A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars:
I wanted to say a few words about the Michigan Solution. No, not thattravesty of justice. I'm talking about a fair, common-sense resolution of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Some in the media are declaring the series over because the Boston Celtics have won four of the six games played so far. But I don’t understand why, with a series this close and hotly contested, anyone would want to shut it down before we play a seventh game and have all the results in. As anybody who follows the NBA knows, a seven-game series would be good for the league, and the added competition would make the eventual victor, whomever it might be, a stronger opponent against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals.
It’s no great surprise that some are trying to push us out of this series. From the beginning, it’s been clear that the media and league elites have been looking for an exciting new face, instead of a team, like ours, that has proven its mettle by making it to the Conference Finals six years in a row. We saw it in the Western Conference as well, where officials and news outlets made clear they were sick to death of the reigning champion San Antonio Spurs and behaved like cheerleaders for the media-darling Lakers. Heck, they almost managed to persuade fans that a hokey, small-town act like the New Orleans Hornets was a legitimate contender. It is safe to say that this has been the most rigged coverage in modern sports history.
But back to the series in question. Yes, Boston has won four games and Detroit only two. But it's hard to imagine a more arbitrary and undemocratic way to determine this series’s outcome than "games won." It is, after all, a bedrock value of the game of basketball that all points must be counted. But how can that be the case when every point beyond the winning point is ignored? There are literally dozens of layups, jumpers, free throws, and (yes, even) dunks that our opponents want to say don't count for anything at all. We call on the NBA to do the right thing and fully count all of the baskets that were made throughout the course of this series.
Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent—a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.
How do we determine a winner in a series so historically close? First off, let's look at these so-called "free" throws, which are anything but. Who decides when these are to be awarded? Hard-working working-people like you and me? No, it's the officials, the league bosses, the elites. So no counting the free throws--unless and until (and I sincerely hope you guys are listening) the refs start breaking our way again. (By the way, you guys do know that Celts star Paul Pierce was involved in a stabbing a few years back, right? I only mention it because Phil Jackson is obviously going to bring it up in the Finals.)
If you take out free throws, Boston's ten-point margin in the series is whittled down to a single-digit, all-but-meaningless nine points. But this is still misleading. Let's be honest: We all know that some baskets count for more than others. (Yes, I know I was arguing for equal representation two seconds ago. What are you, Encyclopedia Brown? Chill out and try to stay current.) Take layups, for example: If you wander naively into the Finals thinking you’re going to win with layups, well don’t come crying to me when Kobe Bryant swats that lameass shit right back in your face. I know. I've been there.
So let's get right down to it: Big shots matter. It makes no difference when they happen, or who's leading at the time, or whether you're likely to make them against the Lakers, or any of that complicated nonsense. And we all know that the only real big shot is a three-pointer. So sure, Boston won more games than us, and scored more points, and made more baskets, and hit more free throws, and never tried to rewrite the rules after the fact. But we dominated them in three-point shooting, hitting 29 long ones to their 26 over the course of the series. Take this into account and it becomes apparent that we are by far the strongest competitor the Eastern Conference can field against the Lakers.
We again ask the league to consider all these facts and come to a fair solution. I’ll be holding a press conference at the Palace tonight, to which I’m inviting all Pistons season-ticket holders. I may announce our intention to drop out of the Eastern Conference Finals. Or I may not. But know one thing: If the media and league elites put the Celtics up against LA, they will lose, and we’ll be the first to say I told you so.
See you next season,
Joe Dumars (as told to Christopher Orr)
Oh well, I guess it's all a moot point anyway. I'm just glad we're finally done with this crap. Onward to stage 2: kicking some Maverick ass!
These days, it's really easy to compile a list of reasons to vote for someone. It's also easy to compile a list of reasons to not vote for someone. But I've discovered it's a bit challenging to compile a list of stupid reasons to not vote for someone! Yet that's what I did. So without any further ado, here is my list of 10 stupid reasons to not vote for Barack Obama:
Reason #1: He's a Muslim!
No he's not. But the bigger question is "So what if he was?" The assumption here is that Muslim=evil or Islam=terrorist.
