1882 Sports Dept. Covers Snowstorm

1882 Sports Dept. Covers Snowstorm

Each year around now, we re-post our budding TV stars’ guide to reporting on snow storms.  This year, something a little different.  This year the Wessays(™) Academy of Journalism presents a hypothetical situation.

It’s December.  The temperature is low. The precipitation probability is near 100% and at absolutely the wrong time, the snow starts to fall and actual news breaks.  

What to cover?  Not enough staff to report both adequately.  Okay, here’s the plan:  send the reporter out to the tree where firefighters rescued the cat and ask the sports guys to cover the storm.

So Ned and Ted suit up and start their play by play.

NED: I don’t know, Ted, this looks like a big storm coming up … I normally don’t take sides but in this case, I’m hoping the plows will win.

TED: Well, these teams have a long term rivalry.

(shuffles papers, finds what he’s looking for, resumes his part of the pregame.)

T: Looking over the stats it seems that each time these teams have met the plows get battered in the early innings but come back later to clean house.

N: The first flakes are falling as snow takes the first swing and you can see the tension building on the field.

T: Yes, Ned, the salt spreader has come up from the minors and this is his first major league appearance. We saw part of his warmup earlier today.

(Video: men load salt into a truck.)

T: Salt is a family guy.  Comes out of Ypsilanti, Michigan.  Won the NCAA Saline Trophy when he played for Penn State.

N: Salt is spreading but those flakes are really coming down now.  Sand is looking on, waiting for a signal from Salt. Salt can call Sand in right about now. But it looks like he plans to handle this first onslaught alone.

T: Sand was almost traded to Fairfax, Virginia a few seasons back. But they sent him for an engine transplant instead, and he’s good as new.

N: Forty Two mile an hour wind gust from the west/northwest now.  Snow beginning to pile up some points on the road and sidewalks. Plow is moving in from the outfield.  Yes he is… pushing away one of the first snow piles.

T: Can we see a replay of that push?

(Video:  Plow pushes snow away, graphics department puts an animated circle around the snow pile.)

Unlike most sports, there is no clock in Snow Removal.  Major League Storm considered switching from innings to timed quarters.  That would need the approval of 60% of the team owners, and the League gave up because it couldn’t muster the votes.

Plus the TV people complained, fearing they couldn’t squeeze in enough commercials between quarters and didn’t want to pay for a half time show.  But that wasn’t their only problem.

They’re still trying to figure out whether it’s okay to put competing auto dealer commercials in the same commercial break and whether the cat story warrants interrupting the game.  There are no time outs in snow removal.

SHRAPNEL:

--The FCC has eliminated net neutrality. This means your internet pr v i d e r  can   sl     ow… parts of your s e r  v   i ce if it doe n ‘t approve of w hat you’re reading.  Also   bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb co  co completely.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2017

1881 And the Horse You Rode In On

1881 And the Horse You Rode In On

Moonlight and magnolia, starlight in your hair

All the world a dream come true

Did it really happen, was I really there, was I really there with you?

We lived our little drama, we kissed in a field of white

And stars fell on Alabama last night

© Sony Music

Not exactly what Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish had in mind when they wrote the song in 1934. But a Star fell on Alabama last night. The Star was Roy Moore, the horseback riding, gun toting, mall prowling, teen pawing deposed judge who wanted to be the Republican Senator from the Republicanist state in the Confederacy.

It was a tiny victory and a huge one.  Tiny, because Democrat Doug Jones won by about one point. Huge because Alabama hasn’t sent a Democrat to Washington since the Dixiecrats moved into the Republican Party.

Huge because the voters defied the president they elected. Huge because Jones’ win will cut the republican majority in the senate to one vote, possibly ending the rubber stamping of everything the alt-right wants from the legislature it has bullied and bought into absolute power.  Huge because it sends a message to the Senate Insanity Caucus:

Turn out the lights

The party's over

They say that all

Good things must end

Call it a night

The party's over

Not exactly what Comden, Styne and Green had in mind when they wrote the song in ‘56.  But apt.

