The Chris Moeller Archives

Is the caller there?

This is the must-watch of must-watches-- the 25th anniversary celebration of the Phil Donahue Show from the pre-Letterman Ed Sullivan Theater in 1992.

posted by CM @ 9:57 PM 0 comments

Catching up

Scott Walker is casting himself as a leader for getting out of the presidential race, but of course, he's just a quitter. A very unpopular quitter. Donald Trump is awful, but my least favorite Republican candidate in the Republican presidential field was Walker. (Ted Cruz is second worst.) The Wisconsin governor's lack of personal appeal I felt most viscerally. It’s the College Republican thing, I believe.

My least favorite Republican candidate in the Democratic field is Hillary Clinton. And that’s what she is. She was a Republican when she was a Goldwater girl, and she’s a Republican when she’s owned by Goldman Sachs. In-between, her husband gave us NAFTA, mandatory sentencing, "don't ask, don't tell," and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

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I’m currently reading Daniel Schulman’s “Sons of Wichita,” about the Koch Brothers. Very entertaining. I love reading about the personal failings of rich people. My siblings and I have a lot less money than Frederick, Charles, David, and Bill Koch, but our communication with each other is a lot less litigious.

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The St. Louis Rams are going to be an interesting case study this year in football fan support. The Los Angeles-bound NFL franchise took in a lot of fans of the visiting Seahawks in the season opener at the Edward Jones Dome. Then the team put up an embarrassing loss to Washington on the road in week two. More games like the one Sunday and home crowds could be very sparse come December.

I’ve stopped rooting for them. Making the playoffs on their way out of town, after nearly a decade and a half of historically-bad football, is not my idea of a feel-good story.

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Against all odds, the Cardinals posted their 94th win of the season last night, and that's with 12 more regular-season contests still to play. They’ve gone nearly the entire season without their pitching ace from a year ago, and without their third and fourth place hitters from what was once a formidable hitting lineup. Pitching, pitching, pitching. The story is as old as the sport itself. On Saturday, they clinched their twelfth trip to the postseason in the last 16 years. No foolin'.

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Sometimes the realities surrounding the city of St. Louis are too much to bare, but the city has taken ownership of “reality” on your cable box. Bravo’s Andy Cohen hosts the nightly series “Watch What Happens: Live” from in front of a wall that displays a Cardinals cap and an Andy-inspired Cardinals bobblehead. Former Cards All-Star Jim Edmonds and his wife Meghan (a St. Louis native) now anchor the 10th season of the Cohen-produced “Real Housewives of Orange County” on the same channel. Over on BET, St. Louis-based hip-hop star Nelly has now been raising his four children for two seasons in front of the camera on “Nellyville.” Throw in Emmy-winner Jon Hamm, from STL’s John Burroughs High School, and it’s clear that Hollywood has a St. Louis obsession.

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My wife and I both have a favorite Jim Edmonds show. Hers is The Real Housewives of Orange County. Mine is the Missouri Lottery Cardinals Live! post-game show on Fox Sports Midwest.

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Quote of the day: A “Real Housewives” character talking about Jim Edmonds on August 31st, “Jim made a living running into walls. I think he can handle Vicki."

posted by CM @ 6:50 PM 3 comments

Refugees and Nativism

In an interconnected planet like ours, denying that refugees should become the "burden" of your country makes little sense. Western European countries have been major players in the politics of Syria and the Middle East. That crisis does not exist in a vacuum. It's the same thing in the United States where migrants coming over the Mexican border are made unwelcome by Nativists when the predominant economic issue driving the migration is the ruinous effect of NAFTA on Mexico and Central America's agricultural economy.

I get that these European countries, like Hungary, Germany, and Austria, don't want to have the most welcoming posture for fear that they might become the sole owner of the refugee crisis, but isn't that why we have a European Union? Or is it just for empowering a central European bank and promoting austerity programs for its member states?

