The Political Whore

And yeah, it’s pretty dead-on and hilarious.

Watch the video after the jump:

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My guest co-host for this week’s HoCast is Seth Nelson, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the Tampa City Council in 2011 (for Linda Saul-Sena’s citywide seat; she is term-limited).

He is a former law clerk on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, so we look at how Sonia Sotomayor did in explaining her statement about policy being made at the appellate court level. Plus, we discuss Walter Cronkite’s death and how it shows what is wrong with today’s news media and ask ourselves whether Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is in trouble.

And between all those headlines, Seth talks about why he’s running for the Council and what his top priorities are.

DL or listen to the podcast after the jump:

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Well, at least the GOP is making progress in terms of romance writing…

By Mitch Perry
PoHo correspondent
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.

Legendary television anchorman Walter Cronkite’s death on Friday at the age of 92 has prompted massive encomiums on his career and how no one figure could ever dominate mass communications like “Uncle Walter” did in the ’60s and ’70s. It also allows us to ponder the state of national television news.

In the immediate days (and weeks) after Michael Jackson’s death last month, America’s broadcast and cable news networks went — predictably — hog wild over the pop superstar’s death. They saw their ratings rise, while also receiving criticism from a lot of quarters that they were overdoing it.

But were you really surprised?

Pardon the expression, but haven’t we seen this movie, err, blanket news coverage before?

Can you say Anna Nicole Smith?  Ronald Reagan? Princess Diana anybody? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m starting a new Saturday feature to wrap up news and blog posts you might have missed during your busy week. Here’s a look at the Week in Review:

New book blasts sportswriters for ‘hysteria’ regarding steroids – Mitch Perry. The WMNF anchor writes about a new book that lays the blame for steroid-mania at the foot of writers who aren’t aggressive. “The writers, the supposed experts, watched over the last 20-30 years as steroids became a very, very common substance. And they didn’t see it.”

Economic report calls Florida “a state in trouble.” The single most depressing (and real) assessment of Florida’s economic shortcomings we’ve ever seen. A must-read. (The graph above is from the report.)

POTUS and the Pope — Peter Schweitzer. Our contributors asks: if the US bishops are sideways with Barack Obama over his abortion stance, why is the pope so warmly receiving him?

Shadowy 527 group unloads YouTube attack ad against governor candidate Alex Sink (video). A Gainesville GOP leader is the face of the anti-Sink political group.

Bankruptcy judge sets auction date for Creative Loafing alt-newspaper chain. It is likely that two groups will bid in late August for ownership of Creative Loafing, pitting the company’s current management against lender Atalaya.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a web-only ad out hitting Sarah Palin and Charlie Crist, among other Republicans, for “quitting” on their jobs.

Take a look.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.

When Alexandra Zayas from the St. Petersburg Times called to talk about the Channel 8 protests, I couldn’t have been happier. Intelligent, friendly, compassionate — Zayas understood the topic and had done the research. She was covering the protest and surrounding story, gathering opposing points of view from friend and foe alike.

Hers would be a well-rounded story. I could just tell. So I was happy to contribute a verse.

But then the editors at the Times dropped the ball. They reassigned Alex and gave her story to Ileana Morales, whose account of the protest is half-assed.

Read the rest of this entry »

David Simanoff was a reporter at the Tampa Tribune for a decade before leaving just as massive layoffs and contraction began at the daily newspaper. He was pretty high profile and a business writer, showing up on News Channel 8 segments often. He is also a gay man.

Now, on his blog, Daily Dave 3.0, he writes about his mixed feelings about whether to join yesterday’s protest of his former employer, Media General, for broadcasting the anti-gay Speechless: Silencing Christians hour-long paid television show on the same evening as St. Pete Pride.

