Random Thoughts 2015, Volume 2

Is there anything new to add after the latest mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina that hasn't already been said before?  Or will likely be done about it?

Pope Francis has said that climate change is happening.  Now if he could only convince corporate executives and politicians who worship money more than they do God.  Oh by the way, doesn't the Pope have his own toxic mess to deal with?

How can anyone have an intelligent discussion about the Trans Pacific Partnership if no one knows, or can say what's in it?

Rachel Dolezal used to run the Spokane, Washington chapter of the NAACP until her parents claimed she was born white.  Dolezal said she identifies as black, and those aren't her real parents.  Who's telling the truth?  Does it really matter if she's black or white?  And how did the NAACP get caught up in all this?

The clown car that is the number of Republican candidates running for President now includes Donald Trump.  He may not be the nominee, but he's upped the entertainment quotient considerably.

With all due respect to Senator Bernie Sanders, isn't he just token opposition for the Hillary Clinton juggernaut?

A woman on the ten dollar bill to stand alongside Alexander Hamilton?  What happened to the efforts to get rid of Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill?  For what it's worth, our choice would be Eleanor Roosevelt.

Jerry Seinfeld has complained that political correctness is killing comedy.  No Jerry, 9/11 did.

Brian Williams is back at NBC after being suspended for "misremembering" certain things about how he covered events.  He's been demoted to "breaking news" anchor status at struggling MSNBC.  How much do you want to bet that Lester Holt, who replaced Williams as "NBC Nightly News" anchor, is looking over his shoulder?

Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn, a former Olympic decathlon champion who became identified with the Kardashian circus--and look what she is now.  So far, she hasn't been asked by the International Olympic Committee to give back her gold medal from the 1976 Games, and already she's being put up as a model of 'courage'.  Well, if changing your sex is something you thought you should have been doing all along, maybe it is courageous.

In other news, Kim Kardashian announced she's pregnant with a boy.  A fact which shouldn't surprise most NPR listeners, or anyone else.

Bud Kraehling (1919-2015): Minnesota's Weather Oracle

Bud Kraehling, who died at age 96 this week, was best known as the man who did weather forecasts from the 1950s to the mid-90s at WCCO-TV (Channel 4).  To many of his viewers, he was the oracle of weather in Minnesota long before anyone had ever heard of Doppler radar or meteorology, or of dewpoints and wind chills.

Like many others in the early days of television, Kraehling did his weathercasts the old fashioned way relying on information and equipment that we would consider primitive today.  An on-air presentation back then might look something like this:  Stand in front of a series of maps.  Use a pointer or a marker like a high school teacher would to highlight fronts and storms affecting our weather, and to show temperatures from across the region.  Relay the current conditions, which usually came from the airport.  Deliver the forecast for today and tomorrow, and maybe a couple of days after that.  Throw it to the news anchor or to a commercial when you're done.

After a few years in radio following World War II, Kraehling joined Channel 4 in 1949 when the station went on the air as WTCN (it became WCCO in 1952).  He did a little bit of everything on the air besides the weather, which included live commercials, station breaks and announced for other shows.

Unlike most others in TV weather, Kraehling had a way of communicating with his audience when he was delivering his forecast, or warning of a possible storm, in a calm and personable manner.  His unscripted banter during newscasts with 'CCO icon Dave Moore were, to put it mildly, legendary.

Kraehling left WCCO in 1996, just as a new generation of meteorologists came to TV with millions of dollars in satellite technology, and a newfound importance on weather at local news stations as the reason people watch. 

Today, you can get the latest forecast anytime you want with whatever technology you've got on hand.  Or you can turn on the TV to hear about the latest "Top Ten Weather Day", or live coverage of a storm happening miles away from your home.  But it is the rare chief meteorologist or weekend weather person who can relay that to viewers in a calm and professional manner the way Bud Kraehling did, and wish others did too.  For that, we thank him.

The Ugly Game

Português: Joseph Blatter, da Fifa, fala à imprensa após audiência com o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, no Palácio do Planalto (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

World football (known in North America as soccer) has survived many things:  wars, depressions, violence on and off the field, use as a propaganda tool, etc.  Yet those who play and/or watch still swear by the game they love, often placing it high on the list beside family and religion.

So how come the game is run by incompetent fools who care more about making money than in improving the sport itself?  Or shouldn't we be surprised by this because that's how most corporations seem to work?

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation made headlines by announcing the arrests in Switzerland of several top officials in FIFA, which is soccer's governing body.  It's part of an investigation that includes $150 million allegedly doled out in bribes and kickbacks through U.S. banks over the past two decades.

Not among the indicted (at least not yet) is FIFA's longtime president Sepp Blatter, for whom no amount of wrongdoing involving the organization seems to have stuck to him.  Blatter was just re-elected to a fifth term with little opposition, so the soccer world still has to deal with him.  How much longer remains to be seen.

