Cut out from under him

Pistorius in court. (www.npr.org)

Oscar Pistorius, the Blade Runner, was charged with the murder of his girlfriend. This no legged Olympic sprinter, a man that made us question everything, especially what we were doing with our lives, has fallen from his pedestal to crumble in tears in a South African court room.

We are reminded that those elevated by their actions -- and their sponsors -- to the top of our awareness are just humans, and in some cases really horrible humans. 

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on Nike's endorsement of Pistorius. It may seem strange that Nike, a shoe company, would sign this man.  However it fits perfectly into the company's model.  Nike signed Jordan before he was a proven commodity, Woods before the company made golf products, and Armstrong without any cycling gear, explains the Journal's Matthew Futterman, because each of these athletes represent something more than being elite; they embody the story of overcoming.

Media and the Israel Gaza Battles

In case you missed it, Israel and Gaza are fighting again. Hamas and others are lobbing rockets at Israel.  Israel is launching "eliminations" of Hamas leadership in broad daylight.  However the Twitter fight is something new.

Them's Fightin' Words

BuzzFeed is calling it how to fight a war for real and online.

I suppose this is to be expected.

It is the new face of war...Twitter. Something to think about. 

Just a thought

Puppy Link.

It would appear that my posts about Paul Ryan and FOX News and Paul Ryan and his marathon times garnered a lot of views on this little, meaningless blog. So after making a big deal about Paul Ryan being a lying sack of shit, I want to talk about how the media has jumped on an unimportant issue --his marathon times-- as harbinger of something more meaningful.

• FACT: Paul Ryan said he ran a "two hour fifty-something" marathon.
• FACT: Paul Ryan ran a 4:01:25 marathon in 1990. 
• FACT: Paul Ryan finished a marathon and that is nothing to scoff at. 
• FACT: His "slip-up" should upset runners but not the general public. 
• FACT: The general public should be upset with Ryan about his lies about everything else.

However, the NPR, the New York Times, The New Yorker and a few others have made a big deal about his marathon lie.

Besides the fact that many people in high stress gigs, like political reporting, tend to run and also hate when people lie about their PRs, this seems like a pile on. These publications have discussed short parts of the nearly 99% untrue speech delieved by Ryan, but they have given significant digital column inches to his "mistake" regarding his marathon time. Not to go all liberal-media-conspiracy here, but come on folks.

Do not take this for me for forgiving this lying sack of shit for lying about his PR. But I am a runner who will never BQ nor ever coming close to a "two hour and fifty-something" marathon.  So after the untruths perpetrated during his speech in Tampa, this just got my goat.


As a runner I feel like I am in the right bitching about Ryan's slip-up, however the Times, NPR and The New Yorker should focus on fettering out the real, important bullshit that Ryan and Romney are spewing to lead our country back to the 1700s and not about the running thing.

 Just a thought.

The Word of the Day is Liar

Puppy Link

When I was in fifth grade, my class took a trip to Sacramento to do gold rush stuff, take pictures, and eat too much candy in Old Town Sac. But there are two things that I remember most from this trip.  My dad came along as a chaperone and we watched a comedy show, which I think was In Living Color, in which they spoofed a kids' show with a word of the day.

The word of the day was liar. L I A R, Liar.  The bit was way above my head at the time but the adults who were in the room thought it was really funny, and the kids just laughed along.

L I A R

This is a long way of saying that the spelling of liar in that sing-song kids' show way was ringing through my head while reading Paul Ryan's speech from last night. (Yeah, I don't watch. I just read in the morning. Better than coffee to get you moving.)

But this morning the liberal Internets exploded with claims of FOX News calling Ryan a liar. This claim is just a lazy and untruthful as his speech.

Sally Kohn, an opinion contributor to FOX News' website, is a left-wing, community-organizing, feminist with a history of working for foundations and organizations that support equality for LGBT Americans. Sounds like the typical FOX News contributor, right?

Look at all the social medias NYRR gives

Early this morning, the New York Road Runners announced that due to overwhelmingly negative reviews of the post-marathon park exit that it was instituting "a new No-Baggage Policy designed to ease finish-line congestion and provide a better and safer post-race experience [and] as a result, you will no longer be able to check baggage at the start of the race and there will be no baggage retrieval after the finish."

Needless to say this did not go over well.  NYRR was trending on Twitter in New York.  The Wall Street Journal,* New York Times, Runner's World and countless blog post reported on or fueled the controversy.  I know the New York Daily News is also planning a significant story on the topic.  The NYRR Facebook page exploded with negative comments, many of them very funny and some just down right mean. 

My thoughts exactly Fred. (Via Kevin Beganics)

Now my views on this are simple: This is a bad idea. But that is not what I am taking away from today's events.  What I see is the power of social media to create a ground swell and still have no impact.  Hear me out on this one, considering I am blogging about it.

Seperating Sox in the News Cycle

Here is your puppy link, as promised.

It has been a tough few days in Red Sox nation. We lost Youk.  This hard-nosed, ass-kicking, Jewish infielder and killer batsman who helped secure the first and second championships for my Boston Red Sox in eons was traded.  His age, diminished speed, injuries, and the presence of a new guy hitting about .375, all mean that this super star is off the Chicago White Sox.  It was sad.  He will be forever loved in Boston and throughout the Red Sox nation.

Then to make matters worse, the President of the United States made a joke about this trade.  The President, an ardent White Sox fan, is excited about having Youkilis on his team.  Obama struck a cord when he joked about it at a fundraiser in Boston.  It was a bit too soon to make a joke at the expense of a team, my team, so soon after loosing a hero.  You could say, his joke stung just a bit.

You know, reading back over that last paragraph I note the excessive use of the word JOKE.  It was pretty funny, a bit mean, but pretty funny.

But not to the Romney camp:

“Last night in Boston, President Obama went to the heart of Red Sox nation and committed an error by taunting fans over the Kevin Youkilis trade to the Chicago White Sox,” [Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea] Saul wrote in an email. “And he was booed for it. . . at his own event! The Red Sox have suffered many setbacks over the years – the Babe Ruth trade, the ball through Buckner’s legs, the Bucky Dent home run. Maybe the President should have congratulated the team for winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007. Instead, he chose to mock them for trading away one of its favorite players at a time when the team is struggling.”

Oh, for sake of something people!  There has been an entire news cycle dominated by this silly comment.  The President is a White Sox fan. He was digging at Red Sox fans. That is what sports fans do.  And when politicos pretend to care about the team for votes, nothing good happens. I remind you of an interview with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in which he said on Meet the Press that he liked the Red Sox and Yankees.

This non-issue should have been left for the sports guys on ESPN to talk about not the Romney camp or the Obama guys.  Sports are fun and totally meaningless, and that is what makes them fun. 

Come on now.  I will forever distrust this front office for canning the best (with his own set of problems) manager the Red Sox ever had for this blowhard and for showing Theo the door but I know my life will go on after the Red Sox don't make it to the play-offs.  Also I hate the Yankees (had to get it in).  But that is for Sports Center debates and bar room conversation with like-minded fans.  Just a thought, the presidential campaigns could talk about the economy or healthcare or foreign policy or seniors or education or anything else...

SPORTS ARE FUN.  Making fun of an opposing team, when done for fun, is fine.  Now. SHUT UP and try to make the country better.

Why No One Can Have it All

Or Why Anne-Marie Slaughter is wrong.

While a number of very smart women have chimed in and written great articles about why this interminable essay was bad, missed the point, is dangerous, or simply stupid, there aren't a lot of men who have or will.  I grew up in a household were my mom went to work and climbed the corporate ladder.  My dad stayed home, ran his own business, and waited until both kids were in or done with college to have what you could call a traditional career.

Arguably you could say, my home life was very much a product of the feminist revolution. I have been called on occasion a feminist.

But before going on to my thoughts on The Atlantic article, I asked two people who also lived in my house to comment on the article:

“Jesus, I got to the end of the first page and saw there were six more pages. No wonder she couldn't get her work done. Fucking academics -- they don't know when to shut up. – Mother, 58, Senior Executive at a Fortune 50 Company

“Ugh. This has been floating around all day and I've been avoiding it, because I don't give a shit why The Atlantic thinks I'm going to be barefoot in the kitchen.

“I just think [the concept of the article is] so stupid. Men make the same choices, it's just that they don't care as much -- or maybe they do! And then they step down too! Like, cool the fuck out; life is full of compromises…obviously you have to make compromises. I just think this is so dumb and backward ...  You can't be a traditional stay-at-home mom and a high powered executive in the same way you can't be a high-powered executive male and coach all your kids’ sports teams. There are 24 hours in a day, regardless of your sex.” – Sister, 25, Ivy League Graduate and Third-Year Medical Student at a Top 10 Medical School

My mother went on to say that the unbelievably long essay was a "six page cop-out" of the ideals that the author allegedly still supports and was riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions. 

