Category Archives: Media

So, how did Brigid Schulte find the time to write a BOOK?

Congrats to my long-ago colleague Brigid Schulte, who just received a starred review in Publishers Weekly for her new book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time:

On her quest to turn her “time confetti” into “time serenity,” journalist Schulte finds that, while it’s worse for women and hits working mothers the hardest, what she calls the “Overwhelm” cuts across gender, income, and nationality to contaminate time, shrink brains, impair productivity, and reduce happiness. Investigating the “great speed-up” of modern life, Schulte surveys the “time cages” of the American workplace, the “stalled gender revolution” in the home, and the documented necessity for play, and discovers that the “aimless whirl” of American life runs on a conspiracy of “invisible forces”: outdated notions of the Ideal Worker; the cult of motherhood; antiquated national family policies; and the “high status of busyness.” The result is our communal “time sickness.” Schulte takes a purely practical and secular approach to a question that philosophers and spiritual teachers have debated for centuries—how to find meaningful work, connection, and joy—but her research is thorough and her conclusions fascinating, her personal narrative is charmingly honest, and the stakes are high: the “good life” pays off in “sustainable living, healthy populations, happy families, good business, [and] sound economies.” While the final insights stretch thin, Schulte unearths the attitudes and “powerful cultural expectations” responsible for our hectic lives, documents European alternatives to the work/family balance, and handily summarizes her solutions in an appendix. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Mar.)

Brigid Schulte

Brigid was the reporter I hired as Lee Bandy’s successor in The State‘s Washington Bureau. My memories of her sort of illustrate the theme of her book. First, there’s the way we met. I went to Washington in January 1993 — there was snow on the ground of the Mall around the booths set up for the first Clinton inauguration, which was to occur a few days later. I had set up interviews with a number of candidates, using an empty office in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau as my base. But Brigid was out of town, and wasn’t getting back until almost exactly the moment my returning flight left.

So we met in the airport, as she was coming and I was going. I was sufficiently impressed to bring her down to Columbia for further interviews. We ended up hiring her. About a year later, she got drafted by the KR national staff, and not long after that moved on to The Washington Post.

Another quick anecdote: She was covering the round of BRAC hearings that led to the closing of Myrtle Beach Air Force Base. The climax of the process occurred on a Sunday afternoon. I happened to have the desk duty that day, and Brigid was having to wait for it all to happen, then write the story and somehow catch a train on which she was to depart with her then-new husband on vacation. This was before cellphones. She filed the story (on a Radio Shack TRS-80, I guess) at a time when it seemed physically impossible for her still to catch the train. Of course, I wasn’t going to let her go until I had the story.

Then there was the matter of calling in to answer my questions after I had read it. She did so, literally breathless and a bit dazed, from a phone on the train — which in those days was a technological marvel. “I’m on the train!” she shouted. “I’m on the phone, on the train! I’m calling you from the train! I made it!” That’s wonderful, I said. Now, here are my questions…

Of course, life has become even more hectic since that time. I mean, she didn’t even have kids back then.

So, I have to wonder: How did she find time to write a book? I always wonder that — I marvel that anyone finds time in a lifetime to do that — but I particularly wonder, given that she knows so well how insane modern life is. Well enough to write a book about it.

But she was always well-organized. She used to carry two notebooks — one for the live stories that day, another for enterprise stuff she was working on for later. I suppose that, while working on this book, she carried a third. Or the electronic equivalent of a third…

NYT claims Snowden “has done his country a great service.” No, really; they actually said that…

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If you hear me retching, it’s not because I overindulged on New Year’s Eve. It’s because of this editorial in The New York Times:

Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community…

I’m just not even going to get into it, beyond to assert yet again that this creep has not “revealed” or “exposed” anything of value. We knew such programs existed, and basically what they did. If there are instances in which the NSA has exceeded or strayed from Congress’ intent, address them. (The NYT makes much of “thousands” of violations among the billions of communications about which it collects data. But folks, that’s not what Snowden and his fans are about. They hate the existence of the legal programs; not specific failures to follow the policies they oppose.) All he has done is stirred the emotions of unthoughtful people to the point that useful intelligence-gathering programs are politically endangered.

