Nobody's So Smart Here

No doubt you'll be seeing something about a recent study showing people watching Fox News for their information are worse-informed than people with no exposure to any (well, at least electronic) news source. It's good for a quick snicker from some people and a bunch of steam from others. The deeper story is that nobody look particularly smart in this.

The study from Fairleigh Dickenson University asked eight current events questions -- four on domestic issues, four on international news -- to get a feel of how certain groups would likely answer them. And, yes, the people watching Fox News ranked the lowest in average number of correct answers, and those listening to National Public Radio came out on top.

Here's the problem: For either the international or domestic questions, no group hit a mark of 40% correct. Yeah, that's right; even the NPR group hit only three of eight. Overall, only 3% managed to get eight questions correct, and another 11% hit seven right.

Basically, no group  won out in pass/fail. There's not a lot of joy in declaring that you're the least stupid.

Wondering about those questions? Here they are, grouped by topic (they were in mixed order for the actual survey. Note that many of them are open-ended, and not multiple-choice ... meaning that you actually had to come up with your own answer and not guess.

INTERNATIONAL

1. To the best of your knowledge, have the opposition groups protesting in Egypt been successful in removing Hosni Mubarak?

2. How about the opposition groups in Syria? Have they been successful in removing Bashar al-Assad?

3. Some countries in Europe are deeply in debt, and have had to be bailed out by other countries. To the best of your knowledge, which country has had to spend the most money to bail out European countries?

4. There have been increasing talks about economic sanctions against Iran. What are these sanctions supposed to do?

DOMESTIC (depending on party affiliation, different #2 questions were asked). 

1. Which party has the most seats in the House of Representatives right now?

2a. In December, House Republicans agreed to a short-term extension of a payroll tax cut, but only if President Obama agreed to do what?

2b. It took a long time to get the final results of the Iowa caucuses for Republican candidates. In the end, who was declared the winner? 

3. How about the New Hampshire Primary? Which Republican won that race?

4. According to the figures, about what percentage of Americans are currently unemployed? 

If you want to see the study, go here. It's pretty stunning to see the question that 30% of those "leaning Republican" and 28% of those as independent (and 11% of Democrats) got absolutely wrong.

Dressed Up (and Someplace to Go)

ORLANDO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT -- If you want a smooth flight -- and the best chances of making your connection sand appointments all day -- take the earliest plane possible. Don't start thinking, that you'll miss all the crowds.

Because of its favored-city status among trade-show planners, Orlando remains one of my frequent destinations. I've made the march through its convention center halls at least 10 times in the last dozen years, and I'm sure I'm missing a few trips along the way.

I've become an expert at dealing with Orlando International Airport at 5 a.m. to catch early West Coast flights. It's a place where baggage check is best avoided, as the lines fill with cranky, tired children complaining about the end of their vacations to cranky, tired parents with wallets sucked dry by theme-park amenities. Or there's the foreign tourists attempting to bully clerks into accepting 100-lbs suitcases possibly containing several uncomplaining children.

There's no avoiding the long early-morning security line at Orlando, unless you use a retinal scanning service that's always sat without customers when I've been there. It's an average 15-minute process, which is a massive advancement from previous security iterations that took at least twice as long with lines stretching the length of the main terminal.

Snaking around the bollards and belts forming the line, you get to see the same people several times, which is no pre-breakfast great. Occasionally, though, there's a surprise, as you can be shocked by neatness.

I looked up in the line this morning to see a woman dressed to perfection in a blue worsted-wool suit. This was no fashionista, but instead a middle-aged lady at least 25 lbs over optimum body mass. The suit looked like she had it sewn before grabbing a cab to the airport; the outfit included a simple white blouse and a single-strand small-pearls choker. She looked fabulous and ready for business.

What' s sad, though, is how she stood out in the crowd. She showed simple, good taste with some smart clothes. For that, she wasn't unusual; she was an aberration.

I confess my membership in the Old School of Travel Fashion, where you put on something from the better side of the closet. There's a picture of me, circa 1972, in a snappy Robert Hall blue blazer and Peter Max clip-on tie as I waited to board a plane at Fresno International Airport. Yes, even when you stopped over in Fresno, you looked snappy.

You still find folks in their best, although it's usually some East Coast exec types in full grey-suit mode going from New York or Boston to Los Angeles on an early a.m. run, using the gained hours in-flight to bill a few more hours and get ready for an afternoon meeting. Occasionally, there'll be someone in first class in some fashionable attire, as part of the rare breeding always looking to keep up appearances.

Unfortunately, most of the crowd at airports resembles some kind of beach slumber party, with raggy T-shirts and fraying cutoffs for men, and a collection of frowsy sweatshirts and shorts for the women. For footwear, the main fashion seems to be flip-flops, or sneakers sans socks for the more-formal.

In a word: sloppy. Airport lounges are places where people look their worst in public, and usually add a lazy demeanor that treats flying as an onerous inconvenience. The journey from Points A to B can barely. E tolerated.

Granted, the corporate attitudes of some airlines doesn't help this, with a serial addiction to add-on fees and a skinflint approach that cuts out a 25-cent bag of pretzels on a three-hour flight. Air travel, despite being one of the continuing marvels of the modern world, is being cheapened daily in service to the level of buses.

That's why it's heartening to see, in the early morning hours at an airport, that someone still takes travel seriously. Maybe she didn't have a choice and went straight from the plane to business at that day's destination, but she still made the effort to look sharp for the journey.

I don't wear the dress shirt and tie anymore, but I always wear good chino or dress pants, along with comfy-but-sturdy shoes and a better-class golf shirt (with pocket for ticket and ticket stub, in case of deplaning). And, yes, a sport coat, for the notch up from casual Friday wear. In today's fashions, it's outright dressy.

And, for me, it's entirely appropriate. After all, I've someplace to go.

 

On Shaving

Maybe it's the beard -- something I've worn since the early Reagan administration -- but people seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that I shave every day. Not all my face, but easily half the territory of a clean-shaven man, every morning before showering.

That's what I thought just about all men did. Apparently not, as I'm finding out, and not because they want to go full caveman-style, either.

For years, I've been partial to a brand of two-bladed disposable razor that give a clean shave with minimum effort. I thought I'd take a look at some of the new systems, although the idea of five blades on a razor head hints of overkill. (I also remember a Saturday Night Live fake commercial from the 1970s getting a laugh for touting the concept.)

These aren't cheap, and charging $10 for the handle revealed that Gillette isn't making money just on the razor blades, either. A phrase on the packaging, thought, struck me odd; it detailed the blade life is different for each user, "especially if you choose to shave daily."

Choose to shave daily? As if this is the out-of-the ordinary behavior of defollicating neat freaks? Or that it's ... well, it's just not done anymore?

Shaving, to me, offered itself in my early teen years as an adult task, done before breakfast in a doubly vain attempt to appear handsome. As I progressed, I worked through a succession of Norelco electrics before hitting on Gillette's Trac II and, finally, its disposable prodigy.

Shaving is also an area where many sons take after their fathers; my dad, however, disdained an electric for a two-edge, single-blade safety razor, and later adopted the newfangled double-edge. I suppose I adopted the Trac II from his example, albeit years after I'd left home.

My father, however, approached shaving as more than a daily need. As a hardhat construction worker, he didn't go through the niceties of cleaning up before work; his bathing came after the shift. Every weekday evening, I remember him standing at the bathroom sink, his lathered face accessorized with a just-lit Camel cigarette in the middle.

He'd make long, clean strokes with the razor; then a pause, a rinse of the razor, a long draw of the Camel and a swig of the cold beer perched on the sink; then a repeat of all the actions until the lather, Camel and beer disappeared. He stood back and looked in the mirror, feeling not only clean of face but also refreshed.

My father is more than 20 years gone now, but I still share that same feeling each morning. The shaving foam, the blade heated by the hot-water rinse and the smooth wet skin signal a clean new day, with a final top-off after a shower with the tingle of a spicy after-shave gel. My face feels great and, yes, refreshed.

The dearth of after-shave products tells me that I'm in a dwindling minority, but I'm not going to stop and become one of these stubble-faced guys who think they're hot stuff with cheeks and chins covered with scratchy bristle. I'll continue the daily appointment, finishing every time with my moment of being clean, sleek and renewed.

And, I'll do it with the trusty supply of disposables. I don't need to pull a razor with a Venetian-blind collection of blades to get what I need in a shave.

 

 

The Perils of Tebow's Time

The National Football League holds less of my attention every year -- baseball's more my speed nowadays -- but you can't get through the sports lags anymore without running into Tim Tebow. And, with plenty of Facebook friends based in Denver, I've heard plenty about Tebow Time.

There's plenty about the genuflections of Tebowing, as well as the straight-arrow, God-praising personality that's earnest for some and aggravating for others. And, of course, the last-second heroics that create a ratings bonanza for broadcasters and moving the Denver Broncos into a series of national games of the week.

