No relief coming from BP's mounting failures

Because of the fact that virtually nothing BP has tried or said has worked or proven to be truthful, I wonder if some government agency is making worst-case contingency plans to stop the oil? Who is to say that relief wells, the alleged ultimate fix scheduled for later this summer, will solve the problem in the Gulf of Mexico?

Here is something to ponder. If approximately 32 percent of the Gulf of Mexico has already been closed to fishing in just under two months, wouldn't that mean that after six months the gulf will be more or less destroyed by the crude oil? Logic tells me that the oil will begin to work its way into the Caribbean and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean. In a year, most of the eastern waterways, including fresh-water rivers, bays and inlets, will have been contaminated by BP's spill.

There is enough oil in Deepwater Horizon well to flow for decades

Extend the doomsday scenario out to the end of, oh, say 2012, and most of the planet will have been impacted by this gusher. Clean water will become a rare commodity. Economies will collapse, particularly in small countries like the Dominican Republic, which rely heavily on tourism. Many animals will go extinct and human beings will get sick or die from exposure to the oil. It's not too far-fetched to believe that wars will ignite in the quest for clean water, something that has been suggested even before this latest environmental disaster.

Is it too far-fetched to believe in a snow-balling effect that will lead us to the brink? What evidence is there to lead anyone to think that this gusher will be capped this summer or even this year? If the technology existed to stop it, wouldn't it have been sealed by now?

The relief well (there are actually two being drilled, one as a backup) is just another theory of how to stop the flow. But it's never been proven at this depth. It's not a guaranteed end, despite what BP claims.

Our government seems to be placing too much faith in BP.

Our founding fathers warned of the dangers of corporations having too much power within our democracy. They saw large corporations as potential threats to our country, and many of the causes of our economic woes are certainly proof that the founders were correct. I bet, however, they never envisioned a corporation having the power to destroy the planet as we know it.

Check out this website for more oil spill news from CNN's Anderson Cooper.

One news story that needs to go away

I wasn't going to do this. I didn't want to be part of the madness. But the insanity of the coverage of the Sandra Bullock-Jesse James breakup is just too much for me not to comment.

Why does anyone outside of their families and friends care about this couple? Their split should have been a brief in the newspaper, a mention at the end of some celebrity-oriented show, a blurb on the Yahoo news home page. That's it.

But here we are, several weeks into the breakup and now we learn that Bullock is going to make an appearance at The MTV Movie Awards on June 6 in Los Angeles. Oh, my God! Stop the presses. Get those CNN reporters out of Louisiana and send them to Hollywood.

I've had it with this story. Not one more minute of any legitimate journalist's time should be spent on it. Unless the mediocre-at-best actress sets herself on fire at the awards or the biker-turned-drama queen figures out a way to stop the oil leak in the gulf, I don't want to hear or read another word about them, their marriage, their childhood traumas or anything else. In fact, I am getting ready to burn my West Coast Choppers t-shirt when I am done with this post.

Lighter news is sometimes a necessary evil in a celebrity-obsessed society such as ours. Media companies need to stay in business. I get it. But the breakup of these two morons doesn't even rise to the level of the Gore separation. Get off of it already.

While on the subject of media coverage, I am glad to see newsman Anderson Cooper of CNN doing a good job on the oil story each night at 10 p.m. ET. While some other major media have pulled back a bit, CNN seems to be intensifying its coverage of the environmental disaster. This is literally a story that gets worse by the day and deserves smart coverage, which Cooper seems to be providing.

The oil spill story, not the Bullock-James ordeal, is one that needs to remain above the fold for many weeks, if not months to come. It's a story that impacts us all in ways we might not have ever seen, while the divorce of two celebrities means relatively nothing.

Obama suddenly on the ropes

I find it very strange from a news judgment perspective that the USA Today (my former employer) home front is leading with the gays in the military story tonight while virtually every other major news web site and television broadcast is all over the oil spill events of the day. PBS, for instance, spent half of its newscast on the spill. Furthermore, as I drilled down into the USA Today site, I noticed the coverage hasn't been nearly as comprehensive as other major media sites have been in the last few weeks. Being that stories like this spill were what that national newspaper lived for in the past, I am baffled by USA Today's lack of coverage.

Here are a few observations about this ongoing story:

- CNN called out President Obama and BP for an entire hour on Anderson Cooper 360 tonight. It was startling to see what many right-wingers consider a liberal news organization catching Obama in several "gotcha" moments, as if Obama's middle initial was W. Cooper asked good questions and raised many excellent points about Obama and BP's failings in the last few weeks.

- Obama's press conference on Thursday was a bad performance. He didn't seem to have a firm grasp on the details like he usually does. He often contradicted himself. And the story about his daughter asking him about the oil leak while he was shaving was simply cheap and sappy. It was like he was groping for something to deflect the heat. I was disappointed in Obama's sense of command and I began to wonder for the first time whether Obama might be better at long-range, big-picture thinking, but not so good at dealing with a serious and immediate crisis. The lack of urgency he showed about addressing unemployment in his first year in office was inexcusable, but in that case he might have thought he had time to work on it. There was and continues to be no time to be wasted in this current environmental disaster. Not a single minute. Of course, some of the criticism Obama is taking is nothing more than political payback for the heat President Bush took for the feds' slow response to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. So it's important to consider the source of the attacks on the current president.

- Is this oil spill going to ruin the Obama presidency? Everyone thought the health-care battle would jeopardize Obama's remaining years in the White House. The ongoing economic woes are certainly a major threat. But the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has the potential to turn even the most liberal people against Obama. It's beginning to look like a botched operation, and that's not sitting well with environmental groups like the Sierra Club. With Obama taking full responsibility for the operation to stop the leak, I am not so sure how forgiving people are going to be.

This situation is bound to get worse. We don't even know a fraction of the damage that has been done yet. This could linger well into the remaining years of Obama's first and maybe last term. His enemies are salivating over a chance to pin real blame on him for showing a lack of leadership. Of course, Republicans aren't exactly champions of environmental causes, so it's kind of ridiculous to hear conservatives all of a sudden worried about the deaths of brown pelicans and sea turtles. It is important to remember that these are the "drill baby drill" people.

It's also important for the media to do its job and stay on this story in the most objective and thorough way it can.

E-media slow to react to California quake

I got an early report of the earthquake near the Mexico-California border today via an e-mail from a friend who lives in San Diego. When I turned on the television to check the cable news stations, there was virtually no information about the quake except on CNN where the downsized B-team was evidently working the Easter holiday shift. Not exactly stuff that would make Walter Cronkite proud.

The latest trend in the media is to let average citizens do the journalistic legwork while allowing most journalists to have the weekend off. That strategy, however, is no substitute for getting images from professional photographers and eye-witness accounts from trained observers/journalists. I saw none of that in the first few hours after today's quake. What I did see was amateur video taken by housewives and children that failed to accurately depict the event and a CNN anchorman who didn't seem to have a grasp of basic geography. It was frustrating to watch a newscast that lacked the most basic information.

As the aftershocks were mounting, FOX News continued to ignore the story entirely, leaving me to think that newscast was prerecorded. When the smiling anchor on FOX finally acknowledged the quake, she didn't seem to comprehend the potential newsworthiness of it and quickly returned to other news that was nothing more than scripted fluff and rehashed stories from the previous week. She didn't appear nimble enough to switch gears. But she had a great smile. And through the aftershocks, the mainstream Web sites weren't on top of the story anymore than TV talking heads.

You would think that after some catastrophic earthquakes lately, a quake near a major U.S. city would draw a greater sense of urgency from the electronic media. This should be when e-media is at its best. I've heard a lot about newsrooms allegedly being 24/7 operations in this new technology age -- about media companies being more competitive than ever. Yet, I saw little evidence of that today. The news out of Southern California trickled to the East Coast today like back in the days of old teletype wire machines. Where was the immediacy and journalistic credibility in the early hours? Tomorrow's traditional newspapers will probably have it covered, particularly in places like San Diego and Los Angeles, but the electronic media was slow to react today, leading me to wonder about the staffing and leadership at these news outlets.

