Gary Coleman
Actor Gary Coleman died this week at the age of 42. The breakout child star of television's "Diff'rent Strokes" was the most visible member of a cast that became infamous for its post-series legal troubles. Coleman had some run-ins involving assault and disorderly conduct, Dana Plato battled drug addiction and died of an overdose in 1999, Todd Bridges was charged with murder (but later acquitted) after becoming a participant in the Southern California drug trade, and guest star Nancy Reagan got mixed up with a presidential administration that sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages and used the proceeds of the sale to fund state terrorism and drug trafficking efforts in Nicaragua.
In
Vanity Fair, a member of Generation X
recalls the charismatic, one-time superstar-- and does so "without irony."
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Holiday Blog Bonus: Via YouTube,
a scene from HBO's "The Wire" with a canned laugh track borrowed from "Married... With Children." Parental discretion is advised.
Obama's Katrina
The ongoing saga of the BP oil spill has been one of the most depressing series of news headlines I can remember. It's not fun at all to think about the mushrooming devastation, the inability or lack of ambition of the companies that caused the spill to stop it, or our inept government's reluctance to do anything besides try to manage the political terrain. To understand the magnitude of this catastrophe, take the Exxon tanker spill of 1989, multiply it by a hundred, then combine it with the movie "Sex and the City 2". That's what we're dealing with here. (And by the way, it
should be referred to as the "BP oil spill," not the "Gulf [or Gulf of Mexico] oil spill." Just as the "Exxon oil spill" a generation ago was not the "Prince William Sound oil spill." I suspect that every time one of our intrepid corporate news reporters refers to the calamity as the "Gulf oil spill," a P.R. douchebag at British Petroleum earns his wings.)
This disaster is President Obama's Katrina. Despite everything we've learned--
from Katrina-- and from the financial crisis, our president still believes it's the responsibility of the federal government to be blindly subservient to private corporations, even when they're destroying public assets like water. It's BP's responsibility to clean up their mess, we're told, and while it's true that the company and its unholy contractors are principally responsible, they'll get their comeuppance when they pay for the entire cost of the cleanup and we nationalize the industry. The problem is that BP has no capacity or willingness to do the actual cleanup, a fact that has been made evident by
the uncovering by Firedoglake.com that BP's entire effort to clean up to this point has been an act of dramatic theater. Having the people who caused the problem
fix the problem makes sense in a "teach the child responsibility" kind of way, but it's an insane strategy for actually stopping the leak, one that would be akin to a tactic in the financial sector of deputizing Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Ben Bernanke to fix the national economy. Oh, shit, bad example.
It's the government's responsibility to protect us from terrorists native, foreign, or corporate. Does Obama think that if he takes responsibility for cleaning up the disaster, he'll be "owning" the crisis politically? It seems so. His apologists can still label this leadership trait "pragmatic" if they want, but it reeks of cowardice again to me. Even some Republicans like Senator Lamar Alexander (TN) are now calling for a government takeover of the cleanup efforts.
Cries of "Socialism" grow faint, I guess, when black, sticky sludge starts lapping up onto the coastlines of Red States. James Carville, partially responsible for saddling us with that "Blue State/Red State" nonsense to begin with, as well as two decades of DLC/Centrist/Third Rail bullshit in the Democratic Party, is throwing up his hands too,
crying for help for his native Louisiana, and seemingly repenting for his long-time advocacy of politics
over people. But it's not hard to imagine the noted strategist otherwise still counseling Democratic pols to play it all so very cautiously.
The Molina Corollary
Hypothetical: You're a psychologist and you're preparing to embark upon an extensive study of behavioral patterns involving siblings. Where do you focus your research? For a pair of scientists published in the current issue of
Personality and Social Psychology Review, the answer is Major League Baseball.
Frank J. Sulloway, PhD and Richard Zweigenhaft (yes,
those guys again) have just
released the findings of their investigation into the relationship between birth order and participation in high-risk activities, and they've done so after the thorough examination of the statistics of 700 baseball-playing brothers at the game's highest level. Naturally, there were a number of variables to be taken into account involving the different subjects, but one statistical finding is clear and remarkable: For more than
90(!) percent of sibling pairs, the laterborn attempted to steal a base more often than his older brother.
Owners of fantasy baseball teams, hear the call of this exciting new area of statistical research.
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Quote of the day: David Letterman, several minutes ago, remarking on the 18th anniversary of the day Jay Leno (first) took over "The Tonight Show":
"I think we all remember where we were when we heard about the attack."
Swing, man
According to info on their site, Lettersofnote.com collects various pieces of individual correspondence-- letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, memos-- that its editors believe should be seen by the global masses.
On Monday, they posted a beauty-- an address from Frank Sinatra to George Michael that was sent by the elder singer to the LA Times' Calendar magazine in September of 1990.
The text of this one contains plenty of the Chairman's legendary color and charm.
Mr. S will tell you a little about the "tragedy of fame." Try getting dropped by your movie studio and from your TV show, disappearing on the Down Beat poll, losing your mouse, er, I mean, girl, and then you open your mouth one night at the Copa and nothing comes out.
