More Sally Draper
By now, my all-time favorite child character on television is Sally on "Mad Men." Sally is an often stubborn elementary school student whose ability to see life's truths is always being underestimated by the adults that surround her. She's been forced to come to grips this season with the divorce of her parents, her mother's remarriage, her father's girlfriend, an introduction to psychotherapy, having at least one younger sibling favored by her mother, the slightly-older boy down the block whose probable fate in 10 years lies with
the Symbionese Liberation Army, and of course, "Beatlemania." Whether she is mischievously escaping her suburban purgatory on the subway train or vomiting across the Thanksgiving Day table, I think Sally is really
happenin', man-- to borrow a phrase she'll soon recognize.
Sally Draper is portrayed in cunning fashion by 10-year-old Kiernan Shipka, who also happens to be my all-time favorite child actress. Shipka made the bold decision this year to have her incarnation of "Sally" abandon the lisp, and I think that was the proper artistic decision. Sally is flowering during season four, eager to take her place in the world. She's dealt courageously with the death of her grandfather, she's eager to cook breakfast for her dad when she stays in the city, and she has boldly chopped off her hair, going against her mother's ardent wishes. She would seem to be light years ahead of where Peggy Olson would have been at her age.
Shipka is in the middle of some heavy publicity for "Mad Men" right now (though she admits that her mom doesn't allow her to actually watch the show). This week, the
AP and
New York Magazine both have published profiles of the actress, who, as you may guess by the quality of her screen performances, is alarmingly eloquent. My favorite quote: "For me, I prepared really becoming Sally, practically transforming into her, when I get pretty close to the scene. I think that’s how I gear up. I just kind of become her." Brava, Madam Shipka!
Ken Burns still refuses to accept the existence of a Central Time Zone
When documentary filmmaker Ken Burns released his PBS miniseries "The West" during the mid-'90s, I remember thinking: That's a good title for this because his "Baseball" series of 1994 could have been called "The East." That 18 1/2 hour epic was all Red Sox/all Yankees, all the time. Ted Williams' hitting exploits were chronicled over three of the series' nine chapters despite the fact that his team never won a World Series, yet Stan Musial, his equal as a slugger and his superior as an overall ballplayer, received a three-minute afterthought in the narrative upon the timeline of his retirement.
New York City was quite literally dubbed by Ken Burns "The Capital of Baseball," yet I've been to that city several times, and I can promise you that three-fourths of the people living there do not give a shit one way or another about baseball, and it's certainly a far lesser percentage than the one for St. Louisans. The Red Sox' long World Series drought was covered in excruciatingly dramatic and endearing detail, with every near-miss exalted, yet the White Sox and Cubs, both with
longer World Series droughts than the Red Sox and shockingly both playing their home games in the same city, were not even mentioned as existing franchises after Inning Two (the chapter devoted to the 1910s). The names "Harmon Killebrew" or "Harry Caray" were never uttered in Burns' "Baseball."
Well, I hate to report this to you, but Burns has outdone himself. Tonight, his series addendum "Baseball: The Tenth Inning" aired on taxpayer-supported television. In it, Burns recalls the era of Major League Baseball that has played out since his last series ended, and I can safely tell you after watching it, that it's all Yankees/Red Sox content again. How bad is the disparity in presentation? It is
this bad-- and I am not joking: the home run chase of 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa is
not covered at all! That pinnacle of baseball's global popularity-- the month of September, 1998-- was skipped entirely. Is the documentary filmmaker committed to being a national "historian" really pretending now that that summer in baseball never happened? It's absurd.
The parochialism is as bad as ever, but the galling part is just how tone-deaf and out of step Burns' "experts" are with regard to the overall sentiment of fans on virtually every subject. Like the first film, the people talking in Burns' "Tenth Inning" are predominantly from the East Coast, they're predominantly baby boomers, and they grind their axes accordingly.
The fates of the Yankees and the Red Sox are of the most supreme importance, of course. Of the rivalry between the two teams, sportswriter Howard Bryant says that "nobody (other teams) could compete with their
aura."-- my italics, but the word at the end of that sentence should be "payroll." The payroll discrepancy between New York/Boston teams and the rest of baseball is never addressed, yet team payroll is the overriding factor in how most Americans-- from individual city to individual city-- relate to the game of baseball.
He presents our history as if America was rooting for the Yankees against Arizona in the 2001 World Series because of the 9/11 attacks, but that's not how I remember it. The Yankees had just won four of the last five World Series, and nobody I know-- and I know a lot of baseball fans-- needed them to win another. Thomas Boswell (of the
Washington Post) gets the award for horse's ass of the night when he refers to the '01 champion Diamondbacks as "two pitchers... they weren't a team." You get the impression that the time Burns spends with the Diamondbacks' noteworthy success story in '01 is just the setup for the later story about Curt Schilling pitching with Boston.
In the narrative, Barry Bonds is held up as the symbol of "the steroid era," and to Burns' credit, the slugger gets to tell his own story through several media clips, but two Red Sox stars who actually failed drug tests during their career, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, are never referenced as linked steroid users, only as the Red Sox World Champions they also have been. Talking head Bob Costas, who complained that he was too prominently featured in the first film, is nevertheless back for more this go-round. He reports that America found Bonds' pursuit of the all-time home record "joyless," yet the images backing the Bonds segments show stadiums filled with screaming, cheering fans.
In "The Tenth Inning," manager Joe Torre says he believes that baseball is "too beautiful to have a lasting scar" because of steroids, but Burns never reminds us in his story that Major League Baseball is a business already covered head-to-toe with scars. I do wish the filmmaker's perspective on the game didn't matter, but it does. His first film offering, aired in 1994, helped to launch the star-crossed Red Sox into becoming a "national team," though they had never been one during their first 90 years of existence. Along with their new heightened status came a graduation to the second most lucrative franchise behind the Yankees.
As for Midwestern baseball, "The Tenth Inning" might have been even worse than the original. Steve Bartman and the 2003 Cubs were afforded about five minutes of the two-hour show, even though that bizarre spectacle, and all it entailed, was clearly the most compelling narrative in American sports-- maybe ever. The ending of the Red Sox 1918-2004 championship drought warrants probably half an hour of time during the special, if we include the Curt Schilling setup in Phoenix, but there was nary a mention of the ending of the White Sox 1917-2005 championship drought. Maybe my math is off.
So what has Ken Burns given us with his update? Well, let's see. His last film on this subject matter wrapped in 1992, and this one is designed to pick up where the last one finished. He didn't talk about 1994 strike at all. He didn't reference Cal Ripken's consecutive games streak. He missed the 1998 and 1999 home run races entirely, like I said before. (Again, this is absolutely bewildering to me.) He actually didn't cover the Yankees' four championships between '96 and '00, and in his steroids coverage, he missed the fact that roughly half of the players on the Yankees '00 team would have their names eventually included in the Mitchell Report.
He forgot to mention that a former MLB team owner was actually elected President of the United States, even though it
was referenced that the subject of steroids in baseball was mentioned one year during a State of the Union speech. He missed the White Sox 2005 Championship entirely, and then the greatest baseball player of the last decade, the decade in which Burns was primarily covering with his film-- Albert Pujols-- got the Harmon Killebrew/Harry Caray treatment. By my recall, the teams in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Houston, Kansas City, Detroit, Tampa, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, Montreal/Washington D.C, Toronto, and Cleveland were not mentioned at all. Nor am I remembering references to Bobby Cox, Ken Griffey Jr., Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell, Frank Thomas, Jim Thome, or Todd Helton. Very thorough, Burns. Nice job.
Honored by their country, decorated by their queen, loved here in America... here are the Beatles
Sunday on "Mad Men," "Beatlemania" struck. In "Mad Men" time, it is now August of 1965, and the Fab Four's concert at Shea Stadium is a hot ticket. More than 55,000 fans would attend. Here's
an assemblage of clips from an Ed Sullivan-produced documentary about the actual concert, featuring thousands of young fans screaming their heads off like Sally Draper. The concert is considered the greatest spectacle in Shea Stadium history prior to Adam Wainwright striking out Carlos Beltran with the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series.
No joke. Look for a 16-year-old Meryl Streep in the clip. She's behind the boy being interviewed at the 0:38 mark.
