Results May Vary

30 November 08
“Alright scale, you don’t like me and I don’t like you, but I’ve been very good so you better treat me right.” - Homer Simpson

Thanksgiving was an all around good time.  There was plenty of excellent food and everyone was in fine spirits.  Only one thing bothered me, and as we get into New Year’s resolution season I’m bracing myself for similar encounters.  From the other end of the table, about halfway through dinner, I heard my father and younger sister agreeing that keeping Thanksgiving dinner under 1,500 calories consumed is a kind of triumph.  There was general assent from the other adults.  And there it was: the morality of food and fitness, perched over our table like an unwelcome dinner guest.  Before I get to that though, I’m going to tell you the secret to losing weight and keeping it off.  Are you ready?  I’m only going to say this once.

Get off your ass and don’t eat so fucking much.

It’s as simple as that.  Now, before you dismiss that as just another way to phrase the dreaded words, “Diet and Exercise”, consider that I described it as “simple”, not “easy”.  There is a vast difference between the two, though people who peddle gym memberships, diet books, exercise equipment, nutritional systems, and abdominal contraptions don’t often point it out.  Decreasing your food intake while increasing your physical activity is simple - but it certainly isn’t easy.  That is a vitally important distinction that is all too often lost.

Consider that we’ve actually adopted the language of morality to our cultural struggles with the bathroom scale.  We use the same words to describe behaviors that are simple and easy to avoid, like stealing and killing, as we do for behaviors like eating too much, which, whatever consequences they may have, are not usually easy, and are certainly not immoral.  It is now common usage for someone to say, perhaps prior to eating dessert, that it’s okay to do so because they were “good” today.  Similarly, the word “bad” is now often used to refer to having recently overeaten.  Take a step back for a moment and ponder the implications of that.  Basic and useful human emotions like pride and guilt are being perverted daily in service to a belief system which holds as its paragon of virtue the ability to appear physically similar to the altered photographs of highly abnormal people which appear in glossy magazines.

We have elevated the concept of “fitness”, with its subtle edge of Darwinism, to a social ideal.  Some of the side effects of this stupidity include well meaning silliness like NAAFA, that’s the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.  This is an organization more or less dedicated to saying that it’s okay to degrade the quality and decrease the quantity of one’s life.  (As of this writing their homepage was reveling in the news that Canadians who are so obese as to require two airline seats now only need to pay for one.)  And yet our culture and our values are so screwed up that an organization dedicated to self harming behavior actually has a pretty compelling argument.  Boiled down to its skinny essentials it amounts to little more than “Fat Happens, Deal with It”, and they’re right.

Fat people are unduly stigmatized and so inevitably some of them rise up and shout against the culture that stigmatizes them.  Doing so doesn’t make being fat any less unhealthy, but it does highlight just how dumb it is to hold well defined abdominal muscles as a mark of personal triumph.  It’s an extreme reaction to an extreme culture; that neither position is particularly logical doesn’t matter in the least.  We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water though; it’s perfectly okay not to look like a model, but carrying around a lot of excess lipids will cost you in every possible way.

Which brings us back to Thanksgiving; it’s a day where overeating is a tradition and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  We eat lots of good food, as a tribute to those who came before us and didn’t always have the option and as a reminder that lean times can still come again.  How much you want to overdo things, if at all, is up to you, but first and foremost it’s a celebration.  Feeling guilty about that last helping of turkey and stuffing serves only to spoil the mood.

We are coming now to the eating season; Christmas and other less commercially important celebrations will be dominating the calendar for the next few weeks.  After that it’s time for New Year’s and the millions of weight loss resolutions which annually accompany it.  So when you see an ad promising you (Yes You!) a new and fitter body, and you will, remember something before you pull out the credit card.  You already know how to lose weight - it’s simple - but no amount of spending will ever make it easy.

No Comments » | Personalized Stupidity, Weight Loss | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Just How Arrogant Are We?

26 November 08
“There is a difference between ignorance and stupidity.” - Artie Ziff
“Not to me there isn’t!” - Homer Simpson

I have frequently seen Rick Shenkman’s “Just How Stupid Are We?” referred to as one of the most popular political books of the season.  The numbers at the book’s home page up at History News Network back this claim: a rash of sterling Amazon.com statistics, media appearances on everything from CNN and Jon Stewart to Alternet and TomDispatch, and - most importantly - three printings.  There is a problem though, “Just How Stupid Are We?” is an awful book which manages the neat trick of being well researched yet transparently shallow; it amounts to little more than an(other) anti-Bush screed from someone who isn’t happy about the last eight years.  Only this time the guilty party is the American people and the victim may well be democracy itself.

Shenkman’s main contention is that the American public is blithely ignorant about basic civics and easily distracted by newsy fluff like drunk driving starlets and dead killer whales; as a result, they (we!) are very bad at making sound judgments when it comes to politics and voting.  Moreover, he feels that “The People” (a concept he uses throughout the book even though he admits about halfway through that it has no real meaning) haven’t received their proper share of the blame for the catastrophes in America’s history, especially the last eight years of Bush the Younger.  Pointing the finger for our problems on dishonest politicians and their corporate media enablers has, in his view, improperly exculpated The People.

