Category: Media Watch

*Early in the debate, moderator Chris Matthews observed that the Florida gubernatorial race was one of the “cleanest” he had seen. Of course, he has arguably seen entirely too much of senatorial races in Tennessee, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

*On getting out of the office and getting involved in cherry-picked races with national import: “I’d do this for free. I love it.”

*On Max Linn’s late entry: “It felt like one of those last-second-calls-from-the-governor’s-office deals, you know, commuting a sentence or something. It certainly added an interesting element. It had to hurt the Republican candidate more.”

*So who won? “Sorry, I don’t get into that.”

Normally I wouldn’t side with the equivocating politician on the subject of campaign debates. But when it comes to next Monday’s (Oct. 30) gubernatorial debate between Charlie Crist and Jim Davis (seen locally on Channel 8 at 7 p.m.), Crist was right to have held out for a more appropriate forum.

The debate, which will be moderated by Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” was originally to be styled after Matthew’s show, a traditional give-and-take interview format with all participants at the same table.

The problem with that is that it pretty much remains personality-driven “Hardball.” Actually, that’s a show I like and do watch most nights. Although I sometimes wince when Matthews interrupts too much, on balance I find that he asks the sort of questions viewers at home would want asked. He can be provocative and funny, and it can make for good television.

But this is the Florida gubernatorial debate, not the Chris Matthews’ show. The most important dynamic is the one between the two candidates. The focus belongs on them. Matthews can facilitate that.

He will ask good, tough questions, and it’s his call as to when opposing candidate rebuttals will be allowed. At his discretion, Matthews will also be allowed follow-up questions.

That could be the great equalizer.

On tour for the first time in a dozen years, Barbra Streisand made up for lost time last week when her 20-city show played Madison Square Garden. By all accounts, New Yorkers still love their quintessential diva. At least most of them.

Some didn’t care for a low-brow skit involving Streisand and a President Bush imposter. One heckler wouldn’t let up. Streisand finally silenced him with “Shut the (expletive) up

Maybe it’s cultural. Then again maybe it’s generational. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a matter of right and wrong, and I’m right – however un-hip.

I’m talking about the recent noon-to-10 pm Sunset ’06 concert in Vinoy Park on downtown St. Petersburg’s waterfront. It was billed as the Bay Area’s first electronic music festival, which as near as I could figure, means a gathering of lots of DJs and plenty of heavy-duty amplifiers.

I was privy to it not because I was one of the 5,000-10,000 in attendance, but because I was somewhere in St. Petersburg. The I-175 off-ramp for openers.

Think the imposition of the migraine bass from hell. Think those who forget the purpose of a microphone and need to constantly yell into it. Think Howard Dean in Iowa. On steroids. Think Vince Naimoli arguing a speeding ticket. Think the same beat and the same sound hour after hour. And, yes, it follows you out to sea. Sunset was never so aesthetically compromised.

I know that if I were staying at the Vinoy, I’d be looking for an apology and a refund. If I lived in a nearby condo, I’d make sure Mayor Baker got an earful.

So, memo to Mayor Pam: Sure, we wish we had St. Pete’s happening downtown scene. And we know you’re trying to fast forward downtown Tampa into a viable arts-business-entertainment-residential neighborhood. But if the opportunity to host an electronic music festival at, say, Curtis Hixon Park is ever proposed, please pass on it.

Even during the height of hurricane season.

Here’s what doesn’t make any sense at all about those rhetorical implosions that have been occurring in the re-election campaign of Virginia Senator George Allen. As a prominent political figure and viable presidential contender, he presumably has access to some of the sharpest, savviest assistants, consultants and spinmeisters around.

But what have they been advising? Or does he just not listen?

Any public relations novice — or generically honest person — could have handled his “macaca” moment and those n-word accusations from the 1970s in a far less clumsy manner.

There’s an applicable, two-part cardinal rule.

Simply tell the truth – and do it right away. Don’t monkey around; don’t become a media serial. Don’t punch some newspaper’s Pulitzer ticket.

At its worst, the truth in the “macaca” case wasn’t going to cost Allen an election. That he stupidly uttered an obscure, off-the-cuff, racial pejorative — native to North Africa – could have been acknowledged and apologized for. It was an insensitively dumb, embarrassing gaffe – but only one day’s worth. A publicity speed bump, not a gaping, campaign sink hole.

Allen, at it turned out, was undoubtedly as familiar with the term as was his mother, who grew up in — Tunisia. But he inexplicably said he “made it up.” That was as untrue as it was unfathomable. It was also an insult to anyone sizing up a front runner who thought it didn’t much matter what he fed the public on this one. As a result, the story sprouted “legs” and was a fortnight’s fodder for political talking heads.