For more, just enter “Snowden” in the blog search field at right (in fact, I’ll do it for you; here are the search results), to see what I’ve said about him in the past. I particularly call your attention to his “Christmas message,” which as I said then “reveals his immaturity, paranoia, irrationality and utter lack of perspective,” the qualities that underlie the actions that the NYT celebrates.

This editorial is the sort of nonsense I expect from an intern working as a press aide in Rand Paul’s office, not from a once-great newspaper.

Thoughts on the president’s presser? Share them here…

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I’ve sort of been listening along during the president’s pre-holiday press availability while doing other stuff.

I liked the question — I forget who asked it, and pressed it, but he was pretty insistent — that amounted to this: Mr. President, several months ago you said the NSA wasn’t doing anything wrong. Why do you think the procedures need to be changed now?

It was a good question. The president was right — there was nothing wrong with our surveillance programs then, and there isn’t now. What has happened is that the drip, drip, drip of details — which haven’t revealed anything significant regarding policy itself, but have merely attached names and specifics (things we did not need to know), and it has had an erosive effect on public opinion. Exactly as Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald intended.

And while he sort of danced around it, the president essentially said that: There’s nothing wrong with these programs, but political opinion has changed, so we’re reacting to that. And the way we’re reacting is that we’re looking for ways to get the intel job done with some procedural changes that make people feel better.

Which is not terrible in and of itself. But I would much, much rather that the president stand up to this propaganda campaign by two people who are trying to harm this nation, and argue against the public impression that their efforts have created. Because by reacting by making changes — or even reacting by trying to make it appear that we are making changes — tells any other minor players with a God complex that if they betray this country by disclosing classified information with which they have been entrusted, they will achieve their goals.

That creates an extremely dangerous precedent.

Now, as to the Obamacare comments, two things jumped out.

I reacted initially the way Ali Weinberg did: “Has Obama ever said before that he was only meeting with health care team ‘every other week, every three weeks’?”

But about two seconds later, I reflected that hey, having a meeting every two or three weeks with a bunch of underlings to make sure they’re doing their jobs is fairly often, given that a POTUS does have a few other responsibilities. It’s way short of micromanaging, but it’s more than “only.”

Then, I noticed that CBSNews reported, “Obama takes blame on health care rollout: ‘Since I’m in charge, we screwed it up’.”

Ummm… no, not really. In fact, when I heard him say it, it struck me as a case of verbal contortion, in an effort to fall just short of taking the blame personally.

That’s really a bizarre construction: “Since I’m in charge” sounds like he’s about to take the blame, but “we screwed it up” rather startlingly shares the blame with others.

I haven’t heard an acceptance of responsibility that tortured since “Mistakes were made.”

Any other thoughts on the president’s remarks today?

Vatican press officer’s persistent cough replaced by laughter

Katie Madonna

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OK, OK, I take it back.

I was complaining about the pop-ups I get at thestate.com when I click in the search field, and then I got this video of the Lexington Medical Center ad, with all the doctors and nurses et al. singing “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.”

I like that one, not least because it features fellow local thespian Katie Mixon, in what one might term the starring role. She appears at the start, arriving in labor, and at the end is handed her baby. One immediately thinks, “This is a way better place to give birth than in a stable in the West Bank.”

Those of you who came to see the SC Shakespeare Company’s production of “Pride and Prejudice” saw Katie in the lead role, as Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

Now, you might call her Katie Madonna. If you were given to Beatle puns.

Enough with the pop-ups!

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I’ve been pretty patient about this. Exceedingly patient, considering that I no longer get paid a dime out of The State‘s ad revenues.

But I’ve just gotta say that it’s getting more and more unpleasant to use thestate.com, with the constant intrusive pop-ups. (Not that I’m going to stop going there, because in spite of all, where else am I going to get that much local content?)

