More on music: Among the accusations of Human Rights Watch are reports of detainee mistreatment at a United States-run, secret prison near Kabul, Afghanistan. According to HRW, some prisoners were tortured by being made to listen to Eminem and Dr. Dre for 20 straight days. Presumably, it was really, really loud, too.
Kind of puts it in perspective next time your ears are assaulted by road rap. Only you can’t call HRW.
Hillsborough County schools are not short-changed on challenges. Undermanaged county growth, overcrowding, budget shortfalls, school-choice frustrations, FCAT roulette. But won’t we all feel better about educational priorities when news coverage of school board meetings isn’t dominated by provincial, polarizing, grandstanding debates about religious holidays and Gay-Straight Alliances? Is the allure of “The O’Reilly Factor” that strong?
Here’s hoping your whole holiday season has been a happy one so far. From blessings that resonated at Thanksgiving to whatever the New Year already portends.
But of no less importance, here’s also hoping yours was a very Merry Christmas. Whether you gathered around a Nativity scene, played Santa to the special people in your life, sang carols off-key, remembered the less fortunate or just enjoyed the company and camaraderie of friends and family. Or any combination.
To repeat: Merry Christmas.
To all – including cultural warriors, secular elites and First Amendment syllogists. It is, after all, the season; it is, in fact, the CHRISTMAS spirit.
Speaking of news, however defined, the Tampa Bay TV market now has had a fortnight to size up the newest entry into the late evening sweepstakes, WTVT-Ch. 13’s NewsEDGE at 11. Early ratings are favorable for the local Fox station, which probably means enough viewers can never get enough frenetically-paced, tabloid-styled news. It is what it is. Mark Wilson presiding instead of Shephard Smith.
But one feature has no future. In a laudable effort to work commentary into the format, the station settled on a four-minute segment called “The Lightning Round.” It features Wilson, sportscaster Chip Carter, weatherman Paul Dellegatto and a community guest barely scratching the surface of three topics, which have ranged from the “happy holidays” controversy and domestic surveillance to a teenage sex survey and the licensing of strippers.
Wilson is personable and glib; the designated guest – ranging from a law professor to print journalists – adds presumptive heft; and Dellegatto and Carter are superfluous. Time, seemingly, is precious in the rapid-fire format and — then we’re privy to what the sports and weather guys think about licensing strippers in Hillsborough County.
This feature has to go. And Carter and Dellegatto should lead the lobbying.
It’s bad enough that the airwaves are polluted with “reality” flotsam, but do print and electronic media actually have to prominently cover – and even tease — this stuff like, well, “news”?
There’s hyperbolized eulogy rhetoric, and then there’s Chris Rock’s over-the-top homage to the late comedian Richard Pryor. Rock referenced Pryor as “the Rosa Parks of comedy.”
Please.
Rosa Parks mainstreamed civil disobedience to odious Jim Crow laws. Pryor, a genuinely hilarious entertainer, mainstreamed the N and MF words.
Truculent, xenophobic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues his game plan for repealing the last millennium. He has now banned all Western music, including classical, from Iran’s state radio and TV stations.
All this does, however, is underscore the Islamic Republic’s commitment to hypocrisy. This is no Talibanned-in-Tehran. Behind the closed doors of the well-off and influential, the liquor still flows, the fashions still reflect Western taste and satellite dish owners still receive entertainment from outside the Muslim cloister.
Two weeks ago I was watching the Sunday morning political talk show hosted by Chris Mathews on NBC. Among his guests: the conservative David Brooks and the not-necessary-to-label Andrea Mitchell of NBC, a mainstream media liberal as well as Alan Greenspan’s wife. The topic was illegal immigration. Economics. Legalities. Security. Sovereign borders. The usual mix.
Mitchell waxed apoplectic when Brooks referenced a “culture of criminality” that permeated much of today’s immigrants — because they were illegal from the get-go. Mitchell accused Brooks of cheap-shotting Hispanics and said today’s immigrants were no less worthy than their counterparts from Europe a century prior.
There then followed a commercial break and a new topic.
That’s show biz.
