In an incredibly brief amount of time, the story of the so-called Balloon Boy morphed from drama to farce. I'm not saying that just because it turned out the little boy, Falcon Heene, was never even on that runaway weather balloon the world was watching for two hours Thursday....

I had a bit of a revelation a couple of days ago, about the nature of national television news as it stands today, at least as it concerns political/public policy stories. Lots of you have probably had this revelation already, but, hey, I work in the media, and sometimes can't...

Years ago, as I was starting out my TV news career in Kingsport, Tennessee, I was interviewing the district's veteran congressman, Rep. James "Jimmy" Quillen. (Quite the character was he; he served 17-terms, and yet managed to sponsor only three pieces of original legislation. Once when I was interviewing him...

Well, they were right, all those folks who said President Obama's education speech would be an exercise in mass indoctrination if not downright mass hypnosis of our nation's children. They warned us that this was step one in creating legions of liberal zombies -- Ozomabies -- ready to do the...

Listening to the people showing up at town hall meetings across the country to scream their opposition to President Obama's health care reform proposals, you would think this is a concept that was sprung on them after last November's election. It isn't. Barack Obama ran on a platform heavily invested...

"Over the Limit, Under Arrest."

"Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk."

"Buzzed Driving IS Drunk Driving."

All the slogans we've heard over the years in countless media campaigns against driving under the influence. All of them dwarfed in meaning and power on this day, when one of the...

There are physicists who believe that all quantum possibilities -- every point on what they call the "wave function" -- actually come true in some universe, somewhere. Right now, guys, at some point in the cosmos a parallel you could be in a hot tub, sipping champagne with your longtime...

It appears the movement to convince people that President Obama was born overseas is petering out. There's more conclusive evidence this week--and there was never a shortage of it--that he was, in fact, born in the good old U.S. of A.. Once again, officials in Hawaii have confirmed the...

I've been called many things, especially since I began blogging. But I've never been called a prude. So my choice of a topic today surprises even me a little bit, but it's something that bugs me more and more. I'm talking about the increasing, indiscriminate, and casual use of loud...

Last week, just before taking my 7-year-old twin boys to my hometown of Cincinnati for a family reunion, I took care of something that's a rite of passage for little boys everywhere: I got them their first wallets. They recently "discovered" money, (actually, they've quickly become frighteningly obsessed with it),...

1) Insurance executives are people, too. Ha-ha! Just kidding!

2) Just about everybody is against health care reform, except for the 85% of Americans who polls show are for it.

3) We should let Canada be better than us in something.

4) Cutting Pfizer's profits sounds fine and...

When one discusses "moving violations" on Manhattan's busy streets, it's assumed the reference is to traffic offenses by drivers of cars, trucks, and other internal combustion-type vehicles. But it's time to expand this definition to include another entire group of "moving" offenders: errant pedestrians.

I came up with this...

The producer for our evening newscast made an astute comment to me today. He said before Michael Jackson's death, a poll of how he's regarded by people would have been evenly split: 50-percent that he's an unparalleled musical talent, a great man, whose "eccentricities" are part of his genius; and...

We humans do hate randomness, don't we? It's what's at the heart, I believe, of conspiracy theories; it's too difficult for many people to believe that a lone gunman could kill a president, or that a small group of men armed with boxcutters could take over airplanes and change the...

There's a tacky old sexist joke that goes something like this:
Q: Why do men typically die five years before their wives?
A: Because they want to.

Hearing more about the tortured final years and months of Michael Jackson's life, I can't help but thinking the reason...

"If I had an enemy and I was trying to conquer him, I would give him money, fame and power. They are three things that are extremely difficult to deal with."
Curtis Martin/Former Star NFL Running Back

It may seem strange to apply the words of...

For me, it was the news consumption equivalent of a spit take: my full realization, days after the fact, of what exactly it was Jon Voight said at the Republican party's national fundraiser in Washington last week. I had heard that Voight, hosting the event, made the kinds of anti-Obama...

Like other parents of children with autism, I reacted with both sadness and puzzlement to the death earlier this year of John Travolta's 16-year-old son, Jett, as the family vacationed in the Bahamas. Sadness, obviously, because a family had lost a child; puzzlement, because the Travoltas' denials that Jett was...

As someone who works in the economically-challenged television business, I'm naturally concerned about anything that might keep people from, you know, watching television. So I'm not happy to see this new academic study that came out today:

"According to new research presented at Sleep 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting...