Tue - August 26, 2008
FIRST THOUGHTS ON A TUESDAY MORNING
from a guy who, a few points aside, has never
liked barack obama.
This morning's Rob Rogers cartoon is very funny, somewhat
surprising, and, truth be told, more than a little unfair. I suspect his inbox
is already full of hate mail. At least a quarter of which will contend he's a
racist.
Posted at 08:25 AM
Mon - August 25, 2008
WHY SHE'S PRO-JOE
and why i've always been too.
The best, most straightforward and economical
explanation of why Joe Biden is a fine Veep pick appears here, courtesy of Slate's Melinda Henneberger.
In a mere two paragraphs, she nails the nub of the gist of Senator Biden's best
(and worst) qualities. The best sentence, and one that describes exactly how I
always felt too, appears just past halfway point of the first
paragraph:
In fact, watching the Democratic debates during the primary season, I always thought that a viewer who came to the exercise cold would have assumed Biden was the front-runner.
Or at least the most presidential.
For that, and for many other reasons, it's a shame that neither voters nor media members paid much attention to him until that damned pandering text message.
In fact, watching the Democratic debates during the primary season, I always thought that a viewer who came to the exercise cold would have assumed Biden was the front-runner.
Or at least the most presidential.
For that, and for many other reasons, it's a shame that neither voters nor media members paid much attention to him until that damned pandering text message.
Posted at 03:59 PM
Sat - August 16, 2008
ANOTHER LIVE-MIKE MOMENT
and more reader mail.
One more piece of reader email to share, this one
from a regular reader and former student -- we'll call her Ms. G. -- who shares
my increasing disgust and withering disdain for NBC's once-great, now often
embarrassing morning show:
I don't know if you caught this, but [on yesterday's Today Show] Matt Lauer interviewed Ryan Lochte, who, despite his suit filling up with water when he began the 200m backstroke, broke a world record and captured the gold for the event. Thirty minutes later Lochte went head-to-head with his friend and colleague Michael Phelps in the 200m individual medley and took home the bronze. When he interviewed him, the very briliant Matt asked Lochte, "Knowing that Michael was trying to break the 6-for-6 record last night, how would you have felt if you had won the gold in the individual medley and destroyed his dream?"
First, what kind of fucked up, assanine, insulting question is that? The guy just won a gold and thirty minutes later took a bronze, and you have the nerve and audacity to ask such a ridiculous question. You could see the confusion and utter "Did you just really ask me that?" look on Lochte's face. Aaaargh!
As a former competitive swimmer myself, I look at Michael in awe and am just amazed at his abilities. He is literally superhuman in his form, focus, and talent, but so was Michael Jordan, Carl Lewis, and Tiger Woods. There are a number of very elite and talented athletes out there that make people just drool in their presence but that doesn't negate the thousand of others that put in the same amount of work if not more to maintain their own talent. I mean Michael Phelps is great and all, but he's not God...
...To ask every single person that comes to be "interviewed" on the Today Show after winning a medal what they think of this one person is not only insulting to those medalists but also to the hundreds of atheletes that, whether they bring home a medal or not, have put in the insane amount of work, and had the talent and good fortune, it took to make it to the Olympics at all.
Now that track and field events are about to start, I'm waiting for Matt Lauer or Bob Costas to start asking the track and field stars whether their medals are worth anything because their name isn't Michael Phelps.
Ms. G. makes, of course, an excellent point. There's no denying Michael Phelps' brilliance -- at least once he shaved off that horrible 'stache -- but to make his story a key part of every other aquatic Olympian's story at these games does a terrible disservice to a collection of men and women who are pretty damned brilliant themselves. And who therefore, in those rare and well-earned moments of nationally televised fame, deserve to shine on their own without being forced to comment, much less admit subservience to, the glow from Michael Phelps' star.
I don't know if you caught this, but [on yesterday's Today Show] Matt Lauer interviewed Ryan Lochte, who, despite his suit filling up with water when he began the 200m backstroke, broke a world record and captured the gold for the event. Thirty minutes later Lochte went head-to-head with his friend and colleague Michael Phelps in the 200m individual medley and took home the bronze. When he interviewed him, the very briliant Matt asked Lochte, "Knowing that Michael was trying to break the 6-for-6 record last night, how would you have felt if you had won the gold in the individual medley and destroyed his dream?"
First, what kind of fucked up, assanine, insulting question is that? The guy just won a gold and thirty minutes later took a bronze, and you have the nerve and audacity to ask such a ridiculous question. You could see the confusion and utter "Did you just really ask me that?" look on Lochte's face. Aaaargh!
As a former competitive swimmer myself, I look at Michael in awe and am just amazed at his abilities. He is literally superhuman in his form, focus, and talent, but so was Michael Jordan, Carl Lewis, and Tiger Woods. There are a number of very elite and talented athletes out there that make people just drool in their presence but that doesn't negate the thousand of others that put in the same amount of work if not more to maintain their own talent. I mean Michael Phelps is great and all, but he's not God...
...To ask every single person that comes to be "interviewed" on the Today Show after winning a medal what they think of this one person is not only insulting to those medalists but also to the hundreds of atheletes that, whether they bring home a medal or not, have put in the insane amount of work, and had the talent and good fortune, it took to make it to the Olympics at all.
Now that track and field events are about to start, I'm waiting for Matt Lauer or Bob Costas to start asking the track and field stars whether their medals are worth anything because their name isn't Michael Phelps.
Ms. G. makes, of course, an excellent point. There's no denying Michael Phelps' brilliance -- at least once he shaved off that horrible 'stache -- but to make his story a key part of every other aquatic Olympian's story at these games does a terrible disservice to a collection of men and women who are pretty damned brilliant themselves. And who therefore, in those rare and well-earned moments of nationally televised fame, deserve to shine on their own without being forced to comment, much less admit subservience to, the glow from Michael Phelps' star.
Posted at 01:34 PM
Thu - August 7, 2008
REGARDING OBAMA
and, uh, somebody else too.
I just logged on to the MSNBC.com homepage and saw
a bright red banner across the top of the screen. It
read:
BREAKING NEWS: Man in Florida arrested on charges of threatening to assassinate Obama.
I clicked on the link and read the AP story. Here, with my emphasis added, are its first three paragraphs:
MIAMI - A man is being held in Florida by federal authorities on charges of threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Raymond Hunter Geisel was ordered held without bail Thursday at a brief court hearing.
The Secret Service says Geisel made the threat during a training class for bail bondsmen in Miami in late July. Another tipster said Geisel also threatened President Bush.
That's right, folks. In the first sentence, as in the glowing red headline, we learn the guy has threatened the life of an Illinois Senator. But not until the fourth sentence that do we learn that the guy has also threatened the life of the President of the United States. Perhaps because that alone wasn't reason enough to arrest him. Or report on it.
BREAKING NEWS: Man in Florida arrested on charges of threatening to assassinate Obama.
I clicked on the link and read the AP story. Here, with my emphasis added, are its first three paragraphs:
MIAMI - A man is being held in Florida by federal authorities on charges of threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Raymond Hunter Geisel was ordered held without bail Thursday at a brief court hearing.
The Secret Service says Geisel made the threat during a training class for bail bondsmen in Miami in late July. Another tipster said Geisel also threatened President Bush.
That's right, folks. In the first sentence, as in the glowing red headline, we learn the guy has threatened the life of an Illinois Senator. But not until the fourth sentence that do we learn that the guy has also threatened the life of the President of the United States. Perhaps because that alone wasn't reason enough to arrest him. Or report on it.
Posted at 04:06 PM
Wed - August 6, 2008
THE DUMB, THE BLONDE
the chicken, and the egg.
As of 9:48am, the day's most-viewed story on CNN.com is Johansson
downplays Obama e-mails. Which makes me think the McCain commercial may
have been smarter than I thought. And which also makes me think that the miscegenation hysteria was even sillier than I
thought.
Unless, of course, most CNN news readers are dumber and sillier than I thought.
Whew. This one's enough to make your head spin. It's the modern media equivalent of the chicken and the egg...
Unless, of course, most CNN news readers are dumber and sillier than I thought.
Whew. This one's enough to make your head spin. It's the modern media equivalent of the chicken and the egg...
Posted at 10:02 AM
Sun - July 27, 2008
"HE TOUCHED ME!"
or, maybe i should start calling him senator
fair and balanced.
From a Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau
report:
At UNITY, the applause was restrained, after organizers reminded conference participants that the appearance was being nationally broadcast and they should make every effort to maintain "professional decorum."
Still, Obama received a standing ovation from many in the audience at the start and end of his appearance. There was also a rush toward the stage after his speech, as Obama shook hands and signed autographs.
One journalist was also overheard wishing him luck, while another squealed, "He touched me!" as she left the ballroom.
Anything I could add would surely be redundant.
At UNITY, the applause was restrained, after organizers reminded conference participants that the appearance was being nationally broadcast and they should make every effort to maintain "professional decorum."
Still, Obama received a standing ovation from many in the audience at the start and end of his appearance. There was also a rush toward the stage after his speech, as Obama shook hands and signed autographs.
One journalist was also overheard wishing him luck, while another squealed, "He touched me!" as she left the ballroom.
Anything I could add would surely be redundant.
Posted at 08:41 PM
Thu - July 17, 2008
THINGS THAT ALMOST MAKE YOUR (EARLY MORNING) HEAD EXPLODE
almost.
1) When you wake up just in time to catch the tail
end of a Today show report on consumer concern in the face of recession,
rising prices, and crunching credit.
2) When you realize this is the 437th consecutive day they've aired a report exactly like this.
3) When you discover that they're gonna spice things up a bit by trying to help you feel more confident in these tough economic times.
4) When you hear Matt Lauer introduce the man who's going to help you do that: motivational speaker and peak-performance coach Tony Robbins!
5) When you resist the urge, because you don't want to wake up your sleeping son or scare your showering wife, to scream at the tv, Maybe we'd all be a little more confident if you ever fucking talked about anything fucking else! . . . And I don't mean Angelina Jolie!
2) When you realize this is the 437th consecutive day they've aired a report exactly like this.
3) When you discover that they're gonna spice things up a bit by trying to help you feel more confident in these tough economic times.
4) When you hear Matt Lauer introduce the man who's going to help you do that: motivational speaker and peak-performance coach Tony Robbins!
5) When you resist the urge, because you don't want to wake up your sleeping son or scare your showering wife, to scream at the tv, Maybe we'd all be a little more confident if you ever fucking talked about anything fucking else! . . . And I don't mean Angelina Jolie!
Posted at 10:00 AM
Wed - July 16, 2008
CAPTURING IN CARICATURE
what was there in substance.
One of TWM's favorite readers and writers -- we'll
call him Mr. R. -- emailed in response to yesterday's magazine-cover post with two paragraphs of
typical wit and wisdom that, as surely as anything else I've read, cuts to the
heart of the New Yorker
histrionics:
I am completely banjaxed by this frantic response to The New Yorker cover. It is proof positive that Americans are the lone species capable of hyperventilating without oxygen. The cover is an obvious satire -- at least obvious to the presumed sophisticates that take The New Yorker every week, or, as is my tradition, every visit to the doctor. I mean, this is the same magazine that ran Art Spiegelman's famous cover cartoon of a Hasidic Jew in a passionate kiss with a black woman -- something we are as likely to see as an AK-47 slung over the shoulders of La Michelle.
It is an interesting window into the invented aspect of the American political identity. Because image is all-encompassing and public perception becomes the defined character of the aspiring leader, a cartoon suddenly takes on a talismanic magic, as if drawing a man that way materially makes him what is drawn. Without force of personality, without the puissance of character, suddenly a cartoon has the power of redefinition? I mean, Thomas Nast's famous cartoons of Boss Tweed had their power in capturing in caricature what was there in substance. This is the inversion of that theory, and it is cause to worry about whether Obama has what the Brits would call "bottom" and whether Americans can tell their aspirant from their elbow.
The most salient point here is the thought of capturing in caricature what was there in substance. It is at once both an apt description of Thomas Nast's Boss Tweed cartoons and an acute lamentation for the state of our modern body politic.
I am completely banjaxed by this frantic response to The New Yorker cover. It is proof positive that Americans are the lone species capable of hyperventilating without oxygen. The cover is an obvious satire -- at least obvious to the presumed sophisticates that take The New Yorker every week, or, as is my tradition, every visit to the doctor. I mean, this is the same magazine that ran Art Spiegelman's famous cover cartoon of a Hasidic Jew in a passionate kiss with a black woman -- something we are as likely to see as an AK-47 slung over the shoulders of La Michelle.
It is an interesting window into the invented aspect of the American political identity. Because image is all-encompassing and public perception becomes the defined character of the aspiring leader, a cartoon suddenly takes on a talismanic magic, as if drawing a man that way materially makes him what is drawn. Without force of personality, without the puissance of character, suddenly a cartoon has the power of redefinition? I mean, Thomas Nast's famous cartoons of Boss Tweed had their power in capturing in caricature what was there in substance. This is the inversion of that theory, and it is cause to worry about whether Obama has what the Brits would call "bottom" and whether Americans can tell their aspirant from their elbow.
The most salient point here is the thought of capturing in caricature what was there in substance. It is at once both an apt description of Thomas Nast's Boss Tweed cartoons and an acute lamentation for the state of our modern body politic.
Posted at 09:18 PM
SELLING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SHORT
and taking the willfully stupid
long.
I have, in the past few weeks, been justifiably
hard on columnist Tony Norman and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial
Board on which he sits -- they'd been pumping out Obama apologetics and
histrionics at a rate nearly rivaling Newsweek's -- so it seems only fair
to praise them when they get it absolutely right, as they have the past two days
in writing about the New Yorker cover
kerfuffle.
Mixed metaphors (There is so much emotional dynamite embedded in the image that taken in isolation, each of the elements has enough resonance to deliver a gut punch to readers inclined to miss its savage irony) aside, Mr. Norman provides an even-handed look at both the criticisms and the defenses of the cover, then sums it up perfectly:
Honestly, there's a messianic quality to much of the imagery and hype surrounding Barack Obama that doesn't allow for a lot of satire. Treating a presidential candidate with the same awe one brings to a sacred text is un-American and a betrayal of our democratic traditions.
Savvy TWM readers will note, of course, that I've been making that same argument -- both explicitly and satirically -- for months, if not years, now. But it's always nice to see someone else come around, however late in the game, to the land of common sense and rational analysis.
Welcome also the PG Editorial Board, which this morning retreated several steps from xxx and back to credibility with this surprisingly blunt and accurate summation:
The rumors aren't true, but a minority of inattentive Americans believe otherwise.
It is feared, especially in Democratic circles, that The New Yorker cover pours accelerant on biases that are already burning. Those who are most outraged fear that the humor will be lost on too many readers who don't understand satire. That's selling the American public short...
...If a minority of voters choose to believe the rumors after this week, then they are willfully stupid. What's the point of coveting their vote?
Contrast this triumphant -- and rightly, delightfully dismissive -- stance with the hand-wringing staged byObamaweek Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter, who
invokes a certified loon (Ross Perot) and a seeming idiot (his cousin, Paul)
to
explain why the New Yorker cover does so much
damage:
In the course of the conversation, it became clear that Perot thought Obama was a Muslim. When I informed him that Obama was actually a Christian, Perot was relieved. He didn't hate Obama; he just had an instinct to believe whatever he happened to see online over what he read in reputable newspapers...