I won't even get into whether or not Islam is evil because it's a stupid argument. If you think the whole religion is any more evil than any other religion, or that its followers are inherently evil, then you're blinded by your beliefs and are incapable of rational thought, and you might as well stop reading this. I'm sorry, but this whole "My God is better than yours argument" is idiotic, and it only leads to lots of dead people. You can believe all you want, but you don't know, and so it's stupid to argue about it. Even stupider is to make blanket statements about all the followers of a particular religion, especially when your religion has no shortage of skeletons in its closet. This is why I'm fanatically agnostic.
As far as equating Islam to terrorism, that's a fair comparison, but only if you ignore all the non-Muslim terrorists in recent history, such as the IRA, abortion clinic bombers, Timothy McVeigh, so-called eco-terrorists, Ted Kaczynski, the CIA, the Chinese government, the Soviets, etc.
But then there's the whole illogic of equating the actions of a few to an entire religion.
I know some people would say that there are more than a few. Well, think about this for a moment. There are about 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, give or take a few hundred million. That's 1,500,000,000 people. Compare that with the population of Phoenix, AZ, which is about 1.5 million, or 1,500,000 people. If there were 1.5 million Muslim terrorists worldwide (there is no way to come up with a number, but still, this is an insanely huge number, and I really doubt it's anywhere near this high under most definitions), that would still only be 1 of every 1,000 Muslims, or less than 0.1%. Put it this way: it's about 1,000 miles from Chicago to Denver. Only one mile would be the "terrorist mile". So it's hardly fair to assume every follower of Islam is a terrorist, unless you're an ignorant, reactionary idiot.
Now, that's not to say that 1.5 million terrorists couldn't cause a whole lot of damage (and they aren't, which is why I think this number is way too high). But if you had to fight them, wouldn't you rather have the other 1,498,500,000 on your side?
Moreover, the definition of terrorist is so vague that anyone can be called a terrorist. I'm sure I could be called one simply for writing this blog. But don't worry, you're reading it, so that makes you a terrorist, too.
Regardless, none of this has anything to do with Barack Obama, so let's move on.
Reason #2: He was raised in a Muslim terrorist madrassa!
Wrong again. I've already talked about the Muslim-terrorist claim. As for the bogus madrassa claim, my guess is that a vast majority of people who keep repeating this have no idea what a madrassa is. I didn't until I first heard this.
I suppose "madrassa" is a scary foreign-sounding word to some. But really, madrassa (madrasah) is simply the Arabic word for school. But I could see how people who are afraid of foreign-sounding words that they don't understand would also be afraid of school, or at least education.
But I guess if you're a complete moron, you can buy the line of reasoning that forty years ago, some grade school teachers somewhere in Indonesia concocted this great plan to select one of their students to be a sort of Manchurian Candidate who would one day become President of the United States so that he could singlehandedly destroy the whole country and convert us, as well as the whole Western World, into a bunch of freedom-hating Muslims. You'd also have to believe that they then thought, "You know, this plan is too easy. Instead of having a white guy with a name like John Smith, let's choose a black man named Barack Hussein Obama! They'll never suspect him!"
Of course, this also supposes that our country is so fragile that one guy can tear it all apart without any trouble. I guess if you have a low enough opinion of this country, you might think that. But that would mean you hate America.
Now I know some people might ask, "Hey, isn't one guy singlehandedly destroying this country right now?" No, he isn't. He hashadlotsof help.
Anyway, let's move on to reason #3.
Reason #3a: But he's Muslim! Look at his middle name: Hussein! What does that tell you?
...and...
Reason #3b: But he's Muslim! Look at his last name: Obama! You know, it sounds like Osama! What does that tell you?
Nothing. Neither tells me anything. And it shouldn't tell anyone else anything, either. Shall we play, "What's in a name?"
Joseph Lieberman and Joseph Biden would be horrible choices for president because their name is Joseph, and we all know Joseph Stalin was one of the most brutal dictators in history. Therefore, Lieberman and Biden would become dictators if elected president.
