MSNBC’s Chris Hayes offers a Coronavirus plan.

 Via Twitter:

OK, so from my interviews with a ton of epidemiologists over the last bunch of months, here's a pretty straightforward plan to suppress the virus and get the US to something like, say, 90% of normal life. Three steps!

1) Mask Up: Short of a national order (which strikes me as tough, enforcement-wise) getting all governors to issue state-wide mask orders would be enormously helpful. Messaging is vital. CDC data shows how important AZ's order was in suppressing its summer outbreak.

2) Bar Rescue: Have the federal government pay every last bar, restaurant, nightclub, theatre and concert venue to stay closed for the next nine months. You'd remove *enormous* pressure to reopen things that aren't safe, and it probably pays for itself.

3) National Test, Trace and Surveillance: This is the most complicated to [set] up, but one way to think of the goal is: what if every place people had to congregate was like the NBA bubble? A number of universities have used this approach and it's...worked!

And that's it! Those three things: masks, pay high-risk businesses to stay closed, massively ramp up testing. We could avoid tens of thousands of deaths and have something much closer to our normal lives.

It's not easy, but it's also not rocket science. It's doable and our federal government is actively choosing to not do it. And not just to not do it, to actually embrace the opposite approach, to promote actions and policies that mean *more* people contract the virus. 

All of this impotent wishcasting at this point. Obviously, it's not gonna happen because Donald Trump is president and the Republican Party supports him and controls the senate and they very much do not care how many people die. They just don't.

New Poem: 2020 FORETOLD

both parties have paid almost two years of rent

on the National Electoral Battlefield

so let the cable news speculation run rampant

and allow the online and print media to join in

with lots of chatter about electability

also please don’t impeach the President

because it messes up the timetable

> 

brush away any Green New Deals

plus talk of Medicare For All

not to mention Free College Tuition

keep Incrementalism alive by

dry repeats of “how do we pay for this”

> 

smash the hopes of young voters,

children and teens taking Civics classes

and the yet-to-be-born

> 

teach them how the concept of Change

doesn’t mean real change for the better

> 

instead, it’s merely a shiny buzzword 

used by a minority party

as a giant crowbar 

to separate power

from the majority party

NBC can't say goodbye to Brian Williams.

The "WE CAN'T LET HIM GO TO ANOTHER NETWORK" style of crisis management engaged in by NBC has erupted again with regards to exaggeration-prone former NIGHTLY NEWS anchor Brian Williams.

From a NEW YORK TIMES article http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/business/nbc-plans-to-let-brian-williams-stay-but-not-as-news-anchor.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
In February, Mr. Williams ranked as the 23rd-most-trusted person in the country, on par with Denzel Washington, Warren E. Buffett and Robin Roberts. By May, his trust ranking had plummeted to 3,352, near the rapper Eminem and the Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner, according to the Marketing Arm, a research firm whose celebrity index is closely watched by media and marketing executives.

The best summary I've read of Brian Williams-as-Anchorman-In-War.

The really dumb, pitiable thing about Brian Williams’ circumstance today is that he felt he had to do it at all – that his maleness or reportage or patriotism would be enhanced by it. But death doesn’t need a punch-up or rewrite. Nearly 20 years ago, I stood outside a club in New Haven, Connecticut, and some argument resulted in a bunch of handgun fire, and I dove in full chickenshit mode behind a car. It would be infinitely sexier to claim that someone standing next to me took a bullet. (They didn’t.) It would be sexier still to claim that I was in the coffeehouse a block away that got shot-up in retribution. (I wasn’t; I’d left it five minutes before.) But all of that is scary stuff without elaboration.

Being shot near is abnormal enough to hold people’s attention; it’s sad that Brian Williams seemed to think he wasn’t taking a brave enough risk by merely flying over one of the most dangerous cities in the world, in the same kind of vehicle that had been shot down merely an hour before. That he felt he needed to claim to be in that other vehicle and “incapable” of remembering whether it was struck with a goddamn rocket is just dumb as hell.

But what’s especially silly – and what will make his firing sillier still – is that he felt a kind of duty to “authenticity” to zero the distance between himself and the troops. In the very climate that he and other media members helped foster (the one in which all soldiers are heroes by default), the solemnity of his war reporting comes with the prerequisite that he seem, at least in one or two telegenic moments, indivisible from the heroes around him.

