Todd's Mischief Blog

A not-so-sappy Thanksgiving message I realize that Thanksgiving Day is nearly over and that, for many, the Black Friday shopping has already begun. But even though the people and not the birds are the ones now stuffed, I don’t think it is too late for a few Thanksgiving thoughts. Besides, it gives me some room to fire off a rather harsher message than the more cheerful and reverent holiday messages that seem to come earlier while the big parade is still on. Gratitude. That’s the point of Thanksgiving, isn’t it? Not just feeling it, but showing it, too. Now, I don’t care whether you use the day to give thanks to God or your forefathers, your fellow man or to fate, or if you just want to share in a general, overall attitude of appreciation. It’s not my business to tell anyone where to direct his or her thanks. But it should go without saying that in order to show thankfulness, first you have to be thankful. Now it’s about to get gritty: The expression “Gratitude is an Attitude” was proba...

The smear campaign against Cain continues   By now the internet, radio, television, and wagging tongues everywhere are all abuzz over the latest campaign blunder by Herman Cain. But is it really the gaffe everyone says it is? Or was it a selective editing job a la Ed Shultz ? Well, call me cynical, but I’ve seen enough media shenanigans to be suspicious of anything taken out of context and this definitely tripped my radar. In the clip that has gone viral (below), Cain does appear to be caught off-guard by a question on Libya, a topic he ought to have been ready for. My first reaction was to wonder how many clips like this land on editing room floors instead of online. In a world used to hyper-slick video and equally slick candidates, a moment of thought gathering can seem disastrous. Still, this isn’t about a some candidate’s “senior moment.” Rather, it is about a hatchet job gone awry. This clip was released by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel along with the entire half-hour interv...

Is JoePa guilty of being too human? I would like a little help understanding something. Joe Paterno did a) nothing wrong, b) not nothing, c) not too little, but d) exactly what he was supposed to do and still has been fired. What am I missing? I'm not saying Joe shouldn't have retired years ago--he should have--but his ousting yesterday strikes me as having more to do with finding a scapegoat than anything to do with misconduct. Shouldn't it be Jerry Sandusky receiving everyone's ire? Yet I hardly hear his name. And how does Mike McQueary keep his job if he is held to anything resembling a similar standard that which Joe is being held to? I don't even care about Penn State except for next weekend's matchup with Nebraska— Go Big Red! — but this sorta throws a pall over that. I just can't help but see JoePa as a fall guy.  First, I take issue with the notion that we have rules we are expected to follow, but when those rules prove insufficient for w...