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Boss, and Ballyard—both gone

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In March, in the days when the final slashes of the cranes were knocking down the last pieces of Yankee Stadium in that old cow pasture in the South Bronx, I wrote about my family’s history with the Big Ballyard.

Today, the old building is gone…and on the day that Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner gave up the ghost, New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden wrote about time, The Boss, and the old stadium, looking out at the empty lot from his bedroom window across the Harlem River.

I’ve spent the last two years avoiding the sight of the old Stadium being dismantled, and wondering, Would you rather be demolished and go quickly, or be dismantled like this, little by little?   The symmetry of watching the vibrant old Stadium and the once robust Boss deteriorate became a daily reminder of my own mortality, a reminder that nothing lasts forever.

Pompous is funny—Fox News proves it

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Talk about looking for excuse to pile on!  Fox News Channel found one and did, and Jon Stewart was there to skewer them.

On last night’s The Daily Show Stewart used the coverage of a recent contretemps involving NASA (full disclosure: I work for a NASA contractor) to ridicule Fox’s anti-anything-Obama  attitude and its religious intolerance.

Yeah, yeah, I know, “We report, you decide,” and the news shows versus the opinion shows, but still…(and don’t bail out before he cracks America’s News Mommy, too.)

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I once thought Fox just hoped the rest of us weren’t paying attention, but now I realize they don’t care about that.  They have faith, my friends—faith that eventually, each of us loyal, God-fearing, right-thinking Americans will come around and agree with them, and the lack of fairness and balance won’t matter.  In the meantime, cha-ching!

(All in all, sort of the same attitude that ESPN has, as demonstrated by having finally put their last shard of editorial integrity into a blind trust.)

Recommended reading 2:

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It’s hard to miss the carping and hand-wringing about the sad state of journalism in America.  Most of that comes from journalists, of course…to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, we’re not complainers, we’re just trained that way.

Some complaints—most of mine—are about the quality of what’s published and broadcast; a lot are warnings about the Internet killing newspapers or cheapening the product.  But I’m not going to blame the delivery boy for what’s in the imagepaper: for evidence that the Web does not necessarily equal poor journalism take a look at The Texas Tribune, and read the Columbia Journalism Review’s piece on how TT has done nearing its first anniversary.

The thing that makes journalism worthwhile is and will be the story, presented by a trustworthy source in an appealing way.  Newspapers and radio and television and the Internet (and other things we don’t know about yet) are means of delivering the story to the reader/listener/viewer.  Each has its advantages and limitations, but none are inherently incapable of doing good journalism.

Too early yet to say if The Texas Tribune is a success, but it looks to be on the right track.  Rather than trying to compete with local news sources or be all things to all people, it’s staked out a territory and hasn’t strayed.  It’s well written.  It has a sense of humor.  It’s even made some money along the way.  It’s worth bookmarking and checking in on from time to time.

USA 234, HIPRB! 1

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Happy 4th of July, all you American patriots…the rest of ya, too.  I’ve got a gift for you, even though you’re not the one turning 234 years old: I invite you to remove your shoes and stroll barefoot among the new tabs at the top of the page, up there under the site title (I gotta get a better title).

For almost a year I’ve been using this page to show off my ideas, but mostly to practice putting one word in front of the other on a regular basis again.  When I discovered that there can be more than one page here, I knew how I wanted to use them.

For years I’ve been saving quotations that appealed to me.  Some I saved just because they were so well written but most of them are ideas I agree with, expressed more ably and eloquently than I am capable (of).  (See.)

Choose from ideas about American law and government and politics, thoughts about my first post-college profession, a section of funnies, and a collection of philosophical takes on life.  I hope you enjoy them, and offer your comments pro and con.  I’ll be adding to the sections as new material is discovered.

So, what did you get me?

I agree with Scalia—I know, it surprised me, too!

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Doe v. Reed was the last case the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments on before the end of the term: should your signature on a ballot petition be allowed to be kept secret.  In her report on the oral arguments legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick noted that Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to believe it should not be when he argued

…you can’t run a democracy this way, with everybody being afraid of having his political positions known.

I agree, and this week the court ruled 8-to-1 against the plaintiffs; Justice Clarence Thomas was the man Choire Sicha identifies as the only person “brave enough to protect bigots from angry gays.”

I was thinking that it seemed cowardly for people concerned enough about the all-but-marriage law in Washington to sign the petition to overturn it but then seek to hide their involvement.  If people want to take the job of writing laws into their own hands, well, OK…we do have elected representatives to do that for us, so initiative or referendum already smells a little like “sore loser at work,” but OK.

But then, having undertaken that effort, to then say that you shouldn’t be publicly identified as having supported the effort—to keep from being harassed because of your beliefs—just seems cowardly.

You want to participate?  Great!  Just remember, don’t bring a pocketknife to a gunfight, and if you want to win the pot, you’ve got to show your hand when it’s called.

Yes, some people will say bad things about you…offer mean opinions of your cognitive skills…sling epithets.  Get over it.  Hiding from confrontation, or even discussion, about differing opinions just reinforces the poisonous political atmosphere.

But consider, it apparently is a First Amendment protection to have your political participation kept anonymous in some instances, like a secret ballot.  The Supremes left open the opportunity for the plaintiffs in Doe to get what they want from a lower court.

Here’s what’s more concerning: in a report on the growing fear of intimidation for voicing unpopular positions, Lithwick discusses the possible application of this idea to political participation in the form of financial contributions to campaigns.  Yep: hiding from public view the identities of people who give campaign money to our representatives.  Imagine that, on top of the Citizens United v. FEC decision that has given corporations the same right to donate money as is already enjoyed by actual real human people.

So, are you OK with letting companies make unlimited campaign contributions, in secret?  I’m waiting for my buddy Scalia to jump on that one.