Marty Kaplan

I Got the Broadcast Blues

Published on March 15, 2010

Local TV news is the number one source of news for Americans. Seventy-eight percent of the country turns to it to find out what’s going on. The Internet may be growing as a news source, and some people still read the paper, but for most people, what’s on local TV news is pretty much what they know about where they live. If you care about the quality of democracy, you have to care about the quality of local TV news – even if you don’t watch it.

The Lies and Reconciliation Commission

Published on March 1, 2010

If Democrats decide to use the procedural move that Congress calls “reconciliation” to pass health care reform, get ready for a war of words. It will be won not by the biggest guns, but the biggest mouths. What’s true won’t matter; what’s loudest, what’s catchiest, will. That’s democracy in the age of newsertainment.

Side Effects Include Denial

Published on February 16, 2010

Why would Pfizer spend $100 million on two-minute TV ads that use a minute of that time admitting that their drug Chantix can cause “changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood,” “weird, unusual or strange dreams,” and “suicidal thoughts or actions”?

Thank You, Norman Lear

Published on January 18, 2010

It's just about perfect that the week that LA Gang Tours launches is also the tenth anniversary of the start of the Norman Lear Center.

Mercury Is Poison

Published on January 4, 2010

Now that we’re about to entrust health reform to the tender mercies of the insurance industry, it’s sobering to see the skullduggery that one of California’s largest auto insurers is trying to pull on the state’s drivers.

Barack Obama Is a Traitor

Published on December 14, 2009

Barack Obama is a traitor.

That’s what Dick Cheney said. Too bad Tiger Woods stepped on the story.

Bra Helps Fight Breast Cancer

Published on November 16, 2009

Now that CNN has put Lou Dobbs out to pasture, you'd think that The Most Trusted Name in News would make the reporting of facts - you know, the practice formerly known as journalism - the hallmark of its brand. Dream on.

If You Liked Health Care, You’ll Love Afghanistan

Published on November 2, 2009

If you’re depressed by the way the national debate about health care has been playing out, just wait until the rubber hits the road on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. If you’re enraged by the way Wall Street’s rescue has made us hostages to their recklessness, get ready for how the oil and coal industries are going to game the energy and climate change decisions ahead. If you’re scared by the way the media can trivialize and polarize and make entertainment out of any topic in its crosshairs, imagine its toxic impact when we get around to dealing with education, immigration and trade.

Balloon Dad to Pose for Playgirl

Published on October 19, 2009

It’s my own fault, I know, for watching “Showbiz Tonight” over the weekend, but I couldn’t find the news on any other channel, and I’d forgotten that HLN, better known as CNN’s Headline News, had turned its definition of journalism over to Nancy Grace, host of “television's only justice themed/interview/debate show, designed for those interested in the breaking crime news of the day”; to Robin Meade, author of “Morning Sunshine: How to Radiate Confidence and Feel It, Too”; to Jane Velez-Mitchell, author of “iWant: My Journey from Addiction and Overconsumption to a Simpler, Honest Life,” who has been “stand[ing] up for the powerless, and speak[ing] for those who don't have a voice” on HLN since Glenn Beck left it for Fox News. And, of course, to “Showbiz Tonight.”

How Would the Right Know It’s Wrong?

Published on October 5, 2009

While the left despairs of Barack Obama’s capitulation to K Street and Wall Street, the right continues to insist that he’s a Marxist, socialist, communist enemy of capitalism. What could possibly convince the right that it’s wrong – about that, or anything else?

I Want to Know What Happens Next

Published on September 23, 2009

Something’s going to happen next week, or next year, that will completely change the story.

The 60 Questions of Our Life

Published on September 14, 2009

“Curiosity: The Questions of Our Life” is the name of a new 60-episode five-year “landmark” series just announced with much fanfare by the Discovery Channel.

Kumbaya, Not Kevorkian, Will Kill Granny

Published on August 24, 2009

I don’t know which is more dispiriting: the New York Times’ failure to call Betsy McCaughey a liar, or Barack Obama’s failure to call Chuck Grassley a liar. It’s tempting to think of both failures as cowardice, a mortal fear of being branded “liberal.” But ironically it’s liberalism itself that makes them both mistake their cowardice for fair-mindedness.

