We begin with this unusual event: Today in 1978, the members of Aerosmith bailed out 30 of their fans who were arrested at their concert in Fort Wayne, Ind., for smoking marijuana:
Britain’s number one single today in 1987:
Today in 1992 on NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live,” Sinead O’Connor torpedoed her own career:
National Review reports that Michigan voters will have a referendum to vote upon Nov. 6:
Proposal 2, called the “Protect Our Jobs” amendment, would constitutionally guarantee collective-bargaining rights to both private and public employees and invalidate any existing state laws that “abridge, impair, or limit” these rights. Its opponents argue that the amendment would nullify much of the reform legislation that has passed since Republican Rick Snyder took the governor’s office in 2011. Upwards of 170 pieces of legislation could be affected if the proposal passes, according to state business leaders.
“Union contracts will trump state law,” says Jim Holcomb of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, “and that’s not hyperbole.”
Even the proposal’s advocates aren’t completely sure how far its impact could reach. During a legal filing with the state board of canvassers, an attorney for the unions said nobody could determine what specific parts of Michigan law the amendment might affect. “If POJ passes, its interaction with existing constitutional provisions, laws, and ordinances will be determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis,” he explained.
The next paragraph is far from an understatement:
The outcome for the initiative will be hugely consequential in a region of the country where conflict over collective bargaining has drawn national attention over the last year. Unions suffered significant blows when they failed to recall Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and when Indiana passed right-to-work legislation. But the Chicago Teacher’s Union strike and Ohio voters’ rejection of Governor John Kasich’s reforms concerning public-employee unions show that labor leaders still have a lot of sway in the heartland.
The Wall Street Journal’s Shikha Dalmia adds:
Michigan public unions began pushing the initiative last year, shortly after Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder—facing a $2 billion fiscal hole—capped public spending on public-employee health benefits at 80% of total costs. This spring, national labor unions joined the amendment effort after failing to prevent Indiana from becoming a right-to-work state. …
The amendment says that no “existing or future laws shall abridge, impair or limit” the collective-bargaining rights of Michigan workers. That may sound innocuous, but according to Patrick Wright of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the amendment would hand a broad mandate to unions to challenge virtually any law they don’t like. …
Thanks to media leaks, we know that already the Michigan Education Association has drawn up an internal wish list of all the laws it will challenge if the initiative passes. The targets include a cap on the health-care benefits of teachers, and reforms to teacher tenure that recently enabled schools to promote teachers based on merit rather than seniority alone. But what’s really exciting the teachers union is the prospect of killing “interdistrict or intradistrict open enrollment opportunities”—which would otherwise promote some competition in education by letting parents vote with their feet and send their kids to better schools. …
The Michigan amendment could also mean the blocking of future laws challenging union privileges. So Michigan’s legislature would never be able to, say, pull a Scott Walker and stop doing unions the favor of withholding dues from public-employee paychecks.
It gets worse. The ballot initiative states that it would “override state laws that regulate hours and conditions of employment to the extent that those laws conflict with collective bargaining agreements.” In other words, collective-bargaining agreements negotiated behind closed doors would trump the legislature—a breathtaking power grab that would turn unions into a super legislature.
Given that Michigan is an economic competitor of Wisconsin, at first blush this looks like a great idea for Michigan. Imagine the flood of Upper Peninsula businesses leaving for more business-friendly Wisconsin. (And look how much better Wisconsin will look in comparison with more-broke-than-broke Illinois and business-unfriendly Michigan.) On the other hand, if this succeeds in Michigan, unions will try this in Wisconsin and other states, even though getting it through consecutive sessions of this state’s Legislature will be impossible as long as one house remains in Republican control.
Union membership is protected by the U.S. Constitution under the right of free association. (Which also means the right to not join a union, not that you’ll ever get unions to admit that.) The “right” to collective bargaining exists nowhere in the U.S. or Wisconsin Constitution. Why Michiganders would want to hand over state government to the people who helped crash most of Michigan’s economy — auto and other unions — is beyond my comprehension.
Today in 1953, Victor Borge’s “Comedy in Music” opened on Broadway, closing 849 performances later. (Pop.)
Today in 1960, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs released “Stay,” which would become the shortest number one single of all time:
The number one single today in 1965:
Rich Galen explains why I am unlikely to watch any of the presidential debates:
- A political debate has as much to do with a classical debate as a Formula One race has to do with a Monster Truck show. …
- In the olden days when I did debate prep with Congressional candidates I made sure they understood that the moderator could ask whatever question he or she wanted to ask, but the candidate was free to answer any question he or she wanted to.
- The answer didn’t have to respond directly to the question.
- Candidates have to play to their strengths. If they are good at data – quote data. If they are good at anecdotes – quote an anecdote. The worst thing a candidate who is good at anecdotes can do in a debate is try to quote data – or vice versa.
- I also counseled the staff to seek out every reporter they could find and declare, following the debate, a shockingly superior performance by their candidate.
- I told them I didn’t care if their candidate threw up on his shoes during the debate. Say it was a victory for anyone in the District who had ever suffered gastric distress.