Both candidates came out of the courthouse.  Moore was the chief judge of the state court until he was ousted for refusing to remove a house-size lawn ornament with the ten commandments from the lawn.  And was then removed again for instructing his judglings from marrying gay couples.

Jones was the US Attorney who prosecuted klansmen for the Birmingham church bombing and other high profile cases. He’s everything you’d expect to lose in Alabama: Pro choice, pro integration, pro Obamacare. He believes in the dangers of climate change, the benefits of education, doesn’t wear his religion on his sleeve and is a fan of (shudder) the New York Yankees.

There are no stories that have him prowling shopping centers and stalking teenage girls.  There are no stories that have him touch-wooing 14-year olds.

He didn’t ride a horse on the campaign trail and to the voting booth.  

Did Jones win the election, or was Moore so bad in the eyes of enough voters he lost? Moore had plenty going for him.  The girls, the guns, the horse. Anti gay, white supremacist. How bad was all this? So bad that even Alabama’s most republican republican, Richard Shelby, now the state’s senior senator, couldn’t support him.

But maybe some good Americans have mischaracterized the people of Alabama, believing they’re all a bunch of red neck racist phonies.  What a relief to be so wrong about so many.  

This result was a surprise. But as the fictional Alabamian Forrest Gump said “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2017

1880 Electric Tales

1880 Electric Tales

Back in the bad old days New Yorkers would say “I don’t trust air I can’t see.”  One reason for that is little neighborhood electric generating plants scattered here and there in lower Manhattan, spewed who knows what-all into the air.

There aren’t any of those left.  So now there’s a lot of air downtown you can’t trust because you can’t see it. But in their day, they were common and Liam O’Malley was one of the last guys with a job you probably never heard of, Master of a DC Plant.

In the early days of electrification, there weren’t AC and DC, there was just DC, which boy genius and thief Thomas Edison said was the most efficient way to transmit power.

There’s a problem with that. DC -- Direct Current -- doesn’t travel well.  That’s why they don’t use it anymore.  AC -- alternating current DOES travel well and that’s why you’ve never seen the place that sends electricity to your house.  It might be a few miles away. But it could just as easily be in Bulgaria.

What, exactly, does a Master of the Plant do?  It’s pretty simple. When the machinery stops and doesn’t make electricity, he restarts it.  If that doesn’t work, he fixes the machinery.  And if THAT doesn’t work, he sends a telegraphic message to Con Ed which eventually does… something.

Liam is the author of the question “Who put the con in Con Ed?”  He had, he said, plenty of time to think up stuff like that because he had the soul of a poet and most of his time on the job was spent reading the Echo newspaper which carried stories from Ireland and with lifting weights which made him look like a weightlifter.

Back in Liam’s day, you asked him “what do you do for a living?” he’d answer “I make electricity for you.” And he was able to say with some pride that making electricity was a noble and useful occupation and working for Con Ed was a noble position.  

After some help from the deregulation crazies, utility companies can be either a supplier, a transporter or both.

Back then, the job of a utility was making things work. Today, that stuff is a sideline.  Today, the job of a utility is hunting for another utility to buy or to be bought by.  Second on the list is protecting the stock price and overpaying executives who wouldn’t know 110 volts from a banana split. Third: they still generate power because they have yet to figure out how to be an electric company without the fuss, muss and bother of actually making electricity.  But fear not, even now, and even without the help of Tom Edison, they’re getting close to a solution.

Here’s how:  by conducting wars in the stock market and the board room.  Regular readers are aware of my maxim: When the real game is at the conference table, the team on the field can’t win.

The suits are so busy writing their separation agreements, unloading or loading up on stock options and inventing fairy tales about how anti competitive practices benefit the customer (or the school children or the hockey game) that they don’t pay attention to when Joe and Josephine come home, flip up the light switch and nothing happens.

But the day is near when Con Ed, LIPA, Dominion Resources, First Energy, Florida Power and Light and Duke Energy all outsource their production to China and concentrate on what they really like to do: Shuffle paper that appears to increase profits, and cash their bonus checks while reducing the workforce by half… always a sure stock price booster.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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© WJR 2017

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1879 This is Your Dog On Drugs

1879 This is Your Dog on Drugs

A veterinarian in Oregon prescribes pot for your pooch.  He is Brian Maas in Bend, a small riverfront city in where the marijuana laws drive Attorney General Sessions nuts.

Two types are available: one for pain, and one for anxiety. Many scientists both in and out of Oregon, (both high and not high,) recommend this treatment.  

The jury is still out on whether it really works and whether there are the usual four million side effects that modern pharmaceuticals remind you of between scenes of smiling people in TV ads.

Now before you get all lathered up, Dr. Maas’ pot has been de-psychotrope-ized.  Not being an expert on such matters, the question that occurs to many people is “what’s left after they defang it?”

Generations of dog people have fed their pets booze.  The poodle down the street prefers Jim Beam to Johnny Walker, but will be happy to drink either. Very happy.  She also seems to prefer Budweiser over Miller, but that’s probably because “Bud” has only one syllable and is therefore easier to bark.

The docs who use this form of treatment say it’s less debilitating than the usual dog and cat tranquilizers. And there’s no argument here about relieving the pain of a suffering animal or the anxiety of a dog or cat that refuses to get into carrier or car because it means a trip to the vet’s and probably an injection of some kind.

Note: the dogs don’t smoke.  The pot is put in oils or other stuff they eat or lick.  If the dogs DID smoke, you can bet that the Surgeon General would be all over the canine bong and joint crowd.  There’d be warning labels on the packages.  The animal’s health insurance cost would skyrocket and you’d likely see public service announcements featuring Nancy Reagan with her oh-so-sound advice, “Just say Woof.”

The feds are getting in the way of clinical testing.  And where are all the states’ rights advocates? Probably out cooking their meth while Rover’s arthritis is getting worse and South Dogpatch won’t allow a treadmill run to determine whether the dog is arthritic enough to be considered for pot.

Any kid from middle school age on up knows how to and where to buy a joint and how much he should pay. But a mature dog or cat with the aches and pains that sometimes come with age is shut out.

Next thing you know, the ATF will be raiding Dr. Flickenheimer’s Kennel and seizing the brownies for evidence.

Meantime, pets are suffering needlessly.

SHRAPNEL (Animal farm edition):

--An overweight squirrel in Maplewood NJ has been caught in the act of stealing chocolates, lip balm and tissues a homeowner traditionally leaves outside for delivery people at holiday time. Breaking into a bag for candy and throat lozenges is one thing.  But lip balm?

--Alas, poor Alice Hoyle of Bath, England. Someone stole her cow.  Well, not exactly a cow.  An inflatable cow she uses as a lawn decoration to promote a charity that helps real cows.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

Find more at https://twitter.com/@wessayswire

© WJR 2017

1878 It's Morning at CVS

1878 It’s Morning at CVS

Here’s a tip on how to shop at CVS. Bring along a friend or a slip a neighborhood kid a couple of bucks to stand on the checkout line before you even start shopping. By the time you gather your stuff, that friend or kid will be near the front and you can check out quickly and leave.

Or make it a day trip.  Maybe bring along a deck of cards.

And now, the store that’s famous for long lines and understaffed registers wants to work its magic on Aetna Insurance by buying it for 69 billion dollars.

Like they don’t have enough debt!

In other words now that they and their contemporaries, Walgreens, Wal-mart, Rite Aid, etc., have killed off the neighborhood pharmacy, they’re ready to take down something bigger.  The CEO wants his company to become “the front door to health care.”

Let’s look at some of this company’s history.  They were a regional New England chain. Then along came Ward Melville of the Melville Shoe Company and bought them.  Melville made Thom McAn and several other brands.  Not too much later, CVS became the tail that wagged the dog and now they are the dog.

