Is there a classier athlete than Rafael Nadal in professional sports? Maybe Derek Jeter, but in a photo-finish I give the nod to Rafa.
In advance of this year’s U.S. Open, he spoke about how much he wanted to win the tournament, “but without obsession, no?”
Passion without obsession.
So far Nadal has handled that balance perfectly.
Which is why it’s so much fun to watch him win.
From our Missed It the First Time desk:
A few letters to the editor of the Boston Globe about its Sept. 5th front-page piece essentially declaring UMass Amherst a second-class university.
Letter #1, from UMass Amherst chancellor Robert Holub, on Sept. 9th:
I WRITE in response to your front-page Sept. 5 article “At UMass, top rung remains out of reach: Hampered by years of cuts, Amherst campus struggles to draw ranking Bay State students.’’ Your readers deserve what I believe is the real story, which is that University of Massachusetts Amherst is the finest public university in New England.
Figures omitted from the article tell an impressive story about the strengths of UMass Amherst:
Enrollment of Massachusetts residents increased by nearly 1,500 between 2004 and 2009, our applications increased 54 percent between 2005 and 2010, and we just enrolled the largest freshman class in school history.
And etc.
Letter #2, from Chairwoman of the Amherst Select Board Stephanie O’Keeffe, on Sept. 12th:
UMass has taken many effective steps to address its so-called party school reputation, and the Town of Amherst is proud to partner in these efforts. While there is still more work to do, the “Zoo Mass’’ days are behind us, and UMass officials and students deserve great credit for that.
Further, there is a bigger story to be told about the successes of this student body: their outstanding academic work and their extraordinary civic engagement. Maybe articles on subjects such as nursing students providing weekly care at housing for the elderly and disabled, or hundreds of fraternity and sorority members going door-to-door to raise money for human service agencies, just don’t sell papers.
Ouch.
Letter #3, from UMass alum Heidi Biehl, also on Sept 12th (bunch of letters in last Sunday’s Globe Ideas section):
WHAT A slap in the face to read the front-page headlines in last Sunday’s Globe — “At UMass, top rung remains out of reach: Hampered by years of cuts, Amherst campus struggles to draw ranking Bay State students’’ — last Sunday, of all days. That was the day that thousands of students moved in to their dorms at UMass Amherst, most of them eager to learn and experience college life.
Looks like it’s the Boston Globe getting slapped in the face now.
From our One for the Missus bureau:
Absolutely hilarious piece on BBC radio yesterday (audio here, around 49:15) about a “cat organ” recital for Prince Charles at a London eco-festival. The instrument is a row of 16 “model” (or maybe “modal”) cats, “each of [which] is capable of meowing, within reasonable tolerances, of a two-octave diatonic scale,” according to cat maestro Henry Dagg.
After assuring listeners that no cats were harmed in the making of the instrument, Beeb presenter Claire Bolderson says to Dagg:
“And what do you do, you squeeze the cat, do you?”
As with so much BBC material, it’s priceless. At least Prince Charles thought so.
First there was last Sunday’s Boston Globe front-page piece:
At UMass, top rung remains out of reach
Hampered by years of cuts, Amherst campus struggles to draw ranking Bay State students
Then there was the reaction (via Universal Hub):
UMass grads tell Globe writer where she can stick her article about their alma mater
Now there’s a full-page ad in this Sunday’s Globe, “Paid for by alumni and friends of the University of Massachusetts Amherst,” with the headline:
A Response to The Globe Article of Last Sunday Concerning UMass Amherst
(No link, because apparently alumni and friends of UMass Amherst haven’t caught on to that Internet thing. But they’re pissed off nonetheless.)
Stay tuned for further details.
It was mail call for the Public Editor in this week’s Sunday New York Times, and newly minted Arthur Brisbane began his column with this note:
The Times hears a multitude of concerns from readers each week, far more than can ever be dealt with in this space. To give a public airing to a few more of the issues raised, I will periodically — starting today — publish comments from readers, along with brief responses from the Times staff and, when appropriate, myself.
Here’s the first letter out of the mailbag:
Women rarely die, it seems. Check the Aug. 27 and Aug. 28 obituary pages of The Times.
Eight men were noted in obituaries and only one woman. I think you will find this consistent over any period you look at. Take any recent period, whether it is a week, a month or a year, and the numbers are consistent.
