The Chris Moeller Archives

The states of television

2012-01-26T06:46:00.000-06:00

Just as an exercise, I tried to come up with the greatest TV show that takes place in each state. I may have forgotten some, you may quibble on other selections, and I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel in some instances. Without Wikipedia, I would have been screwed.

You've got to love a list that has "A Different World," but not "The Cosby Show."

How did I do?

Alabama- Any Day Now
Alaska- Northern Exposure
Arizona- Alice
Arkansas- Evening Shade
California- Moonlighting/Curb Your Enthusiasm/Arrested Development
Colorado- Community
Connecticut- Gilmore Girls
Delaware- The Pretender
District of Columbia- Get Smart
Florida- The Golden Girls
Georgia- Designing Women
Hawaii- Hawaii Five-O (the first one)
Idaho- Napoleon Dynamite
Illinois- The Bob Newhart Show (Chicago), Roseanne (downstate)
Indiana- Parks & Recreation
Iowa- American Pickers
Kansas- The Phil Silvers Show
Kentucky- Justified
Louisiana- Treme
Maine- Murder, She Wrote
Maryland- The Wire
Massachusetts- Cheers
Michigan- The PJs
Minnesota- The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Mississippi- In the Heat of the Night
Missouri- The John Larroquette Show
Montana- Buckskin
Nebraska- The Young Riders
Nevada- Bonanza
New Hampshire- The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire
New Jersey- The Sopranos
New Mexico- Breaking Bad
New York- Seinfeld (uptown), 30 Rock (midtown), Taxi (downtown), The Honeymooners (Brooklyn), Buffalo Bill (upstate)
North Carolina- The Andy Griffith Show
North Dakota- My Secret Identity (Canadian)
Ohio- WKRP in Cincinnati
Oklahoma- Hillbilly Handfishin'
Oregon- Eureka
Pennsylvania- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Puerto Rico- The Flying Nun
Rhode Island- Family Guy
South Carolina- American Gothic
South Dakota- Deadwood
Tennessee- Davy Crockett
Texas- King of the Hill
Utah- Big Love
Vermont- Newhart
Virginia- A Different World
Washington- Frasier
West Virginia- Hawkins
Wisconsin- That '70s Show
Wyoming- The Virginian

Last Words

2012-01-25T17:53:00.009-06:00

I have an entire shelf at home filled with books written by comedians. Truth be known, most of them are not that good. I like the performer so I bought his/her book, and I like people to see them on my shelf. Collectively, I consider them to be America's great truth-tellers. But George Carlin's memoir "Last Words," published posthumously in 2009, is actually a great book. It's intensely clever, bracingly funny, and a damn interesting narrative. Though I have long considered Carlin almost without peer in his profession, I never realized how little I knew about his background. He's a talent so literate and in love with words, yet so marvelously vulgar. It all makes sense now that I know he's the child of some economic privilege, from Manhattan's upper west side, that was raised by a well-to-do, but drunken, violent father-- a successful newspaper ad-sales rep when New York City newspapers were king of all media (before Stern), and a status-seeking mother who saw her husband as being of the low-class, so-called shanty Irish, and herself of the "lace curtain" Irish.

And oh, the Catholicism. When I envision a young class clown getting rapped with a ruler across the knuckles by a sadistic nun, I envision young George Carlin. His teen years, spent in and out of parish schools in Morningside Heights and Harlem on upper Manhattan isle, would help shape and define his world outlook, his comedy, and his art even up until his death. Though he never comes out and says it directly, I imagine his entire career, especially the last three decades on stage, being fueled by an emotional need to piss off an entire order of nuns that might be listening. Challenging religion was at the core of who he was on stage, and Entertainment Weekly recognized the connection, once describing the man as one "for whom the sacred was profane and the profane, sacred.

"Last Words" is a beauty, as terrific as its opening line promises: "Sliding headfirst down a vagina with no clothes on and landing in the freshly shaven crotch of a screaming woman did not seem to be part of God's plan for me." He goes on to describe his very conception this way: "By the time my father's eager, whiskey-soaked sperm forced its way into my mother's egg-of-the-month club, she was forty and he was forty-eight-- certainly old enough to be carrying rubbers."

And it goes on from there. You get the idea. Check it out.

Big ole' birds

2012-01-23T18:27:00.005-06:00

I've looked at this famous image a million times-- I've attempted to draw it on more than one occasion-- but something is factually incorrect about it. Not sure what I'm talking about? Cubs fans, any astounding remarks you want to make first?

Ok, now the reveal: the image is out of proportion with reality, and I have a website called www.flipflopflyball.com to thank for bringing it to my attention. The birds are entirely too large for the baseball bat they're perched upon. Now graphic artist Craig Robinson has given us a look at what the St. Louis Cardinals' logo would look like if it were proportionately correct.

That's just one of the terrific, sometimes astounding, "infographics" at the Flipflop website. (There are more than 100 different ones.) Stay at home from work tomorrow and equate yourself with some of these brilliant graphs, a hearty mix of vibrant design and sometimes extensive statistical research. My personal favorites are "Either side of the buttons", illustrating how the letters of each team name are divided on the front of Major League Baseball uniforms, the breakdown of the 2010 bobblehead promotional giveaways, the etymological Venn diagram of team names, and the ballpark orientation graph showing which direction the batter faces in each MLB ballpark.

I dig this too. It's under the Miscellany category.

Who says baseball fans have too much time on their hands?

A vested interest

2012-01-21T14:28:00.021-06:00

Republicans have got to rally together and chase Rick Santorum out of the presidential race. He's single-handedly ruining the sweater vest look.

I picked up a pre-owned v-neck, argyle sweater vest for a '20s theme party a year and a half ago-- and I look terrific in it. It works on me in a sort of a retro-ironic way, befitting my unique-- some say daring-- personality. (It also helps that I have great hair and cheekbones.) My sweater vest is functional too, less restrictive than a full, itchy pullover sweater, which I cannot abide, and it can be paired with a white dress shirt that makes my skin tone look darker, and that I don't have to iron if it's worn underneath a sweater vest.

Rick Santorum might just be America's un-coolest man. His level of uncool is so off-the-charts high that it's drowning the irony. He's the subject or target of most good recently-written jokes and google-bomb efforts. (A growing percentage of the jibes are even sweater vest-related.) He's the Anita Bryant of his generation. In matters of sex, one of the coolest pastimes that a person can engage in, he's compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia, and he's even opposed to legal contraception because it provides "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." He's such a religious lunatic that he even advocates criminal statutes against adultery.

He doesn't even look good wearing the vest. He's aiming for some bullshit, '50s TV dad, "father always knows best," patriarchal image that's designed to engender the support of that far-right 10% of frightened, uneducated voters that pine for the ordered, sexist, anti-sexual pleasure, "Christian morality" version of mid-century America that never even existed. If you've caught a glimpse of Candidate Santorum on television recently, or were an Iowan stuck behind him at any point at a restaurant cash register in 2011, you know that he's much more pear-shaped now than he was when Dan Savage made him famous. My budding fashion identity for this decade is being stifled by an angrier, more hate-filled Ned Flanders, an ass-backward clod with birthing hips!

Republicans, I'm giving you until Super Tuesday to bury this guy. I want all news cameras moved away from Rick Santorum-- and as quickly as possible. If I see that he garners even 10% of the vote today in South Carolina, I'm going to be pissed. If I see that he has added a necktie to his ensemble, I'm driving down there.

When Republicans do good

2012-01-19T19:39:00.000-06:00

Iowa Governer Terry Branstad has made my happy list for once. He's teaming with the ACLU of Iowa to oppose the use of speed cameras on Iowa roadways. This summer, the city of Des Moines installed cameras on the McVicar Freeway, the major thoroughfare through town.

The ACLU delivered a petition to the statehouse Wednesday containing the signatures of 10,000 Iowans opposed to the red-light or speed cameras. Twenty-four House Republicans introduced legislation also in opposition. Branstad's comments indicate that he sees the original and obvious motivation behind the use of these cameras-- and it's not public safety. It's raising money for municipalities. The governor himself was clocked for speeding by a camera in Arizona this summer, and says he was fined $200 for driving 10 miles over the speed limit. He experienced the feeling of powerlessness that comes with not being able to face one's accuser.

I oppose the use of speed cameras for reasons of distrust, and what I consider to be an unhealthy, unproductive, and unconstitutional overreach by the police state. I oppose speed limits in general for reasons of capriciousness, and because I consider it to be a regressive tax.

Des Moines' enforcement policies betray the typical hypocrisy at work: The posted speed limit through town on the McVicar (I-235) is 60 mph, but drivers won't face a fine (by official declaration!) unless they're clocked by the camera at 70 mph or more.

No, see, the speed limit is 60. You should get fined for exceeding 60, not 70. Oh, but wait, everybody and his monkey drives over 60. The posted maximum speed is considered now, by the reality of the American road, to be the speed minimum. And if nobody obeys the law, and the law is not enforced, why does the law exist? The people have spoken with their right foot.

What we have today instead, with our traffic speed laws, is a system of graft. We have all heard about-- and even experienced ourselves-- the small town and neighborhood "speed traps." Eighty percent of drivers or more roll through the area exceeding the speed limit because they drive cars that have been manufactured to, with ease, reach speeds that are sometimes almost double the highest legal speed. Only a fraction of drivers are pulled over-- chosen by whatever physical characteristics a law officer's personal prejudices may dictate-- and those charged persons face fines usually in the triple digits, and the amount is never based on the driver's personal income. That's why it has to be considered a regressive tax when people with less money face a more impactful penalty.

Des Moines' Robot Police along I-235, and at shifting intersections throughout the city, have collected more than $400,000 in fines over just the first two months of camera enforcement, and that's the net amount for the city coffers after the subtraction of almost a third of the collected fines to the contracted camera company. Both entities are getting fat through our pocketbooks. Speed "offenders" with lots of cash stored away at home continue speeding with little disincentive. Now, who uses that freeway the most? People who work.

Enough with the sin taxes. You can see that I'm very much a libertarian on this, as I am on all social issues that I can think of right now. You pass more laws, you get more criminals, then you need more police.

Is your town broke? Need an influx of ready cash? Then start taxing rich people again! More! Lots more! Rich people have money! And recently, they've been allowed to keep more of it than at any time in our nation's history!

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Here's another Republican suddenly occupying the happy list-- Haley Barbour. The outgoing governor of Mississippi broke with his party's long-avowed "law and order" political mandate and pardoned almost 200 prisoners on his way out of office, in action that not only releases them to freedom, but restores their voting rights. Quick, what do you call 200 Americans being pardoned and let out of prison? I call it a good start.

Our country, 'tis of thee, comprises 5% of the world's overall population, but nearly one of every four prisoners throughout the world is imprisoned here. Prisons in the United States are a for-profit industry-- big business, in fact. Prisons are one of the few things we actually still manufacture. A wildly-disproportionate number of the imprisoned are young African-American men, and we get to work quickly putting them to labor when they're behind bars. Holy shit, we've found a nuanced way to keep slavery alive. Even when they're released, they've been disenfranchised of their voting rights for the rest of their lives if they've been convicted of a felony.

Barbour went further still, by releasing not only non-violent offenders, but even some convicted murderers. For decades, even before Barbour, there have been pardoned murderers on the staff at the Mississippi governor's mansion. Says Barbour, who kept the tradition alive, "In my time, all but one of them have been murderers, because the experts say that those are the people who are the least likely to commit another crime, and that they are the ones who will serve best. I’ve found that to be the case." I love it!

A towering American political figure named Eugene Debs was cheered by his fellow inmates when he arrived at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta in 1918, having been found guilty of violating the Espionage Act because of his opposition to U.S. entry into World War I. Debs famously said at his sentencing, "Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

Cheers to Haley Barbour, a man I rarely agree with, for demonstrating humanitarian action that can be a model for other chief executives, state and federal. Another Republican governor, George Ryan of Illinois, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after he abolished the death penalty in his state in 2005. I believe Barbour's actions make him worthy of the same.

The whole truth and nothing but the truth

2012-01-16T09:19:00.011-06:00

What a mess the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling has created. Newt Gingrich accepts $5 million for his campaign from one man alone—a Las Vegas casino magnate named Sheldon Adelson. With this money, a so-called Super-PAC supporting Gingrich produces a 27-minute documentary attacking his opponent, Mitt Romney, over the issue of Bain Capital, an asset-management firm co-founded by Romney. The nature of the documentary’s criticism is that Bain Capital has been responsible for thousands of job lay-offs, and exposes false claims by Romney to being a “job creator.” Now Gingrich himself is distancing himself from the ad/documentary/infomercial reportedly because Sheldon Adelson believes its tenor is too harsh towards a brand of capitalism that he strongly supports.

Poor Newt Gingrich. It must suck to be owned by someone.

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When I worked in a newsroom, it was understood that there were distinct limits in how far you could go in calling politicians on their shit. The expectation was that you called it down the line-- Democrat vs. Republican, equal time for each, quote one side, quote the other. That's how the job worked, and I never challenged the status quo. Digging deeper-- looking past the words, or questioning the words themselves-- suggested to others that the reporter had a personal agenda. This is still exactly the journalistic model I see when I watch or read the news from traditional sources, and it's what I'm referring to when I write on the blog about an "establishment" media that refuses to challenge the powerful class because it considers itself part of it or aspires to it. These organizations value their proximity and access to the inner circles of power more than they do the pursuit of truth.

In full sobriety and seriousness, the New York Times' public editor Arthur Brisbane asked the question last week of whether or not his paper "should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." Wow, I say. Should reporters really concern themselves with facts or just follow through with reporting a politician's claims uncritically, and leave the fact-checking to the opinion page? Did he really just ask that? This is relevatory. Embarrassingly, Brisbane also uses the phrase "truth vigilante" to demean the paper's critics in this respect.

Maybe it's not so surprising now that Judith Miller and the Times could be duped into parroting the Bush Administration's claims about WMD's in Iraq and cheerleading the nation into war. A decade later, the New York Times' ombudsman wonders in effect: Are the Times' reporters to act as journalists or stenographers? And then they wonder why there's a news-gathering gap in this country with enough room to be filled by WikiLeaks and several thousand bloggers, nearly all of which Times officials would consider to be ideologues.

Maybe we wouldn't have as many lies as we have in government today if the politicians weren't so convinced they could utter them with impunity.

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One of the public relations strategies that institutions use to move past their crimes is stalling. They understand that the passage of time reduces inflamed emotions to a low simmer. At Penn State University, a new president is employing the tactic of trying to separate the crimes of Jerry Sandusky from the employer that gave the sexual predator his professional reputation, access to his victims, and the benign neglect necessary to pursue his sexual assaults with license.

The recent actions of those affiliated with Penn State, ranging from the former school president all the way down to the rallying crowds of apologists among the student body, have demonstrated the fact that the school no longer deserves to have a football team, but profit implications have made it such that the NCAA no longer wields the power of the death penalty for a major football program, and the continuing passage of time from the initial public reporting of the systematic molestation of children, make it probable that we will be back to business as usual at Penn State after only a few "down-recruiting" seasons.

I'll let Deadspin's Dom Cosentino remind us why, contrary to President Rodney Erickson's P.R. efforts, "the Sandusky scandal" truly is "the Penn State scandal," and why it was more than just the actions of "one individual" destroying a school's reputation...

Two longtime Penn State administrators have been charged with perjury in connection with Sandusky's alleged crimes, and Penn State is paying for their defense. Penn State University police had a 100-page report about an allegation against Sandusky in 1998—when he was still on the Penn State football coaching staff—but no one at Penn State did anything about it, nor did anyone at Penn State even seem to know it existed for more than a decade. The former head football coach of Penn State's own testimony indicates he couldn't be bothered to disturb anyone's weekend after one of his subordinates told him he saw a child allegedly being raped in a Penn State football building shower. One month after that, Penn State sold land to Sandusky's charity. And as all that was going on, Penn State's former head football coach, a Penn State trustee, and the chairman of Sandusky's charity were pursuing a $125 million real-estate venture that was the idea of Penn State's former president. Penn State allowed Sandusky to host overnight football camps at Penn State branch campuses as late as 2009. The new Penn State president has said he and "nearly all individuals at the university" were blindsided when the grand jury issued its findings against Sandusky and those two Penn State officials, at least before he wasn't, but don't bother asking him anything else about that. Sandusky himself even watched a Penn State football game from the former Penn State president's box months after the former Penn State president, the former Penn State head football coach, the now-on-leave Penn State athletic director, a Penn State assistant football coach, and another top Penn State administrator testified before the grand jury. And that football game was played just one week before the charges against Sandusky were handed down.

That's the most thorough description I've come across for a college football enterprise that should no longer exist.

The Super Groups do battle

2012-01-12T19:35:00.010-06:00

Just when you were about to forget about the Great Diva Showdown of 2009, the CM Blog, along with Don Cornelius, bring you just a few of the greatest soul groups of all-time!

Will it be?

The mighty O'Jays.

Completely untouchable, the Spinners.

The tempting Temptations.

The stylin' Stylistics.

Masters of the beat, Kool & the Gang.

We don't forget them, the Emotions.

Exploding on stage, the Jackson 5.

Look out. For the Isley Brothers.

You cannot stop the Pointer Sisters.

Take some time for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.

And the fabulous Four Tops.

Spanish Lake

2012-01-09T18:23:00.003-06:00

I spent the summer of 1994 driving an ice cream truck in St. Louis. Each driver was assigned to a specific neighborhood or suburb. Inside each truck there was a 2 by 2 foot metal board with a map affixed to it showing your route. My map and my route were for Black Jack, an unincorporated area in the far north part of St. Louis County. But part of my area, when I would journey east across Lewis and Clark Boulevard, included the CDP (not a town, technically, but rather a "Census-designated place") of Spanish Lake. It is the nearest Missouri township to Jones-Confluence Point State Park, where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers come together.

Spanish Lake is now the subject of a documentary film, directed by Philip Andrew Morton, who was a 15-year-old resident of Spanish Lake in 1994, and is now a 32-year-old veteran of Hollywood, having edited trailers for films by Terrence Malick and Steven Soderbergh. The film, who's trailer appears with this Post-Dispatch story, tackles the socioeconomic changes that have taken place in Spanish Lake since Morton left in 1997.

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Lakhdar Boumediene was an innocent man held at the United States concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for seven years. He was taken from Sarajevo, Bosnia on October 19th, 2001, tortured, and denied a trial until 2008. He was freed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 as the main plantiff in the case of Boumediene v. Bush. The judgment established that Guantanamo prisoners have a right to the habeus corpus under the U.S. Constitution and that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 had violated the Constitution in suspending their rights. Boumediene's editorial in yesterday's New York Times is a must-read.

Cubs win! Cubs win!

2012-01-05T17:48:00.008-06:00

The locker rooms of professional sports teams are not traditionally considered to be hotbeds of tolerance in respect to sexual orientation, but the times they do change, sometimes just when you think they never will. Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" Project, which enlists well-known figures to offer their public support for tolerance and an end to anti-LGBT bullying and harassment, has made its way into these locker rooms, as well as the board rooms, of the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Major League Baseball. Most recently, and most unfortunately, the campaign received headlines when the Denver Broncos of the NFL, the team that sports Focus on the Family spokesman Tim Tebow as their quarterback, and a team that hasn't been bullying anybody on the field the last three weeks, denied a request petition from 8,000 of their fans urging them to participate in the video movement.

This summer, the Chicago Cubs agreed to produce a public service announcement, with Marlon Byrd, Ryan Dempster, Darwin Barney, Mike Quade, and Bob Dernier all participating on camera. Additionally, Mr. Cub himself, Hall-of-Famer Ernie Banks, appeared this summer on a Chicago Cubs team float at the city's Gay Pride Parade. Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts is the first openly LGBT owner of a professional sports team in the U.S., and the team hosts an annual Pride Day now at Wrigley Field.

The Boston Red Sox, San Francisco Giants, Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Phillies, and Seattle Mariners have all recorded similar spots. (The Phillies, especially, bust out the big names, and the Mariners edition even features former Cardinal Brendan Ryan sporting an un-ironic Village People mustache.) You can find these five club spots linked from this YouTube embedment of the Cubs' PSA. Home run! Holy Cow!

Columnist Dan Savage started the "It Gets Better" campaign with his husband in 2009 in response to a rash of news reports about suicides involving, or thought to involve, LGBT teens. Now it's time for the other 24 Major League Baseball clubs to do their part as well-- and Major League Baseball as a whole. Judging by the teams that have recorded spots, and knowing what I know about each ownership group, it's clearly the front office that has to make the move. If they do, they'll find willing video participants in uniform down in their team's clubhouse. The St. Louis Cardinals especially need to involve themselves in this movement. Imagine the impact such a PSA could have on our nation's youth coming from the 2011 World Champions themselves! Let's go, fellas, you're letting the Cubs beat you!

CM Blog 1, Wellmark 0

2012-01-03T17:37:00.012-06:00

The executives at Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa know that the caucuses are a terrific news distraction. That's why the Des Moines-based health insurance company chose this afternoon to announce a 9.3% rate bump on premiums. The increase of up to $45 a month on 86,000 policyholders aged 65 and over was approved last week. Why did we not hear about it until today? Hmmm, I wonder. Nice try, Wellmark, but I saw what you did. (And so did the Register. Three cheers.)

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It's caucus night in Iowa and I'm staying in. I see no civic duty in participating. The people in Iowa who tell you that there is are either party hacks, state tourism proponents, or both. (Good god, how can images like this conceivably be good for Iowa?) This is a civic event only so far as certain voting rights statutes have to be followed. Beyond that, this is a political party event.

Occupy Iowa misstepped by not scheduling a protest event tonight. They ceded to the argument and the warnings that protests would disrupt the political process. These are arguments that were made predominately by party and state leaders that fear the power of the 99%. Yes, it conceivably would have been a disruption, and rightly so. I thought that was the point. I owe nothing to either the Democrat or Republican parties. Their electoral machinations should be as fair game to protest as the demonstrations we've seen at party headquarters and at candidates' offices. The problem with our nation's political system is not that Democrat and Republican parties elect corrupt people. It's that two corrupt parties give us their candidates of choice and shut alternative candidates and parties out of the larger debate. These two parties that comprise the oligarchy should not be reformed. They are far beyond reform. They should be destroyed.

This opinion is not born of the fact that neither of the parties represents my interests, though this is true enough. It's that they also actively work to deny access to the national debate to candidates and parties that do represent my interests. The "Commission on Presidential Debates" was begun in 1987 by a Democrat operative and a Republican operative to shut third-party candidates out of the televised debates, effectively ending the threat of an upstart independent candidacy like John Anderson's or Ross Perot's or Ralph Nader's taking hold. Before the last election cycle in 2010, a group of citizens had to sue the state of Iowa to gain the right to register as Libertarian or Green, and to allow even more parties to pursue the same registration access.

Tonight is a rather meaningless night for those Iowa Libertarians, Greens, and the faithful of other parties. Registered third-party voters, as well as the political "Independents" whose numbers dwarf both the Republicans or Democrats in the state, must change their registration at the door to participate in the caucuses. This requirement is really just a recruitment drive for new members that otherwise have abandoned the two parties in droves over the last two decades. It also serves as free publicity and promotion from a neutered news media that plays along with the charade of voter "choice" collectively out of financial self-interest, power-worshipping habit, and sheer laziness. Our paymasters know that the minimum number of "choices" a person can be given and still potentially believe in the illusion of "choice" is two. And those are the two that we'll be presented with in November. Minority opinions are dangerous as they threaten the real power-player in American politics-- money. In American politics, the candidate that raises the most money wins his or her race an astonishing 94% of the time.

Nothing about the Iowa Caucuses needs to be honored or revered. It's politics in cramped quarters so that the campaign money most effectively utilized through television and radio ads, like Iowa manure, can be spread easier and more cost-effectively. Republican caucus candidates in Iowa this cycle will have wound up spending more than $200 for every vote that gets cast tonight. Calling this "grassroots democracy" is like putting lipstick on an Iowa pig. It's a scam that targets a citizenry needlessly sentimental over tradition and long-meaningless state boundaries. It can be called more accurately an "auction" than an "election."

The extraordinarily powerful and effective Occupy street protests in Iowa up to this point have included, among other things, railroading a key endorsement/media event for Newt Gingrich, and effectively shutting down the President's re-election office for the last three weeks of the caucus campaign. A hundred times more than the caucuses, these events speak to the real battle that's brewing in this nation between a disaffected people and its unrepresentative government. Ending the protests right when they would have the most media visibility and national impact was a last-minute mistake. It's deference that a corrupted process doesn't deserve.

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Note about the text above: I have taken to using the word "Democrat" to substitute for the word "Democratic" when referring to the political party. To my knowledge, this is a tactic that was begun by Republican media operative Rush Limbaugh, who is a fat, stupid lizard, but I have chosen to do it also because, like the foul-smelling character Limbaugh plays on the radio, I cannot bring myself anymore to use such phrases as "d)emocratic party" when it is not. The word "Republican" would be shortened likewise if grammatically allowable. In Great Britain, the names of political parties actually tell you a little something about who they are-- Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish National Party, etc. But to paraphrase Bruce Willis on an unrelated subject in "Pulp Fiction"-- in America, our names don't mean shit.

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8:07pm caucus update: The national television coverage is electric. Where is Triumph the Insult Comic Dog when you need him? Or Dr. Conrad Murray?

Chris Moeller's 2012 New Year's resolutions

2012-01-01T10:50:00.001-06:00

I resolve to join a gym. I've kept a packed gym bag in the back seat of my car for two months. I could stop and sign up after work any evening.

But at this point, I should probably wait until after the New Year's rush.

I resolve to take more photos.

I resolve to engage retail clerks, waiters, waitresses, and customer service representatives in a more meaningful way with my terrific wit. My job can be rather mundane so I know how important it is to be entertained on the job.

I resolve to fight my government if its "Justice" Department attempts to retain me indefinitely. The National Defense Authorization Act is indicative of how the United States has evolved into a zoo. I don't mean that the nation is bizarre, although it is. I mean that they keep us locked up and decorate our surroundings to give us the illusion of living in freedom. Now, half of the animals need the cage to feel comfortable.

I resolve to blog more creative metaphors.

I resolve to be less anal-retentive generally.

I resolve to speak truth to power.

I resolve to use my vacation time to the utmost.

I resolve that I will have no plastic surgeries above the neck.

I resolve to do fewer things by myself.

I resolve to be the kind of man that Rihanna can confidently welcome back into her life. (Correction: This is one of Chris Brown's 2012 New Year's resolutions.)

I resolve to spend more time in nature.

I resolve not to watch my 2011 World Series DVDs every day.

I resolve to tell my friends what they mean to me. Well, not now, but I'll get to it.

Socialism as the future of America

2011-12-29T21:12:00.005-06:00

Eugene Debs, I wish you were alive to see this: the Pew Research Center tells us that socialism is now more popular than capitalism in the United States in the measured age group of citizens under 30 (18-29).

Socialism-- Positive 49%, Negative 43%
Capitalism-- Positive 46%, Negative 47%

These numbers, side-by-side, are quite close, and "18 to 29" was the only surveyed age group in which socialism was more popular, but this is a remarkable achievement when you consider that the corporate news media typically equates socialism with Josef Stalin, and politicians in the United States (other than Bernie Sanders) run away from the "socialist" label faster than they do a televised debate involving a third-party candidate.

What does this poll tell us? It tells me that the crony capitalism and corruption center of the United States can't hold out for much longer when there's a generation of Americans that has only experienced a Wall Street-owned government. Smears that involve labeling someone a "socialist" don't work on young people raised in a world destroyed by capitalism, and that are media-savvy enough to recognize the smear-ers as windy, hateful gasbags.

Disenfranchising the uncommitted

2011-12-27T17:49:00.004-06:00

One of the big lies politicians tell is that the caucus process represents grassroots democracy at its best. But our precinct caucuses in Iowa are neither grassroots, democractic, nor the best option we have.

So, you ask, what could be so undemocratic about “neighbors” getting together, discussing politics, and selecting candidates at a very local level? Let’s start with the fact that Iowa "neighbors" don’t get to select the candidates they'll get to choose from. The candidates are thrust upon them, and these candidates are, by and large-- and increasingly-- corporate-backed candidates deemed "electable" and vetted by the establishment class. Party leaders run the event. National party officials instruct the state officials who instruct the county officials on how the meetings are to be conducted. The caucuses-- and primaries also, for that matter-- are operated by the parties themselves so there is little incentive to appeal to and lure independents.

The argument that Iowa Caucus-goers are more educated than the average American voter because they have more face-time with the candidates doesn’t wash either. This argument requires one to believe that a candidates’ rhetoric, heard in small groups face-to-face, and in Iowans' "front parlors," is more than just rhetoric. Physical proximity to a lie or to political spin doesn’t make that statement more true, and in fact, could likely make one more susceptible to personal judgments and prejudices that disguise actual truth.

Votes at a caucus (for the Democrats at least) are cast in the open, which sounds like a good idea in principle, but the lack of a secret ballot means that voters are subject to pressure from peers, party leaders, perhaps union officials or influential business and religious leaders in their community. (Imagine the shame of a Republican casting a vote for a pro-choice candidate in the presence of his or her church minister.) And at a precinct caucus, you can’t stop by and cast your vote in a period of just a few minutes. The event requires an entire evening’s commitment. Incidentally or not, this requirement helps to suppress voter turnout. Additionally in Iowa, because the caucus is conducted during the month of January, the chance of weather interference is also high.

But voter suppression is exactly what our two oligarchic political parties are striving for. The fewer participants in the process, the better that outcomes can be controlled by the party machine. We saw this in Iowa in 2003/2004 with the orchestrated demolition of Howard Dean’s campaign in favor of that of John Kerry, a long-time Washington insider.

Are there doubters among you of my general thesis? Then I present to you a smoking gun as evidence. KCRG-Television in Cedar Rapids reports today that “uncommitted” and “no preference” votes will NOT be counted by the Iowa Republican Party this year, breaking with a long-standing tradition. The station reports a party official as saying, “Because it is a Republican caucus, only votes for a Republican candidate will be counted. Write-in votes for undecided or uncommitted are counted and sent to Des Moines, but the GOP does not send uncommitted delegates to the nominating convention.” Guess which of the two sets of numbers will be reported to the media.

Take that, 99%! “Uncommitted” or “no preference” slates in the GOP beat Alexander Haig in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1980. On the Democratic Party side, “uncommitted” slates actually won the caucus in 1972 and 1976, and finished second (with 12% of the vote) to Iowa candidate Tom Harkin in 1988. But in this new political climate becoming dominated by the Occupy Wall Street anti-oligarchy movement, the Iowa Republican Party certainly recognizes the threat that a large—- and potentially VERY large-— “uncommitted” block poses to their public claims that the caucus results represent the will of the people. That’s why they’re taking this preventative action. On caucus night, the national media will travel to Iowa and report the percentage results for each of the GOP candidates, but we won’t be told how many Republicans elected to express their dissatisfaction with the entire slate of candidates.

The Iowa Republican caucuses, despite the extraordinary time and energy commitment from the media, represent a miniscule percentage of Americans. First, consider that only 55 million of 313 million Americans are Republicans (about 1 in 6). Of those 55 million, only 608,000 live in Iowa (that's approximate 1 in 90 Republicans). And on Caucus Night 2008, despite a wide open field with no GOP incumbent on the ballot, only 120,000 of even those 608,000 registered Iowa Republicans bothered to participate (1 out of 5). Hear ye, hear ye, 0.00038% of the American people have spoken! And now, this cycle, Iowa Republicans have vowed to disenfranchise even a few of the 0.00038% by discounting their votes.

Meanwhile, the Iowa GOP, as well as the national and local media, have been issuing warnings about Occupy Iowa disrupting the “democratic process.” That's really rich.

"Right here where we live, right here in St. Louis!"

2011-12-24T07:53:00.003-06:00

Allow me to be the first to wish you and yours a very merry Christmas. I'm a big fan of this holiday. In Spanish, you might know, "Christmas" means "more Chris." Anyway, the warmth of the season got me to thinking about my favorite holiday picture-- the 1944 MGM classic "Meet Me in St. Louis," starring Judy Garland.

Released during that magical year of the all-St. Louis "Streetcar" World Series between the National League Cardinals and the American League Browns, the film also arrived in theaters in time for the 40th anniversary of the 1904 World's Fair, which had been held at St. Louis' Forest Park. Set just before that real historic spectacle in late 1903, the film depicts the Smith family-- mom, dad, four daughters, son, grandpa, and a maid-- that live in one of those over-sized, beautiful Victorian homes that still stand in St. Louis' Central West End. The fetching Garland is at her ripest as the second-oldest daughter, Esther (the Denise Huxtable), of the Smith clan. On the set, the actress would fall in love with, and later marry, the film's director, Vincente Minnelli, and their daughter Liza would forever call this her favorite film of either of her parents. The youngest Smith sister is played by Margaret O'Brien, who would win an Oscar for this performance at the age of seven. During the film, the juvenile character announces herself memorably as "lucky enough to be born in her favorite city."

The dramatic arc of "Meet Me in St. Louis" involves the patriarch Alonzo Smith (yes, he's Lon, or Lonnie Smith, if you please) accepting a job in New York City that will force him to uproot the entire family. The children are devastated at the news. They will have to leave their friends, a pair of budding romances for the older girls, and St. Louis itself-- and just before the arrival of the World's Fair-- that is, the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The movie re-introduced the title song (still popular with Busch Stadium organists), and introduced several memorable new songs-- "The Boy Next Door," (or "The Girl Next Door," if you're a heterosexual male with a rich baritone like Crosby, Sinatra or Moeller), "The Trolley Song" (re-popularized later by the Sweeney Sisters on "Saturday Night Live"), and at the very end of the film, the true holiday evergreen "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which is sung mournfully by Garland to a weeping, already homesick O'Brien on Christmas Eve.

It's impossible to see that pained face of O'Brien-- as little Tootie Smith-- without lamenting the real-life fates of the children of Albert Pujols. Their famous first baseman father, like Alonzo Smith, is forcing his family to leave St. Louis for what he defines as a "better" job because it pays him more money, promising the little ones in effect that "next year all (their) troubles will be miles away." Yet as Tootie proclaims, "you can't do anything (there) like you do in St. Louis." How indeed will Santa Claus know how to find them? And heaven have pity on the snowman you try to build in Anaheim, California.

Unlike "Meet Me in St. Louis," there will not be a happy ending to our modern story. A long-term contract has been signed. The Pujols' father, unlike Alonzo Smith, won't come to recognize that "St. Louis is headed for a boom that will make your head spin" until it's much, much too late. It's a Christmas story that's not uplifting at all. It's worthy of neither the enchanting Judy Garland nor MGM's glorious Technicolor. No, it's more like a classic Warner Brothers picture about a tragic fall from grace. The four Pujols children will now just have to muddle through somehow.

To all a good night.

Holiday comedy

2011-12-23T12:53:00.003-06:00

No, it's not holiday-themed. This is just a funny clip to make your day merry and bright. It's from Ricky Gervais' series "Life is Short," coming to HBO in 2012.

The Wizard of Oz and "the book of the year"

2011-12-21T18:24:00.008-06:00

Chad Harbach's "The Art of Fielding" has been named the Book of the Year by Amazon.com. The baseball-centered novel also made the New York Times' ten-best list. One of the key characters in the book is a thinly-veiled version of Cardinals great Ozzie Smith. Says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch...

Henry's fondness for his glove "Zero" and his worn Cardinals hat are mentioned throughout the book. The reason he became a Cardinal fan is the same reason he became a shortstop. It's because of the aforementioned Aparicio - the Cardinals sublime shortstop, Aparicio Rodriguez. Harbach's Rodriguez played 18 years for the Cardinals. He set a college record for consecutive games without an error, a record that Skrimshander is poised to break. Rodriguez's No. 3 is retired by the Cardinals. His first name is all the introduction he needs. Does all of this sound familiar? A Cardinals shortstop who becomes a Hall of Famer, goes mostly by his first name, and has his number retired because of his nimble play in the field...

What a perfect holiday gift this book would be for your friend or family member Chris. But coordinate, people. I don't need 10 copies.

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This is the most thought-provoking piece on Kim Jong Il and North Korea that I've read this week, authored by a former missionary to the Korean peninsula...

The division of Korea was not the fault of the Korean people. Their country was divided by the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the end of WWII. The suffering of the Korean people has continued for 66 years. Ten million family members were permanently separated; people in the north and south live in fear of war; the resources of their country are used for military buildup. On both sides of the division, repression has been used in the name of national security. Only in 1987 was there a revolution that replaced South Korea’s military dictatorship with a democratic government. The same people who worked so hard for democracy and human rights in South Korea are the ones who are the voices for peace in Korea.

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More on why the Republican establishment is attempting to railroad Candidate Paul. It seems that even Rick Santorum has now been deemed worthy of the "serious candidate" treatment if it can help keep the nomination away from Paul..

Paul is running ads that propose to “drain the swamp,” a reference to the insider-driven politics of a Washington where Republicans such as Gingrich maintain the sort of pay-to-play politics that empties the federal treasury into the accounts of campaign donors and sleazy government contractors.

Paul’s ideological clarity scares the wits out of the Republican mandarins who peddle the fantasy that the interventionism, the assaults on civil liberties and the partnerships that they have forged with multinational corporations and foreign dictators represent anything akin to true conservatism.

The problem that Limbaugh, Hannity and other GOP establishment types have with Paul is that the Texan really is a conservative, rather than a neoconservative or a crony capitalist who would use the state to maintain monopolies at home and via corrupt international trade deals.

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Are you guys aware that the football team at Iowa State, my alma mater, is playing in a Bowl Game next week called the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium in New York? The annual game was christened a year ago by Yankees owner Hank Steinbrenner to honor his dad, George, because the old man was evidently quite the college football fan. The game is so closely associated with George Steinbrenner that a number of New York City sportswriters apparently refer to the game informally as "the Boss Bowl." Jesus, what an embarrassment for Iowa State. Wasn't there a bowl game in Detroit willing to take the Cyclones? Or maybe in Myanmar? Of course, the new Yankee Stadium was so heavily-subsidized, they should really call it the Taxpayer Bowl.

The great debates

2011-12-19T11:54:00.013-06:00

Where do you stand on the important issues of the day? Take blogger Ken Levine's "Pepsi Challenge". I did. (And try not to be swayed by my answers, which appear after each question.)

Pepsi or Coke? Coke

Diane Chambers or Rebecca Howe? Diane Chambers

Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers? Aaron Rodgers

Advil or Aleve? Advil

Magic or Bird? Bird's game was more fun to watch.

Batman or Superman? Definitely Superman, not as brooding

The View or The Talk? The Talk, no Barbara Walters

Eva Longoria or Evan Longoria? Eva is prettier.

Kimmel or Ferguson? Kimmel, but only by a hair

Adele or Barbra? Who's Barbra?

James Dean or Heath Ledger? Ledger, Dean's style doesn't age well.

Reese Witherspoon or Reese’s Pieces? Witherspoon is tastier.

The old HAWAII FIVE-0 or the new HAWAII FIVE-0? The old, of course

Facebook or Twitter? I don't understand this question.

Ben Affleck or Aflac Insurance? Affleck's alright.

Bill Maher or Keith Olbermann? Maher, but both are cool.

Suri Cruise or Siri iPhone? Leave the little girl alone.

Angelina or Brad? Angelina, but Brad is prettier.

George Clooney or Rosemary Clooney? George, but it's only generational.

Mitch or Cam? Cam

Claire or Gloria? Gloria, but this is a tough one.

Texts or IM’s? Texts

Iron Man or Iron Chef? I'll catch up on both of these when they're on DVD.

Charlie Sheen or Ashton Kutcher? Sheen misbehaves more interestingly.

Sirius/XM or Pandora? Sirius has Howard 101

Flintstones or Jetsons? Flintstones is more Honeymooners-like.

Betty or Wilma? Betty. No, Wilma.

FRASIER or CHEERS? CHEERS

George Reeves or Christopher Reeve? Christopher Reeve

Egg McMuffin or Breakfast Jack? Iowa doesn't have Jack in the Box

Kate Olsen or Ashley Olsen? This question offends me as a twin.

Jake Gyllenhaal or Maggie Gyllenhaal? Maggie.

Great taste or less filling? Here Comes the King

Cher or Tallulah Morehead? Cher

Kindle or Nook? I'll tell you in five years.

Rocky or Bullwinkle? What is one without the other?

AMERICAN IDOL or THE X-FACTOR? This question is a thinly-veiled survey on the appeal of Randy Jackson.

Disneyland or Disneyworld? Disneyland

Elvis Costello or Lou Costello? I've seen the Lou Costello statue in Hoboken, NJ, so gotta go with Lou.

Elvis Costello or Elvis Andrus? Costello

Buzz or Woody? Never saw those.

Woody or Mel? Too tough

James T. Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard? Picard will unfairly get the bald vote so I'm giving my "hair" vote to Kirk.

The AMA Awards or the ACM Awards? The American Medical Association has an awards show?

Joe Buck (Fox) or Joe Buck (MIDNIGHT COWBOY)? St. Louisan Joe Buck (Fox)

Laverne or Shirley? These were our dogs names when I was a child. Only Shirley lived long enough for me to remember her. Laverne was a rumor.

Bert or Ernie? Ernie, though I'm kind of a Bert.

Paul Rudd or Paul Rudnick? Is there a Ruddnick?

Macy’s Day Parade or Rose Parade? Let's see what do I hate worse-- consumerism or stodgy old college football traditions?

Baltimore Colts or Baltimore Ravens? Colts, because of Art Donovan's many appearances on Carson and Letterman.

Herman Cain or Justice Clarence Thomas? Cain, I guess, but just because he's done less damage overall.

Pubic hair on Coke can or Pepsi can? Pepsi can? That doesn't even make sense.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT or COMMUNITY? Yes, COMMUNITY-- it's that good.

Kim Kardashian or Jenna Jamison? Jamison, more honest.

Subways or busses? Subways, they're greener.

The Subway or Quizno’s? Quizno's, but oh so expensive.

Albert Pujols or Willie Mays? They will have both stayed around too long.

Viagra or Cialis? Let's try both. Can you do that?

Zombies or Vampires? Vampires-- much more interesting.

Zombies or Gerry & the Pacemakers? I can't determine a difference.

Adam Sandler or a crutch? I don't get this, but I'm not big on Sandler.

Christmas or New Year’s? Merry Christmas

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Hillary Clinton's impassioned defense of human rights and the rights of women in Egypt was so powerful I almost forgot that the State Department has worked covertly to prop up this military throughout the uprising of the "Arab Spring."

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This Ron Paul video from the 2008 campaign is pretty inspiring. It presents Paul at his best, speaking unpopular truths and holding to them despite vehement opposition from pandering blowhards (like Rudy Giuliani). Paul is leading in polls in Iowa, but you would never know it to watch the network pundits. He can never be treated as a "legitimate" candidate because of his frequent and scathing critiques of American foreign policy.

As far as I'm concerned, the three best options for Iowans on caucus night January 3rd would be as follows-- 3) going to the GOP caucus and supporting Paul, 2) going to the Democratic caucus and supporting a slate of "uncommitted," or 1, and best of all) joining Occupy Iowa in physical and very public protest.

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Do you think Bruce Springsteen is pissed that Manfred Mann recorded the song he penned, "Blinded by the Light," and changed the lyric "wrapped up like a deuce" to "wrapped up like a douche"? This has long been considered one of the extraordinary examples of "lyricitism" in rock-n-roll history, but I fully contend that it is not the error of the listener in hearing the word "douche". I heard the song again tonight in the car-- and he doesn't say "deuce." He clearly says "douche." Every time.

Supporting the troop

2011-12-17T11:53:00.013-06:00

American hero Bradley Manning turns 24 today. The Army intelligence officer spent his birthday in court accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified "secret" documents to WikiLeaks. In a truly democratic country, the men and women on trial would be the perpetrators of the military, diplomatic, and war crimes that Manning has exposed-- his fellow soldiers opening fire on unarmed men from the cockpit of an Apache helicopter in Iraq, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructing U.S. diplomats to act as covert spies at the United Nations, President Obama for his secret and unauthorized bombings of Yemen and its civilians-- but ours is not a truly democratic nation under the Bush/Obama oligarchy. Manning faces lifetime imprisonment under the Espionage Act (really?), and could still face the death penalty, for blowing the whistle on, and embarrassing, our government of profound corruption when he should instead be given the Medal of Freedom and made a key witness for the Justice Department in the prosecution of these other cases.

The goal is to break the courageous Manning so that he will implicate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, very real threats technologically and morally to America's ability to continue committing crimes with impunity across the globe. To break Manning, he was isolated in military prison for 10 months, kept from all human contact (including his attorneys) except for his guards, had his clothes seized for a time, was made to sleep naked on a mattress with no sheets or blankets, and awakened every 15 minutes after being deemed a "suicide threat."

U.S. officials are well aware of the severity of their actions against Manning and their own willful violation of international law. Amnesty International and the United Nations have both condemned the U.S. for human rights violations in their treatment of Manning, and the U.N.'s special rapporteur for torture has not been allowed to meet unmonitored with Manning.

In Australia, this extraordinary exposure of secret information in the WikiLeaks case-- which has since helped to bring about the Arab Spring and "end" the Iraq war-- earned native son Julian Assange the most prestigious journalistic honor that country offers. Our native son, the actual source of the information, gets tortured Abu Ghraib-style. Dozens of Americans protested outside the courthouse today in Fort Meade, Maryland, and dozens more did so in London outside of the United States embassy, but where is the American journalistic establishment in their public protests supporting Manning? They moved quickly to publish the leaked information-- a veritable "lifetime of scoops". (The biggest reveals were published in the New York Times even before they were published on WikiLeaks' website.) Now, where are they in defending the government transparency they claim to care about?

This story is about you. The ongoing torture and the destroying of an extraordinarily brave and principled human being named Bradley Manning is about you. Your government is showing you how they will treat people who blow the whistle on any one of their crimes. The message is Keep Your Mouth Shut. In his three years in office, our president has now prosecuted more government whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all of his predecessors combined. Virtually the entire world outside of our borders sees what's happening, even if many Americans still refuse to. There has been more revealed in the Manning affair than just what could be read on the hundreds of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic cables. It also has exposed our president, Barack Obama, a man who vowed to operate "the most transparent administration in history," to be the actual "traitor" to America's ideals of justice and humanity, as well as to be one of the great merchants of evil the world over.

The modesty of dress

2011-12-13T20:28:00.005-06:00

Is the mindset of "modesty" in clothing damaging to the self-esteem of young women? Sierra at Alternet argues that it is...

Modesty taught me that my first priority needed to be making sure I wasn't a "stumbling block" to men. Not being sexually attractive was the most important thing I had to consider when buying clothes, putting them on, maintaining my weight (can't have things getting tight!), and moving around (can't wiggle those hips, or let a little knee show). Modesty taught me that what I looked like was what mattered most of all. Not what I thought. Not how I felt. Not what I was capable of doing. Worrying about modesty, and being vigilant not to be sexy, made me even more obsessed with my looks than the women in short shorts and spray tans I was taught to hate.

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New York Magazine's Vulture section recently studied the season-to-date Nielsen TV ratings in great detail and broke down our favorites and least favorites by demographic. What did I learn about myself as a result of their efforts? That I am very different from the average American in my love for NBC's Thursday night lineup, and the least like a poor, teenage girl...

The lowest-rated series with children 11 and under? Parks & Recreation

#2 show overall for both men and women? Two and a Half Men

The number of NBC shows in the Nielsen top 40 aside from Sunday Night Football? Zero

More weekly viewers-- NCIS, or Community, Parks & Rec, The Office, and Whitney combined? NCIS

What do teenage boys love most? FOX Sunday night animation

Most popular show among adults 18-49 with a median income of $100,000 and above? Modern Family

Least popular with that same demographic? Cops

Top 3 shows among adults 18-49 that have 4 or more years of college? Parks & Recreation, The Office, Community

Happy 96th, FS

2011-12-12T19:17:00.003-06:00

Sinatra enjoys another birthday today. A radio pal steered me by email to WMKV in Cincinnati streaming the best of Sinatra until midnight Eastern. We're still missing you Francis.

The company store

2011-12-11T19:05:00.006-06:00

In small towns across America, there has often been what's referred to as "the company store." You would find these in communities dominated economically by one employer. "The company store" is the basic source of all goods and supplies-- hardware, groceries, etc.-- and it's owned by the major employer.

This is referred to as the "truck system." The boss pays out wages for the days' or weeks' labor, and then the employees and their families give that money right back to him at the store in exchange for their various necessities. Often, employees will be paid in company "scrip," usable only at the store, and by design, the employees and their families become further indebted to, and dependent upon, their employer under this system. Tennessee Ernie Ford memorialized this concept of economic exploitation with his 1955 hit tune "Sixteen Tons," when he lamented having to tell Saint Peter at the heavenly gates that he "owes his soul to the company store." Remember that one?

Have company stores gone away? Not by a long shot. In fact, it's quite the opposite. They went national. It's called Walmart. The Survey of Consumer Finances and the Forbes 400 reveal that the Walton family-- that is, six heirs to Sam Walton, founder of the discount store chain-- owned a combined $69.7 billion as of 2007. That's equal to the bottom 30% of all Americans combined, 100 million of us.

One family=30% of America.

That's obscene enough, but of course, none of these Waltons even worked for it. They're "heirs." The company store moves in, levels Main Street, and the store inheritors break the bank. There's still time for change, however, we're not yet being issued scrip.

To the greatest Cardinal of them all... Stan Musial

2011-12-08T17:36:00.006-06:00

There's no competition about this anymore. The leading contender to Musial's throne ended his Cardinals career today approximately 11 years after it began. Musial put in 22 years + wearing 'the birds on the bat,' but a new 8 to 10-year deal with the club might have put Pujols in very comparable company by the time he was done-- that is, except for the seven-to-one advantage in batting titles for Stan the Man.

Am I mad that Pujols has left? A little. Do I think he's greedy? Not if you assume, which I kind of do, that his decision had more to do with union solidarity and raising the league salary bar than it did with personal fortune. No, what I think Pujols is, above all, is dumb. He could easily live 50 more years after his professional baseball career ends, and who wouldn't want the life that Stan Musial, now at 91 years old, has carved out for himself in a beautiful, baseball-mad city as the living embodiment of an organization that has the most passionate, compassionate, fans and that never, ever embarrasses itself (including today).

He would have been staying with a fan base that had few demands upon his performance other than he play as hard as he could. His statue at Busch Stadium has already been constructed, and is currently resting outside a suburban St. Louis restaurant that bears Pujols' name (at least for the near-future). When will our charming, dumb superstar athletes realize that their legacy can only reside in one city? What Pujols will now have combined in legacy in St. Louis and in Anaheim or Los Angeles or whatever-the-fuck will not equal what one Stan Musial has in St. Louis. It wasn't his fault because he got traded, but ask Frank Robinson about that discernible difference. In sheer numbers, Robinson is up there with the best of 'em in the history of the game, yet he's behind Rose, Bench, Morgan, and Perez in Cincinnati, and behind Brooks Robinson and Cal Ripken Jr. in Baltimore.

Yes, I passionately dislike Pujols' agent. Deadspin has revealed to the world in the past month what a reptile Dan Lozano is. And while I wouldn't necessarily disqualify myself from a professional association with such an untoward individual, I also don't present myself to the public as a paragon of Christian, "family-centered" values as Pujols does, nor do I attend Glenn Beck rallies designed to help "Restore Honor" to an increasingly godless, immoral America.

I'm not one of those anti-player baseball fans either. I love that they make tons of money that would otherwise go to entitled team owners. I don't believe that rising player salaries have any effect on the price of game tickets or concessions. To believe that those (high) prices are dictated by anything other than supply and demand would require one to also believe that owners then keep those prices at artificial lows when the payroll ebbs, and if you believe that, I have a contract for you to sign that will pay you $25 million a year when you're 41 years old.

Players Union pioneer Marvin Miller never encouraged players to sign with agents. He wrote in his book, "A Whole New Ballgame," published in 1991, that he felt their compensation was completely outsized compared with services rendered. "The work they do basically involves answering the phone," he wrote, and he singled out Bob Boone for credit because the catcher hired an attorney to handle his contracts rather than an agent. If you don't believe that Lozano's professional pissing match relationship with fellow "superagent" Scott Boros had anything to do with negotiating this contract, consider that Boros previously closed a $252 million deal for Alex Rodriguez, and today's Pujols deal totaled $254 million.

Angels owner Arte Moreno, who pitched a public fit last year when the Red Sox gave Carl Crawford $142 million, lamented today (with some jest) that the two contracts signed today by the club (for Pujols and pitcher C.J. Wilson) total more in dollars than the entire amount he paid for the team in 2003. This is very funny-- overpaid players and all that. But what he doesn't point out-- they never do-- is what that fact means for the skyrocketing value of his initial investment.

As I write this, I realize I'm getting angrier. Now I come across this Deadspin post with the following quote from Albert Pujols in 2009, which now sounds to me more like the parroting of something he heard other players saying, "People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they're jealous that we're in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable. So why would you want to leave a place like St. Louis and go somewhere else and make $3 or 4 more million a year? It's not about the money. I already got my money. It's about winning and that's it. It's about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win."

Grraah-worldchampionsss. Oops, I had to sneeze there.

You'll know if you've read any of my related posts over the past two years that I felt it was incumbent upon the Cardinals to give some more from the previous round of negotiations, and I'm happy to say that they reportedly did that this week. Columnist Bernie Miklasz says he has it on authority that they went as high as 10 years and $210 million, but the Angels' offer blew everybody else away at 10 years and $250 million. Like owner Bill DeWitt and company, I'm able to balance my great respect for Pujols with the understanding that the backweighted dollars on this 10-year agreement were rather scary to comprehend from the standpoint of fielding a competitive team.

My headline tells you that Stan the Man has obviously been on my mind-- and the minds of other Cardinals fans-- today, but let's not forget that Stan, playing in the '40s, '50s, and early '60s didn't know the phrase "free agent" from the phrase "world wide web." (Though he actually did infamously turn down a huge offer to play in a fledgling professional league in Mexico.) I'm also thinking a lot today about Mark McGwire, who definitively accepted a "hometown" discount in contract negotiations only a decade ago, and then literally gave millions of dollars back when he grew tired of battling chronic back pain, and opted to retire, cancelling the remaining years on a guaranteed contract. As the team's current hitting coach, Cardinals fans still have the opportunity to show their love to Mark McGwire daily, yet many of them strangely choose not to.

If Pujols had accepted a deal with the Miami Marlins, or god forbid, the Cubs, the Cardinals would have had to up their offer, I believe, but as it is, I have no problem with Pujols disappearing to the other league, to a team that plays the second half of half of its games after I go to bed, and a club that the Cardinals have played exactly six times in 119 years. If El Hombre wants to truly stain his baseball legacy and become a designated hitter, and play in a home park where fans leave during the 7th inning stretch so they can beat the Disneyland traffic on the Santa Ana, that's his prerogative, thanks to the personal sacrifice of Curt Flood. And if the Angels want to pay a man $25 million a year into his 40s to jog to first on ground balls and lead the league in double plays, that's theirs.

The Cardinals already know they have a championship club. They presented a half-dozen new stars to the sports world during the postseason of 2011-- Freese, Craig, Motte, Garcia, Jay; and now they've got an extra $20 million a year to spend on roster upgrades. Is this a sad day for the Cardinals? Yes, in that they lose a shot at having a second Musial-like icon in the fold (and isn't one Musial an embarrassment of riches anyway?), but I don't think they're hurt on the field in a significant way. The reality of sports is that everybody is ultimately replaceable, and this winter, I have been asking Cardinals fans this question: Considering the talented club they still expect to put on the field next year, would we have been in the bidding for Albert Pujols if he had spent the last 11 seasons playing for a different club? Of course, the answer is no.

There was a lot of sentiment tied up in the Cardinals' bid for Pujols. For our fans, his signing elsewhere is a nice, always helpful reminder that baseball is, at the end of the day, big business. Baseball people, particularly its club owners, get away with murder (or worse, tax dodging) when fans allow themselves to get caught up in the romantic side of the game. See, there I go again-- it's a business, not a game.

