I just watched the 60 Minutes interviews with Harris and Walz. Because Trump refuses to submit to any meaningful interview, all we have is Harris in the hot seat; pressed by the interviewer to answer his questions more fully.
I challenge CBS to use the better part of an hour to show clips from Trump's rallies so that voters can see how se…
I just watched the 60 Minutes interviews with Harris and Walz. Because Trump refuses to submit to any meaningful interview, all we have is Harris in the hot seat; pressed by the interviewer to answer his questions more fully.
I challenge CBS to use the better part of an hour to show clips from Trump's rallies so that voters can see how seriously deranged he is. If Trump won't submit to an interview, let the words from his rallies speak for him!
I present to you all... a 20-something voter's honest thought process (mine) while watching the 60 Minutes segment, presented James Joyce stream-of-consciousness style.
What even is 60 Minutes? (I've forgotten it existed.) Like, the show is 60 Minutes long? Isn't that most shows? It seems too long and yet also too short. Oh right, it's that Sunday Night thing Granny used to watch. I miss her. OK, focus. Why is this literal clock ticking at me? I forgot clocks could tick. Is Jack Bauer going to pop out at me? No, it's this guy sitting on a chair. I have no idea who this man is. Why is he all alone on this chair? Does he not have any friends? "She's been a candidate for two months and the honeymoon is over." How exactly did Man in Chair determine this? Is there a scientific agency that measures honeymoon periods, like those people trying to figure out if we are in the Anthropocene? Why is he so serious? At this point I'm used to everyone on video beginning with "Hey Guys, it's your boy [insert name like Cody or Blake], and here's what we've got for you today! Smash that like and subscribe button!" I'm confused. Does Man in Chair not want me to like him? (His name is apparently Bill.) It's a commercial already. Where is the "Skip Ad" button on this screen? There isn't one. That's the pits! OK, Kamala is finally here. Looking good in purple, gurl! Oh Lord, it's Israel time already. Y'all know she can't straight-up answer these questions without destabilizing the entire world, right Bill? She's not going to share state secrets. WAIT WAIT WHOA her lips are moving but I can't hear what her answer is because Bill is narrating in voiceover what her answer is instead? WTF?!? Do they do that on this show? Why would I want your version of what I can hear myself? "How are you going to pay for that?" Congress is gonna do it if you give her the right Congress, dumbass. WAIT WAIT WHOA did he just literally say "In the real world..."??? Is he literally mansplaining CONGRESS to the actual Vice President right now??? Oh thank God, she just straight up told him he was wrong to his face. "25% of voters say they don't know you. Why don't they trust you yet?" She is polling at 48-50% in almost all polls, so that's a whole heck of a lot of us who are apparently voting for someone we "don't know." Does this guy get that his serious face doesn't make him sound less dumb, or that question less insulting to voters? We're on to FRACKING again. Again. She isn't going to ban fracking! Changing your mind when presented with new information means you are reasonable. Why are people pretending like it's not? Do they want this to be the new "her emails?" It's not gonna be "her emails." Let it go "You have a gun, but have you fired it?" How badly did he have to restrain himself from adding "Shouldn't you be careful, little lady?" Wait... IT'S OVER? I learned nothing from this! Is this why no one knows anything about anything? At least here is Coach Walz! "Is there anything you two disagree on?" Oh for CRYING OUT LOUD, another question no reasonable person will answer! What's next, "how many of your wife's clothes does she look fat in?" Wait... IT'S OVER? Here's Liz Cheney! Why does Liz Cheney have as much speaking time as the VP choice? Bill and Kamala are now walking in some random hallway. Are they gonna bother telling me what this hallway is? Wait... IT'S OVER? There must have been more questions asked, right? **Goes to Google.** Oh, here they are! Ugh, these are shallow and repetitive as well. Why are they calling this a "grilling"? And why were her other interviews "friendly"? These were the same questions on MSNBC, the redhead lady on that channel just wasn't so damn superior about it. How many people still watch this? Apparently it is still about 8 million per week, after being on for half a century. Wait... how many people listen to "Call Her Daddy"? Apparently, it is about 2 million per week after about 5 years.
I can only conclude that I shall not cry when the dinosaurs finally die out.
So f-d up that they treat her like this but give the convicted felon adjudicated rapist a pass on every f’ing stupid thing that comes out of his mouth…
At least they introduced the program with a dump on Trump for refusing to appear and challenged his 2020 grievance when he walked out when confronted with actual fact checking.
That was amazing. Thank you for sharing your inner dialogue. It made me laugh out loud - don’t think that your thoughts are not shared by many so-called senior citizens among this group who have managed to keep up with contemporary media. I haven’t watched 60 Min more than a handful of times in the past half century and it always seems like a form of Reality (I.e., highly staged) TV, kind of a news version of The Apprentice. But I did appreciate their explicit spelling out of the reasons Trump gave for declining, which expose him for the lying con artist he is.
You have nailed the generation gap between us oldies (who still think we are hip) and our young voters who (like you) are dealing with all of this mess. Thank you for helping us understand.
This almost 60 something applauds your recap. What a failed piece of both journalism and entertainment that 6O Minutes special presented. I am surprised more credible people have not called out the production.
I enjoyed your steam of consciousness post even if it was full of silliness. As a "dinosaur" who stopped watching 60 min years ago, I can suggest you at least delay the play of anything you stream so you can fast forward over the commercials.
I would have liked the dude (I think it was Scott) to ask her opinion of Modern Monetary Theory, since she has a degree in economics.
