I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin show today at 7 a.m. (Yes, I know today is not Friday.)
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.
The subject today is a proposed state law to allow employees to work seven consecutive days. How do I feel about this? Tune in or log on and find out.
Even MSNBC cannot polish Friday’s job report, reports Cain TV:
CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to announce the new, “awful,” December jobs report.
“Oh good Lord…” said host Joe Scarborough. “That’s a horrific number. That’s one of the lowest numbers we’ve seen in years.”
Morning Joe’s crack news team did make a half-hearted stab at blaming “cold weather,” but you could tell they’re just not into the argument. The fact is there’s simply no way to spin this data as anything other than dismal. They even bemoaned the fact that the unemployment rate only went down because so many people left the workforce. For MSNBC, that comes dangerously close to actual reporting.
Curious why despite the huge miss in payrolls the unemployment rate tumbled from 7.0% to 6.7%? The reason is because in December the civilian labor force did what it usually does in the New Normal: it dropped from 155.3 million to 154.9 million, which means the labor participation rate just dropped to a fresh 35 year low, hitting levels not seen since 1978, at 62.8% down from 63.0%.
And the piece de resistance: Americans not in the labor force exploded higher by 535,000 to a new all time high 91.8 million.
One thing New Jersey’s Bridgegate demonstrates is that Republican elected officials can abuse their authority as much as Democratic elected officials can.
Another thing it should demonstrate, but won’t, to liberals is that therefore government and elected officials need less, not more, authority and power.
Jonah Goldberg says this about New Jersey Gov. and supposed Republican presidential front-runner Chris Christie:
Outside the peculiar context of Christie’s presidential ambitions, the idea that this should be front-page news across the country is somewhat baffling. Quick: Show of hands. Who is surprised that New Jersey politicians play hardball with other New Jersey politicians at the expense of voters and taxpayers?
Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize it would be that many of you. Okay, just out of curiosity, for those of you who are legitimately shocked, I’d like to ask some control questions. Are you also shocked that bears use our national forests for toilets? Are you shocked that dogs lick their nether regions without much concern about who might be watching? Does it blow your mind that the Pope is Catholic? When you smash your thumb with a ball peen hammer are you taken off guard by the throbbing pain?
I see.
Now I am not condoning or even trying to minimize the significance of “Bridgegate” — an idiotic term by the way. What these bozos did was bozo-rific. But come on. Do you think Rahm Emanuel hasn’t played games with which streets get plowed first after a snow storm? Do you think that the Cuomos have issued every business permit and license on a first-come, first-serve basis? Wait you do? Oh man, that is adorable. Bless your heart.
Like pretty much everyone else, I think that if Christie is lying about being out of the loop, he’s done for. Fair or not, he set the standard by which he wants people to judge him. I grew tired of his constant boasting of his straight-talking a long time ago. But he’s the self-declared exemplar of straight-talking. (I like the straight talk, mind you. I just don’t like all the allegedly straight talk about his straight talking. It’s a bit like Christie’s odd way of being arrogant about how humble he is. Just give me the straight talk; don’t give me a lot of hot air about how straight the straight talk is, ya get me? I love it when my waiter brings a great steak. But when he hangs around selling me on each morsel as it goes into my mouth, it really creeps me out. “Great steak, huh!? Man, you are lucky to be eating that. Take another bite. I bet it’s even better.”)
Also, I’m not a huge fan of career politicians talking about how they’re not really politicians. It’s like a salesman insisting he’s not like any other salesman. Maybe that’s true in some ways (maybe he has three nipples and a neon orange unibrow; what do I know?) but at the end of the day he’s still trying to make a sale which means — tah dah! — he’s a salesman. Christie’s claim to be above politics-as-usual always struck me as incredibly hackneyed and forced. He’s the governor of frick’n New Jersey. Being above politics there is about as possible as cleaning out a stable by hand without getting your white gloves dirty. The fact that voters want to hear that stuff doesn’t make it true. It makes it pandering.
Anyway, Christie set the standard for his straight talking. He set the standard of being better than petty politics. And, yesterday, he laid down a marker for what he knew and didn’t know. If that marker is proven phony, it will profoundly undermine the criteria by which he asks voters to judge him. And that wound will be entirely self-inflicted.
