FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Showing posts with label Beth Reinhard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beth Reinhard. Show all posts

Thursday, June 2, 2016

That curious news re pro #Jeb, pro #amnesty, anti #Trump Miami TV host Helen Aguirre Ferré getting hired by the RNC sounds very, well, Dolphins-like. And when has that been good for fans or anyone since 2000?

That curious news re pro #Jeb, pro #amnesty, anti #Trump Miami TV host Helen Aguirre Ferré getting hired by the RNC sounds very, well, Dolphins-like. And when has that been good for fans or anyone since 2000?
Wow! Where to even start with this bit of curious news I could have never predicted.


















So, pro #Jeb, pro #amnesty, anti-Donald Trump Miami TV host Helen Aguirre Ferré's 
longstanding public criticism of Trump counts for little with the powers-that-be at the RNC these days, as they've now hired her for a task that she seems particularly ill-prepared for, and even worse, will make a bad situation worse, if possible.
It's like hiring a run-oriented head football coach when you have a young, healthy Dan Marino as your QB. A #disconnect.

 The story has gottten lots of traction in the national press, but so far, has stirred little public notice or critical commentary in South Florida where Ferré and her frequently condescending attitudes were not just tolerated but embraced, in large part because her Conventional Wisdom attitudes almost always were 100% in sync with those of the Miami Herald Editorial Board & the perpetually misfiring Downtown Miami Biz community's. :-(

That's why despite a mountain of self-evident facts that would show objective readers how true my criticism of Ferré and her style is, it's hardly surprising that Ferré, thus far, has received almost complete kid gloves treatment from many in the community and press who know better, including former Miami Herald reporter Beth Reinhard, now of the Wall Street Journal.
Reinhard is someone whom I have long criticized on this blog over the years for some very sound reasons about basic fairness, bias, clarity, context and accuracy, as anyone taking the time to check the blog's archives for past posts on Reinhard can discover for themselves.

See all the tweets about Helen Aguirre Ferré's hiring here, inc. the Reinhard tweet

Honestly, over the past dozen years, Helen Aguirre Ferré may've been the single most-over-rated and over-praised woman in all of South Florida, in or out of public policy. 
And for a TV show on a PBS affilate in Miami like WPBT-TV that 
a.) hardly anyone watches, including even me, and that 
b.) has often seemed more like a not-so-funny sketch comedy parody of a TV chat show, because of how often she and her guests are in almost complete agreement, regardless of the issue.

If Helen Aguirre Ferré was doing a good job, wouldn't I have mentioned the show more than once in the past nine years of doing this blog?
It's not been a show to take unpopular positions or inform and enlighten the South Florida electorate so much as it has often seemed to exist merely to hearten true-believers in whatever line the South Florida Establishment's status quo had taken, so Ferre could echo it like a cheerleader.
Usually against meaningful government or political reform of the sort that the South Florida Establishment was afraid of, regardless of party affiliation, geography, race or nationality. 
And forget about Ferré talking out-loud in detail about how truly awful the caliber of the South Florida media has become the past dozen years in simply covering local govt./issues/politics fairly and accurately, and why that was so. 
No, a truth-to-power, straight-talker Helen Aguirre Ferré is NOT.

That's why to me, her show has always seemed so terribly underwhelming, frustrating and disappointing, especially compared to what it could have been -and should have been for the part of the South Florida populace that actually wants to be well-informed, which to be sure, has never been a majority.

Ferré's hiring by the RNC seems destined to just draw more more media attention to her own personal track record in the public eye and her condescendning political attitudes, instead of the task at hand, which was not an easy one.
That is surely NOT what the RNC needs the next five months going into November's election.

Frankly, Ferré's hiring by the RNC has the feel of any of a hundred awful personnel moves the woebegone Miami Dolphins have made the past 15 years, to their fans' dismay. :-(

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Friday, February 15, 2013

re Marco Rubio: Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals. I'll bet I can guess what Reinhard will say about him before reading it. Yes, and so can you! That's the whole problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote; Where's the plan for positive changes at McClatchy's Miami Herald -still missing!

