Newly released priest files show key church figures conspired to hide child abuse from police. Then, a UCLA vocal coach helps nervous pop stars nail the National Anthem at the Super Bowl and other sporting events, Ben Bergman reports that the OC and Navy oppose adding Trestles and San Onofre surf beaches to Historic Register, Southern California companies betting millions on Super Bowl ads, plus much more.
Priest files show key church figures conspired to hide child abuse from police
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez described the newly released personnel files of priests accused of child molestation as "brutal and painful" reading. The papers date back to the 1940s, and detail attempts by the church to shield known child abusers from law enforcement.
The church posted tens of thousands of documents on its website last night, as part of a 2007 settlement with victims of abuse. In an interview with KPCC, the plaintiffs attorney, Ray Boucher, criticized the way the files were released
"They were supposed to release to my clients. Instead they released them on a website. It was their way to control the story."
Archbishop Gomez released a statement to his parishoners last night, calling the behavior described in the files "terribly sad and evil." He announced that he was relieving Retired Cardinal Roger Mahony of his public and administrative duties and said he'd accepted the resignation of Monsignor Thomas Curry.
Curry was the former Vicar for clergy who worked with Mahony in the 80s. He was serving as the Regional Bishop of Santa Barbara. Cardinal Roger Mahony spent two decades at the helm of the country's largest archdiocese, but retired two years ago. Critics of the church say the decision to strip him of his public duties is a meaningless gesture.
The Archdiocese has not returned our request for an interview.
Father Thomas Doyle, a lawyer who investigated charges of sexual abuse in the eighties, joins the show to discuss the documents. He's also co-author of the book "Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse."
Friday Flashback: RIP Ed Koch, job numbers, and more
We'll talk about the week that was with our regular political roundtables. On tap this week, Molly Ball from the Atlantic and James Rainey from the Los Angeles Times.
Mohamed Mohamud found guilty of terrorist plot
Yesterday, a jury in Oregon found Mohamed Mohamud guilty of trying to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. The 21-year-old Somali-American was arrested in November 2010 when he tried to set off what he believed to be a bomb at a popular tree lighting ceremony in Pioneer Square.
The bomb was a fake, given to him by undercover FBI agents who were running a terrorist sting operation. Mohamud will be sentenced in May and could face life in prison.
April Baer of Oregon Public Broadcasting joins the show to tell us about the verdict.
OC, Navy oppose adding Trestles and San Onofre surf beaches to Historic Register
A two mile-plus stretch that includes the coastline around Trestles has been known for decades as a world-class surfing spot. But is it historic? Surfers and environmentalists say yes, and they want the area listed in the National Register of Historic Places. However, they’re facing considerable opposition from the Navy and the Orange County Board of Supervisors.
A state panel will decide on the nomination next week.
Both Trestles – with big surf the pros love – and San Onofre – with soft rolling waves better for beginners – were immortalized by the Beach Boys in the ‘60s.
It’s called “Trestles” because before the railroad put up a concrete bridge here, there used to be a wooden trestle behind the beach.
The beaches lie just a few miles south of the hustle and bustle of Orange County. But with the dirt roads, surf shacks, and general lack of any development - it can feel like you’re in Waikiki.
Surfing's "Ground Zero"
Surfers from Santa Cruz to San Diego starting going there in 1930’s, for “surfin’ safaris” filled with “Hawaiian guitar, Tahitian dancing, and no small amount of boozing,” according to one account.
"We’re basically at Ground Zero for surfing history in California,” said Mark Rauscher, Coastal Preservation Manager for the Surfrider Foundation, the environmental group leading the effort to protect this area.
He says Trestles would be the first surf spot in the country on the Historic Register, and for good reason.
“When you talk to anyone from Southern California this is the place that they know that’s historically important to surfing and the surfing culture that we’ve all grown up around,” said Rauscher.
"Less historical to the surf culture"
Orange County supervisor John Moorlach disagrees.
“I’m not a surfing historian, but I’m not so sure that’s historically accurate,” said Moorlach.
He may not be a surfing historian, but he does describe himself as a student of California Historical Landmarks. On his blog, Moorlach notes he’s visited every county in the state to photograph nearly every landmark.
He doesn’t think Trestles deserves to be included.
“I think when we set aside something for historic import that we do it with sincerity and some perspective with all other related spots,” said Moorlach.
In an October Legislative Bulletin, the supervisors agreed that Trestles is popular. But they also noted that it “has no more significance and is probably less historical to the surf culture” than Huntington Beach, Corona del Mar or Malibu.
They also wrote that an historic designation could affect Marine Corps training. That’s because Trestles is on Camp Pendleton land that the Navy leases to the state.
The biggest objection arises from a project most people thought died years ago: linking the 241 toll road with the 5 Freeway right behind Trestles.
