Brawl in Beantown

My two favorite sports writers, and Boston natives to boot, Bill Simmons and Charles Pierce are in a nasty little spat. Given that I stumbled upon them independently of each other and enjoy both of their takes on sports I was saddened to learn of their animosity for one and other. Here is a summary from the Huffington Post about the most recent spat and here is Charles Pierces retort:

Quote from Huffington Post:

Author and ESPN writer Bill Simmons lashed out at writer Charles P. Pierce today on twitter, citing why he changed part of his book, "The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy."

"Hey CPP: took you out of TBOB cuz you trashed it without ever mentioning that you used to email me all the time until I told you to eff off," Simmons tweeted.

Pierce wrote a review, which was posted on Deadspin, blasting Simmons' book in Nov. 2009.

Simmons also tweeted that he thought Pierce's review was dishonest and that he "came off like a spurned lover."

Pierce responded to the tweets in his blog, calling Simmons a "mendacious, whiny little thin-skinned bag of breeze."

Quote from Pierce:

We started an e-correspondence that was perfectly amiable. Then, at one point, right around Lebron's first year in the league, he fired off a pig-ignorant crack about Lebron's mother and the circumstances of Lebron's birth. This Blog sent him an e-mail saying, essentially, wow, that seemed a bit harsh. He replied with some snarkery and This Blog replied by telling him to "stay out of the deep end of the pool" until he'd actually learned how to report something. That was the last e-mail we ever exchanged.

Since then, he's been trafficking in the notion that he told This Blog to intercourse off because he was resisting its attempts to "mentor" him. (That's what he sold Whitlock. Pimp Hand, give us a call, man!) This is all my granny. This Blog had no intention of "mentoring" him because, to his credit, he was making his name in a new medium with which This Blog was not familiar, and because, if This Blog were going to mentor someone, it would pick someone with more intellectual integrity who was a helluva lot tougher. This Blog would be perfectly willing to explain this all to his face, including its genuine admiration for much of what he's accomplished, but, given his history in such matters, it fears it may die an unfulfilled blog in this regard.

I'm torn since I have affection for both but the giveaway is Bill Simmons' insult of Charles Pierce's career. Either Pierce doesn't care about how people perceive his career and Simmons' insult is futile and lame or he does care and Simmons' is gloating and being ungracious in light of his success. Either way Simmons is acting like a baby.

Lewinsky, Assange and Feminism

Feminist solidarity seems to be fracturing over the rape allegations against Julian Assange much the same way they did against Monica Lewinsky during the Clinton impeachment brouhaha. Writing in Salon.com, Kate Harding attempts to apply the brakes to the efforts to smear Assange's accusers:

Quote:

As of today, even Naomi Wolf -- Naomi Effin' Wolf! -- has taken a public swipe at Assange's accusers, using her status as a "longtime feminist" to underscore the absurdity of "the alleged victims ... using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings."

Wow. Admittedly, I don't have as much experience being a feminist as Wolf has, but when I see a swarm of people with exactly zero direct access to the facts of a rape case loudly insisting that the accusation has no merit, I usually start to wonder about their credibility. And their sources.

Why would a prominent feminist be leading the charge to discredit a potential victim of sexual abuse? Like Bill Clinton, Julian Assange's political activities are cheered by the left but when the champions of these leftist causes are accused of abusing women, feminists are put in an uncomfortable spot. Do they stand with the powerful man who has the opportunity to use his power to advance their political agenda or do they stand with the women who accuse them of sexual crimes?

This question was addressed by Professor Juliet A. Williams of the University of California at Santa Barbara in her paper The Personal is Political: Thinking Through the Clinton/Lewinsky/Starr Affair:

Quote:

Still, there is something to the point that feminists did not participate as fully in the public discourse on this issue as they might have. This reflects, in part, a self-conscious decision, made early on by organizations like NOW, the Black Leadership Forum, and many others, to treat the Clinton/Lewinsky/Starr matter as an inappropriate subject for public scrutiny given that the core concern was a private affair between two consenting adults. In other words, they concluded that as long as Clinton’s sexual dalliances fell short of the high legal standards set for showing sexual harassment or rape, the details of his social life should remain sheltered from public scrutiny. The general opinion seemed to be that real progress for women is best ensured by having a “pro-woman” president like Clinton in office, however disappointing his personal choices might be.

