Tom Watson

The President and Mr. Miller

Bode Miller was the perfect candidate for the packaged American Hero, a good-lucking lad who played the rebel to perfection for the image-makers, and ran with the hype and the credit card ads to the 2006 Olympics. Miller was a portable symbol of American lone rangers, the guy who did it his way and reached for the gold. Except he didn't reach. He turned up hollow and empty and unwilling to sacrifice. He skiied off the course, and he skiied off the story-line.

Just as the Bridge to Nowhere is the perfect metaphor for rudderless national leader of the Republican Party, so the ski bum Bode Miller and his devil-may-care attitude toward spectacular failure on the world stage makes a fine stand-in for the President of the United States.

Compare the scorecards. Downhill, Combined, Super-G, Giant Slalom, Slalom ... 5th, Disqualified, Did Not Finish, 6th, Did Not Finish. Spygate, Iraq, Katrina, Torture, Port Security. Or pick your own issues, any issues. No medals, folks - just ignominy and embarrassment before the world. What Bode Miller is to Olympic triumph, George Bush is to Presidential history, flopping off the slick course of national politics like James Buchanan in Team USA spandex.

Of course, it's one thing to be an over-hyped, overweight slalom slacker hanging out till all hours in the bars of Turin, letting down your sponsors, your teammates, and your fans. To me, athletes never really let their countries down - that nationalistic stuff is just for T-shirt sales. The Olympic movement is about as idealistic as the Nike advertising budget. In the end, Bode Miller really disgraced no one but himself. His stupid little episode will fade, and his moment on the public stage is nearly at an end. George Bush's incredible failure will be with us for many, many years. Increasingly isolated (if that's possible) and with his dream team riddled by buckshot and scandal, our national ski bum has the country on the icy, dangerous downhill towards disaster.

George Bush in the flight suit on that carrier was Bode Miller in the Nike ads before the Olympics, all image and promise. No substance and sacrifice, no guts and inner fire. Here's what Mr. Miller told the (obviously angry) team at NBC Sports:

"The expectations were other people's.  I'm comfortable with what I've accomplished, including at the Olympics ... I wanted to have fun here, to enjoy the Olympic experience, not be holed up in a closet and not ever leave your room. I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level ... I just did it my way. I'm not a martyr, and I'm not a do-gooder. I just want to go out and rock. And man, I rocked here."

Replace Olympics and Olympic with Presidency and Presidential, and how far are you really from the life and times of George W. Bush - who, after all, can always say he got to party and socialize on the Presidential level after a life partying and socializing on the silver spoon circuit.

Bode Miller is right. He is not a martyr. And he has absolutely nothing in common with the American men and women who are dying in our name in the streets of Iraqi cities as the Bush-triggered civil war rages. He has nothing in common with the 2,500 killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is nothing like the young Americans in military hospitals in Germany and Maryland and Texas and elsewhere, kids missing limbs and suffering paralysis and blindness, young people who time and time again tell the politicians and reporters who come around their beds: "I just want to get back to my unit."

Bode Miller is just another selfish American, another potent symbol of our self-satisfied society, but at least he doesn't ask more from others than he is willing to contribute himself. His failure is his own.

George Bush's failure is ours.

UPDATE: I have apparently offended Mr. Miller's "Bodelicious" fans by comparing him (favorably) to the President of the U.S. Here's a sample of the mail I'm getting: "I wanted to remind you - George W. Bush did not achieve anything, while Bode Miller has achieved a lot." I love this medium! (Oh, and for all you Bode defenders - nice how he treated his hometown newspaper columnist).

Nip It In The Bud

It is easy to forget in noting the quiet passing of an old man whose last major appearance was in an ill-fitting toupee replacing Norman Fell on Three's Company in the late 1970s that Don Knotts was one for the first comedians to make the move from small screen to big screen. A huge star in his time from his perfect pitch in the role of Mayberry lawman Barney Fife, Knotts left the small, black and white town for flicks like The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Reluctant Astronaut, The Shakiest Gun in the West and the Apple Dumpling Gang. In all them, he played the little man shaking with fear who finds himself in the big situations. They were funny and they made plenty of money: I saw at least two of them at drive-ins, sitting up on the tailgate of the red Chevrolet wagon in the muggy New Jersey night. But none of them topped Barney, one of the great television roles in the history of the medium - cast well and played to precision by Knotts, whose brand of comedy was the moral center for The Andy Griffth Show. Sure, the fake perfection of small-time Southern life in the 60s, devoid of civil rights battles and racial tension, was appealing in its strange way. But it would have all been short-lived pablum without Don Knotts, as the remnants of the show clearly revealed after he left the cast, and in the dreadful (but weirdly compelling in 2006) Mayberry RFD sequel. Andy, Aunt Bee, and Opie were fine and dandy - but Barney made the show a classic. Even today, the bumbling village lawman, rail thin, bug-eyed, with a single bullet in his shirt pocket for emergencies, a loser with visions of grandeur, still appeals. Just pure comedy. Especially today. Oh and this: in a clear sign of the times, his death was announced today by a spokesman for TVLand.

