“Facebook investors bought into the hype”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, May 19, 2012

How do you “like” that?

After all the breathless frenzy over the Facebook IPO, the most-anticipated new tech stock since the last most-anticipated new tech stock hardly went anywhere. With a final-hour beat-down of instant buyer’s remorse, shares closed less than 1 percent above the $38 initial-public-offering price.

With Facebook friends like these, who needs a well-connected broker anymore? Just leave your money under the Posturepedic or in a Starbucks cup.

Even Wall Street optimists were chagrined. You know the optimists I mean. The ones who believed a Web “community” could really be worth $104 billion. The ones who were predicting a first-day moon launch to $54.

This is what happens at times like these. When things are tough all over — as lately they have been — people believe in fairy tales. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had an irresistible one.

Nerdy Harvard boy makes a Web platform in his dorm room. The platform attracts users around the world. Revenue projections are whatever you want them to be. Continued growth can’t be gauged. But the site sure is big and famous, and everything else feels like slow and grinding work.

With the markets already battered on big opening day, look who did well and who did not.

Facebook’s techy cousins were mostly stuck in the mud: LinkedIn down 5.7 percent, Groupon down 6.7 percent, Zynga down 13.4 percent.

The few advancers? Companies that make and sell, you know, actual things.

Foot Locker, up 8.3 percent. Winnebago, up 1.8 percent.

Forget logging on to the Internet this beautiful but dicey weekend. Run to your motor home and lock the door right now.

I.P.O.

1. Initial Public Oops

2. I Plead Opportunist

3. I’m Pooped Out

4. It’s Possibly Offensive

5. It’s Profoundly Overpriced

THE NEWS IN SONG

Donna Summer

“She Works Hard for the Money”

tinyurl.com/ipoless

ASKED AND UNANSWERED:

Can’t we all just agree: It’ll be news when LI kids DON’T win at the Intel science fair?… What’s the cheap-chic Mystique in Manhasset? Wait, did I just use cheap and Manhasset in the same sentence? Now that’s a Miracle Mile!…Stinky message: Is NIFA trying to tell Ed Mangano that private Morgan Stanley sewers aren’t such a great deal after all?…How much longer will the LIRR be accepting paper tickets? The smartphone-payment talk on the Port Wash line suggests, “Not too much longer.”…If the noose in the Hempstead police locker room was just a harmless prank, why did the HPD just settle with former assistant chief Willie Dixon for $545,000?…Those World War II re-enactors camped near Old Bethpage Restoration Village, are they really spending the whole weekend without Internet access? How will they settle their historical-authenticity debates?…A slice of Oxycontin with extra cheese? Were painkillers an off-menu special at Miceli Brothers Pizzeria?…Who needs a high-school diploma? Syosset senior-class president Josh Lafazan swept to a seat on the Board of Ed…Did liability jitters really keep life-saving defibrillators out of Memorial Park in Kings Park? Or was it a just a passing flutter of exaggerated concern?

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

KEVIN J. CONWAY

It wasn’t like Kevin Conway had extra time to burn. A busy Wall Street investment partner, he had work and family plus charities in the city and on Long Island. He certainly could have ducked the SSP. “But every year, I’d go to the annual dinner,” he said. “Two or three students would speak. And before I hit the sidewalk, it was ‘Sign me up again.’ ” The Student Sponsor Partners (www.sspnyc.org) send at-risk kids to private school, committing the tuition money and one-on-one time to keep them there and guide them through. It’s a role model for a kid in need, a new educational environment and someone checking in. Fifty-two hundred kids, who compete to get in, have gone through the program already. “It’s the best bang for the buck you can imagine,” Conway said. “Direct and personal, clear and provable results. The graduation rates and the turnaround stories will literally make you cry.”

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“A tumultuous week for marriage”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, May 13, 2012

If you don’t like it, it’s “homosexual marriage.” If you do, it’s “marriage equality.”

As in the battle between “right to life” and “pro-choice,” you tell me which words you use. Then I’ll tell you which side you’re on.

What a difference a week can make!

Little more than a week ago, same-sex marriage, to use a down-the-middle term, was puttering along as a second-tier issue this political year.

Gay activists and Christian evangelicals seemed interested. North Carolina had a constitutional vote coming up. But as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney found fresh new ways to pound each other every morning, boy-boy and girl-girl weddings were off to the side somewhere.

