I doubt the embarrassment that CNN causes me is grounds for a lawsuit. Too bad. The network where I raked muck for ten years as Senior Investigative Correspondent makes decisions that give journalism a bad name, as well as making me cringe when admitting I worked there. It could be worse—like having Fox “News,” aka the Republican Propaganda Network, on my résumé.

CNN’s latest gaffe—a stupid stumble shared by Fox—was inaccurately reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned the Affordable Care Act.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-cnn-fox-flub-supreme-court-health-care-ruling-20120628,0,7626860.htmlstory

How does CNN  screw-up reporting one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions in recent years? Fear, probably. With its viewership at the lowest level in twenty years, CNN feels intense pressure to beat its competitors—even if only by a few seconds. Except for a few people in the network’s newsroom, most television viewers give a shit who is first. They do care about receiving accurate information. Unfortunately, panic and desperation by television producers breeds horrible decisions. 

Although CNN”s idiocy will haunt the network for awhile, it gained a bit of redemption this past weekend by exposing attempts by Penn State University to cover-up the Sandusky sex scandal.     

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/iteam/2012/07/cnn-boots-affordable-care-act-reporting-but-scores-scoop-on-penn-state-e-mails

Sadly, CNN “scoops” are few and far between—mainly because a sizeable portion of the network’s reporting staff has been replaced by paid pundits who pontificate about politics and the nation’s state of affairs. Unfortunately, nobody I know of keeps a scorecard to determine the accuracy of the pontifications and prophecies by so-called commentators. It would seem easy to do since these ”experts” are so predictable observant viewers can almost lip-sync their comments.

My CNN tenure spanned from 1989 to 1999, a time when the network was willing to spend substantial money on substantive reporting. I was reminded today of how far CNN has sunk while reviewing video of a couple of 1990’s exposés I will show to an LSU continuing education class later this month. I realize it’s egomaniacal to be impressed with my own work, but I was damn good—thanks in large part to a team  of producers, researchers and the network’s commitment to quality journalism that no longer exists.

CNN is not alone in diminishing the quality of television reporting. I’m finishing Douglas Brinkley’s biography, Cronkite, which does a pretty good job of telling what viewers got in the heyday of CBS News and its broadcast news competitors. To the detriment of the nation, much has changed in the television business. Walter Cronkite’s venue was not perfect by any measure, but he and his staff knew enough to turn to page two before erroneously announcing a Supreme Court ruling.

Maybe the high court will one day deliver a decision allowing old muckrakers to collect damages from networks that force them to say they are retired short-order cooks instead of enduring the embarrassment of admitting they are former TV reporters.         

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

This week’s edition of Newsweek features an “exclusive” story under the two page headline, “Scapegoat.” The lengthy article relates to corrupt activities by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Boston—particularly during the criminal reign of Irish mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger, a vicious murderer-turned-informant who was captured in 2011 after being on the lam for fourteen years.

The so-called scapegoat named in the story is imprisoned FBI agent John Connolly. He’s serving 40 years in federal prison for an array of crimes ranging from accepting bribes to second-degree murder, all of which stemmed from his relationship with Whitey Bulger. In Newsweek telephone interview, the disgraced agent claims, “The Justice Department is going to do everything within its power to try to make sure the full story never comes out.”

That may be true, though I doubt it. What I do know is revelations in the Bulger case couldn’t get much worse than a previously disclosed pattern of corruption involving other FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Boston over a span of 25 years. I don’t like to use technical language, but for Connolly to whine that he is a scapegoat is pure unadulterated bullshit. It’s the equivalent of describing Bin Laden as a scapegoat of 9/11 terrorism.

I first encountered John Connolly in 198o, a dozen years before he was finally exposed as a rogue, convicted and sentenced to prison. I was then working as an investigative reporter for WCVB, Boston’s ABC affiliate. My story was part of a series of reports about the reliability of informants. I attempted question Connolly regarding his tactics in dealing with snitches. My ambush interview attempt placed me on the FBI’s Ten Most Disliked Reporters list.

Connolly: “I can’t make any comment on it—none whatsoever.”

As I later wrote in a non-best selling memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, my audacity in challenging an FBI agent earned me the enmity of Boston’s top federal prosecutor. 

United States Attorney Edward Harrington accused me of being a “tool of organized crime” because I questioned Connolly’s tactics in pursuit of a notorious art thief named Myles Connor, who was accused of double murder in a case in which he had no motive and evidence was so thin that prosecutors offered get-out-of-prison-free cards to the worst kinds of vicious criminals. “Sure, I’ve beaten, robbed, maimed and killed,” they testified. “But I would never tell a lie.” Connor was eventually acquitted.

