Pale Wire (Popscene)

2006-07-02T23:40:00.000-04:00

Oh, duh.
I have a new blog

Just in case anybody cares, last month I started up a new version of the blog over at www.palewire.com. You should now consider this Web site inactive.

2006-05-15T21:47:00.000-04:00

The Short Version
Where you been?

In the days, rather weeks, of my absence (abdication?), I've been doing little of which we can be proud, yet much of which I could report, a condition I'm sure must be a terrifying prospect for you, kind reader. I promise to keep it short. My coffee is getting cold and the staff here at Amphora, Vienna's finest 24-hour Greek diner, seems ready to welcome the departure of this loitering blogger.

In between settling in at my new job, finding a permanent home for myself in Washington, and fulfilling the final requirements of my graduate program, I've managed to drive many thousands of miles in several long, tiresome treks and read several books in many short, invigorating bursts.

I finally did my duty and read the lodestar of my would-be profession, Woodward and Bernstein's All The President's Men, as well as the pair's authoritative summation of their antagonist's decline, The Final Days. While the former book is credited with setting the templates of manner and means for a generation of reporters, the latter's innovation of the practices that Woodward would go on to employ in erecting a shelf full of inside stories on subjects varying from Belushi to Bush deserves mention. As does Woodward's oftentimes boring, albeit occasionally revelatory, writing. August Kleinzahler's collection of poems, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, provided more spark, but in fitful, inchoate moments ferreted away from the day, rather than in any sustained, satisifying meal. Mahmood Mamdani's Good Muslim, Bad Muslim taught me many things about Muslim societies, put American foreign policy in a historical context considerably different than what I'm accustomed to, and provoked me to examine a few assumptions about how exactly this world of ours works. It's shame he doesn't give Soviet policy in Afghanistan the same scrutiny as America's. Backstory, Ken Auletta's collection of New Yorker pieces on newspapers and the media, went well. I enjoy how he can put all the players on the board in what seems such an facile way. His writing makes me feel like I get it. And the steady focus on the business side of the media business is refreshing in comparison to the windy prate that passes for so much of media criticism. John Baxter's memoir A Pound of Paper didn't teach me much, but the guy did make a great drinking partner. Baxter is like A.J. Liebling without the deadline, a gourmand on the make. The now departed Saul Bellow's ode to his departed friend Allan Bloom, Ravelstein, introduced me to another grand homme, this one more literary than the last only in commensuration to his Jewishness.

2006-04-30T22:14:00.000-04:00

Does C-SPAN have a copyright lawyer?
Ah, whatever, this is too funny to be illegal.

2006-04-22T20:27:00.000-04:00

The Shooters Roll
Tune in to that NOLA Bounce

As I write, results are beginning to trickle in after the opening round in New Orleans' first mayoral election since hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the region last fall (Times-Picayune coverage). The elite media is refocusing yet again, and New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh is wondering why a particular part of the city's highly touted heritage is going unappreciated (link).

There was a blitz of benefit concerts, including "From the Big Apple to the Big Easy," a pair of shows held simultaneously at Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall last September. A New Orleans jam session closed the show at the Grammy Awards in February. There have been scads of well-intentioned compilations, including "Our New Orleans: A Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast" (Nonesuch), "Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now" (Concord) and "Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert" (Blue Note), a live album recorded at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Benefit. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony last month, a video segment paid tribute to New Orleans music through the years, from Louis Armstrong to the Neville Brothers; there was also the inevitable New Orleans jam session.

But one thing all these tributes have in common is that they all ignored the thrilling — and wildly popular — sound of New Orleans hip-hop, the music that has been the city's true soundtrack through the last few decades.

Rap music remains by far New Orleans's most popular musical export. Lil Wayne, Master P, Juvenile, Mannie Fresh, B. G., Mystikal and many other pioneers have sold millions of albums, and they have helped make their city an indispensable part of the hip-hop world. Unlike all the other musicians celebrated at post-Katrina tributes, these ones still show up on the pop charts, often near the top. (Juvenile's most recent album made its debut at No. 1, last month.) Yet when tourists and journalists descend upon the city next weekend, for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, they'll find only one local rapper on the schedule: Juvenile, who is to appear on the Congo Square Louisiana Rebirth Stage at 6 p.m. Saturday.

I largely agree with Sanneh's thesis. Despite its widespread popularity with young Americans and the commericalization that's come along with success, hip-hop is still too young, too wild, too black to share the warm embrace the state and society now extend to blues, jazz and rock musicians shunned a generation ago.

But, while Ray Nagin and George Bush may not be throwing Juvenile any shoutouts this election year, there is still an underground effort going on to memorialize NOLA's hip-hop history.

Thanks to a tip from David Drake (blog), I've discovered an .mp3 mix of early New Orleans hip-hop (a variant strain known as "bounce music") uploaded by the elegantly named cocaineblunts last September. It's called Bounce for Relief. It's hot. It's here. And it's free for download, although dude asks that any downloaders make a contribution to Katrina charities. If you give it a go, leave your impression in the comments. We'll chat.

2006-04-19T20:54:00.000-04:00

If there was a Pulitzer Prize for patience
I'd nominate you, my friends.