He ultimately decided not to join the Red Flag Rally, but most interesting are his recollections about how his former employer treated GLBT issues. Here’s what he wrote, using the acronym MFE for “my former employer”:

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Dan Ruth, unceremoniously dumped from 200 S. Parker St. earlier this year, is apparently not content with his every-Friday column in the rival St. Petersburg Times; he has started his own blog.

In a welcome to the Ruthington Post, Dan writes:

It has taken a while for someone who began in the newspaper business back in the lead type days to come around to the vast world of the emerging new technologies, but with the help and encouragement of friends, here it is – the Ruthington Post blog of Daniel Ruth.

I’m still learning how to work with this form, so please bear with me. I will probably spend the next few days playing around and experimenting. But in the future I hope to be posting a daily blog that will deal with all manner of issues, from politics, to popular culture to who knows what?

Stay tuned. Let’s see what the future holds.

Welcome to the blogosphere and its world of quality journalism, Dan.

h/t to Sticks of Fire

This week’s Straight Dope column gets to the heart of a great throwback tech issue: the fear that the start of the 21st Century (Y2K) would see computer chaos:

What’s the final word about Y2K? We were told this was a serious problem, and that huge dollars and man-hours were needed to head off trouble. Why didn’t the sky fall, as predicted? Were the dollars spent before January 1, 2000, well spent or not? The date change seemed seamless to a layman. Was this because we headed off most of the trouble before it happened, or because it wasn’t as serious as predicted? –Paul Wheeler

One may inquire: Why am I answering this now? Because the question keeps coming in, and at some point you have to ask, if I don’t take it on, who will? So here’s the best answer you’re likely to get: 1. While the true extent of Y2K issues will never be known, what we do know suggests the problem was wildly exaggerated. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to focus resources on a few truly high-risk areas, wait till 1/1/2000 for everything else, and fix what broke. Looked at in that light, the money spent on remediation, estimated at between $100 billion and $600 billion, was mostly wasted. 2. That’s hindsight talking. To put things in perspective (I realize the argument cuts both ways) many now say the world as we know it is going to end due to global warming. You think the smart choice is to say: relax?

Read the rest of Straight Dope here.

Gays and straights alike carried red flags (a comment on a Media General exec who said the station viewed Speechless: Silencing Christians and “it didn’t raise any red flags”) and signs relabeling the NBC affiliate in Tampa Bay as News Channel H8 on Wednesday afternoon. More than 100 protesters gathered along Kennedy Boulevard in front of the station’s News Center to draw attention to the hate program that was aired for what they believe was $35,000 paid by a Christian group.

In a sign of political courage, Tampa City Councilman John Dingfelder attended the rally and said of News Channel 8’s decision,”This is not who Tampa is. This type of hate is just not acceptable in our community.” Dingfelder is running for a County Commission seat, a demographic that is much more to the right than the city of Tampa where he has served two terms.

Watch CL video coverage of the rally after the jump.

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From TBO.com:

Hillsborough County commissioners will discuss dropping conservative activist Ralph Hughes’ name from the county’s Moral Courage Award on Wednesday.

Commissioner Rose Ferlita put the controversial issue on the agenda for discussion weeks after the federal government said Hughes died owing $69 million in unpaid taxes.

Ferlita told the Tribune on Tuesday that Hughes’ son Shea has sent a letter to the commissioners asking that his father’s name be removed from the award.

UPDATE: County commissioners did just that. The vote this morning was unanimous.

Organizers of today’s 5:30 pm protest at Media General-owned News Channel 8 in downtown Tampa have released two logos they are putting on signs and T-shirts for the event, playing on the station’s logo and the word “hate” that represents the station’s airing of the anti-gay Speechless Christian infomercial on Gay Pride day.

Here they are:

CL will be staffing the protest and bring you coverage on Twitter and video we’ll post on the blog.

Check me out as I talk about the politics of health care reform today at 12:30 on Your Turn with Kathy Fountain on Fox 13.

