Tag: TV

SO LONG TIM. ALL THE NICE THINGS WE’VE BEEN SAYING ABOUT YOU WERE TRUE – AND IT’S NOT FAIR – NOT AT ALL

Russert1_2
I worked at NBC News, at the TODAY SHOW for nine years, and for much of that time, I was lucky enough to work with Tim Russert.  The picture on the left was one of the few I could find that showed that great, mischievous expression that meant we were going to have fun so even if it’s not a DC kind of photo, it’s the one I like best.

I first met Tim when he still worked with Mario Cuomo., on the Democratic Convention floor in 1984 when Cuomo electrified the crowd and I chased Tim, whom I’d never met, half way out to the parking lot to get a promise that the Governor would be on the show the next day.  He was psyched, hyped and way too busy but he was also adorable and very sweet as we worked to get  things organized.

So when he came to NBC and went to work on getting the Vatican to let us come and do a week of shows in Rome, including time with the Pope, I watched Tim play it out.  He worked with Cardinal Kroll in Philadelphia and with one of his colleagues who worked in the Vatican and somehow we got our on-the-air mass with Pope John Paul II and a Philadelphia Catholic school boys choir sang on the TODAY SHOW.  Who but Tim would have made that happen?

There’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said; I couldn’t write sooner because my kids were visiting for the weekend and I wasn’t being very bloggy.  But as the news broke, my younger son called from the airport. He was really sad.  I’d forgotten how lovely Tim was to Dan, who was around 6 when they met.  Treated him like a cool guy, gave him an NBC baseball cap that I think he still has, teased him guy to guy.  When I went over to deliver our bassinet after Luke arrived Dan came along and this new daddy still had time for a bit of a conversation with a six year old. AND to show us a tape of Willard Scott announcing Luke’s birth on the show.

All week people have been talking about Tim’s love of politics.  That was true; and he mined every subtle message and decision for meaning and impact. But he had another quality that was even more valuable in a journalist: a contagious enthusiasm for living that made each story part of a grand adventure.  He brought everyone in his orbit along with him — sharing energy and laughter, competition that was fierce but never mean and a real belief in both the fun and the importance of journalism in a democracy.

I moved to LA and we mostly lost touch – although he did send a Meet the Press baseball cap in response to a note I sent him.  It made me feel remembered – as it was meant to.  It was the kind of gesture that’s been in the stories people have been telling all week — it’s just that this one’s mine.  And since I’m not one of the rock stars who have been telling these stories all week, just someone he worked with, I’m hoping it will demonstrate the genuine niceness of this guy.  Really.

There’s a wake tomorrow and I’m going to try to go.  I’m betting that there will be a mob scene there but I’d just like to show respect for a moment or two.   I’ve seen so many of us writing about this very sad thing; I’ll say a bit of a goodbye for all of us.

CHARMED, AGAIN. AND PROBABLY NOT FOR THE LAST TIME

Charmed_may_2008NOTICE:  YOU MAY NEED INSULIN TO READ THIS – IT IS REALLY SAPPY — CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED

Right now, I’m crying.  Not just teary, crying.  Right now, the third time I’ve been to this moment.  It’s so embarrassing that until I complete this post I don’t even know if I’ll ever let you see it.  Why such emotion on a sunny day so close to my birthday?  Over a television show?  The final epsiode of one that went off the air in 2006.  One that’s about witches?

If, like me, you never paid much attention to CHARMED, appearing on the now-defunct and youth-oriented WB – about three sisters who are witches and who have witchy powers including, when acting together with the “power of three”, to best Ultimate Evil (I know, I know), let me tell you a bit about them.  I’ve written about them before – when I first found them two years ago and again almost a year ago, after a wedding whose ritual reminded me of theirs, even though in theirs families gather from across the divide between living and dead.  As I wrote then:

On my favorite guilty pleasure, Charmed, rituals of birth and marriage are attended not only by those who share the lives and loves of the Halliwell sisters (yeah they’re witches and their story spent 8 TV seasons enchanting us all) but also by those who came before. They summon, “through space and time”  all members of “the Halliwell line.”  Surrounded by these translucent figures of past
generations, today’s Halliwells celebrate marriages and new arrivals. Those fully and those ephemerally present conclude together “blessed be.”

What does this have to do with Jewish weddings — or any other terrestrial weddings for that matter?  A lot.  Eight years on the air, the longest running show with female leads, it dealt often with travel through time and space and dominions never imagined.  But when really important events arose, all the magic was supplanted by a single, simple spell that basically –well — brought the family together.

