Published in the Columbia Journalism Review Online (www.cjr.org) - June 9, 2010
By Steve Daley
There they are again, this time on the front of the Washington Post "Style" section (6/4/10). It’s the celebrity chefs, and this time they’re in service to First Lady Michelle Obama and her campaign against childhood obesity.
The latest "Style" section snapshot of the culinary elites preceded a larger White House gathering of chefs who are every bit as serious about school nutrition as they are about a $28 chunk of pan roasted Arctic char with orange and rosemary beurre blanc.
We are in the age of the unavoidable cook. They won’t stay in the kitchen unless someone puts a camera in there.
Chef profiles crowd the pages of city magazines such as "Boston," "Los Angeles," and "Washingtonian." These publications track the career paths and great thoughts of chefs the way the old "Sporting News" used to follow All-Star shortstops.
Celebrity chefs overrun HBO’s clever "Treme," though it must be said the shiny, self-satisfied chaps playing themselves in a ruined post-Katrina New Orleans are well behaved, unlike the gaggle of posturing gangsta chefs who torment waiters and rail (generally in British and French accents) on cable television.
Gordon Ramsay, for example, presides over Fox’s "Hell’s Kitchen" like volcanic actor Joe Pesci in "Goodfellas", though in real-world terms he’s about a scary as crème brulee.
Ramsey’s normally affable British colleague Jamie Oliver, the tousle-haired “Naked Chef,” recently took his "Food Revolution" on ABC to Huntington, W. Va.
The locals, having been identified by the Centers for Disease Controls as particularly pitiful examples of lard-based American consumption, handed Oliver his colander when he toyed with the school lunch menu.
“They don’t understand me,” Oliver whinged to the press, and he wasn’t talking about his accent. For the moment, the “Food Revolution” will not be televised.
Anthony Bourdain, a prominent chef and frequent author perpetually angry about something, has a new book: "Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook".
Check, please.
The quality of the food in this new celebrity driven universe can be left for others to judge. But there is little doubt that the publicity machinery for the “top chefs” is four-star.
Consider the Cleveland-based Michael Symon, one of the Food Network’s “Iron Chefs.” He has mounted a heart-healthy campaign to keep resident basketball superstar LeBron James in the greater Cuyahoga County area.
Symon announced he would cook for James and his friends once a month if the big guy would re-sign with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.
It seems like a middling incentive for James, who reportedly makes $15 million a year to play hoops and owns a $29 million endorsement contract from Nike. He could fly to Paris every week for dinner. But that doesn’t mean every news outlet from NBC to Yahoo Sports didn’t cover Symon’s offer.
The man’s a chef. Send a crew.
On May 2, Washington chef Jose Andres—one of Michelle Obama’s high-profile backers in the obesity battle - was the subject of an adoring "60 Minutes" profile.
The fawning segment, which would have made Donald Trump uncomfortable, focused on Andres’s modest roots and his charitable work.
But when Andres began to feed CBS interrogator Anderson Cooper in the chef’s fashionable, six-seat “Minibar by Jose Andres” establishment, a viewer could have been forgiven for thinking the Dalai Lama had gone into the restaurant business.
“Minibar is a window into creativity, that’s all,” said Andres, earning a nod from Cooper.
Last month, Chicago Sun-Times Washington reporter Lynn Sweet felt obliged to apologize to Chicago chef Rick Bayless, who had been drafted by the Obama message machine to assist in a May 19 state dinner for the president of Mexico.
It seems Bayless, demonstrating the professional modesty that characterizes his line of work, had sent a Twitter message or three about his White House culinary experience to his legions of cilantro-happy fans.
Twittering from inside the White House is in violation of some twenty-first century edict, as Sweet reported. Bayless swore on his garlic press that he did not engage in online social networking while actually on site at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The whole enchilada wound up in “Politico,” The Washington Post, all available Chicago media, and a raft of food blogs, and Sweet opted to apologize.
The brouhaha might have been fueled by the fact that Bayless had given interviews about his bond with the Obamas and his “guest White House chef” status to The New York Times and NPR.
It’s no secret that after the gate-crashing fiasco at the Obama’s first state dinner, Bayless’s dear friends were determined to keep the gala a low-key affair until the plates were being cleared.
But in Chef World, publicity is seated at the other end of the food chain from salt: Too much is never enough.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
"The Pacific"
We watched the final episode of "The Pacific" on HBO last night, watched Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie come home to their families and futures, watched Merriell "Snafu" Shelton climb off a troop train in the New Orleans twilight and leave Sledge, his brother in arms through so much horror, sleeping, making no goodbyes.
Perhaps like others I have grown weary of the "greatest generation," even though my late father was part of it, fighting in the Pacific Theater.