Sorry I've been so inactive this past month. There's no good excuse. I've been busy with things even I'm not stupid enough to blog about and simply have not made the time.

As a peace offering, here's a blooper I just captured from WashingtonPost.com. I think we're all continually crestfallen by the milquetoast headlines the Webdesk churns out for the paper's online offerings¹, but this is an entirely different thing.

I can't say which story I want to read less.

¹I'm unable find it just now, but I swear I read a story the other day that profiled news sites dumbing down their headlines in hopes of attracting greater attention from search engines, which send spiders to crawl the Web in pursuit of certain basic keywords. Maybe that's Post.com good excuse. But I don't see how it alone could explain away lines as bland as "Sprucing up the Place" or as vague as "DeLay Charge Stays Outs," both of which adorned the same page I clipped up above.

2006-03-24T07:47:00.000-05:00

Anatomically Incorrect
Does Bill O'Reilly know his way around a brain pan?

(foxnews.com)

Midway through Nicholas Lemann's profile of Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly in this week's edition of The New Yorker, which you can read in its entirety by following this link, we're treated to what is fast becoming one of my favorite reportorial devices: quoting from your subject's vanity novel.

While nowhere near as revelatory as the bizarre bestiality scenes New Yorker writer Lauren Collins uncovered last year in Scooter Libby's Japanese historical fantasy "The Apprentice" (link), the graphic murder scene Lemann pulls from O'Reilly's 1998 thriller "Those Who Trespass¹" is still telling. And particularly so once you appreciate that the victim is a stand in for CBS newsman Bob Schieffer and the killer's hand belongs to you know who.

The assailant’s right hand, now holding the oval base of the spoon, rocketed upward, jamming the stainless stem through the roof of Ron Costello’s mouth. The soft tissue gave way quickly and the steel penetrated the correspondent’s brain stem. Ron Costello was clinically dead in four seconds.

At different times likening O'Reilly's "amazingly nimble talent" to a beat cop, boxer and jungle cat, Lemann tries to capture the essence of the man who is the essence of cable news. In the context of the article, the book quote is there to hammer home how vindictive O'Reilly can be when he feels slighted.

What Lemann declines to do is point out that the quote can tell us something else, something that doesn't require any armchair analysis. That is this: Bill O'Reilly is a bad writer.

Let's look at it again, shall we. The chain of events O'Reilly describes has a spoon shooting upward through the roof of his victim's mouth and into the brain stem. The problem is that the brain stem, a column consisting of the midbrain, the pons and the medulla oblongata which serves as the relay station between the spinal cord and the forebrain, stands behind the mouth, not above it.

(brainexplorer.org)

But, then again, this is O'Reilly. Maybe we just need to factor in the spin.

¹Two editions of the book retail on Amazon.com, each with a slightly different title. The hardcover is "Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Murder and Television;" the paperback is "Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder." You can also buy the audiobook, which was recorded by the author himself.

2006-03-18T22:58:00.000-05:00

Articles of Faith
Following al Qaeda's paper trail

On Friday military intelligence quietly declassified a few Qaeda-related documents not included to last month's Harmony report (link). It's nearly always an illuminating thing to read Bin Laden and Co.'s internal correspondance, but after a couple years spent absorbing this stuff, it's the little things that really get me.

Things like how despite al Qaeda's generous vacation policy¹ members still had to submit requests for time off "2 1/2 months prior to travel" (link). And the fact that vacations are the second thing listed in its constitution. Or how about the stunning banality of the forms given to new applicants at training camps in Afghanistan (link)? I couldn't make this up: They actually asked applicants to list their hobbies.

Speaking of the military, on Wednesday I got an email back from our friend Penny Mellies in Fort Leavenworth. I sent her a short note asking for an explanation of the bizarre bar chart I wrote about earlier this week (link). Her complete response:

From a US perspective, it is meant to reflect the strategic importance of that region.

I've already sent her a reply that expressed my confusion about the lack of labels on the chart's x and y axes and requested further clarification on how something like strategic importance could be measured. She has yet to answer.

¹One week per month if you're married; five days if you're single. You also may interested to learn that a married member made 6.5 times more money than a single member, pulling in 6500 Pakistan rupees each month, compared to a bachelor's 1000 rupee salary.

2006-03-18T20:29:00.000-05:00

Someone call Jack Bauer!
Ben set his hair on fire again.

Excluding from consideration the perpetually dumbfounding realm of the cosmos, and the numbing rows of zeros we line up in a feeble human effort to account for its grand arc, there is, every once in a great while, a statistic that just blows my little mind.

For a time, my pet marvel was the estimate that 20,000 coal miners die each year in Chinese mines¹. That's Sago times 1,666.667.

My new nugget comes out of the U.S. Department of Transportation's 2006 pocket book. Here, dear reader, is a listing of the prohibited items intercepted at American airports in 2003 and 2004. It's too wide for my blog, so you'll have to click on the picture to see it at a decent size.

Yes, that is 22,000 box cutters².

