On Wednesday, July 4th, this full-page ad ran in the New York Times:
Yesterday it ran – again as a full-page ad – in the Wall Street Journal.
Did you catch that part at the bottom of the ad?
Dedicated to the tune of at least a quarter of a million dollars, by the hardestimating staff’s arithmetic.
That is one hell of a tribute to what seems like one hell of a military man.
Next month female athletes will get their first chance to fight for Olympic gold, but even before that, they’ve adopted some men’s boxing traditions according to Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.
Moving On From Cappy’s Ring
As Women’s Boxing Debuts at the Olympics, So Does a Male Tradition: Switching Coaches
Quanitta “Queen” Underwood knew nothing about boxing nine years ago when she wandered into Cappy’s Boxing Gym, an inner-city Seattle club.
Under the guidance of coach Cappy Kotz, however, Underwood evolved into an elite boxer, becoming the national champion in her weight class in 2007, a title she successfully defended four consecutive years. More than just a coach, Kotz helped Underwood overcome a history of sexual abuse and depression. In a 2009 newspaper article, Underwood called Kotz her “dad.”
Yet when Underwood goes to London this summer to compete for the first Olympic medals in female boxing, Kotz will be staying home. Underwood fired him last year, saying she wanted a coach with more international experience.
Underwood calls the move “tough.” Kotz calls it “heartbreaking.”
The Journal piece contrasts their situation with the experience of the real queen of women’s boxing, Marlen Esparza.
Alongside Underwood in London will be Marlen Esparza, a 22-year-old Houstonian who won six national titles in her weight class before earning a spot on the U.S. Olympic team this year. Beside Esparza in London will be Rudy Silva, a law-enforcement professional who coaches boxing on the side. He has been Esparza’s coach since she was a child.
“I think Marlen sees what we’re doing works. It’s not broken,” said Silva.
Esparza declined to be interviewed. But any fighter who wins national title after national title invariably receives come-hithers from coaches with better résumés than Silva’s. To her credit, said Silva, Esparza understands that “the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.”
Esparza did not decline, however, to be interviewed by The Atlantic, which published this profile last month.
It’s a terrific piece, with a heartrending finish about a driven, accomplished young fighter who’s put her entire life on hold while she pursues an Olympic dream.
Looking . . . to the Olympics, Esparza could imagine a scenario in which she wins the gold medal—but not one in which she doesn’t. “I feel like it will complete me—like it will make me what I want to be,” she said. “I don’t want to see someone else win.” Esparza put her fork down, and a tear slid down her cheek. “It would be like someone else living what you’re supposed to be living, and feeling what you’re supposed to be feeling. It’s like someone stealing what I want to be.” She paused again, wiping her eyes with her cloth napkin. “Failure is when your best isn’t good enough, and I’m trying as hard as I possibly can.”
Esparza finished her entrée and we ordered dessert—fried zeppoles with chocolate sauce. When I asked her how she envisions her life after the Olympics—after boxing, that is—she recalled driving to the gym one morning and seeing two girls, about her age, who looked like they were going to the mall. Esparza wondered what the rest of their day might be like, whether they would see their friends, or go to the movies. “And I was thinking, What the heck would I do all day?” She considered this for a moment. “It’s like a small kitten or an inside dog that scratches at the door all day, but when someone finally opens it, they don’t want to go,” she said. “They just look.”
After reading this piece, the hardrooting staff sincerely hopes Marlen Esparza wins Olympic gold next month.
If Mitt Romney (R-Jet Ski) and Scott Brown (R-Brewski) want their campaign messages to be in step, they’re doing a pretty poor job of keeping off one another’s toes.
Start with Romney gunsel Eric-a-Sketch Fehrnstrom’s Monday comment on MSNBC (via the Atlantic) that the Romney campaign agrees with Barack Obama that the healthcare reform individual mandate is a penalty, not a tax.
Cut to Brown saying that he agrees with Romney, as reported in the Boston Herald:
Brown [agreed] that the national health care mandate included in what has come to be known as Obamacare, which forces consumers to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, is not a “tax” — a departure from conservative talking points but in line with GOP standard bearer Mitt Romney’s re-adjusting stance in his fight for the White House.
“It’s not a tax,” Brown said [Tuesday] during an event in Quincy.
Then – awkward! – Romney says on Wednesday that the individual mandate actually is a tax (via Newser):
Romney: Health Mandate Is a Tax
CONTRADICTS ERIC FEHRNSTROM’S COMMENTS
Days after a spokesman asserted that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is not a tax in Mitt Romney’s view, the candidate himself is saying the opposite—thus aligning with the rest of his party. Romney tells CBS News that while he agreed with the Supreme Court’s dissent, “the dissent lost. … The majority of the court said it’s a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that.”
Romney said that meant that President Obama had “broken the pledge he made” not to raise taxes on middle-income families. Of course, the shift opens Romney to criticism that he too raised taxes in passing Massachusetts’ version of health care reform.
Of course, the shift also left Brown swinging in the wind, but apparently he’s willing to stay there.
From today’s Boston Herald:
Brown displayed his support for the president’s stance on the controversial health care mandate — and found himself suddenly on the opposite side from GOP candidate Mitt Romney. During a Fourth of July parade in Plymouth, Brown bucked the conservative argument that the individual mandate, featured in both Obama’s and Romney’s health care reforms, is a tax.
“I’ll stand by my positions,” Brown asserted later at a parade in Wakefield, after news broke that Romney had reversed his campaign’s stance and declared that the fee charged to those who fail to get health insurance is a tax.
Still waiting for the Boston Globe’s version of this faux pas de deux. We’ll keep you posted.
One more reason for Mitt Romney to fire up the jet ski and further pollute Lake Winnipesaukee in that celebratory way of his: The publication this week of two news reports that are extremely damaging both to his image and his campaign.
First, the articles.
Number 1, compliments of Vanity Fair:
Where the Money Lives
For all Mitt Romney’s touting of his business record, when it comes to his own money the Republican nominee is remarkably shy about disclosing numbers and investments. Nicholas Shaxson delves into the murky world of offshore finance, revealing loopholes that allow the very wealthy to skirt tax laws, and investigating just how much of Romney’s fortune (with $30 million in Bain Capital funds in the Cayman Islands alone?) looks pretty strange for a presidential candidate.
Number 2, compliments of the Associated Press:
Assets offshore raise Romney wealth questions
For nearly 15 years, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s financial portfolio has included an offshore company that remained invisible to voters as his political star rose.
Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney’s state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning — suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign.
The omissions were permitted by state and federal authorities overseeing Romney’s ethics filings, and he has never been cited for failing to disclose information about his money. But Romney’s limited disclosures deprive the public of an accurate depiction of his wealth and a clear understanding of how his assets are handled and taxed, according to experts in private equity, tax and campaign finance law.
(Full disclosure: The hardskimming staff has not read the pieces in their entirety, but it appears the two are independently reported. Or at least neither of the reports cited the other.)
So why the celebration? Two reasons.
One, who the hell is reading (or writing about) these reports during a holiday week? (Aside from us, not to get technical about it.)
Two, via Mediaite:
Did Vanity Fair Prematurely Launch The Obama Campaign’s Strongest Attacks On Romney?
An extensive report in Vanity Fair magazine investigating the Mitt Romney’s financial history—including the Republican presidential candidate’s family’s finances and his notorious offshore accounts—is significant for two reasons. One, it signals the beginning of the inevitable and specific attacks on Romney’s wealth and financial transactions which have always tested well among independent voters. Second, by publishing these attacks well before the period in the campaign when they could be the most damaging, Vanity Fair may have undercut President Barack Obama‘s campaign. The timing of this story may be as significant as the story itself.
Yes, for more reasons than one.
The news media are all atwitter (in the traditional sense) over the Romney Olympics, described by The Washington Post (which seemed to originate the coverage) this way:
The Romney Olympics have long included a mini-triathlon of biking, swimming and running that pits Mitt and his five sons and their wives against one another. But after Mitt once nearly finished last, behind a daughter-in-law who had given birth to her second child a couple of months earlier, the ultra-competitive and self-described unathletic patriarch expanded the games to give himself a better shot.
Now they also compete to see who can hang onto a pole the longest, who can throw a football the farthest and who can hammer the most nails into a board in two minutes — not exactly the kind of events they’ll be giving out gold medals for in London this month.
Not even gold stars, actually. Hammer the most nails? Seriously? What a bunch of weenies.
The Carroll Family Olympics (CFO) – now that was a test of athleticism.
There were three events staged each summer at the Big House (Jack and Aggie, sole proprieters):
One-On-One Driveway Basketball
This started out as a fun-loving, family-inclusive event (thus the 30-second asthma timeouts for my hardbreathing sister Nancy and the no-blocked-shot policy for my height-challenged sister Diane), but ended up as a cutthroat affair (No autopsy? No foul!) resulting in a broken arm for my brother Jim.
In-The-Pool Soccer
A tougher version of water polo, in which you had to hit the lip of the pool with the ball. Multiple minor contusions ensued.
In-The-Basement Ping Pong
This event took place in the wee hours, under a wee bit of drink and whatever. Whoever wasn’t playing played the role of Commissioner, and there were any number of trick shots and whatever.
In the latter years of the CFO, my brother Robert tried to introduce a Bike Riding event, knowing full well I never learned how to ride a bicycle (hey! I learned to ride the New York subway system), and my brother Terence tried to introduce a Russian Novel Reading event (hey! I majored in Greek and Latin).
So the Carroll Family Olympics gradually faded away.
But it was always better than the Romney Olympics.
Or Vulpine News Replicas. Or, what they’re technically called, Video News Releases.
Whatever you call them, whether they come from business, the government, religious institutions or academia, VNRs are simply Faux News (not to be confused with Fox Ne- . . . actually, never mind).
In 2006, the Center for Media and Democracy conducted an extensive study of VNRs, which its publication PR Watch described:
Video news releases are pre-packaged broadcast segments designed to look like television news stories, that are funded by and scripted for corporate or government clients. (See “Fake TV News: Introduction.”) On April 6, 2006, the Center for Media and Democracy released a comprehensive report detailing TV newsrooms’ use of VNRs. The report, “Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed,” named 77 TV stations that aired at least one of 36 VNRs tracked over a ten-month period. Not once were the clients behind the segments—such as Pfizer, Intel and General Motors—disclosed to news audiences.
The report includes:
- Video footage of 33 video news releases (VNRs), plus the television news segments that incorporated them;
- A map showing the locations of the television stations throughout the United States that aired this fake news;
- An itemized list of the television stations that aired this fake news, by state; and
- Sections on frequently asked questions about VNR disclosure and policy issues, and on research methodology.
For more, check out this entry from SourceWatch, which is also produced by CMD and which also has an activist agenda. You can see a side-by-side VNR/news report here.
From the industry side, here’s an example from Toshiba (a news report would likely employ the video with a new voiceover):
Turning to a more neutral source, in 2005 the New York Times ran a major investigative report on the Bush administration’s extensive use of VNRs.
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News
t is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
“Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,” a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of “another success” in the Bush administration’s “drive to strengthen aviation security”; the reporter called it “one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.” A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration’s determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The “reporter” covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department’s office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.
Bush didn’t pioneer the use of VNRs as borderline government propaganda (which, not to get technical about it, is illegal), but he did vastly increase their use.
The 2006 CMD study did lead the Federal Communications Commission to send letters of inquiry to the 77 stations running VNRs. The FCC has taken action against three broadcasters – two of them last year.
From the RTNDA’s Communicator of March 25, 2011:
On March 24, 2011, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC or Commission) Enforcement Bureau issued Notices of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NAL) against two television broadcast licensees for airing material from video news releases (VNRs) in violation of the Commission’s sponsorship identification rule. The licensees, Fox Television Stations, Inc. and Access.1 New Jersey License Company, LLC, each face forfeitures of $4,000.
That’s lunch money, not to mention three out of 77 busted over the course of five years is hardly a deterrent.
So the odds are we’ll be seeing VNRs passed off as news for some time to come.
Originally posted at the in restuaro Sneak ADtack!
The hardworking staff has long believed that Charlie Crews – protagonist of NBC’s primetime drama Life that ran from 2007 to 2009 – is one of the great characters ever to hit the small screen.
Played to perfection by Damian Lewis, Crews was a sunshine-loving, fruit-craving (he bought an orange grove with part of his settlement money) Los Angeles detective who served 12 hellish years of a life sentence for three murders he didn’t commit.
(Former partner: “A cop doing time? Please – they broke nearly every bone in his body.”)
When he got out, Crews went back to the LA police force – partly because that’s who he was, mostly because he wanted to find out who had framed him.
As part of the hardworking staff’s Summer of Indolence, we’ve been re-watching the series and after viewing Season 1, we believe even more strongly that Charlie Crews is one for the ages.
Just a taste:
Judge for yourselves here.
We’ll get back to you on Season 2.
Two weeks ago Boston Globe theater critic Don Aucoin submited this piece:
Theater audiences are growing older
Next time you’re in a theater in Boston – or down on the Cape, or out in the Berkshires, or on Broadway, or pretty much anywhere, really – take a look around at the audience. Chances are you’ll notice something missing: young people.
What you’re likely to see instead is wave upon wave of gray hair. Most of the seats will be occupied by baby boomers and those of the generation born around the time of World War II. Thirtysomethings will be scarce; twentysomethings will be even scarcer. And teenagers? Don’t ask.
Or better yet: Do. Why don’t more young people go to the theater?
That article generated a number of letters to the arts editor, including this one published in yesterday’s Globe:
My patrons are slowly dying off, moving away, or becoming too old or frail to attend the theater! A question I ask myself is, how do I change my programming to attract younger audiences, “The Debt Generation”? Do they care about live theater? Or would they rather spend $100 on a single ticket to see Lady Gaga and Lady Antebellum?
ROY JACOBS
Marketing representative, Leach Theatre,
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Rolla, Mo.
Mr. Jacobs might want to check out the excellent Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, which chronicled the misadventures of the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival and addressed just that problem in Season 2.
The results are, well, Shakespearean.
Get thee to a DVD.
From the Sunday New York Times:
The At the Table column in some editions last Sunday about Brooklyn Crab, in the Red Hook neighborhood, misstated the serving size of steamed King Crab legs that customers get for $48. It is 1 1/2 pounds, not half a pound.
Okay.
That’s good to know.
Click to subscribe to RSS
Campaign Outsider 