In 1976, a film called "Network" written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, won four Academy Awards for its satirical portrayal of a television network.
In it, long-time "UBS Evening News" anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is being let go because of the show's low ratings. He has two more weeks on the air, but Beale announces that he will "blow his brains out" during an upcoming live broadcast.
UBS immediately fires him but they let him back on the air, ostensibly for a dignified farewell. Beale promises that he will apologize for his outburst, but instead in an obsenity-laced tirade, complains that life is bull, to put it mildly.
The program's ratings soar and UBS execs decide to exploit Beale's antics rather than pulling him off the air.
In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation with his rant, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" and persuades Americans to shout the same phrase out their windows which they do by the millions.
Soon Beale is hosting a new program called the "Howard Beale Show," billing him as a "mad prophet of the airways" which becomes the highest-rated show on television.
Ironically, what caused belly laughs in 1976 is causing belly aches 33 years later.
The script for "Network" was written long before the advent of cable television which has made it all come true.
Now, we have a veritable Greek chorus of prophets, mad and otherwise, who fill our screens with opinions great and small. And like the fictional Howard Beale, the more outrageous they become, the higher their ratings soar.
I was reminded of all this by the recent very public dust-up featuring Fox's Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, two gentlemen from opposite ends of the political spectrum who on some nights sound like a couple of guys arguing down at the other end of the bar in some beer-and-a-shot joint.
O'Reilly, from Fox, is the darling of the right who, while alleging that his show is fair and balanced, squashes anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan like so many ants on the kitchen floor.
Olbermann is a onetime Grade B sportscaster who reinvented himself as a liberal commentator throws mud at anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi.
They are joined in this Tower of Babble by the likes of Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Rachel Maddow and John Stewart.
These people define political discourse in this country? May God have mercy on us all.
In a recent incident, Olbermann called O'Reilly "a racist clown" on the air. O'Reilly in turn has refused to let anyone utter Olbermann's name on his show.
Wait, it gets more sophomoric than that . O'Reilly once initiated an online petition to have MSNBC remove Olbermann from his timeslot, purportedly to have former slot host Phil Donahue's show reinstated.
Olbermann responded by playing a selection of disparaging television clips featuring O'Reilly and mocked the whole affair in signing the petition to have himself fired.
O'Reilly raised the ante claiming General Electric, whose NBC News Division operates MSNBC, was "promoting the election of Barack Obama and then seeking to profit from his policies."
The sniping caused the chief executives at General Electric and News Corporation, which owns Fox News, to reach an unusual agreement last spring to halt the regular personal assaults on each other's channels, according to the New York Times.
Eric Burns, the former host of Fox's media criticism show "Fox News Watch" said, "Even in an age where there seemed to be no boundaries, people at the very top of two networks thought, 'Well, I guess there are boundaries,
because they've been crossed.'"
What's interesting is that the corporate suits were not only trampling on the First Amendment, but engaging in some dubious business practices since O'Reilly and Olbermann draw big ratings.
All of this would be mildly amusing if these clowns weren't contributing to the dangerous polarization of this country, a place where town halls become blood sport.
Olbermann once accused then President Bush of "subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought."
Fox's conservative pundits paint President Obama as everything from a socialist to a Marxist to a racist and "illegitimate Kenyan fraud."
It "invites, incites and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence," according to David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush.
I understand that reasoned, analytical and rational discussion of the issues facing this country can be boring stuff. If it wasn't, C-SPAN would be the most watched cable system in the United States.
But we have reacheded a point where the winner is the one who shouts the loudest.
It's time we all got as mad as hell and vow not to take it anymore.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Tough to Digest
GROWING up in the 1950s, my life revolved around Hopalong Cassidy movies, Superman comic books and Schwinn bikes.
And, believe it or not, the Reader's Digest.
The Digest was a staple in our house, rooted as we were in suburbia and living in the golden era of the Great American Middle Class.
Times were good. There was a roof over our heads, a car in the garage and chicken dinners on Sunday. Just the kind of life the Digest extolled.
Dad wore a suit and tie. Mom wore an apron. They drove us to church every Sunday in a Chevy and voted the straight Republican ticket.
I don't remember going to a lot of movies and TV didn't make an appearance in our home until I was nearly in my teens. But there was always plenty of reading material around. Most of it was rooted in the Reader's Digest.
We received the monthly magazine in the mail for as long as I could remember and there were dozens of Digest-produced condensed books in our home.
I lapped it up even as a young kid. I loved the cornball jokes - Humor in Uniform, Life in These United States - and even read Increase Your Word Power, all recurring features in the magazine. There were true-adventures stories and odd medical features written in the first person from the perspective of a body organ ("I Am Joe's Gall Bladder.")
The condensed books were just right for young men with more energy than attention span. It wasn't until I grew older that I wondered what was left out.
Nonetheless, they introduced me to such titles as "East of Eden," "The Last Hurrah," "The Ugly American" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."
The Digest was safe-for-the-family reading, claiming a circulation of close to 8 million worldwide and a readership of 38 million. I'm thinking those figures included several million copies in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists.
And now this:
This past week, Reader's Digest, an American icon for almost 90 years, filed for bankruptcy, a victim of bad management, a precipitous drop in print-on-paper popularity and a disastrous economic decline that has squashed many famous American brands like so many grapes.
The Digest announced it would cut the circulation guarantee it makes to advertisers to 5.5 million and lower its frequency to 10 issues a year from 12. This doesn't mean it will soon disappear. But it may be a matter of prolonging the inevitable. The future of print isn't particularly bright.
According to an article in the New York Times, the Digest, after years of trying to broaden its appeal, is being pushed in a decidedly conservative direction.
It is cutting down on celebrity profiles and ramping up on inspiring spiritual stories. Out are generic how-to magazine features; in are articles about military life.
"It's traditional, conservative values: I love my family, I love my community, I love my church," said Mary Berner, the president and chief executive of Reader's Digest Association.
That struck me as odd. The Reader's Digest has for most of its history maintained a conservative and anti-Communist perspective on political and social issues. It extolled the virtues of motherhood and apple pie and offered its readers a cozy world view.
Democrats, ethnic minorities, non-Protestants and poor people were about as rare in its pages as Barbra Steisand at a GOP fund-raiser.
In fact, the Digest took issue with the characterization that they were being pushed in a different direction. Instead, they say they are focusing on core values.
The larger question for the Digest, and many more publications, is: where do they go from here?
"Magazines and cable channels are trying to figure out what they can add to the mix if people already have the basic facts from the Internet and elsewhere," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"A lot of them will aspire to do that around ideology, because it's the easiest way, the simplest way, to organize an audience."
Indeed, the Digest plans to introduce a new multifaceted effort produced with Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, called the Purpose Driven Connection. For about $30, subscribers get a quarterly magazine with religious workbooks, along with DVDs featuring Warren, and membership in a social-networking Web site, including tips on what to pray for each week. It is available through churches and at Wal-Marts.
Now we will see if God Himself can save the Reader's Digest.
And, believe it or not, the Reader's Digest.
The Digest was a staple in our house, rooted as we were in suburbia and living in the golden era of the Great American Middle Class.
Times were good. There was a roof over our heads, a car in the garage and chicken dinners on Sunday. Just the kind of life the Digest extolled.
Dad wore a suit and tie. Mom wore an apron. They drove us to church every Sunday in a Chevy and voted the straight Republican ticket.
I don't remember going to a lot of movies and TV didn't make an appearance in our home until I was nearly in my teens. But there was always plenty of reading material around. Most of it was rooted in the Reader's Digest.
We received the monthly magazine in the mail for as long as I could remember and there were dozens of Digest-produced condensed books in our home.
I lapped it up even as a young kid. I loved the cornball jokes - Humor in Uniform, Life in These United States - and even read Increase Your Word Power, all recurring features in the magazine. There were true-adventures stories and odd medical features written in the first person from the perspective of a body organ ("I Am Joe's Gall Bladder.")
The condensed books were just right for young men with more energy than attention span. It wasn't until I grew older that I wondered what was left out.
Nonetheless, they introduced me to such titles as "East of Eden," "The Last Hurrah," "The Ugly American" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."
The Digest was safe-for-the-family reading, claiming a circulation of close to 8 million worldwide and a readership of 38 million. I'm thinking those figures included several million copies in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists.
And now this:
This past week, Reader's Digest, an American icon for almost 90 years, filed for bankruptcy, a victim of bad management, a precipitous drop in print-on-paper popularity and a disastrous economic decline that has squashed many famous American brands like so many grapes.
The Digest announced it would cut the circulation guarantee it makes to advertisers to 5.5 million and lower its frequency to 10 issues a year from 12. This doesn't mean it will soon disappear. But it may be a matter of prolonging the inevitable. The future of print isn't particularly bright.
According to an article in the New York Times, the Digest, after years of trying to broaden its appeal, is being pushed in a decidedly conservative direction.
It is cutting down on celebrity profiles and ramping up on inspiring spiritual stories. Out are generic how-to magazine features; in are articles about military life.
"It's traditional, conservative values: I love my family, I love my community, I love my church," said Mary Berner, the president and chief executive of Reader's Digest Association.
That struck me as odd. The Reader's Digest has for most of its history maintained a conservative and anti-Communist perspective on political and social issues. It extolled the virtues of motherhood and apple pie and offered its readers a cozy world view.
Democrats, ethnic minorities, non-Protestants and poor people were about as rare in its pages as Barbra Steisand at a GOP fund-raiser.
In fact, the Digest took issue with the characterization that they were being pushed in a different direction. Instead, they say they are focusing on core values.
The larger question for the Digest, and many more publications, is: where do they go from here?
"Magazines and cable channels are trying to figure out what they can add to the mix if people already have the basic facts from the Internet and elsewhere," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
"A lot of them will aspire to do that around ideology, because it's the easiest way, the simplest way, to organize an audience."
Indeed, the Digest plans to introduce a new multifaceted effort produced with Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, called the Purpose Driven Connection. For about $30, subscribers get a quarterly magazine with religious workbooks, along with DVDs featuring Warren, and membership in a social-networking Web site, including tips on what to pray for each week. It is available through churches and at Wal-Marts.
Now we will see if God Himself can save the Reader's Digest.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Post Mortem
Dear President Obama:
With the national debt in the trillions of dollars, every little bit of savings helps. So, Mr. President, I've come up with a proposal to save a few billion dollars, not much by Washington standards but, what the heck, a billion here, a billion there adds up.
My plan is quite simple. Dump the U.S Postal Service. That's right, shut down the post office. Or at least, make it a shadow of its former self.
Let's face it, the post office ranks up there with pay phones, curb feelers and forward artillery observers when it comes to concepts made irrelevant by the march of time.
Oh sure, Mr. President, closing it down would be bad news to stamp collectors and those who can't get their fill of rudeness at the DMV.
But as I'm sure you know, sir, the post office is leaking oil like the Exxon Valdez.
This is not news to postal authorities. They plan to offer early retirement to 150,000 workers, cut management and close offices. The Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year and is facing even larger losses this year.
Postmaster General John Potter has even asked Congress to consider allowing the agency to cut mail delivery back to five days-a-week to save money.
Over the past year, the post office by its own estimates has cut 50 million work hours; stopped construction of new postal facilities; frozen salaries for postal executives; began selling unused facilities; and cut post office hours.
The pony express probably faced the same sort of downsizing.
I've come up with this plan by watching my own mail over a long period of time. We get the occasional letter, an assortment of bills and enough junk mail and unsolicited catalogs to clog a landfill.
Like most Americans, we do most of our letter writing now via e-mail, pay bills and do banking online, buy tickets to movies, theater and sporting events and even do a bit of shopping by computer. Our kids Facebook and tweet to their heart's content without so much as licking a stamp.
The reality of it is you can buy a house, furnish it, purchase a car, find a lifelong soul mate, home school your children and, when it's all over, buy a burial plot on the Internet. Getting your mail electronically is not a big stretch
.I understand, Mr. President, that a lot of what passes for junk mail reflects the flow of commerce on which much of our economy is built. And I know there are rural areas in this county where computers are as rare as gourmet wine shops and spa showrooms.
But there are more than 227 millions computers users in the U.S. and that's about 75% of the population. According to Fiserv, Inc., a financial services technology group, 64.4 million households --nearly four out of the five households with Internet access -- pay at least one bill online, either at a bank or a company Web site.
And consider this, Mr. President: A Westlake Village company called Zumbox is offering consumers the equivalent of an online mailbox that is linked to their postal addresses. The virtual boxes can be used to receive electronic versions of documents such as personal correspondence, bills and promotional mailings.
The company claims to have created a digital mailbox for every street address in the United States. Companies would pay to send electronic versions of paper catalogs or other marketing materials to the mailboxes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Zumbox plans to provide the mailing service for free to government agencies, non-profits, consumers and businesses for bills and other non-promotional purposes.
Users' mailboxes would be organized in the equivalent of folders, so that advertising-type messages are kept separate from traditional correspondence; they will also be able to block messages from specific senders.
Innovation breeds imitation. Zumbox is the first; there will be others.
The handwriting, Mr. President, is on the wall. Keep post office service where it is absolutely necessary, rural
areas with no viable alternative. Let it continue to service the military.
After that, I'm guessing you could reduce the size of the U.S. Post Office by 75 per cent. Since the post office will lose an estimated $6 billion this year, that's a fair chunk of change.
Providing less service will not improve the product, Mr. President.
You can't deliver what's not there.
With the national debt in the trillions of dollars, every little bit of savings helps. So, Mr. President, I've come up with a proposal to save a few billion dollars, not much by Washington standards but, what the heck, a billion here, a billion there adds up.
My plan is quite simple. Dump the U.S Postal Service. That's right, shut down the post office. Or at least, make it a shadow of its former self.
Let's face it, the post office ranks up there with pay phones, curb feelers and forward artillery observers when it comes to concepts made irrelevant by the march of time.
Oh sure, Mr. President, closing it down would be bad news to stamp collectors and those who can't get their fill of rudeness at the DMV.
But as I'm sure you know, sir, the post office is leaking oil like the Exxon Valdez.
This is not news to postal authorities. They plan to offer early retirement to 150,000 workers, cut management and close offices. The Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year and is facing even larger losses this year.
Postmaster General John Potter has even asked Congress to consider allowing the agency to cut mail delivery back to five days-a-week to save money.
Over the past year, the post office by its own estimates has cut 50 million work hours; stopped construction of new postal facilities; frozen salaries for postal executives; began selling unused facilities; and cut post office hours.
The pony express probably faced the same sort of downsizing.
I've come up with this plan by watching my own mail over a long period of time. We get the occasional letter, an assortment of bills and enough junk mail and unsolicited catalogs to clog a landfill.
Like most Americans, we do most of our letter writing now via e-mail, pay bills and do banking online, buy tickets to movies, theater and sporting events and even do a bit of shopping by computer. Our kids Facebook and tweet to their heart's content without so much as licking a stamp.