For reasons both principled and strategic, then, many feminists deemed it unwise to use the Clinton–Lewinsky affair as an occasion to push the feminist agenda forward on issues like workplace harassment and sex discrimination. But how wise was their retreat to the privacy defense of Clinton? More generally, what is lost when feminists abstain in principled silence from public discourse? Answers to these questions bears on the meaning of politics, the status of women, and the contribution feminism can make to people interested in transforming gender relations in this country.

Monica Lewinsky, unlike the women in the Julian Assange case, did not claim to be sexually assaulted or raped, but I find it hard to believe that if President Clinton had been a Republican feminist groups would not have led the charge down Pennsylvania Avenue and stormed the gates of the White House.

Returning to the Assange case, Harding concludes in her Salon.com article:

Quote:

Public evidence, as the Times noted, is scarce. So, it's heartening to see that in the absence of same, my fellow liberal bloggers are so eager to abandon any pretense of healthy skepticism and rush to discredit an alleged rape victim based on some tabloid articles and a feverish post by someone who is perhaps not the most trustworthy source. Well done, friends! What a fantastic show of research, critical thinking and, as always, respect for women.

Assange may or may not be guilty. There is plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the charges levied against him but do feminists really need to be leading the charge on his behalf against the women making the accusations? Feminists' default should always be to side with the women. Sexual assault and rape accusations are woefully underreported as is. It is likely that there is a recent victim of sexual assault or rape watching these events unfold and noting the fact that feminists like Wolf are trashing Assange's accusers. What conclusion should she reach when deciding whether or not to go to the police?

The defense of Assange would be best if it was left to others.

Massachusetts' Miracle?

Noam Sheiber at The New Republic identifies Governor Deval Patrick's 2010 campaign as the model Obama and his aides are hoping will lead to his re-election in 2012. Interesting:

Barack Obama, Tax Cuts, 2012, And David Axelrod: Inside A Divided White House | The New Republic

Quote:

Of all the historical analogies urged on Obama following November’s drubbing—Truman in ’48, Reagan after ’82, Clinton after ’94—the one the White House has opted for is easily the most obscure. That would be Patrick in ’10—as in Deval Patrick, the recently re-elected governor of Massachusetts. Months after Patrick signed the state’s first sales-tax hike in 33 years, political chatterers gave him little chance of surviving to a second term. Not only did he face the same foul, anti-incumbent mood that elected Scott Brown, he’d drawn an attractive GOP candidate in businessman Charlie Baker.

Patrick’s handlers recommended that he distance himself from liberals in the state legislature—and, above all, downplay the tax increase. The governor overruled them. His first commercialhighlighted the “combination of deep cuts and new revenue” he’d accepted to close the state’s budget shortfall. “He all but said, ‘I raised taxes.’ Jesus Christ,” recalls one still-traumatized adviser. “He thought the way to do it was to be true to what he ran on [in 2006]”—the belief that voters will support someone who levels with them, even if they don’t love every decision. In the end, Patrick and his “politics of conviction” won by a comfortable seven-point margin.

Obama's Deal: A Huge Win (Or Maybe A Major Defeat) | The New Republic

Jonathan Chait's reflections on the tax cut deal here:

Obama's Deal: A Huge Win (Or Maybe A Major Defeat) | The New Republic:

Quote:

"How did Democrats get a deal like that? Ezra Klein's source confirms what I speculated without any information -- Republicans love them some rich folk. They're willing to bargain away a lot to help the very rich:

For one thing, the things [Republicans] wanted were things they really, really wanted. A number of sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations have fingered the estate tax as the major player in the size of the deal. 'Republicans were extremely eager to get benefits for the top tenth of a percent of Americans,' says one senior administration official."

Wikileaks' raison d'etre

Here is a fantastic article on Julian Assange's philosophy, if there is one.

Quote:

For Assange in 2006, then, the public benefit of leaked information is not the first-order good of the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world (free information is its own reward), nor is it the second-order good of the muckrakers* (free information will lead the people to demand change). What Assange asks of leaked information is that it supply a third-order public good: he wants it to demonstrate that secrets cannot be securely held, and he wants it to do this so that the currency of all secrets will be debased. He wants governments-cum-conspiracies to be rendered paranoid by the leaks and therefore be left with little energy to pursue its externally focused aims. In his words, “We can marginalise a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to, its environment.”

