New Year's 2020: Just imagine any old-time newsroom, or a bar across the street, with grizzled veterans discussing what stories to expect from the year ahead.
"It'll be the election for sure," says one. "You got an unpopular incumbent Republican president and a ton of Democratic challengers."
"Plus the economy is strong -- that gives the incumbent an advantage," notes another. Everybody nods.
Then, sometime in March, the group gathers again. "Who saw this coming? An effing pandemic? It's going to be the story of the year by far," one editor opines -- forget the election."
By May, the nationwide protests over police violence against black people have overwhelmed the news cycle, temporarily suppressing both the political and the health news. "This is historic," says one the vets. "It reminds me of the 60s, of Rodney King..."
"What about the economy?" chimes in a colleague. "Unemployment has soared; that's the story now."
But as summer comes, the pandemic strikes back. Then, as summer fades, the worst wildfires on record blanket the West, turning the skies orange and the air putrid with smoke. Millions are affected. "Its climate change -- that's THE story" says one of the journalists over Zoom. "it's finally hit home."
Fast forward to this week. Scientists are discussing the brand new evidence that there may be signs of life on Venus and that a black hole may exist in our solar system. The search for extraterrestrial life has reached the point, from a news perspective, that it just seems likely to pop.
"I've got it," sighs one of the hoary old editors. "Forget all the rest. 2020 is going to be be the year we discover life somewhere in the universe!"
It's been that kind of a year. Our veteran journalists may almost be forgiven for turning off Zoom and calling on their old friends, Jim Beam and Hiram Walker. Almost, but not quite. Because they better stayed tuned for what's going to come next...
As I muse about all this, one of my grandchildren comes over. "Grandpa, why are all of the people in those stupid commercials smiling? Life isn't like that. I don't know much about saving 15 percent in 15 minutes, but it doesn't seem like something to get all gaga about. Don't they know that Covid is out there? And why aren't they masked?"
Seriously, when it comes to news cycles, I'm still puzzled by that item about the man in a jetpack cruising past two airliners at 3,000 feet above LAX recently. Maybe that guy was using the gas found in Venus's atmosphere to propel his vehicle?
Or maybe it was just Amazon perfecting its latest delivery vehicle.
Here is your news:
* Devastating fires inject climate change into the presidential campaign (WashPo). The world is burning and drowning. We have to vote for the planet’s future. (Opinion Page, WashPo)
* Republicans in battleground states like Florida are aggressively pushing absentee voting, trying to clean up Trump’s bogus claims that the practice is unreliable and corrupt. Not surprisingly, since Trump ramped up his tirade against voting by mail this summer, polls have started to show that Republicans are less likely to vote by mail than Democrats. That shift is a problem for the GOP during a time when people may be reluctant to vote in person because of the coronavirus pandemic. [HuffPost]
* A data scientist wrote a damning 6,600-word memo to her colleagues at Facebook on her final day at work expressing dire concern over the way the tech giant fails to properly combat the use of fake accounts to sway politics in smaller countries. “In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry,” Sophie Zhang reportedly wrote. [HuffPost]
* Trump boasted of having received “the highly honored Bay of Pigs Award” from Miami’s Cuban community. There is no such award. Later on Sunday, Trump reiterated the award claim, touting his “unwavering devotion to our nation’s incredible Latino and Hispanic American communities.” [HuffPost]
* Trump accuses Biden of taking performance-enhancing substance (Yahoo News). I guess steroids help you in the polls. (DW)
* Karlotta Hicks was ready to teach online. Her handmade Zoom background featured numbers and the ABCs, kindergarten concepts she hoped would jog her first graders’ memories after nearly six months away from the classroom. She’d spoken by phone over the summer to the parents of her 14 students, letting them know that virtual classes would begin right after Labor Day at 8 a.m.“It’s going to be as if the kids were in front of me,” she said confidently a week before classes began at Winans Academy for Performing Arts. But when class began on Tuesday, just one student appeared in her virtual classroom, and his audio wasn’t working. (Detroit Free Press)
* Smoke from the wildfires has drifted so far that it caused a haze in Washington, D.C., and Canada. [New York Times]
* A major fire that has been raging outside Los Angeles for more than a week threatened to engulf a historic observatory and billion-dollar broadcast towers on Tuesday as firefighters struggled to contain the flames. The so-called Bobcat fire was within 500 feet (150 meters) from the 116-year-old Mt. Wilson Observatory, fire officials said in a tweet, adding that crews were in place "ready to receive the fire." Officials at the observatory said all personnel had been evacuated as the fire was "knocking on our door." (Yahoo News)
* Right now, Pennsylvania looks like the single most important state of the 2020 election. According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential forecast, Pennsylvania is by far the likeliest state to provide either President Trump or Joe Biden with the decisive vote in the Electoral College: It has a 31 percent chance of being the tipping-point state. (That’s what happens when you take one of the most evenly divided states in the union and give it 20 electoral votes.) In fact, Pennsylvania is so important that our model gives Trump an 84 percent chance of winning the presidency if he carries the state — and it gives Biden a 96 percent chance of winning if Pennsylvania goes blue. (538)
***
I remember seeing this legendary artist perform in San Francisco many years ago.
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
It's gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is that rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
Look straight ahead, there's nothing but blue skies
I can see all obstacles in my way
Here is that rainbow I've been praying for
It's gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
No comments:
Post a Comment