Then and Now

The Weekly Standard keys in on Nader's toughest obstacle

Still, there's one obstacle that Nader may find insurmountable: The media are almost uniformly critical of his campaign, and of him personally.

It is worth remembering that this is not how Perot was covered in 1992.

Barone quotes a Democratic operative in the Almanac of American Politics, 1996 as saying that Perot "departisanized the critique of Bush" . That is key. If a Democrat called Bush a failure that can be dismissed as politics; when an independent Republican did so, it had a powerful effect. Moreover, when Perot entered the race the first time, he was able to drive down Bush's poll numbers-- something Clinton had failed to do. By making the race competitive, Perot drew interest to it. Finally, Perot's flirtation and entrance into the race helped draw attention away from Clinton when he was reeling from Genifer Flowers, etc.

All of this depended on the media treating Perot as a sincere citizen forced by necessity to take up politics. Had the dominant story been "Texas billionaire trying to hurt Bush," the whole dynamic of the race would have changed.

The House that Phil Built

Michael Barone's Almanac of American Politics is a marvel. I don't think anyone knows more about the topography of the electoral landscape.

Recently i was reading the 1996 edition. He had some astute observations about the methods the Democrats used to maintain power after 1974 despite the normal ebb and flow cycle of US politics.

A key figure in this was Phil Burton-- an important Democratic congressman from California in the 70s.

To maintain the overall Democratic majority in the House, Burton relied not on the popularity of his issues, about which he entertained no illusions, but on institutional advantages such as redistricting and teaching talented young candidates with superior skills to hold otherwise Republican-leaning seats; he encouraged Democrats to rely on the perquisites of office and pork barrel projects.

***

Democrats continued to win majorities in every election. They ignored Republicans, routinely used the rules to prevent direct votes on issues on which their stands were unpopular, maintained caucus solidarity and, under the leadership of Tony Coelho in the 1980s, bludgeoned business PACs into contributing to marginal Democrats and not contributing to Republican challengers.
***

And this is his verdict on the 1994 election which upset the Burton regime:

Most of all the Burton regime ultimately failed because it could not stand the light of day. Talk radio shows showed voters how overbearing and unfair the Democratic majorities were.

Speaking of Barone, this forthcoming book of his could be very interesting.

Just a couple of Thoughts

I know the template says it's the right-wing that is imposing censorship on broadcast media--Stern, Janet, yadda, yadda, yadda...

But do you think the PC left would be silent if Archie Bunker debuted today? In 1971 the language was praised as "frank" and "honest". Now it would be hate speech.

A few short years ago the federal government sent in SWAT teams to resolve a child custody case in Miami. Most liberals applauded-- rule of law, you know.

Now, they just shrug and say that there is nothing to be done as local officials defy state marriage laws.

Ad Age Concurs

WHO CARES IF 'SEX AND THE CITY' IS GONE?

About 5 million to 6 million viewers have tuned in (if that's still a verb) to the exploits of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte each week during the past year, according to Nielsen. But that's less than one-fifth the viewers drawn by the top broadcast show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

***

But you wouldn't know that from the column inches spilled on Sex and the City. During the last year, Sex star Sarah Jessica Parker pulled in 2,001 clips, according to a cheap search on the Factiva database. Comedian Ray Romano, creator and star of Everybody Loves Raymond, whose average audience is about four times the size of Sex's, garnered only 805.

During the week ending Feb. 18, NBC's Law & Order outran Sex and the City by 1 million viewers. But poor Jerry Orbach, its star, drew only 193 newspaper articles during the past year.

***

True, newspapers, like all media, have their demographics, and those demos have moved increasingly upscale and older as younger audiences obtain their news from TV and the Web. Newspaper executives have been scrambling to find ways to reach out to the missing millions. Hitching their caboose to the engine of pop culture is their preferred strategy. But that's a risky gambit, if they allow editors and reporters to populate their pages with unthinking self-references to their own psychodemographic obsessions.

See also

Big Media Echo Chamber

Customer Loyalty

Synergy Fest points to this discussion of customer loyalty.

Several years ago i published an article titled "Is Customer Loyalty a Pernicious Myth." So you might think that i am in the anti-loyalty camp. Which isn't true. I just think it is a matter that lacks analytical rigor, conceptual clarity, and a real appreciation of long-term strategy.

More Clausewitz

Christopher Bassford has a response to Fleming here. Here's how it starts out:

Periodically, some pundit decides to blow the whistle on Clausewitz and the Clausewitzians. Bruce Fleming, Professor of English at the US Naval Academy, offers the latest effort to demonstrate that the Emperor has no clothes. Ultimately, Fleming's critique is not of Clausewitz but of the misuse of Clausewitz's descriptive, explanatory theory in a prescriptive manner by charlatans and ideologues. Unfortunately, the net effect is a sophomoric rejection of ugly, concrete reality and the friction it imposes on those who would think, write, advocate, and act.

Read the whole thing. Bassford is one of the leading American scholars on Clausewitz.

John Kerry in Forest Gump?

That's what Mark Riebling says and it's not April 1.

an unsympathetic supporting character in Forest Gump is based directly on John Kerry

I dunno, since i don't have a copy of the movie to check. But funny if true.

Big Media Echo Chamber

Controversial.

That seems to be the required adjective for any story about "The Passion of the Christ". Further, stories about the movie always include opponents.

In contrast, stories about the end of "Sex and the City" were generally celebratory. Producers did not feel compelled to interview people who found the series pernicious, unrealistic or biased.

"Sex and the City" flattered the demographic that includes journalists and TV people. It gave them a modern day fairy tale, and, for all their vaunted cynicism and critical thinking, they lapped it up like a thirsty poodle.

The contrasting tone of the coverage is only one part of the story. Another is the outsized attention devoted to "SatC." The last episode was watched by 10 million people. The next to the last installment was only the fourth highest rated show on cable the week-end it aired. Despite the media hoopla, less than four million people watched. It was beat out by a preliminary NASCAR race at Daytona and by Monk-- a conventional whodunit with neither nudity nor obscene language.

"SatC" just was not that popular with country at large. The media coverage shows just how insulated and self-referencing journalists have become.

Howard Stern

Richard Bennett has a good post that pretty much sums it up IMHO:

Never in history has a man been more full of crap than the talentless Howard Stern. His whole schtick is dependent on standards of decency setting the boundaries of good taste so he can position himself outside them. He's like the little kid who's learned that he can get attention saying bad words who then works the gimmick to death. He didn't even invent this gimmick himself, he stole it from Alex Bennett (http://www.radiofreejack.com/).
In a setting where adolescent content isn't circumscribed, his show would have no audience. He was created by the FCC, and he knows it, so all this whining about the government cracking down on his free speech rights is just crocodile tears. He benefits from being pushed out of the 6 markets that Clear Channel has banned him from by generating buzz for his tired formula.

Confusion? Or Willful Misreading?

The current Parameters has an article that asks

Can Reading Clausewitz Save Us from Future Mistakes?

The author has a definite answer-- No. As he sees it, On War is one of those books that

are so broad in scope, so inclusive, even of contradictions internal to themselves, that they can be used to justify almost anything.

Fleming is not a military officer (although he teaches at the Naval Academy) but rather is an English professor. He approaches On War as a text and makes a great show of pointing out the internal contradictions in Clausewitz's work and in several commentators who are self-conscious Clausewitzians.

While he scores several good points, the overall effect is superficial and cavalier. This itself is a serious contradiction in a work which has very big aims. Fleming argues that On War which is currently "the foundation document in war theory at the nation’s war colleges and command and staff schools" should only be taught as "poetry."

One "contradiction" is that Clausewitz is a theorist who denies the utility of theory. Further, he is a thinker who discusses war as a perfect absolute and yet highlights the ways in which friction and chance keep real war from mimicking perfect war.

The first contradiction is pure canard. Clausewitz recognized the limits of theory: it can't explain everything or make war predictable. To see this as a fatal contradiction is rather like calling meteorology as a pseudoscience because the weatherman can't make every Memorial Day sunny and 75 degrees.

