Month: October 2004

  • I woke up this morning to the sad news that Christopher Reeve had died last night. That was more than a little sudden (and my grandma would say he was "the third," given the recent deaths of Janet Leigh and Rodney Dangerfield). Ironically, later on I found myself listening to the theme from "Somewhere in Time," which I've never seen, but I know he was in it. I have seen "Rear Window" and the first Superman movie (only about a year and a half ago), both of which I thought he did well in. I think he was a inspiration to many people, and I'm sure he will be missed.


     


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    You know, I kind of noticed this when I was home, and this Yahoo story just makes me glad I'm at college during the election:


    Toledo Tube War: 14,273 Ads and Counting








    Mon Oct 11, 1:00 AM ET


    By Paul Farhi, Washington Post Staff Writer

    TOLEDO -- The cacophony starts before the first light of dawn, like an agitated rooster. It doesn't quit until after the last bar in this hardworking town has stopped serving.








    		  

    "I'm George W. Bush and I approved this message."



    "John Kerry (news - web sites) offers a fresh start . . . "



    "I'm not a big fan of Bush, but what's Kerry gonna do for me?"



    Just about anywhere Toledoans turn their television dials these days, another commercial for the presidential campaign is on the screen. They interrupt "Jeopardy!" and "The Bachelor," the soap operas and the 6 o'clock news. A curiosity when they began to trickle onto the air back in March, the ads now tumble forth in a relentless parade of persuasion.



    Between March and late September, 14,273 commercials about the presidential race aired on Toledo's four leading TV stations, according to the ad tracking firm TNSI/Campaign Media Analysis Group of Arlington. That number makes this smokestack city at the western tip of Lake Erie the epicenter of the presidential air wars; Toledo ranks as the most advertised-to market of any in the big battleground states.



    The city's elevated profile has something to do with its cross-border locale -- TV signals here lap over into southern Michigan, another swing state -- but it is mostly because of Toledo's prominence in the heated battle for Ohio's 20 electoral votes. The city is the urban center of northwestern Ohio, which could be the most closely contested region in this critical swing state.



    Although Toledo and surrounding Lucas County are reliably Democratic, the 12-county area reached by the city's TV stations is not. President Bush (news - web sites) defeated Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) in this part of the state by about 17,000 votes in 2000, 50 percent to 46 percent. Republicans are counting again on the surrounding rural counties, such as Williams and Defiance by the Indiana line, to offset Democratic strength among unionized workers and African Americans closer to town.



    Both sides learned some lessons about the value of advertising four years ago. Behind in the polls by double digits, Gore turned off the ad spigot and stopped making campaign appearances in Ohio in early October, effectively ceding the state to Bush. The Democrats lost Ohio all right -- but by just 3.6 percentage points statewide.



    The experience left Democrats and Republicans alike with a profound sense of "what if" and a determination not to take anything for granted this time. "You're seeing everything both sides have in Toledo," said Jim Ruvolo, chairman of Kerry's Ohio campaign. "No one's holding anything back."



    It certainly did not appear there was any holding back to anyone tuning in earlier this month, when political ads were as thick as rush-hour traffic, even at non-rush hours. Candidate spots often run back-to-back on programs here, with a Kerry ad followed by a Bush ad followed by a Kerry ad. During "13 Action News" at 6 p.m. on a recent Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (news - web sites), the Kerry campaign and the Bush campaign peppered viewers with a total of six commercials during one 19-minute stretch.



    This has certainly been good news for Toledo's depressed local economy, or at least for the four TV stations that are broadcasting almost all of the commercials. Spending on political spots in Toledo will surpass $8 million between July and Election Day, estimated Mary Gerken, general sales manager of WTVG, the city's ABC station. This is about three times the total during the entire 2000 campaign, she said. (The Bush and Kerry campaigns declined to discuss their expenditures in detail.)



    The messages flying over the airwaves go all over the political map. One Bush commercial features a series of clips of Kerry taking seemingly contradictory positions on the Iraq (news - web sites) war -- here saying it was the "wrong war," there saying the world is better off without Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), and again saying, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion [to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites)] before I voted against it." One of Kerry's ads does triple duty: He attacks the war's cost, promises to "stop at nothing" to get the terrorists and then says he'll "fight for a stronger middle class."



