By ROBERT RECTOR
A few items of interest you may have missed recently from news reports, blogs, web sites and other highly suspect sources.
News: Paris Hilton reportedly ordered her helicopter pilot to make an emergency landing on a German farm - so she could use the toilet.
The actress was said to be touring the European country when she made the surprise request.
A source told Britain's More magazine: "She gave the farmer a bit of a shock. Her bouncers even blocked the farm door so the family couldn't go inside their own house while she was using the loo."
The star then allegedly spent another 10 minutes on the startled farmer's porch, so she could smoke a cigarette.
The unnamed farmer said: "She was cold as a fish, and cursed about the weather."
Views: The Germans must be sick of us. First, our World Cup team, then Paris Hilton. The end results both smelled.
News: BOCA RATON, Fla. - A hundred bucks might buy you more than six dozen burgers from McDonald's, but the swanky Old Homestead Steakhouse will sell you one brawny beef sandwich for the same price.
Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams could barely speak between bites as he devoured the 20-ounce, $100 hamburger billed as the "beluga caviar of sandwiches."
"Heaven on a bun," restaurant owner Marc Sherry said.
The burger debuted at the restaurant in the Boca Raton Resort and Club, where a membership costs $40,000 and an additional $3,600 a year.
The bill for one burger, with garnishing that includes organic greens, exotic mushrooms and tomatoes, comes out to $124.50 with tax and an 18 percent tip included. The restaurant will donate $10 from each sale to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Views: May I suggest a Dom Perignon "Oenotheque" 1966 to go with that? At $1500 a bottle, it would be perfect to wash dowm a burger. And don't even dwell on the fact that some guy in the kitchen feeds his family on less than you paid for your sandwich and a membership.
News: BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein ended a brief hunger strike after missing just one meal in his U.S.-run prison, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.
The former Iraqi leader had refused lunch Thursday in protest at the killing of one of his lawyers by gunmen, but the spokesman said he ate his evening meal.
Views: Maybe they offered him one of those $100 Old Homestead Steakhouse burgers.
News: One sunny afternoon in January, Vicki Chandler, a 55-year-old underwriting associate at Cigna HealthCare in Chattanooga, Tenn., was walking to her car when a teenager in loose khaki pants approached her, pointed to her pocketbook and said, "I need that." As she recounts the incident, he snatched the purse and took off.
But then he ran into trouble. As he ran, his loose trousers slipped down below his hips. As he reached down to hold them up, the teen was forced to throw the purse aside.
It's a problem for perpetrators. Young men and teens wearing low-slung, baggy pants fairly regularly get tripped up in their getaways, a development that has given amused police officers and law-abiding citizens a welcome edge in the fight against crime.
Views: Finally, a fashion trend we can get behind. Next for the super hip (and criminally inclined): Tying your shoe laces together.
News: When lifelong musician Roger Busdicker died last week, his daughters made the final arrangements: They had his cremated remains buried in his clarinet.
Views: Please don't stick my ashes in my keyboard or scatter them is some musty old newsroom. I've asked for my remains to be put in the cup on the 18th hole of my local golf course. Based on my friends' skills, they will remain undisturbed for a long time.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
Birthday Songs
By ROBERT RECTOR
When "Sgt. Pepper's Lonley Heart's Club Band" was released in1967, it was called the most influential rock album of all time.
While that may have been laying it on a bit thick, I do rememberdigesting it like a fine meal, savoring every nuance, every flavor. And so didmany of my friends, not star-struck teenagers but people with careers andfamilies.
Such was the popularity and importance of the Beatles at the apexof their career.
And now Paul McCartney is 64. Lots of people turn 64, of course, but only Sir Paul had the foresight to write "When I'm 64," which appeared on Sgt. Pepper and cemented his rightful place in the birthday hall of fame.
Depending on how you interpreted the song, he was either mocking old age or hoping for a soft landing when his time came. Of course, in 1967, being 64 was impossible to contemplate. And his quaint view of enduring love was almost comedic, a song that sounded like it was written and performed by Lawrence Welk smack dab in the middle of a rock masterpiece.
So here's to those of us who have made the journey with Paul and reached 64. Here's to Brian Wilson. And Muhammad Ali. And Michael Bloomberg, Dick Butkus, Clarence Clemmons, Michael Crawford, Michael Eisner, Mick Fleetwood, Aretha Franklin, Stephen Hawking, John Irving, Erica Jong, Wayne Newton, Muammar Qaddafi, Roger Staubach, Barbra Steisand, Michael York. To name a few.
But unlike the lyrics of the song, a lot of us are not "yours sincerely wasting away." Indeed, it used to be that most Americans retired at 65, then got sick and died within a few years. Today, according to a MacArthur Foundation study, nearly nine in 10 Americans ages 65-74 say they have no disability.
Of course, those who make that statement don't count the usual aches and pains that come from dealing with the unrelenting pull of gravity for more than a half-century. Maybe they just forgot. That happens a lot when you're 64.
Nearly two-thirds of baby boomers say they feel younger today than their actual age, up from just under half in 1998. And eight in 10 Americans reject the notion that "my retirement is or will be similar to my parent's retirement." Today, on average, 64-year-olds can expect to live more than 16 years, about four years longer than they would have in 1967 at age 64, according to government statisticians.
So to what do we owe this endless summer? Medical advances? Healthier life styles? Viagra?
According to many experts, various factors contribute to an individual's longevity. Significant factors in life expectancy include genetics, access to health care, hygiene, diet, exercise and lifestyle.
Moreover, the Census Bureau says that life expectancy in the U.S. will be in the mid-80s by the year 2050 (up from 77 today) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scientific advances that can change the rate of human aging itself, as opposed to merely treating the effects of aging as is done today.
We've had some good times in these 64 years. We've gone through a lot of down times as well. Wars, recessions, natural disasters, terrorism, the dark side of humanity that it seems to confront every generation.
Ironically, it has been no bed of roses for Sir Paul. The comfortable retirement with a life-time partner that he sang about eluded him. His first wife, Linda, died of breast cancer at 59, after they had been married 29 years. Last month, he announced his separation from his second wife, Heather Mills, who is 38.
Of the Beatles, only Paul and Ringo, who is 66, made it to 64. John Lennon, who would have been 64 this year, was shot and killed at age 40. George Harrison died of cancer at age 58.
For those of us still standing, look how far we've come.
"The slogan back then was never trust anyone over 30," Jeff Greenfield, a CNN commentator, who is 63, told the New York Times. "We thought people would be dead or in a home by their 60s."
And life today seems to offer a lot more than we were promised in Paul's song:
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.
When "Sgt. Pepper's Lonley Heart's Club Band" was released in1967, it was called the most influential rock album of all time.
While that may have been laying it on a bit thick, I do rememberdigesting it like a fine meal, savoring every nuance, every flavor. And so didmany of my friends, not star-struck teenagers but people with careers andfamilies.
Such was the popularity and importance of the Beatles at the apexof their career.
And now Paul McCartney is 64. Lots of people turn 64, of course, but only Sir Paul had the foresight to write "When I'm 64," which appeared on Sgt. Pepper and cemented his rightful place in the birthday hall of fame.
Depending on how you interpreted the song, he was either mocking old age or hoping for a soft landing when his time came. Of course, in 1967, being 64 was impossible to contemplate. And his quaint view of enduring love was almost comedic, a song that sounded like it was written and performed by Lawrence Welk smack dab in the middle of a rock masterpiece.
So here's to those of us who have made the journey with Paul and reached 64. Here's to Brian Wilson. And Muhammad Ali. And Michael Bloomberg, Dick Butkus, Clarence Clemmons, Michael Crawford, Michael Eisner, Mick Fleetwood, Aretha Franklin, Stephen Hawking, John Irving, Erica Jong, Wayne Newton, Muammar Qaddafi, Roger Staubach, Barbra Steisand, Michael York. To name a few.
But unlike the lyrics of the song, a lot of us are not "yours sincerely wasting away." Indeed, it used to be that most Americans retired at 65, then got sick and died within a few years. Today, according to a MacArthur Foundation study, nearly nine in 10 Americans ages 65-74 say they have no disability.
Of course, those who make that statement don't count the usual aches and pains that come from dealing with the unrelenting pull of gravity for more than a half-century. Maybe they just forgot. That happens a lot when you're 64.
Nearly two-thirds of baby boomers say they feel younger today than their actual age, up from just under half in 1998. And eight in 10 Americans reject the notion that "my retirement is or will be similar to my parent's retirement." Today, on average, 64-year-olds can expect to live more than 16 years, about four years longer than they would have in 1967 at age 64, according to government statisticians.
So to what do we owe this endless summer? Medical advances? Healthier life styles? Viagra?
According to many experts, various factors contribute to an individual's longevity. Significant factors in life expectancy include genetics, access to health care, hygiene, diet, exercise and lifestyle.
Moreover, the Census Bureau says that life expectancy in the U.S. will be in the mid-80s by the year 2050 (up from 77 today) and will top out eventually in the low 90s, barring major scientific advances that can change the rate of human aging itself, as opposed to merely treating the effects of aging as is done today.
We've had some good times in these 64 years. We've gone through a lot of down times as well. Wars, recessions, natural disasters, terrorism, the dark side of humanity that it seems to confront every generation.
Ironically, it has been no bed of roses for Sir Paul. The comfortable retirement with a life-time partner that he sang about eluded him. His first wife, Linda, died of breast cancer at 59, after they had been married 29 years. Last month, he announced his separation from his second wife, Heather Mills, who is 38.
Of the Beatles, only Paul and Ringo, who is 66, made it to 64. John Lennon, who would have been 64 this year, was shot and killed at age 40. George Harrison died of cancer at age 58.
For those of us still standing, look how far we've come.
"The slogan back then was never trust anyone over 30," Jeff Greenfield, a CNN commentator, who is 63, told the New York Times. "We thought people would be dead or in a home by their 60s."
And life today seems to offer a lot more than we were promised in Paul's song:
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Hog Wild
By ROBERT RECTOR
WHAT is it about motorcycles that turns their riders into blithering idiots?
I'm speaking, of course, about the recent accident involving Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who turned his face into an omelet after plowing his high-powered bike into a car and getting pitched head first into a windshield. Helmetless.
Here's a guy who is a pure gold sports hero, who led his team to a Super Bowl win, who at 24 has the world eating out his hand. And he makes two stupid mistakes: (1) He rides a motorcycle thereby jeopardizing his career, and (2) he rides without a helmet thereby jeopardizing his life.
One hopes he has learned a lesson, one that came at a steep price: Seven hours of surgery to repair multiple facial fractures. It could have been worse. Had he been on the freeway, he would probably be dead.
Of course, Roethlisberger hasn't cornered the market on motorcycle stupidity, not by a long shot.
Our very own man/child governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, came close to terminating himself in 2001 when he crashed his bike, breaking several ribs, just about the same time he was pulling in $30 million per flick.
Think that was stupid? Five years later and now governor, Arnold gets into another motorcycle accident, this time with his 12-year-old son as a passenger. They both suffer cuts and bruises.
Think that was stupid? Turns out, the governor was operating his bike illegally, having not obtained the proper endorsement on his California driver's license to operate a motorcycle.
Crazy? How about this: Ben Roethlisberger doesn't have a valid motorcycle license either, according to Pittsburgh television reports.
But Ben and Arnold were lucky. Author T.E. Lawrence, rocker Duane Allman and astronaut Pete Conrad didn't survive their last motorcycle rides.
There must be something incredibly alluring about riding a motorcycle. Frankly, I don't know what it is. It's that life-on-the-edge thing, I guess. I tried it once and didn't catch the fever.
I don't understand, given the dangerous nature of motorcycles, why there is constant agitation to repeal helmet laws. Such was the case in Pennsylvania where an existing helmet law was axed several years ago.
Roethlisberger, by all accounts an otherwise bright young man, has been outspoken in defending his freedom to ride without a helmet. Even after his coach Bill Cowher brought up the issue, Roethlisberger demurred.
"It's one of those things, where he talked about being a risk-taker and I'm not really a risk-taker, I'm pretty conservative and laid-back," Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "So the big thing is just be careful, and that's what we do. I think every person that rides is careful.
"That's the biggest thing, I'll just continue to be careful..."
Talk about whistling past the graveyard.
Yet those "feel-the-wind-in-your-hair" goofs continue to push for the right to go helmetless, claiming that better rider training is the key to safer motorcycling. Indeed, the trend over the last several years has been to repeal helmet laws, according to Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington, a leading advocate of laws requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets.
"The truth is that those who are in favor of repeal are far more organized than proponents of mandatory helmet laws," Tyson said.
But guess who pays the price in higher health costs every time one of these folks scrambles his or her brain in an accident?
A University of California study showed that this state's helmet law has been highly effective in reducing injuries and fatalities due to motorcycle crashes. In the first year of the law, the number of hospitalized brain-injured motorcyclists dropped 53 percent, from 1,258 to 588. Similarly, hospital charges for brain-injured motorcyclists paid by Medi-Cal and other taxpayer sources dropped from $17 million in 1991 to $11million in 1992 In the first two years of California's law, statewide motorcycle fatalities declined 38 percent and total medical care costs were reduced by 35 percent, or $35 million. Seventy three percent of the reduced hospitalization costs were attributable to reduced costs for patients with head injuries.
Bottom line: Ride if you must, but ride as if your life depended on it. There are no fender benders for motorcycle riders.
WHAT is it about motorcycles that turns their riders into blithering idiots?
I'm speaking, of course, about the recent accident involving Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who turned his face into an omelet after plowing his high-powered bike into a car and getting pitched head first into a windshield. Helmetless.
Here's a guy who is a pure gold sports hero, who led his team to a Super Bowl win, who at 24 has the world eating out his hand. And he makes two stupid mistakes: (1) He rides a motorcycle thereby jeopardizing his career, and (2) he rides without a helmet thereby jeopardizing his life.
One hopes he has learned a lesson, one that came at a steep price: Seven hours of surgery to repair multiple facial fractures. It could have been worse. Had he been on the freeway, he would probably be dead.
Of course, Roethlisberger hasn't cornered the market on motorcycle stupidity, not by a long shot.
Our very own man/child governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, came close to terminating himself in 2001 when he crashed his bike, breaking several ribs, just about the same time he was pulling in $30 million per flick.
Think that was stupid? Five years later and now governor, Arnold gets into another motorcycle accident, this time with his 12-year-old son as a passenger. They both suffer cuts and bruises.
Think that was stupid? Turns out, the governor was operating his bike illegally, having not obtained the proper endorsement on his California driver's license to operate a motorcycle.
Crazy? How about this: Ben Roethlisberger doesn't have a valid motorcycle license either, according to Pittsburgh television reports.
But Ben and Arnold were lucky. Author T.E. Lawrence, rocker Duane Allman and astronaut Pete Conrad didn't survive their last motorcycle rides.
There must be something incredibly alluring about riding a motorcycle. Frankly, I don't know what it is. It's that life-on-the-edge thing, I guess. I tried it once and didn't catch the fever.
I don't understand, given the dangerous nature of motorcycles, why there is constant agitation to repeal helmet laws. Such was the case in Pennsylvania where an existing helmet law was axed several years ago.
Roethlisberger, by all accounts an otherwise bright young man, has been outspoken in defending his freedom to ride without a helmet. Even after his coach Bill Cowher brought up the issue, Roethlisberger demurred.
