Deen on the cross
Paula Deen, a person I had not heard of until a week and a half ago, is losing her business empire because she's shown herself over these last few days to be incapable of understanding how most Americans are repulsed by the worship of old-fashioned Southern plantation life. An apology for using an unacceptable word can be perfectly genuine-- and accepted, but when your idea of an apology includes an expression of sadness that your slave-owning great-grandfather shot himself in a barn because the Civil War was lost, you are truly suffering a major disconnect from the larger culture you're trying to serve.
Some Americans apparently need to be constantly reminded that the sociological and economic structure of the South, even long after the War has ended, has been vastly more harmful than simply the comparatively mild concept of separate but equal drinking fountains. It has been a system of targeted terrorism directed at a powerless portion of the population, an actively-violent attempt at full dehumanization, a system under which families were once routinely sold into lifelong separation and into situations of sexual assault and physical torture without even the whiff of legal recourse against the perpetrators of the violence. It's been a system under which the public lynching of a black man was cause for a family picnic as recently as this lifetime for the oldest generation of current Americans. It’s a perverted system under which the battle-flag of the terrorist army is still flown proudly by tens of thousands of individuals, and indeed, by two entire state governments.
In New York recently, Paula Deen said that her great-grandfather believed his “black folk” (i.e. slaves) to be part of the family, and that losing their help on the farm added to the misery of losing the War, and then directly to his suicide. She then proceeded to equate that alleged affection to the affection she has for her own black employees today. It's easy to have strong doubts about the stories that have been evidently passed down through the white side of Deen's "family." The historic myth of the “happy slave” is still too often perpetuated. Slaves that were not outwardly "happy" were looked on with suspicion, seen as potential threats, and therefore subject to even greater terror. To have love for a slave is also a baffling notion as owning a slave is, itself, an act of war. The frantic Southern attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 did not mark the
start of war, but its climax.
Deen’s not being canned by her corporate business partners because she said a bad word once and now admits to it. We are always desperate to believe such a narrative in white America when a dose of modern-day victimization can help us feel less ashamed of the shame-worthy history of our nation. Deen
is getting canned because the weight of her missteps doesn't seem to be penetrating her brain. When confronted with the impact of the public advance of her anachronistic and selfish beliefs, she doubled down with the announcement that “someone evil out there saw what I had worked for and wanted it.” In her recent court deposition, in a civil suit brought against her by a former employee alleging sexist and racist remarks, she was asked if she had ever used "the N word." Her response was that one of the only specific times she remembered doing it was when a black man "held a gun to (her) head" during a bank robbery. So when offered a chance to show regret, her strategy instead is to try to legitimize bigotry.
She’s getting canned for attempting, intentionally or not, to camouflage our nation's original sin, and at this point in history, Americans clearly feel more fatigue for this kind of crap than they do pity. She’s getting canned because her remorse shows no sign of a lesson having been learned. She’s also getting canned by her business partners because of some bad timing. Her testimony in her own case came within days of the start of the celebrated murder trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, and through which, an acquittal of his killer would worsen already frayed race relations, as well as create a new open hunting season on young black men in America like the ones that helped to keep the plantation of Deen's great-grandpappy afloat for those many happy years before the War.
Pareene on Scalia
Here's
Salon's Alex Pareene on Justice Scalia's bizarre Lost Cause dissent in the court verdict Wednesday that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. Just this snippet...
Scalia’s main point is that the court has no right to strike down DOMA. In doing so, Scalia says, the Supreme Court has overstepped its authority.
"It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and everywhere “primary” in its role."
The case could be made that this is sort of the only honest Originalist argument — there is nothing in the Constitution granting the Supreme Court the authority to determine the constitutionality of duly passed legislation, after all — but obviously this argument rather glaringly contradicts every single instance of Scalia voting to strike down a law. Indeed, it contradicts a decision the Supreme Court announced yesterday, in which the conservatives decided that a portion of the Voting Rights Act that they didn’t care for was unconstitutional because they didn’t care for it. But if Scalia wishes to recuse himself from all future cases involving constitutional questions, now that he has determined that Marbury v. Madison was improperly decided, I am not inclined to stop him.
