Dead Blogging The Celtics-Lakers Alley-Oops Game

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Game 7 of the NBA Finals was quite possibly the least artistic basketball game (that didn’t include me) I’ve ever seen.

Who’da thunk Kobe Bryant would play his worst game of the series, and Ron Artest would play his best?

It was a game that all along felt like it would come down to the last possession.

But it didn’t.

Guy on cellphone walking past the Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider about 12:30 am Friday:

Ray Allen sucked, didn’t he?

Don’t you think he cost them the game?

I mean, it was one bleeped-up game.

It was something, anyway.

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Headline o’ the Day (Français Edition)

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

From Campaign Outsider’s Boo Hoo bureau:

Washington Post headline, via Thursday’s Boston Globe.

Economic woes may force French to work until 62

Lede:

PARIS — The French government abandoned a sacred totem of its generous welfare system yesterday to combat mounting deficits, saying that workers soon will no longer have the right to retire at age 60 but will have to wait until they are 62.

Seriously? 62?

Lemme rephrase that:

Boo hoo.

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The High Art Of Photographic Advertising

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Terrific advertising photography show at Harvard Business School’s Baker Library, recreating the 1934 National Alliance of Art and Industry Exhibition at New York’s Rockefeller Plaza.

Sample image:

From the exhibit brochure:

When the photographic exhibition sponsored by the National Alliance of Art and Industry (NAAI) and the Photographic Illustrators, Inc. opened in the 30 Rockefeller Plaza gallery in September 1934, the exhibition’s organizers paid homage to Alfred Stieglitz in a reception dedicated to the “dean of American photography.” By the 1930s a new generation of photographers with a modernist sensibility pursued commercial photography as both an artistic endeavor and a profession, and exhibitions around the United States began to bring attention to their work in the context of a fine-art setting.

In the Rockefeller Plaza mezzanine were approximately 250 works by 50 artists, including such well-known photographers as Russell Aikins, Margaret Bourke-White, Nickolas Muray, John Paul Pennebaker, William Rittase, and Edward Steichen. From atmospheric pictures depicting the working conditions of coal miners to abstract views conveying the luxury enjoyed by owners of Chrysler’s latest automobiles, viewers were treated, as The New York Times’s review noted, to works of “technical excellence and adaptation to purpose” by “leaders of the photographer’s art.”

Favorite image of the Missus and me: Margaret Bourke-White’s George Washington Bridge.

Go see this show.

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Last Week’s News Tomorrow (WCVB Edition)

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

From our New York Times as America’s Assignment Desk bureau:

Times headline, 6/7/10:

Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price

WCVB report, 6/16/10:

The New Addiction: Digital Technology

Scientists Say Many Are Hooked, Need To Shut Down

C’mon, newspeople – let’s shorten up the lagtime.

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New York Times Cross-Eyed On Crossover Voting?

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Nifty piece in Wednesday’s New York Times web-headlined:

In Open Primary, Fear of Party Crashing

Lede:

SALT LAKE CITY — The Tea Party as party crasher?

That’s the question hanging over the Democratic primary next Tuesday between Utah’s lone Democrat in Congress, Rep. Jim Matheson, and his challenger, a retired schoolteacher named Claudia Wright.

Neither candidate is the sort to make a conservative’s heart sing, especially Ms. Wright, who favors gun control, health care reform and abortion rights. She is also openly lesbian in a state where same-sex orientation is not exactly plain vanilla.

But that left-field portrait, paradoxically, might be exactly the suite of traits that could draw in at least some conservatives to support her in the primary. Why? Because she would, presumably, be the easier candidate for a Republican to beat in November. Under Utah Democratic Party rules, any registered voter can show up, no party questions asked, and fill out a ballot.

That would be what’s known as tactical – or crossover – voting, a practice honored more in theory than in reality.

For one recent example, see Eric Alterman’s review of  Zev Chavets’ mash note, Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One.

Limbaugh launched “Operation Chaos” [in 2008], instructing conservatives to vote for Hillary Clinton in crossover primaries in order to weaken the eventual nominee, Barack Obama.

But that’s ancient history in ADHD America, so it’s no surprise the Times didn’t reference the Limbaugh-lower-now effort.

What is surprising: The Times didn’t mention the South Carolina Democratic Senate primary that Nowhere Man Alvin Greene won much to his surprise.

Crossover voting is one of the “conspiracy theories” in the aftermath of the SC primary, as this AP report indicated.

The state has open primaries, which means Republican voters could have chosen to vote in the Democratic primary and gone for Greene. But then crossover voters couldn’t have voted in a more-important four-way race for governor on the GOP ballot.

More than twice as many voters cast ballots in the GOP primary than in the Democratic contest, and vote totals show 19,000 voters selected a Democratic candidate for governor but skipped the U.S. Senate part of the ballot.

So maybe not. But still – germane to the Times Utah Congressional story? Or not?