But come on! You have to wonder how some of the folks in the media can look at themselves in the mirror. The three network news shows have devoted orders of magnitude more coverage to a story about closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge than they have to the IRS scandal. I know this is not a new insight, but WHAT THE HELL!?
The sheer passion the New York Times-MSNBC mob is bringing to a partial road closure is a wonder to behold. What about the children! The chiiiiillllldrennnn!!!!!
But using the IRS to harass political opponents — one of the charges in the articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon —well, that’s complicated. The president didn’t know. The government is so vast. I had a flat tire! A flood! Locusts! It wasn’t his fault! Besides Chris Christie joked about putting down the cones himself! The cones, man! The cones!
But forget about the IRS scandal. Obama’s whole shtick is to pretend that he’s above politics while being rankly political about everything, including his stated desire to “punish our enemies.” By comparison, Chris Christie looks like Diogenes and Cincinnatus rolled into one. From inauguration day forward, this whole crew has behaved like Chicago goons dressed in Olympian garb, and the press has fallen for it.
We don’t need to recycle the whole sordid history of the sequester and the shutdown to remember that this White House sincerely, deliberately, and with malice aforethought sought to make things as painful as possible for millions of Americans. Traffic cones on the George Washington Bridge are a stain on the honor of New Jersey. (Stop laughing!) But deliberately pulling air-traffic controllers to screw with millions of people is just fine? Shafting World War II vets and vacationing families at National Parks is something only crazy right-wingers on Twitter would have a problem with? And keep in mind, it is at least plausible Christie didn’t know what his staff was doing. It is entirely implausible that the president didn’t know about the WWII memorial closure, after the news appeared in the president’s daily briefing (a.k.a. the New York Times).
I’d say I just don’t get it, but I do get it. For the mainstream media, skepticism comes naturally when a Republican is in the crosshairs. It comes reluctantly, slowly, and painfully — if at all — when it’s a Democrat.
Dayton Ward disagrees with that assessment, but goes with it anyway:
Strictly as an exercise in goofy fun, I posited the idea that rather than taking bits or pieces from previous series or films to fill out the storyline for a new movie, that we should compile a list of episodes which all but beg for a wholesale remake. Fans for years have speculated what extravagant do-overs of the most memorable episodes from the original series in particular might look like on the big screen. So, I figured, “What the heck?” Why not engage in a little fanboy wish-listing? …
Presented here in alphabetical order, the results of our little online experiment:
“Balance of Terror,”suggested by Joseph Berenato on my Facebook page – Virtually nothing is known about the Romulans in the “alternate reality” created by the Abrams Star Trek films. Just as the original episode introduced us to the enigmatic alien race, so too could a reworked and expanded version of the story. With room to breathe a bit, there would be more time for character interplay, including the fleshing out of back story for the Romulans and their culture. The scope of the film also could be opened up, with scenes set away from the Enterprise and the Romulan ship, such as at one of the destroyed outposts or a new planet-based location. Would Kirk and the Romulan Commander battle each other face to face, or would the ship-based aspects of the original tale still rule the day? …
“The City on the Edge of Forever,” suggested by Joseph Berenato on my Facebook page – Widely regarded as one of Star Trek’s finest hours—if not the finest hour—what would it take to update and expand this story to feature film length and scope? To be honest, I don’t have the first clue, and maybe it should never be attempted, but if a decision is ever made to revisit this classic tale, then there really is only one person suited to the task: the episode’s original writer, the incomparable Harlan Ellison. Perhaps the answer lies not with the televised episode, but within Ellison’s original screenplay, the development of which is worth a book all its own…so much so that Ellison himself already wrote it! Somewhere within the different versions of the story may well lay the seeds for a new take on Captain Kirk’s ultimate tragic romance. …
“The Doomsday Machine” – Are you kidding? One of the most iconic episodes from any of the Star Trek series is just screaming for a big-budget revamping. This is an absolute no-brainer for me. Just think of what an expanded storyline could do to give us more background on Commodore Matt Decker and his crew, before and during their fateful encounter with the mammoth alien machine. We could even get some insight into the beings who built the thing (just so long as they don’t turn out to be evolved hamsters, or something). And of course it’s just the kind of story that lends itself to the eye-popping space scenes that drive summer blockbusters. Besides, who doesn’t want to see Karl Urban’s Doctor McCoy give Crazy Matt the business? The great Norman Spinrad’s still around, so I say let him have first crack at updating and enhancing his original tale. …
