Don't Gel Too Soon

Is There a Draft in Here? Should There Be a Draft?

 I can't believe I missed it!  Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the first United States draft lottery drawing,  Every young man my age and many older and younger waited in front of their TVs with sweaty palms and pounding hearts (I'm not kidding) as the numbers came out of the barrel.  And those in this photo were the "old white guys" who did it.  The one drawing the number is Republican House Armed Serviced Chairman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) and the man to his right is the (then) despised Chairman of the Selective Service (the Draft) General Lewis Hershey.

OH and one more thing:  just beyond that camera, over to the left, was me.  Sitting with a telephone and reading each drawn number to the CBS News studio where the number was then posted on the screen.  Each number was a birthday, and the order in which they were drawn determined the likelihood that the men in the list would be drafted and, most likely, go to Vietnam.  First birthday drawn - lottery number 1.  Last birthday drawn - lottery number 365.

As I read the numbers into the phone, I was reading death warrants.  Of men my own age.  And I knew it.  

Every number, every birthday, could be someone I knew - an old boyfriend, a cousin, someone's brother, a high school classmate, a teacher, another someone's son.  The war was real in a way it hadn't been before, even though there had always been a draft.  Up until the lottery, college students and graduate students were deferred and so were married men.  In fact, there were more than a few weddings to keep boyfriends home.  

Many of these rules, which were, after all, based on class since there were so many more white middle class men in college than other groups, were wiped out when the lottery began.

That meant that on a theoretical level, I should have been proud.  My country was spreading the risk, spreading the pain - and even if I opposed the war, I knew that others were not being asked to fight it for me and my peers anymore.  Those we loved were also at risk.  All I felt though was fear, and anger, and despair.  Which is probably not a bad way to feel when loved ones are about to be drafted to go fight in a "dirty little war" in Vietnam.

So today, after the President's speech last night, I wonder.  We know the military prefers a volunteer military even with all the re-deployments and disruptions.  It's building a "military class" in our country of people who know things we don't - won't learn.  And they're proud to be there, scared or not.  It's effective.  But is it fair?  Is it even productive, when it insulates so many of us from an imminent sense of loss?  When we never have to fear the husband in a wheel chair, the son whose PTSD will not fade and, worst of all, that dreaded knock at the door, 

9/11 Predicted the Role of Bloggers (I'm Not Kidding)

I don't know about you, but 9/11 footage still wipes me out.  It doesn't get any easier to watch.  But this morning MSNBC was running the first few hours of coverage from the TODAY SHOW in real time and I watched a couple of hours.

It was like watching a horror movie as Katie and Matt started out so cheerily, then began reporting a "small plane" flying into the first Tower.  Then, gradually, the awful reality began to emerge.  And for a good long time, and intermittently thereafter, it was "eye witnesses" and "neighborhood residents" and other information "civilians" who delivered the best information. 

I listened as a young woman on the telephone, on her way to work at a downtown hotel and having just emerged from the subway just below the Trade Center, described the early sights of the attack.  She calmly detailed what she saw, at least until the second plane hit when she responded with understandable emotion.  Even then, she was able to carefully report developments - even putting her questioners on hold to check with a local policeman.  No seasoned reporter could have done it better.

Later, other eyewitnesses appeared, one after the other.  They used words like "reportedly," were very careful as they described what they saw, and offered careful, tempered accounts.  This went on all day.  Of course those closer to the real product of the attacks, the bodies, the people jumping out of the windows - civilian and reporter alike - were deeply moved and it showed. 

So fast-forward to today.  As the mainstream media fights for its life, as programs like my alma mater (9 years) the TODAY SHOW move more and more toward infotainment, the serious, thoughtful and original journalism is done as often on blogs as it is anywhere else.  Of course there are impulsive writers and rumor mongers and gossip tramps but that's true everywhere and, as the witnesses demonstrated eight years ago, you don't need a network paycheck to deliver reliable and well-presented information.  The citizen army of bloggers today is validated every time a caring and thoughtful eyewitness offers mainstream media a sane, helpful description of what's happening, or has happened.

So next time you hear someone going on about "those bloggers" and their untrustworthy nature, take it from a long-time broadcast journalist turned blogger:  it's the content of character, not the brand of employer, that makes a journalist.

Photo via Creative Commons by macten

Colbert, The Word and Woodstock

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Hippie Replacement
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

I know, I"m in London and I should stop putting up videos of TV shows.  But I love this one.  And, it's what we call "timely" since the 15th is the 40th anniversary of ..  well watch this and see for yourself.

Kevin Spacey, David Letterman, Twitter and Moms Rising - All in One Post!!!

OK so I'm in London and a friend posts this on my Facebook page.  And I should be telling you more about London and that we're leaving for Paris this afternoon (on the Eurostar!!) for the weekend but this is just fun.

