Localism

This ad came to my attention as the anniversary over a popular newsman's death was posted by that station's Web site was last week.  They posted an ad for local news and watching the weather forecasts that was around a much different generation.  My, have news reporting changed, and with the modern generation choosing X-rated programming over local broadcast television, they ignore the fundamentals of television such as local news, weather, and sports in favour of what they want at the time they want.  Was this how your local weather forecast was promoted?

Retro TV Friday

For some reason, when I was growing up we always favored the ABC news over NBC or CBS. I'm not sure why, but in doing so we were definitely in the minority. ABC was constantly on the lookout for news credibility in the hopes it would translate to higher ratings, but until Roone Arledge took over the news division in the late 70s, such was not the case.

Here is one of ABC's best teams, circa 1969-70: Harry Reasoner, who had come over from CBS after it appeared he would never succeed Walter Cronkite, and Howard K. Smith, who had been with CBS many years before.



I always really liked this intro: intense, aggressive music (that matches up perfectly with the graphics), high energy, with an underlying seriousness. As the images flash by faster and faster, the subliminal message seems to be, "When the world moves so fast you can't keep up, turn to the trusted names at ABC News." Knowing that Lou Ciaffi and Irv Chapman and Peter Jennings are on the beat was supposed to impress us (although apparently it didn't impress enough of us).

And note those issues - abortion, the Mideast, unemployment, inflaton, China, Congress, ecology (or as we would think of it today, the environment), Substitute "Iraq/Afghanistan" for "Vietnam," and you have virtually a duplicate of what could be on today's news. It proves, once again, that there's very little new under the sun. ◙

Random thoughts

As most of you probably know, "random thoughts" is usually another way of saying, "I don't have enough material for a good story, so I'm going to string together a bunch of unrelated ideas." Fair enough, but I'm going to ask you to bear with me anyway, for some interesting odds and ends.

First off is this fascinating series from Hell's Bible (That's The New York Times, in case you were wondering), on a piece of history I really didn't know much about: the December 16, 1960 plane crash over New York City that killed 134 people - at the time, the deadliest plane crash in American history, and the first to involve a passenger jet aircraft.  The death toll might seem modest compared to, for example, the World Trade Center bombing, but as this picture suggests, the horror on the streets was every bit as real.  I happened on this while following a link to another story altogether, and it was an hour before I could stop reading.  The overview is here, but be sure to follow the link to this affecting story about Barbara Lewnes, the nurse who stayed the night with Stephen Baltz, the young boy who for an all-too-short time was the only survivor of the crash.

Next up is this piece from our loyal reader Suzanne, who thought it was something we might want to put on the blog.  Gross?  Disgusting?  Probably.  Free speech?  Without a doubt.  An accurate description of politicians?  Can't say about the specific case, but in general,...

We've talked before about Bernie Ecclestone, the major domo of F1.  (I probably ought to trademark that description.)  A few weeks ago the 80-year old Ecclestone was mugged and roughed up a bit, but Bernie being Bernie, he's turning it to his advantage.

So what do you know? ◙

TWTWTW*

By Mitchell

This, it must be said, has been a most strange week; and at some point one has to ask when all of life became a Fellini movie.

Thursday was the pinnacle, of course, with the deaths of two of the great pop figures of recent decades, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. (I was going to call them icons, but Jonah Goldberg provided a proper reason to avoid that terminology.) Fawcett's death was hardly unexpected, and her very public struggle with cancer brought a definite sense of dignity to a life that, as is the case with most lives, had its share of ups and downs.

Jackson's, on the other hand, was from out of the blue (although in the moments after it happened, one could find any number of people saying, in essence, that this was an accident waiting to happen) and the reported scene at the hospital - people weeping, information hard to come by, Jackson songs blaring through the hallways while a throng of people and reporters gathered outside - sounds as surreal as any image from Satyricon or Amarcord. It was a strange end to a sad life, and it is very hard not to pity Michael Jackson for the talent he had, and the strange waste his life appeared to become. Ed McMahon's death earlier in the week was almost forgotten, and you have to think that he deserved better than that.

Oh, and Jon & Kate, who brought televised self-immolation to new heights (or lows), announced they were divorcing. Couple this with the truly bizarre disappearance and reappearance of South Carolina Governor Sanford (as we discussed yesterday), and about all one can say is that it was a good week to be working in cable news.