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For what it's worth, Donald Trump hasn't been pulling a fast one on the American voters so much as he's been pulling one over on the traditional news media. At the center of his professional wrestling-style campaign strategy is the acute understanding that the news media feels the need to treat "both sides" of an argument equally regardless of the individual merits. A bloviating candidate spewing rhetoric endorsed by white identity terrorist groups then morphs into a "serious" presidential contender before our very eyes. Many in the media disown the rhetoric, but they live in fear that they'll be perceived as "advocating an agenda" if they criticize Trump's actual ideas rather than simply the form by which he presents them. Promising to destroy millions of families pales in comparison to inferring that Carly Fiorina is unattractive. When Univision's Jorge Ramos attempted to confront Trump about his WWII/Japanese internment plan-on-steroids to forcibly deport 11 million people of Hispanic descent, the Washington Post called Ramos a "conflict junkie" that had "blurred the line between journalist and activist." According to this popular mindset, unarmed black people being killed by police is also not a problem because not everybody agrees that it is.

posted by CM @ 6:49 PM 0 comments

The white privilege of armed rebellion

White people have had enough. They're rallying around police, denying that racism is deeply-embedded in American law enforcement, despite the daily stories we now hear-- and even see- thanks to the explosion of social media. For most whites, the form of reactionary protest is internet memes, but for others, it's armed rebellion against the United States.

The Oath Keepers have been in the news a lot this year, rushing to the side of the powerful against the powerless, claiming that their initiative is the opposite but clearly illustrating for the rest of us the two alternating standards of justice in America that exist for whites and blacks. In Ferguson, Missouri, unarmed peaceful protesters, overwhelmingly African-American, had already been met by militarized local "warrior cops" dressed for an afternoon drive through Mosul. When the militia men of the Oath Keepers showed up, ostensibly to "protect Ferguson businesses," wearing battle fatigues, carrying .50-caliber Bushmaster, and planting themselves as snipers on area rooftops, they were welcomed by the murderous local police as the reinforcement they intended to be. Their presence became another effective weapon against peaceful protest. Being white in America is still a pretty sweet deal.

Since denying the right to peaceful petition of the government leads to inevitable violence, the Oath Keepers were offering nothing of value to the scene in Ferguson. The group now claims they will be offering protection to Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis. Leaders of the organization say they are shielding her from an oppressive federal government because a judge has jailed her for contempt of court for failing to end her personal and public discriminatory practice against issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Davis is a authoritarian government official making in excess of $80,000 a year choosing to deny the court-protected rights of the citizenry in a county that has a median household income of less than $20,000. The Oath Keepers are coming to her defense. You are thinking-- huh? Think of the Oath Keepers then as you do the Ku Klux Klan, founded as it was upon the mission of maintaining order (and racial purity) in the South following the Civil War when the federals, carpetbaggers, and Negras were attempting to slander and malign the Southern way of life.

During the eight-year presidency of Bush 43, American citizens were detained and tortured, in complete secrecy, and the FBI secretly infiltrated peaceful anti-war groups acting on free American soil, including a gardening collective in Iowa City, Iowa. Protesters at the 2004 Republican and Democrat political conventions were rounded into "free speech" cages. Yet the George Zimmermans of the nation that would coalesce to become the Oath Keepers apparently didn't identify a Constitutional crisis until a black man became president. The group was founded in 2008.

Rap artist Killer Mike believes it's time for his fellow African-Americans to arm themselves, and he says he joined the NRA symbolically to that end, despite the historical racism of the gun-rights organization. A proliferation of gun-ownership among blacks would create an institutional challenge for the white supremacists and separatists that make up the rosters of groups like the Oath Keepers. Killer Mike points out that the CIA introduced crack cocaine into black neighborhoods in the 1980s, destroying those communities, and then gun buy-back programs encouraged law-abiding black people to surrender their guns. He believes those people made a mistake, living in a country that was founded and is still defined by armed rebellion.

In an interview with Tavis Smiley on PBS earlier this year, the rapper born Michael Render said that he wished the congregants of Emanuel A.M.E. in Charleston had been armed. His words, "I wished there would’ve been some deterrent; I wish the angel Gabriel had really been in front of that door to stop that man. I can’t tell you that I want them to be armed in church. I can tell you that the Nation of Islam frisks everyone that walks in that door."