The U.S. prosecutor’s portrayal of me was because I committed the unpardonable transgression of ambushing Agent Connolly to question him about an attempt to recruit a prison escapee as an informant in order to frame a public official. After refusing comment, Connolly hightailed it down the street like a fleeing Mafia figure.

Twenty-two years later, my suspicions about the agent’s misconduct were confirmed on a much bigger scale in the worst informant scandal in FBI history. But Connolly’s corrupt legacy didn’t end there.

In November 2008, he was convicted of Second Degree murder in a mob hit of former World Jai Alai President, John B. Callahan whose body was found in a car trunk at Miami International Airport. 

Connolly’s convictions related to his friendship with James (Whitey) Bulger, a gang leader in the South Boston Irish neighborhood where the agent grew up. Bulger paid bribes to the Connolly for leaking information to him of ongoing FBI investigations, as well as identifying cooperating witnesses. The relationship between Connolly and Bulger was the basis of the 2006 Academy Award winning movie, The Departed.

John Connolly was a protégé of another rogue FBI agent, Paul Rico who helped frame four innocent men in a 1967 mob murder. It turned out that a Rico informant was the actual triggerman. Even though the agent and other lawmen knew the snitch was lying, he was the main witness against the innocent men. Rico’s misconduct remained a secret for almost three decades. Meantime, two of the defendants died in prison, and the other pair  served more than thirty years.

Ironically, the prosecutor in the case was Edward Harrington, the U.S. Attorney who called me a “tool of organized crime.” Truth of the frame-up finally emerged in August, 2007, when a federal Judge ordered the government to pay $101-million in damages to the wrongly convicted men and/or their surviving families.

Following retirement from the FBI, Paul Rico became head of security for World Jai Alai. And in the course of the Connolly investigation, Rico was linked to the murder of another pari-mutuel company executive.

A year before John Callahan was killed, Roger Wheeler was shot to death in the parking lot of an exclusive Tulsa, Oklahoma golf club. Whitey Bulger associate, John Martorano, admitted pulling the trigger. Former FBI agent Rico allegedly arranged the contract killing. in January 2004, prior to Rico’s case going to trial, Connolly’s mentor died at the age of 78.

Whitey Bulger’s trial for multiple murders is scheduled for November. In claiming a cover-up, Connolly accuses the feds of doing everything possible to avoid testimony that would be embarrassing to officials not already linked to corruption in Boston. According to Newsweek, some legal observers are also suspicious of the Justice Department’shandling of the case.

“The prosecution of Bulger is being carefully orchestrated,” says Harvey Silverglate, a renowned Boston criminal-defense attorney and author who has written about the case. Silverglate uses the word “cover-up” to describe the prosecution’s motives, adding, “If they wanted to convict Bulger swiftly, they could have tried him in California on gun-possession charges. Would have been an open-and-shut case. He’d have received a 30-year sentence. Or in Oklahoma, where one of the murders occurred; they have the death penalty. But the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston is not about to let this case out from under its control. Because then details might come out that show a pattern of secrecy and cover-up going back generations.”

Harvey Silverglate and I are longtime good friends. Indeed, I interviewed him for the aforementioned 1980 exposé in which I confronted John Connolly. And ever since, I have consulted Harvey on issues dealing with the criminal justice system. He even gave my book a nice plug. But I disagree with my friends Newsweek comments about the location of Bulger’s trial. I believe the families of victims he murdered and/or ordered killed deserve to see him face trial in the city where the crimes occured.

I don’t mean to take too much credit for my early story about Connolly, but I can’t help but wonder if some of Bulger’s victims would still be alive if the Justice Department had taken heed of the agent’s misconduct in 1980. Instead, he was honored with a decoration two weeks following my report for his work in securing convictions of other Boston mobsters—all of whom were Whitey’s competitors in the crime business.

Now, ain’t that a coincidence?

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career. 

Forty years ago this week—June 17, 1972—five burglars with links to the Committee to Re-elect the President were caught inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington’s Watergate office complex. The bungled “second-rate burglary” changed the course of history and brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon. 

The Watergate scandal also altered the course of my career—a boost that took me from local obscurity to near national obscurity. As result of benevolent coincidence and serendipitous circumstance, I managed to surf the Watergate tsunami and even stayed aboard during its ebbing tide. In a span of three decades, I collected multiples of major national journalism awards—anyone of which would validate the careers of most television reporters.