Come on, George, Loosen up.
Rehashing 1985
Yesterday afternoon, I watched the last hour or so of Game 6 of the 1985 World Series on ESPN Classic. This was the game that featured the infamous blown call by the umpire Don Denkinger in the ninth inning, opening the door for the Royals to come back and beat the Cardinals.
A couple of new things came into focus as I watched this replay of a game that took place now a quarter century ago, when I was 10 years old, and that is still difficult for me to watch.
#1- There were 3 very close plays on the bases in the 9th inning, and the umpires got the other two correct. But the slow-motion replays showed that all three should have gone for the Cardinals, not just the two that did. The Cardinals' Tito Landrum beat out a swinging bunt by the narrowest of margins in the top of the inning, and Denkinger was the man at first base to call it right, but one wonders if he didn't have that same play still in mind when he ruled the Royals' Jorge Orta equally safe in his memorable flub to lead off the bottom of the inning. Was there a natural tendency for Denkinger to rule it safe on both sides to be fair?
#2- The Royals have retired to skid row since they won that World Series. They've yet to return to the postseason, even during the last 15 years when 8 of the 30 teams in the league are welcomed in each October. They've had exactly one winning season in the last 15, an 83-79 finish in 2003, and they've never finished better than third in what should be, frankly, a pretty winnable five-team AL Central Division. During the last 11 seasons, they've avoided losing 90 games only three times. Over the last decade, their year-to-year winning percentages are comparable to Stan Musial's year-to-year batting averages. They've been through 13 managers during the 24 years, and this year they've started off 15-25, already canning their field boss. At the time of the 1985 World Series, however, they had been in the postseason 7 of the previous 10 years-- and that was before the expanded playoff system. Maybe it's time the Royals considered that somebody's trying to tell them something and return what doesn't belong to them.
"Lost" predictions
"Lost" is running too intense now not to return to the subject on the blog-- this time with plot specifics. Before offering my predictions, I want to share with you the perfect summary I read online this morning in regards to why this particular television program infuriates so many of its fans, and by the way, you're safe to read any of this post after you've watched last night's penultimate episode "What They Died For." The summary comes from the AV Club's
Noel Murray, and it is this: "The intensity of the tease (is often) out of proportion with the ultimate reveal."
Murray cites the example of the third season finale, "Through the Looking Glass," at the end of which a bearded Jack finds Kate in Los Angeles and pleads to her, now-famously, "We have to go back!" revealing that "Lost" has just delivered its first "flash-forward" episode, as opposed to the episodic flash
backs that comprised the series' first 70 hours. Yes, the "We have to go back!" reveal winds up providing very little backstory for Jack and for Kate. It turns out to be just a little sideways arc about "the Oceanic 6" concocting an agreed-upon lie following their rescue. But the larger point is that there's a style of "Lost" storytelling which has to be accepted if you're going to watch and enjoy the series.
To paraphrase Murray-- "Lost" is not a full-length movie. It's episodic television. It's not even
HBO television. There are commercial breaks. So the decision early on was to make the style of storytelling an especially visceral one. It's about ratcheting up the suspense not only week-to-week, but even commercial break to commercial break. This is a very hard thing to pull off while keeping story and character development from slipping, but Jesus, if you're still watching at this point, something must be working for you. I believe it's an almost miraculous achievement in television storytelling, and so I've been pretty casually dismissing now any fan comment I read online along the lines of "I'll decide what I think when it's all over." Brutha, that's really beside the point.
Anyway, I didn't intend to rehash my previous post. On to my predictions for the final 2 1/2 hour episode "The End," which airs on ABC Sunday night:
*PREDICTION ONE* There will be
no ultimate replacement for Jacob as island protector. The popular theory that the series would culminate with someone taking over and residing on the island in Jacob's place is the classic bit of misdirection-- what with the lists, the names on the wall of the cave, the Jacob touching... but forget it. A replacement was necessary to protect the island, I accept that, but it won't end that way. Jack jumped too quickly at his opportunity last night, so I believe his tenure in the position will be all-too-brief. Others have suggested Ben, or any one of the non-Jack, crossed off names on Jacob's list. Incidentally, I loved the part last night when Jacob revealed to Kate that she was still a candidate even though her name had been crossed off. Her name had only been cleared because Jacob needed
a successor and Kate had found another temporary role as "guardian" to something else, as well as a purpose to her life-- raising Claire's son. It turns out that the replacement was always going to be whomever
wanted to be the replacement. Jacob was only recruiting candidates he thought maybe didn't have much else going on for themselves in their lives. I don't see this reveal as a cop-out on "the names" mystery in any way, either, as some have suggested. Free will has always been a major element and theme of the show, even when it seemed for a while as if the Oceanic passengers were all just game pieces to be manipulated by Jacob and his enemy.