I just looked the show up on Wikipedia and discovered that it went off the air on my 60th birthday – having run from October 7, 1998 to May 21, 2006.  My
husband, when he’s in psychiatrist mode, talks about “anniversary reactions” – when we experience deep feelings but can’t quite figure out where they come from.  Sometimes, they have to do with the occurrence of anniversaries we haven’t even noticed have arrived.  In this case, though, I didn’t know the year the show ended, much less the date.  In fact, I was in Paris with my family to celebrate this 60th birthday landmark on that day and didn’t even notice the demise of the long-running  series.  In fact, I first discovered it, in re-runs, airing as I worked in my office.  I used it to keep me company (believe it or not, it’s on four hours a day – two in the morning and two in the afternoon.)  Didn’t know a thing about the show or its success.

I got an earful from one of my sons when I asked though, who claimed that the show caused plenty of  fights with his (then) girlfriend.  Apparently, it was on at the same time as the Simpsons and every week was a negotiation.

But for me it’s somehow more than that.  These three sisters, and their powers, are deeply moving.  Their battles and solidarity, their humor and courage, their conviction that they could literally save the world from evil (p.s., they did) all resonated in a very weird way.  Still do.

Hence the tears.  The final episode, as the post-show future unfolds, feels like my own life.  Endings.  Loving farewells.  The (hopefully) gratification of recognizing a life at least partially well-lived.  The kids and their kids and an idyllic togetherness among sisters and their husbands and their children and their destiny.  A lot to hope for and, I guess, as my own life moves forward, something to cry about.

 

THE OBAMA LANDMARK: RACIAL ATTITUDES ON MY BIRTHDAY

Obama_older_ladyToday is my 62nd birthday.  It’s pretty amazing.  Not only am I, while still healthy and not rickety, able to witness a Democratic primary where a white woman (for the first time) and an African-American man (for the first time) are the major Democratic Presidential candidates.  Not only am I, while still healthy and not rickety, able to witness the probable nomination of the 46 year old product of an interracial marriage, who has lived outside the U.S. in the developing world, and who is running on a platform of unity and commitment to helping our country have a better future.  AND who is the first candidate to sit for a video interview with BlogHer, thus demonstrating a comprehension of women who blog — and those women who read them.

Not only that.  This morning, half-awake, watching C-Span footage of the Obama Iowa rally last night, I saw a nice white Iowa lady of a certain age, like the one in this photo, put one hand on either site of Obama’s face and kiss him on the forehead.  And it wasn’t even a big deal.

You need to realize that in my lifetime as someone old enough to notice – probably the past 40 years — that would have been unthinkable.  That a highly regarded TV drama was canceled after one season because it featured a white male and black female social worker working together and stations across the south refused to carry it.  Slowly, as the Civil Rights movement brought us forward, things changed.  And here, I’m really only talking about symbols – not all those individual life moments that remain so difficult for so many. I believe that when symbols change, real change will follow.  And some of that appears to be true.

Dean_rusk_daughter_2
In September of 1967 Peggy Rusk, daughter of then Secretary of State Dean Rusk, married Guy Smith – and it was so unusual it made the cover of TIME Magazine.  Which wrote this:

Resignation  Offer. As recently as 1948, California law would have made the union a criminal offense in the state. Until last June, when the U.S.
Supreme Court killed Virginia’s miscegenation law, 16 states still banned interracial marriage. More to the
point, and more poignant, in a year when black-white animosity has reached a
violent crescendo in the land, two young people and their parents showed that
separateness is far from the sum total of race relations in the U.S.—that to
the marriage of true minds, color should be no impediment. Indrawn as usual,
Rusk pronounced himself “very pleased.” Clarence Smith, Guy’s father,
said simply: “Two people in love.”

That’s right – Rusk offered to resign because of the wedding – that was
how unusual it was.  In the early 90s I visited a high school
near Cincinnati, OH, which was once KKK country.  I was producing a “space
bridge” — a satellite conversation between high schools in Ohio and Moscow.  The night
before the show I gave a reception for the families of the kids featured
in the program.  As they wandered in, there in the middle of Ohio, I noticed that one couple was comprised of a white man and an African American woman.  Apparently I was the only one who did though.  One of the boys’ parents had divorced and his dad had married this woman who was now the kids’ stepmom.  And in the middle of semi-rural Ohio, close to the Kentucky border, nobody cared.  I guess you’d need to have been around for canceled TV shows and Secretaries of State offers to resign, to be so struck by what happened.

Fast forward to the Grammys, 1990, this winning song and video, with this kiss.


I guess it’s just that we forget how bad things used to be; a kiss like Neville and Ronstadt’s once could ruin both careers.

