Berkeley Reporter

by Steed Dropout
Oct. 7, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

NOT GOT

As we enter week 2 of gov’t-gone-blooie and Saturday Night Live has rendered its own anthem, we here at Berkeley Reporter are raiding the Irving Berlin songbook.

Berlin, a Jewish immigrant, who gave us White Christmas on the way to chronicling U.S. history in lyrics, was the voice of America even before modern radio.

Here’s what he had to say about sequesters, depressions, shutdowns, and wars in 1946’s “Annie Get Your Gun.” (Annie get your gun on the tea party?)

“Taking stock of what I have and what I haven’t
What do I find?”

“Got no diamond
Got no pearl…”

“Got no mansion
Got no yacht…”

“Got no checkbooks
Got no banks…”

“Got no silver
Got no gold…”

“Got no heirlooms
For my kin…”

GOT

“What I got can’t be bought or sold
I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.”

Did Irv (real name Israel) say moon and sun? Isn’t that too little and too light?
Not if you read: you have the next day of your life.

Too little? Your life is too ruined to welcome tomorrow? Historical accounts of stockbrokers jumping to their deaths in 1929 have been corrected (someone may have fallen off a chair) and Wall Street has bounced back from its latest bump, survived an occupation, and now rolls in dough.

As journalists plan stories of americans surviving the shutdown, Berkeley Reporter is listening to Berlin’s Annie and her guns.

“Sunshine
Gives me a lovely day
Moonlight
Gives me the Milky Way…”

“… I’d like to express my thanks.”

And so would we. Thank you, Israel Isidore Berlin, 1888-1989.

And thanks to the suicidal Tea Party for saving themselves from Annie Oakley.

Opinions here do not represent those of publications in which my work appears.

by Steed Dropout
Oct. 1, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

SO SPIES ARE MESSING WITH STUDENT MINDS, WHAT’S NEW?

A band of agitprop troupers entertained U.C. Berkeley students, Monday, only hours before a mysterious blast rocked the U.C. campus.

The blast caused a few (minor) injuries, but trapped hundreds of students in campus elevators. The campus was evacuated.

Several hours earlier, the troupers/performers…”artists” had enacted hypothetical homeland security spying in response to the naming, recently, of Janet Napolitano, former U.S, homeland security chief as system-wide president of one of the nation’s largest campus systems.

Say what you will about Janet N., but she for-sure has too long a name.

It took more than an hour for the troupe to “rehearse.” Channel 2 TV left in disgust. “They’re artists,” a drone explained.

FSM's Savio Returns to Cal. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Are spies mind-f-ing UC students?” »

by Steed Dropout
Aug. 7, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

THE END OF CRIME REPORTING; WHO’S EVEN READING CRIME BLOTTERS?

Who’s even reading those blah-blah police crime “blotters.”

Roughly the same number, 57,000, who have looked up Berkeley’s Alta Bates Hospital Cafeteria. That number is an accumulation of months or years of reader site-visits.

I’ll take the cafeteria over the blotters any day.

Purse snatchings, e-phone grabs, car-break-ins, strong arm robberies (force), gun brandishing, and the occasional failed home-invasion — although scary — lose their impact with repetition.

Same crimes, week after week with changing addresses.

Know this. “Police Blotter” as hyped online is a misnomer. Perhaps a fraud.

Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Crime Blotter Blah-Blah” »

by Steed Drop-Out
June 26, 2013
Berkeley, Ca

BLACK VOTING RIGHTS, TRAYON MARTIN TRIAL AND BERKELEY’S JUNETEENTH — A POSSIBLE CONNECTION

[Isn’t it the Zimmerman trial? Martin is dead, but he’s the one on trial.]

Splitting 5-4 along conservative lines, June 25 the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Two days earlier Berkeley held it’s twenty-sixth annual Juneteenth fest. Local media did not cover the festival, unless you count pre-event stories. Is it enough to announce an event without reporting on it?

I hope to remedy this. Berkeley Reporter was there photographing, hoping that the publication which pays me as a “contributing photographer,” would publish my shots with their coverage. They had no story and I was told they didn’t want a photo-essay either.

The photo essay appears here.

Proud black women, an event theme. The kids here are truly sisters – a one family production. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Are Berkeley Blacks Getting The Respect They Deserve?” »

by Steed Dropout
June 13, 2013
Berkeley, Ca.

ASK NOT FOR WHOM THEY TROLL — IT MAY BE THEE OR ME

Berkeley has not shed its radical past, which often put it under government surveillance, nor have I. (My story will be told last).

