The Week: What Caught Our Eye

July 29, 2023

Crews work to repair a bridge along the main road connecting the Adirondack towns of Long Lake and Newcomb, N.Y., washed out in recent flooding. The popular Vermont-based jam band Phish will hold benefit concerts for flood victims in Vermont and Upstate New York on Aug. 25 and 26 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Tickets go on sale today at 10 a.m. Nancie Battaglia

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

That sound you heard is the other shoe dropping on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting colleges and universities from considering race when evaluating applicants for admission.

Those who disagreed immediately started talking about “legacy” admissions at elite schools, the practice of offering preferential treatment to the children of alums, presumably at the expense of other qualified candidates. A headline by NPR captured the tone of the reporting this week in the wake of a Harvard study that found students from the richest 1% of American households were more than twice as likely to attend the nation’s most elite private colleges and universities than kids from middle class households with similar SAT scores — Affirmative action for rich kids: It’s more than just legacy admissions.

Among other findings: 10% of students from middle-class families attend what are referred to as “Ivy-Plus” colleges after scoring at the 99th percentile in either the SAT or ACT, compared to 40% of students with similar scores whose families are in the top 1% of income.

The U.S. Department of Education announced it would launch a civil rights investigation into Harvard’s policies on legacy admissions, after a group called Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, asserted that Harvard “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.”

Safe to say we haven’t heard the last of this issue.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: We’re guessing you’re just as shocked as we are that a politician got unmasked as a hypocrite, but that appears to be the case with New York City Council Member Vickie Paladino, who fancies herself a law-and-order type and has crusaded against unregistered vehicles, among other sins. She even wants mandatory license plates for bicycles. She sponsored legislation to combat fake temporary tags on cars, presumably even the one on the fancy car parked in the driveway of her house in Queens. We must say, the stumbling denials, refuted by photographic evidence, are pretty hilarious. In an opinion article published earlier this year, Paladino criticized traffic-enforcement cameras in part because they are “easily defeated by criminals who either conceal their plate or use fraudulent plates.” She added: “The only solution to this, of course, is old-fashioned law enforcement.”

FIGHTING WORDS: Jason Aldean is a country music superstar who has sold millions of records and been nominated for five Grammy Awards. None has generated the attention of the newly released “Try That in a Small Town,” a song that says, in essence, big cities are full of crime but small towns aren’t because the people who live there wouldn’t tolerate it and would take matters into their own hands, which some view as both silly and glorifying vigilante violence. It seems the best thing a country music artist can do for sales is stir up controversy (remember how Morgan Wallen’s popularity soared after he was caught on tape saying the n-word?) — sales of “Try That in a Small Town” zoomed after Country Music Television pulled it in response to an outcry over its setting (part of the video was filmed at the site of a race riot and infamous lynching) and lyrics. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty points out, “In ‘Try That in a Small Town,’ Aldean managed to push a whole lot of culture-war buttons in just a matter of minutes. The opening lyrics sound like he’s narrating B-roll on a Fox News Channel report on ‘rising crime in America’s cities.’ … Alas, the song’s implication that crime thrives in the big cities because of a lack of ‘good ol’ boys, raised up right’ is not borne out by the real-world crime data, and offers listeners a flattering, soothing oversimplification.”

SNAP TO IT: Commander, President Biden’s German shepherd, bit or otherwise attacked Secret Service personnel at least 10 times in a three-month period, according to records turned over to a conservative activist group by the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe next they could find those text messages that were deleted from agents’ phones on January 6.

SEE FOR YOURSELF: A CNN reporter on assignment at the most-robbed Walgreens in the nation witnessed three people walk out of the store with stolen items in 30 minutes. Senior National Correspondent Kyung Lah reported from San Francisco that the store has more than a dozen thefts a day, and had recently started chaining its freezer doors shut to keep thieves from emptying the shelves. Walgreens has closed five stores in the San Francisco area in the past two years because of theft.