The kind that gets me the most is when I merely click in the search box — before I’ve had a chance to enter my search term, or hit ENTER, or anything, just click in the box — and BAM! There’s a popup jumping into my face.

It’s one thing when it’s something local, and relevant. Hey, local merchants gotta eat. But when it’s something as generic and seamy and irrelevant as the set of links above, I get annoyed.

Now, all of that said — one of y’all (Dave Crockett) recently reported getting a pop-up, or rollover, or something, while on my blog.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Here’s how we used to find stuff out in the old days, kids

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Since this post the other day, I’ve been listening more closely to the Christmas music to which I’ve been exposed.

This morning, I heard something really unusual. What got me was the very different rhythm part of this rendition of “O Come Emanuel.” I’d actually been listening a while before I realized what the song was — even though it’s my favorite Advent song. This was before coffee, you understand.

I wanted to know right then who it was. But I couldn’t do what I would normally do. I was driving the truck, which is straight-shift and takes two hands, and wearing my winter coat that zips up, and couldn’t get at my phone to get my SoundHound app to give it a listen and ID it for me. Frustrating (in any event, as I discovered when I got to work, I’d left my phone at home — again, the lack of coffee).

So I decided that I’d fall back on trying to find out who that was when I got to a keyboard. To my inexpert year, it sounded like Pearl Jam. So I hunted on Google, and on YouTube. I asked everybody on Twitter:

Heard a very offbeat rendition of “O Come Emanuel” on radio this a.m. Sounded like… Pearl Jam. Google couldn’t find that. So who was it?

Weirdly, no one answered. I asked again about six hours later. Still no takers. Which is unusual. Normally, someone at least guesses.

So you know what I did? I found out the old school way. Soon as I got a moment (late this afternoon, after a busy day) I called the request line at Magic 98.5. I asked who that was doing “O Come Emmanuel” between 7:45 and 8 this morning.

Turns out it was Third Day, a Christian rock band that formed back in the early ’90s. You know, when everybody was trying to sound like Eddie Vedder.

The fact that my crowd-sourcing efforts failed, I suppose, testifies to grunge-style Christian bands occupying a lesser-known part of the pop music spectrum. Even Rob, Dick and Barry might have had trouble with it.

I’m just glad I solved the mystery. I’m sure you’re happy for me.

Has there ever been a pope as popular as Francis?

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Yeah, John Paul II was kind of a rock star, but at the moment, papal stock seems to me at an all-time high.

The pontiff is having a very good day today:

He was named TIME’s Man of the Year (oh, wait, they call it “person” now, don’t they?).
An ABC/Washington Post poll found that among Catholics, 85 percent approve of the direction in which he’s leading the Church, while only 7 percent disapprove (so much for that conservative Catholic backlash we keep hearing about).
Even Jezebel, a website that I only know about because Kathryn sends me links to it, shouts “Pope Francis Is the Princess Diana of Popes.” The same site earlier said that “the coolest pope ever” is “basically the Beyoncé of organized religion.” I’m not sure, but I think maybe Diana is even a step up from that. His stock just keeps rising, even among the unlikeliest audiences (you have to have read a few of the Jezebel links Kathryn has sent to fully appreciate what I mean).

I hope no one thinks this demeans him in anyway, but this Bishop of Rome is a public relations genius. Which is kinda what the Church needs these days.

He hasn’t changed a thing, other than perception, but that is huge. He hasn’t changed any doctrines (frankly, I’m not all that sure an individual pope can do that on his own — maybe some of y’all more conversant with canon law can shed light on that), including the kind that make smoke come out of the ears of writers at Jezebel. OK, he busted the Bishop of Bling (who was sort of this pope’s polar opposite, PR-wise). That did something. But mostly, it’s about the perception.

What he’s done is make just about everybody feel better about the Church. Which helps the Church in doing its actual job, which is to be the physical manifestation of Christ in this wicked world — spreading the message of love, healing the sick, helping the poor and outcast. It’s kind of hard to get those messages across when so much of the world is holding its hands over its ears and making loud noises to shut you out.

