Edward R. Murrow was a pioneering television broadcaster who died way too young. He died of lung cancer in 1965 at age 57. Good Night, and Good Luck was a movie about a period in his life that came out in 2005. He is really the guy that shaped the television news. He worked for CBS. he started out in radio and covered things about World War II from London. He was head of the network’s then “European bureau.”

Eventually, his career took him to television news, then in its early days. He was a force for free and uncensored media ergo free speech in the era where he really changed our television news during the nationwide hysteria of the communist hunting McCarthy era the early 1950s. He literally took on the establishment and won.

The movie centers around Edward R. Murrow and essentially the pissing match between him and whom he referred to as the junior senator from Wisconsin, or Joseph McCarthy.

This movie has been translated into a stage play with a limited run on Broadway and tonight, CNN and Max broadcast it live from a Broadway theater called the Winter Garden Theater in New York City.

George Clooney has the starring role of Edward R Murrow, and from the movie to the current stage version this has been his baby and what I saw tonight was nothing short of freaking fabulous.

You’re watching a play set in the 1950s about what happened then, yet it’s a version what we’re experiencing today as in right now in this country. It’s almost eerie.

Also important, this is the first time a Broadway play has been broadcast live on television. I really think CNN was sending this country a message by doing this. George Clooney certainly is and I applaud him for the courage of his convictions.

Clooney showed us the new McCarthyism loud and clear. Will it be a catalyst of popular culture to enact positive change? I don’t have the answer for that question.

What I do know is the show has shown us the importance of free and fair journalism and the First Amendment. This show showed us the importance of why we can’t just allow this country to evolve into a fake monarchy or an unpleasant oligarchy meets a political circus, more accurately.

Now I’ll get to what this post was originally about, so read on.

I saw a gentleman on Lancaster Avenue or Route 30 in Malvern/Frazer on Friday. This is not the scene you expect to see out here. You don’t expect to see an unhoused man with his life in a grocery cart out here. A friend of mine told me they saw him in Thorndale Thursday, so that’s quite a journey on foot if he was passing through Malvern/Frazer Friday.

This kind of visual is something you expect from a more urban setting. Although you don’t expect such a sight out here I am told there are plenty of homeless that you don’t see and a lot of them are probably hiding in plain sight.

What is being done for these people now I’ve heard of tent cities or settlements in Pottstown (Chester County and Montgomery County) and further west along the river.

There was a bigger tent city in Norristown (Montgomery County) that was broken up by their borough council and I don’t know where those people ever went.

We don’t seem to have anything that can help these homeless, many of whom have serious mental issues. We have lousy mental health system in this country. There are too few solidly good practitioners, and there are sorts of levels of other kinds people who call themselves mental health professionals, only they’re not.

We have a healthcare system that is so frustrating that there are no words for most people some days if they even have health insurance. And then there’s just the general economy. It’s supposed to be so fabulous now, so where’s the fabulous? Has fabulous been subjected to a tariff, by chance?

There are people out out of work and there are people can’t afford to have safe and decent places to live. There are people can’t afford groceries or medicine. There are many who are white collar slaves at work.

And most of us are just trying to get through each day, each hour of each day, and each week with our heads down and pray for something better. Do prayers work come? Sometimes I wonder.

To see that man Friday in front of Planet Fitness pushing a shopping cart with his life in it really gave me pause. The simple truth is that could be any of us, you just don’t know. There are people I know who struggle, yeah, most of us ourselves are just getting by. It’s like when you see somebody going through cancer or who has lost a loved one, that also could be any one of us on any given day.

We have elected officials of every level of government who have forgotten why they are in office, or they never really cared in the first place, and we were deceived.

Then we have the good eggs, kind of like the proverbial white hats who bang their head on the wall just trying to do their best to help their constituencies.

And while the fat cats seem to get fatter, our media coverage seems to decrease day by day. Local papers have become eviscerated by soulless, nameless, faceless, hedge fund owners.

Regional newspapers, suffer similar issues and every week another voice who represented us retires or leaves or moves on. Some of the young and new reporters that you find don’t really have the institutional knowledge to get some of what they’re covering, and some of them I wonder if they actually have the intellectual curiosity. And I’m not trying to be unfair, because there are also some who are new and tremendously talented and very good. Only you don’t hear their voice often enough.

And then you go to television news. First of all, I want to know who is instructing half of the women what to wear on air, especially when there broadcasting from the studio. And the men aren’t much better and maybe I’m just showing my age, but it really bothers me when I see male newscasters on air wearing sneakers or similarly walk the dog or go to the farmers market type shoes. Can we also talk about how they don’t know how to correctly pronounce the names of the people they’re interviewing or discussing or the streets or the towns?

Next onto what’s covered. And it’s like a game of bingo to try to get a local issue covered. It’s just as hard as it is to connect with your local TV station as it is to get a live person when your Internet goes down and you can’t and you want to talk to somebody from Verizon or Comcast.

And then you wonder when a local story does get placed that affects so many no matter where they live, do people actually care?

These are all my meandering thoughts for the day. You can like them or not like them, it’s entirely up to you. And if you don’t like what I or any other blogger writes about, you are free to start your own blog and see if you can do it better.

Ciao for now.