And I agree.  The issue at the heart of this essay should be what do you value you more, not finding a way to have everything at once.  Feminism, as I understand it, was (and is) a fight for choices, not a fight for women have the same life as men.

Everyone, as my sister notes, must make choices in life.  This does not mean that society couldn't shift slightly to help make those choices easier.  And there is no doubt that because of women (and men) who came before my sister, she is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and is well on her way to earning her M.D. at one of the best medical schools in the world.

The only thing she has to thank them for is opening the door.

And while that door was a real pain to open, she had to learn, study, lose sleep, sacrifice health, and make many other CHOICES to make it to where she is today. You cannot take away the fact that my sister -- not some conceptual fem-ubermench -- worked hard.  There were real sacrifices that were and continue to be made. 

The entire concept of work-life balance is a myth.  You either work more or you "life" more. There is never a perfect mix if you are racing to the top. Something has got to give.  And the sooner you realize that, the sooner "having it all" becomes just as meaningless as an essay written by an academic who had to live through two years of what every female executive at a large or growth company deals with everyday.

The choices aren't tough

When I haven't been blogging about running, food, or other fun stuff in my new city, I have been talking about why I am sick of political discourse.  This is another installment in my multi-part, ever-developing series exploring my disgust of the political space.  So if you too are sick of politics, are one of my friends who makes his or her living in the space, or just don't care what I have to say about the issue, here is a link that will take you to pictures of puppies.  (Future installments will always have an early exit puppy link.)

As you know, 2012 is an election year.  This year we will be faced with plethora choices of very stupid candidates promising all sorts of craziness. Local, state, and Federal elections will dominate the news outlets for the next five or so months. These news outlets will break news that will sound freakishly like this:

OBAMA SLIPS 3% WITH UNDECIDED VOTERS AFTER HE ATE SUSHI

or

ROMNEY IN THE MARGIN, POS OUTWEIGH NEG FIRST TIME 

Two things come to mind when I read these kinds of headlines:  

1. I think Greece actually got this one right.
2. WHO THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE?

People are still idiots

Remember that time last week when we used social media for good?

I do.  It gave me hope in humanity.

This use of social media does not do that.  In fact it diminishes my hope for humanity.

Cynthia Boris of Marketing Pilgrim, explained that the SoCal centric media obsession with car chases has taken a turn to the social:

"Yesterday, the phenomena took on an even stranger turn when a man in a tow truck led police on a two hour “low speed” pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles. It was rush hour, so he hardly ever moved more than a few miles per hour and like a good driver, he stopped for red lights. He also stopped to chat with fans."

Read her post for the rest, but come on guys! This is just sad. 

Sports can be great

I love this ad.

As the kid who stood on the sideline more often than I started and a fan of the team that always finds a way to loose, this ad speaks to me.  I love the story behind the game.  Those ESPN specials about the star getting there early to help the new guy are better than any Top 10 play list. The love of the game but the respect of the process...I love it.

This winter and spring have provided the opportunity to watch many more sporting events than I have watched in the recent past.  Why, I don't know but for some reason there are no complaints if I watch an hour of Greco Roman Olympic Trials or some other craziness of a Sunday afternoon...as I may have yesterday.

Sports have a funny way of bringing out the best and worst in people.  But when done correctly, even the worst of people seems to be fun in context.  I heard third-person tales of a producer on Moneyball bringing dirt from the new (and fake) Yankee Stadium into Fenway during the shooting of the film so to continue the Curse of the Bambino. (If you have to learn about this via Wikipedia, we aren't friends anymore).  Then there was that guy that buried an Ortiz jersey in the new (and fake) Yankee Stadium to curse the Yankees. 

Needless to say, I think the dirt guy won.

But sports and being a fan, if done well, can be cause for standing up and being really excited. We could win or we could also lose; but there is always next year.  The start of the race is unbelievable and the finish line is always the best thing you have ever seen. Two down, full count, and bottom of the 9th are three of the best and most nerve-wracking descriptions that have found their way into sentences from Fenway to Bush Stadium to Chavez Ravine, and to just down the street. There is always a Cinderella and you know you want it to beat Kentucky.

Nothing deep and powerful to say...just that this ad is great and it reminds me of the greatness of sports.

Course Records and Social Media

Yesterday was pretty interesting.  As you know, I wrote a short blog post about Jon Gugala's sexist and disrespectful engagement with fellow journalists and members of the running community online.  This post garnered a lot of attention, not only from my friends and family who normally read this blog but from about one thousand other people as well.