UPDATE: Of course, Joe Gandelman has the quintessential round-up as well as a nice personal story.

The Port o' Call

Suppose for a moment that I'm a political consultant. And I'm working for erstwhile incumbent Robert Menendez, the Democratic Senator by a sliver in New Jersey. And I awake to the news that President Bush is promising to veto Congressional action preventing the turn-over of the ports of New York, northern Jersey, and Philadelphia to the government of the United Arab Emirates. My choices are so many - how exactly to celebrate my client's slam-dunk gift issue of all time? To understand my glee as a political consultant - la-di-da, so many more contributions increasing my advertising budget - to truly know the incredibly pleasure that comes from sudden victory when a long, hard slog was in sight, is to understand why Republicans in Congress are running so damned fast across the aisle to join Democrats in opposing the crazy port deal. And if it helps Menendez, can you imagine how great this is for Camp Clinton? It's not shocking to me to find the Bush Administration so incompetent as to put this agreement through without the lawfully-manded review. It's been clear to many for some time that actual governance is way, way beyond the reach of the "dream team." But it is surprising to see the utter lack of political game in Bush-land - not just nothing, but worse than nothing. Total airball. Almost on purpose.

The Class of '62

Forty-four years ago yesterday, astronaut John Glenn became a national hero by orbiting the Earth in his tin can. A day later, Casey Stengel welcomed the first New York Mets to St. Petersburg, Florida. Today, I turn Hank Aaron's number - so humor this old man with a look at my peculiar, over-achieving class of yearmates, celebrity class. Early bloomers from the Class of 1962, you say? Clearly Darryl Strawberry qualifies, along with child star Jodie Foster, whose career lasted longer than Straw's, alas. Jennifer Jason Leigh (who can act) and Demi Moore (who can't) were brat-packers in their day, as was Matthew Broderick, who seems just to be hitting his stride. Tom Cruise, 44 this year, and Jon Bon Jovi (formerly John Bongiovanni from northern Jersey and 44 the week after next) have achieved matinee idol 40s glory. Jim Carrey, Ralph Fiennes, and Wesley Snipes have thriving careers. Porn star Ginger Lynn may have her best years, ah, behind her at this point. As does Paula Abdul, reduced now to judging American Idol. Garth Brooks is semi-retired, Axl Rose is semi-detached from reality, and Tommy Lee is entering reality show land. Doug Flutie drop-kicked an extra point in his final game before retirement, and Roger Clemens will pitch for the U.S.A. before hanging 'em up - or not. They are the two long, Hall of Fame careers for '62 sports stars. Rosie O'Donnell has similar staying power, not unlike frequent commenter Tom K., who shows a Rosie-like, er, tenacity (yeah that's the ticket) with his critiques of these posts (Fitz and Doug are also '62 babies). Still, my pick for male in a starring role from this class goes to Jon Stewart, the funniest man on television - and a mercifully late bloomer. Female category? Another brilliant late bloomer, the singer Sheryl Crow, whose voice carries every decade of our lives and brings it home with a soulful edge. Ah, what a year it was. And now to blow out the candles....

It's Not Your Party

The libertarian wing of the Republican Party is large, well-heeled, and more knowledgeable than most groups of American voters on day-to-day policy and historic trends in governance. But is the libertarian GOP really in the wrong party these days? Does the Democratic Party represent a more libertarian view towards policy? Blogger Stephen Gordon, who helped to run Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik's campaign for President in '04, thinks so - and he's got some exhaustive research to prove it. Gordon used two different libertarian voting charts (one on pure economic issues, the other on social issues) to give all members of Congress a libertarian rating, based on how they voted on legislation. Shockingly, Democrats in the House far out-stripped Republicans in voting libertarian issues like privacy, regulation, civil rights, etc. JD Lasica, who tipped me to this study, sums it up very well:

Given that Libertarians have traditionally voted Republican, you'd expect Republicans to dominate the top slots, right? But Republicans take only 1 of the top 20 slots in the Liberty index. In fact, Democrats occupy 160 of the top 168 spots. The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, comes in dead last.

I've told my Libertarian friends in recent years that they're voting against their beliefs; now here's documentation to back it up.