The Pat Tillman Story
Pat Tillman's brother Richard appeared on Bill Maher's show Friday night to promote the new documentary film, "The Tillman Story," and it sounds as if he won't be appearing anywhere else.
Watching
this interview, it's clear that, despite some aggressive reporting from our left-leaning margins, there's still a lot we don't know-- and may never know-- about the soldier's death.
The red lights of Sesame Street
Concerned parents succeeded in getting Katy Perry removed from an episode of "Sesame Street" this week because the pop singer was singing on YouTube opposite Elmo wearing
this outfit. "You're going to have to rename [Sesame Street] "Cleavage Avenue," wrote one righteous parent online, and the complaints collectively forced show producers to shelve their idea of airing the clip during the television program.
To the nation's preschoolers, this type of media controversy would already be difficult to understand, but it's hitting them in their own back "street," as it were, as part of one of their favorite TV shows. So, as a public service, I invite you to bring your little ones up close to the computer and Uncle Chris will explain to them what's going on here.
First, a disclaimer: Uncle Chris has no professional training in family counseling, much like television's Dr. Phil; and the designation "Uncle Chris" is for entertainment purposes only, like "Dr. Phil."...
Now children, and I use that term loosely, because we all know you're just pretending not to be sexualized at age four. You're not fooling your Uncle Chris with that biological indifference poopy, and that's why the comely Aunt Katy is so dangerous parading around on the digital babysitter. Women's breasts, you see, are actually dirty, filthy things, and Aunt Katy doesn't think you can comprehend this yet. Breasts make daddies feel all funny and then act stupid, and the daddies kind of run things around here, as you'll soon understand. Also, other women's breasts sometimes make Mommy not like her own body very much either, so many right-thinking mommies justifiably have come to agree about how bad they are. Yes, it was only a short time ago that Mommy's breasts provided your sustenance and for the quality of your health generally, but that was when you were one, and now you're four and it's time you started altering your worldview accordingly.
Now, I want to prepare you. I know you've seen the image of what Aunt Katy is wearing on her video (because you always click on my links). But this is only the beginning. You're going to see much more than what Aunt Katy is revealing of her tummy the next time we go to the beach or to the public pool. On women you don't even know, you're likely to see the top or side of breasts, or part of the space between the two, and definitely the outline of the breasts. I'm going to be straight with you on this because you're getting to be so big. Sometimes
through the swimsuit, you'll see the dot of the breast, but I'm sorry I had to use inappropriate language there to explain myself. We'll cross this whole swimsuit bridge when we get to it at the beach-- maybe we'll throw a blindfold or something in with the towels.
Now I want you to pay close attention to what you hear on the school bus. We're not going to be talking about such matters ever again, but the truth about mommies' and daddies' bodies is out there if you just keep your ears open. The nuts and bolts of it (
nuts, ha, ha... adult aside) aren't important now anyway. What's important is that you begin to already feel the true depths of just how dirty and unacceptable
your body is. Elmo knows this about you, he's just not telling you, because his words are written for him by ultra-liberals opposed to tax cuts. I'll explain later.
Like I said, we won't speak of this again. It's inappropriate conversation. You're too young. Now get out of here, you scamps.
The phantom debates
Roxanne Conlin, candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa,
debated an empty chair in an auditorium filled with her supporters on Sunday. The incumbent senator, Charles Grassley, refused to appear opposite her on the stage. In Grassley's absence, Conlin resorted to answering questions on his behalf, and video clips were aired of Grassley's past appearances on television.
Sure, Conlin didn't get the opportunity to debate the long-time incumbent face-to-face, but she did get some positive ink (as linked above) from columnist Rehka Basu and the state's largest newspaper. Writes Basu, "We live in a democracy, not a monarchy. No officeholder should feel so entitled as to be above answering a challenger... The public should expect and demand debates, and show their disapproval when candidates refuse. And if they do refuse, challengers should keep looking for creative ways to make their case."
Now here's what Basu forgot to mention: There's a third candidate in the Senate race named John Heiderscheit, a Libertarian. Heiderscheit collected at least 1,500 petition signatures in Iowa from 10 different counties, and as a result, his name will appear alongside Grassley's and Conlin's on the ballots of Iowans who walk through the charade of voting on November 2nd. It can be assured that the Libertarian candidate was not invited to appear at the Democratic Party's sham debate targeting Grassley. He was presumably at his home in Bettendorf on Sunday, likewise debating an empty chair.
