By Bob Gaydos

Bret Baier  interrupting Kamala Harris.

    Where to start? Let’s go with the obvious. When you are a “journalist“ interviewing the vice president of the United States, who also happens to be the first ever female vice president of the United States, you don’t interrupt her in the middle of her comment and stick your hand in her face.

    It’s rude and disrespectful to the office and the person. Heck, it’s rude to anyone. It doesn’t matter if she’s not sticking to the script. It’s not her script anyway. It’s yours. Let her answer and then follow up with a question if you’re not satisfied with what you heard.

   Journalism 101. Something rarely practiced on Fox News because, as they have admitted in court, they are not a news organization, but rather, an entertainment network, a fact too many people still don’t know. That means most of the people who work there act like journalists, saying whatever they please whether it’s true or not, and most of their guests follow a script that both interviewer and interviewee know very well.

      Kamala Harris is not part of that chummy Fox club, Bret Baier, who drew the job of interviewing her, knew that full well. And she is running for president against Fox’s favorite fascist and political candidate who can do no wrong, Donald Trump.

      So Baier went into the Harris interview in a “gotcha” mode. It backfired. She got him. She chastised him for interrupting her, completed her statement, called Baier out on running a clip that did not address the issue of the discussion and concluded with a detailed and accurate description of the pathetic candidate Trump is today. Definitely off script.

     Baier should’ve just let her answer the question. But see, that’s the problem when you’re not a real journalist. At Fox, everyone pretty much knows what questions to ask and what answers are going to be given. They get in trouble when outliers like Harris agree to appear with them. She’s a trained prosecutor used to arguing the facts of the case.

     Baier should’ve known that. Maybe he forgot. Or maybe he underestimated his interviewee. That’s rule number one in political interviewing. Know whom you’re dealing with. Number two is know the issues well and what you want to find out. Number three is be polite, but firm, if necessary.

      The goal should be to provide viewers or readers of the story to follow a better picture of the candidate. What he or she stands for on the issues and how well he or she explains those positions. Is he confident? Is she comfortable? Is he nervous? Is she believable?

       Baier actually accomplished all that in spite of himself. Because he was so bad at trying to sabotage Harris and because she is such an experienced, skilled politician, the real Kamala came through. Controlled and confident. Comfortable and believable.

       That’s not always the case. I remember an interview with a local congressional candidate, a political novice, who had difficulty explaining her position on some key issue. In an interview with the newspaper editorial board, her first answer was vague and evasive. Someone asked her to expand on it. Same result. Again, someone asked politely could she please explain to us a little more clearly, so we could understand and write about it accurately. Not much better and growing obviously uncomfortable. When someone started to ask just one more time, tears actually appeared in the candidate’s eyes. We relented. We knew what we needed to know. We endorsed the other guy. Polite-but-firm had worked.

        There’s a lot of quasi-journalism going on today. Especially on television. Newspapers are disappearing every day and people have no clue what’s going on in their own hometown. Social media is not a reliable alternative. The truth is a constantly moving target. This is how candidates like Trump survive. Someone needs to come up with a solution fast.

       I don’t know Bret Baier’s background or training in journalism. I don’t really care, because he sold his soul when he agreed to take a paycheck from Fox News to peddle lies about Donald Trump and his MAGA cult. That goes for all the Foxies.

      Not tooting any horns here, but taking the license granted me when described as a curmudgeon at my retirement from newspapers, I must report that, over many years, in interviewing governors, senators, congressmen, mayors, state officials, legislators, judges, countless local officials and business leaders, never did I or any of my colleagues ever put a hand in the face of the person we were interviewing and interrupt them.

     It’s not respectful or professional and, as Baier found out, can be counterproductive.

     rjgaydos@gmail.com

(Updated from a year ago.)
By Bob Gaydos

What TV showed 23 years ago.

Twenty-three years ago today, like millions of other Americans, I was preparing to go to work. The boys were off to school. It was a sky-blue September day. The news was on the TV, a practice of mine, in case there was something I needed to know about before I got to the paper.

   There was.

   The image on the TV screen froze me and shook the sleep out of my head. Oh, my God!

     What was I seeing? They replayed it.

     I quickly got myself together and headed off to work. But I stopped for a few moments in a nearby park to gather my thoughts and process what I had just witnessed. The radio news informed me that, in addition to the two planes flying into the Twin Towers in New York City, a plane had crashed in a field in Pennsylvania and another had hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

     September 11.

