DON McDERMOTT MORE COLUMNS Advertisement

Before reading this, consider two important points.

1. I have never voted for the winning presidential candidate. My first election was in 1960; I forget who I voted for, but it was not Kennedy, despite the fact that I was a 23-year-old Irish Catholic and I liked JFK. At 23, what did I know?

2. Three days after the 2008 election (that's Nov. 4), I will be 71 years and will have spent most of the last 50 years writing for newspapers.

Trust me (No. 1), some days I just gotta go home and take a nap.

Oh, there is a third point and the reason for this piece to be written. I am so weary of the television pundits repeating -- not reporting -- the same old tired junk, then having analysts on, allegedly giving their opinion, but in reality, for the most part, simply supporting the view of the pundit who asked them to be guests.

Is the money so good that some news people would sell their professional souls to appear on television?

Trust me (No. 2), if I were the editor for some of the anchors for these shows -- especially on the cable networks -- they would be looking for work elsewhere.

And as for people like Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Bill O'Reilly, Rachel Maddow, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck ... well, they have to be tolerated, even though all of them exercise more spin than a cheap clothes dryer. Their subjectivity, in most cases, is undermined by their arrogance, selfishness and lack of responsibility. They don't get it.

These so-called news people have a responsibility to be fair and balanced -- for real. Fox News, which leans toward conservative candidates and causes, espouses the F&B theory, but rarely practices the concept. Talking down to liberal guests and continually interrupting people with opposing viewpoints is unfair and unbalanced.

MSNBC leans towards liberal viewpoints and is equally unaware of how annoying some of its anchors and guest analysts are.

Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs and Wolf Blitzer at least attempt to present both sides of an argument on CNN.

But Tuesday and Wednesday, when their main story was the controversy caused by a comment about "lipstick on a pig," all of these news people went above and beyond common sense in reporting. Americans face some serious issues (economy, energy, housing, education, immigration, defense (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan), yet the focus was on some stupid non-topic.

(I have a particularly personal interest in how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are managed. I have a grandson, Scott, in Iraq, and another, Michael, who was shipped to Afghanistan in June).

And let's be frank. As a registered independent (after a brief four-year Democrat signee in a protest against the mindless machinations of George Bush), all I seek are answers to questions, solutions to problems (without making the problems worse) and common sense approaches to international situations. Shoot first and ask questions later ain't the way to stay safe.

How these news people allowed that mindless controversy to dominate their programs for more than 24 hours is beyond comprehension. I would be embarassed if I had become involved in that unprofessional behavior.

As for the guests, who appear on screen so often, one gets the feeling he is watching re-runs. So we have a solution that could be employed for the remaining 53 days in Election 2008.

Each day, let at least one cycle of the programs (The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity & Coombs, Countdown, et al.) feature a guest host on a rotating basis from each of the states and have as guests two newspaper editorial writers or columnists.

For instance, a television talking head from KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City could have writers from the Rhinelander Daily News in Wisconsin and the Puyallup Herald in Washington. Or, the Brattleboro (Vt.) Informer editor and St. George (Utah) Spectrum's political writer could guest for a TV guy from Reno.

But you know what the chances are of that happening? And what are the chances that Fox News (Unfair and Unbalanced as it is) or MSNBC (as misguided as it is) going along with such an idea?

That scenario is likely to occur when pigs (without lipstick) fly.