1122 Insulting Tim

1122  Insulting Tim

David Gregory won’t be prosecuted for producing a high-capacity ammo clip from under his anchor desk on national television after the Newtown murders.

Gregory is host of “Meet the Press,” the granddaddy of Sunday public affairs programs that started on WOR radio a million years ago and has been an NBC staple for only slightly less time.

Gregory and company went to the DC police and said they were planning to show the empty clip on TV and the cops said that was illegal, which it is.  Gregory did it anyway. Now, the administration in the district says it won’t prosecute because blah blah blah … first amendment … blah blah blah … low level crime... blah blah blah...

Okay, fine.  Gregory could have put up a graphic of the clip and that would have done the same job during his interview with the NRA’s walking dead executive director, showing the evil device without breaking any laws.

Gregory is in the chair vacated by the premature death of Tim Russert who turned “Meet the Press” from a sleepy, sloppy time filler into appointment viewing.  Tim was shaped by the pirate template of journalists.  He was a buccaneer you couldn’t face down, but a graceful man who could say more with an impish grin and a not-so-impish scowl than Gregory can say in 13 weeks of non-stop talking.

Would Russert have shown the clip?  Probably not, but who knows.  The guy’s dead, after all.

Tim was an avid reader of the New York Post.  But that doesn’t mean he was a murdochian sycophant.  He was an avid reader of the Washington Post, but that didn’t mean he was a Grahamian sycophant.

He understood the power of the Sunday pulpit he preached from.   And Gregory insulted the guy’s memory with a sensationalist piece of nonsense.

It’s nice that NBC won’t have to spend megabucks defending Gregory.   It’s cool that he got away with flouting the law for the sake of making a point.  But he’s insulting the House that Tim Built.


(Disclaimer: your correspondent wrote parts of Meet the Press for eight years.)

Shrapnel:

--Today’s blog was made possible by a grant from Pullman Motors of New Roses, Pennsylvania.  Worried about guns?  Visit Pullman for the country’s widest selection of certified pre-owned Sherman Tanks and armored cars.

--You know you’re ordering on line too often when you can accurately type all 16 digits of your credit card, its expiration date and the “security number” on the reverse side from memory.  Amex users get a break, the number is only 15 digits.  The benefits of “membership.”

--Every candidate for the title of Miss America was an individual face on the same body.  And have you noticed that historically two thirds of the winners are either from the south or the midwest?  Except not this year when the winner was from Brooklyn.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
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