 Sadly,  journalism as a whole has not fared nearly as well as I did during the intervening  40 years. From a lofty position of prestige in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the news media’s reputation for giving context to truth-telling has plunged into a state of distrust. And by and large, truth is the only purpose of a free press.

Instead of digging,  contemporary journalism plays a game of “gotcha” that interprets “mis-speak” as investigative reporting. Presidential spokesman Jay Carney, a former reporter, bemoaned the lack of context earlier this week.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/11/obama-private-sector-reporting_n_1587465.html

In less gentle terms, Carney was saying a moron should be able to understand the context of the President’s statement that the economy’s private sector was “doing fine.” It was okay in comparison to the public sector.

As a matter of balance, I also need to note that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been victimized by ”gotcha” journalism, the most notable being his portrayal of corporations as people. It’s a bad description in today’s environment, but still accurate in context. Just ask the U.S. Supreme Court.

In fairness to present day reporters, I will concede that most are just lazy rather than morons—a concession I make despite the great imitations done by personalities populating Fox “News.” 

Anyway, before continuing to whine about everybody else, I should provide bona fides and  brag about my own professional exploits, which actually is the main purpose of this blog as well as a cheap way of hawking my memoir—Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.  

Back in June 1972, I was laboring in anonymity in its truest sense as a fledgling investigative reporter at a radio station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana—far from the hue and cry of the unfolding Watergate political scandal in Washington D.C. And, yes, there were radio investigative reporters in that era. Sober fifteen months, I was trying to redeem myself at WJBO, the station that fired me following a three day drunken bender that ended in February 1971 with me sitting forlornly on a New Orleans curbside holding onto a an empty wine bottle.

Afer nine months in exile trying to salvage my career at another smaller station, WJBO rehired me based on the rumor that as a result corking the bottle, I was conquering the habit of delivering newscasts in unknown tongues. Having been stripped of the dual jobs as News Director and talk show host, I tried to be useful by doing more than simply reading blood and guts reports, stories gathered from newswires and attending press conferences.

So it was that I evolved into an investigative reporter, even though I could barely define investigative reporting at the time. My big breakthrough occured on June 21, 1972. Four days after the Watergate burglary, I aired an exposé of a bribery scheme that sent a public official and three bankers to jail, won the accolades of prosecutors and earned me the Radio Television News Directors International Award for Investigative Reporting. It was the first of more than two dozen journalism prizes that would eventually decorate the walls of my offices over the next three decades.

More importantly, the bank bribery radio award became a springboard to a television career that landed me at local TV stations in Miami and Boston before returning to Baton Rouge in 1982 for seven glorious muckraking years. I was so successful in digging dirt in my Baton Rouge reprise that CNN recruited me as Senior Investigative Correspondent in a fifty-member Special Assignment Unit—a job that lasted ten years.

During my career, I was a front row witness to the rise and demise of investigative reporting.  Television has lost credibility because of its descent into formalaic superficiality and “viewer friendly stories”—otherwise known as dumbing-down journalism. Newspapers and magazines are just as bad, if not worse. In fact,  journalism is all about profits nowadays.

Look at what is happening in New Orleans, a major metropolitan city where the Newhouse family’s privately held Advance Publications chain has announced plans to cut the newsroom staff by half and publish the four-time Pulitzer Prize winning Times-Picayune only three days a week, placing its focus on an online news service.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/13/times-picayune-cuts-half-newsroom-staff/  

Other newspapers in the Newhouse conglomerate are also ending daily publication and dumping. Indeed, contemporary journalism is a victim of giant corporations that have consolidated the media—daily newspapers, radio and television stations, magazines and other print publications. Granted, corporations are people as Mitt Romney proclaimed. But they are people who don’t give a shit about lesser souls when it comes to the bottom line. Nor do they care about journalistic responsibility and/or investigative reporting in serving communities and TV audiences.

In Boston, I was Director of Investigative Reporting for WCVB, a locally owned station described by the New York Times as the “best television station in the country.” However, the station’s commitment to public service diminished consiberably when the greedy Boston-based ownership cashed in a modest investment by selling WCVB for the highest price ever paid for a television station at the time. My investigative reporting unit bit the dust as part of a pre-sale cutback to make the station more attractive to buyers.

When Time Warner Corporation took control of CNN, the network began its downhill slide—mainly because of the implementation of programming that sucks. The slide accelerated when Fox “News” and MSNBC  joined the 24-hour news fray in the mid-nineties.