John McCain, John F. Kennedy, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, John Edwards, John Kerry, John Negroponte, Andrew Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lennon, Johnny Carson, Johnny Cash, Johnny Rotten, Johnny Walker, John Deere, Elton John, Johnson & Johnson, Trapper John, MD, Johns Hopkins, and Olivia Newton-John are all unqualified to be president because they all have "John" as part of their name. Who can forget another "John", John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. You wouldn't want to vote for someone with connections to a notorious assassin, would you?
Hillary Clinton is out of the question, too. Look at her initials: H.C. You know who else had H.C. in his initials? H.C.M., aka Ho Chi Minh, that's who. And Rodham? That's like Rodman, as in Dennis Rodman, the cross-dressing basketball player. And if that weren't enough, "Hillary" starts with an "H", and so does "Hitler". That would make her a cross-dressing, VietCong, Nazi secret agent! Well, your secret is out, Hitlery Nguyen Rodman Clinton!
Reason #4: Obama associates with people who hate America! That means he hates America!
Oh, brother. I have friends who used to do a lot of meth. Does that mean I used to do a lot of meth? I have friends who are gay. Does that mean I'm gay? I have friends who have been in jail. Does that make me a criminal? I associate with many women. Does that make me a woman?
Note: I'm not equating being gay and/or being a woman to doing a lot of meth and/or being a criminal. They're just all things I can't say about myself.
Then there's the whole exaggeration or complete misrepresentation of what was said in the first place. Here's a good comparison of the sound bites and the context of what Jeremiah Wright said. I mean really, he never said anything that was untrue. But I guess a loud, angry black man is too scary to some people. We can also get into whether or not the guy truly hates America, but then we'd have to look at his military service history in Vietnam and how he attended to Lyndon B. Johnson after the president had surgery, and that wouldn't make for a good sound clip.
At the same time as all of this, John McCain was endorsed by John Hagee, a guy who essentially said that New Orleans got what it deserved in Hurricane Katrina because of gays. I guess "God damn New Orleans" is OK, but "God damn America" is not. Either way, hardly anyone is saying McCain is unfit to be president because he sought out Hagee's endorsement, though that could be because there are plenty of other reasons McCain is unfit to be president.
Or there's Pat Robertson, a guy who agreed with another nutcase, Jerry Falwell, when two days after 9/11 he said, "I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen." Robertson also called for Hugo Chavez's assassination. He endorsed Rudy Giuliani, but nobody blamed Giuliani for it.
These televangelist types are doing a great job at arguing for a separation of church and state, though I doubt that's what they have in mind.
Reason #5: But Rev. Wright is his "spiritual adviser"!
In order to believe this means anything, one must first have to be so ignorant to not know what the word "adviser" means. The word adviser means, "One who advises, or one who gives advice." It does not mean, "One who brainwashes." I can understand why there would be a mix up since it does involve religion, an institution whose leaders have been known from time to time to try to brainwash its followers.
Nevertheless, the idea that Obama naturally agrees with everything Jeremiah Wright says is bunk, especially given that Obama has clearly on a number of occasions come out and said he disagreed with many of the things Wright said.
None of this matters anymore, anyhow, since Obama left his church this weekend.
Reason #6: Obama doesn't put his hand on his heart during the National Anthem and refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance!
Sigh.
This is based on one photo that appeared in Time magazine. Here's video of the "offending" incident:
So instead of putting his hand on his heart, he sings along. What an America-hater! Too bad he didn't sing louder in order to drown out that awful-sounding woman with a microphone.
Was he "supposed to" put his hand over his heart? According to USflag.org (yes, there is such a site):
During rendition of the national anthem when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. Men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.
Well, there you go. Since they didn't remove their "headdress", I say they're all guilty of hating America. Except Hillary and that other woman as the rule apparently only applies to men.
Oh, and here's some video that I copied and pasted from snopes.com of Obama leading the Pledge of Allegiance in the Senate. Notice the hand over heart:
Ah, but who cares about the truth when there are plenty of half-truths to go around?
Reason #7: Obama clearly hates America. This is why he refuses to wear a flag pin!