“I see that there’s maybe an ulterior motive,” said Moorlach. “It might be a cute way to try to set some land aside that’s preserved which would not allow for construction. And that’s got those of us concerned about transportation in the county concerned.”
Moorlach says the toll road extension would ease up traffic and provide another way to get out of the county in case of an emergency.
He still hopes one day the toll road extension will happen – even though five years ago, the California Coastal Commission blocked it, and the US Commerce Department upheld that decision.
Surfing and anthropology
Both agencies heard testimony from State Historic Preservation Officer Wayne Donaldson.
“It’s one of these things you work on it so long you begin to wonder what you’re actually doing,” said Donaldson, who retired this Fall, but he wants to see through the process he started five years ago to list Trestles as a historic site.
“It spawned the tradition that we now know worldwide of the California style, the surfing, the talk, the early movies, the early songs.”
Donaldson compares the founders of surfing at Trestles to any other cultural group anthropologists would study – like the Plains Indians.
He says the area more than meets the criteria to be considered historic, and he’s received support from all over.
“We’ve now gotten over 1200 letters from countries worldwide and from every state in the union, people that have visited and had contests and people that have had their kids grow up there – some in their fourth generation – and they just feel that this is so important,” said Donaldson.
Next Friday, the State Historical Resources Commission will decide whether approve the Trestles nomination.
A staff report has already recommended passage.
If the nomination proceeds, a final decision will be up to the national Keeper of the Register.
UCLA vocal coach helps nervous pop stars nail the National Anthem
Beyonce finally addressed the rumors yesterday that she lip-synched the National Anthem during the inauguration, by belting it out at a press conference.
The National Anthem is notoriously hard to perform, and many pop singers have tried and botched it. It requires training, stamina, and a lot of practice. Not unlike the demands on the athletes that’ll be playing at this Sunday’s Super Bowl.
Those who want to get it right turn to Michael Dean, a voice coach at UCLA and an expert on singing the Star Spangled Banner. KPCC’s Sanden Totten has this profile.
When Michael Dean sings the anthem, it’s hard not to feel patriotic.
Dean is sitting casually at the piano in a gray suit and tie, and while he makes the song sound easy, he says it’s not for the faint of heart.
“It get’s a lot of attention every time it’s performed…mostly it gets a lot of attention when it’s performed badly," said Dean.
Dean’s the chair of the music department at UCLA and a seasoned vocal coach, who has trained students to sing the anthem for the school’s commencement for years. Every year – it was a hit. Word spread and soon he was fielding calls from pop stars.
He won’t name names, but Dean says many of them were asked to sing the anthem at a major event, and they were nervous.
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“Pop singers are singing a piece of music that was not written for them. Nobody would get up at a ball game and decide to sing ‘Un Bel Di’ from Madame Butterfly. They would say ‘Well, I can’t do that, it’s a classical piece of music and I am a pop singer,'" said Dean. "That’s what they do with the National Anthem, though. It’s also a classical piece of music. The range of it, the difficulty of the text. It’s classical.”
Dean says modern singers tend to make the same mistakes over and over. For starters, a lot of them mess up the lyrics, like Steven Tyler did last year at an AFC championship game when he fudged the line: “And the rockets red glare – as bomb bursting in air…”
“As bomb bursting in air” isn’t the right line, or proper English for that matter. UCLA’s Michael Dean says the problem is many singers don’t know what they’re singing.
“When I say to somebody ‘What is the twilight’s last gleaming?’ they don’t even know what I am talking about," said Dean. "Some people I have worked with don’t even know what twilight is, other than it’s a movie.”
To start, Dean guides them through the lyrics, line by line. He explains how the poet, Francis Scott Key watched a battle during the War of 1812. It was at Fort McHenry between British and American forces. All through the night, bombs were exploding , and in the morning, Key asks a friend if he can still see the American flag waving above the base.
“Oh say – does that star spangled banner yet wave? If the flag is still there, that must mean our land is still free,” said Dean.
Another common mistake is not starting the song low enough to hit the high notes at the end. Olympic track star Carl Lewis suffered this fate in 1993 when his voice cracked at the "And the rockets red glare" line.
The Star Spangled Banner requires a vocal range of an octave and a half. Dean says to find the right key you have to start by finding the highest note you can sing comfortably. So just singing the notes requires some degree of talent.
“But that’s the way the song was originally written. It was for a professional soloist or a well trained amateur,” said David Hildebrand of the Colonial Music Institute. He says the melody actually comes from an old drinking song dedicated to the Greek poet Anacreon. In the 1800s it was common for poets to write their own lyrics to those same chords. That’s what Francis Scott Key did when he published his take on the song in 1814. Hildebrand says it caught on fast.
