Category: Current Affairs

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Just What He Appears to Be

Dumpnixon

Phil Angelides, the Democrat allegedly running for governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger, is metamorphosing from forgettable also-ran to oddball footnote. I’m sure he’s still out on the stump telling people about his middle-class tax cut and all the good things he would do if he’s elected. That’s the forgettable also-ran part, and too bad, because Angelides has earnestness to spare, some idea of what the state needs, and the willingness to try to get people to pay for the things they want the state to do (translation: he’ll talk about tax increases). Schwarzenegger, who reverted to form as an ill-spoken, bullying boor during the one face-to-face meeting of the campaign, continues with the fiction that the state can do everything it wants without ever raising taxes. Popular message, though no one is talking much about how Arnold managed to balance the budget after he took over in 2004: the state took out a second mortgage to cover a catastrophic deficit; eventually, someone’s going to have to pay that money back. But I digress.

So the handwriting’s on the wall for Angelides. He’s way, way down in the polls and headed for a repeat of Kathleen Brown’s humiliation at the hands of Pete Wilson in 1994 (she lost 55-41). In his darkest hour, though, he’s begun a TV ad blitz with a new spot. This is where he’s bidding to become an oddball footnote: The ad, which tells in 30 seconds about Angelides’s lifelong commitment to public service, is so off-key in conception and message it seems loopy.

It opens with a silhouette of a guy looking at a bulletin board with a big “Dump Nixon” poster. As the silhouette hurriedly scribbles notes, a voiceover says, “In 1972, a young man from California saw a sign that changed his life forever and inspired him to make a difference.” Then we go to a montage of Angelides’s career. Among other accomplishments, he “led school reform in his community and helped California make history.” The ad notes that he’s been called “the most effective and dynamic state treasurer in a generation.”

I’ll pause to let you catch your breath.

Then there’s the background music. As the empty phrases and pictures flit past, the Bellamy Brothers sing “Let Your Love Flow.” (If you need to remind yourself what that sounds like, you can play the ad on the Angelides site or on YouTube.) Maybe there’s a coded message in the lyrics (“There’s a reason for the sunshine sky/There’s a reason, I’m feeling so high…”). Otherwise, it sounds like something the candidate or his wife finds inspiring. That’s the kind of information I wish had been disclosed before I voted for the guy in the primary.

What you can say for the ad is that it takes the high road. It alleges that Phil will fight for me and that he’s always been on my side. It’s also sweet and sticky as treacle and doesn’t tell me one thing to get me to admit to someone else that I’m casting a ballot for this candidate or suggest to them that maybe they should think about doing the same. “Dump Nixon”? Who’s that supposed to win over? Are we supposed to be impressed that that lit a fire under him?

You wonder if people can make heads or tails out of any of it. You’d think the money could be better spent on ads or a Perot-style TV appearance to lay out what this guy would do for the state and why it might be necessary to raise taxes for Californians to have the state they say they want to have.

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Today’s Body Count

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Number of U.S. soldiers, Marines and sailors killed in Iraq in October.
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Number of deaths in October among Iraqi security forces and civilians.

Details: Iraq Coalition Casualties.

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Bush on North Korea: 2000

As related in Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” p. 12. The scene is Barbara Bush’s 75th birthday party in Kennebunkport, Maine, in June 2000. One of the guests was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States and a close friend of the first President Bush:

George W. pulled Bandar aside.

“Bandar, I guess you’re the best asshole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing.”

“Governor, what is it?”

“Why should I care about North Korea?”

Bandar said he didn’t really know. It was one of the few countries that he did not work on for King Fahd.

“I get these briefings on all parts of the world,” Bush said, “and everybody is talking to me about North Korea.”

“I’ll tell you what, Governor,” Bandar said. “One reason should make you care about North Korea.”

“All right, smart aleck,” Bush said, “tell me.”

“The 38,000 American troops right on the border. … If nothing else counts, this counts. One shot across the border and you lose half these people immediately. You lose 15,000 Americans in a chemical or biological or even regular attack. The United States of America is at war instantly.”

“Hmmm,” Bush said. “I wish those asshole would put things just point-blank to me. I get half a book telling me about the history of North Korea.”

I suppose there are several ways you can read that. A generous interpretation is that this shows Bush doing exactly what he’s criticized so often for not doing–broadening his horizons, going out and seeking information from someone who knows the score. That’s a falling-off-the-balcony stretch, though, if you believe the account (from a family friend, mind you) about his impatience for point-blank facts and his distaste for details like the history of North Korea.

But the damning thing about the story is that this conversation took place well into the presidential campaign and long, long after the Clinton administration had been engaged in negotiations with North Korea. Bush condemns the Clinton approach now, but back then, seven months before he became president, it sounds like he didn’t have a clue what was going on there.

