We appreciate that Meet The Press went to Boston to honor the city and its heroes one year after the Marathon bombing, but the programming of this week's episode was a true disappointment. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't have done the Boston tribute, but it's what they put around it that made for poor Sunday news program television.
First, do the producers of the show have so little faith in its moderator that they feel the need to fill up a good part of the program with recorded segments (Harry Smith's MTP Boston story; Andrea Mitchell's interview with fmr. Sec. Kathleen Sebelius) and weekly features? The interview with Secretary Sebelius should have been conducted on Meet The Press! But sadly, MTP doesn't seem to have the clout that it once did or it would have.
But here's why this week's program was an editorial fall-down. This week is indeed the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon, but it's also the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the civil rights act. It was all over the news this week and Meet The Press didn't touch it at all. The panel discussed voting rights, during the Boston Marathon segment, first-responder Kent Scarna talked about living in a free and open society, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns discussed his new film about the Gettysburg Address, yet Mr. Gregory never discussed why four living presidents gathered in Austin, TX this week. It was like a bad movie where they keep feeding you foreshadowing that goes no where.
All of today's topics tied into the Civil Rights act in someway so it was so odd to us that it was never brought to the fore of the discussion. Not to mention that there were new developing events in Ukraine over night, also not discussed.
The ad naseum discussion of the Affordable Care Act would have not be
necessary had the interview with Secretary Sebelius been on Meet The
Press. Mr. Gregory did ask one pertinent question, framing it in the correct context; Politically, should the resignation of Ms. Sebelius be seen as a success or failure? Everything beyond that was superfluous. Did Andrea Mitchell ask the former Secretary good questions? Of course, but that's not the point. The point is that Meet The Press shouldn't have to borrow.
President Obama's comments this week on voting rights, tied into the Civil Rights Acts, spurred the conversation for the Round Table. Mr. Obama said that voting was an issue of citizenship and that it was not an issue of either Democrat or Republican. However, he went on to single out Republicans for trying to suppress the vote by enacting all kinds of restrictions that would work against minorities. As you can imagine, Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal said that there is no evidence that the vast number of laws state Republican legislatures have passed have had any effect on voting. That's true but there hasn't been a national election (a mid-term for example) since many of them have been enacted. We'll have to wait and see, but what we can say is that we shouldn't be making laws to restrict people from voting but to enable more people to do it.
It's what Kara Swisher, editor of Re/Code, was saying that technology in how we do other things - shopping, communicating - should be applied to our civic responsibilities. That's fine, but she missed the point of the question that charged Republicans with making big efforts to prevent that very evolution of expanded voting. But is it really what Republicans are trying to do? Well, they want to win elections so they're doing what ever they can to make those wins happen. The Republican National Committee knows, though would never admit, that Republican chances of taking over the White House, no matter what they do, are becoming slimmer and slimmer. However, where they can win is in local Congressional districts, and through those local wins maintain power and relevance nationally. To facilitate those wins, Republican controlled state legislatures will gerrymander the district, restrict voting by requiring picture identification, shorten registration and advance balloting periods, pour money into advertising, and you may not like any of it. And if you don't, well here's the rub, it's all legal so Republicans are well within the right of the law to make those moves. If Democrats don't like it, they have to get their act together and grind in the corners - compete for those local seats.
Round Table: Re/Code Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher, Republican strategist Mike
Murphy, Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot, and Rep.
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Panel in Boston: historian and author Doris Kearns
Goodwin, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), and former Boston Police Commissioner Ed
Davis. David will also talk with Boston Globe photographer John
Tlumacki and former New England Patriots player Joe Andruzzi
A couple of "By the Ways:"
With agree with Mr. Scarna, who we mentioned earlier, that we don't agree with the apologists because this column believes that ultimately it is you who is responsible for your own actions. Should we, as a society, do all that we can to prevent tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombing? Of course. Do we? Of course not.
A thank you to Senator Ed Markey for mentioning that the Boston segment was produced at Logan Airport and reminding us that it was that very airport from which the 9/11 hijackers took off.
(So the production team for Meet The Press flew into Logan Airport and did the show from Logan Airport? They didn't even go into the city... lame. How about a... oh, we don't know... an American historical site in Boston!)
And in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act, below is the entire text of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, a speech that Ken Burns called the greatest speech ever made in the American English language.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not
hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
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