U.S. Senate longshot candidate Marco Rubio in Hallandale Beach, FL at Southeast Broward Republican Club. June 23, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The National Journal
POLITICS
Can Marco Rubio Live Up to the Hype?
He's the GOP's Barack Obama, a fresh-faced politician with an immigrant name, a playlist full of rap, and a collection of fawning press clips. The challenge: He's selling the same old party message.
By Beth Reinhard
Updated: February 14, 2013 | 8:50 p.m. 
February 14, 2013 | 8:20 p.m.
The freshman senator from Florida had joined four veteran colleagues to unveil a proposal for the first major overhaul of immigration law in a quarter-century. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced “my friend, Senator [Marco] Rubio, who obviously is a new but incredibly important voice in this whole issue of immigration reform.”
Two weeks earlier, Rubio had laid out a similar set of principles in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal under the headline, “Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue.” The article came as a surprise to McCain and other members of the bipartisan group of senators who had been sketching out an immigration plan with and without Rubio for weeks. The blueprint was inspired by legislation that McCain first spearheaded in 2005.
The dig was subtle, but Rubio didn’t let it go.

Oh dear! Another predictable Beth Reinhard paint-by-numbers piece on Marco Rubio in The National Journal, full of the usual resume/personality recitals.
Bet I can guess what Beth Reinhard will say about Marco Rubio. 
Yes, and so can you! 

That's the problem -Reinhard writes about Rubio by rote.
Just like her last piece on him.

Even the new anecdotes she drops throughout the column sound just like the old ones she used, since they are almost always cobbled together to create the same old product: Marco the Magnificent.

It would be far better if she spoke to veteran analysts like Charlie Cook, also of the National Journal and someone whose every word I read religiously for meaning and portent, as mentioned many times here in the past, which is why I've linked to so many of his columns here over the years.

Specifically, speak to Cook about the dangers of over-exposure, which he is getting closer to everyday, and the graveyard of presidential candidates that peaked early and never made it to Election Day because they prematurely annoyed or bored America silly, or flat out didn't have the sort of practical experience needed or the ability to articulate a cogent, distinct message that resonated with the public and which could grow even larger with hard work.
Bill Bradley for instance.

Even though I was an early and very confident Senate supporter of Rubio's in 2009, when the entire Florida GOP and business establishment, along with Florida's sycophantic Mainstream Media, plus the East Coast drive-by MSM, practically handed the 2010 Republican Senate nomination to then-Governor Charlie Crist, in my opinion, Rubio needs to actually accomplish a lot more of substance sooner -and be seen LESS in a pop-culture prism- otherwise, everyone in America may be bored silly by the sight of him within two years as the new car smell wears off, just as he's campaigning for House and Senate candidates throughout the country, and actually getting most of the questions, not the candidates he's with.

Yes, just like a once interesting new TV commercial that you have now grown to cringe at within a milli-second of seeing on TV and reach for the remote.

And if and when that happens, the only thing that will be written about him will be the hit pieces by the usual suspects, especially among liberal reporters and columnists in the West, who have no secret of the fact that they resent the collective power of Cubans in the political process compared to Mexicans, who vastly outnumber them.

And Univision, of course, in their creepy stalker-like relationship with Rubio, where they are always looking to see if he's spending too much time with someone else.
Y
es, Univision, the Spanish-language channel that the Miami Herald is always kissing the butt of and overplaying the significance of, but who will, not so curiously, not mention in print that they didn't air President Obama's State of the the Union address, which is why they won Tuesday night in the TV ratings.

Nope, no mention, as you can see for yourself. 

I thought they were the new "It"?
Qué pasa, Herald?

Yes, Univision, the politically-biased TV network that makes it very clear in their so-called news coverage that the only reasonable side of the immigration debate is pro-amnesty, otherwise, you are a racist. 

 Oh yeah -and the supposed news network whose employees loves to take public whacks at 
Rubio.

That is, if they, too, aren't already bored silly by Rubio and tired of pointing-out the same deficiencies they saw/see in him, over-and-over.

