I hate David Brooks

---

I’ve written about David Brooks before. He is a toffee-nosed middle-of-the-road sort-of-conservative social commentator for the New York Times. He is priggish and frequently clucks his tongue over our decadent society. His preferred society would, I think, be a cartoonish Eisenhower-era America, with everyone living in a little white house and going to church every Sunday, in a rocket car (because David Brooks is a great believer in progress).

Seriously, people like this kill me. They long for the days of Big Religion, when everyone went to church except the really bad people. People like Brooks often whine about how society has suffered without Religion as a Unifying Force.

O yes indeedy, it’s a unifying force, all right. Go ask all the Lutherans and Catholics who died in the Thirty Years War, back in the seventeenth century, about how powerfully they felt about their religion as a unifying force.

But religion is also a civilizing force! the David Brookses cry. Music! Poetry! Art!

(They overlook all the music and poetry and art that’s been created without benefit of religion.)

Which is why this passage, from a recent Brooks NYTimes.com editorial in which he describes Charles Taylor’s book “A Secular Age”, drives me batty:

“. . . What I most appreciate is [Taylor’s] vision of a “secular” future that is both open and also contains at least pockets of spiritual rigor, and that is propelled by religious motivation, a strong and enduring piece of our nature.”

This gives me a splitting headache. First of all: “pockets of spiritual rigor”? Does Christian fundamentalism, or Muslim fundamentalism for that matter, constitute a “pocket of spiritual rigor”? If so, in what way do they add to the value of their respective cultures?

And why would a “secular” future be “propelled” by “religious motivation”? This baffles me completely. I’m a non-believer myself. Can I somehow “propel” myself with “religious motivation” that doesn’t involve believing in a particular religion? Or do I just sideline myself, and allow my culture to be “propelled”?

I don’t know why people read Brooks seriously. I only read him to reassure myself what a completely fatuous bore he is.

Now excuse me while I propel myself into the secular future.

---

The decline and fall of CNN

---

Ted Turner, a true visionary who’s also a true kook, founded the Cable News Network in 1980. People said he was crazy; there wasn’t enough news in the world to justify a 24/7 television news network.

CNN sputtered along through the 1980s. Finally, the first Gulf War in 1991 gave them a breakthrough. People sat hypnotized in front of their TVs and watched the live coverage from Iraq and Kuwait: Wolf Blitzer, Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, Christiane Amanpour. I remember sitting mesmerized in front of a friend’s television myself (I didn’t have cable in those days).

Then cable became common. Then it became almost universal. Then it became almost necessary.

Then CNN found that it was competing with Fox and other news networks, which were using the formula CNN had itself created: reporting, reporting on the reporting, experts. It is hard to fill up twenty-four hours a day with news, so you come up with other stuff – let’s be charitable and call it “commentary” – and pretend that your "commentary" is news too.

Let’s fast forward to the present day, shall we?

On the morning of the fourth of July, Partner and I happened to be watching CNN, and I suddenly realized that they were running a promo for the return of “Crossfire.”

“Crossfire”! This was a point-counterpoint program with Tucker Carlson maybe ten years ago, which got shamed off the air by Jon Stewart, who pointed out that they were accomplishing nothing except filling time. 

Now they’re bringing it back.

Okay. Back to CNN. They’re doing a piece on the New England Patriots player, Aaron Hernandez, who killed some people. First, the anchor garbles the words “New England Patriots” into something incomprehensible, and stares silently into the camera for a long moment until she recovers control of her voice. Now we go to the story. CNN has a reporter on the scene in Attleboro, Massachusetts; a neighbor is leading her around the crime scene, explaining things to her. How the hell does this guy know anything? Best of all, the neighbor is introduced this way: “This is Jay. He asked that we not use his last name.”

Hi, Jay. We can see your face. If we really meant to do you harm, we probably wouldn’t need to know your last name.

But don’t blame poor Jay in Attleboro. Blame the CNN reporter who said, “Uh, sure, if you don’t want to use your last name, you don’t have to. But of course you can appear on camera.”

Isn’t CNN hiring anyone with any expertise in journalism?

Evidently not.

But journalism is no longer in demand.

You gotta fill up those twenty-four hours a day with something!

