Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

This Just In: The Dumbos' Real America Is Inhabited By Real Idiots!

2011-12-17T14:41:00.000-06:00

WTF: Premillennial Dispensationalism is an article of faith with Bachmann Moron Overdrive, the Bitch O'The Great White North, and Ricky Dumbass. These followers of the wacko theology of Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) march in the Fundy (Fundamentalist) Column of God's Only Party (GOP). As Theo Anderson concludes his report about these fools: Heaven help us. If this is (fair & balanced) religious nonsense, so be it.

[x In These Times]
New Confederacy Rising
By Theo Anderson

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What is America, and what is an American? If anything binds us together across space and time, it is our ideals and the stories we tell about our pursuit of them. From the beginning, we set ourselves against Europe’s hierarchies. We exalted democratic government, equality of opportunity and individual freedom. We conceived of our experiment as “the last best hope of earth,” in Lincoln’s words.

But ideals don’t live in a vacuum; they take root in the soil of institutions. Beginning with our first experiments in self-government, the dissonance between our ideals and our institutional practices–especially the tolerance and extension of slavery–created tensions that finally tore us apart.

The South’s alternative vision of the good society was defeated in the Civil War, and our 20th-century history can be told as a narrative of halting progress toward greater tolerance and equality. The major plot points include regulations on corporations in the early 1900s; women’s suffrage in 1920; a social safety net in the New Deal; the Supreme Court’s rejection of Jim Crow laws in 1954; the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s; the gay rights victories since the 1970s.

This narrative suggests that our democratic experiment is working, albeit slowly. If we have never been entirely unified in our ideals, the Civil War at least re-unified our institutions. A century and a half later, we rally around the same flag. Or so we think.

The deeper truth is disquieting. The rhetoric of Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry about the “real America” is not imagined: They and those who oppose them live in different Americas, embodying different ideals and meaning different things to their loyalists.

How we reached this impasse is a fascinating question. The answer to it raises profound doubts and questions about how–and whether–we can move forward as “one nation, indivisible.”

The split could be said to have begun at Harvard in the decades between the Civil War and the turn of the century, when the university’s president, Charles Eliot, initiated a series of reforms that transformed the paradigm of higher education in the United States.

From the colonial era through the Civil War, Harvard’s intellectual life revolved around the Bible. Harvard’s mission was to train gentlemen of high moral character by giving them a solid grounding for their faith.

Eliot moved Harvard away from this ideal and toward the model of a modern research university. Expanding the boundaries of knowledge through research became the institution’s focus. Most universities followed the lead of Harvard and that of Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876 for the sole purpose of pursuing a secular research agenda.

This new mission for universities created a spectacular fragmentation of knowledge. By the early 20th century, the old-school generalist who taught everything from Latin to literature and history was a relic. The new university required scholars to specialize in defined fields. This rise of experts within the academy reflected the increasing importance of expertise in American society, as careers in the professions came to require specialized training.

The progressive movement of the early 20th century grew out of these developments. Progressives hoped to make the new knowledge emerging from universities relevant to the actual world. After the First World War, the window of opportunity seemed wide open. John Dewey–the Columbia University philosopher and quintessential progressive–supported U.S. involvement in the war because he believed that the federal government’s new powers would be used, at the war’s end, to reconstruct society along more egalitarian lines.

Dewey had eloquent critics on the left, most notably Randolph Bourne, a young intellectual who rejected the idea that a militarized state could ever be mobilized for progressive purposes. Dewey, stung by the criticisms, used his influence to have Bourne banned from most progressive publications.

Bourne’s critique ultimately proved correct. But if Dewey was wrong in that case, and if he behaved appallingly toward Bourne, the essence of his vision won out. He and other progressives had been hopeful about the potential of harnessing knowledge to power for the purpose of reconstructing society; and from that point forward, for better and worse, progressive hopes for social reform have been heavily invested in educational and governmental institutions, and a loose, complicated alliance of the two realms.

GOP: God’s Only Party

Religious conservatives pushed back by mobilizing and building a parallel universe of institutions to preserve what they believed to be the truth.

The cause of their exit from mainstream American institutions was religious liberalism–“modernism,” as it was called. Religious modernists accepted scholarly work about the human origins of the Bible while still valuing scripture as a source of wisdom. They accepted evolutionary theory while still holding out the possibility of divine purpose in the universe. They tried, in general, to reconcile religious truth with the knowledge emerging from the academy.

Modernists felt at home within America’s mainstream, but religious conservatives felt betrayed. They built their own network of institutions to defend the old-time religion. Bob Jones University, founded in 1927, emerged from this era.

Two developments added energy and power to this wave of conservative Christian institution building. One was the new technology of radio, which in the 1930s opened the way for freelance evangelists to build their own ministries based on charismatic appeal.

The other crucial development was the popularization of a new account of humanity’s fate: premillennial dispensationalism, or p.d. for short. It posits that human history can be divided into several ages, or dispensations, and that the current age will conclude with the Battle of Armageddon. However, seven years before that battle, Jesus will return to earth for the redeemed, and they will be “raptured” to heaven.

Much more than a theological perspective, p.d. is among the most potent and important political ideas of the last century. Its first great popularizer in the United States was Cyrus Scofield, whose annotated Scofield Reference Bible was published in 1909. Since then, p.d. has grown ever-more influential. It was the subject of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s; and it was the plot-driving device in the Left Behind books, which are among the bestselling works of fiction in the 1990s and 2000s.

The political influence of p.d. is located in its premise that all human institutions are irredeemably corrupt. Since conditions in this world will steadily deteriorate, the duty of the true Christian is to remain faithful to the gospel as the world descends into godless chaos.

Skeptics regarding p.d.’s influence rightly note that a relatively small minority of the population actually adhere to the theology. But unified and highly galvanized groups wield outsized power in American politics. The hard work of actually getting things done, whether for good or ill, depends on the energy and organization of “marginal” groups who represent minority opinions and which, more often than not, are fired by religious faith. That truth has been driven home with frightening clarity by the recent debt-ceiling debate and by the radicalism of the leading Republican presidential candidates–nearly all of whom, not coincidentally, profess faith in some variation of p.d. theology.

Today, the currents of victimization, separatism and fatalism coursing through p.d. have spread beyond the true believers to dramatically reshape the GOP. What has recently come to the fore within the Republican Party, but has been building within it for decades as the religious right’s influence has grown, is a new Confederacy: a nation within a nation, certain of the degeneracy of the usurper “United States,” hostile toward its institutions of education and government, and possessing a keen sense of its own identity as a victimized, righteous remnant engaged in spiritual warfare. As Michele Bachmann put it when explaining her position as a tax accountant for the IRS, she took a government job because she wanted to infiltrate “the enemy.”

America on its knees?

Pundits argue that our current dysfunction stems from disagreements about the proper scope and size of government or the limitations of “free markets.” These explanations miss the heart of the matter. America’s divisions involve fundamental questions of trust and truth: What authorities do you believe? Whose definition of truth do you accept?

For the pragmatic and progressive America that grew out of secularized higher education, truth has a provisional, this-worldly orientation. It’s more evolutionary than eternal in character–a fluid body of knowledge and interpretation, subject to revision and expansion.

For the Confederacy that now dominates the GOP, truth is solid and fixed and divinely embedded in the structure of the universe. Humanity’s responsibility is to accept and believe the truth rather than test ideas against actual experience. The Confederacy’s obsession with “originalist” interpretations of the Constitution–a twin of biblical literalism–is the classic example: truth must be eternal, universal.

Pragmatists and progressives defer to experts and professionals. They expect truth claims to be supported by evidence that emerges from research and testing. They put their faith in this process, and in the communities of inquiry–the disciplines–legitimized by secular institutions of higher education.

The new Confederacy rejects that process wholesale. Its leaders and authorities are the spiritual descendants of the conservative Christians and charismatic radio preachers who broke away from religious modernism in the 1920s and 1930s. For these leaders and their followers, faith justifies–and verifies–itself. You don’t believe an idea because it’s true. It’s true because you believe it.

This is why, in the “real America” of Bachmann, Palin and Perry, it is self-evident that cutting taxes increases revenues; the founders were evangelical Christians; evolution is bunk; climate change is a hoax; the United States has the best healthcare system in the world; we can transform the Middle East into a garden of democracy; Kenya native Barack Obama has slashed the military budget; the war on drugs is worth the cost; and so on. These are all leaps of faith. The new Confederates flat-out reject or ignore any counter-evidence, because they have their own fount of truth. FOX News is the obvious example, but decades before the rise of FOX–going back to the early 20th century radio evangelists–conservatives had been quietly building their own media and networks for “truth” telling.

And here is the unsettling thing for anyone concerned about this fraught moment in the American experiment. Though they’re clueless, the leaders of the new Confederacy do offer a seductively egalitarian vision. The solutions to all our problems can be found, they promise, not through actual experimentation or so-called knowledge, but from the simple faith of ordinary citizens.

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, summed up the egalitarian fatalism at the heart of the new Confederacy this summer, in a letter inviting fellow politicians to his prayer rally in Houston. “Some problems are beyond our power to solve, and according to the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, this historic hour demands a historic response,” he wrote. “There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.”

In 2009, Perry flirted with the idea of Texas leaving the Union–a fact that is astonishing yet unsurprising. It is astonishing because it’s hard to believe a politician of Perry’s rank and visibility would openly muse about secession–and remain a viable presidential contender. Imagine the outrage on FOX News if Barack Obama had once said anything similar.

It’s unsurprising because the truth is right there: Perry, Bachmann and Palin and the segment of the GOP they represent have already seceded from the Union. Spiritually speaking, they live in a radically different vision of “America,” one with its own faith-based realities and aspirations.

Spiritual secession isn’t the same as actual secession, and we are a world away from the 1860s. But Rick Perry’s toying with the idea wasn’t exactly a gaffe. It briefly brought to light a certain disquiet that we aren’t prepared to talk about openly, and raised questions that are too painful to confront. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Lincoln said. But what if the divisions are just too deep and wide to bridge? What if the common ground for compromise simply does not exist? What if the last best hope of earth cannot long endure, after all?

God help us, indeed. Ω

[Theo Anderson, a former In These Times editorial intern, has a Ph.D. in American history from Yale University and teaches seminars at Chicago’s Newberry Library.]

Copyright © 2011 In These Times and The Institute For Public Affairs

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Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.

Copyright © 2011 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

Hitch, RIP

2011-12-16T10:31:00.000-06:00

Christopher Buckley does honor to his late father as well as the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens. A Google search of this blog for "By Christopher Hitchens" produced a scant pair of essays from December 8, 2011, and June 30, 2011. This was a surprising result because this blogger assumed that he had filled this blog with Hitchens' writings. Ah, well. Now he's gone. If this is a (fair & balanced) shalom, so be it.

[x New Yorker]
Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011
By Christopher Buckley

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We were friends for more than thirty years, which is a long time but, now that he is gone, seems not nearly long enough. I was rather nervous when I first met him, one night in London in 1977, along with his great friend Martin Amis. I had read his journalism and was already in awe of his brilliance and wit and couldn’t think what on earth I could bring to his table. I don’t know if he sensed the diffidence on my part—no, of course he did; he never missed anything—but he set me instantly at ease, and so began one of the great friendships and benisons of my life. It occurs to me that “benison” is a word I first learned from Christopher, along with so much else.

A few years later, we found ourselves living in the same city, Washington. I had come to work in an Administration; he had come to undo that Administration. Thirty years later, I was voting for Obama and Christopher had become one of the most forceful, and persuasive, advocates for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. How did that happen?

In those days, Christopher was a roaring, if not raving, Balliol Bolshevik. Oh dear, the things he said about Reagan! The things—come to think of it—he said about my father. How did we become such friends? I only once stopped speaking to him, because of a throwaway half-sentence about my father-in-law in one of his Harper’s essays. I missed his company during that six-month froideur (another Christopher mot). It was about this time that he discovered that he was in fact Jewish, which somewhat complicated his fierce anti-Israel stance. When we embraced, at the bar mitzvah of Sidney Blumenthal’s son, the word “Shalom” sprang naturally from my lips.

A few days ago, when I was visiting him at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, for what I knew would be the last time, his wife, Carol, mentioned to me that Sidney had recently written to Christopher. I was surprised but very pleased to hear this. Christopher had caused Sidney great legal and financial grief during the Götterdämmerung of the Clinton impeachment. But now Sidney, a cancer experiencer himself, was reaching out to his old friend with words of tenderness and comfort and implicit forgiveness. This was the act of a mensch. But then Christopher was like that—it was hard, perhaps impossible, to stay mad at him, though I doubt Henry Kissinger or Bill Clinton or any member of the British Royal Family will be among the eulogists at his memorial service.

I first saw his J’accuse in The Nation against—oh, Christopher!—Mother Teresa when my father mailed me a Xerox of it. He had scrawled a note across the top, an instruction to the producer of his TV show “Firing Line”: “I never want to lay eyes on this guy again.” W.F.B. had provided Christopher with his first appearances on U.S. television. The rest is history—the time would soon come when you couldn’t turn on a television without seeing Christopher railing against Kissinger, Mother (presumptive saint) T., Princess Diana, or Jerry Falwell.

But even W.F.B., who tolerated pretty much anything except attacks on his beloved Catholic Church and its professors, couldn’t help but forgive. “Did you see the piece on Chirac by your friend Hitchens in the Journal today?” he said one day, with a smile and an admiring sideways shake of the head. “Absolutely devastating!”

When we all gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a few years later, to see W.F.B. off to the celestial choir, Christopher was present, having flown in from a speech in the American hinterland. (Alert: if you are reading this, Richard Dawkins, you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph.) There he was in the pew, belting out Bunyan’s “He Who Would Valiant Be.” Christopher recused himself when Henry Kissinger took the lectern to give his eulogy, going out onto rain-swept Fifth Avenue to smoke one of his ultimately consequential cigarettes.

“It’s the fags that’ll get me in the end, I know it,” he said once, at one of our lunches, tossing his pack of Rothmans onto the table with an air of contempt. This was back when you could smoke at a restaurant. As the Nanny State and Mayor Bloomberg extended their ruler-bearing, knuckle-rapping hand across the landscape, Christopher’s smoking became an act of guerrilla warfare. Much as I wish he had never inhaled, it made for great spectator sport.

David Bradley, the owner of The Atlantic Monthly, to which Christopher contributed many sparkling essays, once took him out to lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. It was—I think—February and the smoking ban had gone into effect. Christopher suggested that they eat outside, on the terrace. David Bradley is a game soul, but even he expressed trepidation about dining al fresco in forty-degree weather. Christopher merrily countered, “Why not? It will be bracing.”

Lunch—dinner, drinks, any occasion—with Christopher always was. One of our lunches, at Café Milano, the Rick’s Café of Washington, began at 1 P.M., and ended at 11:30 P.M. At about nine o’clock (though my memory is somewhat hazy), he said, “Should we order more food?” I somehow crawled home, where I remained under medical supervision for several weeks, packed in ice with a morphine drip. Christopher probably went home that night and wrote a biography of Orwell. His stamina was as epic as his erudition and wit.

When we made a date for a meal over the phone, he’d say, “It will be a feast of reason and a flow of soul.” I never doubted that this rococo phraseology was an original coinage, until I chanced on it, one day, in the pages of P. G. Wodehouse, the writer Christopher perhaps esteemed above all others. Wodehouse was the Master. When we met for another lunch, one that lasted only five hours, he was all a-grin with pride as he handed me a newly minted paperback reissue of Wodehouse with “Introduction by Christopher Hitchens.” “Doesn’t get much better than that,” he said, and who could not agree?

The other author that he and I seemed to spend most time discussing was Oscar Wilde. I remember Christopher’s thrill at having adduced a key connection between Wilde and Wodehouse. It struck me as a breakthrough insight; namely, that the first two lines of “The Importance of Being Earnest” contain within them the entire universe of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

Algernon plays the piano while his butler arranges flowers. Algy asks, “Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?” Lane replies, “I didn’t think it polite to listen, sir.” And there you have it.

Christopher remained perplexed at the lack of any reference to Wilde in the Wodehousian oeuvre. Then, some time later, he extolled in his Vanity Fair column the discovery, by one of his graduate students at the New School, of a mention of “The Importance” somewhere in the Master’s ninety-odd books.

During the last hour I spent with Christopher, in the Critical Care Unit at M. D. Anderson, he struggled to read a thick volume of P. G. Wodehouse letters. He scribbled some notes on a blank page in spidery handwriting. He wrote “Pelham Grenville” and asked me, in a faint, raspy voice, “Name. What was the name?” At first I didn’t quite understand, but then, recalling P.G.’s nickname, suggested “Plum?” Christopher nodded yes, and wrote it down.

I took comfort that, during our last time together, I was able to provide him with at least that. Intellectually, ours was largely a teacher-student relationship, and let me tell you—Christopher was one tough grader. Oy. No matter how much he loved you, he did not shy from giving it to you with the bark off if you had disappointed.

I once participated with him on a panel at the Folger Theatre on the subject of “Henry V.” The other panelists were Dame Judi Dench, Arianna Huffington, Chris Matthews, Ken Adelman, and David Brooks; the moderator was Walter Isaacson. Having little original insight into “Henry V,” or into any Shakespeare play, for that matter, I prepared a comic riff on a notional Henry the Fifteenth. Get it? O.K., maybe you had to be there, but it sort of brought down the house. Nevertheless, when Christopher and I met for lunch a few days later, he gave me a tsk-tsk-y stare and sour wince and chided me for “indulging in crowd-pleasing nonsense.”

I got off lightly. When Martin Amis, his closest friend on earth, published a book in which he took Christopher to task for what he viewed as inappropriate laughter at the expense of Stalin’s victims, Christopher responded with a seven-thousand-word rebuttal in The Atlantic that will probably have Martin thinking twice before attempting another work of historical nonfiction. But Christopher’s takedown of his chum must be viewed alongside thousands of warm and affectionate words he wrote about Martin, particularly in his memoir, Hitch-22, which appeared ironically—or perhaps with exquisite timing—simultaneously with the presentation of his mortal illness.

The jacket of his next book, a collection of breathtaking essays, perfectly titled Arguably, contains some glowing words of praise, including my own (humble but earnest) asseveration that he is—was—”the greatest living essayist in the English language.” One or two reviewers demurred, calling my effusion “forgivable exaggeration.” To them I say: O.K., name a better one. I would alter only one word in that blurb now.

Over the course of his heroic, uncomplaining eighteen-month battle with the cancer, I found myself rehearsing what I might say to an obituary writer, should one ring after the news of Christopher’s death. I thought to say something along the lines—the air of Byron, the steel pen of Orwell, and the wit of Wilde.

A bit forced, perhaps, but you get the idea. Christopher may not, as Byron did, write poetry, but he could recite staves, cantos, yards of it. As for Byronic aura, there were the curly locks, the unbuttoned shirt revealing a wealth—verily, a woolly mastodon—of pectoral hair, as well as the roguish, raffish je ne sais quoi good looks. (Somewhere in Hitch-22, he notes that he had now reached the age when “only women wanted to go to bed with me.”)

Like Byron, Christopher put himself in harm’s way in “contested territory,” again and again. Here’s another bit from Hitch-22,a chilling moment when he found himself alone in a remote and very scary town in Afghanistan,

in a goons’ rodeo duel between two local homicidal potentates (the journalistic euphemism for this type is “warlord”; the image of the goons’ rodeo I have annexed from Saul Bellow). On me was not enough money, not enough food, not enough documentation, not enough medication, not enough bottled water to withstand even a two-day siege. I did not have a cell phone. Nobody in the world, I abruptly realized, knew where I was. I knew nobody in the town and nobody in the town knew (perhaps a good thing) who I was, either…. As all this started to register with me, the square began to fill with those least alluring of all types: strident but illiterate young men with religious headgear, high-velocity weapons and modern jeeps.

His journalism, in which he championed the victims of tyranny and stupidity and “Islamofascism” (his coinage), takes its rightful place on the shelf along with that of his paradigm, Orwell.

As for the wit... one day we were talking about Stalin. I observed that Stalin, eventual murderer of twenty, thirty—forty?—million, had trained as a priest. Not skipping a beat, Christopher remarked, “Indeed, was he not among the more promising of the Tbilisi ordinands?”

I thought—as I did perhaps one thousand times over the course of our three-decade long tutorial—Wow.

A few days later, at a dinner, the subject of Stalin having come up, I ventured to my dinner partner, “Indeed, was he not among the more promising of the Tbilisi ordinands?” The lady to whom I had proferred this thieved aperçu stopped chewing her salmon, repeated the line I had so casually tossed off, and said with frank admiration, “That’s brilliant.” I was tempted, but couldn’t quite bear to continue the imposture, and told her that the author of this nacreous witticism was in fact none other than Christopher. She laughed and said, “Well, everything he says is brilliant.”

Yes, everything he said was brilliant. It was a feast of reason and a flow of soul, and, if the author of God Is Not Great did not himself believe in the concept of soul, he sure had one, and it was a great soul.

Two fragments come to mind. The first is from Brideshead Revisited, a book Christopher loved and which he could practically quote in its entirety. Anthony Blanche, the exotic, outrageous aesthete, is sent down from Oxford. Charles Ryder, the book’s narrator, mourns: “Anthony Blanche had taken something away with him when he went; he had locked a door and hung the key on his chain; and all his friends, among whom he had been a stranger, needed him now.”

