Readers know that for years I have made occasional appearances on Wisconsin Public Radio’s morning show Friday 8 a.m. Week in Review segment against someone on the opposite side of the ideological aisle.
Given that I for some reason kept appearing on holiday weekends, my drive for self-promotion included, in the blog posts announcing my imminent presence on the state’s public radio airwaves and at wpr.org, a listing of the holidays of the weekend, including, this weekend, National Donut Day today, National Bubba Day Saturday (insert rude comment about Bill Clinton here), and, on Sunday, my birthday, and my oldest son’s graduation from high school. (An anecdote about him follows.)
I have been on WPR since, I believe, 2008, when I returned to the media world after seven years in private-college public relations. (In that world, you’re not supposed to have publicly expressed opinions separate from your employer’s. Faculty can express themselves; staff cannot. Also, though that was my favorite employer, I was a political minority, and so those of us of similar political worldviews kept that quiet.) Before that, I was occasionally on Wisconsin Public Television’s WeekEnd show and its pundit panel before WeekEnd ended in 2001. My role was to be the non-liberal non-Madisonian, usually from WPT’s studios at UW–Green Bay. (There were two exceptions, one of which I’ll get to presently.)
WPR is getting a new morning host, replacing retiree Joy Cardin and her short-time replacement Kate Archer Kent, and, I’m told, discontinuing the Week in Review segment. I may be appearing on the new morning show on days other than Fridays (as I have on occasion). Those who have a burning desire to hear my previous work dating back to 2011 can find me on WPR’s archive.
My connection with public broadcasting is probably my longest non-paid media association, given that it goes back to my first term at Marketplace Magazine. Nothing lasts forever, particularly in the media, and particularly today.
My favorite opponents probably were four from the news media. Matt Rothschild and I as debaters date back to the WeekEnd show, so you can guess how old that makes us.
(Matt wasn’t on one of my two Madison WeekEnd appearances. I was asked the Friday of Memorial Day weekend 2000 to appear, but I was heading to the in-laws in Southwest Wisconsin that weekend. So instead of going to Green Bay, we stopped in Madison, and while Mrs. Presteblog and our four-week-old son watched, and the latter got oohs and ahs from guests and crew, I debated, among others, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, the same communist now running for governor. The subject was campaign finance reform, and the last thing I said was that the best way to reduce campaign spending was to reduce the stakes in elections by reducing the size of government. That made Soglin literally sputter. I felt that was one of my best closes of all time.)
Bill Lueders popped in and out of the media; he’s now the managing editor of The Progressive magazine. He and I may have had the most fractious Week in Review segment of all time during the Act 10 drama, and it’s probably a good thing I wasn’t there. We were, however, able to laugh about it when I finally met him in person a year later.
Louis Fortis is the publisher of the Shepherd Express and a former state legislator. Though he’s not anywhere close to me ideologically, he seems to have the proper cynical view politics, so we were able to probably find more agreement than disagreement in what we were discussing.
John Nichols is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison. He has a left-libertarian bent, so we have that in common, and unlike many, many liberals, he allows someone to have a different point of view from his.
In fact, all four respect debate. That cannot be said about many liberals and many conservatives. I appeared on the show when requested because (1) as Charlie Sykes and a former coworker correctly observed, I’m a media “ho” (and in other shocking news the sun will rise in the east tomorrow), and (2) I don’t believe you present your side of the story very well if you’re only preaching to the ideological choir. The echo chamber exists even among people who vote Republican most of the time, with Trump-worshippers and reflexive Trump-haters.
I’m pretty certain I didn’t change anyone’s mind during my appearances. Most WPR listeners are — surprise! — on the left side of the political aisle. During one appearance I talked on the phone while watching the morning show Facebook page, and I learned to not do that thereafter. In addition to the echo chamber, a growing number of people appear to harden their points of view instead of being able or willing to refute counterarguments. There are probably multiple reasons for that. On my wall at work I wrote a piece of advice from Andrew Breitbart, “Question the premise.” A lot of people don’t like when you do that.
As I said, nothing lasts forever, but it is kind of sad that something I’ve been involved with for this long is going away.
Riding in a motorcade in Lima, Peru, shortly after the 2016 election, President Barack Obama was struggling to understand Donald J. Trump’s victory.
“What if we were wrong?” he asked aides riding with him in the armored presidential limousine.
He had read a column asserting that liberals had forgotten how important identity was to people and had promoted an empty cosmopolitan globalism that made many feel left behind. “Maybe we pushed too far,” Mr. Obama said. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”
His aides reassured him that he still would have won had he been able to run for another term and that the next generation had more in common with him than with Mr. Trump. Mr. Obama, the first black man elected president, did not seem convinced. “Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early,” he said.
In the weeks after Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages, according to a new book by his longtime adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes. At times, the departing president took the long view, at other points, he flashed anger. He called Mr. Trump a “cartoon” figure who cared more about his crowd sizes than any particular policy. And he expressed rare self-doubt, wondering whether he had misjudged his own influence on American history.
Set to be published next week by Random House, Mr. Rhodes’s memoir, “The World as It Is,” offers a peek into Mr. Obama’s tightly sealed inner sanctum from the perspective of one of the few people who saw him up close through all eight years of his presidency. Few moments shook Mr. Obama more than the decision by voters to replace him with a candidate who had questioned his very birth.
Mr. Rhodes served as Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser through some of the most consequential points of his presidency, including decisions to authorize the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, send more troops to Afghanistan, pull most troops out of Iraq, restore diplomatic relations with Cuba, seal a nuclear agreement with Iran, intervene militarily in Libya and refuse to intervene militarily in Syria.