With the notable exception of some interesting history in the sixth chapter, the book is an intellectual mess that reads like a series of loosely connected rants.  Facts (poll numbers, statistics, specific events) are brought up to allow Shenkman to mock the people involved, but there’s no coherent theme other than that The People’s judgment isn’t as good as Rick Shenkman’s.  He cites lots of surveys which show how ignorant people are of basic civics, including one which purports to show that Americans know more about The Simpsons than they do about the First Amendment, but the whole thing is an exercise in confusing correlation with causation.

He begins by saying that he’s not out to write another catalog of the misdeeds of Bush the Younger, and then proceeds immediately to one of the anguished liberal’s perennial favorites: the start of the Iraq War and the false belief that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks on Washington and New York.  He’s shocked that half of Americans still believed Iraq played a role even after the 9/11 Commission categorically stated that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks.  He then spends the next several pages cataloging all the government and media falsehoods which for years were relentlessly pressed on the American people before concluding that the question we really need to ask is how The People were so easily led astray.

Of course, he omits some inconvenient facts in his little diatribe.  For one thing, in spite of the propaganda barrage coming from most major media outlets (including pretty much every television talking head) and the US Government, literally tens of millions of ordinary Americans opposed the war, many of whom went so far as to turn out in the streets to protest.  These were inarguably members of The People, whereas any number of supposedly well informed media elites, including the luminaries behind publications like The New Republic, supported the war.  Lots of people who would do quite well on those civics surveys Shenkman likes to cite were more bamboozled than great swaths of The People.  But nevermind that, because the myth of The People as an infallible repository of wisdom must be challenged!

Just what myth of The People is he trying to disprove?  That’s a question the book never really addresses.  Shenkman seems to be under the impression that The People never come in for criticism; but, if I may be allowed two strokes with a brush half as broad as his, I’ve seen plenty of criticism of The People.  The left frequently decries mouth breathing rednecks and Bible thumping hayseeds; the right does the same to latte drinking urbanites and godless secularists.

At one point Shenkman reaches way back to 1840 (Tippecanoe and Tyler Too) to show that people have always been susceptible to political manipulation, but then he also complains that today’s young people don’t read the newspapers like they used to back in the 1950s and therefore aren’t as informed as their elders.  He decries the fact that today’s politicians don’t write their own speeches, to him this proves that artifice is the name of the modern game.  He neglects to mention the fact that the Founding Fathers had a much smaller country to run, a much narrower audience to address (white property owners only, instead of everybody), and a lot more time on their hands.

He claims to be a liberal, but Shenkman spends much of the book flirting with the idea, which fully blooms only near the very end, that things were better when only certain folk could vote.  He half heartedly denounces the sexism and racism which that implies, but he clearly believes that his opinions, and those of people intellectually similar to him, should count more.  To give a small example, in his final chapter he suggests that we subsidize college students who can pass a weekly current events test, and nevermind that seriously studying things like math, science and engineering (and possibly working a job concurrently) can legitimately occupy most of a person’s waking hours.

The real problem with “Just How Stupid Are We?” is that it has only one concrete point to make and it could’ve been done in about 3,000 words.  That point, that we should place more emphasis on civics education, is a valid one, but it certainly doesn’t take a whole book to make.  What we’re left with is a small book (with thick margins and generous spacing) of things Rick Shenkman doesn’t like and blames on people different than him.  Unfortunately, over the course of his 210 pages, including a “Sources” section and a very weak index, he frequently contradicts himself in the service of his immediate point.

For example, on page 126, in the context of lamenting sound-bite culture, he writes “I am convinced that, if provided with the facts, ordinary Americans are perfectly capable of reaching a judicious conclusion unless some profound bias affects their thinking.”  That might come as a surprise to the author of page 46 who, lamenting the public’s inability to perfectly detect lies from on high, writes, “If voters were rational our politics would be rational.  They aren’t.”  Well, which is it?  Are the people capable of sound judgment, they’re just easily deceived?  Or are they irrational, vapid and intrinsically disinterested in fact acquisition?  The only intellectual commonality between those two sentences is that they’re pithy declarations, the conclusions they reach are just shy of logical incompatibility.  The only thing that saves them from being completely incompatible is the nebulousness of Shenkman’s padded prose.

The whole thing is fully revealed for the useless and silly exercise it is in the penultimate chapter, a rambling discourse on how easy it is to lead The People astray.  Shenkman mentions how Republicans exploited the Civil Rights Movement to pursue their Southern Strategy and that this made liberals doubt the goodness of The People.  A few pages later he notes that the strategy is fading but he leaves unstated the obvious conclusion: that the public is getting smarter about race.  Getting smarter outside of civics class is not something ordinary people are allowed to do in Shenkman’s world.  He catalogues how liberals despaired about The People after the 2004 election, but then speculates that if the Democrats win in 2008 (the book came out in June) it will be conservatives who will begin to howl and wail against The People.

So his conclusion is . . . what, exactly?  That elections have losers and that the loser’s supporters are unhappy with The People?  Can something that obvious be a conclusion?  Of course not, Shenkman goes further and I’ll let him hang himself:

Thus do we find ourselves where we are today - in the pitiful position that neither liberals nor conservatives are prepared to say to The People: Stop and pay attention.  Liberals cannot because their ideology leaves them unprepared to find fault with The People.  Conservatives have not because The People repeatedly put them in power.  In other words: Neither liberals nor conservatives have had anything meaningful to say about The People’s failure over the last few years to grapple with complexity, misinformation, and fear.

What it means in a democracy to have so few understand how our government works, who pays taxes, and how they are spent we do not care to inquire about too deeply.  If we did, what troublesome debates we would have to have.  We would have to consider the possibility that polls are meaningless since the polled often lack a sound basis upon which to make their choices.  We would have to question the use of referendums and initiatives.  We would have to consider requiring voters to pass a basic civics test before allowing them to cast a ballot.  We might have to discuss the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment in order to allow state legislatures to choose the members of the U.S. Senate as they used to.  We might have to consider allowing the Electoral College to actually make the real decision in electing presidents as Alexander Hamilton wanted.  And we would have to say to the politicians who insist on telling us The People are wise and true that they are full of it and should cease forthwith from insulting our intelligence with empty democratic gestures.

Shenkman concludes (in increasing order of lunacy):

- That polls are often meaningless (I’ll give him that one, but not for the reason he cites).

- That ballot initiatives are bad (They can be overused and implemented poorly, but the principal seems sound enough).

- That we should somehow re-empower the Electoral College (We took away their power, did that happen before or after 2000?  And who elects the Electors again?  I forgot).

- That we should repeal the 17th Amendment so that state legislatures choose US Senators (Ah yes, state legislatures, those bastions of honesty and transparency).

- That we should require citizens to pass a test before being allowed to vote (This one is off the charts; does the term “literacy test” mean anything to you?  How about the principal of one person, one vote?  I’ll dumb it down a shade; do the words “Democracy” and “Republic” hold any meaning for you, Rick Shenkman?).

I could just leave it at that, but I cannot resist one final tweak of this silly, incoherent book and its arrogant author.  Near the end, and you can feel the unctuousness oozing off the page, Shenkman discusses Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.  Citing it as an example of the ways new media can be constructively used, Shenkman writes, “I myself wasn’t wholly convinced of our dire situation until watching his presentation.”  That is a devastating admission, particularly coming from someone who fancies himself well informed and just spent 170 pages lambasting the rest of us for being ignorant and stupid.  He’s praising Gore’s movie, but he’s doing so from atop a mountain of self righteous arrogance, “I myself”, “wholly convinced”, “presentation”.  No one who’s been reading newspapers and serious magazines for the last decade should need any help from Al Gore’s slideshow to realize how “dire” the “situation” has become.  Surely Mr. Shenkman believes that he should have a say in how we respond to global warming, but maybe we should give him a test to pass first.

No Comments » | Book Reports, Just How Stupid Are We, Rick Shenkman, equus altus morium | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Stop the Middle East, I Want to Get Off

23 November 08
“What?  Look, all I’m saying is put an Israeli guy next to an Arab guy and I can’t tell the difference.” - Peter Griffin

The war between the Palestinians and the Israelis has, here in 2008, been around for so long that we actually have a routine to go through every time we get around to electing a new President.  New leadership at 1600 changes the foreign policy landscape of the entire world and that always includes yet another chance to start over on the banks of the Jordan.  Inevitably it insinuates itself onto the new President’s To Do list; how close to the top is sort of up to him but it will be on there, as inevitable as the sunrise.

Thanks to the incompetent machinations of Bush the Younger, Barack Obama is inheriting a Middle East in which the problem of Jews fighting Muslims over a few hilltops no one else gives a shit about actually isn’t the biggest problem in the region.  Problem numero uno is the fact that our military is bogged down in Iraq to no discernable purpose and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, on a body count scale, quite humble next to that fiasco.  Nevertheless it remains a fundamental source of conflict, especially in light of the disastrous framework of Bush the Younger’s misbegotten “War on Terror”.

First, a very brief history.  As a direct reaction to the Holocaust the state of Israel was created with the blessing of the powers that be.  There was a war which the Israelis won and in 1948 it officially became a state.  Almost two decades later, in the 1967 depths of the Cold War, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, backed by the rest of the Arab states and the Soviet Union, decided to attack Israel.  Their goal was to eliminate Israel as a political entity and they failed spectacularly.  The Israelis slaughtered them in less than a week and took the Golan Heights (from Syria), the West Bank (from Jordan), and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula (from Egypt).

Six years later, in 1973, the Egyptians and the Syrians tried again.  The end result was the same, Israel won, but this time the Arabs did much better.  They still lost, but things started well enough that the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, thought for awhile that the end of Israel was at hand.  The concept of Israeli military invincibility was shattered and suddenly the fact that Syria is much bigger than Israel in terms of people and land, and Egypt is much, much, much, bigger, seemed relevant again.

A scant six years later, in 1979, the Israelis and the Egyptians signed a permanent peace agreement.  The Egyptians got the Sinai back and the Israelis got the recognition of the largest and most important Arab state.  It was an unambiguous win for both sides.  Moreover, it established the basic blueprint for resolving the lingering problems of 1948 and 1967: land for peace.

