January, 2013 archive
So You Want To Be a Sportscaster? 0
Mark Washburn tells you how. A nugget:
First, you must pay no attention whatsoever to the proper meaning of words. If you happened to have stayed awake during ninth-grade English, for example, you probably know that a “legend” is a popular myth, a slice of folklore that is largely unverifiable, like Paul Bunyan and Babe, the big blue ox.
Forget all that. If you intend to use proper English, your sports career is doomed.
In sports, anyone who is even vaguely proficient at their job is a legend. If there aren’t at least a dozen legends playing, you have no business covering the game.
Follow the link for more career training.
Droning On 0
Yeah.
Right.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Possibly polite practice rounds?
The Honda headed east toward the Dumbarton Bridge, police said. The whereabouts of the car, which reportedly had two occupants, was unknown late Saturday.
All That Is Old Is New Again 0
Belle Rose remembers another American political party that tried to hang on to power by rigging the election laws. A nugget:
Jefferson was fully aware of the Federalist’s strategy, writing to his daughter, Patsy: “Our opponents perceive the decay of their power. Still they are pressing it, and trying to pass laws to keep themselves in power.”
We know how well that worked.
Blame the Victim 0
In the Detroit Free-Press, Mitch Albom wonders just who, exactly, is the victim and needs apologize in the strange case of Manti Te’o’s online fantasy romance:
It is that machinery that is most angry. Sports Illustrated’s Stewart Mandel wrote this Saturday:
“If Te’o truly wants to clear the air, he needs to sit down in front of a camera. He needs to show emotion, and he needs to show remorse. … Many of his fans and followers still feel betrayed. He needs to apologize for his part in embellishing and perpetuating the myth of Kekua.”
Really? Why? What does it matter? Did he take money from those fans? What did “the myth of Kekua” do except momentarily interest people? And we in the news media perpetuated it as much as he did.
As jaded as I have become about NCAA anything, I must point out that, if anyone is going to act stupid over the opposite sex, real or imagined, it’s likely to be high school and college kids. I give you, for example, Beiber Fever.
And if anyone is going to act stupid over college ball players, it’s ESPN and their fellows.
In their uproar of Te’o, the sports press is, I suspect, most angry because their part in it brings out the ultimate superficiality of their own tongue-dragging fan-dom and, in doing so, indicts the whole damned ball of hooey that is big-time college sports.
Something Old, Something New 0
Chancey Devega on race and Republicanism:
Michael Tesler details this nicely. His article contrasts “OFR” or “old fashioned racism” (the belief in the inherent biological inferiority of non-whites) with modern racism (a belief that blacks are “culturally” deficient and lack the “American values” of hard work, civic duty, and loyalty) and how the former has returned to prominence in the Age of Obama.
The old school is the new school (again)…it would seem that political fashion is cyclical.
Read the rest.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness on the hoof.
“She flashed her lights to warn the males that she was behind them,” the police report said. “The suspects walked off to the side of the road so the victim could pass. After the victim drove past the males, one of the males fired several shots at the victim’s vehicle.”
Facebook Frolics 4
Facebook says, “May I see your passport, please?”
That iteration seems to have extended the online ID checks to people even with relatively small numbers of Friends and followers, as one user who emailed TPM to complain only reported having about 200.
This is creepy, especially given Facebook’s history of zucking with users’ privacy.
More at the link.
A Brace of Bubbas 0
The trial of Bubba the Love Sponge gets even more bizarre.
Words fail me.
Afterthought:
A better title might have been, “Suck on This.”
They Grow Up So Fast 0
Oh, my.
The Ellwood City patrolman who filed the citation reported he had “never seen a student that was so infatuated with a teacher.”
QOTD 0
W. Somerset Maugham:
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
Twits on Twitter 0
Uniform twits twitting uniformly.
More uniformity at the link.
Like a Good Neighbor 0
State Farm is . . . where?
Light Bloggery 0
Home improvements.
No, I didn’t install the steps; I’m flooring the attic now that it’s accessible. If you want the name of a trustworthy, competent, and meticulous “professional handyman” in these parts, I can help you out.
What Republican War on Women? 0
This one:
“Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion, of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime,” the bill says.
(snip(
“The bill turns victims of rape and incest into felons and forces them to become incubators of evidence for the state,” he said. “According to Republican philosophy, victims who are ‘legitimately raped’ will now have to carry the fetus to term in order to prove their case.“
The bill is considered unlikely to pass, but it serves well to illustrated the perverse and perverted view that some Republicans have of women: that they are good for only one thing.
This reduces the human victim of the crime to an evidence incubator.
Philip Roth wouldn’t have made this up and Krafft-Ebing (we’re back in that territory again) would not have believed it.
Via Balloon Juice.
Cartoon Obama, Reprise 0
Tony Norman, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, thinks that part of the wingnut cartoon Obama is based on wingnuts’ having no idea what hit them in the last two Presidential elections.
In response to Barack Obama’s unlikely presidency, many right-wingers have allowed their imaginations to run wild. Instead of appreciating Mr. Obama’s election as an example of the mad genius of the American electorate, many Republicans see sinister conspiracies afoot. They’ve erected a counterfactual fantasy as absurd as the prospect of Mr. Obama’s election once seemed.