Journalism’s heyday is long past. My belief and the optimism of others that Watergate was the dawning of a never-ending era of safeguarding society from corrupt politicians, sticky-fingered public officials and corporate monopolies was an illusion. Or more accurately, an hallucination.

Instead of complaining, I might as well look at the bright side. Barring a miracle drug that stops the aging process, I won’t be around forty years from now to continue my bitching.

But thanks to Watergate, I had my fun.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.      

Don’t get me wrong. I have great respect for Ted Turner. Indeed, he paid to have my septic tank fixed in 1981—eight years before I went to work for him. More on that later. But first, the sins of Ted.

Number two on the sin list of a man once known as “the mouth of the South” is merging CNN—the granddaddy of twenty-four hour news networks—with Time-Warner Corporation. The transgression is second to Ted’s creation of CNN is the first place.

In my opinion, cable news is responsible for dumbing down of America. Launched in June 1980, CNN was then considered a joke, “Ted’s folly.” I was among those who laughed—even louder when colleagues suggested that I apply for a job with the network as a solution to my dilemma of being jobless in Boston at the time.

“Why the hell would I go to Atlanta, Georgia to work for an operation that will soon fold,” I asked? Which brings me to a septic tank, that began overflowing under the circular driveway in front of my home at a very inopportune time.

As I contemplated how to stretch my unemployment check to pay the $300.00 required to avoid stinking up the neighborhood, the mailman delivered a letter postmarked in Atlanta. Enclosed was a check for $300.00—so-called “talent” fees sent to me by Turner Broadcasting. The serendipitous bounty was compensation for re-running a final exposé that I reported for Boston’s ABC affiliate, WCVB, prior to the station abolishing its investigative unit and assigning me to an unemployment line. I was vaguely aware the station had some kind of reciprocal arrangement with CNN, but I did not realize the network had carried my four part series, which dealt with misconduct by federal and state prosecutors in Boston. 

Surprisingly, at least to me, Ted’s check cleared the bank.  Even so, it did not influence my decision to embrace pauperhood in Boston rather than risk applying for a CNN job and facing an unknown fate in Georgia. Just as well.

A few months later, I overcame my ego for a few minutes and accepted an unexpected offer to return to Baton Rouge, where my investigative reporting career began ten years before—a place I vowed never to return because of events I wanted to forget. Read all about it my non-best selling memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.  

Anyway, it turned out I could go home again. And for more money than CNN was then paying its correspondents. The next seven years were highlights of my career marked by two Peabody awards and numerous other journalism prizes. Written up in newspapers and magazines as a hotshot investigative reporter, CNN came calling with a checkbook in hand.

In the nine years since I laughed at the thought of a 24-hour news network, CNN had become a world brand name and in 1989 planned to get serious about in-depth investigative reporting. To that end, I was the first person hired for a 25-member muckraking crew—later expanded to fifty members. I was named Senior Investigative Correspondent at a disgraceful salary considering there was no heavy lifting involved.

In less than a decade, CNN had become a major force in television news. The people we assembled for the investigative team were true journalists—a combination of young reporters and producers, along with experienced award-winning broadcast and newspaper newsmen. Journalism magazines and media critics were astounded by Ted Turner’s commitment to enterprise reporting in terms of  investment, quanity and quality. The network was making money, Turner Broadcasting stock soared and the future seemed rosy. Too rosy in fact to be ignored by other news organizations.

In 1996, sixteen years after CNN aired its first newscast, MSNBC became the second 24-hour news network, a cable enterprise that amounted to liberal talk radio with pictures—the eventual star attraction being a former sportscaster, who placed second in world Olympics for assholes. He wasonly one point behind Bill O’Reilly. 

A few months after MSNBC became a butt pimple to CNN, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox “News,” was established under the leadership of GOP operative Roger Ailes. Satirically claiming to be “fair and balanced,” Fox evolved into the Republican Propaganda Network—a pipeline of misinformation and distortions delivered by a posse of ex-disc jockeys, right-wing talk radio ranters, and resident asshole, Bill O’Reilly. Fox is the network for Tea Partiers, racists and viewers who hate President Obama. The network couldn’t find “fairness” in a dictionary.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/were-fox-news-and-we-approved-this-message/?ref=opinion

Ted Turner’s invention was highjacked. And inadvertedly, he sold out. Facing competition for cable viewers from bigger corporations in 1996, Ted betrothed his brainchild to Time Warner. He became the conglmerates biggest stockholder. However, he was relegated to a secondary role on the Board of Directors. With Ted effectively de-balled of influence, CNN’s downhill trip descended to its current position of number three among the 24-hour networks.

