Media heads are spinning

Donald Trump was honored, so honored. And in introducing his least articulate and most irritating endorser this week in Ames, Iowa, he noted that she is “special.”

Her command of language is certainly special.

“Media heads are spinning,” Sarah said in her speech. Here is a link to the full transcript. Should you attempt to skim it, make sure you have an espresso. If your neurons are functioning, your head may spin, too. The buzzfeed page also includes the video, in case the words alone are not special enough and you want to relive the nightmare of 2008 by hearing that voice once again.

Here is just a tiny section of the endorsement speech:

Sarah during her triumphant 2008 campaign for VP.
Image from Wikimedia.org by user Therealbs2002.

“Oh, I just hope you guys get to know him more and more as a person, and a family man. What he’s been able to accomplish, with his um, it’s kind of this quiet generosity. Yeah, maybe his largess kind of, I don’t know, some would say gets in the way of that quiet generosity, and, uh, his compassion, but if you know him as a person and you’ll get to know him more and more, you’ll have even more respect. Not just for his record of success, and the good intentions for America, but who he is as a person. He’s not an elitist. And yes, as a multi-billionaire, we still root him on, because he roots us on. And he has, he’s spent his life with the workin’ man. And he tells us Joe six packs, he said, ‘You know, I’ve worked very, very hard. And I’ve succeeded. Hugely I’ve succeeded,’ he says. And he says, ‘I want you to succeed too.’ And that is refreshing, because he, as he builds things, he builds big things, things that touch the sky, big infrastructure that puts other people to work.”

Got that?

With endorsements like that, is it any wonder Donald Trump is doing so well?

So that you don’t have to, the spinning heads at The New York Times have chosen for you the juiciest quotes from Palin’s historic oratory. My personal favorite is: “He’s got the guts to wear the issues that need to be spoken about and debate on his sleeve, where the rest of some of these establishment candidates, they just wanted to duck and hide.”

I think I want to duck and hide.

I can’t say my head is exactly spinning, although it hurts. The mystery of Sarah is partly the mystery of Trump. What does it say about a country that The Donald can say the most sinister, ridiculous things, and just get more popular? Or that anybody cares whatever it is that Sarah is trying, and failing, to say?

Whatever education reforms we've enacted over the past several generations, they didn't work. Clearly, many children were left behind. And clearly, in this great land, that’s no barrier to fame and wealth.

As Sarah says: “Mr. Trump, you’re right, look back there in the press box. Heads are spinning, media heads are spinning. This is going to be so much fun.”

Indeed. Some things are so ridiculous that laughter can be the only response.

Like many Americans, I want my country back. I want a country were the members of the political classes are held somewhat accountable for what they say. I want a country where being a reality TV star qualifies you to be a reality TV star, and people don't assume that you are a leader just because you've been seen on TV. I want a body politic that makes some attempt to be rational and intelligent.I want two functioning political parties that make some effort to actually govern.

Republicans: If you can't do any better than The Donald or the The Ted, what is the point?

And I want less Sarah, please. She is years past her undeserved 15 minutes. And yet, I just wrote a blog post about her.

OK, now my head is spinning.

The Martian: A Hopeful Space Odyssey

20th Century Fox Image.

I have not yet seen the new “Star Wars” movie, but I expect to. And, like the 1977 original (and unlike the three clunky prequel movies), I expect it will be entertaining—a cowboy tale of good and evil set in a galaxy far, far away.

But it won’t be my favorite sci fi movie. In the endless Star Wars vs Star Trek debate, I’m a Trekkie. There’s something to be said for a fictional tale set in our own universe, not some alternative reality. And the whole “force” mumbo-jumbo pseudo religious stuff is kind of irritating, at least to me, even if I can cheer for the good and boo at the bad

Anyway, visions of the future are often either dystonian or hopeful, and I’ll freely admit I’m more of a fan of “hopeful.” And visions of the future are either far-fetched or seem plausible. I can’t say plausible is always the most entertaining (Star Trek is no more plausible than Star Wars, I’ll concede), still a good dose of “plausible” is pleasurable in my science fiction.

On the day after Christmas, my two sons and I saw the movie “The Martian.” They both have read the book and, naturally, chatted a lot about how it compared with the movie. Me, I would like to read the book now.

We all enjoyed the movie. Once again, millions in treasure and lives are imperiled to rescue Matt Damon. Mars doesn’t seem like the kind of place I would want to spend a year on, eating potatoes grown in my own poop—but it was entertaining to watch.

Anyway, as far as I could tell, no laws of physics had to be rewritten for the sake of the story. It presumes many technical problems had been solved in the future—but that doesn’t seem so far-fetched. It also presumes that a hot redhead mission commander would be huge disco fan—which is kind of tragic, but again doesn’t require the laws of the universe to be realigned.

