New York Times in Fantasyland

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Page One story in Friday’s New York Times: “Drop the Mask! It’s Halloween, Kids, You Might Scare Somebody.”

Guns, daggers and other toy weapons have long been excised from costumes at many school celebrations on Halloween. But in some classrooms across the country, the interpretation of what is too scary — or offensive, gross or saddening — is now also leading to an abundance of caution and some prohibitions.

That’s appalling enough. But then there’s this:

Even at a public school named after the man who practically invented cloak and daggers for children, there are restrictions.

“Children are not allowed to bring any weapons or masks to the costume parade, no swords, and they can wear moderate face makeup — nothing extreme,” explained Addys Gonzalez, the office assistant at the Walt Disney Elementary School in Burbank, Calif.

Walt Disney “practically invented cloak and daggers for children?”

Really? I don’t think so.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Boston Mayoral Ruse

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

I did a turn as WBUR’s media analyst on Friday’s Radio Boston, which featured Boston mayoral candidates Tom Menino and Michael Flaherty.

Menino (via telephone) was his usual incoherent self, but it was Flaherty’s in-studio appearance that I found most enlightening. I happened to wind up in the control room with one of Flaherty’s handlers (I told her my name but she failed to tell me hers), who responded to every listener call criticizing Flaherty by saying, “That’s not true.”

All due respect, Ms. Handler, that’s not relevant.

As we all know, truth is the first casualty of political war, especially ones involving Tom Menino.

Try saying “that’s not true” to the two-to-one margin Menino will likely win by. Cold comfort for Boston mayoral footnote Michael Flaherty.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Yanked Around, Part Two

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

I yield to no man in my admiration for Olympian closer Mariano Rivera, but really – the Yankees have got to stop playing the boneheaded baseball they’ve descended into.

Regardless of the ballclub’s performance, the Friday New York Times homepage was all upbeat about the hometown team’s victory over the Philadelphia Phillies:

The Yankees defeated the Phillies 3-1 in typical fashion, with home runs, strong starting pitching and Mariano Rivera. The Series is now tied at one game apiece.

Typical fashion? You wish there was anything typical about this post-season for the Yankees.

Exhibits A through C:

• What was the inestimable Derek Jeter thinking when he bunted – foul – two strikes down with two on in the bottom of the seventh last night?

• Why does Johnny Damon keep swinging at the first pitch?

• Can the Yanks squander that many opportunities and still win the World’s Serious?

I seriously doubt it.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

A Million Monkeys Later . . .

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Kindergarten) recently – according to this New York Times report headlined  (in the dead-tree edition) “Obscenity, Governor? Oh, That.” – issued a veto statement that “contained a message – and not a nice message – that some interpret as a put-down of the bill’s author.”

The message can be seen only by a careful reading of the printed version of the veto statement. By taking the first letter of each line, beginning with the third line, two words emerge: The first is obscene; the second is “you.”

Classy, Arnold. Classy.

The response from the Governator’s spokesman Aaron McLear?

“It was just  a weird coincidence,” Mr. McLear said in an e-mail message. “I suppose when you do so many vetoes, something like this is bound to happen.”

That, of course, is the classic A-Million-Monkeys-With-Typewriters-Would-Eventually-Produce-All-Of-Shakespeare’s-Works defense.

In the end, this is much ado about nothing. But the slings and arrows aimed at Gov. Hasta La Vista are – at least from what’s been reported – entirely justified.

Not to be the pahty poopah,

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A World’s Serious

Posted on October 29, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

The great Ring Lardner‘s lede for his 1920 gem, “A World’s Serious:”

ADVANCE NOTICE

Sept. 30. – All though they have been world serious practally every yr. for the last 20 yrs. this next world serious which is supposed to open up Wed. p.m. at the Polo grounds is the most important world serious in history as far as I and my family are conserned and even more important to us than the famous world serious of 1919 which was win by the Cincinnati Reds greatly to their surprise.

Maybe I would better exclaim myself before going any further. Well, a few days previous to the serious of 1919 I was approached by a young lady who I soon recognized as my wife, and any way this woman says would I buy her a fur coat as the winter was comeing on and we was going to spend it in Connecticut which is not genally considered one of the tropics.

“But don’t do it,” she says, “unless you have got the money to spare because of course I can get along without it. In fact,” she added, bursting into teers,  “I am so used to getting along without this, that, and the other thing that maybe it would be best for you not to buy me that coat after all as the sight of a luxury of any kind might prove my undoing.”

“Listen,” was my reply, “as far as I am concerned you don’t half to prove your undoing. But listen you are in a position to know that I can’t spare the money to buy you one stoat leave alone enough of the little codgers skins to make a coat for a growed up girl like you. But if I can get a hold of any body that is sucker enough to bet on Cincinnati in this world serious, why I will borrow from some good pal and cover their bet and will try and make the bet big enough so as the winnings will buy you the handsomest muleskin coat in New England.”

Of course, we know how that turned out.

Regardless, “A World’s Serious” just gets better from there. So find a copy of The Portable Ring Lardner and read the rest of it.

As for the first game of the 2009 World’s Serious between the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, see here.

Then again, I’m not sure any Major League baseball team could have bested Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee last night.

See you tomorrow.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Clove Hurts

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Excellent A-Hed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:

To the FDA, This Indonesian Smoke Is Close but No Cigar

The story:

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar — unless the Food and Drug Administration and a congressional committee think it might be a cigarette.

