I promised myself some time ago that I would stop wallowing in the
journalistic mud known as the celebrity beat.
No more wasted words about the boozy escapades of what passes for talent
these days.
Au revoir, Paris. Bye, Brittany. Later, Lindsay.
However.
It seems the California legislature is poised to prohibit me, and any
other journalist, from digging up dirt on stars gone wild.
A bill currently in play in Sacramento would make it a crime for law
enforcement of court employees to profit by releasing confidential
information gathered in criminal investigations or unauthorized photographs
of people in custody.
There's nothing like an assault on the First Amendment to make me want to
sign up for a job on the Hollywood desk.
The legislation is the brainchild of Sheriff Lee Baca who said it was
needed to preserve the integrity of the justice system at a time that a photo
of Paris Hilton in jail could fetch $500,000.
"It's like putting a bounty on her," Baca told the Los Angeles Times.
Sorry, Lee. It's more like the Mel Gibson Protection Act.
You remember, Mel. He was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving last
July and used the occasion to launch into an anti-Semitic tirade.
We know that because details of Gibson's behavior contained in the arrest
record were leaked to an entertainment blog TMZ.com, apparently by a deputy,
making Mel's conduct front page news for days.
The same TMZ also showed a video of a rapper known as The Game in jail
after he was arrested for allegedly making criminal threats. The video was
shot by an officer using a cell phone and showed the entertainer waving a wad
of money.
Then there were allegations made by deputies that Paris Hilton received
special treatment during her time in jail, including hand delivered mail and
access to a free cell phone while prisoners had to wait in line to use a pay
phone.
It's enough to make a sheriff spring into action.
But as the legislation is written, most of this stuff would still have
made it into the public domain.
That's because the bill would make it a misdemeanor for those entrusted
with information to received financial gain in exhange for confidential
information obtained in a criminal investigation or to solicit or offer
financial compensation for such information.
No one involved in the Gibson, Hilton or The Game incidents have been
found to have asked for or received any compensation financial or otherwise
for the information they provided.
Until someone does accept "financial gain," whether that's cash or a cup
of coffee, all this bill does is attempt to regulate news gathering and keep
the public in the dark. And to save Baca further embarassment.
I'm no advocate of checkbook journalism. If you pay for gossip, you're
going to get more gossip in exchange for more paydays, the facts be damned.
It's the law of the marketplace.
Besides, most people talk for free. Nobody got paid a nickel when
Watergate was being reported.
Finally, the bill would not prohibit a newspaper or blog from publishing
information obtained improperly. And it would not quash acts protected by
state whistle-blower laws, according to its author, Julia Brownley (D-Santa
Monica).
So assuming Baca has the power to discipline any of his deputies he finds
selling information out the back door, what exactly does this bill
accomplish?
Nothing more than delivering a blow to press freedoms.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Want Fries With That Lawsuit?
Are you a young lawyer looking for your big break?
Do you want to be in on the action, where the lawsuits fly like so many
migrating birds?
Do you want to make big bucks suing a deep-pockets corporation, or maybe
make a hefty salary defending big business against get-rich-quick schemes?
Then go to work at McDonalds. Or go to work suing them. Either way,
there will be more business than a drive-through window at lunchtime.
I came to this realization recently when I read that that a young woman in
the Minneapolis/St. Paul area is suing McDonald's after buying a cup of
coffee with cream and sugar at a drive-thru.
After taking a sip, according to her lawsuit, she realized that something
was wrong: The cream was lumpy and rancid.
A couple of minutes later, she asserts she became violently ill. He
reaction was so extreme, her suit contends, that she wound up spending five
days in the hospital with severe bowel problems requiring surgery.
Together with her husband, who claims he's been deprived of her "society,
companionship, and consortium," she is suing for at least $100,000 in
damages.
The owner of the McDonald's in question denies anything was wrong with the
cream. He sees another explanation for the lawsuit, saying, "I have no clue
what this lady is after besides money."
Want fries with that litigation?
Look, I'm not stepping to the plate to defend McDonald's. As a
corporation, they have profited at the expense of people's health. Their
shameless pandering to children through advertising seems to follow the old
adage that "if you hook 'em young, you hook them for life" made popular by
the tobacco industry.
On the other hand, some of the suits targeting McDonald's appear to be
filed by people with quarter-pounders for brains.
Some examples:
- A man who bought lunch at a drive-thru window continued to drive after
wedging his chocolate milk shake between his legs and placing his burger and
fries on the seat next to him. When he leaned over to reach for his fries he
inadvertently squeezed his legs together, causing the cold shake to leap out
of its cup and onto his lap. Stunned, he then plowed his car into the vehicle
in front of him. The motorist who was on the receiving end of this mishap
sued the driver as well as McDonald's. The plaintiff's attorney argued that
the fast-food franchise neglected to warn customers of the dangers of eating
and driving.
- A woman claimed she suffered a second degree burn on her chin after a
scalding hot pickle fell from one of several small hamburgers which she and
her husband bought from a McDonald's restaurant in Knoxville, Tenn. Her
husband also sued for $15,000, saying that he had been deprived of the
services and companionship of his wife. The lawsuit contended that the pickle
was defective and unreasonably dangerous to the customer.
- Another couple alleging that a McBurrito was so oversaturated with black
pepper that it caused the husband to have two months of daily nosebleeds, an
infection in his mouth and possible damage to his vocal chords.
- Then there is the guy who claimed he was allergic to cheese. So he
goes to McDonald's and orders two Quarter Pounders without cheese. He gets
his food, goes home and, get this, sits in a dark room, does not check for
the absence of cheese, takes a bite, and "almost dies" because there is, in
fact, cheese. He's seeking $10 million.
- A parent, after letting his daughter eat an Egg McMuffin for breakfast
and a Big Mac meal for dinner, claimed, "I always believed McDonald's was
healthy for my children." The girl, 19, is 5-feet-6 and weighs 270 pounds.
This last suit mirrored an avalanche of litigation suits claiming
McDonald's caused obesity including a suit filed by three New York City
teenagers who claim the fast food chain's food caused them to gain as much as
200 pounds and develop serious health problems including heart disease and
diabetes.
One could reasonably ask, how soon was it they began to notice the extra
weight?
Perhaps the most famous McDonald's suit was filed by the 79-year-old woman
who spilled hot coffee on her lap, suffering third degree burns. And while
many point to this case as the poster child for our litigious society, the
fact is McDonald's was on the wrong end of it. They were found to be serving
coffee 30 to 50 degrees hotter than other restaurants and that the Shriner
Burn Institute had previously warned them not to serve coffee that hot. It
was also revealed that there had been 700 previous cases involving scalding
coffee at McDonald's. The victim was awarded $500,000 but settled out of
court for less.
So what does this all mean?
It means that the United States has become the most litigious nation in
the world, a place where people increasingly take little or no responsibility
for their own actions and lawyers troll for "victims."
It means the the notion of caveat emptor has been replaced by one of
"what's in it for me."
And it means that if you flip burgers to the tune of $3 billion in
profits, you can expect to have a legal bullseye on your back. It gives new
meaning to Big Mac attack.
Do you want to be in on the action, where the lawsuits fly like so many
migrating birds?
Do you want to make big bucks suing a deep-pockets corporation, or maybe
make a hefty salary defending big business against get-rich-quick schemes?
Then go to work at McDonalds. Or go to work suing them. Either way,
there will be more business than a drive-through window at lunchtime.
I came to this realization recently when I read that that a young woman in
the Minneapolis/St. Paul area is suing McDonald's after buying a cup of
coffee with cream and sugar at a drive-thru.
After taking a sip, according to her lawsuit, she realized that something
was wrong: The cream was lumpy and rancid.
A couple of minutes later, she asserts she became violently ill. He
reaction was so extreme, her suit contends, that she wound up spending five
days in the hospital with severe bowel problems requiring surgery.
Together with her husband, who claims he's been deprived of her "society,
companionship, and consortium," she is suing for at least $100,000 in
damages.
The owner of the McDonald's in question denies anything was wrong with the
cream. He sees another explanation for the lawsuit, saying, "I have no clue
what this lady is after besides money."
Want fries with that litigation?
Look, I'm not stepping to the plate to defend McDonald's. As a
corporation, they have profited at the expense of people's health. Their
shameless pandering to children through advertising seems to follow the old
adage that "if you hook 'em young, you hook them for life" made popular by
the tobacco industry.
On the other hand, some of the suits targeting McDonald's appear to be
filed by people with quarter-pounders for brains.
Some examples:
- A man who bought lunch at a drive-thru window continued to drive after
wedging his chocolate milk shake between his legs and placing his burger and
fries on the seat next to him. When he leaned over to reach for his fries he
inadvertently squeezed his legs together, causing the cold shake to leap out
of its cup and onto his lap. Stunned, he then plowed his car into the vehicle
in front of him. The motorist who was on the receiving end of this mishap
sued the driver as well as McDonald's. The plaintiff's attorney argued that
the fast-food franchise neglected to warn customers of the dangers of eating
and driving.
- A woman claimed she suffered a second degree burn on her chin after a
scalding hot pickle fell from one of several small hamburgers which she and
her husband bought from a McDonald's restaurant in Knoxville, Tenn. Her
husband also sued for $15,000, saying that he had been deprived of the
services and companionship of his wife. The lawsuit contended that the pickle
was defective and unreasonably dangerous to the customer.
- Another couple alleging that a McBurrito was so oversaturated with black
pepper that it caused the husband to have two months of daily nosebleeds, an
infection in his mouth and possible damage to his vocal chords.
- Then there is the guy who claimed he was allergic to cheese. So he
goes to McDonald's and orders two Quarter Pounders without cheese. He gets
his food, goes home and, get this, sits in a dark room, does not check for
the absence of cheese, takes a bite, and "almost dies" because there is, in
fact, cheese. He's seeking $10 million.
- A parent, after letting his daughter eat an Egg McMuffin for breakfast
and a Big Mac meal for dinner, claimed, "I always believed McDonald's was
healthy for my children." The girl, 19, is 5-feet-6 and weighs 270 pounds.
This last suit mirrored an avalanche of litigation suits claiming
McDonald's caused obesity including a suit filed by three New York City
teenagers who claim the fast food chain's food caused them to gain as much as
200 pounds and develop serious health problems including heart disease and
diabetes.
One could reasonably ask, how soon was it they began to notice the extra
weight?
Perhaps the most famous McDonald's suit was filed by the 79-year-old woman
who spilled hot coffee on her lap, suffering third degree burns. And while
many point to this case as the poster child for our litigious society, the
fact is McDonald's was on the wrong end of it. They were found to be serving
coffee 30 to 50 degrees hotter than other restaurants and that the Shriner
Burn Institute had previously warned them not to serve coffee that hot. It
was also revealed that there had been 700 previous cases involving scalding
coffee at McDonald's. The victim was awarded $500,000 but settled out of
court for less.
So what does this all mean?
It means that the United States has become the most litigious nation in
the world, a place where people increasingly take little or no responsibility
for their own actions and lawyers troll for "victims."
It means the the notion of caveat emptor has been replaced by one of
"what's in it for me."
And it means that if you flip burgers to the tune of $3 billion in
profits, you can expect to have a legal bullseye on your back. It gives new
meaning to Big Mac attack.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Does Not Compute
About 10 years ago in Issaquah, Wash., a man was coaxed out of his home by
a police SWAT team after he pulled a gun and shot his personal computer.
The computer, in a home office on the second floor of a townhouse, had
four bullet holes in the hard drive and one in the monitor.
Police evacuated the complex, contacted the 43-year old man by telephone
and got him to come out. He was taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation.
I'm betting that not only was he found to be perfectly sane, but that if
he went to trial, he was judged to be not guilty.
Who among us would have convicted him?
I mention this because my home computer went ballistic recently, behaving
like some petulant child who refuses to do as he is told.
After frank and open discussions with service representatives from
Microsoft, American Online, Charter Communications and Hewlett Packard, all
of whom apparently have a hand in the seamless operation of my computer, the
damn thing still wouldn't work. Had I been armed, I might have joined my
comrade in arms in Issaquah.
But I took a less violent route. I called a computer repair person. Some
40 hours and $500 later, my machine works again. Sort of. It functions but
not quite the same as it did before, sort of like talking to someone who has
recently had a lobotomy. Or like Hal, post "2001: A Space Odyssey."
More disturbing was the fact that the repairman said he found 49 viruses
in my computer. He explained that many of these viruses are generated by
repair people themselves as a way to keep business booming.
Just another reason to love your computer.
It could have been worse. I could have been the guy sitting at the screen
when more than 20,000 international passengers were stranded for hours at Los
Angeles International Airport over the weekend.
It seems a malfunctioning computer system prevented U.S. officials from
processing the travelers' entry into the country.
The resulting chaos did two things: (1) it tied up the airport in knots
and (2) reminded us how utterly dependent we are on technology and how
helpless we are when it fails.
When my home computer was down, I lost access to e-mails and other data I
rely upon in my work and in the conduct of my personal life. I felt isolated.
I also discovered how much I use my computer for entertainment. Surfing
the net is a lot more enjoyable than watching sitcom reruns.
These are minor irritations compared to being herded like cattle at LAX
for hours on end.
But technology run amok is a migraine for all of us these days. Consider:
A computer with the job of issuing vehicular citations goofed and sent
notices to 41,000 residents of Paris, France informing them that they were
charged with murder, prostitution and illegal sale of drugs.
As the calendar changed to the year 2000, items rented from a large video
rental chain prior to January 1st, 2000 and returned after January 1st were
reportedly marked for late fees of $91,250, as though the items were 100
years overdue.
The 2003 North America blackout was triggered by a local outage that went
undetected due to a glitch in the monitoring software.
On June 3, 1980, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
reported that the U.S. was under missile attack due to a computer glitch.
While scientists won't promise that someday they'll produce a mistake
proof, anxiety free computer, they are at least tackling the issue.
Within the next decade, computers will be able to feel anguish and adjust
to soothe the moods of irate users.
Machines with emotional intelligence will be built within the next five to
10 years, researchers told a symposium sponsored by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Media Lab and reported by CNN. The key to
successfully integrating affective computing into daily life is to allow
users to maintain control over their computers rather than vice versa, said
Rosalind Picard, an associate professor at the Media Lab.
Affective computing eventually will be used to make computers respond to
human interaction, making it less frustrating, and perhaps easier, to use
computers, researchers said.
More importantly, warm and caring personal computers may prevent a user
from unloading his Smith & Wesson into the hard drive.
And that's progress.
a police SWAT team after he pulled a gun and shot his personal computer.
The computer, in a home office on the second floor of a townhouse, had
four bullet holes in the hard drive and one in the monitor.
Police evacuated the complex, contacted the 43-year old man by telephone
and got him to come out. He was taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation.
I'm betting that not only was he found to be perfectly sane, but that if
he went to trial, he was judged to be not guilty.
Who among us would have convicted him?
I mention this because my home computer went ballistic recently, behaving
like some petulant child who refuses to do as he is told.
After frank and open discussions with service representatives from
Microsoft, American Online, Charter Communications and Hewlett Packard, all
of whom apparently have a hand in the seamless operation of my computer, the
damn thing still wouldn't work. Had I been armed, I might have joined my
comrade in arms in Issaquah.
But I took a less violent route. I called a computer repair person. Some
40 hours and $500 later, my machine works again. Sort of. It functions but
not quite the same as it did before, sort of like talking to someone who has
recently had a lobotomy. Or like Hal, post "2001: A Space Odyssey."
