Tag Archives: Mark Shields

Well done, Mark Shields

December 19, 2020 kanelis2012

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I want to hail the end of an era in journalism.

It occurred this evening when Mark Shields said “goodbye” to viewers of PBS’s NewsHour, where Shields served for 33 years as half of a Friday evening give-and-take on the political news of the week.

His friend, New York Times columnist David Brooks, served alongside Shields for 19 of those years. The men expressed their mutual admiration and respect for the work they did together on public TV’s premier news broadcast.

I want to share just a brief thought about Shields … and about Brooks.

They reminded me weekly that politics can be a civil and respectful exercise. Shields comes from the liberal/progressive end of the political spectrum; Brooks hails from the center/right end. They would joust on occasion, expressing differences in opinion, context and perspective on issues. However, they did so with grace, class, decorum and mutual respect.

Shields announced earlier this week he would be stepping away from his role as one-half of an indispensable team of thinkers.

I want to share the broadcast he did tonight with Brooks and with NewsHour moderator Judy Woodruff. Shields and Brooks celebrate a lifetime in American politics – YouTube

And while I’m at it, I want to share a column that Brooks penned for the New York Times. Opinion | Mark Shields and the Best of American Liberalism – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Public television is a national resource. It has been depleted just a bit today by the departure of Mark Shields from the PBS NewsHour.

Well done, Mark Shields. Thank you for the wisdom you shared.

national news

This is what happens when we ‘elect a sociopath as president’

March 15, 2020 kanelis2012

The first few minutes of this video speaks volumes to me — and it should to you — about how badly Donald Trump has blown apart the government response to the pandemic that has erupted around the world.

David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, said it eloquently on the “PBS NewsHour.” This is what we get when we “elect a sociopath as president” of the United States.

Brooks expresses “rage” at what he saw this week from the president and the administration he was elected to lead.

Then there’s Mark Shields, the syndicated columnist and the progressive half of this erudite tandem, who talks about Trump’s desire to leave a cruise ship adrift off the California coast rather than let it dock in Oakland. Why? Because it would it increase “my numbers” relating to those infected by the coronavirus. Trump, said Shields, is concerned only about how it affects him, and he said that Trump not only “lacks empathy,” he has an “empathy void.”

Take a look at this video. It’s only about 11 minutes long, but it lays bare the fundamental failure of the current president of the United States and his inability to muster anything resembling presidential leadership in a time of national crisis.

media news

Whether to impeach and risk a stunning setback

September 28, 2019 kanelis2012

David Brooks and Mark Shields are two of the more thoughtful, insightful and provocative commentators anywhere.

Brooks is a conservative columnist for the New York Times; Shields is a liberal syndicated columnist. Both men are regulars on PBS NewsHour, appearing on Fridays to offer their analysis of the week’s events.

I am posting this segment to illustrate how Brooks (more or less) summarizes my own view of the notion of impeaching Donald J. Trump.

Brooks appears to believe that Trump deserves to be impeached. Trump has asked a foreign government for help with his re-election effort. He has violated the constitutional oath he took when he became president of the United States.

Brooks, though, is leery of the result. He takes care to note that impeachment is a “political” exercise. Its intent is to remove a president from office. He doubts that even if the House of Representatives impeaches the president, the Senate won’t follow suit. He said that it’s a tall order to get 20 Republican senators to flip to the Democrats’ side and vote to convict Trump of a “high crime and misdemeanor” in a Senate trial.

Have a listen. Indeed, listen carefully to what these men have to say.

We need some reasonable discourse. Not more hysteria.

The nation appears to be heading down a dark corridor full of traps and tricks.

media news

Biden should channel G.W. Bush?

April 28, 2019 kanelis2012

Mark Shields is well-known to watchers of PBS’s “NewsHour” as a regular commentator and pundit who, along with his pal David Brooks, regularly assesses the week’s political goings-on.

Shields had some good advice for Vice President Joe Biden: Don’t talk too much when trying to explain yourself over questions regarding how you “invade others’ space” by getting too touch-feely.

Biden entered the 2020 presidential race amid questions and complaints from those who said he was a bit too, um, ebullient in his treatment of them.

Even now, the former VP tends to over-talk himself while explaining his actions. Shields had a reasonable option for Biden to consider: Model your response after former President George W. Bush’s manner in dealing with some of his own past behavior.

Shields noted (and it’s in the video attached to this blog post) that when Bush ran for president in 2000, he was dogged by questions from the media about his drunk driving arrest, how he drank too much alcohol and about how he found religion and sobriety at the age of 40.

