Irony: the one word sportswriters should never, ever use

For the past twenty years or so, I've nursed within my heart a small but passionate thirst for vengeance against those who continually misuse the term "irony." Granted, the word itself is difficult to define--many people simply rely upon a Potter Stewart-esque "I know it when I see it" definition. That being said, I have found that sportswriters and announcers are among the most frequent abusers of the term. Too often, they say "ironic" when they should simply say "coincidental." Let's take today's example, from a piece on the tragic Kentucky Derby breakdown of Eight Belles. Take it away, ESPN:

In '06, we had the Barbaro disaster at the Preakness, followed by the long and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to save the Derby champion's life. While that was still ongoing, we saw Pine Island's fatal breakdown in the Breeders' Cup Distaff that fall at Churchill Downs. In a savage bit of irony, the Distaff race was won by Round Pond, who was trained by Michael Matz -- the same man who conditioned Barbaro.

Really, what is ironic about that? The winner of one race was trained by the same guy who trained a horse that broke down in another race. That is...coincidental? Is it even a coincidence? I don't even think it's that--it's something approaching an interesting confluence of circumstances, but hardly coincidental, and certainly not ironic.

Please, journalism industry, I'm begging you: send your writers to an Irony for Beginners class. It's the only way I can stay sane.

Laura Bush says Myanmar government inaction exacerbated cyclone relief efforts. In other news, irony gives up, throws up hands, jumps off a bridge.

Everyone who's anyone knows I hate the Bush administration with every fiber of my being, but I have to admire them for having the brass talks to some up with something like THIS:

U.S. first lady Laura Bush, who has a long-standing interest in Myanmar, urged the government to allow the team into the country, saying she expected Washington would provide "substantial" aid if it could conduct its own assessment of the situation on the ground.

And she blasted the junta, saying the lack of warning before a deadly cyclone hit on Friday was the latest example of "the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs."

I mean, look, Myanmar has what is without doubt one of the most--if not THE most--repressive governments on earth. There's no question about that. But there's something brutally ironic and galling about a presidential administration whose initial response to Hurricane Katrina was this:



chiding another government for failing to meet the basic needs of its people.

Sad story from Portland: long-time Hawthorne business closes to be replaced by...condo parking. Ugh.

There have been rumors for a while, but now it looks like it's official: long time Hawthorne resident Bowers Bakery is closing because the landlord wants to tear down the building and turn it into a parking lot for fancy condos he's building above Noah's bagels. As you can see below, the building also houses FuJin restaurant and Chez Machin, a decent crepe place. Presumably they would get the heave as well.

None of these three are among Portland's elite restaurants, but they are familiar and welcome faces to residents of the neighborhood: my wife and I ate our first meal in Portland at FuJin, wolfing down a plate of their legendary crispy eggplant as we took a moment's rest from our hectic apartment hunting.


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How distasteful is the idea that something like this could be torn down to provide parking for idiots who will move into fancy condos above a bagel store? It's such a typical sequence of events: the dedicated businesspeople who toil for years and make an area "hip" are pushed out by landlords willing to ruin the entire feel of an area just so they can make a quick buck. Lame.

It also creates an interesting conflict between the city's desire for walkable neighborhoods with the city's desire for increased density. Of course, the apartments now above Noah's will be converted into condos, so it's not like the area is going to become more dense. So, will the city just let a building be razed to build parking? I certainly hope not.

Irony alert: "Free Tibet" flags actually made in China

When the actual, real-life news starts to resemble The Onion, you know things have gone sideways.

Take it away, BBC:

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Pop quiz! This flag:

a) is known as the "Snow Lion flag"
b) represents Tibet's victorious accomplishment of a unified spiritual and secular life
c) represents the "Free Tibet" movement
d) is banned in China
e) is manufactured in China
f) it's obviously all of the above, you jagoff

Hey, that's right, "f" is the right answer. (But you don't have to be so antagonistic about it, damn.)

In which my 18 month old daughter discusses the 2008 election

The one rumor I simply refuse to believe

Ok, look, I admit that I'm a pretty easy-to-fool guy, but I absolutely refuse, categorically, to believe that Dwayne Wade is dating Star Jones. I simply won't consider it. There are a few things in life that are so completely catastrophic, and could have such far-reaching and horrific consequences, that they must be blocked from the mind at all cost. Peak oil is one, and now Dwyane Wade dating Star Jones is another. It can't be real. No way.