¹In fairness, the Chinese government's official estimate is 6,000 deaths per year (link). The Hong Kong based Chinese Labour Bulletin put forward the 20,000 estimate (link). In fact, I now see that CLB just put out a new mining safety report on Thursday. Unfortunately I can't read Chinese. If you can, go here and report back what it says.
²Box cutters were the primary weapons used by many of the September 11 hijackers (link)

Category 3_

2006-03-15T09:19:00.000-05:00

WMD, it ain't
But my does it look pressing.

Anyone who can tell me what that chart means wins the sandwich of their choice. I swear to goodness itself that I found it in the U.S. Army's new pocket guide to Arab culture. I suspect it's supposed to be a breakdown of the regions where Arab people live, but its lack of supporting information and the mysterious header give it a geopolitical bent that boggles the mind.

You can read the whole thing by clicking here.

The chart is in on the fourth page, along with these tasty nuggets:

I've sent an email asking for clarification to Penny Mellies, the contact person listed for the guide's creator, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. If you want to call her, her phone number is listed as 913.684.7920/DSN552-7920.

If you could tell me what that DSN means, I'd appreciate that too. But no sandwich.

2006-03-14T09:31:00.000-05:00

The Gospel Gap
Someone link Bernie Goldberg

(stateofthemedia.org)

The Project of Excellence in Journalism just released their third annual State of the News Media report, which includes the poll results displayed above. The chart sets responses from members of the local and national media next to those harvested from the general public in a 2002 Pew Center poll (link).

What we see is that journalists are, if not largely godless, at least much more secular in their outlook than a large segment of their audience. Look, even the journalists who describe themselves as conservative lean toward secular sources of principle.

How all this affects the media's work, the numbers can't say, but the gap itself is interesting. There's an argument to be made here about rationality and Enlightenment principles and yadda yadda. What do you think?

That's just one nugget. There's plenty more to be digested over at the official site.

2006-03-14T06:19:00.000-05:00

Quoth the avian, "Nevermore."
Deep into the darkness peering, long we stood there, wondering, fearing

(smh.com.au)

Yesterday the economists at investment bank BMO Nesbitt Burns released their best guess on what an avian flu pandemic would look like (full report). Travel and tourism business would plummet, as would the demand for "nonessential services." We'd experience something called "social distancing." World GDP growth would slow somewhere between 2 and 6 percentage points, depending on the severity of the outbreak. And government and health care services would likely be run beyond "surge capacity."

On the upside, there's this:

It is important to remember that even with a severe pandemic, roughly 99% of the world’s population will survive. Borders will reopen and the free flow of goods, services and people will recommence. The global economy will survive the hit, and business and governments will learn many lessons.

On the downside, there's this: If we use the U.S. Census estimates as a starting point (link), that's 65 million dead people. I'm not really sure what the report means, but that number certainly makes this projection feel truthy.

Death management is crucial, but likely inadequate.

There's an aphorism for you.

For background information on avian flu and the potential for an outbreak, check the CDC's official page.

2006-03-12T08:01:00.000-05:00

Sunday in the City
Watch as Ben boldly splits infinitives by this Borg-like structure¹

Here I am, blogging live from the Starbucks on the corner of Lafayette and Astor in the self-proclaimed navel of the universe, New York City. It's 8:01 a.m, the 6 train just let out, and a crowd of weary-eyed New Yorkers are fielding their way through trash littered around the square, which is really more of a triangle. In its center is the 2,500 pound cube sculpted by Bernard Rosenthal and installed in 1967². You can see it pictured above. (You can also see an inspired and painstakingly documented prank involving the cube by clicking here.)

Anyway, I'm in New York. That's about all I have to share. I haven't gotten around to installing a nifty post tagging system like some other blogs have, but if I did I bet most of what I splurt out here could probably be categorized as either Books I've Read or Music I've Liked. So we're breaking fresh ground.

It's too bad it's raining, because I planned on walking through most of Midtown, the West Village, across Central Park and bathing in the lights surrounding Times Square before catching the train home to Washington from Penn Station. But such is the stratosphere, and so it's going. Maybe I'll make it back sometime.

¹For more information on the grave threat posed by the Borg cube armada, click here.
²Source: New York Magazine (Although the mag and the pranksters at All Too Flat sport differing opinions on the cube's height. The mag says it's 15 feet tall. The nerds, who claim to have harnessed the mysterious forces of trigonometry, say it's closer to 12. My money's on nerd magic.

2006-03-03T17:21:00.000-05:00

The Sam Donaldson Show
ABC newsman lets it all hang out for MU J-Students

(Dick Swanson)

Earlier this afternoon, Sam Donaldson used the sheer power of personality to hold me and a dozen of my classmates from the University of Missouri captive in the ABC News Washington bureau for more than two hours.

Running roughshod over the entire political history of the United States from 1960 to present, Donaldson ventured to rate the performance of each White House press secretary, offered imitations of characters ranging from George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan to Sen. Everett M. Dirksen, shared stories from his days as a restless young Republican in El Paso, Texas, expressed grave concerns over the current state of union, and even cajoled our gentle program director, former UPI White House correspondent Wes Pippert, into performing an improvised pantomime of the Cheney-Whittington mishap that featured Donaldson wheeling wildly out of a crouch and pretending to shoot a dumbfounded Pippert with an imaginary shotgun.

