Media Sins: Sex Sells

I don't know that I've ever been called a prude, but even I have my limits.

I enjoy prime time dramas that can present issues revolving around sexuality in an intriguing or even humorous manner--the new NBC show Friday Night Lights is a good example, I think. But as we've all seen, too often sex presented in a purely exploitative light is the last refuge of a desperate TV executive producer.

A case in point is the Today Show--once the indomitable force of morning TV. But recently, ratings have declined. Consequently, we get a pre-show tease this morning promoting the following stories:

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff calls homosexuality 'immoral'
• Presidential candidates with histories of infidelities--can they be elected?
• 'Victim' of a sexual liaison with a (hot, blond, young female) teacher in Colorado on set for an 'exclusive' interview (!)
• New research showing that men's sperm count may decrease with age (!)

Everyone knows what kind of topics infest afternoon fare like Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer--but the Today Show? At 7am?

This is the same Today Show that will regularly lament ever-earlier sexual experimentation by teens, and the pornographic dangers that loom on the Internet.

Sophocles is generally credited with first writing the words, 'look to thyself'.

Maybe he had just finished watching Matt and Meredith.

diderot

Blame Baseball

Even the nation's sportswriters sometimes get tired of writing about baseball and its steroid 'scandals' (while somehow ignoring the fact that the average size of NFL players mysteriously increases by about 25 pounds of muscle every two weeks).
So, as a change of pace, these writers have now picked up a new fungo to beat MLB ownership about its collective head--the multi-market game broadcast license granted exclusively to DirecTV.
Now, off the top, I'm not saying this is a good thing. Even though I don't know how any of the traditional networks, or even ESPN, could ever devote enough bandwidth to give you access to virtually every game played. Would cable systems even agree to add to, or 'borrow' enough of, their existing channel menu to allow this? I don't know--and again, that's not my point.
What needs to be underscored is that this scenario--giving all-game rights exclusively to DirecTV--is actually not newsworthy at all. Because the NFL has been doing exactly the same thing for the last five years or so.
Have you ever heard a peep of complaint about that? No. Because it's the NFL. Deep in the recesses of the sportwriter mind is simple contrast: "Baseball ownership--bad. All other sports ownerships--good."
I worked in print and broadcast news for 20 years. I can assure you that sports reporters are not highly regarded among their peers on the basis of pure intellect.
This opinion is not unwarranted.

diderot

Bill Walsh

Good story in Sports Illustrated this week on Bill Walsh, the former 49ers coach and his bout with leukemia. It had a little special meaning for me.
Way back in 1986 I was at a clinic in Chicago at the O’Hare Hyatt. Bill Walsh was one of the guest speakers and of course the room was full. He did a nice job speaking on the West Coast Offense but a little too sophisticated for most of the high school coaches (especially the ones with huge bellies who wouldn’t know a dig route from a stalk block). He thanked the audience and with Dennis Green left the podium stating he had to catch a plane back.
About 20 minutes later, after trying to explain some of what he said to a couple other guys, I was going back to my room. In a corner of the lobby were Walsh and Green, pretty much hidden out of sight, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because the free beer for the coaches was on another floor. I just wanted to go over, introduce myself, thank him for his insight and leave him alone. I pumped up, walked over, introduced myself as a HS head coach down in the Peoria area and so forth. It turned out that his plane was delayed and rather than waiting at the airport they decided to wait at the hotel.
I started to walk away and Walsh said, “Coach, if you’ve got a couple minutes I could go into a little more detail on the offense because with the time I had we just scratched the surface”.
'No Coach, I have to go drink beer with a bunch of high school guys up on level 3 can you wait'? He looked at me, saw that I was being my usual sarcastic self and started to laugh. So there I was in the seat next to Dennis Green and Bill Walsh in the time it takes to say, 'mother may I'. I was there for exactly 46 minutes--I know it was 46 because I looked at my watch and timed it. When a concierge came to tell them their car was waiting we got up, shook hands and he complimented me on the quality of my questions and my overall comprehension. Now he could have been lying through his teeth but I don’t think so, not at all. So here is what I learned (other than football X’s and O’s) from Bill Walsh:

--NEVER overestimate your opponent--not underestimate but overestimate. His theory was that too many coaches worry about situations that will probably never happen instead of practicing their own stuff to make the opposition burn practice time in needless preparation. Boy, is that one true. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen defensive coaches change everything they are trying to do so that they can “cover” your formations and motion. My defensive guys would always worry about motion here and motion there and I would tell them, “What do they run from all these motions?” And they would say, "the same stuff they always run." So what are you worried about? And they would always give me the, “what if”. Screw the what if--nobody has that much time to do all that stuff. Consequently I learned to use lots of formations and motion but very few actual plays. Worked for me and for Walsh.
--Never stop tweaking what you do, especially when you are successful; keep finding ways to disguise and misdirect.
--Attitude and effort are more valuable than talent. He said, 'now when you have Jerry Rice you have both which is ideal', but always take effort and attitude over talent.
--Just because no one is doing it, don’t be afraid to try something innovative and new because from that you get your best ideas. He made the comparison to surgery and told me that almost every major surgical procedure has come from what was learned treating the wounded in war. Interesting.
--Treat your assistants with respect and dignity and always help them to be upwardly mobile if that’s what they want to do. This line is the main subject in the article. No one in football history has had a greater influence on the number of coaches now working in the NFL and college.

