Today in 1962, the Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. Despite those who claim Starr is the worst Beatle musically, the change worked out reasonably well for the group.
Today in 1975, Peter Gabriel announced he was leaving Genesis. Despite those who claim Genesis was better with Gabriel in the group, the post-Gabriel Genesis outsold the Gabriel Genesis by an order of magnitude:
We interrupt your weekend to bring you this from The Big Lead:
Bo Ryan offered up what appeared to be a stunner this week: Remember how I said in June I was going to retire after this season? Yeah, not so sure about that anymore.
That’s what it sounds like on the surface. What basketball insiders behind-the-scenes are saying is much juicer. As the story goes, Bo Ryan wants his associate head coach, Greg Gard, to be his replacement. Gard has been with the program for 14 years. Ryan wants Gard to get the same deal that Mike Hopkins is getting at Syracuse – “coach-in-waiting” for Jim Boeheim.
But it sounds like Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez isn’t ready to hand the job to Gard. The rumored reason? Because of the incredible job Ryan and Gard have done the last two years – getting Wisconsin to the Final 4 – the Badgers opening is suddenly much more attractive than it was five years ago. Sure, we could give it to Gard but … what if we could snag a big name with head coaching experience and keep this machine rolling?
Could Alvarez steal Tony Bennett from Virginia? Bennett is from Wisconsin, was a former assistant there, his Dad coached there, and his star has never been brighter. His family is still in Wisconsin. Virginia’s had a splendid 2-year run that could end after this season. What about Northern Iowa coach Ben Jacobson? He’s built Northern Iowa into the second best program in the Missouri Valley Conference.
If that’s what Alvarez is thinking, Ryan has two options: 1) Stay on as head coach beyond this year (not what he wants, as he turns 68 in December) or 2) Suddenly step down before this season begins so that the Badgers have to promote Gard to “interim” head coach, and he has a chance to succeed with talented players like Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig.
It’s going to be a fun 12 weeks in Madison as this unfolds.
We begin with an interesting non-musical anniversary: Today in 1945, Major League Baseball sold the advertising rights for the World Series to Gillette for $150,000. Gillette for years afterward got to decide who the announcers for the World Series (typically one per World Series team in the days before color commentators) would be on first radio and then TV.
Another voice of my youth died this past week.
Frank Gifford disproved the claim that everyone is famous for (only) 15 minutes. He was known to my generation as the play-by-play voice of ABC’s Monday Night Football for a decade. To my parents’ generation, he was known as a football player for the New York Giants when the NFL began to pass Major League Baseball as this country’s favorite pro sport.
Gifford was ideally situated to become football’s answer to Mickey Mantle. Both were great athletes playing on a championship-level team in the nation’s biggest media market. He was the 1950s and 1960s answer to Matt Forte or LeSean McCoy, running backs (admittedly in a much more run-heavy era) who could also catch the ball. (In fact, after Gifford missed part of the 1960 season and all of the 1961 season because of a head injury, he returned as a wide receiver.) He even threw from his running back position, generally going to his left, which is not easy for a right-handed thrower.
Between 1951, when Mantle reached the big leagues, and 1964 Mantle’s Yankees played in 11 World Series, winning seven. (Remember that between 1958 and 1961 the Yankees were the only New York baseball team, with the former Brooklyn Dodgers and former New York [baseball] Giants in California, and the Mets hadn’t been born yet.) Between 1956 and 1963 Gifford’s Giants played in six NFL championship games, winning only one.
Gifford played in the 1958 NFL Championship game, claimed for years afterward as the greatest NFL game ever played, because it was the first NFL game to go into overtime. (In those days the only games that could go into overtime were playoff games.) His offensive coordinator was a guy named Vince Lombardi, who went on to Green Bay, where he told his misused running back Paul Hornung that from then on he was going to be the Packers’ Frank Gifford.
Gifford dabbled in acting as a player …
… but after his playing career ended moved to TV, announcing football for CBS (as did teammate Pat Summerall), Giants games with Chris Schenkel (who later joined Gifford at ABC) and then games with Jack Whitaker (ditto). His assignments included the first two Super Bowls and the 1967 NFL championship, better known as the Ice Bowl:
Before the 1970 season, the head of ABC Sports, Roone Arledge, contacted Gifford about joining ABC for its new Monday Night Football. Gifford, however, was still under contract to CBS, but suggested his friend, former Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith. Meredith joined Keith Jackson and Howard Cosell, and then one year later Gifford replaced Jackson.
Gifford also worked the Olympics for ABC, including the infamous 1972 gold medal basketball game between the U.S. and the Soviet Union …
… and Winter Olympics downhill skiing:
Gifford was not particularly well regarded by TV critics because he didn’t say clever things. (During the Ice Bowl, however, Gifford said, “Give me a bite of your coffee,” which Jack Buck declared the funniest thing Gifford had ever said.) TV critics may have bought into Howard Cosell’s loathing of the “jockocracy” as well. However, he was part of the highest rated TV program for seven consecutive years. He did his job well — keeping Cosell separated from Meredith, or Alex Karras, or Fran Tarkenton. He also wrote one of the better sports autobiographies, The Whole Ten Yards.
I started this by saying that Gifford was famous twice. Actually, he was famous three times. The third was for being Kathie Lee Gifford’s husband.
The number one song today in 1965:
Three years later, the singer of the number one song in Britain announced …
Today in 1976, Chicago released what would become its first number one single, to the regret of all true brass rock fans:
I just realized when I started writing this that it has been five years since the last big golf tournament in Wisconsin.
The first round of the 2015 PGA Championship is today at Whistling Straits in Haven, north of Sheboygan. I was at the 2010 PGA, covering it in my previous life as a business magazine editor, and, for the last year, publisher.
Since I had three blogs at the time, all of the events taking place that year — an alternative energy fair, the annual Road America Brian Redman vintage race car event, the annual Iola Old Car Show, the annual EAA AirVenture (which this year featured my favorite musical group, Chicago), the Packers’ annual shareholders meeting (which I was entitled to attend as an owner anyway), and, of course, the PGA — struck me as good things to attend and report upon, without having to pay to attend any of them. (That’s sort of the corollary to my long-time professional goal to be paid twice for the same work.)
Each event also got me out of the office, which is useful particularly if you have coworkers who (not to name names) tend to grate on you. We had also covered the PGA as a business story (as we had done the first Kohler golf event, the U.S. Women’s Open back in the late 1990s) because of its big tourism impact, as we had previously covered Iola and EAA.
I had never attended, or had been interested in attending, a golf tournament beyond a high school meet. I wasn’t in the business magazine world in 2004, when Whistling Straits hosted its first PGA, though the people I knew who did go raved about the experience.
I am hideously bad at playing golf (along with basically every other sport, but you knew that), so I beg off the few golf invitations I get. I don’t watch golf either, because it’s not exactly compelling TV viewing.
This, however, was compelling viewing. In one day I got to see Tiger Woods back when he could play; I saw Phil Mickelson, accompanied by a huge entourage of fans, literally disappear into a bunker; I saw John Daly wearing orange and white pants (really); and I saw Sergio Garcia hit out of a sand trap to his dissatisfaction, and then smack his sand wedge on the lip of the bunker three times, as if the carpenter’s poor work can be blamed on his tools. I also saw TBS’ Craig Sager, who was an on-course reporter for the first two days of the tournament, wearing merely a white polo shirt and black pants, as opposed to what he wears for NBA games.
If you can say only one thing about Kohler’s hospitality division, it is that they do big events right. I got fed twice (legitimately, since after writing the blog I didn’t get home until 11 p.m.), which put Kohler way up on my list. Our bag of media swag included a polo shirt (which I am wearing today), the usual media information, a pedometer for a contest among the out-of-shape media types (in one day I walked 15,000 steps, but didn’t win), and an ear-sized satellite radio so those of us without smartphones had a better idea of what was going on on the course.
Herb Kohler, the CEO of Kohler Co., is one of the richest people in Wisconsin. All those who decry the “1 Percent” must therefore be fine with not having facilities like Whistling Straits, or Kohler’s Blackwolf Run, which also hosts pro golf events. Middle-class people do not have enough money to build golf courses to host prestigious events that bring to this state tens of millions of dollars from people not from Wisconsin who come to Wisconsin to watch their favorite golfers compete. (And the 1-Percent haters must be OK with not having Major League Baseball or pro basketball, since neither Brewers owner Mark Attanasio nor the majority owners of the Bucks are middle-class either.)
The parallel between 2010 and today appears to be weather. The Whistling Straits course, a former World War II bombing range, was built on Lake Michigan to emulate a Scottish links course, not just in design, but in weather. Most British Open tournaments you watch look as if they were played on a bad Wisconsin “spring” day, with thick clouds, high winds, and golfers and spectators wearing sweaters and jackets and even gloves. Today, however, as in 2010, it apparently will be hot, though in 2010 the Lake Michigan breeze cooled things off from about 95 to about 85. (The 2010 first and second rounds were delayed because of fog, because the air was considerably warmer than Lake Michigan.)