This wasn't a Haiti-type earthquake. Maybe there was no need to call in Brian Williams to man the desk at NBC or get the webmaster out of bed to redesign the home page. But it was another indication that while the storytelling tools of journalism improve, the actual timeliness, professionalism and accuracy of electronic media leaves much to be desired.

Rediscovering TV in tough times

I never watched much television until I got laid off. Other than a couple HBO shows and New York Yankee games, I didn't really like much of anything else I saw on the tube in recent years. Even the news broadcasts seemed more like bad entertainment than legitimate reporting. Television, I thought, would turn my mind to mush. With the challenges I had at work, there was no reason to risk losing a few million more brain cells while watching American Idol.

Of course, much has changed in the nine months since I was let go from USA TODAY by my former boss, Richard Curtis. Curtis was one of the founders of USA TODAY. In a maddening turn of events, he retired within a few short weeks after ending my career in McLean, Va.

My days now consist of eating, sleeping, job searching and watching TV. Oh sure, I dabble in playing music, sitting in with other weekend-warrior musicians now and then, or strumming my guitar alone in my home. I take walks on occasion to clear my mind, but often find that fresh air causes me to over-think. REM sleep seems to produce that same result. But mostly, I am in a routine. A routine that is easy on the budget but not very invigorating. Hanging with the cat is quaint, and I am sure he appreciates the company, but I believe humans need a bit more from life.

I have turned to TV in the evenings. While I worked nights for most of my career, I now melt into the couch each evening, my wife to my left, the remote to my right. I try to tune out the problems and worries of another unemployed day. I immerse myself in CSI Miami, a show I first discovered around Christmas time, shortly after being laid off. The visuals warmed me during the cold, dark months. Scenes of green palms and sparking tides brought me back to my old stomping grounds in South Florida. A simpler and more hopeful time. When you're 20something, everything is in front of you. Doors tend to be a bit more open.

OK, CSI Miami isn't art. But "H"is a cool cat, a man's man with a touch of New Age values. Calleigh knows how to wear a holstered gun and Eric, in real life, went to my high school in a town 30 miles north of New York City.

I watch another show, Family Guy. My former youthful assistant, Veronica Salazar, actually was the first person to make me aware of the racy cartoon. She had character dolls from the show on her desk. She raved about the sitcom. I had no interest in ever seeing it, figuring I wouldn't enjoy something that a 25-year-old embraces so dearly. As it turns out, however, the show is smart, often disgustingly funny, and covers a wide range of social and cultural comedy and commentary that requires one to be at least 40 years old to fully appreciate. For me, it doesn't get any better than Stewie!

Turns out TV can be an escape and not just an annoyance. DVRs have taken care of having to endure the flood of bad commercials, but I am still cautious with what I sample and what I avoid in prime-time programming. TV is cheap and accessible. Those are good things when one is juggling a budget on less than half the income from just a year ago.

Still, TV can be a trap. I won't turn it on before a certain hour. I won't become a rabid fan of True Blood or take Larry King seriously. CNN and FOX News are unwatchable. I found it ironic that every one of the talking heads for various newscasts praised Walter Cronkite after his death. But they themselves, and the way they approach the news, couldn't be any further away from Cronkite's approach.

TV is in many ways still a vast wasteland. But I do have a new appreciation for what TV can do for people in certain situations or at various stages of life. Yes, there are healthier ways to free the mind and grow the soul. There is yoga, the cure-all to everything. And life itself is in high definition, so running out to get the latest flat-screen technology in a constant quest to improve viewing is sort of ironic. Look out your window. That's HD.

When I return to work, I will have something more to talk about around the water cooler. Something other than cutbacks and the various dysfunctions that occur in every office. I can talk about Stewie's antics and whether or not Eric will turn up alive in the next season of CSI Miami.

Always a silver lining...