Leslie Griffith

Never Underestimate a Beauty Queen

This piece published in The Huffington Post and SFgate.com

Reporters used to laugh when beauty contestants began saying they wanted to someday be television “anchorwomen.”  They did not say “reporters.” They wanted the lights! They wanted the camera! They wanted the action and attention that comes with “anchoring.”

No one is laughing now, except for those former beauty queens occupying those chairs. Most are smart enough to take the catapulting beauty queen experience off their resumes. Consider this: Would you be willing to don a bikini, stiletto heels and tape your body into perkiness just to parade in front of lusty crowds fawning for attention?

Giving away power and agreeing to be objectified from the “get go,” as Sarah Palin might say, is a form of ambition taller than the Transamerica building.  The comparison is intentional, because it was here in San Francisco that George W. Bush was handed a wedge issue that helped him get re-elected. And, Palin is all about wedges…one in particular. She’s playing the “Sarah the Saint” card, ready and willing to tear an already torn apart county into shreds with an issue that should never be politicized to begin with.

Before getting to that, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. It’s November, 2004 and George W. Bush wins Ohio, pushing the Electoral College count in his favor. Here’s what the New York Times wrote: “Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates.”

In Ohio, residents began coming to the polls just before they closed, spurred on by watching gay marriage ceremonies on the nightly news. Those images of men and women rushing to marry their same sex partners got Ohioans fired up and primed to punch any chad located next to Republican names.

Fast forward to Friday as Sarah Palin delivers a mean-spirited address to the all White, middle-aged Tea Party crowd. Following the manic hiccups and incomplete thoughts, she came right down to her own wedge issue—abortion. It’s an oldie. But, in terms of stoking passionate fires, it’s a goodie.

In a new book-- “Game Change”-- Palin is re-named “Saracuda.” The book describes a woman fighting hard not to look like what she is—a woman way over her head and certainly not ready to be president. In the book, Palin is often quoted as saying, “I know, what I know, what I know.” By that she hopes to highlight what she considers her instincts for relating to the people. What Palin knows is that her anti-abortion comments got the most raucous ovations of the night. The beauty queen with the “special needs” child—Saint Sarah—who implies she would have continued with her pregnancy in spite of any dangers related to her advancing age, and no matter how “special” her child’s needs might be. The reasoning is Palineque, taking huge leaps in logic to get to the coveted wedge. Why? Because no one ever knows for sure why such intensely personal decisions are made, but a beauty queen can spot a wedge and an advantage like a Neiman Marcus store. (Palin apparently had Neiman Marcus bags full of clothes all over her hotel room during the campaign.)

Make no mistake; she’s willing to use whatever it takes.  She’s already signed up with FOX News.  So, she’s already got the conservative bully pulpit and the coveted anchor chair.

Writer Len Colodny, who co-wrote “The Forty Years war: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama” said recently on C-SPAN that “Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in drag.” I took that to mean, ambitious without the brainpower, and therefore, easily used by the Dick Cheneys and Karl Roves of this world. The names will be different, but they’ll use her up as “Saint Sarah” and then likely throw her away. From the ridiculous to the sublime:

Sarah—the renegade—is really just another rote. 

 
 

Plucked Peacock

(This piece also published in the Huffington Post 2/8/2010  and at SFGate.com)

We, Comcast  take you, NBC, to be our wedded peacock—to have and to pluck as we see fit.

Let the nuptials begin with a quote from one of Comcast’s current bedfellows. Drum roll please! He’s the king of the threesomes. Hell, he’s the king of the quadruple-somes.  A man who famously brandishes his First Amendment right to say and show anything. A man who will now have indirect access to one of broadcasting’s once honorable “family” networks. Let’s hear it for Larry Flynt!

Felled by a would-be assassin’s bullet, a subsequent stroke and a sub-subsequent addiction to drugs, he’s a surprisingly affable guy, a plucky fellow who keeps rising despite adversity.

Is the drum still on a roll? It should be. Larry Flynt is something of a best man to put these strange bedfellows in context.  He is a man reflective of his country’s inherent contradictions. Many years ago, he boldly showed what no man dared to show before—the “pink shots.” Flynt once took Jesus as his savior, promising to “hustle for God.” Then, presto! He’s an atheist again. He is nothing if not pliable and resilient. Stronger than Mount Rushmore and Rush Limbaugh combined! Unflinchingly pornographic, unapologetic and prolific, Flynt’s corporation produces “about a thousand films a year” for Comcast and others.

Larry laments:  “The world is not what it used to be and will never be that way again.”

By that, he means “innocent.” Flynt’s an expert on lost innocence. He has an infamously high tolerance for helping others lose theirs. But, even he sounded confused by the upcoming 30 billion dollar wedding. He was not, however, objecting at the altar since he stands to profit from the union.              

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So, let us bow our heads in honor of the NBC/Comcast union.

I, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company and, therefore, one of the largest purveyors of double X pornography in the country…

TAKE YOU

NBC, as our corporately wedded partner, to have and to molt, until stock price death do we part.

It is now NBC’s turn.

I, NBC, promise to cross promote, product place, placate and propagate Comcast's propaganda. And, that’s not all.  We promise to do it with a shiny smile while skipping to Bri-tunes, waving red, white and blue pom-poms and singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

We at NBC have shown that we are a compliant partner, proven to have and hold tightly all unsightly corporate secrets. You see we have been married before.  During that marriage, we learned loose lips sink ships—the military kind—with engines made by our first corporate betrothed, GE. Neither were NBC’s lips loose when the New York Times won a Pulitzer for reporting on the cabal of retired flag officers who worked for defense contractors and pimped the progress of the Iraq war for NBC and other networks while posing as “independent” military analysts. The Bush administration was happy; the Pentagon was happy; and GE and other defense contractors were happy. Brian Williams, a very cool dude, was so happy he was speechless. To this day, Williams has never informed his viewers of the Pulitzer won by the Times or the fact that his “independent “military experts were pimping for God, Country, Bush, and the military-industrial complex. Sometimes words can just fail a guy, even a cool one.

General Electric claims to “Bring Good Things to Life,” and we were a peacock that never tired of parroting that slogan. At NBC we rarely brought bad things to light. Like the fact that General Electric is one of the world’s leading beneficiaries of war. GE makes military aircraft, fighters and tankers, helicopters and surveillance aircraft and bombers. GE builds and tests nuclear bombs, is known for making billions on questionable international arms deals and has a history of large-scale air and water pollution. But never mind all that! Corporate marriage vows, like those exchanged between all brides and grooms, say “for better or for worse.”

Forever faithful, NBC will kiss GE goodbye and be a loyal mouthpiece in its new corporate marriage to Comcast. GE is divorcing itself from the old, tired bird. It no longer needs a marketing network. Perhaps that’s because this bird has been well trained and can be released safely from its gilded cage. And, during wartime, GE’s war record speaks for itself. I guess when corporations buy the line…they get to decide where to draw it. With the bird in hand, NBC was an ally with a far reaching, mouthpiece.  A thirty billion dollar mouthpiece that now will look the other way for Comcast.

So, don’t expect the FCC or any other regulatory agency to stand up and protest. They are bound to smileJ, look away, and permit by demurring.

Larry Flynt might call that a head job.

 Final Marriage pledge:

NBC, the Nothing But Complicit network, promises to never rat on anyone with the potential to deflate its stock prices or the stock of those who peddle in greed, war, spying or sex. Unto Comcast, NBC now pledges its troth.

 ‘Till death, or a better offer, do they part.

Weathered Channel

(First published at sfgate.com and The Huffington post August 26th, 2009) I certainly had no idea that two days after writing this Charlie Gibson would be fired. I wonder if editorial decisions such as the one I wrote about below had anything to do with his leaving? We will of course never know.

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The search for a fresh episode of Nurse Jackie left me looking down at my remote for a split second. It took no longer than that to get an injection of America's daily dose of Dick Cheney's patented fear mongering via talking knucklehead, ABC anchor, Charlie Gibson.

In television news everyone knows that the first words out of any anchor's pie-hole are the most crucial, most pertinent words of the newscast. Those verbs and nouns reflect what the editorial management considers to be the most important point to be made that day. ABC revealed much about itself last night.

As a clumsy finger accidentally punched up ABC World News Tonight, my painful, ongoing education in the recklessness of television news broadcasting graduated to a new low.

The long overdue release of CIA torture documents was the lead . . . well, sort of. In advance of the breaking the news, Mr. Gibson offered a pre-lead caveat. It was a quote from the nation's ubiquitous former Vice President and foremost king of national hysteria - Dick Cheney.

This story, about newly released CIA documents, is crucial to maintaining a democratic, transparent, open, accountable government . . . one in which the press is truly free to tell its citizens what the government's doing in their name. It cannot be interpreted by logical minds as anything but an attempt to become wiser, more knowledgeable and, therefore, more free.

But, as usual, up was down and down was up and in walked the unrelenting, omnipresent, Mr. Cheney. He was allowed to speak on the merits of the CIA story before it ran. His words were the first to set the context of the subject and, therefore, the most memorable and powerful.

As always, Mr. Cheney told Americans they were "less safe" now that the torture documents were released. It was no surprise that our national fear monger and professional pot-stirrer told Americans what he always has . . . that we should be shaking in our boots, paralyzed and afraid.

I'd like to refer Mr. Cheney to a quote from one of my favorite Civil War movies, and dedicate these words to his ongoing performance.

"They call this war a cloud over the land. But, they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining.'"

It's raining alright. And Mr. Cheney seeded the clouds and helped deliver the downpour. Now he baits us still . . . with fear of biological and nuclear war.

