Friday Notes

A few notes I've wanted to post, but time, as it sometimes does, got away.

• Etta James has passed. I blogged about her poor health recently, with her sons being hopeful, but alas and At Last, it was not to be.
• We aired a story on CBS 8 News that gives a peek into the building process at the site on Harrison Road in Montgomery in which CBS 8, ABC 32, and The CW will share quarters later this year. You can watch it here if you are so inclined.
• My question about what if the Bourbon Street tea-bagging incident had a women as the victim? Well late last night the suspect was charged with sexual battery and obscenity, despite comment like "oh it's just frat boy pranks."
• And who knew that President Obama could sing? He did Al Green one better---well, not really, but just as the rich man's jokes are always funny, the leader of the free world's entertainment is always entertaining.

Have a great weekend! Spring is right around the corner!

Red Tails

     The movie, which opens Friday, tells the story, more or less, of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black combat pilots in the U.S. Military.
     The folks at Alabama Heritage Magazine offer up their non-dramatized story of the airmen as a primer before you go see how Hollywood handles it.

     The movie is doing quite well, despite critics, like this one for The Associated Press, who finds it a poor telling of the real drama behind what the men accomplished in the air over the theater of war and back home on the ground in America. He did, however, like the aerial scenes.

     The Boston Globe review finds the making of the movie depressing because he believes moviegoers will be foreced to support it, despite the fact that it is not a very good movie. And he writes that it stalls in the aerial scenes.

     My Father was in The Army Air Corps in World War II, the all-white Army Air Corps.

     He and I never talked about that aspect of the war, in fact not much about the war at all. But my Mom told the story of traveling to Florida from New York to visit him during one part of his training.

     She got on a city bus in or near Miami and grabbed a seat at the back. You guessed it, the driver told her to move because that wasn't where she belonged. I would love to finish that tale with a reverse Rosa Parks moment, but alas, Mom did as told and moved to the white section.

[NOTE: The CBS 8 Newsroom reports Red Tails sold out at The Rave Theater Friday night.]

SCOTUS says No to Alabama Prosecutors

      The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a new hearing for an Alabama Death Row inmate who was never informed of a court decision against him, because his lawyers had left their firm and never received word of the decision. Corey Maples (left) missed an appeal deadine because of the miscommunication.
      Alabama prosecutors seem to have really gotten their backs up about this, appealing it all the way to the highest court, at who knows what expense. Why the state didn't simply agree to a rehearing is beyond me. Clearly the inmate was treated unfairly through no fault of his own...why not admit that, espcially in a case in which the inmate's life is at stake?

[PLUS: The Atlantic magazine has an interesting article looking at the Scalia vs Ginsburg arguments in the decision.]

Ink NOT

     A Cobb County, Georgia ten year old asked his Mom if he could get a tattoo with the name of his brother, who had been killed in a car wreck,  on him. She thought about it and said yes. The State said Oh No You Don't and sent her to jail.
       I mean, really? JAIL? What ever happened to small government staying out of people's lives?

Birmingham vs Atlanta Economy

     The Brookings Institute  has a new study of global large city economies, and it ranks Birmingham higher than Atlanta. 

         Birmingham was the only Alabama city included in the study.
Follow the link for an interactive map showing the other world cities that were included.

Obit: Kim Price

     The publisher of The Wetumpka Herald has passed, and journalism has lost a steady, reasoned voice.
     I'd known Kim Price since my earliest days in Birmingham, when he was an AP reporter and I was a fledgling member of the Alabama AP Broadcasters Association.
     Kim was a regular and always welcomed guest on the old For The Record on APT too, and I could always count on him bringing a passionate and thoughtful commentary to the table.
     Kim leaves behind his wife and three children, to whom I send my deepest sympathy. He was 57.

Crimson (Faced) Tide

     Is it just some intoxicated Alabama fans having fun at the expense of a barely conscious LSU fan on Bourbon Street...or evidence of a sexual assault?
     That may depend on the report you read. Here's WWL-TV's report on the incident at a Krystal following the Alabama victory...an incident being investigated by the New Orleans Police. Here's an AP report in The Tuscaloosa News.
     The Alabama fans toss food and trash on the LSU fan, stick fingers in his ears and nose, and then one man in an Alabama Jacket unzips and simulates a sex act, touching the unaware LSU fan with his genitals in the process.
     That WWL report does NOT include the video. You can however find it here and elsewhere online. The apparent Alabama fan is perfectly identifiable, though I have not seen him named anywhere so far.
     And here's a question: if the passed out LSU fan were a female, would there be any doubt that a crime occurred? So why not now?