This pope has, in a startling brief span of time, gotten those people to take their hands from their ears and stop going “AAAUWAUWAUWA!” and start listening, because they like what he’s said so far and are eager to hear what he’ll say next.

Years from now, when the Church is contemplating whether to canonize him (which at this point seems highly likely), this should go on the scoreboard as his first miracle.

Overdramatizing to make celebrities seem interesting

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Lewis as Lt. Dick Winters.

I started reading this with some interest yesterday, at the recommendation of Michael McKean:

The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears [or Miley Cyrus], enthralls the country …

Until I saw it was turning into an Occupy-style rant (which “locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires” should have hipped me to, but I had skimmed over it)…

…despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.

In any case, I shared the concern over celebrity obsession. We really shouldn’t be fixated on celebs, unless they happen to be Christina Hendricks.

But you know, if a significant proportion of the few remaining journalists who are paid to do their thing must focus on celebrities, at least they should do so honestly and well. You don’t have to be writing about war or famine or the fates of nations to do a good job with it. Look at the great tradition of fine sports writing, from Ring Lardner through Sports Illustrated. And let’s not forget that Renaissance man George Plimpton.

Admittedly, there are grace and nobility in sport, while what actors and singers and people-who-are-famous-for-being-on-TV do can be relatively lacking in poetry. But if you must write about them, at least do so honestly, instead of making lame attempts to make them seem more interesting than they are.

I had been delving in triviality myself — looking for most popular Christmas songs — when I saw a link to some apparent controversy regarding something Damian Lewis had said. Being a fan of his work in “Band of Brothers” (and to some extent in “Homeland”), I clicked on it:

Sir Ian McKellen has a bone to pick with Damian Lewis…

Lewis recently commented that when he was in his 20s, he became concerned that if he didn’t break out of the theatre in time, he “would be one of these slightly over-the-top, fruity actors who would have an illustrious career on stage, but wouldn’t start getting any kind of film work until I was 50 and then start playing wizards.”…

Oh, gee — let’s see what sort of verbal artillery McKellen unleashed on Lewis:

The X-Men actor went on to describe Lewis’ statement as “a fair comment”, before adding: “To rebut it: I wouldn’t like to have been one of those actors who hit stardom quite early on and expected it to continue and was stuck doing scripts that I didn’t particularly like just to keep the income up.

“I’ve always wanted to get better as an actor. And I have got better. You’ve only got to see my early work to see that.

“As for a fruity voice? Well, it may be a voice that is trained like an opera singer’s voice: to fill a large space. It is unnatural. Actors have to be heard and their voice may therefore develop a sonorous quality that they can’t quite get rid of, so you think actors are as pompous as their voice is large. I suppose Damian was thinking of that a little bit, too.”…

So… McKellen was fairer, and more thoughtful, about what Lewis said (which, by the way, could as easily be applied to Richard Harris), than this story was.

Where was he “reeling”? Where did he pick a bone?

Sorry, folks — no slugfest here. Move along…

McKellen as Gandalf.

Beam me up NOW: Lt. Uhura gets the drop on Burl

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Burl Burlingame had a lot more foresight that I did. He took the trouble to document some of the more, um, interesting moments in his long newspaper career.

Here we have Lt. Uhura of “Star Trek” getting the drop on him with her phaser. What a great shot — so effectively and dramatically lit.

All I can say beyond that is, I hope that thing is set on “stun”…

The Mustang at 50 — finally, some news of interest to young readers

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My 18-month-old grandson — who is often to be seen toddling about with a toy car in each hand, and who will spend hours testing one wheeled vehicle after another, rolling it back and forth on various surfaces to observe its properties — got very excited when he saw this morning’s business page in The State.

Our dedicated young engineer, carefully studying cars for rollability.

“Deh-is!” (“There it is!”) he exclaimed, pointing at the picture of the 50th-anniversary Mustang in the middle of the page.