That was three decades ago and though the solution is obvious to everyone very little substantial progress has been made.  Enter Barack Obama.  His election was a global feel good moment of a kind that doesn’t come along very often and it might also be the best chance to diplomatically secure Israel since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated thirteen years ago.  That is more or less the point that Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski made in the Washington Post on Friday, their concern is that Obama will see peace between Israel and the Arabs as something which can be safely delayed and miss his window of opportunity.

What Scowcroft and Brzezinski don’t mention is that the opportunity for a permanent deal is also significantly enhanced in the context of our coming disengagement from Iraq.  It was in the wake of the Gulf War that the Arab powers had a real reason to trust the United States, and the Oslo process was a direct result of that.  If Obama keeps his word and gets us out of Iraq, proving that we aren’t going to stay there and dominate the world’s oil spigot, the Arabs would have a similar reason to trust our commitment.

On the Israeli side there are the recent comments by lame duck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stating the obvious: that Jerusalem must be shared, that the settlers must be pulled back, and that Israel cannot secure itself from rocket attacks through force of arms.  Olmert is on his way out, but if his remarks reflect the general mood of the Kadima party and its supporters then the prospects for resolving the issue are greater still.

Whether or not any of these developments will be given a chance to matter is an open question.  But there are a couple of hopeful precedents.  Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat shook hands at Camp David a year and a half into Carter’s presidency; Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands at the White House less than year into Clinton’s.  The two Democrats inaugurated since the 1967 war have produced two historic handshakes.  By exploiting his own popularity and the popularity of ending the Iraq War, Barack Obama has a chance to make it three for three.

No Comments » | Barack Obama, I Love America, Iraq, Israel, Obama Administration, Palestine, Places Other than America, Sophomoric Imperialism, Systems Analyst, The Art of the Possible | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Administrative Auguries

19 November 08
“Haruspicy: predicting the future through the study of animal entrails.” - Dr. Marvin Monroe’s Subliminal Vocabulary Builder

It’s now been a little over two weeks since we all woke up to the reality of President (elect) Barack Obama.  The time prior to the election was a cornucopia of news and candidate appearances, the time since has been a famine for a nation accustomed to gorging.  Obama simply isn’t as accessible to the public, in general or through the media, as he was during the campaign.  This should surprise no one; he is not campaigning for anything at the moment.  His public appearances have boiled down to a press conference, a couple of YouTube videos, and a 60 Minutes interview.  That’s all there’s really been.

In place of direct communication from the man himself speculation and haruspicy, ranging from the intelligent to the inane, are the order of the day.  He’s rumored to be picking this person for this cabinet post, quick - what does it mean?!  No wait, now it’s someone else!  Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State!  No!  Yes!  No!  It’s goofy and pointless beyond written description (Talking Points Memo was kind enough to put together a short montage of uninformed punditry).  Just this morning the second lead story in The New York Times was about one Eric Holder who is believed to be under consideration for Attorney General, but it’s still so speculative that the phrase “no final decision has been made” was used in the opening paragraph.

Some of the names floating around the last couple of weeks will probably end up in the Obama Administration, others will not.  Trying to divine what it all means from the laughably incomplete and inaccurate information available is an exercise in futility.  Up at Salon the always thorough Glenn Greenwald highlights a lot of damning quotes from one John Brennan, Obama’s transition chief for intelligence policy.  (Always beware the blogger-lawyer with access to Lexis-Nexis.)  Is there cause for concern?  Maybe, but the election is over and Obama is now in charge.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with holding his feet to the fire, and people like Greenwald are exceedingly good at that sort of thing, but eight years of Bush the Younger have perhaps made everyone a little too skittish.

Take a look at this exchange from this Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview (starting at the 12:15 mark):

Kroft: There are a number of different things you could do early pertaining to executive orders.

Obama: Right.

Kroft: One of them is to shut down Guantanamo Bay.

Obama:  Mm-hmm

Kroft:  Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by US troops.  Are those things that you plan to take early action on?

Obama:  Yes.  I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo and I will follow through on that.  I’ve said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture and I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture.  Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.

Kroft:  Can you give us some sense of when you might start redeployments out of Iraq?

Obama:  Well I’ve said during the campaign and I stick to this commitment, that as soon as I take office I will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my national security apparatus, and we will start executing a plan that draws down our troops.  Particularly in light of the problems that we’re having in Afghanistan, which has continued to worsen.  We’ve got to shore up those efforts.

Does Obama say simply, “We’re leaving” Iraq?  No, but he’s speaking extemporaneously and hedging is a natural and proper position given the current situation.  Bush the Younger is still in charge and Obama has a lot to deal with after all; but the irrefutable facts are that the Iraqis very plainly want us to leave and Obama very plainly wants to leave.  The specifics are still unknown, but the smart money says we’re leaving.

The same is true when it comes to the issue of torture.  One could nitpick the way Kroft phrases his question, referring to “US Troops” when that horrifying Military Commissions Act put the torturing in the hands of the CIA, but Obama’s statement was simple and clear, “I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture.”  The knee-jerk retort to that quote is to point out that Bush the Younger has also said that we don’t torture when we obviously and provably do torture.  But Obama is not Bush the Younger and for the time being he’s certainly earned the benefit of the doubt.  The same goes for Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Eight years of ever growing and multiplying disasters coming from the Executive Branch have left a lot of people numb to the idea that things might actually get better.  They might not get better immediately, or in a particular person’s preferred order, but things are likely on some kind of upswing.  Obama won; and while he isn’t going to be able to please everybody, he’s said most of the right things in the past and he’s still saying them now.  If he takes office and starts screwing things up left and right that’ll be different, but for now he’s qualified, popular, smart and accomplished; two weeks after his election and nine weeks until his inauguration, that’s enough.

No Comments » | Barack Obama, Fourth Estate, Guantanamo Bay, I Love America, Iraq, Obama Administration, Sophomoric Imperialism, Systems Analyst, The Art of the Possible, Torture, Undiscovered Country | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Serious Problems Deserving Immediate Attention

16 November 08
“‘No more apples in the vending machine please.’  Well, that’s almost a sentence.” - C.M. Burns

The economy sucks, we’re losing two wars and about the only thing this country hasn’t suffered from lately is an alien invasion.  Nevertheless, I have a real challenge for President Obama: can you please do something about the tiny niggling little problems of the NFL?

Commercial Breaks - Televised games go to commercial much too often.  While I recognize that this is what pays the bills it’s been taken to almost comic heights in the last ten years or so.  If a team scores, there’s a commercial.  That’s fine.  But then the broadcast returns for the kickoff - and only the kickoff - before going back to commercial.  Eliminating that extra commercial break between a kickoff and the first offensive play would be greeted with huzzahs of praise across the land.

TV Blackouts - I follow the Detroit Lions, and lately have not been able to watch their games on television because of the NFL’s near insane blackout rule.  If a team does not sell out by Thursday, no local markets can broadcast the game on television.  They define “local” pretty expansively as well, for the Lions it means not only are they blacked out on Detroit television stations, but they’re also off the air in the Flint/Saginaw, Lansing and Toledo, Ohio markets.  That means you need to be more than halfway to Chicago before the NFL deems you sufficiently far away to be able to watch it on television.  It’s a policy that punishes fans and, owing to the league’s overall popularity, usually fans of terrible franchises like the Lions.

Kickoff Times - On any given Sunday there are a lot of 1:00pm Eastern games and a much smaller number of 4:00pm Eastern games.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but the balance is way out of whack.  There are often as few as three late games to nine early ones.  Week 14 this year has only two (2!) 4:00pm games.  On behalf the gambling and fantasy public, who are your most devoted fans and who are trying to follow all the games at once, could you please push one or two more games per week back to 4:00pm?  I’m sure the local fan bases wouldn’t mind an extra three hours of pregame drinking.

Sunday Ticket - I’m a DirecTV subscriber and I’m pretty happy with it in general.  But the fact that DirecTV is the only way to watch all the NFL games is a farce bordering on extortion.  I’m no expert on the finances of the DirecTV deal, for all I know they installed a money pipe right into the commissioner’s office, but if you’re in the entertainment business, as the NFL is, wouldn’t you want to maximize the number of paying customers?

Touchdown Dances - I appreciate that the League has to make its appeal as broad as possible, but I really don’t think a lot of fans are against elaborate touchdown celebrations provided they don’t actually slow the game.  Football is a vicious and violent sport and I, for one, would like to see the men who bring it to me, amped out of their minds on adrenaline and who knows what else, allowed to celebrate success however they damn well please.  It adds personality to the game at the cost of nothing.

Overtime - I am a big proponent of the NFL’s overtime format.  The NCAA format is a joke; it warps statistics, cheapens touchdowns, heavily favors the offense, and all but eliminates special teams.  But there is one change I would like to see tried and that is guaranteeing each team a possession.  Modern place kickers are frequently good from over fifty yards and depending on the return that can mean an offense need only pick up a first down or two to be in a position to win the game.  If each team was guaranteed a possession the team that went first would be playing real offense because there would be a meaningful difference between scoring a touchdown and kicking a field goal.  As soon as the team that kicked off got the ball back, via kickoff, punt or turnover, the rules switch to sudden death.  If it’s a kickoff the other team can match, if it’s a turnover or punt they can win outright.  I do like the current rules, but guaranteeing each team a possession is worth trying for a couple of seasons.  (As for today’s Philadelphia- Cincinnati tie, well, it only happens once or twice per decade so it’s not a big deal.)

Pat Downs - Every fan attending an NFL game, with the predictable exception of luxury suite patrons, is subject to a mandatory pat down on the way into the stadium.  This is security theater at its worst.  It is selectively applied (only the plebs are patted down), it is completely ineffective (I could sneak three guns and a pint of vodka in if I really wanted to), and it’s an invasion of privacy (why is this stranger feeling me up again?).  The pat downs are performed by stadium employees who clearly would rather be doing something else and they serve no purpose other than intimidation.

On field and off the NFL is an extraordinarily well run organization.  But there’s always room for improvement.

No Comments » | I Love America, NFL | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

A Natural

12 November 08
“No, no, no, no, no.  Young man, you need to do some serious boning.” - Principal Skinner

There is a truism in athletic circles, “You can’t coach speed”.  Some very athletic people can run very fast, some other very athletic people cannot run fast and there isn’t a whole lot a coach or trainer can do about it.  Speed is mostly a talent, it’s either there or it isn’t.

