Week in Review 9/10-9/16/07
Monday: David Letterman guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show. It goes down as one of the most entertaining television interviews in recent memory. (YouTube link here.)Tuesday: Following a televised attempt Monday evening to dummy up support for the United States' imperial occupation of Iraq, and then a good night's sleep for most Americans, President Bush fails to have convinced even one new person that continuing the bloody conflict is a good idea. An excerpt from the new book by former Fed chairman and Republican Alan Greenspan is made public Tuesday: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Thursday: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell penalizes the New England Patriots and head coach Bill Belichick for videotaping defensive signals of the opposition in a game against the New York Jets. The penalty amounts to a slap on the wrist with a fine and the loss of one of the team's 2008 draft picks, but no suspension for Belichick. Not a single sports commentator, to my knowledge, has advocated since that the any or all of the Patriots' 3 Super Bowl Championships under Belichick be revoked or be stricken with the dreaded "asterisk." The steroid-hunters in the media go silent, but I suspect could still be provoked on occasion to argue that such penalties be imposed on "steroid users" like Mark McGwire, who have not, like Belichick, been caught red-handed. Coda: If Belichick was spying on a mediocre team like the Jets in Week 1, then we know for almost for sure he was spying on the Rams in Super Bowl 36.
Friday: Retiring Republican Senator Chuck Hagel tells HBO's Bill Maher that President Bush's Iraq policy is "not only a dirty trick." It's "dishonest... hypocritical... dangerous and irresponsible."
Saturday: My alma mater, Iowa State, beats Iowa in football, 15-13, in what is regarded by many as perhaps the greatest upset in the history of the series. But how do we know, or will be ever know? The Iowa Hawkeyes have only played patsies to this point in the season, and college football has scandalously avoided instituting a post-season tournament that could actually prove the ultimate merit of its competitors conference to conference. Does anything other than the $3 million state salary of Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz point to an upturn in that school's football program? As a sports fan, I've stopped taking a personal stake in which of the two football programs is currently cheating the best in player recruitment, but as a state taxpayer, I think we deserve better at one of our major national research universities than a coach who loses to the modest cross-state Cyclones two-thirds of the time (count 'em: 6 of 9). For that kind of money, the Hawkeyes should be playing in the biggest collegiate games of the year and getting a tremendous amount of unwanted national attention for our state's skewed educational priorities.
Sunday: OJ Simpson is arrested on charges connected to armed robbery. His public approval rating remains higher than that of Dick Cheney.
posted by CM @ 1:28 PM
1 Comments:
You forgot to mention that the Cardinals went 1-7 during the week to eliminate themselves from the playoff hunt.
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