There are two key things to keep in mind when approaching Clausewitz and the role of theory and friction in his work. First, he was a practitioner, a theoretician, and an educator. Second, officers have to prepare for war in long periods of peace. What they are preparing for is nothing like the activities they engage in while preparing. (Clausewitz wrote before modern training methods like war games and field exercises were developed). Few professions face as wide a gap between the experience of preparation and the activity itself.

His emphasis on friction, then, is in part, a reminder to the future commander that the complex and elegant- no matter how intellectually satisfying- can be dangerous. His emphasis on will brings to the forefront a quality that is absent in academic discussions but vital in war.

(This excellent article argues that On War has a pedagogical intent as its primary purpose: The Relationship of History and Theory in On War)

Fleming is also cavalier in his handling of neo-Clausewitzian commentators. This is how he dismisses Col. Harry Summers's On Strategy:

There is no point in appealing to Clausewitz’s famous assertion as if, were we to put it over the mirrors of all the officers in the US armed forces, it could prevent future failures. What for one man is a policy, even a good one, is for another a complete and utter lack of one. Summers writes as if the Vietnam War simply lacked a policy, a direction. Certainly it did not seem so to the people running it from Washington, who (as Summers admits) had many justifications (he counts 22) for US intervention. Those who engineered the war were not bereft of a policy.

Twenty-two justifications (many contradictory) do not equate to a clear policy. Summers's point is that the shifting moves in Washington made it impossible for the military to come up with a strategy and carry it out: the objectives kept changing. Further, some of the objectives were not the sort of thing that could be accomplished by military means.

Summers's broader point is that the US did not take policy seriously, entered the war without thinking through ends and means, and trusted to technology and GNP to solve the problem in Vietnam. As a good Clausewitzian he argues that this was a grave mistake and crippled the war effort. In his refutation Fleming basically quotes Tin Pan Alley- you say tomayto, I say tomahto. It's glib, it's clever, but is is hardly a serious critique.

That, in the end, is the problem with the whole essay. It is one thing to mock the Clausewitzians or to find contradictory passages in On War. But if we reduce it only to "poetry", what is to replace it as a foundation document for the war and staff colleges? There are not a lot of contenders for the role and all of them have weaknesses even greater than Clausewitz. On this question Fleming is silent.

See also

Waiting for our Clausewitz

Clausewitz (II)

weird Post

Over at Hit and Run they take note of the Naomi Wolf matter and comment:

Nothing illustrates feminism's moribund state like the response to Naomi Wolf's charges of sexual harassment against Yale literary lion Harold Bloom.

They then cite the large number of women writers who have criticized Wolf for her article.

How exactly does that show feminism is "moribund" unless you expect that vital movements should exhibit rigid ideological conformity?

"Shame on Fox"

Ranting Profs has some good advice for our cable news outlets.

Report what you know -- there has been an arrest, there is reason to believe this man would have had a motive to wish this family ill (and here are the motives), the cops have promised a "profound development" but refuse for now to say what it is. This kind of wild speculation does no one any good whatsoever and is frankly irresponsible. If in fact bodies have been found bring the forensic specialists on then. Until then there is more than enough news to talk about without this kind of macabre speculation. Speculation does not equal scooping.

I couldn't agree more.

Also check out this one.

SCORE A BIG ONE FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

I wonder if any enterprising reporter is digging into this example of political considerations riding roughshod over the objective analysis?

Carnival of the Capitalists

The latest edition is here.

Gibson's Future

One Hand Clapping says "Mel Gibson, blacklisted? Never happen. "

Gibson's movie made $26 million just last Wednesday, more than twice as much as Scorcese's flick made total. You betcha movie producers of all faiths or no faith at all are paying careful attention. I have no doubt that come Monday, producers' inboxes will be filled with 20-page screenplay treatments of the next great Jesus movie. "Jesus Returns" anyone? Maybe "Son of Ben Hur - bar Judah's Revenge."

On the other hand you have this from Steve Sailor

The point of all this inside baseball is that Hollywood is not the do-anything-for-a-profit machine as it is often depicted. There's much the studios won't do, even though the profit opportunities are obvious -- make pro-Christian or anti-Communist or anti-illegal immigration films, to pick some obvious examples.

I tend to agree with Sailor simply because corporate managers tend not to be profit maximizers. Instead, they satisfy the perceived profit requirement and pursue more congenial activities.

Good review of an important book

"It's a Disgrace This Book Had to Be Written"

There are very few books on Americans who long for Hitler, mainly because there never was a significant segment of Nazis in America, but unfortunately there is a significant number of Americans who still think that Joe Stalin was an idealistic reformer, and some of these Americans are in control of history departments of important universities -- and virtually no books are available that document and explain this peculiar situation. "In Denial" fills this gap.

The FCC, Stern, etc.

I think Instapundit has a good point here.

My challenge to those who think that Stern being dropped from 6 stations is an example of Bush Administration crushing of dissent -- see if you can get Kerry and Edwards to adopt a platform of ending all FCC regulation of broadcast content. Take it to the people!

As i noted here, the anti-regulation side is playing a little fast and loose with the facts. We have always had rules on acceptable broadcast content. Stern, Jarvis, and Karmazin want to eliminate those rules by regulatory inaction (while maintaining the cozy oligopoly made possible by licensing).

If the Pinkertons and others want to remove the rules against indecency, go to it. Get a Congressman to introduce the bill to remove restrictions on what goes out over the airwaves. Let's have a debate. (Watch your side lose 355-80).

But, at least, be honest. Don't pretend that Powell is the bad guy or that the "Repressive Right" is trying to impose new restrictions. Admit that you want the current rules changed. And tell us how much nudity, cursing, and rutting you are willing to permit on broadcast TV.

Scott Chaffin also provides the needed reminder that the Stern kerfuffle is about business and lucre.

Let me take a short minute to work this out from a bidness perspective. My understanding is that Clear Channel is #1, and Infinity is #2 in the radio biz. Infinity is the employer of Howie. Clear Channel, then, was in the business of providing sustenance to the bunch most likely to take them down. If you think that doesn't stick in the craw of even the most ruthless, bottom-line businesspeep, you're very mistaken. Only an idiot would NOT go try to find a way out of that situation. That's like McDonald's importing Breakfast Croissants from Burger King. Even if it's a short-term loss, it's worth doing. All that New Economy bullshit about coopetition is fine, as long as you're not direct competitors.
Under the cover of Janet's boob and Mike Powell's FCC whining, Clear Channel gets to "make a stand" against indecency, which will very definitely garner them some good will, and most likely, cause them little to no economic harm. I know the coastals think Howard Stern is the stone-cold nuts, but he ain't, not everywhere.

Speaking of the Passion

Here is Rev. Sensing's review. I doubt i have many readers who do not read him first, but if i do, make sure you read this.

New Finds

OK. So blog -wars sometimes do have positive results. For example, i found this blog

You Big Mouth, You

I agree with him about some of the commentaray that has flowed around Gibson's movie. There has been a steady stream of abuse and mockery aimed at the underlying story and those who believe it.

Also, this site covers crime in Canada. (Yes, Canada). The author's own sister was murdered in 1978 and his own loss makes this a site that never forgets that crime is about victims as well as cops and criminals.

Who Killed Theresa?

Are We All Episcopalians Now?

Ned Flanders is the most prominent Christian on series television. That, in itself, is strong evidence of the profound secularism of the medium and, also, of its fundamental unreality But that is old news.

What i find interesting is that Flanders has become something of a role model for Christians. Flanders, for all his effete fussiness and moralistic obtuseness, is nice. While they might want to be more hip, most Christian spokesmen want always to be nice. For many, inoffensiveness is Godliness.

Part of this surely grows out of a need to be a good witness. Harsh words undermine any talk of Christian love. Also important is the need to counteract the common caricatures of Christians as hateful Puritans and Inquisitors eager to bring back the stake and scarlet letter.

This emphasis on niceness presents a difficulty when confronting our history, For example, the great reformers were many things, but nice is not one of their cardinal qualities. Luther and Knox, especially, were masters of invective. Neither of them had a problem with unloading torrents of crude humor to make a point.

