Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

I’ve often written about how lazy I believe the media to be. This extends to all areas of coverage, whether it be politics or golf. They attach themselves to one thing, and proceed to beat it to death.

What’s ironic is that they are all looking for a new twist to whatever it is they’re covering. I wonder why they continue reporting on it. In engineering, people like this quickly wear out their welcome. And we have them. They have a pet solution, something that (they think) fits all. And they want to use it over and over and over, regardless of efficiency. Because they’re familiar with all its traits. Commonality definitely has its place, but there is a time to move on.

Political reporters do the same. “The Dean Scream” was played ad nauseum, and I never thought it was anything more than someone preaching to the choir. Our entertainment reporters lock onto Michael Jackson or Martha Stewart, and we are constantly fed the same story over and over and over. Sometimes, in a three minute segment, there may be a single new piece of information. The remaining time is eaten up telling us what we’ve been told dozens of times…just in case we missed it before.

Gee, these are the same people who have always complained that there wasn’t enough time to do a full story. I think if they gave us just 10 seconds on each continuing story, they’d have plenty of time for more exhaustive coverage of at least one major topic each day. Of course, that would limit face time for the talent, and minimal opportunity to flash factoids at the bottom of the screen. And that talent might actually have to get new information where there is none.

Golf does the same thing. I was eager to see coverage today of the Nissan Open at Riviera. Tiger is in the field. How would USA Network cover him? As expected:

“Here is Tiger on the first hole.” on tape. Then, continuing on tape, “Here he is at the second,” and, “Here’s Tiger at the third.” Had it been live, I wouldn’t have minded nearly as much.

But David Toms is back in the field after surgery. John Daly is hoping to continue his rebound. And dozens of other fine golfers are trying to get their first win of the year. Mike Wier, Masters winner and Nissan defending champion, is back in the hunt and playing well.

Tiger did not have his typical stellar year in 2003. Yes, he received the Player of the Year Award., but I think his limited playing schedule actually helped him. It won’t happen that way two years in a row. Fewer and fewer people are watching golf just because of him. But sponsors like to see him in the field, and television sponsors want to see him shown.

Sports announcers are more knowlegeable about what they cover than most, but even here the familiar is important.

C’mon, guys. Show the field. Take some risk and show someone who isn’t expected to win. Maybe, just maybe, it will be the story of your life. Or, you can remain in the comfort zone and follow Tiger, regardless of his play. After all, that’s where the money is.

“He’s such a good boy.”
“He’s always been so good with children.”
“I cannot imagine him ever doing something like that.”
“He even put up a sign in the neighborhood that says ‘Watch out for children playing’.”

An 11-year-old girl has been found dead. She was abducted and murdered. Now, the man in custody is remembered by family and neighbors with the same lines we’ve all heard many times before. Every defendant in a case such as this has similar things said about him/her.

Are people in total denial, or is someone like this simply smart enough to play the game before hand so people will say such things about him? We like to think the best of people, but there comes a time when it just isn’t right. Nobody wants to believe their neighbor is capable of such actions, but sometimes they are. Was he really turning his life around as some have said, or just waiting for an opportunity?

In cases like this, I believe there needs to be immediate justice. If found guilty, he needs to be executed soon after. Let the appeals process last no more than a month or two, then be done with it.

My experience this weekend with the TSA airport screeners wasn’t nearly as bad as I’ve had in the past. There is little consistency in their operation. I have to admit, as a security measure, inconsistency can be a good thing.

The problem I have with them, as I guess just about everyone has, is that they are like our public school administrators–zero tolerance. The book says this, and they will do nothing that deviates from it, regardless of logic. Deviation would require judgement and decision-making.

My sister-in-law wanted to sit with us and have breakfast before departing from San Jose. We flew American and she was on Alaskan Air, which departed from a different terminal. She was a ticketed passenger, but couldn’t go through the checkpoint at our terminal. And, there was nowhere to eat at the airport outside the security area. So, she was turned away. The rules allow only ticketed passengers, but the TSA employees had difficulty with the concept that she had a boarding pass for a different terminal, so they made the safe choice–safe in terms of decision-making, not security. No amount of logical discussion would change their minds.

