The purge of senior editors at progressive newspapers this weekend is no cause for cheering. Their resignations are another milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture through our liberal institutions, and American journalism and democracy will be worse for it.
The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who’d seen the publication through difficult times, was pushed out over a headline, “Buildings Matter, Too.” It was atop a piece by architecture critic Inga Saffron, who worried that buildings damaged by violence could “leave a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia.” Staff members deemed the headline an offense to Black Lives Matter. They protested, and no amount of apologizing or changes to the headline were enough. Editor Stan Wischnowski didn’t last the week.
At the New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennet resigned Sunday after a staff uproar over an op-ed by a U.S. Senator. Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton wrote that military troops should be sent to restore public order in American cities when the police are overwhelmed. A staff revolt deemed the piece fascist, unconstitutional, and too offensive for adults to read and decide for themselves.
Our editorial last week opposed deploying active-duty troops, but the idea is legal under the Insurrection Act. George H.W. Bush deployed troops in 1992 to quell riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict, and other Presidents have done it too.
Mr. Bennet defended the op-ed on Friday as part of his attempt to broaden debate in his pages, and at first so did publisher A.G. Sulzberger. But Mr. Sulzberger changed his mind the same day, suddenly declaring that the op-ed he had defended had not received proper editing and should not have been published. By Sunday Mr. Bennet, as true-blue a progressive as you can find, was out the door. James Dao, the opinion editor who had signed off on the Cotton op-ed, was reassigned.
An ostensibly independent opinion section was ransacked because the social-justice warriors in the newsroom opposed a single article espousing a view that polls show tens of millions of Americans support if the police can’t handle rioting and violence. The publisher failed to back up his editors, which means the editors no longer run the place. The struggle sessions on Twitter and Slack channels rule.
All of this shows the extent to which American journalism is now dominated by the same moral denunciation, “safe space” demands, and identity-politics dogmas that began in the universities. The agents of this politics now dominate nearly all of America’s leading cultural institutions—museums, philanthropy, Hollywood, book publishers, even late-night talk shows.
On matters deemed sacrosanct—and today that includes the view that America is root-and-branch racist—there is no room for debate. You must admit your failure to appreciate this orthodoxy and do penance, or you will not survive in the job.
Some of our friends on the right are pleased because they say all of this merely exposes what has long been true. But this takeover of the Times and other liberal bastions means that there are ever fewer institutions that will defend free inquiry and the contest of ideas that once defined American liberalism.
Which of the following would you consider the most unusual and least likely to occur?
1. President Donald Trump calls Speaker Nancy Pelosi to invite her to lunch.
2. Rioters and looters agree to pay for the damage they caused to businesses and individuals.
3. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh appears on “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated radio program that features discussions on progressive politics and black culture.
No. 3 is the correct answer and it was a fascinating moment.
While it appeared that the hosts and Limbaugh were occasionally talking over each other, the conservative had to earn at least some respect with his forceful denunciation of the killing of George Floyd and his belief that the police officer who killed him should be charged with first-degree, not third-degree, murder.
“The Breakfast Club” hosts, DJ Envy, Angela Yee, and Lenard Larry McKelvey, known professionally as Charlamagne tha God, focused mainly on what they called “white privilege” as the source of misery in much of the African American community. Limbaugh countered that the three were examples of how one can overcome obstacles, including discrimination.
Charlamagne reiterated his accusation of white privilege and added “white supremacy.”
What is important in this continuing debate is not each “side” getting in its talking points but listening to how the other reached the conclusions that created their worldview.
Saying things that only reinforce one’s stereotypes and ideology doesn’t solve the problem, and who doubts there is a problem?
I have written this before, even recently, but the main problem is not only racism. It is that we don’t know each other.
The late Republican Congressman Jack Kemp used to say that as a professional football player he had showered with more African Americans than attend the Republican National Convention. Black people who knew him called him a friend.
Growing up in a virtually all-white Washington, D.C., suburb (a city that practiced segregation well into the 1960s), I didn’t know anyone of a different race, other than a family maid, until I began playing college basketball.
Showering and eating meals with people who were “different” from me bridged a gap that no legislation could span. I came to see them as teammates, friends, equals, and better players than me.
White people have enjoyed privilege from the beginning of the country in almost every category. This includes professional sports, which are now dominated by African Americans, but for many years were not.
I recently again watched the Ken Burns series “Baseball” on PBS and was reminded of how that sport (and others) banned black players from fields and courts simply because they were black.
It is important for white people to acknowledge white privilege and this history of white supremacy before helpful and healing conversations can begin and race relations improved.
Limbaugh also made a political point the hosts were unable or unwilling to answer. He wondered why so many African Americans continue to vote for Democrats when that party, he said, had done little to help them.
Yee responded with the stock answer that she votes for the person, not the party. She should have been asked, “When was the last time you voted for a Republican?”
After “The Breakfast Club” segment was played on Limbaugh’s program, a woman caller offered her definition of white privilege. She said it came from how the country was founded, reserving economic and political power for white, land-owning men.
Some will be surprised that Limbaugh seemed to agree with her. He called her summation “brilliant.” More of us need to have these conversations and not be so eager to get in our talking points. We should speak less and listen more.
“The Breakfast Club” exchange was a good first step toward achieving that goal.
Seeing a political conservative laud another conservative for starting a dialogue with political opposites, you might think that should apply for liberals as well.
On Fox News, always mocked and demonized by the rest of the mainstream media as faux news, Howard Kurtz notes that
We are getting a great insight into the culture of the New York Times.
The paper struck a blow for honest journalism–and that greatly upset many of its staffers.
At stake is whether the op-ed pages of a newspaper should be a forum for debate, or just a vehicle for reinforcing what its top editors and a majority of its readers already believe. To choose the latter course is to reduce that precious real estate to predictable propaganda, which is not just one-sided but boring.
The Times did the right thing–well, until it didn’t. The paper’s editors chose to publish a piece by Tom Cotton, a Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, titled “Send In The Military.” Cotton argues that it’s perfectly appropriate for President Trump to use the military to restore order in cities wracked by violent protests after the brutal killing of George Floyd.
Well, there was an open revolt at the paper, led by black journalists who were offended.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of the Times Magazine, who worked on the paper’s Pulitzer-winning “1619” slavery project, said: “As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this.”
To their credit, the editors [decided to stick] to their guns. … The Arkansas senator praised the editors … telling Fox: “They’ve stood up to the ‘woke progressive mob’ in their own newsroom. So, I commend them for that.”
But he spoke too soon. About two hours after I checked in with the Times PR office, the paper caved.…The paper said it would make changes, expand its fact-checking operation and publish fewer op-ed pieces.
Fewer op-eds? No explanation of supposed factual shortcomings? The internal pressure must have been overwhelming.
