Category Archives: Media and Advertising

Commentary of general media coverage, including sports and news.

Have you named the scandals?

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Be very afraid.

Be very afraid.

Glenn Beck had a great point this week when he noted that, even though the Benghazi, IRS and DOJ-AP scandal stories were gaining traction in Mainstream Media, the Media had yet to do what they seem to otherwise always do, which is to name the scandal(s). Thus, Beck took it upon himself to solicit from his audience scandal name suggestions via Twitter. Due to certain circumstances, I was too late to participate, though I did submit my suggestions anyway for the record.

Beck prefaced the solicitation by suggesting that all three scandals have a common thread, which is mainly that whistleblowers are demoted or fired and are left to pick up the pieces while the top of the administration opts for plausible deniability by pre-emptively detaching themselves from any responsibility. I’m getting ahead of myself here, but this week’s responses from Carney, the President and Eric Holder have also had a common thread, which I call the Sergeant Schultz Defense (“I know nothing! Nothing!”).

Ultimately, the winning suggestion, pictured above, was Intimigate. The Beck staff has since placed the Obama logo in place of the third “i” (blind?), making it Intim-O-gate.

It’s an interesting choice because at one point during the contest, Beck was reading through the early entries and specified, “Enough with the ‘gates’.”

Even before he had said that on the air, I had been thinking the same thing. I’m too literal, but, in case you’re too young to know this, the reason the Watergate scandal was called “Watergate” was because it was the name of the hotel. It wasn’t the “Water” hotel and they appended “gate” to it because “gate” equals “scandal”.

In the late 80s, the predominant White House scandal was called Iran Contra. No “gate” required. It should be noted that “IRS-gate” was already applied among the many Clinton “gate” ascribed by Conservative media.

That disclaimer noted, a “gate” won the contest anyway.

I’m not bitter because my entries were tardy, but I actually don’t think Intimigate applies very heavily to more than one of the scandals – the IRS scandal, in which certain 501c tax exempt applicants were hammered with “enemies-list-gathering” style questions that seemed rather intimidating. However, I don’t really see an application for Benghazi or the wiretapping of journalists of Intimigate.

I saw a different common thread among the scandals, which was a pro-Muslim, anti-Christian/anti-Jew strategy. Pro Israel 501c applicants, for example, were told by the IRS that concerns about “Israeli terrorism” prompted their line of questioning. Essentially, the Administration, since its inception has been profiling plenty of groups it finds dangerous – legal gun owners, Judeo-Christians, Conservatives; all but seemingly the one group which has consistently been trying to blow us all up.

This observation prompted me to suggest American Caliphate or, to apply the “gate” terminology: “CaliphGate”. The former has a double-meaning – that we are helping the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East and Africa by supporting their so-called “rebels” with finances and arms to take down less-evil dictators in the region, but also because at home our government is behaving much like those particular fascists with their attempts to silence or intimidate whistleblowers within their own administration or political enemies outside of it.

As for Beck’s common thread pertaining to how whistleblowers are dealt with, I came up with the suggestion that this president has given a whole new meaning to the term, Whistle-Stop. I am still pushing to get this term into the (Conservative) Media lexicon.

On a more humorous note, though Beck said right off the bat we shouldn’t adopt a flippant scandal name or it won’t be taken seriously, for fun I also produced the suggested name, Whatdifferencedoesit-Gate. The truncated version, which is actually more sober – because it really does make a difference, is simply, Difference-Gate.

Also there are some plays-on-words with the tax exempt status claims such as, 501c No Evil or 501c of Deception. You get the gist.

I also reminded many in the Media that I, albeit unsuccessfully because it didn’t catch on, during the  2012 campaign, coined the phrase, Ass-Forward as a play on the Forward campaign slogan. At the time it was a comment on the Democrat Convention juxtaposition of conflicting messages – one, that we “can’t go back to the economic policies of Bush” and hence, we must go “Forward”, and two, that we should go “back” even further than Bush to the tax rates of Clinton.

Fast-”Forward” to today, and if you believe what the Administration is selling, that they knew absolutely nothing about any of the happenstance making news, then you’d have to at the very least believe that this is one incredibly incompetent leader with his head buried in the sand. Within that construct, I think Ass-Forward also applies perfectly.

Anyway, I wasn’t nuts about Intimigate but I’m still working on Whistle-Stop being adopted in some fashion. This evening’s Real News broadcast on The Blaze, Beck’s network, featured the caption, War on Whistleblowers – but I much prefer Whistle-Stop, both for its succinct nature and for its historical context relative to the Presidency.

