I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: Mika Brezezinski

  • Morning Joe, Tennis Channel, or Sunrise?

    Morning Joe, Tennis Channel, or Sunrise?


    Every morning my dog Carl and I are the first creatures to stir in our household and, after his morning constitutional around the backyard, he takes his first nap of the day while I weigh my before-the-dawn-cracks television programming options.

    Third choice goes to the Tennis Channel if there is a “Live” match from across any Ponds with players I enjoy watching in a different time zone from our Eastern Daylight Time. Jet lag is my constant friend during the Australian Open, Roland Garros and Wimbledon tournaments – and I never have to leave the comfort of my recliner in the den.

    Second choice belongs to Morning Joe, the MSNBC news show that begins a four-hour time slot at 6:00 a.m. with co-hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. Morning Joe would probably be #1 for me if it were Morning Mika and/or had producers with less interest in a former president who is a convicted felon. Ugh. Same old, same old.

    But my Number One early morning favorite goes to…(drum roll, please)… Sunrise! on local WIS TV-10 from 4:30 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.

    “Sunrise” team Jamal Goss, Intisar Faulkner, Chandlor Jordan (weather)

    I’m not sure what these young people drink with their coffee, but whatever it is, I’d like to have some. If they don’t enjoy what they’re doing, they hide it well with onscreen fun, shared laughter, corny jokes, subtle reluctance to deliver bad news. My cynical old self has been won over by these fresh smiling faces.

    Do you have a Top Three to start your day? Inquiring minds want to know.

  • March Madness: The Pay Gap is Madness

    March Madness: The Pay Gap is Madness


    The Equal Pay Today Campaign is a project of Equal Rights Advocates which is a collaboration of national, regional and state-based women’s legal advocacy and worker justice groups in the US whose mission is to “eradicate the long-standing gender wage gap impacting the economic security of women and families.” How long is long-standing, you ask?

    Great question. Is 1967 long-standing? It is to me. I entered the work force that year when the average wage for women was 58 cents for every dollar paid to men. My starting salary at my first job at an international CPA firm in Houston, Texas was $650 per month. I was a cum laude graduate of the University of Texas at Austin business school with an accounting major. I was assigned to the firm’s team in their small business division where I sat in a cubicle next to a guy named John who came into the firm at the same time I did but with average grades. Through a random conversation he let slip that his salary was $950 per month. I calculated my compensation was 68 cents for every dollar John earned. The gender gap slapped me in the face and never stopped slapping me during the next 40 years in every workplace I encountered.

    The following image and facts are from the equalpaytoday.org website:

    EPD.jpeg

    82 cents: that’s how much women in the U.S. who work full time, year round are paid for every dollar paid to men. This year, we’re raising awareness around this pay gap with our theme March Madness: The Pay Gap is Madness. 

    Women’s Equal Pay Day marks the day into the year on which it takes for women on average to earn what men did in 2020.

    That’s 15 months. Or, if you look at a typical 9:00-5:00 work day, women start working for free at 2:40 p.m.

    While March 24th is the average for all women, the Equal Pay Day for Black women is August 03rd because they average 63 cents for every dollar paid to men, for Native women equal pay day is September 08th because they earn 60 cents for every dollar paid to men, for Latina it’s October 21st because they earn 55 cents for every dollar paid to men.

    ********************

    In addition to the wage gap inequity, Covid-19 has been particularly devastating for women. According to MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski more than 2.5 million women have fallen out of the workplace in the past year as a result of the pandemic.  Newly appointed Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called the gender disparities “unacceptable and immoral” today in an interview with Ms. Brzezinski. Secretary Raimondo went on to say the Biden administration had acknowledged the needs of women in the American Rescue Plan that includes higher education opportunities for them, assistance with child care which is a huge stumbling block for women who want to work and an overall training up designed especially for women.

    March Madness is a reality in our home where we are focused on the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. Our  University of South Carolina Gamecock women’s team won their second round game which places them in the Sweet 16 – that’s some kind of fun for us. But March Madness: The Pay Gap is Madness also hits home with Pretty and me, and that’s never been fun. 

    The gender gap has been alive and well in the 2021 NCAA women’s basketball tournament, too. University of Oregon forward Sedona Prince posted a video showing the women’s weight room consisted of a single set of dumbbells while the men’s weight room was stocked with rows of weights and dumbbells. Her video went viral and had millions of hits. The uproar from players, coaches, fans and colleges around the country produced an apology from the NCAA…and a speedy delivery for a state of the art weight room for the female athletes.

    What do we want? Fair pay. (and comparable accommodations for women in sport)

    When do we want it? Now.

