Puppets re-enact no-cameras-allowed corruption trial on the nightly news

Channel 19 in Akron, Ohio was disappointed that it wouldn't be allowed to take cameras into the corruption trial of Jimmy Dimora, a former county commissioner. But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla: they bring the courtroom proceeding to their viewers' TV sets by re-enacting them with puppets. As Lowering the Bar notes, "I think that all court proceedings should be reported in this way, but would settle for either puppet coverage of arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court or a full reenactment of the Rod Blagojevich trial."

News Team Not Allowed to Film in Courtroom; Turns to Puppetry Instead

• [Mujokan]

  Read the headline as “puppies”, was disappointed.

  • [taghag]

    hah, me too!

• [irksome]

  Supreme Court proceedings obviously require re-enactment through Kabuki but for corruption trials, I’d recommend Noh.

  • [irksome]

    Upon further reflection, and considering the current make up of the Supremes, I believe Interpretive Dance would be most appropriate.

• [semiotix]

  There are compelling cases to be made on due process grounds for banning television coverage of criminal trials (which is to say, banning 12-second summaries interrupted three times by 3-second sound bites). Defendants have every right to avoid being tried in the media, and you can’t sequester every single jury. Then again, a lot of those reasons fall apart by the time you’re talking about appellate courts or the Supreme Court.

  That said, it’s nice to see a local news show taking the trouble to, well, do any fucking thing at all related to the news. Most local news programs would be ten times better if they put in a tenth the effort it must have taken just to round up the puppets for this segment.

  • [surreality]

    Yeah, I can respect the idea of not allowing cameras for every court case. Plus, this is hilarious, and I’m glad they are giving it attention.

• [Mantissa128]

  A muppet prostitute tossing its head back in pleasure as money is stuffed down its top.

  I have the weirdest boner right now.

  • [amazonite]

    and by ‘boner’, you mean ‘beanie baby stuffed down your pants’.

    • [digi_owl]

      Careful, that could be considered pedophilia in some places.

• [ocatagon]

  Finally a reason to watch the news.

  • [digi_owl]

    Perhaps all news, especially regarding politics and finance, should be reported via puppets?

• [Snig]

  They have to do it this way, to allow cameras in would detract from the dignity of the court. 

• [pyster]

  btw; this is a cleveland ohio station. chan 19 is stationed in downtown cleveland and serves the surrounding areas.

• [taras]

  Puppets’

• [woid]

  I’ll betcha they took this idea from Keith Olbermann, who started doing Puppet Theatre on his MSNBC show 4 or 5 years ago. Who he took it from, I don’t know.

  “If this is anybody but Steve Allen, you’re stealing my joke!” — Krusty the Clown

  • [Incipient Madness]

    I think there used to be a TV show in France that did re enactments of news stories. There was even a version of the show in the US back in the 80s that totally failed. 

• [Bubba73]

  Not only must justice be done, it must also be seen to be done…..by puppets

• [failquail]

  The other option would be to recruit some animators from Taiwan to do CG animation versions :D

  http://www.nma.tv

• [millie fink]

  Friggin awesome.

  Can’t wait to see the Rod Blagojevich puppet!

• [Ken Ambler]

  Channel 19 in Cleveland isn’t exactly the most high brow station.  They started out as the Fox affiliate, then swapped with Channel 8 when they dropped CBS.

  Akron had much better stations, but they died off because we’re part of their TV market, and the Cleveland stations dominate our area. And we get puppet theatre! yah!

• [Miss Demeanor]

  the man on trial is County Commissioner but I suspect it’s really a puppet government behind all this 

• [SedanChair]

  when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla

  YES

• [joshs]

  This restored my faith in humanity today.

• [SoItBegins]

  Now we just need the services of Statler and Waldorf.

• [BombBlastLightingWaltz]

  …they had sex or something along those lines (*edit*a la Clinton)… I said, are you nuts, why did you tell her that?

  Harvard writers can’t tap these gems.

• [solid_ekans]

  It sounds like the puppets were at the end of the newscast. So it wasn’t like this was their main coverage of the story.
  However, I’ll paraphrase Mcluhan,  The muppet is the message

• [Palomino]

  I was born in ’64. For years, all anyone ever saw of a trial was an artist’s sketch of the proceedings.  Now that would be a fascinating read….”I Drew Bundy”. 

• [Henry Goodwin]

  “When life gives you SARS, make sarsaparilla.”

  Am I the only one thinking “No, when life gives you SARS, make life, TAKE THE SARS BACK! Get mad!”?

• [John Hudgens]

  Clevelanders must have a thing about puppet re-enactments… Tim Conway told us a story about how he and Ernie Anderson tried to do a puppet re-enactment of The Tonight Show on a local Cleveland TV show they had in the early 60s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDgvDllSkAQ

• [optuser]

  Thank you, BB for taking care of my to-do list item of tracking this down. My friend told me about it earlier in the week and I was in disbelief that it was on the news.

  Here’s a direct link to the news station including other installments of PUPPET’S COURT.

  http://www.woio.com/category/211979/video-landing-page?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6652751

• [grima]

  The cut to the jury box was priceless.

• [tinyinkling]

  Yikes! Can we get some training for the puppeteers? You move your thumb, not your fingers!