Politics is a very different sort of competition, but there are still inherent talents that make politics easier for a given individual.  Bill Clinton, to take a famous example, is reported to have a real knack for remembering names and faces; as a result, even though he meets a lot of people, he can act like your bosom buddy and ask about your kids and your spouse.  Along those lines, Clinton is also a famously adept public speaker.  He can read the mood of his audience and hold the crowd in the palm of his hands.  Some of that is simple practice, the man has given a lot of speeches, but he’s also fundamentally good at it.  Sarah Palin is a very different politician than Bill Clinton, but there’s no denying that she has a lot of political talent.  Anyone discounting her chances at higher office in the wake of last week’s results would do well to keep that in mind.

At the moment she is awkwardly caught between being a national punch line, a Republican scapegoat, and a promising future talent.  That she was a poor vice-presidential pick is no longer being seriously debated, but that’s no fault of hers and long term it isn’t going to be held against her.  John McCain made the pick, he lost the election and he’s the one who doesn’t get to run for President again (for all kinds of reasons).  Palin certainly wasn’t ready for the intense glare of the national spotlight, but that does not mean she can never be ready, nor does the fact that she was a poor vice-presidential pick this year mean that she’s a poor politician.

Palin drew huge and enthusiastic crowds that listened to her words rapturously, she can still do that.  Palin was able to connect with voters on a personal level, she can still do that too.  Sarah Palin is an undeniably talented politician who wasn’t prepared this time around.  She was laughably ill informed on basic national issues and very clearly did not have her house in order, in terms of the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, travel stipends for her family, and any number of other small time scandals.  All of those things are correctable.

For starters, she needs to begin reading, a lot.  Serious aspirants to national office need a casual and confident command of a dizzying array of issues, local, national and international.  It’s not something that can be learned overnight or even in a month of intense study; the kind of knowledge she needs only comes from years of paying attention.  She ought to have someone compile a daily Palin Paper, New York Times stories for international coverage, Washington Post stories for beltway insider stuff, and Wall Street Journal opinion and editorial pieces for ideological guidance.  (Adding the sabbath gasbag shows to her TiVo would help as well.)  If she spends an hour a day reading that for the next couple of years, with a healthy sprinkling of The National Review and a few other conservative rags thrown in for good measure, she’ll be able to skunk Katie Couric in an interview and turn the tables on Tina Fey.

Does that happen in 2012, 2016, some later year?  No one knows.  Speculation on that subject is laughably pointless at this time.  No one knows what kind of legislation Barack Obama is going to be able to pass, or how he’s going to handle Iraq, Afghanistan, or a dozen other things; and no one has any clue what kind of real world effects those actions are going to have.  But Sarah Palin is only forty-four years old.  She could try in 2012 if things look promising or she could wait until 2016, 2020 or even later.  She has national name recognition and the fundraising opportunities that come with it; her party’s base loves her and they are the people who vote in primaries; plus she’s already proved that she can expand her appeal beyond the base.  Right after the Red convention she was popular outside her natural constituency and if she hadn’t flubbed those interviews so badly that could very well have stuck.

Sarah Palin is a talented, telegenic and ambitious politician.  None of those things are going to change, and if she hits the books for a little while the electorate of the future isn’t going to care that once upon a time - way back in 2008 - she wasn’t ready to be vice-president.

No Comments » | Sarah Palin, The Art of the Possible | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

No School Like the Old School

9 November 08
“Dear Advertisers, I am disgusted with the way old people depicted on television.  We are not all vibrant fun loving sex maniacs.  Many of us are bitter, resentful individuals who remember the good old days when entertainment was bland and inoffensive.” - Abe Simpson

Anyone with cable or satellite has more election eve watching options than you can shake a stick.  Unfortunately most of them involve morons yelling at each other and until a few days before the election I wasn’t sure which pack of morons I was going to grit my teeth and suffer through.  Then, last Thursday, I was reading FiveThirtyEight.com and came across a video of Dan Rather interviewing one of the site’s two main contributors, Nate Silver.  For regular FiveThirtyEight readers the interview didn’t contain any new information, but at the end was a promo for Rather’s election night coverage on HDNet.  This sentence caught my attention, “We can’t promise you fancy touch screens or glitzy graphics, but we can promise you that we’ll let our guests finish their sentences.”  As soon as I heard that I knew which channel I would be watching on election night.  They didn’t disappoint.

Rather hosted the evening from a central chair with a rotating cast of two people on either side of him.  Some of the names were familiar to me, some of them weren’t, but all of them were political professionals with long experience working for campaigns, and not one of them was sporting the word “strategist” or “consultant” as a title.  Here’s how they were described in the HDNet press release:

Those guests include Terry Nelson, who was Political Director for Bush/Cheney 2004 and the first of John McCain’s Campaign Managers in 2008; Dahlia Lithwick, who is the Senior Editor of Slate Magazine; and George LeMieux, who served as Chief of Staff to Florida Governor Charlie Crist and who also writes “The LeMieux Report,” analyzing key business and political issues in Florida. Also joining the broadcast is Drew Westin, political psychologist and author of “The Political Brain,” who studies they way voters make decisions.

