Facebook: Trust and Consequences

Last week, it was reported that administrators at Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota got wind of pictures of students allegedly drinking at parties that turned up on Facebook, which is one of those social networking sites you've probably heard about. They pulled 42 students out of class for interviews, then disciplined 13 of them.

Believing that their privacy and civil rights had been violated, approximately 15 students dared to walk out of the school in protest. Some parents are threatening to take legal action because the suspensions might do irreparable harm to their kids' chances of getting scholarships, not to mention the parents' reputations.

Before we go too much further, a disclaimer: I am a graduate of Eden Prairie High School, which in my case was located in the current middle school, and not the educational fortress that rises above Valley View Road today. (President George W. Bush spoke there a few months after the 9/11 attacks, which explains volumes) I do not have kids who are past or current students of EPHS.

Was the administration, who had claimed that they don't go snooping around Facebook or My Space the way the tabloids stalk Britney Spears looking for dirt, right in disciplining the students? There is a trust factor involved here, and the administrators stepped over the line. Also, they might have gotten their information from kids who wanted to get back at a classmate or two for some slight.

The front page headline in the 1/17/08 edition of the Eden Prairie News asked the question:
"Has Facebook exposed culture of drinking?" The short answer is yes. There has always been a culture of drinking and substance abuse, whether it's at EPHS or anywhere else. The same parents who tell their kids to stay away from drugs and alcohol are hypocrites because they probably did it themselves once upon a time. That's part of the reason why we have an addiction problem in this country, and you don't need Facebook to tell you that.

We're not condoning underage drinking, which has gotten a lot of attention around here lately with the deaths of local college students who imbibed way too much. But if you're going to engage in reckless behavior, at least have the sense not to brag about it or publish pictures of yourself and your friends quaffing brewskis on your web site. Because you never know who might be looking in, whether it's your parents, college recruiters, future employers or law-enforcement personnel. (Actually, that's good advice no matter what your age.)

Too often, people (such as the Star Tribune's schoolmarm columnist Katherine Kersten) underestimate the ability of teenagers and young adults to make the right choices in life, with or without the help of their parents. If we can't trust them, how can they trust us?

Romney Rolls In Michigan, Democrats Deal In Vegas

While most of you were watching Simon, Randy and Paula suffer through bad singing on American Idol, the good folks of Michigan braved snow and ice to go to the polls in their state's presidential primary.

Mitt Romney, son of the former Michigan governor and 1968 presidential candidate, picked up a needed win on the Republican side to keep his campaign going. John McCain was second, and Mike Huckabee came in third.

Hillary Clinton was the big winner in the Democratic primary, though it was kind of misleading. Since the party penalized Michigan for daring to move its voting ahead of Super Tuesday by stripping them of delegates to the national convention (they did the same thing to Florida), no other major candidate bothered to put their name on the ballot.

Instead, Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards were in Las Vegas for yet another televised debate, this one for MSNBC (Dennis Kucinich tried to sue his way onto the stage, but a judge ruled in favor of NBC News' keeping him out). After Clinton claimed over the weekend that President Lyndon Johnson had more to do with the 1964 Civil Rights Act than Martin Luther King, Jr., leading to hard feelings in the Obama camp, the two made nice on the race relations front just in time for King's actual birthday (the federal holiday is Monday).

Other than that, the only real news to come out of the debate was Edwards' stating that in his first year in office, all combat troops would leave Iraq. Clinton and Obama said much the same thing, but didn't go as far as Edwards did.

Nevada and South Carolina are next.

