Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/771213
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS When the news broke Tuesday that Megyn Kelly was leaving the Fox News bubble to pursue a broader audience at NBC, my initial thought was: Who cares? Talking heads frequently switch networks, and Americans increas- ingly get their news not from TV, but from social media sites. ButKelly'simminentmove is huge because it's Kelly. The very fact that NBC covets her polarizing "brand" is vivid ev- idence of how profoundly the broadcast media has changed since the kinder, gentler era of Uncle Walter Cronkite. Back then, long before ca- ble news and the Internet, the TV anchorman (always a man) was broadly and implic- itly trusted across the polit- ical spectrum. In the words of journalist-historian David Halberstam, the anchorman "represented in a real way the American center ... a mass fig- ure who held centrist atti- tudes for a mass audience." But today, the mass audience has been fractured and nar- rowcasted to the point where it's difficult to locate even a shrunken American center. Years ago, a commercial network would never have pitched an eight-digit annual salary to someone like Megyn Kelly, whose every utterance infuriates millions of viewers. But in the current environ- ment, NBC is fine with hiring someone who declared on air (in 45 segments) that the New Black Panthers were a major public menace, and that it was "a verifiable fact" that Santa Claus and Jesus were white. Santa is fictional, and scholars say that Jesus was of Mediter- ranean stock and looked like today's average Palestinian. It's noteworthy that af- ter the news of her hiring broke recently, Kelly's Face- book page was flooded with denunciations from both ends of the spectrum. That's de ri- gueur for any anchorperson in our wildly disputatious na- tion — Uncle Walter would be shocked — but even more so for Kelly. Left-leaning critics called her a front of right-wing disinformation, and attacked NBC for rewarding her. But right-wing critics called her a fake conservative who'd sold out to the enemy. Many in the conservative camp have long been mad at Kelly. They fumed when she questioned Donald Trump, during the first Republican de- bate, about his misogynist his- tory; when she told Newt Gin- grich that he needed to work on his "anger issues;" when she confronted Dick Cheney over his horrific Iraq track re- cord ("You got it wrong"); when she tore into a male guest who called paid mater- nity leave "a racket" (her re- tort: "What a moronic thing to say"). They've long been ticked off that liberal commenta- tors have praised Kelly as Fox News' lone "sane" anchor. Indeed, part of her appeal — at least for those outside the Fox bubble — was that she seemed far more professional than the bloviating mouth- breathers (O'Reilly, Hannity) who bracketed her evening show. How that appeal, and her polarizing past, translates to NBC is anyone's guess. Reportedly, she'll try to soften her image by launch- ing a daytime weekday show (in her words, "a little Charlie Rose, a little Oprah, and a lit- tle me"), but that format has been a graveyard for lots of TV personalities, and it's de- batable that anyone cares to watch her swap celebrity gos- sip. She has also been tapped to launch a Sunday evening show to compete with "60 Minutes," but that aging audi- ence seems intractably loyal. She will reportedly join the NBC News team to cover ma- jor events, but that ensemble format (and the strong com- peting egos) could dilute her edgy brand. But NBC is clearly hop- ing that Kelly can bring along some of her viewers — notably, Republican-leaning women — and thus broaden its ideo- logical reach. For a broadcast news division on the cusp of the Trump era, a news divi- sion widely tagged as "liberal," hiring Kelly is probably smart. If she can boost the ratings by asking tough questions with a conservative sensibility, NBC's money would be well spent. After Kelly's recent clash with Newt Gingrich, Trump social media director Dan Sca- vino tweeted a not-so-veiled threat: "Watch what happens to her after this election is over." Well, now we know. DickPolmanisthenational political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com. Dick Polman CanMegyn Kelly thrive outside the Fox bubble? Cartoonist's take Regarding the charges, ac- cusations and intelligence on "Russian hacking" in the elec- tion: The con- sensus seems to be that Russians hacked the emails of the Democrat National Com- mittee and DNC/ Clinton operative, John Podesta. Re- member that in the history of intelligence agen- cies' analysis, accepted "slam dunk" narratives today of- ten become tomorrow's "blown calls". A number of revelations have emerged from meetings and memos provided to Obama's people, Donald Trump and ap- propriate Congressional com- mittees. Aside from the damag- ing, even damning, email doc- uments released by Wikileaks (founder Julian Assange has in- sisted, for what it's worth, they did not come from the Russian Government), we find a not- particularly-shocking fact that Russia did for Russian inter- ests what American CIA opera- tions do for American interests: meddle in the political affairs of other, particularly adversar- ial, nations. Let's all agree that when our guys do it — it being the full range of clandestine activities deployed in foreign lands to protect America and undermine America's enemies—it's usually ok. "Usually" allows that some find such things to be reprehen- sible or illegal. However, we can all be outraged by and condemn those activities, methods and tactics when used by foreign ac- tors against our fair nation. We all tend to cheer our team and boo the other