God Bless Ronan Tynan

The only thing I miss about the Yankees' absence from the playoffs is the performance of "God Bless America" by Ronan Tynan. Having him perform so often and so well at Yankee Stadium reminds me of the Philadelphia Flyers bringing out Kate Smith to sing it as a good-luck charm.

The U.S. could significantly reduce noise pollution by making "God Bless America" the national anthem. I endure 500 excruciating renditions of the "Star-Spangled Banner" a year on streaming baseball games. Only in the cacophony of battle could someone think that such a jarring collection of notes constitutes music.

Tynan, described as "renowned Irish Tenor Ronan Tynan" so often it sounds like his legal name, has a personal story I'd never heard in spite of these performances. He's a double amputee, physician, and Paralympics athlete who began singing seriously at age 33.

Politics · Music · Sports · 2004/10/25 · 13 COMMENTS · Link

Thou Shalt Not Anger The Times

Today's New York Times includes a letter I wrote to ombudsman Daniel Okrent about his decision to out a reader who sent a violently hostile e-mail to political reporter Adam Nagourney:

I was disappointed by your decision to reveal the name of the offensive e-mail correspondent.

The easiest thing for any newspaper columnist to do is to quote his most abusive critics. It's a win-win: no one would be persuaded by the person's horrendous comments, and it builds sympathy for the columnist.

On the other hand, if the columnist only quoted reasonable people whose criticism is well informed, it would be more of a challenge to refute them.

I don't think a readers' representative should ridicule his readers. Readers need to know that the ombudsman is on their side. If he adopts the same "us against them" bunker mentality as other journalists, he should find another position.

The reader, Steve Schwenk, has received a barrage of abusive e-mail and phone calls, a circumstance that Okrent undoubtedly knew would happen as a result of his column.

In retrospect, I was too charitable to Okrent, who clearly doesn't have the temperament to be an ombudsman. The job requires a herculean amount of patience, as I learned observing the work of Phil Record at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

At the Telegram, Record wrote a daily column for internal use at the paper in addition to a weekly column for the public. Even in the internal column, I can't recall a single occasion when he roughed up a hot-headed reader for an inappropriate remark, in spite of hearing from cranks all the time.

Okrent has now twice compared verbally mistreating a Times reporter to desecrating a church, including this remark to BusinessWeek:

... someone who goes out at night and paints a swastika on the door of a synagogue doesn't want it written about either.

In defense of the sacred sensibilities of reporters, Okrent claims an obligation to hold readers to "public responsibility" for their communication with the newspaper. That's an odd niche for a readers' representative to carve out for himself, unless he's more interested in protecting the paper from critics than challenging its mistakes.

Note: This entry has been updated to remove the statement that Schwenk is a weblogger. He does not have a blog.

Journalism · 2004/10/24 · 35 COMMENTS · Link

Brian Carnell, Salon Subscriber

Last year, I announced a Salon contest on Workbench:

I will buy a Salon subscription for one of the vultures who has circled the magazine for years in premature anticipation of its demise. The winner will be someone whose criticism of the publication is weirdly personal, unnaturally angry, outstandingly venomous, or ideally a combination of all three.

Catching up today, I awarded the prize to the fetchingly bilious weblogger Brian Carnell. No one combines his passionate loathing for the liberal online magazine with encyclopedic dedication to the subject. He has lamented the publication's low ethical standards, lax math skills, and freewheeling accounting practices, among other offenses.

If Salon ever folds, Carnell will be the first to post a hearty "I told you so," a realized prediction that would be more impressive if he hadn't been making it for years.

But I don't want to rob him of this achievement, and it is a matter of public record that he'll cherish this gift for the next 12 months, or the closure of Salon, whichever comes first:

I have to confess that I'm a regular Salon reader, and while I'll miss the site when it dies (and it is going to die), I've only got two words for David Talbot: good riddance.

Salon Blogs · 2004/10/22 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Weapons of Mass Hilarity

In March, President Bush participated in the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, a traditional event in Washington where the president provides laughs at the expense of himself and members of the administration.

His choice of comedic material was deeply offensive: a Lettermanesque slide show depicting his futile personal hunt for weapons of mass destruction under tables and desks in the White House. I couldn't believe that he was laughing off a mistake while it was killing or maiming thousands of U.S. troops. Was the Tet Offensive comedy gold for LBJ in 1968?

David Corn, a columnist for The Nation, was present at the event and similarly unamused: "I wondered what the spouse, child or parent of a soldier killed in Iraq would have felt if they had been watching C-SPAN and saw the commander-in-chief mocking the supposed justification for the war that claimed their loved ones."

A new campaign ad from Win Back Respect answers Corn's question.

Politics · 2004/10/21 · Comment · Link

After the Boston Red Sox defeated the Curse of the Bambino last night by a score of 10 to 3, Nike aired this Fenway Park 1919 commercial to celebrate the achievement.

Sports · 2004/10/21 · 3 COMMENTS · Link

UserLand Buzzing with Improvements

In the past six weeks, UserLand Software has released more than 14 updates to Manila, the server software running all of the weblogs on Buzzword.Com. I added these updates today and they appear -- tempting fate here -- to be running properly.

UserLand Product News describes these changes, which improve the performance of the software, swat bugs, and add a few new features. Here are the upgrades most noticeable to weblog publishers:

• On a discussion board, message subject length has been increased from 60 to 255 characters and the new message subject field has been widened.
• A weblog's shared news aggregator can read newsfeeds in the Atom format in addition to RSS.
• The performance of Manila RPC has been improved, making it easier to update weblogs with third-party software that employs this interface such as Daniel Berliner's Archipelago weblog editor.

I have around a dozen e-mails from Buzzword users looking for help with problems running the software. I'll be working on them here and on the Manila customer support forum, the best place to get the attention of UserLand developers.

Manila · 2004/10/20 · Comment · Link

Routh, Justice, and the American Way

Hoping to recreate the legendary casting of little-known, lantern-jawed soap actor Christopher Reeve as Superman in the '70s, the producers of a new Superman film have chosen Brandon Routh, a little-known, lantern-jawed soap actor, as the next actor to don the cape.

Routh grew up in Iowa and looks the part, but as someone who saw his work as "Seth Anderson #1" on One Life to Live, I'm surprised at this casting. Perhaps he's gotten better since he was fired from that soap in 2002, but back then he was acting Kryptonite.

When Routh was fired, he ranted on his Web site, claiming that producers would get their just desserts in the afterlife. He deleted his comments quickly, but a few soap sites saved a copy:

On Thursday I was released/fired/terminated (whatever you wanna call it) and replaced. There will be a new Seth Anderson.

I am not truly saddened by this turn of events ... in fact I am quite relieved. I have gained much and will now move on. I am saddened however by the lack of respect and humanity expressed by those in control of the show. Instead of being open and honest with me they were conniving and malicious. They actually had me come in to work Thursday, for four hours ... then called me up to tell me they were releasing me! I do not stand for such treatment and this is one reason I am happy that I am no longer in league with people who can't give me respect. They would rather hide than be confronted with the actions they take. Know this everyone, if you can't deal with the consequences of your actions ... seriously rethink your action ... because you may get far in this world ... but this world is not the world that matters.

That said, I will leave God to judge those who have wronged me. And I do forgive them, in hopes that someday they will understand what they have done.

You gotta love someone who evokes God's patient but ever certain wrath upon the people who trespass against him.

Soaps · 2004/10/20 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

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