Yesterday at the library where I was working, there was an elderly man wearing a cap that said, "World War II Vet." I helped him check out a book and as he turned to leave with his wife I said, "Thank you for serving." I don't think he heard me and he didn't respond.
But I wondered if this wasn't the last time I'd have any interaction with a veteran of WW II. The youngest veteran of that awful conflict would be about 86 now. (That's eighteen years old in 1945, plus the 68 years since then.) It was a rather painful reminder that the men and women who won the war are passing from the scene quickly. There will be living veterans for another twenty years or so, but superannuated and probably living quietly within their homes or in various degrees of assisted living.
Thank you to all of them, and to the millions who have already passed away.
Twenty or so years ago, I was in a Richmond Virginia hotel for some reason, and came upon a reunion of marines who had fought at Guadalcanal. For those of you who don't remember, Guadalcanal is an island in the Solomon chain of the Pacific Ocean, not too far from Australia. It was the scene of a desperate fight between the American marines and Japanese army in 1942 and 1943, contesting who would hold possession of a small airfield there. Keeping the runway would allow the possessor to post land based aircraft there and dominate the area. Losing it would make it much harder for the United States to protect Australia and New Zealand. It took almost six months and much bloodshed for the marines to secure the island.
I went over to the dozen or so veterans there and said something like, "You guys went up against the best soldiers Tojo had, and you beat them. For all of us who weren't born yet, thank you."
It was little enough thanks, but I've always been glad I took the few seconds I spent thanking those men.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
Alternative History
People like alternative histories. Harry Turtledove has made a whole life from writing novels that begin with some implausible event. For example, time travel is possible, and white supremacists go back to 1864 and give Robert E. Lee's army modern weapons. The Confederates quickly win the Civil War, with all kinds of ramifications. Space aliens appear on earth, ready for conquest, so Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler must put aside their petty differences to battle the space invaders.
When I was teaching history, I used to challenge my students by asking what history is. For many years, historians and history books told the stories of great men - Alexander and Washington and Napoleon and so forth. Then, Lev Tolstoy said history is about ordinary people and those "great men" are incidentals. The metaphor was the monkey riding the back of the elephant. The monkey screams and chatters and pulls the elephant's ears, and thinks he's steering the elephant. Meanwhile, the elephant goes about his business, devoting his thoughts to getting something to eat, and avoiding lions, and making little elephants. The monkey represents the movers and shakers of the world, and the elephant is the rest of us.
So do the great men matter? Does it make any difference whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is president? Both would build incrementally on the foundations already laid down by their predecessors, dating back to 1789.
To put it more drastically, would there have been National Socialism without Hitler? Would there have been a World War II? Would the Germans have lusted to conquer France and Poland and Russia without Adolf to spur them on?
I support the idea of a kind of combo pack. The "great men" act as catalysts, but they cannot get the rest of us to do anything we didn't have some predisposition to do. There must be a period of preparation before people are willing to do wild crazy things. I can't imagine that the German people would have supported genocide against the Jews in 1933. Hitler had to harden their hearts with incessant propaganda and more and more draconian decrees. Even then, there had to be a substantial amount of anti-Semitism among the German population prior to the coming of the Nazis.
Why do I bring all this up? Because I've been working my way through volume three of William Manchester's monumental biography of Winston Churchill. Last night I read the part concerning Churchill's visit to Washington in December 1941 and January 1942. Churchill stayed in the White House as a guest of President Roosevelt. War was raging, and the two men were meeting to decide on a strategy to win the war and mull over what the post-war world would be like.
One night, Churchill woke up feeling very warm - the room was overheated - and tried to open the window in his bedroom. He strained himself and experienced a mild heart attack. The illness was not reported in the press, and Churchill's own doctor did not tell him the truth about what had happened.
Then, after taking a train trip to Ottawa to address the Canadian parliament, Churchill flew to - of all places - Pompano Beach Florida for a short vacation. Taking a dip in the Atlantic Ocean, Churchill noticed a large shark swimming near him. At the behest of his staff, he beat a tactical retreat and did not venture any further into the water than the shallows.
Suppose it had been a major heart attack rather than a minor one. Or, suppose the shark had been thinking about lunch and decided Churchill would make a good repast. How would history have been different?
Back in London, the war cabinet was headed in Churchill's absence by Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party. Bland Clement Attlee could never have rallied the British population the way Churchill had, and another defeat or two - the British had known almost nothing but defeats to that point - might have produced political turmoil in Old Blighty, to the advantage of the Germans.
And that, it seems to me, is a much more plausible starting point for a fiction writer than time travel or space aliens.
(Here are a couple of additional metaphors for history. History is like a roller coaster, with highs of intense activity and lows of ordinary times when things go along without much happening. History is like a coiled snake, so events that might be far apart chronologically might be close together thematically. History is like a poem, that doesn't repeat itself, but does rhyme. My favorite, one I thought of myself, is that history is like a trip to the fun-house at the carnival. The mirrors will never give a true reflection of what happened in the past, no matter how hard we might try to see one.)
When I was teaching history, I used to challenge my students by asking what history is. For many years, historians and history books told the stories of great men - Alexander and Washington and Napoleon and so forth. Then, Lev Tolstoy said history is about ordinary people and those "great men" are incidentals. The metaphor was the monkey riding the back of the elephant. The monkey screams and chatters and pulls the elephant's ears, and thinks he's steering the elephant. Meanwhile, the elephant goes about his business, devoting his thoughts to getting something to eat, and avoiding lions, and making little elephants. The monkey represents the movers and shakers of the world, and the elephant is the rest of us.
So do the great men matter? Does it make any difference whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is president? Both would build incrementally on the foundations already laid down by their predecessors, dating back to 1789.
To put it more drastically, would there have been National Socialism without Hitler? Would there have been a World War II? Would the Germans have lusted to conquer France and Poland and Russia without Adolf to spur them on?
I support the idea of a kind of combo pack. The "great men" act as catalysts, but they cannot get the rest of us to do anything we didn't have some predisposition to do. There must be a period of preparation before people are willing to do wild crazy things. I can't imagine that the German people would have supported genocide against the Jews in 1933. Hitler had to harden their hearts with incessant propaganda and more and more draconian decrees. Even then, there had to be a substantial amount of anti-Semitism among the German population prior to the coming of the Nazis.
Why do I bring all this up? Because I've been working my way through volume three of William Manchester's monumental biography of Winston Churchill. Last night I read the part concerning Churchill's visit to Washington in December 1941 and January 1942. Churchill stayed in the White House as a guest of President Roosevelt. War was raging, and the two men were meeting to decide on a strategy to win the war and mull over what the post-war world would be like.
One night, Churchill woke up feeling very warm - the room was overheated - and tried to open the window in his bedroom. He strained himself and experienced a mild heart attack. The illness was not reported in the press, and Churchill's own doctor did not tell him the truth about what had happened.
Then, after taking a train trip to Ottawa to address the Canadian parliament, Churchill flew to - of all places - Pompano Beach Florida for a short vacation. Taking a dip in the Atlantic Ocean, Churchill noticed a large shark swimming near him. At the behest of his staff, he beat a tactical retreat and did not venture any further into the water than the shallows.
Suppose it had been a major heart attack rather than a minor one. Or, suppose the shark had been thinking about lunch and decided Churchill would make a good repast. How would history have been different?
Back in London, the war cabinet was headed in Churchill's absence by Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party. Bland Clement Attlee could never have rallied the British population the way Churchill had, and another defeat or two - the British had known almost nothing but defeats to that point - might have produced political turmoil in Old Blighty, to the advantage of the Germans.
And that, it seems to me, is a much more plausible starting point for a fiction writer than time travel or space aliens.