There’s lots more. But what does all this have to do with a presidential candidate? In Iowa?  I don’t know why but as I watched this morning I was so struck by the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime.  Probably it’s just the birthday.  Whatever happens in the campaign, and I am worried about the race stuff that came out of Kentucky and West Virginia, it was a reminder that at least things are better than they were before.  OH and last week I read that there has not been a white male Secretary of State in the US for 11 years!  Nobody’s been yelling about that, either.

NEW FRIENDS ON MY OLD TURF: MOMMY BLOGGERS VISIT KATIE AT CBS NEWS

Katie_shakes_hands
What are the odds?  I spent what would have been my prime mommy-blogging years, before the Interweb was anyone’s darling, working at CBS News at 524 West 57th St.  Now, some of my sweet, funny mommy blogging friends went through the same door I used every day for 7 years to meet with Katie Couric.  Here’s what happened:

Pretty cool, huh?  My 9 years at TODAY never crossed with Katie and clearly my CBS years were the "Place to Be" years, well before hers but it sure was fun to see the girlfriends sashay on in and charm her to pieces.  But then, that’s what they do.

Blogger roll call for The Visit – drawn from original host SV(Silicon Valley) Moms:

CALLING ALL NEWS JUNKIES

Jibjab_news It’s almost Shabbat and I only have a second but if you’re hanging around the web this weekend don’t miss this.  It’s the newest Jib Jab video and will tell you all you need to know about why I went from TV to the web.  Happy Passover!   

TV GRIPES – HAVEN’T YOU HEARD?

Kids_watch_tvThis morning, as I’ve been writing, I’ve been watching a re-airing of a conference on children’s media called Beyond Prime Time, airing on C-SPAN.  Leaders of the FCC, broadcasting and mega-consolidated companies as well as kids’ advocates meeting yet again to talk about all the dangers, risks and difficulties of rearing children in the media-saturated world.  It is horrifying to think about some of the things kids see in the afternoon and early evening, from Jerry Springer to ads for horror movies to news promos "fire kills four children in the Bronx."  And that doesn’t even count the just plain trashy programming designed with kids in mind.  Or the sexism, violence, overt sexuality and generally demented stuff that passes for entertainment. 

I worked most of my life in TV news and loved what we were able to offer.  Today most news cares more about Anna Nicole Smith than riots in the streets of Jerusalem; more about missing coeds than cuts in the loans that get kids to college in the first place.  And that doesn’t count what airs in the entertainment venue. 

The thing is, I don’t think Americans require the ridiculous material polluting early TV hours.  Polls too consistently demonstrate a parental desperation about media; in my experience the lowering of standards emerges from taking the line of least Resistance – the safest, ickiest material.  The Jordan McDeere character on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip turned down garbage and almost lost her job; now she’s in a fight to the death with a new, reality programming exec.  Unlike The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin isn’t going to let us pretend things are better in the TV version in this show.

None of this is new, I guess, but it just kills me that we are still having these conferences and there is still garbage all over the air.  And the cavalier attitude regulators have shown toward the media consolidation that makes these things so tough to resist hasn’t been any help either. They spend hours trashing the media but won’t take the hard positions to make things better.

There is probably not ONE original thought in this whole post but I feel better.

SLEEPLESS (KIND OF) IN SEATTLE

Seattle_view We’ve been up since 4:40 (7:30 at home.) Fortunately there’s a CLOSER marathon on TNT so we’ve had some entertainment. Now the dawn is emerging (that’s what’s in the photo — our view from the Hyatt) and pretty soon we’ll be wandering back over to our son’s home for Thanksgiving. It’s the first year he’s done it at his home and it’s pretty exciting.

The airport yesterday was full of families with kids of all ages on the way to visit people they love for the holidays. Whatever we may think about our country – and there’s plenty to be upset about – and however much we may worry – correctly — about the state of American families when 40% of new borns are born to single mothers — it’s still true that most American families of whatever makeup are loving and devoted –at least part of the time.

My sister is having our cousin for Thanksgiving at her house in Massachusetts and it will be the first time in probably 30 years that this much-loved cousin will be with any of the Samuels “girls” on Thanksgiving Day. We have all gone our separate ways and aren’t together enough but those feelings that anchor our lives are still very much part of us and, I think, of all the people we passed coming and going in the airport.

So to all of you – and all of us — happy Turkey — love your families and count your blessings. I know that’s what we’re going to do.

FLYOVER AMERICA AND STUDIO 60 (and my trip to Syracuse)

The pledge, which I accidentally violated, was to post every day in November.  A promise is a promise and I am trying.  Tonight after a wacky 36 hour trip to Syracuse (don’t ask) I’m so tired I’m hallucinating.  I was guilty the whole time I was there because it felt so small and it was winter-grey besides.  Couldn’t get into it. 

