Tidbits for Monday

                                    Tidbits for Monday

Trying to avoid politics; we'll see how it goes.

       Once and (oh, if it were only true) for all - The words "prejudice" and "bias" are nouns. Period. One can show prejudice, or have prejudice, even be a racist arsehole because of it,   but you can't "be prejudice" or, for that matter "be bias" no matter how many times in various semi literate ravings you choose to misuse it in that context.

        There is a great value to be ascribed to the simple concept of "knowing when to quit."  I am not a slobbering  groveling fan of Barbra Streisand, as are some I could mention, but I will readily concede that she is more than a little adept at interpreting a melody, and within her range, is  just about as good as it gets.  Additionally, she still has that ability at 74, and has adjusted the keys downward accordingly. Why mention this? well, Timmy, because in August,  Babs  released a  new and pretty damned good album called "Encores." As the name implies, these are not new material, rather great Broadway songs. She has chosen to do these classics as duets with some rather interesting singers, some of whom we expect to be good in the genre,   such as Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, and Antonio Banderas, all with real; chops. Then there are some, less well  known as stage singers, who also perform admirably, among then Daisy Ridley, Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Jamie Foxx, Seth MacFarlane, and the divine Melissa McCarthy.

       Which brings me to track 3 - "Who Can I Turn To" from "The Roar of the Greasepaint...etc."  I don't know when Anthony Newly (dead for 17 years) recorded the track, but some genius decided it was worth dubbing into a "duet" for this album. At his best, Newly had a mere 1 1/2 vote vibrato, joining the late Ms. Garland in that club. By the time this was done, it seems like about 3 notes wide, especially in his lower registers - painful.  At least he has quit.

       Remember when base ball was called the national pastime?  I do. I am also appalled by the current price for decent seats in any major league ballpark, but today's newspaper gives us a new low (or high, depending upon interpretation).  Tickets for the first Cubs home game of the world series are selling in the >$6,000 range! Yeah, really.  This clearly puts the game out of the reach of most real fans. The only way such a price could be justified would be if  The Beatles magically reunited and played "Baby You're a Rich Man" and "Money" during  the seventh inning stretch.

  

      Karma is a bitch. One can only hope Roger Goodell finds that out this NFL season. The $35 million (yeah, really) dollar man seems to have odd priorities. He jumped through hoops, legal and political, to bench Tom Brady for four games for a non issue.  I know, don't start, I don't care and I'm not even a Pat's fan!

       Meanwhile, there have been a hoist of domestic violence incidents since "deflategate" and the offenders are still actively playing. I guess that if you don't get caught on camera it doesn't count?  Wait, it gets worse:  Every year, the NFL breaks out the pink shoes and pink gloves to raise awareness about breast cancer, and sells pink NFL memorabilia to allegedly "raise money" for the cause. However, here are the realities of the leagues "good works": For every $100 of pink NFL merchandise sold, $50 goes back to the retailer and $37.50 goes back to the manufacturer. Of the remaining $12.50, the NFL takes $1.25 and donates the rest to the American Cancer Society  a top-heavy pseudo charitable bureaucracy.  Out of the whopping  $11.25 that the NFL donates to the American Cancer Society, only $8.01 goes to cancer research. That gives it a 70% overall and a 60% financial (one star out of four) rating.  There must be a more deserving Cancer related  charity than that (Susan Komen, for the Cure, breast cancer specific, is a three star charity, for example!)

         As bad, and probably even worse, is the fact that the NFL makes $10 billion (nine zeros!) annually, and pays $0 (that's no zeros!) in taxes. If this doesn't offend you, it damned well should. When it comes to overpaid nonprofit executives, NFL commish Roger Goodell stands alone. His 2015 salary of $35 million is about 37  times bigger than the salary of United Way CEO Brian Gallagher, who was the 11th highest-paid American nonprofit executive in 2014.  As mystifying as it seems, while the NFL isn’t a charity that takes donations, it gets away with calling itself a nonprofit 501(c)(6) “trade association,” financed by 32 privately-owned, for-profit member teams ( except for the Green Bay Packers, which is a publicly-owned nonprofit with over 300,000 shareholders).

        Although the NFL operates solely for the profit of its member teams – which collectively bring in $10 billion a year – and got over $300 million in member dues last year, and pays its top executive a ludicrous salary, it gets the same exemption as churches and social justice organizations actually trying to do good in their communities. The NFL isn’t the only offender, as some  pro sports organizations are still "nonprofits" (an egregiously bullshit term)  like the National Hockey League, the Professional Golf Association, and the Association of Tennis Professionals. Meanwhile Major League Baseball gave up their tax-exempt status in 2007, and the National Basketball Association has never tried to classify itself as tax-exempt.  I've tried, and failed to figure out the structural differences between MLB & NBA and the NFL.  Imagine if the  media spent half as much time reporting on this scandal as they did on “Deflategate!”

        Finally, although I generally consider cheerleaders, as Lewis Grizzard once so eloquently opined, to be "the confetti of athletic competition," that doesn't alter the fact that generally NFL owners treat them like shit. Despite Cincinnati Bengals owner Mike Brown’s net worth of $924 million, Bengals cheerleaders were paid just $2.85 an hour for 300 hours of work they put in over the course of half a year. Slovakian minimum wage workers made 65 cents an hour more than Bengals Cheerleaders did last year. Likewise an Oakland Raiders' cheerleader, sued the owners for similar abuses. In the suit, the basis was that, even though the team she worked for was more than capable of paying her a fair wage, she was mandated to fund her own travel for games and required to buy her own cosmetics, which must be applied to a strict standard or she and her teammates face league fines. This is almost domestic financial violence.

        Hopefully, karma will manifest itself when Tom Brady wins another Superbowl ring while Roger Goodell continues to be just another grossly overpaid putz.