Author: Dan Brekke

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TV Tour de Crud

I bray every July about Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, our English-language TV announcers-for-life of the Tour de France. It’s not just the cliched, empty language they use–granted, it was charming once upon a time–it’s their tendency to miss big moments in the race and to make assertions that are simply wrong.

To really appreciate how terrible these guys are, though, it’s necessary to tune in to the Tour of California coverage that their network, Versus, is airing each night. The main problem I have is that Paul and Phil have no concept of the race geography or terrain. Thus on last night’s Stage Two show, Sherwen spouted off about “the long straight roads of the Napa Valley” as the leading racers were shown speeding down the long, straight roads of the Central Valley, on the outskirts of Sacramento. Cycling fans hear constantly about how the racers themselves ride the course to get to know it. You’d think that the guys broadcasting this stuff could at least drive the course so they might get a feel for what’s going on; but there’s no evidence they or the producers take such a rudimentary step. Instead, they just talk over the edited video of the race and spout off. In yesterday’s stage, much of which I’ve ridden many times myself, it was obvious they had no idea where the action was taking place or what was to come. It’s just lazy, lazy, lazy crap.

That’s not the only problem with the Versus coverage, though. The stages have been edited down to a point that it’s hard to get a sense of the action unfolding. Key moments, such as a crash that put local rider Dave Zabriskie out of the race, are missed or ignored (despite the fact the show hasn’t been airing until a good four hours after the finish). And Bob Roll, the one on-camera guy I’d assume (since he has lived here) has a sense of the region. is reserved to his usual role of clown savant.

The best alternative, if you’ve got a high-speed Net connection: the live video/audiocast on the Tour of California’s own site. The video is choppy, but the audio commentary is vastly superior to what the Versus boys deliver,.

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Odd Find

I just heard a blurb on NPR on a recently unearthed home movie of the Kennedy motorcade through Dallas on November 22, 1963. The movie was turned over to the Sixth Floor Museum at Lee Harvey Oswald’s former workplace. After hearing the bit on the radio, I knew just what to do: check the museum’s website for the video. But the site was slammed with traffic. No problem: YouTube or Google Video (or both–are they the same now?) would surely have it. And they did–thirty-nine seconds’ worth, which might be all that the museum made public; or maybe that’s all that the amateur cameraman, George Jefferies, shot. (Jefferies, 82, a former insurance executive, says the home movies sat in a dresser drawer for more than four decades before he recently asked his son-in-law whether he’d like to see some footage of Kennedy’s visit to Dallas.)

Thirty-nine seconds. Not much. A crowd in the street. Limousines approaching and passing. A group of smiling passengers: the Kennedys, the Connollys. In less than two minutes, all that would change. But beyond the haunting irony in the pictures, I was surprised to see that Kennedy had drawn a big crowd and that the city had made a big deal out of the visit; in the clip, you see the flags and bunting and banners flying on lightpoles into the distance. I never realized that the city had enthusiastically welcomed Kennedy. Here’s John Connolly, quoted in the House Select Committee on Assassinations report:

“The further we got toward town, the denser became the crowds, and when we got down on Main Street, the crowds were extremely thick. They were pushed off of curbs; they were out in the street, and they were backed all the way up against the walls of the buildings. They were just as thick as they could be. I don’t know how many. But, there were at least a quarter of a million people on the parade route that day and everywhere the reception was good.”

