* Interesting how the two dailies played last week’s mixed bag of overlapping USF budget and Poly stories on their front pages. What’s the most newsworthy hook? Take your pick.
Tampa Bay Times: “Senate Approves Poly.”
Tampa Tribune: “USF Cuts Shrink to 52M.”
* Speaking of front pages, the one in Monday’s Tampa Tribune was worthy of note. The Trib’s concentration on local stories is understandable and a viable strategy to stay in the daily game. But what’s with a page-one, above-the-fold feature on the downtown Hyatt doorman who hasn’t called in sick in 26 years? It’s a nice piece by Keith Morelli and complemented by a photo layout. But page one dominance?
* Remember when “Wedding Announcements” in the newspaper were, well, pretty much that? So-and-so and so-and-so announce their engagement. Etc. That was then–and this is not.
And this is what the New York Times has begot locally.
The back page of Sunday’s Tampa Bay Times Floridian section was dedicated to weddings. Two couples were profiled. Neither story was compelling. Nor were they romantic or allowably sappy. Pre-wedding pregnancies, check. Abortion options, check. Thanks for sharing–and congratulations.
*Speedy recovery to good friend and talented cartoonist Charlie Greacen, the City Times’ “SoHo Scribbler.” He’s on the mend after suffering a fractured hip in a pedestrian vs. car accident at a South Tampa intersection last week. He’ll be convalescing for a while, to be sure. But when you see a “SoHo Scribbler” cartoon satirizing certain intersection dynamics, you’ll know the inspiration. But also know that tragedy was barely avoided.
Glad to still have you with us, Charlie.
* Societal insensitivities are in the news again with some taken racially aback by Billy Crystal’s (“blackface”) Sammy Davis impression on Oscar night and some media resorting to stereotype humor at the expense of the New York Knicks’ Asian-American sensation, Jeremy Lin.
I’ve seen Crystal do the Sammy Davis impression back in the day. It was legitimately funny, not some minstrelesque “blackface” act. What I did have a problem with was the Sammy Davis parody shoehorned into a 2012 Oscar skit. Not that funny–period. But taking racial umbrage? Call it what it is: lame political correctness at Crystal’s expense.
But, yeah, a couple of the Lin references were decidedly off-putting.
But nothing gets to me quite like revisiting the annoyingly insulting performance of Mickey Rooney in an otherwise classic movie, “Breakfast At Tiffany’s.” Rooney, already well past his prime in 1961, played the Asian character I.Y. Yunioshi with yellow-face makeup and buck teeth. Shame on Rooney–and shame on director Blake Edwards to this day. It’s an appalling performance.