Writers Strike Continues

With the Writers Guild of America's strike against the movie studios and TV networks into its third month with no end in sight, the effects continue to show up not just on your TV screen, but also at the multiplex. A roundup:

• The Golden Globe Awards, that informal gathering of movie and TV stars boozing it up at a ballroom somewhere in Hollywood, was reduced to a nationally-televised news conference because no movie or TV star would be caught dead crossing a picket line. Before that, the People's Choice Awards changed from a live telecast to a pretaped highlights show aired on CBS. We might be watching the wave of the future, because networks are increasingly reluctant to risk heavy fines caused by some awards winner or presenter lobbing an F-bomb or a crude sexual reference on live TV.
• People are already asking if the Academy Awards will meet the same fate if the strike continues. Count on it.
• All the late-night talk show hosts are back, whether they have writers or not. Jay Leno does his own jokes, even though the union tells him not to. Conan O'Brien spins his wedding ring on his desk. David Letterman shaves his beard. Leno and Jimmy Kimmel appear on each others' shows. Now that's entertainment.
• American Idol returns as scripted shows run out of original episodes.
• Following the lead of Letterman, Tom Cruise's United Artists and The Weinstein Company (all independent producers) made separate deals with the Writers Guild to get their people back to work.

Read any good books lately?

Minnesota Wild Sold: Fool Us Once . . .

The Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League have been sold to Craig Leipold, who up until recently was the owner of the Nashville Predators. Bob Naegele, Jr., who has been the majority stockholder in the Wild since the team's inception in 2000, will remain as a minority investor.

Leipold, who is from Racine, Wisconsin, said there would be no immediate changes in the team on and off the ice once the purchase is approved by the NHL.

Forgive our skepticism, but when it comes to out-of-town businessmen like Leipold who have purchased the local NHL franchise in the past, we've seen this movie before. And it had an unhappy ending.

Remember Norm Green? When he came down from Calgary to become the new owner of the Minnesota North Stars in the early 1990s (taking over from the Cleveland-based Gund brothers), he made all sorts of promises such as bringing a Stanley Cup championship to the state (which almost happened in 1991, losing in five games to Mario Lemieux' Pittsburgh Penguins), or building a shopping complex next to Bloomington's Metropolitan Sports Center (which became the Mall of America, though the Ghermezian brothers from Edmonton got the credit for that one.).

But then the North Stars floundered on the ice and attendance--which was never that great to begin with--suffered. Green started making noises about getting out of the Met Center lease and moving into Target Center in Minneapolis, but couldn't make a deal with city leaders. Then he started talking to cities like Anaheim and Dallas, before the NHL told him he could go anywhere he wanted, as long as it wasn't Anaheim (which eventually got its own team). Then came the sexual harassment suit and it was goodbye Minnesota, and hello Dallas. Which is where the Stars in 1999 finally won their Stanley Cup.

Leipold founded the Nashville Predators in 1997 in a city that's better known for country music than for hockey. They've had decent teams, and have even made the playoffs a couple of times. But attendance started dropping and the rumors began: Kansas City or Hamilton, Ontario? Eventually, the Predators were sold to a local group, where the situation remains precarious.

Which raises the question: How long will it be before the Wild leave the State of Hockey? Even though they're one of the NHL's most successful franchises, that may not be enough for Leipold. If there's anything less than a sellout at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center, Kansas City, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Las Vegas beckon.

We have every intention of believing Leipold will do right by the Wild and its fans and not screw up a good thing. But then we believed Norm Green, Howard Baldwin and the Gund brothers. Minnesota hockey fans weren't born yesterday.

Shock! Surprise! Clinton and McCain Win in New Hampshire.

By now we've all seen the sound bite of Senator Hillary Clinton choking up as she explained why she was running for President: "I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see it fall backwards". Was it a genuine moment for the former First Lady, or was it calculated to show the voters that she didn't come from the Candidate Factory (which is not located in China, just so you know)?

Whatever it was, it must have worked because Clinton won the New Hampshire Democratic primary in a stunningly close fashion over Senator Barack Obama, who was ahead in all the polls prior to the voting. John Edwards, who's going to lose voters if he insists on keeping John Mellencamp's "This Is Our Country" (also known as the Chevy Trucks ad) as his theme song, finished a distant third.

How did Obama lose New Hampshire? He's been getting the rock star treatment ever since his win in Iowa, including the cover of Newsweek magazine. But this time more women came out for Clinton than for Obama. Was Oprah Winfrey busy this week?