Then, bang-bang-bang-bang. Romney’s gay foreign-policy spokesman was bum-rushed off the campaign. Joe Biden told “Meet the Press” he’s “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage. North Carolinians inserted a ban on the practice in their state constitution. And Obama, who’d been gradually “evolving” in the legalize-it direction, finally declared himself an official gay-marriage Darwinian.

“Same-sex couples should be able to get married,” he declared.

The change didn’t come quickly. The shift is far from complete. As North Carolina showed, strong personal opposition still lingers out there.

But the issue is suddenly front and center of the presidential campaign. Romney, also battling a prep-school gay-bullying claim, is the one trying to change the topic now. Political and religious leaders seem increasingly open to the basic idea. And the national polls all say the strongest momentum is heading same-sex marriage’s way.

Busy week.

AISLE SAY

1. Here come the brides

2. Well-groomed

3. Wedding belles

4. His-and-his

5. Something old, something very new

THE NEWS IN SONG

Passion’s our only crime.

“Legalize Our Love”

Timbuk 3

tinyurl.com/loveslegal

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

If not for a $4.5 million in state tax credits and 16-year Nassau County property-tax break, would Celestial Seasonings honcho Irwin Simon really have abandoned LI for New Jersey or Colorado? Now we’ll never know…If she’d realized all the hard feelings her gift would generate, would Marion Carll have even deeded her historic farm to the Commack School District? Or would she have just sold the nine-acre 1701 spread to some real-estate developer back in 1969?…Clogging all the drains, trashing a $30,000 piano, blasting the family dog with a fire extinguisher: Did burglars choose the Seebergers’ East Setauket house at random – or because the dad’s a pastor who often works with troubled teens?…Rusty Torres? Ew!…Should Half Hollow Hills School District force their highest performers to pass an $87 AP exam before “AP” goes on their high-school transcripts, regardless of how well they did in the advanced-placement course? That’s the pricey question for some college-bound seniors… Loser! Opportunist! Will the NY-1 congressional race be LI’s ugliest? Randy Altschuler and George Demos, hoping to unseat Tim Bishop, are getting a good, mean start…Some realtors are smiling at May’s 16-percent hike in LI home sales over May 2011. But isn’t this number just as meaningful? The 4.8-percent drop in homes on the market, from 22,827 to 21,741?…Wanna hear a rumor about the LI serial-killer case? Sorry. Never mind. The Suffolk DA said, “Don’t pass it along.”

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

BUTCH YAMALI

Moms shouldn’t have to work on Mother’s Day. But often, they do — in hospitals, restaurants, police and fire departments and other seven-day job sites. Caterer Butch Yamali, carrying on a tradition from his dad’s Queens deli, is serving a free lunch at noon on Monday to all moms who had to work on their special day. No reservations needed, Mom. Just show up hungry at Yamali’s Coral House, 70 Milburn Ave. in Baldwin. “I understand,” he said. “Some moms have to work even on holidays. But they shouldn’t have to go unrecognized.”

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“GOP rivalries hardly forgotten”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, May 6, 2012

Should we pretend to like people we don’t?

They’re coming around very slowly this bitter campaign year.

There on Friday were Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, locked in a room together for an hour and a half — no cameras, no aides, not a whiff of actual affection in the air. This is what passes in politics for “quality time.”

The two of them certainly seemed to be trying. But the disdainful quotes from the primaries were piled up outside, waiting to be snipped into Democratic attack ads.

“If Mitt Romney’s an economic heavyweight, we’re in trouble,” said a zinger from March, picked more or less at random. On his way to the expected Republican nomination, Mitt said plenty back at Rick.

And when the two ex-combatants said their goodbyes, they didn’t even linger for a grip-and-grin photo shoot. Any endorsement that is coming — and one eventually will — wasn’t coming yet.

Michele Bachmann swallowed hard on Thursday, throwing her tea party support behind her former rival. The former governor of Massachusetts, the Minnesota congresswoman said, is “the only option” against Barack Obama.

Newt Gingrich remains the slowest to hug his former nemesis. He suspended his campaign last week but is sounding nowhere near ready to let the bygones be. The best he could manage was this to Wolf Blitzer: “This is a comparative business . . . Our choice isn’t Mitt Romney or Ronald Reagan.”

With friends like these, who needs former rivals?

