Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Officiating and Immigration

The preacher sitting behind me had the whole row laughing early in the game. Alabama was rolling pretty good ahead of Kentucky by double-digits.
But when Kentucky made the game tight, the preacher lost his religion for several minutes.

He went from "THE GOOD LORD LOVES GOOD BASKETBALL" to "YOU #%$@ BLIND BAT ZEBRA, I KNOW WHAT I'M PREACHING ABOUT TOMORROW! WHO IN THE #%#$ TAUGHT YOU HOW TO CALL A BASKETBALL GAME" in the time it takes to lose a lead in a SEC basketball game.

The speed with which the good preacher lost his good humor was directly proportional to Alabama losing it's lead.

Bama finally won and all was right with the world and also the Sunday sermon. But it did remind me of something I've learned after covering sports since 1981 and my daughter playing
AAU basketball at a high level for 10 years.

It is a myth that fans want a fairly called ballgame. Fans in the stands don't want an evenly called game or officials who blow the whistle fairly and squarely.
They want a break. They want an advantage. Don't say the home team fouled. It's the zebra's fault. At the end of the day, it's about winning at all cost and if the officials help us, so be it.

I can see the e-mails now. Jasper from Jasper will write...."Greg, most fans want the officials to do a good job with a sense of fair play."

Yeah....and I'm the King of England.

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Immigration and the Liberal Media...Well, sure the media are liberal aren't they?

Got an e-mail from a really angry guy named John. Says we are just another liberal media
outlet who ignores important issues like illegal immigration. And because we do, he says, that makes us liberals in bed with other liberal media outlets.

I love the conservative/liberal media debate. Just like the officiating in a basketball game...(see above)...people seek out what they want reinforced and try to discredit what they don't want to hear.

Also, people don't want tough questions asked of leaders they support. But that is what we do.
We ask tough questions. And we expect honest answers. If we don't get those, we tend to get a little irritable.

You want to know why a national correspondent gets a little chippy during an interview. It's because at any given point in the day, someone is trying to mislead him or her.

Be glad that we live in a country where the media are tough. In fact, I sometimes don't think the media are tough enough in Washington, DC. We're lucky. I doubt that any reporter is shouting questions at the guy in Iran.

Back to John and his questioning of illegal immigration coverage....

Every time I turn on my television, there is coverage about how people feel and how the country should react to illegal immigrants.

But I think the dirty little secret on illegal immigration is that there is a significant segment
of the business world that wants nothing done about it. Illegal immigrants are a very cheap and reliable source of labor. As long as that pool exists, and business interests weigh in on the political process, I don't see much changing.

One of the smartest people I have ever met in my life said this today...


"Most controversial issues don't have just two sides... there are usually many dimensions to a controversial story."

Illegal immigration is no different that any other complicated issue that affects our time and out life.
It's like speeding, cheating on your taxes, and wanting a "fairly" officiated basketball game.
It's a "I can do it and I don't want you to do it world" that we live in daily.

More later......

JetBlue

A few things that caught my attention.....

JET BLUE

Imagine for a second that your getting on a plane. Taking your seat. Getting comfortable and it's 8 a.m. You find out from a hard-working flight attendant the flight is delayed. Well, that beach in Florida will still be there when you get there. Or....It's Valentine's Day and you can't wait to see the person who you can't live without.

9 a.m.
Read the magazines on the plane.

10 a.m.
They give you water and some of those pretzels.

11 a.m.

Noon.
They give you more water and pretzels. Hope you enjoyed them. The plane is all out of food.

1 p.m.
It's hot in the plane and the flight attendants....hard working flight attendants...finally open a door to let some air in the plane.

2 p.m.
No more food and water.

3 p.m.
Are there more magazines?

4 p.m.
Hey! They open the door again to let some air in the plane.

It's been eight hours and you ask to leave the plane.
JetBlue won't let you off the plane. If you try to get your family off the plane and back to where there is food and water, they will have you arrested.

5 p.m.

6 p.m.
No, you can't get off the plane. Sorry. I know you are a U.S. citizen and you are being held against your will for nine hours, but if you try and get off the plane, you will be arrested. Restrained possibly. But you cannot get off the plane.

7 p.m.
Someone at JetBlue finally comes to their senses and has the plane return to the terminal.
Ten hours.

You sat on the plane ten hours and they wouldn't let you off. People wonder why the government gets involved in the things they do. The JetBlue situation is why.
JetBlue says they are going to put $20 to $30 million dollars up to reimburse travelers
who are "inconvenienced" by the weather delays. In fact, they have come up with a
"Consumer Bill of Rights." That's good. When you hold people against their will for ten hours with little food, water, and two port-a-johns pretending to be airplane toilets, it's good to know that some marketing person with JetBlue got a committee together and came up with a flow chart, mission statement, and a feel-good document to e-mail to all that will fall for it.

Good thing. Someone probably should have been led off in handcuffs and taken to jail for letting a plane with real people sit on a tarmac or at the gate for ten hours.
Most people don't want the government to get involved and solve a problem with private business. But when you callously treat people with contempt and disrespect in the manner that JetBlue did, you open the door for actions you don't anticipate. Like the government ringing your doorbell.

It's too bad really this happened to JetBlue. JetBlue is a discount carrier that is trying it's best to make air travel affordable in the world of big carriers. The Valentine's Day weather debacle was a serious error on JetBlue's part, but one from which they can recover.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Real Life Gets In the Way of a Blog

Welcome to February. Sorry...real life gets in the way of updating my blog.
Lot going on in my life in and out of work.

Several things....


Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby was in town Sunday. In one of those moments that I'm sure I will tell my friends about till I die, I got to spend some time chatting with him for a bit.
Cosby was very cordial, and very accommodating.
When he found out that my parent were retired school teachers, he had a thousand questions.
The importance of education has always been an important part of who Cosby is on a daily basis.

The funny thing that happened during the introduction....I went out and did my usual 3-4 minutes of extraordinary observations. Concluding, I said that I couldn't stay for the Cosby show because the police had found a piece of ice on the Parkway and I had to go to work.
Got a big laugh with that one. Last Friday, we went with "wall-to-wall" coverage when ice conditions forced the Parkway to close. So when Cosby came out, he wanted me to explain it to him.

"Mr. Cosby, when the wind blows a peach off a tree in Southern Tennesse, North Alabama gets shut down."

The crowd laughed again and Mr. Cosby sent me on my way.




*Anna Nicole Smith

Raise your hand if you didn't see this one coming.

Did I miss something? Did I miss the war ending? Did the troops come home? Are the wars over? Is gas still $2.10 a gallon? Did poverty end? Did homelessness end?

The amount of news given to Anna Nicole Smith's death was astounding and more than a little embarrassing. The national cable news outlets made her out to be a head of state.
For someone whose tombstone should read "Went Through Life Stoned," she got
coverage worthy of someone who actually made a contribution to society.

The person who cared the most however was probably doing back flips. The death of Anna Nicole Smith will keep Nancy Grace rolling for months.

Not me. I have a rule at home or at work. When I see an Anna Nicole Smith story, I pick up the remote and change channels. Makes me glad that we still carry Andy Griffith.

Valentine's Day

Ok guys...here is the deal. It's part of the "work smarter-not harder" mentality that I find
so hard to grasp.

Just get the wife or the girlfriend a spa gift certificate. Let her get the manicure, pedicure, or the massage and she will be thanking you for days. When the lady of the house gets to indulge herself, she rarely forgets it.