Wrapping baseball's grand September
Wednesday was one of Major League Baseball's all-time terrific days. We'll start with a summary from Yahoo's Tim Brown:
“Sometimes, in spite of itself, baseball is perfect. Ridiculously, stupidly, exhaustingly, thrillingly, Longoria-ly and Papelbon-eously perfect. Over five hours on a Wednesday night in late September, when baseball was supposed to be quietly ironing its bunting and hoping people soon would be paying attention again, the game willed itself to incomprehensible greatness. In four games spread over two wild-card races and two time zones, the entrancing narrative not only held the four central protagonists, but peripherally ensnared the two best teams in the regular season, along with two of the worst. Where it counted was in Boston and Atlanta, where promising seasons were dying, and in St. Louis and Tampa Bay, where feint heartbeats a month ago became raucous parties just as the postseason beckoned.”A pair of mentally-malnourished opinionists remarked on Des Moines radio this morning that, despite Wednesday's electrification of the sporting world, the National Football League provides that same level of excitement each and every weekend. This is bull fertilizer, of course. It's like saying the movie "Thor" contains more action than "the Godfather"-- true only if you forget to factor in emotional depth, dramatic subtext, and the ability to create unique and indelible moments. A football team is simply incapable of giving a fan emotionally during the season what a baseball team easily provides. This is because baseball is daily.
For the better part of the last month, I have had no social life because of my baseball team. The web that has entangled me involves trying to wind down for bed after a 4-hour do-or-die marathon on television-- and then having to do it again the following night. It is momentum gained, built upon-- and sometimes quickly lost-- but never, ever allowed to sit dormant for something like six entire days. Even a one-day rain-out unsettles the mind. Take your greatest four-hour football game, filled with the requisite tension and unpredictability (also, a commercial break before and after each kickoff). Now stretch out that drama over the entire week, make it about 25 hours long rather than four, with each daily episode adding to-- and even re-writing-- the narrative.
"Oh, really, you're a die-hard fan of the Wasilla Oilers, are you?," I ask the football fan, "You live and die with each snap? For 16 whole days a year? How in the world do you find the time?" At three hours per game, that's a 48 hour commitment for the entire year. One hour every 22 days. I spend more time than that watching Piers Morgan, and that show sucks. This is the difference with baseball. It affirms each and every day from the first crocus to the first snow flurry. And then it goes to sleep so that it-- and I-- can be replenished. It is the rhythm of life.
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I don't care whether or not you like the wild card playoff format, and I still don't, but you have to admit the logic that people employ to support it is typically absurd. This year, based on the current format, we experienced the best possible scenario for the wild card. The close races were for fourth place. Without the wild card, we would not have had these particular races. This is true. But every act of creation is also an act of destruction. Under a different format and divisional alignment, we could have been talking about the great race between Detroit and Texas, or Milwaukee and Arizona. Those races came down to the final day also, but because of the format that's in place this year, these teams were playing for home field advantage instead of playoff berths. This logic is ludicrous: See how dramatic these games were last night: the wild card is awesome. No. Baseball had great games and great pennant races long before they let second-place teams participate in the post-season. And now the bottom line is that the pennant races, when exciting, are less meaningful, because the stakes are lower.
More explain: I posted the stat yesterday about how epic, historically, the Cardinals and Rays' comebacks were this year, but in the end, what have they achieved (so far)? Both teams are still among 6 other teams still competing for the crown. Now take 1964 as a contrast. That year, the Cardinals made up 6 1/2 games on Philly over the final 12 games of the year. Going into the last day, three of 10 National League teams could still conceivably come out on top. But the difference is what was at stake. With their final regular-season win, the 2011 Cardinals earned a spot in an 8-team, 5 and 7 game series, single-elimination tournament. With their final regular-season win, the 1964 Cardinals earned the pennant. You can argue the relative merits of expanding the playoffs, but I won't allow the argument that expanded playoffs have failed to devalue the regular-season. It was a trade-off for more postseason TV money.
