I stayed up until early this morning to watch the absolutely glorious coverage of the Pennsylvania miners, all nine of them, being brought out of the earth alive. There was only one fly in the ointment.
Fox had Geraldo Rivera doing commentary during the rescue. His talk was utter drivel. Did anyone else stay up to watch? He made a comment about the age of the miners “These guys are mostly in their fifties, they aren’t spring chickens.” Hello Geraldo? You aren’t any spring chicken yourself remember! He asked a mining official how much the rescue was costing, as if that had any relevance. When the gentleman politely declined to speculate, and said a lot of the rescue workers were volunteering, Geraldo didn’t want to seem to let the subject go.
Geraldo couldn’t stop talking, even if what he said made no sense, or was a repeat of earlier words.
The man is an idiot and a publicity hound. I don’t want to be really profane, it’s Sunday afternoon, but I’m just so irritated at the guy who can ask “How do you think the families feel?” how do you think they feel, you bozo?
I hate to come to the defense of Geraldo Rivera, but I think you’re being overly harsh because he happens to be Geraldo Rivera.
Keep in mind that I didn’t see this, so he might have been acting so oily and scummy that I would have wrung his little neck. That being said …
Asking how much the rescue is costing is a legitimate question. Maybe you’re thinking, “Jesus, he wants to know because he’s going to scoff at the high cost.” Of course, another way to approach this is to think, “Wow, it’s great that the state is willing to spend X dollars to save these men.” Either way, it’s a relevant fact, and reporters gather relevant facts. It’s not their job to limit themselves to nice questions.
Commenting on their age is also a legitimate comment. If the miners were in their early 30s, for instance, I would think their chances of survival would be much greater than if they were in their fifties.
And what the fuck is Geraldo doing in the US anyway?
I thought he was Fox News’s “war” correspondant, so shouldn’t he be in a cave somewhere in Afghanistahn flourishing his gun, bleating about Osama etc?
It was truly awful listening to Geraldo report by phone this morning how his “glasses were fogged up becase of the etars of joy at this mriacle of rescuing that I was witness to today.”
Miracle?!?
MIRACLE!!!???!?!?
Pardon me, but I didn’t see Jesus doing anything to move the rescue along. I haven’t heard the Pope say DICK about this, but then again, all John Paul can apparently do these days is mumble incoherently.
Miracle my ass, this was nothing more then damn hard work and a bit of luck, neither of which have anything miraculous in them.
God, Satan, buddha, Mohhamad had **nothing ** to do with what happened at the mine up in Pennslyvania.
(didn’t see it, based on thread and hsitory of Geraldo)
Actually, considering his usual accuracy, I’m surprised he wasn’t commenting from Ohio…
** Snoooopy, ** it sounds rather insulting in tone to say “They’re not spring chickens.” There are better, more respectful ways to handle it. If he had some expert say “The average 55 year old is 45% more likely to suffer from hypothermia than a 25 year old under the same cirucmstances.” it is addressed, and info passed on, without disparaging the men .
Geraldo is to journalism as Pauly Shore is to acting.
I turned off coverage on MSNBC because the female reporter in the studio asked for the 1000th time “What kind of medical attention will these men need?”
NO ONE KNOWS. They were still in the mine, for chrissakes! Shut the fuck up and report the facts, don’t keep asking the same questions again and again when it’s all speculation anyway.
I put on CNN and the coverage was much better. When will TV reporters learn that sometimes you can just show live coverage of an event and we can figure it out on our own? You don’t need to chatter non-stop and fill every moment with ridiculous speculation and nonsense.
This brings up a point about “all news channels”. I think Fox, MSNBC, and CNN all are guilty of this.
If there is nothing to report, then shut the fuck up and move on to something else. It seems like the producers say “Okay, we are devoting the next three hours to THE current breaking story, so come up with whatever bullshit you can to fill airtime.”
For ex. re the miner story, you have them saying shit like “Well, we understand they are drilling, and it might take two days to break through.” Ten minutes later: “They are still drilling.”, and so on…
Well, no shit! Let us know when they are getting close, we don’t need a running commentary. So then, they have to find an ex mining engineer who basically says “Yep, they are still drilling.”
“Well, what do you think they will find when they break through?”