    For everything there is a season, the Bible says, and a time for every purpose unto heaven. I think the pandemic has shined a light on a season whose time has past. Let’s get it right.

    ***********************

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated and please stay tuned.

  • you’re a liar and the truth ain’t in you


    Whew. Moving requires much more focus and energy than I remembered. It’s like trying to fill this all-consuming time capsule with the horrible transition stories just waiting to be buried in the back yard and dug up in two years when we hopefully will be finished with this insanity.

    And speaking of insanity. I’ve watched the news on my new over-sized TV less frequently in the last few weeks due to capturing the time capsule horrors in real life, but today I got up early while Pretty slept and I decided to resume my daily morning news update. I have to admit I was intrigued by the intrigue of the James Comey firing earlier this week.

    My go-to coverage from Morning Joe on MSNBC didn’t disappoint. Mika watched in her usual silence as Morning Joe ranted and raved with various political expert guests regarding their feelings about the unorthodox untimely long distance removal of the FBI Director James Comey three days ago. The consensus was, as has apparently been the pattern for this administration in its early days according to the experts, someone(s) was lying about something. Calling for a special prosecutor in the matter of Russian interference in the 2016 United States election process to include the timing of the Comey firing was a no-brainer, said the talking heads.

    Today I decided to heed the advice of former President Obama who suggested we might all get along better if we branched out in what we watched for news. I said farewell to Morning Joe with their segment on the Russian diplomats’ visit to the Oval Office yesterday because I was stunned that their pictures came from Russian journalists since no American news reporters had been invited. A presidential visit to Russia in July to meet with Putin had evidently been one of the topics of discussion in this meeting. I shook my head, thought Seriously? Now?, and changed to CNN.

    Ah, CNN…more Comey discussion. Excellent. Fresh perspectives. Not so much. Why was Comey fired?  The CNN reporter was full of answers. Subsequent revelations indicated Director Comey had recently asked for more resources to pursue the Russian investigation and the possible Trump campaign connection which might have signaled the complex case was about to receive increased attention by the FBI.

    The more likely answer, however, according to the CNN reporter was that James Comey’s testimony in a Senate hearing recently hit DT’s “sweet spot” which was any question related to the integrity of the 2016 election. Comey at one point during the hearing had stated he had become “mildly nauseous at the thought that he might have changed the outcome of the election to Trump.” Okay. Game over. You’re fired.

    Time to change the channel again. This time I switched to Fox News where a segment on the Comey firing was squeezed in between an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece regarding the demonstration at the historically black college Bethune Cookman graduation against guest speaker Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (a protest Dr. King’s niece opposed) and an interview with Hollywood actor Dwayne Johnson who is considering running for President in 2020.

    In the Fox Comey segment, their reporter was at a Tastee Diner in Bethesda, Maryland. He was questioning 4 male coaches who were having breakfast together before they went to work. One of the coaches responded to the reporter’s question about his feelings on the Comey firing by saying everyone needs to trust the President’s judgment in all matters. He went on to say that the mainstream media “makes me sick to my stomach.” Wow. Quite a statement to chew over with the guys having a cup of coffee at the Tastee Diner on a weekday morning.

    Cut back to the anchors for Fox News who thought the Diner interview had been hilarious and by the way, don’t you just love the way males have so much fun together, you know, the male bonding thing.  How did we go from James Comey to male bonding is fun…I’m not sure. But I’d heard way too much about James Comey for one day.

    At this point I turned the TV to the Tennis Channel to watch live action at the Madrid Open which turned out to be less of a distraction than I’d hoped. My mind took off in a different direction with each serve, forehand, backhand, volley or overhead smash. Get out of my head.

    Mainstream media. Whack. Freedom of the press. Whack. Free speech. Whack. Freedom of the press again. Whack. Tweet: Mainstream media = fake news. Whack. MSM = elite news. Whack. Whack. Whack.

    I needed a reality check so I turned off the TV and looked up the First Amendment to the United States Constitution – the one that guarantees fundamental rights for us in this country.

    “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

    That’s right. Now I remember. I have the right to petition for a “redress of grievances” and I believe grievances in the form of lies are running rampant in this administration. Today I have taken action by signing two petitions asking for an independent review of not only the actions of this week but prior 2016  election campaign tampering with our democratic process.

    This reminds me of a time during a dark thunderstorm of deception, cover-ups and corruption in the Nixon administration which threatened the cornerstones of our democracy. Truth was ultimately uncovered and our democracy survived the betrayals and humiliation revealed in the highest levels of our federal government. The President left in disgrace.

