BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Monday, December 08, 2003
So what do we do about
Nomar? The whole notion of trading Manny Ramirez for Alex
Rodriguez is predicated on the belief that Nomar Garciaparra doesn't
want to play in Boston. Presumably, even the Red Sox can't afford to
pay both Rodriguez, a shortstop and the best player in baseball, and
Garciaparra, a shortstop and one of the best players in
baseball.
Now Nomar has broken his silence,
making it clear that he wants to stay here and that he's upset the
Sox have been talking with the Rodriguez camp behind his
back.
The Herald's
Tony
Massarotti has Nomar on the
record. The Globe's Shira
Springer has Garciaparra's
agent, Arn Tellem.
This is quite a dilemma, isn't it?
It's unimaginable that the Red Sox would end their pursuit of
Rodriguez just to keep Garciaparra happy. The sad thing is that this
may be more about management's understandable urge to dump Ramirez
than anything to do with Nomar.
Would it be possible to trade
Ramirez for Rodriguez, get Nomar to sign in the $11 million-to-$12
million range, and move him to third? Who knows? And even if
Garciaparra were willing to settle for less money in order to stay
here, the Sox would still be paying more than $30 million for two
players -- nearly $50 million for three if you throw in Pedro
Martínez's $17.5 million.
On the other hand, if the Rodriguez
trade doesn't happen, then Manny stays here -- and his salary next
year will be almost as high as Rodriguez's. And, of course, Nomar
will stay, too.
So maybe there is a way to get
Rodriguez, dump Ramirez, and keep Nomar.
Wouldn't that be
something?
Fat free. Daniel Akst has a
good piece
in the Boston Globe Magazine on the obesity wars.
The ostensible subject -- legal
responsibility and whether lawyers might successfully sue McDonald's,
KFC, et al. -- isn't all that interesting. But the background
information on the changing thinking regarding carbohydrates (once
good, now bad) and fat (once bad, now less bad) is
excellent.
And though I'm unsympathetic to the
idea of some enterprising Clarence Darrow bringing down the fast-food
industry, we nevertheless find ourselves in an unusual societal
dilemma.
People are eating more fast food
than ever before because they don't have time to cook. And fast food
is almost uniformly unhealthy. As Akst notes, drive down a suburban
strip, or walk around the food court at your local mall. Is there
anywhere you can go where you can eat a reasonably healthy
meal?
Subway's sales have rocketed since
it began stressing healthy alternatives to grease and fries. Maybe
some of the other chains will take notice.
More on Okrent's
introduction. A couple of Media Log readers took issue with my
observation that New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent
should have gotten down to business yesterday rather than introducing
himself to readers.
Marjorie Arons-Barron, president of
Barron Associates Worldwide and former editorialist for WCVB-TV
(Channel 5), writes:
Part of the problem with
the public's attitude toward newspapers, and especially toward
newspaper editorialists, is their anonymity. Many wonder "who the
heck is he/she to tell me what to think?" As a broadcast
editorialist, I was a real person for the Greater Boston area for
two decades. People stopped me in the supermarket or at the gas
station to sound off and dispute something I had said. And still
there were those who undoubtedly thought "who the heck is she ...
etc."
Those who don't know Dan Okrent
might legitimately ask the same question. And, while you might say
that writers like Jurkowitz can explain who he is, a column such
as today's is a good opportunity for Okrent to benchmark his
principles and give us standards against which to measure
him. Wouldn't it be nice if the Globe or Herald
editorial board occasionally did that?
Score one for transparency. But I'd
still rather not have to wait until December 21 to find out what
Okrent thinks of his new colleagues' work.
posted at 10:08 AM |
comment or permalink
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