The Marty Show

Published on August 10, 2009

I keep hoping that the health care “debate” we’re having this summer will turn out to be just a plot point in the 2009 version of “The Truman Show,” the movie where Jim Carrey’s character, Truman Burbank, discovers that what he thought was reality is actually a reality television show.

The Best Speech I Ever Wrote

Published on July 30, 2009

Elie Wiesel wagged a bony finger at me. "History will be watching you, young man," he warned. We were on the tarmac at Geneva International Airport, and yes, I was a young man, not yet 29, though after the week I'd just been through, I felt the age I am today, almost exactly 30 years later.

My Daughter, the Best-Selling Novelist

Published on July 27, 2009

By the way, have I mentioned that my 19-year-old daughter’s novel is a bestseller?

Cheney Meant Well

Published on July 13, 2009

The Importance of Being Michael

Published on July 6, 2009

“Why aren’t you talking about Michael Jackson more?”

Health Care Scare

Published on June 8, 2009

We’re about to find out whether Americans are as suspicious of the right’s anti-health care reform propaganda as Iraqis are dismissive of America’s lame hearts-and-minds campaign in Iraq.

It’s Tough Love Time for Obama

Published on May 18, 2009

First I worried that Obama was foolhardy to put Goldman Sachs alumni and other Wall Street geniuses in charge of fixing the mess that they’d made in the first place. But then I bought the pragmatic argument that these masters of the universe were the only people with enough inside experience to understand the derivatives con game well enough to shut it down.

The Food Fight Online

Published on May 4, 2009

If there's a metaphor for the way that Americans do politics online that's less apt than “a national conversation,” I can't think of one, except perhaps for “a great debate.”

Bye Bye Bybee

Published on April 20, 2009

It will be the playwrights and screenwriters, not the journalists and historians, who will someday get the torture story right. It will be the poets and novelists, not the philosophers and clergy, who will take us to the heart of that darkness. It will be the artists and satirists, not the law and the lawyers, who will eventually haul this decade to the bar of justice.

The Virtue of Hate

Published on April 5, 2009

“If he didn’t hear from her at night, he’d go frantic.” This is Carmen Bachan, speaking through tears about her husband James and her daughter Adrianna.
“That night he told her to be careful, and she was. She was crossing on a green light until that animal took her life and injured that beautiful young man.” That young man is Marcus Garfinkle, who was thrown onto the windshield of the car of the hit-and-run driver who killed Adrianna Bachan. He was carried 300 to 400 feet until the car stopped, and a passenger got out, dislodged him from the windshield, dumped him on the street with two broken legs and then sped away.

The Upside of Outrage

Published on March 23, 2009

A big reason that the Iraq war never ignited nationwide outrage on the scale of Vietnam protests was the absence of conscription. As long as the volunteer army confined the consequences of George W. Bush’s Oedipal acting-out to one slice of America, taking it to the streets was just not how the country channeled its anger; telling it to the pollster was more like it.

The Stem Cell Slippery Slope Fallacy

Published on March 9, 2009

Solidarity For Never

Published on February 23, 2009

Since conservative orthodoxy has turned out to be voodoo economics after all, now would be an excellent time to unmask its demonization of labor unions as yet another con job that big business has pulled on the American people.

The Media Are the Message

Published on February 18, 2009

Patriotic Extortion

Published on February 9, 2009

Compassion Fatigue

Published on February 2, 2009

Liberal Parents, Liberal Children

Published on January 26, 2009

When it comes to politics, today’s college freshmen resemble their baby boomer parents of 40 years ago in all ways except two. One way makes perfect sense; the other is a puzzle.

The Science of Forty-Four

Published on January 20, 2009

“We will restore science to its rightful place” — that’s the line I didn’t see coming. Anyone watching the backgrounders leading up to the inaugural knew that the incoming president would call for “a new era of responsibility.”

