On Sundays for the past few months, the two public television stations we get (one of which is part of Wisconsin Public Television, the other of which is not) has been carrying PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery,” which is actually British TV’s police procedural contribution.
When Sunday’s installment of “Inspector Lewis” (which has been on since the end of “Zen,” whose three episodes made me want to see more) came on, I commented that “Masterpiece Mystery” starts our police TV-viewing week. The new “Hawaii Five-0” is on CBS on Mondays, the original “CSI” is on CBS on Wednesdays, “Rookie Blue” is on ABC on Thursdays, and until football started we would occasionally watch “Blue Bloods” on CBS on Fridays. (On Tuesdays it’s “Combat Hospital,” proving that there’s an exception to every rule, except that “Combat Hospital” followed “Detroit 187.”) On weekends, I watch the syndicated “CSI: Miami,” which stars David Caruso, who we watched on the first season of “NYPD Blue.”
My cop TV viewing goes back a long, long way, to two series that started in the 1960s: “Adam-12” …
… and the original “Hawaii Five-O.”
“Adam-12” was one of the creations of Jack Webb, who started by creating “Dragnet,” which I sporadically watched. One episode stuck in my brain early on, an episode sometimes called “The Big High” and sometimes called “Grass Kills,” about a marijuana-smoking couple who are too high to notice that their baby is drowning in a bathtub.
Another creation of Webb’s was a personal favorite, although it came and went in one season — “Chase,” about a special L.A. police unit assigned to cases too hot for regular cops to handle. I probably noticed the series most because of its cool theme music and because the series included a mag-wheel-equipped unmarked squad car, a motorcycle, a helicopter and a police dog.
The original “Hawaii Five-O,” meanwhile, ended as the longest-running police series in TV history, having cycled through its entire cast more than once except for star Jack Lord. I was somewhat skeptical about Five-O’s return given past rumors (including a 1990s recasting with Russell Wong and, of all people, Gary Busey). But as long as fans of the original make allowances for the updating, such as the non-square characters and their willingness to seriously bend or ignore the rules, they should enjoy the new “Five-0.”
Now that I think about it, my police TV viewing can be viewed as a continuum of YouTube clips, starting with officers Reed and Malloy …
… and McGarrett and the rest of the Five-O four …
… to really young cops …
… to the cops you call should you be bothered by, say, hostage situations …
… to detectives Starsky and Hutchinson …
… to Ponch and Jon …
… to the Hill Street Station in an unnamed city that looks suspiciously like Chicago …
… to much warmer Miami …
… back to Chicago …
… then to New York …
… then to another part of New York …
… then Baltimore …
… and back to L.A. …
… and, too briefly, in Detroit …
… and back in L.A.: …
… and back in Honolulu.
You may have noticed that Los Angeles keeps coming up. The fact that L.A. is where all the movie studios are would be the first explanation. But read a couple of novels of Joseph Wambaugh, former L.A. police officer, and you’ll find that L.A. has both geographic and personal diversity, the latter meaning enough aberrant personalities to provide at least one story on every street corner.
I’ve been known to watch cop TV that is older than I am as well. One of the most noteworthy early cop series was “The Naked City,” based on the movie of the same name:
I don’t remember Burt Reynolds’ one season as a New York detective in ABC’s “Hawk.” But a decade later, when Reynolds was one of the biggest movie stars of the day, NBC decided to reshow the series:
One thing you may have noticed about all these series, and even such series I didn’t mention here, like “Kojak” …
… features distinctive, dramatic theme music, written by such master composers as Elmer Bernstein (“The Rookies”), Mike Post (“NYPD Blue”) and Lalo Schifrin (the first “Starsky and Hutch,” among numerous others), and titles in which one of the stars is the setting of the series:.
And my cop TV viewing isn’t limited to the U.S. (Or North America, given that “Rookie Blue” is pretty obviously Canadian.) One benefit of the year I worked in New London was the New London library, which was part of the Fox Cities-area library system, which introduced me to a 1970s British cop series, “The Sweeney.”:
To come full circle to the lead, the star of “The Sweeney,” John Thaw, later played the title character in “Inspector Morse,” whose partner became the title character in “Inspector Lewis” after Thaw’s death:.
I’d watch Australian TV cops too, but their availability even on YouTube is dodgy.
So what is it about police TV, one of the oldest forms of radio and TV drama? Certainly everyone who ever played cops and robbers can relate to the real fictional thing. (Our house has enough weapons in it to stock a decent-sized police department, or a banana republic’s army.) A veteran police sergeant nicknamed “The Oracle” in the Wambaugh “Hollywood” police novels is quoted as telling new officers that “Doing good police work is the most fun you’ll ever have in your life.”
Whodunits appeal to the brain, unlike many other forms of entertainment (and certainly the oxymoronic term “reality TV”). Even if your vocational interest ended around the time you had to get glasses, most people can admire the idealized image of someone who defends victims and oppresses the bad guys.
We’re in the re-cycle, so to speak, of a trend that first started in the early 1970s — series about specialized cops beyond the traditional beat cops or detectives. The aforementioned “Chase” and “SWAT” were two examples; all the CSI series fit into that mold now.
But what is most compelling about good TV is not the stories; it’s the characters. Time was when my identification with a particular character depended on such things as his name (Steve McGarrett, natch) and heroic nature. Perhaps because I’m getting older, or perhaps because I can now discern good writing, I enjoy watching the cops like Andy Sipowicz of “NYPD Blue,” Lennie Briscoe of the first “Law & Order,” or John Munch of “Homicide” and “Law & Order: SVU.” (Or, to go off canon for a moment, Sam Axe of “Burn Notice.”) I suspect that in some alternative universe, Sipowicz and Briscoe are sitting in a Manhattan bar, drinking their club sodas (they were alcoholics) and trying to top each other with lurid stories about cases they’ve worked.
I have three TV cop projects floating around in my head, one of which could fit the current recycle:
“Black and White,” about two young detectives in 1968 New York. The white detective’s name is Black, and the black detective’s name is White, natch. It would be an interesting look at a turbulent, to say the least, period in our history from the perspective of two young members of the establishment, complete with period music, fashions, cars, etc. The theme music: The Undisputed Truth’s “Smiling Faces Sometimes.”
“DCI,” about agents of the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation, which is responsible for “investigating crimes that are statewide in nature or importance,” including “homicide, arson, financial crimes, illegal gaming, multi-jurisdictional crimes, drug trafficking, computer crimes, homeland security, public integrity & government corruption as well as crimes against children.” That and various Wisconsin settings should be enough to fill a few seasons, right? Theme music: Something from a musical act with Wisconsin roots; perhaps the Bodeans?
An unnamed series about two older detectives who violate rules, rough up suspects, get involved in high-speed suspects and other frowned-upon police activity but are barely tolerated because they also have the highest clearance rate in the police force. Think of two Dirty Harrys in their late careers. Theme music: Perhaps this underappreciated Post work?
I’d be willing to work on a cop series for free if I could write the story that included the arrest of every reality TV “star,” beginning with the two-digit-IQ “stars” of “Jersey Shore.”
At first glance, the ongoing lawsuit between the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association and Gannett Newspapers might seem like the Iran–Iraq War, or a Bears–Vikings game — fans of neither side might wonder if both could lose.
The WIAA, the sanctioning body for Wisconsin high school athletics, sued Gannett after The Post~Crescent live-streamed several football playoff games in 2008. If a media organization wants to broadcast or stream postseason games, it must get the WIAA’s permission, pay a fee, and adhere to various other rules:
Internet blogs, forums, tweets and other text depictions or references are permitted and are not subject to rights fees unless they qualify as play-by-play (see definition below) or are not in compliance with the media policies of the WIAA. Play-by-play accounts of WIAA Tournament Series events via text are subject to text transmission rights fees.
Real-time play-by-play accounts of WIAA Tournament Series events are subject to text transmission rights fees of $30 per game/event at the State level and $20 per game/event at pre-State levels.
Play-by-play – Play-by-play is detailed regular entries or description of the sports events as they are happening, or of the actual action as it occurs, including the continuous sequential detailed description of play, of events, or other material such as graphics or video regarding any WIAA tournament game or event, so that it approximates a video or audio transmission that allows the recipient to experience the game or event as it occurs.
How this has essentially worked is that, if I were blogging from the state tournament, I could text that, for instance, Jordan Jess hit a two-run home run to left field to give Ripon a 6–1 lead over Spooner in the fourth inning, but I could not text or blog something like:
Jordan Jess, batting .467. He’s 0-for-2. He takes ball one.
Breaking ball outside, 2 balls no strikes.
Called strike on the outside corner, 2 and 1.
The 2–1 gets away but Polcyn holds at first, 3 and 1.
Strike on the outside edge of the outside corner, 3 balls 2 strikes.
Throw back to first, and Polcyn is back.
Fly ball to left and deep and GONE! A two-run opposite-field home run for Jess, and Ripon leads 6–1.