The weather became more as expected for the weekend in 2010. So I watched on CBS, and I could see parts of the course where I had been two days earlier. The last day of the 2010 tournament was enlivened by this:
Unfortunately, I have no professional reason to go this year. But I still have the shirt. Given the fact that playoffs were needed to win the 2004 and 2010 PGAs at Whistling Straits, a playoff could be expected Sunday as well. Whistling Straits will host the 2020 Ryder Cup, which gives all Wisconsinites five years to learn match play golf rules.
The Dallas Morning News:
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban isn’t finished talking about politics.
This offseason, he’s Cyber Dusted on a plethora of political topics. Donald Trump, the GOP debate, Ted Cruz. He was even the President of the United States in this summer’s “Sharknado 3.”
Today he sent his followers this blast on the Republican Party.
Here’s what he sent his followers, typed out exactly as he sent it.
–
I am so ready for the Mavs season to start. Until then the sport of the day is politics. Today’s game is trashing the Republican Party
I would prefer to be a Republican. I want smaller government. I want smarter government. Just like most Republicans
Put aside that I disagree with Republicans on most social issues. The Republicans have a much bigger problem that will crush them in every Presidential election until this changes.
The Republican Party requires that all their Presidential candidates Conform to Consensus.
If you don’t agree with every platform of the party not only are you called a RINO, a “Republican in Name Only.” You are considered unelectable in primaries and become a source of scorn on Fox News
That’s a problem.
Leaders don’t conform to the consensus. They create consensus to their vision and goals.
Leaders don’t change their positions mid debate. They welcome scorn from the masses because it creates the opportunity for dialogue.
Leaders don’t look backwards to condemn what has already been done, they look forward to create a better future.
Leaders are not dogmatic. They are principled and know that change is never easy, but when it’s necessary, they must lead.
The Republican Party does everything possible to discourage leadership.
They want dogma.
They want conformity.
They want to conserve their romanticized past.
That’s a shame. I wish they wanted to conserve the best of what America is today and find a leader that can take us to new places that make our future better.
I realize that’s not the way politics work in this day and age. And that just proves the point.
And btw, I know a lot of the same can be said about the democrats, but I don’t want to be a democrat.
Until things change, I’ll sit in the middle and think for myself. Unlike the Republicans.
Far be it from me to criticize someone for thinking for himself. I prefer his definition of leadership to any that exists in politics today, but that is not exclusive to the GOP; it is the logical result of government that is too big, and therefore politics that is too pervasive.
I would be curious as to what Cuban thinks is so dogmatic about the GOP, and the specific dogma with which he disagrees. There is also the danger of generalizing — assuming that, for instance, all NBA players are thugs and all NBA owners are Democrats.
It’s also possible that Cuban doesn’t realize that party platforms are more than not decided by the presidential candidate. There is nothing in the 2008 or 2012 Democratic platforms that Barack Obama did not sign off on, even when they disagreed with his public stances (i.e. same-sex marriage).
Cuban may be one of us conservatarians, economic conservatives and social libertarians. It’s not clear to me, though, that any presidential candidate fits in that category, or at least any presidential candidate that has a chance of getting te GOP nomination.
The number one song in Britain today in 1964 was brought back to popularity almost two decades later by the movie “Stripes”:
That same day, the Kinks hit the British charts for the first time with …
This was, of course, the number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
That same day, KLUE in Longview, Texas, organizes the first “Beatles Bonfire,” where Beatles fans offended by John Lennon’s recent “bigger than Jesus” comment could throw their records to be burned.
The next day, KLUE’s tower was struck by lightning.
Additional respect for free speech came from Rev. Thurman H. Babbs of New Haven Baptist Church in Cleveland, who suggested that Beatles fans be excommunicated.
Despite what The Donald and Jeb! and Carly said in last week’s debate, Scott Walker’s closing statement tackled an even larger elephant in the room: “I’m a guy with a wife, two kids, and a Harley. One article called me ‘aggressively normal.’” The Wisconsin Governor’s detractors aren’t as euphemistic. Let’s face it: Scott Walker is B-O-R-I-N-G.
He brags about the bargain rack at Kohl’s. He spends his Sunday mornings at church and his Sunday afternoons watching the Packers. He live-tweets his haircuts and getting the oil changed in his Saturn. His only unhealthy obsession seems to be an addiction to hot ham and rolls after church. (He really loves hot ham.)
In a news cycle filled with burning cities, beheaded Christians, and transgendered Kardashians, how does a dull Midwesterner stand out? He showed how Thursday night. To paraphrase a reporter talking about Barry Goldwater’s presidential strategy, “my God, Walker is running as Walker!”
This isn’t the first time a politician listed “aggressively normal” as a selling point. In 1920, America’s political climate was in even greater tumult than today’s. President Wilson had fundamentally transformed the federal government into an oppressive entity that regularly jailed detractors, instituted a then-unimaginable level of regulation, and created the first income tax. Our battered soldiers returned from the charnel houses of Europe to find an executive branch pushing for an even more robust internationalism. By the time the president was incapacitated by stroke (a fact hidden for months), most Americans had had enough.