Collected below are some of the highlights from my notes. Donaldson was rolling too fast for me to get everything down, so I've limited this report to what I recorded hard and fast. His speech is punctuated with self-deprecating asides and anecdotal tangents. I was so busy scribbling down the substance of what he said that I often left those out. Assume that any ...'s signal such a remark. I've also juggled things around a bit to organize the quotes by topic¹. Believe me, this only scratches the surface.

On blowups at White House press conferences:

"There's often a kabuki dance going on. The thing to do is to find out what's really going on. It's very difficult.

You're seeing just a small portion [of a reporter's newsgathering]. By the end of the day what you get [in the press room] is only a portion of your story. ... The idea is that's what we're all about.

We can't win. If [the secretary] stays cool, he looks like a calm font of knowledge being beset upon. The impression doesn't transmit what's really going on there.

Reporters don't want to see a president fail. Why would they want to see a president fail?

Advice for any press secretary:

"Tell the truth! You can bob and you can weave and you don't have to voluteer that the emperor has no clothes." But you have to accept "that what we're doing is the American way, if you will. We're not the enemy."

Rating past podium jockeys:

Pierre Salinger

Donaldson referred to him only briefly as "the plucky Pierre Salinger."

Ron Ziegler

He "was the worst one in modern times. He lied. ... Ron Ziegler bought into the fact that he would lie about Watergate. ... His reputation never recovered."

Jody Powell

He "was a good one." He and Carter "were so close that he knew everything."

Marlin Fitzwater

"Marlon was the best." ... That's because "he understood our job. ... He put the president in the best light without treating the press like they were complete fools."

Dee Dee Myers

They didn't give her a chance. ... They didn't give her the information.

Mike McCurry

"He was good, but he knew just as well as all of us that Clinton was lying."

Scott McClellan

Doesn't have "the experience of Marlin Fitzwater, the close access of Powell or the savoir-faire of McCurry."

On Ronald Reagan:

"I found it impossible to dislike him."

On George W. Bush:

"This is not a dumb guy."

"The president came to power not really understanding the world having not been out in the world."

On how his administration handles the press:

They've been "arrogance 101 personified" and are "acting like they still have a 91 percent approval rating."

"The president and his men have a job to do and we have another job to do. We're all good Americans." .. They act like "we're the enemy, to some of them. They're cutting their own nose off."

On America in Iraq²:

"We're fools. ... The hope was that they let us get out before they kill each other...Tit-for-tat. Not that that's what their religion is about, but it's going to happen. We can't stop it, in my opinion."

"Mao said power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but in the end it comes from ideas. That's why we can't win in Iraq."

On the UAE port deal:

"I think the president's right. I think there's not a security issue."

On female presidential candidates:

"Five years ago I would have said there could well not be a way even if she walked across the tidal basin in a white robe. ... Today, I think yes--but not just any woman.³"

On the important role cameramen play in television news:

"Television is pictures. It's not some guy standing there. It's not good writing, although you can appreciate that regardless of media. It's the pictures."

On the future:

"Friedman's right. The world is flat."

On his career:

"I'm proud to say I'm a member of the old school. We make a lot of mistakes. We're lazy. But we try, we make the effort in a distinguished way."

¹ In other words, not all of this is in chronological order. He was, to use his own phrase, bobbing and weaving from topic to topic, often returning with knockout force to a theme he'd only jabbed in the earlier rounds.
²This was prefaced by an erudite recounting of the history of Iraq's formation and a direct comparison to the fractured former Yugoslavia.
³Hillary Clinton stands a chance, Donaldson said. Although he'd pick John McCain over her today (who he sees an unlikely GOP candidate). By 2008, he said things are likely to be fundamentally different than they are today.

2006-03-02T09:10:00.000-05:00

Know Your Rights
Or at least imagine cooler ones.

(National Archives)

The McCormick Tribune Museum just put out the results of a poll gauging how well we, the people, know the rights enumerated in the first amendment to our Constitution.

I think you can guess where this is going.

To their credit, 70 pecent of respondants didn't need to be reminded of their freedom of speech. But just 28 percent could name two of their rights, and less than 1 percent—in fact, just one lone dude out of the randomly selected sample of 1000¹—could name all five freedoms.

Pollers also asked respondants if they could name all five members of the cartoon Simpson family or all three judges on American Idol. Har har, tired, easy and apples/oranges. What's really bizarre, and about as troubling as I'll allow this sort of poll to be in my life, is the number of people who selected "the right to own and raise pets" (21 percent) or "the right to drive a car²" (17 percent) from a multiple-choice list. Here's hoping they were just screwing around.

The margin of error is listed as 3 percent. You can read the full results report, including the polling instrument, here. A few frequenters of PaleWire are experts in this sort of thing. I'd love to hear their thoughts.

And, for all you forgetful freedom lovers out there, here's the full text of the amendment itself:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (source)

¹1000 is also the sample size used by The Gallup Organization (source)
²The Bill of Rights was ratified into law in 1791 (source). While determining the origin of the automobile requires first determining the defintion of an automobile, the mass production of what we would call a car (a vehicle propelled by a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine) did not begin until more than 100 years later.