But his book offers a new window, if only slightly cracked open, into the 44th president’s handling of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election to help Mr. Trump get elected and the aftermath.
In handing over power to someone determined to tear down all he had accomplished, Mr. Obama alluded to “The Godfather” mafia movie: “I feel like Michael Corleone. I almost got out.”
Mr. Rhodes describes the reaction of foreign leaders. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan apologized for breaching protocol by meeting with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan after the election. Mr. Obama urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada to take on a more vocal role defending the values they shared.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama that she felt more obliged to run for another term because of Mr. Trump’s election to defend the liberal international order. When they parted for the final time, Ms. Merkel had a single tear in her eye. “She’s all alone,” Mr. Obama noted.
And yet despite criticism even from former advisers to Mr. Obama, Mr. Rhodes offers little sense that the former president thought he could have done more to counter Russian involvement in the election. Mr. Obama had authorized a statement to be issued by intelligence agency leaders a month before the election warning of Russian interference, but was thwarted from doing more because Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, refused to go along with a bipartisan statement.
Mr. Rhodes called Mr. McConnell’s refusal “staggeringly partisan and unpatriotic.” But Mr. Obama, whose Supreme Court nomination had been blocked by Mr. McConnell for months, seemed less surprised.
“What else did you expect from McConnell?” he asked. “He won’t even give us a hearing on Merrick Garland.”
Still, in preparatory sessions before meetings with the news media before the election, aides pressed Mr. Obama to respond to criticism that he should speak out more about Russian meddling. “I talk about it every time I’m asked,” he responded. “What else are we going to do? We’ve warned folks.”
He noted that Mr. Trump was already claiming that the election would be manipulated if Hillary Clinton won. “If I speak out more, he’ll just say it’s rigged,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Rhodes writes that neither he nor Mr. Obama knew at that time that there was an F.B.I. investigation into contacts between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, despite Mr. Trump’s recent unsubstantiated claims that the departing president placed a “spy” or multiple spies in his campaign.
Mr. Rhodes writes he did not learn about the F.B.I. investigation until after leaving office, and then from the news media. Mr. Obama did not impose sanctions on Russia in retaliation for the meddling before the election because he believed it might prompt Moscow into hacking into Election Day vote tabulations. Mr. Obama did impose sanctions after the election but Mr. Rhodes’s suggestion that the targets include President Vladimir V. Putin was rebuffed on the theory that such a move would go too far.
Mr. Obama and his team were confident that Mrs. Clinton would win and, like much of the country, were shocked when she did not. “I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have seen it coming,” Mr. Rhodes writes. “Because when you distilled it, stripped out the racism and misogyny, we’d run against Hillary eight years ago with the same message Trump had used: She’s part of a corrupt establishment that can’t be trusted to bring change.”
On election night, Mr. Obama spoke by telephone with Cody Keenan, his chief speechwriter, and Mr. Rhodes to figure out what he should say. Mr. Rhodes asked if he should offer reassurance to allies. “No, I don’t think that I’m the one to tell them that,” the president said.
The next day, Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff. At one point, he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, “There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.”
But days later, Mr. Obama seemed less sanguine. “I don’t know,” he told aides. “Maybe this is what people want. I’ve got the economy set up well for him. No facts. No consequences. They can just have a cartoon.”
He added that “we’re about to find out just how resilient our institutions are, at home and around the world.”
The day Mr. Obama hosted Mr. Trump at the White House after the election seemed surreal. Mr. Trump kept steering the conversation back to the size of his rallies, noting that he and Mr. Obama could draw big crowds, but Mrs. Clinton could not, Mr. Rhodes writes.
Afterward, Mr. Obama called a few aides to the Oval Office to ruminate on the encounter. “I’m trying to place him in American history,” he said.
“He peddles” bull, Mr. Rhodes answered. “That character has always been part of the American story. You can see it right back to some of the characters in Huckleberry Finn.”
“Maybe,” Mr. Obama answered, “that’s the best we can hope for.”
Not exactly a surprise, is it? Stupid voters voted for Trump, or didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, to channel their inner redneck instead of as a reaction to eight years of ObamaCare, the traitorous Iran deal, a crappy economy, and unprecedented verbal hatred of conservatives by a president and his would-be successor.
Facebook Friend Michael Smith on Roseanne Barr’s tweet that ended the revival of “Roseanne” yesterday:
ABC had every right to terminate her and cancel her show for what she did. If she did not live down to their standards, they had every right to arbitrarily and capriciously apply discipline – but (and it is a big but), ABC’s actions cement forever their bias.
If you are white and Christian, you are a fair target. Anything can be said about you in a tweet, on air or in a live situation and nothing will happen to the Disney/ABC/ESPN employee who does it. Shows like The View will remain and people like Keith Olbermann, Jemele Hill and Jimmy Kimmel will still have jobs.
CBS will still employ Steven “Cock Holster” Colbert.
NBC and MSNBC will still employ Joy Reid and Al Sharpton.
Bill Maher will still work for HBO.
And they wonder why people support Trump and hate the media…
They wonder why whites support Trump.
Whites support Trump, not because they hate blacks; they do so because in the reactions of the media and the progressive Democrats to Trump, they see themselves.
The bias exhibited by ABC is real and obvious and don’t get me wrong – I think what Roseanne tweeted was reprehensible but I also have eyes and ears and know there are current employees at ABC who have expressed worse and still have jobs – that is my issue – the unfairness of it all. If Rosanne Barr should be fired, then Joy Behar should also be fired.