In 1998, CNN bought out my contract and banished me to a North Georgia golf course. Just in time, too. An epidemic of shrunken testicles had swept through the organization. Since investigative reporting was expensive and risky, most of my colleagues were not far behind. So instead of maintaining a reputation for dependable journalism, CNN replaced correspondents and field producers with paid political pundits and anchors who tell you what they think rather than report the news. 

As a substitute for reporting, CNN relies on live gimmick coverage that has become a joke. The New York Times pointed out the network’s futility and desperation in a Wednesday media column about Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.

Jon Stewart mercilessly mocked the television coverage, particularly the often inane enthusiasm of Piers Morgan on CNN, who described the flotilla on Sunday as an “orgy of excitement.” On Tuesday Mr. Morgan gushed over the queen for many hours straight, but perhaps with more envy than admiration. As Royal Air Force jets streamed red, white and blue smoke while flying over Buckingham Palace, Mr. Morgan said, “I wish I was king.”

CNN did devote almost as much to the Jubilee as BBC America did, but it’s a little unfair to judge that cable news network by a royal event. CNN functions best in hard news and international disasters. And now, more than ever, CNN serves as cable news’s best antidote to the solipsistic ranting of histrionic and proudly biased evening hosts on Fox News and MSNBC.

CNN’s ratings on many nights are at a low point, which makes the network’s refusal to follow its more successful rivals down the path of single-minded opinionating all the more admirable. Mr. Stewart joked that CNN, like Britain, is a fallen and enfeebled world power. But like Britain, CNN is a diminished empire that on special occasions still commands respect and attention. Except, paradoxically, when it gives lavish, unfiltered coverage to a glittery extravaganza like the Diamond Jubilee.

The British celebration certainly deserved coverage by my former employer, but not to the extent of ignoring other major news for hours on end. Wars, political campaigns and world disasters should at least be acknowledged. Unfortunately, every CNN misjudgment made in panic to attract viewers buries the network’s credibility deeper and adds momentum to propaganda outlets like Fox “News” and butt pimple MSNBC.

I’m just speculating. But I wonder if Ted Turner had been unable to pay for my overflowing septic tank in 1981—in other words, if 24-hour news had failed to gain traction—maybe the nation would be a lot better off. As it stands now, the odor of television journalism is worse than the stink from the overflow in the driveway of my Boston home.

And in large part, I blame Ted for an invention that dumbed down America.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

In the next few days, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is expected to name Donald Trump to lead a fundraising group comprised of clowns. Announcement of the appointment is being delayed until Trump provides the campaign with a Certificate of Sanity from an accredited lunatic asylum. The document will be inspected to ensure it is not a forgery.

The Donald jumped the gun in his clown quest Tuesday during a CNN interview by dazzling Wolf Blitzer with half-wit behavior on behalf of the nation’s birthers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/29/wolf-blitzer-donald-trump-ridiculous_n_1553916.html?ref=media  

Although Trump’s act ias a distraction from Mitt Romney clinching the Republican nomination on Tuesday, the candidate is unperturbed by the billionaire’s comments questioning President Obama’s birthplace. “I need 50.1% of the votes to be elected,” Romney said. “And clowns are people. Just like corporations, except corporations are richer.”

Romney points out that no principle is are worth upholding when it comes to getting elected. Besides, he can change his mind after ballots are cast. Or even tomorrow if the winds shift. He has done it before and will do it again many times over if he has to. Romney’s believes he doesn’t have to agree with positions of his supporters, so long as they are able to sign checks. 

Indeed, conservative pundit and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes that courage of convictions has never been Romney’s strong point when votes are at stake.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/trumped/?ref=opinion

Clowns for Romney will travel the country in blackface, wearing witch doctor regalia and re-creating Obama’s alleged birth in an African mud hut. Despite political incorrectness and blatant racism, Trump is confident there are enough birthers, Tea Partiers, Fox “News” viewers, and “ditto heads,” who will pay big bucks to see his road show—tentatively titled, Morons on Display. Negotiations are underway for temporary releases of affluent patients of mental institutions in cities where the clowns appear.

Romney is quite enthusiastic about the new Trump committee. The campaign is beginning get its mojo. He has already locked up the vote of animated department store mannequins, some of whom are relatives. And plans are being made to establish other unified constituences.