2006-02-28T21:40:00.000-05:00

It's the Same Old Song
Ladies, shall you overcome?

Here are the latest stats from the US Labor Department on women in the workplace. The new 2005 fact sheet barely speaks to the gender pay gap singled out by a number of advocacy groups, but it does hold a few things of interest.

Some indicators point toward equality at the top:

Women accounted for 50% of all workers in the high-paying management, professional, and related occupations. They outnumbered men in such occupations as financial managers; human resource managers; education administrators; medical and health services managers; accountants and auditors; budget analysts; loan counselors and officers; property, real estate, and community association managers; social and community service managers; preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers; and registered nurses.

And the bottom:

The unemployment rate for both women and men was 5.1%.

But it's not all pant suits and shattered glass ceilings. I wonder if these numbers attempt to include illegal aliens working service jobs:

The median weekly earnings of women who were full-time wage and salary workers were $585, or 81 percent of men’s $722. When comparing the median weekly earnings of persons aged 16 to 24, young women earned 93% of what young men earned ($381 and $409, respectively).

2006-02-28T07:21:00.000-05:00

Oh no, it's happened again
Ben's gone laces over faces for a wispy Norwegian pop singer

(nrk.no)

Thanks to a link from the right and honorable gentleman Matthew Perpetua, curator of the sensational mp3 tipsheet Fluxblog (link), I've totally lost my head over the new single from Marit Larsen.

ABBA keys, pop hooks, flightly female vocals, HANDCLAPS, and dozens of little sonic Twinkies stuffed underneath the sofa cushions, "Don't Save Me" has sent me spinning. I'm told it's hit No. 1 in Norway.

I didn't know a thing about the woman before a few hours ago, but this Web site, which names Larsen "the best singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist in the world," reports that she's 5'2" and nearly a year yonger than I am. That's all great, but she could be a registered sex offender at this point and I'd probably let it slide.

Download the single from Flux.
Watch the music video.
Buy the CD.
Read the much more informative Wikipedia entry.

2006-02-26T15:11:00.000-05:00

Bloggers Better Think Twice
Spare the mainstream media, or bring this dull work on yourself.

(The CIA World Factbook)

If you're a bookish type interested in boning up the port leasing flap rattling around Washington, you might be interested in browsing a few of the original documents that reporters, as well as government researchers and decision makers, are reexamining.

Here are five:

The State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor's most recent profile on the United Arab Emirates.

Link
Bonus: State Department Background Notes

The Rasmussen poll showing that just 17 percent of Americans favor the deal moving ahead and Democrats making big gains in public perception on national security issues.

Link (Summary is free but you have to register for detailed data)

The former 9/11 Commission's Fall 2005 report card on the government's progress toward meeting the recommendations in its original report. They gave the administration and Congress a D for its progress in the task of improving baggage and cargo screening on the seas and in the air.

Link

The 9/11 Commission's original report, which explicitly stated that "the vast majority of the money funding the Sept. 11 attacks flowed through the UAE"%, revealed that individual Emirati princes were suspected of being in close contact with Osama Bin Laden and introduced us further to Ali Abdul Aziz Ali^ and Mustafa al Hawsawi*, two Al Qaeda operatives accussed of aiding the hijackers financially and logistically from within the UAE.

Link

The already infamous# "HELL NO!" letter written to President Bush by Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-North Carolina)

Link

% Footnote 32 on page 40 here
^ Last I heard, captured in 2003 (source) and currently held at an unknown location.
* Last I heard, captured in 2003 (source) and currently held at an unknown location.
# Bill Kristol called it "idiotic" on Fox News Sunday this morning.

2006-02-24T08:41:00.000-05:00

Mayor Williams' faith-based egotism
and DC's biblical struggle to keep its baseball team.

(Evan Vucci/AP)

You needn't hold a stake in district government's struggle over whether to construct a new stadium for its new baseball franchise, The Washington Nationals (née les Expos de Montréal), to appreciate the vainglory on display in Mayor Anthony Williams' blog post of Feburary 15, 2006 (link).

After leading with the assurance, still unrealized more than a week later, that his post will be nothing more than a casual aside before returning to the important business of answering email from DC citizens, Williams uses the "perverse problem" of the stadium battle to ponder the existential question he reads on the minds of every upstanding citizen: Nagged by empty-headed cynics, unsettled by the anomie of modernity, burdened by the weight of responsibility in a world of pain and suffering, where does Mayor Williams find the strength to be Mayor Williams?

How do I bear the relentless, incessant criticism? How do I function in a low – make that zero gratification – environment? How do I keep, or do I keep my wits in the midst of the cacophony we call local democracy? Let’s see, baseball’s feels betrayed, the council feels excluded, the citizens are anywhere from puzzled, penalized, and/or patronized, and the media is unmerciful. What to do?