The St. Louis Cardinals are the most successful franchise in the entire history of the world's oldest baseball league, and they're poised to continue to be that. The loss of the Great Pujols should not be considered a repeat of the LeBron James debacle unless you believe that the Cardinals are the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that Musial, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Rogers Hornsby, Bob Gibson, Dizzy Dean, Enos Slaughter, Red Schoendienst and Bob Gibson are World B. Free, Bingo Smith, and Boobie Gibson.

Thanks for 11 historic years, Albert. Guess we'll see you in the World Series.

Kind of Blue

2011-12-06T18:27:00.005-06:00

Miles Davis grew up in middle-class East St. Louis during the 1930s and '40s, the son of a prominent local dentist. The Davis family home has fallen into a state of great disrepair, but this isn't one of those stories about long, gradual decline in the industrial city. The decay is just in the last two years.

This is why we can't pause for even a moment to save our vital structural landmarks. The Davis house has never been declared a historic site by the city (or by its state or federal government, for that matter), and now after only a brief period of vacancy, vandals are taking it down bit by bit. Here's some "Blue" Miles to play for atmosphere (in a separate window) while you look at the photos and read about the crumbling house in the link above. The online story from the Riverfront Times in St. Louis really should have included a soundtrack from the very beginning. (And it wouldn't be St. Louis without a couple racist pricks spewing in the comment thread.)

A People's History of TV Fest X, Part II

2011-12-05T17:42:00.005-06:00

Saturday's Moeller-Fest (as some have taken to calling it) recaps below, just as with Part I, with anonymous comments from the comment box. All spelling and punctuation errors belong to the individual writers, not me, and I would have to charge you extra for context. I will remind the reader that the theme of this TV Fest party was "hats," and you can find the television programming schedule further down the page on this blog...

Thanks to all for coming- especially Dave for coming from KC and Tim from Peoria. Amazing!

The dead bird is the saddest moment at TV Fest since the cast of "Soap" lost on Celebrity Family Feud.

'Do you remember me tellin' you to be careful with this thing?.." That's what she said.

Maggie is so cute in her outfit.

Maggie would like to thank Chris for inviting her to join in on the TV Festival. Chris is her favorite uncle.

This is my dad's favorite show, so I've seen millions of episodes. And I never learned anything.

The egg nog is delicious with ice and vodka.

I have a different hat for each show today, each related to the episode that is airing. Good luck guessing all the tie-ins.

Hat #1: Taylor Made. Just like Opie the birdman.

I generally don't like a laugh track, but it helped in this case.

Chris, Do you have a blanket Maggie can lay on?

Does everyone know how Chris' toilet seat works? ROAD TRIP!

To decrease waste I used this label to make a comment.

How did everyone enjoy the delicious lunch of flightless bird?

I hope no one else is coming to the festival since we're at capacity.

Hat #2: US Open- Pebble Beach. Just like doing splits in short-shorts, wearing a hat from Pebble Beach proves that I am not white trash.

What do foreigners think of us when they watch this show?

A rusty bike frame! The American Pickers would buy that for $50 bucks and turn around and sell it for $150. I see "The Gang Becomes Pickers" as a future episode. (emailed comment)

Eagles need to sign that guy that tackled Dennis to their "Dream Team," be sure to make air quotes around dream team. (emailed comment)

Gentleman, please: Bring back short cutoffs.

I forgot to get the blanket for Maggie. I'll leave myself this note.

I like how the swimming lanes in the dry pool go across the width rather than length.

Phil brought his own chair!

Everyone has a friend or two like the guys on "always sunny" I might be that friend.... unfortunately.

Oh lordy... JORTS! sexy, sexy, man jorts!

I like that Carmela wants him to ease up on the drinking- so at the last meal he's drinking a half size can of beer

Next year: TV Fest at Aaron & Alex's lake house.

is her tit-too a mouth with a tongue sticking out?

I like how hat #1 applies to show #1 AND show #3.

that kid is WAY too old for a pacifier

Directed by Tim Van patten AKA "salami" from "White Shadow" I miss the Sopranos

Advance to St. Charles Avenue- If you pass Go, collect $200

We should all get bikes.

The Sopranos is the funniest non-comedy ever.

Guy taking a shit in the background is a TV Festival first.

Discussion about why hired shooters drop their gun at the crime scene.

"Free Parking" is a dumb rule- Bobby is right.

Bobby's right- Free parking rule is low class

Tony the morning after the fight looks like me the morning after the TV fest.

I like Janice's Rolling Stones tattoo on the top of her left bosom. Aaron, how are you enjoying your Rolling Stones beer glasses from your wedding registry.

Hat #3: Chicago Cubs. This episode aired in 2007- the Cubs won the division in 2007. Plus, somebody from this show has probably sung "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley.

The Monopoy House that Carmela flicks off of Tony's cheek is a metaphor for the broken family - but it looked like a hotel painted green.

The guy who plays Silvio is in the band Bon Jovi.

I was expecting a seal to come bite Larry's hand off in that opening sequence.

I'm kicking myself for not preparing the Larry David sandwich for TV Fest.

Aaron has a sandwich named after him @ work. The Moellerbear

Group discussion: Is intercourse sacred?

The best thing about Larry David has got to be his feuds with children.

Notice how all the Jews are honoring hat day.

Most sex in a tv fest episode ever?

Is it really something to even think twice about? of course you don't pick up the phone during sex

Hat #4: Dub's Dread visor. In honor of Larry David, who obsesses about being bald, I am wearing a hat with nothing on top.

You win 2nd prize in a beauty contest Collect $10

When does the hat parade begin?

Group discussion: What tickles your fancy?

What time does the hat parade begin?

The Larry David discussion about picking up the phone during sex could be called "The Big Bang Theory"

Did a bottle just fall and not break?

No Star Wars or Star Trek costumes for these nerds? CBS must not have been able to secure the rights. (emailed comment)

If you look closely, they change out the contents of the shelves to include different pieces of nerd paraphernalia.

I love how Terra is legitimately afraid to speak during the show.

Hat #5: Springfield Isotopes. Tie-in should be obvious.

Not even the nerdiest nerds put Feynman diagrams on their walls.

Aaron you're so great. Glad you're the only one. Limited edition I feel special.

to the right now stomp

to the left now stomp

two hops this time

now Charlie Brown

Everybody clap your hands.

Linus DID NOT wash that apple before eating it! And why the hell did Lucy bother to put down paper?

Lucy really is a bitch.

Fun fact: In 1983, for one year only, Charlie Brown kicked the football.

Linus and Lucy remind me of Tony and Jan Soprano

Linus needs to borrow Aaron's emergency hair scissors

Dear Great Pumpkin- You were delicious with whipped cream- Linus

Emily, do you remember when I went as Charlie Brown Halloween costume to your party 5-6 years ago?

What a bunch of unsupervised little a-holes

How old are these characters? Are they old enough to know what a notary is?

Linus with his blanket looked like Indiana Jones with his whip getting that mailbox open.

I bet Maggie is having dreams about shooting down the Red Baron too!

These kids all have huge heads. They're like the Anti-Rob and Terra

The problem with this year's TV Festival is that there's a tiny bit of hypocrisy.

Poor martyr Charlie Brown and his t-shirt of thorns.

People expect more from you when you have naturally curly hair.

This CGI is not impressive.

The 2011 Worlds Record for largest pumpkin was 1818.5 pounds, that is truly a Great Pumpkin (emailed comment)

Hat #6: Iowa Hawkeyes. It's usually around Halloween when the proverbial football gets pulled away from the Hawks having a truly great season. Also, Charlie Brown seems to be a Hawkeye fan the way he always wears a black & gold shirt.

Turkey on your head? THAT'S an original hat idea.

Does Chris have the only DVD movie collection in the world that's displayed in the order the movies were released?

Maggie paid attention to the whole thing. It's like she recognizes Alex's DVD.

Hat #7: Cubs 1998 Wild Card Champions. This episode aired in 1998, when the Cubs won the wild card. Plus, I think David Schwimmer has sung "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley

Could this be considered a "TV focus group"

Seat warmer. don't you mow your lawn in the summer?

Congratulations to the 2011 World Champion Dallas Mavericks

Why doesn't Alex have a hat on? (I wrote this during 'Friends' but then she put one on)

Besides me, who is STOKED that Beavis and Butthead are back on TV?

All things MASON rock!!

Hat #8: '98 Wild Card again. Another 1998 episode. Not-so-fun-fact: I've worn 2 Cubs hats to mark 2 playoff appearances. The Cubs won the same number of games in both of those playoffs- 0.

RIP Phil Hartman. oh shit... Tone Loc!?!

Yes, black security guard is Tone Loc.

Wasn't that one guy on Fear factor?

There was something like 5 Newsradio episodes in the first 3 years of the TV Fest. Remember when they used to be 2 days long?

My guess is the security guard doesn't drink Egg Nog at Christmas, but instead enjoys some "Funky Cold Medina" while doing the "Wild thing". (emailed comment)

Wonder when Fibber McGee copyright runs out?

I have a photo of the Newradio building in New York City.

Moeller TV fest co-ed softball team? anyone??? anyone???

Santa Claus is from Des Moines

Cotton Hill & the security guard on Newsradio are played by Toby Huss, an Iowan and a bad ass

Hat #9: Moeller TV Fest X - Still the best TV Fest in the world!

thanks for the presents Dave! A donation has been made in your name to the Moeller Foundation

I miss Kids in the Hall a lot.

Sometime check out how large the wikipedia page for Festivus is

Next TV Festival we need to find that old episode of the Dean Martin Show with Harry Blackstone and the goats

Check out the birds out the window

Hat #10: Titleist x2. I'm a two face! Also reminds me of my favorite Seinfeld moment- "The sea was angry that day my friend..." "What, is that a Titleist?" "Well, a hole in one."

The narrator of the radio show looks a little like Larry "Bud" Melman.

Your birthday is technically the first day of your New Year.

He kind of looks like Kevin Spacey

if you wanna get lucky, gimme that toasted tobackey!!!

The Kids in the Hall name comes from Jack Benny.

1956 is gonna be the best year ever!

That Lucky Strike commercial is some classic Mad Men shit

Was that Mel Blanc or Michael Winslow?

Because of people like Rob we will never see great commercials like Lucky Strike. Thanks Asshole!!

Shores of Getchagumee = Shores of Lake Superior (Thank you Gordon Lightfoot)

I wanted Bugs Bunny to be in the radio program

Tom Moeller's Duffy Daugherty anecdote

50 years from now do you think people will be having TV Festivals watching shows that are 100 years old?

How embarrassing both coaches wore the same color suit as Jack Benny.

Did everyone smoke in the 50s? dayum.

Did Jamie telegram any comments about that episode?

No comment.

I'm not impressed by the CGI in this one either

Jack Benny's old high school in Waukegan, Illinois is name the '39ers.'

Biggest problem with TV Fest 10 Part 2? Finding a parking space

Hat #11: Dolphins stocking cap. New Year's Show- come on, it's cold outside.

Discussion: What are your ideas for the next TV Fest? How often is too many TV Festivals in a year?

Hey Kids! It's light up time!

The silly season

2011-11-29T21:06:00.006-06:00

The Republican Presidential Primaries are interesting in a Lindsey Lohan-train wreck kind of way. The fact that nobody mentions is that President Obama has always had the backing of Wall Street and of our establishment financial/political class. He was vetted by Wall Street when he was still Democratic Candidate Obama in 2007, received its stamp of approval then, and has never lost it. Rhetoric to the contrary is-- as they say-- only politics.

How do we know all of this is true? Because if the political establishment really thought that Obama was a "socialist," or a threat to the oligarchy in any conceivable way, we would have a better, and much less comical, slate of challengers on the Republican side (as well as at least one Obama alternative on the Democratic side). No, a second Obama term is A-OK with the wielders of power in this nation, as they've demonstrated time and now time again with their campaign contributions in a pair of national races four years apart, and so the goal of the Republican primary season all along, instead, has simply been to push the media debate further and further to the right. The candidate clowns each take a turn as "frontrunner" in the center of the Big Top, being forced upon the populace one-by-one, until even Newt the Hutt, the lowest-form of pompous, disreputable political sludge not named Santorum, gets a chance.

Trump, Bachmann, Perry, and Cain were all elevated to "serious candidate" status at one point or another this year by a traditional news media still intent on selling the national presidential campaign as a harbinger of meaningful ideas. The large hole in the center fools almost no one. Even the frightened reactionaries of the far right-wing of the U.S. political landscape, the mullahs of the Western World, are smart enough to turn their backs from these bloviating bozos.

I tremble to think how lost we would be-- and indeed, used to be-- in our larger national debate (the one above the news media) without the buckets of stone cold truth being dumped upon us on all sides by Occupy groups from coast-to-coast-- and against the growing threat of violence besides. As always, the use of physical force against truth-tellers betrays the deficiency of ideas to combat them instead. But maybe it's the empty debate we actually have to thank. Into the largest voids often step the clearest solutions.

The second half

2011-11-26T17:45:00.003-06:00

It's really happening, people. Moeller Television Festival X, Part II, is exactly one week away, and the multitudes have been clamoring for a screening schedule. (It's listed below.) As always, TV Fest is free to attend, so if you've come upon this blog by accident, don't even think about turning us all in for program licensing violations.

TV Fest X, Part II is at my home in Des Moines, and you're all invited. Email me at christophermmoeller@gmail.com with any questions or for additional details, and don't forget to bring an inquisitive mind and a hat. Oh, did I mention that hats are required to attend the festival this round? MTF X, PI starts at noon-ish on Saturday, December 3rd, with food and drinks (including alcoholic) provided.

The schedule of TV programs:

"Opie the Birdman" The Andy Griffith Show #96 9/30/63

"Mac & Charlie: White Trash" It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia #62 10/14/10

"Soprano Home Movies" The Sopranos #78 4/8/07

"The Larry David Sandwich" Curb Your Enthusiasm #41 9/25/05

"Middle Earth Paradigm" The Big Bang Theory #6 10/29/07

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" Peanuts 10/27/66

"The One With All the Thanksgivings" Friends #105 11/19/98

"Nine Pretty Darn Angry Men" King of the Hill #42 11/17/98

"Xmas Story" Newsradio #17 12/19/95

"The Strike" Seinfeld #166 12/18/97

"New Years Day Show of 1956" The Jack Benny Program #55 1/1/56

The Roots of outrage

2011-11-23T18:41:00.004-06:00

We had a display of old-fashioned political subversion Monday night on Jimmy Fallon's late night show when Michelle Bachmann appeared as a guest. The Roots, Fallon's house band, played Bachmann onto the stage with an obscure 25-year-old song (by Fishbone[?]) entitled "Lyin' Ass Bitch."

Though the original tune is not in my wheelhouse genre, I feel comfortable describing it as "obscure" since the band's gag went unnoticed during the broadcast. It was a Tweet by the band's drummer, Questlove, that drew attention to the incident after the fact. It drew a rebuke from Bachmann as well, who told Fox News she thought it was "clearly a form of bias on the part of the Hollywood entertainment elite but it's also I think it's sexist as well."

Pointed subversion of our vacuous, hateful political culture or sexist bias by "entertainment elites"? Golly, can't it be both? I'd like to add also, in the Roots' defense, there's no song entitled "Self-Mythologizing Pandering Dimwitted Religious Sociopath."

Intimidation intent

2011-11-20T17:55:00.004-06:00

More on Occupy from Glenn Greenwald, who points out that the true purpose of institutional violence against dissenters is to intimidate others from participating:

The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. They believe that they are free to do everything they choose to do, because they have been "persuaded"-- through fear and intimidation -- to passively accept the status quo. As Rosa Luxemburg so perfectly put: "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." Someone who sits at home and never protests or effectively challenges power factions will not realize that their rights of speech and assembly have been effectively eroded because they never seek to exercise those rights; it's only when we see steadfast, courageous resistance from the likes of these UC-Davis students is this erosion of rights manifest.

It's not a winning public relations strategy for law enforcement to assault peaceful protesters with tear gas, clubs, pepper spray, rubber bullets, or assault rifles. It elicits greater sympathy for the protesters and complicates legal matters. Yet they do it anyway, and this is the larger reason they do. The video of a police assault may engender feelings of anger or sadness on behalf of the protesters' fellow citizens, but if it intimidates most of them into staying on their couch and not joining the movement, the assault will have accomplished its goal.

Greenwald links to the extraordinary video of UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi walking to her car aside a silent vigil by students intended to shame her for her actions in ordering the police action. (I'll directly link to the YouTube clip as well.) Katehi will soon be out of a job, and that will be justified, but the greater significance of the silent protest will be the viral presentation of the power of non-violence. For all of the extraordinary courage being demonstrated by Occupy members across the nation-- and there is little that I find more courageous than sacrificing one's body for the cause of the First Amendment-- there is a helluva lot of creativity being demonstrated as well.

The empire strikes back

2011-11-19T17:57:00.009-06:00

The Occupy Movement is changing the world. How do we know this? Because the United States has now evolved into a full-fledged Police State. The uniformed thugs of our Wall Street government have been aggressively turned on the protesters. ( And that's not seltzer.)

The homeless, jobless, and impassioned change agents that have been occupying Zuccotti Park in New York City were cleared out by Mayor Bloomberg's storm troopers last week. Few should miss the irony of Bloomberg ordering the assault. He's a billionaire resident of the upper 1% of the nation's top 1%, going so far as to buy his way into the office he holds, an action that would make our Founders shudder, but causes nary a raised eyebrow these days. There are reports almost daily now of police violence erupting in one or more of the many tent cities of protesters that have sprung up across the country over two months, and there has been a clearly-orchestrated change in policing strategies. In many cases now, such as in lower Manhattan, protesters are taking to the streets instead.

Washington recognizes the threat, and Chris Hayes has some proof. Staffers of his television program at MSNBC gained possession of a memo from a Washington lobbying firm closely associated with House Speaker John Boehner directed to members of the American Banking Association. It advocates an $850,000 smear campaign on the Occupy movement and the politicians that support it.

The monied interests will do whatever is required to hold on to their plunder. They'll use whatever violent force necessary against protesters so long as they feel America's still-lethargic majority will tolerate it. But make no mistake, they're feeling the heat inside the halls of power, and rightly so as the temperature of the oven keeps getting turned up. Oligarchy beware, Zuccotti Park is everywhere.

What they fished out of the Des Moines River

2011-11-16T19:22:00.004-06:00

Jeez, people. Izaak Walton League volunteers pulled 36 tons of garbage out of the Des Moines River this fall, and this was just in the area between the ballpark and the Grand Avenue bridge downtown. Great job, Ikes, but as a people, we've obviously gotta be better about this. I wonder if they're able to track the source of any of this waste before they recycle it. We could re-plant the 55-gallon steel drums in the bottom of the river with the polluters inside.

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If I had known the Cardinals were going to hire a field manager with no professional managing or coaching experience, I would have applied for the job.

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Save Greendale! The NBC comedy "Community" has delivered one brilliant episode after another for two and a third seasons, but now the AT&T of television networks, the opposite of Batman, is threatening to Britta the series.

Sunday Magazine

2011-11-13T16:02:00.007-06:00

As the culture of widespread and organized progressive protest returns to the United States in 2011, it's worth noting that the broader wave of public peace protests in the 1960s very much had their start in the state of Iowa. The Des Moines Register's Kyle Munson has the story today of the "Grinnell 14," college students that traveled to Washington in 1961 to protest atmospheric nuclear testing, and whose members included now-well-known actor Peter Coyote.

Here's Coyote on YouTube talking about the lasting impact of the '60s "counterculture."

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Former NFL fullback Jon Ritchie has known Jerry Sandusky most of his life and is speaking publicly now about the scandal at Penn State. He's doing so as honestly and perceptively as anybody else I've heard in the sports media. His explanation as to why he probably, like Mike McQueary, wouldn't have acted in the moment to stop the rape of a young boy is as honest as honest gets.

Ritchie's descriptions (beginning at the 8:00 mark of the link, though you should watch it all) about what would be his initial disbelief and confusion over what he has seen really lay false the claims of so many observers this week that they would "beat (Sandusky) to a pulp", or the like, if they found themselves in the same situation as McQueary. As Ritchie goes on to say, this does not excuse the follow-up silence and cover-up by McQueary and his superiors, but it also ticks me off to hear so many people posturing and blustering that they would become immediately physical in that moment in the locker room in defense of the child. Simply put, I don't believe them. Sad as it is, as many as 90% of child sexual abuse cases in this country go unreported, and this is a topic that everyone has to internalize to some degree. The sexual abuse of a child is still referred to often as an "unspeakable" crime, but "unspeakable" is one thing it should never be. Our conversations about it are vital, and increased awareness is always the silver lining when instances of child abuse become public.

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Time to drop some science on you, which I so rarely do: Your brain knows more than you think it does. From Discover, "If you spend an afternoon trying to teach [patients with anterograde amnesia] the video game Tetris, they will tell you the next day that they have no recollection of the experience, that they have never seen this game before—and, most likely, that they have no idea who you are, either. But if you look at their performance on the game the next day, you’ll find that they have improved exactly as much as nonamnesiacs. Implicitly their brains have learned the game: The knowledge is simply not accessible to their consciousness."

That's it. No jokes. Only highly-respected scientific research.

Institutional crimes

2011-11-09T20:11:00.019-06:00

A man is walking in the park at night. A woman passes from the other direction and within a moment, a stranger jumps out from the darkness and attacks the woman. How does the man respond? He thinks about it for a day, then immediately notifies Penn State's athletic director and its senior vice president for business and finance.

Forget Jerry Sandusky for just one moment, and just consider how sick a fuck Joe Paterno is? He's told by a 28-year-old underling that his high-profile defensive coordinator, his right-hand man at the throne of a college football empire, has been witnessed, first-hand, anally raping a 10-year-old in the shower of the football building. University police have already investigated this same assistant coach four years earlier for showering with an 11-year-old. Paterno, this time, waits a day, then reports the information not to the police, but to university officials that together make up a fraction of his salary and at a school where the football program produces approximately $70 million in revenue annually.

Flash forward nine years: In a sport in which a coach can be fired for failure to "go for it" on fourth down of an important game, Paterno becomes the winningest coach in Division I college football history. The underling who told him very privately nearly a decade ago about the forced sodomy of an underprivileged pre-teen by the architect of the coach's nationally-renown linebacker program has been promoted from graduate assistant to receivers coach. The assistant coach, though retired, still maintains an office across the street from the football building and is reported to have been in the football building as recently as two weeks ago. He is arrested and charged with 40 counts of sexual abuse against young boys over a 15-year period. Paterno, who according to his son, reported the charges initially to university officials, then never really gave it a second thought, is forced to confront inquisitors. He steps out of his house, doddering and nearly incoherent, to tell a large group of cheering, amoral, and stupid Penn State students to pray for the "kids who were victims or whatever they want to say... It's a tough life when people do certain things to you." He concludes by promising the students yet another victory on the field this Saturday.

That Paterno is not headed to prison says more about Pennsylvania legal statute than it does about the coach's allegedly limited culpability in connection with these heinous charges, even as the 84-year-old Penn State head man lives his life as a demigod in the college town of all college towns. (Mitch Albom disagrees. He thinks Paterno is being targeted unfairly by a vengeful public and media as he's had the chance to get to know JoePa very intimately over the years asking him questions about third down draw plays and corner blitzes.)

At last tonight, the university's board of trustees removes Paterno immediately from his position as head coach, narrowly sidestepping one last act of cowardice that would have allowed the coach to finish out the current season. Paterno is wildly fortunate to live in a legal climate in which he doesn't have to answer to a criminal investigation about what he knew and when in regards to the actions of his pedarast protege. Joe Paterno, grandfather of 17, will still own the sympathy of all those that believe 46 years of successful football trumps child molestation, and we have not seen the last of JoePa's tears for the horrible ordeal he's had to contend with over these last several days, but this abrupt end is the disgraceful exit Joe Paterno deserves.

Five years later, a few people owe an apology to the National Organization for Women.

Where are the calls for the death penalty in this case-- for the Penn State football program? Here, you have vicious acts against children, institutional and monumental corruption from the very bottom of the coaching hierarchy all the way up to the university president, and nobody is advocating this action as one of the required solutions. Southern Methodist University had an entire season cancelled in 1987 because of "under the table" payments to its football players. In prisons, the convicted sexual abuser of children is the lowest form of criminal in residence. In Division I college football, he's still #2 behind the guy who financially compensates the talent.

The wedding of the century

2011-11-08T18:47:00.003-06:00

Aaron Moeller and Alexandra Shouse sealed their wedding vows with a traditional kiss at Prairie Oak Lodge in Marion, Iowa Sunday as party-goers roared their approval.

The kiss followed a glittering service in which the two were pronounced husband and wife by friend and officiant Jay Parsons, "Reverend Jay" or "Parson Parsons." A receiving line followed, then dinner and cake, before the bride and groom both spoke briefly to the assembled guests. The toast was followed by a lengthy slideshow presentation, and before dancing commenced, there was a spontaneous karaoke performance of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's hit 1968 single "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" by bride and groom.

The couple will now embark on an international tour of the 17 overseas territories and crown dependencies that fall under their legal sovereignty.

The wedding cometh

2011-11-02T19:18:00.002-05:00

CM Blog contributor Aaron Moeller marries Lady Alexandra this Sunday. Yours truly is penciled in as best man and pleased as punch to be so. This is not like that Kardashian thing. This one is for real.

LaRetires

2011-10-31T18:49:00.015-05:00

I had no idea when I criticized Tony LaRussa on the blog last Tuesday that it would be for the very last time. Had I known the manager was going to abruptly retire at the end of the season I would have savored that last attack. I was prepped to share with you this week the hilarious commentary I read about LaRussa on the Deadspin site late last week, about the guy who said that LaRussa managed the Cardinals in the World Series the way Lennie handled his puppy. Then another writer responded that Rangers manager Ron Washington handled his team the way Lenny handled Squiggy-- he feigns interest in them, but really he's only interested in his own lines. (Yes, Deadspin is this awesome.)

One hundred and seventy years (or so) after the game's creation, it's still highly debatable how important the field manager actually is to the success of a baseball team. Young viewers, and a few old ones as well, may wonder why it is that the baseball manager dresses like his players when the same thing does not happen in football, basketball, hockey, or soccer. Well, it's because for the first six decades or so of action, the manager was simply one of the players, a team captain, as it were. He wrote out the lineup, but he also grabbed a glove, most often to play first base, like my dad in couples co-ed softball during the 1980s. That's why they're called "managers," not "coaches." They're not teacher and students. They're more like fellow lodge members.

For the most part baseball managers don't draw up plays, but they do some shuffling of the game pieces about the field. It's the only one of the team sports mentioned above in which a player substitution must last for the remainder of the game. Still, it's the players that play. The offense in baseball isn't run from a playbook with 400-some plays. The defense doesn't have a "scheme." Either the batter hits the ball or he doesn't. Either the pitcher throws strikes or his career dies as he's trying. This is also why baseball is the great sport of democratic society.

What Tony LaRussa has been, more than anything else, over his three decades in the game, is the truest believer that what a baseball manager does matters. He's like the film director that walks his actors through every one of their screen movements and line readings. This is not inherently a criticism, mind you. Actors-- and players-- often crave guidance. This approach often eliminates needless confusion and gross inefficiency. It provides needed intensity and focus. It's also frequently maddening.

LaRussa teams have often been needlessly tight and ineffective in big games, in my estimation, particularly when they're the statistically favored club. I've frequently argued, to anyone who'll listen, that a team with competitive, single-minded leaders like Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, and Yadier Molina doesn't require anybody to motivate them. It just becomes unneeded pressure. Professional players can be trusted to act professionally-- to even lead themselves, I would argue. It's not peculiar that LaRussa pals around in his free time with basketball and football coaches like Bobby Knight and Bill Parcells. His leadership style lends itself traditionally to those other sports in which innovative play-calling and the raising of the performers' adrenaline are vital attributes.

I have no science to support this claim, but I suspect that the fans that are most easily aggravated by LaRussa are those that tolerate the least micromanaging by others over their own lives, and those that tend to roll their eyes at the attempts of others to motivate them. Here, I'm describing myself. After 14 years in the professional world, I'm at my lowest ebb ever for tolerating the "constructive criticism" of the supervisory class. I want to be shown the trust that I know what I'm doing.