The reality of it is you can buy a house, furnish it, purchase a car, find a lifelong soul mate, home school your children and, when it's all over, buy a burial plot on the Internet. Getting your mail electronically is not a big stretch
.I understand, Mr. President, that a lot of what passes for junk mail reflects the flow of commerce on which much of our economy is built. And I know there are rural areas in this county where computers are as rare as gourmet wine shops and spa showrooms.
But there are more than 227 millions computers users in the U.S. and that's about 75% of the population. According to Fiserv, Inc., a financial services technology group, 64.4 million households --nearly four out of the five households with Internet access -- pay at least one bill online, either at a bank or a company Web site.
And consider this, Mr. President: A Westlake Village company called Zumbox is offering consumers the equivalent of an online mailbox that is linked to their postal addresses. The virtual boxes can be used to receive electronic versions of documents such as personal correspondence, bills and promotional mailings.
The company claims to have created a digital mailbox for every street address in the United States. Companies would pay to send electronic versions of paper catalogs or other marketing materials to the mailboxes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Zumbox plans to provide the mailing service for free to government agencies, non-profits, consumers and businesses for bills and other non-promotional purposes.
Users' mailboxes would be organized in the equivalent of folders, so that advertising-type messages are kept separate from traditional correspondence; they will also be able to block messages from specific senders.
Innovation breeds imitation. Zumbox is the first; there will be others.
The handwriting, Mr. President, is on the wall. Keep post office service where it is absolutely necessary, rural
areas with no viable alternative. Let it continue to service the military.
After that, I'm guessing you could reduce the size of the U.S. Post Office by 75 per cent. Since the post office will lose an estimated $6 billion this year, that's a fair chunk of change.
Providing less service will not improve the product, Mr. President.
You can't deliver what's not there.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Barack's Brew
Once around the new cycle:
News: Faced with an uproar over race relations following the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police, President Obama did what any reasonable person would do: He called the protagonists together for a beer.
Gates, Obama, Police Sgt. James Crowler and Vice President Joe Biden gathered for a cold one in the Rose Garden one recent afternoon to hash out their differences.
Views: Nothing like cooling off a couple of hot heads with alcohol. But beyond that, if the President wants to bring the country together, next time he might serve suds from an American-owned brewry. Crowler had a Blue Moon (made in Canada) and the President grabbed a Bud Light (now owned by a Belgium firm). What's worse, Bud Light is to
beer what tap water is to Pinot Noir.
Gates for his part ordered a Red Stripe (made in Jamaica) but emerged as the patriot in this gathering by settling for a Sam Adams, a Boston brew.
Biden doesn't drink alcohol for which we can all be thankful.
Personally, I would have offered up a selection from Washington's very own Capitol City Brewing Company -- which owns a brewpub just a few blocks from the White House.
It's name? "Equality Ale."
News: The Pew Research Center, who brought us the startling news recently that rich people are more happy than poor people and, the somewhat more dubious finding that Republicans are happier than Democrats, have boldly tackled another hot topic.
They found that 34 percent of American adults had taken a nap in the past 24 hours. Men nap more than women, blacks more than whites and Hispanics, the unhappy more than the happy.
Views: We've come a long way in this country. Naps used to be attributable to the three martini lunch. Now we understand that if you're an unhappy low-income male, you are good bet to dose off during the day.
According to the Pew people, napping is quite common at the lower end of the income scale; some 42% of adults with an annual income below $30,000 report they napped in the past day. As income rises, napping
declines. However, at the upper end of the scale (adults whose annual income is $100,000 or above) the tendency to nap revives and reverts to the mean.
What this means remains unclear. We do know that unless you're an airline pilot or a brain surgeon, most people find that a "power nap" in the middle of the work day actually improves your performance.
Indeed, the National Institute of Mental Health discovered in a study that a midday snooze reverses "information overload."
To underscore that point, the more I read or write about this subject, the heavier my
eyelids get.
News: Astronaut Koichi Wakata is returning to Earth with the underwear he used during his four-and-a-half-month space station stay so scientists can check them out. He says he kept them on for a month at a stretch.
They're experimental high-tech undies, designed in Japan to be odor-free.
Views: I knew some guys in college who would have been ripe for this experiment. Wakata, however, was getting funky in the name of science.
The Japanese textile makers who supplied the special nano fabrics and fasteners have announced the experiment a success. The garments can repel static, wick away water, kill bacteria, neutralize odors and "prevent fouling, or permanent odor infusion."
Sounds like just the thing for old editors.
Look for these products to hit the market in the near future. Just think of the convenience and savings if you washed your underwear just a once a month.
Or maybe not.
News: A truck driver had a lucky escape when his cucumber-laden rig rolled near a crocodile-infested river after hitting a buffalo yesterday.
Views: What's this, a "Saturday Night Live" skit? No, it's all true. According to the dispatch from Australia, the 22-ton freight truck came to rest on its side when it ran into a power pole, spilling its load of cucumbers over the
road.
The driver sustained minor injuries and was taken to the Palmerston Health Clinic before being transported to Royal Darwin Hospital.
The story described the incident at taking place along the Arnhem Highway near the Adelaide River Queen Jumping Crocodiles tour site.
Remind me not to include a place with "jumping crocodiles" in its name on my bucket list.
News: Faced with an uproar over race relations following the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police, President Obama did what any reasonable person would do: He called the protagonists together for a beer.
Gates, Obama, Police Sgt. James Crowler and Vice President Joe Biden gathered for a cold one in the Rose Garden one recent afternoon to hash out their differences.
Views: Nothing like cooling off a couple of hot heads with alcohol. But beyond that, if the President wants to bring the country together, next time he might serve suds from an American-owned brewry. Crowler had a Blue Moon (made in Canada) and the President grabbed a Bud Light (now owned by a Belgium firm). What's worse, Bud Light is to
beer what tap water is to Pinot Noir.
Gates for his part ordered a Red Stripe (made in Jamaica) but emerged as the patriot in this gathering by settling for a Sam Adams, a Boston brew.
Biden doesn't drink alcohol for which we can all be thankful.
Personally, I would have offered up a selection from Washington's very own Capitol City Brewing Company -- which owns a brewpub just a few blocks from the White House.
It's name? "Equality Ale."
News: The Pew Research Center, who brought us the startling news recently that rich people are more happy than poor people and, the somewhat more dubious finding that Republicans are happier than Democrats, have boldly tackled another hot topic.
They found that 34 percent of American adults had taken a nap in the past 24 hours. Men nap more than women, blacks more than whites and Hispanics, the unhappy more than the happy.
Views: We've come a long way in this country. Naps used to be attributable to the three martini lunch. Now we understand that if you're an unhappy low-income male, you are good bet to dose off during the day.
According to the Pew people, napping is quite common at the lower end of the income scale; some 42% of adults with an annual income below $30,000 report they napped in the past day. As income rises, napping
declines. However, at the upper end of the scale (adults whose annual income is $100,000 or above) the tendency to nap revives and reverts to the mean.
What this means remains unclear. We do know that unless you're an airline pilot or a brain surgeon, most people find that a "power nap" in the middle of the work day actually improves your performance.
Indeed, the National Institute of Mental Health discovered in a study that a midday snooze reverses "information overload."
To underscore that point, the more I read or write about this subject, the heavier my
eyelids get.
News: Astronaut Koichi Wakata is returning to Earth with the underwear he used during his four-and-a-half-month space station stay so scientists can check them out. He says he kept them on for a month at a stretch.
They're experimental high-tech undies, designed in Japan to be odor-free.
Views: I knew some guys in college who would have been ripe for this experiment. Wakata, however, was getting funky in the name of science.
The Japanese textile makers who supplied the special nano fabrics and fasteners have announced the experiment a success. The garments can repel static, wick away water, kill bacteria, neutralize odors and "prevent fouling, or permanent odor infusion."
Sounds like just the thing for old editors.
Look for these products to hit the market in the near future. Just think of the convenience and savings if you washed your underwear just a once a month.
Or maybe not.
News: A truck driver had a lucky escape when his cucumber-laden rig rolled near a crocodile-infested river after hitting a buffalo yesterday.
Views: What's this, a "Saturday Night Live" skit? No, it's all true. According to the dispatch from Australia, the 22-ton freight truck came to rest on its side when it ran into a power pole, spilling its load of cucumbers over the
road.
The driver sustained minor injuries and was taken to the Palmerston Health Clinic before being transported to Royal Darwin Hospital.
The story described the incident at taking place along the Arnhem Highway near the Adelaide River Queen Jumping Crocodiles tour site.
Remind me not to include a place with "jumping crocodiles" in its name on my bucket list.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Green Is Gone
It's summertime, 2015.
I'm out tending to my front yard. It used to be grass but with increasing restrictions on water usage and a drought that has dragged on for years, it is now what we euphemistically call "California native."
That means it's dirt. We have some drought resistance plants - buckwheat, manzanita and the like - out front, but they don't begin to erase the memories of a green lawn dotted with begonias and zinnias.
You don't hear birds sing much any more. Nor crickets on warm summer nights.
We have a neighbor who tried to keep a bed of flowering plants going in a hidden corner of his back yard, but the drought cops - snoopy neighbors in this case - turned him in to the authorities and he was heavily fined.
There's no chance of that happening to me. I bricked over my back yard several years ago.
My work on this particular day consists of compacting the dirt out front. If I don't, it will blow into the house the first time a Santa Ana wind kicks up.
Afterward, I head for the shower. We are limited to three minutes of bathing time now so showering becomes an exercise in multi-tasking. With a little bit of skill, I can brush my teeth and shave at the same time I bathe. There's a bucket in the stall to collect extra water so we can use it in the toilet tank.
You can buy water around town but the prices have been jacked up sky high. The California legislature promised to deal with this type of thing but years have gone
Water isn't the only thing that's expensive. So are groceries. The drought has severely impacted the state's agriculture production and foods that were once commonplace are now hard to find.
Looking back, how did we get to this point? After all, the warning signs had been around for years.
"The U.S. West will see devastating droughts as global warming reduces the amount of mountain snow and causes the snow that does fall to melt earlier in the year," one study written in 2008 said.
"Our results are not good news for those living in the western United States," the journal Science reported that same year.
California may be at the beginning of its worst drought in modern history, state officials said in 2009.
One UCLA study warned that if the climate behaves the way it did the last time we had global warming, we should probably get ready to settle in to a more arid climate.
Glen MacDonald, the director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment, warned in 2005 that local officials were underestimating the likely duration of new droughts, which in the past century have not lasted more than about five years.
When drought struck, the burden fell on our residents. Most Southern Californians did the right thing and conserved. But even with restrictions and a willing public, Mother Nature was a tough foe to defeat.
Frankly, we had a lousy game plan.
Along with conservation, we should have been building desalination plants and made it easier to build them. Planning and permitting took 15 years for the Carlsbad Desalination Project in San Diego County. That's too long.
We should have encouraged the use of gray water by homeowners sooner. Gray water is nonindustrial wastewater generated from domestic processes such as dish washing, laundry and bathing.
For years, homeowners were forced by the state to build treatment centers if they wanted to use gray water for landscape purposes. It wasn't until 2009 that those restrictions were eased.
We should have done a lot more recycling, reuse and recovery.
We should have fixed a lot more leaky faucets and sprinklers.
We should have done a lot more planning and a lot less development.
But most important, we should have learned long ago that droughts are not a sometimes thing. They are a fact of life. And we should have learned to mitigate them before they struck.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
A Capitol Time
How I spent my summer vacation.
We found ourselves in Washington, D.C., recently on a trip to the East Coast to visit family and friends. This was not a new experience. We visit our nation's capitol often. We have a daughter there and both my wife and I used to live in Washington pursuing wildly divergent careers.
She worked for the CIA. I was in the military. But that's a story for another day.
No matter how many times we visit D.C., we never tire of visiting the museums, galleries and monuments. This time was no exception.
The weather, usually approximating high noon in Borneo, was mild. Tourists were plentiful, mostly gawking parents with bored kids in tow, although seemingly in smaller numbers than we've seen in the past.
Blame the economy, which seems to be the whipping boy for everything from job loss to ear wax.
Conventioneers were visible. The Islamic Society of North America and the Christians United for Israel were meeting at approximately the same time. No incidents were reported.
Also on scene were the Romance Writers of America, the Texas Bandmasters Association, the American Bridge Teachers Association and something called the Magic Lantern Society. Is this a great country or what?
Contrary to what you may have read on the Internet, I didn't see any roving bands of Socialists, loudly promising equitable distribution of the nation's resources. That's not exactly true. I did see a few. Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller and Susan B.Anthony, socialists all, stand etched in stone here.
I expected to see a gaggle of protestors and/or supporters in town for the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. But there were none, reflecting the often boring nature of the hearings despite the cable TV networks' attempt to present it as edge-of-the-seat excitement.
I did see one kid in front of the Supreme Court building hawking "Sonia" T-shirts.
We visited the new Washington Visitor Center, which extends beneath the U.S. Capitol building. It is spiffy and efficient. It should be. It cost $621 million to build, $360 million over original estimates.
Now a group of congressmen want to inscribe "In God We Trust" on the walls of the center which will cost another $150,000. This, of course, is pitting religious types against church/state separation advocates. Maybe the California legislature can them help reach a speedy resolution of the problem.
We took a guided tour of the capitol, something I haven't done in 40 years. The tour hasn't changed much. You visit the rotunda, the old Senate Chamber and the crypt beneath the Rotunda. I noticed that guarding the entrance to the Senate chamber is a large statue of James Garfield. I though it odd that Garfield would occupy a room peopled by the likes of Eisenhower, Lincoln, Washington, Martin Luther King. It would be like finding Gerald Ford in the pantheon of American heroes.
Garfield's main claim to fame is that he was assassinated, the second president (after Lincoln) to be killed in office. Later, I saw an ornate statue of Garfield near the Potomac River. Quite a tribute for a guy who served six months in office.
Not all was well in Washington. The National Mall, which runs 1.9 miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and is often referred to as "America's front yard," was in appalling condition.
Most of the grass is dead or dying. Reflecting pools are filled with putrid water. Sidewalks are crumbling.
An Associated Press analysis of congressional spending since 2005 found the mall has been at a disadvantage in competing for extra funds doled out by lawmakers, compared with sites that are represented by powerful members of Congress.
Because the mall is in Washington, D.C., it has no vote in the House or Senate.
Last year, when dozens of ducks and ducklings died of avian botulism because the water in a mall pool near the Capitol was so fetid, and as urgent repairs were needed to stop the Jefferson Memorial's sea wall from sinking into the mud, the Senate killed a $3.5 million earmark for the mall, according to the AP. Instead, funding went to projects back home.
The Obama Administration recently steered $55 million in economic stimulus money toward repairs, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says that's only a down payment on the nearly $400 million needed to fix things up.
It's a hell of a way to run a capitol.