Good! The flag pin was most likely made in China!
Frankly, I think we've had way too much of this bogus, superficial patriotism and not enough real concern and care for this country. Anyone can wear a pin or put a magnetic ribbon on an SUV (one of the most unintentionally ironic statements a person can make), but instead of hollow gestures, maybe we should try doing something that actually helps the country, such as providing health care, working to pay off our national debt, or simply not fighting unnecessary wars.
Reason #8: Michelle Obama clearly hates America. She said she was proud of America "for the first time." I've always been proud of America!
Really? You've always been proud of America? Were you proud when we were committing genocide against native people? Were you proud when slavery was legal and blacks were considered 3/5 of a person for congressional representational purposes? Were you proud when we had segregation? How about when we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act? Or when we interned Japanese-Americans during World War II? What about when we dropped two nuclear bombs (the only country to ever do so) on Japan, or when we firebombed and leveled German cities? Were you proud of that? Or does that not count because it was a long time ago?
How about more recently? Are you proud that we started detaining prisoners Soviet-style: overseas, indefinitely, and without charging them with a crime? Are you proud when thousands of people were dying in New Orleans during Katrina while the president laughed and strummed a guitar? How about when the previous president was impeached because he lied about having receiving sex? Or how about when the two presidents before him authorized arming Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden?
Mentioning any of this does not mean a person hates the America. Nor does it mean that a person is not proud. But if we ever want this country to get better, we first have to come to terms with the fact that we're not perfect. If this country were a person, it would be a John Wayne-type character, strutting around completely oblivious to its faults, which everyone else can clearly see.
No, it's not hate if you believe the country can do better and expect it to do so.
Reason #9: He has no foreign policy experience!
Well, how well do people with foreign policy experience stack up?
Dick Cheney: Assistant to the President and then White House Chief of Staff under Ford, five terms as US Representative At-Large from Wyoming, House Minority Whip, Secretary of Defense under Bush I, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Halliburton, Vice President under Bush II, shot a guy in the face.
Donald Rumsfeld: Four terms as US Representative from Illinois's 13th district, Director of the United States Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, White House Chief of Staff and then US Secretary of Defense under Ford, Special Envoy to the Middle East under Reagan, Secretary of Defense again under Bush II, Architect of the Iraq Quagmire, used a machine to sign letters of condolences to families of soldiers killed in said quagmire, resigned in disgrace in 2006.
Hillary Clinton: Former First Lady, twice elected as US Senator from New York, imagined gunfire during visit to Bosnia. Oh wait, maybe she didn't imagine it:
Anyway, with these kinds of results from experienced people, I'll think I'll take my chances with the new guy.
Reason #10: We don't know anything about him!
Two words: Goo-gle!
Well, I hope you find this list of reasons not to vote for Obama useful in your voting decisions. Vote early and often!
After my post about Bill O'Reilly a few days ago, I thought it would be appropriate to point out that while he is typical of the corporate media, occasionally one of the talking heads on network TV gets it right:
Granted, Olbermann is no Any Goodman, nor even a Jon Stewart, but these days I'll take what I can get.
Heck, even Chris Matthews jumped in on the act:
Here you have a guy who keeps repeating the same right-wing talking points without even knowing the history behind them. This is nothing new, but a TV host calling him on his ignorance is pretty rare these days. I like it!
It's time to play your favorite game, The Fox is Wrong!
It's not that I'm surprised that TV news talking heads are full of bullshit. What surprises me is how full of bullshit they are. How do they cram so much utter bullshit into one business suit and then coat it with hairspray and makeup before it's time to go on the air? Do the talking heads gobble the bullshit, or do the news execs cram it down their throats? Wonders never cease.
Whichever the case, there's no bullshit shortage, and so they can spew it all over the place once they go on TV. Which is why I don't watch them. It's too bad there are those who do and actually think they're informed.
Even worse are the fanatics. These people remind me of the hanger-ons who would follow around the high school bully, laugh at every stupid thing he said, and pretend to like him so he wouldn't pick on them. They think politics and public policy is a sport, and they think the loud, ex-football player has a better shot at winning against those smart types.