(Here are a couple of additional metaphors for history. History is like a roller coaster, with highs of intense activity and lows of ordinary times when things go along without much happening. History is like a coiled snake, so events that might be far apart chronologically might be close together thematically. History is like a poem, that doesn't repeat itself, but does rhyme. My favorite, one I thought of myself, is that history is like a trip to the fun-house at the carnival. The mirrors will never give a true reflection of what happened in the past, no matter how hard we might try to see one.)
Monday, March 18, 2013
Fareed Zakariah and the Keystone Pipeline
Sitting in the dentist's chair this morning, waiting to have a temporary crown re-attached (It keeps falling out.), I read Fareed Zakariah's column in this week's issue of Time magazine. Mr. Zakariah writes that President Obama should approve the Keystone pipeline through the middle of America, carrying tar-sands oil from northern Canada to refineries in Texas.
The case for the pipeline, as Zakariah makes it, is this. Canada is going to extract the tar-sands oil whether or not the pipeline is built. The oil sludge will be transported south by railroad if there is no pipeline. The columnist says fifteen trains a day, each of one hundred tanker cars, equal what the pipeline would carry. Diesel engines produce carbon emissions, adding to our pollution problems. Although Mr. Zakariah doesn't mention it, there is a small chance of a derailment with spills from all those tanker cars.
Alternatively, without routing their oil across the United States, the Canadians could build a pipeline to the Pacific coast and ship the oil to China. This of course would add to the amount of exhaust gases produced there, and so the level of global pollutants would remain the same. Americans would get our oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.
What we need to do, the columnist argues, is attack the demand side of the energy problem, rather than supply. Weaning us, and everyone else, away from fossil fuels is the answer.
I like Fareed Zakariah and respect his opinions. I differ with him on this one, however. Not being an engineer, I won't try to critique the proposal about routing the Canadian pipeline to the Pacific, except to note there are some very high mountains they would have to cross. I suspect the rationale for the Keystone project is that it's cheaper to go south than to go west.
I think there is a moral component to this as well as a business one. To say it simply, "If we're not part of the solution, we're part of the problem." It's right to say we should be converting as quickly as possible to use of renewable energy. It's correct to say that other countries will use the dirty oil from Canada even if we don't. China's air pollution inevitably affects us, as ours does them.
Still, it's insufficient to argue that because someone else will make a foolish mistake we should make one too.
The case for the pipeline, as Zakariah makes it, is this. Canada is going to extract the tar-sands oil whether or not the pipeline is built. The oil sludge will be transported south by railroad if there is no pipeline. The columnist says fifteen trains a day, each of one hundred tanker cars, equal what the pipeline would carry. Diesel engines produce carbon emissions, adding to our pollution problems. Although Mr. Zakariah doesn't mention it, there is a small chance of a derailment with spills from all those tanker cars.
Alternatively, without routing their oil across the United States, the Canadians could build a pipeline to the Pacific coast and ship the oil to China. This of course would add to the amount of exhaust gases produced there, and so the level of global pollutants would remain the same. Americans would get our oil from Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.
What we need to do, the columnist argues, is attack the demand side of the energy problem, rather than supply. Weaning us, and everyone else, away from fossil fuels is the answer.
I like Fareed Zakariah and respect his opinions. I differ with him on this one, however. Not being an engineer, I won't try to critique the proposal about routing the Canadian pipeline to the Pacific, except to note there are some very high mountains they would have to cross. I suspect the rationale for the Keystone project is that it's cheaper to go south than to go west.
I think there is a moral component to this as well as a business one. To say it simply, "If we're not part of the solution, we're part of the problem." It's right to say we should be converting as quickly as possible to use of renewable energy. It's correct to say that other countries will use the dirty oil from Canada even if we don't. China's air pollution inevitably affects us, as ours does them.
Still, it's insufficient to argue that because someone else will make a foolish mistake we should make one too.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Free, Intemperate Speech
- This was on my Facebook page today, courtesy of the Christian Left. It's like a banner located on state road eighty-five about halfway between Colorado Springs and Fountain. That banner says in large professionally produced letters, "OBAMA, I BUILT THIS BUSINESS!" and "OBAMA, YOU DIDN'T BUILD THIS!"
