Well, yesterday was some
day, wasn’t it?
After handling several things I had to do for work in the morning, I ate lunch, and then as I always do, I checked my email to see if there was anything else in there that I needed to take care of.
There wasn’t, so I was able to turn on the TV and go in and out of my email the rest of the day to see if there was any work to be done.
After handling several things I had to do for work in the morning, I ate lunch, and then as I always do, I checked my email to see if there was anything else in there that I needed to take care of.
There wasn’t, so I was able to turn on the TV and go in and out of my email the rest of the day to see if there was any work to be done.
And at about 11:30 a.m. or so, all hell broke loose on Long
Island.
The very day that I wrote about the almost constant episodes of gun violence that we are currently experiencing, just hours after I typed my last word of yesterday’s Rant on the subject, the very gun violence that I was talking about happened right in my backyard, so to speak, on Long Island.
An employee of a local supermarket went to work, and for reasons not revealed just yet, decided to use his place of work for target practice.
As shoppers were in the supermarket, he went upstairs to the second floor of the establishment and opened fire on at least three people, killing one and hitting two others.
He somehow got out of the market and made his way back to one of his known residences, and after several hours, the police were able to nab him and put him where he belongs, hopefully for a long, long time.
The incident put the entire area in West Hempstead and close environs on total lockdown, because there was a time that no one had any clue where the shooter was, and you can’t have someone like this running around with schools and businesses right off the heavily traveled main thoroughfare known as Hempstead Turnpike.
I sat there riveted by the coverage of the shooting, in particular by News 12, the locally produced news service, that was there seemingly moments after the incident occurred and stayed with it, live, for the next several hours.
The service eventually dispatched several reporters to the scene, and they got some great footage, in particular of the police storming the building where the shooter was holed up in.
And the shooter … it is really a sad thing, to tell you the truth.
The guy has a record, he also had some past mental health problems, and when the reporters read off his background resume, you can just see that the store had given this guy a chance, a chance to put his troubled past behind him by giving him a job as a cart assistant, which basically means that he was moving shopping carts out of the parking lot and bringing them back to the store for shoppers to use.
And he paid the store back for its gratitude for him by shooting the store’s manager dead and two others met his bullets too.
Where he got the gun—a standard handgun—is another story, and I am sure that that will come out in the wash soon.
But while the incident was horrible, the coverage of it was spectacular, exactly what TV coverage of something like this should be, and what makes television, still, the greatest source of on-the-spot news that we have.
Anchor Tara Joyce led viewers through a myriad of information coming from numerous sources related to the incident, oftentimes listening with one ear to a witness while with the other ear, listening to producers and others directing her to the next segment of the event, while speaking as calmly as possible about what was going on while alerting viewers that their children in school might be on lockdown.
This was at-the-moment TV at its best, and when all the networks that reported on the incident allotted what they felt was ample time to it and went onto other things, News 12 stayed with it until its conclusion, when the man was apprehended.
It was great reporting, and I could not turn myself away from the screen during this entire coverage. It was that good.
And then, as this story unfolded, we learned that there was going to be a verdict in the George Floyd case, and the verdict came about two hours after the previous story had just about ended.
The cop who put his knee on Floyd was convicted on all counts, and I do think that it was the correct verdict, given all the evidence brought out at the trial.
The cop, or the ex-cop, used excessive force in keeping Floyd pinned to the ground, and I do believe the ex-cop got what he deserved.
I personally knew he would be convicted, but honestly, I did not think he would be convicted of all charges.
But when the verdict came back relatively quickly, I kind of knew what his fate was going to be, and I think he and his lawyers knew it too.
And as usual, the reaction was pretty much what I expected, too.
I put up on Facebook that while I agreed with the jury’s decision, I did not agree with the way Floyd was being portrayed by the media and several politicians, including the attorney general of Minnesota, who in a nationally televised news conference, characterized Floyd right after the verdict was rendered as pretty much a choir boy.
He was not anything of the kind, and if he didn’t out up some resistance to his arrest for trying to pass counterfeit bills, he would still be with us.
That being said, yes, he was a human being, and he didn’t deserve to die this way.
Well, when I put my feelings up on Facebook, I got the usual hateful treatment.
I was called a racist, I was told that I “needed Jesus in my life,” and I was called a few other things that I won’t go into here.
Again, I agreed with the verdict, but because I said that Floyd wasn’t a model citizen, I got raked over the coals.
Fine with me, as Facebook has a habit of bringing out the worst in people. We all know that, and its ugly head was reared again yesterday.
OK, I am a big boy, and I can take it.
So yesterday was quite a day on the local and national scene, a day where one could literally sit in front of the television for hours at a time and not waste their time for one minute.
Again, it shows the power of television, something I have known about since this once six year old kid sat for hours at a time in front of the television one November weekend to see how the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy played out.
Television is often labeled as a video garbage pail, and it often is just that.
