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MEDIA DISCONNECT? WHAT MEDIA DISCONNECT?
NBC identity Tom Brokaw—who earned $5 million in 2002 alone, and who charges a $60,000 speaking fee—reveals his deep empathy with the common man:
Tom Brokaw to gas-guzzling whiners: Serves you right.
The former NBC anchor, proud owner of a 44-mile-per-gallon Prius hybrid, has no sympathy for monster-car owners who complain at the pump.
"I love it when they have to pay a hundred dollars for a fill-up,” says Brokaw, host of Discovery Channel’s “Global Warming: What You Need to Know.” “I want to pat them on the back and say, ‘How does it feel now?’
I want him to do that, too. I also want security camera footage of the immediate aftermath to be broadcast on America’s Bloodiest Celebrity Beatings. Brokaw is mentioned here as the customer of a charter flight company; the twin-engine, seven-seat Beechcraft King Air E90 he hired sucks down 474 gallons of aviation fuel every 1,400 or so nautical miles. Remember that if Brokaw ever advances on you at the pumps in a back-patting mood.
I want him to do that, too. I also want security camera footage of the immediate aftermath to be broadcast on America’s Bloodiest Celebrity Beatings.
Oh, lord, that’s funny! I’ve got to get tickets to sit in the live, studio audience.
BTW, do Brokaw’s remarks portend a fight with Katie Couric and her second-mortgage SUV?
No lie--I once saw Jerry Springer at a gas station in Chicago. He’s kind of like Tom Brokaw.
I once saw Marty Brennaman at a book store.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 07 13 at 01:04 PM • permalink"I love it when they have to pay a hundred dollars for a fill-up,” says Brokaw, host of Discovery Channel’s “Global Warming: What You Need to Know.” “I want to pat them on the back and say, ‘How does it feel now?’
And the response should be. Take the keys to his shitty little car and toss ‘em in the trash car next to the gas pump.
Remember, Please Don’t Litter.
OR Response is Tim’s security camera footage of the immediate aftermath to be broadcast on America’s Bloodiest Celebrity Beatings.
Please make sure his face can be seen clearly, during the beating.
Dan Rather knows, after all, that nobody in America needs a car with more cargo or passenger room than his cute little overpriced Greenmobile.
The proles who work for a living, have kids, or ever need to move more than a bag of groceries or a cute little thing from an antique store? Laugh at their expenses!
Brokaw is mentioned here as the customer of a charter flight company; the twin-engine, seven-seat Beechcraft King Air E90 he hired sucks down 474 gallons of aviation fuel every 1,400 or so nautical miles.
No celebrities like Brokaw, Barbra Streisand and Bono don’t emit greenhouse gases when they fly in grossly inefficient private jets. The real cause of pollution is when the peasants fly on budget airlines which are almost by definition more efficient. Don’t ask me how the celebrity carbon cancelling effect works, it just does.
Well we all make choices and the choice an SUV owner has to make is it worth the cost of filling up.
Yes, I am sticking up for the comment. I too see absurdity in whining about gas prices when one makes choices that quite clearly makes one vulnerable to gas prices.
Mind you, I (along with most other normal people) prefer quarter a gallon gas and am looking to buy a full sized GM SUV myself.
Brokaw doesn’t worry about it because when he needs an SUV he can pay someone else to get him where he needs to go or do what needs to be done.
Of course, Brokaw probably doesn’t need to drive his Prius 200 miles a crack through blizzards with a Thule full of skis and a car full of people and ski gear. Of course I don’t see him trailing a boat either.
As demonstrated on South Park we can say Brokaw is emitting smug. Get a smug alert up!
Posted by Marcus Aurelius on 2006 07 13 at 01:33 PM • permalinkWell Officer, I was standing there pumping $175 worth of regular unleaded into my F-150’s 2nd tank, and this guys comes out of no where, smacking me on the back, attacking me from behind. Screaming some crazy crap about me raping some woman named Ghia. I’ve never even met a woman named Ghia. So I defended myself, things got a little blurry, and he struggled, and I don’t no what else, and thats how the pump nozzle ended up stuck up his butt. I’m not sure how the 2 gallons of gas got in there though.
I’ve been in Humvees, but only in combat zones. They will be one of the great dinosaurs of our time, on display in car museums.
Hopefully with a Prius lodged in the grille.
While Tom may own an ecologically-correct car, how many other cars does he have? Most of these people don’t drive themselves to work—they’re generally chauffered in a limo. I’m sure Tom’s no exception.
Posted by Polish Frizzle on 2006 07 13 at 02:09 PM • permalinkLet’s keep track of his driving:
1. gets groceries delivered, so his personal chef can make dinner
2. no kids to drive to soccer practice
3. drive to church on Sunday? Probably not.