ALSO on that same Facebook page though, from Moms Rising, is this:  

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner “...we are now lagging behind the rest of the world in closing the gender gap. According to the World Economic Forum, the US ranks 31st of 128 countries overall, but 76th in educational attainment, 36th in health and survival, 69th in political empowerment, and 70th for wage equality for similar work. In the representation of women in our Congress, we rank 71st."

Reps. Maloney, Biggert reintroduce Equal Rights Amendment

Source: maloney.house.gov

Congressman Carolyn Maloney

So when you're finished laughing at Kevin and Dave, think what we can do about these devastating numbers!l   I've just gone to work at Causes Managing Editor at Care2 and we have an active women's rights section there - and we all know plenty of other places to raise some hell.  Somehow, seeing it all aggregated like this makes it worse, no?

Avenue Q, in London! How Did We Miss It Before?

It's more than a little crazy to come all the way to London, see an American musical - and find it so familiar, so real and well-observed, witty, loving and even joyous, that you wonder how it is possible that you hadn't' seen it before.  The play is Avenue Q, and for most people it will be a "yeah, and???" because it won so many Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Direction of a musical, Best Performance by a leading actor in a musical, and Best Performace by a leading actress in a musical, and because everyone has written about it for years.  Hah! And Cindy thinks she made some great discovery!  

In fact, I do think I've made a great discovery - that it's still possible that an entire theater full of people from dozens of countries (just seated directly around us were India, New Zealand, Australia and France) can respond to something without helicopters or wild moving sets or TV/film stars in the cast  -- something so completely human (well, if you count the puppets who are in fact among the "most" human) that it inspired and moved us all.  That all this can be accomplished with warmth and -- I know this sounds corny -- a real affection for what makes us human, for the power of laughter and of songs.  Both of us feel that we had a perfect evening, one that inspires gratitude, even.  Here's a little of it for you, in case you missed it too.(From the Tony's)

Norman Lear Reminds Us Why We Love Music (and Why We're Right)

 

Leave it to Norman Lear, founder and early funder of People for the American Way and creator of All in the Family and Maude, two of the most successful sitcoms in American television history, to produce the remarkable Playing for Change.  Musicians - street musicians, from all over the world, recorded and filmed separately and combined into a multi-national, multi-ethnic concert, recorded (with high-tech equipment) on city street corners and the red dirt of townships, Congo, New Orleans and right in front of the White House. The message, as Lear freely admits "sounds like claptrap" but somehow it can't help but sink in: music, the universal language, reminds us how much we have in common across the barriers that separate nation and race, faith and gender. It won't change anything by itself, certainly, but it's a lovely reminder of what could be.

UPS Pulls Its Ads from O'Reilly: He Deserves It But. . .

I'm torn.  Really.  Nobody hates Bill O'Reilly and all he stands for more than I do.  And when he went after my former colleague Amanda Terkel by sending a producer to prey on her on her vacation, a camera alongside, I was troubled.  It's not the news gathering I was trained to do.

On one hand, it was totally unethical to follow a writer around and harass her for comments made about an anchorman.  It's bizarre and a ridiculous waste of editorial resources, especially when the world of journalism is in such economic chaos.  Chasing her down the street, peppering her with questions, when no one ever asked her for an interview she probably would have granted - it's all disgusting.

On the other hand, when we push advertisers to withdraw their ads from a show, we are doing something we ourselves opposed during the time of great TV from Norman Lear to Stephen Bochco to Diane English, among others.  All in the Family, Hill Street Blues, Murphy Brown - they were among many fine, pioneering programs with a progressive bent that faced threats from major evangelical and other religious and political organizations like the Family Research Council.  Their weapon every time was a threat to advertisers to remove their ads from these and other programs, or face boycotts.  Of course there were no blogs in those days so it was tougher to organize but these people were scary and sometimes effective.  We always defended free speech.  Those shows deserved protection because they aired on licensed public airways.  O'Reilly airs on cable - people pay to watch it so maybe that makes it a bit different.

On the other hand, (I know, this is the third hand) the Amanda gambit was totally unethical behavior, designed, I suspect, as chilling effect on its own.  It raises the price for honest advocacy, exploiting the protection of the First Amendment to do so.

I guess what I'm saying is that what O'Reilly and his goons do is reprehensible; in my mind it's somewhat worse when the "victim" is a tiny woman, anything but threatening, who is on vacation.  But using the weapons that I saw as so dangerous when they were aimed at "us"  -- I'm not so sure.  What do you think?

World Water Problems, YouTube and a Great Organizing Tool

Experts tell us water will be the "new oil."  Las Vegas, running out of water, is already paying residents to replant their lawns with desert plants to save water.  It's getting really scary here; it's been scary in many other countries for a long time.  In some of those countries, the situation is desperate.  Killer dysentery is rampant; babies die, children die, parents die.  And it's not so hard to help.

