And yes, it’s a bit silly.

Back in my old Home Theater/E-Gear days, I’d stop in my local version and play dumb with the video guys and ask questions to see how poorly and incorrectly they’d answer them.

My point wasn’t to be mean or just to have fun, but to gauge the kind of strange information being put out there to my readers and what mistakes and misconceptions we needed to make an extra effort to correct.

And yet, like most tech-loving people, I’ve spent my share of spare change at Best Buy.

But during the last couple of weeks, though, my wife and I have gone through a surreal experience with them.

And it all started with a dishwasher. We bought this moderately high-end KitchenAid unit, one of the sleek models with no controls on the front. It was great, right until we started it up. Water spewed from the front left side of the unit, turning our kitchen into a giant waterslide.

Okay, stuff happens. I’ve reviewed enough audio/video gear over the years to know that. So we called the service folks and they came right out. Turns out the unit was defective. Really defective, as in missing parts — evidently it was Bring Your Beers to Work day at the KitchenAid plant up in Canada. The service guy told us point blank not to fix it, but return it, as there was an entire batch of “bad” KitchenAid units out there.

So far, so good. We weren’t thrilled, but the guy gave us a form saying he recommended a return and exchange. My wife went back to the store and worked out an exchange, getting a similar LG dishwasher instead.

That’s where the fun begins.

You see, Best Buy has this installer group called “The Geek Squad.” Unlike the commercials where they show this smiling guy, professionally hooking up your flat-screen TV, a better description is a bunch of clowns, a few dozen, climbing one after another out of a tiny car. Then the last clown slams the car door closed, the car explodes and then proceeds to set fire to half the town. And then the lead clown looks at you and says “what?”

Anyhow, said Geek Squad was supposed to come and disconnect the KitchenAid, so it could be packed up in some “special” way for return to KitchenAid (maybe Best Buy was going pack in some Yuengling to improve the balance of trade) and then another crew was supposed to come with the LG, install it and be on their merry way.

Friday morning the installers come, but no Geek Squad. After explaining that they, installers, could not possibly uninstall the KitchenAid, they called the mother ship (some scheduling department in the midwest) and left. After much gnashing of teeth and chewing on the appliance department manager, the entire thing was rescheduled for the next day.

Guess what? You guessed it. Same, exact thing. Brilliant!

At this point, not slightly perturbed, we made arrangements for them to try one last time today, Wednesday. I postponed a magazine story interview I was supposed to do this morning and everything. Then, last night, we get a call postponing it until July 3. Uh, nope.

Three strikes and you’re out, Best Buy. They were supposed to find a way to retrieve it today or it was going to be gone — we’re not going to go indefinitely without a dishwasher because Best Buy can’t remove its collective head from its collective posterior. As of this writing, it looks like Best Buy is going to eat a dishwasher — and a two-week old KitchenAid is going off for recycling, on their dime.

We demanded — and got — our money back. Tonight, we’ll buy a dishwasher from HH Gregg and see how that works.

My son Kenny at the New Garden Air Show

One of the many perks of doing what I’m doing for a living is getting to share a little of it with my kids. Last week, I got to take my son Kenny to the New Garden Air Show, which is pretty close to heaven for a nine-year-old boy.

I think he had a pretty good day. I know I did.

You may notice a new look. This is the first entirely designed from the ground up Word Press template I’ve written, called, oddly Mcgann. I’m oddly proud of it, and plan to do more things like this in the coming months.

Although a lot of stuff is the same, writing about school budgeting and development issues and so on isn’t much different than the last time I did it back in the early 1990s, it’s interesting to see how technology has changed things. I guess I’m a little like the old-timers who used to regale me with stories about working with typewriters and how spoiled I was being able to use a computer back when I was a kid in the 1980s.

The two big changes: email and being able to look up virtually everything on the Internet. It is so much easier to get things done now, no missed phone calls, no endless phone tag. (Although even while carrying a phone all of the time, something totally different from the old days, I managed to play phone tag with a state rep for more than a week, recently. Ah, memories.).

Those are good changes. Maybe even excellent changes. And I forgot how much fun this all is and that it seems to make a difference to people. Almost all of the feedback has been good so far, and I hope people continue to reach out and make their thoughts known on what I write.