"It's one of those things, where he talked about being a risk-taker and I'm not really a risk-taker, I'm pretty conservative and laid-back," Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "So the big thing is just be careful, and that's what we do. I think every person that rides is careful.
"That's the biggest thing, I'll just continue to be careful..."
Talk about whistling past the graveyard.
Yet those "feel-the-wind-in-your-hair" goofs continue to push for the right to go helmetless, claiming that better rider training is the key to safer motorcycling. Indeed, the trend over the last several years has been to repeal helmet laws, according to Rae Tyson, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington, a leading advocate of laws requiring all motorcyclists to wear helmets.
"The truth is that those who are in favor of repeal are far more organized than proponents of mandatory helmet laws," Tyson said.
But guess who pays the price in higher health costs every time one of these folks scrambles his or her brain in an accident?
A University of California study showed that this state's helmet law has been highly effective in reducing injuries and fatalities due to motorcycle crashes. In the first year of the law, the number of hospitalized brain-injured motorcyclists dropped 53 percent, from 1,258 to 588. Similarly, hospital charges for brain-injured motorcyclists paid by Medi-Cal and other taxpayer sources dropped from $17 million in 1991 to $11million in 1992 In the first two years of California's law, statewide motorcycle fatalities declined 38 percent and total medical care costs were reduced by 35 percent, or $35 million. Seventy three percent of the reduced hospitalization costs were attributable to reduced costs for patients with head injuries.
Bottom line: Ride if you must, but ride as if your life depended on it. There are no fender benders for motorcycle riders.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Off the Mark
By ROBERT RECTOR
It was a throw-away line, a comment to underscore a point.
Speaking of blogging in a column earlier this week, I wrote that "before the Internet, bloggers were ... the lunatics we used to see ranting on street corners. Now, they call them citizen journalists. Which is like being a citizen thoracic surgeon.
"All you need to know about bloggers is that the insufferable billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is one ..."
If you don't know Mr. Cuban, he is an entrepreneurial genius who made several billions in the technology sector while still in his 40s.
Reaching into his petty cash drawer, he bought the NBA's Dallas Mavericks for $285 million. As owner, he has distinguished himself by racking up more than $1 million in fines for offensives ranging from berating officials on his blog to running onto the court to dispute calls.
Some call his act energy. I call it ego.
Bottom line: Mark Cuban lives in a different universe than mine.
That is why I was surprised to hear from Mr. Cuban, who apparently hangs on every word I write.
"Insufferable? Big word for someone you have never met," he huffed in an e-mail.
Well, Mr. Cuban, anyone with a passing interest in news or sports has caught you and your act. You often get as much camera time as your players. I didn't have to shake your hand to decide you were "insufferable." And if that is too big a word for you, "bombastic" or "self-absorbed" would fit just as well.
Sure, I'd like to meet you sometime, but I bet we travel in different circles.
For example, you have your own $40 million Gulfstream V jet. I fly coach and hope to accumulate enough bonus miles someday for a free trip to San Jose.
You own an NBA team and hang with the assorted billionaires who make up your exclusive fraternity. I coached AYSO soccer and helped out in a couple of fundraising bake sales.
You own a high-definition television channel. I own a digital camera.
You live in a 24,000-square-foot mansion. My house clocks in at about 2,300 square feet, give or take a porch or two.
I'm an ink-stained wretch, and you're a billionaire, yet we can have this dialogue. Is this a great country or what?
Alas, our paths will probably never cross again. But as a parting gift, you directed me to your blog titled, "Why Journalism Matters."
In it you wrote: "Want to get younger viewers? Go out and hire the very best recent college journalism graduates you can find. Give them a camera, a computer and an area of specialty; Business, local politics, national politics, whatever. Better yet, ask them what they think matters ... Tell them their only requirement is that they are equal parts journalist and adrenalin junkies. Focused on fearlessly finding the truth behind stories that matter to them, their families and friends. Guess what, even for a 21 year old, it's not just about Paris Hilton, Bradgelina and the latest Rap feud ..."
Good idea, Mark, but of course most newspapers already hire the best and the brightest. There are some conditions attached, of course: unbiased, balanced and thorough reporting and an ability to write is a requirement.
"Fearlessly finding the truth"? It's called investigative journalism, and it takes vast amounts of time, skill and more than a little bit of luck. I knew two reporters at the Los Angeles Times who spent five years on one investigative story.
In the meantime, readers want the news, and they pay for it to be delivered seven days a week. Not just "stories that matter" to the reporters but stories that matter to them: what the city council or state government or school board did, the election results and, yes, who won the basketball game.
Unless you are going to feed them the unsubstantiated drivel that we call blogs.
It was a throw-away line, a comment to underscore a point.
Speaking of blogging in a column earlier this week, I wrote that "before the Internet, bloggers were ... the lunatics we used to see ranting on street corners. Now, they call them citizen journalists. Which is like being a citizen thoracic surgeon.
"All you need to know about bloggers is that the insufferable billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is one ..."
If you don't know Mr. Cuban, he is an entrepreneurial genius who made several billions in the technology sector while still in his 40s.
Reaching into his petty cash drawer, he bought the NBA's Dallas Mavericks for $285 million. As owner, he has distinguished himself by racking up more than $1 million in fines for offensives ranging from berating officials on his blog to running onto the court to dispute calls.
Some call his act energy. I call it ego.
Bottom line: Mark Cuban lives in a different universe than mine.
That is why I was surprised to hear from Mr. Cuban, who apparently hangs on every word I write.
"Insufferable? Big word for someone you have never met," he huffed in an e-mail.
Well, Mr. Cuban, anyone with a passing interest in news or sports has caught you and your act. You often get as much camera time as your players. I didn't have to shake your hand to decide you were "insufferable." And if that is too big a word for you, "bombastic" or "self-absorbed" would fit just as well.
Sure, I'd like to meet you sometime, but I bet we travel in different circles.
For example, you have your own $40 million Gulfstream V jet. I fly coach and hope to accumulate enough bonus miles someday for a free trip to San Jose.
You own an NBA team and hang with the assorted billionaires who make up your exclusive fraternity. I coached AYSO soccer and helped out in a couple of fundraising bake sales.
You own a high-definition television channel. I own a digital camera.
You live in a 24,000-square-foot mansion. My house clocks in at about 2,300 square feet, give or take a porch or two.
I'm an ink-stained wretch, and you're a billionaire, yet we can have this dialogue. Is this a great country or what?
Alas, our paths will probably never cross again. But as a parting gift, you directed me to your blog titled, "Why Journalism Matters."
In it you wrote: "Want to get younger viewers? Go out and hire the very best recent college journalism graduates you can find. Give them a camera, a computer and an area of specialty; Business, local politics, national politics, whatever. Better yet, ask them what they think matters ... Tell them their only requirement is that they are equal parts journalist and adrenalin junkies. Focused on fearlessly finding the truth behind stories that matter to them, their families and friends. Guess what, even for a 21 year old, it's not just about Paris Hilton, Bradgelina and the latest Rap feud ..."
Good idea, Mark, but of course most newspapers already hire the best and the brightest. There are some conditions attached, of course: unbiased, balanced and thorough reporting and an ability to write is a requirement.
"Fearlessly finding the truth"? It's called investigative journalism, and it takes vast amounts of time, skill and more than a little bit of luck. I knew two reporters at the Los Angeles Times who spent five years on one investigative story.
In the meantime, readers want the news, and they pay for it to be delivered seven days a week. Not just "stories that matter" to the reporters but stories that matter to them: what the city council or state government or school board did, the election results and, yes, who won the basketball game.
Unless you are going to feed them the unsubstantiated drivel that we call blogs.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Advice to Grads
By ROBERT RECTOR
IT'S fun being a journalist.
You get to chase after cops chasing robbers, expose crooked politicians, deflate bumbling city councils and school boards, ply sources with alcohol in the name of truth seeking and occasionally, but only occasionally, earn the grudging respect of your readers.
Trouble is, we journalists are becoming as rare as the Puerto Rican long-tongued bat (an actual member of the endangered species list, for which we can be thankful).
You don't need a Caltech degree to figure this one out. Just remember Rector's Imperative, calculated on a napkin at a downtown bar one night: As the number of jobs decrease, so do the number of people in them.
And those who work at journalism are getting older, according to the Poynter Institute, which is probably a good thing because our readers aren't exactly spring chickens.
All of this was summed up nicely by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten recently in a commencement speech.
"I want to congratulate you all upon your graduation from the University of Maryland College of Journalism, and wish you luck as you prepare to embark on exciting careers in telemarketing or large-appliance repair," he said.
"My point is, this is a challenging time for journalists. And because you are word people, you understand that `challenging time' is a euphemism often used to describe disasters of epic proportions. For example, Richard Pryor was facing a `challenging time' when he ran down the street half-naked and on fire."
"What are your challenges, specifically? Let us begin with, quote unquote, getting a job. Good jobs in journalism have become scarce as newspapers shrink and die, broadcast media fragment to smaller niche audiences and the public appears more and more willing to receive its `news' online from nincompoops ranting in their underpants."
Let me interrupt Weingarten for a moment to enthusiastically endorse his views on online `news.'
Before the Internet, bloggers were the people we used to see ranting on street corners. Now, they call them citizen journalists. Which is like being a citizen thoracic surgeon.
All you need to know about bloggers is that the insufferable billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is one and was recently fined during the 2006 NBA playoffs for criticizing officials.
I mean, are you really going to form your world view or decide how to vote on the recommendation of someone writing a blog under the name Dude With a 'Tude?
Meanwhile, back to Weingarten:
"The most recent job-approval rankings place journalists between `loan shark' and `ho'-bag skank.' We are not without blame for this. It seems as though every week we hear stories about some journalist somewhere who has gone bad - plagiarizing someone, making something up, extorting cash from sources, robbing a convenience store and pistol-whipping the clerk.
"As a columnist, I am particularly dismayed by the smug, self-congratulatory attitudes exhibited by some of my brethren. We columnists should know better, inasmuch as we are the only people in America intelligent and principled enough to tell people what to think and how to behave."
It goes without saying, Gene.
And finally, Weingarten leaves his graduates with these thoughts:
"Objectivity is a good thing to strive for in journalism, but not at the expense of failing to confront the obvious. My own newspaper, for example, has written extensively about Vice President Cheney without once pointing out the self-evident fact that he is - and I offer this as a trained professional observer - Satan...
"Our field is changing rapidly. Technology is overtaking us at an unheard-of pace. The journalists of tomorrow may not look anything like the journalists of today. I mean, literally. For all we know, they might have gills and three buttocks. That's how fast things are changing. But rest assured that, however dizzying the rate of change, when what's at stake is the sacred art of truth-telling, there is always one constant. One thing will always stay the same: Your editor is going to be an idiot."
Words to live by.
IT'S fun being a journalist.
You get to chase after cops chasing robbers, expose crooked politicians, deflate bumbling city councils and school boards, ply sources with alcohol in the name of truth seeking and occasionally, but only occasionally, earn the grudging respect of your readers.
Trouble is, we journalists are becoming as rare as the Puerto Rican long-tongued bat (an actual member of the endangered species list, for which we can be thankful).
You don't need a Caltech degree to figure this one out. Just remember Rector's Imperative, calculated on a napkin at a downtown bar one night: As the number of jobs decrease, so do the number of people in them.
And those who work at journalism are getting older, according to the Poynter Institute, which is probably a good thing because our readers aren't exactly spring chickens.
All of this was summed up nicely by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten recently in a commencement speech.
"I want to congratulate you all upon your graduation from the University of Maryland College of Journalism, and wish you luck as you prepare to embark on exciting careers in telemarketing or large-appliance repair," he said.
"My point is, this is a challenging time for journalists. And because you are word people, you understand that `challenging time' is a euphemism often used to describe disasters of epic proportions. For example, Richard Pryor was facing a `challenging time' when he ran down the street half-naked and on fire."
"What are your challenges, specifically? Let us begin with, quote unquote, getting a job. Good jobs in journalism have become scarce as newspapers shrink and die, broadcast media fragment to smaller niche audiences and the public appears more and more willing to receive its `news' online from nincompoops ranting in their underpants."
Let me interrupt Weingarten for a moment to enthusiastically endorse his views on online `news.'
Before the Internet, bloggers were the people we used to see ranting on street corners. Now, they call them citizen journalists. Which is like being a citizen thoracic surgeon.
All you need to know about bloggers is that the insufferable billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is one and was recently fined during the 2006 NBA playoffs for criticizing officials.
I mean, are you really going to form your world view or decide how to vote on the recommendation of someone writing a blog under the name Dude With a 'Tude?
Meanwhile, back to Weingarten:
"The most recent job-approval rankings place journalists between `loan shark' and `ho'-bag skank.' We are not without blame for this. It seems as though every week we hear stories about some journalist somewhere who has gone bad - plagiarizing someone, making something up, extorting cash from sources, robbing a convenience store and pistol-whipping the clerk.
"As a columnist, I am particularly dismayed by the smug, self-congratulatory attitudes exhibited by some of my brethren. We columnists should know better, inasmuch as we are the only people in America intelligent and principled enough to tell people what to think and how to behave."
It goes without saying, Gene.
And finally, Weingarten leaves his graduates with these thoughts:
"Objectivity is a good thing to strive for in journalism, but not at the expense of failing to confront the obvious. My own newspaper, for example, has written extensively about Vice President Cheney without once pointing out the self-evident fact that he is - and I offer this as a trained professional observer - Satan...
"Our field is changing rapidly. Technology is overtaking us at an unheard-of pace. The journalists of tomorrow may not look anything like the journalists of today. I mean, literally. For all we know, they might have gills and three buttocks. That's how fast things are changing. But rest assured that, however dizzying the rate of change, when what's at stake is the sacred art of truth-telling, there is always one constant. One thing will always stay the same: Your editor is going to be an idiot."
Words to live by.
End of an Era
By ROBERT RECTOR
THE Percy Clark era is mercifully drawing to a close.
The school board has had enough of the embattled superintendent and voted this week that he should hit the road, sooner rather than later.
And the same board that hired Clark five years ago amid great pomp and ceremony and even extended his contract is now moving "expeditiously" to find his replacement.
Clark, for his part, says he is willing to stay until the end of his contract in 2007. "I want to continue to do the very best for the children who are here," he said.
Noble words from a guy who earlier this year was quietly preparing to flee to Cleveland for a job with that city's school district.
Clark's tenure has been checkered since he was hired in 2001. He promised much, but delivered little.
He vowed to turn around a deteriorating district, bringing the middle class flocking back to the schools. He told board members he was ready to start a movement in Pasadena "like we have never seen before," likening it to the civil rights movement.
Instead, the district is a financial disaster. The school board has had to close four schools, lay off employees and disband the district police department.
Financial problems are not necessarily unique to Pasadena. Declining enrollment and budget uncertainty plague many districts.
But Clark dumped his Draconian cutback plan on an unprepared board and an unsuspecting community, providing dubious information on which to base the decisions.
How could such a thing happen? I'll bet the school board is asking the same question.
They need to look no farther than their own board room for the answers.
When Clark was hired, he came with baggage. He was superintendent of the Lawrence Township district in Indiana where he was highly regarded until suddenly resigning in 1996.