I have watched "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" and Ken Burns' fine PBS series "The War," and I grew up watching John Wayne in the movies and "Combat" on TV. I have largely passed over the many books and weepy Tom Brokaw/Tom Hanks retrospectives on the men and women who fought and died in World War II.
"The Pacific" went a long way toward changing that. It was a remarkable piece, remarkable television, a relentless 10-week saga that conveyed the horror of infantry combat in a fashion I had never seen or even imagined.
The recreations of the battles at Guadacanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu and Iwo Jima come at the viewer at the speed of light and are nothing less than terrifying. A series of fine writers, directors and actors deliver the viewer into a world of bone-rattling tension played out in endless, teeming rain and jungle and on sun-baked atolls riddled with lethal caves and danger.
For the viewer, at least for this one, "The Pacific" peels back any lingering romance about wartime, pounding away at the point that in these moments the veneer of civilization is all but gone.
Snafu Shelton's character (played by a fascinating actor named Rami Malek) is equal parts golem and hero, a young man thrust into a reality so violent and uncertain that his amoral pose and boundless cynicism keeps him alive, or so he seems to believe.
There is a scene where Shelton talks idly about the fortunes of war with Sledge, his eyes as dead as a shark's, and you realize that as he chats he is tossing coral pebbles into the open skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
Sledge wrote a book, "With the Old Breed," as did Leckie, a newspaperman. These memoirs from the 1st Marine Division formed the core of the narrative for "The Pacific," as did the better-known and yet mostly forgotten story of Sgt. John Basilone, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor at Guadacanal and, after time spent stateside selling war bonds, made his way back to combat in time for the brutal landing at Iwo Jima.
Studs Terkel interviewed Sledge for his book 1984 book "The Good War." Sledge told him: "To me, there were two different wars. There was the war of the guy on the front lines. You don't come off until you are wounded or killed. Or, if lucky, relieved ... The man up front puts his life on the line day after day after day to the point of utter hopelessness."
That's the war "The Pacific," produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg and myriad others, deliver.
Sledge became a college professor in his native Alabama. Leckie went back to the newspaper trade. They married, lived out their lives, died the same year, 2001. There is a statue of John Basilone in his New Jersey home town, and a Navy destroyer is named for him.
Snafu Shelton, a gambling man, fixed air conditioners in rural Louisiana and by all accounts had a hard life, though it could not have been harder than the horrors he endured on those tiny islands more than 60 years ago.
Sledge, his companion across the killing ground of the airfield at Peleliu, in the caves on Okinawa and on the slow train home, was a pallbearer at his funeral. Their war will stay with me for a long time.
Perhaps like others I have grown weary of the "greatest generation," even though my late father was part of it, fighting in the Pacific Theater.
I have watched "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" and Ken Burns' fine PBS series "The War," and I grew up watching John Wayne in the movies and "Combat" on TV. I have largely passed over the many books and weepy Tom Brokaw/Tom Hanks retrospectives on the men and women who fought and died in World War II.
"The Pacific" went a long way toward changing that. It was a remarkable piece, remarkable television, a relentless 10-week saga that conveyed the horror of infantry combat in a fashion I had never seen or even imagined.
The recreations of the battles at Guadacanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu and Iwo Jima come at the viewer at the speed of light and are nothing less than terrifying. A series of fine writers, directors and actors deliver the viewer into a world of bone-rattling tension played out in endless, teeming rain and jungle and on sun-baked atolls riddled with lethal caves and danger.
For the viewer, at least for this one, "The Pacific" peels back any lingering romance about wartime, pounding away at the point that in these moments the veneer of civilization is all but gone.
Snafu Shelton's character (played by a fascinating actor named Rami Malek) is equal parts golem and hero, a young man thrust into a reality so violent and uncertain that his amoral pose and boundless cynicism keeps him alive, or so he seems to believe.
There is a scene where Shelton talks idly about the fortunes of war with Sledge, his eyes as dead as a shark's, and you realize that as he chats he is tossing coral pebbles into the open skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
Sledge wrote a book, "With the Old Breed," as did Leckie, a newspaperman. These memoirs from the 1st Marine Division formed the core of the narrative for "The Pacific," as did the better-known and yet mostly forgotten story of Sgt. John Basilone, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valor at Guadacanal and, after time spent stateside selling war bonds, made his way back to combat in time for the brutal landing at Iwo Jima.
Studs Terkel interviewed Sledge for his book 1984 book "The Good War." Sledge told him: "To me, there were two different wars. There was the war of the guy on the front lines. You don't come off until you are wounded or killed. Or, if lucky, relieved ... The man up front puts his life on the line day after day after day to the point of utter hopelessness."
That's the war "The Pacific," produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg and myriad others, deliver.
Sledge became a college professor in his native Alabama. Leckie went back to the newspaper trade. They married, lived out their lives, died the same year, 2001. There is a statue of John Basilone in his New Jersey home town, and a Navy destroyer is named for him.
Snafu Shelton, a gambling man, fixed air conditioners in rural Louisiana and by all accounts had a hard life, though it could not have been harder than the horrors he endured on those tiny islands more than 60 years ago.
Sledge, his companion across the killing ground of the airfield at Peleliu, in the caves on Okinawa and on the slow train home, was a pallbearer at his funeral. Their war will stay with me for a long time.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
I Gave At The Office
Back in early 1976 I was running a bar in Washington D.C. The Class Reunion was a saloon for grown ups, a gathering place for reporters, lawyers, politicos, PR types and, after hours, other bar people and people I let stay after hours.
One night as I was conducting a 4 a.m. seminar on the state of American politics, a Democratic Party lawyer and friend of Oklahoma populist Sen. Fred Roy Harris shamed me into writing a $100 check to Harris' long forgotten presidential campaign. The next morning - well, afternoon - the lawyer called me at home and offered to give me the check back.
$100 was a fair amount of money in those days (and is again, as it turns out). But I had blathered on until sunrise so I told him to cash the check and good luck to Fred Harris and his lovely wife LaDonna.
It was the first time I had ever given money to a politician.
Fred and LaDonna didn't have much luck electorally. Jimmy Carter wound up in the White House and I went on a 24-year hiatus from giving money to the political class. It was called journalism.
Journalists don't offer up campaign contributions, as a general rule, and in my opinon it's a pretty good general rule. In the 20-plus years I spent in the newspaper business, I thought my colleagues were a trifle holier-than-thou about the whole thing, but to paraphrase songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, I kept my campaign business in my pocket.
In 1996 the Chicago Tribune and I had an ugly divorce. The market for Washington-based white male political writers and columnists of a certain age was a crowded demographic and after while it was clear my days in daily journalism were effectively at an end.
By 2000, I felt comfortable giving some dough to Al Gore for President, and no regrets except for the fact that Joe Lieberman may have benefited in some way.
We all know what happened in Florida that year and as for me an avalanche of mailings from every tree-loving, affirmative-acting, union-organizing liberal interest group rained down on our house. And the rain continues to this day.
I went in again in 2004 for Sen. John Kerry. My wife Jane and I also coughed up a modest amount for the Democratic National Committee. I was miffed at the presidential outcome but felt better about my largesse as the second Bush-Cheney term began to reveal itself.
2008 was no different. Made a modest contribution to the Barack Obama campaign. Gave $50 to something called "Act Blue" in support of the Democratic House member from my old Republican home town in western New York state. He turned out to be Eric Massa. Stop laughing.
So here we are. President Obama is doing pretty well on the job by my lights. But it's clear that a chap like me cannot pony up enough money to make it interesting. And I didn't write the checks to support the antics of recalcitrant Senate Democrats led by the preposterous Max Baucus of Montana who made a hash of health care or for the timid likes of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Not looking for perfection here but I'm still waiting on closing Gitmo and I'm not for open carry of guns in our national parks, which is now the law of the land. I'm pretty sure that the Afghanistan adventure is going to wind up badly.
Mostly I'm waiting for those 68 million people who voted for Obama to make themselves heard, and for the President and his party to act as if they're proud of what they're trying to do. I believe those two phenomena are connected.
This approach may not involve pleasing Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe or various editorial writers or the folks braying for "bipartisanship" as the culture war heats up.
Until then, however, the little check is not on the mail.
One night as I was conducting a 4 a.m. seminar on the state of American politics, a Democratic Party lawyer and friend of Oklahoma populist Sen. Fred Roy Harris shamed me into writing a $100 check to Harris' long forgotten presidential campaign. The next morning - well, afternoon - the lawyer called me at home and offered to give me the check back.
$100 was a fair amount of money in those days (and is again, as it turns out). But I had blathered on until sunrise so I told him to cash the check and good luck to Fred Harris and his lovely wife LaDonna.
It was the first time I had ever given money to a politician.
Fred and LaDonna didn't have much luck electorally. Jimmy Carter wound up in the White House and I went on a 24-year hiatus from giving money to the political class. It was called journalism.
Journalists don't offer up campaign contributions, as a general rule, and in my opinon it's a pretty good general rule. In the 20-plus years I spent in the newspaper business, I thought my colleagues were a trifle holier-than-thou about the whole thing, but to paraphrase songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, I kept my campaign business in my pocket.
In 1996 the Chicago Tribune and I had an ugly divorce. The market for Washington-based white male political writers and columnists of a certain age was a crowded demographic and after while it was clear my days in daily journalism were effectively at an end.
