Author: Dan Kennedy

It depends on the question

Jon Keller delivered a sneering commentary this morning about the supposed fear our political leaders have of “democracy.” His main example: House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s abortive suggestion that an advisory question about casino gambling be placed on the statewide ballot this fall. As Keller noted, neither side is enthusiastic about the idea, and it seems all but certain to be dropped.

Keller’s commentary hasn’t been posted on the WBZ Radio Web site yet, but you should be able to find it here later today.

Well, I’m one casino opponent who wouldn’t mind seeing a question go on the ballot. But what would the question be? Here’s a simple, fair and neutral question that I think gets to the heart of the matter: “Would you support a gambling casino’s being built in your city or town?”

That is really the only question that matters. Various polls have showed mixed results or mild support for casino gambling when those being surveyed are not required to focus on the possibility that it’s their community that will be affected. The results are quite different, though, when the issue is literally brought home.

Two examples:

  • Last summer, Middleborough residents attending the town meeting that approved a casino deal with the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe immediately turned around and voted overwhelmingly against a casino’s being built in their town. This nonbinding vote, all but ignored by the media, stands as the only occasion that people in Middleborough have expressed their true feelings about the issue.
  • Several months ago, a poll of Massachusetts residents showed that two-thirds were opposed to a casino’s being built in their community. Most news reports focused on mixed results regarding the abstract idea of casinos. But what does that matter if no one wants one next door?

Let’s be clear — this isn’t NIMBYism, because we don’t need to build a casino anywhere. Call it NIABYism — Not in Anyone’s Back Yard.

Ted Kennedy has brain cancer

Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson writes that Sen. Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Though the prognosis is uncertain, this is truly bad news both for the Kennedy family and for Massachusetts.

According to Johnson’s story, the usual course of treatment is radiation and chemotherapy, with survival ranging from less than a year to five years or more. Obviously it’s way too soon to tell whether Kennedy might be able to return to a vigorous and effective Senate career, but it’s a real possibility.

Sen. Arlen Specter, for one, has served while battling various forms of cancer, including a brain tumor, since the early 1990s.

Photo (cc) by diggersf and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Correcting a correction

Can’t editors at the New York Times check their own archives before subjecting one of their reporters to the ignominy of a published correction? On May 14, Times sportswriter William Rhoden wrote a column about the New York Knicks that contained the following passage about former coach Isiah Thomas:

No coach in recent Knicks history was treated as harshly as Thomas. From the moment Thomas was named team president to the moment he was forced to coach the team he assembled, Thomas was the object of an intense dislike that, near the end, bordered on hatred. Some old-timers in the news media never forgot his comment about Larry Bird (if Bird were black, he would be regarded as just another player).

But you’ll no longer find the passage about Bird in the online version; it’s been expunged, as though the Times fears you’ll go blind if you read it. There’s now a correction at the bottom that says:

The Sports of The Times column on Wednesday, about the harsh environment surrounding the Knicks while Isiah Thomas was the coach, erroneously linked Thomas to a racially charged comment about Larry Bird when both men were top N.B.A. players. It was Dennis Rodman — once a teammate of Thomas’s — who famously suggested that Bird would have been regarded as an ordinary player had he been black.

Trouble is, Rhoden got it exactly right. After the Detroit Pistons lost to the Boston Celtics in the 1987 playoffs, both Rodman and Thomas, then the team’s star players, made the incisive observation that Bird was, you know, white. Here’s how the Times’ Ira Berkow described it on June 2, 1987:

In the visiting and losing team’s locker room Saturday afternoon in Boston Garden, Isiah Thomas, the Detroit guard, said he didn’t want it to sound like sour grapes, and that there was no question that his team got beat, and that they came up short, but he harbored a resentment.

In regard to Bird, he [Thomas] said, ”I think Larry is a very, very good basketball player. An exceptional talent, but I’d have to agree with Rodman. If Bird was black, he’d be just another good guy.”

Dennis Rodman, the teammate to whom Thomas had referred, had said that Bird was ”overrated,” and that the only reason he had won three straight league most valuable player awards (until this year, that is), ”is because he’s white. That’s the only reason.”

So, yes, Rodman spoke first. But Thomas agreed with him, and used language that was just as offensive, if you’re inclined to be offended. Rhoden was not using quotation marks, so there was no reason for him to capture Thomas’ quote word-for-word. But it strikes me that Rhoden’s construction comes closer to Thomas than to Rodman. Gee, he must have done his research.

The simple fact is that Rhoden got hung out to dry by editors who apparently couldn’t have been bothered to dig out what really happened 21 years ago. Heck, I remember it, which is why I started diving into the archives. Anyone who was following basketball in 1987 remembers Thomas’ crass comments — more so than Rodman’s, since Thomas was a nationally known celebrity.

Rhoden should demand a retraction.

Zoned out

Recently Miss Media Nation bought a DVD from Amazon UK with her allowance money. She tried to play it on our iMac, and encountered a message that we were in the wrong zone. I switched it for her, but that was hardly an ideal solution for two reasons:

  • You can only switch back and forth a few times before the drive locks forever.
  • Though she can now watch her British-origin DVD, she can’t watch anything else unless I switch it back. See my first complaint.

Nor does the DVD play on the unit connected to our television.

As I understand it, this is supposed to be some sort of protection against piracy or trafficking in early-release movies or something. All I know is that my daughter bought a legitimate product, legally, and now she’s limited in how she can use it.

There are fixes, but they’re more daunting than anything I want to tackle. To say this is abusive treatment on the part of the movie studios is an understatement.

Walking through the fallout

Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan puts the Boston Herald walk-through fiasco in perspective today by pointing out the obvious — that Patriots coach Bill Belichick has forever branded himself as a cheater. Ryan writes:

How could anyone not feel sorry for Bob Kraft?…

His was said to be a model organization, where the owner owned, the personnel people found the right players, and the dour defensive genius coached ’em right up to championships, or close to ’em.

And now?

And now he has to live with the reality that he presides over the most despised and reviled franchise in all of contemporary American sport, and all because the coach he trusted has betrayed him.

In the New York Times, Mark Bowden offers a different sort of perspective, arguing, essentially, that it’s not a big deal and that everyone does it.

Bowden compares the Patriots taping scandal to, among other things, Gaylord Perry’s spitball. Not to condone what Perry did, but, somehow, I don’t buy the comparison. I’m with Ryan on this one.

Ted Kennedy’s illness

Sen. Ted Kennedy has fallen ill, and Media Nation extends its best wishes. Meanwhile, there are signs of early media confusion over what’s wrong.

The Boston Herald reports that Kennedy experienced “stroke-like symptoms.” The Cape Cod Times, whose account of Kennedy’s illness is otherwise thorough, makes no mention of the nature of the senator’s illness. (Those two links via Universal Hub.)

By contrast, the Boston Globe, relying on an anonymous “official briefed on the situation,” tells us that Kennedy suffered a seizure, then a second as he was being transported by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Not that the Herald and the Globe couldn’t both be right.

Instant update: The Herald’s Casey Ross has more details, and describes Kennedy’s “stroke-like symptoms” as “mild.” And the AP, among others, is also using the phrase “stroke-like symptoms.”