MIKE SPONDER
Manhattan
Brisbane gave the first word to Times obituaries editor Bill McDonald, who started off by asserting that any Times obit “has to be news to a national and international readership.” McDonald then adds this:
The other thing to note is that obit pages are by definition backward- looking. Most of the people we write about now were born in the 1920s and ’30s. They largely came of age around midcentury and began making their marks in the postwar years. It was an era largely run by men, and white men at that. So if you apply our rigid selectivity — a focus on movers and shakers — to that era, it should come as no surprise that an overwhelming percentage of the people we write about were white and male.
Brisbane’s response? “Mr. McDonald shows how social mores of the past dictate the demography of the obituary page today.”
Nonsense.
If Brisbane had done his homework, he’d have acknowledged that McDonald’s defense of the manbituary page (this Sunday’s Times scorecard: three men, zero women) was challenged by the diligent Times watchdog website NYTPicker last month.
Headline:
All The Men That’s Fit To Print: So Far This August, NYT Has Published 76 Obituaries — 70 Men And 6 Women.
Bigger picture:
And for the year 2010 to date, the NYT has chronicled the deaths of 606 men, and only 92 women.
As for McDonald’s claim that the disparity is generational and things are getting better, here’s NYTPicker’s response:
We were so struck by the seeming ludicrousness of that statement that we devoted several hours to a painstaking count of NYT obituaries in 1990. That’s two decades ago, long enough in the past that the supposed disparity noted by McDonald should have been even more pronounced. Right?
Wrong. What we found was a disparity between men and women nearly identical to the extraordinary current gender split.
Of 691 NYT obituaries published in 1990, only 92 of them were of women — almost exactly replicating the 2010 numbers.
Times editors have consistently blown off NYTPicker by saying that the paper doesn’t respond to claims by anonymous bloggers (the site has a contributing staff of six, but no bylines).
It’s entirely predictable that NYTPicker would be dead to Times editors dodging responsibility.
But that shouldn’t extend to the Public Editor.
America’s Litt-It Guy Jonathan Franzen entered a banged-out Rabb Lecture Hall at the Boston Public Library Saturday afternoon and tried to move the podium to the center of the stage.
Unsuccessfully.
Undaunted, Franzen proceeded to read the “Mistakes Were Made” chapter from his blockbuster new novel Freedom, which, he disclaimed, “was not intended to be bite-sized – more an intravenous kind of thing.”
It was more than intravenous. It was stunning.
At the conclusion Franzen said, “this gets harder to read” each time.
Not as hard, though, as dealing with the audience Q&A that followed.
First question: What’s the significance of the pop culture references in the book, specifically the band Bright Eyes and SNL’s Tina Fey?
Franzen (after a painful head-scratching interlude): “As opposed to making up a band’s name or a comedian’s name?”
It only got worse from there.
The next question – more like a manifesto – was about how Franzen’s literary ambitions had evolved in terms of “form-al innovation in novels” and etc. and etc. and more pseudo-literary posturing.
Franzen (running his hands over his head): “I can practically feel that question smoothing my hair back from the blast of it.”
The questioning continued in that vein – self-absorbed, convoluted, opaque, phony – until someone asked, “What’s your writing routine? Did it really take you nine years to write Freedom? What do you do about writer’s block?”
Franzen: “Three of my least favorite questions in one package. There ought to be a law . . . I don’t believe in writer’s block. It sounds so vulgar, so mid-century Freudian . . . it also ties in with the large-intestinal view of literary production.”
Excellent. But then it was back to it’s-all-about-me questions (Audience member: “Skip it!”) and plot-revealing rambles (Audience members: “Boo!”).
Overall the questions made any right-thinking person embarrassed for Boston.
(If you’d like to hear actual thoughtful questions posed to Franzen, check out Guy Raz’s Saturday All Things Considered interview with him.)
Saturday Boston Herald headline:
Stein fights for debate spot
Seems the Boston Media Consortium – comprising the Boston Globe, WCVB, WHDH, NECN, WGBH (TV and radio) and WBUR – has established a set of criteria for participation in its two scheduled Massachusetts gubernatorial debates (September 21 and October 26) that Green-Rainbow candidate Jill Stein has not met.
From the Herald report:
In a letter to Stein, the consortium said the candidates can take part in the debates only if they have raised at least $100,000 between Jan. 1 and Oct. 1 and fetched 5 percent in a poll done by a recognized media organization or academic institution. They also must have a campaign headquarters with at least three paid staffers and daily communications with nonpartisan media outlets.
Unfortunately, the Herald piece fails to give the reader any specifics about where Stein either qualifies or falls short.
(The hardworking staff has long held that the Herald is a lively index to the Boston Globe, and this is no exception.)
