Heroes of Basic Cable

It is a quiet evening at home at the Boomer/Rhumba household. Imagine that you are viewing this scene through the lens of a camera:

We find Rhumba curled up on the living room couch, drawing a complex, flowering plant with colored pencils. When she tires of that, she will knit.

A blissed-out cat lies on the floor in front of the couch, carefully positioned to catch the current of warm air from a nearby heater grate. It is oblivious to the television, which is tuned to the History Channel. Currently showing: "Concrete," followed at 9 by "Glue." Rhumba's eyes flick up to the screen occasionally.

Another cat lurks nearby, unseen -- perhaps inside the paper bag in the corner, or in the cardboard box next to an end table. One won't know he's there until one steps on him.

It is a quiet, homey, predictable scene -- except for the strange swish-thud, swish-thud, swish-thud sound coming from just out of the camera frame.

The camera slowly pulls back; and into frame comes a middle-aged man on a low-slung rowing machine of strange design: something like a cross between an aquarium tank and a giant banjo.

When the thickish gentleman pulls back on the rowing machine's handles, a propeller turns inside a flat, circular tank of water, creating resistance -- and an interesting sloshing sound.

The thickish gentleman is Boomer -- me. Both Rhumba and I have had to take desk jobs in recent years, and Rhumba suggested the odd rowing machine -- they call it a water rower -- as a way of getting a little exercise while we watch television in the evening. Rather than coming home and sitting motionless for two or three hours after sitting motionless at work for seven or eight hours.

And indeed the rowing is pleasant, mild exercise -- easily done for 45 minutes or an hour or even more, while watching television. Rhumba and I will take turns on the water rowing throughout the evening.

The subversive side of all this beneficial activity is that I watch a lot of television. And when there's nothing on TV -- a depressingly frequent occurrence -- we pop in a DVD. The local video store has Dollar Nights on Tuesday and Wednesday. Five DVDs, five days, five bucks; what's not to like? We're catching up with all the indy and Brit films we never get around to seeing in the theater. I think I've seen every movie that Simon Pegg ever worked in.

But mostly we watch basic cable channels. We're not big on dramatic series TV or sitcoms on the networks -- too predictable, too stupid, too many guns, or they require regular viewing to understand. So instead we row our way through politics on MSNBC. Cooking on the Food Channel. Obscure documentaries on the History Channel. Third-run movies. Comedy Central. Weekend anime on Cartoon Network. Doctor Who and Romanian-made horror movies on SciFi.

No getting around it -- we're media geeks. Rhumba and I can happily exercise through "The History of Bricks" or "Engineering Disasters II" or a biography of Nicola Tesla on the History Channel, and discuss any of them at length afterwards.

On MSNBC, we are more than familiar with the bombastic and sarcastic Keith Olbermann, the sly androgynous grin of Rachel Maddow, and the confused and near-surreal commentary of Pat Buchanan. Or the snarky but sensitive chef Anthony Bourdain of the Travel Channel, eating his way through obscure and ignored and underprivileged parts of the world (Bolivia! Uzbekistan! Paraguay! Cleveland!) on a moody and endless journey of self-discovery.

We regularly regard with horrified fascination the blonde and anorexic Sandra Lee on Food Network as she assembled "foodscapes" of dishes made from strange combinations of processed food. Or a near-mumified Larry King interviewing the Dalai Lama on CNN. Or the raucous, shameless Wall Street shills on CNBC -- listen to them and lose all your money. Of Fox News -- I say nothing. I really can't bear to watch it.

I have to say something profound here: the last eight years have been hard. The powers that be told us that bad was good, war was peace, slavery was freedom, greed was virtue. The big media and newspapers mainly parroted the official line, or said nothing at all. All while the nation slid into a nosedive that it may not pull out of.

It was only on basic cable, that minor league pigpen of low-budget television, that anybody could say anything off-message from the national propaganda.

And among the crowd of underpaid boobs, comedians, loudmouths, con men, and dime-store messiahs that we welcomed into our living room each night were a few people, just a few among all the chattering nincompoops, who spoke truth. Who said, "No, you're not crazy, evil is not good, war is not peace, greed is not virtue. It's the world that is mad."

And they kept me sane, and some of my friends here in Santa Cruz who wondered why we were so out of synch with the rest of the world. These few commentators, these heroes of basic cable, were a point of reference for our brains, mine and Rhumba and others here in town, as the water rower went swish-thud, swish-thud, swish-thud through the evening, or as I did old-guy yoga on the rug in front of the big Sony.

So here's to you all. First, here's to the ones you might expect me to thank: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and the Daily Show crowd on Comedy Central, for starters.


Thank you Jon and Stephen and friends for, night after night, pointing at the stupidity of the Iraq War and the Bush Administration propaganda -- and laughing. Thank you for saying things that were unalterably true but that television journalists would never be allowed to say. But the Daily Show crowd could and would say them because they weren't journalists. But -- being good old New York style comics -- they knew bullshit when they smelled it.