“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton, “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain, and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” The senator has advocated extraordinary measures involving the domestic deployment of uniformed soldiers for several days—as we’ve witnessed mass protests in American cities during the day and wanton violence, rioting, and looting by night. This exhortation is not new for him, but the venue in which it was placed—the New York Times opinion page—inspired a frenzied revolt from within the journalistic institution that published him. More remarkable, the aggrieved staffers and writers at the Times generally declined to issue a counterargument. They simply declared Cotton’s arguments anathema and sought to wield whatever power they could muster to see them banished.
Regarding the 1619 Project, Ed Driscoll (who I thank for being behind most of the hyperlinks in this post) takes the opportunity to step back and make a broader remark about the “newspaper of record” and, beyond, the mainstream media:
As you may recall from a long day ago, after the opinion page published a fairly straightforward op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, arguing to utilize the military in quelling protests — a position shared by the majority of Americans and 46% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, mind you — several staff members instigated a civil war, all sharing the same copypasta bullying their bosses: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”
… Publishing the opinions of the Taliban wasn’t a bridge too far for the staff, and employees claiming that destroying property isn’t violence on national television isn’t a bridge too far for the management. But a sitting United States senator’s opinion that’s shared by the majority of the electorate is, and as a result, journalism will suffer in the future.
The bitter babies at the New YorkTimes wanted less speech, and they got it. They’ll now publish fewer op-eds overall. There is a wholly illiberal war on the free press, and its primary aggressors aren’t in the White House or corrupt police stations. It’s being waged from within the inside.
Which brings Ed Driscoll to allow William F. Buckley to have the final word:
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
Like many other industries, entertainment companies have issued statements of support for the protests against racism and police brutality now filling America’s streets. But there’s something Hollywood can do to put its money where its social media posts are: immediately halt production on cop shows and movies and rethink the stories it tells about policing in America.
For a century, Hollywood has been collaborating with police departments, telling stories that whitewash police shootings and valorizing an action-hero style of policing over the harder, less dramatic work of building relationships with the communities cops are meant to serve and protect. There’s a reason for that beyond a reactionary streak hiding below the industry’s surface liberalism. Purely from a dramatic perspective, crime makes a story seem consequential, investigating crime generates action, and solving crime provides for a morally and emotionally satisfying conclusion.
The result is an addiction to stories that portray police departments as more effective than they actually are; crime as more prevalent than it actually is; and police use of force as consistently justified. There are always gaps between reality and fiction, but given what policing in America has too often become, Hollywood’s version of it looks less like fantasy and more like complicity.
There’s no question that it would be costly for networks and studios to walk away from the police genre entirely. Canceling Dick Wolf’s “Chicago” franchise of shows would wipe out an entire night of NBC’s prime-time programming; dropping “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and a planned spinoff would cut even further into the lineup.
But the gap between what some companies and executives have promised this week and what they have done in the past cannot be ignored. As reality television critic Andy Dehnart points out, at ViacomCBS, cable networks chief Chris McCarthy pledged “to leverage all of our platforms to show our ally-ship.” One of those platforms also airs “Cops,” a decades-old reality show with a troubled history of participating in police censorship and peddling fear of black and brown criminals. If McCarthy means what he says, canceling “Cops” would be a start.
But simply canceling cop shows and movies would be easier than uprooting the assumptions at the heart of the problem.
Say writers made a commitment not to exaggerate the performance of police. Audiences would have to be retrained to watch, for example, a version of “Special Victims Unit” where the characters cleared only 33.4 percent of rape cases, or to accept that in almost 40 percent of murders and manslaughters, no suspect is arrested. If storytelling focused on less-dramatic but more-common crimes such as burglary and motor-vehicle theft, the stakes would shrink — along with the case-clearance rate.
In addition to revealing the world as it is, art has the power to show us the world as it can be. But when reform doesn’t seem like a real possibility, even modest optimism risks souring into mockery.
The closest thing to a reformist police show right now is “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” a sitcom that alternates explorations of the policies and identity politics of the New York Police Department with fantastic gags and one-liners.
Series co-creator Dan Goor told me in 2016 that he hoped that the show was “Modeling what a good police-community interaction would be like.” I’ve never doubted his care in pursuing that ideal. This week, Goor and the cast donated $100,000 to the National Bail Fund Network and announced that they “condemn the murder of George Floyd and support the many people who are protesting police brutality nationally.”
Still, as Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk put it this week, the show can’t escape what it is: Neither the show’s good intentions and genuine good work nor “its silliness … change the way it prioritizes police perspectives over anyone else’s,” VanArendonk wrote.
One way forward might be to emphasize the dialogues, and sometimes fierce struggles, that take place within police departments. “The Shield,” which aired on FX from 2002 to 2008, follows the reign and eventual downfall of corrupt Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his Strike Team, based on the division at the center of the real-life Rampart scandal in Los Angeles. In the finale, Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder), Mackey’s longtime colleague and a truly decent officer, wins a small victory. Mackey, in exchange for his cooperation in an investigation against the surviving members of his team, is not prosecuted for his crimes, but he is required to spend three years in a deadening desk job at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It takes seven seasons to even achieve that much on “The Shield.” It’s been almost six years since Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., and no one can be blamed for feeling like national reform has moved at a similarly petty pace. If the entertainment industry truly believes change can no longer wait, it should start with its own storytelling.
Rosenberg’s anti-police idiocy prompted these comments:
While we’re at it let’s burn books and send those who disagree with so called progressives to re-education camps.
Great “article “; please tell us which books at the library we should burn.
Perhaps we should also get rid of televised sports? Grown men and women beating each other up for money like 21st century gladiators? The owner class throwing money at the entertainers like…yeah, you get it. Somehow I doubt you’d get a lot of advertisers buying time on “ESPN’s Wide World of Poetry”.
Ridiculous. People don’t break out into song to explain their feelings. Cancel Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Keeping up with the Kardashians? Only the 1% lives like that. Not realistic. Cancel it. Brooklyn 99? Please. Cancel it. Don’t even get me started on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Bottom line? The common folk can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality. Our betters need to protect us from it. Thank God Alyssa Rosenberg is here to lead us out of the morass.
