Alex Rodriguez, the Skunk at the Yanks’ Garden Party, didn’t stink up the joint at the Big Ballpark last night because Raul Ibanez pinch-hit for him in the bottom of the ninth and did this:
And then in the bottom of the 12th, Ibanez improbably did this:
Michael Scherer waxes lyrical at Time’s Swampland blog:
AFP Brings Poetry To Political Boob Tube
Politicians are supposed to campaign in poetry and govern in prose. But political advertising this cycle has been, for the most part, a bunch of PowerPoint presentations overlaid on file photo montages. Grainy shot, voice over, bucolic shot, newspaper quote, statistic, out. They are, for the most part, ugly, predictable and boring. (They are probably effective too.)
Yet here comes Americans for Prosperity, hoping to disrupt the 30-second wasteland with an silent haiku to the emasculation of unemployment in an Ozzie and Harriet household.
Scherer:
Not since the Obama campaign released “Firms,” a spot scored by Mitt Romney’s bad singing, has there been a spot in this cycle that attempts something difficult and creative, and succeeds. I would credit the donors to AFP for their good judgement, but the donors who paid for “The Dinner Table” are anonymous.
As Ads with Mystery Donors Rush Into Politics, Searching Their Wake for Clues
The Sunlight Foundation* has launched Political Ad Sleuth, a project to track and help contribute to a database detailing money spent on political ads this election year.
The initial source of the documents in the database comes from around 200 local stations’ “political files” — tranches, mandated by the Federal Communications Commission, of data on all the political ads bought at each station and at what price. Those 200 stations in the 50 largest television markets in the country were required to hand over those datasets beginning earlier this year to be posted online.
Sunlight worked with Free Press, journalists, journalism students and other volunteers across the country to make those files easier to search, as Kathy Kiely and Jake Harper from Sunlight outline in a blog post.
More:
In its blog post, Sunlight also emphasizes the potential of the project to help reveal the individuals involved in many of the third-party groups running ads. Per the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Sunlight explains, so-called social welfare organizations can spend unlimited amounts of money without registering with the Federal Elections Commission. But those groups still have to identify an officer of their group when they buy ads on local TV stations.
So maybe this initiative, and others like Pro Publica’s Free the Files effort, can unmask the Mystery Donors.
Dennis Lehane is all lathered up, according to the Boston Herald’s Track Gals (and Megan!), because a Boston Globe review of his latest book, Live By Night, implied that he’s a racist. At least that’s how Lehane reads it. Details at IGTLTDT.
New York magazine’s The Cut blog (tip o’ the pixel to the Missus):
Sarah Palin’s Hollywood Makeover: Frosted Lips, Hair
Migrating south from her native tundra to the relative tropics of L.A., Sarah Palin shed her news anchor hairdo and pundit power suit. After a period of intense metamorphosis described as “shopping with her daughter Willow … facials and manicures at a nail salon, shopped at Kmart, and stopped for some lunch at KFC,” she emerged, “noticeably thinner & different.”
To emulate the native garb of Hollywood moms (Tish Cyrus, Dina Lohan) she strapped on a pair of sky-high wedges and arranged her hair in a “messy updo.” Her layered tees fell off her shoulder. She stroked the seat of her ornate jeans. She parted her pink-frosted lips and she smiled.
The hardworking staff, on the other hand, frowned.
From ABC’s The Note, a trifecta of third-party ads:
NRA: National Rifle Advertising
“After the National Rifle Association endorsed Mitt Romney for president last Thursday, the group has aired its first TV ad of the 2012 election season attacking President Obama. The new ad accuses Obama of ‘chipping away at your rights, chipping away at your freedom.’ The NRA’s political arm, NRA Political Victory Fund, said it would spend about $1.5 million this week to air the ad in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Wisconsin, all critical battlegrounds. The group said it planned to air TV ads in swing states through Election Day.”
The spot:
Aux armes, citoyens!
SEAL-Boating Obama
“The group Veterans for a Strong America released an ad on Thursday featuring the family of Navy SEAL Aaron Vaughn, who was killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan in 2011, alleging that Obama administration national-security leaks endangered their lives and their son’s. A spokesman for the group said it plans to air the ad on TV but has not yet reserved any air time.”
The spot:
That should SEAL the deal for a significant number of voters, yeah?
Colorado’s Planned Parent-ad
“Planned Parenthood Votes says it will spend $800,000 airing a TV ad in Colorado featuring footage of Mitt Romney pledging to cut Planned Parenthood funding. A narrator says: “Mitt Romney would turn back the clock for women … Today, millions of women rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for basic health care, including life-saving cancer screenings. And millions more know, we should be making our personal medical decisions, not Mitt Romney.”
The spot:
Turn back the clock? The hardworking staff votes for 1952.
An article in some editions on Sunday about the discovery of a child’s remains in his family’s backyard on Long Island misidentified the kind of fence that was beside the makeshift grave where the remains were found. The grave was bordered by a wooden fence and a chain-link fence, not a corrugated metal fence.
Yankee Killer Alex Rodriguez did it again last night, fanning for the last out on what was decidedly ball four in Game 2 of the ALDS between New York and Baltimore.
Before you start barking at the hardgrudging staff, let’s stipulate that it’s not as if some Yankee greats (of which Rodriguez is not one) haven’t fizzled in previous postseasons. Mickey Mantle comes immediately to mind – his World Series stats (via Baseball-Reference.com) were downright anemic:
But Mr. September is different, because he’s so hapless and so hateful at the same time.
Fashion/Lifestyle bloggers are engaged in some serious buckraking – from $5000 to $50,000 – for flacking designers and brands, and the blogees are starting to rebel. Details at Sneak Adtack.
The local dailies were definitely not in lockstep in their coverage of Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren at the East Boston Columbus Day Parade. Details at IGTLTDT.
Campaign Outsider 