Finally, some news that a young guy can care about. I don’t recall him taking interest in a newspaper before now.

In related news, our own Bryan Caskey posted a link to an interesting piece about how the Mustang might have looked, based on some of the concepts that Ford ran through before coming up with the one, true, perfect design.

Yeah, but do we really need to talk more about sports and reality TV?

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David Brooks makes an argument for having a sensible perspective on politics:

… Then there are those who look to politics for identity. They treat their partisan affiliation as a form of ethnicity. These people drive a lot of talk radio and television. Not long ago, most intelligent television talk was not about politics. Shows would put interesting people together, like Woody Allen with Billy Graham (check it out on YouTube), and they’d discuss anything under the sun.

Now most TV and radio talk is minute political analysis, while talk of culture has shriveled. This change is driven by people who, absent other attachments, have fallen upon partisanship to give them a sense of righteousness and belonging….

I figure that unless you are in the business of politics, covering it or columnizing about it, politics should take up maybe a tenth corner of a good citizen’s mind. The rest should be philosophy, friendship, romance, family, culture and fun. I wish our talk-show culture reflected that balance, and that the emotional register around politics were more in keeping with its low but steady nature.

That sounds good. Do watch that Woody Allen/Billy Graham clip. It would be great to see more stuff like that.

And Lord knows I’ve had enough of the tribal types who define themselves in terms of their partisan affiliations.

But… as I look around me today, when people aren’t talking about politics, it seems they’re talking about reality TV, sports or what some celebrity wore to some self-congratulatory entertainement awards ceremony. Mostly sports. (There were two stories on the front page of The State today. Two. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by sports promos and a picture of a Christmas tree.)

If we pull back on the politics, we can’t really expect the vacuum to be filled by Dick Cavett-type conversation.

Not from what I’ve seen.

Jeff Bezos tantalizes us with drone delivery

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I meant to mention this yesterday, but didn’t get to it.

The first thing I saw about Amazon’s tantalizing “unveiling” of drone delivery of packages — within half an hour, we’re told! — was a piece on Slate pooh-poohing it:

In an infomercial hosted by Charlie Rose on CBS’s 60 Minutes this weekend, Amazon announced that it plans to deliver small packages via drone in the near future. Many media outlets have credulously repeated this claim, just like they did with the beer-delivering drone and the taco-delivering drone.

However, the technical, regulatory, and logistical challenges of autonomous flight in crowded American urban airspace are far more profound than Bezos allowed on TV. As he said, the FAA is now revising its rules regarding autonomous flight. The FAA roadmap is complex. But it bluntly states (on Page 33): “Autonomous operations are not permitted.” There is an exception for line-of-sight operations for small UAVs. But Bezos’ vision of autonomous delivery in a city is not, according to the FAA roadmap, in the cards in the next few years….

Well, to be fair, Bezos did tell Charlie Rose it would be a few years. (But if the writer had Slate had really wanted to mock the media’s gee-whiz, boosterish reaction, he should have commented on the breathless “making of” feature about their Amazon scoop.)

In the spirit of scoffing, I thought about writing a post headlined something like, “Why doesn’t Bezos promise us teleportation while he’s at it?”

But truly, this is pretty much of a gee-whiz idea — little flying robots gently dropping stuff off at our front doors, and NOT taking the stuff back because we’re not there to sign for it? Who couldn’t love that.

Of course, I hope my libertarian friends will now stop insisting that the private sector is the place where innovations that make our lives better originate. I mean, the government’s been using drones for years, with deadly effect. And delivering payloads WAY bigger than five pounds, baby. It just shows how lame the private sector really is that we get excited over something that’s such a “been-there, done-that” to government.

Sorry, Doug. Couldn’t resist.

Seriously, folks, this is exciting. And we communitarians must admit that the one barrier to doing this is government — that is, the FAA. On the other hand, count me among those grateful that the FAA won’t automatically approve thousands of mini-helicopters buzzing around the yards where our kids play.

