WSJ Union-Busts MA

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From Kimberley Strassel’s Friday Wall Street Journal column:

Union Busting, Massachusetts Style

The Bay State’s heavily Democratic House strips municipal employee unions of their power to bargain most health benefits.

Lede:

Pop quiz: What political party, in what state, this week passed a bill in the dead of night stripping public-sector unions of their collective- bargaining powers? Republicans in Wisconsin? The GOP in Ohio or Indiana?

Try Democrats in Massachusetts. Maybe the debate over public-sector benefits isn’t all that ideological after all.

That would be the view of Massachusetts Democratic Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, who late Tuesday led an overwhelming majority of his House in passing a bill divesting policemen, firefighters, teachers and other municipal employees of the power to collectively bargain most health-care benefits. The 111-42 vote took place at 11:30 at night, so as to avoid a mass of protesting union workers set to descend on the State House the next day. The cheek.

You can bet Bay State unions won’t turn the other.

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Grand Old Patience: Republican Presidential Campaigns In Waiting

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Two unlikely GOP presidential maybes – short-sighted vulgarian Donald Trump and out-of-sight Jon Huntsman – have campaign machinery ready and willing to promote their candidacies.

From Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

Campaign Awaits Its Candidate

U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. will land in Washington on Friday with a presidential campaign-in-waiting, including staff and volunteers in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, a polling firm and a fundraising operation built on a billionaire father’s network.

The only question: Does the campaign have a candidate?

Former Utah governor Huntsman has said nothing about a presidential run, but why get technical about it.

The other side of the two-headed coin is Donald Trump (R-Trump This).

From The New Republic:

Trump’s Team

Who’s behind The Donald’s run for president?

Over the past few weeks, many people have dismissed Donald Trump’s possible presidential campaign as a joke. But don’t tell that to the people volunteering behind the scenes—an eclectic crew of young enthusiasts, old Reagan hands, and one especially slimy and notorious political operative.

That last would be Roger Stone, “the veteran Republican operative who is only too happy to be described as a ‘hit man.'”

No wonder Trump is a hit, man.

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Head Scratching Bruin Around Jack Edwards

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Chad Finn’s Boston Globe piece today about the Revolutionary rant Jack Edwards delivered after the Boston Bruins’ overtime win on  Wednesday adds a new chapter to his Grade A homerism.

This, of course, comes on the heels of his now-legendary GET UP! moment earlier in the Montreal series.

Get some help, Jack.

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1-877-Kars For Kids Song Drives People To Drink

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The hardrooting staff listened to part of Wednesday’s rousing Boston Bruins’ overtime win vs. the Montreal Canadiens on the radio, and among many annoying commercials, the most annoyingest was the 1-877-Kars For Kids jingle.

The hardrooting staff is not alone in this sentiment.

Plug 1-877-Kars For Kids into the Googletron and you get results such as:

The most irritating radio commercial of all time: 1-877-Kars-4 …

Kars 4 Kids Complaints – Fraud

PT | Phish | worst songs to get stuck in your head

And best of all:

I hate the 1–800–Kars For Kids song | Facebook

Representative sample:

Name:
I hate the 1-800-Kars For Kids song
Category:
Just for Fun – Totally Random
Description:
A group for all people that want to kill themselves everytime they hear the Kars for kids song and then can’t get it out of their heads
Privacy Type:
Open: All content is public. 
News:
I just hear that song and am presently tying a noose so as to not have to hear it palying in my head again and again.

The hardworking staff joined.

But wait! There’s also this Facebook group:

Get the 1-877-KARS-4-KIDS Jingle off the air!

Name: Get the 1-877-KARS-4-KIDS Jingle off the air!

Category: Common Interest – Beliefs & Causes

Description:

This is my plea. After 14 months of streaming WFAN at work, but constantly hearing that jingle…

yes, you know it…

“1-877-KARS-4-KIDS
K
A
R
S
KARS-4-KIDS
1-877-KARS-4-KIDS
DONATE YOUR KAR TODAY!”

Enough’s enough. No more. Everybody knows the number. We all have your message. And, trust us, if we ever have a car to donate, it’s most likely being donated to the bottom of the Manasquan River. And you know why? It’s not cause we have anything against kids. We don’t. Really! We just… (read more)

Figuring “hate you” are the next two words.

So we joined that group too.

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WSJ Has It In The Bag

Posted on April 29, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Thursday Wall Street Journal headline:

The Messages a Man Sends With His Work Bag

Photo:

Caption: Greg Unis, vice president of men’s merchandising for Coach, holds a Bleecker tote at a Coach store in New York City.

The hardworking staff: This guy is a weenie.

The Missus: This guy is carrying his wife’s bag.

Your message goes here.

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And The Hitman Just Keeps On Comin’

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Boston Herald scribe Howie Carr has a new book out, and it’s been front-page news in the feisty local tabloid all week, starting on Monday:

Even better, the publisher ran an ad for the tome in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal:

Hey – Bill O’Reilly blurbs the book! It must be good!