---

Old men reading the news

---

CBS is the network of the elderly, especially on Sunday mornings. All of the correspondents on “CBS Sunday Morning” speak slowly and carefully, so we old codgers can understand them as we gradually awaken. The host of the show is the charming (but elderly) Charles Osgood, who’s eighty years old as of this moment.

And the show is followed by CBS’s “Face the Nation,” hosted by Bob Schieffer, who’s a comparatively youthful seventy-six years old.

One Sunday morning last spring, Schieffer opened the show with something like this: “Flooding! Snow in the Northeast! What’s with the weather?”

It’s a perfectly valid question, with a plethora of answers, all of them interesting. But it was his tone – his shrill old-man querulous tone – that made it almost funny. He seemed to be saying: What’s this? And why haven’t we heard about this before?

Well, we’ve heard about it approximately a thousand times. I first heard about it in the 1970s in high school, when the first Earth Day was celebrated. I even spent a few pennies then to buy an Earth Day decal, the money for which was supposed to go to some good ecological cause.

But here we are. The atmospheric CO2 level has gone to 400 parts per million, the highest level in three million years. This will have definite consequences on the climate.

And yet Bob Schieffer, who’s possible more than three million years old, wants to know what’s going on!

I’m on the verge of being an old man myself. But even I know more than Bob Schieffer seems to know.

The climate is changing.

Grab your hats and head for the exits, ladies and gentlemen. The future isn’t going to be very nice.

I’m only sorry that the old men on the Sunday-morning television programs aren’t preparing you more properly for it.

---

Howard Kurtz

---

I have been a semi-regular viewer of a Sunday morning CNN show called “Reliable Sources.” Its topic is not so much the news itself as the way news is covered. Its participants, led by journalist / moderator Howard Kurtz, discuss tone, and thoroughness of coverage, and whether one story is being overdone while others are being forgotten. The show is generally merciless when it comes to bad journalism; you can argue legitimately over how many minutes to give a news story, but there’s generally no argument that a bad story – unchecked, inaccurate – is bad journalism perpetrated by bad journalists.

I was startled this last Sunday morning to see Howard Kurtz himself sweating under the lights on his own show.

The story goes like this: Kurtz published a story in which he accused Jason Collins (the pro basketball player who just came out as gay) of covering up the fact that he’d been engaged to a woman. This was false; Collins had mentioned the engagement right up front. When Kurtz was called on this, he grudgingly acknowledged his error, but claimed that Collins hadn’t talked about it very much, which was also untrue. End result: Kurtz has now left two of his jobs, at the Daily Beast and at Newsweek.

Where to begin?:

-         Kurtz got the story wrong, and obviously didn’t bother to fact-check himself. The Collins interview wasn’t all that lengthy, so he must have given it the most cursory read possible. He would have crucified any other journalist who did this.

-         He claimed that Collins’s “plotline” had been “muddied” by the fact that he’d had a relationship with a woman. Plotline? Life don’t got no plotline.

-         He seemed startled and outraged that a gay man might be involved with a woman, as if this threw doubt on Collins’s whole story.

-         Apparently he’s made several other slips over the past year or two, mostly involving misattribution of quotations. He attributes all of his slips to working too hard. Also, according to him, everyone knows how much he’s always believed in the ideals of good journalism.

-         He has for the past few years been working for his own news outlet, the Daily Download. His business partner Lauren Ashford has been a guest on “Reliable Sources” on several occasions, but he has never disclosed their business relationship on the show.

Well, he was in full Mea Culpa mode on Sunday. Some of the questions being thrown at him were pretty harsh, but his answers were incredibly ingenuous – as in “working too hard” and “always been devoted to good journalism.”

Ecch.

Mistah Kurtz, he dead.

---

News is news

---

Recently I wrote about young George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” and his (evident) impression that two men kissing was newsworthy.


Well, it got me thinking. What do we mean – what do I mean – by “newsworthy”?


There’s an excellent show on Sunday mornings called “Reliable Sources,” hosted by Howard Kurtz, which tries to answer that question. It examines the news of the week – not for itself, but for the way it’s been covered. It asks: are we getting the news correctly? And, just as importantly: Are we getting the right news?


This last Sunday, Kurtz and his guests examined the relative importance of this week’s big stories: President Obama’s State of the Union address, the crazy California policeman who killed people and then got killed himself, Marco Rubio’s drink of water, and the Carnival cruise that stalled in the Caribbean.


Obviously the State of the Union was the most important story of the four: it will have the most lasting implications, over the coming months. But the networks were apparently thinking about split-screening it with the Jonathan Dorner siege, if it came to it.


Well, wasn’t the Dorner story news? Yes, in a way. It was certainly important to Californians, as it impacted their own safety. It also reflected on the inner workings of the police force, and how they react to attacks on their own. But it wasn’t as weighty a story as the State of the Union. And the standoff at the mountain cabin was pure theatrics. And – imagine – the networks thought about split-screening it with the State of the Union!


The Marco Rubio story was purely fluff, naturally. However: like Dan Quayle misspelling “potato,” and like Howard Dean’s unfortunately Muppetish scream in 2004, it showed him to be maybe less than Presidential timber. So it was probably half a story, at most.


The Carnival cruise? One “Reliable Sources” guest quoted statistics on the number of Americans who take cruises, and it’s a significant number. And Carnival is based in Panama, and sails under Bahamian flags, and has offices in Miami. This raises serious questions about management and organization. How many times over the past few years have Carnival cruises come to grief? Several, including (most tragically) the Costa Concordia in Italy. This is a real story. (But it’s a story about a mismanaged corporation. It’s not a story about how badly the passengers suffered. They ate a lot of vegetable sandwiches, and used smelly toilets for a couple of days. They weren’t transported forcibly to Somalia.)


I love “Reliable Sources.” It grounds me. It reminds me of a passage from the Analects of Confucius (chapter seven, verse 21): “The Master did not speak of anomalies, feats of strength, rebellions, or divinities.”


In other words: flashy stuff is fun, but it’s not really worth your serious attention.


So how ‘bout them Kardashians?

---

George Stephanopoulos, Ewan McGregor, journalism, and casual homophobia

---

I hate to sound like an old man, but here goes: journalism was better in the 1960s when I was young.

 

 

There are a few good and reputable newscasters on TV. I especially like Brian Williams and Scott Pelley: they are mostly impartial, and they manage to relay the news without noticeable bias. (Also they are both pretty cute.)

 

 

Then there are the rest. I won’t even try to list them. You know the ones: the ones who confuse opinion and fluff with news. 

 

 

Here’s one who caught me by surprise: George Stephanopoulos of “Good Morning America.” He wasn’t really a journalist to begin with; he was one of Clinton’s guys, who resigned after four years because the stress became too much for him. He wrote a book. He turned into a pundit. And now he’s on the morning news.

 

 

I recently saw this clip online. It's a thirty-second fragment of George interviewing actor Ewan McGregor. Watch it, and then rejoin me, please:

 

 

 

 

George really wants this to be an issue. Ewan calls him out.

 

 

Makes you see Georgie in a different light, doesn’t it?

 

 

I used to hate just the right-oriented journalists. Now I find that I hate most journalists.

 

 

Please, people. Kardashians are not news. Men kissing are not news.

 

 

News is news.

 

 

Ponder on that awhile, and then let’s try to get on with our lives.

---

 

 

2016

---

I’ve already written about the 2016 Presidential election, and Chris Christie, who already appears to be signaling that he’d very much like to be president after Obama. 

 

 

Charming. Maybe, if Chris Christie is a good boy, we’ll look him over and kick his tires and see if he’s the man for the job, so long as we’re all still alive in 2016.

 

 

But, as I wrote in my previous entry: please God, don’t subject us to this yet!

 

 

I am one of those people who just want elected politicians to govern. I want them to state their goals, and work toward them, and compromise (as necessary) until those goals (or some form of them) are achieved. I don’t want it to be all about us/them, for at least two years, and preferably for at least four years.

 

 

But there are political junkies who are really only excited by the competition, by the us/them. Sadly, some of our best political commentators are among them. Chris Matthews is talking about 2016 almost every night; he’s already talking about the facedown between Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie, and what a great race it’s going to be.

 

 

You’d think that a man as smart as Matthews is supposed to be would realize that a lot of things can happen in four years. The parties often alternate the Presidency, for one thing. Also, the economy (while just beginning to show signs of recovery) isn’t quite well yet, and Europe is still teetering, which could bring trouble to the USA also.

