Can We Teach "Religion"?

Morgan Spurlock (of Super Size Me fame) has (maybe had, I'm not sure) a show on FX! called 30 Days, in which he would put people in situations that seems contrasting to their own beliefs/ideals in hopes of fostering understanding, if not 'tolerance'. In the pilot, Spurlock and his wife attempt to live on minimum wage for a month, in other episodes: a border state minuteman lives with a family of illegal immigrants in East LA, a 'tough guy' football player living with two gay guys in the Castro District in San Francisco, and there was a Christian living as a Muslim in an Islamic community in Dearborn, Michigan. It's this last one that I found most interesting. He came out of it claiming to "understand" Islam and what it's like to be a Muslim. I was left to wonder if a 'true' Muslim would be willing to undergo a similar experience in a Christian community.

The cover story of last week's issue of Time Magazine was "The Case For Teaching The Bible" (at least it was the cover story in the US edition, the international edition had a cover story called "The Truth About Talibanistan"...standard discrepancy). The article, borrowing heavily from Stephen Prothero and his newest book, Religious Literacy, argues for teaching about world religions in public schools from an objective, non-promotive viewpoint, with the goal being to foster "understanding", if not "tolerance", of all peoples and their various religions.

A few questions:
1) Is it possible to teach 'religion' from an objective viewpoint as an objective field of inquiry? (Assuming 'objectivity' as a concept itself is possible)?
2) Is it possible to fundamentally 'understand' a religion different from your own (or to 'understand' any religion if you claim atheism)?
3) If the 'American Experiment' in democracy has thrived under (at least nominal) areligiosity, is that a necessary condition for the functionality of democracy? Atheism has been the stated preference of communism which has a poor track record, so is religion necessary for that system to succeed? Or is it fundamentally flawed (and democracy fundamentally prone to success), regardless of religious affiliation?


I don't have any answers today, just questions (using being on 'sabbatical' as an excuse). If you have more questions, tack 'em on.

Sabbatical

You know the deal.



I'll be back eventually

Trying to Be Funny

This is legitimately funny:


This is just embarrassing (not just for Rove, I see you too David Gregory)

A Week in the Senate: Day 2

Tuesday in the Senate they were debating the Cochran amendment, a bill to strike the language about a timetable for withdrawal from the Emergency Supplemental request:

Chuck Hagel, (R) Nebraska
"There will be no victory or defeat in Iraq."

"Honorable intentions are not policies or plans or responsible; it may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq."

"Some of my collegues say we should dispense with this frivolous debate, 'the president has threatened to veto, what a waste of our time'. Well, if you logically follow that through, Mr. President, why do we need a congress? Why don't we let the president make all the choices? I suspect there are some in this administration who would liike that, some in this country who would like that...We tried a monarchy once, it wasn't suited for America...This idea that somehow you don't support the troops if you don't continue in a lemming like way to accept whatever this administration's policy is, that's what's wrong...and that is dangerous."

Lindsey Graham, (R) South Carolina
"I would leave tomorrow if I thought the Iraqi people were incapable of solving their own problems."

"I was at Guatanamo listening to Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of 9/11, explaining why he was at war with us, he will be at war with us til his last breath."

John Thune, (R) South Dakota
"Our colleagues on the other side also like to note that there were no Iraqis on the planes that attacked us on September 11th. Well, there weren't any Afghanis either. In fact, if we follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion about who was on those planes, then perhaps this Congress should change the 2002 authorization for the use of force and allow the president to attack Saudi Arabia, because the majority of the hijackers were Saudis. But of course such a line of thinking is ridiculous, because this conflict is not about national identity, it is about ideology; it is about good vs evil, right vs wrong, freedom vs tyranny, and hope vs cynicism...Our greatest export should be freedom"

Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R), Texas
"We're just going to leave, we're not stating any benchmarks, we're not stating any success strategies...what does it say to the enemy? It says the greatest country in the world is going to be there as long as it's not very hard. And when it gets too tough we will just leave and we will walk out...that is not the message of the greatest country on earth."

Mitch McConnell, (R), Kentucky
"We've seen enough to believe that this new approach was exactly the right thing to do"
"President Bush has repeatedly said he will veto...I urge my colleagues not to take us down this path, not to delay the delivery of emergency funding to our troops by forcing a presidential veto."

Joe Liebermann, (I), Connecticut
"The biggest cause of the violence in Iraq is not the split between Sunnis and Shias, but a specific ideology, the ideology of Islamist extremism that is trying to exploit that divide for it's own evil ends."

"We cannot redeploy from our moral responsibility in Iraq or in our foreign policy more generally."

Dick Durbin, (D), Illinois
"Voting for the Cochran amendment says its enough that the president sends us, every 60 or 90 days, a report; 'tell us how things are going Mr President, how are we doing?'. Is that why we're here in Congress to receive reports from the president, to put them on a bookshelf somewhere and hope that a staffer has time to read them? (side note: or perhaps you could read them, oh honorable senator)

You Elected Him, Texas

Senator John Cornyn, (R) Texas, is on the floor of the Senate right now, quoting, at length, from Wiki-freaking-pedia while discussing the Emergency Supplemental.

That's it, I'm running for Congress.

Local News: Easter Embarrassment?

The church down the street from the one I attend has the picture below prominently featured on a poster out front of their campus and on their website:

Now, I'm not one to moralize about bringing in secular artists for church services or whatever, but this poster is slightly embarrassing, no? The oversized Ruben emitting his glorious American Idol-blue radiance (it's so bright he needs his stunna shades), head cocked to the side to show off that playalicious earring, "American Idol" emblazoned across his bosom just to make sure you know why the faceless horde below is worshipping this radiant, transcendent being, with the text in the upper left printed in the traditional easter-egg yellow and pink.