Nor were we limited to news - the sports world provided its share of excitement. The U.S. defeated top-ranked Italy in soccer, and that must have sent someone scurrying to see if it was snowing in Hell. Formula One, playing against type, actually did something that made sense: Max Mosley (whom we talked about here) announced he wouldn't be running for another term as FIA president, and the renegade manufacturers announced they wouldn't be forming a breakaway group after all. Manny Ramirez, he of the drug suspension, now has his doctors being investigated by the DEA, and MLB says they'll cooperate. Phil Mickelson blew another U.S. Open golf championship, and it seemed that might have been the most normal thing about the week; it was all downhill from there.

I wrote at some length yesterday about how life imitates art, and this must be a final confirmation of the fact. Deists suggest that after the act of creation, God no longer took an active interest in life. Regardless of one's own religious beliefs, the last few days must certainly put a lie to that - for at the very least, Fellini seems to have a hand in the script, which suggests that someone up there is running things.

*For all you TV oldies out there, "That Was The Week That Was."

Timing Is Everything

By Drew

Cosmic justice, perhaps? From CNN:

Thirteen years to the day after a Los Angeles jury acquitted him of two murders, another jury began deliberations Friday in O.J. Simpson's armed robbery and kidnapping trial.

Do you remember where you were thirteen years ago today? I wonder how this one will end? Will it be déjà vu all over again, or will this time be different?

UPDATE: Apparently, justice delayed is not justice denied.

No Bull

By Mitchell

Well, August was quite a month here. The month began with the 35W bridge collapse, and ended with a runaway bull at the State Fair. In between, there was a drought, tremendous storms, floods, and heat. It's incredible to think that it all actually happened in the space of 31 days.

There was something truly bizarre about this last story. I mean, how can anyone really keep a straight face when reporting about a bull escaping from its handlers at the Minnesota State Fair on Friday, running loose for about a block before it rammed a fire hydrant and died? Now, this could in fact have been a pretty serious story - the area in which the bull escaped is usually pretty crowded. People, especially young children, could have been trampled or gored. As one witness put it, "All we heard was screaming, and then we saw the bull starting to run after people, and then there was an old couple that got away just in time ... and then it started going after a stroller, but for some reason it just stopped," It was a tragedy waiting to happen, and it was fortunate that no one was injured, save the bull.

That being said, the fact that there were no injuries allows one to appreciate the utter absurdity of the whole thing. The press coverage is rife with unindended humor, as demonstrated in the Strib's story of the bull's "short visit to the State Fair." (Check out the headline: "Bull Meets Its Demise After Run Through Crowd at State Fair") "'It just turned on the fire hydrant, put its head down and hit it at a real good pace,' said witness Chris Fry. 'And when it did that, it just dropped.'" A fair spokeswoman said, "Even our fire hydrant is OK and good to go." I dare say that anyone who's seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon pictured above had to have that image pass through their minds within the first ten seconds of hearing the story.

Bishop Sheen once explained why a man slipping on a banana peel is funny. The humor comes even more from the anticipation, from seeing the peel on the sidewalk with the man approaching, than it does from the actual event. Anticipation - the mind painting a picture of what is to come - is what made the Three Stooges funny, what made Laurel & Hardy funny, what makes old jokes continue to work even after you've heard them time after time. And why do so many of us laugh when we watch the running of the bulls? There's just something outrageous about the image it paints. So forgive me if this seems callous, but the idea of a bull being killed after head-butting a fire hydrant is just too much. Go ahead and try it yourself. As one radio station announcer suggested, perhaps the bull mistook the fire hydrant for a matador's cape. Another wondered if PETA would file suit against the hydrant for having maliciously taken an innocent bull's life. The fact that pictures of the offending hydrant soon appeared online just compounded the absurdity.

The owners of the bull, understandably, were thinking more about their losses - someone figured they probably lost between $4,000 and $6,000 due to the accident. But they were more grateful nobody was injured - "Bulls are replaceable," the owner said. One hopes that someday even they might be able to appreciate how absurd the whole thing was. And that's no bull.

