Monthly Archives: February 2020

As you well know, almost every Wednesday, my pal Stu Shostak hosts Stu's Show and spotlights some corner or crevice of the TV business, often with very impressive guests or me. He had a few scheduled for today's webcast but due to one guest's sudden unavailability, that lineup will have to wait. So today instead, he has three television experts on to discuss recent news about the world of television. The experts are Steve Beverly, Wesley Hyatt and me.

Stu's Show, in case you don't know, is a simulcast. You can stream the video on a Roku-enabled TV or device or on your computer or you can just listen to the audio. To find out how to do this, go to this page…and you can even watch it there at the appointed time. That time begins at 4 PM West Coast Time, 7 PM in the east and other times in other time zones. It'll run at least two hours, maybe longer. I'll be on around sometime after 5:15 West Coast Time. It's live and it's free, and after the webcast, you can download the show from a different section of the same website for a very reasonable price. And while you're there, check out some of the other fine episodes of Stu's Show which you can also download for a reasonable price.

• Still waiting for Vladimir Putin to release the results of the Iowa Caucus. We'll probably hear Donald Trump won the Democratic contest, too.

A few days ago here, we introduced most of you to the Ames Window, a mesmerizing optical illusion. Here's an upgraded version of it that's even more amazing…

The news media seems pretty mad this morning at folks in Iowa who are still, as of this moment, insisting on getting the vote totals right before releasing them. Their failure to announce them last night when the networks expected them was indeed a screw-up but it was one that left a lot of network reporters having to fill, fill, fill and not deliver what their viewers tuned in to hear. Some of them resorted to trying to find out and announce the totals for individual precincts, which are of course of no real meaning. So one precinct out of 1,681 went overwhelmingly for Mayor Pete. What does that prove?

I don't even think the final results whenever the hell we get them mean much. This is like trying to project how the baseball game will turn out after the first batter in the first half of the first inning. And if you don't believe me, ask the Republican nominee from 2016, Ted Cruz. He won the last Iowa Caucus.

I have a certain interest in live television in those moments when the folks who are supposed to tell us what's going on have no friggin' idea what's going on. It's why I like the coverage of police pursuits. It's why I loved that episode of the game show Press Your Luck when Michael Larson got control of the board and was running up a fortune compared to what the producers thought was possible. I still think guys like Colbert, Kimmel and Meyers should do their shows live — or at least without editing — and when things collapse, as they eventually will, have to see what they can build out of the wreckage.

Most so-called "Reality Television" doesn't do this. The folks in charge don't know if the contestant will pick Door A or Door B but they have a script ready for either option. After last night, some of the newsrooms are going to do contingency planning for what to put on when the totals just plain aren't there to be announced. What I would have done is have the anchors explain why the results of the Iowa Caucus, whenever they show up, aren't really that significant. And then fill the time by telling dirty jokes or maybe having Brian Williams do a number.

If you need a reminder of how much stupidity there is in the world, there are these people who call you — I just spoke to one — claiming to be computer technicians who need access to your computer to fix something that's gone horribly wrong with it. You have to have an I.Q. near single digits to not spot this as a scam in under three seconds…but since they still do this, someone somewhere must be falling for it.

I just got a call from "Sanford" from a 415 area code telling me he's the technician who helped me with my computer the last time, alerting me I have a deadly virus that is sending out my personal info, including all of my credit card data and passwords, to thieves around the globe. I must immediately log into the website address he'll give me so he can enter my computer, remove the virus and inoculate my computer against further infections.

Quick Rule of Thumb: Never get an inoculation from someone who doesn't know how to pronounce "inoculate."

I'm kinda curious as to how much this guy might clear if I did go, "Duh, okay!" and give him control of my P.C. I also wonder how many "go fuck yourself, you criminal asshole"s he has to hear before he stumbles across a rube…but I guess the occasional jackpots make it worth it. I get about two of these a month.

And I guess the callers themselves are pretty dense too because even after I told the guy, "Your mother would be ashamed of you for doing this, you lying piece of shit," he was still saying to me, "No, no, I am not lying. Your computer has a deadly virus!" A person any smarter than a salmon would have realized instantly he wasn't going to sell me and would have hung up and tried the next guy on his Potential Sucker List.

Maybe I should have tried telling him, "You're lucky you called me, Sanford! I just got an alert that there's a deadly virus on your computer and it's sending out your personal info, including all of your credit card data and passwords, to thieves around the globe. Quick! You must immediately log into the website address I'll give you so I can enter your computer, remove the virus and inoculate your computer against further infections!"

If I do that with every one of these clowns, I'll bet one of them will fall for it. After all, I'll even pronounce "inoculate" properly.