 

 

Chris Todd on NBC is another one; he’s not as bad as Chris Matthews, but he becomes visibly excited when he starts talking about the chances of one side versus another. The late Tim Russert, with his little handheld whiteboard on which he wrote numbers and vote counts, was another. They all love the struggle, and the numbers, and the victory.

 

 

The rest of us get tired easily, and just want to know that our rights are being protected, and our retirement and health care aren’t in jeopardy. We don’t care so much who’s in office, so long as the right things are being done. We mostly understand that things keep inching forward. The War on Drugs is showing (very belated) signs of dying, or transforming into something more realistic – not a war on potheads, but an attempt to keep cocaine and meth off the streets, the really dangerous drugs. Gay identity and gay marriage are both becoming less of an issue and more of a reality. And, as the most recent election mostly demonstrated, while people in general deplore abortion, it’s a fact of life, and a necessity. Theology (AKA “personhood of the fetus”) can’t be used to determine public policy; if a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant, it’s her choice, and no one else’s.

 

 

The old world dies, and we are born into the new world.

 

 

The birth pangs are painful.

 

 

Let’s not relive them, or pretend how they’re going to feel in four years’ time.

 

 

Let’s just try to get things done.

 

 

Okay?

---

 

 

Chris Matthews: our very own left-wing babbling idiot

---

I’ve written before about right-wing radio and TV hosts whose political rantings drive me up the wall. I know I’ve mentioned Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

 

 

Want to know a surprise? We have a few idiots like that on the left too.

 

 

I like to watch Chris Matthews’s show “Hardball.” His guests are often interesting, and Chris’s politics are close to mine, so I find him easy to watch.

 

 

But, kids, Chris is often unbearable.

 

 

He’s loud and rude. He asks his guests endless “questions” which aren’t questions at all, but long speeches; then, if his guests speak for more than fifteen seconds, he cuts them off. His comments are often pointless. He repeats himself endlessly. He’s very self-congratulatory: recently, when a guest referenced a movie, Matthews cut him/her off to go on and on about the movie, and how he liked it. Who cares, Chris?

 

 

On a recent show, Chris presented Kegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, co-writers and performers on their own show, “Key and Peele,” who do a very funny Obama routine: Peele as the cool rational Obama, Key as his “anger translator” Luther. It was meant to be a friendly encounter, but Chris kept messing up. He called Obama “cool,” which – coming from an aging white man – sounds like an adjective you’d apply to Miles Davis. He kept referencing the fact that both Key and Peele are biracial, like President Obama, and saying that this enabled them to say things other people can’t say.  Really? 

 

 

But the worst moment came when Chris asked Key about his routines about football players with funny names. “Well,” Key said (I paraphrase), “lots of people were given funny names, because their mothers wanted to give them unique names. I’ve got a funny name. And you got it wrong, Chris, when you called me Michael. But that’s okay, because my parents gave me a funny name.”

 

 

Chris suddenly realized that he was being called out – which he hates – and blustered back: “Why? What did I call you?”

 

 

“Michael,” Key replied calmly.

 

 

“And what should I have called you?” Chris bellowed defiantly.

 

 

“Well, my family calls me Kegan,” Key said, still calmly.

 

 

Chris made drowning noises for a few seconds, then calmed down.

 

 

Chris, as a Democrat, was trying to be down with the homies, you see. Except that he had no idea what he was doing, or what he was saying.

 

 

Ah well.

 

 

At least he’s not as bad as Rush, or Glenn, or Sean Hannity.

 

 

(Sigh.)

---

 

Morning TV

---

On “30 Rock” a few seasons ago, Tracy Morgan came charging in and asked Tina Fey: “Liz Lemon, who's crazier: me or Ann Curry?”

 

 

 

Well, Ann Curry is gone now, crazy or not. She giggled a little too much, and she was definitely a lightweight. But she was definitely a morning-show person, god bless her, no matter how crazy she might have been.

 

 

Morning-show people always seem to become part of the family.  While I'm in the bathroom on weekday mornings, getting ready for work, I can hear Partner laughing at George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts and Sam Champion on “Good Morning America” in the bedroom.

 

 

Before George, of course, there was big ugly/handsome Chris Cuomo (brother of the current Governor of New York), who mostly seemed to enjoy getting into ticklefights with Sam Champion. 

