60 Minutes Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

December rambling: hiatus

an “alcoholic’s personality”

The Daily Show is on hiatus until Monday, January 5, 2026. But here are its hosts (minus Jon Stewart) discussing the year gone by…

Silence, as if by Sharp Little Pencil

Happy Public Domain Day 2026!

Democracy’s Library and 1 Trillion Web Pages Archived

The Oscars Will Be Streamed on YouTube Starting in 2029

Kars4Kids and Oorah Face New Class-Action Lawsuit Alleging Donor Deception

What brought Sears down? 10 mistakes from giant companies

Dear Santa: A Genealogist’s Christmas Wish List (Including That One Elusive Death Certificate We’ve Been Hunting for Three Years)

Best Television and Books of 2025 (J. Eric Smith)

A small fraction of U.S. history (old paper money)

‘Jeopardy!’: Four-Time Champion Eric Berman Dies at 60

Is this the Gumby & Pokey / Davey & Goliath crossover episode?

The Opposite of the Drive-Thru Window? You’re in your car. You get your burger without leaving your car. So maybe it’s the same, but… not? and The Accidental Igloo That Saved a Life and A Planely Bad Way to Quit

Orange

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles: he has an “alcoholic’s personality,” drawing a comparison to her father, legendary NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall, who struggled with alcoholism before getting sober.

Three days in the life of a pathetic man.

Wait, some of the redacted Epstein files can be UNREDACTED??

He’s still obsessed with Greenland.

In March 2023, reporter Hugo Lowell revealed exclusively in the Guardian that a federal criminal investigation was examining TMedia – the company that owns the his social media platform, Truth Social – in connection with its acceptance of $8m in loans with suspected Russian ties. Those loans helped keep the company afloat long enough for him to take it public last year, when he netted an additional paper fortune of about $4.6bn. TM sued the Guardian for defamation and $250m in damages. In late November, the judge threw out the case, pointing out that the plaintiff was required to show that “the [Guardian] either knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for its truth” – but he found no such evidence. This was a victory not only for the Guardian but for journalists everywhere.

Reflections of a Census Bureau Employee: MAGA Callers Share a Common Delusion.

3600 Seconds

CBS News’ new editor in chief, Bari Weiss, abruptly postponed a segment of “60 Minutes” about Venezuelan men who the regime deported to the notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo prison, known as CECOT, in El Salvador.

Several veteran correspondents questioned Weiss’ decision. In an email to her colleagues, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said the team “requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story,” she said.

Was Weiss’ decision by design? Or was she merely derelict in her job? CBS News’ censorship spectacularly backfires. Terry Moran: She skipped five different screenings of the 60 Minutes story as it was being written and cut…. Finally, on Thursday, Weiss watched a video of the segment and offered a few suggestions, which were integrated into the script.

Postponing the segment did not prevent it from trickling into public view. Internet sleuths discovered that a Canadian network had briefly published the segment, and a bootleg version of the video began circulating on social media.

Someone thought that, for cBS, the c is now silent.

MUSIC

Randy Rainbow’s new parody: It’s beginning to look a lot like f**k this

Obituaries: Remembering The Mavericks Frontman Raul Malo; O What A Thrill; Dance The Night Away

Singer Chris Rea Dies at 74; Steel River; Let’s Dance

Jerry Kasenetz, a King of Bubblegum Pop Music, Dies at 82. With his producing partner, Jeffry Katz, he made lightweight ditties that soared up the charts in the late 1960s by the 1910 Fruitgum Company, the Ohio Express, and others. (Music links within.)

Go Gentle: Max Eider, R.I.P.

The Musicians We Lost in 2025

Message of Love – Pretenders

Arthur’s Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 27 – The Finale

Coverville 1562 and 1563: The 2025 Coverville Countdown, Parts 1 and 2

Best Albums of 2025 (J. Eric Smith)

10 Songs That Explain My Year from the NYT Amplifier

Time In A Bottle – MonaLisa Twins

Air New Zealand commercial featuring the traditional song “Pōkarekare Ana.”

The Girl With The Flaxen Hair by Claude Debussy

Say You, Say Me – Lionel Richie

Rick Beato’s Top 10 of 2025

Primrose Hill – James McCartney

Mr. Tambourine Man – The Byrds

Sir Duke – Stevie Wonder

Extended interview: Sean Ono Lennon on CBS Sunday Morning. Film: WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko – The Academy Award® winning Animated Short

Social media and bias

woke

The Weekly Sift guy linked to articles about social media and bias. He discredits the belief offered by conservatives that “social media algorithms are biased against them… But it’s worth pointing out that people who have done research on the topic have found the exact opposite…

“When you think of people who have been banned from social media, the names that pop to mind are high-profile conservatives like Trump and MTG, rather than equivalently high-profile liberals.” Even when she rewrites the January 6 script or fantasizes about killing her colleagues, that’s free speech, right? (The latter may be treasonous.)