...My cousin Paul, a smart and successful Californian now in his 80s... doesn't read the New Yorker, but does include Newsweek, Time, the Los Angeles Times and such rarefied publications as the American Scholar in his media diet.
Paul, a lifelong Democrat, is truly undecided about whom to vote for, and it's not hard to see why. To get a fix on the truth about Obama, he recently sent me a letter with a series of things he'd heard about the man. [TWM Note: All were widely discredited rumors about Obama being a Muslim.] He asked me to answer "true" or "false" to each.
Mr. Alter, of course, answered false to all of them. If he'd been true and honest and possessed by even the faintest inclination toward tough love, he would have answered, They're all false, you idiot. Now get your head out of your ass, off the Internet, and back into the real, live, fact-based world with (most of) the rest of us.
Not that it would have made much of a difference. Because in the end, the willfully stupid and the hopelessly ignorant and the gleefully gullible, all the Ross Perots and cousin Pauls of the world, will go on listening to the whispers and reading the forwarded emails and believing all the happy horseshit that appears, with an alarming ease and regularity, on the newswires of their own political delusions.
And if we haven't cured those people by now, a single, satirical magazine cover will not make them any more sick than they already are.
Mixed metaphors (There is so much emotional dynamite embedded in the image that taken in isolation, each of the elements has enough resonance to deliver a gut punch to readers inclined to miss its savage irony) aside, Mr. Norman provides an even-handed look at both the criticisms and the defenses of the cover, then sums it up perfectly:
Honestly, there's a messianic quality to much of the imagery and hype surrounding Barack Obama that doesn't allow for a lot of satire. Treating a presidential candidate with the same awe one brings to a sacred text is un-American and a betrayal of our democratic traditions.
Savvy TWM readers will note, of course, that I've been making that same argument -- both explicitly and satirically -- for months, if not years, now. But it's always nice to see someone else come around, however late in the game, to the land of common sense and rational analysis.
Welcome also the PG Editorial Board, which this morning retreated several steps from xxx and back to credibility with this surprisingly blunt and accurate summation:
The rumors aren't true, but a minority of inattentive Americans believe otherwise.
It is feared, especially in Democratic circles, that The New Yorker cover pours accelerant on biases that are already burning. Those who are most outraged fear that the humor will be lost on too many readers who don't understand satire. That's selling the American public short...
...If a minority of voters choose to believe the rumors after this week, then they are willfully stupid. What's the point of coveting their vote?
Contrast this triumphant -- and rightly, delightfully dismissive -- stance with the hand-wringing staged by
In the course of the conversation, it became clear that Perot thought Obama was a Muslim. When I informed him that Obama was actually a Christian, Perot was relieved. He didn't hate Obama; he just had an instinct to believe whatever he happened to see online over what he read in reputable newspapers...
...My cousin Paul, a smart and successful Californian now in his 80s... doesn't read the New Yorker, but does include Newsweek, Time, the Los Angeles Times and such rarefied publications as the American Scholar in his media diet.
Paul, a lifelong Democrat, is truly undecided about whom to vote for, and it's not hard to see why. To get a fix on the truth about Obama, he recently sent me a letter with a series of things he'd heard about the man. [TWM Note: All were widely discredited rumors about Obama being a Muslim.] He asked me to answer "true" or "false" to each.
Mr. Alter, of course, answered false to all of them. If he'd been true and honest and possessed by even the faintest inclination toward tough love, he would have answered, They're all false, you idiot. Now get your head out of your ass, off the Internet, and back into the real, live, fact-based world with (most of) the rest of us.
Not that it would have made much of a difference. Because in the end, the willfully stupid and the hopelessly ignorant and the gleefully gullible, all the Ross Perots and cousin Pauls of the world, will go on listening to the whispers and reading the forwarded emails and believing all the happy horseshit that appears, with an alarming ease and regularity, on the newswires of their own political delusions.
And if we haven't cured those people by now, a single, satirical magazine cover will not make them any more sick than they already are.
Posted at 09:53 AM
Tue - July 15, 2008
YOU CAN SEE WHY THEY'RE SO UPSET
about that one.
The New Yorker staff, apparently, did not get the memo.
You know, the one that says Senator Second Coming may only be portrayed in the most flattering and/or dignifed and/or beatific and/or Messianic of poses. The one that says no ill words nor unflattering light, no pedestrian poses nor middling moments, shall ever befall a portrayal of him. The one that says you may not, even when you're defending him and attacking his most hateful and ignorant detractors, employ irony or subtlety or satire or anything else that could possibly be misconstrued as anything less than unconditional awe and/or uncritical adoration.
I'm not sure when we started worrying so much about what the great unwashed, the ill-informed and the under-educated, might do if they don't get a joke. And I'm still trying to figure out why, apart from hyperventilating news and internet coverage, all those people are suddenly looking at The New Yorker. But I do know that if we're going to do it, if we're really going to spend our time and our energy and a good chunk of our rhetorical capital fretting over the effects that one magazine cover ironically depicting Senator Obama as a terrorist can have on an impressionable and not terribly discerning or sophisticated electorate, then we should also, once we've finished plunging our knives and slings and arrows into the bloody corpse of satirical cartoonery, start wondering about what kinds of effects might also be wielded upon those poor folks by a constant stream of magazine covers worshipfully portraying the Senator as a cross between MLK, JFK, and Jesus Christ.
Posted at 10:07 AM
Mon - July 14, 2008
CARBOLIC RISING
to infinity, and beyond.
This past Friday, three years to the day after it
opened, and almost a year and a half after I joined in the festivities, we
killed the Judge, printed an obituary, and closed up shop at the Carbolic Smoke
Ball. Some folks, fearing the worst, said nice things about us and wished us well in
our future endeavors. No one, at least to our (admittedly limited) knowledge,
danced on our graves or threatened to cut our nuts off if we ever returned.
Which is good, because we're back.
The future is now, the endeavors have landed, and an all-new -- proudly refocused, redesigned, and re-energized -- Carbolic Smoke Ball rises today.
Give us a week, and we'll give you the world. But a whole lot funnier.
Which is good, because we're back.
The future is now, the endeavors have landed, and an all-new -- proudly refocused, redesigned, and re-energized -- Carbolic Smoke Ball rises today.
Give us a week, and we'll give you the world. But a whole lot funnier.
Posted at 12:05 AM
Sun - July 6, 2008
WHERE'S KEN RICE WHEN YOU NEED HIM?
it could have been sunday night
live.
They haven't posted video of this yet, so you'll
have to trust me, but...
...tonight, on KDKA's 11 o'clock news, the A Block featured a story about a black bear cub wandering through backyards in Leechburg. The tv cameras arrived too late to catch the bear on videotape, but a Leechburg police officer did manage to snap a bunch of photos with his cell phone. And thus did KDKA provide us with several compelling shots of a black bear on a Blackberry.
The image -- the logo looming over the screen, the mammal lurking upon it -- just hung there for seconds that felt like minutes that felt like hours. It was a punch line, a snarky aside, some sort of eye-rolling bad pun (at the very least) waiting to happen. But it never came. Weekend anchor Stephanie Watson just let it roll right on by without ever taking a shot.
In that moment of frustration, after so many moments of high comedic anticipation, I so wanted -- hell, for the first time in my life, I actually longed for -- Ken Rice at the anchor desk. You know he wouldn't have let it pass.
He wouldn't have been able to bear it.
...tonight, on KDKA's 11 o'clock news, the A Block featured a story about a black bear cub wandering through backyards in Leechburg. The tv cameras arrived too late to catch the bear on videotape, but a Leechburg police officer did manage to snap a bunch of photos with his cell phone. And thus did KDKA provide us with several compelling shots of a black bear on a Blackberry.
The image -- the logo looming over the screen, the mammal lurking upon it -- just hung there for seconds that felt like minutes that felt like hours. It was a punch line, a snarky aside, some sort of eye-rolling bad pun (at the very least) waiting to happen. But it never came. Weekend anchor Stephanie Watson just let it roll right on by without ever taking a shot.
In that moment of frustration, after so many moments of high comedic anticipation, I so wanted -- hell, for the first time in my life, I actually longed for -- Ken Rice at the anchor desk. You know he wouldn't have let it pass.
He wouldn't have been able to bear it.
Posted at 11:14 PM
Wed - June 18, 2008
WEDNESDAY MORNING GLORY
for a tuesday evening
submission.
I got to this too late last night, so I saved it
for this morning, when we could all bask in its considerably glory.
Inspired by yesterday morning's Irony and Melody, enraged by the misery and folly of watching 24-hour cable news, and spurred by the decency and humanity bursting always within her, a faithful reader yesterday became a contributing writer, appropriating some TWM tones and concerns and at least a couple of its styles -- if I'm not careful, she'll take over -- and frothed up a wicked little submission.
Guest blogging and media watching don't come any better than this...
TUESDAY AFTERNOON AGONY
breaking news! cnn anchor drowns the fucking lede.
Like it's not bad enough that your whole neighborhood flooded. And then your whole state flooded. And then the levees broke. And Skeletor's still in charge, so you know that whatever happens next, you're going to have to do yourself.
Now, you have to move out of your house in the way that no one should ever have to move out of their house: dragging your life haphazardly on to winter blankets, playing Russian roulette with the markers of your existence, deciding what stays and what goes when you know in your heart of hearts that most of what you're taking out is already damaged beyond repair.
There's your record collection, which you know isn't as important as the folder that carries all your bank information or your homeowner's insurance, but was something that marked your life and your memories in a soulful, sentimental way. And now they're all wet. And, in a last ditch effort, you place them all in your yard. The grass is wet, but not as wet as your house. And you're hoping the warm rays of the sun do something to make it better.
Like it wasn't bad enough.
Then CNN shows up. And so, not only is your basement flooded, but you're being forced to watch Ed Lavandera banter with Kyra Phillips amidst a national tragedy in your side yard.
ED LAVANDERA: The basement was full of water, and they are pulling out everything they can. Beautiful record collections. Vinyls right there, Kyra, on the grass drying out there.
KYRA PHILLIPS: You're leaving yourself wide open. I got to know what some of the albums are.
It gets worse.
After some back and forth about the records, Ed ventures over. And what do we learn?
EL: Elvis. A little Elvis there.
KP: That was my first album. What else do you have?
As though, you know, it's a yard sale.
EL: Andy Gibb. That's there for you, Kyra. You probably like Andy Gibb.
Other things Kyra likes: Watching the lives of innocent Midwesterners float away in the flood waters. And then, the big finish.
KP: Ed, this goes to show -- no doubt. But this goes to show, this is affecting livelihoods.
No shit, assholes. But, oh! She's not done!
KP: Ed, you might want to get that homeowner to move some of those records out of the sun. They'll start warping.
Right, sure, Kyra. Just as soon as he's done with the rest of his earthly possessions. But thanks for the hot tip.
Inspired by yesterday morning's Irony and Melody, enraged by the misery and folly of watching 24-hour cable news, and spurred by the decency and humanity bursting always within her, a faithful reader yesterday became a contributing writer, appropriating some TWM tones and concerns and at least a couple of its styles -- if I'm not careful, she'll take over -- and frothed up a wicked little submission.
Guest blogging and media watching don't come any better than this...
TUESDAY AFTERNOON AGONY
breaking news! cnn anchor drowns the fucking lede.
Like it's not bad enough that your whole neighborhood flooded. And then your whole state flooded. And then the levees broke. And Skeletor's still in charge, so you know that whatever happens next, you're going to have to do yourself.
Now, you have to move out of your house in the way that no one should ever have to move out of their house: dragging your life haphazardly on to winter blankets, playing Russian roulette with the markers of your existence, deciding what stays and what goes when you know in your heart of hearts that most of what you're taking out is already damaged beyond repair.
There's your record collection, which you know isn't as important as the folder that carries all your bank information or your homeowner's insurance, but was something that marked your life and your memories in a soulful, sentimental way. And now they're all wet. And, in a last ditch effort, you place them all in your yard. The grass is wet, but not as wet as your house. And you're hoping the warm rays of the sun do something to make it better.
Like it wasn't bad enough.
Then CNN shows up. And so, not only is your basement flooded, but you're being forced to watch Ed Lavandera banter with Kyra Phillips amidst a national tragedy in your side yard.
ED LAVANDERA: The basement was full of water, and they are pulling out everything they can. Beautiful record collections. Vinyls right there, Kyra, on the grass drying out there.
KYRA PHILLIPS: You're leaving yourself wide open. I got to know what some of the albums are.
It gets worse.
After some back and forth about the records, Ed ventures over. And what do we learn?
EL: Elvis. A little Elvis there.
KP: That was my first album. What else do you have?
As though, you know, it's a yard sale.
EL: Andy Gibb. That's there for you, Kyra. You probably like Andy Gibb.
Other things Kyra likes: Watching the lives of innocent Midwesterners float away in the flood waters. And then, the big finish.
KP: Ed, this goes to show -- no doubt. But this goes to show, this is affecting livelihoods.
No shit, assholes. But, oh! She's not done!
KP: Ed, you might want to get that homeowner to move some of those records out of the sun. They'll start warping.
Right, sure, Kyra. Just as soon as he's done with the rest of his earthly possessions. But thanks for the hot tip.
Posted at 07:40 AM
Sat - June 14, 2008
AND AGAIN
this time, they lower the bar.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Editorial
Board's Obama histrionics this morning turned to Obama apologetics, with a piece that somehow -- by which I mean, oddly;
by which I mean, unfortunately -- spins the resignation of Jim Johnson from the
Senator's VP Vetting team as Raising the bar, a move that highlights a
tougher ethic for which they credit the Illinois Senator while still failing
to debit his continued hypocrisy.
To be fair, the PG Editorial Board does admit that it was easy to see how [Johnson] was becoming a liability for the presumptive Democratic nominee. And they do note that the best way for Mr. Obama... to avoid such embarrassing exits is to not hire such aides in the first place. But they also pull a couple of sleights of hand -- and, worse still, twists of fact -- that lessen the impact of the whole silly affair. Consider:
What's unusual in Mr. Obama's case is he has purposely and strategically sought to be a different kind of candidate -- one who rejects the old politics and the old Washington game. By setting a higher standard, for himself and for America, he can't afford to be tarnished by business-as-usual associates.
Mr. Obama has so far claimed a higher standard. Promised one. Even touted one. But it remains to be seen whether he has actually set one, or whether he will, no matter where he sets it, actually be able to achieve it. The results so far are not encouraging. And even less so this week, when he tarnished himself by attempting to shine a business-as-usual -- in fact, a business-as-he-had-quite-loudly-and-specifically-decried it -- associate who'd been outed as the prototypical insider-with-favors-and-access guy everyone knew him to be. And especially when he refused to acknowledge, much less to act upon, the contradiction.