But when you have days like yesterday, you see that the absolute power of the medium still exists, and can still be vital.
I have been a vocal opponent of how TV handles news today, but yesterday, in particular on the local level, it did its job.
That is what TV can be when the occasion calls for it, and I just wish that there were less occasions like this, and TV just did this as a matter or course.
The very day that I wrote about the almost constant episodes of gun violence that we are currently experiencing, just hours after I typed my last word of yesterday’s Rant on the subject, the very gun violence that I was talking about happened right in my backyard, so to speak, on Long Island.
An employee of a local supermarket went to work, and for reasons not revealed just yet, decided to use his place of work for target practice.
As shoppers were in the supermarket, he went upstairs to the second floor of the establishment and opened fire on at least three people, killing one and hitting two others.
He somehow got out of the market and made his way back to one of his known residences, and after several hours, the police were able to nab him and put him where he belongs, hopefully for a long, long time.
The incident put the entire area in West Hempstead and close environs on total lockdown, because there was a time that no one had any clue where the shooter was, and you can’t have someone like this running around with schools and businesses right off the heavily traveled main thoroughfare known as Hempstead Turnpike.
I sat there riveted by the coverage of the shooting, in particular by News 12, the locally produced news service, that was there seemingly moments after the incident occurred and stayed with it, live, for the next several hours.
The service eventually dispatched several reporters to the scene, and they got some great footage, in particular of the police storming the building where the shooter was holed up in.
And the shooter … it is really a sad thing, to tell you the truth.
The guy has a record, he also had some past mental health problems, and when the reporters read off his background resume, you can just see that the store had given this guy a chance, a chance to put his troubled past behind him by giving him a job as a cart assistant, which basically means that he was moving shopping carts out of the parking lot and bringing them back to the store for shoppers to use.
And he paid the store back for its gratitude for him by shooting the store’s manager dead and two others met his bullets too.
Where he got the gun—a standard handgun—is another story, and I am sure that that will come out in the wash soon.
But while the incident was horrible, the coverage of it was spectacular, exactly what TV coverage of something like this should be, and what makes television, still, the greatest source of on-the-spot news that we have.
Anchor Tara Joyce led viewers through a myriad of information coming from numerous sources related to the incident, oftentimes listening with one ear to a witness while with the other ear, listening to producers and others directing her to the next segment of the event, while speaking as calmly as possible about what was going on while alerting viewers that their children in school might be on lockdown.
This was at-the-moment TV at its best, and when all the networks that reported on the incident allotted what they felt was ample time to it and went onto other things, News 12 stayed with it until its conclusion, when the man was apprehended.
It was great reporting, and I could not turn myself away from the screen during this entire coverage. It was that good.
And then, as this story unfolded, we learned that there was going to be a verdict in the George Floyd case, and the verdict came about two hours after the previous story had just about ended.
The cop who put his knee on Floyd was convicted on all counts, and I do think that it was the correct verdict, given all the evidence brought out at the trial.
The cop, or the ex-cop, used excessive force in keeping Floyd pinned to the ground, and I do believe the ex-cop got what he deserved.
I personally knew he would be convicted, but honestly, I did not think he would be convicted of all charges.
But when the verdict came back relatively quickly, I kind of knew what his fate was going to be, and I think he and his lawyers knew it too.
And as usual, the reaction was pretty much what I expected, too.
I put up on Facebook that while I agreed with the jury’s decision, I did not agree with the way Floyd was being portrayed by the media and several politicians, including the attorney general of Minnesota, who in a nationally televised news conference, characterized Floyd right after the verdict was rendered as pretty much a choir boy.
He was not anything of the kind, and if he didn’t out up some resistance to his arrest for trying to pass counterfeit bills, he would still be with us.
That being said, yes, he was a human being, and he didn’t deserve to die this way.
Well, when I put my feelings up on Facebook, I got the usual hateful treatment.
I was called a racist, I was told that I “needed Jesus in my life,” and I was called a few other things that I won’t go into here.
Again, I agreed with the verdict, but because I said that Floyd wasn’t a model citizen, I got raked over the coals.
Fine with me, as Facebook has a habit of bringing out the worst in people. We all know that, and its ugly head was reared again yesterday.
OK, I am a big boy, and I can take it.
So yesterday was quite a day on the local and national scene, a day where one could literally sit in front of the television for hours at a time and not waste their time for one minute.
Again, it shows the power of television, something I have known about since this once six year old kid sat for hours at a time in front of the television one November weekend to see how the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy played out.
Television is often labeled as a video garbage pail, and it often is just that.
But when you have days like yesterday, you see that the absolute power of the medium still exists, and can still be vital.
I have been a vocal opponent of how TV handles news today, but yesterday, in particular on the local level, it did its job.
That is what TV can be when the occasion calls for it, and I just wish that there were less occasions like this, and TV just did this as a matter or course.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.