This is where black people stand today in America, where their collective patience and capacity for forgiveness surpasses all reasonable expectation-- and frankly all logic as well. In May, a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas-- white and Latino-- broke out, involving more than 200 bikers from five different gangs. A shootout with police entailed, and nine were killed, some by police, and 170 arrested, but the arrestees were treated with respect. In the aftermath, police have been threatened anonymously with grenades and car bombs.This was only one weekend after a group of black children in a suburb of Dallas, unarmed at a swimming pool and enjoying their summer vacation, were manhandled by police and had guns pointed at their faces, one girl in bare feet and dressed only in a swimsuit was dragged to the ground by her hair.

When you are white and have a gun, you are granted the respect of police. When Cliven Bundy, gun in hand, declared solitary war on the federal government from his ranch in Nevada over land rights last year, federal officials ultimately caved afer a brief standoff. Las Vegas police did not wear any protective gear during a tense encounter with Bundy's supporters-- in a stark contrast to the events in Ferguson-- because officials there said it would only escalate the situation. In the end, Bundy claimed victory. His illegally-grazing cattle were returned to him, a roundup suspended, and officials promised only that they would pursue a different administrative remedy. This was 17 months ago, and since then, Nevada Senator Harry Reid has been threatened, and two Las Vegas police officers and a civilian shot to death by separatist militia members. Right wing nuts on television, the ones that routinely call Ferguson protesters "thugs" and even "terrorists," flocked to Bundy's defense, labeling him a patriot. Despite the fact he was defying all three branches of government-- Congressional law, judicial order, and executive enforcement, Bundy had the public support of the Nevada governor and a Utah congressman. A group of Arizona state legislators traveled to his compound to be with him during the standoff. Bundy is still breaking the law on federal land-grazing for the simple reason that he does not believe that the authority of the United State government exists. Of course American Indians were never granted the courtesy of a stand-down over the land disputes they had with Washington. I know you were as shocked as I was when Bundy, after the standoff, shared with reporters his opinion that black people had been better off under slavery.

This is the institutional racism of America-- two completely separate systems of justice-- that's existence continues to be denied by a majority of white people even though it's standing right in front of their faces. You won't ever see Bundy or Waco referenced in one of those clever "thin blue line" or "police lives matter" memes, and you'll never see the Oath Keepers traveling to a remote desert ranch or a biker bar to defend police.

posted by CM @ 12:10 PM 0 comments

Joaquin Andujar 1952-2015

The great Dominican pitching star, Joaquin Andujar, has died at the age of 62 after a long battle with diabetes. He has been living in his hometown in the D.R., San Pedro de Macoris, since his retirement. I call him my favorite player, and I'll wear his retro pullover to work on Friday when the rest of the office will be dressed in Iowa State red or Iowa black. Tonight he's being called an inspiration to his fellow countrymen by Pedro Martinez, but he also inspired children outside of the Dominican Republic to always give their all. I wrote my tribute to him in 2010.

posted by CM @ 7:17 PM 0 comments

The slow but inevitable death of the sports commissioner

Today's deflate-gate court verdict-- a stark repudiation of the NFL rules enforcement regime--  is vitally-important for all American sports leagues, a land in which "commissioners" still attempt to fly above the laws of the larger world as if the current year was 1920. The district judge in the Tom Brady appeal made the issue clear: Commissioner Roger Goodell didn't inform Brady of the punishment he faced, or even of the offense of which he was charged. Brady's legal team was not allowed to question the NFL attorney at the quarterback's appeal, nor was it allowed to examine the evidence.

This is a legal smack-down of Goodell louder than the one former commissioner Pete Rozelle got when Al Davis took him to court in 1982 over the issue of relocating the Oakland Raiders. It will be Goodell's legacy. In an instant, the ruling extraordinarily increases the power of the NFL Players Association by weakening the power of the league and its owners. Goodell's rulings on matters of employee discipline have now been overturned in court on deflate-gate, on the Ray Rice suspension, on New Orleans' alleged bounty program, and on Adrian Peterson's child abuse case. I only wish now that Josh Gordon had appealed his substance abuse suspension in federal court in time to have rejoined my fantasy team last year. (A 7-7 regular-season record eventually claimed the championship.)

This case took the pudding for outlandishness. The charge was strange, and the commissioner's demand during the investigation that Brady surrender unto the league his personal cell phone warranted and earned some deep and impassioned belly laughs. Goodell as tyrant judge and jury is dead. Consistency and transparency both still matter today. Due process kicks ass.

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The revolution must spread to baseball next. It's harebrained already that the figurehead leader of a large baseball corporation can determine which individuals should and should not be eligible for enshrinement at our nation's baseball museum, but this new figurehead we got seems especially to offer nothing fresh. Rob Manfred denied the request this week of the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum in Greenville, South Carolina to reinstate the 0.356 lifetime slugger that was banned from baseball 95 years ago under the accusation that he had conspired to lose a World Series during which he rapped a then-MLB record 12 hits.

The persecuted party has been dead longer than the Rosenbergs, yet the punishment for his alleged crime has not lasted long enough for the likes of Manfred. In his letter of refusal addressed to the Jackson museum, he explained, "The results of this work (research) demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner (Kenesaw Mountain) Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations."

So an all-time great can't be reinstated after nearly a century of punishment because it's now been too long. This is bafflegab worthy of the great Sid Caesar. It's a great thing for the lot of us that Commissioner Happy Chandler had the wherewithal to overrule another infamous Landis decision only two years after the Judge's death and allow Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey to break down baseball's color line, because if Manfred was faced with that particular controversy-- now seven decades after the fact-- he would be liable to find he wasn't "certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations."

posted by CM @ 7:30 PM 0 comments

Which shooters get the benefit of the doubt?

The contrast on CNN tonight is striking.

In one "developing" story, a manhunt is on for three suspects in the shooting death of a police officer in Illinois. Police have not publicly released the names of the suspects, one of which is reportedly African-American and two others white. The officer killed had radioed that he was in foot pursuit of three "suspicious subjects" just before communication was lost. CNN has multiple police experts being interviewed, one a member of the federal marshal service. We have no names and really no information, including the reason the slain officer was pursuing three individuals, but the police side of the story is being told with a proverbial bullhorn.

In the other developing story, a day after CNN's cable news competitor, FOX News, called "Black Lives Matter" a "murder" operation and a "hate group," a video has surfaced of a brown-skinned man in Texas being shot by police with at least one hand in the air and standing stationary. The man's other arm is obscured in the video by a telephone pole. None of the CNN talking heads, including Don Lemon, are willing tonight to indict the officers as yet for the shooting despite what we see in the video. Two deputies, Greg Vasquez and Robert Sanchez, are getting the benefit of the doubt despite very little evidence to the contrary that they murdered this man. They are on paid administrative leave. The police statement said that the "armed" suspect resisted arrest, then the deputies attempted to detain the man using "non-lethal" force before resorting to shooting. None of those claims are supported by the video, including the claim that the suspect was armed.

This police department, in Bexar County (TX), is also criticizing a San Antonio TV station for releasing the video, encouraging local residents to contact the station with their complaints and accusing the station (KSAT) of "sensational behavior" that has put officers' lives at stake, but it seems to me that it's the officers in the video that have been engaged in sensational behavior. How dare the station show unedited video shot on a public street that tells us what it tells us.

By law, police are only allowed to shoot at civilians when they feel their life is in danger, not when they are trying to take someone into custody. According to the new database managed by the Washington Post, at least 662 Americans have been shot and killed by on-duty police in 2015, 62 in the month of August alone. The Post also reports that only 54 officers have been convicted of fatal shootings in the United States since 2005. 

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I believe that this incarnation of Donald Trump exists because we have no Stewart, no Colbert, and no Letterman. The 'no Letterman' is the key part of that dynamic. Dave went off the air in May and that's exactly when Trump's campaign took on this new face. The icon of New York broadcasting always called Trump on his shit-- even to his face. Watch this clip from the Late Show, which dates only to January. We clearly see a man that has already begun his campaign for president. The narcissism is there. At one point, he takes credit for the idea of wearing red ties. But Letterman is there to cut him, and Trump is largely chastened. This Trump is talking about improving "highways, roads, and bridges" (infrastructure). He says that Dave's idea for more mass transit just "needs to be sold." Medical costs, he says, need to be brought under control and "we have to take care of the people." He arguably endorses single-payer health insurance about half-way through the clip, although he doesn't say that directly (he has previously), and he says Dave is "100% right" when Dave says that our nation is stronger than the symbol of the American flag when it gets burned. January Trump sounds almost sensible.

posted by CM @ 7:27 PM 0 comments