Dan O'Donnell Goes Off The Deep End Too

I'm not sure what happened to Dan O'Donnell in recent years, but it's become quite clear that he's gone bat-shit insane.

He didn't used to be that way. In fact, he is a two-time winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award. He used to be the guy on WISN who offset some of the insanity of Jay Weber, Vicki McKenna, and Mark Belling.

Apparently, not anymore.

But before I get into that, let me go off on a tangent about something somewhat related. I finally have access to HBO Max, despite having an older Roku player. I managed a work-around using Hulu's extended features, and a little bit of hard-wiring on my laptop. This has given me full access not only to wonderful shows like Raised by Wolves (which I highly recommend), but also many classic HBO features, such as (and this is my main point) The Newsroom.

The Newsroom was a masterpiece by screenwriter-extraordinaire Aaron Sorkin, who gave us such gems as The American President, The Contender, The Social Network, and of course, The West Wing. It was about a cable news channel whose main prime-time figurehead, Will McAvoy, goes from being an apolitical ratings whore to a stalwart Walter-Cronkite-like figure who stands up for the Truth, ratings be damned. The show featured real-life news events which added to the gravitas of the plot, and Sorkin's amazing dialogue made this particular newsroom - an environment which moves fast even on slow days - move even faster.

Anyway, the reason I'm prattling on about this is that it makes me acutely aware of how obvious the problems with the media were - even back in January of 2011, when the pilot episode of The Newsroom first aired on HBO. Competing cable news channels actually  jockeyed with themselves, not only to get the early scoop, but also to get the story right! Again and again, the triumph of the plot was getting the story straight, in spite of massive corporate pressure to capitulate to the whims of executive management.

And it breaks my heart to see what media has become today. Major news networks, like Fox News, allow themselves to be scooped repeatedly, time and again, by reporting false news, and not only does nobody over there seem to give a shit, they actually encourage that sort of thing! "This is our fake story, and we're sticking with it!" Because ratings, not truth, is the ultimate ruler of content!

"You shouldn't get to have your news your way - like it's an order at Burger King," as Will McAvoy would say.

And yes, the truth is boring. "Nobody is going to want to watch the Will McAvoy makes you eat your vegetables show," as the ratings gurus scold the main character. But damn it all, the truth matters!

Or, at least, it used to.

Which leads me back to Dan O'Donnell. He used to have more integrity

Not anymore. Now, he's just as nuts as everybody else on WISN.

He wrote an article for the MacIver Institute which was published yesterday, in which he railed against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn for NOT legislating from the bench! (Or, more precisely, in not legislating from the bench in the way that HE preferred!) For not giving the craziness a hearing! For not allowing the boneheaded lawsuit brought by the Trump campaign to threaten to throw out a free an fair election won by Joe Biden in Wisconsin! You can read the article for yourself, here.

Charlie Sykes, who has known Dan O'Donnell for years, and even occasionally shared air time with him, probably referenced O'Donnell in his podcast yesterday on The Bulwark:

"I have to tell ya, right before we started this, I'm reading an article by a guy in the conservative - in the right-wing media, here in Wisconsin who I've known for years and years and years. Smart guy, I actually lobbied for him to get a job at one point, hard-working, and he's gone completely bat-shit crazy. Not only supporting all the conspiracy theories about the election in Wisconsin (and there was nothing wrong with the election in Wisconsin, we've had a recount, there's no evidence, Joe Biden won this, it's decisive, it's not really in question) he's not only defending that he's attacking the Supreme Court Justice, the conservative justice, who said, 'Yeah, we're not taking a case that is gonna to throw out the election, that's gonna throw away the votes of millions of Wisconsinites, and just turn the electoral college votes over to Donald Trump.' And so this guy is not only defending the bat-shit crazy conspiracy theories, he's attacking the judge who did the right thing. And I'm going, 'How did this happen? I mean, is there - did somebody put these "red" pills in everybody's coffee a few years ago?'"

Charlie graciously doesn't mention O'Donnell by name, but by process of elimination, it's pretty clear that's who he's probably talking about. The other WTMJ radio bigwigs, Jeff Wagner and Steve Scaffidi, are both in agreement that Joe Biden Won. O'Donnell was one of the radio personalities on WTMJ for a decade, sharing occasional time in the booth with Charlie Sykes before moving to WISN in 2013. (O'Donnell finally got his own radio show on WISN in 2016.) Charlie clearly states he's reading "an article," and the only such article written with this subject matter was done by Dan O'Donnell. So that's undoubtedly who he was talking about.

And Charlie is right. What DID happen?

What happened was the Right-Wing Media Cult consolidated behind Trump. The corporate sponsorship of the Right Wing Media Cult did nothing to stop it. In fact, encouraged it. The oligarchy which once was our democracy was ill-equipped to deal with this new challenge - and news challenge. That's what. And O'Donnell, caught up in the whirlwind of it, has become brain-hacked by it, just like so many others.

The scary part about the ruling in the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarding Trump's lawsuit wasn't that it failed, or that Brian Haggedorn sided with the more liberal judges in ruling against it. The scary part was that it failed by a 3-4 vote!

Think about that! Three to goddamned four! O'Donnell shouldn't be railing against Haggedorn, he should be railing against the three other so-called judges who felt that throwing out an entire state's election was an idea worth considering! This should have been a 0-7 unanimous vote! It was a no-brainer! The fact that three, count them, THREE, Supreme Court justices felt that undermining an election was somehow a good idea, should scare the living shit out of each and every one of us!

And O'Donnell thinks the problem is Haggedorn!

No, the problem is that the same thing that hacked O'Donnell's brain also hacked that of three powerful judges!

Truth matters! It matters in news, and it matters in life. We need to recognize that truth comes before any candidate. Truth comes before Party, it comes before religion, it comes before family, it comes before our nation.

Truth outweighs all of it! Because Truth is more valuable.

If you have nothing but Truth, you are wealthy. And when faced with accepting Truth or losing everything else, you should always choose Truth! Because there is no greater poverty than living with a comfortable illusion!

The plague of our era is that people are 100% convinced that the opposite is true.

In this nation, we have become endeared to the philosophy that one can choose one's own truth. Somewhat like what Guinan said in Star Trek: The Next Generation, when she said, "I believe truth is in the eye of the beholder."

To which Ensign Ro says, "Isn't that supposed to be, 'beauty?'"

"Truth, beauty, it works for a lot of things," Guinan answers.

With all due respect to Whoopi Goldberg, and the entire Star Trek franchise, bullshit! There is only ONE truth! And if it disagrees with your politics, or your religion, (or your favorite science fiction show,) or any other illusion you might have, TOO BAD!

You will find, as I have, that Truth is more precious than any of those other things!

The news, once upon a time, recognized that simple fact. Edward R. Murrow, whose namesake award went to Dan O'Donnell twice, recognized that fact. Walter Cronkite recognized that fact. And the all-too-fictional Will McAvoy recognized that fact.

I long for those days to return.

Eric

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