We found ourselves in Washington, D.C., recently on a trip to the East Coast to visit family and friends. This was not a new experience. We visit our nation's capitol often. We have a daughter there and both my wife and I used to live in Washington pursuing wildly divergent careers.
She worked for the CIA. I was in the military. But that's a story for another day.
No matter how many times we visit D.C., we never tire of visiting the museums, galleries and monuments. This time was no exception.
The weather, usually approximating high noon in Borneo, was mild. Tourists were plentiful, mostly gawking parents with bored kids in tow, although seemingly in smaller numbers than we've seen in the past.
Blame the economy, which seems to be the whipping boy for everything from job loss to ear wax.
Conventioneers were visible. The Islamic Society of North America and the Christians United for Israel were meeting at approximately the same time. No incidents were reported.
Also on scene were the Romance Writers of America, the Texas Bandmasters Association, the American Bridge Teachers Association and something called the Magic Lantern Society. Is this a great country or what?
Contrary to what you may have read on the Internet, I didn't see any roving bands of Socialists, loudly promising equitable distribution of the nation's resources. That's not exactly true. I did see a few. Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller and Susan B.Anthony, socialists all, stand etched in stone here.
I expected to see a gaggle of protestors and/or supporters in town for the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. But there were none, reflecting the often boring nature of the hearings despite the cable TV networks' attempt to present it as edge-of-the-seat excitement.
I did see one kid in front of the Supreme Court building hawking "Sonia" T-shirts.
We visited the new Washington Visitor Center, which extends beneath the U.S. Capitol building. It is spiffy and efficient. It should be. It cost $621 million to build, $360 million over original estimates.
Now a group of congressmen want to inscribe "In God We Trust" on the walls of the center which will cost another $150,000. This, of course, is pitting religious types against church/state separation advocates. Maybe the California legislature can them help reach a speedy resolution of the problem.
We took a guided tour of the capitol, something I haven't done in 40 years. The tour hasn't changed much. You visit the rotunda, the old Senate Chamber and the crypt beneath the Rotunda. I noticed that guarding the entrance to the Senate chamber is a large statue of James Garfield. I though it odd that Garfield would occupy a room peopled by the likes of Eisenhower, Lincoln, Washington, Martin Luther King. It would be like finding Gerald Ford in the pantheon of American heroes.
Garfield's main claim to fame is that he was assassinated, the second president (after Lincoln) to be killed in office. Later, I saw an ornate statue of Garfield near the Potomac River. Quite a tribute for a guy who served six months in office.
Not all was well in Washington. The National Mall, which runs 1.9 miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and is often referred to as "America's front yard," was in appalling condition.
Most of the grass is dead or dying. Reflecting pools are filled with putrid water. Sidewalks are crumbling.
An Associated Press analysis of congressional spending since 2005 found the mall has been at a disadvantage in competing for extra funds doled out by lawmakers, compared with sites that are represented by powerful members of Congress.
Because the mall is in Washington, D.C., it has no vote in the House or Senate.
Last year, when dozens of ducks and ducklings died of avian botulism because the water in a mall pool near the Capitol was so fetid, and as urgent repairs were needed to stop the Jefferson Memorial's sea wall from sinking into the mud, the Senate killed a $3.5 million earmark for the mall, according to the AP. Instead, funding went to projects back home.
The Obama Administration recently steered $55 million in economic stimulus money toward repairs, but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says that's only a down payment on the nearly $400 million needed to fix things up.
It's a hell of a way to run a capitol.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Breaking News
There were times in my newspaper career when I would work a shift so devoid of news, I went home exhausted just from being poised like a puma waiting to jump on the breaking story that never happened.
Then there were periods like the last few weeks when every hour sent a shock wave through the newsroom.
A near revolution in Iran. The deaths of Michael Jackson, FarrahFawcett, Ed McMahon, yes, and even pitchman Billy Mays.
Bernie Madoff gets sentenced to a term so long we may be colonizing Mars when it expires. Ditto the California budget crisis. The governor of South Carolina opts for tan lines over family values. And the Supreme Court tinkers with the Civil Rights Act.
We were promised long hours and lousy pay but this is ridiculous.
The fact of the matter is that all of us who get involved in this business are basically adrenalin junkies for whom a good story is its own reward. Fueled by pots of coffeeand the best of intentions, no day is too long, no quest too impossible in pursuit of a story.
What's interesting about this mega outbreak of news is that is occured in an era of cut-to-the-bone reporting ranks, shrunken budgets and reduced pay, making it an unprecedented challenge.
For the most part, our bruised and battered media rose to the challenge.
Farrah Fawcett was remembered as a pin up girl who did for curling irons what Elizabeth Taylor did for diamonds. More importantly, she didn't just stand around looking beautiful. She could act.
Ed McMahon couldn't act, sing or dance. But he found fame as the perennial sidekick, a sort of Gabby Hayes to Johnny Carson's Hopalong Cassidy. Despite his booming laugh, I always thought Ed looked a little uncomfortable in his role. I mean, here was a former Marine Corps aviator pitching dog food and making small talk with ditzy actresses. But in the end, he was front page news.
Bernie Madoff got 150 years. I hope he serves every minute. Yet his lawyer, interviewed on TV, said he thought the punishment was too harsh because Bernie surrendered instead of fleeing. Well, so did Al Capone. But the interviewer didn't pursue it.
Then there is Michael Jackson.
His death was Princess Di, Anna Nichol Smith and OJ all rolled into one. It blew every other story off the front page.
Michael was an artist, no doubt about it. Although he hadn't been in the spotlight musically in recent years, he has sold an estimated 750 million records.
But there was more at play here. Jackson's bizarre life-style and appearance, the accusations of pedophilia, the never ending fiancial problems, held the public's rapt attention as much as his music.
He was fragile. He was ill. And watching Michael Jackson's life unfold was like watching a slow motion train wreck. You couldn't avert your eyes.
It was a wreck we've seen before. We've watched Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis unravel in public.
We weep and wait for the next generation of tragic heroes.
And they come. Kurt Cobain. Chris Farley. Heath Ledger.
And when they die, especially under mysterious circumstances, it's a big story.
Maybe too big. About two-thirds of the public (64%) say news organizations gave too much attention to the death of the 50-year-old performer. About three-in-ten (29%) say the coverage was the right amount. Only 3% say there had been too little coverage, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
We weren't united in our grief. Blacks followed the death of the African American singer more closely than the population as a whole, the Pew survey found. Eight-in-ten African Americans say they followed news about Jackson's death very closely, compared with 22% of whites.
Despite these finidings, ratings for the cable networks and web site traffic was at an all-time high.
When it came to Michael, we were all Paparazzi.
Then there were periods like the last few weeks when every hour sent a shock wave through the newsroom.
A near revolution in Iran. The deaths of Michael Jackson, FarrahFawcett, Ed McMahon, yes, and even pitchman Billy Mays.
Bernie Madoff gets sentenced to a term so long we may be colonizing Mars when it expires. Ditto the California budget crisis. The governor of South Carolina opts for tan lines over family values. And the Supreme Court tinkers with the Civil Rights Act.
We were promised long hours and lousy pay but this is ridiculous.
The fact of the matter is that all of us who get involved in this business are basically adrenalin junkies for whom a good story is its own reward. Fueled by pots of coffeeand the best of intentions, no day is too long, no quest too impossible in pursuit of a story.
What's interesting about this mega outbreak of news is that is occured in an era of cut-to-the-bone reporting ranks, shrunken budgets and reduced pay, making it an unprecedented challenge.
For the most part, our bruised and battered media rose to the challenge.
Farrah Fawcett was remembered as a pin up girl who did for curling irons what Elizabeth Taylor did for diamonds. More importantly, she didn't just stand around looking beautiful. She could act.
Ed McMahon couldn't act, sing or dance. But he found fame as the perennial sidekick, a sort of Gabby Hayes to Johnny Carson's Hopalong Cassidy. Despite his booming laugh, I always thought Ed looked a little uncomfortable in his role. I mean, here was a former Marine Corps aviator pitching dog food and making small talk with ditzy actresses. But in the end, he was front page news.
Bernie Madoff got 150 years. I hope he serves every minute. Yet his lawyer, interviewed on TV, said he thought the punishment was too harsh because Bernie surrendered instead of fleeing. Well, so did Al Capone. But the interviewer didn't pursue it.
Then there is Michael Jackson.
His death was Princess Di, Anna Nichol Smith and OJ all rolled into one. It blew every other story off the front page.
Michael was an artist, no doubt about it. Although he hadn't been in the spotlight musically in recent years, he has sold an estimated 750 million records.
But there was more at play here. Jackson's bizarre life-style and appearance, the accusations of pedophilia, the never ending fiancial problems, held the public's rapt attention as much as his music.
He was fragile. He was ill. And watching Michael Jackson's life unfold was like watching a slow motion train wreck. You couldn't avert your eyes.
It was a wreck we've seen before. We've watched Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis unravel in public.
We weep and wait for the next generation of tragic heroes.
And they come. Kurt Cobain. Chris Farley. Heath Ledger.
And when they die, especially under mysterious circumstances, it's a big story.
Maybe too big. About two-thirds of the public (64%) say news organizations gave too much attention to the death of the 50-year-old performer. About three-in-ten (29%) say the coverage was the right amount. Only 3% say there had been too little coverage, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
We weren't united in our grief. Blacks followed the death of the African American singer more closely than the population as a whole, the Pew survey found. Eight-in-ten African Americans say they followed news about Jackson's death very closely, compared with 22% of whites.
Despite these finidings, ratings for the cable networks and web site traffic was at an all-time high.
When it came to Michael, we were all Paparazzi.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tweet Talking
President Obama does it. So does Karl Rove.
So does Martha Stewart, Lance Armstrong, Miley Cyrus and Al Gore. Ditto Orpah Winfrey, Yoko Ono, Steve Jobs and Neil Diamond.
They all use Twitter, the social networking phenomenon in which userscan instantly communicate via text to friends, fans and family whatthey are doing or thinking at any given moment.
"I'm eating a bowl of Fruit Loops." "I'm walking the dog." "I'm contemplating a nap."
These are only a few of the fascinating messages you can give or receive if you Twitter. Or Tweet, as they call it. (Does that make the participants Twits? I'm just asking).
Personally, I'd rather read the fine print on my cell phone bill.
But I'm wrong, according to Time magazine. An article in that publication tells me that "Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds.
"The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines."
What does Time magazine know? It once selected Adolf Hitler as its "Man of the Year."
I don't have time to continually invest in the daily routines of my friends. And I doubt they would find an outpouring of messages about the mundane events in my life "strangely satisfying." If they do, they kinda creep me out.
Maybe it's my fault that I don't have friends or family that climb Everest or dine with Warren Buffet. But even if I did, I doubt they could convey the essence of these experiences in 140 characters or less.
I'm not alone here. The Nielsen research tells me that "Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back thefollowing month, is currently about 40 percent."
And let's face it. Most of the stuff appearing on so-called celebrity tweets is written by public relations types and has all the substance of a bowl of meringue.
Examples:
Brittany Spears: "I want to thank everyone at the Mandarin Oriental in London for the hospitality this month! You made my boys and I feel right at home -Brit."
President Obama: "Hosting a town hall on health care reform at the White House today. Watch on ABC tonight at 10pm ET."
Elen DeGeneres: "A big margarita sure is refreshing, but to really beat the heat, watch my show for a chance to win prizes! "
Michelle Wie: "Did you know that babies are born without knee caps? Weird!"
On it goes.
To give Twiter its due, it along with other social networking sites most certainly has played a role in the recent post-election protests in Iran. Indeed, it has helped keep the rest of the world connected to events inside the country as the Iranian leadership repressed dissent and the coverage of it.
And while we'd like to imagine that a tool designed to entertain attention-deprived adolescents will change the balance of power in the Mideast, it's not that simple.
First, it gives too much credit to the tool, not the people who use it.
Second, as foreign policy expert Evgeney Morozov told the Washington Post "...Whether it has helped to organize protests -- something that most of the media are claiming at the moment -- is not at all certain, for, as a public platform, Twitter is not particularly helpful for planning a revolution (authorities could be reading those messages as well.")
Some day down the road, Twitter will be superseded by some other networking device, perhaps some sort of "Star Trek" transporter system so you can actually stand by while your friend brushes his teeth or buys a loaf of bread.
In the meetime, beware of how you tweet.
A story making the rounds on the Internet tells of a guy who just got a job with Cisco, the giant technology firm. He tweeted, "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." His tweet caught the attention of a Cisco employee. To which he responded: "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web."
So does Martha Stewart, Lance Armstrong, Miley Cyrus and Al Gore. Ditto Orpah Winfrey, Yoko Ono, Steve Jobs and Neil Diamond.
They all use Twitter, the social networking phenomenon in which userscan instantly communicate via text to friends, fans and family whatthey are doing or thinking at any given moment.
"I'm eating a bowl of Fruit Loops." "I'm walking the dog." "I'm contemplating a nap."
These are only a few of the fascinating messages you can give or receive if you Twitter. Or Tweet, as they call it. (Does that make the participants Twits? I'm just asking).
Personally, I'd rather read the fine print on my cell phone bill.
But I'm wrong, according to Time magazine. An article in that publication tells me that "Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds.
"The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines."
What does Time magazine know? It once selected Adolf Hitler as its "Man of the Year."
I don't have time to continually invest in the daily routines of my friends. And I doubt they would find an outpouring of messages about the mundane events in my life "strangely satisfying." If they do, they kinda creep me out.
Maybe it's my fault that I don't have friends or family that climb Everest or dine with Warren Buffet. But even if I did, I doubt they could convey the essence of these experiences in 140 characters or less.
I'm not alone here. The Nielsen research tells me that "Currently, more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back thefollowing month, is currently about 40 percent."
And let's face it. Most of the stuff appearing on so-called celebrity tweets is written by public relations types and has all the substance of a bowl of meringue.
Examples:
Brittany Spears: "I want to thank everyone at the Mandarin Oriental in London for the hospitality this month! You made my boys and I feel right at home -Brit."
President Obama: "Hosting a town hall on health care reform at the White House today. Watch on ABC tonight at 10pm ET."
Elen DeGeneres: "A big margarita sure is refreshing, but to really beat the heat, watch my show for a chance to win prizes! "
Michelle Wie: "Did you know that babies are born without knee caps? Weird!"
On it goes.
To give Twiter its due, it along with other social networking sites most certainly has played a role in the recent post-election protests in Iran. Indeed, it has helped keep the rest of the world connected to events inside the country as the Iranian leadership repressed dissent and the coverage of it.
And while we'd like to imagine that a tool designed to entertain attention-deprived adolescents will change the balance of power in the Mideast, it's not that simple.
First, it gives too much credit to the tool, not the people who use it.
Second, as foreign policy expert Evgeney Morozov told the Washington Post "...Whether it has helped to organize protests -- something that most of the media are claiming at the moment -- is not at all certain, for, as a public platform, Twitter is not particularly helpful for planning a revolution (authorities could be reading those messages as well.")