4. gets picked up at the airport in a limo when he makes those expensive talks. But that doesn’t count.
5. Doesn’t haul a boat or a RV because he has the boat permanently moored at his exclusive lake house.Tim, you hold him down, I’ll kick him.
Well, Brokaw knows how to make people want to listen to him. After all, cable TV depends on ratings as well. And given that there are more gas guzzling cars than “environmentally friendly” cars (and I question that the Prius is truly a “green” car), he just insulted a large portion of his potential audience. Way to go, Tom! Nice in-your-face arrogance towards your customers!
Hopefully the program sponsors are listening to this. I know that if Brokaw’s face pops up on my TV screen (especially on his Discovery show), I’m switching to something more mature. Cartoon Network, maybe. Or re-runs of Hogan’s Heros.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 13 at 02:51 PM • permalink"This is science, not politics. What we’re both doing is dealing with factual evidence that now exists. He’s more political than we are, obviously, in his conclusions.
Ouch. Is this a back-handed compliment (read “slap") for al-Gore? Not that TB is any less biased when it comes to environmentalism, since he’s obviously so tickled with himself and his Prius.
It’s fun listening to him try to say “petroleum.”
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2006 07 13 at 04:42 PM • permalinkThis reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a woman from England. I was in the mother country with my husband (who was on a business trip). She was harping on about our American SUVs, etc. etc. When our families all went out to dinner we had to take two cars because there was no room in those cute little ones. (BTW, I’d drive a Mini Cooper in a second, but it isn’t exactly a family car.) I told her that back home we could have gotten the whole crew in my SUV. She then went on to say that two small cars would have still used less “petrol” (that word cracks me up). I have been wondering if there is any validity to her statement about two small cars using less gasoline, but we still would have had one less car crowding the road. I got the feeling that her next argument was that we wouldn’t need those SUVs if we didn’t have all of those unnecessary children.
I love it when they’ve hit a bus in their Prius and are getting their faces reattached. I want to pat them on the back and say, ‘How does it feel now?’
I suppose that’s a little cold. But it’s cold to gloat at anyone’s misfortune. Whether at the gas pump or the emergency room. Tacky, low rent kind of behavior. Which is exactly what we’ve come to expect from our “news"men.
Posted by lumberjack on 2006 07 13 at 05:03 PM • permalinkTom’s glee at being so correct is really ugly. But then, he is what he is. We are in the era of the diminishment of the Talking Heads. They have long since lost their position as interlocutor and conscience of a nation. The guy is small-minded, smug, and clueless about how this looks when people start thinking about it. I live in a Northern California wine country county which is replete with correct little hybrids. And it is also replete with rich people, Democrats, of course, who can afford the little cars. Most of these people, however, also own SUVs. These they haul out for long trips, or for trips to the market when they really have a lot of shopping to do, and they use them all the time in winter when we have a lot of rain. The hybrids are for showing off around town.
And ladcraig, I think that two little cars give off more pollutants and maybe use more gas than the SUV, especially in the city where you have a lot of idling and starting and stopping. The mileage hardly matters there. And I wonder if two 4-cylinder engines are really more efficient than one 8-cylinder engine.
ladcraig, your British acquaintenance is mistaken; the relationship is not intuitive. As a rule, the more people or cargo you can haul with a single vehicle, the more efficient (i.e., economical) the operation of the vehicle.
Some rough numbers follow. This assumes that environmental quality is a direct function of fuel economy, which I think depends on a number of factors. But this is a demonstration, not a proof:
SUVs (2006 models) get a mileage of anywhere from 9 to 36 MPG (from http://www.fueleconomy.gov, do a search by vehicle class). Let’s be conservative and say 15 MPG (I didn’t do an average, just an estimate of the average).
Small cars (2006 models) get a mileage of anywhere from 18 to 66 MPG (same source). Again, let’s be conservative and say 30 MPG (might be a bit high, but the math is simpler).
If you have to transport 6 people 100 miles, and have a choice between on SUV (which seats 6) and 2 small cars (which seat 4 people each), the numbers are:
SUV: 100 miles/15 MPG = 6.7 gallons of fuel
Small cars: 2* (100 miles/30 MPG) = 6.7 gallons of fuel
Fuel saved? None.
Obviously, if you have two very efficient small cars, and a real gas hog of an SUV, the small cars win. For example:
SUV @ 12 MPG = 100 miles/12 MPG = 8.3 gallons
Small cars @ 35 MPG = 2*(100/35) = 5.7 gallons
OTOH, if you have a somewhat efficient SUV:
SUV @ 20 MPG = 100/20 = 5 gallons
Small cars @ 35 MPG = 5.7 gallons
Small cars barely win.