But it’s hardly the last word on a very sensitive, very politically incorrect aspect of this country’s volatile immigration scenarios. We’re all too easily at odds with our own “homeless, tempest-tossed” immigration ideals. In short, today’s immigrants are different – and not just because they’re not from Europe.
Those “huddled masses” of yesterday were looking for economic opportunity, and they were looking to assimilate. Topping their agendas: becoming Americans and Americanizing their kids in this unique melting pot.
Now we have the salad bowl of diversity. Assimilation (for those arriving from south of the Rio Grande) is not a priority. Or a necessity. Or even, presumably, a particularly good idea. Witness “Mexafornia.”
Those coming from other continents and hemispheres — with educations and skills – often seem more absorbed in skimming the economic cream and retaining national and religious identities in self-contained sub-cultures. Opportunity trumped by opportunism. Allegiance is elsewhere.
Other than that and some border issues, not much has changed since the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886.
Next year marks the inaugural World Baseball Classic, an event that organizers hope might some day grow into the counterpart of soccer’s World Cup. It will be an 18-day tournament in March featuring 16 teams from North and Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. The games will be played in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Florida (Walt Disney World), Arizona and California.
It could not have happened without the cooperation of Major League Baseball. As a result, many of the biggest MLB names, such as Bobby Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr., will participate.
However, the most pre-eminent name in the annals of international baseball – Cuba — will be absent. That’s because the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control denied MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association the permits required for a Cuban team to travel here to participate. It’s a function of the Bush Administration’s ever-tightening trade and travel sanctions on Havana.
It’s also a function of lobbying by the usual one-trick pony South Florida politicians, such as Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who want all Cuban screws tightened until Fidel Castro finally does the right thing and dies. For now, however, the Administration will remain tethered to a counterproductive Cold War policy that is as much at variance with sensible trade polices as it is with basic, humane practices.
An interesting aside to the World Baseball Classic is its possible impact on future Olympic bids by U.S. cities.
“This will impact IOC (International Olympic Committee) members negatively,” points out Peter Ueberroth, the U.S. Olympic Committee chairman. “This may be the only example of a country prohibiting competition on an international scale.”
In baseball parlance, it’s called a Bush League move. It’s also another low for a country that ought to be above this sort of vindictive, arrogant action that helps no one. Especially – and ironically – the U.S., which can ill afford any more geo-political black eyes.
See if this sounds familiar.
Some politicians, including “powerful” ones, are recommending that something be done about our presidential primary system. Like get rid of the inordinate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire, the demographically-skewed states that front-end and distort the quadrennial process.
This time it’s Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who’s championing a Democratic proposal that would add one or two caucuses after Iowa’s but before New Hampshire’s first-in-the nation primary in early February. “I hope this is the beginning of the end of Iowa and New Hampshire’s dominant role.”
As if. It’s too little and likely to no avail.
New Hampshire even has a law requiring its primary to be scheduled a week or more before any “similar election.”
Levin’s take? “If New Hampshire decides to challenge the proposal, all bets are off,” he acknowledged. Oh.
And earlier this month in Orlando, presumptive 2008 Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards and Virginia Gov. Mark Warner both equivocated – amid responses awash in “grass roots” rhetoric — when asked about diluting the impact of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Expect New Hampshire to challenge if anything comes of the Democratic proposal. And expect Florida to unconscionably remain a primary black hole.
Recall that when New Hampshire voters cast their ballots in 2004, their choices included: Gen. Wesley Clark, former Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. John Edwards, Rep. Dick Gephardt, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Joe Lieberman, former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Rev. Al Sharpton and Sen. John Kerry. When Florida Democrats voted, they were handed a Kerry rubberstamp. That’s asinine in a state with the population and diversity of Florida.
Both parties need to get serious about a primary system that ill serves its nominee-picking charge. An election without an incumbent would seem to be propitious timing.
Otherwise, the time is long past to just move on to regional primaries on the same day. What’s not to like? The candidates would do less pandering, and the media wouldn’t be able to play momentum kingmaker.
Those looking for an earlier forum on their electability can always go on Don Imus or Howard Stern.