Mary Fallin was a special guest co-anchor yesterday on "News 9 This Morning." She did things like talk about satellites, Facebook and eliminating the state income tax.
Yeah, that's not the correct video. News 9 is dumb and won't let us embed the video on this site, so we'd just posted a different video of Mary Fallin saying something stupid. These videos are not that hard to find on the internet.
The highlight of Fallin's appearance on Monday was this discussion she had with Stan Miller regarding the state income tax. Here's a transcript of some of the interview. It's award-winning journalism at its finest:
Mary Fallin: We find that the states that do the best, especially since this last economic downturn are the states who have the lowest income tax rates. And so, thus you see Texas with no income tax, other states with no income tax, they are doing better than other states, so there’s a discussion in our Oklahoma legislature about how can we lower or get rid of our state income tax, but also how can we make up that revenue for other essential services. We have to pay for roads and bridges, corrections, health and human services…so the legislature is looking for ways to make up for that income.
Stan Miller: What is that? About $250-million? $230-million or something like that?
Mary Fallin: Yeah, Yeah, but it’s about $1.8 billion of the total, I think, of the $6.5 billion of our budget. About a third.
Stan Miller: That’s a lot of money that could be put in schools and roads and bridges, things like that, but really it’s kind of in a {with emphasis} scheme of things. I mean, it would also maybe make people wanna take that money and put it back in the economy. So which creates…generates…
Mary Fallin: Absolutely, absolutely. {Then she talks about other crap.}
Well, that was historic. I think it marks the first time in history that Mary Fallin has been interviewed by someone who's even less intelligent than she is.
Seriously, no wonder Stan Miller was voted worst anchorman. I don't really expect your Aunt Kathy or the guy making sandwiches at City Bites to be knowledgeable on income tax revenue or to be able to ask a decent follow-up question to the governor, but you would think a news anchor would have those skills. The only thing that Stan Miller displayed was confusion and ignorance. $250-million? Some stoned high school civics student could come up with a better guess than that in the whole "scheme of things."
All that being said, I don't want to be too hard on Stan. It's not his fault that he looked so dumb and unprepared. He's a morning anchor. His job is to look handsome, laugh at stupid jokes and wake up your grandma. The toughest question he should be asking is if the kids need to wear jackets at the bus stop. He should never be put on the spot and forced to have a serious discussion with the CEO of our state.
You see, that's why this publicity stunt by News 9 was so wrong. When News 9 allowed Mary Fallin to stop by the studio as a guest anchorwoman, they already began to push the boundaries of journalistic ethics. But when they paired her up with the Mr. Magoo of journalists and gave her the time to openly push her agenda on an unsuspecting audience, they took those boundaries and made them explode. And they did it all for the sake of ratings and publicity.
If the people who ran Channel 9 were smart, they would have allowed Mary do her cute little anchor thing, but when it came time for her to stump on tax reform, they should have brought in a real journalist. You know, someone like Alex Cameron who would have asked real questions and maybe done his homework on the topic. Then they could have had a good ratings bump and acted like a real media outlet.
Then again, this is Channel 9. They haven't done anything smart in a while. They hired a news director with libel baggage from Wichita, have let go of many long time and well-respected staffers, and they are continuing to lose in the ratings to Channel 4. I would not be surprised if Gary England pulls a Dr. Manhattan someday and builds a house on Mars just to get away from it all. Things are getting that bad.
p.s. - I could really care less if we have a state income tax or not. I'm sure the state will find some way to get its money from the middle class.