So it’s a trade off, depending on model, design, etc.
I’ll concede that, one on one, SUVs are more expensive that small cars. But when you are transporting a lot of people and cargo, small cars become inefficient.
Which is what Brokaw completely misses.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 13 at 05:46 PM • permalinkekw said:
And ladcraig, I think that two little cars give off more pollutants and maybe use more gas than the SUV, especially in the city where you have a lot of idling and starting and stopping. The mileage hardly matters there. And I wonder if two 4-cylinder engines are really more efficient than one 8-cylinder engine.
I think you are correct on the pollutants, but it also depends on the model. The fuel economy web site above does have a couple of environmental ratings for each vehicle (green house gas emission, and an EPA air pollution score)......and there’s not obvious relationship between those scores and fuel economy. At least, that’s what I saw from a quick scan of the data. There are likely vehicles that are fuel efficient, but not necessarily low polluting. IMHO, anyhoo.
Anyone else?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 13 at 05:51 PM • permalinkWhen the hybrid cars first came out I really, really wanted one.
After reading this blog for about a year, I want an SUV.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 07 13 at 06:02 PM • permalinkGlobal warming could kill everyone in the M.E.? Horrors. Thank God the Israelis have AC.
The two little vs. one big car thing, no matter what, think wear and tear not only on the cars, but on the folks. You have two drivers, two cars, and a greater chance (anyone know probability math?) of one of the cars getting in an accident. Personally, I like to drive my own car, so I would have been the third car in the queue. I’m extremely selfish and self-centered and don’t want to ride with anyone else unless they’re extremely funny and smart.
I like to say, when in Oz, where’s the nearest benzina station? That’ll get your ass kicked in Stanthorpe.
The Real Jeffs _ But an environmentally conscious human-American shouldn’t WANT to drive ANYWHERE. He/she/optional should just sit at home in the dark, eating yogurt and filtered water and breathing shallowly…
We had an animal rights activist out here in California who was protesting whale watching boat trips. He said people had no business actually going near the whales, even if it was to show their kids what nature looked like. If they wanted their kids to see whales, they could just stay home and watch them on a CD-ROM or something.
<i>Back to your boxes, Gaia-befouling primates!</b>
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 07 13 at 06:45 PM • permalinkEvery time one of these celebrity spokesmannequins opens their mouth to emit some Wisdom For the People like this, the vehicle I plan to buy as soon as I am able just gets bigger and bigger. I was going to get myself a fairly modest Jeep Cherokee, but a woman at work has a Cadillac Escalade that looks like you could stuff a couple of yachts in the back, and I am wondering if I could make the payments on my salary.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 07 13 at 06:45 PM • permalink#27 ladcraig
Our ‘petrol’ = short for petroleum. We go to a petrol station.
Your ‘gas’ = short for gasoline. You go to a gas station.
Cracking up because of....? (just curious)
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 13 at 06:46 PM • permalink#35
I’m thinking about an FJ as my next ride...It’s even sharper-looking in the flesh, and is roomy and substantial w/o crossing into the “behemoth” category. I’ve thought about a Wrangler Unlimited, but I’ve heard terrible things about Jeeps’ maintenance/reliability.
‘Course, whenver tossers like Brokaw start whingeing about us planeless, chauffeur-less plebeians and our fuel consumption, I really crave a Hummer H2.
Posted by WingDynasty on 2006 07 13 at 06:48 PM • permalink.... but as I’m currently in Nth America, driving SUVs big enough to invade New Zealand I can happily admit to ‘gassing up’ and b-u-u-u-u-r-r-r-ning down the freeways.
Ya-hoo.
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 07 13 at 06:49 PM • permalinkWingDynasty
I have had Explorers and they have been good vehicles. Service has been excellent, I don’t expect Ford to bow before and maybe the money that I have made Ford has made my instance ordinary...BUT I doubt it...good vehicle, good people.
Like you I am looking at the Toyota FJ for the next round, just getting bored with Explorers.
I’ve heard the same as to Jeep, but as stated ‘heard’. I Like the Hummer and there latest and smallest the H-3 Is damn good looking, but the MPG I believe is just about the worst and the damn thing is a 5 cylinder, I believe.
The FJ turned my head because it is a Hummer looking vehicle, decent MPG’s AND the biggie, Toyota reliability.