ABBA on vinyl? No wonder she was ready for another year in space …

NASA-JPL image of Mars surface from Mars Rover.

But, I digress. 'The Martian," besides being a type of science fiction that I enjoy, had me wondering about the role of plausibility in fictional media. Clearly, “To Kill a Mockingbird” didn’t happen, but could have. But, why do I like it, but also enjoy Jasper Fforde books?
"Lord of the Rings" takes place in a clearly “other” place that is nothing like our world, and it works on that basis. Why does “Harry Potter” work?

Why do most fanciful tales of talking animals not appeal to me, but "Watership Down" did? Or, for that matter, what is with the appeal of "Charlotte’s Web"?

There’s no requirement that fiction be plausible to be pleasurable, I suppose—but it works better when there is some consistency within its own universe. Anyway, with science fiction, in particular, I do enjoy it if the “science” seems possible. "The Martian" is a man vs. nature fantasy in which part of the appeal is that it is a not-so-far-off future that could be.

Except for that ABBA part.

Seeking the Best & Worst TV Political Ads

I am exploring a new theory for the 2016 presidential elections, and I want your thoughts on it. I think TV ads may have peaked.

Since 1952, for two generations, TV has been the main arena of competition between presidential candidates, and we've seen and heard some historic things in that time period:  a girl plucking daisies before a mushroom cloud in 1964; a promise from Nixon to find an “honorable end” to the war in Vietnam in a commercial that ended with a soldier who had “love” stenciled on his helmet in 1968; Willie Horton in 1988; even Rick Perry wearing the Brokeback Mountain jacket in his disastrous and hilariously parodied 2012 “Strong” commercial.

NPR reported this year that television ad spending in the 2016 race should top $4 billion. But even as the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates for cash to pour into presidential politics, the 2016 races feels different to me.

Mike Huckabee—where is your “Chuck Norris” ad now? In this presidential election cycle, if you don’t live in Iowa, you might not already be inundated with candidate and PAC TV ads, but trust me, they are out there. Yet, in all the odd twists and turns of this very strange campaign (don’t look to me for an explanation why a blowhard billionaire with a tenuous hold on reality leads the polls in one of our major parties—I too am stumped by Trump), I don’t think that there has been a breakthrough TV ad message.

Indeed, some of the commercials I've seen are frankly just entertaining because they are so silly.

Take for example, this PAC ad endorsing Bobby Jindal. It’s not really loaded with much content except “Bobby is coming up in the polls,” but the meteoric rise it trumpets and praises is all the way to 6 percent. Right after this ad started airing, Jindal disappeared from the race completely. I guess he was rising so face he just raptured out of here.

Hillary, a hard-nosed politician and policy wonk of long standing, is toting a softer, "vote for grandma" message in this commercial:

Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, wants you to know that the economy is rigged in this ad. It takes a socialist to change America, I suppose, except I am not sure Middle America will ever vote for a socialist, even if he’s got a catchy slogan like “Feel the Bern.” We've certainly changed the tone of our campaigns since “I Like Ike.”

Jeb, whose poll numbers remain stubbornly low but who has the cash to keep running for some time anyway, actually takes a jab at Trump in this online ad—which I have not seen on Iowa TV, but wonder if I will should Trump’s numbers stay up:

Anyway, as noted, despite a record amount of cash pouring into the coffers of Iowa television stations, I am not sure advertising as yet has moved the needle this year. The mood of the electorate is very down, as world events prove too chilling. As a nation, we seem to be losing the middle.

I don’t want us to descend into multiple warring political factions, and I suppose the roughness of the current political rhetoric might be too easy to be alarmed at. But, how odd it is to feel nostalgic for 2012, when this was one of the hard-hitting ads of the campaign season:

To be fair, I'm not sure all of the ads I'm showing have aired on TV. I saw then on the Internet. Iowans, which have you seen on your home screen? Anyway, I want your help, legions of the Internet. What are your favorite or least favorite ads of the 2016 presidential race so far, and why? Please embed a link with your comment, so we can all share the fun.

In Praise of True Photographers

An MMU student taking photos for the Mount Mercy Times, a channel 9 videographer and a Metro Sports photographer. And me, but you can't see me. Photographers all in dark, MMU AD in white behind them.

These days, the existence of cell phones means that most people are always carrying a camera that can shoot both still images and video.

But, just as having a PC with Publisher on it doesn’t make you a graphic designer, neither does your iPhone make you a photographer.

I was thinking about that this on Saturday in the Hennessy Recreation Center at Mount Mercy University. The university is on Thanksgiving break now, which means few students are around, but the Mustangs had a men’s basketball game that afternoon.