LaRussa's players are in adoration of him as he exits. None of the 2011 champion Cardinals, and they are champion personalities indeed, have a bad word to say about him, but then it's worth pointing out that the many who have were shown the door long ago. The team that remains is epic, which is why it's hard to criticize anything about the man today, but with all the praise being heaped upon the manager this week, you won't hear anybody say this: "He's such a great manager, anybody could play for him." LaRussa did not get the most out of every player that ever played for him. A few very important players rebelled over the years, and sometimes in very public and negative fashion.

Still, it's hard not to like sometimes a guy with such a droll sense of humor, and a guy who genuinely loves animals so much. He said as recently as yesterday that one of the reasons he came to the Cardinals in 1995 was because he thought they had the most beautiful uniforms in sports and also he looked forward to seeing the Budweiser Clydesdales on the field with regularity. That's downright adorable. Yesterday, one of the Clydesdales at Grant's Farm in St. Louis was renamed "Tony LaRussa," and during the Championship parade, LaRussa rode atop the beer wagon.

It's impossible to argue that the Cardinals' great success over LaRussa's 16 years is not his doing to a large extent. I'll go to my grave contending that he tinkers too much and involves himself too much in the action, but his clubs, as a collective group, have always matched his demanding personality and his drive. If the club he managed this year, that refused to give up against all odds, becomes his enduring legacy, he will be well served by history.

He leaves at the very top. He made his retirement announcement this morning less than 72 hours after winning his third World Championship, and I can't help but believe that the timing of his departure speaks more about his legendary competitiveness than anything else that came before it. He leaves needing fewer than 40 wins to move into 2nd place all-time in managerial wins, which deadens charges of narcissism. Bitter competitors in Milwaukee and Cincinnati are denied another chance to beat him. His second title with the Cardinals breaks a tie with the Ozzie/Whitey 1980s regime he succeeded, and it dims the memory of his first decade of near-misses when many fans refused to accept his style of play and his personality in contrast with their earlier heroes. It's fitting, and not coincidental in the slightest, that perhaps the most coldly calculating and over-prepared manager in baseball history has chosen to leave at the very worst possible time for his detractors to criticize him. That's how competitive this guy is.

Moeller TV Listings 10/31/11

2011-10-31T18:27:00.004-05:00

Tony LaRussa announced his retirement as manager of the World Champion Cardinals this morning. You can watch him talk about that, and about the Cardinals' amazing season, tonight on Letterman. And as a holiday bonus on Dave-- kids Halloween costumes. Tony is the third-winningest manager in baseball history and the only two men ahead of him on the all-time list were born, respectively, in 1862 and 1873.

Simultaneously this evening, Cardinals third baseman, and NLCS and World Series MVP, David Freese will be on with Jay Leno. The Freese segment will be followed by "Headlines" or "Jaywalking" or some shit.

Go crazy, folks, go crazy!

2011-10-28T22:59:00.002-05:00

The Chris Moeller Blog congratulates the St. Louis Cardinals, 2011 World Champions, writers of the greatest championship script in sports history, and winners now of eleven total World Baseball Championships!

1926, 1931, 1934, 1942, 1944, 1946, 1964, 1967, 1982, 2006, 2011

No school tomorrow!

Cardinals win greatest World Series game in history

2011-10-28T07:07:00.003-05:00

Here's my favorite statistic about last night's World Series Game 6:

Game-tying hits with two outs in 9th inning or later in World Series elimination game

1911- some guy for the Giants (9th inning Game 5)

1992- Otis Nixon (9th inning Game 6)

2011- David Freese (9th inning Game 6)

2011- Lance Berkman (10th inning Game 6)

Plus, both Freese and Berkman were down to their last strike. And that was before Freese came up again in the 11th inning and hit only the 5th-ever walk-off home run in a World Series Game 6 or 7.

The others are slightly famous...

1960- Bill Mazeroski (9th)

1975- Carlton Fisk (12th)

1991- Kirby Puckett (11th)

1992- Joe Carter (9th)

The 2011 Cardinals are the first-team ever to score runs in the 8th, 9th, 10th, AND 11th innings of any Series game. And now the Cardinals' Albert Pujols and David Freese have taken Reggie Jackson's 3 home run game in '77 and Carlton Fisk's epic home run in '75 and combined them into the same World Series. Insane. I hope Ken Burns was at the game last night.

And then there was Game 7...

2011 World Series thoughts before it's over

2011-10-25T17:42:00.011-05:00

Do I wish more people would watch the World Series on television? Yes, but you can't argue with the product. The World Series is routinely thrilling even if too few North Americans are tuning in. If it means disrupting the pace or dumbing the game down somehow in order to pull a better overnight rating against the NFL, you can keep your popularity. A baffoon named Charlie O. Finley once suggested that the sport switch from white baseballs to orange, an idea that ultimately didn't catch on, but unfortunately the owners ran with another of Finley's harebrained schemes, installing a "designated hitter" for the pitcher in the much more financially-desperate of the two leagues. In general, decisions effecting the game are best left to the people that actually like it. I wish more people watched "Community" also, but that show doesn't need to change a single thing about itself.

I goofed on the Texas Rangers, their state, and their city in a post last week, but I suspect that the baseball fans in Texas are among the coolest people that live there.

The dumbest of all the dumb ideas often suggested to improve Major League Baseball is the one where the league flip-flops the current designated hitter policy for both the World Series and for interleague games-- that is, use the DH in National League parks, and have the pitchers hit in American League parks. It's inevitably suggested that this concept would afford the opportunity for fans in the home city to "watch a different style of baseball". First alternate suggestion for these fans from Chris: buy a television. Two: If you really want to see how the designated hitter rule works-- in person, or you wonder what Lefty Softtosser would look like swinging a bat, and your local nine is conspiring against you on this front, take the summer off from school or work, buy a ticket from the local stagecoach company, and ride by hoof to the next outpost.

I was so excited after the Cardinals' tense Game 1 victory, I had to go sit in my car and scream. You're welcome, neighbors.

Shame on Nikon cameras. Their TV ad campaign in which Ashton Kutcher snaps photos from his balcony of beautiful women frolicking on the beach is incredibly insensitive concerning the way he treated Demi.

As usual, the Cardinals franchise has been disrespected by FOX television. Home viewers didn't get to see Bob Gibson, Bruce Sutter, and Adam Wainwright throw out the ceremonial first pitches before Game 1. (They are the three living pitchers that have closed out Cardinals' World Championship games-- 1964, 1967, 1982, 2006.) Likewise, before Game 2, nobody in their living rooms got to see Hall of Famers Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst throw ceremonial first pitches. Then the series moved to Arlington, and the United States was shown Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki and former President George W. Bush each throw out pitches on consecutive nights. What gives?

I'm not opposed to George Bush being invited to Rangers Park to throw out the first pitch of a Series game, but when he got there and walked onto the field, nobody arrested him.

Through the first five games of the best of seven, the Cardinals' runs scored have been 3, 1, 16, 0, 2.

The Great Pujols' 3 dingers in Game 3 were the stuff of legend. If the Rangers win Game 6 or 7, this Cardinals' season will still be notable forever for September's Mad Dash, Chris Carpenter's epic 1-0 shutout in Game 5 of the Division Series against Roy Halladay, and Pujols' Fall Classic Game 3.

Last night's 4-2 loss to Texas was humbling indeed for the Cardinals, what with that bizarre, failed hit-and-run, the many chances blown at the bat, and Tony LaGenius' dozen or so distinct mistakes. The bullpen phone fiasco and the manager's oddball explanation afterwards was downright embarrassing, but even worse from a competitive standpoint was taking the bat out of his best hitter's hands twice by bunting a man over ahead of his at-bat. The worst of all, and nobody is talking about this one today at all, curiously, was that he pulled Carpenter from the mound in a 2-2 game in the 8th with 3 right-handers due to bat in the inning and after having thrown only 101 pitches. What about Carpenter being this generation's Bob Gibson does LaRussa not understand?

When contemplating LaRussa's maddening resentment towards any potential Cardinals team success that does not have his personal stamp upon it, I still think back to the disrespect that the manager showed towards the talents of shortstop Ozzie Smith in 1996. Now that I know the manager's competitive personality a little better after his 16 seasons at the helm-- his likes and dislikes-- I realize it must have hacked him off something fierce all those years in the American League watching Ozzie in St. Louis performing somersaults and back flips on the field. Tony believes that untucking your jersey on the field after the game is disrespecting baseball so I'm pretty sure that back flips have always been on the forbidden list.

The national anthems performed at Busch Stadium in Games 1 and 2 were very disappointing. St. Louis is one of the country's great musical cities, yet the Cardinals gave us Trace Adkins and the first hillbilly winner of "American Idol." (I'm not going to look up his name.) Ugh, was the team trying to out-Texas the Rangers? That was yucky. On Wednesday night, here's hoping for some Chuck Berry, Clark Terry, Fontella Bass, Michael McDonald, David Sanborn, Grace Bumbry, Nelly, or Nikko Smith.

Play the Tim: I enjoy broadcasters Joe Buck and Tim McCarver enjoying each other on the air. No criticism of FOX in this respect. Those two guys are great. "Playing the Tim" is what I call it when Joe sets up the elder Tim for a joke (even though Tim is neither a cutting edge personality nor particularly funny), then you try to predict what Tim will say in response. During either Game 3 or 4, Joe pointed out that Rangers outfielder David Murphy is the first former student and player at Baylor University to play in the World Series since Mule Watson (N.Y. Giants) in 1923. Joe asked: "Could Mule Watson hit the slider?" I "played the Tim": I guessed that he would say: "The slider didn't exist in 1923." I was wrong. His response: "He was a horse."

If you take only one fact about me to your grave, make it this one: I hate the song "God Bless America" being played at the ballgame. I hate everything about this unfortunate spectacle. I hate the ugly militarism. I hate the often-accompanying "flyovers" that waste your tax dollars and help to keep our kids malnourished and undereducated. I hate the posturing and the arrogance. I hate the theism of the song title and lyric. I hate the repetition since the league already wraps itself in the flag during the national anthem before each game, which should be more than enough. I hate the goddamn song itself-- so banal and hollow. Most of all, I hate the timing of each performance. Ever since September 11th, "God Bless America" has marked the 7th inning stretch of every postseason baseball game-- and plenty of the regular season games as well.

Here's a little newsflash for everybody: there is already a song to play during the 7th inning stretch. It's called "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." It's upbeat, it's catchy, it's fun to sing with your friends and especially with strangers, and it sounds fucking awesome on the organ. There's a part in the song where you can mad lib the name of your favorite team, and near the end, you get to shout out numbers before this great big dramatic conclusion. It's a gas, and no other sport has a fun sing-along of any kind during a break in the action, and that's one more reason that baseball kicks ass. The 7th inning stretch is designed to be in the middle of the inning so that it will always immediately follow a defensive third out by the home team. There's a natural excitement built in with this, and sure enough, in the World Series, those 7th inning defensive outs become even more thrilling as the crowd roars. Yet every night of October during the last decade instead, the crowd's excitement gets predictably tempered by a maudlin stadium announcer who comes on the public address system and dourly requests that we all honor the war dead with a sober rendition of a mediocre Tin Pan Alley funkiller. I wonder if it's true that Commissioner Selig and his wife pause during their lovemaking to duet the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Revised World Series prediction from last week: Cardinals in seven.

Occupy Iowa moves on Obama's office

2011-10-22T14:14:00.005-05:00

Occupy Des Moines was on the march again this morning. Roughly 100 people marched to and protested outside President Obama's 2012 campaign headquarters on Des Moines' near east side. Incidentally, the march overlapped at times, by location, with the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure for Des Moines and Central Iowa-- which is fitting when we consider the very political implications of medical research and of all women gaining access to medicines and health insurance. When social justice is achieved, charity is no longer needed. Make no mistake about this: a fair national health care policy, and working to empower the politically powerless, are two completely overlapping movements.

This protest this morning had particular resonance for me in that it targeted the President. The "too big to fail" banks are terrific targets for demonstration, and will continue to be, but that's only one half of this movement. That first half, it seems to me, is drawing attention to and condemning the casinos on Wall Street, and corporate greed and malfeasance, in general; the other is drawing attention to and condemning the permanent occupation of these big banks and Corporate America over our government. The politicians whose influence the banks and corporations have purchased need to see our faces and hear our voices as well.

I am absolutely thrilled to see this movement evolve into one that is truly a non-partisan one, as I hoped and really expected that it would be. The people of this movement, in Des Moines and elsewhere, are the people of the United States. Nobody should feel excluded from being part of it so long as they are of the 99% that are without meaningful influence over their own government because they are not CEOs or corporate contributors. Everyone rallying this morning seemed to recognize that there has been a wholesale corruption of both major political parties of the United States, not only the Republican. As at least one speaker suggested, it is fundamental and institutional change to our political and financial systems that's ultimately needed.

Cards in World Series again

2011-10-17T20:18:00.005-05:00

The Cardinals are National League champions for the 18th time, and the third time in the last eight years. This trip to the World Series is the sixth of my lifetime for the club, but I've come at it this year from a very different direction. I devoted about the same amount of time to the team as I have in the past, but since they won the Series in '06, I've allowed myself to really relax quite a bit.

As the papers reported, the Cardinals came from out of nowhere in September to qualify for the playoffs, and maybe that's why I've been sleeping like a baby this cycle. The players made a conscious, collective decision late in August to just relax and go for broke, and that strategy has been clicking for both the team and for me. I've even missed a part of some of the games on television, and this is unprecedented. The Occupy Iowa Movement broke out in my backyard a week and a half ago (with seemingly no regard to the Cardinals postseason schedule) and it's been occupying me as well. The partnership of the two events has been very stimulating actually. It's terrific when an energizing Cardinals' pennant race is able to combine its force with an all-but-entirely-unrelated powerful social movement. Objectively there's no connection between the two whatsoever, yet it's interesting to note that the Cardinals also dominated the National League in 1967 and 1968.

As I've aged, I've become more reasoned. Consciously, I think I've always known that my individual actions do not effect the outcome of the game-- whether I score the game or not, where I'm sitting as I watch a game, what I decide to wear that day, etc.-- but either out of habit, or because of the superstitions that the institution of baseball subtly promotes through its rhythm and tradition, I have found myself in the past often getting bogged down with such supernatural foolishness. Save the omens and curses and charms for the Cubs fans, I have now decided, and by the way, that's been working out great for them.

So, to that end, I have no intention of minding the unwritten rules of the game this time around. I'm not concerned about jinxes or karma. I'm going to call 'em like I see 'em, as the umpire says, and I see great things in the team's immediate future. I believe the Cardinals are going to sweep the Texas Rangers in 4 games this week.

It's a great Fall Classic match-up between the clubs to be sure. Don't get me wrong. St. Louis has been one of America's great baseball cities-- maybe its greatest-- ever since that October day in 1926 when Rogers Hornsby and the kid Cardinals took down Ruth, Gehrig, and the Yankees for their first world championship. The victory parade that followed in downtown St. Louis rivaled, and even preceded by one year, the parade the city would hold for Charles Lindbergh and his "Spirit of St. Louis" after the aviator's return from Paris. Dallas, for its part, has been one of America's great baseball cities too. Since roughly September of last year.

The city of St. Louis and its National League franchise introduced the concepts of both beer and hot dogs to the baseball park. The Texas Rangers introduced the world to George W. Bush.

St. Louis is Cahokia Mounds, site of an ancient indigenous city dating back to the year 600 and today, an officially-recognized World History Site. It is Lewis and Clark, the World's Fair, the King of Beers, the "St. Louis Blues" and incomparable cultural figures like Miles Davis, T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Josephine Baker, Chuck Berry, and Tina Turner. It's Gateway Arch monument is the most inspired example of art for art's sake in the public square in United States history. The Dallas/Fort Worth "Metroplex" has arguably the worst suburban and exurban sprawl in the U.S., the second-largest number of freeway-miles per capita in the nation, yet still measurably the fifth worst traffic congestion. Dallas gave us the Kennedy assassination, Vanilla Ice, and the worst of all, Dr. Phil.

The Cardinals have boasted many of the game's great players: Rogers Hornsby, Frankie Frisch, Dizzy Dean, Ducky Medwick, Stan the Man, Enos Slaughter, Red Schoendienst, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Mark McGwire, and Albert Pujols. The Rangers have inducted Rusty Greer into their team Hall of Fame.

The Rangers do have one hell of a team this year. They exploded for 17 hits and 15 runs in the clinching game of the American League Championship Series against Detroit. (Good grief, Texas, save some of those tallies for the next round. You can't execute a man more than once. I mean... unless you've developed a way. Pardon my ignorance.) The Rangers won 96 regular-season games and led their league in batting. But the fun is going to end beginning on Wednesday. It took the Cards only 30 nights to erase a 10 1/2 game deficit to the Braves. They defeated each of the Phillies' aces-- Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Roy Oswalt-- in a single playoff series, then posted a team batting average of .310 in their six-game series against a 96-win Milwaukee club. So I don't think they're too likely to be intimidated by the ghost of Charlie Hough and the haggard remnants of the second edition Washington Senators. Again, Cardinals in four.

Occupy Iowa is marching

2011-10-14T07:12:00.003-05:00

If you're in or around Des Moines this weekend, you need to stop by the State Capitol on Saturday morning and join in a march with Occupy Iowa. The group has selected one of the nation's largest banking and criminal enterprises as its target on Saturday. We'll gather at 9:45am and march to the bank's local corporate office at 10, no later, to send the message that Americans are not satisfied to just sit back and have their government purchased out from under them. I encourage you to donate half a day this weekend for maybe the most democratic thing you'll do in your life. Democracy is not a spectator sport and voting isn't enough, especially when we have such a shitty slate of candidates to choose from each cycle.

Polls of the week

2011-10-13T14:23:00.002-05:00

Time magazine, released today:

Do you feel that the political debate in Washington and the media mostly represents the concerns you discuss and hear in your own community, or not?

Mostly Represents: 36%

Do Not Represent: 60%

Is your opinion of the Tea Party Movement...?

Very/Somewhat Favorable: 27%

Somewhat/Very Unfavorable: 33%

Don't Know Enough: 39%

In the past few days, a group of protesters has been gathering on Wall Street in New York City and some other cities to protest policies which they say favor the rich, the government's bank bailout, and the influence of money in our political system. Is your opinion of these protests...?

Very/Somewhat Favorable: 54%

Somewhat/Very Unfavorable: 23%

Don't Know Enough: 23%

The new Occupy Wall Street movement is currently twice as popular as the Tea Party.

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Marist Poll, 9/20/11:

(To registered voters) Do you approve or disapprove of the job that Barack Obama is doing as President?

Approve: 39%

Disapprove: 52%

Do you approve or disapprove of the job the Republicans in Congress are doing in office?

Approve: 26%

Disapprove: 67%

Do you approve or disapprove of the job the Democrats in Congress are doing in office?

Approve: 30%

Disapprove: 63%

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Bloomberg, 10/6-10/9:

Self-identified REPUBLICANS that favor increasing taxes on households making $250,000 or more annually: 53%

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Chicago Tribune, 10/11:

Cubs fans, who do you want to see win the NLCS?

Brewers: 68%

Cardinals: 13%

This question is mean: 19%

Baby Birds

2011-10-11T18:38:00.032-05:00

A woman that I work with is a Cleveland Indians fan. She has some sort of family connection to Cleveland, I guess. Who knows? I wasn't paying attention to that part. She talks some "smack" on baseball now and again, and the last couple years she and I have placed a financial wager on the World Series. She takes the American League team, and I'm.. forever a National League loyalist.

This woman-- lets call her Tabitha-- was telling me today about her 5-year-old son, whom she is raising to be an Indians fan. Over the weekend, the son told her that he was rooting for the Cardinals in the playoffs. The child apparently has this extraordinary ability, even at his vernal age, to sit and watch an entire baseball game on television. This means that there exists a boy in America that has not yet completed the first grade, but has already at least 150 commercials for "Conan" on TBS.

Anyway, Tabitha told her son that he couldn't root for the Cardinals because he was an Indians fan. The Indians didn't make the playoffs (again) this year, she said, but they "might" be in the playoffs next year. This vague promise of future Tribe success evidently stretched the limits of even this boy's unique attention span. "Mommy, I like the Indians and the Cardinals," he announced, which bothered his mother still, though I was quick to call her out on her hypocrisy when Tabitha announced to me, in her very next breath, that she was rooting for the Texas Rangers, of the remaining four playoff teams, to go all the way.

All sports fans that are parents have certainly been in this situation. I'm not a parent-- I mean at least not that I know of, am I right, fellas?-- but I've often speculated about how I would handle such a situation. Most parents have no qualms about pushing their team allegiances on to their children. My cousin in California, a Los Angeles Angels fan, has his children, 7 and 5, directing the worst school-yard taunts imaginable at the Los Angeles Dodgers. A friend from back home is raising a pair of Chicago Cubs fans now out in the Kansas City suburbs. I've often wondered, with great hope, if his pair of charming little moppets wouldn't one day be swayed by their friends towards the relatively-benign local nine (the Royals)-- and away from the hideous Cubs-- if they end up spending large portions of their lives in that city. Only time will tell.

Part of me thinks that I wouldn't try to sway my own children-- despite that rich, red blood coursing through my veins-- because that's the way it was allowed to happen for me. My parents were sports-minded, but for the most part, non-committed as rooters. I found the Cardinals on my very own when I was of an age not very different than Tabitha's son today. I caught Redbird Fever during the summer of my 7th year, in 1982. Like this boy, I discovered the team on national television. I lived in a different part of Iowa, but the Cardinals there were, like here, of the Midwest, but by no stretch of the imagination, the local team.

There was a family member that tried to sway me. A second cousin (though we were a generation apart) from Wisconsin attempted to get us all Milwaukee Brewers World Series tickets that fall. When he visited Iowa late in summer, it was not yet known that the Brewers would reach the Fall Classic, nor that the Cardinals would ultimately be their opponents when they arrived. I told him the Cardinals were my team. He said he would get us all-- that is, the family-- tickets provided that we pulled for the Brewers. To this day I'm not 100% sure that he was joking. All I remember beyond that is that I answered him in the moment with a defiant "no," and then no Moellers from Iowa wound up going to the World Series that year.

The Cards won that Series in 1982. It was the franchise's ninth championship-- and my first. The next summer Dad drove us to a pair of ballgames at beautiful Busch Stadium in St. Louis, and he bought me a book to read in the car called simply "The Cardinals," which was a statistical catalog of all the players in Cardinals team history, 1876 through 1982 ("Ody Abbott to Ed Zmich"). That book-- and the rest, as they say-- was history.

I thought of that 7-year-old boy from 1982 again today. I have such great reverence for him-- so young, so innocent, so goddamn charmed. The Cardinals and Brewers are doing battle again this week, this time for the National League pennant, and for the Cardinals, what would and could be, after one more round, their 11th championship. That's why even though my conversation with Tabitha was interrupted by work, I felt the need to send her a follow-up email later in the afternoon asserting myself directly, and perhaps impolitely, into her family life. I told her straight away-- you've gotta let that boy of yours fly. He's looking up into that azure sky, and he wants to leave the nest and soar with the eagles, except, wait a minute, the color is wrong. Those aren't eagles at all. Let him go, mom. Let him go.

An honest-to-god Obama death panel

2011-10-06T18:00:00.003-05:00

Glenn Greenwald and Reuters describe the President's secret, undocumented, outlaw committee for murdering Americans. There's nothing to fear from this, however. They're only targeting known terrorists like New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who is such a dangerous threat to us in Yemen that the incriminating evidence against him needs to be kept secret from the public.

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How about this for an interesting-looking social science book (and a completely uninformed endorsement of a new literary product)? "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Regional Cultures of North America." We are not Red and Blue states, says Colin Woodard, but instead, 11 distinct regions, a federation of cultures.

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Are professional wrestlers unionizing? In the fictional wrestling narrative they are, if that means anything. This is surely the insidious plotting of that slimeball commie Nikolai Volkoff.

American spring

2011-10-03T17:34:00.019-05:00

The protests are growing on Wall Street. This is a very exciting time. It's not a protest against Republicans or Democrats. It's a protest against the national political and economic establishment of Republicans and Democrats. A dozen kids squatting two weeks ago outside Trinity Church on Wall Street, "occupying" the Main Street of Corporate America, has grown to the size of 700 of their fellow citizens being arrested Saturday on the Brooklyn Bridge, with similar protests popping up in Chicago, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C. Attacking our paymasters, their crony capitalism, and our economic inequality may be actually succeeding in becoming fashionable. To quote a refrain from "Arrested Development" completely out of context, "you're going to get some hop-ons." And it's hop-ons you want, hop-ons you need.

You're also going to get some snark. New York Magazine described the protest this way: "Several hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters decided that the best way to topple the oligarchy of 'the other one percent' was to cause chaos for the commuters heading in and out of Brooklyn. Which is why they occupied several lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge, closing it off for hours, and leading police to make mass arrests."

Now, let's set aside, to start, the fact that the protest was held on a Saturday and caused about as much of a disruption to the delicate balance of New York City's transportation system as a Susan Komen race. Next, we'll address the so-called politics of "alienation" that's being alleged: It doesn't fit here. Protests that disrupt, you see, are the protests that work. Showing the strength of your numbers puts the reactionaries in the uncommon position of being in the minority. Those people whose main pursuit in life is always avoiding it's minor inconveniences are not your target audience anyway. They're the ones that will eventually be swept along behind the movement anyway because they're afraid to be left alone.

Lest we forget that marching on Selma, Montgomery, Washington, Chicago, and elsewhere was controversial also, but it brought much-needed attention to the Civil Rights movement. In fact, the marches were the heart of the movement. Rosa Parks was not the physically-tired, reluctant hero she's often portrayed as being today. She was an activist, a verbally-blunt and pushy agitator, a revolutionary in its purest form. Today, being "loud and proud" on the lively streets of a gay rights parade provides the same kind of social resonance even as many still criticize such an aggressive, "in your face" cultural presence. "You can be as gay as you want," they say, "as long as I don't have to look at you being gay while I'm sitting in this comfortable chair." But people, as a whole, actually adore boldness as a human characteristic. Ask any of the presidential candidates or their handlers.

Criticizing the protests is a necessary tactic, though, to protect the establishment interests. Thus, these protests are condescended to by many, and criticized as being silly, unfocused, poorly-organized and strategized, and, above all, populated by undesirables-- that is, the jobless and in many cases, the uneducated (i.e. people that don't really matter, and are otherwise unseen).

Many so-called progressives are even criticizing the protests. These are the ones that fear political movements that are non-partisan in nature. They believe that a Democratic President cannot be targeted for criticism because the main goal has to always be electing more Democrats. Deviations from the official party line are perceived as threats to the viability of the party. If you doubt that any of this is true, take a peek out of your window tonight and look for an anti-war demonstration. Report to me by email if you see one.

We're wise, of course, to see the parallels between these protests and the protests throughout 2011 in the American Midwest, in European capitals, and particularly, in the Middle East. The Washington political establishment has opposed those movements as well. Granted, our leaders had to offer verbal support publicly when the spotlight on the world shown upon millions of young men and women in the Middle East protesting bravely, peacefully, and using technology that's popular in the West to grow their movement, but in Egypt, for example, Hillary Clinton and the State Department never stopped working behind the scenes to elevate the dictator Mubarek's top military general as his successor. The goal of the United States was always maintaining the status quo. Places where there are few economic resources for the U.S. to claim, and places where the spotlight of the world never shines-- places such as Yemen, the U.S. is free to pursue its true militarist goals. It's in Yemen that we boldly back a dictator whose army opens machine gun fire upon the peaceful protesters. In return, he aids us in the assassination of our own targeted citizens.

The goal of their criticism is not just to discredit either, but to intimidate. Rarely, if ever, in American history, has aggressive force and the violent suppression of dissent by the police and the military been so tolerated, and even encouraged, by the government and its apologists. It's essential that protesters become categorized as "disruptors" to the peace so that their hearts and minds can be more casually dismissed when their bodies are getting beaten, bruised, and pepper-sprayed.

Will the Occupy Wall Street movement succeed in winning meaningful financial reforms? Maybe. Maybe not. But in either case, what it does is remind people that there is a political movement out there in this country, free to join, that is committed to the idea that our establishment political and financial interests are not above accountability to the people. The fools will always be fooled, but the world will also see a percentage of the population that's willing to stand up to this political hustle. The bandits can make off with our cash and with our economic security, but that doesn't mean they get our tolerance and respect as well. It's on.

