A banner day for the Express-News

A few days ago I posted in my blog about a banner edition of Parade magazine.  The entry was prompted by exceptional articles on Colin Powell and Kevin Costner.  Today, the San Antonio Express-News published its own banner edition, with four superlative articles:

1. Politiqueras in the RGV.  This article about abusive voting practices by politiqueras in the Rio Grande Valley was the only article of the four authored by a local writer – Lynn Brezosky.  Although Democrats often carp that Republican efforts to curb voter fraud are a solution in search of a problem – i.e., they deny that voter fraud is a problem – I have personally heard much anecdotal evidence that voter fraud is a serious problem, especially in communities with large numbers of poor, uneducated voters.    
2. Grover Norquist’s “The Pledge.  This article, which the Express-News borrowed from the Washington Post, reports that a significant number of Republican congressional candidates, led by its most serious challengers to Democratic incumbents, have declined to sign Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”  One of the challengers noted his disappointment that only one of the Republican presidential candidates was willing to accept $10 in spending cuts in return for $1 in higher taxes.  Another said that he can make promises to the voters without signing a pledge circulated by a lobbyist.  Amen.  I previously blogged against the pledge, so this is an exceptionally promising development.   
3. Pay inequity – first article.  The Express-News had two articles on pay inequity, both gleaned from the Associated Press.  The first article was on CEO compensation, and it reported that the “head of a typical public company made $9.6 million in 2011….  That was up more than 6% from the previous year…. is also the highest since the AP began tracking executive compensation in 2006.”  Tellingly, the article noted that David Simon of Simon Properties earned the most – $137 million – and that an individual earning the national median annual pay of $39,312 would need to work 3,489 years to earn that much.  That is outrageous, and obviously the process for compensating CEOs needs to be reformed.
4. Pay inequity – second article.  The second article on pay inequity was buried on page 6 of the Business section.   According to the article, the American Idol runner-up will no longer be guaranteed an album and $175,000.  Instead the runner-up guarantee will be only a few singles and $30,000, while the winner will continue to be guaranteed an album and $300,000.  The pay cut was justified, according to an industry expert, because viewership has dropped from 25 million to 20 million and because the previous albums have generally not been successful.  This change is outrageous, and obviously the singers are being exploited so that the producers and the celebrities can keep more of the money for themselves.  Reminds me of professional sports in the olden days before the athletes were unionized.       

Thanks, Express-News.  They say that newspapers are today’s dinosaurs.  I hope not.

The (un)biased media

A recent article in the Washington Post regarding developments in the Martin-Zimmerman matter provides a good example of why the media has lost all credibility with most Americans.  The Post, like most other media outlets, initially rushed to judgment against George Zimmerman based on virtually no evidence other than an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, being shot by a resident on neighborhood patrol.  Instead of accepting a police investigation that cleared Zimmerman, the media manufactured a perception that the resident was a racist vigilante and the police were after-the-fact accomplices. 

Because of the media uproar, a special investigation was ordered and a special prosecutor eventually decided that there was sufficient evidence to charge Zimmerman with Second Degree Murder.  When I blogged about whether that charge was appropriate, I suggested that we should give the prosecutor the benefit of a doubt, even though many conservatives suggested that the charge was prompted by pressure to avoid rioting in the streets.   

Although it remains possible that the special prosecutor took her action based on the evidence instead of the political pressure, the recent article in the Post reveals that there is significant evidence that supports Zimmerman’s argument of self-defense and contradicts the media suggestion that Zimmerman stalked and killed a defenseless Martin.  According to the article, Martin had an abrasion on a finger, blood under his fingernails, and Zimmerman’s blood on his sweatshirt.  Gun residue on Martin’s sweatshirt indicate the shot was at close range.  And Martin’s father told police that the person heard asking for help on a 911 call was Zimmerman, not Martin. 

Inexplicably, the article fails to report that a medical report obtained by the NY Times that revealed Zimmerman received a broken nose, two black eyes, and a wound to the back of his head from the incident.  It does, however, mention that marijuana was found in Martin’s system when he was killed.  I’m not sure how that made its way into the article, but the Zimmerman injuries did not. 

I am probably more sensitive to media bias because it generally slants in the direction of liberal causes.  But bias in any direction does damage to an institution that is important to the American way of life.  As Thomas Jefferson said:

• [W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

But to remain a viable force for good in America, the media need to maintain their credibility.  It has not done that in the Zimmerman-Martin matter, and the result is more cynical Americans.