It turns out that Clark was suspended and then quit after board members discovered his extramarital relationship with an elementary school principal, according to news reports. Worse, he repeatedly denied the affair, losing his credibility in the district, a Lawrence board member said.
Days after resigning, Clark was taken to a hospital for an overdose of antidepressants, according to news reports.
The Pasadena school board took him anyway, apparently buying into Clark's tale that he was separated from his wife at the time, a classic the-dog-ate-my-homework explanation.
A board member explained that Clark was "forthright with us. And I'm sure that when you meet him, he'll look you in the eye and tell you the things he told us: `You make mistakes, you regret that you made them, and you move on."'
But part of moving on is admitting your mistakes, something Clark was reluctant or unwilling to do, exposing a potential character issue that is manifesting itself to this day.
The board had blinders on. They were so caught up in Clark's rhetoric, they didn't see his flaws.
One board member said that if it it wasn't for the affair, the district couldn't have landed someone with Clark's credentials.
So they gleefully accepted the tarnish on their trophy candidate.
The Cleveland school board gets it. When they learned of Clark's background in Indiana, they dropped him like a hot potato, saying "it's obviously something we couldn't live with."
In the meantime, we have a superintendent who admits to plagiarizing a sermon from a Unitarian minister and using it in a newspaper column under his byline.
We have a superintendent who starts a district band to march in the Rose Parade and then uses ringers to inflate its ranks.
We have superintendent who has angered and disappointed his subordinates and superiors alike.
We have superintendent who has left a legacy of unfulfilled promises.
We can only hope that, if Percy Clark didn't learn from his missteps, the school board will.
THE Percy Clark era is mercifully drawing to a close.
The school board has had enough of the embattled superintendent and voted this week that he should hit the road, sooner rather than later.
And the same board that hired Clark five years ago amid great pomp and ceremony and even extended his contract is now moving "expeditiously" to find his replacement.
Clark, for his part, says he is willing to stay until the end of his contract in 2007. "I want to continue to do the very best for the children who are here," he said.
Noble words from a guy who earlier this year was quietly preparing to flee to Cleveland for a job with that city's school district.
Clark's tenure has been checkered since he was hired in 2001. He promised much, but delivered little.
He vowed to turn around a deteriorating district, bringing the middle class flocking back to the schools. He told board members he was ready to start a movement in Pasadena "like we have never seen before," likening it to the civil rights movement.
Instead, the district is a financial disaster. The school board has had to close four schools, lay off employees and disband the district police department.
Financial problems are not necessarily unique to Pasadena. Declining enrollment and budget uncertainty plague many districts.
But Clark dumped his Draconian cutback plan on an unprepared board and an unsuspecting community, providing dubious information on which to base the decisions.
How could such a thing happen? I'll bet the school board is asking the same question.
They need to look no farther than their own board room for the answers.
When Clark was hired, he came with baggage. He was superintendent of the Lawrence Township district in Indiana where he was highly regarded until suddenly resigning in 1996.
It turns out that Clark was suspended and then quit after board members discovered his extramarital relationship with an elementary school principal, according to news reports. Worse, he repeatedly denied the affair, losing his credibility in the district, a Lawrence board member said.
Days after resigning, Clark was taken to a hospital for an overdose of antidepressants, according to news reports.
The Pasadena school board took him anyway, apparently buying into Clark's tale that he was separated from his wife at the time, a classic the-dog-ate-my-homework explanation.
A board member explained that Clark was "forthright with us. And I'm sure that when you meet him, he'll look you in the eye and tell you the things he told us: `You make mistakes, you regret that you made them, and you move on."'
But part of moving on is admitting your mistakes, something Clark was reluctant or unwilling to do, exposing a potential character issue that is manifesting itself to this day.
The board had blinders on. They were so caught up in Clark's rhetoric, they didn't see his flaws.
One board member said that if it it wasn't for the affair, the district couldn't have landed someone with Clark's credentials.
So they gleefully accepted the tarnish on their trophy candidate.
The Cleveland school board gets it. When they learned of Clark's background in Indiana, they dropped him like a hot potato, saying "it's obviously something we couldn't live with."
In the meantime, we have a superintendent who admits to plagiarizing a sermon from a Unitarian minister and using it in a newspaper column under his byline.
We have a superintendent who starts a district band to march in the Rose Parade and then uses ringers to inflate its ranks.
We have superintendent who has angered and disappointed his subordinates and superiors alike.
We have superintendent who has left a legacy of unfulfilled promises.
We can only hope that, if Percy Clark didn't learn from his missteps, the school board will.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
TV a la Carte
By ROBERT RECTOR
John McCain, war hero, maverick Republican senator from Arizona and possible, if not probable, presidential candidate, has wrapped his hands around an issue that could be as sticky as Iraq or immigration.
Our TV viewing habits.
Talk about issues that hit you where you live.
McCain is busily hawking CHOICE (or Consumers Having Options in Cable Entertainment) act, a piece of legislation that would allow cable companies to compete nationally for your business, rather than only at the local level. In exchange, the pay TV folks would agree to offer channels a la carte, either individually or bundled.
This would allow you, Mr. and Ms. Viewer, to select the channels you want to pay for and opt out of those you don't. It would also, it is claimed, let you gain control over what comes into your home. Savings are promised.
The cable and satellite industry views this proposal will all the cool detachment of a guy who just discovered his 401k money was invested in Enron.
They say it undermines the economic model of the industry and would cause subscribers to pay as much, if not more, for 10 of the most popular cable channels as they know do for 60 or 70.
I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the pay TV industry. It seems they jack up their prices every two weeks and justify it by adding channels that few if any watch.
Besides, how can you love an industry that requires you to use three different remotes to turn on the set.
To underscore McCain's positions, many industry critics cite a study that says the average subscriber watches, at most, 14 channels.
Unless you've surgically attached your remote to your arm, that number seems like an exaggeration.
I thought I'd verify my suspicions by going once around the lineup to check my own personal viewing habits.
Everyone watches the networks, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox and the like, even locals like KTLA, KCAL and KCOP (although I must confess that in 50 years of viewing, I can't ever remember watching anything on Channel 13).
The sports channels seem to get my attention a lot: ESPN, Fox Sports et al.
Then there are the cable news networks which have unleashed on an unspsecting public the ability to take a mundane subject such as Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride, and talk about it non stop for hours, days, weeks. But I do check in to update myself on the news from time to time.
There's MTV and VH-1 but I seem to be about 40 years on the far side of their demographic.
There are movie channels, comedy channels, science fiction channels, children's channels, speed channels, travel channels. I drop in but only occasionally.
There are channels for women (Lifetime, Oh! and, arguably, the shopping networks).
There are channels for men (Spike and the History channel which, while not seemingly gender specific, seems to focus a lot on war and big machinery).
There is the food channel (which I enjoy but never before dinner) and the game show network (which, if I was forced to watch, would drive me to confess to war crimes).
There are ethnic channels and public access channels of every stripe.
Few if any of them have me reaching for my Tivo. But there is something to be said for a having a diverse choice.
So is McCain on to something? Should we be ordering TV channels like we order Burger King?
McCain says yes. In Canada, he argues, subscribers can buy channels individually or enjoy significant savings on a "5 pack," "10 Pack" or "1 pack"of their own choosing.
But under the McCain plan, the big channels such as CNN, Fox and ESPN would survive and thrive. Many niche products, even something as public spirited as C-SPAN, could be wiped out. It could also hurt start-ups such as Black Entertainment Television and Nickelodian which survived and thrived.
Somewhere, there is a compromise that would not force viewers to plow through 70 channels but would allow smaller products to grow. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that the solution will end up costing as much as more as we're paying now.
But it's clear change is in the wind for television viewers.
While we're waiting, we can sing along with this Bruce Springstein song:
"Man came by to hook up my cable TV "We settled in for the night my baby and me "We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn "There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on."
John McCain, war hero, maverick Republican senator from Arizona and possible, if not probable, presidential candidate, has wrapped his hands around an issue that could be as sticky as Iraq or immigration.
Our TV viewing habits.
Talk about issues that hit you where you live.
McCain is busily hawking CHOICE (or Consumers Having Options in Cable Entertainment) act, a piece of legislation that would allow cable companies to compete nationally for your business, rather than only at the local level. In exchange, the pay TV folks would agree to offer channels a la carte, either individually or bundled.
This would allow you, Mr. and Ms. Viewer, to select the channels you want to pay for and opt out of those you don't. It would also, it is claimed, let you gain control over what comes into your home. Savings are promised.
The cable and satellite industry views this proposal will all the cool detachment of a guy who just discovered his 401k money was invested in Enron.
They say it undermines the economic model of the industry and would cause subscribers to pay as much, if not more, for 10 of the most popular cable channels as they know do for 60 or 70.
I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the pay TV industry. It seems they jack up their prices every two weeks and justify it by adding channels that few if any watch.
Besides, how can you love an industry that requires you to use three different remotes to turn on the set.
To underscore McCain's positions, many industry critics cite a study that says the average subscriber watches, at most, 14 channels.
Unless you've surgically attached your remote to your arm, that number seems like an exaggeration.
I thought I'd verify my suspicions by going once around the lineup to check my own personal viewing habits.
Everyone watches the networks, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, Fox and the like, even locals like KTLA, KCAL and KCOP (although I must confess that in 50 years of viewing, I can't ever remember watching anything on Channel 13).
The sports channels seem to get my attention a lot: ESPN, Fox Sports et al.
Then there are the cable news networks which have unleashed on an unspsecting public the ability to take a mundane subject such as Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride, and talk about it non stop for hours, days, weeks. But I do check in to update myself on the news from time to time.
There's MTV and VH-1 but I seem to be about 40 years on the far side of their demographic.
There are movie channels, comedy channels, science fiction channels, children's channels, speed channels, travel channels. I drop in but only occasionally.
There are channels for women (Lifetime, Oh! and, arguably, the shopping networks).
There are channels for men (Spike and the History channel which, while not seemingly gender specific, seems to focus a lot on war and big machinery).
There is the food channel (which I enjoy but never before dinner) and the game show network (which, if I was forced to watch, would drive me to confess to war crimes).
There are ethnic channels and public access channels of every stripe.
Few if any of them have me reaching for my Tivo. But there is something to be said for a having a diverse choice.
So is McCain on to something? Should we be ordering TV channels like we order Burger King?
McCain says yes. In Canada, he argues, subscribers can buy channels individually or enjoy significant savings on a "5 pack," "10 Pack" or "1 pack"of their own choosing.
But under the McCain plan, the big channels such as CNN, Fox and ESPN would survive and thrive. Many niche products, even something as public spirited as C-SPAN, could be wiped out. It could also hurt start-ups such as Black Entertainment Television and Nickelodian which survived and thrived.
Somewhere, there is a compromise that would not force viewers to plow through 70 channels but would allow smaller products to grow. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that the solution will end up costing as much as more as we're paying now.
But it's clear change is in the wind for television viewers.
While we're waiting, we can sing along with this Bruce Springstein song:
"Man came by to hook up my cable TV "We settled in for the night my baby and me "We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn "There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on."
Friday, May 26, 2006
The Summer of Our Discontent
By ROBERT RECTOR
It's summer.
We know this because Memorial Day weekend traditionally kicks off the summer season in this country, even if your Christmas decocations are still up.
We know this because this weekend is the Indy 500, a blend of our love of fast cars with the prospects for death and destruction that attracts hundreds of thousands of people each year to Indiannapolis, a place they would otherwise never visit.
Vegetables are vegatating, graduates are graduating. Or, as an old blues song once observed: "The neighbors are fightin', the mosquitos or bitin'...it's hot."
So what are your plans for the summer?
On the travel front, about 200,000 more bodies are expected to pack LAX this year compared to last summer, according to published reports. At the same time, the number of seats available for U.S. destinations remain flat.
You don't need to be a genius to see that air travel this summer will amount to squeezing toothpaste into the tube.
"As load factors have crept up, we have been seeing involuntary denied boardings go up proportionately, and we'll see them go up even more so this summer," one airline official blithly told the Los Angeles Times.
In other words, it also means the chances of you getting bumped, or "involuntarily denied boarding," will rise in direct proportion to your blood pressure.
And stick this in your carry-on: The increase in traffic will mean longer lines at ticket counters and security checkpoints where LAX is already down 150 screeners.
Heard of Road Rage? Airport Angst is here.
So maybe a driving vacation is the ticket this summer.
Only if you refinance the house first.
The Energy Department announced earlier this month that drivers will pay more at the pump this summer than "previously thought."
"Previously thought"? We previously thought gas was going to cost us an arm and a leg. Now what?
Well, nationwide, retail gas prices will average 34 cents more than a year ago and 9 cents a gallon more than predicted a month ago, according to the energy folks in Washington. Stay tuned.
And if there's a hurricane in the Gulf? "Signaficant supply uncertainties remain," the Energy Department said.
Well, you can always stay home and fire up the grill.
Except that a recent study stated that while consumers perceive gas as a product that empties out their wallets, in reality, they pay much more for groceries. According the Consumer Price Index, long-term grocery inflation has exceeded gas inflation (89.4 percent versus 84.6 percent) over the past two decades.
Maybe we could try organ meat. If you put enough barbecue sauce on it, who knows the difference?
But there is a ray of light in this gloom.
If you have to spend a summer of discontent somewhere, I can't think of a better place than Los Angeles.
That's why I plan to spend part of my summer reexploring my own hometown. And by hometown, I mean the greater Los Angeles area.
I haven't been to the zoo in years. Or Grauman's Chinese. Or Farmer's Market. Or the Santa Monica pier. Or Olvera Street. I plan to go.
I'm planning on a visit to the Hollywood Bowl. And the Greek Theater. And the Getty.
There's a day trip to Santa Barbara by train in the works. A couple of visits to Dodger stadium.
Adventerous? Exotic? No. But in an era of limits, try exploring your own backyard.
If Heull Howser can do it, so can I.
It's summer.
We know this because Memorial Day weekend traditionally kicks off the summer season in this country, even if your Christmas decocations are still up.
We know this because this weekend is the Indy 500, a blend of our love of fast cars with the prospects for death and destruction that attracts hundreds of thousands of people each year to Indiannapolis, a place they would otherwise never visit.
Vegetables are vegatating, graduates are graduating. Or, as an old blues song once observed: "The neighbors are fightin', the mosquitos or bitin'...it's hot."
So what are your plans for the summer?
On the travel front, about 200,000 more bodies are expected to pack LAX this year compared to last summer, according to published reports. At the same time, the number of seats available for U.S. destinations remain flat.
You don't need to be a genius to see that air travel this summer will amount to squeezing toothpaste into the tube.
"As load factors have crept up, we have been seeing involuntary denied boardings go up proportionately, and we'll see them go up even more so this summer," one airline official blithly told the Los Angeles Times.
In other words, it also means the chances of you getting bumped, or "involuntarily denied boarding," will rise in direct proportion to your blood pressure.
And stick this in your carry-on: The increase in traffic will mean longer lines at ticket counters and security checkpoints where LAX is already down 150 screeners.
Heard of Road Rage? Airport Angst is here.
So maybe a driving vacation is the ticket this summer.
Only if you refinance the house first.
The Energy Department announced earlier this month that drivers will pay more at the pump this summer than "previously thought."