- Watch for the answers by Obama and Romney. See how closely they track Jim Lehrer’s questions. Also watch for the post-debate “spin” and see how “shockingly superior” the performances were for each candidate according to their official spinners.
Galen didn’t mention the relatively new theme of expectations — the difference between the conventional wisdom of how a candidate is supposed to do and how he or she actually does. My favorite example is George W. Bush, who before the first 2000 debate was not expected to be able to speak in complete sentences. Well, he could and he did. His opponent, Al Gore, was, well …
Debates have nothing at all to do with being president, or for that matter governor. They may have something to do with being a member of a legislative body — that is, for those naïve enough to believe that minds aren’t already made up before the legislative body meets. The idea that the American people cannot decide between candidates for president without debates is as absurd as suggesting that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are the second coming of Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.
On the other hand, I might watch the vice presidential debate between Paul Ryan and our two-digit-IQ vice president.
I present the number one single today in 1977 to demonstrate that popularity and quality are not always synonymous:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 2004, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne officially opened AC/DC Lane, named for the band, to the bagpipes from …
Birthdays begin with actor Richard Harris, who “sang” …
The number one song today in 1957:
Today in 1967, bowing down to popular music, the BBC began its Radio 1:
The number eight song today in 1958:
Today in 1967, the Beatles mixed “I Am the Walrus,” which combined three songs John Lennon had been writing. The song includes the sounds of a radio going up and down the dial, ending at a BBC presentation of William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” Lennon had read that a teacher at his primary school was having his students analyze Beatles lyrics, Lennon reportedly added one nonsensical verse, although arguably none of the verses make much sense:
The number 33 single today in 1973 …
… 32 slots behind number one:
For those with nothing better to do tonight, I will be announcing the Platteville–River Valley football game around 7 p.m. You can listen at wglr.com.
The timing is coincidental, but the Wall Street Journal decided that one of the burning questions of today is … how biased home-team baseball TV announcers are:
The conventional wisdom in sports is that TV announcers should strive to call the game straight down the middle. It’s a philosophy that’s been embraced over the years by most of the famous baseball voices.
The first problem is: Where, other than the networks and national sports channels (that is, ESPN), is that the conventional wisdom? If you’re watching baseball on Fox or ESPN, you expect an unbiased broadcast. If you’re watching on Fox Sports or whoever carries the team in its market, you expect them to favor the team they’re covering, though not egregiously.
What’s my definition of “egregiously”?
If you’re wondering what’s going on in the American League Central pennant race over the next week, all you need to do is tune into a Chicago White Sox telecast and listen for the voice of the team’s play-by-play man, Ken “Hawk” Harrelson.
Harrelson is, to put it diplomatically, a bit of a “homer.” In other words, he’s unapologetic about his devotion to the White Sox, the team he routinely calls “the good guys.” According to one measure, Harrelson and his booth partner, Steve Stone, make more nakedly biased statements during a single game than every other TV broadcast team in the American League combined.“Let’s just say that if we’re losing, you’re going to know it,” Harrelson said in a recent interview. “I won’t sound happy.” …
Harrelson has taken a decidedly different approach. He considers himself the biggest White Sox fan on the planet. It just so happens that he’s paid to talk about them. He’s known for begging long fly balls (Stretch! Stretch!) to soar over the fence and imploring the players for key hits. He even criticizes calls that don’t go Chicago’s way. In May, he went on a rant against umpire Mark Wegner, saying that he “knows nothing about the game of baseball.” After that outburst went viral, he met with Commissioner Bud Selig and ultimately apologized.
Harrelson should apologize to anyone watching White Sox games for not only his blatant homerism — which one would expect to some extent for watching a WGN-TV White Sox game — but his unprofessionalism in announcing. Several years ago I watched the White Sox blow a ninth-inning lead and lose to California … I mean Anaheim … I mean the Los Angeles Angels. I don’t think Harrelson said 10 words as the White Sox proceeded to lose their lead and the ballgame.
(Harrelson should also apologize to Stone for ruining Stone’s reputation as a really good analyst, which he was with the Cubs’ Harry Caray before the Cubs stupidly decided they didn’t need him around anymore because he was — horrors! — too hard on the Cubs.)
Regardless of who employs them — the team or their broadcast outlet — an announcer should be expected at least to tell listeners or viewers what’s going on, not sit there in a snit because he doesn’t like what’s happening. (I once announced a season of a football team in which the team lost every game. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t take entire drives off because I didn’t like how they were playing. At a minimum, that’s unfair to the listeners and viewers. At the high school level, it’s also unfair to the players, who certainly do not intend to lose.)
Some comments claim Harrelson recognizes good performances by the “bad guys.” (Yes, that’s what he calls Sox opponents.) I have yet to hear this, but we’ll assume they’re right. The point, however, is that WGN is carried across the world via satellite, which means that not only White Sox fans, but fans of their opponents watch, and because of their superstation status, probably in greater proportions than other teams’ cable outlets.