Bush developed a pat answer, Shields said, which was: “When I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish.”

Shields said that the future president recited that mantra with such regularity and frequency that reporters got tired of asking him about it. The issue effectively faded away during the course of the 2000 campaign.

Good advice to follow? Oh, sure . . . but only if the media still lack the staying power to keep harping on an issue that can be explained in a single sentence or two.

local news, media news, national news, political news

PBS discussion sheds great light on campaign ’16

March 19, 2016 kanelis2012

I feel compelled to begin this blog post with a disclaimer.

I am a freelance blogger for Panhandle PBS, the publicly funded television station based at Amarillo College here in the Texas Panhandle.

There. That said, I now want to say that the discussion that was broadcast Friday evening was one of the most intelligent I’ve heard yet about the state of the race for the presidency.

This discussion featuring liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields and conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks covered three critical points:

The Republican primary campaign, the Democratic primary campaign and, in a related matter, President Obama’s nomination of Garland Merrick to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Shields and Brooks occasionally spar when they appear each Friday on the PBS NewsHour. They disagree on substantive matters from time to time. They were in agreement on several critical issues, though, this week.

Hillary Clinton will not be denied the Democratic nomination; Donald Trump is the likely Republican nominee; Judge Garland deserves to have his hearing before the U.S. Senate.

The most interesting aspect of what was said, though, came in the discussion of Trump and Garland.

Shields noted that Trump has won everywhere. He smoked what is left of a once-huge GOP field in Florida, Shields said, where opponents spent millions of dollars in negative TV ads. They didn’t make a dent in Trump’s juggernaut. Whatever it is that Trump has mastered, he has turned it into an unbeatable — so far! — formula for political success.

As for Garland, Shields also believes that the Republican leadership in the Senate is going to pay a price for refusing to consider the judge’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Brooks agreed that Garland deserves a hearing — and deserves to take his seat on the court — he doubts there will be hell to pay in the campaign for Republicans.

Both men also believe that Garland is the best candidate for the court the Republicans are likely to get — particularly if Trump is the GOP nominee for president. Trump will lose the election to Hillary Clinton, who then will be free to appoint someone of her liking — and could present that nominee to a Senate led by Democrats.

And so it will keep going throughout this crazy election cycle.

You’ve got to relish — and share — intelligent discussion whenever you hear it.

That’s what I’m doing here.

* * *

If you’re of a mind, please accept my invitation to look at my blog at PanhandlePBS.org; it’s called “A Public View” and it focuses on public affairs programming aired on Panhandle PBS.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/public-view-john-kanelis/

International news, national news, political news

What would ‘W’ do?

November 21, 2015 kanelis2012

Mark Shields comprises one-half of a talk show tandem that appears Friday nights on public television.

He and the other half, David Brooks, were spot on in their analysis of the political talk arising from the Paris terrorist attacks one week ago.

Shields, a noted liberal columnist, noted how President Bush responded immediately after al-Qaeda monsters hijacked those four jetliners and inflicted the terrible carnage on U.S. soil on 9/11.

“He went to a mosque,” Shields noted, and said “we are not at war with Islam.”

Shields and Brooks — the more conservative member of the “PBS NewsHour” duo — then both described the white-hot rhetoric we’re hearing today from politicians of both parties as being un-American and unpatriotic.

President Barack Obama has sought to make the same case that his immediate predecessor made. Yet the Republicans who 14 years ago saluted President Bush’s stance contend that the current incumbent, a Democrat, is “soft,” that he isn’t serious about this war against radical Islamic terrorists.

George W. Bush was the first leading politician to declare that the current war against terror must not be seen as a war against a religion. Barack H. Obama is the latest one to say the same thing.

Yet we hear other leading politicians talking about shadowing people of a certain religious faith. One of them, Republican candidate Donald Trump, hasn’t yet told us whether he would intend to track U.S. citizens who also happen to be Muslim, which if that is the case is categorically in defiance of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of religious liberty.

This is what this current discussion has revealed.

George W. Bush had it exactly right. His political descendants have it exactly wrong.

International news

Brooks, Shields speak with reason, clarity

February 28, 2015 kanelis2012

If only conservatives and liberals could speak to each other the way these two fellows speak on subjects that have driven the ideologies so far apart.

If only …

David Brooks is a conservative columnist for the New York Times; Mark Shields’s left-leaning column is circulated in newspapers all across the country.

They took on the issue of what to call the terrorists with whom we are at war.

I particularly liked Brooks’s assessment of whether the monsters are “Islamic terrorists.” His view? All religion is open to interpretation. Christians, Jews and Muslims all interpret their faiths differently. He said the terrorists don’t practice mainstream Islam, but they’re Islamic, so why not call them such?