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As far as ESPN is concerned, there are the Yankees and the Red Sox, and there is everybody else. I know I harp on this. The American and National League Wild Card races were virtually identical this year. There were almost equal-size comebacks in the standings, with very similar-looking collapses by one club, and one-and-a-half teams pursuing (the halves were the Giants and the Angels). Both races were settled on the last day, at about the same time, and both even with an extra-inning game. Yet during the last week-- not just last night and today, but all week-- every baseball news report I witnessed (and it was literally dozens)-- on every ESPN news property, whether it was Sportscenter, Mike and Mike, ESPN News, ESPN Radio, ESPN.com, had the American League report as its first or top report, followed by the National League. And this is because the action in the American League race affected the Boston Red Sox directly, and the New York Yankees peripherally. This happened every time, I kid you not. No exceptions.
It is beyond me why Major League Baseball allows this of its most important corporate partner and does not see ESPN's editorial strategy for the damage that it does in building the MLB brand. The discrepancies that exist in talent between the MLB clubs has little to do with payroll. I have long argued this. The Yankees double every team in the league (at least) except for the Red Sox in what they pay out to their players, yet they have one championship in 10 years. If that was the team I rooted for, I would be afraid to look my sports friends in the eye. The difference in stature, reputation, the consistency of on-field competitiveness, and finances between the clubs is better linked, I think, to the Grand Canyon-sized gulf in the way they're promoted. There is nothing remotely resembling this situation in the NFL. Does Major League Baseball not see how alienating this is to fans in their smallest and 'tweener markets? Do you think Kansas City fans ignore the Royals because the NFL Chiefs are so dominating in their sport? Um, that's not quite it. The Chiefs are just as unlikely to win a championship as the Royals. But there's a perception of unfairness. Kansas City baseball fans see their team as the Washington Generals.
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Atlanta's rookie reliever Craig Kimbrel took much of the heat for last night's final failure by the Braves, but he still had enough poise after the game to offer up the most succinct and accurate description of baseball in history, "When you walk guys, nothing good ever happens."
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Last week, my Dad emailed me a story in the New York Times about Ted Williams and his .406 batting mark in 1941. (This is the headless Ted Williams we're talking about here, not the homeless one.) I replied to the email with an extended rant about how overrated I thought this achievement and Williams both were. (By the way, I encourage the sending of personal emails. Consider doing this. You too might be rewarded with your own private Chris Moeller blog entry.)
The best-known story about Williams '41 season is how he arrived at the last day of the year with a doubleheader to play, and a .39955 batting average. Famously, the slugger suited up, collected 6 hits in 8 at-bats over the two games, and finished the season at .406. I suggested to my old man, incidentally, that this act of heroism has been overstated throughout history because nobody would have seen the .39955 as a legitimate .400 anyway. Williams knew this and, as a result, had a very easy decision to make.
Last night, on the 70th anniversary of that Williams doubleheader, the Mets' Jose Reyes took this debate about playing through vs. sitting to a new level. The Mets have never had a batting champion in their five-decade history. Entering last night's final games of '11, Reyes led the Brewers' Ryan Braun by mere percentage points for the National League crown. He had it figured before the game that if he got a hit his first time up, Braun would need 3 hits in no more than 5 at-bats to surpass him. Leading off the bottom of the first, Reyes bunted his way to first base, then had his manager remove him from the game. Is this fair play, or bush league?
His teammates and his manager, Terry Collins, defended him. Of course, Reyes is a free agent-to-be this winter, and he's the only great player on a rotten team, so who is managing whom at this point in the game? Rangers pitcher C.J. Wilson, a completely uninvolved bystander in another state and another league, tweeted, "I hope ryan braun goes 5 for 5 and wins the title now." Well, Braun didn't. Three hits in a game is hard. He went 0 for 4, and finished at .332 to Reyes' .337.
I'll defend Reyes up to this point. It's not all selfishness, at least. When people say he put himself above the team and the fans by doing this, that's not true. I'm a fan of the Cardinals, and when Albert Pujols wins a batting title, a home run crown, or a Roberto Clemente Award for charitable contributions to his community, I take pride in that the same way I do a team championship. It's on a lower tier, but bragging rights about a player on your team can be a meaningful consolation prize when you fail to win the World Series.
