Scholars and Rogues

Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy: why haven’t we heard from Komen’s corporate sponsors?

Samuel Smith — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:43:01 +0000

Corporate sponsorship is important for a great many of America’s non-profits, and that’s certainly true of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Of course, any time you strike an alliance with another entity, you can’t help assuming some of their risk. Your partner jumps the tracks, all of a sudden people are looking at you even though you didn’t do anything wrong.

I tend to believe that Komen’s sponsors had nothing but the best intentions in donating their time and money to supporting a worthy cause. However, I also can’t help noticing that I haven’t heard a peep out of any of them regarding the foundation’s appalling decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood, an entity that doesn’t harness its public health mission to partisan prerequisites.

I can also guarantee you that the PR groups and agencies charged with representing the brands of these sponsoring organizations have been holding their collective breath, desperately praying that this will all blow over and nobody will notice them.

Fat chance. Here’s a list of Komen’s corporate sponsors. If you patronize any of these companies, perhaps you might consider asking them what they think of Komen’s behavior over the past couple of weeks.

3M
ACH Food Companies: Bake for the Cure
Acushnet – Titleist, Pinnacle and FootJoy Worldwide
American Airlines
American Blue Ribbon Holdings
Anchor Bay Entertainment
Ansell Healthcare Products LLC
Aquage (SalonQuest, LLC)
Arizona AFO
Armouth International
Ask.com
Avcor Healthcare Products, Inc.
Balance Walking by Foot Solutions
Bank of America
BCBG MAXAZRIA and ClearVision Optical
Belk
Berkley Packaging Company, Inc.
BIC USA Inc.
Boar’s Head Provisions Co., Inc.
BoConcept USA, Inc.
Boots Retail USA, Inc
Boston Proper
Boston Warehouse
Bowl for the Cure
Brinker International
Brown Shoe Company
Caché
California Pear Advisory Board
Caltrate
Canari Cyclewear
Candy Coburn – Pink Warrior
Caribou Coffee Company, Inc.
Carlisle Collection, Ltd
Caterpillar
Century Payments
Charlotte Motor Speedway and The Dollar General 300 Miles of Courage
Chasing Fireflies
Chesapeake Bay Candle Co
Citizen Watch Company of America
Clean Ones Corporation
Coldwater Creek
Collegiate Shipping Products, LLC
Crayola
Dallas Cowboys – I Promise
Dell
Deluxe Checks
Deuce Brand
Dots
DS Waters
Eggland’s Best, Inc.
Emdeon
Energizer
EuroBlooms
Evian
Evite and Postmark
Exercise TV
Exhale Enterprises, Inc.
Fable Designs, Inc
Feld Entertainment’s Disney on Ice presents Treasure Trove and Dare to Dream
Ford Gum
Ford Motor Company
Forever 21
Fragrance Marketing Group
Freed’s Bakery, LLC
FUZE and Honest Tea
Garden State Growers
General Growth Properties
General Mills Pink Together
Georgia-Pacific
Global Filtration
Globe Electric
Goldtouch
Graphique de France
GUESS
GUESS by Marciano
Hallmark Gold Crown Stores
Hampshire Designers
Hand & Nail Harmony
Hanesbrands
Helzberg Diamonds
Hewlett-Packard
Holland America Line
HSN – Shop for the Cure®
HUE
Hunter Boot USA, LLC
Igloo
Inliten
Interfresh, Inc.
IOGEAR
J. Berry Nursery
Jason Aldean
Jersey Mike’s Subs
Kelly Gale Amen Design
Kent International, Inc.
Kentucky Oaks Ladies First
Key Brands International
KeyBank Foundation
King’s Hawaiian Bakery West, Inc.
KitchenAid
Kobian USA, Inc.
Koch Filter Corporation
Koi Design
Kyocera
La Madeleine
LaCroix Sparkling Water
Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA)
Liberty Mutual
LIFE Event-The Val Skinner Foundation
Louisville Stoneware
Lowe’s Companies, Inc
LPGA Golf Clinics for Women
Magaschoni
Major League Baseball
McAlister’s Deli
MD Jockey Club – Preakness
MegaGoods, Inc.
Merck Consumer Care
Meredith Corporation
Microsoft
Mobile Edge
Mohawk Flooring – Decorate for the Cure
Mottega
Mrs. Baird’s Bakeries
Napa Valley Naturals
Nature’s Flowers
NBC Today Show
Nestle Purina PetCare Company
New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.
New Global Charities
NKOTB
Nordstrom
North American Licensing Company
Not Your Daughter’s Jeans
Nuun
Oil Can Henry’s
Old Navy
On The Border – Fiesta for the Cure™
Opal Orthodontics by Ultradent
OPI
Oracle Giving Commitment Grant
Oreck
Oregon Cherry Growers, Inc.
Oriental Trading Company
Otis Spunkmeyer, Inc.
Palmer’s
Pandora Jewelry
Paris Accessories, Inc (MMG Corporation)
Payless ShoeSource
Philips Consumer Lifestyle
Pink Ribbon Produce
PNY
Pottery Barn Kids
Premium Outlets
Pretzel Crisps
Princess Cruises Community Foundation
Prolacta Bioscience
Provide Commerce
Rally for the Cure®
Redken
REMAX
RiceSelect
Rich Products Corporation
Robinson Home Products
Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc.
Samsung Electronics Europe
Santa Barbara Design Studio and Designs by Lolita
Sarah Fisher Racing
Savvi Formalwear
SELF Magazine
ShoeDazzle
Shoutback Concepts – Deals for the Cure
Shuman Produce, Inc.
Simon Malls
SodaStream
Specialized Bicycle Components
Springs Global
Stein Mart
Stylemark, Inc.
Sy Kessler Sales, Inc.
Teasdale Quality Foods
Testing
The Hillman Group
The Mohawk Group – Specify for a Cure
The Republic of Tea
Trident Seafoods Corporation
True Religion Brand Jeans
Tubbs Romp to Stomp Snowshoe Series
U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Federation
Verbatim
Wacoal America
Walgreens
Wells Lamont
Woman Within
Yoplait USA
Young Dental
Zeta Tau Alpha Fraternity
Zumba Fitness

Thanks to Deanna Pierce for the story idea.

On being responsible (corporate taxation, social responsibility and the questions that Gillian Tett should have asked)

wufnik — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:03:22 +0000

Gillian Tett, normally a font of level-headedness and good judgment over at The Financial Times, had a very odd column this past weekend. She was at Davos (of course!) and was vaguely unhappy about Unilever’s presentation about all the good works it was undertaking in the name of Social Responsibility.

I know, I know, who is going to believe Unilever, one of the largest food and consumer products companies in the world, is Socially Responsible? What does that even mean, anyway? Well, leaving that aside for the moment, I’ve been following this area for a while, and in fact Unilever does spend a fair amount of time and money (relatively speaking) in this area. Why? Because there are an increasing number of investors that are demanding it. There are a whole raft of investment funds that specialize in SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) or ESG (Environmental/Social/Governance) issues, and while they’re not huge in the scheme of things, they are getting bigger. Not only that, but large pension funds, including government pension funds, have been taking an interest in these areas for some time as well, and this interest level continues to grow.

This is generally good news. Companies are out there to make a profit for someone, of course, usually their shareholders, but there have been stirrings of some emergence of broader thinking here. Most of the companies I pay attention to as an analyst are European or British, and most of them file big fat reports at year end called “Sustainability Reports,” in which they detail their measures across a range of issues, like improved recycling rates, emissions reduction other measures to reduce carbon footprints, labour relations, employee benefits, a whole lot of things. Siemens’ 2010 Sustainability report was 104 pages long—but Pirelli’s was even longer, much of it taken up with company and industry measures being undertaken to reduce the problems associated with getting rid of old tires and reducing energy inputs in the tire-making process, which is extraordinarily complicated and very energy intensive. You can find these reports on any company’s Web site. (Here’s the link to the Siemens 2010 Sustainability Report—it makes interesting reading.) Now, admittedly, much of this is work that the companies would have to report to appropriate regulatory bodies anyway—emissions of various substances, for example. And some of it is sheer gloss. But much of it is above and beyond what is minimally required, and some of it is downright impressive. I have to say that European (particularly the German, the Dutch and the Swedish) companies are light-years ahead of their US counterparts in this regard, for a number of reasons. There are few global warming deniers over here.