From a related Fresno Bee article:
Jim Corrao, executive pastor at Northside Christian Church, says he remembers Studdard talking during "American Idol" competition about his church upbringing in Birmingham, Ala.
"We know he has that background," Corrao says. "He is kind of a crossover. I think he will draw people who wouldn't normally come to church."
He's got a point, we all know anyone who would listen to radio-friendly R&B would probably never go to church, especially on Easter, those reprobate heathens. Now, people who actually write and record that music on the other hand....

"...Because we are in the north part of town, people think we serve a certain [read: rich, white, suburban, Dobson-conservative...noted for purpose of clarification] population. I think any church would shiver at that thought. We want everybody -- and anybody -- to feel comfortable."
Hmm, I wonder how anyone could come to the conclusion that you "serve a certain population"...let's read on:
"Celebrity musical artists at previous Northside Easter services included Lee Greenwood, Margaret Becker, Randy Travis and Natalie Grant.
Nope, I can't understand why anyone would think they were catering to a particular crowd.

And finally, this:
"The services are free."
I won't even bother with the obvious "pass the plate" jokes.

Final Four Prognosis

I've got 2 teams still alive in the Final Four, and they just happen to be the two teams I picked to play for the title. If that doesn't work out, I've got a fall-back. Back at the end of college football's regular season, I predicted an Ohio State-Florida rehash in basketball just as there had been in football. Also, in my wrap up of top sports moments of 2006, I predicted a Florida-UCLA rematch in this years Final Four, and lo and behold, we have just that. Sometimes, it's too easy (especially when you're simply picking the best teams in the country to play well).

Final Four scores:
UCLA 66 Florida 61
Georgetown 70 Ohio State 59

I'll stick with my original prediction of UCLA over G'town in the title game 76-69.

Karl Rove's favorite president and everyone's favorite American satirist, for the first time ever, together in one post!

Before we get to the 'in their own words' quotage, here's a Slate article from 2003 which explains why the Spanish-American War (for which Rudyard Kipling penned the infamous poem "White Man's Burden") may, unfortunately, be a fair parallel to Iraq.

Excerpted:
"Though successive U.S. generals proclaimed victory at hand, American soldiers kept dying in ambushes, telegraph lines kept getting cut, and army convoys kept getting attacked...Over the next three and a half years, until July 1902, when the Filipino guerrillas were finally subdued, the U.S. Army lost 4,234 soldiers. Another 2,818 were wounded. (By the Army's own estimate, 69,000 Filipino combatants were killed, along with nearly 200,000 civilians.) The American war effort was marked by much burning, pillaging, and torturing, and the commanders finally achieved victory through a strategy of isolating the guerrillas. They did this by forcing the civilian population out of towns and into "protected zones"; able-bodied men found outside the zones without a pass were arrested or shot."

And now we travel back in time, to the dawn of the 20th century:
William McKinley on the occupation of the Philippines:
"It will be the duty of the commander of the forces of occupation to announce and proclaim in the most public manner that we come not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employment, and in their personal and religious rights. All persons who, either by active aid or by honest submission, cooperate with the Government of the United States to give effect to these beneficent purposes will receive the reward of its support and protection. All others will be brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity, so far as may be possible…."

William McKinley on aftermath of the Spanish-American War:
"When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them. . . And one night late it came to me this way. . .1) That we could not give them back to Spain- that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable; 3) that we not leave them to themselves-they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's wars; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died."

And finally, I offer you Mark Twain's take on the issue:
“There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it – perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands – but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector – not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now – why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.”

Art, Schmart

From an article in today's London Times:
"People appear to care more about gaining evidence of their presence at a cultural landmark than drinking in its pleasures. They want a photograph of themselves in front of the museum or even the star exhibit; they want the souvenir mousemat; in short they want its autograph. The erratic organic memory of looking at beauty seems to have been downgraded to a supporting role."

From Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy In America, 1835:
"...the general mediocrity of fortunes, the absence of superfluous wealth, the universal desire for comfort, and the constant efforts by which everyone attempts to procure it make the taste for the useful predominate over the love of the beautiful in the heart of man. Democratic nations, among whom all these things exist, will therefore cultivate the arts that serve to render life easy in preference to those whose object is to adorn it. They will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful...When I arrive in a country where I find some of the finest productions of the arts, I learn from this fact nothing of the social condition or of the political constitution of the country. But if I perceive that the productions of the arts are generally of an inferior quality, very abundant, and very cheap, I am convinced that among the people where this occurs privilege is on the decline and that ranks are beginning to intermingle and will soon become one."

Now that they're done agreeing, how about a little dissension:
From the Times article:
"People are becoming desensitised to the wonder and the sublime in their daily existence. The only way they can feel is by puncturing their ennui with some kind of extreme experience. I once saw a documentary about the extremest of extreme sports, base jumping, in which a man said that he felt alive only just before he was about to jump with a parachute off a high building. This struck me as sad. He was numb to the beauty and thrill of the everyday."

de Tocqueville breaking with his modern day counterpart and his enamor of 'the everyday':
"The painters of the Renaissance generally sought far above themselves, and away from their own time, for mighty subjects, which left to their imagination an unbounded range. Our painters often employ their talents in the exact imitation of the details of private life, which they have always before their eyes; and they are forever copying trivial objects, the originals of which are only too abundant in nature...they substitute the representation of motion and sensation for that of sentiment and thought; in a word, they put the real in the place of the ideal."

