We know – you just hope it’s not you.
And it’s not.
The Central Intelligence Agency is using Twitter to gather intelligence from these 26 feeds:
Interesting. Wouldn’t you think the spooks would be following, we dunno, Hamas Global PR maybe? Or Vladimir Putin?
Oh, crap – now they’re going to start following us, aren’t they?
. . . nothing good can come of it.
There’s a growing trend among journalists of co-authoring books with subjects they probably would be better off covering.
Exhibit Umpteen, from Sunday’s New York Times.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor at the Washington Post. He’s done some serious investigative work (see this C-SPAN edition of Q&A). He’s also now Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s caddy.
Doesn’t seem right, does it?
The same goes for Boston Globe sports scribe Dan Shaughnessy, who collaborated with former Red Sox skipper Terry Francona on the wildly uncritical Francona: The Red Sox Years. (See Shaughnessy’s side of the story here.)
Not to mention Atlantic Monthly senior editor Jack Beatty’s totally Patty Hearst Syndrome co-authoring of Tom Menino’s Mayor for a New America.
You can call this sour gripes that the hardworking staff has never gotten embed with a bio-worthy subject.
But really – shouldn’t we draw the (buy)line somewhere?
From David Skinner’s Weekly Standard review of Steven Pinker’s new book, The Sense of Style.
Where Pinker breaks ranks with most enemies of tendentious writing is on the question of motive. He cites Hanlon’s razor—“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”—and turns to cognitive science for explanations of why we are so bad at presenting our hard-earned knowledge to others.
Hanlon’s razor, eh? Love it.
As for that explanation Pinker turns to cognitive science for, it’s this:
A major reason, he says, is that once we learn something, it is very hard for us to know what it is like not to know it. This “curse of knowledge” leads us to under-explain and rely on abbreviation, shorthand, and jargon, as we assume our readers know much more than they actually do.
Hmmm. We’ll keep that in mind.
From our Why Not Just Set Your Money on Fire desk
As you splendid readers might (or more likely might not) remember, the hardworking staff has dutifully chronicled the per-ad-ulations of one John Haywood, North Carolina rich guy and erstwhile New Hampshire presidential primary candidate.
He ran a two-page ad in the New York Times a month ago that was promptly trashed by a one-page ad in the Times. Something about “Israel hatred rearing its ugly head.”
Regardless, Mr. Haywood is back, according to splendid reader Carrie from Texas, who sent us this note.
My name is Carrie, and I am a resident of a suburb of a suburb of a suburb of Dallas, Texas. I recently had the (dis)pleasure of receiving in my mailbox a political ad – more like manifesto – which was “written, printed and postage paid for by John D. Haywood”. The flyer itself, which is interesting and somewhat disturbing, is titled “Common Sense MMXIV” and its stated purpose is to “Turn 20 Now Red Texas Congressional Districts Blue and hand a Mandate for Reform to a Democratic House Majority”.
Carrie helpfully included the flyer Haywood has inflicted upon the good people of Texas. Here’s one side:
And here’s the other:
Coincidentally, the day after we received Carrie’s note, Jon Stewart was broadcasting The Daily Show from Austin, Texas, and he delivered this rumination on the prospects of the Lone Star State turning blue:
Pretty funny – but not a word about John “Common (Non)Sense” Haywood.
Somebody tell Jon Stewart he doesn’t know everything, yeah?
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Splendid reader Carrie also included this in her email:
After reading this garbage, I decided to do some research on Mr. Haywood. This research first led me to Mr. Haywood’s 2012 presidential campaign website. I also discovered some very interesting stories regarding a lawsuit that Mr. Haywood filed against St. Michael’s College in Vermont and two journalism students who attended college there at the time . . .
It turns out that Mr. Haywood was a Republican-turned-Democrat who decided to get on the New Hampshire Democratic primary ticket for the 2012 Presidential election. Evidently his friends and associates back in Durham, North Carolina, all of whom were Republicans, did not know that Mr. Haywood was running for president as a democrat. Two St. Michael’s College journalism students did a profile of Haywood for a class project, and Haywood subsequently sued the school and the students claiming that they “outed” him as a Democrat to his friends and also misrepresented his platform. You can read about the case yourself [see here]; it is quite entertaining – especially given the fact that Mr. Haywood is an attorney.
Entertaining indeed.
From our Why the Wall Street Journal Is a Great Newspaper desk
Yesterday’s edition of the Journal included this Geoff Foster piece.
Scary Sports Costumes
Trick or Treat: Turning This Year’s Low Moments Into Halloween Highlights
Any kid can dress up as Captain America or Elsa the Snow Queen. In a year filled with some low moments in sports, here are suggestions on how to dress as your favorite sports antihero.
Among those suggestions was this classic:
Bill Belichick
Dr. Frankenstein was a sinister genius who created an unstoppable monster that was universally abhorred. So basically Bill Belichick. The New England Patriots coach is notoriously moody. In fact, the Journal conducted a study last season and counted only seven times where he was seen smiling in a news conference. [That’s actually true.] The best part is that Belichick is a way more cost-effective costume for your youngster than Frankenstein. All you really need to do is find an old gray hoodie and cut off the sleeves—and maybe add a headset for good measure. It’s a good idea to target the houses giving away raisins to make sure the smile-count doesn’t get above seven.
As SCTV’s Count Floyd used to say, Oooo . . . that’s scary, kids.
Special Bay State bonus: Tip O’Neill’s 3-D House of Representatives.
Oooo . . . that’s funny, kids. (At least we think so.)
And Count Floyd makes a great Halloween costume.
From our One for the Ages desk
You have to go back over a century to match what San Francisco ace Madison Bumgarner did last night: Win two World Series games and pitch more than three innings in a third.
Damn.
Damn.
That’s all.
The hardworking staff is guessing that most of you splendid readers didn’t spend much time watching the Kansas City Royals pummel the San Francisco Giants last night, as the Jints pounded the ball into the ground(out) for seven innings against the untouchable Yordano Ventura (“seven innings, three hits, zero runs, five walks and four Ks. He threw 64 of his 100 pitches more than 95 mph. Not bad for a 23-year-old rookie – ABC News).
Representative sample:
We, on the other hand, watched the whole thing.
Hey – it’s the World’s Serious.
(And while we’re at it, let’s insert a prayer here for Buster Posey.)
Anyway, the only one who took a worse drubbing than the Giants last night was Massachusetts gubernatorial hopeful Martha Coakley.
The hardwatching staff saw this Charlie Baker spot three times during the game broadcast (it might have run more often – we checked out during several commercial breaks).
Oddly, in this everything-is-available age, the only place we could find the Baker ad is at the boston.com link above. But here’s the spot’s bottom line: Baker says he won’t raise taxes. Coakley says she will. (The headscratching staff suspects that Coakley was specifically referring to gas tax hikes, but we could be wrong.)
The spot did to Coakley what Baker was too busy turning on the waterworks in last night’s debate to do: Stuck the knife in and left it there.
The Giants get a shot at redemption tonight. Martha Coakley might not get the same chance between now and next Tuesday.
The Pop History Dig is a terrific website that chronicles signature events and figures of 20th century popular culture. And the latest submission by encyclopedic author Jack Doyle is one close to the hardworking staff’s heart.
“The Mazeroski Moment”
1960 World Series
It was the ultimate in baseball – the final, showdown Game 7 of a World Series. The place was Forbes Field, a classic baseball park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was October 13th, 1960, Aerial-2-Forbes-Field-320that time of year when the last warm
days of summer begin to meet crisper fall afternoons. Excitement was already in the air generally, both in Pittsburgh and throughout the nation, as a presidential election race was underway and a young man named John F. Kennedy was offering the country something new. Later that evening, in fact, Kennedy and his Republican opponent, vice president Richard Nixon, would debate on national television for the third time. But the business at hand in Pittsburgh that afternoon wasn’t politics; it was baseball.
Yes it was.
The hardrooting staff, which has been a Made Yankee Fan in Boston for 40 years, remembers that day like it was yesterday. But Doyle renders it like it’s today.
Cut to the chase:
Now it was the bottom of the ninth inning, with home team Pittsburgh coming to bat. One run, scored at any time that inning, was all the Pirates needed to win the World Series. Yankee pitcher, Ralph Terry, who had made the final Pirate out in the eighth inning, returned to the mound for the bottom of the ninth . . . The first man he faced was Pirate second baseman, Bill Mazeroski. Maz was having a pretty decent Series (in fact, he would go 8-for-25 over the seven games and bat .320 for the Series ), and although he had hit one home run earlier in the Series, in Game 1, he was still not regarded as a home run threat. During the 1960 season Maz had hit 11 home runs.