Christopher was never a “stranger to his friends”—ça va sans dire, as he would say. Among his prodigal talents, perhaps his greatest was his gift of friendship. Christopher’s inner circle, Martin [Amis], Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, Julian Barnes, comprise more or less the greatest writers in the English language. That’s some posse.

But in leaving them—and the rest of us—for “the undiscovered country” (he could recite more or less all of “Hamlet,” too) Christopher has taken something away with him, and his friends, in whose company I am so very grateful to have been, will need him now. We are now, finally, without a Hitch.

The other bit is from Housman, and though it’s from a poem that Christopher and I recited back and forth at each other across the tables at Café Milano, I hesitate to quote it here. I see him wincing at my deplorable propensity for “crowd-pleasing.” But I’m going to quote it anyway, doubting as I do that he would chafe at my trying to mine what consolation I can over the loss of my beloved athlete, who died so young.

Smart lad to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose. Ω

[Christopher Buckley is the son of William F. Buckley Jr. and Patricia Buckley (both deceased) and inherited Canadian citizenship through his mother. He graduated from Yale University and was a member of Skull and Bones like his father. Buckley is the author of The White House Mess (1986), Thank You for Smoking (1994), God Is My Broker : A Monk-Tycoon Reveals the 7½ Laws of Spiritual and Financial Growth (1998) (written with John Tierney), Little Green Men (1999), No Way to Treat a First Lady (2002), Florence of Arabia (2004), Boomsday (2007), and Supreme Courtship (2008).]

Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast Digital

Roll Over, Bitch O'The Great White North! Make Way For More Paul Reversionism!

2011-12-15T11:53:00.000-06:00

'Twas not a midnight ride, but a midday ride that preceded the midnight ride that preceded the shot heard 'round the world. Of course, this will be difficult for a TRW (True Republican Woman) to digest, but history is never simple. (However, TRWs are simple-minded.) If this is a (fair & balanced) corrective, so be it.

[x Smithsonian 'Zine]
The Midday Ride Of Paul Revere
By Christopher Klein

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Colonial Boston’s secret patriot network crackled with the news. Regiments of British troops were on the move, bound for points north to secure military supplies from the rebels. Paul Revere mounted his horse and began a feverish gallop to warn the colonists that the British were coming.

Except this ride preceded Revere’s famous “midnight ride” by more than four months. On December 13, 1774, the Boston silversmith made a midday gallop north to Portsmouth in the province of New Hampshire, and some people—especially Granite Staters—consider that, and not his trip west to Lexington on April 18, 1775, as the true starting point of the war for independence.

With talk of revolution swirling around Boston in the final days of 1774, Revere’s patriot underground learned that King George III had issued a proclamation that prohibited the export of arms or ammunition to America and ordered colonial authorities to secure the Crown’s weaponry. One particularly vulnerable location was Fort William and Mary, a derelict garrison at the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor with a large supply of munitions guarded by a mere six soldiers.

When Boston’s Committee of Correspondence, a local group of citizens opposed to British rule, received intelligence that British General Thomas Gage had secretly dispatched two regiments by sea to secure the New Hampshire fort—a report that was actually erroneous—they sent Revere to alert their counterparts in New Hampshire’s provincial capital. Just six days after the birth of his son Joshua, Revere embarked on a treacherous wintry journey over 55 miles of frozen, rutted roads. A frigid west wind stung his cheeks, and both rider and steed endured a constant pounding on the unforgiving roadway.

Late in the afternoon, Revere entered Portsmouth, a major maritime trading port that had recently imported Boston’s hostility to the royal government. He drew his reins at the waterfront residence of merchant Samuel Cutts, who immediately convened a meeting of the town’s own Committee of Correspondence. With Revere’s dispatch in hand, Portsmouth’s patriots plotted to seize the gunpowder from Fort William and Mary the following day.

Learning of Revere’s presence in the capital, New Hampshire’s royal governor, John Wentworth, suspected something was afoot. He alerted Captain John Cochran, the commander of the small garrison, to be on guard and dispatched an express rider to General Gage in Boston with an urgent plea for help.

The next morning, the steady beat of drums reverberated through the streets of Portsmouth, and 200 patriots soon gathered in the town center. Ignoring the entreaties of the province’s chief justice to disperse, the colonists, led by John Langdon, launched their boats into the icy Piscataqua River and rowed toward the fort on the harbor’s Great Island.

The logistics of overtaking a woefully undermanned fort were not daunting, but the sheer brazenness of the mission, and its dire consequences, should have given the men some pause. As the chief justice had just warned, storming the fort “was the highest act of treason and rebellion they could possibly commit.”

A snowstorm cloaked the colonists’ amphibious attack and muffled the rhythmic dipping of hundreds of oars as they approached the fort. When the patriots came ashore around 3 in the afternoon, they were joined by men from neighboring towns to form a force of approximately 400.

Langdon, a future New Hampshire governor and signer of the United States Constitution, demanded that Cochran hand over the fort’s gunpowder. Despite being outnumbered, the commander refused to yield without a fight. “I told them on their peril not to enter,” Cochran wrote to Wentworth. “They replied they would.”

Cochran ordered the five soldiers manning the ramparts “not to flinch on pain of death but to defend the fort to the last extremity.” On his command, the soldiers fired muskets and three four-pound cannons, but the shots missed the invaders. Before the troops could fire again, the patriots swarmed over the walls from every side and broke down the doors with axes and crowbars. The provincial soldiers put up a valiant fight—even Cochran’s wife wielded a bayonet—but math was not on their side. “I did all in my power to defend the fort,” Cochran lamented to Wentworth, “but all my efforts could not avail against so great a number.”

The patriots detained the soldiers for an hour and a half as they loaded 97 barrels of His Majesty’s gunpowder onto their boats. With a chorus of three cheers, the rebels defiantly lowered the King’s colors, an enormous flag that had proudly proclaimed British dominion over the harbor, and released the prisoners before dissolving into the falling snow as they rowed back to Portsmouth.

Couriers bearing news of the attack circulated through the New Hampshire countryside and recruited volunteers to retrieve the remaining armaments before British reinforcements could arrive. The following day, more than 1,000 patriots descended upon Portsmouth, turning the provincial capital of 4,500 people into a rebel hotbed.

Wentworth ordered his militia’s commanding officers to recruit 30 men to reinforce the fort. They couldn’t even scrounge up one, no doubt because many members were participants in the uprising. “Not one man appeared to assist in executing the law,” a disgusted Wentworth wrote in a letter. “All chose to shrink in safety from the storm, and suffered me to remain exposed to the folly and madness of an enraged multitude, daily and hourly increasing in numbers and delusion.”

That evening, hundreds of patriots led by John Sullivan, himself a provincial militia major and a delegate to the Continental Congress, again shoved off for the island garrison. Facing a force more than double that of the previous day, Cochran realized this time that he could not even muster a token defense. He watched helplessly as the colonists overran the installation and worked straight through the night loading their plunder.

By the time they left the next morning, Sullivan’s men had seized 16 pieces of cannon, about 60 muskets, and other military stores. The booty was disseminated through New Hampshire’s serpentine network of interior waterways on flat-bottomed cargo carriers called “gundalows” and hidden in hamlets throughout the region.

British reinforcements finally arrived on the night of December 17 aboard the HMS Canceaux, followed by the frigate HMS Scarborough two nights later. The uprising was over, but the treasonous assault was humiliating for the Crown, and Revere was a particular source of its ire. Wentworth wrote to Gage that the blame for the “false alarm” rested with “Mr. Revere and the dispatch brought, before which all was perfectly quiet and peaceable here.”

A plaque at the fort, now named Fort Constitution, declares it as the location of the “first victory of the American Revolution.” Other rebellious acts, such as the torching of the HMS Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, preceded it, but the raid on Fort William and Mary was different in that it was an organized, armed assault on the King’s property, rather than a spontaneous act of self-defense. Following the colonists’ treasonous acts in Portsmouth Harbor, British resolve to seize rebel supplies only strengthened, setting the stage for what happened four months later at Lexington and Concord. Ω

[Christopher Klein is an author and freelance writer specializing in history, travel, and sports. His latest book is The Die-Hard Sports Fan's Guide to Boston (2009). Klein graduated summa cum laude and with honors from Drew University.]

Copyright © 2011 Smithonian Magazine

Goodhair's Conundrum: So Many Death Row Inmates & So Few Trees!

2011-12-14T09:58:00.002-06:00

If there is a Hell, The Dubster & Goodhair should burn there. The Dubster mocked Karla Faye Tucker's Death Row conversion (As if his own conversion was genuine.) and Goodhair has not lost a moment's sleep over the possibility that any of the 238 men who have been executed during his miserable reign were innocent. Both of these Dumbos are beneath contempt. The ultimate insult to justice in the Lone Star State was Goodhair's posthumous pardon of a wrongfully executed man. Tim Cole's mother should have spit in Goodhair's face when he bent to tell her that he loved her at the pardoning ceremony. If this is a (fair & balanced) portrayal of a gubernatorial scumbag, so be it.

[x MoJo]
No Country For Innocent Men
By Beth Schwartzapfel

Tag Cloud of the following article

created at TagCrowd.com

(Click to enlarge)

"Dear Mr. Cole," the letter began. "My name is Jerry Wayne Johnson. I'm presently a Texas prisoner. You may recall my name from your 1986 rape trial in Lubbock."

Ruby Session was shaking as she read on. The year was 2007, and the letter was addressed to her son Timothy Cole. "I have been trying to locate you since 1995 to tell you I wish to confess I did in fact commit the rape Lubbock wrongly convicted you of."

Ruby sat down, stood up. A picture of Tim in a tuxedo, taken at his junior prom, smiled from the mantle. Before his trial the prosecutor had offered him a deal to plead to lesser charges. "Mother," Tim had said, "I am not pleading guilty to something I didn't do." He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Thirteen years later, he died behind bars.

The Texas criminal-justice system has long had a harsh reputation, but it has drawn renewed scrutiny with Gov. Rick Perry's run for president. During the past 11 years, Perry has presided over 238 executions, including the infamous case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put to death based on a dubious arson investigation. In a September debate, Perry famously said that he had lost no sleep over the possibility of an innocent man being executed on his watch.

Yet during his governorship, Texas has exonerated no fewer than 56 people. All had served years, sometimes decades, in prison; five were on death row. As Perry sees it, these exonerations don't suggest a problem with the system—they demonstrate that it's working. "We have a very lengthy and methodical process of appeals," he said in March 2010. "And that is a great and good mark for Texas."

Perry made those remarks during an extraordinary ceremony in which he handed down the first posthumous pardon in Texas history. Timothy Cole, imprisoned while a 26-year-old student at Texas Tech University, had been failed by the justice system at every turn. But what makes his story particularly gut-wrenching is that he perished in prison even as the real rapist, Jerry Johnson, tried repeatedly to confess to the crime. By the time Johnson's story was heard, Cole had been dead nearly a decade.

The tale of Tim Cole and Jerry Johnson, which I investigated for more than a year, reveals a system in which an innocent man, once convicted, has virtually no chance of redemption—even with the guilty man fighting for it. For the thousands of Americans spending years of their lives in prison for crimes they did not commit, the odds couldn't be much bleaker.

On the night of March 24, 1985, Texas Tech sophomore Michele Murray was parking her car near campus when a tall black man in a yellow terry-cloth shirt approached and asked her for jumper cables. He reached into the window, unlocked the door, and shoved Murray to the passenger side. He forced her head down onto the seat and held a knife to her neck. He told her that if she kept screaming she wouldn't come back alive.

He smoked while he drove. He asked her name, her major. He took her to a field outside of town and raped her. He smoked when he was done. Then he made her drive him back to town, stole her jewelry and money, and took off on foot.

It was the fifth rape on or around the Texas Tech campus in four months. Female students were frantic. Police were on high alert. In all the cases, a young woman was approached in her car by a tall black man—identified as a smoker by three of the victims—who drove her outside of town at knifepoint and raped her. Composite sketches of the "Tech rapist" in the local papers seemed to change daily. Only about 500 of the 22,000 students on campus were black, and it became a grim joke among them: Don't walk around campus at night or they'll say you're the rapist.

The shoddy police investigation and sensational trial that followed were capped by a remarkable coincidence. When Cole was taken to the Lubbock County Jail after his sentencing, in September 1986, the real rapist was right there in a nearby cell. Johnson, who was awaiting trial for two other rapes and a murder, had followed Cole's story in the paper. He listened to Cole cry. "It was terrible to learn that Tim was…on trial for something I knew he hadn't done," Johnson wrote to me in a letter in 2010. "Seeing him cry his first night in jail and seeing him leave to be taken to prison was difficult, I cried." But he did nothing. He was already facing the death penalty. "I knew it wasn't good to say anything before I went to trial." Later he would learn in the prison library that there was also the statute of limitations to consider. So he kept his mouth shut—for nine years.

Johnson grew up in the 1960s on the east side of Lubbock, an impoverished neighborhood of cotton fields and ramshackle houses. He was raised mostly by his great-grandmother; his mother, JoNell Johnson, and grandmother lived nearby, as did his estranged father, Lorenzo Harris. "Sometimes Jerry would come over to the house, be out there at the fence," Harris recalls. "He knew I was his daddy, but my wife would run him off."

Johnson was 12 years old the night in 1971 when his mother shot and killed a boyfriend after he assaulted her with a pool cue. (She was eventually sentenced to 10 years' probation.) He dropped out of high school but managed steady employment in blue-collar jobs. He had two children and got married in the early 1980s. But by 1985, Johnson says, he had lost control. "Obviously I had a psychological breakdown," he says. "Why, I don't know." When pressed, he demurs. "I cannot form a reason or cause for my actions."

Johnson raped Murray in March, he now admits, but investigators never pursued him as a suspect. He was arrested that July, however, for raping a woman he met at a party. In October, out on bond, he was arrested for kidnapping and raping a 15-year-old girl from Estacado High School; two years later, he was convicted of those crimes and sentenced to life in prison. He was also charged with murdering an insurance saleswoman, but those charges were dropped.

Johnson and I had been corresponding for about a year when we finally met in March 2010, in a bright, empty visitation room at the Price Daniel correctional facility in Snyder, Texas. Tall and thickly built, Johnson was dressed in the facility's standard white cotton shirt and pants and was soft-spoken and polite. Now 52, Johnson is certain he'll never be free again. "There's a lot of people live a false life; everything they do is a lie. Never no honesty. And you have those people that go to their death like that. I don't want to go to mine like that."

When I ask him about the four other Texas Tech rapes—so similar to Murray's but never solved—he says, "I don't have a comment about that stuff."

Hill View Drive, the leafy middle-class block where Tim Cole and his six younger siblings grew up, was overrun with kids. Cole was a big brother to them all: He organized sports games, led neighborhood jogs, and gave advice. "Tim used to always tell me to be the best I could be," recalls neighbor Leon Warren. "He would tell me, 'Make sure you go to a major university and do good,' and 'You can make it.'"

From an early age Cole was sure he would play basketball in college—despite his severe asthma, he loved sports—study business, and own his own company. He went to Texas Tech and the University of Texas-San Antonio before joining the Army in 1981; in 1984, he moved in with his younger brother Reggie in Lubbock to go back to school at Tech. He studied long hours, worked as a dishwasher, and partied occasionally. In January 1985, he was robbed outside a party, and when he reported the crime, police found some marijuana and a gun in his pocket. (He was charged with a misdemeanor.)

One night that April, outside a pizza parlor, Cole chatted up a woman named Rosanna. After Cole had driven away, she got into her partner's squad car, sure she'd found her mark. Rosanna was an undercover police officer—bait for the Tech rapist. Two days later, a detective stopped by Cole's place. He needed to take a picture, he said, for the investigation of the robbery Cole had reported. Cole looked straight into the camera and the detective snapped a Polaroid.

Later that day, an officer brought a photo lineup over to Murray's dorm. All but one of the photos were mug shots—men looking away from the camera, holding their book-in cards. Murray hesitated. She pointed to the Polaroid of Cole. "I think that is him," she said.

"Are you positive?" asked the officer.

"Yes," she said. "I am positive."

Eyewitness identification has long been the most powerful tool in a prosecutor's arsenal. Even when there is a dearth of forensic evidence, juries are swayed by a victim's certitude—how could she forget the face of the person who raped her? But researchers are learning just how often eyewitnesses are wrong: Nationwide, incorrect identification was a factor in the convictions of more than 75 percent of people eventually exonerated by DNA. Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor who has studied the issue for decades, says the Lubbock police did exactly the things that can influence an eyewitness to choose the wrong guy. In a good lineup, he says, the witness must be warned that the perpetrator might not be in the lineup at all. "The tendency is to pick the person who looks most like the perpetrator—relative to the other lineup members," Wells explains. He also argues that the process must be double blind: Neither the officer nor the witness should know which photo shows the true suspect. "It's so natural for the lineup administrator, if you pick the person they had in mind, to smile, react, to reinforce."

For his 2011 book, Convicting the Innocent, University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett examined hundreds of DNA exonerations and found that in at least a third of the cases the victim was shown a "stacked lineup" like Cole's, where the actual suspect was highlighted. Even if victims were uncertain initially, he says, "by the time of trial, almost all of them were absolutely sure they were identifying the right person."

At trial, Cole faced a jury that included one member whose ex-wife had recently been a victim of sexual assault. His brother Reggie and his friends testified that on the night of the rape they were home, partying, while Cole sat at the dining room table all night studying. Reggie also testified that his brother never smoked due to his asthma. But the prosecutor, Jim Bob Darnell, portrayed them as liars who would say anything to save Cole.

No evidence tied Cole to the rape. His attorney, Mike Brown, brought up Jerry Johnson several times and even submitted a picture of him as evidence. Johnson had been charged with two rapes by then, and Brown recognized similarities with those assaults. It didn't matter. "What the jurors saw, and heard, was a courageous young woman unshakeable in her belief of who had raped her," District Court Judge Charlie Baird would write many years later in exonerating Cole. "What they did not know was how that belief had been shaped and formed by the police."

Ruby Session chokes with sorrow as she recalls the moments after her son was sentenced, when he fell to the courtroom floor and cried. She got off her chair and down on the floor with him. She hugged him and rocked him. "My son, a 26-year-old man, lying in his mother's arms. And that's all I could do. And that's the last time my baby was in my arms like that."

Johnson's plan from the start, he says, was to contact Cole directly. "I believed at some point I would connect with him," he says, "and he would probably send a lawyer to talk with me and try to get himself out." He began by writing letters to everyone he knew in prison, asking if they'd run into a guy named Tim Cole. It was a fool's errand—Cole could have been among any one of more than 100 prison units. But Johnson says he couldn't think of another way to find him.

Johnson did not approach the authorities until years after the statute of limitations for the Murray rape had run out. Then, in 1995, he petitioned the court to appoint an attorney for him so he could confess. He copied the petition both to Brown and the district attorney. He got no response.

For five years Johnson worked on his own appeals and helped other prisoners with their legal paperwork. "Never during this time period did I not think about Tim and the petition or a way to contact him," he says. But he took no further action.

Then, in 2000, Johnson sent the court a letter: "Judge I believe I have properly raised an important issue the court should have long ago addressed. Certainly the convicted man would want to see his name finally cleared." In January 2001, he got a two-line order in the mail, with no explanation. It simply said, "Denied."

Most appeals in Texas criminal cases end up at the Court of Criminal Appeals, which consists primarily of former prosecutors elected to the bench. The court rarely reverses a case, even in the face of glaring errors or unfairness—in one case, it upheld the conviction of a man cleared by DNA evidence—and its conduct has prompted the US Supreme Court to rebuke it several times.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is similarly stacked with former law enforcement officials and prosecutors. They rarely meet in person, typically passing a file from one office to the next for an up-or-down vote. The inmate has no right to demand a hearing from the board or receive an explanation. "Either they hire a lawyer or they pray to God," says William T. Habern, former executive director of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Project. "They can write something in if they want to, but who do you think the board is going to believe? Some inmate?" When Cole was up for parole in 1996, Texas considered 1,024 cases classified as SB-45, or "Extraordinary Vote," which include certain types of sexual abuse and violent crimes, and require a vote by the full board. Among those 1,024 cases, not a single prisoner was granted parole and released.

Until the advent of DNA technology, wrongful convictions were thought to be extremely rare. But as the number of DNA exonerations rises—at least 281 as of this writing—we confront the uncomfortable truth that the number of innocent people behind bars is far higher than we realize. The vast majority of DNA exonerations are in rape cases. In many felony cases—robberies, shootings, murders, drug-related crimes—there is no DNA to test. Even in rape cases, forensic evidence often is lost or destroyed.

DNA testing provides false assurance, then, that there is recourse for people failed by the justice system. What it really does is underscore what a true solution would require: a system equipped to deal with the significant number of people locked up for crimes they did not commit. Experts say that number is nearly impossible to nail down. But a conservative estimate, extrapolating from research on eyewitness identification and DNA exonerations, ranges from at least a few thousand to more than 20,000 people wrongly imprisoned nationwide.

A string of devastating stories has put Texas justice, in particular, under a cloud. In addition to Cole's postmortem exoneration and the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, chronicled in The New Yorker in 2009, there is also the case of Anthony Graves, who served 18 years for a gruesome murder while the true killer confessed again and again. Graves was finally freed in 2010 following a Texas Monthly exposé.

