Tag Archives: TV news

BREAKING: Perham Is A Beautiful, Friendly Little Lake Town

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WCCO-TV_Going_To_The_LakePerham, Minnesota — Investigative reporters at WCCO-TV are rumored to be about to air a major exposé involving Perham, Minnesota, a town of roughly 3,000 residents in west central Minnesota’s Otter Tail County.

WCCO’s Goin’ To The Lake Investigative Unit apparently has learned that Perham is a “beautiful, friendly little lake town up north” that WCCO-TV would highly recommend to anyone.

Moreover, WCCO-TV has reportedly learned that Perhamites and their Chamber of Commerce representatives “couldn’t be nicer,” and that neighboring Little Pine Lake and Big Pine Lake are both “absolutely lovely.”

Finally, unnamed sources familiar with the situation indicated that several of the local food offerings were “quite tasty,” so much so that they could prove to be fattening if not enjoyed in moderation.

WCOO-TV officials refused to confirm or deny the reports, instead urging viewers to tune in Friday evening.

The Return of Randy the Ombudsman

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterWriting for MinnPost.com I recently waded back into the lack of ombudsman at any local news organization, by which I mean someone – anyone – who regularly explains what in the hell the newspaper, radio or TV station was thinking when they ran Story X or ignored Story Y.

In an age when no healthy skeptic has reason to take anyone at their word, an ombudsman, someone who does the ‘splainin, as Ricky Ricardo would say, would be a bona fide value-added service. Or so you’d think. (On the other hand, if you’ve actually got something to hide, setting someone loose to ‘splain how completely clueless you were when Story X went down is probably not a good thing and stonewalling may be a prudent move.)

Well, it turns out fortune has smiled on Twin Cities media and what still passes for their newsrooms. After a multi-year hiatus, when his seasonal bear-baiting and booya service occupied his every waking hour, an old friend, Randy is returning. It seems he has hired on his cousin, Leonard, to scour northwest Wisconsin’s highways and ATV trails for booya meat, leaving Randy with several more hours a week to gather his thoughts at Douglas County’s finest road house, the Dry Dock Saloon, right off Highway 35 – and practically underneath the giant microwave tower.

We hadn’t seen Randy since the Dry Dock aborted its $10 All You Can Drink Wednesday special. But a week or so back, on Taco Night, we found him there, nursing his sixth Spotted Cow and found him entirely agreeable to resuming his freelance ombudsman work, not only for the Star Tribune, but the Pioneer Press, MPR and every Twin Cities TV and radio station that hasn’t bothered to explain themselves in forever, which is all of them.

The deal was pretty straightforward as media negotiations go. In exchange for covering his Spotted Cow and taco habit, Randy would ‘splain everything that needed ‘splainin’, until all questions were answered or he fell off his stool, whichever came first.

All in all Rand’ looked pretty good, especially considering the nasty frostbite he got after getting lost in the state forest, with flu-like symptoms, after the big Moose Junction Booya in early March. Thank god those dudes heading for their meth shack found him just before dawn.

By way of priming the pump, I hit Randy with a few ombuds-like questions that had been sent my way on the off-chance that we would reconnect.

Maintaining a strict one Cow to every three for Randy ratio I tossed out the first question.

 

“Randy: I see some East Coast university has proven that the media has gone all-in on Al Gore butt kissing and has started ignoring “climate realists” like me. The survey says a lot of these half-bankrupt daily rags are refusing to run letters  clear-headed folks write pointing out the millions of flaws in this global warming bull [bleep] hoax [bleep]. I’m a big supporter of local businesses, even lefty apologists like the Star Tribune — being an east side guy, the Pioneer Press fits my style of thinking a lot better. But I’m worried. Is this second-class citizen thing for people like me spreading to Minnesota? I mean, hell. You want to see my plowing bill for the driveway last year? It snowed! Thank god TV stations are still holding the line against this liberal snake oil.” Signed, SSH, St. Mary’s Point, MN.

Randy says: Well here’s a news flash for you: The big time media types have people who go outdoors for them. Their idea of “climate” is an air-conditioned tennis court. I haven’t tipped a Cow with one of those prisses since I can’t remember when, unless they snuck into the Moose Junction party uninvited.

So they think they can just willy-nilly up and decide that a hoax is not a hoax and some of the best scientific minds BP and Exxon have ever hired are making [bleep] up? Well, excuse me! They can try it. They can pull all this “peer review” crapola and say some nerd in Iceland is out there with his slide rule measuring glaciers, but you and I, people who buy our groceries and clothes from real stores, like Menards and Fleet Farm, have a way of reminding the pencil necks in their swank newspaper offices how their bread gets buttered. If the Star Tribune or that other one start going ‘New York’ on us, we’ll remind them pretty quick what happens if you don’t give real Americans equal time on this science-y [bleep].”

“Randy: I’m a huge Vikings fan. I took out a second mortgage on my trailer to get my personal seat license for end zone seats at the new place and I am so stoked for that first kick-off. But here’s the thing, neither of the papers in town gives anywhere near enough attention to the second-biggest season of all. You know, screw baseball, basketball and hockey. We’re talking mock-draft season! That sweet spot time of year, from mid-January until late April, when great football minds speculate 24/7 on which can’t-miss 21 year-old The Purple will draft to guarantee them a Super Bowl win for the new People’s Stadium. But where real papers used to give mock drafts a good two or three ages pages a day, the locals are slacking off. If I get one piddly story a day, I’m lucky. If this doesn’t change, I’m getting one of those app phone things, just as soon as my credit improves.” SidH, Golden Valley.

Randy says: I hear ya on that, dude. Football is the only true American sport. I know because I see more ads for trucks and beer watching football than anything else. Hell, what do they advertise on soccer games? Panty liners? These people are short-shrifting real Americans and real men by not running more mock draft stories. If they need more experts they can come up here. Leonard and I’ll give ’em something to write about. If they buy a couple rounds.”

Randy: I don’t know much about TV news but i used to think it was all about getting good-looking gals out in front of house fires, car wrecks and yellow police tape. But lately I see stuff like a couple dudes running off to some resort and partying with the locals. Sometimes they even run these stories about some local bait shop or boat motor repair joint, which I used to think they called “ads”, but they seem to doing for free. What gives? Or maybe I should say, “How do I get them to come up here and plug my bear-baitin’ business?” I could tell those boys a couple hundred good stories. P.S. Those guys aren’t poofters are they? I ain’t never seen hair like that around here.” Leonard, Foxboro, WI.

Randy; Jeezus christ, Leonard! You done driving Pioneer Trail like I told you? I heard AJ clipped a doe out there last night. That meat’d still be fresh enough. But to what you’re sayin’; as I understand it these TV folks aren’t getting anywhere near the dough your Don Shelbys were getting. So they gotta work in some perks anyway they can. If this means they grab a few days fishin’ or personal water-crafting up here in God’s country, I’m all for it. Plus, who says that ain’t news? I mean if they stayed down in the Cities what would they cover? Little kiddies making Easter bunnies? Some new, toity restaurant? People get tired of that hard news crap after a while. A couple brewskies by the lake sounds a lot better.”

If you have a question for Randy the All-Purpose Ombudsman, send it to:

brianlambertmn@comcast.net

 

or, write it on a coaster and leave it on the bar at the Dry Dock.

Complicity in the Bill Cosby Cover-Up Runs Deep

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterThe “outing” of Bill Cosby as, well what else can we call it but as a “serial rapist”? has kicked off a moment of journalistic soul-searching. It isn’t all that widespread and it won’t last long, but it’s a flicker of light worth prodding toward something more substantial.

But first, my one and only inter-raction with the man. It 
was the late ‘90s if I recall and Cosby was in town to give one 
of his ministerial speeches on the topic of family/male/black male responsibility. After more than the usual back and forth with his people I was granted a 10-minute window for an interview. As a lifelong fan as far back as his “Wonderfulness’ LP, which I wore out on the old Lambert family Magnavox, I was still expecting if not an affable, good-humored pro of the show biz game, a kind of Bob Hope with street cred, at least something other than a self-important dick.

It didn’t go well. Cosby clearly found the whole … 10-minute chat … a tedious ordeal (admittedly, I get that a lot), and his “person”, a middle-aged male toadie who looked as though he’d be beheaded if the boss were asked something he didn’t want to answer, interrupted virtually every (harmless) question for re-phrasing into something Bill would rather talk about, which, frankly was very little beyond his usual boilerplate of “pull up your pants and be (my idea of a) man”. Put another way, the interview lasted about eight minutes too long.