More disturbing was the fact that the repairman said he found 49 viruses
in my computer. He explained that many of these viruses are generated by
repair people themselves as a way to keep business booming.
Just another reason to love your computer.
It could have been worse. I could have been the guy sitting at the screen
when more than 20,000 international passengers were stranded for hours at Los
Angeles International Airport over the weekend.
It seems a malfunctioning computer system prevented U.S. officials from
processing the travelers' entry into the country.
The resulting chaos did two things: (1) it tied up the airport in knots
and (2) reminded us how utterly dependent we are on technology and how
helpless we are when it fails.
When my home computer was down, I lost access to e-mails and other data I
rely upon in my work and in the conduct of my personal life. I felt isolated.
I also discovered how much I use my computer for entertainment. Surfing
the net is a lot more enjoyable than watching sitcom reruns.
These are minor irritations compared to being herded like cattle at LAX
for hours on end.
But technology run amok is a migraine for all of us these days. Consider:
A computer with the job of issuing vehicular citations goofed and sent
notices to 41,000 residents of Paris, France informing them that they were
charged with murder, prostitution and illegal sale of drugs.
As the calendar changed to the year 2000, items rented from a large video
rental chain prior to January 1st, 2000 and returned after January 1st were
reportedly marked for late fees of $91,250, as though the items were 100
years overdue.
The 2003 North America blackout was triggered by a local outage that went
undetected due to a glitch in the monitoring software.
On June 3, 1980, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
reported that the U.S. was under missile attack due to a computer glitch.
While scientists won't promise that someday they'll produce a mistake
proof, anxiety free computer, they are at least tackling the issue.
Within the next decade, computers will be able to feel anguish and adjust
to soothe the moods of irate users.
Machines with emotional intelligence will be built within the next five to
10 years, researchers told a symposium sponsored by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Media Lab and reported by CNN. The key to
successfully integrating affective computing into daily life is to allow
users to maintain control over their computers rather than vice versa, said
Rosalind Picard, an associate professor at the Media Lab.
Affective computing eventually will be used to make computers respond to
human interaction, making it less frustrating, and perhaps easier, to use
computers, researchers said.
More importantly, warm and caring personal computers may prevent a user
from unloading his Smith & Wesson into the hard drive.
And that's progress.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Street Wise
Good news. They've found a cure for road rage.
There's now a place where you rant, rave and expose before the world that
idiot who cut you off on the freeway last night.
A website called LA Can't Drive pulls no punches when it comes to
assessing our driving habits.
"Los Angeles drivers can't drive. Plain and simple. Basic traffic laws and
driving etiquette clearly do not apply in a town where the people seem to
operate in their own little bubble, completely unaware or dismissive of
others on the road.
"Call it what you will: self-entitlement, negligence, malaise, ignorance.
My goal? To have mandatory driving tests randomly issued where drivers are
eligible for selection after 6 years. Consider this jury duty for the road."
While a web site might not provide the raw animal satisfaction of laying
on the horn, drilling some jerk with your high beams or flashing the
one-finger salute, at least you can vent without getting involved in a
shooting war.
LA Can't Drive is the brainchild of a blogger who calls himself I-95,
U-405 and says he is "a true bicoastalite who has driven all around the
United States and has found that L.A. drivers are second only to New Jersey
as to the worst drivers in this country."
Sample post:
"So anyone who commutes west going home from work in the early evening
knows how hard it can be to see anything on the road with the sun blazing in
your face, even with sunglasses on. Everything from oncoming cars, crossing
pedestrians, etc. are often reduced to glowing dark shadows.
"So what did this blonde bimbo in this Toyota 4Runner choose to do? Speed,
tailgate, weave erratically between lanes, not signal, and yap emphatically
in her cell phone. Apparently, holding on to her cell phone was more
important than signaling, and clearly she saw nothing wrong with driving
haphazardly with one hand, speeding into the sunset. In the short drive from
Highland to Fairfax, she nearly rear-ended three other vehicles because of
her tailgating and (what I guess to be) her inability to see the brake lights
ahead of her because of the garrish setting sun.
"You would think one near miss would be a clear enough signal for her to
start concentrating on driving more carefully. But, alas, to no avail as
another oblivious driver roams our city streets. And the average IQ of Los
Angeles drops another yet another few points...."
Other posts, complete with photos, ridicule senior citizens, Mustang
drivers and lane-splitting motorcycle riders, worthy targets all.
But, alas, LA Can't Drive has got it all wrong.
Los Angeles motorists are not the worst in the U.S.
That distinction goes to the good folks of Columbia, S.C., where bad
drivers careen down 18th century streets. Columbia is followed by St. Louis,
Mo., Greensboro, N.C., Jackson, Miss., and Cheyenne, Wyo. where equestrian
mishaps must factor into the equation. Of 100 cities, according to a
well-researched survey of the nation's worst drivers, Los Angeles was only
number 39.
On a statewide level, drivers in Rhode Island, Massachusettes, New Jersey,
New York, Washington, D.C. and Maryland rank worse than their California
counterparts, according to another survey.
It must be something akin to bumper cars in Rhode Island since the entire
state could fit into West Covina.
More than 5,000 licensed drivers between the ages of 16 and 65 were
administered a 20-question written test designed to measure basic knowledge
about traffic laws and safety. They were also surveyed about their general
driving habits.
That's not to say California drivers ranked at the top. The best drivers
live in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Iowa, three places where the weather is
so bad most people would rather stay home.
And yet another survey ranked the accident rate by occupation.
Not surprisingly, students ranked first followed by doctors, lawyers and
architects.
I'm not sure what that means. But if you see a doctor cruising down a
street in Columbia, S.C., get the hell out of the way.
There's now a place where you rant, rave and expose before the world that
idiot who cut you off on the freeway last night.
A website called LA Can't Drive pulls no punches when it comes to
assessing our driving habits.
"Los Angeles drivers can't drive. Plain and simple. Basic traffic laws and
driving etiquette clearly do not apply in a town where the people seem to
operate in their own little bubble, completely unaware or dismissive of
others on the road.
"Call it what you will: self-entitlement, negligence, malaise, ignorance.
My goal? To have mandatory driving tests randomly issued where drivers are
eligible for selection after 6 years. Consider this jury duty for the road."
While a web site might not provide the raw animal satisfaction of laying
on the horn, drilling some jerk with your high beams or flashing the
one-finger salute, at least you can vent without getting involved in a
shooting war.
LA Can't Drive is the brainchild of a blogger who calls himself I-95,
U-405 and says he is "a true bicoastalite who has driven all around the
United States and has found that L.A. drivers are second only to New Jersey
as to the worst drivers in this country."
Sample post:
"So anyone who commutes west going home from work in the early evening
knows how hard it can be to see anything on the road with the sun blazing in
your face, even with sunglasses on. Everything from oncoming cars, crossing
pedestrians, etc. are often reduced to glowing dark shadows.
"So what did this blonde bimbo in this Toyota 4Runner choose to do? Speed,
tailgate, weave erratically between lanes, not signal, and yap emphatically
in her cell phone. Apparently, holding on to her cell phone was more
important than signaling, and clearly she saw nothing wrong with driving
haphazardly with one hand, speeding into the sunset. In the short drive from
Highland to Fairfax, she nearly rear-ended three other vehicles because of
her tailgating and (what I guess to be) her inability to see the brake lights
ahead of her because of the garrish setting sun.
"You would think one near miss would be a clear enough signal for her to
start concentrating on driving more carefully. But, alas, to no avail as
another oblivious driver roams our city streets. And the average IQ of Los
Angeles drops another yet another few points...."
Other posts, complete with photos, ridicule senior citizens, Mustang
drivers and lane-splitting motorcycle riders, worthy targets all.
But, alas, LA Can't Drive has got it all wrong.
Los Angeles motorists are not the worst in the U.S.
That distinction goes to the good folks of Columbia, S.C., where bad
drivers careen down 18th century streets. Columbia is followed by St. Louis,
Mo., Greensboro, N.C., Jackson, Miss., and Cheyenne, Wyo. where equestrian
mishaps must factor into the equation. Of 100 cities, according to a
well-researched survey of the nation's worst drivers, Los Angeles was only
number 39.
On a statewide level, drivers in Rhode Island, Massachusettes, New Jersey,
New York, Washington, D.C. and Maryland rank worse than their California
counterparts, according to another survey.
It must be something akin to bumper cars in Rhode Island since the entire
state could fit into West Covina.
More than 5,000 licensed drivers between the ages of 16 and 65 were
administered a 20-question written test designed to measure basic knowledge
about traffic laws and safety. They were also surveyed about their general
driving habits.
That's not to say California drivers ranked at the top. The best drivers
live in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Iowa, three places where the weather is
so bad most people would rather stay home.
And yet another survey ranked the accident rate by occupation.
Not surprisingly, students ranked first followed by doctors, lawyers and
architects.
I'm not sure what that means. But if you see a doctor cruising down a
street in Columbia, S.C., get the hell out of the way.
In Pursuit of Oblivion
It is difficult to characterize someone's death as senseless.
But when four newsmen died in Phoenix after two helicopters
collided while covering some low-grade cop chase, the conclusion was
inescapable: four good people gave their lives in an exercise that was as
meaningless as the story they were covering.
The incident occured as police chased a man who had fled a traffic stop.
An armada of five news helicopters swarmed over the pursuit, more resouces
than most TV stations devote to covering city hall in a given month.
It was a media feeding frenzy. And sometimes they can be dangerous.
That's no armchair observation. I became an unwitting participant in one
of these incidents several years back.
I had hooked up with KFWB reporter Jeff Baugh and his pilot at Van Nuys
airport while doing research for a column on traffic in L.A.
Our languid flight over the Southern California freeway network lasted
about 30 minutes before the word came over a police scanner.
The cops were in pursuit of an ex-con who refused to stop because he had a
broken taillight. Soon, we joined the chase.
"I counted 11 aircraft, including two from the police and at least one
fixed-wing plane above the chase," I wrote at the time. "All must have been
within a thousand feet of each other.
"This high wire act was complicated by the fact that the driver changed
directions and freeways at least eight times during the chase, prompting the
aeiral circus to do the same. In the late afternoon sky, visibility was often
murkey at best. This was clearly dangerous stuff.
"There's a curious protocol attached to police pursuits. The pilots
almost never watch the action. They are too busy looking out for each
other. Their position relative to the pursuit is dictated by others
on board. I observed that TV crews always fly on the left, radio and
others on the right. The reason? By flying on the left, TV cameramen
can shoot through the driver's side window and get a good look at
who's behind the wheel."
Finally, after an hour, the suspect pulled in front of a relative's
residence and quietly surrendered to police.
By the time the late evening news came on, the incident was nearly
forgotten. One station gave it a couple of minutes. Most ignored it.
The potential for disaster was great that day. The potential became
reality in Phoenix.
And now come the demands for reform, some calling for the grounding of TV
choppers.
"If broadcasters won't do it voluntarily, then the Federal Aviation
Administration, acting on behalf of us innocents on the ground, ought to step
in and do it for them," wrote Alan D. Mutter, a veteran media executive.
"Apart from the lives of newsmen lost in helicopter crashes over the
years," he continued, "it cost no less that $1 million a year to operate a
modest-dsized news chopper carrying a crew of two...That's enough money to
hire 10 t0 15 journalists to develop real stories."
Another blogger wrote, "It's one thing to send journalists into a combat
zone to cover a war, with the understanding that they might be killed. It's
quite another to send pilots and cameramen out in breathless pursuit of a
highway chase, or something else that floats in over the police scanner.
Journalists should mourn the passing of their colleagues in Phoenix, but they
should also ask themselves a serious question: Was it really worth it, and
(without necessary reforms), how long will it be before it happens again?"
This is not new territory.
LAPD Chief William Bratton several years ago urged local television
stations to halt their coverage of "careless individuals" from seeking fame
in the media spotlight.
Bratton said that obsessive media coverage of car chases was dangerous
because it gave miscreants an incentive to flee from the police and become
the stars of their very own television shows.
"You know this isn't what your stations should be doing," Bratton said.
Television executives, in a curious bit of logic, responded that if
anything their coverage acted as a deterrent because televised chases
invariably ended in either the arrest or the death of the suspect.
And so the car chase remains a TV staple.
It's what TV does. Manufactured crises such as pursuits and endless
amounts of crime news drive TV ratings. If it bleeds, it leads, as they say
in the TV newsroom.
It's why you are 50 times more likely to see reports of murder, rape, or
car chases and 20 times more likely to see a story of a fire on your local
news than you are a story about education, science, marriage, or pollution,
according to media author Alan Mutter and his research of news coverage
compiled by the Local TV News Media Project at the University of Delaware.
So don't expect the EyewitnessLiveBreakingNews teams to leave the choppers
on the ground anytime soon.
In the meantime, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris is threatening murder
charges against the suspect who was the focus of the coverage.
While that's legally dubious, massive civil awards to the families of the
victims are a real possibility.
And if that hastens the end of an empty journalistic practice, the four newsmen in Phoenix will not have died in vain.
But when four newsmen died in Phoenix after two helicopters
collided while covering some low-grade cop chase, the conclusion was
inescapable: four good people gave their lives in an exercise that was as
meaningless as the story they were covering.
The incident occured as police chased a man who had fled a traffic stop.
An armada of five news helicopters swarmed over the pursuit, more resouces
than most TV stations devote to covering city hall in a given month.
It was a media feeding frenzy. And sometimes they can be dangerous.
That's no armchair observation. I became an unwitting participant in one
of these incidents several years back.
I had hooked up with KFWB reporter Jeff Baugh and his pilot at Van Nuys
airport while doing research for a column on traffic in L.A.
Our languid flight over the Southern California freeway network lasted
about 30 minutes before the word came over a police scanner.
The cops were in pursuit of an ex-con who refused to stop because he had a
broken taillight. Soon, we joined the chase.
"I counted 11 aircraft, including two from the police and at least one
fixed-wing plane above the chase," I wrote at the time. "All must have been
within a thousand feet of each other.
"This high wire act was complicated by the fact that the driver changed
directions and freeways at least eight times during the chase, prompting the
aeiral circus to do the same. In the late afternoon sky, visibility was often
murkey at best. This was clearly dangerous stuff.
"There's a curious protocol attached to police pursuits. The pilots
almost never watch the action. They are too busy looking out for each
other. Their position relative to the pursuit is dictated by others
on board. I observed that TV crews always fly on the left, radio and
others on the right. The reason? By flying on the left, TV cameramen
can shoot through the driver's side window and get a good look at
who's behind the wheel."
Finally, after an hour, the suspect pulled in front of a relative's
residence and quietly surrendered to police.
By the time the late evening news came on, the incident was nearly
forgotten. One station gave it a couple of minutes. Most ignored it.
The potential for disaster was great that day. The potential became
reality in Phoenix.
And now come the demands for reform, some calling for the grounding of TV
choppers.
"If broadcasters won't do it voluntarily, then the Federal Aviation
Administration, acting on behalf of us innocents on the ground, ought to step
in and do it for them," wrote Alan D. Mutter, a veteran media executive.
"Apart from the lives of newsmen lost in helicopter crashes over the
years," he continued, "it cost no less that $1 million a year to operate a
modest-dsized news chopper carrying a crew of two...That's enough money to
hire 10 t0 15 journalists to develop real stories."
Another blogger wrote, "It's one thing to send journalists into a combat
zone to cover a war, with the understanding that they might be killed. It's
quite another to send pilots and cameramen out in breathless pursuit of a
highway chase, or something else that floats in over the police scanner.