Now, this is interesting, but there’s an old debate here too, which Tett drags out again, which is why should companies be doing this stuff in the first place? Shouldn’t governments be doing this? And Tett actually has this to say, quoting the opposite viewpoint (although she ends up coming down in the middle somewhere):

But there is a powerful counter-argument, too: some business leaders retort that companies would actually do better to focus on their primary function – namely the business of making money – and leave governments to worry about those bigger social goals. After all, governments are elected to make countries better, so why do unelected company executives feel any duty to reach into other areas of life? “The fact that companies are doing all this CSR stuff just shows that government has failed,” muttered one British manufacturing executive.

Actually, it’s not just business leaders. It’s often portfolio managers and investors, too, who wonder why these two domains are being intermingled. Now, there’s a defensible argument here—if you want to give money to SRI things, including charities, invest in whatever will give you the best return and then given the money directly to wherever you want. It’s defensible, as I said, but not compelling, for any number of reasons, worth a post in their own.

But back to Tett’s column, because it raises some issues she doesn’t address. What’s missing here? Well, any kind of context, first of all. This is a nice airy-fairy conversation to have over wine at Davos, but Tett could at least have acknowledged a couple of things. First, governments are under a lot of stress to deliver services at any kind of appropriate level now—is there a European or North American government that isn’t cutting services right and left these days? It’s all fine to say “let the government do it” when the government can afford to do it. What about when governments can’t afford to do it any more, especially as the result of a number of totally unnecessary military actions that no one wanted to pay for at the time? Tett’s later comment that “governments are blatantly failing to pursue many of their core responsibilities, forcing companies to step in” ignores a fundamental economic reality right now—many governments are “failing” their responsibilities (to the extent that this is even true—Tett cites no examples) because they don’t have the money.

The other piece of information that Tett could have acknowledged, but didn’t, is just why governments don’t have that money. Well, there are many reasons, presumably, but one of them is certainly the fact that corporations continue to pay a lower and lower level of taxes to governments around the world. If, as Tett acknowledges elsewhere in her column, business leaders are increasingly concerned about growing “income disparity,” then the straightforward solution is for companies to pay higher taxes in order to give governments more money than they have right now to accomplish what governments are supposed to accomplish.

That hasn’t exactly been the recent pattern, though. In the US, corporate taxes as a share of federal government revenues continue to decline, and we had some famous instances in the press not all that long ago—General Electric being the most egregious example, but certainly not the only one. Tax rates actually don’t mean all that much when there are a multitude of ways to get around taxes, as there are in the US. The US has high corporate tax rates, but this actually means little. And the corporate share of taxes collected by the US government has been steadily declining, as this nifty little table from the IRS indicates:

In Europe, it’s a bit more complicated, simply because there are many more countries with a wide range of corporate tax rates (which the EU has been attempting to harmonize). Corporate tax rates have fallen in many countries, but overall tax revenues remain high, because individual rates are higher, and there are VAT taxes. Here in the UK, corporate tax rates have declined markedly since the 1970s, and in fact, continue to decline—from 28% in 2010 to 24% in 2013. In the EU-27, the decline in average corporate tax rates from 1995 has been meaningful, from nearly 36% to just under 24% in 2011. Even so, unlike the US, corporate taxes have remained roughly the same percentage of total taxation during this period, although they dropped in 2009 (and presumably since then) as a result of the recession. At no point since 1995, however, did corporate taxes in the EU-27 exceed 7% of total taxation. Note that this average masks a wide variance across individual countries—the UK had the highest percentage on average, but corporate taxes still never exceeded 10.6% of total taxation during this period.

It’s easy to say “raise their taxes,” but a bit more problematic to actually do it, given the extensive interests that have grown up specifically to prevent corporate taxes from rising anywhere at any time for any reason (this is a major industry, as well as an apparent object of religious faith, in the US these days). Given that, we might expect a bit more realism to accompany comments about governments abandoning their responsibilities than we got here. It ‘s certainly the case that what some corporations are currently doing in some of these “social” areas is a band-aid at best, and some of it is pure gloss.

But there is also some serious thinking going on here in a number of areas, particularly in areas such as transportation policy and sustainability and energy efficiency, what these mean, what are realistic goals and time frames, and how to achieve these–thinking that is just as incisive as found in any university, think tank or government agency. The people who run these companies—mostly men, of course—all go to Davos too, they all know the score on global warming and its implications for things like food and water supplies globally, and the world that their grandchildren might inherit, and many of them are as nervous about all of this as the rest of us. The difference between them and us, aside from the fact that they’re all much, much richer than we are, is that they’re in positions where they can actually do something tangible that can have broad impacts. Good behavior should be acknowledged and encouraged on those occasions when it emerges, and if it helps the share price, so much the better.

Komen VP resigns; an important first step, but a long road to reconciliation remains

Samuel Smith — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:18:45 +0000

The Komen Foundation VP at the center of the Planned Parenthood firestorm, Karen Handel, has resigned.

A few days ago I predicted on Facebook that she’d be gone within a week, but then retracted the prediction when I learned more about the heavy-Right political leanings of the rest of the board (and the involvement of Ari Fleischer in their strategy development).

On Friday, just before America took its collective brain offline for Super Bowl Weekend, Komen offered up a fake apology that encouraged the public to believe that it had changed its mind and was going to continue funding Planned Parenthood after all, even though its release actually said nothing of the sort. It isn’t clear how many average citizens the ploy fooled, but as I explained on Saturday, it sure as hell clowned the copy desk editors of just about every major news outlet in the country.

It’s hard to say at this point what the motivation is for Handel’s exit. Maybe the board is looking at the numbers and concluding that it still hasn’t done enough to assuage the anger of its donor base, and in this case it needs a scapegoat. Or maybe Handel is taking more personal heat than she’s comfortable with and just said to hell with it.

However, what isn’t happening is a substantive reversal on the part of the Komen organization. That social conservative board, in bed with the repugnant, fork-tongued Fleischer, has not decided that it was wrong. Whatever is going on today is designed to distract the public so that they can find another means of enacting their cynical agenda.

I said last week that three things need to happen before America should even consider giving Komen a penny of its cash or a second of its support. First, Handel must go. Second, the rest of the board must go (and at this point, I think that has to include founder Nancy Brinker, who can no longer be trusted). Finally, as I said Friday, demand “that they work with non-partisan health and women’s groups to replace [Handel and the board] with leaders who will put the well being of American women first.”

One down, two to go. Women’s health should not be subjugated to the whims of a partisan agenda, and Handel’s departure, while welcomed, is nothing more than a small first step on a long, rocky road to reconciliation.

I encourage those dedicated to the cause of cancer research and women’s health generally to do a little research. In addition to Planned Parenthood, there are many other local and national organizations who can put those dollars to valuable use.

Getting even with China

wufnik — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:46:27 +0000

It’s easy to blame China for lots of stuff. Its absurd veto (along with Russia, someone else we can blame stuff on) of the recent Security Council Resolution over Syria. Its persistent devaluation of the renminbi to keep it cheap to the US dollar. The fact that it owns an extraordinary amount of US debt, and keeps buying more, giving it increased influence in US economic decision-making. Its constant and never-ending theft of other countries’ intellectual property. Its refusal to stop building coal power plants. Its somewhat slavish adoption of all things American except democracy. Its reluctance to bail out Saab. Its complete lack of anything like a good rock and roll band.