The 19th Amendment maybe?

Andrew Sullivan links to this interview with PJ O'Rourke:

Anna Blundy interviews P J O’Rourke. One of her questions prompts a rant on government interference:

My grandmother was able to keep people from smoking indoors with one cold stare. Why would laws and parliaments and police powers and courts and all sorts of annoying and ugly signs everywhere be necessary? All this expense and exercise of power of one group of people over another – why is all this needed to achieve what my grandmother could achieve with one cold stare?

He offers the counterexample of spittons:

[U]p until some time in the 1920s or so, virtually every American male chewed tobacco and spat constantly. It went away because women put their foot down and said: ‘That’s disgusting!’ I suppose that all had to do with the changing role of women but there didn’t have to be any politician around to think of taking the credit for that, though I’m sure they would have been glad to.

I'm a little stunned that O'Rourke would throw out the date 1920's without thinking about what changed about women's role in society in that decade. If read a certain way it seems like O'Rourke is arguing that the entry of women into the formal political process has enabled the dreaded nanny state. However, unlike O'Rourke I do not pine for the days when women, like his grandmother, held no political power and had to rely on informal social shaming to accomplish their goals.

I also resent the implication that smoking bans represent "all this expense and exercise of power of one group of people over another..."

Let us please not forget that before all these bans smokers were forcefully exercising their power over us and our children by smoking in the workplace, on planes and in restaurants. If they want to kill themselves they can do it in the privacy of their own homes or outdoors but I'm not going down that path with them just because I want to grab a bite to eat or want to visit friends in California.

The Grinch Who Stole McCain

Many people are scratching their heads wondering what happened to John McCain as he falls on his sword to keep gays out of the military and in the closet. See this Daily Show takedown of McCain and his brazen hypocricy and then Andrew Sullivan and James Fallows observations:

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Andrew Sullivan linking James Fallows:

Moneyquote:

I wish I understood McCain. I thought I did once, but it seems increasingly clear that he is a man of near-suicidal vanity and misjudgment (remember suspending his entire campaign to deal with Lehman Brothers, or the insanely reckless selection of an unvetted Palin) and defined by grudges. Much of his shift to the center in 2000 and after was, it now seems obvious, an attempt to sabotage the man who defeated him, George W. Bush. His conduct in the last two years seems very similar with respect to Obama, despite Obama's early attempts to persuade and coopt him.

Sigh....

Jullian Assange: Blofeld or Bond?

Here's a great article from Salon thinking about the Wikileaks affair in comparison to the James Bond narrative:

The Bond universe's "the government is always looking out for us" conceit is a big part of what made the stories so staggeringly profitable. By inventing fabulously wealthy and powerful outsider foes whose destabilizing force rivaled that of governments, Bond's masters -- original author Ian Fleming and his posthumous replacements, the Broccoli family of producers that have controlled the film series since the '60s -- freed the stories of specifics that might stop residents of any nation from feeling that Bond wasn't on their side. As flamboyantly and shamelessly entertaining as Bond stories often are, they're ultimately ads for the unquestioned authority of the state over the individual. No hero backed by the full faith and credit of the entire Western world could ever be considered an underdog, yet that's how Bond is presented, and we buy it because the stories are clever, amusing power fantasies with smatterings of sex and luxury. When Matt Damon, star of the "Bourne" franchise, called Bond "an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people," he pissed off a lot of Bond fans, but he wasn't wrong. He was cutting to the heart of the myth and insisting fans admit what Bond really was: an emblem of authoritarian power and male entitlement, transformed by movie magic, star glamour, and narrative deck-stacking into an underdog hero that even a powerless, penniless wage slave could root for.

The Lord can make you tumble - Charles Pierce Blog - Boston sports news - Boston.com

I just recently discovered Charles Pierce's blog. He may be challenging Bill Simmons as my favorite source for sports/culture commentary. His take on Lebron's return to Cleveland is an example why:

The Lord can make you tumble - Charles Pierce Blog - Boston sports news - Boston.com: "Times are hard in Cleveland, largely because of an economic collapse engineered by the cupidity of our financial Masters of The Universe -- And is it time again to point out that the poor, put-upon Cavs are owned by a guy who got rich in mortgage services during the years when that business was a swindler's paradise? Thought so. --  all of whom are getting fat again while unemployment hits 10 percent and our national outrage is focused on a basketball player who changed jobs. Eyes on the ball, people."