There are some bad ones, however. When did bloggers take over print journalism? I’m sitting in a public meeting the other night and a reporter from another newspaper stands up during the public part of the meeting and starts asking the governmental board questions — midmeeting. Let’s put aside the fact that the question was, to be kind, asinine, and it was. It was also wildly unprofessional.

That’s just wrong on so many levels, I can’t even begin to start explaining it. You’re covering a meeting, not participating in it. Observe, report and ask your questions after the fact. Worse, the reporter in question left before the actual news part of the meeting happened, so he didn’t bother to stick around (in fact, neither of the other reporters stayed for the last 90 minutes of the meeting, when all of the news happened). And it appears that the reporter wasn’t working on a daily deadline of any sort, so I don’t get the rush to leave or why he inserted himself into the meeting.

Maybe things have changed since my last time doing this, but the discomforted looks from the officials on the dais make me think not — even they seemed to realize it was a major breech of protocol and professionalism.

I get that kids don’t want to be reporters anymore. At least smart, talented ones. The money is lousy, most of the companies are run by idiots — or worse, like all the dailies in this area, bankers. (In case you’re wondering, the last 36 months have shown us that investment bankers are like idiots who have then suffered major brain trauma and then were tasered).

But I also know how many people my age have been run aground by this economy and other publishing idiots, say at magazines and Websites, who can be hired for a surprisingly cost-effective price (If I had the money right now, I’d start my own newsgathering operation and only hire pros in their late 30s and 40s who find themselves with limited options as writers thanks to the publishing debacle. And I’d kick some serious butt, thank you).

It’s just not that hard to find good people in this economy if you bother to try, it just seems like these papers don’t even try.

]]> http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?feed=rss2&p=408 0 http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?p=394 http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?p=394#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:45:04 +0000 Mike http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?p=394 In some ways it seems like it’s been about 20 minutes since Election Day and in others like 20 years.

I’ve spent the last few months working and thinking, trying to figure out what’s next, where I fit in and how I can make a difference. I hoped, maybe naively, that I could do something to make the world a better place in politics. I think that it’s been proven at this point, though, that’s not where my future lies.

So what, then?

In general, it’s time to go back to writing. I’ve been doing Web development and I’m not bad at it, but it’s not what I should be doing. I’ve spent more than 25 years as a professional writer, editor and reporter and it’s time to go back to doing what I best.

Which brings me to this morning. There I was, covering the Chester County Commissioners’ meeting for The Chester County Press — not that it was a news bonanza, a couple of proclamations and an announcement of some grants. Then they paid the bills, approved hiring some folks dished out a few raises for a handful of employees and that was pretty much it. Not much drama.

Except for my being there, of course, which caused no small amount of double takes. Interestingly, I had a gracious conversation with Clerk of Courts Frank McIlvaine — the guy I ran against just months ago — and it was friendly enough. Even Carol Aichele, the chair of the Board of Commissioners was friendly and welcomed my coming to cover the meeting. Of course, what they think privately is impossible to gauge.

We’ll see if things stay that way — and the onus will be on me to prove that I have the professionalism to be even-handed in covering local politics, especially with elections on tap later this year and in 2011. Rest assured, if my name is on the story, people will be getting my best, most even-handed work.

]]> http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?feed=rss2&p=394 0 http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?p=390 http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?p=390#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:26:21 +0000 Mike http://blog.mikemcgann.org/?p=390 Nothing longwinded or deep today. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported me and my running mates — especially those in the Chester County Democratic Party who worked so hard. We didn’t get the result we hoped for, but the fight goes on.

We will be back. I will be back. Count on it.

And expect to hear from me in the coming weeks, both in terms of politics and a new Chester County media outlet that I expect to have a role with.

President Barack Obama. Val DiGiorgio says the budget deficit and the bad economy is all his fault, as if Bush was never president.

It was a pleasant enough night at Tel Hei, up in Honey Brook. The audience was reasonably receptive in what was to be the final forum for county-wide candidates.

It was, though, at times a bit like falling through Alice’s looking glass. First, only Val DiGiorgio and Mimi Sack showed up for the GOP, while all five Democrats attended. Sack, of whom virtually no one has anything unpleasant to say was her usual polite, civil self.

