ABC News: Sawyer Out, Matinee Idols In

English: Diane Sawyer attending the premiere of Jesus Henry Christ at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's been almost ten years since ABC News anchor Peter Jennings passed away, leaving a vacuum at the top of their evening news broadcast.  Bob Woodruff, Elizabeth Vargas, Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer have tried to fill it, with varying degrees of success.

The anchor desk is changing once again, as Sawyer is leaving "ABC World News" after five years to become the network's de facto replacement for Barbara Walters.  Sawyer will be doing special reports and the prime time celebrity interviews Walters used to do.

Replacing Sawyer beginning in September is David Muir, who's been anchoring the weekend news and co-anchoring the newsmagazine "20/20" with Vargas.  This is great news for ABC's female-skewing audience, if the comments section on Facebook is any indication.  In their eyes, Muir is much younger (at 40) and handsomer than the other networks' anchors.

Muir is OK as an anchor, but we think the job should have gone to George Stephanopolous.  In a sign that ABC is not completely sold on Muir, they made Stephanopolous their chief anchor for breaking news and special events coverage (such as political conventions and elections).  He will continue to host "Good Morning America" and "This Week".

Once again, there will be three men anchoring the evening news on network TV:  Muir, Brian Williams at NBC and Scott Pelley at CBS.  Women have not lasted long in this job.  Not Sawyer, Vargas, Connie Chung or Katie Couric.  Anyone wonder why?

ABC is a solid number two behind NBC in the network news wars, which still attracts more viewers than cable, though their numbers are older and dwindling.  CBS, for all their promises of "real news" and "original reporting" that harken back to the days of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, is still stuck at number three.

Sawyer never looked comfortable as a news anchor, and "ABC World News" has been plagued with the same kind of gimmicks that makes local newscasts almost unwatchable:  Screaming graphics, pop culture reporting, features such as "America Strong" and "Made In America", and those bottom line "what's coming up" headlines during the first commercial break.  They certainly couldn't help promoting enough of Disney's product, since that's ABC's parent company.  To paraphrase Waylon Jennings, are you sure Peter Jennings would have done it this way?

At least Diane Sawyer is going to a place where she can do better work than reading a Teleprompter every night.  David Muir has the tough job of not only keeping ABC News relevant in a time of media change, but also to keep George Stephanopolous from breathing down his neck should the ratings go south.  Should be interesting to see how this all goes down.

Iraq. Again.

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after a joint press event on Camp Victory, Iraq, April 7, 2009. Obama spoke to hundreds of U.S. troops during his surprise visit to Iraq to thank them for their service. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After American soldiers left Iraq in 2011 following nearly a decade of war, it was widely believed that the government there would stabilize long enough to hold together a fragile country.

Uh, no.  Right now the Iraqi government, headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, is hanging on by its fingernails as a militant Islamic army marches south toward Baghdad.  Iraq's forces have so far shown no desire to fight back, surrendering at the drop of a hat to a group named ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) that's considered to be more extreme than al-Qaeda, if that's possible.  ISIS has already taken control of portions of Syria and Iraq, intending to impose sharia law on those areas.

To meet this threat, and to avoid the embarrassment of losing all the ground the United States had gained (at the cost of over 4000 soldiers) in the late and unlamented Iraq war, President Barack Obama announced Thursday that he's sending 300 military advisers to help out the Iraqi army.  He's also sending some Marines to protect the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.  Airstrikes might be necessary.  But the important thing is, so far as the President is concerned, there will be no "boots on the ground".  That means no combat forces.  Period.

And the next question you're probably asking is, does no really mean no in this case?

This situation has created a lot of clucking among the war hawks in Washington and in the conservative media, the ones who cheered on President George W. Bush's decision to declare war on a country on the pretense of "weapons of mass destruction".  These people are saying that Obama has made the mistake of pulling the troops out of Iraq too soon, and now look what happened.  It's just like what happened with Vietnam when the Viet Cong finally overran Saigon, and what could very well happen if the Taliban conquers Afghanistan once the Americans leave.

