Today in 1977, John Lennon did not get instant karma, but he did get a green card to become a permanent resident, five years after the federal government (that is, Richard Nixon) sought to deport him. So can you imagine who played mind games on whom?
Birthdays start with Harvey Fuqua, who sang for the Moonglows:
Nick Reynolds was one of the original members of the Kingston Trio (whose numbers totaled three times three):
David Muse of Firefall …
… was born the same day of Maureen McGovern, singer of the first disaster movie love song:
Michael Vaughn of one-hit-wonder Paperlace:
One death of note, today in 1921: Composer Englebert Humperdinck. He was not singer Englebert Humperdinck, who changed his name from ordinary but unobjectionable Arnold George Dorsey. Why someone would think Humperdinck was preferable is beyond me.
Last week I wrote about the tensions between the Democratic Party and those who believe the Democratic Party isn’t liberal enough.
I excerpted a piece from Jack Craver of Isthmus and WTDY radio in Madison, a piece that combined contempt of the American voter, Democrats, and basically anyone else who isn’t as left-wing as Craver is.
Well, it turns out Craver must at least once in a while read this blog, because he decided to devote one of his columns to what I wrote about him.
First, some introduction: As a native of the People’s Republic of Madison and a UW graduate, I have read Isthmus on and off far longer than Craver has worked for Isthmus. My background with the weekly goes back to the days when it employed a writer with the pen name of Ursula, whose “Ursula Understands” column answered questions about relationships that few would even think to ask. And until his decision to work elsewhere, I was the occasional non-liberal foil for Isthmus’ Bill Lueders on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin Week in Review program.
The proof that Isthmus has fulfilled its role in the Madison media landscape is demonstrated by The Capital Times’ decision to end daily publication and convert itself into a free tabloid that looks to many readers like Isthmus with a different name, though with similar stupid politics. Isthmus also has from time to time thrown a bone to its non-lefty readers by including columns from such people as Bob Williams, a Stevens Point PR executive who was part of Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus’ braintrust, Charlie Sykes (yes, thatCharlie Sykes) and now David Blaska, who is that rarest of things — a former Capital Times reporter and state employee who, as he describes himself, “swims upstream like a heretical flagellate among the collectivist majority.” The nice thing about publications like Isthmus is that you can read their entertainment writing and, if you are so inclined, skim or skip the left-wing crap in the front of the publication.
As for my hometown, I come by my antipathy for Madison honestly — by experience. Between events like the Madison teacher strike, watching tuition money wasted by instructors’ taking my time to pass on, unbidden, their own political beliefs, and the idiotic protest du jour on days of non-inclement weather on the Library Mall, I came to the conclusion that Dreyfus’ observation that Madison is 30 (now 77) square miles surrounded by reality is a gross understatement. It was a revelation when I left Madison and discovered people who didn’t reflexively hate people who shared my political beliefs and besides that had normal non-esoteric interests. (The newspaper’s quote of the week once came from the husband of one of our account representatives: “Never mind Nicaragua; I want sweet corn!”) Then again, if I want to go back to the old days, I don’t have to go back to Madison; I need only go to Facebook.
Craver starts by bringing up an irrelevant comparison (for purposes of what I wrote) of Gov. James Doyle and his elected predecessor, Tommy Thompson. But there is no question that Thompson was no one’s idea of a fiscal conservative while he was in office. In the 1990s, with economic performance that made writers look for a phrase that sounded like “Roaring ’20s,” you could have your cake and eat it too, with both tax cuts and basically unrestrained spending. The term “structural deficit” may have existed before the 1990s, but it certainly got attention while Thompson was in office, but with tax revenues increasing every year despite tax cuts, well, few people and even fewer voters cared.
Craver also demonstrates most journalists’ affinity for math — not much — with this error:
Doyle spent most of his tenure trying to manage the structural deficit that Tommy Thompson created through his drastic expansion of state government spending on prisons, schools, health care and tax rebates. Doyle, who was raised in the “People’s Republic of Madison,” did what any other radical would do in the face of a budget deficit: Cut state jobs, furloughed state workers, closed a couple corporate loopholes, and raised taxes on incomes over $300,000 by..wait for it…one percent. The stuff of Lenin all right.
