Thank You, Chad Finn

Distinguishing between polemics written only for the publicity controversy brings and those making valid points is difficult. Even though its author might not acknowledge it, any diatribe published in a high-profile platform will attract attention only because it's a diatribe. That said, Boston Globe blogger Chad Finn's polemic Thursday, on WEEI, squarely falls into the latter category.

Finn's column is a defiant, articulate line in the sand against the city's putrid sports talk radio station. While the Globe has never liked WEEI and vice versa -- their styles are polar opposites and its writers are banned from appearing on the air -- Finn had the courage to unleash so many people's private dislike for the only sports radio game in town and place his name on top of what he wrote. (And unleash emotions he did. There were 811 reader comments, as of late Friday afternoon!)

I've addressed my annoyance with the station before in these pages, though, obviously, only have about 0.0000001 percent of the audience Mr. Finn has. Really, any opportunity to criticize WEEI is worth it, and he accurately captures so much of my opinion. As a side note, Dale and Holley's loose, welcoming, cool and insightful midday show is exempted from all of the below. I love listening to them, as done Finn. OK, Finn's highlights:

Point 1: "They [WEEI] think the station’s success somehow reflects on them, that we tune in for their shrill banter, contrived characters, and prefabricated opinions. We don’t — never have, never will. We listen because we love sports, our beloved teams are enjoying a remarkable run of success, and WEEI happens to have both access and broadcast rights." Two good friends always marvel at how I listen to sports talk radio. However, I grew up listening to a superior station and I love sports, though none of Boston's teams could qualify as "beloved" to me. I'm interested in what happens in the sports world and journalists' reporting and analysis on it.

Point 2: "Yelling the loudest doesn’t make you right." Why do so many of the station's hosts, mainly during the morning and afternoon rush hours, talk over each other so much and belittle the callers so often? The shows are cacophonous and irritating, with few, if any, points completed. Why do the hosts only rarely acknowledge a caller making a good point? Admittedly, there are many idiotic points. However, the hosts craft their arguments so narrowly there's no way they can say to a caller, "I agree with you," because it seems each argument has an infinite number of qualifiers, which means their arguments have no core meaning.

Point 3: "Have a well-considered opinion and the knowledge to defend it." I recognize Mike Adams' evening show is meant to have a certain "frat-boy cabana" atmosphere and emphasize "good times" over "serious discussion." But it's truly embarassing how little knowledge he seems to have of the broader sports world. It's astonishing how often he has to turn to his support staff to fill in the details of teams' records and players' names and statistics. This is the equivalent of a cardiac surgeon turning to her nurse for a reminder on where the aorta is.

Point 4: "...the tone regarding politics and world matters has become so extreme that certain hosts make Dick Cheney look like a beatnik. Worse is the increasingly snide disregard for those with different circumstances, views, and — the case certainly can be made — pigment." This addresses John Dennis and Gerry Callahan, the morning hosts, who, five years ago, were briefly suspended after comparing an escaped gorilla from the Boston zoo to inner-city high-school students attending schools in wealthy, high-performing suburbs through a state program. (Again, yes, this really happened.) Many of their other political comments are not much better. Can someone please tell them that there is a Democratic president and Democratic Congress because they were voted into office, i.e. the public at large wants this?

I haven't listened to WEEI much this week, though have heard snatches of the hosts ragging on Finn without mentioning him by name. Of course, it's reasonable for them to be angry -- someone has very publicly sullied their names and reputations. However, I hope the column and the many comments supporting Finn prompts the station to re-examine what it does. (I like to think Dale Arnold and Michael Holley have read it and shook their heads to say, "Yup, Finn's right.") If it's the number-one rated sports station in town, largely because it's the only sports station in town, why not use that as an opportunity to elevate the discourse? At the very least, I hope the hosts don't dismiss Finn by saying, "He has no idea what it's like to be a talk show host. He's just a blogger." Because as those hosts endlessly criticize and nitpick athletes and politicians, they really have no idea what it's like to be those people, either.

An Ode to Used Kids Records

Other Music is the best record store there is. However, Used Kids Records, in Columbus, Ohio, is my favorite, a distinct and important difference. Used Kids doesn't equal Other Music's unparalleled selection, but Other Music's existence is predicated on having impeccable racks. It's the premier record store in the world's most (culturally) important city. If you can't find the indie record you're looking for, there's a problem.

Everything else, though, works in Used Kids' favor. It's a wonderful bastion in Columbus, a Midwestern city that, as much I love it and believe it's wholeheartedly underrated, doesn't exactly have an extensive indie scene. The clerks are nice; the store makes a concerted effort to stock a solid catalog, new and old, across genres; and the plastered posters lining the staircase leading to the store, some old enough that they've laminated themselves onto the walls, lend an ambiance that can only come with hard-won, truly earned recognition and time. (In the above photo, see if you can spot Firehose, Man or Astroman and Sun Ra.)

My girlfriend and I, on our annual pilgrimage there, bought used copies of Beachwood Sparks' self-titled debut, the reissue of Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," the Go-Betweens' "Oceans Apart" and Comets on Fire's "Blue Cathedral," all for $28! As its name implies, the store's biggest strength is its used section. It's reasonably priced and full of quality records that you never got around to buying when they were initially released but certainly are enticing at a reduced price, as opposed to the late-90s major-label detritrus one usually finds in used sections.

If only Boston had a store like Used Kids.

Update: Worth noting that Virgin Records is closing all of its U.S. "megastores" by the end of the spring. I don't mind, as long as it doesn't hurt indie record stores. It was also a pain even to walk inside of the megastore in Times Square.

Phew! Thank God We Missed That One

Further proof we're living in historically monumental times: Everyone breathes a sign of relief when Kansas reaches a deal so it can meet its payroll and California's Legislature compromises to close a $41 billion budget gap. (The latter, for a brief time this week, couldn't find buyers for its bonds, which is the first time I've heard of a U.S. government entity unable to accomplish that.) These are things that shouldn't have to be averted because they shouldn't even enter the realm of end-game possibilities. These were two of them.

Oh, and add Antigua to Iceland and Hungary as the countries taken down by the global financial crisis. While Stanford Financial Group's justifiably S.E.C.-induced implosion isn't tied to the central causes of it all -- foreclosures and mortgage-backed securities whose only identifiable value is "far from what it used to be" -- it still fits into one of the broader themes that has emerged in the past 18 months.: A lack of interest in proper government regulation that could ensure the short-term gains financial institutions were reaping and the debt and risks they were shouldering wouldn't blow up in everyone's faces in the long term.

That brief list of three countries obviously doesn't include the ones who are in full-blown crises: the U.S., Britain, Ireland, Pakistan, France, Argentina, Spain, etc, etc. What is most troubling to me is how hard it is to imagine the recession's end game. It certainly won't come from people like Rick Santelli, the CNBC "journalist" who yesterday launched a populist rant against the Obama administration's plan to stem foreclosures. (Link here to sound rebuttals articulating how idiotic Mr. Santelli is.) How NBC/Universal can justify employing him is beyond me.

Minor Note on John Updike's Death

Charles McGrath, the Times' book critic at large, in his glowing thoughts on John Updike's professional and personal life, has an interesting note of consternation. Updike, McGrath writes, "was the great chronicler of middle-class America, and hundreds of years from now, if people still read, they will read the Rabbit books to learn what that perplexing age, the 20th century, was really like." (Italics mine.) McGrath subtly but devilishly drops that clause in his essay. Having recently finished Jonathan Franzen's collections of essays, "How To Be Alone," which agonizes and intertwines privacy, the self, depression, imagination and reading (aka "being alone") over and over again, that clause is what sticks with me from McGrath's appreciation of Updike.

Why are we always so concerned about reading's impending extinction? It existed in Mesopotamia, on papyrus, more than two thousand years ago, and still does today, no? What about the late-2oth, when Franzen wrote the majority of the collected essays, and 21st centuries send us into such a tizzy about reading's future? The computer and all its hand-held descendants, obviously. Can true reading -- enriching, absorbing, edifying reading -- happen in present day, when the dominant medium is a lit screen instead of a printed page?

I want to say yes and join all the progressive education policy-makers and media pundits who argue that information is being consumed at the same rate -- if not a more prodigious, wide-ranging one -- only on a different platform that might actually have more educational benefits itself. But I always have trouble completing that affirmation. By sheer but amusing coincidence, Amazon released its second version of the Kindle, its hand-held reading device, about the same time Updike died. Reported Brad Stone and Mokoto Rich of the Times, the new version has seven times more memory, a sharper display and a joystick, and turns pages faster -- all for $359. "Amazon hopes that the Kindle becomes the iPod of the literary world, challenging the printed book," they wrote. (Is the name "Kindle" supposed to connote kindling, as in the burning pages of the books we no longer need?)

By now, I've accepted the iPod as an upgrade in the way music is consumed, even though I still don't own one. Music is, by definition, entertainment. Why shouldn't it be portable so you can be entertained wherever you go? My one point of displeasure is the iPod has rendered the album booklet and liner notes irrelevent. I've always thought they provide a joyful, idiosyncratic glimpse into a band's world. Of all the examples I could list, this one, from Pavement's 1997 record, "Brighten the Corners," quickly comes to mind: "And to our one-way corresponders, the address is still 9361 Cole Drive, Stockton, CA 95212." Nonetheless, I get it. The iPod is really an ingenious way for us to enjoy music and for Apple to make money.