If you’re one of those people for whom any or all of the above casts a cloud over your ability to make it through the day, help is at hand. Your worst nightmares may soon be over. And all we had to do was sit back and let the Chinese embrace yet another Western cultural institution—the Business School.Twenty years ago, when China started making a significant dent in the global economy that continues to go from strength to strength, virtually no one attended business school or received an MBA—largely because no school in China actually offered an MBA until 1991. Now, according to the FT, applications within the business school community in China are growing at a 20% clip (and 25% this past year), and this year will see 90,000 young Chinese entrepreneurs and potential business leaders apply to Chinese business schools. And this doesn’t even count the number of Chinese who decide to go somewhere else—like the US or Europe—to get an MBA. International enrollment accounts for about 34% of US business school enrollment, according to Business Week, and China is one of the top three countries providing international students. Chinese enrollment at US business schools also happens to be up 20% this past year. (It’s not just business schools, of course—US graduate schools in general saw a 23% increase in Chinese enrollment this past year as well.)

China, as in so many other things, is looming increasingly large here. According to an outfit called the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (headquartered in Tampa and Singapore, which should also tell you something), there are over 1000 educational institutions in China offering business degrees. Of course, there are 1600 in India, 1600 in the United States, and 1000 in Mexico, so it’s hard to assess how meaningful this statistic is, other than it’s a lot, especially since Sweden, home to some of the world’s most successful multinational corporations, has 25, Norway has 34 and Denmark has, um, 11. The really scary statistic is that, globally, over 13,000 institutions offer business degrees.

And how does that 90,000 applicants last year number stack up? Well, hard to say—statistics are kind of hard to track down, although I imagine they’re out there. There are two ways to look at that. First, what are actual enrollments? Considering Chinese schools didn’t even offer an MBA before 1991, the programs have gotten pretty large. INSEAD estimated that there are about 25,000 people enrolled in Chinese business schools in 2009, and this number is virtually certain to escalate. Since there are 250 schools (at least) in China that now grant MBA, that works out to be about 100 per school—that sounds about right. (My own BS experience was at NYU, which was huge, but in part because it had a great part-time program.) The increase in enrollments in Chinese business schools mostly comes from women applicants, by the way—women made up 43% of the enrollments at China’s top B-schools in 2010, a considerably higher percentage than found in western business schools.

Second, how many MBAs get produced every year? Well, at last count (2007-2008), according to the AACSB, over 150,000 globally (although there may be more recent data that I haven’t found). And it’s been growing—way back in 2000, it was 111,000. This is nearly as scary to contemplate as Tom Paxton’s old song lyric, “In ten more years there’ll be one million lawyers.” (Actually, it’s an old song, and we passed that point a long time ago.) And it will only get worse. The curriculum here is pretty boilerplate, actually, and can be easily replicated—accounting, economics, finance, marketing, organizational behavior, some statistics, that’s pretty much it. And how hard can it be to get one, considering how many people have MBAs now? Of course, there are a whole lot of lawyers too, so maybe that argument doesn’t work.

So why does this matter? Hah, look around. The US economy continues to suffer, and will for years, the ravages of a financial lottery designed and implemented by MBAs as taught in business schools. The notion that “shareholder value” should trump everything else came out of some business school. “Corporations as persons” is the business school wet dream. Business schools hate government regulation—particularly those that relate to, say, worker health and safety—which should, if recent evidence is anything to go by, have some appeal in China. You will virtually never find the notion of economic “externalities” in the course offerings of most business schools. The havoc wreaked on the US economy over the past several decades was coined and minted at US business schools—a model that China seems more than happy to adopt. If MBAs can do to the Chinese economy what they’ve done to the US economy, maybe the playing field will even up a bit.

“Factory Farming And How Oinky Killed 18,000 People” – M.O.C. #114

Lee Camp — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:35:35 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor

wufnik — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:49:00 +0000

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the official beginning of the reign of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth II—the day she ascended to the throne of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It was exactly 60 years ago that her father, King George VI, died. The Princess (as she was at the time) was in Kenya with her husband, Prince Philip, on their way to Australia. She’s been at this for 60 years, nearly as long as I’ve been alive. This is not quite as long as Queen Victoria’s reign, which was 63 years and seven month—but at this rate, Elizabeth looks likely to pass her. Her mother lived to be 101, after all. I have this vague childhood memory of her coronation, which actually took place in 1953—the first time a coronation was televised. Actually the last time, too, since she’s been here ever since.

And what a reign it has been. It’s basically my lifetime, and when I think of the past 60 some-odd years, it’s been just packed, hasn’t it? She’s had 12 Prime Ministers, and if she has had a favorite, she’s kept mum about it (her mother’s was James Callahan). She presided over the dissolution of the British Emrpire, and was there at the birth of The Commonwealth. She has presided over the State Opening of Parliament every year expect two, when she was pregnant with Andrew and Edward. She’s been shot at, and at one point calmly dealt with an intruder in her bedroom at Windsor Castle. There were numerous press reports during Margaret Thatcher’s period as Prime Minister of a rift between the two because of the Queen’s opposition to Thatcher’s policies, although it’s not clear if these reports were true. She has, over her life, suffered the death of her sister and mother the same month in 2002, and that of Diana, for which she was not entirely prepared, and the collapse of marriages of three of her four children.

And she has remained dedicated to the monarchy and to her duties as a monarch throughout that entire period. Her life has been devoted to what she believes is service to the nation, and it stands in stark contrast to some of her Prime Ministers (Mr. Blair, for example), and to most politicians in both the UK and the US. Considering the nature of political dialogue in the US these days, one would think that devoting one’s life to public service—putting others above one’s own self—is one of the deadly sins. But here is a testament to the fact that this is not true—that public service can be a noble endeavor. She is the patron of 600 charities, and you can bet that she’s got the details down pat on each and every one of them.

She is widely loved, even by republicans who have little use for the monarchy. Her kids are a mixed bag, of course, but that may have more to do with their father than their mother. The one most like her is Anne, and one suspects that much of the public would prefer to see Anne ascend to the throne rather than Charles. This is a bit unfair to Charles, who, as I’ve mentioned before, hates modern architecture and likes local and organic farming, which makes him okay in my book, and who has been imbued with the same spirit of service by his mother as she had from her father. But it’s probably more the fact that Anne, like her mother, is a devoted public servant, and keeps it understated, whereas Charles, try as he might, just can’t stay out of the newspapers.

She loves her dogs, maintains one of the world’s finest art collections, has watched Prime Ministers come and go. When her father died and she became Queen, Stalin was still alive, Churchill was Prime Minister again, and Harry Truman was President of the United States. She apparently enjoys a good mystery, and her fondness for Scotland is legendary. She is said to be smart as a whip. An article in the Financial Times Magazine not long ago pointed out that between postcards, posters, tea towels, photographs of her, you name it, “The Queen is the most visually represented non-divine person in human history.” And this doesn’t even include the billions of stamps with her picture, including the famous Machin profile shown above. She has the love of millions. She has the respect of even more, and she deserves it. We should all work as hard as she does, and be as good at what we do as she is.

Last night, the best team did not win (and I’m a Giants fan)

Guest Scrogue — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:06:57 +0000

by Matthew Record

There’s a feeling that’s sat next to me all season as I’ve watch my beloved Giants from strong start to an almost complete meltdown to a rebranding of themselves as tough-as-nails fourth quarter warriors. It’s an odd feeling but I wouldn’t say a negative one. What is this team? I don’t mean these past few weeks or even this season. Going back a few years – what is this team?

