Media: Yes, there's a lot of garbage out there but that doesn't excuse 60 MINUTES

We're not sure what was funnier, 60 MINUTES pretending to do journalism in Norah O'Donnell's chat with Donald Chump or the 'after party' conversation we had with two 60 MINUTESers after the interview aired.  At one point, one of them snapped at us, "Well, look what passes for a TV documentary these days!"

 

 

We're not sure that's a defense but for any misguided like our 60 MINUTE friends, we've called out hundreds of so-called 'documentaries.'  In fact, we can call out one right now.

Rebecca Miller is a bigger liar than her father and who has sat through AFTER THE FALL and thought that could ever be possible?

The silly ninny isn't much of an artist.  But she's not much of anything.  She's certainly not much of an American since she bills herself as Lady Day-Lewis.  She's married to the British actor Daniel Day Lewis who's been given a title.  However, she's an American citizen and we don't do royal titles in the US.  She's not much of an actress, she's not much of novelist either or a filmmaker -- on the latter, seven features films.  That's how many she's directed.  All flopped.  

It's doubtful she'd have been hired in the first place if her father wasn't Arthur Miller.  She speaks with the same cowardice voice as her father.  And that is an issue when she's narrating a four-hour and forty-five minute, five-part 'documentary.'

She's focusing on Martin Scorsese.  No five hours isn't needed.  Nor is her constant purring of "Marty."  

This isn't a documentary, it's a film hagiography from a devoted fan.  Which is how we get his biggest disaster being THE KING OF COMEDY.  No, his biggest disaster is THE ACT.  

She doesn't even mention it in her documentary.  We know "Marty" so we'll be stepping on toes here.  Didn't plan to but since Miller did a fact-free documentary, we'll have to fill in the blanks.

The pluses: Martin directed one of the best films of the 20th century: GOODFELLAS.  He did a few other good films.  He also did some bad films.  He was denied deserved Academy Awards over the years.  Twice he lost to actors.  Kevin Costner's DANCES WITH THE WOLVES at least had scope (it was not better directed than GOODFELLAS).  Robert Redford's ORDINARY PEOPLE was a tiny, bad TV movie (but Redford won best director instead of Scorsese for RAGING BULL).  By the time he finally won (THE DEPARTED), he had hit a creative rut and he's never left it.

Scorsese has two problems as a film maker -- Rebecca avoided both -- and they're going to harm his legacy.

Friday, Kat posted "That embarrassing Martin Scorsese" and it was about Scorsese's stupidity.  He made a Howard Hughes film with a straight Howard Hughes.  

This isn't minor because Scorsese has a troubled history with gay men.  

Rebecca Miller doesn't explore that or even note that.  She shows a bit of Scorsese's documentary AMERICAN BOY: A PROFILE OF STEVEN PRINCE.  It was made quickly -- supposedly in less than 24 hours.  She shows him in a hot tub with Steven Prince (it's footage from the documentary) and he tells Steven not to sit close to him.

Though it's not noted, Steven's gay.  This wasn't a joke.  This was Marty's homophobia.  

His homophobia harmed NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- the film he made with Liza Minelli -- and it destroyed THE ACT.

That's the Broadway musical he directed -- also starring Liza.  Liza's not in the 'documentary' except with archived interviews she did promoting the film in the 70s.  We get the likes of Leo DiCaprio commenting on TAXI DRIVER but no Cybil Shepperd.  It's a strange line up Rebecca Hall selects from until you grasp that she's only speaking to the pre-approved voices Scorsese told her to (this while claiming she had complete freedom).

Liza belonged in that line up.

The two had a long standing affair.  On the set of the film, he had a problem with certain gay members of the crew.  The problem only increased (as did the number of gay men in the crew) when they worked together on THE ACT.

In the 20th century, Martin has been most noted for his squeamishness around gay men which is why they don't really factor in any of his feature films -- a strange silence in the 20th century and an embarrassing one in the 21st.

But that's not the only thing that Rebecca Miller ignores.

Martin Scorsese thinks domestic abuse is a normal part of life.  He thinks it's something he should show.

And he does.  Repeatedly from the male point of view.  He portrays it as love or as control or as this or that.  And maybe that's all it is for a male character.

Even with ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, the beating of Alice's son Tommy is really through the male point of view.  We're not just talking about the way the violence is filmed in Scorsese's movies.

He is tunnel vision and it harms his film.  He never can put himself into the female character.  For De Niro's Jake, the beating only matters when he's handing it out.  But, in real life, when a man is beating a woman, it's not the same thing for a woman.  When someone she loves beats her, if she stays past the first beating, she's always got to worry what's going to set him off, what's going to enrage him next.  It may very well be just another day for the male characters.  But it's never that for a woman who has been beaten. 

And Martin Scorsese's glorification of domestic abuse -- and he does glorify it -- is another nail in his  coffin in the 21st century.