One poll number I'm absolutely not worried about, or, why you shouldn't stress about Clinton supporters voting for McCain

In the frenetic back-and-forth between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, one oft-reported statistic is the number of each candidates voters who claim that they would vote for John McCain in the general election if their favored candidate does not win the Democratic nomination. This is often presented as bad news for the Democratic party. Here's a representative example of this kind of reporting:

A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

As would be expected, almost all Democratic voters who say they support Obama for their party's nomination also say they would vote for him in a general election matchup against McCain. But only 59% of Democratic voters who support Clinton say they would vote for Obama against McCain, while 28% say they would vote for the Republican McCain. This suggests that some Clinton supporters are so strongly opposed to Obama (or so loyal to Clinton) that they would go so far as to vote for the "other" party's candidate next November if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

Now, does this spell doom for the Democrats? On the surface, it could be ominous: if you take a random sample of 100 Democrats, and assume that roughly half support Obama and half support Clinton, then 28% of Clinton's supporters would turn out to be somewhere around 12-13 voters. Take those numbers to a state like Florida or Ohio, and they could be worrisome indeed.

However, I'm not at all concerned, for the following reason: this is an extraordinarily unusual primary process, with the race lasting far longer, and with far more bitterness, than you normally see, in either party. Because of this, the committed voters for each candidate have dug in to their positions, and find it hard to imagine that their candidate could lose the election. This makes sense: when you are supporting a candidate in the early days of the primary season, you likely have not supported him/her for that long, and consequently can easily transition to the candidate who gets the nomination.

Clinton and Obama supporters, however, have at this point been in their respective candidate's camp for an extended period of time. There is a good deal of hostility towards the opponent, who at this point is not John McCain. Given this, I'm not at all surprised that so many Clinton supporters claim they would support McCain. It makes sense that more Clinton supporters than Obama supporters claim they would support McCain--Obama, after all, is more likely to win the nomination, so to his supporters the idea of a choice between Hillary and McCain is an abstraction. For Clinton supporters, the eventual choice between Obama and McCain is very likely, and very likely hard to stomach.

Really, at this point those numbers are not a sign of Clinton's strength, but her weakness. The more her supporters come to grips with her likely withdrawl from the race, the higher the "I'll vote for McCain!" number will rise. It is, at this point, a tactic unto itself: they are trying to persuade superdelegates that voting for Obama will drive Democrats to McCain. Will it work? Probably not. Is it a credible threat? Perhaps, but not at the level suggested by those polls. I suspect that there is probably a hardcore element, say 5-6%, of Clinton supporters who will find themselves so disillusioned by an Obama nomination that they will chose to not vote. I doubt they'll support McCain, however.

I could be wrong about all this. But really, I think at this point the high number of Clinton supporters who claim they'll support McCain is more representative of their growing sense of the inevitability of her loss than anything else, and threatening to support McCain in the general is the only weapon at their disposal.

A question about the military's "relaxed standards"

Question: Who will be the first Presidential candidate to get in trouble (with the media, with the Republicans, same difference) for saying that it's perhaps not the greatest thing ever, and that it certainly says nothing good about our country, that we are dramatically increasing the "waivers" we give to people who have committed felonies and who are now applying to enter the military, now admitting them when in past years they would have been summarily excluded?

NY Times snarks on pope's visit

Wow. Guess there were more of those victims than we thought.

How to Ignore the Iraq War, by ABCNews

It was a bad day for US forces in Iraq.

Five soldiers lost their lives, including three in Baghdad, which General David Petraeus assured everyone was a veritable Charlie's Chocolate Factory of zany good times in his presentation before Congress yesterday.

As I write this, my computer's clock says "Wednesday, 3:34 pm." Since Sunday, not that long ago, 17 soldiers have died.

Give the seeming rupture between this bad news and the positive spin that George Bush and John McCain have been putting on the news, you'd expect that the media would be all over this story like flies on dog crap. You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Check out the front page over at ABC News, gathered about two minutes before I wrote this post. (Click the photo to expand it.)



See that? Or, rather, don't see that? That's right--NOTHING about Iraq. Not a word. There's plenty of room for "Boy monkey says no to Barbie" or "Simon Cowell: Smoking is Good," but a major uptick in violence in Iraq? Borrrrrring.

Sheesh. It's kind of unreal. I mean, yes, I know that it gets depressing day after day to write the same "X US soldiers died today in Iraq, etc." stories, but at the same time, you've got the President, the GOP nominee for President, and the main military official responsible for Iraq all selling the same story, and the "facts on the ground" (as the President is so fond of saying) indicate precisely the opposite. It would be refreshing for the media to pay attention, don't you think?

I'm beginning to understand why "Johm" McCain confuses Iraq and Iran

Isn't "spell your name correctly" one of those skills you have to know by, like, second grade?

Madonna: Insane

Superstars of a certain luminosity evidently reach a point where nobody in their lives is willing to tell them to shut up, and so they just continue on their merry way, their remarks losing great touch with reality and sanity with each passing year. So near as I can figure, Madonna passed this point about a dozen years ago, and so it's not too surprising to discover that nearly everything the woman says is touched by some hint of Teh Crazy. Today, she offered some insight into the plight of Britney Spears, and noted that the starlet's troubled relationship with the paparazzi (or "Pavarottis," to quote a certain wife-beatered, hatted, fertile ex-husband of Britney's) is not unlike, uh, well, something about Africa and witches. Here, take it away, Madge:

When you think about the way people treat each other in Africa, about witchcraft and people inflicting cruelty and pain on each other, then come back here and, you know, people taking pictures of people when they’re in their homes, being taken to hospitals, or suffering, and selling them, getting energy from them, that’s a terrible infliction of cruelty.

“So who’s worse off?

Ok, well, first of all, giving the events in recent years in Rwanda and Sudan, I think "the way people treat eachother in Africa" can occasionally rise above the level of "witchcraft," but, that aside, what the heck is Madonna saying here? Genocide is roughly the equivalent of paparazzi stalking someone eating at Hyde? For real?

News flash: Conservative economist Larry Kudlow would support a war tax!

Ok, well, he didn't come out and say it, but take a look at a couple of passages from his most recent blog post on the execrable "The Corner" blog over at National Review:

Surprise, surprise. Having failed to penetrate General Petraeus’s story about the great improvements on the ground in Iraq, liberals are now trying to make the case that the cost of the Iraq war may have somehow undermined the economy, and even caused the current slowdown. What complete and utter nonsense.

First point: The U.S. has spent roughly $750 billion for the five-year war. Sure, that’s a lot of money. But run the numbers and the total cost works out to a miniscule 1 percent of the $63 trillion GDP over that time period. It’s miniscule.

Ok, got it. $750 billion over five years is "miniscule."
Next:

Perhaps the anti-war forces should recall the portion of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, where he called on Americans to pay any price, and bear any burden, in order to preserve freedom, liberty, and democracy. Do these folks actually think 1 percent of GDP is too large a price, too heavy a burden? I sure hope not.

You heard it here first. Larry Kudlow, one of the most conservative/brain-dead economists in America, thinks that a $750 billion war tax over 5 years is a small price to pay for freedom. Pretty incredible news. I only hope that President Bush will follow his suggestion.

Oh, heavens! In a fit of pique, John McCain called his wife a "trollop" and a word that rhymes with "runt"

'Tis not always so easy being John "Walnuts" McCain, apparent GOP nominee and winner of the "Presidential Candidate Who Most Closely Resembles a Friend of Grandpa Simpson" contest. Back in the day, he and his wife, the heiress to the lucrative Budweiser distribution franchises in Arizona, had something of a spat. Normally, so what, many couples have meaningless spats. What makes this one somewhat interesting (and hilarious!) is the filthy talk ("straight talk," natch) that came spilling out of his mouth in response to a fairly mild and genial putdown by his wife.

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Yow! First of all, I have to say that the "c-word" is coming back into vogue lately: the key plot moment in "Atonement" owed much to that particular word, and now here we have ol' Walnuts McCain dropping it as well.

However, even more than the c-word is his use of "trollop." Note: if you are attempting to convince voters of your undying youth and vigor, try to avoid using words that even Montgomery Burns himself would find stale and outdated. "Trollop?" Who says that?