DiGiorgio — clearly rattled by mailers sent out by his opponent, Jim Reilly, went on the attack, trying to defend the both his lack of fiscal training and experience as well as the county’s giant debt load. That was to be expected. But then DiGiorgio dropped this bombshell:

All of our current economic problems have been caused by President Obama and the Democrats. When he said that, I really began wondering whether it was Val who took a shot to the head Monday night instead of Brian Westbrook.

You can agree or disagree with the decisions Barack Obama has made since coming to the White House, certainly, but you have be either, A: a lying weasel, or B: an incompetent buffoon to suggest that the current economic situation is the fault of the current president. You can’t even blame him for most of the current deficit: when G.W. Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001, we had a budget surplus. SURPLUS. The first one in a generation. When he left office? That surplus turned into more than a trillion dollar deficit. By the end of this year, the final fiscal year planned and budgeted by the Bush Administration, the deficit is projected to jump to $1.4 trillion.

Just for those of you keeping score at home: the deficit jumped about $200 million a year the last three years of the Bush Administration. And yet, according to DiGiorgio’s math, this crazy spending is all Obama’s fault.

DiGiorgio’s comments are a lot like someone complaining about someone else forgetting to use a drink coaster, just after driving a tank through your living room.

And this is the guy that you want watching the finances of Chester County? Either his math skills are so poor that he wouldn’t pass the fifth grade competency tests or he’s such a partisan that he blithely ignores the facts.

Either way, it’s kind of embarrassing. Can’t we do better?

* * *

Frank McElwaine’s decision not to show up at Tel Hei continues his “Let ‘em eat cake” campaign of ignoring the voters’ desire to know more about him. No Website. No real claim to be able manage the office, other than sitting behind a desk for 34 years working with Big Oil. And he just doesn’t show up at the final forum of the campaign season.

“I can’t believe he didn’t bother to show up,” one Tel Hei resident said to me afterward. “Doesn’t he care what we think? Or does he think we just have to vote for him just because he’s a Republican? Well, I can tell you, I’m not. And a lot of people here aren’t either. Maybe that will get their attention.”

Words are nice, but they really don’t mean much of anything. Actions are what count and McElwaine’s actions have indicated he’ll be little more than a disconnected, no-show if elected. And don’t get me started on his tight relationship with Chester County ACTION — you know, the folks who claim Waterboarding is just “good clean fun” and want to teach creationism in the schools.

Can’t we do better?

You may not know that Election Day is one week away and it is understandable. It’s not like there’s been a lot of coverage in the media; more on that later. But these are tough times and frankly, an election might be the last thing crossing people’s minds right now.

Recently, I saw a government estimate that roughly 21 percent of working age people are either unemployed or working just part time while wanting a full-time job. That’s one in five people in our country. And with Pennsylvania lagging the rest of the country in terms of economic recovery, that number could be worse here.

So, it would be understandable if people were more interested in watching Dancing With the Stars — not to mention the upcoming World Series and the Phillies — than reading the news. Everyone deserves a break from what has seemed like little more than bad news bracketed by the endless bickering between the political parties, more driven by scoring political points than solving problems.

But I remain shocked at the number of people who don’t seem to know we have an election on Nov. 3. Many are better informed of the New Jersey gubernatorial race than of the elections in their own county, school district and township or borough. It’s not a new problem: voting has been declining in these off-year elections for decades.

That means a very few people, those who vote in these off-year elections, get to decide virtually everything about your local real estate tax bill. They get to decide how your children will be educated, how or if your street will be paved and whether open space will be protected. Don’t you think you should be part of that process? Don’t you think your opinion matters?

And, no, you can’t really defend not voting by suggesting that “they’re all the same” and it doesn’t make a difference. Both on the county-wide level and in many school board races, there are stark differences and your vote could well be the deciding one in which path our county and our school take in the coming years. Not to mention that the State Supreme Court balance will be decided by this election, the court is currently split 3-3 and the winner will tip the scales toward one party or another.

Even without local media coverage, the Internet offers a lot of options to find out about each of us running for office. Most of the candidates for office have sites and you can hear directly from them, without a filter, what they stand for and why they should be elected. Except for my opponent, Frank McIlwaine, who chose not to have a Web site. And that choice, in and of itself, speaks volumes about the startling differences between us.

In just a few minutes, in front of the computer you’re reading this on, you can fully educate yourself on the issues and make intelligent, informed decisions on Election Day. And keep this in mind: your vote will have roughly 1000 times the impact this year that your vote had in the national election last year. A tiny handful of votes could well make the difference.

Be part of the solution. Vote.

* * *

You probably didn’t hear about the League of Women Voters forum for the County Row offices on Oct 18 in the County Library in Exton. There wasn’t a ton of publicity for the event and the local daily newspaper, the increasingly ironically named Daily Local News chose not to cover it.

As an old newspaperman I’m more saddened by this than angry. Local politics used to be the heart of local coverage, until focus groups claimed people didn’t want to read about politics in the paper. So the powers that be, mostly former ad salesmen turned publishers, worked methodically to cut the amount of political coverage in your local paper. Which, by the way, is about the same time the political landscape began to turn toxic — although 24/7 cable TV news played a part in that as well.

Interestingly, readership has dropped like a rock. The funny thing about focus groups is this: people lie. A lot. Smart newspaper editors know what people read by what they get phone calls, letters and now, e-mails and story comments online, about. Even in the DLN, when they did cover the Downingtown Mayoral Debate earlier this month, the comments on the Web version of the story were just about the highest number in recent memory — this just from one town of about 4,000 registered voters.

At its heart, news is conflict. Man versus nature. Man versus car/bus/animal. Man versus man, which is split between crime stories and politics. And politics is full of conflict and human drama — you have winners and losers and many great opportunities for story telling. You temper that mix with a lot of local sports and human interest stories and you have a good product and a steady source of readers and advertisers. And you have to tailor that mix to your local readership — every local paper reflects its region and flavor.

But greed and a lack of vision have derailed thousands of papers like the DLN and they are quite literally dying, and were before the Internet came along. That’s sad both because its bad for our democracy and because I’ll always have a special passion for newspapering.

Something will emerge, a combination of local broadcasting and the Web, to replace this current hole in local news coverage, and we will be better for it. But it is scary to think in this time of unlimited information, that we might have the least well-informed populace in generations.

I’m told another news option will be coming soon, so I hope that competition forces the allegedly local papers to get on the ball and start covering the news again.

I was delighted to spend a half hour on the air with Mike Pincus of WCHE the other day — as will be the case with my running mates Kipp Stone and Jim Reilly over the next couple of Wednesdays. The Republicans? Suddenly, they have scheduling conflicts.

Scheduling conflicts? Why not claim that they had to wash their hair? I mean, come on. While there’s been some suggestion that the Chester County GOP is mad because some at WCHE have been critical of Chester County’s own would-be Lt. Governor, Carol Aichele. I’m skeptical myself.

I think it has a lot more to do with the same reason my opponent doesn’t have his own Web site: the GOP apparently thinks the less you know about him — or any of their candidates — the more likely you’ll be to vote for them. That’s along the same lines as the sudden disappearance of the Chester County ACTION Website — only for it to be replaced by a sanitized, less scary version (thanks to Wayback Machine, however, the original scary content is saved for all to see ).

As a candidate for office, there’s an obligation to the people to share your thoughts and explain why you’re the most qualified for the job. It’s a job interview, done over and over again, sometimes one person at a time, and others, through the media, in front of a larger audience.

Unfortunately, this new breed of GOP candidate — as well as the party leadership –seems to see this as a coronation and believes that they have no responsibility to the voters, who might as well be told to “let them eat cake.”

That’s starkly different from what the four of us running on the Democratic slate believe.

We fundamentally believe in as much transparency and sunshine as possible — both in our campaigns and in running county government. We are fighting for a return of county government of the people, for the people, by the people, and they’re fighting to keep it in the hands of a few wealthy, powerful special interests who profit from decisions that cost you and me — taxpayers — millions of dollars a year.

We understand accountability — we’ve all run businesses. In my case, I literally had hundreds of thousands of readers to answer to, not to mention advertisers and retailers. I had to balance the needs of all — and look to the long-term in making decisions, not just running for the quick buck, or always caving in to what the easy — but wrong — choice might be.

They don’t.

Thankfully, we have a chance to do something about it on Nov. 3.

* * *

So the National Rifle Association calls me up the other day. It seems they want to tell me about how the United Nations and Hillary Clinton want to take my handgun away.

A nearly screaming, mostly ranting recording of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre (although I could swear that he’s identified as the organization’s president) plays for a couple of minutes before a live operator comes back on the line to ask me my opinion.

I, of course, have looked up the issue on the Internet and found it to be completely fake. So, mostly, I just laugh at the person and suggest, maybe, just maybe, that there really could be better things to do with their time and money.

Hey, don’t get me wrong: the NRA has every right to advocate for gun rights. I think we need to look, honestly and fairly at the balance between Second Amendment rights and the dozens of people shot monthly in cities like Philadelphia.

On the off chance that this entire thing is fake — that some left-wing organization is pulling an Abbie Hoffman and making these calls to make the NRA look bad, I want to make clear that there are some smart, sober groups on the right, who many times make valid points when we to the left of center overreach. The back and forth of two-party government is a healthy adversarial relationship and it’s crucial to good government.

But…we’re not really seeing a lot of that of late. What we’re seeing of late are things like Sarah Palin’s Death Panels, and the pathetic gibberish of Glenn Beck. A lot of shrill, loud lies, like this UN/Hillary Clinton fiction from the NRA. The lunatic right-wing fringe seems to have taken over, and an awful lot of us, left and right, Democrats and Republicans, are pretty concerned.

I wish, for one second, that the people spouting these lies believed in them. But they don’t — it’s a cynical manipulation of voters, intended to make you angry. Like it or not, these NRA calls are basically a campaign to make people mad so they’ll come out and vote against people like me, if only because I happen to be in the same political party as Hillary Clinton. Since they can’t make the case on the merits of the facts, they have to trump up some emotional, fictional case.

Folks, it’s an insult. They must really think you’re pretty gullible and they must be scared to be trying something like this. They must know that eventually, the truth will come out, it always does, and you folks will be pretty angry. But I guess, like their big-money contributors who caused the current financial crisis, they seem to be only worried about short-term success and not really about the consequences over the long haul.

You deserve better and you should demand it.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. 1932-2009.

“The dream shall never die.” But the man behind the dream passed away today after a valiant battle against cancer, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy.

For my entire life, “Ted” Kennedy was the senator from Massachusetts and a true lion of the senate and for many of us called to public service, both an example and an inspiration. As the icon of a legendary and tragic Irish-American family, Kennedy fascinated me from an early age.

His death this morning, although expected for some time now, hit me hard and in a deeply personal way.

Make no mistake, Kennedy was a flawed man — although few of us could live through what he lived through without losing touch with reality — it is his public life that we celebrate today.

When someone asks any of us why we are Democrats, invariably, it is because of the issues that Kennedy often spotlighted and championed — including more than 30 years of fighting for affordable and universal health care coverage for Americans. He fought for those who had little voice and little power, the average person struggling to get by. In the end, he fought for us.

He fought for voting rights — something still under attack here in Chester County, as we saw in Lower Oxford Township in 2008 — he fought for civil rights, workers rights. education reform and immigration reform and issue after issue that matter to all of us and he strove tirelessly to improve the lives of average people.

How do we honor that legacy?

We must collectively pick up the torch and make our tributes to Ted Kennedy not in words, but deeds. We must pick up the fight and keep our sights on those issues that Kennedy championed so valiantly for so long. We must redouble our efforts for health care, for quality education, for jobs and opportunity for all, not just a few.

Although, Sen. Kennedy suggested that the torch had been passed to a new generation with the election of President Barack Obama, with his loss, we must all assume that mantle and show his courage, his conviction and his will to fight for the things that matter. Each of us must strive to make a tiny fraction of the impact Kennedy made, so that collectively we are able to continue the good fight.

This can be the end of an era, or the beginning of a new and better one — but that depends on all of us, whether we will carry on the fight, or allow a glorious legacy to fade to black.

That is the choice, my friends, the choice we all have to make. We have a chance to renew ourselves, renew our country with a new sense of purpose and meaning and focus our efforts to help those who need our help most.

I end here with Kennedy’s famous words at a time of painful defeat, after losing the presidential nomination to President Jimmy Carter in 1980, words filled with both pain and hope. We must share Kennedy’s determination and keep his dream — our dream — alive:

“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”