Cole, Willingham, and Graves were all convicted under prior Texas governors. But Perry has done little to improve the state's criminal-justice system, which has almost a million people in its grip. In 2001, he vetoed a bill banning the execution of the mentally disabled. In 2003, he cut the prison system's budget by $230 million, slashing education programs, drug treatment, and food; when an independent auditor warned that was untenable, Perry cut the auditor's office too. In 2007, his administration backed a bill making some child sex offenders eligible for the death penalty. While Perry has signed legislative reforms covering eyewitness identification and access to DNA testing, the system still offers scant options for the many people imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.

During his years behind bars, Cole tried to keep himself busy. He took business classes, corresponded with family, and subscribed to magazines like Nature, Jet, and Money. "I want to become vindicated as well as totally exonerated in order to receive a Pardon from the Governor of the State of Texas in order to place it on my wall in my future office or the den of my home," he wrote in one letter. As he told his mother to stay strong and his brothers to study hard and go to college, he repeated this phrase like a mantra: "vindicated and totally exonerated."

In 1991, Cole won an appeal on procedural grounds, but the Court of Criminal Appeals still ruled his conviction would stand. In 1992, his case was considered by the pardon and parole board. He was asked if he was sorry for what he did. He said he didn't do anything. He was denied parole. He kept up on emerging DNA technology, and in 1995 he wrote a letter to the newly founded Innocence Project in New York City, but the organization did not take his case. In 1996, he was denied parole again.

Cole was running out of options. The dust, heat, and poor ventilation had brought back his asthma, and he was shuttled between hospital wards and prison cells—twice he was found unconscious and rushed to the emergency room.

In Cole's letters, upbeat sentiments like "I will continue to patiently wait for this unfortunate matter to resolve itself" began to give way to "How far does this miscarriage of justice have to go before I can prove my innocence?" And finally, "I don't have any more dreams."

On December 2, 1999, Tim Cole was on his way to the infirmary with chest pain when he collapsed on the floor and never woke up again. He was 39.

There is no formal legal means in Texas to confess to a crime for which someone else has been convicted. "I guess you can contact whatever law enforcement agency handled the case," says Lubbock District Attorney Matt Powell. That, of course, is precisely what Johnson did when he copied his petition to the district attorney in 1995.

"Here you've got a guilty guy saying, 'I did this crime,'" says Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas. "All the ears went deaf and all the eyes went blind."

The Innocence Project of Texas itself receives thousands of letters each year from inmates claiming to be innocent, and Blackburn says that has fine-tuned his BS detector. Even guilty prisoners have nothing to lose by trying; indeed, Johnson wrote to the Innocence Project about Cole in 2005, but his confession was buried in a diatribe about other issues and got no traction. Johnson also fired off letters to newspaper reporters, law professors, and even a private investigation firm. Some were angry rants about Lubbock law enforcement; some asked for help with his own innocence claim; some expressed a wish to confess. Many of the letters contained all these things, perhaps making them difficult to take seriously.

But then, in 2006, Cole's former attorney, Mike Brown, received one of Johnson's letters. (Brown says he doesn't recall ever receiving a copy of Johnson's 1995 petition.) He forwarded it to Powell, who sent an investigator to look into it, not expecting much.

By April 2007, Johnson still had gotten nowhere. But then, while looking through some old papers, an idea struck him. He had his stepmother look up Cole's jail book-in card, which contained Cole's home address. Soon afterward, Ruby Session held Johnson's letter to her son in her hands.

After recovering from the shock, Session sent a copy of Johnson's letter to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which during her son's trial had run his name under headlines referring to the "Tech rapist." Now, the paper noted: "The family of Timothy Brian Cole, who was 26 when he was convicted of rape in 1986 and died in prison while serving a 25-year sentence, hope a letter they received last week from a man imprisoned for two brutal rapes around the same time will finally clear the former Tech student's name."

Reading the paper in his cell, Johnson was stunned. He'd had no idea Cole had died. "I remember not coming off my bunk the rest of that night," he says. "I reread and reread that article."

The paper also quoted a skeptical Jeff Blackburn of the Innocence Project. "We've had several of these guys," he said. "None of them have checked out." Cole's youngest brother, Cory, took exception to Blackburn's comments and called to tell him. The two men soon became friends. After the Innocence Project sent a lawyer to interview Johnson, Blackburn agreed to represent the family to clear Cole's name. With public pressure mounting, the DA's office discovered that the original rape kit was still in storage; it conducted DNA testing with Johnson's cooperation and soon confirmed that he was indeed the rapist.

The proceeding to posthumously exonerate Cole took place in Austin in February 2009. Michele Murray (now Mallin) was there to confront Johnson for the first time since 1985. She and Session hugged and cried, and she told Johnson that she hoped he'd suffer for what he'd done to her, and to Cole. "No man—no person—deserves what that young man got," she said.

Cole's brother Sean rocked in his chair and cried as Judge Baird read his ruling: "I find to a 100 percent moral, factual, and legal certainty that Timothy Cole did not sexually assault Michele Murray Mallin."

Session listened, expressionless.

"I find that Timothy Cole's reputation was wrongly injured, that his reputation must be restored, and that his good name must be vindicated."

Cole's brother Reggie pumped both fists in the air.

"I find that Tim Cole shall be and is hereby exonerated and freed from any guilt or blame related to the sexual assault of Michele Murray Mallin."

It was all over the news. Texans in their living rooms heard about it, the Board of Pardons and Paroles heard about it, legislators heard about it. The Tim Cole Act, establishing one of the nation's most generous compensation programs for the wrongfully convicted, passed three months later.

On a windy day in March 2010, Rick Perry, impeccably groomed in a camel-colored jacket and green tie, stood in a hotel conference room in downtown Fort Worth. Perry quoted from Proverbs and flashed a solemn grin around a room filled with family members, reporters, and exonerated convicts. "Ruby, it means the world to me to be here today to look you in the eye and tell you that your son is pardoned," he said. He commended her for her "graceful persuasiveness" and called her a "wonderful, loving, Christian woman." Then Perry leaned in to hug her, adding, "And I want to say: I love you."

But if Perry learned anything from the exoneration of Tim Cole, it was not in evidence 18 months later, when he went on national television and declared his absolute faith in the Texas justice system. Ruby Session clearly had not shared that faith as she received Perry's pardon, somber-faced. That night she went home and, next to her son's junior-prom picture, carefully placed on the mantle the piece of paper he had died waiting for. Ω

[Beth Schwartzapfel is a journalist and writer specializing in long-form and narrative journalism. Her work has appeared in Mother Jones, the New York Times, the Nation, and Ms, among other newspapers and magazines. Schwartzapfel earned a BA in English, with honors in Creative Writing, from Brown University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the New School.]

Copyright © 2011 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress

The End Of The Trail, er, Hajj?

2011-12-13T13:39:00.000-06:00

In July 2011, one of the most prominent foodies in this country (restaurant critic Andrew Knowlton) annointed a hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint in East Austin as primus inter pares (first among equals) in the world of smoked meat in Central Texas. Today, this intrepid blogger, with utter disregard for his own comfort, got to the Franklin Barbecue joint more than an hour before the place opened and he was still 10th in line. At 10:45 AM, an employee came out and took a survey of what those in line were going to order after the door opened. A rough tally was made and for those at the middle of the line and beyond, the verdict was "We'll be out of meat before you can get in the door." Back in the summer 2011, just after the article appeared in Bon Appétit, this blogger was at the end of a two-block line. He didn't wait around for the news that there was no more meat that day. Now, drum roll please, this blogger ate Franklin's brisket, a couple of pork ribs, and a ½-link of sausage. Verdict: close, but no cigar for Franklin Barbecue. Not even the best in Central Texas, let alone the US of A. A wait in line at Louie Mueller BBQ in Taylor, Texas is worth the wait. Franklin Barbecue, not so much. If this is (fair & balanced) foodie savagery, so be it.

[x Bon Appétit]
The Best BBQ Restaurant In America
By Andrew Knowlton

Tag Cloud of the following article

created at TagCrowd.com

(See a Franklin Barbecue slideshow here.

Long before most people have had their first cup of coffee, Aaron Franklin is on his third espresso. When you're smoking the best BBQ in the country, your day starts very early. In order to get his impossibly tender brisket and ribs ready for the lunch rush, Franklin arrives at his no-frills restaurant, Franklin Barbecue, in East Austin, Texas, at 3:30 a.m. By ten o'clock a line composed of bleary-eyed college kids, office workers abusing their lunch "hour," and BBQ geeks will form; by 1:15 p.m. the dreaded sign will be posted: "Sorry, Sold Out! Come Back Soon."

Franklin's rise to the ranks of pit-master stardom is incredible considering the sanctity (and proximity) of the legendary spots and the loyalists who support them. Even more impressive, Franklin has done in a couple of years what took others decades to achieve. In December 2009, the then-31-year-old opened a food trailer in a vacant lot behind a friend's coffee roastery. Weeks later, his barbecued meats (pulled pork, pork ribs, sausages, and stunning brisket—the pride of Texas-style barbecue) became the focus of camera-toting food bloggers and local media. Now this upstart joint, not even two years old, is mentioned in the same breath as BBQ stalwarts Kreuz Market and Smitty's Market in nearby Lockhart. Some even think it has surpassed the greats. You can count me as a member of that club.

Some experts argue that attaining BBQ-genius status requires a degree of heredity. If that's true, Franklin qualifies. His father owned a spot in Bryan, Texas. It was short-lived, but young Franklin was bitten by the bug. Several years after his dad's place closed, Franklin's wife, Stacy, who now helps run the restaurant, sent him to the hardware store to buy a grill. Except he didn't come back with a grill; he returned with an offset smoker. His first brisket was, by his admission, "awfully terrible." But friends who came over for the couple's backyard barbecues started to heap on the praise. His hobby became a profession, and by March of this year, Franklin had outgrown his tiny trailer's kitchen and opened a bricks-and-mortar location with two commercial smokers. The crowds followed.

Franklin's explanation for his overnight success is almost antithetical. "Patience," he says in his understated way—to which I'd add exacting sourcing and technique. First of all, he uses Meyer Angus beef, which is humanely raised in Montana without hormones or antibiotics. The fires in his pits are started using only post oak wood and butcher paper drenched in the tallow that covered the previous day's brisket. Then, after seasoning the ribs with (of course) a secret spice mix and putting them in the smoker, Franklin grabs a lawn chair, checks his e-mail, and usually works on the New York Times crossword puzzle for an hour. Once the meat is done, he wraps it in foil or butcher paper and sets it aside for that day's service.

His brisket requires even more TLC. Franklin swears he uses only salt and pepper to season it. Judging by the complex flavors of the finished product, I think he's withholding a spice or two, but he promises it's all about time and the temperature of the pits. Whereas most places smoke brisket for seven hours at a blazing 500°, Franklin cooks his for about 18 hours at 250° to 270°. It goes into the pits around 9:00 a.m. and won't come off until about 3:00 a.m. the next day. The meat emerges with a pinkish smoke ring around the interior—the true sign of cared-for barbecue—that's almost a half-inch thick.

Let it be known that before visiting Franklin Barbecue a few months back, I never considered Texas brisket real BBQ. I'm a Georgia native and, like most hardened BBQ regionalists, I was convinced that the best BBQ was what I'd grown up eating. For me, the "real stuff" meant pulled or chopped pork. It was only after I moved to New York City—yes, New York City—some 12 years ago and visited spots that dabbled in all styles that I realized BBQ could involve beef. (I know that sounds crazy, but I'm sure my Southern brethren understand.) Life's too short to get caught up in the debate about what constitutes traditional, authentic BBQ and what does not. As a wise friend said, "If you're talking about it, you're not eating it." Today, I'm more concerned with eating delicious smoked meat than with arguing about its origins. Great BBQ can be found all over the country, from Portland, Oregon, to Manhattan. It also just happens to be at Franklin Barbecue.

So here's my mandate: Go to Austin and queue up at Franklin Barbecue by 10:30 a.m. When you get to the counter, Aaron Franklin will be waiting, knife in hand, ready to slice up his brisket. (Order the fatty end.) Grab a table, a few beers, and lots of napkins and dig in. Take a bite, and don't tell me you're not convinced you've reached the BBQ promised land. But hurry: Franklin's a prizefighter in the prime of his career. There's no telling how long he'll keep up with his schedule. Let's hope, for barbecue lovers' sake, that this man never loses his passion for BBQ, or runs out of espresso. Ω

[Andrew Knowlton is the Restaurant and Drinks Editor of Bon Appétit magazine, where he writes features and monthly columns for both the magazine and the website. Knowlton has appeared as a judge on The Food Network’s "The Next Iron Chef America" and "Iron Chef America" as well as on NBC's "Chopping Block."]

Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast Digital

Read Tom Tomorrow Today

2011-12-12T10:33:00.000-06:00

How dumb can Dumbo voters be? How high is up? How many bubbles are in a bar of soap? These are equivalent questions. However, the limitless stupidity of those who vote Dumbo (GOP) is limned in the rise of Newtron as the Dumbo frontrunner to oppose the POTUS 44 in 2012. Most incredibly, the Religious Right, holding family values über alles, are supporting Newtron as the flavor of the month. Tom Tomorrow lists all of Newtron's endearing qualities in today's 'toon. In 1996, Newtron provided the Dumbos (and Teabaggers) with a list of descriptive terms for Democrats: anti-flag, anti-child, anti-family, bizarre, pathetic, sick, and traitor. In the interest of equal time, this blogger has a few descriptive terms for Newtron: hypocrite, sleazeball, scumbag, bizarre, pathetic, sick, and traitor. If this is (fair & balanced) sauce for the goose/gander, so be it.

[x This Modern World]
Fun Facts About Newt Gingrich
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

(Click to enlarge) Ω

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins.

[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Salon and Working for Change. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly.

Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002.

When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001.]

Copyright © 2011 Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)

Stop! In The Name Of Blogging??????

2011-12-11T10:45:00.003-06:00

It may be a sign of creeping senility, but this blogger enjoyed the slide show of wacko traffic signs and billboards with background music by the one-hit Canadian group, The Five-Man Electrical Band. Enjoy.

[x YouTube/Dantheshan Channel]
Signs (1971)
By The Five-Man Electrical Band

If this is (fair balanced) semiotics, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap 'Zine]
The Stop Sign Wasn’t Always Red
By Hilary Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein

Tag Cloud of the following article

created at TagCrowd.com

(Click images to enlarge)

In the early automobile age, American streets existed in a Hobbesian, drive-or-be-plastered state of anarchy. “Not only were the streets in those days completely disgusting and filthy, but there were horses and bicycles, and it was just completely chaotic,” says Joshua Schank, C.E.O. of the Eno Transportation Foundation, whose namesake and founder, William Phelps Eno, is widely credited with conceiving the stop sign at the turn of the 20th century.

At a time when there were no driver’s licenses, speed limits or clear lane demarcations, the notion of a stop sign was revolutionary. In fact, aside from the occasional road markers letting riders on horseback know how far they were from the next city, there was no road or street signage at all. Eno, scion of a wealthy New England family who never learned to drive, helped change all that. In a 1900 article titled “Reforming Our Street Traffic Urgently Needed,” for Rider and Driver magazine, he proposed placing stop signs at intersections. It was a civilizing notion.“That was a new concept and really did introduce the idea that you had to watch out for other people,” Schank says.

THE SIGN ENGINEERS

Eno became a key figure in a traffic-control awakening that would make great strides in the early 20th century. In 1911, a Michigan road got a center line. In 1915, Cleveland received an electric traffic signal. Detroit, the center of the automobile industry, is credited with installing the first proper stop sign that same year. According to Schank, it took the form of a 2-by-2-feet sheet of metal with black lettering on a white background.

We have the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments to thank for the stop sign’s iconic shape. In 1923, the association developed an influential set of recommendations about street-sign shapes whose impact is still felt today. The recommendations were based on a simple, albeit not exactly intuitive, idea: the more sides a sign has, the higher the danger level it invokes. By the engineers’ reckoning, the circle, which has an infinite number of sides, screamed danger and was recommended for railroad crossings. The octagon, with its eight sides, was used to denote the second-highest level. The diamond shape was for warning signs. And the rectangle and square shapes were used for informational signs. “You have to realize this was done by engineers, and engineers can be overly analytical,” says Gene Hawkins, a professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M University and the nation’s pre-eminent expert on the history of the stop sign.

BIG RED

It took a bit longer to determine the stop sign’s color. It wasn’t until 1935 that traffic engineers created the first uniform standards for the nation’s road signage, known as the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. It was 166 pages long and recommended a yellow stop sign with black letters. The 1954 revision, however, called for the stop sign to be red with white letters, in step with the color-coding system developed for the railroad and traffic signals. “Red has always been associated with stop,” Hawkins explains. “The problem was they could not produce a reflective material in red that would last. It just was not durable until companies came up with a product in the late ’40s, early ’50s.”

Today the stop sign is so ingrained in collective international driving culture that some experts are, counterintuitively, recommending doing away with it entirely. (Ejby, Denmark; Ipswich, England; and Ostend, Belgium, are already experimenting with a post-stop-sign world.) “The theory is that people will pay more attention to pedestrians and other vehicles and slow down in pedestrian areas if there are no signs, because they won’t know what to do,” Schank says. “That wouldn’t be possible if [Eno] hadn’t first introduced the stop sign.” Ω

[Hilary Greenbaum is a graphic designer and columnist for The New York Times Magazine. She graduated with College and University Honors (BFA) from Carnegie Mellon University; she also received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Dana Rubinstein is a freelance reporter In NYC. She received a BA from Cornell University and an MA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.]

Copyright © 2011 The New York Times Company

Season's Greetings From This Blog!

2011-12-10T10:13:00.001-06:00

Parodist Marcy Shaffer and her friends at Versus ring in the season to be jolly with a medley of carol-based railleries.If this is a (fair & balanced) early gift, so be it.

[x Versus]
In Excess, And Way So! (Holiday Parody Sampler}
Parody Lyrics By Marcy Shaffer

RANGES I HAD HEARD WERE HIGH, to "Angels We Have Heard On High"(Traditional): Gary Stockdale - Lead Vocal. A remix/new video of the VERSUSPLUS classic "Exchanges Have Occurred On High."

MALAY RIDE, to "Sleigh Ride" (Music by Leroy Anderson/Words by Mitchell Parish): Janis Liebhart - Lead Vocal, Background Vocals

GO TELL IT IN ACCOUNTIN', to “Go Tell It On The Mountain” (Traditional): Gary Stockdale - Lead Vocal, Background Vocal; Scottie Haskell - Background Vocal; Janis Liebhart - Background Vocal

THE CINDERS OF AYN RAND, to “Winter Wonderland” (Words by Dick Smith/Music by Felix Bernard): Janis Liebhart - Lead Vocal, Background Vocal; Scottie Haskell - Background Vocal; Gary Stockdale - Background Vocal

OH, CRE (Oh, Commercial Real Estate), to “O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum)" (Traditional): Janis Liebhart - Lead Vocal, Background Vocal; Angie Jarée - Background Vocal; Gary Stockdale - Background Vocal

IT'S BEGINNING (TO LOOK A LOT MORE RISKLESS), to “It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” (Words and Music by Meredith Willson): Gary Stockdale - Lead Vocal, Background Vocal; Angie Jarée - Background Vocal; Janis Liebhart - Background Vocal Ω

[VERSUS parodies are written by Marcy Shaffer, whose professional writing experience includes television, film, lyrics, verse and… musical parody. VERSUS is co-produced by Russ Meyer, a private equity veteran whose industry expertise includes financial services as well as entertainment. Shaffer is an attorney-cum-parodist (Roll over Stephan Pastis!) — AB from Radcliffe College and a JD from Harvard Law; her partner, Russ Meyer, received his MBA from Stanford University. Shaffer writes the words and Meyer counts the beans.]

℗ © 2011 RMSWorks

Roll Over, John Madden! Make Way For Chucky!

2011-12-09T09:25:00.001-06:00

Today's most entertaining talking head on ESPN is one of the two analysts on "Monday Night Football": Jon Gruden. Unlike his co-analyst, ex-Philadelphia Eagles QB Ron (Jaws) Jaworski, Gruden is a loose cannon in the TV booth. If this is a (fair & balanced) trivial pursuit, so be it.

[x The New Yorker]
Monday Night Lights
By Kelefa Sanneh

Tag Cloud of the following article

created at TagCrowd.com

(Click to enlarge)

Jon Gruden has one of the most recognizable faces in professional football, partly because he hasn’t worn a helmet since 1985, when he began his transformation from feckless college quarterback to triumphant professional coach. In 1998, he was named the head coach of the Oakland Raiders; in 2003, at thirty-nine, he won the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Sports Illustrated chronicled his “spectacular” rise, and People anointed him one of the “beautiful people,” although his appearance was more impish than debonair—he was known as Chucky, because of his devilish squint, which made him resemble the psychotic doll from the horror movie “Child’s Play.”

In 2009, after a particularly disappointing season, the Buccaneers fired him, but, instead of moving on, he stayed put, and prospered. Gruden, who is now forty-eight, remained in Tampa, with his wife and three sons. He rented an office in a local strip mall, where he began presiding over irregular gatherings of a group that he calls the Fired Football Coaches Association. (He keeps boxes of F.F.C.A. visors and T-shirts in the bathroom, stacked in the shower stall.) Gruden’s office contains one of the country’s greatest collections of football videotapes, sorted according to a complicated taxonomy of his own devising. He says, “You want to talk about two-minute offense? Ball security? Nickel jam? Red-zone touchdown passes? Quarterback fundamentals? Read options? Three-down nickel blitzes? Checkdowns? Wildcats? I got it all down here.”

