Yesterday was a strange day. I was working on a post that began, “I’m no Freddy Krueger, but I still like the 13th falling on a Friday.” Also in production was a post on criticism of my favorite political pundit, Keith Olberman, who’s been placed atop a low flame Bunsen Burner for blatant pro-Obama partisanship and general self-righteousness. Um, wait… Uh, nevermind. I’m not that, right? One commenter nailed him to the hypocritical cross writing, “Olbermann is nothing more but the left liberal version of Bill O’Reilly.” As ET might say, “Ouch.”
My advanced hunt and peck was interrupted by some early morning real work, a dentist visit, more work, and then a summer outing of the Marketing department. As I walked into the house after my drilling, I looked around at the greens, blues, and pink of blooming roses and conciously thought, “Everything is so beautiful.” It was almost as good as the surreal view of the world you have when in love. It was that gorgeous of a New England Spring day. The outing festivities at Kimball Farm were fun and relaxing, and I enjoyed the opportunity to chat with people I seldom see from behind my closed door. I skipped their ice cream, but did query a group why the ice cream beer float never caught on…
Once I picked up the boy Kyle and got home, I learned Tim Russert of NBC had died. On MSNBC, Mr. Olberman led an incredible media outpouring appropriate perhaps for Mother Theresa, but a bit excessive for a TV talking head. All the cable networks including CNN and even Faux News jumped on the eulogy marathon that’s still going…
I didn’t really care for Mr. Russert’s prosecutorial “gotcha” style, and called it out after watching his unjust joust with Hillary Clinton in January. Sure, that’s just one critical example from a generally distinguished career, but the full-court press reaction to Mr. Russert’s passing is more about their self-importance than about Tim Russert. Last night I heard how tragic it was that Tim Russert would miss the rest of this year’s historic presidential election and “how will we possibly cover it without Tim?” To those observations I thought it’s surely less tragic than for those African-Americans who died yesterday before they could vote for a black American president, and yeah, the election will get covered without Tim.
I guess my point in all this is that their “self-importance” has been earned, and the media more than ever delivers “news” only slanted with opinion and they have more power than ever to do it. There’s an electoral cliché that originated with Maine, moved to Missouri, and in recent years probably resided in Florida. It’s about the importance of carrying those states in order to win in November. In 2008, it’s shifted again, this time with the power residing in our media outlets. With Fox the propaganda machine of the Right and MSNBC their nemesis on the Left, as CNN goes, so goes the nation.
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Two headphone cycles while mowing my weeds is cementing “Parallel Play” as my favorite Sloan record yet. As the most democratic quad-core in rock, this Canadian band splits songwriting and vocals almost equally between Chris Murphy (bass) Patrick Pentland (lead guitar), Jay Ferguson (rhythm guitar), and Andrew Scott (drums). Live, they also swap roles when Scott grabs a guitar and Murphy just makes a mess behind the kit. Honestly, that used to be my “whatever” part of a show, but Scott’s songs on Parallel Play (Emergency 911, Down in the Basement) are so strong I’m getting over it.
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