The Mets' new savior
ESPNNewYork's Mets Blog
believes that Mets starting pitcher Matt Harvey deserves to start the All-Star Game for the National League next month in a nod over the St. Louis Cardinals' Adam Wainwright-- even though Wainwright has 10 wins to Harvey's 7, a comparable ERA, three complete games and two shut-outs to Harvey's zero (for each), a 106-10 strikeout-to-walk ratio, a home run ratio of one every 29 innings, and he beat Harvey head-to-head in New York on June 13th.
Blogger Adam Rubin, who, according to his bio, covered the Mets for the New York Daily News for 10 years before joining ESPNNewYork (yes, apparently that's how you write it) argues that, when faced with a choice, we must remember how much "Harvey means to the Mets," who are hosting this year's Midsummer Classic. Rubin's logic here is impeccable. Wainwright has done virtually nothing to help the Mets this season-- in fact he beat them in his only start against them, and also, memorably kept them out of the World Series in 2006.
In related news, ESPNSt.Louis does not exist-- with or without spaces between the words, and there is no such thing as an ESPN "Cardinals Blog."
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It's fun to play the Astros again. The Cards get 'em for two games this year in Houston, last night and tonight, even though the Houston team was bullied into joining the American League before this season began. Speaking of the Astros, how the hell is Jeff Bagwell not in the Hall of Fame?
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But there's something monstrously wrong about a Cardinals/Astros series that features the DH.
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It's hilarious that A-Rod wants back with the Yankees. Yesterday, after the (one-time) slugger tweeted that he had been cleared to play-- by his own personal physician, GM Brian Cashman responded by saying, no joke, "Alex should just shut the fuck up." Lovely.
I enjoyed this particular exchange because of all the dynamics at play. One of which, of course, is A-Rod's addiction to steroids, but also, know that Cashman didn't want to sign A-Rod to his enormous contract in 2007 to begin with. That signing is a constant reminder to all of us that Brian Cashman has no power in the Yankees organization, and has always been simply a lackey for the dictatorial family that owns the club. Also, it's clear that the Yankees don't want A-Rod healthy at all-- despite their pointed claims to the contrary-- because they want to collect on the insurance for his injury. The man collects $28 million a year in salary and his contract doesn't run out until 2017. A successful insurance claim would recoup 80% of that.
Like I said, hilarious.
"Tone"
The final episode of
The Sopranos—the quick cut to black that welcomed the closing credits—was, and remains, controversial cinematically, but indisputably, the slashing cut had the secondary effect of keeping the image of actor James Gandolfini in your head for moments after. The last portrait of Tony Soprano has him looking up quickly from his appetizer at the sound of a diner doorbell. We're left to wonder: Is it his daughter at the door, or somebody more menacing and in possession of ill intent?
I loved the equivocal ending from the first moment I saw it. This was weeks before the blogosphere collectively and finally decided that it liked it too, and the occasion of Gandolfini’s shocking and premature death this week at the age of 51 has me thinking today about the actor’s iconic portrayal as Soprano family patriarch and the enduring memory of that last image.
It’s not the most indelible scene in the history’s run though. I keep coming back to a first season scene between Tony and his psychiatrist in which the patient laments, “It’s good to be in on something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” He’s talking about his life in la Cosa Nostra, but he could be a paid spokesperson for the United States of America as it stands today. This was not incidental to the episode's script. It was very purposeful—perhaps providing even the overarching theme for the series.
Gandolfini and his vessel on screen were a colossus atop the world of television. It wasn’t TV, as the network commercials always tried to explain. It was bigger than TV.
He was bigger than TV. He was the heartbeat of the show that was nothing less than the most important piece of American popular art since the invention of jazz music. We’re living ourselves at the end of something wildly imperfect but undeniably great. The party is over and that’s why the death of this man who provided such important symbolism, as well as a character that we could so equally love and revile, feels like just another in what's become a long line of painful tragedies.
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There can be no justice from a secret court.
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Quote of the day: Facebook commenter Geoff Kirk, regarding the historical biography "Team of Rivals,"
"If Lincoln had followed Obama's style of picking cabinet members he would have appointed Jefferson Davis to be Sec. of war."
Squeezing in a blog post
This wedding business is a real innings-eater. There's the invitations, the preparation for the venue, the whole thing's really a big production. If time permitted, these are the topics I would be blogging about...
-American billionaire Dan Snyder and changing the name of his franchise in the National Football League from the Washington Redskins to something that doesn’t directly reference the severed scalps of Native Americans that were once collected for sport by the agents of their holocaust.
-How
Mad Men, more than any other show on television, is the most direct descendant in theme, tone, and imagery of
The Sopranos. With this, there would be an examination of how creator Matt Weiner co-wrote with David Chase the infamous Sopranos "dream episode" entitled "The Test Dream," and then called back to it this season with
Mad Men's "The Crash." You are now armed to explore this topic on your own.
-This is more of a news alert: Yadier Molina enters tonight's game batting .367.
-I should probably go straight to Homeland Security with this one, but I want to report suspected terrorist activity. Officials at the highest offices of American government are funding al Qaeda operatives. They're doing so by funding the rebel jihadists in Syria. This is being done quite openly so I'm sure somebody else will call it in and these terrorist sympathizers will be swiftly hauled off to Guantanamo.
-The fact that
this happened. Because of course it did.
Quote of the day: Mark Twain, regarding the music of Richard Wagner, "It's better than it sounds."
America, meet Glenn Greenwald
It is a thrill watching Glenn Greenwald reach the next level of media fame. I have been reading him religiously for years. I “liked” him on Facebook the very first day I joined the social networking site, and I have been stealing his web content for almost a decade and renaming it the Chris Moeller Archives.
After years at Salon.com, Glenn is now committing highly-responsible and impressive acts of journalism at the Guardian in London. Through this employer in England, and from his home in Brazil, he is safe from the reach of most of the tentacles of the United States Department of Justice, but sadly, not from CIA robot bombs. For all we know, Glenn is now a target of such as (reminder:) our government's drone policy is entirely classified and Glenn is now guilty of publishing the unsettling facts about our Surveillance State on Steroids that were leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Surely, President Obama, whose historic presidency has made him the embodied fulfillment not of the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr., but of Dick Cheney, is weighing his strike options carefully. He's our "I Have a Drone" president.
Glenn Greenwald, previously unknown to most Americans, made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows this past week in the wake of his journalistic coup, and if you had the chance to catch any of those interviews, you were probably, like me, reminded unintentionally of those humorous video clips in which child “reporters” interview famous people. One can’t help but fall over laughing at the pretzel-like contortions of the establishment defenders of our now beyond-Orwellian political climate, one in which the citizens at both "far" ends of the spectrum opposing the right of the government to steal your private phone records and electronic address books are labeled extremists.
Even after the administration gets caught in its own web of deceit, it can't muster the decency to stop lying. Instead, officials this past week trotted out a bogus claim about this exact spying program having
once aided in the uncovering of a bomb plot in New York City. It was a claim that could be-- and was-- quickly debunked by reporters after only a cursory investigation. The president is trying everything in his power to shift the direction of that ill wind that's now blowing the smell of pig shit towards the farm house. He claims that Congress provided authorization and oversight for these programs, and certainly some friendly members of Congress did, but the claims of Snowden and Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden argue that the two lawmakers were lied to by the NSA about the extent of the program. The exposed fraudulence is piling up so fast on our Eavesdropper in Chief that
Vladimir Putin can now claim some moral authority on the subject of protecting government whistleblowers. This is like Jerry Sandusky calling you as a sexual deviant.
It's not just the government that's spying either, it's the private corporations that work for them, and in capacities that go beyond
even the public posturing of "fighting terrorism." Are we left to speculate on my accusation? No, we are not. The public record already confirms that military contractors, in cooperation with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, on separate occasions,
attempted to use NSA records to spy on and sabotage activists and political groups that opposed them, as well as unfriendly labor unions and reporters, including Greenwald himself. Thus far, only heightened vigilance on behalf of committed citizens, reporters, and (mostly-) independent news outlets have prevented the success of these lawless, targeted attacks on our information systems by corporate terrorists.
The last decade has not been a good one for the Fourth Amendment. If the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures were an MMA fighter, we would be demanding a technical submission. But that doesn't mean there won't be other battles on the card for the resilient "Fighting Fourth," and it's as crystal clear as those Verizon audio feeds to the new billion-dollar NSA headquarters in Utah that brave citizens of the world like Snowden, Greenwald, Bradley Manning, and Julian Assange are scaring the authoritarians shitless.
Cardinals fan outs Reds and Pirates players as cheaters, division race ends early
You can’t see it, of course, but I’m holding a rumpled piece of paper in my hand. On this paper is a handwritten list of all the Major League Baseball players to whom I have provided performance-enhancing drugs over the last three years. This list comes from the private medical records of the anti-aging clinic that I operate, the Moeller and Sons PED Academy. The names of the players I have serviced with my products are…
Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, Zack Cozart, Todd Frazier, Jay Bruce, Shin-Soo Choo, Xavier Paul, Devin Mesoraco, Bronson Arroyo, Homer Bailey, Johnny Cueto, Mat Latos, Mike Leake, Aroldis Chapman, Garrett Jones, Neil Walker, Pedro Alvarez, Clint Barmes, Starling Marte, Andrew McCutchen, Jose Tabata, Russell Martin, A.J. Burnett, Wandy Rodriguez, Francisco Liriano, Jeff Locke, and Jason Grilli
I know you’re doubting right now the veracity of my claim but these names on a sheet of paper are exactly the level of evidence that is currently implicating Ryan Braun, Alex Rodriguez, and at least 20 other players in the Major League Baseball investigation of Anthony Bosch and the now-defunct Biogenesis of America clinic of Coral Gables, Florida.
I confess that none of my clients, who all incidentally play for either the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, have failed a drug test. Their medical records with me are supposed to be private, but I’m leaking the names to prompt an investigation and to publicly shame them, and unlike Anthony Bosch, you can trust me completely because I’m not cutting a deal with Bud Selig in exchange for dropping a lawsuit and “put(ting) in a good word” with law enforcement.
It’s really a shame that all of these players are going to have to be suspended in the middle of an historic division race between three clubs, the Reds, Pirates, and Cardinals, that have been league rivals playing in the same three cities since 1892, and even before that, in a league called the American Association.
It’s pretty obvious why Major League Baseball officials are going after Bosch’s people and not mine. Ryan Braun embarrassed the vinegar out of them when a previous drug-related suspension was overturned after the league’s shoddy handling of his sample was exposed. Additionally, the New York Yankees, Baseball Inc’s most gloried franchise, wants out from under its hideous Alex Rodriguez contract. Your Bronx Bombers, the one-time Evil Empire that has been downgraded in recent years to merely Evil, would trade anything short of their taxpayer-funded stadium to skip out on the $300 million they still owe the 37-year-old has-been. Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, born with a silver spoon up his ass, told reporters yesterday he hopes Rodriguez will “act like a Yankee” during the course of this league investigation. It remains to be seen what this order from management actually entails for ARod: Boozing it up in public with Whitey Ford? Distancing oneself with great contempt from both the media and fans? Swapping wives with a teammate? Making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon? Firing Billy Martin? Clarification, please!
The Reds and Pirates are both feel-good stories of this baseball season so the league wants nothing to do with my clinic, despite the fact that I am completely opening my books for them to see, and providing free Dum Dum pops to anybody that stops by the office. As with Bosch, the league does not have subpoena power to compel me to testify, but nor do they need it. I’m offering these names off my clinic’s profit-and-loss statement gratis in an effort to help clean up the mess that Big Baseball has made for itself. And yet they go with Bosch because he has the juicier client list. Along with the aforementioned Braun and Rodriguez, he’s got a former All-Star Game MVP and a Cy Young Award winner. I've listed each of his “clients” below, as it’s been reported by ESPN—and next to each name I have included a fun fact about that person.
Nelson Cruz- Hispanic
Melky Cabrera- Hispanic
Bartolo Colon- Hispanic
Gio Gonzalez- Hispanic
Yasmani Grandal- Hispanic
Francisco Cervelli- Hispanic
Jesus Montero- Hispanic
Jhonny Peralta- Hispanic
Fernando Martinez- Hispanic
Everth Cabrera- Hispanic
Fautino de los Santos- Hispanic
Jordan Noberto- Hispanic
Cesar Puello- Hispanic
Now can I get a little disdain for my players too? I’ve got some All-Stars and Gold Glove winners in here. What’s a guy have to do anymore to ruin baseball? Cancel a World Series?
At the one-third pole
I haven’t written about my baseball team all spring, but these are merry times indeed for them and for me. Entering tonight's game against Arizona, the team is 37 up and 19 down, good for a .661 winning percentage. They have the best record in baseball by two full games, the largest run differential of any club (+84, the next best is +68). They have claimed 20 of 29 road games, won or tied 11 straight series dating back to April 28th, and I’m sleeping like a tiny baby.
Their starting rotation (at least at the beginning of the year) appeared last week on the cover of Sports Illustrated. That same cover also declared the Cardinals “Baseball’s Model Organization… Past, Present and Future.” (The “Future” part seems a bit presumptuous, but I like their confidence.) The way the team has been built is noteworthy. Almost the entire roster was assembled via the amateur draft. Of the team’s core players, only Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran, and Edward Mujica were acquired from outside the organization at the major league level. David Freese and Adam Wainwright were acquired as minor leaguers, and everybody else was drafted—the catcher and his backup, the first baseman, the second baseman, the shortstop, the center fielder, the best hitter off the bench, the best defender off the bench, and each of the other starting pitchers other than Wainwright. The minor league system is so loaded—with another potential ace debuting with a flourish last week at Busch Stadium (Michael Wacha)—that it feels like, at this point, the team could call up the entire starting rotation of their Rookie League club and each man would proceed to throw a four-hit shut out.
The downside of the year so far? Um, hard to say. It’s rained a lot in St. Louis. Does that count? There’s always a risk that injuries will derail a season, but at this point, it’s hard to see a position on the club, other than catcher, where an injury would greatly compromise the club. It's deeper than the Mississippi River at the Industrial Canal. Granted, they could probably upgrade their bench some if they could get the Los Angeles Angels to agree to take their journeyman first baseman Ty Wigginton in exchange for journeyman first baseman Albert Pujols (.248). We could exchange bad contracts as Wigginton was inexplicably given a two-year, $5 million deal for the season began. But this is nitpicking.
Keep chargin', Cards!
Who is Bob Benson?
Warning: Mad Men spoilers ahead.
It’s not really a mystery to me who the new mystery man is on
Mad Men. You’ve been overthinking it. And by "you," I mean you if you're reading this and you have also been posting your Bob Benson theories at other forums on the internet.
He’s not an FBI informant sent to incidentally uncover Don Draper’s biggest secret, nor is he an informant or investigator for a rival ad agency or for a newspaper. The overly-polite new employee of the now-unnamed ad firm is not a serial killer. He is also not Don’s son, the product of his virginity-losing tryst with a prostitute during the Depression—although I do enjoy the symbolism theories regarding Don’s son Bobby (his second of three children with Betty) and the "Bobbies 2 through 5" reference from last week's episode. (As one online commenter theorized—he might even be Bobby from the future: Bob=Bobby, "Ben" is the Hebrew word for "son," "son" is "son.")
No, I contend that Benson’s presence in Matthew Weiner's fictional universe is designed merely to underline the growing generational contrast between Don and his co-workers. We will soon find out, I believe, that Bob Benson, Wharton grad, accounts man, and holder of an extra cup of coffee in his hands at all times, is generally harmless—unless you consider the metaphorical embodiment of the coming Reagan Revolution to be most harmful.
And.. you should. It's almost too obvious that Benson will be the head of the agency by about this time next year.