Speaking of smart types, have you seen Steve Novick's new ad? Well, here it is:
Here are his others if you haven't seen them:
If you live in Oregon, you have until April 29 to register as a Democrat to vote for Steve!
OK, I swear this is the last time I'm going to do this. Unless, I decide to do this again, of course.
Once again, Hunter at the Daily Kos hit one out of the park with his latest blog posting. It's like I'm beginning to develop a man-crush on this blogger, to the point that I'm creeping myself out a bit. Still, his (her?) postings kick several different types of ass, so here they are. The latest is about the sham of a debate that aired last night, which if you haven't heard, consisted of questions about Rev. Wright, flag pins, and other bogus non-issues while really, really, reallyimportantstuff was ignored. Anyway, here's the posting:
After the first forty minutes of last night's Democratic debate, it was clear we were watching something historic. Not historic in a good way, mind you, but historic in the sense of being something so deeply embarrassing to the nation that it will be pointed to, in future books and documentary works, as a prime example of the collapse of the American media into utter and complete substanceless, into self-celebrated vapidity, and into a now-complete inability or unwillingness to cover the most important affairs of the nation to any but the most shallow of depths.
Congratulations are clearly in order. ABC had two hours of access to two of the three remaining candidates vying to lead the most powerful nation in the world, and spent the decided majority of that time mining what the press considers the true issues facing the republic. Bittergate; Rev. Wright; Bosnia; American flag lapel pins. That's what's important to the future of the country.
What a contrast. Only a few weeks ago, we were presented with what was considered by many to be a historic speech by a presidential candidate on race in America -- historic for its substance, tone, delivery, and stark candor. Last night, we had an opposing, equally historic example -- and I sincerely mean that, I consider it to be every bit as significant as that word implies -- of the collapse of the political press into self-willed incompetence. You might as well pull any half-intelligent person off the street, and they would unquestionably have more difficult and significant questions for the two candidates. It was not merely a momentarily bad performance, by ABC, it was a debate explicitly designed to be what it was, which is far more telling.
It is certainly true that a case could be made that the moderators explicitly set out to frame even the supposedly "substantive" questions according to GOP designs. The implicit presumption of success in Iraq when, nearly an hour into the debate, the moderators finally deigned to mention the defining current event of this campaign. Gibson, as moderator, lied outright about the supposed effects of capital gains tax cuts, and dogged the candidates over it to a greater extent than any other economic issue: does he really believe that of all the economic challenges facing this nation, the most pressing of them is supplication towards a decade-long Republican bugaboo? Gun control? Affirmative action? These are the issues that are most compellingly on the minds of Democratic primary voters, in 2008? Or were the questions taken from a 1992 time capsule, insightful probes gathering dust for a decade and a half until they could find network moderators desperate enough to dig them up again?
But even slanted questions could be forgiven, of the press; what was more inexplicable was the intentional wallowing in substanceless, meaningless "gaffe" politics. It says something truly impressive about the press that a few statements by a presidential candidate's preacher bear far more weight to the future of our nation than the challenges of terrorism or war. It is truly a celebration of our own national collapse into idiocracy that we can furrow our brows and question the patriotism of a candidate, deeply probe their patriotism based on whether or not they regularly don a made-in-China American flag pin, but a substantive discussion of energy policy, or healthcare, or the deficit, or the housing crisis, or global climate change, or the government approval of torture, or trade issues, or the plight of one-industry small American towns, or the fight over domestic espionage and FISA, or the makeup of the Supreme Court -- those were of no significance, in comparison.
If a media organization set out to intentionally demonstrate themselves to be self absorbed and ignorant, they could not have accomplished it better. It was not just a tabloid debate, but the tittering of political kindergardeners making and lobbing mud pies. It was politics as game show. The moderators demonstrated that to them and their supposed "news" organization, the presidency of the United States of America is about the trivialities of_politics_, which were obsessed over ravenously, not about the challenges of American governance, which were fully ignored.
