Les Moonves! Heads up, over here, please!

Some of you know I routinely give Les Moonves advice on what he can do to improve CBS news (and he should feel complimented – I don’t even consider ABC or NBC worth my precious time…). He has apparently – upon deep consideration, I’m sure – decided NOT to take my selfless advice that he hire Delia Gallagher over Katie Couric. Ah well, some people have to learn the hard way…

Nevertheless, I’m going to continue in my tireless quest to restore CBS News to its former glory, this time with a story suggestion for the aging and jowly 60 Minutes program.

Hey, Les? (you don’t mind if I calls you Les…) Here is story that you should perhaps consider for the show. It could be very serious and very important. In an age where Islamofascists are making so many Muslims seem less-like-people-and-more-like-caricatures, when moderate Muslims must look at the madness at the extremes and wonder, “who, exactly are we, anymore?” this is a story that might actually be helpful for a change. I’d use it for sweeps week, if I were you. Ready? Here’s the pitch: The Mosque…that Sheltered Jews!

“Their children are like our own children”
“Yesterday at dawn, the Jews of Paris were arrested. The old, the women, and the children. In exile like ourselves, workers like ourselves. They are our brothers. Their children are like our own children. The one who encounters one of his children must give that child shelter and protection for as long as misfortune – or sorrow – lasts. Oh, man of my country, your heart is generous.”

– A tract read to immigrant Algerian workers in Paris, asking them to help shelter Jewish children.

And you needn’t do all the thinking about this on your own – I know that’s hard to do with so many distractions, and the news media are nothing, lately, if not distracted and off their game. So, I’m pointing you to two helpmeets, two bloggers who could be useful to you as you flesh this out. Check out neo-neocon (oh, stop it – don’t shrink back in terror just because she’s a “neocon” she’s a brilliant lady) and Siggy from the psychoanalytical threesome at Sigmund Carl and Alfred.

Yes, they are, like me, anonymous bloggers, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. While anonymous sources in news items are the devil’s very own, when it comes to gleaning information from an anonymous blog you’re generally going to get sources cited, and helpful direction, and the anonymity factor does not destroy your credibility since – as a rule – anonymous bloggers are still demonstrably real people, as opposed to so many of the “sources” who “say” so much to the New York Times and seem like so much phlegm and vapor.

Well, you do as you wish, of course – I’m only offering you a story idea that is more than worth doing. But since you seem bent on Couric over Gallagher it is safe to say you and I have very different ideas about things worth doing. Still, I hope you’ll consider it. Make it Wallace’s swan song. Get him out of the all-day make-up session, prop him up and give him one last big story while his toes are (as he implies) only curling.