(If you are getting texts like that, I hope you have an unlimited-service plan.)
The WIAA also prohibits broadcasters from broadcasting state tournament events, since it sells those broadcast rights. That is why, despite covering two state champion football teams, I have never broadcast a state football game from Camp Randall Stadium; the WIAA sold broadcast rights to Fox Sports Wisconsin on the grounds that government-access cable TV would be an unfair competitor. If you wanted to watch Ripon’s state baseball semifinal against Green Bay Notre Dame or state title game against Spooner and you had no Internet access, no luck for you. (Fox Sports Wisconsin carries most state tournament finals, not pre-final games, on tape-delay.)
The WIAA won the latest game when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled in favor of the WIAA, writing, “We conclude that WIAA’s exclusive broadcasting agreements for Internet streaming are consistent with the First Amendment. … Gannett’s theory that coverage and broadcast are identical is … analytically flawed. Simply put, streaming or broadcasting an event is not the same thing as reporting on or describing it.”
That is logically correct, and truth be told, I’m not sure why someone would choose to watch two sportswriters conversing about a game with no one doing actual play-by-play. However, that’s the Post~Crescent’s decision and an individual’s decision to watch or not.
There is, however, a significant party missed in Gannett’s attempt to cloak itself in the First Amendment. Robert Dreps, the defendants’ attorney, was paraphrased as saying that the decision “mistakenly compared taxpayer-funded high school sporting events with private entertainment acts and professional sports.”
High school sports is not the same thing as the National Football League or the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Taxpayer funds do not allow the Packers to operate (of course, there is the ½-percent Brown County sales tax that is funding the early-2000s Lambeau Field renovations, but that is funding a stadium owned by the taxpayers). Division I college athletic departments are not usually funded through tax revenues, and private college athletic departments are never funded through tax revenues.
In contrast, everything important about high school athletics is funded by taxpayers. Your property tax dollars built your high school. Your property taxes and other tax dollars pay coaches’ salaries, such as they are, and pay the salaries of teachers and other school district personnel who are paid to work games, plus the cost of the transportation for student–athletes and coaches to games. Except in cases of donations or sponsorships, your tax dollars bought uniforms and sports equipment.
State high school sports tournaments are public, taxpayer-supported events. … High school athletic organizations have long been treated as state actors, just like their public school members, for constitutional purposes. … Although the issue has not yet been decided in Wisconsin, we see no factual or legal basis on which the WIAA’s constitutional status can be distinguished from its counterparts in Tennessee, Illinois, Arizona, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Indiana, Mississippi, Rhode Island or Pennsylvania … or any of the other states where the issue has been adjudicated …
That makes one wonder why this case is being presented as a case of the First Amendment vs. commercial interests (which too are part of the First Amendment), instead of a case about how taxpayer dollars are being used. As the Gannett Wisconsin Media story put it, “The dispute centered only on postseason play because those tournaments are organized and run by the WIAA, which both sides agree is bound by the same rules that apply to government agencies.”
That’s quite an admission by the WIAA, which claims on its website to be “a voluntary, unincorporated, and nonprofit organization” “governed by its member schools” with input from such groups as coaches, school athletic directors, school district administrators, sports physicians, officials and WIAA staff. You’ll note that the word “taxpayer” appears nowhere in this paragraph, because the word “taxpayer” appears nowhere on the WIAA’s website despite the fact that taxpayers fund everything that allows the WIAA to exist, including WIAA membership dues.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, given that most WIAA staff once upon a time were teachers, and as we saw earlier this year teacher unions have traditionally cared very little about the people paying their salaries. If taxpayers were actually represented in the WIAA, perhaps Ripon Area School District taxpayers might get an answer from the WIAA as to why, in an era of gas prices reapproaching $4 per gallon, Ripon students are going 144 round-trip miles on a school night to play two conference basketball games and one conference volleyball match.
An Associated Press story about WIAA vs. Gannett noted that “At least a dozen associations have similar exclusive streaming deals. They say it brings in money to keep state championship tournaments going. But newspapers worry the ruling could lead to more reporting restrictions.”
In fact, there already are reporting restrictions. The WIAA’s media rules note that “Media of a personal, recruiting or rankings nature, or whose demographic audience are fan-based or focused primarily on one school or a small number of schools do not qualify as news-gathering organizations for purposes of media credentials.” The WIAA contracts with a video production company for postseason video, and that company requires video providers to provide them with tapes (without, as far as I know, any compensation) and includes such requirements that announcers not be biased for or against one team and must not go out of their way to criticize officials. (The second should be second nature for announcers who want to act like professionals; as for the first, whom should an announcer seek to please: the WIAA or the organization that pays him and whose viewers are in fact rooting for one of the teams?)
Even though the WIAA is currently winning in federal court, there is a danger here that could make the entire federal lawsuit moot. In fact, I suggested some Democrat in the Legislature do just that the last time the Democrats controlled the Legislature — create a bill to assign the Department of Public Instruction to take over high school and middle school athletics. The DPI is one of my least favorite tentacles of state government, but the DPI does regulate (taxpayer-financed) schools, and athletics are part of the educational experience (the WIAA even says so), so there is at least some logic in having the DPI replace the WIAA. (The University Interscholastic League, Texas’ high school sports sanctioning body, is part of the University of Texas.) And it would certainly make superintendent of public instruction elections more interesting. (Don’t bother asking when taxpayers will get to vote in WIAA Board of Control elections.)
There is also another danger to taxpayers who are also fans of high school sports. The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison wrote in 2009 that the WIAA’s winning the lawsuit “could significantly reduce the coverage of high school sports that millions offans across Wisconsin get from their local newspaper, in print and online.” The WIAA tried something similar earlier in the 2000s when it attempted to set up a radio network for the state football and basketball tournaments that would have required radio stations to pick up the entire tournament, not just games of local interest, or not carry any games, including those of local interest.
Policies that serve to reduce media coverage aren’t going to increase support of high school athletics, particularly in these cash-strapped days. And given the role high school athletics has in communities across this state, policies that serve to reduce media coverage aren’t going to increase support of schools, financial or otherwise.
If you asked most Wisconsinites to identify their favorite sport, the answer probably would be the activity that in its high school iteration starts across the state tonight.
For more than 20 years, I have been announcing high school and college football, first on radio, and now on cable TV in Ripon. I’ve been watching football for far l0nger than that. My first sports memory is watching my father swear at our TV as the Green Bay Packers transitioned from the Glory Years to, well, the Gory Years, the 31-year-long desert between Super Bowl appearances. (My father insisted on putting a blanket over our south-facing living room window so he could clearly see the Packers’ descent from Super Bowl glory past mediocrity.)
The Packers were so bad in my early childhood, in fact, that I have this emblazoned memory: One day in third grade, I picked up a sports legends book from the grade school library. (I noticed two things: Milwaukee Bucks center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wasn’t in it, but there was a basketball player named Lew Alcindor who looked exactly like Abdul-Jabbar, and although boxer Muhammad Ali wasn’t in it either, a boxer named Cassius Clay looked just like him too.) And I got to reading about the Packers’ winning the first two Super Bowls, which happened when I was 1½ and 2½ years old. And my eight-year-old mind could not process the fact that the same team my father swore at every fall Sunday had won the first two Super Bowls, even though the Glory Days were in their twilight.
Around that time, I started attending one UW football game a year, thanks to the fact that my parents and grandfather were season ticket holders. I know people who actually prefer watching football on TV because you get a better view from the multiple replays. To me, though, football is about the entire experience — the marching bands (such as, well, you know), the brisk (or worse) weather, the feeling of fan involvement by being there that is just not the same on TV.
I certainly did not get my affinity for football by playing the game. With apologies to my high school classmates who played on those teams, the fact is that La Follette won, in order, three, one, one and four games my four years there. I did not see La Follette win a football game until my senior year, despite the fact that I was at every home game, sitting in the La Follette Marching Band for the last three of those years. The football I played was of the touch or flag variety, where my lack of athletic skills were tolerated.
At the time I, a 6–2 160-pound stick, didn’t get the reason to get my brains beat out (or so I thought, until I got to the UW Marching Band practice field, where I learned that their practices were more strenuous than high school football’s) to sit on the bench during games. And once I started to understand the game more, I couldn’t think of a compelling reason to push around the guy in front of me — or, more likely, get pushed around by the guy in front of me — so that the guy with the ball might gain two or three yards. (Games with little passing and unsuccessful running are to me boring to watch, though running teams are easier to announce.) I didn’t get the positives of athletics (such as getting together in a group effort, the realization of the group as being more important than the individual, and the importance of doing well just because of the importance of doing well instead for recognition) from athletics; I got them from band.
And I didn’t get my affinity for football from the great successes of the Badgers and Packers either. The Badgers were not as bad as they would become in the Don Mor(t)on Veer from Victory Era of 1987–1989 (as in six wins in three seasons). But in the 1970s, the Badgers had exactly two winning seasons — 7–4 in 1974 and a 5–4–2 in 1978. The Packers also had two winning seasons — 10–4 in their NFC Central championship season in 1972, and 8–7–1 in 1978.