Certainly, as mere citizens we could ask little of the network that unapologetically brought us The Path to 9/11, a fabricated conservative pseudo-documentary laying the blame for terrorism at the feet of everyone loathed by the far right. But it is not simply ABC that bears the blame: surely, one could expect similar drivel from any of the other networks or cable channels who have so successfully and self-importantly dimmed the national discourse, these past ten years. For his part, the chairman of the written intellectual wisp, the New York Times' David Brooks, marveled at the "excellent" questions:
We may not like it, but issues like Jeremiah Wright, flag lapels and the Tuzla airport will be important in the fall. Remember how George H.W. Bush toured flag factories to expose Michael Dukakis. It’s legitimate to see how the candidates will respond to these sorts of symbolic issues.
Indeed, how dare his peon readers whine about these things: this is how the political game is expected to be played by the grand masters of our discourse. Symbolic tours of flag factories! Checkmate! That is the elite idea of "issues" in our national debate. Piss on the war, and screw the economy -- somebody find a goddamn flag factory to tour! That is how our most elite media figures like to see political opponents "exposed" as... well, what exactly? What does touring a flag factory prove, other than the media in this country is so astonishingly gullible, tin-headed and shallow that you can actually tour a damn flag factory and get praised for it by our idiot press as being a bold, disarming move against your opponent?
Truly, we have become a nation led by the most lazy and ignorant. It seems impossible to mock or satirize just how shallowly the media considers the actual world ramifications of each election, how glancingly they explore the actual truth behind political assertion or rhetoric, or how gleefully they molest our discourse while praising themselves for those selfsame acts. And that, in turn, is precisely how we elected our current Idiot Boy King, a man who has the eloquent demeanor of a month-old Christmas tree and the nuance of a Saturday morning cartoon.
It seems impossible, but we may yet have an election season in which we can be in a slogging, five-year-long war, and mention the fact only in glancing asides. We may yet have a series of Republican-Democratic debates in which the most pressing issues of the economy are entirely ignored, so that we can more adequately explore the "patriotism" of the candidates as expressed by their clothing. We may have yet another campaign season carefully orchestrated to leave all but the most glancing and hollow of themes untouched, while our press achieves multiple orgasms at every botched line, every refused cup of coffee, every peddled character assassination or character assassination-by-proxy peddled by the sleaziest of paid dregs. A campaign, in other words, perfectly suited to the bereft, rudderless, and substanceless self-pronounced guardians of our democracy.
Perhaps, if nothing else, it is time to take back the debate process and insist once again on moderators chosen for competence, expertise and neutrality, rather than network or cable network fame. The elites of our press have managed to botch the task time and time again; perhaps it should be left to someone with an actual interest in doing the job.
There you go. When we vote for people based on something their pastor said or based on whether or not they wear flag pins or whether they drink orange juice instead of coffee, we're screwed. Without the right kind of information and knowledge, our democracy can't work. And that's why I blog. Fortunately, stealing from others is one way to blog.
Once again, Hunter at the Daily Kos showed the world a thing or two about how to blog. And once again, I'm going to rip his latest off and post it right here on Rob Dow's World. Here it is:
BitterJuiceBowlGate, Day Whatever + 1 by Hunter Tue Apr 15, 2008 at 08:12:00 AM PDT
You'd think I was making it up, if there wasn't videotape. And, you know, ten years of the exact same behavior preceding it. Monday, on MSNBC:
['MSNBC Live' anchor Contessa Brewer]: It's interesting, though, because you always have this question that erupts around election time: Who would you rather have a beer with? And so, it's not just what the candidates are saying to appeal to folks -- they want to be seen as the guy or the gal next door -- but they also have to do it. So, we've seen these candidates now in Pennsylvania -- here's Hillary Clinton doing shots in a bar. And then we have video of Barack Obama tossing back a Yuengling, which, anybody who's been to Philadelphia knows they're very proud of their local beer out there. How important is the video? I mean, if -- do these pictures really speak a thousand words, Jon?
[Reuters Washington correspondent Jon Decker]: They do. And let's not forget Barack Obama bowling. You know, this cuts to "is this person real? Do they connect with me as a voter?" You know, for someone who's in a bowling league in northeast central Pennsylvania, in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, they can't identify with someone getting a 37 over seven frames.
