Bunning relents but damage likely done

Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky finally came to his senses tonight. Read the latest. It may be too little too late for some unemployed folks because the deadline for a seamless continuation of funding was missed due to Bunning's one-man blockade. Combined with the timing of when certain people were scheduled to move into a new tier and the state in which they reside, further payments might be delayed for days, weeks or months. A percentage of jobless people who would have otherwise qualified for continuation of payments if last Friday's deadline was met, may have some problems restarting the process. Because I am one of those people, I will report back on this saga next week.

At the very least, Mr. Bunning has created a lot of anxiety for thousands of Virginians who might have received a similar "bye" notice to the one I got in the mail today from the Virginia Employment Commission -- an agency that still has not returned my calls or answered my e-mails. If payments do not resume for a percentage of us, Bunning will have done more damage than the mainstream media will probably report.

It's been clear to me that most news folks are missing the important nuances and magnitude of this sometimes surreal story. There has been a fair amount of editorial commentary about Bunning's cruel stunt but little analysis about what it really means for average folks caught in the most complex part of this political web. In fact, the media hasn't done a good job in general of covering the unemployment problem in this country. They report the data released by the government, but I don't see much challenging of those statistics that fail to portray the whole picture. I don't see much interpretation of what unemployment means to society, let alone the diversity of individuals facing financial extinction. In a year in which many politicians, including President Obama, all but ignored growing unemployment issues, where was the media?

An interesting side note to this mess... Diane Sawyer led with the Bunning story on the ABC network news Tuesday night. Meanwhile, Brian Williams of NBC barely made mention of it late in his newscast. Think I will be watching Diane Sawyer from now on. What kind of news judgment does Williams have? Pushing a story that impacts millions of Americans to a 20-second blurb? Is he kidding? No wonder Sawyer's ratings have risen since she has taken over at ABC. Kudos to ABC for chasing down Bunning and airing his classless outbursts and thoughtless actions.