Look, How Wrong Can You Be?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

The office was cramped and cluttered, with dusty posters of old TV personalities on the wall: Edward R. Murrow, Howard K. Smith, Walter Cronkite. The single window behind the desk was half open, letting in the noise from the street below.

“So, you wanna be on the network news talk shows,” the man behind the desk said.

He was a big man with a florid, jowly face and a cigar stuck in one corner of his mouth. He had his suit coat off, and his short sleeves were rolled up. The name plate on his desk read, “Mort Nuttman, Talent Agent.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “See, I’ve been writing this political column for years, and I think I know a lot about the subject. I was wondering if maybe I could be one of those high-paid TV pundits.”

Nuttman grunted. He opened the folder of columns I’d brought and scanned through them. After a moment, he set it down. He looked at me, up and down, for a long moment, without speaking. “The question is,” Nuttman said finally, “how wrong can you be?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Look,” he said, “You wanna make the big money as a guest pundit on the big shows — “This Week,” “Fox and Friends,” “Situation Room” — you gotta show that you can be completely wrong. Not just once, but over and over. Look at the heavy hitters — Bill Kristol, Dick Morris, The Cheneys, Palin, even John McCain. You know what they have in common?”

“They were all wrong?”

“You bet they were!”

“I don’t know if I can be like those guys,” I said. “I’m kind of center-left.”

He rolled his eyes. “Dear Lord,” he moaned. “Not a liberal.”

“That’s a problem?”

He shook his head. “Liberals are hard to work with, pal. They show up with facts, and figures, and” he made air quotes with his fingers and put a sneer in his voice, “reee-search.”

“Facts are bad?” I said.

“Facts make people change the channel,” he said. “I don’t need another Alan Colmes on my client roster.”

“Who?”

“Exactly. Now, if you were an actual liberal, you’d be dead in the water.”

“What about Rachel Maddow?”

He waved a hand dismissively “One show. One network. Plus, she’s a looker. The big money’s in being able to do a lot of shows, and it’s easier to do that if you’re a far-right wacko. More entertaining. We can work around the ‘center-left’ thing, like we did with James Carville and Bill Maher. But you’ve got to be willing to do what it takes to grab people. Now, yell!”

“What?”

“C’mon, yell! See if you can drown me out.”

I was confused. “Yell what?”

He handed me a piece of paper. “This script’ll do.” He began talking in a calm, measured voice. “One thing that makes the current border crisis more complicated is the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which was signed by President George W. Bush…”

I looked down at the paper and began to read at the top of my lungs. “WHEN IS OBAMA GOING TO STOP BLAMING BUSH FOR EVERYTHING?!” I hollered, doing my best to shout Nuttman down. “A COUNTRY THAT CAN’T PROTECT ITS BORDERS IS NO COUNTRY AT ALL! AAAAAAH!”

I stopped and looked up. He was nodding.

“OK,” he said, “good projection, just the right edge of barely controlled rage. We might have something here. But you still need to have been wrong a lot.” He sat back down. “So,” he said. “Were you in favor of the Iraq War? Do you still think it was a good idea?”

“Oh, God, no,” I said. “It was a debacle that should never have happened.”

Nuttman grimaced. “How about Romney? Were you predicting he’d score a landslide win over Obama as late as Nov. 6, 2012?”

“What are you, nuts?”

He pressed on. “Did you predict that Obamacare enrollment numbers weren’t going to reach predicted levels?”

“Nope.”

He sighed. “Sorry, pal. You just don’t have what it takes.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “The people who have been consistently wrong about everything get to pull down fat salaries on TV? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What do you think this is, kid? News? This is infotainment. No one likes people who are right. Audiences like people who agree with them. Loudly.”

“Even if they’re wrong?”

“Especially if they’re wrong. People who know they’re wrong want someone to tell them they’re right, so they never have to admit it.”

I shook my head. “I hate to say it,” I said, “but you’re right.”

“Don’t let it get around,” he said.

Get It Now, Get It First, Get It Wrong, Redux

Latest Newspaper Column:

One of the most aggravating features of our multi-network, Twitter-driven, twenty-four-hour news cycle is something that invariably happens in the wake of a horrible event like last week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon: driven to get something, anything, out there, the cable news channels, the airwaves, and the Twitterverse became veritable fountains of misinformation. Apparently, the old journalistic principle that you didn’t go live with something unless you’d verified it with at least two sources is as dead as Walter Cronkite. Now what they report on is what’s been “reported,” whether or not said “report” is actually true or even from a credible source. Hey, they’re not lying. All they’re saying is that someone else said it. Such is the sorry state of “journalism” today. 

So in the aftermath of the carnage, unsubstantiated rumors and gossip became “reports”, which were breathlessly passed on but which quickly became discarded as new and more lurid rumors took center stage. The device was a pipe bomb. There were two other devices found that hadn’t exploded. No, three. Twelve people were dead, among them an eight year old girl who’d come to see her Daddy run the marathon. A Saudi national had been arrested running from the scene. And, of course, before the echoes of the blasts had died down and the wounded were still bleeding in the streets of Boston, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of the online nuthouse Infowars were proclaiming that the whole thing was a government conspiracy. (When an Infowars “reporter” asked if the bombing was a “false flag operation to take away our civil liberties,” Governor Deval Patrick’s three-word response was a lesson in how to handle stupid questions: “No. Next question.”)

The wave of BS reached a crescendo on Wednesday when CNN said there were “reports” that a suspect had been identified. Then there were “reports” that there was a suspect in custody. Then there were “reports” that there wasn’t. Finally, the Boston FBI office released a statement refuting the story: “Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack.” Once can almost hear the exasperation as the release goes on to say: “Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.” 