Terry’s first pitch to Mazeroski was a fast ball down the middle but high, for a ball. Next came a pitch lower in the hitting zone which Mazeroski unloaded on with a good swing. The ball popped off the bat and soared high into the afternoon sky heading toward and then over the left field wall. Bill Mazeroski had just made his Pittsburgh Pirates the 1960 champions of baseball.
The great Mel Allen’s call:
…There’s a drive into deep left field, look out now… that ball is going, going, gone! And the World Series is over! Mazeroski… hits it over the left field fence, and the Pirates win it 10–9 and win the World Series!
The-whole-thing-was-nuts graf:
Years later, Mickey Mantle was quoted as saying that losing the 1960 World Series was the biggest disappointment of his career, the only loss, amateur or professional, over which he cried actual tears.
Hey, if The Mick could cry, why not me too?
Some years later I wrote this commentary for WGBH radio.
ANCHOR: Last week, the New York Yankees played the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Steel City for the first time since their 1960 World Series seven-game classic. Here’s John Carroll’s Take.
It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen, and I was 11 years old by that time. The 1960 World Series was entirely bipolar: The New York Yankees won 3 laughers by a combined 35 runs, while the Pittsburgh Pirates won 3 squeakers by a combined 6 runs. Everyone knew which team was superior.
Even so, there was still Game Seven to play at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Because Yankee manager Casey Stengel had completely botched his pitching rotation, it was journeyman Bob Turley – not money-in-the-bank Whitey Ford – who took the mound for the decisive game.
Bullet Bob lasted all of one inning – giving up three runs on two hits and a walk. But the Yankees clawed back –largely through the efforts of left fielder Yogi Berra, who drove in four runs on one hit and a walk.
SFX: 1960 WORLD SERIES 0036
YOGI HAS PRODUCED MORE HITS AND DRIVEN IN
MORE RUNS THAN ANY OTHER SERIES STAR IN HISTORY.
NEW YORK HAS A BRACE OF RUNS TO TAKE A
7-4 LEAD, AND THE PIRATES’ HOPES FADE
But in the fateful bottom of the eighth, Yankee shortstop Tony Kubek was hit in the throat by a bad-hop grounder that should’ve been a double-play ball. Instead, the Bucs went on to score five runs and take a 9-7 lead into the ninth.
The Yankees once again clawed back to tie the game. But leading off the bottom of the ninth, light-hitting second baseman Bill Mazeroski did this:
SFX: 1960 MAZ HOME RUN 0008
BACK TO THE WALL GOES BERRA
IT’S OVER THE FENCE – HOME RUN –
THE PIRATES WIN
Mazeroski’s clout went down as one of the most dramatic moments in sports history, not to mention my young life.
Years later, the Missus asked me in an offhand way what my all-time favorite team was. She had come across a mail-order company that sold reproductions of the hometown paper’s front page the day after a World Series win, and she wanted to get me one for my birthday.
I told her the 1960 New York Yankees.
Shortly thereafter, the Missus received the October 14, 1960 UnknownPittsburgh Post-Gazette front page with the headline
“BUCS ARE CHAMPS” in umpteen-point all-caps boldface. The Missus was, understandably, somewhat confused. She called the mail-order company and said, “No, I wanted the 1960 World Series front page.”
The mail-order gal replied, “Honey, you got the 1960 World Series front page.”
The Missus continued to be somewhat confused, so she asked me how I could be that attached to a losing team.
Because of the way they lost, I said. The 1960 Yankees were the team that taught me exactly how heart-stopping baseball could be. And in the end, that was even better than winning.
But man, it hurt. (Luckily, the next year worked out better.)
Subsequently, the Missus bought me this Official Souvenir Program, with the Game 7 box score filled in.
And this Game 7 ticket.
God love her.
As the hardworking staff drove through Allston yesterday, we noticed this billboard over the Mass Pike (sorry, no picture – I was driving, yeah?).
No Rant. No Slant.
WBUR 90.9 FM
Boston’s NPR News Station
You know that’s not aimed at Howie Carr, right? It’s a direct shot at WGBH, specifically Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.
Huh.
Let the wild Boston NPR rumpus begin!
From our One for the Ages desk
Last night the hardwatching staff witnessed (with roughly 17 other baseball lovers) the masterly complete-game shutout San Francisco Giants ace Madison Bumgarner laid on the Kansas City Royals in Game 5 of the World’s Serious.
It was the very embodiment of the great Robert Francis poem, Pitcher.
His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.
Man, did the Royals understand too late.
Bumgarner’s postseason numbers: 4-0, 0.44 ERA, and a knee-buckling 1.20 opposition batting average.
Wow.
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