"TOUCHING BASE -- President Obama checked out the jersey of Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball, during a tour of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on Thursday. Obama was highlighting the tourism industry during his visit to the museum (Boston Globe May 23 2014)."
Related: Obama Abandoned Veterans
He sent Shinseki up to pinch hit.
"States often take wrong turn in seeking winning tourism slogans" by Mark Niquette and Jennifer Oldham | Bloomberg News May 16, 2014
NEW YORK — Nebraska’s tourism commission paid for months of research. More than 3,500 corporate leaders, potential visitors, and residents were interviewed. Thursday, the marketing campaign debuts: ‘‘Visit Nebraska. Visit Nice.’’
Turns out that Nebraskans have a critical streak.
‘‘It sounds boring,’’ said Andrew Norman, executive director of Hear Nebraska, an Omaha nonprofit he founded with his wife to change perceptions of the state as a hokey bastion of corn and beef. ‘‘There is a hell of a lot more going on here.’’
States hunting for the next ‘‘Virginia is for Lovers’’ budgeted more than $350 million in fiscal 2012-13 for advertising and promotion, according to the US Travel Association. Yet without ‘‘Mad Men”-level talent and adequate resources or research, the money can go for naught, creating ads that fall flat or, worse, provide an occasion for mockery.
Washington pulled the plug on ‘‘SayWa’’ after only six months in 2006 when critics found it baffling. After more than two decades of ‘‘Georgia On My Mind,’’ the Peach State tried ‘‘Put Your Dreams in Motion.’’ That one died amid comparisons to Coca-Cola’s catastrophic change to its signature soft drink’s formula in 1985. Alaska used ‘‘B4UDIE’’ for a month in 2005. The ads looked like vanity license plates, but conjured a frigid demise straight out of Jack London.
‘‘It’s pretty hard to create bad tourism advertising, because everybody likes to dream about vacations,’’ said Michael Erdman of Longwoods International in Toronto, a research firm that surveys travelers and works with states.
Yet, for every successful tourism slogan, perhaps 20 fail, said Barbara Lippert, a columnist for Mediapost.com and former Adweek critic.
Many campaigns ‘‘are corny and backward,’’ Lippert said. ‘‘They just sort of go to that place where all bad ads end up, which is completely forgettable.’’
Your SCARCE TAX DOLLARS hard at WORK!
All that blandness is directed at a rich prize. Nationwide, tourism generated $887.9 billion in direct spending last year and $133.9 billion in revenue for governments, the US Travel Association said. In Nebraska, it is the third-largest income generator, bringing in $3.1 billion in 2012.
‘‘Visit Nice’’ has a dual meaning, said Angela White, a spokeswoman for the Nebraska Tourism Commission. It combines how people feel about the state with experiences at such events as the College World Series and Sandhill crane migration.
Tourism budgets in 2012 in neighboring Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota were all more than double Nebraska’s $5.2 million.
‘‘We have to find ways to be creative,’’ White said. The campaign will target Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota and include television and billboards.
Reaction has fallen short of delighted. Scores of comments on social media and the Omaha World-Herald’s website suggest the state missed the mark.
‘‘Grandmas are ‘Nice,’ a soft blanket is ‘Nice,’’ ’ wrote Andrea Norris on Facebook.
‘‘That’s not the word I would use to describe Nebraska.’’
Neither would I.
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"Neb. principal sorry for bullying flier" Associated Press April 18, 2014
LINCOLN, Neb. — A Nebraska school principal has apologized for sending fifth-grade students home with a flier that advises those who are bullied to not tattle on their tormentors.
Some parents of the fifth-graders at Zeman Elementary in Lincoln complained and posted angry comments on Facebook, the Lincoln Journal Star reported Thursday.
The principal, Donna Williams, apologized directly to the families on Wednesday for the wording of the flier, and the district posted the apology on its Facebook page.
‘‘The flier was sent home with good intentions,’’ Williams said. ‘‘Unfortunately, it contained advice that did not accurately reflect LPS best practices regarding response to bullying incidents.’’
District student services director Russ Uhing said the Lincoln Public Schools philosophy is: Ask the bully to stop. Walk away. If the bullying continues, tell a parent or teacher.
On the contrary, the flier advises that students should not tell on bullies because the number one reason ‘‘bullies hate their victims is because the victims tell on them.
‘‘Telling makes the bully want to retaliate,’’ the flier says. ‘‘Tell an adult only when a real injury or crime (theft of something valuable) has occurred. Would we keep our friends if we tattled on them?’’
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And it is not just Nebraska:
"Ohio ‘bully,’ 62, serves sentence on street corner" Associated Press April 14, 2014
SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio — A man accused of harassing a neighbor and her disabled children for the past 15 years sat at a street corner Sunday with a sign declaring he’s a bully, a requirement of his sentence.
Municipal Court Judge Gayle Williams-Byers ordered 62-year-old Edmond Aviv to display the sign for five hours Sunday.
The judge selected the wording for it: ‘‘I am a bully. I pick on children that are disabled, and I am intolerant of those that are different from myself. My actions do not reflect an appreciation for the diverse South Euclid community that I live in.’’
Aviv arrived at the corner with the sign just before 9 a.m. Within a couple of minutes, a passing motorist honked a car horn. Later in the morning, he was sitting in a chair holding the hand-lettered sign in front of him. A court probation officer monitored him.
Aviv mostly ignored honking horns and people who stopped by to talk with him. But he was not happy with the punishment, calling the sentence unfair. ‘‘The judge destroyed me,’’ he said. ‘‘This isn’t fair at all.’’
Court records show Aviv pleaded no contest in February to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Aviv has feuded with his neighbor Sandra Prugh for the past 15 years, court records show. The most recent case stemmed from Aviv’s being annoyed at the smell coming from Prugh’s dryer vent when she did laundry, according to court records. In retaliation, Aviv used a fan to blow the smell of kerosene onto Prugh’s property, the records said.
Prugh has two adult adopted children with developmental disabilities, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy; a husband with dementia; and a paralyzed son.
Prugh said in a letter to the court that Aviv had called her an ethnic slur while she was holding her adopted black children, spit on her several times, regularly threw dog feces on her son’s car windshield, and once smeared feces on a wheelchair ramp.
The judge also ordered Aviv to serve 15 days in jail and to undergo anger management classes. He also had to submit an apology letter to Prugh.
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"School bus driver accused of bullying" Associated Press April 24, 2014
OLYMPIA, Wash. — A school bus driver has been placed on leave while the Olympia School District investigates accusations that he bullied a developmentally disabled 14-year-old girl.
The Washington Middle School student had been complaining about verbal abuse for more than a year but the district didn’t act until it saw video from a surveillance camera, her mother said.
The district showed the mother video taken April 17 that shows the driver encouraging other special-needs students on the bus to call the girl names.
The girl has an assigned seat at the back of the bus, where the heaters are located. When she has asked the driver to turn the heat down, he instead turns the heat up, the mother said.
The school district is treating the complaint very seriously, a spokeswoman said.
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Also see: Patrick signs antibullying update into law
(Go back to top of this post to see the biggest bully of all) ]
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Robert Gates supports idea of gay Scout leaders
Ex-defense chief now Boy Scouts president
Also see: Opening the Gates of the 2016 Presidential Campaign