FRIENDS OR FAKERS

1. Cops and firefighters

2. Hillary and Barack

3. Army and Navy

4. Mangano and Bellone

5. The girls on “Girls,” the women on “The View”

THE NEWS IN SONG

I’d kinda like to be the president:

“Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

Smash Mouth

tinyurl.com/befrenz

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Does anyone in East Hampton still think all those deer are cute? Traffic deaths, Lyme disease, garden maulings – Councilman Dominick Stanzione has now declared a “deer emergency”…Prefer the weather THIS weekend?…What’s more segregated, LI housing or LI schools? Professor Douglas Ready of Columbia University Teachers College says (via the LI Index)  the two are inexorably intertwined…MS-13, 18^th Street Gang – do all LI street gangs now have to have numbers in their names? Pagans, please come home!…How many “disabled” LIRR retirees weren’t faking it? The list allegedly grows shorter again…What’s Christopher Cruz’s defense? “The disabled man deserved to be beaten with his own cane in the McDonald’s parking lot?”…The $227,000-a-year question for Philip D’Angelo, just hired from the Skaneateles Central School District near Syracuse to be superintendant of the Wantagh Union Free School District: Compared to Skaneateles, isn’t Wantagh a real breeze to spell?…How cool was this? Two New York Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with 660-gallon “Bambi buckets,” scooping water from Sarnoff Preserve Lake on Thursday morning, then dumping it back in? Brush-fire training – for next time…Chuck Schumer asked a reasonable question at LISTnet’s LI Software Awards: How come we get so many science grants but produce so few science jobs? Answer that, you’ll win a prize — though probably not a job.

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

THE FIRE PROBERS

In all, seven separate governmental entities — local, state and federal — are investigating the 1,100-acre brush fire that left such a scar on Manorville: The Suffolk County police, the state Forest Rangers, the fire marshals of Riverhead and Brookhaven, the Ridge and Manorville fire departments and the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Forest Rangers, who are part of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, have now termed the blaze arson, though they aren’t quite saying what they mean by that and not all the other agencies seem yet to have signed on. Multiagency probes often disintegrate into political turf battles. This one hasn’t yet. But it’s a huge case and a vital one. Here’s hoping they all keep playing nicely — and that we get some solid answers soon.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Time for another giant leap into space”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 29, 2012

Let’s go somewhere fun.

How does Mars sound? Or Pluto? I don’t care, anywhere that’s far, different and feels like somewhere once we get there. For a good long while now, NASA has been having trouble getting the trip-planning formula quite right.

It’s been almost 43 years since Apollo 11 landed on the moon. And where has NASA been flying lately? Oh, right. I almost forgot. On commuter runs to the International Space Station, where the astronauts would do a few experiments, perform some maintenance chores, wave goodbye and head quietly home. Not too many giant leaps for mankind. No rocky souvenirs at all.

Clearly, there’s still a huge public appetite for space travel. You saw the throngs on Friday, staring skyward as the Space Shuttle Enterprise buzzed low across New York on one of the great piggyback rides of all time. The future museum attraction even looped above the Roosevelt Field Mall, a flying hat tip to the former airfield where Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927.

The Enterprise was just a practice craft. It never achieved a day of orbit. And yet, associated as it is with a once-glorious space program, it still hinted at all the high-flying possibilities Up There.

Surely, we can do better than an orbiting confab of Russians and Chinese.

Venus, anyone?

SPACE PACE

1. 10, 9, 8, et cetera

2. One small step, then another small step

3. Armstrong, Aldrin and some other guy

4. Up, up and maybe it went that way

5. It’s a bird, it’s a plane — it’s a 747 carrying a retired space shuttle to a tourist aircraft carrier on the west side of Manhattan

THE NEWS IN SONG

“Why Go Up There?”

Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans

tinyurl.com/spacedate

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Have you been called at home by “the Water Department,” threatening a non-payment shut-off? Don’t pay! It’s a scam, says Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss…Worst acronym ever? Can you beat TVASNAC, the Town-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee repping residents around (just three letters) JFK?…After May 22, will Smithtown Central School District be proud – or chagrinned – to install breathalyzers in school?…Real dentists have enough trouble getting patients to make their appointments. How did alleged fake dentist Manuel Carranza do it at his New Cassel home?…Does the expanding Walt Whitman mall, with Henri Bendel and Swarovksi on the way, really need that $3-million Suffolk County tax break?…How much agape are Nick Cosmo’s out-of-luck investors feeling these days for the convicted Agape World Ponzi schemer? $400 million worth? That’s where his lieutenants are putting the take…If Nassau County installed an ozone monitor, would the air test any cleaner than Suffolk’s “smoggiest in New York State”? The American Lung Association can’t say…Don’t any other Southampton boys want to play field hockey? Until they do, 13-year-old Keeling Pilaro will keep pushing hard to play on the girls’ team…With forecasters predicting a below-average Atlantic-hurricane season, what extra-wimpy names do this year’s storms deserve? Hurricane Aw-don’t-worry-about-it? Hurricane Be-calm-it’s-going-somewhere-else? Hurricane Category Zero?