By 2000, I felt comfortable giving some dough to Al Gore for President, and no regrets except for the fact that Joe Lieberman may have benefited in some way.
We all know what happened in Florida that year and as for me an avalanche of mailings from every tree-loving, affirmative-acting, union-organizing liberal interest group rained down on our house. And the rain continues to this day.
I went in again in 2004 for Sen. John Kerry. My wife Jane and I also coughed up a modest amount for the Democratic National Committee. I was miffed at the presidential outcome but felt better about my largesse as the second Bush-Cheney term began to reveal itself.
2008 was no different. Made a modest contribution to the Barack Obama campaign. Gave $50 to something called "Act Blue" in support of the Democratic House member from my old Republican home town in western New York state. He turned out to be Eric Massa. Stop laughing.
So here we are. President Obama is doing pretty well on the job by my lights. But it's clear that a chap like me cannot pony up enough money to make it interesting. And I didn't write the checks to support the antics of recalcitrant Senate Democrats led by the preposterous Max Baucus of Montana who made a hash of health care or for the timid likes of Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh of Indiana.
Not looking for perfection here but I'm still waiting on closing Gitmo and I'm not for open carry of guns in our national parks, which is now the law of the land. I'm pretty sure that the Afghanistan adventure is going to wind up badly.
Mostly I'm waiting for those 68 million people who voted for Obama to make themselves heard, and for the President and his party to act as if they're proud of what they're trying to do. I believe those two phenomena are connected.
This approach may not involve pleasing Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe or various editorial writers or the folks braying for "bipartisanship" as the culture war heats up.
Until then, however, the little check is not on the mail.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Breaking News from the Luncheon Keynoter
Posted on Columbia Journalism Review (cjr.org) April 6, 2010
By Steve Daley
First of all I’d like to thank (Tucker Carlson; Arianna Hufington; that tweedy-looking professor over there) for the opportunity to discuss the future of newspapers and print journalism.
We meet at a time when our beloved industry is (in a period of historic transition; completely hosed; in more trouble than the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome).
Like you, I love the newspaper business. I (read five or six papers a day; got a week-a-year severance deal back when the getting was good; was in my 40s before I realized I had a job but not a career).
Almost every day someone asks me (for advice on whether or not to go to journalism school; how to become the London bureau chief for the New York Times; do I have a phone number for Burson-Marsteller).
And I always say the same thing; (Go for it, my friend; Why don’t you go outside and lie down in traffic?; I could tell you the truth but it’s too painful for both of us).
It’s true that when I was coming up you could (write your way out of South Bend; have someone help you file your story if you got drunk; fool yourself into thinking you had a professional future).
Yes, those were great days. But you didn’t come here to listen to (an embittered geezer; a guy with a 4-and-a-half bathroom house on 29th St. in Georgetown; complete sophistry about the future of print).
No, you want to (hear 21st century jargon such as “crowdfunding” and “reader engagement”; think you can be a salaried columnist when if you’re lucky you’ll end up as a “digital community manager”; believe that really smart people in newsrooms are getting a handle on all this).
Some may scoff. But I would encourage you to pursue that dream, because (newspapers fold but journalism school is forever; there may come a time when people will decline to write for nothing; maybe the MacArthur Foundation will pick up the tab for everything).
If I could say just one thing to you that is (reason for optimism; the main takeaway from my upcoming book on the future of news; palpably untrue and yet said all the time in these sessions it would be:
(The old business model isn’t working but you may be the one to identify the new model; The future lies in “hyperlocal” news; The answers can be found in incorporating advertising into Kindle content and smart phone applications).
In fact, innovation is everywhere. It’s true that the early results for “citizen journalism” (have been mixed; tell us that with free content you generally get what you pay for; exposed fundamental misunderstandings of the difference between reporting and bloviating).
If you’re like me, when you hear of the need for newspapers to move beyond the “monopoly mindset” and function better as “a filter,” you think (it makes a heck of a lot of sense; Dick Nixon would’ve loved that; give readers less, tell them it’s more).
And when you hear of the imperative to “personalize the news” you think (I love white space; co-branded flea markets; hey, I can now personally read my hometown paper in about five minutes).
Cynics often compare the newspaper to the dinosaur. But remember that (dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years; many had brains the size of walnuts, much like Chief Innovation Officers; extinction theories abound but we know the end came abruptly).
New voices have come to the table. The passion we feel is shared by (former radio execs who love hanging banners in the newsroom; bright young folks who tell Romenesko that credentialing reporters is elitist; the folks down at the news co-op who are kind of fixated on their non-profit tax status right now).
We welcome them all. I’d love to stay and entertain some questions but (I’m on CNN with Rick Sanchez in 25 minutes; I don’t have any good answers; I have to get back to a mandatory newsroom seminar on search engine optimization).