Based on one game — yes, one game — the Journal proceeded to rate all 32 baseball team TV announcers for bias, or lack thereof:
Some of what the writer sees as bias doesn’t strike me as bias, or at least objectionable bias. The Pirates’ “E-I-E-you’re-out!” comment might be funny … once. “Casilla’s window-shopping!” is a more contemporary version of longtime Tigers’ announcer Ernie Harwell’s comment on an opponent’s called-strikeout that “He stood there like a house by the side of the road and watched it go by.” (If I ever got a chance to do baseball, I’ve thought of announcing a called strikeout as “SIT … dowwwwwwwwn.”)
As a viewer, I would be annoyed by “Can I get a big WOOOO!” or “Paul GOOOOOOOOLDSCHMIDT!” As an announcer, I am not saying anything close to that. I’m not sure who’s to blame for this, but announcers, even at the major-league level, seem increasingly eager to shriek like baboons at big moments. Some announcers sometimes seem to spend more time practicing their catch-phrases than, say, doing game prep. (I have exactly two catch-phrases: “Bullseye!” for a three-point basket, and “To the end zone!” to announce the end of a long touchdown run. The former replaced “Bango!”, a reference to former Bucks announcer Eddie Doucette that no one remembers; the latter was my attempt to say something other than “touchdown” for a football team that averaged 46 points a game.)
I do not refer to the team I’m announcing as “we,” because I’m not a member of the team. (Believe me, no team wants me on their team. And yes, that rule includes when I’m watching the Packers, Badgers or Brewers; I’m not on their teams either.) I don’t refer to players by their nicknames. The story does point out that former players who become analysts, which could include the Brewers’ Bill Schroeder, are probably more comfortable saying “we” or “us” because they were on the team. And if I say “we go to the fourth quarter,” that means the listeners or viewers along with us announcers.
But if I’m announcing one specific team, I would be an idiot if I didn’t want that team to win. For one thing, the listeners want that team to win. (Which means the sponsors too.) Beyond that, if I’m covering a team in the postseason, it’s in my own best interest as an announcer for that team to win. The more the team wins, the farther it goes in the postseason. Teams that win titles tend to help their announcers’ careers, as Wayne Larrivee, who called the Bears’ Super Bowl XX win, can probably attest.
I used to announce Ripon College football and basketball games for Ripon’s cable TV channel. The last few years, those games were broadcast live on the Internet as a conference package, with each home team originating the webcast. Our games had the same announcers broadcasting for three different audiences — each teams’ fans live, and the Ripon viewers (including the players) the next day. If I got any complaints about bias, I never heard them. (In fact, one of the nicest announcing compliments I’ve ever gotten came from a follower of one of Ripon’s opponents.)
There is a difference between an announcer who wants his team to win, and an announcer who wants his team to win so badly that he refuses to acknowledge reality — that maybe his team is not as good as its opponent, or that an official’s call justifiably went the other way. One reason Harry Caray was tolerable to watch if you weren’t a Cubs fan is that Caray would turn on the Cubs when they did poorly. (Caray’s call of a Henry Aaron home run in a Braves–Cardinals game: “Here’s the pitch … oh my god … it’s over the roof.”) That also applied to his son, Skip, who was legendary for wittily skewering the team that was paying his salary. (He was fond of announcing “partial sellouts” at Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, where fans dressed as empty seats got in free, and opened one game with “And like lambs to the slaughter, the Braves take the field.”)
The first, most important thing a sports announcer must do is call the game. It amazes me how often the little things like, say, score and time don’t get mentioned. (Having written that, I must admit that one issue for me in converting from tape-delay TV to live radio is calling the score and time enough.) Beyond that, an announcer has to know his audience. Fans forgave Packer and Badger announcer Jim Irwin, and forgive Brewers announcer Bob Uecker, for their announcer lapses because their careers demonstrated that they wanted the teams they were announcing to win. That seems to be priority number one among Wisconsin sports listeners. They even forgave Larrivee for having been the Bears’ announcer before he got to the correct side of the Bears–Packers rivalry.
The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center has good news:
For those who do not speak meteorology: The orange areas indicate above-normal temperatures. The blue areas would indicate below-normal temperatures if there were any. Green indicates above-normal rainfall and brown indicates below-normal rainfall.
We could use more precipitation. But above-normal temperatures mean less need to heat, and less need for gas for snowblowers, among other benefits of warm winters. Of course, given last year’s wildly wrong prediction of winter (blamed on El Niño), and the less-than-accurate forecast (AccuWeather was half-right; the Climate Prediction Center was completely wrong) for this past summer, feel free to take this with a grain of salt.
Proving that there is no accounting for taste, here is Britain’s number one single today in 1963:
Five years later, record buyers made a much better choice:
The number one U.S. album on the same day was “Time Peace: The Rascals Greatest Hits”:
I need name neither title nor artist of the number one album today in 1974:
The number four single today in 1985:
The number one album that day was Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”:
The number one single today in 1991:
Birthdays begin with Ben E. King, one of the numerous lead singers of the Drifters before his solo career:
Nick St. Nicholas played bass for Steppenwolf:
Paul Burgess played drums for 10cc:
Med Lucart of Wall of Voodoo:
Moon Unit Zappa, fer sure fer sure:
One death of vote today in 1968: Dewey Phillips. Who? The first DJ to play the first record of Elvis Presley, on WHBQ in Memphis:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 