"Previously thought"? We previously thought gas was going to cost us an arm and a leg. Now what?
Well, nationwide, retail gas prices will average 34 cents more than a year ago and 9 cents a gallon more than predicted a month ago, according to the energy folks in Washington. Stay tuned.
And if there's a hurricane in the Gulf? "Signaficant supply uncertainties remain," the Energy Department said.
Well, you can always stay home and fire up the grill.
Except that a recent study stated that while consumers perceive gas as a product that empties out their wallets, in reality, they pay much more for groceries. According the Consumer Price Index, long-term grocery inflation has exceeded gas inflation (89.4 percent versus 84.6 percent) over the past two decades.
Maybe we could try organ meat. If you put enough barbecue sauce on it, who knows the difference?
But there is a ray of light in this gloom.
If you have to spend a summer of discontent somewhere, I can't think of a better place than Los Angeles.
That's why I plan to spend part of my summer reexploring my own hometown. And by hometown, I mean the greater Los Angeles area.
I haven't been to the zoo in years. Or Grauman's Chinese. Or Farmer's Market. Or the Santa Monica pier. Or Olvera Street. I plan to go.
I'm planning on a visit to the Hollywood Bowl. And the Greek Theater. And the Getty.
There's a day trip to Santa Barbara by train in the works. A couple of visits to Dodger stadium.
Adventerous? Exotic? No. But in an era of limits, try exploring your own backyard.
If Heull Howser can do it, so can I.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
A Matter of Faith
By ROBERT RECTOR
Several months ago, I summoned up all my psychic powers and predictred that at this point in time, America would be under seige.
The threat was not from crazed terrorists, soaring gas prices or waves of illegal immigration but something almost as insideous: the Hollywood publicity mill.
And right on schedule, the promotional orgy surrounding "The Da Vinci Code" is in full swing.
As predictions go, this hardly ranks with Nostrodamus or Karnak the Great. The release of the movie based on Dan Brown's book, a mix of skewed catholic theology, crime thriller and conspiracy theory, was sure to generate the kind of hype for which Movie Town, U.S.A. is deservedly infamous.
What I didn't predict was the level of pouting by the religous community whose members appear to be the only people taking "The Da Vinci Code" very seriously.
If you are on of the two of three people in the country unfamiliar with "The Da Vinci Code," its central theme is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that she bore him a child, and that the Catholic Church has spent two thousand years covering it up while engaging in a distaste for all things feminine.
This conspiracy is wrapped inside a murder mystery wrapped inside a quest for the Holy Grail. A theological treasure hunt, if you will.
It is, as they say in the business, a page turner. And more than 43 million readers turned those pages since the book was published.
But several things the book is not:
It is not great literature. Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, said: "if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o'clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03..."
Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie called it "a book so bad it makes bad books look good."
It is not true: Despite Brown's attempt to add a veneer of truth to his book by identifying actual institutions and locales, few bought into it. According to one study, only five percent of the people who read the book said they changed any of their religious beliefs because of it's content. Indeed, one could safely assume that people who believed "The Da Vinci Code" also believed "Star Wars" and the "Dukes of Hazzard."
So why all this hand wringing?
"The Da Vinci Code' gratuitously insults Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church," said Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Birmingham, England. "It deliberately presents fiction as fact." In the Philippines, which has Asia's largest Christian population, the city council of Manila, the capital, passed a resolution banning the film in local theaters.
Greek authorities banned the film for viewers under 17, saying it touched on "religious and historical questions of major importance that a minor is not able to evaluate." Monsignor Angelo Amato, the second in command in the Vatican's influential doctrinal department, said the fictional work contains slander, offenses and errors, and if "they were directed toward the Koran or the Holocaust [they] would have justifiably provoked a worldwide revolt. Yet because they were directed toward the Catholic Church, they remain unpunished."
Does he want a revolt? If so, he shows a level of intolerence unseen since Muslim clerics whipped their followers into a deadly frenzy over the publication of cartoons portraying the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspapers last year.
The fact is this movie is entertainment, not theology. It is no more a threat to anyone's faith than Indiana Jones or almost anything Oliver Stone has produced. The Catholic church has withstood hits from Martin Luther to Henry VIII. I think they can keep director Ron Howard at arm's length.
Is it controversial? Certainly, but so was "The Passion of the Christ" which was largel considered anti-Semitic by many and condemned by some prostetants for departing from New Testament story lines.
In the meantime, despite negative reviews, people are flocking to "Da Vinci." The church's posturing has probably helped boost ticket sales.
Does the Vatican truly believe that a Tom Hanks flick will be the undoing of their religion? If so, their beliefs rest on frail foundations.
Several months ago, I summoned up all my psychic powers and predictred that at this point in time, America would be under seige.
The threat was not from crazed terrorists, soaring gas prices or waves of illegal immigration but something almost as insideous: the Hollywood publicity mill.
And right on schedule, the promotional orgy surrounding "The Da Vinci Code" is in full swing.
As predictions go, this hardly ranks with Nostrodamus or Karnak the Great. The release of the movie based on Dan Brown's book, a mix of skewed catholic theology, crime thriller and conspiracy theory, was sure to generate the kind of hype for which Movie Town, U.S.A. is deservedly infamous.
What I didn't predict was the level of pouting by the religous community whose members appear to be the only people taking "The Da Vinci Code" very seriously.
If you are on of the two of three people in the country unfamiliar with "The Da Vinci Code," its central theme is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that she bore him a child, and that the Catholic Church has spent two thousand years covering it up while engaging in a distaste for all things feminine.
This conspiracy is wrapped inside a murder mystery wrapped inside a quest for the Holy Grail. A theological treasure hunt, if you will.
It is, as they say in the business, a page turner. And more than 43 million readers turned those pages since the book was published.
But several things the book is not:
It is not great literature. Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, said: "if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o'clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03..."
Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie called it "a book so bad it makes bad books look good."
It is not true: Despite Brown's attempt to add a veneer of truth to his book by identifying actual institutions and locales, few bought into it. According to one study, only five percent of the people who read the book said they changed any of their religious beliefs because of it's content. Indeed, one could safely assume that people who believed "The Da Vinci Code" also believed "Star Wars" and the "Dukes of Hazzard."
So why all this hand wringing?
"The Da Vinci Code' gratuitously insults Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church," said Vincent Nichols, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Birmingham, England. "It deliberately presents fiction as fact." In the Philippines, which has Asia's largest Christian population, the city council of Manila, the capital, passed a resolution banning the film in local theaters.
Greek authorities banned the film for viewers under 17, saying it touched on "religious and historical questions of major importance that a minor is not able to evaluate." Monsignor Angelo Amato, the second in command in the Vatican's influential doctrinal department, said the fictional work contains slander, offenses and errors, and if "they were directed toward the Koran or the Holocaust [they] would have justifiably provoked a worldwide revolt. Yet because they were directed toward the Catholic Church, they remain unpunished."
Does he want a revolt? If so, he shows a level of intolerence unseen since Muslim clerics whipped their followers into a deadly frenzy over the publication of cartoons portraying the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspapers last year.
The fact is this movie is entertainment, not theology. It is no more a threat to anyone's faith than Indiana Jones or almost anything Oliver Stone has produced. The Catholic church has withstood hits from Martin Luther to Henry VIII. I think they can keep director Ron Howard at arm's length.
Is it controversial? Certainly, but so was "The Passion of the Christ" which was largel considered anti-Semitic by many and condemned by some prostetants for departing from New Testament story lines.
In the meantime, despite negative reviews, people are flocking to "Da Vinci." The church's posturing has probably helped boost ticket sales.
Does the Vatican truly believe that a Tom Hanks flick will be the undoing of their religion? If so, their beliefs rest on frail foundations.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Bush Leagues
By ROBERT RECTOR
KABC Talk radio host Doug McIntyre recently wrote that "most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President's place in history.
"So maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius..."
But "after five years of carefully watching George W. Bush," McIntyre writes, "I've reached the conclusion that he's either grossly incompetent or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both."
This is no small step for McIntyre, who concedes he was a Bush backer. "So I'm saying today I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush," he writes. "In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he's the worse President period."
That, of course, remains to be seen. But it got me to wondering: Who were our worst Presidents?
Any compliation must be viewed against the backdrop of our country's slash-and-burn political atmosphere, in which the person on the other side of the aisle is not just your idealogical opposite but your mortal enemy.
If you didn't vote for him, he automatically moves to the top of the list,
But, mustering all the neutrality I can, one could make a good case in my lifetime for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter to make the all-flop team.
Historians and scholars, not suprisingly, are all over the map on the issue.
George Washingon, Abraham Lincoln and Frankin Roosevelt almost always make the top of their list.
Public opinion polls give high marks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Many historians do not.
Ranking at the bottom by most are Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Warren G. Harding.
Why? A bit of research into scholarly articles and encyclopedia entries explains it all.
Pierce makes the list because of his failure to take the steps necessary to head off the impending Civil War. A northerner with southern sympathies, he was ultimatley abandoned by his own Democratic party and not renominated for a second term when his popularity in the north declined.
Philip B. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt wrote in "The American President" that Pierce was "a good man who didn't understand his own shortcomings."
He is the great-great granduncle of current U.S. President George W. Bush.
Buchanan was also skewed for failing to prevent the country from sliding into the Civil War. On Buchanan's final day as president, he remarked to the incoming Abraham Lincoln, "If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am in leaving it, then you are truly a happy man."
Before Buchanan left office, seven slave states seceded and the Confederacy was formed.
Historians in 2006 voted his failure to deal with secession the No. 1 presidential mistake ever made.
Andrew Johnson, vice president under Lincoln, ascended to presidency after Lincoln's assassination. Johnson was president during part of the Reconstruction following the Civil War. His conciliatory policies towards the defeated rebels and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Congressional Republicans, leading the House of Representatives to impeach him in 1868; he was the first President to be impeached. He was subsequently acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.
Oddly enough, Johnson was elected as a Democrat to the Senate and served from March 4, 1875, until his death on July 31, 1875.
Harding presided over a number of scandals involving others in his administration and, after his death, gained a reputation as being one of America's least successful presidents. In numerous polls of historians, Harding is ranked as one of the worst.
The most infamous scandal of the time was the Teapot Dome affair, which centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who was eventually convicted of leasing public oil fields to business associates in exchange for personal loans. In 1931, Fall became the first member of a presidential Cabinet to be sent to prison.
Thomas Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, was convicted of accepting bribes. Jess Smith, personal aide to the Attorney General, destroyed papers and then committed suicide. Charles Forbes, director of the Veterans Bureau, skimmed profits, earned fat kickbacks, and ran alcohol and drugs. He was convicted of fraud and bribery and drew a two-year sentence. Charles Cramer, an aide to Charles Forbes, also committed suicide.
Harding didn't personally profited from these crimes, but he was apparently unable to stop them. "My God, this is a hell of a job," Harding said. "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends. . . they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
In the meantime, Grant, cited by McIntyre, is my most measures a bottom feeder. He is usually described as a brilliant militray strategist but a poor president, another vicitim of scandal plagued administrations but whose personal integrity was never questioned.
Does George Bush belong in this rogue's gallery?
He's clearly no Washington. But is he a Buchanan? Only time will tell.
KABC Talk radio host Doug McIntyre recently wrote that "most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President's place in history.
"So maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius..."
But "after five years of carefully watching George W. Bush," McIntyre writes, "I've reached the conclusion that he's either grossly incompetent or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both."
This is no small step for McIntyre, who concedes he was a Bush backer. "So I'm saying today I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush," he writes. "In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he's the worse President period."
That, of course, remains to be seen. But it got me to wondering: Who were our worst Presidents?
Any compliation must be viewed against the backdrop of our country's slash-and-burn political atmosphere, in which the person on the other side of the aisle is not just your idealogical opposite but your mortal enemy.
If you didn't vote for him, he automatically moves to the top of the list,
But, mustering all the neutrality I can, one could make a good case in my lifetime for Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter to make the all-flop team.
Historians and scholars, not suprisingly, are all over the map on the issue.
George Washingon, Abraham Lincoln and Frankin Roosevelt almost always make the top of their list.
Public opinion polls give high marks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Many historians do not.
Ranking at the bottom by most are Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Warren G. Harding.
Why? A bit of research into scholarly articles and encyclopedia entries explains it all.
Pierce makes the list because of his failure to take the steps necessary to head off the impending Civil War. A northerner with southern sympathies, he was ultimatley abandoned by his own Democratic party and not renominated for a second term when his popularity in the north declined.
Philip B. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt wrote in "The American President" that Pierce was "a good man who didn't understand his own shortcomings."
He is the great-great granduncle of current U.S. President George W. Bush.
Buchanan was also skewed for failing to prevent the country from sliding into the Civil War. On Buchanan's final day as president, he remarked to the incoming Abraham Lincoln, "If you are as happy entering the presidency as I am in leaving it, then you are truly a happy man."
Before Buchanan left office, seven slave states seceded and the Confederacy was formed.
Historians in 2006 voted his failure to deal with secession the No. 1 presidential mistake ever made.
Andrew Johnson, vice president under Lincoln, ascended to presidency after Lincoln's assassination. Johnson was president during part of the Reconstruction following the Civil War. His conciliatory policies towards the defeated rebels and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Congressional Republicans, leading the House of Representatives to impeach him in 1868; he was the first President to be impeached. He was subsequently acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.
Oddly enough, Johnson was elected as a Democrat to the Senate and served from March 4, 1875, until his death on July 31, 1875.
Harding presided over a number of scandals involving others in his administration and, after his death, gained a reputation as being one of America's least successful presidents. In numerous polls of historians, Harding is ranked as one of the worst.
The most infamous scandal of the time was the Teapot Dome affair, which centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who was eventually convicted of leasing public oil fields to business associates in exchange for personal loans. In 1931, Fall became the first member of a presidential Cabinet to be sent to prison.
Thomas Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, was convicted of accepting bribes. Jess Smith, personal aide to the Attorney General, destroyed papers and then committed suicide. Charles Forbes, director of the Veterans Bureau, skimmed profits, earned fat kickbacks, and ran alcohol and drugs. He was convicted of fraud and bribery and drew a two-year sentence. Charles Cramer, an aide to Charles Forbes, also committed suicide.
Harding didn't personally profited from these crimes, but he was apparently unable to stop them. "My God, this is a hell of a job," Harding said. "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends. . . they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!"
In the meantime, Grant, cited by McIntyre, is my most measures a bottom feeder. He is usually described as a brilliant militray strategist but a poor president, another vicitim of scandal plagued administrations but whose personal integrity was never questioned.
Does George Bush belong in this rogue's gallery?
He's clearly no Washington. But is he a Buchanan? Only time will tell.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Sorry Excuses
By ROBERT RECTOR
First off, let me say I'm sorry if you have been insulted or angered by anything I have written.
If I offended anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, school afflilation, shirt color, hat size, lipstick shade or soft drink preference, I'm truly sorry.
But at least I didn't end up in a new book called "My Bad: 25 Years of Public Apologies and the Appalling Behavior That Inspired Them" by Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin.
The authors say one of the reasons American culture is in decline is that "any misdeed, no matter how egregious, can now be immediately negated by a bleat of casual contrition."
Not surprisingly, politicians or those making pronouncements about politics make up a great deal of this book. You can't beat our elected representatives when it comes to foot-in-mouth disease (See Bill Clinton).