The cigar (or cigarette) in question is called a kretek. Kreteks are cigarettes that blend tobacco and cloves. Billions are smoked in Indonesia, wreathing that country in the scent of studded oranges. A few weeks ago, though, clove cigarettes were banned in the U.S. on the grounds that their fragrance is a come-on to children.

It was the FDA’s first act under a law giving it the power to police tobacco. But as soon the clove-cigarette edict went out, a California kretek importer brought in a new line of clove cigars.

Not surprisingly, the clove cigar looks very much like a clove cigarette in sheep’s clothing. Regardless, the Kretekniks (read: highly paid lobbyists) sprang into action and are now on the FDA like Brown on Williamson. We’ll see how that works out.

Interestingly, the FDA ban on flavored smokes exempts menthol cigarettes, 90 billion of which Americans enjoy every year. As the Journal explains:

[A] menthol ban, congressional aides and tobacco activists say now, would have ignited a huge bootlegging crisis.

That’s just one example of the tobacco-industrial complex at work. On a macro level, Phillip Morris has totally lavaliered the FDA in the hope that strict regulation will freeze the cigarette market  – with PM as eternal industry leader.

We should all be so lucky. And so rich.

(Campaign Outsider official Teachable Moment™:  The Duchess de La Valliere, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, was a French noblewoman and the lover of Louis XIV. She had four children with him.)

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Dead Blogging the Massachusetts Senate Debate

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

(dead blog v. tr. To write about an event after it’s happened.)

Tonight’s Senate debate was – I dunno – unseemly.

For starters, it was sponsored by the Edward Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, the big (taxpayer) bucks center whose sole purpose is to lionize the Lion of the Senate. So it felt less like a debate than an audition.

Add to that, Peter Meade – the founding president and CEO of the institute – served as moderator of the debate. Inconveniently, Meade has “contributed to two of the [Senate] hopefuls’ campaigns in the past,” as the Boston Herald reported. So one man’s Meade is another man’s poison.

And to top it all off, every major TV station in Boston (with the unremarkable exception of Fox 25) streamed the debate live and unfiltered (here via WGBH-TV).

You see what I’m saying?

Unseemly.

Regardless. Some ads ‘n’ ends from whatever that was on Boston television tonight:

• Celtics co-owner and Senate race ATM Steve Pagliuca ran one of his ubiquitous TV spots on WCVB 60 seconds before the debate started.  The very definition of all those dollars and no sense.

• Two best drinking games: “Like Sen. Kennedy” and “I agree with Michael.”

• Mike (The Butcher) Capuano mentioned pork more often than the Other White Meat campaign.

• Do these candidates think they’re running for Governor of the United States? All their “I’ll do [this]” and “I’ll make [that] happen” is the biggest fairy tale this side of Cinderella. You’re running for a spot in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, people. You don’t make things happen in the U.S. Senate. Things happen to you.

• As for the Kontent of the debate, here’s a representative sample: “You can’t make bad deals [in Senate wrangling]. You have to make good deals.” Hey, sign me up for envelope-licking duty.

• Martha (I Have a Sister Overseas) Coakley at one point recommended robbing banks to solve our economic problems (it’s too late in the evening to provide context). Forget the U.S. Senate – should she even be Massachusetts AG?

• Alan (My Father Is a Doctor. From Iran) Khazei was the only candidate who went for the Kennedy trifecta, comparing himself variously to JFK, RFK, and Ted K. Sorry, Alan. Not working.

• Did Peter Meade really end the debate saying, “God bless you and God bless the United States of America”?

Good God.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

W Is for Wha?

Posted on October 26, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

Anybody else wondering exactly why “Inside the W” ran above the fold in the Boston Sunday Globe’s Money & Careers section, while “Fight against hunger in the Hub expands” ran below the fold?

Could it be that “the W Boston, a 28-story hotel that opens Thursday with 235 rooms and 123 residences” is a potentially lucrative advertiser, something the Greater Boston Food Bank is decidedly not?

Your conclusion goes here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Yanked Around

Posted on October 26, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

As a survivor of the Great Fold of 2004, I’ll freely admit that I went into tonight’s Yankees-Angels game with one thought.

Don’t do this to me again.

The good news:

They didn’t. The New York Yankees defeated the Anaheim Los Angeles California Angels four games to two in the 2009 American League Championship Series, thereby advancing to the World’s Serious (as the inimitable Ring Lardner called it) versus the Philadelphia Phillies.

The bad news:

The Yankees are never going to beat the Phils playing the way they did in the ALCS.

Their flaws included – but were not limited to – boneheaded managing, boneheaded pitch selection by their hurlers, boneheaded pitch selection by their hitters, and boneheaded base running.

But by far their biggest flaw: They failed to heed the timeless admonition of the inimitable James Malone before a gunfight in The Untouchables:

And put your man down. Because he’ll do the same to you. Shoot to kill. …

The Yankees never convincingly put the Angels down. They let the Halos hang around far too long, and at times the Bombers looked like they were playing scared.

Toughen up, guys. The World’s Serious is serious.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Soupy Sales Revisited

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Campaign Outsider

In my sendoff to the posthumously lionized (Pookie would be pleased) Soupy Sales, I foolishly left out the estimable-but-meshugge private detective Philo Kvetch.

Grace note for the jazz-loving Milton Supman:

Sad that he’s gone, but it’s been a hoot watching clips of his WNEW show in New York, which ran from when I was 13 until I was 17.

Outside of Bugs Bunny, Soupy Sales – and “Fractured Fairy Tales” (in a photo finish with my Mom) – had the biggest influence on me during my adolescence.

I’ll be eternally grateful.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment