RIFLES AT DAWN

One Big Question about the Chadima Report

2012-01-25T08:31:00.001-06:00

As one of my friends said on a social media site thismorning, “Worst time ever for a crotch-grab”. With the news about Penn State being blared on all media 24/7, JohnChadima apparently got drunk and fondled the genitals of a student-employee ofthe UW Athletic Department.

My question, after having read every word (save for theredacted names) of the report, is not for Chadima, or Barry, or the 4-memberpanel that undertook the official investigation. I’m not sure at whom my question is aimed,but it involves UW Police Lieutenant Jason Whitney.

My question is: since it was widely reported by a number ofcredible local news media that no police agency was involved in the Chadimadebacle, why does the report clearly indicate Lt. Whitney was informed of thesexual assault, and where is the official police report?

My question is out of ignorance. Is it not necessary to file a report when asworn officer is told of an (at that point, one assumes) “alleged” sexualassault? When the UW Police Lieutenantwas informed of the incident, did he interview either the complainant or thealleged perpetrator, and if so, is there some sort of report on it?

The only reason I ask is not to throw mud at Lt. Whitney orcall into question the actions taken by the UW in officially dealing with thisincident. As an old-fart former newsanchor, I wonder why, when the local media asked if there was ANY police agencyinvolved in the Chadima thing (the questions were posed when we had no ideawhat Chadima’s resignation was about), the UW said NO police agency wasinvolved.

My question begs another question: will sexual assaultcharges ever be filed against Chadima? Is it not a sexual assault if the victim decides not to “press charges”? I’m really exposing my ignorance here.

Years ago, I went through some media training offered by theMadison Police and a local law firm regarding what constitutes sexual assault,what constitutes the various degrees of sexual assault; and, I’ve had no smallamount of “management training” on the topic of sexual assault and what constitutesa hostile workplace. I also know, as domost adults who’ve worked with others, that there’s a hell of a lot of sexualassault that never gets reported.

The way I understand it, if actual unwanted touching ofgenitals is involved, it’s second-degree – not fourth degree, as many of themedia are reporting it today. I’m notsure where the media got their information on this, and perhaps the laws,rules, and interpretations have changed, but when I went through the training,saying something boorish like “nice ass!!!” was fourth-degree; but if there wasactual unwanted touching of genitals….not groping through clothes….it was atleast second degree.

I guess that’s why I’ve enjoyed reporting, writing, anddelivering news for the past four decades: I’m curious about this stuff,skeptical of authority and officialdom, and always full of questions. If I were actually working this story, I’dask the questions I pose here to a competent authority on the issue.

I understand that big-time collegiate athletics is very mucha tight-knit and closed society; I’m not surprised in any way that the victimof Chadima’s advances was so clearly concerned that his report of the assault notupset the team, which was preparing for the Rose Bowl; nor am I surprised thatthe UW kept a lid on this thing until the independent investigation wasreleased.

I am surprised at Chadima’s disgusting and completelyinappropriate use of power and force, threatening to fire student-employees whodidn’t do what he asked them to do. I amshocked at his incredible lack of judgment in getting involved in a type ofincident so similar to what happened at Penn State, while that story was stillvery much in the news.

And I hope somebody who knows more about this than I do willbe able to answer my question.

And to Channel 27’s Tony Galli: you scooped everybody. Congratulations.

Why He Won't Recuse Himself

2012-01-24T09:30:00.001-06:00

The short answer is, because to do so would be anacknowledgement that he did something wrong.

I refer, of course, to Herr Goebblemann (Wisconsin SupremeCourt Justice Michael Gableman), the most recent ethically-challenged Justiceto be elected to the highest court. Heaccepted two years’ worth of high-priced legal counsel from the Milwaukee law firmMichael, Best & Friedrich. Thoselawyers really ought to use the Oxford comma in their business name instead ofthe ampersand, if you ask me….and nobody did – i.e., Michael, Best, andFriedrich.

The deal was, in essence, we’ll give you all the counsel youneed on the ethics charges, and if at the end we can’t stick the taxpayers withthe bill, we won’t bill you. This iscalled “contingency billing” and lawyers do it all the time. It’s the same concept as “no fee if we don’t win”.

A lot of folks like me think it’s wrong to offer acontingency arrangement for defending a sitting justice on ethics charges. Ordinary folks like you and me would never beable to get such a deal. If we got thecan tied to our butt by the boss after being caught doing something whichviolates the “moral turpitude” clause (if there is one) of our employmentcontract, you can bet there’s not a lawyer in the state who’d take such a caseon a contingency basis.

Be that as it may, lawyers are also very familiar with theconcept “admission against interest”. Anexample might be, if the cop pulls you over for speeding, and you say “I didn’trealize the speed limit here was 35” – you’ve sort of admitted that you weregoing more than 35 mph, and the cop might want to write you a ticket forinattentive driving, as well. That’s whythe best counsel when you’re pulled over for ANYTHING is to answer directlyonly the questions the cop asks, and not volunteer ANY other information.

For Herr Goebblemann to recuse himself from cases whereMichael, Best & Friedrich are involved as counsel to the party or partiesinvolved would be to sort of admit that taking all that free legal advice fromMB+F was wrong. Now, us ordinarynon-lawyer folks know it was wrong for him to get all that free legal service,but for him to acknowledge that there even might be a QUESTION that he can’t beimpartial about it would be…….yup, a sort of admission against interest.

I’m sure that some bar-admitted lawyer reading this rantcould point out flaws in my logic and/or analogies. So be it. This is something Herr Goebblemann’s colleague, the Gut-Check Judge(Justice Annette Ziegler), knows a thing or two about. She sat in judgment on cases involving hersugar-daddy hubby’s bank in West Bend, and said she did a “gut-check” beforetaking the case to see if she thought she might not be able to be impartialwhen dealing with a case involving hubby’s bank, and sure enough, thosegut-checks never prevented her from judging a case!!!!

But you see, that’s the thing. These folks NEVER seem to be able todetermine what’s a conflict of interest, and what isn’t.

We need to help them see more clearly when they’re up forre-election. (Which in Justice Ziegler’scase is 2017, and in Justice Gableman’s case, 2018.)

Radio Is Dead

2012-01-23T09:11:00.001-06:00

I have a friend who spent years as a radio broadcaster, whowhen asked recently to speak to a group of broadcasting students at a stateuniversity said “radio is not a sustainable career”.

Amen.

The business of radio broadcasting was destroyed by federalderegulation. Like a cancer that doesn’tkill you overnight, but gradually saps the life from you, deregulation was thefirst step down the road to mass consolidation (a handful of companies likeClear Channel and Cumulus own thousands of radio stations), which led tounsustainable debt financing, which led to mass layoffs of the very essence oflocal radio – the on-air personalities and news professionals, and when theeconomy went sour a few years ago, it sealed radio’s doom.

This past weekend, a sad case on point surfaced: the ownerof KXLI-FM, once a powerhouse hundred-thousand-watt station serving Las Vegas, wasput up for sale on eBay.

That’s right, eBay. Talk about irony: new media consuming old media.

The owner of KXLI-FM, Scott Mahalick, paid 22 milliondollars for the station five years ago. As of this morning, the highest bid for the station on eBay was under ahundred thousand dollars. The siteoffers a “buy-it-now” price of 8.9 million dollars.

A couple more facts in evidence: Bain Capital, the Mitt Romney company, had aHUGE role in the Clear Channel financing scheme, and those of us in the biz arewell aware of the thousands of Clear Channel radio employees who have been laidoff (fired) in the past couple years. This has nothing to do with Mitt’s politics or my politics; it’s simplya fact: venture capitalists have played a huge role in killing local radio.

What’s happened to “local” programming under massconsolidators like Clear Channel and Cumulus? Since they have so few remaining on-air employees, yesterday afternoon’sNFL playoff game between the 49’ers and Giants was carried live on all seven ofthe Cumulus-owned stations in San Francisco. It’s simply cheaper to carry the same programming on seven stations,which is absurd from an audience-generating standpoint, than to have to createindividual programming for all seven. Economiesof scale run amok.

I would say “Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to beradio broadcasters” – but I think by the time a child born in the past five yearsreaches age 18, there will be no more local radio.

Somebody Wake Up Barry

2012-01-19T10:38:00.001-06:00

When they told Barry the city of Madison stood to lose about12 million bucks if the WIAA basketball tournaments moved to Green Bay, hisresponse was….and I quote…..”ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz”.

So let’s just let Barry sleep a while longer.

For those not following the game, the WIAA is consideringmoving the boys and girls state basketball tournaments out of Madison becausethere’s a conflict in scheduling March Madness. Come next year, the Badgers Hockey team will be competing in thenewly-formed Big Ten Conference, and there’s a chance….a chance….that the BigTen Hockey Conference will want to play its championship games at the KohlCenter.

For the moment, let’s set aside the idea that playing theBig Ten Hockey Conference’s championship games at the home rink of a memberinstitution is a flawed idea, and that there are plenty of other neutral-icevenues which are capable of hosting such an event.

Let’s instead talk first about the emotional aspect of theWIAA state basketball tournaments. Ifyou’ve ever been a student or parent at a school that qualified for the statetourney, you know what a thrill it is to go to Madison for this colorful annualevent. All the best teams are there; youget to wander down that crazy State Street where you become part of the meltingpot of politics and academia. Whether ornot you realize it, your mind gets a sense of “The Wisconsin Idea”, connectingthe great university on one end of the street with the imposing capitolbuilding on the other end. You look up and see that gorgeous building – the people’shouse, YOUR state capitol – and you watch (or play) in an arena you’ve seen sooften on TV, the arena where the athletes of YOUR state university play. It’s a symphony for the senses.

Now let’s talk about some of the even more intangibleaspects of the WIAA state basketball tournaments. As our former mayor - the one with thedifficult-to-spell-and-pronounce Polish name – has recently pointed out in hisexcellent screed on the topic, Madison needs every opportunity to connectitself viscerally with the people of the state who don’t live here. Madison is a pejorative for “collection ofcrazy politicians and students and professors”; Madison is known as the placewhere all those lefty progressives live, march, and protest; Madison is tiedeternally to its history of activism. Whenyou come from wherever….Boscobel, Neenah, Rice Lake, Monroe, Eau Claire,Tomahawk, Wauwatosa, Wautoma, Wyocena, you-name-it….and drink in the reality ofyour state capital…it helps create a bond between you and your capital city,and the huge university you support with your taxes. It’s a GOOD thing.

Let’s talk about the hard, tangible aspect of the WIAA statebasketball tournaments: by most reliable accounts, the tournaments bring inabout 12 million dollars in hard cash to Madison. Hotels, restaurants, gas stations, giftshops, bars, liquor stores, convenience stores, and dozens of other enterpriseslarge and small benefit from the influx of ‘sconnies from the boonies. And they’re the best kind of dollars you canget: the ones that come from outside your community.

Decision time on moving the WIAA state basketball tournaments isapproaching. Milwaukee can’t do it;their arenas are booked. Green Bay cando it, and a lot of folks are talking about moving the tournaments to the ReschCenter there.

So let’s let Barry nap a bit longer – say, another week orso. And then, let’s get his ass out ofbed with a bucket of cold water just as big as the one in the picture at thetop of this rant. And let’s remind himthat it’s time for him to say “thank you” in a very tangible way to thecommunity and the state which have enriched him, by using his influence to tellthe Big Ten Commissioner “sorry, the Kohl Center is in use by the people of ourstate during Big Ten Hockey Tournament time; you’ll have to look elsewhere”.

Am I Now Too Old For Morning TV News Shows?

2012-01-18T09:28:00.000-06:00

My bride tells me part of my problem is that I just don’tlike change. We discussed that point abit, and I tried to put a finer point on it by saying I don’t like NEEDLESSchange. I’ll admit my Windows 7 runs alot quicker and slicker than Windows 98, and while I may grouse a bit aboutsuch changes, they seem to make things better. Needless change, to me, is illustrated nicely by the changes CNN has madeto its early morning news program.

As I groused about it to my bride again this morning, shepointed out that now both of us are outside the ironclad 25-54 age demographic,so what we think doesn’t even matter to network TV programmers. She also pointed out that neither of us isreally a “broadcaster” any more (even though my day-job reporting is heard onradio stations around the state and Midwest), so we don’t even know what “THECONSULTANTS” are thinking these days.

My morning routine involves letting the dogs out, herdingthem back in, getting a cup of coffee, and planting my butt in front of the TVto find out what heinous things have happened overnight. For the past three years, I’ve watched CNNfrom 6 to 6:30 to get a fix on what’s going on. But a few weeks ago, they took what (to me) was a perfectly good morningnational news show and wrecked it.

They brought in the children.

Instead of having adults like Carol Costello, ChristineRomans, and Ali Velshi give an excellent summary of the news, now, they haveSoledad O’Brein sitting around a table with a number of other children and they“talk about the news” rather than report it. They start with what they consider the “lead” story (spelled “lede” inthe print news biz, I’m told) and just sit around and talk about it. This morning it was the mostly-sunken cruiseship. Some boy who couldn’t have beenmore than 25 years old was trying to make a fine point about maritime law. A cynical 62-year-old bastard like me wouldrather hear about maritime law from some grizzled old sea salt who at leastlooked like he might have set foot on a ship or two.

This new young group of CNN morning newsies sat around andtalked about this ONE story from 6 AM until 6:15 AM, when, in frustration, Ichanged the channel. In 15 minutes,these children talked about ONE story.

Years ago, when I was consulting radio news operationsacross the fruited plain, my mantra was “story count equals credibility”. In other words, years and years of duplicatedresearch showed that people perceived the station that ran the MOST newsstories in any given unit of time (5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes – which inbroadcast parlance is referred to as a “quarter-hour”) was perceived as beingthe most credible news organization. Itwas OK to go in depth on a story, but only AFTER you’d given thelistener/viewer a big blast of assorted other news items.

Granted, radio and television are far different critters,particularly in the morning, where radio listening is done half at home andhalf in the car on the way to work. TVis still essentially a 100% “in-home” critter in the morning. I have a good friend who is considered thetop news/talk radio consultant in the nation, and he still tells me that one ofthe biggest challenges is helping the on-air talent to understand clearly theimplications of the fact that the average listener is only there for about 18minutes in the morning. They’re busy,they’re in and out, and they want a concise summary of news and weatherfrequently.

Maybe it’s the old radio news programming consultant part ofme that makes this change in CNN’s morning programming so distasteful tome. I expect to be told about at least adozen stories if I dedicate 15 minutes to watching. There’s a hell of a lot more going on in theworld on any given day, like today, than a boat wreck that happened days ago. And while I confess complete ignorance aboutwhat TV News consultants are thinking about, saying, and preaching these days,I do NOT want to see a bunch of kids talking about the same story for 15minutes. If I want to hear a 15-minuterant about a single topic, there are plenty of other TV (and, God knows, radio)stations which can provide that.

Maybe I am just too old, my opinion doesn’t count, and theadvertising department doesn’t want to sell ads about products I might finduseful. And, this morning, I wassecretly hoping that maybe CNN might make mention of the MILLION signatures onthe Walker recall petition in Wisconsin.

But, to the news children who run things today, 15 minutesof kids sitting around talking about a boat that half-sank several days ago isapparently more important than giving viewers a representative sample ofcurrent events from around the nation and the world.

Surprises

2012-01-17T11:23:00.001-06:00

Things That Do NOT Surprise Me

One MILLION signatures on the Walker recall petition; 850K+ on the Clay Fish petition.

Paula Deen has Type-2 Diabetes.

Paula Deen says this diagnosis will not affect the way shecooks.

Newt and the rest of the gang are attacking Mitt in aRepublican feeding frenzy.

A local weather-woman this morning said we’d get two tothree inches of “snowfall”. As opposedto….snowrise? At least she didn’t say “thewhite stuff”.

The public prints are saying the next phase of the Walkerrecall is likely to be more difficult than the gathering of signatures. Ya think????

The state Taxpayers Alliance says the well-off will dobetter than the poor under the changes to the 2011 state income tax rules.

Things That DO Surprise Me

The Captain of the Costa Concordia apparently fled the shipwhile it was sinking off the coast of Italy. Whatever happened to “going down with the ship”….or, at least waitinguntil the passengers are all off the sinking ship? This would seem to be the oldest law of thesea. They oughtta hang this guy.

How poorly the Packers played Sunday. I’m still annoyed.

Out Amongst the Dweebs and Dolts

2012-01-12T12:00:00.002-06:00

I know, I know. 75%of sconnies have to re-learn their winter driving skills every year. This first “snow event” (as the weather folkscall them) of the year has brought out all the idiots. In the course of a half-hour of runningerrands, I saw three cars in the ditch, witnessed two fender-benders, andendured the idiocy of far too many people exhibiting ZERO winter driving skill.

I take winter driving seriously; my giant, gas-sucking,all-wheel-drive, foreign-made SUV is equipped with four Dunlop GrandTrek Iceand Snow tires (tip: every bit as good as, and less expensive than theBridgestone Blizzak, which is supposedly the gold standard) and I considermyself a safe and accomplished winter driver.

Half of the battle, perhaps more, is staying out of the wayof the dweebs and dolts who can’t drive on snow.

There are the ones who think the condition of the roadsurface has no effect on their vehicle, and they drive as though it was sunnyand warm and the laws of physics have been suspended. There are the ones (I’ve noticed a lot ofthem own Jeep Grand Cherokees) who think their four-wheel or all-wheel drivewill allow them to traverse slippery roads with impunity. These are the ones who pass you going way toofast, and a few moments later you see them in the ditch. And there are the ones who drive incrediblyslow, hunched over the wheel, fearing for their life and limb, unknowinglycausing just as many wrecks as the dweebs who drive too fast.

Entirely too many people were driving in the snow with theirheadlights off. They’ve never heardabout the aviation and navigation concept of “see and be seen”. One of the unlighted vehicles I encounteredwas a model similar to mine, so I know the operator had either deliberatelyshut off the headlights, or is completely unfamiliar with the “automatic”feature on the headlight switch, which is essentially a “set it and forget it”position which keeps the headlights on any time you’re driving, and shuts themoff after a short delay when you put the transmission in “Park” and turn offthe engine.

I have high expectations of winter drivers in Wisconsin, andevery year my expectations are lowered another notch. My daughter, who now navigates the thoroughfaresof the NYC metro five days a week, talks about how crappy New York drivers arein snow, and her venerable Buick sedan has already been rear-ended in the snowonce this winter by an east-coaster following her way too closely.

Come to think of it, and after my experiences today, I’mgoing to revise my estimate and say three-quarters of the battle is staying outof the way of the dweebs and dolts who have no business driving on snow.

Be careful out there.

We Don't Know What It Costs

2012-01-11T15:10:00.000-06:00

A blogpost from a friend up in the Fox Valley got methinking about how Big Pharma and Big Medicine and Big Insurance took over ourhealth care system without firing a shot. Of course, it took the rental of several hundred politicians at no smallexpense, but it began, I believe, when we stopped actually paying for thingsinvolving our health care.

Centuries ago, when I was a young man in my twenties, I hadsomething almost none of my other friends had: health insurance. Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which I’ll call BC/BSfor the balance of this rant. I had it because my father was a prudent man andinsisted that I have it. I don’t recallhow much it cost.

This was in a time (the roaring 70’s) when outfits likeradio broadcasting companies didn’t offer health insurance as a “fringe benefit”(that’s what such things used to be called). Nor did most companies. If youwanted health insurance, you purchased it. It had nothing to do with your job, just like car insurance. You justbought it. Or you didn’t.

One night, playing softball with the radio station’s team (Iwas a hard-hitting first baseman, sports fans) I fell on my arm. Pretty hard fall, and it came in a loss tothe County Sheriff’s Department’s softball team. After a couple beers followingthe game, the arm still hurt like the dickens. One of the deputies said “you oughtta have that looked at”, so I did.

In those days, there were no “urgent care centers”. If you hurt yourself after regular businesshours, you went to the hospital, which I did. Before I could cross the threshold into the emergency treatment area tobe dealt with, I had to either produce proof of insurance or sign a bunch ofpapers saying I understood I was responsible for ALL costs incurred in treatingme. So I produced the little paper cardwith the BC/BS logo on it, and was ushered into a large treatment area.

Since my little BC/BS card said “X-Ray and Diagnostic Tests”on it, there was no question about getting the arm X-rayed, and a short whilelater the ER doc said “your regular doctor happens to be here in the hospitalmaking rounds of his patients; I’ve mentioned you’re here and he’ll be comingto take a look at you shortly”. I said “butdoc, is my arm broken?” He said “no, it’s not. Your doctor will be here shortly.”

Had I known what was going on, I would have said “you tellold Doc FeelGood that I don’t want or need to see him – you’re my doc rightnow, and if my arm’s not broken, I’m outta here; if it is, I want you to treatme”. But I didn’t understand the system,until several weeks later, when BC/BS sent me a statement indicating that boththe ER doc and my regular guy, Dr. FeelGood, had submitted an invoice for (Ibelieve it was $150 apiece) “examination and treatment”. My treatment, by the way, was a quick hellofrom Dr. FeelGood, who confirmed that my arm was not broken and would probablybe sore for a few days, and I should take a couple aspirin to dull the pain. (This was long before the NSAIDs likeIbuprofen were available to regular folks over the counter.) Total time of his “examination and treatment”was approximately 60 seconds; total time of my contact with the ER doc wasprobably about the same. Not a bad racket;these boys bill out at a cool nine thousand bucks an hour (150 bucks a minute).

So, BC/BS, which was even back then in the roaring 70’s inbed with the doctors and drug companies, coughed up the exorbitant payment toBOTH docs.

Also, as a young man I was prone to sinus infections, andDr. FeelGood would from time to time prescribe antibiotics for me. Each course of antibiotics cost about$28. I know that, because way back inthose days, whether you had insurance covering medications or not, you paid thepharmacist when he or she dispensed the medication. If you had insurance, AFTER you paid thepharmacist, you mailed the paid receipt to your insurance company, and theyreimbursed you for the cost (up to the limits of your policy). There was no “co-pay”; you just paid it.

The point of this needlessly long exposition is that backbefore Big Pharma and Big Medicine and Big Insurance took over everythingrelated to our health care, we were connected in the sense that we knew whatthings cost. We knew how much the doccharged for an office visit, because we paid it, right then and there, to thereceptionist, before we got to see the doc. We knew how much antibiotics cost because we paid for them, out of ourown pocket, before we could walk out of the pharmacy with the medication. Health insurance had nothing to do with youremployment (unless you worked for a huge union operation, like Ford Motors orGeneral Electric).

The cost of hospitalization back then? I really don’t know. That was covered by the part of BC/BS theyused to call “Major Medical”, and thank heaven I never needed that part of thecoverage back then.

When you have a direct connection to how much things cost,you have a far better sense of control. That’s the way free market capitalismis supposed to work, I think. If theguy with the plow on the front of his pickup truck says he wants an additional tenbucks a time more this year than last year to plow your road when it snows, youhave the option of simply paying him more, bargaining for a better deal, hiringsomeone else, or buying your own plowing rig. Your decision. You know what itcosts. When you go to the store to doyour grocery shopping, you know what things cost before you toss them into thecart.

The beginning of the end of our control over health care waswhen we stopped knowing how much things cost. Now, we don’t care what it costs, as long as our insurance coversit. And that, to me, is the biggest partof the problem.

Putting Things in (Forced) Perspective

2012-01-10T10:14:00.001-06:00

Joe and Diane Philbin are in a living hell right now. Their second-oldest child (they have six),Michael, somehow wound up in the Fox River a few blocks from the UW-Oshkoshcampus Sunday night, and drowned. Mikewas only 21 and a Dean’s List student in his Junior year at Ripon College. I can’t imagine anything more tragic for a parentthan the untimely death of a child. Wewill be conspicuously reminded of this tragedy this coming Sunday afternoon,when the Packers take to the frozen tundra in their first playoff game of theseason.

Mike’s dad, Joe, is the Offensive Coordinator of thePackers, and whether or not he’s actually at the game Sunday, the Fox Sportsfolks will milk every possible drop of drama out of this tragic situation.

Because, as I’ve said so many times, television’s defaultposition is excess.

No doubt, someone – Mike McCarthy; that horrible JoeI-have-this-job-only-because-my-dad-was-an-icon Buck; Troy Aikman; TerryBradshaw; Curt Menefee; Howie Long;Jimmy Johnson; any one of a host of others – will make the sage observationthat the death of a child “really puts things in perspective”.

Gosh, you mean the tragedy of a child’s death should weighgreater in our spectrum of emotions than who wins a football game?

No doubt, they’ll drag out file footage of Brett Favre playingthat December 2003 Monday Night Football game in Oakland, just after his dadhad passed away, complete with clips of the teary-eyed quarterback talkingabout how his daddy would have wanted him to play that game (which the Packerswon, 41-7, featuring a near-perfect performance from Favre).

Yes, to help us understand how this puts things intoperspective, we’ll be reminded that the tragic death of his son will weigh moreheavily on Joe Philbin’s mind than whether the Packers beat the Giants and whetheror not Joe gets that Miami head coaching job he’s been interviewed for.

It’s also a good bet that the TV will remind us that thePhilbin family….and, in fact, the entire Packers’ family…is still trying tomake sense of this tragic event.

And, should the Pack beat the Giants, it’s safe to assumethat young Michael was looking down from heaven, where he’d asked Jesus as aspecial favor if daddy’s team could win one for him.

That would really put things in perspective.

Big Mystery

2012-01-09T11:22:00.002-06:00

Whatever it is, it’s major. But we don’t know what it is, so we naturally speculate on what may be behind the resignation of one of Barry Alvarez’s top lieutenants, Senior Associate Athletic Director John Chadima, who’s been one of Barry’s right-hand men for the past couple decades.

Sometime during the day Friday, Chadima was apparently suspended from his job; a few hours later, he resigned. His UW-owned cell-phone was immediately disconnected (standard procedure, one imagines) and several local media pointed out Chadima’s half-million-dollar condo/home on Lake Mendota in the Town of Westport is for sale – implying that this is a recent development, although it appears to my brief search that it’s been listed for some time.

Relentless prying by the local media has generated little, if any, new information about what’s going on, except that Madison and L-A area police say they’ve had no contact with Chadima; the rumors that it was an incident somehow connected with the Badgers’ recent Rose Bowl trip have not been confirmed or denied; and all the UW is officially saying right now is that there is an investigation of some sort into whatever led to the suspension/resignation.

Another of Barry’s right-hand men, Vince Sweeny, says only that Chadima’s resignation did not shut down the investigation and that until they have all their ducks in a row, the UW is not going to make further public comment about the situation. Several media have reported that The Man himself, Barry Alvarez, is headed back to Madison from his other home in Naples, Florida.

I know nothing more than what I see on TV and read in the paper, and I have no “inside sources” who might shed more light on whatever it is that’s going on.

But, whatever it is, it’s big. Stay tuned.

Still Another Media Rant

2012-01-06T09:19:00.000-06:00

Back in the 60’s, my Grandma Morrissey (born 1899) was, unlike most women of her generation, a night-owl. Raised on a family farm, Grandma went to the State Normal School in Oshkosh and got a teaching degree, and for years she taught elementary school before meeting Grandpa and starting a family. She was amazingly “with it” in her later years; knew all about the arguments for and against that Indo-Chinese war; thought the shootings at Kent State were a national tragedy; and Grandma could discuss current events with the best of them.

As a night-owl, Grandma loved to watch The Tonight Show, and she was a huge fan of Johnny Carson. After Grandpa passed away in ’68, I made it a point to spend some time with Grandma every week. One time, while watching The Tonight Show with her (back in those days, it was Johnny with Ed McMahon and trumpeter Doc Severinson and the “NBC Orchestra”), Grandma asked me if I would take her on a ride to see where Johnny did his show. I learned at that time that Grandma believed ALL television originated from the white cinder-block building under the big tower at the edge of town: WOSH-TV, Channel 41. I gently reminded her what Ed McMahon said at the beginning of each show: “From New York (that’s where the show originated back then), it’s the Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson….”.

Grandma, who literally grew up in the horse-and-buggy days, as hip as she was, just couldn’t wrap her head around the concept of network television. To her, all TV came from that tower on the north edge of Oshkosh, and the long-since-defunct WOSH-TV Channel 41. Never mind that every half-hour they reminded her that she was actually watching The Tonight Show on WFRV-TV, Channel 5, Green Bay.

What prompted this rant, and the extended introduction featuring my late Grandma, is the recent change in one of the local TV news operations. Fox 47 in Madison for years carried a newscast at 9PM produced by the news staff at Channel 27 in Madison. A few days ago, Fox 47 made a different deal, and now their 9 PM news is produced by the news staff of Channel 3 in Madison. Most folks with any media savvy understand this arrangement. Fox 47 gets a “news” image by simply hiring someone else to do it. But apparently, here in the 12^th year of the 21^st Century, there are a LOT of people who simply cannot understand this.

When Channel3000 (the internet arm of Channel 3 in Madison) posted a story about how the folks at Channel 3 were now doing the news at 9 PM for Fox 47, the stupid, hateful comments popped up online immediately. Channel 3 was in bed with Fox News???? How COULD you?? Why do you HATE AMERICA now??? So, what’s Bill O’Reilly really like? This is the sort of comments that were posted.

Those of us who’ve worked a lifetime in “media” find this both amusing and puzzling, that people seem to have so little understanding of these things. A few years ago, I tried to explain to a friend who’s a fairly high-profile person in the lefty community of Madison that Fox 47 was owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, NOT Fox News. His eyes glazed over after about 20 seconds, and I knew he wasn’t following. I didn’t even get into the part about how Fox News is different from the Fox TV Network, knowing that there was no chance I could explain how networks operate through a series of local affiliates.

Perhaps Grandma’s theory - that all television programming comes from a small cinder-block building on the north edge of Oshkosh – is still alive and well in 2012, with small variations and plenty of apparent adherents.

First Media Rant of the New Year

2012-01-03T08:25:00.000-06:00

I arose this morning to be (mis)informed by the nooz that “Iowans are waking up this morning and heading to the polls for the Iowa Caucuses”.

Different year; same nooz dweebs.

I expect my nooz writers, even if they don’t live in Iowa, to understand at least a little bit about the uniqueness of the Iowa Caucuses. There are two principal and critical things wrong with that nooz sentence above – first, the implication that some sort of caucusing activity will take place this morning. Nope. Not ‘till tonight. Second, the assertion that these strange Iwegians “head to the polls” to do this caucusing that they do. Nope. Most of the gatherings are in people’s homes. They sit around, drink coffee and such, and discuss the candidates. They caucus. And then they separate into groups supporting their particular candidate. This is caucusing. It is not a “primary”. It is not an “election”. It does not happen “at the polls”.

This, by the way, from a local TV station which sent its political reporter to Des Moines to do live reports from Iowa regarding the caucuses. Had she heard that nooz sentence above, she would have immediately grabbed her cell phone and called command central at the TV station to set them straight about “waking up and going to the polls”.

An hour or so later, while sipping coffee and digesting the reports of the Rose Bowl embarrassment in the State Journal, I heard a different noozette tell me about the sad and violent event at “Mount Rainer National Park”. And she pronounced it “RAIN-er”. I suppose I can forgive a young nooz writer for misspelling Rainier; dropping the first “i” in the word and spelling it “Ranier” or some such; but for an actual on-air newsette to get so far in the biz as to actually be sitting in front of a camera reading the nooz every morning, I’d expect enough worldliness to know that it’s pronounced “ra-NEER”, not “RAIN-er”.

Don Henley was right about the bubble-headed bleached-blonde in his great tune “Dirty Laundry”.

While I’m at it, it came to my attention Sunday morning that on some New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square, Justin Bieber attempted to warble the great Paul McCartney/Beatles song “Let It Be”, with accompaniment from Carlos Santana. This is wrong on so many levels that I’m not sure where to begin. First, there should be some sort of rule, since apparently there’s no accounting whatsoever for musical taste, that forbids insects like Justin Bieber from attempting to sing ANY classic rock song. And for God’s sake – will someone please tell Carlos Santana that no matter HOW much money they offer him, he should not be so desperate as to take the same stage with anyone of Bieber’s ilk.

What’s next: Bieber doing the lead vocal to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, with James Hetfield remaining vocally tacit while strumming along on his Gibson Explorer guitar (or, the axe he first wielded, that Japanese copy of the Flying V)?

Off to never-never land; a New Year has dawned, and everything is the same.

...and I have many grievances to air....

2011-12-29T15:34:00.002-06:00

…regarding the denizens of the local airwaves. My first is a wish that in the New Year, the electronic media folks would learn what their print counterparts learned a long time ago: that it’s drunken driving, not drunk driving. Another huge pet peeve that’s reared its head for the past couple years is the tendency among both print and electronic media folks to use the incorrect and awkward form “one-year anniversary” or “fifty-year anniversary”; worse yet, “six-month anniversary”, and all the possible variants. First anniversary. Fiftieth anniversary. You can’t have a six-month anniversary, since “anni” means “year”.

Somewhere decades ago, probably beginning as an evil plot by some misguided English teacher, we were told that it’s correct to say “an historic”. Well, it isn’t. Not any more than it’s correct to say “an hysterectomy”, “an horrible”, “an hospital”…I could go on. If you are British and do not pronounce the “h” sound in the previous words, as they do in some dialects of the mother tongue, you can say “an historic”, but you cannot pronounce the “h” in historic, so it really sounds like you’re saying “an istoric”. And even then it sounds stupid in American English.

Here’s another grievance I have with the media, and the last few weeks have about driven me off the edge of sanity. Please stop showing “soldier homecomings”, particularly when it involves weeping spouses and/or children. It’s OK once every few months when it’s truly an unusual circumstance, but the contrived crap that’s being foisted on us these days is tiresome. Yes, dad is home from Iraq (always mispronounced “eye-RACK” by the dweeb reporter) and it’s nice to see him reunited with his family, but enough with the weeping spouses and children. The voyeurs and emotional misfits who thrive on this sort of cloying emotion have plenty of other places to go to get their fix.

We’ll also soon be in the season of cognitive dissonance for the local news writers. They decided a couple years back to replace the perfectly good word “closing” with “closure” for reasons which I have yet to fully grasp; but, unless the weather continues as goofy as it has been so far this winter, we will soon have school CLOSING reports. How this winter phenomenon escaped conversion to “school closures” is one of the great mysteries of newswriting. I suspect it’s because the graphics packages and software programs associated with it have yet to make the migration from closing to closure.

I’ll be OK if no politician every again talks about giving us “tools” of an sort, whether it’s a “tool” to help balance a municipal budget or a “tool” to help police catch more bad guys. And, it’s OK to say the word “snow” more than once in any given report. It’s not necessary to call it “the white stuff” on second reference. And interviewers can revert to the old form of “tell me more about what this means” instead of the current “talk about…..” whatever. It sounds rude. You can drop the word “different” out of most of your stories, too. It’s not necessary to say “he went through seven different counties on his European tour”; nor is necessary to say “the Local High School Team beat seven different teams en route to the state championship”. “Different” is almost always needless and annoying. (Thank you, George H.)

If I hear one more nooz functionary tell me “the incident remains under investigation” at the end of a crime or spot-news story, I’ll puke. OF COURSE the incident remains under investigation. Unless cops nab the bad guy red-handed, they continue to investigate until they nail the perp. Stupid, lazy, writing; but you hear it every day, along with the newsspeak phrase “officer-involved shooting”, which has only recently come into the parlance of nooz writers, who cleverly took the phrase directly from the stilted writing of police reports. (Joel DeSpain, this definitely does NOT mean you!!!)

About the same time as “closing” became “closure”, it apparently became unlawful to write or say the words “get” or “got” in writing news or commercial messages. “Buy one, get one free” is now “buy one, receive one free”, and as stupid as that sounds, you hear it all the time. Just a few moments ago I heard a commercial saying “buy now and receive zero percent financing for 2 years”. I don’t know who made this new rule, but I’d like them to receive my size 13 shoe up their butt.

Here are words to live by for a certain class of nooz readers who, for reasons best understood by themselves, refuse to use the words is, are, was, were, has, have, or had in the first sentence of a story, thinking perhaps that it lends some sort of dramatic urgency to their weak writing and delivery, in the same manner as those nooz dweebs who say things like “Five people are killed in a Christmas Eve house fire in Connecticut”, as if forcing the opening line to sound like present tense will make the story more dramatic and exciting. Stoopid.

And you sports folks….I have grievances with you! First of all, the damnably stupid phrase “welcome IN”, which seemingly precedes every sports broadcast. No one except Chris Berman says “welcome in”, and if you want to go through your professional career emulating a has-been clown, please don’t do it when I’m watching or listening. And, something I’ve ranted about for years – could we drop the “former” from “former Cy Young winner” and other similar constructions? Once you win the Cy Young Award, you’re a Cy Young winner forever. They don’t take it away from you. That used to be true of the Heisman Trophy, too….but….along came Reggie Bush, who is the only “former” Heisman winner.

Now that Bret Musburger has achieved the age of 95, he’s learned to say “WISconsin” instead of “WESconin” most of the time, but you sound like an outlander when you say GREEN Bay instead of Green BAY, as so many network sports guys do. Two other quick sports grievances: supposedly professional announcers who say “offsides” instead of “offside”, and the myriad of football announcers who refer to a run-action pass as a “play-action pass”, a misnomer that’s stuck since the fake handoff into the line was invented. It’s not a “play fake”, it’s a real, actual play; it’s a RUN fake that freezes the linebackers. It’s a run-action pass, and the only announcer I’ve ever heard say it properly is Ron Jaworski. (I could also add my grievance that in baseball it should be called the fair pole and not the foul pole, since if a ball hits it, it’s a fair ball, not a foul ball, but that would be piling on.)

And one last sports grievance to close out the year: In the name of all that’s holy, Bo Ryan, will you PLEASE put the names of the Badger basketball players on their jerseys – not just their number – so I can learn who they are more quickly and be a better fan?

Thank you for listening to my grievances, and have a nice New Year.

The Most Dangerous Gang In The State

2011-12-22T14:10:00.002-06:00

They're devious, divided, disgusting, disorganized, duplicitous, dangerous, and deadly. They've been know to throttle each other by the throat when they disagree. They're unethical, act like they're superior, on the take, and ruthless.

I refer, of course, to our state Supreme Court.

This latest news, about Herr Goebblemann, comes as no shock. The only surprise is that it's taken this long for somebody to break the story, about how he's been on the take from a fat-cat Milwaukee law firm for years, while at the same time sitting in judgment in cases involving that same firm.

Of course, there's his compadre, Madame Gut-Check, d/b/a Justice Ziegler, who finds nothing wrong with sitting in judgment on cases involving her hubby's bank. When questioned about that, she said she did a "gut-check" to see if she could be impartial while sitting in judgment of cases involving sugar-daddy's bank, and sure enough, she saw no problems.

Some wag posted an item the other day suggesting that instead of forcing Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce to buy individual judgeships on the highest court, we should just sell naming rights to the court ("The Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Supreme Court") and let the big business boys over on East Wash just pick the folks they want to serve on the court.

It could also be suggested that the bidding rights be extended to outfits like WEAC, but everybody knows they don't have any money any more, or SEIU, or name-your-lefty outfit.

This thing with Mikey-boy Goebblemann could really be a dog with fleas. How any human being with an IQ above room temperature could think it's OK to accept tens of thousands of dollars worth of legal services from a big-time right-wing bunch of Milwaukee gunslingers with JD's is fine, and then to sit in judgment on cases involving that firm....well, let's just say that it takes a special kind of snake to operate that low on the turf, while holding a position that just a few decades ago was so exalted.

Every so often, like now, I have hope (faith disappeared a long time ago) that an incident like this one with Goebblemann will cause the people of this great state to rear back and clean house on every wing of that big building with the high dome at the head of State Street - that their disgust will be of such magnitude that they'll rise up in disgust and do what's necessary to oust the whole lot of them and start over.

But then, I realize that like the situation in Washington DC, no one has faith in any of our government institutions any longer, and they don't even care that the rats are running the ship.

Disappointed.

2011-12-19T10:03:00.001-06:00

When somebody in the media gets canned/fired/downsized/outsourced/pink-slipped/let go/shown the door/choose your euphemism, said media doesn’t generally make note of it. There are exceptions; when I was stabbed in the back and shown the door by my former radio partners in 2008, the CEO went on the air two days later and libeled me. A “discoverable public statement”, as my lawyer said. BIG mistake. (I still have the tape of the broadcast, although my lawsuit was settled and sealed in 2009.)

But this rant is about Dave Blaska, not me. I had to find out in Chris Rickert’s column in the State Journal that Blaska , along with fellow Isthmus bloggers Jack Craver and Emily Mills, were recently shown the door in a cost-cutting move/realignment of goals/reassessment of mission/refocusing on core strengths/choose your euphemism.

I read Blaska’s Blog on the Isthmus Daily Page (which owns the copyright to the composite graphic at the top of this post) faithfully. He posted three or four columns in a typical week, and they were always well-written and entertaining. Dave and I agree on very little, and his canonization of Vicki McKenna is annoying, but Dave put out a good, lefty-baiting, thought-provoking, and apparently well-read blog.

The disappointment this rant is about is not so much that Blaska’s Blog has been banished, although I will miss not having it to laugh with or at it; rather, I’m more disappointed that Rickert’s column says Blaska was doing this for the paltry sum of 30 dollars a week. I’m disappointed that he’d agree to work that cheaply. He’s FAR better than 30 bucks a week, fifteen hundred bucks a year, ten bucks per column, or however you want to look at the number.

When I was canned and went into the freelance business, I wasn’t sure how to price my work. The best information I could get back then, based on several reliable sources, was that the going rate for experienced and qualified freelancers was, give or take, 39 bucks an hour plus expenses (travel, lodging, etc.). In my negotiations with various clients I’ve had in the past three years, I’ve worked for less and I’ve worked for more. But I’ve never gone below 20 bucks an hour plus expenses, a “rate” I gave a couple not-for-profit agencies.

More disclosure: back in the summer of ’09, Isthmus contacted me about being Blaska’s foil – writing a Daily Page blog from the lefty point of view, to “balance” Dave’s right-wing blog. Long story short, we never even got to the discussion of money (and I’m sure I was not the only person “in the running” for the job), because many of my concerns about who’s property the proposed posts would be, what kind of backing I might expect from Isthmus if I ruffled the wrong feathers, and similar technical/intellectual property/ownership concerns took me out of the running after a few conversations.

I was thinking that if my concerns could be addressed, and it ever got down to talking about money, I’d say “just pay me what you’re paying Blaska”. We are similar in age and “journalistic” (please don’t call me a journalist) experience; I’d venture to say my name at that time had at least as much public recognition/recall as Dave’s; I admired his work; I figured I’d work for the same wage. As it turns out, I’m glad it never got to the money stage. At that time, I had four other projects going – one big one, and three smaller ones. I was billing out at 20 bucks an hour plus expenses for one of them; 40 bucks an hour plus expenses for two of the other small projects; and I was doing the big project for 75 bucks an hour plus direct expenses.

Had I known Isthmus was paying Blaska 30 bucks a week….regardless of the number of columns/blogs he posted per week….I would have turned it down, had we ever gotten to the money stage. I may or may not have an inflated view of my marketability, but I wouldn’t do a column for ten bucks, or seven and a half bucks, or whatever it worked out to at $30/week.

I was doing THIS – blogging here, at that time under the name “The Way Things R” (I changed it to “Rifles at Dawn” a couple years ago) por nada. Some of the best writing in the blogosphere is done gratis; those of us who do this sort of thing do it because we love it, and because it’s an important outlet for our creativity, and…..because nobody EDITS our work! We can say whatever we please (within reasonable bounds), however we please, whenever we please. No editors, no deadlines, no nothin’.

Dave Blaska, I miss your Daily Page blog. I’m sure you had your reasons, but you worked too damn cheaply. You’re worth a hell of a lot more than 30 bucks a week.

By the way, this is the 666th post on this site. Scary.

Energy!

2011-12-18T09:25:00.000-06:00

In the course of grocery shopping and running errands yesterday (Saturday) I counted 16 spots where people were gathering signatures for the recall petitions. They were along the busy portion of Fish Hatchery Road through Fitchburg; set up on corners in the newer, residential sections of Fitchburg; three spots on Park Street between the Beltline and the Capitol Square; even one set up in – heaven forfend – the McMansion segment of Seminole Highlands. Or Highlands of Seminole, whichever is correct.

Last week the organizers announced they’d garnered over half a million signatures, of the 540,208 needed to force a recall election. They announced they hope to have nearly three-quarters of a million signatures by Friday the 13^th of next month.

My observations yesterday are certainly not scientific, not a representative sample, but the most clear impression I am left with is that the people out there in the cold holding up signs and trying to flag cars down are full of energy. A lot of energy. If I would give a “thumbs-up” sign or toot the horn when I approached their location, they’d jump up and down or wave or return my thumbs-up. They were all smiles and very animated, at every location I saw.

I’m still not going to predict the outcome of the recall election….which I now believe is going to happen, after all the lawyers for the Republicans do everything they can to delay it….but if the side that wants the recall can hold their energy, it’s going to be a real close election.

Looking a bit farther down the road, one of the many things that troubles me is that regardless of the outcome of the recall election, I believe the partisanship will do nothing but increase. With dweebs like that Fitzgerald boy wanting to make it a FELONY to sign more than one recall petition, and the fact that the Democrats demonize everything the other party does, regardless of the election’s outcome it will drive the sides even farther apart.

If Walker stays in office, he’ll have carte blanche to continue granting favor after favor, exemption after exemption for the big-business interests that support him financially. If he’s tossed out, and some Democrat takes over, I believe their agenda will be to try and undo everything Walker has done, from Act 10 to privatizing many of the state’s former cabinet bureaus.

The “us versus them” mentality isn’t going away. If anything it will be getting stronger. And that’s a BAD use of energy.

'Tis the Season...

2011-12-15T12:06:00.001-06:00

Here are our two purebred Collies, doing what they’re best at: just being dogs. They’re my companions, my office staff, my protectors, and my buddies. Sunny (AKC KaZes Rivendell’s Uptown Girl) is in the foreground of this snapshot. She’s a Blue Merle Collie, with the distinctive Blue Merle colors and markings. In the background is her “big sister”, Shadow (AKC KaZes Shadow Tangled Up Heart), a Sable Collie (like the TV and movie star “Lassie”) two years older than Sunny, scanning the property for deer, squirrels, rabbits, turkeys (we have wild turkeys in our exurban neighborhood), or any other intruder. They’re not really sisters, but they have the same “dog daddy”, a Collie whose AKC Pedigree starts with the two letters CH – for Champion – from a long line of Champion Collies, so judged by people who eat, sleep, breathe, and dream Collies.

Before Sunny came to live with us in 2010, she was a show girl – winning all sorts of awards on the Collie show circuit. Shadow has been with us since she was a puppy in 2006. They are gentle, kind, loyal, loving animals, bred to run the hills and dales of Scotland all day, herding sheep. To see Shadow or Sunny running across our property at full tilt is to see beauty in high speed, their coats and manes flying in the air, agile enough to turn rapidly at full gallop. Greyhounds can run faster…about 45 MPH in bursts…but Collies can run at top speed (37 MPH) for long periods. Rabbits and squirrels are no match for Sunny, who can probably hit 40 miles an hour, and turn on a dime at full speed. She caught one of each this summer. Very few rabbits and squirrels will venture across our fenceline, having learned that they’re no match in speed or agility for the Collies.

Both have been exceptionally healthy animals (good breeding), but a few weeks ago Shadow got some sort of rash, and our regular vet, who’s taken excellent care of all our animals for the past 15 years, sent us home with a container of antibiotic pills (Ciprofloxacin) to knock down the bacteria, with instructions to begin administration with the evening feeding. Not too long after we gave the first pill to Shadow, she had a very big and very bad reaction to it – which our vet had warned us to be alert for – and we took her to Exceptional Care for Animals, the 24-hour emergency veterinary service run by Dr. Mark Koeppl.

There, Shadow got truly exceptional care from Dr. Koeppl and his staff; they managed her adverse reaction immediately, and sent us home saying they’d call if anything untoward happened during the procedures and treatments they were going to give Shadow. About four hours later, they called to say she was doing fine, and that we could come and get her if we wanted. We did. We were given explicit instructions about how to administer the new medication she’d be on. She recovered fully and quickly, and is just fine.

Emergency medicine for people is expensive; emergency medicine for animals is expensive. There are expensive machines and diagnostic tools and laboratory equipment involved in both human and animal emergency care; and the care is administered by highly trained and experienced professionals in both the human ER and the animal ER. Fortunately, we are able to afford it. A lot of people can’t.

So now to the point of this post, lest it become nothing but an indulgence on my part about my dogs. ‘Tis the season, and, if you have a few dollars to spare, and love animals, might I suggest a donation to “The Tuffer Fund”. It’s run by Dr. Koeppl, and is named for a tough little cat Dr. Koeppl and his staff took care of a few years ago. The fund helps animal owners who otherwise would not be able to afford excellent emergency care. The Tuffer Fund doesn’t get a lot of publicity; but it helps do a lot of good.

Caring for humans comes first, as it should, for the vast majority of us. But if you can spare a few bucks (or a lot of bucks!) to help animals, send a check (and put “Tuffer Fund” on it) to the address below. Thanks in advance for anything you can contribute. And, so you know, no one asked me to make this solicitation. It’s just a good thing to do.

The Tuffer Fund

Exceptional Care for Animals

229 W. Beltline Highway

Madison, WI 53713

Recall Paranoia

2011-12-14T09:53:00.003-06:00

So, it’s OK if someone who claims their name is Mickey Mouse signs a recall petition, as long as they have a valid Wisconsin address. Or so we’re hearing on the news. Along with the tidbit that some person claiming to be Adolph Hitler signed one of the senatorial recall petitions this summer, but it was tossed out because Adolph listed an address in Germany, not Wisconsin.

Mix that news in with the recent report on Faux News (from Reince Priebus) that election fraud is “rampant and widespread” in Wisconsin, and it’s enough to push the paranoids off the edge of the cliff.

There have been reports on the local media about people grabbing recall petitions from the hands of the volunteer signature-getters and destroying the petitions; widespread reports of threats to people volunteering to gather signatures; even one local report that some loser doofus freeze-framed a local TV news report, got the name and phone number of one of the signers from the TV image of the petition, and made a harassing phone call to that person.

When I signed the petition, I voluntarily put one of my (valid) e-mail addresses on the petition (in case there’s some question about the validity, is the reason the volunteer told me) instead of my phone number, because I just don’t trust that my phone number wouldn’t somehow end up on a political telemarketer’s call-sheet. Because no, I don’t want to contribute to Joe (or Jane) Blow’s campaign fund to make sure that (peace/justice/the American way/inflation/election fraud/abortion/radical socialism/left-handedness/whatever, name your issue) doesn’t take root right here in (name of community).

Here’s the thing.

The recall petitions, assuming those who want Walker ousted gather the 540,208 signatures necessary, simply trigger another (expensive) election. I think a lot of folks don’t understand that. They apparently think if enough signatures are gathered and verified, Walker is outski-putski. They apparently don’t understand that if enough valid signatures are gathered, it doesn’t mean Walker is out; it means there’s going to be another election. I think those pro-Walker/anti-recall ads that run every 10 minutes on TV may be confusing some of the lesser intellectually-endowed among us.

I hope Walker is cast out into the exterior darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, and I hope that Clay Fish person who consorts with him is shown the door, as well. She’s REALLY looney. I’ll go out on a limb here on the 14^th day of December and say I think the signature-gatherers will garner far more than the 540-thousand plus they need; but when the election is held – well, that’s another kettle of (clay) fish.

But, as Rick Perry said to Mitt Romney the other night, I’m not in the betting business. And I really can’t afford to gamble ten thousand dollars. So we’ll just have to trust that all those new safeguards the Republicans put into place in the past few months to try and end the “rampant and widespread” election fraud in the Badger State will do the trick, so we can be confident in the result, no matter what it is. (By the way, that last sentence was intended as sarcasm. I'm told sarcasm doesn't come across well in print.)

The photo at the top of this post is copyright The Christian Science Monitor.

I Don't Do Book Reviews

2011-12-12T11:22:00.000-06:00

I’m not objective. I become a fan of the authors I choose to read, and any semblance of “journalistic ethic” (please don’t call me a journalist) flies out the window. When Stephen King comes out with a new book, I buy it and read it. Same with a handful of other authors like David Maraniss, David Baldacci, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (together or separately). A little Michael Connelly. W.E.B. Griffin. Some P.D. Cornwell.

11-22-63, King’s latest, could be called a book about the Kennedy Assassination. It could be called a book about time travel. Some might say it’s a glimpse into an alternate future. At around 850 pages, it can appear (judging a book by its thickness) a daunting read. To me, the book is at its core a love story.

No spoilers here; I won’t give anything away. The central event of the book is the murder of John Kennedy in Texas in 1963. But the central character’s mission is almost derailed by a love story that unfolds about half-way through the novel, and drives it to a very interesting conclusion.

Poignant, some would say.

I whipped through this book in a week, averaging a little over a hundred pages a day. That’s actually a relatively slow pace for me, because I have to do so much reading for my “day job” with Public News Service. Often, a Stephen King book involves scores of characters – like The Stand. Some, like Duma Key, revolve around a handful of characters. 9-11-63 falls into the latter category. On one hand, I wanted to plow ahead quickly to see what would happen next; on the other, I wanted to read slowly, and savor King’s elaborate plot development.

It’s not a time-travel book in the Heinlein sense, as in the late sci-fi master’s “A Door Into Summer” or “Time Enough for Love”. It’s a fresh look at the possibilities and complexities of time travel, but it never gets cluttered with scientific mumbo-jumbo. And it’s not an attempt to “set the record straight” on what really happened in Dallas on that November day 48 years ago.

If King’s new book is on the Christmas list of someone you know, buy it. And buy a copy for yourself, if you enjoy reading. You won’t be disappointed.

He's Got the White Folks All Riled Up

2011-12-09T10:54:00.001-06:00

The image above of Kaleem Caire is stolen from the Isthmus Daily Page. Mr. Caire’s face has been in the papers and on TV a lot lately. His idea for a charter school for young black men in Madison has sparked heated debate.

On my way home from an errand this morning, Mitch Henck and his Friday Roundtable guests Sunny Schubert and Ed Garvey on WIBA-AM were taking calls on this hot-potato topic. Pretty sharp crew, but this issue has the three of them – and their callers – disagreeing on many points regarding the proposed school.

Those who keep track of such things say about half of Madison’s young black men will likely spend some time in prison before they’re out of their 20’s. Far too many not only don’t graduate from high school, they drop out of school long before their senior year. That this is a problem seems non-debatable, but solving the problem is another matter.

A day or so ago, after the latest school board meeting regarding the proposed school, Caire made what I think is a profound proclamation, namely that for far too many years in Madison, the public schools have put the needs of the adults (teachers, staff, administrators) ahead of the needs of the students. It’s not hard to see where Caire is coming from on this: making sure the teachers union contract is settled and following its dictates trumps damn near everything else.

Many of the roadblocks Caire has run into involve the teacher’s union: he first proposed hiring non-union teachers (you can imagine how THAT idea went over with the school system); when he compromised, it drove expenses too high to be manageable; the wrangling continues.

There are apparently those who firmly believe young black men will only listen to another person of color, and that putting a blue-eyed teacher of Norwegian extraction in front of them results in no listening, no learning. Mitch, Sunny, and Ed gave that topic a workout. If this assertion is fact – and I’m not stipulating that it is – it’s an indication of how deep the problem runs.

Caire’s vision of a “Madison Preparatory Academy” breaks a lot of traditions and calls for a highly non-conventional approach to education, by Madison standards.

I say nothing is lost by giving him a shot at it, while much may be lost if we continue the status quo.

The Tale of Tommy and Tammy

2011-12-07T09:24:00.001-06:00

One is an unabashed progressive/liberal, openly and proudly gay, a Madison hometown woman who’s been in Washington since 1999 with huge name recognition in……Dane County. The other is a small-town boy from the tiny hamlet of Elroy, arguably the most popular Governor in the state’s history, a moderate Republican who has a track record of working with people from the other side of the aisle, likes mass transit, is an inveterate cheerleader for Wisconsin, and has huge name recognition in every county, corner, nook and cranny in the state.

Both want Herb Kohl’s seat in the United States Senate.

Even lefty former Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz likes Tommy. In a recent column/blog for Isthmus, Cieslewicz talked about how he’d reached out to Tommy for help trying to save the federal train money. Dave says Tommy obviously worked hard to try and help, but we all know how that story ended. And there’s no doubt Dave will cast his ballot for Tammy, not Tommy.

In this day and age, it’s more than surprising that a hard-core lefty like former Mayor Dave would reach out to a Republican politician for help in accomplishing a task; and even more remarkable that a lifelong Republican would even take such a call, say nothing about actually working with a member of the “opposition” for what they both perceived as a project for the common good.

I’ve interviewed Tammy countless times in person and on the phone; while she can come off as somewhat of a Pollyanna, and often avoids hard questions and attempts to redirect the conversation, I have no doubt that Ms. Baldwin is a true, honest, and loyal public servant of her constituency, and that she really does act most often in the best interests of the people she represents. Tammy often had a staff person with her when she appeared on Sly’s morning radio program, but Tammy took Sly’s (and my) questions and responded without conferring with the staff person; she took live calls from listeners and gave off-the-cuff responses. She knew her stuff and you would be hard-pressed to stump her.

I’ve interviewed Tommy countless times during his long tenure as Governor. Here’s an in-studio photo from 1989, from the former (multi-award-winning) radio show (Madison’s Morning News) my wife (who wasn’t yet my wife then) and I did, with Governor Thompson holding forth as “Guest Editor” – a role which allowed him to make unfettered, unfiltered, and uncensored comments on anything Toni or I would say, including the privilege of actually interrupting us during a scheduled newscast to make an observation. No staff; no handlers; no spin doctors ever accompanied Tommy during his visits to our show. His driver, a State Patrol officer, would sit in the producer’s booth sipping coffee. Tommy took plenty of live calls from our listeners, and he answered every question head-on, no dodging.

I’m not going to mention Mark Neumann or the Fitzgerald boy or anybody else who might be interested in Herb Kohl’s seat. I think it’s going to be Tommy and Tammy. And if so, Wisconsin has a very interesting choice to make about which one to put in that Senate seat.

But I’ll tell you this: either one, Tammy or Tommy, is a hell of a lot better choice than that fellow from Oshkosh who has our state’s other U.S. Senate seat.

(The side-by-side photo at the top of this post is stolen from Isthmus.)

If You Can’t Dazzle Them With Brilliance, Baffle Them With BS….or, The Rape of The Wallet

2011-12-02T07:34:00.002-06:00

My wife and I have long agreed that if there is any choice in the matter, we spend our money with local merchants at locally-owned businesses. We bank local. We dine at locally-owned restaurants. But, there are times it’s not possible or practical to buy local, and this was one of them.