Going forward I wish you all what I have enjoyed - a long and fulfilling career in the newspaper game.
That, of course, (is what we all wish for; went out the window sometime during the Clinton years; is not ever going to happen in this millennium).
Be sure to tip your content providers, er, servers on the way out. The chicken Kiev was real nice.
By Steve Daley
First of all I’d like to thank (Tucker Carlson; Arianna Hufington; that tweedy-looking professor over there) for the opportunity to discuss the future of newspapers and print journalism.
We meet at a time when our beloved industry is (in a period of historic transition; completely hosed; in more trouble than the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome).
Like you, I love the newspaper business. I (read five or six papers a day; got a week-a-year severance deal back when the getting was good; was in my 40s before I realized I had a job but not a career).
Almost every day someone asks me (for advice on whether or not to go to journalism school; how to become the London bureau chief for the New York Times; do I have a phone number for Burson-Marsteller).
And I always say the same thing; (Go for it, my friend; Why don’t you go outside and lie down in traffic?; I could tell you the truth but it’s too painful for both of us).
It’s true that when I was coming up you could (write your way out of South Bend; have someone help you file your story if you got drunk; fool yourself into thinking you had a professional future).
Yes, those were great days. But you didn’t come here to listen to (an embittered geezer; a guy with a 4-and-a-half bathroom house on 29th St. in Georgetown; complete sophistry about the future of print).
No, you want to (hear 21st century jargon such as “crowdfunding” and “reader engagement”; think you can be a salaried columnist when if you’re lucky you’ll end up as a “digital community manager”; believe that really smart people in newsrooms are getting a handle on all this).
Some may scoff. But I would encourage you to pursue that dream, because (newspapers fold but journalism school is forever; there may come a time when people will decline to write for nothing; maybe the MacArthur Foundation will pick up the tab for everything).
If I could say just one thing to you that is (reason for optimism; the main takeaway from my upcoming book on the future of news; palpably untrue and yet said all the time in these sessions it would be:
(The old business model isn’t working but you may be the one to identify the new model; The future lies in “hyperlocal” news; The answers can be found in incorporating advertising into Kindle content and smart phone applications).
In fact, innovation is everywhere. It’s true that the early results for “citizen journalism” (have been mixed; tell us that with free content you generally get what you pay for; exposed fundamental misunderstandings of the difference between reporting and bloviating).
If you’re like me, when you hear of the need for newspapers to move beyond the “monopoly mindset” and function better as “a filter,” you think (it makes a heck of a lot of sense; Dick Nixon would’ve loved that; give readers less, tell them it’s more).
And when you hear of the imperative to “personalize the news” you think (I love white space; co-branded flea markets; hey, I can now personally read my hometown paper in about five minutes).
Cynics often compare the newspaper to the dinosaur. But remember that (dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years; many had brains the size of walnuts, much like Chief Innovation Officers; extinction theories abound but we know the end came abruptly).
New voices have come to the table. The passion we feel is shared by (former radio execs who love hanging banners in the newsroom; bright young folks who tell Romenesko that credentialing reporters is elitist; the folks down at the news co-op who are kind of fixated on their non-profit tax status right now).
We welcome them all. I’d love to stay and entertain some questions but (I’m on CNN with Rick Sanchez in 25 minutes; I don’t have any good answers; I have to get back to a mandatory newsroom seminar on search engine optimization).
Going forward I wish you all what I have enjoyed - a long and fulfilling career in the newspaper game.
That, of course, (is what we all wish for; went out the window sometime during the Clinton years; is not ever going to happen in this millennium).
Be sure to tip your content providers, er, servers on the way out. The chicken Kiev was real nice.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
A Census Form for "Real" America
The U.S. Bureau of Fun Facts estimates it will take the average person either 10 minutes or 10 days to fill out this survey. If your layabout stepson Randy has moved back into the house, yes, you have to count him. Use a pen. With ink in it.
1) How many nights a week does your family watch “American Idol,” “Survivor” or that Donald Trump show?
2) How many members of your family believe President Obama was born in another country? How many members of your family believe Hawaii is another country?
3) How many times a week do members of your family go to the Wal Mart? __
For household items? __
For clothes? __
For food? __
For a social life? __
4) How many members of your family actually work at Wal Mart?
5) Would you describe your family members as close knit?
Chronically obese? Heavily armed?
6) Is there someone in your household – not a blood relative - who is just really getting on your last nerve? Identify.
7) Who is cuter? Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift? C’mon. No waiting.
8) Should Tiger’s wife like totally bail on him for running around with those floozies or should she just hang in there and take the money or what?
9) How many members of your family think Jimmie Johnson wins too many NASCAR races? Has Dale Earnhardt Jr. been pretty much of a disappointment to you and your entire family?