So cruise the aisles.  Everything you need is right there. CVS generic for everything that ails you and always lower than the price-jacked name brands.

You will also be able to pick up their health insurance starter kits on the same shelf as the CVS brand over the counter drug you’re there for.

Stomach remedies? Stomach insurance.

Headache remedies? Headache insurance.

Hemorrhoids? Butt insurance.

Allergies? Allergy insurance.

If you need actual medicine, the pharmacy will be happy to sell you the appropriate insurance to go with it.

After taking the wrecking ball to the CareMark mail order pharmacy, CVS learned a few things about telephone customer service.

The customer service department will be reduced to two operators, Martha and Henry. When you ask for help on the phone, you get Martha. She puts you on hold, lets you stew to canned funeral music and then hangs up.

When you call back you get Martha again. You ask for her supervisor. She connects you with Henry. He puts you on hold, lets you stew to canned funeral music and then hangs up. Or...

When you ask for help on the phone, you get Henry. He hangs up after about 30 seconds on hold.

When you call back you get Henry again. You ask for his supervisor. He connects you with Martha. She apologizes, puts you on hold and they block your number.

When you check out of the store -- finally --

1. The computer system is a little slow today. It’ll just take a minute to check you out.
2. You can check out quicker by scanning your items into our smartphone app available free at iTunes and Google Play.
3. It will take the register forever to print out your receipt which consists of two inches of data and a mile and a half of coupons for stuff you don’t need and with the shelf life of a fruit fly.
4. The automatic exit door will have jammed closed. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.  Are you in a hurry?  Uh… is the patient sick?  Oh, 103.2 fever. Well… the door repair people will be here any minute.

Front door to health care?  But no emergency exit?  Sure.  Why would anyone want to leave when everything on earth is at your fingertips right here. Even Ice Cream, paper towels and the biography of Ward Melville. Just scan what you use into your iPhone.

Ross Mol contributed content to this post.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

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© WJR 2017

1877 Nightcrawlers

1877 Nightcrawlers

The problem with living nightcrawlers is if you cut them in half, you get two living nightcrawlers.  And they call them nightcrawlers for a reason.

They live and work in darkness.  And so it was that the Senate early Saturday morning passed the tax fraud… uh… the tax bill.  But don’t worry.  It’s not going to be enacted into law immediately. It has to be reconciled with the House version which is equally fraudulent. It’s the same tune but different words.

Several things come to mind.

--Has anyone read this thing?  On its route to a 51-49 passage it shape shifted more times per minute than a presidential speech.

--Who dealt this mess? Probably lobbyists, consultants and congressional employees tasked with putting the actual substance into words on paper, giving the elected officials plausible deniability when some rogue constituent calls them to task. (“Does it really say you can deduct the paint for my yacht?” “I didn’t know that, the bill was written by staff.”)

If it eventually makes its way into law, this measure will grant tax reductions to rich people who won’t notice the difference.  You, of course could live luxuriously on the amount of their cut alone.

Eventually the middle class, already in an econ-corset will see substantial increases.  Senators recognize this, but say future congresses will extend the cuts.

Really!

And the bill in its present form would increase the deficit by more than a (t) trillion dollars.  What’s the matter, deficit hawks? Is it okay to vote against something you’ve spent a lifetime lauding?

Working in the wee small hours, the Senate also threw another bucket of sand into the workings of the affordable care act.  That will mean 13 million of you will lose health insurance.

Whose fault is all of this?  Yours. You elected this can of worms.  And not just the senators. It’s the presidents and the representatives and the state reps and governors who turned all voting into a surreal parody of democracy.  Now, candidates pick their voters instead of the other way around.

This space has long advocated adding the Final Exam Amendment to the US constitution. The Final Exam Amendment would require senators and representatives not only to read a bill but to pass a test before being allowed to vote on it.

Fat chance, that.  

SHRAPNEL:

--No one read the bill. One reason is laziness. Another is part of it is handwritten protected by illegibility and maybe invisible ink.