What Mr. Cheney is really afraid of is prison. If we count the lies he's told, it's nothing less than reckless unprofessionalism to let this man deliver a pre-emptive lecture on any network at any time. Let's count the duplicity, shall we? Although it may be redundant to point out, we cannot allow these facts to swirl down some memory hole. This is particularly true when the masters of news seem to be caught in the hole's gravity.

Mr. Cheney lied to Congress and got Americans into an illegal, self- serving war. He's dodging his own prison cell by screaming "fire" in our crowded, national movie theatre.

As he tells this nation's citizens over and over that they are on the verge of being attacked by Weapons of Mass Destruction, we should ask him if those frightening, silence-inducing WMDs are the real kind or the imagined ones he told us we'd find in Iraq.

And while I am at it, this is a man who committed grievous offenses against his own nation by promoting the outing of a CIA operative whose job was, ironically, but not coincidentally, to look for WMDs!!!

As we finally see a modicum of effort by the mainstream media to focus on stories that shed light on the past nine years of dark secrets . . . why in the world would the one who gets to speak first be the person who made the rain in the first place?!

Charlie Gibson, it seems, should be demoted to weatherman. He certainly knows how to show us . . . even if by accident . . . which way his network sees the wind blowing.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/griffith/detail?entry_id=46298#ixzz0PbiXovO2

One Lone Bureau in Mumbai and an Actual reporter

Published in The Huffington Post December 1st, 2008

CNN made two scrupulous decisions before the tragedy in Mumbai. Both illustrating to the nation and the world the capacity of television news to be more than, as Edward R. Murrow put it, “Wires and a Box.”  If the other handful of networks owning America’s major conduits of information take notice, perhaps television journalism will not remain an oxymoron and the people’s trust in television journalists can be restored.

CNN proved ready for this tragedy by inherently understanding a bureau in India could become a strategically important move and possible open a window for the rest of us to peek through.  No other television news corporation had a bureau and a reporter there.

How did CNN figure that out?  With Pakistan to the northwest, generally considered to be one of the most dangerous places on the planet, Afghanistan next to Pakistan and Iran and Iraq next door, it did not take remarkable sagacity, but it did take money, and that’s why there were no other American television network bureaus there.  Stockholders these days often consider education excess.

Sectarian and political violence surround India, but until Thanksgiving Day, India was considered relatively safe. Relative being the operative word in that sentence.

The second thing CNN did right came in the form of a scrappy, brilliant, formidable reporter manning the lone bureau in India.  Sara Sidner barely flinched when explosions erupted and drunk and angry mobs surrounded her. She lives in India; she knew her stuff.  But then, Sara Sidner always had “Game” and a “Send me in coach” attitude.

Sara Sidner sat in the same chair as I for many years. She worked as an anchor on weekends and a reporter on week days.  Local news did not fight for her to stay. She had no contract keeping her from walking away-- so she did. She’s a rarity in television news today. She did not cover herself in airbrush makeup and flap her eye lashes or purse her dimples for the cameras. She wanted to be a reporter.

Few local corporate television executives notice Sara Sidner qualities these days, so she did what big fish in small ponds do. They either shrink or swim away and grow.

The pond Sara left was crowded with beauty queens toting beauty pageant sashes as resumes. Objectification to reach a goal is not Sara’s style.   Instead she chose the unknown. She chose to walk away from the comforts of home toward potential terror. She has a reporters heart and mind and if she could be cloned, American’s would be better informed and democracy safer. She chose to immerse herself in Indian culture while surrounded by countries with itchy- trigger- fingers, twisted loyalties and sectarian and political killing fields.

Following  the massacres in Mumbai one former intelligence member told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, that the “human intelligence networks” have collapsed---that there is complete reliance on “technological intelligence gathering. ” The same former intelligence officer said, “That contributed to the intelligence failure that perhaps could have stopped the “Thanksgiving day bedlam.”

Reporters based in foreign countries once helped fill that “intelligence void.” And anyone who has ever sent an e-mail to a friend, who misinterpreted the message, knows technology cannot replace human nuance. The lump in my throat melted when I saw Sara reporting from Mumbai. I knew her ability to gather information and relate it to others, and I also know America cannot avoid another 9/11 without understanding these conflicts.  People love Sara and sense her sincerity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she did not come up with some answers as to whom the culprits were and the points they were trying to make.

 One personal note: When the contradictions of television news got too much for me, Sara Sidner sent flowers to my home and pleaded with me to return to television broadcasting. She indicated current destructive trends would change and reporters would be allowed to become public servants again. With those gestures, she considered my friendship more important than climbing the ladder to the anchor chair that in local and national news turns reporters into actors and creates myopic minds promoting corporate cronyism and corporate agendas. She was not looking for a camera close up, she was looking to be the real thing.