Maybe it speaks to some defect in Brian Williams’ character that he felt he needed to be a character as much as a reporter – like his sideshow gigs of being the Disembodied Head of Brian Williams on the TV wall behind Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, or being yet another mega-Springsteen fan journalist, or being a nine-time recurring guest gig on 30 Rock as himself. Given all of that, maybe Brian Williams putting on fatigues was just another form of dress-up and being liked.

There was another option for him – there always was – but, depending on how you define the word, it was always a lot more dangerous. Brian Williams could have renounced feel-good features on the “regular joes” feeding a war machine revved up on lies and focused instead on the lies endangering them. He could have reported more on non-heroes – both the desk bound creators of the war or the volunteers of questionable stability who make the Hadithas every time. Or he could have reported on heroes who worked as contractors for the American occupation and were left behind in a radicalized nation without Uncle Sam’s backing or, even better, on the black-books contractor class that took US payouts and did their jobs with minimal inconvenience and maximal collateral damage.

All of that is less fun and more threatening to one’s contract than a sexed-up trip in a whirlybird in a warzone, but it’s reporting too. Edward R Murrow had his war reporting moment, but then he made a second one by fighting a cynical patriotic narrative in service to posterity and at great risk to himself. Not everyone can do that, but failure at the attempt is nobler than a successful joyride. Besides, it seemed to work out for him all right.

The above passage comes from Jeb Lund's op-ed for the GUARDIAN titled "Brian Williams will lose his job for giving us what we wanted to hear."

Link to the complete column: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/brian-williams-will-lose-his-job-iraqi-helicopter-story

Alec Baldwin explains MSNBC for you.

In the midst of a lengthy confessional/rant/explanation /denial of homophobia on NEW YORK magazine's website, Alec Baldwin has some interesting, potentially controversial things to say about his short-lived MSNBC talk show.  The full Baldwin article can be found at http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/alec-baldwin-good-bye-public-life.html. Without further delay, here's the pertinent excerpt:

My “career” as a talk-show host started with a perfectly simple ambition. In my WNYC podcast, “Here’s the Thing,” I wanted to conduct interviews based on appreciation of my guests and their work. Or, in the case of those like George Will, a respect for their careers, whether I agreed with them or not. To think that something as uncomplicated and innocent as that led to the MSNBC debacle is still surreal to me. My goal was always to take a talk show to the network. I never wanted to be on MSNBC. My contacts at the network said to me, “We don’t have a slot for you on the network right now.” And I told them that was fine. And they said, “Maybe you go on MSNBC for a year and we’ll hone and refine the show?” And I said okay.

I watched MSNBC, prior to working there, very sporadically. Once I had signed a contract with them, I wanted to see more of what they were about. It turned out to be the same shit all day long. The only difference was who was actually pulling off whatever act they had come up with. Morning Joe was boring. Scarborough is neither eloquent nor funny. And merely cranky doesn’t always work well in the morning. Mika B. is the Margaret Dumont of cable news. I liked Chris Jansing a lot. Very straightforward. I like Lawrence O’Donnell, but he’s too smart to be doing that show. Rachel Maddow is Rachel Maddow, the ultimate wonk/dweeb who got a show, polished it, made it her own. She’s talented. The problem with everybody on MSNBC is none of them are funny, although that doesn’t prevent them from trying to be.

My pitch to them was: I’m going to bring the WNYC podcast to MSNBC. And that show is going to be eclectic—guests who don’t often get the microphone. I want to keep it simple. I get somebody in a chair and I shoot the shit with them for an hour and a half and we cut it into a one-
hour show. Dick Cavett was my hero who allowed there to be pauses in the show. He put ­people on who were somewhat unconventional.

So I’m going to go on MSNBC, and people are speculating, “Oh, here he comes! Crazy liberal! And what’s he going to do? Is he going to try to give Bill Maher a run for his money? Is he going to try to give Jon Stewart a run for his money?” And I think, Are you out of your fucking mind? Those men are stars of established, highly successful shows. That’s never going to happen. My show was meant to be as harmless and inoffensive as could be. There was one theme to the 52 episodes of the WNYC podcast and only one way it worked—the show was about appreciation. I wasn’t out to get anybody or make anybody look bad, because I know what that’s like.

