"Your" Tax Dollars At Work

The United States Secret Service star logo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scandal and corruption aren't new things in Washington.  There have always been those who think they can get away with all sorts of things that are improper and/or illegal, as long as they're not the ones paying for it.  Until they get caught.  Here's some recent examples:

• An advance team of Secret Service agents and military personnel, preparing for President Barack Obama's visit to a conference in Colombia, got caught using prostitutes.  The President was never in danger, as far as we know.  But nine agents have either quit or been fired, according to CBS News.
• Some members of the General Services Administration, which monitors how much money the government spends, have been living it up on the country's dime by throwing lavish parties at a convention in Las Vegas.  It's a case of whatever happens in Vegas doesn't always stay there.

While these developments are embarrassing and puts the country in a bad light, they also tell us that these are people whose salaries are paid for by the government.  As in the American taxpayer, who we'd like to believe is helping to fund the very services these people represent.

However, with Uncle Sam trillions of dollars in debt and in hock to the Chinese for much of it, the American taxpayer has less and less to do with the funding of its own government.  Most of us can't comprehend all that money, unless you've won the MegaBucks lottery.

You know those self-serving news reports about how some government agency is wasting money on a needless project?  It makes for great TV, but they do little to solve the real problem. 

Oh, you could make a few cuts here and there, saving tens of billions of dollars.  But then lobbyists and others start hollering at Congress about the necessity of keeping its pet projects in place, so very little gets done.  And let's not even get into partisan politics.

We should be outraged at Secret Service agents and other government employees who have fun at the country's expense, but we're not because this kind of thing seems to be happening all the time.  If they don't seem to care, why should we?  After all, it's only money.

Dick Clark (1929-2012): Rocking The Culture

Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at 82 after years of health problems, wasn't the first to bring rock and roll music to network TV in the 1950s.  Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan all had Elvis Presley and others on their variety shows before anyone had ever heard of Clark.

Clark also wasn't the first to host what became "American Bandstand", either.  He was a Philadelphia radio DJ when WFIL-TV (now known as WPVI) chose him to replace the previous host on the weekday afternoon show, where he had been filling in from time to time.

Then "Bandstand" moved to ABC in August 1957, and the whole country (or those that could get ABC at the time) tuned in weekday afternoons to watch teenagers dance to the music and performers lip-synch their latest hits.

Clark, with his boyish looks and wholesome image appealing to parents, did plenty to advance the course of societal change through "Bandstand".  Not only did he make rock and roll safe for mass consumption, but he also did his bit to help integrate African-Americans on the show, who after all made this music possible.  So long as they danced among themselves and not with the white kids, because in the Jim Crow era, folks in the South didn't cotton to things like that.

Thanks to "Bandstand", Clark had either hosted and/or produced thousands of hours of entertainment on radio and TV:  "The (fill in the dollar amount) Pyramid", "TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes", and the American Music Awards.  And he still looked younger as his audience grew older.

"American Bandstand", which had been rolling through the musical changes for three decades, finally left TV in 1989.  By then, Clark was becoming known as "Mr. New Year's Eve", covering the annual ball drop from New York's Times Square since 1972 through the annual "New Year's Rockin' Eve" telecast.

Then Clark had a stroke in 2004.  He made few public appearances after that, but he continued to co-host "Rockin' Eve" with Ryan Seacrest, doing the countdown from inside a TV studio instead of freezing on a Times Square perch.  Clark deserved points for putting himself out there, but his slurred speech made him hard to understand.

Dick Clark may have been a ubiquitous presence on TV for decades.  But without him, many of the biggest stars in music who made their first appearance on "Bandstand" would never have been heard from.  There would be no "Soul Train", no music videos, and no mp3 players.  Rock and roll would be just a footnote beyond Elvis, quickly put down by fearful parents and other "right-thinking" people.

In fact, what happened in the studios of WFIL in Philadelphia in the late 1950s and early 60s just might have been the start of a cultural revolution in America that's still happening today, in the same town where the Declaration of Independence was signed.  Not to put Clark in the same category as Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock, but he was a Founder in his own right.

In the immortal words of "Rate-A-Record", Dick Clark's life and career had a beat, and you could dance to it.

Love 105 Lightens Up

Current "Love 105" logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ever since Cumulus Media took over Twin Cities radio stations KQRS, KXXR and Love 105 after buying out Citadel, industry folk have been wondering what they're going to do with them.