The chain of events which follows started last Tuesday afternoon, when the carpet-cleaning company (locally owned, locally operated) FAILED to keep an appointment, and with a houseful of guests expected for the long Thanksgiving weekend, my wife was mortified about the condition of a rug in our main living area. Knowing we’d not likely be able to secure carpet-cleaning services the day before a holiday, we opted instead to purchase a new rug. (The old one is now here, in my spacious and tastelessly-appointed office.)

This decision necessitated a trip to a huge national chain store. It had been a full day at work for my wife; she faced a full day of cleaning and baking the next day (Wednesday), so she decided to go rug-shopping Tuesday night. She went to three stores to find the one that was the right size, color, and texture for the room where we and our guests would be spending many hours during the four-day Thanksgiving holiday.

Tired and bedraggled, but successful in her carpet-hunt, she returned home and we retired to the sleeping chamber.

Friday morning, with our guests heedlessly slumbering in the lower living level (no doubt in a semi-coma induced by tryptophan from the turkey, combined with alcohol) my bride was perusing the bargains on her iPad and found something to purchase. This necessitated getting her wallet to get the debit card, and that’s when we discovered that the wallet was missing.

After an exhaustive search of our home and her car, she placed calls to all three stores she’d visited Tuesday night, inquiring if anyone had turned in a wallet; no ma’am. I called the bank to cancel and replace the debit card, while she went online with the state DOT to replace her driver’s license.

This Wednesday afternoon (a week since the wallet had gone missing), I got a call from the bank, saying the big-box store had just called THEM, reporting that the wallet had been turned in a week ago and there was no phone number in the wallet or in the phone book for Toni Morrissey, so maybe the bank could find her and tell her they had the wallet, had been keeping it for a week, and, well, were tired of keeping it.

Yesterday morning, I went to the Customer DisService department of the big-box store to retrieve the wallet, and that’s when the 36-minute battle began. At the “intake” level, I was denied. Never mind that I have the same surname and address (and a debit card from the same bank); she would have to come in and pick it up in person. Never mind that all her ID was in the wallet; she had to do it.

Sensing a challenge, I politely asked to speak with higher authority. I was routed to an Assistant Manager; then to a shift manager, giving the same story each time, and finally I said I’d like to speak to the highest authority in the building. I was escorted to the sanctum sanctorum, and listened politely while the STORE MANAGER explained the STORE POLICY to me. I pleaded my case again; nope.

I said to the STORE MANAGER, as I pulled out my cell phone, that I was going to call the police and report the crime that was taking place. “Whaddaya mean, CRIME?” whined the STORE MANAGER. Summoning my Irish talents as a master BS’er, I informed the store manager that because Wisconsin is a marital community property state, the wallet he was holding against my wishes was as much my property as my wife’s, and that knowingly holding said property against my wishes is a form of kidnap called trover (I couldn’t remember the difference between trover and replevin from my law courses over 40 years ago), and in Wisconsin trover is a class-E felony, hence the STORE MANAGER was de facto a material party to a felony, and that the POLICE would come and tell the STORE MANAGER whether Wisconsin law trumps his STORE POLICY and when the police informed him of the answer, I would insist that they take the STORE MANAGER into custody for this crime against me and all the people of the great state of Wisconsin.

As far as I know, my spiel was 100% unadulterated BS.

The color had drained out of the STORE MANAGER’s face; his demeanor was far less assertive and self-assured (some might say smug); so I held my cell phone up, and said “last chance – store policy or Wisconsin law?”

He took my wife’s wallet, which had been handed to him by the shift manager when we entered the STORE MANAGER’s office, and handed it to me. I thanked him and left the store.

Sometimes I Feel Like a Number

2011-12-01T09:31:00.003-06:00

In the picture above, taken last night by Associated Press photographer Gerry Broome, you see a North Carolina player (white and blue uniform) shooting over a UW-Madison player (red uniform). It was a hard-fought battle; the Badgers had a flat first half, and perhaps a half-court shot at the halftime buzzer launched by Ben Brust of the Badgers woke them up; but, the clock ran out on Bo’s boys and they lost by three on the home court of the always-tough Tarheels.

The player in the photo above, putting up the shot, is a fellow named Harrison Barnes. I know this because after he made the shot, on the live TV broadcast the camera showed him at a different angle, and above his uniform number (40) I saw the name “Barnes”. The name of the Badgers player in the picture is…..ah….5.

To write this post, I first looked online for some pictures of the game last night, and then I went to the UW Badgers basketball website and downloaded a roster of the current players. The point of this post is that I want Bo to relent and put the names of the players on the back of their uniforms.

I believe there are certain times (games, tournaments) when coaches are given no choice in the matter: they MUST put the player’s last name above the number on the back of their uniform jersey. At least, that’s what I gather, from years of observation. Because most of the time, the Badgers have nothing but a number on their jerseys.

Yes, I understand that many coaches deliberately leave the player's name off the jersey to show that it’s a TEAM effort and that it’s not about individuals. Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a bunch of crap.

I don’t KNOW the names of all the players, but I really WANT to. Oh, I know that red-haired fellow is Mike Bruesewitz (31), but that’s the only one I know “by heart” right now. Hopefully, later in the season, I’ll know the names of most of Bo’s players, because I’ll have seen them often enough to associate a name with a uniform number. But it would be SO much easier if Bo would just put their names on their uniforms. It would make me a BETTER fan. It would increase my enjoyment of the game.

So, if you have any influence with Bo, mention that I suggested this. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

And, by the way, the follow in the picture above…wearing the red uniform number 5….is Ryan Evans.

I had to look it up.

A Confederacy of Dunces

2011-11-30T09:53:00.003-06:00

If you haven’t read John K. Toole’s novel, for which this post is named, I herby recommend it. It’s not about the dweebs who now inhabit our state legislature and cabinet positions; rather, it’s a look at some of the sub-cultures which flourished in New Orleans in the 60’s. I can see Governor Walker as the title character of the book, Ignatius Jacques Reilly, a man who enjoys modern conveniences, but has a middle-ages outlook on life and blames his troubles on some higher power, and claims the goddess of fortune too often gives him a bad spin on her wheel of luck.

I got to thinking about “A Confederacy of Dunces” because of the name of the political dweeb who has introduced a “personhood” proposal as an amendment to our state’s constitution. It’s the same thing the voters of Mississippi just rejected; a proposal which claims “personhood” begins with a male erection or some such nonsense. This dweeb’s name is Andre Jacque, and he represents people who live in a gerrymandered district which runs from far southeast suburban Green Bay to Manitowoc.

Andre Jacque would be the sort of typical Cajun name you’d run across in New Orleans. For those who haven’t had the benefit of living in the Big Easy for a couple years, as I have, the Cajuns (a corruption of the word “Acadian”) trace their origins to the French exiles of Canada. I’m not going to get into the vast difference between Cajun and Creole, which a lot of Midwesterners think are interchangeable terms.

When dunces like Representative Jacque introduce such backward proposals, the media pounce on them and trumpet them. Stories like this are like the ignorant utterances of Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber – fun, because they’re so stupid and uninformed. The stories get picked up by national media, and my contention is that stuff like the Jacque proposal makes Wisconsin look like some backwater state populated by fundamentalist dunces, and – long story short – it does more harm than good to Wisconsin’s image.

Sort of like the sex education stuff the legislature has been wrangling about lately. Apparently we need to turn back the calendar to the Nancy Reagan heyday of “just say no”, which began as a mantra against drugs and morphed into a plea against premarital sex.

The more you ridicule absurdly unnecessary stuff like the proposed Jacque constitutional amendment, the harder and louder the push-back from the dunces who think stuff like this is important. Sort of like Miss Vicki’s radio show: the shrillness of her rants against the recall apparently increases as a direct function of the number of signatures gathered.

To circle back to the beginning, the title of Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book is taken from a Jonathon Swift quote: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him”. My adaptation of that quote would be something like “when a true dunce appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the idiots and lunatics will raise their voices in agreement with him”.

For This, We Give Thanks

2011-11-29T09:57:00.000-06:00

I believe it is fair and accurate to say that our “kids” have completed the journey through adolescence, and both have become (in my humble, but deadly accurate opinion) interesting and responsible young adults.

Ample evidence of this was readily available during their extended stay in our home over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Lights were turned out when they left their temporary living quarters, in the lower level of our multi-level home! Since they moved out to be on their own years ago, we’ve converted the “spare bedroom” into a craft studio for my wife, another has become “storage” for seasonal clothes, and our lower level consists of a bedroom, full bath, and large “living area”, in which they set up an air-mattress bed. We used to call the lower level of our home the Free Energy Area, because they’d NEVER turn off the lights when they left.

I suspect the last several years of paying their own electricity and gas bills has taught them the virtue of saving energy.

My wife and I are early-risers, which means we’re early to bed. For the three nights that our kids (and their significant others) stayed with us, they stayed up late, conversed, played games (like Scattergories – I have no idea what this is), and did their best to exhaust my supply of beer and liquor (with my blessing), all while being quiet enough to never once rouse us. Not that many years ago, they’d come home from work or whatever and bang doors, stomp around, blast the TV, and in general act like there was nobody else to be concerned about. Not this time. I’m sure they had plenty of fun, but were also considerate and quiet.

After the huge Thanksgiving feast, they all pitched in and helped clean up the dining room and kitchen, without being asked! What excellent guests!

Saturday they went to the Badgers-Penn State game (photo above: our son Dru is far left with his fiancée Ashly; our daughter Mallory is third from the left, with her beau, John; and their friend Breanna and her friend Adam are on the right). They all piled into my huge, gas-sucking, foreign-made SUV and I dropped them off at the campus-area home of their friend Luke, for a little pre-game partying. Unlike the prior generation, these young people will NOT drive after they’ve been drinking. Their cars stayed in our driveway and they cabbed it home after the game.

They came home from the game and a bit of post-game partying sober (Mallory and John were home about 7:30 PM and Dru and Ashly were here an hour later), mixed themselves some drinks, and entertained themselves into the wee hours, long after my wife and I and the dogs had gone to bed. Not that long ago, they probably would have been candidates for detox after a Badgers game and some heavy post-game partying.

When they pulled up stakes Sunday late morning, they policed and straightened up the “lower living area”, neatly piled the extra blankets, and Mallory collected their towels and put them into the washing machine and started the laundry cycle. Not that many years ago, they would have left the lower living level in a shambles, with all the lights on and towels strewn everywhere. Dru and Ashly headed back to Milwaukee, where they now live, and we took Mal and John to the airport for their 1 PM flight back to New York.

They manage their own lives, their own finances, their careers, and are independent, but respectful and considerate. They participate actively in conversation, seem enthusiastic about their daily routines, and are a real joy to be around.

They’ve grown up and have become interesting young adults. For this, we give thanks.

What? The Supercommittee FAILED?

2011-11-22T09:23:00.000-06:00

I was not exactly stunned and shocked to learn that the so-called “Supercommittee” reported failure to achieve anything, and isn’t even bothering to meet today. There were probably a handful of people across the nation who thought maybe these 12 folks could come to consensus on some cuts and tax tweaks. But those who thought the committee might accomplish anything at all are the eternal optimists who see a pile of manure and think “oh boy, there’s a pony around here somewhere!!!”.

There is no such thing as reason in Congress any more. It’s all political push-pull, driven by seemingly unlimited cash spent to buy influence, and the constant quest for party advantage and re-election. A corollary to this is the signing of “pledges” by so many of these dweebs: pledges about taxes, abortion, marriage definition, and so on. Pledges seldom allow for compromise of any sort, regardless if it’s for the greater good.

We need term limits. Rare are the people like Scot Klug, who kept his word and served as long as he said he would.

We need to stanch the flow of influence-buying cash. That means we need election contribution reform.

Perhaps as much as anything else, we need an electorate that takes the time to really learn about candidates and issues. We need fewer Tea Parties and fewer Occupys and fewer one-issue groups and more informed voters.

We may need to fire the lot of them, the Members of Congress, and start over.

The Ongoing Destruction of The Weather Channel

2011-11-17T15:04:00.000-06:00

This is not the first time I’ve mentioned this topic. I predicted back when NBC bought the Weather Channel they’d ruin it, and as far as I’m concerned, the corporate suits are doing a pretty good job of it.

Did anybody ask the geeks like me, who spend far too much time on the Weather Channel, if we wanted Al Roker on in the morning, to ass it up and make weather puns? Far as I know, they didn’t ask. They just put him on with no adult supervision and let him be a buffoon.

Here’s the thing about niche (and, for all you TV dweebs, that’s pronounced “nitch”, not “neesch”) programming. By definition, it’s designed to appeal to a particular segment of the mass audience. In this case, I’m guessing, when they first put The Weather Channel on cable years ago, the idea was to capture all the weather geeks out there in TV-land and give them weather, weather, weather.

I admit to my weather geekiness and I embrace it. For years, TWC faithfully fed my need to know where low pressure systems, high pressure systems, and fronts of all sorts were, and what they were doing. I’d get up to go to work at 2:30 AM and flip on TWC, and there was a meteorologist, live, giving me my first fix of weather info for the day.

Now that I don’t get up at half past two to go to work, I’m liable to turn on TWC at the spur of the moment just to see what’s going on. More often than not these days, when I indulge the whim, I see something like “When Weather Struck Without Warning”, “Storm Stories”, “Peter Lik Photographs Great Clouds”, or “Famous Weather Systems of The Civil War”. Canned programming, instead of a live meteorologist.

To me, the most annoying part of how NBC is destroying TWC, is in their weekday morning offerings. Unless I tune in during the first 8 minutes of the hour, and see the lady who thinks she’s some kind of rock star (Stephanie Abrams – the first person TWC put on to be a celebrity, rather than a purveyor of weather information), I’m not going to get much weather. I’m more likely to see something like “The Business Barometer”, a bunch of useless (to me) information about the stock market and such, aggregated by CNBC. Or a longish vignette from the National Geographic channel.

The suits at NBC have taken what was an excellent product that perfectly served a niche market, and have tried to make it all things to all people. News flash to 30 Rock: I want WEATHER from The Weather Channel, not sports, not stock market news, not sewing tips. And certainly not FAMOUS TELEVISION PERSONALITY AL ROKER assing it up. WEATHER. I want WEATHER.

I’m sure the theory behind this “all things to all people” crap is that if they can convince the typical TWC viewer that they don’t need to go anywhere else on the dial to get everything they need in the morning, time-spent-viewing will increase, and drive advertising rates higher. This is the kind of tortured thinking that passes for programming expertise in broadcasting today. Instead of finding out what the audience wants and giving it to them in spades, it’s the other way around: give them a whole bunch of stuff and hope they’ll keep watching.

One thing TWC still does better than any other media outlet is cover severe weather live. They’re GREAT at it; you can tell all those geeks like Jim Cantore and Mike Seidell are really lovin’ what they do; and those in-house experts like Dr. Greg Forbes they call on when things are really flyin’ around add just the right touch of hi-tech weather geekiness to make it all so…..well, so SCIENTIFIC!!!! Whether it’s a tornado, cyclone, blizzard, windstorm, hail storm, or a huge outbreak of severe weather, TWC is at its best and nobody comes close to being as good as they are at it.

But the rest of the time, TWC is slipping into the mediocrity of most live TV, being pushed slowly into the grave by executives who have no passion for content (weather!) and think only in short-term business considerations.

The University Where Children Are Raped

2011-11-14T14:47:00.000-06:00

Getting through the coverage of Saturday’s Penn State – Nebraska game was difficult enough for a cynical old bastard like me, but Sunday morning brought a new wave of nausea. Some dweeb on TV introduced a story about the game by saying “The healing has begun at Penn State.”

My rear end. Not by a long shot. This thing is just getting started. The surface has barely been scratched.

First, there was the disconnect of ESPN’s “College GameDay” show, which prompted my friend John Roach to describe in a Facebook status update as “tone deaf”. Not surprisingly, the premiere collegiate football show entirely missed (or deliberately avoided) the essential truth of what apparently happened at the Pennsylvania State University: young boys – God knows how many – were raped, in college athletic facilities, and grown men turned a blind eye and deaf ear.

The man who is accused of doing the raping, Jerry Sandusky, was “one of the boys” in the Penn State Athletic Department, which, along with apparently the highest level of officials at Penn State, conspired for years to cover these crimes.

Then there was the obscene spectacle, captured in the copyright photo above, taken by Gene Puskar of the Associated Press, of the Penn State and Nebraska players gathering and taking a knee at midfield to devoutly pray for the victims. It was enough to make me puke. “Everything’s OK now; we prayed to Touchdown Jesus, and everything is forgiven; now, let’s play some ball for Joe Pa!!!”

Then, the trifecta of media excess, the Sunday morning TV news programs, most similar in tone to the ABC report that stated “the healing has begun” at Penn State.

If you don’t believe my assertion that this thing is just getting started, ask the Roman Catholic Church what happens when you look the other way when young boys are sexually assaulted and there’s a conspiracy to cover it up. The capo and his crew in Rome have spent the last decade selling off hard assets and bankrupting parishes to compensate the victims, and there is still no end in sight to the stream of victims and the flow of cash to compensate them.

This Penn State thing is not even comparable to the crap pulled by Ohio State or Miami. It’s a completely different and infinitely more disgusting. But, as in the cases of the Ohio State and Miami, the idiotically blind Penn State partisans are hoping that “football will help the healing process”, when football is the problem itself.

This is “too big to fail”, athletic version, and it’s just getting started.

Veterans Day Salute: Uncle Jack

2011-11-11T15:37:00.000-06:00

I posted the picture above on Facebook today in honor of Veterans Day. It’s my dad’s brother, Lt. John Thomas Morrissey, and the picture was taken around 1950. My first memories of Uncle Jack go back to around 1955, when I was six years old, and I remember being given my first VERY fast ride in a car in Uncle Jack’s brand new Buick. It was a black sedan with those “portholes” in the side, a huge swath of chrome along the side, with bright red accent paint alongside the chrome. Uncle Jack called that car “the red-winged blackbird”. He told me it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to talk about our high-speed jaunt, and that we should just keep it between us. I did. Until now.

It was a “company car” – issued by Liggett and Myers, the tobacco company Uncle Jack worked for when he came home from serving in the Army. He took a job as a route salesman for L&M Cigarettes. He never talked about his experiences in the Army. My dad, who saw plenty of combat in the waning days of the war in Europe in ’44 and ‘45, and then served in the Army of Occupation in Japan, never said much about his experiences, either. If you asked dad about what Uncle Jack did in the Army, he’d only say “Uncle Jack was a spy”.

In my grandparents’ bedroom in the huge family homestead in Oshkosh there was a large, framed charcoal drawing of Uncle Jack. It was top-notch quality, and the specifics I can remember were that the drawing had Jack’s name, the name of the artist who did it, and it said “Fort Holabird, Maryland” with a date. I wish I knew what happened to that charcoal drawing. I wish I had it.

When you asked my grandpa about what Uncle Jack did in the Army, all he’d say was “he was with the Counter-Intelligence Corps”. The CIC is the forerunner to the CIA. I also know that Uncle Jack could speak and read Japanese, and that in his home were many beautiful pieces of art from Japan. He said he learned to speak Japanese in the Army, and that yes, he had spent some time in Japan.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what Uncle Jack did in the Army, and if your imagination is like mine, I’ll bet you guess he did some pretty interesting things, which he simply could never talk about.

That’s the thing about those guys that served in combat and who did “undercover” work for the military. They don’t talk much about it, except perhaps when they’re with their peers.

So, here’s a Veterans Day salute to my late Uncle Jack, and to all the other men and women who have served in the armed forces of our nation. Thank you, all of you. A lot.

Tannenbaum

2011-11-09T09:34:00.002-06:00

First of all, the state should not put up a Christmas tree in the center of the Capital Rotunda. Like it or not, agree or disagree, it is a Christian symbol. Like it or not, agree or disagree, this is not a Christian nation.

A decorated tree does not connote or relate to anything but Christmas. It’s not a “holiday tree”, as the politically-correct police would have us say. The decorated tree is not a symbol of Memorial Day, 4^th of July, Veterans’ Day, New Year, nor any other holiday. It is a symbol of Christmas.

It is not a Hanukkah Bush.

Second, could we please not waste any more time debating this? Could we not have any more segments on TV and talk radio arguing about what to call it? Could we stop saying that the phrase “holiday tree” is an attack on Christianity? (I’m not sure…has Fox News dragged out that annual warhorse yet, or is it too soon to talk about the attack on Christianity?)

And, third, would the media be kind enough to stop the knee-jerk reaction to be the first to get Annie Laurie Gaylor (Freedom From Religion Foundation) to comment on the non-existent controversy?

Take a look at the photo above: where do you suppose it was taken – Dallas? Chicago? Montreal?

Tokyo.

Where it is referred to as a Christmas tree.

It Looks Pretty Bad for Penn State

2011-11-07T10:36:00.000-06:00

A quick read of the criminal complaint leads me to believe that this case is going to be a stunner, and it may take down a lot of people.

It appears that one of the former Penn State coaches, Jerry Sandusky, ran some sort of foundation for young men which he used to troll for boys he could fondle (taking showers with, touching, etc.), and that a lot of people looked the other way.

There is a lot of “looking the other way” in big-time collegiate sports. But this case, which has been smoldering for a dozen years, burst onto the public consciousness this weekend, and already Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley is on administrative leave (by his own request, late Saturday night), and one of the school’s Senior VP’s, Gary Schultz, decided after the case broke that he’d go back into retirement immediately. Curley and Schultz face charges they lied to a grand jury about the case.

Sandusky faces 40 counts of abuse, including 21 felony charges, for abusing 8 boys between 1994 and 2009. Many of the incidents allegedly happened in a Penn State athletics building.

As is so often the case, the initial news reports lead to more questions than answers. Why is this just coming to light now? How much did Joe Pa know, and when did he know it? Why haven’t the parents of the boys who were alleged victims said something sooner?

Sandusky was on Joe Pa’s staff for 32 years, and the jock world saw him as Joe Pa’s successor. Except, of course, Joe Pa hasn’t retired. Joe Pa is now 167 years old and has been head football coach at Penn State since 1871. Joe Pa is expected to still be head coach of the Nittany Lions when they play the Badgers at Camp Randall on November 26^th.

Unless, of course, he suddenly retires and disappears. Stay tuned.

We Learned Nothing from 2008

2011-11-02T10:27:00.001-05:00

The man above, Jon Corzine (photo copyright Forbes) just finished spectacularly crashing his firm – MF Global – as if it were 2008. 40 to 1 leverage on European bonds. And now the FBI wants to know if maybe ol’ Jonnie used some of his customers’ money to make this huge and fateful wrong bet.

It’s likely, regardless of what the FBI discovers, that there’ll be any serious consequence for Corzine. He’ll wash his hands in bankruptcy court and walk away from it.

Just like all the others did. Except for the ones we bailed out, that is. They were "too big to fail."

For those who don’t follow the game closely, Jon Corzine is a Democratic politician and long-time baron of Wall Street. Earlier this year, he lost his brief job as Governor of New Jersey to Chris Christie. Before that, he ran Goldmine (Goldman) Sachs. You may recall that firm being in the news in late 2008.

Oh, it’s all one big club, these titans and barons who run the money in the United States.

As a Democratic Party pol, Corzine decried the exorbitant salaries on Wall Street. So what kind of a deal did he make for himself at MF Global? A tiny salary of 1.5 million dollars per annum, a signing bonus of 1.5 million dollars, 11 million in stock options, and 400 grand to his lawyers for setting up his compensation plan. And let’s not forget…the back end of the deal, which says if he leaves MF Global, his options immediately vest, he gets 12.1 million in cash as “severance”.

By the way, MF Global’s second-quarter report shows 64 percent of the firm’s revenues went to compensation. The only businesses in the world that operate this way are Wall Street firms.

These guys keep doing this, and keep getting away with it without a consequence.

We learned nothing from 2008.

Why I Don't Feel Safer Today

2011-11-01T07:06:00.000-05:00

Today, the first of November, Wisconsin’s new concealed-carry gun law goes into effect. And I don’t feel one bit safer.

I’m not a gun hater. I am thoroughly trained in firearms use by a highly-decorated World War Two Combat Infantry Veteran - my late father. I have trod the woods and fields of Wisconsin legally hunting deer and small game. That’s me, above, a few years ago, doing some target-shooting on my land in Colorado.

The reason I don’t feel safer today, mainly, is that those people who argue most vociferously for their right to carry a concealed weapon are, I believe, also the most likely to actually USE that weapon. The same people who will say things like “an unloaded gun is a useless thing” and “I carry it for protection” and “cars and baseball bats kill people; nobody’s talking about taking them away from us”.

The rights-demanders are seemingly just itching for a situation where they can draw their concealed weapon and put it to use. We can debate this assertion, but you won’t likely change my mind.

I will feel less safe because I, or a member of my family, may find themselves in a situation where somebody with four hours of weapons training actually uses a concealed weapon, and I or my family member ends up injured or worse because we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Law enforcement officers are thoroughly trained in weapons use, and they have professional protocols to follow. I want them to be carrying a weapon wherever and whenever. I trust they will know when to shoot, and when not to shoot. The rights-demanders: not so much.

As to my personal relationship with concealed carry: I won’t apply for a permit, and I will not violate the law by unlawfully concealing or carrying a weapon. Suffice it to say that if someone invades my home when I’m around, there will be nothing concealed about what I choose to greet them with.

Manage Your Expectations

2011-10-31T08:54:00.001-05:00

When you schedule pre-Big 10 Season games with schools like Wofford State, Northern Illinois, South Dakota, and The Citadel, you make yourself bowl-eligible (6 wins) in short order.

You make your players and fans feel good about themselves.

What you don’t do is prepare your team to soundly trounce Michigan State and Ohio State on the road.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of the haters who feels good when the Badgers lose. I do believe most jocks are pampered, most coaches are overpaid, and that far too much is made of the won-lost record. But I am a fan, and I’d far rather see any Badgers team win than lose.

It’s clear that the philosophy of the football brain trust on Monroe Street for the past umpty-nine seasons has been to get bowl-eligible in a hurry, put up a decent showing in conference competition, and end the season with a January 1^st bowl game. It’s a philosophy which has served the football Badgers well for many years.

The trouble comes when you land a highly-sought-after quarterback; you mow down UNLV, Oregon State, Northern Illinois, and South Dakota….and then discover that Nebraska wasn’t really ready for prime time just yet, and Indiana is no match. You’ve got this quarterback who most decidedly does NOT fit the “Wisconsin mold” and can throw, scramble, and run with the best of them, and people start talking “Heisman”, and the phrase “National Championship Game” starts to pop up regularly in conversation. My friend Jay Wilson puts on his professor glasses and lays out the possibilities of a Wisconsin national championship on his blackboard (which is actually green) for the Channel 3 viewers. And you start paying attention to BCS standings.

That’s when the trouble starts. And then, you get shocked with a highly improbable finish on the road at East Lansing, and a startlingly similar scenario plays out in Columbus. Suddenly it’s all disappointment and accusations of time-out mismanagement and special teams breakdowns and gloom.

The problem is, you didn’t manage your expectations.

The Badgers football team is designed to get bowl-eligible in a hurry, do well in conference play, and go to a “decent” bowl game. And so far, sports fans, it is EXACTLY on track. It is NOT designed for high BCS rankings; it is NOT designed to be on a par with Southeast Conference teams; it is NOT designed to compete for a national championship.

The Badgers will do well against Purdue, Minnesota, Illinois, and Penn State. They’ll play competitive ball. They may not win all four remaining games, but it’s not likely they’ll be blown out of any of them. And partly because of their W-L record and partly because Badgers fans love to party and travel well, they’ll be in a decent bowl at the end of the year.

Manage your expectations.

How Typical

2011-10-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

Next Tuesday, the state’s new concealed-carry law goes into effect. Thursday afternoon, Republican Senator Mike Ellis of Neenah said he was opposed to allowing concealed weapons to be carried onto the Senate Floor. Then he changed his statement, a bit.

Here’s how Chanel 11 TV in Green Bay reported it on its website:

“Senate President Mike Ellis initially told reporters on Thursday Senate Republicans planned to ban weapons in the Senate galleries and on the chamber floor during debates. But Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Juneau Republican, said the plan was still under discussion.

Now Ellis says he's spoken with Fitzgerald and was told the plan was to allow guns on the floor but not in the chamber's galleries, which means spectators would not be allowed to carry.”

Another example of lawmakers making laws which they really don’t want to apply to themselves, or their workplace.

God Hates the Badgers Football Team?

2011-10-24T09:56:00.000-05:00

As is my custom, when my wife’s alarm clock went off at 5:25 this morning, as she headed for the shower I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV to get the latest news from my friend Rob Starbuck on Channel 3. They were doing their sports segment, and I heard Coach Bielema say there was nothing they could have done to prevent the loss at Michigan State Saturday night.

Actually, what Coach Bielema said was more like this – and I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close: “I don’t want to get too spiritual here, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe somebody up there just didn’t want us to win this one”.

Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be? WHAT?

I’m not at all a believer in “if it was meant to be, it will be; if it wasn’t, it won’t happen” because I think it flies in the face of individual effort and is one of those things people tell themselves (and others) after something they’ve wanted a great deal or worked hard for, doesn’t happen. I’m pretty sure God does not get involved in issues involving the outcome of football games or personal relationships or any of that stuff.

So, to hear Coach Bielema essentially say there may have been nothing they could have done to win that game because God may not have wanted them to was a real shocker. Here’s a guy who’s had to prove himself worthy of the job handed to him (unlawfully, by the way) on a silver platter by his extremely successful predecessor (and Coach Bielema has proved beyond any doubt he was worthy), pretty much inferring that the outcome of the Michigan State game was out of his hands.

Coaches work tirelessly to motivate players to give their best and their all every time the ball is snapped; they teach that individual effort must mesh with team effort to achieve a desired outcome; that they must give their all as individuals and as a team to make things happen. So, to hear a successful coach say God may not have wanted them to beat the Spartans really rocked me.

Some may say that I’ve taken the coach’s words out of context, that he was understandably down after such a dramatic ending, that he’s doing nothing more or less than any human does to rationalize a huge emotional hurt, but….this was a public statement, on the record, with the coach fully aware that cameras were rolling, clearly inferring that God may have had a hand in the outcome of the game.

It was a tough and stunning loss, and I’m a Badgers fan all the way, but I think the UW’s habit of dining on cupcakes in the pre-season, and believing their own press clippings after they dispatched Nebraska so easily, may have had more to do with the outcome of the game than the Lord God Almighty deciding to be a Spartans fan Saturday night. I hope that dawns on the coach before they head to Columbus next Saturday.

"A Laser-Like Focus on Jobs"

2011-10-20T15:30:00.002-05:00

(Author's note: for years, my wife has told me no one understands my sarcasm. The first two anonymous comments below illustrate her point nicely. For the uninitiated, this post is meant to be dripping with derision and disdain for our dysfunctional state legislature and political "leadership".)

One thing seems certain: there will be no job creation in the great state of Wisconsin until we roll back the law that allows those Planned Parenthood people to pass out condoms at schools in Waukesha, a cruel ploy designed to get the impressionable youth of Waukesha to start having sex, creating babies they don’t want and can’t afford to have, thus drumming up more disgusting abortion business for Planned Parenthood.

Such is the apparent content of the current extreme extraordinary emergency exemplary plenipotentiary legislative session on jobs.

Another thing seems certain: there will be no job creation in the great state of Wisconsin until we roll back this damnable “earn-a-buck” program that the disgusting Madison liberals who used to run the DNR put in place to try and scare people about Chronic Wasting Disease, under the guise of thinning the herd, after a fraudulent and inflated count, conducted by sandal-wearing pot-smoking hippies who are the remnants of the 60’s counter-culture from the east side of Madison, in an effort to unnecessarily hamper the attempts of hard-working-down-on-their-luck ‘sconnies to go into the woods on opening day and blast away at an 8-point buck to bring home food for their family, and to further depress the great Wisconsin butchering and meat-preparation industry.

This new deer czar we have will put a quick end to that foolishness.

One more thing seems certain: there will be no job creation in the great state of Wisconsin until we decide once and for all what kind of fertilizers our farmers and citizens can use to grow bigger, better, and stronger crops and to create lush green lawns, the pleasing appearance of which will entice the captains of industry to locate their profitable businesses here, creating vast numbers of moderately-paying jobs, which will allow us to shut off the unemployment money spigot which has been so heinously abused by the lazy and unmotivated slackers who claim they can’t find work, and will once again allow sales of Milorganite to take place in Dane County, which will create still more jobs in the Milwaukee County Sewerage Utility and in the privately-owned lawn and garden businesses of Dane County.

And that, my friends, is a laser-like focus on jobs.

Psychic or Psyched Out?

2011-10-19T15:33:00.001-05:00

In the course of my daily activities I was compelled to motor to the city’s sprawling southwest side to run a couple errands, including the purchase of some over-the-counter cold meds for my long-suffering bride. Half-listening to some blabbermouth with a very Irish-sounding name on the radio, my ears suddenly perked up when I heard a commercial for the “Psychic Connection” or some such. Based in California, according to the ad, and with a staff of “carefully screened professional psychics”.

Indeed.

This sort of stuff always reminds me of my first cousin once removed (some would call her a “second cousin”) who made a pretty penny back in the 80’s working as a telephone psychic for one of the many such outfits that thrived in southern California back then. Matter of fact, it pretty much paid for her education at Cal State Fullerton.

She and her family, relatives on my mother’s side, lived in the Orange County community of Garden Grove - or, as it was called in 1987, “Garden Nam”, because of the proliferation of VietNamese families and businesses that had put down roots there. It was conventional wisdom that along the city’s main thoroughfares, Garden Grove Boulevard, Euclid Street, Brookhurst Street, Chapman Avenue, et.al., if the business sign was written in VietNamese and English, anybody was welcome to do business inside; if the sign was in VietNamese only, only native speakers of the language were welcome. Or so my cousins told me.

As usual, I digress.

My wife (V 1.0) and I had motored down to Garden Grove from our digs in Palmdale to spend a weekend with the cousins, and after a measured amount of truth serum (80 proof) had been administered, I noticed that the cousin in question was nowhere to be found. Her father looked at his watch and said “she’s on her shift”, which I came to discover referred to her six-hour shift as a telephone psychic (8 PM to 2 AM). She worked out of her bedroom in the family home, using a moderately elaborate phone system which allowed her to take calls from a central number and dispense psychic advice.

The next day, she showed me the set-up, and said the Saturday evening 8 to 2 shift was “prime time” for money-making (they were paid per-call-per-minute); and the next shift, which started at 2AM, was referred to by the insiders as “the desperate hours”. She had some seniority, and was good at it, so she got first dibs on the shifts available.

Did she have psychic talent? Of course not. She explained to me that she’d answered an ad, gone to an interview, and was selected to get 16 hours training in “how to be a psychic”, and given a fairly large ring-bound manual (which she showed me)of instructions and tips on everything from how to use the phone hook-up, to how to listen carefully for conversational clues to feed information back to the caller to seem “psychic”, to tips on how to keep the sucker (err…customer) on the line as long as possible to rack up the dollars. She was a smart kid (in her late teens at the time) who picked up the con quickly and made good money fielding phone calls and doing “training sessions” with new hires. She did it all through her college years, got her degree, and went on to a more conventional career.

Every time I hear an ad like the one I heard on the radio this afternoon, or that I see on late-night TV, I chuckle and think of my cousin, dispensing psychic wisdom and revelations from her bedroom in Garden Grove, and the desperate people who so wanted to believe what she was telling them.

Scientific Consensus

2011-10-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

There’s a new book out from author Debbie Nathan called “Sybil Exposed”, which categorically exposes the multiple personality story of “Sybil” as a complete, deliberate hoax.

The story of the girl with 16 distinct personalities, Sybil, became quite popular in 1973, when a book was released purporting to tell the story of this Minnesota farm girl who wound up in New York City and on a therapist’s couch, telling horrifying stories of her torture and abuse, which fractured her personality into multiple parts. They even made a very popular movie about it, with Sally Fields playing the title role.

As Nathan chronicles, “Sybil” is actually Shirley Mason, who met Manhattan therapist Cornelia Wilbur in the early 1950’s. Wilbur suggested the two of them could make a lot of money if they concocted this wild story about Mason’s travails and fractured personality. The two collaborated with writer Flora Schreiber, and the myth of Sybil was born. In 1958, Mason “came clean” and issued a statement that the whole Sybil thing was a complete fiction. (Nathan’s book is based on this statement and other materials now archived at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY.)

But Wilbur so aggressively promoted the story of her multiple-personality patient among psychiatric circles that she came to great fame; made a fortune off Schreiber’s 1973 book – which is still in print and which you can buy today on Amazon for $9.99 – and the whole idea of multiple personality disorder was born. It became an official medical/psychological disorder designation which exists to this day, because the consensus of the powers-that-be in the world of psychiatry was that Wilbur’s stories about Mason were true.

Consensus.

As Nathan’s new book so clearly illustrates, consensus can be a very dangerous thing. The consensus of leading medical authorities was that Joseph Lister was crazy, when he postulated that nearly-invisible organisms called “bacteria” were the cause of so many post-operative deaths in hospitals in the late 1800’s.

The consensus of leading environmental scientists in the 1970’s was that the earth was on the verge of another ice age, because of the global cooling they’d observed. Thirty years later, the consensus of leading environmental scientists is that the earth is rapidly heating up because of man-made factors. Many of the same scientists; much of the same data.

In Lister’s case, he proved beyond any doubt that carbolic acid has antiseptic properties, and that what it does is kill bacteria. All the others were wrong, and he was right. Think of that the next time you rinse your mouth out with Listerine. (Yup – same guy.) Lister is only one of many cases that illustrate so clearly that science is not about consensus, but about demonstrable, repeatable fact. Truth, if you will.

I don’t know if the earth is cooling or warming or if greenhouse gasses are behind it or if the hole in the ozone layer is a factor or if the hole was caused by fluorocarbons or what. I do know that consensus is fine for resolving a discussion about where to go for dinner, but that it has nothing to do with science.

Chance the Vulgar Chant Will Stop: Zero-point-zero.

2011-10-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

For those few of you who read this rant and are not familiar with what the game-day experience is like at Camp Randall Stadium, a word of warning: this post will contain vulgar language. Nothing adults haven’t heard, but if it’s not your cup of tea, be forewarned, and catch up on some other blogs.

Several years ago – I’m not sure when - the reform-school dropouts who populate the student sections of Camp Randall Stadium (those sections with letters in the middle of the alphabet) began a chant which persists to this day. It must have started when the Badgers were in the throes of the Don Morton era, when wins were few and far between, and the game on the field was not the most exciting part of the game-day experience. Half the students would yell “Eat shit!” and the other half would yell back “Fuck You”. Some insist it arose prior to the Morton era, as a crude counterpoint to the beer commercial that said “Tastes Great! Less Filling!” in several variants, back in the 70’s and 80’s.

It gets so loud that the TV sound techs have had to figure out a way to try and keep it from invading grandma and grandpa’s living room, as they watch alma mater. It’s crude, rude, stupid, vapid, devoid of creativity, boorish, and….now firmly entrenched, as much a part of the game-day experience as the jump around frenzy between the 3^rd and 4^th quarter, and the 5^th quarter show from Dr. Leckrone and his marching band.

And it’s not going away because Barry and Bret sent ‘round an e-mail to the students asking them to stop doing it.

Anyone who’s ever parented a child knows what children do when you ask them to stop doing something that annoys you or is unmannered. Absent a consequence, the behavior continues.

A few years ago then-Chancellor John Wiley sent ‘round a similar e-mail, and it was ignored, just as Barry and Bret’s e-mail will be ignored tomorrow morning when Indiana comes in for the Homecoming game.

Attending a Badgers home football game entails dodging a phalanx of drunken students to get into the stadium, and woe betide he who wears the colors of the opposing team – stand by to be loudly insulted, intimidated, and, if the cops aren’t around, to have beer tossed at you. It’s a very raucous atmosphere, it’s a very partisan crowd. It’s what some people call “part of the home-field advantage”. Badgers basketball and hockey games at the Kohl Center are nothing like the Camp Randall experience. In my opinion, the crowd chants and cheers that are part of a Badgers hockey game are far more creative and engaging than anything in or around Camp Randall. The experience of having 17 thousand rabid hockey fans chanting “SIEVE!!!” and pointing their collective (index) finger at the goalie who’s just been scored on is unduplicated in collegiate sport anywhere. (European soccer matches are in a league of their own.)

I think part of it is that the powers-that-be at the big college on the lake aren’t really serious about stopping the vulgar chant. There’s no consequence. It’s sort of like those messages you see before the feature film starts, in a movie theater – the ones about silencing your cell phone and “no talking or texting during the film”. Movies are made for young people, and it’s their money that drives the box office, so theatre owners aren’t really serious about stopping the talking and texting; they run the message to make the “more mature” patrons feel that management is concerned about the movie-going experience. Nobody ever gets tossed out of a movie theatre for texting while the movie is on.

If the brain trust at the UW were serious about stopping the chant, they could do it in a heartbeat. All they’d have to do is announce to the crowd that if the vulgar chant is heard, the referee will throw the yellow hankie and announce an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on the home team (a “bench foul”, if you will). It would take approximately one such penalty to bring the vulgar chant to an end.

Without a consequence, the chance of the vulgar chant ending because of an e-mail from the Athletic Director and the Head Coach is….as Dean Vernon Wormer (Animal House) would say….zero-point-zero.

"Traffic Reporting" in Madison: The Longest Rant I Have Ever Written

2011-10-13T10:34:00.002-05:00

With all due respect to my friend and former colleague Shawn Prebil, who is quite conscientious and good in reporting traffic in Madison and is the best at it, in general the state of the art here sucks. This rant arises from my foray into rush-hour traffic this morning, and from anecdotal evidence supplied by my wife, who deals with afternoon rush-hour traffic five days a week.

When you look at the picture of a Los Angeles traffic jam above, you have the equivalent of ten thousand words on why LA needs accurate and timely traffic reporting – and, conversely, why Madison does NOT. In LA, an incomplete or inaccurate traffic report can ruin your day. In the late 80’s, when I was working for the Jack Kent Cook organization in LA, his newspaper (The Los Angeles Daily News) sponsored traffic reports on KABC-AM. At one point in 1987, when the 101 Freeway was being reconstructed, the boys in the marketing department (it was a team effort, but I’m taking majority credit) came up with a slogan for a publicity campaign: “60 seconds on 790 could save you 60 minutes on the 101”. It was a print campaign; the slogan was at the top; there was a graphic with the Daily News masthead in the middle; and the bottom line said “Daily News traffic reports on KABC AM 790”.

At that time, California Hiway 101 was the busiest stretch of road in the nation, collecting all the traffic from the San Fernando Valley and points north and west (where it’s called the Ventura Freeway), snaking down through the Hollywood Hills (where it’s called the Hollywood Freeway) and down into the heart of the city, where it terminates near the collection of tall buildings commonly thought of as “Los Angeles”. The marketing campaign, run in conjunction with ABC, was to draw attention to the traffic reports on KABC-AM; the ad for the Daily News that ran in the traffic report cited some reason why your life was not complete without a subscription to the Daily News. Synergy. Both companies benefit.

The thing is, though, that before the campaign was launched, the principals of both companies laid down an edict: KABC traffic reports had to be deadly accurate, timely, and totally user-friendly. Both companies actually gave a hoot about the product they were advertising, because as any LA commuter can tell you, once you’re burned by an inaccurate or untimely traffic report, and you wound up stuck in traffic (glance again at the picture at the top of this post), you will change the station and NEVER rely on them for traffic again. NEVER.

This trip down memory lane now brings me back to this morning, and my encounter with local traffic reporting (such as it is). I had a fasting blood draw at 8:25 at a clinic on Odana Road near Whitney Way (west side of Madison), so with no caffeine aboard, I was cranky to begin with. I left our secluded exurban enclave at 8 AM, headed up HiWay MM, and merged onto the beltline. Moments before I got to that spot, the traffic report on the radio (it was not Shawn, it was the other AM station that does traffic) said “the westbound beltline is kind of slow from the interstate to Park Street, but after that, it’s moving at normal speed”.

Exactly the opposite was true. I could see it with my own eyes atop the ramp where MM (Rimrock Road) crosses over the beltline. Behind me, when I merged onto the beltline, traffic was fine. Ahead of me….Park Street and beyond…it was a sea of red brake lights and three westbound lanes of bumper-to-bumper 10 MPH traffic. The traffic report I’d heard less than a minute ago was completely and totally incorrect.

Another momentary diversion, if I may: I have a slightly more than passing familiarity with the inner workings of traffic reporting in Madison. My wife (before she was my wife) and I, when we worked together on the (Award-winning) broadcast “Madison’s Morning News”, created the first regularly-scheduled traffic reports in Madison history. It was the summer of 1988; I’d just moved to Madison from Los Angeles, and the beltline bridge over Mud Lake was being built. Prior to construction of that bridge, the “beltline” pretty much ended at South Towne Drive, and traffic continued on Broadway Street. Traffic would back up horribly, and Toni and I enlisted the services of Maynard “Skip” Schneider, the Public Relations guy for the local Triple-A, to do actual, on-the-scene LIVE traffic reports from the construction site, at the beginning of top-and-bottom-of-the-hour newscasts, from 6:30 AM to 9 AM.

At the top of the hour, we’d run NBC national news; then we’d start our local news by giving a headline version of the lead story, then going to the News 3 Weather Center, with a live forecast (via telephone line), and then it was “Now, live from Car 1480 in the beltline construction zone, here’s Command Sergeant Major Skip Schneider”. Skip, who got a hoot out of me calling him “Command Sergeant Major”, would then tell us what was going on and how to avoid the worst of the traffic snarls. Same routine at the bottom of the hour. And thus, traffic reporting was born in the Madison radio market in the summer of 1988.

Through the years, traffic reporting devolved from an actual person in an actual vehicle driving on the actual beltline (“Casey James reporting live from the beltline in the WTDY News Cruiser”), to “Road Rage Traffic” with Shawn Prebil live in the News-Talk 1670 Road Rager ; then, when a new consultant came in and said we had to remove all the anger from the station, Road Rage Traffic went bye-bye and it became just “traffic and weather together”, a slogan stolen from a Chicago radio station. Somewhere around 2005 the traffic vehicle was parked forever, and Shawn began doing morning traffic reports from a studio in the radio station, by monitoring D.O.T. traffic cameras.

Now, with radio dying the death of a thousand cuts (personnel cuts), the guy who does the traffic report I heard just before merging onto the beltline in Madison is actually sitting in a studio in Milwaukee. Yes, he’s 75 miles away, and he looks at D.O.T. traffic cameras on his computer monitor. And he’s responsible for doing live and recorded traffic reports on an ungodly number of Milwaukee and Madison radio stations. As good as this guy is, and as accomplished a broadcaster and communicator as he is, it’s simply impossible to keep up with so much traffic in the state’s two largest cities and be completely accurate and timely.

If he knew how wrong his 8 AM report was, he’d be ashamed. I’ve listened to this guy for years, and he’s a thoroughly competent professional. But because of the economic unviability of radio in 2011, and the untenable debt service the company he works for (Clear Channel) has gotten itself into, he’s forced to attempt to do an impossible task.

I wasn’t late for my blood draw. I knew, from years of living in the Madison area, that if you need to be anywhere in the morning, and your trip involves the beltline between 7 and 9 AM or 4 and 6 PM, you need to allow an extra 15 minutes travel-time. Madison doesn’t have anywhere near the need for accurate traffic reporting that larger cities do. It’s predictably slow at predictable places at predictable times. A big wreck can throw a wrench into the pattern, but 95% of the time Madison traffic is completely predictable. And that fact is the traffic reporter’s stock-in-trade.

Some day, in another round of cuts, Madison radio owners and managers will figure out that they really don’t need scheduled traffic reports, particularly because they’re not timely and accurate, and that the function can be handled by the news department, in the few stations where such a department still exists. They can just take the commercial that’s connected with the traffic reports and fold it into the news report or into regularly scheduled programming. They’ll make a few bucks less because the commercial isn’t “special”, but the personnel cuts will more than offset the small loss.

There you have it: the past, present, and future of traffic reporting in Madison.

Don't Bank On It

2011-10-06T10:27:00.002-05:00

The image above has been flying around the internet the past couple days, graphically illustrating that it’s still true that often, a picture is worth a thousand words. (Click on it and take a good look.)

I am very well acquainted with a person, whose identity shall remain confidential, who in 1998 was working in a senior executive capacity for one of the banks listed on the chart above. Back then, 13 years ago, my acquaintance accurately predicted two of the mergers that happened in the ensuing two years, and said that by 2010 there would be five major US banks.

As you can see from the chart, my acquaintance missed it by one. There are four.

I’m not sure what will come of the “Occupy” movement now afoot; it could be the birth of a huge, new force in American life and politics; and it could be just another momentary diversion. I’m not as good as my acquaintance mentioned above in predicting things.

But I do know the “Occupy” movement has begun to tap into an emotion felt by millions of Americans. These people, these – for lack of a better name – Wall Street barons, have fleeced us for a long time. They wrecked the economy with their reckless – for lack of a better word – greed, their bundled subprime mortgages, their credit default swaps, their co-opting of the “ratings services”. They came out of it unscathed, and while they may not be bundling subprime mortgages any more, they’re no doubt doing similar things we’ll discover a decade from now, and all the while “feeing” us to death.

It’s far too simplistic, but the allegation of the so-called 99-percenters, “we’re too big to fail”, does resonate. They’re saying the middle class is what’s failing, and you can find plenty of evidence for that without looking too hard.

What can we do about it?

My wife and I have taken the first step. We’ve moved nearly all of our financial business to a locally-owned and locally-controlled financial institution (it’s a credit union), and by January, 100% of our financial business will be done and controlled right here in Madison.

It’s a first step, not a complete solution. But we think it’s a damn good start.

I Hope It's Not Over

2011-10-05T11:24:00.002-05:00

It’s been such a fun Brewers season that I hope it doesn’t end Friday at Miller Park. I hope the Brewers can win tonight, in Arizona, and then move on to the NL Championship series.

But it’s their inconsistent play that troubles me the most. Anybody remember the last few weeks of September?

Last night was a stumble – from which I hope they pick themselves up and put tonight’s game away, early. But more often than not, when they’ve stumbled this season, they’ve fallen flat on their faces for a week or more.

In September they beat the snot out of the Cards in a critical series, and then went to Chicago a few days later and let the Cubs look more like world-beaters than the 3^rd-rate team they are.

And there was the curse of SI, which led to that long slump.

Like all good things, I don’t want it to come to an end. I want them hosting Game One of the World Series on the 19^th, and going on to win it.

Then it can end.

Endangered Species?

2011-10-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

For a while, I was actually concerned that in some near-term politically-correct future, my beloved alma mater, Hortonville High School, would have to change its mascot from the Polar Bear to the Baby Harp Seal or the Emperor Penguin or some critter along those lines. After all, my parents both graduated from Oshkosh High School - long before there were four high schools in that city - and were proud Oshkosh Indians - long before what’s now Oshkosh West High School had to change the mascot from “Indians” to “Wildcats”.

For a while, mascot-changing was rampant in Wisconsin, under the Doyle administration, when the politically-correct-police were put in charge of a new committee to make us all feel bad about native American-themed mascots. Now, the tide has apparently turned.

A Waukesha County judge has ruled the Mukwonago High School Indians can continue being the Indians, and the state’s attempt to force them to change mascots was unconstitutional. The Reader’s Digest version is that the judge ruled that the DPI (Department of Public Instruction) bureaucrat who tried to force the change…a dude named Paul Sherman…had an “impermissibly high risk of bias”.

I’m really not certain why the good folks of the village of Hortonville decided years ago to select the Polar Bear as a mascot. I always liked it, because it was unique, and the Polar Bear is considered a powerful and self-reliant critter. I was a staffer on our high school newspaper, the Polar Cub. In sports, we played teams like the Omro Foxes, the Winneconne Wolves, and, yes – the Berlin Indians. And the Clintonville Truckers, so-named because of the huge Four-Wheel-Drive plant there.

The thing that annoyed me so much about the politically correct forces in Madison is that they completely ignored the simple fact that mascots are selected because they are reflective of the community’s roots (Clintonville Truckers, Kimberly Papermakers, Ashland Oredockers, Stoughton Vikings, DeForest Norskies), or that the mascot possesses qualities which we wish to emulate.

I’m not offended that Notre Dame calls itself the “Fighting Irish”. They could have called them “The Drunken Micks” and it wouldn’t have bothered me a bit. Same with the Boston Celtics. I have no idea why any “native American” would be annoyed that a community like Berlin or Mukwonago or Oshkosh decided to use the Indian as its mascot, and I would make the case that only in the City of the Perpetually Offended (Madison) would a notion that “Indians” is somehow demeaning would gain any traction.

I will admit that some of the logos used are stereotypical, in a cartoon-like fashion. The one used by the Cleveland Indians, for example.

But that’s just bad taste, which you may choose to define as offensive, but not cause to change the name of the mascot. They need a face-lift, not a name-change.

So long live the Hortonville Polar Bears, and the Mukwonago Indians, and all the rest of them. Including the Marquette Warriors.

Have You Heard? Chris Christie is FAT!

2011-10-03T15:31:00.000-05:00

It’s the only remaining form of discrimination that you can still get away with, so apparently everybody and their brother feels it necessary to comment on Chris Christie’s unhealthy weight. You can’t make a joke about his religion, whatever it is. You can’t make a joke about his ethnic background, no matter what it is. You can’t make a joke about his skin color, no matter what it is. You can’t make a joke about a disability which may affect him, no matter what it is. You can’t make a joke about his sexual orientation, no matter what it is.

But being fat? Well, roll out the barrel!!!

Everybody from pea-brained social media friends of mine to national TV hosts like Jay Leno have made jokes about Christie’s weight. It’s such an easy target. Asked about his weight by some nooz dweeb a few weeks ago, Christie shot back “I eat too much. It’s not a mystery.”

Oh, and the fat puns – Christie tackles weighty issues; he’s not running for President so much as he’s waddling for President; he needs to fatten up his campaign chest – most of them aren’t even mildly creative.

We have TV shows that poke fun at fat people, like the now-popular “Mike and Molly Show”, about a couple who met at “Overeaters Anonymous”; like the old “Fat Albert Show” from Bill Cosby, who should be ashamed of himself for naming the big guy “Fat Albert”; and the perennially popular “Biggest Loser” shows, which have engendered local spinoffs. Some people argue that “Biggest Loser” is about success and confidence and transformation; but at its essence, it’s a show about fat people.

Try to imagine a show “Biggest Gainer”, about people with anorexia desperately trying to see their body as the rest of the world does, and GAIN weight.

Didn’t think so.

Loyal - or not?

2011-09-29T11:39:00.000-05:00

Reports in the public prints and media indicate Coach Bielema and his minions are disenchanted with Badgers fans who’ve sold their tickets to Saturday night’s game to Nebraska fans. Something like “loyal Badgers fans wouldn’t do that”.

Indeed.

At this writing, Thursday noon, according to StubHub, nosebleed seats are going for around 200 bucks; good seats are ranging from 300 to 700 bucks; all the way up to 4 seats at Varsity Club Level 1 going for a cool 1200 bucks apiece.

The UW Football brain trust is implying (if not outright saying) that selling your tickets to a Nebraska fan is disloyal.

Commentators are saying this would NEVER happen in places like Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas, where football is more religion than sport.

Many years ago, I decided the best seat in the house for the “big game”, no matter what the sport, is in my huge overstuffed recliner in the media room of our home, watching in hi-def on the 65-inch screen and listening through a 300-watt 5.1 sound system which can create sound so massive I alert the US Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center when I’m going to move the volume past “5” on the indicator.

So I have no issue with those Badgers fans who’ve decided to trade in their game tickets for a mortgage payment.

Loyalty, schmoyalty. It’s the free market in action.

And This Is News Because.......?

2011-09-26T10:21:00.002-05:00

Every time the Football Badgers play at Camp Randall Stadium, the local media – print and electronic – report the exact number of people who were ejected or arrested at the game. The number is usually around 25 or 30. The media don’t report this number for Badger Basketball games or Hockey matches at the Kohl Center; nor for the UW womens’ softball games at Goodman Field on the UW Campus; or, for that matter, the intercollegiate golf matches at University Ridge or the volleyball matches at the old Field House.

But, like clockwork, the morning after the football game, the news radio station in town and the local TV news stations parrot the numbers, taken from the official news release of the UW Police, I’m sure. The Wisconsin State Journal ran about two column inches on the official drunken/disorderly count on page 5 of this morning’s paper.

For the mathematically challenged (certainly including me), let’s use easy-to-work-with numbers, and assume that 40 people were ejected or arrested at a typical football game. Since Camp Randall holds about 80 thousand people, the total number arrested/detained/ejected/taken to detox is 0.05%. In other words, not statistically significant.

99.95% of the fans at Camp Randall were NOT arrested/ejected/taken to detox. And the actual percentage is lower, if you add in the thousands who just mill around the stadium, and the hundreds of ushers, security personnel, concessions stand workers, and media types who infest the area on game-day.

Do the statewide media report such a figure after every Packers or Brewers or Bucks game? Of course not, but I’ll bet a week’s pay that the Green Bay and Ashwaubenon Police and the Brown County Sheriff’s Department would tell you the percentages are similar at a typical Packers game at Lambeau Field.

I think the reason(s) the local media report this figure as if it were news is simply that years ago, when the Badgers Football team sucked and lost all the time, it was more entertaining to report the number or arrests than the number of points scored – and the “tradition” has continued.

Why the University Police continue to provide this number to the media is a deeper mystery; if I were Barry Alvarez, I’d have coffee with Chief Riseling and ask her nicely to discontinue the practice. Of course they have to keep official records, but spoon-feeding them to the media is another thing. (Here come the e-mails and comments from my many newsie friends yelling “freedom of information”.)

When/if the number exceeds the norm (as it well may next Saturday when Nebraska comes for its first game at Camp Randall, and it’s A NIGHT GAME which means all-day-all-night drinking), it may qualify as news.

But to merely parrot the number after every home game seems pointless, and, well, not “newsy”, even if it is “truthy”.

Who's Afraid of the "New" Facebook?

2011-09-23T11:03:00.001-05:00

Not me. There’s a reason Facebook has outlived similar sites like MySpace and why Facebook dominates social media. It keeps reinventing itself, and making improvements.

Do I have to repeat the old saw that most people hate change?

I can still see everything I want on Facebook. It’s just laid out differently. It’s like the grocery store – once you get used to a particular layout, they change everything around. But like the “new” Facebook, the basics are still in place after they change the store layout….the milk and eggs are still way at the end of the store, and the high-markup impulse purchase items are still prominent. The can of beans that you’d find in Aisle 7 last week is now in Aisle 11, but it’s still there.

My “news feed” on Facebook is now a running display on the right margin of the page, and status updates and pictures posted by my friends are still on the “center aisle” of my Facebook display.