It seems curious that the media notices an increase in “white nationalism” and doesn’t notice their own increased attacks on whites. It’s hard to come together when you are constantly under assault. I don’t think it is about race at all, it is about a group of people tired of being unjustly blamed for every ill in the world. Whites are not being drawn together because they are white, they are forced together because they are the focus of so much ill will.
Private businesses can be as fair or unfair as they wish – but they shouldn’t be surprised when people notice.
It should be pointed out that ABC didn’t decide merely to end Barr’s show yesterday. It also ended the employment of every actor on that show and every crew member, something that tends to get ignored when TV shows are ended.
Huge ratings weren’t enough to save the rebooted Roseanne, which was formally cancelled by ABC on Tuesday after star Roseanne Barr described former Obama administration aide Valerie Jarrett as if “the Muslim brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby” on Twitter.
It was a vile thing to say, though no one has any right to be surprised that Barr said it. The notoriously pro-Trump comedian—who is otherwise something of an ardent leftist—has a long history of offensive, nonsensical utterances. She once said Wall Street bankers should be executed via guillotine, has flirted with 9/11 trutherism, and claimed the Boston Marathon bombing was a false flag operation. She doxed George Zimmerman’s parents, and suggested people should go to their homes unless Zimmerman was arrested for killing Trayvon Martin. In March 2018, she falsely accused Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg of making a Nazi salute; it was Roseanne herself, of course, who posed as Adolf Hitler for a satirical magazine in 2009, holding a tray of overbaked gingerbread men labelled “burnt Jew cookies.”
Roseanne is crazy, and her disgusting remark about Jarrett is perfectly in character. No one is allowed to pretend that Roseanne finally went too far, or some such nonsense: the Jarrett comment—for which she swiftly apologized, to no avail—is hardly more offensive than any number of things she has said over the years. If people who say very bad things do not deserve to work in television, then Roseanne should never have been rebooted in the first place.
The only thing that’s different this time is this: social media turns up the volume on offensive statements, and provides a perfect platform to pillory the perpetrator into submission. The network executives at ABC had to watch the Twitter villagers reaching for their pitchforks in real time, and feel the pressure to respond.
There’s nothing technically wrong with this: ABC can end any of its shows, prematurely or not, for any reason. Roseanne doesn’t have a First Amendment right to a platform on television, and if outraged liberals can persuade her bosses to jettison her, more power to them.
And yet I think we ought to be a little worried about what will come of this. Roseanne was by some accounts an interesting show that offered insights into the kind of Trump-voting working class American family that doesn’t often grace our TV screens. “Like most of us, they live, and live through, their differences, an accomplishment the show’s more ideological critics don’t seem to give people much credit for,” wroteReason‘s Scott Shackford in a review of the show for the July issue of Reason.
Can a person find Roseanne interesting without endorsing Roseanne the person? If so, why was that possible yesterday, but not today—given that nothing about Roseanne’s nature has fundamentally changed?
Many conservatives are already criticizing what they will undoubtedly view as ABC’s capitulation to political-correctness-run-amok, and it’s easy to see how this could play directly into the right’s narrative that the left is determined to silence everybody who says the wrong thing. In response to left-of-center pundit Toure calling on ABC to address the fact that “millions are hurt, offended, and traumatized by Roseanne’s racist comments,” conservative commentator Jesse Kelly tweeted the following:
REMINDER:
Liberals will come for your career for wrong-think. People on the Right have had about enough of it and will start returning the favor.
But conservatives are already coming for people’s livelihoods. Not even a week has passed since the NFL caved to pressure from conservative viewers—as well as the president himself—and banned players from kneeling during the national anthem as a protest against police violence.
And that’s the problem. Conservatives won’t watch football unless all the players comport themselves perfectly, rigidly adhering to the right’s version of patriotic correctness. How dare you disrespect the flag, they say. Liberals don’t think a television show should continue to exist if somebody central to its production does or says something super bad. How dare you traumatize our marginalized communities, they say.
This race to find more things to be offended about and more reasons to start lynch mobs doesn’t seem particularly healthy for the fabric of American society, especially if right and left are determined to one-up each other on the outrage front. Many media companies will attempt to appease viewers on both sides of the ideological spectrum, and their output will be that much less interesting. I won’t particularly miss Roseanne, but I do miss being able to appreciate a television show, book, or work of art, even if I thought the artist was a lunatic.
Based on marketplace merit, durability, edge, warmth, artistic contribution, distinction and style – these are Halby’s top 5 play-by-play announcers in each of the top 10 DMAs (designated market areas).
The list in each market is spelled out in alphabetical order. Some markets are easier to grade than others .
Popularity of both sport and team market by market is also a consideration. There are no right and wrong answers because play-by-play is both a science and art. The science is the use of nomenclature, pace and fundamentals and the art includes warmth, proper pausing, bond-building and storytelling .
The closest market to Presteblog World Headquarters is Chicago, and so …
#3 CHICAGO
JACK BRICKHOUSE, HARRY CARAY, JIM DURHAM, BOB ELSON AND HAWK HARRELSON
This involved splitting hairs. Names considered include popular broadcasters of yesteryear; Hal Totten, Pat Flanagan, Bert Wilson, Lou Boudreau and Vince Lloyd. Currently an argument can be made for Pat Foley, Pat Hughes and Neil Funk. Tough market to limit to five!
Thanks to the former superstation WGN-TV (as opposed to WGN America, which carries nothing worth watching anymore), people with cable TV, or people who lived close enough to Chicago, could see and hear the work of nearly everyone on this list:
Only those of a certain age might remember that Brickhouse did the Cubs and the Bears:
First, let’s consider the entire state of Wisconsin to be a single market, since the population to this day is under six million. That’s smaller than the New York City DMA and barely bigger than Los Angeles.
That said, the top five is:
Bob Uecker (Milwaukee Brewers)
Jim Irwin (Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Bucks, Wisconsin Badgers, etc.)
Eddie Doucette (Bucks)
Earl Gillespie (Milwaukee Braves, Badgers, etc.)
Matt Lepay (Badgers, etc.)
A solid quintet, to be sure. But it leaves out Merle Harmon, Blaine Walsh, and, in a roundabout way, Ray Scott. And, I’m sure I’m leaving out some other worthy candidates.
What’s your top five?
It’s hard to argue against Uecker, Irwin and Lepay.
Walsh worked with Gillespie on Braves’ games, but also did some national work:
Gillespie got to do some national work too, thanks to the Braves:
Scott was CBS-TV’s assigned announcer for Packer games, which means that in the TV blackout days Packer fans in Green Bay and Milwaukee only got to see Scott on road games.
Along with Harmon …
… a lot of fans not might remember Gary Bender, who did sports at WKOW-TV in Madison and announced Badger football and the Packers (both with Irwin) before going to CBS:
There’s also Brewers TV announcer Brian Anderson, who misses Brewers games because he’s getting a lot of national work:
If you work in radio you are more likely to be subject to psychopathic behaviour from your co-workers, according to the findings presented in a new book by Oxford research psychologist Dr Kevin Dutton.
As B&T reports, Dr Dutton, who works at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, has written a book called The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success.
The book details the jobs that are most likely to attract psychopaths, with journalists and media presenters taking out the second and third spots on the list respectively.
The #1 job likely to attract people with psychopathic behaviour is that of CEO, and others include public servants, police, surgeons, chefs and lawyers.
Dutton says that the key character traits to look out for are the ability to control others, and to manipulative.
He goes on to say that psychopaths generally perform well in an office environment, are often found in senior management and that the CEO is the career most suited to the personality disorder.
Top 10 List:
CEO
Journalists
Media presenters
Public servants
Police
Clergy
Salespeople
Surgeons
Lawyers
Chefs
I’m a full-time journalist and part-time radio sportscaster, which makes me a psychopath TWICE.
In case you ever wondered if there was any imagination left in Hollywood, this should give you an answer.
CBS is repeating what it did nearly 40 years ago when as the original Hawaii Five-O was running out …
… CBS came up with a series to set in Hawaii:
And now that the rebooted “Hawaii Five-0” is nearing its end …
As with “Hawaii Five-0,” which replaced “Hawaii Five-O,” contemporization takes place. The original McGarrett was a Navy commander, but we never found out how he ended up in Hawaii. The new McGarrett was a Navy SEAL who went to Hawaii to investigate the murder of his father and is asked by the governor to set up a statewide task force to get the bad guys. McGarrett and Danno have what apparently is called a “bromance,” Chin Ho becomes a disgraced former Honolulu police lieutenant, and Kono, formerly a fat and funny Polynesian, becomes a woman.
Apparently in “Magnum P.I.” 2.0, Magnum is no longer the son of a Korean War aviator killed in action. He still has military buddies Rick (actual first name Orville) and T.C. But Higgins, the World War II-veteran (as his never-completed autobiography told viewers) major domo of the Robin Masters estate, has become a woman too, and apparently is not the antagonist the original Higgins was.
When CBS released its first-look pic Monday of series star Jay Hernandez in the coming reboot of Magnum, P.I., it was no wonder that fans of the original took to Twitter to howl their dismay.
Though Hernandez is shown sitting in the same red Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole convertible that Tom Selleck drove in the original ’80s series, something definitely was missing. As one wag put it, the original series had two stars — Selleck, of course, and his luxuriant mustache.
Both personally and professionally, Selleck has been defined by his copious ‘stache, even going back to his USC student modeling days when he posed for an iconic 1977 Salem cigarette ad “to pay the rent” as he later said.
But it was Magnum P.I. (1980-1988) that cemented his iconic status as the hirsute himbo, winning him a Golden Globe and an Emmy for the series in 1985, when it was at its peak.
… Getting back to the MagnumP.I. series revival with Hernandez, it appears to be set in today’s times and not the more flamboyant and freewheeling ’80s. The detective’s signature Aloha floral shirt is also nowhere in evidence, even though a print shirt would certainly be on-trend, given menswear’s current love of the style seen everywhere from the Tommy Hilfiger to Louis Vuitton runways for spring. The new Magnum is rather disappointingly clad in just a generic blue button-up.
Hernandez is also missing the Detroit Tigers ballcap that Selleck wore to keep his raven curls in place. And it’s doubtful that we’ll see the character clad in the boxer-style short-shorts that the original Magnum wore running around in his Hawaiian paradise.
With its network home on CBS, the MagnumP.I. series revival could be going for mass-market appeal. (It’s possible that today, a mustache would read as too ironic, too Brooklyn hipster.) Though Hernandez does sport a hint of stubble, it may not have worked for him to rock a full bristly ‘stache, even though they have been seen on red carpets on edgy young actors such as Stranger Things‘ Dacre Montgomery and on late-night talkers like Chris Hemsworth appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live recently. Not to mention other tragedy-tinged TV dramas focusing on mustachioed characters of the period like Milo Ventimiligia’s Jack Pearson on This Is Us and James Franco’s dark turn as brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino on The Deuce.
But will a Magnum sans his mustache really have what it takes? Much like Samson, who lost his godly abilities when shorn of his lengthy locks, will the new iteration of the TV folk hero still have the power to keep the people tuned in without his bro-mo? We’ll have to wait until this fall to find out. For now, we can only hope some kind of hairline storyline makes the cut.