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

PETE FORNATALE

His final gigs was at Fordham’s WFUV and satellite’s SiriusXM. But Pete Fornatale was very much a Long Island guy. From Port Washington and then Rockaway Park, he helped invent, to spread and to perpetuate the whole idea of progressive music radio. He made his biggest mark at free-form rock pioneer WNEW-FM, but his impact was undeniable across the years. He was a taste-maker and an enthusiast, a discoverer and a confidante, a lover and sharer of just great music. He died at 66 of complications from a stroke. There’s one fewer reminder now of how great radio could be.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Already in drought and it’s not yet summer”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 22, 2012

How’s that drought coming? Step under my umbrella. We can discuss it here.

It’s always tempting — isn’t it? — to sneer at dire warnings when the evidence points the opposite way. Ask Al Gore, whose global-warming lectures are inevitably scheduled on the mornings of major snowstorms. He may have the science on his side. But all those parkas in the auditorium set a deeply skeptical tone.

That’s where we are this weekend as the National Weather Service reports the driest Long Island winter and spring in 13 years. The U.S. Drought Monitor is using words like “extreme” and “severe.” That little spritz on Wednesday night? It did nothing. The gauge at Long Island MacArthur Airport still showed a rainfall total since Jan. 1 of 9 inches below normal.

We need more rain around here. That’s as hard to miss as a parched-ground brush fire in Manorville.

Are you with me? Maybe not.

With clouds as heavy as these and forecasters warning darkly, “Flash floods!” no one’s in much of a mood for finger-wagging — at least not until this low-pressure system blows through.

Then we’ll get all the lawn-sprinkler lectures and the swimming-pool guilt — and all the tired jokes about showering with a friend.

See you at the Drought of 2012. It’s still a tough sell.

RAIN OR SHINE

1. “Dry Me a River”

2. “Singing in the Pain”

3. “Balmy Monday”

4. “Purple Strain”

5. “The Rain Will Come Out Tomorrow”

THE NEWS IN SONG

Who needs a weatherman?

“I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”

Randy Newman

http://tinyurl.com/gonnarain

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Rain dance worked, huh?…Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko wants more “prescribed burns”? Is that the brush-fire equivalent of destroying the village to save it?…All those gouging gas stations discouraging credit-card use, they’re not, ah, forgetting to report any of that extra cash on their taxes, are they?…With Sears Hardware pulling out of Lindenhurst, North Babylon and Hauppauge, know where I can exercise the unwarranted lifetime warranty on my Craftsman wrenches set should they ever fail to satisfy me, which they haven’t yet?…Defense lawyers say Khurram Shahzad’s coke conviction is the first to be tossed over shoddy science at the Nassau Police crime lab? Won’t be the last, will it?…When will the Cash Mob from the East Quogue Ladies Sanity Society show up at MY house? Struggling Main Street merchants, who got a nice infusion yesterday afternoon, aren’t the only people feeling strapped these days…Suffolk County Ethics Commission – didn’t you realize even the name was a joke? Tom Spota’s grand jury isn’t laughing now…What was first-term Councilman Eugene Cook implying when he demanded a state audit of the Huntington Town Board? That someone had been cooking the books?…Wanna see steam come out of Kevin Law’s ears? Just say “commuter tax” so the LIA CEO can hear. But wait – wouldn’t a city commuter tax make LI businesses comparatively more competitive?

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

JARED RIVERS

We find our basketball heroes younger and younger these days. Keep an eye out for 13-year-old point guard Jared Rivers. The 170-pound 6-footer is on his way to Christ the King High School in September. College and NBA scouts are already taking notice. The high school’s great backcourt tradition has launched Derrick Phelps (North Carolina), Eric Barkley and Omar Cook (St. John’s), Erving Walker (Florida) and this year’s sensation, Omar Calhoun (UConn). The son of a city cop and an LI schoolteacher, Jared is “as fundamentally sound and mentally tough a youngster as I have ever seen,” says CTK JV coach Artie Cox. The new kid just led his AAU team, The New Rens, to the playoffs of the Super League JV division at Island Garden, beating the previously undefeated Blue Bombers, a squad of high-school all-stars with two 6-foot-9 15-year-olds. That’s 6-foot-9 — and growing.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Let’s not drag Mom into the political fray”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 15, 2012

Don’t say housewife. It’s not a house she’s married to.

