I love pbs! It sells what nobody wants to buy. From the documentaries to the pundit panels, it delivers the 10,000 ft view of any topic imaginable. Most of the time, it also tries to entertain, lightly. Even when they tackle the heavy topics they don’t rush through or sensationalize. They stay serious but steady. At the end of the article the journalist has you feeling like it is bad today, but this too shall pass.
Nobody is better at maintaining a calm and informative flow than the folks at NewsHour. Everybody has the mood in mind, whether they are in front of the camera or behind it. The set designers and builders avoid any distracting graphics. The clothing and makeup people don’t enforce an artificial fashion code on the presenters1. All the zoom calls look like Zoom calls.
All of the journalists work diligently to make the news informative and sympathetic to the range of viewers who might tune in from any spot in America, but no one works harder on it, and no one is better at it than Geoff Bennett. He is the anchor of NewsHour, and one of the few people remaining in TV journalism who truly merits that title. He is the embodiment of unflappability.
He can steer a politician’s Ideological cruise boat away from the muddy reefs which call to those vessels inexorably. He knows how to navigate a soliloquy on the secret project known to everyone which has the Chinese Communist Party and its real leader, George Soros, passing out visas and voter registration cards to the horde of slavering migrants stampeding toward Brownsville. He knows how to keep a light touch on the tiller as he sees us through a report on US policy toward Costa Rica.
He doesn’t simply change the subject. He offers the guest an opportunity to make themselves understood, first to him, and then by the transitive property of Television exposition, to the rest of their fellow citizens.
It’s clear, from the beginning of every interview, that nobody’s going to get him riled. He will not raise his voice, gesture emphatically, laugh, or talk over the guest.
His performance during the Trump era’s mass psychosis helped alleviate my heartburn. Geoff’s steady tone and incisive questions exposed the populist neofascist face of Trump’s movement. The political operatives all suffer from hubris and profound incompetence exacerbated by their competitive hankering for Trump’s perianal flavor. Geoff’s conversations with these snarling purse dogs allowed them to demonstrate that incompetence. He has given them the rope that they have asked for, while resisting the temptation to help them with the knot and the tree limb. After listening to them respond to his questions, I figure on just letting them sell NOAA to Exxon and eliminate FEMA before the next hurricane season, try to safely, inexpensively, and effectively round up 16 million people and deport them, and have somebody like Matt Goetz stand up at morning briefings to tell Federal prosecutors and law enforcement that he’s the new sheriff in town and here are all of his well-considered and professionally informed plans for the agency’s future.
Lately, I have started questioning my odds of a worry-free future again. I’m having doubts because they broke Goeff. I know I shouldn’t be surprised. Everyone has their limit. There’s just that one, last, dumb shit comment that pushes things over a person’s line. We all start off hopeful when we engage in adversarial discussions. Despite all the absolutisms tossed about in the course our disputes, we all hope that at the end, we will be able to say that the opposition was misguided, but even so, gave a respectable argument for their position.
We don’t become dejected when an opponent offers up a logical fallacy or bogus statistic in the course of an argument. What kills a person’s spirit is insistent incoherence delivered from beneath the protective umbrella of a time limit, or in such a massive load that it will strain the attention of any sane person to see the argument thoroughly dismantled.
On November 13th, 2024 at 49 minutes and 55 seconds into the PBS NewsHour, the cameras captured the very instant when Geoff snapped.
You can see it coming. The guest throws out cryptic negativity about Covid vaccines, then ramps it up with some free-floating homophobia. Then for the finisher, he throws out abortion on demand with no restrictions and no restraint. The next glimpse of Geoff’s face reveals his thoughts as clearly as spoken words.
‘This? This again with two minutes left in the interview? I can’t. I know I should swat this down, but I am so tired. I’m just going to ignore it and move on.’
I sincerely hope that Geoff recovers. He looked a lot better by the end of the episode, but that kind of hit can result in a relapse. Please get well soon Anchor Man. I don’t think I have it in me to start worrying about Matt Goetz doing the same thing to the FBI.
Okay, there is that one pink pantsuit that keeps coming back. I imagine there’s a story behind that, because I can’t imagine that nobody said anything. I consider it an isolated incident.
Dedicated to the Game 