* This year’s presidential election reinforced some basics about polls. You can’t always trust them. So many variables, so little verification. But here’s one that, despite it’s almost unprecedented numbers, absolutely resonates. A Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/AM 820 News Tampa Bay Poll shows nearly 90 percent of respondents favoring a ban on texting while driving. Seven percent opposed such a law for this state.
Florida remains one of 11 states that has not outlawed text messaging for drivers. That’s a disgrace–and the poll numbers surely reflect the outrage. As for that 7 percent? That’s still too high for a blatantly obvious public-safety threat–even given the number of telecom lobbyists and self-styled, politically partisan, “personal liberty” champions out there.
* I always look in on the Outback Bowl, regardless of who’s playing. To be honest, however, I’m most interested in those network cut-away shots that feature local color–from Busch Gardens and Ybor City to waterfront skylines and Gulf beaches. Especially when the weather is notably balmy here–and not even close most other places. That’s a gratis marketing coup on national television every New Year’s Day. On Tuesday, the scoreboard showed that South Carolina won, but Tampa Bay is an Outback winner each year.
* NBC Nightly News follows the industry standard by teasing to its own network programming, in this case “Rock Center” and “Meet The Press.” Often. It’s part of the business of news. We all get that. But that’s no acceptable, self-interest rationale for how it handled the flap about “Meet The Press” host David Gregory’s dramatic display of a high-capacity magazine in his interview with NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre. It was all over the internet and print media that Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department had opened an investigation as to whether NBC and Gregory had broken a law, namely the one that prohibits the sheer possession of such magazines.
NBC’s immediate response: no comment by a spokesperson. But more to the point, the “Nightly News” couldn’t so much as mention it. There’s taking care of your own–and then there’s self-serving, news-judgment negligence.
* Thomas Sowell is a well-known conservative author and scholar. And as a black Republican, he occupies, especially these days, a unique media niche. He’s presumed to personify the truth-teller who’d rather stand on principle than embrace a brother. As it should be. Unless, that is, you say this in a recent Creators Syndicate column:
“After watching a documentary about the tragic story of Jonestown, I was struck by the utterly unthinking way that so many people put themselves completely at the mercy of a glib and warped man, who led them to degradation and destruction. And I could not help thinking of the parallel with the way we put a glib and warped man in the White House.”
That’s not writing; that’s spewing. Thomas Sowell has morphed into Allen West.