A lot of Reyes' defenders are saying what he did is a common occurrence, but they're only half-right, and that's not right enough. What's common is a guy sitting out the last day to finish at or above .300, something like that, but this scenario is different. One extra guy hitting .300 is a victimless crime. What Reyes did was not. He screwed Ryan Braun. Reyes' goal was not to reach that magical batting plateau of .337. It was to better Braun directly. And that's kind of lame.
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One of my co-workers is a Braves fan. This morning he sent the following e-mail to the members of our department's vast Cardinals contingent. It was entitled "Intercepted Email":
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Atlanta Braves
Attn: Freddie Gonzalez
101 Turner Field
Atlanta, GA 14552
Dear Atlanta Braves:
At this time, I show that you are currently 8 ½ games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals. Your team has shown what baseball is all about. Great pitching, great hitting, and fantastic role models for the young baseball fans. However, at this time we have a baseball dilemma. Albert Pujols will not be resigning with the St. Louis Cardinals after this season. It is detrimental to baseball should he not be in the post season to attract the audience members of the mid-midwest. We have developed a compensation program to allow your players to benefit from the St. Louis Cardinals to win the Wild Card and make the playoffs. I will send more information to you via courier in the next few days.
Thank you for your cooperation,
Bud Selig
MLB Commish
“Instant replay will never be instituted in our game”-
I replied: "I can't believe this is authentic. Bud Selig doesn't really care about what's best for baseball."
Coming back
The biggest regular-season comebacks (after 130 games)-- to qualify for the post-season-- in baseball history:
2011 St. Louis Cardinals 10.5 games
2011 Tampa Bay Rays 9 games
1964 St. Louis Cardinals 8.5 games
1934 St. Louis Cardinals 8 games
ESPN's webpage for the MLB standings features a column in which each team's current chances for making the playoffs is measured. When I was in St. Louis on August 25th, the Cardinals' chances of making the playoffs was 0.8%.
Here is what that page looks like today. Amazing. Bring on the Phillies!
Cards run wild in run for the Wild Card
The Cardinals trailed the Atlanta Braves in the Wild Card race by 10.5 games back on August 25th. Tonight, the players will tuck themselves into their little beds in a dead tie. In tonight's game, they battled back from a 5-0 deficit against Houston to win 13-6. There was a dash of magic mixed in too. Behind by one run, they got an inning and a third perfect innings out of a rookie pitcher, Eduardo Sanchez, he of the filthy slider, who due to injury, last pitched for the team on June 12th, and last pitched even as a minor leaguer in August.
The Cards may not have much gas left in the tank-- the bullpen has been worn down to a nub-- but they have pulled even for the National League's final playoff slot after 161 games. Both the Braves and Cardinals play their final regular-season games tomorrow night-- Atlanta at home against the playoff-bound Phillies, the Cardinals, with their ace Chris Carpenter pitching, in Houston against the Astros. Do yourself a favor and seek out this Cardinals game on television, radio, or the internet. You're going to witness a remarkable human energy-- and maybe a thrilling conclusion to a comeback story of epic proportions. In a sense, they're not really playing for the playoffs though. They've already been in the playoffs for better than a month.
The white man fights back-- with a bake sale
The College Republicans is a tremendous organization. I recall their campus participation from back when I was in school in Ames, IA in the mid-'90s. It was the College Republican's job to keep "liberal" professors informed of Rush Limbaugh's daily talking points, and also, I noticed, to pose a persistent challenge to the perceived prevalence of "date rape" during public forums. The group has become quite notable nationally. The College Republicans are responsible for Karl Rove, Rick Santorum, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and the worst economic crisis in the U.S. in seven decades.
The clever-ists at their UC-Berkeley branch have now given us
the "Increase Diversity" bake sale. Whites pay $2.00 for each baked item, Asians pay $1.50, Latinos $1.00, African-Americans $0.75, and Native Americans $0.25. Prices are reduced an additional quarter dollar for women of each corresponding race.
These Junior Abramoffs have a brilliant radar for unfairness. All communities, secondary schools, and learning environments, you see, are equal when it comes to creating a college applicant, but white males, and College Republicans, have been laboring themselves under the boot of female and minority oppressors. Well, at least they were paying attention when their "liberal" professors read the statistics about financial earnings by race and gender demographic. Their percentages are not wildly off-base.