Gaypocalypse Now...Priceless

John McCain is making the Daily Show writers' jobs way too easy.

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The Curious Case of Barack Obama

A friend of mine wondered on Facebook whether the Republicans feel bad for the beating they are administering to Obama right now. If this were Little League we might have to enforce the mercy rule.

I always imagined I would be Obama's last defender. It still frustrates me that the left has not embraced the immense challenge and accomplishment the passage of health care reform was and is.

However the current debate over tax cuts and unemployment compensation has me contemplating whether or not to jump ship. I remarked to my friend that Obama's skills as a politician seem to be regressing as he gains more experience. He appears to be the Benjamin Button of politicians.

Thinking back to the primary against Hillary Clinton it is still shocking that Obama was able to defeat the most popular, powerful and effective political family in modern Democratic politics. It seemed that it was Bill and Hillary, especially Bill, who seemed to stumble and bungle the politics of the primary. Who can forget Bill's attempted racial belittling of Obama's victory in South Carolina. It seemed the old pro had lost his touch and a new superstar was born.

But Obama's current weakness started to become apparent during the stimulus debate at the beginning of his term. After much publicized wining and dining of conservatives Obama began the debate over the stimulus bill with a good faith nod to Republicans by including $350 billion in tax cuts and credits in the $900 billion stimulus plan. He was rewarded with an astonishing zero Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate. One of those three, Arlen Specter, was driven out of his party as a result.

This one-way negotiation strategy continued into the health care debate which was nearly derailed when Obama and Senate Democrats let the infamous "Gang of Six" drag negotiations on for an entire summer while Tea Party activists sabotaged the debate in town halls throughout the country. Obama's decision to go all in after the devastating Scott Brown election is still maybe his finest moment and may make all his smaller failures moot in the long run.

Now after the midterm elections Obama appears to letting Republicans fight to protect tax cuts for millionaires while simultaneously cutting off benefits for the those struggling with unemployment. Obama's response? A pathetic attempt at pandering to the deficit hawks with an unsollicited proposal to freeze federal employee pay. A proposal that gets him nothing in return from the Republcians, will fail as a public relations ploy, and will actually do nothing to address the deficit.

When is he going to take a stand? When is he going to pick a fight to illustrate the differences between his priorities and Republican priorities? If the contrast between tax cuts and unemployment insurance does not provide this opportunity I'm not sure what will.

Ted Strickland, former governor of Ohio, and Paul Begala, former aide to President Clinton, agree.

Ted Strickland:

But his frustration was evident as the discussion progressed. Talking, unprompted, about the debate over the expiring Bush tax cuts, Strickland said he was dumbfounded at the party's inability to sell the idea that the rates for the wealthy should be allowed to expire.

"I mean, if we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up," he said. "These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don't care if they are paid for, and we don't think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren't paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?"

Here is Paul Begala begging Obama to stop making unilateral concessions to Republicans. The impetus for his comments here was Obama's announcement he would be freezing federal workers pay.

My only hope is that Obama is playing rope-a-dope with the Republicans, feigning weakness to entice the GOP to overreach, and then using their aggression to his advantage. The confluence of the tax cuts/unemployment insurance debates is the time to start fighting back.

The Promise Of A Democratic Iran - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan links to an interesting paradox concerning Iran that is revealed by the new Wikileaks documents.

The Promise Of A Democratic Iran - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan:

"Karim Sadjadpour made an important point in yesterday's FT:

The WikiLeaks revelations make clear that Arab officials believe Iran to be inherently dishonest and dangerous. The feeling is probably mutual. But they hide perhaps a more interesting issue, namely what type of Iranian government would actually best serve Gulf Arab interests.

President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad and the Islamic Republic may be loathed, but equally the advent of a more progressive, democratic Iran would enable Tehran to emerge from its largely self-inflicted isolation and begin to realise its enormous potential. In the zero-sum game of Middle Eastern politics, a democratic Iran would pose huge challenges to Persian Gulf sheikhdoms."