 

 

Then there was the gorgeous CBS weekend host Chris Wragge, big and blond, like your handsome athletic cousin. He actually hosted the CBS weekday morning show for a while, but left this past January. He won’t be soon forgotten hereabouts.

 

 

Even the local hosts are interesting.  Partner and I used to enjoy the oddball pairing of Mark Zinni and Michelle Muscatello on Providence's Channel 12: they were always making each other laugh, and often came within inches of saying inappropriate things, which was exhilarating.  Michelle is still with us in Providence, but Mark is back in Cleveland, his home town.  I miss him.

 

 

Then there was the monstrous Vince DeMentri, who used to be the local Fox morning host.  He was big and blocky and handsome, but he gave off a kind of DANGER signal, like the abusive husband in a Lifetime movie.  The show had a meek little co-host named Sean Tempesta, who seemed to make Vince furious; after a while, Vince wouldn't even share the set with Tempesta. 

 

 

Then, suddenly, DeMentri disappeared.  I did a little research – wonderful place for research, the Internet! - and found that Vince had been a very bad boy in Pennsylvania before coming to Providence; he'd had an affair with another anchor, started doing stupid things (he hid her blow-dryer!), etc.  After he left Providence he went to New York City, where a few years ago he slapped the Bahamian ambassador’s driver for getting in his way.  Vince was acquitted, but lost his job in NYC. God knows where he is now.

 

 

I love morning television.  It's like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to get.

---

 

Saturday morning jabbering

---

Most weekend mornings, Partner and I watch a program called “Up with Chris Hayes.” Chris is a bright-looking young man with hipster glasses, who moderates one of those political-panel shows featuring people you’ve never heard of discussing issues of the day.

 

 

The problem on Chris’s show is that nothing really gets said.

 

 

Chris himself is a big part of the problem. He’s a jabberer. He’s obviously very bright, but he asks questions that turn into ten-sentence essays, and he continually interrupts himself, talking at top speed, because his mind is (obviously) working so very very quickly.

 

 

Unfortunately, his guests (consciously or unconsciously) follow suit. They jabber, and interrupt themselves, and one another. It’s like listening to dogs barking at one another in an animal-rescue facility.

 

 

Also, Chris does not necessarily invite the best or most compelling guests to his show. A while back he had Michael Ian Black on the panel, to discuss immigration issues. Michael Ian Black is a comedian / actor / performer, okay? He’s quite bright, I’m sure; he even co-wrote a book with Meghan McCain, for whatever that’s worth. I’m not sure, however, that he had anything powerfully compelling to contribute to a discussion about immigration rights. Also, back a few months ago, Chris had Mike Daisey on several weeks in a row to discuss Chinese factories, and the terrible conditions therein. Daisey claimed he’d been there and taken all kinds of direct testimony from people. Guess what? Daisey lied about many of the details. When confronted with this, he responded that he was a performer, not a journalist.

 

 

Around eleven o’clock on a recent Saturday morning, I went to the health club, and turned on the treadmill television, and saw Melissa Harris-Perry was on, and I sighed with relief. Her show is a lot like Chris Hayes’s show, with the following exceptions:

 

 

-        She speaks deliberately, in complete sentences.

-        Her guests (mostly) speak deliberately, in complete sentences.

-        Her guests (who on that morning included a former Cabinet official, a real journalist, and a professor) seem qualified to speak to the issues at hand.

 

 

It was a genuine pleasure to listen to her and her guests.

 

 

Chris Hayes, if you’re reading this: take a look at Melissa’s show. You might learn a thing or two.

 

 

 

Anderson Cooper

---

I was pleasantly surprised to hear on TV the other morning that my darling boy Anderson Cooper has come out of the closet.

 

 

Not that this is a surprise, mind you. I think I (and many others) have pretty much always known that Anderson is on our team. I am always delighted when a celebrity comes out of the closet. As I’ve said before: the more the merrier. It makes it that much easier for a teenager in Two Dot, Montana to come to terms with his / her own sexuality.

 

 

 

And I do like the words Anderson chose, for their breezy casualness: “The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud . . . By remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something — something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true.”

 

 

 

Do yourself a favor and go read Anderson’s whole letter on Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

 

 

It addresses, nicely and neatly, the question: Is there ever a good reason to stay in the closet?

 

 

For Anderson, there were two: the desire to have a private life, and the desire – as a journalist – to maintain objectivity. (“I want to report the news, not be the news,” he said.) Not that there’s any question about his objectivity; I find his reporting very balanced. But then, I’m a fan. But his deeper point is worth pondering. If you’re a member of the radical right, what do you think of Rachel Maddow? Smart? Incisive? Nah. She’s that lesbian on MSNBC. See, for a lot of people, you can’t be gay and objective. You’re always advancing the gay agenda.

 

 

(As I'm advancing it now. As in: gay people are part of society. Always have been, always will be.  And, increasingly, we are choosing not to live in celibate seclusion. So go deal with it.)

 

 

As a journalist, Anderson was confident of his own objectivity, but was (understandably) reluctant to give critics any reason to doubt his objectivity. Appearances aren’t everything, but they’re not nothing.

 

 

But sometimes the mere fact that you’ve come out – Here I am! You wanna make something of it? – is a worthwhile and powerful statement.  It goes to prove that “gay,” like “Asian-American” or “Californian,” is just one of many attributes, and it doesn’t define or inform your entire life. He’s not Anderson Cooper the gay journalist; he’s Anderson Cooper the journalist.  (Example: Neil Patrick Harris is super gay. But he plays a womanizer on a stupid CBS sitcom, and people love it. And I love him for doing it.)

 

 

(And here’s another thing: it’s not always safe to be openly gay. Read this excellent piece by Kathy Griffin on the subject. She points out, very neatly, that gay people are subjected to hatred and violence in much of the world – including the United States.  She praises Anderson’s bravery, and rightly so.)

 

 

All things considered, I think Anderson made the right decision. And I like that he did it right after the end of Pride Month. Here’s the message I got from that: Pride doesn’t end on June 30. It’s a yearlong activity.

 

 

Long live Anderson Cooper.

 

 

And his eyes, which (as Anderson tells Pee-Wee Herman at the end of this wonderful video) are a national treasure.

---

 

 

Missing children, Nancy Grace, and Dan Abrams

---

Partner and I get up at 7:00 am or a little after. We have slightly different routines. I go into the living room, read my email and drink my coffee; he stays in the bedroom, reads his email, watches “Good Morning America,” and drinks his coffee.

 

 

Naturally I can hear most of the dialogue.

 

 

At 7:30am, “Good Morning America” almost invariably features a story about a missing child.  The child is almost always white, by the way. They usually have the irrational Nancy Grace and the mostly-imperturbable Dan Abrams doing Point Counterpoint on the subject.

 

 

Naturally there’s no real information.  Nancy always assumes the worst, and declares it, and announces that anyone who disagrees with her is a fool and an ivory-tower intellectual and a goddamned liberal.

 

 

Dan Abrams usually points out, mildly, that all the facts aren’t in, and more work needs to be done on the case.

 

 

Nancy explodes, calls Dan an ivory-tower intellectual and a goddamned liberal, and wants to know why more isn’t being done to bring this case to its (obvious) conclusion.

 

 

Some thoughts:

 

 

-        I wonder how many missing children there are in the USA today. 

-        I wonder how many of them are non-white. 

-        I wonder why we so seldom hear about the non-white missing children on “Good Morning America,” and I wonder if it’s because they’re just not considered to be so angelically adorable.

-        I wonder that they pair the astonishingly illogical Nancy Grace with the perfectly reasonable Dan Abrams, and allow her to snarl at him idiotically, just for the sake of TV entertainment.

-        I wonder what percentage of these poor children are ever located.

 

 

And finally: I wonder that the TV doesn’t actually explode with the whole idiotic illogicality of the thing.

---

 

The death of Mike Wallace

---

Mike Wallace died this past weekend.  Andy Rooney (of the unruly eyebrows) died last November.

 

 

The old CBS brigade is beginning to fade away.

 

 

A few of the ancients are still alive.  Charles Osgood (age 79) still anchors “CBS Sunday Morning.”  Morley Safer (age 80) is still around, I think.  Bob Schieffer  (age 75) still hosts “Face the Nation,” also on Sunday mornings; he’s wonderful, but he seems to be getting a big weaker over the past few years.  The wonderful Bill Geist (a mere baby at age 66) is still going strong. 