Kennedy personally stopped the motorcade twice to speak to spectators. Imagine that happening now. The report went on to say: “Governor Connally noticed that Mrs. Kennedy, who had appeared apprehensive the previous day, was more relaxed and enjoyed the Dallas crowd. The only hostile act he remembered was a heckler with a placard that read ‘Kennedy Go Home. The President noticed the sign, and asked Governor and Mrs. Connally if they had seen it. Connally said, Yes, but we were hoping you didn’t.’ ”

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Tonight’s Reading

The New Yorker’s February 19th issue includes a take-out on “24,” its use of torture as both plot device and tool to extract information from evil-doing characters, and its impact in the real world (“Whatever It Takes,” by Jane Mayer). We’d like to convince ourselves that our prime-time television is all just play acting, that grown-ups can tell the difference between what’s made up and what’s not, and that viewers will maintain a balanced image of the world after immersing themselves in a hyper-violent, hyper-paranoid adventure like “24.” But the article points out that officials in the Army and FBI, people responsible for real-life interrogations and for training those that do them, find “24” not laughably implausible but actually harmful.

The story details a meeting between some of the show’s producers and writers and a group of officials including Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, the dean of West Point. Finnegan and “three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country” met the “24” team to discuss the impact of the show’s depiction of the unrestrained use of torture (Joel Surnow, the co-creator of the show, its executive producer, buddy of Rush Limbaugh, and convinced right-winger, declined to meet with Finnegan et al.). As Mayer recounts:

“Finnegan told the producers that ’24,’ by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by ’24,’ which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, ‘The kids see it, and say, “If torture is wrong, what about ’24’?” ‘ He continued, ‘The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.’ ”

Mayer notes that “24” isn’t the ultimate source of the moral fog surrounding U.S. policy on torture. No, the problem for people like Finnegan is that the our government is in the hands of people who promote torture as an acceptable weapon in our state of permanent war. If you’re paying attention to the regime that Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez and their brief writers are trying to put in place, the troops might be forgiven for thinking that Jack Bauer is a model they might aspire to.

In passing, one of the people who comes out looking OK in Mayer’s story is Kiefer Sutherland, who actually seems to think about the issues his character raises.

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Holiday Weekend Swine Report

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Until an hour or two before this picture was taken on Saturday, Rocky was a fun-loving, terrain-uprooting boar enjoying life in the borderlands where Alameda, Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties meet, in the highlands between southern San Francisco Bay and the San Joaquin Valley. Then he met a slug from a high-powered rifle–just guessing both as to gender and to means of demise–passed on to hog heaven and got strapped to a utility box on the back of a Toyota pickup. That’s when I saw him, in the parking lot of The Junction, a roadhouse that caters to some bicycle types like myself and a lot of bikers. I just hope Rocky found a good home and a chef who knows how to make the most of him.

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Today’s Reading

Kate pointed this story out in today’s New York Times, and read it aloud:

“He Confirmed It, Yes He Did: The Wicked Witch Was Dead”

“Like any coroner, he has seen some things. But one case stays with him nearly 70 years after the fact, like some old song he can’t get out of his head.

“He couldn’t shake this case even if he wanted to, what with all the videotapes, the DVDs, the television broadcasts replaying the gruesome aftermath over and over, in vivid Technicolor. Those striped socks, curling back like a pair of deflating noisemakers. …

“The coroner’s name is Meinhardt Raabe, and he lives in a retirement community tucked between here and there. He can’t see or hear too well, and his short legs need the assistance of a three-wheeled walker with hand brakes. But none of this means that at 91 he has forgotten much, because he hasn’t — especially about that case.”

It might be hard to believe a profile on one of the bit players in “The Wizard of Oz” might make compelling fare, but the story’s worth reading just for the writer’s touch; the story he tells is touching, too. There’s a catch, though: For a reason that escapes me–probably because this is the work of a highlighted national columnist, Dan Barry–the story is only available online as part of the Times Select service (we get Times select because we shell out for a daily subscription to the paper). It’s hard to see how this really helps the Times much. It’s one thing to put op-ed columnists and older-than-two-week archives under wraps and make people pay to see them, though I wonder if even that’s a winning proposition in the long term. This is just a lovely slice of life, and it comes as something of a rude surprise that it can’t be shared (unless, I suppose, people want to make do with email copies).