Don’t say stay-at-home mom. With all the soccer practices, doctor’s appointments, carpool trips and runs to the mall, she should be so lucky.

Whatever you do, don’t talk about the luxury of a woman with children who doesn’t work outside the home. It’s a sacrifice, not a luxury. You’re clear on that, I hope.

It’s still a minefield — cultural, political and personal — the choices women make as they balance family and career. Don’t believe me? Then ask Hilary Rosen. The veteran Democratic talking head who said on CNN that prospective first lady Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life” — then watched as the entire presidential race was hijacked for three days.

Republicans had mentioned birth control. Democrats had blamed Republicans for a “war on women.” Now Republicans were blaming them for “dissing Mom.” Truly, the personal is the political again.

This far in, you’d think that everyone could just agree: Women should make the choices they want to and they need to. Politicians on all sides should point their ugly slogans some other way.

No, moms who work outside of the home aren’t abandoning their children any more than moms who don’t lack self-identity.

“Oh, you don’t work? I’m sorry.”

“Aren’t you bored at home all day?”

Life is complicated. No choice is ever simple. Whatever the politicians might say.

MOM ALWAYS SAID

1. “This’ll hurt me more than it’ll hurt you.”

2. “You’re bored? Then help me clean the house.”

3. “As long as you live under our roof, you’ll follow our rules.”

4. “Just wait ’til your father gets home.”

5. “Go kiss Grandma.”

THE NEWS IN SONG

Good boys, bad boys and their mama

2Pac’s

“Dear Mama”

http://tinyurl.com/shetried

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

Who’s this gonna fool: Snappy displays in the windows of vacant East Hampton Village stores?…With all the publicity Newark Mayor Cory Booker is getting for his “come-to-Jesus moment” saving a neighbor from a house fire, did this thought briefly cross Steve Bellone’s mind: “What if I rode one of those Manorville horses away from the brush-fire flames?”…Which gay LIer should the new Gay Parent Teacher Student Association be named for? Walt Whitman? Harvey Milk? Please don’t say Rosie O’Donnell!…My idea of a LIPA Smart Meter? One that forgets to record all the juice being used…With so many nightmare scenarios to play off of, how did the 106^th Rescue Wing pick just one for Friday’s emergency drill at the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center?…Can’t some smart horticulturist save the landmark white oak? The magnificent  tree at the entrance to Wading River, judged “rotting” and “dangerous” has been standing proudly since before the Revolutionary War… 76 dates around the world and Madonna couldn’t schedule one for practice arena – The Nassau Coliseum…Hate paying the extra 8.625 percent? You may, but Nassau and Suffolk officials are smiling now at the unexpected hike in first-quarter sales-tax receipts…Mason-Dixon Exchange Program: If Georgia, Virginia and other easy-sale Southern states keep sending their handguns to us, how ’bout we start sending our shooters to them? Kinda like Fresh Air Fund for the homicide set.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

THE WATER WATCHERS

You knew we’d pay. You knew the snowless winter and the rainless spring wouldn’t come and go without penalty. And sure as buds are on the trees in April, it’s now collection time. The U.S. Drought Monitor of Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service – yes, bureaucracies have layers – have declared a severe drought for all of Suffolk plus eastern Nassau County. The current dryness is as plain as the smoke from those nasty wildfires — acrid, rancid and impossible to miss. Raise a glass to the water restrictions that are coming. Just be sure you drink it. Don’t pour a drop down the drain.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Religion’s still at the center of politics”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 8, 2012

Things don’t change much in the battle for the American soul.

One day, Roger Williams is debating John Winthrop, Puritan preacher against Puritan governor, over the proper distance between religion and government.

The next — or 400 years later — Rick Santorum is warning about a “war on religion,” Mitt Romney is trying to make Mormonism more mainstream, and one in three Americans are still convinced Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.

Church and state aren’t even close to being separate, whatever the Constitution may say.

This is a special, spiritual weekend. Jews commemorate Passover. Christians celebrate Easter. And the 2012 race for president is entering a whole new phase. Republicans all but have their nominee now. The president is sounding like a candidate again. Religion remains easily at the center of politics.

In a fascinating new book, “Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty,” John M. Barry shows how key this debate is to the very idea of America.

Williams won that argument, we’ve always been told. His notion of America as a land of a free will and secular authority is enshrined in our founding documents and taught in our classrooms. But as the book reveals so vividly, the debate has never really ended. It just keeps coming back.