The Badgers finally started getting respectable in 1981, which began with a 21–14 win over number one ranked Michigan. The stunning nature of that win cannot be replicated in print here. The Badgers also beat, at home, archrivals Ohio State and Purdue on the way to a bowl berth. The next few years were pretty good too, including my one and only bowl trip, to the 1984 Hall of Fame Bowl as a member of the UW Marching Band. And then UW coach Dave McClain died of a heart attack two days after the annual spring game. McClain’s interim replacement was not retained after his one season, and then, well, six wins in three seasons (including a growing number of games where a growing number of fans dressed as empty bleachers) speaks for itself.
The Packers, meanwhile, hovered around .500 for the early ’80s, and then Forrest Gregg replaced Bart Starr as coach and decided to blow up Starr’s work (such as it was) and start over with players who were worse both on and off the field. The Packers had one playoff year (1982) and two near-playoff years (1983, when the team set a record for scoring offense and were still outscored on the season, and 1989, when 10 of their 16 games were decided by a touchdown or less), but that was it.
This was about the time that I started announcing games after graduating. The first game was on a beautiful Friday afternoon in 1988, Cuba City’s Homecoming against Lancaster. Announcing was a challenge because, independent of the fact that I had never announced football before that, the Cuba City press box faced the wrong direction, into the sun, and was closer to the goal line than the 50-yard line. Both facts proved a problem during the overtime, when, of course, the action was on the opposite end of the field.
You may have noticed by now a certain parallelism between Badger football and Packer football fortunes. The Packers started getting good when general manager Ron Wolf and head coach Mike Holmgren arrived in 1992. The Badgers, meanwhile, hired Barry Alvarez, and, wonder of wonders, not only got to the Rose Bowl, but won it on New Year’s Day 1994. Three years later, the Packers won Super Bowl XXXI.
I truly believe Badger and Packer fans of today do not realize how good they have it today. This past season, the Badgers got to the Rose Bowl (and losing the Rose Bowl is better than not getting there), and the Packers became the first NFC team to win a Super Bowl despite playing every playoff game on the road.
Meanwhile, back on Friday nights, I started announcing Ripon games in the fall of 2003. This was a good year to start announcing Ripon games, because if I announce games for another 46 years the 2003 Tigers will still be the most dominant offensive juggernaut I’ll probably ever see. The Tigers scored more than 40 points in 12 of their 14 games and more than 50 points in five of their games. They had a 2,000-yard rusher, and their quarterback rushed for more than 1,000 yards and passed for more than 1,000 yards. They won their second game of the season 56–36 with both their longest pass (82 yards) and longest run (92 yards) in program history. They won their second playoff game 56–42.
The game I remember the most from that year was their next-to-last regular season game against archrival Berlin. (Ripon vs. Berlin is the longest running rivalry in Wisconsin high school football.) Ripon was averaging more than 50 points per game, while Berlin was giving up just 5 points per game. Both teams were undefeated, and the winner was going to clinch a share of the conference title.
Besides the score — Ripon 49, Berlin 0 — one other fact stands out: Ripon got 567 yards of offense, all on the ground.
Gold trophy number two came two seasons later, with a much more defense-dominated team that also played closer games. (Well, except for their first playoff game, won 63–6.) The 2005 Tigers gutted out wins over their archrivals to win their third consecutive conference title, but fans accustomed to seeing the Tigers maul their opponents were a bit skeptical of what this team could do once the postseason started.
The highlight was their next to last game, their state semifinal against Lodi. Ripon scored the first two touchdowns, then Lodi scored the next two. Ripon held Lodi on a big fourth-down play, and then Lodi held Ripon on a big fourth-and-goal play. The Blue Devils had the ball deep in their own end with about 2 minutes left to play, which you would think would be a bad time to fumble.
And then the fun began. Lodi did indeed fumble and Ripon recovered, scoring the game-winning touchdown three plays later. The ensuing kickoff, into a 30-mph south wind, looked like a dying duck and spun out of bounds. Instead of taking the ball at the 35-yard line, the Lodi coach decided to make Ripon rekick. The next kick went up in the air, looked as if it hit something in the air, and came down behind a Ripon player, who decided that now would be a good time to fall on the ball. So Lodi’s comeback attempt turned out to consist of one play at the very end, and Ripon won on the way to its second state title in three years.
Ripon has made the playoffs for 10 consecutive seasons, which is difficult even in these days when most teams make the playoffs. (When I was in high school, only conference champions got in the playoffs, then two teams per conference, and now all teams with winning conference records and most teams with .500 conference records get in.) Besides their success, though, what makes covering Ripon football enjoyable is that the Tigers are a program their community can be proud of for reasons besides their record. The coaches have collected several letters over the years from game officials complimenting them for their on-field sportsmanship. Watch a Tiger game, and you’ll see Tigers picking up their opponents after plays. In a decade of watching them I have yet to see Ripon coaches publicly reaming out their players for something they did on the field, and I cannot say that about other programs I’ve witnessed.
So what is it about football? (“It” includes the fact that of all the sports played by men, football seems to have the most following among women, even though almost no women — almost — play football.) I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there is just one football game per week, and nine (high school), 11 or 12 (college) or 16 (NFL) games in the regular season. There is considerably less margin for error in a football season. Football also undoubtedly has parallels to ground wars in that one side is trying to take territory from the other by ground or air, and the most important battles are won or lost on the road. And in high school, players are not playing for money or for their athletic scholarship benefits (though they may be playing to try to get a college scholarship).
The breakdown sequence at the end of Ripon High School practices goes like this (each line except the last repeated twice):
We are … Ripon!
We are … the best!
We believe in … our team!
We believe in … each other!
We believe in … hard work!
WE WANT SOME MORE!
If a calamity occurred and I was installed as the head coach of a high school football team, other than adopting Ripon’s offense (since I’ve been around them, they have never failed to average at least 200 rushing yards per game), every week I would tell the players something probably similar to this: You get one chance to play this game today. Once tonight’s game is over, you can never play it again. And there are only nine chances to play high school football, every season. So make this one count.
Last week, I wrote about the Facebook page “If you grew up in Madison you remember …” which last week was attempting to take over Facebook like dandelions in your lawn.
As of today, the group, which is not even two weeks old, has more than 6,100 members and nearly 17,000 posts. Not surprisingly, the growth and post rate has slowed down since last week; otherwise it eventually would have taken over the entire Internet, not merely Facebook. It’s also getting media attention of its own, with WIBA radio (Madison’s first commercial radio station) having done a segment last Friday.
Why this popularity? Two posts on Facebook give answers:
This page brings us all back to a more simpler, carefree, happy time. Before all the “trials and tribulations” of adult life took over. And before all the pain and sorrows , that I’m sure most of us have endured. Life was pretty easy then . Such little things gave us such enormous joy. I think this is healthy reliving it all.
What’s telling is that so many people have so many fond memories of childhood in Madison. Clearly, for a lot of people, it was a great place to grow up.
One example of that “simpler, carefree, happy time” is all the movies I saw at East Towne Cinema, rated from G to R. (This entire old Madison thread started with media, as you know.) All the movies — from “Benji” to “First Blood” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to “The Spy Who Loved Me” — started with the funky open that you see here.
On Thursday, the subject of Tedd O’Connell, described as WISC-TV’s “hipster newsman” in a Madison Magazine article, came up. O’Connell was WISC’s City Hall reporter (and I know that because I first met him when he was in the City–County Building coffee shop during a ridealong with my Scoutmaster, a Madison police officer) and news anchor for 15 years. He left Wisconsin but returned in the mid-1990s to become the first news director at WGBA-TV in Green Bay. He died of cancer three years ago.
While doing a search for information on O’Connell, I came upon this video, from which come these images that brings you the ’70s in all their funky color glory, followed by the much more buttoned-down ’80s:
This is the second iteration of WISC’s checkerboard set. (O’Connell is in the middle; John Digman, who used a 1949 Cadillac antenna to do the weather, was on the right, and a sports guy, possibly Jim Miller, is on the left). The glass panels you see were originally used to superimpose graphics behind the anchors. The original set had no desk; the anchors sat on low-back chairs with their scripts in their laps.
The anchors and reporters used their signatures for graphics, the reading of which may have been a challenge for viewers of those with more illegible signatures. The original version also had a high-tempo theme once described as sounding like angry bumblebees, which was followed by a slower synthesizer-heavy theme (and you can hear a small clip in the background on the video at 6 seconds). And for those who think Casual Friday is a ’90s concept, well …
Apparently WISC decided the checkerboard set was not colorful enough, so its replacement was rainbowish. (I remember the lighter tan being more orange.) O’Connell is pictured with meteorologist Marv Holewinski (unfortunately not wearing his banana-colored suit), who can still be heard on the radio doing weather and outdoor reports.