“It did become quite popular based on the number of times it was reprinted," said Hildebrand. "I mean the lyrics were published in newspapers, they were published in little song books.”
And even though the tune was beloved, it wasn’t until 1931 that President Hoover declared it our National Anthem. It became a mainstay of government ceremonies and sporting events. Then in 1991 at the 25th Super Bowl in Tampa, Whitney Houston brought the tune to new heights.
Her version was released as a single, and was the first time the anthem made the Billboard Hot 100.
“I think it really established a direction for the piece to be considered by the public to be some kind of pop song,” said Dean.
As captivating as Houston’s performance was, UCLA’s Dean says it helped popularize singing the song with a vocal style known as melisma, that sliding up and down the scale R&B singers do so well. Dean says melisma is great for pop music, but it distracts from the lyrics of the National Anthem.
“Showing off your voice is not the point really of any great music," said Dean. "You want people going away being moved by the piece and moved by the meaning of the piece, and this piece of course is not a little fluffy piece of music. It is a very deep piece of music.”
For a good example of how to do the song justice, Michael Dean points to baritone Robert Merrill. He sung the song on opening day at Yankee Stadium almost every year from 1969 until his death in 2004.
“He was a classical singer singing a classical piece of music. Two things that were meant to go together,” said Dean.
NY Times, Wall Street Journal say China hacked papers' computers
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported computer systems in its Beijing bureau had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers. This came a day after The New York Times announced similar cyberattacks.
The intrusion at the Times was detected last fall when the paper began reporting on the personal fortune of China's Prime Minister. Hackers allegedly stole the passwords of reporters and other staff members.
China's Ministry of National Defense has denied involvement in these attacks. For more on this we're joined now is Rob Gifford, China Editor at the economist.
New prisons boss ready to end federal oversight
California faces a December deadline to ease overcrowding in the state’s 33 prisons. That’s to comply with federal court orders to provide basic medical and mental health care to inmates. But last month Governor Brown vowed to get those orders overturned and to end federal oversight of mental health care.
“We can run our own prisons,” Brown said. “By God, let those judges give us our prisons back. We’ll run them right.” There's also an economic factor: the state has spent billions complying with the federal mandates.
Now, the Governor has appointed a new prison boss who’s uniquely qualified to wage his fight with the “those judges.”
California’s new Corrections Secretary, Jeff Beard, ran Pennsylvania’s prisons for nearly a decade. During that time, he was called as an expert witness in a hearing on California's prisons. He testified that “severe overcrowding” was “the biggest inhibiting factor” in the delivery of health care. That hearing led a three-judge court to order the state to reduce its prison population – a decision the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2010.
Today, Beard says health care in California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is being adequately provided.
“From everything I’ve been able to see, and nationally-known experts have been able to see, and the inspector general has been able to see, the CDCR is offering a constitutional level of care for medical and mental health,” Beard said in an interview this week.
Beard says California has reduced the inmate population by 43,000 inmates since 2006. He sees no reason to reduce by another 9,000 inmates as the court has ordered. One good reason he stresses: The enactment of realignment in 2011 has shifted thousands of felons to counties over the past year.
“That’s a huge, dramatic shift that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the counties,” Beard said. “If you don’t need to go further today to meet a constitutional standard, why don’t we let the counties settle in with the huge changes that have occurred?”
Attorney Michael Bien, who represents California inmates suffering from serious mental illness, begs to differ, saying: “I respect [Beard] a lot, and he has a lot of skills and experience, but I strongly disagree with his position that we’ve done enough now.”
Bien’s firm brought a class action suit two decades ago that forced the state to improve psychiatric care. Bien later pushed for a cap on the prison population as an attempt to end chronic backlogs and delays in treatment that he says thwarted improvements and drove the suicide rate above the national average. Bien says the corrections department has yet to implement many suicide preventions the court ordered.
“Custody officers are not providing CPR to people who they find who are still alive,” Bien says. “We’re talking about bodies found with rigor mortis, which takes several hours to occur, in a unit where custody officers are obligated to be rounding every 30 minutes to see if somebody is in distress.”
In reports to the court this month, the overseers of prison mental and medical health care separately concluded that California has yet to provide minimally adequate care to inmates. It’s unlikely that the federal judges who appointed the overseers would override those findings and agree to more crowded conditions, or to end court oversight of California’s prisons.
Beard — whose appointment must still be approved by the State Senate — is not fazed by the challenge, saying he knew what he was getting into with this job. He sees great opportunity: “We can do some of the things that people would have wanted to do over the years but couldn’t do because of the population and crowding.”
Beard wants to expand programs proven to reduce the recidivism rate. He also plans to restore treatment programs that were cut back in recent years to address what he says is the large number of inmates – 70 percent on average – who suffer from some type of addiction or substance abuse. He also wants to reduce lockdowns that restrict inmates to their cells and prevent them from participating in assistance programs.
City of Oakland offers banking services to city's poor
In Oakland today, officials are rolling out a new municipal ID card that has an added bonus: it's also a debit card. It's the first card of its kind in the nation, and it's designed to solve common banking problems for immigrants and people living on the financial edge. Although other cities like Los Angeles are looking at Oakland's experiment, many have concerns about mis-use and fraud. KQED's Aarti Shahani reports.
'Frankenweenie' screenwriter hopes to make Courier Prime the industry standard
Over the past century, technology has done a lot to improve the quality of movies. Technicolor helped move motion pictures beyond black and white, stereoscopic imaging and special glasses have allowed 3-D figures to burst off the screen. But when it comes to writing films, little has changed over time.
Sure, screenwriters use computers now, instead of typewriters, but for more than 50 years they've used the same old font: 12-point Courier. Screenwriter John August wants to change that with a new font, called Courier Prime.
Are American pro sports teams ready for openly gay players?
Earlier this week, during an interview with radio host Artie Lange, San Francisco 49ers Defensive Back Chris Culliver said gay teammates would not be welcomed on his team. The remarks struck a chord in a city known as the gay rights mecca of the country.
Although Culliver has since apologized, the incident rekindled the debate about whether the NFL, or any professional American sports team, is ready for an openly gay player.
We speak with Wade Davis, a former NFL cornerback who left the league in 2003 and came out in 2006.
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Southern California companies betting millions on Super Bowl ads
The Super Bowl may be every football player’s dream, but to businesses, a Super Bowl commercial is a sign you’ve made it to the big leagues.
Several Southern California companies, from Taco Bell to Los Angeles-based Paramount Farms, a pistachio and almond business, are paying millions of dollars to pitch their products to captive football fans, eager to see the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens go head-to-head on Sunday. (Preview some Super Bowl videos below.)
The ads don’t come cheap. Some cost more than $4 million to air and you have to stand out from the 60 to 70 commercials during the game. But it’s a financial risk companies like Paramount Farms are willing to take.
“You can’t have a louder megaphone than the Super Bowl when it comes to advertising,” said Marc Seguin, Paramount Farms’ vice president of marketing.
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Seguin said his company will launch its first Super Bowl commercial, featuring Psy, the Korean pop star behind the hit, “Gangnam Style.” His music video on his official channel on YouTube has received more than 1 billion views and Seguin hopes that popularity will help his product.
“Psy is going to use a lot of his Gangnam-style moves to crack open pistachios in a way that only Psy could,” Seguin said. “I think everyone is going to be smiling and dancing when they see the commercial.”
Meanwhile, Manhattan Beach-based Skechers said it will air two Super Bowl commercials, including one that features former Super Bowl MVP Joe Montana. He’ll be pumping up Relaxed Fit shoes and the commercial has a cameo from his former teammate, Ronnie Lott.
“Relaxed Fit gives guys the perfect combination in their footwear: incredibly comfortable shoes that look great in any setting,” said Michael Greenberg, president of Skechers in a statement. “So we thought, let’s give them what they want with football legends delivering some old-school physical comedy.”
Dina Mayzlin, an associate professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business, said successful Super Bowl commercials can boost sales, create buzz and even elevate a company’s image.
Nearly 180 million people are expected to watch Sunday’s game, according to the National Retail Federation. That means advertisers will have a captive audience that has made a sport of watching to see the elaborately made commercials.
“The beauty of Super Bowl ads is they really reach everybody,” Mayzlin said. “It’s not just men who watch it. Women watch it. Everybody watches the Super Bowl.”
If commercials are done wrong, it could cause backlash. This year’s Volkswagen commercial has people talking about whether or not it is racist. The ad features a white Minnesotan with a Jamaican accent trying to cheer up his glum co-workers. At the end of the commercial, it shows the Minnesotan is happy about life because he drives a Volkswagen car.
But pistachios and Psy are a different story.
Seguin said he believes the 30-second commercial could boost sales of the company’s “Wonderful Pistachios” brand by 20 percent.
“Wonderful Pistachios' brand has been growing non-stop since we launched it,” Seguin said. “We expect this to even escalate that growth.”
And Seguin is betting millions of dollars the Super Bowl commerical will score big for his company.
How '30 Rock' and Liz Lemon altered the landscape for women on TV
The NBC comedy "30 Rock," starring Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, ended its 7-year run last night. The show was about the cast and writers of a live sketch comedy show, led by showrunner Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey.
It's funniest jokes often played off female stereotypes and Lemon's struggle with the work-life balance, and several media critics argue that "30 Rock" was a real game changer for women in comedy.
We'll speak to Linda Holmes, writer for NPR's entertainment and pop-culture blog, Monkey See.