A brilliant journalist and historian, Barry isn’t out on the campaign trail this year. But he might as well. He’s predicted many of the most interesting clashes, planted even before America was born.

Chag sameach.

Happy Easter.

Enjoy the campaign.

FOUNDING FATHERS

1. “THESE are your best candidates?”

2. “Have you ever READ the Constitution?”

3. “It costs HOW MUCH to run?”

4. “Anyone still believe in FIRST PRINCIPLES?”

5.”Life, liberty and pursuit of constant ACRIMONY!”

THE NEWS IN SONG

Praise be

Rufus Wainwright

“Hallelujah”

http://tinyurl.com/halsong

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

You think the idea of “bike bandits” is kinda funny, huh? Then you weren’t just robbed on Prospect Avenue in Westbury by two gun-wielding pedal-pushers…Is there some good reason why Nassau’s Transit Advisory Committee, formed in February, hasn’t even met yet? Veolia Transportation is already starting to squeeze $7 million in deficit reduction from the NICE bus service…Brown water, black mold and human waste bubbling up from the drains? Until 67 inmates filed federal lawsuits and the New York Civil Liberties Union was called in, Suffolk Sheriff Vincent F. DeMarco had no clue at all about the “squalid conditions” at his Riverhead and Yaphank jails?…Where are Fluffy and Cutie supposed to go now that Board of Trustees has told the Basals “no live chickens” in Great Neck? Apparently dead ones are still okay on local restaurants plates…Now that JetBlue has blown us off, is Air Canada ISP’s next dream date? 85,000 LIers a year now fly to the north country from JFK or LGA…Doesn’t anyone know what a Montauk alley is worth? Official appraisals range from $22,500 to $184,000 for the narrow town-owned strip that bisects the old Ronjo Motel.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK
THE PLAN VAN

Forget the angry rhetoric. Forget the Washington funding battles. Forget all the finger-pointing on the campaign trail. Planned Parenthood of Nassau County is providing just the kind of reproductive-health services it always has, now even more conveniently: Free screenings for sexually transmitted diseases, and you don’t have even go inside. This month, the blue Plan Van will be parked right outside the local Planned Parenthood clinics, part of a national Get Yourself Tested campaign aimed especially at young people. Monday, April 9, 12-3 p.m., 35 Carmans Rd., Massapequa. Wednesday, April 18, 1-4 p.m., 110 School St., Glen Cove. Wednesday, April 25, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 540 Fulton Ave., Hempstead. No appointment necessary. Just show up and beat those nasty bugs.

“GOP prez race’s inevitable winner: Romney”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, April 1, 2012

That was fun. Too bad it’s over.

Oh, I know. The race for the Republican presidential nomination isn’t officially settled yet.

Rick Santorum could romp through Wisconsin on Tuesday, just like Newt Gingrich’s win-by-staying-home strategy could be just the Hail Mary pass he needs to score a brokered-convention victory in Tampa, Fla., the final week of August.

Could — but won’t.

Math is math, and momentum is momentum, even by the highly erratic standards of Republican presidential politics circa 2012. And this much is now impossible to contradict: Despite valiant efforts from his last, tenacious opponents, Mitt Romney is going to be the party’s nominee.

Seven months from now, he’ll be on the ballot opposite Barack Obama, and anyone who calls the race easily predictable hasn’t been paying close attention this year. Nothing in politics is easily predictable this year.

Otherwise, Gingrich would never have shot (even briefly) to the front of the Republican pack. Or Rick Perry. Or Michele Bachmann. Or Herman Cain. Nor would any of these insta-sprinters have fallen as swiftly as they rose. But there they were, at least for an instant, poll-confirmed contenders all.

Go figure.

And here’s the really strange thing, the truth that lingers even as the ever-steady Romney finally accepts what was probably always destined to be his: Democrats enjoyed the Republican ruckus far, far more than any Republicans did.

Now that it’s almost over — now that the final air is fading from the lingering pretenders, now that the party elders are warning nervously of damaging delay — can’t they all please find a way to extend the race some more?