Let’s assume I agree with the writer (which I do not). How would one address the nearly 250,000 a year malpractice deaths ? Or alchohol related deaths ? Cancel any show that has booze or doctors saving lives ? Maybe make a show called “Law and Order: Malpractice” or “Law and Order: SJW”, oh wait SVU is already too political. Fact is, television and movies and video games are ENTERTAINMENT. They aren’t there to provide life lessons, ideology or political commentary. They are an escape from real life, which is horrifying enough. Thankfully, neither the writer or anyone commenting here will change the way hollywood does things. It’s about the money…
Yes stop all tv and movies you don’t like now. They brainwash everyone who can’t reason or think for themselves. Right. In my experience intelligent people don’t have a view of real world reality primarily from fictional tv shows or movies. Tv and movies are by design full of intentional drama, caricatures, intentional exaggerations and beyond the pale provocation. Sometimes they hit the mark and do reflect the life experience of many, but much is exaggerated farce. Thinking people know “reality” to the degree they can from life experience and all the ways we can educate ourselves from many sources. Only unthinking people get their view of reality primarily from fiction. Censorship per the thought police is not the way. Education through life experience, self effort and self reflection is. Most people know that.
Sure. Censorship is always a good idea in a free country. The Supreme Court has already opined on this matter. Read about it.
Plato uses the same logic in the Republic when he demands that the poets be banished. Is entertainment properly understood propaganda for the masses? How do people get paid to write this stuff?
In calling on Democrat mayors and governors to get tough around the country yesterday, Trump said “these people are anarchists”, referring to the rioters around the country:
Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors. These people are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!
Personally I wish Trump wouldn’t turn so many of his tweets into a political attack on ‘Sleepy Joe’ during a time of such nationwide distress over what’s going on. But I digress…
In response to this tweet, PBS White House reporter Yamiche Alcindor actually tweeted the following: “”These people are anarchists,” President Trump says without providing any evidence.”
“These people are anarchists,” President Trump says without providing any evidence. https://t.co/P7HGwsbKWD
Has Yamiche been watching the news this weekend? Has she not seen all the fires raging, stores broken and looted all around the country? Has she not seen all the cop cars with broken windows and graffiti all over them? Has she not seen members of the press being attacked? Trump doesn’t need to provide evidence, it’s all over the country.
This just goes to show how far the media will go in their hatred of Trump to defend these thug mobs and Antifa groups.
Ted Cruz hit Yamiche late last night:
PBS seems to have trouble w/ what words mean. According to Webster’s:
“evidence” – a sign which shows that something exists or is true : indication.
“anarchist” – one who uses violent means to overthrow the established order.
The media is committed to defending this anarchy and chaos. They have picked a side and it isn’t America’s. This is not a joke. For your own sake, know who they are and what they are doing. 👇🏻 https://t.co/HjJnhZX6EN
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and randomly destroys property …
Some people learn from others, and some people learn only from experience. And so The Post Millennial reports:
A news editor for a small, independent newspaper was in support of the protests-turned-riots, until they broke into the paper’s office and she had to take cover from looters and vandals in the basement.
Leigh Tauss, an editor for the progressive news outlet Indy Week in North Carolina, was stunned to find that the protesters-turned-rioters did not look favorably upon her business when they swept the area.
She tweeted out on Saturday, saying “the crowd is extremely peaceful and groups and many are wearing masks and trying to keep distance.”
It was only a few short hours later that Tauss tweeted again about the protests. This time her tone was difference.
“I went into the hallway. I heard someone l enter the office and what sounded like smashing inside. We are a small newspaper with a handful of desktops. I’m now hiding in the basement.”
I went into the hallway. I heard someone l enter the office and what sounded like smashing inside. We are a small newspaper with a handful of desktops. I’m now hiding in the basement.
And then on Sunday morning, Tauss posted what had become of her office at the hands of the rioters, tweeting “I’m devastated. We are a progressive newspaper. Last night I was inside when the first brick was thrown.”
I’m devastated. We are a progressive newspaper. Last night I was inside when the first brick was thrown #Raleighpic.twitter.com/MJvPdscyqf
A similar scenario happened with ESPN sportswriter Chris Martin Palmer, who encouraged rioters to burn down a low-income housing area in Minneapolis. But when they showed up to his place, he did not hold back in referring to the rioters as “animals.”
Tauss marked the escalations on Twitter.
Several business with windows smashed in Wilmington street. All the wreckage from last night was cleaned up this morning. #Raleighpic.twitter.com/MQvYEqo0lx
It’s midnight. The protesters have spread out throughout downtown, evading the cops. Some are going around smashing windows and lighting fires #raleighpic.twitter.com/PwHtlJw8tM
Not sure why, but dozens of officers just charged at the few remaining protesters. Smoke bombs and fireworks go off in the street #Raleighpic.twitter.com/ur2sp8UaHP
Former ESPN reporter Chris Martin Palmer celebrated rioters burning down a $30 million affordable housing complex in Minneapolis on Thursday, writing: “Burn that s**t down. Burn it all down.”
He changed his tune after the “gated community” down the street from him came under attack.
“They just attacked our sister community down the street,” Palmer tweeted. “It’s a gated community and they tried to climb the gates. They had to beat them back. Then destroyed a Starbucks and are now in front of my building. Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood. Go back to where you live.”
In Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… (1989), Lloyd Dobler sketches out a stumbling, uncertain-but-nevertheless-determined path for his and my generation:
“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.” “We’re not sure what we want, but not this,” was a strange but endearing generational rallying cry. Few of us who saw the film in our teens or early twenties failed to laugh with recognition.
Ascribing common traits to an entire generation of tens of millions of disparate Americans is a dubious exercise, even a fool’s errand. So call me a fool, I won’t take it personally.
For instance, assuming everyone in a particular generation has seen a particular movie. Except probably for the original “Star Wars.”
Still, a few characteristics unique to Generation X did become clear as the decades passed. Gen X was notably the first generation to have to deal with the mistakes of the Baby Boomers, and the first in which interracial relationships and homosexuality enjoyed widespread acceptance. Gen X-ers were also more emotionally damaged by divorce than the children of any previous or subsequent generation. There was fragility within us as we faced a joyous historical moment when American ways had indisputably been proven superior to those of the Soviet empire and affluence had become, for the first time, available to a huge proportion of Americans. No previous generation could simply choose wealth, but Gen X discovered that a master’s in business or a law degree was a virtual ticket to the upper class. And this created a conflict, given the anti-materialist shibboleths of the John Lennon-led Boomer culture we’d all inherited: Did access to wealth mean we ought to pursue it? Could we achieve it in some Doblerian way that preserved our sense of self? The natural optimism and excitement of youth were tinged with doubts.
Steeped as we were in Boomer rock music, we sensed it was full of questionable advice. Turning away from, or blowing up, the existing power structures so we could “get ourselves back to the garden,” as Crosby, Stills and Nash sang in Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” was not an option we considered. We were not revolutionaries. The country that awaited us not only didn’t require radical overthrow, it seemed pretty good. Our first votes were likely to be for Reagan (61 percent of the youth vote in 1984) or George H.W. Bush (53 percent in 1988). We advanced into adulthood as cautious idealists, a little hopeful and a little confused.