Obama apparently believes that the United States should be backing off from its "world policeman" role and let countries like Iraq and Afghanistan work out their own problems.  Which is nice in theory, but maybe the next President will create an excuse to meddle in the affairs of another country in the name of national security.  Especially if that country happens to have a resource essential to keeping the American economy going.  In Iraq, it's called oil.  And ISIS reportedly has taken over a well there.

Then there's the question of whether or not the U.S. should cooperate with Iran, who as it happens is also helping their Shiite brothers in Iraq drive back the Sunni invaders.  The U.S. and Iran are wary about each other, given the controversy over Iran's alleged nuclear program.  But if this works out, who knows?

President Obama may not want to fight Bush's wars any more, but that's what he's been doing for most of his term in office.  If he is really serious about letting Iraq and Afghanistan handle their own affairs, he would have brought home the troops long ago.  All of them. 

Casey Kasem (1932-2014): Radio's Countdown King

Casey Kasem at the 41st Emmy Awards (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Casey Kasem, who died Sunday at age 82, was known to one generation as the man who counted down the hits every week on radio.  To others, he was the voice of "Shaggy" on TV's "Scooby-Doo".  Either way, Kasem made his own impact on American contemporary pop culture.

After a long career as a radio deejay and sometime actor, Kasem helped launch "American Top 40" in syndication on July 4, 1970.  The original version lasted almost two decades, at a time when the Top 40 format on AM radio was giving way to the demographically-parsed programming (contemporary hits, album rock, etc.) of FM.  For three or four hours every weekend (depending on the city), Kasem played what America listened to, regardless of whether your radio station had them on their playlist or not.

A typical "AT40" had Kasem introducing the songs as they were ranked by Billboard magazine's (or somebody else's) record chart, interspersing them with tidbits about the song or the artist.  Kasem would interrupt the countdown long enough to add extra tunes, salute stations that carried his show, and deliver a "Long Distance Dedication" from (typically) a soldier serving overseas to his sweetheart in Bozeman, Montana.

Kasem did his countdown shows in various formats for nearly four decades before retiring in 2009.  Ryan Seacrest has been hosting "AT40" since Kasem turned the show over to him in 2004.

In Kasem's spare time, he lent his voice to animated characters including "Shaggy", some commercials, and was at one point the voice of NBC.

Recently, the end of Kasem's life was a tragic soap opera that played out on the evening news.  Because of the form of dementia that he was living with, his voice was gone.  He was the subject of family squabbles over money, how he was physically treated, and who had legal control over his affairs.  Then it was reported that Kasem disappeared, only to turn up somewhere in Washington state.

Then Casey Kasem died on Father's Day, leaving behind a legacy of "Scooby-Doo" reruns and classic "AT40" episodes that still air on some radio stations.  Say, didn't he end his show by urging his listeners to keep their feet on the ground and to keep reaching for the stars?

He's probably among those stars right about now.

Down Goes Eric Cantor

Official portrait of Congressman . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ever since the start of Barack Obama's presidency, the Republican Party and the Tea Party have combined to undermine the President's and the Democrats' attempts to make the nation in their own image, while at the same time polarizing Washington to the point where nothing gets done.

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare?  Grudgingly passed.  Gun control, immigration reform and tax reform?  Nope.  Finger-pointing on Benghazi, Bowe Bergdahl and a militant army occupying Iraq?  Absolutely.

But there comes a time when ordinary people get tired of political parties who can't go along to get along for the good of the country.  That happened Tuesday, when Rep. Eric Cantor lost his 7th District GOP primary in Virginia to a little-known Tea Party candidate named David Brat.  It was shocking, and it wasn't even close.  The next day, Cantor resigned his position as House Majority Leader, effective at the end of July.

Cantor had all the support his incumbency could ever need:  a solidly Republican base, a national profile and outspending Brat by a 2-to-1 margin.  It was that national profile, along with a softening of his previously hard-line views on immigration, that had Cantor's constituents wondering what he's done for them lately.

