(CONFERENCE-FINAL) NOTES FROM A FRIDAY AFTERNOON
clearing the bandwagon of my
mind.
For your consideration: another curious collection
of thoughts, reactions, and observations that didn't make it into a full-length
post this week. So they're sort of like all that damn green tree pollen that's
been covering everything in sight the past few weeks. You're not quite sure
where they came from, but you know they're not going away any time
soon...
• I have long argued that accusations of the Clinton Camp playing the race card have been a bit of a stretch and almost always been blown out of proportion. But when Senator Clinton, no matter how weary and unfocused she may have been, sat down with a USA Today interviewer and said, I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition... Senator Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again... There's a pattern emerging here, well, that looked and sounded to me like a whole house of race cards.
• It may well be true, but saying it that bluntly and that gracelessly -- especially now -- feels both dirty and desperate. When I read the text, I had a sudden urge to take a shower. After I heard the sound clips, I did.
• Funny, isn't it, that everyone piled on Hillary for knocking back a shot in an Indiana bar a couple of weeks ago -- she's a poseur; she's stooping to act like she's in touch with the commoners; what a phony baloney bitch -- but no one, at least not in the mainstream media, felt the need to question Obama's sudden interest in (loudly) ordering a beer at a pub in North Carolina. Funnier still when you consider that Hillary knocked back that shot like she knew what she was doing, and that Obama, after brandishing it for all the reporters and photographers to see, sipped that "PBR" like he was drinking a fine sherry.
• The Strange Bedfellows Tour continues, with a link to another Christopher Hitchens piece that seems to me spot on. Perhaps because I made a similar argument just last week. Here's the money paragraph: Nettled at last by the way in which this has upset his campaign, Sen. Obama last week cut the ties that bound him to his crackpot mentor. Well, high time. But those who profess relief at this should perhaps revisit what they thought (and wrote) about the earlier Philadelphia speech in which Obama was held to have achieved the same result with less trouble. If he was right last week, then the Philly speech was a failure on every level, and if it was a failure on every level, and thus left Obama hideously vulnerable to the very next speech made by his foaming pastor, then that must raise questions of eligibility for the highest office.
• In the wake of some bloggers and commenters still contorting themselves to defend -- or even to praise -- the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, here's an interesting email from one of TWM's most regular readers: All I can say is this: a nation that is afraid to expose the inanity, the grotesque immorality, of Rev. Wright is not ready to have a black man or woman for president. We're not sufficiently racially mature if we feel a need to patronize, or to treat Wright's expression of the black "experience" as worthy of respect.
• PittGirl's on a roll today -- even issuing a thumb war/Parcheesi/Guitar Hero challenge to we humble purveyors of the Smart, Handsome, Articulate, Incredibly Dashing, Non-Self-Pitying Boys Society (TM, Patent Pending) -- but this is, by far, her best work of the day. And the week.
• Looking for a sweet, full-featured, shockingly affordable all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax for your home (or any) office? I heartily recommend the Canon Pixma MX 310. An inelegant name, perhaps, but one hell of an elegant -- and efficient -- machine.
• After family and friends, there are few greater arrivals at your door than a five-pound box of Wilbur Buds.
• Though I imagine there will be a few more Oh my God! moments mixed in with all the action and suspense sure to dominate the last three episodes, last night's rich, mythology-packed installment of LOST feels like the one everyone will be thinking about and talking about and, no doubt, wildly debating for the next seven months. It was that good. And that much of a wicked, mind-bending tease.
• Yeah, I know it's Sweeps. And I know the show lost what was left of its dignity a long, long time ago. But when I wake up to hear Meredith Vieira telling me that the Today show will tell me more about that huge sinkhole in Texas, and then asking me to wonder whether something like that could be waiting under your town -- or under your house, I just want to scream. And then hope that, if another one of those sinkholes does exist, it's beneath the Today show studios.