Bring back F. MacBuckley’s ‘Firing Line.” BC to you, Will but the conservative was an excellent host and interviewer who I often disagreed with in my young (younger than your) mind. Tabloid journalism sells, Will. And after all, everything in life must have a price tag attached. My house cats demand feed every day at the expected hour or else I’m in big trouble. The doorbell rings and a smiling Jehovah’s Witness wants me down on my knees. Cheese wiz, now my Chinese girlfriend wants me to learn the way of the Wok.
This 60 something appreciates your 20 something take, it impresses me as knowledgeable & accurate! It is in saying, specifically, where the bullshit lies, like this, that it can be addressed. Well done.
I have been watching 60 minutes for most of my adult life. It is not entertainment tv and I am disgusted by your commentary. At least they try to present fact-checked information. “Call Her Daddy” is not on my radar, dinosaur that I am. How about not pissing off people who still have one foot in a world that you denigrate. While you make some good points, your smirks are telling and insulting.
You know, J.D.... nowhere in my comment did I say that people who watch 60 Minutes are bad. Considering the program's reputation and longevity, that would be pretty rich. YOU are not the dinosaur here. I gave my honest impression, which was bafflement at this one segment. I'm poking fun at a generation gap and differences in media presentation and consumption. This includes myself as well. You don't have to like my comment and you don't have to like my brand of humor. Humor is enormously subjective. However, it's a bit rich for you to reserve the right to be pissed off at me for that while not also realizing I might be pissed off in return by you calling me disgusting. I don't take any of this to heart, but may I politely request that you chill the heck out? Thanks.
P.S. I hadn't heard of Call Me Daddy until Heather mentioned it yesterday. Apparently it is quite popular, yet I am not the target audience and so was unaware. Once again, the idea that media is so splintered and what was once monoculture now breeds culture shock is what I am lampooning. Myself included.
In defense of time I'd like to put forth my experience of awakening wonder when I first watched 60 Minutes as a teen in a world that seemed so bland and incomprehensibly sanitized. It became the one thing on tv I looked forward to. Rock my world! I still crave that. Truth warriors, bring them on.
Have at it. I was disillusioned with CBS when they trashed Dan Rather, and went on to help turn TV into a wasteland with Survivor. So I have no illusions that they are sacrosanct, but they do fact check. I like that on the two shows that are still worth watching. Well, mostly. I hate digital and I’m half dinosaur but I do how to take care of my business in the digital age (I can even get hacked and scammed with others). But we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Sorry if I had a “Vanity Tantrum”
We are all in need of Vanity Tantrums. Funny, I’ve never watched Survivor. I never did reality tv which of course is a play on the term just as Truth Social is anything but the truth. But I always thought you were a woman. Just curious which are you or are you both.
An old cat lady with a daughter and grands. Never did reality tv either. A bane on our existence. I remember a time before “reality,” the dumbing down of most tv (blame Andy Cohen for much of it) and when A and E, and Bravo had quality shows. Now it’s put in your order, pay and try for something watchable. PBS was my go to until repubs pulled their funding til it’s almost unbearable. Yep, I’m a dinosaur waiting for the asteroid.
I was filmed in the background of a 60 Minutes show in 1965 or 66. It was fun watching the cameras and interview people walk around like they were in a foreign country.
But the show that appeared on TV was a lot like this description; useless drama and no real information! It was all about Mike Wallace and not the supposed subject.
The 60 Minutes interview was very biased. Still trying to normalize Trump! A convicted felon running for president. Harris has policies and solutions. His rallies show his policies which are threats, retribution, all lego-centered. Media money....
Julie, Contrary to viewing the interview as “biased,” I dare say I view the time-honored 60 Minute interviews every four years for presidential candidates as an opportunity to show one can withstand critical scrutiny. Frankly, I both appreciated how Harris held up and also how Whitaker was intent on underscoring that Trump backed out once he had learned he would be fact-checked. Given that the matter of fact-checking was an issue in the past two debates and now on 60 Minutes, in my view, the story that needs amplifying is that, in contrast to Harris who showed she could handle a cross, neither Trump nor Vance, by their own admission, could submit to this type of vetting. While said story would not win over any MAGAts, it clearly could affect increasing numbers of so-called moderates.
I don't agree with Julie that it was biased in the way that she is characterizing it, which seems a little knee-jerk. However, the interview was a "win" for Harris/Walz only in the sense that a) the other guys forfeited by not showing up at game time, and b) she managed to get through it without punching Whitaker in the face.
As someone who is not of the demographic that has the reverence for the "time-honored" tradition of this interview and only watched to see what the fuss was about, I was just so taken aback by how vapid it genuinely seemed. Not on the part of the candidate, by on the part of the program. To my mind, there was no "critical scrutiny" here at all, at least not of the kind I find useful. All the questions were either designed to allow her to give no clear answer at all without causing damage, or were asking her to explain other unnamed people's perceptions of her own supposed shortcomings. Look, I'm voting for the lady regardless, but if the interviewer had actually **picked some of her policy positions** and really made her drill down on them, that would have been a legitimate test of know-how I would like to have seen her pass. Instead we got vague admonishments about how "realistic" they might be or how people might not "feel" they "know" the "details" yet. She danced around it all well - she's a smart lady and knew what was coming - but what a cheat for viewers interested to see actual scrutiny of what actually matters to us, rather than a facsimile of "scrutiny" connoted simply by the presence of a furrowed brow.
Will, Suffice it to say, part of the brilliance of this week’s media blitz is its recognizing the necessity of engaging both with traditional and with new media. I suppose I’m asking you to trust my assertion that, typically, Baby Boomers resonate to candidates who show they can handle a cross.
Well, everyone has their own impressions on these things, and I certainly don't wish for my providing mine to sound like it is invalidating someone else's. I guess I just struggle to see how this rises to the level of Harris proving she "can handle a cross" relative to all the other ways she has already proven that, and my Boomer Dad thought the questions were pretty embarrassing too. But if others thought it was illuminating then I'm glad, because the more votes for my candidate the better, obviously!