Seth Rosenberg, award winning SF Bay Area investigative journalist, traces FBI surveillance at U.C. Berkeley to the early WW2 years in his recent expose of gov’t surveillance.

Berkeley radicals have had a half century to adjust to big brother tactics.

Except for wide-spread Berkeley activities on behalf of whistleblowers, like Snowden and Manning recently, there has been little personal concern from Berkeley rads who assume they’re being watched.

You might wonder if this isn’t Berkeley bragging.

Continue reading “Radical Berkeley Used to Gov’t Surveillance” »

By Steed Dropout
June 12, 2013.
Berkeley, Ca

ELLSBERG PACKS THE HOUSE OVER LATEST LEAK

In a press interview, Tuesday in Berkeley, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, took questions about leaking. I was there taking pictures.

Saying “I don’t know him [Edward Snowden, who recently leaked government surveillance of Americans]; I would have advised him not to do it, but I’d be wrong. If Snowden has to spend the rest of his life in jail it would be worth it to tell the public what our government is doing,” Ellsberg said.

This quote reflects the views of Ellsberg when he leaked “the Pentagon Papers.”

He has written that fifty-two years ago he was inspired to leak by a jailed draft resister, who said he was glad to be joining his friends.

Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Berkeley’s Ellsberg” »

by Steed Dropout
May 17, 2013

I arrived at just before three in Tilden Park for a ceremony inducting the Dalai Lama, his holiness, in Berkeley's Rotary Club's Peace Grove, near the peak in Tilden Peak. If you follow the peace grove sign, you'll fall into a gulch, left. Maybe that's why the grove is 'off-the-beaten path.' Attendance at past peace grove inductions has, reportedly, declined in recent years. I wondered if the ceremony would come off. I didn't check the staging area for the event (deserted) because I hiked up from a different start.
Photo by Ted Friedman.

Continue reading “Flub-Nuts Journalism” »

by Steed Dropout
April 8, 2013

He thought so, but he admitted that his doctors had been less than candid about the downside to his survival.

Was Ebert a medical experiment or worse, an advertisement for surgeries the rest of us would decline?

In a Ted talk shortly before he died, he described five deaths he survived.

Everyone in the humanities and computer sciences — in fact, every American should see this and ask what would you have done?

The incidence of thyroid cancer might seem low (1.03%) but it is rising according to the New York Times.
Continue reading “Saved From the Grave (5 times); Was it Worth Ebert’s Travails?” »

by Steed Dropout
March 27, 2013

SHOULD JOURNALISM PHOTOS SUGGEST STORIES? OR SHOULD THE STORIES LEAD?

I am about to turn journalism upside down.

The following story was written just so I could publish a photo. Usually I shoot and report, but my stories for the Berkeley Daily Planet were written first; later I selected a photo-essay.

First the story, then the pictures.

At papers like the SF Chronicle and on television, photographers pursue their own stories, but their editors will link their footage to the ten o’clock news.

The Oakland Tribune Media Group has, for at least a decade, put photography in the hands of reporters — saving money when my friend David Yee lost his press photographer’s job to someone like me.

We’re news reporters first and reluctant photojournalists second.

I spent so much time shooting mayor’s election forums last year , I often came away without a story. My editor saw me in action with the camera, and told me to stick to the story.

Shot that snapped me out of my reluctance to shoot. Mayor with aide stows chairs after calling the meeting, presiding over it and headline-grabbing. Photo by Ted Friedman/Berkeley Daily Planet.

Continue reading “Journalism Upside Down” »

by Steed Dropout
Feb. 12, 2013

WHEREVER YOU ARE

I’ve been pushing a “goodnight sweetheart promotion” on my magazine-like Facebook, where we have an editorial policy favoring me. Here at BR, I’m the big cheese, a real Citizen Kane.

Now I’m throwing my weight around at my own Facebook. My Facebook, my rules.

Ted Friedman Berkeley Facebook.

My promotion derives from Jimmy Durante’s “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” In the 1940s Durante met a waitress in Calabash, North Carolina and vowed to make the name Mrs. Calabash famous.

Why? The Calabash angle was a moniker — now we say brand — to make your brand original. And here I am borrowing.

I discovered good night sweetheart by serendipity, a weird confluence of events. I have always liked the sophomoric sentiment of this old crooner’s favorite. While searching, I came across some of the most amazing covers of goodnight.

The best was a college student’s, ohhyea09.

I first became smitten with Good Night Sweetheart in 1959, when we first serenaded a brother’s pin-girl (now it’s nailed girl) at Sigma Something or Other at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
Continue reading “Good Night Mrs Callabash and Good Night Sweetheart” »