     After about an hour of processing reports on what had happened, a meeting was held and it was decided that The Times Herald-Record would publish a special edition that afternoon, the first one, I believe, in the morning newspaper’s history.  My job was to write an editorial explaining what had happened. Or at least trying to explain it. About 500 words. “We need it in an hour.”

     I don’t have a copy of that editorial and I’m sure it was mostly emotion. I do remember writing, “America was at war.” 

       The world changed that day. America changed. We the people had been attacked. We were one nation, under the spell of the dynamic leadership of New York’s mayor, Rudy Giuliani. America’s mayor. We grieved together, healed together and called for retribution together, against whoever it was who had attacked us.

          So we started a war against, not the country where the terrorists responsible for the attacks came from (Saudi Arabia): but against a country (Iraq) that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. We justified it by claiming Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” that it could use against someone, maybe us. That was a lie our government told us. We found out later.

           Then we went after the actual attackers in the mountains of Afghanistan. We actually found and killed their leader, then decided to stay in Afghanistan for some 20 years, trying to save it from itself.

            In those ensuing years, Giuliani went from “America’s Mayor” to embarrassingly ridiculous mouthpiece for every lie put forth by Donald Trump, including the lie that he lost his re-election bid to President Joe Biden because the election was rife with vote fraud.

             Also in the ensuing 23 years, the Republican Party has steadily turned itself from a party that espoused defense of all Americans into a party of an aggrieved white minority whose leaders in Congress legislate only in the interests of wealthy donors who contribute to their campaigns. Into a cult that believes and repeats Trump’s lies or, worse, repeats them for political gain or out of fear.

           Whatever galvanized us into one people 23 years ago (a common enemy I suppose) started disintegrating as soon as we started demonizing any group of people, different from us (Muslims) as the enemy. “Us” became more vague.

            The World Trade Center was rebuilt, Trump exposed the fear and bigotry at the center of the Republican Party and gave free rein to the fissures hiding within American society.

             The FBI now says the greatest threat to America is from domestic terrorism. Not Iraq. Or Afghanistan. The threat comes from the white supremacists groups who organized the assault in Washington and still threaten any who reject their cause.

       In 1870, cartoonist Walt Kelly coined a phrase in his Pogo comic strip: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

       Indeed.

       Not so long ago, on Jan. 6, 2021, I once again stared transfixed at a scene on television. Am I really seeing this? Thousands of virtually all white Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as president. Some were ready to hang Vice President Mike Pence to prevent him from fulfiling his duties. People died. Republicans refused to accept the election result and many even claimed there was no riot that sent them running for their lives.

          Today, the war to preserve American freedom and democracy is being fought right here at home. Fortunately, millions of Americans stand on the side of what’s right. Many still remember how we felt as a unified nation in the wake of the attacks 23 years ago. Trump, running for president again, and others who supported him in his attempted coup are being called to account in the courts. Many have already been sent to prison for the attack on the Capitol. Many more, including Trump, must follow.

           I’m not sure I”ll be here to mark the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, but whether I am or not, I pray the U.S. Capitol is still proudly standing. Electing Kamala Harris president this year will make that more likely.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zest-of-orange.com. He was editorial page editor of The Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., for 23 years.

By Bob Gaydos

Rapper Lil Jon juices, the Democratic national convention.

 Chicago (cue music)

     “Mr. Chairman! The great state of Euphoria, where men are proud fathers and women are allowed to come out of the kitchen and be corporate executives, where we teach real history in our schools and don’t ban books, where the concept of equal rights is embraced, where LGBTQ spells freedom, where no one is above the law, where the air is clean and we like it that way … the state of rock and roll and hip hop and anything Willie Nelson does, where there are no white, brown or black jobs, where veterans are respected and democracy cherished, the state of presidents and patriots, poets and perfect sunsets … Euphoria, where the right to vote and the right to choose are sacred, where we love our country and honor our commitments, the state full of hope for the future of America, proudly casts all 47 of its votes for the next president of the United States, the first black/Asian woman president of the United States, the tough, young, smart prosecutor who we think once went to school here or at least we wish she had, the current Vice President of the United States … KAMALA HARRIS!”

 Milwaukee

     “Mr. Chairman, the state of Submission, where real men carry guns and all women carry babies, where we protect our children from pornographic literature and communist ideas, where people know their place and the only votes that count are the ones we say count, the state that knows best what is best for its citizens, casts its however many votes you say we have for the overweight, old sex offender with the orange hair and big wad of tape on his ear who was just convicted of 34 felonies, is accused of attempting a coup, is buddies with Vladimir Putin and wants to protect America from sharks, social security and windmills … the man who once bankrupted a casino and said Covid would pass quickly, the great leader of our party … the former… umm, Trump.”

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Vice President Kamala Harris waves as she is introduced during the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.’s Grand Boulé,in Indianapolis.

    Much as the politicians and those whose job it is to write about them think there is nothing else worth writing and reading about in the world, they’re wrong. But they can dominate the news coverage through sheer persistence and repetition, as witness the recent non-stop “reporting” on how Joe Biden was slipping mentally as well as physically and was too old to serve another term as president and needed to step aside as a presidential candidate for someone — anyone — younger.

     Donald Trump, nearly as old, clearly slipping and never close to Biden in terms of intellect and knowledge of how stuff actually works (never mind moral compass) pretty much got a pass through all this because the media had already decided what the storyline was.

     Well, Biden flipped the story on them when they were napping on a Sunday afternoon. He apparently caught Republicans napping, too, because all they had been talking about for weeks and had highlighted at their crowning of Trump at their nominating convention was beating “Old Joe.”

     No mo. Joe’s out, Kamala’s in it to win it and much of the media is now busy trying to come up with a storyline on why the vice president just can’t beat Trump.

      Hotshot political writer talking to a colleague working at a desk close by: “Harris? Really? I mean she’s too … well, she’s not … well, you know, she doesn’t … and isn’t she too … well, yes, as you say, Democrats are acting weird and rallying behind her. Like, all of them, even the lefties. Wow! How’d they do that? And they seem excited. And she’s getting lots of positive social media reaction outside of the MAGA sites. And she’s raising a ton of money already. A lot! Of course, she is smarter and much younger than Trump. Then there’s the abortion issue that Trump bragged about … but Republicans are now trying to hide that. And there’s the women’s vote, the black vote, the black women’s vote, the young people’s vote. Heck, the Asian-American vote. … You know, despite what our polls say, Trump might actually have a problem beating her because, well, you know how he talks about women and Harris won’t put up with it. After all, she’s a former prosecutor and he’s a convicted felon and a sexual offender and she’s sent a lot of them to prison. She also went after phony, for-profit colleges, like the one Trump ran. And, really, he did take all those documents. And he does lie constantly and isn’t too bright and rambles a lot. Plus, she keeps talking about preserving democracy the way Biden did and a lot of people like that and Trump has called us “fake news” in the past. A lot. Remember? And now Republicans are whining that Biden tricked them? No fair! That he should be forced to run because he said he was? Are they kidding? How would that work? Or that he should now step down as president? But he never said he couldn’t do the job and no one else did, just that he’s too old for four more years. Which you could also say about Trump, right? You ever see him walking down a ramp? Scary. And Trump’s been talking about sharks and electric boats and abandoning NATO and Ukraine and having the Justice Department go after his “enemies,” which doesn’t sound good. And that J.D. Vance he picked to run as his vice president? He once called Trump “America’s Hitler”! Now he’s acting like Trump’s new Rudy Giuliani. He’s changed his name three times. Forget George Santos. Is there a bigger phony around? Maybe we should recheck Vance’s “hillbilly” story. …

     “I mean, Biden has done a good job and he’s a proud man with a long record of service who has suffered a lot of personal loss in his life and it takes a lot of humility, especially because people think you’re too old, to step aside, to pass the torch to ‘a younger generation,’ as he said. To finish the job. To preserve democracy, as he also said. After all, Harris can run on his record because it’s their record, right? And it’s a good one. Economy? Foreign policy? All good. He even worked out a bill — bipartisan — to address the Mexican border issue, but Republicans killed it because Trump told them to. He didn’t want Biden to have it as a campaign issue. How cheesy, right? And Trump’s got nothing real to offer but revenge. That and tax breaks for rich people. I mean, did Mexico ever build that wall? Did we ever see his ear? And he’s already attacking Harris personally. Calling her crazy. Mispronouncing her name. Petty. … So, whaddya think? At this point, it looks like Republicans are really stuck with Trump, right? I mean, he’s got all his MAGAs, but that’s not enough to get elected without cheating and the guy is really old and showing signs of slipping, isn’t he? I mean, he never really was all there, anyway, right? And Old Joe really set Kamala up great, like overnight, didn’t he? Slick. She’s got a lot of positive energy going. Money rolling in. And she is the VP.  Hmmm … Hey, thanks for listening … 

          “Hey, boss! I think I’ve got a new angle on a storyline for Kamala. …”

rjgaydos@gmail.com