But running a close second are sports figures and show business types. most of whom have never understood that having a pretty face or turning a double play doesn't provide you with unique insights into the human condition. (See Tom Cruise).
Apologies shared by the authors include this all-encompassing classic from Ted Turner: "I really, from the very bottom of my heart, want to apologize. At one time or another, I've offended almost every group. I'm sure I'll be apologizing again."
Or, "If I did the things that they say I did, am I sorry, do I apologize? Yes." That beauty was from Bob Packwood, after announcing his resignation from the Senate following years of apologizing for decades of unwanted sexual advances toward various women, or as he once put it, "for the conduct that it was alleged I did." You can also mull over these mea culpas:
"Well, my analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. What do you want me to do? Go over and kiss the camera? What do you want me to do?" -Bill O'Reilly, after being confronted on "Good Morning America" with videotape of him saying that if no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, "I will apologize to the nation and I will not trust the Bush administration again."
"I'm sorry if she felt she was harmed." -Sportscaster Marv Albert, in court on sexual assault charges for biting a woman on the back more than a dozen times.
"The comment was not meant to be a regional slur. To the extent that it was misinterpreted to be one, I apologize." -Lawyer Kenneth Taylor, after referring to people living in the mountains of Kentucky as "illiterate cave dwellers."
"If my comments brought pain to anyone, I certainly did not intend for this to happen and apologize for any such reaction." -MSNBC talk show host Michael Savage, after telling a caller, "Oh, you're one of the Sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig."
And last but not least, this one cited by the authors as a classic but which was uttered too late to be included in the book:
"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week." -Texas lawyer Harry Whittington, expressing his remorse for having stuck his face in front of Dick Cheney's shotgun.
In the interest of fairness, I should point out that newspapers make mistakes and crank out corrections by the bushelbasket full every year in this country.
They run the gamut from the sublime ("It has come to the editor's attention that the paper neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission," from the Lexington Herald Leader) to the ridiculous ("Norma Adams-Wade's June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite." from the Dallas Morning News).
The Guardian once apologized, "In our...cover story about Hunter S Thompson yesterday, we mistakenly attributed to Richard Nixon the view that Thompson represented "that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character". On the contrary, it was what Thompson said of Nixon.
Even the stately New York Times once wrote: "An article in Business Day about Brendon Loy, the Notre Dame student who was one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the potential threat to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, misstated the name of Mr. Loy's dog. It is Robbie, not Becky (which is his fiance's name)."
From Us Weekly magazine, this correction is funny only if it didn't happen to you: "In our feature "Why She Left Him" ...the woman identified in the photograph as former adult film star Ginger Lynn Allen is neither Ms. Allen nor an adult film actress..."
Maybe comedian/musician Tom Lehrer was on to something when he said, "I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."
Robert Rector, a former editor with the Pasadena Star-News and Los Angeles Times, is a freelance writer.
First off, let me say I'm sorry if you have been insulted or angered by anything I have written.
If I offended anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, school afflilation, shirt color, hat size, lipstick shade or soft drink preference, I'm truly sorry.
But at least I didn't end up in a new book called "My Bad: 25 Years of Public Apologies and the Appalling Behavior That Inspired Them" by Paul Slansky and Arleen Sorkin.
The authors say one of the reasons American culture is in decline is that "any misdeed, no matter how egregious, can now be immediately negated by a bleat of casual contrition."
Not surprisingly, politicians or those making pronouncements about politics make up a great deal of this book. You can't beat our elected representatives when it comes to foot-in-mouth disease (See Bill Clinton).
But running a close second are sports figures and show business types. most of whom have never understood that having a pretty face or turning a double play doesn't provide you with unique insights into the human condition. (See Tom Cruise).
Apologies shared by the authors include this all-encompassing classic from Ted Turner: "I really, from the very bottom of my heart, want to apologize. At one time or another, I've offended almost every group. I'm sure I'll be apologizing again."
Or, "If I did the things that they say I did, am I sorry, do I apologize? Yes." That beauty was from Bob Packwood, after announcing his resignation from the Senate following years of apologizing for decades of unwanted sexual advances toward various women, or as he once put it, "for the conduct that it was alleged I did." You can also mull over these mea culpas:
"Well, my analysis was wrong and I'm sorry. What do you want me to do? Go over and kiss the camera? What do you want me to do?" -Bill O'Reilly, after being confronted on "Good Morning America" with videotape of him saying that if no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, "I will apologize to the nation and I will not trust the Bush administration again."
"I'm sorry if she felt she was harmed." -Sportscaster Marv Albert, in court on sexual assault charges for biting a woman on the back more than a dozen times.
"The comment was not meant to be a regional slur. To the extent that it was misinterpreted to be one, I apologize." -Lawyer Kenneth Taylor, after referring to people living in the mountains of Kentucky as "illiterate cave dwellers."
"If my comments brought pain to anyone, I certainly did not intend for this to happen and apologize for any such reaction." -MSNBC talk show host Michael Savage, after telling a caller, "Oh, you're one of the Sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig."
And last but not least, this one cited by the authors as a classic but which was uttered too late to be included in the book:
"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week." -Texas lawyer Harry Whittington, expressing his remorse for having stuck his face in front of Dick Cheney's shotgun.
In the interest of fairness, I should point out that newspapers make mistakes and crank out corrections by the bushelbasket full every year in this country.
They run the gamut from the sublime ("It has come to the editor's attention that the paper neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission," from the Lexington Herald Leader) to the ridiculous ("Norma Adams-Wade's June 15 column incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite." from the Dallas Morning News).
The Guardian once apologized, "In our...cover story about Hunter S Thompson yesterday, we mistakenly attributed to Richard Nixon the view that Thompson represented "that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character". On the contrary, it was what Thompson said of Nixon.
Even the stately New York Times once wrote: "An article in Business Day about Brendon Loy, the Notre Dame student who was one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the potential threat to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, misstated the name of Mr. Loy's dog. It is Robbie, not Becky (which is his fiance's name)."
From Us Weekly magazine, this correction is funny only if it didn't happen to you: "In our feature "Why She Left Him" ...the woman identified in the photograph as former adult film star Ginger Lynn Allen is neither Ms. Allen nor an adult film actress..."
Maybe comedian/musician Tom Lehrer was on to something when he said, "I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."
Robert Rector, a former editor with the Pasadena Star-News and Los Angeles Times, is a freelance writer.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Cell Mates
By ROBERT RECTOR Like many other of my fellow Americans, I share a love/hate relationship with my cell phone. It can be the very model of convenience, allowing me easy and instant contact with business associates, friends and family, anytime, anywhere.
It can also be intrusive, rude, annoying and maddening. Like a lottery ticket, it promises a lot more than it delivers. I was reminded of this recently on a trip to Hawaii. While soaking up the sun along with a few mai tais, a friend called me from Los Angeles on my cell phone. We chated easily, a clear and static-free conversation that sounded like he was in the next room.
Trouble is, if he had called me at my home on the mainland, I would have never received it.
That's because the cell that works in the middle of the Pacific doesn't work at my home in Glendale or anywhere within a mile radius of it.
Which means I own an instrument that sends and receives calls and text, takes pictures, downloads television shows, plays the entire score of Swan Lake, rings to the sounds of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" but blinks "no signal" when I walk in my front door.
Sure, there are a few hills around by why is it a signal that can be heard in Maui can't make it past Montrose? Well, technological schizophrenia, for one thing. Most major cell phone companies in the United States use different operating systems which means one carrier might work where another won't.
The Europeans are smarter than us. They have one universal system for most of the continent which means you get reception from the bottom of the Paris Metro to the top of the Swiss Alps.
In the meantime, we Americans all suffer together. According to a Consumer Reports survey, 80% of U.S. cell phone users have experienced service problems.
The report said overall satisfaction with cell phone service is generally below average compared with other services rated by the magazine. We can presume that means they rank behind bank tellers and telemarketers in the minds of the public. This probably doesn't bother the Cell Phone Boys, who have managed to get us addicted to a device that is so ingrained in our culture you feel naked if you leave home without one.
Sure, there are some pesky problems: they may cause brain cancer, they do cause auto accidents, they can be used by terrorists to trigger bombs.
But you can bet your sweet Samsung that most families own more than one.
That explains why an authority like the CIA World Factbook tells us there are more cell phones in the United Kingdom than people. Then again, the CIA's batting average on fact finding hasn't been so hot lately.
There are some among us, however, who consider the cell phone to be the most reprehensible invention since the car alarm. Or rap music.
That's because, thanks to the cell phone, you are now a participant in, or a prisoner of, the intimate conversations of any stranger who stands within 20 feet of you.
We've all been there.
At a restaurant recently, a woman in the booth next to me loudly disparaged someone in such emotional terms she sounded like a prosecutor in the throes of closing arguements at a murder trial.
My daughter once was trapped in a jury assembly room one time with a guy who discussed his eye surgery for nearly an hour. She could recite the procedure in minute clinical detail when she got home that evening.
A college librarian wrote on the Internet that "I don't know how the students manage to study when they are on their phones every two seconds having pointless conversations that distract everyone else. One night I was forced to listen to one patron talk to her friend about how she tans her butt crack for 2 hours!! "
If the loud conversations aren't enough, I recently sat in an office when three unattended cell phones rang at the same time, each one playing a different 16 bars of music. It was rock 'n' roll hell.
I heard one go off in the middle of a funeral once, and more times than I care to count at plays, movies, restaurants, even rest room stalls.
It seems our world is being divided into two camps: the quiet and courteous and the loud and boorish.
But maybe technology is on the verge of rescuing us. There is such a thing as a cell phone jammer.
Simply put, a cell phone jammer is a device that emits signals in the same frequency range that cell phones use, effectively blocking their transmissions by creating strong interference. Someone using a cell phone within the range of a jammer will lose signal, but have no way of knowing a jammer was the reason. The phone will simply indicate poor reception strength.
The trouble is, they're illegal.
But it just might be worth 30 days in jail for the satisfaction it would bring.
It can also be intrusive, rude, annoying and maddening. Like a lottery ticket, it promises a lot more than it delivers. I was reminded of this recently on a trip to Hawaii. While soaking up the sun along with a few mai tais, a friend called me from Los Angeles on my cell phone. We chated easily, a clear and static-free conversation that sounded like he was in the next room.
Trouble is, if he had called me at my home on the mainland, I would have never received it.
That's because the cell that works in the middle of the Pacific doesn't work at my home in Glendale or anywhere within a mile radius of it.
Which means I own an instrument that sends and receives calls and text, takes pictures, downloads television shows, plays the entire score of Swan Lake, rings to the sounds of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" but blinks "no signal" when I walk in my front door.
Sure, there are a few hills around by why is it a signal that can be heard in Maui can't make it past Montrose? Well, technological schizophrenia, for one thing. Most major cell phone companies in the United States use different operating systems which means one carrier might work where another won't.
The Europeans are smarter than us. They have one universal system for most of the continent which means you get reception from the bottom of the Paris Metro to the top of the Swiss Alps.
In the meantime, we Americans all suffer together. According to a Consumer Reports survey, 80% of U.S. cell phone users have experienced service problems.
The report said overall satisfaction with cell phone service is generally below average compared with other services rated by the magazine. We can presume that means they rank behind bank tellers and telemarketers in the minds of the public. This probably doesn't bother the Cell Phone Boys, who have managed to get us addicted to a device that is so ingrained in our culture you feel naked if you leave home without one.
Sure, there are some pesky problems: they may cause brain cancer, they do cause auto accidents, they can be used by terrorists to trigger bombs.
But you can bet your sweet Samsung that most families own more than one.
That explains why an authority like the CIA World Factbook tells us there are more cell phones in the United Kingdom than people. Then again, the CIA's batting average on fact finding hasn't been so hot lately.
There are some among us, however, who consider the cell phone to be the most reprehensible invention since the car alarm. Or rap music.
That's because, thanks to the cell phone, you are now a participant in, or a prisoner of, the intimate conversations of any stranger who stands within 20 feet of you.
We've all been there.
At a restaurant recently, a woman in the booth next to me loudly disparaged someone in such emotional terms she sounded like a prosecutor in the throes of closing arguements at a murder trial.
My daughter once was trapped in a jury assembly room one time with a guy who discussed his eye surgery for nearly an hour. She could recite the procedure in minute clinical detail when she got home that evening.
A college librarian wrote on the Internet that "I don't know how the students manage to study when they are on their phones every two seconds having pointless conversations that distract everyone else. One night I was forced to listen to one patron talk to her friend about how she tans her butt crack for 2 hours!! "
If the loud conversations aren't enough, I recently sat in an office when three unattended cell phones rang at the same time, each one playing a different 16 bars of music. It was rock 'n' roll hell.
I heard one go off in the middle of a funeral once, and more times than I care to count at plays, movies, restaurants, even rest room stalls.
It seems our world is being divided into two camps: the quiet and courteous and the loud and boorish.
But maybe technology is on the verge of rescuing us. There is such a thing as a cell phone jammer.
Simply put, a cell phone jammer is a device that emits signals in the same frequency range that cell phones use, effectively blocking their transmissions by creating strong interference. Someone using a cell phone within the range of a jammer will lose signal, but have no way of knowing a jammer was the reason. The phone will simply indicate poor reception strength.
The trouble is, they're illegal.
But it just might be worth 30 days in jail for the satisfaction it would bring.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Gas Pains
By ROBERT RECTOR
Next time you're stading there with a gas pump in your hand, watching the meter rack up a price that resembles your zip code, chew on these words:
"Of course [the world price of oil] is going to rise. "Certainly! And how...You [Western nations] increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and the same for sugar and cement...It's only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil..."
Those words came not from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejadnor, nor Hugo Chavez of Venezuela nor Osama bin Laden. It came from our longtime ally, the Shah of Iran, in 1973.
That's right, folks, 33 years ago.
That's how long we've been jerked around by a combination of geo-political shenanigans, price gouging and an appaling lack of political will and personal responsibility.
At first, there were the gas lines, brought about when Arab oil producing countries refused to ship to countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kipper war.
Lines streched blocks, even miles. Tempers flared, violence erupted. Drivers followed tanker trucks on their delivery routes. I knew people who would wake in the morning to find the contents of their car's gas tank siphoned away in the middle of the night.
Finally, the odd/even rule was instituted. If you had a license plate number that ended in an odd number, you bought gas only on odd-numbered days of the month, while those with even numbers bought on even-numbered days. My routine was to arise at 5:30 in the morning, take a Thermos of coffee and the morning paper and queue up with dozens of other motorists waiting for the gas station to open. If you didn't get there early, chances are the station would be dry by 9 a.m.
The national speed limit was reduced to 55 mph, year-round daylight savings time was implemented, an advertising campain told us, "Don't Be Fuelish."
It was simple but effective. We made personal sacrifices so we could collectively survive.
Considering that we are being told today that this is a supply and demand issue, should we institute those restrictions again now?
It's clear we can't turn to Washington for help.
Jimmy Carter's solution to the energy crisis was to urge citizens not to turn up their thermostats and wear sweaters. He also installed solar power panels on the roof of the White House and a wood-burning stove in the living quarters. However, his successor, Ronald Reagan, ordered the solar panels removed and the wood stove dismantled.