• ‪My prediction for the Iowa Caucuses tonight: Someone wins, someone finishes way too far below expectations and the media makes way too many assumptions about what it means.

After last night's Super Bowl game, as I'm sure you know, that guy in the Oval Office tweeted…

Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well. Our Country is PROUD OF YOU!

Someone must have pointed out quickly that while the states of Kansas and Missouri kinda share the Chiefs and there is a Kansas City in Kansas, the Chiefs are technically based in Kansas City, Missouri. A few minutes later, the first tweet was deleted — as if deleting a tweet received by millions makes it disappear as if it never existed — and Trump tweeted…

Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game and a fantastic comeback under immense pressure. We are proud of you and the Great State of Missouri. You are true Champions!

I would have had a higher opinion of D. Trump if the second tweet had been more like…

Oops! My thumbs got carried away. I meant to say that the glorious states of Missouri (where the Chiefs play) and Kansas (which roots for them) both have a right to be very proud.

But that would have violated a cardinal rule of the Trump administration, one that I actually suspect is drilled into everyone who joins it as part of the welcoming orientation. Donald Trump never apologizes for anything and he only admits he's wrong about one out of every thousand times he is. And if I'm wrong about how often he admits errors, it's because the actual ratio is worse than that.

I'm kind of amazed he doesn't see the value of admitting errors, at least about little screw-ups that don't matter one bit. Would he have lost a scintilla of respect from even one person who respects him if he'd owned the mistake instead of pretending it never happened? It might make it more credible when he denies errors about something important…like whether or not Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. (Newly released e-mails reveal just how bad a lie was being disseminated when Trump defended his error to the death, as he does with most of them.)

Today, Trump backers are out in force trying to claim that Trump's first tweet (i.e., the one that was quickly deleted) was not wrong…and they don't even believe that. It's just something you have to say when it's verboten to admit he was wrong about anything. And then of course, they make the leap to "Obama did the same thing" bringing up some mistake he made, like the famous time he referred to "all 57 states." But there are two differences there.

One is that Obama never thought there were 57 states. Sometimes, we all misspeak…like a verbal typo. I occasionally mistype my own name and don't notice. That does not mean I don't know how to spell my own name. In his speech when Jimmy Carter accepted his party's nomination to run for president, he sought to praise one of the men he'd bested for the position. Even though it was right on the TelePrompter and right on the typescript in front of him, he referred not to Hubert Horatio Humphrey but to "Hubert Horatio Hornblower."

Trump makes those kinds of mistakes all the time. We all do. They do not indicate stupidity or lack of knowledge. Ah, but defending them suggests a lack of humility and maybe a stubborn belief that the people are so stupid, they can be convinced you didn't X when they all heard you say X.

And of course the other difference is that Obama admitted his gaffe and laughed about it. Trump rarely demonstrates any ability at all to laugh at himself and on the rare occasions when he tries, it sounds forced and awkward. I don't know about you but I'm scared at the prospect of any person in power who, when caught in a mistake, can't own up to it; whose first instinct is to double-down on the error.

There's a difference between one of those verbal typos and actual mistakes because of missing or faulty knowledge. And then there are the premeditated, deliberate lies…like when you know your administration is doing its damnedest to remove coverage for pre-existing conditions and you're out there saying, "I stand stronger than anyone in protecting your Healthcare with Pre-Existing Conditions."

And in Trump, we often get a fourth category of lie, which is denying what he said even though there were eight cameras and twenty microphones there capturing it. So we get all these lists of Trump Lies, like the one maintained by the Washington Post. On the third anniversary of Trump's inauguration, it stood at 16,241.

I think some of the ones they list are unfair because they're in the "misspeak" category and a lot of them — like saying "We've never had an economy like this before" — are subjective. You could probably argue that at any day in the history of the U.S., the economy was not exactly the same as it was on any other day, good or bad. But what's horrifying about the list is the number of times he said something that was blatantly untrue and said it over and over and over. Those are not verbal typos. Obama only mentioned the 57 states once.

This is not me trying to convince anyone Trump is a dishonest man. I operate on the assumption that no swing voters read this blog, that the Trump supporters who do come here are small in number and that if they do change their minds about him, it will be because of his words and actions, not because of me or anyone else. Every now and then though, I feel the need to articulate (if only to myself) one of the many reasons I think he's an awful president and a worse human being. And that disconnect from the truth and inability to admit mistakes is a big one.

[Correction: The original version of this post referred to Trump as "a worse human being." In truth, it has not been established that he is a human being at all.]

• I can think of few things that will make Donald Trump madder than if Greta Thunberg gets a Nobel Peace Prize and he doesn't.