My first reaction was the sensible one: to pray to God to please kill me, immediately. Preferably by meteor. But one of the defining characteristics of my life is that God just isn't that into me, and/or all the meteors are already spoken for, so it never works.
In lieu of divine homicide, then, I suppose the only other avenue left is to try to pry some sense from the nonsense. So here goes: what you see, above, is the defense of the petty, the vapid and the embarrassingly trivial as valid "news", worthy of actual air time. The premise goes like this: the news media reports some minor absurdity about the race. Various pundits go on television to tell Americans how the latest triviality should make them "feel". Ten times as many pundits appear to analyze what would happen if Americans actually felt that way. Then comes the man-on-the-street interviews to see if people really do "feel" that way, and regardless of what actually gets said, by how many, the hypothesis is pronounced correct, or at least "newsworthy". (Note: the definition of "newsworthy" is simply "something we felt like putting on television." This could be a story about Abu Ghraib, or a story about a cat that has learned to ride a skateboard, or a story about what Robert Novak thinks about something. It is, in other words a meaningless phrase.)
Then George W. Bush and a half dozen cabinet members in some back room somewhere authorize the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, but we can't pay attention to that because we've all got to decide whether we want a president with good bowling scores.
Where did we get this notion that the President of the United States should be a drinking buddy? Where did we get the notion that the strongest nation on earth should be led by a folksy, easy-to-like drunk? I don't mean where did the country get this notion, I mean when did the media decide that this was a valid measure of a leader, something worth endlessly discussing, and analyzing, and tittering over? When facing down the leader of a rogue nation in a series of intense negotiations, I don't want the guy shooting pool at the corner bar, I want someone with a head for the job, for God's sake, and I don't give a rats ass if he likes buffalo wings, or bowling, or can smash an empty beer can on his head. (A point of trivia: the first President to try to smash a beer can on his head was John Quincy Adams. Unfortunately, beer cans did not exist back then, only kegs, so Adams gave himself a hell of a concussion attempting the feat.)
Yes, we all understand that, if no other information about a candidate is forthcoming, voters will attempt to divine a candidate's values, positions or general worth from whatever minor points of familiarity can be gleaned. This is human nature; this is how uninformed voters vote. But when that happens, that is a failure of our Democracy, not a strength. There is little excuse for not knowing the positions of candidates after two dozen Democratic debates and a passel of Republican ones, and when each candidate has more than an ample record of past records and statements -- regardless, though, how on earth did we reach the point where the news media themselves seize upon the trivialities and petty trinkets of the campaign as themselves as or more meaningful than the actual political positions and records of the candidates?
Yes, there are uninformed, dull-witted voters in the world, people who will decide who to vote for based on choice of beer. But why -- why, in the name of all that is holy, and several things that are not -- would the political media itself, presumably the group of people most informed about the actual issues of governance riding on each election, choose to celebrate that lack of substantive information and instead wallow in the meaningless?
What, is it a game? Laziness? Ineptitude? Stupidity? Most people who read this site know my own opinion, by now: it is a little of each of those things, but mostly it is institutional stupidity, a stupidity and vapidity enforced by a lack of corporate will or resources to fill the news day with anything more significant. Placing a talking head on television is, compared to covering any news story at all -- especially one that might require leaving the office -- free. It costs nothing more than a camera, a microphone, and the willingness to say whatever enters your head and pronounce it sufficiently pundacious.
In addition, and more troublingly, the shift in the attitudes of those that cover politics continues unabated, and with ever more ridiculous affectations. Political reporters no longer consider themselves observers, or balances to counter the powerful; they consider themselves an integral part of the political game itself. We are barraged constantly with the spin coming from every election camp -- and the spin itself is reported as the story. It is not enough even to report that spin, anymore; now the airwaves are filled with the actual spinners themselves, presenting the absurdity of the day directly to the audience without the noisome filters of reportage or fact checking or impartial rebuttal. The spectacle of debate is the story, not the thing actually being debated. The thing actually being debated, whatever it may be, is just the pointless MacGuffin around which two opposing sides can be booked to scream at each other for a few minutes between commercials.