The chart at the top shows political leanings of the mass media in the '04 election (judged by what issues they covered) side by side with numbers on self-identification of political leaning between Kerry and Bush voters. Guess what: there's a huge gap between what the media (left, right, and center) cover and how many libetarians there are. And there's also far more blue in the libertarian box. Part of this is the Democrats being out of power - it's easy to both vote for civil liberties when you're not writing the legislation, and to call for increased civil liberties when you're not running policy. But part of it is clearly the Republican Party's swing to greater government control over dailylife and commerce, led by this administration and keyed by its panicky response to 9/11.

Frequent commenter Tom K. is a libertarian Republican if ever there was one. In reaction to my post on Attorney General Gonzales' rather weak defense of the non-FISA executive domestic spying scandal he explicitly took issue with his party's incredible swing. In doing so he may well have put his finger on why libertarians don't try and take back their party - or switch:

The libertarian right is outspoken enough. The problem is, it barely exists, demographically -- most are seduced by some promise or other from the Nanny state.

I have said I find the President's claims to power execessive and dangerous. (I think I said dangerous; if I didn't, I've said it now.)

Nanny state. Police state. Mary Poppins versus flights in the night on unregistered aircaft to Gitmo or Syria. Should libertarian Republicans switch? Hell, we Democrats elected Howard Dean our national chairman - if you guys came over, with your fancy Ivy League degrees and your think tanks, you'd have a field day. And unlike in your own political home on over the Bush Plantation, in these precincts you're welcome to try.

The Off-Season

They closed down Wida's this year, one of the last traces of the roadhouse-style hotels that slaked workingman thirsts and provided a pillow near the beach for post-war generations up and down the Jersey Shore. The property on which it sat was just worth too much in the end. A crew has already gutted the old barroom, package store, and the vast, paneled dining rooms where large, extended families sat at straining tables piled with lobsters, blue crab, veal chops, and steaks. For decades, Wida's was the place of choice for our own brood, with its full baseball team of grandkids. It handled parties of 20 and 30 and more, and the enthusiastic noises of children at one end of the table never interfered much with a few quiet Heinekens taken at the other end after a long day in the surf or the shops on the boulevard.

But Wida's is gone, following the Shermat arcade, Mr. Tee's mini-golf, the Admiral Motel, Morrison's Seafood, the Beach Haven cinema, and Marvel's market to the grave, all deceased low-density middle class palaces living on only in memory of those who taken a portion of their summers down here from childhood on. For me, that memory begins in the late 60s, when this barrier island a much smaller version of itself. Empty lots abounded, cottages were really cottages, the style was less than conscious.

Here on Long Beach Island they continue an American trend: tear down paradise, build a newer version. Then do it over again. And pack in more people.

Can't blame 'em. Despite the winter storms and beach erosion that has left several seaside McMansion's hanging precariously over the sand, land values on this 18-mile barrier island have exploded to a greater degree than almost any territory in the U.S. over the past few years. There's money on these dunes, but there's precious little space - so people tear down post-war cottages and build upwards, three and four stories at time. In summer, the boulevard that bisects this island like a bloodworm's gullet is bumper to bumper.

But not in February. In February, this place is empty. Indeed, it's getting emptier here in the off-season, which is fine with me, because I enjoy the windswept barren quality and its incredible contrast to midtown. Salt air, a few birds and precious few year-round residents. Distant figures on the beach, a few dogs, a fisherman's truck or two. Stoplights on blink, the boats shrink-wrapped in the boatyards. A pub, the diners, a bookstore remain open. It's warmer here than in New York, being out to sea and to the south, but the wind picks up speed down around Cape May and never stops, sweeping from the bird sanctuary south of Holgate within sight of the drab Atlantic City casino towers north through Beach Haven - where I'm writing post - and up to Barnegat. It's cold, alright.

And ever more empty. With developer money set on full gush, the number of year-round residents here is dropping rapidly - and no one who works here, lives here. They all live on the mainland, in the fastest-growing townships on the east coast, an area alive with new big box retailers and malls and senior housing and health care consortiums, all burrowing into the old endless pinelands a square mile at a time. Out here in Beach Haven, there's a mayor who blames the emptying of full-time residents not on rampant development, lack of zoning laws, and ever-shrinking commercial life but on - get this now - illegal immigrants.