Governing by camera.

     Starting today, tickets will be issued to the owners of cars caught speeding by hidden cameras in Montgomery.

     It's an extension of the red light cameras now in use at numerous intersections in Montgomery, Selma and other Alabama cities.

Red Light Camera

     In both cases the tickets go to the owner of the vehicle, not the driver. Does that not seem like a violation of due process? (Proof, if any was needed, that Tim did not attend law school?)

     The speed-cameras will be "hidden" inside out-of-service police cars, so city officials argue that you deserve the ticket if you're so stupid as to speed past a marked police car.

Speed Cameras

    The red-light cameras have a mixed history, with some cities tearing them out after citizen complaints, and after studies suggested the companies that collect the revenue had an unfair incentive to interpret the photos against drivers and for the city (and themselves).

     If Montgomery residents are unhappy about the use of the cameras, there is a rather simple way to eliminate them. Start mobilizing like-minded citizens, send petitions to members of the council and the mayor, and make sure they know that they will be unelected if they don't pull the plug. They're betting people will forget by the time the next election comes around, and there is no power of recall in Alabama that would allow them to be removed before the election. 

     But a patient electorate, and a campaign of ads against those who voted for the spy cams, could work. 

Warning Signs

     Or the voters could do the opposite, rise up in support of the cameras and demand even more be installed, to catch jaywalkers and litterers and people cursing or violating the new ban on smoking in public buildings and....

MMMM # 182 -- They know It When They Hear or See It

     The Supreme Court heard arguments last week over nudity and/or "obscene" language on broadcast radio and TV. Think Janet Jackson (and why is Justin Timberlake always left out of the telling of that Super Bowl incident?) 

    Among the points made:

"...the FCC had received complaints about the opening episode of the last Olympics for showing statues with bare breasts and buttocks."

     Yet cable TV channels, one click away on virtually all TV's from their broadcast cousins, can show virtually anything they want. Watch some True Blood or Shameless for examples.

     The only real difference between one channel and the other is that you pay to bring cable in, while broadcast is free. Does the public really see a significant difference between cable channel 4 and channel 400?

"...I know it when I see it..." (Justice Potter Stewart, 1964, in an opinion on what "hardcore pornography is".)

     Nonetheless, the current Supremes seem inclined to not only maintain the current FCC regs, but maybe even expand on them, probably on a 5-4 vote, as usual. And the cable companies hope that is exactly what they do.

ALSO: a reader spotted what certainly seemed like a great story for the MMMM...it said a Christian Talk Radio Network had been airing the same programs over and over on a 365 day cycle, since 1988. On first read I though, hmmmmm. On reflection, I recognized it as satire. All things online are suspect, including this one.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of http://www.timlennox.com/]

 

Ships At Sea

    Twice recently, really big ships, presumably with the latest in modern navigation, have run aground.

    First it was a container ship that broke up off New Zealand several months ago, and now, of course, the cruise ship that capsized off the Coast of Italy.

     At least Titanic--- almost exactly 100 years ago---lacked most of that modern equipment.

     According to last night's CBS News, the company that owns the passenger ship has had a history of problems, and the Captain is in police custody for abandoning ship before many of the passengers were evacuated.

     If we ever need proof that life is fragile, that even the most routine activities can go bad, stories like those are more than ample.

[UPDATE: The best navgation equipment in the world won't do any good if the Captain intentionally steers close to shore so the family of one of his crew can see the ship from their coastal home.]

Paula's Diabetes

     The Queen of Southern Fried Foods has joined the large per centage of Southerns who are diabetic.

     Sure, genetics play a role, but diet---and weight--play a bigger part.

     We loved Paula Deen's fried-everything, but can we have seconds now please? Second thoughts?

King quote to be changed.

     The Washington Post, ABC and others are reporting that the disputed quote on the MLK Memorial will be changed to better reflect what he actually said.

     Monday is the King Holiday, of course...as well as the Alabama State holiday for Jefferson Davis. The inscription on the left is part of the Civil War Memorial in Montgomery.

     We love our dichotomy here in Alabama. 

