What They Learn in Journalism School

Based on years of watching TV news reports, I can imagine the day in Universal School of Journalism when they dealt with "How to End Your TV Report."

The cardinal rule, never to be violated, is: Do not end on a positive note, never. Several options are available:
1. Suggest that something awful could still go wrong.
2. Suggest a countervailing trend.
3. Raise a question that qualifies any optimistic developments in your piece.
4. Use your imagination to suggest that somehow the future is still in doubt, so viewers should tune in next time.
5. Say anything just as long as it is negative in some way.

That appears to be the one thing that all the students learned well.

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Quasi-Acerbic Oddities for Today

Senator McConnell said he did not want a judge on the Supreme Court who let subjective preferences and personal ideology affect their rulings. You mean you do not want judges like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Scalito?

Somebody should instruct Senators that all people have ideologies, personal background experiences, and identities that affect their rulings. I did not say determine, I said affect, i. e., influence.

Cheney is to the left of Obama on gay marriage. He favors it if the decision is made by the states, while the President has so far only indicated support for civil unions.

Senator Greg Judd says he does not want government bureaucrats making decisions about our personal health care. Apparently, he prefers to have them made by corporate bureaucrats working for companies who want to maximize their profits by limiting services.

Strange.

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