    The "I'm not a big fan of Bush" ad comes not from Kerry or the DNC but from the anti-Bush Media Fund, one of several independent "527" organization that have been plying Ohio's airwaves since just after the beginning of the year. The commercial features a middle-age man in a hard hat whose question ("but what's Kerry gonna do that's different?") is answered by a narrator. "For 20 years, John Kerry has fought for jobs," the narrator says. ". . . Under Bush-Cheney, Ohio has lost 230,000 jobs while they give no-bid contracts to Halliburton."



    "Halliburton," the hard-hat guy repeats glumly.



    David Davis, a political science professor at the University of Toledo, said all the advertising has the same motive: to sway undecided voters and to spur the faithful to show up on Election Day. But he noted that advertising can do only so much in a political campaign. Organizational work such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, as well as day-to-day developments in the campaign count, too, Davis said.



    Indeed, the ad barrage raises an obvious question: Is anyone being persuaded by all of this?







     



    In some ways, it is almost irrelevant in Toledo. Ruvolo acknowledges there is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy driving the air wars here: Both sides feel they have to have ads on the air simply because the other guy has his ads on the air. "It is kind of an arms race," he said, a bit sheepishly.


    Toledoans interviewed in random encounters on downtown streets generally express fatigue -- and a bit of bewilderment -- about what they're seeing on their TV screens. Walking into the Lucas County courthouse on a sunny fall afternoon, James King, 64, an executive with a health management company, offered the jaded view. "We're kind of sick of them," he said. "It seems like they've been going on forever. I really think it's turning everyone off. When you see as many negative ads as we've seen, you have to believe that it's turning more people off than getting people excited about the election."


    King described himself as "a ticked-off conservative" who is leaning toward Kerry. But his choice wasn't shaped by any messages he has picked up from a few thousand political ads. "I'm alarmed at what has happened to the conservative agenda under this president," he said. "The deficit is a disaster. I deplore this war. The government has gotten bigger, not smaller. [Bush] has injured the party and its ideals."


    Over on Adams Street, Najie Olive, the owner of Ranya's restaurant, still is not sure which way he is voting. The ads, he said, have not been especially helpful. "It's pretty much tit for tat," he said. "It's like a teeter-totter. They just keep swinging back and forth. . . . I guess I haven't really become tired of it. I'm just immune to it."


    A block away, by a statue of native son William McKinley, the assassinated 25th president, teacher Rick Buss was asked whether he can remember any of the TV commercials he has seen. Buss, 54, thinks hard for a moment, holding his hand to his forehead. "Oh, boy," he said finally, stumped. "There's just so many of them that they kind of blur together. The average person can't differentiate who's saying what. It's very confusing."


    In fact, the most memorable ad for Sara Agocs, 25, has been "the one President Bush did attacking John Kerry's service in Vietnam. It seemed very unfair to me." Informed that the ad was aired by an independent group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and not the Bush campaign, Agocs seems surprised.


    "See, I didn't know that," she said. "All these independent agencies. I don't know what's coming from who."


    Yet even if the sources of the ads and the messages are somewhat indistinct, Buss and Agocs can identify the general themes each side is promoting -- that Kerry (according to the Bush campaign) has taken inconsistent positions on many issues and thus cannot be trusted, and that Bush (according to Kerry) has mismanaged the war in Iraq and the economy and does not deserve another four years.


    It's not much, but both sides hope it's enough come Election Day.




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    Go Kerry! (I had to sneak that one in)

  • Hey, everyone. I really need to start updating more often. Of course, I’ve also got a huge backload of pictures that I’ve promised you that haven’t been acquired and/or developed yet (Joshua Bell, Florida, Denison, John Kerry, etc). I will try to do that soon, I promise (not that my promises mean much to you guys anymore anyways). In the meantime, I’ve got some stuff I want to share, and I’ll try the title strategy to break up the long blocks of text.


     


    The Stream Is On


     


    At least, that’s the advertising slogan. Denison’s radio station, WDUB (aka The Doobie) is now online, which means you all can listen to it. My roommate Mandy’s show is on Thursdays 3:30-5:30 pm Eastern time. I make frequent appearances, so those of you who don’t know me in real life can actually find out what I sound like (Now there’s a scary thought).


