It's been quite a week on the tube. It isn't just the new fall season that has our TiVo working overtime. It's the pleasure of watching the Republicans crash and burn before our very eyes like a scene from a bad action movie.
There's the simple joy that comes from watching the daily TV poll numbers reflect the nation's dissatisfaction with all things Bush. According to ABC, NBC and CNN, Bush now has the lowest approval rating of any President in his second term since polls have been taken.
Then there's the added pleasure of watching the Republicans get caught in web after web of their own making. TV reporters and pundits alike were positively gleeful in their reportage of Karl Rove being a "suspect" in the Plamegate affair on October 14. That hand-rubbing satisfaction followed the embarrassment of the previous day's little lapse from the White House, when Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Allison Barber got caught coaching a handful of soldiers in Tikrit prior to their "impromptu" interview with President Bush.
In what ABC and NBC called "the dress rehearsal," Barber was taped not just giving the soldiers the questions the President would ask them, but telling them when to pause, how to respond and generally being stage mom to this small band of soldiers, who were supposed to sell the war that more than 60% of Americans now believe the President is handling badly. Since two of four networks led with the story, and CNN had covered it as it was happening earlier in the day, the result was anything but positive for the Bush team.
This gaffe followed by a day the bizarre TV news conference declaration by Bush that Harriet Miers, his beleaguered choice to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court — we just loved Rachel Dratch's portrayal of her on Saturday Night Live, she absolutely nailed her — is a good fundamentalist Christian.
Uh, didn't the Prez say of now-Chief Justice John Roberts that his religion (Catholic) was irrelevant? Even conservatives were scratching their heads over this one.
Another kicker for the Bush team has been ABC's stunning series of reports all last week and this week on Good Morning America, World News Tonight, Prime Time Live, 20/20 and Nightline detailing the lax security in protecting America's nuclear reactors and the nuclear laboratories situated in colleges nationwide. ABC senior investigative reporter Brian Ross did an Emmy- and Peabody-winning turn in his investigation of just how easily a dirty bomb could be exploded in some of the nation's major cities, or how nuclear materials could be stolen in some sleepy little towns that shouldn't even have nuclear materials on hand, like at Reed University in Oregon.
The most terrifying of Ross' investigations involved his sending two-person teams of fresh-faced and mostly female journalism-school graduates into various college nuclear facilities. Nearly all of them found not just easy access — open doors day and night, no security guards on site — but where there were actually people in attendance, these undercover reporters found they could talk their way right into the nuclear-pool grounds and stare right into the nuclear pool. Were they terrorists, instead of reporters, they could have dropped an explosive device and showered the surrounding area with nuclear material for miles.
All of this scary reality show was caught on hidden camera. None of these students had their bags searched, none was asked to identify themselves, and several were even given floor-plans of the reactor sites, which ABC blurred on camera for the security that no one at the sites themselves had protected.
In scenes straight out of The Simpsons, when Ross confronted the hierarchy of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about ABC's findings, the NRC's most common answer was, "Well, we'll have to look into that."
Cold comfort to Americans who thought that the Bush Administration had put terrorism front-and-center. Following on the heels of the Katrina disaster proving the Office of Homeland Security isn't prepared for a natural disaster, let alone a terrorist attack, people might want to start stocking their own underground bunkers. Seeing how close a truck could come (within 50 feet) to the nuclear reactor at MIT in downtown Boston with no security details to stop it was truly alarming. But more alarming was the "who cares?" shrug from the NRC in response.
Capital gang
Another Bush Administration blooper occurred at a press conference October 14 when White House press secretary called veteran reporter Helen Thomas, who has covered every Administration since Hoover, soft on terrorism because she was asking probing questions, as she tends to do. ABC senior White House correspondent Terry Moran came to Thomas' defense, gentleman that he is. But it was another black eye in the face of the gang that seems incapable of getting anything right, and has begun making all their mistakes in prime time, live, before the TV cameras.
