Even with the magic of Google, I wasn’t able to find out if any officeholder anywhere had ever been sent back by voters to a seat they had just been kicked out of. When I’d heard Monserrate, who got the boot after a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction, was going to run to replace himself, I thought it was a funny thing, a joke, like Dennis Kucinich running for President. Funnier than that, actually. But I’m hearing now that he has a real chance of winning next Tuesday’s special election. I find this amazing. Not only did Mr. Monserrate rough up his girlfriend (originally accused of slashing her face with a broken glass, his conviction came on the lesser charge of assault because he was caught on a surveillance camera manhandling her through his apartment building’s lobby), he had also just months earlier been at the center of a Senate power coup that was absurd even by Albany standards. He emerged from it all a figure of ridicule, except, we may find out, to voters in his once-and-perhaps-future district.

When David Paterson dropped out of contention for the governor’s race, I thought, what else COULD he do? His approval ratings now stand at 19%, which put him just ahead of Bernie Madoff and just behind Vlad the Impaler. But if Hiram Monserrate wins next week, I’m going to wonder if Paterson shouldn’t have just gone for it. Then again, executive political failure, where all voters weigh in, is different from legislative elections where it’s just the voters in a single district who make the call. That explains the ridiculously high incumbent reelection rates we see: anti-incumbent movements are always focused on kicking out someone else’s incumbent, not yours. It’s an old political formula that will get put to the test like never before next Tuesday in Queens.

Governor Paterson proposed this late last year, and it was shot down almost immediately. But since then, growing awareness of the severity of New York’s budget crisis might have changed some minds. Not mine, though; I was for it all along.

There’s just no doubt anymore that rising rates of obesity and diabetes are/will be putting a crushing burden on our health care system. There’s also no doubt anymore that soda consumption is one of the chief causes of childhood obesity. If a penny-per-ounce tax succeeds in creating a “chilling” effect (get it?!), and less soda is sold and consumed and turned into unsightly fat, than the tax would be effective. If it doesn’t discourage people from purchasing sugary drinks, than more money is raised to address all the health problems that result from too much soda and unsightly fat, and the tax would be effective

The American Beverage Association, of course, begs to differ, but its logic is a little tortured:

‘"Taxes don't work for making people healthier,’ said Chris Gindlesperger, an association spokesman. ‘It puts good New York beverage industry jobs at risk.’ He estimated the beverage industry employs 160,000 people in New York state.”

By saying “health taxes” don’t work, I assume he means people will continue with their typical beverage consumption. If they do continue, than all those beverage industry jobs are not at risk. Can’t have it both ways.

A final note: this tax wouldn’t affect my family at all. We’re not completely successful by any stretch at keeping our children on truly healthy diets, but we never bring soda into the house. If we did, they would drink it, and nothing else. I should also mention that my executive producer, who needs to approve this blog before it’s posted, has a Coke addiction (note the capital-C) severe enough that we’re thinking of having an intervention. If you never see this post, that’s why. Okay, that didn’t make any sense at all. Good thing I said where I stand on the issue at the very beginning.

I never would have thought that DVD’s for children where the principal action is a toy train going around a track and a windup monkey playing cymbals could be so divisive. I’m referring to the new research out today on Walt Disney’s “Baby Einstein” series of DVD’s—particularly one called “Baby Wordsworth”—examining if it helps the vocabularies of children 24-months and younger. The study’s conclusion: it doesn’t. Might even hurt.

Here’s some reading you can do to find out how tense this issue has become. This link covers the original debunking. Here you can read about how some groups actually sued Disney over the educational claims the company was making for the Baby Einstein products. And with this link, you’ll learn how the original creators of Baby Einstein are now taking the researchers to court, to try and get access to their raw data, which, the creators apparently believe, will show that there just might be some real learning benefits with these DVD’s.

The researchers’ biggest beef seems to be that watching the DVD’s could well come at the expense of real-life interaction with parents and in social settings, where language becomes most deeply ingrained. I suppose that’s true, but we made sure our sons had plenty of that to go along with the occasional Baby Einstein viewings. MY biggest beef is that it got our kids into the habit of staring into a television screen at a very early age. Back when it was images of a toy train going ‘round and ‘round, no big deal. But now that they’re seeing shows where trains blow up, it’s more worrisome.

Feel free to leave comments about your family’s experience with Baby Einstein-types of products, and your thoughts about them now.

If not for Governor Paterson’s ongoing implosion (informal pools are springing up about which day he’s going to resign), the announcement by Harold Ford, Jr. that he will not “primary” Kirsten Gillibrand in New York’s U.S Senate race would be front page political news. Instead, it’s been more of an A19 kind of thing. Or to put it in more contemporary terms, news web sites have the Ford item listed somewhere below Kate Gosselin becoming a contestant on “Dancing With The Stars.” Even so, I wanted to leave some thoughts about Mr. Ford’s brief flirtation with a Senate run, namely that I found it a singularly ungracious spectacle from beginning to end.