On the other hand, it's good to remember that Rubio eventually got so bored/irritated with Reinhard asking him the same ol' leading questions over-and-over during his long Senate campaign, that as I wrote here at the time, towards the end, he eventually started freezing her out because he simply couldn't take the routine anymore

You might recall that was back when the Herald's then-Ombudsman took Beth Reinhard (and the Herald) to task in his once-in-a-while Sunday column for having one person perform both reporter and columnist duties, saying that it was a conflict of interest.

The Ombudsman was right, of course, and Reinhard proved why that was true by being whiny publicly in her columns about being frozen out by Rubio, which not only made her less attractive to Rubio as a person to speak with, but for voters and newspaper readers, made her 'articles' about him not at all reliable, since you already knew that she was mad at him enough to say so publicly.
But I guess I'm the only one who remembers that, huh?

Alas, the Herald's then-Ombudsman left in April of 2011 and has never been replaced, with rather predictable results from my perspective: more bias than ever in articles as well as more missing facts and context.

 As many of you regular readers know, I've directly asked the Herald's top management why there's been no replacement and no mention made in the paper of what their plan is, if any, for an eventual replacement.
And, what their plan for improvement in print and online was to keep the faith of readers.
That's been met with stony silence. 
Followed by more silence.

A smart and fair-minded person representing the interests of Herald readers and ethics is not in the cards there.

Folks, it's time to face the fact that publisher David Landsberg has no actual plan for the Herald's future that positive for news consumers, because if he did, he'd have already made them public months before they went to a pay wall, and only added the pay wall AFTER getting rid of the problem step-children, adding new and curious columnists and reporters who don't take things for granted -one of the worst daily offenses there!-  and completely re-do the website from top-to-bottom, so the same stories don't appear in three separate places there, as happens now, which is acutely embarrassing for everyone, most of all, them.

That's why in my opinion, with the same people in charge, the Herald's problems are only going to get worse over time.

 But if someone with some smarts and money bought the Sun-Sentinel, fired all the dead wood and made it more like some of the Swedish newspapers that I've become increasingly  used to, and read daily while I was in Stockholm last month, newspapers which are very popular, well then, you could well see will see a very interesting dynamic take place here
in South Florida.
But not right now.

Now, each newspaper and its management seem locked in a battle of lethargy to do the least amount of original enterprise reporting possible.
  
------
TheWrap
Ratings: Univision Wins Night By Skipping State of the Union
By Tim Kenneally
Published: February 13, 2013 @ 10:03 am

November 1, 2010
Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL

September 3, 2010

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!


-----
Univision staffer attacks Sen. Marco Rubio on Facebook

No doubt after the Castro Brothers finally go adios for good, many of the Univision employees will try to move to Cuba and try to suddenly reinvent themselves as real journalists, after years of being celebrity hand-holdres, political suck-ups and amateur political science professors based in LA, NYC and Miami, forever intent on lecturing us on how important Latin America is, despite the fact that we mostly don't care about it for perfectly valid reasons, no matter how much they insist it's important.



But it's not, even with changing demographics and population changes, Americans aren't going to suddenly care about Honduras or Uruguay or Brazil if they never did before, and they can't let on that the whole thing has been a journalistic con for years to fleece advertising dollars.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Déjà vu opinions from a new perch: National Journal's Beth Reinhard may've left the Miami Herald behind, but she STILL makes the same tired and unpersuasive arguments as before. You'll never guess who she writes will be the key to 2012 vote. Surprise -Hispanics! She's wrong -it's actually Catholics in the Midwest and PA


Déjà vu opinions from a new perch: National Journal's Beth Reinhard may've left the Miami Herald behind, but she STILL makes the same tired and unpersuasive arguments as before. You'll never guess who she writes will be the key to 2012 vote. Surprise -Hispanics! 
She's wrong -it's actually Catholics in the Midwest and PA

If you think that former Miami Herald political reporter and columnist Beth Reinhard can go even three sentences in this story WITHOUT mentioning the I-4 Puerto Rican voters that we've all been reading about for at least 18 months, you LOSE.