When I fly, I wear nothing with any metal at all. I don’t wear a belt, and wear slip-on shoes. This time I had on a windshirt which has tiny metal snaps on the sleeves. These have set off metal detectors before. Going through one detector, I crossed my arms to keep the ends as far from the detector as possible. The screener laughed when I showed him why. Going through another, I had my hands in my pockets. The screener chided me to take them out. So, I did and put them up to my face as in prayer. “Arms down to your sides!” I did, and explained about the snaps. “Then you’d have to take it off and go back through again!” Excellent people skills, and certainly security conscious.

I’ve gone through metal detectors set so sensitively that I set it off even though I had absolutely no metal on my person at all! At Hartford, I went through the shakedown after that, and the screener kept rubbing me with the wand and checking it against his watch because nothing was setting it off. All the time, my wallet and computer were sitting at the conveyor 20 feet away, and they wouldn’t allow me to retrieve them. I was getting belligerant, and a cop nearby snickered knowingly. When they finally asked me to roll the front of my pants over to check inside the waistband, I simply undid the plastic button, pulled down the nylon zipper, and opened wide. I was then released, but not allowed to get my personal items until I got my shoes back on. Fortunately, nobody else was getting through cleanly, so there was a pile of things untouched.

I find it true that the amount of authority a person will exercise is inversely proprtional to the amount he has. That is, people with little authority most relish its use. People with great authority seldom feel the need. This is certainly true of TSA employees. And that is the real danger. Using skill and experience to improve security is not part of their mindset. Judgement and personal evaluation of each situation is beyond the capability of many. But they know you are hostage, and enjoy the power.

Update: James Bovard has even more to say about this in Reason.

News outlets in this country have become enamored of body counts. In no war prior to Vietnam was this a daily issue in the news. The Johnson Administration is responsible. Because there was no way to measure success in the “normal” fashion, Robert MacNamara and his Defense Department leaned on the count of enemy killed as a measure of progress. I remember watching the news each night, and the lead or final graphic on newscasts was “XX American soldiers died today in Southeast Asia.”

I was struck by this today as I read an article on MSNBC’s web site. It carried a boilerplate paragraph:

The deaths raised to 513 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the United States and its allies launched the Iraq war March 20. Most of the deaths have occurred since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.

I have seen this paragraph in every single article on that site that reports American deaths. It is a running tally of, in their view, a lack of progress in Iraq. And it modifies their previous boilerplate which mentioned only the deaths “since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.”

Body count is no measure of success or failure. In all the history of warfare, it has been simply a number, if tallied at all. This has often been used to illuminate the human cost of battles in history, placing the number in context for comparison. But no effort is exerted in trying to do that here.

My youngest son, Birdie, is an 82nd Airborne trooper. He spent nine months in Afghanistan killing Al Queda and Taliban fighters. He spent those nine months keeping his soldiers from being killed by same. He is now in Baghdad, involved in a different scenario. He is involved in efforts more akin to police work. His soldier skills are not as important as his people skills. He must walk that fine line in order to stay alive, yet not harm innocents.

I don’t think he and his fellow soldiers concern themselves with body counts. They pay attention to each job at hand, and measure their success by how well they accomplished it. They have no mandate, as did soldiers in Southeast Asia, to build an enemy body count as a way for the folks in Washington to measure progress.

On the other side, however, body count is the only weapon they have which can be effective. There is no possiblity of them defeating our forces. All they can do is erode support here at home. That is a given, and everyone from every philosophy in this country knows this.

There are people in this country who want to show dead American soldiers on television. Failing at that, they want to show caskets being off-loaded from aircraft. Lacking that, they want to show families grieving. Right now, what they have to settle for is a chorus counting deaths daily, and keeping a spreadsheet tally for convenience. Citing this body count is an insult to the memory of those men.

As a father of two in that part of the world, doing a job they feel is important to do, I’m sick of the crybabies in our media standing on the roof of a 4-star hotel every evening to tell us how many of our sons have died “since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.”

Had these folks ever done anything of real value in their lives, I would cut them some slack. Bob Arnot gets a tip of my cap, and there are one or two others. But most never leave the hotel lobby. I’ve been deployed with some of these losers nipping at my heels, and they live a vicarious existence. What they need is real lives. In Ethiopia, I had dozens of them to take care of. What I mean by that is that they had absolutely no experience on a flight line, and my troops and I had a constant battle keeping them safe around aircraft. When they weren’t outside, they were in the terminal, or back at the hotel.