And then came the 1980s. O’Connell is in the middle with sports director Van “Mount Horeb toppled Verona” Stoutt on the left and, I believe, meteorologist Dana Tyler, now at WFRV-TV in Green Bay, on the right.
They also did their news (or at least news updates) from the newsroom for a while; this is O’Connell’s report of the shooting at the City–County Building in which Dane County Coroner Clyde “Bud” Chamberlain was killed.
You may have concluded from reading this blog and its predecessor that I have a love–hate relationship with my hometown. That’s actually not accurate — you can love neither things nor places, since neither is capable of loving you back. (That includes jobs, by the way.) I think I had a very nice, mostly uneventful childhood in a place that really doesn’t exist anymore, or at least exist in the way I remember it.
And all I needed for evidence was a drive through my old neighborhoods on Saturday — the first house I remember, the house we built, and my old grade school and high school. Both the houses were originally green; they are now gray. (My parents ruined the house I grew up in by changing its paint from green with yellow trim to gray with red trim. Something about resale value, I think.) I had a really difficult time recognizing the older house; the present owner of the one-story one-car-garage house somehow added two more garage spaces. (Which, my wife points out, makes the house look like more garage than house.) The trees are much bigger than I remember them, because, of course, they’ve grown in the 40 years since they were planted. (So have I, of course, both vertically and horizontally.)
This is how a young mind works: There was a Meadowlark Drive south of Cottage Grove Road and a Meadowlark Drive north of Cottage Grove Road, but they didn’t connect to each other. And I always wondered why that was. (A cul de sac road ended any chance of their linking.) The Heritage Heights neighborhood apparently was developed by an Anglophile, given that the road names included Kingsbridge, Queensbridge, Knightsbridge roads and Greensbriar and Vicar lanes. (Plus Inwood Way and Open Wood Way; the mnemonic device would require you go into Inwood Way to get to Open Wood Way.)
I don’t know if those who had positive childhoods remember their hometowns in such detail (even if occasionally inaccurate) as how the “If you grew up in Madison you remember” group does. (The contrast is that my parents grew up in small Southwest Wisconsin towns and left at the first opportunity, never to return except to visit their parents. Everyone votes with their feet.) I said last week that gauzy memories suggest either we remember things as being better than they were, or things were better then than we thought they were at the time. That makes me wonder how our three children will remember their childhoods where their parents chose to raise them.
I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin program Friday at 8 a.m.
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Ideas Network can be heard on WHA (970 AM) in Madison, WLBL (930 AM) in Auburndale, WHID (88.1 FM) in Green Bay, WHWC (88.3 FM) in Menomonie, WRFW (88.7 FM) in River Falls, WEPS (88.9 FM) in Elgin, Ill., WHAA (89.1 FM) in Adams, WHBM (90.3 FM) in Park Falls, WHLA (90.3 FM) in La Crosse, WRST (90.3 FM) in Oshkosh, WHAD (90.7 FM) in Delafield, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, KUWS (91.3 FM) in Superior, WHHI (91.3 FM) in Highland, WSHS (91.7 FM) in Sheboygan, WHDI (91.9 FM) in Sister Bay, WLBL (91.9 FM) in Wausau, W275AF (102.9 FM) in Ashland, W300BM (107.9 FM) in Madison, and of course online at www.wpr.org.
Will we discuss Recallarama? Or the diving stock market? Or President Downgrade? Will an hour be enough?
A month ago, I discovered a few old pieces of Madison media on YouTube, and posted them on this blog.
Then on Tuesday, I was trying to write Wednesday’s blog item when I checked on Facebook.
Several hours later, I decided to start writing this to make up for all the time I lost in the Facebook “If you grew up in Madison you remember” group. I think I once mentioned that most of my high school graduating class appeared to be on Facebook. Apparently everyone else who grew up in Madison the same time, or before then, is on Facebook too.
On Tuesday, the activity on this group slowed down my laptop and threatened to bring the Internet to a screeching halt more effectively than an electromagnetic pulse. It was like feeding bread to ducks, with people fighting to get their memories of Madison online.
In the four hours between when I was let into the group and when I finally turned off the email notifications, there were more than 500 posts. The group jumped over 1,000 members and 3,000 posts less than 24 hours after it was created. (As someone posted, “Hooray! We broke Facebook!”) By the end of its second day it exceeded 3,400 members and 7,500 posts. By the end of its third day it exceeded 4,600 members (and jumped over 5,000 members shortly thereafter) and 11,000 posts. WIBA (1310 AM) in Madison is doing a segment about this group today at 10:30 a.m. This site may need to be spun off of Facebook onto its own domain — maybe www.ifyougrewupinmadisonyouremember.com.
A lot of the memories, not surprisingly for Wisconsin, involved bars and drinking. (I’ll pause while you recover from the shock.) I was part of the last high school class that could legally drink at 18. One of my first mixed drinks was something called Swampwater, which was the color of antifreeze and was usually served in mason jars. I have been unable to determine what was in it. (I drank that in a campus bar where I was in more than any other campus bar; in a previous location, it was a favorite of my father’s back when he was a UW student.) There were also fond memories of Long Island Ice Teas, which, for those who can’t decide between gin, rum, vodka or whiskey, combines all four, plus triple sec, sour mixer and cola. As one poster put it, “This site is proof you can’t kill all your brain cells no matter how hard you tried.”
Many of the other memories (including the aforementioned memories involving adult beverages) undoubtedly were of the if-our-parents-only-knew variety. (The amusing point to ponder is how many of the members’ parents are also on Facebook.) The future corollary is when parents ask themselves how much of what they did when they were their children’s age would they want their own children to do.
In rough alphabetical order, what also came up included:
The A&W drive-in that sold root beer in the baby-size mugs quite inexpensively. Ask my parents, and they will tell you how on summer nights they would give their boys baths, put them in their pajamas, and take them to this drive-in, where they would order three root beers and one orange. (Guess who got the orange because he didn’t like root beer.) And the boys in the back seat would have one orange smile and one brown smile.
Arlans, a discount retailer that had a store on Milwaukee Street, and Eagle, the grocery store on the other half of the same building. Swiss Colony owned the building last time I saw it. The building is west of the “new” Madison post office, opened in Gerald Ford’s presidency.
Barnaby’s, a pizza place where numerous birthday parties were held. People placed orders and then picked them up when a light at their table informed them dinner was ready. It offered pizza-and-root beer combinations, which was fine unless you didn’t like root beer.
Bridgeman’s, a restaurant and ice cream parlour (that’s how they spelled it) that was my first employer. There was a Dairy Queen in the neighborhood before Bridgeman’s, but when Bridgeman’s arrived it blew DQ out of the water. (On the other hand, there is still a restaurant in the original DQ building, whereas the old Bridgeman’s is now, ironically, a dental office.) The best thing about working at Bridgeman’s was eating the mistakes, particularly the Tin Roof sundae (hot fudge, butterscotch and pecans, I think). Drinks were free, but food was full price unless, oops, someone made a mistake. (Perhaps that’s why it went out of business less than a decade after it opened.)
The C&P shopping center with a sloped parking lot. Most of the store was level with the west side of the lot, but there was a ramp that went from the main level to the ground level where shoppers could bring their cars and pick up their groceries. (Another thing you never see anymore.) Of course, five-year-olds loved to race down the ramp ahead of Mom’s grocery carts.
Cars we drove or owned, which were on the large side in the case of the former and were barely functioning in the case of the latter.
“Choi,” a term of approval at La Follette (I assume it’s short for “choice”), and the more superlative “choi to the max!” At the time I thought this was just an ’80s term. Based on posts, however, it appears to have been limited to only Madison. That makes one wonder who started “choi,” in the same way that La Follette alumni of the early ’80s still wonder who started the epic spring 1982 outdoor food fight.
Concerts in various venues ranging from the Shuffle Inn (Van Halen) to Headliners (Joan Jett) to Merlin’s (U2) to the Dane County Coliseum (Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Doobie Brothers, Elvis Presley, Cheap Trick opening for Queen, REO Speedwagon opening for every other act, Foreigner, Chicago more than once) to the Orpheum Theater (Bob Marley and the Wailers) to the Dane County Junior Fair (Rick Springfield) to the Memorial Union Terrace (the Violent Femmes) to Breese Stevens Field (Ready for the World and Sheila E) to … an East High School TWIRP (The Woman Is Required to Pay) dance, where Cheap Trick supposedly played.
Madison’s first convenience stores, Stop & Go and PDQ.
The drive between Madison and Cottage Grove, which was posted at 55 mph except for one 50-mph stretch. So much development has taken place in the intervening years that Dane County BB is now posted at 35 mph.
Department stores in the pre-mall era, including Gimbel’s, Manchester’s and Yost’s. Some offered not just clothing, but restaurants or hair styling. Similar to …
Several old drug stores, including Gerhardt’s (now a Walgreen’s) and Rennebohm’s, owned by a former governor of Wisconsin. I believe Gerhardt’s was where I purchased my first record (Rhythm Heritage’s “Theme from ‘SWAT’”). My parents remember the downtown Madison Rennebohm’s because it had a lunch counter (where I ate once before interviewing the mayor of Madison, who had just replaced the mayor who had replaced Paul Soglin.)