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Monday Dribblings

Text vs. image: The New York Times has a sort of character essay this morning on father and son farmers in Lebanon, Kansas (the geographic center of the lower 48 states). It’s a good enough piece, though it tries to do too much–relate the end of a way of life and a son’s break with his father–with too little–maybe 500 words. As it happens, the text is accompanied by a video version of the piece. The story follows much the same outline, but it’s different: For one thing, you get to hear and see the reporter play his role, gently prompting a couple of the the answers the son gives in the story. You also get to see the way the dad plays to the camera when he’s talking to the son. At the same time, the father and son come off as more compelling characters; the kid especially seems a little guilty and torn about leaving the farm for school. The video version comes off as the better piece of storytelling; if nothing else, the beautiful visuals make it worth watching.

The other Foley scandal: Let me add my voice to those decrying the emails of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.). I don’t need to rehash the story. But I think something has gone unmentioned in the furor over his come-ons to young congressional pages: His disgraceful prose style. For example, one email read:

“glad your home safe and sound…we dont go back into session until Sept 5,,,,si its a nice long break….I am back in Florida now…its nice here…been raining today…it sounds like you will have some fun over the next five weeks…how old are you now?…”

Maybe the congressman was just trying to adopt the breezy style of instant messaging (“cul8r!”) to demonstrate he was an electronic communications hepcat. His IMs with another page show he was a master of the form (“Maf54 (7:37:27 PM): how my favorite young stud doing”) despite his advanced age and high station. If so, he was going too far. Email accommodates a certain degree of informality–“Hey, guy” can substitute for the stuffy “Dear Hunk,” for example–but it is not an invitation to abandon form altogether, as Foley did. He seems incapable of maintaining a thought long enough to type it.

Foley would have done well to follow the example of one of his young correspondents, who shows an admirable respect for standard orthography and makes a game if less than perfect attempt to employ proper capitalization and punctuation:

“What happened was I gave certain people Thank-you cards, you know? I gave Foley one because he was a really nice guy to me and all. Then, he asked me to write my e-mail on the back of his. So I was like, ‘sure!’ because of course I had no suspicions.”

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Last Days at the Ballpark

First of October, last day of the baseball season. Not really the last last day — two rounds of playoffs and a non-global World Series are still to come. But in reality and emotionally for most teams and most fans, Sunday was it. It’s a great occasion for musing on the changes of season and of life. Let’s skip that; Roger Angell and by now about fifty-one other diamond prose slingers have been there and done that. Besides, I went to just one game all year (the A’s cuffed the upstart Tigers). But I’ll indulge in a couple of pictures that come to mind:

–Fan Appreciation Day, Oakland Coliseum, 1983 or ’84 or ’85: The last Saturday of the season. I went with Kate. We sat in the second of the three decks on the third-base side. I don’t remember who the A’s played or what the outcome was. But the park had that look it only gets at the tail end of the year, the afternoon light coming in at an odd low angle. It being Oakland, the game was sparsely attended, as it should have been, the A’s having descended into a stretch of mediocre years. What I remember, though: Seagulls, crowds of them, all over the field and the stands long before the game was over.

–Last day of the season, Oakland Coliseum, 1986: Kate and I were going to go to the last game of the year with out friends Robin and Jim, who were and are the most faithful A’s fans we’ve ever known. Something came up that I thought I had to do, so Kate went with them to the game; I was going to drive down whenever my work, whatever it was, was done. I had the game on from time to time, and realized as it progressed that the A’s pitcher, Curt Young, had not given up a hit. Around the sixth inning, I left for the game, now aware that Young was pitching a perfect game. Now I started to worry: I had waited so long to go to the game that now I was going to miss a piece of baseball history. While I was on the freeway, the game went into the 7th. Young got one out, then two; he had retired the first 20 batters in a row. I’d be in time to see the end of it; the 21st batter came up (by looking it up, I know it was Kevin Seitzer and the game was against the Kansas City Royals). He hit an infield grounder and beat the throw to first for a hit. I was simultaneously crushed and relieved; too bad about the perfect game, bu at least now I hadn’t missed one (Seitzer turned out to be the only base runner Young allowed that day). I got to my seat in the top of the 8th.

Enough of the glory of my times. One team I follow, the A’s, is going to the playoffs; they’re playing the Minnesota Twins, a team they’ve had real problems with the last four or five years, so I don’t have big hopes.

My other team is the Cubs. That’s a legacy of having grown up in the Chicago area, having gone to my first game at their park and maturing as a fan, if that’s what fans do, just at the time their good late ’60s team came along. That’s ancient history, though, and by now I don’t have a single atom of sentimentality left for them. They’re just a bad team, no more cute or colorful or loveable or worthy of some special loyalty than, say, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. They’re so bad, they even fail to excel in failure. They did manage to lose 96 games this year, more than any other team in their league. But the mark of a colossally bad team is to lose 100 games; the Royals and Devil Rays managed to achieve that, but the Cubs fell short.

The horror show the Cubs put on has no apparent effect on fans’ willingness to pay to watch. The team drew a full house Sunday, as they did nearly every game. More than 3 million people attended their games this year. The explanation has got to be that the score doesn’t matter any more; the old park, the red brick, the ivy on the walls, the big centerfield scoreboard, the Old Style and franks and Frosty Malts, have become a draw in themselves.