In a field of flashy candidates, a dull Midwesterner caught the zeitgeist by calling for a “Return to Normalcy”:
“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”
Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding’s promise of a boring four years delivered a landslide victory from an exhausted electorate. After dying in office he was replaced by our dullest president, Calvin Coolidge, who was succeeded by a third steady hand, Herbert Hoover.
In many ways Walker is the heir to Silent Cal; a leader focused on concrete results with minimal rhetoric and even less drama. He spent his time as a county executive and governor methodically rolling back the worst excesses of government as the world flailed around him. The unwashed progressives in Madison ranted and raved, but Walker remained the eye of the storm. Unions threatened his family, judges harassed his friends, and MSNBC’s Ed Schultz held a year-long St. Vitus’ dance, while the governor stretched in his church pew, dreaming about hot ham.
As an ideologue, I’m more attracted to conservatarian activism. If a candidate promised to cut government in half, I would think it was merely a good start. Forget balancing the budget, I want spending well below incoming revenues for the next decade. And if the next government shutdown doesn’t last a year, don’t bother. So, on paper, a “return to normalcy” shouldn’t be that appealing.
But Walker appeals to an exhaustion with politics in general. Like most small-government enthusiasts, I don’t want to think about Washington, D.C. every minute of every day. My ideal politician is someone I only hear about at election time and maybe in January when he submits his State of the Union address in writing. I would much rather focus my time on family, business, and art, than waste Christmas Eve watching C-SPAN’s live congressional feed. I long for the days when supermarket magazine racks featured celebrity weight loss tips instead of FLOTUS lecturing me about kale.
If we’re frustrated with politics now, we’ll desperate for relief by November 2016. If Scott Walker is able to capitalize on that mood — starting with a definition of what “normal” even means anymore — the White House chef might need to stock up on hot ham and rolls.
This is an ironic observation for those of us who remember the Act 10 debate and Recallarama earlier this decade. It was certainly the most bold thing a Wisconsin governor has done in quite a while, and it generated vociferous opposition, to say the least.
But only in today’s society where excess politicization crashes into hypersensitivity to offense does what Walker did seem controversial. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ended public-sector unions by executive order. Ohio Gov. John Kasich tried to do Act 10-style reforms only to have them negated in a statewide referendum.
As it is, not many voters are ideologues as Gabriel claims to be. Walker, meanwhile, is as unflappable a politician as exists today in the high-pressure 24/7 media world. He didn’t blink during the Act 10 debate, or during Recallarama. Walker may be well-positioned once Donald Trump inevitably burns out, or gets bored with running for president.
Investor’s Business Daily reports about this:
The only thing more outrageous than the EPA’s release of three million gallons of toxic waste into Colorado’s Animas River has been its cavalier response to the disaster in the days since.
On Sunday night, EPA regional director Shaun McGrath told a town hall meeting in Colorado that the EPA would “hold ourselves to the same standards that we would anyone that would have created this situation.” Right.
This is an agency that will aggressively fine businesses, municipalities and anyone or anything else for even the slightest violation of its ridiculously strict standards, but that will face zero fines for its own environmental catastrophe.
It’s an agency that claims that even the tiniest levels of pollutants are extremely hazardous, yet has been busy downplaying the damage after its own incompetence caused the release of millions of gallons of toxic waste.
A few hours after the spill, an official EPA statement described it as nothing more than a “pulse” that had “dissipated in about an hour.”
Previous pollution had already killed off most fish in the Animas, it said, so there was no real risk to wildlife.
The agency didn’t even bother to notify New Mexico officials until almost 24 hours after the breach about the menace heading their way.
In the days following, EPA officials kept telling the public that no health hazard had been detected and that there was no threat to drinking water.
As late as Monday, McGrath was still saying he couldn’t give an assessment of potential harm to people.
He couldn’t? The EPA allows only minuscule amounts of these same metals in the air and water because it thinks they are so harmful.
The “safe” level for arsenic in drinking water is a tiny 10 parts per billion. Its hugely expensive mercury and air toxic rule was designed to get coal and oil plants to cut already tiny emissions of mercury, cadmium and other such pollutants.
Yet tests have shown lead spiking at thousands of times higher than government-approved levels, arsenic at 800 times and extremely high levels of beryllium, cadmium and mercury because of the EPA spill.
And the spill has affected seven water systems in New Mexico and Colorado — where the EPA is now delivering bottled water.
When it comes to pollution, the EPA appears to have one set of rules for itself and another for everyone else.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 