Will, My views mostly stem from my trusting Harris and her team likely anticipated the nature and type of questions Whitaker would ask and concluded her replies would be an important piece of the conversations emerging from this week’s media blitz.
I'm confused. Do you mean lower-case inquisition, as in a life of knowledge? If so, thanks! Do you mean upper-case The Inquisition, as in the medieval reign of terror? If so, rude! And how dare you, good sir!
I never saw this level of vitriol coming, but I suppose one never expects The Spanish Inquisition.
I watch 60 minutes, have forever, but since their ‘interview’ with mtg I have been really disappointed in the gotcha questions. I always felt they were better than that.
Kathaleen, While candidates don’t get to choose the questions, they can do themselves a great deal of good when they can retain integrity while their words and deeds are subject to critical scrutiny.
Barbara, I don’t agree with all you said, but fully agree that the issue of fact checking that terrify the felon and his running mate should absolutely be amplified! That in and of itself is newsworthy!!!!
Christine, I would only note that amplifying Trump’s and Vance’s repeated insistence that they not be fact-checked becomes far more impactful when we can point to Harris’s willingness to subject her record to critical scrutiny.
Let's hope that Kamala wins Decisively in November 2024, and is Inaugurated on January 20th, 2025... Bear in Mind, 'The President-Proposes-And-Congress-Deposes'... One of the Advantages that Joe Biden had being President, is that he could work with narrow margins in both Houses since he was a creature of the Senate for so long....
I am sure Kamala learned alot from president Biden. She is seasoned and focused. There is no doubt in my mind she will be a strong leader for this country and the people.
Hello Patricia... The more that I watch her in Interviews, the more I like Kamala... She is giving a tremendous Interview with Steven Colbert right now... She is shouldering a Tremendous Load Of Hope right now... She is also in the Difficult position of being on the Biden Team., she can't be Independent yet.. We can hope that she can get Congressional Help with her new initiatives....
Mainstream media is worried about the same thing that Republicans who were originally opposed to Trump are. They are afraid to alienate the Trump base. They are burned by the Trump branding as fake news, however absurd, and need the viewer numbers to sell ads and stay afloat. They don’t want to seem biased against Trump, so the rules are different for him. Meanwhile, they treat Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz with the standard traditional scrutiny. Corporate media leadership needs to think about what a free press will look like if Trump is elected and how culpable they will be if they continue to treat him with kid gloves. He will never be their friend. Look how he handled press conferences when he was President. They won’t even be in the room.
They re also afraid of losing advertising dollars of his base plus moderate Rs who still vote for him out of lifelong habit and concern for Democratic tax increases on business plus individual ownership of most MSM are solidly big business Rs!
Call them names and they will cower. Puke. What the hell is our media made of. What stories would you like, Mr. asswipe Please don’t insult us again. Oh. I see, we just have to follow Rupert down the Foxhole. Excuse us. We seem to have lost our balls somewhere. But our bottom line looks good.
“Bill Whitaker, who drew the assignment, asked questions that were very obvious, and that were sometimes very leading. For example, he grilled Harris on her economic plan, observing that it would add $3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, and demanding to know how she would pay for that. What that question overlooks is that EVERY president of the last century has added to the deficit, almost invariably at a rate greater than Harris' plan would.”
I would make the argument that the questions - while poor - were not actually "obvious." The obvious questions to ask, in my mind, would be based on obvious issues that obviously affect everyone in the country.
"You have proposed a ban or grocery price gouging. Can you explain to our viewers by what mechanism that would actually work, and how that would be different from the 'price controls' that your opposition is claiming it would amount to?"
"We have seen the ravages of climate change yet again this hurricane season, but you have not touched on that as much as your predecessor. Do you intend to continue carrying out his policies of incentives, or do you think we should go even further?"
...and so forth. "How will you pay for this stuff, especially if Congress doesn't feel like being nice?" isn't an obvious question as much as an infuriatingly obtuse one. The answers are "I'm a Democrat, so tax raises on corporations are my jam!" and "Well, if I don't have a good Congress we're all sh!t outta luck, now aren't we?" and we all know those are the answers without Harris having to say a word. Yet she somehow still had to find the words to say it, and viewers were left poorer.
I'm just trying to imagine Walter Cronkite asking LBJ "What makes you think you can expand elder care when Congress has not done it yet?" like Whitaker just asked Harris. Patronizing and infuriating doesn't begin to cover it.
P.S. Even if she did NOT entirely pay for her investments (which she obviously needs to, as the debt is already absurd), per reports today it would add less debt by trillions and trillions than her opponent's plan, which we all know he has no intention of paying for at all. So the broadcast and cable interviewers can stuff it with the repetition of the whole "irresponsibly spending Democrat" canard, because at this point they are simply misleading people, full stop.
I think you’re right about most of this, but the fear of the debt is mostly a rightwing canard. They live on complaining about it, but they’re the assholes who run it up, and it’s never kept us from continuing to have the strongest economy in the world.
It’s a game each side plays. Repuks lower taxes for big business and the wealthy thereby driving up the debt. The democrats need to expand needed services to the people thereby driving up the debt further. Then the blame game and whoever is left standing takes the prize and further shoves the debt down the sheet hole. Honestly, the debt is far too large to sustain. And the only way to reduce it is restoring the tax rats to pre Trump. Some of those tax reductions will end automatically anyway.
Republicans play games. Dems try to do the right thing. As to “the debt is far too large to sustain,” I don’t know any reputable economists who agree with you on this point. It’s an easy complaint, but the complexities of the economy as a whole put debt-mongering in the category of whining.