Democrat and Republican campaign stooges can't have it both ways. This is the logical extension of the polluted process through which many viable candidates-- viable as determined by the balloting process of the individual states and the federal government-- are excluded from the campaign dialogue and debate.
At the level of the national vote (U.S. President), all third-party candidates are excluded from the televised debates, as the debate commission is run as a joint venture between Democrat and Republican party hacks. No third-party candidate can be deemed viable because a duopoly has replaced the structure of democratic government. In the U.S. Senate race in Iowa, Chuck Grassley has virtually all of the name recognition, more money than he can spend, and therefore, the institutional imperative to skip out on any and all public debates. I guess that's some tough shit for Roxanne Conlin.
The Cardinals quietly slip on their pajamas
Way to go, Cardinals. The Birds were in Miami today making up an August rain-out on what was originally scheduled to be their last off-day of the season. It was a one game series, in and out, on the way from St. Louis to Pittsburgh for a night game tomorrow. Anyway, Tony LaRussa's team was
shut out, 4-0, by the Marlins' Chris Volstad, he of the 5.11 ERA entering the game. The Cards never had a runner reach third base, and the game took all of 1 hour and 52 minutes to play-- the shortest game in Marlins history. So take that,
Jack Clark!
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A man has been arrested in Chicago for attempting to plant explosives in the neighborhood surrounding Wrigley Field. I have no other comment here except notice that, in the Sun-Times'
news coverage of the incident online, a "related blog post" to the story is "(The Bears') Matt Forte claims to be healthy, 'explosive.'" Weird. Doesn't anybody edit that stuff?
One more related comment, I guess: it's a good thing the story didn't read-- "Lebanese man attempts hari-kari." I think you can all see where I'm going with that.
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What do you guys think of the new George Steinbrenner memorial at Yankee Stadium?
Too much? Those markers about one-sixth of the size that you see dwarfed in the foreground are dedicated to a pair of Yankee near-greats named Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio. Seriously, even "Seinfeld" writers couldn't have come up with this.
Also, is David Wells really allowed to touch it?
TV 101
American, you're living in a glorious time for television entertainment-- maybe the best ever. Give me the flawless "Mad Men," the screwball classic "30 Rock," the ingenious "Curb Your Enthusiasm," the delightfully-daffy "Community," the campy "True Blood," the charming "The Big Bang Theory," the soulful "Treme," the bawdy "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," the bizarrely-endearing "Bored to Death," as well as a whole host of other, imaginative, mostly-premium cable programs-- mix in an explosion in inventive late-night comedic programming that includes Maher, Stewart, Colbert, and still Dave and Conan, and I'll put this collection of series up against the best of any era that came before it. Envy me, the co-host of a long-running, annual television festival. The TV in your living room is stretching its metaphorical legs before us these days, and all we need to do is forget about the otherwise-bizarro, panicked reality that surrounds us in this country, sit back, and enjoy.
If the oughts, on the shoulders of "The Sopranos" and "The Wire," have competition for the best decade of television in history, I say it's the 1970s. Festival-goers know Aaron and I have a soft spot for "M*A*S*H," and the wonderful shows of Norman Lear, and especially of the MTM production house. As good as the best of television is today, mostly-free of commercials and the oppressive influence of corporate butchers upon the real authors of narrative, one must still raise his or her stein in tribute to the people who brought us television in the 1970s, a decade during which people would actually stay home to watch TV on Saturday night-- a remarkable social phenomenon at the time, as today. Also, television during the '70s had Suzanne Pleshette.
This week, the AV Club gives us
a "primer" on '70s TV sitcoms (complete with clips!). Study up on this. Moeller TV Festival IX is only two months away. Date and details to follow soon.
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Kansas City's Bill James is arguably baseball's most influential theorist and statistician ever. Today, most of the big league clubs have player development systems modeled on his "sabermetrics."
