RAGGED THOTS

Well, guess it was only a matter of time for the all-around feel-good story of the year to take a turn for the worse! What the media giveth, the media taketh away.  After a two-week ride from obscurity to international obsession, Jeremy Lin's tale took an, ahem, dark turn last week.

That turn was, yes, on race -- perhaps not surprisingly, given that the National Basketball Association is primarily African-American, with a number of Caucasian Europeans, a handful of American-born whites and Lin as the only Asian-American starting player.

First, boxer -- and soon to be jailbird -- Floyd Mayweather Jr. complained that the whole "Linsanity" media madness was being driven because of ethnicity:  “Jeremy Lin is a good player,” Mayweather tweeted, “but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” (On the other hand, some have argued precisely the opposite: Despite an impressive career at Harvard, Lin was overlooked coming out of college because he was Asian. (Personally, I lean toward my colleague Peter Vecsey's theory: The NBA-coach bias is more against Ivy League players than anything else.).  

Two things wrong with Mayweather's statement: 1) Some black players so what Lin does -- but in the seven games that he's played, he's managed to (depending on the game) outduel Kobe Bryant, hoist a Jordanesque game-winning three-pointer -- and put together a Jason Kidd stat-line of 10 points and 13 assists.  That sort of versatility is rare for any player -- regardless of race.  2) No black players on the Knicks were doing "what [Lin] does every night."  Indeed, had not head coach Mike D'Antoni brought Lin into the game off the bench against the New Jersey Nets on the night of Feb. 4, he likely was soon to be would have been heading out the door given the team's 8-15 start.  Another six wins got them to playing .500 ball (until Friday's loss to the atrocious Charlotte Hornets, of which, more in a moment).

Labels: ESPN, Floyd Mayweather, Jeremy Lin, New York Knicks, race

Well, my numbers weren't completely off: Instead of 31-17, the final score was 21-17! I got the New England side of the equation, but the Giants didn't quite ring up the numbers on the offensive side as I envisioned.  That said, the game played out as I thought, with respect to the winning quarterback. Eli is now the top dog in the Manning family. He led the team to a winning fourth-quarter touchdown -- as he did four years ago and as he has done all season. Eli now has two Super Bowl wins -- and gotten them in a quicker time than his more accomplished brother took to get one. He's also the only guy to have beaten Tom Brady twice in the postseason.  To become elite, ya gotta beat the elite.

And Eli Manning is as elite -- and clutch -- as they come.

And given the respective ages of this team's core players on offense and defense, there's no reason why the Giants shouldn't be favorites at least to make it back to the NFC championship game next year.

Congrats, Eli. Congrats, New York Giants!!

Labels: Eli Manning, Super Bowl

Thank goodness there aren't as many pre-game polls for football games as there are for presidential primaries and caucuses!  Though, I guess, if you factor "predictions" into it, they come out about equal.  In any event, I've avoided sports prognostication in recent months, but since there's a New York (Jersey?) team involved, I will break that streak.  Especially given that there's a hated Boston-related squad lining up on the other side today.  


Conventionally speaking, I think this actually won't be a close game. I'm thinking it will be about a two-touchdown margin (though it could be larger). And it's going to go the Giants way. 


If anything, this match-up reminds me of one of the old late-80s, early-90s games where powerful AFC teams go storming into the Super Bowl and find themselves rather outmatched by their NFC counterparts. Remember three Denver blowouts? Remember one close Buffalo loss -- followed by three consecutive blowouts?  


Things those Denver/Buffalo teams all had in common were great quarterbacks, explosive offenses and "finesse" defenses whose sins were often covered by the aforementioned QB/offenses. Frankly, that's what I see in this year's New England team -- which gave up more passing yardage this year than any team other than....drum-roll...the Green Bay Packers. 


Yes, that would be a Green Bay team that lost to the New York Giants.  (And yes, statistically, the Giants were only a few notches better, however they made up for it with a ferocious pass-rush -- especially later in the season when banged-up members returned). The Giants beat the Patriots earlier this year, in Foxboro, when Big Blue had several key contributors not playing -- and the Pats were at full strength. Today, the Giants are healthier than the Pats (sorry, Gronk) and they are playing better.

Arguably, more significantly, there's also a psychological factor at play here. All the pundits are talking about Tom Brady's "legacy" and the possibility of getting a fourth ring that puts him in a class with only Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.  Well, there's the other quarterback there -- the guy whose played forever in the shadow of his older brother. Indeed, even in a year where Peyton didn't play, he was one of the enduring storylines. Even into the post-season, all the headlines have been about Peyton's future in Indianapolis.
  
Tonight, Eli Manning has the opportunity to win a second Super Bowl, taking him past his forever-shilling brother and into the rarified air of multiple winners. Suddenly, Eli's no longer being compared to Peyton. Instead, pundits will have to compare him to Brady (who he'll have beaten 2-0 in the Big Game), Roethlisberger (whose 2-1 in Super Bowls) and Rodgers (who he's already beaten this playoff drive). Oh, and winning it all in Indianapolis?  How sweeter can it get? 


New York Giants 31, New England Patriots 17.

Labels: Eli Manning, New England Patriots, New York Giants, Super Bowl, Tom Brady

All Florida polls have Mitt Romney with a significant lead over Newt Gingrich heading into tomorrow's primary, with NBC/Marist showing a 15-point margin and Rasmussen at 16 points. For the Sunshine State, at least, it appears to be all over. However, on Sunday, Public Policy Polling came in with a survey showing a much more compact Romney lead -- 39-32 (Santorum and Paul are way back at 14 and 11, respectively). That can be considered an outlier, sure, except PPP (yes, a Democratic outfit) pretty much nailed the breadth of Newt's South Carolina win.

Even though it's still a lead, high single digits is still different from 15 and 16-point blowouts. Caution should still be shown. So, one wonders exactly what Romney's people were doing giving the equivalent of an early victory lap to The New York Times Sunday:

David Kochel, an adviser who arrived here from Iowa to oversee the pressure campaign, described the strategy as “let’s go rush the quarterback.” A team of Romney boosters started infiltrating nearly every Gingrich campaign stop to offer instant rebuttals. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah showed up to challenge Mr. Gingrich’s record to reporters and at one point tangled with Mr. Gingrich’s press secretary as the cameras rolled. Bay Buchanan, a longtime conservative activist, worked on the Romney campaign’s behalf to win over voters and commentators.
[SKIP]
A team of some of the most fearsome researchers in the business, led by Mr. Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, spent days dispensing negative information about Mr. Gingrich, much of it finding its way to the influential Drudge Report, which often serves as a guide for conservative talk radio and television assignment editors and to which Mr. Rhoades has close ties.
The effort hit a peak by Thursday, when the site was virtually taken over by headlines assailing Mr. Gingrich, whose advisers said they eventually gave up on trying to persuade the Drudge staff to spare them, acknowledging, in the words of one aide, that “very little can be done.”
The Romney team was also carefully tracking Mr. Gingrich’s every utterance for a potential opening. What an aide described as a “eureka moment” came just hours before the debate on Thursday night. At a Tea Party rally in the Central Florida town of Mount Dora that day, Mr. Gingrich had opened a new line of attack, noting that Mr. Romney had investments in funds that included shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage lenders.
Mr. Romney’s opposition-research team in Boston quickly dug into Mr. Gingrich’s own publicly disclosed holdings to find that he, too, had mutual fundsinvested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The information was quickly fed to Mr. Romney during his private debate preparation session at a hotel in downtown Jacksonville.
When Mr. Romney delivered the attack against Mr. Gingrich that evening, Mr. Gingrich was left with no substantive response, a killer blow that helped keep Mr. Gingrich from commanding the debate stage as he had in South Carolina.

Wow. If Gingrich need anymore ammunition on his charge that Romney is the hardball candidate of insiders and borderline dirty campaigning, this article sure provides it. Personally, all's fair in love, war and politics (well, except for attacks on the family), but this sort of press access -- before the primary is actually over -- seems, well, not exactly wise.

Labels: 2012 GOP nomination, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich

Michele Bachmann will be going on an all-out radio run today, perhaps capitalizing on the momentum of a not-too-bad debate performance last week, coupled with the fallout of what might be called "Rootsgate."  Bachmann got a surprising amount of cross-party sympathy when Jimmy Fallon's house band, The Roots, chose a rather rude song with which to introduce Bachmann on her appearance last Monday -- the '80s ska-funk group Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch."

After the taping, but before the broadcast, bandleader ?uestlove (pronounced "Questlove") tweeted that they had chosen something with "snark" for Bachmann and then showed followers the list of the five songs off of Fishbone's debut EP.  The "la la la" opening bars of the "L.A.B" then told the tale. (Ironically, had ?uestlove said nothing, few people would have likely recognized a relatively obscure 26 year-old song).

Anyway, Twitter exploded.  Conservatives found the song an example of what mainstream media (and major networks) do to those on the right. But even some liberals thought it was a case of the easy sexism with which major institutions can be comfortable.  Regardless, Fallon first made a cute apology by declaring that
?uestlove was "grounded." When it was obvious that wouldn't suffice, he (again, on Twitter) fully apologized to Bachmann, adding that he was "honored" to have her on and "I'm so sorry about the intro mess."

That, however, wasn't enough for Bachmann.  She demanded an apology from NBC -- which she finally got Thanksgiving  night:  Don Vaughn, an NBC senior vice president called the episode "not only unfortunate but also unacceptable." Did that (and a follow-up personal call from Fallon) satisfy Bachmann? Um, not quite. "If that song had been played for Michelle Obama I have no doubt that NBC would've apologized to her and likely they could've fired the drummer or at least suspended him. None of that happened from NBC and this is clearly a form of the bias on the part of the Hollywood entertainment elite," observed Bachmann. 

So, after gaining multiple apologies from the star of a late night show and a network executive, Bachmann raises the question of how the First Lady of the United States would be treated in similar circumstances. Well, fortunately, one doesn't have to go too far to find out:  The same day the Roots were calling Bachmann the B-word, a media individual of far more reach was going after her near-namesake. In an odd defense of NASCAR fans right to boo Michelle Obama and Joe Biden's appearance at the end of season race, Rush Limbaugh -- host of a program with a reported audience of some 20 million -- declared the first lady guilty of "uppity-ism."

Let's be clear here: "Uppity" is a word that, in the 21st century, is archaic for good reason: It was a handy racial insult of a bygone era, though it had happily faded from common use. Indeed, the most public use of the word in a political context before Limbaugh was 20 years ago -- by Clarence Thomas in his infamous pushback against sexual harassment charges in his Supreme Court nomination process. (However, check baseball great Bill White's memoir, Uppity: My Untold Story of The Games People Play for another provocative exploration of the word.)

The irony -- and hypocrisy -- in Limbaugh's attack on Mrs. Obama is that, just one month ago, he was reprising the Thomas line to defend Herman Cain! Limbaugh summarily declared that the sexual harassment story was exemplary of the mainstream media "going for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can." Limbaugh, it should be noted, was the leader (along with Ann Coulter) in this "explanation" for explaining the Cain controversy -- even before the candidate himself decided to use the race card (who then backtracked to point the figure at other GOP candidates and double/triple-backed to blaming the generic "liberal" media, while minimizing the racial element). So, we're supposed to believe that, one minute Rush is Mr. Sympathetic on how the media indulges "the ugliest racial stereotypes" for a black conservative -- but he is unaware of what "uppity" means in reference to blacks in general? It strains credulity.

Sure, some media talking heads have engaged in racial stereotyping with respect to Cain -- thought the sexual harassment charges aren't indicative of that. And yes, liberals have hardly been reticent to declare that calling the president arrogant is a racial "dog-whistle" for "uppity." But that's not the case here.

Rush Limbaugh is smart man. After more than twenty years atop talk-radio and having authored multiple best-sellers, he knows what words to use where. Again, stipulating that Michelle Obama's anti-child obesity might be too intrusive (arguable, at best), there are any number of words he could have used to describe what he thought was "intrusive", "pushy" or "haughty" behavior on the part of this White House by lecturing the country on parental skills. But, he opted for the odd cognate "uppity-ism" to describe how sports fans at a Southern-based event felt about a black First Lady. (Frankly, I'm not sure NASCAR fans should feel that Limbaugh was doing them any favors with his choice of words to describe Mrs. Obama).

This is ugly stuff. And serious.

Unfortunately, unlike the bipartisan anger at the Fallon debacle, criticism seemed fairly one-sided. Limbaugh's regular foes on the Left went after him. Things were relatively quiet on the other side -- except for the support Limbaugh got that, ho-hum, there's nothing to see here; move along. Newsbusters slammed ABC for reporting on the incident (or picking up Media Matters' report of it).  Glenn Beck actually agreed with Limbaugh, in fact adding that "uppity" was the right description for both Obamas.

Great. So much for the effort to counter the liberal meme that "Tea Party=racist." How much easier it is when one of the leading voices in the conservative movement decides to use an intentionally loaded word against the first lady. Where on earth would the mainstream media come up with the wacky idea that there's an element of racial resentment in criticism of the Obama president. On the other hand, Limbaugh's early (i.e. 2009) claim that "Obama's America" gave license to black kids beating up white kids on school buses wasn't exactly helpful in that regard.

Of course, not only wasn't there any apology forthcoming from Limbaugh (as if), he went further in his Michelle O put downs: In the midst of the Bachmann kerfuffle, Limbaugh suggested playing "Baby Got Back" (AKA, "I Like Big Butts") when introducing Mrs. Obama. Ha. Ha. In another context that might actually have been funny. Not this time.

So, to be clear: In one week, we have an example of a mainstream media entertainment show's band insulting a female conservative woman with a song with a title using a universally derogatory word for a woman; the host and an executive of his network apologize. Then we have the case of a conservative media host (with a daily audience roughly ten times larger) dipping into a different Roots playbook (think Alex Haley's miniseries) to direct an insult at a black First Lady. And the disapprobation comes largely from one side?

Very sad.

Labels: michele bachmann, michelle obama, Rush Limbaugh

Say it ain't so, Joe.

The winningest coach in college football history is out, following the exposure of what amounted to a 13-year institutional cover-up at Penn State of alleged serial pedophile, defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. (Gory grand jury details can be read here. And FAIR WARNING: This is truly ugly stuff.) So, students end up rioting in Happy Valley because of Paterno's instant dismissal. Really, kids? You planning on purchasing "Rioters 4 Pederasts"?

And, oh yeah, the whole thing could end up even worse. How, well, there's a former district attorney -- who didn't prosecute Sanduskey when allegations were first raised in 1998; a few years later, he  disappeared and had his laptop hard drive destroyed. Odd coincidence or, God help us, a suggestion that this cover-up might even go there?

The title of this post was borrowed from a recent cover article in The Atlantic magazine, written by Pulitzer-prize winning historian Taylor Branch. He, of course, is famous for his trilogy of books looking at the civil rights era.

Branch's article focuses more on the NCAA's role in big-time college athletics, the impact of television contracts and raises the question of whether student athletes should get more compensation for their on-field exploits.

But it is germane to the current Penn State saga because it zeroes in on how huge and, arguably, corrupt an industry college sports has become -- and football in particular (not gainsaying the NCAA billion-dollar "March Madness" contract). It so huge that it is understandable why a giant football program like Penn State would engage in a 14-year coverup of heinous crimes committed by a member of its football staff.

How times have changed. Just two years ago, the debate going on was whether Paterno's closest rival in victories -- Bobby Bowden -- should have 12 wins vacated because of a cheating scandal. If that were to happen, Bowden would have had no chance to retire with the victory prize. As it happened, Bowden was forced out -- because the team started underperfoming on the field (those wins were vacated) and the point became moot.

This story, however, is on a whole other level. It's not about recruitment violations or kids getting cars from boosters or trading game shirts for tattoos. This is about at least nine young boys being abused -- raped -- by a defensive coordinator of the football team. And it seems clear that people at the top knew -- not in 2002 when graduate assistant Mike McQueary walked in on by-then-former coach Sandusky raping a kid in the showers -- but in 1998. That was when, it appears, Sandusky was forced out of his job -- but still allowed access to the college's athletic facilities!

As others have noted, the much-ballyhooed Big Ten Network -- bringing in millions in revenue and giving the conference even more pull with the NCAA -- has avoided this story like the plague. That's the problem with today's college athletics: The institutions want the money, influence and the benefits that come with a large  athletics department -- a volatile brew that is sowing chaos and multiple conference hopping (ya thought, Boise, Idaho, was out west? Ha! Turns out it's in -- or will be -- the Big East!) But what about the responsibility? That's something quite different.

As Branch shows, the institutions have no qualms taking advantage of young student athletes (a phrase, Branch notes, created to help indemnify schools against worker's compensation claims brought by injured players). Now, it seems, that same CYA mentality seemingly extends even to not caring about the lives of really young people who not only aren't athletes -- but are actual pre-adolescent victims of a sexual predator who was allowed to use his current and former workplace as his own "playing field" (or, dare I say it, "happy valley").

Shame indeed.

***UPDATED AND EDITED SINCE INITIAL POSTING

Labels: Joe Paterno, NCAA, Penn State, Taylor Branch

Your humble bloghost made his return to Fox News Channel's overnight sensation, "Red Eye" on Friday night (Saturday morning). The following clip is the opener and first segment. Surprise, surprise! Herman Cain continued to be a topic of major media interest:




Here is Andy Levy's hilarious "halftime show".




And be sure to catch yours truly geeking out at the very end.

Labels: Fox News Channel