In a setback, Gays for Romney failed to gain momentum because of the refusal of bleached blonde men with mullets to risk being held down by gangs at rallies and having unwanted haircuts.  Romney, of course, claims he doesn’t recall leading such an event as an eighteen year old prep school student. His loss of memory concerns potential gay recruits. No wonder. The late philosopher and cultural critic George Santayana warned that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 

Gays for Romney is only one of the groups to fall be the wayside recently. Former American Nazi leader David Duke volunteered to create Ku Klux Klanners for Romney, however, the proposal was rejected after Duke demanded that the campaign to provide new bedsheets for his followers. 

Nonetheless, its early in the campaign and Romney is optimistic other more acceptable supporters will form groups to get him above the 50 percent threshold. Swiss bankers and lobbyists for residential automobile elevators have already come together to back the candidate. And whore-mongering Louisiana Senator David Vitter is trying to organize Loose Women for Romney.

Regardless, the former Massachussets Governor doesn’t really need a lot of new groups. After all, he now has Donald Trump. What more could he ask for? 

Come to think about it, what more could President Obama ask for?

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

As the crow flies, I live less than two miles from East Louisiana State Hospital—the state’s largest facility for treating the seriously nervous. Any day now, I expect mental patients to climb the hospital’s back fence, scurry through the forest, wade across a creek and come running down the seventh fairway to my home where they will begin chanting, “Barack Obama was born in Kenya.”

Soon afterwards, white-clad attendants armed with nets and carrying funny looking jackets will show up and return patients to their rightful wards. However, a few of the most seriously deranged will elude capture and carry their moronic mantra to other parts of the country—maybe even getting elected to public office in places like Arizona, the home of Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett. Both men have displayed their lunatic credentials by raising the birther issue. Actually, there was very little doubt about Sheriff’s Joe’s mental state prior to ordering his crack (a possible reference to smoking habits) team of investigators to conduct an investigation of President Obama’s birthplace.

Guess what? Arpaio’s whiz kids concluded there were still questions related to the long form birth certificate released by Hawaii at the request of the President. Maybe the certificate was tampered with, they said. Such a conspiracy would require the complicity of hundreds of people to keep the plot secret, including a few Obama critics. But as anyone who has dealt with the insane knows, logic and reason are not the strong points of nuts.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57388911-503544/sheriff-joe-arpaio-suggests-obamas-birth-certificate-is-a-forgery/

Given Sheriff Joe’s ongoing feud with the federal government over his tactics in violating the rights of Hispanics and other citizens, the investigative distortions by Maricopa agents is not surprising. Arpaio’s threshhold of embarrassment is so high, he is beyond humiliation.

Arizona Secretary of State Bennett, who demanded that Hawaii confirm the legitimacy of Obama’s birth, must have consulted a psychiatrist in recent days. Or, perhaps, the Romney campaign told him to slip out of his straitjacket and show voters he was smarter than a rock. Bennett is Arizona co-chairman of Mitt’s presidential bid. Whatever his reasoning, Bennett today announced an end to the needless controversy. 

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/05/23/arizona-officially-accepts-obama-birth-record/     

I should try being more generous in diagnosing the mental health of birthers. Some of these folks voice crazy theories for more sinister reasons—often political, sometimes pure racism. What better way to bring attention to themselves among the nation’s disenchanted. 

Consider the people populating the Republican Propaganda Network, aka Fox “News,” and talk radio. Even for a bare Tuscaloosa High School graduate like me, it’s pretty easy to diagnose mind-state of characters like Glenn Beck and pill-head Rush Limbaugh. Both are eligible for lock-down wards in hospitals with high fences. Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and a few others displaying marginally unhinged behavior are probably acting their roles, though O’Reilly manages to be a world class asshole on and off the air.

That brings me to Geraldo Rivera, a smart guy with the propensity for saying stupid things. Long ago, he provided me insight to the undisciplined mind of someone willing to do anything to bring attention to himself. His latest outrage is claiming the tragic Orlando shooting of Trayvon Martin may have been prompted by the seventeen year old wearing a hoodie. Geraldo doubled down on the theory three weeks after being criticized by his son, among others.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/geraldo-rivera-trayvon-martin-benjamin-crump-hoodie_n_1532576.html?ref=media

I mention Geraldo because of our past acquaintance. In fact, he approached me about going to work on his long ago failed syndicated show, Now It Can Be Told. I declined. Good thing, too. A friend took the job and told me later it was the equivalent of lying in daily a bathtub filled with broken beer bottles—a comment he made in the wake of an Geraldo’s ongoing, on-air dispute with Bette Midler over whether they once had sex with each other. Midler said if it happened, it was such a small thing (pun intended) she can’t remember the event.