John McCain: Hates Trollops

The smartest $10 you'll spend on the internets: Charles Bronson 3-D paper doll

If you haven't wasted hours or weeks of your life wandering around Etsy.com, you owe yourself the chance. It's a website where hundreds if not thousands of independent artists and craftspeople sell all manner of products: t-shirts, art prints, plates, random pieces of wood, you name it. Like most markets, it's got a decent mixture of fantastic stuff and crazy stuff. The following item, however, is definitely one of the strangest (and best) items I've found: a paper figure of legendary action star Charles Bronson. Bronson, far cooler than modern day joke Chuck Norris could ever hope to be, gets the full treatment here, and for a mere $10 this incredible product could be yours. (I'm not affiliated with the artist in any way whatsoever, I just think this is pretty damn cool.)



Etsy.com: Charles Bronson paper toy.

British/US sex-scandal gap grows depressingly wide

Look, the Brits outclass us in many areas. Pop music, for starters. Good TV comedy. CRUMPETS, for crying out loud. But imagine my dismay at discovering that they have done us one better in an area that used to be ours for the keeping: the sex scandal. Sure you've got your Eliot Spitzers and the $750/hour call girl, but, honestly, isn't that whole thing a little played out by now? What has happened to us, America? Have we just gotten fat and content in our old age, no longer determined to bring ingenuity and entrepreneurship to the sex scandal as we did in days gone by? Consider these two recent examples, and tell me which looks like the hungry contender, and which one looks like the self-satisfied champion of yesteryear:

United States

The co-founder and former CEO of the liberal-progressive Democracy Radio and husband of U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow was caught in February by a Troy police sting aimed at catching prostitutes, according to a police report.

Thomas L. Athans was stopped Feb. 26 by undercover officers investigating a possible prostitution ring in a room at the Residence Inn near Big Beaver and Interstate 75. Athans paid a 20-year-old prostitute $150 for sex in a Troy hotel but was not arrested, according to police reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by The Detroit News. The police report said officers observed Athans enter a room under surveillance and leave 15 minutes later.

Great Britain

Formula one boss Max Mosley is under pressure to resign after he was exposed by a British tabloid enjoying a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes.

Jewish groups condemned the behaviour of Mosley, 67, whose father, Sir Oswald, was the leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.

Mr Mosley was caught on video by the News of the World with five women in an underground "torture chamber" in Chelsea, where he spent several hours allegedly indulging in sado-masochistic sex.
...
Mosley reportedly took part in the scene on Friday at a London apartment near his home, according to the News of the World.

In a video on the newspaper's website, it shows a man identified as Mosley arriving at an apartment.

The man is then greeted by a woman playing the role of a prison guard, checking his hair to s ee if he has been kept clean "at the other facility".

Later, another woman in a prisoner's uniform enters the video and the man said to be Mosley is heard speaking German.

Ok, look, no comparison. The whole Nazi angle is really distasteful, yes, but when is a good sex scandal tasteful? Isn't the whole point of a sex scandal that you are shocked? And in a day and age in which kids can really view all manner of indecency on the computer, you have to give Mr. Mosley credit for bringing his A game to the sex scandal arena. The United States showed some creativity, it must be admitted, by having its contestant arrested on Big Beaver Road, but that's about it, as they lose points by the low amount of money exchanged ($150) and the shockingly small amount of time spent on the actual act--15 minutes. Meanwhile the British guy paid God knows how much and spent hours engaged in his dirty business.

For shame, America.

Point/Counterpoint: Bush on Iraq

George W. Bush, today:

"Prime Minister [Nuri al-] Maliki's bold decision -- and it was a bold decision -- to go after the illegal groups in Basra shows his leadership and his commitment to enforce the law in an even-handed manner," he said.

"This operation is going to take some time to complete. And the enemy will try to fill the TV screens with violence, but the ultimate result will be this: Terrorists and extremists in Iraq will know they have no place in a free and democratic society."

Reality, also today:

Iraq’s Prime Minister was staring into the abyss today after his operation to crush militia strongholds in Basra stalled, members of his own security forces defected and district after district of his own capital fell to Shia militia gunmen.

With the threat of a civil war looming in the south, Nouri al-Maliki’s police chief in Basra narrowly escaped assassination in the crucial port city, while in Baghdad, the spokesman for the Iraqi side of the US military surge was kidnapped by gunmen and his house burnt to the ground.

Saboteurs also blew up one of Iraq's two main oil pipelines from Basra, cutting at least a third of the exports from the city which provides 80 per cent of government revenue, a clear sign that the militias — who siphon significant sums off the oil smuggling trade — would not stop at mere insurrection.

US military manages to out-parody itself

Congratulations. It couldn't have been easy for spokespeople to come up with something like this. Up is Down! Black is White!

