BAD TIMES
5 years ago
May 16, 2003 | Dan Kennedy called for “tougher standards” in journalism in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.
“Yet by purging Blair, it would be wrong to think that all is now well at the Times, or in journalism. Tougher standards are needed. We all deserve better. I was struck by a comment that Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center...at Harvard’s Kennedy School, made to USA Today. Jones noted that in the Times’ self-examination, the family of former POW Jessica Lynch and others said they were well aware that Blair had falsely claimed to interview them...But they didn’t complain to the Times because they didn’t expect any better of the media. ‘They didn’t say, ‘Holy cow,’ this is somebody who is clearly unscrupulous.’ Instead, their response was to shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Hey, what did you expect?’ ’ Jones was quoted as saying.” Read Full Article

GOOD RIDDANCE
10 years ago
May 15, 1998 | Matt Ashare presented the 1998 BMP award for Best National Act to Radiohead.
“For a band whose career in the US was launched in 1993 with the kind of perilously catchy...single that can easily kill a band's career by marking them as a one-hit wonder, England's Radiohead have truly come a long way. Sure, ‘Creep’ was great the first dozen times you heard it, but you can't blame Thom Yorke for not wanting to sing it anymore...Johnny Greenwood hated the song so much from the get-go that he tried to muck it up with those cacophonous false starts on his guitar...But Yorke, Greenwood, and the rest of the band refused to be defeated by success, returning in '95 with The Bends (Capitol), a disc...with absolutely no ‘Creep,’ a disc as complex as ‘Creep’ was simple...

“The Bends in all its convoluted glory was really just a twisted prelude to OK Computer (Capitol), which arrived last summer with nothing resembling a workable single and very little in the way of a coherent lyric. Majestic probably doesn't begin to describe the operatic scope of the album, but it's not a bad place to start...So now some of the same critics who wrote the band off after ‘Creep’ hit the charts are holding Radiohead up as modern-rock saviors, which they probably are.” Read Full Article

SELECTIVE LISTENING
30 years ago
May 16, 1978 | After having had bad experiences with living arrangements due to his musical pursuits, pianist Paul Raeburn seemed to have found the perfect situation.
“Not too long ago, I thought I had solved all my problems. I had an apartment to myself (no roommates to worry about). It was on the second floor (not too difficult to get the piano in and out). And the downstairs neighbors never complained. I could never quite understand why they never complained, but I was happy to let the matter rest.

“In fact, so tolerant were the neighbors that they allowed several people to enter the apartment one weekend when I was away and help themselves. When I returned, I found that the burglars had chopped a large hole in the door, upended the dresser, pried into a locked metal file cabinet, strewn clothes and books everywhere, and the neighbors, bless their hearts, had never said a word. Stereo, television, tape recorder, typewriter, piano amplifier...had been removed. Miraculously, the piano stood in the center of the living room. (I don’t blame the thieves for not taking it—I know how difficult it is to get it down the stairs.)” Read Full Article

THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-SHOTS
35 years ago
May 15, 1973 | George Kimball pointed out the differences between those folks sitting in the grandstand and the clubhouse and those in the infield at the Kentucky Derby.

“If you are a Governor or a Mayor or a Newspaper Editor or a Kentucky Colonel or if you just happen to have a lot of money or happen to be on intimate terms with somebody who has a lot of money or even somebody whose family once had a lot of money then you will wind up in the grandstand, the clubhouse, or in one of those boxes near the finish line which run about $50,000 for Churchill Downs’ 50 yearly racing days but which are rarely used save on Derby Day...

“If, on the other hand, you (a) have developed a tolerance for claustrophobia, (b) loved Woodstock, (c) have an aberrant penchant for attending spectacles you are unable to see, (d) drink a lot, and (e) don’t have the money or the connections for a seat, you will end up in the infield.”

5/16/2008 2:53:25 PM by Ian Sands | Comments [0] |  

PLAYING FAVORITES
5 years ago
April 25, 2003 | Brent Kendall analyzed how a presidential candidate’s declared “favorite book” can affect his campaign chances.
“The 2000 election demonstrated precisely how candidates' book choices play right into the media's preconceived storylines--for better and for worse. The vice president announced his book selection on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ Stendhal's The Red and the Black...Unfortunately for Gore, The Red and the Black provided a convenient plotline for his detractors. Stendhal's protagonist Julien Sorel may be one of the great characters of 19th-century literature, but he was also an opportunist whose actions were calculated to advance his career. Reporters seized on Sorel's inauthenticity as an analogy for Gore's. When Gore decided not to pursue the 2004 nomination, National Review extended the analogy even further, writing that his fancy for ‘Stendhal's novel of a career chosen against inclination’ was evidence that he ‘felt that politics was a burden.’

“George W. Bush fared much better, citing Marquis James's The Raven, a 1929 biography of Sam Houston, whose life had hit an alcohol-induced rock bottom after years of success, only to be once again lifted when he moved to Texas and rediscovered his guiding principles. That was Bush's campaign story in a nut-shell...In the end, each book jibed with the media's storyline about each candidate — Bush, the easy-going, prodigal Texan, and Gore, the know-it-all pandering phony.” Read Full Article

BARNICLE’S BLUNDERS
10 years ago
April 24, 1998 | Dan Kennedy pointed out an embarrassing error Mike Barnicle made in a Boston Globe column.
“There he goes again.