The rubes and boobies, all 74 million of them, to the last man or woman, sincerely believe thst they will soon win the lottery and be obscenely wealthy, and they don’t want to pay taxes on their newfound wealth. Honest to God! That’s the way these POS’s “think.”
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - Ronald Wright
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon Johnson
Wow what a great quote. I was just in Mississippi for a music a festival and I paid homage to the Emmitt Till museum. Folks that live around the site in the side of the railroad tracks are so impoverished and so kind and friendly and I thought the world had passed these folks by.
I think that's true but a bit complicated. For one thing we still talk about "the lowest" of people in a general way when what we mean is low socioeconomic status, and I think that's complicated. It has little to do with what Joseph Welch called "decency", and for centuries, power (of which money is a form; often interchangeable with others) has been observed to tend to corrupt. The Declaration of Independence was a protest against domination, even though in some other respects the Colonists remained dominators. That's part of what's tricky, as humans are not eager to compromise their own advantages, and yet that is often part and parcel a meaningfully free society.
The notion and practice of "divide and rule" goes way back, it it remains effective. I have read that wealthy slave owners cultivated racism in a culture they dominated economically, in part because they feared the development of poor white-poor black solidarity. Not all money is collected meritoriously, nor even honorably, but but for the most part all dollars spend the same, irrespective of their path of origin. In a society ruled by and for the whole of a people. we get to make the rules about how money gets accumulated, such as defining fraud and theft, and again that can be complicated and its presentations not always obvious. Our current systems of law way disadvantages the poor, and boosts the economic advantages of the very rich. Count the ways. By and large we were moving our society toward what T. Roosevelt called a "Square Deal" until Reagan Republicans seized effective control of the media. Do we really want to live in a society more shaped by guys like Musk, than take the time to work out paths of our own choosing?
In general, where lack of power is extreme, look for abuse of the powerless; the poor and especially the poor an very young or very old, female, or ethnic minority. Where privilege is extreme, look for abuses. Also, I think that some hide from the reality of the own suffering with the "privilege" of lording it over some out group of whatever variety. Dictators always provide targets that are deprived of state and social protection. It's the root of top-down autocracy.
I’m not sure I’d endorse this as a sweeping generalization, but I’ve certainly encountered it in my MAGA relatives. It’s a small kernel of hope they need to keep from falling into a pit of total despair.
No Rex, they are not voting for any policy initiatives. They are voting against the party that tells them they are privileged and should be guilty and they are pissed off. I too am pissed with I’m told I’m privileged but that does t change my political course. Democrats are too thick-headed to understand why we are often on the losing side. Oh, can you say border neglect? Yesiree. We neglected the borders for 3 years and now pay back time. But do my democratic allies comprede this? Nope. Not at all.
It's truly AMAZING the nice things we could have - and I mean the absolutely insane bounty of nice things for absolutely everyone - without adding a penny to debt...
… if we just got on board with the idea that asking someone to have four yachts instead of five was not some sort of perverse sin.
"In research with his colleague Beatriz Barros, he found that the average billionaire had a carbon footprint thousands of times that of the average person. The global average footprint of CO2 emitted per person is just under five tonnes, while they estimated that Roman Abramovich – the top polluter according to their list – was responsible for about 33,859 tonnes of carbon emitted in 2018. More than two-thirds of that was the product of his yacht, the 162.5-metre Eclipse."
For me the question is how does extreme concentration wealth impact the quality of life of societies as a whole? Pollution (and the millions set against controlling pollution) is just one example. Newspapers repeat like a mantra that popular initiates are perpetually blocked by this or that wealthy lobby. ow is that not a very serious problem? How is that not a betrayal of everything the US way of government is "supposed" to be?
I would argue that it was not only UN-substantive, but actively insulting and irresponsible. The questions were all personality-based, not policy-based. He's been asked in every interview about misspeaking or fibbing or whatever about where exactly he was in China God knows how many years ago. This is something that affects literally zero people in the entire USA, and he's already publicly apologized, so at this point we can only conclude it is a purposeful attempt to paint someone with a lifelong commitment to public service as untrustworthy (Thou shalt not have told a tall tale ever or thou shalt be disqualified!). Meanwhile, neither person on the other ticket could be bothered to appear at all because they are currently too busy purposefully spreading conspiracies about the response to a natural disaster that has left countless injured and homeless.
Frankly I am sick of Trump. I want no more of him. What CBS and others need to do is to show, as Heather does, the DISinformation campaign. Rather than MISinformation. Dangerous stuff out there.
Clips of trump is a great idea to replace an interview but the way things are with his peeps it would be called fake news. Nothing seems to be real in that world. Not even a storm surge.
I just watched the 60 Minutes interviews with Harris and Walz. Because Trump refuses to submit to any meaningful interview, all we have is Harris in the hot seat; pressed by the interviewer to answer his questions more fully.
I challenge CBS to use the better part of an hour to show clips from Trump's rallies so that voters can see how seriously deranged he is. If Trump won't submit to an interview, let the words from his rallies speak for him!
I present to you all... a 20-something voter's honest thought process (mine) while watching the 60 Minutes segment, presented James Joyce stream-of-consciousness style.