What I'm not seeing is the obvious. In offering loads of praise and whooping it up with every pull-it-out-of-the-hat win, everyone -- from the passionate fan to big-shot sportswriters -- steers clear of the fact that Tim Tebow's a lucky guy. A very lucky guy.

I admit I'm not much of a Broncos fan anymore. I still haven't forgiven Edgar Kaiser for firing Red Miller as head coach 30 years ago (and the team for not elevating Miller or the late broadcaster Bob Martin to the Broncos Ring of Fame). And, for someone whose first memorable season as a fan included the thrills provided by Marlin "The Magician" Briscoe, I've seen better Broncos teams through the years.

What strikes me about this season, however, is the massive amount of happenstance involving the Broncos and Tebow. Even as a garden-variety fan, it's not hard to see that team's benefitted from a Berghof-sized picture window of opportunity that's unlikely to occur again anytime soon.

First, there's the AFC West division: It's lousy. The Kansas City Chiefs, last year's champs (yes, really), flubbed the first half of this season, and both the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders wasted early season momentum. Even Denver's winning streak leaves it only one game above mediocrity (and only two ahead of last-place Kansas City).

Second, Denver's nine wins come courtesy of a lot mediocrity; of 14 games to date, only five involve teams with winning records. Denver's standing against better-than-.500 teams is 2-3, and one of those wins (Cincinnati) is in the credit column of former Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton.

Third, Denver's recent winning streak also included missing quarterbacks, with Kansas City's Matt Cassel disappearing during the first game with the Broncos, and Jay Cutler of the Chicago Bears leaving the team before that matchup. Both were replaced by quarterbacks overwhelmed by any opponent on any given Sunday.

Fourth, the variation of the single-wing-and-a-prayer offense installed for Tebow proved to be a bit much for some NFL defenses, although the main product wasn't points; instead, it ate up the clock and, combined with Denver's sharp (and well-rested) defense, kept games low-scoring and close.

Yes, in the past few weeks, the ball's been more in the air when Denver's on offense, although that's also when facing bad and banged-up secondaries (including New England's). The Patriots also effectively stopped  Tebow's option capabilities with schemes that are probably in heavy video rotation with coaches in Buffalo and Kansas City.

However, both teams have little to play for -- the Bills are already out of the playoff hunt, and the Chiefs will be done if Buffalo loses. The only thing Denver may need to fear is snow; Tebow Time has literally been a fair-weather phenomenon until now.

Not to totally discount a season with an outstanding athletic performance from Tim Tebow and a grinding defense, but the 2011 season for the Denver Broncos also involves a remarkable string of just-enough efforts against dull and uneven competition, along with a heapin' helpin' of, well, luck. At some point, the luck -- and the time -- will run out.

X-press way to Your Garage

Whenever the auto-show season begins, someone invariably comes out with a "best-of" of cars that looked great, turned a lot of heads, and somehow never made it to your driveway -- or any garage in your Zip Code.

And then there's the worst-of tally, usually of cheap cars that appeared en masse in every suburban parking lot for five years, and then disappeared in some kind of Rolling Rapture. Unlike some limited-edition German autobahn cruiser, it was the kind of vehicle owned by someone you knew.

In my case, that person was me. Pick any bad-beater list, and I've owned at least two. A 1972 Ford Pinto. A 1989 Volkswagen Fox. Even one of the all-time schlagers ... a 1978, four-door, automatic Chevrolet Chevette.

There's another perennial entry, though, that gets panned as a major Detroit mistake. With this one I beg to differ, mainly because I alos owned one and found it something more than a bucket of bolts.

Ladies and gentlemen, return with me to the early 1980s, when General Motors offered its view of the future ... with the X car.

Here, with one car, a U.S. manufacturer offered innovations such as front-wheel drive and better gas mileage -- not to mention a snazzy rod-based manual transmission with Teflon-coated parts. People bought 'em up, whether in Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac or Chevrolet iterations.

Unfortunately, all those swell new parts came together without a real idea of the sum, which led to several problems with weird steering under acceleration. (GM apparently did a quick fix for the models sent to car magazines, which didn't help the car's later reputation.) Owners of manual-transmission models, meanwhile,found out quickly that Teflon and hot engine fluids didn't play well together.

That, however, wasn't a problem with me. I bought, brand-new, a 1981 Chevy Citation five-door hatchback with a 2.6L V-6 engine and automatic transmission. I think it fell under one recall for a reason I can't remember.