Anyway, Geraldo personifies attention-needy television reporters who are always in search of the spotlight. I like him personally based on past encounters, one of which was attending Brother Jimmy Swaggart’s church together (a story for another post, or buy the book and read out all out it).

In the course of the Jimmy Swaggart sex scandal, I was a guest two or three times on Geraldo, a new show that was sort of the son of Now It Can Be Told. In the days leading up to my last appearance, I was approached by a fired former Swaggart employee making serious allegations about a sexual attack on his daughter at the ministry. The tale reeked of vindictiveness and lacked corroboration—shortcomings that I pointed out to Geraldo after he learned of the allegation shortly before the show. He agreed that the yarn was too farfetched to be credible. However…..

On the day the program aired, Geraldo planted the accuser in the audience and allowed the him to make serious and unproven allegations about the Swaggart organization before a national audience. It was completely irresponsible. Believe it or not, Geraldo is an excellent reporter. But good journalism goes out the window when he has the opportunity to create controversy. 

And that is the reason that so many “mainstream” reporters write stories about the birthers—reports that are generally tagged with the disclaimer, “the long form birth certificate  proves the President was born in Hawaii.” But it only takes that little bit of publicity for nearby asylum patients to leap the walls and wander the streets.

Hopefully, they won’t wear hoodies.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

Every week, I receive telephone calls from (202) 224-4623—the Washington D.C. area code. Since many former CNN colleagues live in and around Washington, I answer in hopes somebody is seeking my valuable advice about running the nation. That’s not the case. It’s Vitter.

And when I hear the voice saying, “This is Senator David Vitter,” I hang up quickly. The whore-hopping Louisiana lawmaker may want me to set him up with a prostitute and I haven’t a clue where to find one. Maybe Brother Jimmy Swaggart can provide Vitter with names and addresses of old flames selling flings.

Admittedly, I may be jumping to the wrong conclusion regarding the purpose of Vitter’s calls. Perhaps I should listen to determine the reason he is contacting me. Politically, though, we have absolutely nothing in common. Indeed, I’m still recovering from the fact that Louisiana voters re-elected him to a second term following disclosures he was a liar, a cheat and a legislative obstructionist. As recentlay as this week Vitter has blocked a bill assisting Louisiana homeowners and businessmen obtain flood insurance.

http://theadvocate.com/home/2843179-125/reid-vitters-tactics-slowed-nfip 

It is hard to imagine what voters were thinking when they cast ballots for Vitter. I guess his 2010 re-election 2010 was facilitated by fantasies of hypocrites who condemn others for sins they wish they had the courage to commit. Exhibit One of my theory is four term Governor Edwin Edwards—a man who never saw a young woman he wouldn’t put moves on, or a corner he wouldn’t cut to accomplish his goals. 

Although Edwards spent eight years in prison for corruption, he has been greeted as a conquering hero since his release from a gated government time-share complex in Oakdale, Louisiana. In a way, that is as it should be.  Though ethically challenged beyond redemption in his political career, Edwards was convicted on questionable charges by a pill-addled federal hanging judge, and a jury that was manipulated by ambitous prosecutors willing to do anything to secure a notch in their gunbelts.

It was Edwards arrogance that led to his downfall. Despite character flaws, he was actually pretty good Governor—a great chief executive when compared to Bobby Jindal, the frequent flyer miles obsessed Ivy Leaguer who apparently holds the view that the earth is only six-thousand years old.

Besides advocating the inclusion of teaching creationism in public schools, Governor Smarty-Pants seems intent on ensuring that Louisiana holds its low rank in the nation in terms of education, environment and health care services for the poor. His goal is to privatize state government.

I probably should cut Jindal some slack, given that he appears to be delusional. The former Rhodes Scholar still believes GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will consider him as a running mate—a dream that is shared by a tiny constituency that would rather take a bullet to groin than pass a tax.  

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76335.html

If Mitt Romney has a political mental breakdown and selects Jindal as a running mate, it will certainly cause a lot of celebration in Louisiana. Not that my fellow Louisianans need much to happen in order to celebrate. But Governor Smarty Pants has taken the fun out of partying for teachers, college professors and a large number of state employees facing layoffs and a reduction in promised pensions. Consequently, Jindal can set off a wave of jubilation if he departs the state to indulge his  addictions of globe-hopping and stalking television cameras as a candidate for higher office. 

But that still leaves us with morally unfit obstructionist, David Vitter? We are stuck with him for nearly five more years. And that ain’t good for the state. Vitter does as much damage in Washington by doing nothing as Jindal does in Louisiana by doing something.

In the wake of do-nothingness, the Senator must have a lot of free time on his hands or he wouldn’t be calling me so often. I sure wish he would stop. Instead, he needs to check the Yellow Pages under the listing, “Escorts.” 

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.

It pains me to criticize my former employer—the company that paid me far more than I ever thought I was worth (truism for most TV reporters), and contributed generously to an IRA that now allows me to live on the seventh hole of a beautiful golf course and occasionally swing a club, even though the flight of the ball is absolutely unpredictable. My hurt in criticizing CNN is not nearly as painful as the torture of watching the grand-daddy of 24-hour news networks desperately trying to stop its ratings from going into the toilet. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/business/media/cnn-ratings-decline-stirs-worries.html?_r=1&WT.mc_id=BU-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M252-ROS-0512-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_c=186686

Whoever (or is it whomever) makes CNN’s final programming decisions needs to wear a papersack over his/her head. I keep my television set tuned to CNN throughout the daytime hours just in case real news breaks. The channel is usually muted so I don’t have to endure an endless line up of talking heads and political pundits. I don’t know where the network finds these alleged “experts,” many of whom (or is it who) are so predictable I can lip sync their commentaries.

Appearing on the Piers Morgan’s nightly celebrity fest a couple of weeks ago, CNN’s outspoken founder, Ted Turner, said he had hoped his baby would become television’s New York Times. Instead, it has become the cure for insomnia. A Huffington Post blogger did a pretty good job recently analyzing the problems that make the network so boring. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/cnn-is-terrible-heres-why_n_1478927.html

Among  CNN’s most egregious sins is the failure of its anchors and “reporters” to challenge inaccurate and/or stupid comments made by politicians. Notable exceptions to this criticism are Soledad O’Brian and weekend anchor Don Lemon. Given the Republican Party’s views regarding women and homosexuals, it seems ironic that CNN’s most macho on-air personalities other than network war correspondents are a woman and an out-of-the-closet gay. I should also include Anderson Cooper as a tough interviewer, though he undercuts his authority with silly bullshit segments and attempts to be cute.

The worst offender in failing to challenge inaccuries is Wolf Blitzer. He is not a simple minded guy, but for reasons unknown Blitizer allows guests to get away incredibly idiotic claims. Maybe he is trying to be “fair and balanced,” the satirical slogan of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox “News,” aka the Republican Propaganda Network.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/keller-murdochs-pride-is-americas-poison.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Presumably, CNN is trying to compete with Fox “News,” far and away the cable news ratings leader. But what purpose is served by CNN winning a battle with fools, a definition that fits a majority of Fox’s personalities. The network appeals primarily to tea partiers, racists and malcontents.

Rather than good news judgment, CNN tries to boost viewership with new toys like political correspondent John King’s razzle-dazzle digital boards that cause many confused people to ask the musical question, “What the hell was that?” To pay for all its technical wizardry and huge stable of pundits, CNN has fired a lot of reporters in recent years and closed a number of substantive newsgathering units.  

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/layoffs-at-cnn-as-network-transitions-to-acquisition-model-for-documentary-programming_b117576

 As former Senior Investigative Correspondent in CNN’s fifty-member investigative unit during the network’s heydays, I bemoan the downward trend of Ted Turner’s invention. Sadly, he made the decision to turn over controlling interest to Time Warner Corporation— a decision he has regretted ever since. But the network was already in descent. Young and blonde folks were replacing old dudes like me.

Granted, CNN needed to adapt to a change in viewer demographics. But like most of its decisions beginning with wall-to-wall coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the network has been guilty of overkill—a whine for another post. Suffice to say that it was exploitation over responsibility.

Anyway, there may be a positive to CNN’s journey to the toilet. Aftr all, if viewers miss a story, they can tune in and see it repeated—again, again and again, ad infinitum.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger: A Saga of Exposing TV Preachers, Corrupt Politicians, Right-Wing Lunatics…and Me is available at amazon.com, soft-cover or Kindle and at independent bookstores like the Cottonwood in Baton Rouge. It offers $19.99 worth of laughs and much more. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) investigative reporting career.