One can look the other way, but this is not a good practice when crossing the interstate of local politics. One can try to ingratiate one’s self with the powers that be in hopes of clemency, but would you believe this fails my high standards of integrity? No? Well just accept that it simply doesn’t work. Oh, and I know, one can savor the criticisms for lessons learned or sift the sands of experience for deeper meaning, and this sounds good. The problem comes when you realize a lot of the criticism is, while well-intentioned, uninformed, self-interested, and or inconsistent. What happens when the judge in the flip-flop competition is flip-flopping himself?

Where to go, not for policy advice but for inner strength? Over the years I’ve stopped in many places looking for help and consolation. I’ve made it a point to read the great philosophers. The illumination is brilliant, but it’s a harsh, cold, light. In fact, it’s a brutal, barren world out there. Philosophy and the sciences have their place, but they only take you so far. Religion for me has come to play a central role. Really. I mean it. I’m not some evangelical wrestling you down asking demanding you be saved. I’m just saying that it provides a kind of warm hearth on a cold winter night (the kind we used to have before global warming).

You need an inner kind of gyroscope to stay steady in order to, as my Dad always said, keep your eye on the ball. At one of the interminable meetings in the baseball process one of the attorneys told me I had the patience of Job. I took this as a real compliment, because Job, with a book in Hebrew Scriptures in his name, brought us one of the great and dramatic poems in literature. To do this he endured the loss of his family, the removal of his property, the affliction of a terrible disease, and last but not least, a sorrow not even seen on Oprah! He asked God for a sign and God told him to well, trust Him. And Job did. That’s a powerful lesson of faith and hope against all obstacles.

I’ll just leave this way. I heard this reading in a mass I recently attended. It’s so appropriate for the public servant – with emphasis on the service. Seventy percent of the time we’re taking dinner orders and it’s our job to salute smartly and serve our boss, the citizens. Thirty percent of the time, however, we’re required to lead, whatever the hardships and discontent. And that’s what we’re doing with difficult decisions. We’re going to take incoming fast balls aimed at our heads, but we’ve got to stay strong, trying to keep our eye on the ball. We’ve got to stay on our mission, even though we can’t always give a sign.

“The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, ‘Why does this generation seek at sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.’ Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.” (Mark 8: 3-4)

It's nice that the mayor can find some solace for himself in tradition, but this whole thing smacks of a delusion of grandeur. It should be noted that the "zero gratification" environment he's required to endure comes with a six-figure salary (link). I've spent the last half hour trying to wrap my head around those last three paragraphs. Where does this sermon fit into his 70/30 scheme? Is he really comparing his push for the stadium to Jesus Christ's quest to redeem the eternal souls of all mankind? Why, oh why, would his handlers let him put something like this on the public record? What does this guy do all day?

Do the long-suffering citizens of Washington DC, be they baseball fans or not, even have a prayer, let alone a useful public servant?

2006-02-24T07:03:00.000-05:00

The Future Needs Help
Nerds, too.

According to a report issued by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last November (link), here are the ten occupations expected to grow the fastest between now and 2014:

Home health aides
Network systems and data communications analysts
Medical assistants
Physician assistants
Computer software engineers, applications
Physical therapist assistants
Dental hygienists
Computer software engineers, systems software
Dental assistants
Personal and home care aides

Six of them include either the word assistant or aide in their title. What with the baby boomers graying out and people in general living longer, the health stuff is no surprise. But what about the dental rankings? Here's how the BoL's Occupational Outlook Handbook explains it:

Population growth and greater retention of natural teeth will stimulate demand for dental hygienists. Older dentists, who have been less likely to employ dental hygienists, are leaving the occupation and will be replaced by recent graduates, who are more likely to employ one or even two hygienists. In addition, as dentists’ workloads increase, they are expected to hire more hygienists to perform preventive dental care, such as cleaning, so that they may devote their own time to more profitable procedures.

Fewer dentures equals more dentists. Good hygiene means more hygienists. The same thing can't be said for agriculture, where better farming means fewer farmers(link).

2006-02-22T08:55:00.000-05:00

Tropical Depression

Other than my first visits to Falls Church's most famous honkytonk, JV's Restaurant, for chili and NASCAR with the gang (My favorite character being a mellow dude who broke his long-held silence to buzz a sharp critique of Jeff Gordon's performance on Celebrity Poker Showdown through a throat box), the highlight of my holiday weekend was reading Brian Moore's novel, No Other Life.

Set in the former French colony of Ganae, a place you might but need not compare to real-life Haiti, it's the story a well-meaning native priest turned populist leader, a character you might but need not compare to the real-life Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who struggles to blaze a path for his people out of poverty without compromising his values or encouraging violence. It's told in the first person by a priest at the local university still struggling at an advanced age to figure out how he, a farflung white man from Quebec, found himself caught up in the political intrigue of a tropical outpost of the Third World.

Jon Banville was right back in 1993 when he praised the novel in The Times Literary Supplement as "an honest-to-god yarn, complete with alarms and excursions, gunfire, identifiable villains, a beautiful bitch and, of course, a hero pure in heart," but I also agree with Terry Eagleton's criticism that the narrator doesn't reveal enough of himself to lend Moore's narrative its desired weight, which aims to surpass critical mass when our kindly Virgil faces his darkest doubts about the authenticity of his faith.

