Thumbs up, down
Bum steers, Star Wars politics and forget the Super Bowl in this week’s thumbs.
Forget the Super Bowl. The football showdown of the week was Seth Payne vs. Josh Innes, two Houston sports radio rivals who got into a shouting match Wednesday morning at Super Bowl’s Radio Row inside Minnesota’s Mall of America. The Chronicle’s John McClain, who was a guest on Payne’s show, put his thumbs to the phone and livetweeted it: “I’m doing my regular Wed morning gig on @SportsRadio610 and @Seth Payne is in a screaming match on air with Josh Innes from rival 790. They’re on air calling each other names and other stations taping. Like rasslin”
At least nobody got a concussion.
Well it looks like the Bum Steer-er has become the Bum Steer-ee. The new editor-inchief of Texas Monthly magazine Tim Taliaferro kicked off his tenure by stepping right in the middle of a journalistic ethics cowpie.
To quote the Columbia Journalism Review: “In an editorial meeting on January 17, staffers at the Austin-based magazine sat in ‘stunned silence’ when Taliaferro, who arrived at the magazine last winter, seemed to suggest that the magazine had entered into a partnership with Bumble, the popular woman-centric dating app.”
Bumble founder, 28-year-old Texan Whitney Wolfe Herd, gets a cover story on Texas Monthly, and the magazine gets free social media promotion from Bumble.
Swipe left on that idea. Journalism isn’t for sale.
We’ve heard of “Return of the Jedi,” but this is ridiculous. In December, Luke Skywalker himself — Mark Hamill — got in a Twitter fight with Texas’ own Ted Cruz about net neutrality. Now the “Star Wars” star is tweeting his support for Dr. Jason Westin, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 7th Congressional District in west Houston. The winner of that race will face off in November against John Culberson, whose interests are more International Space Station than Death Star. If you’re going to get involved in Houston politics, Mark Hamill, at least promise to show up at Comicpalooza 2018 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in May. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear whom Chewbacca endorses. Is “GGWWWRGHH” running for a state or a federal seat?
While Trump fans were chanting U-S-A, Rockets fans were chanting M-V-P Tuesday evening — as the political world was glued to the State of the Union address — James Harden led the Rockets to a victory over the Orlando Magic with the first ever 60-point triple-double in NBA history.
Few neighborhoods have been hit worse by Hurricane Harvey (and the Tax Day and Memorial Day floods) than Meyerland. But historians have successfully rescued and preserved historical records from Houston’s Jewish community that has long called Meyerland home. The new archive at the Woodson Research Center in Rice University’s Fondren Library includes photographs, cookbooks and even a rare World War II-era silk “service flag” that lists synagogue members who were in the military during the war. As you may have read on these pages before, the measure of a city today isn’t merely what it can build, but what it can preserve.