Sportsnet muzzles Martinez and Tabler; and Ontario’s hybrid learning needs to be pushed back on
A radio-reliant Blue Jays fan of 35 years' standing needs to rely on Philadelphia Homers. Speaking of Canadian cheapness, Ontario is telling on itself with the Askhole move to "synchronous learning."
Take on the panopticon; the surveillance state is coming for Ontario schoolchildren
Remote learning and austerity do not mix.
The call-and-response will likely need some workshopping in order to be more chantable. Fewer syllables would be a start. But people need to fight Ontario’s government for the property developers and school boards are plotting with a shift to a “community learning model” in all grades come September. School boards, who have been conscripted into the war on public education since funding was wrested by the province in the Mike Harris years, are going to require teachers to split their attention between a classroom of children and children who are learning online from home. In, wait for it, all grades, all the way down to elementary school, where the children are younger and have more needs. There is also scuttlebutt that school boards under the thumb of education minister Stephen Lecce — the fellow who needs to ask his Twitter followers for moral clarity when Israel is indiscriminately going bombs-away at Palestinian children in Gaza during eid Muburak — have to do all this with zero certainty about 2021-22 funding. The word among teacher friends is that school boards are going to get half of the promised funds up front, with whatever the rest is to come later. How, again, are they to plan for hybrid learning?
Talk about an Askhole move.
Such Askholery With Bad Intent is part of the ongoing gutting of public education. The Ontario RepubliCon way is to use a crisis to clear space for disaster capitalism: privatize a social good and socialize the predictable poor outcomes. It has worked so well with elder care, eh. In education, it means that urban schools in Toronto with a more racialized student population have to make do with less. Rural schools, such as the ones I attended as a child, also get shafted as their enrollment declines.
Teachers in Ontario are burnt out from decades of decreased funding. All of this seems coldly calculated to push them over the edge so they leave the profession and are replaced by younger, inexperienced and cheaper teachers.
The bad intent is not just from politicians, let alone one party. The Ontario Liberals, who governed from 2003 to ’18, were notorious for finding education issues to campaign on and then not following up with additional funding. Based on what was trending on Twitter last week, it would come as no shock if they make a campaign pledge to re-institute Grade 13, even though the quality of education in kindergarten through Grade 12 is under siege.
The desire to “surveil teachers and their work” is also strong among principals, who seem to be adopting more of the management mentality than an educational one. Teachers have been right to resist being surveilled, and to wonder why this is more of a priority than, ohIdunno, having a working body camera on every single police officer, although that is another tangent. It cannot be allowed to happen.
One-size-fits-all online learning sounds like something intended to fail on purpose. If it is so great, then why do Silicon Valley richies pay handsomely to create a tech-free existence for their tiny humans? They must know something that Ontario’s political leadership is banking on people not learning until it is much too late.
As a Xennial and the son of a recently retired teacher, I am protective of Ontario’s education system. It was not perfect for an introverted, self-directed learner, but in the 1980s and ’90s there was a strong legacy from Conservative governments that meant someone in a rural area such as I could get a good education and move on to any university or community college they so desired.
The timing was such that I finished high school in 1996 before the Harris crew could take out their egghead envy on the secondary system. I was in university learning to see What Is while the fight was expanded to the post-secondary system. They actually think they are owning the Libs, but they are trashing their own party’s legacies.
And, hey, it is probably also an Askhole move for a 44-year-old singleton to ask people whose lives are filled with chasing after tiny humans to get mad about and start organizing. A society where everyone has the equality of opportunity to better themselves through learning creates social wealth. Why does it feel like this needs to be said louder for the people in the back?
Babbler and Tabler are under a gag order
So the two men Rogers pays to broadcast baseball are not allowed to (checks notes) talk to the media about broadcasting baseball. Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler are trusted on a live mic for 2½ hours of airtime during a telecast, but cannot speak to reporters before a bunch of suits have a meeting about the series of meetings that will need to be held before they brief Martinez and Tabler about staying on message about the ‘Babbler and Tabler Do TV On The Radio’ experiment.
The Toronto Blue Jays, as you know, are the sole MLB team without a dedicated radio broadcast, opting to simulcast the TV audio.
Sportsnet declined requests to make (Buck) Martinez and (Pat) Tabler available for interviews. The network said the earliest they might talk on the subject would be mid-season. (The Canadian Press, 14 May)
That put the ball right on a tee for shitposting purposes even more than Philadelphia rag-armer Chase Anderson did for the Blue Jays batters on Sunday. As someone who was an Old by age 10, I have relied more on the radio than TV to follow the Jays for 3½ decades. A dedicated radio stream would be a nice creature comfort while being commanded to stay home.
Science and public health supersede our precious sports, so the Blue Jays playing home games in Dunedin, Fla., and Buffalo is fine. Knowing how empty the Skydome seems with sparse early-season crowds nixes any desire to have the Blue Jays back with capped capacity inside a 49,282-seat stadium. Canada might get to herd immunity faster than popularly believed, so there is some faint hope they could play in Toronto in 2021.
Radio should be a more important link than it was during the Before Times. And MLB’s stoopid local blackout policy with MLB.tv means the app’s Canadian-based users who do not feel like hooking up a VPN can only access the radio stream of the Blue Jays and their current opponent. Their next opponent is the Boston Red Sox; good thing they (engage sarcasm font) do not have a big fanbase in Canada.
The inevitable response has been to listen to the opposing team’s radio stream. Some of the teams — Atlanta, Oakland and Houston — deserve a stick tap. They had more to say about the Blue Jays than “that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sure can hit,” and have worked in background details that I did not hear while watching nearly every Jays telecast during the 2020 pandemic season. There was a good chuckle during the recent Atlanta series when after it was related that the parents of Danny Jansen, the gossamer-hitting catcher, were host parents to minor leaguers in Wisconsin, including five-time all-star outfielder Adam Jones.
That only works as long as one knows they are not being fed homerish bullflop. Most Blue Jays fans are accustomed to that with Martinez and Tabler, whom Jesse Spector described in 2014 as “lack(ing) depth and (becoming) irritating over the course of three hours.” They are like a Tim Hortons in a small town that cannot keep an independent coffee shop.
The suspension of disbelief was shattered during Sunday’s Phillies-Blue Jays game by how Philadelphia commentators Scott Franzke and Kevin Frandsen, who were calling the game remotely, characterized a called third strike that ended the Phillies’ first at-bat.
Robbie Ray, part of Toronto manager Charlie Montoyo’s “Ryu, Ray, and three days of TBA” starting rotation, stranded three runners by striking out rookie catcher Rafael Marchan on an inside fastball.
Franzke, the PBP, and Frandsen, a former Phillies player, made it sound like home plate umpire Andy Fletcher had just covered one of Ángel Hernández’s greatest hits. Frandsen grunted that it was “unreal,” but Statcast showed the pitch nicked the top corner, high and tight.
After the commercial break, Frandsen doubled down. He averred that Ray “hasn’t proven that he can hit that spot.”
Ray’s control is ephemeral, but does that mean he must make the exact same pitch to the exact same spot at least twice in order for one strike to be called? Marchan is a 22-year-old with barely any MLB experience, he would not get as much benefit of the doubt on a close two-and-two pitch as either a veteran batter or Ray, the seven-year veteran pitcher throwing it.
Rookies know they have to swing at anything close with a two-strike count. Since Frandsen is someone who Played The Game, so he would know how that works.
As a fan, I will still keep listening to the opposing radio broadcasts, since those actually are radio broadcasts. Being snowed by bias is all part of a passive-aggressive protest, I guess.
But Rogers should know it is never too early to admit a mistake. It should restore the radio broadcasts by the all-star break in July. By then, Danny Jansen might even have his on-base percentage up in the .240s, and could be slugging in the .300s. He is at .193 / .247, which is only a combined 265 points below the MLB average.
Hey, it is all about selling hope.
Lastly, but not least of all
On one of his comedy specials, Bo Burnham has a bit about how the average person is conditioned to say “no comment” when the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the news. A no-comment cuts close to centrist-edgelord both-siding. Something more like the truth, as Shadi Hamid laid out at The Atlantic, is that, “If we want to prevent violence or terrorist activity from happening in the future, then we have to understand what motivates violence or terrorist activity.” Hamid points out the George W. Bush administration took that tack after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, before the whole starting a war without Congressional approval gambit proved more popular with 51 per cent of the electorate. But if Bush could take it when the United States was attacked, then surely President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could take it too.
One other ketchup answer (it goes on everything) worth sharing is that, no, antilockdown marchers are not on the same plane is Free Palestine demonstrators who gathered in several Canadian cities last weekend.
Boy, I sure hope that “Why is it okay for Palestinians to protest but it’s not okay for the anti-lockdown people to protest?” is the dumbest, most ignorant question I get asked today.These are very much the same people whose idea of being oppressed is “Somebody tried to make me feel bad for being white.” Which is probably a big part of why there’s a clear and established link between these marches and white supremacist groups. Suckers ripe for the picking.
Protesting is about making the powerful recognize others’ humanity in full. There is a mega-difference between what has been imposed on Palestinians for the last 73 years, and the temporary COVID19 restrictions. There needs to be an effort to understand what is driving vast numbers of people to ignore science, instead of just screaming, “COVIDiots!” Everyone deserves understanding but not necessarily sympathy: the antilockdown marchers should be viewed through the same lens as terrorism. Which is exactly what Nova Scotia did on Sunday, by the way.
Nova Scotia gets injunction to block all anti-mask protests AND makes it illegal to promote these rallies on social media
Some sports to finish off? There was a college football championship game last weekend. Sam Houston State won the Football Championship Subdivision national title, shading South Dakota State on a late touchdown. There were fans in the stands, so nature is healing.
That is more than enough for today. Please stay safe, and be kind.