Journalists should mourn the passing of their colleagues in Phoenix, but they
should also ask themselves a serious question: Was it really worth it, and
(without necessary reforms), how long will it be before it happens again?"
This is not new territory.
LAPD Chief William Bratton several years ago urged local television
stations to halt their coverage of "careless individuals" from seeking fame
in the media spotlight.
Bratton said that obsessive media coverage of car chases was dangerous
because it gave miscreants an incentive to flee from the police and become
the stars of their very own television shows.
"You know this isn't what your stations should be doing," Bratton said.
Television executives, in a curious bit of logic, responded that if
anything their coverage acted as a deterrent because televised chases
invariably ended in either the arrest or the death of the suspect.
And so the car chase remains a TV staple.
It's what TV does. Manufactured crises such as pursuits and endless
amounts of crime news drive TV ratings. If it bleeds, it leads, as they say
in the TV newsroom.
It's why you are 50 times more likely to see reports of murder, rape, or
car chases and 20 times more likely to see a story of a fire on your local
news than you are a story about education, science, marriage, or pollution,
according to media author Alan Mutter and his research of news coverage
compiled by the Local TV News Media Project at the University of Delaware.
So don't expect the EyewitnessLiveBreakingNews teams to leave the choppers
on the ground anytime soon.
In the meantime, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris is threatening murder
charges against the suspect who was the focus of the coverage.
While that's legally dubious, massive civil awards to the families of the
victims are a real possibility.
And if that hastens the end of an empty journalistic practice, the four newsmen in Phoenix will not have died in vain.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Goodby to Zombies From Space
Let us pause, remove the hats from our collective heads, place them over
our hearts and observe a moment of silence as the hearse rolls by, carrying
the remains of an old friend.
That friend is the Weekly World News, which was to supermaket checkout
lines what the New York Times is to international reporting. It will cease
publication on Aug. 3 of this year, according to its publisher, American
Media.
American Media is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, and is best known
as the publisher of the National Enquirer. The company announced last month
it was exploring the sale of five of its 16 magazines as part of a strategy
to focus on celebrity weeklies and lifestyle magazines
That's what they say.
But we know WWN was in fact killed by brain-eating zombies from outer
space.
And its demise has left the world a much more boring place.
Where else but the WWN could you find stories like, "Hillary Clinton
Adopts Alien Baby" or "Termites Eat the Eifel Tower," "Hard Up Sheik Sheds
His Wives, 200 Woman Harem to be Sold on eBay." or "Mink Coat Comes Alive and
Bites Rich Widow to Death."
Where else can we learn that French President Jacques Chirac has announced
a plan for France to surrender retroactively in all of history's previous
wars or that the Pope wants Mel Gibson as successor or that Dick Cheney is a
robot or that a cruel surgeon re-attached a pair of conjoined twins after
they failed to pay their medical bill for the initial surgical separation he
performed.
Where else do you read "Doomsday Dragons Heading for Earth!'' "Gal Uses
Dead Hubby's Ashes for Breast Implants!'' "Painting of Elvis Weeps Real
Tears!'' or "Oprah to Replace Lincoln on $5 Bill!"
Where else do you find a columnist like Ed Anger. His book, "Let's Pave
the Stupid Rainforests and Give School Teachers Stun Guns," could have served
as a primer for right wing radio talk show hosts.
The Economist once described Anger as a man who "hated foreigners, yoga,
whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza; he liked flogging,
electrocutions and beer."
There was never a slow news day at the WWN. That's because there was no
need for news. While it never publicly questioned the accuracy of its own
stories, even billig itself as "the world's most reliable paper," it did
begin stating several years back that "the reader should suspend disbelief
for the sake of enjoyment."
As if we had to be told.
Sal Ivon, former managing editor, said, "If someone calls me up and says
their toaster is talking to them, I don't refer them to professional help, I
say, 'Put the toaster on the phone'."?
Perhaps the most famous character to appear in the pages of WWN was Bat
Boy, a half bat, half boy found in a cave.
According to published reports, Bat Boy was first featured in a 1992
issue. He since has led police on a high speed chase, fought in the war on
terror, led the troops to capture Saddam Hussein, bitten Santa Claus and
traveled into outer space. In 2000, he gave his endorsement to Al Gore. It is
fortold that he will become president in 2028.
We could do worse. And have.
A personal favorite was WWN's cover story following the Northridge
earthquake, headlined "Earthquake Releases Demons From Hell." It was
illustrated by an alleged photo showing a couple of T-Rex looking dudes
terrorizing San Fernando Valley residents while hanging out besides a
collapsed freeway.
I think the folks who conceived these stories were geniusus and the
writers were worthy of Pulitzer consideration, a view probably shared by no
other human being.
Well, there was one other person. In the film "Men in Black, Tommy Lee
Jones refers to WWN as the "best damn investigative reporting on the planet."
Now, all are left with for comic relief is the Fox television network.
our hearts and observe a moment of silence as the hearse rolls by, carrying
the remains of an old friend.
That friend is the Weekly World News, which was to supermaket checkout
lines what the New York Times is to international reporting. It will cease
publication on Aug. 3 of this year, according to its publisher, American
Media.
American Media is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, and is best known
as the publisher of the National Enquirer. The company announced last month
it was exploring the sale of five of its 16 magazines as part of a strategy
to focus on celebrity weeklies and lifestyle magazines
That's what they say.
But we know WWN was in fact killed by brain-eating zombies from outer
space.
And its demise has left the world a much more boring place.
Where else but the WWN could you find stories like, "Hillary Clinton
Adopts Alien Baby" or "Termites Eat the Eifel Tower," "Hard Up Sheik Sheds
His Wives, 200 Woman Harem to be Sold on eBay." or "Mink Coat Comes Alive and
Bites Rich Widow to Death."
Where else can we learn that French President Jacques Chirac has announced
a plan for France to surrender retroactively in all of history's previous
wars or that the Pope wants Mel Gibson as successor or that Dick Cheney is a
robot or that a cruel surgeon re-attached a pair of conjoined twins after
they failed to pay their medical bill for the initial surgical separation he
performed.
Where else do you read "Doomsday Dragons Heading for Earth!'' "Gal Uses
Dead Hubby's Ashes for Breast Implants!'' "Painting of Elvis Weeps Real
Tears!'' or "Oprah to Replace Lincoln on $5 Bill!"
Where else do you find a columnist like Ed Anger. His book, "Let's Pave
the Stupid Rainforests and Give School Teachers Stun Guns," could have served
as a primer for right wing radio talk show hosts.
The Economist once described Anger as a man who "hated foreigners, yoga,
whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza; he liked flogging,
electrocutions and beer."
There was never a slow news day at the WWN. That's because there was no
need for news. While it never publicly questioned the accuracy of its own
stories, even billig itself as "the world's most reliable paper," it did
begin stating several years back that "the reader should suspend disbelief
for the sake of enjoyment."
As if we had to be told.
Sal Ivon, former managing editor, said, "If someone calls me up and says
their toaster is talking to them, I don't refer them to professional help, I
say, 'Put the toaster on the phone'."?
Perhaps the most famous character to appear in the pages of WWN was Bat
Boy, a half bat, half boy found in a cave.
According to published reports, Bat Boy was first featured in a 1992
issue. He since has led police on a high speed chase, fought in the war on
terror, led the troops to capture Saddam Hussein, bitten Santa Claus and
traveled into outer space. In 2000, he gave his endorsement to Al Gore. It is
fortold that he will become president in 2028.
We could do worse. And have.
A personal favorite was WWN's cover story following the Northridge
earthquake, headlined "Earthquake Releases Demons From Hell." It was
illustrated by an alleged photo showing a couple of T-Rex looking dudes
terrorizing San Fernando Valley residents while hanging out besides a
collapsed freeway.
I think the folks who conceived these stories were geniusus and the
writers were worthy of Pulitzer consideration, a view probably shared by no
other human being.
Well, there was one other person. In the film "Men in Black, Tommy Lee
Jones refers to WWN as the "best damn investigative reporting on the planet."
Now, all are left with for comic relief is the Fox television network.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Eating Peanuts
Where the hell is Paris Hilton?
It's only been three weeks since she walked out of jail like she was
sashaying down a runway, her graceful gait illuminated by the light of a
thousand cameras.
And now, story over. The public sleeps, their blood lust satisfied. Paris
who?
All that remains are the low groans of the media who woke up the next day
with a roaring hangover, after indulging in an orgy of excessive coverage
like so many sailors on shore leave.
As one wag noted, 50 years from now, someone might write a book on the
incident called "When Humans Lost Their Minds."
After a lot of naval gazing, the collective media didn't exactly promise
never to do it again (see David Beckham). But there have been calls for
restraint and assurances in some quarters that such stories would be reported
in context of news on Dafur, the war in Iraq and the presidential campaigns.
We'll see about that. Covering the rise and fall of celebrities, even
talentless paparazzi creations, is like eating peanuts.
A real test is coming next month. That's when a trial is scheduled to
begin for a young woman who makes Paris Hilton look like Mother Theresa.
We speak of course of Nicole Richie, socialite, actress and most notably
Paris' sidekick in the TV show "The Simple Life."
The adopted daughter of singer Lionel Richie, Nicole, among other
problems, has Michael Jackson as her godfather.
Just to put things in prospective, Paris was pulled over for driving
erratically and charged with a misdemeanor.
Her handlers said she hadn't eaten, had one margarita and claimed her
field sobriety test showed "the very absolute lowest reading you can possibly
get to warrant being taken in."
Paris problems started when she got caught twice for driving with a
suspended license. The authorities charged that those actions, along with
the failure to enroll in a court-ordered alcohol education program
constituted a violation of the terms of her probation. And, as we all well
know, off to jail she went.
Nicole's first splashy foray into the annals of celebrity justice started
in 2003 when she was stopped in Malibu and charged with possesion of heroin.
And, oh yeah, she was driving with a suspended license.
She almost has Paris trumped right there.
But then Richie was arrested by the California Highway Patrol after she
failed a field sobriety test and was charged with driving under the influence
on the 134 Freeway in the Burbank/Glendale area.
If that isn't enough, she was allegedly piloting her Mercedes the wrong
way on that well-traveled road.
According to news reports, she admitted to using marijuana and Vicodin
before the incident.
The California Vehicle Code says that if convicted of DUI twice within 10
years, a person can be sentenced to between 90 days and a year in jail and
have driving privileges suspended. But that sentence could be reduced if the
convicted agrees to probation.
It looks like tough times ahead for Nicole. Of course, she could strike a
plea bargain with prosecutors but it's going to be difficult in view of Paris'
experience.
I mean, if Paris gets 30 days for a suspended license, what does a trip
the wrong way down the freeway deserve? Life without parole?
And yet.
Rumor has Nicole is pregnant. The sources are the usual Internet gossip
sites but there's enough buzz to make you wonder.
In a court filing, her lawyers said they intend to use defense expert Terence McGee, a
medical doctor specializing in drug abuse, to challenge the prosecution's scientific evidence
against Richie.
Will her legal team rule the day? If not, will Lee Baca intervene because of Nicole's
delicate condition? What role will City Attorney Rock Delgadillo play? And what ever happend
to him anyway?
This has all the trappings of a soap opera the likes of which haven't been seen since Ana
Nicole Smith. Which was six months ago.
It will all takes place in the slowest news month of the year.
So stay tuned. And tuned. And tuned.
It's only been three weeks since she walked out of jail like she was
sashaying down a runway, her graceful gait illuminated by the light of a
thousand cameras.
And now, story over. The public sleeps, their blood lust satisfied. Paris
who?
All that remains are the low groans of the media who woke up the next day
with a roaring hangover, after indulging in an orgy of excessive coverage
like so many sailors on shore leave.
As one wag noted, 50 years from now, someone might write a book on the
incident called "When Humans Lost Their Minds."
After a lot of naval gazing, the collective media didn't exactly promise
never to do it again (see David Beckham). But there have been calls for
restraint and assurances in some quarters that such stories would be reported
in context of news on Dafur, the war in Iraq and the presidential campaigns.
We'll see about that. Covering the rise and fall of celebrities, even
talentless paparazzi creations, is like eating peanuts.
A real test is coming next month. That's when a trial is scheduled to
begin for a young woman who makes Paris Hilton look like Mother Theresa.
We speak of course of Nicole Richie, socialite, actress and most notably
Paris' sidekick in the TV show "The Simple Life."
The adopted daughter of singer Lionel Richie, Nicole, among other
problems, has Michael Jackson as her godfather.
Just to put things in prospective, Paris was pulled over for driving
erratically and charged with a misdemeanor.
Her handlers said she hadn't eaten, had one margarita and claimed her
field sobriety test showed "the very absolute lowest reading you can possibly
get to warrant being taken in."
Paris problems started when she got caught twice for driving with a
suspended license. The authorities charged that those actions, along with
the failure to enroll in a court-ordered alcohol education program
constituted a violation of the terms of her probation. And, as we all well
know, off to jail she went.
Nicole's first splashy foray into the annals of celebrity justice started
in 2003 when she was stopped in Malibu and charged with possesion of heroin.
And, oh yeah, she was driving with a suspended license.
She almost has Paris trumped right there.
But then Richie was arrested by the California Highway Patrol after she
failed a field sobriety test and was charged with driving under the influence
on the 134 Freeway in the Burbank/Glendale area.
If that isn't enough, she was allegedly piloting her Mercedes the wrong
way on that well-traveled road.
According to news reports, she admitted to using marijuana and Vicodin
before the incident.
The California Vehicle Code says that if convicted of DUI twice within 10
years, a person can be sentenced to between 90 days and a year in jail and
have driving privileges suspended. But that sentence could be reduced if the
convicted agrees to probation.
It looks like tough times ahead for Nicole. Of course, she could strike a
plea bargain with prosecutors but it's going to be difficult in view of Paris'
experience.
I mean, if Paris gets 30 days for a suspended license, what does a trip
the wrong way down the freeway deserve? Life without parole?
And yet.
Rumor has Nicole is pregnant. The sources are the usual Internet gossip
sites but there's enough buzz to make you wonder.
In a court filing, her lawyers said they intend to use defense expert Terence McGee, a
medical doctor specializing in drug abuse, to challenge the prosecution's scientific evidence
against Richie.
Will her legal team rule the day? If not, will Lee Baca intervene because of Nicole's
delicate condition? What role will City Attorney Rock Delgadillo play? And what ever happend
to him anyway?
This has all the trappings of a soap opera the likes of which haven't been seen since Ana
Nicole Smith. Which was six months ago.
It will all takes place in the slowest news month of the year.
So stay tuned. And tuned. And tuned.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Chat Room
He sat behind me at a recent Dodger game.
With every pitch, he regaled all within earshot on strategy, statistics, the relative talent level of each and every player, memories of games past, all punctuated by strong opinions:
"With men on first and third, and a left handed pitcher facing a Venezuelan born batter with a moustache, the pitcher needs to throw a three finger forkball with the shortstop breaking to cover second, the center fielder shaded to right and the infield deep just like the time the St. Louis Browns nipped a 7th inning rally by the Phillies in 1939."
After one inning, I was ready to stuff a Dodger dog in his mouth.
Of course, he was merely verifying Rector's Rule, which holds that anyone sitting behind you at a sporting event is either a deep pool of incorrect information, has had his volume adjusted by seven or eight beers or has a child who kicks the back of your seat for three hours.