Much of the investigation revolves around what it took to award past and future men's World Cup tournaments in South Africa (2010), Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022).  FIFA officials allegedly took money from those countries' football organizations in exchange for a favorable vote to host a World Cup.  It's not much different than, say, a politician discreetly taking lobbyists' moolah in exchange for a favorable vote in Congress.

Russia and Qatar have their own set of baggage, none of which should affect their standing as future World Cup hosts.  For Russia, it's worldwide outrage over President Vladimir Putin's lust to regain territories lost after the Cold War.  For Qatar, there is the summertime heat that might force the move of the tournament to late fall, as well as allegations of human rights abuses.  It seems they've been building stadiums with alleged slave labor, or using labor who are paid and allegedly treated like slaves.

Given that this is an ongoing investigation, how much are things really going to change at FIFA?  There is talk of boycotting the World Cup among some countries and corporate partners, but do they really want to pass up the money and exposure that comes with such a prestigious event?  What about the backlash from fans in their own countries?

In the United States, where soccer is just starting to get a foothold on people's consciousnesses, will FIFA retaliate by denying them a chance to host a World Cup in the foreseeable future?  Or punish the American teams in other ways?  There is precedent.  The U.S. has yet to host another Olympic games (NBC's money notwithstanding) since the scandal involving the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games.

(Oh, by the way, FIFA is holding the Women's World Cup in Canada this month.  Any guesses as to how this scandal is going to affect people's perception of the competition?)

Yes, the game of world football/soccer has survived many things.  Can it survive the people who run it?

UPDATE (6/2/15):  Blatter announced that he is stepping down as FIFA's president, pending the election of his replacement.  Maybe he just realized he's become a liability?

Strib Pages

Once upon a time in the Twin Cities (and maybe your town), alternative weekly newspapers roamed the Earth.  Copies of the Twin Cities Reader, Sweet Potato and others were available for free on college campuses, record stores, newsstands and libraries.  In those pages you could learn about government corruption, alternative lifestyles (usually from a liberal perspective), hard-hitting reviews of movies and restaurants, and the latest band coming to town that for some reason don't get radio airplay.  It was nothing you'd ever find in your typical local daily.

Now it's 2015.  Alternative papers are still around, though they're fewer in number.  Sweet Potato has since become City Pages, which after the demise of other weeklies ended up cornering the local market on alternative journalism.  And Voice Media, which currently owns CP, has chosen to sell it to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. 

The Strib, which was recently purchased by businessman Glen Taylor, has vowed to keep CP editorially independent.  To that end, they're shutting down Vita.mn, an entertainment-based weekly.

It's hard to believe there won't be some tweaking to the point where "alternative" is all but meaningless.  Those hard-hitting articles we talked about?  They'll start resembling those long pieces you usually find in the Sunday newspaper, devoid of any real point of view.  Oh, and the language in the articles should be cleaned up too.

City Pages usually likes to point out the shortcomings of the Star Tribune and the other media in town when it comes to local news coverage.  Any bets on whether that continues?

And we mustn't forget the amount of advertising CP accepts for "gentlemen's clubs", massage parlors, tattoo shops and other businesses not normally found in a daily newspaper intended for general audiences.  Again, how long do you think this is going to last?

You might say this is the beginning of the end for alternative journalism, though some might say the end came a long time ago.  Maybe it's too much to ask in the age of the Internet and declining interest in printed media, but could there possibly be somebody out there willing to provide an alternative to the "alternative"?

Baltimore: Charmless City

Baltimore, Maryland Skyline from the Inner Harbor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here's where we stand from the latest American city to burst into flames, caused by a young African-American male who paid the price for messing with a police officer who allegedly did something stupid.  This time, it was Baltimore, Maryland.

(1)  Six police officers are charged in connection with the death of Freddie Grey, who after being arrested, had died of spinal injuries while in custody.

(2)  Since the incident, protests in Baltimore and elsewhere had been relatively peaceful until they turned violent last week.  Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested, some businesses were destroyed and/or looted.  A 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew was imposed on the city, and a state of emergency was declared by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, allowing National Guard troops to patrol the streets.

You could compare all of this to what happened in Ferguson, Missouri a few months ago, but the issues are slightly different here.  Baltimore has had a history of racial violence, stemming from the apparent lack of opportunities that has caused hopelessness and frustration among African-American residents.  (Heck, that happens in every city.)  Yet who's running the show?  African-Americans from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on down.  How could they not have seen this happening?

(3) There is a widely-viewed video of an African-American mother forcefully hitting her teenaged son for attempting to participate in one of the demonstrations.  Most everyone applauded the mother, because they seemed to think that's the way parents should react if their kids were caught doing something like this.

Uh, let's see.  Ray Rice and Floyd Mayweather have been accused of beating up their significant others.  Adrian Peterson has been accused of using a switch on one of his sons.  So let's not make this woman Parent of the Year, OK?