And yet somehow the PG Editorial Board, inhabiting a reality that seems to include the actual events of the week, sees it differently:
He was right to send James Johnson packing
By which they must mean: he would have been right, if he actually had sent him packing. Because anyone who's followed this story knows that Senator Obama did not send James Johnson packing. Instead, he:
• defended him: Jim Johnson has volunteered his time to perform a specific task for the campaign, one he has performed many times for many candidates before, that has nothing to do with advising the campaign in the development of policy;
• He -- inelegantly, and defensively -- dismissed the criticism: Well, look ... first of all, I am not vetting my vice presidential search committee for their mortgages. I mean, this is a game that can be played -- everybody, you know, who is anybody who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships;
• defended the process: I would have to hire a vetter to vet the vetters. I mean, at some point, you know, we just asked people to do their assignments;
• dismissed, in fact, the whole idea: These aren't folks who are working for me. They are not people, you know, who I have assigned to a job in the future administration. And, ultimately, my assumption is that this is a discreet task that they are going to be performing for me in the next two months.
And then, after all that, Johnson resigned. He was not sent packing; he packed up and left on his own. With only a tepid acknowledgment (He has made a decision that I accept) and an even more tepid explanation (Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee) from Senator Higher Standards.
Surely the PG Editorial Board knows this. It is, after all, common knowledge. Their paper even reported on it. I think.
If you search for Jim Johnson or James Johnson on the PG web site, you'll find an item about his experience (in which Senator Obama tellingly refers to him as a friend), but not about his resignation. Surely a major metropolitan newspaper reported on the controversy-fueled resignation of the head of the VP vetting team for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee? Especially when that presumptive nominee has loudly and repeatedly vowed to run a campaign and field an administration free of such privileged, old-school insiders? Perhaps it did but then neglected to archive the story online? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, even as, lately at least, they have so rarely earned it.
Of course, if you run those searches, you will find a piece by the AP's Julie Hirschfield Davis, dated today, that doesn't seem to know: just days after similar revelations prompted Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to ax one of his potential vetters, Jim Johnson. Which seems to me even more shocking than the PG's problems. How can an Associated Press reporter, much less one assigned to a story on Democratic ties to special mortgage deals, not know that Johnson resigned? How can the editor (or editors) assigned to the story not know it either? Doesn't anybody freaking fact-check any more? Or are the embarrassing details just not that important when writing about Senator Raising the Bar?
But I digress. (Slightly.)
What's all the more astonishing -- by which I mean, infuriating -- about the revisionist history of the passage is that we know the PG Editorial Board knew the truth; after all, they noted it in the first sentence of their own editorial:
...when the aide stepped down after some unflattering news coverage.
How they can reconcile Johnson stepping down with Senator the claim that Senator Obama sent him packing remains a mystery. Is it simple sloppiness? Or is it, as I've already suggested, just more party-line cheerleading for the Illinois Senator? Neither scenario inspires a lot of confidence. Or trust. Or even the audacity of hoping that the big-time editorial board of a big-time, big-city newspaper would, no matter its apparent and abundant biases, be able to get its story straight, its facts correct, and its analysis accurate.
To be fair, the PG Editorial Board does admit that it was easy to see how [Johnson] was becoming a liability for the presumptive Democratic nominee. And they do note that the best way for Mr. Obama... to avoid such embarrassing exits is to not hire such aides in the first place. But they also pull a couple of sleights of hand -- and, worse still, twists of fact -- that lessen the impact of the whole silly affair. Consider:
What's unusual in Mr. Obama's case is he has purposely and strategically sought to be a different kind of candidate -- one who rejects the old politics and the old Washington game. By setting a higher standard, for himself and for America, he can't afford to be tarnished by business-as-usual associates.
Mr. Obama has so far claimed a higher standard. Promised one. Even touted one. But it remains to be seen whether he has actually set one, or whether he will, no matter where he sets it, actually be able to achieve it. The results so far are not encouraging. And even less so this week, when he tarnished himself by attempting to shine a business-as-usual -- in fact, a business-as-he-had-quite-loudly-and-specifically-decried it -- associate who'd been outed as the prototypical insider-with-favors-and-access guy everyone knew him to be. And especially when he refused to acknowledge, much less to act upon, the contradiction.
And yet somehow the PG Editorial Board, inhabiting a reality that seems to include the actual events of the week, sees it differently:
He was right to send James Johnson packing
By which they must mean: he would have been right, if he actually had sent him packing. Because anyone who's followed this story knows that Senator Obama did not send James Johnson packing. Instead, he:
• defended him: Jim Johnson has volunteered his time to perform a specific task for the campaign, one he has performed many times for many candidates before, that has nothing to do with advising the campaign in the development of policy;
• He -- inelegantly, and defensively -- dismissed the criticism: Well, look ... first of all, I am not vetting my vice presidential search committee for their mortgages. I mean, this is a game that can be played -- everybody, you know, who is anybody who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships;
• defended the process: I would have to hire a vetter to vet the vetters. I mean, at some point, you know, we just asked people to do their assignments;
• dismissed, in fact, the whole idea: These aren't folks who are working for me. They are not people, you know, who I have assigned to a job in the future administration. And, ultimately, my assumption is that this is a discreet task that they are going to be performing for me in the next two months.
And then, after all that, Johnson resigned. He was not sent packing; he packed up and left on his own. With only a tepid acknowledgment (He has made a decision that I accept) and an even more tepid explanation (Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee) from Senator Higher Standards.
Surely the PG Editorial Board knows this. It is, after all, common knowledge. Their paper even reported on it. I think.
If you search for Jim Johnson or James Johnson on the PG web site, you'll find an item about his experience (in which Senator Obama tellingly refers to him as a friend), but not about his resignation. Surely a major metropolitan newspaper reported on the controversy-fueled resignation of the head of the VP vetting team for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee? Especially when that presumptive nominee has loudly and repeatedly vowed to run a campaign and field an administration free of such privileged, old-school insiders? Perhaps it did but then neglected to archive the story online? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, even as, lately at least, they have so rarely earned it.
Of course, if you run those searches, you will find a piece by the AP's Julie Hirschfield Davis, dated today, that doesn't seem to know: just days after similar revelations prompted Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to ax one of his potential vetters, Jim Johnson. Which seems to me even more shocking than the PG's problems. How can an Associated Press reporter, much less one assigned to a story on Democratic ties to special mortgage deals, not know that Johnson resigned? How can the editor (or editors) assigned to the story not know it either? Doesn't anybody freaking fact-check any more? Or are the embarrassing details just not that important when writing about Senator Raising the Bar?
But I digress. (Slightly.)
What's all the more astonishing -- by which I mean, infuriating -- about the revisionist history of the passage is that we know the PG Editorial Board knew the truth; after all, they noted it in the first sentence of their own editorial:
...when the aide stepped down after some unflattering news coverage.
How they can reconcile Johnson stepping down with Senator the claim that Senator Obama sent him packing remains a mystery. Is it simple sloppiness? Or is it, as I've already suggested, just more party-line cheerleading for the Illinois Senator? Neither scenario inspires a lot of confidence. Or trust. Or even the audacity of hoping that the big-time editorial board of a big-time, big-city newspaper would, no matter its apparent and abundant biases, be able to get its story straight, its facts correct, and its analysis accurate.
Posted at 01:19 PM
Mon - June 9, 2008
THERE THEY GO AGAIN
in lock, stooping step.
Remember, about a month and a half ago, when the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board implied that anyone who voted for
Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary was dumb and quite possibly racist?
When it analogized her campaign both to the Bush Administration and to the
Confederacy? When it more or less suggested that Senator Clinton was the
candidate of the old, the stubborn, and the
stupid?
Well, now you can add the candidate of the out of step. Which, at least in yesterday's editorial, sounded an awful lot like code for the uncool. Or maybe just the losers:
NOW THAT Barack Obama has secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination, some rethinking will have to occur where the political establishment came out for Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary.
I've read this sentence at least a dozen times now, and it still catches on my brain the way proper English catches on Evgeni Malkin's tongue; you know that clarity and correctness are in there somewhere, but be damned if you can find them, much less find comfort in them. The inelegance, both musical and grammatical, of where the political establishment came out for Hillary Clinton alone is enough to make you wonder how its author(s) could possibly be paid to sit in judgment over honest-to-goodness practitioners of the craft. It's roughly the same feeling you get when you talk to an elementary school principal.
But I digress.
Twice, in fact...
The list of Clinton backers among top Democrats was remarkable -- Gov. Ed Rendell, Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl (and former Mayor Sophie Masloff) and members of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee.
Why does (Sophie) get the parentheses? (Just wondering.)
Now. I must admit that seeing all those names lined up in support of a candidate is as good a reason as I can imagine to support her opponent. But that's beside the point. Because the point here is...
That so many could march in step while being out of step with much of the rest of the country didn't endear this state to Sen. Obama.
...that key players in both the state and the region are out of step with much of the rest of the country. And that, in doing so, they might have upset poor Prince Barack. We'll handle that last bit of silliness in a moment, but first, let's consider the latest bit of condescension, this time mixed with a healthy dose of Afterschool-Special-worthy peer pressure -- like, what's the matter, dudes? everyone else is supporting Obama! you don't want them to think you're, like, a bunch of squares, do ya? -- from the PG powers-that-be.
If by out of step they mean, endorsed a candidate who did not win the nomination, then, of course, they have a point. Rendell, Knoll, Onorato, Ravenstahl and (Masloff) endorsed the candidate who finished second. A close second. A very close second indeed. Consider the official vote totals:
OBAMA: 17,535,458 (48.1%)
CLINTON: 17,493,836 (48.0%)
Those numbers do not count estimates for states (like Iowa and Nevada) that have not released popular vote totals, nor do they include votes from Michigan. If you remove the votes from Florida, where Senator Obama was on the ballot but did not campaign, the totals look like this:
OBAMA: 16,959,244 (48.9%)
CLINTON: 16,622,805 (47.9%)
This number is a bit of a stretch, because Senator Obama still won over half a million votes in Florida, and Senator Clinton, though clearly bending and damned near breaking rules to which she and her campaign readily agreed, did not campaign as vigorously as she otherwise would have. In any case, in the interests of fairness, it's worth considering the difference if all the votes were ignored.
Even then, Senator Obama wins the official popular vote by only 336,439 votes. Or, about 1% of the vote.
If you count all the Florida votes for both candidates, Senator Obama wins the official popular vote by 38,622 votes. Or, about .1% of the vote.
By every official measure, Senator Obama wins. He will be the nominee, and he deserves to be the nominee. And so, yes, Rendell, Knoll, Onorato, Ravensthal, and (Masloff) all backed a loser. But a loser who lost by, depending upon how inclined you are to count vote totals in Florida -- and, let's face it: after 2000, we should never be inclined to count vote totals in Florida -- either .1% of the popular vote, or by the much larger, more whopping, more totally staggering and humiliating total of 1% of the vote.
So you can see, of course, how horrendously out of step with much of the rest of the country Rendell, Knoll, Onorato, Ravenstahl, and (Masloff) really were. They backed a candidate who, after nearly 35 million votes were cast, lost by somewhere between 38,000 and 337,000 votes. A candidate who, despite her many flaws and failings, still earned about 17 million votes across the country, tallied almost half of all the Democratic votes cast, and took the race down to the last day of the primaries.
And yet the PG editorial board makes it sound as though they'd endorsed Dennis Kucinich.
I won't even discuss the absurdity, much less the inherent condescension, of the notion that winning the Democratic Primary process -- no matter how great or small the margin -- is somehow a fair and accurate measure of being in step with much of the rest of the country. That idea seems a bit dismissive of Republicans. And Independents. And all the rest of the parties. And were it true, I suspect we would have elected more than two Democratic Presidents in the last 40 years.
When George W. Bush beat Al Gore and John Kerry by similarly thin margins nationwide, did the PG Editorial Board opine that all the state and regional pols who'd endorsed the Democrats were similarly out of step with much of the rest of the country? My memory's a little fuzzy, but...
...I think we all know the answer to that one, don't we?
But he can't afford to bear a grudge. He needs Pennsylvania. He needs the help of those who backed Mrs. Clinton.
Indeed he does need them. Just as he needs this state. But come on, folks -- how could he hold a grudge? He's Senator Breath of Fresh Air. Senator New Kind of Politics. Holding a grudge because you lost to a strong and qualified candidate is awfully old school, isn't it? That's just more of the same politics as usual, isn't it?
I mean, sure, we've seen how he bristles at criticism, how he doesn't like the tough questions, and how he will suddenly break his vow never to disown you if you start saying unflattering things about him (as opposed to, say, the government, or most of the rest of the country), but surely he won't succumb to the divisive politics of the past and bear a grudge against a state full of people in a country he's promised to unite. Right?
(Oh, how I love when supporters of Senator New Kind of Politics frame their arguments in the rhetoric of the Old Kind of Politics. I have yet to decide whether they're just forgetful, whether they don't actually buy the hype they're selling, or whether, somewhere deep down in places they don't like to acknowledge in editorials or comment threads, they understand that it really is just a bunch of empty blather. Whatever the case, it never fails to amuse.)
If they support him as enthusiastically, they might yet pick a winner.
This from an editorial board that, only two days earlier, praised a valiant but ultimately vanquished hockey team for coming so close, for battling back and coming so far and pushing the eventual champion almost to the brink of defeat. But, hey, intellectual consistency may be too much to ask from a group of men and women who, by the end of yesterday's editorial, sounded like a bunch of boys and girls on a middle school playground, taunting other kids for liking the wrong sports team. (You rooted for the Penguins to win? Suckers! Root for the Wings next time, and you might yet root for a team that wins the Cup! Na na nah na na!)
(Did I say this whole thing sounded like a bad After School Special? What was I thinking?)
I guess I was thinking that people should accept victory with grace and dignity with defeat. That they should put both in perspective. And that, except from people who root for the Flyers or write for the PG Editorial Board, those things don't seem like to much to ask.
Well, now you can add the candidate of the out of step. Which, at least in yesterday's editorial, sounded an awful lot like code for the uncool. Or maybe just the losers:
NOW THAT Barack Obama has secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination, some rethinking will have to occur where the political establishment came out for Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary.
I've read this sentence at least a dozen times now, and it still catches on my brain the way proper English catches on Evgeni Malkin's tongue; you know that clarity and correctness are in there somewhere, but be damned if you can find them, much less find comfort in them. The inelegance, both musical and grammatical, of where the political establishment came out for Hillary Clinton alone is enough to make you wonder how its author(s) could possibly be paid to sit in judgment over honest-to-goodness practitioners of the craft. It's roughly the same feeling you get when you talk to an elementary school principal.
But I digress.
Twice, in fact...
The list of Clinton backers among top Democrats was remarkable -- Gov. Ed Rendell, Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl (and former Mayor Sophie Masloff) and members of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee.
Why does (Sophie) get the parentheses? (Just wondering.)
Now. I must admit that seeing all those names lined up in support of a candidate is as good a reason as I can imagine to support her opponent. But that's beside the point. Because the point here is...
That so many could march in step while being out of step with much of the rest of the country didn't endear this state to Sen. Obama.
...that key players in both the state and the region are out of step with much of the rest of the country. And that, in doing so, they might have upset poor Prince Barack. We'll handle that last bit of silliness in a moment, but first, let's consider the latest bit of condescension, this time mixed with a healthy dose of Afterschool-Special-worthy peer pressure -- like, what's the matter, dudes? everyone else is supporting Obama! you don't want them to think you're, like, a bunch of squares, do ya? -- from the PG powers-that-be.