MSNBC assigned a producer to me, Jonathan Larsen. Like (Dan)Sullivan with  (the short-lived Broadway revival of the play) Orphans,  Larsen didn’t get me or the show and didn’t want to be there. When I told him I wanted to interview Debra Winger, Larsen looked like, We’re here on a set, with an expensive crew and studio time, and you want to talk to Debra Winger? There was nothing less interesting to him. Most of the guests I suggested—Ellen Barkin, Neal Barnard from PCRM, JFK-conspiracy icon Mark Lane—he couldn’t care less. As we went along, Larsen would simply stare at me after everything I’d suggest and say, “Well, let’s see what Phil says.” Larsen was sent there to babysit me.

Phil Griffin is the head of MSNBC, and when I saw that Griffin didn’t have a single piece of paper on his desk, meeting after meeting after meeting, that should have been my first indication there was going to be a problem. Phil is a veteran programmer who knows well the corridors and chambers of television programming—and couldn’t give a flying fuck about content. All he wanted to talk about was Giants tickets, Super Bowl tickets, restaurants, movies. The conversations about the set, about the physical production of the show, cameras, lighting—it seemed like he wanted to get those over with as quickly as possible. He didn’t care. He had four monitors on the wall. They were all on, muted. He never listened to them. He never watched them.

The meetings with Phil were brisk and convivial. Eventually, however, we got to the point where he asked, “So you really meant it when you said you wanted to do your podcast on the air, on TV?” And I told him, yes, that was my idea. That was when he explained to me that TV, with its visual component, was different. When viewers turn the channel, they want to see something. They want to see Robert Redford. They want to see Justin Timberlake. TV “captures” the audience with the visual.

He said that we needed to change it up. At first I thought, This is not working. It was a mistake and I need to get out of here. And I told Phil so. Then I stopped and I said to myself, They might be right. I would try it their way.

The first name they came up with was Rob Lowe. They said, Rob Lowe’s going to be in the building. Do you want to interview Rob? I said, “Not particularly.” Rob’s a famous star of films, TV. He’s Rob Lowe. He’s famous. But there’s no shortage of outlets for him. And they looked at me like, You really don’t get it. I think they thought, You should have just said yes, simply to play the game.

I should have simply said, “Sure, bring in Rob Lowe.”

Something to remember when violent movies get re-condemned in the wake of Connecticut and Oregon.

Reposting this comment made by "djiggs" on the HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE site:
"From his review of Gus Van Sant's 'Elephant,' a fictionalized account of a Columbine-like school shooting, here's Roger Ebert on the media's behavior while reporting these kinds of events:
"Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?"
"The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.
"The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."
"In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.
"I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy."
This is Ebert again. I gather my point is what goes around, comes around.

Keith Olbermann fired by Current.

This was just announced a few minutes ago, so very little is known about the reasons for Current's decision.  My theory is that the channel wants to be more centrist Democrat, so I'm thinking that Cenk Uygur of THE YOUNG TURKS--someone not afraid to disagree with President Obama--may be vulnerable to pressures from above.
In Keith Olbermann's case, he allegedly tends to fight Authority until Authority shows him the door.
[UPDATE] Via THE NEW YORK TIMES, Current TV's side of the story:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/current-tv-dismisses-keith-olbermann/
Here's a post from the entertainment site THE WRAP:
http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/keith-olbermann-fired-current-tv-36679?page=0,0
[UPDATE]  Olbermann, via Twitter, tells his side of the story:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/olbermann-to-take-legal-action-against-current-tv

New poem: WITHDRAWAL

I'm trying so hard to withdraw,

to untie the rubber tube

and wrench the syringe of cable news

from my veins.

Don't want to see the CNN Saturday anchor

smile every time she reads something 

off the prompter.

Don't want to see MSNBC hosts

named Lawrence and Ed

competing for who can get the most headlines

to fill the ratings void left 

when Keith Olbermann was unjustly fired.

Don't want to see Chris Matthews

saying things about Anthony Weiner

"sticking it out."

Don't want to see Anderson Cooper

being a puppet of his writers and producers.

Don't want to see Fox News

unless I'm in a doctor's waiting room

where I have no choice.

And, even then, I want a magazine

to keep me from being irradiated

by Republican talking points

and facts twisted like Silly Putty.

Don't want to watch HLN

and hear Nancy Grace

snarl about Lady Justice.