If you want to stop the whistleblower from blowing, you’ve got to stop the whistle. You could go with Blow-Stop but that is not descriptive enough, though it does rhyme nicely with “Blow Pop”.

Hope you can think of a few good ones on your own. It’s not too late, as so far only The Blaze has begun deploying Intimigate into its vernacular.

There’s still time to dub something before the rest of the Media does.

If Benghazi covered properly, would Romney be President?

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Miss Mitt?

Mitt-managed?

This is a question with no definitive answer, yet one worth pondering.

We can’t build a time machine and go back to September 12, 2012 and ensure that Benghazi was given the proper coverage – both in terms of accuracy and attention – and then relive the election two months later. Hence, we’ll never know.

In addition, we have to ask how much more could’ve been reported in those two months leading up to the election – given it took all this time to finally hear from the courageous whistleblowers within the State Department. We do know that the topic did come up during the election campaign. Most infamously, Romney was ambushed by Candy Crowley in the second debate, making the average viewer who hadn’t paid attention to the story believe that Obama was right and Romney was wrong. (Of course, fact-checking proved the opposite, but the damage had inevitably been done.) Additionally, much of the pre-election coverage – as is done in any NY or LA Times story – was about the politicization of Benghazi by the Romney campaign. Take that plus the debate debacle and Benghazi may have actually been a net loss for Romney, which is almost unfathomable today as we look back.

I have already drawn the analogy, as have others, to Iran-Contra and the massive amounts of coverage it generated during the Reagan presidency. Hence, I have to throw in this huge caveat to my rhetorical question: all that negative coverage did not hurt Reagan or Bush, that is unless you count that “October surprise” story that surfaced the Friday before the 1992 re-election bid of Bush, who was gaining momentum in the polls, that was Iran-Contra-related (and entirely fabricated and run by a media in bed with Clinton even before Lewinsky was in bed with Clinton).

Also, even before the election I do recall John Stewart lambasting the obvious cover up about the “video” by the entire administration, meaning the Joe Cool voter who watches The Daily Show did at least hear that angle leading up to their voting decision, though not with the scope and level of detail we heard from the three whistleblowers, including the stand-down order and the no call back from the Secretary of State.

My overarching analysis of the 2012 Presidential election concluded that it was mostly a popularity contest and hence Obama connected with more Joe-average voters who like cool people such as celebrities, the hip Obama had the leg up on stuff-shirt, Richie-Rich Romney no matter what first term scandals his administration covered up. I also bought into the Andrew Wilkow assessment that “free stuff won” – i.e., Romney was right about the 47% who paid no income tax, that it would be difficult to persuade them with a message that wasn’t more giveaways for them. Given this premise, I lean toward an answer of no – that Benghazi, properly reported wouldn’t have cost Obama the election, though I do think daily negative coverage even over two months would’ve taken some toll.

Now, none of this means that the recent revelations from the Benghazi whistleblowers render these acts as impeachable, however. Not only have the whisteblowers’ testimony blown the lid off everything this Administration told us directly for weeks after the attack, but when you coupled them with the revelations about the inappropriate use of the IRS in harassing and enemy list-gathering of Conservative and pro Israeli organizations seeking 501c nonprofit status (Nixon’s articles of impeachment included inappropriate use of the IRS, remember), you have quite a case building. I’ve heard it argued that the stalling and bullying tactics applied toward these groups in strategic locations relative to the election, i.e., battleground states, might’ve impacted the ability of Conservative groups, both those unable to mobilize while awaiting 501c status approval and others who heard of the red tape and privacy infringements imposed on applicants and subsequently didn’t bother to try to form their own organizations.

Nevertheless, we’ll never know if what we now know were known prior to the 2012 election, whether the outcome would’ve been different.

One prediction I Tweeted earlier: now that the “I-word”, “impeachment” has been mentioned – most notably by a sitting U.S. Senator (Inhofe, Oklahoma), I believe that, in addition to the predictable media objections that will include, “partisan witch hunt” and “racist Republicans” and “can the country go through this again?” we will hear another anti-impeachment argument from mainstream media pundits that will go, “Do we really want President Joe Biden?”

If that happens, you read it here first.