We Real Cool: An Outsourcing

Preface: For the 2nd time in as many weeks I'm apologizing for another case of WWBWS (Writing While Black...While Sleepy). Please forgive any incoherence. I've been up 21 hours at this point, but I wanted to attempt this before I forgot it. One of these days I'll get back to day-time writing, I promise. But for now, slog through this /end of preface

I need this one explained to me: Why, with all of the cultural power in this country, is it that white America has outsourced "coolness" to us black folk? Is it some sort of cultural masochism? Why not define the term such that you are in fact cool, and others are less so and their youth strive to be like you, and not the other way 'round? Is it because 'cool' has to be something different/better/other than mainstream (otherwise, why name it at all?) and so the very otherness of being (stereotypically) 'black' is uncritically accepted as 'cool', just because it's different? If so, why don't other majority social cohorts find 'coolness' in minority groups. Then again, maybe it's as simple as Miles Davis naming an album "Birth of the Cool" and no one ever dared question that he and his entourage were cool (and a risk a trumpet upside the head? Thanks but no thanks), and thus anything he thought cool must be cool.

When it comes to coolness as a motivating force, perhaps you've simply missed Gwendolyn Brooks' poem 'We Real Cool', on the revelries and dangers of self-serving cool-seeking:

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Happy 4th Anniversary of the start of the Iraq War!

The President was coerced into a speech today by all of the hubbub surrounding the 'anniversary', but it was clear he wasn't prepared to do it, so he trotted out a rerun, a veritable clip show of past speeches, rather than saying anything new; sticking to classics: safe haven this, embolden that, blah blah blah.

And the way the news media played up this "4th Anniversary" nonsense was ridiculous, if not predictable. Who cares what day the "war" started, the only date that matters is the date of it's conclusion.

I wonder if Hallmark will have a card made up for next year's 5th anniversary.

Impeachment? Inconceivable!

Working at a TV news station does have its advantages. For instance, we have access to governmental video feeds that are not readily available to the public at-large. Occasionally, I'll spend the last half of my lunch hour watching Tony Snow's White House press briefings or some congressional hearing on a satellite feed (a rare opportunity to see our government in inaction).

Just this past Friday, we were privy to the entire Valerie Plame hearing, which may very well have been on C-Span as well; either way, it was very interesting. Not because of her predictable testimony, but because 1) there were other people watching over my shoulder for a change, anxious to see what she would say (and because she is kinda hot)
and 2) about 4-5 minutes into the hearing, there was a lady in the audience behind Plame at the hearing that could be seen attempting to insinuate herself in a position such that her torso, but not her face, could be seen by the television camera. Why, you ask? Advertising.

What was she selling?



Ok, that's not really her. In reality, she was wearing a simple white shirt with hand-drawn black letters reading, "Impeach Bush".

Of course, this one lady is hardly alone in declaring the desire to "impeach" our current president, but to her and those like her, I offer the wisdom of Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Impeachment is a process that requires a majority vote in the House to bring a charge, then a 2/3 vote in the Senate to convict. If they can do that, they can definitely pass a law reducing carbon emissions by eliminating all cars and requiring all human transportation to be via "the most glorious rainbow"s.
(Gratuitous and wonderfully unnecessary Anchorman reference)

If this nameless, (literally) faceless woman, or any of the other impeachementistas out there think 1/3 of Senate republicans would vote for the removal of a sitting Republican president, we should lock them up with the illegals in T. Don Hutto Internme...ahem, Detention Center, until they gain their sanity. Talk about government inaction.

In the end, maybe Bush should have taken Vizzini's rebuke in The Princess Bride to heart: "You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"

That Vizzini knew his history too well, and we appear to repeat it now because we didn't listen to the man. Then again, even if the Italians had sent us some Sicilians with their experience, instead of those artsy-fartsy Florentines and those ever-nostalgic for "Pax" Romans in their 'coalition of the willing' allotment, would we be out of Iraq by now? In the words of Vizzini: Inconceivable!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Having successfully beware'd the Ides of March, we have all earned a glorious celebration of the day of St. Patrick, celebrated for.....I have no idea why he's celebrated to be honest, nor do I care really. All I know is, March 17 is a day of much celebration and wearing of green and (for some reason) pinching and for many, joyous drunkenness.

So, luck of the Irish be with you (it certainly wasn't with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish basketball team this afternoon, losing to Winthrop in the first round of the NCAA tournament....I'm almost convinced it was an NCAA conspiracy to schedule it so they couldn't play on St. Patrick's Day)

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

John Sununu, senator from New Hampshire became the first congressional republican to call for the ouster of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the wake of a few recent Justice Department scandals. Of course, Sununu standing up as the moral authority in this instance is interesting, given the dubious activities of his 2002 campaign.
"The 2002 Election NH "phone jamming" case revolves around the hiring by the New Hampshire Republican Party of the Virginia-based telemarketing firm GOP Marketplace. Republican operative Allen Raymond, who was president of the firm at the time, then "subcontracted the deed" to Mylo Enterprises Inc., a Pocatello, Idaho, phone bank shop. Prosecutors allege that 'GOP Marketplace' "was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls" on Election Day, November 5, 2002. Six phone lines that were being run by Democratic "coordinated campaign offices," as well as phones in the offices of the Manchester firefighters union -- which was also doing a get-out-the-vote campaign that morning -- were jammed by 800 computer-generated hang up calls that tied up the lines for 1 1/2 hours."

There is nothing wrong, per se, with him calling for Gonzales to be removed for incompetence as Attorney General, I just wish it was coming from someone who wasn't marred by scandal himself; I wonder what he would say if someone called for him to be removed from the Senate for his campaign using dubious, illegal activities on election day in 2002.

Then again, Stanford prof Victor Davis Hanson had this to say in a recent op-ed, Bipartisan Hypocrisy
"In politics, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each election year on campaigning. Image-makers, pollsters and media advisers shape every election. Fluffy candidates are removed enough from the electorate that the idea that their own actions should match their rhetoric is seen as hopelessly old-fashioned."

Official Tourney Bracket Picks

Here's how my bracket works out:

Midwest Regional
1st round winners: Florida, Arizona, Butler, Maryland, Notre Dame, Oregon, Georgia Tech, Wisconsin
To the Sweet 16: Arizona, Maryland, Oregon, Georgia Tech
To the Elite 8: Maryland, Oregon
To the Final 4: Maryland

West Regional
1st round winners: Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia Tech, Southern Illinois, Duke, Wright St, Indiana, UCLA
To the Sweet 16: Kansas, Southern Illinois, Duke, UCLA
To The Elite 8: Kansas, UCLA
To The Final 4: UCLA

East Regional
1st round winners: North Carolina, Marquette, USC, Texas, George Washington, Washington State, Texas Tech, Georgetown
To the Sweet 16: North Carolina, Texas, Washington State, Georgetown
To The Elite 8: Texas, Georgetown
To The Final 4: Georgetown

South Regional
1st round winners: Ohio State, BYU, Tennessee, Virginia, Stanford, Texas A&M, Nevada, Memphis
To the Sweet 16: Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Nevada
To The Elite 8: Tennessee, Texas A&M
To The Final 4: Texas A&M

Final Four
Maryland vs. UCLA
Georgetown vs. Texas A&M

NCAA Championship
UCLA 76 Georgetown 69

Happy Pi Day

The annual day celebrating the mysterious irrational number known as pi is upon us (well, it's about over now; sorry, I got to this kinda late today).

Anyway, in honor of Pi Day, here are some quotes celebrating that glorious number:

"What good is your beautiful investigation regarding pi ? Why study such problems, since irrationl numbers do not exist?"
- Leopold Kronecker

"If we take the world of geometrical relations, the thousandth decimal of pi sleeps there, through no one may ever try to compute it."
- William James

"Computing pi is the ultimate stress test for a computer - a kind of digital cardiogram"
- Ivars Peterson

"To ask for the system in pi is like asking 'Is there life after death?'; When you die, you'll find out."
- Richard Preston

"There's a beauty to pi that keeps us looking at it ... The digits of pi are extremely random; They really have no pattern, and in mathematics that's really the same as saying they have every pattern."
- Peter Borwein

"Pi is not just a collection of random digits. Pi is a journey; an experience; unless you try to see the natural poetry that exists in pi, you will find it very difficult to learn"
- Antranig Basman

The Ethanol Exception

“I think it makes sense to -- when there's a time of shortage of a product that's needed, so that the consumers can have a reasonable price, it seems to me to make sense to address those shortages, and dropping a tariff will enable the foreign export of ethanol into our markets, which will particularly help on our coasts. And yeah, I've talked to Congress about that.”
-President Bush, May 2006

He obviously shifted course sometime between then and now, because he told Lula da Silva the exact opposite thing last week in Sao Paolo.

Then this:
From an article from truthabouttrade.org, (which is, according to their website, "a nonprofit advocacy group led by American farmers – narrowly focused, issue specific - as we support free trade and agricultural biotechnology.")
"...Texas oil man Ron White shows off the site for his next big investment: a planned $20 million ethanol processing plant. His company, EthylChem Ltd., is just one of a rush of new Caribbean enterprises trying to serve the suddenly booming U.S. ethanol market...These biofuel entrepreneurs won't actually make ethanol from Caribbean sugar cane, even though sugar makes the best base for the fuel. Instead they'll just import it from ethanol powerhouse Brazil, and process it here. Then they'll try to cash in on the islands' sweet tariff status: an exemption from a 54-cents-a-gallon U.S. tariff on ethanol processed anywhere else. "Avoiding the tariff -- that's the economics of our business," says Mr. White."


I've said before and I'll say again, I am no economist (having somehow managed to get through high school and college without ever taking an econ class of any kind) so I encourage those with more knowledge to come along and inform a discussion of these things; but it seems to me that it is doublespeak to regularly sing the praises of free trade and then in this one instance be internationally protectionist, while allowing plenty of wiggle room to circumvent the tariff for the (nominally) American corporate interests. It seems to me a set-up of Brazil; get the Central Americans hooked on Brazilian ethanol, then cut our support for the Brazilians once we get a functional ethanol industry of our own, then undercut Brazil on pricing and turn around and sell them American ethanol cheaper than they can afford to produce their own from sugar. Use the tariff to promote American production. But this completely flies in the face of free trade policy, doesn't it?

Let the enlightening commence, please.

In your face, pop-lit!

"The two Alice books by Lewis Carroll are the finest literary fantasies ever written. They will last forever, and Harry Potter will wind up in the rubbish bin. The first six volumes have sold, I am told, 350 million copies. I know of no larger indictment of the world's descent into subliteracy."
-Harold Bloom

The Liberal Media Takes A Holiday

A new argument emerges countering the notion of a vast liberal media conspiracy. According to a new study from Media Matters for America, the Sunday morning talk shows (Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week with George Stephanopolous, and Fox News Sunday) have, over the past several years perpetually featured more conservative and Republican guests than progressive/liberal/Democrats. This includes elected officials, pundits, commentators, and any other guests. Across the board, all of the shows tilt to the right. Maybe the 'liberal media' needs a day off in the week to re-charge the batteries for all of the liberal-ness they'll spew the rest of the week....or maybe the media isn't as liberal as the conservatives/Republicans claim it to be (especially during their apparently many appearances with said 'liberal media').