--Will the Koch brothers’ cash infusion turn Time Magazine into Breitbart between slick covers? Not likely. But it may not matter because who reads the thing, anyway?

GRAPESHOT:

-My review of Henican’s book about trump

-The New York Daily News uses the work of a freelance photographer named Angus Mordant and some of us want to know if he is.

-Barring incident, we’ll look Wednesday at CVS’s plans to buy Aetna.

Today’s Quote:

-“This page is not a democracy.” -- Beth A. Breeze, one time NBC colleague.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

Find more at https://twitter.com/@wessayswire

© WJR 2017

1876 Matt, What Happened?

This is the guy I knew and worked with. Young, fresh, already balding. A decent newsman and a decent human being.  This was a gentleman, a class act.

As surely you know by now, Matt Lauer has been fired as host of the Today Show. Sexual misbehavior. Pictured as a tyrant. Where does an 800 pound gorilla sit?  Anywhere he wants to. Until they recognize that like King Kong, we don’t see who’s wearing the gorilla suit.

He was worth $25 million a year to the company. The people loved him. Early on, the staff loved him. Now?

What a mess.

Matt never needed to abuse. Women regularly signaled their availability.  So why pick on employees who performed acts thinking if they didn’t, their jobs -- and maybe their careers would immediately start circling the drain.

Matt, you were weakening over time.  Those interviews with trump and with Hillary Clinton were lame and uninformative.  Everyone has off days. You could have picked a Saturday or Sunday and napped in your living room instead of in a television studio with presidential candidates and millions of viewers.

It’s hard not to get bored when you do the same stuff over and over for 20 years.  When you’re bored, you start phoning it in. You have time and energy; you make trouble for yourself and others.

Lauer’s admission and apology was issued just before air time yesterday morning (but early enough to make a graphic for the Today Show open.)

NBC’s own statement was a weasel job. It said no one in present management heard about any sex thing until last Monday.  Earth to NBC’s current owner, Comcast: “present management” has been present for only a short time.  

Okay, what about non-present management? Former executive producer Jeff Zucker said he never heard any complaints either.  

And Jeff’s the kind of guy who makes it his business to know everything. Every. Thing. Everything from which reporters are stationed where to what words the anchors will say, to what time the office wastebaskets were most recently emptied to how the guy who empties them takes his coffee.

As we’ve pointed out in various other situations, when the real game is in the boardroom, the team on the field can’t win. While all this was going on, GE’s soon to be former CEO, Jeffrey Inept, was busily trying to palm off NBC and found a willing sucker in the guise of an avaricious and ignorant Comcast.  While the two sides were trying to out nickel and dime each other, the team on the field had a field day.

So you can’t completely blame Matt.  But, yes, you can blame him enough to throw him out because what he did was wrong and the climate is right for such firings.

In the shelter of indoor venues, various honors to various accused are being withdrawn.

Matt can only hope that Ohio State University doesn’t withdraw his honorary bachelor’s degree because he’s going to need it for those resumes he’s preparing to send out.

It’s bad enough that he hurt all those women. Now, the costume company is en route to repossess that gorilla suit.

SHRAPNEL:

--Hoda Kotb, co host of The Today Show’s frothy fourth hour, reminds us she is a credible co anchor and serious journalist by filling Lauer’s chair for now.  She does this in the simplest and most direct way. By calmly and reassuringly presenting the stories of the morning.

--Is Kotb a candidate for permanent occupant of that chair? A lot depends on what NBC can do about its scatterbrained hiring of Megyn Kelly.  A two- woman morning team would be a first, but would it work?

GRAPESHOT:

-Savannah Guthrie is no Katie Couric.

TODAY’S QUOTE:

“The star of the show is the show, not the star.” -- me, explaining what Lauer understood when he first started as co-anchor, an uncommon virtue he evidently has forgotten. (I hate it when writers quote themselves.)

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

All sponsored content on this page is parody.

Find more at https://twitter.com/@wessayswire

© WJR 2017