(4)  The Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox, because of the unrest, played a baseball game at Camden Yards that was closed to spectators.  Elsewhere in the city, tourism is down and some conventions were canceled.

Considering the other times of crisis in American history (World War II and 9/11/01 come to mind), you wonder why nobody else had ever thought of teams playing in empty stadiums before.  While we agree that playing games sometimes has to take a back seat to real life, there's no need to be heavy-handed and patronizing about it.  So what's going to happen to the Preakness Stakes?  An empty Pimlico race track, anyone?

As for skipping Fort McHenry or any eatery that serves crab cakes, seeing images on TV of violence on the city streets tends to change one's travel plans, don't you think? 

(5)  After the charges against the six police officers were announced, the tone of the demonstrations changed to mostly peaceful and positive.  Because of that, the city of Baltimore has dropped its overnight curfew.

Ah, but what will happen when the trial begins?  If recent history is any guide, most (if not all) of those officers will be exonerated due to lack of evidence and laws that favor them and not the victim.  Then Baltimore will be on edge again.

The cycle continues.  Who's the next city to buckle under the weight of police mistakes and lack of opportunities for its citizens?

Comcast-TWC: Cutting the Cord

Logo of Comcast Latina: Insigne Comcast (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Comcast, the communications giant that owns NBC, has called off its $45 billion merger with Time Warner Cable citing too many regulatory hoops they had to jump through.  Really, it was all the opposition from government and consumer groups that they couldn't overcome.

Together, Comcast and TWC would have controlled nearly 30 percent of cable subscribers and 57 percent of broadband users.  That's why, to satisfy regulators, Comcast-TWC was willing to unload some of its territories (such as Minneapolis and St. Paul) on other cable providers such as Charter Communications.

When the proposed merger was announced, alarm bells rang in Washington and for those who cared about the future of the Internet.  If the government had approved the deal, the new company would have had monopolistic powers over who got on their broadband and how much they would have charged subscribers.  Which isn't a whole lot different from what's going on now, "net neutrality" or not.

Comcast already has the lowest customer service ranking of any American company, behaving in a way that's reminiscent of AT&T before the government broke up the phone company monopoly in the 1980s.  Well, that's also true of most cable providers whose exclusive rights to serve certain areas have been in place for decades.

Now that Comcast-TWC have severed ties, other possible unions in the communications have come to the forefront.  Charter is taking a second run at TWC, according to media reports.  AT&T is combining with DirecTV, once they can figure out how to explain to regulators how a phone company can coexist with a satellite provider.

But that won't change the fact that cable is becoming less and less popular with consumers, who are sick of paying through the nose for channels they don't want, opting for Internet streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Plus in addition to keeping an antenna for broadcast TV.  The thing is, though, they still have to go through a broadband service--most of whom are owned by cable providers. 

This is what providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable are facing, and they are losing.  They must either adapt or die, and not be so arrogant about it.  They can't afford to.

Hillary Clinton For President, Take Two

Hillary Rodham Clinton (Wellesley College) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It must have been a slow news weekend.  All CNN and the Sunday morning news programs wanted to talk about was the forthcoming announcement about Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations, and to speculate about how she would run her 2016 campaign.  That's what most of us were watching while waiting for the Masters TV coverage to start.

And there was Hillary, on a video release first shown on social media that looked like an insurance commercial.  The former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State--the woman who's been in our lives since her husband Bill first campaigned for the White House--now wants to be the first person of her gender to serve as President of the United States.

This isn't Clinton's first trip down the campaign trail.  She was favored to take the Democratic nomination in 2008, until a guy named Barack Obama came along and beat her to it.

This time around, Clinton has a clear field for the Democratic nomination, with Obama's two terms in the White House almost up.  Thus far, she has yet to receive a challenge from someone in her own party, and that could be a problem prior to July 2016 in Philadelphia.

The Republicans have no shortage of challengers for Clinton.  Three U.S. Senators have announced their candidacies so far:  Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.  They are (or were) Tea Party and Libertarian darlings until they decided they wanted to be President.  The GOP wants to prove that they really are an inclusive party, so long as their candidates don't stray from the conservative line.  At least not until a more mainstream candidate decides to jump in.

Unlike those other guys, we know plenty about Hillary Clinton:  The highs and lows of her husband's Presidency, Benghazi and those State Department e-mails that her enemies keep bringing up.  What we have yet to find out is what she wants for the country, and how she would govern it.  She can't just count on name recognition alone.

John Dickerson of CBS (who was just named host of "Face the Nation", replacing the retiring Bob Schieffer this summer) raised an important point on the April 13 "Evening News" broadcast, and it goes like this:  Since 1952, only one party has won three consecutive elections.  That was the Republicans with Ronald Reagan (twice) and George H.W. Bush (once) in the 1980s.  President Obama has won twice.  Will Hillary Clinton be third time lucky for the Democrats?  Or will voters decide to give whoever represents the GOP another chance?