    I was sitting in a hospital room with my daddy in 1974 while we watched President Nixon leave the White House. My daddy turned to me and said, “You know, some people are just liars, and the truth ain’t in them.”

    I hear the rumblings of thunder in the distance and see the dark clouds gathering once again over our country, but I know without a doubt that the truth will always keep us free.

  • Okay – So Here’s The Deal


    OMG, the US Open ended Sunday after two weeks of intensive and extensive TV coverage that demanded my attention from sun- up to sundown every day. Beyond the obvious “live” matches that were fantastic, I had to get the late-night  commentary reviewing the day’s completed matches that occasionally went into the wee hours of the next morning and of course had to get the previews of the day’s matches every morning starting in the wee hours on the Tennis Channel. Honestly, Pretty and I were exhausted after the men’s final Sunday afternoon, but the tennis Grand Slams are my one weakness.

    Okay. So here’s the deal. I am somewhat of a morning person – not necessarily early morning –  but the dogs and I usually start our routine around 7:30. Pretty typically prefers the 9 o’clock range; consequently Charly and Spike and I are left to our own ramblings for the first hour and a half every day. As long as tennis commentary is on during that time, all goes well.

    Beep, Beep, Beep…danger lurks when there are no tennis matches for retired tennis pros to discuss on an early morning sports talk show because that means I will be surfing for…I’m not sure what for…just channel surfing.

    When I began the search this morning, the first image to pop up was a semi-attractive woman leaning on a small stand that held an open Bible which she was apparently using as a reference manual for her message to depressed people to get up and get going with their lives. No more lying around in bed until 9 o’clock. Absolutely not. Get out of bed and make something of yourselves. Depressed people of the world, unite – it was like a Create Space on steroids for adults.

    My goodness, I said to Charly who was lying on the floor next to my chair. Maybe Pretty needs to get up right this minute and we need to busy ourselves doing something. But before I could pursue going upstairs to wake her, the woman on the TV began promoting her new book that could be mine if I made a donation to keep her show on the air so I lost interest and switched the channel. No thanks, I have my own books to sell. Plus, my doctor prescribed wellbutrin for depression and that means I rise and shine every day full of piss and vinegar – well, piss certainly.

    Ding, Ding, Ding – step away from the TV, Charly said to me.  Oh, if only I’d listened to her. Instead,  I decided to watch a news show called Morning Joe because the ostensible co-host Mika the Meek was hosting in Morning Joe’s absence. My apologies to the Morning Joe lovers in cyberspace, but I find him to be rather rude. I may even agree with some of the comments he makes, but I do wonder why Mika Brzezinski stays with him sometimes. Perhaps it has something to do with the $2 million she receives every year whether she says a word or not. Which is mostly not word one when Morning Joe is around; Mika turns to mush when he’s at the table. I have to fight the urge to tweet: Mika, be no longer Meek. Speak up, your opinions are just as valuable as Joe’s.

    But I don’t know how to tweet on my cell phone so she’ll never know how much I’m longing for the day when she will speak  up and out loudly above the men who regularly sit at the MSNBC desk with her. This is a woman who writes about equality for women and then lets her cohorts ignore her.  Sweet Lady Gaga.

    Surprise, surprise. This morning’s topic was the 2016 presidential election and the ongoing public concern with the health of the two leading candidates – a concern that became a firestorm of news items after Secretary Clinton had to leave a 9-11 ceremony in New York this past weekend due to a highly classified secret that she had pneumonia. She needed three days of bed rest before rejoining the fray that is her life right now. I hope no one tells the semi-attractive Bible lady that HRC was in bed – the Bible lady might just vote for Trump who is not in bed and is in a dead heat with Hillary according to the most recent polls.

    Noted famous TV personality Dr. Oz interviewed Donald Trump about his general health on his wildly popular TV show and Mr. Trump produced a two-page note signed by his mother releasing him to run for President. Just kidding – the note was signed by a certified doctor who proclaimed him fit to serve…for something.

    Sigh. Then the Morning Joe conversation went downhill from there when visiting opinionated person Donny Deutsch interjected the interesting fact that 40 – 60% of men Donald Trump’s  70 years of age have erectile dysfunction.  Neither Mika nor I wanted to think about that fact. Charly barked at the TV and ran upstairs to get back in bed with Pretty. Spike jumped down from the living room sofa and walked back to get into his crate in the laundry room. Alas, only Mika and I wandered in the wilderness of erectile dysfunction together until the clock struck 9 and thankfully, Morning Joe was over.

    Tomorrow I plan to sleep until 9 o’clock. How many days until the Australian Open in 2017…hm…too many. Maybe I can get the Singapore tournament on the Tennis Channel – it’s almost like a Grand Slam.