Honor and Decorum for Dead Terrorists

     When soldiers of any nation are trained, they are trained to kill.
     To kill.
     That's not exactly something that comes naturally (or is it?).
     Even in my very Basic Training in South Carolina a while back, the Drill Sergeants expected me to be fairly unthinking in my ability to open fire on people with an M-16 or grenade ( and I wasn't even going into The Infantry).
     Now comes the story of U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of some Taliban terrorists who they had killed, and the Pentagon is in an uproar and high level government officials are demanding their heads.

     So let's see. These are men--U.S. Marines no less---trained to kill in whatever vicious manner we've selected, trained to hate the enemy so much that a blade to their throat or a bullet to the head at close range is more than they deserve. But once the children-killing, puppy-gutting, WMD-making bastards are dispatched to wherever it is they are going, our military is supposed to treat them  like saints or little children and give them a reverential funeral and wire flowers from FTD?
     If it had been the other way around, I'd be calling for the heads of every Afghan alive, but I would also understand that war is a crappy institution in which people are trained to act against the best instincts of humanity.
     We're supposed to be angry enough to kill 'em, but not to disrespect 'em?
     The Marines didn't help the peace process, or U.S./Afghan relations. But in the killing part of armed diplomacy, that's not their job.

The Death Penalty

     If you listen to opponents of Capital Punishment, the tide is turning against the use of the death penalty.
    But a new Pew study finds little change in recent years. A majority still favor it.

Russia points a finger at The U.S.

     All of those problems the Russians are having keeping space-craft going in the right direction, and staying where they are supposed to?
     Maybe it's the CIA or The Pentagon, or the Boy Scouts of America! The Russian space folks are hinting that outside forces may be to blame for some of their failures. No, they really don't name the Boy Scouts, but they may as well. When things to awry, it seems to be a particularly Russian reaction to blame others. Maybe you just screwed up Mr. Cosmonaut?

Not in Alabama, for Sure!

ESPN: LOWEST RATINGS EVER FOR A BCS CHAMPIONSHIP.

     What's going on here? Bias against the SEC? Did viewers expect the same result as the previous Alabama-LSU game so they didn't need to watch? Was Monday night a bad night?

[PLUS: Read USA Today's take on what it is about Alabama that makes it such a college football powerhouse...(though I'm not sure they found an answer as much as they asked the question in-depth.)

MMMM #181 The New Year

     2012 is going to be a landmark year for the media in Montgomery.

     The gathering of WAKA CBS 8, WNCF ABC 32 and WBMM CW 22 under one state of the art roof will offer tremendous opportunities. Construction is progressing and we'll be in the new HD facility on Harrison Road in plenty of time for the Fall 2012 TV Season.

     TV and just about all other media continues to flow to smartphones, keeping people in touch all day every day.

     The challenges that have faced print aren't going away. The Montgomery Advertiser saw additional layoffs in 2011, a shrinking of the paper's width, and a tightening of the overall operation.
     Prime Montgomery Magazine  published for its first full year in 2011 (The 2 year anniversary is in April) and is going strong.    

     Alabama Public Television closed its Montgomery Studio and production facility on Madison Avenue in 2011, firing all but one employee, an engineer. I understand APT has started hiring some people in recent weeks to operate its studio in the Alabama Statehouse when the Legislative session begins next month. It's unclear what programs they will air and when. Their website appears to be down this Sunday evening.

     Online media continues to grow, though profits are another story. Some local Montgomery sites are doing a good job covering events in the Capitol, like MidtownMontgomeryLiving.com
     Radio is still struggling too, with the usual format changes and consolidation of stations (not unlike what's underway with CBS 8).
     In the Fall of 2012, this website will celebrate its 5th Anniversary...Lord willing and the creek don't rise. Which on a rainy night like tonight seems like a distinct possibility!

[ADDENDUM: The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to stop regulating speech on Broadcast TV tomorrow. Broadcasters argue in a multi-media world, they are being treated unfairly.]
[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this website!]

The Long Haul of Joblessness

     The Wall Street Journal says the impact of the U.S. unemployment resulting from the Great Recession will be felt for a long time, pehaps for generations.
     And since Alabama's unemployment rate has been higher than the national average....

When Getting There is NONE of the Fun.....

     Picture this:you are walking in one of the urban areas of Alabama...Birmingham, or Montgomery..maybe Huntsville or Mobile, and you are not familiar with the streets.
     So you ask your GPS enabled smart phone-pad-flash-drive-cassette to create a route for you. And you want it to include a stop at a hot dog place.
     Microsoft has patented a program that will do just that...avoiding "bad neighborhoods" and giving preference to hot-dog places that just happen to be advertisers on the program.