This is a team without a personality or flavor… usually elite as a pass rushing unit combined with what is probably among the worst secondaries in the league, six or so years running. The Giants are team that occasionally gets superb years out of cast-offs like Ahmad Bradshaw but still can’t convince Brandon Jacobs to run like he weighs 260 lbs. This is a team that literally can’t find enough space for all their phenomenal defensive line talent (notably lining up Jason Pierre-Paul at tackle to make room) but hasn’t drafted an all-pro linebacker since Jessie Armstead in 1993. This is a team that, in 2003, drafted what turned out to be the best quarterback in the draft but packaged him with other picks (one of which became Shawne Merriman) in order to get a lesser quarterback with more name recognition.

And, yet, it’s all almost genius in its own way, isn’t it?

We’ve now won two Super Bowls in four years, which is a very, very impressive feat given that this team really isn’t very good. Or are they? Seriously, what is this team?

This is the era of Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning. My thoughts one the latter are more complicated so we’ll start with the coach.

Tom Coughlin

A mere three years after taking his team to the Super Bowl, Coach Jim Fassel was unceremoniously fired following the abortion that was the Giants 39-38 playoff loss to the 49ers in 2002 and the injury-wracked 2003 season. The line on Fassel was always that he was too friendly to his players, led a sloppy show and most importantly of all, that his players lacked discipline. I like that word discipline a lot – it covers all manner of sins when discussing the failings of a football team without really meaning anything. It’s as if these players – these unbelievably fast, strong machines with bodies carved out of wood immediately devolve into freshmen at a fraternity kegger without a stern, business-like coach to keep them honest.

Enter Tom Coughlin, a man who’s primary claim to fame up until that moment had been his leading the Jacksonville Jaguars to an entirely improbable AFC Championship performance for the perception around the league that he didn’t take any guff from his players. Almost immediately Coughlin alienated veterans Michael Strahan and Tiki Barber with his dogmatic approach of instilling discipline through mandatory fines for being late to meetings and two-a-day practices designed to, I don’t even know, kill the players, I guess. For this, of course, the old grumpy white guy sports media could not praise him enough. Discipline was the watchword of the new Coughlin administration in Giants land.

There’s a funny thing about discipline in football. Unlike most of the other bullshit intangibles sports guys like to mouth off about, discipline is more or less a measurable quantity. A disciplined team should not get hit with penalties. While it’s not fair to look at one year and say whichever team got the least number of penalty yards was the most disciplined, over a period of years it gives a fair assessment of the culture of a team. Over the last seven years the Giants have ranked 13th, 16th, 19th, 27th, 11th, 26th, 27^th and penalty yards where higher is better, out of 32 teams. I want you to read those numbers again. Not once did the Giants even luck into accidentally being a disciplined team.

Besides demonstrably failing at the one thing which was supposed to be his strength, Coughlin is among the least creative play-callers and formation designers in football. Coughlin calls a solid, unspectacular game that rarely embraces the particular strengths of the team and has not substantively changed at all during Coughlin’s eight-year tenure. Now, I’m not saying I want Coughlin to jump on every idiotic bandwagon that rolls through the NFL (I’m looking at you, Wildcat formation) but Coughlin is just an old-school guy locked fast in an outmoded way of thinking, especially offensively.

I was, for example, shocked – fucking shocked – to learn that Brandon Jacobs holds the team record for rushing touchdowns with 52. Of these 52 touchdowns, 27 of them , or a little over 50%, have come from rushes within 2 yards. This is despite the fact that Jacobs fails in short yardage situations 20% more often than the average running back. Any average NFL running back would have more luck scoring in short yardage situations and yet Coughlin has been beating his head against that same brick wall – not for one year, not two… seven years. In seven years Coughlin has not learned this blatantly obvious lesson. For what its worth, of Ahmad Bradshaw’s 18 touchdowns, only 17% have come from within 2 yards.

Coughlin will, from now on, receive favorable comparisons to a lot of great coaches… Parcells, Belichick, etc. But I found a piece in particular that had a comparison I really like: Coughlin is Tim Tebow. While that author meant it as a compliment: “When the critics put his back against the wall and put his job in jeopardy all he does in win,” I don’t. I mean it in the least complimentary way possible. In the same way that Tebow is lauded with credit that belongs to others (namely, his defense) and in the same way that Tebow manages to fall ass-backwards into dramatic, memorable wins, then yes, Coughlin is the Tebow of coaches. The problem with this Super Bowl is what it means for the Giants long-term. Somehow, Tom Coughlin is a multi-Super Bowl winning coach, which means it’s going to be some time before we’re able to get rid of him. Which means, the Giants yearly ritual of starting strong before running the gamut from mediocrity to more than one complete collapse in the second half of the year will continue indefinitely. Indeed, the Giants have never – not once – done as well or better in the second half of the season as they did during the first under Tom Coughlin. They are 47-17 through the first 8 games under Coughlin and 28-36 in the second 8.

Kevin Gilbride and Tom Coughlin are not the worst offensive minds in football, but they might be the worst to have ever received their particularly egregious brand of extended tenure.

Eli Manning

Eli Manning constantly makes us question the nature of what it is to be great. Eli is not a great quarterback. In 2010, I had him ranked 12^th best in the league, this year I would say he cracked the top 10, but not the top five. He vacillates between mediocre and far more often simply “good.” He will occasionally ratchet that up to “very good” and that above all else is what’s so maddening about him and why I’m not sure what to make of him as a player, or how I feel about him as my team’s quarterback, both historically and moving forward.

I never understood what it was that people liked so much about a player being “clutch.” First of all, as a person who tried not to blindly ignore observable facts, I’m a scion of the idea that while clutch performances exist, clutch players do not. Though, more to the point, listening to sports talk radio guys laud players for having that “extra gear” they can shift into “when it counts,” I’m left wondering why anyone would want that. If a guy has an “extra gear” shouldn’t we be pissed he isn’t using it all the time? Doesn’t that imply “clutch” players aren’t always trying their hardest?

Eli isn’t exactly considered “clutch” but much has been made of how much better he played this year in the 4^th quarter. While others congratulate him for that, it drives me nuts. Eli clearly has all of the tools, both physical and in his surrounding personnel to be an elite quarterback but he’s held back by bad decision-making. He throws way too many stupid passes and a lot of them are picked off. Watching him these last few weeks, though, really drives home – he fucking could be the best quarterback in the league, but he just isn’t. Why? I honestly have no clue. Maybe he’s just not driven by that phantom desire for greatness. Maybe he realizes he’s going to luck into a shot at the Super Bowl every four years and the years when the team really is great – like in 2008 – they don’t actually make it past the first round.

Now, however, we have to endure the interminable questions of whether Eli is better than his brother Peyton. Peyton Manning, for my money was, up until probably three years ago the unquestioned greatest quarterback of all time. With the good statistical years Brady had in the championship days giving way to some absolutely stupid performances since 2007, I think the gap has closed such that either one has a fair argument for the crown.

The Eli vs. Peyton debate is different, though, and more insidious. It says something about us and what we believe “greatness” is. Peyton Manning is not only a great athlete, but a brilliant football tactician who basically served as his team’s de facto offensive coordinator. Without him, a 10-6 Indianapolis team only two years removed from a Super Bowl win with roughly the same roster descended to the unquestioned worst team in the NFL in 2010. Peyton’s credentials should be absolutely beyond reproach and yet the question will be asked over and over again – is Eli better than his brother because he has more championships.

The answer should be, of course, FUCKING NO, MORON, HE’S NOT BETTER! But it’s not, and this becomes the insidious referendum on greatness I referred to earlier. Somehow, all the work – all the fantastic, unprecedented work Peyton Manning has done gets erased by a lucky two months for the Giants. This is the same impulse that lets us look at a Donald Trump on the one hand and a hardworking family man laid off and on unemployment on the other and declare one a success and one a failure without in any contextualizing the reality that lead to their respective places in the world.