Add to this catalogue of errors, the shocker of the various TV news reports featuring Pakistani President Pervez Musharif complaining not just about the lack of response from the US to the dreadful earthquake tragedy outside of Islamabad, but his secondary comments that the Bush Administration hadn't even been able to take care of his own people in New Orleans after Katrina struck. Ouch. And this from Bush's big ally in the region.
Speaking of Pakistan, why has the American news coverage of the disaster in Pakistan in which more than 30,000 are known dead been so thin? Are the images from Katrina still so fresh that Americans can't be shown someone else's tragedy?
When the tsunami struck in the Pacific last December, that disaster was the lead story on the news for several weeks. Well-known reporters from every network were on hand, as were Diane Sawyer, co-host of ABC's Good Morning America, and NBC's Today show vet Anne Curry, doing human interest pieces in the disaster zone. Why isn't there similar coverage of the Pakistani earthquake? It's a question that does demand some answers.
Another question we'd like the answer to: How much money did the Bush family personally contribute to Katrina relief? We saw Bush attempting to hammer some nails into wood for Habitat for Humanity last week on CNN. Jimmy Carter he's not. Late-night comedians loved it. Jimmy Kimmel stripped away the CNN crawl to reveal Bush hammering at Fisher-Price-style play-nails in primary colors. Their graphics team is the best.
But we ask the question because our gal Oprah contributed $10 million of her personal fortune. Now granted, she's the wealthiest woman in America, but shouldn't the Bushes, who are rolling in it after all they've saved in the big Bush tax cuts, have given at least 10% of what Oprah gave? You don't have to be from Mississippi as Oprah is to contribute, do you?
Oprah did an excellent piece on poverty in America with CNN's Anderson Cooper on October 13 (check out her website, Oprah.com, if you missed it), using the Katrina disaster as her vantage point. Cooper, who did some of the best reporting from the region (even if the conservatives later called him "shrill" for demanding that someone go to the New Orleans Convention Center and feed people), put it all in perspective. One-third of Americans have no savings. The majority of Americans are, to quote Cooper, "one paycheck away from homelessness if there's a disaster." Sobering to all. Perhaps someone could send a tape of the show to the President?
Oprah has a new campaign to catch pedophiles the police can't or won't catch. We wish she'd take on the ones wearing vestments in the Catholic Church; the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Archdioceses really need Oprah. Apparently Oprah, who was herself a victim of sexual abuse as a child, is able to capture known pedophiles and turn them over to police just by doing a TV show on October 12. She has another coming up next week. Don't worry about queer fear: unlike, say, the Vatican, Oprah knows the difference between a pedophile and a gay man.
Team play
After three seasons of dismal shows, L&O: Criminal Intent has decided to try something new. Like a team that works. Eleven of the season's 22 shows will feature Chris Noth (formerly Mr. Big of Sex and the City, and a star of the original L&O ) and Annabella Sciorra. We can only weep with relief at a reprieve from the one-trick pony of Vincent D'Onofrio being the only viable member of the cast.
Speaking of viability, does ABC's Commander-in-Chief really pull in the ratings they claim? Are there that many Republican women watching TV in prime time when they should be going to their fundamentalist churches midweek like Harriet Miers? We keep watching this train wreck for the same reason we watch The O'Reilly Factor , to see what the other side is up to. But we find Mackenzie Allen absolutely loathsome, and her Republican-in-Independent's-clothing utterly craven.
Like NBC's ratings dog E-Ring, C-in-C oozes Republican ideology from every vapid pore. Last week's creepy episode, in which the drug war is portrayed as the main war to be fought in America, exemplifies how out of touch both the show and Republican ideologues are with what's happening on the streets of America. We would like to think the first woman President would take on poverty and health care first. Close to 80% of those in the US living in poverty and without health care are women and children. Are drugs the major issue in America today? Republicans think so, but real Americans have more pressing issues, of which drugs are only a symptom.
When Allen called for a coup in the pseudo-Colombia of the show (kind of like what George Bush did in Haiti a few years ago) it was obvious where things were going. We'll keep watching so you don't have to. After all, you have so much Bushwatch to TiVo. Stay tuned.