So here is the question: Was Luther a bad Christian? Are we to be ashamed of the men who led the Reformation? Should we value inoffensive niceness more highly than the men who created a central pillar of our civilization?
Or is this just a matter of different mores for different times?

Luck

Business Pundit has a good post asking Does Luck Matter in Business?

Napoleon, when evaluating generals for promotion, would often ask, "is he lucky?" Not a perverse question at all when you consider what he said about battle in his Maxims:

#95
War is composed of nothing but accidents, and, although holding to general principles, a general should never lose sight of everything to enable him to profit from these accidents; that is the mark of genius.
In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it.

Exploiting accidents is the "mark of genius". To the outsider it will often look like luck.

As BP says:

It seems that luck, by definition, should be random, but I have to second guess that when I hear comments like "that guy has all the luck." Maybe that guy was just well prepared when the right opportunity came along.

Global Bomb Network

Junk Yard Blog connects a few more dots.

I just found this blog.

It rang a bell with me because for twenty years i, too, was a Pennsylvanian in exile.

Varieties of Liberalism

Cella's Review discusses an essay by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn on the subject. As he rightly notes, K-L "exudes erudition and wisdom." (Plus he discusses Poland's repeated role as savior of Western Civilization.)

Two interesting posts on liberalism

Here and here at Unqualified Offerings. This was especially good:

Unqualified Offerings long since became convinced that among the things "liberalism" has become is revenge. A lot of the bicoastal policy class actually come from flyover country, but they leave mad. They're gay or brainy or ugly or bad athletes, or all at once. They have rough childhoods and come to the government or the media with a grudge. UO attended many parties with such people in its youth, so it knows what it's talking about here. (UO also fits snugly in two or three of the adduced categories.)

48% Yankee

According to this quiz.

When metaphors blind

Jacob Levy over at Volokh has a really perverse analysis on bubble candidates.

I was actually thinking about this over the weekend, after reading the NYT's Week in Review retrospective of the Dean bubble, with the recent Kerry-bubble debate in mind as well.

Because W was a bubble candidate, in just the same way.

He then goes on a long, entertaining jaunt about how voters just sort of fumbled into supporting GWB because they were confused, desperate, misled. For example,

That earlier President was named George Bush. And it appears that a fair number of the people who expressed support for George Bush in the polls didn't understand that there were two of them

It's a classic piece of punditry-- plausible analysis, entertaining conclusion, lacking some critical facts.

First, GWB impressed a lot of his fellow governors. That was a crucial part of his early support. They certainly didn't confuse him with his father. Plus, Bush's victory in 1998 was crushing and deep: his electoral prowess was not simply a matter of polling numbers. (Bush also was generous with his fund-raising apparatus in 1998 and helped other Republicans raise money. That's a big plus for someone who aspires to lead the party).

Second, McCain squandered his chance for the nomination; it wasn't just GWB's war chest. McCain decided to pander to the media bus by sticking his thumb in the eye of conservative voters: gun owners, born-again Christians, pro-lifers. In contrast, Bush was willing to take the heat and stand by them on their issues. Again, it is hard to reconcile that with bubble behavior-- those groups knew what they wanted in a candidate and where the candidates stood on the issue. Their choice was both rational and well-informed.

Carnival of the Capitalists

The latest blogging on business and economics is here.

Kerry in the Atlantic

John Kerry got a tremendous boost to his candidacy late last year when Douglas Brinkley brought out his book and excerpts ended up as the cover story in The Atlantic. The current issue has several letters in response. Two, I thought, were pretty interesting.

I was struck by the ending of Douglas Brinkley's piece on John Kerry's Vietnam combat experience, a passage that was apparently taken from Kerry's war diary. Having jumped into a ditch with the mutilated body of a comrade, and with AK-47 bullets whizzing over his head, Kerry recorded the following dissociative episode:
I just lay in the ditch, not firing because I wanted to save ammo and because I couldn't see what I was firing at and I thought about what was happening in New York at that very moment and if people really felt that I was doing something worthwhile while they went down to Schrafft's and had another ice cream sundae or while some fat little old man who made another million in the past months off defense contracts was charging another $100 call girl to his expense account. And then, when the shooting stopped, I came back to where I was.
To anyone who grew up reading Hemingway and Fitzgerald, the style and sense of the passage is familiar, especially the references to Schrafft's ice-cream sundaes and fat little old defense contractors with their expense-account "call girls"?images that sound about right for 1920 or 1935, but to my ears are very dated if ostensibly reflecting the thoughts of a young American under fire circa 1969.

Which is not to say the account is not perfectly true. I've heard a story about an intoxicated reporter who got thrown in jail and, feeling that some dramatic response was called for, removed one shoe and pounded it against the bars of his cell, only later realizing that he had borrowed the scene wholesale from a gangster movie.

However, there is no apparent irony in Kerry's story, and since Hemingway himself was big on bullshit detection, I can't help wondering if an American soldier in 1969 in a Vietnamese ditch under AK-47 fire would truly ponder New Yorkers eating Schrafft's ice-cream sundaes and fat little old defense contractors charging their expense accounts for call girls. Having never been in combat, I have no basis for judging, but it would be most edifying to learn if the passage rings true according to the bullshit detectors of other combat veterans.

Thomas Martin Pflaum
Micanopy, Fla.

According to an excerpt from John Kerry's war diary, when pinned down by enemy fire, Kerry wondered about fat-cat war profiteers who charge call girls' fees to the cost of war materiel. Ordinary combat officers, when pinned down by enemy fire, tighten their sphincters and wonder 1) How the hell am I going to get out of this? and 2) What's the best thing I can do now for my men and my mission?

One wonders what Lieutenant Kerry's men wondered while he wondered about higher matters.

Joseph R. Owen
First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)
Skaneateles, N.Y.

Quite Right

From OTB:

Are we really going to take the juvenile position that only people who have earned a Silver Star or higher get to talk about national security issues? And that whatever they say is, by definition, right because they once got shot at? If so, what if they disagree? How can they conduct a debate, since they are all, by definition, right?

Funny the Democrats didn't talk that way when Clinton ran against two decorated veterans. And they had no problem having Patricia Schroeder act as one of their leaders on the House Armed Services Committee. (WHat right did she have to question generals who had served in combat?)

Vietnam, AWOL, etc. etc.

From the MRC: Kerry?s Partisan Partners in Smearing Bush:

The networks followed McAuliffe?s agenda. From Feb. 1-16, ABC, CBS and NBC aired 63 National Guard stories or interview segments on their morning and evening news programs. That?s far more coverage than Bill Clinton?s draft-dodging scandal received in 1992. Back then, the three evening newscasts offered 10 stories on Clinton?s complete evasion of service; this year, those same broadcasts pumped out 25 stories on whether Bush?s acknowledged service was fully documented.

Despite the fact that no Democrat had substantiated their AWOL claims, the networks put the burden on Bush to prove his innocence. After the White House released documents on February 10 showing Bush had satisfied the Guard?s requirements and received an honorable discharge, reporters wanted more evidence (see box). The records showed Bush was never ?AWOL,? exposing the baselessness of the Democrats? original charge, yet none of the networks framed their stories around questionable Democratic tactics. Instead, they kept the onus on Bush: ?The issue is not going to go away,? ABC?s Terry Moran promised.

From Hitchens:

But now, those like Terence McAuliffe who defended every piece of Clintonian mendacity have decided to pin the label of "deserter" on George Bush Jr. This is sordid from at least three points of view. First, in respect of the facts it was self-evidently untrue even before the release of the president's records (and before some of his original accusers began to change their minds, or, in one case, to admit that he was losing same because of early onset Alzheimer's disease). Bush evidently did the gentlemanly minimum, which was itself a good deal more than the average for his college generation. The term "AWOL" is a studied insult and a conscious lie. Second, it's been admitted by the president well before now that the pattern of his youth was not entirely creditable. We've already covered all that, from the boozing to the driving. We don't have to take his word for it that he was "saved," but it's plain enough that he has reformed, thanks largely to his wife, and so it's mean and despicable to revisit that period in such a Pharisaic manner. Third, some Democrats really seem to want to act hawkier than thou. Are they so sure that this is a bright idea?