The broader point to this whole still unfolding saga, a multi-pronged tragedy, is again both how little we the public truly know about celebrated public figures and how our culture’s myth-making machinery sends down roots far deeper than reality. (For regular readers, this is an echo of my embarrassing infatuation with John Edwards.)

The media mea culpas going around include one from one of black culture’s most inightful and provocative critics, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who cops to not pushing Cosby hard enough, in a story seven years ago, on assertions already made against him by over a dozen women. Says Coates in his recent Atlantic web piece, “ … it is hard to accept that people we love in one arena can commit great evil in another. It is hard to believe that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist because the belief doesn’t just indict Cosby, it indicts us. It damns us for drawing intimate conclusions about people based on pudding-pop commercials and popular TV shows. It destroys our ability to lean on icons for our morality. And it forces us back into a world where seemingly good men do unspeakably evil things, and this is just the chaos of human history.”

One of the great revolutions in American cultural consciousness-raising would be a campaign to demystify celebrity myth-making. But rational skepticism about the show biz famous is not particularly welcome, even in places supposedly committed to it. If you ask, almost every pop news consumer understands fairly well the business plans of celebrity magazines/media and all their inanity-worshipping stepsisters, the “lifestyle” outlets of one silly sort or another. Not that the average consumer thinks about it much, but if you ask they’ll concede it’s all just a selling game.

A game they consume voraciously.

But as bad as the vast mass of all that celebrity silliness is, clogging our cultural arteries with stupendous flows of irrelevant non-news at best and pure, free publicity at worst, the problem is compounded by an unwillingness of so-called “serious” journalism to apply even the most minimal counter-balance.

I spent more time than I care to remember playing willing shill for the Hollywood hype-machine, interviewing the famous and beautiful with only rarely an untoward or impertinent question. (OK, I was thrown off the so-called “junket circuit” three different times for such transgressions. But because I “gave good profile”, I was eventually invited back.) But that was while working for a free weekly. When I arrived at a supposedly bona fide daily newspaper I had some (seriously misplaced) expectations that, at long last due skepticism would be encouraged … rewarded … cheered.

A guy has rarely been more wrong. The sad fact is that the features departments of mainstream newspapers, even the good ones, (and I wasn’t working at one of those), exert little to no skeptical energy on their show biz subjects. More to the point, they don’t tolerate “cynical”, “negative” rogue writers applying it independently.

From (long) direct experience I can tell you the features end of daily newspapering is completely happy and comfortable serving as yet another layer of the show biz publicity machinery. (If only those cash-strapped papers got a cut of the tickets they helped to sell.) The guiding (focus-group tested) rationale being that readers want the paper to reflect and enhance their excitement and delight in “the stars”, which is to say, the paper’s job is to magnify what “the stars’ ” publicity machinery has already established. (It goes without saying that local TV news, a show biz sales game in itself — morning, noon and night — hasn’t even imagined a skeptical thing to say about celebrities, other than an errant choice of a red carpet gown, or a Justin Bieber-like meltdown.

It’s easy to understand Mr. Coates’ dilemma. Here’s a prominent figure among the black intelligentsia (Coates) conflicted over a direct attack on a revered black icon, (Cosby). The record will show there are plenty of people undermining influential black leadership figures, so why would a young black intellectual add his name to that barrage?

Ironically, the predominantly white managers of mainstream news organizations, no doubt assessed the racial liabilities of reporting the accusations against Cosby as well, and demurred … until the tidal wave granted everyone cover to “reassess”.

But that’s Cosby. What of the mega-tonnage of so-called “journalism” heaped on show biz personalities of all persuasions with for all intents and purposes no application of skeptical perspective at all? Obviously, serial rape is a special level of depravity. But I can assure you that Bill Cosby isn’t the only revered celebrity icon who has successfully marketed a persona wildly out of step with his true nature, and marketed it with the full, albeit unwitting complicity of the allegedly responsible professional media.

Would we really be worse off if professional journalists refused to be a part of the bullshit brigade?

 

 

 

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