So I’m always looking for my own bias. It’s always a challenge to double-check one’s own assumptions. On 60 Minutes, Jonathan Haidt, “a social psychologist and professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business… says the people most likely to fire their social media dart guns are those on the far right and the far left.”

But damn! Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy on The Daily Show podcast over the issue Is JFK Jr. Still Alive? It would be easy to dismiss true believers as “crazy.” But “crazy” has roots in real-world facts, mixed with extrapolations that I can’t understand.

Psy-Op

When I read that some “researcher” has “proved” that George Floyd’s death was “a Psy-Op to Usher in U.S. Race War,” I first had to ask, “What the heck is a Psy-Op?” OBVIOUSLY, I’m just not with it.

“Definitions of psyop. Military actions are designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups, and foreign governments. Synonyms: psychological operation. Type of: military operation, operation. Activity by a military or naval force (as a maneuver or campaign)”

One example of PSYOPS is “propaganda, a type of communication or advertisement that aims to influence a targeted group’s way of thinking or decision-making. Ultimately, the goal of a propaganda campaign is to compel a population to take action in line with a specific message by introducing influential information.”

The Deep State paid for Floyd’s funeral, so obviously, there is a nefarious objective at work. Florida’s General Counsel, Ryan Newman, explained what “woke” means to the DeSantis administration. “It would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” The description actually seems reasonable. But Newman thinks it’s a BAD thing.

Social Media

Tressie McMillan Cottom, the writer, sociologist, and MacArthur Fellow, was on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in early December. She talked about The Illusion of Twitter as a Public Square. I think it’s worth the ten minutes to take in her POV.

Of course, the whole Internet may be vulnerable to attacks on the infrastructure. But also underwater cables keep the system operating. “When they congregate in one place, things get tricky.”

Lesley Stahl of CBS News is 80

60 Minutes for 30 years

I was watching 60 Minutes in November. Lesley Stahl was reporting on the mountain gorillas of Rwanda making a comeback. “Visiting mountain gorillas is no walk in the park. It’s an uphill hike for more than an hour at an altitude of 8000 feet, through that farmland that once belonged to the gorillas just to get to the park.

“Lesley Stahl: Are you out of breath?
Tara Stoinski: Yes. [LAUGHS]
Lesley Stahl: Or is it just me?”

And I thought that reporter must be close to 80! And she was. She must love the gorillas, which she first covered back in 1987.

It occurred to me that I had been watching Lesley Stahl for nearly half a century. As she noted in her 1999 book Reporting Live (1999), she, Connie Chung, and Bernard Shaw were the ‘affirmative action babies’ in what became known as the Class of ’72.” As such, she was assigned to cover, in June 1972, a “third-rate burglary” in the Watergate complex. Like Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post, the seemingly insignificant story really launched her career.

She was a White House correspondent during the presidencies of Carter, Reagan, and part of Bush 41. Also, she moderated the CBS Sunday morning program Face The Nation between September 1983 and May 1991.

Since March 1991, she’s been a correspondent for 60 Minutes. Thirty years is as long as Steve Kroft and the late Ed Bradley were on the show; only Morley Safer and Mike Wallace, both of whom started in 1968 are now deceased, were on longer.

Awards

Lesley Stahl received 13 Emmys, plus numerous other awards. One was for “a shocking 2015 report on how some police recruit vulnerable young people for dangerous jobs as confidential informants.” One was for a series based on her “unprecedented” access at Guantanamo Bay prison facilities. “Another [was] for an eye-opening story about China’s huge real estate bubble… She won her 13th Emmy for her interview with the widow of a slain hostage that offered a rare look inside the technically illegal process of negotiating with terrorists.”

Stahl has gotten the big interviews. Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, the then-new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and many, many more. She has managed to greatly annoy some of the powerful, including Trump (2020) and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007).

“She and her husband, author Aaron Latham, live in New York. They have a daughter, Taylor Latham, and two granddaughters. Jordan and Chloe, the subjects of her book, ‘Becoming Grandma: the Joy and Science of the New Grandparenting.'”

The Good Fight and other Sunday TV

no CBS All Access for me

Before The Good Fight aired in 2017, I was a huge fan of the TV seriesThe Good Wife (2009-2016). Maybe it was the premise. In real life, the US was experiencing a series of sex scandals, involving high profile male politicians.