A few weeks after Gruden was fired, he got a call from a TV producer, who wanted him to evaluate college players for coverage of the N.F.L. draft. His technical facility and slightly screwy intensity transformed an interminable event into something a regular person might watch, at least for a few minutes: in Gruden’s amplified view, the seemingly mundane selection process is actually a series of criminally good deals and unconscionable misjudgments. In May, 2009, ESPN announced that Gruden would be joining “Monday Night Football,” the network’s top-rated show, as one of two analysts, alongside Ron Jaworski, a former quarterback, and Mike Tirico, the play-by-play announcer. Jaworski is an erudite football scholar, and a levelheaded one, which means that he sometimes seems like Gruden’s sensible sidekick, or perhaps his minder.

Earlier this season, deep in the third quarter of a close game, the camera cut to the broadcasting trio in the booth. “This division is up for grabs,” Gruden said. His TV voice, a twangy Midwestern snarl, is no different from his everyday speaking voice. “Somebody’s got to grab ahold of it and choke it!”

Jaworski hung his big hand on Gruden’s shoulder. “Relax, Jon,” he said. “Relax.”

In October, ESPN gave Gruden a five-year contract extension. Gruden is now one of the most influential analysts of the country’s most popular sport—a mixed blessing for a man who only ever wanted to be a coach. When his son Deuce made his high-school football team, Gruden agreed to be the assistant offensive-line coach, and he rented a cherry picker so that he could record the games from high above the field, for intensive study. Sean Payton, the head coach of the New Orleans Saints, a former protégé of Gruden’s and a longtime friend, has noticed that neither Gruden’s level of effort nor his routine has changed much since he got fired. “I think if we were clocking Jon, the hours would be very, very similar,” he said.

On TV, Gruden’s understanding of football strategy is less conspicuous than the sheer delight he takes in the game, and the urgency he ascribes to even the most banal triumph or miscue. The world of football is dominated by two types, brutes and nitpickers, and Gruden’s exuberant commentary shows how both can coexist in one rather feverish person. During a replay of a successful run, he praised the elegant design and the decisive violence. “Well, I like that kind of football right there,” he said. “You put about three tight ends on the right, and you just mash people.

He is also a polarizing figure, criticized for overpraising players—the man once known as Chucky has become something of a cheerleader. “Outstanding young man,” he said one night, gushing over a promising quarterback named Matt Cassel. During another game, after an unremarkable six-yard rushing play, he said, “That was one of the best runs I’ve seen.” And when the New Orleans Saints’ transcendent quarterback, Drew Brees, darted away from a mob of defenders to complete an unlikely pass, Gruden said, “Way to go, Brees—that’s awesome!”

The rise of fantasy football has created a subcategory of fans for whom individual player statistics (which determine the performance of their fantasy teams) are more important than wins and losses. But Gruden abhors the “stats sluts” who try to replace the judgments of a trained eye with mathematical formulas. He says, “You know what I hate, man? Guys that you know haven’t seen the film: they just quote a bunch of statistical bullshit.” Of course, there’s something absurd about a man who loves data railing against “statistical bullshit.” As Gruden demonstrates every Monday night, it’s not possible to assess football without statistics. If anything, his voluminous appetite for game film suggests that football needs more and better statistics: a way to measure all the things that Gruden notices when he is watching and rewatching plays. But coaches, no less than fans, like to believe that there will always be a role in the game for spirit and determination—and, by extension, for coaches and for fans.

In “Moneyball,” the film based on Michael Lewis’s baseball book, Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who revolutionized baseball through sophisticated statistical analysis: it turned out that managers were routinely overrating or underrating players. Through unsentimental analysis and shrewd trading, Beane managed to improve the Athletics’ wins-per-dollar ratio: he couldn’t outspend the Yankees, but he could outsmart them. The film presents Beane’s triumph as a victory for a scrappy team, and for baseball, which could cast off the shackles of faulty statistics. In fact, the Athletics’ triumph was incomplete (they never won the World Series) and temporary, because other teams started using more accurate statistics, too. Beane’s broader achievement, making baseball more efficient, could even make it more difficult for cash-strapped teams like the Athletics to prosper. “Moneyball” is, despite itself, a melancholy film: it hints at a joyless future in which players always play about as well as the numbers would predict, and therefore have no reason to play at all. Gruden energetically upholds the illusion, essential to fandom, that sports is a test of character—that every play, every game, really matters.

Gruden wakes up early, at three-seventeen (an arbitrary alarm-clock setting that stuck), and on a recent Thursday morning he arrived at the F.F.C.A. at around three-forty-five, pulling his white Mercedes into the empty lot. He wanted to learn everything he could about the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs, who were playing in the following Monday’s game. Gruden spent the morning examining “melts,” video compilations that allow him to view every play from just about every angle.

He is fit and reflexively physical, with a habit, common to coaches, of accentuating his statements with pokes, taps, and gentle shoves. But he has trained himself to sit still for hours, holding a professional-grade remote control called a Cowboy clicker, watching plays forward and backward, at full speed and in slow motion. He works in silence, except for his own occasional remarks. Every week, as he gets to know the two teams, he quickly comes to view their achievements and blunders as his own. “That wasn’t very good,” he murmured, after one uninspired Chiefs sequence. “That wasn’t our best effort. Wonder what happened.” Then he hit rewind and watched the play again.

There is no rational way to explain the amount of time that Gruden invests in each “Monday Night Football” broadcast: he spends days memorizing the names, numbers, and tendencies of all fifty-three players on both teams, even though little of this information makes it onto the broadcast. Once he has a sense of each team, he starts editing, creating a series of four-minute demonstration reels, known as “cutups,” to share with his producers and fellow-broadcasters, partly so they can create highlight clips for the show, and partly so that he can be sure they know what he’s talking about. When he is finished compiling a cutup, he sits with the Cowboy clicker in his left hand and a mouse in his right hand, so that he can run back and forth over the plays and draw emphatic arrows and circles, while he records an audio commentary track. These commentaries, for internal use only, are both loopier and more technical than what’s broadcast on “Monday Night Football.” Footage of Tom Brady, the Patriots’ dominant quarterback, inspired a theatrical soliloquy:

Tom Brady? He’ll kill ya. If he catches you half asleep, he’ll punch you right in the face with the stretch—he’ll hand the ball to Woodhead, or Green-Ellis, or Ridley, or Faulk. Guys aren’t ready. They’re not ready. He’ll do it five plays in a row, on national TV, in front of the world. And he loves nothing more than humiliating you. Because I know this: he humiliated me. It’s a hell of a system they have, and he is the greatest trigger of our lifetime. Look at him! He’s snapping these plays off before the Jets are ready. You can be as multiple as you want on defense, but, when you play Tom Brady, he regulates you. He turns you into [whispered] trash.

It seems likely that Gruden spends more time watching tape than the average N.F.L. coach; certainly he spends more time talking to other coaches, because he has no secrets to protect. From one perspective, this might seem like a waste: one of football’s sharpest minds, watching all the teams without coaching any of them.

But, from a different perspective, it is football’s complexity and secrecy that seem wasteful: all that intelligence and effort devoted to delicate, multivariable contingency plans that the vast majority of fans will never notice, let alone decipher. Football strategy, an arms race between offenses and defenses, is a bit like Beane’s moneyball: it doesn’t necessarily make the sport more entertaining, and may indeed make it less so. Tim Tebow, of the Denver Broncos, became one of the year’s biggest stories precisely because he counters this trend: he is a much maligned quarterback, dogged but crude, who has thrilled fans—and converted Gruden, a former skeptic—by reviving a violent and risky offensive scheme called the option, which was supposed to have been rendered obsolete by the speed and aptitude of modern N.F.L. defenders. Tebow throws less and runs more: instead of looking calmly downfield, he might scuttle toward the sideline, daring a linebacker to try to tackle him.

John Madden, the ultimate coach-turned-commentator, discovered that, after twelve years of coaching professional football, he was burned out; his thirty-year second act, as an analyst and a lovable celebrity, eventually came to define him, and he never seemed to question his decision to abandon the sidelines. Gruden is still widely perceived as a potential coach—his name is mentioned, online and on sports radio, whenever there is a quivering team in need of defibrillation. But executives at ESPN won’t say whether his new contract includes a provision that would allow him to return to coaching, and, for now, Gruden considers himself lucky to have one of football’s best jobs. “Every time, after a Monday-night game, I try to walk by the locker rooms, because I love to see the team that just won,” he says. “And then you drift by the losing team’s locker room. You just see the pain, the fatigue in people’s faces—that’s what you don’t miss.”

Gruden grew up in a football family, the son of a journeyman coach, Jim Gruden, who was hired as an assistant at Notre Dame in 1978, when Gruden was fifteen. There was AstroTurf in the basement and Notre Dame memorabilia on the walls. The décor changed in 1981, when his father was fired, which turned Gruden against the Fighting Irish without turning him against the game. He wanted to be an élite quarterback, but he wasn’t as strong or as fast as his younger brother Jay, who went on to be a star at the University of Louisville and in the Arena Football League. So Jon enrolled at the University of Dayton, where he was a communications major and a second-string quarterback for a third-tier team. He discovered that he loved studying anything that was football and nothing that wasn’t.

In “Do You Love Football?!,” a memoir that Gruden published after his Super Bowl victory, he remembers his peculiar fondness for the aesthetics of coaching: as a teen-ager, he practiced drawing perfect chalk circles so that when the time came to diagram plays his “X”s and “O”s would be neat and consistent. He proved himself at a series of assistant-coaching jobs at colleges, and then, starting in 1990, in the N.F.L., working as a glorified secretary for Mike Holmgren, the offensive coördinator for the San Francisco 49ers, who found that his new assistant was unstumpable.

Gruden was thirty-one when the Philadelphia Eagles named him their offensive coördinator, and he was thirty-four when Al Davis, the owner of the Oakland Raiders, named him head coach. Gruden modernized the Raiders’ playbook, using short pass plays to lure opposing defensive backs toward the line of scrimmage, leaving them more vulnerable to occasional long passes. In 2002, Davis traded Gruden’s services to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in exchange for four prime draft picks and eight million dollars.

Gruden’s success in Tampa Bay may have arrived too quickly. He won the Super Bowl in his first year, propelled by a ferocious defense. Since he is considered an offense-minded coach, some of the credit went to Monte Kiffin, the team’s revered defensive coördinator. In the years that followed, the Buccaneers never won another playoff game, and Gruden struggled to build a reliable offense. In his last six seasons, the team cycled through seven different starting quarterbacks. By the time he was fired, his record at Tampa Bay was fifty-seven wins and fifty-five losses. He pushed the Buccaneers to their first Super Bowl, but he left behind a team that was worse than the one he inherited.

Earlier this season, on a Tampa radio station, Shaun King, a former Buccaneer quarterback, complained that Gruden was “judgmental” and “dishonest.” Gruden replied, mischievously, “I did fail miserably in developing Shaun King.” By most accounts, Gruden had strained relationships with many of his Buccaneers; Derrick Brooks, a linebacker who was sent to the Pro Bowl, the league’s all-star game, eleven times, recalls that he occasionally served as a mediator between his teammates and Gruden. But players who aren’t winning consistently are supposed to be unhappy—and no coach had great success with King, an outstanding college quarterback who never became an outstanding professional. Coaches are at the mercy of their players, and this must be the worst part of the job: watching helplessly as one perfectly conceived play after another springs imperfectly, sometimes disastrously, to life.

To see football from a coach’s perspective is to see almost nothing but failure: a grim parade of misaligned bodies, incorrect decisions, missed signals, and bad ideas, occasionally interrupted by a heads-up play or a feat of physical genius. Football is entertainment, but the players dissected on Gruden’s screens seem less like performers in the spotlight than workers under surveillance. Ensconced in his lair in Tampa, far from the “Monday Night Football” cameras, Gruden can sound shockingly negative. He is forever judging players who don’t or can’t excel—“slapdicks,” he calls them, or, more familiarly, “slappies.” A defensive lineman gets shoved back on his heels and collapses, too calmly, onto the turf. “He just looks like he’s enjoying this, getting blocked,” Gruden says. Three receivers run malformed routes, and they all end up in the same throwing lane. “That’s horrific,” Gruden says. An offensive tackle dives halfheartedly at the feet of a defender, who leaps over him and knocks down the quarterback. “I can’t take it,” Gruden says.

It is an analyst’s job to notice these errors, and to somehow incorporate them into a coherent account of the game. John Madden revolutionized the form, highlighting mistakes while also minimizing them, by deflating the game’s pretensions. He talked as if he were standing with friends around a barbecue grill, and his casual diction encouraged fans to imagine highly paid professionals as spirited amateurs. He taught viewers how to recognize well-laid blocks, but he also loved fat guys, busted plays, muddy fields. The NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth, a former wide receiver, has honed a smooth, aloof style, presenting players’ errors for inspection and gentle ridicule. During a recent game, he responded to an interception by saying, with satisfaction, “He made a blind throw, and paid a big price for it.”

But, for Gruden, there is nothing funny about a mistake, and if he downplays errors it’s because he wants to fix them. His enthusiasm isn’t meant to fool the fans—it’s meant to motivate and inspire them, as if they were players. Some of Gruden’s best moments occur when he forgets where he is, offering viewers advice they are unlikely to use in their everyday lives. One night, a slow-motion replay of a short throw known as a screen pass inspired him to wax pedagogical on the art of blocking. “When you run a screen pass, and you’re the first lineman out, you have to look for that linebacker who’s matching the back in man-to-man coverage,” he said. “And, if you get him, you’ve got a big play. Great job!”

“Monday Night Football” has been one of television’s highest-rated programs since its début, on ABC, in 1970. Roone Arledge, the television executive who created it, realized that the tribes of fans who watched their local teams on Sunday would also tune in, en masse, for a nationally televised game on Monday. The timing, and the bright lights, implied that the Monday game was special, and the perception has lingered. But, because the games are scheduled months in advance, and because football—with its short season and frequent injuries—is hard to predict, Monday’s games are no better or worse, on average, than any others. The show moved from ABC to its corporate sibling ESPN in 2006, and the transition from an entertainment network to a sports network has been accompanied by a shift in emphasis. Where once “Monday Night Football” tried to link football to popular culture (the comedian Dennis Miller spent two seasons in the booth), now it is dedicated to football purism.

Even so, “Monday Night Football” is the most popular show on cable television, typically drawing about thirteen million viewers—more than twice as many, often, as its closest competitors. No sport has benefitted more than football from television’s high-definition reinvention, which makes it somewhat easier to follow twenty-two men, wearing suits of plastic armor, carrying out twenty-two different assignments at the same time.

Earlier this year, the league was fending off inquiries about the dangers posed to players by concussions, and fans thought that a labor dispute might cancel the season. But the players and owners reached an agreement, and the disturbing research into head injuries hasn’t yet eroded football’s reputation, however mystifying, for providing wholesome and patriotic entertainment. Instead, it’s the National Basketball Association that had to cancel part of the season. And the sixth game of this year’s World Series, hailed as an all-time classic, drew about as many viewers as a regular-season football game a few nights later.

Midway through the season, the Chiefs seemed promising: they were led by Matt Cassel, the quarterback whom Gruden had called an “outstanding young man.” Then they lost two seemingly easy games, and Cassel injured his hand; the new Chiefs quarterback was Tyler Palko, an unheralded twenty-eight-year-old whose résumé includes engagements in the United Football League and the Canadian Football League. By contrast, Brady, the Patriots’ quarterback, could be the most accurate and effective passer of his generation; Bill Belichick, the Patriots’ crafty coach, is probably the most feared man in football.

By the time Gruden and the others arrived in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on a Saturday morning in November, Patriots-Chiefs no longer seemed like a battle of equals. At the first on-site production meeting, at a hotel on the stadium grounds, Gruden addressed the group, explaining how his various observations might fit into story lines. He talked about how the Patriots like to start plays before their opponents can get set, and how their constantly fluctuating formations can confuse opposing teams. Then he switched to the language of television. “I want to show confusion, chaos—I want to show stress,” he said. “And I want to show the Patriots creating that stress.”

Gruden, Jaworski, and the rest of the crew filed into a cinder-block room in the bowels of the stadium, where they interviewed various Patriots. The team’s two best receivers arrived together: Wes Welker, a small, intense veteran wide receiver, and Rob Gronkowski, an ingenuous six-foot-six tight end, who looks like a teen-ager still learning to handle an epic growth spurt. The producers thought it might be fun to frame Welker and Gronkowski as the Patriots’ “Odd Couple,” and someone was dispatched to see about licensing the theme song. It was an inane idea, but it would give the producers an excuse to broadcast a package of clips of the two receivers, helping viewers to understand their divergent styles: Welker puts himself exactly where the ball will find him, while Gronkowski can reach over, around, or through defenders to make a catch.

On Sunday, ESPN technicians set up eight television screens in a hotel conference room, so that Gruden and the rest of the team could watch all the day’s games at the same time. Gruden sat in front of the one showing the Baltimore Ravens versus the Cincinnati Bengals—he was rooting for the Bengals, who employ his younger brother, Jay, as offensive coördinator. That night, Gruden and the crew travelled half an hour south, to Providence, Rhode Island, where the Chiefs were staying. They were searching for hope. Tyler Palko, nattily attired in a jacket, a checked shirt, and a tie with a tie pin, seemed mellow and unflustered; he referred to his coach, Todd Haley, as Todd instead of Coach. Romeo Crennel, the Chiefs’ defensive coördinator, was jolly but not necessarily reassuring.

“They got Welker, they got Gronkowski,” Gruden said. “You only got eleven guys.”

“You said it,” Crennel replied.

At the Monday-morning production meeting, Gruden made a grim prediction. “My point spread is 29.5, and rising,” he said. Jaworski bet him a steak dinner that the Patriots wouldn’t cover.

When it was Jaworski’s turn, he issued a stern proclamation. “Call me crazy, but I’m really excited for Tyler Palko tonight,” he said, and a roomful of skeptical sports producers erupted in laughter. Jaworski had given himself the thankless task of building up the Chiefs, praising them as much as he could without putting his own credibility at risk. Perhaps viewers would buy into the idea, however far-fetched, that Palko would emerge as the night’s underdog hero. Later that day, as Jaworski was making a cup of coffee in the ESPN bus, he tried the line again. “Call me crazy, but I’m excited about Tyler Palko,” he said. He exhaled. “I’ve got to sell this,” he said to himself.

Gruden was storing up his reserves of optimism for the camera-operator meeting, which was held, a few hours before kickoff, in the crowded training room of the New England Revolution, the local soccer team. “Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson—no one could believe it,” he said. “Villanova won the N.C.A.A. title—no one could believe it. Upsets do happen!” If an upset occurred, he wanted it filmed properly. “Let’s document everything that happens, good and bad,” he said. “It could be one hell of an interesting night!” This was as far as he was willing to go on the Chiefs’ behalf. As the camera operators cheered, Gruden and Jaworski walked out of the locker room, across the floodlit field, and up into the broadcast booth.

The broadcast started at eight-thirty, with final predictions from the booth. Gruden looked solemn. “I think the Kansas City Chiefs are in real trouble tonight,” he said.

Jaworski looked at Gruden and Mike Tirico. “You guys can call me crazy, but I’m excited about Tyler Palko tonight,” he said. Tirico giggled, but Gruden just squinted.

The temperature was in the thirties, and the booth, with its folding window thrown open, wasn’t much warmer. The Chiefs had decided to try to unnerve the Patriots by starting fast, running plays without huddling first, and the broadcast team seemed slightly off balance, too—the game wasn’t sticking to the script. The crew got surprised by a foul—the referee announced a penalty before Tirico had time to explain what had happened. A field goal gave the Chiefs a 3–0 lead, and they hassled Brady, who prefers to do his precisely calibrated work in peace. In production trucks, parked on the far side of the stadium, ESPN producers were compiling brief highlight packages and trying to persuade their superiors to put them on the air.

As the second quarter began, the producers fed Gruden a package designed to show how the Chiefs were succeeding. In one play, the Chiefs kept their most accomplished pass-rusher away from Brady, and sent a less fearsome but more unexpected player; in another, they assigned a total of four defenders to Gronkowski and Welker. “They’re going to double Wes Welker out of motion, and they’re going to double Gronkowski across the field,” Gruden said—the video froze, with rectangles around Welker and Gronkowski, and numbers to identify the two defenders covering each.

After one commercial break, Tirico set the scene. “A chilled and surprised crowd here in Foxborough,” he said. The surprise lasted until the end of the second quarter, when the Patriots’ many moving parts started moving together. Gruden explained to viewers how Brady, reading the Chiefs’ defense, switched at the last minute from a run play to a short pass. Later, after the Chiefs’ defenders lost track of Gronkowski, he reappeared in the end zone holding the football. “The Chiefs blew the coverage,” Gruden said. Once the cameras had cut to a commercial, he sounded as if he were back in his lair in Tampa. “God damn it,” he said. “You blow a coverage like that—they had ’em on the ropes!” By halftime, it was 10–3, Patriots.

In the second half, the Patriots kept scoring, and Palko, trying to keep pace, threw a pair of interceptions. When a rarely used Chief named Jerheme Urban checked in, Gruden told viewers to expect a wildcat, in which the ball goes directly to a rusher, instead of to the quarterback. “Look for some trickery,” Gruden said, and, sure enough, the Chiefs snapped the ball to Urban. But, increasingly, the producers in the truck inserted planned video segments—in one, Gruden proposed to address the N.B.A. lockout by allowing struggling football teams to draft idle basketball stars. With the Patriots leading, 27–3, Belichick, in keeping with his reputation for ruthlessness, pressed on. The Patriots scored a final touchdown to win, 34–3. The last touchdown was meaningless to just about everyone except Gruden. It put the Patriots up by thirty-one, which meant that they had covered his spread. Jaworski owed him dinner.

Gruden didn’t visit either team’s locker room that night. He walked across the parking lot to the hotel, escorted by security guards in fluorescent coats and ringed by high-spirited Patriots fans shouting, “Gru-den! Gru-den!” Later, he would get notes from Jay Rothman, the show’s top producer, who has been pushing Gruden to avoid talking over the action while also staying away from abrupt endings: the goal, for any football analyst, is to bring each commentary to a gentle conclusion just as the next play is about to begin.

The next morning, he flew back to Tampa. For Gruden, the real weekend is midweek, when he can immerse himself in film; his real season is off-season, when he can evaluate players, confer with coaches, maybe even run an occasional quarterback drill.

One of the studio analysts for “Monday Night Football” is Steve Young, the record-setting quarterback, who became close to Gruden when Gruden was an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers and Young was an impatient backup, waiting for Joe Montana to move on so that he could play. Young remembers discovering that Gruden was also a football nerd—they used to compete to see who could memorize more plays. Gruden was among Young’s earliest supporters, and Young is impressed and amused by the coach’s transformation. The language Gruden uses on the air is a lot more “flowery,” Young says, than the language he remembers being subjected to on the field.

Young tries to make Gruden’s commitment to broadcasting sound believable. “I think he’s found a really neat place,” he says. “He gets to get all his football out, and I think he’s enjoying it. I suspect that in a few years maybe something comes up, but, for now, I think he’s just fine.”

Still, he hesitates when asked which role suits Gruden better. “Aw, jeez,” he says. “I think he’s a good analyst. But I think he’s a great coach. You’re limited in what you can accomplish as an analyst.”

For Gruden, the two roles are linked: he wouldn’t be such a persuasive analyst if he didn’t feel like a coach, and it would be an odd sort of triumph if his time with ESPN—explaining football to thirteen million viewers, instead of to fifty-three players—proved even more successful than his time with the Buccaneers. Gruden admits that his current career, doing almost everything he used to do except winning and losing, is a poor substitute for the real thing. “I miss it a ton,” he said one day, after a long morning of watching tape in Tampa. “In some ways, I can’t believe I’m not a coach.” Ω

[Kelefa Sanneh joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. Prior to that, he was the pop-music critic for the New York Times, beginning in 2002. Before covering music for the Times, he was the deputy editor of Transition, a journal of race and culture, based at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, at Harvard University. Sanneh is a graduate of Harvard University.]

Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast Digital

From The I Felt Sorry For Myself Because I Had No Shoes Department...

2011-12-08T11:30:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, this blogger was bemoaning the two bad things that had recently happened in his life and he mused that "bad things come in threes." Last eve, he received a call from the fraud detection unit of his credit card issuer. A rash of $100 purchases had been changed to the blogger's credit card at various retail businesses in Phoenix, AZ. The last (and final) time this blogger visited the Grand Canyon State was in December 2009. So, two computer failures (laptop and router) were joined by credit card fraud. However, this blogger's self-pity party was halted by Christopher Hitchens and his fight for life. Hitch has problems. This blogger has inconveniences. If this is a (fair & balanced) cry of shame, so be it.

[x Vanity Fair]
Trial Of The Will
By Christopher Hitchens

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created at TagCrowd.com

(Click to enlarge)

Death has this much to be said for it:
You don’t have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be
They bring it to you—free.
—Kingsley Amis

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying.
—Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

When it came to it, and old Kingsley suffered from a demoralizing and disorienting fall, he did take to his bed and eventually turned his face to the wall. It wasn’t all reclining and waiting for hospital room service after that—“Kill me, you fucking fool!” he once alarmingly exclaimed to his son Philip—but essentially he waited passively for the end. It duly came, without much fuss and with no charge.

Mr. Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, has had at least one very close encounter with death, more than one update and revision of his relationship with the Almighty and the Four Last Things, and looks set to go on demonstrating that there are many different ways of proving that one is alive. After all, considering the alternatives...

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

In fact, I now sometimes wonder why I ever thought it profound. It is usually attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker. In German it reads and sounds more like poetry, which is why it seems probable to me that Nietzsche borrowed it from Goethe, who was writing a century earlier. But does the rhyme suggest a reason? Perhaps it does, or can, in matters of the emotions. I can remember thinking, of testing moments involving love and hate, that I had, so to speak, come out of them ahead, with some strength accrued from the experience that I couldn’t have acquired any other way. And then once or twice, walking away from a car wreck or a close encounter with mayhem while doing foreign reporting, I experienced a rather fatuous feeling of having been toughened by the encounter. But really, that’s to say no more than “There but for the grace of god go I,” which in turn is to say no more than “The grace of god has happily embraced me and skipped that unfortunate other man.”

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker. Nietzsche was destined to find this out in the hardest possible way, which makes it additionally perplexing that he chose to include the maxim in his 1889 anthology Twilight of the Idols. (In German this is rendered as Götzen-Dämmerung, which contains a clear echo of Wagner’s epic. Possibly his great quarrel with the composer, in which he recoiled with horror from Wagner’s repudiation of the classics in favor of German blood myths and legends, was one of the things that did lend Nietzsche moral strength and fortitude. Certainly the book’s subtitle—“How to Philosophize with a Hammer”—has plenty of bravado.)

In the remainder of his life, however, Nietzsche seems to have caught an early dose of syphilis, very probably during his first-ever sexual encounter, which gave him crushing migraine headaches and attacks of blindness and metastasized into dementia and paralysis. This, while it did not kill him right away, certainly contributed to his death and cannot possibly, in the meanwhile, be said to have made him stronger. In the course of his mental decline, he became convinced that the most important possible cultural feat would be to prove that the plays of Shakespeare had been written by Bacon. This is an unfailing sign of advanced intellectual and mental prostration.

(I take a slight interest in this, because not long ago I was invited onto a Christian radio station in deepest Dixie to debate religion. My interviewer maintained a careful southern courtesy throughout, always allowing me enough time to make my points, and then surprised me by inquiring if I regarded myself as in any sense a Nietzschean. I replied in the negative, saying that I had agreed with some arguments put forward by the great man but didn’t owe any large insight to him and found his contempt for democracy to be somewhat off-putting. H. L. Mencken and others, I tried to add, had also used him to argue some crude social-Darwinist points about the pointlessness of aiding the “unfit.” And his frightful sister, Elisabeth, had exploited his decline to misuse his work as if it had been written in support of the German anti-Semitic nationalist movement. This had perhaps given Nietzsche an undeserved posthumous reputation as a fanatic. The questioner pressed on, asking if I knew that much of Nietzsche’s work had been produced while he was decaying from terminal syphilis. I again responded that I had heard this and knew of no reason to doubt it, though knew of no confirmation either. Just as it became too late, and I heard the strains of music and the words that this would be all we would have time for, my host stole a march and said he wondered how much of my own writing on god had perhaps been influenced by a similar malady! I should have seen this “gotcha” coming, but was left wordless.)

Eventually, and in miserable circumstances in the Italian city of Turin, Nietzsche was overwhelmed at the sight of a horse being cruelly beaten in the street. Rushing to throw his arms around the animal’s neck, he suffered some terrible seizure and seems for the rest of his pain-racked and haunted life to have been under the care of his mother and sister. The date of the Turin trauma is potentially interesting. It occurred in 1889, and we know that in 1887 Nietzsche had been powerfully influenced by his discovery of the works of Dostoyevsky. There appears to be an almost eerie correspondence between the episode in the street and the awful graphic dream experienced by Raskolnikov on the night before he commits the decisive murders in Crime and Punishment. The nightmare, which is quite impossible to forget once you have read it, involves the terribly prolonged beating to death of a horse. Its owner scourges it across the eyes, smashes its spine with a pole, calls on bystanders to help with the flogging … we are spared nothing. If the gruesome coincidence was enough to bring about Nietzsche’s final unhingement, then he must have been tremendously weakened, or made appallingly vulnerable, by his other, unrelated sufferings. These, then, by no means served to make him stronger. The most he could have meant, I now think, is that he made the most of his few intervals from pain and madness to set down his collections of penetrating aphorism and paradox. This may have given him the euphoric impression that he was triumphing, and making use of the Will to Power. Twilight of the Idols was actually published almost simultaneously with the horror in Turin, so the coincidence was pushed as far as it could reasonably go.

Or take an example from an altogether different and more temperate philosopher, nearer to our own time. The late Professor Sidney Hook was a famous materialist and pragmatist, who wrote sophisticated treatises that synthesized the work of John Dewey and Karl Marx. He too was an unrelenting atheist. Toward the end of his long life he became seriously ill and began to reflect on the paradox that—based as he was in the medical mecca of Stanford, California—he was able to avail himself of a historically unprecedented level of care, while at the same time being exposed to a degree of suffering that previous generations might not have been able to afford. Reasoning on this after one especially horrible experience from which he had eventually recovered, he decided that he would after all rather have died:

I lay at the point of death. A congestive heart failure was treated for diagnostic purposes by an angiogram that triggered a stroke. Violent and painful hiccups, uninterrupted for several days and nights, prevented the ingestion of food. My left side and one of my vocal cords became paralyzed. Some form of pleurisy set in, and I felt I was drowning in a sea of slime In one of my lucid intervals during those days of agony, I asked my physician to discontinue all life-supporting services or show me how to do it.

The physician denied this plea, rather loftily assuring Hook that “someday I would appreciate the unwisdom of my request.” But the stoic philosopher, from the vantage point of continued life, still insisted that he wished he had been permitted to expire. He gave three reasons. Another agonizing stroke could hit him, forcing him to suffer it all over again. His family was being put through a hellish experience. Medical resources were being pointlessly expended. In the course of his essay, he used a potent phrase to describe the position of others who suffer like this, referring to them as lying on “mattress graves.”

If being restored to life doesn’t count as something that doesn’t kill you, then what does? And yet there seems no meaningful sense in which it made Sidney Hook “stronger.” Indeed, if anything, it seems to have concentrated his attention on the way in which each debilitation builds on its predecessor and becomes one cumulative misery with only one possible outcome. After all, if it were otherwise, then each attack, each stroke, each vile hiccup, each slime assault, would collectively build one up and strengthen resistance. And this is plainly absurd. So we are left with something quite unusual in the annals of unsentimental approaches to extinction: not the wish to die with dignity but the desire to have died.

Professor Hook eventually left us in 1989, and I am a generation younger than him. I haven’t sailed as close to the bitter end as he had to do. Nor have I yet had to think of having such an arduous conversation with a physician. But I do remember lying there and looking down at my naked torso, which was covered almost from throat to navel by a vivid red radiation rash. This was the product of a month-long bombardment with protons which had burned away all of the cancer in my clavicular and paratracheal nodes, as well as the original tumor in the esophagus. This put me in a rare class of patients who could claim to have received the highly advanced expertise uniquely available at the stellar Zip Code of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. To say that the rash hurt would be pointless. The struggle is to convey the way that it hurt on the inside. I lay for days on end, trying in vain to postpone the moment when I would have to swallow. Every time I did swallow, a hellish tide of pain would flow up my throat, culminating in what felt like a mule kick in the small of my back. I wondered if things looked as red and inflamed within as they did without. And then I had an unprompted rogue thought: If I had been told about all this in advance, would I have opted for the treatment? There were several moments as I bucked and writhed and gasped and cursed when I seriously doubted it.

It’s probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory. It’s also impossible to warn against. If my proton doctors had tried to tell me up front, they might perhaps have spoken of “grave discomfort” or perhaps of a burning sensation. I only know that nothing at all could have readied or steadied me for this thing that seemed to scorn painkillers and to attack me in my core. I now seem to have run out of radiation options in those spots (35 straight days being considered as much as anyone can take), and while this isn’t in any way good news, it spares me from having to wonder if I would willingly endure the same course of treatment again.

But mercifully, too, I now can’t summon the memory of how I felt during those lacerating days and nights. And I’ve since had some intervals of relative robustness. So as a rational actor, taking the radiation together with the reaction and the recovery, I have to agree that if I had declined the first stage, thus avoiding the second and the third, I would already be dead. And this has no appeal.

However, there is no escaping the fact that I am otherwise enormously weaker than I was then. How long ago it seems that I presented the proton team with champagne and then hopped almost nimbly into a taxi. During my next hospital stay, in Washington D.C., the institution gifted me with a vicious staph pneumonia (and sent me home twice with it) that almost snuffed me out. The annihilating fatigue that came over me in consequence also contained the deadly threat of surrender to the inescapable: I would often find fatalism and resignation washing drearily over me as I failed to battle my general inanition. Only two things rescued me from betraying myself and letting go: a wife who would not hear of me talking in this boring and useless way, and various friends who also spoke freely. Oh, and the regular painkiller. How happily I measured off my day as I saw the injection being readied. It counted as a real event. With some analgesics, if you are lucky, you can actually “feel” the hit as it goes in: a sort of warming tingle with an idiotic bliss to it. To have come to this—like the sad goons who raid pharmacies for OxyContin. But it was an alleviation of boredom, and a guilty pleasure (not many of those in Tumortown), and not least a relief from pain.

In my English family, the role of national poet was taken not by Philip Larkin but by John Betjeman, bard of suburbia and the middle class and a much more mordant presence than the rather teddy-bearish figure he sometimes presented to the world. His poem “Five O’Clock Shadow” shows him at his least furry:

This is the time of day when we in the Men’s Ward
Think “One more surge of the pain and I give up the fight,”
When he who struggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day that is worse than night.

I have come to know that feeling all right: the sensation and conviction that the pain will never go away and that the wait for the next fix is unjustly long. Then a sudden fit of breathlessness, followed by some pointless coughing and then—if it’s a lousy day—by more expectoration than I can handle. Pints of old saliva, occasional mucus, and what the hell do I need heartburn for at this exact moment? It’s not as if I have eaten anything: a tube delivers all my nourishment. All of this, and the childish resentment that goes with it, constitutes a weakening. So does the amazing weight loss that the tube seems unable to combat. I have now lost almost a third of my body mass since the cancer was diagnosed: it may not kill me, but the atrophy of muscle makes it harder to take even the simple exercises without which I’ll become more enfeebled still.

I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my “will to live” would be hugely attenuated. I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true. Almost like the threatened loss of my voice, which is currently being alleviated by some temporary injections into my vocal folds, I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.

These are progressive weaknesses that in a more “normal” life might have taken decades to catch up with me. But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise? Just as I was beginning to reflect along these lines, I came across an article on the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. We now know, from dearly bought experience, much more about this malady than we used to. Apparently, one of the symptoms by which it is made known is that a tough veteran will say, seeking to make light of his experience, that “what didn’t kill me made me stronger.” This is one of the manifestations that “denial” takes.

I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing. Ω

[Christopher Hitchens is an Atlantic contributing editor and a Vanity Fair columnist. Hitchens was educated at The Leys School, Cambridge (His mother arguing that "If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it."), and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and graduated with a "gentleman's 3rd." Hitchens came to the States in 1981 to write for The Nation. Hitchens is the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, CA and is the author of Hitch-22: A Memoir (2010).]

Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast Digital

Today, A Tom Tomorrow Trifecta

2011-12-07T05:03:00.001-06:00

This blogger is baaaaaaack! However, it wasn't easy. Upon returning from the Turkey Day sojourn (2 weeks!), it seems that the router that connected this blogger to the Internet had failed. It would seem that some evil presence in cyberspace has a voodoo doll of this blogger. First, a laptop computer failed and now a router. Bad things come in threes and today's post features a Tom Tomorrow triple feature. In the first 'toon, a pair of Dumbos offer their take on sexual harassment. In the second, Sparky The Wonder Penguin confronts Biff about rugged individualism. Finally in the third 'toon, Tom Tomorrow provides all of the Dumbo wisdom about class conflict. Perhaps a three 'toon post will ward off an evil third event for this blogger. If this is (fair & balanced) superstition, so be it.

11/21/11 — [x This Modern World] — The Myth Of Sexual Harassment — By Tom Tomorrow

11/28/11 — [x This Modern World] — Rugged Individualists — By Tom Tomorrow
12/05/11 — [x This Modern World] — Class Conflict — By Tom Tomorrow
(Click on images to enlarge) Ω

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins.

Would This Blog Be Considered Above Average In Lake Wobegon?

2011-11-20T11:07:00.000-06:00

An idea whose time has come is The No Blog Left Behind Act. How about Teach To The Blog? It is a chore to be upbeat in these troubled times. If this is (fair & balanced) classroom chicanery, so be it.

PS: This blog will go dark during a two-week hiatus over the holidays. Happy Turkey!

[x WQ]
Teach To The Test?
By Richard P. Phelps

Tag Cloud of the following article

created at TagCrowd.com

Every year, the education magazine Phi Delta Kappan hires the Gallup Organization to survey American opinion on the public schools. Though Gallup conducts the poll, education grandees selected by the editors of the Kappan write the questions. In 2007 the poll asked, “Will the current emphasis on standardized tests encourage teachers to ‘teach to the tests,’ that is, concentrate on teaching their students to pass the tests rather than teaching the subject, or don’t you think it will have this effect?”

The key to the question, of course, is the “rather than”—the assumption by many critics that test preparation and good teaching are mutually exclusive. In their hands, “teach to the test” has become an epithet. The very existence of content standards linked to standardized tests, in this view, narrows the curriculum and restricts the creativity of teachers—which of course it does, in the sense that teachers in standards-based systems cannot organize their instructional time in any fashion they prefer.

A more subtle critique is that teaching to the test can be good or bad. If curricula are carefully developed by educators and the test is written with curricula in mind, then teaching to the test means teaching students the knowledge and skills we agree they ought to learn—exactly what our teachers are legally and ethically obligated to do.

Yet there are two senses in which teaching to the test can indeed be harmful: excessive preparation that focuses more on the format of the test and test-taking techniques than on the subject matter, and the reallocation of classroom time from subjects on which students are not tested (often art and physical education) to those on which they are (often reading and mathematics).

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, for example, implicitly encourages educators to reallocate classroom time, because it requires testing in only reading and math (in seven grades) and science (in three). Researchers have yet to determine exactly what the effects have been in schools, but NCLB has created a clear incentive for educators who are worried about their schools’ performance to cut back on art, music, and history classes while devoting more time to reading, math, and science. (Since science results are not included in the school accountability calculations under NCLB, however, that subject may also get short shrift.)

What about all the time spent on schooling students in the techniques of test taking—how to fill in answer sheet bubbles, whether to guess or not, what to do when time runs short, and so on? This kind of instruction has been known to eat up weeks, even months, of class time during which students study old examinations or practice test-taking skills. It should occupy less than a day. The firms that write today’s standardized tests, such as the Educational Testing Service and CTB/McGraw-Hill, strongly discourage this kind of preparation, correctly arguing that teachers who spend more than a little time familiarizing students with test formats can hurt learning and test performance by neglecting to cover the subject matter itself. (As for the amount of time spent administering the tests, another source of complaints, it is insignificant. The tests required by NCLB, for example, are given once a year and take about an hour each.)

The evidence from commercial firms that offer preparation for college and graduate school entrance tests such as the SAT and GRE is clear on this point. Most companies, including industry behemoth Kaplan Inc., focus on subject-matter review. However, one firm, The Princeton Review, distinguished itself for years by arguing stridently that students need not master such material to do well. For a fee of several hundred dollars, it would teach test-taking techniques that it promised would increase scores. But dozens of academic studies failed to confirm these claims, and after sustained pressure from better-business groups, The Princeton Review agreed last year to pull the ads in which these assertions were made.

Why do so many teachers persist in extensive test preparation? Partly because they have been misled. But there is a deeper and far more troubling reason why this kind of teaching to the test persists: It sometimes works. And it does so for a very bad reason: Repeated drilling on test questions only works when the items match those on the upcoming test. But if those questions are available to teachers, that means test security has been breached. Someone is cheating.

Test security includes measures ranging from taking effective precautions against divulging any but the broadest foreknowledge of the test’s contents to educators and students to guarding against old-fashioned cheating when students take tests. It requires diligence both in proctoring test administration and in maintaining the “integrity” of test materials. For example, for a paper-and-pencil test, materials must be sealed until the moment test taking begins and students—and no one else—open their test booklets. Students should be the ones to close those booklets, too, with the completed answer sheets inside. Recent cheating scandals around the country, however, indicate how easily and frequently integrity is violated.

Unlike in most other industrialized countries, security for many of our state and local tests is loose. We have teachers administering tests in their own classrooms to their own students, principals distributing and collecting test forms in their own schools. Security may be high outside the schoolhouse door, but inside, too much is left to chance. And, as it turns out, educators are as human as the rest of us; some cheat, and not all manage to keep test materials secure, even when they are not intentionally cheating.

