POLITICIANS ARE QUICK TO FORGET:
THEY CAN’T CONTROL REPORTING,
THE  MEDIA  GETS  LAST WORD

Bachmann et al vanish from public view
as Mayor of Baltimore hypes gambling;
MLB Interleague excitement wears off

DOES DONALD TRUMP OWN A HAT?
 
By David Maril
 
While watching U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder back-pedal away from the heavily criticized attempt by President Barack Obama’s administration to intimidate the media, it’s interesting to note the following:

 Why, going back to the Watergate scandal days of John Mitchell in the Richard Nixon presidential administration, has the position of attorney general become more a political extension of the White House than a fair enforcer of the law? Mitchell was famous for surprisingly admitting he and his political cronies should be judged by what they did and not by what they said.

Certainly no Bobby Kennedy, who originally politicized the office in a positive way following his controversial appointment as his brother’s AG in 1961, Mitchell drove the politicization to new depths.

And now we have Holder, who in his nearly five years as attorney general has relied heavily on double-talk and flip-flopping while mishandling several key situations. Besides displaying uneven and weak legal judgment, he’s even proved to be incompetent as a politician.

His latest blunders include attempting to stifle media coverage by signing off on the Justice Department’s obtaining two months’ worth of phone records of a number of Associated Press reporters and targeting a Fox News reporter — and then insisting he had nothing to do with any of it.

The saddest part of this embarrassment to the Obama Administration is that instead of being forced to resign, Holder has been appointed to investigate himself.

 What does it say about the low state of politics when so many Republicans and Democrats are critical of Obama and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, jointly surveying the progress made in the coastal recovery from Hurricane Sandy? Is working together and finding common ground no longer considered an admirable trait for elected officials in government?

 You have to wonder why Donald Trump, always eager to consider running for political office to boost his TV ratings, hasn’t thrown his hat — if in fact he owns one — into the New York City mayoral race. With Andrew Weiner, who resigned from Congress in disgrace after posting a lewd photo of himself on the Internet running for mayor, the field is certainly wide open.

 If you want to stay in the political spotlight for a long time, don’t seek the Republican nomination for president.

The mistake-prone Michele Bachmann announced last week she will not seek reelection to Congress. And the only time you ever hear anything from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is if one of the Sunday news talk shows needs to fill a guest slot and brings him in from the bullpen. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, John Huntsman, former governor of Utah, and Rick Santorum, former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, have all but vanished from the national scene.

 The national story of the year underplayed in the news is that the State of California, which was ready to declare bankruptcy the last few years, projects an $850 million budget surplus for 2014. Gov. Jerry Brown, who seemed finished as an impact politician a few decades ago, should win Comeback of the Year honors.

 Maybe I’m old-fashioned and expecting too much, but it bothers me to see Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the dedicated, hard-working mayor of a major city like Baltimore, posing for a photo (which ran in the Baltimore Sun) standing behind giant ceremonial casino dice.

OK, casino gambling in Maryland is legal and hopefully will produce much-needed revenue for the city and state. But how far should our elected officials go in personally prodding people to roll the dice?

For years, the NFL and many of the other professional sports leagues had rules against team officials and athletes under contract officially associating or having any connection with gambling establishments.

Funny that the standards for professional athletes are higher than for our elected officials serving us in government.

 The Al Jazeera America TV network will be taking a major step toward credibility in the United States if it continues to hire reporters of the quality of WJZ’s Adam May. May, who established himself over the past 10 years as one of Baltimore’s most respected reporters and anchormen, will be missed by Maryland viewers, having been signed by Al Jazeera English as a national correspondent to work in Washington.

 Norah O’Donnell, hidden on the sparsely watched CBS This Morning, is the best of the national news anchors. If CBS is smart, it will promote her to co-anchor of the Evening News with Scott Pelley. She’s an impressively serious and focused journalist who knows how to extract information from the squirmiest of politicians, using a tough but civilized approach.

 If Anheuser-Busch, the best known and largest American beer company, could end up sold to Belgian-Brazilian brewery conglomerate InBev a few years ago, is it such a surprise China is on the verge of purchasing Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer?

 One seldom-mentioned reason Southwest Airlines, BWI-Thurgood Marshall’s most popular carrier, is so well liked is, it’s the only major airline to not charge penalties for ticket changes if you modify your itinerary before or during your trip.

 Mark Harmon has achieved perfection in the portrayal of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on the number-one rated “NCIS” TV series. Included among the short list of other actors who matched this inseparable identity-connection to one fictionalized character at such a popular level would be Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger, William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, Jack Webb as Joe Friday — and in more recent times, Peter Falk as Columbo.

Speaking of old-school TV characters, Dennis Quaid’s portrayal of Sheriff Ralph Lamb on the recently canceled “Vegas” is about as close as you can get to Robert Taylor’s role as Sheriff Walt Longmire on A&E’s “Longmire.”

 With the exception of close geographical rivalries like Orioles-Nationals, Yankees-Mets, Cubs-White Sox, Angels-Dodgers, and Giants-A’s, the intrigue and excitement of Interleague MLB play is wearing off. It’s really nothing more than an attempt to squeeze a few extra dollars out of the game and takes away from interest in the All-Star Game and World Series.

 Isn’t it getting a bit tiresome having to listen to baseball announcers on all local broadcasts being forced to read commercials urging fans to vote “early and often” in the All-Star Game balloting for as many players on their team as possible?

What happened to voting for the most deserving stars in the game?

 With an authoritative voice and a concise and accurate play-by-play style, Orioles’ TV voice Gary Thorne is one of the best baseball announcers in the business.

He’d be providing his viewers a service however if he’d revert to the traditional practice of giving the score at the end of every half inning when going to a commercial break. Often when watching a televised game, people are doing other things and not staring every second at the graphics on the screen.

It’s vital to have the announcer confirm the score after every half inning.

 Even though he isn’t in Baltimore anymore, former Orioles’ President of Baseball Operations Andy MacPhail shouldn’t be forgotten and deserves much of the credit for the team’s return to respectability.

It was MacPhail who hired Buck Showalter as manager and rather impressively fleeced Texas and Seattle for such impact players as Chris Davis, Adam Jones and Chris Tillman. Under his watch, the Orioles rebuilt their farm system, developing such players as Manny Machado, Matt Wieters, Jim Johnson and Brian Matusz.

Because MacPhail left at the end of the 2011 season, he misses out on the recognition he deserves.

 It’s almost shocking to see an Oriole, Nate McLouth, close to the top of the American League in stolen bases. McLouth, a Dan Duquette acquisition, gives the usually sit-back-and-hit-the-ball-out-of-the-park-Orioles the type of base-stealing aggressiveness they rarely display.

With the exception of Brian Roberts and Brady Anderson, the last legitimate Orioles’ threat to steal a base every game was Luis Aparicio in the mid-1960s.
 
davidmaril@hermanmaril.com
 
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