Further reading from the .PDF Library:

white_house_forum_on_health_reform_report

Hidden Costs

By Joe Bardi
Cross-posted from The Daily Loaf

For more news and reviews of the summer’s biggest movies, check out the CL Movies & Television site.

Screening information: Outrage is screening exactly once, Wed., July 15 at 7 p.m. at Tampa Pitcher Show, 14416 N. Dale Mabry, Tampa, 813-963-0578. The film carries no MPAA rating.

If there’s a central message to Kirby Dick’s Outrage, it’s that living life denying one’s sexual orientation is an awful existence. Not only is the closeted person lying to their family and friends — often at great emotional cost to everyone involved — they are lying to themselves. There’s a lot of self-hatred hanging in the closet, and it’s an old saw that the most homophobic folks are the most in denial. Still, a person’s choice to keep their preference private is their own. But what about politicians living in the closet who work to advance anti-gay-rights legislation? Don’t they deserve to be exposed?
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By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

On Saturday, June 27, thousands of people gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, FL for the city’s annual Gay Pride parade and festival. While we were celebrating and honoring the legacy of the LGBT civil rights movement, our local NBC affiliate (WFLA-Ch. 8) was airing Speechless: Silencing the Christians, an hour long special paid for by the conservative American Family Association (AFA) that makes a series of specious and demeaning claims about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Watch a clip from the program after the jump.

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Rumproast.com put together this compilation of all of soon-to-be-ex Gov. Sarah Palin’s sighs, heavy breathing and other respiratory gasps during her crazy-sounding resignation newser. None are repeated and they are in their original order:

And it will be on Aug. 25, during a hearing in downtown Tampa that will start at 10 a.m. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano today approved a disclosure statement for Creative Loafing’s reorganization plan after a week of intensive talks between the chain’s owners, in the form of company CEO Ben Eason, and its largest creditor, Atalaya Capital Management LP.

Atalaya is the investment fund that was owed $31 million from financing CL’s 2007 pay-down of debt and purchase of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper. As part of the negotiations, Atalaya has agreed to write-down its promissory note to $12 million, which would be repaid at 8 percent interest-only for five years and balloon due at that point.

According to the terms of the reorganization plan and promises made in court today, all CL creditors would be paid in full with two exceptions: Atalaya and BIA Digital Partners, which provided additional lending in the 2007 deals. BIA is now part of an Eason-led equity group that will bid for ownership against Atalaya.

Monday’s hearing found the normally adversarial Atalaya and CL relationship thawed to some degree.

“We are on board and supportive of moving forward under this process,” Atalaya’s lawyer, Tyler Brown, told the judge via telephone during the noon hearing. Read the rest of this entry »

The season of slime starts early, and isn’t even that original, to tell you the truth. Haven’t we seen these same “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” parody attack ads in every elections since at least 2004? Didn’t we see similar ads trotted out against Vern Buchanan two years ago?

Either way, the shadowy 527 group Don’t Bank on Sink has released an Internet ad mocking CFO and governor candidate Alex Sink’s use of state airplanes.

Watch the entire ad and learn more about who’s behind the group after the jump.

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By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor

As we remember Stonewall and the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, the progressive community is understandably frustrated with the pace of our administration in bringing about real change.

They have a point.

Enough already with the military’s ridiculous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

And it’s about time we legalize gay marriage.

Yet after the stunning parades this weekend and the first official recognition of the movement by a sitting working US President, I’m filled with more hope than ever before.

Which is why I didn’t allow my blood pressure to rise when WFLA/News Channel 8 aired an “it would be disturbing if it weren’t so silly” documentary infomercial Saturday night about wicked gays trying to silence Christians. I urged my fellow libs to take deep breaths and see this program for what it was — a spoiled brat stomping his feet and holding his breath in the hopes of getting attention and that last piece of cake.

“Their world is ending, Mary,” I said with a giggle. “It’s falling down around them and they can’t do a thing to stop it. Let’s not be so reactionary. Pass the Sangria and shut the fuck up. I want to hear what these freakshows have to say so I can make fun of them later.”

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Rhodes, after a deputy beat the snot out of him shoved him to the ground during his arrest.

On his return to the air weeks after his arrest.

From the St. Petersburg Times:

Rhodes, 50, was supposed to be tried today on charges tied to his Jan. 16 arrest. But the trial was continued until Wednesday because his attorney was awaiting transcripts from a previous hearing.

Now, instead of going to trial, Rhodes will plead no contest on Wednesday to a misdemeanor obstruction charge, defense attorney Jeff Brown said.

As part of the plea deal, Rhodes will serve 50 hours of community service. Adjudication will be withheld, meaning he will not have a conviction on his record.

A stunning admission, if completely unsurprising to anybody who has run campaigns in any African-American community in this state: The way to get coverage in black-owned media is to pay for it.

That was the direct message to Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, from a group of African-American media execs over the weekend:

“At the end of the day, it’s about money. If you buy advertising, you’re more likely to get coverage,” said Johnny Hunter, president of the Florida Association of Black Owned Media and publisher of Sarasota’s Tempo News.

That according to coverage of the meeting in the Orlando Sentinel. Greer’s response?

Greer promised that the party would stop ignoring black media. He said that mainstream newspapers such as the Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Tribune and Tallahassee Democrat cover the party’s issues regardless of whether they advertise, but the party chairman nevertheless seemed willing to accept the quid-pro-quo arrangement.

“When I hear that when we advertise, the paper will be more likely to disseminate Republican issues, am I hearing right?” Greer asked. “I don’t understand the legitimacy of disseminating information and having a tie-in to revenue — but I get it.”

By William McKeen
PoHo contributor

Cross-posted from The Farm Report

I noticed it 30 years ago, when I began teaching. In my history class, students seemed to have little interest in the cast of characters until photography came along. Pictures changed the way we looked at history. We were never as interested in George Washington as were in Abraham Lincoln. It was because of those portraits of Lincoln, where we could look into his haunted eyes.

You can’t hide from pictures. The horrific video of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, bleeding out on a Tehran street not only makes the political upheaval in Iran more tangible, it also shows the power of new media. We don’t turn to television, toward any immaculately dressed network news anchor, to see these images. We click on YouTube and get handheld cell phone video from a helpless bystander.

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The News Media Guildi is protesting (and rightly) on behalf of its members at the AP because of new social media policies at the news organization that will now require reporters and editors to remove comments and other info on their Facebook pages that don’t meet AP standards.

From Editor & Publisher:

“It is making some people cringe,” said Kevin Keane, News Media Guild administrator. “It is not appropriate for a company that heralds free speech.”

Keane also objected to another portion of the new rules that states: “Posting material about the AP’s internal operations is prohibited on employees’ personal pages.”

“You can’t tell people not to talk about anything internal to AP,” Keane said. “It is too broad. People have the right.”

Equally is its backwards policy on reporters using Twitter to communicate news. Here is both the Facebook and Twitter provisions from AP’s Q&A-format policy:

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Ah, the evolution of media. Murphy-Goode winery is looking for a blogging-tweetering “social media whiz” who is into wine to move into their vineyards home for six months and jump-start its viral marketing efforts.

CL’s own wine expert, Corkscrew author Taylor Eason, is an applicant, and here is her video:

You can vote for Taylor, if you are so inclined.

And Taylor is not alone among Tampa Bay social-networking oenophiles seeking the “really goode job.” Read the rest of this entry »

Republican pundit David Brooks’ article in today’s New York Times discusses the latest events in Iran, as turmoil from their recent fraudulent election has spilled into the streets of Tehran. In his comments, Brooks observes that “on the big issue, the administration has it exactly right.”
This agreement — which is far from the position voiced by most Republicans — gives added support to Peter Meinke’s “Dear David” letter in this week’s Poet’s Notebook. Meinke’s basic claim is that long-time, and famous, Republican Brooks is slowly morphing into a Democrat, and it’s time that he made the actual leap — not in a self-serving Senator Arlen Specter sort of way, but because Brooks’ views coincide more and more with Barack Obama’s.

