IT HARDLY MATTERS Back to Main Index Browse the Archives	Wednesday, October 18, 2006 ( 03:02 PM ) If we ever happen to live in one of these wuss-bag communities where children's games are outlawed, you can bet I'll be dressing our kids up in football pads and helmets and using them for tackle practice in order to toughen them up. And what Celeste D'Elia doesn't realize is that these "near collisions" she's all worked up about are most likely helping her son learn to quickly and effectively get out of the way of other rampaging children. IT'S CALLED COORDINATION, LADY. USE IT OR LOSE IT. And besides, up until about 2nd grade, tag is the funnest game for a huge group of kids. That and flippin' dodgeball. I guess the answer to getting around the dodgeball ban would be: "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball." Dodgewrench. Awesome. Not it! Mass. elementary school bans tag Wed Oct 18, 10:00 AM ET ATTLEBORO, Mass. - Tag, you're out! Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable. Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban. While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous. Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports. "I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid." Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said. Sunday, October 15, 2006 ( 09:46 PM ) I have six articles to read for tomorrow night's class. But after the extraordinarily busy week I had, I still need a day or two to decompress (the weekend just didn't do it). Thursday, October 12, 2006 ( 11:15 PM ) So Chris Bell asked Kinky Friedman to drop out of the Texas gubernatorial race. Kinky's reply? "We don't negotiate with terrorists." AWESOME. How could anyone NOT want Kinky as governor?? ( 02:13 PM ) Okay, this is pretty funny. And I've also met Xavier Becerra before. I helped a friend who was working on his Los Angeles mayoral campaign a long time ago. He showed up at the volunteer thing I was at. He's a nice guy. Unfortunately, his appearance on the Colbert Report's Better Know a District wasn't too funny. "Tonight Show" Accused of Favoring the Governator By Natalie Finn Usually actors use a late-night talk show to announce that they're engaged, or that their wives are pregnant, or that they're really, really sorry for having been caught with that hooker. But sometimes, in Los Angeles anyway, actors use that stage to declare that they're running for governor. That's what Arnold Schwarzenegger did in 2003, announcing his candidacy during a Tonight Show with Jay Leno appearance. And, in preparation for the Nov. 7 election, he sat down for another chat with his old pal Jay on Wednesday night. (He's also appeared four other times since that fateful night three years ago.) Meanwhile, reps for Schwarzenegger's opponent, California State Treasurer Phil Angelides, said that they also tried to schedule an appearance for their guy but had not heard back from The Tonight Show as of Tuesday afternoon. In recent polls, Schwarzenegger is leading Angelides by a double-digit margin. In turn, a California congressman filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, accusing the NBC show of violating the equal time statute of the Federal Communications Act that requires electronic media outlets to grant the same amount of on-air time to rival political candidates. "Use of the public spectrum is granted as a public trust," U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, wrote to the FCC. "It is not to be used to favor certain candidates. Clearly, an appearance by a candidate on an entertainment program that reaches all of California's voters [not to mention all the Terminator fans] provides favorable treatment to that candidate." The Tonight Show sort of made amends for granting Schwarzenegger the platform on which to announce he was going to run during the 2003 recall election. Afterward, all 135 declared candidates, from porn star Mary Carey to Gary Coleman, were invited on camera and given 10 seconds to declare what they were all about. They all had to shout their ideas at the same time, but still. Becerra pointed out in his letter The Tonight Show's 2003 action, using it as an indicator that he's right about the equal protection provision. "The governor has spent $35 million in launching negative attack ads against Phil Angelides, and now NBC is just giving him further free time on national network TV to campaign," the candidate's spokesman, Brian Brokaw, told Reuters. NBC has said that Schwarzenegger's appearance tonight falls under an exemption to the equal time clause, because it would count as a bona fide news interview. "Consistent with The Tonight Show with Jay Leno's previous practice, NBC is following the news guidelines for interviewing a political candidate," Tonight Show spokeswoman Tracy St. Pierre said in a statement. "Under the news guidelines, the scheduled appearance of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Oct. 11 broadcast is not subject to the FCC's equal-time provisions." Meanwhile, the FCC told reporters that it doesn't comment on broadcasts before they air. In the past, however, the government agency has ruled that politicians' appearances on entertainment shows such as Politically Incorrect, Howard Stern's radio show and The Daily Show have qualified as newsy interviews and therefore were exceptions to the rule. "While NBC is claiming that the governor's appearance is technically a news segment, Schwarzenegger is sandwiched in between a supermodel and a Las Vegas circus act, which isn't exactly what we would see on Meet the Press," Brokaw said. That supermodel happens to be Heidi Klum, which reminds us--the season finale of Project Runway is on tonight, too.