Reporting on Ford’s decision not to run, my colleague Peter Thorne, on our newscast last night, ventured that perhaps it would have been smarter of Ford to begin his exploration with the humbleness of someone new to this particular political arena. Instead, he was in Gillibrand’s face from the get-go, referring to her rarely by name, but more often as “the unelected Senator.” Along the way, he also called her a liar and a puppet under the control of party leaders. Let us count the ways this hyper-aggressive strategy backfired for Ford:

--For one thing, it unleashed Kirsten Gillibrand. The former upstate congresswoman was little-known by most New Yorkers, and when Ford began his verbal assaults, she at first laid low. But after a few weeks, she came back at him, revealing herself not to be the soft-edged soccer mom-type she appears on the surface, but a pretty good bare-knuckled political fighter in her own right. She called out Ford on his Wall Street/carpetbagger background, and his backtracking on conservative positions, such as gun control and gay rights, that played well down South but not so much in New York. (In fairness, Gillibrand did the same thing after she was appointed and faced the need to win votes statewide). But if Ford thought he could intimidate Gillibrand, he was wrong; all he did was make her tougher and give her better name recognition.

--A quieter and humbler approach by Ford might have drummed up some real interest from Democratic leaders, and calmed their fears about a bloody primary battle. Instead, his in-your-face approach all but guaranteed a damaging primary. No wonder just about every party leader in the state stuck with Gillibrand instead of inviting an unnecessary and costly distraction that might have turned off many voters no matter who ended up with the nomination.

--Finally, he closed out his withdrawal from contention by insisting that if he HAD decided to run, he would have won. Where I come from, that’s called being a sore loser. In his op-ed piece in the Times today, Ford himself cited the prospect of a tough and ugly primary battle as the reason he wasn’t entering the race. So he created a contentious atmosphere, and then claimed that’s why he wasn’t running in a race he says he would have won. I’ll give this to Harold Ford, Jr.: he may be new to New York, but he’s already got the chutzpah thing down.

For resignation: The Paterson administration--and I use that word fairly loosely at this point--began careening downhill almost immediately after his swearing in two years ago. There’s plenty of time left for even weirder stuff to happen in the 10-months left in his term…. another word I’m using loosely.

Against resignation: Weirdness becomes David Paterson. He is an artist who uses inexplicable political decision-making as his medium. Who are we to stand in the way of great art?

FR: It’s no big deal if he resigns, since he succeeded another guy who quit, so Paterson wasn’t elected to the job in the first place.

AR: Neither was the man who would take his place, Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch, who has never actually been elected to any office.


AR: Having not one but two governors quit within a single four-year period simply crosses an embarrassment threshold for Albany that the state cannot abide.

FR: Albany has no embarrassment threshold.


AR: Governor Paterson, as he said himself today, has no reason left to play politics or worry about his future, so he’ll be able to make the hard decisions to deal with the state’s fiscal crisis.

FR: He also has no reason left to work more than a few hours a day or focus on the job much at all. (This is a link to a New York Times piece headlined “As Campaign Nears, Paterson Is Seen As Increasingly Remote.” That’s when he WAS still running for governor. If he’s disconnected when he’s running, imagine where his attention might be if he’s not.)


See if you can think of more pro/con arguments, and what conclusion you might have already reached about David Paterson’s immediate future.. Or in other words: “Ya gotta let me know, should he stay or should he go.?”

But I happen to know some of the good in Hiram Monserrate, and it makes his narrative more complex for me. He and I both have sons with autism. We met a few years back, when he was on City Council, and presented me with a proclamation for the work I do raising awareness of autism. Here’s a picture of us, along with then-Council Speaker Gifford Miller.

Parents of children with autism often connect instinctively, but I admired him further for the actual legislative legwork he does for the cause. From a Queens newspaper:

“State Senator Hiram Monserrate may be in some turmoil over a pending investigation, but there is one cause where his absence will be felt should he leave public office. Monserrate, as a city councilman, had a good record on producing results for families with autistic children…Monserrate was instrumental in securing safe school busses for children with autism.”:

My son rides a bus to school every day. Monserrate might well have played a role in making sure he gets back home to his family safe and sound. When the senator came to the PIX-11 studios for an interview last summer, during the disastrous Republican senate coup in which Monserrate played a leading role, he saw me across the studio and shouted, “Hey, Jim, how’s your son doing?” It was years after we had last seen each other, and I appreciated him remembering. It didn’t change a word of the news copy I would read about him hitting his girlfriend or helping shut down the legislature for a month. But I remembered he'd reached out to me -- as a fellow father in the autism universe.

I am certainly not saying having a child with autism excuses egregious personal behavior. If he assaulted his girlfriend, or played dirty politics, he deserves whatever punishment is due. What I AM saying is that tidy, consistent narratives about public figures break down, for better or worse, when you know things that don’t usually make it into the tabloid headlines.

