Opinion

I made a point of tuning into C-SPAN on the last night of the Democratic National Convention.  It wasn’t because I was looking forward to a political speech from Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria.  Although in retrospect, Ms. Longoria’s speech was statesman-like in comparison to what went before her.

What I saw shocked me.

I just spent about $5,000 at the two national political conventions.

No, I wasn’t out wining and dining with the heavy hitters, and despite how much my critics would love to finally be able to prove my biases, I wasn’t handing out political contributions to candidates either.

I spent the money to send Michigan Radio reporters to cover the Michigan delegation at each convention.

Last Tuesday was National Radio Day! How do I know? I saw it on Facebook, of course, which is where everyone who is younger than me seems to get all their news.

But not me. I’m still a radio guy. So I celebrated National Radio Day by working in the news room at Michigan Radio, where we also spend lots of time on Facebook.

One of the best things about blogging for Michigan Radio is the pleasure of introducing you to an idea or a person that network listeners and viewers of the website haven’t seen anywhere else in public radio.

When I introduced myself to Michigan Radio’s webpage readers, I suggested that at one level, NPR news is hard to criticize; what you hear in broadcasts is mostly beyond reproach.

But sometimes a larger story awaits, in what you don’t hear on the air or see on the websites. A case in point:  Economists for Romney. 

Economists for Romney is a group of 500 national economists, who support for Mitt Romney’s economic plan, signing a public letter to the nation that begins, “We enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney’s economic plan to create jobs and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of economic freedom. The plan is based on proven principles: a more contained and less intrusive federal government, a greater reliance on the private sector, a broad expansion of opportunity without government favors for special interests, and respect for the rule of law including the decision-making authority of states and localities.”

When I voted on Tuesday, there were several things I needed to know. 

The toughest thing was figuring out who to vote for among all of the candidates for several obscure township boards and lower-level county offices.  These people do important things, but their work is almost entirely below the radar-level of most media.  Their names, and even the offices they hold, are relatively unknown.  It is sometimes hard to even know, without help from the ballot, whether I’m voting for just one candidate, or “two of five” names, or even all four of just four names on the ballot.

The Boy Scouts of America recently reaffirmed their ban on allowing openly gay boys to participate in Boy Scouts, and openly gay or lesbian adults from being leaders.

(Full disclosure – I was a Boy Scout for many years during my teens, but that was decades before anyone was debating this issue.)

We live in an odd world where what side of the “homosexual agenda” you are on can now be demonstrated not only by your participation in scouts, but also where you buy your chicken sandwich.

If I asked the well-informed Michigan Radio listeners to name the mayors of Ann Arbor, Birmingham, Flint and Grand Rapids, and those cities' most critical electoral issues, I expect that very few could do it.

But naming the mayor of Troy, and her most pressing issue, is something most of us can easily do. That is because Troy mayor Janice Daniels is facing a recall election.  And not just any recall; the reason Daniels faces a recall is that last summer, she posted this comment to her own Facebook page:

“I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.”

Last week, a bomb threat called in from Canada shut down the tunnel that runs under the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor. The tunnel is the second busiest crossing between the United States and Canada. The busiest crossing is the Ambassador Bridge just more than a mile down river. The tunnel was closed to traffic for most of the afternoon while authorities from both countries inspected the tunnel and found no bomb.

The four most famous words that Mitt Romney never wrote are, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

You read that right.  Mitt Romney never wrote those words.  They were the headline of a New York Times op-ed column that was authored by Romney and published in the newspaper on November 18, 2008.

I doubt that most people could accurately recite so much as a sentence of the op-ed that Governor Romney actually wrote in that column.  All that anybody remembers is the headline, which I have discovered was written by a New York Times editor, not Governor Romney.