 

p.s., a similar article was published by USA Today.  It included the following additional exculpatory information, but an inflammatory headline – “Police Report: Trayvon Martin’s shooting was avoidable”:

Another witness interviewed on the night of the shooting described hearing a commotion and going out to investigate, the same report said:

“He witnessed a black male, wearing a dark colored ’hoodie’ on top of a white or Hispanic male who was yelling for help. He elaborated by stating the black male was mounted on the white or Hispanic male and throwing punches ‘MMA (mixed martial arts) style.’ He stated he yelled out to the two individuals that he was going to call the police. He then heard a ‘pop.’ He stated that after hearing the ‘pop,’ he observed the person he had previously observed on top of the other person (the black male wearing the ‘hoodie’) laid out on the grass.”

Serino’s report described his review of the 911 calls: “In the background I could clearly hear a male’s voice yelling either ‘Help’ or ‘Help Me,’ fourteen (14) times in an approximately 38 second time span. This voice was determined to be that of George Zimmerman, who was apparently yelling for help as he was being battered by Trayvon Martin.”

Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show

One of Jon Stewart’s favorite tactics on The Daily Show is to reveal FOX News anchors or conservative politicians who endorse diametrically opposite principles, depending on whether the principles support the conservative or liberal position.  His latest example of this tactic showed FOX conservatives opposing the Buffett tax because it would generate only $4 billion a year in receipts, which according to them is a mere pittance when compared to America’s ongoing deficit. 

On one level, that argument never made sense to me.  I remember insurance liberals at USAA not wanting to exclude an unnecessary coverage because the change would not save enough in costs to appreciably lower premiums.  My response was that, if the change is good, then it doesn’t matter if the change alone doesn’t fix all problems.  Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  A bunch of small improvements might accumulate into a big one.   

On another level, however, Stewart’s response to the FOX conservatives goes even deeper and is much more entertaining.  His research routinely produces examples where the FOX conservatives have loudly and proudly espoused the opposite opinion.  With respect to the Buffett tax that raises the $4 billion pittance, you can imagine how funny it is to see the same people argue against the $400 million (repeat slowly for emphasis – $400 million) that goes to Planned Parenthood not?  Why is $400 million to Planned Parenthood so much and $4 billion from the Buffet tax so little?

Fox News has claimed the moniker of “fair and balanced,” but actually Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is the best place to find opinion/news that is willing to skewer both the left and the right for stupidity and even hypocrisy.  The other dominant opinion channels – FOX (right) and MSNBC (left) – think so monolithically that they mention the other side’s perspective only to bash it, not analyze it.      

Although Stewart is an unabashed liberal, he has no hesitancy attacking liberal stupidity or perfidy.  I can’t think of an example today, but I will post something in the next few days to show Stewart as an equal-opportunity skewerer.

Trayvon Martin, Staying Alive, and some context

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing, an op-ed piece by someone called “Toure” in this week’s Time magazine suggested to black Americans “How to Stay Alive While Being Black.”  The piece was subtitled, “Eight talking points about the potentially fatal condition of being black.” 

Most of Toure’s points consisted of practical tips such as avoiding trouble-spots and defusing troublesome situations, but the underlying theme was that America is full of racists who continually profile and stereotype.  These people will perceive a violent thug when in fact all they see is a black male.

As I was reading “Toure’s” column, it occurred to me that I have not seen any context provided regarding the scope of this problem – i.e., vigilante, otherwise law-abiding types who profile an innocent black male and then commit violence.  I remember reading in the past about how relatively uncommon white-on-black violence is compared to black-on-black violence.  I also remember reading about good black kids being indiscriminately murdered by black gang members who resent the Uncle Tom good kids.

Maybe its time for the media to provide some context to the Trayvon Martin case.  I suspect the danger created by gang members is a thousand times greater than the danger from vigilantes.

Getting started on Netflix

I recently signed up for Netflix streaming ($8 a month, plus $50 for a streaming device for my laptop) before learning that 90% of the Netflix movies were only available on DVD.  This learning led me to sign up for one by-mail DVD at a time (another $8 a month).  Then I learned that, despite Netflix’s incredibly fast one-day turn-around time, one DVD at a time meant that the DVD was usually in transit instead of available for me to watch.  This learning caused me to sign up for two DVDs at a time (another $4 a month).  Now I’m good to go at less than $20 a month, which is a small fraction of my cable bill.

Step two in getting started on Netflix is deciding which movies to watch.  Yesterday, I was watching a movie on streaming Netflix called The Big Lebowski based on a friend’s recommendation.  After watching the movie and finding it to be great fun (some of the dialogue by “The Dude” sounded amazingly similar to Jerry Lundegaard in the movie Fargo, which was written by the same Coen brothers), I did some research and learned The Big Lebowski was #34 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 50 best cult movies.  Then I had my epiphany – why not review that list and find some other all-time great cult movies that I might be interested in watching.  My review of that list led me to adding several movies to my queue of streaming movies and about ten more to my DVD list. This is Spinal Tap is #1. 