I don’t necessarily think it’s important that we call these terrorists Islamic. We know what they’re doing. As Shields noted, most of the Islamic State’s victims are Muslims. They’re also killing Christians and Jews. They’re evil in the extreme and we need to respond accordingly — which we are doing.

But the discussion on PBS is worth seeing anyway.

If only the two sides could talk to each other the way these fellows do.

national news, political news

Rudy talks himself out of relevance

February 21, 2015 kanelis2012

Two of the smarter pundits — one a liberal, the other a conservative — have found common ground on the remarks delivered recently by former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani.

Mark Shields and David Brooks agree that Guiliani’s assertion that President Obama doesn’t “love America” are unacceptable and the Republican Party to which Guiliani belongs needs to call him out.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/02/21/david_brooks_giulianis_comments_unacceptable_incumbent_upon_republicans_to_police_the_party.html

What “America’s Mayor” seems to be doing — if the GOP follows through on the advice — is talking himself out of becoming a relevant voice in the nation’s political discourse.

Brooks, who writes a right-leaning column for the New York Times, told the PBS NewsHour that Guiliani’s remarks are “self-destructive” and are just plain wrong.

Guiliani spouted off during a political event honoring Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. It took place in New York City. He prefaced his remarks by acknowledging it was difficult to say, but then he said the president doesn’t love the country he governs.

This is a shameful act of demagoguery.

Shields, whose column tilts to the left, brought up a fascinating element to Guiliani’s doubts about Obama’s patriotism. It was that Guiliani received six draft deferments to get out of serving in the Vietnam War and persuaded a judge to get him reclassified to 2A specifically to keep him from going to war. Are those the actions of a patriot? Shields asked.

Shields also noted: “I go back to John McCain, who in 2008, when this was a hot issue, had the courage to confront a Republican audience in Lakeville, Minnesota, when they made this charge and said, no, that is untrue. President Obama is an American. He cares about this country. He loves this family, and I like him, but I disagree with him on the issues.”

If the mayor is setting the tone for the upcoming GOP presidential primary campaign, then the developing field of candidates talking about entering the race need to switch to a new song sheet.

NewsHour moderator Judy Woodruff did note that several Republican officials denounced Guiliani’s remarks. They were correct to do so.

Brooks responded: “It’s incumbent on Republicans to do that, just to police the party.”

national news

Yes, there's intelligent discussion out there

February 9, 2015 kanelis2012

Public television, as well as public radio, get vilified by those who object to a so-called “liberal bias” in both media.

I don’t see it. Then again, perhaps my own bias clouds my vision.

A recent discussion by two noted pundits — one liberal and one conservative — points out, though, that common ground can exist and that two ideological foes can actually agree.

David Brooks, the conservative, writes a column for The New York Times; Mark Shields, the liberal, writes a syndicated column distributed by newspapers around the country.

They took up the issue of President Obama’s speech this past week at the National Prayer Breakfast. Speaking on the PBS NewsHour on Friday, I was struck by Brooks’s comments in particular.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-brooks-politics-vaccination-using-religion-justify-evil-acts/

The president said Christians shouldn’t be too quick to cast stones at Islamic terrorists because Christianity has been used by radicals to do bad things “in the name of Christ.” Obama cited the Crusades and the Inquisition as examples.

Obama’s remarks have drawn considerable fire from the right. Brooks, however, takes a different view:

“I think, if the president had come as an atheist to attack religion and to attack Christianity, the Republicans would have a point. That’s not what a president should be doing.

“But that’s not how he came. He has used that prayer breakfast year after year to talk about his own faith, his own faith journey, his own struggles. He’s used it — he has come as a Christian. And the things he said were things — I have never met a Christian who disagreed with what he issued, that the religion has been perverted, that we have to walk humbly before the face of the lord, that God’s purposes are mysterious to us.

“This is not like some tangential, weird belief. This is at the core of every Christian’s faith and every Jew’s faith. And so what he said was utterly normal and admirable and a recognition of historical fact and an urge towards some humility. And so I thought the protests were manufactured and falsely manufactured.”

This kind of view illustrates, in my opinion, what makes public television so valuable. You do not hear the screamers — on the left or the right — trying to outshout the other side. Oh sure, you have the McLaughlin Group, but even those discussions are mild compared to what one hears on MSNBC or Fox.

As for Brooks and Shields, these two men are known for their agreeable disagreements.

I’ll take that level of civility over the scream fests any day of the week.

High Plains Blogger