Media – Page 18 – Doug's Views

March 16, 2011April 18, 2020

Kirk Herbstreit has left home

Over the weekend I saw some tweets and a Dispatch article about ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit and his family leaving Columbus and moving to Nashville Tennessee. That struck me as odd since Herbie is a dyed in the wool Buckeye. The reason he gave to the Dispatch was that relentless fans were driving him out of town. His reason didn’t surprise me.

Former player and ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit said he and his family are moving to Nashville, Tenn., 10TV News reported.
Herbstreit told the Columbus Dispatch that in his role with ESPN he has to be objective about the Buckeyes.
He said most fans understand that, but said a small percentage of them are so relentless in criticizing him that he has to move.
Herbstreit: ‘Relentless’ Fans Forced His Move To Tenn.

I met Kirk in the fall of 1988 when he was a freshman at Ohio State. The then new head coach John Cooper had decided that freshman football players needed to be more social with regular students like myself, so the players were housed in Morrill and Lincoln Dorms next door to Ohio Stadium. My room in Lincoln that year was in the same suite as Kirk and several other freshman football players.

There was Kirk and his roommate Paul. Next door was Len Hartman and his roommate Judah Herman – both would become starters for Ohio State in their years there. There were two more players in the other dorm room but I can’t remember their names. I really got to know and hang out with Kirk, Paul, and some with Len and Judah.

Kirk back then was typically shy with any new person but once we all got to know each other he opened right up and was fun to hang out with. He had the confidence and arrogance that comes with a hotshot football player. He liked to party and be with his girlfriend at the time. For someone like me, a lifetime OSU fan, it was fantastic when we would get treated better because Kirk was with us.

I remember going to a huge house party off campus where many OSU players showed up. Watching basketball player Chris Jent escorting not one but three dates around was awesome in my immature mind at the time.

Kirk brought his Nintendo game system to school and based it in my room because he didn’t want people traipsing through his room. We would play RBI Baseball all the time. Kirk played the Detroit Tigers and knew some way to make sure he won each game. He would hit the game winning home run, drop the controller and leave the room. It drove all of us nuts and we spent most of the year trying to figure out how to beat Kirk. During Spring Quarter we did finally beat him. There was a crowd in our room often for these games. We also played Tecmo Bowl football a lot.

I also remember he didn’t take criticism well. He hated not being liked. He was used to being told how great he was especially as a player but when he got to Ohio State some people didn’t like him and we heard the stories when he complained about it and we knew it bothered him.

“Relentless fans” have been the bane of his existence during his time with ESPN. I admire his effort to not be a Homer for Ohio State and think he gets too much grief here in Columbus for trying to be impartial.

What is a “Homer”?

What is a homer? I’m glad you asked. It is being a committed hometown or favorite team fan to a fault. This is a sports syndrome that many people get when they stop looking at something objectively and are subject to regional and cultural biases surrounding them. Fantasy football team owners: we are not general managers in the NFL, so stop saying “WE” when you address your favorite team. Stop jumping on your team’s, coaches, GM’s and owner’s back every time something happens that you didn’t like.
When (and when not) To Be a Homer

Most of the Columbus media are “Homers” toward OSU but Herbstreit is not. I think that’s why the relentless fans harp on him so much. He has a premier gig as ESPN commentator doing many of the big games. Some of them include Ohio State and some fans expect him to show bias toward OSU during the broadcasts.

It’s funny because there are several former players that work other sports like Clark Kellogg in basketball and I don’t see them getting hassled but then again maybe they do but it doesn’t bother them as much.

I actually feel bad that Kirk felt he needed to move away but knowing him like I do, it doesn’t surprise me.

March 14, 2011April 18, 2020

King Kasich censors press at budget plan press conference

Found out today that Ohio Governor John Kasich is censoring any video or photos from his budget plan release press conference on Tuesday. The arrogance of this joker is ridiculous. I guess he doesn’t want any video record of what he presents that can be used against him later. You last saw this kind of secrecy in the administration of President George W Bush and has never been done at the state level. Kasich has also fallen in a recent poll and he’s only been in office three months. King Kasich

Reporters have been told they will not be allowed to broadcast sound and images from the Tuesday release of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s budget plan.
Spokeswoman Connie Wehrkamp says journalists can bring only pens, notepads and tape recorders to the afternoon briefing, where Kasich is to announce the first details of his state spending blueprint for the next two years. She says videos and photos will be prohibited and the audio may not be used for anything but checking accuracy.
Gov. Kasich Forbids Broadcast of His Budget Plan

King Kasich’s day gets worse.

In his first two months as Governor, John Kasich has scored a lower approval rating than the last three Governors, including Bob Taft, at this point in their terms. Most telling in this first poll are the independents, who at this point, are decidedly against the Governor – disapproving 52% to 30%. Kasich receives even worse marks for his handling of the economy, picking up the approval of just 38% of those polled.
Buyer’s Remorse: New Poll Shows Voters Abandoning Kasich

February 28, 2011April 18, 2020

Walker Remorse – Union people who voted GOP have second thoughts

In a recent post I asked how many union people in Wisconsin and Ohio voted against their interests and helped elect the cheap labor conservatives now trying to take away their collective bargaining rights. Looks like in Wisconsin we now know it was at least 17 points worth to the Democratic side.

The difference between how folks would vote now and how they voted in November can almost all be attributed to shifts within union households. Voters who are not part of union households have barely shifted at all- they report having voted for Walker by 7 points last fall and they still say they would vote for Walker by a 4 point margin. But in households where there is a union member voters now say they’d go for Barrett by a 31 point margin, up quite a bit from the 14 point advantage they report having given him in November.
It’s actually Republicans, more so than Democrats or independents, whose shifting away from Walker would allow Barrett to win a rematch if there was one today. Only 3% of the Republicans we surveyed said they voted for Barrett last fall but now 10% say they would if they could do it over again.
A big part of Scott Walker’s victory in November- and Ron Johnson’s as well- was Democratic voters sitting at home. Our final pre election poll in Wisconsin found that likely voters had supported Barack Obama by only 3 points in 2008, in contrast to his actual 14 point victory in the state. Those sleeping dogs aren’t lying any more though and when you combine the reinvigoration of the base with GOP union households trending back toward the Democrats, Walker seems to have severely hurt his party’s chances of building on their gains from 2010 next year.
Do over?

January 25, 2011April 18, 2020

Media no friend to man with the Golden Voice

Ted Williams and Dr. Phil You couldn’t miss him. One of the first Internet blow ups of 2011. A homeless man from Columbus, Ohio who gained national exposure for his radio DJ sounding voice. Ted Williams was homeless because of drugs and alcohol abuse that crashed his life and his family relationships. So his sudden fame was one of those great “American dream” stories? Ted was thrust into the media whirlpool and it looks like he will be spit out after the leeches get their fill.

It started out with good intentions. A Columbus Dispatch reporter takes a video of Ted hustling for money at an Interstate exit. He has a “golden voice” and the video proves it as he does a professional sounding radio air check. Next the right people see the video at the right time and Ted is plucked out of the make shift tent home in the bushes near the interchange and into the lime light. National print, radio, and TV appearances follow as does tons of job offers from companies that see a feel good story any first year marketing major could see.

In the first week of Ted’s new fame no one talked about him getting help for his addictions. He claimed he had been sober for two years but it is very rare that an addict can just go cold turkey like that. When other people have lived in such conditions, like if they were abducted, there usually are mental health professionals who help them transistion back into normal society. Here was a guy who lived a rough life on the streets for more than few years and people took him at his word that he was sober and okay. They didn’t seem to be getting him all the help he needed to acclimate back into regular society.

After the umpteenth article in the Columbus Dispatch about Ted, I tweeted the editor, on January 6th, and asked if Ted would be getting some mental health help.

Me: Do you know if there is any mental health help for Ted Williams – I worry he might slip back to bad habits
Ben Marrison: Apparently #TedWilliams, the #GoldenVoice was offered some type of counseling support today.
http://twitter.com/#!/dispatcheditor/status/23026961144094720

So it seems no one addressed his mental health needs for four days. Of course the media got all they needed from Ted with all the appearances and interviews.

Ted next showed up on the Dr. Phil show and I guess people might say he was getting help then but Dr. Phil McGraw gave up his licence to practice psychology in 2005 and the State of California considers his show entertainment. After the third full show, Ted agreed to go to rehab since he had relapsed due to the stress of his new found fame.

Williams left after two weeks because his manager said he had work in Los Angeles.

All ends well, right? Nope. The Hollywood ending is just that – found only in a movie – especially when it involves a drug and alcohol abuser.

Ted Williams really needs professional help if he is going to really control his addictions

January 17, 2011April 18, 2020

Fact Check – the @Weirdodo @joegallant and @m4zdaman tribute post

It started with a tweet and brought out how some are misinformed about history. One has to wonder why people tell or repeat lies that can be refuted so easily.

I heard about the Tucson shooting victim who was arrested for making a death threat to a Tea Party person at a taping for the ABC News Sunday news show “This Week” and sent off a flippant tweet:

Violent words from Right 20 from Left 1 – Death threat at ABC-TV Town Hall event Saturday

I wrote it because I knew that the people on the right and by extension the corporate media would hold that event out as proof that “both sides do it” which is actually a false equivalence. The violent rhetoric from the right far outstrips any coming from the left – if any from the left even exists.

