"I continued singing, and I expect I always will." -- Pete Seeger, before Congress, 1955
If I had one moment of bravery in my life to match
this one (must read) that Pete Seeger had, the world could simply kiss my ass. In 1955, before the House Un-American Activities Committee-- a mockery of political theater that was itself un-American-- Pete stood up for his friends, and for all of us. Others named names. Braver than those pleaded the Fifth. Pete pleaded the First.
Because of the resulting blacklisting, history has re-written the story of how popular his musical group, the Weavers, actually were during those first years that followed World War II and welcomed the Cold War. The musicians were not only banned from radio, from TV during its infancy, and from recording contracts, but the government even threatened night-club owners that considered booking the group. The blacklisting of Pete Seeger lasted for two decades, and then only chilled after that. Tom and Dick Smothers deserve credit for putting Seeger on their prime-time television show during the explosive summer of 1968. Pete had not been chastened by time. On the Smothers Brothers program, he
performed “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” a folk song with a biting allegorical message about the Vietnam War.
Pete's songs were not Pete's songs. They belonged to everybody. He introduced a few and revived most. His were in the folk tradition-- traditional blues and union songs, staples of the community hoedown, the family porch, and the Little Red Songbook. I saw the man perform at Jazz Fest in New Orleans the week of his 90th birthday. He was on stage with his grandson. As all Seeger concerts were at
some point, this one was a sing-a-long.
It’s ironic that he became blacklisted for having been a member of the “Party”—the Communist Party, because throughout his life, he was one of the few that always put principles above any political party, whether it be Communist, Democrat, or otherwise. There aren’t many genuine revolutionary heroes out there, but Pete Seeger was one of them. Like Gene Debs before him, he experienced the revolutionary's pivotal moment, the one where he or she chooses prison over collaboration. Pete Seeger was cut from the same cloth as Debs, and off the top of my head I can't think of a greater compliment. He was a man of colossal principle and morality. R.I.P. Comrade.
The Lesser Olympics
I’m intrigued by the saga of Des Moines native Lolo Jones competing at Sochi. Jones is the track and field star who flopped at the Summer Games in 2012 and now has re-invented herself as a bobsledder in winter competition. I’m interested in this for more than just the local angle. It dovetails into a strongly-held opinion of mine that some sports competitions are simply not worth watching because the greatest athletes of the planet are either completely disinterested or effectively excluded.
I’m prepared to name names on these sports. Here’s a partial list of athletes that don’t generally impress me: golfers, tennis players, and bicyclists, for socioeconomic reasons; hockey players, speedskaters, and skiers, for climate reasons. Even before Lance Armstrong was “disgraced” and banned from the world of cycling due to his use of performance-enhancing yada yada blah blah blah, you would not have colored me impressed with his achievements. I truly believe this: If Allen Iverson had made the conscious decision, anytime between the ages of 8 and 14, to become a bicyclist, rather than a basketball player, neither you nor I would recognize the name “Lance Armstrong" today. Another good place to begin this argument is with an examination of the biographies of either Earl Woods or Richard Williams. These were two men of modest financial means (Williams' more modest than Woods') that famously put their children on the fast track to fame and fortune by training them in the comparatively less competitive worlds of golf and tennis, respectively.
This is also why I otherwise have no interest in the winter edition of the Olympics. It’s more than coincidental that the cold weather games, which are, by default, the exclusive playground of countries north of approximately 40 degrees latitude anyway, didn’t even exist until roughly the same point in history that brown and black-skinned peoples started competing in and dominating nearly all of the summer competitions. My wife is from Kenya. I asked her if she had any interest in watching the Winter Olympics next month. Of course she doesn’t. There are no Kenyans-- no Africans at all-- in the Winter Olympics. At the equator, they don't even have snow covering their mountain peaks.
There seems to be discernible resentment in some Olympic circles towards Lolo Jones because of what she is even
attempting to do in crossing over. (Jones, incidentally, is of mixed-race heritage, and was raised in abject poverty.) Her critics don't admit it, but the root of
their oft-heard complaint that Jones is “taking up a slot” otherwise set aside for somebody that has "worked her entire life to be an Olympic bobsledder" is that her success turns a mirror towards the talent discrepancy between the original Olympics and its younger sister. Up until the present day, the only prerequisite for being an Olympic ski-jumper, for example, is to have been brought up by a family living in a northern climate with an annual household income of at least $200,000. What if Jones' public ambition encourages copycats? If Lolo is nothing else, she's highly practical. Highly motivated to win Olympic gold, she has decided to take an easier route to it than the one she chose back in high school. The fact that she took up the sport of bobsledding at the age of 30, and can almost immediately be considered among the best in the world, tells us all we need to know.
