CBS – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Scott Pelley Fired. Time To Move On

Good night, and good luck.

Scott Pelley was fired by CBS. By most accounts, except those from CBS management, he was fired for daring to speak the truth about what is happening under their new ownership that’s far too fond of kissing the ass of the president.

A picture of fired CBS 60 Minutes Correspondent Scott Pelley

I have a couple of thoughts.

First, Pelley shouldn’t have been fired I don’t care how belligerent he may have gotten with his bosses. The world needs a little more righteous belligerence instead of the babble we get for show.

Second, the current management of CBS are idiots, which is easily proven by how ineptly they handled this entire episode. There’s not enough eggs to cover the faces of the feckless.

Third, while it’s right to be momentarily outraged at the numbskulls from CBS and those who play them like puppets, it’s time to move on.

For Pelley.

For most of us.

I’m not pointing specific fingers at Pelley when I say this, but he was part of a media establishment that largely has failed us since before the dawn of the Trump era and continues to do so daily. The 1st amendment put the press on a cherished and protected pedestal. The cringing cowardice and capitulation of those atop that pedestal these days has aided the current regime in knocking itself off it. The Fourth Estate is essentially a cliché that lost its meaning.

New horizons await. Hopefully with new voices and new approaches headed towards them. Time to open the floodgates and let the waters wash away a multitude of sins that helped bring us this ultimate sinner without par.

All around us venues like podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok are where many are getting their news and their entertainment. Given that there’s been so little courage and competence in the establishment media for so long, it’s no wonder kids on TikTok get higher ratings for reviewing school lunches in the cafeteria. Hell, YouTube is kicking the media’s butt from Hollywood to New York in ways that it’s almost hard to fathom, but increasingly easy to acknowledge. For anyone but the media.

Would I like to see some of the big names who’ve gotten the axe in this regime’s purges get second chances on different platforms? Sure. But only if they seek out these new approaches and find a little courage. Those new approaches might still come under fire from the cowardly bullies that cower and lash out at any criticism. But at least they won’t come under fire from capitulating corporate chieftains who bow and scrape to the bloviating bullshit artists, hoping they can survive until the chaos we’re surrounded by ends someday.

Like it or not, traditional media as an institution, revered as it is, and as holy as its acolytes hold themselves, shares a big part of the blame and is no different than anything else that’s been touched, tainted, and torched in this tumultuous decade plus. It took a while for what passes as journalism to dig its way out of the robber baron era of previous generations. You can argue that CBS was in the forefront of the leaders that helped wash off the tinge of yellow journalism. Those days are over.

What was is gone. Self-immolation. There’s no use pretending it can be rebuilt from any of the remaining ashes.

Kudos to Scott Pelley for standing up for what’s right. We need more like him. We’ve needed more like him for too long. I’m sorry what happened to him and so many others in the media, throughout government, and in other fields of endeavor. No one deserved what’s happening. But I have to ask each of them, what took you so long? Even the visually impaired among us clearly saw most of this coming. Certainly this second time around.

Mourn the losses.

Curse the bad guys.

Then move on and build something in the future that might have a hope of preventing these cascading catastrophes from happening to anyone else in the future.

Good night, and good luck.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

The Cowards and Greedy Captains of Industry

If you can’t take a joke…

Once upon a time things like free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press were considered hallmarks of what America stood for. That feels more and more like a fairy tale. The folks in control of the government keep ripping their claws into social and political fabric and turning America into some weird fascist and cultish state that worships a convicted felon and child rapist.

2021 11 08 smothers brothers alamy.

The latest outrageous move of the Trump administration is threatening ABC to take late night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel off of the air “indefinitely.” It’s a political move and a business move. It’s also a mob move.

Disney, the pseudo-family corporate parent of ABC, Disney made the move after one of the ABC affiliates, Nexstar Media said it was so offended by Kimmel’s comments about the recent shooting of Charlie Kirk that it would pre-empt the show on its stations.

Here’s the fun part. Nexstar is trying to expand its stable of channels and that requires FCC approval. You don’t need a crayon to draw your own conclusions because the thugs in charge are so transparent with their thuggery.

Day by day we’re watching what used to be called the Captains of Industry, academia, and the media drive their boats into what they presume is the safe harbor under Trump’s protection. That harbor is getting so crowded that no one is going to be able to sail out again. Forget the ship of state, the ships of commerce are running themselves aground. This will continue because once ground is given, the bully keeps taking. It’s a tale told too well.

This feels like a yet another power move and of course it requires power to pull off. But it’s actually the move of cowards who realize they are despised and have skin so thin that they can’t take a punch line from a so-so comic. It also requires what we once thought of strong business leaders to show their true colors as cowards. Captains of Cowardice fits more today than the former sobriquet of Captains of Industry.

Another president in another time, Lyndon Johnson, once said about the comedic and satiric criticism tossed at him by the Smothers Brothers.

“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”

Don’t get me wrong. LBJ was pissed. But he was man enough to rise above it, at least publicly. Those were tumultuous times then as well. These times are becoming not only tumultuous, but tortuous because of the daily drip of news like this.

Add ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ To Your Streaming Cue

Worth a watch or a re-watch.

Last night after a rough, though totally not surprising day, I posted the following on social media:

Certainly it was how I felt and was indeed an homage to Mr. Murrow and what he stood for. I didn’t go immediately to bed after posting that “good night” message. Instead I re-watched the excellent film containing Murrow’s famous sign-off, “Good Night and Good Luck.”

As we all go through what we’re going to continue to go through (and who really knows what that is), I’d recommend watching or re-watching the film again. It’s on most streaming services so it’s easy to find.

There are and will be pressures all the way around and certainly a dramatization of any kind compresses events to create that drama. Given that we may never hear about any of the recent conflicts that I can only hope happened inside corporate media headquarters before they folded up their tents to march willingly in step with the new administration, the story of taking on McCarthy, while also relevant to our current moment, is really just the stage for the one behind the scenes that impacts what we see or don’t see on our screens of so many sizes.

This isn’t some moment of nostalgia for a time gone by. It is a recognition that where we are now is a place we’ve been before. This time around those that control the media and messaging have, for the moment, much more control than they did in Murrow’s day. Make no mistake, they had some control then, but now it’s more pervasive and the Murrow’s, Friendly’s and Paley’s are fewer in number.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.