     


     


    A Childhood Interest Resurfaces (Not That It Fell By The Wayside THAT Much)


     


    Ever since I was 9, I’ve had a sort of “hobby” interest in volcanoes. I’m not sure what brought that about, but I was particularly fascinated with Mt. St. Helens (I do know what brought that specific fascination about, and it has to do with a specific book that told the story really well, but nobody else would find the details interesting). I was nuts about the subject. I read every book about it that I could get my hands on. During a snowstorm, my friend and I even built a model replica of the famous 1980 eruption out of snow (in our defense, we had just seen a movie featuring a science fair and we were pretending to be in one, so it wasn’t totally spontaneous). I still have a copy of a National Geographic Magazine from 1981 that contains a huge feature on the 1980 eruption. There is some personal interest, too, I guess. My dad was living in Montana in 1980, and he says they got an inch of ash where he was and that because of it he had to leave work early. Of course, I did most of this weird stuff when I was 9, and the fascination has since receded into the background of my psyche. But it hasn’t gone away. As most of you have probably heard, in the past week or so there’s been some activity going on around Mt. St. Helens, and naturally this has piqued my interest. It’s also gotten me in the mood for cheesy volcano disaster movies, which I might talk about next time. I thought it was kind of odd that of all the Cascade volcanoes to experience activity, it’s the one that just had a major eruption (in geologic terms). Cascade volcanoes don’t erupt that often (maybe once every century or two), causing a massive pressure build-up in the mountain, and that’s why their eruptions are very explosive (unlike volcanoes like Mt. Etna in Sicily or Kilauea in Hawaii, which erupt frequently, so there’s not as much of a pressure build-up). I’ve actually heard rumors that scientists think Mt. Rainier may erupt in the next few years. However, I was caught in a nerdy moment earlier today. There was a small eruption this afternoon. Guess how I found out about it? Through the webcam. I was already at the site, and I happened to refresh the page just as the eruption started. Naturally, this took me by surprise, and I actually shouted “Oh, shit” (Luckily nobody else was in the apartment at the time). I then turned on the TV and watched some CNN reporter interviewing a scientist, with the volcano in the background. That just looked weird. I mean, they’re proceeding with this interview as calm as can be, and there’s an ERUPTING VOLCANO right behind them. Then I had to go to class so I missed the rest of it, but it looks as though things have quieted down, although they still think there’s going to be a bigger eruption. If I happen to catch it on the webcam, I’ll be sure to shout some more profanity, just for you guys.


     


     


    What? I Actually DO Stuff on Weekends?


     


    Well, two weeks ago I went to the Ohio Renaissance Festival. I went to the Michigan Renaissance Fest once, when I was nine, so I didn’t have a whole lot of basis for comparison, but I think I like the Ohio one better. Everything’s a lot closer together. A lot more people dress up, too. There was a guy (visitor, not worker) there dressed as Gandalf. He was the spitting image (right down to a real beard). People kept asking him to pose for pictures, which he obliged. Actually, dressing up seems to be the norm. You feel out of place if you’re not. I didn’t have any medieval style outfits. The closest thing I had was a lace-up three-quarter sleeve shirt, which I wore. When I was there, I bought a brass forehead tiara that I thought was pretty. I wanted to get more costume stuff, but it was too expensive. But that wasn’t my prize haul, and those who know me well will know what I had my heart set on. To my sheer and utter delight, they had swords in my price range. Unfortunately, none of the affordable swords were rapiers, but I liked the one I got. It’s a smaller-scale replica of the Witch King’s sword from Lord of the Rings, and it looks awesome. I will post pictures soon. I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to go back every year, and each year I’ll get another sword and a new costume piece.


    This past weekend I went home to play in my high school’s alumni band for the homecoming game. There was one other person from my class in the band, and I almost didn’t recognize him because he’s lost just about all his hair already (and he’s only 22). There were also three alumni cheerleaders from my class, as well as a few people just visiting. Stritch (my high school) actually beat the opponent 38-0. They were pretty good when I was in high school, then they really went downhill and didn’t win for two years before this year, and now they’re doing all right again. One of the interesting tidbits is that Stritch’s place kicker is a girl, and she’s one of the best players. She hasn’t missed a point yet. She’s also on the soccer team, which must help. Anyways, now I’m way behind on work, so I better go now.