“In this past Sunday’s Boston Globe, columnist Mike Barnicle sneers at those who are not familiar with the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, writing that ‘if you do not know who he is or what he has written during his life, then drop this section and go directly to the comics.’

“Trouble is, Barnicle misspelled McCullough’s name — repeating his feat of a week earlier, when he mangled the names of music legends Bo Diddley and Brownie McGhee...”

IT'S A MAD, MAD WORLD WE LIVE IN
20 years ago
April 22, 1988 | Susan Buchsbaum attended a Baby Miss of America pageant at the Holiday Inn in Randolph, Mass.
“Music plays, lights blaze, and the first parent steps from behind a curtain to display Nicole, a two-month-old infant who is fast asleep. Desperately, the mother tries to rouse the child, shaking her vigorously as the judges look on. The panel will be deciding on the Best Outfit, the Most Photogenic Baby, and the child with the Most Fascinating Eyes. Valiantly the mother continues to jiggle her baby...as the emcee informs the audience that ‘Nicole’s favorite food is formula.’ ...

“...Nicole actually wins the prize for Most Photogenic. Jasmine, a five-month-old wearing a floppy white bow...wins for her outfit and her eyes. When she is also pronounced the overall winner in the Pee Wee category, the music soars...and the puzzled infant...is draped with a banner and crowned...Modeling, says St. John, who directs the Babies of America Modeling Agency, is definitely in the cards.”

SACRIFICIAL LAMBS
25 years ago
April 26, 1983 | Michael Matza got both sides of the debate in a piece dealing with animal experimentation in local biomedical research facilities.

"As many MFA supporters see it, morally dubious animal research has been promoted by a stream of platitudes about curing cancer and saving children. ‘The public and the press has pandered slavishly, almost sycophantically, to anyone who wears a white coat,’ says Annette Pickett of Lincoln, MFA’s (The Mobilization For Animals) coordinator for the Northeast...She is deeply suspicious of the motives and methods of university-affiliated scientists. ‘It’s no great, bursting desire to save human life’ that motivates them...’They’re out for their own egos...,’ she asserts. ‘They’re out to extract the secrets of the universe by literally cutting animals apart. That seems to me the least likely way to learn the mysteries of life.’
...
“Defenders of the primate center in Southboro...mention the disease studies in cats that played a role in the development of the polio vaccine; they also mention the use of dogs in the discovery of insulin 60 years ago...Other life-saving medical breakthroughs include the development of techniques related to organ transplants and coronary bypass surgery, as Dr. S.J. Adelstein, dean for academic programs of the Harvard Medical School, told the Harvard Gazette last month. ‘And this list is just the beginning,’ he said. ‘Artificial hips and knees for the elderly, treatment of children with congenital heart disease..., all of these and other breakthroughs have only been possible through animal studies.’ ”

4/24/2008 12:02:55 PM by Ian Sands | Comments [0] |  

With The Wire's fifth and final season in the can -- we'd talk more about it, except that a couple of our slacking staffers are still plowing through seasons one through four -- creator/mastermind David Simon stopped by Harvard to accept we're-not-worthy genuflections from a few serious social-science superstars. Leading off was William Julius Wilson, whose landmark When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor was namechecked by Simon as a strong influence on the dockworkers' plot in Season Two. WJW, in his introduction (which you can stream below): "Indeed, I do not hesitate to say that [The Wire] has done more to enhance our understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality than any other media event or scholarly publication including studies by social scientists."

Simon was his typically combative self -- if not the angriest man in television then, well, still angry. His remarks on what led him from a beat on the Baltimore Sun to writing The Wire is as lacerating a critique of journalism as you'll hear -- it's a potent argument that should sit side-by-side all the reams of html being expended on how the internet is killing newspapers. When one budding j-school student asked whether Simon had overstated the case against journalism by making one of Season Five's villains a newsroom fabricator, Simon responded by referencing "those two fellows at the Globe," by which we can only assume he meant Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith. He also declined to answer the spoilerific best question of the evening -- "How come Omar had to get whacked by that little hopper?" -- a question which we'll attempt to answer ourselves in a post later this week.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Wire-at-Harvard event if there wasn't some dweeby white kid attempting to pick a message-board-grade argument with the series creator by suggesting that Simon should've picked a Baltimore club track for the Wire's opening theme. (We didn't get a chance to scream, "Dude, Season 4 Episode 8!") We'll post that clip later this week, after we finish shuddering with embarassment for everyone involved. Suffice to say that Simon had a very plausible answer for a totally absurd question, and that DJ Technics will survive this latest indignity.

We'll be posting the FULL AUDIO of the conference on Thursday; check back for the mpfree.

David Simon at Harvard: Introduction by William Julius Wilson


David Simon at Harvard: on the birth of The Wire


David Simon at Harvard: on the death of journalism

COMING SOON: later this week, we'll be posting highlights from the panel discussion, where Simon traded bons mots with WJW, a Boston Police Deputy Superintendant (Simon made a show of checking her stripes after she declared The Wire authentic, noting that he'd never gotten that kind of straight talk from anybody over the rank of sergeant), Bronx-reared author Geoffrey Canada (Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America), and the swashbuckling sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, who went undercover with street gangs to write an insider's look at thug politics and also posted on the Times' Freakonomics blog about watching The Wire with actual street criminals.

4/7/2008 10:10:35 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |