From Friday’s New York Times front page after the Yankees basically blew their ALDS series vs. the Detroit Tigers:
Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees struck out to end the game
Friday’s dead-tree edition, by contrast, featured a photo of Rodriguez after he struck out with the bases loaded in the 7th.
No question A-Roid failed to come through in the clutch. Then again, that’s true of most of the other Yankees as well.
Plenty of blame to go around.
Thursday’s Wall Street Journal was a mixed blessing for GOP Hair Apparent Mitt Romney.
The good news:
Christie’s Exit Sends Donors Romney’s Way
The bad news:
Romney Environment Push Is Fresh Target for His Rivals
Win some, lose some, yes?
Verizon is once again running full-page ads in the Boston Globe painting the telecom giant’s union employees as unreasonable in their negotiating demands:
The hardworking staff thinks this dustup has a fair chance of going on for a very(izon) long time.
New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who the hardworking staff has repeatedly pointed out is incapable of mentioning Mitt Romney without adding that he “once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car,” is at it again in her latest column, but even she’s exhibiting symptoms of Seamus Fatigue (pat. pending):
I know you couldn’t care less about Sarah Palin bowing out of the presidential race, but let me ask you this: Who wants to spend the next 13 months watching Mitt Romney run against Barack Obama? Can I see a show of hands?
I thought so. All of us, regardless of political persuasion, have a stake in trying to keep the Republican presidential fight going through the winter. These are tough times. (“Sesame Street” just announced it’s adding a poverty-stricken Muppet.) We need diversion.
Plus, it doesn’t look as if there’s going to be a professional basketball season. And I cannot really figure out that many ways to mention that Romney once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.
Really, there’s never been a better time to enter the Seamus Sweepstakes™: Guess the date on which Collins will write about Romney without mentioning his cartop pooch, and win an all-expenses-paid lunch with the hardworking staff.
You know this can’t go on forever. Or can it?
. . . and you still get a picture of this:
Game 5 of the ALDS Tigers-Yankees tilt was by far the worst for a Made Yankee Fan in Boston:
Bases loaded, one out in the Yankees 4th – zero runs.
Bases loaded, one out in the Yankees 7th – one run (thanks to a two-out walk).
Bottom of the 8th, Derek Jeter – who has taken called strikes all through the series to let Brett Gardner steal second – inexplicably does not when Gardner has second totally stolen, flying out to end the inning.
Bottom of the 9th, Alex Rodriguez predictably strikes out to end the Yankees’ season.
The very definition of Gone Fishin’.
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Tea Bagged) got plenty of help from Tea Party groups in his successful 2010 campaign, but maybe not so much this time around.
According to the Daily Caller, the tea has cooled:
Scott Brown was the tea party movement’s first electoral victory. But now that he’s up for re-election for a full six-year term in 2012, tea party activists tell The Daily Caller they’re not going to bother putting together the same operation that swept him into office the first time.
Don’t get them wrong: They’ll vote for him; they just won’t work for him. “Scott Brown has disappointed us a few times,” says one Tea Party Patriot. “So are we going to go out there and hold signs for him everyday? I don’t think so.”
And he’s not doing all that well on the gender front either after making a sexist crack about Democratic Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren on a radio program this morning.
Let the cups and saucers fly.
Wednesday’s Boston Globe:
A top Patrick aide accused of OUI
A top adviser to Governor Deval Patrick was arrested early Sunday on drunk driving charges.
Ron Bell, the governor’s senior adviser for community affairs, was pulled over in Brookline at 3:30 a.m. after failing to maintain his lane on Boylston Street, police said.
Bell was charged with operating under the influence, first offense, and marked lanes violations, said David Traub, a spokesman for the Norfolk district attorney’s office. Bell pleaded not guilty Monday in Brookline District Court and was released on personal recognizance. Brookline police cited Bell for speeding.
Wednesday’s Boston Herald:
Cops: Aide insisted, ‘I work for Deval’
Community affairs director arrested on OUI charges
A longtime top aide to Gov. Deval Patrick nabbed on drunken driving charges over the weekend told cops he worked for the governor and was “very important at the State House,” according to Brookline police.
“I work for Deval Patrick, if that helps,” Ron Bell, the governor’s $97,000-a-year community affairs director, reportedly told police when he was arrested at 3:30 a.m. Sunday.
“He also kept telling (officers) that he worked for Deval Patrick and he is very important at the State House,” Brookline police Sgt. Michael R. Disario wrote in a report.
Forget two different Americas. Two different Bostons is more like it.
There are umpteen million stories in the Mac-ed City. This has been one of them:
I bought a Mac SE in 1989. It cost, as I recall, $3000 (which was real money at the time) and had slightly more computing power than my left pinky.
But for me as a freelance journalist, it was absolutely transformative.
I no longer had to cut and paste with scissors and Scotch tape. (Good.)
I therefore no longer had to go to Copy Cop before delivering – mostly by hand – my pieces to the various publications I wrote for. (Very good.)
I no longer had to know my destination (Marshall McLuhan: “A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.”) before I started a “loose sally of the mind,” as the great Dr. Johnson defined the essay. (Not as good.)
I no longer performed the Keyboard Shuffle, that choreography of paper-feed-keystroke-ding!-carriage-return-keystroke-ding! that chronicled my compositional progress. (Kind of sad.)
Win some, lose some. But, to be honest, I never wanted to go back.
Every now and then the articles start to pile up at Sneak ADtack Central, so to kind of clear the coffee table, here are some pieces you might want to check out:
• Ad Age: Twitter Landing More TV Roles Than Most of Product Placement’s Top Practitioners
The rich get richer: “YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all show up during prime-time entertainment programming on broadcast TV as often, or more often, than many of even the biggest practitioners of product placement.” Don’t miss the nifty charts.
• MediaPost: Facebook’s Changes Present Opportunities For Brands
Everything Mark Zuckerberg does is designed to weasel more information out of the vast legions of Facebookniks, the better to peddle them to online marketers. This piece details what new avenues the latest wave of changes – revamped news feed, Ticker, Timeline, etc. – opens up for the marketing crowd (about to get more crowded).
• Los Angeles Times: There’s little privacy in a digital world
Subhed: Users of TVs, computers and smartphones leave technological fingerprints wherever they go, and companies are lapping up the data. And don’t forget video games, retail store loyalty cards, you cable box, and etc. All to help marketers target and address you more effectively. (Although, as the Sneaksters noted recently, not everyone is impressed by the results.)
Geek.com: Facebook stores up to 800 pages of personal data per user account
There’s that man again! (Fun fact to know and tell: Facebook can track you even when you’re logged out.) But here’s the money quote:
As well as the information you’d expect (name, address, date of birth, friends), there’s also unexpected data such as messages you have deleted, logging which events you decided not to attend as well as those you did, the last location you accessed Facebook from, a list of every single machine you ever logged into Facebook from, who has poked you, and there’s even fields for political and religious views even though they were empty.
That’s a big yikes. (Tip o’ the pixel to Jeff H.)
Originally posted on Sneak ADtack
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