Anyway, the point is: whether it would’ve meant we’d have President Romney, we deserved the story to be given the scandal classification and associated attention it deserved in the time period prior to the election. In that regard, we were robbed. Ultimately, Romney may not have been robbed of the presidency, but we the people were robbed of the news coverage we deserved.

Benghazi reports should be party-agnostic.

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What difference does party make?

What difference does party make?

You can’t seem to get 20 seconds into a news report about the Benghazi hearings before party identification occurs.

I recently saw a local network news broadcast recap of the hearings, which should a clip of Hillary Clinton, followed by fellow Democrat Diane Feinstein, followed by the news anchor saying, “Republicans are saying….”

Ugh!!!! That’s when I tuned it out.

The Senate investigation of the Benghazi cover-up should have absolutely nothing to do with political party. This isn’t Republicans versus Democrats. This is people elected to the U.S. Senate by the American people who should be hell bent on finding out the truth about Benghazi.

Party affiliation? To quote the former Secretary of State, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

It should not matter one iota which political party a Senator on the hearing committee represents. Each should be equally determined to get to the bottom of what happened, why Americans were deliberately lied to  and what could have been done differently, if anything, to have saved the lives of four Americans. That is their obligation.

The Democrats on or off the committee who are trying to politicize this into an anti-Republican, “nothing to see here; this is a politically-motivated witch hunt” partisan issue – and the media, who administers regular reports that go, “Republicans say X, but Democrats say Y” – are doing all Americans an enormous disservice.

The knee-jerk, default, auto response in any political news report is “Republicans say X, but Democrats say Y” – i.e., somehow every political news story seems to come down to political party affiliation – oh, except when a Democrat like Gary Condit is an alleged murder, then the “D” affiliation is dropped from all news reports.

When it comes to incidents like Benghazi, political party should be completely irrelevant. It should not matter which political party is in power, or which has the majority in either house. It doesn’t matter. Truth is truth – and wanting to get to the bottom of it is irrespective of the R and D attached to the elected official bound by the rest of us to work toward ensuring freedom of opportunity for all Americans.

The point is, “Republicans versus Democrats” should be a position only offered during election campaigns. During the rest of the time, including a time when Americans deserve answers on how and why four lives were lost, the construct should be US Senators, US Representatives, US State Department officials, etc. – because, when it comes to finding answers on Benghazi and any other national security-related affairs, we aren’t Republicans or Democrats; we are Americans.

Garcia remarks show: Euros have no filter.

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Filter-proof.

Filter-proof.

I hadn’t even heard about the flap between golfers Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods, paired together for Saturday’s third round at the Players Championship. Then I caught the local sports report on Sunday where the topic was broached – and, afterwards, on the “two-shot” as it’s called, the sports anchor asked the news anchor, “Were you surprised to hear Sergio say what he said?” (that Tiger isn’t fun to be paired with and isn’t the nicest guy on tour).

The news anchor seemed unprepared for the question and changed the subject to Garcia’s errant tee shot on the 17th that cost him a chance at winning.

What the anchor could’ve said was, “No, I’m not surprised – because as we’ve seen from many European Tour players – that Euros have no filter. They simply say what’s on their mind. They don’t sugarcoat things. They don’t know what political correctness is; that is an American phenomenon.”

I’m flashing back to a scene from “Oxford Blues” with Rob Lowe where he gets into an argument in a politics or civics class with the Brits about differences between Yanks and Brits. No, it had nothing to do with what I wrote above, nonetheless, the general comparing of the two countries reminded me of the film.

Especially leading up to the bi-annual Ryder Cup, we’ve heard European Tour players very openly state their minds, like when Colin Montgomerie assessed the U.S. team’s roster in an interview before the 1997 action. The comment that stood out was, “Who’s afraid of Jeff Maggert?”

Years later, we heard Euro and Brit Paul Casey catch some heat for his own Ryder Cup-related comments about how he trained himself to hate the “stupid Americans” in order to gin up motivation for the competition.

We’ve had England’s Ian Poulter being called out for his statement of bravado in which he indicated that it should be just he and Tiger dueling it out to be the best player in the world. We’ve also had Ireland’s Rory McIlroy calling out a U.S. golf commentator for being critical of his caddy regarding McIlroy’s decision-making.

Look outside the realm of golf and you’ll see a similar trend – especially with the British. They are known for being blunt – and yes, that would include actress Emily Blunt. Presumably Gordon Ramsay’s in-your-face, mince-no-words approach is appreciated by the viewing audience of his shows, though I contend all the profanity is completely unnecessary.

