By Michael Kaufman

Poor Howie Rose and Josh Lewin. The two radio announcers for the New York Mets have had their hands full, not to mention their mouths full of marbles, struggling their way through the copy for the new Wendy’s ad touting the fast-food chain’s new Tuscan chicken on ciabatta sandwich: “Go for the gusto with our lightly breaded chicken, rich garlic with roasted tomato aioli and sliced asiago cheese, on a toasted ciabatta bun. Available for a limited time only.” After stumbling on “aioli” and “asiago” the other night Lewin closed with, “Available for a limited time only at Wendy’s, home of hard-to-pronounce foods.” A couple of night later Rose, perhaps too focused on avoiding mispronouncing aioli and/or asiago, stumbled on “tomato.”

But I feel even sorrier for them—and for other baseball announcers who are in the same boat—each time they are forced to read endless inane copy that turns every available moment into advertising revenue.  A few days ago I heard an “injury report” informing listeners that no one on the team was injured at the time. That bit of silliness was sponsored by a law firm that specializes in injury suits.  How long will it be before they sell the advertising rights to the sunshine or the air we breathe?

And why, oh why, did the Mets agree to link the name of the ballclub to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity? How many times must we be reminded that WOR is the “new home” of those two bags of poison gas “and the New York Mets.” Eventually it occurred to me that there must now be others taking their place on WABC so I tuned in for a moment, only to hear the toxic intonations of Michael Savage, who used to be on WOR. A moment was more than enough: “Dr. Savage” (as he enjoys being addressed by callers) sounded like he was foaming at the mouth.

But the worst thing about the Mets switching radio stations is that the WOR signal is much weaker than that of WFAN, their former longtime home. WOR doesn’t carry as well to Orange County. I tune in a game when I’m driving and I often have to listen through static and high-pitched whistling noises that other family members find unbearable. This usually ends with my grumpily acceding to a passionate request to turn off the radio. It also reminds me of what it was like when I was 10 years old and begged in vain to be allowed to stay up later to hear the end of a game.  How did I end up with a wife as merciless as my parents? How can they not care that it’s the top of the ninth or extra innings? I used to be able to pick up WFAN and listen to Mets games when we went to New Hampshire during the summer. Good luck with that now that they are ensconced in their new home alongside Hannity and Limbaugh.

The thing that annoys me most, however, about baseball this season is not the overbearing advertising or the Mets changing radio stations. Rather, it is the increasing use of video replays to determine if an umpire has made the correct call.  Now, for example, if a manager believes the umpire made the wrong call of safe or out on a close play at home plate, he can calmly signal to the umpires that he’d like to challenge said call. The umpires will then trudge from the field via one of the dugouts to watch the replay. This may take a minute or two (affording previously untapped advertising opportunities). Upon their return to the field the umpires will either uphold the original decision or reverse it.

This is supposed to be wonderful for the game.  I find it more likely to induce sleep or a change in channels.  I prefer the occasional bad call (umpires are human after all) and the ensuing rhubarbs involving managers such as Earl Weaver, Leo Durocher, and Billy Martin.  Imagine if this rule had been in effect, say, during the first game of the 1955 World Series when Jackie Robinson stole home. Maybe Yogi was right. Maybe it was the wrong call. But so what? It’s so much better this way.

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.

 

Click here to view “Obama’s ‘Other’ Race Speech

By Emily Theroux

“Attacking Obama for Jeremiah Wright Is So 2008.”

That was the snappy headline posted last May on Keith Boykin’s blog, Fighting Words. A Republican super PAC planned to hire an “extremely literate” pitchman, Boykin said, “to argue that Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln'” when he took a stand in support of same-sex marriage. The kicker? Attack ads linking the president with his controversial former pastor.

Word leaked out, however, and the PAC announced that the scandalous plan had been scrapped.

Boykin was incensed that anyone would admit they found “literate” blacks unusual — or characterize Obama as “metrosexual.” The group  wanted to “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do” in 2008, Boykin noted. “That is, they plan to lead a campaign of good old-fashioned race-baiting.”