Wrapping baseball's grand September

2011-09-29T17:27:00.009-05:00

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":

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

2011-09-28T23:12:00.005-05:00

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

2011-09-27T21:41:00.008-05:00

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

2011-09-25T10:49:00.012-05:00

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

2011-09-21T12:22:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-18T13:42:00.007-05:00

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

2011-09-14T10:18:00.011-05:00

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

2011-09-13T21:44:00.009-05:00

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

2011-09-10T15:27:00.010-05:00

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 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

2011-09-07T20:25:00.006-05:00

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

2011-09-06T18:07:00.010-05:00

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.

There's no difference, Nader now vindicated

2011-08-31T15:56:00.009-05:00

The Obama Presidency has had the remarkable effect of finally convincing Democrats of the principle argument that Ralph Nader has been making for three decades—that there is no practical difference between Republican and Democratic governance in Washington.

The dissatisfaction with Obama has been most pronounced in respect to the corporate giveaway legislation that was disguised as health reform, the abhorrent budget deal involving the debt ceiling this summer that will gut social programs, and his unilateral, illegal bombing of Libya. The public frustration is palpable even if nobody affiliated with the party yet has the stones to challenge the president in a primary in 2012.

It’s been a gradually-rising tide of anger, but now a prominent progressive writer has taken the critique to a new level by challenging even that loudest charge against Nader’s 2000 third-party presidential campaign—the accusation that the Al Gore presidency that Nader supposedly sabotaged would have been an improvement on the Bush II presidency. As the runner-up in the 2000 campaign, Gore evolved into a loud public critic of the war in Iraq, but a President Gore would not necessarily have done anything different than Bush did in respect to toppling Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. The new champion of this theory is Salon’s Steve Kornacki:

It should be noted that when he announced his opposition to Bush’s war push in the fall of '02, Gore endorsed the basic goal of removing Hussein and securing his (supposed) WMD stockpiles. What he objected to was more the go-it-alone nature of Bush’s approach. In other words, you could also argue that Gore, still stung by the 2000 election outcome, may have been motivated in some way by his desire to stage a big, principled fight with Bush -- and that a different result in '00 might have produced a different, more hawkish response from Gore, one that would have led to … an invasion of Iraq.

As U.S. Senator from Tennessee, Gore had been very much a hawk on the issue of the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, and his would-have-been presidential advisors in 2001 and 2002 were major hawks—including, of course, his VP nominee Joe Lieberman, who would have us bomb Iran tomorrow if it were his call to make. Kornacki argues that there would have been tremendous political pressure on Gore to go to war as Hussein continued to thumb his nose at world leaders and weapons inspectors.

Statesman Gore and President Gore would have been different in other ways as well. Statesman Gore is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocate for protecting the environment. Yet as Vice President, Gore was the highest-profile advocate for NAFTA, the trade deal that favored private sector investment and expansion over environmental regulation, and that would come to devastate traditional farming practices in the U.S. and Mexico. Indeed, over the years, the required sacrifice of capitalists for the sake of a healthy planet has been "an inconvenient truth" for corporate Democrats as much as it has been for anybody.

According to this "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair poll cited by Kornacki, 56% of Americans now fully equate the concept of an Al Gore Presidency with the W. Presidency, including 48% of Democrats. Shockingly, only 44%-- of Democrats-- believe today that the world would be a better place if Gore had won the 2000 election. Consider my mind blown. But then again, those polled have now endured three years of a Democratic president and it looks a lot to them like the Republican President. Hope and Change have both taken on the discernible stench of hog manure. Ralph Nader and his small, courageous, and prophetic group of supporters await your apologies and your support for a truly progressive (third-party) presidential candidate in 2012.

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How ridiculous are U.S. drug laws? We've begun requiring prescriptions for over-the-counter cold and allergy medications because one of their principle ingredients is used to cook methamphetamine. This type of stupid prohibitionist legislation should be the only proof we need that these well-financed and parasitic medical and pharmaceutical corporations are calling the shots with lawmakers. A high is perfectly legal if there's a health industry conglomerate out there that can make a dollar off of it. The shit on the street is nothing to them but competition. Have a 24 hour bug or even just a seasonal allergy? That'll be 90 bucks for a visit to the doctor's clinic, thank you, or if you're lucky, only a $20 co-pay and half a day off of work. Not to mention that $50,000 a year it already costs to storehouse your neighbor in a private prison after his possession charge. What's up next? Am I going to have to carry around photos of my workbench on my cellphone to show the guy at Lowes that I'm not planning to sniff the wood sealant?

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I don't have a workbench.

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If my entry looks and feels different today, it's because I'm typing it on my new laptop. Oh, the places we will go...

Back on duty

2011-08-29T15:16:00.007-05:00

Let's see... what did I miss last week?

-Kim Kardashian got married on August 20th. The couple-- Kim and the NBA's Kris Humphries-- apparently found a way to pay for a $5 million wedding and even make millions of dollars through sponsorships, and television and photo rights. I can't say I was surprised to hear that Kim was able to make money on the back end.

-God cracked the Washington Monument as a sort of RSVP for his imminent return.

-In an important investigative piece, the LA Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security is spending $75 billion every year on national protections that include a "Zodiac boat" with side-scan sonar for 22-mile-long Lake McConaughy in Keith County, Nebraska.

Says Ohio State University professor John Mueller: "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year."

-Iowa Governor Terry Branstad never said that gays are subhuman. He simply said that they don't deserve the same rights as the rest of us.

-The reason I was gone last week was that I spent a week of vacation in St. Louis going to ballgames and seeing the sights. The Cardinals lost the first three games, then won two. I rode the metro train a lot, and saw much of Forest Park and the Central West End especially. Forest Park is as much a civic treasure in St. Louis as the Arch. Within it you have a world class art museum, the St. Louis Zoo, the Science Center, the Muny outdoor theater, the underrated Missouri History Museum, lakes, trails, a golf course, a tennis club, the Jewel Box greenhouse, the Boathouse restaurant, the pavilion from the 1904 World's Fair, and over a thousand acres of green space. I saw and did many things during the week, yet I'll forever remember this trip for having been there the night that the Cardinals' $120 million outfielder, Matt Holliday, left a one-run game in the 8th inning because a moth flew in his ear.

Dog days

2011-08-21T11:28:00.001-05:00

Summer is certainly winding down in a hurry. I work until 8 o'clock three nights a week at my job, and it really begins to feel like the season has come and gone when I no longer have the daylight on my drive home. This week was nothing short of tragic. There were some late day thunderstorms mixed in, still it seemed like we were losing about 20 minutes more of light each day. Gosh, I hope there's nothing wrong with the Earth's rotation.

Don't expect any posts this week. I'll be on the road as part of an end of summer odyssey of sorts. I'll be journeying to both the Rick Perry Prayer Rally to End Public Schools and Dr. Marcus Bachmann's "Pray Away the Gay" Cuddle Therapy Retreat.

During my absence, the concierge is available to assist you. Begin by pressing 7 on your room's direct dial telephone. Enjoy this YouTube clip that's been making the rounds on blogs and newsfeeds. It's the most sexist television advertisement of all-time.

Searching for Ron Paul

2011-08-16T21:08:00.026-05:00

Ron Paul finished second to Michelle Bachmann in the Ames Republican Straw Poll on Saturday. (Oh, my beloved former home of Ames, Iowa-- why must you be increasingly known for this mortifying exercise in political and media fraud?) Paul lost by fewer than 200 votes, has raised more money than any GOP candidate other than Mitt Romney, and routinely finishes in the top 3 or 4 in GOP presidential nomination polls.

But he does not exist as far as the national news media is concerned. Bachmann appeared on five national television news programs on Sunday morning. Paul had one scheduled appearance, he says, and the show cancelled on him. Iowa's largest newspaper and national papers like USA Today declared Bachmann, Romney, and recent entry Rick Perry to be the frontrunners-- in bold headlines Sunday and Monday. Paul was given the same concentration as Herman Cain.

This is how it works. Paul is not a "serious" contender, by the estimation of the insiders, because he bores them with substance. He talks about policy while Bachmann accuses her political opponents of being anti-America. He questions the existence of the Federal Reserve Bank while Perry vaguely threatens violence towards the Fed's chairman.

Paul holds a belief system (libertarian) that is well-documented and quite popular, but he is anti-Washington to his core. He defies their narratives. He appears with Ralph Nader at joint news conferences and interviews to promote the concepts of third-parties and citizen empowerment. He's a Republican that opposes the imperial wars of Bush and Obama in the Middle East, opposes the surveillance state championed by both Democrats and Republicans, and opposes Wall Street bailouts on philosophical grounds, rather than politically-expedient ones. (In other words, unlike Bachmann, Romney, and Perry, Paul opposed bailouts under President Bush before he opposed them under President Obama.)

I'm not a libertarian. If you're talking about keeping government away from the sex lives of adults, or opposing illegal overreach by law enforcement against accused enemies of the state, I'm with you, but economically, for example, laissez faire capitalism has corrupted and nearly destroyed us. We've attempted at the allowance of investing and lending without government regulation and consumer safeguards, and the result is the clusterfuck you see outside your window. Bankers made off with billions by selling garbage loan products and then betting against them. Libertarians, at this point, should be considered wholly discredited in the debate, frankly, after the reckless and totally avoidable collapse of 2008. But I respect Paul, who is a libertarian through and through, because he never, ever panders and he's fundamentally honest. And you can count the honest politicians in Washington without having to take off your shoes and socks.

That's the final reason the Washington press corps doesn't treat Paul as a "serious" contender for the Republican nomination-- even though he drew 10% of party support in 2008 and has grown his campaign and fundraising operations considerably since, along with his national profile. The candidate that is treated seriously says things that are complete and utter bullshit. He or she flat out lies. In fact, if you don't lie or attempt to spin, you're not acting "serious," in their view. The traditional political press doesn't want to discuss matters of policy. Then they would be forced to acknowledge that some political ideas have more merit, fundamentally, than others. Instead, they prefer to hear mindless, focus group-approved piffle from candidates that allow them to judge the "performance" rather than the ideas themselves. That's what we've been getting from them thus far, and unfortunately, that's what we're going to be forced to endure for the next 15 months.

FOUND!! VIDEO OF EPIC BASEBALL MOMENT THOUGHT LOST FOREVER!!

2011-08-11T21:43:00.040-05:00

Ok, first: despite the attention-grabbing and very accurate headline: Don't skip to the end! This is very important.

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1986 was a very long time ago. Your faithful blogger was only 11 years old that year. A full quarter century later, I'm lucky I can still feed myself. Ronald Reagan was President in 1986. He was lucky he could feed himself. Tom Seaver, pitching hero of the '69 Miracle Mets, was still an active ballplayer. Sade was on her first ever world tour, although she looked exactly the same as she looks today! One night in St. Louis that summer, September 15th, little-used first baseman Mike Laga, in just his 8th-ever at-bat as a Cardinal, stepped to the plate and did the unthinkable. The unimaginable.

Michael Russell Laga played in the big leagues each season from 1982 to 1990, but in only 188 total games. That's an average of less than 21 per season. The most was 41 (in '88), and the least was 9 (in both '84 and '85). He would finish as a career .199 hitter. He was in the big leagues because of his power potential but he would hit only 16 home runs in 423 career at-bats. If you mistakenly type in "Mike Lage" on a search for him online, Google will not suggest "Mike Laga."

His Cardinals teammates would often tease him about his time spent shuttling up and down between the major and minor leagues. "Sparky wants to see you," they would say. This was a cutting reference to an episode that had taken place during Laga's pre-Cardinals career with the Detroit Tigers. For the first time in his career, Laga was going to break with the Detroit club out of Spring Training due to an injury to another infielder. It was thought that the other player would need to be placed on the disabled list to start the season, but at the last minute, trainers determined that he was healthy enough to go. The very last minute. A lieutenant of Tigers manager (and "WKRP" star) Sparky Anderson was charged with finding Laga on the team's charter plane out of Florida and pulling him off. ("Sparky wants to see you.") The plane sat for several minutes on the tarmac as Laga exited, his suitcase and equipment were pulled from the baggage hold, and his teammates watched.

Fast forward to that night in 1986, however-- at bat against the Mets' Ron Darling. Laga hits a ball entirely out of Busch Stadium. An absolutely spectacular accomplishment, but a rather peculiar one in that the ball he slugged was foul. Nobody else ever did this in the history of old Busch Stadium-- not from its opener in 1966 to its final game in 2005. Not fair. Not foul. It was a cereal bowl. Nobody was thought to have even come close. I went to a lot of games in the old stadium. I sat in the upper deck most of the time-- more than 90 times. I'd say that during those games, I saw maybe ten balls even hit into the upper deck, and usually into the the first couple rows. Knowing the legend of Mike Laga, I would sometimes sit there in amazement considering how somebody could hit a ball over the upper deck and over the concrete roof far above my head. This photo is the best I can find online to sort of illustrate the extraordinary trajectory required to accomplish what Laga did. With my game mates, I would speculate where he must have hit the ball. I knew he was left-handed so it must have been pulled to the right side, but what kind of pitch location and swing could produce a ball hit so high but with so much obvious wood on the ball? I literally could not fathom it.

And here's the other thing. It's hard to remember now, but 25 years ago, many, many Cardinals regular-season games were not televised. There was no ESPN. You could see them if they played on the cable channels of the Cubs or Braves. They might be featured on the national Saturday afternoon Game of the Week, or, a few times, on something once called Monday Night Baseball. A few games were broadcast locally in St. Louis, but for a number of others, more than not, the only video recording was an overhead camera high above home plate. That camera was there to record for the league. If a brawl broke out on the field, for example, the czar of punishment for the league would need the video to see who attacked who.

The Cardinals did not have a video recording of the game, and if they did, they didn't bother to keep it for very long. Baseball is a meticulously recorded game for the consideration of history-- but it's recorded on paper. The Mets ran away with the division in 1986. By September 15th, they were probably 20 games ahead already of the second place team. There were no nightly baseball highlight shows. Today, there are highlights on a 24-hour loop. During the Cards' pennant race of 1987, as their magic number dwindled, I remember running upstairs every night to inform my Dad about whether the Cardinals had managed a win (or were winning). During the sports segment on the Cedar Rapids late local news, the Cards might be winning in the 7th inning at 10:20 at night. That score was probably an hour and half old at 10:20. Nobody in the Cardinals organization saw fit to store away a video of a foul ball hit by the #25 man on the club.

But guess who did. The New York Mets. Thank God-- again!-- for large market baseball teams. WOR-TV in New York was there. They broadcast most of the Mets games in 1986 to the tri-state area of New York, Connecticut, and Jersey, and several cable systems nationwide, and of course, they were there for a weeknight tilt between the Mets and their division rivals two weeks before the start of the playoffs. They've had video of the foul ball this whole time and didn't know that anybody was looking for it. A video company like the one that produced season highlight videos for the Cardinals' pennant-winning clubs in 1985 and 1987 (respectively, "Heck of a Year" and "That's a Winner"-- I have both of these burned to DVD if you want to borrow them) produced a video for the '86 World Champion Mets called "A Year to Remember," and I'll be damned if they didn't include this foul ball highlight just for giggles.

And now you're glad you waited. After 25 long years, Cards fans, here it is-- the foul shot heard 'round the Midwest, and the first line someday in congenial Mike Laga's obituary. The legend gets substantiated. Strike two.

Understanding the concept of "nothing to lose"

2011-08-10T12:59:00.006-05:00

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has the solution for rioting and looting: more head busting. In Great Britain, where the locals have still not grasped the proper use of a baseball bat, the street riots have moved into their fifth day as the country's Conservative leader attempts to explain why property destruction should be the exclusive domain of privileged preps.

One can argue the purpose and effectiveness of this civil disorder, but it's unarguably political in nature. To say otherwise is to deny the rage and desolation felt by individuals of the world's growing underclass. The riots were touched off by the shooting death of a civilian by a law officer charged with maintaining peace-- this was an inherently political action. These neighborhoods of English cities, pockets of injustice, racial tension, and high unemployment, and popular destinations for refugees fleeing developing-world homelands scorched by corruption, violence, and Western armies, are going to be highly-susceptible to physical clashes between their residents and the assigned, uniformed, and armed guardians of middle- and upper-class wealth. The results of the riots will be destruction, death, and sadness, but one can't help but shake his or her head at the sight and sound of the elites of their country and ours imperiously admonishing the rioters for "destroying their own neighborhoods." This is people with futures scolding the behavior of people without.

How will American politicians respond when our corrupt and unfair social and economic systems ultimately lead to large-scale violence? The United States, as much as any wealthy nation on Earth, ignores the plight of its underclass and instructs its poor to blame themselves for the necessities they don't possess. We're forced to return again to the words of warning from John Kennedy: "Those that would make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."

7 MInutes in Heaven

2011-08-05T15:49:00.002-05:00

I have a new favorite TV show. It's a web series called "7 Minutes in Heaven," an interview program on Hulu hosted by "Saturday Night Live" writer Mike O'Brien. Celebrities are fed alcohol and then they answer O'Brien's questions inside of a clothes closet in which interviewer and interviewee are uncomfortably close together. Sometimes they act out a dramatic scene in a segment called "Closet Theater." At the end, the host tries to make out with them.

There have been only four episodes so far, but there are at least three more to come. O'Brien's "SNL" colleague Kristen Wiig led off in humorous fashion. She was followed by Bravo TV producer Andy Cohen, then actor (and Cedar Rapids native) Elijah Wood. The most recent guest, actress Patricia Clarkson, became the first to fully grasp the concept of the show. Curiously, each episode clocks in at a little less than 5 minutes.

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Sade is in Chicago this weekend. At Saturday night's show, I'm going to attempt to scale the stage and present her with a ring. It's not an "engagement" ring per se, more of a "promise" ring. Like a promise to be "exclusive." Here's Sade at Live Aid in 1985.

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Quote of the week: Deadspin commenter Arthur_Digby_Sellers on the death this week of former NFL and "Police Academy" star Bubba Smith, "Somewhere, Michael Winslow is impersonating a trumpet playing Taps."

What's in a (TV) name?

2011-08-03T16:52:00.005-05:00

Run out of blog ideas? Never. How about six of the greatest TV names ever? How did I arrive at the magic number of six? That's all I could think of.

Rule 1) These are all character names that help to define the person. They're all quite colorful, but there are no "nicknames." There's no "Hawkeye," no "Gomer" or "Goober," no "Paulie Walnuts" or "Big Pussy," no "Dot Com."

Rule 2) Many TV names are very distinctive, but excluded here because I find them to be rather pandering to their audience. "Thomas Magnum"-- here's a tough guy private eye named after a gun. I get it. It's no reflection on the show, but that's too easy. Why not just call him "Peter Gunn"? Aha, because that was already taken. "Mork from Ork"? Cute, but "Mork" shares alliteration with "Mindy," and "Ork" simply rhymes with "Mork." I was 15 hundred miles away and two years old at the time, but I feel like I was at the pitch meeting. And "Ralph Malph"? Come on. Another rhymer. Nobody's last name is really "Malph." I'm serious. Google it. Nobody.

Rule 3) I tried to strain out the great names that became great simply because the characters or the actor portrayals were so wonderful. "Archie Bunker" is now an actual type of person. "Ralph Kramden" now seems like a terrific name for a guy with great ambition stuck in the lower middle of American social life. We all know what a bonehead a real-life "Clavin" can be, but nobody walked out of the first filming of a John Ratzenberger "Cheers" episode and said-- "That character "Cliff Clavin" has a great name."

There you have it. Only I fully understand the rules. Most TV character names are just afterthoughts. They're designed to fit snugly, but not get in the way. These six go the furthest above and beyond, says me.

LES NESSMAN: Good ole' WKRP-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio. "With More Music and Les Nessman." "Les Lessman" would have been too cute. "Les Nessman" is just slightly off. The bow-tied, balding radio newsman was rarely seen without a Band-Aid somewhere on his person, and he was probably not a great journalist despite the seeming respect of the agriculture industry. When the Shah of Iran was overthrown, as just one example, he missed the story completely. His lead story that day was about a pig that could do addition and subtraction. As his name suggests, he was a slight man, and often-poignantly inconsequential. In the series' 27th episode, Nessman strikes up a conversation with a co-worker's blonde, hunky beau named Steel Hawthorne. Says Steel: "I like to think that a man's name says a lot about the kind of person he is. What's your name?" Les: "Les." You can't write dialogue that good.

JACK TRIPPER: The history is entirely undocumented, as far as I know, and call me naive, but I choose to believe that the creators of "Three's Company" already had the name of their lead male character picked out when they cast John Ritter in the role. The series was based on the British series "Man About the House," in which the lead character was named Robin Tripp. But there's no evidence (on Wikipedia) that the original character, with two female roommates, was a "klutz," yet with the brilliant Ritter on "Three's Company," the stateside version of the show had itself one of the brilliant comic pratfall artists of all time. For seven seasons, Ritter "tripped" through every swinging door and over every living room couch that ABC set designers could put in front of him.

BEAVIS: When considering the names of the two principals of MTV's "Beavis and Butt-head," one's mind tends to first consider why some parent, or set of parents, would endeavor to name their child "Butt-head." But as far as we know as viewers, this dysfunctional child had no other Christian name. Yet there could have been no "Butt-head" without the perfect name to balance it. I simply love the name "Beavis," which was drawn from the last name of one of creator Mike Judge's college friends. I love the way it rolls off the tongue, its complete lack of sophistication, and most of all, the way it holds up the more outrageous, showy name without drawing attention to itself.

OPRAH WINFREY: In the mid-1970s, an ambitious but unassuming young local news reporter in Nashville, Tennessee named Gail Robinson made the professional decision to change her on-air moniker, and the rest, as they say, is broadcasting history. While watching a re-run of the Marx Brothers' film "Go West" early one morning dressing for work, Gail decided to take the name of her favorite Marx family funnyman, Harpo, spell it backwards, and begin her television ascent armed with the most bizarre, unforgettable name possible. She imagined news directors all across the country leafing through piles of reporter headshots, wondering to themselves, or out-loud, "Let's see here, should I hire this smiling lady named Jessica Payne or this one named Oprah?" The now-legendary TV talker cunningly anticipated the day when all afternoon talk shows would be given one-word titles named after their host.

MEADOW SOPRANO: This is the first one I thought of for this list. I like it not for what it says or means about the character, but what it says about the character's parents that gave her the name. In the first episode of "The Sopranos," we see mafia boss Anthony (Tony) enamored of wild ducks that have taken up residence in his swimming pool. It becomes a running theme of the series to show Tony's spiritually empty life contrasted with his ideals about where he would prefer to fit in the world. We also come to find Meadow's mother Carmela obsessed with classic literature, and intellectually-curious far beyond the stereotype of her social position. It's never referenced or even exactly alluded to, but it's so perfect that two decades before the series begins, Tony and Carmela, probably only subconsciously, gave their daughter not a traditionally-Italian or Roman Catholic name, but instead a rather "pagan" one that could help potentially separate her from her family heritage of criminal activity and the accompanying psychological burden. She was given a slightly-improved chance of escape. Of course by contrast-- and this is no accident-- her younger brother is Anthony Jr.

GOB BLUTH: On "Arrested Development," George and Lucille Bluth's oldest son is a failed magician and ventriloquist, an inveterate liar, a selfish conniver, and his parents' least favorite of their four children. He wants nothing more than the love and respect of his father, but never achieves it. He is officially "George Oscar Bluth II" and so I should probably identify him as "G.O.B." with the periods added, but acquaintances refer to him as GOB, pronounced like the biblical character of Job. The name is constantly being fouled up by others however. Is the 'o' long or short? Does the 'g' make the 'juh' sound or the 'guh' sound? Even GOB himself gets a little fuzzy on which of each it should be. When he forms a business partnership with his brother-in-law Tobias, they name the new venture "Gobias," pronounced, we're told, like "'go buy us' some coffee." Um yeah, like the guy with the $6000 suit wouldn't land on the list of the best TV names by the blogger who doesn't make that much in three months. Come on!

The Democrats circle the drain

2011-08-01T20:45:00.009-05:00

The story of America’s Congress dating back to the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1981 is largely a story of one party capitulating to the other. Republicans lead. Democrats cave. Tonight on Nightline. The often-used metaphor (at least by me) for President Obama and the Democrats is that of the kid at school getting his lunch money lifted off him every day by a pack of bullies. This week's agreement on the budget and the debt ceiling rises not quite to that level though. Imagine instead the boy that's getting robbed also being pantsed and stuffed headfirst into a garbage can. Now we're getting close.

Washington's “compromise” agreement contains no tax increases. There are no hikes for the rich even though our nation's top tier earners have seen their tax rate of 91% during the Eisenhower boom of the 1950s plummet to 35% under Bush and Obama. There was no closing of tax loopholes. There was not even an extension on unemployment benefits in the plan. These should have each been dealbreakers for President Obama. The lack of tax revenue is what caused this mess to begin with (along with our costly and immoral wars overseas), and yet the rich will wind up having to sacrifice nothing. Wall Street criminals made off with trillions, throwing a raging keg party with our money at our house in our absence. They were rewarded with even more bags of money, no new regulations in the banking industry, and now working people and the unemployed get to clean up the vomit and the garbage that the party left behind.

We’re set up now for more than $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, a new Congressional panel that will look into even further cuts in entitlements, and automatic cuts if Congress fails to find common ground during the future negotiations in which Republicans will have less incentive than ever to compromise since their opponents again demonstrated that they will eventually fold their tents. Democratic Congresswoman and shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords theatrically interrupted her long and difficult convalescence to travel to the Capitol Monday and cast a vote that will gut Social Security and Medicare. This is a dramatic and thrilling new standard for demonstrating how much strength and effort the Democrats will expend to disappoint us.

This vote provides an opportunity for the conservative con men of the political class to now destroy Medicare, a program they hate with career-motivating passions because it stands as vibrant, living proof that government-administered health care works better than a system of health care-for-corporate-profit. The “shock doctrine” has been effectively implemented in the United States. Fear of the nation’s default forced by ideological warriors of the extreme-right exposed the president again as both a coward and a fool. (Oh your god, I can't get over what a weak politician this guy is.) You have to guess otherwise that he’s just been playing the game until he can cash out financially upon leaving office.

Some Republicans didn't vote for the budget deal today, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they didn’t get everything they wanted. There were a handful left behind to be publicly angry with "the compromise,” but if a Republican voted against this deal, that’s only because that hard-line individual wants to starve the nation of even more of its basic services and protections for the poor and disadvantaged and for our crumbling infrastructure. Theirs is a curiously-popular ideology. It promotes taking money away from nursing homes and schools because a tax on yachts would restrict “individual freedom.” I don’t pretend to understand it, but I can recognize it. They know that as long as they can continue to swerve hard to the right, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will hug tight to the "middle" regardless of where the line is painted on the road. The people don’t matter now. We’ve been cut out of the process by the Citizens United ruling and the effective dissolution of the McCain/Feingold Act. It’s a government now of the corporations for the corporations by the corporations. They’re swerving us as far right as we can possibly go. Life in the fascist lane.

A People's History of TV Fest X, Part I

2011-07-25T20:50:00.007-05:00

For a recap of Saturday's Moeller TV Festival, I will only say that I have a new favorite in my memory. Like fine wines and beautiful women, TV Fest gets better with age. And like politicians, whores, and ugly buildings, it gets more respectable as well. This time thirteen good friends participated in the weekend proceedings, according to my best accounting, plus Maggie the Dog, who was only locked away in the back bedroom most of the time because of all the dirty parts.

Fortunately for those who couldn't be there, we have a written record of the event in the form of anonymous guest comments stuffed in the newly- and beautifully-decorated comment box. Here are just a few of them, presented lovingly, completely free of context, but vaguely chronological. As they are, again, anonymous, I could play no favorites in selecting them here. As I drank too much, I also cannot remember who 'fessed to which ones. They appear below entirely unedited. Any spelling, punctuation, capitalization, or factual errors are yours, not mine. And here they are..

This episode comes from Chris' one-of-a-kind bootleg collection.

pantyhose with open toed shoes????

the roofies make it tingly

Special thanks to David and Tim for coming from out of state to TV Fest 10!

I miss my trench coat days... and so does Jim. When I worked at KMRY Radio, I set my pantyhose on fire with my space heater in February

Did they say his full name is Herbadore?

