March Madness
CBS Sports has got the March Madness and they've got it bad. The television network will make $600 million from their coverage of this month's NCAA men's basketball tournament. They're charging a million dollars for each 30-second advertisement that will air during the Final Four on Saturday and during Monday's championship game. Television executives, NCAA officials, coaches, gambling houses, clothing and sneaker manufacturers all get rich off the event, but the players we watch on the court get paid nothing.
The "student-athlete," whom we worship for his or her competitive purity, doesn't need to get paid. So says NCAA president Myles Brand. This is because said athletes are not in the business of "making profits for owners and shareholders," according to Brand, who makes the ridiculous claim that the current policy prevents the athletes from being "commercially exploited." Hmm, ok. No exploitation, but unpaid labor is fine. He's not even accurate about the commercial exploitation. Nike has run a series of TV ads during this year's tournament that recalls great moments from tournament history, but the players appearing in these vintage videos aren't getting a dime from Nike. If we wanted to really get serious about ending the commercial exploitation of the participants, we'd have to take away the television cameras.
It's all a sweet arrangement for the Ohio State University Athletic Department, to name only one. They
just sold their sports media (marketing, TV, and radio) rights this week for $110 million. The school's Athletic Director, Gene Smith, who was the AD at Iowa State during my study there, says the deal should keep 36 of Ohio State's sports in operation for 10 years. I should say so. $110 million can pay for a lot of sporting equipment and bus trips.
Basketball coaches are always telling us how courageous their players are. The week leading up to the Final Four would actually be the perfect time for a group of principled, courageous players from the four participating teams to make a very public stand and stage a walk-out. Students demonstrate for social change every day in this country. There's no reason that high-profile athletes in their ranks should feel excluded from the opportunity.
The Inger-Dahls
My Des Moines neighborhood has a new grocery--
a larger Dahl's store in the shadow of the old on Ingersoll Avenue. The new shop opened last week, and it has blown my mind both times I've shopped there thus far. The same recognizable employees still work there, but it's as if they now work in a spaceship. I tried jumping in the store and I couldn't even reach the ceiling.
It reminded me of the time I drove to watch a baseball game at Milwaukee's old County Stadium in 2000, and you could see the new monstrous Miller Park nearly completed beyond the outfield bleachers. It was also similar to that experience in that I saw Brewers' firstbaseman Prince Fielder there eating.
Because Prince Fielder is fat.
In actuality, I've noticed that the biggest change in the new store from the old is that all of the pens at the checkout are still attached to their chains.
Miami gets the latest "Bailout Park"
Despite operating during the nation's worst economic crisis in 70 years, a Miami/Dade County Commission signed off yesterday, by a vote of 9-4, on a $515 million taxpayer-funded ballpark for the baseball Marlins in the Little Havana neighborhood of their city. The facility is expected to be completed by 2012. At which time, the Florida Marlins will officially become the Miami Marlins, according to team owner Jeffrey Loria. During the funding debate, MLB COO Bob DuPay warned the commission that Miami would put itself in danger of becoming "the only major city in America without major league baseball" if it didn't approve the gift.
Jeffrey Loria, if you don't know, is one of the real slimeballs in or out of the game. He made his name in baseball by piloting the once-prosperous Montreal Expos straight into the ground. He purchased the franchise in 1999, immediately demanding a new taxpayer-funded ballpark, even though the current house of the Expos, Olympic Stadium, had still not been paid off. After being refused by that community, Loria set out to fold the team. The roster was dismantled, the payroll was slashed to the lowest level in the league, the English-language radio broadcasts were ended, and a local television agreement was reached with, I think, the old DuMont network.
Loria and Commissioner Selig then cooked up what may have been the most unscrupulous deal in sports history-- an agreement that allowed Loria to sell the Expos to a business partnership that was, in effect, the commissioner's office, with the purpose of contracting the team. Only a lawsuit filed against another forcibly-contracted team, the Minnesota Twins, kept both teams in business, and Loria's former business partners filed racketeering charges against him.
In 2002, the owner of the Marlins, John Henry (not the mythical working hero of the 19th century) sold his team to Loria, with the understanding that Major League Baseball would allow him to purchase the Boston Red Sox (Henry wound up with the "winning" bid for the Red Sox, but not the "highest"). Both men moved up one chair in the franchise fraternity, the Expos became the Nationals of Washington D.C., and Olympic Stadium was taken over by feral cats.