Now it turns out my chatty Dodger friend was merely underscoring what social scientists have recently discovered.
Men actually yak more than women.
One study recorded 400 college students for days and found that members of each sex spoke the same number of words.
Another found that men actually talk slightly more than women, especially when the topic of conversation was non personal.
In other words, we guys will freely blab on about NBA rebound leaders, fast sports cars, beer and mega construction projects. Just don't ask us about our Valentine's Day plans or whether we love puppies.
And then there's this take from Campbell Leaper, a psychologist at UC Santa Cruz who believes "some men may be using talkativeness to dominate the conversation."
Clever, those men.
Nonetheless, Matthias Mehl, of the University of Arizona, said the stereotype of female chattiness was deeply ingrained in Western folklore and was often considered a scientific fact.
Researchers and therapists had given this impression by using a figure that women speak about 20,000 words a day while men can only manage to get 7000 into the conversation.
This threefold difference has been widely reported. "The 20,000 versus 7000-word estimates appear to have achieved the status of a cultural myth, cited in the media for the past 15 years," Mehl said. It was not based on evidence.
In Mehl's study, women spoke about 16,215 words a day and men about 15,669, an insignificant difference, the researchers concluded.
There was huge variation between individuals, with the chattiest man spewing out 47,000 words a day, while the most reticent one spoke only 500.
I'm betting Mr. 500 was married.
Linguist Alice Freed at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, says that the caricature of the gossipy gal can have a truly negative effect: "The power of the stereotype is that women are considered to speak too much." She says that this stereotype emerged as a way to devalue what women had to say.
But James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, who worked with Mehl on the study, believes that the stereotype has a different origin. "I think it's because of the way that women and men naturally react to conflict," he says. "Women talk more during arguments, and we extrapolate those very salient memories to the rest of life."
Whatever, the stereotypes are deeply ingrained in many cultures. "Women's tongues are like lambs' tails, they are never still," goes one English proverb.
"The woman with active hands and feet, marry her, but the woman with overactive mouth, leave well alone," say the Maori.
And then there's the old Chinese saying: "The tongue is the sword of a woman and she never lets it become rusty."
It may take some time to work past those images.
While it may be news that we use the same number of words, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we don't always talk the same language.
"We did find men talk more about money, sports and technology and women talk more about relationships," Mehl said.
Well, shut my mouth.
With every pitch, he regaled all within earshot on strategy, statistics, the relative talent level of each and every player, memories of games past, all punctuated by strong opinions:
"With men on first and third, and a left handed pitcher facing a Venezuelan born batter with a moustache, the pitcher needs to throw a three finger forkball with the shortstop breaking to cover second, the center fielder shaded to right and the infield deep just like the time the St. Louis Browns nipped a 7th inning rally by the Phillies in 1939."
After one inning, I was ready to stuff a Dodger dog in his mouth.
Of course, he was merely verifying Rector's Rule, which holds that anyone sitting behind you at a sporting event is either a deep pool of incorrect information, has had his volume adjusted by seven or eight beers or has a child who kicks the back of your seat for three hours.
Now it turns out my chatty Dodger friend was merely underscoring what social scientists have recently discovered.
Men actually yak more than women.
One study recorded 400 college students for days and found that members of each sex spoke the same number of words.
Another found that men actually talk slightly more than women, especially when the topic of conversation was non personal.
In other words, we guys will freely blab on about NBA rebound leaders, fast sports cars, beer and mega construction projects. Just don't ask us about our Valentine's Day plans or whether we love puppies.
And then there's this take from Campbell Leaper, a psychologist at UC Santa Cruz who believes "some men may be using talkativeness to dominate the conversation."
Clever, those men.
Nonetheless, Matthias Mehl, of the University of Arizona, said the stereotype of female chattiness was deeply ingrained in Western folklore and was often considered a scientific fact.
Researchers and therapists had given this impression by using a figure that women speak about 20,000 words a day while men can only manage to get 7000 into the conversation.
This threefold difference has been widely reported. "The 20,000 versus 7000-word estimates appear to have achieved the status of a cultural myth, cited in the media for the past 15 years," Mehl said. It was not based on evidence.
In Mehl's study, women spoke about 16,215 words a day and men about 15,669, an insignificant difference, the researchers concluded.
There was huge variation between individuals, with the chattiest man spewing out 47,000 words a day, while the most reticent one spoke only 500.
I'm betting Mr. 500 was married.
Linguist Alice Freed at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, says that the caricature of the gossipy gal can have a truly negative effect: "The power of the stereotype is that women are considered to speak too much." She says that this stereotype emerged as a way to devalue what women had to say.
But James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas, who worked with Mehl on the study, believes that the stereotype has a different origin. "I think it's because of the way that women and men naturally react to conflict," he says. "Women talk more during arguments, and we extrapolate those very salient memories to the rest of life."
Whatever, the stereotypes are deeply ingrained in many cultures. "Women's tongues are like lambs' tails, they are never still," goes one English proverb.
"The woman with active hands and feet, marry her, but the woman with overactive mouth, leave well alone," say the Maori.
And then there's the old Chinese saying: "The tongue is the sword of a woman and she never lets it become rusty."
It may take some time to work past those images.
While it may be news that we use the same number of words, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we don't always talk the same language.
"We did find men talk more about money, sports and technology and women talk more about relationships," Mehl said.
Well, shut my mouth.
Motoring Migranes
If you're feeling sharp, stabbing pains in your wallet each time you plunge that gas nozzle into the family sedan, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Get ready for more motoring migranes.
The Metropolitan Tranportation Authority, those downtown bureaucrats whose stewardship of public transportation equates the Titanic's safety record, is developing plans for toll roads within the next three years.
The concept is called "congestion pricing" and what it means is that if you don't want to feel your life ebbing away on some gridlocked freeway, you'll fork over extra bucks to use less crowded lanes. And the toll will rise based on the amount of traffic.
In Orange County, the plan is already at work. The 91 Express Lane, a 10-mile stretch, will nick you for anywhere from $1.15 to $9.50, depending on the hour.
Let' see, 10 bucks a day during rush hour, five days a week...that could add up to a hefty piece of change over a few months time.
Of course, you could take a bus. But the MTA just approved a hefty boost in bus rates over the loud objections of its most loyal customers, working class citizens who depend on public transportation. Those who can afford to drive will get priced out of life in the fast lane.
If all of this strikes you as fundamentally unfair, since the gas taxes you pay build the roads on which you travel, you may have a very good point.
The Automobile Club, for one, agrees.
"We feel it will be a form of double taxation to charge people for the roads they have already paid for by gas taxes," Hamid Bahadori, principal transportation engineer for the Automobile Club of Southern California, said in a published interview. "Rather than trying to restrict access, they had better start delivering on the projects."
And if you have trouble understaning how charging extra will reduce congestion, try to connect these dots.
"At some point, we have to reduce the number of single-passenger automobiles if we want to reduce gridlock in L.A. County," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a master of understatement.
How do we do it? Try to get people to drive less during peak hours by making it expensive. Or behavior modification through taxation, something to mull as we celebrate the Fourth of July.
But wait, there's more.
Up in Sacramento, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is floating a plan that would cost California motorists, farmers and boaters an estimated $130 million per year to fund alternative-fuel research and other clean air programs.
The bill comes less than one year after lawmakers passed legislation to aggressively cut the state's greenhouse gases in an attempt to curb global warming. That effort will fail if "we as government don't do something to help jump-start the alternative fuels market," said Nunez, D-Los Angeles.
Jump start the alternative fuels market?
The University of California was selected earlier this year for a $500-million grant meant for funding research and development of alternatives to petroleum-based fuel, sponsored by global energy conglomerate British Petroleum.
University of California at Davis researchers recently received up to $25 million in funding from Chevron Corp. to spend the next five years developing clean and affordable, renewable transportation fuels from farm and forest residues, urban wastes and crops grown specifically for energy.
A $125-million grant for California's research effort for bioenergy was awarded last month by the U.S. Department of Energy to fund a collaborative effort in California to develop alternative energy sources from plant materials.
Against this backdrop, Fabian has decided to pass the hat.
But, hey, what the heck, as long as were tapping our 401ks for gas and toll roads, let's get into the change jar and bankroll alternative fuels.
Get ready for more motoring migranes.
The Metropolitan Tranportation Authority, those downtown bureaucrats whose stewardship of public transportation equates the Titanic's safety record, is developing plans for toll roads within the next three years.
The concept is called "congestion pricing" and what it means is that if you don't want to feel your life ebbing away on some gridlocked freeway, you'll fork over extra bucks to use less crowded lanes. And the toll will rise based on the amount of traffic.
In Orange County, the plan is already at work. The 91 Express Lane, a 10-mile stretch, will nick you for anywhere from $1.15 to $9.50, depending on the hour.
Let' see, 10 bucks a day during rush hour, five days a week...that could add up to a hefty piece of change over a few months time.
Of course, you could take a bus. But the MTA just approved a hefty boost in bus rates over the loud objections of its most loyal customers, working class citizens who depend on public transportation. Those who can afford to drive will get priced out of life in the fast lane.
If all of this strikes you as fundamentally unfair, since the gas taxes you pay build the roads on which you travel, you may have a very good point.
The Automobile Club, for one, agrees.
"We feel it will be a form of double taxation to charge people for the roads they have already paid for by gas taxes," Hamid Bahadori, principal transportation engineer for the Automobile Club of Southern California, said in a published interview. "Rather than trying to restrict access, they had better start delivering on the projects."
And if you have trouble understaning how charging extra will reduce congestion, try to connect these dots.
"At some point, we have to reduce the number of single-passenger automobiles if we want to reduce gridlock in L.A. County," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a master of understatement.
How do we do it? Try to get people to drive less during peak hours by making it expensive. Or behavior modification through taxation, something to mull as we celebrate the Fourth of July.
But wait, there's more.
Up in Sacramento, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is floating a plan that would cost California motorists, farmers and boaters an estimated $130 million per year to fund alternative-fuel research and other clean air programs.
The bill comes less than one year after lawmakers passed legislation to aggressively cut the state's greenhouse gases in an attempt to curb global warming. That effort will fail if "we as government don't do something to help jump-start the alternative fuels market," said Nunez, D-Los Angeles.
Jump start the alternative fuels market?
The University of California was selected earlier this year for a $500-million grant meant for funding research and development of alternatives to petroleum-based fuel, sponsored by global energy conglomerate British Petroleum.
University of California at Davis researchers recently received up to $25 million in funding from Chevron Corp. to spend the next five years developing clean and affordable, renewable transportation fuels from farm and forest residues, urban wastes and crops grown specifically for energy.
A $125-million grant for California's research effort for bioenergy was awarded last month by the U.S. Department of Energy to fund a collaborative effort in California to develop alternative energy sources from plant materials.
Against this backdrop, Fabian has decided to pass the hat.
But, hey, what the heck, as long as were tapping our 401ks for gas and toll roads, let's get into the change jar and bankroll alternative fuels.
Doo Gooder
With a name like Anthony Portantino and birthplace like New Jersey, you might think this guy once sang with Dion and the Belmonts, down on the corner, under the street lights.
But this Portantino is more Democrat than Doo Wop. If you want to catch his act, you'll have to go to Sacramento where he performs as the state Assembly member from La Canada Flintridge, a city he once served as mayor.
Portantino may nonetheless find himself forever linked to golden oldies if his bill, AB702, is signed into law.
That piece of legislation, called "the truth in music advertising act, would make it harder for musicians to advertise themselves as a famous group from the past unless they had trademarked the name or at least one of its members was an original member.
So while the state grapples with health care crisis, global warming and budget woes, should we care if there's one too many versions of the Drifters up on stage?
Damn right we should.
Because it's all about two things Americans hate: cheating and stealing.
On any given night in this country, some group of yokels in riding the nostalgia wave by pretending to be one of the fabled groups of the 50s and 60s.
The Coasters, the Platters, the Drifters, the Diamonds, the Vogues, the Marvelletes are hitting the oldies circuit and raking in the bucks.
According to one source, there are dozens of groups calling themselves the Coasters, the Drifters or the Platters. Many of these guys are about as close to the originals as the Rolling Stones are to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
"When these guys stand on stage and say 'When we recorded this song in the '50s,' 'When we won our Grammy,' 'When we sang on the street corner,' and they're 22 years old? Come on," Bob Crosby, president of the nonprofit Vocal Hall of Fame, said in a published interview. "They're lying.
"It's no harmless illusion, either, he said. "All these fake groups are out there stealing incomes, history and applause."
And they get away with it. That's because it's not always easy to tell who holds the rights to a particular musical group's name or to identify an authentic member of an act formed 50 years ago, according the the website Law.com.
Singers then were often recruited by managers or producers who didn't afford young vocalists, often poor African-Americans, the legal protections more commonly available today. Members came and went before the visibility that, in the MTV era, cemented band members' identities with a group. Trademarks were sold, sometimes under less than legal conditions. Squabbles and lawsuits over group names continue.
The Vocal Hall of Fame's Crosby and Jon Bauman, better known as Bowzer from the nostalgia group Sha Na Na, are spearheading a nationwide effort to reign in unauthorized imposter groups.
"This is a sophisticated form of identity theft," said Bauman. "These imposter groups have been duping consumers and stealing the names, the remuneration and the legacy of the pioneers of Rock n Roll for way too long."
So far, nine states have passed similar measures and eleven others are considering legislation.
While we may have more important issues to occupy us, this effort is important because the doo wop and R and B music of the 50s and 60s was more than just dance tunes. It was in its own simple way a powerful force, a music that brought races together, one that influenced generations of Americans, one that changed the world.
It's artists and architects deserve our protection.
Besides, as Crosby says: "If you want a gut-wrenching experience, try watching a baby boomer audience leap to its feet at the end of an impostor group show. The audience so clearly thinks it's honoring the body of work, the legacy, the deep pleasure this music has given them since their youth... "They don't know they're applauding the wrong people..."
Despite what the Platters sang in the 1950s, there are no great pretenders.
But this Portantino is more Democrat than Doo Wop. If you want to catch his act, you'll have to go to Sacramento where he performs as the state Assembly member from La Canada Flintridge, a city he once served as mayor.
Portantino may nonetheless find himself forever linked to golden oldies if his bill, AB702, is signed into law.
That piece of legislation, called "the truth in music advertising act, would make it harder for musicians to advertise themselves as a famous group from the past unless they had trademarked the name or at least one of its members was an original member.
So while the state grapples with health care crisis, global warming and budget woes, should we care if there's one too many versions of the Drifters up on stage?
Damn right we should.
Because it's all about two things Americans hate: cheating and stealing.
On any given night in this country, some group of yokels in riding the nostalgia wave by pretending to be one of the fabled groups of the 50s and 60s.
The Coasters, the Platters, the Drifters, the Diamonds, the Vogues, the Marvelletes are hitting the oldies circuit and raking in the bucks.
According to one source, there are dozens of groups calling themselves the Coasters, the Drifters or the Platters. Many of these guys are about as close to the originals as the Rolling Stones are to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
"When these guys stand on stage and say 'When we recorded this song in the '50s,' 'When we won our Grammy,' 'When we sang on the street corner,' and they're 22 years old? Come on," Bob Crosby, president of the nonprofit Vocal Hall of Fame, said in a published interview. "They're lying.
"It's no harmless illusion, either, he said. "All these fake groups are out there stealing incomes, history and applause."
And they get away with it. That's because it's not always easy to tell who holds the rights to a particular musical group's name or to identify an authentic member of an act formed 50 years ago, according the the website Law.com.
