I’ll get to Rick Sanchez later in this post. But first, a few words about the testimony of BP President Tony Hayward this morning before the the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. As this is written more than one hour into the Congressional hearing, Hayward has yet to utter a word about his company’s massive blunders. Instead, committee members are giving their usual speeches—posturing and politicizing.

Chairman Bart Stupak began the hearing by droning on about its purpose. We know the purpose, for God’s sake. As the Democrat’s Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, he going to need a speech therapist before heading out on the campaign trail. But Stupak is downright dynamic compared to California Democrat Henry Waxman, who continues his campaign to become the most boring person ever elected to Congress. Today, he gave an endless recitation of every news story and revelation since the spill occured 50-plus days ago.

So far, however, the leading contestant in the sweepstakes for the most stupid comments is GOP Representative Joe Barton of Texas—a state that is not far behind South Carolina, Illinois and Louisiana in electing politicians, who require zippers on their mouths. Barton today accused President Obama of shaking down BP by pressuring the mega-corporation to commit a minimum of $20-billion dollars into an escrow fund to compensate the “small people” for the loss of their livlihoods and to pay for the damage inflicted on Gulf Coast seafood industry, marshes, beaches and wildlife. The use of the term, “small people,” was a gaffe by the Swedish speaking Chairman of BP’s board. He has since apologized and promised to also compensate medium and large people.

Anyway, Congressman Barton’s remarks were so dumb he broke my stupidity measuring scale. In addition to describing  the escrow fund as a “shakedown,” he actually apologized to BP for President Obama’s insistence that a fund be established to insure that Gulf Coast residents get paid for their losses. 

The loss of my stupidity measuring device is a setback because the Louisiana legislature launched a comeback yesterday to regain its title as the nation’s stupid politics champion. Lawmakers revived a bill that will allow concealed weapons in church. WWJP. What would Jesus pack.

That brings me to Rich Sanchez time. My Sanchez obsession is not personal. He’s probably a nice guy. Then the cameras light up and he represents everything that is wrong with television news. Sanchez is not a journalist. He is a performer playing the role of a journalist. It goes back to his days in Miami at the same local station where my career as a television investigative reporter began, which was a few years before Rick’s arrival on the scene. I learned of Rick’s style in one of those “You are not going to believe this guy” phone calls from a former colleague. I didn’t believe, but now do after watching his role playing CNN antics.

Remarkably, though, Sanchez got out-done this week by a substitute anchor on his afternoon program, Rick’s List. Sitting in for the vacationing Sanchez was Drew Griffin, CNN’s Senior “Investigative” Correspondent—a position I held for ten years, ten years ago (I know I could have said a “decade ago” to avoid repetition, but I like it the way I wrote it).

It’s probably impolite to criticize my successor. So what? I will do it anyway, motivated by ”investigative” reporter Griffin’s effort yesterday to go for the President’s jugular by repeating  a story that has been around for several weeks—namely that the White House tried to discourage two candidates from opposing Obama-favored hopefuls in Democratic primary elections in Colorado and Pennsylvania. Discussions about possible Administration jobs if the guys dropped out of the races wre described by Griffin as “Chicago-style  politics.” To re-enforce the characterization, he did a live interview with the Executive Director of Chicago’s Better Government Association, a watchdog group with an impeccable reputation for holding public officials accountable. Unfortunately for Griffin, the BGA representative refused to take the bait. Like every other non-partisan commentators, he described the contacts as a routine effort to maintain the Democratic majority in the Senate. Obama is, after all, the titular head of the party. Griffin’s frustration was visible as he rephrased his questions to elicit the anwer he wanted. Bad reporting, I thought. 

My criticism of Griffin is more an indictment of CNN for the network’s failure to hold him to a higher standard of journalism. My successor has blown other stories. Drew drew (man, I’m on a roll) wrong conclusions when he joined forces with former Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, who tried to win votes by politicizing Hurricane Katrina tragedies. Foti first accused  Dr. Anna Pou of killing elderly patients at Saint Rita’s hospital in New Orleans. While waiting or evacuation, she prescribed pain medicine to ease the suffering of terminally ill patients. A grand jury refused to indict her.

Griffin also jumped on Foti’s bandwagon in his investigative reports of the owners of a nursing home in which 35 residents died before rescuers got to them. The operators of the facility were eventually tried and exonnerated. And finally, Griffin was responsible for erroneous reports about voter registration fraud by ACORN, the African American political activist group that went into bankruptcy defending itself on a variety of allegations.

So the old codger strikes again. I know I sound like a world class whiner in criticizing CNN and its reporters. But the network has retreated to irrelevance. And that is unfortunate in an era when responsible television reporting is so badly needed. I guess I’m living in the past.  

Back to the congressional hearings. I need a good afternoon nap.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.