Settling in South Florida in 2003, Loria took another run at that sweet, sweet taxpayer coin-- but this time in a riper, less-enlightened political climate. By 2008, as the local citizenry continued to hold out on Loria's demands, the Marlins had a total team payroll ($21,836,500) less than half the size of the second-lowest MLB team total (Tampa Bay at $43,820,598), and less than the total amount Yankees thirdbaseman Alex Rodriguez makes annually ($27,000,000).
With his hand firmly out last week, Loria promised the people of Miami and Dade County that stadium construction would create 2,000 jobs for the area, albeit temporary. "The timing for the stadium could not be better," Loria slithered, "People need jobs, people need paychecks. The time to get it done is now." Of course, those 2,000 jobs would also be created if Loria, a prominent Manhattan-based art dealer, paid for his
own stadium.
County negotiators put a provision in the agreement that cuts Loria's profits if he attempts to sell the team within the next seven years (a cleverly-devised "flip tax"), but buried in the fine print of the agreement was a "death clause" stipulation that if Loria died during those seven years, Miami taxpayers would lose out on their equity as a Loria heir would be allowed to sell the team and claim 100% of the sale's proceeds. Discovery of this stipulation set up the bizarre scene last month when the Marlins team president, David Samson, Loria's son-in-law, made a public promise that Loria would remain alive for those seven years.
Taxpayer-funded ("bailout") ballparks are bonanzas for Major League Baseball. A Minnesota State University researcher found that the financial value of a franchise rises an average of $50 million in the first year alone after a new stadium is completed. Approval for this particular stadium was even easier than most, in that it didn't require a voter referendum. It's not immediately apparent where Loria could have even relocated his team if his money grab had failed, making the commission's decision thoroughly and finally inexplicable.
What we're left with is a collection of nine dimwits on a commission who have just blown hundreds of millions in taxpayer money on a team that South Floridians have already chosen to ignore with their pocketbooks. League-low attendance figures and alienated fans have been Loria's calling card for better than a decade now, in two vastly-different North American environs, but he's just been given a gift he's always wanted and never deserved-- the 37,000-seat ballpark of his dreams. It's going to wind up being wasteful in more ways than one-- 15,000 seats would probably be enough.
Last of the real gunslingers
After 23 years of "dating," David Letterman has gotten married to a former staffer on his show and the mother of his five-year-old son, Regina Lasko. The comedian announced the nuptials this afternoon during a taping of his late-night program. Letterman and Lasko were reportedly wed on Thursday near their vacation home in Montana.
During the taping, Letterman said that he had "secretly felt (for years) that men who were married admired me-- like the last of the real gunslingers." But what about all of the perpetually adolescent single men? We've come to depend upon Dave being single. He's had the freedom to flirt on the air, on our behalf, with any starlet he chooses. This is going to require some adjustment on my part-- TV viewing adjustment, but not lifestyle adjustment.
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The most informative and important report you'll read online or in print this year... may be
this one by Matt Taibbi on the global economic crisis-- even though it gets second billing to the story about Letterman.
K(X'nO) means hugs and kisses
My former employer, Clear Channel Radio and sports station KXNO in Des Moines, is in
some hot water with the FCC after a profanity-laced verbal attack on a colleague by show host Marty Tirrell was heard over the air during a commercial break. The air talent's--and I use that term loosely-- microphone had evidently not been turned off. (
Full audio here.)
Several thoughts come to mind...
- While listening to the online clip, I first wondered how the broadcasters could not have known that they were still on the air. Even the recording studios at the station have an on-air sign that lights up when the mics are "hot." But it eventually becomes clear in the clip, after they come back from the break, that "Marty and Miller" are broadcasting from a remote location. Such a scenario always makes a show trickier for the control board operator in the studio. This director has to always remember to flip that switch, obviously, but Tirrell is given a pair of headphones and he has only himself to blame. In broadcasting school, you're taught that
every microphone is "hot." Even at state schools.
- I always liked Larry Cotlar. Nice guy, self-effacing, great Cardinals fan. I never met Tirrell. His show was only on Saturday mornings when I left the station three years ago. I was working weekdays and Sundays.
- I could never understand, then or now, how a group of grown men could be so obsessed about high school sports.
- When this type of thing occurs, the underappreciated group of people who schedule the station's commercials have to find a later place on the schedule to re-air those commercials for the advertisers-- "make goods," they're called. But that wouldn't seem to be necessary in this case. Many more people will hear the audio clip of the commercial break on WHO-TV's website than would have ever been listening live to the show.
