‘Objectivity’ and Olbermann

Posted on November 6, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

It was subtle.

It was understated in a shifty way.

But The New York Times managed to tell its readers that journalists who give money to political causes are bad people without mentioning that the Times has a bias: The nnewspaper’s ethical guidelines ban what the Times authors prefer to consider journalistic “activism.”

But they didn’t tell you that.

The closest the Times came to acknowledging that it has a pony in this race occurred when writers Brian Stelter and Bill Carter stated that “most journalistic outlets discourage or directly prohibit campaign contributions by employees.”

That’s a prissy way of saying most news organizations abridge the rights of their employees by forbidding them to participate fully in the process Americans have come to call “democracy.”

Somehow, the Times was able to publish its long article without mentioning that in the single instance when a journalist challenged a “journalistic outlet” for disciplining him for donating money to a political campaign, an arbitrator chastised the “journalistic outlet” and ordered it to stop interfering in employees’ banned its political behavior.

Okay, the employee who was censored was me, and the “outlet” was my former employer, the Detroit Free Press.

The Times was trying to report on MSNBC’s suspension of political commentator Keith Olbermann for donating money to Democratic campaigns in last Tuesday’s election.

The great newspaper disguised its own stance: Times staffers are expressly forbidden to take part in politics.

Through some warped concept of “objectivity,” this fact never emerges from the Times report.

The Times’ statement that “most journalistic outlets” ban political participation by their employees requires qualification.

It would have been more accurate to say that while most print newspapers have such restrictive policies, “journalistic outlets” exist where journalists’ right as U.S. citizens to take part in the political process is recognized.

At Fox News, for instance, and the New Yorker, and Time Magazine, and Slate, staffers’ right to make political donations is not mess with.

Isn’t it interesting to learn from the Times that MSNBC’s decision to discipline Olbermann was based more on marketing considerations than on the defense of ethical principles?

It is an odd contrast. Conservative Fox News actually encourages political participation by staffers, while liberal MSNBC has a big problem with it in part, according to the Times, because MSNBC wants to distinguish itself in viewers’ minds from its arch-rival, Fox News.

Once again, the “journalistic outlets” show that it’s about marketing, not ethics.

That is what happened in The Newspaper Guild case, in which the union defended me when managers at the Detroit Free Press tried to fire me in 2007 for donating $500 to the Michigan Democratic Party in 2004. When pushed during his deposition, a top Free Press editor defended the paper’s ban on political activity in marketing terms.

My employer was not above invoking principle when it saw opportunity. When the Guild first grieved the Free Press action, the newspaper responded by telling us that as employees of a private organization, Freepsters have no First Amendment rights.

Unfortunately for the newspaper, its attorney failed to understand that the union wasn’t arguing my case on constitutional grounds. Rather, the Guild pointed out that there is such a thing as a contract between Guild members and the newspaper. That contract does not regulate political behavior of Free Press staffers.

An arbitrator agreed with the union and ordered the Free Press to lift its ban on political expression by Free Press employees.

[For a thorough discussion of this case, see my new book, Shoestring Reporter.]

Given the widespread use of bans on journalists’ fundamental right to take part in the political process, it’s interesting to see how little the media covered the Guild’s signal victory.

Times writers Stelter and Carter along with their editors might want to study my extensive discussion of this issue as the case unfolded three years ago. It would be nice to read a complete and fair discussion of this issue in the Times. [ Shoestring Reporter.]

Meanwhile, when next the Times weighs in on this important journalistic issue, I hope the newspaper shows some courtesy to its readers by acknowledging that it is one of the “journalistic outlets” that bans political participation by its employees.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Arbitration, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Rich Rod punt

Posted on November 6, 2010 by hro50ta1

“I am proud of how our coach has handled all of this, as well as his players.”

—  University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, on the NCAA’s verdict that the UM football program committed five major rules violations

By Joel Thurtell

What is Mary Sue Coleman proud of?

Hiring a head coach who flouted NCAA training rules?

Those NCAA sanctions against UM’s football program are something to brag about?

Rich Rodriguez dodged the charge that he promoted an “atmosphere” of disobeying rules.

That’s what the did, though, and the NCAA just minced words, caving to pressure from UM firebrands but still branding him as an A Number One screw-up.

Thanks to Rod, the program got nailed.