What even is 60 Minutes? (I've forgotten it existed.) Like, the show is 60 Minutes long? Isn't that most shows? It seems too long and yet also too short. Oh right, it's that Sunday Night thing Granny used to watch. I miss her. OK, focus. Why is this literal clock ticking at me? I forgot clocks could tick. Is Jack Bauer going to pop out at me? No, it's this guy sitting on a chair. I have no idea who this man is. Why is he all alone on this chair? Does he not have any friends? "She's been a candidate for two months and the honeymoon is over." How exactly did Man in Chair determine this? Is there a scientific agency that measures honeymoon periods, like those people trying to figure out if we are in the Anthropocene? Why is he so serious? At this point I'm used to everyone on video beginning with "Hey Guys, it's your boy [insert name like Cody or Blake], and here's what we've got for you today! Smash that like and subscribe button!" I'm confused. Does Man in Chair not want me to like him? (His name is apparently Bill.) It's a commercial already. Where is the "Skip Ad" button on this screen? There isn't one. That's the pits! OK, Kamala is finally here. Looking good in purple, gurl! Oh Lord, it's Israel time already. Y'all know she can't straight-up answer these questions without destabilizing the entire world, right Bill? She's not going to share state secrets. WAIT WAIT WHOA her lips are moving but I can't hear what her answer is because Bill is narrating in voiceover what her answer is instead? WTF?!? Do they do that on this show? Why would I want your version of what I can hear myself? "How are you going to pay for that?" Congress is gonna do it if you give her the right Congress, dumbass. WAIT WAIT WHOA did he just literally say "In the real world..."??? Is he literally mansplaining CONGRESS to the actual Vice President right now??? Oh thank God, she just straight up told him he was wrong to his face. "25% of voters say they don't know you. Why don't they trust you yet?" She is polling at 48-50% in almost all polls, so that's a whole heck of a lot of us who are apparently voting for someone we "don't know." Does this guy get that his serious face doesn't make him sound less dumb, or that question less insulting to voters? We're on to FRACKING again. Again. She isn't going to ban fracking! Changing your mind when presented with new information means you are reasonable. Why are people pretending like it's not? Do they want this to be the new "her emails?" It's not gonna be "her emails." Let it go "You have a gun, but have you fired it?" How badly did he have to restrain himself from adding "Shouldn't you be careful, little lady?" Wait... IT'S OVER? I learned nothing from this! Is this why no one knows anything about anything? At least here is Coach Walz! "Is there anything you two disagree on?" Oh for CRYING OUT LOUD, another question no reasonable person will answer! What's next, "how many of your wife's clothes does she look fat in?" Wait... IT'S OVER? Here's Liz Cheney! Why does Liz Cheney have as much speaking time as the VP choice? Bill and Kamala are now walking in some random hallway. Are they gonna bother telling me what this hallway is? Wait... IT'S OVER? There must have been more questions asked, right? **Goes to Google.** Oh, here they are! Ugh, these are shallow and repetitive as well. Why are they calling this a "grilling"? And why were her other interviews "friendly"? These were the same questions on MSNBC, the redhead lady on that channel just wasn't so damn superior about it. How many people still watch this? Apparently it is still about 8 million per week, after being on for half a century. Wait... how many people listen to "Call Her Daddy"? Apparently, it is about 2 million per week after about 5 years.
I can only conclude that I shall not cry when the dinosaurs finally die out.
Very good.
Yes, I agree. I thought Bill was hard on Kamala and was rude. But she handled it like a pro.
So f-d up that they treat her like this but give the convicted felon adjudicated rapist a pass on every f’ing stupid thing that comes out of his mouth…
At least they introduced the program with a dump on Trump for refusing to appear and challenged his 2020 grievance when he walked out when confronted with actual fact checking.
I thought he was rude, as well. Kinda seemed he was anxious to trip her up.
Excellent, Will.
That was amazing. Thank you for sharing your inner dialogue. It made me laugh out loud - don’t think that your thoughts are not shared by many so-called senior citizens among this group who have managed to keep up with contemporary media. I haven’t watched 60 Min more than a handful of times in the past half century and it always seems like a form of Reality (I.e., highly staged) TV, kind of a news version of The Apprentice. But I did appreciate their explicit spelling out of the reasons Trump gave for declining, which expose him for the lying con artist he is.
Amen that last sentence
You have nailed the generation gap between us oldies (who still think we are hip) and our young voters who (like you) are dealing with all of this mess. Thank you for helping us understand.
lol, Rhonda, more like aching hips rather than being hip! 😜
Will, MANY THANKS for starting my day with 5 min of belly laughs and a multitude of new perspectives! Kudos from a 77 yo great-grandmother!
This almost 60 something applauds your recap. What a failed piece of both journalism and entertainment that 6O Minutes special presented. I am surprised more credible people have not called out the production.
I enjoyed your steam of consciousness post even if it was full of silliness. As a "dinosaur" who stopped watching 60 min years ago, I can suggest you at least delay the play of anything you stream so you can fast forward over the commercials.
I would have liked the dude (I think it was Scott) to ask her opinion of Modern Monetary Theory, since she has a degree in economics.
Oh Will, thank you. Love your perspective.
This is very creative, informative, slightly arrogant and dismissive. Right on point. Helpful, even if uncomfortable, in my opinion.
Bring back F. MacBuckley’s ‘Firing Line.” BC to you, Will but the conservative was an excellent host and interviewer who I often disagreed with in my young (younger than your) mind. Tabloid journalism sells, Will. And after all, everything in life must have a price tag attached. My house cats demand feed every day at the expected hour or else I’m in big trouble. The doorbell rings and a smiling Jehovah’s Witness wants me down on my knees. Cheese wiz, now my Chinese girlfriend wants me to learn the way of the Wok.
I will Wok that way.
This 60 something appreciates your 20 something take, it impresses me as knowledgeable & accurate! It is in saying, specifically, where the bullshit lies, like this, that it can be addressed. Well done.
Thanks, Will! I learned a lot- from you. I quit television years ago & I'm an old guy. Loved the ticking clock bit!
What a fascinating stream of consciousness! I Really enjoyed reading this. So REAL. Thanks 😊
I have been watching 60 minutes for most of my adult life. It is not entertainment tv and I am disgusted by your commentary. At least they try to present fact-checked information. “Call Her Daddy” is not on my radar, dinosaur that I am. How about not pissing off people who still have one foot in a world that you denigrate. While you make some good points, your smirks are telling and insulting.