10) Coke Zero or Pepsi Free? Taco Bell or Sonic? Bud Light or Miller Light? Jack Daniels or 'Turkey? Ford pickup or Chevy pickup? Domino’s or Papa John’s?
1) How many nights a week does your family watch “American Idol,” “Survivor” or that Donald Trump show?
2) How many members of your family believe President Obama was born in another country? How many members of your family believe Hawaii is another country?
3) How many times a week do members of your family go to the Wal Mart? __
For household items? __
For clothes? __
For food? __
For a social life? __
4) How many members of your family actually work at Wal Mart?
5) Would you describe your family members as close knit?
Chronically obese? Heavily armed?
6) Is there someone in your household – not a blood relative - who is just really getting on your last nerve? Identify.
7) Who is cuter? Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift? C’mon. No waiting.
8) Should Tiger’s wife like totally bail on him for running around with those floozies or should she just hang in there and take the money or what?
9) How many members of your family think Jimmie Johnson wins too many NASCAR races? Has Dale Earnhardt Jr. been pretty much of a disappointment to you and your entire family?
10) Coke Zero or Pepsi Free? Taco Bell or Sonic? Bud Light or Miller Light? Jack Daniels or 'Turkey? Ford pickup or Chevy pickup? Domino’s or Papa John’s?
Friday, March 12, 2010
Irish Pubs and Irish Bars
There's a difference, of course.
Irish bars, replete with florid lawyers of Irish-American extraction, knuckleheads in turned-around baseball caps, generally bad food and endless midnight choruses of "The Wild Rover," can be outgrown. Irish pubs - increasingly hard to find in American cities or in Ireland, for that matter - provide a different sort of experience, and a more enduring one.
Except on St. Patrick's Day, of course, when they all are equally to be avoided.
The practical matter is that, inevitably, Irish bars and Irish pubs in this country exist in the same space. The quiet late-afternoon-to-early-evening comfort of a shadowy hideaway for a drink, some conversation and maybe a few laughs is often transformed by night into a raucous, bibulous, banjo-rattling gymnasium.
This is probably a minority opinion. Proof that the appeal of the Irish bar extends beyond matters of Celtic heritage is that it is the one species of saloon that keeps growing. Certainly that's the case around Washington D.C., where they are now as common as congressional earmarks.
(In Ireland, pubs are closing at the rate of about one a day, falling victim to recession, smoking bans, drunk driving laws and changes in the Irish lifesyle. Still, no trip to Ireland is complete without a pint in McDaid's, a proper pub off Grafton Street in Dublin, or in a real country pub in Cork or Donegal or the county of your choosing).
In my youth - a phase my wife Jane refers to as "young and stupid" - I worked for a time as bartender in a pair of popular Irish bars in Washington; the Dubliner and Kelly's Irish Times, respectively. That was more than 30 years ago and the fact that both haunts are still pouring whiskey and keeping folks up late at night is testimony enough to their charms.
I worked the very first St. Patrick's Day at the Dubliner on Capitol Hill in 1974 and lived to tell the tale. Danny Coleman, the Dubliner's owner then and now, used to refer to this annual event as the ultimate in "planned hilarity." An honest bartender will tell you that early in a career working March 17 is highly prized, largely for the chance to earn what is generally called "serious money."
A couple of years of puddled green beer, puking coeds and deranged conversation will cure the sensible bartender of that itch.
It's a net plus to see the Irish get some attention, I suppose, but I don't have much good to say about St. Patrick's Day. In my barroom days, after flirting with the St. Paddy's Day tip cup, my idea of a good time was dinner with some friends at a long-gone Indian restaurant in Georgetown called Apana. Then, straight home.
In a decade as a single man living in Chicago, my loyalty to Butch McGuire's saloon on Division St. earned me access to the VIP back door in the alley on March 17, though I don't believe I ever afforded myself the opportunity.
At its best, the lure of the Irish saloon 364 days a year is all about pursuit of what is known in Ireland as "the craic."
The concept is both simple and often debated. And the pronunciation is "crack." It is time spent away from the stressful and the unpleasant, from the rigors of real life and work and money and sometimes family and often responsibility.
"The craic" can be quiet or noisy, played out in a small group or a large one, fueled by grand doses of adult beverage, or not so much.
Fun, for want of a more literary term.
"The craic was mighty," you could hear a fellow say in Ireland. If you were there, you know exactly what he means.
Irish bars, replete with florid lawyers of Irish-American extraction, knuckleheads in turned-around baseball caps, generally bad food and endless midnight choruses of "The Wild Rover," can be outgrown. Irish pubs - increasingly hard to find in American cities or in Ireland, for that matter - provide a different sort of experience, and a more enduring one.
Except on St. Patrick's Day, of course, when they all are equally to be avoided.