“When asked whether Wright is off-limits in the 2012 presidential campaign, Romney said he hadn’t ‘read the papers yet,’ according to Los Angeles Times reporter Maeve Reston. Perhaps that should come as no surprise since the presumptive GOP nominee has already tried to link Obama to Wright, as he did in a radio interview with talk show host Sean Hannity in February. And though the official Wright ad campaign will never see the light of day, the racist undertone will persist through November. This is part of a dog-whistle campaign to reach out to those crazy conservatives who think Obama is a radical socialist Muslim Kenyan with no birth certificate and no right to be president.”

A fellow BET blogger quoted GOP candidate Mitt Romney‘s famous last words on the matter: “I repudiate that effort. I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign. I hope that our campaigns can respectively be about the future and about issues and about a vision for America,” Romney told the press.

Now, Mythological Mitt has repudiated something he’d insisted five months ago was beneath his stellar standards. Before embarking on a new plan of attack designed to hit Obama hard with the GOP’s perennial backstop when the going gets rough — the race card — the Romney campaign issued a preemptive statement  denying any involvement with his henchmen’s “October surprise.”

Mitt may have delegated this new hit job to right-wing media mavens, but the scheme has Willard’s Mitts all over it. He must have been cracking all kinds of stupid, robotic jokes last night, when The Drudge Report, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity teamed up to do his dirty work, by going flat-out, race-baiting “Goddamn America!” Jeremiah WRIGHT on his opponent’s unsuspecting a$$.

 

Drudge: ‘Curious tape’ will ‘ignite accusations of racism

Yesterday afternoon,  conservative newsbreaker Matt Drudge dribbled out Twitter-hints designed to foster a feeding frenzy on the right. “Curious tape dropping tonight. NOT from MOTHERJONES. Will cause controversy, ignite accusations of racism — in both directions!” read the first Drudge clue. “Internal debate at news network about airing tape tonight, on eve of debate… MORE” came out an hour or so later.

Andrew Kirell of Mediaite chipped away at the teased Drudge story, finding several edits of what he suspected to be the tape in question, as well as a 2007 blog post by Lynn Sweet of The Chicago Sun-Times that included a transcript of Obama’s speech. The video, recorded on June 5, 2007, at the Hampton University Annual Ministers’ Conference in Virginia, had been posted online for the past five years.

Then-Senator Obama spoke eloquently and without a teleprompter, using the metaphor of “a baby born with a bullet in its arm,” to a mother who had just been shot in the stomach in Compton, to discourse about despair in the African-American community — over the L.A. riots 15 years earlier, over second-rate schools, low-paying jobs, and substandard housing. He riffed about Hurricane Katrina, black prison inmates, and college students. He cited programs that would create jobs and improve transportation and health care; about investing in minority-owned businesses and ending the Iraq War.

Obama spoke with the relaxed “urban” drawl he’s been known to use when speaking to black audiences, but what of it? The longer version of the tape featured powerful, stirring oratory, not anger, and included Obama’s shout-out to the Rev. Wright, only months before the pastor’s infamous videos appeared online. Someone going for a “dangerous,” “edgy,” backbeat failed miserably by adding cheesy boom-box bass effects to the beginning and end of the tape.

 

Tucker Carlson c. ’07: ‘This isn’t a dog-whistle. It’s a dog siren.’

“This isn’t a dog-whistle,” intoned Tucker Carlson, who “broke” the tale of the recycled Obama tape yesterday on his website, The Daily Caller. “It’s a dog siren.”

“The racially charged and at times angry speech undermines Obama’s carefully crafted image as a leader eager to build bridges between ethnic groups. For nearly 40 minutes, using an accent he almost never adopts in public, Obama describes a racist, zero-sum society, in which the white majority profits by exploiting black America.

“The mostly black audience shouts in agreement. The effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.”

This characterization is absurd. Calling a speech delivered by a black politician to a black audience “racially charged” seems like hyperbolic fear-mongering to me — unless, of course, Carlson is expressing that kind of aggrieved mindset prevalent in people who cry “racism” whenever a black man raises his voice.