Anyway, the point is: you ask a European a question and they’ll give you an honest answer. In this case, of course, the media was in high dungeon that anyone would ever suggest anything negative about their Almighty God, Tiger Woods, to whom they bow down and worship on a regular basis.

The bottom line is that the European is most likely not going to run their comments through a filter, and I would suggest that this should make them more admirable to us. I find the behavior quite refreshing.

So get over it, Americans! Leave the filtering to your water systems, coffee makers and cigarettes.

‘A’ is for Arias; ‘F’ is for media prioritization of news.

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Ben who? Kermit who?

Ben who? Kermit who?

My goal on this blog is to only offer commentary and insight that you aren’t already reading or hearing elsewhere. If something is written or said to which I have nothing to add, then I typically won’t post about it. I usually do not link to other stories unless I can add something.

On that note, I just read something in Glenn Beck’s Blaze email newsletter that stood out and which I’d like to supplement with commentary.

Beck cited a definitive Tweet offered by one of his listeners that went (paraphrased):

“Too bad Jody Arias didn’t kill a US Ambassador or an unborn child. Then no one would be talking about her.” 

That’s absolutely perfect, relative to “mainstream” media’s prioritization of news.

This is obviously in reference to the Benghazi and Kermit Gosnell stories that only Right media has deemed worthy of assigning top priority in its news coverage.

You can very legitimately ask yourself: why is Jody Arias’ murder even a national story in the first place? What implications does it have on the nation? What precedent will its trial’s verdict establish for other murder trials going forward, for example?

In other words, why is it such big news?

The answer is simple and twofold. First, it contains a lot of juicy, salacious content. The media loves that in the era of entire TV programs devoted to showing us celebrities and their wardrobe malfunctions or pregnant bikini shots or being seen in public without makeup, etc. Second, if you are going to deliberately bury stories that would make the Democratic Party and the Left wing progressive movement look bad then, well, ya gotta report SOMETHING.

Now, here’s an analogy I Tweeted out recently that I haven’t heard anyone else mention. It’s the analogy to the Iran Contra “scandal” as it was presented by the media in the late 80s. This “scandal” was the top story for months and months. Household names emerged like Oliver North as a result. Now, why, pray tell was this such a huge story to the Left wing – I mean, “mainstream” – media? If my memory serves, this big scandal pertained to how American lives were saved by the US government.

Fast forward to Benghazi, in which four US lives were lost. The media yawns. No questions whatsoever to be asked about how this happened, why the Administration lied to us about it, why they didn’t heed the warnings issued to the State department. Nothing to see here!

A similar observation on news prioritization was made last year by Michael Savage during the Casey Anthony trial coverage – i.e., it was overshadowing a potentially bigger national news story, which I believe was the helicopter carrying Seal Team 6 members that was shot down – and investigative questions the media should’ve been asking the Obama administration about the matter.

Again, the media will always pick a story with salacious details that has zero implication politically over a story that would hurt the Left wing narrative. In the age of the Obama presidency, any story that would make ‘The One’ look bad is deliberately buried. When enough alternate news outlets cover it, they jump in only to tell us that there’s really nothing to report.

In the case of Clinton and Lewinsky, well, first the media tried to bury it but once enough outlets (starting with the National Enquirer and Drudge Report) began reporting it they had to jump in. So they tried to focus on the salacious aspects of the story while simultaneously trying to detach any political meaning to it. The political coverage later centered around the Republican “witch hunt” and how impeachment was all about political vendettas, etc.

This is who they are and this is what they do.

Del’s eclectic leaderboard

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The Tiger and the Del

The Tiger and the Del

I suppose if you’re a Sacramento resident watching the Thursday night or Friday morning local news and you catch the portion of the sports report that covers the first round recap of the PGA Tour’s Players Championship, you might ask yourself three questions.

  1. Who’s leading the tournament?
  2. How’s Tiger doing?
  3. How are players with ties to the Sacramento area doing?

Even though this is not what I would wonder about the first round of the Players, I can’t fault KCRA’s Del Rogers for approaching his sportscast in this manner. The avid golf fans are going to tune into the Golf Channel’s national coverage to find out what’s going on at the tournament.

To the local news viewer, well, what separates local news from national news when it’s a national story? Item 3 on my list above is what. How are the boys from the Sac area doing? Sure, their family members probably don’t tune in to KCRA to find out how they did, but maybe those guys who knew a Nick Watney or a Ricky Barnes back in high school but have since lost touch and didn’t catch the action on the Golf Channel might legitimately turn to their local sportscast for the update on their standing.