You know, J.D.... nowhere in my comment did I say that people who watch 60 Minutes are bad. Considering the program's reputation and longevity, that would be pretty rich. YOU are not the dinosaur here. I gave my honest impression, which was bafflement at this one segment. I'm poking fun at a generation gap and differences in media presentation and consumption. This includes myself as well. You don't have to like my comment and you don't have to like my brand of humor. Humor is enormously subjective. However, it's a bit rich for you to reserve the right to be pissed off at me for that while not also realizing I might be pissed off in return by you calling me disgusting. I don't take any of this to heart, but may I politely request that you chill the heck out? Thanks.
P.S. I hadn't heard of Call Me Daddy until Heather mentioned it yesterday. Apparently it is quite popular, yet I am not the target audience and so was unaware. Once again, the idea that media is so splintered and what was once monoculture now breeds culture shock is what I am lampooning. Myself included.
In defense of time I'd like to put forth my experience of awakening wonder when I first watched 60 Minutes as a teen in a world that seemed so bland and incomprehensibly sanitized. It became the one thing on tv I looked forward to. Rock my world! I still crave that. Truth warriors, bring them on.
Hey JD, R U at it again? Try being a little less not nice for a change. Or I will team with Will and turn your comments into chop suey, lol.😝
Have at it. I was disillusioned with CBS when they trashed Dan Rather, and went on to help turn TV into a wasteland with Survivor. So I have no illusions that they are sacrosanct, but they do fact check. I like that on the two shows that are still worth watching. Well, mostly. I hate digital and I’m half dinosaur but I do how to take care of my business in the digital age (I can even get hacked and scammed with others). But we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Sorry if I had a “Vanity Tantrum”
I used to work Winter Mountain Rescue... In a Real Situation... The Best Team Survives... 'Survivor' was/is a 'Hot-House' Fantasy...
No script that was crapola?
We are all in need of Vanity Tantrums. Funny, I’ve never watched Survivor. I never did reality tv which of course is a play on the term just as Truth Social is anything but the truth. But I always thought you were a woman. Just curious which are you or are you both.
An old cat lady with a daughter and grands. Never did reality tv either. A bane on our existence. I remember a time before “reality,” the dumbing down of most tv (blame Andy Cohen for much of it) and when A and E, and Bravo had quality shows. Now it’s put in your order, pay and try for something watchable. PBS was my go to until repubs pulled their funding til it’s almost unbearable. Yep, I’m a dinosaur waiting for the asteroid.
Wonderful review!
I was filmed in the background of a 60 Minutes show in 1965 or 66. It was fun watching the cameras and interview people walk around like they were in a foreign country.
But the show that appeared on TV was a lot like this description; useless drama and no real information! It was all about Mike Wallace and not the supposed subject.
The 60 Minutes interview was very biased. Still trying to normalize Trump! A convicted felon running for president. Harris has policies and solutions. His rallies show his policies which are threats, retribution, all lego-centered. Media money....
Julie, Contrary to viewing the interview as “biased,” I dare say I view the time-honored 60 Minute interviews every four years for presidential candidates as an opportunity to show one can withstand critical scrutiny. Frankly, I both appreciated how Harris held up and also how Whitaker was intent on underscoring that Trump backed out once he had learned he would be fact-checked. Given that the matter of fact-checking was an issue in the past two debates and now on 60 Minutes, in my view, the story that needs amplifying is that, in contrast to Harris who showed she could handle a cross, neither Trump nor Vance, by their own admission, could submit to this type of vetting. While said story would not win over any MAGAts, it clearly could affect increasing numbers of so-called moderates.
I don't agree with Julie that it was biased in the way that she is characterizing it, which seems a little knee-jerk. However, the interview was a "win" for Harris/Walz only in the sense that a) the other guys forfeited by not showing up at game time, and b) she managed to get through it without punching Whitaker in the face.
As someone who is not of the demographic that has the reverence for the "time-honored" tradition of this interview and only watched to see what the fuss was about, I was just so taken aback by how vapid it genuinely seemed. Not on the part of the candidate, by on the part of the program. To my mind, there was no "critical scrutiny" here at all, at least not of the kind I find useful. All the questions were either designed to allow her to give no clear answer at all without causing damage, or were asking her to explain other unnamed people's perceptions of her own supposed shortcomings. Look, I'm voting for the lady regardless, but if the interviewer had actually **picked some of her policy positions** and really made her drill down on them, that would have been a legitimate test of know-how I would like to have seen her pass. Instead we got vague admonishments about how "realistic" they might be or how people might not "feel" they "know" the "details" yet. She danced around it all well - she's a smart lady and knew what was coming - but what a cheat for viewers interested to see actual scrutiny of what actually matters to us, rather than a facsimile of "scrutiny" connoted simply by the presence of a furrowed brow.
Will, Suffice it to say, part of the brilliance of this week’s media blitz is its recognizing the necessity of engaging both with traditional and with new media. I suppose I’m asking you to trust my assertion that, typically, Baby Boomers resonate to candidates who show they can handle a cross.
Well, everyone has their own impressions on these things, and I certainly don't wish for my providing mine to sound like it is invalidating someone else's. I guess I just struggle to see how this rises to the level of Harris proving she "can handle a cross" relative to all the other ways she has already proven that, and my Boomer Dad thought the questions were pretty embarrassing too. But if others thought it was illuminating then I'm glad, because the more votes for my candidate the better, obviously!
I’m with your dad.