From the study's conclusion:
"The overall conclusion of this study is clear: All four Sunday-morning talk shows gave Republicans and conservatives significantly more airtime than Democrats and progressives during 2005 and 2006.

While there are variations among Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, and Fox News Sunday, all showed evidence of imbalance toward the right. All four programs featured more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives. All four hosted more conservative journalists than progressive journalists. All four gave more solo interviews to Republicans than to Democrats. All four were more likely to feature a panel tilted to the right than tilted to the left.

We must note that we make no claims of intentional bias in the systematic over-representation of conservatives that we have documented. It is not our assertion that the producers of the Sunday-morning talk shows have set out to intentionally skew their programs in favor of right-leaning voices. Whatever the combination of reasons that produced the imbalance, the imbalance nonetheless exists. It is our hope that our study will lead these shows to scrutinize their practices.

...Furthermore, no network representative has ever given an answer to the question of why conservative journalists outnumber progressive journalists so dramatically on the Sunday shows. This question has nothing to do with which party is in power, and the disparity has been obvious for all of the past decade.

In the wake of the November 2006 elections, it will be interesting to see how the networks respond to the new Democratic majority in particular and the shifting political climate in general. Will progressive voices continue to be marginalized? Will the "reasonable" center continue to be defined by an overrepresentation of conservatives and a paucity of progressives?"

Oh, How Convenient, Here Comes March Madness

Poor Bush Administration, it's been a rough 2-3 weeks hasn't it? Just look at the problems they've faced recently:
The I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby conviction (his name listed in full strictly for the ridiculous factor)
Suspicious US Attorney firings
FBI Patriot Act abuse scandal
Walter Reed 18 issues

Looks like they could use another crazy astronaut scandal-sized event to come along to get people focused in a different direction...how convenient there just so happens to be such an event on the horizon...

MARCH MADNESS!!!!!

Yes, folks, it's tourney time once again. Time for those of us who haven't seen a college basketball game since last year's title game (and maybe even farther back than that if you're bracket got completely screwed up in the Sweet 16) to go print out your bracket or two and start guessing about teams you've never heard of (wtf is a Virginia Commonwealth? What's the difference between Texas A&M & Texas A&M-CC? Where on a map can I find Wright State?). And yet, we all do it every year, even though we know we have no idea who'll win (although, in fairness, neither do the 'experts'), and we all throw our brackets away and cheer for big upsets as soon as the games get close.

The good news for a lot of classroom/office drones out there, the NCAA is offering all of the games streaming online for free, just in case you don't already waste enough time in class/work on facebook/myspace/youtube anyway, now you'll have another option.

Time to pick my 'darkhorse' favorite this year, a real sleeper team poised for a Cinderella run...I'm going with Washington St. as a semi-sleeper and Winthrop as "this year's George Mason". Overall, I'm going to pick (at least for today...final bracket predictions to come Thursday morning) Maryland, UCLA, Georgetown, and Texas A&M to the Final 4, with UCLA-Georgetown as the title game, with the Bruins winning it all....or maybe Georgetown...or Maryland....or Kansas...or Wright State. Who knows, who cares, it's the first weekend and that means I just wanna see upsets!

300: In Praise of Film Reviewers

Rather than writing about the film specifically (because if you've seen the trailers/ads for it you already know if it is something you want to see or not, and my personal opinion probably wouldn't sway you one way or the other; and I will say this, the movie is exactly what it is being sold as x10, for better and worse) I will take a slightly different angle.

Most people I know tend to think that film critics/reviewers don't know what they're talking about or are out of touch. (Of course, most statistics show this to be untrue, movies that make lots of money are typically well-reviewed, according to Boxofficemojo.com, of the top 20 grossing films of 2006, 12 were well-receieved critically, from 2002-2005, all of the top 10 received wide critical praise...check the link above to see the highest grossing movies in every year back to 1980...Three Men & A Baby was the top money-earner of 1987...further proof that the 80's is a decade largely worth forgetting).

But regardless of what you think of a critic's opinion on a movie, every once in a while a movie comes along that inspires a critic, either directly or in spite of itself, to create some of the more entertaining prose being written today. And then there are times when we are really lucky and a movie is released that unleashes the creativity of the mass of critics and we are treated to a plethora of glorious review blurbs (the last such film I can recall was Catwoman) and 300 is just such a movie. Here are some of the choice nuggets in print about this movie:

From a review by A.O. Scott at the New York Times:
"Devotees of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups will find much to savor as King Leonidas leads 300 prime Spartan porterhouses into battle against Persian forces commanded by Xerxes, a decadent self-proclaimed deity who wants, as all good movie villains do, to rule the world. The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers...but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities."

From Glenn Whipp at LA Daily News:
"Yes, "300" is the most homoerotic action movie ever made (not that there's anything wrong with that), and that is some kind of landmark, though not the one the movie's marketing — which is trying to vacuum up the allowance money of mostly heterosexual adolescent boys — is trying to suggest. Things we learn about Spartan men from Zack Snyder's "300": Spartan men are hard. Spartan men are strong. Only Spartan women give birth to real men, thus only Spartan men are real. Their sweat is real. It makes them oily. Spartan men don't wear much in the way of clothes, favoring tight-fitting Speedos for most of their daily activities, activities that include sweating, the thrusting of, um, spears and the killing millions of foreigners who want to take away their freedom, i.e. their right to sweat and thrust...Women exist either to writhe around naked (frat boys confused by the way Snyder's camera ogles the men can take solace in Xerxes' frenzied lesbians) or act tough like a Spartan man, minus the sweat."

From Dana Andrews' review at Slate.com:
"In at least one way, the film is true to the ethos of ancient Greece: It conflates moral excellence and physical beauty (which, in this movie, means being young, white, male, and fresh from the gyms of Brentwood).
Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both). The Persian commander, the god-king Xerxes is a towering, bald club fag with facial piercings, kohl-rimmed eyes, and a disturbing predilection for making people kneel before him."

From Brian Jurgens at Freezedriedmovies.com:
"The character design is less impressive. For one, all the bare-chested men make this seem less like a retelling of Greek history and more like an adaptation of Men’s Fitness magazine. I’ve invented a term to describe the film’s stylized action, which recalls the great Hong Kong “pistol opera” wave in the 90’s, only without any pistols, or shirts: “nipple opera”.
Lest you be concerned that all the muscled himbos on screen make 300 a movie that only gay men could love, the filmmakers have gone out of their way to ensure that gay men will be offended by the film by presenting the villain Xerxes as some kind of supersissy who wears makeup, has long fingernails, and makes lisping advances to King Leonidas. It’s really the most offensive kind of revisionism – in reality, Xerxes was a ferocious monster of the most aggressive sort. But Miller thought that his villain would be all the more hateful if he were presented as a stereotypical predatory homosexual, so he took the liberty of changing history for his own purposes."

From Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com:
"The actors march around in package-enhancing skimpy outfits, and their skin glows. But the film has a poreless, waxen quality, as if all sensuality had been airbrushed out of it: The actors struggle valiantly to take hold of their characters, but deep down they know they've donated their bodies, and their faces, to science....Spartan he-men spout declarative sentences like "Only Spartan women give birth to real men!" and sneer at their fellow city-staters, the Athenians, calling them -- with straight faces -- "boy lovers." Then they don battle garb consisting of leather Speedos and flowing deep-red capes; when the fighting starts, they add helmets and strap-on shinguards, but their pectorals, and the rippling contours of their washboard stomachs, remain exposed, Village People style. In one scene, Leonidas watches as a young soldier demonstrates his spear-chucking prowess: "Fine thrust!" he says, nodding approvingly. It's an obvious nugget of comic-book homoeroticism, but Snyder doesn't let himself, or his actors, have fun with it: The movie stays well inside its closet of self-seriousness."

From Eric Nellin at Scene-stealers.com:
"Battle scenes recall the replay option on a football video game where you can watch slo-mo, sudden zoom-ins, and rotating camera angles. This allows you to see the moment of contact or, in the case of “300,” see every detail as a spear enters an ogre’s eye. There is so much slow motion that if they had run the entire film at normal speed, it would have been half as long."

From Kyle Smith's review at the New York Post:
"So our "hero" is a psycho, which puts a hollow at the center of the story. But can't we just ignore the politics and enjoy the decapitations?...when we meet Xerxes: He's modeling the latest in earrings, dog collars, lipstick and eyeliner, like an 8-foot RuPaul...Keeping in mind Slate's Mickey Kaus' Hitler Rule -- never compare anything to Hitler -- it isn't a stretch to imagine Adolf's boys at a 300 screening, heil-fiving each other throughout and then lining up to see it again."

From John Beifuss at Commercialappeal.com:
"Coming soon to a football camp, police academy, military base, neocon assembly and jihadist cell near you: "300," a gory yet motivational celebration of the "no retreat, no surrender" code of the ancient Spartans that disdains cut-and-run senators, coalition-of-the-not-willing-enough Arcadians, "diseased old mystics," the physically inferior (never trust a hunchback) and anyone who doesn't understand (to quote Queen Gorgo) that "freedom isn't free." War is hell? Not for these heroic Spartans"

From 'Bryant' at deep-focus.com:
"...with its fetishistic depiction of the nearly naked male body as nothing more or less than a merciless instrument of warfare, it fills a much-needed gap between gay porn and recruitment film. Don’t get me wrong. Gerard Butler makes a fine piece of beefcake and gives a solid performance, shouted and snarled, as King Leonidas, who led 300 hale and hardy Spartans on a daredevil mission against the feared armies of Persia just to prove a point. And I appreciate the aesthetic value of nudity and near-nudity in film. The acres of flesh on display here lend some human appeal to a movie that’s dominated by inhumanity...Other than the Spartan warriors, looking bronzed, muscular and oddly vulnerable in their red capes and Speedo-like battle-garb, the bulk of the movie is populated by misshapen freaks and nancy boys who stand between the 300 and their glory."

From Brian Orndorf at Ohmynews.com:
"The Spartan battles make up most of the running time, but truthfully, if you've seen one slo-mo, flying-through-the-air spearing, you've seen them all...All the shimmering golds, disfigured monsters, and half-naked men with their ripped abs (sure to be the most paused DVD in the history of West Hollywood) won't change the fact that "300" is a one-trick pony, and thanks to Tyler Bates's Whitesnake-meets-Hans Zimmer score, it's a ceaselessly earsplitting one too...Snyder makes a sloppy pass at emotional interaction between the king and queen, but he undercuts any progress with a writhing sex scene straight out of Shannon Tweed's once ubiquitous repertoire..."300" shoves the realm of digital manipulation and chest-thumping brawn past the point of no return...It's a fireworks show in the daytime, Christmas presents on Dec. 26, and porn without the penetration. I'm not big on movies needing a point to be appreciated, but this is the first film in a long time where I asked a movie, just what the hell are we accomplishing here? "

American Beauty-Part 1: Masculinity in America

I wrote a rather lengthy post about various themes in American Beauty, which I saw for the first time this week, but the mysterious depths of the internet consumed it and I was forced to start over, so rather than attempting to get that whole thing back, I'll start with this one, and if I feel so inclined, I'll get to more of it tomorrow, or at some other date later to be determined...but probably tomorrow.

For the uninitiated, the film being discussed in this post is American Beauty, Academy-Award winner for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, and Acting for 1999.

Masculinity in the film is explored in the same way it is in Fight Club: the characters are nostalgic for the mythic cinematic era of cowboys and WW2 heroes where manly men were rugged, self-sufficient, subjugated women and family and homosexuals and were generally rulers of the roost; Maleness defined in terms of fiction instead of real-life. In Fight Club the men try to attain some modicum of masculinity through bucking the system and fighting each other. Of course, in the end, they don't realize they've given up one system of oppression and repression for another, they are always just following the rules laid out for them, whether they be those of the mainstream or those of 'fight club'. In AB, Lester rebels attempts to gain his masculinity by attempting to revert to a time in his life when he felt most masculine, when he was a carefree teenage boy. Of course, he eventually realizes he is not a teenage boy and just as he does he gets his head blown off. These attempts to define themselves as male by trying to go against or outside of the establishment (all the while operating well within it) are what bothers me about these films. I fear people will see these actions as noble attempts to stay 'male' within a society that is trying to emasculate us, instead of seeing that the nostalgia they have that classic John Wayne-man is based on myth and not real life.

The real problem is that since the women's liberation movement, the line between what men have been able to identify as uniquely male as opposed to female has been eroding, and the idea that is strictly anatomical is unacceptable as the 'true male' wants to cast the 'homosexual male' as 'other' along with the female and child. So if females can vote and have the same jobs and serve in the same army and own property and drive and be priests and CEO's and their bosses, and homosexuals share the same biological makeup, what is it that makes men men? Masculinity has been largely stripped down to a psychological state as it can no longer be defined wholly physically or socially, and as since there is freedom of thought/mind set for females and homosexuals as well, 'masculinity' is rendered an outdated concept in the current world, thereby making the belief in the existence/possibility of masculinity what makes one in fact a man.

Annette Benning's character in the film equates happiness with success with maleness. She sees Lester as less than a man because he is a loser and is therefore dissatisfied with him. She goes after a man who she sees as successful (the reference here was subtle so you might not have caught it, he is called "The King"). He is wildly successful and thus in her eyes intensely male and so she sets out to have an affair with him. She is successful in this conquest and thus, feeling her own masculinity rising, decides to take up a serious interest in guns, another activity she considers uniquely male, hoping that by becoming more 'male' she will be successful and thereby happy.

Most interesting is the character of Col. Fitts. He almost seems to waylay the entire conversation about about masculinity. He is the typical, classic American man. He is a Marine with a son and a wife and a suburban home (sounds like he should be played by Henry Fonda). But the writer attempts to de-mythologize this character by making him also repressive (his wife is near catatonic), homophobic, (possibly) a neo-Nazi, with undertones of homosexuality. These characteristics are not far off of the classic male archetype of the John Wayne/western/'greatest generation' cinema era, only these are the qualities that are often buried. What is interesting is that this character is the only one not updated by the writer, he is, socially, still stuck in 1953. I suppose the writer could be saying that this is where this character belongs and is critiquing the modern day characters for looking up to him as their idol of manliness when he was really a repressed homosexual all along anyway, but I don't know that the irony runs that deep here. Maybe it does, and if so, bravo, Alan Ball.

I was rushing to get this done so I can go post something before I go to bed, so tomorrow there may be slight/major revisions, so be on the lookout for that. As usual comments are free and unmoderated...speak your mind!

Down Goes Libby! Down Goes Libby!

For those who wisely avoid the news, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted on 4 counts today including obstruction of justice and perjury. He is in line for a prison sentence of 2-3 years, although he promises to appeal (even if the convictions stands he'll never go to jail...gotta love those presidential pardons!)

Of course, most people don't care about this at all, they didn't care about it when it broke 3 years ago and they don't care now that it's over. The trial hasn't really received much media coverage (especially on 'On The Record w/ Greta Van Susteren' where they managed 0 mentions of it during the 6 week trial), because news coverage is seeker-sensitive, giving us what they think we want, rather than what actually matters (For instance, the AP upheld a self-imposed ban on Paris Hilton stories last week (which, ironically, became quite the story itself over the weekend), proving that they can in fact not write about her if they so choose), but I'm not going to go on lamenting the state of journalism and information dissemination again (and, again, I pose Neil Postman's question, what is "information", anyway?).

Back to Libby, media watchdog group Media Matters for America has crafted their own "Dishonor Roll" for media misinformation about the Libby trial, and it looks like they name just about everybody who covered it:

Time magazine and former Time magazine correspondent John Dickerson
The Washington Post Editorial board & editorial page editor Fred Hiatt
The Washington Post op-ed page and Outlook section editors
Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward
Headline writers
Media writer Howard Kurtz
Ombudsman Deborah Howell
Columnist Richard Cohen
ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper
The Associated Press
Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume
Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle
Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron
Fox News host John Gibson
Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, former Fox News military analyst
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano
Weekly Standard Executive editor, Fred Barnes, during appearances on Fox News
Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, also during appearances on Fox News
Hardball with Chris Matthews
Host Tucker Carlson
Situation Room host Wolf Blitzer
Senior national correspondent John Roberts
Nationally syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak (bonus)
Nationally syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, during appearances on Fox News
Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens
Former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein
The Washington Times editorial board
Former deputy assistant attorney general Victoria Toensing -- and everyone who gave her a forum
Former Motion Picture Association of America president and Johnson White House aide Jack Valenti.

Judging by this list, maybe it's better that it didn't get that much coverage, if even those who attempted to discuss it professionally couldn't get it right. So I guess I should really say thanks....but I won't.

More New Music

New (and not-so-new) music I've come across of late that is very good:

The Feeling - Twelve Stops and Home
In Brief:
"The Feeling have an ability, even within the most ambitious song structure or accomplished piece of musicianship, to sound as if they are singing to you in a small, intimate club, rather - and this, lest we forget, is the primary reason that punk existed - than performing down to their audience from some lofty, lapsed-hippie rock star perch, with a thinly veiled contempt for pop and its listeners. Refreshingly, they rarely sound pleased with their obvious cleverness...They write ornate and soaring conversational love songs, full of heart, bittersweet observation and unashamed street-level Englishness...Not to mention innocence, energy, freshness, youth."

Explosions in the Sky - All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
In Brief
"Sometimes Explosions in the Sky start with a whisper and end with a scream, but on the first track here, they begin with a scream and proceed into a symphonic odyssey that Aaron Copland might have composed if he'd played electric guitar. Like Copland, EITS are cinematic, but with more kinetic drive than any film--except maybe Koyaanisqatsi--could match. Compositions like "It's Natural to Be Afraid" take you on epic journeys that roar like a Harley Davidson one minute and slip into taut contemplation the next, using the slow-tension build that EITS have perfected. All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone was produced by John Congleton, who has worked with lo-fi groups like the Roots and the Mountain Goats. They rely on the arc of their compositions and the integral twin lead guitar lines that never solo but always drive the songs. They can shift from power-chord aggression to the sound of plucked mandolins in an instant. This is progressive rock for people who weren't even born when prog reigned supreme. "


James Hunter - Believe What I Say
I've written about James Hunter before, his sophomore record, People Gonna Talk, was one of my favorites of 2006, but this is debut from 1996, and it is every bit as wonderful.
In Brief
The album, which features a guest spot by Van Morrison on not one but two tracks, jumps out of the gate with the swaggering and lovely “Two Can Play”, which will induce headshakes, finger snaps or both. Think of a cross between Sam Cooke and Bobby Darin and you would get the gist of this bubbly, bouncy and well-crafted horn-tinged nugget. The fact that he does it so gosh-darn easily is even more remarkable, as he tosses in some subtle but effective guitar licks.

From there, Hunter ups the boogie ante with the gorgeous “Way Down Inside”, which could have made him a part of some Motown revue. With all of the appropriate shrieks and squeals at all the right times, Hunter could be mistaken as hamming things up, but he never does. The middle portion isn’t a guitar driven bridge but a rollicking drum solo by Jonathan Lee. Perhaps the quality of the album originates from the fact that Hunter can slow things down without becoming as schmaltzy as Matt Dusk or some other non-Harry Connick contemporary crooner.

3 Strikes and You're Out....or are you?

We all know baseball is "America's Pastime" and that "it's 1-2-3 strikes your out at the ol' ball game". But why does this have to extend to real life? The three strikes rule was put in place in baseball by it's supposed founder, Alexander Cartwright, in 1845 arbitrarily (and it was briefly changed 40 years later to 4 strikes). Applying an arbitrary standard like "three strikes" simply because it works out in baseball seems slightly insipid, and not necessarily good legal policy. In California we have a "3 Strikes and You're Out Policy" in regards to felony convictions. In a few states, there are gun laws called "10-20-Life" which are essentially the same thing. Now the NFL is considering a "3 Strikes" policy for it's players regarding legal problems. We often tell people you never get a second chance in life, but today we are giving people (at least) 3 chances when it comes to breaking the law.

Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio was discussing this last Monday and his position was that "good, decent people don't get arrested 3 times from age 22 to about 33-34, which is about the average length of a pro career" in defending the move by against claims from callers that "sometimes things happen" and that discrimination might lead some to getting arrested.

The NFL is considering the policy after a particularly heinous run of player legal offenses over the last 18 months (some of which I noted a few months back), particularly Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam "Pac-Man" Jones, Chicago Bears lineman "Tank" Johnson, and Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry who each have 3-4 arrests in the last 2 years. Most recently, Jones was involved in a shooting at a Las Vegas strip club which also involved him "making it rain" $81,000 cash on the strippers, then demanding his money back, only to have it seized by the police.
The NFL is trying to avoid picking up the "thug" image that has so tarnished the NBA since the late 90's, but goons like these are making it difficult.

My feelings on the situation are more of less summarized by Jemele Hill of ESPN.com:
"If the NFL patterned a three-strikes code of conduct program after its substance abuse policy, it would be revolutionary, welcome and a perfect way to combat behavior that is truly embarrassing and unruly...Of course, any NFL behavioral policy would have to be written so that it's not based strictly on convictions. Not all players who are arrested are guilty. Not all those who claim to be innocent actually are. And being arrested for a suspended driver's license should not be put in the same category as domestic violence.
Yes, that would force the NFL to play detective and judge. But the perception of the league is at stake."

In other "3 Strikes" news, Japanese wunderkind Daisuke Matsuzaka (progenitor of the mystical, magical, Gyroball (See it for yourself here) makes his first spring training start in about half an hour. The entire baseball world is waiting to see what will happen, if he appears to be worth the hundred million dollar wrangling the Red Sox had to endure to bring him in.

...Unfortunately, he won't be playing against real major leaguers; he won't even be playing against minor league players. No, his start Friday evening in Florida will be against.....Boston College.
That's 1 strike for the Red Sox for even scheduling a game against BOSTON freaking COLLEGE, and Boston already has 1 strike for that ridiculous Aqua Teen Hunger Force "terrorist hoax" debacle.

If Daisuke blows it tonight against BC, that's three strikes and Boston's out....of the Union; no more free rides for historical significance.