Any Brian Moore fans out there? This was my first exposure to his work, and it's certainly gotten my attention. What would you recommend?

2006-02-21T19:28:00.000-05:00

I am John Galt
And, ladies, I'm on the prowl.

I've yet to read the main article, but a sidebar to Lori Gottlieb's cover story in the new Atlantic on the online dating phenomenon (link) offers an amusing list of niche matchmaking sites that have sprung up to service the specialized desires of the Web's many, and varied, subcultures. After the requisite political firewalling by both sides (Left, Right), things get interesting. There are exclusive dating clubs for finding Ivy Leaguers, millionaires, golfers, horse people, firefighters, partners in adultery, asexuals, and, of all things, devotees of Ayn Rand.

If you're unfamiliar with her work, check out Wikipedia's entry. It's far from authoritative, but, if nothing else, the page's contested status should communicate how embattled her legacy remains. A proponent—no, apostle—of individualism and free markets, Rand used her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to enshrine the image of the ideal capitalist, a tireless and supremely capable existentialist who must overcome the constraints imposed by a society organized to force compromises that can only pollute his or her vision.

It's stark stuff. Rand was indeed an absolutist. Her work treats government regulation as akin to shackles. She was so committed to capitalism that a six-foot tall dollar sign was displayed at her funeral.

And, like other passionate absolutists, her work tends to attract the affection of the young—although it can also claim a number of powerful adherents, including the recently retired chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. I initially read her two major novels (she was also the author of a number of philosophical tracts) as a college freshman. My Composition I professor offered extra credit to anyone who could conquer them. No small feat. At 1200 pages, Atlas Shrugged remains the longest book I've ever read, a distinction it's likely to hold the remainder of my life.

I won't go off too far with my opinions. Suffice it to say that my standby quip when the subject arises is to suggest that after waiting 1000 pages for Atlas Shrugged's mysterious hero, whose sudden disappearance created its own rhetorical expression, Who is John Galt?, the 90-page speech he unfurls by way of introduction is enough to make even a sympathetic reader wish the hero had stayed home.

I'd like to introduce you to some of the people who're so dedicated to Rand's brand of individualism that they are actively seeking a mate with the same subscriptions, but the site banned me after I tried to create a profile under the name Ellsworth Toohey, the villain of The Fountainhead. A prominent newspaper columnist who manipulates the vulgar emotions of the masses and encourages mediocrity by championing a selflessness and modesty that Rand obviously found both disgusting and destructive, Toohey serves as the counterpoint to Rand's hero, the bold, original and uncompromising architect Howard Roark.

I'm unsure how this particular group can justify preventing my free expression. I guess I'll have to go for a goth.

2006-02-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

Meet The Arts

I'm looking forward to seeing Art Brut at the Black Cat in April. Unlike most of the supposed "new rock revolution," they don't suck. In fact, they rock.

Here, have a listen:

Art Brut - "Formed A Band"
[Schuba's Tavern, Chicago, November 15, 2005]
Taking nod-and-wink knowingness to new levels of absurdity, this song, the band's debut single, is at once the freshest and the silliest rock song I've heard in the last year. It's an easy concept to summarize: "We are Art Brut. This is our first song. In it we will sing about forming the band. We will also touch on our goals for the group, which include 'talking to the kids,' hitting Top of the Pops and bringing peace to Israel and Palestine."

It's rowdy, repetitive, spastic. Plus, like most of the band's music, it requires a healthy patience for talkie parts. But it's also a hell of a lot of fun. And even if you don't like the song all that much, don't fret, because your obliging entertainers have included snippets of AC/DC, REM, The Modern Lovers and some charming banter in an inspired four minutes and nine seconds.

For something a little more polished, though not by much, check out the music video shot for their subsequent single "Emily Kane" or the studio recording of my favorite Art Brut song, "Good Weekend."

Their album, Bang Bang Rock and Roll, isn't out yet in America, but you can always buy it from Amazon.co.uk. A full recording of the Schuba's performance is available for purchase at emusic.

2006-02-19T21:52:00.000-05:00

Slangin'
Watch The Washington Post get 'jiggy' with it.

Besides its snuggily tone, here's what most struck me about Peter Slevin's front-page profile of Tammy Duckworth (Feb. 19), an Iraq veteran with two prosthetic legs who's running for Henry Hyde's old seat in Illinois' suburban 6th Congressional district. From today's Washington Post:

...Sen. Richard J. Durbin and Rep. Rahm Emanuel appealed to Duckworth when she was still recovering from her injuries, dissing the up-and-running campaign of fellow Democrat Christine Cegelis, who took 44 percent of the vote against Hyde in 2004. (emphasis added)

Yoiks! Is that the word "dissing" on the front page of The Washington Post? While I'm sure you've heard the term used before, here's its entry from, believe it or not, Mirriam-Webster's online dictionary:

Main Entry: dis
Pronunciation: 'dis
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): dissed; dis·sing
Etymology: perhaps short for disrespect
1 slang : to treat with disrespect or contempt : INSULT
2 slang : to find fault with : CRITICIZE

Not one to be left behind, the Oxford English Dictionary also includes an entry.

dis, n.
slang (orig. U.S., esp. in African-American usage).
Forms: 19- dis, diss. [Prob. shortened < DISRESPECT n. after DIS v.3]
Failure to show respect; abuse, disparagement; an expression of scorn or contempt, an insult.