Early this past summer I was forced to make some huge changes and adaptations when my trusty 2005 Compaq desktop computer (which has been fully updated twice since I bought it) started to crap out. I’ve got a venerable HP (circa 1999) in storage “just in case”, but my computer guys told me it was time to upgrade. That meant switching from Windows XP to Windows 7. I had about a week to worry about it, because my computer guys custom-ordered a new desktop for me (a high-end Dell Vostro), so it took a few days for the Dell folks to build it to spec and ship it. I wrung my hands.

My friends and business colleagues kept telling me “no sweat, you’ll pick up Windows 7 with no problem”….and I kept thinking “I learned on Windows 3.0 and was always happy with Windows 98 – why do I have to go to Windows 7 on this new machine?”. As everybody found out, Windows 7 looks and runs a little differently, but it IS better than XP; and Office 2010 is better than Office 2007; and, in my particular case, because I record and edit a lot of digital audio for my “day” job, Adobe Audition 3.0 really is better than Adobe Audition 1.5.

The “new” Facebook is just fine. And I have no doubt that it will keep changing and morphing and developing and reinventing itself. The day I can’t keep up with it is the day I’m officially “old”.

V A (o) R

2011-09-21T14:38:00.000-05:00

VAoR: Voluntary Assumption of Risk. Also, for you pilot types, a play on VOR, which stands for VHF Omnidirectional Range, or VHF Omni-Range.

I suspect the legal world will have something to say about voluntary assumption of risk, in what is certain to be a flood of lawsuits following last week’s crash at the Reno Air Races. The concept is simple. If you go to a baseball game and sit halfway down the third base line, there’s a chance that a foul ball will head right at you. Most people are aware of this, unless you’ve never been to or watched a baseball game. The ticket you buy to get into the game probably says somewhere in fine print that the team isn’t liable if you get conked on the noggin by a foul ball.

When you go to an air race….not an air SHOW, and there’s a huge difference…you may or may not know that there is a chance something horrid will happen, as it did last week. I have every confidence the lawyers will clear this all up for us. (Sarcasm is dripping off that last sentence, but it sometimes doesn’t reproduce well on the internet.)

Both air shows and air races are regulated by the FAA, but there’s a major difference. In an air show, the pilots keep their planes parallel to the flight line and grandstand or seating area, and perform their maneuvers in a way that’s designed to never aim the plane toward the spectators. This minimizes the chances a plane in trouble will go down into the crowd. In an air race, there’s a point in the course where the planes turn right toward the spectators. As they round the pylon for the home stretch, for a short time they’re essentially aimed at the spectators.

And if something goes wrong at that point…as it did in Reno last week….a lot of things can happen, and very few of them are good.

That’s the most significant difference between and air show and an air race. Someone should explain to the TV nooz geeks that the two terms are decidedly not interchangeable.

I love aircraft and aviation, and have been a member of the EAA for decades. I’m not a licensed pilot, but years ago in my broadcasting career, as architect of the formats run on the AM radio stations in a broadcast group I was once affiliated with, I had to do a lot of flying with our CEO in the business twin (a Piper Aztec – the Navy calls them U-11A’s) that the company leased. It was the only way we could spend a full day at one of the other operating companies and be home to sleep in our own beds that night. Efficiency. The CEO was many years my senior, and he asked me to fly right-seat with him no matter how many people were on board (the plane carried as many as 5), and he taught me how to land the plane in case some horrible medical situation befell him in the sky.

What happened in Reno was a tragic accident. I’m not looking forward to how the legal eagles will compound it.

(Photo at top copyright Associated Press.)

Upon Further Review...

2011-09-15T09:49:00.002-05:00

I may have been wrong about the “Curse of SI” when I wrote about it a few weeks ago. Note the late-August date on the cover above (Copyright Sports Illustrated).

The Brew-crew did well for a few days after the magazine cover came out, but then….

Watching them struggle to hit Phillies’ pitching was one thing; though that voice in the back of my head kept saying “they can’t do this if they meet the Phils in the playoffs”….but now, to watch them struggle against Rockies’ pitching….ugggh.

And the cherry on the cake is Prince Fielder’s interview with Brian Anderson, done Tuesday and leaked this morning, to run this weekend…..that Prince is apparently “going to take his talents elsewhere” next season; at least, that’s what one concludes when Prince tells BA that it’s been fun being the one-two punch with Ryan Braun, but those days are numbered.

When you’re in a pennant race, particularly when you’re slowly losing traction, the ONLY appropriate answer to a question about free agency is “let’s wait till after the season to talk about it. Right now I’m focused on winning the NL Central and moving forward into the playoffs”, or some variation of that idea.

Curse of SI or whatever, I have an uneasy feeling.

Who Sets The Quotas?

2011-09-14T11:48:00.000-05:00

Not surprisingly, the assertion by an outside entity (the Center for Educational Opportunity) that the UW-Madison is admitting Blacks and Hispanics with lower qualifications than White and Asian kids is creating a medium-sized stir in the City of the Perpetually Offended.

And rightly so.

I’ve often wondered what sort of arcane formulations, algorithms, and weightings are used to decide who gets admitted to the big UW, and who doesn’t. Both our kids got admitted (and graduated), when an awful lot of their friends at Madison’s LaFollette High who had credentials just as strong, did not get admitted. I’ll always wonder how much my alumni status affected the decision.

Or was it the “political connections” my wife and I have that tipped the scale? We are pretty well acquainted (as in invited-into-the-home-for-Saturday-night-dinner) with more than one of the UW Regents. Or was it “media fame” – I was on a #1-rated morning radio program and my wife was on a #1-rated local TV news broadcast.

Regardless, both of our kids had the kind of academic credentials that would have gotten them accepted at just about any college or university in the nation. But – so did several of their friends, who were not accepted.

What I’d like to know is who sets the quotas – who makes the rules – what sort of criteria are involved – and how much of a factor is race, in the UW admissions process. To me there’s no question that it’s desirable to have some diversity on campus, and I’m a believer in affirmative action. Growing up in Hortonville, the only black people I knew anything about played for the Packers or Braves. My first personal experience with a black person was as a freshman in the dorms, and a young fellow from Milwaukee named Theophilus R. Hawkins. Theo and I hit it off right away. We were both big fellows, loved music and fast cars, and through Theo I got to meet a number of other young black kids and form solid friendships.

But that was back in the mid-60’s. My kids grew up in Madison and have plenty of black and Hispanic friends – kids they’ve known since middle school, many of whom they still pal around with. They didn’t need the freshman dorm experience to meet and get to know kids who don’t look like them.

I think it’s time to let a lot more sunshine into the admissions process at the UW. If I were a black or Hispanic kid, I’d want to know that it wasn’t just “affirmative action” or some quota that got me accepted – that my hard work and academic record had more to do with it than some committee’s ideas about what diversity is.

Discussions about race are always difficult in Madison, but the one about admissions standards at the UW is one that needs to happen here, and in the rest of the state.

(The University of Wisconsin owns the copyright on the image above.)

The Football Lexicon

2011-09-13T11:31:00.000-05:00

Pictured above (copyright ESPN) is “The Boomer”, who began as a pretty good TV sports host and has morphed into a loudmouth caricature, who has apparently ruined his voice from years of yelling (to bring more “excitement” to the sports event?). Just listen to him the next time you see him. He’s constantly trying to do something with his voice…I’m just not sure what. He certainly doesn’t sound like Chris Berman did a decade ago.

But my rant is focused not on those who report sports, but on what they say. Here are a few of my long list of pet peeves.

“Offsides”. Nope. Offside. Look it up. You can’t be across the line that demarcates your side until after the ball is snapped. (See also “Onsides kick” – nope. Onside kick. )

“Play-action pass”. Everybody says it (except Ron Jaworski, who only says it half the time) but it’s inane. It’s a RUN-action pass. Every time they snap the ball it’s a play, whether it’s a run, pass, punt, or kick from placement. What makes this play special is the run action. It looks like a run to the defense, then turns into a pass.

“Former walk-on”. College football broadcasters say this all the time. Once you’re a walk-on, you’re a walk-on forever – that status will NEVER change. Walk-on. It means the player tried out for the team without a scholarship or formal invitation. Just walked into camp and said he wanted to play. Sports guys love to put “former” in front of everything…”former Cy Young winner” and “former Gold Glove winner” are just a couple examples. Once you win the award, you get to keep it. Once a Cy Young winner, always a Cy Young winner. (Note: this is getting dicey with the use of “former Heisman Trophy winner” – there are 76 Heisman Trophy winners, and the Pack faces one this weekend – but Reggie Bush’s situation calls for an asterisk or something.)

“Welcome in.” This is just plain stupid. Nobody says “welcome in” except sportscasters, as in “Welcome in to Sports Center.” They all do it.

Confusing a “reverse” with an “end-around”. This is quite common. In a “reverse”, the ball actually changes direction – the play starts with the ball moving one direction (left) and then when handed off it moves the other way (right). In an end-around, the end involved moves from whatever side of the formation he’s on, takes the handoff, and then runs around the other side of the formation. This is not rocket science, but the majority of football broadcasters get it wrong.

“Prolific”, “Proficient”, “Prodigous.” Each has a separate and distinct meaning and they are not interchangeable. Sports folks often say “prolific” when they mean “proficient.” Last week, Michelle Tafoya of NBC said “The Saints’ offense is very prolific.” Huh? But they all seem to do it.

“Icing the Kicker.” Nothing at all wrong with this phrase, except it’s possibly the most stupid thing done in football. Coaches think if they call a time out before a placement kick, it will make the kicker “think” too much about the kick. What it does (ask any kicker, center, or holder) is give them time to make sure everything is optimal. Who wants to be rushed or hurried when attempting a precision play that requires exquisite teamwork and timing? Yet coaches still do this stupid “icing” thing, and give the opposing team’s field goal unit plenty of time to make sure everybody’s on the same page.

Oh, there are many more….I could go on for hours…..but that’s enough for this time. I’m sure I’ll be reminded of a few more Sunday afternoon when the Packers play the team with the Former Heisman Trophy Winner at quarterback. I hear he’s a very prolific guy.

9-11-01 Redux

2011-09-12T09:40:00.001-05:00

No, I haven’t forgotten; and I never will. I was anchoring news for a group of five Madison radio stations that fated September morning ten years ago, and I have a CD of our coverage in case I ever want to live it again. But I don’t.

I guess I’m not an overtly sentimental person about death; I’ve told my wife that when I kick the bucket she should just chop me up into pieces and throw me in a (big) hole in the ground in the huge raspberry patch along our southern fenceline, somewhere near the two pet cats we placed at rest there after they passed on.

I will never forget, and I doubt any American over the age of 10 who was alive that day will forget. That date is as burned in as December 7^th, 1941 was to the prior generation, and as the murder of JFK is, to my generation. (November 22^nd, 1963 – but most of us don’t remember the date, just where we were and what we were doing when we got the news.)

In my opinion, the vast coverage of the tenth anniversary (or, as far too many network dweebs said, “ten-year anniversary”) lacked one critical element. I’ll get to that in a moment.

I knew Sunday’s coverage, no matter which network or cable news outlet you watched, would be over the top with sentimentality and that even our sporting events that day would be interlaced with maudlin references to the day and all the innocent and unsuspecting – and all the incredibly brave – Americans who died that day. That was to be expected. It’s the way the TV folks are. Excess is the default position.

But, as far as I’m concerned, one of the most important elements of the 9-11 story was missing in all the coverage on all the stations I saw yesterday. The missing element was the capture and killing of Usama bin Laden, which we found out about Sunday night May 1^st.

To me, you can’t tell the story of 9-11 without telling the part about how our brave and dedicated military and intelligence community tracked down that bastard, and how a phenomenally intrepid US Navy Seal Team stormed his compound, ended bin Laden’s life, AND were able to get away safely after their duty had been done.

The story of 9-11 is far from over, but – to me – you can’t tell the story without saying we got the bastard who was behind it and arranged for him to meet Allah.

It would be fitting to honor our military – those who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, regardless of your feelings about those missions – to acknowledge their contributions, right along with the brave firefighters and police officers who gave their lives trying to help their fellow Americans on 9-11.

Losing The Base

2011-09-07T16:11:00.001-05:00

I’m pretty sure no matter what President Obama says in his “Jobs Speech” tomorrow (Thursday) evening, he’s pretty much toast. It’s already been spun as a “campaign speech” and even though the Republicans are smart enough not to extend the event into NFL Football by giving a formal rebuttal, you know they’ll pick his “plan” apart, no matter what it is.

In my opinion, he’s pretty much lost his hard-core base here in the most liberal county of this purple state.

Why do I say that?

Not just because the TV stations which can (in Green Bay and Milwaukee) have already decided to put the speech on one of their auxiliary channels, and run their local news at 6 followed by the NFL Pre-Game show. (In the arcane thinking of the NFL, Milwaukee is still the only other “home” market for the Packers other than Green Bay, though they haven’t played a game in Milwaukee for years.)

I say he’s lost the base because when our former mayor, Dave Cieslewicz, posted a link to his weekly Isthmus column/blog on Facebook Wednesday, a rant which says he’s disappointed that President Obama didn’t stick to his guns regarding fuel economy standards for American cars and trucks, the comment stream was brutal.

Here’s a sample of the comments:

“he seems to be a man who fears fighting more than capitulation and what we need right now is a fighter.”

“it stinks that we get promises and no action.”

“he is the only man I’ve ever gone door-to-door for, NEVER will I do that for him again! He has betrayed everything that I thought he stood for.”

“what he needs to do is grow a pair”. (This, from a female commenter.)

“Start fighting harder? I want to see him START. I’m fed up with him telling us that we have to all suck it up together. All of us except the super-wealthy. When does he get sick of living with himself?”

And this is a representative sample; not many kind words for the President from the locals.

He’s toast.

The Game-Day Experience

2011-09-06T11:08:00.001-05:00

One of the blogs I enjoy reading did a bang-up job of chronicling the Badger game-day experience for the UNLV game last Thursday night. Well, half of the experience, as the blogger’s smart phone, with which he was keeping a video chronicle of the game, died.

The post is here (http://www.nonsportsmanlikeconduct.com/2011/09/want-to-know-what-its-like-to-attend-12.html) and it’s worth the read.

My conclusion, even though the blogger was only able to take us to half-time: the best seat for a Badgers game is in front of my big-screen hi-def TV at home.

The post about his game-day experience is a wry look at the hoops through which one must jump just to make it to your (entirely too small) assigned space in Camp Randall Stadium, from the challenge of parking within reasonable walking distance of the stadium, through the assembled multitudes and vendors-of-things-deep-fried-in-hot-grease, to negotiating through the warrens in the bowels of the stadium, and then cramming yourself into the small bit of real estate you’ve paid so dearly to rent.

The pomp of the Division 1-A college football pre-game is chronicled, along with a gallery of still pictures of some of the more colorful individuals who attend these contests.

Big-time college football is a huge financial undertaking, and, as the old saying goes, to run with the big dogs, you need to bring a very large wallet. It takes a lot of grease to wedge 87 thousand fannies into those expensive seats, and I’m not talking about just paying your athletic director and head coach a million bucks a year or more.

But here’s the subtle point I took away from the post: the Badgers’ goal is to make it to the Rose Bowl. Not to win the national championship, but to make it to the Rose Bowl. That’s why they continue to schedule patsies like UNLV (the Badgers won in a rout, 51-17) and Northern Illinois and Saint Rita’s School for the Blind – so they can get the six wins necessary to be “bowl-eligible” and set their sights on Pasadena New Year’s Day.

Scheduling patsies in the pre-season as the Badgers have for decades insures that they will never qualify for the national championship. The fans by and large seem to be OK with this practice of spending a month playing games where the outcome is never seriously in doubt. There's only a bit of grousing about it.

But these are tougher times. Even the corpuscles…the old white guys in the cardinal red jackets…will at some point balk in paying the exorbitant “licensing fees” and “mandatory contributions” necessary to maintain a position in the “good seats” in the stadium.

The Badgers may find themselves in a position where they’re going to have to set their sights higher than the Rose Bowl if they’re going to keep feeding the beast that is NCAA Division 1-A football.

Craziness

2011-09-02T08:54:00.003-05:00

A week of craziness, that’s what it was.

President Obama wants to give his big jobs speech the night of the Tea Party “debate”; and then gets totally bi#ch-slapped by John Boehner, who tells the Pres to f-off; they re-schedule the big jobs speech for Thursday night, and both sides seem unaware that it’s the NFL opener – and that for 97.21 percent of Americans, watching the Pack and the Saints is vastly preferable to watching another political speech.

Then, the clueless White House has to reaffirm that the speech will start early enough that it won’t bump into the NFL game.

Used to be that when the leader of the free world asked to speak, NOBODY said “no”…..

A kid gets clobbered over the head with a brick in a mugging downtown, involving a gang of seven thugs and losers, and it gets buried in the middle of the newscast. We’ve accepted this behavior now, after a summer of muggings downtown?

Some dweeb politician lady was on the TV news explaining to me that the Republicans want to force women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, because the legislature recognizes that abortion is a “dangerous procedure” and they want to make sure it’s “safer”? And yet the same right-wing extremists want to make sure no UW Med-school students learn this “dangerous procedure” by getting training at Planned Parenthood.

As my friend GH used to say, “HDDTTWA”. (How dumb do they think we are.)

State Supreme Court Justice David "Just a reaction" Prosser has to be shamed into recusing himself from a case where he has direct personal involvement. State Supreme Court = Insane Clown Posse.

And try as they might, no national news reporter or anchor could get any east-coast governor to throw FEMA under the bus post-Irene. Everybody said they were getting the help they requested in a timely fashion.

Oh yes..I almost forgot. I'm supposed to boycott Dancing With the Stars because they have a transgendered person this season. Sonny and Cher's child. Part of ABC's agenda to "push" transgenderism. Yah, I'll get right on that.

A crazy week indeed.

(Image above copyright Sukiki Chan. That's an anteater.)

Thugs and Losers

2011-09-01T14:34:00.000-05:00

These things seem to go in cycles. Thugs and losers invade Madison’s downtown and roam the streets in the early hours of the morning, looking for trouble and victims. We seem to be in such a period again.

The latest incident involves a couple of young men who were walking on the UW campus around bar time a couple days ago. They tell the cops they were accosted and then assaulted by a gang of seven young men, who clobbered one of the two over the head with a brick. He’s still hospitalized, and we don’t know much more about it than that.

Had the victims been two young coeds, this incident would have ranked higher than the middle of the stack, which is where most of the local electronic media ran it.

We don’t have a description of any members of this gang of seven who apparently were after money.

We won’t draw any conclusions about their race or ethnicity, because it does not make one iota of difference. They are thugs and losers, and I’m thinking it’s about time we had another crackdown on these low-lifes.

It’s a matter of priorities. I know these extra patrols the cops put on from time to time cost money. Probably not as much as it will cost to police the Badgers/UNLV game at Camp Randall tonight; but serious money nonetheless.

But really, it’s just a matter of priorities. And will. This latest incident of the brick-to-head bashing is the most recent in a summer filled with incidents, granted not as violent, of people being attacked and mugged downtown around bar time.

It's time to spend the money again, and put a bunch of these thugs and losers out of business again.

Plenty of Hate to Go Around

2011-08-30T11:43:00.001-05:00

There’s very little civility left in politics in Wisconsin, and we’re likely to see more strife and heated disagreement in the future, and very little common courtesy.

Why? Start with the image at the top of this post – the clenched fist. The labor version, seen here, has been copied and modified many times by various Democratic Party organizations. There’s the version that has the number “14” superimposed on the fist, over the star, representing the 14 Democratic state senators who decamped to Illinois this winter. The latest version has “16” replacing the 14, to indicate the two seats the Democrats picked up in the summer recall elections.

Clenched fist. Sends a pretty clear message, doesn’t it?