-This incident reminds me of the time Ross Peterson and I were doing the old "Baseball Show on KXNO." I cut loose on the air once in a similar fashion, but not during a commercial break because our show didn't have any commercials. I was upset that Ross had taken (and hidden from me) the one and only free admission pass we had for the Bob Feller Museum in Van Meter. Naturally upset over this professional breach, I called Ross "a jealous prick" and "a goatfucker" on the air during one of our Sunday evening broadcasts. He responded on-air by saying that I had embarrassed the station with my fawning over Feller and that he was going to "wrap my testicles around my neck." But I got along with the guy fine.
Fearless baseball predictions for 2009
Since we parted company with our national game in the City of Liberty last October, the highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, admitted to having used banned substances, and then he underwent arthroscopic hip surgery that may cost him the first two months of the season. But the biggest surprise of the winter was how badly Madonna played it. A-Rod's new girlfriend is normally more media-savvy than to jump on such a badly-leaking P.R. boat. After a quarter-century in the global spotlight, could it be that hitters are starting to catch up with that fastball?
A-Rod's Yankees are my choice to claim the American League pennant in 2009. They've shed a lot of their dead weight from a year ago and bolstered their pitching rotation by adding the expensive arms of hurlers named CC and A.J. The Yankees will be joined in the post-season by the Angels, White Sox, and a revived Tigers club.
In the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers will take the flag for the first time in 21 years. It's become increasingly difficult for the team to recruit free agents since Alyssa Milano got engaged, but last month's re-signing of impact slugger Manny Ramirez puts Team Blue in the driver's seat. The Cubs, Mets, and Diamondbacks will round out the National's post-season lineup.
At the All-Star Game in St. Louis come July, the National League will break a 13 year winless drought after Brewers' outfielder Ryan Braun deposits two home run balls deep into the Field Box seats in left, something he does every time he plays at Busch Stadium. Thousands of out-of-town visitors to Busch Stadium will ask the question: "Why don't they play the game on
that fancy softball field-for-rent across the street?"
In October, the Dodgers will take the World Series from the Yankees in six games. As they do, vitriolic comments by Yankees and Red Sox fans on the Fox Sports message board, aimed simultaneously at Joe Torre, "A-ROID," and Manny Ramirez, will cause the internet to explode.
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Quote of the day: Alex Rodriguez to Details magazine on why he won't publicly name his favorite Madonna song,
"The last thing I want to do is go to every stadium and have them play that song."
Comrade Obama
Red-Baiting has been a staple of right-wing attack politics for more than a century, and lately, we've been experiencing a particular renaissance. President Obama has been labeled a Socialist by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, and the ditzy comedienne who used to do handstands on "Saturday Night Live".
But Obama is not a Socialist. Take it from your old pal Friedrich Engels. On Tuesday, the president called himself "a New Democrat," and that he is. Ergo our problem. Obama says he's pro-growth, opposes protectionism, and supports free trade. His appointees in the Treasury have been adamant that "nationalizing the banks" is not an option currently on the radar. Spokespersons in Health and Human Services won't touch single-payer health insurance with a 10-foot pole, still arguing that our defective health care system can be fixed "by building on" the current one involving private insurers and by "modernizing" Social Security.
At a public health forum this week, Obama told Iowa Senator Charles Grassley that he was concerned that "private insurance plans might end up feeling overwhelmed" by any radical changes to the health care system. So evidently, the real agenda in that arena is not to make coverage more readily available or more cost-efficient to Americans, but in continuing to protect the middle-men who have been jacking up the price.
"Socialist" ideas are easy to recognize. They're the ones that have worked-- Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits, federal deposit insurance, market regulation and oversight, a minimum wage, rural electrification and national parks.
And here are some ideas that have proven not to work, or offer little hope-- deregulation (casino capitalism), privately-administered health care, and corporate handouts disguised as altruistic public relief programs.
Calling President Obama a Socialist is an insult to our American Socialist forebears who did the heavy lifting of introducing and championing the successful ideas listed above.
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A.I.G executives
just took Obama's lunch money.
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As of tomorrow, it will be
two full weeks since The Des Moines Register published the accusations of an Iowa state representative accusing members of the public interest group, Citizens for Community Improvement, of physically threatening her over the phone and running her off the road into a ditch near her home. In those two weeks since, there have been no follow-up stories on her slanderous accusations. As far any news consumer can surmise, the state rep, Delores Mertz, has not been asked to produce the audio tape she claims to have that indicts the organization or its members. There has been no follow-up by the Register or challenge to her outrageous claims whatsoever. If similar accusations had been leveled by an elected official against, say, members of the Principal Financial board of directors, do you think there would have been some sort of follow-up in the paper?
Little Cyclone
I went downtown to watch my high school alma mater, Benton Community, play in the boys state basketball tournament yesterday. The game that followed BC's defeat featured one of the most celebrated preps in state history, Harrison Barnes of Ames.
Turns out that Barnes is the son of former Iowa State hoopster Ron Harris, an early '80s contemporary of Barry Stevens and Jeff Hornacek. Just 16 years old, Barnes is old enough to date Shawn Johnson. We just stayed around for a half, but Barnes took two early fouls and went to the bench. His team didn't need him to advance, however. If you live in Iowa, I'm sure you can catch his skills in action this weekend on public television.
As to the linked story above, I'm curious as to what constitutes an "unofficial" visit to a college when you're a recruit.
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It's hard to determine just how serious this discussion is, but
proponents say passenger rail service between Iowa City and Chicago may be in the not-too-distant future.
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Maybe I'm the jinx: I watched my first-ever Ultimate Fighting event at a local bar last Saturday, and now,
a UFC steroid scandal has erupted. Guess I'll have to go back to baseball.
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Despite some
team turmoil, Venezuela beat the U.S. 5-3 in a World Baseball Classic matchup Wednesday night. Now we've got a "can't-miss" ballgame in the tourney lined up for this Saturday night: Puerto Rico (featuring two popular Cardinals: their manager Jose Oquendo and catcher Yadier Molina) vs. the United States.
The steroids poll
A recent
ESPN/Seton Hall poll regarding attitudes towards steroids in baseball is instructive. The numbers can be spun any number of ways, of course, and will be, but what I find most interesting is that even among the (only) 25 percent of respondents who say they'll attend fewer games than last year, just 7.2% of those say they will do so because of the taint of performance-enhancing drugs. That's an amount hardly commensurate with the fantastic amount of attention given to the steroids issue by ESPN, the poll's sponsor.
What seems the most obvious from the results is that people believe what they've been told by the sports media. Many fans believe athletes make too much money, but then nobody has bothered to ask them whether the
team owners make too much money, or whether, as taxpayers, they're tired of subsidizing new stadiums. The percentage that believe player salaries are the biggest problem facing the game is almost twice that of those that believe that the price of attending the games is the biggest problem so evidently these people don't mind paying the exorbitant prices, they would just like to see the owners hold on to a bigger cut.
Against all rationality, a large majority of people believe that more baseball players than football players are using Human Growth Hormone, but then, why would this guy on the phone be asking me all of these baseball questions if they weren't?
Not surprisingly, opinion on the prospect of Barry Bonds being admitted into the Hall of Fame is divided by race. Only 36.8% of white respondents said Bonds should be enshrined in Cooperstown, with 50.1 opposed. For blacks, 60.3% said
yes, with only 20.1% opposed. For Hispanic voters, 59.5% answered yes, with 31.3% opposed. The divergent poll results pertaining to Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Alex Rodriguez seem to indicate that the players' personalities, or perhaps their team affiliation, have as much impact on their perceived Hall-worthiness than any of the accusations leveled them, as the accusations toward each are rather similar.
Discuss at your leisure.
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Sinatra news has been lacking on this site for too long, but there's word today that a 35-year-old Florida man
has won a
"conch shell blowing contest" thanks to his rendition of "Strangers in the Night." (FS couldn't abide that song, but perhaps he just needed to hear it backed by a conch shell.) Upon his victory, contest winner Lloyd Mager punched a photographer and began praising the songwriting genius of Mr. Jimmy Van Heusen.
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Paraphrase of the day (because the clip isn't on YouTube to quote directly): Jon Stewart, as guest on "The Late Show with David Letterman" last week,
What's the deal with the Octo-mom? She already has 8, and now she adds 6. Does she think she's playing blackjack? Is she planning to hit on 14?
The McNugget defense
By now, many of you have heard
the harrowing saga of the Florida woman, Latreasa Goodman, who called the 911 emergency phone line this week when her local McDonalds "ran out of McNuggets." Perhaps I'm the only one, but I think that at least a case can be made that Goodman's action was justified. Yes, you read that right.
First of all, most of the headlines pertaining to this story are incomplete or misleading. To be more accurate, she didn't call 911 because they ran out of McNuggets, she called because she ordered McNuggets, they took her money, and then refused to refund it when they discovered they had run out, instead trying to offer her another item of equal or greater monetary value.