When I arrived at college in 1985, U2 and Talking Heads were very much the bands of the moment, but there was a palpable sense that Bono and Co. still hadn’t quite fulfilled their promise, that their best days, like ours, were yet to come. Junior year, just as we returned from spring break to a New Haven that flipped overnight from gray slush to Monet efflorescence, U2 delivered its hoped-for masterpiece in The Joshua Tree, instantly and obviously the defining rock album of the decade.
How, you ask, has this blogger been spending evenings during the coronavirus-mandated statewide lockdown of sorts?
Binge-watching a TV series that screams the ’80s, NBC-TV’s “Miami Vice.”
The short version of the creation of the TV series is two words from NBC programming executive Brandon Tartikoff: “MTV cops.” Or. more precisely, two cops that looked as if they had stepped out of an MTV music video. (Back when MTV played music videos.)
In one sense, “Vice” could be said to be a 1980s iteration of a classic that had recently gone off the air, the original “Hawaii Five-O.”
Both were set in lush locales that hid the seething sewers of crime (and, in Miami’s case, decadence) underneath. (To unreasonable ends, in Five-O’s case; as costar James MacArthur once put it, the show probably solved every crime in the islands halfway through its run.)
Things diverge from there, though. Unlike, say, “Adam-12,” I am confident in asserting that no one decided to go into police work based on “Miami Vice.” Outside of the setting Five-O was a straight police procedural. Vice was sort of film-noirish in that the heroes had skeletons in their own closets.
James “Sonny” Crockett was a former college football star and Vietnam veteran who started the series by trying to avenge his young partner’s death. Ricardo Tubbs was a New York City police detective who went to Miami to avenge the death of his brother, another NYPD detective.
The two are members of the Miami–Dade (then known as “Metro–Dade”) Police Department’s Organized Crime Bureau, called “Miami Vice,” investigating and either arresting or killing drug dealers and various other purveyors of South Florida vice, as well as their politician and dirty cop (including feds) enablers.
Crockett lives on a sailboat moored in a harbor. Thanks to asset forfeiture, Crockett gets to drive a “Ferrari Daytona” (which was actually a replica car on a Corvette chassis) and a speedboat. (Ferrari was upset about the use of the faux Daytona, which wasn’t built by Ferrari to be a convertible anyway, so Ferrari donated two Testarossas for use.)
It’s always interesting to learn who was considered for the roles that were iconically played (if that’s a word) by the eventually chosen actors. Crockett candidates included Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte, Richard Dean Anderson, Mickey Rourke, Gary Cole, and Larry Wilcox (yes, of “CHiPs”) before Don Johnson, who had been in four failed pilots (as was Tom Selleck before “Magnum P.I.”) was chosen, reportedly over Wilcox. Denzel Washington would have done a great job, but different job, as Tubbs. Geoffrey Cole, who ended up on “The Cosby Show,” also auditioned for Tubbs.
Johnson considered leaving the series after its second season. Mark Harmon, formerly a rookie cop on “Adam-12,” a sheriff’s rescue guy on “240-Robert” and a San Francisco cop in the movie “The Presidio,” was considered as Johnson’s replacement.
Their boss was initially Lt. Lou Rodriguez, played by character actor Gregory Sierra (previously seen playing a detective in “Barney Miller”). Sierra, however, didn’t like working in Miami, so he was killed — I mean, written out — and Edward James Olmos was cast. And arguably that’s where the series took off in a character sense; the conflict between detectives Crockett and Tubbs and their boss was rather stereotypical in Sierra’s case, but Olmos’ Castillo, described in one place as a “modern-day samurai” with an improbable background for a police lieutenant, was impenetrable and unpredictable, at least until writers lost the plot of his character in the final season. (Olmos joked that he was the highest paid actor per word in Hollywood.)
We started watching the second season, and then when we purchased the whole series (from exactly where you would expect to get DVDs — Menards) we moved to the pilot and the first season. The series certainly was rolling in the second season.
The series is famous for a lot of things, including the start of a lot of acting careers:
One way you can tell its cultural impact, beyond the pastels (an idea creator Michael Mann came up with after going to a Miami paint store — and Crockett’s penchant for baggy light-colored clothing and shoes without socks) …
… is the number of musicians who started appearing in the series during season one, a trend that continued through the third season. The soundtrack is basically a who’s-who of pop and rock music of the ’80s, with a few pleasant flashbacks as far back as the early ’60s.
And, of course, Johnson became a star, as did Olmos.
One of the more amusing moments is when Johnson’s ex-wife, Melanie Griffith (the daughter of Tippi Hedren, with whom Johnson appeared on the 1973 movie “The Harrad Experiment”), appears in an episode as the owner of a call girl service. After the series ended Johnson and Griffith remarried, and then re-divorced.
To say the series is an unrealistic depiction of police work is completely beside the point. Every officer, including Castillo, contributes to the series’ body count to the extent that all of them should have been fired, even if all the shootings passed shooting review board muster. The bad guys usually have the shooting aim of Star Wars storm troopers. Castillo’s detectives lie to their boss about getting personally involved in cases without impunity, and only get called on it once. (Though that was an epic 15 seconds, with Castillo calling their professional conduct in the case “abominable.”)
Miami is, as Hawaii was, depicted as a nest of crime and, well, vice, buried under a sea of cocaine, the wonder drug of the ’80s. (A place called Sex World is prominent in one episode and part of others.) One can only imagine what the producers (including Dick Wolf before he started the “Law & Order” juggernaut) would have come up with a decade later after “NYPD Blue”
The series is quite dark. According to one website 108 people are killed in the five seasons, and frankly that seems low. Crockett is a Vietnam veteran (how that dovetails with his being a college football star and his apparent age in the mid-1980s … well, it’s TV, which is not subject to the usual measurements of time), and he runs into damaged Vietnam veterans who make up plot points in a few episodes. And whether or not Crockett was damaged by Vietnam, he’s got the macho-sensitive brooder thing down. (In two episodes he regrets previous behavior toward a female high school classmate and a former police partner who was homosexual, not to mention his being an absent husband and father, which is why he is an ex-husband. Young Crockett didn’t learn that the way to avoid regrets is to not do the wrong thing(s) in the first place.)
It was also unique for its abrupt endings in the first two seasons of the series that leave unanswered questions. (Did he survive or not?) Not often are there tags with humorous conclusions. In fact, five consecutive second-season episodes end with a suicide, with Crockett yelling “NO!!!” as the character prevents his or her being able to return to the series.
Two of the main characters start by providing comic relief — detectives Switek and Zito, usually found in a van filled with surveillance equipment. (Complete, early on, with a giant bug on the roof.) They’re portrayed as something less than competent early on, though that changes. And then Zito gets killed, and Switek, larger than everyone else and with a penchant for inappropriate comments to match, develops a gambling addiction. The two female leads, detectives Gina Calabrese and Trudy Brown, seem to spend the largest parts of the episodes they’re in engaging in prostitute sting operations.
There is humor in the interaction of the characters, particularly Izzy Moreno the malaprop-plagued informant, such as …
“We move in the same social matrix!”
“Hey, man, you can’t go in there with those brown shoes, this party is color-cooperated!”
“The slightest barometric altercation in the atmospheric pressures tend to affect my paranasal digestive systems.”
“Like a lawyer and a priest, when I’m immoralizing women …”
“You are ruining your skins! The ultra-veelet rays are destroying the epidermal cortex as we speak!”
“Dr. Trautman, yes … He only handles the physotropic symptoms, I was called in to deal with the psycho-kinetic diseases, the neural consciousness frontier.”
… and another informant known as “Noogie,” but otherwise it was pretty grim until the fourth season, which featured episodes about dueling televangelists, a cryogenically frozen reggae singer, UFOs, and the theft of bull semen. Black humor (appropriate for a series involving police) can be found throughout the series, such as when a chemist developing the most pure synthetic cocaine in the world tries some himself (after Izzy fakes trying some), and achieves the first and last high of his life.
Throughout the series Crockett and Tubbs had underworld alter-egos, Burnett and Cooper, respectively. Oftentimes Crockett/Burnett and Tubbs/Cooper got involved with women as part of their cases, but it always ended badly for the women (one of Tubbs’ girlfriends doesn’t survive the teaser), particularly singer Caitlin Davies (played by singer Sheena Easton), who over several episodes testifies against a corrupt record producer, falls in love with Crockett, marries him, gets pregnant, goes on tour and gets shot to death.
One episode later the writers trotted out the trope of a character’s getting amnesia, and so into the fifth season Crockett thought he was Burnett, and acted accordingly, adding to the series’ body count. And then magically Burnett went back to Crockett, conveniently forgetting Burnett’s carnage, and conveniently avoiding the usual career repercussions for a police officer who killed several people.
After Crockett returns to his right mind, the rest of the series (including four episodes that ran after the series finale, one of which may have been a pilot for another series that NBC didn’t buy, and another of which NBC declined to broadcast because of its subject matter, child molestation) foreshadows the end of the series through Crockett’s increasing burnout. That could be said to apply to the series too, particularly when the last two seasons featured increasingly bizarre storylines or repeated stories from earlier seasons.
The series ended with a two-hour finale movie in which Crockett and Tubbs are recruited by mysterious feds (are there any other kind?) to rescue from a fictional Latin American country a corrupt dictator (supposedly based on Panama’s Manuel Noriega, though he looks more like Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, and he’s played by non-Latino non-Arab actor Ian McShane) who is willing to tell all to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Crockett and Tubbs are, of course, nearly killed on several occasions and repeatedly double-crossed, which leads them to their living end.
The series interestingly ends not with the iconic theme music, but with a solo effort by Chicago guitarist Terry Kath …
… whose song ended another cult classic, the 1970s movie “Electra Glide in Blue.”
Lopez Video reviewed the series after doing what we did:
The concentration on raw aesthetics during the first 2 seasons makes this show a classic. Whether it was Michael Mann, this Yankovich character, or whoever, the primary emphasis of the show was raw aesthetics – the detective stuff came second (albeit a close second).
This was a show about pastel colors, Art Deco architecture, pop music, cars driving fast beach-side, drugs, and most importantly, sockless loafers with flowing blazers over a wrinkled V-neck.
The detective stuff was obviously interesting on a biological level: I want to know the answer to the mystery! The more mysterious, the more I want to know the answer. And the regional ideation with the various Columbian drug cartels or anti-Castro Cubans or the corrupt cops / politicians… It’s all just fun to watch, especially if you’re from Miami. Like bubblegum.
I stand by my original assessment that the show would’ve been far more addicting if the writers had extended the life of the first drug king-pin, Calderone. His story is tied to the motivational drama of Rico Tubbs – Calderone murdered his brother in New York City, thus kickstarting the entire show.
Instead of killing Calderone by the 5th episode of the 1st season, they should’ve made Calderone an almost omnipotent drug kingpin. His power is profound & supreme. He exists only in shadows.
And so the capturing of Calderone would’ve become the specter that ties the entire series together. This is the season finale everybody tunes in to see (Think: “Lost“).
Anyway, they didn’t do that & the show quickly develops into a psuedo-CSI with a “monster-of-the-week” feel; sometimes introducing random-ass female love-interests for both Sonny & Rico. It’s all kind of blah but you stick around waiting for that new awesome 80s tune or that one unexpectedly good episode of that surprise cameo appearance by Bruce Willis or Julia Roberts.
Not enough Calderone? They took on Calderone and his brother and his cousin. And Tubbs fell in love with Calderone’s sister and they had a child, but of course they both died.
The double agent aspect of the show elevates it to something special. It reminds me of Scorsese’s “The Departed” & Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” There’s something spectacular in seeing people transform by putting on masks to exist in separate worlds. Having to live two realities is extremely archetypal, and very cinematic.
The undercover theme is what made the show consistently interesting for me.
As far as acting, the real stand outs are Edward James Olmos and Martin Ferrero, with Don Johnson representing the blank every-man like a Warhol silkscreen: even his name is a blank canvas for projection… Don Johnson. It might as well be Al Whiteman.
Yet after a while, Don Johnson becomes quite identifiable as the ideal of a Warrior spirit: the kind of person you want to visualize weekly being in your world, because of this-quality or that-quality.
And as for his partner, played by Philip Michael Thomas, he is the quintessential balancing-force of this Warrior energy… with perhaps more of a Lover archetype activated & mixed-in, as he’s usually depicted rocked by his erotic emotions. Johnson is shown this way as well, but his character seems to develop an awareness overtime to consolidate these feelings in exchange for heightening his job performance… like a pure Warrior. Nothing stands out about Philip Michael Thomas’s character, and yet couldn’t imagine this particular show without him. He’s like the ground-rock that keeps the animality of Sonny Crockett contained.
Finally, the music in the show is great. There’s some classic music-movie moments, running all throughout the show, to the very end of the season finale. The resurrection of good obscure music (even if it was popular in its day) by contextualizing the sounds to new images, is just something I adore about cinema. It gets me high.
Everyone has an opinion of the best episodes …
“Miami Vice” clearly is of the ’80s, which is why it was a stupid idea to make a movie. (I will not dignify that idea by watching said movie.) I wonder, though, if a Vice-style show featuring police chasing around all matter of human depravity could be done in a different locale — say, Las Vegas. (Not like the original “CSI” did.)
Before their unpaid furlough, the white lab coats at Blaska Policy Werkes had been studying the disconnect between the rhetoric of progressives like Bernie Sanders, Mark Pocan, John Nichols, and A.O.C. and their actions.
