Riding the Waves: Soledad O'Brien and Warren Ballentine

I’m generally not a big follower of TV and radio news personalities but two stories this week have caught my eye.

CNN's Soledad O'Brien

First I learned here that Soledad O’Brien’s morning show on CNN is being canceled. I didn’t even know she had a morning show so what troubles me is not that she lost it [the ratings were pretty low, it seems] but that the big shots at the network were upset that too many of her viewers were ethnic. 

Don’t you just love this post-racial America?

Hey, if they don't want people of color to watch their network I'll be glad to help spread the word.

"The People's Attorney"

The second news personality, Warren Ballentine, not only lost his nationally syndicated radio show, but also may be on a fast track to lose something of far greater value: his freedom. It seems that Ballentine, an Illinois attorney, was indicted last week in connection with what federal officials are calling a ”$10 million mortgage fraud scheme.” Source

Chicago feds seem to think “the people’s attorney”, as Ballentine refers to himself, conspired with others to obtain nearly 30 bogus mortgage loans via fraudulent documents between December 2004 and May 2006.

Ballentine, 41, is scheduled to appear at a US Courthouse in Chicago on Feb. 5 on six counts of bank fraud, false statements and mail and wire fraud. He has proclaimed his innocence on Facebook and elsewhere.

I wouldn’t ordinarily have paid much attention to this except that Ballentine was a featured speaker last year at a Cleveland State University program I attended. He professed a fondness for our fair city and I think he professed Ohio roots. I hadn’t heard of him before that appearance but discovered he had a fair number of local listeners. I listened to his show once or twice and moved on.

Here’s hoping "the people’s attorney" does not represent himself.