The CNN-NPR-NY Times Middle East Conspiracy

Published on January 14, 2009

Have you noticed that when people complain about bias in the media, it's always bias against their own point of view and never bias in favor of their side?

Eyeless in Gaza

Published on January 5, 2009

Where were all the people of Gaza rising up in outrage when Hamas used them as human shields?

Once in a lifetime

Published on December 31, 2008

I don't know about you, but I've had it up to here with once-in-a-lifetime events.

Broadband: Not for kids only

Published on December 18, 2008

The average broadband offering in Japan is 10 times faster than the average service available to U.S. consumers -- at half the cost. People in countries like Finland, France, Korea, Sweden and Italy also pay less to get more.

All’s well that ends Zell

Published on December 11, 2008

The prospect of Zell's dumping Tribune assets at fire-sale prices has renewed speculation about the Los Angeles Times being returned to local ownership.

All the news that’s fit to neuter

Published on December 3, 2008

When the obituary for American journalism is eventually written, a milestone in the journey to its death rattle will surely be the column that The New York Times' ombudsman, Clark Hoyt.

We felt so safe there

Published on November 20, 2008

Maybe the only way you can put down roots in California is with the thought that every place has its own risks, its tornadoes and hurricanes and lightning, that driving on the freeway is even more dangerous than living on a fault line.

The kids are all right

Published on November 11, 2008

As I drove across Los Angeles on election night, I saw clusters of teens and kids in their 20s celebrating on random street corners, high-fiving drivers at red lights. They may not have marched on the Pentagon to end the war in Iraq, but they have given the nation a new president who has pledged to do just that. For the first time since the springtime of the baby boomers, they have become not just consumers to be marketed to, but a political force to be reckoned with.

Let bygones (not) be bygones

Published on November 5, 2008

So John McCain -- while claiming that not he's not impugning Barack Obama's patriotism -- impugns Barack Obama's patriotism, but we're supposed to understand that it doesn't really matter, because that's just what people do in campaigns.

Move over, Willie Horton

Published on October 27, 2008

According to KDKA News Director John Verrilli, it was Pennsylvania McCain spokesman Peter Feldman, in the absence of any confirmed facts, who told the media that the mugger saw a McCain bumper sticker on Ashley Todd's car, and that the B stood for Barack.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T for Colin Powell

Published on October 19, 2008

I couldn't help recalling that this was the same Colin Powell whose United Nations speech five years earlier had convinced me that invading Iraq was the right thing to do.

Alan shrugged

Published on October 13, 2008

Wall Street's problem, in the president's mind, is not a systemic pathology, not an illness that comes on the same chromosome as the profit motive. Instead, it's the behavior of a frat boy on a bender, the reckless phase of a good-time Charlie rather than the symptom of profound disease.

Gotcha? You betcha!

Published on October 6, 2008

But there's also a less benign explanation for the media's negligence, and it's captured by something President Andrew Jackson said nearly two centuries ago: "If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning."

The debates won’t matter

Published on September 28, 2008

Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." I think he had it half right.

Is our fate really sealed? Is change possible?

Published on September 25, 2008

Within the calendar that constitutes the Jewish cathedral in time, no days are more saturated with the experience of human nature, and with experiments in human change, than the Days of Awe. This is when we are asked, paradoxically, both to steep in our powerlessness to escape our species' fate, and yet also to try out behaviors that can rescue us from our destinies.

One-Day U

Published on September 17, 2008

You have to go back to Spiro Agnew and his bullyboy ventriloquists, Pat Buchanan and William Safire, to find this kind of sneering contempt for educated people.

Post-Palin Depression

Published on September 10, 2008

This is not just a Jewish phenomenon, though a few thousand years of expecting to be scapegoated, persecuted, exiled or killed certainly contributes to the melancholic gene Jews are known for carrying, the optimism of a Ben-Gurion or Sandy Koufax notwithstanding.

The Hollywood candidate is not Obama

Published on September 1, 2008

If John McCain wins this election, it will be because of Hollywood.

But he’s a Muslim!

Published on August 25, 2008

The Muslim issue is a way to talk about race without talking about race, and without having to squirm about saying that race is not an issue.