No more UM goody-two-shoes.

Another nail in the coffin of UM football tradition.

Why won’t the UM honchos fire this man?

Not only does he get their program pilloried for rules violations.

But he just can’t win football games.

In three years, he’s managed to beat three Big Ten teams, albeit one of them — Indiana — twice.

What hammer does this man hold over UM administrators?

It’s hard to figure: He gets in a jam with his former employer in West Virginia for what amounts to deceit, and UM covers his ass. Antes up millions.

Right then, we had major embarrassment writ large.

That was just for starters.

Give him a chance?

We’re into Year Three, and on the football field, Coach Rod has proven his teams are good at beating only third-rate teams. Put them up against a moderately good Big Ten squad, and the Wolverines wilt.

Rod sure is good at making excuses. From the beginning, he’s been great at pointing his finger at former coach Lloyd Carr, who in contrast to Rod was a miracle-worker. Rod blames players when the buck stops with him. He’s also blamed the assistant coaches he hired and supposedly supervises.

Although from the NCAA investigation it appears that Rod was turning a blind eye — wink-wink — to his assistants’ misbehavior.

The University of Michigan needs to take control of its own football program.

There’s only one way to do that when your head coach flouts the rules.

Fire Rod and his half-baked staff.

Now.

Forget the rest of the season.

The rest of the season is a goner with or without Rod.

With Rod gone, the University of Michigan could start rebuilding its football program.

It could rebuild starting now, if…

If it could somehow pump wisdom and judgment into top administrators like President Coleman.

The first thing she needs to learn from this is that you don’t proclaim pride in someone whose main off-the-field life strategy is based on the fake punt.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Worse than dogs

Posted on November 5, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

A little question for the FBI.

What legal people call a “hypothetical.”

What if the FBI were raiding a warehouse with dozens of agents.

What if some of the agents were human beings.

And what if some of the agents were dogs.

Two of the agents get shot.

One of the wounded agents is a human being.

The other wounded agent is a dog.

A medical helicopter arrives to render immediate aid and transport to the hospital.

But the chopper has room for only one agent.

Which agent gets treated, the human or the dog?

I’ll bet I know the answer: The human, of course! What moron would give medical treatment to a dog before treating a human being?

Even if they thought the human agent was dead, I’ll bet the fibbies would ship the human agent’s cadaver for help before they’d airlift a dog.

Now let’s switch to a real situation. Thanks to reporter Niraj Warikoo and the Detroit Free Press, we know that in a real — not hypothetical — raid on a warehouse in Dearborn, the FBI decided to send a dog off in a medical helicopter while leaving a shot Muslim man — target of the raid and supposedly dead — lying on the ground.

It’s hard to believe much of what the FBI has said about this case, beacuse they obstructed Dearborn police for months, shuffling videos and other evidence and postponing for six months Dearborn police interviews with agents who did the shooting.

But there is no question the dog got the chopper and the man got the chop.

Dearborn police at the scene were upset by the way the feds helicoptered the dog. According to the Free Press:

On one recording from a Dearborn police car, an officer can be heard saying, with expletives, “They’re going to … Medevac the … dog. Unbelievable…. It seems extreme.”

But the FBI records make clear that the evacuation and medical care were according to its policy. In such incidents, FBI agents, including dogs, are to get special treatment from on-site emergency personnel working for the FBI, while any suspects who are injured or killed are to be treated by local EMS workers.

“We generally transport our own,” (FBI Special Agent Sandra) Berchtold said….

In our hypothetical, I assumed the FBI would take care of the human being first. They’d be pretty hard-hearted — not to mention imbecilic — to treat a dog before a human, even if the dog was an agent.

Yet that is what they did.

My first reaction was to see their behavior as anti-Muslim.

After reading Agent Berchtold’s defense, I realized it’s not just Muslims the FBI is against.

By making the choice against the human and for the dog, the FBI sees people it investigates as sub-human.

Muslim, Christian, Jew, atheist, it makes no difference.

FBI targets get treated worse than dogs.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

JOTR’s ‘legal expert’

Posted on November 4, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Spike Kopee

JOTR Editor

A number of JOTR staffers have complained about our hiring of Ray Judicata, JOTR’s new “legal expert.”

Our music critic, Pete Pizzicato, is all bent out of shape.