Yeah, in this seaside town of 50-by-100 lots crammed with four-story faux Victorian manses, all handrails and trapezoid decks and false whimsey, priced at $1.5 million, the poor, largely Spanish-speaking service population - the busboys and housepainters and cleaning women - are the real problem. They're why decent New Jersey natives can't find a cheap year-round rental on Long Beach Island any more: thsoe that do exist "are being rented to large numbers of illegal immigrants who crowd as many people as they can into the," Mayor Deborah Whitcraft told The Sandpaper weekly. "This is having a profound effect on the ability of local American citizens ... to find hourly wage ... Some people think it's wonderful to get their landscaping and lawn work done for cheaper. It's not such a bargan in the long run."

Whitcraft was a Republican, who swtiched to the Demcratic line to run for Mayor of this town of only 1,200 year-round residents, down 500 in the last two decades. Now, she's dumped that line for an independent tab, publicly priding herself on not being "politically correct." No danger there. She should certainly qualify for the idiot nomination. But she's not particularly bright enough to link the growing building boom - ever-higher, ever-taller - with her own crusade to toss the "hordes" of illegals out of Beach Haven. Funny thing - I don't see much of anyone here this winter. Just the birds.

The Social Climber

The ladies who had first introduced him into society were surprised to discover how wide the circle of his acquaintances had grown. Their feelings were mixed. On the one hand they were pleased that their young protege had made so great a success, and on the other a trifle nettled that he should be on intimate terms with persons with whom their own relations had remained strictly formal. Though he continued to be obliging and useful to them, they were uneasily conscious that he had used them as stepping-stones to his social advancement. They were afraid he was a snob. And of course he was. He was a colossal snob. He was a snob without shame. He would put up with any affront, he would ignore any rebuff, he would swallow any rudeness to get asked to a party he wanted to go to or to make a connection with some crusty dowager of a great name. He was indefatigable.

- Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge

Mesh Media

Five or six years ago, I wrote a piece with Chervokas for @NY, or the Times, or Inside or the Standard (neither of us can remember which, and digital archiving is poor) that imagined a time when we'd all carry a device that downloaded content constantly - movies, music, books, articles and self-made combinations of all of them. In that world, wideband nodes would handle large packets of information freely, without regard to closed networks, so that whether we were walking through Grand Central or riding down the Turnpike, our content subscriptions would find us. The trick then wasn't the hardware; indeed, only a few years later that kind of hardware is ubiquitous. Nor was it the software per se; again the software exsts.

The trick then - and the trick today - the insanely frustrating, anti-consumer, growth-stifling trick is so damned simple: ubiqutious, cross-platform, device- and location-agnostic digital rights.

As is his wont, Jason had a moment of clarity about subscriptions, and the doom that faces closed networks like satellite radio, while stuck in traffic on the Willis Avenue Bridge and wrote it up over on his blog. Good read. Here's a part:

Consumers are willing to pay for the best network access (I heard recently from a cable TV exec that super high bandwidth Internet services are flying off the virtual shelves--"people want blazing fast," was the phrase the exec used). And consumers are willing to pay for the best content. But they HATE having to pay for one in order to get the other. That's why consumers resent the cable TV model that forces users into a menu of programming (the way auto manufacturers force buyers into more profitable packages of options). I would gladly pay a subscription fee to HBO directly, rather than through DirecTV, if it allowed me HBO video on demand on my TVs, my computers, at hotel rooms on the road, at a vacation rental, on my portable devices.

The universal appeal of peer-to-peer file sharing, of weird "mesh media" impromptu local networks (of the sort I experienced on the Willis Avenue Bridge) in part has to do with the freedom from paying, but even more so has to do with the freedom of use--not "use" in the sense of piracy--redistribution for commercial purposes--but "use" in the sense of personal choice within a neatly legal context.  In absence of an industrial infrastructure to provide that choice, end users are doing it for themselves.

Fred Wilson, who puts his firm's money where his digital consumer's gut tells him to - and does it very successfully - agrees with Chervokas (and urges us to get the band back together in the bargain). Fred has riffed on this subject many, many times over the past couple of years - his frustration with the limited rights of iTunes, the insanity of cable and satellite consumer contracts, the limitations of physical media etc. In responding to Jason, Fred goes upside the head to the Time-Warners and Viacoms of the world:

I am sick and tired of paying ten times for the same content.  I want to pay once and use whenever and wherever the hell I want to.  I am sorry that others use that same freedom to pirate the same content, but I don't and I resent the fact that I am treated like a thief by association.

Great point. And it all comes home to me this spring, because we're doing some work on our house (I hope). And I thought it would be wonderful to really improve the home network, add a music and video server, and make distribution in our little corner of the universe ubiquitous. Well, good luck. I can strong all the high-speed fiber I want, invest in the fastest wireless hubs, and the put in big, far servers. Hell, I can tweak the software and make sure it works everywhere in the house. But guess what? Digital rights screws my plans over big-time. Whether it's my cable contract or the rights that come with my DVDs or the limited playable moves from an iTunes download - it still can't be done.

