To the Sports Editor:

Harvey Araton was dead-on in his assessment that the N.B.A. has become a cultural divide between the hip-hop culture of the players and the boardroom culture of the fans ("Brawl Evokes Real Story of N.B.A. and Its Fans," Nov. 23). The product that the marketing maven David Stern has been shoving down the throats of Middle America is grossly out of touch with the behaviors and attitudes typically valued in adults and desired in children.

More and more Americans abhor any product that gives the appearance of attempting to stress or teach values that are the antithesis of the attitudes typically taught in classrooms and homes all over the nation. For a generation, the N.B.A. has surrounded itself with cultural elements of the hip-hop lifestyle.

Just because MTV, the N.B.A. and Fox want the road that Middle America has driven on for generations to veer off into a cultural abyss does not mean that people have to follow.

Stern, the network executives, the marketing directors and the commissioners of the other major sports - Paul Tagliabue, are you paying attention? - must realize this fact before this seemingly golden eight-lane highway they built turns out to be a deserted dirt road.

Geoffrey Boltz
Johnstown, Pa.

- posted by Don Porges @ 11/30/2004 01:59:00 PM |

His first heart attack occurred in 1978, when he was 37. He had a second in 1984, and after suffering his third heart attack, in 1988, Cheney had quadruple bypass surgery to clear clogged arteries.

On Nov. 22, 2000, Cheney suffered what doctors called a "very slight" heart attack and had an angioplasty to open a clogged artery.

Cheney was back in the hospital on March 5, 2001, after complaining of chest pains. Doctors performed another angioplasty to reopen the same artery.

After his fourth heart attack, Cheney quit smoking, began regular daily exercises for 30 minutes on a treadmill and said he began watching his diet. He takes medication to lower his cholesterol.

- posted by Don Porges @ 11/13/2004 02:42:00 PM |

Ed Ellers adds:
Many American series were formatted to have a short segment at the end - whose length was equal to the difference between the NAB prime-time and non-prime-time limits - that could, if necessary, be dropped (and may not even have been related to the plot of that episode). Sadly, most stations in my experience still cut out other bits and leave in the 'appendix' segment; I've even heard of the studios themselves, when releasing old filmed series on tape in domestic syndication, editing out bits of the plot while leaving in that almost-useless final segment!

- posted by Don Porges @ 11/10/2004 01:29:00 AM |

From RANDY ALFRED: E. Andrew Torgan didn't quite get it right [below] on the Red Sox and Massachusetts Democrats. The real story is the heretofore unknown "Curse of the Bobino." No Democratic presidential hopeful from New England has been elected since Bobby Kennedy was traded to New York in 1964!

- posted by Don Porges @ 11/09/2004 06:30:00 PM |

• We keep hearing that this was missed by the pundit/political class because it was all "under the radar". I wonder if the people this appealed to managed to escape the pollsters' nets for months, or what? They're certainly not the cell-phone-using urbanites we were hoping would turn up and surprise pollsters -- whose average 2% or so lead for Bush during the final month of campaign wasn't too far off. And while we're on that, what happened in both camps that made it sound like Bush was toast on Monday night? I can't believe there's any advantage to pretending you're about to lose, and reporting from the Bush plane was that they were not at all happy. Are we to think that Rove was flying under his own radar? Vote fraud charges don't answer the question, since, again, if true, it wasn't a secret from the fraudsters.

• Having said all that, if there is an under-the-radar effect, it's the kind of thing that will be hard for the Dems to match, because the Democratic electorate lives in places that are full of reporters. (In fact, the Democratic electorate is full of reporters. OK?) Where are we going to get the equivalent of a church-based "moral values" campaign that the other side won't notice?

- posted by Don Porges @ 11/04/2004 08:17:00 PM |