We don’t care about the journey, we count up the Super Bowl rings or we tabulate a guy’s bank account and we declare a winner. And it’s fucked up.

Why do we bother keeping track of these athletes statistics to the third decimal place if we intend to ignore them? Joe Montana is better than Dan Marino. Why? Well, Joe Montana has four rings. Well, Joe Montana also had Ronnie Lott and Jerry Rice. Joe Montana had a better tactician for a coach. You know, they guy who invented the offense they were using. Forget a nuanced examination the facts, let’s get something quick and dirty, like Super Bowl wins and move on.

Eli Manning is the living embodiment, for and against, of all of our worst and most reactionary impulses. I’ve never thought he was good enough to be a Championship quarterback, even after 2007 – a Super Bowl victory I thought belonged to the Giants line and Steve Spagnuolo and, in my head, only incidentally involved Eli. But tonight, having watched my team hoist their second trophy in four years? I don’t have the slightest clue what to think anymore. He must be a championship caliber quarterback but, if he is, than that designation has been devalued.

Eli Manning could be one of the greats, but now that his legacy in that regard is sort of locked in, I have a hard time believing he’s going to be pushing himself much harder to achieve that Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady level of elite since his place in their company has been, right or wrong, guaranteed by the number of rings he’s now won even if that ring belongs a lot more to Jason Pierre-Paul, Hakeem Nicks and Chris Snee than it does to him.

The Super Bowl is meant to be the culmination of a long process of planning and execution. You amass the pieces over a period of years and when the moment is right, with a little bit of luck you charge at the prize against your elite peers. The Giants, however, are more like this constant rebuilding projects with these short, staccato burst of greatness that just happened to be timed correctly. I don’t believe in the idea of sports momentum but having watching the Giants these past few weeks it’s definitely hard to say I’m as steadfast an un-believer as I once was. Similarly, I don’t ever believe a team “owns” another team but damned if it doesn’t seem like the Giants own the Patriots in a big spot.

Last night’s Bowl victory is probably not the start of a long dynasty. If anything, it’s as likely to make the Giants complacent and lazy but it feels wonderful for now just the same.

The magic of sports is that since it’s not pre-determined, the best team doesn’t always, or even usually win. Last night, the best team did not win. I just wonder about the way we experience sports, rationalize it, drench it in hindsight bias and devalue the achievements of people just because they didn’t achieve the one moment the one time. The fact that less than great men are capable of great moments should be a sign of hope to all of us who are not, strictly speaking great. But if we are all defined by a few moments when we were at our best or worst than we risk losing the flavor of what real life actually is. Sports it’s supposed to be this amplified competition that reflects real life so I for one, even as a Giants fan, refuse to be taken in by the hype. I know I’m going to have to have the same argument over and over again with other Giants fans explaining how I could possibly not see the obvious greatness of Eli Manning. Those late game picks may be long forgotten memories to them but I remember the failures – the late season swoons and one game doesn’t erase all that. Eli is not any one narrative — they are all right and they are all wrong in equal measure. One game doesn’t change who he is as a person or a professional.

I thank you, Eli Manning and the Giants, for the championships, the fun and the moments of joy but you still suck.

Words are hardly “such feeble things” in Orwell’s literary journalism

Chris Mackowski — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:59:41 +0000

Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. (1937) — Orwell is best know for his dystopic 1984 and Animal Farm, but Orwell cut his chops as a journalist, and he understood the power of his pen. In Wigan Pier, he looks at the abominable Depression-era conditions of northern England’s working class. “I have seen just enough of the working class to avoid idealizing them,” Orwell says, yet he obviously admires them for somehow making due, lowering their standards of living rather than giving in to despair. He also realizes their value in calling out the hypocrisies of the country’s middle class.

even now, if coal could be produced without pregnant woman dragging it to and fro, I fancy we should let them do it rather than deprive ourselves of coal. But most of the time, of course, we should prefer to forget that they were doing it. It is so with all types of manual work; it keeps us alive, and we are oblivious of its existence.

Orwell lives his story. “[B]y no conceivable amount of effort or training could I become a coal-miner; the work would kill me in a few weeks,” he quickly realizes. He doesn’t just “tell,” though; Orwell is a master of the “show.”

It was not only the dirt, the smells and the vile food, but the feeling of stagnant meaningless decay, of having got down into some subterranean place where people go creeping round and round, just like blackbeetles, in an endless muddle of slovened jobs and mean grievances.

Particularly in the context of the hard lives of the working class, Orwell suggests that his own trade seems soft. “Words are such feeble things,” he says.

It’s hard to take him at his word about that, though, because Orwell writes description about as well as any writer could dream of. His opening sequence, set in a boarding house, rolls right into it: “Hanging from the ceiling here was a heavy glass chandelier on which the dust was so think that it was like fur.” Suspicious tripe, coal-black fingerprints on slices of bread, crumbs so long unbrushed from the kitchen tablecloth that “I used to get to know individual crumbs by sight and watch their progress up and down the table from day to day”—Orwell doesn’t miss a trick when it comes to setting scene.

The second half of the book grinds down into Orwell’s treatise on the pros and cons of socialism, although for this he can be forgiven. After all, Wigan Pier was written for the Left Book Club, and Orwell explicitly wrote his piece with the idea of social change in mind. “I would not do it if I did not think that I am sufficiently typical of my class, or rather sub-caste, to have a certain symptomatic importance,” he says. This portion of the book was, I admit, of less value to me as I look at the was creative nonfiction writers write about place, although I did go through it just for the sake of enjoying Orwell’s clarity of thought.

Orwell’s social consciousness and his sense of responsibility as a journalist went hand in hand—powered by incredibly literary skill. In Orwell’s hands, words are never such feeble things.

Walden Sunset

Chris Mackowski — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:31:24 +0000

Walden Pond, sunset, Saturday, 4 February 2012

Soft power, hard power, election power

Guest Scrogue — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:08:31 +0000

by Robert S. Becker

If he wins, risk-averse, calculating Mitt Romney won’t name a firebrand V.P. Not noxious Newt, who’s way too grandiose to play second fiddle to anyone. Thus, short of a Black Swan event, we can expect two safe national tickets, thus reversing the election pyrotechnics the last time around, with its high drama and gaseous eruptions.

Too bad for media frenzy, late-night comics, or pundits amused by theatrics — who all relish barking-mad, headline-grabbing mavericks. On pre-emptive invasions alone, will the two top dogs compete with the bellicose tirades spewing from Bush, Cheney or McCain, let alone Perry or Bachmann? Not likely, what with two, miserably failed wars slogging to a finish, reminiscent of old soldiers who never really die, just slowly fade away. How many war-fatigued voters will hoot and holler for much more than a missile strike that dissuades Iran from more rogue rhetoric?

Even the breakthrough symbolism of 2012 suffers: no whiter-than-white Romney as first Mormon president compares with the first minority winner, especially having vanquished our most famous woman politician, then a cranky war-monger with loudmouth sidekick. If Mitt picks a running mate no more pugnacious than Joe Biden, the result would be four candidates much less likely to bare their teeth than defeated GOP zealots. In that sense, Romney’s survival is good news — if only a break from maniacal neo-con insolence. Not believing in much of anything, other than caution, distinguishes both Obama and Romney from fringe misfits displaying Grandiose Rhetoric Syndrome (GRS).

Obama has already returned to his soft power campaign patter. Okay, on Iran, he’s still pandering to the right, taking “nothing off the table.” But consider Obama explaining away this contradiction — we fire off our nukes (or do massive civilian bombing) just to take out half-done Iranian nukes to send a message? I suspect Obama would much prefer history to take his soaring, oratorical defenses of government as his legacy. His cheerleading so far outshines his legislative gains, and his business-as-usual, save Wall Street programs will be forgotten in 10 years. Is there any doubt four more Obama years means more compromise, co-operation and consensus — proof positive of his “devoutly non-ideological” purity?