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Murder City

By way of MK, an absorbing site from Northwestern University, Homicide in Chicago 1870-1930. It’s a database of 11,400 killings in the city during the six decades between the eve of the Chicago Fire and the beginning of the Great Depression. The information comes from a handwritten Chicago Police Department index. It’s a pretty staggering collection, and one that tends to at least soften the notion that we live in remarkably violent, crime-ridden times. I went into the site and looked up cases that took place on Racine Avenue, a major thoroughfare a block west of the street where my mom grew up. Some highlights:

June 17, 1920

Ryan, Paddy “THE BEAR” – Age 37 – Fatally shot in Racine Ave., 100 feet north of 14th St. by some unknown man who escaped. Motive jealousy. [The suspect’s identity was unknown but his motive was? Chicago Tribune stories from the time say this was a hit undertaken because Ryan, gang chief and ward heeler, was not “splitting square” the proceeds of a recent liquor heist. Suspects named in “Front Page” fashion included a diminutive pickpocket identified only as “The Rat” and Ryan lieutenant “Nuts” Nolan. The stories suggest that police detectives stood by and watched the Ryan shooting because he might have sung about cops on the take.]



June 4, 1923

Santorsala, Rose, alias “Blackhand Rose” – Age 37 – Shot to death in her home, 416 N. Racine Ave., by some unknown person or persons who escaped. [Love the handle “Blackhand Rose.” Wonder what her game was.]



July 23, 1925

Long, Arthur – Age 42 – Fatally assaulted with an iron bar (neck broken) at 5:45 A.M., at 7930 So. Racine Ave., the Cascade Laundry Co., where he was employed by four safe blowers who also bound and gagged two other employes, blew the safe and escaped. 10 Dist. Charles Pfarmenschmidt and Joseph Bushell are wanted. [This is four blocks from my grandparents’ home; they were married in 1925, I think, but I’m not sure they had moved in there yet.]

March 22, 1929

Kaplan, Howard – Age 19 – Accidentally shot to death at 11:30 PM, 3/22/29, at 3047 Racine Ave., during an initiation of members into the “Royal Order of Skulls” by Louis Dolinsky. On 3/23/29 Dolinsky, who was not booked, was exonerated by the Coroner.

March 21, 1930

Danaher, Dennis – Age 55 – Found shot to death at 10:45 AM, 3/21/30, in the bedroom of his home, 4th fl., 326 So. Racine Ave., the place in disorder. Deceased collected on his wife’s insurance policy a few weeks ago and it is believed his unknown assailant’s purpose was robbery. 26 Dist. The doors were locked but the bedroom window was wide open.

May 31, 1930

Chick, Rose – Age 29- Shot to death at 9:30 AM, 5/31/30, in a room at the Bel Ray Hotel, 3150 N. Racine Ave., by her husband, Noah S. Chick, from whom she had become estranged. They had registered at the hotel as Mr. and Mrs. John Swanson and met in an attempt to effect a reconciliation. Chick also attempted suicide but did not succeed.

August 5, 1930

Jelinek, Agnes – Age 6; Emil – Age 3 – Murdered in the kitchen of their home, 1848 So. Racine Ave., by their temporarily demented father, Frank Jelinek, who worried recently over financial losses. He cut the children’s throats, fractured his wife’s skull with a hammer, and then committed suicide by slashing his own throat. [Temporarily demented? I looked this case up in the Chicago Tribune’s archives. The paper gave this page one treatment, complete with a picture of one of the two child victims. Two of the killer’s older sons by a previous marriage survived because they were away at work. They discovered the bodies when they came home. According to the Trib: “The two brothers said their father had been acting queerly for several months and recently purchased some rope with the avowed intention of hanging his entire family. At that time, the brothers said, their mother sought to have her husband placed in an asylum, but was restrained by relatives.” The dad was said to have been frantic over losses in his candy and cigar store, situated at the front of the death house.]

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A Reminder: What We Know

Q. What assurances can you give the American people that the intelligence this time [on Iran supplying IEDs to Iraqi insurgents] will be accurate?