So is Melanie Munch, JOTR food crtiic.

Pete thinks Mr. Judicata is more than a little bit off-key.

Melanie thinks Mr. Judicata exhibits terrible taste.

Truth to tell, management have been bombarded by questions:

“What are Mr. Judicata’s qualifications?

“Did Mr. Judicata graduate from Harvard Law?

“What law review was Mr. Judicata editor of?”

Such questions would be regarded with more respect if they were not coming from journalists.

Nonetheless, I was directed by management to respond.

So, respond I will.

First, since when does a legal expert working in JOURNALISM need QUALIFICATIONS?

Certainly, I would expect a REAL legal expert, one working, say, in the law courts and maybe even representing REAL CLIENTS, to have some actual qualifications related to the practice and theory of law.

But a JOURNALIST?

Come on!

Since when does a JOURNALIST need QUALIFICATIONS of any nature?

To the second question, I must first ask: What kind of moron would pose this question?

If Mr. Judicata had graduated from Harvard Law, do you think he’d be working at a cheap-ass blog?

Do you think he’d be a fucking JOURNALIST of any stripe?

The question about the law review is equally idiotic. Of course, Mr. Judicata didn’t serve as editor of a law review.

How could he have?

HE DIDN’T GO TO LAW SCHOOL!!!

Now, are you ready?

Despite not graduating from Harvard Law, despite not having been editor of a law review, despite having no qualifications whatsoever to opine intelligently about legal matters, Mr. Judicata is nonetheless more qualified than most journalists.

Mr. Judicata holds a professional license.

He is a certified plumber.

Posted in Joel's J School | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Allah she wrote!

Posted on November 3, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Ray Judicata

JOTR Legal Expert

Those FBI files about the feds bumping off an imam in Dearborn make the fibbies look kind of, well, bad.

Some people might say the FBI acted like, you know, criminals.

What really bugs me, though, are the people saying the feds should have got medical help to the imam after they shot him scads of times, but instead they used a helicopter to transport a wounded attack dog to a veterinarian.

So what?

The bleeding hearts think the imam was a human being and deserved better treatment than a dog, even though the imam was a Muslim.

Some nut cases think ‘cause the dog was a dog and didn’t even have a religion — that we know of — that he didn’t deserve first-class treatment.

I say the fibbies shouldn’t have to answer these dumbass questions.

The dog was a federal dog. For all I know he has a doggone pension! The dog was an AGENT! The imam was a MUSLIM! He was ipso facto, as we legal experts say, a legitimate target, being, you know, a doggone IMAM.

The fibbies are the fibbies – let ‘em work in peace, for Christsake or for that matter in the name of Allah.

As in “Allah she wrote!” — hah-hah!

Pisses me off when people second-guess the FBI. They’re out there protecting our asses, keeping those Muslims off guard and making them know they will always be third-rate citizens in the good ol’ CHRISTIAN U S of A.

Now, as JOTR’s legal expert, I’m gonna give you my considered opinion: If I were the FBI, I’d not only have RESISTED turning over those Dearborn imam shooting files to the Detroit Free Press.

I wouldn’t have done it – flat out.

Let them fight me —  I mean, the FBI — in court.

If I lost in court, I’d have another card up my sleeve.

What I’d do, see, is rent a warehouse somewhere in Metro Detroit. I’d investigate the newsies for some murders committed by someone they maybe wrote about. I’d find some faint connection and charge them with, you know, whatever — TERRORISM!!!

If that didn’t stick, well, I’ve got the warehouse. I’d lure the newsies inside. Show them some flat-screen TV sets.

Little would the newshawks know that the TVs were “hot”.

Well, they might not REALLY be stolen. We’d just SAY they were stolen.

What the fuck difference does it make? For the purposes of our trick, it would amount to the same thing.

Our “trick” is a gimmick we legal experts call a STING.

Now, I know there are some cynics who call a STING something else.

ENTRAPMENT.

But there are legal tests for a sting, and we’ll make sure our sting passes ‘em. And if not, well, what judge would object to us nailing a stinking reporter? They’re as low as an imam, anyway.

Soon as the newsies look at those hot TVs, we nail their asses! We set off some diversionary explosions. Confuse ‘em. Unleash attack dogs. Corner ‘em.

If all goes well, they give up. We cuff ‘em and charge ‘em with dealing in stolen goods.

Nothing to do with TERRORISM, but nobody notices in all the ruckus.

That’s the real diversion: Take everybody’s mind off what the fibbies did.

We’d have the newsies fair and square, and that would be the end of their stupid investigation of us.

Now, there is one problem: The newsies will come into court with lawyers, and we might have some trouble. The law is after all the law in some cases when it can’t be avoided or subverted.

There is an antidote: No court for them.

How do you manage that?

Easy: Shoot the newsies.

Set off those diversionary bombs and make a lot of noise. Send in a bunch of attack dogs. In the chaos we shoot off lots of rounds and take out the reporters en masse.

Just say they shot first.

Oh yes, we’ll have some video cameras taking pictures, and we’ll point ‘em so they can’t quite show the “gun” in  our victim’s “hand.”

Very convenient, thanks to advance planning by the fibbies.

Then we get the FBI and Justice Department and Mike Cox to whitewash the shootings and say we were justified in knocking off these troublemakers.

So what if we medevac a dog and leave the humans dying on the ground?

Nobody will know, ‘cause we won’t tell ‘em.

If they ask for the paperwork, hey, we just lure ‘em to a warehouse and shoot ‘em.

End of story.

This is how we deal with people we don’t like. If we don’t like what you stand for, like, say, you’re a Muslim with ideas about setting up a separate Islamic state, kind of like what we want the Israelis to do with Palestine, why we’re gonna bring you down. Even if all you do is yackity-yack, nothing more.

Doesn’t matter to us. We don’t like you, we take you out.

Simple as that.

You’re a Muslim in this day and age, you got no rights.

Besides, who gives a shit about a Muslim, anyway?

That is what I would do, and that is my considered legal opinion.

I’ll be writing more about Law in the United States, but for now, that’s “Allah she wrote” – hah-hah! — from Ray Judicata, your JOTR Legal Expert.

Posted in Bad government, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The case for ‘Patten Bay’

Posted on October 28, 2010 by admin

This story appeared in the October 26, 2010 Manitoulin Expositor

By Joel Thurtell

A government surveyor in Ontario’s pioneer times could name places pretty much as he pleased, so Thaddeus Patten, who surveyed much of northern Ontario including McGregor Bay, named many Bay sites after friends and relatives.

But there is no place in McGregor Bay — in Canada’s Georgian Bay north of Manitoulin Island — that bears his name.

His great-granddaughter, Zoe McDougall, wants to correct that. She’d like to see Patten’s name on the map of McGregor Bay.

She’s hoping to have a small lake in the Bay named in honor of the man whose surveys helped open the region to railroads, roads, towns, farms and industry.

McDougall plans to ask the Geographical Names Board of Canada to officially attach the name “Patten Bay” to the small part of McGregor Bay where her forebear built a cabin in 1917.

Between 1883 and 1934, Patten surveyed much of northern Ontario between the border of Quebec and Thunder Bay. He was born in 1859 in Carlyle, Ontario. His father died in a farm accident when he was eight. He began his apprenticeship at 14 with Little Current land surveyor George Brockett Abrey, his brother-in-law. Twelve years later, he received his license as an Ontario provincial and Dominion of Canada land surveyor.

He surveyed town sites on Manitoulin Island, Lake Panache on the Whitefish River First Nation reserve and the Little Current and Espanola highway. Patten served for many years on the Little Current municipal council and was a Valuator for the Canada Permanent Mortgage Corporation for 30 years. He died in 1939.

According to McDougall, “His original survey stakes, placed in McGregor Bay in the summer of 1916, still remain on many of our islands.”

Places sometimes get their names in quirky ways. For instance, McDougall lives year-round with her husband, Burnley McDougall, in an expanded version of the cottage her great-grandfather built on what is locally known as Vim Island. He bought half of the 21-acre island numbered “TP 1916” in his survey. It got its name informally from a slogan on boxes of “Force,” a wheat flake breakfast cereal: “Vigor Vim made him Sunny Jim.” Once, members of the family ran out of food on the island and had only Force to eat. So they started calling the island “Vim.” The name stuck.

One McGregor Bay spot took its monicker from an incident that produced lots of mirth. A Little Current man named Oliver Vincent fell asleep while hunting in McGregor Bay and missed shooting a deer. His companions jokingly named the place of his nap “Vincent’s Bunk,” according to “McGregor Bay, The Quiet Paradise,” By Louis Nees.

