Real to Reel History

We just saw the DVD of the movie "Bobby" the other night, which was a quasi-fictional account of the events leading up to the assassination of Robert Kennedy just after he won the California Democratic presidential primary in 1968.

Emilio Estivez directed and had a role in the film, in which he assembled an all-star cast that included his father Martin Sheen, William H. Macy, Anthony Hopkins, Heather Graham and Sharon Stone. With the setting being the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the movie tried for a Robert Altman-esque kind of narrative (minus the characters talking over each other). But "Bobby" stops in its tracks whenever the real Senator Kennedy appears in vintage news footage giving speeches and interacting with the voters, making it look like a retro campaign ad. Did Estivez want to make a movie or a documentary?

Robert Kennedy may have been a hero to liberals (and anyone else) who wanted to return to the days of his brother John Kennedy's presidency, and he might indeed have brought the country together in the turmoil of the 1960s had he lived to be president. But he had his faults. He once worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy during his anti-Communist witch hunt days. And as JFK's attorney general, RFK made many enemies as he went after organized crime figures and dithered while the civil rights movement turned violent.

As president, would RFK really have made any difference trying to end the war in Vietnam, and in easing racial tensions? We'll never know the answer to that one, because he died the same way his brother did, by way of the bullet. Sorry to spoil the ending, but even Hollywood can't put a happy face on history.
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A word about Lindsay Lohan, who appeared in the movie as a young woman who marries her boyfriend so he could avoid fighting in Vietnam: She may be best known these days as the out-of-control party girl who's currently in rehab. If Lohan's performances in "Bobby" and "A Prairie Home Companion" (Altman's last film) are any indication, she has a bright future ahead as an actress.

Shut Up and Study

Here's what we've learned from some of the decisions handed down by the Supreme Court so far:

• The new conservative majority needs to look at the calendar sometimes. Is this 2007 or 1957?
• The justices seem to think we need to hear more political ads from special-interest groups telling us who to vote for.
• Freedom of speech applies only to adults.

Let's talk about the last one for a minute. The Court ruled 5-4 (going strictly down ideological lines) in favor of the high school principal in Juneau, Alaska for tearing down a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner during a rally, and suspending the student who said he meant it as a joke.

While we'd be the last folks to endorse drug use, that doesn't mean students (or anyone else)have to swallow the company line on the "war on drugs". It has been a complete bust, if you'll pardon the expression, with the flow of drugs flowing freely despite the government's best efforts. And more lives are being destroyed because of it.

Oh, and there might be a problem with that Jesus reference. Something about keeping religion out of the schools might have escaped the justices' notice.

For those of us who haven't set foot in a high school lately (whether or not you have children), things aren't what they used to be. Thanks to the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech, your local school now resembles a minimum-security prison, with kids going through metal detectors for weapons and lockers being searched for drugs.

When students aren't being treated like prisoners, they're being tested more and learning less. The ill-conceived "No Child Left Behind" act put schools across the country behind the eight-ball when it comes to graduation rates, resulting in more emphasis on "teaching to the test" and less on students actually getting something out of a subject. Meanwhile, the arts and gym classes are sacrificed at the altar of NCLB.

What do the students think? Well, since the school newspaper is censored and the Supreme Court says they can't protest any more, we don't really know.

But the message to students is loud and clear: Shut up, study hard and don't do drugs.

Why We're Not Writing Today

When I started this blog a month ago, one of the things I did not want to do was to be one of those people who write when they really have nothing to say. It's hard enough staring at a blank screen, wasting precious electricity coming up with something remotely profound. It's even harder when you don't do your research, so you don't make an idiot out of yourself.

So don't be shocked if you don't hear from me at certain times. I'd love to take cheap shots at President Bush's veto on stem cell research, whether or not Kevin Garnett will remain a Minnesota Timberwolf, or Paris Hilton getting out of jail. But not today.

I'll come back when I'm ready.

What If They Scheduled a Game and Nobody Came?

A show of hands, please. How many of you out there are aware that the San Antonio Spurs swept the Cleveland Cavaliers to win the NBA title for the fourth time in a decade?


Gee, what a shock. Not many of you did. The championship series that mercifully concluded on ESPN on ABC played to a record-low TV audience. ABC could not wait to get back to reruns of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives", which the NBA Finals pre-empted.


Everyone seems to have a theory on why few folks chose to watch roundball on a summer's eve. Here's ours:

1. Three times a year, the networks save their best shows for the period where ratings determine the rates they can charge to advertisers. They're called sweeps months. And since they happen to be in the prime months of November, February and May, the networks don't want sports cluttering up their otherwise crucial schedules, unless it's the Super Bowl or the Olympic Winter Games. But the NBA and the NHL, who should really be determining their champion in April or May, are willing to wait until it's almost the Fourth of July to get a shot at a network TV audience.
2. If you're comparing sports leagues to TV shows, the NFL is "American Idol". Major League Baseball is "Days of Our Lives". The NBA is "Survivor" And the NHL is one of those Sunday morning interview programs.
3. The Spurs, as we mentioned, have won four NBA titles in the past decade. That puts them up there with the New England Patriots (three Super Bowl titles), New York Yankees (three World Series titles, and Detroit Red Wings (three Stanley Cup titles). But to most folks, the Spurs have no personalities and are boring as hell to watch. As for Cleveland, they might have LeBron James and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame . . . but it's still Cleveland.