Democrats created a new tax bracket of 7.75 percent, above the old highest tax bracket of 6.75 percent. That is not one percent, because 7.75 divided by 6.75 equals 1.148. In other words, Doyle and Democrats didn’t increase taxes by 1 percent, they increased taxes by 15 percent for income beyond $221,670 for single people and $295,550 for married people filing jointly. That group, I suppose, fits into what Democrats and their apparatchiks are calling the “super rich,” although they’re really not.
Craver makes a valid point that he buries in more left-wing cant:
Doyle did about the least amount one could expect a governor to do to change the current system. He slightly expanded BadgerCare for the poor, he very slightly increased taxes on the rich, and he slightly decreased the size of government. He maintained the status quo. What would you call somebody who does that? Maybe ol’ Webster can help us out. Here’s a word that seems to match: Conservative: Tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions.
If you want to claim that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” really don’t fit today’s ideologies, fine. The term “liberal” used to have “classical” before it, which describes those of us who believe in the individual rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. By that definition, today’s liberals aren’t liberals at all (except in such areas of personal freedom as drug use and abortion rights). Perhaps Craver prefers the term “neo-socialists.”
Doyle did, remember, start his term (and our sentence with him) in the Executive Residence by pledging “We should not, we must not, and I will not raise taxes,” before raising taxes $2.1 billion. (I’m surprised Craver didn’t make the obligatory George “Read My Lips” Bush reference, a pledge whose reversal went a long way to getting Bush fired by the voters.) The point that goes without acknowledgment or explanation on the left side is why, when Doyle increased taxes and nibbled at the margins of government growth (as if any taxpayer noticed), this state ended up with government finances worse on a proportional basis than only our neighbors to the immediate south, Illinois.
Craver makes another good point that he buries in rhetoric against me and, well, everyone else:
What is most irksome about Prestegard’s post, however, is that he uses relative terms, such as “raising/lowering taxes” to describe political philosophies. This is unfortunately an aspect of political rhetoric we see on both sides of the political spectrum, but it has become especially prevalent on the right, where candidates cannot talk about taxes — only about their wish to not to raise them.
For instance, as much as Republicans howled about the $5 billion Doyle tax hike, they still haven’t repealed them. Why not? Well, they’ve got a budget to balance. But according to their logic, they haven’t raised taxes. (Although they’ve made a few symbolic tax cuts and other corporate taxes that will go into effect in future years.)
Candidates on the right can’t talk about taxes? The fumes where Craver works must be getting really thick. Republican elected officials and candidates at every level talk about taxes all the time. One of the interesting facets of the looming default of our federal government, or whatever the media’s going to call it in the next week, is the issue of raising taxes vs. not raising taxes vs. reforming taxes as part of a debt ceiling deal. In the latter case, the approach the GOP has favored since the days of President Ronald Reagan has been to reduce rates and reduce or eliminate exemptions and deductions. In that case, some taxes would go up, but most would go down.
In that scenario, would demagogic politicians or candidates accuse Republicans of raising taxes because one tax went up even if 10 went down — even if the total tax take decreased? Of course. Accusing politicians of demagoguery is like accusing water of being wet. Political courage is in short supply.
If I asked a Republican (and I’d have to, because I am not a Republican) why they didn’t cut taxes, they probably would say that they had to balance the budget after the billions of dollars of deficits that are the legacy of the Doyle administration and the previous party that controlled the Legislature. (Note that Reagan cut existing taxes in 1981 before the tax reform of 1986.) If Walker and the GOP don’t substantially cut taxes by the 2014 election, voters will be justified in asking themselves why they voted for a party that didn’t do something about our ridiculously high (for what we get) state and local taxes.
This has gone on so long already that a second part seems appropriate. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.
I have written, because it is undeniably correct, that this summer’s Recallarama is occurring because Democrats, public employee unions and their apparatchiks want to undo the Nov. 2 elections because, well, they lost.
It is not, as I wrote last week, because the aforementioned triumvirate of transgressions believes Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans pulled a fast one on the voters in enacting changes to public employee collective bargaining. The unions knew in plenty of time that that was what Walker intended on doing, because Walker said so, more than once, and to the state’s biggest newspaper more than once.
The unions want you to believe it is out of their concern over state budget cuts, even though the state budget itself increased 7.6 percent. But as I wrote last week, the discerning voter should believe nothing the aforementioned axis of error says in their campaign ads.