The College Republicans have every right to act like smarmy assholes. I'm not in the group that would demand a public apology here. Their leadership structure has been quite successful in producing notable politicians, including one key Democrat, Hillary Clinton, but I think it important to note that they've produced very few professional comedians.
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In Amnesty International's annual list of the countries with the most state executions, these are your
top 5 nations since 2007.
1) China
2) Iran
3) Iraq
4) United States
5) Pakistan
Isn't that crazy how four of the countries are really corrupt, indifferent to human rights, and driven by an insatiable barbarism and bloodlust, yet the other is, like, totally cool and stuff?
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Yesterday in New York, Roger Maris' sons, Randy and Roger Jr., told the media that
they still consider their father to be baseball's all-time single-season home run champion, though his record of 61 in 1961 was surpassed a total of six times between 1998 and 2001 by either Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, or Sammy Sosa. In related news, I believe
my dad is the all-time single-season home run champion. Way to go, Dad, I love you. I believe 2005 was your best year.
"The Big Owe" and other assorted things
Montreal's Olympic Stadium (or Stade Olympique) stands as
the ultimate monument (thus far) to the folly of public financing for stadia. It also betrays the axiom that hosting Olympic Games is a financial benefit to a municipality. The facility was built to lure the Summer Olympic games to Quebec in 1976, which it did successfully. It also housed Major League Baseball's Expos from 1977 until 2004 when the league stripped the city of its franchise because it refused to go into debt again on
another stadium. "The Big O," or alternately, "The Big Owe," was finally paid in full in 2006 after the original promise of a $134 million (Canadian) price tag had ballooned to the real-world figure of $1.61 billion.
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Bill O'Reilly has
threatened to quit his show if President Obama raises his taxes. In related news, the Octomom claims she'll stop having children if she doesn't get her own TV show.
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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sent me a lovely email this week apologizing for the manner in which the company announced the changes to its mailing and streaming movie services earlier in the year. I refuse to accept his apology because the mea culpa is really just an underlining-- and attempted re-branding-- of the same corporate restructuring theory. You see, like many of you, I'm on the wrong side of Hasting's projected future for his company. Netflix ultimately wants to get rid of its mail service because it costs them more money to use postage and deliver manually than it does to stream on-line, yet the number of movie and television titles Netflix is able to stream on our computers is severely limited and promises to be severely limited well into the future.
The company is betting that most of their customers are rather indifferent to what they watch and that the smaller streaming library will ultimately suffice our artistic tastes. That's not me. I don't watch what I perceive to be shit, just to fill an evening's time, in the same way that I don't go to the local multiplex and simply watch the most interesting movie on the bill. Instead, I check the movie listings first, and if nothing good is playing, I don't go. Announcing that the company is splitting off its mail service as a separate subsidiary called "Qwikstar" is just Netflix doubling down on their very faulty, and already very unpopular, new strategy.
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A week ago, I would have told you that "Qwikstar" was the name of the place down on the corner where I fill up my gas tank.
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Here's some better than average wisdom I picked up in a fortune cookie today: An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.
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Melissa McCarthy's performance this summer in the film "Bridesmaids" was so good that it won the actress an Emmy for a TV show called "Mike & Molly." But that's nothing compared to Martin Scorsese. He won an Emmy Sunday night for making "Raging Bull" in 1980.
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A Cardinals' playoff run is better than sex. Or maybe my memory is just bad. And of course, by that, I mean that the Cardinals haven't been in a good pennant race since 2009.
Random topics 9/18/11
I think it would be a good idea for bars and restaurants to re-install phone booths. Not the phones, just the booths. Then people would have quiet places to talk on their cell phones.
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Last night, during the 4th inning of the Cardinals game in Philadelphia, the bullpen phone in the Cards dugout stopped working. (Sadly, they would need that phone on several occasions.) The action of the game ground to a complete halt while this was brought to the umpires' attention, and apparently the solution in this situation is to unplug the other team's bullpen phone as well-- so that the situation is fair to both sides. Doesn't that seem strange that, in this day and age, they don't place cell calls, text, or even send an email? In the case of Tony LaRussa' 10-man bullpen-by-committee in St. Louis, the team probably doesn't want to have to pay for all of those minutes.
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Brad Pitt is starring in a new film called "Moneyball." It's a dramatization of a baseball book written about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, and about how the executive attempted to revolutionize the game through statistical analysis in helping his small-market team compete against the better-financed Yankees and Red Sox. You know, this movie looks interesting, but I think I'll wait until they make a movie about the Minnesota Twins' fourth-place American League finish in 2003.
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Don't watch the Emmys tonight if you're doing so for a glimpse of Alec Baldwin. Fox/Newscorp
cut a phone hacking joke from a skit he was participating in so he walked. I love how the network claims the joke was cut because it was in poor taste. As if a joke at the expense of Rupert Murdoch, the
perpetrator of the hacking crimes (as I'm sure this one was), is the same as a joke at the expense of the victims. Hilarious.
Stories from the Heartland
On Sunday, President Obama addressed the nation. "They wanted to terrorize us," he said, "but as Americans, we refuse to live in fear." The president uttered this absurdity while
standing behind bulletproof glass.
The same day, roughly a thousand miles away, as red, white, and blue flags waved in the breeze from sea to shining sea, Shoshana Hebshi, a married mother of 6-year-old twins was being
pulled off of an airplane by an army of police at the Detroit airfield, in handcuffs, headed for a prison cell, a long interrogation, and a strip search. Why was this suburban mom, who was returning home from her sister's birthday party in California, targeted for removal from the plane? Her future lawsuit against Frontier Airlines and the state will likely help illuminate.
Hebshi is also a 35-year-old graduate of Iowa State University, a long-time resident of Des Moines, and a blogger. (Aside: Shit, who is she reminding me of? No, it can't be me. I'm 36.) Hebshi, who recently moved to Ohio, made the mistake Sunday of "flying while brown." And doing so on "Patriot Day." Hebshi's father is Arabic, her mother is Jewish. By the decision of the airline's ticketing system, she happened to be seated next to two men of Indian descent. Come on, airplane patriots, Indians are most likely Hindus, or even Christians. Learn to tell your brown people apart.
Fortunately, because Hebshi is a blogger, she can tell you
the full story in all of its frightening detail. She said that during her detention, she was inspired by the experiences of Malcolm X to share her story. She wanted to use her forced solitude, as he did in prison, to work for "social change and personal betterment." Well, there you go. Color me mistaken. At least we know there is one brave American that
is refusing to live in fear. It's just unfortunate that it's her broken government and her racist fellow citizens that Shoshana Hebshi needs to fear.
Parisian style
There is a human oddity living in Paris named John Galliano. For two decades, this theatrical gentleman has worked as a fashion designer of considerable reputation for several global companies that sell overpriced clothing. Here's
a photo of him captured at last Saturday's Mississippi State/Auburn game. He made news in February when a video surfaced of him hurling some Mel Gibson-like anti-Semitic remarks at a group of women while being drunk in a bar. Seriously, it's like this guy doesn't know the first thing about picking up chicks.
You may have already heard about this incident. His twin brother has
appeared several times on Conan O'Brien this summer. Anyway, when this happened, the peculiarity about it for me was not that the video of his verbal insults had been posted to YouTube, or that it had been sold to TMZ. Rather, it was because he was
arrested for it.
In France, you see, there is no freedom of unpopular speech apparently. What he did is considered there to be a crime. He was
convicted in a Paris court last Thursday of making "public insults based on the origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity" against these women. Though his fine was suspended, he had been sentenced to pay 6,ooo Euros (US$8,400), he
did pay $23,000 in court costs for himself and the plaintiffs he "offended," and potentially, he faced up to six months in prison for his offense. Is this for reals? Where have
I been living?
Galliano also got sacked by his boss at Dior, of course, and both his professional and personal reputations have taken a major hit, but the criminal element of it blows me away. I don't know (or care) if the dude is a racist or not, but in this country, at least you have a right to be racist in your personal life, and to express yourself accordingly unless the speech in question-- such as a burning cross in somebody's yard-- is designed to intimidate, or if it's designed to incite persons to commit a specific crime. Certainly drunken pronouncements and insults in a public house along the lines of Galliano's "I love Hitler," "dirty Jewish face," and "dirty Asian shit" are protected here, and we largely have the enlightened Warren Court of the 1950s and '60s to thank for that. In France, actress Brigitte Bardot has now been convicted five times in recent years for her public expressions, most recently because of a published letter to President Sarkozy referring to Muslims as "the population that is destroying us."
This type of ugly speech adds nothing to the national conversation, but you'll never convince me that France's approach is preferable. It provides cover instead to the very concerted efforts all over the globe to chill media freedoms and to criminalize speech. Some of us get anxious these days, too, over any pleas to be "responsible" in our speech in respect to the so-called "national good." Who gets to decide?
Racist ideas can be stubbornly persistent in pockets, but on their merits, they cannot thrive, and thus, I don't fear them. I arrived at that conclusion myself also, not because my government told me to arrive at it. If the women in this bar feel they were slandered or libeled by Galliano, it seems to be they can sue him in a civil court proceeding rather than a criminal one. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution exists precisely to protect the most unpopular speech that exists. After all, popular speech doesn't require any protection.
College Football Saturday
The Iowa State/Iowa football game doesn't mean as much to me as it did when I was a kid, or back when I was in college
at Iowa State getting to broadcast some of the games on campus radio. Baseball has always been my sport, but once upon a harvest moon, I could get revved up for this annual game-- and do so with the best of 'em. Now I've carved out an almost 15-year professional career between the radio and student loan industries, and I understand better how profitable college football and the shaping of collegiate identities is for everybody
other than the players actually risking livelihood and limb on the field. (Oh, will we ever see an end to this giant hypocrisy in our nation's educational system called the "student athlete"?)
Also, the competition between the two schools is hardly fair. Not when you have the Iowa Board of Regents giving Iowa's football coach $3.65 million per year for 10 years. Not when you have members of the Board, who are supposed to oversee the health and well-being of both public institutions, voting last year to accept the move of the University of Nebraska into the Big Ten Conference, effectively destroying Iowa State's athletic conference and jeopardizing the future financial solvency of their entire athletic department. Then jumping in with
the heavy promotion of the new Iowa/Nebraska rivalry. Therefore, there will be no recap of today's game. Not even the final score.
Instead, here are the predicted final scores of the game offered earlier this week by the Cedar Rapids Gazette "Pick 'ems" panel of 15 staff sportswriters and experts:
Iowa 27, Iowa State 14
Iowa 43, Iowa Sate 41 (3 OT)
Iowa 28, Iowa State 13
Iowa 28, Iowa State 10
Iowa 14, Iowa State 3
Iowa 14, Iowa State 3
Iowa 28, Iowa State 10
Iowa 21, Iowa State 17
Iowa 28, Iowa State 24
Iowa 20, Iowa State 10
Iowa 24, Iowa State 10
Iowa 27, Iowa State 13
Iowa 28, Iowa State 14
Iowa 27, Iowa State 13
Iowa 24, Iowa State 14
On second thought, here's the final score from today: Iowa State 44, Iowa 41. Suck it, Hawkeyes!
Best show, worst episode
Another AV Club Q&A caught my fancy. The site asked its writers this time for their opinion on
the worst episode of the best TV show. My turn again:
I actually like a few of the episodes their contributors chose: "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" and "The Summer Man" on "Mad Men," "The Puerto Rican Day" on "Seinfeld," and "30 Rock's" "Stone Mountain." None are great, but they don't stick out either. Tasha Robinson is correct though that "Breaking Bad's" "The Fly" was a complete dud.
My choice actually goes to another "30 Rock" offering, which I'd like to point out couldn't be my choice here unless I thought the show was great. I want to reiterate that. The category is "best show, worst episode," remember? Some of you may not have seen this pile of manure yet because the season 5 DVD won't be out until November 29th, but it has to be "Queen of Jordan."
This is the episode centered around Tracy Jordan's wife Angie (played by Sherri Shepherd). It's done up as a fictional reality series for Angie, with the production overlapping the TGS set. There's no doubt that it was done as a filler episode. Tracy Morgan, as Tracy Jordan, missed much of season 5 due to health complications, and the series struggled for his absence. That's #1. It was also a concept episode in which we suffered for the lack of Liz as Liz, Jack as Jack, and particularly Kenneth the Page as Kenneth the Page. The cast is already playing down a man, why make it two?
Reality shows are too easy a target for such a clever show as "30 Rock," and that silly main plot dominated the half-hour. The gimmick disrupted the overall rhythm, and I rarely laughed. The B and C stories seemed like afterthoughts of a sort, and though one of them featured guest star Susan Sarandon, making the episode worth watching even years from now, I regret that the actress' agreement to guest on the show was used to such limited ends. Perhaps she'll reappear.
Shockingly, I'm finding much love online for this episode as I search for details to support the general impression I still carry with me from half a year ago. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's that I can't fully appreciate a spoof based upon the "reality housewife" shows as I have actually never seen one.
9/11/11
Where was I on September 11th, 2001? I'm going to try and start a trend here and not tell you. The approaching 10th anniversary of the date is fast becoming an exercise in narcissism disguised as community empathy by Americans. It's an exploitative profit machine for our mainstream news media.
September 11th was no doubt a monumental date in our nation's history. Our reaction to it brought to the visible surface all of our insecurity and hypocrisy. It delivered a full-body embrace of our bullying nature towards the rest of the world, our tendencies to panic, recklessness, and callousness. The citizens of the dying empire cried out in pain for their own victims and the vulnerability of their empire in a way that they never could for the lesser humans living outside our borders.
In a cruel twist to the story of 9/11/2001, the perpetrators of the violence against us killed themselves at the end of their mission. This left us twisting briefly in the breeze for vengeance, but we found substitutes of the same skin color and religion to torture and kill in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and dozens of other countries through our "covert military operations". We rounded up the political enemies of regional warlords, shipped them by the hundreds without trial or charge to our national concentration camp in Cuba where they could be drowned, burned, and psychologically destroyed for an indeterminate amount of time. We farmed out some of our torture too (and still do) to allies like The New Hitler
Moammar Gadhafi. Better that a hundred men and boys be tortured and murdered in secret than a guilty man go free.
Six thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed since. Add them to the rolls of the 9/11 dead. 550,000 more that have served during the decade have filed disability claims with their government. Not that they matter so much, but a million or more are dead too in some of the countries that we invaded. Eight million have become refugees or been displaced from their homes, probably for good. We were like a peculiar man that gets his pocket picked in a crowded market. The thief has fled without identification and so the man finds justice instead by putting on a blindfold and wildly swinging a baseball bat.
We turned on ourselves too. Oh, did we turn on ourselves. A national surveillance state was established. We wiretapped peace protesting organic farmers in Iowa City. We searched undercover for "evil" in mosques from city to city, coast to coast. We've strangled the long, enduring lifeblood of the nation by clamping down on immigration. We turned air travel into a national satire of three-ounce liquid containers and public gropings. Whistleblowers to our Constitutional crimes have increasingly become the prime targets of the nation's "Justice" department. Not just information "leakers" either, but even those that espouse or repeat unpopular political opinions. Constitutionally-protected political speech under court precedent has been criminalized. Just last week, a 24-year-old Virginia man was charged with "providing material support" and "propaganda" to a terrorist organization because he posted a 5 minute video on YouTube that featured "jihad" messages and clips of U.S. fun and games at the Abu Ghraib torture facility in Iraq. He faces 23 years in prison. A Pakistani cable TV provider living in New York City was prosecuted and sentenced to six years in prison in his state for offering a Hezbollah news channel in some of his channel packages.
And of course we have Anwar Awlaki, referenced here several times before thanks to the news exposure by
Glenn Greenwald. He's the U.S. citizen sentenced to assassination by our anti-war president, the former Constitutional law professor, despite never having been convicted or even charged with a crime. If Western countries were held accountable for their human rights violations in the way we hold tinpot dictators accountable in developing countries, a pair of U.S. presidents and a paddy-wagon full of cabinet officials would be considered war criminals.
This anniversary is a sad occasion to be sure. Over the course of a decade, the 9/11 dead have been disgraced by our military industry, its profiteers, their government, and the whole of their fellow citizenry who have done virtually nothing to hold the lawless military and government accountable for their actions. They've been martyred again by our inability to live with our neighbors in peace or with even a crumb of humility.
