Francona To Manage McCain Campaign?

A report out of New York claims that the McCain Campaign has hired Boston Red Sox Manager Terry Francona to manage its final push toward the White House.

Based on the Sox Skipper's sterling track record of leading an organization back from the dead in several high-stakes situations (if only for a short time) Francona is an inspired -- if risky -- choice.

But time is running out for the McCain campaign, and drastic measures are in order.

Ghost Whisperer

One of the benefits that accrues to a top-rated network television show is the freedom to stretch out from time to time, and having the budget to do it properly.

For the past few months, "Ghost Whisperer" has been a diverting weekly entertainment that Gail and I enjoy watching together.

"Ghost in the Machine," this week's show, takes on an important subject -- on-line predators -- and puts some serious resources behind the production of a powerful and scary episode that will hit very close to home for a lot of parents.

This behind-the-scenes feature will give you a taste of the exceptional special effects; try to see the full episode if you possibly can:

Edie Adams

I've been posting too many obituaries lately, but the passing of Edie Adams can't go without notice.

She was "an actress, comedian and singer who both embodied and winked at the stereotypes of fetching chanteuse and sexpot blonde, especially in a long-running series of TV commercials for Muriel cigars, in which she poutily encouraged men to 'pick one up and smoke it sometime'...clad in the highest heels and the slinkiest dresses, [she] danced with giant cigars, caressed them and extolled their virtues, often with a come-hither...wink, and the whispered slogan adapted from Mae West’s famous invitation to come up and see her.”

Don Draper and the boys from "Mad Men" would have loved her, and they might have made a commercial just like this one:

Too Pretty To Do Math?


“The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued.”

"The idea that the U.S. won’t even properly develop the skills of young people who could perform at the highest intellectual levels is breathtaking — breathtakingly stupid, that is.

The authors of the study, published in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, concluded that American culture does not value talent in math very highly. I suppose we’re busy with other things, like text-messaging while jay-walking. The math thing is seen as something for Asians and nerds."

As Bob Herbert, Bill Gates, and others have been saying for some time now, we had damn well better reverse this trend of ignoring practical education in math and the sciences, because while Americans have been focused on being pretty, the rest of the world has been eating our lunch (and dinner).

Not From Around Here - 2

“He’s neither-nor,” said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, [about Barack Obama] while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. “He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.”

Separate New York Times articles today look at attitudes about race on campus and in the South, and recall for me some observations by David Brooks, posted on the Freeway earlier in the campaign.

I think that in order to affirm how far we may have come in our attitudes about race in America, we have to be totally honest about the distance yet to go.

The Duchess

There's a lot we liked about "The Duchess" and some things -- well, not so much.

It's a gorgeous film to watch on the big screen, with a compelling story about a fascinating woman very engaged in the extraordinary times just before the American and French Revolutions. It's full of fine actors, beautifully costumed, who are so good that they couldn't screw it up if they tried. And they have a great story to work with.

The soundtrack by Rachel Portman is so haunting and right that as soon as I got home, I downloaded it to my iPod.

Unfortunately, the correspondences between Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire, and Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, while accurate, are laid on so thick and so often that they distract from the narrative flow.

Still, it's well worth seeing at the cinemaplex; but do it soon, beacause there weren't many people there when we went, and the average age looked to be well-north of fifty.

For now, have a look at this marvelous extended wide-screen preview from the film's UK website.

Teens Adjust To New Economic Realities


“Kaitlyn Postle is having a bumpy adjustment (to the financial crisis). She has a weekend baby-sitting job and can’t wait to turn 16, so she can find work at a mall.

“I used to ask for things and my parents would say, ‘We can’t do that,’ ” she said in a phone interview. “So I would throw a tantrum and get an attitude. They used to give in a lot. But that doesn’t work now.”

The good news, she said, is that when she shops at thrift stores, she can buy more for her money. But now that she has a temporary license — freedom! — how will she pay for gas?

She assumes she will have to attend a local college and live at home. “I don’t have a problem with that,” she said. “Whatever. That way, I won’t have to pay for everything.”

In the background, a half-shout of protest could be heard. “Of course,” Kaitlyn added, “my parents aren’t too happy about that.”

Examining the financial crisis as it ripples out into the real world.

As if it wasn’t already a challenge to teach kids how to manage (and earn) their own money…

Alternative Investments


If you're on the sidelines financially, uncertain which way to turn, there's a new way to keep yourself warmed-up while you wait to get back into the game.

"Today OneSeason.com is introducing a day-trading site for sports fans – a Web stock market which allows people to invest real money to own “shares” of their favorite sports players, teams and leagues. The word “shares” is in quotes because the shares on OneSeason are, ultimately, meaningless— only illusory slices of players like Eli Manning or Lebron James, which either rise or fall depending on the demand for those shares among other traders. People can transfer up to $2500 a year to their OneSeason accounts."

Fantasy Sports on steroids.

More Paglia on Palin

"The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother — without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive.

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend. And by the way, I think Tina Fey’s witty impersonations of Palin have been fabulous. But while Fey has nailed Palin’s cadences and charm, she can’t capture the energy, which is a force of nature."

Some more reflections on Sarah Palin from Camille Paglia

Bailing Out The Kids


(Illustration by Mark Matcho for Newsweek)

"A Pennsylvania mother says that after her 23-year-old daughter took on $20,000 in loans to help finance a $160,000 undergraduate degree, the best job she could get last year paid less than $40,000, failing to cover rent, expenses and loan payments. In hopes of helping her gain entry to a higher-paying career, her parents picked up her loan payments, paid off $2,000 in credit-card debt and persuaded her to move back home, where she's preparing to apply for law school."

A lemming-like push to get your kid into college, without regard for the return on your (and their) investment, is resulting in helicopter parents being grounded by boomerang kids.

What They Do For Love


A Chorus Line is my favorite Broadway musical, in the same way The Godfather is my favorite movie. Both are fresh every time I see them. So I was eager to see for myself if the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line was as good as I had heard it was.

The CD of the revival captures the energy and passion of the original, and surprisingly includes more of the actual play than the original recording did.

Most of the actors in this revival of A Chorus Line, which we saw last weekend at The Opera House in Boston, weren’t even born when the show opened off-Broadway at The Public Theatre in New York in May 1975.

The characters in the show have become so iconic – as in “a Cassie” or "a Morales" – that aspiring Broadway musical actors want to play them with all the fervor and passion the characters themselves demonstrate in “I Hope I Get It,” the play’s opening number. That's because the play is about them and will continue to be about every Broadway musical actor, past and present.

At our performance, an understudy (Julie Kotarides) played Diana Morales and nearly stole the show, in classic Broadway fashion.

Nikki Snelson took complete ownership of the role of Cassie and performed a thrilling "The Music and the Mirror," almost making you believe no one else had ever done it before.

All of this and more is what makes A Chorus Line unique, and has kept it fresh and relevant for so long, with no end in sight.

Seeing it at the Opera House was special; even though its seats are as small as Fenway Park's, it has been fully restored to its Roaring Twenties’ splendor, with exceptional sightlines and architectural details. Don’t miss any chance you get to see something there.

And don't miss the chance to see this production of A Chorus Line if it comes to a city anywhere near you!

Axe Dark Temptation

I don't think you're going to see this commercial anytime soon on "Oprah" or "Desperate Housewives," but you can't avoid it on just about every baseball and football broadcast -- right after the one for Captain Morgan Rum.

It will sell a lot of Axe body spray.

I'm including it here as an example of the kind of repetitive media messages men are bombarded with when most women aren't watching -- and also beacuse it's sick, twisted and kind of funny:

They're Baaack!

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight…you and I are about to hire many of the same people who made huge amounts of money (think “Trophy Houses”) getting us into this financial mess, and pay them large hourly fees to help get us out of it:

“Treasury officials do not plan to manage the mortgage assets on their own. Instead, they will outsource nearly all of the work to professionals, who will oversee huge portfolios of bonds and other securities for a management fee.

The government will hire only a bare-bones internal staff of about two dozen people with expertise in asset management, accounting and legal issues, according to administration officials, and will outsource the bulk of the program to 5 to 10 asset management firms.

The selected asset management firms will receive a chunk of the $250 billion that Congress is allowing the Treasury to spend in the first phase of the bailout. Those firms will receive fees that are likely to be lower than the industry standard of 1 percent of assets, or $1 for every $100 under management.

Administration officials said they would try to drive down fees with a competitive bidding process. But with $700 billion to disburse, the plan could still generate tens of billions of dollars in fees if the firms negotiate anywhere close to their standard fees.”

I guess we have to hire them, since they’re the only ones who know how to untangle the mortgage-backed securities they created in the first place.