Bode Miller, Christin Cooper, and NBC’s Olympic Coverage Suckitude

While the last part of this title could launch a whole series of articles, my target today is last night’s Christin Cooper interview of American skier Bode Miller after the Super-G event which was his final chance to get a medal. Miller’s rather interesting story includes significant competitive achievements. It also includes a recent personal loss, the death of his younger brother.

Throughout their coverage so far, NBC has presented personal information about Olympic athletes as a way to elicit greater interest among viewers (and, by extension, enhance the television ratings). After all competitors had finished yesterday’s race, Miller was left tied for third place, thus becoming the oldest alpine skier ever to win an Olympic medal.

Cooper approached Miller and initiated the following on-camera exchange:

NBC [Christin Cooper]: For a guy who says that medals don’t really matter, that they aren’t the thing, you’ve amassed quite a collection. What does this one mean to you in terms of all the others.

Miller: This was a little different. You know with my brother passing away, I really wanted to come back here and race the way he sensed it. This one is different.

NBC: Bode, you’re showing so much emotion down here, what’s going through your mind?

Miller: [pause] Um, I mean, a lot. Obviously just a long struggle coming in here. And … it’s just a tough year.

NBC: I know you wanted to be here with Chilly, really experiencing these games. How much does this mean to you to come up with this great performance for him? And was it for him?

Miller: I mean, I don’t know if it’s really for him but I wanted to come here and … I don’t know, I guess make myself proud, but…

NBC: When you’re looking up in the sky at the start, we see you there and it just looks like you’re talking to somebody. What’s going on there?

Miller: [breaks down crying]

Awful, right? But it gets worse. Because of the time difference between the U.S. and western Russia, the NBC production team had 20 hours to either edit the interview before televising it or decide not to use it at all. They did neither.

The viewing audience was horrified, as indicated by comments on Twitter.

Then, to add stupidity to both insult and injury, the networked doubled down. According to the New York Times, an NBC spokesperson issued a statement in defense of the interview itself and the decision to air it later.

“Our intent was to convey the emotion that Bode Miller was feeling after winning his bronze medal,” a spokesman for the network said. “We understand how some viewers thought the line of questioning went too far, but it was our judgment that his answers were a necessary part of the story. We’re gratified that Bode has been publicly supportive of Christin Cooper and the overall interview.”

How nice that Miller, who apparently has been friends with Cooper for years, is willing to forgive. That doesn’t mean that it was the right thing for NBC to do.

How and why did this sordid episode suck? Let me count the ways.

1. Even if Miller’s grief over his brother’s death was “a necessary part of the story,” it was addressed very clearly by Miller in his response to Cooper’s first question. Hammering him about it afterward was redundant, unnecessary, and ultimately mean.
2. NBC is supposed to be presenting Olympic coverage, not a gossip rag. Giving some background on the athletes adds a human interest aspect to the coverage, but it shouldn’t be the focus over the results of the competition. NBC chose to make it the focus.
3. Cooper had obviously decided in advance that she would go for the most gut-wrenching display she could evoke. That she didn’t stop until he was sobbing is proof of her intent.
4. Once she got the tears she wanted and in full view of the camera, Cooper attempted to comfort Miller by laying her hand on his shoulder. If she were really concerned for his comfort, she wouldn’t have badgered him.
5. The decision, hours after the fact, to air the entire exchange shows how far American media have descended into the “reality TV” pit. Someone, or more likely several people, deliberately decided that the ratings were worth exposing someone in a vulnerable moment to a voyeuristic public that, thankfully, was horrified by it.
6. “How much does this mean to you?” (like its close cousin, “How special is this to you?”) isn’t an interview question. It’s a crutch used by reporters who are too incompetent to ask relevant questions about the event at issue and/or too lazy to come up with a real question. Just once, I want the interviewee to reply, “It’s not special to me at all, dumbass,” and then walk away. Extra points if it’s done on live television.

Over at today’s Wall Street Journal, Kwame Dawes has an “Ode to Bode Miller’s Tearful Interview with Christin Cooper” which I won’t excerpt only because you really should read the whole thing. All I’ll add is that it made me think of rocker Don Henley’s 1982 single “Dirty Laundry,” which is as accurate an indictment of major media today as it was then.

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde
Comes on at five
She can tell you ’bout the plane crash
With a gleam in her eye
It’s interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom
Got a running bet
Get the widow on the set
We need dirty laundry

Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em when they’re down
Kick ’em when they’re up
Kick ’em all around

Calendar Coincidences

If you read my previous post, you know that today is the 45th anniversary of my uncle’s death. It is also one of several days on which I ponder the many days on my family calendar that mark multiple events. Apropos of Uncle Nicky:

• The day he died was also his brother-in-law’s—my father’s—birthday.
• Janet, Uncle Nicky’s fiance, was born on my maternal grandmother’s birthday.

There are several other shared dates on my mother’s side of the family, including:

• Cousin Joe’s birth on my mother’s birthday.
• Cousin Linda’s birth on cousin Rob’s birthday.
• Cousin Tricia’s birth on cousin Laura’s birthday.
• My son’s birth on cousin Sally’s birthday.

And that isn’t even including the near-misses, like Uncle Nicky’s birth the day after my mother’s birthday and his namesake cousin Nicky’s birth the day after my brother’s birthday.

On Dad’s side, relatives tend to die on holidays. For example:

• My great-grandfather died on New Year’s Eve.
• My grandfather died on Independence Day.
• My great-aunt died on Thanksgiving.
• My great-grandmother died on St. Patrick’s Day.
• My brother died on the second anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing (OK, not a holiday, but a significant historical date nonetheless).

So on Ma’s side, people tend to be born on other relatives’ birthdays, and on Dad’s side, people tend to die on holidays. But one person mixed it up a little:

• My paternal grandmother was born on Halloween and died on my sister-in-law’s birthday.

Finally, though this wasn’t by chance, my parents were married on my maternal grandmother and almost-aunt’s birthday.

With only 365 or 366 days in any given year, it isn’t unusual that most people would observe some such synchronism among those they know. But I’m not sure I’ve ever known another family with so much of it.

Every Parent’s Nightmare

I kept the following diary on my BlackBerry a week ago last Sunday. For reasons that should quickly become obvious to the reader, it took until now for me to decide to post it..

6:58am — The phone wakes me up. “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” the ringtone I assigned to my parents, who know I’m not an early riser. This isn’t good.

I’m groggy when I answer, and the laryngitis I have from a vicious week-long cold isn’t helping me sound better. It’s the Den Mother’s Father calling. As we exchange perfunctory greetings, he sounds fine. He always sounds fine, even now as he tells me that my son is at the hospital after cutting his wrists in a suicide attempt.

The Den Parents, Jet Setters

Status of United Air Lines flight 989 from San Francisco, California, to Kona/Kaulua, Hawaii, as of 16:00 EDT (click to view larger)

As I type this, the Den Mother’s Parents are jetting their way over the Pacific Ocean toward Hawaii to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The lucky dogs.

DMM and DMF flew out yesterday from Boston to San Francisco, where they stayed overnight because DMM doesn’t do well on very long trips. At 9:33 PDT this morning, they departed SFO for Kahului-Kona. They will spend four days on the island of Hawaii and eight days on Maui before coming home.

Their actual anniversary isn’t until a month from now, at which time they are planning a bash for family and friends. It had been my intention for many years to throw the 50th anniversary party for them, but two years ago the Den Brother suggested that we instead send them back to Hawaii, where they spent their 25th anniversary. I agreed, not forseeing that in the interim I would buy a house and end up cash poor. Fortunately, I got my annual bonus from my employer two weeks ago and was able to make some catch-up payments to the Hawaii account.

I’ve never been to our 50th state, but everyone I know who has says it’s amazing. On their first trip way back in 1987, DMM and DMF spent time on Oahu, Maui, and Kauai. Ever since, they have talked about going back to Maui some day. The Big Island was suggested by my brother and sister-in-law, as well as posthumously by my grandmother who, I reminded my parents, had gone there in the late 1970s and raved about it.

The state of Hawaii is comprised of a chain of several dozen islands, atolls, and islets. The largest and easternmost is the island of Hawaii, commonly referred to as the Big Island. Although the archipelago stretches more than 1,500 miles from end to end, Hawaii is the eighth smallest U.S. state in terms of total area and fourth smallest in land area. It is also significant in being the only state not part of North America; the Hawaiian Islands are technically part of Polynesia, which is geographically associated with Oceania.