We interrupt this tv fest for a quick announcement... Amy Winehouse is dead. You may return to your already scheduled programs.

if someone starts another TV fest, I will take them out.... Cobra Kai style.

Thanks to Jamie for coming from out of state-- and for proving how far he came by coming late.

I will not talk during the TV Festival.
I will not talk during the TV Festival.
I will not talk during the TV Festival.
I will not talk during the TV Festival.
I will not talk during the TV Festival.

I'm Troy McClure... You may remember me from such tv festivals as tv fest 3 and tv fest 7.

Aaron, you shouldn't laugh at the old man, young pretty wife jokes... that's you

Cellphones... vibrate. Geesh Danyell!!

Nipples at the TV Fest!!

Hot lips needs a bra.

Jello Puddin Pops in the freezer?!? Score!! :)

I love Aaron Moeller

I was going to Ask if this was Pre or Post Radar, but watching the opening credits my Question was answered. Post-Radar

It's about time those 4077 jokesters learned a lesson.

Aaron's worried about his Lube job

Is Maggie ok?

Yeah, Maggie is fine. I think she just needs to go out soon.

That's a BIG curtain. These jokes make no sense. I think Chris' demonstrative laughter & gestures constitute comments. They have a tropical theme too. I thought that WAS David Letterman. Isn't he the host? David Letterman is a jerk. Johnny should talk more. David Letterman was ugly even when he was younger.

Are we watching this episode because April is National Tooth Decay month? Is that why Johnny is doing this Dentist bit? Also, do we need to pace ourselves on the comments. I noticed Chris busted into another pack of note cards.

Johnny said Moeller

Aaron and Alex have a Polaroid television. If we shake it, will the jokes get funnier?

According to IMDB, David Letterman is still alive and still has his own show.

Secrets don't make friends, Aaron Moeller

Isn't it great that the commercials are edited out?

I bet they would let Leno drop off a fruit basket.

Moellers, may I call you Moellers? I can't criticize this tv Festival which has a long honorable tradition dating back to years well before my time...

I think there should be a time limit to comment explanations... maybe next TV Fest since I'll be a Moeller...

My dentist tells me my teeth are almost as cute as I am.

Do we need more pineapple?

Now THIS is actual television.

I wasted this card because I am a rebel!

Remember "That '80s Show"?

This is an accurate depiction of the 1970's except no one has a MASH BJ Honeycutt mustache.

I went to H.S. with Christine Moore. She was the second "Eric's sister" after the first one got fired. In October, I have my 20th H.S. reunion, I can ask Christine to come to TV Fest 10.5 as the Guest Speaker if you'd like.

Community is the best comedy on right now. He said. Fully erect.

Who would have thought Fletch would be such a dick. be the ball danny... nanananana.

this festival is NOT full of uggos. Who has drug cigarettes?

What if the theme at TV Fest Ten Part 2 was "sluts"?

I've only seen this show like 3 times & I've seen this one

Where is Alex?

Growing up we had a couch that looked like Doc's sport coat.

david letterman is a lost Moeller.

Best Carson Shows EVER!!!

eye miss Alex

When I was 31, I quit corporate America. I went to Cedar Rapids and no one gave a shit. Just an average girl with exceptional hair. Chapter 2: TV Fest 10.5.

Kenny Powers reminds me of Pete Rose. The actor throws like a girl but at least he has Moeller hair.

Show of hands please- Raise your hand if you have a dream catcher in your car.

I was worried this would be over the top, but after that episode I think I'm safe. Driving over today I heard a guy broadcasting from a car dealer. He said it's too Hot out, I'm sweating Like a cucumber in a women's prison. True story.

Why does everyone fold these cards? It's not secret.

I've seen every single episode of every season of this & I've seen this one.

for the record... dollywood Rulez!!!

(read this last) Who can do TV Fest Ten Part 2 the first weekend in December?

The News of the World

2011-07-20T09:38:00.008-05:00

Rick Santorum is finally breaking his silence on the Google-bombing of his surname years ago by author, sex columnist, and gay-rights activist Dan Savage. He's doing so now to try to raise some much-needed presidential campaign cash.

From the campaign letter linked above:

"I took the high road for nearly a decade by not dignifying these mindless attacks, then even defending his 1st Amendment right to spew this filth. And to this day, liberals like Rachel Maddow serve as Savage's lackeys on national television, pushing his smut.

Yes, he may have the right to belittle and degrade us, but that doesn't mean we have to sit by and not fight back. That is why I need your support today, and your contribution of $25, $50, $100 or $250 to my campaign will help us do just that!"

I love this story. If you're late to it, Savage targeted the then-U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania in 2003 for his anti-gay hate speech in office. The wildly-successful "Google-bombing" involved attaching the word "santorum" to this definition: "san-TOR-um (n)-- 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

Eight years after the fact, Savage's Spreadingsantorum.com is still the #1 weblink according to that dominant search engine on a check for the word "santorum." It comes in ahead of even the politician's Wikipedia page and his campaign website. I urge you to click on it today, and help to keep it on top.

Savage said, upon Santorum's announcement for the U.S. Presidency several months ago (and isn't that an amazing concept in and of itself), that he won't relent in his publicity campaign against capital-S-Santorum until the former senator makes a $5 million personal donation to the gay-marriage advocacy group Freedom to Marry. He says that if it were up to Santorum and his supporters, Savage and his husband would have never been able to adopt their son. So consider that when you read Santorum's fundraising claims that Savage started this feud.

---

It was a damaging distraction from the important "Hackgate" story, but I have to admit that that's a pretty wild video of Rupert Murdoch's granddaughter jumping up to protect him from a shaving cream pie during his "Junior Soprano" court performance Tuesday... What was that?.. No, that can't be right... But he's so old... No, I'm not writing that. I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

---

On the lighter side, Robert Baer, the CIA agent that George Clooney portrayed in the movie "Syriana," is predicting that Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu will attempt to bomb Iran by September, before the U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood.

The singer describes his art

2011-07-19T19:45:00.001-05:00

As part of an ongoing feature in which the writers at AV Club are invited by their editor to answer questions about their personal entertainment tastes, the participants were asked this week to share their “go-to” karaoke songs. It’s an interesting read if you’re in “the life” like I am. (Many of them are not.) It’s a terribly interesting concept. There are favorite songs in life that are not necessarily favorite songs to sing. Some don’t fit. Some aren’t in your vocal range or are too difficult to sing. The Club critic who suggested that karaoke is more of a theatrical performance than a vocal one is absolutely correct. I couldn’t help but want to contribute an outline of my own experience, albeit with more than just one paragraph of text. There are rumors to the effect that there will be a post-Moeller TV Fest karaoke opportunity in Cedar Rapids Saturday night, and the timing seems right then to broach the topic.

For years, I have been a Sinatra guy on stage, first and foremost. In fact, I did FS tunes almost exclusively for a long while. The Chairman is a baritone, like me, and it’s my opinion that those American standards that comprise the Sinatra songbook are the most elastic, versatile tunes there are. They’re not overly-produced, and the Sinatra songbook can also double as the Ella Fitzgerald songbook, and the Tony Bennett songbook, and the Steve Lawrence songbook, and the Michael Buble songbook, and on and on. The standards have already been recorded in dozens of distinguishable styles so when you’ve become a little familiar with many of them, it’s easy to “borrow” some affectations of each during such a “performance of persona.” By and large, mine is a Sinatra tribute act though. I perform to the arrangements of Sinatra collaborators Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Don Costa, and Count Basie. It’s at least one full part impersonation, and when the mouth mannerisms are on during a given evening, I would refer to it as a sort of “bizarro-Superman” rendition, eerily similar to Frank Jr.’s contribution to “My Kind of Town” on the “Duets II” album when FS the Younger delivered all of the hereditary vocal similarities of his pop but less of the polish and with less of that old “lots of bourbon under the bridge” sort of quality. I have ingrained at least a dozen Sinatra versions of an old chestnut like, say, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” so when I’m “ring-a-ding-dinging” my way through one, swinging it up there with those stars, I can bounce it and wail it a little differently each time. That's what jazzbos like me do.

When you attempt a Sinatra tune, though, and especially when you watch others attempt, you notice quickly how potentially hazardous it can be-- how susceptible the interpretations are-- to degradation into a harsh and dismal “lounge lizard” routine. The pitfalls I’m describing were made famous for all to see by Bill Murray with his “Nick” character on "Saturday Night Live" during the late ‘70s. Fortunately, this has never been a big stumbling block for me. To avoid this, you have to know the Sinatra recordings frontwards and back, and you have to never stop channeling the “From Here to Eternity”-to-Sands Hotel decade of the mid-‘50s to mid-‘60s, when FS was riding a Basie wave and had a Freddie Green rhythm section stampeding up from behind him. You’ll drown if you swim in the still-water pacings of the geriatric/arena concert tours of the '80s and '90s.

It’s a delicate thing to pull off, but you can’t argue with the results. I was once quietly informed that a friend of a friend had been performing Sinatra songs almost exclusively also, then stopped entirely after hearing me drop “Luck Be a Lady” and “One For My Baby” back-to-back one summer evening at a local watering hole. (Why would I make that up?) Years ago, before an office holiday party, my boss came to me nervous that nobody would participate in his scheduled karaoke proceedings for the evening. I agreed to kick off the entertainment portion of the festivities, but provided only that I be allowed to open, not with a song, but with a set. I did the first four tunes in the machine that night. It was the same night I began a lifetime practice of incorporating the Sinatra style of always crediting the songwriters and arrangers with each delivery. Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Hoagy Carmichael, Kander & Ebb—it’s important that the young people know who these cats were.

In recent years, I’ve been branching out into newer music, and by newer music, I mean only 30 to 40 years old. The natural evolution for me was into that genre of silky R&B. We know from Sinatra’s last album of new songs in 1984 (the Quincy Jones-produced “L.A. is My Lady”) that FS was moving in this direction also. As Sean “Puffy” Combs has often pointed out in interviews, Sinatra was a significant figure in creating the concept of “urban” music in the United States. He would certainly never abandon the brass instruments that mark the jazz-tinged cul-de-sac of the pop music world, and he would never say goodbye to music that makes the ladies swoon. The new go-to guys for me became Luther Vandross and especially James Ingram, a soulful baritone popular in the early and mid-‘80s who, thankfully for me, is now greatly forgotten. He laid claim to a couple enduring tunes that nobody else out there is now singing, and I never have to worry about somebody jumping up from table six and urinating on my showstoppers.

I thoroughly enjoy dueting with Aaron, the twin, who goes out singing 10 evenings for every one time that I do. We had an immediate hit recently performing a Hall & Oates tune, one that begged for future “Rock and Soul” offerings. As the “Oates” of the pairing, I simply play air guitar and join in on the refrains. It’s a winning act. Aaron’s a big, big talent in his own right. We’ve just seen a small tip of what he’s going to accomplish in this game before he’s finished. He and I could bring the house crashing down with a duet rendition of “Me and My Shadow” (the Sinatra/Sammy Davis Jr.-slightly-racially-insensitive version), but he refuses to commit the time to independently learning the source recording. He’s like a first-round draft choice athletic talent that just has to be willing to put in the work.

Having the audience support what you do is imperative. After all, at the end of the day, we do what we do for the fans, yet unlike many of the AV Club’s amateur crooners, I happen to dread sing-alongs. I’m like Benny Goodman in that way. That giant of swing used to say that when his band played, he didn’t even want to see people up dancing. He wanted them to sit and listen and pay close attention. Listen close. Now we're swingin'.

The Dirty Digger

2011-07-16T12:17:00.014-05:00

The most interesting take on Rupert Murdoch and his damaged empire of sleaze comes from his former employee Roger Ebert. The critic's blog post from Tuesday begins with this paragraph: "Mike Royko called Rupert Murdoch The Alien. He landed on the Chicago Sun-Times like a bug-eyed monster from outer space and extruded poisonous slime. I was an eyewitness." It takes off from there.

I think Murdoch's legacy in the United States is a little different than many people say it is. FOX News is blatantly biased, and frankly abhorrent to me, but he didn't invent what he does. FOX's politically-conservative defenders are correct that the television and print news organizations that came before it in the U.S. have not been objective either. Of course, the major players have rarely been liberal either, as much as they have been "Corporatist Democrat" in many cases. That would be strange if we had a liberal media in this country when we don't even have a major liberal political party for a theoretical liberal media to influence and from which to curry favor.

It's impossible for a news organization to be "objective." The job of its journalists, instead, is to be fair. You can't deliver a story from "both sides" when there are, in actually, multiple sides to every story, and when the selection of every story is, itself, an editorial decision about what's important and deserves attention. The success of Murdoch's business model owes to the fact that he has successfully exploited that misunderstanding. Of course CNN is not objective. They just claim to be. Their goal is to be perceived as politically "moderate," and in terms of what they consider a "moderate" to be. In fact, they're terminally "moderate." That's their point of view. If Eliot Spitzer's conservative co-host resigns, as she did earlier this year, Spitzer's gotta go too, because CNN can't have a show on the air hosted by a self-proclaimed liberal. They would be intruding on MSNBC's niche approach at taking on Murdoch's ratings leader.

The main difference between CNN and FOX News, aside from the decibel level, is that FOX News has a larger and more specified segment of the political population that it panders to. They're neither objective nor fair in their presentation of the news, but the utter boldness and audacity of their unfairness, from the beginning, forced the traditional CNN into a defensive posture of doubling-down on their claims of objectivity. Because they don't cop to a point of view, or possess a FOX-like slate of angry on-air personalities, they look toothless in terms of challenging any perceived political authorities, and because their news product actually doesn't challenge political and corporate authority, and therefore isn't very good, they become the "inoffensive" news alternative popular mostly just with airports and hotel bars.

The minute that FOX News confessed to being the tool of a right-wing agenda, the house of cards would start to collapse. The Air America Radio Network made that mistake. The venture failed because it admitted it had a left-wing agenda, and so the establishment political structure and its media competitors didn't have to take it seriously. It could be dismissed as political propaganda. (MSNBC learned from this and that's why it's evening lineup of news opinion programs doesn't promote itself as "liberal" or "progressive," but instead "lean(ing) forward.")

If you listen close, though, Murdoch's operation gives itself away. They advertise themselves famously as "fair and balanced" but they're also there, they say, to be an alternative to a "left-wing" agenda in other media. Well, which is it? Right-wing viewers recognize the proverbial wink and play along with the charade because they like to feel like they're in on a sophisticated plot, and a lot of poor white people, who feel crapped on by life, and who legitimately have no political power, are delusional in believing that if they support the goals of, and become pals with, rich people, those rich people will someday share some of their money with them. It's a method of political exploitation designed to keep rich men rich, and it's been Rupert Murdoch's only professional agenda for almost six decades.

MLB All-Star Game thoughts 2011

2011-07-12T23:20:00.005-05:00

--First, thanks to Derek Jeter for choosing not to participate tonight in Phoenix. If he were there, the broadcast on FOX would have been unwatchable.

--Congratulations to Jeter for getting his 3,000th career hit on Saturday. Again, it was his 3,000th, not his 5,000th, but fans were treated to a month of media attention to rival Babe Ruth's 60-home run season if Ruth were to rise from the grave and hit 60 this year. All perspective has been lost. It's a nice achievement but 27 other players have done made it to 3,000. It's 158 more hits than the Nationals' Ivan Rodriguez has. If "Pudge" Rodriguez lasts long enough to reach this milestone, and incidentally, become the first-ever catcher to do so, don't expect the same fawning by reporters.

I admit I was impressed when Jeter hit 3,000 on his odometer on a day that he also went 5 for 5. Had that ever happened before, I wondered? Turns out Craig Biggio did it, and only four years ago. Funny, I don't remember that feat tipping the world off its axis. Only one of these two games will be the subject of a "remember when" ESPN special with sappy background music three decades from now. Jeter's been a solid player for a decade and a half-- a productive batsman in a hitters park in a hitters league in a hitters era with a buttload of well-paid teammates surrounding him. He's also been possibly the league's dullest superstar and one of the league's worst shortstops, a natural outfielder playing his career out of position so that his boss can buy more sluggers to roam on the grass behind him and bat behind in the order.

--The Home Run Derby is one of the worst events in sports. The competition has more in common with the strongman hammer game on the midway than with baseball facility and skill. Also, you can't watch it on television because ESPN assigns Chris Berman to do the play-by-play.

--Several All-Star selections begged off their involvement with this year's game. Meanwhile, the best player since Hank Aaron sits at home healthy, and desperate for at-bats. Albert Pujols won the National League's Decade Triple Crown for the 'oughts, the first to win a Decade Triple Crown since Rogers Hornsby in the 1920s. He has never failed to hit .300 for a season, or hit 30 home runs, or drive in 100 runs. He's a top 10 MVP finisher every year of his career, and #1 or #2 seven out of 10 years. Halfway through this season, his average is only .280, with 18 home runs, and 50 RBIs. Eighty-four men were chosen for this year's game-- eighty four-- and Pujols wasn't one of them. Not named by the fans, not named by the manager, not named by the players. Yet the big question everybody's asking? Where is Derek Jeter and his 17 extra-base hits?

--In a heavily-promoted MLB poll this summer, Stan Musial's game-winning, 12th inning home run in 1955 was voted by fans as the greatest All-Star Game moment in history. It was announced as the winner yesterday. While this is a nice little addition to the historic legacy of the Greatest Cardinal of Them All, I don't believe this for a second. I'm not just saying that it's untrue. I'm saying that somehow the voting was rigged. Even Cardinals fans hardly know about this event. In the final round of voting, Stan's homer in '55 beat out Cal Ripken's home run in his final All-Star Game in 2001. Now I'm sure it was better than that. I watched that game and that was no big deal. But the deserved winner would be the moment that Musial beat out in the first round-- Pete Rose barreling into home plate and taking out catcher Ray Fosse to win the 1970 contest. That was the only time in history that a moment rose (no pun intended) to the level of defining one of the game's "star" players. It was also the game at its best-- Rose going all out to win an exhibition because-- now you'll have to pardon the cliche-- pride mattered.

Musial got a "make good" from Bud Selig on this somehow because the commissioner screwed the pooch in 1999 when he announced that the annual All-Star Game MVP award would be named after that pathetic John Wayne-impersonator Ted Williams, instead of Musial, who played in more All-Star Games than any player in history (24), and hit more All-Star Game home runs (6) than any of the rest. The voting fans screwed Musial when they left him off the All-Century team in '99, and the commissioner had to add him to the final team roster. Then the even-more elderly Musial got shafted again in 2009 when the Cardinals hosted the All-Star Game, and FOX botched its coverage of the pregame ceremony and President Obama was invited to throw out the first pitch instead of Stan the Man even though the President never hit a single All-Star Game home run in his life. Musial is now 90, and it was announced earlier this year that he's been diagnosed and living with Alzheimer's. Then he wins this contest. I'm a Cardinals and Musial fan, and I can recognize charity when I see it.

--The issue of players blowing off the game this year is overblown. It's mostly Yankees that didn't show-- Jeter, Mariano Rivera, CC Sabathia. They must not think much of their team's postseason chances if they don't care which league has World Series home-field advantage.

--Just a reminder again: You came to the wrong place if you want to hear some criticism of Bud Selig for the whole All-Star Game/World Series home-field thing. I love it. It's the one thing he's gotten right. I'm a National Leaguer to the bone-- and just old enough to remember a time when the league distinctions, the rivalry, and this game had meaning. It's an aesthetically and morally-superior league. For decades, the NL was the more racially-integrated league. It's been remarkably competitive and balanced for over a century, compared with a shameful lack of parity in the other. Even now it's distinct in its standings-- the losingest team in its history (Philadelphia) has been largely the dominant club for the last three seasons. The cities and ballparks are much better-- although the uniqueness of Montreal is missed. You've gotta take the San Francisco Bay over Oakland, Wrigley over Sox Park, Dodger Stadium over the Orange County freeways, Jackie Robinson Field over Steinbrenner Manor. Most importantly, National League teams know enough to only start nine players on each side. They actually possess the ability to count. The entire American League has been guilty of an ongoing five-yard penalty since 1973.

I've posted this a hundred times now, but the argument against a mere exhibition game determining an important element of the postseason schedule doesn't hold water because the old system was more flawed and nobody ever complained about it. What was the old system for determining which league champion had home-field advantage in the World Series? They alternated every year. Win 110 regular-season games and sweep through the playoffs? Too bad, it's an odd-numbered year. It can't get more random than that in weighing actual merit. The old system helped win the 1982 World Series for the Cardinals, but it cost them both the '85 and '87 Series.

--The game just ended. Lovely indeed. As I write this, Giants manager Bruce Bochy is high-fiving his victorious NL comrades on their 5-1 victory. There's no doubt which is the most dominant league now. That makes two of these games in a row (42-38 lifetime), and NL teams are winners of three of the last five World Series, even though they only had home-field advantage in one of those series. Congrats again, National League. The other side could have used a little more Derek Jeter, I guess.

Disaster Capitalism

2011-07-11T20:32:00.018-05:00

President Obama should—but won’t—channel this famous line from Michael Corleone in "The Godfather, Part II" during budget negotiations in Washington. Remember this one: “You can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing. Not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.”

There should be no compromise on Social Security and Medicare. None. No raise in the age requirement for entitlement benefits. No give whatsoever. Working people have sacrificed enough during this economic fiasco that has destroyed the country they built. They bailed out the “too big to fail” banks and the perpetrators walked off with billions. We’ve sent our sons and daughters, not the sons and daughters of the rich, to die for corporate investments and profit overseas. According to a retired Pentagon official speaking on NPR, taxpayers are ponying up more than $20 billion annually in Iraq and Afghanistan-- on air conditioning alone! That one line item in the defense budget is bigger than the entire annual budget of the space program. What we’re witnessing is a philosophy in action called “disaster capitalism,” and it was exposed in all of its vulgar detail by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book “The Shock Doctrine,” the most important non-fiction book published in the English language in the new century.

It's a strategy implemented by the oligarchs in Chile, in Argentina, in Indonesia, in Russia, in Poland, in China, in Sri Lanka, in South Africa, and in a myriad of other countries. The global corporatists wreck the national economies with “top-down” strategies of deregulation and the decriminalization of financial “reforms” they know to be bogus-- slashing taxes for the rich, hijacking elections, and suppressing populist dissent. Their promise of increased corporate freedom is more jobs, but the jobs do a vanishing act instead. The economic policies are actually designed to fail. They’re implemented over the will of the people so that social protections like health care, unemployment insurance, and aid to women and children can be gutted.

Now these policies of the Milton Friedman apostles have come home. They shifted into high gear in the States with the bailout of the Wall Street banks in 2008 and 2009. The looters made off with millions, none of the top bank executives were forced to stand for their crimes, and no new safeguards came into law, allowing innumerable future fleeces to take place. The resulting debt crisis allows the political henchmen to strip us of our necessities.

The “bipartisan” panels being promoted as saviors are full of shit. They're packed with "moderate" politicos vetted by Wall Street. The screaming monkeys of our corporate media are full of shit too. Their proverbial bread is buttered on one side. America’s crisis of debt and economy will not be solved by “compromise.” The rich caused this. The rich—and the rich only—should fix it. End the tax loopholes. Double or triple the tax rates on $100,000 and more in individual annual income. If the corporate Republicans and Democrats won’t back this, shut the whole thing down. Be willing to take this to the voters in 2012, and see if the plutocrats are willing to do the same. Stand up for Social Security and the public protections that comprise the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Then watch vote-eligible majorities, for the first time ever, race to the polls.

Alas, as I said earlier, this won’t happen. President Obama already extended the Bush tax cuts without a peep, and now has reportedly offered to raise the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare benefits during the current negotiations. We need a fighter willing to go toe-to-toe. Instead, we get this. Obama's role is as a congenial, photogenic puppet to more powerful men running his party and his presidency. Men who, bizarrely, see compromise as not only the means, but the end itself, and don't care at all for what's being weighed in any potential budget compromise. Men who can’t see, or choose not to see, the larger picture of the corporate destruction of a nation because they’re being simultaneously compensated for their indifference via their personal net worths. They promise us that we'll make it through these hard times just fine, and they're quite right-- if by "us," they mean them.

The first half

2011-07-07T18:48:00.007-05:00

Well, we could sit here twiddling our thumbs until Justices Scalia and Thomas disagree on a legal opinion, or I could get on with it already and finally reveal the screening schedule for Moeller TV Festival X-- Part I.

Again, this momentous, decennary event will be held at Aaron and Alex's condo in Cedar Rapids on Saturday, June 23rd (with Part II of course to follow late in the year, under the holiday lights, in Des Moines). If you haven't already, it's not too late to confirm your FREE participation at TV Fest by RSVPing to atmoeller@hotmail.com or christophermmoeller@gmail.com. It starts at noon-ish, food and drink are provided, there's a luau theme, and I haven't forgotten that I promised you a schedule earlier in the post.

'Tis...

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" WKRP in Cincinnati #54 1/3/81

"Mr. Plow" The Simpsons #68 11/19/92

"My Funky Valentine" Modern Family #15 2/10/10

"Bar Wars VII: The Naked Prey" Cheers #264 3/18/93

"April Fools" M*A*S*H #194 3/24/80

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (unknown number) 4/18/86

"Not Without My Daughter" Arrested Development #21 4/25/04

"Prom Night" That '70s Show #19 3/7/99

"Modern Warfare" Community #23 5/6/10

"I Do Do" 30 Rock #80 5/20/10

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (unknown number) 6/27/86

"Episode 5: Beginning a New Audio Book" Eastbound & Down 3/15/09

Oh, Doesn't he ramble

2011-07-04T21:38:00.005-05:00

The season two finale of "Treme" poured my soul out tonight. Because of the holiday, I watched the episode an evening late, on-demand, but I realize I'm still way ahead of the curve. None of you have probably seen it yet, yet someday you will, and when you do, I predict that you'll be grateful just to be of an animal species that's capable of creating such an affirming piece of life, depth, and emotion.

No spoilers, but this episode was especially engaging for me because it centered around New Orleans' JazzFest, the purpose of our annual sojourn each spring down the river from Iowa. But like the other NOLA calendar events, the festival is just the backdrop. The show is really about these extraordinary inventions of character, so humanistically presented, from this very real place, that grow more and more appealing with each passing hour. I am amazed at the cast and crew's abilities to create drama without having at least one villainous character in the mix-- except perhaps for George Bush and Dick Cheney, though they're never seen. The entire package represents a new peak elevation for the stage and screen in terms of recreating reality in fiction. I'm not afraid to make that claim. One generation grows from the next. It's equal parts passion, joy, and tragedy, and greater than that, it is as close to an uncompromised artist's vision as TV has ever supported.

I'm really in no position emotionally right now to try to describe it more to you. What I'm really saying is that you people (you HBO-sponging cheapskates) need to start watching or catch up with this show so that I have somebody to talk to about it! OK, that was wrong of me to call you a name right there, even inside parentheses, and I'm sorry. You've got your own things going, I realize. But this program needs to become a priority right now. Season one (on DVD) will start off slow for you, but don't we say that now about all of the best dramatic series. The first season has a wonderful climax that helps to define the show's grand purpose, and then you can settle in and enjoy season two as it rockets into orbit. ("Treme" has been renewed for a season 3 in 2012.)

You need to understand what HBO is doing here. They are giving one man and his team full autonomy to create something. According to creator David Simon, there is absolutely no interference. And they certainly realize that this show will never be popular. It will never be lucrative for the network. It might even lose money. The network has given Simon this autonomy due to the artistic results of their previous investment in his series "The Wire"-- and that show had shitty ratings also. The honchos at HBO seem to be doing this for the most fucked-up reason that ever existed in art-- they respect you. It's almost enough to strip a guy of his long-entrenched cynicism.

It wasn't always apparent in season one, but the series is actually about making art. And it's about indifference to art in the sense that New Orleans is a most artistic city that the rest of the United States fails to fully understand and appreciate. Like "The Wire," it's about the importance of our urban life. It reveals the politicians' lies about small-town values being American values. As Simon has pointed out even this week, the war is over-- and the country life lost. Take it from your old pal, Joe Dirt from Newhall, we're not going back. Our future is going to be in how we build and re-build our cities, about whether we're going to gate ourselves off from our neighbors or share a sense of place. "The Wire" was about studying and explaining the city. "Treme" is about feeling for it. It's a kick. I don't know how you've been spending your Sunday nights for the last three months, but they haven't been more fun than mine. Join me.

