Category Archives: politics

Why they don’t call it ‘Morning Whoa’

Joe

Flickr photo by Nathan Congleton | Morning Joe

Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin.

Well, that’s true if bloviating is a sin and if my typing here ranks on the same level as the hot air generated this morning during a brief discussion on “Morning Joe” about the controversy swirling around Mike Rice, the men’s basketball coach at Rutgers University.

For those who don’t know, “Morning Joe” is the morning cable-TV chat fest hosted on MSNBC by Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. Along with a revolving door of pundits, they discuss the news of the day, which today included Rice, 44, who has coached at Rutgers since 2010.

Mike Rice Jr.

Mike Rice Jr.

In a video released Tuesday by ESPN, Rice is shown shouting profanities at players in practice, shoving them and throwing basketballs at them. For his behavior, he was fined $50,000 by the university in December and suspended for three games, according to news reports.

I’ve just told you as much about this as anyone else learned by watching “Morning Joe.”  But it’s what happened next on the panel discussion that was interesting and points to what’s wrong with these shows.

First, let me say I don’t know nearly enough about the situation at Rutgers to say what should happen to the coach.

But that must just mean I’m not as smart as Joe, who condemned Rice and then passed the billy club to the next panelist as the discussion moved around the table. By the time it got back to Joe, he was calling for Tim Pernetti, the Rutgers athletic director, to be fired.

The whole process repeated itself, getting back again to Joe, who then said Rutgers President Robert L. Barchi ought to be fired if he doesn’t step up and deal with both Rice and Pernetti.

The conversation was repeated at least two or three times as a new panelist joined the discussion so he, or she, could bloviate. I guess this was done because the world cares what Bob Herbert, a former columnist at the New York Times, thinks about the Rutgers basketball coach. Of course, this would be because Herbert usually writes about poverty, the Iraq war, racism, according to his Wikipedia page.

I’m glad I’m not likely to be “fired” from my job by someone as smart as Joe and Bob and the others who are there primarily to fill broadcast air time with hot hair. There must be better things they could do.

But for my saying so, please, Father, forgive me for passing a snap judgement after watching just a few minutes of something on TV. And please show the same forgiveness to Joe and Bob and the others.

An afterward from the writer:

I was thinking about all of this after I posted it, and what it proves is the wisdom of my friend, Larry, who is an engineer and is way smarter than I am.

“Don’t watch the angry people on the TV,” is something Larry often tells me.

But that’s exactly what I did this morning instead of going to the gym. I would have been much better off at the gym.

Almost every day is a good day to ride a bicycle

rideWhen asked why he rides a bicycle, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer is reported to have said: The advantages? Exercise, no parking problems, gas prices, it’s fun. An automobile is expensive. You have to find a place to park and it’s not fun. So why not ride a bicycle? I recommend it.

Stephen Breyer

Stephen Breyer

Breyer, 74, was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton and is generally regarded as one of the High Court’s liberals. So maybe that’s why he is an advocate for bicycling.

But I’m not into politics today. I only point out Breyer’s position on bicycling to raise awareness for 30 Days of Biking. Now in its fourth year, the organizers say the only rule for 30 Days of Biking is to bike somewhere every day for 30 days — around the block, 20 miles to work, whatever suits you — and then share your adventures online.

To be honest, I wimped out and didn’t ride Monday night because it was kinda cold. And I don’t know if I’ll make it today. But I am planning to ride Wednesday.

Hope you are, too.


Twitter — the good and the maybe not-so-good

text from last nightNot everyone who returns here regularly to read what has been written may be familiar with Texts from Last Night. In fact, I’d guess most readers over the age of 40 aren’t familiar with it.

If you are, you probably follow it on Twitter or Facebook.

I saw the post above on Wednesday. It’s typical of what shows up several times each day from Texts from Last Night.

An outdated Wikipedia page says TFLN is a “living document of twentysomething life” that features “many blackout drinking, sex, and vomit stories,” along with discussions about morality.

Many of these texts are funny, but I often wonder just how truthful they are. Methinks there is a fair amount of exaggeration in them.

At first, I was especially inclined to call B.S. on this text. I’m just not sure how many teachers or professors would do this. But there are lecherous educators out there, I suppose, and getting your students to write these kinds of stories could be a more discrete way to get your jollies and just as titillating as reading the Penthouse Forum — if it’s even still published. (And while we’re on the subject, I once hired a reporter who claimed to have worked for Penthouse Forum, an experience that he never made sound particularly exciting.)

But my takeaway thought after reading some of these texts is to be grateful no one thought to capture and publish the drunken anonymous prank telephone calls of a generation ago. And I’m really glad text messaging didn’t exist back then.

This and that …

Positive tweets: If you’d like to know more about a more productive way a 17-year-old junior at Iowa City West High School is using Twitter, check out this video story from the Today show.

It seems simple to me: Just drink water.

Hello, my name is Chris. And I am a book nerd. Thank you to my friend, HP, for pointing out this link.

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann

And finally, a Quick Hit: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence …

Let that soak in for a second.

If ever there was an oxymoron, could there be a better one than House Intelligence Committee? Especially when it is called the SELECT committee and it includes Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.

With that kind of membership, how select and how intelligent can it really be?

God bless her district in Minnesota for re-electing this woman. It helps keep the national spotlight off Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

Thank you and keep up the good work: Wednesday, I wrote about the lack of dialogue on this blog and encouraged more of you to begin posting comments. It prompted 11 readers to post 19 comments.

That’s a good start. I encourage them to keep it up today and for other readers to join in the fun