THE PRESIDENT: Ed, we know they’re there, we know they’re provided by the Quds force. We know the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. I don’t think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds force, go do this, but we know it’s a vital part of the Iranian government.

What does President Bush know, and when does he know it? It matters because, despite his insistence that he’s not spoiling for a war with Iran, the things he knows tend to take on a life of their own and consequences for everyone else. So: A look back at what the administration presented as fact during its campaign to launch the war in Iraq. The speaker unless otherwise noted is Bush; the source is whitehouse.gov.

August 26, 2002 (Vice President Cheney): Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.

September 26, 2002: We know that the Iraqi regime is led by a dangerous and brutal man. We know he’s actively seeking the destructive technologies to match is hatred. We know he must be stopped. The dangers we face will only worsen from month to month and from year to year. To ignore these threats is to encourage them. And when they have fully materialized it may be too late to protect ourselves and our friends and our allies. By then the Iraqi dictator would have the means to terrorize and dominate the region. Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX — nerve gas — or some day a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.”

November 7, 2002: Well, I think most people around the world realize that Saddam Hussein is a threat. And they — no one likes war, but they also don’t like the idea of Saddam Hussein having a nuclear weapon. Imagine what would happen. And by the way, we don’t know how close he is to a nuclear weapon right now. We know he wants one. But we don’t know. We know he was close to one at one point in time; we have no idea today.

January 28, 2003: From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves.

March 6, 2003: We care about the suffering of the Iraqi people. I mentioned in my opening comments that there’s a lot of food ready to go in. There’s something like 55,000 oil-for-food distribution points in Iraq. We know where they are. We fully intend to make sure that they’re — got ample food. We know where their hospitals are; we want to make sure they’ve got ample medical supplies. The life of the Iraqi citizen is going to dramatically improve.

March 15, 2003: We know from prior weapons inspections that Saddam has failed to account for vast quantities of biological and chemical agents, including mustard agent, botulinum toxin and sarin, capable of killing millions of people. We know the Iraqi regime finances and sponsors terror.

April 12, 2003: As people throughout Iraq celebrate the arrival of freedom, America celebrates with them. We know that freedom is the gift of God to all mankind, and we rejoice when others can share it.

April 22, 2003 (Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary): Q But the primary motivation behind going into Iraq, at least as expressed by the administration at the time, was the danger presented by Saddam holding these WMDs. Even if they did not exist, does the administration think that going into Iraq was the right thing to do?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I can’t share the premise. We know they exist and we’re confident they will be found.

Continue reading “A Reminder: What We Know”

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Pictures

Whitehouseradio

Perusing the White House website this morning for more of the president’s wisdom, I came across the image to the left, which is still on public display. I see Senator Palpatine, in the middle; and Anikin, on the right. But I can’t quite place the figure on the left. Not the microphone–the other one.

Speaking of images, the San Francisco Chronicle this morning has a big front-page story on the identity of the source who in 2004 leaked transcripts from a federal grand jury to two reporters at the paper. Accompanying the story, both print and online, are pictures (different ones in each place, but taken at the same time and place by the same Chronicle photographer) showing the reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, and their Hearst Corporation lawyer. But there’s someone else in the pictures, too: Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein, who is such a key part of today’s stories that he is never mentioned. So why did the paper, which has a stack of Williams/Fainaru-Wada images as high as an elephant’s eye (speaking figuratively), use pictures with Bronstein? I can’t believe Bronstein had anything to do with choosing the images. In some way, it looks like the boss’s vanity and self-importance have become institutionalized.

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Now Batting: The Decider

The most important words in 18th century American history: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

In the 19th: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In the 20th:

First third: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Middle third: “I have a dream.”

Final third: “Can’t we all just get along?”

Too early to tell about the 21st century. If unreserved arrogance is the theme, Bush and his folks have a lock on it.