Sunday morning pundit shows
Movie review; Greenwich bike plan
By Darren Johnson
Journal & Press
Hope you’re having a relaxing Sunday.
I normally start this day watching these Sunday morning pundit shows on the major networks. I guess they are kind of antiquated in this day and age, but they feel more serious than most other TV. Most other “news” type programming is loud and visually jarring. These old-style shows like “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation” conduct themselves at a more digestible pace.
ABC planned to re-air the 22-minute Biden post-debate interview this weekend during George Stephanopoulos’ time slot. You could also watch it here.
I know people have firm opinions on whether or not the president should drop out of the race, but I doubt the above interview settles anything as far as Biden’s alleged diminished capacity goes.
In fact, I think interviews like this are a black eye for the field of journalism, and these national games affect us at the local level. An overall distrust in journalism — and the Stephanopoulos interview was very high profile — results in fewer local papers being sold at local convenience stores. It has become easy for someone to watch an interview like the above and then just say, “I’ll spend my $2 on something else.”
Stephanopoulos came off as an operative with an agenda, asking the same question a dozen different ways, trying to rattle an older fellow whose communication skills are lousy at this point.
Historians will look back at this interview as really odd and mean-spirited and probably ageist, especially since soon modern medicine will have cures for age-related mental decline. Stephanopoulos comes off as a bit of a bully.
But, despite that he’d worked for an establishment political party in the past in a high profile position, Stephanopoulos can now call himself a journalist and save up his political capital for the occasional hit job.
Like this one.
It shouldn’t be Stephanopoulos’ job to decide a political race or who the candidate should be. Just conduct an objective interview and let the viewers decide. But an agenda was evident in this interview.
And these national interviews are what people see, not the lonely local papers on a store shelf behind the Redbox, CoinStar and other obsolete technology.
And this national punditry with blow-dried, agenda-driven “journalists” casts a shadow over all of journalism — and the result is fewer people will pick up these local papers, even, out of disgust.
30-Second Movie Review
This movie, “The Beekeeper,” starring Jason Statham, is now free if you get the Amazon Prime channel. It had recently been in theaters.
It’s the typical story of a highly trained former CIA-style operative who is trying to do something mundane in retirement — in this case beekeeping — who somehow gets dragged back into a scenario where he has to use his mad skills to kill lots and lots of people.
You have to suspend a lot of disbelief — like why does the main character not have an American accent if he’s a former US operative? — but this can be a fun watch, if you don’t mind stylized gunplay and dance-like murder sprees.
And now for the comics — ‘9 to 5’ by Harley Schwadron
Greenwich Town/Village Bike and Pedestrian Connectivity Plan
The Village and Town of Greenwich recently shared a press release launching a new project: a Bike and Pedestrian Connectivity Plan aimed at making Greenwich a better place for walking and biking. The goal is to increase connections, so residents can move more easily between locations such as the library and a Battenkill River access point. The actual priorities and outcomes of this project will ideally come from residents who walk and bike and know where the opportunities lie. This stage of the project aims to encourage resident engagement.
You can find out more here: https://villageofgreenwich.org/2024/07/01/greenwich-to-launch-bike-ped-connectivity-plan/
Or, better, try out this link to see the interactive map: https://wikimapping.com/greenwich-ny.html. You can also offer input there.
And that’s it for today. This coming week, we’ll feature one columnist per day taking over the newsletter.
Consider becoming a paid subscriber, if you don’t already!
Stephanopoulos...I no longer watch TV news. I manage to stay pretty well informed without it. It's all theater. I prefer print. That said, he was a bully. How do these people get away with it? I grew up with Huntley, Brinkley, Cronkite, Severeid, etc. I'm showing my age and my increasing annoyance with major news outlets, both print and TV.