Halcyon Rock is an island in Pathfinder Bay named after a yacht that anchored near it. Pathfinder Bay is named for a yacht, too, according to Raymond F. Hunt Jr.’s “A Short History of McGregor Bay.”

There were plenty of nameless places, and Patten put them on the map with handles of his choosing. One of his brother-in-law Abrey’s daughters, Nellie, married Stuart Jenkins, a former owner of the Manitoulin Expositor newspaper in Little Current and later proprietor of a store on Iroquois Island in McGregor Bay. Their friend Patten named “Little Lake Nellie” after Nellie Jenkins.

He named Lake Josephine after a Little Current friend, Josephine Currie. Lake Marjorie he named after his daughter. Lake Helen honors Helen Bridges Heintz, an early cottager. Beatrix Tatham, a Little Current high school teacher, has a lake named after her.

For the past two summers, McDougall has hosted the Patten Bay Potluck to popularize the name.

But she doesn’t trust tradition to make the name stick.

Will the Canadian place names board agree that Thaddeus Patten’s accomplishments as a surveyor and pioneer are worthy of placing his name on the map?

Jeff Ball of Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources said the little bay that would be “Patten” already meets two of the board’s requirements. It has no name now, and Patten is dead.

But McDougall needs to show that Patten “made a significant contribution to the legacy of the area where the entity is located and/or a significant contribution to the legacy of the Province,” Ball wrote.

As evidence of Patten’s connection to McGregor Bay, McDougall will submit a 1916 photograph showing Patten beside a surveying instrument in front of a tent on Vim Island, officially TP 1916, where he built his cottage. And she will send a long list of Ontario places he surveyed.

McDougall has letters of support from cottagers from neighbors on the proposed “Patten Bay.” She plans to contact local government and First Nation officials too, but will submit her request soon because the board could take more than a year to act.

Her letters to local officials could help in an unofficial way, though, by advertising the name in government circles.

No harm giving tradition a boost, and easier than holding a potluck.

As one of McDougall’s neighbors on Patten Bay, though, I have a wish. Regardless of whether the name is officially adopted, I hope she keeps holding her Patten Bay Potlucks.

They’re a tradition!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com


Posted in Bay, Lakes and streams | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

If you were a doctor,…

Posted on October 26, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

If you were a doctor and knew that a certain drug would do your patients no good and might even harm them, would you go ahead and prescribe it anyway?

What if the drug that does no good would actually cause seizures, hallucinations, vomiting, dizziness, muscle cramps, weight loss and more?

This is actually happening when it comes to prescribing for patients suffering from the memory- and reason-debilitating disease known as Alzheimer’s.

According to drugs.com, common side-effects of Aricept (generic name donepezil) are:

Abnormal dreams; diarrhea; dizziness; loss of appetite; muscle cramps; nausea; tiredness; trouble sleeping; vomiting; weight loss.

Those are only the “common” side-effects.”

Aricept also causes “severe” side-effects.

According to drugs.com, you should “seek medical attention right away if any of these SEVERE side effects occur when using Aricept.”

Severe side-effects of Aricept are:

Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); bloody or black, tarry stools; chest pain; decreased urination; depression; fainting; fever; seizures; severe dizziness or headache; shortness of breath; slow or irregular heartbeat; swelling of the hands, ankles, or feet; unusual bruising; tremor.

Would you, if you were a doctor and knew about these side-effects and also knew this drug would do your patients no good, would you prescribe such a drug?

And yet many people are taking Aricept. It can only be prescribed by doctors.

Same is true of Exelon, generic name rivastigmine, which has “common” side-effects similar to Aricept’s:

Diarrhea; dizziness; drowsiness; headache; increased sweating; loss of appetite; nausea; stomach upset or pain; tiredness; vomiting; weakness; weight loss.

Exelon’s “severe” side-effects also are similar to Aricept:

Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); anxiety; bloody or black, tarry stools; chest pain; decreased urination; depression; fainting; fever; new or worsening tremor or uncontrolled muscle movements; new or worsening trouble walking; seizures; severe or persistent dizziness, tiredness, or weakness; slow or irregular heartbeat.