But Goodman didn't want another item, she wanted McNuggets. Those were the terms of the agreement. Consider the fact that every financial transaction is considered one of equality. The seller determines that a specific product will be surrendered at a given, often listed, price, and the buyer then agrees to exchange the matching amount of legal tender when purchasing. Now what if this dispute had been in the reverse-- the McDonalds employee surrendered the McNuggets, but the woman refused to pay, walking out the door with her meal in hand. The woman has then violated the spirit of the transaction. She's committed theft, and I'm certain all would agree that the restaurant would be justified in reporting to the police that a crime has taken place. How then is the restaurant's violation of the transaction agreement any different? In this spirit, businesses can be just as guilty of theft as individuals.
Now, as to the dialing of 911, the situation in question doesn't strike most people as an example of a true "emergency," but what phone number should she have called then? She's being robbed. Granted, the robber in question is not in a position to run away, but what's the
non-emergency police phone number? I don't know that number for where I live. Do you know it? Do you keep it listed in your car? I have long treated 911, not as the emergency number, but more accurately, as the number for the police. It takes the police long enough to show up if it's an emergency. I'm guessing that if this woman calls any other number, one that few of us even know, she has basically committed to spending the rest of the day at McDonalds.
The defense rests.
The United States v. Barry Bonds
The Nation's Dave Zirin has been virtually a one-man media campaign in
exposing the criminal assault on baseball slugger Barry Bonds by the United States Justice Department.
After seven years of investigation, the Justice Dept. arrived in court this week with virtually no case against Bonds. A judge called the investigative actions of IRS agent Jeff Novitzky "a callous disregard" for constitutional rights. Novitzky and seven agents, carrying a warrant for the medical records of 10 baseball players in the BALCO case had claimed 4,000 sealed medical files from the nation's largest sports drug-tester, Comprehensive Drug Testing. Three federal judges had demanded that the files be returned, and Novitzky failed to do it.
Bonds' perjury charge was based on his statements before a grand jury that anything he took illegally was done without his prior knowledge, and the only person that could contradict him was his trainer and friend, Greg Anderson, who has steadfastly refused to testify against him, despite being imprisoned for 13 months by the Justice Dept. Anderson is a great friend, for sure, but he's also partly refused to testify because he claims the feds promised he wouldn't
have to testify if he agreed to plead guilty to steroid distribution and money laundering in 2005, which he did.
In January, the feds raided the home of Anderson's mother-in-law and threatened to punish her for tax evasion, and similar threats have been made against his wife as well. "Even the mafia spares the women and children," says Anderson's attorney.
After almost all of the prosecution's case was ruled inadmissible this week, the feds are basically armed now with only a claim by Bonds' former mistress about the alleged "shriveling" of the slugger's testicles. The case has been delayed until at least July as the prosecution considers its appeal. It's all been a pathetic display of investigation ineptitude and criminal government overreach, as well as the waste of a hell of a lot of taxpayer money.
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That Anheuser Busch/InBev merger is
working out great. At least, we don't have to list this one as another
American company that's tanking, only one with American workers.
Hog opponents threatened to kill me
Naturally I have terrible regrets about losing my state legislative race last fall. (Voters rejected my candidacy and then 598,000 U.S. jobs are lost during the first month of the new session.) But what I don't miss is the dangerous world of politics.
The Des Moines Register published claims today
by Democratic State Rep. Delores Mertz that her life has been threatened by members of the public interest group, Citizens for Community Improvement. The organization had filed an ethics complaint last month against Mertz, charging a conflict-of-interest between Mertz family hog operations and her service as the head of the House Agriculture Committee. For 10 years, CCI has been a leading opponent of large-scale hog-confinement operations in the state. Mertz claims members of the organization have tried to run her off the road near her home, and she purports to have a tape recording at home of members threatening to shoot her.
I'll be curious to see Mertz produce this tape, or to find out if she'll be required to produce it by the news media. CCI is one of the truly enlightened public interest groups in this state. They sponsored a community debate I participated in during the run-up to the election, and I found their members to be not only serious and committed, but good-natured.
Mertz's accusations have taken the headlines today over the findings of the House Ethics Committee, which ruled against a conflict of interest between the Mertz's 4,000-head hog operation and her influential position in the House. Their verdict was ludicrous-- an example of House members protecting their own. (Here is CCI's
official response to the ruling.) Each legislative member may have a conflict of interest of some kind in the chamber, as Rep. Dawn Pettengill suggests to the Register, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to serve ashead of a committee that directly conflicts. The ranking member has tremendous influence over what bills make it to a vote on the House floor and what the bills look like when they get there.