Then there's Jodie Foster.  

We were shocked to hear Jodie go on about the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.  For years, she refused to even talk about and ended interviews if anyone brought it up.  She gave Rebecca Miller too much credit when she decided to discuss it with her.  We say that because, Jodie just played the part.

She shouldn't have been nominated for an Academy Award for Iris.  It's become obvious over the years that Robert De Niro coached the performance through a series of games with a child.  She wasn't acting, she didn't have the chops and she makes that clear every time she talks about it.  

So why is she the one Rebecca Miller bears in on?  She wants to know about the assassination attempt on Reagan.  The 12-year-old?  That's how old she was when she made the film.  Rebecca doesn't go after Martin -- the adult director -- or Paul Schrader -- the adult screenwriter.  

Rebecca's not a feminist -- she thinks she's beyond equality, if you can believe it.  But you'd think that if she wanted to explore the assassination attempt of a sitting president, she'd make a point to ask those that were adults when the movie was made.  These were not her ideas or her creations.  And watching her answer these questions from Rebecca Miller, we felt very uncomfortable.  Two adult males came up with a characterization and a third male watched the film and acted on it.  Three men imposed themselves and all these years later it's still, "Jodie, explain it to us."  

The proper response from Foster should be, "F**k you."

That is not our first take down of a documentary.  Unless we die this month, it probably won't be our last.

But now let's move back to 60 MINUTES.

That was an embarrassment.  Why Norah O'Donnell handled the chat that way, we have no idea.  If she thinks that embarrassment will help her find another job, she's mistaken.  And it is time to find another job.  The new owner thinks she's overpaid.  She's no longer anchoring the nightly news.  She has no where to go and damn little to offer.  A real interview could have given her a praise worthy exit.  Now?  Maybe FOX "NEWS" will be interested?

Time and again, she failed as a journalist.

She asked about political violence increasing and he whined that "they call me a Nazi all the time. I'm not a Nazi. I'm the opposite. I'm somebody that's saving our country."  He talks like a Nazi.  Norah could have pointed that out.  How his comments about immigrants tracked with "Final Solution" comments by Hitler.  Or she could have just treated him with the lack of respect he's earned and shot back, "Should they call you the space cowboy, the gangster of love, Maurice maybe?"

Instead, he lied.  And got treated as though he were a truth teller and not a serial liar.  That's not journalism.

If Norah wasn't up to the interview -- and clearly she wasn't -- 60 MINUTES could have and should have offered a crawl at the bottom of the screen explaining Chump's various lies. 

He's taken to the high seas to go after oil-rich Venezuela and he insists that the boats he's attacking and destroying -- killing people on board -- are 'narco terrorist' boats.  There is no death penalty in the US for dealing drugs.  But any sentence a drug dealer or trafficker receives in the US follows a trial.  Except in Chump Land where fat ass is not judge, jury and executioner.  He lied that each boat he's attacked would have killed 25,000 Americans ("every one of those boats kills 25,000 Americans. Every single boat that you see that's shot down kills 25,000 on drugs and destroys families all over our country.")  Norah didn't challenge him and didn't ask where he plucked that figure from?  In fairness to Norah on the latter, it was obvious to most viewers that he'd plucked it out of his fat ass.  She didn't even point out that boats -- not being planes -- are never "shot down."

It's hard to pick the worst section of the interview.  Certainly, this one is a strong possibility:

NORAH O'DONNELL: I-- I w-- definitely want to talk about the economy, but I just want to make s-- sure we-- we button up this issue--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

NORAH O'DONNELL: --on nuclear weapons. And I want to clarify this--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

NORAH O'DONNELL: Are you saying that after more than 30 years, the United States is going to start detonating nuclear weapons for testing?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'm saying that we're going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes.

NORAH O'DONNELL: But the only country that's testing nuclear weapons is North Korea. China and Russia are not--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, Russia's-- no, no. Russia's testing nuclear weapons--

NORAH O'DONNELL: So my understanding--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And China's testing 'em too. You just don't know about it.

NORAH O'DONNELL: That would be certainly very newsworthy. My understanding is what Russia did recently was test essentially the-- delivery systems for nuclear weapons, essentially missiles, which we can do that but w-- not with nuclear warheads-

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Russia's testing, and China's testing, but they don't talk about it. You know, we're a open society. We're different. We talk about it. We have to talk about it, because otherwise you people are gonna report-- they don't have reporters that gonna be writing about it. We do. No, we're gonna test, because they test and others test. And certainly North Korea's been testing. Pakistan's been testing.

No, Russia and China are not detonating nukes.  When that takes place, when a nuke detonates,that registers on our nuclear detonation detection system (which utilizes both ground features and satellite features), it registers on seismic monitoring and it registers via direct visual or radiological evidence.  No, repeating because it is important, Russia and China are not detonating nukes. Norah's tentative observation ("That would be certainly very newsworthy") does not count as pushback -- and it's especially weak when you consider the topic being discussed.