Even torture is now nothing more than a MacGuffin for the two sides, now. Domestic espionage? Governmental corruption? An astonishing corruption of the Department of Justice itself? Merely trivialities around which two sides can be booked for boisterous, vapid debate.
Talk about elitism: when, exactly, did we get to the point where an assortment of multimillionares can vie, every four years, for the title of most folksy, and most "common", and have the attempts reported with a straight face by the most supposedly intelligent and insightful political minds available? Are we serious? Watching a set of multimillionaires competing desperately to each appear the most down to earth, the most folksy and hick, challenging each other with increasingly "common" costumes, extolling the virtues of barbecue and hot dogs and grits, admiring the local sports team in every individual state they visit; admit it, it is hilarious. It is one of the few contests the rich have, among themselves, that the rest of us get to enjoy as well, for watching a lifetime establishment insider play dress up, and watching them play act as they pretend to be what they see us as being, namely complete and utter rubes, more obsessed with our backyard grills than the fates of our own jobs -- that is a fine play indeed, if you are into truly dark humor.
But we have perfected the game. Now we can watch dozens upon dozens of supposedly intelligent, jaded political reporters tool around the country after them, reporting on their gamesmanship and faux-folksiness with earnest expressions, reporting on their latest diner visits and photographs with puppies -- now that is the game within the game. The politicians consider us rubes. The press consider us rubes, too. And so they work together to tell us how we should feel, when the play is performed for us, and how we should feel when something goes off-script, and they are even generous enough to reuse the same storylines from one election to the next, so we do not damage our poor, piteous brains by having to relearn what we are supposed to think about the elitist, effeminate Democrat, or the foreign policy gravitas-having Republican.
Good God, it is impossible to express how insulted we should be that the guardians of our discourse think this is the only political slop worth serving us.
Very well; I give up. If, as the Reuters correspondent declares, common America has no hope of identifying with someone getting a poor bowling score, then the answer seems obvious. We must quantify how much "connection with the voters" is possible, given a particular score in the sport: this will then allow us to wallow freely in our own idiocy, not bothering the pitiable higher-ups of government or the press with our incessant demands for any more substantive information or knowledge. I therefore suggest the following crude measures of a man, so that the people of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre will not be left in cruel emotional limbo, unable to find an emotional bond with their candidates.
A score of 100 should be the minimum: if a candidate can bowl over 100, after practicing for a week, that signifies that they have the minimal personal integrity worthy of office. They are suitable for heading a lesser government agency, or an ambassadorship.
If a candidate can top 150, they show true intellect, and are worthy of at least a cabinet position. 170 indicates fortitude in the face of adversity, indicating perhaps a position in the defense department is in order. 180 signifies that their tax returns are in order.
If a candidate achieves a score over 200, that means that they are faithful to their spouse. A score over 220 furthermore indicates a loving relationship, and not just a marriage of convenience. A score over 225 signals that they have the love of their children as well, and that their children are free of drugs or unfortunate homosexual tendencies.
A bowling score of 240 or above shows a candidate as capable of leadership. It also testifies to a good relationship between with their God; the presidency may be viable. 250, the typical score of devout Protestants, cinches the deal, indicating God loves them back. A second term may be in order.
A score of 260 indicates competent fiscal management abilities; if they achieve this score on a league night, managerial competence is also likely. Bowling an impressive 270 is a sign of great foreign policy capabilities, possibly including past war hero status. At 280, you can expect a balanced budged to be achieved, as well as at least one great speech about the evils of communism.
A score of 290 will win a war, probably without a nuclear exchange.
And what of the perfect game, the elusive 300? Ah, my children, that indeed shows true greatness. In the entire history of the Republic, only one President has been a 300 bowler: none other than the Emancipator, the great Abraham Lincoln himself.
Because it was Abraham Lincoln's hard-fought perfect game, achieved in the dead of one cold and bitter winter's night, that allowed him to free the slaves.