     There will be some unhappy business owners if the smart-machine decided their hot dog stand is located in a  "high-crime" area and sends the user away...conveniently to the competition.
     I'm actually surprised there isn't already a program identifying homes for sale where violent events, criminal or otherwise, or even just plain natural deaths, have occurred (for the poltergeist phobic among us)...and that rate various neighborhood blocks on a ten scale for the number of break-ins that have occurred to homes or vehicles.
     Programs like this tend to have a self-fufilling feature. Like the Top-Ten Stories list in newspapers, which increase the rankings for those stories by attracting more readers, insuring they will stay in the top ten longer.

Equal Protection Against The 5 Iron

      I overheard two women talking on Friday about Elin Nordegren using a bulldozer to tear down the Florida mansion she and Tiger Woods lived in before the cheating and the divorce. The comments were positively gleeful, picturing her driving a huge yellow machine of destruction through the multi-million dollar home to punish her cheating spouse. You go Elin! Then one of the women added how happy she was when Elin had attacked Tiger with a golf club too, and the other agreed. When I raised a question, they were "just kidding", of course.

     I had not read anything about the mansion destruction at that point, but as I usual, I started asking myself questions. Does she own the place? Fine, tear it down, burn it, do whatever she legally wants to. But if it's jointly owned with her ex? No way.
     And about the golf club assault...which as far as I know was never verified...if the situation had been reversed, and it had been Elin cheating on him, would it have been a cause for celebration if Tiger had taken a club to her? Of course not.
     I'm not advocating or excusing cheating, just suggesting equal treatment.
     The subject of spousal abuse was fresh on my mind because of an interview I did over the holidays with the Executive Director of the One Place Family Justice Center in Montgomery. He told me about the percentage of men who are abused physically and verbally by their wives, and how difficult it is for them to report it. With some folks cheering the beating of a male spouse, cheater or not, I can understand why.
     When I finally did read the mansion story, it was much less dramatic. There was no vengeful hard-hat wearing Elin, her fist raised in victory as she drove a bulldozer through the home. Instead, she's tearing down the 1932 house that had termite damage to build a new one. And it was a demolition company doing the destruction, contributing whatever could be salvaged to Habitat For Humanity.

Welcome to New Orleans (NOT)--UPDATED!

 
  New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Ted Lewis has a welcome to The Big Easy article for the Crimson Tide and fans today. It places Football in Alabama (or, Alabama Football, if you will) and The Civil Rights struggle, on parrallel time tracks. He quotes Historian Taylor Branch:

"Football and segregation were parallel manias in Alabama in the 1960s," Civil Rights Era historian Taylor Branch said. "And they were so imbedded with the idea of segregation, they couldn't find a way out of it except through football.

To his credit, Lewis mentions that LSU had it's first black player after UA.
Roll Tide?

UPDATE: Not to be outdone, The Wall Street Journal has a story about LSU with the headline "You Can't Spell Lush Without L-S-U." Really!

Weight Watchers PR Problem

The problem's name is Charles Barkley....a paid spokesman for the company who describes the company as a "scam" in on off-air but recorded chit-chat during a game. I'm sure there's a PR way to turn it around that doesn't involve the obvious...firing Barkley. Suggestions?

Business

     BEST BUY Executives must be having a terrible morning after this morning's online Forbes article.
     Ouch....the story of a retailer who was perfectly positioned to slide into the online environment, and yet, according to the writer, failed.
     What other companies have taken the same journey to online failure?

Gene Bartow

     I'm not a sports reporter (there's an understatement!) but over the years I've covered a variety of sports stories, mostly because I was the last person left in the newsroom. (Remind me to tell you about the time I filled in for Eli Gold on the old WERC "Calling All Sports" show.)
     The death of Gene Bartow reminded me that I had covered the announcement that the was leaving UCLA after just two seasons and coming to UAB to launch a basketball program. It was 1977, and I had been in Birmingham for about a year when the news conference was called. The details are fuzzy, but it was such a big announcement that even sports neophyte me could sense the impact it would have. The room was packed with reporters from everywhere.
     I hadn't thought about that event probably at all since it happened, but today's story of his passing brought it flashing back. If there were negative stories or controversies about him (other than leaving LA for Birmingham, of all places!) I don't remember them. He brought a ton of class to sports in Birmingham, and helped put UAB on the sports map. Rest in Peace, Coach.
   

Terrorism Tower Directory

Taliban agrees to open office in Qatar.