Soft Talk, Big Sticks

Indeed, did not Obama’s defeat of hawkish Clinton, then more hawkish McCain, signal some sort of turn from the hard power fiasco of Bush-Cheney? Obama’s soft power, charm offensive played well against eight years poisoned by wrong-headed saber-rattling, coercion against domestic enemies, rights violations and nakedly imperial power plays. Neo-con defenses of torture, plus permanent incarceration, hit squads, and secret prisons, put Bush-Cheney in the eternal Hard Power Hall of Shame. Only a second term reveals how Obama better reconciles his soft and hard power pledges.

Likewise, a Romney win shows enough Republicans favor his kind of mushy-ideological pragmatism, not the crude pugnacity of Gingrich or Santorum. Ron Paul, curiously enough, talks soft power abroad (well, defensive war-making) but domestically his hard-core, absolutist philosophy discourages soft power compromise: that “government is best which govern least.” Period, end of story, nothing soft about no civil rights laws.

Like our pragmatist-in-chief, Romney rarely met a high-sounding principle he couldn’t embrace. But doesn’t belief in human flexibility drive soft power — and would not a President Romney try to match Obama in the “compromise, co-operation and consensus” realm? In short, an Obama-Romney battle, however nasty, presents two detached, managerial, mediation types keen to “optimize the system,” engage big business stakeholders, and thrash out differences by slicing them in half, then again. With moderation the new wave, the no-compromise Tea Party’s wings will be clipped. Or evoke a winger third-party that assures an Obama win.

Romney: Sprint to the Middle

Certainly, five minutes after commandeering the GOP nomination, Romney tacks hard middle, dishing out reassuringly soft language to corral centrist white folks mightily offended by Obama’s wobbles (and background). And the president’s counter-strategy is no mystery: vote for me (I’m more likeable), the economy’s on the mend, and all we need is more collective action, along with Democratic control of the House and Senate.

Thus our national election pageant returns to relative normalcy, that is, to total obsession with personality, fundraising, management of sound bites, adjustment to surprises, and mangling foes without getting tainted. My rule of thumb: the less any election is about anything real (read: systemic change), the more star power, wedge issues, and propaganda dominate. Brace for an onslaught of expensive words, along with even more expensive, well-polished non-solutions (in long run costs). And the tiresome GOP talking points calling out Obama for what’s he done — ruined the country by squandering trillions with anti-business bias — plus what he’s not done: fueled job growth, served private enterprise, or sustained national prestige and security, respect for religion as well as the religion of American exceptionalism. Yawn.

Postpone the Fireworks

For a minute there, the transient Gingrich surge foreshadowed an election battle royal with Obama (in rhetoric, anyway), fraught with more sensational headlines than a morass of celebrity meltdowns. More’s the pity for those delighting in the absurd, still imagining Newt’s hard power pile driver up against the silver-tongued, soft power president teeming with help-your-neighbor, community togetherness. Can’t always get what you want . . .

Dispatching Gingrich means dumping the ultimate GOP mugger, congenitally prone towards shameless lying and knowing how to get in any opponent’s face. Newt doesn’t simply disagree with Romney, for example, but scorns him as “breathtakingly dishonest.” The president isn’t simply misguided, but a fraudulent, “food stamp president” whose “Kenyan anti-colonial” socialism dramatizes his otherness. What a joke: Obama the great enemy of empire building, the most capitalist-friendly “socialist” in history — and from Kenya, to boot.

But, alas, my Gingrich Gratification Grid (and subsequent Obama landslide) dissipates if the Florida primary follows polling, re-setting the GOP status quo. Perhaps the super-rich GOP can no longer cherrypick their no-tax-business champion, but they can defang unruly attack dogs, like Newt. Kudos to rightwing billionaires protecting their own, dividing and conquering “their” Tea Party just like they swiftboat Democrats. What a moment, to enjoy a return to relative electoral melodrama after the rancorous Bush turmoil.

The loathsome list again

wufnik — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:35:13 +0000

When you come down to it, we’re surrounded by morons and fools, many of whom are our leaders–political, cultural, media, whatever. Opening a newspaper or turning on the television in modern America often is like diving into an oil spill. So it’s time once again to remind ourselves of their transgressions, which we have the Buffalo Beast to do for us, so we don’t have to waste time trying to keep track ourselves. Once again, here is their annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans in 2011. It’s got Megyn Kelly (pictured, number 45) on it, and all the Repubican presidential candidates, and Rupert Murdoch is way up there at number 2, bless his heart. And The Donald, of course.

Dear Secretary Panetta: U.S. taxpayers have better things to do with their money than fund nukes in Europe

Russ Wellen — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:38:20 +0000

The Project for Government Oversight has written a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta reminding him that it's U.S. taxpayers who pay for nuclear weapons in Europe.

The Komen “reversal”: a crushing failure of America’s newsrooms

Samuel Smith — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:51:13 +0000

Yesterday I attempted to shed a little light on the PR crisis strategy behind the Komen Foundation’s sudden Planned Parenthood “backtracking.”

Contrary to what Komen’s highly-paid PR crisis hacks and gullible headline writers at newsdesks around the nation would ask you to believe, The Susan G. Komen Foundation does NOT promise to fund Planned Parenthood in the future. They promise to let PP APPLY for grants in the future. Applying and receiving are different things, as anyone who ever applied and got rejected for a job ought to know.

…

The announcement is timed beautifully – just before Super Bowl Weekend – and they’re hoping that the combination of the pretend apology and the big game will insure that, come Monday morning, nobody will remember what they did. They can then find a reason to deny those future Planned Parenthood grant apps when nobody is paying much attention.

The title of that post wonders if the American public will be stupid enough to fall for it. Perhaps the question I should have been asking was this: why are America’s copy editors stupid enough to fall for it? Witness the headlines from some of the nation’s more prominent purveyors of journalism:

Komen Drops Plans to Cut Planned Parenthood Grants – ABC News
Komen reverses Planned Parenthood move – angering antiabortion activists – Philadelphia Inquirer
Komen reverses move to cut Planned Parenthood funding – Reuters
Komen backs off decision on funding cuts – msnbc.com
Komen Reverses Stance on Planned Parenthood – Bloomberg
Web Fury Spurs Komen Reversal, $3 Million for Planned Parenthood – BusinessWeek
Cancer Group Backs Down on Cutting Off Planned Parenthood – New York Times
Komen does about-face on cuts to Planned Parenthood – The Seattle Times
Komen changes course on Planned Parenthood funding – Atlanta Journal Constitution
Charity Does an About-Face – Wall Street Journal
Komen Caves Under Pressure, Reinstates PP Funding – Forbes
Komen Charity Reverses Planned Parenthood Grant Cuts – PBS News Hour

It’s frightening how much journalism has changed in a generation. For instance, there used to be a subtle game of cat-and-mouse between the PR hacks who wanted their clients’ stories told a certain way and the journalists who wanted the story told the right way. The pros would tune up a pitch and present it to a reporter or editor so that it put the organization in the best light. There was something of a negotiational process. And the publisher went to press with a headline (written by the copy desk) that, in their view, best summarized the nuts and bolts of the story. The PR pro/journalist relationship was a professional one, with each side understanding the demands of the other’s job. A good PR exec would work to make the reporter’s job easier by making sure the pitch was tailored to the publication’s audience and the reporter understood that the PR industry could be a helpful source of information – after all, communities have a vested interest in the businesses and private organizations that serve them, right? Reporters often resented the high salaries that PR professionals earned (and any number of reporters eventually migrated over to “the dark side” for this very reason – in fact, most of the best PR people I have known in my career followed precisely that path), but there was a productive symbiosis that worked well so long as everyone did his or her job well.

I remember the frustration on the 50th floor at 1801 California in Denver back in the late ’90s when US West would go to the press with a story and they’d spin it differently than we wanted. This happened often enough, and especially with quarterly earnings reports. The Media Relations and Investor Relations teams would hone the story to a fine edge, release it to the world, and what appeared in the papers the next day often bore very little resemblance to what we had put out. Why? Well, the PR group’s job is like that of a lawyer – represent the client’s interest, period. The reporter, on the other hand, was more like the judge, making sure that due attention was paid to the facts themselves. The audience was the jury.

That was then, and this is now. While the nature of financial reporting is such that you still get some actual journalism when earnings are released (thanks to the laws and regulations around corporate finance), the rest of the newsroom might as well be on the payroll of the PR firm doing the pitching. My colleague, Dr. Denny, spent 20 years on the copy desk and has dedicated significant energy here at S&R to explaining why our papers are increasingly populated by unedited PR copy (and to the corrosive impact this exerts on our democracy). The next time you’re thinking of buying a book on why the republic has gone to hell, save your money. Just click that link above and spend a few hours reflecting on his analysis. It’s more illuminating than just about anything on the virtual shelves at Amazon. And it’s free.

I don’t want to put words in Denny’s mouth, but I suspect had yesterday’s “reversal” story broken on a day when Denny was running the copy desk he’d have taken the time to:

actually read the release;
consider the established context of the story and the motivations of the players involved (no, he wouldn’t project his politics into the story, but he would be aware of the politics of the organizations because that’s at the center of the controversy);
take a moment to think about the importance of the story to the community he served – what was their interest?
Oh, yeah – he’d consider how much space he had and whether there were other more pressing stories.

Then he’d have edited the story according to these factors and he’d have written a headline that summarized what Komen had actually done. If, in his professional judgment, Komen was legitimately reversing field, that’s what the headline would have said. If, on the other hand, he had read the facts of the case the way I do, he would have ignored the cleverly crafted 48-point bold headline that Komen’s PR folks had put at the top of the page.

But yesterday, all across America, copy editors who are in too many cases inexperienced, poorly trained and swamped with more responsibility than one person can reasonably manage, did what they usually do. They took the headline at face value and ran the press release pretty much as-is.

And what landed in front of the public, flying under the banner of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, and, the gods help us, the PBS News Hour, was unfiltered crisis PR put together by hacks paid not to think about the best interests of the public, but about the financial and political agendas of their client. Put in the terms of my courtroom analogy above, it’s like we’ve made the defense attorney the judge and jury, as well.

The lesson, sadly, is that with this story (and just about all other stories of importance to the citizens of the US), we cannot look to the press for help. They have become nothing more than the publication arm of the American public relations industry. Typists. Transcriptionists. Gofers. Foot soldiers.

So it’s up to us to read closely, to think critically, and to keep each other plugged in, using whatever tools are available, so that we can make informed decisions in the public interest. If we don’t, nobody will.

Is Bill Belichick really a Hall of Famer?

Samuel Smith — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:47:37 +0000

I can’t tell you how many times this week, in listening to radio, watching TV or reading print “analyses” on the upcoming Super Bowl, I have heard “Bill Belichick” and “Hall of Fame” used in sequence. It’s been a lot. The working assumption is that the Patriots’ head coach, who has been to four Super Bowls and won three of them (pending Sunday’s showdown with the New York Giants) is a lock first-ballot HoFer. After all, he has several rings and is widely regarded as the premier genius of the contemporary game.

Fair enough. But before this particular runaway bandwagon crashes the gates of Canton, I’d like to ask a question: is Belichick really a Hall of Famer?

Let’s consider a few brief facts.

He cheated. Yes he did. Stone cold busted. (Apologists can argue that what he was doing was no big deal if they like. But as bad as I detest the guy, I respect the hell out of his ability. He’s brilliant and even the slightest edge is something he can make hay with. Also, if it didn’t give him an advantage, why did he risk the punishment that was going to attend getting caught? Smart people simply do not bet high-risk/no-reward propositions.)
One of his protégés, Skippy McDaniel, replicated the same crime when he was head coach in Denver. And got busted. This doesn’t automatically reflect on Belichick, but it does suggest something systematic, something programmatic, doesn’t it? Which means we might be skeptical about any claims that what the Pats got nailed for was a one-off.
Most critically: Belichick has won three championships, but none of them since his cheating was exposed.

The Patriots might win Sunday, and if they do then it takes some steam out of the question I’m posing. But:

if the Giants win, and
if Belichick never wins another title (which would be consistent with what has historically characterized the careers of most NFL championship coaches more than a few years removed from Super Bowl wins), and
if you had a Hall of Fame vote…

…would you cast it for Bill Belichick, whose résumé would, at the time of consideration, include zero Super Bowl wins that you could assume were clean?

I don’t know. I might vote for him eventually, but not on the first ballot. And maybe never, because I’m one of these self-righteous dinosaurs who thinks that sportsmanship and ethics matter.

What do you think?

Komen Foundation pretends to change its mind. One corporate communications executive wonders: is the public stupid enough to buy it?

Samuel Smith — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:53:14 +0000

Read. The language. Closely.

Contrary to what Komen’s highly-paid PR crisis hacks and gullible headline writers at newsdesks around the nation would ask you to believe, The Susan G. Komen Foundation does NOT promise to fund Planned Parenthood in the future. They promise to let PP APPLY for grants in the future. Applying and receiving are different things, as anyone who ever applied and got rejected for a job ought to know.

I have some experience in the world of corporate communications, folks. Lots and lots, in fact, and I’ve been inside a Fortune 150 war room when the wheels flew off. Today’s media charade is an attempt to get the heat off as soon as possible. Textbook stuff.

The announcement is timed beautifully – just before Super Bowl Weekend – and they’re hoping that the combination of the pretend apology and the big game will insure that, come Monday morning, nobody will remember what they did. They can then find a reason to deny those future Planned Parenthood grant apps when nobody is paying much attention.

So, America – how stupid are you?

If you want Komen to do the right thing, demand that they fire their aggressively anti-abortion president and their anti-abortion board and that they work with non-partisan health and women’s groups to replace them with leaders who will put the well being of American women first.

Anything short of that plays right into the hands of those who’d hold breast cancer victims hostage to a social conservative political agenda.

S&R Poetry: “The Hour of Ours,” by Alan Garvey

Poetry — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:14:56 +0000

It’s not that I don’t like the kids
just that I crave respite from the clutter and crash
of toy tractors and trains, trucks shunting
from one junction of the sitting-room to another.

It’s not that I don’t like you browsing
the web on your laptop, switching from gifts
for your family to documentaries about
bottled water, and breast ironing in Cameroon.

It’s not that I don’t want the outside world
and its ways of waking when we’d rather sleep,
though I resent the shriek of our alarm –
see, on TV alarms work with a civilised beep.

It’s not that I strive to be the all and everything
for thee, a Victor Meldrew type of axis mundi.
It’s that there is but one hour of opportunity
when the kids are asleep and we turn off the TV,

its animations and jerks shrunk to a tiny dot,
a flatline of noise and intrusion where all is still
and we can be who we are without satellites or cargo,
when the world stops, time and space bend at our will.

________________

Alan Garvey’s third collection of poetry, Terror Háza, was published by Lapwing (Belfast) in 2009. His work is represented in various magazines and anthologies. He graduated with a MA in Creative Writing; has read in Toronto and Newfoundland and worked in Budapest, courtesy of the Irish Arts Council. He has worked as an arts administrator, part-time lecturer and creative writing tutor, and is a contributing editor to The Gloom Cupboard.

Super PAC money exposes myth of ‘democratic’ politics

Dr. Denny — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:09:45 +0000

During their 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain both claimed the support of the people, citing evidence of small donors who gave to their campaigns. Both used that as a claim to be the true inheritors of the populist mantle.

We were so naive back then about ~~purchasing power~~ financing campaigns. How times have changed despite the continuing fiction of claims by candidates of “popular” support. Our small $201 checks no longer matter. Other people write bigger checks. Corporations can write indescribably large checks.

A report from the Campaign Finance Institute following the 2008 election refuted their claims. Looking at small donors (at least $201), mid-range donors ($201-$999) and large donors ($1,000 and up), the CFI concluded that nearly half of the 450 million donations to President Obama’s campaign committee came from the $1,000-and-up donors.

Both Obama’s and McCain’s campaign made use of bundlers (fundraisers who package checks from other donors), a practice perfected by President George W. Bush. Each raised tens of millions of dollars through the bundled checks of large donors.

Well, presidential candidates are populists no more. Super PACs, organizations freed by the Supreme Court to raise unlimited amounts of money for electioneering communications, have killed that lingering civics-class fantasy.

President Obama’s campaign continues to try to perpetuate the myth that his principal support comes from “small” donors. He has raised about half of his campaign committee’s $125 million (so far) from under-$200 donors. The man of the people, Mitt Romney, has pulled in about $56.5 million for his campaign committee — and less than 10 percent came from small donors.

But enter folks like billionaire Harold Simmons. According to the Center for Responsive Politics:

Simmons and his holding company, Contran Corp., gave $8.5 million to three super PACs, two of which support candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, in the last quarter of the year. [emphasis added]

Enter casino mogul Sheldon Adelson et familia. Without the $11 million-plus given to super PACs by him and his family, Newt Gingrich would quietly drown in the political quagmires of his own creation.

And that small-donor populist, President Obama? First, he has a network of 445 bundlers who bring in millions of dollars to his campaign committee; 61 of those brought in at least a half-million dollars each.

Second, there’s the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action. Sadly, it’s relatively poor ($4.1 million) compared with pro-Newt and pro-Mitt super PACs. But give it time: As The Boston Globe reports, “reliably liberal donors” contribute. You know the ones: Hollywood and labor unions. They’ll eventually open their wallets. But will they be needed?

“That [super PAC] hasn’t really caught on with progressive donors,’’ said Anthony Corrado, professor of government at Colby College. “There are plenty of ways to support the president without having to give to a super PAC. At this point, the expectation is the president’s campaign committee will be very well-funded, and he’s not going to need the additional resources a super PAC might generate.’’

I’m not so sure. At least 290 super PACs exist. Of the top 10 grossing super PACs, conservative-oriented ones have raised nearly $60 million; liberal-oriented ones only $17.3 million.

The CFI report defined “large” donors as those who gave $1,000 or more to formal candidate campaign committees. But even those donors were limited to a maximum total donation. Not so the donors to super PACs. Thanks to reporting by Nicholas Confessore and Michael Luo of The New York Times, we learn:

Close to 60 corporations and wealthy individuals gave checks of $100,000 or more to a “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney in the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, according to documents released on Tuesday, underwriting a $17 million blitz of advertising that has swamped his Republican rivals in the early primary states. [emphasis added]

The law says super PACs cannot “coordinate” with candidates’ own campaign committees. But Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have exploded that particular legal dodge, haven’t they?

Super PACs, because they are permitted to spend half their revenues in “electioneering communications,” will have a far greater influence than candidates’ own campaign committees. In the four GOP primary contests, super PACs have spent about $44 million. And on what? Attack ads. Vicious, unrelenting, often misleading attack ads.

After just four nominating contests in January, the super PACs already account for nearly half of all television ads bought so far, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. Meanwhile, ads funded by the candidates themselves dropped 40 percent.

Super PACs are accumulating extraordinary amounts of political money. We’ve all been focused on the role of super PACs in the presidential campaigns. But as I wrote more than two years ago, billionaires rule politics beyond presidential campaigns. Think Bloomberg for mayor. Think Whitman for governor.

Super PACs will have more than enough money to pour into presidential politics. But the spending won’t end there. They’ve taken aim at backing candidates for or re-electing incumbents to Congress. Reports Dan Eggen of The Washington Post:

The powerful political groups known as super PACs, whose heavy spending has become a significant factor in the presidential race, are also beginning to play a role in congressional races around the country. The groups have set off a scramble among candidates in both parties, who are now struggling to cope with a flood of negative ads run by organizations that are outside their direct control.

Targets of super PAC money in recent months include at least two dozen pivotal House districts around the country, along with high-profile Senate races in states such as Massachusetts, Ohio, Utah and Indiana, according to Federal Election Commission data and interviews with political strategists.

Can super PAC-funded advertising in gubernatorial races be far behind?

Big political money, it seems, follows a basic Reaganomics principle: Trickle down. So much money controlled by the very wealthy, corporations, and unions now rules politics at an increasing number of levels.

If you take pride in giving the reportable $201 donation to a candidate’s campaign committee, you’re still living in a a fantasy that your gift matters.

cross-quarter

Lisa Wright — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:30:20 +0000

A WordsDay Special: 25+ Books in 30+ Days

Chris Mackowski — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:24:42 +0000

So I crammed all those books into my head, and as I suspected, I can’t stop. I’m still cramming, still trying to slip just a few more books under my brain. It’s not that I need to. I want to. That’s what too much reading will do to you: it’ll make you want to read more. (Well, at least that’s how it goes with me.)

But because I’m getting close to exam time, I’m trying to concentrate more on the reading, with less time for writing about the books as I go. So, these will be brief:

Bryson, Bill. I’m a Stranger Here Myself. (1999) — A little glib goes a long way. That’s how I felt by the time I reached the end of Bryson’s collected columns, written for an English newspaper after moving back to America following a 20-year sojourn abroad. Any one column was great, and Bryson frequently made me laugh out loud. The book was chucklicious. But it was also a little much, perhaps because the columns were short and, by their nature, jumped from topic to topic, which made the overall feel of the book a little manic. Had I spaced the book out over a few weeks and read just a few entries at a time, I’m sure Bryson’s charm and droll humor would’ve worked for me much, much better (because, let’s face it, the guy is hilarious!). I can see myself giving the book one of those “It’s not you, it’s me” speeches.

Gilman, Susan Jane. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. (2009) — I picked this up because it was a travelogue about two college graduates who decide to backpack across China in the mid-1980s. “Hey, let’s be Odysseus,” she and her friend decide. “Let’s be Byron. Let’s be Don Quixote, Huck Finn, and Jack Kerouac all rolled into one—except with lip gloss.” Their story turned out to be funny, tragic, interesting, and gripping. Gilman pulled me in quick, and I didn’t want to put the book not (not that I had the leisure to even if I wanted to). Gilman’s book has pitch-perfect pacing, and it reads like a good novel even though it’s nonfiction. “God knows I couldn’t make this up,” she says in her author’s note. Her post-9/11 perspective as a writer (and a more experienced traveler) gives the book extra resonance.

Kingsolver, Barbara. High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. (1995) — This collection of essays was so good I don’t even know where to begin with it. Only a few of her essays focused specifically on place (my reason for reading), but those that do made me feel like I was in the crater of Hawaii’s dormant volcano Haleakala or in a crowded village in the African country of Benin or along the banks of Horse Lick Creek in the mountains of Kentucky. Cumulatively, Kingsolver captures what it means to be human—or should mean, anyway. “It’s starting to look as if the most shameful tradition of Western civilization is out need to deny we are animals,” she writes. The book is a paean to curiosity and wonder. “I have taught myself joy, over and over again,” she says. I constantly found myself highlighting passages, making notes, copying quotes. Kingsolver’s essays are so rich. In the final accounting,” she writes,” a hundred different truths are likely to reside at any given address.” A hundred different truths—and more—reside in this collection. Kingsolver might be the great discovery of this entire reading project.

“How To Argue With A Republican” – M.O.C. #113

Lee Camp — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:32:56 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.