Our various doctors, dentists, etc. It turns out that our pediatrician, Dr. William Ylitalo of Quisling Clinic, was also the pediatrician of numerous other people in this group. (Quisling Clinic was started by two physicians who were cousins of Vidkin Quisling, who was to Norway what Vichy was to France. For running Norway for the Nazis, Vidkun was executed after the right side won.) Dr. Ylitalo’s son is in this group too, so I imagine he’s been enjoying the reading. And most of us also had in common various dental appliances to correct our overbites, underbites, or poorly spaced teeth.
The East Side Business Men’s Association festival on Milwaukee Street. Everyone who attended was of the age where they didn’t notice how rickety the Ferris wheel was. (The ESBMA building on Atwood Avenue/Monona Drive was also the site of the La Follette High School Class of 1983 post-graduation party, our final formal event as a class before the 1988 reunion. It’s now called the East Side Club.)
The early days of East Towne Mall, which in its first decade or two had fountains, smoking areas, a Burger King, County Seat (preferred source of Levi’s), the Aladdin’s Castle video arcade, a bar, a two-screen theater and the Moon Fun Shop, a head shop. East Towne also had York Steak House, where I had my first and last dates (and a few in between) with my first girlfriend.
The back road to East Towne, which before development there meant driving through a weird intersection that included a right-hand curve and a steep hill that ended at a stop sign. My brother was driving our 1975 Chevrolet Caprice to work one day when he was rear-ended at the multi-level intersection by a one-ton van. The van appeared as though a giant fist had smashed the front end. The Caprice suffered … a bent rear bumper.
The Hungry Hungry (or possibly Hungry Hungry Hungry), a drive-in I vaguely remember occasionally visiting across the street from Olbrich Park on the east shore of Lake Monona.
Ironic repositioning of store chains. What you know as Kohl’s, Wisconsin’s finest retail chain, was also a chain of grocery stores, most in buildings with curved roofs. What you know as Copps’ supermarkets also was a group of discount retail stores. The East Side had a Kohl’s grocery store and a Copps discount retail store, neither of which are in existence today. (The Kohl’s building on Monona Drive is still there, though.)
Kelly’s, a former fast-food chain in at least Madison. The difference between Kelly’s and McDonald’s was that Kelly’s had hot dogs, and its mascot was a dancing pickle reportedly named Pete.
Marc’s Big Boy, a restaurant on East Washington Avenue (the chain still exists, but not that restaurant) that featured fish in buckets wrapped with wax paper with London newspaper print, and Big Boy comic books.
Various off-brand gas stations, including Fisca, Kickapoo, Martin and Transport.
Paisan’s, which, in its fourth location, still has the best pizza in Madison.
The Pig’s Ear, a high-end restaurant (which I never went to) with garish pink walls. It is now called Talula and has gotten at least one good review.
Pizza Pit, which still runs this commercial:
Public employee strikes — the 1976 Madison teacher strike (which prompted the mediation/arbitration law), which got us two weeks off right after winter vacation for the price of (1) losing our entire spring vacation, (2) having to go to school on a Saturday, and (3) adding two days at the end of the school year) and the 1977 and 1980 Madison Metro bus strikes, which forced those who didn’t live near our middle and high schools to find alternative transportation to and from school.
Queen of Apostles High School, which was just east of Interstate 90. I didn’t go to “QAS,” but when I joined the Boy Scouts our meetings were there until it closed in the late 1970s. It’s now some kind of high-tech business.
The Catholic church many of us attended, St. Dennis, the only Catholic church in the entire La Follette attendance district. (St. Bernard was on Atwood Avenue, and Immaculate Heart of Mary were in Monona, but it still seems like poor planning to have a farther east or farther south Catholic church for the far East side’s exploding growth.) Until my senior year of high school, St. Dennis Masses were held in either a very small church, or the school gym. (For the first few years of my life, I thought every Catholic church had backboards and a scoreboard.) St. Dennis pre-adult parishioners were in two groups — those who also went to St. Dennis School between first and eighth grades, and those who attended the Madison public schools. St. Dennis didn’t have a church big enough for the enormous congregation until 1983, in a building project funded by monthly Friday fish fries in the 1970s, where I bused in exchange for free fish afterward.
Paul Soglin, when he was mayor of Madison the first time, from 1973 to 1979. And then he was mayor from 1989 to 1997. And then he was elected mayor again in April. (Perhaps when Soglin passes on they’ll just prop up his body El Cid-like in the City–County Building council chambers and have an assistant push keys on a laptop for “Motion to approve,” “those in favor say aye,” and so on.
Teachers, including former La Follette choir teacher Rod Witte (who was very popular with his singers) and Pete Olson, physical education and driver education teacher and (twice-state-championship-winning) boys basketball coach at La Follette, who now apparently can be found fishing on a lake in Vilas County. Any student or player of Olson’s knows exactly what he would have said about all this: “Not very impressive.”
Theaters, including the Cinema Theater on Atwood Avenue (where as previously noted my brother and I saw our first movie, “Lady and the Tramp”) and the Badger and Big Sky drive-ins.
The Wisconsin term for an ATM: a TYME machine, standing for “Take Your Money Everywhere.”
The old UW–Madison registration process. In the days before online registration, and even before the days you could register by phone, you were assigned a registration start time by your last name. Students at the state’s only world-class university started at the UW Stock Pavilion (just the place you want to be on a hot August day), then raced to various buildings corresponding with subject areas on campus, where the student would check with the academic department registration committee to see if any spots were available for the desired class. Repeat the process until you get your classes (if you have an early registration time), or, if not, figure out alternatives. One semester this process went so well that I had classes two days from 8:25 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., no classes at all two other days, and a morning full of classes on Friday. This is one of the excuses I have for not giving money to my alma mater.
The Vietnam War protests, well chronicled in the Academy Award-nominated documentary “The War at Home.” I had relatives outside Wisconsin who, not knowing the layout of Madison, assumed from what they saw on the evening news that their nephew and his young family was in danger of being assaulted by marauding college students. (There was no need for concern because (1) college students probably didn’t know Madison existed outside campus, and besides that (2) we were in bed by bartime.) The nadir of the antiwar movement occurred Aug. 24, 1970, when UW’s Sterling Hall was bombed by four people (one of whom disappeared shortly after the event and has never been found), killing one UW grad student. Many people remember the middle-of-the-night bombing for the sound it made and the damage it caused. I was a religious watcher of ABC-TV’s “The FBI” at the time, a show that ended with star Efrem Zimbalist Jr. doing a piece about someone on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, and I remember the night those four were on.
“When we could road trip all night on $5 worth of gas!!!” And indeed you could do that, even with 11-mpg cars, because gas was less than $1 a gallon into the 1980s.
Various features of the Henry Vilas Zoo, including a polar bear that played with a bowling ball and the Mold-a-Rama machine. If that’s the polar bear I remember, I believe it came to a premature end when, after a mentally ill man jumped into the polar bear pit, Madison police shot the bear to protect the man. That led some people to suggest that the police had chosen which to shoot incorrectly. I went on a field trip with my oldest son to the zoo, and it, of course, blew my mind.
Younger readers and non-Madisonians will probably wonder what the hell these 3,000-plus people are babbling about. My prediction, however, is that you too will be reminiscing about the good old days (no matter how old you are) before you even realize it. My wife (who after her first La Follette reunion with me claimed she had more in common with my classmates than hers) recalls fondly driving around the courthouse square in Lancaster the wrong way, with her best friend screaming the whole way. (Or perhaps it was the mouse hiding in the headliner of the car — the stories sometimes get confused.)
I have no idea how many of the 3,000-plus members of the “If you grew up in Madison you remember” group still live in Madison. Based on what they remember, they, and I, grew up in a Madison that had fewer of the problems that Madison has today. (The weather, however, is unchangeable.) A number of posts included mention of going someplace by foot or on bus, by themselves, with no harm occurring, something you wouldn’t be likely to recommend doing today. So while Mad City was a good place to grow up, I don’t think it is a good place to grow up today, assuming you could even afford to live there.
These memories have also been softened, in one direction or another, by time. Distance makes us forget that, when we were in middle school, we wanted to get to high school, and when we were in high school (the giant angst factory), we wanted to get out of high school (whether “out” meant college, a job, or just out of Madison). Either we remember things as being better than they were, or things were better then than we thought they were at the time.
Most of us (certainly me) probably need to thank our parents for their contributions to the Madison in which they raised us. Many, including my parents, came to Madison from various other places, sometimes for better occupational opportunity, or perhaps because they thought Madison would be a better place to raise their kids than where they grew up. They were the people went to work every weekday (or more), paid the high taxes, took up their free time with various civic involvements, endured the institutional strangeness, and made the other sacrifices parents make for their kids. And the memories on this insanely popular Facebook page were one of the results.
This is part two of a reaction I started Tuesday to a blog that reacted to my blog that reacted to the blog of Jack Craver of Isthmus. (I think that’s five prepositional phrases without commas.)
What tax rates do you propose as appropriate for the state on corporate and individual income?
What services do you believe the state should provide with that tax revenue? Which services go beyond what you believe to be essential services and into the arena of “leftist” government? Would it include BadgerCare?
Glad you asked, Jack! Answer number 1A: The appropriate corporate income tax rate is zero. One reason is that, as readers of this blog know, businesses don’t pay taxes; their customers pay business taxes in the cost of a product or service. Business taxes serve only to obscure the actual cost of government, and taxpayers should know exactly how much they’re being required to pay to fund government. There are three things for which businesses use profits — to reinvest back into the business; to increase compensation for employees; or to return to the business’ owners as dividends. Any of those is preferable to the trash can known as government. And if there are no taxes, there are no tax breaks, and there is no money spent on campaign contributions to encourage or discourage tax breaks.
As for question 1B, the easy answer would be “lower than Craver wants,” but I don’t know what the correct tax rate is other than whatever tax rates (and taxes) are necessary to fund the correct functions of government. The purpose of government, generally, is to perform the correct functions of government, which does not mean employing people (except as to perform the correct functions of government), or redistributing income, or effecting trendy social change that doesn’t have a basis in our inalienable rights.
What are those “correct functions of government?” Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus, economic conservative and social libertarian, identified three and only three functions of the federal government: “defending our shores, delivering our mail and staying the hell out of our lives.” (If only.) The state Constitution lists such government functions as enforcing the law, education (schools and universities), and purchase and/or construction of “land, waters, property, highways, railways, buildings, equipment or facilities for public purposes” — to wit, “public highways,” “airports or other aeronautical projects,” “veterans’ housing,” “port facilities,” “railways and other railroad facilities,” and “the forests of the state.” (The Constitution, however, says the state may fund the aforementioned list; the word shall only comes up on the subject of education.)
That seems to be a pretty good list. Which means there’s a lot that state and local government now does that isn’t on that list, or not to the extent spending on that government function is occurring today. When asked about waste in government, Sen. Frank Lasee (R–De Pere) used to bring up rails-to-trails spending — converting abandoned rail beds to bicycle paths — not because it wasn’t a worthy function of government, but because it isn’t worthy to the level of exceeding all other states in rails-to-trails spending. The state Constitution allows using public debt to purchase land, but at the rate of $60 million per year, with zero economic return? (The aforementioned Knowles–Nelson Stewardship Fund spending is down from $86 million per year under the previous governor and Legislature.) The Constitution does not require the existence of a State Patrol responsible for writing traffic tickets instead of conducting actual law enforcement. And where is the employment of executive assistants — who are political appointees for department secretaries — a core function of government?
What about economic development, including downtown revitalization? The answer lies in another question: How much government-funded economic development takes place to undo the effects of bad public policy? (The practical question, on the other hand, is how much government-funded economic development has to take place because other goverments are doing government-funded economic development.)
Craver tries to bait me by asking about BadgerCare, and I imagine he’d be interested in if I’d be interested in getting rid of, say, unemployment insurance, Social Security, or other social programs. His asking that question demonstrates the left’s utter contempt for anything that would limit the role of government in our lives, such as our founding documents. To them, the U.S. and state Constitution are nothing more than scratchings on parchment written by dead white men.
(Craver also asked what I meant in my reference to former Supreme Court Justice Louis “Loophole Louie” Butler, who got his nickname from his time as a Milwaukee public defender. What I meant was that any Supreme Court justice who ruled as he did in the lead paint case — that it was OK to sue a company that manufactured lead-based paint without proof that that company manufactured the lead-based paint that was involved in the lawsuit should be not just thrown off the Supreme Court — and Butler lost two Supreme Court races — but disbarred.)
And now for Craver’s grand vision:
Instead of talking superficially about “raising” and “cutting” taxes and programs, why don’t we talk about what the appropriate tax rates are for the services we expect? If we had that debate, there would be honest disagreement about what the government should provide, but at least voters would have a better idea of the system their politicians stand for.
If such a dialogue existed in America, I don’t think there would be any question that there is no meaningful left-wing power in the country. If there were, there would be a serious push for fundamental change to our economic system. Socialism, communism, the works. In fact, in the U.S. we only have one member of Congress who calls himself a “Democratic Socialist,” and there are a few Democrats who talk seriously about even developing a welfare state that rivals that of other Western countries. The health care plan the GOP denounces as an end to America as we know it was a carbon copy of the plan the Republican Party introduced less than 20 years ago. It’s not a “government takeover,” it’s simply a government handout to corporations — something both parties have proudly supported throughout history.
You don’t have to be a subscriber to Madison commie propaganda to believe the Democratic Party is not in the business of advancing leftism. You simply have to read a history book. I’m sure nobody is prouder of that fact than the people on the right who have been running the show for the past 30 years. Thanks to Ronald Reagan and his disciples, we don’t have a left and a right in this country. We have a center-right and a far right. And then we have some liberals watching from the bleachers.
It doesn’t always have to be that way, however. The political character of a country can change overnight, often with horrifying results (ever heard of Nazism?). People who ridicule the suggestion that Democrats could not win by running further to the left either have no sense of history or are willfully ignoring it. Over the past 100 years American political values have changed drastically many times. We’ve gone from no income tax to a top marginal rate of 92% and then back down to 35%. We’ve gone from segregation to a black president. Soon we’ll have gay marriage, not just because people have gradually accepted it on their own, but because enough people in politics and media talked about it that people began to see the issue differently.
Today’s liberals generally hate markets, but perhaps the reason why “Democrats could not win by running further to the left” is because Democrats have figured out that being more leftist than they already are is a non-starter among voters. (If you think about it, voting is the ultimate market.) The purpose of a political party, after all, is to get its candidates elected and keep them in office. American voters have had the choice, since before World War II, of Wisconsin’s own Fighting Bob La Follette, Henry Wallace, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich and others more left-wing than either the Democratic presidential nominee or the ultimate presidential winner and chose otherwise. (Barack Obama did not become president because of his ideology. In fact, his poor poll numbers probably could be described at least in part as voter remorse.) Ronald Reagan probably drove the GOP to the right, but voters decided to move the country rightward. If Craver and his fellow travelers don’t like that, well, to quote a former coworker of mine, it sucks to be them.
If left-wing ideas would be more popular if only those ignorant voters (such as those who voted the wrong way according to Isthmus Nov. 2) realized how wonderful those ideas are, then, for instance, Obamacare would not be polling as poorly as it is. (For that matter, Democrats in Recallarama would be campaigning on restoring public employee collective bargaining “rights,” but they’re not, are they?) Maybe voters outside the People’s Republic of Madison are smarter than Craver seems to think. Some may even realize that monthly U.S. job growth since Obama signed health care deform into law is one-tenth what it was before Obamacare became law. And liberals have yet to satisfactorily explain why, with enough exceptions for you to be able to count using both your hands, liberal talk has been smothered on commercial radio by conservative talk.
Craver’s blog mentions three presidents — Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower — as, he claims, liberal icons in the White House. (Which would have come as a surprise to Eisenhower. Then again, by today’s standards, Richard Nixon was a liberal. Which makes him an even worse president than people think.) I know of no non-socialist economist who would claim the economic system the U.S. had in World War II as the ideal. I’m also unaware of any liberal who believes detaining tens of thousands of Americans based on the shape of their eyes represents the highest of liberal ideals. And as lefty as Roosevelt and Truman may comparatively have been in their day, they ultimately fail the leftist test because they believed in our country and defending it from its enemies. The reaction of the American left to the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and radical Islam in this century says all you need to know about whether the left would ever actually fight to defend this country from foreign enemies.
Craver and readers who disagree with my philosophical bent may dismiss what I’ve written yesterday and today as the rantings of a relative of Joseph Goebbels. My views are my own, but I think my views represent the mainstream of political thought outside the People’s Republic of Madison than Craver’s do. The people I know and associate with — whether conservative, moderate or liberal — are not obsessed with politics, focus on their own lives instead of trying to control others’ lives, and seek to improve where they live by doing the work themselves instead of waiting for government to show up and bail them out.
Maybe Craver is right after all when he claims that there is no real American left. But if there isn’t, it’s because in the marketplace of ideas, the left lost, and deserved to lose, and deserves to keep losing.
Last week I wrote about the tensions between the Democratic Party and those who believe the Democratic Party isn’t liberal enough.
I excerpted a piece from Jack Craver of Isthmus and WTDY radio in Madison, a piece that combined contempt of the American voter, Democrats, and basically anyone else who isn’t as left-wing as Craver is.
Well, it turns out Craver must at least once in a while read this blog, because he decided to devote one of his columns to what I wrote about him.
