* Such a tragedy that a TV news reporter and a photographer were killed in North Carolina while covering the effects of heavy rain from sub-tropical storm Alberto. It’s a reminder that field-reporting journalists–in an optics are everything era–can run serious, on-site risks. It ‘s also a reminder to media outlets that viewers don’t really require an elements-battling, on-camera, human presence to underscore how really awful a given weather condition might be.
* Samantha Bee, she of the “feckless c-word,” Ivanka Trump insult, has picked up where Michelle Wolf left off at the White House Correspondents Dinner. While unfunny crudeness that would get blipped on The Daily Show is off-putting enough, the harm lies in Trump-era politics. Call it an unforced error that makes a certain element of the media look classless and subject to stereotyping. It’s more fodder for the media-demeaning, Trump “witch hunt” machine.
* No you can’t make this up. The American computer-video-game marketplace has a niche for “Active Shooter.” It’s a game that allows players to re-create school shootings by stalking hallways to rack up kills. It’s sick–but there is a disclaimer: “Please do not take any of this seriously. This is only meant to be the simulation and nothing else. If you feel like hurting someone … please seek help from local psychiatrists or dial 911.” Yeah, Nikolas Cruz would have taken that advice.
“Active Shooter” isn’t merely sick. It is unconscionably, disgustingly, disingenuously sick.
* ABC canceled Roseanne because it had to. Roseanne Barr’s blatantly racist tweet did it. PR damage-control mode kicked in with the demise of the top-rated show. The tweet was “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values” glibly explained ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey.
Interestingly, two years ago Dungey became the first black entertainment president of a major broadcast TV network. Too bad good conscience–if not taste–didn’t kick in instead of an agreement to bring back the “abhorrent, repugnant” actress in the first place. Ratings in the age of Trump obviously mattered more than Barr’s well-established, polarizing values–until the tweet from hell made it untenable to keep her on.
* These can be challenging times for pollsters. Cell phones, busy would-be respondents, a protean electorate and surveyors who aren’t exactly old-school Gallup clones are part of today’s political landscape. It didn’t help when StPetePolls, in assessing the Dana Young-Janet Cruz District 18 Senate-seat race, referenced Cruz as “Janet Cruz Rifkin.” It had her trailing Young by nine points. She will be on the ballot–and probably future polls–as Janet Cruz. And likely not down by nine points.
* I don’t always agree with Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts. But recently one of his observations really resonated. It has to do with Trump and race and partisan appeal. It has to do with pandering to the lowest common denominator among us. No, we’re not living in “post-racial” America as many had hoped–more like post-overreaction America. Check out the Quoteworthy.