Radio 101

I really appreciated, back in the days when this was done, the really quick radio commercial breaks, back when it wasn't necessary to have eleventy songs in a row. Stations would play three songs, break for one or two ads, and be right back to the music. I have airchecks that illustrate this nicely. Back then, I was willing to wait when I heard, "More music in 60 seconds!"

However, today's bloated breaks send me straight to the preset buttons. But what makes this worse is that it appears that we are simply expected to sit through these commercials as long as it takes. I don't know about anyone else, but I am not inclined to wait around for something to happen when someone blithely says "We'll be back in 3½ minutes." (That would be you, Bobby Bones.)

That moment I heard that, I flipped to Bob FM, and sure enough, Bob got a whole song, "Devil Woman", in before Kiss-FM even came back from their break. "Devil Woman", by the way, is longer than 3½ minutes, so either Bob faded the song early, or Kiss took a longer break than promised. Either way, that's not a good way to get your listeners to stick around.

Okay, now I feel old...

Thanks a lot, KITY. (Warning: page has embedded streaming audio.) KITY is Austin's oldies station (yes, Austin does have an oldies station; listen at 102.7 in most parts of town to hear it), and I have heard more and more 80s tunes in their mix. This morning, Lou Christie was followed by Lionel Richie's "All Night Long".

Is my music really that old?

Al Gore loses historical perspective

In the middle of Matt Lauer's fawning interview of Al Gore this morning on Today (when Mr. Gore could get a word in edgewise, what with Mr. Lauer's continual pleading with Mr. Gore to run for President, and his shilling of Mr. Gore's DVD), Mr. Gore stated that Iraq is the "worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States". (I believe "worst strategy mistake", as the page reads currently, is a typo.)

Ummm...not to downplay the admitted mistakes made in the Iraq conflict, but I can immediately think of at least one strategic mistake that was much worse, and that is Jimmy Carter's disastrous mishandling of Iran in 1979, withdrawing of support for the Shah, and basically setting the stage for everything that has happened in the Middle East since then, including the current Iraq conflict.

But I don't really think Mr. Gore was nearly as concerned with historical accuracy as he was with rhetoric and sound bites.

Why was I missing Christmas commercials???

'Twas the month before Christmas
And all ads were the same
They showed unrealistic situations
And they were all really lame

Scarlett Johansson as much as calls herself a slut...

In the midst of criticizing President Bush for his "staunch conservative views on sex", Scarlett Johansson made some of the dumbest statements I've heard in a while. To wit:

* She is so "socially aware" that she gets an HIV test every six months. No, honey, that just means you sleep around a lot.
* The article doesn't make this completely clear, but it appears that Ms. Johansson thinks President Bush wants to make abortion illegal in all states. I don't remember him bringing that up in the last, well...ever.
* This is an actual quote, referring to President Bush's so-called views: "Every woman would have six children and we wouldn't be able to have abortions." Or maybe you'd have to learn something called personal responsibility. Anyway, I don't seem to recall the president stating this desire, either. If you're going to make up someone's views, try making up worthwhile viewpoints for yourself first.

Anyway, why do we have to rely on schools for our sex education? Why is it that so many people are unwilling to teach their own children, well, anything? Why are so many willing to let their kids watch badly written, badly acted "love scenes", but won't say a word to them about the subject?

Perhaps if parents, collectively, would grow a spine and have the kinds of talks with their children that life demands, they would learn that "love" in the media has nothing whatsoever to do with real life love. Real life relationships, romantic or not, require character development. TV, by and large, doesn't show this. And Ms. Johansson could use it.

The votes are in...

Once again, after the votes were counted, countless people were complaining about the results, saying the fix was in, and calling the whole thing simply a popularity contest.

Of course, we all know what I'm talking about here: Dancing With the Stars!

I've never watched the show myself, but I did find the suggestion of a "dance-off" between the two finalists (Mario Lopez and Emmitt Smith) to be an interesting idea. Why can't we have this type of redo for our election? I don't think seeing the Democrats and Republicans dancing would change anything, but it would give me a good laugh. And that's really what's important here.

More Tony Romo fallout...

Don't you think Dish Network is kicking themselves over paying for a full season's worth of ads featuring Drew Bledsoe? At least one local station (okay, it was 101X) took to offering a disclaimer before airing one of the ads the other day.

265th District Court: Get rid of this guy!

Tonight's "20/20" discussed the completely unequal treatment given two offenders. Both received ten years probation, and both violated the terms of that probation. One offender, who has connections, is caught with cocaine twice, and gets nothing. (Incidentally, he murdered a man and got a really nice plea bargain.) The other, who did not have connections (and happens not to be the same race as the first guy), smoked one joint, and was given a life sentence. (He, as you might expect, didn't murder anyone.)

How in the world is this equal treatment under the law?

By the way, the judge for both cases was Keith Dean, who ducked all questions about the case when asked about it, at least once misstating the law regarding discussing cases in his court. (He certainly could have discussed a case in which all appeals had already been exhausted, but he tried to hide behind a law that didn't apply.)

And here's the kicker: Per the Dallas Morning News voter's guide, Judge Dean's stated views on punishment don't match his actions. His statement on punishment was, "A judge should never impose more punishment than is necessary and never for the wrong reason." Try reading your own statements, sir.

Judge Dean's opponent is someone named Mark Stoltz, who doesn't appear even to have a campaign website. This race, from the small amount of research I did, appears to be over already, but this guy deserves to be tossed.

(If 20/20 ever gets around to putting this story on their webpage, I'll link to it.)

TX-Gov: Bell & Strayhorn: Real Men of Genius?

I wouldn't have believed these ads existed, had I not been tipped off by a co-worker this afternoon. Apparently the ad mentioning Ms. Strayhorn bothered her by its use of the word "woman". (Would she have preferred the term used for Mr. Bell, "guy"?)

TX-22: A completely useless poll

Last we heard, Shelley Sekula-Gibbs was facing a long, uphill fight in her write-in campaign against Nick Lampson for Tom DeLay's old seat, with Bob Smither showing appeal as an alternative.

Surprisingly enough, the write-in campaign now seems to be doing better than expected. Pollster shows Dr. Sekula-Gibbs only down eight points, 36% to 28%, with Smither apparently not showing.

Well, that's all well and good, but it's completely useless as a poll. A quick look further down the page, the percentages of Democrats and Republicans in the 504 likely voters is shown. Guess what: the distribution is Democrat 36%, Republican 28%. That is not even close to the actual distribution in TX-22, according to Wikipedia. (Determining whether Wikipedia is accurate today or not is left as an exercise to the reader.) Perhaps the pundits who have already called this district (that would mean you, Robert Novak) might want to rethink things.