If by out of step they mean, endorsed a candidate who did not win the nomination, then, of course, they have a point. Rendell, Knoll, Onorato, Ravenstahl and (Masloff) endorsed the candidate who finished second. A close second. A very close second indeed. Consider the official vote totals:
OBAMA: 17,535,458 (48.1%)
CLINTON: 17,493,836 (48.0%)
Those numbers do not count estimates for states (like Iowa and Nevada) that have not released popular vote totals, nor do they include votes from Michigan. If you remove the votes from Florida, where Senator Obama was on the ballot but did not campaign, the totals look like this:
OBAMA: 16,959,244 (48.9%)
CLINTON: 16,622,805 (47.9%)
This number is a bit of a stretch, because Senator Obama still won over half a million votes in Florida, and Senator Clinton, though clearly bending and damned near breaking rules to which she and her campaign readily agreed, did not campaign as vigorously as she otherwise would have. In any case, in the interests of fairness, it's worth considering the difference if all the votes were ignored.
Even then, Senator Obama wins the official popular vote by only 336,439 votes. Or, about 1% of the vote.
If you count all the Florida votes for both candidates, Senator Obama wins the official popular vote by 38,622 votes. Or, about .1% of the vote.
By every official measure, Senator Obama wins. He will be the nominee, and he deserves to be the nominee. And so, yes, Rendell, Knoll, Onorato, Ravensthal, and (Masloff) all backed a loser. But a loser who lost by, depending upon how inclined you are to count vote totals in Florida -- and, let's face it: after 2000, we should never be inclined to count vote totals in Florida -- either .1% of the popular vote, or by the much larger, more whopping, more totally staggering and humiliating total of 1% of the vote.
So you can see, of course, how horrendously out of step with much of the rest of the country Rendell, Knoll, Onorato, Ravenstahl, and (Masloff) really were. They backed a candidate who, after nearly 35 million votes were cast, lost by somewhere between 38,000 and 337,000 votes. A candidate who, despite her many flaws and failings, still earned about 17 million votes across the country, tallied almost half of all the Democratic votes cast, and took the race down to the last day of the primaries.
And yet the PG editorial board makes it sound as though they'd endorsed Dennis Kucinich.
I won't even discuss the absurdity, much less the inherent condescension, of the notion that winning the Democratic Primary process -- no matter how great or small the margin -- is somehow a fair and accurate measure of being in step with much of the rest of the country. That idea seems a bit dismissive of Republicans. And Independents. And all the rest of the parties. And were it true, I suspect we would have elected more than two Democratic Presidents in the last 40 years.
When George W. Bush beat Al Gore and John Kerry by similarly thin margins nationwide, did the PG Editorial Board opine that all the state and regional pols who'd endorsed the Democrats were similarly out of step with much of the rest of the country? My memory's a little fuzzy, but...
...I think we all know the answer to that one, don't we?
But he can't afford to bear a grudge. He needs Pennsylvania. He needs the help of those who backed Mrs. Clinton.
Indeed he does need them. Just as he needs this state. But come on, folks -- how could he hold a grudge? He's Senator Breath of Fresh Air. Senator New Kind of Politics. Holding a grudge because you lost to a strong and qualified candidate is awfully old school, isn't it? That's just more of the same politics as usual, isn't it?
I mean, sure, we've seen how he bristles at criticism, how he doesn't like the tough questions, and how he will suddenly break his vow never to disown you if you start saying unflattering things about him (as opposed to, say, the government, or most of the rest of the country), but surely he won't succumb to the divisive politics of the past and bear a grudge against a state full of people in a country he's promised to unite. Right?
(Oh, how I love when supporters of Senator New Kind of Politics frame their arguments in the rhetoric of the Old Kind of Politics. I have yet to decide whether they're just forgetful, whether they don't actually buy the hype they're selling, or whether, somewhere deep down in places they don't like to acknowledge in editorials or comment threads, they understand that it really is just a bunch of empty blather. Whatever the case, it never fails to amuse.)
If they support him as enthusiastically, they might yet pick a winner.
This from an editorial board that, only two days earlier, praised a valiant but ultimately vanquished hockey team for coming so close, for battling back and coming so far and pushing the eventual champion almost to the brink of defeat. But, hey, intellectual consistency may be too much to ask from a group of men and women who, by the end of yesterday's editorial, sounded like a bunch of boys and girls on a middle school playground, taunting other kids for liking the wrong sports team. (You rooted for the Penguins to win? Suckers! Root for the Wings next time, and you might yet root for a team that wins the Cup! Na na nah na na!)
(Did I say this whole thing sounded like a bad After School Special? What was I thinking?)
I guess I was thinking that people should accept victory with grace and dignity with defeat. That they should put both in perspective. And that, except from people who root for the Flyers or write for the PG Editorial Board, those things don't seem like to much to ask.
Posted at 11:56 AM
Sun - May 25, 2008
I HAVE SOMETHING ELSE TOO
and even more later this week.
Just a quick question for all you news hounds and
media junkies out there:
Which of the following seems woefully, painfully out of place on the front page, above the fold, of the Sunday edition of a major metropolitan newspaper that bills itself as One of America's Greats:
1) A new installment of "The Road to the White House," headlined Where did she go wrong? Clinton says her campaign's not over, but that hasn't stopped the post-mortems;
2) A full-color action shot from Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, in which the newspaper's hometown hockey team had just played the night before, headlined, Stanley Cup Final GROUNDED BY THE WINGS; or
3) A story about how countless groups of women friends fancy themselves like the characters of a long-dead HBO series, share a love of glamour, glitz, and high-end fashion, and now eagerly await the release of a new summer movie geared to their most superficial instincts, headlined, For 'Sex and the City' fans, it's friends that count?
I'll wait while you...
...what? You have your answer already? It wasn't even close, you say, because both the question and the answer insulted your intelligence?
Then I imagine you're not an editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Which of the following seems woefully, painfully out of place on the front page, above the fold, of the Sunday edition of a major metropolitan newspaper that bills itself as One of America's Greats:
1) A new installment of "The Road to the White House," headlined Where did she go wrong? Clinton says her campaign's not over, but that hasn't stopped the post-mortems;
2) A full-color action shot from Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, in which the newspaper's hometown hockey team had just played the night before, headlined, Stanley Cup Final GROUNDED BY THE WINGS; or
3) A story about how countless groups of women friends fancy themselves like the characters of a long-dead HBO series, share a love of glamour, glitz, and high-end fashion, and now eagerly await the release of a new summer movie geared to their most superficial instincts, headlined, For 'Sex and the City' fans, it's friends that count?
I'll wait while you...
...what? You have your answer already? It wasn't even close, you say, because both the question and the answer insulted your intelligence?
Then I imagine you're not an editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Posted at 02:48 PM
Tue - May 20, 2008
WWACD?
he'd be the immature, idiot blogger (and
emailer) of the week.
It is always difficult to admit when you're wrong.
To acknowledge that you've made a faulty assumption and a knee-jerk reaction and
then compounded them both by writing or speaking, emailing or blog-posting,
without fact or reason or even a modicum of common sense on your side. It is
even more difficult to apologize when you've done any of these things, much less
when you've managed to do all of them. And it is all the more difficult,
apparently, when you are 24, going on 10, going on 2
1/2.
Which brings us, then, to Adam Caldwell, the hopelessly immature, intellectually dishonest, marginally literate purveyor of a local Pittsburgh Penguins fan blog. Acting upon a bit of an unfair -- or at least unfairly represented -- tip over at The Burgh Blog, Master Caldwell reacted to Thursday's Gary Roberts post with an email and a blog post that would be funny, were they not so feeble, infuriating, were they not so pedestrian, and at least a little troubling, were they not such perfect proof not only of my point last Thursday but also of so many other things I've argued over and over again here at TWM. Chief among them: that a little knowledge is an especially dangerous thing when it is in proximity to a keyboard and an internet connection; that context and subtext and fact and truth and reason have now almost entirely passed out of a culture that prefers to celebrate the guttural bleatings of cheap insults and ironic self-congratulation; and that unfettered ignorance has but unfounded narcissism to defeat before it becomes the official currency of our intellectually bankrupt technological age.
To wit:
Bud,...
When greeted with an appellation like Bud, you know immediately that you're in the presence of social and intellectual nobility; it is the salutatory currency of kings and queens and people who will no doubt enjoy playing beer pong well into their 30s. You count your blessings that he did not address you as Dude, but you figure that will come later, when he wants to show at least a little respect.
...you can't call out "bandwagon, immature, and casual fans"...
What you can't do, Master Caldwell, is put quotations marks around words that are not direct quotations. I imagine you were told this quite often in middle school, and perhaps often again in high school. Pity that you ignored it as well and as fully as you seem to have ignored all other lessons in basic composition.
For the record, I identified casual fans and immature fans and bandwagon-jumping fans as the most likely and obvious offenders of the Gary Roberts cult-hero silliness. Now. Did I, as my pal JP accuses, paint with a bit wide of a brush? Perhaps. Because Lord knows there are at least a few mature, serious, long-time fans out there who enjoy a few laughs from the recurring Chuck-Norris-ification of the Pens' veteran winger. But careful readers will note something the knee-jerk set seems content to miss: I did not suggest everyone who did so (I referred to the fans with an undying obsession for this stuff) was necessarily all of those things (linking by and and repeating with fans separates the three, indicating that all types are possible offenders). These distinctions are both subtle and grammatical, I know; hence the rampant misunderstanding of them.
So. Yes. There are, of course, exceptions to the Gary Roberts rule. But you must look no farther than the reaction of Master Caldwell -- who is not a casual fan and is not a bandwagon jumper but is, after even a cursory glance at his email or his web site, by any reasonable definition, an immature fan -- to see the truth in my contention. And all the others I've made since.
...when you don't talk about the Pens until they trade for Hossa and then make the playoffs.
As we'll see when we get to his blog post, but which already takes far less than a rocket scientist -- or even a Penguins blogger -- to surmise, Master Caldwell took a quick look at the Sports Archive link on the right of this page and concluded that I'd never written (er, talked) about the Pens before the Hossa trade. Of course, TWM is almost four years old, and, as you can clearly see on the right margin, boasts 146 sports posts. The published archive only goes back to the last 50, which date from roughly the last year.
So you can already see the lengths of Master Caldwell's research, the great and exhaustive dedications of time and energy and intellectual acuity he devoted to making sure he knew what he was emailing and blogging about. (As you'll see when we get to his post, he proudly links to the Sports archive, as if it actually proves his point. Pity that the only points it proves are the ones I make about his ethical vacuity and intellectual dishonesty. But I'm getting pretty far ahead of myself...)
And yet Master Caldwell's paltry research is even simpler -- and more simple-minded -- than that. He didn't even bother to explore all 50 headlines listed on the page. If he had, he would have discovered at least seven more Penguins posts pre-dating the Hossa trade piece. Of course, that would have demanded patience and effort and the pride that comes from actually being correct. It also would have required him to click on a couple links and dig deeper than just what he could see by scrolling down a single page. It also would have required him to imagine that an exhaustive list of posts in a four-year-old blog might stretch back farther than three months. And that, of course, would have delayed -- and, indeed, even prevented -- him from getting down to the far more enjoyable business of hacking out a pair of witless broadsides.
And yet, even if we grant his hideously faulty assumption that I never once wrote about the Penguins before the Hossa trade, there are still a few Brobdingnagian holes in his (ahem) logic. Namely: that I was actually calling out those kinds of fans. (I wasn't. I was lamenting the overkill of the fans who insist on this insipid Gary Roberts worship.) Or that I couldn't lament or call out those fans if I hadn't ever blogged about the Pens before the Hossa trade. (Because Lord knows only long-time self-important bloggers can lament silliness or call out a lack of perspective.) Or that to have been a long and serious Penguins fan I would have had to blog about them incessantly -- and no doubt immaturely -- for weeks and months and years before. (Which, of course, minus the immaturity, I actually have done. But I'm getting ahead of myself again...)
Wow. This is exhausting, isn't it? You can see why Master Caldwell just gave up. Coming to this site must have been awfully taxing for him. It's a wonder he managed to read any of it all without passing out. Or going blind. Or needing to count syllables on his toes.
You come off severely hypocritical.
I didn't even know I was on severely hypocritical.
Now. That said...
...this may be my favorite sentence of all. If only because, in it, I am lectured on (assumed) hypocrisy and (supposed) intellectual credibility by a guy who, as you will soon see, redefines the realities of both with every last, lamentable sentence he farts and belches my way.
And we let people know about it.
I like this sentence too, written as it is with all the righteous indignation of Woodward and Bernstein declaring that they must let the people know about crimes committed by the President. You know -- if Woodward and Bernstein were a couple of lazy kids who couldn't write. And if Nixon hadn't actually committed those crimes.
Here's a little tip,Bob Carl Adam: when you're letting people know
about something, it should actually be true. Or close to true. Or have some
tiny shred of even the most remote and random basis in fact. Because when it
doesn't, you look like an idiot. No matter how many equally idiotic readers you
have yucking it up behind
you.
http://www.immaturesecondratepenguinsblogtowhichiwillnotlink.com
Not even if you paid me. Because I have far too much respect for the eyes, the brain cells, and the dignities of my own readers.
What we can't understand...
Suddenly he's writing in the first-person plural. Which means Mr. Caldwell must have either an equally vexed blogging partner or a deranged mind. You make the call.
...is how people can be so thick that they can't realize the cult status surrounding Gary Roberts stems from the fact that he's nowhere near what he used to be, in terms of hockey talent.
Gee, thanks,Dude Bud Slim, for explaining it to me. Now I
understand completely.
You're all lauding Gary Roberts because he's not as good as he used to be. You're elevating and celebrating a guy on your favorite hockey team who does not deserve it, to the necessary exclusion of other, far more significant contributors on your favorite hockey team, precisely because he does not deserve it. I get it. It's an irony thing. It's like Stephen Colbert and John Stewart, only not funny. And without a point.
Well, then. I can hardly wait until 2028, when we can all salute Jordan Staal's and Marc-Andre Fleury's no-longer-greatness. I mean, it would be silly to salute their greatness now, while it's actually happening. Better to manufacture a movement and wear some bracelets and get your sign on the Jumbotron. During a series in which your cult hero doesn't even hit the ice.
How fascinating finally to have been enlightened. And to understand that one of the best ways people invested in their favorite hockey team can think of to salute it is to create and perpetuate a nice, ironic inside joke that's all about themselves. No wonder he's so proud of himself and his blog. I imagine it's only a matter of time before he auditions for a reality tv show. If he hasn't already.
Don't write something thinking that you're enlightening everyone when you're the one that's out of touch.
Speaking of irony.
Like we said, if you weren't a bandwagon fan that makes posts about the Pens when the fever pitch is the highest,...
There's that first-person-to-third-person shift again. Definite sign of a personality disorder. I'm thinking he/they need/s some serious counseling.
(We'll get back to the absurd notion that I'm a bandwagon fan later. Stay tuned.)
...we would at least respect your opinion.
Oh, yes. You can be sure they'd respect my opinion then. They would no doubt respond with careful thought and reason and evidence, with fact and logic and something resembling a coherent, cohesive argument that responded in kind to the points I made. Or at least some sort of retraction or clarification. Or maybe even an apology.
He/They would, wouldn't he/they?
Stay tuned for that too.
Thanks for your time.
Such a nice, courteous sign-off for such an immature, insulting email. I can't decide if it's a standard sig line, or just a passive-aggressive thing. Either way, it's amusing.