Anyway, back to it. In the alt-universe, every character now has something pretty good going for themselves in Los Angeles (or at least the potential for such), and they shouldn't have to be stuck on that perhaps-literally god-forsaken island. "Lost" has been destined for a happy ending from the get-go-- of this, I am convinced. It's generally a populist show, that's how populist shows end, and actor Matthew Shepard (Jack) confirmed to Jimmy Fallon last night that he believes the ending of the show to be "beautiful." That means happy. And the biggest reason of all that there will be no protector remaining on the island at the end of the series is that there will be no island left to protect. The alt-universe in Los Angeles will be the reality, and the island will rest in its ruined state at the bottom of the ocean, as we already saw that it is back in the first episode of this final season. The End.
*PREDICTION TWO* The toughest one for me to gauge is how the main characters will be coupled off-- but indeed, they will be. Everybody's getting coupled off in that alt-timeline (even Danielle Rousseau and Ben). Jack's ex-wife in the alt-universe is one of the biggest reveals still to come, and will determine which way things fall. Sawyer has to be paired with either Kate or the otherwise deceased Juliet, and I could see pairing off Jack with either Kate or possibly his ex-wife, whom he seemed to really love, but the new "ex-wife" being held out as a secret for this long is the real tip-off for me. I BOLDLY predict: the ex-wife will be Juliet. Who else could it be? Kate's been in handcuffs, Ana-Lucia is unpopular with viewers (although I like her, she's hot) and they just used her up in another capacity of the story (helping the gang escape from jail last night), and it has to be a major female character. Maybe Penny. I've read some speculation of this online, but I doubt it. It would make perfect sense that a pair of doctors, Jack and Juliet, roughly the same age, had gotten together back in the day and had themselves a talented, pleasant-enough kid. Since the characters' memories of their existence on the island are returning to them though, I suspect Sawyer and Juliet will ultimately find themselves again in Los Angeles, reunited in love at her son's piano concert, and then you've got Jack left to pair off with Kate, who stitched him back to health way back in episode one.
*PREDICTION THREE* The Man in Black will not "leave the island," or "go home" in any literal sense. I think it was definitively established last week in the seemingly-underappreciated episode, "Across the Sea," that Jacob's brother, the man whom we could-- and should-- feel some sympathy for was buried with his "mother" long ago on the island. The Man in Black is not John Locke either, who's about to be physically and emotionally healed in the alt-timeline. What we see on the island now is simply the Smoke Monster, a sort of stand-in for evil itself, that despite glimpses of possible humanity, has been snapping too many necks and slashing too many throats in recent episodes to ultimately warrant any sympathy or salvation from the show's writers. He's/It's going down.
*PREDICTION FOUR* Desmond is (obviously) the centerpiece between the two separate Season 6 universes. He's going to somehow (big "somehow," perhaps) wind up absorbing that magical light ("the source") that we're seeing as a literal light on the island, and that's the
metaphorical light that we're seeing being passed around (or "exposed") by Desmond person-to-person in the new, final reality for our beloved characters in Los Angeles. The End. Really, this time.
Jefferson and slavery
Musician and author Ned Sublette wrote a tremendous book released last year entitled "The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square." It's a political, cultural, and musical history of that city from the Spanish "discovery" and colonization period, beginning in the 16th century, until essentially the 1820s.
I was particularly informed by the chapter on Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President and card-carrying "founding father" of the United States, architect of the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, fully one-fourth of Mount Rushmore, and author of these words in respect to the African "race":
The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites... Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigation of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.Sublette essentially argues in this section of the book that any attempt to categorize Jefferson as
conflicted on the issue of slavery is a whitewash (so to speak) of history. It's a common defense of the former president, with all he symbolizes for American history, to call the matter "complicated." Jefferson, after all, occasionally expressed apprehension in writing about the righteousness of chattel slavery, and he freed some of his slaves at the time of his death, but Sublette looks deeper while addressing head-long one of the most controversial subjects in American history-- the rumored relationship between Jefferson and his most-prized slave, Sally Hemings, whom the Master allegedly impregnated...
Sublette:
A November 1998 article in Nature Magazine summarized DNA tests that showed, in the author's words, that "the simplest and most probable explanations for our molecular findings are that Thomas Jefferson, rather than one of the Carr brothers (blogger's note: Jefferson's nephews), was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson [the last of Sally's children]."... For me, the question the Jefferson/Hemings story brings up is not whether he fathered her children, but why did American historians kick and scream so hard for so long that this couldn't possibly be true? Of course it could be true. Whether Jefferson exercised his option or not, he could have sex with Sally Hemings whenever he wanted. The matter of her consent was irrelevant, because she couldn't refuse. Because that's
what slavery was.A page later:
If the matter were tried in a court of law, with a presumption of innocence and an expensive law firm to defend Jefferson, (which is how a number of mainstream American historians seem to have seen their role in this case), we might have to let him off the hook for lack of definitive proof. On the other hand, if he were a poor man with substantial circumstantial evidence against him and a public defender, he'd accept a plea bargain, the way some 95 percent of criminal cases in the United States are resolved now, and get off with a guilty plea and a reduced sentence. But then, no one has accused Jefferson of a crime. After all, you can do with your property as you like.According to the author, Statesman Jefferson favored the idea of teaching slaves to read, but opposed teaching them to write. This was a common notion at the time because being able to write allowed slaves to forge passes to leave the plantations. It wasn't a mark of great liberal thinking on Jefferson's part. He shared another of the typical attitudes of the day too: that Americans were stuck with their Africans even as they feared a violent uprising along the lines of the bloody slave revolt in Haiti (then called Saint-Domingue) during the last decade of the 18th century. It was the fault of the British for transporting them to the colonies in the first place, according to this train of thought, and it was now impractical to round them all up and deport them back to Africa. If they couldn't be expelled, they couldn't be freed.
