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Hits and Misses

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Anonymous

Newton Minow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appears before the House Antitrust Subcommittee on March 13, 1963, in Washington. Minow, who as Federal Communications Commission chief in the early 1960s, famously proclaimed that network television was a “vast wasteland,” died May 6. He was 97.

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Greene County Sheriff Marcus Simms underwent surgery Sunday and began physical therapy on Monday.

Courtesy of Brittney Simms

HIT: Newton Minow had been out of the headlines for decades when he died last weekend at the age of 97, so a couple of generations of Americans had never heard of him, or had only the most glancing familiarity with him. But he was considered one of the top newsmakers of 1961, alongside John F. Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor. The reason? As chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Minow set off a storm when he declared that American television was “a vast wasteland.” Of course, much of what Minnow decried then is now considered classic, such as beloved series like “Gunsmoke,” “Perry Mason” and “The Andy Griffith Show,” and are high art compared to the reality shows, dumdum yack-fests and other mindless filler spread across the hundreds of channels Americans now have access to. But Minow’s agitation at the state of television more than 60 years ago played a part in elevating the stature of network newscasts, launching the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the creation of “Sesame Street,” which is still on the air today. Minow was also behind pioneering efforts to put communications satellites into space. For his obituary, he told The New York Times, “I went to the White House and told President Kennedy that these communications satellites were more important than sending men into space, because they would send ideas into space, and ideas last longer than people.”

MISS: A lot of attention has been paid to the censoriousness of folks on the hard right, with their efforts to remove library books and limit what can be taught in schools. And though we should avoid making a false equivalence, there are plenty of people on the further reaches of the left interested in curtailing speech, and who get into a state of high dudgeon over seemingly innocuous things. A prime example has unfolded recently in Easthampton, Mass. An offer to be superintendent of the community’s school district was withdrawn from candidate Vito Perrone, but not because evidence of malfeasance, deception or any other deal breaker surfaced. Instead, the offer was pulled because Perrone referred to Cynthia Kwlecinski, the chairman of the committee, and her assistant, as “ladies” in an email message. Kwlecinski explained that using the term “ladies” was a “microaggression,” and she was “insulted by the familiarity with which the candidate addressed me.” Perrone apologized and said he was heartbroken by the withdrawn offer. On the other hand, he might well have been lucky not having to work for such a ridiculously oversensitive boss.

HIT: Greene County Sheriff Marcus Simms was in a serious motorcycle accident last Friday, and that’s not good news at all. A broken vertebrae in his neck required surgery, and he also suffered a concussion and several other broken bones. But, in the estimation of his wife, Brittney Simms, the fact that he was wearing a helmet kept his injuries from being even more severe. She told the Observer-Reporter, “Luckily he had a helmet on. A helmet is 1,000% what saved his life.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that motorcycle helmets save about 1,800 lives every year, and 800 lives are lost among those who were not wearing helmets. More cyclists will be out on the road in the next couple of months thanks to the warming weather, and wearing a helmet just makes sense. And, like Simms, it can make the difference between being injured in an accident and a more dire outcome.

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