What makes a TV series, of course, is its characters and their interrelationship, which can make up for stories of dubious credulity. The original Magnum, Rick and T.C. all had Vietnam in common, and in some cases aftereffects thereof. (That and picking on Higgins.) Magnum was described as leaving the Navy because he found out one day that he was 33 and, because of his Navy experiences, he had never been 23. Then he found out he had a daughter from the wife he thought had died in Vietnam (actually more of a heartbreaking plot turn than I can describe here). At the end of the series Magnum goes back into the Navy and he and his daughter go off to live wherever the Navy sends him.
Eighties crime series Magnum P.I. is eyeing a comeback with ABC developing a female-centric sequel which will centre on Magnum’s grown daughter.
The reboot is described as a “fun, high-action” rebirth of the cult show that featured Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living Oahu, Hawaii. It ran from 1980 to 1988.
According to Deadline, the sequel will follow Magnum’s daughter, Lily, as she returns to Hawaii to take up the mantle of her father’s PI firm.
Along with her friends, Lily mixes Hawaii’s tropical beaches with the underbelly of international crime syndicates and tries to unravel the mystery of a spy operation that ended her career in naval intelligence.
The project comes from Desperate Housewives actress Eva Longoria and her producing partner Ben Spector.
Working with Universal, which owns the rights to the series, Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment production company identified Magnum PI as both viable and relevant.
Lily Magnum starred in just four episodes of the original series after being raised by her mother, not Magnum. The show ended with Magnum being reunited with his daughter and promising to give her a stable home after his former wife is killed. …
It is unclear whether actress Troian Bellisario, who played Lily Magnum in the original series, will reprise her role. Bellisario currently stars in teen drama Pretty Little Liars.
Apparently Magnum’s Daughter P.I. went nowhere. Interestingly, the original was first pitched to ABC, which passed.
I have my doubts about this. This seems to be following the Star Trek/Hawaii Five-0 reboot formula of characters of the same name who aren’t the same character, throw in some references to the original series, maybe some stunt casting or characters (the remake had a Wo Fat, but he was in organized crime, unlike the original Chinese agent Wo Fat, and Al Harrington, who played Ben Kokua on the original, appeared in an episode of the remake). If you want mindless action for your TV series, using a director from “The Fast and the Furious” franchise is an obvious choice.
As far as characters go, the difference between Five-O and Five-0 is that the latter did have character development over the series, though rather implausibly. (How likely is it that four police officers could sneak into North Korea? Or that one just happened to be held hostage the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 across the river in New Jersey? Or that McGarrett’s mother came back from the dead to be revealed as a secret agent?) The original McGarrett had a few things happen to him (niece died, girlfriend died, and he was shot and blown up), Kono was replaced by Kokua, and Chin Ho was killed, but for the most part the 13th-season McGarrett was an older version of the first-season McGarrett.
The number of Hollywood reboots of TV shows from the ’60s through the ’80s, either on film (“The Wild Wild West,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “SWAT,” “Shaft,” “Charlie’s Angels”) or TV (“Adam-12,” “Dragnet” [which actually had five iterations — radio, black-and-white TV, late ’60s including a movie, late ’80s in syndication without Joe Friday, then in the early 2000s with Ed O’Neil as Friday], “Kojak,” “Ironside,” “Knight Rider”) is too long and too depressing to list here. Remaking the original as a farce never works. (It is unclear what prompted a remake of “The Wild Wild West” with Will Smith.)
Some blame the fact the studios are owned by publicly traded companies concerned only with the next quarter’s P&Ls and therefore will approve only financially sure things. That’s how you get repeated James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Star Wars, comic superheroes and Fast & Furious movies. There has been a new Rockford Files in development, with Vince Vaughn playing James Garner’s original role, for several years.
One of the few defenders of Magnum 2.0 claimed that Hernandez (whom I had never heard of before now) is a great actor and noted the dearth of good roles for non-whites. The key would seem, however, to create good original characters for non-whites, instead of casting a Latino Magnum, or black Kojak or Ironside. (Samuel L. Jackson didn’t really work as Shaft 2.0 anyway.)
However Hernandez and his costars do, they will not be the originals. Selleck had never had a starring role in a TV series before “Magnum,” though he had done some movie acting and had been a memorable recurring character, Lance White the perfect detective, in “The Rockford Files.” Larry Manetti, who played Rick, had had a few supporting roles during that period, and Roger E. Mosley, who played T.C., had been in a few movies. All are best known for their “Magnum” roles, even though Selleck is now in “Blue Bloods” and starred in a few movies. John Hillerman, who played Higgins (though Hillerman was from Texas), had more of a movie career, but other than “The Last Picture Show” and “Blazing Saddles” was probably best known for “Magnum” too.
The biggest difficulty with remakes beyond trying to reinvent the lead characters is pushing them from the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s into the 21st century and the culture of today. TV series that took place three to five decades ago necessarily translate well into this politically correct, oversensitive, humorless era we live in. No one has come up with the idea of the retro-setting, to remake a series but set it in, or close to, the era the original series was in, apparently because (1) that would require work (for instance, getting vehicles and music of the era) and (2) out of concern viewers wouldn’t relate to an era where, for instance, the good guy would sleep with the girl in an episode who then would vanish from sight thereafter. (This is despite the fact that TV series through the early ’80s were filmed under the strictures of the Television Code, which, according to the always-accurate Wikipedia, “prohibited the use of profanity, the negative portrayal of family life, irreverence for God and religion, illicit sex, drunkenness and addiction, presentation of cruelty, detailed techniques of crime, the use of horror for its own sake, and the negative portrayal of law enforcement officials, among others.” Ironically removing boundaries has made writers in mass media less creative.)
