The end (of 2011) is near, the end is (almost) here. Here are some stories to get you through the last few days of 2011, along with a couple of “best of” links.
- Tulsa World sports columnist Dave Sittler fumbled yesterday after he attempted to engage Oklahoma State University’s defensive coordinator Bill Young in an off-the-record conversation following the Fiesta Bowl press conference. Problem is, Sittler didn’t realize he was being recorded when he called former University of Oklahoma head coach John Blake a “slapdick” who was only hired “because he was black.” Luckily for OSU, Young didn’t take the bait, saying simply, “There’s a lot of things out there that’s frustrating, but boy, I’ve been so fortunate to just get what I’ve got.” Deadspin posted the story yesterday, and then it was picked up by Ology.com, the Crimson and Cream Machine, and others. No acknowledgement yet from the Tulsa World (although readers have had plenty to say in the comments sections of Sittler’s most recent columns).
- The Oklahoman published a well-written narrative by Mike Boettcher about his time as an embedded reporter with Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry Brigade in Afghanistan. After coming near death with the 101st Airborne just months earlier—“I was caught in the open with little cover from incoming Taliban rounds,” he wrote. “Video I shot that day would later show a bullet, heading straight for my camera, deflected at the last millisecond by a piece of wood.”— Boettcher was ready to return home for good. But he felt a responsibility to tell the stories of war. “Oklahomans noted the (45th Infantry Brigade’s) heavy losses with alarm, but there were no reporters embedded with the Thunderbirds to tell their story. I plotted to go back.” He managed to stay out of the line of fire the second time around, but it didn’t necessarily make the job easier.
- The Oklahoma Policy Institute revealed this week that, “While most states have done a good job maintaining and ensuring the availability of health insurance for kids, Oklahoma has taken an enormous step backwards by changing state law to restrict coverage for newborns and babies.” Because the Affordable Health Care Act requires insurers to provide coverage to children regardless of pre-existing conditions, many insurers pulled out of the child-only market—plans bought by parents for their children because their insurance doesn’t cover dependents. OK Policy wrote: “How did Oklahoma respond? Our Insurance Department made a downright Faustian bargain with insurers: In exchange for re-entering the child-only individual health insurance market, state regulators agreed to exclude babies up to 1 year old from coverage altogether. The state permitted babies to be uninsurable in the child-only market in Oklahoma by law. According to the Insurance Department, this is what insurance companies said they needed to reenter that market… Insurers in Oklahoma made about $25 million in after-tax profit last year in the individual market alone – which doesn’t even include profits from the large group market, where most Oklahomans get their health insurance. Why the Insurance Department chose to accept such a radical demand from the industry is the real mystery.”
- StateImpact Oklahoma reported that a dental program servicing low-income and uninsured families is struggling in light of budget cuts. “When the budget crisis hit in 2010, the State Health Department was hit hard. Funding for several programs, including Dentists for the Disabled and Elderly in Need of Treatment, was totally eliminated,” Logan Layden reported. D-Dent continues its mission, however, and “ironically… still receives its most referrals from the State Health Department.”
- Norman-based BRONCHO got some love from NPR Music today. “Try Me Out Sometime” (which just happens to be the theme song to This Land’s documentary series “Public Secrets”) was named one of five “tremendous” garage-rock songs of the year. Becky Sullivan wrote: “Perhaps the best debut album of 2011 came by way of BRONCHO, a garage-punk quartet from Norman, Okla. Frontman Ryan Lindsey is better known as the keyboardist for the Starlight Mints, but this side project has been touring the Midwest since early 2010. Can’t Get Past the Lips hit stores this August, and ‘Try Me Out Sometime’ was an instant standout. It’s not a complex song, by any means, and the simplicity is fantastic because the execution is so strong. Three chords are plenty enough backdrop for Lindsey to yelp out the hooks.” Sullivan also recommended readers check out the band’s “excellent music video,” which you can watch below.
- We were excited to hear about Woody Guthrie’s archive coming to Tulsa, but there was even more Woody-related news to get excited about this week. Orange County’s OC Weekly reported that filmmakers have finished a short flick based on Guthrie’s song “1913 Massacre.” The song describes a Christmas Eve tragedy involving striking copper miners in Calumet, Michigan: 73 people died in a stampede to the stairway when someone (whose identity remains a mystery to this day) shouted “Fire!” Sixty-two of those who died were children. “The documentary 1913 Massacre follows Woody Guthrie’s son, Arlo Guthrie, himself a folk singer, through the town of Calumet,” Gabriel San Roman blogged. “Bringing the tragic history to the present day, the film presents the last living witnesses of that night at Italian Hall in an effort to reconstruct the painful chapter of the still divided town. 1913 Massacre also explores the question as to why the landmark building central to an important episode in the centuries long struggle between labor and capital was torn down in 1984.” A release date for the film has yet to be determined, but San Roman speculates, based on the 2012 centennial anniversary of Guthrie’s birth and the 2013 anniversary of the event, it will come quickly. Watch the film’s trailer below.
1913 Massacre Trailer from Louis V. Galdieri on Vimeo.
- If you’re in need of a laugh—or maybe something to help jog your memory as you look back on the year—The Lost Ogle has been counting down to the end of 2011 by rehashing the year’s top stories published on its blog. For more weird news, read this Associated Press story about Oklahoma’s offbeat, animal-related stories from 2011.
—Holly Wall, News Editor