Will, My views mostly stem from my trusting Harris and her team likely anticipated the nature and type of questions Whitaker would ask and concluded her replies would be an important piece of the conversations emerging from this week’s media blitz.
This boomer saw the questioning as vapid also.
Will, I abandoned 60 Minutes years ago, and for some of these very reasons that you've articulated.
Maybe the inquisition would suit you.
I'm confused. Do you mean lower-case inquisition, as in a life of knowledge? If so, thanks! Do you mean upper-case The Inquisition, as in the medieval reign of terror? If so, rude! And how dare you, good sir!
I never saw this level of vitriol coming, but I suppose one never expects The Spanish Inquisition.
I thought Chilcutt was a female. Ah… but that’s another 20th century illusion. Who knows only the owl knows.
I watch 60 minutes, have forever, but since their ‘interview’ with mtg I have been really disappointed in the gotcha questions. I always felt they were better than that.
Actually, they were never better than that.
no mention by CBS of Project 2025
Kathaleen, While candidates don’t get to choose the questions, they can do themselves a great deal of good when they can retain integrity while their words and deeds are subject to critical scrutiny.
IMHO, CBS seems to have abandoned critical scrutiny.
Gail, In my view, any day a candidate is willing (and able) to subject her record to scrutiny (critical or otherwise) is a good day for the candidate.
Well done!
Barbara, I don’t agree with all you said, but fully agree that the issue of fact checking that terrify the felon and his running mate should absolutely be amplified! That in and of itself is newsworthy!!!!
Christine, I would only note that amplifying Trump’s and Vance’s repeated insistence that they not be fact-checked becomes far more impactful when we can point to Harris’s willingness to subject her record to critical scrutiny.
Let's hope that Kamala wins Decisively in November 2024, and is Inaugurated on January 20th, 2025... Bear in Mind, 'The President-Proposes-And-Congress-Deposes'... One of the Advantages that Joe Biden had being President, is that he could work with narrow margins in both Houses since he was a creature of the Senate for so long....
I am sure Kamala learned alot from president Biden. She is seasoned and focused. There is no doubt in my mind she will be a strong leader for this country and the people.
Hello Patricia... The more that I watch her in Interviews, the more I like Kamala... She is giving a tremendous Interview with Steven Colbert right now... She is shouldering a Tremendous Load Of Hope right now... She is also in the Difficult position of being on the Biden Team., she can't be Independent yet.. We can hope that she can get Congressional Help with her new initiatives....
Mainstream media is worried about the same thing that Republicans who were originally opposed to Trump are. They are afraid to alienate the Trump base. They are burned by the Trump branding as fake news, however absurd, and need the viewer numbers to sell ads and stay afloat. They don’t want to seem biased against Trump, so the rules are different for him. Meanwhile, they treat Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz with the standard traditional scrutiny. Corporate media leadership needs to think about what a free press will look like if Trump is elected and how culpable they will be if they continue to treat him with kid gloves. He will never be their friend. Look how he handled press conferences when he was President. They won’t even be in the room.
They re also afraid of losing advertising dollars of his base plus moderate Rs who still vote for him out of lifelong habit and concern for Democratic tax increases on business plus individual ownership of most MSM are solidly big business Rs!
Call them names and they will cower. Puke. What the hell is our media made of. What stories would you like, Mr. asswipe Please don’t insult us again. Oh. I see, we just have to follow Rupert down the Foxhole. Excuse us. We seem to have lost our balls somewhere. But our bottom line looks good.
60 Minutes interview was DC Press Corpse bullshit. Surprise surprise.
For example, courtesy of today’s electoral-vote.com blog:
“Bill Whitaker, who drew the assignment, asked questions that were very obvious, and that were sometimes very leading. For example, he grilled Harris on her economic plan, observing that it would add $3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, and demanding to know how she would pay for that. What that question overlooks is that EVERY president of the last century has added to the deficit, almost invariably at a rate greater than Harris' plan would.”
I would make the argument that the questions - while poor - were not actually "obvious." The obvious questions to ask, in my mind, would be based on obvious issues that obviously affect everyone in the country.
"You have proposed a ban or grocery price gouging. Can you explain to our viewers by what mechanism that would actually work, and how that would be different from the 'price controls' that your opposition is claiming it would amount to?"
"We have seen the ravages of climate change yet again this hurricane season, but you have not touched on that as much as your predecessor. Do you intend to continue carrying out his policies of incentives, or do you think we should go even further?"
...and so forth. "How will you pay for this stuff, especially if Congress doesn't feel like being nice?" isn't an obvious question as much as an infuriatingly obtuse one. The answers are "I'm a Democrat, so tax raises on corporations are my jam!" and "Well, if I don't have a good Congress we're all sh!t outta luck, now aren't we?" and we all know those are the answers without Harris having to say a word. Yet she somehow still had to find the words to say it, and viewers were left poorer.
I'm just trying to imagine Walter Cronkite asking LBJ "What makes you think you can expand elder care when Congress has not done it yet?" like Whitaker just asked Harris. Patronizing and infuriating doesn't begin to cover it.
P.S. Even if she did NOT entirely pay for her investments (which she obviously needs to, as the debt is already absurd), per reports today it would add less debt by trillions and trillions than her opponent's plan, which we all know he has no intention of paying for at all. So the broadcast and cable interviewers can stuff it with the repetition of the whole "irresponsibly spending Democrat" canard, because at this point they are simply misleading people, full stop.
I think you’re right about most of this, but the fear of the debt is mostly a rightwing canard. They live on complaining about it, but they’re the assholes who run it up, and it’s never kept us from continuing to have the strongest economy in the world.