Since Recallarama is all about Nov. 2 and what’s happened since then — because of the horror of creating more jobs in May than the rest of the country combined — it is instructive to ponder what would have happened if Tom Barrett had defeated Scott Walker and had Democrats retained control of the Legislature. (I’ll pause until your shudders stop.)
The MacIver Institute has fought through the shuddering and pondered exactly that scenario:
Our analysts consulted with the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau as they went through the amendment packages line by line. Their findings: If the Assembly Democrats’ twelve major packaged amendments to the budget bill had passed, Wisconsin would be looking at a $1,779,098,700 spending increase. …
The first overt increase in spending was proposed in Amendment 4, titled the Education Package. The package would have increased spending by a total of $1,271,709,900. The largest proposed spending increase would have restored $1.2 billion in general education equalization aid. Interestingly, the Democrats attempted to use a familiar accounting gimmick, common in previous Wisconsin budgets, to make this look like only a $349.6 million spending increase. Assembly Democrats attempted to shift $897.4 million of this increase onto the 2013-2015 budget. The amendment as proposed did not reflect this but the Legislative Fiscal Bureau provided this detail. Regardless of the timing, Assembly Democrats attempted to increase spending by $1,271,709,900. …
Amendment 7, the so-called Tax Fairness Package, would have increased taxes on capital gains and manufacturers by $356.3 million. It also attempted to restore $56.2 million for the earned income tax credit and $13.6 million for the homestead tax credit. Critics classify these programs as welfare spending even though they contain the word “tax” in their title. These credits would give “tax refunds” to people who don’t pay taxes to begin with. …
In their package on Healthcare, Amendment 9, the Democrats attempted to remove the enrollment cap on family care, a move that would have cost the state an estimated $290 million over the biennium. The Democrats also attempted to stipulate that $466 million in unspecified cuts made by the governor’s bill could only be made through efficiencies. This was an attempt to maintain current services, remove eligibility restrictions, and not increase cost sharing by enrollees. …
Their Environment Package, Amendment 12, proposed an increase in the bonding allowance of the land stewardship fund by $234 million as well as to the Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements (PACE) by $12 million. The total proposed bonding increase was $246,000,000. These increases would have cost the state $2,980,000 in principal and interest payments over the biennium. The Joint Finance Committee’s budget bill did not zero out these bonding allowances. The bill only decreased them from $86 [million] to $60 million per year from fiscal year 2011-12 through 2019-20 for the stewardship program. The amendment also increased aid for recycling by $26 million over the two-year period. This brings the total spending increase to $28,980,000. …
As it was passed by the legislature, the new state budget erased the structural deficit and is scheduled to leave the budget $300 million in the black.
However, had the Assembly Democrats been successful in their attempts to amend the budget, the plan would have left the state with a $1.4 billion deficit going into the 2013-2015 budget deliberations.
Increasing spending by $1.7 billion to create a structural deficit of $1.4 billion while raising taxes by $356.3 million two years after increasing taxes by $2.1 billion — that is what voters avoided by voting correctly Nov. 2.
It should be pointed out that the MacIver Institute did not double-count — that is, “If a specific spending proposal was included in more than one amendment, we only counted the spending once.” On the other hand, it could be argued that Democrats introduced some of the amendments as political theater instead of policy proposal — introducing amendments they know would lose to be able to charge that those evil Republicans cut recycling aid and money for assistant district attorneys.
It should also be pointed out that these amendments were in reaction to the governor’s proposed 2011–13 budget as modified in the budget process by the Legislature. My guess is that, given the Democrats’ horrid record in fiscal management, had the Democrats been required to create their own budget, it would have been, in fact, worse than what MacIver identifies. That’s what happened in the 2009–11 budget, proposed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, passed by Democrats and then made about 0.017 percent less fiscally irresponsible through Doyle’s vetoes.
The actual 2011–13 budget and the budget repair bill that cut back public employee collective bargaining, Democrats claim, gut education and various other of their favorite government services. That’s their version; the Weekly Standard has the actual truth:
But as the abstract debate over collective bargaining collides with reality, it is becoming clear just how big a lie the Big Labor line was. Now that the law is in effect, where are the horror stories of massive layoffs and schools shutting down? They don’t exist—except in a couple of districts where collective bargaining agreements, inked before the budget repair bill was introduced, remain in effect.
In Milwaukee, nine schools are shutting and 354 teachers have been fired due to a drop in state funding and the end of federal stimulus funding. But if teachers there agreed to the 5.8 percent pension contribution, the school district says it would rehire 200 of those teachers. (Other changes could offset the rest of the layoffs.) …
The only other district seeing such massive layoffs is Kenosha, where 212 teachers will be fired this year. “Kenosha is in the same boat as [Milwaukee], with a collective bargaining agreement signed before Walker took office that lasts until June 30, 2013,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on July 16. “But most other Wisconsin districts have avoided layoffs and massive cuts to programs.”
That includes, voters in the 14th Senate District, the Berlin school district, which closed its elementary school in Poy Sippi. Contrary to what voters are being led to believe by the latest inaccurate left-wing political ad, the closing of Poy Sippi was decided before the 2011–13 state budget was finished. And, reports WLUK-TV:
“We explored a number of different options,” said Bob Eidahl, the Berlin Area School District Administrator.
Eidahl says the district wanted to balance its budget with minimal impact on students.
“This was a decision that we really wish that we didn’t have to make, but financially it was the best alternative for us at the particular time,” said Eidahl.
The 70 or so students who previously would have went to Poy Sippi will now be bused about 20 minutes to Berlin’s elementary school.
“No one had layoffs,” said [teacher Hargrave. “Everyone will have a position there, or throughout the district, so that’s a huge positive.”
Neither the state’s finances nor the state’s taxes are where they need to be yet. But the state would have been worse off had not voters fired Democrats left and, well, left Nov. 2. And the state will be worse off if voters vote for Democrats in the Aug. 9 and 16 recall elections.
Our subject today is the depiction of journalists — or, as we like to call ourselves, “ink-stained wretches” — in the entertainment media.
This isn’t exactly a Golden Age of journalists in entertainment, but it’s interesting to note how many of them have been depicted on TV in the past few years, including in “Ugly Betty,” “Dirt,” “My Boys” and “Just Shoot Me.” For a while, magazines particularly attracted the attention of TV scriptwriters, as shown in “Ugly Betty” (and the movie it seems to have been based on, “The Devil Wears Prada”), “Dirt” and “Just Shoot Me.”
Many other movies and TV shows have featured journalists as characters, but neither “The Odd Couple” movie nor TV series was about newspapers. In most cases, journalists are plot devices to move the story along — for instance, “Then Came Bronson,” a 1969 series about a newspaper reporter who decides to travel around America after a friend of his commits suicide and leaves him his motorcycle. (Travel the country on a reporter’s salary — that’s how you know it’s fiction.)
Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in “Citizen Kane,” was based on newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, but “Citizen Kane” is not a newspaper movie. “All the President’s Men” chronicled the Watergate investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who are to Watergate what any number of TV reporters were to the John F. Kennedy assassination. “All the President’s Men,” based on Woodstein’s book (that’s what Post editor Ben Bradlee called the pair) All the President’s Men, helped create the brief genre of reporters as rock stars, due no doubt to casting Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, but it’s arguable whether it’s a newspaper movie or political thriller. Jack Webb, creator of “Dragnet,” did one newspaper movie, “-30-” (which reporters typed at the end of their stories to indicate to the typesetter that that was the end of the story), which imdb.com describes as depicting an “implausibly active day in the life of a metropolitan newspaper.”
My favorite in the newspaper movie genre is “Deadline USA,” with Humphrey Bogart as the editor of a daily newspaper about to be sold. “Deadline USA” ends what might be one of the best endings of any movie: The bad guy, a mobster, is about to be exposed in the pages of the newspaper, and as he’s threatening editor Bogart on the phone, the newspaper’s press begins to run. When the mobster says he can’t hear Bogart’s character due to the noise, Bogart’s response is: “That’s the press, baby. The press! And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing!”
(The movie also includes another line: “A journalist makes himself the hero of the story. A reporter is only a witness.” That contrasts to the definition I heard in college of “journalist”: “an out-of-work reporter.” So am I a journalist or not?)