And it let his opponent, Vietnam vet-novelist-former Republican James Webb, back in the race. Big time.

As for those scarlet letter, n-word allegations, unless it stands for nincompoop, the cardinal rule is to admit such “that-was-(immature 20-something) then, this-is- (politically correct) now” indiscretions. Then apologize for them. And then immediately bridge to your agenda for America in 2006. The stuff, in effect, that really matters.

The less-than-subtle message: “I’m here to talk about the issues on the minds of most Americans, if not most members of the media. I’m here to talk about America’s priorities and how best to address them – not what I said while horsing around on campus a generation ago. Next question.”

We’ve all seen that spleen-rupturing photo of Chris Simms down on one knee and wincing in pain after a Carolina Panthers’ cheap shot. In retrospect, we all admired his gritty performance.

Less than admirable, however, has been the opportunistic use of that image as a marketing hook for the St. Petersburg Times. As in: “Keeping you in the know. We told you first.”

Call it another cheap shot.

Katie Couric is cute, perky and engaging and very good at communicating and interviewing. She’s in the prime time, network-TV news business, which, we shouldn’t forget, is more about slick packaging than shear informing.

The formula is a familiar one: the right look, the right personality, the right set, the right theme music, the right voice over, the right appeal to the right demographics. Then cherry pick your news items, add soft features and insert some gimmicks.

It’s not a People’s-Right-To-Know paean or the Great American Gravitas Machine.

It’s show business. And Katie is a pro.

And that’s the way it is.

Once again Beloit College has issued its annual College Mindset List that looks at the “cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year (university) students.”

The implication for their elders (or at least their instructors): Don’t assume too much. For example, for the incoming class of 2010: The Soviet Union has never existed; there has always been only one Germany; Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S.; and Michael Moore has always been showing up uninvited.

Those smart enough to be in college but young enough to lack a literal frame of reference for a lot of stuff makes for a fun rite of autumn and assures Beloit some national publicity.

But it should also underscore the mandate for each well-educated generation: Read the minutes of previous meetings.

*Don’t make pre-recorded telephone calls. They’re really, really annoying.

*Don’t top your brochure bio bullets with who you married, who you sired and where you go to worship. Start with relevant experience to the job at hand.

*Endorsements can have value, but dispense with the pretentious name-dropping – especially of the deceased (i.e. Ronald Reagan).

*Have a fiscal philosophy, of course, but don’t say you’ll “never” raise taxes . At best, that’s irresponsible. More than likely, you’re lying and pandering.

* Family values used to mean something. Now they’re code words — frequently of the cheap-shot variety. Too often they say more about the attacker than the attacked. Unless your opponent is Joe Redner, leave it out.

*Don’t refer to yourself in the third person . It sounds phony. Leave that for ego-tripping, professional athletes.

Anyone with school-age kids knows that text books aren’t what they used to be. Mom, Dad, Dick, Jane, Spot and Puff have gone the way of the Nelsons, Andersons, Cleavers and Huxtables. Not a relevant enough reflection of the demographics – and politics — of diversity.

As a result, pictures have never been more of a priority.

According to New York University professor Diane Ravitch, author of “The Language Police,” there is “more textbook space devoted to photos, illustrations and graphics than there’s ever been, but frequently they have nothing to do with the lesson.

“They’re just there for political reasons,” she recently told the Wall Street Journal, “to show diversity and meet a quota of the right number of women, minorities and the disabled.”

The WSJ cited the McGraw-Hill Company’s 2004 guidelines for elementary and high school texts: 40 per cent of people depicted should be white, 30 per cent Hispanic, 20 per cent African-American, 7 per cent Asian and 3 per cent Native American. Federal estimates indicate non-Hispanic whites made up 67.4 per cent of the U.S. population and 60 per cent of the school-age population. Close enough.

But a closer look at the McGraw-Hill guidelines yields an agenda beyond numbers. There are specific directives for ethnic and racial portrayals. Such that this is what political correctness on steroids surely looks like. One example: Asians should not be portrayed “with glasses, bowl-shaped haircuts, or as intellectuals.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

But how refreshing to have read that story about the Vietnamese couple who bought a Beef O’Brady’s in St. Petersburg. Thomas and Grace Tran were both refugees who arrived in America as kids. Now they are welcome reminders that a land of opportunity still awaits those who value education and work ethic and for whom English fluency and societal assimilation were goals – not cultural insults.

And, yes, Thomas Tran does wear glasses – but Grace doesn’t.