January 14, 2005
 
THUMBS VIII: ‘Mud Fence’ Dumb; Stupid Media Executives; Weather Channel Ageism; Nap Time for Young Docs
 
by David M. Kinchen
Editor, Bluefield News Network
 
Hinton (BNN) –This is the eighth installment of an occasional series expressing approval or disapproval of recent news events, commentaries, etc. Thumbs Up for approval; Thumbs Down for disapproval. I welcome contributions, which will be credited in the item. Contact me at davidkinchen@hotmail.com.
 
THUMBS UP to actor Jack Black (he was brilliant in “The School of Rock”) for telling a British magazine interviewer last year that “Most actors are dumb as a mud fence.” He told the interviewer from Uncut magazine that “the dumber you are, the better an actor you are in a lot of cases.” In a bit of Rumsfeldian speak – my coinage for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Gertrude Stein-like rhetoric – Black added: “It’s okay to be dumb as long as you know you’re dumb. But if you don’t know you’re dumb, then you’re dumb.”
 
I’m indebted to a column in the Washington Post for the Jack Black quotes, which also apply to media executives who make racial slurs at company meetings.
 
I’m thinking of two dummies named Steve R. Nylund, who made a joke racially disparaging to African-Americans at a corporate function in Italy in 2003, and Hans Holger-Albrecht, a director who used a racial slur at another Metro International corporate gathering in 2003. Nylund resigned Jan. 12, 2005 as president of Metro's North American subsidiary, Metro USA. Metro said he would remain with Metro International as executive vice president, but without operational responsibilities. Holger-Albrecht resigned from the Metro International Board. The details are reported in Jim Romenesko’s site on the Poynter web site (www.poynter.org), an invaluable resource for news and views about current journalism in all its many forms.
 
Metro is contemplating selling 49 percent of its Boston publication, Metro Boston, to the New York Times Co., parent of The Boston Globe. In an example of media piling on, the competing Boston Herald has front-paged the racial remarks and has filed a complaint with the Justice Department to block the $16.5-million deal on antitrust grounds, according to a Boston Globe story.
 
THUMBS DOWN to Californians who persist in building houses in unsafe areas and to county and city officials who cave in –good choice of words, in this case – to people who insist on building permits being issued in proven unstable areas. I’m talking specifically about the hamlet of La Conchita, on the Pacific Coast of California’s Ventura County, between Ventura and Santa Barbara. The Jan. 10, 2005 hillside collapse and mudslide is a larger sequel to a similar geological malfunction in March 1995 that took out houses but caused no loss of life. Californians might fit Jack Black’s “mud fence” standards, literally, in the La Conchita case. The retaining wall built after the 1995 collapse was about as effective as a picket fence, according to news reports. My old paper, the Los Angeles Times, reported Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005 that county officials warned that the area remained “prone to more slides like the one…that has now claimed 10 victims.”
 
Strangely, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, touring the area, encouraged residents to rebuild, nonplussing people like Jim Otousa, a contractor geologist with the Ventura County public works department who told The Times: “The earth is still moving, and it’s going to be a dangerous and uninhabitable area for some time.”
 
The Gubernator’s comments also caused consternation with people like Kathy Long, head of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, who questioned how they could make the slide-prone La Conchita community safe. Since the 1995 mudslide that destroyed nine houses in the community of 260, county officials have warned that the area is unsafe but have also said they lack legal authority to order residents to leave, according to The Times. CNN reported Jan. 13 that most banks had refused to issue mortgages on houses in the enclave; my guess it that anybody foolish enough to pay more than a half million dollars for a tract house there will have to pay cash. These communities in Ventura County are not Malibu or Santa Barbara: They’re middle-class places with beautiful ocean views in a state where people do crazy things for such views.
 
THUMBS DOWN to the Weather Channel for letting one of the cable channel’s better forecasters go, because, at 41, she’s too old. According to Joe Flint of WSJ.com, Marny Stanier Midkiff claims in an age discrimination suit that she was fired last year in favor of a younger forecaster. Broadcasting as Marny Stanier, she alleges in federal district court in Atlanta that she was replaced with a younger woman because the Atlanta-based network wanted to get rid of talent over 40 in an attempt to snag younger viewers. Funny, I’ve seen a bunch of middle-aged guys on the channel, along with a new crop of hottie females. This action, if it’s true and I believe it is, is so 20th Century. Get with it, Weather Channel: I value experience above slit skirts and cleavage and I’m willing to bet younger viewers do too. Marny Stanier was and is a good meteorologist and didn’t deserve to be fired. If it walks like age discrimination and quacks like age discrimination, it’s age discrimination!
 
THUMBS UP to a study conducted by Harvard Medical School and reported by the Associated Press that doctors in training were more than twice as likely to have an automobile accident while driving home after working 24 hours or longer, compared with when they worked shorter shifts. The study also found that after extended shifts – required twice a week of most young doctors in the workaholic U.S. –interns and residents were about six times more likely to report a “near-miss accident and that they sometimes fell asleep while driving.”
 
The study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, prompted Dr. Charles A. Czeisler to state that “if they’re going to require these trainees to work such long hours, they should at least provide them with transportation home. Czeisler is a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School and the head of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
 
Try this on for size:” The researchers found that the doctors worked on-call shifts averaging 32 hours in which they were lucky to grab a few hours' sleep and that about half worked from 81 to 140 hours per week.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any sleep-deprived “trainee” messing with my body! Stop the madness and cut the hours. This is a macho holdover from a previous era of terminal stupidity.
 
Thumbs Archives:
10/16/04 — Part I
11/10/04 — Part II
11/26/04 — Part III
12/15/04 — Part IV
12/24/04 — Part V
12/31/04 — Part VI
01/08/05 — Part VII
01/14/05 — Part VIII
01/21/05 — Part IX
02/04/05 — Part X
02/11/05 — Part XI
02/18/05 — Part XII
02/25/05 — Part XIII
02/28/05 — Part XIV
03/06/05 — Part XV
03/10/05 — Part XVI
03/18/05 — Part XVII
03/26/05 — Part XVIII
03/30/05 — Part XIX
04/09/05 — Part XX