It may not have been obvious in the  broadcast but when you refer to the text, it's obvious that Norah's most repeated phrase was "Uh-huh." 

She was so agreeable.  Is she angling for a job in the administration?  That would explain why she never asked him what his repeated attacks on Joe Biden and Barack Obama were supposed to accomplish?  She never pointed out that president's don't do that.  Or that both men had won elections and represented various voters that Chump was also attacking when he attacked Biden and Obama.  

And it's easy to be agreeable when you let someone lie and don't care at all.  Excerpt:

NORAH O'DONNELL: Can you just answer that question that tariffs have led to inflation? They have led to an increase in cost of living for most Americans--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: They haven't led to inflation. We have no inflation. We have no inflation. Biden had inflation, and he didn't have tariffs. He didn't use tariffs.

NORAH O'DONNELL: For the average American--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You know why he didn't use 'em? 'Cause he's not smart enough to use 'em.

NORAH O'DONNELL: But the companies say they passed on more than 30% of these costs to the American consumer off the tariffs--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, ready, are you ready?

NORAH O'DONNELL: Somebody has to pay for it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. You have to pay, but we don't have any inflation. Inflation is the que-- is the real test of paying. Everybody said, "Oh, if you do tariffs, you're gonna have inflation." So Biden had the highest inflation in the history of our country by far, okay. No tariffs.

I have very modest tariffs compared. Let me tell you. These tariffs ultimately are so good that at some point when they're used properly, and I use them more properly than anybody's ever even dreamt possible, think of it. We become rich. We're taking in trillions of dollars.

And I have no inflation. And I have total national security. When I put the 100% tariff on China over and above what they were already paying, which was about 55%, so 155%, they came to the table immediately and they made a deal with us that was a very fair deal. That's called national security. And then I didn't make 'em pay the 100%. That would have been instituted. That would have come to fore on November 1st. Norah, Norah, listen to me--

NORAH O'DONNELL: I know our time with you is limited. I hear you.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If I didn't have the power of tariff, we would be-- we would be like a subject nation. We'd be subject to everyone else. Everybody uses tariffs on us. If I wasn't allowed to use tariffs on them, we would be a third rate-- we would be a third world nation.

NORAH O'DONNELL: I know your time is limited, so I do want to make sure I get through another-- more of these topics.

Yes, we are suffering from inflation.  October 24th, the US Labor Dept issued a press release noting:

The index for gasoline rose 4.1 percent in September and was the largest factor in the all items monthly increase, as the index for energy rose 1.5 percent over the month. The food index increased 0.2 percent over the month as the food at home index rose 0.3 percent and the food away from home index increased 0.1 percent.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in September, after rising 0.3 percent in each of the 2 preceding months. Indexes that increased over the month include shelter, airline fares, recreation, household furnishings and operations, and apparel. The indexes for motor vehicle insurance, used cars and trucks, and communication were among the few major indexes that decreased in September.

The all items index rose 3.0 percent for the 12 months ending September, after rising 2.9 percent over the 12 months ending August. The all items less food and energy index also rose 3.0 percent over the last 12 months. The energy index increased 2.8 percent for the 12 months ending September. The food index increased 3.1 percent over the last year. 

Sorry to shock Chump and O'Donnell but that is inflation.

And that's reported by Chump's own Labor Department 10 days ago. 

So many times a real response would have been not "uh-huh," but instead, "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"  His second impeachment:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, it's the opposite. I think I've been very mild-mannered. You're looking at a man who was indicted many times, and I had to beat the rap. Otherwise I couldn't have run for president. They tried to get me not to run for president by going after me and by indicting me.

But even during my term, on a perfect phone call, I got impeached. This call was perfect. Tim Scott, from South Carolina, highly respected, a legitimate person totally legit, he read the tran-- thank goodness we had a transcript of the call.

The call I got indicted on, a call on Ukraine of all places, with the President of Ukraine. It was a perfect phone call. Tim Scott said, "I just read the transcript. The President didn't do anything wrong, was perfect." And that was the end of the indictment pretty much.

What the hell does that mindless ranting have to do with anything?

He wasn't indicted on that, he was impeached over that for the second time.  And what the hell does idiot Tim Scott's opinion matter? He holds no law degree.  He went to college on a sports scholarship, let's not pretend he's the new Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Much was cut from the interview that CBS aired over the public airwaves.  You can find the full interview on YOUTUBE and here for a transcript. CNN's Daniel Dale did a fact check here.

But all you needed to see was Chump running all over Norah O'Donnell who could pretty much only manage one of her "uh-huh"s and never managed to hold him to facts and never managed to seriously correct hm.  If her point was to demonstrate how vapid and unimportant journalism can be, then she succeeded.  And others at 60 MINUTES can whine about TV documentaries but that doesn't change -- and won't change -- how Norah's chat with Donald was not journalism.