Merging
When we're on the road together, can we agree that it's agreeable to let people in as we all approach the same lane closure, whether it be one caused by construction or collision? Let's put our pride away, shall we?
It's called a "bottleneck" for a reason. Let's imagine we're all droplets of water in a bottle. As long as somebody is going, we'll all get through quickly. In fact, the only scenario that slows us all down is when the grilles of two vehicles come to a 'V.' Now imagine that you let even three cars merge ahead of you. This probably seems like a lot, more than what's even required or is typical. But even in this extreme situation, you're still going to get through the bottleneck in almost precisely the same amount of time. We're all familiar with that marvelous feeling one gets in their inner core when traffic begins to move and we're able to accelerate back to full speed. How long will it then take you to catch up to each of the three cars you allowed in ahead of you if you
really need to? Ten seconds? Five? That's how easily you can make up for the time you lost while showing the world your beautiful humanity. So act like an adult.
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In our house, during this most intoxicating of all recent Hollywood award seasons, we're rooting for the home teams: Kenya's
Lupita Nyong'o and Omaha's
Alexander Payne (both pictured below). The glaring omission among the Oscar nominees this year is James Franco for his work in
Spring Breakers, and I thought
American Hustle was more fun than a barrel of Chris Christie political thugs. But the best movie I've seen this year is called
Fruitvale Station.
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Speaking of prestigious trophies, baseball commissioner Bud Selig has been chosen as
the recipient of the first ever Bud Selig Leadership Award.
Selig vs. Rodriguez, a knockout decision?
I guess since Marvin Miller is dead, Major League Baseball thinks it can get away with any anti-labor action it wishes to take.
You’ll have to forgive my ignorance of some of the details, but I don’t understand how arbitrators could have ruled against Alex Rodriguez in his effort to overturn his suspension for being linked to Anthony Bosch’s anti-aging clinic in Florida. A three-person arbitration panel dropped the suspension from 211 games to 162 games (effectively he’ll have to sit out the upcoming season), but that number is still out of line with the Collective Bargaining Agreement that reads as a 50-game suspension for a first offense on PEDs, and 100 games for a second. And I would like to remind everyone that Rodriguez has still not failed a drug test and that there is no physical evidence linking him to an illegal or banned substance. There's not even any proof that Bosch was supplying players with anything other than water.
If the CBA really does allow for special cases like this to not only exceed the sanctioned suspension guidelines, but to do so based solely on the legal testimony of a deal-cutting criminal that is now in the employ of Major League Baseball, then the Players Association’s original decision to agree to any drug testing whatsoever was even dumber than I’ve always thought it was. This is why you never negotiate over your Constitutionally-protected rights; in this case, the right to privacy. I don’t give a shit if the rank and file of the union wanted testing. This is the reason they pay dues: to have lawyers in charge of their union and the legal protection of sound advice. I don't blame A-Rod for suing his union.
At the age of 42, Barry Bonds was blackballed from Major League Baseball. At the time, he faced felony charges of perjury that would eventually fail to hold up in court. He was coming off a season in which he had posted an on-base percentage higher than any other player not named Barry Bonds or Frank Thomas since 1962, and was asking for only a one-year contract. Rodriguez may be blackballed likewise, and surely that will be to keep him from threatening the Hank Aaron career home run mark that has already been smashed to smithereens by Bonds. But A-Rod can’t be blackballed without getting paid at least $61 million more. The Yankees, even after 2014, will still owe A-Rod three more seasons at $20 million per, and if they actually allow him to suit up and he adds just six more home runs to his career total, the club will have to pay him an additional $6 million for having surpassed Willie Mays’ career HR mark. After that, it’s $6 million more for every one of the greats that he passes on the all-time list, including Aaron and Bonds.
A-Rod’s talent may or may not still be up to snuff in 2015, especially after he misses a full season at the age of 39, but if the Yankees cut him loose, unfortunately, it won’t matter if he can still play or not. Other teams sign great players for their own, but also for the purpose of keeping that person’s talent from going to another team. That’s the beauty of blackballing someone else. You don't have to worry about the threat of the latter. It will be a collusion, a gentlemen’s agreement if you will, not to sign him, and Major League Baseball-- dating back through Barry Bonds through the
actual "collusion" scandal of the 1980’s and all the way back to Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell-- has a marvelous tradition of these unholy gentlemen’s agreements.
The occultist and the president
Manly P. Hall, Ayn Rand, Nancy’s psychic crap, UFOs. Is there any cult the Reagans didn’t join?
Now half of America is caught up in a Cult of Reagan, one that Ronnie established for the United States presidency defined by an ignorant, pandering, and mean-spirited public "optimism." Flattery sells to a population of souls rapidly losing privilege under a dying empire.
Film director Steven Soderbergh unintentionally defined who we are as a people in this age in a “State of Cinema” speech he made last spring: “I don’t care who you’re pitching, I don’t care
what you’re pitching… Stop yourself in the middle of a sentence and act like you’re having an epiphany, and say, ‘You know what, at the end of this day, this is a movie about hope.’”
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Yeah, Lee Oswald was a lone gunman. That’s why there are more than 1,700 still-classified CIA documents related to Oswald, the Kennedy assassination, and Oswald’s murder.
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This is going to be my new thing. I’m going to go on Facebook each day and address each one of those ridiculous comments that reactionary Friends make. This is the pat response I'm going to post: "As with other political conservatism, I'm going to assume that yours is caused by reduced reactivity of the anterior cingulate cortex."
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I don’t have any children, but I imagine that if I did, it would be very difficult to teach those children the importance of occasionally sucking it up and doing what it is they don’t want to do. Working against me is the fact that Woody Allen doesn’t show up to receive his Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes.
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Viewer support of the Olympics in Sochi will be a condoning of the abuses of Vladimir Putin's government. I say this because that’s what
Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are saying. If these extraordinarily-brave women tell me that that's the way it is, then that's the way it is.
Alyokhina (left) and Tolokonnikova
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I’m grateful for the information Edward Snowden gave us regarding NSA data-mining surveillance, but he should have gone through the proper channels in reporting the overreach. By doing so in the commission of a crime, he cheapened his actions. On a related note, Rosa Parks should have given up her seat on the Montgomery city bus and filed a formal complaint with the bus company.
I am Dan LeBatard
I don’t mean to brag…
But I have not only successfully voted-- but have successfully voted
my conscience-- in the 2014 election for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I really didn’t think I would ever be able to say such a thing in my lifetime-- and before the age of 40, no less. Here’s how it happened. Deadspin.com purchased a ballot from someone that's on the list of “qualified” sportswriters-slash-voters, the man’s identity shrouded in secrecy, and then the man said he didn't need any money at all in exchange for handing over his ballot. Next, the website collected my vote, along with those of thousands of other baseball fans, and submitted, under this sportswriter’s name, a list of our ten very favorites from an impressive list of candidates, arguably the best list ever.
After the formal vote results were announced yesterday by the Hall of Fame, Deadspin publicly revealed that our angelic messenger was Miami Herald sportswriter and ESPN personality Dan LeBatard, to whom I am now eternally indebted.
By some combination of luck and happenstance, Deadspin and LeBatard even accepted some of my personal picks for use on our collective ballot. My pet cause, Mark McGwire, barely missed the cut of players whose names were submitted, which is disappointing, but then it’s hard to quibble with the will of the people.
Maddux and Glavine were both ultimately selected by the governing body, the Baseball Writers Association of America, for Hall enshrinement later this summer, along with Frank Thomas, a designated slugger that I deemed more of a one-dimensional All-Star-type player than a Hall of Famer while I was conscientiously clicking on names from my very crowded electronic ballot. I don’t expect Maddux and Glavine to send thank you cards or anything. I was just offering my support to them as part of my civic duty to a game that has provided me endless enjoyment.
Deadspin editors claim that they have another designated voter lined up already for 2015, if the terms surrounding a charitable donation can be finalized. It won’t be LeBatard this time around as he was stripped today of his membership and voting rights in the BBWAA for having engaged in this particular agreement with Deadspin. But his dual rewards for his courageousness, I hope, are the everlasting gratitude of the fans he shared his vote with for one glorious year and a feeling of well-deserved satisfaction that allows him to sleep at night like a tiny baby. It’s also worth nothing that Dan will still have a voice in the process next year as he will continue to be eligible to participate in the Deadspin vote.
And I simply cannot wait now until next year. I can see why these sportswriters get off on having this power-- and why it turns so many of them into sanctimonious jackasses. Will it be Biggio’s turn to get the call? The only catcher-slash-second baseman in the 3,000 hit club missed induction by only two votes this year. Is it Piazza’s turn as well? Bonds and Clemens both, perhaps? Maybe it will even be the year of destiny for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who teamed up to save Bud Selig’s sorry commissioner ass back in 1998, rescuing the business of Major League Baseball from public ambivalence and making the world forget that Selig had cancelled the World Series four years earlier.
Perhaps eventually, Deadspin, along with its copycats, will even rescue our nation's baseball museum from Major League Baseball. Today the Hall of Fame voting process has a sliver of respectability where on Tuesday it had none.
On a somber, final note, LeBatard is
getting hammered today by frothing members of his betrayed “fraternity.” These clowns of the keyboard-- four of which voted for Armando Benitez or J.T. Snow, and 16 of which
didn't vote for Greg Maddux-- are correct that there
was a major scandal connected to the Hall of Fame voting this year, and it was this: Both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens-- winners of a combined
fifteen (not a misprint) MVP and Cy Young Awards-- received less than 36 percent support in the overall vote. I’m grateful that the indignity of that fact has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I voted for both of them.
Football is so crooked it's oblong
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take college football seriously. My alma mater, Iowa State, suits up its players once a year against Oklahoma State in the Big 12 conference. At the beginning of the 2013 season, there was a five-part magazine profile in Sports Illustrated investigating Oklahoma State University’s football program. It revealed, between the years 1999 and 2011, under-the-table cash payments and bonuses to players, sham jobs, academic misconduct designed to produce passing grades, heavy drug use, a "hostess group" of female students utilized to have sex with potential recruits, and former players coping with homelessness, drug addiction, suicidal impulses, and prison sentences. Half a year later, no sanctions have resulted against Oklahoma State, which is fresh off a lucrative January 3rd appearance at Cowboys Stadium in the Cotton Bowl.
So pay for play under the table is okay? Whoring out the co-eds is kosher too?
Officials at Penn State University knowingly enabled two decades of child molestation, but NCAA officials informed us that a four-year bowl ban and a "significant" loss of scholarships would be more damaging to the celebrated "Success with Honor" football program than the death sentence. Two years after sanctions, the Nittany Lions have gone a combined 15-9, and have won twice as many games as they've lost in conference play. The NCAA has restored five of the lost scholarships per year, citing "significant momentum" by the school in making institutional changes, which I guess means none of the coaches have been observed raping a child during the previous 18 months.
So when I hear a joke about my school only winning three football game this season, I'm not sure why I should feel any sense of embarrassment? This is like having a losing record in the ring against nothing but Don King fighters.
I spy a democratically-elected representative of the people
Holy Christ, is the NSA even
spying on members of Congress? They're not denying it. They lie to Congress so why would there be any qualms?
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A George W. Bush appointee, Judge Richard Leon, called the NSA surveillance program “almost Orwellian” as he struck it down from the bench. Last week, a Bill Clinton appointee
reversed that ruling.
So make sure you all get out and vote for Democrats next year! It will be the most important mid-term election of our lifetimes!
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Yes, Northeast United States, you are correct: Michelle Bachmann, Steve King, Ted Cruz, and Todd Akin are all lunatics. Flyover America is such an embarrassment to the whole of us. But speaking personally, there is no elected official in Washington that terrifies me more than
Peter King of Long Island, New York.
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African forest elephants, another casualty of the "War on Terror."
The Duke of Funk
We lost George Duke during 2013, the same year I got to see him perform at NOLA JazzFest with Stanley Clarke. Enjoy
this clip of George in Tokyo in 1983, playing the biggest hit he ever penned. He also funked up Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" album and played with Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, and Dianne Reeves.
Ten Slate headlines, ranked
In the age of the “click-bait” online business model, let’s check in on the progress of one popular site: Slate.com. Are these headlines "click"-able to you? Come along.
Headline #10. “The Next Great Wine… Made in China?”
This headline is pretty weak. It’s attempting to appeal to a new conventionally-held media wisdom that the next great
everything will be originating from the fledgling Eastern Empire of the People’s Republic. One in a thousand Americans is an authority on wine, but one in ten wants you to think he is, so this headline might be bait for your typical web surfer with middle-brow taste that Slate desperately wants to associate itself with.
9. “A Brief History of Diagramming Sentences”
Maybe this should be 10. Are they for real? I must be in the 1/10th of one percent of internet users that might be interested in this topic, and I’m not.
8. “Why is No Among a Child’s First Words?”
Another headline fail. It’s not intriguing enough. The answer to the question is already clear without reading further: Physical and verbal helplessness requires a baby to learn very basic conveyances to let a caretaker know his or her basic desires and dislikes. The only reason I would click on this story would be to see why what’s incredibly obvious may not be that obvious. But then I need to be told briefly why it’s not obvious.
7. “The Weather is Horrible Today Pretty Much Everywhere”
I’m sure you know by now that “the weather” is that one topic that everybody complains about, but then does nothing about—and this headline was accompanied by a color-coded temperature map of the United States, but I feel like I just saw this story elsewhere on the web one day last month. It’s the middle of winter by now. And I can see on the map that there are “cold” colors like blue and purple across almost the whole U.S. map. Freshen it up, Slate.
6. “Five Ways Drones Could Do Some Good in 2014”
If you’re familiar with Slate, you probably recognize that this headline represents the site at its frequent, trolling worst—an online site pandering to the ruling elite while pretending to be audacious. This headline’s gonna get some clicks, but not one from me. If I wanted to read tired old propositions boosting the imperial state but masquerading as forward-thinking subversiveness, I’d do a quick search for Thomas Friedman’s latest column.
5. “College Students’ Thesis Topics Are Hilarious, Depressing”
Now we’re getting somewhere. This headline is very straight-forward, of course, but it’s for a story capable of selling itself. On just a few occasions I have attended a graduate school commencement ceremony, and when I do, I get a kick out of reading the individual thesis topics printed in the commencement program. If this is a thing you like, then here's that thing you like.
4. “I Deleted Everything From My Facebook Timeline. It Felt Wonderful”
Here’s an exciting testimonial. Most of us spend time on Facebook. Just as many of us are at least mildly aggrieved by our Facebook experience. Should I clear
my Timeline? Maybe this article will help me decide!
3. “Don’t Panic, But An Asteroid We Didn’t Even Know About Probably Hit Earth Last Night”
This is closer to what Slate does most expertly: In this case, framing a story about “science” that would be on page eight of any major daily newspaper and making it a must-read for dum-dums like me. I haven't even clicked yet and I’m thinking, shit, should I blow off my bowling night later in the week?
2. “Help! My Daughter Is in Love With My Son’s Boyfriend”
This headline belongs to the weekly piece from Slate’s advice columnist, and that column's weekly headline is almost always provocative. Notice how I seem to fall hardest for headlines that begin with dramatic phrases like “Don’t Panic” or “Help!”
1. “The Safe, Free, Readily Available Therapy for Most Major Diseases”
Here’s today’s gold standard—the reason that Slate is only a hair away, journalistically, from being Star Magazine. When you see a headline like this one, normally while in the grocery store check-up line, don’t you wonder why the news outlet’s competitors don’t also pick it up and run with it. Seems like this one could be bigger than “Nixon Resigns.” Tomorrow morning when you check back in with Slate, maybe this one?: “The Long-awaited Cure for Cancer?”
Resolutions 2014
Bring on 2014, the year of the thing that replaces twerking. I remember being a kid and thinking to myself: what will it be like to welcome a new year during the 2000’s. I’ll be so old by then. Now we’re well-established into the new millennium and it feels about the same as the old ones. Kind of a let-down, actually. There has still been no colonization of the moon. (The moon people still have complete political autonomy.) There are still no four-course dinners in the form of one easy-to-swallow purple tablet, no winged horses, no World Series parades on Chicago’s North Side. Maybe 2014 will bring all or some of the above.
Now for me personally, in the new year…
I resolve to fix the drain in the bathroom sink. What could that be down there?
I resolve to switch to e-cigarettes. I’m not a smoker, but I’m trying to quit eating those Cadbury chocolate eggs.
I’m going to become an uncle in 2014 so I resolve to be the kind that tells jokes and pulls coins from behind ears.
I resolve to figure out how that coin trick works.
I resolve to become famous being a professional furniture mover. Sounds impossible, you say? Well, I have a specific plan. Are you ready for it? I’m going to move furniture while wearing camouflage and growing a really long beard. Because that costume will give me “personality.”
I resolve not to misdirect my anger in winter. It’s not snow I hate, it’s automobiles. Snow is innocent.
I resolve to hit .415 off somebody. Anybody. In any sport. Did you know that Tony Gwynn had a career .415 batting average, in 94 at-bats, against a pitcher who’s about to become a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Greg Maddux. Good hitting and all that.
I resolve to roll my eyes every time I hear a college football or basketball coach call the players “kids.”
I resolve to blog with greater consistency. The year of the wedding and early marriage presented time management challenges, but this New Year's marks the tenth New Year's of the CM Blog era. Now I've got a little thing going for me called "dependency." My own.
Stick with me, babies. Don't forget old acquaintances in the new year, and take a cup of kindness yet.
