Jim Scott always has had a blessed political life. And it turns out that one of the worst moments of his career -- losing Tuesday to political newcomer Ken Keechl in his reelection bid for the Broward County Commission -- may turn out to be a blessing too.
Florida governor-elect Charlie Crist has contacted the 64-year-old Scott -- a former state senate president who spent two decades legislating in Tallahassee before joining the commission -- and might soon offer him a position in his administration, sources say. It's only gossip now, but more should be known by the middle of next week.
After the jump: AP Goes Borat and A Little Something About Ed Bradley
-- Funniest AP lede in the staid, buttoned-up news organization's history:
"SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) -- Two fraternity boys want to make lawsuit against "Borat" over their drunken appearance in the hit movie."
While we here, I saw Borat film and was laugh all way through it. He comic genius on caliber of Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, and Richard Pryor.
(Sacha Baron Cohen was also brilliant in Talladega Nights, by the way).
-- Say what you will about 60 Minutes these days. I find it increasingly celebrity-obsessed and like it less and less. But it used to be a toweringly important and groundbreaking show that influenced the holy living hell out of me as a young reporter. When I was younger and more nervous about having a confrontational interview with a con man, murderer, or corrupt politician, I used to prepare by trying to channel Mike Wallace in his glory days. You know, fearless and full of himself. 60 Minutes was really the only place where a kid could watch the reporting process, the interviews, the styles of the broadcasting pros and learn something worthwhile. With the over-produced tripe that is flooding the networks today, those days are long over.
And the soul of the show when it was at its best was Ed Bradley. He was cool as the other side of a pillow in everything he did on TV -- and that's not an easy feat (seen, say, Dateline's Keith Morrison or Stone Phillips lately?). But what really made him so great? Well, it wasn't just the fact that he broke barriers as a black man and that he was about as engaging and intelligent a presence as could seem humanly possible. It was that he did those things on one of the greatest shows ever while it was still in its prime. When it was practically the only show in town (20/20 couldn't touch 60 Minutes back then).
And you really didn't think Bradley was gonna die any time soon, in part because those dudes on 60 Minutes don't die. Morley Safer and Mike Wallace must be a combined 195 years old or something. Don Hewitt produced Edward R. Murrow, for crying out loud. I think he was there when Thomas Edison invented the first motion pictures, too. Only next to them could it seem that Bradley died a young man. Hell, he still had a quarter century left in him. The good news is that he left us enough in the last 30 years to last a lifetime.