Singers then were often recruited by managers or producers who didn't afford young vocalists, often poor African-Americans, the legal protections more commonly available today. Members came and went before the visibility that, in the MTV era, cemented band members' identities with a group. Trademarks were sold, sometimes under less than legal conditions. Squabbles and lawsuits over group names continue.
The Vocal Hall of Fame's Crosby and Jon Bauman, better known as Bowzer from the nostalgia group Sha Na Na, are spearheading a nationwide effort to reign in unauthorized imposter groups.
"This is a sophisticated form of identity theft," said Bauman. "These imposter groups have been duping consumers and stealing the names, the remuneration and the legacy of the pioneers of Rock n Roll for way too long."
So far, nine states have passed similar measures and eleven others are considering legislation.
While we may have more important issues to occupy us, this effort is important because the doo wop and R and B music of the 50s and 60s was more than just dance tunes. It was in its own simple way a powerful force, a music that brought races together, one that influenced generations of Americans, one that changed the world.
It's artists and architects deserve our protection.
Besides, as Crosby says: "If you want a gut-wrenching experience, try watching a baby boomer audience leap to its feet at the end of an impostor group show. The audience so clearly thinks it's honoring the body of work, the legacy, the deep pleasure this music has given them since their youth... "They don't know they're applauding the wrong people..."
Despite what the Platters sang in the 1950s, there are no great pretenders.
Monday, June 25, 2007
A Word of Advice
It's graduation season. Students will swelter in full-length robes made of nonbreathable fabric while their parents bake, doting and dehydraded, in the summertime heat.
The care and feeding of the planet will be passed on to a new generation by commencement speakers, most of whom were entrusted with the same responsibility, only to screw it up big time.
Those hard-earned diplomas will open the door to exciting and rewarding careers. In medicine, for example, you will heal the ill and be paid hansomely for it. In journalism, you will expose ills and get paid like a fork lift operator.
Lord knows, I've been through a bunch of these ceremonies, both as a participant and as a spectator.
One of our daughters "walked" in high school, twice in college, once in law school and once when she was sworn into the bar. Her tuition was exceeded by the amount spent on new clothes for each occasion.
And each and every ceremony that I sat through as a graduate and a parent was accompanied by a speech in which grads were wished well in the real world and reminded that this place was where they learned to think.
Aside from the general tone of the remarks, I remember absolutely nothing. Not one word.
Perhaps that was because I was caught up in the emotion of the moment. Or maybe I was just in the wrong place and the wrong time.
But there have been plenty of pearls of wisdom passed on at these affairs. What follows is a few favorites culled from a seemingly inexhaustable library of graduation speeches found on the Internet:
"Be as bold as the first man or woman to eat an oyster." - Shirley Chisholm, congresswoman.
"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad." - Theodore Roosevelt.
"When you leave here, don't forget why you came." - Adlai Stevenson.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!" - Andy McIntyre.
" You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." - John Wooden.
"It is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock. - Woody Allen.
"During my second year of nursing school our professor gave us a quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was a joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. "Absolutely," the professor said. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello." I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy." - Joann C. Jones.
"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. - Vince Lombardi.
"Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed." - Erma Bombeck.
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit." - Nelson Henderson.
And perhaps most telling:
"Education is the best provision for old age." - Aristotle.
The care and feeding of the planet will be passed on to a new generation by commencement speakers, most of whom were entrusted with the same responsibility, only to screw it up big time.
Those hard-earned diplomas will open the door to exciting and rewarding careers. In medicine, for example, you will heal the ill and be paid hansomely for it. In journalism, you will expose ills and get paid like a fork lift operator.
Lord knows, I've been through a bunch of these ceremonies, both as a participant and as a spectator.
One of our daughters "walked" in high school, twice in college, once in law school and once when she was sworn into the bar. Her tuition was exceeded by the amount spent on new clothes for each occasion.
And each and every ceremony that I sat through as a graduate and a parent was accompanied by a speech in which grads were wished well in the real world and reminded that this place was where they learned to think.
Aside from the general tone of the remarks, I remember absolutely nothing. Not one word.
Perhaps that was because I was caught up in the emotion of the moment. Or maybe I was just in the wrong place and the wrong time.
But there have been plenty of pearls of wisdom passed on at these affairs. What follows is a few favorites culled from a seemingly inexhaustable library of graduation speeches found on the Internet:
"Be as bold as the first man or woman to eat an oyster." - Shirley Chisholm, congresswoman.
"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad." - Theodore Roosevelt.
"When you leave here, don't forget why you came." - Adlai Stevenson.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!" - Andy McIntyre.
" You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." - John Wooden.
"It is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock. - Woody Allen.
"During my second year of nursing school our professor gave us a quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was a joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. "Absolutely," the professor said. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello." I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy." - Joann C. Jones.
"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm. - Vince Lombardi.
"Graduation day is tough for adults. They go to the ceremony as parents. They come home as contemporaries. After twenty-two years of child-raising, they are unemployed." - Erma Bombeck.
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit." - Nelson Henderson.
And perhaps most telling:
"Education is the best provision for old age." - Aristotle.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Jail House Crock
I feel sorry for Paris Hilton.
Sure, she's a spolied, self-centered, morally compromised pseudo celebrity whose very fame has been created by a howling pack of paparazzi peddling their wares to gaudy fan mags and cable TV hacks.
Sure, she was caught driving her Bentley like a bumper car, full of booze but not remorse.
Sure, she was pulled over driving with a suspended license shortly after that. Sure, she then got nailed doing 70 in a 35 MPH zone with her lights out at night.
Sure, Paris blamed her handlers for her being caught behind the wheel twice while her driver's license was suspended. Asked whether she had understood the terms of the drunk-driving plea that she agreed to Hilton, said: "I just sign what people tell me to sign. I'm a very busy person."
Sure, some mean old judge then sentenced her to a jail term for violating her probation.
Sure, kindly Sheriff Lee Baca cut her loose after three days, citing medical problems, forcing her to spend the rest of her sentence under house arrest on the hard-scrabble grounds of her Hollywood mansion.
Sure, she immediately became a political football in a war between the Sheriff's Department and the Superior Court system over who has juristiction in such matters.
But even though her popularity ratings are lower than George Bush, poor Paris last week was subjected to treatment usually reserved for mass murderers.
First, a couple of beefy cops drag her out of her house. Then she's trussed up like Hannibal Lechter to appear before a judge.
Then she's led weeping out of the courtroom and back into jail to the loud applause of much of the free world.
Because she used every resource available to her to avoid jail, which I trust most of us would have done under similar circumstances, she incurred a public wrath so intense I half expected a lynch mop to appear at her front door, armed with torches and pitchforks.
How did this happen?
Pretend for a moment you're Lee Baca. Among your other responsibilities is overseeing an inmate population of 20,000, the largest jail system in the United States.
You know that 90% of the inmates in L.A. County jail are serious felons -- many held on murder charges or attempted murder charges.
Into this mix some judge has dropped Paris Hilton. By your yardstick, she's a low level offender and most female inmates serve 10 per cent of their sentences because of overcrowding.
Since she was sentenced to 45 days, 23 with time off for good behavior, she gets cut lose in 3 days, slightly more than 10 per cent of her sentence.
Besides that, you know that she's not behaving normally. She refuses to eat or drink for fear someone will take a photo of her on the toilet. She hasn't taken her medications and in your opinion, "she has severe problems."
You have two choices: keep her caged up to satisfy the public blood lust. Or discover the heir to the Hilton hotel fortune severely ill or dead of the cold stone floor of her jail cell.
It's a no brainer. Send her home with an ankle bracelet and confine her there for 45 days.
Let's face it. This case is about a lot more than Paris Hilton.
It's about a frustrated judiciary who has seen their sentences slashed by as much as 90 per cent due to overcrowding. And at least one judge is drawing a line in the sand.
"This has the strong potential to set up what will become an untenable precedent because of overcrowding in jail and the lack of adequate housing," Baca told the Los Angels Times.
In the last five years, the Sheriff's Department has released more than 200,000 inmates early, including some who ended up committing murders and other serious crimes when they otherwise would have been behind bars.
The releases were possible because of a nearly 20-year-old federal court order allowing the Los Angeles County sheriff to alleviate overcrowding by letting county offenders go home early.
Two hundred thousand, free to go. And we're in a rage over Paris Hilton?
In the meantime, Paris remains in jail, serving more time that she would have if her name was Jane Doe. Her very celebrity has been her undoing instead of her salvation.
And in a skewed bit of logic, the public is satisfied that justice has been served.
Sure, she's a spolied, self-centered, morally compromised pseudo celebrity whose very fame has been created by a howling pack of paparazzi peddling their wares to gaudy fan mags and cable TV hacks.
Sure, she was caught driving her Bentley like a bumper car, full of booze but not remorse.
Sure, she was pulled over driving with a suspended license shortly after that. Sure, she then got nailed doing 70 in a 35 MPH zone with her lights out at night.
Sure, Paris blamed her handlers for her being caught behind the wheel twice while her driver's license was suspended. Asked whether she had understood the terms of the drunk-driving plea that she agreed to Hilton, said: "I just sign what people tell me to sign. I'm a very busy person."
Sure, some mean old judge then sentenced her to a jail term for violating her probation.
Sure, kindly Sheriff Lee Baca cut her loose after three days, citing medical problems, forcing her to spend the rest of her sentence under house arrest on the hard-scrabble grounds of her Hollywood mansion.
Sure, she immediately became a political football in a war between the Sheriff's Department and the Superior Court system over who has juristiction in such matters.
But even though her popularity ratings are lower than George Bush, poor Paris last week was subjected to treatment usually reserved for mass murderers.
First, a couple of beefy cops drag her out of her house. Then she's trussed up like Hannibal Lechter to appear before a judge.
Then she's led weeping out of the courtroom and back into jail to the loud applause of much of the free world.
Because she used every resource available to her to avoid jail, which I trust most of us would have done under similar circumstances, she incurred a public wrath so intense I half expected a lynch mop to appear at her front door, armed with torches and pitchforks.
How did this happen?
Pretend for a moment you're Lee Baca. Among your other responsibilities is overseeing an inmate population of 20,000, the largest jail system in the United States.
You know that 90% of the inmates in L.A. County jail are serious felons -- many held on murder charges or attempted murder charges.
Into this mix some judge has dropped Paris Hilton. By your yardstick, she's a low level offender and most female inmates serve 10 per cent of their sentences because of overcrowding.
Since she was sentenced to 45 days, 23 with time off for good behavior, she gets cut lose in 3 days, slightly more than 10 per cent of her sentence.
Besides that, you know that she's not behaving normally. She refuses to eat or drink for fear someone will take a photo of her on the toilet. She hasn't taken her medications and in your opinion, "she has severe problems."
You have two choices: keep her caged up to satisfy the public blood lust. Or discover the heir to the Hilton hotel fortune severely ill or dead of the cold stone floor of her jail cell.
It's a no brainer. Send her home with an ankle bracelet and confine her there for 45 days.
Let's face it. This case is about a lot more than Paris Hilton.
It's about a frustrated judiciary who has seen their sentences slashed by as much as 90 per cent due to overcrowding. And at least one judge is drawing a line in the sand.
"This has the strong potential to set up what will become an untenable precedent because of overcrowding in jail and the lack of adequate housing," Baca told the Los Angels Times.
In the last five years, the Sheriff's Department has released more than 200,000 inmates early, including some who ended up committing murders and other serious crimes when they otherwise would have been behind bars.
The releases were possible because of a nearly 20-year-old federal court order allowing the Los Angeles County sheriff to alleviate overcrowding by letting county offenders go home early.
Two hundred thousand, free to go. And we're in a rage over Paris Hilton?
In the meantime, Paris remains in jail, serving more time that she would have if her name was Jane Doe. Her very celebrity has been her undoing instead of her salvation.
And in a skewed bit of logic, the public is satisfied that justice has been served.
Monday, June 04, 2007
What's In a Name?
I love scientific research. The very phrase conjurs up visions of white-smocked technicians working tirelessly to find a cure for cancer or crack the mystery of time travel.
But not all research is so noble. For example, a gentleman named Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, was once honored for his studies of Murphy's Law ("Whatever Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong") and especially for demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side.
Then there's Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Universit Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when dry spaghetti is bent, it often breaks into more than two pieces.
Joining this distinguished company are researchers at Miami University who say they know why you can remember some peoples' names but not others. They can show that certain names are associated with facial features.
To underscore their point, the researchers say that when people hear the name "Bob," they have in mind a larger, rounder face tham when the hear the name "Tim" or "Andy."
This immediately caught by attention since most people know me by Bob. And it just so happens I have a face that might be charitably described as round.
The question is, do I have a round face because my name is Bob, or is it just a coincidence?
Researchers don't have the answer to that one but suggest that because "Bob" is a round sounding name, it croses over into visual representation.
Whatever. My experience with lugging around the name Bob for more than a half-century is that it's not a name folks take particularly seriously.
Bob is the Little League coach. Bob is the guy who works at the hardware store. Bob is the car salesman. Bob is the eternal guy next door.
Bob is never a distinguished man of letters. No one of noble birth was ever a Bob. There is no King Bob as far as I know (although there was a King Robert the Bruce of Scotland in the 14th Century). There has never been a president named Bob.
But we Bobs have had our moments.
We have graced the movie and TV screen, featuring talents as diverse as Robert DeNiro and Bob Denver, Robert Shaw and Robert Redford.
In baseball, we have produced Roberto Clemente and Bob Feller.
We've sparkled as musicians: Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bobby Darin.
We have graced literature with Robert Browning, Robert Burns, Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson.
We have produced statesmen such as Bobby Kenneday, Bob Dole and Bob Taft.
Bob Hope is ours. So is Robert E. Lee.
Besides, there are a lot worse names that can get attached to people.
Take the case of Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, for example, an unfortunate Swedish child whose parents chose to protest a naming law which stated that "first names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it..."
Then there is Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louise Maud Nora Ophelia Prudence Quince Rebecca Sarah Teresa Ulysis Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeno Pepper, a British woman whose names corresponded with the first letters of the alphabet. In fact, her friends called her "Alphabet."
Jaime Lachica Sin was a Philippine clergyman, known as Cardinal Sin because of his status within the Catholic church.
Others of note revealed in a quick trip through the Internet:
Depressed Cupboard Cheesecake, the child of a couple in Kent, England.
Espn (pronounced Espin) is the name of two boys from Michigan and Texas, named for the popular cable sports channel ESPN.
Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, a man with one of the longest names ever recorded.
Loser Lane, a New York Police Department sergeant.
Shanda Lear, daughter of Bill Lear, founder of Lear Jet Corporation Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette, daughter of magician Penn Jillette.
Optimus Prime, a member of the United States National Guard.
Ima Hogg, daughter of Governor of Texas James Stephen Hogg. Urban legend contends that she had a sister named Ura Hogg, but this apparently is false.
The world of sport has produced a rich trove of names:
Running back I.M. Hipp is often mentioned as a favorite.
NFL wide receivers Fair Hooker and Golden Richards were stars on their teams.
Sport combined with literature to give us football players D'Artagnan Martin and Hiyawatha Francisco.
Basketball gave us God Shammgod and World B. Free
Baseball produced Wonderful Terrific Monds III, player in the Atlanta Braves farm system in the early 1990s.
Would my life be different if my name was Optimus? Or Golden? Probably not. Maybe Bob isn't such a bad name for a round-faced guy after all.