It’s a game each side plays. Repuks lower taxes for big business and the wealthy thereby driving up the debt. The democrats need to expand needed services to the people thereby driving up the debt further. Then the blame game and whoever is left standing takes the prize and further shoves the debt down the sheet hole. Honestly, the debt is far too large to sustain. And the only way to reduce it is restoring the tax rats to pre Trump. Some of those tax reductions will end automatically anyway.
Republicans play games. Dems try to do the right thing. As to “the debt is far too large to sustain,” I don’t know any reputable economists who agree with you on this point. It’s an easy complaint, but the complexities of the economy as a whole put debt-mongering in the category of whining.
I never figured out the crowd appeal of tax cuts for the rich.
The rubes and boobies, all 74 million of them, to the last man or woman, sincerely believe thst they will soon win the lottery and be obscenely wealthy, and they don’t want to pay taxes on their newfound wealth. Honest to God! That’s the way these POS’s “think.”
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - Ronald Wright
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon Johnson
My favorite LBJ quote
Wow what a great quote. I was just in Mississippi for a music a festival and I paid homage to the Emmitt Till museum. Folks that live around the site in the side of the railroad tracks are so impoverished and so kind and friendly and I thought the world had passed these folks by.
I think that's true but a bit complicated. For one thing we still talk about "the lowest" of people in a general way when what we mean is low socioeconomic status, and I think that's complicated. It has little to do with what Joseph Welch called "decency", and for centuries, power (of which money is a form; often interchangeable with others) has been observed to tend to corrupt. The Declaration of Independence was a protest against domination, even though in some other respects the Colonists remained dominators. That's part of what's tricky, as humans are not eager to compromise their own advantages, and yet that is often part and parcel a meaningfully free society.
The notion and practice of "divide and rule" goes way back, it it remains effective. I have read that wealthy slave owners cultivated racism in a culture they dominated economically, in part because they feared the development of poor white-poor black solidarity. Not all money is collected meritoriously, nor even honorably, but but for the most part all dollars spend the same, irrespective of their path of origin. In a society ruled by and for the whole of a people. we get to make the rules about how money gets accumulated, such as defining fraud and theft, and again that can be complicated and its presentations not always obvious. Our current systems of law way disadvantages the poor, and boosts the economic advantages of the very rich. Count the ways. By and large we were moving our society toward what T. Roosevelt called a "Square Deal" until Reagan Republicans seized effective control of the media. Do we really want to live in a society more shaped by guys like Musk, than take the time to work out paths of our own choosing?
In general, where lack of power is extreme, look for abuse of the powerless; the poor and especially the poor an very young or very old, female, or ethnic minority. Where privilege is extreme, look for abuses. Also, I think that some hide from the reality of the own suffering with the "privilege" of lording it over some out group of whatever variety. Dictators always provide targets that are deprived of state and social protection. It's the root of top-down autocracy.
I’m not sure I’d endorse this as a sweeping generalization, but I’ve certainly encountered it in my MAGA relatives. It’s a small kernel of hope they need to keep from falling into a pit of total despair.
No Rex, they are not voting for any policy initiatives. They are voting against the party that tells them they are privileged and should be guilty and they are pissed off. I too am pissed with I’m told I’m privileged but that does t change my political course. Democrats are too thick-headed to understand why we are often on the losing side. Oh, can you say border neglect? Yesiree. We neglected the borders for 3 years and now pay back time. But do my democratic allies comprede this? Nope. Not at all.
The root reason of all Republican success at the ballot box is endemic racism in the white population.
Neither could Will Rogers in 1932 when he skewered “trickle down” as a scam
And her answer was appropriate; restore the massive Trump tax cuts for billionaires to pay for her humane social program!
It's truly AMAZING the nice things we could have - and I mean the absolutely insane bounty of nice things for absolutely everyone - without adding a penny to debt...
… if we just got on board with the idea that asking someone to have four yachts instead of five was not some sort of perverse sin.
"In research with his colleague Beatriz Barros, he found that the average billionaire had a carbon footprint thousands of times that of the average person. The global average footprint of CO2 emitted per person is just under five tonnes, while they estimated that Roman Abramovich – the top polluter according to their list – was responsible for about 33,859 tonnes of carbon emitted in 2018. More than two-thirds of that was the product of his yacht, the 162.5-metre Eclipse."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/12/superyacht-industry-booms-during-covid-pandemic
For me the question is how does extreme concentration wealth impact the quality of life of societies as a whole? Pollution (and the millions set against controlling pollution) is just one example. Newspapers repeat like a mantra that popular initiates are perpetually blocked by this or that wealthy lobby. ow is that not a very serious problem? How is that not a betrayal of everything the US way of government is "supposed" to be?
The Walz interview segment was shorter but more substantive. In general, these days it doesn't pay to get your hopes up with televised McNews.
I would argue that it was not only UN-substantive, but actively insulting and irresponsible. The questions were all personality-based, not policy-based. He's been asked in every interview about misspeaking or fibbing or whatever about where exactly he was in China God knows how many years ago. This is something that affects literally zero people in the entire USA, and he's already publicly apologized, so at this point we can only conclude it is a purposeful attempt to paint someone with a lifelong commitment to public service as untrustworthy (Thou shalt not have told a tall tale ever or thou shalt be disqualified!). Meanwhile, neither person on the other ticket could be bothered to appear at all because they are currently too busy purposefully spreading conspiracies about the response to a natural disaster that has left countless injured and homeless.
Which is why I never watch it.
Indeed
Frankly I am sick of Trump. I want no more of him. What CBS and others need to do is to show, as Heather does, the DISinformation campaign. Rather than MISinformation. Dangerous stuff out there.
To candidate Trump: turn on the lights, your party's over.
Clips of trump is a great idea to replace an interview but the way things are with his peeps it would be called fake news. Nothing seems to be real in that world. Not even a storm surge.
Great idea!
Yes!