Though he conceded the eventual inevitability of emancipation, Jefferson was married as much to the institution of slavery in his livelihood and his identity as he was in his political outlook, Sublette argues:
Thomas Jefferson-- amateur violinist, revolutionary, politician, farmer, nail manufacturer, architect, philosopher, Jefferson Davis's namesake, and grandfather of the Confederacy's minister of war (George Wythe Randolph... born at Monticello in 1818)-- owned over six hundred other people during his lifetime, between one and two hundred of them at any one time, including four who were probably his own children. He lived his entire life dependent on the income of slave labor. As was the norm for planters, Jefferson was both insolvent and fabulously wealthy. He was not a man to deny himself anything. Monticello was proof of that. When he remodeled Monticello, he mortgaged his slaves to cover his expenses. That was a common enough practice; plantation owners lived in constant debt, and their most visible asset was not their land... Their best, and most liquid, asset was their Negroes, who formed the basis of their credit.So again, we're back to the major theme of today's America-- politicians in service to the ideals they value highest-- the protection of personal property and unimpeded acquisition. However immoral an institution may be, it must endure if there's capital to be protected. Today, the facts about Thomas Jefferson still get swept underneath the nation's living room rug, and there's some new revisionism blooming as well-- the suggestion put forth by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and others that the South did not fight the Civil War over the issue of slavery.
This is an absurd notion. Indeed, it had everything to do with slavery. For the South, it was about perpetuating white supremacy and an economic system in which slave labor was the engine. Lincoln was assassinated by a white supremacist. That the majority-poor whites of the South were not large-scale planters or may not have had the financial means to even own slaves, and therefore had no reason to fight to maintain the institution of such is arguable but ultimately immaterial. Wealthy elites make the wars, as they still do today, and poor folks fight for their purposes and for their benefit.
The history of slavery in the United States requires continued discussion and debate as we try to come to grips with its legacy-- this is true for everyone regardless of skin color or whether they reside above or below the Mason-Dixon line. There's still much pain and pride at play, as well as the desire by all for that vital sense of belonging. But it has to be
history that we're discussing and debating
, not myth, and there's too much myth still surrounding Thomas Jefferson, who may have possibly authored the line "all men are created equal," but didn't live the concept a single day of his life. Fortunately, in our quest for reconciliation, we have the common ground of all being Americans. We're all beneficiaries of the spoils of evil deeds.
Mr. Baseball
I've got no science to give you with this. All of my evidence is anecdotal. But baseball has lost its sense of humor. Higher salaries and ticket prices have caused players to adopt an ultra-professional, but by-and-large extremely dull posture. The proliferation of websites devoted to sports-celebrity gossip has required the players to become extra protective of their personal privacy and their public images, and now it's only the actual societal menaces that take the time to drink and use recreational drugs for fun in-between, and sometimes, during, games.
The television and radio broadcasters, as a group, are as colorless and boring as they've been at any time that I can remember. Since most of the games are resigned to cable channels, these announcers and their bosses seem intent on only broadcasting to the established sports fan, not wooing the otherwise disinterested others that could be won with some extra human interest.
A generation ago, we had Morganna the Kissing Bandit, the exotic dancer "with a 112-pound body and a 15-pound chest" who ran illegally onto the field and kissed the cheek of 37 different ballplayers between the seasons of 1971 and 1990. If she did that at a Major League game tonight, she would get tasered.
Perhaps all of this is to be expected when you have a commissioner that looks like
this, but our baseball business is in dire need of a personality who humanizes and
humorizes the game again, a character who adds color and helps to take the game out of its sporting ghetto and place it back into the American cultural and entertainment mainstream. What it needs is another Bob Uecker.
I was reminded of how great Bob Uecker has been for baseball as I listened to him interviewed by phone this afternoon during the Fox Game of the Week between Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Uecker is still delivering play-by-play on radio for the Brewers in his hometown, but it's primarily localized exposure and the 75-year-old is currently on leave from the team recovering from heart surgery. (He's been reading quite a few get-well letters, he told Fox's Tom McCarthy and Mark Grace during the broadcast-- most of them he's written himself.)
Though it's still a tremendous joy to listen to Uecker, it's clear we're past the day when he would score with his comedic quips on late-night television seated next to Johnny Carson or David Letterman. He appeared as a guest with Johnny 64 times and starred in a number of hilarious beer commercials that traded on his less-than-stellar 6-year playing career during the 1960s.
Here's
a clip of Bob with Letterman from April 4th, 1994. Forgive the so-so quality of the video, but appreciate the great comedic timing of the man. Uecker has been more than just a funny ex-ballplayer these years, he ranks, I believe, with the great comedians. Support for this opinion is that
other comedy greats regard him with such high esteem.