I mentioned on the air that for students who come to school on these days, since typical classroom curriculums probably couldn’t be followed, that perhaps extra time in the library or activity in the phys ed department could be possibilities. I don’t see where teacher supervision of such activities equals babysitting; it equals adult guidance that teachers and schools by definition provide, but just under different circumstances.

I still appreciate the chance to have a conversation with all of you about this, even those commenters who questioned my sanity and, a few of you, my parentage. The intensity of your anger was an eye-opener for me. It gave me more insight to the teachers’ perspective, but, I have to say, also more insight into the experience of those who dare to push for much more significant educational reforms than just providing a safe haven for neighborhood students on snowy days.

The principal reason being given for the preemptive closing is so parents aren’t forced to make alternate arrangements—pick-ups, child care, etc.—on short notice. Fair enough. Most households now have two working parents, and there’s less flexibility to rearrange daily schedules. But that in itself is an argument for keeping schools open on snowy days. I’m guessing kids from many of those families would be able to get to school. Once they’re there, safe and sound and keeping busy, the parents could go about their day in as normal a fashion as possible.

Closing schools because of weather is expensive and disruptive. Closing schools when there’s not a bit of snow on the ground sends a message to children that their education is vitally important, unless it’s a little inconvenient for the grownups. The school system should do a survey, and find out how many parents think they could get their kids to class even in the event of heavy snow. If it turns out that 40-percent or more of all students, teachers, and staff would make it, then snow days--except in truly extreme weather conditions--could become a thing of the past. I guarantee you, employers would appreciate it, not having to lose workers for the day so they can watch their kids. Parents would appreciate not having to lose a day’s pay. And students would get the message—like I did growing up—that just about nothing, including weather, comes between them and their education.

I’m talking about the news today that the British medical journal “The Lancet” has completely retracted findings it published in 1998 that vaccines administered in early childhood are linked to autism, and the increasing incidence of autism. The vaccine issue has roiled the autism community ever since. No, “roiled” is too gentle a term. It has been World Wars One, Two, and Three, pitting autism families bitterly against one another, and alarming doctors who have witnessed growing numbers of parents not getting their children vaccinated at all.

One of the hardest parts about having an autistic child in your family is that you have no idea why it happened. There’s no known cause, no cure..in short, no answers. It’s a mystery inside a mystery inside a mystery. There’s nothing to blame, nothing to point to and say, “that’s what put us here, that’s what has changed our lives forever, that’s what has my handsome boy unable to talk or take care of himself in the simplest ways.” Nothing. I can understand why people cling to the notion that there’s an identifiable, tangible cause of what they’re going through. It’s human nature.

But at some point, the science has to be considered. It’s not an abstract argument; more time and money spent exploring a possible vaccine link is less time and money spent on finding possible genetic or environmental causes, less time and money spent on taking care of the multitude of children who now have autism, and planning for their needs as they enter and go through adulthood. I want researchers to find what we really should be blaming for this epidemic, and I want them to agree. For many parents of autistic children, it’s the only kind of closure we can hope for.

Liam Watkins

Okay, I’ve seen enough. I want one. Or, I should say, iwant one. Talking about the new Apple ipad, of course, unveiled today by Steve Jobs in typical bombastic fashion, with techno dorks around the world just shivering in anticipation.

This thing is coooooooooool, people. That’s really about the only knowledgeable review I can give at this point, not actually having used or even held the ipad itself (it ships in 60-days). But I can see why folks who do know what they’re talking about are saying it’s going to be a game changer for web browsing, book and magazine reading, emailing, gaming, and photo sharing. Even if it’s just seen by many as a glorified iphone or itouch with a bigger screen, that’s okay; I think there had to be a point where consumers would want to use certain apps, watch movies, and view websites on something larger than a smart phone LCD.

But that leads to my one doubt about the likelihood of the ipad becoming as ubiquitous as ipods and iphones: you can’t just slip it in your pocket. In other words, the bigger screen is the key selling point, AND the key disadvantage. Is it truly a whole new kind of mobile marvel, or is it a slicker, smaller laptop?

What do you think? Non-techno dorks should feel free to comment.

In other words, if you have 1000 Facebook friends, at least 850 of them are “friends” only in the loosest definition of the term, most are barely even acquaintances, and a majority of those scarcely rise to the level of “some dude I met at a party.” Professor Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropologist, came up with the 150-figure in the 1990’s—before social internet sites existed--and it’s actually known in academic circles as “Dunbar’s number.” He maintained then, and still does now, that the number of so-called “important” relationships cannot exceed their evolutionarily-based correspondence with the size of a Neolithic farming village, a unit of the Roman army, or a modern office environment.

Makes sense to me. The only problem I have with this research is that the 150-figure seems way high to me. I have about 30 Facebook friends, a number that seems to be holding steady since I hardly ever logon to the site. And I count only a tiny percentage of those as “important relationships” in the Dunbar-ian sense. Maybe that means I’m anti-social, but I prefer to think my ancient ancestors simply hailed from a much smaller farming village. Or that my neocortex has issues.