James argues that, if they had been available to him, Babe Ruth would have ingested steroids like candy-- and more power to him, he says. (I'm paraphrasing.) Remarks James, "There is no real difference between sending Babe Ruth to jail and sending Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to jail. The only relevant difference is the difference between America in 2010 and America in 1940."
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What have I always said about motorist
speed traps being the only real source of revenue left for small municipalities? Cheers to the state of Missouri for finally enforcing their anti-speed trap ordinance against criminal law agencies.
Tony gotta go
Fourteen years ago, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa came to St. Louis and designated the team's Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith a spare part. Having never seen Ozzie play on an everyday basis, LaRussa declared the shortstop position up for grabs during spring training between the 41-year-old, 13-time Gold Glove winner and a 26-year-old newcomer by trade with San Francisco, Royce Clayton.
With a long-ago-damaged rotator cuff finally healed by surgery during the offseason, Ozzie hit .288 in Florida's Grapefruit League with no fielding errors in '06, while Clayton bopped for a .190 average with eight errors. Yet LaRussa declared Clayton the winner of the battle because he had "fresh legs," and announced that Ozzie would start just one game in every series that season. The club finished 56-55 in games started by Clayton during the regular season, 31-19 in games started by Ozzie, and the team won the National League Central Division by 6 games. Tone deaf as he so often would be over the next decade and a half, LaRussa would ask Ozzie if he wanted to be traded to a non-Cardinals team in May of that year, but club ownership was able to work out a deal with the shortstop in which he would retire with the Cardinals at the end of the season. Ozzie Smith was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002. Clayton would wind up playing for three seasons as a Cardinal, with 11 MLB teams over a 16-year career, and posted a career adjusted OPS rating (77) equal to Rob Wilfong.
Today, a lot of baseball observers believe LaRussa
is past
his prime. They're arguing that his team has quit on him this month. His "with-me-or-against-me" style of management and his tactics towards interpersonal relationships have always rubbed some players wrong. Ron Gant, Brian Jordan, and Scott Rolen all wanted out. Others like Ozzie, Andy Van Slyke, Jim Edmonds, Anthony Reyes, Ryan Ludwick, and Adam Kennedy criticized a perceived lack of communication. And he's been paranoid as hell from the very beginning, occasionally complaining about shadowy figures within the organization or its extended family rooting against him.
This year each of these issues has been exacerbated. He's said to be in opposition to the new statistical style of player development favored by club vice president Jeff Luhnow. The executive's first-ever draft pick (in '05), Colby Rasmus, now a second-year player, asked for a trade during the summer reportedly because of hostility he was feeling in the clubhouse connected to the organization's philosophical rift. (He's "Luhnow's boy," it seems.) Rumors suggest that some in the clubhouse are miffed over a supposed LaRussa tendency to play favorites-- John Jay favored over Rasmus in the outfield, for example, or Skip Schumaker over Brendan Ryan in the infield.
LaRussa's post-game interviews, broadcast on Fox Sports Midwest, have become opportunities lately for him to launch nasty snarls and curt responses at reporters. When the manager was asked last month about sitting Rasmus in a big game, he compared the player's approach to the game unfavorably-- and unnecessarily-- to Jay, even though a trade of Ryan Ludwick had made his point moot about playing one over the other. After a loss to the Cubs just two nights ago, he made a point to boldly inform the media that an error charged to the second baseman Schumaker on a double play ball should have been charged to the shortstop Ryan because of a low toss, a ludicrous claim if you saw the play to begin with, but more interesting when you consider that LaRussa made the high-profile decision a year and a half ago to convert Schumaker, an outfielder by training, into a keystone infielder. It was a pointless verbal dig.
A couple weeks ago, he defended keeping pitcher Kyle Lohse too long in a game by referring to Lohse as "a targeted Cardinal," whatever the hell that means, and he's been harping more than ever this year about the so-called "proper way to play the game." This frequent type of comment has often been a positive for the club through the years, in the way that it could unite the clubhouse and that the players were mirroring his game intensity, but more and more that intensity now manifests itself as rigidity and tightness in the club, and LaRussa, uncharactistically outspoken of late about off-the-field issues like Arizona's immigration law and "Restoring Honor in America" rallies, seems like he's entombing himself in social paranoia that may also be manifesting itself in the form of disgust for a 24-year-old center fielder with a laid-back demeanor. I'm not suggesting that LaRussa has turned curmudgeon, but during the last home stand, he arrived late for a game because he had been yelling at some neighborhood kids for walking across his lawn. He might just go "Woody Hayes" on a player if they don't let him go soon.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals are getting trounced by the Reds of Cincinnati in the standings, and the Birds have to win 8 of their final 19 games-- an unlikely scenario, it seems lately-- to avoid finishing the season with a losing record. The Reds' emotional leader on the field is Scott Rolen, formerly the Cardinals' emotional leader. Rolen is a great player in nearly every facet of the game, and he wanted out of St. Louis three years ago because of the manager. This should stick in the craws of all Cardinals fans as Rolen should be considered the ideal player to manage. SB Nation's Dan Moore
recently described the third baseman beautifully as a player who "plays baseball like he is demonstrating it for people who didn't quite hear him right the first time he tried to explain things. When he hits a home run, he puts his head down and sprints around the bases; when the ball is hit his way he reacts instantly, makes an astounding play, and then puts his head down. Now you try it," but as Moore also points out, his fire is internal, not external, so out he goes. The Cardinals' third basemen this year are Felipe Lopez, who is 29 for 160 since the All-Star break, and Pedro Feliz, who is slugging .297 for the season.
The Cardinals are playing alternately tight and uninspired. Watching Yadier Molina get doubled off on a fly ball last night, down 5-1 to the Cubs, because he forgot how many outs there were, was possibly the team's lowest point of the season to date, but there are still two and a half weeks to play. I'm not sure why a club with an All-Star nucleus of Molina, Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Chris Carpenter, and Adam Wainwright requires such an angry decision-maker in the dugout. It's an ultra-professional group that should be able to motivate itself regardless of the manager.
The solution is a low-key, Red Schoendienst-style field boss that would avoid attention-grabbing maneuvers, and allow the players to simply play. That solution just happens to be standing over in the third base coach's box in the person of long-time Cardinals player, then-coach, Jose Oquendo, who's been managing Puerto Rico for two cycles in the World Baseball Classic. Jose was dubbed "the Secret Weapon" as a player, and I suspect he would be one as manager as well.
Iowa's judges up for bid
With Senator Charles Grassley and former Governor Terry Branstad, both Republicans, poised to claim blow-out midterm victories in November against the uninspired Democratic opponents in their statewide races, liberal voters in Iowa may find very little reason to go to the polls-- especially here in Des Moines and the state's 3rd Congressional district where a Republican, Brad Zaun, squares off against the incumbent Congressman, Diet Republican Leonard Boswell. But these liberals should pay heed to the fact that our ballots may be in the national spotlight for a different reason on election day.
Last week, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
made national news during her visit to Iowa by criticizing, in a speech before the Iowa Bar Association, the special interest campaign dollars that have been flowing into the state's judicial retention races, dollars she says would allow judges to be bought out on various issues, or retaliated against at the polls. If the entire process becomes politicized, it may force Iowa judges to start committees and begin campaigning to retain their seats.
Bob Vander Plaats, a failed GOP gubernatorial candidate in Iowa and the Bull Connor of the gay civil rights movement in America, has been soliciting funds from bigoted special interest groups like the American Family Association and the National Organization for Marriage in an effort to unseat the three (of nine) Iowa Supreme Court Justices who are up for retention on the ballot this year. Justices David Baker, Michael Streit, and Chief Justice Marsha Ternus all voted in favor of lifting the ban on gay marriage in Iowa in the court's unanimous 2009 decision. Chief Justice Ternus, like O'Connor incidentally, was appointed to her highest judicial position by a Republican Chief Executive.
An organization called "Iowans for Fair and Impartial Courts" has been started in dedication to keeping campaign dollars out of judicial elections in our state.
This is their website.
Chicago, we need your big shoulders
Mayor Daley II of Chicago has announced that he's stepping down, and Washington politicos are suggesting that it's all but certain Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a former Illinois Congressman, will seek the vacant position. I say
hurray. If that's the public relations angle that's needed to get Obama to cut this prick loose at the midterm, then I'm all for it.
It's probably wrong to think that all of Obama's lapses as president, both in policy and in ethics, are the fault of a solitary cabinet official-- after all, Obama is a product of the same Chicago Democratic "machine" as Emanuel-- and yet I just can't stop myself from believing it. The New York Times called him the most influential chief of staff in the nation's history. He cautioned against the stimulus, and he pushed for the bank bailouts. He's been behind the Wars on Iraq and Afghanistan since their inceptions. He's used stronger language than "prick"
to describe supporters of single-payer health insurance-- I think "fucking retarded" was the phrase exactly. He quashed that winning idea of single-payer before it could even be measured in a national forum, and that led directly to the derailing of meaningful reform.
Emanuel has long been considered a stern partisan, a product of the Windy City political system that has a well-worn reputation for its foul stench, yet I would argue that he's probably been corrupt to his core going back to the cradle. In case you're not aware, that loudmouth douchebag you see strutting around the screen on HBO's "Entourage" is a portrayal of Emanuel's real-life brother, Ari. Why do I somehow picture those same scenes playing out in the Oval Office with Obama as the equally-bland and vapid political version of the fictional Vincent Chase?
Rahm Emanuel is a boil on the presidency, his party, and the nation. In fact, it would be fitting if somebody important named the current so-called "enthusiasm gap" between Republican and Democratic voters in 2010 "the Emanuel Gap" as this baffoon did almost everything humanly possible in just two short years to create it.
The people of Chicago have already been saddled for years with a polluted river and a pair of doormat baseball teams-- and they deserve much, much better-- but they would really be doing us a solid if they could take this guy off our hands. At least make him
think you're going to vote for him.
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Green Party candidates nationwide are beginning to pick up
endorsements from labor groups during this election cycle, maybe because, not long ago, Rahm Emanuel counseled the president to "fuck the UAW." The cynics may be correct that we're destined to always be a two-party system in the U.S., but nobody said they have to be the two parties we've got.
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Sportswriter Dave Zirin appeared on C-Span's "BookTV" this Labor Day weekend, promoting his new book on a long-ignored subject, "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love." If you missed his appearance on your television,
here it is on your computer.
Ah yeah, we're gonna need that back
The NCAA has ruled that the University of Southern California and their former running back, Reggie Bush, cheated more than most during the 2005 football season, and so Bush is going to be
"relieved of" his '05 Heisman Trophy before the end of the month.
As the article above indicates, USC is planning to voluntarily relinquish its "copy" of Bush's Heisman, but no word yet on whether Bush plans to do the same. I think he should make the NCAA goons come take it from him. I'm not talking about holing up in his house with firearms or anything like that. He should just say "You have to come get it," being generally belligerent and petty and all that. Then when somebody shows up at the door, he should let them in, but don't hand it to them. Just leave it sitting on the mantle, and when the goons are boxing it up, he should pretend he's not paying attention on the other side of the room, like by rifling through some bills or something on his desk. Don't give them the satisfaction. Although maybe he could play a video of last year's Super Bowl on the TV or something while they're hauling it out. That would be subtle.
The rules for collegiate athletics never change. A current or alumni player can engage in almost any amount of abhorrent, violent and/or misogynistic behavior, up to and including the murder of your ex-wife and her date, but
the talent must never, ever be financially compensated.
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Perhaps energized by the death of George Steinbrenner, the old lefthander Bill Lee has
added another win to his lifetime total.
Enjoy this video of
a Bill Lee "sermon" recorded at a New England church last summer.
Our Muslim President
Call me an optimist, but I just can't find it in me to believe that so many of my fellow Americans (now 24%, according to Newsweek
) actually believe that President Obama is a Muslim. Don't these polls wind up sort of perpetuating the opinions they're designed to gauge just by posing the question? In other words, a man or woman sitting by his or her phone (and they don't call people with cell phones very often, incidentally, so grain of salt with all of these polls) has to wonder:
Why would Obama not
be a Muslim if Newsweek, The New York Times, or CNN is asking me this question? Nobody ever asked me if President Bush was a Muslim. Just by being asked, the question is given weight.
"Does Obama want the terrorists to win?" "Is he the Antichrist?" "Is he a Martian preparing to harvest the organs of our most accomplished athletes?" Aren't the results of these types of questions also just a reflection of the chief executive's current approval rating? If a person being polled doesn't like the subject person of the poll, and he or she is even a little bit fired up about it, that person is just going to choose the most negative response options possible during the phone poll, whether they actually believe their statement or not. They may
not actually believe it, but they're savvy enough to want to skew the poll results for other purposes, and now here's their chance when the phone rings in the den on an otherwise dull evening.
Accepting any poll results at face value assumes a terrific amount of honesty, and purity of motive, on the part of those being polled, and it assumes also-- frequently incorrectly-- that people have a high level of respect for the pollster, yet the media organizations that are identifying themselves at the beginning of each of these inquiries don't poll very well themselves.
There is a point to be made with these results in respect to how certain high-profile media types have worked to perpetuate inaccuracies behind some pretty poorly-disguised political motivations, but
saying that you think Barack Obama is a Muslim may not mean that you actually believe it. It may only mean that you like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin more than you like Obama, and now you've taken your chance to choose sides in the media-perpetuated horse race. A question relating to factual information has been transformed into a question of political opinion.
That's still terribly troubling that race-baiting and demagoguery work so successfully, but it's the national news media, as much as the population in general, that has to wise up about this. The major news outlets still act too often as if it's their responsibility to "report without bias"-- which is still as fundamentally impossible as it ever has been-- instead of slashing through the now-incredibly sophisticated political misdirection campaigns that produce these type of poll results.
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Also, Obama's tone-deaf political team keeps falling into the same trap with all this right-wing name-calling. Like being branded a "liberal" or a "Socialist," they just deny and deny, and never bother to mix in the suggestion that it would be OK even if he were one of these things. (Of course, he is far from either of those.) It's the business of politics, and the right-wing has been highly-successful at damaging the brand names of opposing philosophies through their business. Obama may not be a Muslim any more than he's a Socialist or even a liberal, but what the fuck if he was?
Cards' season negotiates a few nasty turns
The Cardinals have been choking their season away of late against the mediocre likes of the Cubs, Brewers, Pirates, Nationals, and Astros. They've lost 8 games on 1st place over three weeks, and I'm beginning to hate this maddeningly-inconsistent team almost as much as Brandon Phillips does. The St. Louis club's wild-card hopes are still at a glimmer, and I'm obliged to remain positive at least through this Labor Day weekend since Aaron and I have tickets for a couple of the games in St. Louis against the division-leading Reds, but some "home cookin'" at Busch Stadium never seemed so vital.
Of course, I'm not thrilled that the manager felt the need to haul Albert Pujols before the crowd at the
"I Have a Scheme" "rally... for white self-pity" in Washington. At the urging of the Cards' skipper, Pujols appeared and accepted a meaningless bauble from a cable TV paranoid who loves Martin Luther King Jr. almost as much as he loves "state's rights." But don't count me among those who say sports and politics shouldn't mix. A placard being waved at a Busch Stadium counter-rally last weekend read "I have a dream... baseball wasn't political." Oh, if only.
Pujols
should feel free to let his political feelings known, as he did in regards to the Arizona immigration law a few weeks ago. I just question what sort of hidden insight the manager and player possessed into Glenn Beck when they both accepted a promise from the organizer that the event not be promoted as "political," even as the organizer makes his substantial living as a full-time political commentator. Saturday's event may have been purposefully "apolitical," but every day after will be for Beck, just as every day before was. I also wonder how Pujols justifies standing with a man, in Beck, who has not only offered a full-throated endorsement of the Arizona immigration law Pujols says he opposes, but who has even
threatened violence in his opposition towards undocumented immigrants. Pujols appears Saturday just because Beck offers him an award engraved with a sentiment of Christian charity? I don't get it.
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Can we call a moratorium on lawn sprinklers? The summer of 2010 is
rivaling 1993 as the wettest in Iowa history, and hundreds of people have been flooded out of their homes in central Iowa. Yet my employer's landlord opens up the tap seemingly every day, watering both the grass and much of Vista Drive, with gallons of water running down the street into the gutter and helping to flood our already-saturated water table. Our warming planet will take excellent care of your lawn just by holding more water in the atmosphere. Please turn off the spigot, everyone. It's only vanity.