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse

By Mitchell

Wednesday night is usually grocery night in the Hadley household. When you live downtown there aren't all that many grocery choices; the nearest one, Lunds, is just across the river, but it's not the kind of place you go when you live on a budget

So for us, the choice is usually to go over to Roseville, where there's a Cub and a Super Target. You get there by going out on Washington Avenue and taking a left on to the 35W bridge that runs over the Mississippi River, about six blocks from our condo. I'd get home from work and do a half-hour on the exercise machine, we'd have a quick dinner, and then we'd head out between 6 and 6:30.

But it was hot today, in the 90s with a forecast of rain, and Judie had been out to lunch with my aunt and was tired and didn't really feel like going back out, and so we decided to wait until tomorrow. Because of that, we were home at 6:20 when the first bulletins came on the local news that the bridge had collapsed, that there were perhaps 50 or 60 cars in the water, that it was a disaster.

About that time we became aware of the sirens outside. Now, living where we do (downtown, not far from Hennepin County Medical Center), you get used to the sound of sirens, and so perhaps they'd been going for a few minutes. But these were continuous, and there were so many of them. Police cars, fire engines, ambulances. It could only be for one reason.

As I said, we're only about six blocks from where the bridge collapesd. By going out the front door of our condo and crossing the street, we could walk across the Stone Arch Bridge, which parallels 35W. A woman from our building was headed out there; her husband usually drove across that bridge to get home, and she hadn't heard from him yet. Judie asked her when she'd last talked to him; she thought about 20 minutes, which would put it after the collapse, but when she looked at her watch she thought it might have been longer ago than that. She was shaking, fighting hysteria, headed down to see what she could find out.

There were perhaps hundreds of people already on the bridge, with more coming from every direction. Emergency vehicles screamed across the bridge, which is usually limited to pedestrian traffic. Black smoke rose from the scene, the fire from the semitrailer that was shown prominently on TV. We could see a portion of the bridge standing up at a 45 degree angle, other pieces beyond our sight, in the river.The street was jammed with cars, trucks, people. The sirens were endless; police and fire boats coming from Stillwater, a town located further down the river from Minneapolis. More police cars, patrolmen hanging out the doors, asking people to get out of the way. A blue command center being set up. Flashing lights everywhere. A Metro bus, slowly moving toward the river, the sign on the front reading "Rescue Bus." People were taking pictures, taking videos, talking on their cell phones. We ran into a co-worker from my office, who took that bridge every day to and from work. He didn't really know what to do, just kept walking down, to see what he could see.

For all its faults, Minneapolis is a pretty ordinary place. Sure, there are the murders and the gang violence, but there's never been a major airplane crash here, the most famous fire we've ever had was in an empty office building on Thanksgiving night and didn't hurt anyone, there just isn't anything to compare to what we saw and heard tonight, at the far end of our neighborhood.

It's dark now, at 9:30. The sirens have eased off; everyone who needs to be down there is already there. The large surface parking lot behind our building has emptied out, and there isn't nearly as much traffic out there as there was a while ago. The rain that was forecast has held off, but the temperature is still high, the air heavy and still. The news coverage, locally and nationally, will continue into the night, and the headlines in tomorrow's Strib will be predictable.

Tomorrow is Thursday, and it will be grocery night for us. We'll have to find a different route to the store, of course, or a different store. It's true we could easily have been on that bridge when it went down tonight; it was the right night, and while we often would have been going over it around 6:30, there have been nights when it's been closer to 6:00, or 6:10. It might be somewhat melodramatic to suggest that we should have been on that bridge tonight. A lot of people should have been, and weren't, and we can be grateful for that. But I don't want to put that fine a point on it, though, on how close a call it might have been. It was enough to have been that close to it, to see the flashing lights and hear the sirens and see the helicopters hovering over the neighborhood, to see your city and a road you take being featured on CNN and Fox News.

It was enough to be that close, to see and hear it all, to listen to people worried for their friends and loved ones. It was enough, to remind you once again (as if you really needed reminding) of the fragility of life, the fleetingness of it all. And for those of us of faith, it doesn't mean that life is meaningless; rather, it it reminds us of how packed with meaning every second of life is. It was enough to make you think about that decision to stay home tonight, and to go on your knees in Thanksgiving. It was enough, perhaps, to remind you that life is never enough, that there is always more to experience, more to do, and less and less time in which to do it.

MH - Peter Jennings, R.I.P.

Peter Jennings died yesterday. Read here what I wrote about him in March, before his cancer diagnosis.