I tivo Charlie Rose every day. I don't always get to them right away. I use them as radio--while I cook breakfast, clean up, exercise . . .

The great joy of that show is the incredible breadth of ideas and perspectives you hear. I tend to get the most out of the various sorts of artists he has on the show, though those are people I can often hear elsewhere, just not in such depth. (Outside of Fresh Air, the other great source.)

But weeks like this are always special, when most of the world leaders are in NY for the UN assembly, and so many of them stop by his studio for a chat. (It kinda started midweek and will continue through much of next week, if he follows his past pattern.)

In general, politicians are the least interesting guests on his show, but he either culls out the few who are not full of hot air, or perhaps they're not windbags when they're not talking to a domestic audience. These people aren't running for anything here. They do have an agenda with the American public, of course, but most of the ones he has on are smart enough to know they're going to impress us a lot more if they leave the BS at home and just talk candidly. (Or am I just used to American politicians--have they not gotten so slick and full of shit everywhere else?)

It can also be a tough week, because you have to deal with a lot of accents--tougher if you're in the kitchen cooking and trying to listen with one ear and one brain hemisphere, and sometimes the ideas sound a little foreign . . . it's a little more work, but usually worth it.

Tonight, was pure pleasure. The President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a woman I'd never heard of--OK, I didn't even know they had elected a woman, I'm embarassed to admit--was something of a revelation. What an incredibly intelligent person. And such a wise, thoughtful take on everything. She had been tortured by Pinochet's goons, and her father, a general, had been murdered by them, but she spoke about it without anger. She spoke of the horrible anger she'd had in the past, but it was clear from her demeanor that it really was gone.

I think she was most refreshing the way she talked about issues passionately, but with none of the us/them mentality we have in our politics now. In fact, she talked about her frustration reading our press, which she sees as still speaking in a Cold War vocabulary, about good guys and bad guys in her region. She sees those countries struggling to enact economic reforms that will build their economies in the long run, but also improve people's lives, and how difficult that balance is, and how everyone is looking for the right answers. Essentially, she says that there are a lot of well-meaning people trying different approaches down there, and for us to split them down the middle and slap half of them with the goodguy label and half badguy is ludicrous, yet we do it with barely a thought.

She had a lot to say. I can't convey more than a fraction of it, but I'm the richer for having been exposed to her. I can't wait for the rest of the week.

And the book looks pretty damn good, too, from my quick stab, tonight.

Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina came out today, and is already #2 at Amazon, so you're prolly going to be hearing a lot about it.

I checked it out tonight at Denver's great local bookstore Tattered Cover. Really interesting opening, written in Frank's usual fluid style. And I was really glad to read this in the intro:

This book is not intended to be a harangue about George W. Bush or the war in Iraq, though my views will certainly be evident. What it is instead is a critical retracing of the sophisticated steps by which some clever people in the White House, handed an opportunity and a mandate by the shocking events of 9/11, unfurled a brilliantly produced scenario to accomplish a variety of ends . . .

Thank you! As much as our fearless leader irks the hell out of me, I don't really need to spend time on a detailed analysis of how. The man will come and go as a mediocre to horrible president, and I've already lost interest. He's just not an interesting guy. But, the way the media has been co-opted and participates in promoting these preposterous fictions upon us--that's important.

That's exactly what The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are ultimately all about, and that's why they are insanely popular, and brilliant at the same time. (And most of the press still doesn't quite get them--or chuckles along with them, but doesn't get that they are the butt of the joke more than the politicians. Either they don't get it or can't figure out how to change.)

Those shows do it on a daily basis, bit by bit, but so nice to have someone pull the whole picture together.

And what a gutsy move by his publisher to devote 100 pages to a timeline, showing side-by-side what the white house was saying internally, and the alternate reality they were pitching to us. That's worth the price of the book all by itself. (The book says the timeline will be updated continually at his website. It's not live yet, but there's a "coming soon" sign.)

So far, so good. I'll let you know more as I get further.

Meanwhile, he's going to be the guest on Fresh Air on NPR Wednesday.