Usage:
1986 Los Angeles Times 31 Aug. (Calendar) 87/4 Please give credit where credit is due{em}point an accusing finger at the Long Beach Police Department for not doing its job and stop the ‘dis’ (disrespect) on rap music for once and for all.

1993 Rolling Stone 18 Feb. 60/3 Tricks of the Shade, the Goats' debut, was recorded last year, when Bush-Quayle disses were less of a foregone conclusion.

2001 N.Y. Mag. 14 May 76/1 All fifteen tracks are one-dimensional disses and dismissals of scantily clad women, vengeful boyfriends, and the group's assorted doubters.

A quick search of the archives via Lexis Nexis shows this is far from the first time the Post has put the word in print. A search returned 190 articles, though a quick survey shows a number of those hits are proper nouns (Click here to learn more about the Norfolk city of Diss in the UK). The first reference to the word in the Post seems to have come on March 15, 1987, when a feature in the Washington Post magazine known as J Street included this brief glossary of slang words then in vogue with America's youth:

bumpin' (bum'pun) adj. First-rate, of high quality, attractive; usually in reference to material goods, esp. clothes, as in "That jacket is bumpin'."

bumpin' like a mug. Trend-setting and of high quality, again in reference to material goods; e.g., to describe the hottest portable stereo ("box"): "That box is bumpin' like a mug."

dis (diss) verb. To show disrespect, esp. to a teacher or other authority figure. Also, to harass, to ridicule, as in "The boys on the bus were dissing that girl."

junks (junks) noun. Basketball shoes, usually expensive ones; the only kind of shoe any self-respecting teen-ager is wearing (as this edition goes to press).

The first reporter to use the word seems to have been Joe Brown, who wrote it into a profile of the "divas" Diana Ross, Patti LaBelle, Stephanie Mills, Natalie Cole and Chaka Khan in August of 1989.

It seems that from the very start, the Post opted to expend the ink and use the two 's' version diss instead of the 25 percent shorter dis. Maybe because its closer to the phonetic pronunciation?

As far as I can figure, Slevin's usage today was the word's first appearance on the Post's front page. The editorial board has used it repeatedly for headlines (ex. Dissing Darwin, Dissing the District), but the only other front page article returned by Lexis was a Nov. 2004 story on the troubled basketball player Ron Artest. And that mention comes well after the jump. Plus it wasn't used by the reporters, but appears in scare quotes inside a quote from sports psychologist Paul Beard, who provided this insight into Artest's now legendary rampage (video link):

One intensity comes out of a self-drive. The other one is a desperate kind of intensity, 'You're not going to 'diss' me, I'm a star.' It's psychological. When a player's primary source of self-worth is tied up with being a star athlete, any threat to that status, real or imagined, becomes psychologically life-threatening."

Beard believes a sort of "psychological fusion," happened to Artest the moment he was hit by that cup.

2006-02-17T21:13:00.000-05:00

Art captures life imitating life
I bet this is how it really feels to play for the Detroit Tigers.

(AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

Click here to get your juices flowing with some more spring training photos.

2006-02-17T12:39:00.000-05:00

Povich: Media still draws mostly liberal English majors
For the record, I have a degree in—don't laugh—communication.

My cohort of Missouri journalism school students and I received a lecture this morning from Elaine Povich, a longtime Capitol Hill reporter who’s worked for both Newsday and the Chicago Tribune.

If you run her name through google, as I did this morning, one of the most common things you’ll find is this quote, which was taken down by a Washington Times reporter and printed on April 18, 1996:

More people who are of a liberal persuasion go into reporting because they believe in the ethics and the ideals. . . . A lot of conservatives go into the private sector, go into Wall Street, go into banking. You find people who are idealistic tending toward the reporting end.

Povich told our group that the comment came out of a conversation sparked when she was approached after she made a lengthy presentation on her book Partners and Adversaries: The Contentious Connection Between Congress and the Media. (I can’t tell you the reporter's name because I’m refusing to pay the Times' Web archive $2.95)

The reporter asked her about the survey included in the appendix to her book that found that 89 percent of Washington journalists voted for Bill Clinton instead of George Bush in the 1992 election (my copy lists a 2.8 percent margin of error). The results ran as the lead, along with the quote, which was subsequently picked up by the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and then widely cited as evidence of a leftward tilt in mainstream news coverage.

“Rush made me famous,” Povich said today. “But he wouldn’t let me call in and talk about it…I spent a year of my life working on that book and the only thing that anybody remembers is the so-called liberal media.”

She went on to say that conditions have changed since her infamous quote, pointing to an increase in conservatives brought in to staff places like Fox News, but not a whole lot.

“Who become journalists? Not engineers,” Povich said. “All engineers—except the one I married—are conservatives. English majors become journalists. And English majors are 90 percent liberal."