Lost in "Lost"
I'm a "Lost" watcher, and I want to say just these things about it before it wraps May 23rd:
"Lost" is about the journey, not the destination. All TV series are really that way. I'm not going to require of it that it tie up all loose ends, that it provide plausible explanations for all of the "Lost" island's magical qualities, or provide full closure to each character's story. I did not start watching the series from the beginning. I did a major catch-up via DVD during the middle of Season 3 (out of 6), and I've been watching it at its natural week-to-week pace only since the start of Season 4, yet I don't think that's the reason I feel so little loyalty towards the rules and the principal themes of Seasons 1 & 2. Shows evolve. Priorities change. They begin as one thing. They become another. Humans behave that way, too. That's why it's easier to become emotionally-invested in the longer-running arc of a TV series than a film, and the reason I can't think of a single theatrical release out of Hollywood that has the emotional resonance for me or the inspired loyalty to match any of the, say,
ten greatest shows on television during that same period.
The characters on "Lost" were always written a little inconsistently, their motivations often contradictory, the dialogue frequently uninspired. The series broke with the rule of writing that story should always serve character, and that's a rule I would have told you I always supported, incidentally. Now I've reformed. On "Lost," every element of the show is in service to the narrative structure, the incomparable, brilliant outline of constant "reveals" and the parade of new mysteries to be explored that have continued at a whirlwind pace right up at least to the final 3 1/2 hours yet to air. I swear I've spent more time
dissecting this show than I have
watching many of my other favorites. That's been the fun. The cottage industry of viewer "theories" that has built up online is perhaps the greatest artistic triumph of the series. They've engaged us.
What a story outline it was. The show's creators had their doubters, remember, but I already feel vindicated in my suspicion all along that the largest mysteries of all-- the numbers, the off-island encounters, the bodies buried beneath the water, the true meaning of the island (as opaque as that might be), etc.-- were mapped out from the very beginning. Kudos to the writers and producers for delivering on each of these in a major way and holding us in suspense all along.
And that's the perfect analogy, by the way-- being "held in suspense." It's already evident that there's going to be an avalanche of criticism directed towards the show immediately upon its finale. People will feel "let down," and they'll be expressing themselves as such. But that's to be largely a natural "let down" due to the fact that we're no longer being "held in suspense." It's almost a literal thing. The show will be over. At 10pm central time on Sunday night, May 23rd, we will have been delivered everything we will ever be given in terms of new dramatic narrative on these characters. But viewers need to be careful not to confuse these inevitable feelings of abandonment that this reality will engender with feelings of dissatisfaction or contempt directed towards the show or its storytellers.
Much of the hate also will be fueled by the fact that the show that's ending no longer looks like the show that began in the fall of 2004. Yet I don't understand why this is such a bad thing. Who really wants a simple, explicit ending anyway for a show that's kept us guessing all along? Like David Chase and his abrupt, enigmatic conclusion for "The Sopranos," it appears as if producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof aren't going to be willing to "end" their show in just 10 days. They'll leave us guessing on a number of important items, and it's that open ending that will allow the series to live on forever. It's about tempting our imaginations and forcing us to draw many of your own conclusions, and that's a rare gift to television viewers indeed.
Three wise dudes
Glenn Greenwald on the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan:
Nothing is a better fit for this White House than a blank slate, institution-loyal, seemingly principle-free careerist who spent the last 15 months as the Obama administration's lawyer vigorously defending every one of his assertions of extremely broad executive authority. The Obama administration is filled to the brim with exactly such individuals -- as is reflected by its actions and policies -- and this is just one more to add to the pile. The fact that she'll be replacing someone like John Paul Stevens and likely sitting on the Supreme Court for the next three decades or so makes it much more consequential than most, but it is not a departure from the standard Obama approach.Kagan is Obama's Harriet Miers, and Obama looks more and more like the Democrats' George W. Bush.
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Matt Taibbi on AG Eric Holder's suggestion that the Justice Department is looking to scale back Miranda rights:
For the Democrats, it will surely end up being one of the darker moments of the Obama presidency — not because it’s necessarily so terribly meaningful (at least compared to ending Too-Big-to-Fail), but because it represents a new low on the utter-lack-of-balls front. The only reason we’re even talking about this Miranda issue is because a bunch of morons on talk radio made a big fuss about it, and if our president is going to go sticking his thumbs into the constitution every time he can’t take a few days of getting reamed by a bunch of overpaid media shills whose job it is to hate him no matter what he does, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.Taibbi has harsh words for "conservative/Tea Partiers/Republicans" on this topic at the link as well.