Reagan removed controls on oil prices, which resulted in lower prices and a glut of oil. But he did nothing to encourage conservation which haunts us to this day.
Clinton dipped into strategic reserves as a solution. Now Bush is essentially doing the same thing by halting for the summer the purchase of crude oil for the government's emergency reserves and waiving clean air rules.
Bush also has directed the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and the Energy Department to investigate whether the price of gasoline has been unfairly manipulated.
One might reasonably ask what took so long. But we can also say with some certainty that by the time such an investigation is concluded, Bush will be retired, tweaking the plans for his presidential library.
Ethanol? Hydrogen? Practically speaking, they are years away.
So why not return to the odd/even plan? Why not lower the speed limit?
Could you plan ahead for your gasoline purchaes if it saved you a buck a gallon or more?
Could you drive 10 mph slower if it put money back in your pocket?
Could you learn to restrict your driving habits if it paid dividends, not only for you but for all Americans?
Would you personally work to contribute to a Untied States that is less dependant on foreign oil?
People is this country learned to live with gasoline rationing during World War II, driving cars that were much less fuel efficient than they are now.
Why? They did it to defeat an enemy that threatened their way of life.
Do we face such an enemy now?
Think of it in these terms: If Iran succeeds in creating nuclear weapons, the American motorist would have paid part of the cost.
Next time you're stading there with a gas pump in your hand, watching the meter rack up a price that resembles your zip code, chew on these words:
"Of course [the world price of oil] is going to rise. "Certainly! And how...You [Western nations] increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and the same for sugar and cement...It's only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil..."
Those words came not from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejadnor, nor Hugo Chavez of Venezuela nor Osama bin Laden. It came from our longtime ally, the Shah of Iran, in 1973.
That's right, folks, 33 years ago.
That's how long we've been jerked around by a combination of geo-political shenanigans, price gouging and an appaling lack of political will and personal responsibility.
At first, there were the gas lines, brought about when Arab oil producing countries refused to ship to countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kipper war.
Lines streched blocks, even miles. Tempers flared, violence erupted. Drivers followed tanker trucks on their delivery routes. I knew people who would wake in the morning to find the contents of their car's gas tank siphoned away in the middle of the night.
Finally, the odd/even rule was instituted. If you had a license plate number that ended in an odd number, you bought gas only on odd-numbered days of the month, while those with even numbers bought on even-numbered days. My routine was to arise at 5:30 in the morning, take a Thermos of coffee and the morning paper and queue up with dozens of other motorists waiting for the gas station to open. If you didn't get there early, chances are the station would be dry by 9 a.m.
The national speed limit was reduced to 55 mph, year-round daylight savings time was implemented, an advertising campain told us, "Don't Be Fuelish."
It was simple but effective. We made personal sacrifices so we could collectively survive.
Considering that we are being told today that this is a supply and demand issue, should we institute those restrictions again now?
It's clear we can't turn to Washington for help.
Jimmy Carter's solution to the energy crisis was to urge citizens not to turn up their thermostats and wear sweaters. He also installed solar power panels on the roof of the White House and a wood-burning stove in the living quarters. However, his successor, Ronald Reagan, ordered the solar panels removed and the wood stove dismantled.
Reagan removed controls on oil prices, which resulted in lower prices and a glut of oil. But he did nothing to encourage conservation which haunts us to this day.
Clinton dipped into strategic reserves as a solution. Now Bush is essentially doing the same thing by halting for the summer the purchase of crude oil for the government's emergency reserves and waiving clean air rules.
Bush also has directed the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and the Energy Department to investigate whether the price of gasoline has been unfairly manipulated.
One might reasonably ask what took so long. But we can also say with some certainty that by the time such an investigation is concluded, Bush will be retired, tweaking the plans for his presidential library.
Ethanol? Hydrogen? Practically speaking, they are years away.
So why not return to the odd/even plan? Why not lower the speed limit?
Could you plan ahead for your gasoline purchaes if it saved you a buck a gallon or more?
Could you drive 10 mph slower if it put money back in your pocket?
Could you learn to restrict your driving habits if it paid dividends, not only for you but for all Americans?
Would you personally work to contribute to a Untied States that is less dependant on foreign oil?
People is this country learned to live with gasoline rationing during World War II, driving cars that were much less fuel efficient than they are now.
Why? They did it to defeat an enemy that threatened their way of life.
Do we face such an enemy now?
Think of it in these terms: If Iran succeeds in creating nuclear weapons, the American motorist would have paid part of the cost.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The Fat of the Land
By ROBERT RECTOR
Nothing hits the spot when you're hungry like a quarter-pounderwith cheese and an order of fries.
Supersize it? Hell yes.
Truth be told, however, I haven't had either one in more than a year. Why? Because I have learned a diet that includes fast food on a regular basis can give you an up close and personal relationship with obesity, hypertension and diabetes. Hold the heart attack, please.
I mention this because a recent Associated Press story said that McDonald's Corp. is once again facing an outbreak of bad publicity expected from a new book, "Chew on This," and a movie due out later this year based on "Fast Food Nation." a book critical of that industry.
The book and the movie hold fast food companies responsible for the nation's childhood obesity epidemic and criticizes them for being low-wage employees.
Nothing new here. McDonald's, an easy target for those with a beef, so to speak, against Styrofoam containers, the consumption of animals or other alleged crimes against nature, has been sued numerous times, accused of fostering obesity. Courts have dismissed most of the claims.
And McDonald's, along with others in the industry, is beginning to introduce menu items that would warm a vegetarian's heart, due mostly to changing tastes and consumer pressure.
That is not to say I'm a stauch defender of the fast food industry. For one thing, they target kids. Or as "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser says, "This is an industry that feeds and feeds off the young."
To underscore that point, consider that McDonalds is one of the biggest toy companies in the world. One out of three toys received by a child in the United States comes from a fast food restaurant. As any marketing type will tell you, building brand loyalty among the very young usually attracts the rest of the family resulting in a relationship that lasts for generations. Just ask the breakfast cereal manufacturers.
And there's no debating the reach and power of the fast food industry. Again, Schlosser writes, Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers,videos, and recorded music - combined.
Schlosser's point is that the fast food industry has used political influence to increase profits at the expense of human health and the social conditions of its workers. There is probably some truth to that. It wouldn't be the first time in this country that business has put the pursuit of profits above the public good (see the tobacco industry).
However, McDonald's thrived in large part because it was in the right place at the right time. Just about the time the chain was growing, the Americn landscape was undergoing a sea change. Women were entering the workforce in record numbers, In 1975, about one-third of American mothers with young children worked outside the home; today almost two-thirds of such mothers are employed.
Mealtime became crunch time. Fast food became a convenience that became a necessity.
Ultimately, there is something troubling about making burger joints a metaphor for all that is wrong with America. Are we all such slaves to the power of marketing that we need a lawyer or an animal rights activist or a nutritionist to protect us fromourselves?
Do we need to go to waddle off to court when our pants get too tight, looking to blame someone, anyone but the person responsible?
Are you going to tell me that you didn't know that living on burgers, pizza and burritos could be injurious to your health?
Are you going to say you were addicted to fries? That you broke out in a cold sweat if you couldn't suck up a bucket of fried chicken? That your hands trembled if a stuft crust pizza wasn't on the menu?
Are you suggesting you couldn't stop yourself from pushing fast food on your kids? That you don't read the nutrition information on the products you buy?
You want an answer to the problem of obesity in America? Look in the mirror. If you don't like what you see, stop patronizing places that make you that way.
If, instead, you decide to sue, you better hope I'm not on the jury.
Nothing hits the spot when you're hungry like a quarter-pounderwith cheese and an order of fries.
Supersize it? Hell yes.
Truth be told, however, I haven't had either one in more than a year. Why? Because I have learned a diet that includes fast food on a regular basis can give you an up close and personal relationship with obesity, hypertension and diabetes. Hold the heart attack, please.
I mention this because a recent Associated Press story said that McDonald's Corp. is once again facing an outbreak of bad publicity expected from a new book, "Chew on This," and a movie due out later this year based on "Fast Food Nation." a book critical of that industry.
The book and the movie hold fast food companies responsible for the nation's childhood obesity epidemic and criticizes them for being low-wage employees.
Nothing new here. McDonald's, an easy target for those with a beef, so to speak, against Styrofoam containers, the consumption of animals or other alleged crimes against nature, has been sued numerous times, accused of fostering obesity. Courts have dismissed most of the claims.
And McDonald's, along with others in the industry, is beginning to introduce menu items that would warm a vegetarian's heart, due mostly to changing tastes and consumer pressure.
That is not to say I'm a stauch defender of the fast food industry. For one thing, they target kids. Or as "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser says, "This is an industry that feeds and feeds off the young."
To underscore that point, consider that McDonalds is one of the biggest toy companies in the world. One out of three toys received by a child in the United States comes from a fast food restaurant. As any marketing type will tell you, building brand loyalty among the very young usually attracts the rest of the family resulting in a relationship that lasts for generations. Just ask the breakfast cereal manufacturers.
And there's no debating the reach and power of the fast food industry. Again, Schlosser writes, Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software, or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers,videos, and recorded music - combined.
Schlosser's point is that the fast food industry has used political influence to increase profits at the expense of human health and the social conditions of its workers. There is probably some truth to that. It wouldn't be the first time in this country that business has put the pursuit of profits above the public good (see the tobacco industry).
However, McDonald's thrived in large part because it was in the right place at the right time. Just about the time the chain was growing, the Americn landscape was undergoing a sea change. Women were entering the workforce in record numbers, In 1975, about one-third of American mothers with young children worked outside the home; today almost two-thirds of such mothers are employed.
Mealtime became crunch time. Fast food became a convenience that became a necessity.
Ultimately, there is something troubling about making burger joints a metaphor for all that is wrong with America. Are we all such slaves to the power of marketing that we need a lawyer or an animal rights activist or a nutritionist to protect us fromourselves?
Do we need to go to waddle off to court when our pants get too tight, looking to blame someone, anyone but the person responsible?
Are you going to tell me that you didn't know that living on burgers, pizza and burritos could be injurious to your health?
Are you going to say you were addicted to fries? That you broke out in a cold sweat if you couldn't suck up a bucket of fried chicken? That your hands trembled if a stuft crust pizza wasn't on the menu?
Are you suggesting you couldn't stop yourself from pushing fast food on your kids? That you don't read the nutrition information on the products you buy?
You want an answer to the problem of obesity in America? Look in the mirror. If you don't like what you see, stop patronizing places that make you that way.
If, instead, you decide to sue, you better hope I'm not on the jury.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Out Castes
By ROBERT RECTOR
I had a close encounter this past week with outsourcing, that peculiar phenomenon in which a call or e-mail requesting assistance is answered by someone six to eight time zones away whose English is a second or third language.
It was a simple billing question for an online company. After waiting in an electronic queue of some 60 or so souls, I received an e-mail message that said:
"I feel so lucky and honored that I have received your inquiry. I will try my hardest to sincerely provide the information you require."
That was my first clue that I was no longer in the good old US of A where the response would have been "Whazzup?" and I would have been refered to as "Dude."
All thing considered, the e-mail conversation went well, despite the fact that both of us communicated in a sort of shorthand English.
It's not my first brush with this sort of thing. Call the Los Angeles Times about a delivery problem and you'll get someone who has never been west of the Mississippi. A question about a laptop computer will send you half a world away.
There appears to be no limit to outsourcing.
For example, in Great Britain, blood and urine samples from National Health Service patients are sent to India for pathology tests to cut costs. The non-emergency requirements of pathology tests are conducted at the clinical lab setup at Mumbai, India. The 24-hour lab conducts the test and the results are uploaded into the special network linked to the NHS. The NHS hospitals in the UK get the reports in 24 hours.
Simple enough, but now there is talk of sending patients overseas for medical procedures.
On a lighter note, McDonald's is experimenting with a program that allows workers at call centers to fill orders placed by customers at drive-throughs. In a New York Times story, a young woman in Santa Maria, Calif., is seen busily filling orders from Honolulu to Gulfport, Miss. And some Carl's Jr.'s restaurants are going to try it next.
Even Reuters, the European news service, is hiring journalists in Bangalore, India, to do basic financial reporting on 3,000 small to medium-size American companies.
What's next? Prescription refills? 911 calls? Dial-a-Prayer?
All of this has set off a highly emotional debate surrounding the sending of skilled jobs overseas in the interest of saving a buck.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the volume of offshore outsourcing will increase by 30 to 40 percent a year for the next five years. Forrester Research estimates that 3.3 million white-collar jobs will move overseas by 2015. According to projections, the hardest hit sectors will be financial services and information technology.
Scary numbers to be sure but some economists argue that most jobs will remain unaffected altogether: close to 90 percent of jobs in the United States require geographic proximity. Such jobs include everything from retail and restaurants to marketing and personal care -- services that have to be produced and consumed locally, so outsourcing them overseas is not an option. Amid all this, something odd is occuring.
India, the largest recipient of outsourced jobs employing approximately 400,000 people, is facing a crisis: It is running out of skilled people to take the jobs.
The country is facing a shortfall of almost half a million workers, threatening its status as the world's "back office."
How can a country of 1.2 billion people come up short of workers? According to one report, it's quality, not quantity. Bluntly put, many of the more than 3 million college graduates churned out every year are considered mediocre.
And filling the gap are Americans and Europeans who are flocking to India to take the jobs, in large part because their mastery of English is a huge asset.
Some experts in India see the need for 120,000 more workers in the next five years who speak English and European languages. And they're looking to North and South American and Europe to fill those jobs.
Which means we may have come full circle. Will India soon be outsourcing jobs to the United States?
I had a close encounter this past week with outsourcing, that peculiar phenomenon in which a call or e-mail requesting assistance is answered by someone six to eight time zones away whose English is a second or third language.
It was a simple billing question for an online company. After waiting in an electronic queue of some 60 or so souls, I received an e-mail message that said:
"I feel so lucky and honored that I have received your inquiry. I will try my hardest to sincerely provide the information you require."
That was my first clue that I was no longer in the good old US of A where the response would have been "Whazzup?" and I would have been refered to as "Dude."
All thing considered, the e-mail conversation went well, despite the fact that both of us communicated in a sort of shorthand English.
It's not my first brush with this sort of thing. Call the Los Angeles Times about a delivery problem and you'll get someone who has never been west of the Mississippi. A question about a laptop computer will send you half a world away.
There appears to be no limit to outsourcing.
For example, in Great Britain, blood and urine samples from National Health Service patients are sent to India for pathology tests to cut costs. The non-emergency requirements of pathology tests are conducted at the clinical lab setup at Mumbai, India. The 24-hour lab conducts the test and the results are uploaded into the special network linked to the NHS. The NHS hospitals in the UK get the reports in 24 hours.
Simple enough, but now there is talk of sending patients overseas for medical procedures.
On a lighter note, McDonald's is experimenting with a program that allows workers at call centers to fill orders placed by customers at drive-throughs. In a New York Times story, a young woman in Santa Maria, Calif., is seen busily filling orders from Honolulu to Gulfport, Miss. And some Carl's Jr.'s restaurants are going to try it next.
Even Reuters, the European news service, is hiring journalists in Bangalore, India, to do basic financial reporting on 3,000 small to medium-size American companies.
What's next? Prescription refills? 911 calls? Dial-a-Prayer?