Chris glares back at the rockets' red glare

2011-07-02T16:48:00.009-05:00

Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays. It's an occasion for Americans to take a much-needed break from their constant fretting over the plight of other nations and pay a little tribute to their own. It's also the season for fireworks.

When once asked if he liked motorcycles, George Carlin responded, "I like motorcycle accidents." That's essentially the way I feel about fireworks. Then there's also the way Mort Sahl said he felt about General William Westmoreland during the Vietnam War, when the Army Chief of Staff would appear on television decorated with all of his medals--Distinguished Service, Bronze Star, et al. "Very impressive!" Sahl said, "If you're twelve."

During the summer, fireworks go off in downtown Des Moines at about 10pm every other Friday night following a ballgame. From where I can live, I can hear them loud and clear, but never see them. This is the equivalent of being a guy who has to take the neighbors' dog out to take a shit. I get all of the inconvenience, none of the perks. When the illicit firecrackers, bottle rockets, and Roman candles, up from Borderfuck, Missouri, start exploding around the neighborhood this time of year, I root openly for user error. Nothing life-threatening, mind you, maybe just some jagged fragmentation cutting through the ankle or shin of the principal attendant. A blown off digit would send a powerful message to others that would try to disturb my time and peace away from work.

Aerial, civic-related fireworks have their advantages, I concede. They mark important home runs and victories by the home team. They make it easy for me to beat the traffic when they're tacked on to the end of more interesting outdoor events. Our ozone layer is probably beyond saving anyway so their damage to our air quality can be mostly ignored after the smoke has blown away. I really just don't need to see any more fireworks displays for the rest of my life. They don't excite me. They're loud, and the rhythm of their explosions is not made more appealing, aesthetically, by coordinating it with the greatest hits of Lee Greenwood. They disrupt the natural world, which for me is plenty colorful and exciting as is. And the displays never change. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any revolutionary new technique or design employed in the pyrotechnic industry for years. They're a modicum of danger combined with almost no feeling of adventure. I can top both by staying at home and putting random household items in the microwave.

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Broken washing machine holiday update: I haven't had to resort to bathtub washing yet. Turns out it's easier so far just to keep buying new clothes. Also, I still haven't invested in a washboard. I got to thinking: Why not save more money and just use my abs? I mean, am I right, people?

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A Groucho anecdote from Dick Cavett's book "Talk Show" (Disclosure: the earlier Mort Sahl line comes from that book also): Groucho was lunching with the late John Guedel, whose name you've seen as producer on the credits of "You Bet Your Life." A couple approached the table and the man said, "Groucho, we just adore you. Say something insulting to my wife." Groucho looked her over and said to the husband, "With a wife like that you should be able to think of your own insults."

A right to die

2011-06-28T23:33:00.004-05:00

I was remiss in not acknowledging the passing of the euthanasia advocate, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, earlier this month. I decided to retrace my steps after reading the recent Stefan Kanfer biography of Humphrey Bogart (“Tough Without a Gun”). The author’s descriptions of the last few months of Bogie’s life in 1956 and early ‘57 after the actor had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer were plainly horrifying. During surgery to remove the growing tumor, he was sliced open diagonally across his body from shoulder to hip. Then during his recovery from the strenuous operation, his coughing fits—already extreme and alarming to others before surgery—caused him to literally cough his stitches loose and they had to be resewn. By the time he slipped into a coma months later, and following a second futile surgical attempt to excise the tumor, one of Hollywood’s most iconic figures and an enduring embodiment of the toughness adjective had dropped in weight to under 80 pounds. His young son and daughter were kept from him in his final days because of his concerns, and his wife’s concerns, that the children would only remember their father as a frail, dying man.

I thought of these passages again when I researched online news reports of Dr. Kervorkian’s death back on June 3rd, and I came across this comment from Ned McGrath, the communications director of Detroit, Michigan’s Archdiocese: “It is both ironic and tragic that Kevorkian himself was afforded a dignified, natural death in a hospital, something he denied to those who came to him in desperation, only to be poisoned and have their bodies left in places such as vans and motel rooms.”

To which I say: Fuck you, Ned McGrath. I cannot imagine a more upside-down and misrepresented assessment of Dr. Kevorkian’s principled and unselfish medical work than that. McGrath's skewed statement belongs in the sewer next to the argument that the ordination of women into the clergy is a moral offense equal to the raping of children. It belongs next to the defense that people in the developing world should be denied contraceptive devices when they’re dying by the millions-- mostly poor and powerless women-- from unprotected, and often forceable sex and sexually-transmitted disease. It falls in next to the idea that one person's religion can dictate whom another person chooses to love and marry. McGrath is certainly familiar with these other opinions. He's paid to promote them. Speaking in his professional capacity, as he was earlier this month, it makes him a less than ideal candidate to offer worthy perspective on the dignity of life and death, or about what exactly it is that poisons us.

Jack Kevorkian is one of the heroic figures of our time-- indeed, a man far ahead of it. While it’s generally understood that his celebrated right-to-die efforts posed a monumental challenge to a lagging legal system in this specific area of jurisprudence, it’s less often acknowledged that his work was also designed to serve as a damning indictment of his own profession. His was the argument that a doctor has the duty to serve his or her patient above all else. Not the business of medicine. Not peripheral cultural interests. And not any perceptions of an omnipotent, incorporeal being or mythology.

It’s rather pathetic to consider that through several years of very high-profile activity and the advocacy of a rather widespread and not-at-all-uncommon societal attitude about euthanasia, Kevorkian carried the banner of ethics in this area almost-singlehandedly in the United States. The rest of the medical field remained-- you’ll pardon the expression-- dead silent. It's collective arrogance by his colleagues to claim that Kevorkian is the only physician "playing God" in the field when that's precisely what medical persons are required to do almost every day of their working lives. Sadly, the right of the individual to determine how much they have to suffer before dying does not exist in this country, yet doctors are allowed to employ the preferred method of death of the Nazi concentration camps by starving and thirsting their comatose patients to death, sometimes over the course of days, and even weeks. This is unconscionable.

Many of Kevorkian’s patients had not been diagnosed “terminal” cases, this is true. But almost by definition of the intent, the longing for death by these individuals was often heightened by the fact that their “natural” end was not imminent. A period of continued suffering was often indeterminate. It’s also true, as Dr. Kevorkian once stated, that “we’re all terminal” from a very legitimate perspective.

Since the peak of Kevorkian’s advocacy in the late '90s, three U.S. states have legalized physician-assisted suicide, but even on this short list, the individual state laws each restrict the action to “terminal” cases. The level of physical pain cannot be a motivating factor. The combination of a medically-diagnosed sound mind and the principle of self-determination is legally meaningless.

Humphrey Bogart was one of the toughest of them all, but the thought certainly must have crossed his mind at some point to put an early end to his suffering, and this was a very different time in our history. Another tough guy, former NFL star Dave Duerson, suffered from crippling and unceasing headaches, a symptom of a concussion-related neurodegenerative disease that stemmed from his football career. Seeking permanent relief, he shot himself to death in the chest in February. He chose his heart as his gun's target, rather than his head, because he knew that it was important for other football players to have scientists be able to study his brain and his illness. A bullet shouldn't have been needed at all.

We're a very long way from where our laws and our values need to be. Religious ethics are drowning out medical ethics in our country's hospitals, and our pathological fear of death is suppressing freedom, reason, and our very humanity.

The cycle ends

2011-06-26T18:49:00.000-05:00

You might recall from a previous post that I've been having washing machine problems. When the rotation begins, the unit shakes violently and the emanating noise measures in pitch and volume nearly equal to that of a space shuttle launch.

The repairman was out to the house Friday, and his professional prognosis was a dire one. Let's see if I can relate accurately what he told me, a mere layman: the clothes bin rests on three hydraulic shock supports that balance it and give it the spin and centrifugal force needed to keep my clothes sudsy clean and help keep the general odor of my person passable for discerning members of the opposite sex. One of the three supports came unhinged, causing both a wildly uneven spin and the hideous noise. During the ensuing melee, a second support had been busted and the third one bent. To repair the machine, the labor cost alone would be upwards of $800. After I quickly agreed with the repairman's inference that such an investment would be unwise, he counseled that the best course of action would be to keep the machine in as comfortable a position as possible, confine visits of friends to a precious few, and pre-order the funeral arrangements.

Because I'm thrifty, my immediate thoughts drifted to any and all alternatives to buying a new machine, which previous research suggested might run in the neighborhood of $1200. You see, a major issue with the price tag is that my current arrangement and the allowable space is for a stackable washer/dryer combo. The dryer still spins like a dream and evaporates moisture like a motherfucker, but since its conjoined sibling is a terminal case, that seemingly makes it a terminal determination for both.

Or is it? I have a clothes washing problem only. If I can just get them wet, I can easily get them dry. I do have options. First, there's the public laundromat, site of so many past visits, but I hate to go back. Leaving public machines behind was my personal triumph of 2007, and also I parted with them under harsh words. There's the local dry cleaner, and I've heard tell of a newfangled process called Martinizing, but this still results in the away-from-home inconvenience, and I'm not sure I can envision my socks and my oh-so-delicates in one of those plastic bags. No, the only alternative is some old-fashioned bathtub washin'.

The repairman wasn't gone three minutes before I was searching online for 'how-to's and helpful hints on hand-washing clothes. The web experts all seemed to agree this was a feasible option. It won't hurt your tub. It's a very "green" alternative actually. (In fact, I could probably organize a Des Moines eco-laundry cooperative.) The use of rubber gloves would probably be a good strategy, they say, to protect my hands, and that's no problem. I've got hundreds of those. And the machine impact on your clothes can be closely replicated by hand. It just requires more time and a lot more effort.

When I was a kid, the family kitchen was decorated with old-fashioned bath and kitchen devices. An old churn of some kind sat high upon the shelf. I think there was a small handsaw hanging from the wall, and I know for sure there was a washboard hanging next to the "old-timey" telephone. I should investigate the current whereabouts of that washboard as I'm not sure how easy a new one would be to find in stores. If you look up the Wikipedia page for washboards-- and this is true- here, I'll show you-- there's just a one-paragraph description under the heading "The washboard used for laundry." Then there's nine paragraphs for "The washboard used as a music instrument." The washboard is just about the most anachronistic musical instrument that one can name, yet how sad is it that the device is even more anachronistic when used for its original purpose? Very, I guess.

Oh well, I've rarely been described as "cutting edge." Or am I actually right at the very tip of the sharp precipice? After all, the eco-laundry in Portland, Maine calls itself "The Washboard," and you know how cool people in Portland, Maine are. My summer loads are light anyway, and I'm committing to at least giving this the old college try. As a modern appliance, the washing machine has to be considered a luxury of the Western world, right? Not a necessity. Now I'm gonna prove it. This is not a tragedy, it's an opportunity. I mean it's a washing machine, right? It's not a television.

Civic tributes

2011-06-22T20:11:00.000-05:00

In two different pockets of the country, a debate rages about the proper way to honor (or whether to honor at all) a locally-born and iconic rock 'n roll star. AV Club has the story this week about the popularity of pilgrimages and fan-made memorials in Seattle to the late Kurt Cobain. Dead since 1994, Nirvana's front man is still not officially remembered by the municipality even though many people, as well as Google Maps, refer to Viretta Park, near the location of his suicide, as Kurt Cobain Park. The city of Seattle just named a park for rocker Jimi Hendrix last year, 40 years after the guitarist's death.

In St. Louis, Chuck Berry is a controversial figure even at the age of 84. A major progenitor of the rock genre of course, Berry is still regarded as a community liability by many St. Louisans because of his criminal rap sheet. Last month, a petition with 100 signatures was submitted to the city council opposing the use of public funds to accommodate on city property a bronze statue depicting a guitar-strumming Berry. While the issue of tax usage was primarily cited by the opposition leader, the 86-year-old Elsie Gickert also comes perilously close to making herself a caricature of the small-minded old bitty, telling reporters that she objects to the plan because of her views on Berry's morality.

In both the Cobain and Berry cases, objections to civic endorsements seem to be based not on distaste for to the two artists' once-controversial musical style, but on perceptions of the hedonistic lifestyles that have always surrounded the music-- Cobain for his drug use, Berry for his court convictions on sex and property crimes. Among those three famous vices of the post-war era-- sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll-- it's the sex and drugs that seem to linger now as the least-settled matters within America's collective consciousness.

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Just when we think our nation's health care problems have been solved, an unemployed man in North Carolina has to rob $1 from a bank for the purpose of getting free health care in prison-- and even that didn't work.

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Last week on Bill Maher, MSNBC's Chris Matthews predicted, with some derision but without any hesitation in his speech, that Minnesota Congresswoman (and Waterloo, IA native) Michele Bachmann would be the 2012 GOP Presidential nominee. How the IRS tax attorney-turned-anti-tax crusader has risen from a frothing-at-the-mouth-from-the-backbench, female equivalent of Steve King to a serious contender for this prominent position speaks volumes about the modern political process in the United States-- and none of it good. Old media sees her as viable because she projects Sarah Palin's aging beauty queen vibe, follows Palin's playbook in doubling down every time she jumbles her facts, but unlike Palin, isn't getting dogged at every turn by a Levi Johnston or Kathy Griffin. But here's the positive part: Her political ascendency makes her now worthy of a vicious and colorful Matt Taibbi takedown in the new issue of Rolling Stone.

The 21st century Hunter S. Thompson calls her "grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies." She is also "at once the most entertaining and the most dangerous kind of liar, a turbocharged cross between a born bullshit artist and a religious fanatic, for whom lying to the infidel is a kind of holy duty."

Bachmann has gained almost instant traction among GOP voters nationally, and shan't be laughed at by all the others, Taibbi says, because there are an awful lot of Americans "who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously." This Bachmann is in it to win it.

And a dog to be named later...

2011-06-20T20:30:00.012-05:00

As a kid sometime during the 1980s, I remember buying a book at the mall that chronicled the most bizarre stories in the history of baseball. I no longer have the book, and I don't remember its title, but I remember that many of the stories contained in it, even the ones that I've heard repeated multiple times since, I recall first reading about in this particular book. This list of bizarro happenings included the tale of Bill Veeck sending a midget up to bat for the St. Louis Browns during a game in 1951. Most of you know that one. It included the story of the sullen and violent Ty Cobb going into the stands in 1912 and pummeling a heckler who had lost both of his hands in an industrial accident, and one about the early 20th century fad of ballplayers attempting to catch baseballs dropped from city skyscrapers or from the Washington Monument. You might know those. And it also featured the story of a pair of New York Yankees pitchers and roommates (both left-handers, of course) who swapped their wives and children with each other in 1972. You really ought to learn about that one.

Just a few weeks into what would become George Steinbrenner's long reign as owner of the Yankees, it was reported that a former 20-game winner, Fritz Peterson, and his wife Marilyn were attempting this delicate maneuver alongside two-time 10-game winner Mike Kekich and his wife Suzanne. The off-season deal in the winter of '72-'73 turned out to be about as imbalanced as Brock-for-Broglio. Mike and Marilyn crashed and burned. Fritz and Suzanne are approaching a 38th wedding anniversary. Fritz also came to Christ after his playing days, and has a new career writing books that speculate about which Yankees all-time greats are in heaven and which ones aren't. (I'm not making this up. Most recent title: Mickey Mantle is Going to Heaven.)

Now here's the best part. Ben and Casey Affleck, along with Matt Damon, are attached to a production now approved at Warner Brothers (entitled "The Trade") that will dramatize this entire episode. All three artists are South Boston natives, of course, as well as died-in-the-wool Red Sox fans. New York magazine has a must-read article about the Petersons and Kekichs in their most recent issue, and in it, Ben Affleck makes very little attempt to disguise the fact that he was drawn to the story-- and he may direct the film as well as star in it-- because it portrays the Yankees organization, as a whole, as detestable enough to have its players making off with each other's wives. As a viewer, I can appreciate a hatchet job on the Yankees. Hopefully, it's the type that will cause Billy Crystal to cough up his peanuts and Cracker Jacks. But as baseball's sexual deviants go, and they would seem to be legion, Peterson and Kekich at least deserve points for imagination. And definitely for audacity and aspiration.

Among the ruins

2011-06-16T20:54:00.003-05:00

The city of Vancouver is so cool that even when it's rioting, it's doing so with style. I don't even care if this photo is staged (because obviously the couple is performing to some extent), it's still the coolest image ever. It's romantic, frightening, and inspiring all at the same time. It's even ironic in the sense that the riot is so pointless that the subjects seem to be goofing on it.

Monday Night Videos

2011-06-12T20:19:00.009-05:00

When the decade of the 1980s began, I was in preschool. By the time it ended, I had already become the man I am today. What I experienced in-between was the golden age of music videos.

Here are six of these classic short films, each smothered in creamy '80s deliciousness:

1) Huey Lewis and his band mates engage in PG hijinks at the beach and on the boardwalk.

2) Madonna succeeds in typecasting Danny Aiello as gruff but lovable Italian-American patriarch.

3) Paul Simon trades in Artie for one of the stars of "Community". Hint: It's not Ken Jeong.

4) Greatest Duran Duran song? "Hungry Like the Wolf?" Common mistake. It's "Rio".

5) Performing arts teacher Lionel Richie is drawn to the inner beauty of a blind female student that also has a lot of outer beauty.

6) Sade-- my wife-to-be after she overcomes her phobia about living in the states-- gets tangled up in a bit of fateful espionage. This is the expanded version of a classic.

More on Weiner's namesake

2011-06-09T20:01:00.016-05:00

Today was an important day in the progression of the Anthony Weiner scandal. It was the day that new political stories began to move in and take its place in the headlines. At last the news cycle is moving on. But not here. I've still got some stuff:

I’m getting a little annoyed by the sanctimonious public defenses of Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, by complete strangers. The woman obviously doesn’t deserve to be heaped upon either, but she did enter into a social contract with a man that purposely thumbs its nose at human biological urges, and furthermore, she did it with a congressman. Didn’t she watch late night comedy shows while growing up? That’s what these guys do. They get Fergalicious. Huma's attracted to power, or at least she coincidentally found it. She worked for Hillary Clinton for years as a top aide, and we’re told often how personally magnetic both of the Clintons are. Then she marries a powerful and brash, dare I say cocky, man cut from the same cloth. If she’s surprised by her husband’s general response to his professed female admirers or to his general weakness towards the seductiveness of celebrity and power, than that makes one of us. While we’re on the subject of unimportant issues and details, I’d like to point out that she’s a gorgeous woman, and don’t think that that doesn’t help in making this a much sexier story inside Washington, D.C., possibly the unsexiest city in America, or as many have called it-- Hollywood for ugly people.

Unlike Joan Walsh of Salon, I don’t find new reports of Abedin’s pregnancy to be a game changer in respect to my opinion on Weiner's career. As a fellow feminist, I actually resent the implication that a pregnancy puts Abedin in a more psychically-or emotionally-wounded position. Pregnant ladies lose some mobility but they aren't more vulnerable in this way. Pregnant ladies can kick ass and take down names. (Didn't Walsh ever see "Fargo"?) Also, I'm not sure I've been able to locate the "coordinated right-wing effort" Walsh refers to in trying to drum Weiner out of office, unless she means ultimately putting a candidate up against him in the general election next year. Every story I read is about Democrats trying to do the man in, but then Walsh spends most of her professional life covering for Democrats. Weiner's political future is his family's decision, not ours. In fact, as I stated yesterday, I’m prepared to butt out of the couple's personal life entirely.

Dana Goldstein of The Nation is worried because she gave in to temptation and looked at the penis pic online, and though she respects Weiner as a pol, she fears she now won’t be able to envision the congressman at his press conferences without thinking about his junior. Like her, I clicked on a link to the photo online, but my conclusion from it is that this danger is overstated. I was in plenty of locker rooms growing up, and I’ve seen plenty of deals in my time. To a man, when I see any of those guys today (some of whom read this blog), I can assure you-- and them-- that I'm not thinking about their deals, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual. I’ve also seen a few naked women in my time (not bragging if it's true) and when I converse with them after the fact, I don’t find myself distracted. I can function this way because I’m a mature adult. As studies probably tell us (I'm so confident about it that I'm not even going to look it up), we're actually better off knowing. When you're really curious about something, it's the element of imagination that always makes things much worse. I’ll give you an example. Try to imagine Newt Gingrich’s newt. Ugh. Pretty hideous, right? You’ve never seen it, but that doesn’t make the idea of it any better. I mean there's only so many kinds it can be, and each one is worse than the last to consider. And any putz blogger is capable of putting the idea in your head.

During all of his famous indiscretions, we never saw Clinton's slick willie, but one of his accusers (I lose track of which) described it for us. Remember in testimony she said that it bent to one side, which his most intimate supporters vigorously disputed on his behalf because the very idea of it not being a complete "centrist" violated the man's political principles. The imagining of it, for me, was just as bad as actually seeing it. In truth, seeing it would probably help to strip away its power. We're stuck now with only the legend. The public exposure would have humanized it. It would have lost its ability to define us as a people.

Part of me thinks that the reason so many of his colleagues are so bent out of shape (no, that’s bad)… angry about Weiner’s penis pic is that he was being too open in general. This is a generation of lawmakers whose dedication to secrecy by government officials makes Richard Nixon look like Ralph Nader. When officials are keeping secret tens of millions of government documents every year not because the information written on them is sensitive, but simply because they can, how do you think they’re going to react to the type of privacy breach that involves pubic hair and the Opie and Anthony radio show?

That’s why, in a strange way, Weiner is now the most valuable representative we have in Washington, as citizens. He’s already been quite literally exposed. And that’s why I’d like to see every one of our Puritanical representatives, men and women, forced to strip down to their all-togethers for public inspection, one by one, perhaps via a televised mass disrobing at next year's State of the Union address, and at least in time for the findings to be published in all the 2012 voter guides. They don’t mind violating us. They're the ones responsible for all the gropings and the x-raying of pacemakers and colostomy bags at the airport. They're the ones that let the truly sexually-perverse violations of Abu Ghraib go unpunished. I say it's their turn now. Mr. and Ms. Legislator, show us what you got under there.

The real scandal

2011-06-08T15:39:00.010-05:00

We finally found an issue that Democratic lawmakers in Washington can get passionate about: running one of their own (Anthony Weiner) out of town. What I resent most, as a citizen, is that this gaggle of elitist peacocks feels that it can work behind the scenes to impact a decision in respect to a fellow politician's future when the decision about his future should belong to Weiner's constituents in the Queens and Brooklyn boroughs of New York City. That's not just Minority Party Leader Nancy Pelosi trying to rid her caucus of Weiner, that's the representative from California's 8th district trying to force a change for New York's 9th district. More two-party bullshit. It remains to be seen what Weiner has been exposed of here besides having an active, and rather harmless, fantasy life, yet the den of thieves that is the nation's capital is quick to cast its typically-insincere collective judgment upon an individual's private family morality.

Contrary to most of the commentary we've been hearing and reading, the new cultural low that's been established with this story is not with the sexual behavior of a political figure, but with the righteous clucking of Washington insiders, most of whom are probably at least as perverted as, and much more disingenuous, than the "pervert" in question. These individuals stoop to presume that they can speak for a "wronged" woman they don't really know in almost every case, and to opine on marital vows that are private, someone else's, and none of their frigging business. Weiner's fellow lawmakers are showing themselves to be spineless, vindictive hypocrites, and the "journalists" in town wouldn't know a real government scandal if it bit them on the ass.

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Incidentally, if Maureen Dowd believes that Weiner's "web of lies" is "outrageous even for Capitol Hill," as she states in the opinion column linked above, then the New York Times is even more outdated and trivial than I already thought. Weiner's "web" comes in at about #540 on the overall rankings.

Well-meaning advice

2011-06-06T20:30:00.020-05:00

Things are not going great for the Cubs these days. They're 23 up, 34 down (losing tonight also), trailing even the Pirates by 4 1/2 games, banged up, criticizing each other, and if the LA Times can be believed, one of nine teams currently in violation of league policy in respect to the debt vs. earnings ratio. They were swept by the Cardinals this weekend, who were aided by the Great Pujols of Mound City becoming the first Major Leaguer in 16 years to win consecutive games with walk-off home runs.

On a drive half-way across Iowa yesterday, I listened to the post-game torment of a dozen Cubs fans during a WGN Radio call-in program. They lit up Cubs manager Mike Quade for challenging Pujols in the same hitting situation in back-to-back days while one of the hosts of the show made some bizarre comparisons to decisions he once made as a high-school baseball coach. (Chicago radio, really? You're better than that.) As a Cardinals fan, I wanted to defend the Cubs manager. First of all, Pujols was having an extraordinary weekend, but he was batting only .257 when the week began, with an OPS of just .722. In the Cards' lineup, he had been intentionally walked this year fewer times than the club's most-of-the-time 8th place hitter Daniel Descalso. Nearly every team has pitched to Pujols at all times, and few have regretted it. You simply do not walk this player with two out and nobody on at this point in the season, particularly on Sunday when Pujols was 0-for-15 lifetime against the 10th inning pitcher in question.

It's only natural that Cubs fans would be calling for Ryne Sandberg to manage the club, and they were doing that yesterday. The fan favorite and Hall-of-Fame second baseman wanted desperately to manage the club in 2011, but was passed over by the new ownership during the off-season in favor of an interim manager that had posted a healthy winning percentage over the last two months of 2010. I had a different perspective than the callers and the hosts. I've watched a number of Cubs games this year, and as is the case with almost every team in the history of the sport, the success or failure of the club has not hinged ultimately on the actions or inactions of the manager. This club would likely be within a game or two of their current mark even if John McGraw was managing them. (Whitey Herzog, maybe.) That's just baseball.

Sandberg fans should be grateful he was not chosen for this time and place. One of the most popular men ever to wear the Cubs' uniform would be having to shoulder the blame for this fiasco if he had. There's a reason that only a few Hall-of-Fame-caliber players even attempt to become managers-- it's because 95% of all managerial tenures end with a firing and at least a little animosity. A Hall-of-Famer's legacy is already secure, especially in the town where he posted his many triumphs. Why try to tamper with it? Ryno has dodged a bullet thus far, but something tells me he still wouldn't turn down the offer if he got it, and that offer may even be forthcoming in the next year if the Cubs' owner Tom Ricketts listens to the irrational pleas of some of their fans.

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Baseball anecdote of the day: From today's StL Post-Dispatch, one they'll still tell years from now, "Tony La Russa doesn't tell this story often, but he thought it was worth repeating late Sunday afternoon in his office. After Albert Pujols had won a second consecutive extra-inning game against the Chicago Cubs with, in this case, a high-stepping, walk-off home run, the Cardinals' manager hearkened to the night in Phoenix in October 2001, when his team was eliminated in the last inning of the last game of a playoff series by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The team had gathered at a steakhouse for a party sponsored by Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., and, at one point during the night and early morning of commiseration and celebration, Pujols, then a rookie, asked La Russa to sign a photo of the two of them. La Russa said he "wanted to do right by it" and said he would give it to Pujols on the plane ride home the next morning.

When La Russa presented Pujols the photo, he had inscribed, "To Albert. The best player I've ever managed."

And this was after one season.

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Non-baseball anecdote of the day: Evolved from Chris Hitchen's musings today upon the admitted-sexual creativity of Congressman Anthony Weiner. Included is some good advice for the next time you find yourself publicly-nude at the wrong time-- In my time at Oxford, there still persisted a quaint survival from the Victorian era. A special part of the river bank set among the willows was reserved for nude male bathing, with membership restricted to dons and clergymen. Prominent signs and barriers prevented boats and punts containing females from approaching this discreet stretch. On one fateful Sunday afternoon, however, a recent flood had washed away the signs and weakened the barriers. A group of ladies was swept past the rows of recumbent and undressed gentlemen. Shrieks of embarrassment from the boat, while on the shore—consternation. Pairs of hands darted down to cover the midsection. All but one, the hedonist and classicist Sir Maurice Bowra, whose palms went up to conceal his craggy visage. As the squeals were borne downstream, and the sheepish company surveyed itself, Bowra growled, "I don't know about you chaps, but I'm known by my face around here."