Sooner or later, Sen. John Kerry is going to have to say which he thought was the noble cause: the war or the antiwar movement. In the later movement, he clearly was not numbered among the "moderates." I remember those "Winter Soldier" hearings very well, and as far as I'm aware the charges made against the U.S. Army in Vietnam were substantially true, even if some of them were laid by shady and suspect characters. However, if the average in the field was tolerance for rape, torture, mass killing, and a depraved indifference to human life, what becomes of the "band of brothers"?

What am i missing

How are Mel Gibson's father's views relevant to the merits of "The Passion"? It seems to me that they have even less relevance than a movie director's membership in the CPUSA.

Sounds Reasonable

A prediction: some time before the November election, Sullivan will formally renounce the GOP and/or George Bush.

Over at Spoons.

It's Buchan-mania

First, it was an essay in the New Criterian.

Then it was Hitchens in The Atlantic.

Now, we have Steyn dusting off an old column.

And to think, i read Buchan when Buchan wasn't cool.

"A Vet Questions John Kerry's Military Service"

Over at Frontpage Mag.

Definitely worth a read.

One of the criticisms of US officers in Vietnam was that they collected medals they didn't deserve and for actions that were just part of the job for enlisted men. So, if Lt. Kerry had not joined up with the VVAW he would have served as a pretty good example of that.

No one asked me

but i think Blogopoly is good clean fun. And yes, even funny sometimes.

But not everyone agrees.

Passion in the Corner

NRO passed along a weird little email under the heading "A CONTRARIAN VIEW OF THE PASSION". I say weird, but mean-spirited and cynical might be more accurate. Ed Kilgore writes

the heavy marketing of Gibson's film to conservative evangelical Protestants strikes me as theologically perverse, if commercially smart. These are people, for the most part, who don't place much stock in the liturgical calendar, and the particular relevance of the Passion to the annual cycle of meditations about Christ. Moreover, these are people who often think St. Paul's comments on gender relations or homosexuality--or for that matter, the entire Old Testament--are as central to Revealed Truth as the gospels themselves. Presumably, most conservative evangelicals would be as interested in, say, a movie about the cursing of the Cities on the Plain as with anything specifically about the Passion.

And third, I'm a bit concerned, though not surprised, by the sort of Popular Front thinking that has so many conservatives from every religious background expressing total solidarity with Gibson's faith, which is by any standard a bit eccentric, and by Catholic standards specifically, heretical or at least schismatic. I realize that many conservatives share the Left's eagerness to transfer political and cultural ideological labels into every realm of life, including religion…conservatives should beware embracing just anyone who calls himself a conservative.

First, note that Kilgore assumes that conservative Evangelicals would be happier watching a movie where gays are killed than a movie about Jesus Christ.

Second, he assumes that Evangelicals and traditional Catholics are more divided on essential matters than either are from secularists. (That's how i read "theologically perverse). That sure doesn't leave much room for ecumenicalism.

Similarly, by speaking of "Popular Front thinking" he implies that the Protestants who have praised this movie are forging cynical quasi-political alliances with Gibson. He rules out that they might actually admire the movie.

The late Francis Schaeffer was a prolific writer much admired by Evangelicals. One of his most influential books was The Christian Manifesto which argued that believers could and should become active in politics. One of his key points was that conservative Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and Jews should join together in what he called "an ecumenicalism of orthodoxy." In his view, the matters which divided a conservative Evangelical from a conservative Catholic were smaller than those matters which divided either one from secularists and from many liberals in their own churches.

This book was a huge seller (although it never made the best seller lists because Christian bookstores were not then polled by the list-makers). I'm not certain i knew any Evangelical minister or Sunday School leader who had not read it. Operationally, you see Schaeffer's thinking at work in many grass-roots pro-life groups where Baptists and Catholics work together despite their theological differences.

This type of ecumenicalism is driving a lot of the Evangelical interest in "The Passion". Yes, Gibson is Catholic. But his movie, by following so closely to the Gospel narrative, is orthodox. There is nothing cynical about that.

I also was disappointed that the Cornerites largely let Kilgore's ("an occasional NR/NRO Contributor") charges pass without comment.

"Freedom Without Responsibility"

Terrific post over at TCS:

When we see leftist ideology statistically predominant among college professors, news reporters, or open-source software advocates, what we are seeing is self selection. What Richard Florida dubbed The Creative Class is a self-selected group that seeks freedom without responsibility in their professional lives. Thus, we should not be surprised that their ideological bent is toward modern liberalism, which translates this personal preference into a political platform.

Carnival of the Capitalists

The latest edition is available here.

This is a true must read

Have you ever heard that "rule of thumb" was derived from the common law rule that a husband could beat his wife as long as the rod was no thicker than his thumb? Did you know this was an example of the Big Lie? Do you know what connects that lie with the San Francisco marriage ceremonies/civil disobedience?

All this and more is revealed here.

Politics and the Sports Pages

From InstaPundit on the way the AP slipped anti-Bush commentary into its coverage of Daytona:

Message: I don't care! Reader Rick Giovanelli, who sent the link, comments: "Give me a break, I can't even read the sports websites now without seeing this nonsense?" Apparently not. At least until after the election. . . .

Those with good memories will remember that Rush Limbaugh said that sportwriters were infected with political correctness when he was a commentator on ESPN. That part got lost in the controversy about race and Donovan McNabb. But there can be no doubt that the first part was right. (And for the record, i thought Rush was wrong about McNabb and said so at the time).

Several ESPN interviewers spent time asking drivers and journalists about the reaction to the "controversial" movie "The Passion" which was promoted on the hood of Bobby Labonte's car. One of the professional chatters even asked "do sports and religion mix?" (Guess she didn't know about the whole invocation thing at all the Cup races).

Mark Steyn

By contrast, the Kerry narrative is almost impenetrable. If Vietnam bitterly divided a nation, split communities, tore apart families, etc, etc, Sen Kerry somehow managed to wind up on both sides of the fence: in the 1960s, he was John Wayne taking out the gooks in 'Nam; in the 1970s, he was Hanoi Jane Fonda, leading the protest movement; now, after two decades in Congress opposing every new weapons system for America's military, he's campaigning like Bob Hope on a USO tour flanked by wall-to-wall veterans. What story accounts for Senator Flip-Flop these past 40 years?

If character is the issue, Bush can relax. And, if doing your bit for national security is the issue, then John Kerry's been Awol for two decades.

The rest is here.

"12 Questions About Vietnam For John Kerry"

A sample: "It has been said that Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged soldiers to desert during the war. Is that true?"

John Hawkins has the rest here.

Two ways to plan

Most large corporations seem to operate under the assumption that the best strategic plan is detailed, heavy on numbers, and tightly integrated to the expense budget. Although strategic planning was invented by the military a century before its adoption by corporations, very little of the insight into military planning has made it into the office tower.

Von Moltke wrote that "no plan survives contact with the enemy" and that strategy is "a system of expedients." This flexibility and acceptance of the unpredictable is anathema to the typical business planning process. All too often, we plan as though the we can determine what sales will be eighteen months from now, what expenses and what programs will produce those sales (by product and market).

In short, we think that the point of planning is to produce a plan that can be followed as though the organization is on auto-pilot. We want details, accountability, and milestones. And then we spend the rest of the year interpreting performance based on variance to plan.

This is not what effective planning is in the military. Colin Gray writes:

As General Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed, the principal value of military planning is not to produce ahead of time the perfect plan, but rather to train planners who can adjust and adapt to changing circumstances as they emerge.

Any business which wants to be more resilient and flexible would be smart to adopt the Eisenhower approach: planning as an educational process for people rather than a process for the production of the perfect plan.

Another problem with traditional planning is that it treats strategic problems as though they are entirely a matter of detail complexity. Yet, in reality, making and implementing strategy is a matter largely of dynamic complexity.

From Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline:

The answer lies in the same reason that sophisticated tools of forecasting and business analysis, as well as elegant strategic plans, usually fail to produce dramatic breakthroughs in managing a business. They are all designed to handle the sort of complexity in which there are many variables: detail complexity. But there are two types of complexity. The second type is dynamic complexity, situations where cause and effect are subtle, and where the effects over time of interventions are not obvious. Conventional forecasting, planning, and analysis methods are not equipped to deal with dynamic complexity. Mixing many ingredients in a stew involves detail complexity, as does following a complex set of instructions to assemble a machine, or taking inventory in a discount retail store. But none of these situations is especially complex dynamically.

From John Sterman, Business Dynamics:

Most people think of complexity in terms of the number of components in a system or the number of combinations one must consider in making a decision. The problem of optimally scheduling an airline's flights and crews is highly complex, but the complexity lies in finding the best solution out of an astronomical number of possibilities. Such needle-in-a-haystack problems have high levels of combinatorial complexity (also known as detail complexity). Dynamic complexity, in contrast, can arise even in simple systems with low combinatorial complexity. ... Dynamic complexity arises from the interactions of the agents over time.

Competitive strategy is inherently dynamic: competitors react to each other's initiatives. Treating it as a matter of static analysis and programmed implementation is a recipe for failure.

A point worth remembering

What's more, we should not forget that containment was failing. The shameful performance of the United Nations Security Council members (particularly France and Germany) in 2002-2003 was final proof that containment would not have lasted much longer; Saddam would eventually have reconstituted his WMD programs, although further in the future than we had thought.

That's from Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong by Kenneth M. Pollack You know, that Atlantic article which is so harsh on the Bush administration's handling of intelligence and the decision for war in Iraq.

Our Friends to the South

I don't know which is more disturbing: that spectators in Mexico taunted the US soccer team by chanting "Osama, Osama" . Or that the major media are determined to play down the matter. Details are at Rantingprofs.

Uncovered Story

Turn on a cable news network this week and you couldn't help hearing about Michael Jackson's finances and the $70 million dollar loan that is coming due. I'm not quite sure what the importance of that is beyond its gossip value.

I didn't see any discussion of John Kerry's impending financial crisis. See the Country Store for details. There are many "unanswered questions" about his campaign financing and the completeness of his financial disclosures. Somehow, those seem more important than what a pop star spends his money on.

That other scandal

Over at Roger L Simon:

I defended Clinton even when his lies got obvious (though I didn’t feel very good about it) and to this day I think Kenneth Starr is a creep out of Dickens.

Over three years after the Starr report and we are still working off the first draft of history as crafted by Carville and Blumenthal.

It probably wouldn't have caught my eye except that i've just finished The Truth at Any Cost which presents a much fuller picture of Starr and shows how wrong the caricatures were. Not that they let him off easy, but they show why he was a respected lawyer and what the OIC was up against.


Truth at Any Cost: Ken Starr and the Unmaking of Bill Clinton

I don't usually read Hugh Hewitt

but this is pretty good:

In short, most of "elite" media in America is practicing a steely resolve not to dignify the Kerry allegations absent some "proof," while relentlessy probing President Bush's ANG record of three decades ago. The hypocrisy is so enormous that it defies categorization, though not explanation: Standards for Beltway media differ when the "scandal" involves a man of the left than when it involves a man of the center-right.

"Gibson's 'Passion' in Very 'Select' Theatres"

That's the title of a very odd post over on Foxnews. Apparently, Roger Friedman thinks Gibson's film should be shown in theaters where it would lose money. Why this special requirement for this movie? Plenty of films open in carefully selected urban markets and never make it to the suburban multi-plexes.

What makes this opening strategy special is that it up-ends convention. Manhattan and LA are supposed to get first crack at all movies-- that's where buzz gets generated, that is where entertainment reporters hang out. For this movie, however, Gibson discovered that the audience was in the hinterlands and that they were primed and ready to go.

Clayton Cramer has a more thorough discussion here.

Right on Target

Who cares who screwed Roger Partridge?

The Bloomsbury group bores me silly. Always has. All hat, no cattle—and that most definitely includes the only marginally readable Virginia Woolf. It’s the highbrow counterpart of the Algonquin Round Table, with better gossip and fewer one-liners. Now they’re all dead, and about time, too. The sooner they’re forgotten, the better for British literature.

Deeply Offensive

Jeff Jarvis plays Joe McCarthy with The Beltway Taliban.

Like Pinkerton, refuses to acknowledge that broadcasters ands cable companies are regulated businesses and always have been. They don't like the law on broadcast decency, so they don't want it enforced. If anyone is being undemocratic, it is the media libertines.

As for cable, while the content is protected by the First Amendment, their monopoly status and pricing policies are not. Forcing cable companies to adopt a la carte pricing, (instead of the prevalent package model), is not much different than allowing cell phone number portability. How does the First Amendment protect the right of Comcast to force a family to pay for MTV in order to get Fox News?

Oh, by the way, Jarvis's employer " has extensive interests in cable television" just in case you thought he was some sort of disinterested party.

Super Bowl Fallout

Ad Age has a couple of reactions to the Super Bowl ads and the half-time show. This one is not surprising:

PR FIRMS PRAISE JANET JACKSON BREAST STUNT
'It Raises the Bar for All of Us,' Says Executive

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- For those in the business of masterminding public-relations stunts for marketers, Janet Jackson's big expose during CBS's airing of the Super Bowl has raised a serious issue: how to top it.

I also like this reaction to the ads by Ad Age's editor:

AN ADVERTISING SUPER BOWL OF NON-IDEAS

Sophomoric Humor Fails as Compelling Entertainment

A flatulent horse. Tens of millions of Americans open their doors, and this is what marketers drag into their living rooms. A farting horse.

Yeah, thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Entertainment bowl

The Super Bowl, more entertainment spectacle than sporting event (despite this year's nail-biting finish), is a perfect platform for marketers to demonstrate how their messages can break through in a cluttered, fragmented and viewer-controlled media universe. As advertising moves from unwelcome intruder to invited guest, it is more likely to be cloaked as entertainment, as something viewers choose to spend time with because of a perceived intrinsic value.

The expectation is there with the Super Bowl that the ads will enhance the experience -- viewers have been conditioned by breathless segments of morning shows, newspaper stories and cable news reports to tune in as much for the ads as for the game. But there's a sense of artificial, forced frivolity that surrounds the event, and the mediocrity of the creative reminds that the ad business won't be saved merely by turning up the volume on 30-second commercials.

Uncovered News

One Hand Clapping notes that the terrorists in Iraq are concerned because our efforts to rebuild he Iraqi police forces are succeeding and that success is making their operations more difficult.

Since Everyone Seems to Be Doing It



create your own visited states map

We are way ahead of the curve

Outside the Beltway discovers that Kucinich is earning the respect of some pretty impressive guys. Hitchens says:

Dennis Kucinich is the sort of guy who we need in politics. He thinks long-term, and he doesn’t think that in the short or long term it pays to trade principles for compromises

Hey, that's sort of what we said back on Jan 19:

I feel sorry for Dennis Kucinich and am startled to realize that i feel a certain amount of admiration for the man.

On policy, the man is a complete moonbat. I doubt that there are many issues we agree on. But the man campaigned hard for his positions even though he knew the odds were heavily against him.

Carnival of the Capitalists

The latest edition is here.

Hunter S. Thompson can die now

We have found his replacement.

Every Winter in Minnesota, 5 or 6 consecutive Friday nights of just ending up somewhere pile up on each other, into one King Hell bitch of a Friday, where a man is forced to make choices, not knowing whether the inevitably poor quality of those choices will haunt him at some odd hour, say 4am on Saturday morning, when he should have been in bed long ago, but is instead standing in a room where he's never been, with people he doesn't know, witnessing things he's only read about in books and seen between 40 minutes and 45 minutes past the hour on "VH1: Behind the Music."

That's Jack Sparks. If you like music you should be reading The Other Side of Country.

I have to thank Scott Chaffin for the pointer. And, by the way, Scott is bucking to be our Kerouac:

Here's how I'm gonna get rich -- I'm gonna organize 3-person trips to Minneapolis, and I'm gonna shove 'em in the truck, and I'm gonna drive them all the way there from Dullass, and we're gonna listen to two of my CDs for every one of theirs, and we're gonna get there early enough for everyone to have a nap, and we're gonna pick Jack up at his house, and we're gonna drink while driving and smoke Marlboro reds, and we're just gonna go and do whatever Jack says.

