The Blogtastic Blogonator

Who killed Michael Jackson? We did.

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:46:17 GMT

Michael Jackson’s death was just what cable TV needed. Ed McMahon’s death, sure it was sad, but he was old, his financial woes were only minor and he wasn’t eccentric.

Farrah Fawcett, well, her sad tale had already saturated the airwaves with specials about her struggle with cancer, plus, she was a ghost of the feathered visage that graced the walls of many a teenage boy in the 70s and 80s. But like many sex symbols, the shine had worn off her star.

Jackson, well he was a bona fide sensation, a shooting star in the pop constellation, one that most people thought would never fade. So we’ll watch for the next few days, maybe weeks, as everyone shares in the collective grief that always comes when idols die. So, what or who killed this pop star?

Incredible superstardom usually comes at a high cost. We demand a lot from our pop stars. That demand to be entertained comes with certain expectations. People crack under the weight of all the pressure.

They start buying exotic animals. They develop weird predilections. Their lives dissolve into bizarre caricature. Then they die in the bathroom or somewhere else on their unusually large estates.

Sure Jackson was a mega star, but he didn’t get that way without a little push from us. To take this as a denial of his talent would be foolish. There’s no need to argue about the fact that this incredibly gifted man’s unusual success was warranted.

Plenty of successful people don’t turn out like Jackson. But they don’t carry the burden that he did — the burden of his family’s success and his own and the tragic consequences that often come with it.

When all is said and done, Jackson was just a kid from Gary, Ind., who made it out by his talent and hard work. Sure his life unraveled. But that’s all part of the deal, isn’t it?

So we’ll watch the tributes that will no doubt border on hagiography. Then there comes a point in the onslaught of media coverage where you can’t handle any more. So you step away from the TV, look in the mirror and ask who’s to blame. In a small way, we all are, aren’t we?

'A Nation at Risk' redux: Ditch summer break, improve schools

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:55:27 GMT

Here’s where the nation’s parents take a deep breath and ask the big question, “What do I do with my kid for the next three months?”

It used to be that summer vacation was a magical gap in time where kids roamed the streets for hours on end until the streetlights flickered or the mosquitoes attacked, whichever came first.

Now it’s looked at as anachronism, a throw-back to another era when kids broke their backs on farms when they weren’t cracking books. Some argue that the time between the last day of school and the first takes a disastrous toll on what kids have learned, requiring a period of catch-up each new school year.

Writing in “The Atlantic,” Derek Thompson suggests ditching summer vacation as one of his

“10 Crazy Ideas for Fixing Our Education System.”

It wouldn’t be the first time someone tossed out a litany of suggested improvements, but here we are just over 26 years since we learned that our nation was at risk of failing our public school children and we’re still confronting the same concerns and looking for ways to improve the system.

What are 10 things you would do to improve our education system?

Countdown to the Olbereilly Factor

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:26:02 GMT

I’ve just learned that there’s nothing quite as unbecoming as a cable news tinkling (yes, you can't use the P-word) match between two egomaniacs.

It’s one reason I don’t devote myself to the evening cable chat shows like “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” or “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Another reason … it’s just not how I choose to spend my prime time. Even if I did, my other half can’t stand all the pompous blustering that emanates from both Olbermann and O’Reilly and others of their ilk. I think one of these talkers calls it bloviating. If I stop on these shows for just a second too long, my wife usually screams.

So it’s rare indeed to watch both Olbermann’s and O’Reilly’s shows back to back … on the same night, in their entirety. It’s only possible when I can’t sleep. And so, there I was Friday morning watching repeats of the previous evening’s shows, one right after the other, while the rest of my family slept.

Maybe I’m just catching up, but Olbermann and O’Reilly both spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time attacking each other’s networks, when they weren't lobbing bombs at their ideological enemies at the other end of the spectrum.

Whenever I’ve caught snippets of Olbermann’s show before, he’s always going after O’Reilly. If I happen to catch some of O’Reilly’s show, he’s either bragging about his ratings, or hawking his books, T-shirts or patriotic doormats. Olbermann attacks Fox (O’Reilly’s channel). O’Reilly attacks MSNBC (Olbermann’s channel).

Apparently, it’s now so bad that O’Reilly is dispatching his minions to infiltrate shareholder meetings of rival networks, particularly General Electric, which owns MSNBC, which employs Olbermann. At least that’s what both he and Olbermann talked about on their shows Thursday.

Fans of both Olbermann and O'Reilly have joined the fight, too.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that neither of them try to pass themselves off as straight news people, although it might not always be so clear. Their evening broadcasts and bromides are soaked in opinion.

The sad reality is, so many people watch both shows … millions of people.

I’m guessing when these people are swirling their martinis or swilling their beers, Olbermann’s and O’Reilly’s fans alike, they’re not swapping nuggets of information they’ve gleaned from the most recent piece of journalism they read. They’re probably sharing war stories gleaned from their favorite opinion makers.

Sometimes, these war stories end up getting passed on as news rather than opinion.

Olbermann and O’Reilly are two sides of the same coin. Olbermann provides aid and comfort to the left. O’Reilly does the same for the right.

I get the feeling that those who watch either show, or both shows, are the ring of kids circling the two schoolyard bullies as they duke it out … in service to their country and their network bosses’s bottom lines.

In the wee hours of the morning Friday, I guess I stopped to take a look and see who had drawn the most blood. Or maybe it was all just a dream.

Does Racine have its own Twitterati?

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:09:08 GMT

Racine’s own Mark Czerniec is without a doubt my favorite local Twitter personality (Tweeter, Twitterer, Twitterato, whatever you want to call them).

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer on Thursday anointed 20 local “tweeters” that she considered among the city’s Twitterati in an article in the paper’s Cue section.

It made me think of Mr. Czerniec. I’m not gaga over Twitter. Truth be told, I spend more time on Facebook. Yes, to some, that could be considered a sad admission.

I still check Twitter from time to time, but I consider myself a half-hearted hobbyist when it comes to this particular social networking site. I’m still new to the whole social networking thing. It’s hard to keep up.

However, when I do check Twitter, I’m always glad to see Mark Czerniec’s Tweets. They’re always engaging. It could be his years of experience in radio. He considers his audience.

He highlights recipes he’s working on, links to articles he’s read or lists the birds who’ve visited his yard in Racine. It’s all good stuff, in my opinion.

So, are you on Twitter? Who do you follow in the Racine area? Who should we be following?

"Lower Taxes" Johnson wants your vote

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:38:14 GMT

Here's a little campaign trivia tidbit. If you want to run for elected office in Wisconsin using your old nickname -- you know, that endearing name your chums gave you at summer camp or the one your sorority sisters gave you in college -- the state Government Accountability Board says that's just fine.

John "Biff" Henderson or Melissa "Scooter" Smith can ditch their first names, leaving voters to choose between Biff Henderson and Scooter Smith.

Good luck convincing the GAB that your pals used to call you "Lower Taxes" way back when. Don't even try to get them to believe your family has been calling you "None of the above" since before you could walk.

From the GAB:

"No titles are permitted. In addition, names such as “Red” or “Skip” are permitted, but names which have an apparent electoral purpose or benefit, such as “Lower taxes,” “None of the above” or “Lower Spending” are not permitted.

It is also not permissible to add nicknames in quotes or parentheses between first and last names. For example, John “Jack” Jones or John (Jack) Jones are not acceptable, but John Jones, Jack Jones or John Jack Jones are acceptable.

What purposefully electoral nickname would you put on the ballot?

Thanks for the mammaries or, our nation's weird obsession

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:33:20 GMT

I must give credit where credit is due. That’s not my bit. It’s Dave Blaska’s. He used it on Joy Cardin’s week-in-review show Friday on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Blaska, an online blogger for Madison’s Isthmus weekly newspaper, pulled that one out during the panel’s discussion of the “right to breastfeed” bill. The bill had a public hearing earlier this week before a state Senate committee.

It was clear the three men — Gene Purcell filling in for Joy Cardin and the Isthmus’ Bill Lueders, the other guest on the show — were a bit uncomfortable discussing a topic like breastfeeding.

That’s when Blaska dropped the bomb (in homage to Bob Hope, at least that’s who he credited). Funny or not, the joke helped the three men segue into another discussion.

No sooner had I changed the station when I found another group of guys talking about breastfeeding. This time it was the zany folks at Jonathon Brandmeier’s drive-time show from Chicago giggling about the actress Salma Hayek nursing a baby in Sierra Leone.

It wasn’t clear if they were giggling about breastfeeding in general or Hayek nursing a stranger’s baby in particular, but giggling is giggling and that is often a response from someone who is uncomfortable about the subject, especially if it’s guys talking about breasts.

This is odd considering Brandmeier (who is often hilarious) is no stranger to breasts. He often hosts zany radio gimmicks like getting scantily-clad women (often the well-endowed variety) to parade around, presumably for some kind of prize.

So here we are. In a nation with a weird obsession about breasts (the source of food for humanity for millions of years), states like Wisconsin are asked to protect nursing moms from a public that doesn’t flinch at a lady in a bikini selling the image of breasts, but gets a little squeamish when a mom uses her breasts for their intended purpose, in public god forbid.

It’s no wonder that some people shake their heads at the fact that Wisconsin’s only real action on the issue of breastfeeding has been to remove it from a list of lewd behaviors. Nice.

Wisconsin has a long way to go, so does this country for that matter, before “thanks for the mammaries” is anything more than a punch line.

Columnist dashes bankers' hopes for fun in the sun

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:55:50 GMT

San Juan ... we have a problem. Apparently 100 rooms just opened up at the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico.

Thanks to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Dan Bice for reporting about the Associated Bankers’ now-cancelled trip to Puerto Rico.

Unpack your Bermuda shorts and your flipflops gang. You’re not going anywhere.

The idea of jet-setting executives sipping mojitos in Puerto Rico while the economy circles the drain is a bitter pill for the rest of us to swallow, especially when the bank's top officials are feeding at the government trough.

You have to love a columnist who gets the head of one of the state’s largest banks to cancel a trip for 100 of his highest performing execs.

My guess is Bice won’t be getting an invitation to the next Associated Bank company picnic. I’m guessing he doesn’t care. You go Dan!