This might sound like a radical suggestion, but with the proliferation of games on cable and satellite TV during the season, wouldn't it make more sense to put the NBA and NHL finals there instead of on the networks? Let ESPN and TNT have the NBA finals instead of having ABC use Eva Longoria in the stands as product placement for "Desperate Housewives". And the NHL deserves better than the cloak of invisibility on Versus, and getting bumped for horse racing on NBC.

Then maybe the season can end on time. Or maybe not.

Carl Pohlad, Media Mogul

Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins and a host of other businesses, might balk at signing star players Johan Santana and Torii Hunter to long-term deals. But he still has $28 million to spend on a radio station.

That's how much his new company, Northern Lights Broadcasting, is paying Radio One to acquire KTTB-FM 96.3 (aka B96), in what they hope will be the first of many media properties.

Northern Lights says they'll keep the rap/hip hop format (officially called "rhythmic CHR", but we know better), even though Radio One doesn't believe there's enough support in the Twin Cities market. There are some who even believe that hip hop is fading as a format. If that's true, then why does it still dominate the pop charts?

At the risk of sounding like the noted historical revisionist Sid Hartman: If Pohlad had bought KTTB a year earlier, Twins games would be running on that station instead of KSTP-AM 1500, and the hip hop would have been dumped.

What's next? Vikings owner Zygi Wilf buying KQRS? Wolves owner Glen Taylor purchasing KDWB? KSTP owner Stanley Hubbard taking over the Minnesota Wild?

Yes, We Live In a Cave (With Basic Cable)

Notice to all those who obsess over "The Sopranos" (and that includes the constant speculation and post-mortems in various media):

There's a vast majority of us out here who honestly don't care whether Tony Soprano lives or dies. That's because we have standard/basic cable and satellite, and HBO is too expensive for our taste.

We could have bought the DVD, but some of us don't think the sex, profanity and mob violence makes it worth the money.

On the other hand, the reruns on A&E aren't worth watching without the sex, profanity and mob violence. It insults our intelligence knowing that basic cable, longing to do what HBO and Showtime does every day, ends up looking like network television.

Now that "The Sopranos" is over with, would it be too much to ask not to give so much publicity to shows we can't watch?

The Not-So-Simple Life

We realize there are other things going on in the world:

• There are now over 3,500 soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq.
• "Scooter" Libby has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for essentially being the fall guy in the Valerie Plame affair, with the bigger fish getting away and Plame's life in danger.
• An American lawyer, currently holed up in a Denver hospital with tuberculosis, endangers countless lives because he chose to ignore the strong hints from government and medical officials that maybe he and his new bride shouldn't be traveling.

But all that is being swept aside, at least on the cable news channels, for earth-shattering news: Paris Hilton--hotel heiress, reality TV personality, and unwitting star of a sex tape--is behind bars.

The hotel heiress was sentenced to 45 days in a Los Angeles county jail for violating her probation in an alcohol-related conviction, with the possibility of getting out in 23 days for good behavior.

After three days, however, Hilton was moved out of jail and back into her home to serve out the rest of her sentence, citing an "undisclosed medical condition". The backlash was swift, with much criticism over the type of justice celebrities and the well-connected receive compared to you and me. Even professional rabble-rouser Rev. Al Sharpton flew out to the West Coast to weigh in on this one.

A judge corrected this potentially embarrassing mistake by ordering Hilton back into jail, and this time serve her full sentence. She was led away in handcuffs, sobbing "It's not fair!"

(To give Hilton the benefit of a doubt for only a moment--and this is just speculation--her "undisclosed medical condition" may be more than just a case of not being willing to do the time. There might be a real problem here.)

Is it just coincidence or just plain karma that Hilton and other well-known party girls such as Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie are having problems with the law at the same time, which also have something to do with drinking and driving? They are also risking their lives in other ways that aren't clear to us at the moment.

Let's just say there's not a lot of sympathy for any of them right now.

Ducks Swim In Stanley Cup

The Anaheim Ducks may not be owned by Disney any more (they were sold a couple of years ago), but Donald Duck might have appreciated how they fought and battled their way to their first NHL Stanley Cup victory, defeating the Ottawa Senators in five games.