And here's the PW review:

Starred Review. This blistering j'accuse has vitriol to spare for George Bush—calling him a "spoiled brat" and "blowhard"—and his policies, but its main target is the PR machinery that promoted those policies to the American people. New York Times columnist Rich revisits nearly every Bush administration publicity gambit, including Iraqi WMD claims, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" triumph, the Swift-boating of John Kerry and the writing of fake prowar letters-to-the-editor from soldiers. He uncovers nothing new, but his meticulously researched recap-cum-debunking—complete with appended 80-page time line comparing administration spin to actual events—builds a comprehensive picture of a White House propaganda campaign to bamboozle the public, smear critics, camouflage policy disasters and win the 2002 and 2004 elections through trumped-up security anxieties. Along the way, he pillories a sycophantic media (Bob Woodward gets spanked hard), spineless Democrats and an infotainment culture that happily accommodates the Bush administration's erasure of the line between reality and fiction. Sometimes Rich's critique of Republican politics as cynical image-manipulation goes overboard, as in his "wag the dog" theory of the Iraq war as a Karl Rove electoral maneuver; more often, though, it's on target. The result is a caustic, hard-hitting indictment of the Bush administration, timed to make a splash in the upcoming election campaign. (Sept. 19)

Amazon link here.

Wednesday Update:

Frank was on The Colbert Report last night, and NPR's Fresh Air today (the first 3/4 of the show). Listen to Fresh Air show here.

Comedy Central repeats Colbert endlessly through the next day, and a lot of stations play or replay Fresh Air at night, so you still have time to catch both. He was great on both.

(And if you watch Colbert, tune in two minutes early to see the preview on The Daily Show. Nothing to do with Frank, but it involves Stephen's word-a-day calendar, which I won't give away, but it still has me snickering just remembering.)

OK, maybe I get the situation after all.

For years, I've been flumoxed about the pathetic state of network news: not what's wrong with it, but why the net execs don't get what's wrong with it.

They are well aware that something is wrong. Ratings have declined rapidly for several years, and the story is monumentally worse demographically. The average age for the nightly network newscasts is now something like 60, which barely even seems possible. (Median age of 60 would be bad enough, but average? That means for every 20 year-old watching, there are three 80 year-olds, or six 70 year-olds. Unbelievable. The number of young adults watching is trending toward zero.

That's a huge problem for the nets now--because advertisers don't pay much for old folks--and a life or death problem for them in the medium run, because as Les Moonves admitted in so many words last night on Charlie Rose, those viewers are going to be dying off, and if we don't attract some young ones, it's over.

That viewing pattern seems pretty obvious: old people who grew up with decent news shows established a lifelong habit and many continue. Younger people with other options who tune in are repulsed by what they see and choose not to watch.

So what's the problem with the shows? It seems so freaking obvious, yet they've tried a million different fixes and they never seem to address the obvious one: they're shitty storytellers. I mean, really shitty. I only check in occasionally these days--like yes, I did check Katie Couric out, and she was fine, better than fine, actually, I think she's really good. And they tried to change the show surrounding her, making it magaziney, more feature pieces and all that, but that didn't do diddly, because it's these same retched cliche-ridden pieces that tell us almost nothing, but in a magazine format. And it really doesn't matter how wonderful Katie is introducing all this crap; at some point we still have to watch the crap, and why would we?

The correspondents just seem to rely on all the same tired lines night after night, stringing together lame conventional wisdom and expressing it with a string of cliches, but worst of all, they try so hard to make it cute, or sometimes to make it cool, or sometimes funny--none of which 90% of them have any talent at. And most nauseating of all, they feel this perpetual need to tie every freaking story up with a little bow: a final line or series of lines that "puts it all in perspective," or some such twaddle, like ". . . in one small town, they are learning never to forget -- but sometimes not to remember either" or some horrible reach to sound profound or something.