Lose, just like Herald readers did for so many years when they opened the paper and thought that if only out of randomness, perhaps that would be one of the few times in the year when they might see something original under her byline, and yet inevitably, what would follow was almost always the same banal and predictable words and "observations" about subjects that we'd all already seen.
Already seen and better-described and analyzed by other reporters and columnists MANY MONTHS before.

Yes, she even comes up with some of the predictable italicized names (for Hispanic food) to show that she's in touch.
Que Dios!

The National Journal
The Story of the Hispanic Vote Is the Story of the 2012 Campaign
Cuban-Americans aren’t the only Latinos candidates need to woo in Florida. Puerto Ricans also command attention.
By Beth Reinhard
Updated: November 1, 2012 | 9:39 p.m. 
November 1, 2012 | 2:00 p.m.

My favorite part?
Where after NOT explaining why Spanish-surnamed voters in the near-future will politically be more like Puerto Ricans than Cubans or Mexicans or Central Americans, and thereby curtail Cubans' relative power and favored role in Florida and the U.S., at the beginning of the fifth pargraph. 
Just saying it doesn't make it so.

There, she lays this gem on the table:
"Regardless of the outcome, the Hispanic vote will be one of the most important markers of the parties’ futures...'"
Sounds like backsliding and equivocating to me.
  
It's not for nothing that I once justifiably titled a blog post here -on September 3rd, 2010-
Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/addition-by-subtraction-beth-reinhard.html

 What time zone is she in? And year?
More past posts that mentioned Reinhard are here:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search?q=reinhard

The only saving grace -and I do mean ONLY- is that Reinhard doesn't make the obligatory butt-kissing reference to some Univision TV personality flacking a book like Jorge Ramos, did in 2004, complete with grandiose and self-serving reference to the power of people with tildes in their last name, something that Reinhard surely would have seen fit to do if she were still at the Herald.

 What's that?
You say that you don't you recall the name of the Ramos book from 2004?
It was "The Latino Wave: How Hispanics Will Choose the Next President"
Hmm... not so much.

 But because he's one of their favorites, America's Mainstream Media just pretends that boast and the book behind it never existed, and it's like Ramos never got an at-bat and struck-out.

 At One Herald Plaza, right on Biscayne Bay, there still seem to be far too many people, even in the year 2012, who haven't caught on to the fact that their constant sycophantic need to make Hispanic media or Hispanic-oriented advertising executives -especially the ones in Miami whom the Herald wants to sell advertising space to or partner with, with all its attendant log-rolling- the ones quoted so extensively and so over-the-top in articles about Spanish-language media the past few years, sound like young Jones Salks, instead of car salesmen or Hi-Fi salesmen of the mid-1970's that they are, reeks of desperation.
Would you like that new stereo with "Quad" sound, sir?

The people they've quoted so promiscuously were nothing more than salesmen trying to sell something -a product or service.
That's fine, but there's nothing lofty or high-minded about selling toilet paper and air freshener and cookie and beer, so stop acting like there is.
It's sales!
That's all it is.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, February 26, 2011

The show is Jeopardy! and the question is: "Can I have 'Midterms' for $2,000"


"Can I have 'Midterms' for $2,000"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvhOI7Z9oKU

Above, a video showing a side of American pop culture that you'd think the South Florida news media would've already shown over-and-over by now.

In any case, seeing it puts me in the mood to recall a thing or two I once wrote in 2009 about Marco Rubio, back when the South Florida news media had all but conceded the 2010 GOP U.S. Senate nomination to Charlie Crist.

But some of us could see that what was so appealing about him to us would also prove just as appealing with Florida voters, confounding the "experts" who discounted his talk about taking the Constitution seriously.

The excerpt below is from a June 22nd, 2009 email to a Hallandale Beach friend who'd first told me weeks before about the underdog Rubio's appearance that June night in Hallandale Beach, which took place before an overflow audience at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center.

All of my photos below are from June 22, 2009, Hallandale Beach.



That's Anthony Man of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel at the table.

-----

As I said earlier, if I don't get that info from you tonight, I'll write the basics about his appearance at the HB Cultural Center Tuesday night, and try to post it before I go to sleep tonight.