I bought all this stuff, I paid for the songs, the TV shows, the sports, the movies and I'm a thief in my own house, as Fred said. When the hell will digital rights be about consumer digital rights? A market awaits. For now, I may as well be stuck on the Willis Avenue Bridge.

Pedro's Toe Reports

I loved the bold headline on ESPN's baseball homepage today: Happy New Year! There's no question that Pitchers & Catchers Day combines the religious earnestness of Rosh Hashanah and the secular sloshing of January 1st toast-making into one happy little morning in the slushy month of February. In darkness, there is light; from an endless, undrinkable winter's sea of bad sports and fastball-longing, an island of breathless green emerges. But enough of the strangled metaphors. Let's talk about Pedro's big toe.

George once pitched Jerry on a stand-up routine based on the big toe being the "captain of the toes" until the smaller toes makes  a grab for power - "the coup de-toe," says Jerry. "Yeah," says George. "The coup de-toe."

The routine bombed. And I'm frankly worried about the Mets' own little coup de-toe to start this potentially wondrous season, and whether New York's own Big Toe - 34-year-old Pedro Jaime Martinez - and his gnarled, painful digit. Despite the acquisition of the noble and powerful Carlos Delgado, the bold and overpowering Billy Wagner, the blocky, contact-making Paul LoDuca, the continued development of young stars Jose Reyes and David Wright, and the prospective comeback of Carlos Beltran, it may be no understatement to allege that as Pedro's big toe goes, so go the Mets. Because this routine can't afford to bomb.

The Mets are built to win now, with a blend of young talent and veteran presence; they are built to launch the Wilpons' new television network, and to set the stage for the new stadium in Flushing. Sometimes, it's a bit obvious to state that the best player on any team and his health are the keys to any season. Well, the obvious it is then: I simply can't find anything that matters more to this Mets team - with its decent but thin starting staff and beefed-up bullpen - than the performance of Pedro over a long, tough season.

So on this, P&C Day 2006, a day of rejoicing and hope, let us focus on the foot, on the much-hyped corrective shoe from Nike, and join hands in this, our blogging Mets family (and I mean you and you and you .. and not you, ye Yankee-loving bastard), to pray to the powers above for Pedro's Big Toe.

May it deliver us from evil and the Braves. Amen.

The Nobility of Dissent

Ever have one of those purely organic writing moments, when your thoughts and writing become almost physical, so closely aligned are they with your existence? Jack Grant had one of those this morning over at the The Moderate Voice, publishing the best post I've seen yet about the Coretta Scott King funeral and the pathetic controversy stirred up by the whining, lockstep conservatives in thrall of Presidential power. Go read it. This is a taste:

What is democracy about? What is America about?

Dissent...Our nation was founded on dissent. We should never forget that the American Revolution was a rebellion against the legal, legitimate government of the colonies, and the Declaration of Independence was nothing more than an attempt to justify an illegal rebellion against a legitimate government.

Covey Lovey Dovey

The talking head Beltway media mouths are covering the pellet-sprayed tort reform episode in Texas as if it's a story from some exotic culture, little-known in these parts, but somehow authentic to the mythical heartland that - as we all know - actually stands for the real America, and elects manly Presidents besides. The ultimate moment came when Chris Matthews asked Sen. Alan Simpson (in the role of Cheney hunting pal) to define what a covey of quail looks like, and to explain life out on trail "for guys like you and the Vice President." Matthews manfully copped to shooting some skeet in his time, but admitted somewhat sheepishly that he'd never shot at animals, wearing that "gosh, tell me about what real men do, Senator" grin as he probed the now-infamous blamfest with the Wyoming Republican.

This line of talk reveals a strange, even warped vision of authentic Americanism - one that ignores the fact that the huge majority of Americans live in cities or subdivisions, and hunt only for bargains on Playstations, flat screen TV's, and gasoline.

It also gives a style of hunting that can charitably be described as shooting fish in a barrel with fine Italian shotguns far more old-fashioned American macho credit than it deserves, as if wealthy hunters driving Hummers around a private ranch to blast away at cage-raised "prey" hold any fair comparison at all with the kind of tough, ready men of the outdoors - you know, the kind of guys who would spend weeks on end in the actual wild: herding, say, sheep or cattle and sleeping rough - two men to a small, wind-swept tent. Must get might lonely out there.