"Stand by for news!"
I "worked with" Paul Harvey for nine years at WHO Radio in Des Moines. His morning news broadcast from Chicago (and much more recently, from a recording studio in Arizona) aired during the Van & Bonnie show in the 7am hour. His mid-day report stretched 15 minutes, beginning at noon, six days a week, and the station also subscribed to his popular "The Rest of the Story" broadcast, which aired during the show I directed on weekday afternoons, "Drive Time Des Moines".
The hosts of that show, Sue Danielson and Jerry Reno, and I would sometimes tune in and try to guess the celebrity Harvey was profiling, but most of the time that five minutes served as a bathroom break for each of us (Jesus, I really blog a lot about my radio bathroom breaks) or a chance for the three of us and sportscaster Jim Zabel to talk about other topics more interesting. (For all his skills, Harvey was usually less intriguing to me than the conversation about life and work going on between those three colleagues of mine in the studio.) When ABC Radio Networks gave Harvey a new 10-year contract in 2000, upon the broadcaster's 80th birthday, I think the rest of us all felt that momentary surge of job security, especially the septuagenarian Zabel (another great candidate for the Radio Hall of Fame, incidently).
Upon Harvey's death yesterday in Phoenix, superblogger Ken Levine
is calling him the best pitchman in broadcast history, but then Levine never heard Zabel sell Des Moines on taking a taxi cab to the State Fair. Actually, the distinction of best pitchman, for my money, was another dead Chicagoan who started his career in St. Louis-- Harry Caray. But there's little doubt besides that Paul Harvey was fascinating to listen to, for that delivery and unforgettable staccato cadence alone.
After working for almost a decade at the technical board of a 50,000 watt radio station, you become very sensitive to extended pauses in on-air performance. If I'm tuned in to this day, two seconds of dead air on my radio causes the hair on my arms to stand at attention, and there was nobody that caused that sensation more for me while I was working than Paul Harvey. ["...And that famous automaker who grew up the son of the inventor of bicyclists was..." (pause) (my reach for the mousepad)... John... Chrysler. And
now, you know the
rest of the story."] I think there was only one time, not paying attention, that I cut him off prematurely, and let me tell you, doing
that will really cause the station's phones to light up. "The Rest of the Story" segment was loaded into the computer system as just one 5-minute cut, though, so backing up the recording was not an option. I lived in fear that during the ROTS the electricity would go out or that I would bump the computer mouse by mistake. As I recall, on that one occasion I cut him off, I just started answering the calls and making up an ending. "Who was the great television star whose first job was as a door-to-door salesman for ladies shoes? Well, that was Andy Griffith, of course."
Now, Harvey's politics were another matter all together. More apt to side with the afflicting than the afflicted, Harvey certainly owes much of his longevity to the fact that he never posed a threat as a news commentator to his corporate employers or sponsors. (I'm sure Wal-Mart loved him as much as he loved them.) Better and more courageous broadcasters than Harvey had shorter careers so let's be careful not to make longevity the final measure of professional success. Harvey was an ardent backer of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and an influential voice across the Midwest in support of Joe McCarthy during the early '50s.
But what's a little sinister Red-hunting almost 60 years later? It says a lot about the broadcasting talent of the man that he could reel off a seven-decade career like that. Most politically-conservative commentators find themselves embarrassingly out-of-date or wholly-discredited for their ideas after just one or two. I can say that I, along with almost every other radio listener, learned a lot about broadcasting and life from Paul Harvey over the years, except for who that TV star was that sold ladies shoes.
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There's a media pile-on over steroids every year right about the time that Spring Training begins, but baseball is going to outlast us all.
This mid-week article written by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist illustrates why. No, I'm not referring to the content of the article, which is rather repetitious and silly-- another baseball superstar being pushed into a position of social responsibility he shouldn't be expected to fill. I'm referring instead, and only to the dateline published in bold at the very beginning of the column. For as long as the journalists of the traditional media, the loudest arbiters of sporting ethics, are given all-expense trips to Florida to cover the sport in February, you're going to be reading and hearing about the game of baseball.
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What's the right age to tell a highway he's adopted?
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A
recent study reveals that Utah is the country's largest per-capita consumer of online pornography, and also-- to the surprise of many perhaps-- the results of the study seem to indicate a positive correlation between Christianism and porn.
Atheists and agnostics, are you going to let these people show you up like this?