I may(?) also post the clueless Beth Reinhard column from Saturday's Herald that was one of the worst of the many bad columns she's penned since I returned to South Florida:
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/columnists/story/1105950.html
She's truly awful and bereft of either insight or originality.

But by embracing DeMint, Rubio risks moving too far to the right. DeMint advocates sending illegal immigrants back to their home countries and making English the official language of the United States, which could mean that Rubio's Spanish-speaking constituents would not be able to get ballots and other government documents in their first language.


I'm going to be picking that column apart soon on my blog, as it is full not only of intellectual laziness, but factual errors, not the least of which is the comments about the language of the ballots, since the DOJ has oversight over certain states because of the federal Voting Rights Act, and that includes Florida.
You know, where we live?

Plus, because South Florida's county officials have decided that it's good public policy that ballots also appear in Spanish (and Creole), and that is supported by the majority of the local populace, Reinhard's argument is a straw man.

A good reporter would already know that.
That Beth Reinhard doesn't, or acts like she doesn't, gives you some true sense of her profound political ignorance.
Not that this is exactly Breaking News to me.

See also the New York Times:
Justices Let Stand a Central Provision of Voting Rights Act
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/us/23scotus.html

Frankly, I almost always groan after reading something Reinhard's written.

In fact, it was after reading some nonsense she'd written about Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, while I was having breakfast with my father at Denny's, that I decided I needed to finally listen to my friends back in D.C., who'd been urging me for years to start a blog when I was still living there.

Right, when all my media and political connections were close-at-hand and would've proved very useful to me in sharing some very interesting stories, anecdotes and insight that I was either eyewitness to or privy to, that had heretofore remained the domain of party chatter among very close friends with a curiosity matching mine.

10:35 p.m.
Just got your new email with attendee info. Thanks!

Confirmed Speakers: RNC Secretary Sharon Day, Broward GOP Chairman Chip LaMarca, Marco Rubio Candidate for US Senate, Lt. Col. Allen West Candidate for US Congress, Joyce Kaufman 850 AM Radio Host, and a special video presentation from Michael Steele. Performing our National Anthem, National Vocalist Lou Galterio.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Monday, November 1, 2010

Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL



I've been sitting on this for months just waiting for Election Day to get here.

Below is an excerpt of an email that I wrote back on January 23rd, 2010 and sent out to a few dozen people following the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Massachusetts Senate seat held for 47 years by Ted Kennedy.
(And when was the last time you saw the media talk about him? It's like he died. Or, alternatively, booked a flight on Oceanic Flight 815.)

Most of you know who come here regularly know where I stand on the subject of Dan Gelber, as well as his his pack of supporters, which includes some of the most anti-democratic and unethical pols in Broward County.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Dan+Gelber%22

He's far too ambitious for his own good and doesn't have a record of being honest with voters.

He will lose the FL AG race to Pam Bondi, whom I will be voting for, as I think she'll set many media hearts aflutter as she tries to improve on Bill McCollum's decent track record and fight Obamacare.

Pam Bondi - "About Me"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5LbUFAJn6o

Organized Crime at It's Worst



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vds3WkKOrAw

Obviously, this was written before we all got the good news that Beth Reinhard would be leaving the Herald and heading to Washington and The National Journal.

My worst fear is that her column will be replaced by -dare I say it- Patricia Mazzei.
I will be devoting an entire post on Mazzei soon that zeroes in on some particularly irksome articles of her's that all shared the same weakness, regardless of subject matter.
Once you notice it, trust me, it's hard to ignore when you see her articles.
You'll find yourself actively looking for it.

Sort of like the way that once I knew that Campbell Brown had a certain facial tic when she was on-air, reporting the news, it was hard not to watch her and just wait for it.

-----

Just a note to let you know that per some of my hints of late, I already had a ton of things I'd already written that were going to be posted on my blog tomorrow. Subjects include: ...the Dan Gelber vs. Dave Aronberg race for AG, and Scott Brown's remarkable triumph, plus a couple of anti-Beth Reinhard pieces, exposing her infamous shallowness when it reached new jaw-dropping lows lately.
(Seriously, five sentences about the race to replace Meek?)