teams. "Some" (meaning mostly Democrats) tend not to cheer our team and don't always boo other teams. Starting with the CIA, the re- cord of "blown calls" is lengthy. In "Why Are the Media Tak- ing the CIA's Hacking Claims at Face Value?" James Carden of The Nation (preeminent voice of the left for decades) wrote, on December 15, "The high- profile anchors and analysts on CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC who have cited the work of The Washington Post and The New York Times seem to have come down with a bad case of histor- ical amnesia. The CIA, in their telling, is a bulwark of Amer- ican democracy, not a largely unaccountable, out-of-con- trol behemoth that has often sought to subvert press freedom at home and undermine demo- cratic norms abroad." "Americans like the regime- change theorist Michael Mc- Faul (later Ambassador to Rus- sia from 2012-14) interfered in order to keep the widely un- popular Boris Yeltsin in power against the wishes of the Rus- sian people. For its part, the CIA has a long history of over- throwing sovereign govern- ments the world over." Accord- ing to the historian William Blum, the CIA has "attempted to overthrow or suppress over 70 governments, grossly inter- fered in elections in 30 coun- tries, dropped bombs on people of 30 countries and attempted to assassinate more than 50 for- eign leaders." Each of those ac- tions might be arguable on the merits; The Nation's progressive bent must be considered; vilifi- cation of the CIA is generally a leftist project. "Consulting the CIA's his- torical record, one is con- fronted by a laundry list of fail- ures, which includes missing both the break-up of the Soviet Union (during the 1980s a CIA deputy director by the name of Bob Gates called the USSR 'a despotism that works') and the 9/11 attacks. In the years fol- lowing 9/11, the CIA has been caught flat-footed by, among other things, the lack of WMD [DP: stockpiles] in Iraq (2003); the Iraqi insurgency (2003); the Arab Spring (2010); the rise of ISIS (2013); and the Ukrainian civil war (2014). "More recently, CIA Director John Brennan made false state- ments before Congress over the CIA's hacking into the comput- ers of Congressional staffers." Roger L. Simon reminded us that the Director of National In- telligence James Clapper, (who just testified to Congress for the Obama/Democrat/news me- dia-preferred narrative of Rus- sian hacking to elect Donald Trump), "blatantly lied to the Senate Select Committee on In- telligence on March 13, 2013." Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper answered repeatedly with an emphatic "No." Months later, Edward Snowden (who, together with WikiLeaks' Jul- lian Assange, have questionable motives but invariably accurate disclosures) "revealed to the world that the NSA was collect- ing just such data on those mil- lions of Americans via our cell- phones." My informed theory is that Russia, Putin et al 1) didn't think Trump would win any more than 95 percent of Ameri- ca's pollsters and observers did; 2) set about, assuming a Clin- ton win, to meddle in our po- litical contest by revealing em- barrassing (to Democrats and Hillary) emails; and intended to 3) assure that, upon becom- ing President Hillary Clinton, they (the Russians) would have an American leader damaged and well aware that even more embarrassing and destructive revelations could be deployed if she didn't play well with Putin. It makes sense. What also makes sense is that Russia wanted to undermine faith in the integrity and results of our elec- tion; the efforts to undermine Donald Trump's legitimacy by Democrats serves that exact pur- pose. Yes, the Democrats are the real Putin "useful idiots." Carden: "In 1977, Carl Bern- stein published an expose of a CIA program known as Opera- tion Mockingbird, a covert pro- gram involving "more than 400 American journalists who… have secretly carried out assign- ments for the CIA." CIA docu- ments revealed that "journal- ists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the con- sent of the managements of America's leading news organi- zations…One can see that there isn't much need for a covert gov- ernment program these days. The (Russian hacking/election interference) stories show that today too much of the media is all too happy to do overtly what the CIA had once paid it to do covertly: regurgitate the claims of the spy agency and attack the credibility of those who ques- tion it." Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it CIA, Russia — not all it seems Indeed, part of her appeal — at least for those outside the Fox bubble — was that she seemed far more professional than the bloviating mouth-breathers (O'Reilly, Hannity) who bracketed her evening show. Dick Polman Don Polson NBC is clearly hoping that Kelly can bring along some of her viewers — notably, Republican- leaning women — and thus broaden its ideological reach. For a broadcast news division on the cusp of the Trump era, a news division widely tagged as "liberal," hiring Kelly is probably smart. StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895- 4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, sena- tor.nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558-3160, governor@gover- nor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa, 507 Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Francisco 94111, 510 286- 8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 District 5, Burt Bundy, Ext. 3016 Red Bluff City Manager, Rich- ard Crabtree, 527-2605, Ext. 3061 Corning City Manager, Kristina Miller, 824-7033 Your officials OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, January 10, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4