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Chris Hitchens on France's effort to outlaw the wearing of burques (what Bill Maher calls the beekeeper suits) in the country's public settings:
The French legislators who seek to repudiate the wearing of the veil or the burqa—whether the garment covers "only" the face or the entire female body—are often described as seeking to impose a "ban." To the contrary, they are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face. The proposed law is in the best traditions of the French republic, which declares all citizens equal before the law and—no less important—equal in the face of one another.This is a subject in which leftists seem deeply divided. Place me firmly in Hitchens' camp. Of course Muslim women have the theoretical right to dress as they choose-- I say 'theoretical' because there's such a great record of ongoing female subjugation in the culture of the religion's fundamentalist sect-- but what about their daughters? I've got more problems with France's '04 ban on head scarves in public schools, a sign of personal religious affiliation that doesn't obscure the face. It's the concealment that's troubling to me because, as Hitchens states, it can be a tremendous safety concern-- for all of us-- and it can hide the scars of physical abuse. Some religious liberties end at our borders. This is a reality that should be accepted. One is not allowed, for example, to hold a woman or any other person as a slave, even if it's consistent with that potential slaveholder's religious convictions. Female circumcision is also a federal crime, as Hitchens notes. View this outlawing of the burqa as an extension of personal freedoms. A multicultural society is a reality of all of our futures and tolerance will be a requirement. Considering this, we're going to
have to be able to look each other in the face.
Miranda goes the way of the campaign promise
The daily disappointment: Our Attorney General, Eric Holder, says it may be necessary to
scale back Miranda rights in combating terrorism. Says the
Washington Post: "The administration is trying to thread a difficult needle: of taking a harder line on terrorism while also doing so within the confines of the criminal justice system." Translation: The White House is struggling to balance the United States Constitution and the rule of law with political expedience.
Remember back in 2008 when Obama supporters made the charge that a vote for John McCain was a vote for a third term of George W. Bush?
I do.
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Root, root, root for the home team: In January,
Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy
likened admitted-steroid user Mark McGwire to Hitler. Today, he
calls admitted-steroid user David Ortiz (of the Red Sox) "a character guy."
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Actress Khandi Alexander is one of our dear favorites since her days on "Newsradio." Here's
The New Yorker on her latest on-screen effort:
In “Treme” (which has been picked up for a second season on HBO), as LaDonna Batiste-Williams, a bar owner in post-Katrina New Orleans, Alexander—the Queens native who was equally brilliant in “The Corner” (2000) and subversive as the coroner Alexx Woods on “CSI: Miami”—acts as though her life depends on it. She not only brings a linguist’s scalpel to the script—she emphasizes a word like “busted,” say, until you feel just that—she also shows us LaDonna’s need to survive in her newly changed world with a glance, or a gesture. Alexander breaks the box, otherwise known as television, wide open with her searing intelligence and blistering heart.
Aisle 4, Row 8, Seat 113
Just how close did the Chicago Cubs come to winning their first National League pennant in 58 years on the epic night of October 14, 2003? So close that I had several innings anterior stopped watching that Championship Series Game 6 between the Cubs and the Florida Marlins. As a Cardinals fan fearing imminent destruction of the natural order of things, all I could bare to do was briefly check in on the score during each commercial break of the program(s) I was watching. I
had to know what was happening. I just couldn't stand to watch it unfold.
The beauty of baseball-- and sometimes, the bittersweetness of it-- is that the tension builds the later in the game it goes. It's not an inevitable countdown of the clock, punctuated by clumsy time outs, such as it is in football, basketball, or hockey. Nor is it a count-
up (huh?), as it is in soccer. No, if you're team achieves the advantage on a baseball scoreboard, there's no stalling out of the clock. You have to go after the other side aggressively. In fact, it's considered strategically-advantageous for pitchers to become
more confrontational if they've given a lead to work with-- throw
more strikes, the conventional wisdom goes, and don't give your opponents anything for free. As a result, in baseball, each succeeding out that's earned releases a shot of adrenaline in the fan, heightening the drama.
One out. Two out. Three out. On to the ninth. I find it all quite pleasing, aesthetically, unless of course you're rooting for the trailing team. It's never hopeless, because there's no clock, but you can feel that hope slipping further away with each out.
I could feel the Cubs fans' intensifying glee through the television with each remote-controlled return to the action, but at one check, I noticed the mood had remarkably changed. Having flipped back, I had no idea what had just happened, but I could see immediately in the corner of the screen that the score was now tied. The Fox Television camera was settled on a pair of Cubs fans silent and sitting on their hands, and the broadcasters were silent also. What had transpired was a series of miscues that had begun with an action taken by a fellow fan named Steve Bartman.
Deadspin and
New York Magazine's Will Leitch has written a new book called "Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons and the New Golden Age of Baseball." Leitch is a native of central Illinois six months my junior. That means we've shared roughly the same lives as Midwest baseball fans, and in the service of full disclosure, he's also a Cardinals fan. An excerpt from the book, chronicling the action that I initially missed on 10/14/03, was
recently published at
Deadspin. I particularly appreciated Leitch's reminder that there were other, now-forgotten, non-Bartman fans in the left-field seats that also reached out for that infamous foul ball sliced off the bat of the Marlins' Luis Castillo.
Two other men were next to him, less-positioned but arms also outstretched, completing our enduring image of Steve Bartman on his own Mount Calvary.
Greece gets the 'shock' treatment
Once you're familiar with Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine," you can see it in crystal clear operation across the globe. We discussed this concept back on
April 23rd, and less than two weeks later, we have a new country, Greece, making headlines in connection with this exercise-- a nation being placed over the economic barrel by the international corporatists, and the people being forced to fight back-- this time with stones.