But there is something hard to surmount when it comes to recognizing the computer screen as a superior vehicle for reading. Staring at a screen for an extended period of time -- and I do it at least eight hours each day (not only to blog!) -- is mind-numbing. In much the same way Franzen criticizes TV-watching, reading on a computer screen is more passive. It is easier to skim and disengage. There's something about holding a book (or newspaper), pulling it close while lying on the couch and, there, you're in another world.

Feeling Nourished

The first 90 seconds of Temple of the Dog's hit, "Hunger Strike," are actually really great. The guitar line spins off the fingers nicely and twirls around itself over and over, with just enough echo, so that you get lost in it. Then Chris Cornell goes all Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, and singing in what's a relatively unadorned style for him. Eddie Vedder joins as Robin to Cornell's Batman, with the same amount of subtlety. Whenever I hear the song, as I did this morning, I'm transfixed in the moment. It has the same lovely hazy quality that slowcore does (though no one would ever include Temple of the Dog with the bands Wikipedia correctly identifies, in the link, as slowcore bands).

Unfortunately, Vedder then goes crazier with his chorus vocals, the bridge consists of a few minor chords that slam on the brakes in a jarring way and the guitar solo is too fearsome a blizzard. But for those 90 seconds, it's wonderful.

The above is a pretty funny parody of the "Hunger Strike" video, via YouTube. I would've included the original -- and complimented Vedder's vest and shirt -- but the only version I could find blocked embeds.

Thwack!

Last week, I had the pleasure of watching squash played for the first time. Wesleyan's women's varsity team defeated Colby's, 5-4. (Woo woo!) The most pleasurable thing of standing in a full squash center, where other matches were also happening simultaneously, was the constant thwack of the small black ball, ricocheting off every possible wall. For such a patrician sport, there's also something thrilling and gritty about it -- all that constant motion, jostling and sound.

Thanks to the Cardinal.

Farewell, Salvatore DiMasi (No Question Mark Needed)

Massachusetts House Speaker Sal DiMasi's resignation last week raises a familiar but important question. Are a politician's ethical shortcomings forgivable if his tenure and legislation is otherwise forward-thinking and accomplished?

DiMasi is a 21st-century version of this dilemma. One hundred years ago, politicians would create municipal sewer, trash removal and police systems while feeding a corrupt system of patronage to staff them. Circa 2009, DiMasi preserved gay marriage in Massachusetts, steered the passage of its universal health care law, blocked the casino industry from coming here and championed bills to promote the biotech and renewable energy industries, and helped craft an oceans management policy for the state -- estimable matters that rightfully deserve celebration -- all while offering exclusive access to the State House to a few of his good friends.

To be clear, DiMasi has not been charged with any ethical or criminal wrongdoing, though that seems quite likely considering his former campaign treasurer has been criminally charged with lobbying state legislators while not being registered as a lobbyist. This campaign treasurer calls it "business consulting" and has pleaded not guilty. It all sounds like dangerous semantics, especially considering this campaign treasurer gave DiMasi a $250,000 mortgage on his North End condo and paid off DiMasi's in-law's legal bills, both things that would have been a crime if he were registered as a lobbyist, as he should've been.

Fred Salvucci, the poppy of the Big Dig, had an op-ed column in the Globe a few weeks ago addressing this dilemma. He wrote it was "hunting season" for reporters "trying to bag their third consecutive speaker" and that "the enormously positive public benefit of DiMasi's leadership needs to be considered before the media blitz hustles us into driving him from office." Fair enough, but that argument can only be made while wearing rose-colored, Kool-Aid-tinted glasses. Forget the argument that public officials need to be supremely ethical because their salaries come from tax dollars. Public officials need to be supremely ethical because we expect them to be our leaders and create the foundation of a society that is better for all. When the Massachusetts House Speaker is taking a mortgage from one of his friends and then favoring his client's legislation -- on ticket brokerage, of all the inane topics possible -- there is no way he can live up to even a faded replica of this standard.

As a side note, DiMasi's resigation leaves Gov. Deval Patrick as the longest-tenured of the three leading politicians in the state, surprising because he is only starting his third year. That his budget proposal for next fiscal year, one of the first things he did in his newly ascendant position, includes higher or new taxes on meals, hotels, candy and liquor stores doesn't prove he's a stereotypical 20th century liberal, only looking to raise "revenues" wherever possible, as many have argued. Instead, it only further proves that Massachusetts' state government is too unwieldy, exhausting and voracious to reform, and defeats even a man as remarkable and intelligent as Gov. Patrick.

Update: It also should be noted that DiMasi appears headed for a second career in lobbying or consulting on health care policy, considering he was speaker when Massachusetts passed its historic law. How exactly he qualifies as an expert on this befuddles me. He handled the political end of things, not the policy one, correct? Perhaps this also speaks to Mr. DiMasi's character.