But not all research is so noble. For example, a gentleman named Robert Matthews of Aston University, England, was once honored for his studies of Murphy's Law ("Whatever Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong") and especially for demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side.
Then there's Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Universit Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when dry spaghetti is bent, it often breaks into more than two pieces.
Joining this distinguished company are researchers at Miami University who say they know why you can remember some peoples' names but not others. They can show that certain names are associated with facial features.
To underscore their point, the researchers say that when people hear the name "Bob," they have in mind a larger, rounder face tham when the hear the name "Tim" or "Andy."
This immediately caught by attention since most people know me by Bob. And it just so happens I have a face that might be charitably described as round.
The question is, do I have a round face because my name is Bob, or is it just a coincidence?
Researchers don't have the answer to that one but suggest that because "Bob" is a round sounding name, it croses over into visual representation.
Whatever. My experience with lugging around the name Bob for more than a half-century is that it's not a name folks take particularly seriously.
Bob is the Little League coach. Bob is the guy who works at the hardware store. Bob is the car salesman. Bob is the eternal guy next door.
Bob is never a distinguished man of letters. No one of noble birth was ever a Bob. There is no King Bob as far as I know (although there was a King Robert the Bruce of Scotland in the 14th Century). There has never been a president named Bob.
But we Bobs have had our moments.
We have graced the movie and TV screen, featuring talents as diverse as Robert DeNiro and Bob Denver, Robert Shaw and Robert Redford.
In baseball, we have produced Roberto Clemente and Bob Feller.
We've sparkled as musicians: Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bobby Darin.
We have graced literature with Robert Browning, Robert Burns, Robert Frost, Robert Louis Stevenson.
We have produced statesmen such as Bobby Kenneday, Bob Dole and Bob Taft.
Bob Hope is ours. So is Robert E. Lee.
Besides, there are a lot worse names that can get attached to people.
Take the case of Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, for example, an unfortunate Swedish child whose parents chose to protest a naming law which stated that "first names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it..."
Then there is Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louise Maud Nora Ophelia Prudence Quince Rebecca Sarah Teresa Ulysis Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeno Pepper, a British woman whose names corresponded with the first letters of the alphabet. In fact, her friends called her "Alphabet."
Jaime Lachica Sin was a Philippine clergyman, known as Cardinal Sin because of his status within the Catholic church.
Others of note revealed in a quick trip through the Internet:
Depressed Cupboard Cheesecake, the child of a couple in Kent, England.
Espn (pronounced Espin) is the name of two boys from Michigan and Texas, named for the popular cable sports channel ESPN.
Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff, a man with one of the longest names ever recorded.
Loser Lane, a New York Police Department sergeant.
Shanda Lear, daughter of Bill Lear, founder of Lear Jet Corporation Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette, daughter of magician Penn Jillette.
Optimus Prime, a member of the United States National Guard.
Ima Hogg, daughter of Governor of Texas James Stephen Hogg. Urban legend contends that she had a sister named Ura Hogg, but this apparently is false.
The world of sport has produced a rich trove of names:
Running back I.M. Hipp is often mentioned as a favorite.
NFL wide receivers Fair Hooker and Golden Richards were stars on their teams.
Sport combined with literature to give us football players D'Artagnan Martin and Hiyawatha Francisco.
Basketball gave us God Shammgod and World B. Free
Baseball produced Wonderful Terrific Monds III, player in the Atlanta Braves farm system in the early 1990s.
Would my life be different if my name was Optimus? Or Golden? Probably not. Maybe Bob isn't such a bad name for a round-faced guy after all.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Waiting for the Winds to Blow
IN many newsrooms, the annual brush fire risk report is usually greeted with grim humor. No matter what the weather, it was always bad news.
If there is abundant rain, more brush will grow, thereby elevating the risk.
In dry years, the hillsides are tinderboxes waiting to explode in flame.
It makes me wonder why fire officials even bother with a yearly update. Fire season is year-round, no matter the weather.
The report this year is predictably bad, owing in large part to the fact that our annual rainfall barely eclipsed that of Death Valley. And federal meteorologists are warning us that we can expect extreme drought conditions for the foreseeable future in Southern California.
That was information I didn't really need because I discovered just the other day that I had misplaced my umbrella. I didn't remember where it was because I didn't use it this year.
So here we are, once again, living on the precipice in Los Angeles. Be it earthquakes, wildfires or race relations, we're always a half-step away from stepping on the apocalyptic banana peel in our little corner of paradise.
Just in the last several weeks, wildfires almost annihilated Griffith Park. At the same time, Catalina Island almost became uninhabited. Had the Santa Anas been blowing, the ending would have not been so happy.
Against this backdrop, insurance inspectors are swooping down on homes in high-risk areas and demanding that owners take action: clear brush, cut down trees, install fireproof roofs.
Why? Because, according to one published report, more than 6 million homes stand in wildfire red zones and the number of homes going up in "wild land communities" is expected to rise by 20 percent in the next decade.
Yet a study conducted by Allstate found that three-quarter of the residents living in high-risk communities thought it was somewhat or very unlikely that their homes would burn.
Look, I don't usually get warm and fuzzy about the insurance industry. At last report, it made billions in profits, even after paying out claims related to Hurricane Katrina. There's some smoke and mirrors in that figure because many insurers purchased disaster insurance of their own before the 2005 storms, much of it from overseas firms. Bottom line: You won't see many insurance executives hustling spare change at freeway onramps.
On top of that, I suspect insurer demands on policy owners become excessive in some cases.
But if their efforts force people to take greater responsibility for their own safety and even, perish the thought, stop building in fire-prone areas, maybe some good will come of this.
It is absolutely insane that we repeat the same cycle year after year after year. Wildfires erupt in brush areas, and pushed by hot dry winds, consume housing developments that shouldn't be there.
The Cedar Fire in October 2003 was a classic example. Fanned by Santa Anas, it burned 722,000 acres: 3,640 buildings were destroyed, 15 people died.
In 1996, 10 homes burned in Malibu and Calabasas. In 1993, fires that ravaged Malibu, Calabasas and Altadena killed three people, injured 12, destroyed or damaged nearly 400 houses, and forced the evacuation of thousands. In June 1990, the College Hills brush fire in Glendale destroyed or damaged 67 homes. In 1982, a wind-driven fire raced from Dayton Canyon in the West San Fernando Valley to the Malibu coast, destroying 97 homes and burning 54,000 acres.
And on it goes.
Is our memory that short? Is our will that weak? Then maybe a face slap from the insurance companies will get our attention.
And let's face it, those same insurance companies are beginning to check out of the Hotel California. Allstate has announced it would no longer underwrite new homeowner policies in the state, citing risks from wildfires and earthquakes.
California FAIR plan already insures 20,000 homes in brush fire areas and one would have to think there are limits as to how many of these policies can be written.
Perhaps it is time to rethink how and where we live while we wait for the winds to blow.
And blow they will. In the words of Joan Didion:
"There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it..."
If there is abundant rain, more brush will grow, thereby elevating the risk.
In dry years, the hillsides are tinderboxes waiting to explode in flame.
It makes me wonder why fire officials even bother with a yearly update. Fire season is year-round, no matter the weather.
The report this year is predictably bad, owing in large part to the fact that our annual rainfall barely eclipsed that of Death Valley. And federal meteorologists are warning us that we can expect extreme drought conditions for the foreseeable future in Southern California.
That was information I didn't really need because I discovered just the other day that I had misplaced my umbrella. I didn't remember where it was because I didn't use it this year.
So here we are, once again, living on the precipice in Los Angeles. Be it earthquakes, wildfires or race relations, we're always a half-step away from stepping on the apocalyptic banana peel in our little corner of paradise.
Just in the last several weeks, wildfires almost annihilated Griffith Park. At the same time, Catalina Island almost became uninhabited. Had the Santa Anas been blowing, the ending would have not been so happy.
Against this backdrop, insurance inspectors are swooping down on homes in high-risk areas and demanding that owners take action: clear brush, cut down trees, install fireproof roofs.
Why? Because, according to one published report, more than 6 million homes stand in wildfire red zones and the number of homes going up in "wild land communities" is expected to rise by 20 percent in the next decade.
Yet a study conducted by Allstate found that three-quarter of the residents living in high-risk communities thought it was somewhat or very unlikely that their homes would burn.
Look, I don't usually get warm and fuzzy about the insurance industry. At last report, it made billions in profits, even after paying out claims related to Hurricane Katrina. There's some smoke and mirrors in that figure because many insurers purchased disaster insurance of their own before the 2005 storms, much of it from overseas firms. Bottom line: You won't see many insurance executives hustling spare change at freeway onramps.
On top of that, I suspect insurer demands on policy owners become excessive in some cases.
But if their efforts force people to take greater responsibility for their own safety and even, perish the thought, stop building in fire-prone areas, maybe some good will come of this.
It is absolutely insane that we repeat the same cycle year after year after year. Wildfires erupt in brush areas, and pushed by hot dry winds, consume housing developments that shouldn't be there.
The Cedar Fire in October 2003 was a classic example. Fanned by Santa Anas, it burned 722,000 acres: 3,640 buildings were destroyed, 15 people died.
In 1996, 10 homes burned in Malibu and Calabasas. In 1993, fires that ravaged Malibu, Calabasas and Altadena killed three people, injured 12, destroyed or damaged nearly 400 houses, and forced the evacuation of thousands. In June 1990, the College Hills brush fire in Glendale destroyed or damaged 67 homes. In 1982, a wind-driven fire raced from Dayton Canyon in the West San Fernando Valley to the Malibu coast, destroying 97 homes and burning 54,000 acres.
And on it goes.
Is our memory that short? Is our will that weak? Then maybe a face slap from the insurance companies will get our attention.
And let's face it, those same insurance companies are beginning to check out of the Hotel California. Allstate has announced it would no longer underwrite new homeowner policies in the state, citing risks from wildfires and earthquakes.
California FAIR plan already insures 20,000 homes in brush fire areas and one would have to think there are limits as to how many of these policies can be written.
Perhaps it is time to rethink how and where we live while we wait for the winds to blow.
And blow they will. In the words of Joan Didion:
"There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route66, drying the hills and the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it..."
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Cheap Tricks
My journalistic colleagues engaged in some high decibel howling recently over the news that Pasadena Now, an online publication that purports to be the pulse of Pasadena, was outsourcing its reporting jobs to India.
That's right, folks. The people who brought you sacred cows are now going to be covering the politicians down at city hall.
The reason? It's cheap. After all, since city council meeting are broadcast on the Internet, why not have some low-wage reporter half a world away armed with a laptop do the job?
Publisher James Macpherson sees it this way: "I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications. Whether you're at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you're still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview."
There are a lot of things wrong with this, of course. Accepting the bluster of a sitting politician at face value is nonsense (see George Bush or Bill Clinton), a nuance that will be lost on a reporter who has never been east of Punjab peering at a flickering computer screen.
And as any discerning reader knows, the behind-the-scenes arm twisting and deal making that precede a public political stance, be it a vote in Congress or one in Pasadena, is often more revealing and important than the vote itself. That kind of analysis isn't broadcast on the Internet.
Then again, expecting in-depth reporting at Pasadena Now is like looking for lobster amid the fish sticks.
The web site is mostly a compilation of press releases, hand out photos and parroting of local media, just the thing that a minimum-wage staff can crank out. It's not bad. It's just not going to shape opinions.
And Pasadena Now isn't even the first to embrace outsourcing.
Reuters began farming out financial news reporting to India some three years ago. The beginnings of an outsourcing move to China have already started, a place where the pay is even lower and the job pool even larger.
If that's not bad enough, Thomson Financial, a business information group, has been using computers to generate some stories since last year and is so pleased with the results that it plans to expand the practice.
By using previous results in Thomson's database, the computer stories say whether a company has done better or worse than expected. "This is not about cost but about delivering information to our customers at a speed at which they can make an almost immediate trading decision," said Matthew Burkley, senior vice president of strategy at Thomson Financial. "This means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think."
And what will they be thinking about? How they could any day lose their jobs to a land far away. Or worse, to a machine.
In the meantime, let's take this outsourcing idea and run with it.
I suggest we outsource the entire Pasadena City Council.
Think of how we could fill up the coffers if we farmed out these seven folks and cut back on their $1200 plus perks monthly salary. We'd live in a world free of pot holes.
Think of how free from influence and collusion our council members would be if they were thousands of miles away, operating in complete isolation from one another, perhaps in the Himalayas, far from those pesky constituents.
Think about how cheap elections would be. It would almost be like American Idol. No endless campaigning. No fund raising. One phone call or mouse click and, bang, we have a winner.
Mayor Bill Bogaard has been a fine leader but by outsourcing his job, we might find another Gandhi. Shirtless. Noble. And cheap.
OK, so maybe outsourcing won't get to that point. But I never thought I'd see media jobs shipped overseas in my lifetime.
I have a feeling we better learn to get use to it.
As an old Indian proverb goes, "If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile."
That's right, folks. The people who brought you sacred cows are now going to be covering the politicians down at city hall.
The reason? It's cheap. After all, since city council meeting are broadcast on the Internet, why not have some low-wage reporter half a world away armed with a laptop do the job?
Publisher James Macpherson sees it this way: "I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications. Whether you're at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you're still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview."
There are a lot of things wrong with this, of course. Accepting the bluster of a sitting politician at face value is nonsense (see George Bush or Bill Clinton), a nuance that will be lost on a reporter who has never been east of Punjab peering at a flickering computer screen.
And as any discerning reader knows, the behind-the-scenes arm twisting and deal making that precede a public political stance, be it a vote in Congress or one in Pasadena, is often more revealing and important than the vote itself. That kind of analysis isn't broadcast on the Internet.
Then again, expecting in-depth reporting at Pasadena Now is like looking for lobster amid the fish sticks.
The web site is mostly a compilation of press releases, hand out photos and parroting of local media, just the thing that a minimum-wage staff can crank out. It's not bad. It's just not going to shape opinions.
And Pasadena Now isn't even the first to embrace outsourcing.
Reuters began farming out financial news reporting to India some three years ago. The beginnings of an outsourcing move to China have already started, a place where the pay is even lower and the job pool even larger.
If that's not bad enough, Thomson Financial, a business information group, has been using computers to generate some stories since last year and is so pleased with the results that it plans to expand the practice.
By using previous results in Thomson's database, the computer stories say whether a company has done better or worse than expected. "This is not about cost but about delivering information to our customers at a speed at which they can make an almost immediate trading decision," said Matthew Burkley, senior vice president of strategy at Thomson Financial. "This means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think."
And what will they be thinking about? How they could any day lose their jobs to a land far away. Or worse, to a machine.
In the meantime, let's take this outsourcing idea and run with it.
I suggest we outsource the entire Pasadena City Council.
Think of how we could fill up the coffers if we farmed out these seven folks and cut back on their $1200 plus perks monthly salary. We'd live in a world free of pot holes.
Think of how free from influence and collusion our council members would be if they were thousands of miles away, operating in complete isolation from one another, perhaps in the Himalayas, far from those pesky constituents.
Think about how cheap elections would be. It would almost be like American Idol. No endless campaigning. No fund raising. One phone call or mouse click and, bang, we have a winner.
Mayor Bill Bogaard has been a fine leader but by outsourcing his job, we might find another Gandhi. Shirtless. Noble. And cheap.
OK, so maybe outsourcing won't get to that point. But I never thought I'd see media jobs shipped overseas in my lifetime.
I have a feeling we better learn to get use to it.