Some day down the road, Twitter will be superseded by some other networking device, perhaps some sort of "Star Trek" transporter system so you can actually stand by while your friend brushes his teeth or buys a loaf of bread.
In the meetime, beware of how you tweet.
A story making the rounds on the Internet tells of a guy who just got a job with Cisco, the giant technology firm. He tweeted, "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." His tweet caught the attention of a Cisco employee. To which he responded: "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web."
All the Answers
Just about the time I decided that the Internet, the great technological leap of the late 20th century, was becoming nothing more than a repository for political extremism, pornography and spam, a ray of hope appeared.
Someone, I learned, has actually developed a website that will makeyour decisions for you.
What great news. No more wondering what to wear, what to eat, who to date, what religion to follow, where to vacation. No more wondering what scarymovie to watch, where to live in San Antonio, Texas, how to politely bypass a Greenpeace volunteer.
Hunch.Com will make those decisions for you, leaving lots of time to, well, vegetate I guess.
All you have to do is buy into the concept and your problems are solved.
The idea is novel but the execution is a bit scary. Hunch asks its clients question, hundreds of them, to determine what kind of person you are.
Once they have you figured out, they base their answers to your dilemmas on what they know about you and people like you.
The questions are much like you find on personality tests that employers administer to prospective hires, some obvious in their intent,others less so.
If you saw a guy you thought was a jerk accidently drop a wad of cash on the sidewalk, would you (a) return it (b) think about it or (c)keep it because the guy is a chowderhead.
OK, that goes to character. I get that. But it also asks if I believe aliens live among us, whether I fold my underwear, if I everbroke a bad habit and if I wet my toothbrush before I use it. (For the record, I answered no, sometimes, yes and absolutely).
The scary part: Aside from dispensing advice, what do they do with this information?
The Hunch folks promise they won't sell it to to marketers. But promises get broken. And there are other dark uses for this information.
I'm waiting for the knock on the door some moonless night by government sleuths who will inform me that my "wet toothbrush" answer pegged me as a terrorist.
So despite some misgivings, I decided to give it a try in the interest of journalistic inquiry.
After I asked a few random questions, I was told the following: I am not genius (I've heard that from my wife), I should run for public office (and face a pack of rabid journalists? No thanks) , root for the Denver Broncos or the Washington Redskins (actually, I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan), drink Cabarnet Sauvignon (I lean toward Zinfadels), play golf (I do) and live in North Hollywood (settle down in a faceless subway stop? No thanks).
I can't say any of these answers lit the way for me. Maybe something a little more esoteric.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The chicken: "If you want a chicken egg, your best bet is to start with a chicken. If you start with an egg you might end up with a lizard or something."
What gender am I? "You identify more with males. You may been seen as more male or enjoy more activities that are associated with the male gender." (But there was an 18 per cent chance I was female).
What profession is best for me? Interior design (early Ikea is a personal favorite), followed by advertising executive or agent.
Should I become a writer? "Unless you write teen fiction with wizards, wolves, or witches; diet books; exploit the hopes of people of faith; or self-help guides, you're probably not going to have a best seller this decade."
-
Come to think of it, I think I'll follow the old fashioned method in reaching a decision: Always trust your first instinct.
Someone, I learned, has actually developed a website that will makeyour decisions for you.
What great news. No more wondering what to wear, what to eat, who to date, what religion to follow, where to vacation. No more wondering what scarymovie to watch, where to live in San Antonio, Texas, how to politely bypass a Greenpeace volunteer.
Hunch.Com will make those decisions for you, leaving lots of time to, well, vegetate I guess.
All you have to do is buy into the concept and your problems are solved.
The idea is novel but the execution is a bit scary. Hunch asks its clients question, hundreds of them, to determine what kind of person you are.
Once they have you figured out, they base their answers to your dilemmas on what they know about you and people like you.
The questions are much like you find on personality tests that employers administer to prospective hires, some obvious in their intent,others less so.
If you saw a guy you thought was a jerk accidently drop a wad of cash on the sidewalk, would you (a) return it (b) think about it or (c)keep it because the guy is a chowderhead.
OK, that goes to character. I get that. But it also asks if I believe aliens live among us, whether I fold my underwear, if I everbroke a bad habit and if I wet my toothbrush before I use it. (For the record, I answered no, sometimes, yes and absolutely).
The scary part: Aside from dispensing advice, what do they do with this information?
The Hunch folks promise they won't sell it to to marketers. But promises get broken. And there are other dark uses for this information.
I'm waiting for the knock on the door some moonless night by government sleuths who will inform me that my "wet toothbrush" answer pegged me as a terrorist.
So despite some misgivings, I decided to give it a try in the interest of journalistic inquiry.
After I asked a few random questions, I was told the following: I am not genius (I've heard that from my wife), I should run for public office (and face a pack of rabid journalists? No thanks) , root for the Denver Broncos or the Washington Redskins (actually, I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan), drink Cabarnet Sauvignon (I lean toward Zinfadels), play golf (I do) and live in North Hollywood (settle down in a faceless subway stop? No thanks).
I can't say any of these answers lit the way for me. Maybe something a little more esoteric.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The chicken: "If you want a chicken egg, your best bet is to start with a chicken. If you start with an egg you might end up with a lizard or something."
What gender am I? "You identify more with males. You may been seen as more male or enjoy more activities that are associated with the male gender." (But there was an 18 per cent chance I was female).
What profession is best for me? Interior design (early Ikea is a personal favorite), followed by advertising executive or agent.
Should I become a writer? "Unless you write teen fiction with wizards, wolves, or witches; diet books; exploit the hopes of people of faith; or self-help guides, you're probably not going to have a best seller this decade."
-
Come to think of it, I think I'll follow the old fashioned method in reaching a decision: Always trust your first instinct.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Good Luck, Grads
The chances of landing a decent job are about as good as finding
weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert." --- Will Ferrell,
speaking to Harvard grads, 2003.
Congratulations, 2009 graduates. Let me shower you with a few
feel-good commencement cliches: Today is the first day of the rest of your
life. Live for others, not just yourselves And as you go forth into the world,
always reach for the stars.
So much for the pleasantries. Now, let's get real. The job market
stinks. It's 10 times worse than it was when Will Ferrell spoke.
The best advice I can give you is to prepare yourselves for the
future is to get use to the idea of living with your parents again.
This especially true if you majored in art history, philosophy or
comparitive literature. For you, telemarketing, poultry processing or
roofing await you as career paths. If they're hiring.
Of course, if you're a former beauty queen, you can always get a
job as a TV reporter covering the mayor of Los Angeles. But I advise against
it. It never seems to turn our well.
"Your families are extremely proud of you. You can't imagine the
sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most
opportune time to ask for money." --- Gary Bolding
According to a survey from National Association of Colleges and
Employers, the class of 2009 is leaving campus with fewer jobs in hand than
their 2008 counterparts. The group found that just 19.7 percent of 2009
graduates who applied for a job actually have one.
In comparison, 51 percent of those graduating in 2007 and 26
percent of those graduating in 2008 who had applied for a job had one in hand by
the time of graduation.
One career counselor put it this way: "The bad news is this is
the worst job market I've seen, and I've been in career development
for 30 years.
"On the other hand, when the job market is tight, new
college graduates will find that while it is competitive, they have
the advantage of being a cheaper source of labor. The workers that
are being laid off by these companies are often more experienced and
so have higher wages."
That's comforting news. If you work, prepare to work dirt cheap.
And don't forget to step over the bodies of former employees on your way
in the door.
Meanwhile, more students are graduating from college, according to
the National Center for Education Statistics. Colleges and universities
will grant an estimated 1,585,000 bachelor's degrees this school year, up
from 1,544,000 in the 2007-2008 year and 1,506,000 the prior year.
It could be worse. In China, 6.1 million graduates have been
searching high and low for work the past few months. But they join an
estimated two to three million graduates from previous years who still haven't found
jobs.
"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." --- Milton Berle
"...You must knock on doors until your knuckles bleed. Doors will
slam in your face. You must pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and knock
again. It's the only way to achieve your goals in life." --- Michael Uslan,
film producer.
The employment outlook is not all bad, some career counselors say.
Despite cutbacks in finance, retail, manufacturing and construction, demand
for recent graduates remains high in fields such as accounting, public
service, health care, education and technology.
And look at it this way. Your job prospects are a lot better than
they would be if you hadn't gotten that degree. Without it, your career is
on the fast track to fast food.
A couple more words of advice from one who's been there: Life is
not fair, get use to it. Business cycles don't last a lifetime. You can
expect to work until mid century and beyond so be patient. Most people have
to work their way up. Unless Daddy runs a hedge fund, start small but get
started.
And last but not least: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end
up working for one.
"All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is
the ladder." --- Author Unknown.
weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi desert." --- Will Ferrell,
speaking to Harvard grads, 2003.
Congratulations, 2009 graduates. Let me shower you with a few
feel-good commencement cliches: Today is the first day of the rest of your
life. Live for others, not just yourselves And as you go forth into the world,
always reach for the stars.
So much for the pleasantries. Now, let's get real. The job market
stinks. It's 10 times worse than it was when Will Ferrell spoke.
The best advice I can give you is to prepare yourselves for the
future is to get use to the idea of living with your parents again.
This especially true if you majored in art history, philosophy or
comparitive literature. For you, telemarketing, poultry processing or
roofing await you as career paths. If they're hiring.
Of course, if you're a former beauty queen, you can always get a
job as a TV reporter covering the mayor of Los Angeles. But I advise against
it. It never seems to turn our well.
"Your families are extremely proud of you. You can't imagine the
sense of relief they are experiencing. This would be a most
opportune time to ask for money." --- Gary Bolding
According to a survey from National Association of Colleges and
Employers, the class of 2009 is leaving campus with fewer jobs in hand than
their 2008 counterparts. The group found that just 19.7 percent of 2009
graduates who applied for a job actually have one.
In comparison, 51 percent of those graduating in 2007 and 26
percent of those graduating in 2008 who had applied for a job had one in hand by
the time of graduation.
One career counselor put it this way: "The bad news is this is
the worst job market I've seen, and I've been in career development
for 30 years.
"On the other hand, when the job market is tight, new
college graduates will find that while it is competitive, they have
the advantage of being a cheaper source of labor. The workers that
are being laid off by these companies are often more experienced and
so have higher wages."
That's comforting news. If you work, prepare to work dirt cheap.
And don't forget to step over the bodies of former employees on your way
in the door.
Meanwhile, more students are graduating from college, according to
the National Center for Education Statistics. Colleges and universities
will grant an estimated 1,585,000 bachelor's degrees this school year, up
from 1,544,000 in the 2007-2008 year and 1,506,000 the prior year.
It could be worse. In China, 6.1 million graduates have been
searching high and low for work the past few months. But they join an
estimated two to three million graduates from previous years who still haven't found
jobs.
"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." --- Milton Berle
"...You must knock on doors until your knuckles bleed. Doors will
slam in your face. You must pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and knock
again. It's the only way to achieve your goals in life." --- Michael Uslan,
film producer.
The employment outlook is not all bad, some career counselors say.
Despite cutbacks in finance, retail, manufacturing and construction, demand
for recent graduates remains high in fields such as accounting, public
service, health care, education and technology.
And look at it this way. Your job prospects are a lot better than
they would be if you hadn't gotten that degree. Without it, your career is
on the fast track to fast food.
A couple more words of advice from one who's been there: Life is
not fair, get use to it. Business cycles don't last a lifetime. You can
expect to work until mid century and beyond so be patient. Most people have
to work their way up. Unless Daddy runs a hedge fund, start small but get
started.
And last but not least: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end
up working for one.
"All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is
the ladder." --- Author Unknown.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Happiness Is a Warm Republican
Here's something to chew on (if you still can) as you slide into the Buick and head on down to the local eatery for the early bird special.
Americans grow happier as they grow older. And a recent Pew Research Center survey shows that this trend is holding true even as the economy tiptoes like a drunk on the edge of the Grand Canyon.
What's more, the survey found, the rich are happier than the poor, whites are happier than blacks, married people are happier than unmarried folks and, drum roll please, Republicans are happier than Democrats.
That's great news. Next time I need cheering up, I'll follow the sounds of laughter to a group of rich old white people with grins on their faces and McCain/Palin bumper stickers on their cars.
The findings equating Republicanism with bliss cut against the grain a bit. Some of my perceptions were formed at my first real job in journalism editing the letters to the editor at the San Francisco Examiner in 1963.
Even in those days, San Francisco was a bastion of liberalism. Come to think of it, San Francisco was probably left-leaning in 1863.
But I would estimate that 75 percent of the letter writers were from an audience that was older, conservative and unhappy as hell. So being young and impressionable, I came to the conclusion that when you reached a certain age, say 40, you became Republican and grumpy. And you wrote a lot of letters to newspapers.
Even today, if you want to know Republicans are thinking, you tune into the Fox News, which manages to maintain a high degree of outrage day after day. I mean, who would watch Bill O'Reilly if everyone was happy?
If you want to know what the Democrats are up to, you switch on Comedy Central where politics is a running gag. Head yuckmeisters John Stewart and Stephen Colbert draw ratings that would have made Walter Cronkite envious.
Maybe these pollsters equated humor with happiness. For example, former Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is a pretty funny guy. Democratic Senator Barney Frank from Massachusetts is about as funny as a North Korean nuclear test.
Nonetheless, my assumptions are apparently wrong, according to the Pew people. About 45 percent of the Republicans said they were very happy, compared with 30 percent of Democrats.
Republicans have been happier in surveys going back to 1972, the Pew folks say. That could be attributable to the fact that the Republicans have held the White House for most of those years.
But not necessarily, according to the survey. "Republicans tend to have more money than Democrats and as we've already discovered people who have more money tend to be happier," the report states.
Even adjusting for income, however, poor Republicans and happier than poor Democrats and rich Republicans are happier than rich Democrats.
Here's what the Pew people say separates Republicans from Democrats:
Republicans have more money, they have more friends, they are more religious, they are healthier, they are more likely to be married, they like their communities better, they like their jobs more.
Wait, there's more. Republicans are more satisfied with their family life, they like the weather better, they're more likely to feel that individuals - rather than outside forces - control their own success or failure.
OK, so that makes Democrats broke, friendless, single, sickly, atheistic louts who dislike where they live and work and feel manipulated by unseen forces. And, oh yeah, they complain about the weather a lot.
That sounds a lot like journalists.
The Pew people conclude that "there is a growing body of scholarly research, not just in this country but around the world, which supports the basic finding of these Pew surveys: that Republicans (or conservatives) are happier than Democrats (or liberals), and that these gaps persist even after basic demographic factors have been controlled.
"At least in the United States, this partisan happiness gap has widened in recent years."
I guess this means after the Democrats cure the ailing economy, conclude two wars, defuse the nuclear ambitions of rogue nations and provide affordable health care to all, they can start working on the Happiness Gap.