First, some introduction: As a native of the People’s Republic of Madison and a UW graduate, I have read Isthmus on and off far longer than Craver has worked for Isthmus. My background with the weekly goes back to the days when it employed a writer with the pen name of Ursula, whose “Ursula Understands” column answered questions about relationships that few would even think to ask. And until his decision to work elsewhere, I was the occasional non-liberal foil for Isthmus’ Bill Lueders on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin Week in Review program.
The proof that Isthmus has fulfilled its role in the Madison media landscape is demonstrated by The Capital Times’ decision to end daily publication and convert itself into a free tabloid that looks to many readers like Isthmus with a different name, though with similar stupid politics. Isthmus also has from time to time thrown a bone to its non-lefty readers by including columns from such people as Bob Williams, a Stevens Point PR executive who was part of Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus’ braintrust, Charlie Sykes (yes, thatCharlie Sykes) and now David Blaska, who is that rarest of things — a former Capital Times reporter and state employee who, as he describes himself, “swims upstream like a heretical flagellate among the collectivist majority.” The nice thing about publications like Isthmus is that you can read their entertainment writing and, if you are so inclined, skim or skip the left-wing crap in the front of the publication.
As for my hometown, I come by my antipathy for Madison honestly — by experience. Between events like the Madison teacher strike, watching tuition money wasted by instructors’ taking my time to pass on, unbidden, their own political beliefs, and the idiotic protest du jour on days of non-inclement weather on the Library Mall, I came to the conclusion that Dreyfus’ observation that Madison is 30 (now 77) square miles surrounded by reality is a gross understatement. It was a revelation when I left Madison and discovered people who didn’t reflexively hate people who shared my political beliefs and besides that had normal non-esoteric interests. (The newspaper’s quote of the week once came from the husband of one of our account representatives: “Never mind Nicaragua; I want sweet corn!”) Then again, if I want to go back to the old days, I don’t have to go back to Madison; I need only go to Facebook.
Craver starts by bringing up an irrelevant comparison (for purposes of what I wrote) of Gov. James Doyle and his elected predecessor, Tommy Thompson. But there is no question that Thompson was no one’s idea of a fiscal conservative while he was in office. In the 1990s, with economic performance that made writers look for a phrase that sounded like “Roaring ’20s,” you could have your cake and eat it too, with both tax cuts and basically unrestrained spending. The term “structural deficit” may have existed before the 1990s, but it certainly got attention while Thompson was in office, but with tax revenues increasing every year despite tax cuts, well, few people and even fewer voters cared.
Craver also demonstrates most journalists’ affinity for math — not much — with this error:
Doyle spent most of his tenure trying to manage the structural deficit that Tommy Thompson created through his drastic expansion of state government spending on prisons, schools, health care and tax rebates. Doyle, who was raised in the “People’s Republic of Madison,” did what any other radical would do in the face of a budget deficit: Cut state jobs, furloughed state workers, closed a couple corporate loopholes, and raised taxes on incomes over $300,000 by..wait for it…one percent. The stuff of Lenin all right.
Democrats created a new tax bracket of 7.75 percent, above the old highest tax bracket of 6.75 percent. That is not one percent, because 7.75 divided by 6.75 equals 1.148. In other words, Doyle and Democrats didn’t increase taxes by 1 percent, they increased taxes by 15 percent for income beyond $221,670 for single people and $295,550 for married people filing jointly. That group, I suppose, fits into what Democrats and their apparatchiks are calling the “super rich,” although they’re really not.
Craver makes a valid point that he buries in more left-wing cant:
Doyle did about the least amount one could expect a governor to do to change the current system. He slightly expanded BadgerCare for the poor, he very slightly increased taxes on the rich, and he slightly decreased the size of government. He maintained the status quo. What would you call somebody who does that? Maybe ol’ Webster can help us out. Here’s a word that seems to match: Conservative: Tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions.
If you want to claim that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” really don’t fit today’s ideologies, fine. The term “liberal” used to have “classical” before it, which describes those of us who believe in the individual rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. By that definition, today’s liberals aren’t liberals at all (except in such areas of personal freedom as drug use and abortion rights). Perhaps Craver prefers the term “neo-socialists.”
Doyle did, remember, start his term (and our sentence with him) in the Executive Residence by pledging “We should not, we must not, and I will not raise taxes,” before raising taxes $2.1 billion. (I’m surprised Craver didn’t make the obligatory George “Read My Lips” Bush reference, a pledge whose reversal went a long way to getting Bush fired by the voters.) The point that goes without acknowledgment or explanation on the left side is why, when Doyle increased taxes and nibbled at the margins of government growth (as if any taxpayer noticed), this state ended up with government finances worse on a proportional basis than only our neighbors to the immediate south, Illinois.
Craver makes another good point that he buries in rhetoric against me and, well, everyone else:
What is most irksome about Prestegard’s post, however, is that he uses relative terms, such as “raising/lowering taxes” to describe political philosophies. This is unfortunately an aspect of political rhetoric we see on both sides of the political spectrum, but it has become especially prevalent on the right, where candidates cannot talk about taxes — only about their wish to not to raise them.
For instance, as much as Republicans howled about the $5 billion Doyle tax hike, they still haven’t repealed them. Why not? Well, they’ve got a budget to balance. But according to their logic, they haven’t raised taxes. (Although they’ve made a few symbolic tax cuts and other corporate taxes that will go into effect in future years.)
Candidates on the right can’t talk about taxes? The fumes where Craver works must be getting really thick. Republican elected officials and candidates at every level talk about taxes all the time. One of the interesting facets of the looming default of our federal government, or whatever the media’s going to call it in the next week, is the issue of raising taxes vs. not raising taxes vs. reforming taxes as part of a debt ceiling deal. In the latter case, the approach the GOP has favored since the days of President Ronald Reagan has been to reduce rates and reduce or eliminate exemptions and deductions. In that case, some taxes would go up, but most would go down.
In that scenario, would demagogic politicians or candidates accuse Republicans of raising taxes because one tax went up even if 10 went down — even if the total tax take decreased? Of course. Accusing politicians of demagoguery is like accusing water of being wet. Political courage is in short supply.
If I asked a Republican (and I’d have to, because I am not a Republican) why they didn’t cut taxes, they probably would say that they had to balance the budget after the billions of dollars of deficits that are the legacy of the Doyle administration and the previous party that controlled the Legislature. (Note that Reagan cut existing taxes in 1981 before the tax reform of 1986.) If Walker and the GOP don’t substantially cut taxes by the 2014 election, voters will be justified in asking themselves why they voted for a party that didn’t do something about our ridiculously high (for what we get) state and local taxes.
This has gone on so long already that a second part seems appropriate. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.
Our subject today is the depiction of journalists — or, as we like to call ourselves, “ink-stained wretches” — in the entertainment media.
This isn’t exactly a Golden Age of journalists in entertainment, but it’s interesting to note how many of them have been depicted on TV in the past few years, including in “Ugly Betty,” “Dirt,” “My Boys” and “Just Shoot Me.” For a while, magazines particularly attracted the attention of TV scriptwriters, as shown in “Ugly Betty” (and the movie it seems to have been based on, “The Devil Wears Prada”), “Dirt” and “Just Shoot Me.”
Many other movies and TV shows have featured journalists as characters, but neither “The Odd Couple” movie nor TV series was about newspapers. In most cases, journalists are plot devices to move the story along — for instance, “Then Came Bronson,” a 1969 series about a newspaper reporter who decides to travel around America after a friend of his commits suicide and leaves him his motorcycle. (Travel the country on a reporter’s salary — that’s how you know it’s fiction.)
Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in “Citizen Kane,” was based on newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, but “Citizen Kane” is not a newspaper movie. “All the President’s Men” chronicled the Watergate investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who are to Watergate what any number of TV reporters were to the John F. Kennedy assassination. “All the President’s Men,” based on Woodstein’s book (that’s what Post editor Ben Bradlee called the pair) All the President’s Men, helped create the brief genre of reporters as rock stars, due no doubt to casting Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein, but it’s arguable whether it’s a newspaper movie or political thriller. Jack Webb, creator of “Dragnet,” did one newspaper movie, “-30-” (which reporters typed at the end of their stories to indicate to the typesetter that that was the end of the story), which imdb.com describes as depicting an “implausibly active day in the life of a metropolitan newspaper.”
My favorite in the newspaper movie genre is “Deadline USA,” with Humphrey Bogart as the editor of a daily newspaper about to be sold. “Deadline USA” ends what might be one of the best endings of any movie: The bad guy, a mobster, is about to be exposed in the pages of the newspaper, and as he’s threatening editor Bogart on the phone, the newspaper’s press begins to run. When the mobster says he can’t hear Bogart’s character due to the noise, Bogart’s response is: “That’s the press, baby. The press! And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nothing!”
(The movie also includes another line: “A journalist makes himself the hero of the story. A reporter is only a witness.” That contrasts to the definition I heard in college of “journalist”: “an out-of-work reporter.” So am I a journalist or not?)
“Citizen Kane” and “All the President’s Men” are on Best Colleges Online‘s list of 14 movies every journalism major is supposed to see. The rest of their list, though, looks more like movies for entertainment’s sake than movies for insights about journalism: “Network” (and I suppose its inclusion on this list will make you mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore), “Almost Famous” (a teenage boy’s fantasy about journalism), “Good Night and Good Luck” (Edward R. Murrow vs. Wisconsin’s own Joe McCarthy), “Ace in the Hole,” “Ringu” (“a reporter investigating some mysterious deaths and a popular urban legend encounters a cursed video tape that spreads like a virus and eventually kills off (almost!) everyone who pops it into the VCR”), “Zodiac” (about the real-life serial killings in San Francisco on which “Dirty Harry” was based), “The Paper,” “Broadcast News” and older flicks.
The best known TV series about newspapers is probably “Lou Grant,” which also is notable for taking a character from a sitcom (the title character’s boss, a Minneapolis TV station news director, on “Mary Tyler Moore”) into a drama. Ed Asner played the TV news director-turned-Los Angeles newspaper city editor, the lead character in one of TV’s first ensemble drama casts. “Lou Grant” was loved by critics and those who give out awards; the series won 13 Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe awards, a Peabody award and nine other awards in its five-year run. (The first season can be seen at hulu.com.) The series was canceled, despite its being in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings in its last month, largely because Asner used both his role in the series and his office as president of the Screen Actors Guild as a soapbox for his views on the U.S. presence in central America, to the discomfort of CBS and advertisers.
The cult classic “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” is an example of the genre of journalist as investigator, a detective armed with a notebook and a camera instead of a gun. (Of course, police detectives carry notebooks and guns, and sometimes cameras too.) In fact, just as there are more serial killers on TV or in movies than in real life, there may be more investigative reporters depicted on TV than actually exist in real life — for instance, Raymond Burr got out of his wheelchair on “Ironside” to play the title role in “Kingston: Confidential,” described thusly: “An investigative reporter, backed by the head of a newspaper and TV chain, uncovers a plot to utilize nuclear power plants in a scheme to take over the world.” (I wonder if the staff of the Green Bay Press–Gazette or the Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter is aware of this fiendish plot involving those nuclear power plants along Lake Michigan.)
Other TV shows that have featured journalists as major characters include:
“The Adventures of Hiram Holiday,” a 1956 series about a newspaper proofreader (a position unknown at Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers) who is “thought to be a meek-little nobody by everyone around him” until he’s “discovered to have a range of skills that would make James Bond green with envy.” The publisher of said newspaper, “recognizing the sales potential of Hiram’s story, sends the young man on a trip around the world” with a reporter “to document his adventures for readers back home.”
“Big Town,” also known as “Byline Steve Wilson,” about “The Illustrated Press, the largest and most influential newspaper in Big Town, whose driving force was crusading editor Steve Wilson.” (Every TV series set at a newspaper has a crusading publisher and/or editor, you see.) This was one of the first TV series featuring the print media, on at the same time as a series called either “News Gal,” “Byline,” or “Your Kaiser Dealer Presents Kaiser–Frazer ‘Adventures in Mystery’ Starring Betty Furness in ‘Byline.’” (For those who think advertiser tie-ins are bad now, they used to be worse.)
“Deadline” (not to be confused with this “Deadline,” or “Deadline for Action,” or “Deadline Midnight”), a 2000 series about a New York tabloid newspaper that got a lot of PR push from NBC, which was so successful that it lasted 13 episodes.
“Hard Copy” (not to be confused with the “Hard Copy” tabloid “news” show), a series that CBS premiered after Super Bowl XXI in 1987. Despite the prime premiere time slot, it lasted six episodes.
“The Name of the Game,” an example of the rotating-star series popular in the 1960s and 1970s, featuring Gene Barry as the head of a publishing company for whom “People Magazine” (no, not that People magazine) investigative reporter Anthony Franciosa and “Crime Magazine” editor Robert Stack worked.
“Slap Maxwell,” a Dabney Coleman star vehicle about a stereotypical hard-bitten sportswriter. Coleman won a Golden Globe, which didn’t stop ABC from canceling the series after one season. This is not to be confused with “Buffalo Bill,” in which Coleman played a stereotypical egotistical talk-show host. That show too won a Golden Globe (costar Joanna Cassidy), and that show too was canceled after one season. A sportswriter not played by Coleman, the title character of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” fared much better, lasting 10 seasons, but then again, how often was Raymond depicted at his employer?
My personal favorite of that genre is “The Green Hornet,” a comic book turned into a radio series, a film serial, and then a TV series featuring the publisher of a newspaper who fought crime on his off hours, dogged by one of his own reporters who was trying to find out the secret identity of the Green Hornet, thought to be a “ruthless criminal.” (Hint to reporter Mike Axford: He signs your paychecks.) Besides having a great theme written by trumpeter Al Hirt based on Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” “The Green Hornet” TV series was the U.S. TV debut of martial artist Bruce Lee, who played the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato. (It should be noted that their favorite vehicle was not a green Hornet, but “Black Beauty,” comparable probably to a black Chrysler 300 of today, but with such special features as rocket launchers, smoke guns, etc.)
At this point you may be asking: What about the “Green Hornet” movie? I haven’t seen it, and based on these reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes I don’t plan to see it:
A facetious industrial product, and the first out-and-out bore of the year.
Despite its obvious angling to become a franchise, this Green Hornet offers little that’s worth committing to even the “cult flick” chamber of your brain.
A big, sloppy, loud, grating mess of a movie.
[Seth] Rogen takes what should have and could have been one of the most unique antithesis’ to Batman and transforms it in to a vanity project for his one note comedy and flat one-liners…
…an uneven, disastrously overlong piece of work.
I’m sure you’re shocked — shocked! — to discover that Hollywood, well, Hollywoodizes its depictions of journalists. (For one thing, any media outlet depicted on TV appears to have far more staff than an actual media outlet of that size would have.) The reason there haven’t been very many good depictions of journalists is that most of what journalists do, though important, frankly isn’t very interesting to watch. (After the fact, that’s another story.) Interviews, particularly hostile interviews, can be entertaining to watch, as demonstrated by CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.” But the process of putting words on paper (or into word processing program now) isn’t very interesting to watch if you’re not in the profession, any more than the process of watching photographers take photos, radio reporters edit sound or TV reporters put a story together in an editing bay is interesting to watch. Nor is, say, sitting in a courtroom at a trial or at a city council meeting. And if you think those wouldn’t be interesting to watch, watching an editor come up with a story list for an edition of his or her publication, or editing reporters’ stories is as exciting as watching trees grow.
I haven’t seen very many non-TV reporters you’d want to see on the screen from an appearance standpoint either. (Guess where the phrase “you have a face for radio” came from.) Few are tall, baby-faced in a rugged sort of way, with graying curly hair, piercing blue eyes, facial hair that varies with the season … sorry, got lost in the moment there. The reporters and editors I’ve known over the years aren’t fashionably thin or, for that matter, thin at all or, for that matter, fashionable at all, and don’t have hot significant others, cool cars and funky living quarters. (Media types, however, are quite adept at violating traffic and parking laws, thanks to those pesky deadlines.) There are more married people than in your typical TV series setting (although journalism is known for its unpleasantly high divorce rate).
One of the most bizarre incidents mixing (fictional) TV and real life occurred in 1992 over “Murphy Brown,” a sitcom set at a TV newsmagazine that looked a lot like “60 Minutes.” The title character gave birth to a child with no father in the picture. That prompted Vice President Dan Quayle to blast the show during the 1992 presidential campaign for a depicting “a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid, professional woman — mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’” That was misread as an attack on single mothers who were not single by “just another lifestyle choice,” criticized by others who praised the show for not having the title character get an abortion, prompted the series’ creator to have her (fictional) show give a response to Quayle’s comments, and then, from one to many years later, resulted in a series of admissions from places you’dnever figure, including from Candace Bergen, who played Brown, that Quayle was, uh, right. (If this paragraph didn’t make sense to you, nothing about that made sense at the time either.)
Most of the time, the personality of reporters doesn’t come across in their on-screen depictions. I find that to be too bad, because one reason I’ve liked working in the media is because of my fellow aberrant personalities in this profession. There is more drinking and smoking in journalism than in society as a whole (although media companies tend to frown on bottles in desks nowadays, and media owners have the same no-smoking-at-work policies as everyone else), and there is more, shall we say, use of colorful vocabulary than in your typical workplace. Black humor and situationally inappropriate humor is a trademark of this profession, as is automatic skepticism. Some media types seem to be engaging in a contest to see who can be more cynical than the next media type, particularly those who specialize in political reporting, for ample reason. That is portrayed better in “Dilbert,” which isn’t set in a media workplace, than in most TV and movie depictions I’ve seen.