The prototypical local news viewer can be assumed to be one who doesn’t know a whole lot about golf. So those folks, Tiger Woods is about all they know of the sport. Hence, Item 2 above.

Item 1 should be self-explanatory; I mean if you’re not going to tell us who the first round leader of the tournament is then why even report on the event in the first place?

This approach, I will say, did make for a somewhat odd-looking graphic. It listed five players in order of lowest-to-highest scores, beginning with leader Roberto Castro at 9 under par, followed by Woods at 5 under par (even though he was actually tied with 5 players for 4th, the leaderboard made it appear as if he were 2nd), followed by three Sacramento-Stockton area players – believe in the order of their scores. If watching without sound – or perhaps the sound is drowned out by household chatter – one might’ve been misled into believing that they were seeing the actual leaderboard and its top 5 players.

I’ll be somewhat nitpicky here. On Item 2, the Tiger-watch. I’ve been critical in the past of KCRA’s Del Rogers for being way too Tiger-focused in his golf coverage. However, now that Woods is back to being the top ranked player in the world I can’t fault him for citing his performance in any round of tournament golf he plays. I would suggest, though, that maybe Rogers ought to apply a “Big Three” mentality and always include Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy with Woods when updating us on golf scores. That way it’s not all Tiger, all the time.

If you want to be even more literal, your “Big Three” update would be comprised of the top three players in the Official World Golf Rankings. Those would be Woods, McIlroy and 2013 Masters champ Adam Scott. Not a bad Big Three there (Note: Mickelson is currently 10th in the rankings).

Also, Rogers could’ve shown the actual Top 5 leaderboard from the tournament’s first round – though after one round that doesn’t really tell you much because it will change so many times by Sunday’s conclusion. In showing us the Top 5 in his graphic (known in the industry as the “chryron” – because you see I interned at KCRA over 20 years ago), he could’ve simply told us over the graphic how local players did. That way we wouldn’t have been presented such a strange-looking leaderboard graphic, which we couldn’t even call a “leaderboard”. We’d have to call it a, “Players scores that Rogers thinks we care about” graphic.

Overall, I give Rogers the benefit of the doubt, but I think including a couple more big names in his weekly Tiger updates would make his sports reports a bit more fair and balanced.

‘Derby’ of promos disguised as news

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Hat tip: This isn't real news.

Hat tip: This isn’t real news.

Same ol’ same ol’.

It comes as no surprise whatsoever that my – and no doubt your – local NBC affiliate has laced its newscast with Kentucky Derby “news” stories leading up to the Kentucky Derby broadcast.

One story I saw was on the derbies worn my Derby-goers.

Oh and did they mention the Kentucky Derby would be broadcast live on NBC?

Why, YES, they did!

Thanks, NBC. You could’ve given us real news but you gave us so much more.

Same as it ever was.

Headless bodies cliché misplaced in Morning After report.

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Can't get a-head.

TV News can’t get a-head.

I consider it the third biggest cliché deployed by TV news.

The number one cliché is the sometimes head-shaking, sometimes smiling editorial comments inserted by anchors following a news report. You know the ones – like the, “What a great story!” remarks that follow a feel good story, or the “That’s terrible!” exclamations after a tragic report.

The second biggest cliché, one I’ve cited before in this space, the classic field report from a location where something either happened hours before or will happen in the future, but where nothing is happening at the time of the live report – e.g., the 11 PM live report in front of the Capital building to tell us legislation was passed earlier that day.

The third cliché is the also-classic “headless bodies” b-roll footage (that’s the technical term for showing video while an unseen narrator is speaking). This tactic is most commonly deployed in reports on American obesity, where we see collages of overweight bodies traversing the streets and spilling out of their big and tall clothing. Imagine the videographer’s directive from his/her producer: “Only shoot from the neck down in order to embellish the point and preserve the identity of the fatties.”

Recently I observed a different headless body deployment. It was shots of headless hand-holding couples used as b-roll supporting a story on the over-the-counter availability of the Morning After pill.

Noteworthy is that I happened to be watching this with sound turned off. Steven Spielberg has said that the sign of a well-directed film is when you can watch it without sound and still comprehend the story.

