The Jaffe Briefing - October 28, 2019
TRENTON – As California goes, so goes New Jersey, it seems. Late last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Play Act. The law will eventually give student athletes full control over what are known as “name, image and likeness” rights. Hardly was the ink dry on the law when a New Jersey version was born. NJ Spotlight reports that some state senators are promoting a New Jersey Fair Play Act that would allow college students to profit from their names and images by signing endorsement deals or other advertising contracts. Now, if only there was a legislative fix for the Rutgers football team, marching this season toward another winless Big 10 schedule.
PATERSON – Lawyers, it seems, are in greater demand than teachers as the school board just doled out no-bid contracts to two more attorneys. That brings to 20 the number of outside lawyers it’s paying $935,000 to keep on retainer this year. This same school board closed a big gap in its $610 million budget in May, laying off 234 staffers including 166 classroom teachers with no plan to rehire any. The Paterson Press says one new lawyer is the city’s former law director; the other is married to the district’s chief legal counsel. A district spokesman says there are no conflicts of interest: “Both these attorneys are well known and held in high regard in the Paterson community.” Unlike teachers, apparently.
GALLOWAY TWP – A two-term mayor is probably used to running - just not in pursuit of a burglar. Mayor Anthony Coppola Jr. is making national news after police say he helped catch a 31-year-old Port Republic man allegedly found inside Coppola’s family restaurant last week. The Press of Atlantic City says Coppola, 52, phoned police on his cell while doing a half-mile sprint along Route 9, close on the suspect’s heels. With the mayor’s help, officers arrested the man hiding in a wooded area and, in his possession, allegedly found stolen keys to the mayor’s eatery, Fred & Ethel’s Lantern Light Inn, and other businesses. Coppola, now running for a third term, likely locked up the ‘tough on crime’ platform.
COLTS NECK – Forget impeachment: just yank Trump’s liquor licenses. That’s what New Jersey is doing to the President’s golf club here, one of three that bear his name in the Garden State. The state Attorney General’s Office said too much booze allegedly was served to a man who later pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in a fatal 2015 drunken driving accident, earning Trump National in Colts Neck a 25-day suspension and a motion to revoke its liquor licenses. The Washington Post also reports this club allegedly sold more than just beer, another violation of its license. #MAGA (Make Alcohol Great Again)
FREEHOLD – There was a chance that Bruce Springsteen may not actually be in the news today. But then the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece about a new exhibit in Freehold, titled, “Bruce Springsteen: His Hometown,” at the Monmouth County Historical Association in Freehold. There’s a mini-documentary about Freehold as a microcosm for the nation (and as a terrific oxymoron). The exhibit, which runs through next September, features more than 150 objects, some of which are borrowed from the “Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music” at Monmouth University, and a few from the Boss himself. Historians dug deep, comparing Joost Springsteen’s first boot in New Amsterdam in the mid-1600s to the boots that Bruce wore on stage in the 1980s. Bruce described Freehold the best: “Well, I got outta here really hard and fast in Freehold; Everybody wanted to kick my ass back there in Freehold; Well, if you were different, black or brown; It was a bit of a redneck town; Back then in Freehold.”
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
ROCHESTER, MN – Very soon, we will finally know which is the creepiest doll in a Minnesota museum, with Halloween right around the corner. Winners are to be announced today at The History Center of Olmsted County, which is asking social media users to decide which are the more “unsettling toys” among nine of its scariest, weirdest and oddest dolls. There are dolls with movable eyelids, real human hair, or appear like mummified corpses. Others look like aliens, roadkill and sad Victorian children whose images burn a hole in your brain for all eternity. But, hey, it’s all for fun right?
MOSCOW – A local man had filed a suit against Apple, alleging that the purveyor of your Mac has somehow made him gay. According to The Week, the trouble all started when he downloaded a crytocurrency app to his iPhone, delivering him 69 “GayCoins,” rather than the Bitcoin he expected. “Don’t judge until you try,” GayCoin sent him in a note. It’s unclear what really happened next, but in court papers the guy wrote, “I thought, in truth, how can I judge something without trying?” So, now, apparently, the Moscow man has a boyfriend and is struggling to explain what exactly happened to his parents. He was demanding 1 million rubbles from Apple, equal to $16,000. Following all the negative publicity, he has opted to drop the suit.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was on this day in 2014 that an apparently embarrassed Walmart issued an apology, after labeling plus-sized Halloween costumes as “Fat Girl Costumes.” The product was retitled, “Yes, Of Course You Don’t Look Fat in That Costume, Dear.”
WORD OF THE DAY
WIT OF THE DAY
TODAY'S TRUMPISM
WEATHER IN A WORD
Sixties
THE NEW 60
A Jaffe Briefing Exclusive
by Andy Landorf & John Colquhoun