What I’m saying is it might be wise for the Democrats to tone things down a bit, and used something other than a clenched fist as their symbol.

There’s the relatively recent factor of hate-talk shout radio, exemplified in Madison by Vicki McKenna on the right (her show is also aired in Milwaukee), who yesterday told her listeners that Barack Obama hates Americans (really, Vicki? The President HATES Americans?); and there’s Sly on the left, the veteran rabble-rouser who never met a labor organization leader or member he didn’t like, and who delights in encouraging the “Walker-Stalkers” to go to every public appearance the governor makes, with the expressed purpose of heckling and disrupting.

There was the recent incident at Messmer Prep School in Milwaukee where somebody….and you have to presume it’s someone sympathetic with the left….super-glued shut the doors of the school so Governor Walker would have to use a different entrance to get into the school to give a speech.

And now we have the labor folks in Wausau telling the Republican elected officials from the area that they’re not welcome to march in the Labor Day Parade, saying it’s hypocritical for them to support labor one day a year and spend every other day doing things to the detriment of organized labor. This is very much a “developing story” right now, and the mayor of Wausau may have something to say about who can and cannot use city streets, city police and fire protection, and municipal employees at a public event, and who can and cannot be excluded from same.

We have politicians on the right calling the demonstrators in Madison “union thugs” and defying court orders about keeping the State Capital open and making public remarks denigrating the personal hygiene of the demonstrators.

And both sides seem intent on shouting down anyone from the other side who speaks at a rally or makes a public appearance, such as the demonstrators who tried to shout down Sarah Palin when the Tea Party brought her here a few months ago. (And then complained that “the right can afford better sound systems than we can”.)

We are a state divided, and both sides seem to be doing what they can to make the division deeper and wider.

The Lord God Shall Smite Us All

2011-08-29T14:33:00.000-05:00

Although she keeps trying to distance herself from her recorded and well-documented comments, Michelle Bachmann is eventually going to have to own this stuff, in some forum where she won’t be allowed to attempt to spin her way out of it.

She told Floridians Sunday that Hurricane Irene and last week’s earthquake were messages from God to politicians, to warn them to start heeding His Word (which, of course, by implication, is available through Bachmann).

After the St. Petersburg Times carried a report on Bachmann’s Tea Party rally there, and the story was then picked up by the Huffington Post, a Bachmann flack said the comments were made in jest.

Yup.

This woman is as bat-shit crazy as Glenn Boeck, who said Hurricane Irene was a blessing from God, reminding us we’re not in control.

I’ve done way too much reading about Bachmann, on the chance that someone like her, whose views and beliefs are so far out of the American mainstream, could actually become President. The more I read about Rick Perry, who has many views paralleling Bachmann’s, the more amazed I become.

These are the folks who believe evolution is a theory and that the earth is only a few thousand years old. In other words, when science and their religious beliefs conflict, the Bible is the arbiter. These are the candidates who appeal to those folks who cling to their guns and Bibles in tough times, to paraphrase someone else.

We’re in deep do-do.

(Photo above Copyright CBS News.)

Unbridled Fear and Wretched Excess

2011-08-26T09:47:00.000-05:00

The media are doing what they do best; whipping up a great deal of fear and uncertainty about Hurricane Irene and where it may go and what it may do.

I am watching with more than passing interest, hundreds of miles from the path of any hurricane, as our daughter now lives in Yonkers, New York (NYC metro) and one of my closest, lifelong friends and his family live on Staten Island.

I had the mandatory parental chat with our daughter this morning (electronically, as did her mother last night – nobody really talks to anybody that much any more) and dispensed the usual parental advice, which boils down to what Mayor Bloomberg said: prepare for the worst and hope for the best. She’s a smart young woman and she’ll do what’s appropriate; and, as the daughter of parents who’ve worked in media all their lives, she understands that the media’s default position is “excess”.

I’ll be interested to see if she actually calls us Sunday night or Monday (and whether or not she’ll be able to). She did call after the earthquake earlier this week. She works on the 8^th floor of a building in White Plains, and when stuff started rockin’, she and everybody else evacuated the building. Knowing I’d been through three earthquakes in my southern California years, she wanted to compare notes.

In our chat this morning, I mentioned that I’d been through a hurricane (New Orleans, 1987), and when we were told to evacuate, we did…went up to Baton Rouge for a few days and came home to broken widows, water in the house, a tree leaning against our rear balcony and one that smashed our outbuilding, and a ‘frig full of food that had to be tossed, because the power was out for a couple days. I asked her to imagine what it would be like to have no power for a couple or three days, no way to charge her cell phone, etc. and to plan appropriately.

It was just a year ago today at 5 AM that she (and her BFF Breanna, who rode along to keep her company and then flew back to Madison) pulled up stakes and headed off to grad school in New Rochelle. And a few days after she arrived and unpacked, Hurricane Earl grazed Long Island Sound and dumped a lot of rain on New York.

We concluded our chat with the hope that on Monday we’d be laughing about it, and how the media would be screaming “New York City Dodged A Bullet!!!” and talking about what MIGHT have happened.

I hope so.

9-11 Memorial FAIL

2011-08-25T14:25:00.002-05:00

Ten years later….all there is, is a hole in the ground, with a collection of construction workers and a handful of pieces of heavy equipment.

We’re just a few weeks shy of the tenth anniversary (or, as too many in the media will say, “ten-year anniversary”) of the 9-11 attacks.

Many of those media folks, particularly the ones who sit in for El Rushbo while the blowhard is vacationing with fabulous people at some exotic resort smoking expensive cigars and drinking pricey Scots Whisky, are pointing to this shameful hole in the ground in lower Manhattan as evidence of the current mediocrity of the American spirit. (Though this assertion, which originated, I believe, with Mark Steyn, flies in the face of the “American Exceptionalism” which is a keystone of the Limbaugh doctrine.)

Thing is, these hard right-wingers have a point here.

I think it is shameful and disgusting that in a decade, we have nothing but a hole in the ground to show for our pledge to “never forget”. For heaven’s sake, John Kennedy got us to the moon in a decade! (Albeit with a lot of help from Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and NASA.)

Nothing but petty arguments have surrounded this whole “9-11 Memorial” thing. Every sub-set of the people directly and indirectly impacted by the events of that horrible day have wrangled, bickered, whined, and belly-ached about every aspect of the “plan”. Every mewling had to be placated. Everyone’s ego had to be massaged.

And what you see above is what we have to show for it.

This is a disgusting failure of leadership on many levels.

The Curse of S.I.

2011-08-24T10:37:00.001-05:00

Let’s see if I have this right: you DO want your picture on the cover of Rolling Stone, but you do NOT want your picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated, because of the “Curse of S.I.”, which is, if your picture is on the cover of S.I. some bad thing will happen to you.

This old curse was talked about a great deal more a couple decades ago than now. But there’s a resurgence of discussion about it, because the Brewers have been red-hot, and there this undercurrent of fear that having the pictures of three Brewers stars on the cover of S.I. will cause the team to go on a losing streak or that some injury will befall one of the three.

There was the case of Braves (back when the Braves played in Milwaukee) star third baseman Eddie Mathews , who was the first person to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated back in August of 1954. The Braves snapped a nine-game winning streak, and a broken hand later caused Mathews to miss seven games. That’s when the curse started…with the very first issue of S.I.

In August of ’78, Pete Rose was on the cover of S.I., and his 44-game hitting streak ended that week. In January 2010, Vikings quarterback Brett Favre was on the cover with the headline "Favre on Fire" before the NFC Championship Game and lost, so I guess the curse can be good for Packers fans. On January 19, 2011, Jay Cutler appeared on the cover, and then injured his knee as the Bears lost to the Packers in the NFC championship game.

There are scores of places on the internets where you can look up the list of athletes who have supposedly suffered from the Curse of S.I.

As I write this, on Wednesday morning, the Brewers are the hottest team in baseball, with a franchise-record 10-game lead on the Cardinals in the National League Central Division.

Fingers crossed.

Sad, On So Many Levels

2011-08-23T09:17:00.000-05:00

The picture above, copyright CBS News, was taken at the memorial service for one of the Navy SEALs killed in the shoot-down of a helicopter in Afghanistan several days ago. The dog in the picture was partnered with that SEAL, and he still has his “jump gear” on – the harness and ring that attach the dog to his SEAL master when they deploy from an aircraft.

Partners forever.

The photo is indescribably sad on so many levels. The death of one our nation’s highly-trained fighting men; the bond that forms between a dog and his master; and on and on. Just sad.

When I first saw the photo, my first reaction was sadness – knowing, as a dog owner, how tight that bond between human and canine can be; knowing that the dog senses that his master, his partner, is no longer with us; sad that the young man in the coffin paid the ultimate price for his service to our nation.

Then, I felt some anger. Anger that our troops are being misused in these horrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asked to be policemen, social workers, traffic cops, farm workers, teachers, construction workers, and all manner of things for which they were not really trained. Particularly in the case of the Navy SEAL, who undergoes years of the most grueling physical and mental training you can imagine.

I see the role of the SEAL as exactly the kind of mission which ended in the killing of Usama bin Laden: a risky mission where lots of things can change quickly or go wrong or contrary to plan, demanding an almost superhuman physical effort and the ability to recognize threats instantly and react to them, where years of training pay off in the desired outcome.

I see the role of our armed forces as vastly different than the roles they’re being asked to play. They’re not cops, they’re soldiers. My vision has them being experts in wrecking stuff, blowing stuff up, in long-range and close-order combat, in assaulting a position, taking it and holding it, operating like finely-tuned parts of a huge and powerful machine.

I see them as a force to be feared and reckoned with, a force that when deployed, sends a message to evil-doers that justice is about to be served.

I do not see our armed forces as international police officers, social workers, construction workers, or anything other than as the finest fighting force on the planet.

I want the death of the SEAL in the photo above to have “counted”….to have meant something…and I pray that it did.

Monday Media Rant: "Efforting" A Recall

2011-08-22T08:37:00.001-05:00

The phrase "Efforting A Recall" is the first thing that greeted my eyes this morning when I popped the TV on to catch the latest local news. My favorite morning anchorman, that distinguished-looking tall fellow with a name that makes you think his family made a fortune in coffee, was talking about the odds that there actually will be an effort to recall Governor Scott Walker.

The picture over his right shoulder (screen left) had the words above (“Efforting A Recall”), with a Wisconsin flag and perhaps some other visual doo-dads. I believe in TV they call these things “graphics” – or, at least they did centuries ago, when I worked in TV.

Don’t bother looking in the dictionary for the word “efforting”; you won’t find it. Every time I type the word into Microsoft Word, where I write the original version of these rants, the auto-correct underlines the word in red and suggests that instead I use the word “affording” or “effecting” – both of which are real words.

“Efforting” is not a real word. The Urban Dictionary probably says it best:


	A made up word used only by newscasters to show off that they're doing the job they're paid to do. A poor attempt to make the word ‘effort’ into a verb. To make it sound like something simple is tough to do, so they’re making extra effort. Often used as a stall when a report isn’t ready.

I’m sure my tall friend had nothing to do with the “graphic” shown over his shoulder while he was reading the story. And he would never actually say such a word on TV. But it’s very 21^st century for folks in the electronic news biz to use non-words such as “efforting”, “Med-Flighted” (another attempt to turn a noun into a verb), “tased” (don’t tase me, Bro!!!!!), because it shows they know the inside jargon of the biz.

Sort of like the anchors and reporters who now say ‘talk about you team’s chances of making the playoffs’ instead of asking a question during an interview. I guess they figure giving a command to the interviewee will have more force than asking a question.

Or the sports folks who say “welcome in to the program/broadcast”. Welcome IN. Nobody actually talks like that. Can you imagine anyone who grew up speaking English saying “welcome in to my house” or “welcome in to my world”?

I’m efforting restraint in not tasing all these jargon-mongers, so they don't have to be Med-Flighted to a local hospital.

Rusty's Out; Tommy's....In?

2011-08-19T07:50:00.002-05:00

So, Tommy Thompson (D…ah, I mean R, Elroy) has rounded up the usual suspect (Jim Klauser) and is making serious noises about running for US Senate. Gee, what a shock. Tommy, talking about running for something. And Russ Feingold says he’ll run for NOTHING in 2012.

The blogosphere is taking Tommy’s threat seriously, swearing that he really means it this time and will officially announce just after Labor Day.

Problem is….which party will have him? Tommy is a political dinosaur now, still thinking he’s a Republican. If ever there were a RINO (Republican In Name Only), it’s Tommy T.

Full disclosure: I like Tommy. He was kind enough several times while Governor to be “guest editor” on the old “Madison’s Morning News” radio program my wife and I hosted during the Thompson years. He’d sit with us the full three hours of the show, and tell stories and take phone calls (even from lots of those "Dane County Liberals"!) and generally have a good time.

Tommy represents to me – and maybe this is just my age – the “real” Wisconsin spirit. Work together to find solutions to problems. Argue your point vigorously; take a vote; and whether you won or lost, have a brew or two at the Avenue Bar with the pols who voted with you and those who voted against you.

Welfare’s a problem? Don’t throw it out; don’t blame the poor; fix it. Same with health care: expand the program, don’t cut it to death. Brewers need a new stadium? Tax those bastards in Milwaukee..”what a better way to do it…stick it to ‘em!!!”…and gitt’r done. Amtrack? Hell yes. Put me on the board. Love my Harley, but love my mass transit, too. Stem cells? Hell yes, let’s see if we can’t get a bunch more money from Warshington to throw at the UW. And, while you’re in office, why not essentially double the size of government in Wisconsin.

See what I’m getting at? Tommy’s actions make him, by any definition, a Democrat: raise taxes, expand welfare and health care, support and expand stem cell research, increase the size of government.

Nobody seems sure how to deal with this. Miss Vicki yesterday afternoon referred to Tommy as an “old guard Republican”. Didn’t call him a RINO, because we’re in uncharted waters here. We’ve got a guy who was the most popular governor in decades, who essentially had the job for life, whose name recognition is gold from Hilbert to Howard to Hayward to Hales Corners, who finds himself a member of a party that now stands directly opposed to everything Tommy did while in office.

This oughtta be REAL interesting……

Dealing With DishNet

2011-08-18T15:44:00.000-05:00

It began last Friday night when I was playing back some alien/horror/space/gory death movie that I’d recorded off one of the 75 or 80 movie channels we get. Toni had gone off to Gotham to spend the weekend visiting our daughter and enhancing the Manhattan economy, and the dogs and I had the house to ourselves, free to watch crappy movies and lounge around the media room all day and night. About a half-hour into the movie, the picture froze, then the screen went black, and the DishNet receiver crashed.

It recycled itself and came back up on a TV station. I selected the DVR, and told it to resume the movie. Crash. Instantly. Cycled again. Waited. Pulled up a different horrible space aliens/face-eating movie I’d recorded. Got a half-hour in: crash. My keen powers of deduction suggested there was something wrong with the DVR. Annoying, but not the end of the world. I have scores of DVD movies, so I spent the weekend watching some of my favorite DVD movies.

Knowing (or, at least assuming) that a weekend call to the DishNet tech folks would be routed to Bangladesh or Mogadishu, on Monday, I fired up a chat with the DishNet tech folks. For those who have not had the pleasure, for the first 15 minutes they ask you such inane things as “has a tree recently been uprooted by a storm and fallen on the satellite receiver on your roof?” and “has it snowed within a thousand miles of your current location within the last four months”; then they proceed to the “please unplug your receiver for one minute and then plug it in again and see if that fixes it” stage.

I chatted through all of this until the poor soul on the other end of the chat had exhausted his or her checklist, and I was “handed off” to a tech specialist, who, to his or her credit, believed me when I told him or her that I believed the hard drive had been corrupted, so I was told that a new receiver, same model, would be shipped to me FedEx, and I would have to install it. Would they send a tech over to my house to do it? No. It’s “simple”.

Wednesday afternoon the new receiver arrived; I swapped it for the corrupted one, hooked up the five necessary wires (three from the satellite dish on my roof, the HDMI cord that hooks the receiver to the TV, and the a/c power cord) and proceeded to the next step, which was to power up the unit.

Suffice it to say what happened next was NOT what the DishNet folks had painstakingly laid out in the instruction sheet that accompanied the new receiver. (What a surprise!) I called the number listed on the sheet for tech help, got connected immediately, and the young man (who told me he was in Colorado) tried his best to walk me through the “check switch/satellite alignment” screen, but he just couldn’t do it. After about 10 minutes, he transferred me to the “advanced technical unit” and a very pleasant young lady (who told me she was in Virginia) diagnosed the problem in about one minute. The guy I’d been talking to before must have been operating with an outdated manual…he kept trying to get the system to look at four satellites, when I only need to look at three. “It happens”, she said, philosophically.

After the young woman in Virginia got me to where I needed to be in the set-up process, she told me there’d be about a half-hour of downloads, so my new receiver could suck in all the data it needed, and she said “if you’d like, I can stay with you on the phone and we can chat while this is going on, or, if it’s OK with you, I’d like to take a few more calls and help some other folks while your data is downloading, and I promise I’ll call you back in half an hour and we’ll see if you’re good to go”.

This young woman is not only very smart, but very well-trained and very customer-friendly. I hope they’re paying her about 50 bucks an hour.

As promised, she called me back 30 minutes later, made me check to see that all my favorite channels were actually coming in, and then – talk about a person who does her homework – she said “I see you have another DishNet system and receiver in another part of your house (we do, in the master bedroom suite) – 999 times out of a thousand there’s no problem, but would you mind going to check and see if that system is still working the way you want – I’ll stay with you while you check.” Everything was fine, so I thanked her and ended the conversation.

If anyone from the DishNet Board of Directors ever reads this, I think you should seriously consider making this young woman in Virginia – she told me her name was Wendy – the new CEO of DishNet.

Public Art or Public Disgrace?

2011-08-15T09:25:00.003-05:00

I am an art dummy, one of those uncultured dweebs who can say only “I know what I like, and I don’t like that.” I can look at the art created by our daughter, which adorns the walls of our home, and say with satisfaction that I like it and enjoy it, but I cannot tell you why.

Such is the way it is with the object pictured above, a phallus thrusting into the sky near Camp Randall Stadium, an abomination called “Nail’s Tales”, a monstrosity created by UW art grad Donald Lipski for two hundred grand and installed in 2005. Lipski said it was a tribute to his UW roommate, who was on the Badgers football squad. I can’t tell you why I don’t like it, outside of the obvious; I just know that I don’t like it in front of Camp Randall Stadium and wouldn’t like it in any other locale.

This Lipski guy is fairly well-known; he has pieces adorning public spaces in New York City, including Grand Central Terminal and Central Park; it’s difficult to find an honest-to-goodness review of his work that actually criticizes the phallic obelisk he foisted on Madison; but it’s clear that the thing is nearly universally disliked in Madison.

My friend Doug Moe has written several columns over the years denigrating the statue, and this morning his column in the State Journal says it’s time to get rid of the damned thing. “It’s the time when an individual or groups has to seize the momentum, dig in, work hard and make history happen”, Doug writes.

Doug writes that he had a conversation with Al Fish, the UW bureaucrat who’s apparently the point man on things of this sort, and the Fish made it clear that he would not be amused at any attempt by Doug to put together an official group and start making some real noise about getting the damned thing removed. Fish admitted he has never had a conversation with Lipski about moving it. Some codicil of the agreement regarding the sculpture says it can’t be moved without Lipski’s permission, so I’d suggest to my friend Doug that he is well-acquainted with many of our city’s finest litigators, and one way to tackle the challenge as part of a full frontal assault on the UW and Fish to get it moved would be to have this part of the contract struck down. I’m pretty sure most of the high-profile legal eagles Doug knows would do it pro bono.

It’s well past time for that abomination that disgraces our football palace to be torn down, just like the statue of Saddam that was torn down in the early days of the Iraq war.

Let me know what I can do to help, Doug.