Today I received an email from Ramya Raghavan, from "CitizenTube", announcing some new tools to help deliver video messages for nonprofits.  Here's the example she sent along - it raised $10,000 in one day.  "That's enough to build two brand-new wells in the Central African Republic and give over 150 people clean drinking water for 20 years!" 

Ramya urges others to take a look; you can make it work for your nonprofit too.  Here's the link.  Some days I really love the Internet.  This is one.

Education, National Security, Charlie Rose and Arne Duncan

The man sitting next to President Obama is our new Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Wednesday night he spent an hour with Charlie Rose. I've inserted some excerpts below; you can watch the whole hour here.  Chuck Todd has summarized the interview as well, here.   If you have time though, I recommend that you watch one or the other; this is not a usual man.

Maybe this position is one that allows for more exceptionally unambiguous appointments by Democrats; Secretary Richard Riley, who served President Clinton, was also extraordinary.  Named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten top cabinet members of all time, he presided, along with the unstoppable Linda Roberts, over the Internet wiring of all our schools.  He also worked to build up early childhood education, community colleges, parent engagement,higher standards and much more.  So I admit from the get-go that I have a soft spot for this kind of education leader.  Even among such excellence though I suspect this man is going to raise the bar even higher. Watch this.

See what I mean? What impresses me is not only the exceptional story of growing up in the home of a mother who ran an inner-city tutoring program; of seeing for himself what a decent education, which he calls a matter of social justice, can enable. Not only listening to him describe the educated friends from the program who "made it" and those who didn't learn - and "died." Literally. 

It's his vision of serious ways to meet the obligation we have to our kids - and our economy.  His belief in the school as a potential center of the community, as a resource, run, perhaps, by the school during school hours and the Y or Boys and Girls Clubs afterward, remaining open late into the evening, six or seven days a week.  Recession, depression or apocalypse, we aren't going to have a very attractive 21st Century if we don't return our schools to their role as engines in the production of innovative Americans who keep us economically and creatively at the vanguard. So even if we can look away from the substandard schools, the ridiculously high drop-out rates and the lousy physical plants as someone else's kid's problem, the loss of those kids hurts us all. It's a national security issue. 

Joe Scarborough and Crew: How Did They Ever Get To Be Cool? (They are!)

Well this is one reason. 

I gave up my alma mater, THE TODAY SHOW, for C-SPAN's Washington Journal. But no more - nope.  Now I'm strictly a Morning Joe girl.  My insomniac husband and I start our day with these characters, and there's good reason.  They're smart, they're funny, they have real personalities, and they think and react. Both they and their guests deftly provide more information and perspective, than anywhere else you can go in the morning.

When I started at TODAY the theory was that people felt as if we were in their bedrooms.  That Deborah Norville failed at replacing Jane Pauley (as if anyone could) because she was so perfect, so slick, that she was intrusive.  TV was still one-way then; we produced the show, trying to make it as accessible as possible, but still, we were sending it to the audience, not talking with them.

At Morning Joe - the perfect Millennial programming, Scarborough, (former Congressman) the shredding (den mother?  Zen master? daughter of Zbigniew)  Mika Brzezinski, wise-cracking Willie Geist (former Tucker Carlson producer, son of CBS News Sunday Morning contributor Bill Geist) and the rest of the crew are not in our bedrooms, we're in the studio with them.  There's no "third wall" (I always wanted to produce a show like that,) you see the cameras, the cardboard Starbucks cups and even the producers.  We're all in it together.  Conversations with their (very well-booked) guests are smart, sassy and collegial; lots of information emerges but from conversation, not inquisition.  There is very little distance between the audience and the studio - bluster is deflated and humor is the tool of choice.  ALL with considerable elan, explication, foresight and accessibility.

I almost forgot the music.  Most commercial breaks are punctuated with music - often Bruce Springsteen, always connected to the last topic of conversation.  During the campaign, of course, Born to Run and Jackson Browne's Running on Empty were favorites.  It's another way of communicating with the audience - fun and usually spot on.  When it's not music, it's clips from late night comedy or other relevant but irreverent television.

I'm not alone in this - didn't invent a new wheel.  The New York Times has called the show "oddly addicting" (my experience exactly); the Washington Post described it as "a provocative, alternate-universe newstalk show."  From six to nine AM Twitter is full of Joe sightings.

I spent many years in broadcast news, nine of them at the TODAY SHOW, and I've mourned its transformation from the informative show I knew to what seemed to me to be an undisciplined mush called, by many production alums, "Friends in the morning."  It's wildly popular so I'm not condemning it - just saying that it isn't the show I worked for.  Now, after a long, sad period of missing what TODAY was, I see in Morning Joe what it could have (and should have) become.