As an old Indian proverb goes, "If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile."
Monday, April 30, 2007
Almost True Confessions
I've done some dreadful things in my life. I've removed "do not remove" tags from mattresses. I've rolled through stop signs while turning right. I've used profanity, mostly on the golf course. I have been envious when an unemployed sign painter wins a $300 million lottery. I have visited Hooters and consumed chicken wings in vast amounts.
Pride, envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, lust, anger, I've dabbled in them all.
Now, thanks to the Internet, there is a place for me to unburden myself.
Sites like notproud.com, dailyconfession.com, grouphug.com and ivescrewedup.com, offer an opportunity to those who believe that confession is good for the soul to reveal their deepest secrets.
The postings sometimes make you laugh. And sometimes cry.
"I ordered a pizza for my wife and I but she was running late and I ate the whole thing and she had to heat up yesterday's leftovers," reads one.
"I'm going to break up with him because he doesn't spoil me enough. I'm spoiled. And I think I deserve it," reads another.
"I was flirting with a guy I met on line," confesses a poster. "We have been talking to each other for a few weeks. I lied about the real me - how old I am, where I live, etc. and pretty much expected the same from him. We got to the point of swapping photos and I told him to send me his and I would send him mine. I received it today. It was my brother. My 13-year-old brother! (I am 17). I have not yet figured out just what to do - I haven't told him or anyone yet."
"Everyone talks about the beauty of childbirth," says one woman. "My son was born seven days ago. He was the ugliest, blood covered, prune wrinkled, limp pile of purple flesh I have ever seen. I was mortified. Once they got him all cleaned up and swaddled - he looked much more like the images I had seen of newborns, pink and cuddly. I confess that I am embarrassed with my initial reaction, but with God as my witness, he was one ugly little cuss."
"I've tried to convince myself that I am in love with someone who is addicted to crack cocaine, but the truth is - I'm afraid to leave him for fear that he will hurt me more than he already has..." says one writer.
Another says: "A friend of mine was shot and killed last weekend, by a black guy. I've always been a bit racist, despite the fact that I knew a few very nice, caring, Chrisitan black people. But now that this has happened, I feel like I've just lost all respect for them."
"I am sorry God for not keeping that baby," a confession on ivescrewedup.com reads. "I had an abortion and had kept that secret for over 18 years. I am so ashamed. Please forgive me."
"I loved him so much, but he wouldn't talk to me," says another post. "So I said I had cancer and that I was dying. I would cry to him about fears of the future and dying and what I wish I could have done with my life. Eventually I had to tell the truth, because his mom wanted to call mine about a weekend with them. I hurt him. He has to see a counsellor now because Ive caused him so much pain. I want to cut my wrists, take pills, jump off something-because I know that I deserve this hurt, but it's killing me that he has to deal with it...I played him, abused him, took advantage of what a good person he was. Hours of late night phone calls comforting me. Hours of driving to get me. And I hurt him. And now, I wish I really did have cancer, because, to lie when Im so blessed, while everyone around me suffers, is the worst thing I could do. And I dont believe I deserve anything better."
Funny or tragic, the trouble with all of this is that it's a one-way conversation. Confessing your sins to a computer screen may provide some short-term help but it's not the same as talking to a priest, a therapist, or even a friend.
There's nobody there to say "you're normal," or "it's not as bad as you think," or "you're one sick puppy."
Then there's validity of the posts. In the case of the woman confessing to an abortion, the site is run by a pro-life church in Florida.
And then there was this one:
"I worked with a man we'll call Bill. I had a huge crush on him, and would tease him by wearing thong panties and flash him throughout the day. He was married and even has a daughter and I didn't care. Anyway, one thing led to another, and we had intimate relations. I don't really think we had sex, it was only oral. I have to apologize to his wife and daughter. Hillary, Chelsea, I am sorry. Monica."
Pride, envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, lust, anger, I've dabbled in them all.
Now, thanks to the Internet, there is a place for me to unburden myself.
Sites like notproud.com, dailyconfession.com, grouphug.com and ivescrewedup.com, offer an opportunity to those who believe that confession is good for the soul to reveal their deepest secrets.
The postings sometimes make you laugh. And sometimes cry.
"I ordered a pizza for my wife and I but she was running late and I ate the whole thing and she had to heat up yesterday's leftovers," reads one.
"I'm going to break up with him because he doesn't spoil me enough. I'm spoiled. And I think I deserve it," reads another.
"I was flirting with a guy I met on line," confesses a poster. "We have been talking to each other for a few weeks. I lied about the real me - how old I am, where I live, etc. and pretty much expected the same from him. We got to the point of swapping photos and I told him to send me his and I would send him mine. I received it today. It was my brother. My 13-year-old brother! (I am 17). I have not yet figured out just what to do - I haven't told him or anyone yet."
"Everyone talks about the beauty of childbirth," says one woman. "My son was born seven days ago. He was the ugliest, blood covered, prune wrinkled, limp pile of purple flesh I have ever seen. I was mortified. Once they got him all cleaned up and swaddled - he looked much more like the images I had seen of newborns, pink and cuddly. I confess that I am embarrassed with my initial reaction, but with God as my witness, he was one ugly little cuss."
"I've tried to convince myself that I am in love with someone who is addicted to crack cocaine, but the truth is - I'm afraid to leave him for fear that he will hurt me more than he already has..." says one writer.
Another says: "A friend of mine was shot and killed last weekend, by a black guy. I've always been a bit racist, despite the fact that I knew a few very nice, caring, Chrisitan black people. But now that this has happened, I feel like I've just lost all respect for them."
"I am sorry God for not keeping that baby," a confession on ivescrewedup.com reads. "I had an abortion and had kept that secret for over 18 years. I am so ashamed. Please forgive me."
"I loved him so much, but he wouldn't talk to me," says another post. "So I said I had cancer and that I was dying. I would cry to him about fears of the future and dying and what I wish I could have done with my life. Eventually I had to tell the truth, because his mom wanted to call mine about a weekend with them. I hurt him. He has to see a counsellor now because Ive caused him so much pain. I want to cut my wrists, take pills, jump off something-because I know that I deserve this hurt, but it's killing me that he has to deal with it...I played him, abused him, took advantage of what a good person he was. Hours of late night phone calls comforting me. Hours of driving to get me. And I hurt him. And now, I wish I really did have cancer, because, to lie when Im so blessed, while everyone around me suffers, is the worst thing I could do. And I dont believe I deserve anything better."
Funny or tragic, the trouble with all of this is that it's a one-way conversation. Confessing your sins to a computer screen may provide some short-term help but it's not the same as talking to a priest, a therapist, or even a friend.
There's nobody there to say "you're normal," or "it's not as bad as you think," or "you're one sick puppy."
Then there's validity of the posts. In the case of the woman confessing to an abortion, the site is run by a pro-life church in Florida.
And then there was this one:
"I worked with a man we'll call Bill. I had a huge crush on him, and would tease him by wearing thong panties and flash him throughout the day. He was married and even has a daughter and I didn't care. Anyway, one thing led to another, and we had intimate relations. I don't really think we had sex, it was only oral. I have to apologize to his wife and daughter. Hillary, Chelsea, I am sorry. Monica."
As the Crow Flaps
It's been quite a week for singer/environmental activist Cheryl Crow.
First, she and her eco-buddy Laurie David got into a head-on collision with Republican Party political overlord Karl Rove at a White House correspondents dinner Saturday night that went something like this:
Crow and David, upon meeting Rove, urge him to take "a fresh look" at global warming.
"I honestly thought that I was going to change his mind, like, right there and then," David tells the Associated Press, revealing the depth of her political sophistication.
Both celebrities were guests of news organizations: Crow invited by Bloomberg News and David by CNN.
At one point, according to the celebrities, Crow touches Rove's arm and "Karl swung around and spat, 'Don't touch me.' "
"You can't speak to us like that, you work for us," Crow claims to have responded.
"I don't work for you, I work for the American people,' says Rove.
"We are the American people," says Crow."
"She came over to insult me," Rove says, "and she succeeded."
OK, these little misunderstandings sometimes occur, especially when influential and powerful egos get together over drinks. All is not lost, however. Crowe gets some publicity even while her cause gets lost in the hubbub.
Undaunted by her failed attempt to turn Rove into a tree hugger, Crow recently offered a couple of save-the-planet suggestions on her website that sounded like they came straight from Saturday Night Live.
"I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," she wrote. "Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required."
And then, in game of can-you-top-this, she said she advocates "not using paper napkins, which happen to be made from virgin wood and represent the height of wastefullness".
Crow said she has designed what she calls her "dining sleeve" - a detachable contrivance which offers the user "the convenience of wiping his mouth on his sleeve rather than throwing out yet another barely used paper product". Crow's hairbrained ideas on environmental activism brought her face-to-face with the biggest media frenzy she has faced since she split from Lance Armstrong.
The press had a field day. Tabloids made it front page news. I actually saw several commentators on cable TV soberly discuss her toilet paper propsal as if it was a pending congressional initiative.
Crow later said she was only joking.
Maybe. Maybe not. But it says something about celebrity/activists that we believed she just might be serious.
There are plenty of celebs out there who are using their visibilty to do good deeds. Bono, Angelina Jolie, Oprah, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, have all plunged headlong into righting some of the world's wrongs. They follow in the footsteps of Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye and Elizabeth Taylor, among others.
But many go overboard. Others support liberal causes, or misery chic as some call it, which makes them suspect in the minds of many. America still suffers a hangover from a double shot of Jane Fonda.
Others -- Madonna comes to mind --- talk more than they know.
Cheryl Crow is a fine performer who unfortunately has confused activism with stand up comedy. Does she seriously think that making outlandish statements will actually promote serious discussion of global warming and environmental change? Does she think she can convert Karl Rove at a cocktail party?
For whatever good intentions she may have, Crow now teeters on the edge of joining the mostly ignored. And that would be a shame on such an important issue.
First, she and her eco-buddy Laurie David got into a head-on collision with Republican Party political overlord Karl Rove at a White House correspondents dinner Saturday night that went something like this:
Crow and David, upon meeting Rove, urge him to take "a fresh look" at global warming.
"I honestly thought that I was going to change his mind, like, right there and then," David tells the Associated Press, revealing the depth of her political sophistication.
Both celebrities were guests of news organizations: Crow invited by Bloomberg News and David by CNN.
At one point, according to the celebrities, Crow touches Rove's arm and "Karl swung around and spat, 'Don't touch me.' "
"You can't speak to us like that, you work for us," Crow claims to have responded.
"I don't work for you, I work for the American people,' says Rove.
"We are the American people," says Crow."
"She came over to insult me," Rove says, "and she succeeded."
OK, these little misunderstandings sometimes occur, especially when influential and powerful egos get together over drinks. All is not lost, however. Crowe gets some publicity even while her cause gets lost in the hubbub.
Undaunted by her failed attempt to turn Rove into a tree hugger, Crow recently offered a couple of save-the-planet suggestions on her website that sounded like they came straight from Saturday Night Live.
"I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting," she wrote. "Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required."
And then, in game of can-you-top-this, she said she advocates "not using paper napkins, which happen to be made from virgin wood and represent the height of wastefullness".
Crow said she has designed what she calls her "dining sleeve" - a detachable contrivance which offers the user "the convenience of wiping his mouth on his sleeve rather than throwing out yet another barely used paper product". Crow's hairbrained ideas on environmental activism brought her face-to-face with the biggest media frenzy she has faced since she split from Lance Armstrong.
The press had a field day. Tabloids made it front page news. I actually saw several commentators on cable TV soberly discuss her toilet paper propsal as if it was a pending congressional initiative.
Crow later said she was only joking.
Maybe. Maybe not. But it says something about celebrity/activists that we believed she just might be serious.
There are plenty of celebs out there who are using their visibilty to do good deeds. Bono, Angelina Jolie, Oprah, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, have all plunged headlong into righting some of the world's wrongs. They follow in the footsteps of Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Danny Kaye and Elizabeth Taylor, among others.
But many go overboard. Others support liberal causes, or misery chic as some call it, which makes them suspect in the minds of many. America still suffers a hangover from a double shot of Jane Fonda.
Others -- Madonna comes to mind --- talk more than they know.
Cheryl Crow is a fine performer who unfortunately has confused activism with stand up comedy. Does she seriously think that making outlandish statements will actually promote serious discussion of global warming and environmental change? Does she think she can convert Karl Rove at a cocktail party?
For whatever good intentions she may have, Crow now teeters on the edge of joining the mostly ignored. And that would be a shame on such an important issue.
Progress and Other Abnormalties
Random thoughts.
Progess is good. Without it, we wouldn't have boom boxes, car alarms aand automated telephone answering services.
But I've got to draw the line with the latest hairbrained scheme cooked up by the folks over at Disney,
When Disney debuts its latest Winnie the Pooh series "My Friends Tigger & Pooh," on TV next month, the character Christopher Robin will be largely replaced by a girl named Darby.
Never mind that Darby sounds like a name for a leprechan. Christopher Robin was the centerpiece of A.A. Milne's charming stories around which all the characters---Pooh, Tigger, Eyeore, Rabbit, Kanga---revolved. Indeed, Chrisopher, who Milne patterned after his own son, was the only human inhabitant of the 100-acre wood where their adventures took place.
And now, some 75 years after Christopher and his friends first appeared in print, some chick suddenly barges in? Do I smell the unmistakable arorma of political correctness wafting over this whole affair?
What's next? Robin Curuso?
British author Hugh Fraser put it this way: "For a girl to intrude breaks the spell of the story. They aren't her toys."
A protest movement at Bringham Young University? It's as rare as a 50-year flood but those are the kind of hackles that Dick Cheney can raise these days.
Students and faculty at the conservative Mormon campus want the administration to withdraw an invitation for the Vice President to speak at commencement this month.
Citing his involvement in faulty intelligence before the Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal, critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for graduates.
But just in case you thought BYU was becoming a hotbed of radicalism, the university limited student protest to sitting on the sidewalk and carrying signs.
Then, according to one blogger, "As soon as 1:00 hit and the time for free speech expired, after an impromptu performance of the Star Spangled Banner by the BYU Democrats, men from BYU dressed in suits and sunglasses with Secret Service-style earpieces roughly rounded up all of the signage and banners. "You'll be able to use it all again. We're just going to keep it for you. So you don't carry it around campus, we'll take it to a safe place until the next designated protest."
Don Imus is an idiot. Not only did he allow his radio talk show to become a launching pad for racist, sexist stereotyping, he deeply hurt a bunch of seemingly nice kids from Rutgers who had overcome incredible odds to make the NCAA women's basketball championship.
To Imus, they were just "nappy-headed hos."
And thanks to him, their moment in the sun has forever been clouded.
Despite his characterization that he's a nice guy who did a bad thing, Imus is guy who once called basketball player Patrick Ewing a "knuckle-dragging moron," called the New York Knicks "chest-thumping pimps" and, after being asked what he had in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell and Al Sharpton, said "We all have 12-inch penises."
Nice guy, indeed.
To be fair, Iman is mouthing phraes that have been the hallmark of rap music since its inception. There has been outrage, to be sure, but not enough to clean up what is an unsavory art form, one that has morphed into an even worse life style.
And Iman's most severe critics don't posses spotless records. Al Sharpton once referred to "the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights," a disparaging reference to a Brooklyn neighborhood's Orthodox Jewish population. Jesse Jackson once called New York City "Himietown."
Maybe everybody involved needs to go off the air for two weeks. Or longer.
