* The rebranded Miami (nee “Florida”) Marlins knew they were getting a media high-wire act with new manager Ozzie Guillen. With that futuristic, new Debt Payment From Hell stadium, some pricey free agents and renewed Latin interest, ownership aggressively pursued the marketable Venezuela native who was sure to be as colorful and controversial as he was profane and unpredictable. But he would be worth it in Little Havana and environs, where insouciance would no longer be hip.
But what owner Jeffrey Loria wasn’t counting on was Guillen going beyond controversy. Going beyond political sacrilege in the sovereign state of South Florida. “I love Fidel Castro,” he recently told Time magazine–and, in effect, shouted it into the media ether. Say what?
Of course there was context–it was a shout-out for Castro’s sheer survival and longevity. Doesn’t matter. Those four words can’t appear in the same sentence around Miami. The Marlins went into damage-control mode and issued a knee-jerk condemnation of Castro. Guillen called a closed-door session with the team’s beat writers to dial down the Castro ardor, apologize to the exile community, limit backlash and set the geopolitical record straight: He does not–repeat, does not–approve of Castro’s repressive, 60-year track record. Then the Marlins suspended him for five games.
Perhaps Miami fans will be forgiving or forgetful if the team wins. Perhaps.
After all, it’s not as if Guillen had condemned the Cuban embargo, advocated for normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations and strafed Marco Rubio for his self-serving, exile-parentage back story and disingenuous positions on immigration. That would have meant he knew what he was talking about.
* The late Mike Wallace has passed on to that ultimate interview, and those who knew him best are affirming what we always knew. Wallace, a reporter-performer hybrid, was, indeed, the standard for television interviewers. It went beyond the theatrics: the ambush advantage, the leading question, the incredulous double-take and the thrust-and-parry dynamics.
Other constants were always on display. While Wallace was a natural for TV–and won his final Emmy Award at age 89–he never relinquished his well-honed, old-school tools. While he could be the consummate inquisitor, Wallace was always an assiduous listener. That arched brow wasn’t pure theater.
And Mike Wallace always did his homework. Any epitaph would be remiss not to highlight his preparation ethic that should be media mantra: You have to master the basics before you’re ready for prime time. Don’t leave it all to researchers and producers. And regardless of forum or style, never forget that truth–including the statistical sham that characterized the selling of the Vietnam War–is its own end.
* Page One-upsmanship: Once again the two local dailies played a major story very differently. There’s getting beat–and there’s just not getting it. It’s likely more the former as last Friday’s Tampa Bay Times went with a front page, above-the-fold, graphic package on a story about Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and partners making a bid for Channelside Bay Plaza, the financially troubled, under-performing, high-potential entertainment complex. The Tampa Tribune buried it that same day on page three of the Metro section as a four-graph business “brief.”
For a paper whose survival mandate is “all things local,” that should be embarrassing. If not, that’s embarrassing too.
* But it’s not all one-sided. The Trib did hustle and score with a Sunday piece on EB-5 visa financing, an intriguing but obscure federal immigration program that enables wealthy foreigners, most notably Chinese, to buy their way into a green-card and then permanent American life. It’s a quid-pro-quo for job-producing investments. Get enough investors (minimum $500,000 each) teaming up, and there could be enough to make a difference in financing high-impact, high-profile projects. Such as a sports (read: baseball) stadium. There’s precedent.
* To Bryant Gumble, it was “embarrassing.” To the general public, it was more like: “That’s show business.” That was the upshot of NBC’s Today show booking political diva Sarah Palin as a guest host one day last week. It was Today’s programming counter to ABC’s Good Morning America that was featuring week-long guest co-host Katie Couric.
It was really yet another sobering reminder that the worlds of political leaders and pop culture personalities are often uncomfortably entwined. And increasingly in this society, synonymous.
The Katie Courics, however, are infotainers. The electronic-media/show business firewall has been down for some time–from Edward R. Murrow and John Cameron Swayze to today’s talk radio and cable TV hucksters.
However, we now live in a parallel political universe, where candidacies can lead either to elected office or a Fox TV gig. And that notorious shuttle goes both ways. But now NBC has jumped in with the quintessential political harlot. Yeah, that is embarrassing.
* How odd that North Korea, an otherwise hermit nation, has opened guided tours for Western media desiring an on-site look at preparations for its controversial three-stage, long-range, rocket launch of an observation satellite. The launch would violate United Nations resolutions on missile activity. Coverage has already been beamed around the globe. Possible motive? Give outsiders, who have been toyed with by the Pyongyang bi-polars for years, a first-hand look at internal strength, determination and unity as only North Korea can orchestrate it.
* Given the Trayvon Martin case, there couldn’t be a worse time for 20th Century Fox to be seriously bankrolling and sending out trailers on its space-alien spoof with the ill-omened title: “Neighborhood Watch.”
* Speaking of the Martin case, how unconscionably negligent was it for an NBC News producer to have edited a recording of George Zimmerman’s call to police the night he shot Martin? The network hustled to air it on its Today morning show. The edited version–“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”–gave the impression that Zimmerman, without prompting, volunteered that Martin was a black kid. In fact, Zimmerman was asked by Sanford police if the person in question was “black, white or Hispanic.” It obviously makes a difference, especially if a case for racial profiling is easily in the offing.
While NBC ultimately fired the producer, it won’t be able to erase the impression among skeptics that the media has its own agenda. That’s how skeptics become cynics.