Utell us.

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What Can (Scott) Brown Do For You?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

First it was Massachusetts Independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill knocking off the aw-shucks-why-are-they-so-mean-to-me schtick that Scott Brown (R-Why Are They So Mean to Me?) used very effectively in his upset Senate run.

Cahill video (complete with Browniak sweater and kitchen counters) countering meanie ads from the Republican Governors Association:

Now comes Massachusetts GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker with a TV spot, as the Boston Globe reports, “introducing himself as a local guy in a gray T-shirt playing pickup basketball with his son.”

[Campaign Outsider Quibble®: They’re not actually playing “pickup basketball” – more like “one-on-one.”]

Regardless, the ad:

Another Brown ripoff.

See: Scott Brown challenges Barack Obama to a game of two-on-two.

Hey, Deval Patrick: What Can (Scott) Brown Do For You?

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Campaign Outsider Convoluted Sentence o’ the Day™

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Lede of Tuesday’s Boston Globe editorial headlined, “World Cup: Boston shows its international face.”

[Can the hardworking staff take just a moment – or two minutes – to bemoan the interminable load time of the online Boston Globe? Thank you.]

Back to that lede:

Walking around downtown, Boston’s international character is barely visible.

Huh?

Putting aside the misplaced modifier or dangling participle or whatever “Walking around downtown” is (Word meister Jan Freeman: Help!), the hardworking staff found the next sentence even more convoluted:

So Mayor Menino’s plan to broadcast the World Cup finals on City Hall Plaza — and the explosion of interest in the tournament, replete with costumes and flags, at downtown sports bars — is a welcome expression of the city’s makeup.

The headscratching staff hereby applies for the much-needed position of VP/Grammatical Chiropractor at the Globe.

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WCVB’s Mystery Pundits

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Monday night, NewsCenter 5 at 11 ran a report on Ted Kennedy’s “Secret FBI Files.”

Oddly enough, the piece featured another secret: It failed to identify – either verbally or visually – two local political analysts, leading one to believe that WCVB stands for We Can’t Vaguely Bother (to ID people).

This marks roughly the umpteenth time ‘CVB has done this (the hardworking staff has lost count).

The web version – which also turns the analysts anonymous – is here.

As a public service, Campaign Outsider will identify them: Democratic analyst Mary Anne Marsh, and Boston University social science professor Thomas Whalen.

Because, well, We Can Vaguely Bother.

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Boston Globe’s Israeli Peretz-el

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

Editor’s note from Sunday’s Boston Globe:

A May 24 story about a protest against an Israeli ambassador’s commencement speech at Brandeis University was written by a part-time correspondent who failed to disclose that he had previously editorialized in personal Internet posts against Israeli policy toward Palestinians. Globe editors learned of those posts while conducting an internal review of the Brandeis coverage. The correspondent’s failure to disclose a conflict violated Globe policy, and he should not have been assigned to cover the event. The story failed to include coverage of the substance of the remarks made by Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, and made no mention of an electronic petition supporting his appearance.

Here’s the hardworking staff’s post about the piece last month.

And here’s the New Republic’s Marty Peretz back then about the Globe’s persistent anti-Israel bias.

So, nu?

Nothing yet from Peretz on the Globe Editor’s note.

But inquiring minds want to know.

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C.J. Chivers, As In Shivers

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Campaign Outsider

The always notable C.J. Chivers has yet another terrific piece in Sunday’s New York Times.

Headline (web edition) :

As Afghan Fighting Expands, U.S. Medics Plunge In

Lede:

MARJA, Afghanistan — The Marine had been shot in the skull. He was up ahead, at the edge of a field, where the rest of his patrol was fighting. A Black Hawk medevac helicopter flew above treetops toward him, banked and hovered dangerously before landing nearby.

Several Marines carried the man aboard. His head was bandaged, his body limp. Sgt. Ian J. Bugh, the flight medic, began the rhythms of CPR as the helicopter lifted over gunfire and zigzagged away. Could this man be saved?

Nearly nine years into the Afghan war, with the number of troops here climbing toward 100,000, the pace for air crews that retrieve the wounded has become pitched.

The piece features, as usual, eye-grabbing photos from the indomitable Tyler Hicks:

And, as usual, graphic details from Chivers:

At the airfield, the crews had talked about what propelled them. Some of them mentioned a luxury: They did not wonder, as some soldiers do, if their efforts mattered, if this patrol or that meeting with Afghans or this convoy affected anything in a lasting way.

Their work could be measured, life by life. They spoke of the infantry, living without comforts in outposts, patrolling in the sweltering heat over ground spiced with hidden bombs and watched over by Afghans preparing complex ambushes. When the Marines called, the air crews said, they needed help.

Now the bullets whipped by.

Afghanistan may be where empires go to die. But it sure has brought a lot of excellent reporting to life. And not just in the New York Times.

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