Maybe It’s a little like visiting the U.S. Capitol or the White House. The scoundrels and miscreants in residence today matter less than having an idea what the places were built for and knowing that once, they were home to a Jefferson or a Lincoln or an FDR. Still, I think I liked baseball better when people just stopped coming out to the park when the team stunk. Tickets were easier. And that autumn light, a sparse crowd and a big flock of seagulls seem like the perfect sendoff for a failed season.

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Leslie Griffith: The Career

A loyal reader who is also following the end of Leslie Griffith’s career at KTVU went to the station’s website to read its biography of the apparently erstwhile news anchor. It’s the standard stuff, recounting the impressive list of honors and awards bestowed upon her (sample: She “won a 2006 Telly Award for investigative reporting for ‘Horrors Under the Big Top,’ an expose focusing on the poor treatment of elephants by Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus”). But that’s not all. Our loyal reader was even more impressed by another achievement:

“Griffith’s outstanding work at KTVU Channel 2 News has netted her more than two dozen Emmy nominations and nine Emmy trophies, most recently for her 2003 news series, Lost Children of Romania.’ for which she spent two weeks following more than 100,000 homeless children through the sewers of Bucharest.”

Must have been a tough couple of weeks down there with all those kids.

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Berkeley: Democracy Under Fire

YesonaYesona2

A sign and personal note to the world in a neighbor’s yard. Not sure what prompted the note, since anti-tax vandals have been in short supply in these parts. And since the area is full of these “Yes on A” signs–they generally appear to go unmolested–and it seems strange that anyone would single this one resident for political harassment.

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The Case of the Missing Anchor

[11/17/06 update: It’s official–Leslie Griffith is gone for good from KTVU.]

[10/8/06 update: The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross weighed in on Leslie Griffith’s absence. KTVU’s general manager said she’s on leave at least until October 27; in late September, he was saying he expected her back early in October.]

I didn’t catch the top of the KTVU “10 O’Clock News” Thursday night, but the show undoubtedly opened with one of the anchors saying something like, “Leslie Griffith has the night off.” It’s not news when a TV co-anchor takes a vacation day, but what’s odd is that Leslie Griffith, who’s appeared opposite Dennis Richmond for eight and a half years, has had the night off, from both the 10 o’clock show and the 5 p.m. newscast, for six weeks running. Griffith’s departure wouldn’t be shocking; from my perhaps unforgiving viewpoint she’s been giving empty, off-key performances for years and just doesn’t appear suited to the straight-ahead news operation KTVU fancies itself to be.

But if Griffith is out, why doesn’t the station say so?

The reason: Griffith is not out. She’s just not on the air. And there’s no telling when she’ll be back. According to a KTVU staffer, “Management is saying, ‘Leslie is on extended leave, and we look forward to her return.’ ” The staffer added that Griffith “has been gone on her own accord. She has not been forced out.”

[Update: Another source says that while rumors swirl at the station about whether Griffith will return or not, more attention is focused on the upcoming launch of “The 10 O’Clock News” in HDTV. That’s scheduled to happen October 9.]

(Even though most of the local papers seem to have taken a pass on this story–I guess there’s a war on or something–the Contra Costa Times’s TV writer has taken notice: “Where’s Leslie Griffith?“)

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Your Civics IQ

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute cooked up a 60-question quiz it says proves U.S. college students are a bunch of dolts and ignoramuses when it comes to knowing basic American history and civics. You can’t take the full quiz, apparently, but there’s a five-question sample version online. Go take it. Then report back: How did you do? (Grading scale is as follows:

5 of 5 correct: You’re Ben Franklin, coolest, smartest American ever and inventor of the $100 bill.

4 of 5: You’re James Madison, main man of the Constitution who let the Brits burn the White House.

3 of 5: You’re Al Gore: Way smart, inventor of Internet and “Love Story” model, but haunted by failure.

2 of 5: You’re Warren G. Harding, and your biggest accomplishment is dying in office.

1 of 5: You’re George W. Bush, and you have never liked quizzes.

0 of 5: You’re just you, and we love you for it.

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Onion Guest-Edits CNN Site

Our president and his crew of new world architects — slogan: “Blowin’ shit up as fast as we can for freedom” — are out on the road with a new message about Iraq: It’s a good war. It’s a necessary war. And if you’re agin’ it, you’re nothin’ but an ol’ appeaser of fascism. (The new pronunciation for “Iraq” is “Sudetenland.”)

That’s nice.

CNN, like everyone else, is covering the story. Reading through one of their newsfeeds, I discovered that someone’s having a little fun, at the president’s expense, in a headline: “Bush 3.0 releases patch for Iraq war.” A good, sharp piece of commentary worthy of The Onion, but markedly different from the story’s actual headline: “Bush begins new push to shore up fight on terrorism, Iraq.”

So what happened? Either someone at CNN is getting playful with headlines, or somehow the page was hacked. I’ve got doubts about either scenario, but whatever happened, it wasn’t an accident. Screenshots below (click for larger images).

[Update: I saw the “Bush 3.0 headlines sometime between 9 and 9:30 a.m. Pacific; it’s now 10:15, and all evidence of the headline has vanished in the updated version of the story. I’ve sent messages through the CNN site asking what gives, but so far no answer.]

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