June First filler

2011-06-01T20:44:00.011-05:00

I wish I had something to blog for you this week. I really do. Work has been crazy busy since returning from the long weekend. It was wild today, with the sole exception of 3 to 4 in the afternoon when I sat in a meeting about the company's 401(k) program. That hour was as boring as the rest of the day was busy. I have to tell you, these banking reps of ours conducting this venture put the mutual fun in mutual funds. But I digress.

I came home at five with designs to do some laundry and to find a topic online to write about, but I was delayed trying to find my laundry detergent. It turns out that my washing machine had shaken so violently the last time I cleaned my clothes that the detergent jug had bounced off the stackable washer/dryer and became lodged behind the appliance. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but that was the day the civil defense siren went off in the city.

This washer/dryer unit is a slick little apparatus, but it's pretty immovable inside of its assigned space in my bathroom and three different parts of the machine are plugged into or attached to the wall behind. I spent about half an hour trying to lift the nearly-full 3-liter jug of Tide Mountain Spring out from behind the appliance using only a broom handle and a state school education. You'll be glad to know that I ultimately succeeded, but note to self: Don't ever put the Tide on top of the washer/dryer unit again, or at least until the guy from NASA comes out and fixes the spin cycle. It's like I'm always saying-- if it's not one thing, it's the next. Like that time I saw the Monica Lewinsky slot machine. It said, "Insert Bill." But anyway, gang. I know I'm exhausting your patience. In the dictionary, you'll find "sympathy" between "shit" and "syphilis." Time to go instead. I don't want you to have to let you keep me. Back with the usual crap soon.

Holiday baseball update

2011-05-29T12:50:00.007-05:00

Happy Memorial Day weekend. I haven't blogged hardly at all about baseball this season, but it's been a pretty enjoyable season so far if you're a Cardinals fan. At the one-third pole of the regular-season, the club has re-claimed the top spot in their division (at least so far, but I'm optimistic) after surrendering the division crown to Cincinnati a year ago.

The Cards are nine games over .500 despite what should have been a recipe for failure. If someone had told me on the first of February that one of the two pitching aces (Adam Wainwright) would throw out his elbow in Spring Training and be lost for the season, that the second of the two (Chris Carpenter) would be 1-5 with an ERA of 4.58, that their closer (Ryan Franklin) would be 0-3, 1 of 5 in save opportunities, and have a 7.79 ERA, that the Great Pujols would be batting .262 and ranked 45th in the league in slugging, and that the club would be second in the league in blown saves and 11th in in fielding, I would have guessed that the team would be giving away their tickets by now. But they're not. I just had to buy some. Starters Kyle McClellan, Kyle Lohse, and Jaime Garcia are a combined 17-4. As a club, they lead in the league in hitting, are second in runs, and only the Phillies have more wins in the Senior Circuit.

If that's not good enough, the Reds have settled back into their traditional mediocrity, and the Cubs are going nowhere (although Harold Camping reportedly likes "their intangibles.") It could be worse for both these clubs, they could be the Dodgers. Day-to-day management of the National League's L.A. franchise was taken over by the commissioner's office because of "deep concerns" over the team finances in the wake of the team owner's divorce. Also, a fan of the rival Giants was nearly stabbed to death at Dodger Stadium on Opening Day, and last night the stadium started on fire. Oh, you can't beat fun at the ole' ballpark, as Harry used to say.

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Randy Poffo died a week ago in a car accident. He was one of the great professional wrestling artists of the world, but what is less known is that before reinventing himself as Randy "Macho Man" Savage in the ring, he played three seasons of minor league baseball with the Cardinals beginning at the age of 18. His minor league roommate, Tito Landrum, went on to great Major League success, and remembered Poffo this week during an interview on St. Louis sports radio.

The Landrum podcast is worth a listen, if only to catch up with Tito Landrum, but I'm really referencing this story so that I can link this photo from a "Macho Man" memorial.

The last Oprah

2011-05-25T17:02:00.023-05:00

I have Wednesdays off so I was able to watch the last episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show this afternoon. She greeted us by saying there would be no more surprises, unlike the various celebrity walk-ons that I've been reading about for the last few weeks. Too bad. That's what I was hoping for. Oprah has never been my bag, but I enjoy highlight shows, and Chris Rock, as just one potential participant in such a show, is always funny.

Watching her intently for an hour this afternoon confirmed that her show really has been, for 25 years, the opposite of what I really go for on television. There's no sense of irony to it. She radiates none of the cynicism I feel is required for each of us to cope in a world of powerful and dangerous manipulations, though she has a parallel message of courage and self-empowerment that's very important. She revealed today, for example, that she has done over 200 hours of episodes alone on issues of child abuse.

There were very few video clips even in her last hour. It was mostly monologue, and I was shocked at how quickly the hour seemed to go. That is a mark of a great broadcaster, and I can marvel at that the way I marvel at Howard Stern's ability to entertain me on the radio sometimes for better than three hours at a time. But watching a final episode designed to be a sort of encapsulation of the host's core values and ideals, it's pretty obvious again why she wouldn't be a fan of Stern, or even the two long-running television shows of David Letterman.

As everyone is already well-aware, these other programs are quite coarse and mean-spirited by comparison, and they also delight in draining the pool of the sort of self-seriousness that Winfrey swims in at nearly all times. There is certainly no difference in the way that the three hosts are opportunistic in respect to their shows. In Oprah's case, we saw that manifest itself this past week with the way that Maria Shriver, recently victimized in a very public way by her husband, was inexplicably drawn into the host's inner circle. As an interviewer, Oprah is a sort of anti-Howard Stern, but that’s not a compliment. Stern is the most entertaining, penetrating public questioner we’ve got, and Oprah’s Q-and-A’s with celebrities and public officials have little of the same unfiltered directness or “edge-of-your-seat” unpredictability.

Of course her show has an audience that is heavily-female, and that's not my gender, but I refuse to attribute my disinterest in her show over the years to that certain tangible. (I love Tina Fey and Roseanne Barr TV concoctions, for example.) I rolled my eyes several times during today's broadcast for very specific, different reasons. First of all, you have the continuous, now-infamous, and ridiculous camera cutaways to the reactive faces of people in her studio audience. Their strong belief in whatever Oprah is selling at that moment is always about as subtle as a prostate exam. On a comedy talk show, we would have to equate this to cutaways of seeing people laugh, but you rarely see this since the early days of the medium, unless the person is being singled out for a specific comedic reason.

Second is her promotion of "miracles" and the way she couples this with such distasteful self-aggrandizing. Oprah believes in miracles, I'm paraphrasing from today, because she is the product of a one-time only sexual encounter between her parents, and because she rose from an impoverished childhood all the way to the high public stage she stood upon today.

For Oprah, you see, everything in her life can be categorized as "miraculous"—her career opportunities, her personal success, her friends, the lives she's touched, the lives that have touched her, etc. She appeals to all of the people who hope for miracles in their lives and are eager to categorize them. Immediately following the broadcast of her show today, the syndicate station in Des Moines promoted the top story for their 5 o’clock local newscast. It was about “a miracle” in Joplin, Missouri. I didn't stay tuned, but the gist, I gathered, was that one or more persons in Joplin stayed safe during the deadly tornado Sunday by securing themselves inside of a large appliance. (I can't remember if it was a refrigerator or freezer.) A young girl came on the screen right away and said "God saved me," and the words “God saved me” were helpfully posted by the station's news department below her image. How about “science saved you,” or better yet, ”you saved you”? Dropping yourself inside an almost-impenetrable, unbending metal contraption was a pretty clever maneuver, I say.

Oprah has been promoting a religion of sorts for 25 years, and she made those parallels verbally explicit today. She devoted at least five full minutes during the hour to the promotion of a deity, or greater power, that guides her life. Then her very last words for the entire run of the show were “To God be the glory.” It's been a faith that promotes the positive attributes of personal empowerment and tolerance, but it has also been one, in my opinion, that has not particularly caused discomfort for the already-most-comforted.

Aside from a high-profile endorsement three years ago, her show has always been decidedly apolitical, despite touching often on social topics that have major political elements and realities. Her show, for example, has been much less political than the Phil Donahue show of the 1970s and early ‘80s, from which it derived its format.

But that's probably as people prefer it. It occurred to me again today that I was probably not her most-receptive audience member when she ordered us all to listen to and follow that disembodied voice (my phrase) that we hear in our heads, referring to it more than once as the "voice of God." Last month, at the National Atheist Convention, when the actor and comic Paul Provenza inscribed his book to me with the very contradictory message, "Fight the imaginary power," he may have been preparing me to combat just this particular pitch.

It's the arrogance that's tied up into all of this that's so off-putting. Believers certainly tell me that they find atheists arrogant so you'll have to believe me when I tell you I see it in the opposite. I don't believe we live in a human-centered world, which is going to be an inescapable contradiction for anyone dealing with the Oprah Winfrey Show. I see hers as a self-centered conceit in itself. I believe that the universe will go right on expanding long after the climate of Earth becomes uninhabitable for its most-evolved animal species.

The idea that everything that happens on the Earth, from the conscious decisions that we make as humans to even our very physical conceptions, to me, has more to do with chance than with any sort of "miracle," and I resent Winfrey's bold pronouncement today that her beliefs in a divinity (even a non-denominational one) should be accepted by the rest of us. It should come as no surprise perhaps, given her worldview, that Oprah has frequently been duped by her guests, whether they be authors of dubious intent and promotion, various "self-help" shysters, even a few celebrities promoting junk science, such as Suzanne Somers or Jenny McCarthy, or some combination of the above, like Dr. Phil. Also, it's worth pointing out here that no political figure ever feared going on her show. Whether it was an Obama, Bush, or Palin-- it was understood in Washington that an appearance on Oprah would make you look good.

A few seasons in, she cleaned up her act a bit, trimming away the more Springer/Sally/Ricki/Montel elements of the show in favor of what amounted to a sort of career tribute to the poet of inspiration Maya Angelou. We all know she made a lot of money, and she spent a lot of it on very worthy ventures. I'll give her credit too in that, while she seemed to pass judgment at times on a lot of other entertainers (particularly comics) with differing values than hers, such as a Letterman, Stern, Rock, or Tracy Morgan, she eventually opened her show to most of them.

It's hard to guess what her legacy will be. On one hand, she's leaving really no other TV show like hers still on the air as she exits. The traditional "confessional" type of program she transformed for herself lives on mostly now via some tacky, very un-Oprah-like reality shows. On the other hand, her intent was always to reach and inspire people in a more one-on-one basis. As her mail and email attests-- and here I do not doubt for a minute her reports of her personal correspondence, she has touched millions of fans, and succeeded at inspiring them in just the way she intended. At its most fundamental level, that often profound connection between messenger and messen-gee is what television is about, and few, if any, have ever taken it to such heights of emotion and impact.

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Different topic entirely: I guess we should all be thankful that there isn't a nuclear power plant in Joplin, Missouri. Can you even imagine? Yet there are many nuke plants in the Midwest, as we know. Someday, right? And we can't prepare for or prevent the worst-case scenario unless we swear off nuclear power for good.

Feel the Heat

2011-05-23T20:33:00.006-05:00

I don’t care what you say. I’m pulling for the Miami Heat in the NBA Playoffs. I'm not planning to watch any of the games or anything. It was 81 degrees in Des Moines today and there are tons of baseball games on the other channels. But I'm picking them for my favorite.

I can’t understand the resentment people seem to feel towards LeBron James. The superstar forward had every right to leave Cleveland as a free agent last summer. (If you thought James’ departure was ugly, just watch the reaction when Dennis Kucinich leaves town.) James put in seven years there as a player. That's pretty good. He gave it “the old college try,” as we say, although he technically skipped right over college on his road to success. James isn’t even a native of Cleveland. That's an oft-repeated inaccuracy by many repeaters who know better. He's actually from Akron, as they know. And catch me agreeing to a lifetime contract with any sports team in Sioux City.

“Loyalty to community” is one thing, but “loyalty to team” is something potentially quite different. Too many fans like their sports best when they’re soaked in the traditional patriarchies. That's especially true when the stars on the fields and courts of glory are rich, young black men. The owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dan Gilbert, is a pretty odious figure incidentally, a legalized loan shark as head of the "0% interest, no money down" Quicken Loans internet mortgage provider. "Subprime Dan" attacked James viciously and personally when the player signed with Miami, likening his departing employee to a child, and calling the decision a "cowardly betrayal." That made it pretty clear, at least to some of us that don’t pay close attention but nevertheless have opinions, just why it was James might have been looking for greener pastures of employment.

James’ successful attempt at timing his free agency signing in Miami with the team's signings of two other greats of the game, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, is a threat to the establishment of the game, according to many fans. These fans are correct. Coordinated team building by the participants makes it painfully obvious that team owners in sports are superfluous. These businesses could be just as-- and even more-- effectively run by the players themselves, or by their local communities, such as it's done with the NFL’s Packers in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Last I checked, the Heat had won only a single NBA Championship prior to this year. Meanwhile, their Eastern Conference rivals, the Chicago Bulls, whom they lead 2-1 in a best-of-7 series, have won six titles since I started high school. Combined with their home court advantage, I’m not so sure why everybody thinks the Bulls are the underdog team we should all be pulling for. As recently as the 2007-2008 season, the Heat had the worst record in the league. They're kind of a great story.

Would I like to see LeBron James, who is often thought of as a "brand" rather than an actual person, evolve into a more socially-conscious superstar in the game? Yes. Would I like the Miami Heat to adhere more closely to the traditional customs of American sport in regards to pluralistic team nicknames? Also yes. But I’m pulling for James and his teammates in their current series and this post-season. It would be a marvelous event if a terrific player delivered on his grand ambitions. But again, I'm not going to watch any of the games. I haven't sat down to watch an NBA contest, beginning to end, since I attended a game in the Twin Cities in 2004. It was an afternoon game on Super Bowl Sunday and because of my traveling, I missed seeing Janet Jackson's nipple on television. I will be damned if I let something like that happen again.

A meaningful challenge

2011-05-21T17:48:00.023-05:00

With great bravado, a carnival barker hollers at the passers-by along the midway. “Behold the amazing turtle man. Half-man, half-turtle! Come inside the tent and see this amazing oddity of nature!” An intrigued man turns over two bits and walks into the tent. Atop a couch, he sees a model who has fastened some sort of large shell-looking aparatus to his back. The man shrugs and exits the tent. As he turns to leave, the barker shouts at the man-- and for all to hear: “Is that not the most extraordinary thing you have seen in all your life, sir?!” All eyes nearby turn and peer towards the man to see his reaction. He responds with a sheepish ‘yes.’ The man was had, but he’s not about to compound the mistake by admitting it to the world. Such as it is with Barack Obama and so many of his liberal supporters.

A vote for John McCain, we were told by Democrats, was a vote for a third term for George W. Bush, but lo and behold, we got that third term anyway. In fact, dare I say the Obama presidency has been arguably worse than either of Bush's, a stunningly depressing reality to consider, though I'm pretty sure that American hero Bradley Manning would concur. At least Bush went to the Congress for authorization before launching his illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His cabinet may have phonied up the intelligence to justify one of them, but at least (the very least, oh god, this is depressing) he called for an up-or-down vote from the legislative branch. Democratic lawmakers, almost all of whom cast gutless 'yes' votes when they got their chance, must have vowed not long after to never let that happen again. No more Congressional authority would be needed. Every new war will be "the president's war."

Obama launched his war against Libya. He didn’t allow a Congressional vote. Instead, he extended executive authority over our military’s imperialist actions to an unprecedented new level. Like Bush, he lied about his motives, stating that the war was for humanitarian purposes only, but now it’s about “regime change” and we’re still engaged 60 days later in a bloody civil war between warring tribes. Obama has ended neither of his predecessor’s wars, and in addition to throwing Libya onto the bonfire, he’s also secretly bombed Yemen. Wiki Leaks uncovered that Yemen’s oppressive government claimed credit for the action, but it was the U.S., in actuality.

The Obama administration began launching drone attacks on Pakistan also, killing hundreds of civilians. (Even Bush and Cheney didn’t have the gall to do that.) Then after stepping past the Pakastani government that his and Bush's administrations had paid out in the billions, he launched a military attack to kill the 9/11 mastermind (imagine any U.S. president pulling the same type of unilateral maneuver involving a hotel in London or Paris), and he had the man immediately murdered and buried at sea without trial. The anti-war factions across the country have sat utterly silent throughout all of this aggression because the president is a Democrat.

The rule of law is entirely passé for this administration. This past week, the Patriot Act, once so unpopular with liberals, and many conservatives as well, was extended for the second time during Obama's tenure, both times without any proposed changes by the White House. The Obama Justice Department has continued the Bush/Cheney practice of torturing prisoners; like Bush, trying to officially label the practice something other than torture. Much of the torture is now outsourced to foreign governments (again, as Wiki Leaks confirmed), but Obama hasn't even managed to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison, the symbolic Ground Zero for America's sadistic coercion tactics and for its national shame in violating the Geneva Conventions and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. (Even "John McBush," Bush’s third term, has been an outspoken opponent of torture.)

The Department of Justice has continued the legalistic charade of denying trials for prisoners that they consider "too dangerous," and they’ve even added to the War Powers Act the extraordinary idea of authorizing the assassinations of American citizens who have not been convicted of, or even charged with, a crime. The Obamas have continued to promote the Bush argument that we’re in a permanent war so that the unconstitutional War Powers Act remain legally unchallenged and in effect. President Obama is free to declare and pursue any wars that he chooses anywhere in the world, and enact any laws that he so desires if he publicly claims it in the security interests of the state. For all intents and purposes, he is a king.

It’s hard to imagine that even George W. Bush would have handled the “Arab spring” any worse than Obama has. When the people of Egypt rose up in such historic and peaceful opposition against the dictator of their country, Secretary Clinton and the Obama State Department threw their public support behind the dictator’s second-in-command, anxious over losing their strongman in the region who had been charged with keeping “stability.”

The crimes of Israel continue to go unchallenged. Obama made a soaring speech Thursday in respect to the Middle East, but no change in policy was laid out. (Finding the pretty words has never been Obama's problem.) The governments in Israel, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, where protestors have all been targets of violence by the state, like in Libya, continue to get a free pass. Middle East democracy protestors cannot be fully supported by the compromised U.S. government because logic dictates that the next step would be forcing Israel to retreat to its 1967 borders and cease the assault of the steamroller on the West Bank and Gaza. Obama spoke out of both sides of his mouth Thursday when he said that "every state has the right to self-defense," but then stated that the Palestinians must be content in being "a sovereign non-militarized" one. The president's speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Sunday should be even more enlightening.

Israel is to this decade something like South Africa was to the 1980s. The Palestinians live walled off as Israel morphs into an apartheid state. The United States refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership, labeling their democratically-elected government a terrorist organization. As late as 1988, Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in South Africa was also officially considered one of the world's "most notorious terrorist groups" by the U.S. government. Like South Africa two decades before, Israel's right-wing government, because of its actions, is now becoming increasingly isolated around the world even as it continues to claim the steadfast support of international corporations and the American government and commander-in-chief.

Dr. Cornel West of Princeton dared to challenge the president last week from the position of both a progressive and a black man. He was met by other liberals not with substantive debate, but queer accusations about his personal motives. West called Obama “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats,” which the historical record struggles to contradict, but the high-profile professor, whom incidentally has rarely failed to mention the great hope he continues to hold out for the Obama administration (against all possible indicators, I might add), is accused of acting petty over perceived personal slights from our first post-racial president.

It's worth noting, actually, that part of Obama's original vetting among the Washington Democrats and Wall Street power brokers in 2007 and 2008 was establishing the candidate as the anti-Jesse Jackson, or the anti-Al Sharpton, former Democratic and African-American candidates with whom Dr. West more closely identifies personally and publicly. This central concentration of American political power had to be assured that a "President Obama" would not be a threat to the establishment hierarchy of power in the country. West's personal motives in criticizing are immaterial anyway in respect to his specific policy criticisms. Either they resonate or they don't, and West's accusations about the president's epic failures in office clearly touched a nerve here because the claws came out. It’s sad when the party affiliation attached to the politician's name means more to the establishment liberals than the importance of acknowledging the moral cowardice of the leader of the free world and of its most powerful army.

Most progressives have claimed a position like that of the battered spouse in their relationship with Obama and the Democratic Party. They defend the president, particularly, for his health care initiative and his program for economic stimulus, seemingly without even noticing that even the modestly progressive gains Obama has been responsible for have simultaneously been massive corporate giveaways. And why shouldn't they be? The corporations paid for them with their record-breaking campaign contributions. West’s critics, such as Joan Walsh of Salon, only tolerate criticism of Obama if the criticism is toothless enough not to damage him politically. Dissenting voices are shut out of the party's primary process, but then if the candidate is opposed from the left in the general election, those candidates will be scolded for having not mounted their challenges during the primaries. It would all be a big joke if the results being felt all across the globe weren’t so tragic.

The refrain from Democrats never changes: Trust us... this is the best we can do right now... the timing's not right... first this, then this, then that. Yet as Dr. King said about the civil and economic rights struggles of his era, “'Go slow' means 'don’t go at all.'” Candidate Obama told us he opposed the two Bush/Cheney wars in Asia. Now we have five. He told us there should be no more ignoring of the law after Bush invaded Iraq, now he has his own Iraq underway in Libya, and this is arguably worse because he had the benefit of witnessing Bush's disastrous results. Barack Obama is not “the most liberal president to date,” as Walsh preposterously claims. This president is less liberal than Richard Nixon. That's how much the goalposts have moved during two generations of American political life. Corporations have purchased our government. They’ve purchased our elections and they’ve purchased the officeholders. They’ve even purchased the debate.

Contrary to Walsh’s claims, there are easy choices here. Liberals have tried the capitulation strategy for decades, and we’re getting rolled. Shockingly, when you demand nothing of their leaders, that's exactly what you get. During the early 1930s, Huey Long, the Louisiana lion that challenged Standard Oil, was touring the country, engaged in heavily-attended public policy debates with and against Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas. That’s how mainstream both of those men's ideas were at the time. Now working people and the disenfranchised are fighting to hold on to even the very concept of labor unions. Thanks to the unchallenged Revolution of the Right, the monumental Civil Rights Act is controversial again, as if it were 1963. Activism is being criminalized. Abortion rights are being stripped away little by little, state to state, in clearly unconstitutional ways, yet nobody even challenges the attacks on the firm legal footing on which they stand for the silly fear of opening up Roe v. Wade to the current court. We have a majority of Washington Democrats conceding cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while the president from their party throws exponentially more money down the hole in his imperialist efforts at nation-building. What are a Democrat's priorities if not protecting the safety net over militarist expansion?

Dr. West is damn right that there are racial and class elements to this. Those elements have been fundamental to the destruction of the Democratic Party. Joan Walsh can be a progressive in theory, but she doesn’t really feel it when things go sour. A large percentage of your establishment/corporate/apologist Democrats aren’t feeling it economically even when our government priorities get this far out of whack. They’re typing their political arguments over six dollar coffees. They say they care about the poor, but you’ll never even hear a Democratic politician use the phrase “working class” to describe these Americans. Listen close, they’re always fighting for the “middle class.” That group of voters is much more difficult to categorize.

Walsh decries old-fashioned "identity politics" because it’s divisive, but division is what’s needed. The splinter is required to differentiate the ideas from those of the Republicans. The Democrats now have no "identity" at all. The advantaged class running the show declared war on the disadvantaged class right about the time Ronald Reagan gave them the blueprint to do it.

The solution is excising the tumor. Once liberals and progressives actually free their ideas and agendas from their unholy entanglement with the Democratic Party, its corporate interests, and the industrial war machine, then and only then will be start to see the political pendulum swing back to the left in America. That's a tent show that would actually live up to the advertising, and one I'd pay to see.

President Kucinich?

2011-05-18T17:02:00.005-05:00

You would never guess it to read American newspapers or watch American television, but the political leaders that dominate the media's attention are completely out of step with American voters. That's why it's considered a terrific turnout if half of our eligible citizens bother to show up to vote.

More than 60 percent of Americans oppose our military exploits in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, but the candidates that also oppose it, like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, are not treated as viable by party leaders or by establishment pundits.

It might surprise you to know, though, that Kucinich would likely win if he were paired in a race against either right-wing media favorite, Sarah Palin or Donald Trump. According to Public Policy Polling, Americans prefer Kucinich to Palin 43% to 36%, and Trump 40% to 36%. The PPP opinion firm is in the bag for Democrats, but it's interesting to note that, in these head-to-head matchups, Kucinich does essentially as well as President Obama does. Since Obama is looking at a re-election landslide of Reagan-like proportions against the GOP's warm body, it's time for progressives to start strategizing about what they can do in 2012 to send the President a message of dissatisfaction over his lack of moral courage.

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Quote of the day: Nancy Hicks Gribble, on "King of the Hill"-- "Telling the truth is like the sun. People used to think it was good for you."

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Maybe it's just me. When I read the news reports that Navy SEALS uncovered quite a lot of pornography at Osama bin Laden's compound, my first thought was: What does the news media think is a lot of pornography?

Don't make plans

2011-05-16T20:36:00.018-05:00

For the first time, the Moeller TV Festival will be conducted in two installments this year. In honor of our 10th Anniversary, Part I will be July 23rd in Cedar Rapids at Aaron’s house, and Part II will be at my Des Moines habitation in November or early December. It’s all very exciting to contemplate except when you consider that the world is going to end this Saturday.

Well, perhaps not exactly. But a major downward turn commences in just five days. If you live in Des Moines, you might have seen the billboard on the city's east side overlooking the McVicar Freeway, but it's not only in that location. Eighty-nine-year-old Harold Camping and his international Family Radio ministry have been buying up billboards all over the country announcing the coming Day of Judgment.

It’s all based on some sort of Bible Math involving Noah and the flood, and the supposed date of Jesus' crucifixion. I won’t bore you with the specifics because I don't want to have to study it hard enough to explain it. But the short of it is that the divine Rapture will take place May 21, 2011, and for those not swept up to heaven in the Jesus Party Bus, the event will be followed by 153 days of human suffering, earthquakes, open graves, hellfire, and what-not, before the world is swallowed whole by the Lord on October 21st. (Baseball teams, set your pitching rotations.) The early departed will miss the first half of the TV Fest though so too bad for them. It's going to be a luau theme.

The timeline confused me at first. I saw the billboard weeks ago that advertised the May date, but later I saw a dude wearing a sandwich board on the I-235 ramp at ML King that had the October date and it seemed like we were conflicting. Now I know. You've got your hell on Earth and your hell in hell. There are two dates. It's like a TV Festival in that way. Reverend Camping was wrong once before though. He misread the numbers the first time and came up with a date of September 6, 1994. Oops, that's some egg on his face there. Measure twice. Cut once.

Apocalyptic doomsayers are batting oh-for-'a lot' so far, but Rev. Camping has a calculator and a dream. I'm not sure what he'll do when he wakes up a goat on Sunday morning, but I have a guess: He’ll claim he misjudged the numbers again and he'll come up with a new date of prophecy, and he’ll ask for more contributions for his church.

His flock is invited to Moeller TV Festival X, Part I-- again, it's Saturday, July 23rd, at Aaron's house in Cedar Rapids. Wear a Hawaiian shirt for the luau and bring your calculators. It's free to attend, with a meal provided, so it would make for a perfect day if you've given away all of your money and possessions.

Nature's course

2011-05-14T23:16:00.000-05:00

I saw a lot of the Mississippi River on my road trip to New Orleans last week, and there's a lot of the Mississippi River to see. Flood waters were trickling over the interstate (and under my car tires) north of Memphis on Monday. This weekend, thousands have been evacuated in the Cajun country of Central Louisiana so that a spillway might be unlocked and opened, and greater damage averted downriver in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

And now do you want to read something even more troubling? I came across this one the day we arrived home. Some experts predict that the Great River may be about to shift course, choking off both Louisiana's capital city and it's largest by population. Although the river's course has changed radically and multiple times throughout the planet's history, New Orleans has been the drainpipe of the river for so long that the city is actually built, not upon bedrock, but on vast quantities of packed mud and clay that the river has carried down to the gulf. (That's Iowa soil under the Bourbon Street cobblestone.) We're not just talking about its commerce and its culture when we say that the river literally provided the foundation for the city and the near-entirety of Southern Louisiana.