Doesn’t that look like a nice guest list?  Not a single nationally famous pundit trying to get in one more zinger, just a couple of writers with long political experience and a couple of politicos.  Even better, Rather lived up to his tag line; no one interjected to score a debate point, they didn’t all laugh uproariously at each other’s bad jokes and whenever one of them started to speak they were allowed to finish their thoughts even if it took a minute or more.  It was calm, rational and sober analysis, the antithesis of the NFL Sunday Countdown pre-game show atmosphere on the cable news channels and their network brethren.

The broadcast wasn’t flawless by any means.  Rather is now seventy-seven and his age is showing, he can’t transition from one topic to another seamlessly and he frequently misspoke in a way they he didn’t used to.  There were some minor technical problems as well; his usual program on HDNet isn’t done live and there were several times where the camera angle was wrong or an incorrect graphic would be displayed.  But these are minor trifles.

The whole thing was a wonderfully sane and relaxed acknowledgement of the reality that things don’t happen that fast on election night.  Yes, at the top of an hour a bunch of states close their polls and can be called, and yes in between those times some states can be reliably called as well.  But in the meantime there is a lot of downtime and it was a pleasant viewing experience to see non hyperactive political professionals allowed to explain what they were seeing and what they thought.  In short, Dan Rather’s HDNet election eve broadcast was television coverage done right, the most calm and informative election broadcast I can recall watching in years.  The only real downside is the unfortunate reality that it probably isn’t the start of a trend.

No Comments » | 2008 Election, America's Elite, CNN, Dan Rather, Election Coverage, Fox News, HDNet, MSNBC, The Art of the Possible, The Vast Wasteland, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Red, White and a Whole Lot of Blue

5 November 08
“It was like that when I got here!” - Bart Simpson

Congratulations President Obama, you are now the proud owner of the following messes:

Afghanistan - A significant but hopelessly small American military presence sits in the middle of what is beginning to look like an ethnic civil war.  This one has been getting worse of late and our response has been counterproductive and frequently fatal to a good deal of civilians.  As if on cue, we bombed a wedding on Monday night and killed 40 innocent people.

Iraq - A large American military presence in the middle of an ongoing civil war (which we caused).  It’s calmed down a bit but the underlying causes have not been addressed and you can safely assume that our exit will not be completely clean.  It will be messy and in this case “messy” means things like dead children.  The sooner you can get us out the better.

Guantanamo Bay - An illegal prison under US authority contains roughly 250 men who have been detained and tortured for years.  Some of them are probably guilty of terrible crimes but it will difficult to prosecute them because of the reckless incompetence of your predecessor.  Others are likely innocent of any serious wrongdoing but as a result of their imprisonment may now be dangerous to themselves or others.  They must be released in a way that mitigates any future harm they can do.  I’d personally recommend cash and an apology.

Prosecutions - While we’re on the subject of your incompetent predecessor, a large number of his current and former subordinates are likely guilty of a number of crimes, domestic (wiretapping, torture, perjury) and international (war crimes, torture).  It’s possible that your predecessor himself could be criminally liable for a number of things as well.  Dealing with that in a just manner without alienating a substantial minority of the country (on either side) is going to be a fine tightrope act and it will come at you almost immediately.

Recession - The economy contracted last quarter, and that was before the banks melted down and took Wall Street with them.  The federal budget is a mess state and local governments are in even worse shape and will likely need significant assistance.  Banking and insurance regulations will need significant and politically controversial attention.  Hey, speaking of insurance . . .

Medical Care - The system we use to deliver medical care to ordinary people is deeply inequitable, patently unfair and needlessly complex.  Reforming it is a vital necessity but it will at least appear to be hideously expensive and will be opposed by a number of well established and deep pocketed interests who profit from the current system.  This list includes, but is not limited to, pharmaceutical companies, insurance conglomerates, and the politicians they own (many of whom are in your own party).

Global Warming - There is a significant consensus that we have only a few years to begin to seriously reverse some of our more boneheaded policies regarding emissions of greenhouse gases.  Failure to adequately address this problem will, quite literally, kill millions of people and damage the lives of billions more.  It is generally assumed that addressing these problems will have negative economic consequences and though this is likely false just combating that assumption is a huge task.

This list is by no means complete, but these are the most pressing problems bequeathed to you.  It’s a daunting list, but quite frankly I don’t think it’s as dire as is generally assumed.  I have only one reason for my possibly foolish optimism, but it is a very good one.

For eight years the levers of federal power have been controlled by people who seem to be almost deliberately inept at their jobs.  The chaos and destruction wrought by their reckless and relentless ineptitude has soured the mood of the country to one of its lowest points ever.  But that all ended last night.  While we don’t yet know the full extent of the messes they created, we can be pretty confident that just raising the quality of federal decision makers to that of mere competence will produce immediate and tangible improvements.  Should you and the people you appoint turn out to actually be good at your jobs well . . . the sky’s the limit.

