The mind wanders as it is wont to do and we find ourselves thinking 20 summers back, the summer of '99. For us the summer of 70's retro, The Phantom Menace - the summer of greens and grays, the summer at CNN Inside Politics.
The summer of one kickass 26th birthday party in which we had everyone we knew over and knocked back a case and half of beer and a bottle and 3/4s of whisky with our childhood friend.
We lived in Northern Virginia and took the Metro into Union Station. Boy was it hot. Thinking back we think of AC. DC* is hot anyway but this was an especially hot summer. We recall watching some Orioles games played in 100 degree weather.
For that matter for father's day we took our dad to a Yankees-Orioles game, his first (and only) at Camden Yards. This was the summer we obsessed about the Yankees. They won 114 games the year before. This was our first taste of generational Yankee glory and we wanted a repeat bad. Obsessed, unhealthily so, and worried the worry of the powerless, much like we do about politics now. The 1999 Yankees remain our favorite team of the Joe Torre Era. They won 98 games and the World Series.
We went to a CNN outing at Camden Yards, they played the Twins. By then we were a gofer for CNN's chief pollster, Keating Holland. A very nice man, fellow baseball geek and Delawarean as is Mrs. Stroock. He liked to use a keyboard rather than a mouse and told us how he used to work with punch cards. Keating took the time to explain how polling works and we spent a summer collating polls for him and learning how they were written and organized.
We went to a half dozen other Orioles games that year and saw the Yankees clinch the division at Camden Yards. When some Orioles fan yahoo shouted Derek Jeter sucks we turned around and said, 'It is 12-3. Why are you still here?!' Paul O'Neill hit a bases loaded double in the 8th, still the most exciting baseball play we've ever seen in person.
*See what I did there?
So yesterday Donald Trump assembled the media in Trump Tower and berated them. Good.
“It was like a f–ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.
Too bad it wasn't just 'like' a firing squad.
Here is yet another article, this one at The Atlantic, about why the media sucks. Basically the media is run and staffed by ambitious young women, preening beta male college boys and homosexuals.
This is of course a transition (pun intended) from the old style media of coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, donut eating fat guys.
When I worked at the Wesley College Whetstone the paper was run by a guy like that. He was a 30 year old army and air force vet who loved news. God he might as well have been my father. 30 years old!
When I worked at CNN Inside Politics the office was filled with young women hired by the middle aged director. Ok not everyone was young. Ahhhh Sasha Johnson. She was cute, athletic etc. She once inadvertently flashed me, getting out of a cab, a moment I will take to my grave. I never liked Kate Albright-Hanna or my boss Jane Caplan. Bear in mind the later, while writing on gun control, used to work for the Brady Campaign. Interestingly we were all about the same age. The difference was these were up and coming go-getters, I was some dumb schlub brought in to do scutt work, like run to FEC and get the list of contributions to the Elizabeth Dole campaign. I was less important than the interns.
For a while the polling director took me under his wing. Nice man, very smart, and a baseball fanatic as all good pollsters should be. Thank you, Keating Holland.
My father worked at NBC Nightly News from 1968 till 2005. He was one of the guys you could see in the newsroom behind Tom Borkow. There he is, right over Tom Brokow's shoulder:
My sister and I used to like to call him up during the broadcast and try to get him to scratch his ear or something. He wouldn't.
He saw the transition first hand. By the time my old man left the office was filled by hyper-educated young professionals who worked out during lunch and didn't expect to have to work after hours. These were hyper-successful fastidious types. As me old man said, 'I remember when we used to stub out our cigarettes on the newsroom floor and now I have to go outside to smoke.'
So President-Elect Trump is dead on hear. Don't be nice to them. Don't treat them with respect. They'e the enemy.
BTW, lots of media badmouthing in Israel Strikes: War of the Red Sea. There's a character named Martin, based on the terrorist sympathizer, misogynist, homosexual Martin Bashir.