Yeah, good luck with that. 

The part about “unintended consequences” brings to mind one of the most pernicious effects of misinformation: if you say one thing today, and say something different tomorrow, there are thousands of the above-mentioned conspiracy theorists out there who’ll insist that the correction was not an attempt to set the record straight, but is part of a cover-up. For example, after the Newtown massacre, one incorrect MSNBC report that killer Adam Lanza (originally misidentified as his brother Ryan) had left his Bushmaster semi-automatic mass murder weapon in his car is still being seized on to this day by callous gun nuts to “prove” that the government is lying about assault weapons to promote the “gun control agenda.” Of course, these are the same people who won’t believe anything else ever reported on MSNBC, but you can’t expect consistency from crazy people. 

Sure enough, as soon as it was revealed that the “Saudi national” who was supposedly taken into custody was being questioned as a witness, not a suspect, commenters at the right wing website “the Blaze” were proclaiming that the President was “protecting his Muslim brothers.” 

I know we can’t forbid news organizations from spreading misinformation (darn that pesky First Amendment!). But there ought to be some kind of required warning label on all the crap the news media spreads in the immediate aftermath of a horrible crisis. Something like a disclaimer in the ubiquitous “crawl” running across the bottom of the screen: “Warning: thanks to the near-total erosion of journalistic standards, the so-called ‘information’ you are receiving in this broadcast may be based on rumor, half-truth, prejudice, completely unfounded speculation, or the person on-screen just pulling allegations out of their rear end because they have nothing solid to report but don’t want to just stand there looking like a goober.” If we’re going to be so consistently misinformed by our media, we should at least be informed of that fact.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage.

Commercials I Just Don't Get, Redux

Latest Newspaper Column: The Pilot

I've mentioned before how I just don't seem to be on the same wavelength as the people who make TV commercials. Maybe I'm just not hip enough, but there are some that leave me scratching my head and trying to figure out, "How or why is this -supposed to make me want this product?"

Take, for instance, the commercial for the cell phone company where the blank-faced woman stuffs her child into a pet carrier to get the child on a plane cheap, explaining to the audience with a creepy lack of emotion that she needs to save money to pay her cell phone charges.

She's then accosted by a pair of equally creepy baggage handlers who look and speak like aliens who are trying to pass as human and failing badly at it. They tell the woman she can get cheap phone service from their company, before further confirming their alienness by failing to realize that the person speaking from inside the tiny cage is a human child and not a talking dog.

The same company used to run an ad where two talking pigs were enjoying a large plate of ham in a restaurant, explaining that what they're doing isn't as wrong as -paying high cell phone bills. Apparently, there's an ad agency out there that thinks child abuse, cannibalism and creepy humanoids are a hilarious way to peddle cell phone service.

I do not want to meet these people. Ever.

On the subject of phones, I'm glad that Apple's iPhone is soon going to start working with Verizon's phone network. But that ad with all the ticking clocks and people watching them, tapping their fingers, anxiously awaiting the exact second when they can have a choice of which company drops their calls, does not make me want to get either an iPhone or Verizon's service. It makes me want to tell these people they really need to get a life.

Then there's the commercial for McDonald's coffee in which the young hipster-looking dude with the scruffy beard rudely and repeatedly tells everyone, including a passing dog, "Don't even talk to me before I've had my coffee."

Look, I like my cup of coffee in the morning. I like it more than just about anyone I know. And I have to say, Mickey D's makes a surprisingly good cup of Java. But I've got to tell you, this commercial does -nothing except make me want to smack that guy in his pretentious hipster face. Think you're too good to talk to people in the morning, you little douchebag? Well, have a little talk with the back of my hand.

Also, I'd like to say a word or two about those Hyundai commercials where everyone who's not driving a Hyundai is a sheep. Hey, Hyundai? Here's a news flash. You don't make me want to buy your car by being smug and condescending. Just the opposite, in fact.

Oh, and here's a message to the folks at Charmin: those commercials for toilet tissue with the bears in the woods? We got the joke a long time ago, guys. Bears. Bodily functions. Woods. Really, we get it. It's just tiresome now, when it's not gross. Let it go.

While we're at it, let's face facts: Chester the Cheetos Cheetah has jumped the shark. He was kind of amusing when he was inciting put-upon young women to exact revenge. But when he starts enticing grown men into forts made out of mattresses, it's more than a little disturbing.

And what's the deal with the commercial where Chester and a female music store employee are tormenting another employee - who is, it should be noted, actually eating Cheetos - by playing "Chopsticks" over and over? What message does this send? "Eat our product and we'll still be a jerk to you"? It's almost enough to make me want to boycott Cheetos. Almost.

Tonight is, of course, the Super Bowl, which, among many other things, is the time when advertisers roll out a whole bunch of new commercials.

I probably won't get most of them, either.

Next Season on "Law and Order"

Brazil TV Host Wallace Souza in Murder Probe

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Aug. 11) - In one murder after another, the "Canal Livre" crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.
Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking...

The killings of competing drug traffickers... "appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show."

Of course, for all I know this may have already BEEN an episode of Law and Order...

TV Thought For the Day

There are some who say we have to torture suspected terrorists to keep something awful from happening, like a political assassination or a nuclear bomb attack.

But that Jack Bauer guy on "24" tortures people right and left and the show's already lost one President, hundreds of civilians to nerve gas attacks, and a chunk of California to terrorist nukes.

The lesson of "24" seems to be: torture doesn't keep us safe.