Another drug used to “combat” Alzheimer’s is Namenda.

“Common” side-effects of Namenda:

Constipation; dizziness; headache; pain.

“Severe” side-effectrs of Namenda:

Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); change in behavior, such as aggressiveness, depression, or anxiety; chest pain or tightness; fainting; hallucinations; one-sided weakness; severe tiredness; speech changes; sudden severe headache; vision changes.

Doctors prescribe these drugs.

Doctors know — or SHOULD know — that there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s.

It is worth repeating: Doctors know that no drug will stop or even slow the progress of Alzheimer’s.

The pharm companies know it.

That hasn’t stopped them from marketing drugs they claim will retard the disease.

Seen the TV ads?

One doctor told me she knows these drugs are no good, but it’s hard to say “no” to relatives of Alzheimer’s patients who want to think there is some magic bullet.

Nothing known to man will stop this disease. This was the finding of a National Institutes of Health study last spring.

Yet patients with Alzheimer’s desperately want help.

They await if not a cure, then at least something that will indeed slow the decay of their minds.

The bitter truth is that, as The New York Times headlined in a seminal August 28, 2010 article, “Years Later, No Magic Bullet for Alzheimer’s Disease.”

It is worth repeating: NO MAGIC BULLET.

The word is not getting through to the medical community.

Doctors still prescribe so-called cholinesterase inhibitors like Aricept, Namenda and Exelon, even though there is no evidence they do any good.

Insurance companies still pay for the drugs, useless though they are.

It is a bitter, bitter blow to those who take the drugs believing they will help, then learning months or years into the treatment that they have been paying for and ingesting substances that are worse than useless.

The side-effects can be powerful.

Before his death, my father was taking Aricept. Nobody told us about the “abnormal dreams” that can be side-effects of Aricept. When dad thought he was having nocturnal conversations with a well-dressed man whose remarks alarmed him, dad started to go for one of the loaded handguns he kept in his night stand.

We removed the guns.

But we didn’t understand where those dreams were coming from.

You will hear — as we heard — that Alzheimer’s disease causes hallucinations.

Is it the disease, or the treatment, that causes such dreams?

Hallucinations, dreams, whatever you call them, they can be very powerful. They can inspire behavior that otherwise would not happen.

Behavior provoked by drugs that can’t do good, but can do plenty of mischief.

I’ll write more about Alzheimer drug side-effects in a future column.

But let me ask: If you were a doctor, would you have patients take this kind of medicine?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Alzheimer's | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Setting an example at UM

Posted on October 24, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

The Detroit Free Press’s Drew Sharp was right on the money when he wrote that Coach Rod needs to fess up, shoulder the responsibility for a third miserable University of Michigan football season and stop blaming assistant coaches and players.

At first, I was baffled by Rod’s self-serving finger-pointing. Why would a coach at a university that claims to be the Harvard of the Midwest try so publicly and stupidly to excuse what is — mostly — his own major screw-up?

(I say mostly, because some of the blame for UM’s misery belongs to arrogant functionaries like former Athletic Director Bill Martin and UM President Mary Sue Coleman who hired Rod; but I’m getting ahead of my story.)

Doesn’t the university have handlers, I mean PR people, who can either muzzle or temper the remarks of someone like Rich Rodriguez, who after all presents himself as the face of the university?

Why do they let Rod pretend the blame lies with underlings or the previous coach? Remember Rod’s “cupboard is bare” excuses the first awful season of his tenure as he tried to blame Lloyd Carr for Rod’s poor performance?

But then, I had another thought: This is the same state-chartered institution of alleged higher learning where the president is allowed to supplement her $800,000 annual university salary with a tip of the drugmakers’ hat worth $230,000 a year.

I mean the earnings UM President Mary Sue Coleman receives for serving as a board member for pharmaceutical maker Johnson & Johnson.

According to Coleman, there is no conflict. She claims what she does or doesn’t do occurs at such an exalted level that it couldn’t affect the behavior of those menials such as professors and physicians who might actually be influenced by a free lunch or funding for, say, a weekend getaway for residents.

Low-life residents and attending docs are now prohibited from taking freebies from drugmakers, but Coleman gets to pocket her almost quarter of a million because she’s above the fray.

See what I mean?