At this point fans of the originals who decry this trend often call for reunions of the originals. Unfortunately nearly every cast member of the original Five-O is dead, as is John Hillerman, the original Higgins, along with a few lesser characters. (Joe Santos played a detective on both “The Rockford Files” and the original Magnum.) The original Magnum was in his 30s in the ’80s; now he’s in his 60s and the New York City police chief … oops, wrong series. It’s hard to imagine what Magnum, Rick and T.C. would be doing in their 60s.
Preference for originals over remakes tends as well to paper over the faults of the originals. James MacArthur, the original Danno, noted that the original Hawaii Five-O probably solved every crime that had taken place in Hawaii halfway through its 13-season run. The original Starsky and Hutch started as a gritty crime drama with an admittedly ludicrous “undercover” car …
… to social workers with badges as the four seasons progressed, complete with “very special episodes.”
It’s not as if Hollywood was a fount of creativity before the suits started running the studios either. Crime fiction is about as old as mass entertainment. The first TV crime dramas date back to 1949, and the first radio crime dramas date back to the 1930s, if not sooner. Magnum was not the first Hawaiian-based private detective; that was the private eyes on “Hawaiian Eye” (which, unlike Magnum, was not shot in Hawaii, but at the Warner Bros. studio, same as Miami Beach-based “Surfside 6.”)
One wonders if Magnum’s creators, Glen A. Larson and Donald Bellisario, thought up Magnum after seeing …
… Las Vegas-based PI Dan Tanna (also a Vietnam veteran) in the late 1970s. But if CBS copied ABC, ABC returned the favor with …
… Texas-to-L.A. PI/rich guy Matt Houston.
NBC’s response may have been to double viewers’ fun with two leads for “Riptide” …
… unless “Riptide” was an answer to CBS’ “Simon & Simon,” which followed Magnum on Thursday nights. (Featuring two brothers who could have only looked less alike had one or both been adopted.)
Selleck wanted Magnum to be more responsible than he appeared. (Despite the body count of 50 dead guys over eight seasons.) So he got speeding tickets and generally didn’t get the girl. Well, where’s the fun of that? Fans of the original Star Trek often defend its third season, which includes some of the worst episodes and ideas (alien women take Spock’s brain, Kirk and an ex-girlfriend exchange souls) in the history of entertainment.
At least viewers who prefer the originals have online streaming services and YouTube, and then join in online efforts to spot the flaws in their favorite shows.
The generic congressional ballot has continued to tighten, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with the Democrats’ edge over Republicans within the poll’s margin of sampling error for the first time this cycle.
About six months out from Election Day, 47% of registered voters say they back the Democratic candidate in their district, 44% back the Republican. Voters also are divided almost evenly over whether the country would be better off with the Democrats in control of Congress (31%) or with the GOP in charge (30%). A sizable 34% — including nearly half of independent voters (48%) — say it doesn’t matter which party controls Congress.
The Democrats’ advantage in the generic ballot dipped from 16 points in February to six points in March to just three points now. The party’s advantage has waned among enthusiastic voters as Republican enthusiasm has grown (in March, 36% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters said they were very enthusiastic about voting; that’s up to 44% in the new poll), but the Democrats still have a double-digit lead among those most excited to vote this fall (53% of those who are very enthusiastic about voting say they’d back the Democrat in their district vs. 41% who say they favor the GOP candidate). Those enthusiastic voters also say by a 10-point margin that the nation would be better off with Democrats in control of Congress than Republicans.
By 48% to 43%, registered voters say they would rather back a candidate who opposes Donald Trump than one who supports the President. That margin has narrowed from the 52% who opposed Trump to the 41% who supported him in January. …
The results come from the same poll this week that found nearly six in 10 saying that things in the country are going well amid improving approval ratings for the President’s handling of major issues, including the economy, immigration and foreign trade. Trump’s overall approval rating, however, held steady at 41%. …
On more traditional issue priorities, voters are now more apt to say the nation’s economy will be an important factor in their vote than they were in February (84% call it extremely or very important now, up from 79% in February), with immigration (from 72% important to 76% now) and taxes (from 67% important to 73% now) are also on the rise. At the same time, health care has dipped somewhat as a priority (from 83% important to 80%, with the most meaningful shift coming in the share who call it “extremely important,” which dipped from 53% in February to 46% now), along with sexual harassment (from 64% to 58%) and the Russia investigation (from 45% important in February to 40% now).
The latter is the one prediction I will make — voters’ evaluation of the economy as of November will determine which party’s candidates they vote for Nov. 6.
The latest YouGov/Economist poll (May 6-8), one of a few that comprehensively breaks down support by ethnicity, has some frightening news for the Democratic Party.
While President Trump’s approval holds steady among registered voters at 41 percent, his support among blacks in this poll is striking. If it holds for 2020, it could be devastating for Democrats. Among African-Americans, 16 percent approve of Trump, 10 percent are not sure, and 75 percent disapprove.
While that sounds highly negative, these are high positives for a Republican politician among black Americans. Approval of 16 percent is 8 points higher than the 8 percent of black voter support Trump received on election day 2016, and 9 points higher than the black vote Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney received in 2012. The “Not Sure” at 10 percent is staggering, and the 75 percent “disapprove” rating is consistent with the low 70 percent aggregate found in any YouGov poll among this demographic.
The same poll, with their rounding, reported in January that Trump approval was at 10 percent among black Americans, 15 percent were not sure, and 74 percent disapproved, so the numbers are not only steady but improving in Trump’s favor.