Our sister paper, the Chicago Reader, and its excellent media writer Michael Miner has a piece about the (ta-dah) future of journalism, but it makes some good points to ponder, including this one:

EveryBlock cofounder Daniel X. O’Neil, speaking on the panel “Why the News Still Matters,” went this tweet one better. “I think there’s just a lot of real unnecessary negativism about journalism,” he told the 170 or so people in attendance. “Frankly, I think it’s going to be great. I swear to God we’ll look back ten years from now and we’ll all be making an insane amount of money and we’re going to look at each other and we’re going to say, ‘Hey, you were there that day! Remember, we all thought we were screwed?’ No, we’re not. Everything’s great. It’s literally impossible for the answer to the question ‘What happened?’ not to be valuable.”

Wow, the rosiest assessment ever. I believe I am going to be making an “insane amount of money” in 10 years. Just not in journalism.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not just U.S. daily print journalism that is dying a horrible, twisting death; it is also happening in Great Britain.

This from the Guardian:

Claire Enders, the chief executive of Enders Analysis, told a Commons committee that newspapers would close across Britain because revenues would collapse by 52% – or £1.3bn – between 2007 and 2013.

“We are expecting up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years,” Enders told the Commons culture, media and sport select committee hearing on the future of local and regional media.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor, “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field

I grew up listening to Q105. That’s right, before I developed taste in music, I would tune in regularly to the WRBQ Morning Zoo, and Mason Dixon with his recorded laughter tracks. If you peered into my bedroom circa 1984, you’d certainly find me singing along with safe standards like The Fixx, Michael Jackson, and Cyndi Lauper.

Oh. The. Horror.

Eventually I discovered WMNF, mixed tapes, and the Cuban Club. I soon forgot all about Top 40 radio, its censored, dissected tunes that represented the lamest of corporate rock, and never looked back.

Q105 was dead to me.

Recently, though, I began listening again. The station now plays oldies from the 1960s and 1970s and occasionally such songs provide a history lesson from which my kids could learn to appreciate music.

Or so I thought.

Read the rest of this entry »

Twelve-year-olds throughout the world are in mourning today as the rumored corporate shrinkage of MySpace is coming true. About 480 workers will be hitting the bricks by the end of the day, according to its news release:

MYSPACE REDUCES STAFF BY NEARLY 30%

Return to Start-Up Culture a Focus for Company Moving Forward

LOS ANGELES—June 16, 2009—As part of a plan to restructure itself into a more innovative, efficient, and entrepreneurial business, MySpace announced today that it will reduce its staff by nearly 30%. This restructuring plan crosses all U.S. divisions of the company and lowers the total number of domestic staff at MySpace to 1,000 employees.

“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. “I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.”

“MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace,” said Jonathan Miller, News Corporation’s CEO of Digital Media and Chief Digital Officer. “I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward. I am confident in MySpace’s next phase under the leadership of Owen and his team.”

Is Facebook far behind? Although we loooooove us some Facebook…

“You’re the president, not a rerun of Law and Order.”

As the new models for journalism start to emerge, here is another piece of that puzzle, from The New York Times:

Four nonprofit groups devoted to investigative journalism will have their work distributed by The Associated Press, The A.P. will announce on Saturday, greatly expanding their potential audience and helping newspapers fill the gap left by their own shrinking resources.

Starting on July 1, the A.P. will deliver work by the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are A.P. members, which will be free to publish the material.

The A.P. called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets.

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

Confronted with a news story involving lesbian penguins at a German zoo, you would think that evil geniuses Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller could muster at least one decent lesbian joke.

Watch their pathetic attempts after the jump.

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Speaks for itself.