Saturday Globe story:
Stein has met some of [the criteria]. She has a campaign headquarters and at least three paid staff members, according to campaign finance records. She also registered above the 5 percent polling threshold in a May Suffolk University/7 News poll, though more recent surveys have shown her below that level.
But Stein has fallen short of the final threshold, a requirement that she raise $100,000 between Jan. 1 and Oct. 1. Her campaign manager, Daryl Sprague, said she has raised more than $70,000, and has picked up her pace since Tuesday’s televised debate on WBZ, in which she was included.
Two things:
1) If a candidate for statewide office can get to 5% in polls without raising $100,000, that alone should get her into the debates.
2) The first Boston Media Consortium debate is September 21 but the fundraising deadline is October 1? What if you hit six figures on September 29? Do you get to call for a do-over?
[Campaign Outsider Exclusive Sidebar®: The hardworking staff participated in the 2002 incarnation of the Boston Media Consortium, which wrestled with three minor-party candidates in the gubernatorial race – Stein, Libertarian Carla Howell, and Independent Barbara Johnson. The consortium wanted no part of that trio, and jury-rigged the criteria to keep them out. (By the end, you had to bring a food taster to the consortium meetings.) But Mitt Romney (R-Big Love) wanted them in for reasons that quickly became apparent. So they were in.]
But now, Stein isn’t.
Old friend and longtime technical adviser Dan Kennedy has it right at Media Nation: Jill Stein is a credible candidate and deserves to be in the debates. At least now.
The hardworking staff was interviewed on BBC radio yesterday (audio here at 28:00) about the media rumpus around PyroPastor Terry Jones and his Koran-again, off-again threat to burn multiple copies of Islam’s Holy Book.
Beeb presenter Fergus Nicoll was gobsmacked that the U.S. news media were giving so much play to a (formerly) insignificant crank, although I believe he’d concede that the British news media aren’t exactly what you’d call restrained.
(No American news organizations, after all, have hacked into Terry Jones’s voicemails. Yet.)
But the implication was that the Brits wouldn’t chase this story, and the hardworking staff is inclined to give Fergus the benefit of the doubt in this case.
Meanwhile, the only thing more pathetic than the media slutathon currently underway (Donald Trump? The vile Westboro Baptist Church?) is the inevitable media regretathon, which has started midstream.
Coverage of Koran Case Stirs Questions on Media Role
Media to Terry Jones: You used us!
Ya think?
A week ago, as the hardworking staff duly noted at the time, an outfit called Takara-jima Publishing ran a two-page ad in the New York Times asking this question:
Classic teaser ad, yes? Made more teaser-y by the virtual absence of any information about the company on the Internet.
So the hardworking etc. decided to check back one week later with both the Times and the Net.
Net results:
1) Nothing in the Times. (Really, who runs a six-figure teaser and doesn’t run a payoff?)
2) This on the Web.
Your head-scratch goes here.
The hardworking staff – in between its hard work – has watched a fair amount of U.S. Open coverage, and one thing viewers of the tournament can’t escape (apart from John McEnroe’s apparent disdain for Pam Shriver) is this Mercedes-Benz commercial:
The spot shows a series of luminaries – from Martin Luther King Jr. to Muhammad Ali to Leonard Bernstein to some gal who looks really familiar but we can’t place her to Michelle Kwan to Green Day to Roger Federer – throwing up their arms in a triumphant V, which nicely mirrors the new Mercedes Gullwing silhouette.
The cost of the car? Here’s a price list from carsession.com:
The SLS AMG is available at a price of 177,310 euros (including 19% VAT). Thanks to a diverse range of optional extras, the gull-wing model can be enhanced to suit any personal taste.
The most important optional extras at a glance (prices are inclusive of 19% VAT):
* AMG ceramic high-performance composite braking system: 11,305 euros
* AMG forged wheels in a 10-spoke design, size 9.5 x 19 inches (front) and
11.0 x 20 inches (rear), with tyre size 265/35 R 19 (front) and 295/30 R 20 (rear): 2,380 euros
* AMG carbon-fibre engine compartment cover: 4,760 euros
* “AMG ALU-BEAM silver” paint finish: 11,900 euros
* “AMG Monza grey magno” paint finish: 3,867.50 euros
* Bang & Olufsen BeoSound AMG surround sound system: 7,021 euros
That would be 225,130 U.S. dollars, with $52,354.10 of available options.
Even more knee-buckling is the price tag of the commercial. The hardworking staff has no idea what exactly it would cost to obtain rights to the images of all those icons in the Mercedes ad, but it’s certainly seven figures. Maybe eight.
Go figure.
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