GO FISH! The Snack that Smiles Back is growing. Campbell Soup Co., owner of Pepperidge Farm, the company that produces the wildly popular Goldfish snack crackers, announced it will invest $160 million in a Utah manufacturing plant to expand production of Goldfish to keep pace with consumer demand. The new line will increase the bakery’s output of Goldfish by 50 percent and produce over 5 million Goldfish per hour, or 1,500 every second. 

Ironman Lake Placid competitor Josh Hunt takes part in a new race tradition — the ringing of the Miracle Bell near the finish. He finished the grueling course in a time of 11 hours, 16 minutes, 32 seconds, placing him among the top 15%. Ironman Lake Placid, the oldest Ironman competition in the continental United States, will celebrate its 25th year in 2024. Laurie Scheuing.

FRIGHTENING MOMENT: Bronny James, the son of basketball legend LeBron James and a freshman at the University of Southern California, went into cardiac arrest while practicing with his Trojans teammates in preparation for a two-week preseason tour of Europe. He was tended to immediately by the team’s medical staff, and was released from the hospital after three days. It’s uncertain when, or if, he’ll be able to resume his playing career. His situation is different from that of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, whose heart stopped because of a blow to the chest. LeBron James posted a message of thanks on social media to “the countless people sending my family love and prayers. We feel you and I’m so grateful.”

SOUTHPAW UNMASKED: It’s fair to say that the people Michael Springstead encounters in his part-time job are happier to see him than the ones in his day job as a sixth-grade math teacher. Springstead, who’s 58, has donned the oversized head and furry costume of SouthPaw, the beloved feline mascot of the Tri-City ValleyCats, since the minor league baseball team started playing in Troy, N.Y, in 2002. He greets fans at the gate before the game, teases them in the stands, dances on the dugouts and otherwise stays in motion, providing entertainment and laughter for millions of fans over the past two-plus decades. “He's committed to his profession and his craft,” ValleyCats president Rick Murphy told the Albany Times Union. “This is obviously a part-time job, but it's a full-time commitment. When he puts the costume on, it's showtime. ... We were looking for someone who could represent the brand night in and night out. He’s a staple.”

DON’T SEE THAT EVERYDAY: In fact, not since 1884 had a team accomplished a triple play the same way the Atlanta Braves did against the Boston Red Sox this week. Center fielder Michael Harris II caught a shallow fly ball from Triston Casas and threw to first base to retire Adam Duvall, who had strayed too far, uncertain whether the ball would drop. As the throw came in, Masataka Yoshida, who was on second base, attempted to tag up and advance, only to be thrown out by first baseman Matt Olson — an 8-3-5 triple play, the second in major league history and first since the Boston Beaneaters did it against the Providence Grays.

TRAGIC INDIFFERENCE: A school bus monitor in New Jersey was charged with manslaughter and child endangerment after a 6-year-old in her care suffocated as the monitor stared at her phone for 14 minutes while wearing ear buds. The bus had hit several bumps, causing the child, who was nonverbal and used a wheelchair, to slump against her harness, which tightened around her neck and prevented her from breathing. Police said surveillance video on the bus showed the child “struggled violently for her life, flailing her arms and legs” for nearly three minutes.

COST CUTTING: SmartAsset, a financial information provider, analyzed Internal Revenue Service data and found New York lost roughly 19,800 residents earning more than $200,000 annually in 2021, after losing roughly the same number the year before as the pandemic made remote work — and cheaper places to live — more attractive. California fared worse, losing 27,341 residents from the $200,000-plus bracket in 2021. Not surprisingly, Texas and Florida, which have no state income tax, led the list of states seeing an influx of high-income workers.

LIVES

JOHNNY LUJACK led Notre Dame to three football national championships in the 1940s, a run that included consecutive undefeated seasons and was capped by a Heisman Trophy-winning performance in 1947. He led the Fighting Irish to the national championship in 1943, then spent nearly three years in the U.S. Navy during World War II before resuming his collegiate career. A two-time unanimous All-American in football, Lujack was a tremendous all-around athlete, one of only three people ever to earn varsity letters in four different sports at Notre Dame. As a rookie with the Chicago Bears in 1948, he played defensive back, intercepting eight passes, and also served as the team's kicker. “He was not only a legend in Notre Dame football and the sports world,” Lujack's granddaughter Amy Schiller told The Associated Press. “He was a legend as a father and grandfather and great grandfather.” He was 98.

SINÉAD O’CONNOR was as recognizable for her shaved head and provocative actions as she was for her musical brilliance, a star from the time she debuted in 1987. Her 1990 cover of Prince’s ballad “Nothing Compares 2 U” was a worldwide smash, but she is perhaps best known for a 1992 appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” when she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on camera and denounced the church as the enemy well before incidents of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church were widely reported. “People assumed I didn’t believe in God. That’s not the case at all. I’m Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation,” she wrote in the Washington Post in 2010. O’Connor, who was public about her struggles with mental illness, was 56.

TAFARI CAMPBELL was working as a sous chef at the White House when he met the Obamas, and they liked him so much they hired him as their personal chef when President Obama left office. He was paddleboarding on a pond at the Obamas’ estate in Martha’s Vineyard when, according to a witness, he began to struggle and slipped under the surface. In a statement, the Obamas called Campbell a “beloved part of our family,” adding, “our hearts are broken that he’s gone.” He was 45.

RICHARD BARANCIK was an Army private first class deployed to Salzburg, Austria, when he volunteered to serve as a driver and guard for the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section – the Monuments Men. During and after World War II, the roughly 350 museum directors, scholars, curators and artists made famous in a 2014 George Clooney film preserved European artworks and cultural treasures that had been looted and hidden by Nazi Germany. After the war, he remained in Europe to study architecture at the University of Cambridge in England and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. On returning to the United States, he entered the University of Illinois, graduated in the late 1940s and started an architectural firm in Chicago in 1950. He was 98.

DERMOT DORAN was a son of Ireland, born in 1934, to parents who ran a Dublin pub. He could have followed the footsteps of his brother Eammon, who founded one of New York City’s most famous Irish bars. Instead, he pursued a different ministry – the priesthood — and found himself as a missionary in Nigeria in 1968 in the middle of a civil war, one of the 20^th century’s worst humanitarian crises. He smuggled journalists into the region to bring news of the crisis to the world and organized an international airlift that brought 60,000 tons of aid and saved an estimated one million people. He was 88.

ALMOST FINAL WORDS

“I don’t know anyone who went. George Santos could’ve pulled off a better fundraising swing in the Hamptons than Ron DeSantis did this past weekend.”
—    Caroline Wren, a longtime GOP fundraiser, after DeSantis scrapped two Hamptons fundraisers last weekend due to a lack of interest.

THE SIGNOFF

BURNING SENSATION: The director of a burn treatment center in Arizona told CNN that all of the facilities 45 beds were full, one-third of them taken by patients who burned themselves by falling on the ground during a blistering run of triple-digit heat. He said the temperature of pavement in Arizona can reach 180 degrees, and that it takes only a “fraction of a second” to get a “pretty deep burn.”

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Principal Author: Bill Callen. 

Sincere Thanks to Contributors: Ryan Moore, John Brodt, Tina Suhocki, Leigh Hornbeck, Kristy Miller, Troy Burns, Tara Hutchins, Claire P. Tuttle, Nancie Battaglia and Laurie Scheuing.

FACING OUT is what we do. We help companies, organizations and individuals work effectively with their most important external audiences – their customers, their shareholders, their communities, the government and the news media.  www.behancommunications.com

Facing Out features news and other nuggets that caught our eye, and that we thought might be of value to you, our friends and business associates. Some items are good news about our clients and friends, others are stories that we hope will leave you a bit more informed or entertained than you were five minutes ago. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback. 

Let’s make it a conversation: mark.behan@behancom.com