Iman can say whatever he wants but I have a feeling that his advertisers will continue to distance themselves from him and that his show will shortly be history.
Maybe that's not a bad thing. This country is a melting pot and its future depends on our ability to get along. One less voice that divides us won't be missed.
Iman once said, "My goal is to goad people into saying something that ruins their life."
Little did he know he was writing his own epitath.
Progess is good. Without it, we wouldn't have boom boxes, car alarms aand automated telephone answering services.
But I've got to draw the line with the latest hairbrained scheme cooked up by the folks over at Disney,
When Disney debuts its latest Winnie the Pooh series "My Friends Tigger & Pooh," on TV next month, the character Christopher Robin will be largely replaced by a girl named Darby.
Never mind that Darby sounds like a name for a leprechan. Christopher Robin was the centerpiece of A.A. Milne's charming stories around which all the characters---Pooh, Tigger, Eyeore, Rabbit, Kanga---revolved. Indeed, Chrisopher, who Milne patterned after his own son, was the only human inhabitant of the 100-acre wood where their adventures took place.
And now, some 75 years after Christopher and his friends first appeared in print, some chick suddenly barges in? Do I smell the unmistakable arorma of political correctness wafting over this whole affair?
What's next? Robin Curuso?
British author Hugh Fraser put it this way: "For a girl to intrude breaks the spell of the story. They aren't her toys."
A protest movement at Bringham Young University? It's as rare as a 50-year flood but those are the kind of hackles that Dick Cheney can raise these days.
Students and faculty at the conservative Mormon campus want the administration to withdraw an invitation for the Vice President to speak at commencement this month.
Citing his involvement in faulty intelligence before the Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal, critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for graduates.
But just in case you thought BYU was becoming a hotbed of radicalism, the university limited student protest to sitting on the sidewalk and carrying signs.
Then, according to one blogger, "As soon as 1:00 hit and the time for free speech expired, after an impromptu performance of the Star Spangled Banner by the BYU Democrats, men from BYU dressed in suits and sunglasses with Secret Service-style earpieces roughly rounded up all of the signage and banners. "You'll be able to use it all again. We're just going to keep it for you. So you don't carry it around campus, we'll take it to a safe place until the next designated protest."
Don Imus is an idiot. Not only did he allow his radio talk show to become a launching pad for racist, sexist stereotyping, he deeply hurt a bunch of seemingly nice kids from Rutgers who had overcome incredible odds to make the NCAA women's basketball championship.
To Imus, they were just "nappy-headed hos."
And thanks to him, their moment in the sun has forever been clouded.
Despite his characterization that he's a nice guy who did a bad thing, Imus is guy who once called basketball player Patrick Ewing a "knuckle-dragging moron," called the New York Knicks "chest-thumping pimps" and, after being asked what he had in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell and Al Sharpton, said "We all have 12-inch penises."
Nice guy, indeed.
To be fair, Iman is mouthing phraes that have been the hallmark of rap music since its inception. There has been outrage, to be sure, but not enough to clean up what is an unsavory art form, one that has morphed into an even worse life style.
And Iman's most severe critics don't posses spotless records. Al Sharpton once referred to "the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights," a disparaging reference to a Brooklyn neighborhood's Orthodox Jewish population. Jesse Jackson once called New York City "Himietown."
Maybe everybody involved needs to go off the air for two weeks. Or longer.
Iman can say whatever he wants but I have a feeling that his advertisers will continue to distance themselves from him and that his show will shortly be history.
Maybe that's not a bad thing. This country is a melting pot and its future depends on our ability to get along. One less voice that divides us won't be missed.
Iman once said, "My goal is to goad people into saying something that ruins their life."
Little did he know he was writing his own epitath.
Ring Around the Rosie
It has happened again.
Some months back, when actor/producer Mel Gibson made headlines by enagaging in an anti-Semitic tirade, then blamed alcohol for his remarks, I wrote that while Gibson may suffer from the disease of alcoholism, he suffers from the disease of prejudice as well.
Little did I know at the time that actor Michael Richards would come along shortly thereafter and spew anti-black venom at a comedy club that sounded like it was scripted by the White Citizens Council. I wrote that Richards had done the impossible: He made Mel Gibson look like Mahatma Gandhi. Sometime later, I criticized conservative columnist Ann Coulter for being shrill, bombastic, absolutely devoid of any sense of decency.
Then along comes Rosie O'Donnell.
Rosie, from her catbird seat on the daily televised gabfest called The View, has managed to make Coulter look like a learned pundit whose insight and analytical skills bring crystal clarity to complex issues.
Let me say this about Rosie O'Donnell. She's gifted comedian and has devoted much of her time to the care, feeding and education of children.
She is also the sworn enemy of Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump for which she should receive our undying gratitude.
But somewhere along the line, Rosie has bought into some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories this side of the grassy knoll.
It's not unusual for a somehwat dark world view to emerge among the Hollywood liberal chic who see a lot of right wing secret agents lurking in the shadows, especially during a Republican administration.
Rosie, however, has elevated goofiness to a new level and doesn't care who knows it. Here are a couple of hightlights.
O'Donnell says she believes the Iranian seizure of British Royal Navy personnel was a hoax, intended to provoke a war with Iran. To underscore her beliefs, she writes on her blog in a strange mixture of haiku and text message shorthand:
"the british did it on purpose into iranian waters as US MILITARY BUILD UP ON THE IRANIAN BORDER
we will be in iran before summer as planned
come on people u have 2 c i know u can"
Never mind that almost all evidence points to the fact that the British were in Iraqi waters and that the Iranians were the provacateurs here.
But if that conspiracy isn't deep and dark enough, get a load of this one:
Rosie said she believes 7 World Trade Center had been imploded, in line with 9/11 conspiracy theories. "It is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved." She commented that she had no idea who might be behind such a deed, but argued in a blog entry that the building was blown up to destroy evidence of the corporate financial scandals at Enron and WorldCom.
We needed further evidence that Enron and WorldCom. were scams?
This particular theory moved the decidedly nonpolitical Popular Mechanics magazine to launch into an explanation of the events surrounding the destruction of 9/11 in a gentle attempt to question Rosie's engineering credentials.
By buying into 9/11 conspiracy junk, Rosie puts herself on the same wave length with those who believe the attacks were planned and carried out (1) the U.S. Government, (2) military mad hatters (3) the international Jewish conspiracy, (4) UFOs or (5) all of the above.
Along the way, O'Donnell has ripped the judges on American Idol for racism at the same time she was criticized for mocking the Chinese language while finding time to come to the defense of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suggesting the government elicited a false confession from the 9/11 mastermind by "using torture, robbing him of his humanity and treating him like an animal."
It must be exhausting to be Rosie. Every way you turn, there's another conspiracy to reveal.
She, of course, has every right to speak her piece. And if ABC television wants to pass off street corner oratory as entertainment, so be it.
Maybe these people will all go away if I stop writing about them.
Some months back, when actor/producer Mel Gibson made headlines by enagaging in an anti-Semitic tirade, then blamed alcohol for his remarks, I wrote that while Gibson may suffer from the disease of alcoholism, he suffers from the disease of prejudice as well.
Little did I know at the time that actor Michael Richards would come along shortly thereafter and spew anti-black venom at a comedy club that sounded like it was scripted by the White Citizens Council. I wrote that Richards had done the impossible: He made Mel Gibson look like Mahatma Gandhi. Sometime later, I criticized conservative columnist Ann Coulter for being shrill, bombastic, absolutely devoid of any sense of decency.
Then along comes Rosie O'Donnell.
Rosie, from her catbird seat on the daily televised gabfest called The View, has managed to make Coulter look like a learned pundit whose insight and analytical skills bring crystal clarity to complex issues.
Let me say this about Rosie O'Donnell. She's gifted comedian and has devoted much of her time to the care, feeding and education of children.
She is also the sworn enemy of Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump for which she should receive our undying gratitude.
But somewhere along the line, Rosie has bought into some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories this side of the grassy knoll.
It's not unusual for a somehwat dark world view to emerge among the Hollywood liberal chic who see a lot of right wing secret agents lurking in the shadows, especially during a Republican administration.
Rosie, however, has elevated goofiness to a new level and doesn't care who knows it. Here are a couple of hightlights.
O'Donnell says she believes the Iranian seizure of British Royal Navy personnel was a hoax, intended to provoke a war with Iran. To underscore her beliefs, she writes on her blog in a strange mixture of haiku and text message shorthand:
"the british did it on purpose into iranian waters as US MILITARY BUILD UP ON THE IRANIAN BORDER
we will be in iran before summer as planned
come on people u have 2 c i know u can"
Never mind that almost all evidence points to the fact that the British were in Iraqi waters and that the Iranians were the provacateurs here.
But if that conspiracy isn't deep and dark enough, get a load of this one:
Rosie said she believes 7 World Trade Center had been imploded, in line with 9/11 conspiracy theories. "It is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved." She commented that she had no idea who might be behind such a deed, but argued in a blog entry that the building was blown up to destroy evidence of the corporate financial scandals at Enron and WorldCom.
We needed further evidence that Enron and WorldCom. were scams?
This particular theory moved the decidedly nonpolitical Popular Mechanics magazine to launch into an explanation of the events surrounding the destruction of 9/11 in a gentle attempt to question Rosie's engineering credentials.
By buying into 9/11 conspiracy junk, Rosie puts herself on the same wave length with those who believe the attacks were planned and carried out (1) the U.S. Government, (2) military mad hatters (3) the international Jewish conspiracy, (4) UFOs or (5) all of the above.
Along the way, O'Donnell has ripped the judges on American Idol for racism at the same time she was criticized for mocking the Chinese language while finding time to come to the defense of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suggesting the government elicited a false confession from the 9/11 mastermind by "using torture, robbing him of his humanity and treating him like an animal."
It must be exhausting to be Rosie. Every way you turn, there's another conspiracy to reveal.
She, of course, has every right to speak her piece. And if ABC television wants to pass off street corner oratory as entertainment, so be it.
Maybe these people will all go away if I stop writing about them.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Guess Who's Coming to Edit?
The print journalism profession is engaged in so much soul searching these days it could pass as a parole hearing.
What does the future hold? Is there a future? Should we move everything lock, stock and printing press to a web site? But how do you make a web site pay, when news is available almost anywhere free of charge? What about blogs? Are they reliable sources for information? And what about citizen journalism? Do you want your newspaper written by the guy next door?
It is this kind of hand wringing that makes some editors attempt what can be charitably described as gimmick-based journalism in attempt to appear cutting edge.
Example A is the latest very public soap opera to be staged down at the Los Angeles Times.
As we join this episode, the Times has decided to turn its Sunday opinion and editorial section over to a "guest editor."
But the first "guest" down the chute is Brian Grazer, a Hollywood producer who, it turns out, is represented by a publicist who is the opinion editor's girlfriend. Questions are immediately raised as to whether Grazer received favorable consideration in landing the assignment.
The debate over the Times sometimes cozy relationship with Hollywood is re-ignited.
Accusations are made. Angry words are exchanged. Feelings are hurt.
The entire Sunday section is scrapped, opinion editor Andres Martinez quits and the "guest editor" program is relegated to the trash heap. In the middle of it all, the mud slinging and finger pointing by editors, columnists, pundits and academics reaches a threshold unmatched since the last presidential campaign.
Other "guest editors" whose work we will never see included Donald Rumsfeld and Magic Johnson. Honest.
And the Times, already staggered by a number of body blows delviered by its greedy corporate owners in Chicago, gets a black eye.
Indeed, the elevated volume of outrage coming from the Times newsroom is in direct proportion to the distain felt for their Tribune overlords, one of which is the publisher who signed off on this "guest editor" nonsense.
Worse yet, instead of becoming the source, the Times becomes the story.
There is no question that citizen voices play an important part in any news publication. There is good reading in the letters column. There is intriguing debate in op-ed pieces.
But I would no more let Donald Rumsfeld run my opinion pages than he would let me run the Department of Defense. Each job requires a professional.
And despite what you may think of journalists, there are skills involved.
Allison Silver, a former editor of the Times Opinion section, put it this way:
"No matter how clever and talented the invited guest is, the decision to go outside journalism suggests indifference to editing as a critical profession. It goes without saying that you wouldn't turn your Sunset Strip restaurant over to your mom for the night no matter how good a cook she is, or take the Jet Propulsion Lab away from Caltech and give it to CalArts to run, just to shake things up. But the newspaper was suggesting that any one of a number of smart amateurs could pull together a Sunday analysis section, given a little guidance. Professional experience and journalistic skill were deemed of secondary value."
The Times is not alone in this quagmire. Vanity Fair magazine is turning an issue over to Bono, the rock musician/activist, to edit.
Is this a trend? If it is, objectivity could be the victim. And the newspaper profession can ill afford that kind of problem at this time and place.
What does the future hold? Is there a future? Should we move everything lock, stock and printing press to a web site? But how do you make a web site pay, when news is available almost anywhere free of charge? What about blogs? Are they reliable sources for information? And what about citizen journalism? Do you want your newspaper written by the guy next door?
It is this kind of hand wringing that makes some editors attempt what can be charitably described as gimmick-based journalism in attempt to appear cutting edge.
Example A is the latest very public soap opera to be staged down at the Los Angeles Times.
As we join this episode, the Times has decided to turn its Sunday opinion and editorial section over to a "guest editor."
But the first "guest" down the chute is Brian Grazer, a Hollywood producer who, it turns out, is represented by a publicist who is the opinion editor's girlfriend. Questions are immediately raised as to whether Grazer received favorable consideration in landing the assignment.
The debate over the Times sometimes cozy relationship with Hollywood is re-ignited.
Accusations are made. Angry words are exchanged. Feelings are hurt.
The entire Sunday section is scrapped, opinion editor Andres Martinez quits and the "guest editor" program is relegated to the trash heap. In the middle of it all, the mud slinging and finger pointing by editors, columnists, pundits and academics reaches a threshold unmatched since the last presidential campaign.
Other "guest editors" whose work we will never see included Donald Rumsfeld and Magic Johnson. Honest.
And the Times, already staggered by a number of body blows delviered by its greedy corporate owners in Chicago, gets a black eye.
Indeed, the elevated volume of outrage coming from the Times newsroom is in direct proportion to the distain felt for their Tribune overlords, one of which is the publisher who signed off on this "guest editor" nonsense.
Worse yet, instead of becoming the source, the Times becomes the story.
There is no question that citizen voices play an important part in any news publication. There is good reading in the letters column. There is intriguing debate in op-ed pieces.
But I would no more let Donald Rumsfeld run my opinion pages than he would let me run the Department of Defense. Each job requires a professional.
And despite what you may think of journalists, there are skills involved.
Allison Silver, a former editor of the Times Opinion section, put it this way:
"No matter how clever and talented the invited guest is, the decision to go outside journalism suggests indifference to editing as a critical profession. It goes without saying that you wouldn't turn your Sunset Strip restaurant over to your mom for the night no matter how good a cook she is, or take the Jet Propulsion Lab away from Caltech and give it to CalArts to run, just to shake things up. But the newspaper was suggesting that any one of a number of smart amateurs could pull together a Sunday analysis section, given a little guidance. Professional experience and journalistic skill were deemed of secondary value."
The Times is not alone in this quagmire. Vanity Fair magazine is turning an issue over to Bono, the rock musician/activist, to edit.
Is this a trend? If it is, objectivity could be the victim. And the newspaper profession can ill afford that kind of problem at this time and place.
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