As for me, I adhere to the words of Albert Schweitzer:
"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The Road to Ruin
What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and
what's good for General Motors is good for the country." --- GM president
Charles Wilson in 1952.
That low rumbling sound you hear is Charlie Wilson spinning in
his grave. Fifty seven years after he uttered that famous line, he
wouldn't recognize the old place.
Oldsmobile and Pontiac have joined the Nash and Studebaker on the
slag heap of automotive history. Plants have been closed,
subsidiaries jettisoned, the workforce slashed. The stock, long a
mainstay of the family retirement portfolio, is flirting with a buck
a share. There is talk the company could leave Detroit.
What's good for General Motors these days is bankruptcy. What's
good for the country is to keep the company propped up long enough for it
to reemerge from its financial woes as a completely different entity.
Of course, General Motors is not alone. Chrysler is already in
bankruptcy. Ford is banking on electric vehicles to stave off an
economic nosedive. However, as Henry Ford once said, "You can't
build up a reputation on what you are going to do."
There are a lot of reasons bandied about for the decline of the Big
Three automakers. Poor management often marked by arrogance (see
Wilson's quote above), management/union relationships that make the
Israelis and Palestinians look like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Failure
to recognize that the Japanese had a better idea. And products that
set new standards for lousy quality and bad design.
It is that last category that concerns us today. As we bid goodby
to the American auto industry as we know it (does anyone really think
Fiat will make a better Chrysler?), it's time to take a nostalgic
look back at the cars that helped sink Detroit.
The Corvair. What can you say about a car that gave us Ralph
Nader? To refresh your memory, this sexy, rear-engined beauty produced by Chevy
was a radical departure from the iron being produced in 1960. But it had a
couple of flaws: it tended to careen out of control on its own, its
single-piece steering column could impale the driver in a front collision and it
leaked oil like the Exxon Valdez. All of which made Nader a media star with
his book, "Unsafe at Any Speed." Alas, the Corvair is gone but Nader is
still with us.
The Edsel: Ford's folly was not so much a bad car as a bad idea.
Prededed by years of hype (There was even an "Edsel Show" on CBS
starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Louis Armstrong),
the car turned out to be nothing more than a bulbous Mercury with a stupid
grill. Even after 50 years, its name is still a joke punchline ("It looked
like an Olds sucking a lemon") and synonymous with failure.
The Vega. Chevy's attempt to take on compacts and subcompacts
like the VW Beetle, the Vega was initially popular when it was introduced in
1971. It was even Motor Trend's car of the year. Little did the public know
that the first time General Motors tested this car on the track, its front end
reportedly broke off from the rest of the vehicle. Buyers soon
learned that the body was prone to rust and the aluminum block engines could
overheat and burst into flame. Quality was nonexistent due to labor difficulties
at the Lordstown, Ohio, manufacturing plant. The recalls began to multiply
but customers didn't and it was off the market by 1977.
Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare. Rushed into production in 1976 as
Chrysler teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, the cars had a few problems.
"The engines would stall when you stepped on the gas. The brakes would
fail. The hoods would fly open. Customers complained, and more than three and a
half million cars were brought back to the dealers for free repairs--free
to the customer, that is. Chrysler had to foot the bill. But then even cars
that were mechanically sound started rusting." That assessment is from
none other than Lee Iacocca, Chrysler's main man at the time who coined the
phrase, "If you can find a better car, buy it."
Cadillac Cimarron. GM in its infinite wisdom decided to take a
world famous brand reknown for prestige and luxury and offer it up as a
humble, poorly performing compact. According to one source, the Cimarron,
introduced in 1981, was initially advertised as "Cimarron, by Cadillac" and
sales personnel were instructed by GM to not refer to the car as a Cadillac
and to inform customers that it was technically, not a Cadillac. It was, in
fact, a four-cylinder Chevy Cavilier priced twice as much as its sibling.
According to Car and Driver, current Cadillac product director John Howell has
a picture of the Cimarron on his wall captioned, "Lest we forget."
And last but not least, the Pinto. The Pinto, like the Vega, was an attempt to compete
with imported compacts and subcompacts. But the Pinto surpassed all others
when it came to failing both engineering and ethical standards.
It seems that the car's design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event
of a rear-end collision which sometimes resulted in deadly fires and
explosions. This, and the fact that the doors could potentially jam during an
accident due to poor reinforcing made the car a potential deathtrap. When Ford
became aware of the flaw, it decided it was cheaper to pay off lawsuits than
to redesign the car. When all was revealed in a Mother Jones magazine
article, lawsuits, criminal (murder) charges and an expensive recall of all
defective Pintos followed. Although Ford was subsequently acquitted of all
charges, it paid several millions of dollars in damages and earned the reputation
for being the manufacturer of "the barbecue that seats four."
what's good for General Motors is good for the country." --- GM president
Charles Wilson in 1952.
That low rumbling sound you hear is Charlie Wilson spinning in
his grave. Fifty seven years after he uttered that famous line, he
wouldn't recognize the old place.
Oldsmobile and Pontiac have joined the Nash and Studebaker on the
slag heap of automotive history. Plants have been closed,
subsidiaries jettisoned, the workforce slashed. The stock, long a
mainstay of the family retirement portfolio, is flirting with a buck
a share. There is talk the company could leave Detroit.
What's good for General Motors these days is bankruptcy. What's
good for the country is to keep the company propped up long enough for it
to reemerge from its financial woes as a completely different entity.
Of course, General Motors is not alone. Chrysler is already in
bankruptcy. Ford is banking on electric vehicles to stave off an
economic nosedive. However, as Henry Ford once said, "You can't
build up a reputation on what you are going to do."
There are a lot of reasons bandied about for the decline of the Big
Three automakers. Poor management often marked by arrogance (see
Wilson's quote above), management/union relationships that make the
Israelis and Palestinians look like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Failure
to recognize that the Japanese had a better idea. And products that
set new standards for lousy quality and bad design.
It is that last category that concerns us today. As we bid goodby
to the American auto industry as we know it (does anyone really think
Fiat will make a better Chrysler?), it's time to take a nostalgic
look back at the cars that helped sink Detroit.
The Corvair. What can you say about a car that gave us Ralph
Nader? To refresh your memory, this sexy, rear-engined beauty produced by Chevy
was a radical departure from the iron being produced in 1960. But it had a
couple of flaws: it tended to careen out of control on its own, its
single-piece steering column could impale the driver in a front collision and it
leaked oil like the Exxon Valdez. All of which made Nader a media star with
his book, "Unsafe at Any Speed." Alas, the Corvair is gone but Nader is
still with us.
The Edsel: Ford's folly was not so much a bad car as a bad idea.
Prededed by years of hype (There was even an "Edsel Show" on CBS
starring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Louis Armstrong),
the car turned out to be nothing more than a bulbous Mercury with a stupid
grill. Even after 50 years, its name is still a joke punchline ("It looked
like an Olds sucking a lemon") and synonymous with failure.
The Vega. Chevy's attempt to take on compacts and subcompacts
like the VW Beetle, the Vega was initially popular when it was introduced in
1971. It was even Motor Trend's car of the year. Little did the public know
that the first time General Motors tested this car on the track, its front end
reportedly broke off from the rest of the vehicle. Buyers soon
learned that the body was prone to rust and the aluminum block engines could
overheat and burst into flame. Quality was nonexistent due to labor difficulties
at the Lordstown, Ohio, manufacturing plant. The recalls began to multiply
but customers didn't and it was off the market by 1977.
Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare. Rushed into production in 1976 as
Chrysler teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, the cars had a few problems.
"The engines would stall when you stepped on the gas. The brakes would
fail. The hoods would fly open. Customers complained, and more than three and a
half million cars were brought back to the dealers for free repairs--free
to the customer, that is. Chrysler had to foot the bill. But then even cars
that were mechanically sound started rusting." That assessment is from
none other than Lee Iacocca, Chrysler's main man at the time who coined the
phrase, "If you can find a better car, buy it."
Cadillac Cimarron. GM in its infinite wisdom decided to take a
world famous brand reknown for prestige and luxury and offer it up as a
humble, poorly performing compact. According to one source, the Cimarron,
introduced in 1981, was initially advertised as "Cimarron, by Cadillac" and
sales personnel were instructed by GM to not refer to the car as a Cadillac
and to inform customers that it was technically, not a Cadillac. It was, in
fact, a four-cylinder Chevy Cavilier priced twice as much as its sibling.
According to Car and Driver, current Cadillac product director John Howell has
a picture of the Cimarron on his wall captioned, "Lest we forget."
And last but not least, the Pinto. The Pinto, like the Vega, was an attempt to compete
with imported compacts and subcompacts. But the Pinto surpassed all others
when it came to failing both engineering and ethical standards.
It seems that the car's design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event
of a rear-end collision which sometimes resulted in deadly fires and
explosions. This, and the fact that the doors could potentially jam during an
accident due to poor reinforcing made the car a potential deathtrap. When Ford
became aware of the flaw, it decided it was cheaper to pay off lawsuits than
to redesign the car. When all was revealed in a Mother Jones magazine
article, lawsuits, criminal (murder) charges and an expensive recall of all
defective Pintos followed. Although Ford was subsequently acquitted of all
charges, it paid several millions of dollars in damages and earned the reputation
for being the manufacturer of "the barbecue that seats four."
Monday, May 11, 2009
Panic in the Press
Just this past week, I performed a number of death defying acts,
each one so profoundly heroic that strong men trembled and weak men cried.
I left the house.
I withdrew money from an ATM machine.
I ate at a Mexican restaurant.
I attended a baseball game at Dodger Stadium.
I shook hands with people. And even hugged a few.
And I did it all without a mask.
Welcome to Life in the Time of Swine Flu.
I knew were were entering uncharted territory the other day when I
spotted a woman in the supermarket with at least two dozen bottles of hand sanitizer in her
cart, enough to wipe down the Rose Bowl.
Other than that, the only public signs of panic I've seen is on
the part of the media.
What we have had is an outbreak of out-of-control coverage.
"Swine flu-HIV could devastate human race" screamed a headline on
a UPI story.
"Flu Fears Spur Global Triage," pronounced the Wall Street
Journal. "
NBC's Robert Bazell said the government didn't "want people to
panic," but then panicked viewers saying "it appears to be an outbreak unlike anything we've
seen in our lifetimes."
CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked a Centers for Disease Control official,
"Is it time for people . . . to stop shaking hands and to stop hugging each other?"
Not to be outdone, Fox anchor Shepard Smith hinted the flu story
might be "just a distraction" from more serious issues." Another Fox host
darkly repeated Internet reports that "the government knows a lot
more than they are telling us."
Taking it even one step further, syndicated conservative talk show host
Neal Boortz played the terrorist and race card in one deft move: "What better way to sneak
a virus into this country than give it to Mexicans?"
Meanwhile in Great Britain, the London Independent thundered
"Prepared for the Apocalypse", describing Mexico as a "quasi-apocalyptic vision of anonymous faces
shrouded in government-issued surgical masks".
"Sore throat at breakfast … dead by teatime … how the last flu
pandemic killed 40 million," entoned the Express.
Then there was Vice President Joe Biden, saying he was advising
his family to stay off public transportation which prompted the Wall Street Journal to
observe, "Who knew Mr. Biden was talking about himself when he warned last year that Barack Obama
would be tested by crisis early in his presidency?"
On the network news last week, swine flu stories took up a
whopping 43 percent of airtime, according to the Project for Excellence In Journalism.
I would have guessed it was more like 93 per cent.
To be fair, not every media outlet went into hysteria mode. Many
approached the topic with healthy skepticism, reporting that more people die per year from
ordinary flu viris than from the swine variety.
And comedic commentator John Stewart put things into proper
prespective: "Swine flu ranks last on the list of things that can kill you in Mexico."
Truth be told, this was a tough call for a lot of editors.
Scientists and public health officials have been warning for years
about a deadly pandemic. The swine flu scared us in the 1970s, so much so that a massive
innoculation program was initiated which did more harm than good. Bird flu is still lurking
out there somewhere. We've been through the Asian Flu, the Hong Kong Flu and SARS.
Add to that a climbing death rate in Mexico and outbreaks in the
United States. Then the World Health Organzation ratchets up their alert staus to its second
highest level. The President of the United States holds a press conference in which he
expresses "cause for concern, not cause for alarm."
On the other hand, previous pandemic scares have been overblown.
This is not a story you assign to an intern.
The trouble will much of the coverage begins when anchors on the
24-hour-a-day cable news channels pick up the beat. They have a lot of air time to fill and
pretty soon begin to overreact to evey development while feeding on each other's excesses.
Mark Feldstein, a former correspondent for NBC, ABC and CNN,
explained it this way to the Washington Post: "Cable news has 24 hours to fill, and there isn't 24
hours of exciting news going on. If you scare people, they'll tune in more."
Besides, the media loves doomsday scenarios. Remember Y2K and Mad
Cow Disease?
Then when this hype gets spread on myriad social networking
networks, you have an information pandemic. As of Wednesday, Google listed 19,100,000 hits
for the topic "Swine Flu."
The trick for the media is to balance restraint with the need to
inform the public of an important story. It's a difficult act that sometimes gets lost in the
emotion of the moment.
The result is that the public loses faith in the media. In Texas,
when Fort Worth closed down every single school sending 80,000 students home, the governor
blamed "media hype."
We know that this particular chapter may not be at an end. Some
public health officials warn that the virus could mutate and that a real global outbreak
could occur.
If that happens, will the public view the media as the boy who
cried wolf?
That would make a bad situation worse.
At a time the media is expanding to include any and all voices,
which voice to listen to will become increasingly important.
each one so profoundly heroic that strong men trembled and weak men cried.
I left the house.
I withdrew money from an ATM machine.
I ate at a Mexican restaurant.
I attended a baseball game at Dodger Stadium.
I shook hands with people. And even hugged a few.
And I did it all without a mask.
Welcome to Life in the Time of Swine Flu.
I knew were were entering uncharted territory the other day when I
spotted a woman in the supermarket with at least two dozen bottles of hand sanitizer in her
cart, enough to wipe down the Rose Bowl.
Other than that, the only public signs of panic I've seen is on
the part of the media.
What we have had is an outbreak of out-of-control coverage.
"Swine flu-HIV could devastate human race" screamed a headline on
a UPI story.
"Flu Fears Spur Global Triage," pronounced the Wall Street
Journal. "
NBC's Robert Bazell said the government didn't "want people to
panic," but then panicked viewers saying "it appears to be an outbreak unlike anything we've
seen in our lifetimes."
CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked a Centers for Disease Control official,
"Is it time for people . . . to stop shaking hands and to stop hugging each other?"
Not to be outdone, Fox anchor Shepard Smith hinted the flu story
might be "just a distraction" from more serious issues." Another Fox host
darkly repeated Internet reports that "the government knows a lot
more than they are telling us."