“Citizen Kane” and “All the President’s Men” are on Best Colleges Online‘s list of 14 movies every journalism major is supposed to see. The rest of their list, though, looks more like movies for entertainment’s sake than movies for insights about journalism: “Network” (and I suppose its inclusion on this list will make you mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore), “Almost Famous” (a teenage boy’s fantasy about journalism), “Good Night and Good Luck” (Edward R. Murrow vs. Wisconsin’s own Joe McCarthy), “Ace in the Hole,” “Ringu” (“a reporter investigating some mysterious deaths and a popular urban legend encounters a cursed video tape that spreads like a virus and eventually kills off (almost!) everyone who pops it into the VCR”), “Zodiac” (about the real-life serial killings in San Francisco on which “Dirty Harry” was based), “The Paper,” “Broadcast News” and older flicks.
The best known TV series about newspapers is probably “Lou Grant,” which also is notable for taking a character from a sitcom (the title character’s boss, a Minneapolis TV station news director, on “Mary Tyler Moore”) into a drama. Ed Asner played the TV news director-turned-Los Angeles newspaper city editor, the lead character in one of TV’s first ensemble drama casts. “Lou Grant” was loved by critics and those who give out awards; the series won 13 Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe awards, a Peabody award and nine other awards in its five-year run. (The first season can be seen at hulu.com.) The series was canceled, despite its being in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings in its last month, largely because Asner used both his role in the series and his office as president of the Screen Actors Guild as a soapbox for his views on the U.S. presence in central America, to the discomfort of CBS and advertisers.
The cult classic “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” is an example of the genre of journalist as investigator, a detective armed with a notebook and a camera instead of a gun. (Of course, police detectives carry notebooks and guns, and sometimes cameras too.) In fact, just as there are more serial killers on TV or in movies than in real life, there may be more investigative reporters depicted on TV than actually exist in real life — for instance, Raymond Burr got out of his wheelchair on “Ironside” to play the title role in “Kingston: Confidential,” described thusly: “An investigative reporter, backed by the head of a newspaper and TV chain, uncovers a plot to utilize nuclear power plants in a scheme to take over the world.” (I wonder if the staff of the Green Bay Press–Gazette or the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter is aware of this fiendish plot involving those nuclear power plants along Lake Michigan.)
Other TV shows that have featured journalists as major characters include:
“The Adventures of Hiram Holiday,” a 1956 series about a newspaper proofreader (a position unknown at Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers) who is “thought to be a meek-little nobody by everyone around him” until he’s “discovered to have a range of skills that would make James Bond green with envy.” The publisher of said newspaper, “recognizing the sales potential of Hiram’s story, sends the young man on a trip around the world” with a reporter “to document his adventures for readers back home.”
“Big Town,” also known as “Byline Steve Wilson,” about “The Illustrated Press, the largest and most influential newspaper in Big Town, whose driving force was crusading editor Steve Wilson.” (Every TV series set at a newspaper has a crusading publisher and/or editor, you see.) This was one of the first TV series featuring the print media, on at the same time as a series called either “News Gal,” “Byline,” or “Your Kaiser Dealer Presents Kaiser–Frazer ‘Adventures in Mystery’ Starring Betty Furness in ‘Byline.’” (For those who think advertiser tie-ins are bad now, they used to be worse.)
“Deadline” (not to be confused with this “Deadline,” or “Deadline for Action,” or “Deadline Midnight”), a 2000 series about a New York tabloid newspaper that got a lot of PR push from NBC, which was so successful that it lasted 13 episodes.
“Hard Copy” (not to be confused with the “Hard Copy” tabloid “news” show), a series that CBS premiered after Super Bowl XXI in 1987. Despite the prime premiere time slot, it lasted six episodes.
“The Name of the Game,” an example of the rotating-star series popular in the 1960s and 1970s, featuring Gene Barry as the head of a publishing company for whom “People Magazine” (no, not that People magazine) investigative reporter Anthony Franciosa and “Crime Magazine” editor Robert Stack worked.
“Slap Maxwell,” a Dabney Coleman star vehicle about a stereotypical hard-bitten sportswriter. Coleman won a Golden Globe, which didn’t stop ABC from canceling the series after one season. This is not to be confused with “Buffalo Bill,” in which Coleman played a stereotypical egotistical talk-show host. That show too won a Golden Globe (costar Joanna Cassidy), and that show too was canceled after one season. A sportswriter not played by Coleman, the title character of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” fared much better, lasting 10 seasons, but then again, how often was Raymond depicted at his employer?
