BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

PROGRAM NOTE: Tune in to PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION as we spend the hour with Mayor Linda Tyer and her director of administrative services, Roberta McCulloch-Dews. Join THE PLANET and Supercitizen Terry Kinnas for all the fun beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday night, Dec. 15, on PCTV Channel 16, Time Warner Cable. 

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(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY DEC. 12, 2016) — You can put an unwashed bum in a tuxedo, but he’s still going to reek. Similarly, you can clean up the look of a newspaper, but unless the content changes, it’s still going to read like a joke.

Welcome to the new, spiffed-up, newspaper once known as The Berkshire Eagle.

As THE PLANET has pointed out, The Boring Broadsheet is to investigative journalism what tee-ball is to hardball. Its readers — actually, its former readers, who now vastly outnumber their syllabic brethren — know this best of all, particularly as it pertains to the “see, hear, and speak no evil” local coverage. The BB might tell you of a near-fatal fire or shooting, but they leave out the vital details — left to remain hidden, unless THE PLANET finds time from a busy schedule to bother plying our sources.

Today’s continuation of Journalism 101 concerns the “telegraph” coverage, as national and international news is known as in the newspaper business. The BB suffers from a hallucinatory, liberal bias that not only embarrasses the flag and masthead but approaches the irrational. The prime example of this preposterous position is The BB’s post-election coverage of president-elect Donald Trump.

The paper obviously can’t handle Trump’s brilliant and decisive win. Instead of provided measured and complete coverage of the presidential transition, it searches the wires for the kinds of “Peter Pan” stories about Trump that have become commonplace in the wake of Nov. 8. These are stories that convey the belief that if one wishes hard enough, maybe Trump’s triumph will go away. It’s the newspaper equivalent of putting fingers in one’s ear and loudly singing “la la la la, na, na, na, na.”

Blaring the False Impression

The latest example of The BB’s amateurish coverage of Trump can be found above the fold on page 1 of the Saturday, Dec. 10, edition. The headlines blared the false impression that the CIA had declared that Russia had hacked the Democrats during the presidential campaign for the purposes of rigging the election against Hillary Clinton.

Right. And the National Enquirer space alien has been spotted selling shelled clams from an oxcart on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The CIA “report” that Moscow was working for a Trump win boils down to the opinion of an unnamed “senior U.S. official” — a report the CIA refuses to make public. In other words, it’s one of them “trust us” reports without portfolio. Come on, Alan English, new publisher of The BB. You’d better hold your editors to a much higher standard than that if you wish to stem the precipitous fall of your plunging circulation.

As Trump’s transition team pointed out in response, the report came from the same bad actors in the CIA who “said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” These were people who, like The BB, were still fuming that their gal lost the election to a consummate showman.

Of course, the denatured Democrats called for an investigation.

The ‘Deep Dive’

The out-going Barack Obama, still clutching on to the presidential pillar with his scratching fingernails, called for a “full-scale review” of cyberattacks conducted during the campaign. He further directed that the review be concluded before he mercifully leaves office. This is the president, remember, who pledged to end America’s disastrous, $7 trillion-and-counting involvement in Afghanistan (16 years of war and counting), Iraq (13 years of war and counting), and environs.

Obama said the investigation will be a “deep dive” into the facts — you know, the kind of “deep dive” Hillary took as Secretary of State when she shook down foreign leaders for millions on behalf of the saintly Clinton Foundation.

THE PLANET wonders if Obama’s “deep dive” will include the information contained in the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, where the Wasserman bitch worked on behalf of Hillary to sink the wildfire campaign of Bernie Sanders.

We should also not forget what has happened to relations between Washington and Moscow in the eight years of the Obama presidency. The two countries went from cooperating allies to the brink of nuclear war. At least Trump has promised warmer relations with Russia, a country led by the best politician on the planet, if not THE PLANET. We speak of Vladimir Putin. We speak of Donald Trump, who, by the way, just announced he’s going to bring back “Merry Christmas” in favor of this “Happy Holiday” crap.

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“When I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love, “L-U-V.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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