While looking at the top-50 cult list, I saw that Entertainment Weekly also had a list of the 50 sexiest movies of all time.  Eureka!  I like sexy movies even more than I like cult favorites.  That list similarly resulted in me queuing-up several more streaming movies and a dozen or so DVDs.  Out of Sight is #1.  Plus, there is a list of the 100-best new-movie classics that I haven’t gone through yet, with Pulp Fiction at #1.

Looks like I don’t have to worry for a while about which movies to queue up.  This situation reminds me of the winter I spent in San Diego between graduating from college and starting law school.  I worked that winter as a Pinkerton night watchman and used the time to read many of the best 100 classic books of all-time. 

Time well spent.

 

 

Dealing with celebrities

America has become obsessed with celebrity, and this obsession has resulted in a media that focuses more on hounding celebrities than on developing thoughtful communication. 

Ordinary people who try to avoid this culture of celebrity sometimes are placed in an awkward position when they encounter a celebrity.  The awkwardness comes from not wanting to be too hot or too cold.  Celebrities are entitled to their privacy, but their privacy does not take priority over the rest of us doing our thing.  For example:

• Give them their privacy.  I often see NBA All-Star Michael Finley at Lifetime Fitness, and he is apparently keeping his game sharp in the event an NBA team needs him.  If you look at my Facebook page, you will see that I have a photo album of my “glory days – high school basketball.”  Because I played in the relative obscurity of North Dakota, you might think that I would want to challenge Finley to a game of one-on-one, and you would be right.  But that would not be the right thing to do.  Even if I beat him, what would that prove?  And it wouldn’t be fair to Finley to spend his time letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry compare their games to his.
• Celebrities need to get in line with the rest of us.  Today at Lifetime Fitness I was doing some work on one of their four flat bench presses, starting at 135 lbs.  (That’s also the weight I finish at.)  After doing one set, I moved away for a few minutes to do some bicep curls.  While I was gone, NBA David Robinson and another guy (looked like a player, too) started using my bench and my weights (135 lbs.)  I gave them a few minutes, but when they started on their second set, I decided to move in.  David may be the Admiral, but that was my bench.  I walked right up to David and said I was using that bench, and furthermore I thought that 135 lbs. was a little too light for them.  He said he was sorry (everyone knows David is one of the nicest guys in the world), and I said don’t worry about it because I will use one of the other benches.

        It’s all about balance and perspective.

Romney’s gaffe

The mainstream media is making a big deal about one of Romney’s rare gaffes. 

Yesterday, the headline in the Washington Post read, “With new momentum, the Republican front-runner heads west, but not before saying that he is ‘not concerned about the very poor, because they have a safety net,’ a remark that could provide ammunition to critics.” 

If you read the entire article, you will learn the full story.  During an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, Romney said:

• “I’m not concerned about the very poor, because they have a safety net,” Romney said, citing food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid. He pledged to repair holes in that safety net “if it needs repair.”  “But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans,” Romney continued. “My campaign — you can choose where to focus. You can focus on the rich — that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor — that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.”

All of that makes sense except that Romney should not have used the term, “not concerned.”  He should have said that his main focus was not on the very poor….  Let’s hope that the Washington Post is wrong and that this gaffe is only a brief distraction. 

No such luck. 

The next day, the NY Times included the following headline – “A truncated ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor’ comment was seized on as showing Mitt Romney to be out of touch.”  As with the Post article, the Times article provided the context of Romney’s remarks:

• Taking in the full context of his remarks, as Mr. Romney urged reporters to do, his statement seems more benign: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine.” He is most concerned about the middle class, he said. 

CBS News also joined the fray with its lead paragraph – “As the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination moved from Florida to Nevada, frontrunner Mitt Romney tripped over his own tongue.”

Both the Times and CBS News noted that Newt Gingrich was trying to make something of the remarks, saying he was “fed up with politicians of either party dividing Americans against each other.”

Rush Limbaugh probably sums it up best:

• “Everyone knows what he was trying to say, but he didn’t say it. He makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across at the prototypical rich Republican….  It’s gonna make it harder and harder and harder to go after Obama.”

The South Carolina primary results

Newt Gingrich decisively won the South Carolina primary with 40% of the vote, followed by Mitt Romney with 28% and Rick Santorum with 17%.  Ron Paul took up the rear with 13%.  What a mess. 

After three state contests (IA, NH, and SC), Romney has a first-place finish and two seconds, Gingrich has a first-place finish and two fourths, Santorum has a first-place finish, a third, and a fifth, and Paul has a second, a third, and a fourth.  Furthermore, Romney has the most total votes, followed by Gingrich, Paul, and Santorum.  Although those results seem to favor Romney, Gingrich has momentum and leads the delegate count with 23, compared to Romney’s 19, Santorum’s 12, and Paul’s 3.

But the betting site Intrade.com continues to believe that Gingrich is destined to be a loser.  This morning, it listed Mitt Romney as a 71.8% favorite to win the Republican nomination.  Gingrich is second with 22.5%, followed by Ron Paul with 2.6%.  The candidate who appears to have lost the most in South Carolina is Rick Santorum, who chance for the nomination is now listed at 0.7%, which trails even Mitch Daniels at 1.0%

I attribute Newt’s victory to two developments:

1. The most recent debate in which he attacked the media for asking about his 2^nd marriage and in which Romney equivocated about his tax returns.  This morning Romney finally capitulated on releasing his tax returns, so that issue will go away (if there is nothing problematic in the returns), but damage has been done.
2. Front-runner status invariably brings the front-runner back to the pack.  Although the media seems to bring heightened energy to highlight weaknesses of the front-runner and ignore weaknesses of the contenders, I suspect the voters magnify this scrutiny by rooting for the underdog.  Everyone loves a close contest.  Now that Newt will self-proclaim himself to be the front-runner (ignoring Intrade.com), the media and the voters will look at Newt with more skepticism. 

As the campaign moves to Florida in ten days, it expect to hear a lot more about Gingrich as described on the Sunday talk shows this morning – i.e., Newt may be able to attract a lot of passion by attacking the media and the establishment, but his huge negative ratings by the majority of Americans (consistently at about 60% for almost 20 years), his lack of executive or business experience, his rocky tenure and ethics problems as Speaker, and his weak conservative credentials (cap & trade, individual mandate) will preclude him from seriously challenging Romney.

The last debate in South Carolina

I fell asleep midway through last night’s Republican debate.  When I woke up at 5 am to watch Imus in the Morning, I was shocked to see that Imus was so upset with Romney’s performance that he was shifting his support from Romney to Obama. 

According to Imus, Romney’s answer to a tax-release question was incredibly weak and mealy-mouthed; but even worse, it appeared almost unscripted when the question was absolutely predictable. 

An Imus staffer made an interesting analogy with President Obama’s birth-certificate issue – i.e., the reluctance to release the requested document continues to elevate the issue because people wonder if the politician is hiding something.  Obama never gave a convincing answer for his delay, yet the eventual release revealed no smoking gun.  Romney is a smart guy, but it is difficult to understand his strategy on this issue.   

In contrast to Romney’s weak performance, Gingrich did boffo from the get-go according to Imus.  When the first question of the evening was directed to Gingrich on the subject of infidelity and an open marriage, Newt did what he has consistently done throughout the debates – he attacks the media in general and the questioner (John King) in particular.  According to Newt, the question was almost the most despicable thing he could imagine.

For someone who easily accuses others of pious baloney, Gingrich is awfully quick to be critical of the behavior of others.  Although Imus initially was impressed with Gingrich’s strong answer, he eventually drifted toward the position that he was more offended by the weakness of John King’s response to Gingrich.  Imus said that he would have cut Gingrich off and said that the infidelity/open-marriage story was all over the news and that Gingrich didn’t have to respond if he didn’t want to, but don’t be lecturing him about what questions to ask.  The debate is with the other candidates, not the media.

The problem is that Republican primary voters probably like the media even less than they like President Obama.  Only Gingrich, however, seems to have decided to trash the media, and that could be a big advantage going forward.

 

Joe Paterno finally speaks

In an article in today’s Washington Post, based on two interviews with Sally Jenkins, Joe Paterno finally speaks.

Jenkins reports that Paterno has been slowed by radiation and chemotherapy (“a wig replaced his once-fine head of black hair”), but he was anxious to defend his record.  The reference to 85-year-old Joe’s black hair reminds me of Ronald Reagan, who was always accused of dyeing his.  But I am also reminded of the Reagan comparison for another reason – how much or how little he micromanaged his empire.  Many of Reagan’s opponents thought he was a dunce who wasn’t aware of what was going on around him; that he was a mere figurehead.  Then Saturday Night Live did a hilarious skit suggesting that Reagan was actually just acting dumb so his opponents would underestimate him. 

Before the Sandusky incident, I often heard the same about Joe Paterno – i.e., he was no longer the vigorous person that he once was and that the football program was on cruise control, being run by his assistants.  But once the Sandusky affair occurred, that talk disappeared.  Instead there seemed to be unanimity amongst the media that Joe was a God-like person who presided over all things related to Penn State. 

The article and Joe addressed this issue head-on:

• Yet it came with the realization that as the face of the university, people assign him greater responsibility than other officials.  “Whether it’s fair I don’t know, but they do it,” he said. “You would think I ran the show here.”

In fact, Joe didn’t feel like he was an omniscient God:

• [McQueary] was very upset and I said why, and he was very reluctant to get into it,” Paterno said. “He told me what he saw, and I said, what? He said it, well, looked like inappropriate, or fondling, I’m not quite sure exactly how he put it. I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do. So I sat around. It was a Saturday. Waited till Sunday because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. And then I called my superiors and I said: ‘Hey, we got a problem, I think. Would you guys look into it?’ Cause I didn’t know, you know. We never had, until that point, 58 years I think, I had never had to deal with something like that. And I didn’t feel adequate.”

The article also directly addressed why Joe didn’t do more than forward the report of the sex-abuse incident:

• “Almost as difficult for Paterno to answer is the question of why, after receiving a report in 2002 that Sandusky had abused a boy in the shower of Penn State’s Lasch Football Building, and forwarding it to his superiors, he didn’t follow up more aggressively.  ‘I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,’ he said. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”….  Paterno’s portrait of himself is of an old-world man profoundly confused by what McQueary told him, and who was hesitant to make follow-up calls because he did not want to be seen as trying to exert any influence for or against Sandusky. “I didn’t know which way to go,” he said. “And rather than get in there and make a mistake . . .” 

The Washington Post article gave me another déjà vu moment when it described Paterno’s dismissal.  I still remember Dallas Cowboys football coach Tom Landry complaining about the way he was summarily dismissed by new Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.  Although I didn’t think Landry’s dismissal was handled so badly, Paterno has a much better argument:

• Paterno is accused of no wrongdoing, and in fact authorities have said he fulfilled his legal obligations by reporting to his superiors. Nevertheless, the university Board of Trustees summarily dismissed him with a late-night phone call four days after Sandusky’s arrest. At about 10 p.m., Paterno and Sue were getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. An assistant athletic director was at the door, and wordlessly handed Sue a slip of paper. There was nothing on it but the name of the vice chairman of trustees, John Surma, with a phone number. They stood frozen by the bedside in their nightclothes, Sue in a robe and Paterno in pajamas and a Penn State sweatshirt. Paterno dialed the number.  Surma told Paterno, “In the best interests of the university, you are terminated.” Paterno hung up and repeated the words to his wife. She grabbed the phone and redialed.  “After 61 years he deserved better,” she snapped. “He deserved better.”

Regarding Paterno’s relationship with Sandusky:

• On a Saturday morning in 2002, an upset young assistant coach named Mike McQueary knocked on Paterno’s door to tell him he had witnessed a shocking scene in the Penn State football building showers. Until that moment, Paterno said, he had “no inkling” that Sandusky might be a sexual deviant. By then Sandusky was a former employee, with whom Paterno had little to do. Although Sandusky had been his close coaching associate and helped fashion Penn State defenses for three decades, their relationship was “professional, not social,” as Paterno described it. “He was a lot younger than me.” Sandusky had been out of the program for three years, and in fact, Paterno said he cannot recall the last time he had seen or spoken to Sandusky. “I can’t,” he said.

About Sandusky’s surprise retirement:

• Sandusky retired in 1999, shortly after Penn State made the Alamo Bowl. The timing was curious. Paterno’s understanding was that Sandusky took early retirement on his recommendation after Paterno told him frankly that he would not become his successor. The state was offering 30-year employees a handsome buyout, and Paterno believed Sandusky should take it. Paterno was frustrated that Sandusky spent so much time working on his youth foundation, The Second Mile, that he was not available to help in recruiting and other coaching duties. Authorities now say Sandusky used Second Mile to meet and groom his alleged victims.  “He came to see me and we talked a little about his career,” Paterno said. “I said, you know, Jerry, you want to be head coach, you can’t do as much as you’re doing with the other operation. I said this job takes so much detail, and for you to think you can go off and get involved in fundraising and a lot of things like that. . . . I said you can’t do both, that’s basically what I told him.”

Jenkins’ article gives Joe Paterno the opportunity to speak, something he was denied by the Penn State Board of Trustees, an entity he supposedly controlled.  I believe Joe’s statements are credible and adequate to defend his conduct in this entire affair.  In the end, people will remember Joe’s accomplishments, and he will be seen as a victim, not an accomplice in the Sandusky affair.