Then again, you know the tough, rawhide Brokeback Mountain types would never use a word like "covey" in their lives. Nor would they employ chauffers, dog-handlers, and drovers (not to mention a team of advanced life support medics) on their hunts for food - one group to chase the birds, some dogs to flush them, and another to mix the cocktails to perfection. In truth, the affair at the Armstrong Ranch bears far more resemblence to the famed hunting scene in the brilliant Robert Altman Gosford Park - a film about British aristocracy and societal mores - than it does to any hard-bitten piece of Americana. (The irony, of couse, is that Gosford Park gets the Americans all wrong - or at very least, reduces them to simple comic book characters for the sake of the plot). Even better is The Shooting Party, a forgotten mid-80s flick that is a diffident James Mason late career tour de force. One can see Sir Dick amidst the butlers and the game-keepers, all tweed and hip flasks, can't one?

The frontier motiff being rushed into print and onto TV screens - with its buckshot, heck yeahs, and flying pellets - is the worst kind of spin, playing as it does to finely-attenuated national myths. James Wolcott caught the vibe on Hardball just right:

...Simpson seemed to be racing toward senility like a long-lost lover as he put forth the proposition that it's news when the vice president gets shot, but heck, not when the vice president himself shoots someone, especially if they're not really hurt that much. His motto seemed to be "What happens at the ranch, stays at the ranch," and he stroked the word "ranch" with possessive frontier reverence, as if the "ranch" were some sacred inviolate no-news zone where the ghost of Jock Ewing broods through the clouds. It is a land of grizzled patriarchs, measuring their manhood in dead birds.

Seems to me this gauzy Americana now being shilled by the talkies doesn't ring true for another reason - you know, the scene when Wyatt Earp stands up, looks his fellow citizens in the eye, and tells 'em what's what. Dick Cheney's version of hunting is the snooty Gosford Park variety, all servants and set-ups, and posturing. And his reaction to a tough situation? Pure cut and run.

But with Harry Whittington back in ICU with a heart attack, maybe I'm playing the blame game a little too early.

UPDATE: Well, Newsweek's big piece by Evan Thomas on Cheney's lifestyle and personality change pretty much lifted my Gosford Park comparison - yeah, just a coincidence ... we all know Evan Thomas never reads blogs - but I guess I don't mind. Good piece. Here's his take:

The VIP world inhabited by Cheney is perfectly symbolized by the Armstrong Ranch, where the hunting accident occurred. More than 50,000 acres of rolling country, the ranch is "Gosford Park" with a twang—not quite as gilded or as pampered as an English country house on a shooting weekend between the wars, but just as private and entitled in an understated, elegant way.

Shoot First....

The incompetence of the Bush Administration continues:

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday.

Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed Whittington with shotgun pellets on Saturday at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.

Armstrong said Cheney turned to shoot a bird and accidentally hit Whittington. She said Whittington was taken to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital by ambulance.

Typical neo-con when it comes to hunting safety. It moved? Fire! Mr. Whittington should realize that he's now well within the ethical boundaries of the famed Powell Doctrine - Cheney broke you, now he owns you. And you gotta know this about the Veep: he's far better at flipping the bird than he is at shooting it.

Blogging Snow Job

With more snow in my front yard than any average Giuseppe in Turin - the meteorologists and my weather-loving father are going nuts - it's the perfect time to settle in, put another pot of coffee on, and noodle around with the Weblog. And so, time for a few notes and thoughts on the medium itself - yes, I know, a good percentage of you rolls your eyes and mutters "technology review ahead - nuts" but I don't care. As I've said before, this blog is an experiment in the form as well as an outlet for discussions on politics and media, and frankly, I've been neglecting the plumbing for quite some time.

So a couple of thoughts, some additions, and some subtractions.

First this: advertising does not work for the average blogger, even the above-average blogger. It only works for the big group blogs and a tiny handful of full-timers. Advertising as a means of support for bloggers is a complete, utter, and frankly, rather embarassing failure. If Fred Wilson can't earn more than charity change for his blog - well-read, updated thrice daily, and a leader in an important category - than few others can. If Steve Gilliard has to hang out a rusty tin can on his blog and beg for nickels, then blog advertising has failed. If Joe Gandelman's still on the ventriloquism circuit instead of sitting in a fine office, collecting fees for his incredible service to blog journalism, then advertising doesn't work.

Sure, it works for Google, but I suspect that is because we were all suckers in the early days of this and slapped AdSense up on our sites. Well, AdSense doesn't work for me and it's coming down. I'm also sure advertising sales has created a nice little business for Henry Copeland and his BlogAds empire - a nice idea, fairly well-executed. But you know, a bunch of liberal bloggers who also enjoyed books and media criticism banded together to form the the Liberal Prose network - but it hasn't worked for me. It doesn't seem to me like anyone is actively selling the ads. Yeah, I got a few ads from Rosie's site, a rock band pushing its downloads, and a few other causes. But the money was small, and it takes too much time and space. So it's coming down.

Frankly, it's disappointing in the purportedly "open" blogosphere to find such abject failure in advertising - to find gatekeepers, a star system, and closed networks. In short: old media. The advertising model is the same fellas, stop fooling yourself into thinking it's not. Advertising on blogs is old media, with a little tip jar begging thrown in. Since this blog exists only for the conversation it stirs and for the outlet I need to keep away from padded rooms, my "paid" advertising is coming down - at least for now.

Besides, I need the space for more experiments.

Ironically, one of them is advertising of a sort - but it's free, open, and based entirely on the individual publisher's tastes - and not on the ad reps from BlogAds or the formulas over at Google, which are a little too open, except in Communist China. It's called Word of Blog, and I got it from Fred (who treats his own blog like an experiment as well) a few months ago. I really like Word of Blog, because I control what sites and people I promote. Sometimes it's a political cause, sometimes it's a podcast, like Jason's great Down in the Flood. Sure, no money changes hands - but the interface is easy, and it feels good.

The next one also comes from Fred, and it's the"charts" produced by the wonderful music recommendation/online radio site Last.fm - which is so easy, and so good it just has to find its way into the mainstream media canon in iPodian proportions at some point. Last.fm lets you build radio stations for (fully-licensed) online listening, and keeps charts of what you've been playing on its servers, and on iTunes. I've wanted to have my own personal charts on this blog since I started it, and was frustrated by the manual Typepad lists etc. This does it. Automatically. Hope it starts some conversations. [Blog charts would be a terrific service for NetFlix and Tivo to offer as well, come to think of it].

Finally, thanks to Bruno Giussani, I discovered coComments literally the second it went public and I really like it so far. The service gives you a browser plug-in that lets you save your comments on other sites to coComments' server first, then to the blog's site itself. That's slightly cumbersome and may be automated at some point, but it you're really into the conversation - as I am - it's invaluable. Because when you give up your comments to the coComments site, you gain a tracking mechanism - this allows you to publish your comments elsewhere on your own blog, and to create RSS feeds for your comment stream. [Note to coComments team: right now, the service is slow and moderately selective - it takes a while for comments to make the RSS stream - and therefore, alert me to follow-up]. Could this "change everything?" Will we actually need blogs anymore if the "conversation" takes on its own life in feeds? Dunno. But I'm gonna try it out for a while - I urge you to click on the box from time to time and jump into the conversations I'm involved in on other blogs.

Very cool. Just like the weather.

UPDATE: I realize that this post may have cast aspersions upon the members and organizers of the Liberal Prose Network. Let me clear that up: they're some of my favorite bloggers, great people, and if Blogads.com works for them, terrific - I dearly hope the money is good so they can afford to write even more! No, my complaint is really with the Blogads system - it's just another ad sales bureau and it was clear that despite the enthusiasm of the Liberal Prose folks, there was no ad salesperson on the other side pushing this....just some wishful thinking on our part. Then there's the pathetic Amsterdam junket, an ill-considered venture in which so-called "independent" bloggers take free airfare from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, beds in a 5-star hotel, and promise an "interview" with the Dutch Tourism Board. Lame. Bad judgment. And even the great Ezra Klein and Lindsay Beyerstein threw their reputations in for chump change. [What's next, fellas -golf at St. Andrew's?] This is like record companies providing coke and hookers to play songs, folks. It's old school, as in the bad old school. The site claims: "The mantra here is transparency." The mantra should be "bloggers for sale - cheap." This is why blog advertising hasn't worked - there's nothing new there. Blogads.com is old media. I wish them well, but I don't have the room.

Countdown to Glory

The Winter Olympics is an existentialist's dream. Filled with absurdist sports, obscure tests of useless skill, and little-known principalities that leap back onto the world stage every four years, the entire exercise argues against its own existence. I mean, is there anything more absurd and yet strangely beautiful as Formula One champion Jackie Stewart's burr describing the technicalities of the turning line in the so-called sport he alone calls "loooooooooge." Or ski-jumping, skeleton, curling, and that skiing/shooting thing. It's all too crazy to exist, too wacky to actually be a worldwide competition watched by millions, too improbable given the temperatures and precipitation needed (not to mention the corporate sponsorship money) to really be real.