• While we're on the subject of great and grating media sinkholes... You know that strange and fabulous days are upon us when I'm agreeing with great swaths of a Bob Smizik column. But today's piece about the rise of Penguins passion and fandom gets it just about right. Here's the rightest of all: The team is positioned to be a contender, if not a champion, for years to come. They have a stable full of young players who are both fan and media friendly. Of greater significance, most of the players, and virtually all the stars, are as wholesome as the boy next door. Some, in fact, are young enough to be the boy next door. Parents looking for role models need look no further. The Penguins are thick with them. These guys aren't packing guns, they're not getting arrested, they're not being sought for child support payments, they're not demanding to be traded. They are the anti-modern day athlete, and no one exemplifies that more than the team's best player, Sidney Crosby.
• Amen to all of that, but especially to the last two sentences.
• Though Mr. Smizik gets most things right in that column, here's one bit he surely gets wrong: the notion of the Penguins' youthful fan base. There's no question, of course, that this team has energized the under-30 and even the under-20 crowd in Southwestern Pennsylvania. And that surely bodes well for the future of the franchise and for the finances of all the people, including all the residents of the city and the county, who stand to benefit from it. But to be a base, you have to have been there from the beginning. Or at least for more than three years. Loyal, long-time fans and season ticket holders are this team's true fan base. Without them -- without us -- the team wouldn't have lasted long enough to excite all these new, young fans. The rock-solid foundation on which this team stood, between the Jagr and Crosby eras, was the core group of fans who continued to support the team even when it was losing, when it was enduring those pre-lockout lean years with little chance of success but a lot of scrap and hope and hard work anyway. I'm thrilled for every fan in the city, the county, and the whole damned region who's discovered this great team and, through them, this great sport. But please don't tell me the newcomers and bandwagon jumpers are the team's base. They're great, and they're a huge part of the future. But they're merely building new levels of support and success atop a foundation that's been there all along. Even when it was watching the likes of Steve McKenna and Konstantin Koltsov.
• Now. After five almost interminable days of waiting, like the weeks before Christmas and vacation all rolled into one, and after five truly interminable days of fan idiocy and media frenzy, it's nice to know the boys will finally get back to playing some hockey tonight. And that all three Hermann boys, along with our surrogate brother and uncle The Blizz, will be there to watch 'em.
• (Let's Go, Pens.)
• I have long argued that accusations of the Clinton Camp playing the race card have been a bit of a stretch and almost always been blown out of proportion. But when Senator Clinton, no matter how weary and unfocused she may have been, sat down with a USA Today interviewer and said, I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition... Senator Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again... There's a pattern emerging here, well, that looked and sounded to me like a whole house of race cards.
• It may well be true, but saying it that bluntly and that gracelessly -- especially now -- feels both dirty and desperate. When I read the text, I had a sudden urge to take a shower. After I heard the sound clips, I did.
• Funny, isn't it, that everyone piled on Hillary for knocking back a shot in an Indiana bar a couple of weeks ago -- she's a poseur; she's stooping to act like she's in touch with the commoners; what a phony baloney bitch -- but no one, at least not in the mainstream media, felt the need to question Obama's sudden interest in (loudly) ordering a beer at a pub in North Carolina. Funnier still when you consider that Hillary knocked back that shot like she knew what she was doing, and that Obama, after brandishing it for all the reporters and photographers to see, sipped that "PBR" like he was drinking a fine sherry.
• The Strange Bedfellows Tour continues, with a link to another Christopher Hitchens piece that seems to me spot on. Perhaps because I made a similar argument just last week. Here's the money paragraph: Nettled at last by the way in which this has upset his campaign, Sen. Obama last week cut the ties that bound him to his crackpot mentor. Well, high time. But those who profess relief at this should perhaps revisit what they thought (and wrote) about the earlier Philadelphia speech in which Obama was held to have achieved the same result with less trouble. If he was right last week, then the Philly speech was a failure on every level, and if it was a failure on every level, and thus left Obama hideously vulnerable to the very next speech made by his foaming pastor, then that must raise questions of eligibility for the highest office.
• In the wake of some bloggers and commenters still contorting themselves to defend -- or even to praise -- the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, here's an interesting email from one of TWM's most regular readers: All I can say is this: a nation that is afraid to expose the inanity, the grotesque immorality, of Rev. Wright is not ready to have a black man or woman for president. We're not sufficiently racially mature if we feel a need to patronize, or to treat Wright's expression of the black "experience" as worthy of respect.
• PittGirl's on a roll today -- even issuing a thumb war/Parcheesi/Guitar Hero challenge to we humble purveyors of the Smart, Handsome, Articulate, Incredibly Dashing, Non-Self-Pitying Boys Society (TM, Patent Pending) -- but this is, by far, her best work of the day. And the week.
• Looking for a sweet, full-featured, shockingly affordable all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax for your home (or any) office? I heartily recommend the Canon Pixma MX 310. An inelegant name, perhaps, but one hell of an elegant -- and efficient -- machine.
• After family and friends, there are few greater arrivals at your door than a five-pound box of Wilbur Buds.
• Though I imagine there will be a few more Oh my God! moments mixed in with all the action and suspense sure to dominate the last three episodes, last night's rich, mythology-packed installment of LOST feels like the one everyone will be thinking about and talking about and, no doubt, wildly debating for the next seven months. It was that good. And that much of a wicked, mind-bending tease.
• Yeah, I know it's Sweeps. And I know the show lost what was left of its dignity a long, long time ago. But when I wake up to hear Meredith Vieira telling me that the Today show will tell me more about that huge sinkhole in Texas, and then asking me to wonder whether something like that could be waiting under your town -- or under your house, I just want to scream. And then hope that, if another one of those sinkholes does exist, it's beneath the Today show studios.
• While we're on the subject of great and grating media sinkholes... You know that strange and fabulous days are upon us when I'm agreeing with great swaths of a Bob Smizik column. But today's piece about the rise of Penguins passion and fandom gets it just about right. Here's the rightest of all: The team is positioned to be a contender, if not a champion, for years to come. They have a stable full of young players who are both fan and media friendly. Of greater significance, most of the players, and virtually all the stars, are as wholesome as the boy next door. Some, in fact, are young enough to be the boy next door. Parents looking for role models need look no further. The Penguins are thick with them. These guys aren't packing guns, they're not getting arrested, they're not being sought for child support payments, they're not demanding to be traded. They are the anti-modern day athlete, and no one exemplifies that more than the team's best player, Sidney Crosby.
• Amen to all of that, but especially to the last two sentences.
• Though Mr. Smizik gets most things right in that column, here's one bit he surely gets wrong: the notion of the Penguins' youthful fan base. There's no question, of course, that this team has energized the under-30 and even the under-20 crowd in Southwestern Pennsylvania. And that surely bodes well for the future of the franchise and for the finances of all the people, including all the residents of the city and the county, who stand to benefit from it. But to be a base, you have to have been there from the beginning. Or at least for more than three years. Loyal, long-time fans and season ticket holders are this team's true fan base. Without them -- without us -- the team wouldn't have lasted long enough to excite all these new, young fans. The rock-solid foundation on which this team stood, between the Jagr and Crosby eras, was the core group of fans who continued to support the team even when it was losing, when it was enduring those pre-lockout lean years with little chance of success but a lot of scrap and hope and hard work anyway. I'm thrilled for every fan in the city, the county, and the whole damned region who's discovered this great team and, through them, this great sport. But please don't tell me the newcomers and bandwagon jumpers are the team's base. They're great, and they're a huge part of the future. But they're merely building new levels of support and success atop a foundation that's been there all along. Even when it was watching the likes of Steve McKenna and Konstantin Koltsov.
• Now. After five almost interminable days of waiting, like the weeks before Christmas and vacation all rolled into one, and after five truly interminable days of fan idiocy and media frenzy, it's nice to know the boys will finally get back to playing some hockey tonight. And that all three Hermann boys, along with our surrogate brother and uncle The Blizz, will be there to watch 'em.
• (Let's Go, Pens.)
Posted: Fri - May 9, 2008 at 01:19 PM
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Published On: May 09, 2008 03:20 PM
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Published On: May 09, 2008 03:20 PM