Without any doubt, I did not expect that kind of reaction.  Over the course of my personal blog's lifetime, it averaged between zero and 60 hits per day.  Yesterday, after some proactive social media promotion, which I do with most of my posts, the blog saw over 900 visitors. By this morning the post had over 1,040 hits and eight comment (including two about a typo that I didn't remove after fixing the mistake). OK, enough with the self-congratulations.

After posting and pushing my post out to my small Twitter and Facebook community, the re-Tweets started coming in with small edits about how this is unacceptable.  It would appear that the call to email the editorial and publishing executives at his major outlets also was successful, in that by yesterday evening Runner's World's official Twitter feed published two Tweets distanced itself from Jon (H/T Charles Mandel).

Now, Jon is entitled to his view and should be free to express said views, however, he can't expect others not to react.

Ann Romney's Experience is the Question

Stay at home parents -- moms or dads -- do work. It isn't easy raising children. I know, I was a child and a pain in the ass.  There is no doubt in my mind that those who stay at home contribute to the family and provide real economic benefit to the household.

Now, parents who work full time also raise children. They also do laundry, make dinner or leave early to see kids at said dinner, help with homework, and even sometimes have to deal with the negative consequences of having kids due to pesky social norms.  These parents contribute to the household with both income and to those other areas where stay at home parents provide their primary contributions.

All of this being said, Hilary Rosen's resume building statement on CNN yesterday was 100% true and has nothing to do with Ann Romney being a stay at home mom.

The Romney family is rich. Like really rich.  They have people to clean their many homes and cook meals for them. I am sure that there were many times that Ann or Mitt or one of their five boys cooked or cleaned but I would imagine that it wasn't often and it was for recreation rather than out of necessity. As my mother (a working one, for the record) said, "Ann Romney has no more idea what it is like to be a working woman than George H.W. Bush knew about the price of milk in the grocery store."

But that isn't even the whole point.

Power: Africa, Social Media and Meaningful Change

For those of you who do not choose to earn a liberal arts degree in the International Relations and have not sat through a number of courses that focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, here is the 30 second version of history:

There were thousands of small and large communities, states, and nations that lived, grew and shrank for thousands of years in Sub-Saharan Africa with as many government, political, and religious structures as there were communities, states, and nations. There were times of peace and prosperity and times of strife and war.

Then Europeans showed up. Stuff started changing. We can talk about the raping and pillaging if you want but what is key is that European powers saw the continent as a place for raw materials, from minerals to rubber to slaves. LOTS of things happened over the next five or so generations but here is the take away: Africa was a place for resources and nothing else.

Then "Africans" -- that singular group of people (...) -- started demanding independence and started getting it. Through this process some bad stuff happened, most notably the violent expression of repression tactics employed by the Europeans to control different groups identified as different by the Europeans.

You are now up to date.

Clearly this is unbelievably abridged and painfully flawed but so was that video you told me to watch yesterday.

We wern't nervous..but we were hungry - The Sohpia Grace & Rosie Sensation

Admit it. You think they are cute. Well, that is because they are. They represent pure childhood fantasy and they have no problem being on camera. In fact they love it.

The Ellen Show, a place where dancing around and having fun is not only encouraged, it is scheduled, has been featuring these British Bombshells for a few months now and I got to say, they are pretty fantastic.

How can't you smile at this?
In an age of reality TV "stars" it is nice to see kids just having a blast and knowing that what they are doing is something unbelievably special. They are cute, funny, and normal little girls with some talent. My friend said they are a perfect mixture of Shirley Temple and Russel Brand. That pretty much sums it up, but they are much more talented than Brand.

Yup, went there.

There is Nothing on TV

Last weekend, I had a very interesting conversation with a number of folks over canned beer, sitting in a hot tub overlooking Lake Tahoe.

Someone made a sweeping statement about the end of broadcast television and that in a few years everything would be online. YouTube would be our new ABC, NBC and CBS, and almost everyone agreed. I thought this to be ludicrous and the conversation took off.

The main issue the others had was that the lack of choice we have today with traditional TV will push people to a specialized, personalized media experience. They were saying that technology will enable an on-demand media engagement: connection to scheduled entertainment would go the way of mini-disk and Eight Track.

The main issue I had was the value of intellectual property and the investment it takes to generate serial quality material. For example you aren't going to get a show like "Modern Family" or "House" out of a group of buddies uploading to YouTube. There are just too many moving parts that cost too much money. And even if you can demand it, without content your demands go unanswered.

