Quote of the Week...from Al Franken

The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal.  They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover.          --Al Franken

Not that there isn't plenty of partisan and ideological bias in the media today, but Senator Franken is correct: the reporting and discussions we experience...especially on television...have been greatly simplified, personalized, and delivered for their emotional impact and ability to attract viewers (who then watch the commercials), not as a means to inform and educate.  The fact that our president can tie up so much news time with his absurd Twitter posts is symptomatic of this dereliction of mass journalism in the early twenty-first century.  I can easily spot...and most probably you can, too...whenever someone is leaning too far over to one political side over the other.  But it is much more insidious when it comes to choosing WHAT to cover...FoxNews can discuss an issue and claim that they are balanced because they have a conservative and a liberal debating it, but if the topic is always about Hillary's emails then the bias is already embedded.  The bottom line is that when media can choose between devoting coverage to issues facing us and the personalities involved in the debate, they usually lean toward the personalities...

I never did think Al Franken was funny on Saturday Night Live, but I hadn't realized that he was more of a behind-the-scenes figure in this series, writing much of the comedic material.  Since then, he's gone into politics, first as an opinion-maker with some bestselling books and then as one of Minnesota's senators since 2009.  He is a staunch progressive Democrat who I feel looks out strongly for the interests of people at large and in particular for those he represents in Minnesota...including groups not a part of his political base and not just the wealthy, vested interests that control so much of what happens on Capitol Hill.  Sometimes I think Franken is a bit too blunt and undiplomatic in his approach, but compared to the current occupant of the White House he's pretty tame and easy-going.  I just finished reading his current release, titled Giant of the Senate, and which relates his upbringing, the years with SNL and his relationships with his colleagues there...and then the turn to politics, finally discussing his first term in the United States Senate.  I found the book very educational and entertaining, although I'd already read a lot of the earlier stuff about him.  It was his Senate chapters that interested me the most, especially the parts where he discussed different issues in greater detail than the media is willing to cover...

I just heard that Al Franken and Attorney General Jeff Sessions were in a heated exchange the other day in a Senate hearing...sounds like business as usual.  But although he is partisan in his politics, the Minnesota senator and former comic is developing a reputation in his current post as someone who is very personable and willing to work across the aisle with Republicans on issues of mutual benefit.  And Bill O'Reilly despises him...yet another feather in his cap...