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Yesterday while channel surfing we stumbled across an NBA TV show celebrating Sir Charles Barkley’s 50th birthday.   Ernie Johnson sat down with Barkley and recounted his upbringing, his NBA highs and lows, his life post NBA, etc.  Nevermind that the show originally aired in 2013, it was quite good.

Why was it quite good?  Barkley was a breath of fresh air.  Barkley is always a breath of fresh air.  He’s such a well-rounded person (pun unintended) overall, and he has three key attributes that we relish.   He is authentic, honest, and funny.  Those are three characteristics that are far too often MIA.

In today’s world don’t you yearn for more, plenty more, of all of that?

For example, there was nothing funny about Tony Bobulinski’s interview last night.  Well, at least he sure seemed honest and authentic.  Did you not see it?  Understandable.  CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC so far have refused to run any of this, in their words, “unsubstantiated” story on the Biden family profiting from Hunter selling access to his father to foreign and sometimes communist countries.

Is there a shred of honesty in those outlets calling themselves news organizations any more?  And, make no mistake, while Fox ran with it on Tucker Carlson’s show, they aren’t a bastion of authenticity in the media any longer either.

And, what about the subjects themselves?  There’s nothing funny about Hunter’s documented troubled personal life.  And where is he?  Shouldn’t he be screaming from the mountain tops about the travesty of it all and how honest he and his father are?

Patriarch Joe has repeatedly denied knowing anything about the pay to play ruse that Hunter and his cohorts ran in multiple foreign lands.  Now last evening comes and goes and in written and audiotaped form comes undeniable proof that Joe knew even when he said he did not.  We’ll stop shy of saying that Joe directly profited from these arrangements, but authenticity of that sordid transaction is only a checking account statement away it seems.

Say it ain’t so Joe, again.  Or, admit that it is so.  Honesty is always the best policy we’ve been told.

An authentic and honest media of days gone by always fact-checked a dishonest politician.  The Watergate story was dug up by very hardworking journalists who would stop at nothing to uncover the truth.  Now, the only mudslinging is done by a compliant media to cover up the hole that the side that they have chosen has dug for themselves.

Charles Barkley has considered strongly, on multiple occasions, pursuing an elected political office.  We so wish he would.

There’s nothing funny about what we’re missing.  Honesty and authenticity used to go a long way.

Would the media even cover his campaign? Actually, now that we think about it, Sir Charles is in the media.

Perhaps he could cover his own campaign accurately.  It’s about the only way to get it done these days.