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The Boston Herald Wants Your Vote!

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Boston’s feisty local tabloid is currently engaged in – what to call it? – engagement journalism.

Literally, in one case.

For the past few weeks, the Herald has been running a Royal Wedding contest, which is essentially a bakeoff among local engaged couples for who’s “most deserving of royal wedding treatment” (finalists here).

And that’s not the only ballot battle being hosted by the Herald.

We already have a winner in the paper’s restaurant-naming contest! From Wednesday’s Herald:

Cheers to Blue Inc.!

Reader inspires name of chef’s new eatery

We have a winner!

Jason Santos, the blue-haired chef and “Hell’s Kitchen” runner-up, is naming his new restaurant Blue Inc. — and 24-year-old Ashley Capone wins an invitation to the June opening party and gets to name a drink on Santos’ menu.

“I couldn’t believe it was me,” said Capone, who got the phone call yesterday about winning the Herald’s restaurant-naming contest. “I’ve never won anything, except maybe some swim meets when I was younger.”

Good thing she jumped in the Herald pool.

But wait! There’s more! Also from Wednesday’s Herald:

Did they rock you? Vote now

Let the battle begin!

Voting for the Herald’s Bandemonium contest begins today, and you, the reader, decides which high school band, choir, orchestra or glee club deserves to win $5,000 from Ernie Boch Jr.’s Music Drives Us Foundation and bragging rights as the best high school music group.

Maybe they should rename themselves the Boston Herald-Voter.

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Not My Man Gottfried

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried, he of the toe-curling Japanese tsunami jokes that lost him his job as the voice of the Aflac duck, mounts a defense in this Salon piece by Kerry Lauerman:

It had been about a month since Gilbert Gottfried lobbed those brutally crude jokes about the Japanese tsunami when I met him earlier this week. He still seemed a little stunned by the reaction, which included a public drubbing by the morality police, and being fired as the voice of the Aflac spokesduck. Still, he couldn’t quite make himself grovel for forgiveness. “You start to feel sorry, and then you wonder what you’re feeling sorry for,” he says. “That I made jokes?”

Yeah – that you made jokes about a natural disaster that took upwards of 18,000 lives.

Regardless, Gottfried will appear for a book-signing this Friday at 7 p.m. at the Harvard Square Coop to promote Rubber Balls and Liquor.

The hardworking staff hopes to be there.

The hardworking staff hopes others will also be there to make Gottfried feel more sorry than he currently does.

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NYT Tries To Ad To Digital Subscriptions

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

First the New York Times launched a pay wall. Then it launched an ad campaign.

Via WWD (via the Missus):

The Times is running a series of three posters on Metro North, Long Island Railroad, in taxis and on the subway (e.g. the 8th Avenue-bound L platform at First Avenue). The three iterations — designed around the theme’s art, world and style — make use of photographs taken by Times’ photographers. One shows My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way head-banging bright red hair; the second shows a student walking home near the border of Somalia and Kenya; and the third shows a runway model at Donna Karan‘s show last fall. All three versions have lots of intricate webby-looking graphics — interactive time lines, podcast buttons, video players, links to comment threads. The point seems to be: There’s a lot to click on at nytimes.com.

Representative poster:

But wait! There are TV spots, too!

WWD says the Times will spend $13 million on the ad campaign.

Throwing good money after bad ideas?

Time will tell, as the chin-strokerati say.

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Manny Becoming Manny

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Former New York Times reporter (and current Boston University media relations officer) Sara Rimer knocks it out of the park in this Times piece about the Washington Heights origins of baseball riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma Manny Ramirez.

Lede:

Hero. Cheat. Prodigy. Ingrate. Free spirit. Knucklehead. Hall of Famer. Pariah. Enigma. Manny Ramirez, one of the great right-handed hitters of his generation, who retired from baseball this month after once again testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, was many things to many people — fans and family and teammates from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to Cleveland to Boston. Sara Rimer, then a reporter for The New York Times, met Ramirez in 1991 at George Washington High School in Manhattan. Over two decades, she enjoyed a memorable and mystifying acquaintanceship with Ramirez.

What follows is a fascinating – and frustrating – chronicle of Ramirez’s star-kissed past:

I don’t remember the first time I saw that quicksilver swing. What I remember is what it felt like to be there on that rock-hard artificial surface atop the hill next to the high school, among his euphoric teammates and fans shouting his name, merengue blasting from someone’s boom box in the concrete bleachers behind the third-base line, the major league scouts lined up behind home plate as Manny came up to bat in his baggy black-and-orange secondhand uniform and red cleats and slammed one home run after another, day after day.

– and star-crossed present:

That was the Manny who at least seemed knowable, before he disappeared behind the wall of all that surreal major league fame and money. Who is the real Manny? The 18-year-old prospect with everything ahead of him, or the 38-year-old major leaguer who walked away from baseball rather than face a 100-game suspension after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs for the second time in recent years? Who knows?

Who knows, indeed. But the hardworking staff knows this: You really should read this piece.

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