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.