Later a few of tweets pop up in my mention file:

@cadfile Keith Olbermann praised a man for threatening the life of a Tea Party member here
@cadfile As far as violent words. The left seems to confuse political metaphor with reality calling it violent words
@cadfile I see violence as a left-wing thing. The guy that flew airplane into IRS building was a Communist & SEIU beating a man up

And that was from just one person @m4zdaman

The truth is that Olbermann praised the man on his Friday show – a day before the incident as the article and a check of the show’s website shows. That means that m4zdaman thinks that Olbermann is clairvoyant. Nice trick – then why didn’t he stop it before it happened?

The IRS plane crasher wasn’t from the left and the SEIU beating was found to be a hoax.

Of course my question has always been why does the right have to use violent “metaphors” in political discussions. All I know is some men use violent words to compensate for a small penis or a questioning of their sexuality. I wonder if that is true for those on the right that use those unnecessary words. It just seems that those on the right want to be dicks for the sake of being a dick – kind of like Biff Tannen was in the Back to the Future movies.

Next I get a few tweets from @Weirdodo and @joegallant who like @m4zdaman seem to think flooding people with tweets somehow “proves” your intelligence or correctness. Here are the more ridiculous ones:

@cadfile Violent actions from left, 1000 to 1, http://tinyurl.com/the-real-KKK Gee, looks almost like current events!
@cadfile Um… KKK was the paramilitary arm of the pre-war southern Democrat party
@cadfile “The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and Freedmen’s Bureau workers”

So the false equivalence they are drawing is that the Democratic Party of the 1950’s and 1960’s is the same party that elected President Obama in 2008 and the KKK from the 1950’s and 60’s would support a black President.

Yes the Democratic party was in general made up of a large number of southern people who supported Jim Crow laws and segregation. Although it was a southern Democratic President who supported and got the Civil Rights Act passed. The KKK was a domestic terrorist group that was anti-minority, anti-immigrant, pro-white, right wing nationalists. They also supported Jim Crow laws and segregation.

Leading Democrats of the time were racist such as Strom Thurman, Jesse Helms, and Robert Byrd. Back then many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. Thurman switched to the GOP in 1964 to support Goldwater and oppose the Civil Rights Act. Helms switched to the GOP in the early 70’s while Byrd stayed in the party but moderated his views.

The main reason the GOP changed to more conservative and racist was the Southern strategy where Republicans like Richard Nixon scared white voters in the south and they voted for Republicans. The more liberal Democrats then took control of the party and evolved as the opposite of the GOP. However there are still some conservative members just as there use to be more liberal Republicans back in the day.

So if we were going to humor @Weirdodo and @joegallant we could say that if the KKK existed today like they did in 60’s it would be the paramilitary arm of the GOP since it seems the GOP has the worst problem with a black President and a liberal agenda for health and social programs.

I think it’s funny that someone on the right has to go back to the dark days of the Jim Crow south which makes the false equivalence so obvious and striking.

Again in the past two years, coinciding with the Obama administration, the amount of actual violence coming from the right is off the chart. He is just a brief summary:

July 2008: A gunman agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America” kills two and wounds four at a Unitarian church.
October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee for a plot to murder Barack Obama and dozens of other African-Americans.
December 2008: A father-son team involved in the “patriot” movement try to extort a bank with a homemade bomb; they end up killing two police officers.
January 2009: A white supremacist in Brockton, Mass., rapes a black woman, kills her sister and a homeless man, and is captured while en route to a Jewish community center.
April 2009: A white supremacist and gun nut kills three Pittsburgh cops because he believed conspiracy theories about President Obama taking away his guns. He had been posting Glenn Beck videos on a neo-Nazi website.
May 2009: Another right-wing crazy in Okaloosa County, Fla., also fearing his guns would be confiscated, kills two cops before being shot dead.
June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester kills a security guard at the Holocaust Museum.
July 2009: A woman takes a break from posting Glenn Beck videos on her MySpace page to case an Air National Guard Base in Long Island. Upon her arrest, authorities find an assault rifle, a shotgun and 500 rounds of ammo in her car.
August 2009: A man in Collier Township, just south of Pittsburgh, walks into a women’s aerobics class and kills three women. His diary states, “Good luck to Obama! He will be successful. The liberal media LOVES him. Amerika has chosen The Black Man. Good!”
February 2010: An anti-government tax protester flies his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and one other.
March 2010: Seven militiamen in Michigan and Ohio are arrested for plotting to assassinate local police officers to spark a new civil war. This is also the month that an anti-government extremist walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two, before being shot dead.
May 2010: A mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., is firebombed.
July 2010: A Glenn Beck fanatic loads his car with weapons and drives to the Bay Area to attack the offices of the Tides Foundation and ACLU. He is wounded in a shootout along with the patrolmen after they intercept him on a routine traffic stop.
September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man who refers to himself as the “Christian counterpart to bin Laden” is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up an abortion clinic.
Violence from the right

The corporate media meanwhile is quick to downplay these events and other threats directed at Democrats or liberals.

I don’t really care if you are a Democrat or Republican but what does jerk my chain is if someone is obviously ignorant – especially about something so easy to check out.