Lax test security has plagued American education for at least a quarter-century. The people in the best position to fix the problem, though, are the same ones who direct our attention instead to the evils of “teaching to the test.” But teaching to the test is not the main problem; it is the main diversion.

It was not always so. In the late 1970s, a group of 10 African-American students who were denied high school diplomas after failing three times to pass Florida’s graduation test sued the state superintendent of education. The plaintiffs claimed that they had had neither adequate nor equal opportunity to master the curriculum on which the test was based. Ultimately, four different courtrooms would host various phases of the trial of Debra P. v. Turlington between 1979 and 1984.

“Debra P.” won the case after a study revealed a wide disparity between what was taught in classrooms to meet state curricular standards and the curriculum embedded in the test questions. A federal court ordered the state to stop denying diplomas for at least four years while a new cohort of students worked its way through the revised curriculum at Florida high schools and was tested.

Before Debra P., Florida and most other states that gave graduation tests purchased the exams “off the shelf” from commercial publishers while leaving responsibility for curricular standards management in the hands of school districts. Given that each state’s standards differed, when they existed at all, commercial tests were based either on an amalgam or, except in Iowa and California, another state’s standards.

Florida’s schools had been teaching state standards, but the standards underlying the graduation test were from somewhere else. Debra P. revealed a conundrum: In learning the Florida standards, students were not prepared for the graduation test, but if their teachers taught to the test, students would not learn the official Florida curriculum. The court declared it unfair to deny students a diploma based on their performance on test content they had had no opportunity to master.

Debra P.’s legacy continues to prescribe how high-stakes tests are made. The development of standards-based tests is time consuming and expensive. And the process starts only after the content standards have been set. Today, the standards dog wags the test tail.

Even so, some education insiders rue the effect on instruction. Complete alignment matches the content of the curricular standards, the test, and instruction as well, which means that every teacher in the state must teach the same content in a given grade level and subject area. That notion is anathema to many education professors and others who take the romantic view that each and every teacher is a skilled and creative craftsperson who designs unique instructional plans for unique classrooms. In this view, standardizing instruction “de-skills” teachers. Therefore, teaching to a test must always be wrong.

About the time Debra P. v. Turlington was decided, John J. Cannell, a medical resident working in rural Flat Top, West Virginia, read about the claims of local school officials that their children scored above the national average on standardized tests. Skeptical, he investigated further and ultimately discovered that every state that administered nationally normed tests made the same claim, a statistical impossibility. Cannell documented the phenomenon—later called the “Lake Wobegon Effect,” an allusion to radio humorist Garrison Keillor’s fictional hometown where “all the children are above average”—in two lengthy self-published reports.

As often happens after school scandals make the news, policymakers and pundits expressed dismay, wrote opinion pieces, formed committees, and, in due course, forgot about it. Deeper investigations into the issue were left to professional education researchers, the vast majority of whom work as faculty in the nation’s colleges of education, where they share a vested interest in defending the status quo.

Cannell correctly identified educators’ dishonesty and lax security as the culprits behind the Lake Wobegon Effect. At the time, it was common for states and school districts to purchase standardized tests off the shelf and administer the exams themselves. To reduce costs, schools commonly reused tests year after year. Even if educators did not intentionally cheat, over time they became familiar with the test forms and questions and could easily prepare their students for them. When test scores rose over time, administrators and elected officials could claim credit for increased learning.

These were not the high-stakes graduation tests of Debra P. Test security was very lax because the tests were given only for diagnostic and monitoring purposes. They “didn’t count”—only one of the dozens of state tests Cannell examined carried direct consequences for educators or students. Nevertheless, prominent education researchers, most notably those associated with the federally funded National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), at the University of California, Los Angeles, blamed “high stakes” for the test score inflation.

In this line of argument, high stakes drive teachers to teach (successfully) to the test, which results in artificial test score increases. CRESST researchers and others simply ignored the abundant evidence to the contrary—that too much time studying a test format harms students—and, in effect, echoed the claims of The Princeton Review’s now-retracted advertising. Seldom do such critics mention their other reasons for criticizing high-stakes tests: These exams are often externally administered and thus beyond educators’ direct control, and the results can be used to judge educators’ performance.

Consider two particularly high-stakes tests, the SAT and ACT. A student’s score on these tests plays a large role in determining which college he or she attends. But these tests exhibit no score inflation. Indeed, the SAT was re-calibrated in the 1990s because of score deflation. The most high-stakes tests of all—occupational licensure tests—likewise show no evidence of score inflation. All of these tests are administered under tight security, and test forms and items are frequently replaced.

The harmful teaching to the test that Cannell uncovered was, unambiguously, cheating. Is it still practiced today? Probably not widely, but yes. This year, cheating scandals were uncovered in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. The 800-page Investigation Report on the Atlanta Public Schools named 178 school-based principals, teachers, and other staff who either pressured others to cheat or felt pressured themselves in a “culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation.” The most common illicit activity investigators uncovered was painfully straightforward: Teachers and administrators erased students’ incorrect answers and replaced them with correct ones.

In Washington, D.C., school administrators practiced a more elaborate form of score manipulation: the blueprint scam. During a test’s development, a contractor typically produces a “blueprint”—a document that matches education standards to the test items written for them. Blueprints show that the draft test items cover all the standards, and in acceptable and consistent proportions. Often they are kept secret along with other test materials until the tests are completed. But some states make their blueprints public, indicating that some standards are meant to be emphasized more than others.

Washington’s school authorities go a step further. Each year, they publicly identify a large number of standards—as many as half the total in some cases—that will not be represented by any test item. Teachers then face a moral dilemma. They are ethically and legally obligated to teach all the standards for their grade level and subject. But the students of their colleagues who do not do so—who teach only the standards they know will be tested—may well perform better on the year-end test. The official record will show the thorough, responsible teacher to be inferior to colleagues who take instructional shortcuts. And in Washington, teachers can be rewarded with pay bonuses or subjected to dismissal on the basis, in large part, of their students’ test performance.

Much harmful teaching to the test would be easy to fix: by tightening security, rotating test items and test forms frequently, and squashing sleazy deceits such as Washington’s blueprint scam. Test security is more likely to be tight when tests are externally administered, either by computer or by proctors unaffiliated with the schools. If neither approach is possible, test booklets should be made tamper proof, teachers who administer a test should do so in a classroom other than their own, school administrators who handle test materials should do so in a school other than their own, and the materials should arrive just before test time. Neither teachers nor principals can coach students on specific test items in advance if they don’t have them in advance. And educators can’t change students’ wrong answers if they never touch the answer sheets.

The problem is easy to fix, however, only if educators genuinely desire to stop the cheating. Although the fixes are simple and obvious, test security is effectively no better today than it was in Cannell’s time. The tests are better, but test security often is not.

The current flawed testing regime puts teachers in a classic “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” bind. The only way out, according to many educators, is to eliminate testing, or at least the stakes attached to it. But without standardized tests, there would be no means for members of the public to reliably gauge learning in their schools. We would be totally dependent on what education insiders chose to tell us. Given that most testing critics are education insiders, that may be the point.

The furor over the recent cheating scandals could lead to real progress on test security reform, but the vested education interests are still trying to deflect attention elsewhere. Earlier this year, the National Research Council released a report that again asserts a causal relationship between high stakes and score inflation and ignores test security’s role. The report’s proposed solution is to administer new no-stakes “audit tests.” Under the dubious assumption that such no-stakes tests are inherently trustworthy and incorruptible, the resulting score trends would be used to shadow and allegedly verify (or not) the trends in the high-stakes tests. Thus, resources that could be used to bolster the security of the test that counts would be diverted instead toward the development and administration of a test that didn’t. Who would administer the new tests? Almost certainly it would be school officials themselves.

A more fundamental worry is that education researchers are now attempting to compromise the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, a set of guidelines developed by three national professional organizations for developing and administering tests that the courts use as a semiofficial code of conduct. The education insiders have incorporated their ideas into the draft revision of the standards. In its more than 300 pages, the draft says next to nothing about test security.

We have an opportunity to set things right with an agreement by more than 40 states to embrace the new Common Core State Standards Initiative for kindergarten through grade 12, beginning in 2014. The Common Core is sponsored by the National Governors Association; participation is voluntary. Standards for reading and math have already been agreed upon, and committees are drafting those for science and social studies. The design and administration of the relevant tests are being discussed now. Already, the liveliest debate concerns the lower grades, where many standards—such as those that require students to speak, draw, dance, and build—can be tested only through expensive procedures. If they wish to head off harmful reallocations of classroom time and ensure that “what gets tested is what gets taught,” policymakers will need to spend the extra money. That decision is itself a test of our determination to assure tight security in the new system, and a superior education for American children. Ω

[Richard P. Phelps is the Director of Research and Strategic Resources for The Association of Boarding Schools. He has had a lengthy career as a education policy analyst and a researcher in educational testing and assessment. Phelps received a BA in history from Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated with an MA in history from Indiana University at Bloomington. At this point, he moved into the study of public policy and received an MPP from the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. He graduated with a PhD in public policy from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Phelps is the author of The Standardized Testing Primer (2007).]

Copyright © 2011 The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

A Turkey Day Ode To The L.O.

2011-11-19T10:40:00.001-06:00

Today, this blogger goes unconventional again and becomes a foodie. The inevitable result of Turkey Day meals is a refrigerator full of the uneaten LEFTOVER leavings from the big meal. The LEFTOVER is known to hip foodies as the L.O. or L.O.'s. Today's post to the blog is an L.O. cookbook. If this is (fair & balanced) gastronomy, so be it.

PS: Avoid L.O. food poisoning by following these safety rules here.

[x NY Fishwrap 'Zine]
A Radical Rethinking Of Thanksgiving Leftovers
By Mark Bittman

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Everyone (yes, literally) says that leftovers are “the best part of Thanksgiving,” but I’m not psyched for dry meat on bread with a ton of mayonnaise, or even that exotic alternative, cranberry sauce.

And yet. There you are with four pounds of turkey, a pile of meaty bones, cranberry sauce destined to hang around until February and your grandmother’s stuffing, which wasn’t easy to make. Oh, and mashed potatoes, an always-challenging leftover.

Fear not. Here are 20 (you read that right) handy-dandy minirecipes designed to stimulate both your overindulged appetite and your tryptophanned-out brain. Although they may need adjustments based on your original recipes — stuffing, for instance: cornbread or Pepperidge Farm? — the range is broad enough for you to find a few things that work.

TURKEY

Turkey-Noodle Soup With Ginger

Cook chopped onion, carrot, celery, garlic and ginger in neutral oil until soft, then add chicken or turkey stock and bring to a boil. Cook pasta in boiling salted water until almost done; drain and stir it into the soup, along with shredded turkey; heat through. Garnish: Parsley or cilantro.

Turkey Salad with Scallions and Spicy Mayonnaise

Toss shredded turkey with chopped scallions, celery and cilantro. Fold in mayonnaise and pimentón and chili powder or paprika to taste. Garnish: Cilantro.

Indian-Spiced Turkey-Lentil Soup

Cook chopped onion, carrot and celery in butter until soft. Add a sprinkle of curry powder and cook until fragrant. Add lentils, a bay leaf and turkey or other stock to cover. Bring to a boil; turn the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are tender. Stir in chopped turkey and heat through. Garnish: Dollop of yogurt.

Pulled-Turkey sandwich

Whisk together ketchup (a cup or so), a splash of red-wine vinegar, chili powder, minced onion and garlic and some cranberry sauce if you like; add enough water to form a thin sauce. Cook over medium-low heat for 10 minutes, then stir in a pound of shredded turkey and heat through. Serve on toasted hamburger buns or rolls.

Turkey Seco Tortillas

Spread shredded turkey in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toss with olive oil, minced garlic, cumin, coriander and/or chili powder. Bake at 300 for about 30 minutes, or until dried and crisp, stirring occasionally; serve with flour tortillas and the usual garnishes.

STUFFING

Eggs Baked in Stuffing

Pack a layer of stuffing into the bottom of a well-greased baking dish or ramekins. (If you have time for a layer of caramelized onions, even better.) Make indentations and crack eggs into them and sprinkle with grated Parmesan or other cheese; bake at 375 until the eggs are just set, 10-15 minutes.

Stuffing-Stuffed Bell Peppers

Cut the tops off a few bell peppers and remove the seeds and stems. Pack a mixture of moist stuffing (add any flavorful liquid, if necessary), grated Parmesan and sautéed ground beef or pork into the peppers. Drizzle all over with olive oil and roast at 450 until the peppers are tender, about 30 minutes.

Savory Bread Pudding

Heat milk, a few tablespoons butter and some chopped fresh herbs until the butter melts. Beat one egg per two cups of stuffing, then slowly whisk in the milk mixture. Pour over crumbled stuffing, sprinkle a heavy amount of shredded Gruyère on top and bake in an 8-by-8-inch dish at 350 until browned and bubbly, about 50 minutes.

Pan-Fried Stuffing Cakes

For every 2 cups crumbled stuffing, stir in 2 beaten eggs and a little flour. Form into patties and cook in olive oil or butter until browned on both sides. Sauce: Whisk together equal parts sour cream and cranberry sauce.

Stuffing Breakfast Sausage

In a bowl combine stuffing, ground pork or turkey, chopped fresh sage and fennel seed. Form into patties, then cook in olive oil until the outsides are crisp and the inside no longer pink. Garnish: Maple syrup, cranberry sauce or a mixture of the two.

MASHED POTATOES

Mashed-Potato Pierogi

Cook chopped onion and garlic in butter until soft; stir into mashed potatoes. Fill wonton skins with a spoonful of the potato mixture (don’t overstuff); fold over and seal the edges with a little water. Working in batches, sauté in butter, or steam, or fry in an inch or two of hot oil until golden brown. Garnish: Sour cream and chopped dill.

Mashed-Potato Gratin with Jalapeños

Cook chopped onion, garlic and jalapeños in olive oil until soft. Stir into mashed potatoes and pack into a greased baking dish. Sprinkle with shredded Cheddar and bread crumbs and drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 375 until browned and bubbly, about 15 minutes.

Garlic-Rosemary Potato Fritters

Cook lots of chopped garlic and rosemary in olive oil until fragrant. Stir into mashed potatoes along with beaten eggs (about 1 for every 2 cups) and enough all-purpose flour to bind. Form into patties (chill if time allows), then dredge in bread crumbs or flour and cook in olive oil until browned.

Mashed-Potato-and-Turkey Croquettes

Stir together mashed potatoes, chopped cooked turkey, chopped onion, beaten egg (about 1 per cup) and enough all-purpose flour to bind. (A little sage or thyme is good, too.) Roll into balls and dredge first in flour, then in beaten eggs, then in bread crumbs. Cook in olive oil until browned all over. Serve with cranberry or applesauce and sour cream.

Turkey Shepherd’s Pie

Cook chopped onion and carrot in butter or olive oil until soft. Stir in a little tomato paste, chopped cooked turkey, peas or other leftover vegetables and leftover gravy (or a spoonful or 2 of flour and some chicken stock); simmer until thick. Put the turkey mixture in a baking dish, spread mashed potatoes over the top, then top with crumbled stuffing or bread crumbs and a drizzle of olive oil or melted butter. Bake at 400 until golden brown. Garnish: Chopped parsley or sage.

CRANBERRY SAUCE

Cranberry-Yogurt Parfaits

In individual glasses, alternate layers of cranberry sauce, Greek yogurt, honey and chopped pecans. Garnish: Fresh mint.

Cranberry-Swirl quick bread

Combine 2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon salt in a food processor. Pulse in 4 tablespoons chilled butter. Add 3/4 cup buttermilk, 1 tablespoon orange zest and 1 egg and pulse just until combined. Pour into a greased loaf pan and swirl in 1 cup cranberry sauce with a knife. Bake at 350 until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, at least 45 minutes.

Cranberry-and-Gruyère Grilled-Cheese Sandwich

Spread cranberry sauce on a slice of bread. Top with sliced Gruyère and a second slice of bread. Butter the outside of the sandwich generously. Cook in a skillet until the bread is golden brown and the cheese is melted.

Cranberry-Braised Chicken

Cook chicken parts in butter, rotating and turning as necessary, until browned on all sides; remove from the pan. Add chopped onion, garlic and ginger and cook until soft. Stir in cranberry sauce and a little chicken or turkey stock or white wine; add the chicken. Cover and cook over medium-low heat, turning the chicken occasionally until it’s cooked through. Garnish: Orange zest.

Cranberry Negronis

Mix equal parts gin, Campari, vermouth and cranberry sauce in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and strain. Garnish: Orange or lemon peel. Ω

[Mark Bittman is a prolific author on the topic of food and cooking. In 1987 he became the senior writer (later editor) of Cook's (the predecessor of Cook's Illustrated), and in 1990 Bittman began writing for The New York Times. Within the next few years he'd written How to Cook Everything (1998, 2008) and begun to write a weekly column, "The Minimalist." Bittman is a graduate of Clark University.]

Copyright © 2011 The New York Times Company

Are You Kiddin' Me?????

2011-11-18T11:02:00.000-06:00

This blogger listened to the second half of the Jets-Broncos game last eve. It was past the blogger's bedtime, so he was listening to the radio broadcast on his bedside clock-radio. When Tim Tebo took off on 20-yard touchdown run with 58 seconds left, this blogger nearly fell out of bed. The only thing missing was a lightning bolt striking the stadium lights and a shower of sparkling lights. If this is (fair & balanced) incredulity, so be it.

[x Jokes4us.com]
Tim Tebowisms
By Tebow Fan(atic}s

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created at TagCrowd.com

When the bogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks the closet for Tim Tebow.

The active ingredient in Red Bull is Tim Tebow's sweat.

A spike in Tim Tebow stiff arms caused the tooth fairy to go broke in 1997.

You don't hit Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow hits you!

Tim Tebow’s number is 15 because that’s how many players it takes to tackle him.

The quickest way to a man's heart is with Tim Tebow's forearm.

They once asked Ray Lewis if he'd like to run full speed at Tim Tebow, and he said "No".

SuperMan wears Tim Tebow Pajamas. So does Lou Holtz.

Tim Tebow can touch MC Hammer

Tim Tebow gets called for roughing the tackler.

When Tebow spikes the ball, he strikes oil.

You can lead a horse to water, but Tim Tebow can make him drink.

Tim Tebow doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

Tim Tebow can get breakfast at McDonald's after 10:30 A.M.

Tim Tebow ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.

Tim Tebow can get Chick-Fil-A on Sundays.

People with amnesia still remember Tim Tebow.

Tim Tebow's family once threw him a surprise party. Once.

Tim Tebow hits blackjack with just one card.

The only reason you're still conscious is because Tim Tebow hasn't stiff-armed you in the face.

When Tim Tebow was a kid, he made his mom finish his vegetables.

Superman's only weakness is kryptonite. Tim Tebow laughs at Superman for even HAVING a weakness.

Tim Tebow doesn't do pushups. Instead, he pushes the earth down.

Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Tim Tebow.

When Tim Tebow was a kid he made his mom finish HER vegetables.

Tim Tebow counted to infinity. Twice.

In the beginning there was nothing. Then Tim Tebow stiff-armed that nothing in the head and said "Get a job". That is the story of the universe.

When life gives Tim Tebow lemons, he uses them to kill terrorists. Tim Tebow hates lemonade.

When Google can't find something, it asks Tim Tebow for help.

In a recent survey it was discovered the 94% of American women lost their virginity to Tim Tebow. The other 6% were incredibly fat or ugly.

Tim Tebow loves women. All of them. At the same time.

What color is Tim Tebow's blood? Trick question. Tim Tebow does not bleed.

Tim Tebow has been to Mars. That's why there's no life on Mars.

Tim Tebow once stiff-armed a horse. That animal became what is now known as the giraffe.

Tim Tebow is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.

Tim Tebow is the reason Waldo is hiding.

When Tim Tebow wants popcorn, he breathes on Nebraska.

When taking the SAT, write "Tim Tebow" for every answer. You will score more than 1600.

Tim Tebow can dribble a football.

Tim Tebow was once asked to repeat himself. The last thing that person ever heard was the whooshing sound of a stiff-arm.

Tim Tebow can kick start a car. Ω

[Jokes4us.com is an online library of jokes, arranged by category.]

Copyright © 2011 Jokes4us.com

Roll Over, Ambrose Bierce! Make Way For Gonzo Matt!

2011-11-17T11:10:00.002-06:00

Disclaimer: Ye with no tolerance for blasphemy, so not enter here. That said, Gonzo Matt Taibbi goes nuts over Tebowmania and the resulting article ain't pretty. Tonight, the Denver Broncos play the NY Jets on the WTF-NFL Network. Disclosure: this blogger will honor the memory of his late Bronco-diehard father by going to his favorite sports bar ("Cover 3") to view Tebowmania versus the 46-Defense. While the Detroit Lions made short work of The Chosen One a few weeks ago, the Jets will be in a fever-frenzy and the faithful had better pray for The Chosen One. In the meantime, if this is (fair & balanced) "assassinative prose," so be it.

[x RS]
God Fumbles
By Matt Taibbi

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God must not know shit about football if Tim Tebow is his idea of an NFL quarterback.

We all saw this coming. A year and a half ago, every NFL fan base in the league held its collective breath before the draft, praying fervently that their team would not make the
fatal mistake of selecting Florida Gators icon Tim Tebow with a high draft choice.