Often, but not always, there was a wife standing by her husband. It happened in New York State, with Eliot Spitzer, the crime-fighting attorney general who became governor. But it as revealed that Spitzer, in his former role, was also prostitute-facilitating Client 9.

Likewise “Alicia [Julianna Margulies] has been a good wife to her husband, a former state’s attorney [Chris Noth]. After a very humiliating sex and corruption scandal, he is behind bars. She must now provide for her family and returns to work as a litigator in a law firm.”

After the run ended, there was a spinoff called The Good Fight, starring Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart, Alicia’s former boss/partner/frenemy. CBS showed the first episode. To see others, though, one had to sign onto something called CBS All Access. No thanks. The new Star Trek is on the same platform.

Now, after the third season of The Good Fight, with another one scheduled, Season 1 is being shown on CBS broadcast TV, each Sunday night. I’m excited, but not enough to have watched any of the five episodes I’ve recorded. I know lots of folks like to binge on these things, but it’s not me.

That means the DVR records a lot Sunday nights. In addition to The Good Fight, there are also one or two episodes of 60 Minutes episodes. Of course, most of them I’ve already seen unless some NFL football game, NCAA basketball contest or golf tournament ran long.

The other hour is The $100,000 Pyramid. It’s a game show that initially aired in 1973 as the $10,000 Pyramid, hosted by the late Dick Clark. Former NFL linebacker Michael Strahan is the current host. The game plays the same as it did decades ago. The clues in the first round may be more explicit – “horny” was a word a contestant had to convey recently.

Whereas I specifically dislike some of the other shows ABC has brought back, such as To Tell The Truth and Match Game, though I had watched them in earlier incarnations. I have no interest in seeing Press Your Luck or Card Sharks then or now.

May rambling #2: Blind In Your Mind

Since when did Christianity become more about preaching the rules than preaching the Gospel of mercy?

A sad case of Facebook blackmail.

“Dude, enough with the entitlement.” She doesn’t owe you @#$!”.

Women are getting harassed in bathrooms because of anti-transgender hysteria. Plus Utah man attacked for taking his 5-year-old daughter into Walmart men’s bathroom. I have taken my then-5 y.o. daughter to a Wal-Mart men’s bathroom, in North Carolina, without incident.

Obituary of a Homophobic Racist, or, My Grandfather.

Killing Dylann Roof. “A year after Obama saluted the families for their spirit of forgiveness, his administration seeks the death penalty for the Charleston shooter.”

Why should schools move away from suspensions?

Poor People Deserve To Taste Something Other Than Shame.

The Election Is About the Country, Not the Candidates

Cartoon: Cut from commencement speeches.

The End Of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Campaign.

What third parties CAN do.

John Oliver: Primaries and Caucuses.

R.I.P. Pinius Bergmann (1925-2016).

Aphantasia: How It Feels To Be Blind In Your Mind.

Book review: Stardancer by Kelly Sedinger.

Alicia: As I’m leaving the library today, I walked by a pile of new books and literally said out loud to myself, “No, I already have enough at home to read right now.”
Roger: The question: What did the books say in response?
Alicia: It was more of a quiet weeping.

On the heartbreaking difficulty of getting rid of books.

Neither Rand nor McNally. Death by GPS.

This month in 1856: Violence on the U.S. Senate floor.

Three-minute video about the Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region, produced by the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

The Trouble with Comics: the epic Question Time survey of the best current comics titles.

Now I Know: Combat Juggling and The Land Down Under in the Land Down Under and And Together They’ll Make Music.

True Facts About The Owl.

Sodium.

TELEVISION

60 Minutes, the Sunday night news staple, honored Morley Safer, one of television’s most celebrated journalists. Then, days later, Safer died at 84. From the New York Times: “Mr. Safer had broadcast 919 “60 Minutes” reports, profiling international heroes and villains, exposing scams and corruption, giving voice to whistle-blowers and chronicling the trends of an ever-changing America.”

Alan Young, RIP, star of Duck Tales, and, of course, Mr. Ed. But, of course, of course, some are unhip to the lingo.

Beth Howland, Accident-Prone Waitress Vera From the Sitcom ‘Alice,’ Dies at 74, on New Years’ Eve 2015. Her husband was the actor Charles Kimbrough, who played the anchorman Jim Dial on the television series ‘Murphy Brown.’

Muppets TV show, RIP.

David Letterman – Behind The Scenes Of Late Night’s Longest Running Broadcaster and Leaving Letterman, Part I.

The closing of Johnny Carson’s last Tonight Show.

I disagree broadly, but as for these three: Celebrities Should Not Play Jeopardy. Plus Buzzy Cohen Might Be The Most Polarizing ‘Jeopardy!’ Contestant Yet.