Yet exist it does, and in ever-deepening hues of nationalistic grandeur, speed-enhancing technology, and vast frozen surfaces of strange competition. And so tonight we gathering by the flickering hearth of living color to gaze upon the opening festivities from the mountains of Torino, Italy, known among Catholic believers for the famous Shroud of Torino and as a short-lived Ford brand of sedan in the mid-70s. According to the NBC gonzos, Turin is an action - that is, what you should be doing in and around Torino, their favored non-English pronunciation, which I guess sounds more Euro-trashy to the Paris Hilton wannabes they hope will watch the bitchin' snowboard runs.

The Olympics these days are given a daredevil X-Games style production value, which I've seen on the previews for every sport but women's figure skating - which is given a hazy, soft hue like every muscled young woman in the athletic equivalent of Olivia de Haviland in ugly but perky skating duds. And all that makes me pine for the days of Jim McKay, Franz Klammer, Mike Eruzione, and Dorothy Hamill - in my book, the greatest winter Olympian of them all.

Sure, many Americans will grip their Kleenex tightly as Michele Kwan makes her final (and, I'm guessing, sadly futile) spin for the gold medal that has eluded her otherwise stunning career, but U.S. figure skating glory will always lie with Hamill. This view may well be entirely personal, as I was just approaching my 14th birthday in February 1976 and Dorothy Hamill from Riverside, Connecticut became something of a young lad's dream girl. Who can forget the gold medal skate in Innsbruck, Austria by the near-sighted 19-year-old with the sassy, brown bob? That effort won perfect 6.0 marks for artistic impression under the old system, which favored grace over pure athleticism - but also favored nationalist mark-making, political vendettas, and corruption. When she won, the flowers rained down on the ice and Hamill, without her glasses, squinted to find her parents in the crowd. On the medal stand, she looked down at the gold medal in her hand, scrunched up her shoulders in girlish glee, and cried. There was an innocence to those games, the first Olympics after the '72 summer massacre of Israeli athletes, somehow comforting in the snows of the Alps.

The Olympics has, of course, always been pure myth in its ideals - free nations, free athletes all competing in respectful, even games. Politics doesn't merely intrude - politics is part of the base of the modern Olympic movement. Still, the winter games cling to that thread of the ideal more than the summer games, in my view - partly because many of the sports are abscure and don't pay the big bucks. And partly because of the snow, because of an explicit tie to a season of the year in the nothern hemisphere of the world, because of sports that require frozens hills, and ponds, and fields. Strange, absurd and in this season between baseball and, well, baseball - between election and impeachment, between invasion and withdrawal - the Winter Olymics is a distraction, occasionally welcome.

UPDATE: Watched the opening ceremony with the kids last night and was stunned at the importance they attached to the introduction of each national team, and the reverence they gave it - indeed the respect and interest they held for each nation. Not to mention the many questions: "where is Belarus, Dad?" Interestingly, my commenters on this post so far (some of them, I know from pervious outings, as jaded politically as they come) also seem to find something special in the games. Hmm. Finally, bad news for Kwan fans.

The Face of Fear

When the Attorney General sat before Congress - before us - unsworn by tactic and unapologetic by soviet dogma and stated clearly that the President of the United States has the right to ignore the laws he feels it necessary to ignore, Alberto Gonzales displayed the full face of what Republicanism has become in this country: the face of fear.

This face feigns complacency and confidence, but it shivers just below the clammy surface with cold, sweaty fear - fear based in the self-knowledge of internal incompetence, fear based in the flames of a middle east made worse by adventurous armchair soldiers and political hacks, fear that lies in a fumbling, failing American view of the future, brought to us by those who can only provide a bridge to nowhere. This Administration says bluntly: "you should be afraid, we are not strong, we must throw the law away or we will all perish."

As if the rebel army of hundreds of thousands was in the field, a few dozen miles from the White House.

The GOP mouths on Matthews and Abrams were praising the Attorney General for his manly appearance, for the guts it took to answer Senators' questions today, for "keeping the American people safe" - but it was phony praise for a non-accomplishment. In truth, Gonzales looked like a neutered tree-sloth, just another loyal commissar pushing Bush central planning and backing up what is becoming ever more rapidly an American secret police.

This worried those Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who apparently don't have to turn in reports to the ministers who now control all U.S. policy - namely, the crotchety chairman Arlen Spector, VP-in-waiting Lindsey Graham, and strict constructionist Mike DeWine. These three apparently knew a high-crime-slash-misdemeanor when they saw it, and bore in on Gonzales. They and the magnificent Russ Feingold may also sense something else, that pulsing course of fear, that backward gait of America on the run.

They may also suspect that fear won't "keep the American people safe," that there is no perfect world, that fanatics who will kill for religious sects cannot be stopped by digital wiretaping of our own citizens. And they know that when the next attack comes - when and not if - we'll all realize we gave away the freedom we were supposed to defend for cheap price of political snake oil.