And you might also expect me to thank Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, for being the only source of unabashed liberal commentary on commercial TV.


Thank you, Mr. Olbermann, for gradually morphing Countdown -- your goofy tabloid news show -- into a place where we could hear Bush administration policy criticized by actual people who actually knew what they were talking about. And thank you for expressing the that white-hot anger many of us felt against the administration -- an anger that otherwise we could only express impotently in our own living rooms.

Now it must be said that Olbermann's a propagandist; he says things that are unfair and misleading about people he doesn't like. I also have to admit that the people Olbermann doesn't like are pretty odious, and they attack and slander and harm a lot of innocent people.

Still, I'm one of those guys who believe that when you fight fire with fire, you risk turning into an arsonist. So I've stepped back from Olbermann in some ways. But he was there when we needed him. And Rachel Maddow, Olbermann's former protege who now has her own show, shares all of his virtues and few of his vices.

And I'd also like to thank a few people you wouldn't expect. I'd like to thank Suze Ormann, of the Suze Ormann Show on CNBC. Yes, Suze Ormann, the brash financial Yenta with a smile like the front end of a Jeep.With the high beams on.

Suze, who hates debt above all things. Suze, who dispenses financial advice like a dominatrix of thrift. Suze, who takes phone calls from people who want to make discretionary purchases, and then tells them whether she'll give them permission to buy it.


That segment is called "Can I Afford It?" And it usually goes something like this.

"Uh, Suze, I'd really like to buy my husband a set of ten-thousand dollar golf-clubs. Golf is his life, and he's been dreaming about them since forever I'd like to get these for his birthday. It'd make him so happy!"

"Okay girlfriend," Suze barks. "Show me the money!" And it will turn out that the two of them take home $4000 a month, have $50,000 in student loans, $6000 in credit card debt, and $15000 in savings.

"And how will you pay for it, girlfriend" Suze purrs, eyes cold as ice.

"Well, we thought we'd pay out of savings, or take out a line of credit on the house."

You are DENIED, girlfriend!" Suze shrieks. "DENIED! You CAN'T AFFORD IT! You're in way over your heads in debt and you want to dig yourself a DEEPER HOLE?"

And she'll rage on for a good three minutes. Honestly, this is great sport; just look Suze up on YouTube, you'll see.

Besides the sheer sadistic joy of watching these torture sessions, I'm grateful to Suze for being maybe the one person on television who makes it her mission to stop people from buying things they don't need or can't afford. Corporate America spends billions to tell you to buy things, that happiness lies in possessions, that credit will solve everything, that taking money out of your house to buy a car makes perfect sense because, hey, real estate only goes up.

Only Suze defies this rap. Oh, sure, others will come on television and advise thrift in polite talk-show conversations. But Suze screams for thrift, tries to drown out consumerist propaganda with sheer volume: Eat at home! Save your money! Pay off your debt! Prepare for retirement! You want to pay fifty thousand for a WATCH? Are you NUTS? YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT! DENIED! DENIED!

And last fall, as the shit was about to hit the fan on Wall Street, Suze came on the tube and told everybody near retirement age to sell all their stocks NOW! "Wall Street will come back from this in ten years -- but you're going to need that money before then, AREN'T YOU? If you're near retirement, YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING IN THE MARKET!"

Bold words, Suze, especially for someone with a show on CNBC, the Wall Street Greed Network. Thank you.

I would also like to thank Chuck Todd for keeping me sane during the '08 presidential campaigns. During the long primary season, the usual brainless newsreaders picked up every scandal the candidates manufactured to use against each other and parrotted them mindlessly. Inevitably, some neat-haired male-model anchorman would ask some politico, "Does this doom candidate X's chances? Is it all over?" I almost couldn't watch campaign news -- too high on drama, too low on fact.

Then one day, a bland-looking fat guy with a beard started showing up on NBC and MSNBC, on Olbermann's show and elsewhere. It was Chuck, the new NBC "political director," whatever that was. And when Olbermann asked him one of those kick-up-the-drama questions -- "Is this the end for Candidates X" -- Chuck calmly raised a hand and said, "Let me explain..."


And he did explain. Chuck is a complete election junkie. He knows how national political campaigns work from the ground up -- all the nuts, all the bolts, all the numbers. NBC dug him up from some Washington insider's briefing sheet he'd been editing for years and brought him over for the campaign.

So when some other analyst talked up Rudy Guiliani as the Republican sure-thing, Chuck shook his head and said, "Let me explain..." And he did a masterful job of handicapping Giuliani's chances -- his ownership of 911 on the one hand; but on the other hand, his incompatibility with the values of the Republican wacko base, his poor chances in each the upcoming Republican primaries based on the demographics and poll results, the inadequate size of Guliani's war chest.