This result may actually be underreporting Trump’s black support, as this records “all voters,” which consistently has lower figures for Trump in all categories, as opposed to registered voters. YouGov/Economist gives Trump a 40 percent “All voters” approval rating four points lower than their registered voters findings (RealClearPolitics favors the registered voters results across the polling companies it reports).
Of course, one polling company’s report could be a fluke. Some firms use different methodology, and some don’t break down approval ratings by ethnicity, but the bigger picture is clear.
Marist’s March 19-21 approval for Trump among black Americans was 6 percent; 17 percent were unsure, and 77 percent disapproved. The Quinnipiac poll, which is consistently negative to Trump, on March 21 found black approval at 11 percent, “Don’t Know” at 4 percent, and disapproval at 84 percent. Taken in the aggregate, the three polls have Trump’s approval at 11 percent, at 12 percent for not sure or don’t know, and disapproval at 77 percent. Again, while the negatives are high, the positives are higher than is typical for Republicans, and if black Americans vote in accord with these approval ratings it would be easily enough to tip a tight election.
The threat to the Democratic Party is obvious based on these results and their upward trend for Trump. If Trump could win Pennsylvania despite a turnout for Hillary in Philadelphia that was only three points less than President Obama received in 2012 and “The best turnout without Obama on the ballot I’ve ever seen,” then any further bleeding of black support in that state could ensure Trump’s re-election, even if he lost Florida but kept his rust belt wins. If the current support level holds and turns into actual support (or anywhere near it), then Democrats are in profound trouble—possibly even for the midterms.
In Michigan and Wisconsin, Hillary underperformed Obama with blacks. Trump’s margin in Ohio was so high that any further slippage among blacks would lead to landslide territory. …
Given the 2016 results, that might be enough to ensure good numbers for Trump among African-Americans in his next bout at the polls, but there may be much worse news for Democrats. There are three key dates from the official black unemployment figures: in February 2010, the height of the financial crisis, black unemployment was 16.8 percent; in February 2016, it was 8.7 percent; and in February 2018 it was 6.9 percent. The last figure is the lowest since records were kept.
Certainly the lower trend began under the Obama administration, but the economy is far enough along in the Trump administration to ascribe the remarkable level of employment to Trump’s policies. This indisputable fact has led to this spin: “Yes, black unemployment is low, but blacks value more than just work opportunities.”
Due to economic considerations in 2016, and in the absence of overt racism from Trump’s administration, a chunk of black voters seems to have hesitatingly moved to Trump and his promise of jobs. Their “try it and see” or, as Trump put it, “What have you got to lose,” has been well rewarded so far.
If black support for Trump gets into double figures, the Democratic Party will have to look for different themes than Russia or Stormy Daniels and other such nonsense. Their failure to present an economic focus in 2016 contributed greatly to Hillary’s loss. To do so again, especially with black voters, could end in utter disaster.
Regular readers recall my references to the movie “The Tao of Steve” and its three cool Steves:
Two of them are fictional — astronaut-turned-cyborg Steve Austin …
… and Hawaii Five-O …
… or Hawaii Five-0 chief Steve McGarrett:
The third is, or was, a real person — actor Steve McQueen.
Which brings to mind an eternal question: What is cool?
There are probably three elements of coolness. One is apparent effortlessness — the ability to do what you’re supposed to be doing, preferably well, without breaking a sweat. (Think James Bond.)
Another is the ability to come up with the correct line for every occasion, such as …
McQueen in “The Magnificient Seven”: “We deal in lead, friend.”
McQueen in “The Cincinnati Kid”: “I don’t need marked cards to beat you, pal.”
McGarrett I: “You know, it’s a funny thing. I’m used to Intelligence playing it cool. Really cool. But you seem more interested in a quiet funeral than in finding out who killed your man.”
Austin: “Well, thanks for the ride, Oscar. I’ll try and forget the conversation.”
McQueen in “The Towering Inferno”: “When there’s a fire, I outrank everybody here. Now, one thing we don’t want is a panic. Now, I could tell them, but you ought to do it. Just make a nice cool announcement to all your guests and tell them the party’s being moved down below the fire floor. Right now.”
McQueen: “When I believe in something, I fight like hell for it.”
McGarrett 2.0: “Guess the rest of us who don’t have a seat on an aircraft carrier will just have to get out our snorkels.”
Having a scriptwriter is useful to achieve verbal coolness.
The third is distance, including emotional distance, which is probably where the term came from. One never really gets close to a cool person. It helps as well to not know embarrassing details about that person. You probably would not think that, to use a random and (as far as I know) fictitious example, McQueen was cool if you knew that he ate paste in grade school.
The thing, of course, is that coolness cannot be acquired. Either you are cool, or you are not, and no efforts to make yourself cool will actually make you cool.
I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Ideas Network’s The Morning Show Week in Review Friday at 8 a.m.
The Morning Show and all the other Ideas Network programming (including my favorite, Old Time Radio Drama Saturdays and Sundays from 8 to 11 p.m.) can be heard on WHA (970 AM) and W300BM (107.9 FM) in Madison, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, WLBL (930 AM) in Auburndale, WHID (88.1 FM) in Green Bay, WHWC (88.3 FM) in Menomonie, WRFW (88.7 FM) in River Falls, WEPS (88.9 FM) in Elgin, Ill., WHAA (89.1 FM) in Adams, WHBM (90.3 FM) in Park Falls, WHLA (90.3 FM) in La Crosse, WRST (90.3 FM) in Oshkosh, WHAD (90.7 FM) in Delafield, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, KUWS (91.3 FM) in Superior, WHHI (91.3 FM) in Highland, WSHS (91.7 FM) in Sheboygan, WHDI (91.9 FM) in Sister Bay, WLBL (91.9 FM) in Wausau, W275AF (102.9 FM) in Ashland, and of course online at www.wpr.org.