Pittsburgh_incline From childhood family visits to my cousins and our current annual trips to the Cleveland Clinic I’ve grown perversely fond of Cleveland – and I grew up in Pittsburgh so I have a real feeling for it.  But lots of smaller cities just feel claustrophobic and kind of disappointed.  This was one of them although the people we met were lovely and very friendly — like Midwesterners.

Harriet_and_hughley Which reminds me (stay with me here) – Studio 60 is fun.  I loved seeing John Goodman make all the coastal liberals (of course I AM one) squirm – and say several things that were true and also are what’s wrong with my political tribe, in my opinion.  About those uppity liberals who think everyone between the coasts is stupid.

The show has a determination to look at this issue I think – not only in a Nevada courtroom but also through the constant dialog between Matt (Matthew Perry’s character) and Harriet (Sarah Paulson) — probably the most beautiful woman I’ve seen on TV in a long time — maybe ever. 

I’m going to bed now and sleep off the last of the airplane air before I have to get on another plane Friday and get to Orlando before Shabat.  G’nite.

CHARMED, I’M SURE

Charmed2_1   I work at home much of the time.  Usually I watch C-SPAN.  But I tripped over a show called CHARMED (more) that most of you probably already know and I find that I’m … well…charmed by it.  In case you’re as clueless as I was, it’s a long-running Aaron Spelling (no surprise there) series about three sisters who learn that they’re witches — good witches of course — and not only good witches but the official CHARMED ONES.  Apparently the power of sisters radically increases the power of witch-hood.  Anyone with sisters could have told you that.

The longest running series with female leads, the show ran for 8 years and is now in multiple reruns on TNT, which is where I found them.  They’re gorgeous, smart, sensible and dedicated to vanquishing evil and saving the world.  Just like the rest of us, right?  They love each other, they grow, learn, fall in love, have children, and fight demons with their powers — all at the same time. 

I don’t know what it is.  I have two sisters and we love each other and used to have sister power hugs every holiday when we were all together and now, with all of us over 50, still love each other and our sister power even through its occasional glitches and frayed moments.  I love women — always have- and get what it is about us all that’s so wonderful.  But none of that explains my affection for a television show about women younger than my sons and their do-gooding, loving, thrilling, gorgeous lives.  I’m more of a West Wing/Six Feet Under/Sopranos kind of girl.  Go figure.

I don’t think I’m going to try.  Any time great, brave, committed, generous women are out saving the world – whether they’re Amy, Lauren and Maxine, Cagney and Lacey, CJ, Donna, Abbey and Amy, or Rose, Georgina, Lady Marjory and Mrs. Bridges, it’s a cause for celebration.  So that’s what I’m doing.  Celebrating the charm of the Charmed Ones and glad that they keep me company once in a while.

Sorkin and Sunshine (that ought to get your attention!)

Earned myself a media feast yesterday.  I’d been waiting for weeks for my husband to go with me to see Little Miss Sunshine and he finally admitted that despite rave reviews from both of our sons he just didn’t want to go.  So while he was at class last night I went.  By myself.  And had popcorn for dinner.  Which of course added to the pleasure.  But this film didn’t need any help.  One of our friends told me she was laughing and crying at the same time; NOT laughing THEN crying and not crying from laughter but feeling both emotions at once.  Boy do I get that.

If you live in a family you will love this film.  If you’ve had someone you love drive you nuts with a crazy dream you’ll love it.  AND if you know that, underneath, most families really do love each other and, when it’s really important – actually come through for each other – well – give it a try.  In addition to a lovely story and script it’s so well-acted and directed that it’s effortless.  How a couple of music video directors developed such calm, steady use of a camera I’ll never know.  At the AFI theater, where I saw the film, the two of them offered an on-camera intro.  They’re real grown-ups and pretty no-nonsense and that’s probably part of it. 

BUT that’s far from the end of this happy day — last night got even better.  If you did not see the debut of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip or get a preview DVD from NetFlix find find find someone who TiVo’d it and watch.  Or go here and watch the premiere from the same link.  This is going to be AT LEAST as good as the West Wing.  Really.  The characters are great, the writing is wonderful and the stories don’t go where you think they will.  Whitford and Perry are just lovely, Amanda Peet very cool, ( and don’t we love seeing a woman network president?  Yup, we do)  and Timothy Busfield still playing a sweetheart. Then there’s Steven Weber playing a bad guy.  How cool is that?  From Wings to villainy?

Anyway it was a great night for popular culture and a real brain-feeder.  Try for both.  You’ll be glad.