Like Marxists everywhere, they purport to speak for the common man but represent the interests of tenured academics, the governing class, professional grievance peddlers, and other elites. They left “the Deplorables” to Donald Trump.
The farmers, tavern keepers, and hairdressers who protested WI Gov. Tony Evers’ rigid economic paralysis were motivated by “fear,” or “paranoia” or “just plain manipulated for political reasons,” Pocan sniffed. (Recounted here.)
The Progressive Dane mayor of Madison was more succinct: “Idiots!” she called them. Pocan, Mayor Rhodes-Conway, Nichols et al have yet to miss a single paycheck during a lockdown that has idled 33 million proud American workers and made them supplicants for Nancy Pelosi’s charity.
Peggy Noonan gets it. “Since the pandemic began, the overclass has been in charge — scientists, doctors, political figures, consultants—calling the shots for the average people. But personally they have less skin in the game,” Noonan writes in “Scenes from the class struggle.”
“The National Institutes of Health scientist won’t lose his livelihood over what’s happened. Neither will the midday anchor. …
It’s not that those in red states don’t think there’s a pandemic. … they know they may get sick themselves. But they also figure this way: Hundreds of thousands could die and the American economy taken down, which would mean millions of other casualties, economic ones. …
The working-class people who are pushing back have had harder lives than those now determining their fate. … No one sent them to Yale. … The overclass says, “Wait three months before we’re safe.” They reply, “There’s no such thing as safe.” …
Peggy Noonan’s Bottom Line: “Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called anti-lockdown demonstrations ‘racist and misogynistic.’ She might as well have called them ‘deplorables.’”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Please choose Whitmer as your veep, Uncle Joe!
From that came this observation:
The best part is that most of those Deplorables are Democrat voters. This is the very same magic that Ron Reagan used–except Ron was preoccupied with defeating Russia rather than the far more terrible Enemy Within.
I was young in the 1970s (weren’t we all), when I first started becoming interested in cars.
I was interested in other four-wheeled vehicles too, including custom vans. No, not this van …
… which is technically a minivan, (a depiction of) our 2001 Honda Odyssey. As an appliance, it was a marvel of function and design. As a driving experience, it was like driving a Honda Accord, because it was based on an Accord, also a marvel of design and function, though if you use a synonym you can spell “function” without “fun.”
For some reason (coronavirus boredom?) Automobile Magazine found a list of van-based movies, which was the genesis for this blog:
Sometimes bad can be good—especially when we are referring to vansploitation movies of the 1970s. Like the hot-rod and biker movies of the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s was the golden age of movies about vans. But let us be clear: This genre of celluloid includes some of the cheesiest, most sexist, and dumbest plotlines in motion picture history—think “Smokey and the Bandit” meets “Porky’s”—but it also includes some of the coolest customized vans of all-time. Chances are you’ve probably never heard of or ever watched any of these silly vansploitation flicks, so know up front that the vans usually feature wild paint jobs with suggestive graphics, shag carpeting, CB radios, waterbeds, mirrors on the ceiling, refrigerators, toasters, and much more.
Here are four essential vansploitation movies to check out.
“Blue Summer” (1973)
The earliest known vansploitation movie of the ’70s is “Blue Summer,” directed by Chuck Vincent—who is known mostly for directing a number of the era’s adult films. Basically, it is the story of two beer-swilling high-school graduates who meet female hitchhikers, a preacher, a righteous biker, and other crazy locals in their groovy Dodge van with flowers all around and a butterfly up front. The beat-up gray van is named “The Meat Wagon” by its owner, and you can guess that this one isn’t exactly for the kiddos.
“Supervan” (1977)
This vansploitation film features one of the coolest custom vans of all time. The star of “Supervan” is named “Vandora,” and it’s a solar-powered machine with lasers that was created by George Barris. The legendary “King of Kustomizers” used a Dodge Sportsman as the base for his futuristic ride, and he also appears as a judge in the movie. Poet and writer Charles Bukowski also makes a cameo and can be seen briefly during a wet t-shirt contest. You can skip the first 20 minutes of this movie because that’s when Vandora finally enters the scene. Far out, man.
“The Van” (1977)
“Bobby couldn’t make it … till he went Fun-Truckin’!” teases the poster for this classic pile of vansploitation. “The Van” is directed by Sam Grossman and is about a kid that spends all of his money on a customized bright yellow Dodge dubbed “The Straight Arrow.” It has a huge glass window with giant phallic arrow graphics on its sides—it’s not very subtle at all. Strangely, the theme song “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns is used throughout the movie’s terrible soundtrack. Go figure. Also as a bonus, funnyman Danny DeVito co-stars in a pre-“Taxi” type of role with a slight “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” character vibe.
“Van Nuys Blvd.” (1979)
This one is the best of the vansploitation bunch, as “Van Nuys Blvd.” is the culmination of the vansploitation genre. It is still cheesy but also the easiest one of these movies to watch. It is directed by William Sachs and stars Bill Adler as a small-town hayseed who heads to the bright lights of Van Nuys, California, to cruise his Ford Econoline van on the now legendary boulevard. It also stars Cynthia Wood, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year who drives and races a bad ass Dodge Tradesman van of her own. This one is definitely the “American Graffiti” of vansploitation movies, and it is more than worth a look for its footage of the Southern California car-culture scene of its day.
The 1970s was the apotheosis of van movies because the 1970s was the apotheosis of custom vans. The vehicle originally on a truck chassis with a body designed for various commercial uses could be customized from front bumper to back bumper, outside and inside, for the owner’s needs, including sleeping. (Solo or otherwise.)
As with other vehicles of the day, vans could be mechanically improved by choices of wheels and tires, additions of sidepipes, or engine upgrades. None of that changed the reality of the van as large and heavy.
Owners could augment the interior with upgraded front seats, sunroofs, tables, mini-refrigerators wired into the van’s electrical system, beds, and (inevitably shag) carpeting.
Van exteriors, specifically the vast expanse between the front doors and the back doors, were a canvas for the creativity or interests (and budget) of the owner:
In this you could rock all night and party all day in Detroit Rock City.The Denimachine was a promotion with Ford, Coca~Cola and Levis. I think I tried to win this. I didn’t win, and I may have been ineligible due to age anyway.This is the Dodge Santana, which demonstrates one way tall people could customize their vans — extend their height.For those who think vans are too high, one could chop them, as happened with ’40s and ’50s cars. And there was nothing stopping anyone — except their skills and wallets — from, say, adding a rear axle.)If you had enough money, and were tall enough to get in, you could buy this Pathfinder four-wheel-drive conversion. Imagine driving that in high winds. (For that matter, imagine a four-wheel-drive Santana in high winds. Semis with empty trailers would be more stable.)Remember Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine?This GMC van was part of the 1980s TV series “The A-Team.”
Interestingly for a manufacturer that usually was the third of the Big Four (then Big Three), Dodge built the van that seemed to get the most praise from van magazines. And then Dodge looked at what people were doing to its vans and decided to help by introducing …
… the Street Van, with factory semi-customization.
Ford saw (or learned about that), and decided to produce …
… the Cruising Van, done one better (or worse) by …
… the Pinto-based Cruising Wagon, yet another Detroit-created vehicular answer in search of a question. (Or, if you will, the love child of a Cruising Van and a 1950s-vintage sedan delivery.)
Not to be outdone, Chevrolet showed up with …
… the Van Sport (not to be confused with the Sportvan, a van with seating for up to 12 and windows).
My idea was to make a lifesize version of this Hot Wheels van, with chrome (!) paint and flames:
(The Hot Wheels car is on sale for $100, by the way. Ponder that one.)
The custom van was a fad of the ’70s, brought to us by the Baby Boomer generation that enjoyed unprecedented (until then) prosperity, health (for those who avoided the Vietnam War) and cheap gas prices.
Are American consumers in the containment phase or the mitigation phase as they try to limit the spread of misinformation in their daily news intake? Getting the straight story on yet another FBI abuse has been particularly challenging.
NBC has apologized for “inaccurately” cutting a portion of an interview with Attorney General William Barr that left a false impression with viewers of “Meet the Press.”
The trouble began when program host Chuck Todd introduced an excerpt of a CBS interview with Mr. Barr. The interview concerned last week’s decision by Mr. Barr’s Justice Department to drop its case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had been wrongly targeted by the FBI. According to the A.P. report:
When Barr was asked by reporter Catherine Herridge what history would say about the decision, Barr replied that “history is written by the winner. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”
Todd said that he was struck by the cynicism of that answer.
“It’s a correct answer,” Todd said. “But he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this is a political job.”
However, “Meet the Press” didn’t include Barr’s full answer to Herridge’s question. He went on to say: “But I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.”
The Trump era has been a particularly challenging one for Mr. Todd. He was deceived for years by Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who claimed on Mr. Todd’s show to have seen evidence of Russian collusion but then never produced it—either on “Meet the Press” or anywhere else.
Mr. Todd isn’t the only one who has struggled to make sense of this unique era. Other highly esteemed journalists also failed as they pursued the collusion theory beloved by Trump critics. Amazingly, after failing to grasp the historic abuse of federal investigative powers directed against Trump associates and being led astray by anonymous sources, a number of these journalists even shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for “national reporting.”
People in the journalism industry are not particularly known for self-reflection. Anyone hoping the 2018 awards season would persuade the industry’s leading lights to renew their commitment to accuracy and fairness has perhaps been disappointed.
Recently the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary went to a New York Times essay which includes these notes at the bottom:
Correction August 15, 2019
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was approved on July 4, 1776, not signed by Congress on that date. The article also misspelled the surname of a Revolutionary War-era writer. He was Samuel Bryan, not Byron.
Editors’ Note March 11, 2020
A passage has been adjusted to make clear that a desire to protect slavery was among the motivations of some of the colonists who fought the Revolutionary War, not among the motivations of all of them.
Other than that the story was accurate? The Times called this last amendment a “clarification” rather than a correction. If one wanted to get really depressed about the state of journalism, one could conclude that this year’s submissions were so bad that Pulitzer judges felt they had no choice but to honor a piece that had been significantly amended. But they seem to have really liked it.
Even fixtures of the media establishment cannot take their status for granted. The Pulitzer board surely understands that people can choose to ignore its judgments if they conclude the competition is becoming a celebration of the craft of political storytelling.
This year’s winning essay was part of a larger Times collection of stories called the “1619 Project.” After the project was rolled out last year, several historians, including previous Pulitzer winners, wrote to say they were “dismayed at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.” They added:
These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or “framing.” They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only “white historians” — has affirmed that displacement.
On the American Revolution, pivotal to any account of our history, the project asserts that the founders declared the colonies’ independence of Britain “in order to ensure slavery would continue.” This is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding — yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false.
Here’s hoping that consumers don’t just decide to give up on news organizations altogether. Extreme media distancing wouldn’t be healthy either.
Daniel Greenfield starts with the perspective of skepticism about the media (which is a reasonable attitude) but then …
Even while the media is blaring stories about the abuse of the Payroll Protection Plan loans from the Small Business Administration, its own industry took millions in loans and wants billions more.
Unlike many small businesses which were forced to shut down because of the lockdown, the media has been wrongly listed as ‘essential’ and exempted from the shutdowns, but that hasn’t stopped it from taking money that should have been used to compensate small business owners who can’t stay open.
It should be noted that “the media has been wrongly listed as ‘essential’ and exempted from the shutdowns” is, in order, an opinion and a statement that varies depending on where you are.
Even when the media operations cashing in on the SBA loans aren’t anyone’s idea of a small business.
The Seattle Times maxed out its PPP loan with a $10 million payout. The Seattle Times is not only Washington State’s largest daily, but its parent company, the Seattle Times Company, owns two other papers, and had, as recently as 3 years ago, put out 7 papers. It also owned multiple newspapers in Maine which it sold off for over $200 million. It had two printing plants, one of which it sold. The Rotary Offset Press, which it still owns, continues to print a variety of magazines and newspapers.
But while the Seattle Times is, like the New York Times, a multi-generational family property, the McClatchy Company owns 49.5% of voting stock and 70.6% of voting stock in the Seattle Times Company. McClatchy has dozens of papers and had revenues of over $800 million in 2018.
While McClatchy has operated at a loss and filed for Chapter 11, it’s not a small business. Neither is the hedge fund likely to run it which is partially backed by, among others, CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest and most politically correct pension fund in the country.
Is this really a small business?
Despite the façade of family ownership, national chains have owned much of the Seattle paper business since the Great Depression with McClatchy taking over from Knight Ridder. Even if you ignore all the wizards behind the Emerald City paper’s curtain, the Seattle Times Company has 849 employees.
How was the Seattle Times able to max out the SBA’s PPP loan? Double and triple standards.
If you deal in fresh fruit and have over 100 employees, according to the SBA, you’re not a small business. If you supply toys, you’re limited to 150 employees. But if you’re a newspaper publisher, you can have up to 1,000 employees and still be considered a small business.
That’s how a company that owns 3 papers, a printing plant, and its silent partner is one of the largest news publishers in America, was eligible to grab loans intended to keep small businesses afloat.
The Seattle Times wasn’t unique among the media in seizing loans meant for shuttered small businesses.
The Tampa Bay Times got an $8.5 million loan, close to the max. The Times Publishing Company also puts out 10 papers, a few magazines, and Politifact, a site which claims to ‘fact check’ politicians, but frequently makes false claims, puts out spam, and smears conservatives.
The Company is owned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which is funded by leftist billionaires like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar.
And just to make matters worse, the Poynter Institute, which is officially a non-profit, also got a stimulus loan of $737,400 to cover its coronavirus “business losses”.
Poynter notes that as, “a nonprofit with under 60 employees, Poynter qualified for the loan.” But Poynter’s documents suggest that its newspaper business had $123 million in revenues with assets of $43 million.
That’s not a small business.
The Tampa Bay Times and its shady operations, the intermingling of non-profits and for-profits, is already suspect on its own. It should not have been taking money meant for small businesses.
But the media has been eager to pig out on small business loans even as it attacks public companies that took PPP loans. Axios, a media venture by Politico bigwigs, with around 200 employees, funded by venture capital and investment firms, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood tycoon with a net worth of $750 million, and NBCUniversal, scored a $5 million PPP loan.
But this obscene piggery isn’t enough for the media which wants a much bigger exemption.
Senator Maria Cantwell, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator John Kennedy dispatched a letter urging a waiver on the affiliation rule “which restricts assistance to companies owned or controlled by larger entities.” This would potentially allow huge multi-billion-dollar conglomerates like Gannett to raid money intended for small businesses even as they lobby politicians to shut those businesses down.
The senators falsely claimed that keeping the media going was “essential to public health”.
Affiliation waivers would lift the 1,000-employee limit and allow newspapers owned by national chains to apply for loans as if they were small businesses. It’s the equivalent of having every Starbucks outlet claim that it’s just a small business serving the local community and won’t pass the money upward.
The media has been shaming other corporations that took PPP loans, yet it is entirely without shame.
There ought to be no more sanctimonious lectures about corporate bailouts from Democrats who want to bail out billion-dollar corporations while small business owners can’t get inside the front door. If affiliation rules are waived for the media, Gannett’s thousand plus newspapers would be ready to raid the SBA for loans that would likely never be repaid, while justifying the looting by arguing that the media is suffering because small businesses can’t afford to take out as many ads in local papers as before.
The media has already managed to loot at least $23.5 million meant for small businesses. Affiliation waivers would turn PPP loans into a bailout for media conglomerates that would be worth billions.
The media has already been allowed to operate while actual small businesses were shut down, even though there’s been a coronavirus infection spike in the media which, as far as we know, killed several people.
Evidence?
It’s used its megaphone to push for more shutdowns of local businesses as non-essential even as it demands the right to raid the money intended for those businesses to fund its massive operations.
Enough.
National media chains on the verge of bankruptcy want to exploit small business loans intended for coronavirus relief to keep their broken business model going for another few years before they fold.
The PPP loan program was not designed as a bailout for media giants and their pension fraud.
The Seattle Times, the Tampa Bay Times, Poynter, and Axios ought to be pressured into returning the money they took. And while that may never happen, any effort by politicians to apply affiliation waivers to the media ought to be fought as an obscene cash grab from small businesses to lefty corporations.
It is a good question to ask why businesses of five to 10 employees haven’t been able to give PPP loans while much larger “small” businesses have.
To say, though, that every media outlet is the same is false. To assert that no one needs reporters delving into what their local governments are doing with their tax dollars is ignorant and foolish.
Today on #GivingTuesdayNow we humbly urge you to consider a gift to support the journalists in your community working tirelessly and at personal risk to help you navigate the COVID-19 health and economic crisis. We are grateful for their skill in providing useful, reliable information about all aspects of the pandemic in these times of confusion and social stress. We need them to continue to tell the stories of the sick, the dying, the health care heroes and those working to move us forward. The value of this journalism is immense.
Your dollars, if you can swing it, are deeply appreciated, particularly given the economic pressures faced by local news companies.
But how about something even better? Don’t just give. Engage.
Buy a subscription to your local news website or newspaper. Become a sustaining member of the local public radio or television station, or your favorite nonprofit news website. If you have the option to patronize an advertiser who spends money with a local news source, please consider. You know what’s better than journalism supporters? Customers.
When the audience has skin in the game, there is an implicit compact with the journalists that together we can help improve a community. Such engagement runs deeper than just the money. We’ve long said journalism helps us participate in democracy.
When the coronavirus hit, local news organizations were already at-risk with “underlying health conditions.” The fragmentation and even evaporation of advertising revenue long before the pandemic forced significant retrenchment and left the local news industry with an uncertain future.
With revenue in freefall, publishers were forced to significantly cut costs, including news coverage, while asking the audience to pay more for the product. That’s a hard balancing act, for sure.
A byproduct of the tension has been an unhealthy indifference. According to a study by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 86% of Americans believe in the value of local news, yet only 20%paid for a subscription or membership to a local news organization. Even those who say they value journalism are becoming bystanders, and in the process settling for a weak sauce of coverage, at times, from their preferred local news source.
The Knight study found more than 60% of Americans believe their community news sources aren’t doing enough to keep an eye on local officials. They want more coverage of education, drug addiction and housing.
A report last year by the nonprofit education news site Chalkbeat said there were no full-time education beat writers in locales as big and complicated as Newark or throughout the communities of Silicon Valley. Might not more paying customers demand better?
Today’s newsroom leaders have a deeply difficult task in covering their communities with substantially fewer journalists than before. But how the remaining resources do get deployed is a choice.
Combine your patronage with engagement — write letters, leave comments, attend events, call in story tips — and you become part of the equation in making the choices mean the most for your community.
The coverage of coronavirus by local journalists has struck a blow against indifference. Today we recognize the exceptional energy, relevance and sophistication that journalists have brought to the crisis and its consequences. Every member of a local news company is serving their community. …
An enduring theme of American journalism is that it helps move us off the sidelines, get involved, demand action. In these confusing times of crisis, it’s useful to remember that journalism is part of the democracy toolkit, and we need not feel powerless.
I wish I could endorse 100 percent of that statement. But too many in the media refuse to admit that their previous work might not have been connecting with their readers. (Recall my list of reporter engagement, or lack thereof, where they work.) The problems of the media are not merely due to shrinking advertising base or corporate ownership, even though advertising has been shrinking thanks to the Internet, and the managers of big media companies don’t always make the right decisions.
There has, for one thing, been too much commentary (in print or online, particularly on Twitter) from reporters whose commentary brings into question their objectivity. The corollary is the arrogance of some reporters who bristle whenever they are questioned by their readers. (That may be more a personality flaw than a flaw in the profession. Everyone needs thicker skins, including reporters, who you’d think would be immune to the slings and arrows of contrary comment.)
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Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 