The practical matter is that, inevitably, Irish bars and Irish pubs in this country exist in the same space. The quiet late-afternoon-to-early-evening comfort of a shadowy hideaway for a drink, some conversation and maybe a few laughs is often transformed by night into a raucous, bibulous, banjo-rattling gymnasium.
This is probably a minority opinion. Proof that the appeal of the Irish bar extends beyond matters of Celtic heritage is that it is the one species of saloon that keeps growing. Certainly that's the case around Washington D.C., where they are now as common as congressional earmarks.
(In Ireland, pubs are closing at the rate of about one a day, falling victim to recession, smoking bans, drunk driving laws and changes in the Irish lifesyle. Still, no trip to Ireland is complete without a pint in McDaid's, a proper pub off Grafton Street in Dublin, or in a real country pub in Cork or Donegal or the county of your choosing).
In my youth - a phase my wife Jane refers to as "young and stupid" - I worked for a time as bartender in a pair of popular Irish bars in Washington; the Dubliner and Kelly's Irish Times, respectively. That was more than 30 years ago and the fact that both haunts are still pouring whiskey and keeping folks up late at night is testimony enough to their charms.
I worked the very first St. Patrick's Day at the Dubliner on Capitol Hill in 1974 and lived to tell the tale. Danny Coleman, the Dubliner's owner then and now, used to refer to this annual event as the ultimate in "planned hilarity." An honest bartender will tell you that early in a career working March 17 is highly prized, largely for the chance to earn what is generally called "serious money."
A couple of years of puddled green beer, puking coeds and deranged conversation will cure the sensible bartender of that itch.
It's a net plus to see the Irish get some attention, I suppose, but I don't have much good to say about St. Patrick's Day. In my barroom days, after flirting with the St. Paddy's Day tip cup, my idea of a good time was dinner with some friends at a long-gone Indian restaurant in Georgetown called Apana. Then, straight home.
In a decade as a single man living in Chicago, my loyalty to Butch McGuire's saloon on Division St. earned me access to the VIP back door in the alley on March 17, though I don't believe I ever afforded myself the opportunity.
At its best, the lure of the Irish saloon 364 days a year is all about pursuit of what is known in Ireland as "the craic."
The concept is both simple and often debated. And the pronunciation is "crack." It is time spent away from the stressful and the unpleasant, from the rigors of real life and work and money and sometimes family and often responsibility.
"The craic" can be quiet or noisy, played out in a small group or a large one, fueled by grand doses of adult beverage, or not so much.
Fun, for want of a more literary term.
"The craic was mighty," you could hear a fellow say in Ireland. If you were there, you know exactly what he means.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Eric Massa and the old home town
Posted on Huffington Post, March 10, 2010
By Steve Daley
My father was the town Democrat. At least it felt that way growing up in Corning, N.Y.
Before my father, my maternal grandfather pretty much held the title in the small, scenic company town (Corning Inc.) in the Republican stronghold of southwestern New York State.
Joe Daley and Paul V. Lovette Sr. were Democratic aldermen in a place where Democrats won elected office about as often the local temperature hit 100 degrees on Thanksgiving morning.
For decades, Congressional representation in that part of the state was the private reserve of dull Chamber of Commerce Republican businessmen.
When the Sisters of Mercy had control of me in grade school, the local congressman was W. Sterling Cole, a stolid GOP lawyer from Painted Post, N.Y. who held the seat for more than 20 years.
When popular Jamestown mayor Stan Lundine somehow won the seat after the retirement of the GOP member in 1976, he became the first Democrat in the 20th century to represent the district in the House of Representatives.
A few years later, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, showing his legendary political savvy, sent Lundine into permanent public obscurity by picking him as his lieutenant governor.
Republican Amory Houghton Jr., former Chairman and CEO of Corning Inc., won the seat, which, it must be said, he ably held for nearly two decades.
My father was resigned to Houghton’s tenure in Washington, believing it only fair that a man who owned the district might as well represent it in Congress.
The truth is, Houghton was an independent sort who voted against the Iraq war and was possessed of a political spine as alien to Eric Massa and Democrats such as Ben Nelson, Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln as webbed feet.
Houghton’s retirement and the election of garden-variety GOP Rep. Randy Kuhl in 2006 seemed to signal more of the same for the district.
So the 2008 election of Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to the House from the 29th district looked like a pretty big deal, at least to a Steuben County native son and political junkie who had been away a long time.
There was some evidence that the local politics was shifting. In 2008 President Barack Obama won nearly 49 percent of the vote in the district (John McCain drew 50.5%).
In 2006, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran strong for re-election in the “Southern Tier,” in part because she wasn’t afraid to show up in places such as Corning, Hornell and Jamestown.