GRAND OLD CLASSICS

1. Herman Cain Mutiny

2. Brave Newt World

3. The Adventures of Huckle Perry Finn

4. Ron Quixote

5. Mitt’s Summer Night’s Dream

THE NEWS IN SONG

Willie Nelson

“The Party’s Over”

And wouldn’t he know?

tinyurl.com/nomonomo

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

More revenue-generating red-light cameras? Is that Suffolk-ese for “We’re broke and we don’t have a clue who else to soak”?….More quiet cars are a start. But can the LIRR somehow create more quiet riders?…In the “circus like atmosphere” Steve Bellone says he created over his predecessor’s Suffolk budget practices, who are the high-flying trapeze artists? And who are the clowns?…IPod, iPad — iSue? Evelyn Paswall is demanding $1 million after walking into the glass door of the Manhasset Apple Store and breaking her 83-year-old nose…Why stop with street signs?  State troopers charge William Richardson of Hempstead with trying to steal a light pole off the Meadowbrook State Parkway near Sunrise Highway…Of all the jabs he could have taken at Andrew Cuomo, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, what made Brooklyn state Sen. Kevin Parker turn suddenly racial? “Three White guys in a room”? Can’t he think of any better I-feel-excluded insults?…The bipartisan host with the most? Chuck Schumer, maitre ’d of the 2013 presidential inauguration, even if the Republican wins?…How hard was Keith Olbermann to get along with? Current TV hired Eliot Spitzer to replace him!

LONG ISLANDERS OF THE WEEK

HONEST SENIORS

You didn’t cheat when you had the chance to. You took the SAT or ACT on nothing but your ability and your hard work. Then you lived with the scores you got. What would have been better? Selling your soul and going Ivy on a lie? Twenty current or former students, most from upscale families with dreams of brand-name colleges, allegedly made a different choice. They are already paying at the hands of Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice. But as the College Board and ACT Inc. put in a whole new regime of test-security measures, all the honest kids should not be forgotten here. They should be congratulated, even if they aren’t congratulating themselves. They are the ones who stood on their ability. They are the ones who stood for something right.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Even the words ‘pink slime’ hard to digest”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 25, 2012

Words are only words.

Then again, you tell me: Which will you be asking for in the meat aisle at Waldbaum’s, King Kullen or Shop Rite?

“Lean, finely textured beef” or meat that contains “pink slime”?

Now that the icky name has taken such a firm hold, good luck finding any meat containing the additive at any Long Island supermarket — by any name.

It’s a fact of life in the media world: Win the war of words, and you will win the war. Get stuck with the wrong terminology, and you’ll be as helpless as a bankrupt meat processor waist deep in unsalable hamburger filler made from processed beef trimmings, aka “lean, finely textured beef,” aka “pink slime.”

Yes, words matter, especially if you’re trying to convince somebody of something. Just ask a “right-to-lifer” or a “pro-choice advocate.”

Think how different Mitt Romney’s week would have been if his communications director hadn’t compared the fall campaign to an Etch A Sketch.

Think how different East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley future would look if she hadn’t compared the Springs Concerned Citizens to “Nazis”?

If only she’d said “bullies” instead.

If only she hadn’t lost a slimy war of words.

SLIMY AND PINK

1. Putting the “gross” back in “grocery store.”

2. You want fries with that?

3. No, thanks, I’m on a diet.

4. Just serve it in the school cafeteria. The kids will never notice.

5. Where’s the “beef”?

THE NEWS IN SONG

Who knew ground beef had a tribute band?

Zappa Plays Zappa

“I’m the Slime”

tinyurl.com/tooslimy

ASKED AND UNANSWERED

ISP to DCA on USA twice a day: How ’bout those happy letters for LI lobbyists and Smithsonian fans?…Does Bob Wolff ever get tired of all the attaboys? The 91-year-old News 12 sportscaster just got the Guinness nod for “Longest Career as a Sports Broadcaster” (73 years and counting and counting)…Next Republican grudge match? Peter King versus Chris Christie? The LI rep says the NJ gov needs to chill over the NYPD’s cross-Hudson Muslim-spying ops…We all need friends, right? So please click “accept” to any Facebook requests from Steve Levy, new president of Common Sense Strategies…Where was the anti-incumbent wave in Northport as Village trustees Jerry Maline and Damon McMullen were swept back into office? Some dead guy’s one-vote write-in campaign?…Just because Anthony Coates is a close friend and campaign consultant to Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter, why should that disqualify him from a newly created nonunion $65,000 “legislative secretary” gig? Don’t you help your friends?…Tell me again: After 17 years with a home at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, why does the Global Maritime and Transportation School have to leave in July? The Seaman’s Institute at Snug Harbor is suddenly scheming a Staten Island snatch-and-grab.