“Errand of Mercy” – If Star Trek Into Darkness showed us anything, it’s that a Federation confrontation with the Klingons is likely, if not inevitable. Somebody’s already drooling at the prospect of the massive, all-out Star Wars-style battle sequences which are sure to litter a tale like this. With that in mind, let’s be sure to have a nice balance of action in space and some of that great character work Star Trek can do when it’s firing on all cylinders. Give Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk a worthy adversary in the form of Commander Kor, who can be a thorn in his side for many years to come. This also is the kind of story which could be fleshed out so as to include plenty of good material for the rest of the cast while Kirk and Spock are dealing with Kor. As for the Organians? Well, Star Trek never really followed up on what the original episode established, so it’s pretty much a blank page so far as what these omnipotent super beings might do, given the chance. …
“In A Mirror, Darkly” (Star Trek: Enterprise) – In truth, I figure any movie featuring the Mirror Universe also would take cues from original Star Trek episodes “Mirror Mirror” and “The Tholian Web.” If the filmmakers wanted to use this conceit as a means of showcasing the “old school” U.S.S. Defiant and the original series aesthetic in order to represent the original timeline, I’d be game. Maybe part of an expanded story using elements from the various episodes could be used to show how Mirror Spock deals with his Captain Kirk. I wonder what Zachary Quinto would look like in a beard? Or, maybe they tweak the idea enough so that Leonard Nimoy could be Mirror Spock. Also, is Trek fandom ready for “Empress Nyota?” I think we could handle it. …
“Mudd’s Women”/”I, Mudd” or “The Trouble With Tribbles,” suggested by Melissa Nickerson and John Ordover on my Facebook page – During the discussion we had about this topic over on Facebook, friend and former Pocket Books Star Trek fiction editor John Ordover made the point that after the fairly intense storylines which have dominated the last few films, it might well be time to lighten things up a bit. Just as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was a definite change of pace following the first three movies, so too could a fresh take on a lovable rogue adversary like Harry Mudd or Cyrano Jones. Tackling a more whimsical tale would depend in large part on the actor chosen for the pivotal role of the scoundrel du jour. For my money, I can see Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) as Mudd, but what about Jones? Hmmm?
This, first, is an outstanding list, combining my two favorite episodes (“Balance of Terror” and “The Doomsday Machine”), the most award-winning episode (“City on the Edge of Forever”), and two other favorites (“Mirror, Mirror” and “The Trouble with Tribbles”). The Harcourt Fenton Mudd episodes are amusing, but “I, Mudd” was over-the-top campy, though the use of the Liar’s Paradox is great.
Each of the original episodes was longer than an hour-long series today, because the networks jam in more commercials. Many episodes required substantial pre-filming script editing. Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison wrote “City,” which required enormous rewrites because creator Gene Roddenberry objected to Ellison’s characterization of some of the Enterprise’s crew. “Tribbles” author David Gerrold typed his script on a 12-pica IBM Selectric typewriter (remember those?), and when, as the studios did in those days, Desilu distributed the first draft of the script as retyped using a 10-pitch typewriter, it was 90 pages long. At one minute per page, Gerrold said, that could have been the first 90-minute episode of “Star Trek.”
The problem, however, is how to add material without padding to stretch a one-hour TV episode into a two-hour movie. This might be easiest in the case of “Balance of Terror,” because it was based on a movie, “The Enemy Below.” A movie could delve into the backstory of Romulans and Vulcans being related, along with the particular anti-Romulan animus of the navigator in the original. (That, however, is a character not in the current version of “Star Trek” — Chekov arrived in the second season.)
“The Enemy Below” was about a U.S. destroyer and a German submarine, each pursuing the other in the North Atlantic. The German sub had a war-weary captain and his friend the executive officer, plus other characters including a more-Nazi-than-thou officer. There is one scene while the sub is in silent running where the captain looks at his exec to have him look at super-Nazi, who is of course reading Mein Kampf. The exec looks back at the captain and shrugs. The scene could not have been done better.
“The Enemy Below” shows that while the Germans were the enemy, not all Germans were that different from the Allies. (Which is different from claiming that the Axis and the Allies were equally bad.) “Balance of Terror” is similar in showing a Romulan captain who does his job well and carries out his orders without necessarily agreeing with them.
As for “The Doomsday Machine,” there’s a sequel option there too if any more “Star Trek: The Next Generation” movies are made. One of the better TNG novels, Vendetta, posits that the doomsday machine was created by a race at war with … the Borg. Some of the action in the original occurs off-screen — the machine eating a planet onto which Commodore Decker’s crew was beamed down after the machine damaged Decker’s ship — and obviously could be included to devastating effect. (Imagine watching the planet you’re standing on destroyed — watching your own death.)
The scene where Kirk orders Spock to relieve Decker (Kirk’s superior officer) of command is not only one of the greatest moments in the history of the series (all five series and all the movies), it is quintessential Kirk and a demonstration of why Kirk was the superior captain to all the rest. Kirk would do anything for his ship, including blatantly violate not just Starfleet regulations, but protocol of any military in the history of mankind.
“Tribbles” would be an interesting choice, because there’s more there than casual viewers might think. Gerrold wrote that James Doohan, who played Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, who had to clean up the tribbles from the Enterprise, pointed out that the tribble crisis could have cost Captain Kirk his command thanks to a series of events beyond Kirk’s control combined with Kirk’s antagonism toward the Federation bureaucrat in charge of the quadrotriticale project. The episode had the Enterprise protecting a shipment of wheat — sorry, quadrotriticale — on a space station for a planet experiencing a famine, when along comes Cyrano Jones and his tribbles, followed closely by the Klingons. What happens if the tribbles eat all the grain? (Apparently tribbles are not gluten-intolerant. And as viewers know, if you feed a tribble, you get a bunch of hungry little tribbles.) What happens if the Klingons attack the space station? What if the Organians give Sherman’s Planet to the Klingons? Any of those scenarios would probably be a career-killer for Kirk.
The problem with any of these, of course, is the inevitable comparisons between J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” and the original. It’s impossible to imagine, for instance, better music than the original “Doomsday Machine” soundtrack …
… which was also used for “Journey to Babel,” “Mirror, Mirror,” “Obsession,” “The Immunity Syndrome” and other episodes.
There’s also the larger issue of why not just a series, but an episode is being remade. Of course, the long and dreary list of TV-sh0ws-turned-inferior-movies — “Wild Wild West,” anyone? — shows that ship sailed a long time ago, and is a subject that would take up far more space than this blog.
Evangeline Vangie Gwost, age 99, of Little Falls, passed away Thursday, Dec. 19, 2013, at St. Ottos Care Center in Little Falls. …
Evangeline Vangie Merchlewicz was born Aug. 2, 1914, in Little Falls, the daughter of Joseph and Frances (Sniezek) Merchlewicz. She grew up in Little Falls and graduated from Little Falls High School, Class of 1932. Following her schooling, she worked for the Farm Security Administration in Little Falls and across northwestern Minnesota. During World War II, she was a court reporter at Camp Ripley. She was engaged to George Gwost before he went to serve during the War in the Pacific. Upon his return, the couple was married April 10, 1945, at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. During their honeymoon, they went to the Busch Gardens in St. Louis. It was there they got their initial inspiration to start a rose garden which grew to 500 bushes in their retirement. Vangie worked as a professional secretary for many companies in Little Falls and retired from Morrison County Social Services. Her retirement was short lived and she began working at the Morrison County Record as a proofreader. She was soon asked to begin a cooking column, Whats Cookin In The County, which she began in 1981 and continued until her second retirement in 1996. Vangies commitment to her church was life-long. She began playing the organ in the third grade and played until 2002. She and George were life-long members of the Senior Choir. She also played at St. Ottos for 10 years. Vangie was instrumental in the launch of the basement remodeling committee which she co-chaired with her husband, George. They published a cookbook, which she co-edited with Geri Wotzka, to fund the basement renovation. Vangie enjoyed working, cooking, flower gardening, was famous for her kolaches, dancing, music and with George, hosted many parties in their backyard log cabin. …
Vangie was preceded in death by her parents; husband, George (May 6, 2008); infant daughter, Mary Suzanne; brothers, Vincent, Dominic, John, Jerome Merchlewicz and sisters, Celia Rue, Helen Trebiatowski, Sr. Vincent (Lucille) DePaul, Esther Prestegard and Leona Janousek.
Vangie was my great-aunt, and, as far as I know, the first columnist in the family. The brothers and sisters were my great-uncles and great-aunts (five of whom, I believe, I met), and Esther was my grandmother, who died before I was born. I found out about her cooking column on one of our Little Falls trips, so I mentioned that to the cooking columnist at the newspaper I worked at in college, so Vangie got to be a guest columnist in Monona, and perhaps our cooking columnist was a guest columnist in Little Falls.
Vangie was the last of her family to pass on to the great Polish family reunion in the sky. Celia lived in a big white house in Minneapolis within view of a SuperAmerica gas station sign, which fascinated the four-year-old who visited one summer. On a previous trip, the story goes, my father took my brother and me for a walk, and for some reason I decided to take a slightly different path, into a pond, to where the only thing floating was my hat. I don’t remember that, but I do remember this sequence of events on the aforementioned 1969 trip:
We visited the Como Park Zoo with Celia and Uncle Oscar. (Dad got to drive their late 1960s Plymouth Fury.) One of the stops was to the bird area, where a peacock stuck his head through the fence and bit me on my middle finger.
That trip included a visit to one of Minnesota’s giant statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox (possibly in Brainerd). On the way, our brand new 1969 Chevrolet Nomad started knocking loudly enough to scare a back-seat passenger. The nearest Chevy station claimed the brand-new car needed a new engine. The owner of the car decided it was bad gas, and avoided the former Consolidated brand thereafter.
Aunt Helen, who lived in Little Falls, owned a Buick convertible that apparently had included as a previous passenger one Hubert H. Humphrey, which is why she kept it. Her late husband was the police chief in Little Falls, and my father would visit their son during the summer. I think Herman died before I was born, although I heard enough times the story of one of his officers who found a stray cat and put it in his squad car. Said officer found out that transporting cats in cars is a bad idea for the driver and, in his case, his squad, which overturned during said transport attempt. I’m told that Herman couldn’t usually get the whole story out because he’d start laughing and then start crying from laughing.
It is said you should write about what you know. Vangie knew cooking, at epic quantities. She once admitted she stayed up all night to cook for said reunions. Every Labor Day weekend for many years she and George would host enormous family reunions at their house outside Little Falls. Uncles John and Jerry (the owner of the second English springer spaniel I ever saw, the first being our own) would sit at a table and drink beer and brandy. Some number of their four children and 10 grandchildren, plus other nieces and nephews would be there — all cousins of mine to the extent I could remember who belonged to whom. Food was eaten, adult beverages were drunk, and music was played and sung. (Including by me when cousin Mary Ann gave me her trumpet to play.)
The reunions were so large by the late 1970s that the family rented out Lindbergh State Park. One year, the Morrison County Sheriff’s Department threw us out of said Lindbergh State Park. How do you fix that? You get one of the family to marry a sheriff’s deputy. He’s now the sheriff of Morrison County.
Someone once said that Merchlewicz family reunions, weddings and funerals were all the same event. I can’t speak to the latter, but that seemed to apply to the first two. George and Vangie sang at Mary Ann’s wedding (which was not at Lindbergh State Park). I forgot the reason, but that wedding included this joke: A duck walks into a pharmacy and asks the pharmacist for a tube of Chapstick. (If this was a Wisconsin joke, it would be Carmex, of course.) The pharmacist gave the duck his Chapstick, and then the duck said, “Put it on my bill.” In keeping with that joke, when the priest presented the new couple to the congregation, a bunch of the family was wearing duck bills on their noses.
(The worst thing I can say about this family came from this wedding: A bunch of us went out that weekend to a Little Falls bar. They were drinking Grain Belt beer on tap. Appallingly bad beer.)
This is the sort of thing you see less of these days, for two reasons. Vangie was one of 10 children. Vangie and George had five children, one of whom died at birth, and the other of whom gave Vangie and George a total of 10 grandchildren. Those children live from Minnesota to Washington. Smaller and more spread out families make big family events more difficult.
That doesn’t mean that family traditions can’t continue to future generations. Every Christmas, we get from my aunt two pans of kolaches, which are Polish pastry with a drop of fruit inside. You can guess where my aunt got the recipe. I just finished ours yesterday.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 39,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Someone on the Classic Television Facebook page put together photo montages of TV shows that premiered in particular years, such as my birth year, 1965:
What’s amusing to me about this montage is that I did indeed watch several of these shows, in order as shown on the graphic:
This list is in addition to shows that were already on the air in 1965. (Reruns of “The Big Valley” replaced my first favorite show, “Circus 3” on WISC-TV in Madison, so I refuse to list it, whether or not Linda Evans was on it.) I didn’t see all of these in their original runs; the various retro TV channels were my first viewing of some of them.
While we were recovering from New Year’s Eve or watching one of the 687 bowl games on New Year’s Day, Yahoo! Sports observed:
Green Bay has perhaps the best fans in the NFL … which is why the league should be very worried that the Packers and two other teams are still struggling to sell out their playoff games.
Green Bay, as of Wednesday morning, was about 8,500 tickets short of a sellout, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Tom Silverstein. If the Packers don’t sell out by 3:40 p.m. Thursday, the game will be blacked out on local TV from Green Bay to Milwaukee. That’s almost inconceivable. The Press-Gazette said the Packers have sold out every regular-season game since 1959 (a playoff game in January of 1983, at the end of the strike-shortened season, did not). And yet they are having troubles selling out a playoff game a week after Aaron Rodgers returned from injury to beat the Bears for the NFC North title.
The Bengals produced a video with some players urging fans to buy playoff tickets, which you wouldn’t think should be necessary for a NFL playoff game. Former Bengals receiver Chad Johnson said he would buy the unsold tickets, of which there are about 8,000 according to reports, but it’s unclear if he was serious. As of Wednesday afternoon the Colts needed to sell 5,500 tickets for their game against the Chiefs before Thursday afternoon to become a sellout and avoid a local television blackout.
It would be a tremendous embarrassment to the league to have three of four playoff games blacked out locally, and likely, the tickets will get sold somehow to avoid that scenario. But there’s a bigger issue here. Is this the most stark example that NFL fans aren’t too excited to go to games anymore?
A quick glance at Ticketmaster on Wednesday afternoon showed the face-value prices for the Packers playoff game ranged from $313 and $102, not counting Ticketmaster fees. If you’ve attended a NFL game, you know that the cost doesn’t end with tickets. Parking is outrageously and insultingly high at most NFL games. Concessions aren’t cheap either. NFL teams have gouged and gouged and gouged, and maybe there’s a breaking point.
It is supposed to be a high of four degrees in Green Bay on Sunday, when the Packers play the 49ers, with a low of minus-15 degrees. Would you rather spend a few hundred dollars to sit in miserable conditions or stay at home and watch on TV, where the high-definition view is a heck of a lot better than it is better than any vantage point in the stadium? It seems that more fans are asking themselves that question, especially as the in-home experience for watching games has improved with great televisions and easy access to discuss the game with friends online.
The NFL has a serious issue on its hands when three cities are struggling to sell out a playoff game, including the Packers. All three games might sell out and the local television blackout scare will be forgotten. But the NFL better not ignore what’s happening this week. It’s not a good sign for the future.
NFL rules stipulate that if the game isn’t sold out by 3:40 p.m. Thursday, or 72 hours prior to kickoff, there will be a television blackout in local markets, including Green Bay/Fox Cities, Milwaukee and Wausau. The Packers could ask for a deadline extension, and it’s believed the league would grant that request.
Packers director of public affairs Aaron Popkey said the organization remains “optimistic” the game will sell out and a TV blackout can be averted. It’s possible a corporate sponsor could step forward and buy the remaining tickets.
Even if that occurs, it’s baffling the Packers would have to go down to the wire to sell out the most important game of the season.
How could a franchise so rich in playoff tradition, with such a hardy fan base, find itself in a predicament usually reserved for NFL teams far less popular and successful?
Not counting games involving replacement players in 1987, the last time a Packers home game didn’t sell out was in January 1983 when they hosted the St. Louis Cardinals in a first-round playoff game and many disgruntled fans were turned off by a strike-shortened season.
But what excuse is there this year? The Packers won three of their last four games in dramatic fashion to capture a third straight division championship and fifth consecutive playoff berth. Plus, the return of quarterback Aaron Rodgers from a broken collarbone offers hope the Packers can do some damage in the postseason. …
There’s a combination of factors that have contributed to the Packers’ difficulty in selling tickets this week:
■ The forecast for Sunday’s game calls for a high in single digits and a below-zero wind chill. It’s understandable that instead of shelling out between $102 and $125 for a ticket to the deep freeze, a fan would rather watch the game from the comfort of a warm living room sofa on a high-definition, big-screen TV.