Taking it even one step further, syndicated conservative talk show host
Neal Boortz played the terrorist and race card in one deft move: "What better way to sneak
a virus into this country than give it to Mexicans?"
Meanwhile in Great Britain, the London Independent thundered
"Prepared for the Apocalypse", describing Mexico as a "quasi-apocalyptic vision of anonymous faces
shrouded in government-issued surgical masks".
"Sore throat at breakfast … dead by teatime … how the last flu
pandemic killed 40 million," entoned the Express.
Then there was Vice President Joe Biden, saying he was advising
his family to stay off public transportation which prompted the Wall Street Journal to
observe, "Who knew Mr. Biden was talking about himself when he warned last year that Barack Obama
would be tested by crisis early in his presidency?"
On the network news last week, swine flu stories took up a
whopping 43 percent of airtime, according to the Project for Excellence In Journalism.
I would have guessed it was more like 93 per cent.
To be fair, not every media outlet went into hysteria mode. Many
approached the topic with healthy skepticism, reporting that more people die per year from
ordinary flu viris than from the swine variety.
And comedic commentator John Stewart put things into proper
prespective: "Swine flu ranks last on the list of things that can kill you in Mexico."
Truth be told, this was a tough call for a lot of editors.
Scientists and public health officials have been warning for years
about a deadly pandemic. The swine flu scared us in the 1970s, so much so that a massive
innoculation program was initiated which did more harm than good. Bird flu is still lurking
out there somewhere. We've been through the Asian Flu, the Hong Kong Flu and SARS.
Add to that a climbing death rate in Mexico and outbreaks in the
United States. Then the World Health Organzation ratchets up their alert staus to its second
highest level. The President of the United States holds a press conference in which he
expresses "cause for concern, not cause for alarm."
On the other hand, previous pandemic scares have been overblown.
This is not a story you assign to an intern.
The trouble will much of the coverage begins when anchors on the
24-hour-a-day cable news channels pick up the beat. They have a lot of air time to fill and
pretty soon begin to overreact to evey development while feeding on each other's excesses.
Mark Feldstein, a former correspondent for NBC, ABC and CNN,
explained it this way to the Washington Post: "Cable news has 24 hours to fill, and there isn't 24
hours of exciting news going on. If you scare people, they'll tune in more."
Besides, the media loves doomsday scenarios. Remember Y2K and Mad
Cow Disease?
Then when this hype gets spread on myriad social networking
networks, you have an information pandemic. As of Wednesday, Google listed 19,100,000 hits
for the topic "Swine Flu."
The trick for the media is to balance restraint with the need to
inform the public of an important story. It's a difficult act that sometimes gets lost in the
emotion of the moment.
The result is that the public loses faith in the media. In Texas,
when Fort Worth closed down every single school sending 80,000 students home, the governor
blamed "media hype."
We know that this particular chapter may not be at an end. Some
public health officials warn that the virus could mutate and that a real global outbreak
could occur.
If that happens, will the public view the media as the boy who
cried wolf?
That would make a bad situation worse.
At a time the media is expanding to include any and all voices,
which voice to listen to will become increasingly important.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Every Dog Has His Day
Look, I have enough things to worry about theses days.
Can I eat pistachio nuts? Are there Somali pirates in my neighborhood? What's going to happen to Phil Spector in prison? Do I have to learn to love Hugo Chavez?
Thankfully, there is one less furrow in my brow.
Bo, the Obama's new dog, has finally arrived.
This is particularly good news for those downtrodden Washington reporters who aspire to practice great and important journalism but instead have found themselves on the dog beat for the last several months.
Nobody ever won a Pulitzer covering dogs.
Nonetheless, speculation about the Top Dog has been rampant in the press since the Obamas announced after the election that their daughters would be rewarded with a pet.
Indeed, the identity of the dog was a story too big to contain.
White House aides told the AP that the office of the first lady arranged an exclusive deal on the dog story with the Washington Post. But celebrity Web sites and bloggers were abuzz with rumors of the first family's selection of a dog; one site even claimed it had pictures of the future first pet.
A Web site called firstdogcharlie.com broke the news, publishing a picture of Bo which it said was originally named Charlie, according to the Post. The celebrity gossip Web site TMZ.com linked to the picture.
So much for the big White House unveiling. For an Obama team that ran a tight-knit press operation during the residential campaign, it was a sign of how tough it can be to keep the lid on things in Washington. And they think they're going to keep the bank stress test results secret? Not in this dog-eat-dog environment. But I digress. Bo is a Portuguese Water Dog, which is not a CIA interrogation technique but a poodle-like animal with boundless energy. The name was selected by the kids because Michelle Obama's father was nicknamed "Diddley." Bo Diddley, get it? He is said to be pre-trained: Bo already sits, shakes, rolls over and Twitters. Like all things in Washington, his selection has been, well, dogged by controversy. The Obamas said their preference was to get a shelter dog, but daughter Malia has allergies so they had to be more selective in their choice. This, of course, put the Obamas smack in the dog house with angry animal lovers who were lobbying for a rescued animal. But it turns out Bo had been shown the door by his previous owner. So in fact he is a second-chance dog. "Clearly our best hope was that he (the president) would go to a shelter or a breed-rescue group," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. "He didn't do that, but he also didn't go to a pet store or puppy mill either..." In fact, the Obamas didn't go anywhere. Bo was a gift from the Kennedy family. If that's not enough, conservative icon Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker and possible Republican presidential candidate, told ABC news that he found all the hubbub over Bo "fairly stupid." (Which is not as bad as Barney, the Bush Scottish terrier, who earned the wrath of Karl Rove and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rove remarked that Barney was "a lump." Putin said he feels a world leader should own large robust dogs, not smaller breeds. Wait until he gets a load of Bo.) As White House pets go, Bo is a benign character. Calvin Coolidge, a taciturn man if there every was one, had six dogs, a bobcat, a goose, a donkey, a cat, two lion cubs, an antelope, and a wallaby. The main attraction in his personal zoo, though, was Billy, a pygmy hippopotamus. Herbert Hoover's son, Allan Henry Hoover, owned a pair of gators that were occasionally allowed to wander around the White House grounds. Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection were Benjamin Harrison's two opossums. To save cash during World War I, Woodrow Wilson brought in a flock of sheep to take care of the White House's groundskeeping duties. Old Ike, a ram, supposedly chewed tobacco. The Bushes had a black cat named India. The name rankled citizens of the country of the same name to the point that many Indians named their dogs "Bush." As for President Obama, now that the pet controversy is behind him, he can turn his attention to such mundane matters as a reeling economy, nuclear ambitions of rogue nations and terrorism. And in the loneliness of the Oval Office when things get tough, he can recall the words of President Harry Truman: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."
Stop the Presses
"HE who pays the piper, calls the tune."
Words of wisdom from centuries past still ring true.
If you don't believe it, ask Rick Wagoner, former CEO of General Motors.
The American public paid this particular piper billions in taxpayer dollars to keep his business afloat.
When he floundered, the public, through its president, called the tune. It was entitled "Hit the Road, Jack."
There is a place, however, where the piper adage doesn't always play. And you're looking it at.
In the news business, the advertising department, which pays the bills, not only doesn't call the tune - its members aren't allowed in the same room with the piper.
Reporters and editors determine content. No advertising types allowed. The news columns are not for sale.
Would you want coverage of the Wall Street crisis compromised or surpressed because banks and brokers buy ads in the paper? Would you want stories about salmonella-tainted food to go unreported because markets and restaurants spend a lot of money advertising in newspapers?
You get the point.
This has been holy writ since Ben Franklin was a copy boy.
But there is change in the wind.
If you didn't notice the dust-up at the Los Angeles Times recently, you missed what one Web site called the "defining moment in the waning days of newsprint."
With the blessing of the publisher (and none of the editors as far as I can tell), the Times printed a bought-and-paid-for story on its front page that was nothing more than a shill job for a new NBC television series. It was ham-fisted, it was ugly and it was one of the most egregious violations of trust between a paper and its readers I've ever seen - and I worked at the Times for 33 years. Worse, it was apparently done at the suggestion of the Times. Several days later, the Times published another shill job, this time for a movie, that was made up to look like one of its sections. I wonder if the revenue collected for these products offset the subscription cancellations that followed. Times Publisher Eddy Hartenstein said he decided to run the NBC ad despite newsroom objections because he was trying to ensure that The Times could continue to operate. "Because of the times that we're in, we have to look at all sorts of different - and some would say innovative - new solutions for our advertising clients," he said. Whether readers knew this was advertising or not was beside the point, said Geneva Overholser, director of the school of journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. "Some people say readers are smart and they can tell the difference, but the fundamental concept here is deeply offensive," she told The New York Times. "Readers don't want to be fooled, they don't like the notion that someone is attempting to deceive them." All of us in the newspaper business are in survival mode. This paper is no stranger to furloughs, staff cutbacks and other attempts to keep our heads above water. But, to paraphrase another saying, what good does it do to sell advertising and lose your soul? Advertisers won't advertise if there are no readers left. And there will be no readers left if they don't believe in the integrity of the product. I hope the Times' foray into deception is not a trend. The real path to survival for newspapers is a great leap forward. While print will survive in some form, the industry needs to devote all its energies into producing a top-rate digital product. If not, it's just trying to sell buggywhips to astronauts. Digital journalism is the answer not just because it's trendy but because it can do the job better than print. Unlike TV and radio, which are stuck with people reading out loud, customers of digital journalism will get the best of all media forms, according to author and journalist Mark Bowden. They can wade into any story that attracts them as deeply as they wish. Readers will gravitate toward prose, while those who prefer sounds and images can simply watch and listen. The digital report will not be locked into the strict chronological format of TV and radio news, but will be much more like a newspaper, which permits you to begin with sports and weather, if you wish, or go right to the editorials or comics. Bottom line: More people read the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times online than in print. Bottom line Part II: My morning routine now consists of reading this paper and the Times with my first cup of coffee in the morning. With the second, I scan the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC and whatever outlet strikes my fancy via my laptop on the kitchen table. If this old dog can learn that new trick, so can everyone else.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Gavin Comes Calling
Gavin Newsom, the man who would be governor of California, blew into town the other day, deciding, I presume, that while his heart may be in San Francisco, his potential voters are in Southern California.
Newsom is the Democratic mayor of Bombast by the Bay, perhaps best known as a prominent and vocal opponent of Prop. 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative that was passed by voters last fall.
It was a stance that cut both ways.
An infamous film clip of Newsom wound up on a pro-Prop. 8 commercial, in which he was seen grinning broadly and saying of gay marriage, "This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not."
How that notoriety continues to play out for Newsom remains to be seen. Clearly, gays are a potent political force in San Francisco and a mayor who wants to keep his job had better be a friend to that community.
Gays are a political force in Southern California as well but not enough of one to have stopped the Prop. 8 movement. The initiative passed in every county here except Santa Barbara. That's territory Newsom would have to win to achieve election.
So chalk that up as one delicate issue on Newsom's plate. Another is that he's testing the political waters on the home turf of a potential rival, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Villaraigosa is nothing if not a photo-op. When it comes to visibilty, he beats Newsom hands down.
But on closer inspection, these two have something in common.
Scandal.
On Jan. 31, 2007, Newsom's campaign manager and former deputy chief of staff, Alex Tourk, quit after learning of a sexual affair the mayor had with Tourk's wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, in late 2005.
At the time of the affair, Rippey-Tourk worked in Newsom's office as the Mayor's aide for commission appointments.
After leaving her job in Newsom's office in August 2006, Tourk received $10,154 in catastrophic illness pay, which is usually reserved for those who are terminally ill, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
An investigation by the San Francisco city attorney cleared all those involved of legal wrongdoing.
Newsom apologized for the affair, saying, "I hurt someone I care deeply about, Alex Tourk, his friends and family, and that is something that I have to live with and something that I am deeply sorry for."
He announced that he would seek treatment for alcohol abuse.
In the meantime, Villaraigosa, prompted by a report in the Los Angeles Daily News, was revealing an ongoing, year-long affair with Telemundo anchorwoman Mirthala Salinas, which was widely believed to have triggered the breakdown of his marriage.
"I have a relationship with Ms. Salinas, and I take full responsibility for my actions," he said at a news conference.
Salinas was engaged in an enormous conflict of interest by covering the mayor for an extended period while she was sleeping with him, even broadcasting news of the mayor's separation from his wife.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Villaraigosa's admission cast a fresh shadow over his own personal conduct: He has two adult daughters born out of wedlock and his wife filed for divorce in 1994 over a separate affair for which he later publicly apologized. They eventually reconciled.
In the end, Villaraigosa dumped Salinas and won reelection, seeming to survive the scandal.
Salinas, her journalistic career ruined, disappeared from the stage.
At least, Newsom and Villaraigosa won't be able to point the finger of moral outrage at one another.
Politicians survive sex scandals, Bill Clinton being the most prominent example. But Clinton had the political capital to see himself through.
Newsom and Villaraigosa are asking us to forgive and forget at a time in this country when the public is outraged at the moral and ethical lapses of bankers, brokers and, yes, politicians.
That's asking a lot.
Perhaps that is why Sen. Dianne Feinstein, not exactly a fresh political face, is the instant front-runner if she jumps into the Democratic primary field for governor, according to a Field Poll reported in the Sacramento Bee. She comes out ahead of state Attorney General Jerry Brown, a former governor favored my many older voters but a mystery man to many younger ones.
Billionaire former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is the early leader for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. But she is so little-known that her favorability ratings among GOP voters lag behind Brown, a favorite liberal target for many California Republicans.
In a Feb. 20-March 1 poll of voter preferences for potential Democratic and Republican primary contests, Feinstein emerges as the clear voter favorite to date.
The 16-year U.S. senator, former San Francisco mayor and unsuccessful 1990 gubernatorial candidate is preferred by 38 percent of likely Democratic primary voters.
Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are tied for second at 16 percent, followed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at 10 percent and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi at 4 percent.
Newsom is the Democratic mayor of Bombast by the Bay, perhaps best known as a prominent and vocal opponent of Prop. 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative that was passed by voters last fall.
It was a stance that cut both ways.
An infamous film clip of Newsom wound up on a pro-Prop. 8 commercial, in which he was seen grinning broadly and saying of gay marriage, "This door's wide open now. It's going to happen, whether you like it or not."
How that notoriety continues to play out for Newsom remains to be seen. Clearly, gays are a potent political force in San Francisco and a mayor who wants to keep his job had better be a friend to that community.
Gays are a political force in Southern California as well but not enough of one to have stopped the Prop. 8 movement. The initiative passed in every county here except Santa Barbara. That's territory Newsom would have to win to achieve election.
So chalk that up as one delicate issue on Newsom's plate. Another is that he's testing the political waters on the home turf of a potential rival, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Villaraigosa is nothing if not a photo-op. When it comes to visibilty, he beats Newsom hands down.
But on closer inspection, these two have something in common.
Scandal.
On Jan. 31, 2007, Newsom's campaign manager and former deputy chief of staff, Alex Tourk, quit after learning of a sexual affair the mayor had with Tourk's wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, in late 2005.
At the time of the affair, Rippey-Tourk worked in Newsom's office as the Mayor's aide for commission appointments.
After leaving her job in Newsom's office in August 2006, Tourk received $10,154 in catastrophic illness pay, which is usually reserved for those who are terminally ill, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
An investigation by the San Francisco city attorney cleared all those involved of legal wrongdoing.
Newsom apologized for the affair, saying, "I hurt someone I care deeply about, Alex Tourk, his friends and family, and that is something that I have to live with and something that I am deeply sorry for."
He announced that he would seek treatment for alcohol abuse.
In the meantime, Villaraigosa, prompted by a report in the Los Angeles Daily News, was revealing an ongoing, year-long affair with Telemundo anchorwoman Mirthala Salinas, which was widely believed to have triggered the breakdown of his marriage.
"I have a relationship with Ms. Salinas, and I take full responsibility for my actions," he said at a news conference.
Salinas was engaged in an enormous conflict of interest by covering the mayor for an extended period while she was sleeping with him, even broadcasting news of the mayor's separation from his wife.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Villaraigosa's admission cast a fresh shadow over his own personal conduct: He has two adult daughters born out of wedlock and his wife filed for divorce in 1994 over a separate affair for which he later publicly apologized. They eventually reconciled.
In the end, Villaraigosa dumped Salinas and won reelection, seeming to survive the scandal.
Salinas, her journalistic career ruined, disappeared from the stage.
At least, Newsom and Villaraigosa won't be able to point the finger of moral outrage at one another.
Politicians survive sex scandals, Bill Clinton being the most prominent example. But Clinton had the political capital to see himself through.
Newsom and Villaraigosa are asking us to forgive and forget at a time in this country when the public is outraged at the moral and ethical lapses of bankers, brokers and, yes, politicians.
That's asking a lot.
Perhaps that is why Sen. Dianne Feinstein, not exactly a fresh political face, is the instant front-runner if she jumps into the Democratic primary field for governor, according to a Field Poll reported in the Sacramento Bee. She comes out ahead of state Attorney General Jerry Brown, a former governor favored my many older voters but a mystery man to many younger ones.
Billionaire former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is the early leader for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. But she is so little-known that her favorability ratings among GOP voters lag behind Brown, a favorite liberal target for many California Republicans.
In a Feb. 20-March 1 poll of voter preferences for potential Democratic and Republican primary contests, Feinstein emerges as the clear voter favorite to date.
The 16-year U.S. senator, former San Francisco mayor and unsuccessful 1990 gubernatorial candidate is preferred by 38 percent of likely Democratic primary voters.
Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are tied for second at 16 percent, followed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at 10 percent and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi at 4 percent.
Don't Pass It On
The Internet is truly a boon to all mankind.
If you want recipes for brussel sprouts, for example, there are literally hundreds. This is not a particular help to me since I like mine with an entire brick of Velveta cheese melted on top to disguise the taste. But there they are.
If you want a Rush Limbaugh bobblehead doll, it's there for the taking.
You can check your stock portfolio and then, with a click of the mouse, find the number for a suicide prevention hotline.
But there's a dark side to the Internet, one that I've been increasingly exposed to lately.
My inbox has been filling up lately with messages from well-meaning family members and friends who are anxious to share the Outrage of the Day.
Mostly, these consist of warnings of impending doom in the form of riots and revolution or tales of outrageous abuses of power by our elected officials that threaten our very way of life.
As if there isn't enough bad news out there.
We live in fearful times. Who would have believed our economy could be in the shape it's in now? And the finest minds in the country, so far, haven't been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Against this backdrop, I guess we're ripe to believe anything.
Which gives birth to these kinds of Internet posts:
Example one: "Sources at the United States Embassy in Beijing China have just confirmed that the United States of America has tendered to China a written agreement which grants to the People's Republic of China, an option to exercise Eminent Domain within the U.S.A., as collateral for China's continued purchase of U.S. Treasury Notes and existing U.S. currency reserves!
"The written agreement was brought to Beijing by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was formalized and agreed-to during her recent trip to China.
"This means that in the event the US Government defaults on its financial obligations to China, the Communist Government of China would be permitted to physically take...land, buildings, factories, perhaps even entire cities - to satisfy the financial obligations of the U.S. government."
This immedialtely raises in some people's minds two horrific images: Chinese Communists and Hillary Clinton.
Outrageous? You bet.
Trouble is, it isn't true.
My first hint came when I searched the data bases of the New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to see how they covered this story.
They hadn't. Think what you will about the media, they're not about to blow off a story that would alter the economic, political and moral landscape of our country forevermore.
Not only has the State Department denied it ("there is no factual basis or substance to this report") the source seems to be a former radio host named Hal Turner who once claimed to have "Amero" coins which proved a secret consiracy to to merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a single entity.
Nonetheless, the eminent domain story spread like wildfire over the Internet spread by bloggers who didn't lift a finger to check its authenticity.
The real scary thing is that people were willing to believe it.
Example Two: Petition for President Obama:
"Dear Mr. President: We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on recently which would allow illegal aliens to access our Social Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the United States."
Really, Social Security for illegals? I can feel my blood pressure starting to rise. But again, not a word in the nation's leading media.
According to the Snopes website, which attempts to get to the bottom of urban legends, this legislation wasn't about giving illegal aliens Social Security benefits.
It was a proposed amendment to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform act in 2006 which would have granted former illegal aliens who had since become legal credit for monies they themselves had paid into the Social Security fund while they were in the U.S. illegally.
The Senate, knowing a political hot potato when it sees one, voted to withdraw the amendment from consideration. Which means they killed it.
Indeed, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act never became law.
Example three: President Obama snubbed the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball honoring recipients of the Medal of Honor.
True enough. He didn't attend. Vice President Biden attended instead.
Obama didn't show up at any of the dozens of unofficial balls and galas sponsored by entities other than the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
He did, however, attend the official Commander-in-Chief's Ball honoring all U.S. service members, including Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipients, hundreds of wounded soldiers (and their families) from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and spouses of troops currently deployed overseas.
In fact, the American Legion issued a statement saing, "From The American Legion's point of view, the new President's absence was understandable considering the unprecedented logistical challenges presented by the vastly increased number of visitors to this inauguration and the necessary attendant security measures."
My advice: if you get an e-mail telling you to pass it on to everyone you know, don't.
If you want recipes for brussel sprouts, for example, there are literally hundreds. This is not a particular help to me since I like mine with an entire brick of Velveta cheese melted on top to disguise the taste. But there they are.
If you want a Rush Limbaugh bobblehead doll, it's there for the taking.
You can check your stock portfolio and then, with a click of the mouse, find the number for a suicide prevention hotline.
But there's a dark side to the Internet, one that I've been increasingly exposed to lately.
My inbox has been filling up lately with messages from well-meaning family members and friends who are anxious to share the Outrage of the Day.
Mostly, these consist of warnings of impending doom in the form of riots and revolution or tales of outrageous abuses of power by our elected officials that threaten our very way of life.
As if there isn't enough bad news out there.
We live in fearful times. Who would have believed our economy could be in the shape it's in now? And the finest minds in the country, so far, haven't been able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Against this backdrop, I guess we're ripe to believe anything.
Which gives birth to these kinds of Internet posts:
Example one: "Sources at the United States Embassy in Beijing China have just confirmed that the United States of America has tendered to China a written agreement which grants to the People's Republic of China, an option to exercise Eminent Domain within the U.S.A., as collateral for China's continued purchase of U.S. Treasury Notes and existing U.S. currency reserves!
"The written agreement was brought to Beijing by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was formalized and agreed-to during her recent trip to China.
"This means that in the event the US Government defaults on its financial obligations to China, the Communist Government of China would be permitted to physically take...land, buildings, factories, perhaps even entire cities - to satisfy the financial obligations of the U.S. government."
This immedialtely raises in some people's minds two horrific images: Chinese Communists and Hillary Clinton.
Outrageous? You bet.
Trouble is, it isn't true.
My first hint came when I searched the data bases of the New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to see how they covered this story.
They hadn't. Think what you will about the media, they're not about to blow off a story that would alter the economic, political and moral landscape of our country forevermore.
Not only has the State Department denied it ("there is no factual basis or substance to this report") the source seems to be a former radio host named Hal Turner who once claimed to have "Amero" coins which proved a secret consiracy to to merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a single entity.
Nonetheless, the eminent domain story spread like wildfire over the Internet spread by bloggers who didn't lift a finger to check its authenticity.
The real scary thing is that people were willing to believe it.
Example Two: Petition for President Obama:
"Dear Mr. President: We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on recently which would allow illegal aliens to access our Social Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the United States."
Really, Social Security for illegals? I can feel my blood pressure starting to rise. But again, not a word in the nation's leading media.
According to the Snopes website, which attempts to get to the bottom of urban legends, this legislation wasn't about giving illegal aliens Social Security benefits.
It was a proposed amendment to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform act in 2006 which would have granted former illegal aliens who had since become legal credit for monies they themselves had paid into the Social Security fund while they were in the U.S. illegally.
The Senate, knowing a political hot potato when it sees one, voted to withdraw the amendment from consideration. Which means they killed it.
Indeed, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act never became law.
Example three: President Obama snubbed the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball honoring recipients of the Medal of Honor.
True enough. He didn't attend. Vice President Biden attended instead.
Obama didn't show up at any of the dozens of unofficial balls and galas sponsored by entities other than the Presidential Inaugural Committee.
He did, however, attend the official Commander-in-Chief's Ball honoring all U.S. service members, including Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipients, hundreds of wounded soldiers (and their families) from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and spouses of troops currently deployed overseas.
In fact, the American Legion issued a statement saing, "From The American Legion's point of view, the new President's absence was understandable considering the unprecedented logistical challenges presented by the vastly increased number of visitors to this inauguration and the necessary attendant security measures."
My advice: if you get an e-mail telling you to pass it on to everyone you know, don't.
Ed's Really Excellent Plan
If the folks in Washington are looking for new ways to combat joblessness and boost local economies, they need to look no farther than the San Gabriel Valley.
It is there that Ed Roski has come up with a one-man, sure-fire stimulus package. And it's beautiful in its simplicity.
First, announce you are going to build a 70,000-seat stadium and bring NFL football back to Southern California.
Nobody asked for it but, what the heck, Roski, a billionaire businessman, controls the land necessary to build the stadium in the city of Industry and already has a certified environmental impact report for the site.
The price tag: $800 million or so.
So far so good. Building a stadium would certainly create jobs as would having a fully functioning pro football team working there.
But even if a spadeful of dirt is never turned in pursuit of this project, it will directly and indirectly engage many dozens of architects, engineers, public relations people, bankers, bartenders and bureaucrats.
Never mind that the chances of this stadium getting built are about the same as me setting the pole vault record. The NFL isn't interested. Neither are the people of Los Angeles. It doesn't matter. Those working on the project get paid just the same.
Next, alienate people living in the surrounding communities.The city of Walnut has already filed a lawsuit to stop the proposed construction of the stadium. People in Diamond Bar are mad.
The Walnut suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court accuses the city of Industry of approving the stadium without sufficiently reviewing its environmental impact. Neighboring cities "would realize significant traffic impact, noise, air and light pollution and other impacts that would jeopardize the health, safety and welfare of its residents," officials in Walnut claim.
The city of Industry and Roski's people disagree.
I think you see where I'm going here.
The suit immediately initiates the Lawyers Full Employment Act. Hordes of attorneys from both sides descend upon the issue to argue the merits of the case.
Motions are filed. Depositions are taken.
The attorneys in turn hire clerks, researchers, limo drivers, messenger services and pizza delivery boys to fuel their efforts.
Talk about trickle down economics.
But wait, there's more!
The citizens of Walnut are not happy that their elected representatives were late to the party in opposing the stadium. So they are filing recall papers against three city council members.
Help wanted: campaign managers, petition circulators, poll takers, vote counters, printers to grind out political signage. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, there are a lot of people in Walnut who support a stadium. When they get organized, they'll also be looking to employ a few good men, metaphorically speaking, to represent their interests.
And even more: According to the Los Angeles Times, the Walnut suit also claims that the developer's campaign failed to reach the city's large Asian population.
The suit claims that the city of Industry did not properly inform Walnut residents in their native language about the potential impact of the $800-million stadium. Although Industry knew that the stadium-entertainment complex would impact large Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Spanish-speaking populations in Walnut, it failed to provide notices for the project in any language other than English, according to the suit.
This, of course, opens the door to reams of paperwork necessary to notify the aggrieved populace in at least four different and diverse languages about the project. That requires a veritable United Nations to translate and communicate the appropriate information. Another job creation opportunity.
For the Roski plan to work, he must convince a current NFL owner to pull up stakes and move to Southern California.
Think that would result in a few bigtime lawsuits and the attendant employment opportunities? Is the Pope German?
So notify the Obama Administration. Ed's on to something. Our economic salvation lies in proposing outlandish stadia smack dab in the middle of communities that don't want them. It could cut the unemployment figures in half.
And what happens when the Roski NFL stadium plan falls through? Why, he'll build a giant retail center complete with office space, stores, theaters and restaurants.
Get your resume ready.
It is there that Ed Roski has come up with a one-man, sure-fire stimulus package. And it's beautiful in its simplicity.
First, announce you are going to build a 70,000-seat stadium and bring NFL football back to Southern California.
Nobody asked for it but, what the heck, Roski, a billionaire businessman, controls the land necessary to build the stadium in the city of Industry and already has a certified environmental impact report for the site.
The price tag: $800 million or so.
So far so good. Building a stadium would certainly create jobs as would having a fully functioning pro football team working there.
But even if a spadeful of dirt is never turned in pursuit of this project, it will directly and indirectly engage many dozens of architects, engineers, public relations people, bankers, bartenders and bureaucrats.
Never mind that the chances of this stadium getting built are about the same as me setting the pole vault record. The NFL isn't interested. Neither are the people of Los Angeles. It doesn't matter. Those working on the project get paid just the same.
Next, alienate people living in the surrounding communities.The city of Walnut has already filed a lawsuit to stop the proposed construction of the stadium. People in Diamond Bar are mad.
The Walnut suit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court accuses the city of Industry of approving the stadium without sufficiently reviewing its environmental impact. Neighboring cities "would realize significant traffic impact, noise, air and light pollution and other impacts that would jeopardize the health, safety and welfare of its residents," officials in Walnut claim.
The city of Industry and Roski's people disagree.
I think you see where I'm going here.
The suit immediately initiates the Lawyers Full Employment Act. Hordes of attorneys from both sides descend upon the issue to argue the merits of the case.
Motions are filed. Depositions are taken.
The attorneys in turn hire clerks, researchers, limo drivers, messenger services and pizza delivery boys to fuel their efforts.
Talk about trickle down economics.
But wait, there's more!
The citizens of Walnut are not happy that their elected representatives were late to the party in opposing the stadium. So they are filing recall papers against three city council members.
Help wanted: campaign managers, petition circulators, poll takers, vote counters, printers to grind out political signage. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, there are a lot of people in Walnut who support a stadium. When they get organized, they'll also be looking to employ a few good men, metaphorically speaking, to represent their interests.
And even more: According to the Los Angeles Times, the Walnut suit also claims that the developer's campaign failed to reach the city's large Asian population.
The suit claims that the city of Industry did not properly inform Walnut residents in their native language about the potential impact of the $800-million stadium. Although Industry knew that the stadium-entertainment complex would impact large Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Spanish-speaking populations in Walnut, it failed to provide notices for the project in any language other than English, according to the suit.
This, of course, opens the door to reams of paperwork necessary to notify the aggrieved populace in at least four different and diverse languages about the project. That requires a veritable United Nations to translate and communicate the appropriate information. Another job creation opportunity.
For the Roski plan to work, he must convince a current NFL owner to pull up stakes and move to Southern California.
Think that would result in a few bigtime lawsuits and the attendant employment opportunities? Is the Pope German?
So notify the Obama Administration. Ed's on to something. Our economic salvation lies in proposing outlandish stadia smack dab in the middle of communities that don't want them. It could cut the unemployment figures in half.
And what happens when the Roski NFL stadium plan falls through? Why, he'll build a giant retail center complete with office space, stores, theaters and restaurants.
Get your resume ready.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Rose of Dodger Stadium
WE are lurching into spring, drought, depressions and doom notwithstanding.
If you don't believe it, daylight savings time starts this weekend.
That means it's baseball season, a mystical place where, at least for the time being, we can find relief from a world of Obamas and Octomoms.
Out at Dodger Stadium, the season is defined by two words. And I don't mean double plays, line drives or outrageous prices.
I mean Vin Scully.
Vincent Edward Scully has been the mellifluous and knowledgeable voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers for nearly 60 years.
He has been named California Sportscaster of the Year 28 times, he received the Ford Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, was honored with a Life Achievement Emmy Award for sportscasting and induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995, and was named Broadcaster of the Century by the American Sportscasters Association in 2000.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame. There is talk of erecting a statue of him at Dodger Stadium.
Through the power of his voice, he has almost single handedly made the Dodgers one of the top drawing franchises in all of sport.
His popularity has crossed generational, economic and racial lines.
But he has been ignored by the Rose Parade.
If you've read this column in the past, you probably know that I've been on a three-year campaign to get Scully named grand marshal of the Rose Parade.
And the public agrees, if my mail is any indication.
So far I've come up a little short. In the last two years, the good folks at the Tournament of Roses have selected Emeril Legase, a TV chef whose career has deflated faster than a bad souffle, and Cloris Leachman, an 82-year-old actress whose most recent claim to fame was remaining upright on a couple of episodes of "Dancing With the Stars."
Vin Scully is a cut above the rest, which just so happens to be the 2010 Rose Parade theme.
Let's get a bandwagon going. E-mail tournament president Gary J. DiSano at rosepr@rosemail.org. Post on the tournament's Facebook page. Send them a copy of this column to: 391 South Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91184. Or call the tournament office at (626) 449-4100.
Play ball.
Despite two daughters, a wife, a sister and multiple nieces, I know next to nothing about women's fashions.
Most of what I've seen in print and on television seems a little out of touch with reality. Or maybe I just run with the wrong crowd.
Against this backdrop, my wife dragged me to a charity fashion show the other day, the first event of this kind I have ever witnessed.
I was exiled to a table with a bunch of other husbands, probably to make sure any comments I made didn't result in a socially awkward moment.
The models appeared to be about 7-feet tall, 6 feet of which were legs. They were poised and willowy, moving like so much warm maple syrup.
Rather like our new First Lady.
Michelle Obama is a Harvard Law School grad but for the first several weeks of her husband's administration, no one is asking what she thinks.
Instead, most of the conversation is about how she looks, a burden she shares, I suspect, with a lot of women.
But she is tall and graceful and appears to enjoy dressing the part, which makes her fair game to the fasionistas. Or fashion police, depending on your view. They've been waiting in the weeds since Jackie Kennedy occupied the White House.
Most recently, Ms. Obama was criticized for showing off her toned triceps and biceps in her first official photo as first lady.
"Post-Title IX arms," Robin Givhan called them in the Washington Post. Some are calling her choice of attire (she also wore a sleeveless dress to her husband's speech before a joint session of Congress), calling it too informal and out of season.
"Oh my God," Cindi Leive, Glamour editor, e-mailed the New York Times after the congressional episode. "The First Lady has bare arms in Congress, in February, at night!"
"The dress was so inappropriate for that occasion. This is not trend setting it is simply poor taste ... I was offended by the disregard for the other people in attendance. Good fashion is never offensive," huffed one reader.
I guess she should have worn a burqa.
Frankly, I never noticed that she wore a sleeveless dress. Had I noticed, I wouldn't have cared. And who makes up these rules, anyway?
But I did like the response from the White House: Social Secretary Desiree Rogers who said that Mrs. Obama's feeling is "If I want to wear no sleeves to hear my husband speak, that's what I'm going to do."
And for the record: In 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy wore a sleeveless black sheath to her husband' State of the Union address.
If you don't believe it, daylight savings time starts this weekend.
That means it's baseball season, a mystical place where, at least for the time being, we can find relief from a world of Obamas and Octomoms.
Out at Dodger Stadium, the season is defined by two words. And I don't mean double plays, line drives or outrageous prices.
I mean Vin Scully.
Vincent Edward Scully has been the mellifluous and knowledgeable voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers for nearly 60 years.
He has been named California Sportscaster of the Year 28 times, he received the Ford Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, was honored with a Life Achievement Emmy Award for sportscasting and induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995, and was named Broadcaster of the Century by the American Sportscasters Association in 2000.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame. There is talk of erecting a statue of him at Dodger Stadium.
Through the power of his voice, he has almost single handedly made the Dodgers one of the top drawing franchises in all of sport.
His popularity has crossed generational, economic and racial lines.
But he has been ignored by the Rose Parade.
If you've read this column in the past, you probably know that I've been on a three-year campaign to get Scully named grand marshal of the Rose Parade.
And the public agrees, if my mail is any indication.
So far I've come up a little short. In the last two years, the good folks at the Tournament of Roses have selected Emeril Legase, a TV chef whose career has deflated faster than a bad souffle, and Cloris Leachman, an 82-year-old actress whose most recent claim to fame was remaining upright on a couple of episodes of "Dancing With the Stars."
Vin Scully is a cut above the rest, which just so happens to be the 2010 Rose Parade theme.
Let's get a bandwagon going. E-mail tournament president Gary J. DiSano at rosepr@rosemail.org. Post on the tournament's Facebook page. Send them a copy of this column to: 391 South Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91184. Or call the tournament office at (626) 449-4100.
Play ball.
Despite two daughters, a wife, a sister and multiple nieces, I know next to nothing about women's fashions.
Most of what I've seen in print and on television seems a little out of touch with reality. Or maybe I just run with the wrong crowd.
Against this backdrop, my wife dragged me to a charity fashion show the other day, the first event of this kind I have ever witnessed.
I was exiled to a table with a bunch of other husbands, probably to make sure any comments I made didn't result in a socially awkward moment.
The models appeared to be about 7-feet tall, 6 feet of which were legs. They were poised and willowy, moving like so much warm maple syrup.
Rather like our new First Lady.
Michelle Obama is a Harvard Law School grad but for the first several weeks of her husband's administration, no one is asking what she thinks.
Instead, most of the conversation is about how she looks, a burden she shares, I suspect, with a lot of women.
But she is tall and graceful and appears to enjoy dressing the part, which makes her fair game to the fasionistas. Or fashion police, depending on your view. They've been waiting in the weeds since Jackie Kennedy occupied the White House.
Most recently, Ms. Obama was criticized for showing off her toned triceps and biceps in her first official photo as first lady.
"Post-Title IX arms," Robin Givhan called them in the Washington Post. Some are calling her choice of attire (she also wore a sleeveless dress to her husband's speech before a joint session of Congress), calling it too informal and out of season.
"Oh my God," Cindi Leive, Glamour editor, e-mailed the New York Times after the congressional episode. "The First Lady has bare arms in Congress, in February, at night!"
"The dress was so inappropriate for that occasion. This is not trend setting it is simply poor taste ... I was offended by the disregard for the other people in attendance. Good fashion is never offensive," huffed one reader.
I guess she should have worn a burqa.
Frankly, I never noticed that she wore a sleeveless dress. Had I noticed, I wouldn't have cared. And who makes up these rules, anyway?
But I did like the response from the White House: Social Secretary Desiree Rogers who said that Mrs. Obama's feeling is "If I want to wear no sleeves to hear my husband speak, that's what I'm going to do."
And for the record: In 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy wore a sleeveless black sheath to her husband' State of the Union address.
The Muzak Man
An icon of American pop culture is teetering on the edge of the economic collapse. And maybe that's a good thing.
Muzak Holdings, the maker of background music heard in elevators, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this past week.
If this is indeed The Day the Muzak Died, we will at last be free from decades of ear pollution that threatened to turn our brains to oatmeal.
No longer will we be subjected to romanticized versions of "Disco Inferno," "Stairway to Heaven" or "Mustang Sally" performed by the 101 Strings and endlessly piped into elevators, doctors offices, restrooms, grocery stores and bank lobbies.
No longer will we be put on hold for a half hour while some orchestra plays "The Sounds of Silence" or "Tired of Waiting for You."
In 1989, rocker Ted Nugent tried to buy the company for $10 million just so he could destroy it. One wag claimed the name was a combination of Music and Prozak.
For whatever else it may have been, Muzak had a dark soul. According to published reports, the company marketed a theory called "stimulus progression" which stated that a person's outlook could be altered with music.
Offices played 15-minute blocks of Muzak tracks that increased in tempo until the final song was so upbeat the workers found themselves happily toiling away when they normally would start to lag.
One man's manipulation is another man's brainwashing.
To give Muzak its due, it has in recent years moved away from the
"elevator music" approach to multiple specialized channels of music, including offering channels of commercially available recordings intended to match the targeted environment.
But live or die, the name Muzak will always be synonymous with music to slack your jaw by.
Pass me my I-Pod.
President Obama's speech to the nation in front of joint session of Congress Tuesday night was remarkable for two reasons.
First, it was a pep talk that Americans needed to hear. But at the conclusion of almost every sentence we were treated to the sight of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leaping to her feet to lead the applause. She looked like a jack-in-the-box that landed on a whoopie cushion.
After a while, it became a distraction. I stopped watching the president and focused on Pelosi, wondering if she was going to break out a set of pompons. Enthusiasm is fine, and I know she had to sit next to Dick Cheney for two years. But next time, Nancy, fasten your seatbelt. It's going to be a long ride.
To hear tell it, Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard showed up on Colorado Boulevard one recent morning, his chain saw glimmering in the sun, the stub of a half-chewed cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, and, aided by a pack of hired goons, started chopping down ficus trees.
I don't necessarily subscribe to this view of events but there's no debating the heated level of rhetoric over the city's tree removal ordinance. The city recently approved a plan to remove three dozen ficus and carrotwood trees and replace them with palm and ginko trees.
Businesses in the area have complained that the ficus trees have caused costly repairs to sidewalks and sewers. And, more to the point, obscured signs. There's a lot of evidence to support this view. Santa Monica, among other cities, has been yanking ficus trees and replacing them for years.
Advocates say the trees provide needed shade and beauty. No argument there. You have to wonder if a little more study would have resulted in a better solution such as better maintenance, better replacement choices.
Several council members said they felt compelled to stick with the original removal plan, since it is part of a phased landscaping plan that dates back to 1996.
So what? Nobody was asking the council to repeal the Bill of Rights. Just reconsider an ordinance. It's too bad patience didn't carry the day.
Muzak Holdings, the maker of background music heard in elevators, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this past week.
If this is indeed The Day the Muzak Died, we will at last be free from decades of ear pollution that threatened to turn our brains to oatmeal.
No longer will we be subjected to romanticized versions of "Disco Inferno," "Stairway to Heaven" or "Mustang Sally" performed by the 101 Strings and endlessly piped into elevators, doctors offices, restrooms, grocery stores and bank lobbies.
No longer will we be put on hold for a half hour while some orchestra plays "The Sounds of Silence" or "Tired of Waiting for You."
In 1989, rocker Ted Nugent tried to buy the company for $10 million just so he could destroy it. One wag claimed the name was a combination of Music and Prozak.
For whatever else it may have been, Muzak had a dark soul. According to published reports, the company marketed a theory called "stimulus progression" which stated that a person's outlook could be altered with music.
Offices played 15-minute blocks of Muzak tracks that increased in tempo until the final song was so upbeat the workers found themselves happily toiling away when they normally would start to lag.
One man's manipulation is another man's brainwashing.
To give Muzak its due, it has in recent years moved away from the
"elevator music" approach to multiple specialized channels of music, including offering channels of commercially available recordings intended to match the targeted environment.
But live or die, the name Muzak will always be synonymous with music to slack your jaw by.
Pass me my I-Pod.
President Obama's speech to the nation in front of joint session of Congress Tuesday night was remarkable for two reasons.
First, it was a pep talk that Americans needed to hear. But at the conclusion of almost every sentence we were treated to the sight of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi leaping to her feet to lead the applause. She looked like a jack-in-the-box that landed on a whoopie cushion.
After a while, it became a distraction. I stopped watching the president and focused on Pelosi, wondering if she was going to break out a set of pompons. Enthusiasm is fine, and I know she had to sit next to Dick Cheney for two years. But next time, Nancy, fasten your seatbelt. It's going to be a long ride.
To hear tell it, Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard showed up on Colorado Boulevard one recent morning, his chain saw glimmering in the sun, the stub of a half-chewed cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, and, aided by a pack of hired goons, started chopping down ficus trees.
I don't necessarily subscribe to this view of events but there's no debating the heated level of rhetoric over the city's tree removal ordinance. The city recently approved a plan to remove three dozen ficus and carrotwood trees and replace them with palm and ginko trees.
Businesses in the area have complained that the ficus trees have caused costly repairs to sidewalks and sewers. And, more to the point, obscured signs. There's a lot of evidence to support this view. Santa Monica, among other cities, has been yanking ficus trees and replacing them for years.
Advocates say the trees provide needed shade and beauty. No argument there. You have to wonder if a little more study would have resulted in a better solution such as better maintenance, better replacement choices.
Several council members said they felt compelled to stick with the original removal plan, since it is part of a phased landscaping plan that dates back to 1996.
So what? Nobody was asking the council to repeal the Bill of Rights. Just reconsider an ordinance. It's too bad patience didn't carry the day.
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