So, I bicycled to campus to grab a newspaper camera from the closed library building (where the paper office is and to which I have a key) for a student to borrow.

And I stayed for half the game to shoot some images.

I don’t know if basketball was the original sport that I shot years ago with my Minolta 35 mm camera. I know that the Calumet at Muscatine Community College had a basketball team, but I don’t recall where they played (there was no gym on campus) nor whether I shot any images of their games (I was one of the editors of the student newspaper at MCC back in the day).

Anyway, I know that I shot some basketball games at Marycrest College, as well as some soccer. At the time, the longest lens I owned was a 135 telephoto—no change in focal length.

My favorite shot of over 120.

At the game this weekend, I had a much nicer camera, my current Nikon D3100. Yet, most of my photos aren’t any good. I shot over 120 images, and consider only a few of them passable. Some samples are on this blog post, a few more can be seen in a Facebook gallery.

These days, as traditional media contract, one endangered species is the news photographer. It’s too easy to give a reporter a camera and tell her to shoot her own images, or depend on the kindness of strangers and their many photo-taking devices.

But I think the really good news or sports photographer is a rare breed worth preserving.

In this day of YouTube and instant photos and videos, we’re awash in images. That doesn’t mean we’re awash in good journalistic images—ones that really tell a key part of the story, that communication the action and emotion of a key instant.

And that kind of image is not easy to capture. Granted, I wasn’t using a really good camera—while my Nikon is an SLR digital camera and came with a 70 to 200 mm zoom, neither the camera nor the lens are the best for this kind of photography.

I can’t blame my low “hit” ratio on the camera, however. I’m a decent amateur photographer, and in my newspaper days, my photo skills did serve me well—but I was never primarily a news photographer.

A metaphorical tip of my imaginary metaphysical hat to those who are news photographers—you preserve instances of history in a way that writers like me should respect and recognize for the artistry, difficulty and skill level that good sports or news photography requires.

A picture is worth a 1,000 words—but only if it’s in focus, well composed and dramatic. And that’s not easy.

I know not much is going on in this image, but I kind of like it anyway. Under Armour vs Nike. When I left, Under Armour was out-scoring Nike about 4 to 1.

When Does the Media Turn Doctors into Santa Claus?

Some good news and not so good news from my media life this week:

A son-in-law was featured in an English newspaper because his earlier genetic research contributed to new cancer treatments. That’s good news.

Dr. Martin speaking Thursday. Her presentation was part of the fall Vietnam series at MMU.

A professor at Mount Mercy University reminded her audience that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is not Santa Claus, and that the answer to the old question posed in a 1960s anti-war folk song—“when we they ever learn?”—sadly, seems to be “not yet.”

Congratulations Dr. Matthew Moscou for the research you’re part of that makes the world a better place. However, it’s important to recall that Moscou isn’t a magician who waived his magic wand and came up with a new cancer treatment—but part of a community of dedicated scientists working quietly behind the scenes, slowly uncovering mysteries of the universe. Someone else applied the genetic knowledge Matt uncovered studying barley to cancer cells in humans.

A link to the story about Matt is at the end of this post.

And media don’t always report well on science, which is a problem. Our public support for science has not always been high, and we have a cultural distrust of intellectuals of all sorts, including scientists. That has clear and negative impacts on our political life, such as denying, and failing to talk intelligently, about big issues such as global warming.

Anyway, it was nice to see Dr. Matt in the news in a positive way. Shifting gears, Dr. Martin spoke at Mount Mercy Thursday of last week about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a famous speech he gave in which he articulated his reasons for opposing the Vietnam War. Since King had benefited from  civil rights legislation pushed by President Johnson, that opposition was gutsy.

And King spoke of the folly of our involvement in no uncertain terms.

Dr. Martin speeaking.

King tends to be remembered today for the “I Have a Dream” speech and his language about a society where the color of skin does not matter. That message is sometimes co-opted today by people who argue against efforts to promote diversity, on the grounds that such efforts are not color blind.

I don’t want to get into that particular quagmire right now, partly because I’m no expert on the topic and partly because I’m personally conflicted. But certainly our modern use of King's words out of context do him and his cause no favors.

Final view of Dr. Martin.

I do want to note something Martin said. I don’t know which writer she was quoting, but she recalled that someone once said that today there tends to be a “Santa Claus-ification” of King—to remember his 1963 speech, and ignore some of the harder criticisms and more controversial positions he took beyond that speech.

King had courage. As Dr. Martin noted, his concerns about military policy and nonviolence should echo today.

And we in the media should be careful of our tendency to simplify stories in order to create more digestible narratives. King was not Santa Clause. Scientists aren’t magicians.

But Matt sure does look nice in his British lab outfit! See the story.

Adventures In Free Rabbit Ears TV

TV in bedroom, with antenna.