■ The Packers sent out playoff notices to season ticket holders during the worst part of their season when Rodgers’ return was uncertain and they were getting crushed by the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving. It’s likely many threw away their order forms thinking the Packers had no hope of earning a playoff berth.
■ The Packers overestimated the loyalty of their fan base by imposing a new no-refund playoff ticket policy in which unused money would be applied to next season’s tickets. The team also initially limited ticket sales this week to four per customer but quickly removed that restriction when it realized how slow tickets were selling.
■ The Packers added 7,000 seats to Lambeau Field this season, increasing the capacity to 80,750 and making it more difficult to sell out a game that isn’t part of the season-ticket package. It raises concerns that the Packers might have trouble filling their stadium, the third-largest in the NFL, if the team ever goes into an extended losing drought like it did in the 1970s and 1980s.
As a Packer shareholder, I got an email earlier this week:
Dear Green Bay Packers Shareholder,
The Green Bay Packers are pleased to offer an opportunity to purchase
tickets to the NFC Wild Card Game, scheduled for Jan 5th at Lambeau Field.
Thank you for your continued support of the Green Bay Packers. We look
forward to seeing you at Lambeau Field!
Fans younger than myself have gotten to see Packer games, wherever played, for their entire lives. So it might come as a surprise that, unless they lived within range of the Wausau or Madison CBS stations or points west, Packer fans did not get to see home games on TV before 1974, when the NFL’s current blackout policy came into existence.
Until 1973, the NFL blacked out TV broadcasts in teams’ home markets, which by the NFL’s definition included Green Bay and Milwaukee. From 1973 onward, home games were allowed to be broadcast only if the game was sold out within 72 hours of kickoff.
(The reason the blackout policy changed has to do with, believe it or don’t, the Packers. Green Bay’s only playoff berth in the 1970s sent the Packers to Washington. The Redskins won on the way to their first Super Bowl berth, in Super Bowl VII, but without any D.C. Redskins fans, most notably including President Richard Nixon, being able to see the games on TV. The story goes that Nixon’s attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, asked NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to lift the blackout, a request Rozelle refused. Kleindienst then supposedly said the Nixon administration might have to review the NFL’s antitrust exemption. However, Congress beat Nixon to the punch, passing a law the following year that led to home games on TV.)
This has been an issue a few more times than Yahoo! and Vandermause reported. Preseason games at Milwaukee County Stadium sometimes didn’t sell out, so I recall not being able to see Saturday night preseason games until the following morning on WISC-TV in Madison. There were County Stadium games in the ’80s and ’90s that didn’t sell out until the Milwaukee TV station scheduled to carry the games purchased the remaining tickets before the deadline. The station bought the tickets, of course, to avoid the blackout and losing all the revenue from the commercials it sold for the game.
That is, I predict, what will happen if the final deadline (assuming an NFL extension, which is pretty likely) arrives without the remaining 7,500 (or fewer, one assumes at this point) tickets sold. Neither WLUK-TV in Green Bay nor WITI-TV in Milwaukee wants to lose the local ad revenue from Sunday’s game. If they buy the tickets, they will make less money on the game, but less revenue is better than no revenue.
This, too, hasn’t been uncommon elsewhere in the NFL over the years. The 1958 NFL championship, claimed to be the Greatest Game Ever Played, wasn’t seen in New York. One of the greatest postseason comebacks in NFL history, Buffalo’s 38-35 overtime win over Houston …
… wasn’t seen in Buffalo because the Bills didn’t sell out. One reason why the NFL hasn’t returned to Los Angeles since the departures of the Rams and Raiders is that Rams and Raiders games rarely sold out in L.A., even playoff games.
The NFL is the only professional league that has a blackout policy anymore. (Individual sports teams had their own blackout policies, however. The Chicago Blackhawks used to ban home-game broadcasts until owner William Wirtz, well, died. Wirtz’s son allowed home-game broadcasts. Wirtz’s son is much more popular in Chicago than his father was, for reasons beyond the two Stanley Cups.) The NFL obviously wants to keep people coming to the stadiums and spending money therein, particularly in all those stadiums built and renovated to make people spend money in them. For what it’s worth, the leagues that don’t have a blackout policy don’t always sell out early playoff games.