Well, in the case of the Morning After news report, I was somewhat confused because the hand-holding couple footage was supplemented with occasional shots of very pregnant female headless torsos. So I wasn’t exactly seeing the connection. Perhaps it was because the Morning After pilld have a certain limitation on how far along in one’s term she can be for it to be effective or legal? I’m sure the pregnant torso shots were taken from prior stories about prenatal health.

Come to think of it, the handholding couple shots – probably taken from archives from prior feel-good stories about Valentine’s Day – were also misplaced. That’s because abortions, I would suppose, are rarely the result of loving couples. They are more likely the result of regrettable, mistake encounters. I mean how often does of hand-holding couple walk into a Planned Parenthood, for example?

Ultimately, I find it disturbing and bizarre that images of pregnant women, most likely associated with reports on prenatal health, were used in the context of abortio. For good measure, so were the feel-good pictures of loving, hand-holding couples.

Journalism Is Dead: Media laps up sequester fraud.

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FAA: Fraud Against America

FAA: Fraud Against America

I knew it was a sham.

The minute I saw the first news stories about IRS refund delays and airport delays due to sequester-related furloughs, I knew a fraud was being perpetrated against us.

No, I’m not saying that furloughs of IRS employees and Air Traffic Controllers aren’t actually taking place but I am saying they are taking place for political, not practical, reasons. Remember, the sequester is only defined as a budget “cut” by today’s irrational standards, where a reduction in the growth of spending is defined as a “cut”. There really are no budget reductions.

So then why would there be furloughs pray tell? A slowing of the growth in spending might mean the IRS and FAA can’t hire new employees, but why would it require existing employees to take pay cuts?

Because the Federal Government’s goal here, as reported this afternoon on Real News on The Blaze Network, is to show you how much you rely on them to live your daily lives by deliberately inflicting measures that will inconvenience your life, all in the name of, “You can’t ever stop growing the government.”

This is positively sickening.

YOUR GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO TRICK YOU!!!

Does this trouble you even one iota???

Perhaps you’ve grown immune at this point. Or you simply don’t care.

They will do anything to get more of our money – and there is no lie they won’t tell, no fraud they won’t perpetrate.

Of course, every news network except one, the aforementioned Blaze Network, is eating it up. No questions asked. Journalism Is Dead. JID. RIP. They simply tell us the effects of the furloughs and they show us videos of people stranded at airports. Right on cue. Served up by the government they trust so unconditionally despite the traditional objective as journalists to be reflexively dubious and skeptical of that entity.

Nope, not one of those local reporters you’re seeing is chiming in with the questions, “But are these furloughs really necessary? Has the budget actually been reduced one red cent? Did the sequester specifically require FAA furloughs?”

One of my local news stations boasts the slogan, “Asking questions. Getting answers.”

I watched this station report the FAA furloughs without asking a single question, however.

We deserve better. We deserve a government that doesn’t thumb its nose at its citizenry through deliberate infliction of pain-inducing measures which are based on fraudulent premise. We also a deserve news journalists who inform us when the government is committing such fraud upon us.

Evidently, we aren’t worthy.

Today, the media is the messenger of the Obama government. A communication arm that disseminates whatever is fed to them, without question, without journalistic integrity.

Or, as Colonel Kurtz said of Captain Willard:

You’re an errand boy.

Update: Del DOES know (Tiger-less) golf!

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Del redeems himself!

Del redeems himself!

Lo and behold, just one day after I lambasted KCRA Sacramento’s sportscaster (and ex-NFL player) Del Rodgers for only covering golf when Tiger Woods is in the field, Rodgers devoted a substantial portion of his Saturday night-Sunday morning (“overnight” recording) report to the Heritage Classic at Hilton Head – two highlights and a leaderboard graphic. Keep in mind that there were no local players on the leaderboard and this was an event covered on CBS (though he may have taken the highlights from NBC Golf Channel; I didn’t notice).

Good on him!

Sometimes you have to NBC-it to believe it!

The only knock on this particular coverage – a Phil Mushnick (NY Post Sports-Media critic) favorite – is that Rodgers, in reporting on the Oakland A’s 1-0 defeat to the Tampa Bay Rays, failed to note the Rays pitchers responsible for hurling the shutout.

Otherwise, hats off to Del Rodgers for recognizing that they actually do play golf when Tiger doesn’t  enter the tournament.

Oh, and, no, I cannot take credit for this happenstance. I did not send my post to Rodgers or KCRA and, unless he spends his days Googling his name, I doubt he would’ve seen it.