And after much back and forth and long after our hands became pruney these two points came out:

My Point: Without a significant investment in the product, the entertainment, educational, or news value of the product will not live up to the standards of the consumer; this is especially true of my chums in the hot tub.

Their Point The old advertisement business model no longer will work as technology advances and those who create must change the way they do business in order to survive; without a change of distribution, taste makers, like my chums in the hot tub, will no longer consume mass media.

These issues are not diametrically opposed, but both are at the core of consumer media's future.

Hashtags and Funny Hats

As information has become easier to consume, it would appear as if more people are utilizing the democratization of info simply to disseminate product but not to learn anything.

Over the past few years we have seen the rise of the Tea Party Movement. They have come together with clear goals of a smaller government and lower taxes. In the last month, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has materialized with vague and unobjectionable goals of ending greed and bringing about social justice.

These two groups are different and comparisons between them are not fair to either group. The only thing these fringe elements have in common is the idea that their communications structure should be both engaging and promoting their point of view as fact to the media.

The Tea Party, which is blessed with a leadership structure and no qualms about putting a person in charge, has an advantage over OWS but both groups have allocated capital (financial and human) to get the message out (regardless of facts or reality).

I was taken aback by the number of cameras that are at the Occupy Wall Street protests. I would venture that everyone at the protests sees oneself as a journalistic witness. Arguably the Tea Party people are dressing up in Revolutionary War garb not 'cause it is comfortable but to put forth this concept of going back to the good old days of no running water, slavery and true instability on the frontier as truly better than what we got now.

As a communications professional, I know these tactics well, and I have to say that they are being utilized in a one dimensional manner. Over all these protests attract everything the media loves: Folks in funny clothing and uncompromising screaming matches. Facts or even fact checking makes for slower and more deliberate conversations which makes for bad TV. Even so, the media has some sick twisted need to make sure both sides of a story are heard (because there are always two clear sides to a story).

So in order to be heard we end up with sound bites that are devoid of value. Examples:

1. This is what democracy looks like.
2. End the Fed.

Both totally meaningless and back up without fact, action or you know thought.

Ending the Fed would be a problem for like as many reasons as the Fed has tools to fix inflation (zing!). Also for this occupation to look like democracy, the occupiers need to engage in the system of government. They don't seem to be doing that according to recent reports. Sure it isn't great but it is a system that allows for the person with the most votes to make the decisions for a while. So get more people to vote for you and you get your person in charge...(BTDubs, that is what democracy is, not just what it looks like.)

So while the Tea Party has become a force in the margins of the Republican party and in Congress they seem to continue down this path of illogical and non-fact-based reality. It would be nice to OWS go in a different direction, using fact to support their otherwise lovely yet equally meaningless observations. Sure the system sucks, but what are you going to do about it? Sit in a park?

The over abundance of people pretending to have something to say on camera only reenforces the fact that there is nothing to say. For any movement to work, it needs messages. For any movement to last, it needs messages supported by fact.

The New Establishment Looks a lot like the Old Establishment

Vanity Fair published its coveted "New Establishment 100" list today.



Here are some interesting stats based on the 100 listed entities (some were shared) now known as the "new" establishment list:

There are 13 women listed.
The first woman listed was number 23 and is Lady Gaga.
Of the 13 women listed, six shared their spot with at least one man. So nearly 40% of women on this list share their position with men.

Not so new this establishment huh?

Nicely done VF.

Do Fun Stuff - The Charity Album

My lovely wife is a HUGE fan of the beautiful and inspirational blog "Pacing The Panic Room." I am not a regular reader of the blog, however I enjoy it whenever I visit. If you are into people taking good pictures and building a loving, modern and complicated family, you will like this blog. They are also doing this great thing raising money for children with Smith Magenis Syndrome, a developmental disorder that you can read more about at Pacing The Panic Room or here with a new album (info in the sweet graphic below).

Of course it is worthy cause and if posting a neat graphic and some nice kids music can make my wife happy, well this is the least I can do! Enjoy and perhaps buy the album if you have some kids to entertain!

The Los Angeles Times' Entertainment Section

Well done LA Times for calling it like it is:


While it is clear that this particular article was placed in this particular section for the content of the piece, it is pretty clear to me that the editors of the Times did this with a smile on their faces.

So on this President's Day, I leave you with this: These so-called presidential candidates are the jesters in the court of our nation's real leaders.

This Just In: The News

H/T davidAMwilensky