All of this has set off a highly emotional debate surrounding the sending of skilled jobs overseas in the interest of saving a buck.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the volume of offshore outsourcing will increase by 30 to 40 percent a year for the next five years. Forrester Research estimates that 3.3 million white-collar jobs will move overseas by 2015. According to projections, the hardest hit sectors will be financial services and information technology.
Scary numbers to be sure but some economists argue that most jobs will remain unaffected altogether: close to 90 percent of jobs in the United States require geographic proximity. Such jobs include everything from retail and restaurants to marketing and personal care -- services that have to be produced and consumed locally, so outsourcing them overseas is not an option. Amid all this, something odd is occuring.
India, the largest recipient of outsourced jobs employing approximately 400,000 people, is facing a crisis: It is running out of skilled people to take the jobs.
The country is facing a shortfall of almost half a million workers, threatening its status as the world's "back office."
How can a country of 1.2 billion people come up short of workers? According to one report, it's quality, not quantity. Bluntly put, many of the more than 3 million college graduates churned out every year are considered mediocre.
And filling the gap are Americans and Europeans who are flocking to India to take the jobs, in large part because their mastery of English is a huge asset.
Some experts in India see the need for 120,000 more workers in the next five years who speak English and European languages. And they're looking to North and South American and Europe to fill those jobs.
Which means we may have come full circle. Will India soon be outsourcing jobs to the United States?
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Weather Wimp
By ROBERT RECTOR
Let me say right up front, I'm a weather wimp.
I'm Southern California born and bred and when the temperature dips below 70 or it rains more than once a week, I become restless, easily irritated, feeling caged like an animal.
Oh sure, I've lived other places: San Francisco where summer never comes and the fog seeps into your bones; and Washington, D.C., a place so hot in July and August that the British Foreign Service once declared it a hardship post, considering it a worse place to live than Calcutta.
All things considered, I'll take Los Angeles, where the voices of songbirds waft on jasmine-scented breezes.
Until this year.
This spring stinks. Too cold, too cloudy, too windy, too wet. Not the kind of top down, crank-up the Beach Boys weather we've grown to love. More like Scotland or some other dark, brooding place.
Not that everybody minds. The local television news crews have been able to roll out their "storm watch" teams with irritating frequency, firing up Doppler radar, filming the same flooded intersection in the San Fernando Valley week after week and sending their highly skilled reporters out to ask people on the street, "So, what do you think about the rain?"
For the rest of us, however, good weather makes most of the unpleasant aspects of living in this megalopolis tolerable.
So I checked in with the National Weather Service to see what gives.
In its usual understated way, they concede that the period from Feb. 6 through April "unusually cool." Which is like saying that Shaquille O'Neill is "unusually large."
The NWS will tell you that temperatures have been below normal for 46 of the last 51 days.
In fact, in April, as of this writing, temperatures have been below normal every single day. It was the coldest March since 1962. For all you weather nuts out there, the coldest March in history was in 1880 with an average temperature of just over 54 degrees. I'm surprised anyone moved here.
The average daily high in March this year was 63.3 degrees, 6.5 degrees below normal which the NWS describes as "whopping."
Rainfall for March recorded in downtown Los Angeles was 2.87 inches, actually slightly below normal. But it rained 11 days in March, nearly twice the normal number of wet days.
For the season, rainfall will be about 80 per cent of normal downtown. Some areas are reporting normal totals. And, of course, compared to last year, it's been downright bone dry. Last year, depending on where you live, we received from 36 to 50 inches of rain.
All of this should dispel the notion that we don't have weather in Southern California.
After all, this is the land where weather conditions sound like the lineup for a rock concert: the Santa Ana Wind, June Gloom, Pineapple Express, the Red Flag Warning and the Cutoff Low.
For the next 30 days, it looks like we can expect more of the same although forecasters rival stockbrokers when it comes to warning that their advice could be totally wrong.
As for me, I'll throw another log on the fire and keep complaining. As novelist Kin Hubbard once observed, "Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in awhile, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation."
Let me say right up front, I'm a weather wimp.
I'm Southern California born and bred and when the temperature dips below 70 or it rains more than once a week, I become restless, easily irritated, feeling caged like an animal.
Oh sure, I've lived other places: San Francisco where summer never comes and the fog seeps into your bones; and Washington, D.C., a place so hot in July and August that the British Foreign Service once declared it a hardship post, considering it a worse place to live than Calcutta.
All things considered, I'll take Los Angeles, where the voices of songbirds waft on jasmine-scented breezes.
Until this year.
This spring stinks. Too cold, too cloudy, too windy, too wet. Not the kind of top down, crank-up the Beach Boys weather we've grown to love. More like Scotland or some other dark, brooding place.
Not that everybody minds. The local television news crews have been able to roll out their "storm watch" teams with irritating frequency, firing up Doppler radar, filming the same flooded intersection in the San Fernando Valley week after week and sending their highly skilled reporters out to ask people on the street, "So, what do you think about the rain?"
For the rest of us, however, good weather makes most of the unpleasant aspects of living in this megalopolis tolerable.
So I checked in with the National Weather Service to see what gives.
In its usual understated way, they concede that the period from Feb. 6 through April "unusually cool." Which is like saying that Shaquille O'Neill is "unusually large."
The NWS will tell you that temperatures have been below normal for 46 of the last 51 days.
In fact, in April, as of this writing, temperatures have been below normal every single day. It was the coldest March since 1962. For all you weather nuts out there, the coldest March in history was in 1880 with an average temperature of just over 54 degrees. I'm surprised anyone moved here.
The average daily high in March this year was 63.3 degrees, 6.5 degrees below normal which the NWS describes as "whopping."
Rainfall for March recorded in downtown Los Angeles was 2.87 inches, actually slightly below normal. But it rained 11 days in March, nearly twice the normal number of wet days.
For the season, rainfall will be about 80 per cent of normal downtown. Some areas are reporting normal totals. And, of course, compared to last year, it's been downright bone dry. Last year, depending on where you live, we received from 36 to 50 inches of rain.
All of this should dispel the notion that we don't have weather in Southern California.
After all, this is the land where weather conditions sound like the lineup for a rock concert: the Santa Ana Wind, June Gloom, Pineapple Express, the Red Flag Warning and the Cutoff Low.
For the next 30 days, it looks like we can expect more of the same although forecasters rival stockbrokers when it comes to warning that their advice could be totally wrong.
As for me, I'll throw another log on the fire and keep complaining. As novelist Kin Hubbard once observed, "Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in awhile, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation."
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
One for the Road
By ROBERT RECTOR
My first Japanese car was a Datsun, circa 1973 if I recall.
It was green with gold racing stripes that ran its length, a silly touch for a car that groaned at 50 mph.
I bought it partly in reaction to gasoline shortages that were plaguing the country at the time. It had a four cylinder engine and body that was slightly stronger than tin foil.
But my primary motivation was to dump the Buick I owned that drank gas like the tank it resembled and overheated even when it was going downhill.
We were too young for a Buick anyway. My wife said it made her hair turn blue when she drove it.
I have tried to stay true to American products since then with mixed results.
I had a Chevy that still had some GM assembly line worker's coffee cup wedged between the engine block and the fender well when I bought it.
We bought the inevitable Chrysler mini van when we were in our soccer mom phase.
But we have also gone foreign in our purchaes over the last several decades, a little Japanese here, a little German there.
I thought about that recently when I read that Ford and GM are caught up in a protracted sales decline, losing to more nimble companies like Toyota which had its best March in history.
Even South Korea's Hyundai is experiencing better results than Ford and GM.
That's not entirely surprising. The American automotive industry has become fat, arrogant and stupid over the years.
A Los Angeles Times story on the plight of the Buick marque contained this telling ancedote:
"I remember being told by a GM executive … that they'd never worried about Buick because as people got older and richer, their asses would get fatter and they would always buy Buicks to sit 'em in," said Dan Gorrell, vice president of San Diego market research firm Strategic Vision, which has done consumer studies for GM.
That mentality certainly worked on one level: the average Buick buyer is 69 years old, the oldest demographic in the industry, according to marketing rearch reports.
Buick is in such desperate shape that even Tiger Woods can't sell them.
A cornerstone of the American capitalist system is that you stay quick and competitive or die. And it appears that Ford and GM may be checking into an automotive hospice
Should we care? After all, most of our appliances, electronics and clothing are manufactured overseas. So who cares about Ford and GM?
I do, for one.
It's hard to get teary eyed over an industry that sold over priced and somtimes unsafe products to an unsuspecting public for decades. Remember planned obsolesence? The Corvair? The Ford Pinto? All brought to you by the American car dealers.
However, automotive manufacturing remains an important part of our economy. Roughly one in five jobs in the industrial Midwest is dependent upon General Motors alone, for example.
And on a strictly sentimental level, Ford and GM products are more likely than not a part of our personal history. Chances are, your first car was a Ford or Chevy. Maybe even your second or third car. Chances are it was your Dad's first car, too. Chances are you lusted after a Corvette or Mustang.
I'm not advocating a government bailout of two multi-billion companies who have managed to fritter away what was once a monopoly.
But we can hope they make a go of it. And there are some signs they are finally awakening from a long slumber.
Ford has responded to hybrid innovations from Japanese manufacturers by bringing out their own line of hybrid vehicles. GM has hopped aboard the alternative fuel train in hopes of capturing market share.
And both are beginning to pay attention to design after being stuck in the 50s for 50 years.
Even more important, reliability is improving. Indeed, Michael Quincy, automotive content specialist for Consumer Reports, says the quality of Ford and GM cars has improved greatly in recent years.
Looking at Ford in particular, that company's American-branded cars are about average in long term reliability. Again, though, today's "average" is a lot better than the "average" of years gone by.
Recalling a jingle from some year's back, "Wouldn't You Rather Have Buick?"
Maybe, just maybe, I would.
My first Japanese car was a Datsun, circa 1973 if I recall.
It was green with gold racing stripes that ran its length, a silly touch for a car that groaned at 50 mph.
I bought it partly in reaction to gasoline shortages that were plaguing the country at the time. It had a four cylinder engine and body that was slightly stronger than tin foil.
But my primary motivation was to dump the Buick I owned that drank gas like the tank it resembled and overheated even when it was going downhill.
We were too young for a Buick anyway. My wife said it made her hair turn blue when she drove it.
I have tried to stay true to American products since then with mixed results.
I had a Chevy that still had some GM assembly line worker's coffee cup wedged between the engine block and the fender well when I bought it.
We bought the inevitable Chrysler mini van when we were in our soccer mom phase.
But we have also gone foreign in our purchaes over the last several decades, a little Japanese here, a little German there.
I thought about that recently when I read that Ford and GM are caught up in a protracted sales decline, losing to more nimble companies like Toyota which had its best March in history.
Even South Korea's Hyundai is experiencing better results than Ford and GM.
That's not entirely surprising. The American automotive industry has become fat, arrogant and stupid over the years.
A Los Angeles Times story on the plight of the Buick marque contained this telling ancedote:
"I remember being told by a GM executive … that they'd never worried about Buick because as people got older and richer, their asses would get fatter and they would always buy Buicks to sit 'em in," said Dan Gorrell, vice president of San Diego market research firm Strategic Vision, which has done consumer studies for GM.
That mentality certainly worked on one level: the average Buick buyer is 69 years old, the oldest demographic in the industry, according to marketing rearch reports.
Buick is in such desperate shape that even Tiger Woods can't sell them.
A cornerstone of the American capitalist system is that you stay quick and competitive or die. And it appears that Ford and GM may be checking into an automotive hospice
Should we care? After all, most of our appliances, electronics and clothing are manufactured overseas. So who cares about Ford and GM?
I do, for one.
It's hard to get teary eyed over an industry that sold over priced and somtimes unsafe products to an unsuspecting public for decades. Remember planned obsolesence? The Corvair? The Ford Pinto? All brought to you by the American car dealers.
However, automotive manufacturing remains an important part of our economy. Roughly one in five jobs in the industrial Midwest is dependent upon General Motors alone, for example.
And on a strictly sentimental level, Ford and GM products are more likely than not a part of our personal history. Chances are, your first car was a Ford or Chevy. Maybe even your second or third car. Chances are it was your Dad's first car, too. Chances are you lusted after a Corvette or Mustang.
I'm not advocating a government bailout of two multi-billion companies who have managed to fritter away what was once a monopoly.
But we can hope they make a go of it. And there are some signs they are finally awakening from a long slumber.
Ford has responded to hybrid innovations from Japanese manufacturers by bringing out their own line of hybrid vehicles. GM has hopped aboard the alternative fuel train in hopes of capturing market share.
And both are beginning to pay attention to design after being stuck in the 50s for 50 years.
Even more important, reliability is improving. Indeed, Michael Quincy, automotive content specialist for Consumer Reports, says the quality of Ford and GM cars has improved greatly in recent years.
Looking at Ford in particular, that company's American-branded cars are about average in long term reliability. Again, though, today's "average" is a lot better than the "average" of years gone by.
Recalling a jingle from some year's back, "Wouldn't You Rather Have Buick?"
Maybe, just maybe, I would.
Good News, Bad News
By ROBERT RECTOR
Our taxes are due.
We are up to our nostrils in the quicksand known as Iraq and nobody is throwing us a rope.
The debate over immigration reform is dividing our communities.
The President, faced with approval numbers that resemble winter temperatures in the Dakotas, is dumping staff members.
Then there is the weekly helping of grisly murders, political hanky panky and studies that assert we eat too much, sleep too little and are ill prepared for the bird flu.
Even our sports heroes are turning out to he chemically fueled automatons. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?
Are you alone in wanting some relief from the run-for-your-life headlines that dominate today's news?
Apparently many people are. Check out these developments:
A newspaper called the Newark (N.J.) Weekly News has signed a $100,000 contract with the city council to publish "positive news" about the city.
"Do we have critical reporters on the staff? No. Do we have investigative reporters? No. Our niche is the good stuff. People have come to know it and they love it," explained Weekly News owner and editor Howard Scott.
Now, there's an idea. Just think of all the smiles that could have been generated right here in the the San Gabriel Valley under this arrangement. I can see the headlines now:
Council, Residents Join Hands to Welcome Wal-Mart
Red Cross Chapter Saluted for Hiring Practices
Homeowners Beg the NFL: Take the Rose Bowl, Please
Pasadena Schools Adopt a Sleeker Look by Closing Four Schools
Arcadia Needs Another Shopping Center
Of course, that isn't exactly the way these stories unfolded. But, hey, put on a happy face.
Not everyone is buying into the Newark Plan for Positive Journalism, however. Roy Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said, "If you are publishing government propaganda in the guise of neutral, detached reporting, that's about as unethical as you can get short of putting a hit out on somebody."
Perhaps a better alternative is a website called HappyNews.Com. These guys are right up front about it:
"Our basic belief is not that people should be insulated from bad news. Far from it. We encourage people to be fully engaged, fully informed citizens. That means we need to know the good and the bad. We just believe much of the traditional media has strayed from this course, and reports a disproportionate amount of negative news. We are trying to balance the scales back out..."
Almost all political stories are rejected. Coverage of the war in Iraq has been limited to things such as Marines celebrating Thanksgiving and volunteers sending teddy bears to Iraqi children.
The 30,000 job cuts announced by General Motors Corp.? You won't read it in HappyNews. Sports stories are mostly out "because one team wins and one team loses," the website's founder, Byron Reese explained.
