Beats me, but signing up with Apple+ has become easier. Last Friday, my son Booker was in Baltimore for the weekend and I lamented that the Red Sox game was on Apple, which meant—because of its six-kinds-of-signing-in-difficulties; I subscribed a few years ago and was stymied upon trying to log in—we couldn’t watch. He said, “I’ll take care of it, Dad,” and generously didn’t poke me in the ribs. He was successful, and we had a smashing time seeing a rare Sox win—5-1 over the equally underachieving Braves—and chattered away during the commercials. (Not incidentally, advertisements on nationally-broadcast baseball games have really dipped in quality, relying on shoddily AI-produced images and making no sense at all. There were incoherent car, power tool and booze spots—the hypocrisy of allowing whiskey on the air, but not tobacco still confounds me—and the one differential was a gambling ad that had disclaimers on the lower 25 percent of the screen. I’m in favor of legalized gambling, but that’s a time bomb that’s ready to erupt. A scandal, perhaps for political purposes, that’ll dwarf PEDs.)
I regularly watch the Sox on NESN and the lead broadcaster is Dave O’Brien, a cliché machine (ameliorated a little by former Sox player and now analyst Lou Merloni, but not Kevin Millar who’s a yakety-yak giggler who calls players “dudes” ) who inevitably makes fans recall the golden era of Don Orsillo and the late Jerry Remy manning the booth, with assists from the great Dennis Eckersley. Nevertheless, the Apple broadcast last Friday was awful. Lead complaint: guest analyst David Ross (who played for six teams and managed the Cubs) wouldn’t shut up, missing plays while he went on about all his friendships in baseball, telling stories that were inconsequential and bad jokes. (I can think of several former big-leaguer “color” guys who are a pleasure, like Jim Palmer (Orioles), David Cone (Yankees and ESPN) and Tom Glavine (Braves), whose insights aren’t tossed-off and made during lulls.) I hate interviews with managers during the game, since they’re pro forma, but when Ross spent an entire half-inning with the Sox up talking to the team’s “game-planning coordinator” Jason Varitek—terrific former Sox catcher and the obvious choice to replace the faltering manager Alex Cora when GM Craig Breslow summons the ball to fire him—it drove me nuts.
In fairness, the Sox’s play the past several seasons has driven me nuts—and once again, the prospect of the Yankees making it to the World Series is giving me a toothache and it’s only early-June—but O’Brien doesn’t help. (A sports announcer lifer, O’Brien’s probably a swell guy, but as a viewer that’s of no significance to me.)
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I subscribe to The Boston Globe for its baseball coverage and not much else. I do read columnist Jeff Jacoby, though, because he’s a smart and reasonable voice in a newspaper (no longer in the “national conversation”) that’s so liberal it makes The Washington Post look like The Washington Examiner. An exaggeration, but you get the point; besides, the fantasy world of newspapers has, if you can believe it, gotten worse just in the past year, including The Wall Street Journal. Jacoby, 66, has written a column for The Globe since 1994, and though conservative, he now says he’s “politically homeless” and has voted Libertarian in the past three presidential elections. But he’s not a shrill #NeverTrumper, just a guy who finds the Republicans as repulsive as the Democrats, for contrasting reasons; he’s “safe” to read.
Earlier this week, Jacoby wrote a sensible article about the NPR/PBS “defunding” debate. Jacoby says that the NPR suit to block Trump’s edict to stop federal subsidies to the “news” organization is correct, since Congress has approved them. And then he agrees with Trump that NPR and PBS are “biased.” He notes, as many have, that the networks receive millions from corporations and “listeners like you.” The money doled out by Congress is but a small line item in NPR’s budget, but that’s not the point. Unless I’m mistaken—and who really knows in today’s marketplace—outlets like The New York Times and CNN aren’t compromised by government handouts.
Jacoby writes: “In a democratic society with a cherished tradition of an independent press, the very idea of government underwritten media should be anathema. When news organizations depend on largesse from the Treasury, there is bound to be a price paid in objectivity, fairness, or journalistic clarity.”
Those two sentences are flowery—the “independent press” is definitely no longer “cherished”—but correct. I don’t understand why liberals find that so puzzling.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter @MUGGER2023