Someday, we’ll have this. Just as someday, we’ll have self-driving cars — once the liability issues are worked out.

And I like that Bezos is straining at the limits, getting out there, breaking molds, challenging assumptions, yadda-yadda.

It’s stuff like this that makes me hopeful that he’ll come up with mold-breaking ideas that save the newspaper industry, now that he’s in that business. I’d love a chance to help him do it. It would be wonderful (not to mention tremendous fun) to be on the technological frontier as a part of forging the salvation of the Fourth Estate.

Maybe we could even work drones into it…

TV ad probably not best medium for strong-mayor pitch

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Not that there’s anything in particular wrong with it. It’s just that the medium forces oversimplification.

It does hit the accountability issue, which is key. But helping people understand how a strong mayor is more accountable takes explanation.

Absurdly, opponents of reform have tried to claim that a city manager is more accountable. Their argument is that the manager can be fired any time, rather than having to wait until re-election time.

That is rendered absurd by experience. No one who has seven equal bosses can be said to have a boss at all. Anyone recall how long it took city council even to do an evaluation of Charles Austin? I’m sort of asking, because I don’t recall the exact length of time myself. But it was outrageously long, reflecting how difficult it is for a body of seven people to agree on what direction and feedback a manager should receive.

And anyone who thinks an elected mayor is accountable only at election time hasn’t paid attention to the way elected officials actually behave, which is to look over their shoulders constantly to make sure the voters are happy with the job they’re doing.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I pass on the advert.

The Economist tells America to buck up, stiffen upper lip

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I’m not finding a link to the actual report itself, but I thought I’d share this release from The Economist:

November 26th 2013

THE ECONOMIST PUBLISHES SPECIAL REPORT ON AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY

After a dreadful decade abroad, Americans are unduly pessimistic about their place in the world

This week’s issue of The Economist publishes a special report on America’s foreign policy, “Time to cheer up”, which argues that the world America faces today may seem cussed and intractable, but America’s strengths are as impressive as ever.

In this report, Edward Carr, Foreign editor for The Economist looks at the advantages America has in the primacy game and shares a to-do list for the world’s superpower. After five years immersed in a world-class financial crisis on top of a dozen more in unhappy wars, the mood in America was bound to be dark. And yet the great engines of American power are turning. The armed forces are peerless and will remain so, even when they are financed less lavishly. The economy is clawing its way back to health. Despite Iraq, the ideals of liberal democracy and open markets are potent still.

In geopolitics America has no direct challenger, but without maintenance primacy frays. One threat is Washington politics, eroding American authority in the world. The other is the shifting international system– which no longer needs America as a guard against Soviet aggression and must find a way to reflect the aspirations of emerging powers, chiefly China.

Only a country that had glimpsed supremacy would count those two threats as decline. Predictably, the unipolar moment after the Soviet collapse was transient– if only because it tempted America into relying too much on force. The return to the frustrations and reverses of everyday diplomacy is uncomfortable, no doubt; and if America withdraws or lapses into peevishness, dangerous as well. Yet the country has one tremendous advantage. What will most determine its destiny is none other than America itself.

– ENDS –

Apparently, some newspapers still have money to waste

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That’s all I can think after glancing through this offering of “one-line films created by the Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.”

Which, the credits tell us, were produced by The New York Times Magazine.

And which star Robert Redford, Cate Blanchett, Bradley Cooper, Oprah Winfrey and others.

Wow. Apparently, some newspapers still have money to waste…

Re-elected Mayor Benjamin pumped up, feeling his oats

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Last night at the annual meeting of the City Center Partnership in the Tapp’s Arts Center, Columbia’s just-re-elected mayor got up to speak, and urged those present to address him henceforth as Steve “Landslide” Benjamin.

Yes, it was a joke. Everybody laughed. (Although when it was mentioned at another meeting I attended today over lunch, mayoral aide Sam Johnson said yeah, he was trying to discourage “Landslide” from calling himself that. Also joking. I think.)