 

“THE ACCENT. THE ANGER. THE ACCUSATIONS. THE SHOUT-OUT TO REV. WRIGHT, WHO IS IN THE AUDIENCE“ was emblazoned across the top of Drudge’s site when he posted “The ‘Other’ Obama Race Speech.”

“Tape of Obama pushing class warfare surfaces on debate eve,” read Hannity’s preposterous headline when he posted the video on the Fox News website last night. “STATE of the RACE,” the tape trumpeted in garish, 150-point crimson type. The mainstream media, Hannity noted, had been ignoring this Obama bombshell “for years,” yet Tucker was flogging it as an “exclusive.”  The truth was that both Fox and Tucker had debuted the tape when it first emerged in 2007.

 

Newt Gingrich’s take on Obama was already cranked up and ready to roll. (I’ve added italics to the code words pointed out by Rachel Maddow in this extraordinarily condescending, openly racist diatribe. This guy needs to retire from public life. His rhetoric is disgusting.)

“I’m assuming there’s some rhythm to Barack Obama that the rest of us don’t understand — whether he needs large amounts of rest, whether he needs to go play … basketball for awhile. I don’t watch ESPN; I mean, I don’t quite know what his rhythms are. But this is a guy who is a brilliant performer as an orator, who may well get reelected at the present date, and who, frankly, happens to be a partial, part-time, uh, president.  I mean, he really is like the substitute referees in the sense that he’s not a real president. He doesn’t do any of the things presidents do. He doesn’t worry about any of the things presidents do. But he has the White House; he has enormous power. He’ll go down in history as president —  and I suspect he’s pretty contemptuous of the rest of us.”

It was good old white-boy Newt who originated the term “Food Stamp President” and hatched the brilliant plot to falsely accuse Obama of removing the work requirement from welfare — the same “lazy parasite” canard suggested by the sleazy Romney slogan “Obama isn’t working.”

What do Romney’s hate-mongering surrogates think the tape reveals about Barack Obama? Surprise! Back in 2007, he was “way more black than he seems to you now,” said Rachel Maddow. He went to black churches. He even talked black sometimes. Fancy that: He is more than a figment of Sean Hannity’s delusional imagination; he doesn’t always follow Insannity’s black-socialist-president script.

As it turned out, the October surprise flopped badly, even on the right. Noah Rothman of Mediaite pronounced it “The Obama Tape Dud” and said it only served to indict the 2008 press corps. “What do conservatives think they will accomplish in 2012 by consistently and incessantly submitting evidence which proves the press failed in their jobs in 2008? … Republicans would do well to focus on the issues of 2012, because the Democrats, the media and persuadable voters have moved on long ago.”

Quin Hillyer of The American Spectator’s Spectacle blog also offered his perspective: “(C)ertain allowances for edginess always have been (made) to black speakers before black audiences — a slight double standard, to be sure, but one that slavery and Jim Crow provide at least semi-reasonable excuses for, and one that is less damaging than actual policies (quotas, etc.) that enshrine discrimination into law.”

 

The MittWit’s life of unquiet desperation as the walls close in

Three months ago, Romney campaign spokesman Lenny Alcivar boasted that the Romney campaign would remain in what journalist Ben Smith dubbed “the Mittness Protection Program” by continuing to avoid vital questions about his policies or “core beliefs.” Instead, Mitt would filter his utterances through conservative conspiracy websites like Drudge and  Breitbart.com.

“When this election is over, one of the lessons that will be learned by the mainstream media is that they no longer have a toe-hold on how Americans receive their news. … We no longer allow the mainstream media to define the political realities in America. The rise of Breitbart, Drudge and others, combined with an aggressive Romney campaign, is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the conservative movement.”

So how’s that Drudgy/Techie thing goin’ for ya, Mitt? Whoops! It’s almost debate time. Download a few more of those pre-programmed zingers, and do try to hide your desperation. It’s going to be a long, tetchy hour-and-a-half.