With mentors like Coleman, a guy like Coach Rod can hardly be blamed for getting out of sync.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Bad government | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

MSU’s ‘diversity’ lesson

Posted on October 23, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

“Diversity: full circle” is the title of a discussion on the program of Michigan State University’s centennial celebration of 100 years of journalism mis-education in East Lansing.

Sorry, slip of the tongue.

They’re in fact celebrating a century of journalism “education,” and I apologize for failing to have the proper respect for their training program.

The program does indeed have a discussion about “diversity,” and that would be a good thing if the people who set up this conflab had thought to diversify the background of their presenters. They’re pretty much all MSU grads or members of the MSU faculty.

Does that seem like a cheap shot?

I have a few more low-budget arrows in my quiver: For instance, why must these shindigs always have the endorsement of major newspaper chains like Gannett and the ghost of a chain once known as Knight-Ridder?

Knight-Ridder is dead and gone, except for its foundation. But Gannett is alive and running the two former Detroit dailies.

I note the presence of a Gannett vice president on the program.

Somehow, I get the sense that there might be some financial assistance as well. Am I being a cynic?

A presence that I don’t see is that of any representative of The Newspaper Guild, whose Local 22 represents journalists at the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, both controlled by Gannett.

The Guild is trying to negotiate a contract with Gannett for Free Press and News workers, and wouldn’t it have been interesting to see someone like Detroit Guild administrative officer Lou Mleczko on the program?

Now, that would have shown the sponsors were paying more than lip service to diversity.

The keynote speaker is Jennifer Carroll, a Gannett VP.

How neat it would have been to have scheduled a panel discussion with Carroll and Mleczko.

I might actually have been tempted to attend such a panel, in hopes of asking some questions.

Like, how much of a raise did Carroll get last year when Gannett was firing 6,000 workers?

Gannett’s top three execs last year cashed checks worth $10.6 million.

Right now, Gannett is bargaining with the Guild and asking union members for concessions in pay and health benefits.

Yet Gannett has declared that it will continue to give raises to management.

How interesting it would be to have a real discussion in a journalistic forum about some of these issues that are killing journalists across the country.

No place at the Management State University journalistic “education” forum for questions about labor and management.

A hundred years “teaching” journalism.

Selectively.

Unions and union members, stay off the stage.

I think this is called censorship.

It sure is a poor excuse for “diversty.”

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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A culinary problem

Posted on October 23, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Anybody else troubled by this?

Okay, we make long drives between Michigan and our summer place in Ontario.

Ten hours on the road is what we tell people, but truth is, it’s more like eleven or twelve.

A haul.

Gotta eat, don’tcha know?

And I do know that the fast-food places are not good for me.

Oh yeah, I saw the movie, “Super-Size Me.”

Yep, Mickey-D being the absolute worst.

For years, we wouldn’t touch Mickey-D.

Somehow, maybe due to shrewd placement of their golden arches, we got back into lunch or breakfast or whatever you call it at Mickey-D’s.

The one in Espanola is very, very convenient. Half an hour after departing the Bay, there’s the arch place, right on Highway 6.

Oh sure, there’s Roger Rabbit also in Espy, with great Canadian breakfasts. But the service is Canadian-style, too.

Slowwwwwww.

Maybe that’s not so bad. compared to the aftermath of a meal at our regular eatery.

It took me a while to realize that a certain thirstiness, a certain dryness of throat must be attributable to the fare at McDonald’s.

If I didn’t have a bottle of water to swig on, the experience could be pretty bad.

I said as much to Karen. She agreed, so on our last trip down-country, we swore off the yellow arches.

Stopped for lunch at a Big Boy.

Damnation!

Couple hours later, same saltiness, same awful dryness of mouth and throat.

No more fast-food joints!

Tonight, driving home from dinner with a couple friends at a full-service Ann Arbor restaurant, I felt that thirst welling up in my gorge.

Salt, or whatever it is, was pasted to my mouth.

Cross that place off.

And I know what to do about those cross-country trips.

We have a wonderful device made by Coleman called an “iceless cooler.”

Plugs into the 12 volt direct current socket in our car. 

The solution?

We will make sandwiches before leaving home, stuff them in the cooler and save ourselves a bunch of money.

Not to mention stop those droughts-in-the-throat that are extremely unpleasant.

And unhealthy.

Bye-bye, Mickey-D!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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