Publishers and pundits alike conspire to make books like former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates’ recently published memoir seem far more controversial than they actually are, by releasing & commenting on juicy excerpts.

CONSUMERS WOULD BE BETTER SERVED
IF JOS. A. BANK & MEN’S WEARHOUSE
REMAIN  AS  SEPARATE  ENTITIES

WBAL-Radio should expand Bill Vanko’s airtime

BUSH/OBAMA SECDEF ROBERT GATES
PUBLISHES CONTROVERSIAL MEMOIR
 
By David Maril
 
While wondering why President Barack Obama doesn’t have time for regular White House media press conferences but is able to schedule a Tonight Show appearance with Jay Leno, it’s interesting to note the following:

  Another sign of our short-attention lifestyle is the way commentators react every time advance excerpts are released from soon to be published books.

Far too many draw conclusions based on only a selected few controversial excerpts, delivering inaccurate and misleading judgments about the publication. This plays into the strategy of publishers simply trying to stir up interest to sell more books.

The latest example is the publication of Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, by former George Bush and Obama Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.

The book, nearly 600 pages long, is, for the most part, respectful of Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. You’d never, however, get that impression from the coverage the book has received.

After reading the reviews and listening to the network news commentators sound off, you’d think Gates had produced a juicy, tell-all, shoot-from-the-hip trashing of the White House and most of our major political figures.

All of this hype will definitely boost book sales. It will also mean a number of disappointed readers when they discover Gates’ memoir is much more subdued than advertised.

  With rising concern about loss of privacy because the government compiles so much personal information in the name of national security, when will the public begin questioning why automakers design vehicles that can be used as spy machines?

A recent government report reveals the carmakers are stockpiling data from vehicle navigational systems. Most car owners don’t even know this information is being kept or what it is being used for.

  Why is there so much cheerleading going on for Men’s Wearhouse and Hampstead, Md.-based Jos. A. Bank to buy each other out and merge into one giant clothing retailer?

HOW MUCH MORE PROFIT THE OWNERS WILL MAKE

All the story coverage focuses on market shares and how much more profit the owners of the surviving company will make. But what about the consumers and employees?

If you are a consumer, you should be hoping they remain separate companies and continue to compete against each other, offering as many discounts, sales and bargains as possible. Despite all the propaganda about how mergers make a company stronger and everyone gains, the reality is that plenty of offices and branches are closed and workers lose their jobs.

When one company sells out to another, there’s a drastic decrease in marketplace competition, which means higher prices will be charged to the consumers.

  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” controversy, with his administrative aides using disruption of traffic flow onto the George Washington Bridge as a political bullying tactic, isn’t unique. This type of punishment, dished out to a community or region, has happened before.

Going back to the late 1950s, Worcester, Mass. residents have believed their city was bypassed when the Massachusetts Turnpike was built as payback from Boston politicians who didn’t like the conservative clout of the city’s newspapers, the Telegram and Gazette.

While Springfield, a city farther west, had four turnpike exits, Worcester was originally given only two, located in the neighboring towns of Auburn and Millbury. To access the Pike, Worcester residents had to drive out of the city.

HIGHWAY ACCESS WAS EXPANDED NEARLY A DECADE LATER

Nearly a decade later, the slight seemed corrected when highway access was expanded by building Interstate-290, running past the College of the Holy Cross, New England’s oldest Jesuit institution.

  Think how much money New Jersey could have generated if Baltimore had rented the state its retired speed cameras, which are still making headlines nearly a year after the city shut them down.

The latest news, according to the Baltimore Sun, is that a secret audit last year revealed the rate of tickets mistakenly issued was 40 percent higher than city officials claimed.

One of the “specialties” of these dysfunctional Baltimore traffic cameras is to issue speeding tickets to drivers in vehicles stopped at red lights. Imagine the thousands of speeding tickets that could have been given to all the Fort Lee commuters sitting in hours of traffic while the access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were closed off.

  What in the world is CNN thinking of with its distracting background of red and blue lines moving across the screen on Sunday’s “State of the Union with Candy Crowley”? While guests on-camera are being interviewed, it looks as if the attack of the red and blue killer-rays is being launched behind their backs.

WBAL-Radio should expand, not shorten Bill Vanko’s airtime to simply updating stories.

  In revamping what had been an informative, well-struc- tured and entertaining 5-9 a.m. morning news program, WBAL-Radio will be making a mistake if it reduces Bill Vanko’s role to updating news stories on the hour and half-hour.

VANKO BRINGS A LOT TO THE PROGRAM

While it makes sense to elevate the talented Bryan Nehman into the type of starring role Dave Durian filled before retiring, Vanko has proven he brings a lot to the program, with solid interview skills and a dry, but not overbearing, sense of humor.

In a four-hour news program, it’s a mistake to rely too heavily on just one personality.

On a similar theme, here’s hoping that the program’s new format doesn’t disrupt Keith Mills’ sports reports by having Nehman cut into his time with expanded banter and opinions. There isn’t a better local sportscaster in the Baltimore media market than Mills, and he should be allowed to deliver his all too brief reports without chatter and interruptions.

  National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell must have too much time on his hands if he feels one of the big issues that the NFL needs to address is too much success kicking extra points.

The idea of eliminating the extra point and making touchdowns seven points is absurd.

If extra-point accuracy threatens the popularity and welfare of the NFL, why not just make kicking PATs a more difficult task?

NARROW THE WIDTH OF THE CROSSBARS

The league could have teams line up for extra points 10-yards deeper. Or, if there’s also a fear that field-goal accuracy is getting too high, narrow the width of the goalpost crossbars.

You’d think Goodell would focus more on solving the disturbing rate of serious injuries among active and retired players, which the league will have to deal with sooner or later.

  On the subject of rule changes, Major League Baseball’s plunge into the use of instant replay raises a question of who controls the recorded video from all of the different camera angles.

In the NFL, all broadcasts are on major network television. Baseball is a lot different.

In most games, the baseball replay material will be taken from local broadcasts controlled by the participating teams. Many baseball teams, like the Orioles (MASN) and Red Sox (NESN) own or control their own broadcast outlets.

Baseball’s history is filled with teams censoring what goes out over the air. Hall of Fame broadcaster Red Barber, for example, was fired from the Yankees one year when he ordered the television producer to have cameras show the empty stands during one of the smallest crowds ever at the original Yankee Stadium.

With the control team owners have over local broadcasts, what certainty is there that all replays will be made available if the information they supply guarantees a ruling against the home team?

This will be something that needs to be worked out.
 
davidmaril@hermanmaril.com
 
“Inside Pitch” is a weekly opinion column written for Voice of Baltimore by David Maril.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Bill Vanko is an award-winning reporter and radio broadcaster who is the co-host of “Maryland’s Morning News” each weekday on WBAL-Radio (1090AM).  The football acronym “PAT” stands for “Point/s After Touchdown.”

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