The reason the NFL’s blackout policy might have to end has to do with those new stadiums, believe it or not. In almost all cases, those stadiums have been built with significant taxpayer contribution. There is no constitutional right to watch a sporting event, but given that taxpayers, whether or not they are football fans, are paying for stadiums, that’s still a good point to bring up to politicians whose main goal is to get reelected.
I don’t think this is necessarily an ominous portent for the Packers, which could host the NFC Championship if they beat San Francisco Sunday and win their second-round game on the road. (I predict an NFC championship game at Lambeau will be sold out well before the blackout deadline.) Packer fans’ enthusiasm for the team doesn’t necessarily extend to unexpectedly spending more than $100 per ticket (plus air fare for those who can’t drive due to time or distance), immediately following the holidays, to sit outside in single-digit temperatures and below-zero wind chills, to watch a team that as recently as 10 days ago appeared to have no hope of getting into the playoffs. On the other hand, Packer tickets cost less than the league average, and Lambeau Field is one of the largest NFL stadiums. If I were part of the management team of the Bengals or Colts, I might be more disturbed, since Paul Brown Stadium is one of the smaller NFL stadiums, and Colts fans have no weather excuse given Lucas Oil Stadium’s retractable roof.
The NFL should find this disturbing too. Again, it’s right after the holidays, and playoff tickets are more expensive than regular-season tickets. But perhaps this demonstrates that the NFL’s appeal isn’t unlimited in the universe of entertainment and non-essential consumer spending. Maybe it also demonstrates that, contrary to what the Obama administration and its apologists want you to believe, the economy really isn’t good enough to spend a few hundred dollars to attend an NFL playoff game.
This report on the State of Conservatism comes at the end of an annus mirabilis for conservatives. In 2013, they learned that they may have been wasting much time and effort.
Hitherto, they have thought that the most efficient way to evangelize the unconverted was to write and speak, exhorting those still shrouded in darkness to read conservatism’s most light-shedding texts. Now they know that a quicker, surer method is to have progressives wield power for a few years. This will validate the core conservative insight about the mischiefs that ensue when governments demonstrate their incapacity for supplanting with fiats the spontaneous order of a market society. …
Franklin Roosevelt, emboldened by winning a second term in 1936, attempted to pack, by expanding, the Supreme Court, to make it even more compliant toward his statism. He failed to win congressional compliance, and in 1938 he failed to purge Democrats who had opposed him. The voters’ backlash against him was so powerful that there was no liberal legislating majority in Congress until after the 1964 election.
That year’s landslide win by President Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater, less than 12 months after a presidential assassination, left Democrats with 295 House and 68 Senate seats. Convinced that a merely sensible society would be a paltry aspiration, they vowed to build a Great Society by expanding legislation and regulation into every crevice of Americans’ lives. They lost five of the next six and seven of the next 10 presidential elections. In three years we shall see if progressive overreaching earns such a rebuke.
In 2013, the face of progressivism became Pajama Boy, the supercilious, semi-smirking, hot-chocolate-sipping faux-adult who embodies progressives’ belief that life should be all politics all the time — come on, everybody, spend your holidays talking about health care. He is who progressives are.
They are tone-deaf in expressing bottomless condescension toward the public and limitless faith in their own cleverness. Both attributes convinced them that Pajama Boy would be a potent persuader, getting young people to sign up for the hash that progressives are making of health care. As millions find themselves ending the year without insurance protection and/or experiencing sticker shock about the cost of policies the president tells them they ought to want, a question occurs: Have events ever so thoroughly and swiftly refuted a law’s title? Remember, it is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
From Detroit’s debris has come a judicial ruling that the pensions that government employees’ unions, in collaboration with the political class, extort from taxpayers are not beyond the reach of what they bring about — bankruptcy proceedings. In Wisconsin, as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s emancipation legislation requiring annual recertification votes for government workers’ unions and ending government collection of union dues, more than 70 of 408 school district unions were rejected.
This year’s debate about the National Security Agency demonstrated the impossibility of hermetically sealing distrust of government to one compartment of it. Worries about the NSA’s collection of metadata occurred in a context of deepened suspicions about government because of this year’s revelations that the administration has corrupted the Internal Revenue Service, the most intrusive and potentially the most punitive domestic institution. Conservatism is usually served by weariness of government.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 