I recall rabbit ears. Years ago, it was the way that my family got TV. That was back in the 1960s.

They were tall, maybe 3-feet long, and sensitive. To watch a particular TV station required rotating the antenna and then playing with the angle of the “ears” until everything more or less settled on a grainy black-and-white image with so-so audio.

And that’s the way it was for many years. At some point, maybe when we moved to Muscatine or maybe in our later years in Clinton, we upgraded to a rooftop antenna and earned better reception.

But for many years, it was just the rabbit ears. I recall that it was a rare day—maybe when the atmospheric conditions were just right—that we got an IPTV signal in Clinton. We mostly subsisted on the Big 3 network affiliates from the Quad Cities. I watched the moon landing, mankind’s greatest technological adventure to date, on grainy black-and-white images courtesy of rabbit ears in our living room in Clinton.

Can you say “Capt’n Ernies Cartoon Showboat?” How about “Acri Creature Feature?”

The first antenna was OK, but no channel 9.

Anyway, those antenna days have suddenly returned. The local cable system in Cedar Rapids finally wised up and digitally scrambled their signal, so you can’t get the first 13 channels for free just by plugging in your cable. I don’t really blame them. But I had just purchased a small digital TV to replace a failing TV in our bedroom, so I was interested in getting some TV signal—without paying a cable TV bill.

At Menards while buying some fall flower bulbs, I saw a display of a cheap digital antenna for $8 or so, and I purchased it. We plugged into our new $99 digital TV, and voila, we did indeed get several stations: Channel 2, Channel 2.2, IPTV (3 channels) and an ION family of channels, as well as Home Shopping Network.

However, that left out Channel 9, and I am interested in that station. Better local news and “Modern Family” both come from that source. A quick check of the KCRG web site revealed the truth: You need rabbit ears. The $8 antenna is more like a plastic tray. So, we’re going to party like it’s 1969.

My wife and I were shopping in Target tonight, and I ended up over in electronics. And for $10, there it was, a GE rabbit-ear antenna.

Innovative TV technology of the new century.

So we bought it, and I plugged in. The stations that we got with the $8 antenna seem to come in slightly better. ION breaks up now and then, but who watches ION? We get duplicate IPTV channels with the new antenna, so there is no doubt Dowtown Abbey will be available in January (honestly, that was a large part of the motivation for the whole project for both my wife and I—we need the comfort, months in advance, that we won’t miss what the Dowager Countess will say).

I noticed that if I “play” with the modern rabbit ears, it tends to mess up whatever station it’s on. With the digital channels, most of them are best left alone—no rotating or adjusting or fiddling with the antenna. They come in crystal clear or pretty much not at all.

So we’re back in business—we can have our morning news and our shot of IPTV when we want it.

Still, it does feel a bit weird. Honestly, rabbit ears?

The Opening of the Wall

Dr. Joe Nguyen at the opening ceremony.

Thursday night was an emotional one at MMU. The Moving Wall came to campus in the morning, and a rainstorm pelted down on the workers as they were midway through installation.

They powered through. They were men and women on a mission.

Later, after skies had cleared, I took part in the afternoon opening ceremony. It was very poignant. In particular, I felt a chill as an MMU student, a veteran, read the names of Linn County’s own who are on the wall—who died in the Vietnam War.

She chocked up a bit reading the names. I felt the same just listening.

Following the opening ceremony, that evening there was a panel discussion in Flaherty where Professor Joe Nguyen asked a panel of veterans some questions about their Vietnam experience.

Flaherty was packed for the veteran's panel. Joe Nguyen leads discussion.

There were three American veterans, and three from South Vietnam’s armed forces. One of those Vietnamese veterans, dressed in a crisp white naval uniform, was Joe Nguyen’s father. To say there was a charge of emotion in the room several times would be to understate it. I’ve never seen a room so packed that was, at times, so quiet and attentive.

Most presentations in our Fall Faculty Series “Stories We Tell: Legacies of the Vietnam War” will be less than an hour. Thursday’s panel went on for 90 minutes or so, and when it ended, I think most people in the room wished we could take a break and continue. There simply wasn’t enough time to hear all the stories these men had to share.

MMU Times student reporter at event.

This is a blog about “media,” which implies a channel through which communication passes (like this blog). But you can experience a small piece of the legacy of Vietnam in an unmediated way. A travelling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the famous “Wall” in Washington DC, is set up in the lawn in front of Warde Hall, which is why we had the Thursday events.

It’s a quiet corner of campus, which feels right. Come on down and see it for yourself.

And if you missed the great programs we had Thursday, remember that there is a whole series of events that goes into November. Use media—check out the MMU web site for more details.

More photos of the real stars of Thursday night: