Odds and Ends

Morning folks. I didn't blog last night 'cause my wireless router fried. And I was too lazy to set aside my notebook and walk the 40 feet to my desktop to go online from there.

Anywho, I'm doing a little homework this morning and have no grand ideas.

But I do have some reading material for you and a few morsels for thought.

• My article in today's paper. Enjoy.
• Is this for real? If so, I can't begrudge anyone happiness, but it's just weird. I know neither of these two is a killer on the record, but it still makes me envision OJ hooking up with Lizzie Borden.
• When I was a kid my dad used to say all the time "I hate quitters." Later he toned it down and said he didn't hate them, 'cause hate wasn't right. Eventually he backed off that notion altogether, because some people quit some things for honorable reasons. Jerry Roberts, former editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press newspaper, quit not so long ago, because he didn't like what management above him was doing to the paper's news content and its staff. He could've bitten his tongue, collected his pay and stayed put. But, right or wrong, he quit on principle. So it was gracious of my dad to eventually clarify, but from when I was a kid I understood that he meant he had disdain for people who quit simply because the going gets tough, which leads me to two of the biggest fighters in media these days: Donald Trump and Rosie. I have respect for both to the extent that Trump has built his business and reinvented it repeatedly over the years to much success, and both of them have ingeniously turned themselves, their personalities, into marketable commodities. I even respect that they don't often seem to back down from what they say they believe, even though I don't like most of the opinions I've heard her express or how he's expressed his opinion. Either way, I've always respected that they took the heat for their words. And now they've both quit. She quit The View after her tussle with co-host Elizabeth Hasslebeck over whether or not Hasselbeck should have defended Rosie's statement about "who" the terrorists are in the war in Iraq. For the record, the terrorists, as far as my tiny brain can comprehend, are the people intentionally killing civilians and blowing up markets and schools, etc. He quit The Apprentice, after NBC announced it wouldn't be on the fall schedule. Lower ratings over the past couple of seasons contributed to NBC's decision. Still, I recall Trump lambasting a cast member/contestant on The Apprentice who decided to quit last season when her team was in a slump. She left because she said the conditions weren't right for her. So, back where we started: Trump and Rosie quit. You don't have to like either of them, but quitting 'cause the kitchen got too hot? Not cool. BTW, in case someone who knows Trump stumbles and falls face first into a computer monitor that has this blog on screen and tells him about it, I am not the dumbest person in newspaper. I have met that person. He doesn't work at the Miami Herald.