“Well, we really don’t know.” (because they are still fucking drilling!)
ad nauseum.
I would imagine the talking heads get a bit tired of this too.
The drama sorta seems to have been (wisely) over when they drilled the initial ventilation shaft and started pumping hot air into it.
The miners tapped back nine times.
I can imagine the miners agreeing, “Let’s stay here…”
Dunno why they couldn’t drop down some notes or Krispy Kreme’s.
It was a good story. I watched it ‘live’ this morning, but mostly just read updates and ignored the news channels.
Although I just turned on Geraldo’s special two-hour FoxNews bit. He’s sharing Pizza and Donut’s with some of the survivors.
The U.S. could use a happy story with American Ingenuity to the rescue, and mining companies need money to pay their lobbyists. And you’re not a Patriot if you must question why they broke into the old well anyways.
Max Torque: You got a laugh out of me with that one!
Rivera is a putz. He was on Dennis Miller Live a few weeks ago, talking about Afghanistan. Jesus, you’d think he was Ernie Freakin’ Pyle or something. He went on an on about the bond he shares with other men who faced death, and about how he’s addicted to the fear and loved the risk, and blah blah blah. The thing is, after he came home from Afghanistan we found out that the fucknut hadn’t been within 100 miles of any action, and he claimed to have been present at an action when other people said he was halfway across the bloody country from where that action took place.
He’s a flat-out liar, and a publicity hound. How would you like to be the local reporter covering the mine disaster, finally getting your shot to do national coverage (and doing a damned good job of it), when Rivera strides through the door and says, “I’m here to take over, boy.”
Let me come to Geraldo’s defense in a couple ways, pertaining to last nights coverage which I did watch on Fox News.
Fox News threw it to him to sit and watch while 9 miners were resuced at about 15 minute intervals. What the heck is he supposed to talk about? That’s a tough job, finding something to say about all this for 2 hours with the occasional “Here’s the next guy, his name is _____ and he’s # years old.”
CNN was alot worse. All they did was interview different rescue workers who had pretty much the exact same thing to say each time, and that wasn’t much. At least Geraldo was trying to find something to say, even if it was just blind speculation for the most part. If the channel is going to say “Here, spend two hours on this, commercial free, and we have no information for you so just play it on the fly,” then I’d say his comments were allright considering. I don’t know what MSNBC did, but he at least beat CNN as I see it. It’s the type of story that I think deserves a little sentimentalism, and he gave it. Sure it sounds a little sappy, but it was appropriate.
I think you may have misinterpeted this. The phrase does seem trite, but these guys weren’t sping chickens, meaing that there may be added complications due to their age. twenty-somethings could last longer down there than fifty-somethings, and possibly need less medical attention when rescued. So, their ages are not entirely irrelevant.
I thought the CNN guys was GREAT, because he was being responsible, even at the expense of getting ‘scooped’. The anchor kept saying things like, “Can you get in there and find out what’s going on?” And he’d say, “Sure - but right now the guy I need to talk to is busy saving these guys. I’ll ask him when he’s free.”
The anchor kept prodding him - “We’re getting a report from Reuters that the men are alive. Can you confirm that?” “No, I can’t. I’ve been asked not to say anything until the families have been notified one way or the other.”
The poor guy probably did his last national broadcast, but I thought he did a great job.
I’m surprised Geraldo didn’t show up in a hardhat with some movie-smudge on his cheeks to show just how ‘involved’ he was.
When they got the last miner out, someone should have shoved Geraldo down the hole, pumped all the water back in, and sealed all openings.
On the other hand, Geraldo is so scummy, he’d probably mutate into a new species (he’s barely human now), breed with himself, and take over the earth when released.
I watched Geraldo’s coverage. In fact, because of Mr Winnie’s fascination with cable news, I find myself seeing a lot more of Mr Rivera than I’d like. My take: he’s essentially harmless, but what he DOESN’T know about journalism and interviewing would fill a library. He invariably makes comments that are completely irrelevant and self-serving, focuses on issues that are totally out of sync with what his story is ostensibly about, and asks questions that make people look at him and blink rapidly as though to say, “You can’t REALLY be asking that, can you?” His coverage of the mine rescue was not out of the ordinary.