My personal favorite of that genre is “The Green Hornet,” a comic book turned into a radio series, a film serial, and then a TV series featuring the publisher of a newspaper who fought crime on his off hours, dogged by one of his own reporters who was trying to find out the secret identity of the Green Hornet, thought to be a “ruthless criminal.” (Hint to reporter Mike Axford: He signs your paychecks.) Besides having a great theme written by trumpeter Al Hirt based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” “The Green Hornet” TV series was the U.S. TV debut of martial artist Bruce Lee, who played the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato. (It should be noted that their favorite vehicle was not a green Hornet, but “Black Beauty,” comparable probably to a black Chrysler 300 of today, but with such special features as rocket launchers, smoke guns, etc.)
At this point you may be asking: What about the “Green Hornet” movie? I haven’t seen it, and based on these reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes I don’t plan to see it:
A facetious industrial product, and the first out-and-out bore of the year.
Despite its obvious angling to become a franchise, this Green Hornet offers little that’s worth committing to even the “cult flick” chamber of your brain.
A big, sloppy, loud, grating mess of a movie.
[Seth] Rogen takes what should have and could have been one of the most unique antithesis’ to Batman and transforms it in to a vanity project for his one note comedy and flat one-liners…
…an uneven, disastrously overlong piece of work.
I’m sure you’re shocked — shocked! — to discover that Hollywood, well, Hollywoodizes its depictions of journalists. (For one thing, any media outlet depicted on TV appears to have far more staff than an actual media outlet of that size would have.) The reason there haven’t been very many good depictions of journalists is that most of what journalists do, though important, frankly isn’t very interesting to watch. (After the fact, that’s another story.) Interviews, particularly hostile interviews, can be entertaining to watch, as demonstrated by CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.” But the process of putting words on paper (or into word processing program now) isn’t very interesting to watch if you’re not in the profession, any more than the process of watching photographers take photos, radio reporters edit sound or TV reporters put a story together in an editing bay is interesting to watch. Nor is, say, sitting in a courtroom at a trial or at a city council meeting. And if you think those wouldn’t be interesting to watch, watching an editor come up with a story list for an edition of his or her publication, or editing reporters’ stories is as exciting as watching trees grow.
I haven’t seen very many non-TV reporters you’d want to see on the screen from an appearance standpoint either. (Guess where the phrase “you have a face for radio” came from.) Few are tall, baby-faced in a rugged sort of way, with graying curly hair, piercing blue eyes, facial hair that varies with the season … sorry, got lost in the moment there. The reporters and editors I’ve known over the years aren’t fashionably thin or, for that matter, thin at all or, for that matter, fashionable at all, and don’t have hot significant others, cool cars and funky living quarters. (Media types, however, are quite adept at violating traffic and parking laws, thanks to those pesky deadlines.) There are more married people than in your typical TV series setting (although journalism is known for its unpleasantly high divorce rate).
One of the most bizarre incidents mixing (fictional) TV and real life occurred in 1992 over “Murphy Brown,” a sitcom set at a TV newsmagazine that looked a lot like “60 Minutes.” The title character gave birth to a child with no father in the picture. That prompted Vice President Dan Quayle to blast the show during the 1992 presidential campaign for a depicting “a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid, professional woman — mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’” That was misread as an attack on single mothers who were not single by “just another lifestyle choice,” criticized by others who praised the show for not having the title character get an abortion, prompted the series’ creator to have her (fictional) show give a response to Quayle’s comments, and then, from one to many years later, resulted in a series of admissions from places you’dnever figure, including from Candace Bergen, who played Brown, that Quayle was, uh, right. (If this paragraph didn’t make sense to you, nothing about that made sense at the time either.)
Most of the time, the personality of reporters doesn’t come across in their on-screen depictions. I find that to be too bad, because one reason I’ve liked working in the media is because of my fellow aberrant personalities in this profession. There is more drinking and smoking in journalism than in society as a whole (although media companies tend to frown on bottles in desks nowadays, and media owners have the same no-smoking-at-work policies as everyone else), and there is more, shall we say, use of colorful vocabulary than in your typical workplace. Black humor and situationally inappropriate humor is a trademark of this profession, as is automatic skepticism. Some media types seem to be engaging in a contest to see who can be more cynical than the next media type, particularly those who specialize in political reporting, for ample reason. That is portrayed better in “Dilbert,” which isn’t set in a media workplace, than in most TV and movie depictions I’ve seen.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