So having set aside my official journalist’s cap some time ago, I sent Massa a modest $50 campaign contribution, which earned me a handwritten thank you note (not sure who the hand belonged to).
It did not take Massa long to bring me to my senses.
Having once voiced support for a single-payer health care system, he quickly signed on with 38 other House Democrats to vote against his own party’s health care reform bill. Which is something Randy Kuhl could have done, and would have done.
Through modern electronic channels, never having met the man, I told Massa to take me off his money list. I was a trifle let down, but what’s the worst that can happen?
Well, it turns out there’s resignation and disgrace and whining and conflicting rationales and the overwhelming likelihood the district will again have a Republican serving in the House.
If it was a Democratic renaissance, it was a short one.
Last week, Eric Massa of Corning followed New York Gov. David Paterson and Rep. Charles Rangel into political ignominy in the Empire State.
On a Wednesday Massa announced he would not be seeking a second term in the House, citing a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
On Friday, after published reports that he had been accused of sexual harassment by a male employee and was the subject of an inquiry by the House ethics committee, Massa resigned effective this week and booked a date on the Glenn Beck program.
Joe Daley and Paul Lovette are gone, and so it appears are the Democrats in my old hometown and its environs. Local savants say the mayor of Hornell would make the best Democratic candidate to replace Massa.
My guess is they’ll elect a Democrat to Congress sometime before the next Ice Age.
By Steve Daley
My father was the town Democrat. At least it felt that way growing up in Corning, N.Y.
Before my father, my maternal grandfather pretty much held the title in the small, scenic company town (Corning Inc.) in the Republican stronghold of southwestern New York State.
Joe Daley and Paul V. Lovette Sr. were Democratic aldermen in a place where Democrats won elected office about as often the local temperature hit 100 degrees on Thanksgiving morning.
For decades, Congressional representation in that part of the state was the private reserve of dull Chamber of Commerce Republican businessmen.
When the Sisters of Mercy had control of me in grade school, the local congressman was W. Sterling Cole, a stolid GOP lawyer from Painted Post, N.Y. who held the seat for more than 20 years.
When popular Jamestown mayor Stan Lundine somehow won the seat after the retirement of the GOP member in 1976, he became the first Democrat in the 20th century to represent the district in the House of Representatives.
A few years later, then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, showing his legendary political savvy, sent Lundine into permanent public obscurity by picking him as his lieutenant governor.
Republican Amory Houghton Jr., former Chairman and CEO of Corning Inc., won the seat, which, it must be said, he ably held for nearly two decades.
My father was resigned to Houghton’s tenure in Washington, believing it only fair that a man who owned the district might as well represent it in Congress.
The truth is, Houghton was an independent sort who voted against the Iraq war and was possessed of a political spine as alien to Eric Massa and Democrats such as Ben Nelson, Max Baucus and Blanche Lincoln as webbed feet.
Houghton’s retirement and the election of garden-variety GOP Rep. Randy Kuhl in 2006 seemed to signal more of the same for the district.
So the 2008 election of Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to the House from the 29th district looked like a pretty big deal, at least to a Steuben County native son and political junkie who had been away a long time.
There was some evidence that the local politics was shifting. In 2008 President Barack Obama won nearly 49 percent of the vote in the district (John McCain drew 50.5%).
In 2006, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran strong for re-election in the “Southern Tier,” in part because she wasn’t afraid to show up in places such as Corning, Hornell and Jamestown.
So having set aside my official journalist’s cap some time ago, I sent Massa a modest $50 campaign contribution, which earned me a handwritten thank you note (not sure who the hand belonged to).
It did not take Massa long to bring me to my senses.
Having once voiced support for a single-payer health care system, he quickly signed on with 38 other House Democrats to vote against his own party’s health care reform bill. Which is something Randy Kuhl could have done, and would have done.
Through modern electronic channels, never having met the man, I told Massa to take me off his money list. I was a trifle let down, but what’s the worst that can happen?
Well, it turns out there’s resignation and disgrace and whining and conflicting rationales and the overwhelming likelihood the district will again have a Republican serving in the House.
If it was a Democratic renaissance, it was a short one.
Last week, Eric Massa of Corning followed New York Gov. David Paterson and Rep. Charles Rangel into political ignominy in the Empire State.
On a Wednesday Massa announced he would not be seeking a second term in the House, citing a recurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
On Friday, after published reports that he had been accused of sexual harassment by a male employee and was the subject of an inquiry by the House ethics committee, Massa resigned effective this week and booked a date on the Glenn Beck program.
Joe Daley and Paul Lovette are gone, and so it appears are the Democrats in my old hometown and its environs. Local savants say the mayor of Hornell would make the best Democratic candidate to replace Massa.
My guess is they’ll elect a Democrat to Congress sometime before the next Ice Age.
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