When they are with the troops, they can easily get in the way without trying. Others try to get in the way so they can get their “story.” In Afghanistan, Birdie’s team had the pleasure of Geraldo’s company on a raid. Birdie isn’t small, and when he entered the structure, his left shoulder took out the door while his right elbow took out Geraldo.

Realistically, neither scenario is satisfactory; Being with the troops, or staying in the hotel waiting for reports to file or broadcast. But there are plenty of other things they can do, if only they were willing to put a little effort forth, and maybe put themseves in some jeopardy. Some did during the days before “President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.” They filed extraordinary reports with the soldiers and Marines. But their compatriots and anti-war agitators accused them of “becoming too close the the men they were with.” Some good ones have gone home to safer digs. Professionally, the risk was too great.

Those remaining could take a cue from one of the several Iraqi bloggers. Alaa is one they might read. I would guess they could find some simply amazing stories to write. If they followed any one of these leads, much better stories than the ones they currently put out might lead to the Pulitzer they want. And it would be of far more value to this country, the world, and Iraq than “since President Bush declared an end to active combat May 1.”

UPDATE: I just ran across this while checking out Glenn Reynolds. Kevin Sites is, obviously, a true journalist.

Over on USS Clueless, Steven releases “the fire in his heart”, or belly, or whatever. You’ll get a few chuckles, along with an education.

What a surprise…Pete Rose bet on baseball.

Rose was my favorite ball player, with Johnny Bench being a close second. It should come as no surprise that I was a Reds fan. I always thought he played the game the way it should be played.

Big Pete’s ego was (and is) enormous. In a TV interview, he’s wearing a suit and tie, but something else caught my eye–the number 14 embroidered on his shirt collar. It’s really sad. The only thing this man has is his memories because he pissed away everything else.

Rose is not someone I would ever have wanted to know. He lived large, but always in a way that put Pete Rose front and center to the exclusion of all else. He was the prototype for most professional athletes of today. He got the nickname “Charlie Hustle” because he ran out every base on balls. Not just ran, but sprinted. In his way, it was how he said to everyone “Look at me!” The nickname was not a term of endearment, it was an insult from players who had been around.

Rose’s goal was to pass Ty Cobb’s hit record. He did. Along the way he showed how much his own ego meant relative to team. When Bench and Joe Morgan negotiated contracts which paid them more than he was making, he insisted on renegotiation. When the Reds balked, he went to Philadelphia at his first opportunity–still in the National League so he could break the NL hit record if he didn’t get the overall.

When it looked like he was going to break it, he managed to go back to Cincinnati. Once his playing days were over, he stayed on as a “playing manager” to try and increase his numbers.

He was my favorite player of the time, but nowhere near being one of my favorite people. Being banned from baseball was what he deserved. The rules on gambling were very well known, as was the penalty. He chose to ignore them all. It’s time to ignore him, also.

He earned a place in the Hall of Fame, but that honor wasn’t important enough to him to keep him away from betting on games he played and managed. Staying out of Cooperstown was his choice.

I picked up a copy of Da Vinci Code yesterday and began reading it last night. The book’s concept interests me. I’ve read several articles condemning the thesis that Jesus was married, all of which dispute the claim as blasphemy. I take issue with that. Christianity differs from other religions in that dissent and opposing viewpoints are inherent. When The Church became so rigid as to crush dissent, dissenters splintered off as Protestants. Each of the Protestant churches has differing views. In fact, virtually every congregation is different in some way.

There have been several scholarly studies on the issue of Jesus’ marital status, and many more non-scholarly treatises. Da Vinci Code is one of the latter, but the thesis can’t simply be dismissed as bunk. If Jesus followed, as he apparently did, all the teachings of Judaism throughout his life, it would not be a surprise to find out he married.

Those who, like David Limbaugh and Hal Lindsey, cannot reconcile their own beliefs with the possibility of Jesus’ marriage do a disservice to the tenets of religion. I wrote to Lindsey to express my view that whether Jesus was married or not did nothing to change my religious beliefs, and I asked why it would upset his. I got no reply. One line in his linked article gives an indication of his reason: ‘The natural man can only look at a man-woman relationship from a sexually based orientation.