When our ‘93 Dodge Dakota gave its life protecting us from an oncoming car, the Chief did his research & came up with what Consumer Reports at the time said fit the bill quite nicely...Toyota Tundra extended cab V8. I drive a ‘90 BroncoII (6cyl auto), also have a ‘91 Explorer Sport 4onthefloor (6cyl). #1 Daughter drives a ‘97 ExplorerXLT (6cyl). That Tundra is one fine machine, but the lil Bronco is SO DAMN MUCH FUN! Parks anywhere, turns on a dime. And gets about twice the miles per.
BrokeKaw makes me gag. Pretentious prick.
#27 I got the feeling that her next argument was that we wouldn’t need those SUVs if we didn’t have all of those unnecessary children.
As you say, ladcraig. The lady just wanted to indulge in a little light America-bashing, and she would have found another excuse if there were no SUVs.
Myself, I drive a Ford Ranger pickup. It’s not an SUV, but it’s not a Gaia-loving pedal car either. Drove a Dodge Ram full-size van for years. I really miss it.
BrokeKaw makes me gag. Pretentious prick.
Auntie, you just summed up this entire thread in 6 words. Congratulations!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 07 13 at 09:36 PM • permalinkNilk,
The real problem with a SUV for you is the visibility close to it. It would be dangerous to Magilla. Not a problem only found on them but worse on them than on most vehicles.
Posted by Lloyd Flack on 2006 07 13 at 10:07 PM • permalinkHere’s the skinny on Brokaw’s fair and balanced Global Warming: What You Need to Know from MoltenThought (via mediablog):
Unfortunately the show is nothing more than the usual pro-Kyoto Protocol agitprop, less fair and less accurate than what Al Gore churns out between fawning lecture stops.
And if Tom Brokaw owns only one car, I’ll eat this keyboard.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 07 13 at 11:42 PM • permalinkDespite the fuss and the green marketing and the rather optimistic figures from Toyota, Priuses are not that fuel efficient. I’ve seen two separate reviews that report the car’s actual fuel consumption, under sedate to normal driving, to be around 6.5 litres per 100kms. That’s not bad for a car its size… but it’s about the same as a normal petrol Mazda 1 or a Hyundai Getz, which cost half as much and require less expensive maintenance.
Unfortunately Brockaw and his pals seem to be going by the official figures, not the actual figures.
All of this is very sad, as I’m a big fan of fuel efficient motoring, but I wouldn’t be seen dead in a Prius nowadays. They’ve got themselves a reputation as overpriced cars for patronising wankers who care more about tokenistic display than genuine change.
Posted by blandwagon on 2006 07 14 at 12:27 AM • permalinkBrokaw (or, as many of us in the US call him for his enunciation, BrokenJaw) and his empathy disconnect—that rang a bell, then I remembered and dug up:
BROKAW BLOWS OFF THE MARINES
Page Six, The New York Post, Friday, November 4, 2005
November 4, 2005—A GROUP of Marines is fighting mad at Tom Brokaw for going AWOL from the U.S. Marine Corps Ball and instead jetting off to a lavish dinner at the White House in honor of Prince Charles and Lady Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.
The NBC anchor, whose brother was a Marine, agreed months ago to speak at Wednesday’s ball at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. But he ditched it at the last minute to hang with the royal couple at the D.C. shindig, which was also attended by President Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, former first ladies Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan, Condoleezza Rice, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.Brokaw, who penned the acclaimed “The Greatest Generation,” about the American war effort during WWII, tapped his NBC colleague Jon Siegenthaler to sub for him. .... [emphases in the original]
Siegenthaler tried to make light of it, saying that even Brokaw’s mother told Brokaw that he was making the wrong choice. But I guess you know that old Brokaw, such a wattage hound. It’s funny to think that for a while some were talking up his political prospects.
I found a live link to the “BROKAW BLOWS OFF THE MARINES”:
http://entertainment.myway.com/celebgossip/pgsix/id/11_04_2005_1.html#35, 53. I saw one of these the other day while I was out trundling around in my death beast and fell in love.
I’ve never been a Holden girl - all of my cars have been japanese, and my oldies drove Fords.
Also, Lloyd, these days a lot of the bigger vehicles seem to come with beepers for when you reverse, and I make sure that the rugrat is on the steps or in the car when I move.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 07 14 at 02:57 AM • permalinkThis totally sums up hybrid owners South Park Smug Alert
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 07 14 at 03:19 AM • permalink#51 Rebecca H,
You are correct in assuming the lady just wanted to get in her digs at America. At dinnertime, she got onto our American healthcare system, t.v. culture, education system, Hurricane Katrina, the “illegal” war, Bush, the 2000 presidential election, fast food, etc. If it wasn’t for the fact that this was an important business dinner for my husband, I would have gladly stayed at the hotel.
If Brokaw is going to tell SUV owners they deserve high gas prices, I hope he’s criticizing all of the grandstanding politicians who talk about the petroleum compaines’ so-called “price gouging” too.
Posted by Ted Schuerzinger on 2006 07 14 at 10:00 AM • permalink"I told her that back home we could have gotten the whole crew in my SUV. She then went on to say that two small cars would have still used less “petrol” (that word cracks me up).”
Tell her that, if that were the case, then public busing would be one of the most terrible wastes of “petrol” in the world.
Posted by Tatterdemalian on 2006 07 14 at 10:55 AM • permalink..we call it “petrol” here in Oz too.
That may be changing. I listen to 2WFM (Mix 106.5) sometimes when I’m at work and the morning crew has this contest where the person wins 150L of free gasoline if they answer the phone with “Sammy, Subby and Alan Give Me Gas”.
Posted by Bashir Gemayel on 2006 07 14 at 12:30 PM • permalinkWhy have it just one way? You could get the GMC Sierra or a Chevy Silverado 4WD hybrid. That way you could flaunt your moral superiority and crush Priuses (Prii?) under your tires. I’d love to see a hybrid with the monster tires just to watch the effects of the cognitive dissonance on people.
Posted by JDFlanagan on 2006 07 14 at 01:22 PM • permalink#71 ekw
I just came back from Oz at the end of May, and I heard people say “gas” more often than petrol. I didn’t know if they were just saying it for me or not (it’s not like I can’t handle the word petrol after all), but I got to wondering if gas weren’t the word to use in Oz.
It isn’t. As a student, I worked in a petrol station for a few years and “gas” as a description for petroleum/gasoline/normal-fuel was almost never used. The main exception being that their was an international business park about a kilometre away with quite a few Americans working there who used that term.
However, Australians do also use the word “gas” but for a different product - LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas). LNG is becoming increasingly popular, but currently only has a minority of the fuel-market (maybe ~10% or something).
If you heard Australians referring to filling up their cars with “gas”, it is highly probable that they were driving LNG-vehicles.
I have a question for Americans though - is LNG used in USA? If so, what do people call it?
LNG got a a bad rap in this country because of a putative instability which caused it to blow up under certain circumstances (the hippie green community hated it about twenty five years ago. Where’d they go?) which was hardly a common occurrence, but you know how easy it is to start a fear of something if you buy into the enviro-scaredycats mentality. So we don’t really use it as consumers though it has uses I don’t know about obviously. I saw it all the time in Oz.
I think that I heard gas and gasoline because my friends were using it around me. They were making me feel a part of, the dears.
With the spike in oil prices in the last 5 years, there is alot of enthusiasm for LNG here. A few years ago, LNG converters (who would mechanically adjust a petrol-engine to accept it) were complaining because the Federal government equalized the tax on petrol and gas. (previously, gas had less tax on it.)
The LNG converters thought that it would destroy the industry. But the price-differential between the two fuels has blown out in recent years, and the business is now booming. I’ve heard people talk of waiting-lists to get their cars converted to LNG.
An additional benefit is that Australia, although not oil-self-sufficient, is definitely gas-self-sufficient.
Re: the use of words.
Occassionally, I’d hear teenagers use the term ‘gas’ but that was probably due to hearing it on TV. Also, teens might say stuff like ‘hit the gas’ meaning to ‘drive fast’. But the entire word ‘gasoline’ is not written or used anywhere here on signage, nor is it used in papers, media, etc. The aforemention teens probably weren’t even aware that its an abbreviation.
hehe, if your friends actually used the whole word “gasoline” in front of you then that was definitely out of politeness! ;-)
Dave S. - yep, probably. Or they could have simply changed the word for US release version. Can’t remember to be honest.
Same way “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was altered to “Sorcerer’s Stone” in USA. When releasing any form of media, I guess it makes sense to cater to local tastes.
Were the “Mad Max” really dubbed over? hehe :-)
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Slightly off topic but Jerry Seinfeld was on a chat show describing how he drove a VW Beetle across the US one summer. He was pumping gas in Arizona when someone recognized him and said, “Hey, you’re Seinfeld from that show!” Jerry laughed and said, “What the hell would Jerry Seinfeld be doing pumping gas into a Beetle in the middle of Arizona?” The fan agreed and they had a jolly good laugh at the absurdity of it.
No lie--I once saw Jerry Springer at a gas station in Chicago. He’s kind of like Tom Brokaw.
Don’t you think that Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation book was sort of a rip off of Studs Terkle’s The Good War? I do. Read the Terkle book instead even if Studs is an old (out of the closet) Lefty (as opposed to Objective Tom).