Giving Chuck Todd a Chance on “Meet the Press”
Richard E. Vatz
On September 7 Chuck Todd will take over as moderator of NBC’s once-venerable “Meet the Press (MTP).” The historically pre-eminent Sunday talk show once sported the no-nonsense, tough Lawrence Spivak as host but under David Gregory has become so liberally biased as to make even NBC, the most left-wing major network, embarrassed.
So what does NBC do in replacing Mr. Gregory after embarrassing him with the modified limited hangout treatment which led to his “voluntarily” leaving the program?”
They appoint Chuck Todd, a very knowledgeable but consistently Democratically partisan journalist.
When Sen. Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, The Washington Post columnist Herbert Block (Herblock) took off the new president’s 5 o’clock shadow in the cartoonist’s depictions of him, writing, “Every new president gets a new shave.”
The implication was that Herblock would not prejudge the new president in his cartoons, and he would give Mr. Nixon a chance to be less corrupt, although Watergate made that a difficult argument to carry the day.
But in memory of Herblock’s giving Sen. Nixon a new shave, MTP viewers are herein urged to give Chuck Todd a chance to mend his politically prejudiced ways.
Good luck, Mr. Todd; be fair and balanced.
Professor Vatz taught Media Criticism for two decades at Towson University and is author of The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion (Kendall Hunt, 2013)