Now. If you read this site, and especially if you've read this far, you know I couldn't let that email go without an immediate response. And I didn't. But I'll save the details -- or at least the broad strokes of it -- for later, after we've taken a look at the even more witless and juvenile post to which he so proudly referred me...
This post basically had no point until we happened to check out [ BurghBlog ].
Well, it still has no point. And no reason. And no [logic]. And no [truth]. But you have to admire, at least a little bit, a writer so un-self-aware that he admits he has no point before he even begins to prove it.
The talented and link-savvy "PittGirl" found a link of some dude complaining about "WWGRD."
Dude. See? I told you it was coming. The blog post obviously demands a greater formality.
(And, not to nitpick, but PittGirl found a link to some dude lamenting the Gary Roberts' cultdom.)
Meet [ Chad Herman ]:
Or Chad HermanN. But, hey, why let a little thing like proper spelling hold you back? After all, virtually nothing else you write is proper or accurate. May as well fuck that up too.
And we take this is was a shot at all of us:
Well, of course you do does. Because you is are the centers of your own happy, heinously deluded little universe.
But, quick, check out his "sports" archive. [ Here ]
Ah, yes. The proof. Exhaustively researched, as we have already seen. And now provided with a link for verification, so that all the pea-brained readers of his blog can muster up their best Gary-Roberts-esque outrage and... what, exactly?
HOW DARE this guy call out "bandwagon" fans when he's only talked about the Pens when they traded for Hossa and then when they started the playoffs.
Oooh. ALL CAPS. He must be really mad now.
(You should know, too, that one of the best parts about this post and indeed the whole blog -- to which, again, I will not link -- is the visual cacophony of colors and sizes and type styles in which they're written; the pages look like they were tapped out by an eight-year-old who'd just discovered all the things he can do with Microsoft Word. And then went blind. But kept on typing. The only thing missing is a 72 pt. font that declares me a BIG FAT POOPY HEAD. I imagine it may be forthcoming.)
Meanwhile, I'm wondering how some immature, uncritical, intellectual midget of a Penguins blogger dare make claims that are not true, that are not supported by the text to which he refers, that he has not bothered to verify, and that prove only his own considerable shortcomings.
CHAD HERMAN IS A FRINGE FAN WHO THINKS HE'S ENLIGHTENING EVERYONE.
Interesting, I think, that someone who has not yet demonstrated the capacity to think fancies himself such an expert on how I do it.
Chad, you're not, dude.
Not a fringe fan? Not thinking? Or not enlightening anyone?
Just wondering, bud.
You can already tell that PeeWee wants the Pens to lose just so he can bitch about something.
Perhaps the only refreshing bit about both of these tirades is that someone as obviously limited and painfully uncreative as Master Caldwell waited this long to pull out the two (ahem) rhetorical devices I was certain would come immediately:
1) The obligatory Pee Wee Herman reference. Takes me back to high school, it does.
2) The essential, especially to Western Pennsylvania, he must not be a real fan and just wants to complain about stuff and probably hopes they'll lose gambit. Which is, of course, so clear in all those rhapsodic, superstitious, occasionally melodramatic posts I make to their honor and glory. Anyone who roots that hard must surely be harboring a secret longing for failure. Maybe it's another irony thing.
The fact anyone would actually get mad about this Roberts stuff is bizarre.
You know, because, like, I like it, and all my friends like it, and all my friends' friends like it, so, like, what's not to like?
I am tempted here to note that being critical of something is not the same as getting mad about it, but you all know that as surely as Master Caldwell does not. So I won't.
Though I will enjoy the thought of Master Caldwell expressing amazement that anyone could be bothered by these things, even as he's bothered to the point of an insulting, dismissive email and a rambling, juvenile post, replete with several ALL CAPS AND COLORS TIZZIES, about being bothered by them. For someone who staked such a(n obviously unintentional) claim to irony in his email, he seems (once more) unable to recognize it here.
But PeeWee takes it as "casual" fans disrupting "his" team.
At this point, I'm almost too tired to continue. Trying to deconstruct all the leaps and gaps and fallacies in Master Caldwell's (ahem) logic is like trying to plug all the holes in a strainer with a single needle. No matter how fast you poke, there's always a lot more pouring out.
We know not everyone likeS Gary Roberts and people will have their own opinions.
Except, of course, that I do likE Gary Roberts. Hell, I love him. The first sentence of my post said so. And it was a nice, short, simple sentence, so I can't imagine why you didn't understand it.
And, yeah, we know people will have their own opinions, but they're NOT ENTITLED TO THEM UNLESS THEY'RE THE SAME AS OURS. Or unless they meet our own random, useless criteria for judging fandom. Or unless they likeS the same thingS that we doeS.
But seriously lighten up.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Bud.
And don't accuse bandwagon, casual, and immature fans being behind this.
I presume you mean of being behind this...
...so, well, okay. Except that, as you and some of your equally vapid emailing cohorts have already abundantly proven, I'm right. At least on the immature part.
If you've never seen Chad Herman type out a post on his site, we found exclusive footage: [YouTube video of a primate urinating into his own mouth.]
Did I say this guy was immature? Really?
Did I say he was painfully uncreative? I did?
Well, shame on me.
Come back to us when you don't wait till the playoffs to talk about the Pens. Thanks.
Funny thing, that. Because I did.
After I received the email, and before I read the post, I sent a full (and shockingly respectful) reply to Master Caldwell. I assumed -- wrongly, it turns out -- that his zeal for the Penguins and the exuberance of his youth inspired him to write something he would, when faced with fact and truth, later regret. That he got caught up in the moment -- in one of those knee-jerk reactions that lead to some of those faulty assumptions that lead to writing and speaking and emailing and blog-posting for which you will later apologize and make amends -- and would, once he'd learned the errors of his ways, admit and apologize for them. Especially to another die-hard (albeit far more mature and intelligent) Pens fan.
But, alas, he did not.
Not even after learning that I've been blogging for four years -- which is, by the way, two years longer than he's been blogging on his site.
Not even after learning that I've been blogging, here on an intentionally all-purpose, general-subject site, about the Pens for four years -- which is, by the way, two years longer than he's been blogging about them on his site.
Not even after learning that -- and reading a couple of stories about how -- I was a season ticket holder even through the lean years, when less than 10,000 people were showing up every night to cheer on the scrappy but still sorry likes of Steve McKenna and Milan Kraft and Konstantin Koltsov, and that Wendy and I followed them obsessively, even to the point of scrounging and chasing down cable access, when we lived in Baltimore, and that I spent as much spending money as I could afford on Pens tickets in the pre-Cup days when I was an undergrad at Duquesne.
Not even after learning that I've been going to Pens' games since he was 3, and that I've loved and rooted for the team since before he was born.
None of that mattered. And none of that made any difference. Because, in the sad little world of Adam Caldwell and his middle-school-intellect web site, just as it is in the equally sad little worlds of so many other bloggers and writers and commentators and, it seems, anyone who these days has any opinion at all, it is much more fun to hurl the insult than it is to hurl the truth, more important to think you are right than to know you are correct, more convenient to expectorate in all caps and multiple colors and link to YouTube videos of pissing primates than it is to consider, or to engage, or even to angrily but sensibly respond to words and thoughts and ideas of someone who has the terrible temerity to disagree with you. Why try to refute someone's argument when you can just shit in his face?
Am I overstating? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way...
...remember when Master Caldwell said that, if circumstances were different, he -- uh, I mean they -- would respect my opinion:
Like we said, if you weren't a bandwagon fan that makes posts about the Pens when the fever pitch is the highest, we would at least respect your opinion.
And remember when I kinda sorta doubted that might be true? Well, here's the response my email -- which gave Master Adam the (undeserved) benefit of the doubt and explained in detail how and why I am anything but -- produced:
Hi, Chad.
A friendly beginning. That's nice.
Lets just get one thing straight.
Missing an apostrophe. A bit combative already. Not good signs. And one that continues, of course, this whole passive-aggressive thing he has going. I think he should seek help immediately. And not just for the grammar.
You will never get a private/public apology from us ever.
Remember what I wrote at the start of this post? Exactly.
You are entitled to your meaningless opinion, just as we are to ours.
That's an awfully funny way of showing respect, don't you think?
And I won't even mention that people who claim entitlement to their opinions are almost always the people who have no thought or fact or logic or reason or data or truth with which to back it up.
(Oops.)
The fact you would even ask for an apology shows us how big of a douche you are.
My considerable doucheness aside, I never asked for an apology. After all, that would be like asking President Bush for an apology. Or Adam Caldwell for a well-crafted, correctly spelled sentence. Rather, I told Master Caldwell that he owed me one. And that whether or not I got it would tell me everything I needed to know about him and his blog.
And so it has.
All you need to know about our blog is that we could careless about what people like you thing.
It is obvious, I thing, that they could also careless about spelling. And diction. And grammar.
P.S. Dont't ever right us a email with 5 paragraphs again.
Okay. I wont't.
But I may WRITE you aN email with 5 paragraphs some time. I'll just make sure they're really short. And I promise not to use any big words.
Because we won't read it.
There's that personality disorder again. (Do you think he has a conjoined twin?)
I fell asleep midway through.
No doubt because your mind is not used to processing a compound sentence. Or a complex thought.
Now. I know what all three of you who've made it this far and are still reading are thinking: gee, Chad, this was fun, but wasn't it a bit much? Isn't it all at least a little bit beneath you?
Well, yes. Probably. It does, in the end, seem a bit like producing a masters thesis to explain to a two-year-old why he shouldn't make poopy in his pants. And I should, I suppose, just learn to let this stuff roll over and away from me more freely than it does.
And yet, as you know, these sorts of immature, irrational, anti-intellectual absurdities push my buttons like precious few things in the world. Whether they're coming from a nationally renowned, indicted former coroner or a locally inclined, immature fellow blogger, I am both viscerally and intellectually compelled to respond to them. To refute them. To expose them and deconstruct them and make cold, hard, painfully clear examples of them.
I suppose it's the father and the teacher, the writer and the lover of writing, the perfectionist and, yes, the pedant in me.
I am all of those things, guilty as charged. But I am also, at least -- even in my weakest and most excessive moments -- someone who still believes in the importance of taking care and being fair, of doing right and doing well, someone who believes in a rigorous and absolute dedication to what I like to call the Rational Middle: that place where sense and logic and reason always prevail.
Even when I know they can not. And even when, in overzealous moments like these, with nothing but the best of intentions, I beat and belabor and occasionally berate them myself.
CORRECTION, 2:07pm: An email from Master Caldwell's co-blogger, Derek Rocco, informs me that Adam didn't write the bad grammar parts, that was me. That sentence would, of course, seem to verify his claim, so please substitute Master Rocco for Master Caldwell any time I shred the grammar and spelling of the blog post.
Though I must say I find it awfully amusing -- and supremely ironic -- that one of the writers of that festering, indefensible juvenilia of errors would implore me to please keep my facts straight.
Which, of course, I now have. See how easy that is, boys?
Which brings us, then, to Adam Caldwell, the hopelessly immature, intellectually dishonest, marginally literate purveyor of a local Pittsburgh Penguins fan blog. Acting upon a bit of an unfair -- or at least unfairly represented -- tip over at The Burgh Blog, Master Caldwell reacted to Thursday's Gary Roberts post with an email and a blog post that would be funny, were they not so feeble, infuriating, were they not so pedestrian, and at least a little troubling, were they not such perfect proof not only of my point last Thursday but also of so many other things I've argued over and over again here at TWM. Chief among them: that a little knowledge is an especially dangerous thing when it is in proximity to a keyboard and an internet connection; that context and subtext and fact and truth and reason have now almost entirely passed out of a culture that prefers to celebrate the guttural bleatings of cheap insults and ironic self-congratulation; and that unfettered ignorance has but unfounded narcissism to defeat before it becomes the official currency of our intellectually bankrupt technological age.
To wit:
Bud,...
When greeted with an appellation like Bud, you know immediately that you're in the presence of social and intellectual nobility; it is the salutatory currency of kings and queens and people who will no doubt enjoy playing beer pong well into their 30s. You count your blessings that he did not address you as Dude, but you figure that will come later, when he wants to show at least a little respect.
...you can't call out "bandwagon, immature, and casual fans"...
What you can't do, Master Caldwell, is put quotations marks around words that are not direct quotations. I imagine you were told this quite often in middle school, and perhaps often again in high school. Pity that you ignored it as well and as fully as you seem to have ignored all other lessons in basic composition.
For the record, I identified casual fans and immature fans and bandwagon-jumping fans as the most likely and obvious offenders of the Gary Roberts cult-hero silliness. Now. Did I, as my pal JP accuses, paint with a bit wide of a brush? Perhaps. Because Lord knows there are at least a few mature, serious, long-time fans out there who enjoy a few laughs from the recurring Chuck-Norris-ification of the Pens' veteran winger. But careful readers will note something the knee-jerk set seems content to miss: I did not suggest everyone who did so (I referred to the fans with an undying obsession for this stuff) was necessarily all of those things (linking by and and repeating with fans separates the three, indicating that all types are possible offenders). These distinctions are both subtle and grammatical, I know; hence the rampant misunderstanding of them.
So. Yes. There are, of course, exceptions to the Gary Roberts rule. But you must look no farther than the reaction of Master Caldwell -- who is not a casual fan and is not a bandwagon jumper but is, after even a cursory glance at his email or his web site, by any reasonable definition, an immature fan -- to see the truth in my contention. And all the others I've made since.
...when you don't talk about the Pens until they trade for Hossa and then make the playoffs.
As we'll see when we get to his blog post, but which already takes far less than a rocket scientist -- or even a Penguins blogger -- to surmise, Master Caldwell took a quick look at the Sports Archive link on the right of this page and concluded that I'd never written (er, talked) about the Pens before the Hossa trade. Of course, TWM is almost four years old, and, as you can clearly see on the right margin, boasts 146 sports posts. The published archive only goes back to the last 50, which date from roughly the last year.
So you can already see the lengths of Master Caldwell's research, the great and exhaustive dedications of time and energy and intellectual acuity he devoted to making sure he knew what he was emailing and blogging about. (As you'll see when we get to his post, he proudly links to the Sports archive, as if it actually proves his point. Pity that the only points it proves are the ones I make about his ethical vacuity and intellectual dishonesty. But I'm getting pretty far ahead of myself...)
And yet Master Caldwell's paltry research is even simpler -- and more simple-minded -- than that. He didn't even bother to explore all 50 headlines listed on the page. If he had, he would have discovered at least seven more Penguins posts pre-dating the Hossa trade piece. Of course, that would have demanded patience and effort and the pride that comes from actually being correct. It also would have required him to click on a couple links and dig deeper than just what he could see by scrolling down a single page. It also would have required him to imagine that an exhaustive list of posts in a four-year-old blog might stretch back farther than three months. And that, of course, would have delayed -- and, indeed, even prevented -- him from getting down to the far more enjoyable business of hacking out a pair of witless broadsides.
