Public Broadcosting

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

First it was NPR sacking Wan (at the sight of Muslims) Williams for no apparent reason except NPR execs are a bunch of rabbits. (Apologies to rabbits everywhere.)

To summarize:

NPR=Not Particularly Rational.

Now PBS has Texas-Chainsaw-Edited Tina Fey’s acceptance speech for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

(Apparently there’s nothing funny about Sarah Palin rape-kit jokes.)

So, to summarize:

PBS=Plainly Bowdlerized Stuff.

Hey, public broadcastniks:

There’s a public broadcost to this craven behavior. Check next year’s budget for details.

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The San Francisco Gone-icle

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

The hardworking staff is in San Francisco for the National Communication Association convention (don’t ask), and so we immediately picked up Monday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.

You know how Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, “There’s no there there”?

Well, Oakland has come to Frisco.

There’s no Chronicle there.

The A section featured 16 pages, which is fine for a Monday, but the Bay Area metro section was four – count ’em, four – pages, with one eighth-page ad and some obits.

The Business section wasn’t much better – two small ads and some legal notices.

But I did get to read my Left Coast doppelgänger, Jon Carroll, who by his own admission was not having his best day.

In Fact, he wanted to call in “doesn’t have a clue today” or “is stupid today.”

But file he did, about, well, places he’s lived, including his current home – wait for it – Oakland.

“Now, in Oakland, we don’t get many tourists. When I see people fumbling with a map in Jack London Square, I figure they must be really lost. My first instinct is to show them the way to the ferry terminal. We don’t have that many sights in Oakland. Lots of great restaurants, very nice lake, a rose garden, Fairyland – what am I missing? We’re not a tourist town.”

In other words, not much of a there there.

(Sorry for no links or graphics. It’s the iPad. The hardworking staff will work it out over winter break.)

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NYT Weak In Review

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

From Sunday’s New York Times:

A Star College Quarterback Is Worth …

Revelations that the father of Cam Newton, Auburn University’s star quarterback and a leading Heisman Trophy candidate, may have sought as much as $200,000 from recruiters has reignited the debate over whether college athletes ought to be paid.

They certainly pay off – in publicity, in rankings, and in merchandise sales. Cam Newton, however, not so much.

Newton is worth a lot, though not as much as many believe. That’s because the marketing of individual [college] players is restricted, unlike the situation in professional sports. Player names, for instance, are not printed on jerseys, which limits the chances for schools, apparel makers, advertisers and others to generate income from Newton’s name and likeness.

But wait – what about this photo from the Times piece?

Isn’t that Newton’s name printed on his jersey? So what exactly is the Times saying?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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The Most Beastly Photo Of Tina Brown Ever

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

From our Camera-Unready desk (via Saturday’s New York Times):

That’s a Grade-A Yikes!

Here’s guessing Tina will do yikewise to the Times at the first opportunity.

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James Levine. Rhymes With Supine.

Posted on November 13, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Boston Symphony Orchestra music director James Levine – who’s headed to the Guinness Book of World Records in the category of Having the Most Jobs and Doing None of Them – is, not surprisingly, AWOL from his latest gig.

Via the New York Times:

James Levine, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, withdrew from a performance of “Don Pasquale” at intermission Wednesday night because of a stomach virus, the Met said. Joseph Colaneri, an assistant conductor at the house, stepped in and led the final act. The Met said on Thursday that Mr. Levine, 67, was “much better” and planned to conduct the opera on Saturday, as scheduled.

Yes, well, we’ll see about that.

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Boston Theater Boffo At NYT

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Swell New York Times review by Ben Brantley of  Massachusetts native Annie Baker’s The Shirley, Vt., Plays currently at  the Boston Center for the Arts.

Lede:

BOSTON — What you notice most about Shirley, Vt., is how quiet it can get. This is not the silence classically associated with small-town America, a noiselessness that probably doesn’t exist anymore anyway. There are, after all, cellphones in Shirley.

No, the quiet that pulses everywhere in this fictional town, the creation of the seriously gifted young playwright Annie Baker, is the kind that descends among people when words feel inadequate. In Ms. Baker’s small, vast and meticulously detailed universe, words are by their very nature inadequate. So even when people are talking up a storm, you’re conscious of the void that separates them, filled with frustrated thoughts and hopes of connection.

Ms. Baker’s distinctively bittersweet sounds of silence are echoing throughout the Boston Center for the Arts, where three of her works are being performed, with considerable skill and affection, by three different troupes: “Circle Mirror Transformation” (by the Huntington Theater Company), “Body Awareness” (by the SpeakEasy Stage Company) and “The Aliens” (by Company One).

Shirley this sounds like a theater production we should see.

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So The Internet Is NOT Killing Print?

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

From The Guardian (via the Missus):

We thought the internet was killing print. But it isn’t

Nut graf(s):

A fascinating new piece of research this week looks in detail at the success of newspaper websites and attempts to find statistical correlations with sliding print copy sales. As one goes up, the other must go down, surely? These are the underpinnings of transition.

But “in the UK at least, there is no such correlation”, reports the number-crunching analyst Jim Chisholm. “This is true at both a micro-level in terms of UK newspaper titles and groups and at a macro-level comparing national internet adoption with circulation performance. Indeed, the opposite case could be argued: that newspapers that do well on the web also do better in print… Understandably worried traditional journalists should know that the internet is not a threat.”

Well, that’s a relief.

Understandably.

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Scott Brown: Dead Man Walking?

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

That’s what Politico says:

Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who launched the GOP’s midterm insurgency with his special election win last January, just might be a dead man walking. 

His polling numbers are still solid. There’s no Democratic war-horse candidate primed to take him on. Brown’s campaign coffers are full, and his celebrity lets him command a national following. 

So what’s the problem?

[V]irtually every result from last week’s elections in Massachusetts offered up grim omens for Brown’s future. His party failed to capture a single high-profile office in the state. Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, despite early signs of vulnerability, won reelection by a convincing 6-point margin over Charlie Baker, a health insurance executive viewed as a star by state and national Republicans. 

Highly touted Republicans lost campaigns for state treasurer and auditor. The National Republican Congressional Committee spent money to contest the open 10th District House seat, but state Rep. Jeff Perry — a personal friend of Brown whom the senator campaigned for — came up short.

Even Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley won reelection by 26 points, not even a year after her defeat by Brown made her look hapless and flat-footed in running to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy.

(Martha Coakley Adjective File: Add “hapless and flat-footed.” Comes right after “ham-handed and tin-eared.”)

Me, I wouldn’t write Scott Brown off right now. In fact, I’ll lay plenty of 8-to-5 that he continues to be the exception that proves the rule.

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Free The Boston Herald 1!

Posted on November 10, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Yesterday, the hardworking staff registered for an eight-day free trial of the Boston Herald’s SmartEdition, which enabled us to produce this Paul Szep/Zip Resemblance post, complete with Scott Brown naricature.

Flash forward to today, when we wanted to post a Szep/Zip naricature of Deval Patrick from this piece.

Alas! – our free eight-day trial was nowhere in sight. Instead, the Herald repeatedly asked for our money.

Apparently, eight days isn’t as long as it used to be. At least in Herald time.

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Szep’s Drawings: Zip Resemblance To Subjects

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

For a long time now, the hardworking staff has noticed that Paul Szep’s caricatures for the Boston Herald in no way resemble the characters themselves.

Exhibit Umpteen (from a Monday op-ed about Massachusetts Sen. Scott “Who’s Jeff Perry?” Brown):

Szeriously – does that look anything like Mr. Barn Jacket?

I didn’t think so.

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