The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a "by-product of the success of the surge."

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that the Iraqi government and security forces were now confident enough to take the initiative against Shiite extremists in the southern port of Basra.

Don't you get it? It's violent BECAUSE we are winning! That is, it appears that we are losing precisely because we are not losing. Sheesh, why don't you idiots get it?

Our cruel culture: prison prohibits father from visiting dying daughter

As the parent to a young girl, it's impossible to read a story dealing with parenthood and not feel some sort of twinge at the old heart strings. Thus, I'm more affected by the following story than I might have been two years ago. Nevertheless, it's hard to view it as anything other than the product of a culture that increasingly feels no sense of sympathy for those who deserve nothing but care and tenderness.

The facts are simple: a young girl, 10 years old, lies dying of brain cancer in a Nebraska hospital. Her father, meanwhile, is in South Dakota, serving a 4 1/2 year sentence for a drug offense. Leaving aside for a moment the idiocy of prison sentences in our "war on drugs," we are faced with the sad news that the warden of the prison has decided to reject the prisoner's request to be transferred to a prison closer to his daughter so that he might occasionally see her in the final month of her life. That's right: he's not asking to have his sentence commuted or anything of the sort, just that he might be transferred from one prison to another.

Why? Well, the reasons are almost laughably absurd: because the circumstances are "not extraordinary." One wonders what could possibly be more extraordinary or compelling than a child dying of cancer. It's hard to read this story and feel anything other than sheer revulsion at people who could be so heartless--not to the father, although it's cruel to him, too, but to the 10 year old girl facing the last month of her life, and knowing that her father cannot be with her.

What should happen here? Well, it's clear. First, the prison should come to its senses and give this man a chance to see his daughter. Second, the governor of the state, if he has the power, should arrange for a transfer. Thirdly, our beloved President, the man who commuted Scooter Libby's sentence because HIS family had suffered, should intervene to transfer this poor girl's dad to a new prison, one that would allow him the chance to see his daughter.

The most disturbing thing about this story is what it reveals about our culture, one that has developed almost a fetish for seeing "punishment" carried out against people we dislike. Whether it is an innocent man in Guantanamo Bay, kept shackled and isolated for years without even being charged with a crime, or a man being kept apart from his dying daughter, we demand that our systems of justice inflict the most brutal punishments, mental and physical, on prisoners. Why? What possible rehabilitative uses can such punishments serve? Well, none, of course. Keeping this guy away from his daughter will do nothing other than nurture within him a burning rage against society, yet the prison warden keeps his head down and insists on the policy.

It's a shame, an embarrassment, and an outrage.

Al Gore is a political failure when it comes to leadership in the Democratic Party

I'm going to ask a very simple question that has really been bothering me as I contemplate the long-term consequences of the increasingly bitter battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton: where the living hell is Al Gore? He is perhaps the sole figure in the Democratic political hierarchy who, by virtue of a speech, conference, or interview, could change the dynamic and propel one of the two candidates towards the nomination. Normally that role would fall to the last Democratic president, but since Bill Clinton is the spouse of one of the two candidates, that is an impossibility. So Gore, with his impressive credentials and widespread popularity (not to mention his having won nearly every non-political award of late other than the Cy Young), is the one guy who could step up to the microphone and urge some way forward.

So what's the problem? Is it that he, for example, doesn't like either Clinton or Obama? That seems possible, but certainly he understands the importance of electing one of them over McCain. (Unless, of course, he's planning his own run for 2012.) Does he feel a sense of loyalty to the Clintons, and is he therefore staying out of the way for fear of stepping on their toes by endorsing Obama? It's hard to say, as he has remained, frustratingly, on the sidelines for the past few months. The party is in dangerous territory here, with one candidate seemingly hell bent on attacking the states, voters, and racial groups that have so far propelled her opponent to the lead. It seems highly unlikely that the Democrats would stand an easy chance of winning the general election with a fractured base, yet no "distinguished elders" in the party have lifted a finger.

The three people who garner the most respect in Democratic circles, and who are not affiliated with either campaign, are Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and John Edwards. None of them has made the slightest move to break this stalemate. Gore, because of his role in the 2000 elections, is, I think, the most important of this threesome, so it is his absence that is the most frustrating and maddening. Gore, I suspect, is still living in his "the work I do is so much MORE than politics" dreamworld. It would be nice if he bothered to return to reality.