The Tip - Esterday’s News

Along with mention of Vladimir Putin and Jon Moulton

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
11/10/07
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp

 

For years, my principal source of news has been the London Guardian. Recently, that has been augmented by the brilliant “BBC News America” show, on BBC America weeknights at 7pm. It’s a full hour of comprehensive, detailed, knowledgeable coverage. If there is a firefight between troops and insurgents in Iraq or Afghanistan, BBC reporters are in the middle of it with their cameramen, talking to one side or the other as the bullets fly, instead of talking about the Pentagon news release about the incident hours later from a hotel room miles away and hours later, as American television reporters are wont to do. BBC sends reporters to trouble spots who speak the local language and understand the customs, instead of depending on a helpful government translator. In recent weeks, the BBC has had comprehensive and detailed stories about the effects of the Chinese “economic miracle” on a rural village in China, and a look at how families are changing, not just in the west but throughout the world. It’s not unusual for a reporter to confront an interviewee, as happened last night when Katty Kay (silly name, superb journalist) accosted the ambassador of Pakistan to the United States and asked him how, as a lawyer, he could rationalize his personal support for a regime that was rounding up all the lawyers. She asked him three times, unlike most American journalists, few of whom would even ask the question once. Matt Frei, chief presenter of the show, is no empty suit. Picture Ted Koppel, with just a small dash of Jon Stewart. He has notably incisive and probing interviews with people ranging from the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman to Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the pro-Democracy movement in Burma. I watched the Friedman interview prepared to dislike the man, and came away with a much-elevated opinion of him. BBC News America has the power to change your mind.

The Guardian, of course, remains the finest paper in the world. Lots of deep coverage, and commentary from people like Georges Monbiot, Martin Kettle, Noam Chomsky, and Greg Palast make for news coverage unparalleled anywhere in the world. The American media mentions people like Aung San Suu Kyi, Than Shwe, Benazir Bhutto, or Pervez Musharraf, and then have some blow-dried cretin give a 30 second overview of the days events, and explaining that the implications “remain to be seen.” The Guardian studies these people, finds out what makes them tick. And they tackle stories deemed too ethereal for American audiences. For example, they covered what should have been a major pronouncement by Jon Moulton, head of Alchemy Partners and one of the biggest players in the entire field of equity, that “Several of the largest private equity deals sealed in the months before the credit crunch brought the buyout market to a shuddering halt this summer are facing collapse under a mountain of debt.” The man just gave us clear warning that the mushrooming credit crisis is about to double in size, and the American press didn’t bother to cover it. When the Dow suffers a major crash, possibly in the next few weeks, none of the American papers will be able to explain how a collapse in diligence led to the crash.

BBC and the Guardian are what journalism should be like.

Yesterday morning I turned my car radio on to Jefferson Public Radio, the local NPR station. “Morning Edition” was on. This was on a morning when Bhutto was under house arrest and nuclear power Pakistan was facing chaos and possible anarchy. The idiot American president was babbling happily about how Musharraf was protecting Pakistan from terror by rounding up all the lawyers. (I just learned – from British news sources, of course – that Pakistan has just expelled all foreign journalists). Condoleezza Rice was once again showing her utter ineffectuality in the middle east and making America look like a Macy’s Day Parade clown balloon. East Britain was facing severe flooding from a tidal surge–a shape of things to come in a world of global warming. Mexico was recovering from massive flooding. The chief henchman and police chief for the leading Republican candidate had just been indicted on 14 felony counts of racketeering, fraud, and corruption. Many news stations didn’t even mention Guiliani’s involvement in the Bernard Kerik case. The Mukasey nomination for Attorney-General was coming up for a vote in the Senate, and not one Senator had the guts to ask why that sorry son of a bitch didn’t spend an hour being waterboarded and THEN come back and tell us whether or not it was torture.

So which of these important news stories was NPR covering?

None.

They spent the entire 16 minutes it takes me to drive to work discussing whether Hillary Clinton neglected to tip a waitress at a restaurant a month ago.

Oh. My. Fucking. Gawd. It’s the sort of mindless, stupid crap you expect from the hacks at Faux News. Or NewsMax. Or the patch of poison dingleberries over at Free Republic. It’s the sort of thing trash pseudo-journalists at Townhall will obsess over. For years. Decades. They still haven’t gotten over Whitewater.

Did Hillary neglect to tip a waitress! Film at eleven! If this is true, the Republic is doomed!

Talking heads on right wing shows who otherwise don’t give a shit about working Americans will whine for hours about how Hillary was cruel not to tip. It’s the sort of thing that made Tucker Carlson the man or whatever the fuck he is today. It’s why people who don’t know who Vladimir Putin is know about John Edwards’ haircut, or Obama not wearing a flag pin. That just means the man isn’t a pretentious pseudo-patriotic asshole, is all. He may have flaws, but at least he doesn’t wear one of those stupid flag pins. But Faux News considers it proof he supports terrorism. Faux News this week resurrected Kathleen Willey’s lunatic claim that Hillary Clinton murdered Willey’s cats. For what it’s worth.

NPR. National Public Radio. What’s worse is that they didn’t pick this story up from Dick Morris or Michelle Malkin or one of the other GOP noise machine pseudo-journalists. They came up with it themselves. NPR.

I logged on to the NPR site and emailed them, suggesting they fire the reporter, David Greene, and the news editor who thought this was a newsworthy item and hire some journalists. That was yesterday morning. I haven’t heard back.

Do you CARE if Hillary forgot to tip a waitress or not? If you do, put this piece down, or turn off the monitor or whatever, go out in your back yard, and shoot yourself. Do it now, and minimize the chance that you might have children.

Even the waitress, Anita Esterday, didn’t really care if she got tipped or not, and told the NY Times, the once-and-past newspaper that shows it is possible to be dignified and worthless, “You people are really nuts. ... There's kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now -- there's better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn't get a tip.” It turns out that the campaign did leave a large tip to be divvied among the staff who served the eight tables, and someone at the restaurant stiffed Esterday, not the campaign.

So not only was the story stupid, but it wasn’t even true, leaving NPR to sing, “Esterday, all my troubles seemed so far away...” They would have trouble resurrecting their journalistic credentials, assuming any outfits in America even bother with such any more.

In the meantime, you, my readers (the ones who didn’t shoot themselves on page two) are in an elite group: You know who Anita Esterday is, just like every right wing moron in the US who watches Faux, but you also know who Jon Moulton is, and why his opinions are more likely to affect you in the coming months than any of NPR’s.