You are reading this one day before my appearance, which gives The Donald one day to do something for us to talk about.
In addition to Star Wars Day, Friday is National Password Day. Saturday is, paradoxically, Cinco de Mayo and National Hoagie Day. Sunday is National Nurses Day, National Tourist Appreciation Day (for those who live in tourism areas all year and thus deal with tourism traffic, I guess), and National No Diet Day. (That’s every day for me.)
Friday is one day after the anniversary of National Public Radio in 1971 and our oldest son’s 18th birthday, which means that as of today (or, more precisely, 7:02 p.m.) there are now three adults in the house, though one is an adult/teenager, or teenadult, or something.
Watching the Sean Hannity show the other day, I heard four giddy words I can’t say I expected: “Up next, Piers Morgan!” Only a few days prior, after all, Morgan had been involved in one of his trademark Twitter spats — with Hannity mainstay Sebastian Gorka, no less — and it had ended with Morgan declaring America’s contribution to World War II overrated and unhelpful.
“Where would Britain be without you & your massive GUNS?!” Morgan had snippily tweeted at an American. “Speaking German,” replied Ben Shapiro, retweeted by Gorka. Morgan’s comeback? “It was really good of America to join WW2 two years later, after millions had died. Many thanks.”
That tasteful comment did not come up during the Hannity interview, which was instead a chummy exchange of shared disgust at the Mueller investigation, James Comey, and the latest dumb thing Joy Behar had said.
Morgan would have made a curious guest for a conservative talk show even without his recent foray into historical revisionism. To the extent he’s made any political brand for himself in America, it’s been as a hectoring anti-gun fanatic and generally condescending anti-American scold. Yet because Morgan has had some mildly sympathetic things to say about Donald Trump as of late (or at least hates some of the same people as the president) all is forgiven, and he’s now understood as “one of us” to some corners of the conservative base.
It was the same phenomenon that saw Kanye West’s remarkable rebranding last week. A tweet or two in the president’s favor and the man previously best known for calling George W. Bush a racist sociopath on live television and contributing such immortal lines to the canon of American music as “eatin’ Asian p***y / all I need was sweet and sour sauce” was reborn as a conservative folk hero. Perhaps West was taking his cue from Roseanne Barr, whom many on the right have given a similar mulligan for decades of far-left lunacy on the grounds she kinda likes Trump.
Conservatives are at their worst when they obsessively internalize leftist critiques, and no criticism has proven a greater font of conservative insecurity than liberal teasing that the Right is crotchety, backwards, and unhip. Much anxious effort has been exerted to prove these critics wrong, yet desperation rarely produces flattering results. The hurried search for conservatives with some progressive cachet — black, gay, famous, young, etc. — often manifests as low standards and embarrassing self-delusion, as the intellectual talents of various B-rate minds are inflated to heroic status the moment their public rhetoric drifts even the teensiest bit rightward.
It’s even worse than usual these days, given the very definition of “rightward” has become hazier than ever amid the rise of a fairly unideological Republican president and an increasingly visible fanatic far Left.
Since Trump plays his partisan role awkwardly, and is on the receiving end of a hysteria that often has little to do with politics, the president can come off a sympathetic figure, even if — perhaps especially if — one’s understanding of politics is fairly shallow. People who imagine themselves to be outspoken or uncouth outsiders with stylistic similarities to Trump can easily empathize with him, regardless of their policy opinions. This makes Trump a celebrity president who is often judged on celebrity terms, where arguments like “I just can’t stand him!” or “Show those haters!” are considered sufficiently full opinions.
Meanwhile, the cultural crusades of the far Left have become more conspicuous than ever through endless media coverage of language and thought policing at college campuses, newsrooms, and elsewhere. Again, regardless of the politics involved, this sort of thing is quite easy to engage with at a cultural level alone. Americans don’t like being told what to do or what to say, and there will always be a great deal of contempt leveled at anyone who affects the personality of a scold or busybody — and support for those who resist.
Conservatives can claim some degree of common cause with anyone who feels that Trump is being given a hard time and thinks the colleges are going nuts, but this isn’t much. Identifying political allies exclusively on such thin criteria will invariably require turning a blind eye to all sorts of other deranged opinions, and redefining conservatism into a temperament of shallow irritation with some characteristics of American political culture circa 2018, as opposed to anything resembling a timeless or coherent philosophy.
An obsession with building up superficially cool but intellectually preposterous right-wing celebrities has already led to disasters such as Milo Yiannopoulos, and one can’t help but feel a grim sense of déjà vu as an ever-growing parade of semi-coherent supposed conservatives from Hollywood, pop music, and YouTube are hyped by conservative media outlets desperate for validation by young, hip audiences.
That said, critics do run the risk of snobbery. Conservatives have to be open to newcomers, and ideological newbies — particularly those who were on the left until five minutes ago — will inevitably spout opinions that are one-dimensional, badly articulated, or half-formed.
The key is sizing up the motive animating the alleged new right-wing personality. Does the rhetoric of the nouveau-conservative appear to be coming from a place of genuine political interest? Do his opinions reflect a desire to engage in arguments beyond the present moment? Or has he simply discovered a new way to get in front of the cameras and exploit the wishful thinking of a uniquely desperate audience?
One of the few benefits of growing older is the realization that you longer need to follow pop culture, or often care what other people think. I can express that with a sentence, or two words.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 