Lay off staff?  That's a given.  Radio is beginning to look like the local corporate-owned convenience store, where only a couple of employees at a time are needed to sell gas and groceries.

Change to news and talk?  Cumulus is reportedly planning to switch some of its FM stations in major markets to that format.  They did that at KGO-AM in San Francisco, replacing their highly-respected talk format with news, causing a rebellion among listeners.  If Cumulus tried that in the Twin Cities, then they would actually have to hire talent, or at least outsource it to make the whole thing appear local.

Love 105 was the long-rumored target for any kind of format switch, including news.  They have three weak FM signals in three different places (Cambridge at 105.1, Lakeville at 105.3, and Eden Prairie at 105.7) that were originally designed to serve those communities, instead of an entire metro area.  And they have had just as many formats, including alternative rock and classic R&B, since the signals were combined in the '90s.

So it came as a surprise when Cumulus decided to turn Love 105 from "The Greatest Hits of All Time" into an adult contemporary format, with "Best Variety, Best Songs" as its tagline.  In other words, they're replacing oldies with more modern stuff aimed at women 25-54.  They're also catering to all the former WLTE listeners who have been flocking to 105 since Christmas, when the light rock station turned into country KMNB (102,9 FM) under the cover of holiday music.

This may not be the end of the changes at Cumulus.  What's going to happen at KQRS when Tom Barnard (who has been taking on-air potshots at the company) decides his radio future?  Will 93X still be around in its current form?  And there's been an opening for an ABC News Radio affiliate (which Cumulus owns distribution rights to) since KSTP-AM became 1500 ESPN.  So that all-news and talk thing might not be dead after all?

Politics 2012: Santorum Out, Romney In

Rick Santorum took himself out of the 2012 presidential race Tuesday, leaving Mitt Romney as the de facto GOP nominee to take on President Barack Obama.

Unlike Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, who insist on sticking around until the bitter end despite dwindling support, Santorum decided to face reality.  The former Pennsylvania senator's campaign, according to media reports, had run out of money and never could compete financially with Romney.  Also, even though Santorum and Gingrich split the Southern vote in the primaries, Romney accumulated enough delegates to take a commanding lead for the nomination.

Santorum didn't help his cause by being the candidate stuck in the 1950s.  He came across as a rigid guy in a vest, railing against taxes and government-run health care, women's reproductive rights, and separation of church and state.  Plus, he had a bad case of "open mouth, insert foot" syndrome common to politicians.  Still, don't count him out for 2016.

Now it's up to Romney, who started campaigning against Obama weeks ago while fending off the ankle-biters, to rack up the remaining delegates and claim his prize in Tampa at the Republican convention this summer.

But Romney has a few obstacles to overcome before he can occupy the White House.  Among them:

• He's not real popular among conservative women, Hispanics and Christians who voted for Santorum and Gingrich.  He's going to have a hard time winning over the states he lost in the primaries.
• Santorum dubbed Romney the "Etch-a-Sketch" candidate for hitting the reset button on his positions once too often.
• Inadvertently reminding everyone that he's a rich guy who has no clue how to relate to the masses who are struggling to get by.
• The Mormon faith Romney practices shouldn't be an issue.  President John F. Kennedy proved long ago that he didn't take orders from the Vatican, so why should Romney bow to the elders in Utah?  However, conservative Christians who still think Obama is a Muslim and wasn't born here aren't as likely to embrace someone who prays to a different God.
• Convincing his fellow Republicans, who don't think he's in rightward lockstep with the party, that he really can beat Obama in November.  His support from mainstream Republicans--whatever that's supposed to mean these days--is grudging, at best.
• Even with an uncertain economy, rising gas prices and the very real possibility of the Supreme Court striking down "Obamacare", the President still leads Romney by several points in the polls.  If the election were held today, that is.

Ready or not, the campaign leading to the general election has just begun.  Over the next six months or so, it gets worse before it gets better.

Mike Wallace (1918-2012): The Role of His Life

Publicity photo of journalist Mike Wallace for the television program Mike Wallace Interviews. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before Mike Wallace, who died at the age of 93 Saturday, became the hard-hitting journalist who helped define "60 Minutes" for decades, he had a varied career in entertainment.

