Who are these guys?
Who are these guys in the pool? Can you identify them?
Can they swim?
(Answers below the fold.)
Campaign underwater? (and classroom DVD offer)
June 19, 2008
1 Comment | 
Abraham Lincoln, Campaigns, Elections, Famous quotes, History, History images, History video sources, Politics, Slavery, Technology, Television | Tagged: Campaigns, Illinois, Lincoln Douglas Debates, Midwest floods 2008 | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
“Network of the Lincoln Bicentennial”
June 10, 2008You’ve got to love C-SPAN. Commercial television networks spend billions purchasing rights to be the sole broadcaster of sporting events, the Superbowl, the World Series, the NBA championships, the NCAA basketball championships, the Olympics.
What’s a money poor, creativity- and content-rich public affairs cable channel to do? Well, gee, there’s the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth coming up in February 2009 . . .:
Meet C-SPAN, “the network of the Lincoln Bicentennial.”
Note the site, set your video recorders (digital or not — just capture the stuff). C-SPAN plans monthly broadcasts on Lincoln and the times, plus special broadcasts on certain events — November 19, the 145th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, for example.
Of particular value to students and teachers, C-SPAN offers a long menu of links to sites about Lincoln, and to original speeches and documents (DBQ material anyone?).
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
·1st Debate: Transcript | Video
·2nd Debate: Transcript | Video
·3rd Debate: Transcript | Video
·4th Debate: Transcript | Video
·5th Debate: Transcript | Video
·6th Debate: Transcript | Video
·7th Debate: Transcript | Video
Good on ’em. C-SPAN leads the way again.
Teachers, bookmark that site. Are you out for the summer? U.S. history teachers have a couple of months to mine those resources, watch the broadcasts, and watch and capture the archived videos, to prepare for bell-ringers, warm-ups, and lesson plans.
What will your classes do for the Lincoln Bicentennial? Will that collide with your plans for the Darwin bicentennial?
1 Comment | 1861-1865, Abraham Lincoln, Biography, Civil War, Education, Freedom - Political, History, History audio sources, History images, History video sources, Lesson plans, On-line education, On-line learning, Patriotism, Politics, Presidents, Slavery, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Television | Tagged: Abraham Lincoln, Education, Entertainment, History, Lincoln Bicentennial, Media, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Don’t look at the moonwalking bear
March 27, 2008If I had a perception problem or a new optical illusion for every class day in psychology, we’d start every day happy.
This is a great ad. It gently pokes your pride in your ability to see what’s going on — from a bicycle safety campaign in Britain urging motorists to look out for bicyclists:
1 Comment | psychology, Television, Video and film | Tagged: Bicycle safety, Media, Perception, psychology, Television | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Squashed squawking heads
February 29, 2008Getting snowed out of Springfield, Illinois last week gave me an extra 8 or 10 hours to sit around airports and find things to gripe about.
Is anyone else bothered by the tendency to use high-definition television monitors with a regular TV signal, and then spread the picture out to cover the screen, which makes the victims on the television look as if they’d been modified for a guest appearance on South Park?
(This image is for illustration of the phenomenon only.)
Am I the only person who prefers that people look like people, even if there is a blank area on the television screen? In the past year I’ve been in a couple dozen classrooms where the projectors were set to distort every image transmitted. For a presentation on, say, Emmitt Till, or the death of Rosa Parks, I thought the settings disrespectful at best.
How can they call it “high definition” if it distorts everyones’ faces?
I was relieved late Sunday to get back home to our old, analog televisions and normal human proportions on the screen.
6 Comments | Technology, Television, Transportation, Travel | Tagged: Media, Technology, Television, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
“Old iron pants” Cronkite
February 10, 2008I noted a documentary on Texas water problems, narrated by Walter Cronkite. Okay, no kid in college today remembers Cronkite on the news every night; it’s likely that most of our high school students could not identify him in any way.