Or, for that matter, 

Doctor Drew and his endless quest

to present himself

as a sober-minded moralistic ambulance chaser.

I just want to tear out the needle

and the syringe

and throw them across the room

hearing the breaking glass of the syringe

and pronouncing myself

cured of propaganda and endless distraction

from the news that really matters.

Re video GLENN BECK IS THE NEW ANN COULTER.

I was sufficiently irritated by both the Glenn Beck promotional campaign (including stick-tongue-out TIME cover and being the just-announced online interview guest of Katie Couric) to post a YouTube video, which can be found at http://www.youtube.com/terrymcca
Essentially, it makes the point that caricatured Punch-and-Judy GOOD TELEVISION is still so highly valued in both cable and Old Network News that, while "extreme" leftists like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman are shut out, buffoons like Beck and Coulter are endlessly put on-air because they get "ratings" and the lunatic fringe of conservatism must be exploited to that end.

To be honest, Championship Wrestling boorishness can be found on the Left as well as the Right--witness the MSNBC host I'm conveniently forgetting the name of [airs post-Scarborough and is styling himself as the progressive O'Reilly; think it's something like Dylan Hanraty] who, on his show last week, almost made me feel sorry for the female Birther he dumped on so viciously.

Yes, I know the Birthers waste valuable time (in court and when they go on television/radio) in trying to undo the Obama presidency. But how is the MSNBC anchor's behavior any different than O'Reilly, Beck and Coulter at their worst?

The tabloidization of AOL continues: re Alec Baldwin.

Here's a headline on AOL's Welcome Page:
ALEC BALDWIN PICKS A FIGHT
Here's the subheading:
Testy Actor Slams TV Anchor, Calls Her Too 'Cutesy'

Reality Check: Baldwin referred to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. And here's the quote from the article: On Rachel Maddow: "She is smart and charming but her writers are dreadful and the less cutesy she is, the better. She did an excellent interview with Colin Powell recently. The next night, I missed that tougher, less avuncular Rachel."

[The full article can be found at: http://www.popeater.com/movies/article/baldwin-peppers-msnbc-with-friendly-fire/423073?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl5link3http%3A%2F%2Fwww.popeater.com%2Fmovies%2Farticle%2Fbaldwin-peppers-msnbc-with-friendly-fire%2F423073]

Alec Baldwin does have a valid, nonarguable point: MSNBC does seem to want Ms. Maddow to fulfill the smile-every-few-words requirement now determined as appropriate for acceptable television hosting/anchoring (another example: Ben Lyons' near-constant grin--witnessed the last time I made myself sit through AT THE MOVIES).

To be fair, I haven't watched an entire episode of THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW in recent weeks. But I hope the smirky pop-culture-explanation final segment has been put in cement shoes and thrown into the East River.

Verdict: The folks at Time Warner, in order to get AOL visitors to Click The Link, are guilty--yet again--of inflating a not-that-momentous story into a Man Bites Dog extravaganza.

MSNBC's MORNING JOE now has 7 seconds to protect the world.

There's now a 7-second delay on MSNBC's Joe Scarborough-and-friends MORNING JOE show in case anyone says the f-word or anything similar: http://www.popeater.com/television/article/msnbc-deploys-f-bomb-radar-for-joe/245464?icid=200100397x1213391572x1200793386

Glenn Greenwald in SALON remembers the times in the past (mainly when Joe had his previous evening show SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY) when Scarborough would rail against celebrities who said the f-word on live TV, scaring the daylights out of decency advocates everywhere: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/10/scarborough/index.html

Rachel Maddow--fighting liberal who uses bad Bushie language.

Rachel Maddow, who I've called "bright and interesting" in the past, plopped a big embarrassing doozie out of her mouth during Tuesday night's election coverage on MSNBC.

She uttered something about how 9/11 "hasn't been avenged yet."

This seems to mean that Ms. Maddow is eager to get her war face on and support a big expansion of the current conflict in Afghanistan regardless of the consequences.

Sounds a lot like George Butch Jr. talk, unfortunately.

Maybe carefully targeted smaller-scale military action and old-fashioned police work might be enough to stay on guard against Al Qaeda in the coming years.

Let's hope President-elect Barack Obama has a cooler head than Rachel Maddow regarding the future of the War on Terror.