Brett Banter

The New York Times delved into the world of the Delaware Senate race in this morning's edition. It was a nice article recapping a debate between Democrat candidate Chris Coons and Republican Christine O'Donnell, but it does shine a light on the coverage of political campaigns in modern America.

Unless you have been stuck in the Middles Ages, you have heard the story of O'Donnell -- the Tea Party favorite who has been hit hard by the left for past statements regarding education, masturbation and witchcraft. O'Donnell seems to be constantly answering some version of these questions and according to the New York Times, the debate hosted by Wolf Blitzer was no different. She was asked repeatedly asked about past comments about evolution and her finances. Coons, who wrote a college paper that called himself a Marxist, was allowed to simply answer his questions and move on.

It's an interesting political divide right now. For the past few years, many of the left accuse the right of attacking Barack Obama over his past and come up with nasty comments for people who want to know where Obama's money for college came from, where he was born, what religion he practices. But isn't that was the left is now doing to O'Donnell? Is that political discourse?

It's the great debate.

Someone was squatting illegally in a New York City building. That is nothing to get really that worked up over. If you have ever been to the Big Apple, squatting in abandoned buildings is a way of life.

But this squatter wasn't homeless. And the building wasn't vacant.

A New York-based lawyer ended up working out of an Empire State Building office for more than seven months rent free earlier this year, according to the New York Times. Daniel K. Pearlman had been subleasing space from a mortgage broker on the 40th floor of this iconic building for several years. When that tenant bailed because of debt, many of the other subleasers were kicked out as well. Pearlman, though, never got an green eviction notice so he kept arriving every day. He figured he wouldn't leave until he was told. It took seven months.

That takes some guts. Historically, the Empire State Building doesn't look well on people messing around. They hired planes to shoot down King Kong, and he was just hanging around on the outside. Pearlman's fate was not as severe.

Building management claims they knew about Pearlman and deactivated his security card. He says he got a new one. Management slowly removed office furniture. Pearlman said it didn't bother him because they still delivered the mail. They say they didn't evict him because they were tied up with other matters. When those ended, he was booted

Pearlman has chutzpah. Though, he is paying for office space somewhere else now.

I remember as a kid being fascinated by movies about famed outlaw, Billy the Kid. Not that these movies were good (though, the one with Dracula is pretty funny), but they intrigued me by how glorified the Kid was in these films. He was a hero. A legend. An honest man.

I knew it was a load of crud.

Billy the Kid was a murderer, horse thief and a jerk of the highest order. He was Atilla the Hun without an armed horde. He was Al Capone without a Tommy Gun. He was Charlie Sheen without the anglicized name. (Second movie reference today, can you guess it?)

However, somewhere along the way he became a folk hero. Now, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson wants to hold a hearing to see if he should pardon Billy the Kid. It's meant to be fun, but some people are rightly insulted.

Billy the Kid got one of the biggest public relations makeovers in history. It's somewhat of a mystery, but somewhere along the line his story changed. It makes you wonder what bad guys of the modern era will one day emerge with better reputations?

No the headline was not a reference to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but the latest public relations brain freeze by British Petroleum. In the wake of one of the world's messiest semi-natural disasters since the Red Seas crushed down on the Egyptian Army, everyone's favorite oil producer had another boo-boo. Big boo-boo, actually. According to the New York Times, a vital piece of equipment at a Texas refinery broke down. Instead of shutting down the plant and trying to fix the problem, BP staff decided to reroute the chemicals and burn them off. For 40 days, the plant continued releasing thousands of pounds of deadly chemicals into the local environment.

Now, true the company was kind of busy making up excuses about the oil spill, but no one on staff said "hey, maybe we should tell people to be careful." Or maybe they did, and someone higher up the BP foodchain said "eh, who cares? Maybe it will blow over."

It did blow over. Into houses and neighborhoods. And when kids started getting hacking up their four-year old lungs long enough to end up in a hospital, Texas environmental authorities found the source. Now instead of having to deal with the media glare of just a refinery leak, BP lawyers get to deal with a $10 billion class-action lawsuit.

Somewhere, the BP public relation staff should be slapping its collective head.

The New York Times painted a gloom and doom picture of the housing market this morning. Their not-so-new news is that the era of Americans turning mortgages into personal money machines is over. It's a sad tale that was fueled by greed and a lack of common sense. People bought houses they couldn't afford thinking they would double in value within a few years. What were they thinking? They were thinking they had seen it happen elsewhere? They read national stories about it. They watched television "reality" shows that promoted this idea.

It was a fallacy. A bad public relations move that has only gotten worse. One of the little talked about tales in the housing debacle is that the real estate market is not national. What plays in Peoria doesn't always play in Kalamazoo.

The Times again trumpeted this fallacy by talking about expected national housing numbers would not be up to par. Of course they won't people. There was too much housing construction in places that didn't need it. The glut is there. Not everywhere.

Ed Koch was New York City in the 1980s. He was the mayor, but he represented everything about New York to the rest of the world. He was loud, obnoxious, arrogant, smart, witty, funny, urbane, he was the New York Mets winning the World Series, he was the New York Mets snorting enough of cocaine that even Elton John gave pause, he was the hookers on Times Square, he was the burned out buildings in the Bronx, he was sticking his tongue out New Jersey, he was a Democrat, but he leaned right. It's no wonder he was elected to serve three terms leading America's largest city.

He stayed mostly out of the news in the 1990s, but now he is back and fighting the New York state government. It's an interesting tale. According to the New York Times, Koch,85, only has a few years to live and wants to go out in a last hurrah by beating back the gridlock in his state. He wants reform and anyone who stands in the way will get a double barrel blast from old Ed.

Will it work? Koch was beloved in his time, but the Times article states that it had been 18 years since he had been to Buffalo before a recent muckraking trip. Koch knows the pitfalls as well, but he wants to try.

And sometimes trying -- as opposed to apathy -- is the best thing. Huzzah for second acts.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of the times. Thus starts the classic book, a Tale of Two Cities. It is easily one of the most well recognized openings of any book in world history. It has been copied, parodied, repasted and corrupted more times than anyone can ever imagine.

But does it count as plagiarism? The New York Times wrote this week about the rise in plagiarism amongst college students. As usual, the Internet is to blame. If only Al Gore could have stopped that part of the Internet when he created it. Seriously, though, it's not just that plagiarism is wide spread. It's that students have taken such a blah (thanks Lady Ga Ga) attitude towards it. The article details that many students think if something does not have an author's name that it is fair game. Tebow weeps on that one. They also think they won't get caught. They must be lazy and stupid because there are hundreds of resources out there for people to use to see if something has been copied.

What does this all mean? Is originality dead? Do blogs count as orginality? Shake a Magic Eight Ball on each answer and get back to me.

One of the things that tends to irritate me about modern culture and the way the media represents it is the phrase "cult classic." This gets bandied about a lot by the media and the would-be media. It seems any cheesy movie ever done now has some kind of following. For example, Troll 2, which apparently is the subject of a documentary and enough conventions that the New York Times took notice. And I am loathe to admit it, the story on Troll 2 was the first thing I read this morning on the Times' homepage. So I am guilty as well.

Why does this happen? Have we become such a segmented society that anytime we find someone with a kindred spirit that we flock together immediately. When I was a reporter, I was always skeptical when someone told me their sport/event/ endeavor was growing or on the rebound. Was it really, or did it just seem that way because the Internet allows them to connect more easily?