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

GEORGIA GIER

We’re big boosters of the Junior League of Long Island. Really, what’s better than volunteering? How else should community-minded women use their time? Longer lunching? Apparently, Georgia Gier isn’t busy enough. Along with being a beloved science teacher at W.T. Clarke High School in the East Meadow School District, lead faculty for the Natural Sciences College at the University of Phoenix, an active volunteer in Al Gore’s Climate Project and a new mom, the lifelong Oyster Bayer is also current president of the local league. As the volunteer group recruits a new generation of women for a wide variety of community projects focusing on health care and the needs of women, the JLLI is celebrating its 50th anniversary as a member of the Association of Junior Leagues International. Once in a while, the new chapter president also gets a chance to sleep.

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican

“Rutgers trial highlights demise of privacy”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, March 18, 2012

I’ll be watching you.

And if I’m not, the store security monitor will. And the credit-card issuer and the Internet provider and the cellphone company and the ubiquitous traffic cams.

And the watchers are only revving up: One Texas sheriff recently got his own drone, although (highflying karma) the $300,000 spy-in-the-sky did just crash into the SWAT team.

I’d say it’s about time to admit the obvious: That glorious legal concept “expectation of privacy” is sounding pretty hollow these days.

Do you really think E-ZPass and MetroCard aren’t keeping tabs on you? Paranoiac’s Rule of Thumb: Never trust anyone who runs capital letters together in unconventional ways.

No one could have predicted that Rutgers student Tyler Clementi would jump to his death off the George Washington Bridge after learning he’d been spied on by a laptop camera in the dorm with another man. But on Friday, a New Jersey jury found Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, had violated the young man’s privacy and was guilty of bias intimidation based on sexual orientation, a hate crime.

The case stirred a national debate about same-sex bullying and teen suicide — worthy topics, of course. But there’s another lesson in the Rutgers case that should get some attention too.

It may be the last gasp of outrage at privacy violated.

Almost every laptop now comes with a high-resolution camera. Almost every new mobile phone can now shoot video. The lines between watching and spying are being erased with technology, ever cheaper, ever easier to conceal.

When everyone’s watching everyone — often surreptitiously — the very concept of personal privacy is under mortal attack. When everything we do in life is somehow captured digitally, people eventually stop demanding, “Hey, just leave me alone.”

PARANOID . . . OR REALISTIC?

1. Every keystroke still lives on my computer.

2. No Facebook message is ever really erased.

3. Amazon cares what I’ve been reading.

4. Cellphone towers follow me everywhere.

5. Even if I forget, it’s all up there in the cloud.

THE NEWS IN SONG

YES…there is

“Somebody’s Watching Me”

by Rockwell

tinyurl.com/uwatchme

ASKED AND UNANSWERED:

Is the boutonnière retiring too? Or will Gary Ackerman’s congressional replacement be expected to carry on the flowery Democrat’s lapel tradition?…Is Jeffrey Bohman the Nicholls Road Trestle Tagger? Cops says the 21-year-old’s baby-faced graffiti binge hit targets in West Islip, Bayshore and Stony Brook…If things were reversed and an 18-year-old fatally struck a sheriff’s deputy standing beside a disabled highway-patrol car — how much weight would we have given to the teen’s claim, “Sun glare blinded me”?…Why not a summer ferry between Sag Harbor and Greenport? Even if there’s some pickup traffic at the two end, won’t the actual ferry trips take cars off the crowded roads?…Sunday dinner a little tense today at the Cassandros? Manhattan prosecutors say Woodbury lawyer Robert Cassandro targeted several of his own relatives in a $4.6-million real-estate Ponzi scheme…A few extra pennies is one thing, but why are some LI gas station charging credit-card customers an extra $1 per gallon? Can you say “gouging”?…Too many chiefs? Robert Straight Arrow Cooper and Robert Wyandanch Pharoah, who both claim to the lead the Montaukett Indians, are fighting bitterly over plans for a Native American museum in downtown Montauk…St. Patrick’s Day on a Saturday? The Cabbage Association may be smiling, but who cleared that with the Temperance League?

LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK

Chris Algieri

You don’t find too many professional boxers on their way to med school. But Chris Algieri, an undefeated (13-0-0) junior welterweight who lives in Huntington, is putting his MCATs on hold and his record on the line March 31 against Rochester’s Winston Mathis at The Paramount in Huntington. “Chris is really excited to fight in front of his hometown fans again,” said promoter (and Hofstra grad) Joseph DeGuardia, president of Star Boxing, who’s had two sellout boxing nights at the reopened theater/nightclub. “He’s a good-looking kid, a kickboxing champion, a Stony Brook graduate and really, really smart. He’s psyched.”

E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican