Author: Dan Kennedy

Those amazing Celtics

Jeff at CelticsBlog writes:

As soon as the final buzzer sounded, I knew I would remember this game for the rest of my life. When my children are playing sports and get down about playing poorly, I’ll tell them stories about this game. When I’m feeling overwhelmed and overworked, I’ll think about this game. When a friend is feeling low and comes to me for some words of encouragement, I’ll draw inspiration from this game.

OK, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s not like it was a baseball game. But that was amazing, astounding, inspirational — oh, I’ll stop stringing clichés together now.

When it looked impossible, I was clicking back and forth between the game and Olbermann. But that 20-point margin started shrinking, and all of a sudden it was a game.

It’s too easy to say that the Lakers are choking. Look at all the youth-league, high-school and college games even the lowliest NBA player has had to dominate in order to get where he is today. Is winning a high-school championship really any less stressful for a 16- or 17-year-old than winning an NBA title is for a 25-year-old? I don’t think so. But at least from where I’m sitting (that would be in our living room), it appears that the Celtics have more character and team cohesiveness than the Lakers.

One other thing. I suppose you can’t tell much about a person by watching him being interviewed on TV. But Doc Rivers, like Terry Francona, comes across as just a good, decent human being. Stuff like this tends to confirm that.

The Outraged Liberal:

In Boston — and around much of the hoop world — this game will be known as the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. In LA, well, there will be references to tight neckties.

And in fairness and as a reality check, I will remind all of us (Yankees fans don’t need it) that it is physically possible to come back from 3-0, let alone 3-1.

Universal Hub rounds up more Celtics commentary here.

Wrong on the National Press Club

Josh Marshall passes along a Daily Kos item criticizing the National Press Club for providing a platform to an Obama critic from the lunatic fringe. The Kos piece — by Markos himself — urges readers to sign a petition asking the press club to disinvite the wingnut in question, someone named Larry Sinclair.

In fact, the National Press Club is merely renting space to a group called Veritas Federal Media, which is sponsoring the news conference. Click here and scroll down to June 18. You’ll see this: “This event is not affiliated with the National Press Club or the Eric Friedheim Library.” (The library is part of the press club.)

That said, the press club could certainly do a better job on its home page, where you’ll find a plug that looks very much like an official notice saying: “Larry reveals the truth about Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.”

Governor’s daughter comes out

Bay Windows breaks some pretty big news today: Gov. Deval Patrick’s 18-year-old daughter, Katherine Patrick, has come out as a lesbian, right before this weekend’s Boston Pride parade. Katherine tells editor-in-chief Laura Kiritsy:

As private of an issue as it is, we’ve sort of had to come to terms with the fact that we are a public family and there you give a part of yourself away. And we also … wanted people to know that it’s not only something that we accept, but it’s something that we’re very proud of. It’s a great aspect of our lives and there’s nothing about it that is shameful or that we would want to hide.

Two interesting side notes: the governor did not know about his daughter’s sexual orientation until after last year’s battle over marriage equality; and he makes the common-sense point that he was uncomfortable about talking with Bay Windows because he wouldn’t do an interview to announce that his daughter was straight.

Catching up on some recent posts

Following up a few recent Media Nation posts:

Hyperlocal is about conversation, not traditional news. Writing for the Online Journalism Review, Tom Grubisich takes a deeper look at the Washington Post’s LoudounExtra.com site, recently pronounced a failure by the Wall Street Journal. Grubisich’s verdict is that the site falls short in large measure because it doesn’t provide much in the way of interactivity and social networking.

Parsing the financials at GateHouse Media. The financial blog 247WallSt.com last week claimed that GateHouse Media — a national chain that owns some 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts — could go broke later this year because of its plummeting stock price and $1.2 billion debt. But, in fact, there is some positive news to report as well.

According to GateHouse, in the first quarter of 2008 revenues were $168.9 million, an increase of 78.4 percent over the previous year. And its EBIDTA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $30.1 million, up 93.9 percent over the previous year.

A not-so-mysterious increase in listeners. The Boston Globe today profiles “TOUCH 106.1 FM,” a pirate radio station serving the black community that’s been threatened by the FCC. Globe reporter Brian Ballou does a thorough job, but I had to chuckle at his writing that the station’s Internet listenership has recently jumped from 2,000 to 5,000 without offering any possible explanation.

Here is the explanation.

The anti-Obama right’s latest obsession

Did you know that there is a movement afoot on the right to demand that Barack Obama produce his birth certificate on the grounds that it might prove he’s not a “natural born Citizen,” as the Constitution requires of presidents? I hadn’t heard that one until it came tumbling out of Jay Severin’s careless mouth on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) yesterday.

Anyway, I went to Google Blog Search, entered “Obama ‘birth certificate,'” and got 3,416 returns. Perhaps that’s not indicative of a major groundswell — many of the posts appear to be refutations of the crazier conspiracy theories out there. But the crazier conspiracies are indeed out there, including the notion that he was born in Kenya, and that he’s lying about his date of birth in order to cover that up.

This post on Daily Kos strikes me as smart and comprehensive. And National Review’s Jim Geraghty — a conservative who thinks Obama should produce his birth certificate — nevertheless offers a reasonable and non-hysterical perspective.

Gmail, heal thyself

Gmail bounced back a lot more quickly than the threatened 24 hours, I’m pleased to report. But I’ve been pondering the possibility of changing the way I use it, and this gives me additional impetus. I know there are some Media Nation readers who love this stuff, so they’ll indulge me, and perhaps provide some advice. The rest of you can skip this.

I made the switch to Gmail a little more than a year ago. For a while, I used it in conjunction with a POP account, but soon I switched to Web-only. Why?

  • My mail was the same wherever I was, even if I was using a different computer — including my archives and my address book, which are also in Gmail.
  • I could download my mail and send outgoing messages hassle-free even in places like public libraries, which often block POP access.
  • Gmail on the Web is just a nice online experience — the labeling, the display, the search features and the like. Aesthetics matter.

Over time, however, I’ve become frustrated. I hope to stick with Gmail in some way, mainly because it does such a good job of filtering spam. But I might change the way I use it. My complaints:

1. It does not integrate well with my non-Gmail account. I use Gmail to access my Northeastern e-mail. Theoretically, I should never have to log on to my Northeastern account. But it hasn’t worked out quite that conveniently.

For a long time, I had NU e-mail forward to Gmail. Mail arrived instantly, and life seemed to be good. But there were minor problems too arcane to mention, so I turned off forwarding and set up Gmail to grab my NU mail directly. There’s a delay that can last from a few minutes to an hour or more — usually not a problem, but occasionally a big problem.

It also seems as though, every so often, Gmail simply refuses to deliver a piece of mail on the NU server. Therefore, every day, I have to log on to my NU account separately to see whether there’s anything I missed. A waste of time, to say the least.

2. Every piece of outgoing mail is somehow stamped with my Gmail address. When I send an e-mail from Gmail using my NU address as my outgoing address, my Gmail address appears somewhere in the header as well. This is not a big deal, but I don’t like it.

3. Gmail’s advertising sometimes sets off spam filters. I have sent messages from Gmail using my NU address that have been marked as spam on the receiving end. In attempting to troubleshoot this, all we could think of was that Google’s ads rang the alarm.

Now, I could go back to using Gmail with POP — or, even better, IMAP. But there are some really nice features I would lose. My Gmail address book cannot easily be exported to Apple’s Address Book. The biggest sacrifice is that I’d no longer be archiving my mail on Google’s servers unless I set things up to make a separate, time-consuming operation out of it. I love the labeling feature and I love the super-fast searching, and I don’t want to give those up.

If there’s anything I’m saying that shows my ignorance, please enlighten me. I’d love to be able to improve my Gmail experience without giving up what I like.

Gmail woes

I’m increasingly disenchanted with Gmail. And it just got worse. Here’s a message I received a little while ago:

This account has been locked down due to unusual account activity. It may take up to 24 hours for you to regain access.

Unusual account activity includes, but is not limited to:

  1. Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail via POP in a short period of time.
  2. Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
  3. Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
  4. Leaving multiple instances of your Gmail account open.
  5. Browser-related issues.

Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it’s probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.

If you feel that you have been using your Gmail account according to the Gmail Terms of Use, you can troubleshoot your problem by clicking here.

I’m probably in trouble over #4. I am a heavy e-mail user — especially so today, as I am doing some heavy multi-tasking while working on a story. I make no apologies, and I’m not going try to troubleshoot my problem. At least not at the moment.