My TV travelogue

Fact: Some people in New York are smarter than me

Stephanie Ruhle greets guests on the set before her MSNBC show Friday, April 4. Photo by Jerry Risius

Omaha’s humble Eppley Airfield looked bombed-out under construction but beautiful nonetheless Sunday after having breathed in 30Rock’s NBC Studios in the heart of Manhattan.

It was the Friday Nightcap on “The 11th Hour With Stephanie Ruhle” on MSNBC. I was invited to be part of a roundtable to discuss the week’s news — tariffs and tanking markets — along with Ruhle, Chris Jansing of MSNBC, Steve Liesman of CNBC and Sami Sage of the “Betches” podcast.

This Iowegian was wading in deep water. They are way smarter than me and were speaking with White House sources that day. When I reported to the studio Ruhle was in makeup, editing with producers via cellphone up to the last minute. I couldn’t help but gawk.

I had been on her show remotely before but never in person. You’re escorted into the studio wound tighter than a drum sure that you are going to mess something up.

“Where do I look?” I asked.

“You look at me,” Ruhle replied.

Pretty simple. Until you say beans dropped 22 cents that day, and I should have said 35 cents, but in fact bean prices dropped 22 PERCENT since November. I had my numbers down but got them confused by being overwhelmed in a chair under the lights. Chris Jansing had notes in front of her. She is smarter than me. This is not a newspaper where a copy editor catches your mistake. It is live, knucklehead.

Ruhle is a veteran of Wall Street who became a financial journalist. She is charming, whip-smart and fast. During a commercial break Ruhle ripped up the script for her next block about other news. The tariffs and markets demanded more attention.

“Sorry about that,” she told the producers.

Five, four, three, two, one … go. Bam. The cameras are back on and everyone rolls with it. Amazing.

An hour passed in five minutes. But I meant to say …

Ruhle delivered an astonishing closing shot talking straight into that camera in defense of journalism. And then it was a wrap.

I tried to make the points that rural voters are so angry they can’t see straight. They go hating on immigrants who turn their corn into chops, eggs and milk. Trump promises to deport those immigrants but can’t because the meatpackers are telling him it will kill them. He imposes tariffs and offers agribusiness bailouts. We all would like to sit on golden toilet seats so we delude ourselves. The bird flu could simply pass on its own, the ag secretary suggests, and we actually believe that food prices will go down and stock markets will go up. Our thinking has gone upside down.

It cost $120 to catch a cab from the airport to midtown Manhattan late Thursday afternoon. I could have taken a train instead and ended up in Philadelphia. Traffic and prices for everything are hideous. I have become my Dutch uncle.

Fortunate for me that I was able to stay for a couple evenings in Brooklyn with Audrey Delgado and Jerry Risius. Jerry co-directed the documentary “Storm Lake’” with Beth Levison, and Beth the fangirl got a hug from Stephanie. Mission accomplished. (The documentary is streaming for free during April at the PBS website, by the way.) Jerry made sure I showed up on time. The dude is a prince. Of course, it’s because he grew up on a Buffalo Center hog farm.

It was April drizzly yet tens of thousands gathered in Brooklyn to protest on Saturday what we pundits were complaining about the night before. I chose to eat French pastries at a warm, dry and charming cafe near Audrey & Jerry’s 1877 brownstone with niece Kathleen Massara, an Omaha girl made good as a culture editor at The New York Times. I discovered that she is not 12 anymore and knows more about editing than I do, and somehow she manages to hang on to that Omaha good cheer despite the editing process.

Audrey saw me off by making a tremendous Mexican breakfast Sunday morning. Jerry blasted me to LaGuardia, his secondary office as he hops around the globe on assignment. My seat mate on the afternoon flight was a young woman from Omaha who, like me, was happy to see the Missouri River below. People from Omaha love Omaha. She works for an architectural firm, her family has had season tickets to the College World Series for decades, she studied at Nebraska-Omaha. She’s sticking like glue.

She liked dropping in to see a niece in the Big Apple but sure was glad to talk Dodge Street. We covered Creighton basketball and Rosenblatt stadium, not protests or tariffs. It was a good way to land and decompress. On to the bathroom at the Denison truck stop.

You wake up at home in The City Beautiful on Monday morning and world markets crashed overnight. Bears growled on Wall Street. Corn and soy were up a bit. It’s a crapshoot knowing where it all leads. It was a thrill to hear “five, four, three, two, one, go.” Now brace yourself. Turbulence ahead.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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