Thanks to my friend Janice Browne, I have the image above to post of my latest appearance on Raising America with Kyra Phillips on HLN. (12pm weekdays! Check it out!)
Some people said my backdrop was a little blah last time. (A plain white wall? What could be blah about that?) So this time, I livened it up with works from two of my favorite artists. For those of you art critics out there, these were produced with mixed media (crayons and fingerpaint). Bennett’s (on the left) is titled “Fireworks” and Sutton’s (on the right) is titled “My Beautiful Picture”. Bids will be accepted in the comments section below. Proceeds go to charity (i.e., their college funds).
As for the video, well, the wonderful Kelly of Are You Finished Yet graciously put her technically-challenged head together with mine and made a valiant effort to help me embed it here. Unfortunately, we came up as blank as last week’s wall. So instead of an embed, I’ll direct you again to HLN’s site or my Facebook page (where you can also like me!). This week, I defend straight dads’ right to the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and applaud Willow Smith for not wanting to make a hip-hop Annie movie.
If anyone tech savvier than me and Kelly wants to take a stab at helping me embed the next one or put it on YouTube, I’ll graciously reward you with your own moderate-quality reprint of either “Fireworks” or “My Beautiful Picture”, your choice.
Well, guess how I made my first appearance on Raising America? Yes, somebody cancelled, and I took their place. This Jerry has something in common with the Unbelievable Jerry on Vermont Today.
Thankfully, Kyra handled the switcheroo with much more grace than Dick Loudon, and no one got called any names.
I apologize to everyone who was expecting to see me this Friday, because I won’t be on then after all. This is the world of live TV, I guess. The good news is I was on the air. I raised America. Kyra was delightful, my sparring partner ArmyWife101 was terrific and decidedly not a weenie, and most importantly, I didn’t embarrass myself. I don’t think so, at least. You be the judge.
You can watch video of the segment on the HLN site here or on my Facebook page here. (OK, I’m linking the FB page because I’m shamelessly hoping you’ll “Like” the page while you’re there. You thought TV would class me up maybe? Ha, fools! Seriously, though, if you’re interested in my appearances, you’ll get much more up-to-date info from my FB and Twitter than from the blog.)
Technical geekery footnote: Ideally, I’d be embedding the video right here, but unless I’m mistaken, WordPress only allows video embeds from certain sites, and HLN isn’t one of them. (If anyone geekier than me knows better, feel free to give me some tips in the comments.)
I want to tell you a story about my favorite episode of Newhart, Bob Newhart’s second sitcom. In this series, Bob was a humble Vermont inkeeper named Dick Louden, who, as the show’s producers searched for sharks to jump, became a host of a local cable TV talk show. (They never jumped that shark, by the way. The best episodes came after Dick started his TV gig.)
Dick kept his show low-key and respectable, as PBS as possible, against the wishes of his cheesy, more FOX-like producer, Michael (my hero, Peter Scolari). Dick’s idol was newsman Edwin Newman, and in the episode I’m going to tell you about, he actually books Newman as a guest. But Newman cancels at the last minute, and the fill-in guest is a phony spoon-bending psychic from the mall. Grumpy about losing his A-list guest for this clown, Dick calls the psychic a “weenie” on air. In typical Bob Newhart style, this is the extent of him blowing his cool, and afterward, he’s mortified at his momentary breach of journalistic decorum.
To his surprise, though, ratings go through the roof, and before long, his producer is intentionally booking lunatic guests who will bait Dick into calling them “weenies”. They even add a peanut gallery of overhyped audience members chanting, “WEE-NIE! WEE-NIE! WEE-NIE!”
Dick gets caught up in the spectacle and basically morphs into Jerry Springer, though I should add that this was four years before Jerry Springer’s talk show debuted. This was satire at its finest, people.
Have I mentioned that I love this show?
Well, I always thought that I’d make terrible television because I’m not a weenie shouter. I’m more like Dick at the beginning of the episode — quiet, reserved and just a tad sarcastic. Somehow, though, a few weeks ago, I was approached to do weekly roundtable segments for a new show that’ll be airing on HLN (the former Headline News, CNN’s sister network) called Raising America with Kyra Phillips. The premise of the show is to report the news through a parent’s eye and with correspondents who are parents like me. Hey, I’m a parent like me! No wonder they picked me!
I didn’t announce my big news on this blog, because I was roughly 100+% convinced that, as soon as they saw me do some sort of rehearsal, they’d realize they made a terrible mistake and they’d find someone else to be their token “Dad blogger from a nontraditional family in the Northeast”.
Today was the rehearsal. A few minutes before I was scheduled to Skype in for my segment, a producer sent me a list of topics we might discuss, including this one, Snoop Lion to Educate Children on Smoking Weed. Here’s all you really need to read from that article:
The rapper said he would be happy to provide guidance to the eight and nine-year-olds he coaches at the Orange County Junior All America Football League on how to avoid irresponsible drug use.
‘It’s not that I would ever push weed on our kids,’ Snoop explained.
‘But if they wanted to, I would love to show them how. The right way, so that way they won’t get nothing put in their s*** or overdose or trying some s*** that ain’t clean.’
A great topic for discussion, but I could only imagine how a panel of parents would react. We’d all just be trying to out-shout each other with our condemnation of Mr. Lion. I figured my only way to stand out was to go a different route and play up the snarky cynicism. “I’m pretty sure if you read the rest of that quote, Kyra, it ends ‘and please be sure to mention my new album while condemning these views.'” I practiced my zinger a few times to get it just right, then dialed in for the session.
Because of how they setup their Skype connection, I couldn’t see who I was talking to, but there was a man and a woman on the panel with me. When Kyra raised the topic, the woman jumped right in with something like, “Well, pot is legal in Colorado now, so maybe Snoop has the right idea.”
Wait… what? She agrees with him?! I could hear a voice chanting softly in the back of my head… “Wee-nie! Wee-nie! Wee-nie!”
The chant partially drowned out whatever the man said, but he didn’t challenge her premise. If I remember, he seemed to think kids smoking pot was inevitable, so why fight it?
Kyra could clearly tell I was bursting to say something. “Jerry, do you want to comment?”
“Yes, well, pot may be legal in some places,” I began, calmly, “but IT’S NOT LEGAL FOR 8 AND 9-YEAR-OLDS!!!!!!”
So I took the bait. I lost my cool. Here I was, against every instinct I had, arguing with people about current events on TV. (Granted, it was just a rehearsal, so I can’t show you the footage. The best I can give you is this.) “Anyway,” I went on. “I doubt even Snoop believes it. I’m pretty sure if you read the rest of his quote it said, ‘And by the way, my new album drops this fall!'”
It got a laugh. Zing! He shoots, he scores!
Suddenly, I’m starting to believe this may actually happen. I mean, I may still go all Cindy Brady when my big debut actually comes, but I think I’ve managed to trick the producers into thinking I can be interesting television for now.
So here it is, my official announcement and my plug for Raising America with Kyra Phillips, weekdays from 12PM-2PM on HLN, premiering Monday, February 4th.
My first segment is scheduled for Friday, February 8th, but I’ll be promoting it more as the date approaches.
Thanks to my friend Janice Browne, I have the image above to post of my latest appearance on Raising America with Kyra Phillips on HLN. (12pm weekdays! Check it out!)
jerry-mahoney.com 