For me, the defining moment of modern news was--I hate to say this, but it really was 9/11. But not in the sense that it was a watershed event or it was so important that it changed our world or blah blah blah with that nonsense. I mean that for about 24 hours, they QUIT trying to be so damn profound or cute or . . . over-produced, I guess. There was no title to the tragedy yet, and no theme music. Those are obvious hallmarks, but those are just the symptoms. What was really different, was that nobody tried to do these damn packed "stories"--they just said what the hell was happening. It was wonderful. They stopped doing the gross shit they normally do and just spoke candidly about what was happening, what they had learned, what they were finding out. No wannabee-profound bows at the end, just stripped away to no nonsense reporting. And to my utter amazement, they were really good at it.

I actually dreamed, briefly, that they would both notice the difference, and notice that it was actually much better than when they were trying to hard--or when they just didn't have the time to package it.

For a long time I thought the problem was that they were just pretty shitty storytellers, and I couldn't get why the editors or execs or whomever could not see that. (Although I wonder how much of the problem is that the "anchors" got way too much power. Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings were all made the top editors of their shows, as well. That's almost always a problem. If the people writing or creating are the same people editing--I think that fails to grasp the concept of what an editor is: someone standing a few steps outside the creation-process, who can more objectively assess, and tell you when it's not working.)

But still, why couldn't someone--say, Les Moonves--not see the problem of shitty storytelling and just tell them.

And then I saw him on Charlie Rose, addressing it, and saying off-handedly once again that the key to the news is just like sports or fiction or movies or whatever: great storytelling. And it dawned on me suddenly that he gets that, but maybe doesn't get that they're trying too hard. Maybe the format of three-minutes of spoken word is hard to tell much of a story, and/or the correspondents aren't that good at it, and they're trying to tell a beginning middle and end to something without the space to do that, and so they are getting these incredibly hokey attempts. They're OVERtelling it. They're trying to end every freaking piece with some brilliant capper line like it's the great american novel--and by the way, not noticing that most great novels don't end with thundering profundity lines--and they're screwing up by pushing the storytelling thing too hard and just producing really shitty ones.

Maybe someone just needs to tell them, "Look. It doesn't need to be clever. It doesn't need to be cute. It doesn't need a bunch of yucks--and by the way, you're not actually a comedian. It doesn't need to be revelatory every time. Just let it be what it is, tell it like it is, don't try to make it intense or dramatic or solemn or A Lesson. Just tell the freaking story naturally. Quit trying to jazz everything up."

I get the sense that they have gotten the message that it's about great storytelling, so they're overtelling every story, the first instinct to really bad writing. Somebody please tell them to stop.

Just a thought before I go.

Listening to 60 Minutes as I get my apartment ready for my mini convalescence. (Over the top anal on that score. Got a little nursing station for my ex, with ice packs, medication, and the assortment of remotes. And I covered every facet and refrigerator door plus my alarm cock and shouts with big sheets of paper labelled in thick magic marker: "NO WATER!" Terrified I'm going to wake up groggy and forget. Or take a show, so damn thirsty and wondering why I hadn't gotten drink, so I tilt me head back for a warm but refreshing fill-up. Better not happen. Or I'll be OFF schedule!)

God. A report from Bob Simon, who has always been hard for me to stomach, but the segment is puns and cliches and little cutesisms almost end to end. Interesting material--aside from being a total rah-rah for the oil industry, with a bit of the other side at the end--but who can listen past all that hokum? Who the hell wants to?

He's almost as bad as Dan Rather.

The worst thing about the invention of 60 Minutes II seems to have been that they packed it with horrifying correspondents, and presumably producers, and then merged them into the original show once the spinoff died. Yes, Simon already contributed to the old show, but mercifully rarely. Now they've got the awful people on there all the time.

Sad.

Only thing scarier, I checked out an episode of Love Monkey. Aggressively vile. Who will be punished?

Here's the surprise: I am not disgusted at Time Magazine's person of the year. I actually kind of like it.

Still disgusted that anyone acts like it matters.

Was Time Magazine ever . . . good?

How did they get in charge of person of the year? Yeah, I know that one, they started it. But why did anyone ever care? At some point, they must have actually been relevant.