And yet, even if we grant his hideously faulty assumption that I never once wrote about the Penguins before the Hossa trade, there are still a few Brobdingnagian holes in his (ahem) logic. Namely: that I was actually calling out those kinds of fans. (I wasn't. I was lamenting the overkill of the fans who insist on this insipid Gary Roberts worship.) Or that I couldn't lament or call out those fans if I hadn't ever blogged about the Pens before the Hossa trade. (Because Lord knows only long-time self-important bloggers can lament silliness or call out a lack of perspective.) Or that to have been a long and serious Penguins fan I would have had to blog about them incessantly -- and no doubt immaturely -- for weeks and months and years before. (Which, of course, minus the immaturity, I actually have done. But I'm getting ahead of myself again...)
Wow. This is exhausting, isn't it? You can see why Master Caldwell just gave up. Coming to this site must have been awfully taxing for him. It's a wonder he managed to read any of it all without passing out. Or going blind. Or needing to count syllables on his toes.
You come off severely hypocritical.
I didn't even know I was on severely hypocritical.
Now. That said...
...this may be my favorite sentence of all. If only because, in it, I am lectured on (assumed) hypocrisy and (supposed) intellectual credibility by a guy who, as you will soon see, redefines the realities of both with every last, lamentable sentence he farts and belches my way.
And we let people know about it.
I like this sentence too, written as it is with all the righteous indignation of Woodward and Bernstein declaring that they must let the people know about crimes committed by the President. You know -- if Woodward and Bernstein were a couple of lazy kids who couldn't write. And if Nixon hadn't actually committed those crimes.
Here's a little tip,
http://www.immaturesecondratepenguinsblogtowhichiwillnotlink.com
Not even if you paid me. Because I have far too much respect for the eyes, the brain cells, and the dignities of my own readers.
What we can't understand...
Suddenly he's writing in the first-person plural. Which means Mr. Caldwell must have either an equally vexed blogging partner or a deranged mind. You make the call.
...is how people can be so thick that they can't realize the cult status surrounding Gary Roberts stems from the fact that he's nowhere near what he used to be, in terms of hockey talent.
Gee, thanks,
You're all lauding Gary Roberts because he's not as good as he used to be. You're elevating and celebrating a guy on your favorite hockey team who does not deserve it, to the necessary exclusion of other, far more significant contributors on your favorite hockey team, precisely because he does not deserve it. I get it. It's an irony thing. It's like Stephen Colbert and John Stewart, only not funny. And without a point.
Well, then. I can hardly wait until 2028, when we can all salute Jordan Staal's and Marc-Andre Fleury's no-longer-greatness. I mean, it would be silly to salute their greatness now, while it's actually happening. Better to manufacture a movement and wear some bracelets and get your sign on the Jumbotron. During a series in which your cult hero doesn't even hit the ice.
How fascinating finally to have been enlightened. And to understand that one of the best ways people invested in their favorite hockey team can think of to salute it is to create and perpetuate a nice, ironic inside joke that's all about themselves. No wonder he's so proud of himself and his blog. I imagine it's only a matter of time before he auditions for a reality tv show. If he hasn't already.
Don't write something thinking that you're enlightening everyone when you're the one that's out of touch.
Speaking of irony.
Like we said, if you weren't a bandwagon fan that makes posts about the Pens when the fever pitch is the highest,...
There's that first-person-to-third-person shift again. Definite sign of a personality disorder. I'm thinking he/they need/s some serious counseling.
(We'll get back to the absurd notion that I'm a bandwagon fan later. Stay tuned.)
...we would at least respect your opinion.
Oh, yes. You can be sure they'd respect my opinion then. They would no doubt respond with careful thought and reason and evidence, with fact and logic and something resembling a coherent, cohesive argument that responded in kind to the points I made. Or at least some sort of retraction or clarification. Or maybe even an apology.
He/They would, wouldn't he/they?
Stay tuned for that too.
Thanks for your time.
Such a nice, courteous sign-off for such an immature, insulting email. I can't decide if it's a standard sig line, or just a passive-aggressive thing. Either way, it's amusing.
Now. If you read this site, and especially if you've read this far, you know I couldn't let that email go without an immediate response. And I didn't. But I'll save the details -- or at least the broad strokes of it -- for later, after we've taken a look at the even more witless and juvenile post to which he so proudly referred me...
This post basically had no point until we happened to check out [ BurghBlog ].
Well, it still has no point. And no reason. And no [logic]. And no [truth]. But you have to admire, at least a little bit, a writer so un-self-aware that he admits he has no point before he even begins to prove it.
The talented and link-savvy "PittGirl" found a link of some dude complaining about "WWGRD."
Dude. See? I told you it was coming. The blog post obviously demands a greater formality.
(And, not to nitpick, but PittGirl found a link to some dude lamenting the Gary Roberts' cultdom.)
Meet [ Chad Herman ]:
Or Chad HermanN. But, hey, why let a little thing like proper spelling hold you back? After all, virtually nothing else you write is proper or accurate. May as well fuck that up too.
And we take this is was a shot at all of us:
Well, of course you do does. Because you is are the centers of your own happy, heinously deluded little universe.
But, quick, check out his "sports" archive. [ Here ]
Ah, yes. The proof. Exhaustively researched, as we have already seen. And now provided with a link for verification, so that all the pea-brained readers of his blog can muster up their best Gary-Roberts-esque outrage and... what, exactly?
HOW DARE this guy call out "bandwagon" fans when he's only talked about the Pens when they traded for Hossa and then when they started the playoffs.
Oooh. ALL CAPS. He must be really mad now.
(You should know, too, that one of the best parts about this post and indeed the whole blog -- to which, again, I will not link -- is the visual cacophony of colors and sizes and type styles in which they're written; the pages look like they were tapped out by an eight-year-old who'd just discovered all the things he can do with Microsoft Word. And then went blind. But kept on typing. The only thing missing is a 72 pt. font that declares me a BIG FAT POOPY HEAD. I imagine it may be forthcoming.)
Meanwhile, I'm wondering how some immature, uncritical, intellectual midget of a Penguins blogger dare make claims that are not true, that are not supported by the text to which he refers, that he has not bothered to verify, and that prove only his own considerable shortcomings.
CHAD HERMAN IS A FRINGE FAN WHO THINKS HE'S ENLIGHTENING EVERYONE.
Interesting, I think, that someone who has not yet demonstrated the capacity to think fancies himself such an expert on how I do it.
Chad, you're not, dude.
Not a fringe fan? Not thinking? Or not enlightening anyone?
Just wondering, bud.
You can already tell that PeeWee wants the Pens to lose just so he can bitch about something.
Perhaps the only refreshing bit about both of these tirades is that someone as obviously limited and painfully uncreative as Master Caldwell waited this long to pull out the two (ahem) rhetorical devices I was certain would come immediately:
1) The obligatory Pee Wee Herman reference. Takes me back to high school, it does.
2) The essential, especially to Western Pennsylvania, he must not be a real fan and just wants to complain about stuff and probably hopes they'll lose gambit. Which is, of course, so clear in all those rhapsodic, superstitious, occasionally melodramatic posts I make to their honor and glory. Anyone who roots that hard must surely be harboring a secret longing for failure. Maybe it's another irony thing.
The fact anyone would actually get mad about this Roberts stuff is bizarre.
You know, because, like, I like it, and all my friends like it, and all my friends' friends like it, so, like, what's not to like?
I am tempted here to note that being critical of something is not the same as getting mad about it, but you all know that as surely as Master Caldwell does not. So I won't.
Though I will enjoy the thought of Master Caldwell expressing amazement that anyone could be bothered by these things, even as he's bothered to the point of an insulting, dismissive email and a rambling, juvenile post, replete with several ALL CAPS AND COLORS TIZZIES, about being bothered by them. For someone who staked such a(n obviously unintentional) claim to irony in his email, he seems (once more) unable to recognize it here.
But PeeWee takes it as "casual" fans disrupting "his" team.
At this point, I'm almost too tired to continue. Trying to deconstruct all the leaps and gaps and fallacies in Master Caldwell's (ahem) logic is like trying to plug all the holes in a strainer with a single needle. No matter how fast you poke, there's always a lot more pouring out.
We know not everyone likeS Gary Roberts and people will have their own opinions.
Except, of course, that I do likE Gary Roberts. Hell, I love him. The first sentence of my post said so. And it was a nice, short, simple sentence, so I can't imagine why you didn't understand it.
And, yeah, we know people will have their own opinions, but they're NOT ENTITLED TO THEM UNLESS THEY'RE THE SAME AS OURS. Or unless they meet our own random, useless criteria for judging fandom. Or unless they likeS the same thingS that we doeS.
But seriously lighten up.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Bud.
And don't accuse bandwagon, casual, and immature fans being behind this.
I presume you mean of being behind this...
...so, well, okay. Except that, as you and some of your equally vapid emailing cohorts have already abundantly proven, I'm right. At least on the immature part.
If you've never seen Chad Herman type out a post on his site, we found exclusive footage: [YouTube video of a primate urinating into his own mouth.]
Did I say this guy was immature? Really?
Did I say he was painfully uncreative? I did?
Well, shame on me.
Come back to us when you don't wait till the playoffs to talk about the Pens. Thanks.
Funny thing, that. Because I did.
After I received the email, and before I read the post, I sent a full (and shockingly respectful) reply to Master Caldwell. I assumed -- wrongly, it turns out -- that his zeal for the Penguins and the exuberance of his youth inspired him to write something he would, when faced with fact and truth, later regret. That he got caught up in the moment -- in one of those knee-jerk reactions that lead to some of those faulty assumptions that lead to writing and speaking and emailing and blog-posting for which you will later apologize and make amends -- and would, once he'd learned the errors of his ways, admit and apologize for them. Especially to another die-hard (albeit far more mature and intelligent) Pens fan.
But, alas, he did not.
Not even after learning that I've been blogging for four years -- which is, by the way, two years longer than he's been blogging on his site.
Not even after learning that I've been blogging, here on an intentionally all-purpose, general-subject site, about the Pens for four years -- which is, by the way, two years longer than he's been blogging about them on his site.
Not even after learning that -- and reading a couple of stories about how -- I was a season ticket holder even through the lean years, when less than 10,000 people were showing up every night to cheer on the scrappy but still sorry likes of Steve McKenna and Milan Kraft and Konstantin Koltsov, and that Wendy and I followed them obsessively, even to the point of scrounging and chasing down cable access, when we lived in Baltimore, and that I spent as much spending money as I could afford on Pens tickets in the pre-Cup days when I was an undergrad at Duquesne.
Not even after learning that I've been going to Pens' games since he was 3, and that I've loved and rooted for the team since before he was born.
None of that mattered. And none of that made any difference. Because, in the sad little world of Adam Caldwell and his middle-school-intellect web site, just as it is in the equally sad little worlds of so many other bloggers and writers and commentators and, it seems, anyone who these days has any opinion at all, it is much more fun to hurl the insult than it is to hurl the truth, more important to think you are right than to know you are correct, more convenient to expectorate in all caps and multiple colors and link to YouTube videos of pissing primates than it is to consider, or to engage, or even to angrily but sensibly respond to words and thoughts and ideas of someone who has the terrible temerity to disagree with you. Why try to refute someone's argument when you can just shit in his face?
Am I overstating? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way...
...remember when Master Caldwell said that, if circumstances were different, he -- uh, I mean they -- would respect my opinion:
Like we said, if you weren't a bandwagon fan that makes posts about the Pens when the fever pitch is the highest, we would at least respect your opinion.
And remember when I kinda sorta doubted that might be true? Well, here's the response my email -- which gave Master Adam the (undeserved) benefit of the doubt and explained in detail how and why I am anything but -- produced:
Hi, Chad.
A friendly beginning. That's nice.
Lets just get one thing straight.
Missing an apostrophe. A bit combative already. Not good signs. And one that continues, of course, this whole passive-aggressive thing he has going. I think he should seek help immediately. And not just for the grammar.
You will never get a private/public apology from us ever.
Remember what I wrote at the start of this post? Exactly.
You are entitled to your meaningless opinion, just as we are to ours.
That's an awfully funny way of showing respect, don't you think?
And I won't even mention that people who claim entitlement to their opinions are almost always the people who have no thought or fact or logic or reason or data or truth with which to back it up.
(Oops.)
The fact you would even ask for an apology shows us how big of a douche you are.
My considerable doucheness aside, I never asked for an apology. After all, that would be like asking President Bush for an apology. Or Adam Caldwell for a well-crafted, correctly spelled sentence. Rather, I told Master Caldwell that he owed me one. And that whether or not I got it would tell me everything I needed to know about him and his blog.
And so it has.
All you need to know about our blog is that we could careless about what people like you thing.
It is obvious, I thing, that they could also careless about spelling. And diction. And grammar.
P.S. Dont't ever right us a email with 5 paragraphs again.
Okay. I wont't.
But I may WRITE you aN email with 5 paragraphs some time. I'll just make sure they're really short. And I promise not to use any big words.
Because we won't read it.
There's that personality disorder again. (Do you think he has a conjoined twin?)
I fell asleep midway through.
No doubt because your mind is not used to processing a compound sentence. Or a complex thought.
Now. I know what all three of you who've made it this far and are still reading are thinking: gee, Chad, this was fun, but wasn't it a bit much? Isn't it all at least a little bit beneath you?
Well, yes. Probably. It does, in the end, seem a bit like producing a masters thesis to explain to a two-year-old why he shouldn't make poopy in his pants. And I should, I suppose, just learn to let this stuff roll over and away from me more freely than it does.
And yet, as you know, these sorts of immature, irrational, anti-intellectual absurdities push my buttons like precious few things in the world. Whether they're coming from a nationally renowned, indicted former coroner or a locally inclined, immature fellow blogger, I am both viscerally and intellectually compelled to respond to them. To refute them. To expose them and deconstruct them and make cold, hard, painfully clear examples of them.
I suppose it's the father and the teacher, the writer and the lover of writing, the perfectionist and, yes, the pedant in me.
I am all of those things, guilty as charged. But I am also, at least -- even in my weakest and most excessive moments -- someone who still believes in the importance of taking care and being fair, of doing right and doing well, someone who believes in a rigorous and absolute dedication to what I like to call the Rational Middle: that place where sense and logic and reason always prevail.
Even when I know they can not. And even when, in overzealous moments like these, with nothing but the best of intentions, I beat and belabor and occasionally berate them myself.
CORRECTION, 2:07pm: An email from Master Caldwell's co-blogger, Derek Rocco, informs me that Adam didn't write the bad grammar parts, that was me. That sentence would, of course, seem to verify his claim, so please substitute Master Rocco for Master Caldwell any time I shred the grammar and spelling of the blog post.
Though I must say I find it awfully amusing -- and supremely ironic -- that one of the writers of that festering, indefensible juvenilia of errors would implore me to please keep my facts straight.
Which, of course, I now have. See how easy that is, boys?
Posted at 12:10 PM
Sun - May 18, 2008
LINCOLN, DOUGLAS, WOFFORD, & WECHT
and the incredible maturity of jordan
staal.
I've been awfully critical of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette lately -- with good reason -- so it's only fair that, on a morning
when I found plenty of good and interesting things to read in those pages, I
should note those too.
So:
• David Shribman's A new/old way to campaign argues convincingly, and maybe even Romantically, for a return to the Lincoln-Douglas style of debate this general election season. One-on-one, no moderator, no teleprompter? Amen and hallelujah!
• TWM-Favorite Dennis Roddy's Race on the trail takes an occasionally troubling look at prejudice in presidential politics and concludes with a bracing pair of paragraphs. (Though it seems to forget the Edison/Mitofsky poll that found 37% of Pennsylvania whites voting for Obama and 10% of Pennsylvania blacks voting for Hillary.)
• Torsten Ove's The vivid, vitriolic, venomous verbiage of U.S. v. Wecht excerpts some choice rhetorical and syntactical excesses from the Cyril Wecht trial, proving that our logorheic former coroner got the government, and the diction, he deserved.
• Ron Cook's At 19, Staal mature far beyond his years on and off the ice pays tribute to a player, and indeed to a person, who may be the most admirable and remarkable young man in a locker room now overflowing with them.
Good work, good writing, and good reading all. Four bright ways -- among others -- to ease into this gray and rainy Southwestern Pennsylvanian day.
• David Shribman's A new/old way to campaign argues convincingly, and maybe even Romantically, for a return to the Lincoln-Douglas style of debate this general election season. One-on-one, no moderator, no teleprompter? Amen and hallelujah!
• TWM-Favorite Dennis Roddy's Race on the trail takes an occasionally troubling look at prejudice in presidential politics and concludes with a bracing pair of paragraphs. (Though it seems to forget the Edison/Mitofsky poll that found 37% of Pennsylvania whites voting for Obama and 10% of Pennsylvania blacks voting for Hillary.)
• Torsten Ove's The vivid, vitriolic, venomous verbiage of U.S. v. Wecht excerpts some choice rhetorical and syntactical excesses from the Cyril Wecht trial, proving that our logorheic former coroner got the government, and the diction, he deserved.
• Ron Cook's At 19, Staal mature far beyond his years on and off the ice pays tribute to a player, and indeed to a person, who may be the most admirable and remarkable young man in a locker room now overflowing with them.
Good work, good writing, and good reading all. Four bright ways -- among others -- to ease into this gray and rainy Southwestern Pennsylvanian day.
Posted at 09:30 AM
Mon - May 12, 2008
THE MESSENGER WHO UNDERSTOOD THE MESSAGE
or, when leonard heard
jeremiah...
I'm about a week late to this one -- got behind in
some of my reading and am only now getting caught up -- and the piece itself is
almost a week late in so (w)rightly lamenting and skewering its subject matter,
but...
...The Messenger Who Killed the Message is an outstanding title, metaphor, and dismissal of a series of performances that, as I have already noted, plenty of bloggers and commenters and commentators have tripped over themselves and their condescending best intentions to justify. The whole piece is required reading, but here, for my eye and ear, is the money passage:
If you condemn bigotry when it is turned against people like you, but tolerate it when people like you turn it against someone else, you forfeit all claim to the moral high ground. You are a hypocrite acting only from narrow self interest.
For all that, though, the thing about Wright's lost weekend that stands out most for me is his demeanor in the two speeches he gave: smug, mugging for the cameras, signifying, jive talking, acting the fool.
Did he really say an attack on him was an attack on the black church entire? Did he really make those faces and throw that silly salute? Why didn't he just slap his hands together, yell ''Dy-no-mite!'' and be done with it? Wright came across like drunken Uncle Buddy at the Thanksgiving table, the one who doesn't know he's not funny and won't shut up.
More to the point, he did not come across like a reverend. Or even a Christian.
In this season of political pandering and histrionics, truer words have rarely been written. That they were written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist, makes them awfully hard to dismiss. That they were written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., African-American, makes them awfully hard to demonize.
But not, I'm sure, for lack of trying.
...The Messenger Who Killed the Message is an outstanding title, metaphor, and dismissal of a series of performances that, as I have already noted, plenty of bloggers and commenters and commentators have tripped over themselves and their condescending best intentions to justify. The whole piece is required reading, but here, for my eye and ear, is the money passage:
If you condemn bigotry when it is turned against people like you, but tolerate it when people like you turn it against someone else, you forfeit all claim to the moral high ground. You are a hypocrite acting only from narrow self interest.
For all that, though, the thing about Wright's lost weekend that stands out most for me is his demeanor in the two speeches he gave: smug, mugging for the cameras, signifying, jive talking, acting the fool.
Did he really say an attack on him was an attack on the black church entire? Did he really make those faces and throw that silly salute? Why didn't he just slap his hands together, yell ''Dy-no-mite!'' and be done with it? Wright came across like drunken Uncle Buddy at the Thanksgiving table, the one who doesn't know he's not funny and won't shut up.
More to the point, he did not come across like a reverend. Or even a Christian.
In this season of political pandering and histrionics, truer words have rarely been written. That they were written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist, makes them awfully hard to dismiss. That they were written by Leonard Pitts, Jr., African-American, makes them awfully hard to demonize.
But not, I'm sure, for lack of trying.
Posted at 10:19 AM
Sun - May 11, 2008
A DAY LATE AND A DOPPLER SHORT
or, the weathermen blow it
again.
It's been a while since I took our esteemed local
meteorologists to task for their sensationalism, their rank incompetence, or
their inability to know the difference. This is not, of course, for lack of
opportunity, but rather for excess of courtesy; after all, you can only hammer
these people so often before the point gets made, the joke gets old, and the
dead horse gets beaten to dust. But this weekend's performance was so abysmal,
so wholly and utterly and pathetically wrong, that I just can't resist a brief
chronicle of it.
On Friday, they said, the rain would end by noon. And it did. But then it started again at five. And continued, with varying degrees of intensity, until around seven o'clock Saturday morning.
Last night, they said that today's rain would arrive around four or five in the afternoon. This morning, they said the rain would arrive around noon. As I sit here writing, at 10:05am, I'm listening to the sound of a hard rain pelting off my skylight.
It sounds just like the tapping of my fingers before I post. And the ticking of my head before it explodes.
On Friday, they said, the rain would end by noon. And it did. But then it started again at five. And continued, with varying degrees of intensity, until around seven o'clock Saturday morning.
Last night, they said that today's rain would arrive around four or five in the afternoon. This morning, they said the rain would arrive around noon. As I sit here writing, at 10:05am, I'm listening to the sound of a hard rain pelting off my skylight.
It sounds just like the tapping of my fingers before I post. And the ticking of my head before it explodes.
Posted at 11:40 AM
Tue - May 6, 2008
THESE HUNGRY EDITORS WON'T BE DENIED
but the rest of us will.
Part me of thinks I should not disparage anyone who
wants to support the Penguins during this (or any) playoff run. But then
another part of me endures loutish, drunken fans at the Arena -- I went to a
Pens game two weeks ago, and a Steelers game broke out -- and silly, ignorant fans on talk radio and silly, awkward editorials in the morning paper,
and, well...
Spare us the wagers of cheesesteaks vs. Iron City.
Spare us the unfortunate mix of a little knowledge and a lot of cheek. If only because no one would ever wager cheesesteaks against Iron City. They'd wager cheesesteaks against Primanti's sandwiches. Or maybe pierogies. And Iron City against Yards. Or maybe Yuengling.
Any way you mix the two, hockey fans know it's going to come out bitter.
Oh, yes. Very bitter. Especially in Pennsylvania, where the masses cling to sports and sticks almost as much as they do to guns and religion.
Isn't that right, Barack Obama endorsers?
That's how it's always been with the NHL's Pennsylvania rivals, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers, who will open a best-of-seven series here Friday night for the Eastern Conference title. For anyone not paying attention (and it's hard to understand how), this is the playoff round before the Stanley Cup finals.
If they're not paying attention, I doubt they're still reading. And if they really want to be informed about hockey playoff rounds, I doubt they'll be looking just below British shocker: Voters dump the Labor Party in local councils on your editorial page.
That's Stanley Cup as in championship.
That's repetitive as in redundant.
That's championship as in the kind the Penguins haven't copped since 1992, when star center Sidney Crosby was still shy of his fifth birthday.
That's awkward -- as in grating -- parallel structure. Please stop.
And another thing: Copped? Copped? Who are you, Raymond Chandler?
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Too late.
The young Pens have come this far, capturing two rounds of playoffs in the remarkably short span of eight wins and one loss, just by doing that -- taking it one game at a time.
Did anyone proofread this thing? Or did they just decide that a couple of paragraphs so awkward in tone may as well be equally awkward in syntax?
They also have counted on every man to find his one shining moment, as newcomer Marian Hossa did in his overtime goal Sunday.
One shining moment? Who wrote this? Jim Nantz? James Brown? Verne Lundquist? In the middle of a PG editorial, a bad CBS Sports broadcast (yes, I know that's redundant) broke out.
Not that Friday night's face-off will be just another game. The Pens go up against their cross-state nemesis, who beat Pittsburgh in five of their eight meetings this season, including an 8-2 humiliation in December.
Whatever the Pens suffered in that loss, it was, I assure you, no more humiliating than the printing of this editorial.
Let's hope the Flyers had their fun. This is the series that counts.
And this is the editorial that hurts.
These hungry Penguins won't be denied.
Cramming two clichés into just six words. Impressive. If not necessarily creative. Or admirable.
Someone call Gene Collier. Quick.
Go ahead, bring it.
If you say so, Mr. President.
My God. If there's anything more desperate and pathetic than newspaper editorial boards trying to sound hip and cool by writing about a local sports team, it's newspaper editorial boards trying to sound hip and cool by writing about a local sports team in an arch, affected vernacular that even the team's players would not dream of employing.
Sidney Crosby: If you want a rivalry, there's one right there. As players, we know that the playoffs are always intense, but it throws some spice into it when it's Pittsburgh-Philadelphia.
Marian Hossa: We're going to enjoy this, have a day off, and then we're going back to work to get ready for the next opponent.
Ryan Malone: It's going to be a battle. We've worked hard to get where we are now. Why not play them and have this big rivalry? It's going to be great for the fans.
PG Editorial Board: Go ahead, bring it.
Whatever the Flyers bring, it is sure to be only marginally less dignified on the ice than the PG Editorial Board is here in print. For anyone not paying attention (and it's not hard to understand why), that's the final, and most lamentable, insult of all.
Spare us the wagers of cheesesteaks vs. Iron City.
Spare us the unfortunate mix of a little knowledge and a lot of cheek. If only because no one would ever wager cheesesteaks against Iron City. They'd wager cheesesteaks against Primanti's sandwiches. Or maybe pierogies. And Iron City against Yards. Or maybe Yuengling.
Any way you mix the two, hockey fans know it's going to come out bitter.
Oh, yes. Very bitter. Especially in Pennsylvania, where the masses cling to sports and sticks almost as much as they do to guns and religion.
Isn't that right, Barack Obama endorsers?
That's how it's always been with the NHL's Pennsylvania rivals, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers, who will open a best-of-seven series here Friday night for the Eastern Conference title. For anyone not paying attention (and it's hard to understand how), this is the playoff round before the Stanley Cup finals.
If they're not paying attention, I doubt they're still reading. And if they really want to be informed about hockey playoff rounds, I doubt they'll be looking just below British shocker: Voters dump the Labor Party in local councils on your editorial page.
That's Stanley Cup as in championship.
That's repetitive as in redundant.
That's championship as in the kind the Penguins haven't copped since 1992, when star center Sidney Crosby was still shy of his fifth birthday.
That's awkward -- as in grating -- parallel structure. Please stop.
And another thing: Copped? Copped? Who are you, Raymond Chandler?
But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Too late.
The young Pens have come this far, capturing two rounds of playoffs in the remarkably short span of eight wins and one loss, just by doing that -- taking it one game at a time.
Did anyone proofread this thing? Or did they just decide that a couple of paragraphs so awkward in tone may as well be equally awkward in syntax?
They also have counted on every man to find his one shining moment, as newcomer Marian Hossa did in his overtime goal Sunday.
One shining moment? Who wrote this? Jim Nantz? James Brown? Verne Lundquist? In the middle of a PG editorial, a bad CBS Sports broadcast (yes, I know that's redundant) broke out.
Not that Friday night's face-off will be just another game. The Pens go up against their cross-state nemesis, who beat Pittsburgh in five of their eight meetings this season, including an 8-2 humiliation in December.
Whatever the Pens suffered in that loss, it was, I assure you, no more humiliating than the printing of this editorial.
Let's hope the Flyers had their fun. This is the series that counts.
And this is the editorial that hurts.
These hungry Penguins won't be denied.
Cramming two clichés into just six words. Impressive. If not necessarily creative. Or admirable.
Someone call Gene Collier. Quick.
Go ahead, bring it.
If you say so, Mr. President.
My God. If there's anything more desperate and pathetic than newspaper editorial boards trying to sound hip and cool by writing about a local sports team, it's newspaper editorial boards trying to sound hip and cool by writing about a local sports team in an arch, affected vernacular that even the team's players would not dream of employing.
Sidney Crosby: If you want a rivalry, there's one right there. As players, we know that the playoffs are always intense, but it throws some spice into it when it's Pittsburgh-Philadelphia.
Marian Hossa: We're going to enjoy this, have a day off, and then we're going back to work to get ready for the next opponent.
Ryan Malone: It's going to be a battle. We've worked hard to get where we are now. Why not play them and have this big rivalry? It's going to be great for the fans.
PG Editorial Board: Go ahead, bring it.
Whatever the Flyers bring, it is sure to be only marginally less dignified on the ice than the PG Editorial Board is here in print. For anyone not paying attention (and it's not hard to understand why), that's the final, and most lamentable, insult of all.
Posted at 11:13 AM
Sat - May 3, 2008
NOT THAT COMPLEX AFTER ALL
or, the uncritical joys of
renunciation
Just shy of four months ago, I was surprised to
discover that I agreed with whole, great swaths of a column by
Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Postie with whom I often disagree.
After reading his latest column reprinted in this morning's
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I was almost as surprised to discover that
rhetorical lightning can indeed strike
twice.
This will, no doubt, be counted against me by my pro-Obama critics. On more than one occasion, I've been dissed or emailed or insulted by people who, closing their minds and opening their web browsers, decide they can happily dismiss and reflexively vilify me just because I, on occasion, happen to agree with a guy (or a gal) they can write off as a neocon kook. You know -- as if the world is divided into good and evil, as if they have the exclusive right to decide which is which, and as if that stance is not in direct violation of the ideals they, by supporting Senator Obama, claim to espouse.
And yet those sorts of do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do sorts of hypocrisies these days abound in Camp Obama, as Mr. Krauthammer -- who is, I think, wrong about many things but still right about these (see how easy that is, kids? just a simple, substantive, case-by-case judgment; that's a new kind of rhetorical politics you really ought to try sometime) -- neatly observes:
At a news conference in North Carolina, Mr. Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Mr. Wright's latest comments -- Mr. Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words. What were Mr. Obama's three citations? Mr. Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming 9/11 on American "terrorism."
But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Mr. Obama decided to cut off Mr. Wright not because the reverend's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Mr. Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Mr. Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context.
This last part is not entirely true. Because one important thing changed: he had the (what's that word again?) audacity to insult Senator Obama. To question his sincerity. To suggest that he was just playing politics. In other words, as they say in those bad movie trailers: This time, it's personal.
I suspect that, as much as the National Press Clubbully loony pulpit, was the reason for
the change of heart. And the sudden willingness to disown someone he once said
he could no more disown than his own grandmother. Combine those two factors,
mix in a newly energized press corps that, in the middle of a surprising but
almost certainly inevitable course-correction, has finally decided to draw some
fresh blood from Senator Breath of Fresh Air, and you get what we saw and heard
but did not quite buy in North Carolina this week.