The Friedmanist thugs on Wall Street and at the International Monetary Fund, as has been their practice in now-almost-countless other locales (Argentina, Russia, Poland, South Africa, Japan, et al), threatened to withhold rescue loans from Greece unless lawmakers there agreed to radically cut social democratic programs-- pensions, services, and civil servants' pay, and the Parliament voted to do that Thursday touching off riots with more than 30,000 people in the streets of Athens and the killing of three people.
The very role of the IMF-- in theory-- is to provide stabilizing funds to prevent economic catastrophes, to act as a lifeline to nations in need. It has a mandate to keep countries afloat, peoples fed, clothed, and sheltered, and the rest of us safe from elements such as economic-based and religious-based terrorism. Now that aid is an offer. A Greece in a weakened state means that it can be opened up for greater (foreign) privatization and a rapid profit for a select few. If all goes according to plan, perhaps we can even get them to sell off some of their national assets. Real estate with a Parthenon, anyone?
Western Europe is the final frontier on the planet for the system of unrestrained capitalism (with due respect to Venezuela and Cuba). According to neoliberalism theory, President Truman fucked up royally during the aftermath of World War II by implementing the Marshall Plan, rescuing the left half of the European continent, allowing social programs to take root and nations to be rebuilt. Forget that these social programs created the highest standard of healthy living on Earth, the countries were also fortressed against corporatist exploitation, and that was a major missed opportunity for investors. Never again.
Greece can be the latest foothold. The plan: Let the country fall deeper and deeper into debt and inflation, then they're ripe for radical shock therapy-- an IMF rescue tied to massive concessions in the social safety net for the growing numbers of poor and disenfranchised. Now the multinational capitalist rapists sweep in and widen the gap further between the haves and have-nots as they have in other hot spots of supposed "democratic expansion" like Russia and South Africa, where the percentage of people living in poverty is now even larger than it was 20 years ago under (alternately) systems of authoritarian Communism and apartheid.
As is their role under the Shock Doctrine, traders on Wall Street went into a panic this afternoon as they watched protesters in Greece turn violent. A massive selloff, or just the threat of such, creates the panic necessary to force the concessions Wall Street requires to strengthen its grip, holding the Greek government hostage to the knee-jerk reactions of ratings agencies like Moody's and the S&P, and in this case, also reminding other vulnerable European states like Portugal and Spain that they'll have to play ball to get their loans if and when the time comes.
Let the big boys pay back the money. They're the ones that plundered it-- not the people of Greece. The Greeks have been victims of corruption by government officials and the same Goldman Sachs assholes we have to deal with, the financial group that helped Greek officials hide the country's debt. Now the people are set up to lose their state-run services and their living wages as agencies and assets get chopped up and sold to the highest foreign bidders. A nation's banks are looted, the people are told they're the ones responsible, and the kleptocracy gets legal and political cover. We're next.
The players rise up
If you're on Dave Zirin's email list, as we all should be, you're probably already aware of the unprecedented and very public political statements being offered by professional athletes in opposition to the state of Arizona's recent anti-immigration-- and anti-Hispanic-- legislation.
Zirin writes:
The (NBA's) Phoenix Suns, stepping out as a team against Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB 1070 is entirely without precedent in the history of sports, not to mention politics. It would be like if the 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers had come out as one in support of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. The reason why team owner Robert Sarver and players like Steve Nash and Amare Stoudamire took this unique step, amidst all the protest and controversy, is their belief that the bill itself is fundamentally unjust, and it compelled them to act. As Stoudamire said, "It's going to be great to wear Los Suns (on their uniforms) to let the Latin community know we're behind them 100%.”Once upon a time, professional athletes in the United States showed much more willingness to put themselves on the line publicly for their personal beliefs. Curt Flood, Jackie Robinson, Jim Brown, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Billie Jean King, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dave Meggyesy, and of course, Muhammad Ali, were athletes that showed they valued their principles above their paychecks during the 1960s and '70s, but then we settled into a sort of drought during which the highest-profile and trendsetting of athletes, like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, grew most intent on staying silent and building up their corporate brands.
Stoudamire and the two-time league MVP Nash are not the only current athletes speaking out on this hot-button issue. In baseball, Padres firstbaseman Adrian Gonzalez, a native of Mexico, and White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, from Venezuela, both former All-Stars in the sport, say they would boycott the 2011 All-Star Game if it is played in Phoenix as scheduled, and former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent went on ESPN radio last week to condemn the idea that politics and sports don't mix, citing the sport's vital cultural history and calling the enterprise "a moral force." (27.7% of current MLB players were born in Latin America.) The NBA and Major League Baseball Players Associations have both opposed the bill in written statements, and athletes like the Royals' Jose Guillen, and the Padres' Yorvit Torrealba and Scott Hairston are also speaking out. Said Torrealba, "I don't see this being right. Why do I want to go play in a place where every time I go to a restaurant and they don't understand what I'm trying to order, they're going to ask me for ID first? That's bull."