Wallace was an actor, a radio and TV announcer, and a game show host in the 1950s.  He was a commercial pitchman who, among other things, hawked cigarettes.  He even co-hosted a morning talk show with his then-wife Buff Cobb.

Those were just to pay the bills on Wallace's way to his real career:  interrogating world leaders, celebrities and small-time crooks.  He first plied his trade on a local New York show called "Night Beat" in the 50's (which became "The Mike Wallace Interview" when ABC picked it up), then moved on to CBS News in 1963 as a correspondent.  Before "60 Minutes" went on the air in 1968, Wallace was the first person executive producer Don Hewitt hired.

Wallace's confrontational style of "ambush interviewing", where his subjects who committed alleged wrongdoing would be paid an unscheduled visit by a "60 Minutes" camera crew and being asked embarrassing questions, has been imitated by countless broadcast journalists (local, cable and network).

Wallace's approach occasionally got him and the network in trouble.  The two most notable instances were:

• Retired General William Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS for a documentary they did during the Vietnam War.  Twelve million dollars in legal costs were spent on that trial before Westmoreland dropped it.
• Wallace's interview with tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigard, who claimed the company he worked for deliberately put nicotine in its cigarettes, was taken out of a "60 Minutes" report because of network fears of a lawsuit.  Eventually, the full report was broadcast.

Wallace stayed at "60 Minutes" almost as long as it's been on the air (now in its 44th season), from its premiere broadcast to his stepping down as a regular correspondent in 2006 when he was in his 80s, becoming a part-time contributor after that.  He has won 21 Emmy awards, five DuPont-Columbia journalism awards and five Peabody awards.

Mike Wallace wasn't afraid of looking his subject in the eye and not blinking before he got the answer he wanted, as if he were in a courtroom interrogating a witness.  He was broadcast TV's version of a crusading newspaper journalist who stopped at nothing to get at the truth.  He also knew how to put on a good show for the millions who made "60 Minutes" the longest-running news magazine in TV history, thanks to his entertainment background.  Mike Wallace played the role of his life as a master interrogator, and broadcast journalism has benefited from it.

Keith Olbermann No Longer Current

Cropped headshot of Keith Olbermann (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once again, Keith Olbermann and his bosses had a difference of opinion over how his nightly broadcast "Countdown" should be run.  Once again, Olbermann was shown the door--this time at Current TV, a progressive cable news network co-owned by former Vice President Al Gore.

Olbermann has either quit or been fired from Fox, CNN, ESPN, MSNBC, and other networks too numerous to mention.  He lasted less than a year on Current.  It's getting to the point where it's no longer a surprise.

This was supposed to be a match made in heaven.  Olbermann would continue "Countdown", which previously had an eight-year run on MSNBC before he suddenly bolted.  In return, Current gave him a reported $50 million contract, a financial stake in the network and the title of Chief News Officer.

Then it all went downhill.  Technical problems resulted in "Countdown" being broadcast from a darkened studio, as if the network forgot to pay the light bill.  Olbermann declined to appear on Current's coverage of the GOP presidential primaries and on other occasions, meaning more air time for substitute anchor David Shuster.  The war of words between Olbermann and Current management got more heated.  And the ratings for "Countdown" weren't anywhere near what they were on MSNBC because, among other things, Current doesn't get as much distribution among cable and satellite providers.

In recent weeks, Olbermann pulled his most popular segment "Worst Persons In The World" (not for the first time) in response to criticism that liberal commentators are just as capable of using misogynist language regarding certain women as Rush Limbaugh is.  That only made "Countdown" a little duller.

Since Olbermann's arrival, Current has replaced reruns of documentaries (such as Gore's own "An Inconvenient Truth") in prime time with shows hosted by Cenk Uygar and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.  They've also added simulcasts of Bill Press' and Stephanie Miller's radio programs to its morning lineup.

Taking over Olbermann's time slot is Eliot Spitzer, who you may recall was Governor of New York until a sex scandal involving a prostitute drove him out of office.  After that, CNN gave Spitzer a short-lived talk show that began in controversy and ended in low ratings.

Olbermann has reportedly threatened to sue Current TV over his breach of contract.  So what's he going to do after that?  No other network will hire him.  Maybe he should go the Glenn Beck route and open up a pay-per-view web site, just like the man he used to ridicule on TV every night.  It won't have as many viewers as Current does now, but at least the only person who gets to fire Keith Olbermann is Keith Olbermann.