So hard to picture now.

Of course they can do any cover they want. Who cares.

Our media. Ugh. Yet another example of our revolting lapdog media. Why on earth do they go along with it? They actually act like it's a big deal, like the person these bozos choose actually is the person of the year.

Can you imagine anyone less qualified to have their finger on any kind of cultural pulse than Time? Kind of comical. Dork Of The Year, sure. But person?

OK, here's a compromise: Time gets to choose Dork Of The Year, someone else gets Person. Sounds fair. Let's see if they'll go for it.

Hey. Just wrapping up writing for the night, and making a blog-free-weekdays exception to pass along this quick but important Columbine news flash my assistant sent me tonight:

From Wednesday morning's Denver Post:

The Colorado Supreme Court today agreed with The Denver Post that items seized from the homes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are criminal justice records, which clears the way for their release if Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink determines the release would benefit the public.

The Denver Post is seeking notes written by Wayne Harris about his son Eric and Dylan Klebold; medical records of the teenagers; the audio and videotapes they made; and their writings, including school papers, notations in the Columbine yearbook and the diaries.

Release of the items was strongly opposed by the Harris and Klebold families and by Mink, who must now decide whether to release the records.

If Mink refuses to release some or all the items requested, The Post can seek a judicial review of that refusal, said Steve Zansberg, The Post's lawyer.

Nice! I had faith the court would do the right thing. And unanimously.

I do not have faith that the sheriff will release the material -- at least The Basement Tapes -- but I still believe the lower courts will.

(And in a weird twist, the attorney, Steve Zansberg represented me last winter when the Air Force subpoenaed me and a bunch of other reporters for our notes in a rape court martial. Great guy. And I watched his performance in front of the court on this case. Very impressive.)

Don't you just love the Times Magazine?

I have subscriptions to about six different magazines and I can't even bring myself to flip through them most months. (A friend picked a copy of Vanity Fair off the coffee table last week and sniffed all the perfume ads. That's the most anyone has gotten out of it in awhile.)

But the Times--as dry as I find the newspaper (with brilliant exceptions here and there), that magazine has some incredible writing week in, week out.

And interesting stories. Yesterday afternoon and this morning, I lolled my way through the wonderful Chasing Ground, and just got started on just got started on Meet the Life Hackers, which may end up being even more relevant to my life.

Rather than try to resummarize, I'll just give you the teasers directly from the (online) magazine:

Chasing Ground:

Whether or not there's a real-estate bubble hardly matters for a large company like Toll Brothers. The mega-developer is hungrily buying up land for its market-tested luxury homes and transforming the landscape of America's haves.

Meet the Life Hackers:

Can anyone find a way to make your constantly beeping and dinging computer leave you alone and let you work? Inside the nascent field of interruption science.

I was just directed to this interesting site called The Trenchcoat Chronicles (tag line, "Poking society in the eye with a sharp pointy stick") and oddly enough, the latest post was about Columbine.

One of those whacked out readers writing to him praising the killers. Ugh.

I just had a brief email exchange with the author of the site, and he lamented that "unfortunately guys like that are an everyday occurence at my site." Double ugh.

Luckily they're not around here, for whatever reason. I've had a few, but rarely.

What I do get--as I pointed out to him, and realized I was way overdue in mentioning here--is a whole lot of high school and college kids emailing me asking for help with their reports. Usually about one a week. From the weirdest places in the world.

It's a minor hassle responding to them all, but there's also nothing in this world that makes me quite as happy. (And luckily, I got tired enough of repeating myself a few years back that I created The Columbine Almanac, which I can usually direct them to, and which I use all the time myself, to find the evidence I need as I write.

One girl actually entered a school contest and advanced up to the state level (in Oregon, if I remember), and her family flew her out here to interview me and Frank DeAngelis, though I was unfortunately out of town that week and had to do mine by phone. She asked great questions, though. (Much better than most journos I know. Seriously. Sadly.)

I wince sometimes when I get these requests, but always makes me smile, too.