Arizona Diamondbacks infielder Augie Ojeda, a U.S. citizen born in Los Angeles, said, "I don't know the details, but if I leave the park after the game and I get stopped (by police), am I supposed to have papers with me? I don't think that's fair... My neighbor is a policeman. I asked him what it means, and he said he had no idea. If he doesn't know, I don't know who would." How many of you carry your Social Security card or birth certificate around with you're out of the house?
A boycott of the state of Arizona is an idea that's growing well beyond the sports world. We can all do our part by staying away from the Grand Canyon State, taking our business and our vacations elsewhere, but these athletes and sports teams can have a major and very positive impact. What would the Cardinals do if players Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, Dennys Reyes, and Jaime Garcia announced they were refusing to travel to Phoenix for the team's matchup against the D'Backs beginning June 11th? What if the Cubs' Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano, Geovany Soto, Carlos Zambrano, Carlos Silva, Carlos Mormol and Kosuke Fukudome did the same July 5th, and the Reds' Francisco Cordero, Orlando Cabrera, Johnny Cueto, Miguel Cairo, Carlos Fisher, Daniel Ray Herrera, and Ramon Hernandez on August 17th? And how about this: What if their teammates decided to join with them in solidarity? The Diamondbacks are a privately-owned business, but owner Ken Kendrick is a major political donor of his state's Republican Party, which drafted and pushed this measure, and the team has accepted more than $250 million in public funds for their current stadium.
Clubs say they don't want fans and players "politicizing" the sports world, but they've already done that through lobbying and subsidies. They can't have it both ways. If they've thrown their support, financial or otherwise, behind institutional apartheid, as the Diamondbacks have, there has to be a consequence.
The BP Oil Spill
I'm back from New Orleans, where the music is as hot as ever, but where the water is becoming dirtier by the day, with special thanks to British Petroleum for helping to strengthen the case that the United States should-- at last-- nationalize its oil industry. As many as 210,000 gallons of crude oil have been gushing out of BP's undersea well each day after a rig explosion two weeks ago, and again the residents of the Gulf Coast are the most unfortunate victims of a
man-made disaster instigated by failed policy, deregulation and purposeful industry neglect.
BP has been ordered to pay $485 million in fines and settlements to the U.S. Government over the last few years, according to Public Citizen, due to the environmental damage they had already inflicted, worker safety violations, and their attempts to manipulate the energy market. They've spent millions in lobbying against regulations that could have helped to avoid this recent catastrophe, and now
we hear that the company has legal liability only up to $75 million for damages inflicted upon area businesses and government agencies, a veritable drop in the bucket for what's taking place off our valuable and vulnerable southern coast. The disaster this company is responsible for comes just a few weeks, incidentally, after President Obama co-opted for his own Sarah Palin's "Drill, baby, drill" policy position regarding off-shore drilling. Now will he (hopefully) be forced to revisit that error in judgment and/or ethics?
When my companions and I sat down for dinner on Thursday night in the French Quarter before menus that included boiled crawfish, shrimp creole, and blackened fish (the
good "blackened," I guess that is now), we were advised by our waitress to make our seafood selections while the getting was still good. This last weekend of JazzFest 2010 was also quite possibly the last weekend for the foreseeable future in which local seafood would be available in dining establishments along the Louisiana wetlands. On Friday, local fishermen, shrimpers, and oystermen in the communities of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes were being gathered into a sort of make-shift disaster management team forced to assist BP with fending off the oncoming smelly and gunky black tide bound for the coastline, and forcing a now-tenuous relationship between fishing and petroleum industries that are usually so complimentary towards each other (oil rigs create artificial reefs advantageous for fishing) that the city of New Orleans features something called the "Shrimp and Petroleum Festival" on its annual events calendar.
BP, for its part, is casting blame towards the companies that operated and provided services on the rig, Transocean, and
that name again, Halliburton; and corporation and contractors will certainly attempt to weasel out of as much responsibility as they can for causing this unprecedented natural disaster. Americans who love their low taxes will pay out-of-pocket instead (as they always do, anyway) through increased prices for food, at the pump, and for home fueling.
Refineries dot the low-lying, muddy and swampy landscape of Louisiana and Mississippi, yet despite being the neighbors and stewards of enough oil and natural gas to keep a small collection of Middle Eastern royals hip-deep in Western decadence for decades, the overwhelming majority of Gulf Coast residents live in poverty. The oil and gas extracted from their shores,
our shores--
natural resources that rightly belong to the people of the United States are given away to corporate conglomerates for a song, while we accept shit back on the dollar, the same products refined and sold back to us at a mark-up of unparalleled industry profit, while the oil and gas companies simultaneously pollute our environs and we clean up their messes. That oil and gas rightfully belongs to you and me-- the American taxpayers-- and it's high time-- Mardi Gras-high time-- to demand back what is justifiably ours by nationalizing what is already a national resource. We'll pay less to cool and heat our homes, and to fill up our vehicles. We'll have real accountability and oversight in instances of misdeed or negligence, and a little more of that representative democracy we advertise so vigorously to the rest of the world.