But then I read this article below this morning, after which I'm apoplectic, and now, I may have to re-schedule some things just to keep my head from exploding. How does the chief political reporter for the largest paper in the state NOT mention in a story ostensibly about insiders vs. outsiders, that Gelber's father was/is a longtime judge, someone who knew everyone who was ANYONE in Miami-Dade even BEFORE he was a judge?

I even knew who his father was when I was a kid in the 1970's -it's beyond incredulous! http://www.miamidade.gov/ethics/members.asp

Of course, rather than do like Gelber did, and work for his dad, the judge, one summer... or, as the Boston Globe put it:
At the end of his junior year at Tufts University, Scott P. Brown did not take a typical summer job like many of his classmates. Instead, he spent two months in Army basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., after joining the Massachusetts National Guard.
I've now read ALL the Boston Globe stories on Brown for the past few weeks and am even more impressed with him than before.

I will be sharing some of what I learned about him in some of those posts, though they may be after Sunday now just because I'm so tired of writing. By the way, here from Thursday is the best thing written on Scott Brown thus far, featuring some great investigatory sleuthing by the New York Times to connect-the-dots:

G.O.P. Used Energy and Stealth to Win Seat
January 20, 2010

This article is by Adam Nagourney, Jeff Zeleny, Kate Zernike and Michael Cooper.

BOSTON — The e-mail message from a Massachusetts supporter to one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement arrived in early December. The state was holding a special election to fill the seat held by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, it said, and conditions were ripe for a conservative ambush: an Election Day in the dead of winter with the turnout certain to be low.

“To be honest, we kind of looked at it and said, this is a long shot,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of state campaigns for FreedomWorks, which has become an umbrella for Tea Party groups. But the group was impressed by the determination of organizers in this decidedly Democratic state and was intrigued by the notion that this could be a way to effectively derail federal health care legislation.

Read the rest of the article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/us/politics/21reconstruct.html

This is the single best-written article I've read on any subject the entire year.

In the hard copy of this, they even have a chart showing the number of events Brown and Martha Coakley attended the past few weeks, and as you may already know by now, he outworked her 3:1.
Truth be told, some of those Globe stories appear brilliant in retrospect.

-------
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/beth-reinhard/story/1440999.html

Florida's top candidates for U.S. Senate hardly political outsiders

By Beth Reinhard

January 23, 2010

Out of the cascade of commentary about Tuesday's upset by a Republican in Democrat-rich Massachusetts came this gem from state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach, who used to shoot hoops with the U.S. senator-elect in college:

"To the legions of Republicans in Florida who are claiming the 'I'm Scott Brown mantle,' let me say this: 'I know Scott Brown, Scott Brown was a friend of mine . . . you're no Scott Brown.' ''

The riff on the famous slap at Republican Dan Quayle after he compared himself to Jack Kennedy during the 1988 vice presidential debate was spot on. The leading candidates for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat -- Gov. Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek -- are all career politicians who commit sins of omission when they distance themselves from the establishment.

QUITE A LEAP

The governor is the biggest insider of them all. Crist compared Brown's avowed commitment to "the people's seat'' in Massachusetts to his own claim to be the "people's governor'' of Florida. It's quite a leap for the sitting governor of the nation's fourth largest state, a vice presidential shortlister, and the once-presumed Republican nominee to claim kinship with a truck-driving state senator who faced a double-digit deficit in the polls. (Do they even let pickups onto Fisher Island, where Crist's wife owns a $3.2 million manse?)

Crist's scorn for "the radical Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda'' when he congratulated Brown also rang hollow since the economic stimulus package he supported sits at the very top of that agenda. Crist pointed out that he had spoken to Brown after his victory, as if sound waves made them soul mates.

While Rubio is certainly the underdog in the GOP race, the former speaker of the Florida House and a six-figures-earning lawyer is no political outsider either. In the last 11 years, Rubio was out of public office for only the last one -- a part of his resume he frequently skips over in his stump speech. Can he honestly lay the blame for the recession at the feet of Crist and President Barack Obama and claim to have had nothing to do with it?

Rubio has to stretch pretty far to the left to put his arm around Brown, who backs abortion rights and the state health insurance program in Massachusetts. Rubio touted his participation Friday in the "Virtual March for Life'' on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Earlier this week, he backed Attorney General Bill McCollum's claim that the pending healthcare legislation is unconstitutional because it requires people to buy insurance. Like in Massachusetts.

PART OF THE MAJORITY

As for Meek, he does have one thing in common with Brown: Political analysts expect him to lose the general election. But while Brown was competing against the Kennedy dynasty in Massachusetts, Meek practically inherited his seat in Congress from his mother, Carrie Meek. She staved off potential rivals by waiting until the last minute to rule out another term.

That part of his bio didn't come up when campaign manager Abe Dyk said: "Having worked as a skycap for tips, as a Florida State trooper and having led the Coalition to Reduce Class Size, Kendrick Meek is the candidate best positioned to deliver that change as a U.S. senator.''

Ahem. Meek is part of the Democratic majority who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. He has roots in Liberty City but has long roamed the halls of Washington and Tallahassee. The closest he ever got to a nude Cosmo centerfold like Brown? A mention in a celebrity blog called "Young Black & Fabulous.''

Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald.

-----

http://www.pambondi.com/home/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Friday, September 3, 2010

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!

Per Miami Herald Losing Chief Political Reporter Beth Reinhard To National Journal
Miami NewTimes By Tim Elfrink,
Thursday, September 2 2010 @ 1:39PM
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/09/herald_losing_chief_political.php

It's only my opinion, but from my own perspective and experience, the Miami Herald's Beth Reinhard can't leave South Florida soon enough.

I know that makes some of you laugh because you know I thought THAT was the case years ago, too. Know that I'd have been only too happy to drive her to the train station to split town if people down here actually took trains.
You're right -it's a long time coming.

But long-frustrated Miami Herald readers finally have a reason to cheer.

Reinhard's oh-so predictable and often deadly-dull Conventional Wisdom take on the passing political scene may've been fine for the Quad Cities in 1966, but among other fatal flaws, she seem handcuffed to the "Usual Suspects," forever quoting the same handful of people with motives she never bothered to reveal.

(And yes, I've been to the Quad Cities area in Iowa, too, spending a week there in Davenport, driving over from Chicago for business in 1987. One night, when I couldn't fall asleep in my hotel room, I went for a walk around midnight, eventually crossing the Rock Island Centennial Bridge (U.S.-67) over the Mississippi River from Davenport to Rock Island.

I was NOT expecting that the bridge sidewalk would be mesh-like metal, since that meant I couldn't look down, otherwise it would have caused me to get dizzy over the water.
It was a VERY weird sensation to walk across the bridge at that hour and just stand there in the middle for 15-20 minutes and think of all the history that has gone past you and below you.

I eventually ate at an IHOP or diner in Rock Island and got back to my hotel room in Davenport around 3:30 a.m. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Centennial_Bridge

I also visited the great minor league ballpark there on the River, then called John O'Donnell Stadium when Quad Cities was a Cubs affiliate. It's now called Modern Woodmen Park and home of the Cardinals' farm team, the River Bandits.
Look at the photos! The Marlins would be lucky to have a view like the one over first base.
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/team1/page.jsp?ymd=20080606&content_id=410802&vkey=team1_t565&fext=.jsp&sid=t565)

It's no wonder that seasoned political reporters and columnists from outside of Florida, including some I know, were always mystified when they came down here and got a chance to read more than one example of the Reinhard Method, or to hear her talk on TV or radio.

It's not like they expected a patrician David Broder clone or an intellectual David Frum-type would be the leading political reporter at the Herald, since this is Miami, after all, the anti-wonk capital, but they were in no way prepared to see that things were just -as bad- as I had described in phone calls or emails about how little respect or column inches Broward County rated.
They thought I'd always been exaggerating.
Nope.

Earlier this year, after one such reporter friend had visited South Florida and had absorbed some sun and digested some bon mots de Reinhard, and returned home, she emailed me that she's sure that Reinhard probably has some special talent that we're just not privy to.