I also can say, without hesitation, that it was one of the best cars I've owned. 


Frankly, there are a number of car writers reporting more on experience than reputation. Tag a car as crap, and it's a self-sustaining identity.

One of the major problems with worst-car lists is that someone writing about a 30-year-car and likely didn't drive one, let alone own it.  These less-than-classic cars aren't found at expo or museums. It's just the reputation that keeps building, especially when automotive writers have a fast one pulled on them by a car company.

My Citation was no wonder car. I can tell you it was the roomier car I ever owned, with incredible cargo space with the back seat flipped down. The V-6 delivered plenty of power without guzzling gas, and the front-wheel drive performed great through a number of Colorado and Montana winters.

I pulled six years of good service out of the car before trading it in for a 4-wheel-drive pickup that gave me nothing but trouble before expiring on the same day I paid off its loan. The Citation the one car I regret selling, and it deserves a few words of praise.

It was also the car I owned when I got married 28 years ago. It's the one that had the soap-written wishes n the huge back window, and the tin cans tied to the rear axle. A few years after I sold it -- and nine years after the wedding -- I thought I spied the old Citation in a Denver parking lot.

I crouched down under the rear bumper and, on the rear axle, were the straggly ends of the string used for the tin cans. The car still looked ready to go whatever distance you cared to try. I hope it kept going for a long, long time.

So Many Nazis, So Little Time

A few years back, I finally reached the rarified height sought by many and reached among the millions of dedicated TV watchers. I became a Nielsen family.

For a month, I wrote down my TV viewing routine in a diary supplied by the Nielsen organization.  Instead of trying to throw the results with something noble, like seven hours of PBS a day or C-SPAN symposiums on labor disputes of the 1970s, I decided to record what I really watched.

The results probably caused some Nielsen data clerk to heave the thing out the nearest window. The diary consisted mainly of:

1. Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasts.

2. The Fox Business Channel’s Countdown to the Closing Bell, but only on days when Liz Clayman showed up for work.

3. Turner Classic Movies.

4. The History Channel and its offshoots for any World War II documentaries.

Or, to be specific, any documentaries dealing with Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. If there’s going to be Nazis in it, I’m there.

It’s hard to tell where my fascination with Nazis began. I recall that I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer during a junior-high-school summer, and I’ve kept going for another four decades. I’d estimate that I’ve read at least 400 books on various topics, and there are at least 60-odd volumes on the bookshelves here in the house.

It’s hard to find some topic I haven’t explored, from biographies of Hitler’s finance minister to a detailed aesthetic critique of Hitler’s artistic sense and the parallels to how he viewed the world.

Not all the books are dry historical tomes. I’ve read through a number of novels, including the excellent Bernie Gunther series of detective stories by Philip Kerr, as well as David Downing’s “train-station” series with American hero John Russell.

Of course, I’ve also taken in hundreds of hours of films on various aspects of the Third Reich, from Schindler’s List to Swing Kids to old groaners from the 1940s like Hitler’s Children. A wealth of movies came from Germany in the past few years, such as Downfall, North Face and Napoli.

It’s the explosion of documentaries, however, that provide plenty of viewing time. At one point, critics began calling The History Channel by the knock-off of The Hitler Channel, and the broadcaster began wheeling its massive collection off to lesser subsidiaries like Military Channel and that treasure trove of the Third Reich, the Military History Channel.

It’s not unusual that’s I’ll fill an odd hour with a documentary about those naughty Nazis. Most people would think this dull – surely this is just repetitive stuff. After all, Hitler keeps dying in the bunker at the end, doesn’t he?

Well, yes, but the history of Nazi Germany is one of those topics that seem to enrich itself as time goes on. The cottage industry of books about Watergate and the assassination of John Kennedy seem to have played out, but the goods on the Nazis seem to get better and better.

Part of this is an effort – especially among British historians – to dig deeper and find more information. While some of this is terrific (Alan Kershaw’s new look at Hitler with his two-volume biography) and some is just plain silly (the Fuhrer’s drug intake as detailed in the documentary High Hitler).

It’s all fascinating to me. When people ask me why, my stock answer isn’t something about a love of history, or some pining for a revival of fascism. No, I keep watching and reading because I want to spot the Nazis when they come back.

And that’s not said as a joke, either. It may not be with rallies and banners and storm troopers, but that same wave of ideas to save us from peril – at a very high cost – is certain to return. If it happened in an enlightened, cultured and common-sense place like Germany in the 20th century, it can happen anywhere, anytime. It’s the challenge of Spot the Totalitarians; the more you know about the last time it happened, the better prepared you are to stem the next tide.

And, there isn’t going to be any end of this soon, as illustrated by a recent BBC radio documentary called Nazi Gold about the perpetual interest in the Third Reich. The narrator noted the example of the late British humorist Alan Coren, who collected a series of essays and decided on a joke title to boost sales. He teamed up two big trends in publishing – golf and cats – and called the book Golfing for Cats. And, just to jump on the Nazi publishing bandwagon, he put a big swastika on the cover.

The book sold like hotcakes.

Me and My Kindle

Yeah, I’ve heard all the arguments against the Kindle and other e-book readers. At times, the cases being made seem to implicate these electronic tablets in some sort of conspiracy against the written word, as if we’re destroying something by using one to read a book or a magazine article.

I should be one of these people railing against these little devices. I write for a living, and – for at least 45 years or so – I’ve rarely spent a day without a book at hand. I know I’ve owned thousands of books in my life, and my condo includes at least eight bookcases full of volumes ranging from the complete set of Martin Beck mysteries from Sweden to the best of P.J. O’Rourke to collections of Soviet propaganda posters.

And yet I’d gladly pay someone a small fee for transferring each of those books to its own MOBI file. Because – yes – I own a Kindle, and I find it to be the best think I’ve received since that day in the early 1960s when I received my first public library card.

Frankly, the shouting against the e-book misses the mark completely. These nifty little pads enhance, not deter, the reading experience. And I’m reading more – and more widely, as far as content – because of my Kindle.

I learned to read at a very early age; I also became quite good at it. I remember being taken away from art classes in kindergarten and first grade and sitting in front of nice ladies who asked me to read things and talk about them. These turned out to be skills tests, and they found out that – in first grade – I was reading at a sixth-grade comprehension level. (My inability to draw anything is likely the the cost of learning my young proficiency.)

Today, I still read faster and at a greater comprehensive level than most people. A massive tome didn’t bother me, as long as I found it interesting. One of the best Christmas presents I ever received was Shelby Foote’s three-volume history of the Civil War, and it took me seven weeks to read all of it – some 1,945 pages.

I like big, thick books. And yet I’m ready to throw them over for this thin electronic tablet, because I’ve tired of carting around and hold big, thick books. Stuffing a bunch of them in the memory of my Kindle, with all of them at the ready for a good read, is a marvelous innovation.

Many people make a big deal of the feel and smell of books. I’ve never been one to go gaga over the turning of pages and holding a book, and the only universal smells I associate with reading are the odors of bad ink and the dust that leads to sneezing fits.

I also can’t recall a book where the physical attributes enhanced the book. Does anybody remember the color of the pages of their favorite books? (By the way, they’re rarely white.) Are you a stickler for page size? Have you ever bought a book because it’s in an appealing weight of a favorite font? E-books often offer a one-font-fits-all format, but it’s the words themselves – not the typestyle or package that make a difference.

The lack of the physical presence of turning pages also seems to enhance my speed in reading – I find can get through books faster on my Kindle, and that spurs me to put more variety in my selections. In the past few months, I’ve read biographies (admittedly my favorite type of book) of Robert Oppenheimer and Roger Ebert, spy novels from Len Deighton, historical mysteries from Philip Kerr, a detailed history of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, Graham Greene’s Travels With my Aunt and Ross MacDonald’s The Zebra-Striped Hearse.

E-book readers also offer the idea of the sample, where you can download a portion of the book for free. This isn’t just a couple pages of browsing – some of the samples run for 60-70 pages. This also enhances the idea of trying something new, and you don’t have to wait for the popular volumes to return to the New Book cart at the library.

Not that e-book readers are perfect substitutes for books. Many books aren’t available in e-book form. Photographs remain problematic in reproduction, and detailed maps – the essentials of books detailing modern warfare – are a travesty at this point. Some of the general tables like Apple’s iPad seem to do better here, but the backlit nature of computer screens aren’t as good for reading as the non-illuminated surfaces of e-book devices.

I haven’t sworn off printed books, but it’s been a bit – months, actually, since I’ve picked one up for a start-to-finish read. I’ve found my Kindle to be my new companion, service as a small personal library on the go. I don’t need all the pages and binding and cover to remind me that I’m reading a book … even in electronic format, the words touch me all the same.