I wish i had said this

Patterico worries about the possibility that an innocent person might be executed every once in a while. So do I. If it happens, let's put the blame where it belongs: on Mike Farrell, Jesse Jackson, the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and all the other little boys grown men who cried wolf.

Xrlq was discussing the posturing and lying going on around the Kevin Cooper case out in California.

On one hand, we are told that our death rows are filled with innocent men. Yet, when the anti-death penalty types bring out examples, the evidence often points to guilt. You would think that in high profile cases they would lead with their strongest examples.

Do Clothes Make the Nation?

What kids wear to school is not a trivial matter. Plenty of thoughtful people (Bill Clinton) think school uniforms are a good idea. Elite private academies and parochial schools have imposed dress codes and uniforms for decades.

The attempt by the French to bar Islamic dress is unsurprising. Since the Dreyfus case France has been relentlessly and aggressively secular. Catholicism was viewed with suspicion by most of the political class which was more anti-clerical than even-handed.

So, in a real sense, the French actions are not an anti-Islamic innovation. They are a continuation of the efforts that ensure that its citizens think of themselves first as Frenchmen, not as Catholic, Jew, or Muslim.

The French actions are not without historical precedent. Ataturk banned Islamic dress in Turkey after the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire in order to strengthen the new republic. Modernizing Tsars like Peter the Great forced Western ways on the Russian nobles (including western clothing) as part of their efforts to link Russia to Europe not Asia.

Habits of dress are often more important than politics and debate. David Gelernter understands this and makes the point repeatedly. In 1939: The Lost World of the Fair he shows how the "ought culture" of the 1930s was reinforced by little things on a daily basis. Among these were neckties which middle class men wore even when they were dining with their families at home.

Gelernter also makes an interesting point about Iran's frustrating diplomacy in the last decade of the Cold War. The mullahs aggravated both the US and USSR. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the atheism of Leninism did not make them pro-American. The CIA coup and on-going support of the Shah did not make them pro-Moscow. A Middle East expert remarked that the first thing an Iranian Mullah noticed about the Americans and Russians is that both wore pants. Whatever the political differences between the two nations, they were united by culture- a culture the Iranian leaders did not share.

Lileks is wrong

I know it doesn't happen often, but it did this week.

Please no. I think I speak for millions when I say that I am deathly sick of the counterculture sixties. The music, the war, the protests, all the hagiography - it's not a reflection of the era’s importance but the self-importance of the generation who hung on the bus as it trundled along down the same old rutted road of history.. I’m tired of hearing about the boomers’ days of whine and neuroses; I’m weary of ritual genuflection to their musical icons; I’m utterly disinterested in most of the pop-cult trivia they hold so dear. We’ll probably be better off when that demographic pig has been excreted from the python so we can see the era clearly without choking on the smoke.

First of all, the 60s had plenty of crap music just like any decade. And plenty of it is over-praised. (Personally, i could live without ever hearing another Beatles song). But Hendrix is the real deal. If he is an icon, he deserves to be. Go pick on a more deserving target.

Second, Lileks is using a pretty broad brush. Yeah, some boomers are nostalgic for the protests. But it is always helps to remember that the guys in the rice paddies were mostly baby boomers. As are most of the generals you see on TV commanding the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were not boomers.

When all the boomers are dead, Lileks still won't get to see the era clearly. Sixties nostalgia isn't a generational thing; it is also political. If you are anti-military today, you think it is really cool that 500,000 people once marched on the Pentagon. There are millions of boomers who never thought it was cool then.

"Complete Statement from Testimony of Lt. John Kerry to US Senate Foreign Relations Committee"

You can read the whole statement over at The Blog from the Core.

I liked this

From Hobbs Online:

An anonymous blogger might tell you he can't blog because his employer might not like it, or his customers - so just trust him that he is who he says he is. Hogwash. He just wants the freedom to behave badly, slander with impunity, and spread lies.

The Junk Yard Blog doesn't think much of anonymous bloggers either.

"NFL reaction to series a factor in cancellation"

ESPN.com

"Playmakers" has been sacked.

After months of speculation about its future, ESPN's originally scripted series about a fictional professional football team will not return, a company official said Wednesday. One of the main reasons for cutting the series after the first season was the reaction from the NFL brass.

"Many considerations went into this decision, not the least of which was the reaction from a longtime and valued partner," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN's executive vice president of programming and production. "We are proud of the show on many levels -- it was a creative and critical success, and we are appreciative that viewers clearly embraced this new genre on our network."

***

In its only season, "Playmakers" won critical praise and pulled in a significant audience -- an average of 1.6 million households for each of the show's 11 episodes.

***
ESPN broadcasts NFL games on Sunday night, and ABC -- which, like ESPN, is owned by the Walt Disney Co. -- televises "Monday Night Football." The rights deal for both broadcasts runs through the 2005 season.

Earlier in the just-completed 2003 season, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue admitted to calling Disney CEO Michael Eisner to express his displeasure with what he thought were the show's "one-dimensional" plots.

So the NFL really knows how to make their displeasure known. A series that tarnished the image of the sport (and hence hurt the brand) got Tagliabue involved. Which is a more forceful reaction than they had to the SB half-time show.

Makes me think this guy is right.

NFL must be high-fiving behind closed doors

The NFL is in perfect position here: It gets to tut-tut and claim the high moral ground that such a terrible, depraved thing could ever happen on our dime when in reality the holiness of the $2.5 million commercial spot is not only maintained, it probably is enhanced.

You think anyone is ever going to try to stage a Lingerie Bowl again? You think anyone's going to be stupid enough to take on the greatest god in television, the Super Bowl, with vague promises of pay-per-view titillation? The Super Bowl has already delivered the real thing, Bosco. It gave you The Other Jackson. There will be no one trying to upstage next year's halftime show

What's interesting is that no one suggests that there is an opportunity for clean counter-programming. Inside the little compound of media and advertising, there are no desirable consumers more conservative than Chandler on "Friends". They worry they will lose eyeballs to the Lingerie Bowl, but not that people will click away because of Nelly or Janet Jackson.

And this guy is probably right, too.

Expect more 'oops' on live TV

"There will be lots of public clamor," says Roger Desmond, director of the school of communications at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. And ultimately, nothing will change. "The networks will continue to do more of what they know works, which is big stunts," he says, particularly when they can be "positioned" as an unplanned surprise to everyone.

That Times of the Month

A new issue of The Atlantic.


Mark Steyn on Michael Straghit.

Christopher Hitchens on John Buchan.

Caitlin Flanagan on how serfdom saved the women's movement.

And much, much more. If you don't subscribe you really are missing the best magazine in America.

Rhetorical Three Card Monte

James Pinkerton warns us:

By now you've no doubt seen the implant-enhanced mammary that was exposed during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII -- destined to be known forever as the Boob Bowl. Strange as it may seem in light of the real perils this country confronts, Washington is making a federal case -- two federal cases, in fact -- over Jackson's bit of exhibitionism. Any investigation is farcical, of course, but the lasting damage it could do the First Amendment, and to free expression in general, is not something to laugh about.

To listen to the libertarian blogosphere, you would think that Powell and conservatives are trying to impose scary new rules on television. But that is a crock. The FCC has always forbid obscenity and indecency on broadcast television. Jackson threw down the gauntlet and they have no choice than to respond.

If the Pinkertons and others want to remove the rules against indecency, go to it. Get a Congressman to introduce the bill toremove restrictions on what goes out over the airwaves. Let's have a debate. (Watch your side lose 355-80).

But, at least, be honest. Don't pretend that Powell is the bad guy or that the "Repressive Right" is trying to impose new restrictions. Admit that you want the current rules changed. And tell us how much nudity, cursing, and rutting you are willing to permit on broadcast TV.

This is also good, although it has nothing to do with the SUperbowl.

Justin Katz has a thoughtful post here.

And OTB's Beltway Traffic Jam is here.