The state has two official languages: English and Hawaiian. The latter was in danger of dying out as recently as a generation ago, but there has been an active effort to revive it. Toward that end, the University of Hawaii runs a College of Hawaiian Language.

Ethnically, the islands’ original inhabitants were Australasian. Latter-day immigration brought large numbers of Japanese. Today, a plurality of the state’s residents are of Asian descent—38.6%, well above the national average of 4.8%, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

Since I started writing this post, the Den Parents’ flight has progressed nicely. They are about an hour from landing. To kick off their 11 days in paradise, I wish them Hau’oli la Ho’omana’o, Me Ke Aloha.

Veterans Day Musings

I begin this post with the cartoon to the right (click the image to view larger). I love Maxine, and I love self-deprecating humor, and I love veterans, so it seemed appropriate. No disrespect is intended by the humor.

Today is Veterans Day, a federal holiday that traces its roots to the first anniversary of the armistice ending the fighting of the first World War. On November 11, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson spoke of “solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.” Congress passed a law in 1938 officially establishing Armistice Day and another in 1954 renaming it Veterans Day. A holiday for a similar purpose is observed in British Commonwealth countries and is known as Remembrance Day, the main difference being that Remembrance Day honors those who died in military service, whereas Veterans Day honors all military veterans, living and dead.

I always take this opportunity to think of members of my family who have served in the armed forces. The most recent are my cousins Jon and Tania, both active duty Army officers: Jon is a veteran of the Afghanistan War, Tania served in Bosnia. But there have been many others as well. One of my father’s cousins volunteered for two tours of combat duty in Vietnam. Two uncles, both now deceased, served during wartime, one in the Air Force at a nuclear missile installation in North Dakota during the Vietnam War and another in the Army in Europe during the Korean War (having lied about his age so he could enlist at age 17). Another uncle served during peacetime after Korea. My grand-uncle fought in World War II and returned shell-shocked, what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of my mother’s cousins was a Bataan Death March survivor. Going way back, my great-great-grandfather was a Civil War veteran, having been wounded while fighting on the Union side during the Battle of Port Hudson. Innumerable friends have served as well, some currently on active duty or in the reserves or National Guard. Now my son’s friends are serving, including one who is a Pentagon naval officer whose brother and sister are officers in the Air Force and Army, respectively.

I am not unique in feeling a personal connection to veterans known and unknown. My Facebook feed today is loaded with friends’ tributes to their military friends and loved ones, as well as gratitude to those who have served. One friend, a Canadian musician (who happens to have the same name I have), posted a message of thanks to all Canadian soldiers. Down the street from my office, the AHL’s Worcester Sharks hockey team is playing a matinée game with free admission for those with military ID. Yesterday, my employer held a veterans recognition event to honor our own employees who have served; it was well-received and promises to become an annual event.

Wherever you are today, please take a moment to remember people in your life who have given of themselves in military service. If they are still alive, visit or call them and thank them.

In conjunction with yesterday’s ceremony, we held a sock drive for the local homeless shelter run by Veterans Inc. Apparently, socks are the number one needed item in shelters, and when we approached Veterans Inc. to ask what we might be able to donate, that’s what they asked for. It makes sense, if you think about it—when people clean out their closets and drawers looking for used clothing to donate to charities, they come up with coats, pants, sweaters, etc. But we tend to wear our socks until they have to be thrown out. We ended up with several large cartons stuffed full with socks that will go to good use.

I served on the planning committee for the veterans recognition event, which means that in addition to attending, I also had lots of behind-the-scenes tasks to take care of. Among my assigned roles was to find the old patriotic decorations that everyone seemed to think still existed somewhere in the building, and determine what we could still use. With some help, I put my hands on a dozen tri-color banners that would have been perfect had they not been yellowed from years (decades?) of storage in less than ideal conditions. With the help of Woolite® and OxiClean® (that stuff really works, even if Billy Mays was a raving druggie lunatic), I managed to whip them into shape, press them, and provide them to our facilities staff Wednesday morning to be hung up later that day. After going over where and how they should be hung, my final word to facilities was, “Make sure the red hangs on the left. This isn’t Bastille Day.”

The remark elicited some chuckles, but it also got me thinking about the many other countries whose flags are the same colors as ours. When we Americans hear “red, white, and blue,” we automatically think of the Stars and Stripes. But those are the colors of several other nations too, including France (“bleu, blanc, et rouge”). Off the top of my head, I thought of the other Anglophone countries of the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand; the Caribbean nations of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico; and the mega-nation of Russia. It turns out they are just the beginning.

According to the World Flag Database, there are 29 national flags whose sole colors are red, white, and blue. That includes all shades of blue, from light blue (Luxembourg) to the darkest navy blue. There are other flags that are predominantly red, white, and blue, but if they have even the tiniest bit of another color (such as Croatia and Slovenia), they I don’t count them. (The gold fringe that sometimes adorns the edges of ceremonial flags doesn’t count, either.)

• Australia
• Cambodia
• Chile
• Cook Islands (New Zealand territory)
• Costa Rica
• Cuba
• Czech Republic
• Dominican Republic
• Faröe Islands (Danish territory)
• France
• French Southern & Antarctic Lands (French territory)
• Iceland
• Laos
• Liberia
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• North Korea
• Norway
• Panamá
• Puerto Rico
• Russia
• Samoa
• Slovakia
• Taiwan
• Thailand
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Wallis & Futuna (French territory)

It Seems Like Yesterday

Forty years ago today, my brother died. He was four months short of his sixth birthday; I had just turned seven. He had been diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia three years earlier. Today, ALL is one of the most curable forms of childhood cancer. Not so in 1971.

It isn’t supposed to be that way. Children aren’t supposed to die, but they do. They die of cancer or drown in flooded pits at construction sites or get hit by cars walking home from school. Sometimes they are killed deliberately, by strangers or even their parents. Life isn’t always fair or just.

My memories of my brother are few but vivid. I remember playing with him in our basement play room. I remember looking at him through the glass of our front door, which I couldn’t walk through because a kid at school had chicken pox and I had to stay with a neighbor until we were sure I hadn’t been infected. With an immune system decimated by chemotherapy, my brother would have died of chicken pox. I remember the funeral, where my father read a eulogy my mother had written. I remember playing in the front yard after the funeral and my friend from next door asked me if my brother had really died. I don’t think she believed it. It isn’t supposed to be that way.

What I don’t remember is throwing a book at him once, cutting his chin and sending him to the hospital because chemotherapy destroys platelets and he could have bled to death from a cut like that. Nor do I remember the details he apparently told me about his cancer treatment and how horrible it was. Some things are better forgotten.

Sometimes, I talk to him, not to the five-year-old boy he was then, but to the adult he would be, 45 years old now. I wonder what advice he’d give me or what advice he would ask of me. I think he would be amused that I named my son after him. Maybe he is.

Things would be much different if he had lived, though I can’t say how. Losing a brother and watching my parents endure the death of a son were formative experiences. Without them, I would be a very different person. It’s quite likely that I would never have met many of the people who have become very important to me.

It isn’t supposed to be that way. Or maybe it is. It may be unfair, but if there is some Grand Plan that we can’t begin to understand, maybe this is exactly how it was supposed to be. Maybe sadness and heartbreak and negotiating the forks in the road of life are what make us better people.

Someone in My Family Has Athletic Talent, Just Not Me

My mother’s side of the family is celebrating a great achievement this week: the first among us to get an athletic scholarship to college. New England Recruiting Report posted this story earlier in the week about my cousin, P.J. Santavenere, who will start his sophomore year this fall on a full basketball scholarship at Division I St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York.

P.J., who is the oldest child of one of my first cousins, isn’t the first in the family to be a pioneer of sorts; his grandfather (my uncle), a first generation Italian-American like my mother, was the first among his siblings to earn a Bachelor’s degree. In terms of athletics, the only other member of our family to excel in sports until recently was another of our cousins, who played high school football. But hot on P.J.’s heels is his younger brother, Steven, who is a pretty good high school basketball player in his own right and could very well find himself in Division I in a couple of years.

Looks like I’ll have to rethink my apathy toward college basketball…

Happy Birthday to the Den Son

How is it possible that my offspring is 27 years old today? In going through some old pictures recently, I found this one of him during our February 2001 mini-vacation in Toronto.

While the primary purpose of our trip was to visit the Hockey Hall of Fame, we took time to hit the famous CN Tower, where we enjoyed a high-altitude lunch at a bistro that used to be a nightclub. I’m pretty sure that the table where we sat was in almost exactly the same spot where I sat many years ago when the love of my life took me to that nightclub. Imagine that, being in the same spot with the two most important people in my life, but at different times 17 years apart.

A Totally Kick-Ass Housewarming Gift from the Den Son

How did I ever get by without a power drill? I got this over the weekend from my son, who promptly used it to fix my medicine cabinet door. Bonus! Then I used it to drive some screws in record time. I really could have used it last week when I was trying to screw a robe hook into the solid wood bathroom door.

I asked him why he bought a Kawasaki brand. He said it was because “they make great watercraft,” which I suppose is as good a reason as any.

The funny thing is that I was positively giddy over my very first power tool. They say that girls grow up and become their mothers, but it appears I have become my father.

Holiday Traditions from Generation to Generation

Hey, I just realized this is my 900th post since starting the Den Mother blog. Happy anniversary to me!

Photo from the Boston Globe

It hardly seems possible that Thanksgiving is only two days away and Christmas only 32 days away. 2010 has been a stressful year for the Den Mother, but as the saying goes, I ain’t seen nothing yet. Tonight, I officially began the most hectic—yet also most enjoyable—time of the year.

For Thanksgiving dinner, we will gather at the home of the Den Parents for eating, drinking, and general merriment. We will also have a guest, one of my friends who found herself facing Thanksgiving Day alone. I decided that since no one should spend Thanksgiving Day alone, and since our meal is generally big enough to serve a small third world country, it made sense for all concerned for her to dine with us.

Thanksgivings (and Christmases, and Easters) of my childhood were almost always spent at my grandparents’ homes in Connecticut. My mother’s parents and my father’s parents lived a mere half hour apart, so we made sure to hit them both. In retrospect, it was a hellish travel day, with us coming down from Massachusetts in holiday traffic and whatever inclement weather Mother Nature decided to dish out just to make things interesting. But it was all I knew and I was happy to see my extended family. Then one of my grandfathers died and my grandmother moved in with us a few years later, when I was a teenager. She had her own apartment on one end of the house and she loved to cook holiday dinners. Thus she presented us with the perfect excuse to stay home for Thanksgiving and travel the day after to visit the other side of the family. When Gram’s general condition began to deteriorate the last years of her life, my mother jumped in and assumed the Thanksgiving cooking responsibilities.

Now my mother is getting a bit older, not nearly old enough to be unable or unwilling to put on a big holiday feast, but I decided a few years ago that she deserved a break. Little by little each year, I have assumed more of the cooking. This might have been the year that I took it over for good, including roasting my first turkey, especially since she saw fit to schedule a surgical procedure for the day after Thanksgiving. Just so she wouldn’t have to go to Boston at the crack of dawn Friday morning exhausted from the previous day’s festivities, I told her I’d take care of everything. Alas, the Den Mother’s Mother is a stubborn woman who probably doesn’t quite trust me to do the turkey, stuffing, and giblet gravy properly. So I agreed that she can do those and I’ll do the rest: vegetables (a variety of tastes, textures, and colors), desserts (the requisite pumpkin pie, plus Dad’s favorite pecan, apple, and my award-winning pumpkin cheesecake), set-up (best china, sterling, stemware, and expertly folded linen napkins), clean-up (ugh, enough said), etc., although apparently she doesn’t trust me to make a decent pie crust either, because she went behind my back and ordered pies from a very shi-shi bakery in town. Oh, and the Den Sister-in-Law is providing shrimp cocktail and a batch of Ma’s traditional holiday punch for before dinner. And of course, Dad handles the wine, because that’s his thang.

My goal is to make this the last year my mother has to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. With a little luck, I’ll be moving shortly after Christmas and will be settled in my new home in more than enough time to host a fabulous Thanksgiving 2011. No doubt, much hilarity will ensue, especially if I go whole hog and attempt to also make my own pies. But at 40-something, I figure it’s time for me to take the baton and let my mother be a relaxed and pampered guest for a change.

This Thursday will be the closest thing I’ll get to a dress rehearsal. Wish me luck.