If football is America's real national religion, then the faithful knew that Tebow was born to play the role of the backup QB, the clipboard-carrying Savior, the first-round pick who spends the early years of his career being the knife end that impatient fans plunge into the starting QB's back every time he takes a dumb sack or throws an ill-advised pass.

Nobody has ever been better cast for this role than Tebow. We've had our share of plucky, try-hard athletes who dominated in college and brought huge fan bases with them to the pros — think of Doug Flutie, J.J. Redick and Tyler Hansbrough — but Tebow has inspired more Great White Hope cliches than all of those guys combined.

Before he even set foot on an NFL field, it was football gospel that the beatific Gator was a "great competitor" with "great intangibles," who was a "born leader," breathless descriptions that, in addition to being a galling overt insult to the thousand-plus other true NFL tough guys who apparently have been shallow, half-assing jerks all these years, carried with them one powerful underlying message: Tebow sucks.

Every man on Earth knows what it means when a guy describes a woman as having a "great personality," and yet somehow tens of thousands of grown men didn't know what it meant when one football analyst after another kept talking about how Tebow was a "special person." Watching Tebow play quarterback is an embarrassing, painful experience; the poor kid takes 10 minutes to pass the ball, and if he has to make more than one read in a play, his brain locks up like a truck axle caught on a tree branch, and he ends up either throwing the ball straight into the ground or running face-first into the defensive line.

In that respect, Tebow's first start, against the hapless Miami Dolphins, was one of the most amazing sports contests ever shown on television, with Tebow freezing at the sight of one open receiver after another while Dolphins coach Tony Sparano similarly stood dumbfounded, like a man whose brain was being eaten by beetles, as he made one catastrophic call after another. Seeing Sparano's late decision to go for two, despite being up by two scores, was like watching a man stand up in the middle of a live-fire exercise."

Yet when it was all over, and Tebow had "won" the game when his counterpart Matt Moore fumbled in field-goal range in overtime, the media orgy was fully on.

TIM-TASTIC! shouted The Denver Post. A new website appeared, celebrating the act of "Tebowing," defined as kneeling in celebratory prayer, "even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different." People around the world sent in photos of themselves "Tebowing" — soldiers abroad Tebowing, guys on forklifts Tebowing, old ladies and their miniature dogs Tebowing, etc. And the NFL's official website stooped to a new low when it marketed Tebow's next game, against the Detroit Lions and their fearsome front seven, as "Good versus Evil."

The NFL, of course, has seen plenty of extremely religious athletes before, including all-time stars like Reggie White and Kurt Warner, but it never sunk to marketing those players' godliness — for the obvious reason that you don't have to market a player's religion when the guy can, you know, actually play.

None of this, was Tebow's fault. A twentysornething kid who's just trying to make it in sports has no control over millions of fans and armies of sportswriters turning him into a symbol of righteousness and a warrior in the fight against cultural relativism. Nor does Tebow have any control over all the preposterous things that have been said oflate in a desperate attempt to preserve his legend, not the least of which being a Fox Sports columnist who hinted that Tebow's failures were the result of a Denver coaching staff bent on "sabotaging" him in order to escape from the media frenzy.

And yet, when Tebow came out in his next game and lost to Detroit, 45-10, turning in one of the worst performances in the history of quarterbacking, there was something perversely satisfying about the spectacle.

Witnessing the Tebowmania phenomenon get pulverized under a torrent of ruthless hits by Detroit's Ndamukong Suh, Cliff Avril and Stephen Tulloch (who deliciously "Tebowed" after a sack of the Chosen One) was a little like reliving Clarence Darrow's savage cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey Trial. In both cases you came away feeling sorry for the defeated, but it was just something that had to be done, like putting away an old dog with cloudy eyes. Ω

[As Rolling Stone’s chief political reporter (and sometime sportswriter), Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi has written Spanking the Donkey: On the Campaign Trail with the Democrats (2005); Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire (2007); The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics & Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire (2008); and Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History (2011). Taibbi graduated from Bard College in 1991.]

Copyright © 2011 Rolling Stone

Today's Blog Post Is Brought To You By... The Letter K!

2011-11-16T11:48:00.000-06:00

The letter K got a workout last eve with Duke victory over Michigan State in Madison Square Garden. Coach K this, Coach K that, ad nauseum. Today's meditation on the eleventh letter of the English alphabet had resonance with all of the recent K-mania. The irony of all of this Coach K nonsense is that Coach K pronounces his name with a silent-K. Ditto for Coach K's mentor, Coach Night (spelled Knight). If this is a (fair & balanced) voiceless velar plosive, so be it.

[x TNR]
The Kase Against K: How The Kardashians Are Ruining The Letter
By Chloë Schama

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About 10 years ago, something terrible happened: Strangers began to get comfortable with my first name.

Throughout elementary school, I suffered mispronunciations (chole, rhymes with coal, was common) and misunderstandings (“What’s that short for?”). But what my name caused me in annoyance, it made up for in distinction. “Chloe” (or “Chloë or “Chloé”) was both classic and uncommon, I came to realize. Cookie-cutter was dull, different was daring—and yet “Chloe” was distinct without being ridiculous or made up.

Then, other people caught on. In the 1980s, “Chloe” was ranked at 586 among the most-popular baby girls’ names; in the ’90s, it crept up to 123. By 2005, it had climbed its way to 19. I began to hear my name at airports and playgrounds; mothers and fathers shouted it out at busy intersections. I suddenly knew what it was like to be a “Mike” or a “Sarah.” By 2009, “Chloe” was in ninth place. Supermarkets and shopping malls were no longer safe. Banish the thought of entering a McDonald’s with a plastic playpen area.

Then, something even worse happened: the Kardashians, especially third-sister Khloé. Reality television, as Laura Wattenberg wrote in Slate earlier this year, has had a noticeable effect on name popularity in recent years. “Maci”—the name of a main character on the MTV show “Teen Mom”—was the fastest-rising name of 2010. “Khloé”—a separately tracked, made-up variation of “Chloe”—has been the fastest-rising name of the past five years. (Khloé is a central character on “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” as well as the spin-offs “Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami” and “Khloé & Lamar.”) In 2005, as Wattenberg points out, the name was not even in the top 1000; last year it reached the 42nd slot. “Chloe” continued to rise in the rankings, but so did “Khloe,” a re-interpretation that was not even tracked by the Social Security administration before 2006. Now, it was not just the rarity of my name that was under assault; it was its integrity.

The Kardashians, as it’s very hard not to know, have turned their family into a ubiquitous commodity—or, as they would have it, a kommodity, as they grab every opportunity (even those rightfully belonging to the letter “C”) to advertise themselves. All the Kardashian daughters have names beginning with the letter “K”; the shows’ website is filled with phrases like “get to know who’s who in the krew” and invitations to view the Kardashian Kollection for Sears. Their nail polish line includes colors like Hard-Kourt Fashionista and Kendall on the Katwalk. When Kim Kardashian briefly married basketball player Kris Humphries earlier this year, there was a half-joking assumption that his first name played a major role in inspiring the short-lived union. The impetus here is clear: The family is the brand and the brand is the family. The more they can remind consumers (konsumers?) of this, the more they stand to benefit. They’re not the types to let spelling stand in their way.

Of course, the Kardashians aren’t the first to use alliteration to enhance their celebrity. Marilyn Monroe, Ozzie Osborne, and Joan Jett are just a few who ditched their birth-names for snappier single-letter combinations. But they are perhaps the first to so thoroughly embrace the single-letterness of their commercial enterprise. There are semi-scientific reasons why playing up the letter “K” may make some sense. According to some branding experts, companies and products beginning with the letter “C” are the most common, while “K” brands rank near the bottom of the list. The hard sound of “C” is appealing, studies say, but “K” variations are unusual, making “K” words ripe for brand-name cultivation.

“K” sounds are amusing, as well. Writing about the origin of the concept of “Podunk” in The New Yorker in 1948, H.L. Mencken wrote that “The letter “K” has always appealed to the oafish risibles of the American plain people.” Neil Simon worked this into his 1972 play The Sunshine Boys. (“Pickle is funny … Cup cake is funny … Tomato is not funny. Roast Beef is not funny … But cookie is funny.”) Even Mel Brooks proclaimed the inherent attraction of the eleventh letter of the alphabet: “Instead of salmon, turkey is a funnier sound," he reputedly said. Other poultry with clicky sounds also appealed to Brooks: “Chicken. There's nothing funnier than chicken,” Brooks told Entertainment Weekly in 2000.

So the “K”-shaped prism through which the Kardashians refract the world may be little more than a marketing ploy originating 30-something years ago when pregnant “momager” Kris Kardashian decided to stick to a single letter for her brood. She might not have framed it in these terms at the time, but she was cultivating a clan primed to capitalize upon an appealing but under-exploited sound, while imbuing their products (i.e., themselves) with a comic ring. We’re kooky! We’re krazy! Now go buy some klothes.

I can’t help but find this deeply annoying, and not just because they’re popularizing a version of my name that tramples on its classical roots. For the record, I’m not alone in my annoyance at overly creative K-based nomenclature. Writer Edith Zimmerman—no “c”’s or “k”’s to be found in her name—recently lost it in The New York Times magazine when faced with the “irrationally annoying (and sloppily spelled)” Internet sensation Kreayshawn: “Spell your name right! Or at least spell it shorter!” she wrote.

The Kardashian venture is objectionable not just for personal reasons but also because it subordinates coherence to catchiness, an altogether too frequent phenomenon these days. This isn’t meant to be a treatise on electronic-age eloquence—or lack thereof. (Read Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad or Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story—both of which imagine not-so-distant futures in which all communication has been broken down to text-message-style fragments—if you want to be truly frightened on that front.) But the Kardashians do deserve at least a little chastisement for further dismantling language in their self-involved, money-making hustle. E-mail, texting, tweeting have chopped up and garbled our sentences and syntax; we should resist letting marketing do further damage. I may have given up on the singularity of “Chloe,” but I’m not ready to embrace “Khloé.” Ω

[Chloë Schama — daughter of Columbia University historian Simon Schama — graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and received a master’s in English from Cambridge. She is a Deputy Editor of TNR and was the assistant to the literary editor at The New Republic from 2005–2006, the assistant literary editor from 2006–2007, and the assistant managing editor from 2010–2011.]

Copyright © 2011 The New Republic

Today, Read Some Vintage "Assassinative Prose"

2011-11-15T10:31:00.000-06:00

In a blog that is devoted to Rants & Raves, today's post features this blog's penultimate (thus far) rant. If only Ambrose Bierce lived in our day with the Dumbo poseurs who would be the POTUS 45. If this is (fair & balanced) imaginary invective, so be it.

[x CHE/Lingua Franca]
I Will Never Be A Ranter
By Geoffrey Pullum

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I realized the other day that I’m not qualified as a ranter. I used to think I was, but I was wrong. I’m just a bland, easy-going guy. Things are just great, everyone’s OK, have a nice day. I changed my mind when I chanced on a real piece of rant, on a level I will never attain.

It’s a fairly well known passage, though I happened not to have seen it before. It appeared as an unsigned comment about Oscar Wilde in a column headed “Prattle” in a satirical magazine called Wasp on 31 March 1882. It is known to have been written by Ambrose Bierce (as Ellmann’s biography of Wilde confirms, though without quotation). And quite frankly, after reading it I don’t think I can ever rant ever again. I can’t compete. I am never going to make it as a ranter. Bierce wrote it before Oscar ever had a play on the stage, but it’s hard to believe that a fun evening at "The Importance of Being Earnest" would have mollified a man with opinions as over-the-top negative as this slab of utterly assassinative prose:

That sovereign of insufferables, Oscar Wilde has ensued with his opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck, to the capital edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses, fooling with their foolers. He has tossed off the top of his head and uttered himself in copious overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and says it — says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. There never was an impostor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Therefore is the fool enamored of the feel of his tongue in her ear to tickle her understanding.

The limpid and spiritless vacuity of this intellectual jellyfish is in ludicrous contrast with the rude but robust mental activities that he came to quicken and inspire. Not only has he no thoughts, but no thinker. His lecture is mere verbal ditch-water — meaningless, trite and without coherence. It lacks even the nastiness that exalts and refines his verse. Moreover, it is obviously his own; he had not even the energy and independence to steal it. And so, with a knowledge that would equip an idiot to dispute with a cast-iron dog, and eloquence to qualify him for the duties of a caller on a hog-ranch, and an imagination adequate to the conception of a tom-cat, when fired by contemplation of a fiddle-string, this consummate and star-like youth, missing everywhere his heaven-appointed functions and offices, wanders about, posing as a statue of himself, and, like the sun-smitten image of Memnon, emitting meaningless murmurs in the blaze of women’s eyes.

He makes me tired. And this gawky gowk has the divine effrontery to link his name with those of Swinburne, Rossetti and Morris — this dunghill he-hen would fly with eagles. He dares to set his tongue to the honored name of Keats. He is the leader, quoth’a, of a renaissance in art, this man who cannot draw — of a revival of letters, this man who cannot write! This little and looniest of a brotherhood of simpletons, whom the wicked wits of London, haling him dazed from his obscurity, have crowned and crucified as King of the Cranks, has accepted the distinction in stupid good faith and our foolish people take him at his word. Mr. Wilde is pinnacled upon a dazzling eminence but the earth still trembles to the dull thunder of the kicks that set him up.

Great Caesar’s ghost. I don’t ever again want to hear anyone telling me that H. P. Lovecraft’s prose is a bit florid and overwritten. And taste the venom! People really let their hostility hang out back in those days. Today we have Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as the pinnacle of nastiness; but once there was Ambrose Bierce. Ω

[Geoff Pullum was professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for many years, and is currently professor of general linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. In 2012 he will take up a position as Gerard Visiting Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. He earned a B.A. in Language with First Class Honors from the University of York (England). Pullum was awarded a Ph.D. in General Linguistics by the University of London.]

Copyright © 2011 The Chronicle of Higher Education

Willard Created The Most Famous Rat Ever & Now We Have W.(illard) MItt Romney!

2011-11-14T10:36:00.002-06:00

If only life imitated art and Ben, the killer rat, could be unleashed at the next Dumbo presidential debate. That would be a real horror film. If this is (fair & balanced) operant conditioning, so be it.

[x This Modern World]
Not Mitt Romney
By Tom Tomorrow (Dn Perkins)

(Click to enlarge) Ω

Tom Tomorrow/Dan Perkins.

Up From Child Abuse

2011-11-13T13:07:00.001-06:00

Another HT to the young fellow in the Valley of the Sun who advised this blogger to mine the current issue of The Atlantic a little more deeply. And guess what this blogger found. Listen to audio clip below and it will bring back memories.

[x YouTube/Toan5985 Channel]
"The Rockford Files" Intro
By Mike Post and Pete Carpenter

The result was trip back in time to this blogger's favorite TV show: "The Rockford Files" (September 13, 1974 - January 10, 1980). Thanks to the all-knowing Wikipedia, here is the cast:

Cast
James Garner as James "Jim / Jimmy" Scott Rockford

Also starring:
Noah Beery, Jr. as Joseph "Rocky" Rockford, Jim's father, a retired truck driver. (The role was played by actor Robert Donley in the 1974 pilot episode.)

Recurring stars:
Joe Santos as Sergeant Dennis Becker, Jim's friend on the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) (promoted to lieutenant in season 5)

Stuart Margolin as Evelyn "Angel" Martin, Jim's former cellmate. Angel is an untrustworthy con artist who constantly gets Jim in trouble, yet Jim remains his friend.

Gretchen Corbett as Elizabeth "Beth" Davenport, Jim's lawyer and sometime girlfriend (seasons 1–4)

James Luisi as Lieutenant Douglas J. "Doug" Chapman (seasons 3–6), Becker's boss (until Becker's promotion). He [Chapman] and Jim despise each other.

Tom Atkins as Lieutenant Alex / Thomas Diehl (seasons 1–2 and 4)

Luis Delgado as Officer Todd / Jack Billings

Bo Hopkins as John "Coop" Cooper, Jim's disbarred attorney friend (Season 5)

Pat Finley as Peggy Becker, Dennis' wife

Isaac Hayes as Gandolph "Gandy" Fitch, an acquaintance of Jim's from his prison days. Gandy was a much feared inmate, and it is inferred that even Rockford (whom he refers to as 'Rockfish') was a victim of his brutality. Rockford helps prove that Fitch was sent to prison for a crime he did not commit.

Tom Selleck as Lance White, a suave and dapper (and more successful) Private Investigator, who sometimes works with Jim on cases.

James Whitmore, Jr. as Fred Beamer, an auto mechanic who aspires to be a Private Investigator, and involves himself in Jim's affairs, at one time assuming his identity, and plunging Jim into trouble (Whitmore later directed the TV movie "The Rockford Files: I Still Love L.A").

Dennis Dugan as Richie Brockelman, a young, idealistic and somewhat naive Private Investigator who seeks Jim's help from time to time. Bereft of Jim's cynicism and physical toughness, this character was spun off for the short-lived "Richie Brockelman, Private Eye."

Kathryn Harrold as Dr. Megan Dougherty, a blind psychiatrist who originally hires Jim. Their relationship eventually blossoms into a romance. Jim is upset in a later episode to find she has become engaged to another man.

Simon Oakland as Vern St. Cloud, a fellow Private Investigator, blustery, arrogant and used to getting his own way, St. Cloud and Rockford grudgingly accept each other's assistance from time to time, trading insults along the way.

Louis Gossett, Jr as Marcus Aurelius "Gabby" Hayes, an impeccably dressed Private Investigator, chauffeur driven, boastful and nearly always on a hustle, usually to Rockford's misfortune. Gossett appeared first in "Foul On The First Play" wearing a full wig with sideburns, appearing the following season in "Just Another Polish Wedding" without it.

Valentino, a cat that either Jim has adopted, or is a stray who frequents Jim's trailer, is seen in at least one episode, and is referred to in another by the same name.

Of all of the characters, this blogger most enjoyed Evelyn "Angel" Martin (Stuart Margolin) and Gandolph "Gandy" Fitch (Isaac Hayes). Margolin had the shiftiest eyes in all of TV drama and Hayes rumbling "Rockfish" when he spoke to Jim Rockford was sheer genius of characterization. If this is (fair & balanced) low culture, so be it.

[x The Atlantic]
The Rockford Style
By Clive James, Reviewer

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Review of The Garner Files: A Memoir (2011)
By James Garner and Jon Winokur

Stand aside for Maverick! Stand aside again for Jim Rockford! They live forever in the shining presence of one man! Let his name ring out: James Bumgarner!

Or perhaps not. At the appropriate moment, he changed his moniker. It was his one and only fiddle with the facts. Let this neatly written and well-supplemented little book—all of his friends provide relevant stories and fond judgments—set a new standard of integrity for the genre. But for a book to have that, the subject has to have the same, or he will have falsified the facts even before fame got to him.

James Garner, you can bet on it, has never told an important lie in his life. He really is like the men he plays onscreen, even unto the modest requirements symbolized by the humble trailer that serves Jim Rockford for a residence. He is thoughtful, honest, and fundamentally gentle, although he has knocked men down when riled. On the evidence given here, one doesn’t doubt that they asked for it. One doesn’t doubt this guy at all.

Every sane person’s favorite modern male movie star, Garner might have done even better if he’d been less articulate. In his generation, three male TV stars made it big in the movies: Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, and Garner. All of them became stars in TV Westerns: McQueen in "Wanted: Dead or Alive," Eastwood in "Rawhide," and Garner in "Maverick." The only one of them who looked and sounded as if he enjoyed communicating by means of the spoken word was Garner. McQueen never felt ready for a film role until he had figured out what the character should do with his hands: that scene-stealing bit in his breakout movie, "The Magnificent Seven," in which he shakes the shotgun cartridges beside his ear, was McQueen’s equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy, or of a practice session for a postatomic future in which language had ceased to exist.

As for Eastwood, he puts all that effort into gritting his teeth, because his tongue is tied. Garner could learn and deliver page after page of neat Paddy Chayevsky. If you can bear the idea of watching Eastwood struggling with a long speech, take a look at his self-constructed disaster movie "White Hunter, Black Heart, in which he plays John Huston at the theoretical top of his mad male confidence: it’s like watching a mouse choke. Like McQueen, Eastwood never really left the Wild West, where little is said except by a six-gun. When McQueen and Eastwood moved up, they took the Wild West with them. Or at any rate, they took a context in which the important things are all unspoken, because nobody really knows how to speak.

Garner or his narrator could really have told us more about just how leaden-tongued modern Hollywood is. Writers like Chayevsky and Aaron Sorkin are rare cases, and the preferred way of writing is to bolt together clichés that have already been tested to near-destruction. When Garner speaks here about the marvelous Joan Hackett, he forgets to say that she spoke beautifully. Of what use was that, in a medium that spoke—still speaks—in a string of sunsets and crashed cars?

Garner, a quick study who could learn and deliver speeches long enough to make his awed listeners hold their breath to the breaking point, was the only one who seemed to enjoy producing intelligible noise. But Garner, compared with the other two, never really caught on as a big-screen leading man. Though tall and handsome, he was never remote: he had an air of belonging down here with us. As a small-screen leading man, he had done too thorough a job with the 20 or 30 good lines in every episode of "Maverick" or "The Rockford Files" to make an easy transition into a putatively larger medium that gave him many times more square feet of screen to inhabit, but many times less to say.