Den Beste is Right

The biggest story was the one we didn't read: "Terrorist attack causes 30,000 deaths". It is the deafening silence, the dog not barking in the night. For the third straight year since 9/11, a crowd the size of a small city concentrated itself in a stadium and sat for several hours to watch the most heavily televised live event of the year. And then that crowd dispersed and went home.

RTWT here.

There goes my faith in astrology

Acidman and i have the same birthday.

Humor is over-rated

It's invaded all the important areas of life. I can avoid the snarkfests on VH1 and the E network. I grit my teeth as it seeps into political coverage. (This is non-partisan: i'm as sick of Dennis Miller and the Dean video as I am of AL Franken and Arianna Huffington). I find the whole Wonkette thing lame.

But the breaking point for me was when it invaded sports. I started to avoid the football pre-game shows this season. Lame jokes and lamer skits have displaced reporting and analysis. Howie, Deion, Terry and Boomer crack themselves up but it just leaves me cold. And why have unfunny comics on to joke about something they know little about? If you can't fill an hour, just do a half-hour show and stop trying to be a comedy club.

As Aaron points out, humor is hard work and few do it well. Most of us should just not try.

I know, i know. The fool gets to say things to the king that no one else can. But look around: no king, no secret police, no Inquisition. We don't have to speak obliquely. Why waste time with a cheap joke when we have the ability to really say whatever we want.

Much of the joking around is a weasel's game anyway. It lets the smug but superficial camafloge their ignorance while retaining center stage. They don't have to defend what they say-- they were just joking. But they still are smarter than you.

Whither the Steelers

A 6-10 season is disappointing enough, but Pittsburgh has also racked up three losing seasons in the last six years. Obviously the team is looking as big changes.

Everyone is pretty much in agreement that Maddox disappointed and the running game ran out of gas. But there is a deeper problem. The Steelers roster is filled with one dimensional players. As a result, the play calling is predictable and easy for teams to game plan.

Under Cowher, the fullbacks and tight ends block for the running back. All three positions are unimportant in the passing game and the fullback is not a ball carriers.

When teams prepare for the Steelers they don't have to worry about misdirection in the ground game: Bettis can't get outside and the fullback isn't a threat on a counter play. Cover two isn't much of a problem because neither the TE nor the running backs can take control of the middle of the field.

The lack of break away speed also hurts. A well-executed draw or screen pass goes for 15 yards, not 40. Teams find it easy to bend without breaking.

What's striking is that this over-specialization is not "traditional Steelers football." When you look at the Super Bowl teams they were much more balanced despite the fact that they had greater position players. Nor is the Cowher system consistent with what great teams of this era have done.

This year only 25% of the passes went to RB/TEs. Bradshaw complete 40-50% of his to Harris, Cunningham, et. al. even though he had two Hall of Famers at wide out. The current Steelers have no one on their roster who fills the role that Novacek and Johnston played in the passing game for the Cowboys of the 1990s. Nor do they seem interested in full backs who can catch the ball despite the success the West Coast offenses have had for twenty years.

(Early in his tenure at Pittsburgh, Cowher had a fullback- John L. Williams-- who led the team in receptions. We won twelve games and came within four points and one play--fourth and goal from the three-- of the Super Bowl).

The Steelers also are exemplars of the simplification of the running game. Where teams once looked to have two capable running backs on the field at once (Taylor and Hornung, Czonka and Kiick) the system now calls for a blocking back and a feature back. Again, a uni-dimensional plan of attack that simplifies things for the defense. I've never heard or read a good explanation for why current backs can't learn to both block and run.)

Super Bowl Commercials

Wow. All that money and this is the best Madison Avenue can do? Farting horses and crippled old people? Earnhardt Junior in a football game?

If AARP wanted to do something really useful, they'd highlight advertisers who use senior citizens as objects of mockery. I doubt Frito-Lay or anyone else would want to deal with that counter-brand message.

I did thing the Pepsi/Jimi Hendrix and the Chevy/kids/soap spots were well done.

I would expect that someone got fired

Over the Janet Jackson half-time thing. A costume designer or a production assistant. Some one. Because we know that the executives at MTV and CBS didn't intend for this to happen.

SO who walked the plank?

Because if no one did, it looks fishy, you know. Makes you think the apologies are insincere.

Carnival of the Capitalists

Check out the latest edition here.

Hall of Fame

I don't mean to be greedy, but i think the Hall of Fame voters messed up by not selecting L. C. Greenwood. Then they rubbed salt in the wound by voting Carl Eller in.

Only two tackle/end tandems are in the HOF: Merlin Olsen/Deacon Jones and now Alan Page/Carl Eller. Yet the Fearsome Foursome never played in a Superbowl while the Purple Gang were 0-4. One might think that the 4-0 Steel Curtin deserved a second representative more.

Older players like Greenwood are hurt by sportwriters's obsession with statistics. Greenwood's sack totals are unimpressive by current standards (73.5 career, 11 in his best season.) But he played at a time when teams threw much less. In the early 70s teams passed around 360 times a season against him. Now 500 attempts is more common. Greenwood simply had fewer sack opportunities.

Before the game was opened up, the first job of a D-lineman was to stuff the run. No easy matter against guys like Csonka, Earl Campbell, or O. J. SImpson. Greenwood was a much better run stopper than Eller.

In four Super Bowls the Vikings got pushed around; they gave up an average of 215.5 yards rushing. (Franco Harris set a record with 158 yards against them in IX and Oakland piled up 266 yards in XI). In contrast, Pittsburgh held the Vikings to 17 yards on the ground despite having one D-lineman playing with pneumonia and losing two all-pro linebackers in the second half.

Fran Tarkenton said that Eller "was the dominant outside pass rusher of his day.? I guess Tark has blocked out the trauma of having three passes batted back in his face by number 68 in SB IX.

Scott's Right

No Hall for Bullet Bob

Unreal. I thought this was the year, finally, that the Hall would pull their head out of where ever they have it lodged, but nope.

Like i've said before. Some people play the game well. Others, like Bob Hayes, change how the game is played.

Sharing the Joy

Venomous Kate makes a good point:

The thing is, it takes some bloggers - and non-bloggers, too - a long time to figure out that the more heavily we promote each others' blogs, the more we all succeed.

But this got me to thinking. While most of us bloggers are good at linking to other blogs, how good a job do we do bringing non-blog readers into the fold? I have to admit, i rarely send an email link to a blog post to friends or associates who are non-readers of blogs. Yet that is the bog opportunity. Readers only have time to read so many blogs: passing them back and forth can increase the "pie" only so much. Finding new readers could really juice up the audience for everyone.

Blogging for Money

Matt Welch discusses the economics of Blog Ads here. While it is true that blogging is no way to make a living, the numbers are improving.

He also makes a good point about the importance of scale and critical mass:


Two other points, before I stop proselytizing for my friend Henry Copeland (http://blogads.com/weblog/): 1) Network effects will work very well here. The more participating blogs from Los Angeles, the easier it is for advertisers to make a useful, targeted group buy (and therefore pay me more money!). This also works for subjects -- media, baseball analysis, DIY music, whatever.

This is in line with something i wrote back in May

Right now newspapers are aided by their unchallenged dominance as a local advertising channel-- nothing else can really do the job when it comes to promoting a sale at a local department store store or specials at the grocery and nothing else can match newspapers for classified ads.

This advantage is eroding. Technology, demographics, and business necessity will see to that.

***

Eventually, on-line news sources and communities focused on specific geographic localities may provide a realistic alternative to local newspapers. If so, then they become a potential advertising vehicle.

In addition to the spot model for advertising, there is the old sponsership model.

Radio and television programs used to have a single commercial sponsor who picked up the costs, often owned the program and whose products were the only ones advertised. (That's why it's the Hallmark Hall of Fame and why daytime dramas are called soap operas). Echoes of the practice live on in PBS's underwriters.

The old model isn't a perfect fit with blogs because it would threaten bloggers's independence and creditbility. If Mazda sponsered Instapundit many people would dismiss his views on CAFE, Kyoto and the RX-8 out of hand.

But blogs have buzz and advertisers desperately want buzz. A couple of dozen advertisers are going to drop $3 million or more trying to generate some at the Super Bowl.

