Notice the mismatched socks?
What's so interesting?
Protesters finish protest leave area.
Columnists who imitate Herb Caen's style of three dot journalism wouldn't be fazed in the least by one week that produced an opportunity to include the particulars of the Profumo Scandal, a chance to stand in the batter's box at AT&T Park, a curious fashion note for political protesters, and the possibility of informing readers in the USA that Australia now has a TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party before the New York Times runs that bit of information.
Getting a photo that shows the view down the third base lane
from home plate in AT&T Park in San
Francisco CA was not
what the World's Laziest Journalist expected to accomplish on Saturday November
9, 2012. We had learned that the Red
Bull Flugtag glider competition was going to be held at McCovey Cove (AKA China
Basin) and we thought a photo of a failed attempt to glide away from the launch
point would be an eye-catching stock image to have available when it comes time
to write about the struggle between the President and the Republican controlled
Congress over the "fiscal cliff" showdown.
AT&T Park, which is the home for the Giants baseball team which currently holds the "World Champion" title, is adjacent to where the Flugtag competition was scheduled to be held and the management for the baseball team, in a show of civic pride and hospitality, had agreed to open up the baseball stadium to make a greater number of observation points available to the public. They also were showing the event on the giant (pun?) screen in the bleacher section beyond center field.
The World's Laziest Journalist arrived at AT&T Park
about 11 a.m. knowing that the event was not scheduled to begin until 1 p.m.,
so we wandered around taking feature shots.
Since the Park was open free to the public, we went in and immediately
noticed that the public was being permitted to stroll out onto the playing
field. We thought that a photo take
showing the viewpoint of a batter standing at home plate would be good for use
on our photoblog, if nothing else.
We did not know that one of San Francisco's famous cable cars was on display inside the stadium so when we saw it we took some feature shots of it immediately. Folks who have attended a baseball game at that venue would know about it, but people living outside the Bay Area, who are not baseball fans, might find it amusing to see one of the cable cars in an incongruous setting. So we snapped several frames of that visual oddity.
Baseball fans who were informed ahead of time about the
opportunity, were taking a large number of snapshots of themselves on the
playing field, and in the dugouts.
Images take from far away and which are then tightly cropped have a sever quality challenge that makes the photos take from the media vantage points seem all the better in comparison. One such image was on the front page of the next day's San Francisco Chronicle's, which just happened to be the Sunday edition, which has the largest circulation numbers for each week.
We figured that an attitude of reverse snobbism could be
implemented for a column that describes the flugtag photo expedition and with a
bit of chutzpah we could pull it off and let it go at that because we "had
other fish to fry."
If Karl Rove (or whomever) fully intends for the Republican controlled Congress to drive the USA off the fiscal cliff, which would be a better choice: A Republican in the White House or a Democrat whom many conservatives already despise? Wouldn't having a Democrat to blame it on be better than having a Republican in office struggling for reelection in 2016? Maybe another column questioning the validity of the results obtained from the electronic voting machines would be a good column topic choice.
If a foreign country had hacked into the CIA files and
exposed the director's indiscretions, Americans would be livid but if the FBI
causes the ruckus does that make it OK? Something fishy is going on and American media
is directing their audience's attention to the hanky panky aspect of the story
and ignoring the nagging questions about how and why this scandal came to
light. Knowing that "ya gotta go along
to get along," we will also skip over those questions as being inappropriate
for use as a column topics.
Were Mandy Rice Davis and Christine Keeler better looking than the women involved in the latest scandal?
Speaking of British scandals, didn't one of their most famous
media moguls use a crack hack team to get dirt on politicians and then use that
knowledge to manipulate them?
Could there be a stealth manipulation angle to the Petraeus scandal that the American media is overlooking?
We came across the information that a TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party is in the formative stages in Australia. Will they form a welcoming committee to greet the disgruntled American conservatives who threatened to move to Australia if President Obama got reelected? We sincerely hope the assignment desk at the New York Times reads this column.
The conservative who are griping about being taxed too much
can sympathize with some of the protesters seen at San Francisco City Hall
at noon on Wednesday of this week. The
folks who want tax breaks so that they can increase the country's employment
level would probably make a reference to Lady Godiva's famous tax protest and
make the assertion that times are so tough now that protesters apparently can't
afford clothes.
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