So much for unity. So much for a new kind of politics.
Mr. Obama's Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Mr. Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed they were ever surprised by Mr. Wright's remarks: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning."
That was then. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Mr. Wright's outrages. But hadn't Mr. Obama told us that surprise about Mr. Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America's history of segregated services? How then to explain Mr. Obama's own presumed ignorance? Surely he too was not sitting in those segregated white churches on those fateful Sundays when he conveniently missed all of Mr. Wright's racist rants. Mr. Obama's turning surprise about Mr. Wright into something to be counted against whites -- one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia -- now stands discredited by Mr. Obama's own admission of surprise. But Mr. Obama's liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation.
You almost have to pity them in a way: they've sunk so much faith and hope into this man and this campaign that they're left with two choices: renounce them both and admit the mistake, or keep plowing blindly and uncritically ahead, growing (dare I say?) more bitter by the day, reduced to demonizing or insulting or a priori dismissing anyone who dares question Senator Obama's credibility.
Which, again, just for the record, sounds an awful lot like the much-maligned old kind of politics to me.
This 20-year association with Mr. Wright calls into question everything about Mr. Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a "new politics," rising above the old Washington ways of expediency.
It's hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Mr. Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as something whites could not understand and only Mr. Obama could explain in all its complexity. Turns out it was not that complex after all. Everyone understands it now. Even Mr. Obama.
Just as he -- and plenty of other people -- did all along.
This will, no doubt, be counted against me by my pro-Obama critics. On more than one occasion, I've been dissed or emailed or insulted by people who, closing their minds and opening their web browsers, decide they can happily dismiss and reflexively vilify me just because I, on occasion, happen to agree with a guy (or a gal) they can write off as a neocon kook. You know -- as if the world is divided into good and evil, as if they have the exclusive right to decide which is which, and as if that stance is not in direct violation of the ideals they, by supporting Senator Obama, claim to espouse.
And yet those sorts of do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do sorts of hypocrisies these days abound in Camp Obama, as Mr. Krauthammer -- who is, I think, wrong about many things but still right about these (see how easy that is, kids? just a simple, substantive, case-by-case judgment; that's a new kind of rhetorical politics you really ought to try sometime) -- neatly observes:
At a news conference in North Carolina, Mr. Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Mr. Wright's latest comments -- Mr. Obama cited three in particular -- were so shockingly "divisive and destructive" that he had to renounce the man, not just the words. What were Mr. Obama's three citations? Mr. Wright's claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming 9/11 on American "terrorism."
But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Mr. Obama decided to cut off Mr. Wright not because the reverend's words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Mr. Wright chose to display them -- live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Mr. Obama's Philadelphia pretense that this "endless loop" of sermon excerpts being shown on "television sets and YouTube" had been taken out of context.
This last part is not entirely true. Because one important thing changed: he had the (what's that word again?) audacity to insult Senator Obama. To question his sincerity. To suggest that he was just playing politics. In other words, as they say in those bad movie trailers: This time, it's personal.
I suspect that, as much as the National Press Club
So much for unity. So much for a new kind of politics.
Mr. Obama's Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Mr. Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed they were ever surprised by Mr. Wright's remarks: "The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Rev. Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning."
That was then. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Mr. Wright's outrages. But hadn't Mr. Obama told us that surprise about Mr. Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America's history of segregated services? How then to explain Mr. Obama's own presumed ignorance? Surely he too was not sitting in those segregated white churches on those fateful Sundays when he conveniently missed all of Mr. Wright's racist rants. Mr. Obama's turning surprise about Mr. Wright into something to be counted against whites -- one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia -- now stands discredited by Mr. Obama's own admission of surprise. But Mr. Obama's liberal acolytes are not daunted. They were taken in by the first great statement on race: the Annunciation, the Chosen One comes to heal us in Philly. They now are taken in by the second: the Renunciation.
You almost have to pity them in a way: they've sunk so much faith and hope into this man and this campaign that they're left with two choices: renounce them both and admit the mistake, or keep plowing blindly and uncritically ahead, growing (dare I say?) more bitter by the day, reduced to demonizing or insulting or a priori dismissing anyone who dares question Senator Obama's credibility.
Which, again, just for the record, sounds an awful lot like the much-maligned old kind of politics to me.
This 20-year association with Mr. Wright calls into question everything about Mr. Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a "new politics," rising above the old Washington ways of expediency.
It's hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Mr. Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as something whites could not understand and only Mr. Obama could explain in all its complexity. Turns out it was not that complex after all. Everyone understands it now. Even Mr. Obama.
Just as he -- and plenty of other people -- did all along.
Posted at 02:12 PM
Thu - April 24, 2008
YOU ARE DUMB, AND YOU ARE PROBABLY A RACIST, IF YOU VOTED FOR HILLARY CLINTON
but not if you voted for barack obama. then you
are the wise and enlightened and open-minded, even if some numbers may suggest
otherwise.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up,
opened the newspaper, and learned that people who voted for Hillary Clinton on
Tuesday did not actually bother to
think:
Pennsylvania could have put a stop to this civil war, but the voters were not inclined to think their votes through...
...With a Bush administration legacy of ill-advised war and economic woe, the Democrats would have to go out of their way to lose the general election -- and in Pennsylvania they unthinkingly went down that road.
You have to grudgingly admire, I suppose, an editorial that manages to analogize a woman who received 1.2 million votes in the Pennsylvania Primary and has to date received 13,917,009 votes nationwide as both the Bush Administration in the Iraq War and the Confederacy in the Civil War, as the candidate of the old, the stubborn, the foolish, and the unflinchingly stupid. The only missing accusation -- and it was surely whistling Dixie at the edges of the second analogy -- was the idea that she's the candidate of the irredeemably racist.
But the Post-Gazette editorial board -- methinks I spy the heavy hand, and the ham-handed metaphors, of Tony Norman -- doesn't have to regret the omission, because the New York Times, with a big assist from the Obama Campaign, handled it well enough for the both of them:
It is a question that has hung over Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and it loomed large on Tuesday night after his loss to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania: Why has he been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?
In a front-page, homepage piece headlined Questions over Race and Electability, the answer remains unspoken, if not unheard: because so many of those people are racists, of course.
Just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.
After acknowledging -- grudgingly -- that Senator Obama has ascended to his current front-runner status by winning big victories in very white states, and that crowds at his rallies are as white as any at Clinton rally, Adam Nagourney's piece turns to Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, to note that many of these people react negatively to people who are seen as different." In other words: to people whose skin color is different.
But the hack job doesn't stop there. Consider these passages:
For Mr. Obama, race presents two potential problems: Voters opposing him simply because he is black, and Democrats who will not support him because they do not think a black man can win a general election.
The results in Pennsylvania suggest that problems exist. A poll of Democratic voters conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press found that Mrs. Clinton drew 63 percent of the white vote while Mr. Obama drew 90 percent of the black vote, mirroring a pattern in many other states. More strikingly, the poll found that 18 percent of Democrats said that race mattered to them in this contest — and just 63 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election.
Funny -- if predictable -- the implications and conclusions to which these numbers inevitably lead. But let's look at them against the grain for a moment.
37 percent of Pennsylvania whites crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Obama. Only 10 percent of Pennsylvania blacks crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Clinton. Which means that whites were 370% more likely to vote for the black candidate than blacks were to vote for the white candidate. But Obama's the one with the race problem? He's the one suffering at the dirty hands and darkened minds of those awful, knee-jerk, working-class racists?
If you really wanted to make an argument based on these numbers -- and I don't, by the way, any more than I want to buy that first set of faulty assumptions -- you would have to argue that Senator Clinton is the one with the race problem. After all, she's the one who suffered (far) more from voters unwilling to cross racial lines. But I don't see any articles or editorials or think-tank hand-wringing about that phenomenon. Oh, no. All I see are the -- frankly, quite fucking offensive -- suggestions that people who voted for Hillary Clinton are (just to recap) old, stubborn, foolish, unflinchingly stupid, or irredeemably racist.
Now. Let's not kid ourselves. Are (lots of) people voting against Barack Obama because he's black? Of course. Are (lots of) stupid people voting for Hillary Clinton? You bet. But you'd have to be a dreamer, an elitist, or -- let's be honest -- an utter moron to suggest that there are not also (lots of) stupid people voting for Barack Obama, and (lots of) people voting for him because he's black.
But those sorts of prejudice and stupidity are acceptable, I suppose, as long as they're in service to the sanctified causes of Hope and Change and a More Pefect Union, as long as you're voting the right way for the right guy that the right reporters and editorialists and (who are we kidding) hypocritical condescenders want you to. What is not okay, apparently, is for you to take a good, long look at that candidate and, the color of his skin and the power of his punditry be damned, decide he is too out of touch, or too elitist, or too inexperienced, or too uncertain on the issues, or just too much of a blowharding, self-loving phony to be President. That is most certainly not okay.
Even if it was back in 2000.
Pennsylvania could have put a stop to this civil war, but the voters were not inclined to think their votes through...
...With a Bush administration legacy of ill-advised war and economic woe, the Democrats would have to go out of their way to lose the general election -- and in Pennsylvania they unthinkingly went down that road.
You have to grudgingly admire, I suppose, an editorial that manages to analogize a woman who received 1.2 million votes in the Pennsylvania Primary and has to date received 13,917,009 votes nationwide as both the Bush Administration in the Iraq War and the Confederacy in the Civil War, as the candidate of the old, the stubborn, the foolish, and the unflinchingly stupid. The only missing accusation -- and it was surely whistling Dixie at the edges of the second analogy -- was the idea that she's the candidate of the irredeemably racist.
But the Post-Gazette editorial board -- methinks I spy the heavy hand, and the ham-handed metaphors, of Tony Norman -- doesn't have to regret the omission, because the New York Times, with a big assist from the Obama Campaign, handled it well enough for the both of them:
It is a question that has hung over Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and it loomed large on Tuesday night after his loss to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania: Why has he been unable to win over enough working-class and white voters to wrap up the Democratic nomination?
In a front-page, homepage piece headlined Questions over Race and Electability, the answer remains unspoken, if not unheard: because so many of those people are racists, of course.
Just when it seemed that the Democratic Party was close to anointing Mr. Obama as its nominee, he lost yet again in a big general election state, dragged down by his weakness among blue-collar voters, older voters and white voters. The composition of Mrs. Clinton’s support — or, looked at another way, the makeup of voters who have proved reluctant to embrace Mr. Obama — has Democrats wondering, if not worrying, about what role race may be playing.
After acknowledging -- grudgingly -- that Senator Obama has ascended to his current front-runner status by winning big victories in very white states, and that crowds at his rallies are as white as any at Clinton rally, Adam Nagourney's piece turns to Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, to note that many of these people react negatively to people who are seen as different." In other words: to people whose skin color is different.
But the hack job doesn't stop there. Consider these passages:
For Mr. Obama, race presents two potential problems: Voters opposing him simply because he is black, and Democrats who will not support him because they do not think a black man can win a general election.
The results in Pennsylvania suggest that problems exist. A poll of Democratic voters conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press found that Mrs. Clinton drew 63 percent of the white vote while Mr. Obama drew 90 percent of the black vote, mirroring a pattern in many other states. More strikingly, the poll found that 18 percent of Democrats said that race mattered to them in this contest — and just 63 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election.
Funny -- if predictable -- the implications and conclusions to which these numbers inevitably lead. But let's look at them against the grain for a moment.
37 percent of Pennsylvania whites crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Obama. Only 10 percent of Pennsylvania blacks crossed racial lines and voted for Senator Clinton. Which means that whites were 370% more likely to vote for the black candidate than blacks were to vote for the white candidate. But Obama's the one with the race problem? He's the one suffering at the dirty hands and darkened minds of those awful, knee-jerk, working-class racists?
If you really wanted to make an argument based on these numbers -- and I don't, by the way, any more than I want to buy that first set of faulty assumptions -- you would have to argue that Senator Clinton is the one with the race problem. After all, she's the one who suffered (far) more from voters unwilling to cross racial lines. But I don't see any articles or editorials or think-tank hand-wringing about that phenomenon. Oh, no. All I see are the -- frankly, quite fucking offensive -- suggestions that people who voted for Hillary Clinton are (just to recap) old, stubborn, foolish, unflinchingly stupid, or irredeemably racist.
Now. Let's not kid ourselves. Are (lots of) people voting against Barack Obama because he's black? Of course. Are (lots of) stupid people voting for Hillary Clinton? You bet. But you'd have to be a dreamer, an elitist, or -- let's be honest -- an utter moron to suggest that there are not also (lots of) stupid people voting for Barack Obama, and (lots of) people voting for him because he's black.
But those sorts of prejudice and stupidity are acceptable, I suppose, as long as they're in service to the sanctified causes of Hope and Change and a More Pefect Union, as long as you're voting the right way for the right guy that the right reporters and editorialists and (who are we kidding) hypocritical condescenders want you to. What is not okay, apparently, is for you to take a good, long look at that candidate and, the color of his skin and the power of his punditry be damned, decide he is too out of touch, or too elitist, or too inexperienced, or too uncertain on the issues, or just too much of a blowharding, self-loving phony to be President. That is most certainly not okay.
Even if it was back in 2000.
Posted at 01:48 PM
Wed - April 23, 2008
I READ THE NEWS AGAIN, OH MY
about an unlucky man who didn't make the
grade.
The Washington Post notes that Seantor Obama -- who built his
campaign on being different, took off the gloves in Pennsylvania, and
now may have to keep them off -- faces a tough quandry. Which
distinguishes his position, I suppose, from all of those easy quandries.
And which also seems to split hairs on a bald man's head. If only because, by already -- and repeatedly -- removing the gloves, he has, to anyone with eyes and mind open enough to see, already compromised that alleged electoral integrity. He's no longer different, no longer the Breath of Fresh Air, Different Kind of Politician he and his supporters have always professed him to be. (Not, of course, that he ever really was that anyway, but...)
He has, tough quandries and manufactured media dilemmas aside, long ago crossed over to the dark side, and no amount of smiling or moralizing or speechifying can change that.
And which also seems to split hairs on a bald man's head. If only because, by already -- and repeatedly -- removing the gloves, he has, to anyone with eyes and mind open enough to see, already compromised that alleged electoral integrity. He's no longer different, no longer the Breath of Fresh Air, Different Kind of Politician he and his supporters have always professed him to be. (Not, of course, that he ever really was that anyway, but...)
He has, tough quandries and manufactured media dilemmas aside, long ago crossed over to the dark side, and no amount of smiling or moralizing or speechifying can change that.
Posted at 10:34 AM
I READ THE NEWS AGAIN, OH BOY
and this time, it all made
sense.
Perhaps you will remember that after Senator Sniper
Fire had won in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island, I noted the -- let's be charitable here --
curious nature of the Post-Gazette's big, bold headline: Democratic
race goes on. Seven weeks later, I must give credit where it's due and
note that this morning, they got it absolutely right: Clinton wins, the
race goes on.
For the record, I also would have accepted: Clinton wins, the spin continues; Clinton wins, Obama packs up his toys and runs to Indiana; or You bitter, you better, you bet.
For the record, I also would have accepted: Clinton wins, the spin continues; Clinton wins, Obama packs up his toys and runs to Indiana; or You bitter, you better, you bet.
Posted at 08:53 AM
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