DAN'S PAPERS, February 26, 2010 Page 22 www.danshamptons.com
Twentysomething…By David Lion Rattiner Reality TV and The Olympics When Paris Hilton had her reality TV show, it felt like all girls in America tried extra hard to be idiots, selfish and conceited. This was back when most people didn’t understand that reality TV is staged and that the stars are aspiring actors. We now know that Paris Hilton is one very ambitious woman who successfully turned an image of a dumb blonde into a lot of money. But reality TV didn’t stop with her. It has grown into its own industry, with shows about becoming a professional singer and shows about guys who cheat on their girlfriends. The most recent one, “The Jersey Shore,” broke through to mainstream pop culture, literally, after a guy violently punched a girl in the face on camera. Combine this bombardment of America broad-
casting idiocy and no morals, mix in a no-end-in sight war, and then add in a pinch of Bernie Madoff, and it seems like the PR firm that’s running the “America” account is being run by the guys in the reality show, “Tool Academy.” That said, reality shows serve a huge purpose, and that is that they have made our dominance in the Olympics that much sweeter. You just can’t ignore the young athletes from America and what they’ve accomplished this year. All of the sports that require serious training, challenge and skill have an American medal attached. None of our athletes have been able to be touched and yes, these are the athletes who we all thought were from the same tribe as “The Real World” and “American Idol.” During the last summer Olympics, many of the The East End’s Favorite Kids Party Spot!
athletes were older, and Michael Phelps started to feel like a stoner and perhaps just a little too genetically gifted. But in this Olympics, young, reality TV-watching youth of America skied faster than anyone and ice-danced the crap out of Germany and Russia. Where has China been? You got a billion young athletes, right? You’re a big rising super economy. But you can’t find one in a billion whocan beat a young American at any legit sport? Say all the negative things you want about American youth. Call snowboarders a bunch of potheads while they super-humanly fly through the air doing flips and twists that you could never even fathom doing. Insist that America’s youth aren’t leaders when it was they who mobilized, more so than any other generation prior, to be a deciding voting power that elected our current president. “Oh but they play Xbox and watch reality TV so they must be dumb and irresponsible.” Yeah, I guess you are right. In the meantime, American youth will continue to completely dominate the world stage at the Olympics while they spend too much time on the Internet.
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rail/bus transit service known as the East End Shuttle—a concept validated in a transportation study by The Volpe Center that concluded, “the entire Shuttle concept could operate for less than what we currently pay the MTA each year.” The problem is that the East End is in the jurisdiction of two New York City-based organizations—the MTA and the NYMTC, the gatekeeper for transportation project funding. The MTA operates the transit services in its jurisdiction, including the LIRR on the East End, which represents only 2% of their service population. “We have no clout,” read the press release. 5TRT recommends removing the East End from under the thumb of the MTA by establishing a Rural Planning Organization (RPO) and a Regional Transit Authority (RTA). “Fred Thiele, Marc Alessi and Ken La Valle have filed legislation to establish the Peconic Bay Regional Transportation Authority (PBRTA) for this purpose,” it stated, adding that Representative Tim Bishop’s action is needed to acquire federal funds to establish a new system. It would take extremely strong leadership in Albany to pull off transit independence. Resolution can’t happen unless dynamic leadership can convince state lawmakers that this inequity is harmful to the entire state. But for now the MTA seems willing to discuss East End autonomy while taking the $520 million. The MTA has set a public hearing at the County Center in Riverhead on March 8 on its proposed LIRR service cuts. The MTA will listen, be polite, and use great sound bites. But in the end, as my old Sag Harbor sailing buddy said, “Nobody in his right mind is going to sign away a cash flow of $520 million unless he has three guns pointed at his head.”
The Sheltered Islander Miss the ferry? You can read Sally Flynn’s new column online at danshamptons.com. She’ll be back in these pages soon! 1317212