Which scenario is more likely to succeed in making Pontiac (say) appear more innovative: a Super Bowl spot or sending 10 bloggers to the Final Four? Factor in the cost differential (90% cost savings using bloggers) and the heavy odds against a given SB spot catching fire. The bloggers don't have to say anything nice about the Grand Am-- Pontiac generates favorable PR via traditional media just by underwriting the effort.

Kay Report and WMD

Justin Katz has two good pieces up: on at TCS and this one on his blog.

Clinton: A Conservative?

David Bernstein writes:

I was equally puzzled by conservatives' hatred for Clinton, who was probably overall the most conservative Democratic president of the twentieth century policy-wise, but also represented elements of cultural liberalism (draft-dodging, pot-smoking, womanizing, feminist-marrying, Hollywood-befriending, etc.) that drive conservatives nuts.

Clinton was conservative only because he lost control of Congress in 1994. If you look at the 1993-94 Clinton you find a very liberal agenda: gun control, gays in the military, national health care, tax increases. Even after 1994 Clinton fought against welfare reform and a balanced budget until political necessity and GOP resolve forced him to get on board.

Polls and Politics

If you want to get lost in the woods it's pretty simple: just look only a short distance in front of you and never look back. That makes it easy to go in circles while you think you are going in a straight line.

I wonder if our obsession with polls doesn't have the same result.

Would we draw the same conclusions about the Democratic race if we looked at it from the perspective of of July 2003 as do we do after looking at last weeks polls?

I doubt it.

From a longer perspective, one thing that stands out is the failure of the two moderate candidates, Gephardt and Lieberman, and the comparative success of two New England liberals. An angry insurgent did better than the champion of the UAW.

Edwards would be a surprise. Again, voters went for a new face, not one of the established leaders.

Is there any way that the results so far are not a set-back for the DLC. Doesn't that bode ill for the whole party in November?

Journalists and criticism

Instapundit makes a very good point:

"Is there any profession that's worse at admitting mistakes and taking criticism than the journalistic profession? "

The stereotype of the military is that they are constantly fighting the last war and are resistant to change. Yet, the various war colleges and service schools set to work analyzing Vietnam while the fighting was still going on. The mistakes and lessons were not swept under the rug. New doctrine was developed and all officers educated accordingly. All this happened while the draft was ended and the defense budget reduced in real terms.

My question is, how many J-schools focus on what went right and wrong with war reporting in SE Asia? Do any of them discuss how the military victory of Tet '68 was portrayed as a military defeat for the US and why this mistake was made? Do any of them remind students that it was an armored blitzkrieg from NV, not a peasant uprising which doomed Saigon in 1975?

I sometimes think that the biggest danger of war reporting is the journalist's selfish motive to be defeatist. Back in April i put it this way:

What is not often discussed is how professional ambitions make journalists defeatists. When wars go well, the uniformed military receives the praise. It is they who enter into history. We remember Nimitz and Patton, not the correspondents who wrote dispatches about the victories at Midway and Bastogne.

In contrast, Vietnam made the careers of David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, and Neil Sheehan. Exposing military failure and atrocities makes the journalist the hero not the chronicler. It is a powerful temptation, one which could cause a reporter to lose proportion and distort the meaning of events. Yet this is not something that seems to get discussed much.

WMDs: Fooling the Dictator

NRO is apparently persuaded that Saddam wasn't such a terrible guy after all. That's the assumption behind this post.

If the scientists and generals could con him on WMDs, then he and his apparatus weren't very efficient. Moreover, it suggests that people in the know weren't "terrorized".

I've discussed this before and the reasons it seems fanciful.

"Kerry doesn't deserve Vietnam vets' support"

One sentence this piece in Opinion Journal really stood out:

In his book "Stolen Valor," B.G. Burkett points out that Mr. Kerry liberally used phony veterans to testify to atrocities they could not possibly have committed.

For a long time the popular media image of Vietnam veterans was as drugged out losers who were haunted by the atrocities they were forced to commit. Gullible journalists helped create this image by retelling the fictions of fake veterans. If Burkett is correct, Kerry was an early enabler of this big lie and willingly smeared his fellow veterans for political gain.

One can admire Kerry's service and bravery but still question the political opportunism of his post-war career.

UPDATE: This article has even more detail on Kerry's calculations and the scale of the lying.

Vetting the Vet Record

Fun Facts from the Statistical Abstract

Some people don't read reference books. I don't understand those people. How do they ever learn interesting stuff like this?

In 1999, Americans spent more on hunting equipment and firearms ($2.4 billion) than they did on equipment for camping ($1.3 B), alpine skiing ($0.6 B), tennis ($0.3 B) or in-line skating/skateboarding (($0.5 B).

Statistical Abstract

In the world of television, however, no one goes hunting except bad guys.

'For the Survival of Democracy'

An interesting new book on the New Deal. This is from the review in the Times:

''For the Survival of Democracy'' is a history of the New Deal in the spirit of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Hamby, a distinguished professor at Ohio University, knows exactly what he's doing here. The generation that created his field, he writes in an epilogue, ''established a tone that still dominates the study of American politics in the 1930's: a near-adulatory perspective, occasionally nagged by a sense that F.D.R. was too 'conservative' to lead us entirely into the promised land of equalitarian social democracy.'' He also notes the inconvenient fact that hobbles them: it's impossible to argue that the New Deal accomplished what it set out to do, namely, to produce a genuine economic recovery.

But it is not in answering the question ''Did it work?'' that Hamby ventures his most aggressive contribution to this discussion. He's more interested in what there was to admire in Roosevelt's attempt. He concludes: not too much.

I took several of Dr. Hamby's classes and seminars many, many years ago. He is a Truman scholar and was a conventional liberal: open-minded, not at all ideological. So this book is not some cut and paste hack job by a right-winger.

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Carnival

All politics all the time makes for a dull blogosphere. So check out the latest batch of posts on economics and business.

Winner’s Curse

Synergy Fest has a series of interesting posts on Winner's Curse. I especially liked this one that relates the author's first hand experience with the phenomenon and its causes.

The commercial banking sector bought itself an expensive dose of the curse in the 1990s. As the industry consolidated, banks overbid for acquisition targets and hurt their balance sheets and stock prices. Exhibit A is usually First Union and Corestates, but there were many others.

What is interesting is that the banks who were hurt by overpaying in 1997-2000, were those who had been successful with an acquisition strategy from 1985-97: First Union, Bank One, NationsBank, etc.

I can think of several reasons why these banks stumbled:

1. Business as usual at an inflection point. In the late 80s, the bank acquisition market was not an auction. There were only a handful of regional banks doing the buying and numerous attractive targets. Under these conditions, winner's curse does not apply.

When conditions changed-- more bidders, fewer targets-- not many executives noticed. Growth by acquisition was still the strategy.

It's hard for any organization to reject a successful strategy based on the hypothesis that conditions have changed.

2. Go fever. Once top executives set their sights on an acquisition target, it is hard to hit the brakes. There is a powerful temptation to torture the numbers and make the pro formas support a higher price.

3. Grow or be eaten. When the assumption is that the industry is destined to have 3 or 4 megabanks, executives fear that standing pat means they will eventually become prey. This is a powerful incentive to justify a high bid for an acquisition which greatly enlarges their company.

While it is easy to see the problems today, most journalists and stock analysts promoted the acquisitions until the unfortunate results were manifest. One brave exceptions was Tom Brown who actually got fired because he spoke out against several expensive mergers. His company has a blog which makes for interesting reading for anyone interested in the financial services industry.

Side bar: Winner's Curse can also apply to the job market-- especially when firms hire outside executives for senior positions. The most enthusiastic candidates with the biggest promises is probably not the one with the best appraisal of the realities.

"Bush, Clark, Michael Moore and the charge of desertion"

The best discussion i've read so far is over at One Hand Clapping.

Good Point

Coyote at the Dog Show wonders why background checks are good for gun purchases but dangerous for airline travelers?

One War at a Time Please

Report: Rumsfeld considers striking Hizbullah to provoke Syria

It may be nothing but speculation. But if not, it is worrisome.