In a feature movie like "Support Your Local Sheriff," he was charming, but his standout line of dialogue, the line that we all took home, was all that he got to take home as well. I loved that line, especially in its final variation, when he is beginning to lose patience with pests: “I’ve never made any secret of the fact that basically I’m on my way to Australia.” The tag became one of my own call signs, and I would try to get the soft richness of his voice into my own timbre. But in the movies, you just couldn’t get enough of him. When, in earlier years, he made the occasional movie that rang the bell—"The Americanization of Emily," "The Great Escape"—it was a reminder that his television shows had more of him in them. And even today—except for those movies that, in his near-retirement leisure, he has been choosing with great care, sometimes developing the entire project—you still can never quite get enough of him. Nobody ever felt that way about Clint Eastwood, because all he ever did was grit his teeth as he varied his “art” movies with thrillers, the same story made half a dozen times while he was holding the same gun, a .44 Magnum that slowly acquired the patina of the Statue of Liberty. But I digress.

Garner, though he had to nerve himself to do it, spoke wonderfully, even though he spoke against his nature. In real life, he was comparatively unforthcoming, as people who were beaten up at home during their childhood sometimes are. (More of these domestic tortures in a minute, after we get a clearer focus on the person they happened to when he was not much more than knee-high to the people hitting him.) But he positively loved to read out written words. In "The Americanization of Emily," he has a long speech by Chayevsky that Eastwood and McQueen, put together, could never have finished reading even silently. Garner flew through it. As it happens, his views about dying for your country were the same as Chayevsky’s, but it wasn’t mere congruence of mind that made the matchup of writer and actor so thrilling: it was synchronicity of tone. While mourning the continued loss of "The Hospital," the great movie Chayevsky wrote for George C. Scott (if the role wasn’t first conceived with Scott in mind, we can still say that he was born to play it) (where is the damned thing?), let us think for a moment of what the great writer would have done for Garner, and for all of us, if only the great writer had lived to a proper age. If Garner himself were to think too much about such things, he would go nuts. One of the secrets of maintaining a long and fruitful career is not to mourn too much for the might-have-beens.

On the evidence the ghostly Winokur provides, Garner’s early jobs were never part of a plan leading toward show business. Such plans, in America, are usually called “dreams.” To the extent that the apparently aimless and perhaps ineducable Garner had them, all the dreams must have been of his stepmother, who was fond of beating him with a spatula and made him parade around in a girl’s dress while everyone called him “Louise.” He somehow limped away from these rehearsals doing a convincing impersonation of a sane man. The war in Korea tried to kill him a couple of times but got no closer than qualifying him for two Purple Hearts, bestowed for wounds that he later made a point of shrugging off.

Honesty about himself is important to him. We feel, when reading, that he is leaving out none of his vices: he swore too much when he played golf, but only because he couldn’t bring himself to cheat. Traditionally, Hollywood stars are allowed to cheat at everything, including marriage, but Garner has quite evidently played it straight all along. (McQueen notoriously milked the budget of every movie—if the hero he was playing wore a suit, it would mean 10 more Savile Row suits for McQueen—and Eastwood, worshipped by now as a pillar of artistic integrity, has never expected himself to present the picture of faithfulness that is provided here of Garner.) The question about Garner is not whether he has really played it as straight as he says but whether he has ever played anything.

But the answer has to be yes, and the role he has played is (you guessed it) James Garner. Aside from the solid nice-guy basis provided by mother nature (or stepmother nature, if you prefer to think that a little routine homicidal mania makyth the man), he has had to make it all up. Nothing was given to him, except the looks. He had to deepen his voice (he never tells us how he did it: perhaps, in these censorious days, he prefers to omit the information that he did it the way Lauren Bacall did, by steamboating a few thousand cigarettes). Even today, he is not really comfortable speaking to a roomful of people: the camera is a way of not having to do so. (And even to the television camera, his discomfort shows if he has to speak in propria persona: in a tribute to Doris Day, he praised her devotedly, but it was obviously only the obligation of a close friendship that could make him speak at all.)

As he reveals several times during the course of this short book, he thinks actors should say what is set down for them—which rather rules out the prospect of speaking impromptu. By listening, he learned that the script is the foundation of the house. He was always a great one for learning things, and the key to that was to keep his ears cocked. In his pre-television career, when he was playing one of the silent judges in a touring company of "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial," he learned that listening properly to the other actors is the only way to keep your face alive for the audience. If you don’t listen, they won’t look. On set, he learned not to sit around and shoot the bull for too long with the crew: better to study the camera, treating the various parts of its façade as parts of a face. If it’s you that’s supposed to be delivering lines from offscreen, be there to deliver them on the spot instead of looping them afterward. It will sound better for you, and look better for everybody. (There are plenty of actors hiding in their trailers who don’t know that one.)

All of his skills have been improved by study—often of other actors. Fans of Henry Fonda will be glad to find that Garner copied a little dance step in "Local Sheriff" from "My Darling Clementine." Garner is good throughout the book when speaking about most other actors, but far too generous when praising his buddy Marlon Brando. “We were both rebels” sounds like a rare instance of his normally finely tuned ghost letting the tone control slip, but there’s nothing wrong about praising Brando as long as you admit that the capacity for industrial sabotage that he brought to so many of his film sets was another form of robbery: somewhere, somebody was paying for every extra hour that Brando’s behavior cost. Still on the subject of Brando, a judgment like “best movie actor we’ve ever had” would mean more if Garner had taken room to say that Alan Arkin was a much better movie actor but didn’t look it.

It’s dissatisfying to find Garner so predictable about actors, when he’s otherwise so open and honest. But no one can complain about his honesty when it comes to the executives who were still, in those days, running the industry like a canyonful of horse thieves. At a time when Jack Benny was earning $25,000 a week on television, Garner was starring in "Maverick" for a 50th of that amount, and practically paying for his own pants. It might have been treatment like that, when McQueen was doing "Wanted: Dead or Alive," that made McQueen into the future burglar of any movie’s budget, but you can’t be made into a thief except to feed your family. Garner was never a thief. He played it straight over money, and expected everyone else to as well.

That was a revolutionary attitude in Hollywood, where everybody expected the written deal to be a mere preliminary to the subsequent larceny. The problem wasn’t so much the system as it was the custom. When the studio system finally came apart and the big moguls were no longer on the telephone together except via Tokyo, the custom continued of robbing the artists. It continues to this day—I have a director friend who has given his career to making off-trail movies but he has found to his cost, and repeatedly, that his backers will back out when the thing is nine-tenths complete and leave him to finance the remaining tenth, because they know he will mortgage his house (again) rather than abandon the project. Garner, whose natural integrity makes you wonder why he is not a Quaker or an Amish person or something—how do you escape with so much virtue from a house ruled by a sadist?—simply hates such an attitude. When he finally got around to studying the accounts for the worldwide television reruns and saw how Lew Wasserman and Universal were robbing him, he sued them. Nobody ever does that.

Garner did it, and got some millions back when he finally agreed with the thieves to settle out of court, he having been vindicated and they, no doubt, still with a mountain range of stolen money yet to spend. The impressive thing here is that Garner was in no way a born litigant. He doesn’t like having his time wasted, any more than anyone else. He just wanted to correct an anomaly, to punish an offense: to get justice, if you wish. You could hand this book as a primer on ethics to any young man just reaching the age of choosing his way in life. Perhaps the most useful thing it shows is that you need not panic if the choice is not clear: things sometimes just happen. Given his proclivities, Garner could have driven racing cars. But by accident, he wandered into a situation where they were looking for an actor roughly his shape and size.

Later on, he became a renowned amateur race-car driver anyway, like Paul Newman. And although Newman drove race cars onscreen to formidable effect, he never got the chance to be a Formula One star onscreen, as Garner did in "Grand Prix," the split-screen guy-thing blockbuster by John Frankenheimer. Garner likes that movie a bit too much—the story line is even worse than he says—but maybe he still smells high-octane gasoline. A measure of his generosity and understanding is that concerning "Grand Prix," he refrains from making the most of his opportunity to call McQueen a dolt, which the bullet-headed one clearly was. "Grand Prix" was McQueen’s starring vehicle if he wanted it. He walked away from it. Then, when Garner took it, McQueen had the hide to behave as if Garner had stolen it.

Perhaps the equivalent book about McQueen should be handed to your young man as a guide to what not to do. I have an idea for packaging the two books together. But I wouldn’t want to do anything that Mr. Garner might not like, and I imagine the same sentiment is general throughout show business. In every field of creative activity, there are people famous for their goodness: they are rarely at the top of the tree, which is a harsh environment. But the occasional one is. In time, James Garner’s lasting importance might be that he showed how a television career and a movie career could be fruitfully combined. But it must be said that the TV actors have a very good reason for leaving a hit show behind when the moment comes, and Garner and his ghost have done a very good job of showing what that reason is.

The work is just too hard. A good show takes more than a week to make, so making one a week leaves no time at all. The mental strain is vivid, and even the mere physical strain can leave a strong man needing knee replacements. In the later episodes of "The Rockford Files," that deep pain in Jim’s eyes was probably the spin-off from about six different areas of arthritis at once. So successful in television that he could rarely stop work to make the movies that would have made him a great film star, he wore the silver shackles of the golden slave ship. James Bumgarner, in my country, Australia—the magic land to which you were always on your way—we have a name for you. We call you a hero. Ω

[Clive James — born Vivian James in Sydney, Australia — graduated from the University of Sydney. He relocated to London and he has lived in the UK since 1962. James attended the University of Cambridge and graduated with Second-Class Honors in English literature. James is a critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs (1980, 2009), for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism.]

Copyright © 2011 The Atlantic Monthly Group

Roll Over, Crèvecoeur! Make Way For William Deresiewicz?

2011-11-12T10:38:00.000-06:00

In Letters From An American Farmer And Sketches Of Eighteenth-Century America (1782), a French-born nobleman — Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecœur (December 31, 1735 – November 12, 1813) — asked the enduring question: "What, then, is the American, this new man?" The author had become a citizen of New York in 1770 and changed his name to John Hector St. John. In 1978, Duke University history profesor Anne Firor Scott wrote an article for The Journal of American History that balanced the gender-scale: "What, Then, is the American: This New Woman?" The meaning of American is not a settled matter in the second decade of the 21st century. If this is (fair & balanced) nailing jelly to the barn door, so be it.

[x TAS]
Yankee Come Home
By William Deresiewicz

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“But of course,” Susan Sontag says somewhere, “New York is not America.” But of course: the notion is a commonplace, not least among the liberal classes. People like me, in other words, and probably people like you. And we all know what the formula means: that the values and sensibilities that New York epitomizes—cosmopolitan, freethinking, cultured—are somehow not America, either. That we, thank God, are not America, are not Americans. That New York is, that we are, halfway towards what more enlightened Americans have always longed to be (though we are more apt to intend the idea now in political than in cultural terms): European.

But here’s a thought to give us pause: the other side agrees. No weapon in the right-wing arsenal—the nativist, nationalist arsenal—is more frequently deployed than the charge of un-Americanness. They claim that we are not Americans, and we agree with them. When we attempt to delegitimize them (which we do just as often), we use a different epithet: “stupid.” Which is, lo and behold, the same thing we say about “Americans.” “Americans” are stupid, fat, ignorant, and bigoted. They eat the wrong food and vote for the wrong candidates. “America” is Walmart, Disney, Texas, SUVs. New York, San Francisco, organic produce, independent films, hybrid cars—that’s all something else.

Here’s what it amounts to: we both just wish the other side would go away. And here’s the truth: it won’t. They aren’t going to secede again, and we aren’t going to all move to Canada. Political life is an arranged marriage with no possibility of divorce. We’re stuck with each other. Which doesn’t mean we ought to stop fighting, or look for compromise as anything other than a last resort. It does mean that we need to acknowledge reality, and we can begin by acknowledging—by asserting—our own reality. We are America, too. America is Texas and New York, soldiers and professors, Glenn Beck and Louis Lapham, the Daytona 500 and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. I’m a leftist, Jewish, atheist, urban, East Coast, Ivy-League-educated child of immigrants who reads The New York Times and listens to NPR, and I’m every bit as American as Rick Perry or Sarah Palin. If we want to take America back, we need to take “American” back. Ω

[William Deresiewicz, formerly an associate professor of English at Yale University, is a widely published literary critic. His criticism directed at a popular audience appears in The Nation, The American Scholar, the London Review of Books, and The New York Times. More often than not controversial, his negative reviews of Terry Eagleton, Zadie Smith, and Richard Powers drew heated reactions within the literary community. In 2008 he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. Despite the publication of Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets by Columbia University Press in 2004, Deresiewicz was denied tenure at Yale in 2008. His most recent book is A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter (2011). Currently, William Deresiewicz blogs in The American Scholar (All Points) about American culture with new posts each Monday.]

Copyright © 2011 The American Scholar/Phi Beta Kappa

This Blogger Knows It When He Sees It!

2011-11-11T10:31:00.000-06:00

There are no windows in this blog because "That would just allow people to screw things up." If this is (fair & balanced) tweaking, so be it.

[x New Yorker]
The Tweaker
By Malcolm Gladwell

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Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in Steve Jobs (2011), Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. “We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’ ”

It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. European washing machines, Jobs discovered, used less detergent and less water than their American counterparts, and were easier on the clothes. But they took twice as long to complete a washing cycle. What should the family do? As Jobs explained, “We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table.”

Steve Jobs, Isaacson’s biography makes clear, was a complicated and exhausting man. “There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” Powell tells Isaacson. “You shouldn’t whitewash it.” Isaacson, to his credit, does not. He talks to everyone in Jobs’s career, meticulously recording conversations and encounters dating back twenty and thirty years. Jobs, we learn, was a bully. “He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe,” a friend of his tells Isaacson. Jobs gets his girlfriend pregnant, and then denies that the child is his. He parks in handicapped spaces. He screams at subordinates. He cries like a small child when he does not get his way. He gets stopped for driving a hundred miles an hour, honks angrily at the officer for taking too long to write up the ticket, and then resumes his journey at a hundred miles an hour. He sits in a restaurant and sends his food back three times. He arrives at his hotel suite in New York for press interviews and decides, at 10 P.M., that the piano needs to be repositioned, the strawberries are inadequate, and the flowers are all wrong: he wanted calla lilies. (When his public-relations assistant returns, at midnight, with the right flowers, he tells her that her suit is “disgusting.”) “Machines and robots were painted and repainted as he compulsively revised his color scheme,” Isaacson writes, of the factory Jobs built, after founding NeXT, in the late nineteen-eighties. “The walls were museum white, as they had been at the Macintosh factory, and there were $20,000 black leather chairs and a custom-made staircase. . . . He insisted that the machinery on the 165-foot assembly line be configured to move the circuit boards from right to left as they got built, so that the process would look better to visitors who watched from the viewing gallery.”

Isaacson begins with Jobs’s humble origins in Silicon Valley, the early triumph at Apple, and the humiliating ouster from the firm he created. He then charts the even greater triumphs at Pixar and at a resurgent Apple, when Jobs returns, in the late nineteen-nineties, and our natural expectation is that Jobs will emerge wiser and gentler from his tumultuous journey. He never does. In the hospital at the end of his life, he runs through sixty-seven nurses before he finds three he likes. “At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes:

Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. . . . He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex.

One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.

In 1779, Samuel Crompton, a retiring genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. Yet England’s real advantage was that it had Henry Stones, of Horwich, who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves, of Tottington, who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly, of Glasgow, who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy, of Manchester, who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and, finally, Richard Roberts, also of Manchester, a master of precision machine tooling—and the tweaker’s tweaker. He created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation. Such men, the economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”

Was Steve Jobs a Samuel Crompton or was he a Richard Roberts? In the eulogies that followed Jobs’s death, last month, he was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh—the mouse and the icons on the screen—from the engineers at Xerox PARC, after his famous visit there, in 1979. The first portable digital music players came out in 1996. Apple introduced the iPod, in 2001, because Jobs looked at the existing music players on the market and concluded that they “truly sucked.” Smart phones started coming out in the nineteen-nineties. Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, more than a decade later, because, Isaacson writes, “he had noticed something odd about the cell phones on the market: They all stank, just like portable music players used to.” The idea for the iPad came from an engineer at Microsoft, who was married to a friend of the Jobs family, and who invited Jobs to his fiftieth-birthday party. As Jobs tells Isaacson:

This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, “Fuck this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be.”

Even within Apple, Jobs was known for taking credit for others’ ideas. Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone, tells Isaacson, “He will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, ‘That’s no good. That’s not very good. I like that one.’ And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea.”

Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it. After looking at the first commercials for the iPad, he tracked down the copywriter, James Vincent, and told him, “Your commercials suck.”

“Well, what do you want?” Vincent shot back. “You’ve not been able to tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know,” Jobs said. “You have to bring me something new. Nothing you’ve shown me is even close.”

Vincent argued back and suddenly Jobs went ballistic. “He just started screaming at me,” Vincent recalled. Vincent could be volatile himself, and the volleys escalated.

When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.”

I’ll know it when I see it. That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge. He looked at the title bars—the headers that run across the top of windows and documents—that his team of software developers had designed for the original Macintosh and decided he didn’t like them. He forced the developers to do another version, and then another, about twenty iterations in all, insisting on one tiny tweak after another, and when the developers protested that they had better things to do he shouted, “Can you imagine looking at that every day? It’s not just a little thing. It’s something we have to do right.”

The famous Apple “Think Different” campaign came from Jobs’s advertising team at TBWA\Chiat\Day. But it was Jobs who agonized over the slogan until it was right:

They debated the grammatical issue: If “different” was supposed to modify the verb “think,” it should be an adverb, as in “think differently.” But Jobs insisted that he wanted “different” to be used as a noun, as in “think victory” or “think beauty.” Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in “think big.” Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same, it’s think different. Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.”

The point of Meisenzahl and Mokyr’s argument is that this sort of tweaking is essential to progress. James Watt invented the modern steam engine, doubling the efficiency of the engines that had come before. But when the tweakers took over the efficiency of the steam engine swiftly quadrupled. Samuel Crompton was responsible for what Meisenzahl and Mokyr call “arguably the most productive invention” of the industrial revolution. But the key moment, in the history of the mule, came a few years later, when there was a strike of cotton workers. The mill owners were looking for a way to replace the workers with unskilled labor, and needed an automatic mule, which did not need to be controlled by the spinner. Who solved the problem? Not Crompton, an unambitious man who regretted only that public interest would not leave him to his seclusion, so that he might “earn undisturbed the fruits of his ingenuity and perseverance.” It was the tweaker’s tweaker, Richard Roberts, who saved the day, producing a prototype, in 1825, and then an even better solution in 1830. Before long, the number of spindles on a typical mule jumped from four hundred to a thousand. The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.

Jobs’s friend Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, had a private jet, and he designed its interior with a great deal of care. One day, Jobs decided that he wanted a private jet, too. He studied what Ellison had done. Then he set about to reproduce his friend’s design in its entirety—the same jet, the same reconfiguration, the same doors between the cabins. Actually, not in its entirety. Ellison’s jet “had a door between cabins with an open button and a close button,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs insisted that his have a single button that toggled. He didn’t like the polished stainless steel of the buttons, so he had them replaced with brushed metal ones.” Having hired Ellison’s designer, “pretty soon he was driving her crazy.” Of course he was. The great accomplishment of Jobs’s life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies—his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness—in the service of perfection. “I look at his airplane and mine,” Ellison says, “and everything he changed was better.”

The angriest Isaacson ever saw Steve Jobs was when the wave of Android phones appeared, running the operating system developed by Google. Jobs saw the Android handsets, with their touchscreens and their icons, as a copy of the iPhone. He decided to sue. As he tells Isaacson:

Our lawsuit is saying, “Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.” Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products—Android, Google Docs—are shit.

In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”

Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

Jobs was someone who took other people’s ideas and changed them. But he did not like it when the same thing was done to him. In his mind, what he did was special. Jobs persuaded the head of Pepsi-Cola, John Sculley, to join Apple as C.E.O., in 1983, by asking him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” When Jobs approached Isaacson to write his biography, Isaacson first thought (“half jokingly”) that Jobs had noticed that his two previous books were on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, and that he “saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” The architecture of Apple software was always closed. Jobs did not want the iPhone and the iPod and the iPad to be opened up and fiddled with, because in his eyes they were perfect. The greatest tweaker of his generation did not care to be tweaked.

Perhaps this is why Bill Gates—of all Jobs’s contemporaries—gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism. Time and again, Isaacson repeatedly asks Jobs about Gates and Jobs cannot resist the gratuitous dig. “Bill is basically unimaginative,” Jobs tells Isaacson, “and has never invented anything, which I think is why he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

After close to six hundred pages, the reader will recognize this as vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man.

As his life wound down, and cancer claimed his body, his great passion was designing Apple’s new, three-million-square-foot headquarters, in Cupertino. Jobs threw himself into the details. “Over and over he would come up with new concepts, sometimes entirely new shapes, and make them restart and provide more alternatives,” Isaacson writes. He was obsessed with glass, expanding on what he learned from the big panes in the Apple retail stores. “There would not be a straight piece of glass in the building,” Isaacson writes. “All would be curved and seamlessly joined. . . . The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and he showed it to me with overlays indicating how it could surround St. Peter’s Square in Rome.” The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He “had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’ ” Ω

[Malcolm Gladwell is a British-born Canadian journalist, author, and pop sociologist. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He is best known as the author of four books: The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009). Gladwell graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto's Trinity College in 1984.]

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