No Comments » | 2008 Election, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Bush the Younger, Guantanamo Bay, I Love America, Institutionalized Stupidity, Iraq, Sophomoric Imperialism, The Art of the Possible, Torture | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos

Red versus Blue

2 November 08
“Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals and rule you like a king.” - Sideshow Bob

Bush the Younger was a shitty president right from the start.  We will never know if a Gore Administration could’ve prevented the 11 September attacks (though presumably they wouldn’t have been nearly as focused on porn and drugs), but we know for sure that Bush the Younger was the worst possible of man for the aftermath.  He crassly exploited the tragedy for political purposes by stigmatizing his opponents as cowards and traitors.  He abandoned centuries long traditions of honor and law by condoning torture.  And, a mere eighteen months after the real terrorists struck, he invaded a country that had nothing to with the attack.

In the year and a half from that horrible September day to the lunatic hubris of “shock and awe” Bush the Younger did more damage (in every sense of the word) to the United States of America than Osama bin Laden could’ve hoped to do if he lived to be a hundred and fifty.  That it took the majority of the American citizenry years to catch on is a tribute to the good and the bad in us all.  In the good column is implacable American loyalty and the genuine desire to do what is right and just.  In the bad column is naivete and the stubborn belief in happy fiction over unpleasant reality.

There is, of course, also plenty of blame due to our craven news media and to specific fiends within the government, but ultimate responsibility rests with the President.  Bush the Younger, whether he knows it or not, has neither scruples nor honor and such men are dangerous even in normal times; in a traumatized country that wanted nothing more than a leader in which to believe . . . well, the results are all around us.  There is no need to grind one’s teeth listing them again.

That his deception lasted through 2 November 2004 was a true surprise to me, for while I am a cynic in the truest sense of the word I am also an optimist.  Even in the dark days after that horrible election my faith that a great majority of Americans would eventually see his shit for what it really was never wavered.  A few weeks later I was talking politics with my father and I said something which I’ve been repeating ever since.  He was despairing over the state of things and, trying to cheer him up, I said, “This country is not insane.”

What was happening then was easily mistaken for insanity, but it was then, is now, and always has been, deception.  Take our newfound enthusiasm for torturing people.  Its utter ineffectiveness was carefully concealed, its stomach churning realities systematically hidden, and its terrible human toll obscured and ridiculed.  That the deception was successful should come as no surprise.  It was perpetrated with savvy marketing acumen by people in the highest levels of government.  Torture propaganda was so successful that 24 must now be debunked in class at West Point.  If America was populated by people as crazy as the 2004 results suggested we never would’ve defeated England, much less created a tremendously successful 232 year old society.  This country is not insane but it was deceived.

Now we are coming to the other side of it, and hell hath no fury like an electorate scorned.  Bush the Younger’s approval ratings have never been lower; he’s barely been seen in public in weeks and Reds of all walks of life, pundits, former cabinet members, politicians and spouses, are yelling over each other with shouted endorsements of Barack Obama.  Dick Cheney is, notably, not among them.

This election could very well turn the country Blue for a long time for the simple and utterly rational reason that Red government and Red policies have been spectacular failures.  Supply side economics wrecked the economy and preventative war discredited itself in its very first application.  What will be interesting to see, and tremendously important to the future of the country, is how the Reds react to what should be their utter defeat on Tuesday.  They followed the piper off the cliff, but at the moment they seem to be blaming the cliff.  It’s John McCain’s fault for running a lousy campaign, it’s Sarah Palin’s fault for not knowing anything, it’s the media’s fault for not reporting fairly.  You notice who they’re not blaming?  Bush the Younger, his governing philosophy (to the extent he has one) and the dishonest political climate necessary for his election.

Barack Obama would be our first black President, but in terms of recent political history the greater fact is that he is not of the Vietnam generation.  He was too young for Woodstock and Tet, too young to get caught up in Watts or Watergate.  That may seem a trifling distinction but recall that it was only four years ago that the Democratic nominee was sunk by false accusations of Vietnam era disloyalty.  The Baby Boomers will fight each other all the way to the nursing home over that terrible war but the majority of the country is now too young to remember it.  The domination of the nation’s politics by the clashes of that time, bound up with issues of civil rights and feminism, is at an end.  It only survived this long because Bush the Younger shoehorned the 11 September attacks into the same tired framework.

That Obama is having his victory celebration in the same Grant Park where the Blues destroyed their last governing coalition forty years ago is a none too subtle signal that that time is indeed over.  Of course the man himself is a potent symbol as well.  A black man with a Muslim name who came from the fringe of American society has now worked his way to its very pinnacle.  His story is the one I was told growing up, that in America anyone can become anything.  His election on Tuesday will serve as renewed proof that it is true, a bright shining reminder that even in our darker times our principals will prevail and pull us through.

Barack Obama is a candidate brought to us from the very heart of the American Dream, a brilliant contrast to the indifferent depravity of Bush the Younger.  The strangeness of his name and the darkness of his skin serve only to illuminate the ideals he represents.  This is truly America at its best.

President Barack Hussein Obama, in four or eight years that phrase will mean something very different than it does today.  But for now it means that failure does not go unpunished, that dishonesty has its limits and that America is her better self again.

No Comments » | 11 September, 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Bush the Younger, I Love America, The Art of the Possible, equus altus morium | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Zeno Amerikanos