I replied that could be true but that her writing speaks for itself -mediocre and uninspiring.

Try hard to think of a column or article of her's that questioned the South Florida version of CW, or tried to get to the heart of a matter thru an unconventional approach.
Or even the last time you cut one of her article/columns out of the paper?

You can't, and like 99% of all Herald readers, once you saw the headline of one of her stories, and even more so, of one of her columns, you knew exactly what to expect.

The whole thing was telegraphed because you know she has such a small bag of tricks in her arsenal.
Plus, she never ever surprises you.

Thus, Reinhard never ever veered from her connect-the-dots script, including her failed attempts to seem like a self-effacing Tina Fey at times when it wasn't called for and only served to distract.

Reinhard was too easily pacified and seduced by CW and too often seemed pleased with herself for peddling the mundane.
She was like a slightly less-mean-spirited Tracy Flick, but failed to see the truly compelling stories all around us down here because then she'd have had to leave her comfort zone.
She didn't want to.
That so many people wouldn't return her phone calls, as she recently wrote about Marco Rubio, whom I like and will vote for but who clearly is not without his flaws, may, in fact, not be a result of their not liking what she wrote and actually be something simpler: people feeling that far too often, Reinhard had burned them.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/13/1775520/reinhard-rich-political-novices.html

That she called with the article already written in her head, and wasn't open to actually listening to their side or perspective and perhaps re-questioning her original aim with a story.
Facts should matter at least once in a while, shouldn't they?
Seriously, why would you call someone back, much less a reporter, if they won't listen to what you say, and just want to steamroll you about some topic, regardless of what it is?
You doubtless do it all the time with friends and relatives -I know I do.
Why should others be any different?

Reinhard's worst sins in my book was her low-hanging fruit sense of journalism and consistent lack of curiosity, as she failed over-and-over to give readers the sort of insight into some pol or official's motives and outlook that would be helpful to readers in understanding them, and what was going on policy-wise in anti-wonk South Florida.

It was sometimes like she was the daughter of the Beacon Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the Knight Foundation, and only wanted to please already-powerful people.
She'd tut-tut them, perhaps, but always like a loving daughter reproaching her father for something he's wearing that embarrasses her.

I didn't need every article of her's to be like a fascinating Vanity Fair profile from the early-to-mid 1990's under Clinton, but one every few YEARS might've been nice!

(Or maybe I was just spoiled by 15 years of daily reading the WaPo's Style section from 1988-2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/print/style/)
Seriously, after all this time, do Herald readers now have any added insight from her into why Meek, Crist or Rubio are the way they are and do what they do?

No, which is why out-of-town/national reporters so consistently seem to get to the heart of a local matter, general sense of mood or pierce a local/state political personality's facade when they drop in, yet she's always... what exactly?

(Compare anything of hers to Tim Padgett's fabulous TIME article exactly one year ago on the State of Florida, Behind Florida's Exodus: Rising Taxes, Political Ineptitude

There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them. One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html Though Hoosier-born Tim lives in Miami as Bureau Chief, it's the same principle.)

Rubio and Meek are both from South Florida, but despite all this proximity, Reinhard has added zero to the mix in our understanding of them or what they might do.

As I've written numerous on my blog about the media coverage of the FL-17 congressional race,
her writing about it was perhaps the best example of her lack of curiosity and imagination: dreadful writing of the sort that you'd expect from a mediocre Junior College newspaper you pick up out of boredom while waiting around for your pick-up order at a Kinko's.

The one congressional seat in South Florida that we knew last year would result in sending a 'new face' to Washington would seem like a great opportunity to re-examine some longstanding ideas about this area, and the CD that stretches from Liberty City to Hollywood, including where I live in Hallandale Beach, not far from Gulfstream Park Race Track.

Instead, there was hardly any reasonable coverage of it to speak of until a week before the election, and by then, it was written not by Reinhard but Patricia Mazzei, who's what, five years out of college?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/17/1778997/9-seek-rare-house-seat-replacing.html

Why is the least-experienced reporter writing about THE most important local congressional race in greater Miami?

That's why it's the Herald.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)