The defeat of Cantor has every incumbent on edge in this election year, even the ones representing the so-called "safe" districts where there's little chance of not getting re-elected.  It has also given the Tea Party's extreme conservatism a big shot in the arm, after being written off as a bunch of wackos by most of the politicians and pundits.

But Cantor's defeat won't change the projected makeup of Congress come November.  Most pundits believe (and so do we) that the Republicans will retain their majority in the House, then try to do the same with the Senate.  Just who those newcomers will be, and how they will govern, is anyone's guess.

All of which makes Michele Bachmann's decision not to run for Congress again seem smart by comparison.  Bachmann could have spent millions of dollars to keep her seat in Minnesota's Sixth District, risking voter fatigue with her antics over the past few years.  But she didn't.

Don't worry about Eric Cantor, folks.  He'll either land on his feet as a lobbyist, or be in a Cabinet position under a Republican president.  It's the ones who, like Cantor, were arrogant enough to lose elections because they weren't taking care of business back home that we need to worry about.

Coming Home . . . To What, Exactly?

Private First Class Bowe Robert Bergdahl, United States Army. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The war in Afghanistan is winding down, so we're told.  President Barack Obama just announced again that major American combat operations will cease at the end of the year, and that a small number of forces would serve as advisers for a while longer.  We'll believe it when we see it.

Soldiers returning from war have been popping up everywhere, it seems, with impromptu reunions  upstaging graduations, sports events, local celebrations, and even the neighborhood barbeque.  We know this because cameras just happened to be at these events for no good reason, becoming a fixture on local news shows along with the latest stunt to raise "awareness" for some disease.

Along with all the manufactured giddiness that coming home entails, comes reminders of the costs of another bad war that had no bearing on national security.  Thousands of soldiers returned in body bags.  Thousands of others also returned with their limbs blown off and their minds ravaged by being in a constant state of deployment.

They didn't have to go to war, you know.  It's not like Vietnam, where your choice was to either fight there or flee to Canada if you couldn't get a deferment.  Instead, today's soldier chose to be one after witnessing the attacks on 9/11/2001, needed money to pay for college, or couldn't find a job back home.

Once you do go to war, you become so frustrated by what is going on around you that it makes you want to go nuts or go AWOL, or both.  An American soldier named Bowe Bergdahl apparently did just that.  He allegedly stepped off his military base in Afghanistan one day in 2009, then found himself as a guest of the Taliban for the next five years.  Bergdahl was recently released in a swap with five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay that the Obama administration engineered.

(Officially, the U.S. government says it does not negotiate with terrorists.  Unofficially, this probably happens more times than people think, so long as everything is kept on the QT, and no one needs to know about what we're really doing, right?  Because if you don't negotiate, people die.)

When you get home from the war, you can expect to get treated for your combat-related maladies at a VA hospital near you.  Wait times may vary, of course, just as in any civilian hospital depending on where you live.  If you happen to live in a politically-sensitive part of the country where veterans and seniors abound--let's say, Phoenix, and for some reason your VA hospital is the subject of a congressional investigation into why some people died while waiting to get taken care of.  This has resulted in Eric Shinseki resigning as secretary of Veterans Affairs,

If, however, your head is so messed up by so much combat that you start confusing your loved ones  with enemy combatants, or you start going all Rambo on your co-workers, that's another story.  PTSD is a serious problem, and the sooner it's diagnosed and treated, the better.  Also, keeping weapons away might also help.

Americans turn into flag-waving idiots when it comes to Our Soldiers.  Even though they haven't done a damn thing Over There except for exporting destruction, misery and hate, we are expected to kiss up to them as conquering heroes by those who don't know any better, or were blinded by conservative talk radio.  All those cute reunion videos won't mean a thing if we took a hard look at what kind of people they became while serving in the wars of the last decade.  And what they might do in the future not just to themselves, but to the rest of society.  This is what coming home is all about.