These are the Swedish Royal Guards. I believe that all music should be performed like this…

• One benefit to having absolutely no interest in football: On Super Bowl Sunday, you can get any table at any restaurant that isn't showing the Super Bowl.

John Oliver answers questions…

The New York Times has an online quiz where it asks you how you stand on certain issues. It then tells you who your ideal candidate would be, picking from among those still in the Democratic race. It matched me with Pete Buttigieg and said that I had the least in common with Bernie Sanders. I think my views aren't as far from Bernie's as that.

But you see, here's the problem with a quiz like this. I have to answer each question Yes or No and I don't think either choice correctly describes my position on most of these questions. For instance…

• Is it important that your candidate makes it a priority to work with Republicans? My answer isn't Yes or No. It's more like, "Well, that would depend a lot on how many seats the Democrats wind up with in the House and Senate. To get anything done, my candidate may have to."
• Do you view President Trump's election as an anomaly? My answer isn't Yes or No. It's more like, "I'm not surprised that a lot of Americans wanted what he was offering. I think it's an anomaly that so many people became convinced he was presidential material and could or would deliver on those promises."
• Do you want a candidate who doesn't pursue money from big donors? My answer isn't Yes or No. I think there are big donors and there are big donors. There are some who don't expect legislation that benefits them financially. The point is that the government should not be bribable…and that's a real word, no matter what my spell checker is telling me.
• Do you want a nominee who would make history based on race, gender, sexual orientation or religion? My answer isn't Yes or No. I want a nominee who can beat Donald Trump and is equipped to be a very good president. If that person is the first gay president or female president or Jewish president, fine. I just wouldn't put that high on my list and certainly not above getting the best possible administrator.
• Do you want to replace the private health care system with a universal, government-run health insurance system? My answer isn't Yes or No. I want everyone in this country to have access to highly affordable quality health care. I really don't know if we have to replace the existing system to arrive at that or whether something like a public option alongside the private system will do it.
• Do you think four-year public colleges and universities should be tuition-free for everyone? My answer isn't Yes or No. I think college should be highly affordable and people should be able to get it without going into serious debt. That might mean tuition-free or almost free for some. When I went to college, I paid tuition but it was within my means. If I hadn't had an income then, it was well within my family's means…and we were far from wealthy. We need to bring the costs down to that level. But the question suggests a binary choice: Make it free or leave the costs the way they are.

And so on.  As you can see, a Yes/No answer doesn't convey my opinion.  Also, the quiz seems to weigh all these issues equally.  I care a lot more about some of them than others…and so will you if you take it. I might care the most about some issue that's not on there at all…like, say, Climate Change, Immigration or preventing World War III.

I just got my first notice about the primary here in California, which is March 3.  They sent me a list of polling places but I'll probably vote by mail, which means I have about three weeks to decide.  I really don't know who I'm going to vote for.  I don't even know if the question I'm answering is "Which of these people would be the best president?" or "Which of these people would be the best candidate?"

I haven't even ruled out Mike Bloomberg.  This article makes an interesting case that he ranks high as answers to both of those questions.  Oddly enough, as I was reading that article earlier today, I received two identical text messages from someone I've never heard of who said his name is Joe…

MARK, This is Joe from Mike Bloomberg 2020 asking for your support.  Txt 1 for YES, 2 for more info, 3 for NO and 4 to Stop.

And then it gives me a link to Bloomberg's website.  I texted 4 and then blocked that number.  I dislike people coming to my door uninvited trying to sell me things and I'm not much fonder of them doing it on my iPhone.  I would love to know how they got my name and number.  I'm not ruling out Bloomberg because of this but I wish he hadn't done this.

Not so long ago, the lawyer Michael Avenatti — the guy representing Stormy Daniels, the guy on all those cable news shows — announced he was running for president. He expected to be in the Iowa Caucuses right about now but instead, he's in solitary confinement in the jail where Jeffrey Epstein died…which, I'll admit it is almost the same thing.

How the hell did he wind up there? If you're curious, this article will tell you.

Well, the biggest news in the world today is probably what's going on with the feral cats in my backyard. Yesterday, Murphy spent much of the day about sixteen inches from Lydia's house while Lydia slept in it, ignoring Murphy's constant howling. I don't understand how she could sleep through that but she becomes instantly alert from the sound, about eight yards away, of me popping the pop-top on a tin of Friskies® Mixed Grill.

There is still no sign of Lydia wanting anything to do with Murphy but she doesn't mind Murphy approaching the cat dish and eating the untouched portions of Lydia's lunch. I see no indications of what Murphy wants with Lydia or my yard. It may just be a search for a cat-friendly yard with a complimentary cat buffet. I'll letcha know what else I observe out there.