Hortense

A Chicago Story: Cheeseburgers

The Three Guys were emailing yesterday and I mentioned my strong memory of the first time I ever ordered something by myself in a restaurant: a cheeseburger when I was about 10 or 11. It was a single-counter, bowling-alley shaped greasy spoon in my neighborhood. What I remember most is how quickly I finished that and paid, absolutely petrified I was doing something wrong.
Oketo answered with a similar, but much better story:
'It was a place called Brown's, after its owners, Dickie Brown (who went to my grammar school) and his older brother (whose name escapes me), who was killed years later drag racing on Dee road when it still known as Forest Preserve Drive. Anyway, same thing, I took my 59 cents and ordered a cheeseburger.
Now, I was afraid that I would be seen doing this since 59 cents was a lot of money to my family and they would not want it wasted on a burger. Like you, I can still remember how afraid I was of ordering wrong or being seen. Once they gave me the burger I took it out of the store and road my bike to Oriole Park to eat it. Theory being it was natural for me to be at the park but not on Harlem avenue--if seen.
So, I get to the park but by the time I get there the grease has eaten through the paper bag and the cheeseburger falls on the ground. The bun opens and the meat lands on the ground. It picks up stones, cinders, dirt etc. However, I was not about to throw away this watershed moment so I scraped off the crap and ate it. It's funny. That incident is so ingrained in my head I can still remember the fear of being seen and the actual taste of that burger with all the sidewalk condiments. Why would those experiences be so vivid for each of us after all this time?'

Two Sets of Books

Amid the fallout this week over the conditions endured by some rehabilitating war veterans at the Walter Reed Medical Center, there is an admission that should not be ignored--in fact, it should be shouted from the rooftops.

ABC News anchorman Bob Woodruff--himself a casualty in the Iraqi theatre--reported that there are actually 'two sets of books' recording the number of wounded U.S. service people in this pointless war. The first, for public consumption, puts the count at about 23,000. The second, the one we've never seen, says 205,000.

205,000.

Why the discrepancy? One spokesman explained that a lot of those additional patients are just seeking dental treatment.

Remember, the people who launched this war--those hideous, delusional, treasonous liars--are the ones who tout their concern for our 'brave people in uniform'. But they are, in reality, the ones who ignore them.

Shame on them.

diderot

Who am I?

Let's face it. We're Americans. Nothing fascinates us nearly as much as ourselves.

But are we who we think we are?

Here's another way to test yourself...and your loved ones, if you can make them promise to reveal their profile (scroll down to the questions).

diderot

17%

When I was in the news business, we aired a lot of stories about 'first woman this', and 'first woman that'. Couldn't get enough of those landmark accomplishments.
You don't hear nearly as many of those anymore. Maybe this is why.
While equality is still some distance away, there's no disputing how far the world has come, on a number of fronts. Progressives are winning.
Now, if we could just get those poor women out of their burkas...

diderot

In Defense of Baseball

In spring, a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of...spring training.
And I have no doubt this baseball season is going to be a trying one, with attention all season long perversely tuned in to Barry Bonds' pursuit of the career home run record. Sort of like the sporting version of the Anna Nicole Smith decomposition. (And how ironic that Bonds reportedly is subjected to constant death threats because his accomplishments are 'tainted' by drug use. It wasn't too many years ago that Hank Aaron, the man who holds the record, was himself subjected to similar treatment because his efforts were 'tainted' due to the color of his skin.)

In any case, this will only ratchet up the complaints of trouble-makers like hortense who proclaim, "baseball is NOT the national pastime anymore!" To which I can only reply, "duh!"

Baseball was dominant in the first half of the last century for a lot of good reasons. First of all, it was effectively the only sport. The NFL was in its infancy. College sports were mainly the concern of the few who went to college. The NBA and NHL and, amazingly, even snowboarding didn't even exist yet.

What's more, the game was woven into the fabric of life. Everyone played in the afternoon. You would probably take your break from the factory floor and run into the sales office, where they had a radio, to get an update on the score. On the way home on the streetcar, you might hear, "yeah, Appling doubled his first two times up, drove in three runs, and we held on, 4-2." At dinner, especially if there were sons in the family, information would be shared on exactly what had happened...and, "by the way, did you hear the darn Yankees won again?" Even a disinterested wife or daughter could not avoid being exposed to the names and the lingo of the game. It had no competition; it did not divide on the basis of politics or religion (and eventually, even on race); and in most places, it was as safe as talking about the weather, even if Cubs/Sox or Yankee/Giant/Dodger loyalties did generate more lively discussion in some cities.

Yes, those days are gone. And in that sense, obviously baseball is no more the national pastime than churning your own butter. But this is different--FAR DIFFERENT--from the erroneous accompanying claim that baseball is no longer America's favorite sport. The elevation of this myth to accepted fact is largely backed by the assertion, "football has better TV ratings." Like a White House spinmaster standing behind his podium, this is a distracting, fallacious claim designed to deflect attention from the actual truth.

Yes, on a Sunday afternoon in Cincinnati in the middle of October, more people are going to be watching the Bengals game on TV than were viewing the Reds play on a Tuesday night a couple months before. But so what? The NFL plays one day a week. The NBA and NHL a couple times a week. Colleges follow a similar schedule. Baseball plays virtually every day for six months. Detractors claim that makes for an 'unfair' comparison. So what? You want fair? Have the NFL play six times a week.

It seems obvious to the point of absurdity to compare how many people actually buy tickets to attend sporting events in a season--period. (And total TV ratings follow in lockstep). Isn't this the way leadership is judged anywhere else? Is the nation's 'number one' automobile determined by how many vehicles are sold after 7pm? Do corporations report their sales and earnings just based on what happened south of the Mason-Dixon line? "Top" is the equated with "total".

So stop for just a second and guess how many total people annually pay to attend (or view on TV) the following sports: Major League Baseball; minor league baseball; the NFL; college football; the NBA; and college basketball. Rank them in order in your mind.

Then take a look at this and understand who unquestionably is #1:






diderot

Fog of War

Maybe you were on an email list and received a series of these pictures from the Pearl Harbor attack, hidden inside a Kodak Brownie camera for 63 years. It's hard to do a better job of showing 'the fog of war'--what it's like when you're under attack and don't really know what to do. It's the same in Iraq...and was the same for me in Vietnam.

Those pictures of Pearl Harbor, I've scanned them a few times now, even printed a couple up. Can you imagine what was going through those guy's heads when it hit? Yeah, goin' home in a couple weeks for X-mas, get to see the family and so forth, BAM, not now, holy shit, I'm helpless. Now that's the tone I imagine went through each and every person on the island. A feeling of total helplessness.

I only had that experience once, when the Huey I was in got shot down. Going in circles (auto rotate) you have this feeling like whatever is going to happen, make it happen now--I'm scared to death and don't know what to do. Training helps in a fire fight when you expect to be in one and your mind gets prepared so that when the shit happens it's not a surprise and then you can react and counter. It's not unlike a big game situation in football because the physical aspect of the game is there, and you could get your ass kicked big time. It's much more about survival and, if you have leadership responsibilities, protecting those you are fighting with. It is the ultimate us against them mentality.

No one, and I mean no one, in a fire fight stops to think of the possible political/geopolitical outcome of the situation. It's just, "how do I get my ass out of this and prevent my guys from getting killed?" That's it. Survival.

I did know this: I did not want to be taken prisoner under any circumstance. The stories we heard about that stuff were probably exaggerated but they still made me sick. No, I would have been one of those guys who took it before surrender, down with the ship type. Thank goodness I never had to make that decision.

I could tell who to trust, count on, respect (regardless of rank) as soon as the shooting started. Or even as little as 10 minutes after meeting a guy. I had 2 lieutenants, both great, never took needless chances, weren't gung-ho and asked questions. When the second guy came in, the first thing he did was ask me what the hell this (war) was all about. In other words, 'I've been in the states training and I don't know shit about live combat so tell me the real story'. This was good as it gave us the confidence that this guy wasn't gonna march us into a blood bath. We were lucky, there were plenty of the other types of officers and if the VC didn't get them, their own men sometimes did. Like the 1st part of "Band of Brothers" where the guy who played Ross on Friends is put in command. That guy wouldn't have lasted a week in the Nam'.

War is hell.

hortense

Is anyone listening?

How much money can we spend on a war that will never, ever work? 30 billion, 50 billion, why not 500 billion I mean it's only our future we're gambling with. Are people sincerely that stupid? We have, at this time the most incompetent president in our brief 200+ year history running the show and the show needs to close. There is no way to get out of this "war" with honor, none. Investing young human lives and billions of dollars is abhorent and immoral. I was there, in the front lines in 71', I feel a complete sense of deja vu surrounding me and it makes me sick.

hortense