Senator John McCain won the Republican primary, just like he did in 2000, over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Like Clinton, all the pundits counted McCain out after their relatively poor showings in Iowa. This time, McCain got more votes from independents than Obama did.

Romney's reason for losing might stem from New Hampshirites' familiarity with him in next-door Massachusetts--in this case, they've probably seen too much. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, finished third. The other guys (Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, etc.)? They were nonfactors.

It was either Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews on MSNBC who hit the nail on the head concerning the significance of the past week: For the first time, presidential candidates who happened to be African-American and a woman won a caucus and a primary, in that order.

Come to think of it, maybe Hillary Clinton was on to something.

NFL 2007: Almost Perfect--One Way or Another

As the 2007 National Football League regular season ended, the New England Patriots went 16-0, besting the 1972 Miami Dolphins by two games, forcing some of the surviving members of that team to keep their champagne on ice. Coach Bill Belichick's team may have been perfect, but certainly not flawless. Witness the close calls in games against Philadelphia, Baltimore and the New York Giants where, instead of running up big scores like the Patriots did to some teams, they scored the winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter.

At the other end of the spectrum, the 2007 Dolphins almost made pro football history of their own, one loss shy of being the only other team besides the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers to lose every game. As it was, the Dolphins' only victory was against Baltimore. As punishment, well-traveled taskmaster Bill Parcells was brought in to see if he could right the ship.

The biggest surprises in the NFC were the Green Bay Packers, with another record-setting year for quarterback Brett Favre, and the Washington Redskins. After what they've been through, with the murder of Sean Taylor, they could have fallen apart and missed the playoffs. But they didn't.

On the public relations front, letting CBS and NBC simulcast the NFL Network's telecast of the Patriots-Giants game was kinda puzzling. For weeks, the NFL was roundly ripped for keeping a potentially historic game on a channel that was having problems getting on most cable systems because of an access dispute. Then they relented, making the NFL Network seem weak in the process for not sticking to its guns in the eyes of cable. But the ratings were huge, so nobody really minded. (By the way, the NFL claimed that the first Super Bowl was a simulcast between CBS and NBC. But both networks used different announcing crews, so it really doesn't count.)

The Minnesota Vikings finished with an 8-8 record, losing their last two games to fall out of playoff contention. Really, folks, the lousy first half of the season they had killed any chances of getting into the playoffs in the first place. Quarterback Tarvaris Jackson is still learning on the job. Adrian Peterson had a great rookie season until injuries and better defenses slowed him down. And coach Brad Childress continues to be outsmarted and outcoached by wily old veterans such as Joe Gibbs of Washington and Mike Shanahan of Denver--and in some cases, not-so-wily coaches--when it comes to replay challenges. But owner Zygi Wilf insists he's committed to the team he's put together, and won't hesitate to spend money on better players. We shall see.

Our Super Bowl matchup: New England vs. Dallas.

Politics '08: Obama, Huckabee Win in Iowa

Finally, after what seemed like an interminable number of debates and campaigning, the good people of Iowa got together and decided on their own who they thought should run the country for the next four years.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was the choice among Iowa's Democrats, which is a pretty amazing feat considering how overwhelmingly white the state is. Or maybe they were just under the spell of Oprah?

Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and former senator John Edwards were neck-and-neck for second place. For Clinton, this is a major letdown considering that she was the front-runner a few weeks ago. For Edwards, he's got to feel good about how far he's come.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, was the surprise winner edging out former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Seems Iowans are more comfortable with an evangelical Christian they know than a Mormon they don't know. And Huckabee's appearance the previous night on Jay Leno (was the candidate aware that he crossed picket lines?) didn't seem to hurt him.

Slugging it out for third place are Senator John McCain of Arizona and Fred Thompson, the former Senator from Tennessee, who should feel fortunate that he's still in the race. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani chose to campaign in Florida instead.

Dropping out after poor showings: Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, both Democrats.

Next stop: New Hampshire on Tuesday.