Chuck's conclusion: Rudy was an also-ran. And Chuck was right.

And when in May Hilary Clinton pressed for the disqualified Michigan and Florida delegates to be counted towards the Democratic nomination, and the talking heads began chattering that she could make a late comeback against Obama," Chuck shook his head and said, "Let me explain...." And laid out how even a best-case scenario for Clinton still wouldn't get her enough votes to pull ahead of Obama, based on the primaries that were still in play and the ones that Obama had already locked up. And Chuck was right.

And in September and October, when Obama led McCain but not by much, and the talking heads chattered that maybe the race was still wide open after all, Chuck shook his head and said, "Let me explain...."

And he told how traditional polling techniques might undercount Obama's younger supporters who had cells instead of landlines. And how, historically, polls taken in September mean little because so many haven't made up their minds yet -- but whoever was ahead on October 15 almost always won.

And Chuck was right -- young people poured out of the woodwork to vote for Obama and brought their parents with him.

Chuck was right -- about everything. When the political bullshit on the tube was a mile wide and ten feet, I could always count on Chuck to come out with his snowplow of campaign knowledge to cut a smooth path to clarity through it for the rest of us. There aren't many on TV you can trust to know what they're talking about -- but you can trust Chuck.

NBC likes Chuck, too. He's still their political director, but they also kicked him upstairs to White House correspondent. Now he's doing stand-up segments in a spiffy trenchcoat on the White House lawn. The other morning the MSNBC anchor asked him one of those stir-up-the-drama questions by remote: "Obama's poll numbers are down from 82 percent to 65 percent now. Is the White House already losing influence?"

Chuck shook his head, dislodging flakes of snow from the shoulders of his trenchcoat. "I never believed in the initial poll numbers. Listen, as long as the approval rating's above 60 percent, Obama's people are happy as clams."

Go Chuck! My man!

And finally (this blog entry does have an end, trust me) I would like to thank Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel. Not for any inspiring message -- he's a weatherman. But for setting an inspiring example.

Jim Cantore is a short, muscular guy with a shaved head, big nose and jug-handle ears. He's the guy the Weather Channel sends into the path of monster hurricanes and other weather disasters so he can give calm, measured video reports from ground zero of hideous disasters. As they are happening all around him.

Here's a shot of Jim in Galveston during Hurricane Ike, holding up a piece of flying debris that had just bounced off his shoulder. Is this man having a good time, or what?


The entire collective expertise of the Weather Channel meteorologists is put to work to figure out exactly where a hurricane will come ashore, so Cantore can be there right as the eye wall goes overhead and the winds clock 180. Cantore, aka "The Angel of Death," is feared by Gulf Coast mayors -- not for what he does, but for what his presence means. It's said down that way that if the wind kicks up and the birds all leave and then Jim Cantore shows up -- you're in trouble.

But all that aside -- Jim Cantore loves his job, really loves it. He never looks happier than when he's rapping out a crisp description of conditions at the landfall point of a Cat 4 hurricane -- as the rain whips by horizontally and the wind rips away chunks of building in the background.

I appreciate his stern warnings to stay-behinds to "get out before it's too late -- " even though Jim Cantore never, ever will. And I appreciate the apologies he makes to the audience when his video signal keeps dropping out -- because 140-mph winds are rocking his TV truck so badly that its transmitter dish can't keep a lock on the satellite. Don't worry Jim, we still love you.

And I appreciate the way he's there to meet the same hurricane not once, but twice or even three times. He catches it as it comes ashore in Barbados, then jets ahead to meet it again in the Dominican Republic. And then zoom aheads of it one more time for the final showdown, mano a mano, on the sandy shores of South Texas.

It's an outrageous job. The kind you don't do unless you love it. It's obvious Jim loves it, he has said so. I'd like to think I could be as outrageous as Jim Cantore if I had to, to chase a dream I really loved. Although my dreams are not shaped like hurricanes.

Jim I will always watch faithfully, because he's Jim and I like his style. The other guys -- the Keiths, the Jons, the Suzes, the Chucks - I don't watch so religiously anymore. I don't have to. Yes the nation is still in deep trouble. But we as a people have learned to recognize that good is not evil, greed is not virtue, slavery is not freedom. And our new leaders now acknowledge that, too, no matter how imperfectly.

So I've exited from despair. I can handle the news now, because I know the rest of you out there in Pennsylvania and Florida and Arizona and Delaware are not crazy, not anymore if ever. And so there's hope.

So thanks again to Chuck, Suze, Keith, Jon and the rest; I'll still watch you often, but you're not my lifelines to sanity anymore, and I may well switch one of you off to watch Tony Bourdain eat live eels in Borneo.

But thanks for being there when I needed you.

Sincerely,

Boomer