 

 

But still!

 

 

CBS – journalistically, anyway – is an octogenarian’s network.  Look at the list above!  They’re old!  There are a few younger correspondents – the lamentable Steve Hartman, for example, with his mournful insincere face – but they’re the exception.  (And Steve Hartman, let’s face it, is just a feeble Charles Kuralt wannabe.)

 

 

Listen, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mind old.  I’m getting there myself.  I’m fifty-four going on fifty-five, with sciatica and kidney stones.  I understand the demographic, and the concerns.

 

 

But even I become impatient with CBS’s news division when they explain the “Internet” to me as if it’s a strange new concept, or “Whole Foods,” or “Cyndi Lauper.”

 

 

I’ve said before that CBS is the geezer network.

 

 

I thought I was exaggerating.

 

 

I was wrong.

---

 

Sir David Tang

---

I subscribe to the Financial Times.  This is mostly for the crossword puzzle. I like reading about finance and economics too, however; I know I'll never really understand them, but I'm a masochist and enjoy banging my head against them sometimes.

 

 

The FT has wonderful features, especially in the weekend issue. I have already written about the column written by Tyler Brule, the gay Canadian entrepreneur of French / Estonian descent who edits the magazine “Monocle.” (If you've heard of "Monocle," award yourself several thousand snob points.)

 

 

Another more recent addition is a column called “The Agony Uncle,” by a Chinese entrepreneur / kajillionaire named Sir David Tang.

 

 

I never miss reading him.

 

 

“Agony aunts,” for you Americans, are the British equivalent of our “advice columnists” like Abigail Van Buren and Ann Landers. This column of Sir David's, however, is not very much like theirs. People ask the most peculiar questions, like: Can I steal the stationery when I stay as a guest in a royal residence? How can I tell my houseguests that I want them to leave? Where can I get sunglasses like yours?

 

 

And Sir David answers them, with ponderous authority and dry humor.

 

 

Recently someone asked how to mask the fact that one has just farted in public.

 

 

Sir David's solution to the problem is perfect, and I will be sure to use it in future.

 

 

While you're in the act of farting, just turn to the person closest to you and shout “Stop it!”

 

 

You won't find advice like that in your local paper.

 

---

 

I love you, Tyler Brule

---

 

I like reading the Financial Times. It makes me feel smart and cosmopolitan. I like the almost-unvarying reaction of people around me when I read it: “Excuse me, why is your newspaper that color?” (It's printed on its own unique salmon-colored paper, so everyone knows you're reading the FT. Even their website is that color.)

 

 

I mostly like the crossword puzzles. Ahem, ahem, I won their crossword-puzzle contest a few months ago. I won a dictionary and a word guide, both of which I gave away. But my name appeared in the Financial Times.

 

 

I also like the columns. Lucy Kellaway is great. The weekend edition is full of great feature writers: Sir David Tang, Mrs. Moneypenny, Harry Eyres, Robin Lane Fox.

 

 

And Tyler Brule.

 

 

Harry Eyres and Tyler Brule write complementary columns on weekends. Harry writes “The Slow Lane,” about ruined cathedrals and chamber-music recitals and flower shows; Tyler writes “The Fast Lane,” about flying to Helsinki and where to eat in Montevideo and what kind of underwear to buy on the Ginza.

 

 

Tyler is an almost-unbelievable character: Canadian, son of a soccer player and an artist, journalist, socialite, cosmopolitan, editor of a magazine called Monocle that you've probably never read, but that actually creates trends. He is gay, handsome, perfectly self-assured. He writes about flying from Sao Paulo to Frankfort to Dubai as if – well, of course, you do that too, right? And how tedious it is! So you should bring your bottle of Sea Breeze, and your best silk robe from Kuala Lumpur (he always mentions the brand names, and the stores, and the cities in which he bought them).

 

 

But he is also gracious. He speaks to you as if – of course! - you live the way he does. You fly everywhere, you do everything. You are exhausted (as he is) from living on the run. You are relieved to spend a day or two by a remote lake in Finland with some dear friends, before flying to London and Lusaka and Luang Prabang.

 

 

The perfect host makes you perfectly welcome in his world.

 

 

I love you, Tyler Brule.

 

---