Over at ADCO, we were particularly pleased to see the above cover on last week’s Free Times. On account of, you know, we came up with “Famously Hot.” I really enjoy the fun that Free Times has with the brand, such as on this cover last year.

Yo! I wanna tap me some a that Bro-surance!

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Just what President Obama and Sec. Sebelius needed to overcome their PR disaster…

Here’s what some folks in Colorado have come up with to try to help Obamacare along:

The ads, which all live on the DoYouGotInsurance.com website, are a collaboration between Colorado Consumer Health Initiative and ProgressNow Colorado Education, and reference the famous “Got Milk?” ads.

In one ad — called “Let’s Get Physical” — characters named “Susie” and “Nate” are described as “hot to trot.” Susie gives a thumbs up while holding a back of birth control pills.

“OMG, he’s hot!” the ad reads. “Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers. I got insurance.”

Somebody was Rocky Mountain high when they came up with this. And while they carried it out, too.

You know, if Wayne and Garth from “Wayne’s World” (“Party on, Garth!”) had come up with this, even they would have been doing it ironically. (And yeah, I know they’re trying to use irony here, but very, very badly.)

Set aside how offensive this is to constituencies who don’t much like Obamacare to begin with. If were a member of the target audience, I would be especially offended. Because even when I was a college student attending actual keggers, I was more rational, and more articulate, than this:

Not sure how I ended up here perched on top of this keg. I could totally fall, but that’s OK. My budget will stay balanced even if I don’t, because I got insurance.

The language reads like some old fogy’s notion of the way tweens think and speak. (Are kids really saying “gnarly” again?)

My personal nomination for the worst bit in the whole campaign — the text in the “keg stand” ad that says:

“Don’t tap into your beer money to cover those medical bills.”

Oh, no. Wouldn’t want to do that. Heaven forfend.

Good news, bad news, good news, good news, bad news, bad news, good news, bad news about Obamacare

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Peruse the above image of the lockscreen of my iPad at 3:48 p.m. today. Here’s what I thought I understood from those headlines, which all came in within an eight-minute period, while I was in a meeting and couldn’t stop to read further:

More than 100,000 used healthcare.gov to pick a plan in October — way more than previously reported!
No, only about 26,000 signed up.
No, it was 106,000!
… but that was way fewer than hoped.
No, wait; it’s just 26,000. That’s according to Sebelius.
No, according to Sebelius, it’s 106,000!

When you go beyond the headlines, you see that the 106,000 includes people who signed up through state exchanges (which SC does not have), and only 26k through the federal exchange. And the 106,000 number is way, way fewer than the Obama administration had hoped for and projected.

But, according to Sebelius, about a million people have gone far enough through the process to determine that they are eligible to enroll in a plan.

And off we go again…

Oh, and you’ll notice at the top of that stack of headlines that one had just come in on a story with far easier-to-understand, but more horrific, numbers…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Category Archives: Media

So, how did Brigid Schulte find the time to write a BOOK?

NYT claims Snowden “has done his country a great service.” No, really; they actually said that…

Thoughts on the president’s presser? Share them here…

Vatican press officer’s persistent cough replaced by laughter

Katie Madonna

Enough with the pop-ups!

Here’s how we used to find stuff out in the old days, kids

Has there ever been a pope as popular as Francis?

Overdramatizing to make celebrities seem interesting

Beam me up NOW: Lt. Uhura gets the drop on Burl

The Mustang at 50 — finally, some news of interest to young readers

Yeah, but do we really need to talk more about sports and reality TV?

Jeff Bezos tantalizes us with drone delivery

TV ad probably not best medium for strong-mayor pitch

The Economist tells America to buck up, stiffen upper lip

Apparently, some newspapers still have money to waste

Re-elected Mayor Benjamin pumped up, feeling his oats

Yo! I wanna tap me some a that Bro-surance!

Good news, bad news, good news, good news, bad news, bad news, good news, bad news about Obamacare