When’s the next rocket ship outta here? I’ll save you a seat.
Took awhile, but a recent session within the “Today” show, a production of NBC News, duplicated CNN for trying to commit lunacide.
It was in 2009, a few days after Michael Jackson’s death — on the day that news of his death broke CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen told Wolf Blitzer that “cardiac arrest is an extremely serious condition” — when CNN, eager to sustain the story, turned to Jack Rourke, identified by CNN as “a psychic consultant who has worked extensively in paranormal research and consulted major Hollywood studios.”
Which meant what? Apparently, CNN wanted its national audience to feel comfortable with Rourke as a legitimate trader in the field of hocus and pocus. After all, nothing bogus comes out of Hollywood.
Rourke cautioned CNN’s viewers to be skeptical of those conjurers and studiers of tea leaves who claim to already have been in touch with Jackson. Why? Because, he said, “No reputable medium or psychic will try to contact Jackson for at least six months.”
Yep, any credible psychic knows that you don’t even bother pursuing a personal relationship with the dead until the sympathy cards are in the mail. CNN didn’t mess with Rourke’s claim or particular line of work. He was, after all, chosen as an authority.
But on March 11, the “Today” show gave CNN a run for its dim-and-dimmer demographic ratings. Without as much as a wink it announced that a new season of “Long Island Medium” was about to begin on the TLC Network, and that host and medium, Theresa Caputo, was right there — live (and presumably alive) — in the studio.
From there, “Today” co-hosts Willie Geist and Savannah Guthrie conducted a cordial, respect-filled, serious and at times even reverent chat with Caputo. As if…
If it bothered them that NBC News had assigned her to conduct a polite, promotional interview with a woman whose self-identified talent, profession and TV career is predicated on her special gift to connect and converse with the dead, neither host showed it.
Then again, Caputo wouldn’t have her own prime-time show on a network that has entered the cable network race to present freak show junk — “600 Pound Mom,” “Bubble Skin Man,” “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” — if she couldn’t contact the dead, would she?
No matter the high incidence of young men wanted and/or arrested for crimes committed while wearing face-shrouding hoodies — both before and after the racially incendiary Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case in Florida — we’re often scolded to avoid presumptive profiling.
Yet, last month a segment of truTV’s “Bait Car” — real-deal detectives drop video and audio-rigged cars in high crime areas, where the cars are soon stolen — was stunning for its similarities to the Martin/Zimmerman episode.
The caper was in Atlanta, where Officer Price, en route to drop a bait car, saw something that bothered him. Via police radio, he reported to team members a Honda occupied by two young men.
“I see two males riding with hoodies on their head, and it’s nice and warm,” Price later explained. “It was suspicious.”
The multiple-car bait car team then followed that car. Its license plate was checked. The car had been reported stolen. A further description was radioed in by another cop in the bait team as that Honda went by: “Black males and they’re going to be wearing hooded sweatshirts.”
As the chase began, Officer Price is seen and heard laughing: “I called it!”
The driver of the stolen car tries to elude the police. He hits the gas, loses control, smashes into a house, then he and the passenger run. They’re both soon apprehended. One is 17, the other 16.
For what it’s worth, Officer Price, whose hoodie profiling led to the collar, is black.