Walter Cronkite anchoring coverage of a NASA manned space flight, for CBS News (Gemini Mission series?); CBS News Photo via NASA
Cronkite was the most respected man in news through the 1960s and 1970s. Recruited to CBS during World War II, Cronkite is famous for his sign-off — “And that’s the way it is . . .” — well remembered for his announcement of the death of President Kennedy, remembered among newsmen and space aficianadoes for his coverage of NASA’s glory days, and remembered for his post-Tet Offensive judgment announced in an on-air editorial that the American public had not been getting the facts about the Vietnam conflict, and that the U.S. could not “win” such a war. Because Cronkite’s credibility was so great, his turn on the view of the winability of Vietnam carried a lot of public opinion with him. When Cronkite’s views on the war turned against it, America turned against it.
So, it would be nice if students had a passing familiarity with the Cronkite story.
When I found Cronkite narrating a Texas Parks and Wildlife documentary, at 91, it pleased me.
But, looking for a short bio to link to for the post, I found this 1996 interview with Cronkite, introduced by a biographical sketch, including this piece of information:
Most recently, Cronkite, affectionately nicknamed “Old Iron Pants” for his unflappability under pressure, has recorded the many significant events of his distinguished career in his autobiography, A Reporter’s Life (Knopf, 1996).
What? How does “Iron Pants” relate to unflappability?
It doesn’t. Someone has cleaned up the story for public consumption. But the original story isn’t all that profane or racy, either.
During the political conventions of the late 1950s and 1960s, the three commercial networks, later joined by PBS, would camp out at the convention halls. Someone would anchor the broadcast for the network — Huntley and Brinkley for NBC, the current news anchor for ABC, and Cronkite for CBS — and the coverage frequently would take a couple of hours in the afternoon, and then go through the entire prime time hours (hey — it was late summer during rerun season; who cared?).
The anchor booths often were suspended capsules up in the rafters of the convention center; bathrooms were a long way from the anchor booths. Huntley or Brinkley, as a team, could take a break and take a stroll to relieve himself while his partner carried on. ABC sometimes brought in one of the roving reporters from the floor, or a guest anchor, to give their anchor some time out of the booth.
Cronkite soldiered on alone. He was called “Old Iron Pants” because he seemed to have no need to take a break to relieve himself.
This story was old by the time I covered the Democratic National Convention in New York City in 1976. One network reporter swore that, during the 1972 conventions, a group of reporters counted the coffees and waters going into Cronkite to see if he was doing some sort of fluidless sprint — he matched the other anchors drop for drop of consumption. So, in 1976, the rumor was that Cronkite had to have a private bathroom built into the anchor booth somewhere.
No one could find it.
One reporter for a New York station swore he’d met Cronkite in a restroom, but no one believed him. No one else in the room at the time could say they had also met Cronkite — no corroboration, no credibility.
And so the legend of “Old Iron Pants” grew, bolstered by stories from old reporters unfettered by Snopes.com. Cronkite’s on-air brilliance, and ability to cover hours of conventions at a stride, were made possible by a bladder of legendary strength, if you listened to the old reporters wax on about the issue. “Old Iron Pants” is a nickname that has nothing whatever to do with reportorial ability, talent or luck. It instead refers to the ability of Cronkite to stay in the game while everyone else had to make a visit to the, uh, clubhouse.
This biography says Cronkite was “unflappable?” No, that doesn’t begin to tell the real story. Cronkite was stalwart, a rock unmoved by waters, gauging the political tides while unaffected (on-air) by his own.
At least, that’s the way I got the story. Anybody got a citation to something more reliable, and different?
As Joseph Pulitzer once said, “Accuracy! Accuracy! Accuracy!” Let’s tell the whole truth.
Resources:
- Profile of Cronkite in The Atlantic, part of a series about television news in 1976, “The Power and the Profit.”
- PBS American Masters, “Walter Cronkite: Witness to History” (This may be the origin of the “Iron Pants=unflappability” shibboleth.)
- MediaBistro/TV Newser report on NBC anchor Lester Holt, known as “Iron Pants” around NBC . . . and why
Immediate update: Good grief! “Affectionately named ‘Old Iron Pants’ for his unflappability under pressure” may appear more often than “Cronkite” on Google. Is this another case where the polite, euphemistic explanation has supplanted the more raw, more sensible real explanation?
8 Comments | 1968, Accuracy, History, Humor, News, Newspapers, Political conventions, Politics, Television | Tagged: 1968, Accuracy, History, Media, Political conventions, television news, Walter Cronkite | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Dutch creationists pay to keep evolution off television
August 20, 2007Here’s an interesting tactic Dutch Christians seem to have picked up from Adnan Oktar: If you don’t have a rebuttal to evolution, buy the rights to the information and cover it up.
It’s a commercial/religious twist on what Richard Nixon tried to do, but this may be legal. Will it work? Can Christians, or Moslems, purchase the rights to the truth, to keep it from being broadcast?
David Attenborough is famous for his nature programs, usually produced for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) and often broadcast in the U.S. on Public Broadcast System (PBS) stations. An evangelical Christian television network in the Netherlands purchased the rights to one of Attenborough’s latest productions, The Life of Mammals, but has edited out all references to evolution.
Are the edits significant? See for yourself:
Comparative clips of the English and Dutch versions can bee seen at Cloggie.
Still, with Adnan Oktar spending millions to publish and distribute widely a grotesquely inaccurate book on evolution (unholy to do such things, Adnan – really!), with Texas’s State Board of Education chaired by a hard-headed creationist, one does tire of the creationists’ tendencies to try to purchase the right to be stupid, and then force that stupidity on others.
Why not just stick to the facts? What’s so wrong about letting the truth out? What’s so wrong with the truth that religious fanatics will spend millions to cover it up?
Richard Nixon’s ghost is slapping Santayana’s ghost on the back, asking him to join in on the joke. Santayana’s ghost is not laughing.
More information:
- DutchNews.nl story on the affair
- Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, a blog by Richard Bartholomew
- In Dutch, discussion on the affair in EO’s online discussion forum
2 Comments | Accuracy, Adnan Oktar, Capitalism, Creationism, Ethics, Evolution, Santayana's ghost, Television | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Serious indictment of media fetishes . . .
August 8, 2007. . . that will drive the “mainstream media (MSM)” critics to distraction. Are we sure it’s a good idea to let Rupert Murdoch own the Wall Street Journal?
Orcinus tells conservative commentators to grow up:
Remember the fuss over Jet Pilot Action Figure Bush’s “package”? Damn fool didn’t loosen his straps before getting out of the jet. Nobody else on the deck had his crotch trussed up like a Christmas goose; and to them, he looked like a rookie idiot. But Chris Matthews practically had an orgasm on-air while watching him prance and strut.) The fact that so many mainstream and conservative media guys are suckered by this posturing shows that they don’t really have a clue about what a Real Man looks like — though, somewhere deep down inside, they’re pretty sure they don’t qualify. That’s why they’re so easily wowed by men who can put on the costume and make it look good.
But they’re even more easily cowed by men who can actually fill the boots. John Kerry. John McCain. Colin Powell. Bill Clinton. (You don’t have to agree with their politics; but nobody can say these men haven’t comfortably worn the full measure of male power and responsibility for some critical stretch of their lives.) Like little boys, the media guys are so awed by the outward forms of masculinity that they eagerly make a fetish out of them; but they also actively fear and resent men who display the authentic internal goods that make an honest-to-God man. These guys’ very presence incites such a strong sense of personal inadequacy that the Boys On The Bus can only resort to attacking them in ways that are openly calculated to feminize them — that is, to bring them down to their own level. He look French. He’s whipped by his powerful wife. He’s preoccupied with his hair. Translation: This guy has more balls and more maturity than we do — and we need to take him down before everybody figures out how inadequate that makes us feel.
And this:
. . . the first rule of real macho was that those who possess it never need to prove it to anyone. If you have to prove it or put it out on display, you don’t have it in the first place. And if you are intimidated by seeing it in others, you aren’t even in the ballpark. The truth of that should come home to all of us every time we hear an MSM or conservative talking head going on in breathless awe about some public figure’s “manhood,” or asking leering, creepy questions about other people’s sex lives.
In a time when we need thought leaders who can help us sort out the issues and navigate the national crisis, we’ve got a media staffed by sniggering, leering first-graders who exhibit every regressive intellectual, moral, emotional, and sexual characteristic of right-wing authoritarian followers. It’s time to clean house — and to demand new media voices who aren’t in business to make fun of the grownups, or shamed by people who show the attributes of true maturity and power. It’s time to send the scared little boys home, and put some authentic adults in charge.
1 Comment | Current History, Heroes, History, Leadership, Newspapers, Politics, Radio, Reason, Television, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 