So what do you get on HappyNews? Here's a sampling:
Girl Wins Spelling Bee After 41 Rounds.
Jill Carroll Visits Newsroom, Thanks Staff
California Wine Sales Hit Another High
Clinton Raises Billions for World's Needy
Alabama Votes to Pardon Parks, Others
Of course, you could pick some nits with these choices. The youngster who finished second in the spelling bee probably doesn't consider it happy news. Jill Carroll is the recently freed prisoner of Jihadists who threatened to behead her which, of course, is the basis for this story. It's great California is cranking out wine by the hundreds of millions of gallons but perhaps not such great news for those battling alcohol abuse. For all his good deeds, Bill Clinton still elicits a remarkably negative repsonse in some people. And while it commendable that Alabama has gotten around to forgiving Rosa Parks, one might ask why it took them 51 years to do so.
But you can't please everyone.
As for me, I'll take my news straight up, no chasers. If I want to add a silver lining, I'll paint it myself.
Our taxes are due.
We are up to our nostrils in the quicksand known as Iraq and nobody is throwing us a rope.
The debate over immigration reform is dividing our communities.
The President, faced with approval numbers that resemble winter temperatures in the Dakotas, is dumping staff members.
Then there is the weekly helping of grisly murders, political hanky panky and studies that assert we eat too much, sleep too little and are ill prepared for the bird flu.
Even our sports heroes are turning out to he chemically fueled automatons. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?
Are you alone in wanting some relief from the run-for-your-life headlines that dominate today's news?
Apparently many people are. Check out these developments:
A newspaper called the Newark (N.J.) Weekly News has signed a $100,000 contract with the city council to publish "positive news" about the city.
"Do we have critical reporters on the staff? No. Do we have investigative reporters? No. Our niche is the good stuff. People have come to know it and they love it," explained Weekly News owner and editor Howard Scott.
Now, there's an idea. Just think of all the smiles that could have been generated right here in the the San Gabriel Valley under this arrangement. I can see the headlines now:
Council, Residents Join Hands to Welcome Wal-Mart
Red Cross Chapter Saluted for Hiring Practices
Homeowners Beg the NFL: Take the Rose Bowl, Please
Pasadena Schools Adopt a Sleeker Look by Closing Four Schools
Arcadia Needs Another Shopping Center
Of course, that isn't exactly the way these stories unfolded. But, hey, put on a happy face.
Not everyone is buying into the Newark Plan for Positive Journalism, however. Roy Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said, "If you are publishing government propaganda in the guise of neutral, detached reporting, that's about as unethical as you can get short of putting a hit out on somebody."
Perhaps a better alternative is a website called HappyNews.Com. These guys are right up front about it:
"Our basic belief is not that people should be insulated from bad news. Far from it. We encourage people to be fully engaged, fully informed citizens. That means we need to know the good and the bad. We just believe much of the traditional media has strayed from this course, and reports a disproportionate amount of negative news. We are trying to balance the scales back out..."
Almost all political stories are rejected. Coverage of the war in Iraq has been limited to things such as Marines celebrating Thanksgiving and volunteers sending teddy bears to Iraqi children.
The 30,000 job cuts announced by General Motors Corp.? You won't read it in HappyNews. Sports stories are mostly out "because one team wins and one team loses," the website's founder, Byron Reese explained.
So what do you get on HappyNews? Here's a sampling:
Girl Wins Spelling Bee After 41 Rounds.
Jill Carroll Visits Newsroom, Thanks Staff
California Wine Sales Hit Another High
Clinton Raises Billions for World's Needy
Alabama Votes to Pardon Parks, Others
Of course, you could pick some nits with these choices. The youngster who finished second in the spelling bee probably doesn't consider it happy news. Jill Carroll is the recently freed prisoner of Jihadists who threatened to behead her which, of course, is the basis for this story. It's great California is cranking out wine by the hundreds of millions of gallons but perhaps not such great news for those battling alcohol abuse. For all his good deeds, Bill Clinton still elicits a remarkably negative repsonse in some people. And while it commendable that Alabama has gotten around to forgiving Rosa Parks, one might ask why it took them 51 years to do so.
But you can't please everyone.
As for me, I'll take my news straight up, no chasers. If I want to add a silver lining, I'll paint it myself.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Takin' It to the Streets
By ROBERT RECTOR
I am a member of the demonstration generation.
Fueled by the confluence of the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war protests, perhaps no other recent generation took to the streets as often as those of us who came of age in the 1960s.
We didn't invent marching for a cause.
That honor in this country goes to the colonists who took to the streets to protest the tyrany of English rule.
But we marched and cheered and shouted and sang long enough and loud enough to eventually help bring an end to segregation in this country and a stop to a war whose goals were as clouded and ill conceived as today's adventure in Iraq.
Many of us were guided by the words of Martin Luther King. In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. King spoke of "direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the. . . community."
We did just that. Looking back, it seemed like right and truth and justice drove us. We were idealistic and motivated. We were also naive.
I thought about that this week as I watched students pouring out of their schools to march in protest of the more Draconian aspects of immigration policy being debated in Congress.
They are young, idealistic and, I'm relativly sure, convinced they have truth and justice on their side. They have been vocal but nonviolent.
Let's hope they can stay that way.
Just as surely as the civil rights movement begat the Black Panthers and the peace movement begat the Weathermen, there are those who would hijack causes such as the immigration rights movement and turn it to their own nefarious ends.
History teaches us that this is so.
Remember the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? Some of the original members were organizers of sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the South. SNCC played a leading role in the Freedom Rides and the 1963 March on Washington, seminal events in the civil rights movement. Ultimately, the group was taken over by the likes of H. Rap Brown who embraced violence which he said "was as American as apple pie."
The Students for a Democratic Society? Rejecting the ideal of participatory democracy, many members broke off and formed the Weathermen who called for a series of militant actions to achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the government of the United States, and of capitalism as a whole.
Seen an anti-war demonstration lately? In many cases, front and center, is a group of anarchists whose main goal seems to be to create of climate of violence and mistrust between the demonstrators and police and bring discredit to the cause . They were primarily the instigators of trouble between the police and demonstrators outside Staples Center during the Democratice convention in 2000.
Today's reality for many us is that yesterday's idealism has been replaced with disillutionment and distrust.
Having said that, I believe attempts to radicalize and polarize the immigrants rights movement may fail because so many of those participating have a financial and emotional stake in this country.
To underscore that point, I was cheered to read the words of Gustavo Arellano, writing in the Orange County Weekly about last weekend's demonstration:
"Those Latino multitudes who marched waving the Stars and Stripes sought the right to remain here and enter the American social contract. They want the responsibilities and burdens of citizenship. Sure, there were Mexican flags, and people shouted "Me-xi-co! Me-xi-co!" as if they were cheering on the tricolor soccer squad. But the chatter on the streets was that of assimilation. The most telling sign was the young people at the protest - the children of immigrants, who chanted in Spanish then talked to each other in perfect English. They are the legacy of the illegal immigrants, the reason why the illegals want to belong."
Let's hope this movement follows the examples of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated in the future.
I am a member of the demonstration generation.
Fueled by the confluence of the civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam war protests, perhaps no other recent generation took to the streets as often as those of us who came of age in the 1960s.
We didn't invent marching for a cause.
That honor in this country goes to the colonists who took to the streets to protest the tyrany of English rule.
But we marched and cheered and shouted and sang long enough and loud enough to eventually help bring an end to segregation in this country and a stop to a war whose goals were as clouded and ill conceived as today's adventure in Iraq.
Many of us were guided by the words of Martin Luther King. In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. King spoke of "direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the. . . community."
We did just that. Looking back, it seemed like right and truth and justice drove us. We were idealistic and motivated. We were also naive.
I thought about that this week as I watched students pouring out of their schools to march in protest of the more Draconian aspects of immigration policy being debated in Congress.
They are young, idealistic and, I'm relativly sure, convinced they have truth and justice on their side. They have been vocal but nonviolent.
Let's hope they can stay that way.
Just as surely as the civil rights movement begat the Black Panthers and the peace movement begat the Weathermen, there are those who would hijack causes such as the immigration rights movement and turn it to their own nefarious ends.
History teaches us that this is so.
Remember the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? Some of the original members were organizers of sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the South. SNCC played a leading role in the Freedom Rides and the 1963 March on Washington, seminal events in the civil rights movement. Ultimately, the group was taken over by the likes of H. Rap Brown who embraced violence which he said "was as American as apple pie."
The Students for a Democratic Society? Rejecting the ideal of participatory democracy, many members broke off and formed the Weathermen who called for a series of militant actions to achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the government of the United States, and of capitalism as a whole.
Seen an anti-war demonstration lately? In many cases, front and center, is a group of anarchists whose main goal seems to be to create of climate of violence and mistrust between the demonstrators and police and bring discredit to the cause . They were primarily the instigators of trouble between the police and demonstrators outside Staples Center during the Democratice convention in 2000.
Today's reality for many us is that yesterday's idealism has been replaced with disillutionment and distrust.
Having said that, I believe attempts to radicalize and polarize the immigrants rights movement may fail because so many of those participating have a financial and emotional stake in this country.
To underscore that point, I was cheered to read the words of Gustavo Arellano, writing in the Orange County Weekly about last weekend's demonstration:
"Those Latino multitudes who marched waving the Stars and Stripes sought the right to remain here and enter the American social contract. They want the responsibilities and burdens of citizenship. Sure, there were Mexican flags, and people shouted "Me-xi-co! Me-xi-co!" as if they were cheering on the tricolor soccer squad. But the chatter on the streets was that of assimilation. The most telling sign was the young people at the protest - the children of immigrants, who chanted in Spanish then talked to each other in perfect English. They are the legacy of the illegal immigrants, the reason why the illegals want to belong."
Let's hope this movement follows the examples of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and that the mistakes of the past aren't repeated in the future.
It's a Guy Thing
"Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain."
That sage observation was made by Euripides, and he made it in 438 B.C. He was, of course, a Greek dramatist known for his tragedies, as that quote might attest.
Some 2400 years later, the state of matrimony finds itself on similarly shaky footing.
But now a marraige therapist with more than 30 years in the trenches has come up with a reason why many marraiges end badly.
It's our fault, guys. We really are scum.
Robert Mark Alter contends in his new book "It's (Mostly) His Fault" that the man is primarily responsible for the marital problems.
Alter explained in an interview that "when a woman is in a relationship with a man, it's not about getting the best of them or dominating them, it's about connecting.
"One of the things I've learned as a therapist, this is about ``withness.'' Is he with me, does he want to spend time with me, does he want to talk with me? With a woman, it's more about connecting and with a man, it's more about dominating. Men are all about hierarchy, all of male sports are about ``I am above you, I have beaten you.'' My experience with women in relationships is it's not about that for them."
So woman are blameless?
"There's all kinds of women and all kinds of men," Alter said. "In some cases, women are mostly at fault, so this isn't one size fits all. But the preponderance of my experience is that when I'm sitting in therapy and I'm making interventions - and I was a hockey and basketball referee, so I became good at deciphering who made the mistake - 80-90 percent I was turning to the man and saying, ``you can't say that to her.''
OK, fair enough.
So I put the question to a number of male acquaintences. Are you responsible for all the discord in your marriage?
This admittidly unscientific control group ran the gamut from seemingly devoted husbands and fathers to a couple of guys who never got over the frat house life style to several for whom marriage is basically a conduit to coach youth soccer and Little League baseball.
None would concede that he was at fault 100 per cent of the time in a dispute. Many attributed disagreements to the differences in the way men and women perceive problems or approach solutions. But intrestingly enough, every single one of them admitted to doing something so stupid and/or insensitive at least once during their marriages that they remain guilty, sometimes years after the fact.
You know, the standard stuff: missed anniversaries, a couple of unfortunate incidents involving alcohol, a round of golf while she was home with a couple of sick kids, too much time at the office, not sharing in domestic duties, stuff like that.
And being emotional clods, most guys try to make up for their boorish behavior by being romantic. But as someone once wrote, when the relationship is in disrepair, a woman will feel it has to be repaired before sex, not repaired by sex.
Come to think of it, maybe it's amazing that marriages survive at all. But they do and we have women to thank for it, according to Alter.
"My experience is that when it comes to knowing how to be in a relationship, how to be intimate with another person, how to connect, women have much less changing they need to do than men. You can see an example: if you're ever at a restaurant, look for a table of three or four women. You'll see them leaning forward toward each other, having a great time connecting, and it's my feeling they know something about getting along with other human beings that we men don't know."
Or as Euripides also said, "Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife."
That sage observation was made by Euripides, and he made it in 438 B.C. He was, of course, a Greek dramatist known for his tragedies, as that quote might attest.
Some 2400 years later, the state of matrimony finds itself on similarly shaky footing.
But now a marraige therapist with more than 30 years in the trenches has come up with a reason why many marraiges end badly.
It's our fault, guys. We really are scum.
Robert Mark Alter contends in his new book "It's (Mostly) His Fault" that the man is primarily responsible for the marital problems.
Alter explained in an interview that "when a woman is in a relationship with a man, it's not about getting the best of them or dominating them, it's about connecting.
"One of the things I've learned as a therapist, this is about ``withness.'' Is he with me, does he want to spend time with me, does he want to talk with me? With a woman, it's more about connecting and with a man, it's more about dominating. Men are all about hierarchy, all of male sports are about ``I am above you, I have beaten you.'' My experience with women in relationships is it's not about that for them."
So woman are blameless?
"There's all kinds of women and all kinds of men," Alter said. "In some cases, women are mostly at fault, so this isn't one size fits all. But the preponderance of my experience is that when I'm sitting in therapy and I'm making interventions - and I was a hockey and basketball referee, so I became good at deciphering who made the mistake - 80-90 percent I was turning to the man and saying, ``you can't say that to her.''
OK, fair enough.
So I put the question to a number of male acquaintences. Are you responsible for all the discord in your marriage?
This admittidly unscientific control group ran the gamut from seemingly devoted husbands and fathers to a couple of guys who never got over the frat house life style to several for whom marriage is basically a conduit to coach youth soccer and Little League baseball.
None would concede that he was at fault 100 per cent of the time in a dispute. Many attributed disagreements to the differences in the way men and women perceive problems or approach solutions. But intrestingly enough, every single one of them admitted to doing something so stupid and/or insensitive at least once during their marriages that they remain guilty, sometimes years after the fact.
You know, the standard stuff: missed anniversaries, a couple of unfortunate incidents involving alcohol, a round of golf while she was home with a couple of sick kids, too much time at the office, not sharing in domestic duties, stuff like that.
And being emotional clods, most guys try to make up for their boorish behavior by being romantic. But as someone once wrote, when the relationship is in disrepair, a woman will feel it has to be repaired before sex, not repaired by sex.
Come to think of it, maybe it's amazing that marriages survive at all. But they do and we have women to thank for it, according to Alter.
"My experience is that when it comes to knowing how to be in a relationship, how to be intimate with another person, how to connect, women have much less changing they need to do than men. You can see an example: if you're ever at a restaurant, look for a table of three or four women. You'll see them leaning forward toward each other, having a great time connecting, and it's my feeling they know something about getting along with other human beings that we men don't know."
Or as Euripides also said, "Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife."
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