Led by the goaltending of J.S. Giguere and the goal scoring of Teemu Selanne, Justin Penner, Dean McAmmond and others, the Ducks survived the tepid Ottawa offense and the suspension of resident tough guy Chris Pronger (for putting the elbow on McAmmond in Game 3) for one game. Having seen them do the same thing to the Minnesota Wild in the first round, this does not come as a big shock.

What also didn't come as a big shock was the predictably abysmal TV ratings the Stanley Cup finals got, first on Versus and later NBC. Game 3 on the Peacock tied for the lowest-rated prime time program in history with a 2005 rerun of "The West Wing".

(In Minnesota, the playoffs did well in the local ratings, which is what you would expect in the State of Hockey. But they were all outpointed by Minnesota Twins games on FSN North, and most of them were replays of afternoon games. That's right. Taped baseball did better than playoff hockey.)

At least NBC tried to spice things up with an appearance by Don Cherry, the flame-throwing commentator on CBC's "Hockey Night In Canada", in Game 4. Dressed up like Colonel Sanders (minus the bucket of chicken), Cherry advocated more fighting as a way for the NHL to attract more American TV viewers. This is why, with idiotic comments like that one (others are much stronger), the CBC puts a delay on Cherry's between-periods segment. NBC must have heard enough, because Cherry wasn't around for Game 5.

The Ducks are the third consecutive Sunbelt-based team to win the Stanley Cup (Tampa Bay and Carolina are the others), while a Canadian-based team hasn't won one since the 1992-93 Montreal Canadiens. Who's next? Phoenix? San Jose? Atlanta?

NBA Finals: Not Boring Again

In a season marked by on-court brawls, synthetic basketballs, high draft picks going to teams in the Pacific Northwest, and college coaches who change their minds about coaching a pro team, it has all come down to this: Cleveland Cavaliers vs. San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals.

Spared the ugly fate of another Spurs-Detroit Pistons final, we now have the dream matchup of Tim Duncan, Robert Horry and Tony Parker going for the Spurs' fourth title against LeBron James--and the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The NBA is happy. Nike is happy. So is ESPN on ABC, which now has something to show besides Parker's fiancee, Eva Longoria of the network's "Desperate Housewives", cheering him on in the stands.

James got his team this far with a historic Game 5 against the Pistons, scoring 48 points in a double-overtime victory for the Cavaliers. He has done something Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers wishes he could do after chasing Shaquille O'Neal all the way to Miami: Take his team to the finals almost by himself, just like Michael Jordan used to do. But where's his Scottie Pippen?

You'll also be hearing a great deal about the city of Cleveland's title drought, going back to the Indians last winning the World Series in 1948 and the (original)Browns capturing the NFL title in the pre-Super Bowl year of 1964. Until James came along, the Cavaliers have been a mostly sorry mess during their history, suffering through bad teams and bad owners.

We think the drought will continue, with the unexciting but experienced Spurs taking care of the Cavaliers in five or six games. But LeBron James will soon have his day.

Terrorists Keep Out! Uh, Never Mind.

Federal authorities arrested three men (and looking for a fourth) in connection with a plot to blow up the fuel tanks at New York's JFK International Airport. The suspects apparently hail from the countries of Guyana and Trinidad. The Feds say the plot, which never got beyond the talking stage, involved blowing up the fuel tanks at the airport, whose lines stretch from there to New Jersey. From what we're told, the devastation would have rivaled that of the events of September 11, 2001.

This follows other similar plots involving a military base in New Jersey and the Sears Tower in Chicago, allegedly dreamed up by wannabe radical groups who didn't have the money, equipment or planning necessary to carry it out.

We are constantly told by the Bush administration that America needs to fight the terrorists in Iraq, so that they won' t come here. Don't bother. They're already here, and they're not necessarily working for Osama bin Laden.

Ding! You Are Now Free to Screw Up a Governor's Name

In our last post, the way we spelled the name of the Governor of California would have gotten national spelling champ Evan O'Dorney (who is from there) gonged.

The correct spelling is: S-C-H-W-A-R-Z-E-N-E-G-G-E-R.

Are we good?

Can You Use The Word "Victory" in a Sentence?

Evan O'Dorney of Danville, California beat out 286 contestants to win this year's National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word "serrefine", which means small forceps. For his trouble, he (or his parents) get $35,000 cash, a $5,000 scholarship, a $2,500 savings bond, and all the reference books he can handle.

A couple of things:

• Evan is home-schooled, but would be considered an eighth-grader if he attended a public or private school. Don't you think kids like that are sitting ducks for the parents' political and religious leanings instead of being exposed to the world?
• The event was televised by ABC and ESPN, with the championship round presented in prime time. The kids showed a lot of poise for the judges and the TV viewers, but aren't they a little young to be put in that kind of pressure cooker?
• Should Evan be a guest on either Jay Leno's or David Letterman's shows, he'll probably be asked this question: How do you spell the name of California's governor? It is S-C-H-W-A-R-Z-E-N-A-G-G-E-R.