The business in question is a parking lot for trailers. The business owner fenced off about an acre of land adjacent to his residence, topped the fence with barbed wire, and allows people to park their recreational vehicles there for a fee. It doesn't look like a labor intensive business. There doesn't appear to be any security, so I think all the owner does is unlock the gate each morning and lock it again at sundown. There is a corrugated building at one side of the lot so customers can keep their vehicles under cover, I guess for an extra fee.
Like the man in the photo, our man in Colorado relies on the public roads, public police and fire protection, sent his kids to public schools (Unless they were home-schooled and even then there were state developed curricula and professional aid when needed.), has access to public libraries, and so forth. Since his business is next to his residence, I wonder if and how he obtained a zoning variance for the business.
I wonder where the lumber yard in the picture is located, so I can refrain from doing business there ever. And may I say, whether anyone approves of President Obama's actions as chief executive, there is no excuse for such abusive speech.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
The Casual Vacancy
Recently, I read The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling's new novel. It's a good read, and what follows is my book report. I hope I get a good grade on it.
The Casual Vacancy opens with the death of its pivotal character, Barry Fairbrother, dead of a cerebral hemorrhage on page five. Friend to troubled youth and (we think) honest businessman, Barry had been a member of the town council where he lived in England, where he was the primary antagonist of Howard, the obese owner of a deli and chairperson of the council. Barry's death means there is a "casual vacancy" on the council and a special election must be held. Howard soon persuades his son Miles to try for the open seat.
If Miles is successful, there will be a majority on the council ready to take care of the Fields, a slum community. Ultimately, Howard and many others in town would like to demolish the Fields in the expectation its many residents will just go away, or failing that at least redraw the town boundaries to foist the Fields onto the neighboring larger town. Doing so would eliminate the costs incurred by the many welfare recipients there and require their children to attend schools in the larger town. Also, it would mean closing the drug treatment facility there which Howard thinks is a financial drain on his town and, in his opinion, shows very little evidence of doing any good.
Howard is married to Shirley who mostly follows in his ample shadow. Most of her resentment is directed at Howard's business partner, who seems to function as a kind of second wife to the big man. Then there's Samantha, Miles' wife, bitterly hostile to her in-laws, who mostly drowns her resentments in large quantities of wine.
The town doctor is Jawanda Parminder, political ally of Barry Fairbrother and possibly secretly in love with the dead man. She and her handsome husband are the parents of Sukhinder, a teenager who is the victim of constant harassment from the boys at school. Sukhinder takes out her hatred and feelings of inadequacy by cutting herself with a razor blade.
There are more characters. Let's see, there's Gavin, Miles law partner, trying to get out of a romantic relationship with Kay, a social worker, clinging to him. Kay is the mother of Gaia, prettiest girl in school, who wants nothing more than to return to London where she and Kay had lived until Kay followed Gavin to our little hate-riven town.
Then there's Samuel (I think that's right, I don't have the book in front of me.) who is ferociously aggressive with his wife and their two sons, Andrew and Simon. Our boy also receives stolen merchandise and uses his employer's equipment for personal purposes. There's the vice-principal of the school and his wife the guidance counselor, parents of Stuart, called "Fats" by the other kids, who is obsessed with what he calls "authenticity," by which he means no moral convictions at all.
Above all, there is Krystal Weedon, angry teenager, who lives in the Fields with her heroin addict mother and Krystal's little brother, three year old Robbie. To call their home a dump would be to compliment it. Krystal does try to do some cleaning and cares for Robbie as best she can while her mother dozes and doses. Terri Weedon trades sex, and allows the house to be used as storage space for stolen merchandise, for heroin.
The only person who managed to make a connection with Krystal, saw anything other than deliquincy and promiscuity in her future, was Barry Fairbrother, who formed a girls' rowing team at the school with both Krystal and Sukhinder as members of the crew. But now Barry is dead and the team will certainly be disbanded.
The story has to do with the election, but the "casual vacancy" also refers to the empty places in the characters' hearts. For much of the story the reader must be thinking, "What an awful bunch of people." Only Krystal shows any real honorable human emotions, and it is her lapse in a pathetic attempt to change her life for the better that leads to the final tragedy.
I suppose there is some sense of redemption at the end of the book, but for the most part venality and selfishness triumph. Sukhinder and her mother, and Gaia and her mother, find some reconciliation. So does "Fats" and his parents. Andrew begins to realize that he can stand up to his despicable father.
For a while, reading The Casual Vacancy, I kept thinking of Peyton Place, a novel from the nineteen fifties, about another small town and the many secrets of the townspeople there. I guess there are also echoes of Sinclair Lewis' books about American small towns, and the shallow manipulative people who lived in them.
This is not a great book, I doubt it will be read fifty or a hundred years from now, but it's a good book, especially after the first hundred pages, when all the characters have been introduced and we start to see how they will interact. Read it if you have time, but don't expect to find Harry Potter or anyone resembling him in there pages.
The Casual Vacancy opens with the death of its pivotal character, Barry Fairbrother, dead of a cerebral hemorrhage on page five. Friend to troubled youth and (we think) honest businessman, Barry had been a member of the town council where he lived in England, where he was the primary antagonist of Howard, the obese owner of a deli and chairperson of the council. Barry's death means there is a "casual vacancy" on the council and a special election must be held. Howard soon persuades his son Miles to try for the open seat.
If Miles is successful, there will be a majority on the council ready to take care of the Fields, a slum community. Ultimately, Howard and many others in town would like to demolish the Fields in the expectation its many residents will just go away, or failing that at least redraw the town boundaries to foist the Fields onto the neighboring larger town. Doing so would eliminate the costs incurred by the many welfare recipients there and require their children to attend schools in the larger town. Also, it would mean closing the drug treatment facility there which Howard thinks is a financial drain on his town and, in his opinion, shows very little evidence of doing any good.
Howard is married to Shirley who mostly follows in his ample shadow. Most of her resentment is directed at Howard's business partner, who seems to function as a kind of second wife to the big man. Then there's Samantha, Miles' wife, bitterly hostile to her in-laws, who mostly drowns her resentments in large quantities of wine.
The town doctor is Jawanda Parminder, political ally of Barry Fairbrother and possibly secretly in love with the dead man. She and her handsome husband are the parents of Sukhinder, a teenager who is the victim of constant harassment from the boys at school. Sukhinder takes out her hatred and feelings of inadequacy by cutting herself with a razor blade.
There are more characters. Let's see, there's Gavin, Miles law partner, trying to get out of a romantic relationship with Kay, a social worker, clinging to him. Kay is the mother of Gaia, prettiest girl in school, who wants nothing more than to return to London where she and Kay had lived until Kay followed Gavin to our little hate-riven town.
Then there's Samuel (I think that's right, I don't have the book in front of me.) who is ferociously aggressive with his wife and their two sons, Andrew and Simon. Our boy also receives stolen merchandise and uses his employer's equipment for personal purposes. There's the vice-principal of the school and his wife the guidance counselor, parents of Stuart, called "Fats" by the other kids, who is obsessed with what he calls "authenticity," by which he means no moral convictions at all.
Above all, there is Krystal Weedon, angry teenager, who lives in the Fields with her heroin addict mother and Krystal's little brother, three year old Robbie. To call their home a dump would be to compliment it. Krystal does try to do some cleaning and cares for Robbie as best she can while her mother dozes and doses. Terri Weedon trades sex, and allows the house to be used as storage space for stolen merchandise, for heroin.
The only person who managed to make a connection with Krystal, saw anything other than deliquincy and promiscuity in her future, was Barry Fairbrother, who formed a girls' rowing team at the school with both Krystal and Sukhinder as members of the crew. But now Barry is dead and the team will certainly be disbanded.
The story has to do with the election, but the "casual vacancy" also refers to the empty places in the characters' hearts. For much of the story the reader must be thinking, "What an awful bunch of people." Only Krystal shows any real honorable human emotions, and it is her lapse in a pathetic attempt to change her life for the better that leads to the final tragedy.
I suppose there is some sense of redemption at the end of the book, but for the most part venality and selfishness triumph. Sukhinder and her mother, and Gaia and her mother, find some reconciliation. So does "Fats" and his parents. Andrew begins to realize that he can stand up to his despicable father.
For a while, reading The Casual Vacancy, I kept thinking of Peyton Place, a novel from the nineteen fifties, about another small town and the many secrets of the townspeople there. I guess there are also echoes of Sinclair Lewis' books about American small towns, and the shallow manipulative people who lived in them.
This is not a great book, I doubt it will be read fifty or a hundred years from now, but it's a good book, especially after the first hundred pages, when all the characters have been introduced and we start to see how they will interact. Read it if you have time, but don't expect to find Harry Potter or anyone resembling him in there pages.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Yankee Go Home
It's almost baseball season again, the time of year when all things are possible, when the cold winds of autumn are months away, waiting, we all know, to dash our hopes of pennants and wold series triumphs, the time when we keep high wish that rookies and fading veterans give us one more year of hope.
I am, as all good readers know, a Red Sox fan, one of God's most pathetic creatures. I'm also a rationalist, someone who tries to evaluate the cold hard facts without excessive sentimentality, but even I find myself thinking, "Can Middlebrooks recover from that wrist injury, can Lackey become again the pitcher he once was, can Victorino provide some occasional power from a position where you really expect some homerun clout?" If all those things actually happen, the Sox could be formidable.
Despite two world series wins in the last decade, rooting for the Red Sox still seems like being loyal to a company that makes a slightly inferior product. It's as if you somehow love the Kia, when you know all the experts say the Accord or the Camry is the standard of excellence in the compact car class.
For years, the baseball standard of excellence has been (cue the Darth Vader march) the New York Yankees. The Yankees grind down opponents, they rely on a superior amount of player talent, on their roster or available to it, thanks to the big fat Steinbrenner checkbook. It's not quite fair, although the Red Sox are not exactly pikers at throwing huge amounts of money at ballplayers either.
This year looks to be different. The Yankees are hurting. Their centerfielder, Curtis Granderson, has a broken arm. Their third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, has a bad hip. Now their first baseman, Mark Teixeira (Did I spell it right?) is injured. They signed Kevin Youkilis to cover third base until "A-Rod" returns, and could move him to first, but that leaves third in the hands of two men for whom the sobriquet "journeyman" is actually a compliment. "Youk" also is fragile. The shortstop, Derek Jeter, the "face of the franchise," injured his ankle last year and might be slowing down. Only Robinson Cano among the infielders is a quality player in the prime of his career.
Their offense looks to have a "Punch and Judy" aspect this year. Brett Gardner, moving to centerfield to cover for Granderson, is fast and can steal bases, as can the ageless Ichiro Suzuki, playing rightfield. Neither does much about hitting homeruns, long the Yankee staple. Leftfield will also be in the hands of players who cannot reach the bleachers.
With Russell Martin gone to piracy, they must rely on marginal major league talents behind home plate.
As a baseball traditionalist, I believe it's really all about the starting pitching. Have a good rotation and your team is in good shape, but even here the Yankees look brittle and old. C.C. Sabathia is still solid at age 32, though not as dominating as he was a few years ago. Hideki Kuroda teams with him to provide a left-right combination that's very good, though, again, both men are in their thirties, and have logged a lot of innings on their shoulders and elbows. Even more so for Andy Pettitte, forty years old, who has defied the wear and tear a major league pitcher expects, but is a baseball senior citizen.
Beyond that, there are question marks. The oft injured Phil Hughes can throw quality innings unless he hurts himself, which is probable. Ivan Nova did very well last year, but remains an unknown quality for the long haul. The Yankees traded for Michael Pineda before the 2012 season, and he did nothing for them last year. He might become again the young stud-hoss he was for the Mariners, but who can say?
There might be more talent in their minor league system, but it hasn't become obvious yet.
The Yankee bullpen looks to be a strength. Mariano Rivera is back as the closer, though he is ancient by baseball standards. (He's twenty years younger than I am, but then I'm not trying to throw fastballs past big league hitters.) The corp of set-up men looks solid, but Joba Chamberlain gets hurt every year, it seems.
The Yankees might yet sign someone off the baseball scrap heap and get good service from him, as they did with Andrew Jones the last couple of years. They might swing a trade for another team's veteran player to fill one of their talent gaps. When A-rod, "Tex" and Granderson all return they might be very good again. Possibly there will be a rookie who emerges to give them a lift. Possibly yes, but probably no.
So Yankee haters, take heart. This looks like a down year for the pinstripes.
Now, can Lester and Buchholz carry the Bosox?
I am, as all good readers know, a Red Sox fan, one of God's most pathetic creatures. I'm also a rationalist, someone who tries to evaluate the cold hard facts without excessive sentimentality, but even I find myself thinking, "Can Middlebrooks recover from that wrist injury, can Lackey become again the pitcher he once was, can Victorino provide some occasional power from a position where you really expect some homerun clout?" If all those things actually happen, the Sox could be formidable.
Despite two world series wins in the last decade, rooting for the Red Sox still seems like being loyal to a company that makes a slightly inferior product. It's as if you somehow love the Kia, when you know all the experts say the Accord or the Camry is the standard of excellence in the compact car class.
For years, the baseball standard of excellence has been (cue the Darth Vader march) the New York Yankees. The Yankees grind down opponents, they rely on a superior amount of player talent, on their roster or available to it, thanks to the big fat Steinbrenner checkbook. It's not quite fair, although the Red Sox are not exactly pikers at throwing huge amounts of money at ballplayers either.
This year looks to be different. The Yankees are hurting. Their centerfielder, Curtis Granderson, has a broken arm. Their third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, has a bad hip. Now their first baseman, Mark Teixeira (Did I spell it right?) is injured. They signed Kevin Youkilis to cover third base until "A-Rod" returns, and could move him to first, but that leaves third in the hands of two men for whom the sobriquet "journeyman" is actually a compliment. "Youk" also is fragile. The shortstop, Derek Jeter, the "face of the franchise," injured his ankle last year and might be slowing down. Only Robinson Cano among the infielders is a quality player in the prime of his career.
Their offense looks to have a "Punch and Judy" aspect this year. Brett Gardner, moving to centerfield to cover for Granderson, is fast and can steal bases, as can the ageless Ichiro Suzuki, playing rightfield. Neither does much about hitting homeruns, long the Yankee staple. Leftfield will also be in the hands of players who cannot reach the bleachers.
With Russell Martin gone to piracy, they must rely on marginal major league talents behind home plate.
As a baseball traditionalist, I believe it's really all about the starting pitching. Have a good rotation and your team is in good shape, but even here the Yankees look brittle and old. C.C. Sabathia is still solid at age 32, though not as dominating as he was a few years ago. Hideki Kuroda teams with him to provide a left-right combination that's very good, though, again, both men are in their thirties, and have logged a lot of innings on their shoulders and elbows. Even more so for Andy Pettitte, forty years old, who has defied the wear and tear a major league pitcher expects, but is a baseball senior citizen.
Beyond that, there are question marks. The oft injured Phil Hughes can throw quality innings unless he hurts himself, which is probable. Ivan Nova did very well last year, but remains an unknown quality for the long haul. The Yankees traded for Michael Pineda before the 2012 season, and he did nothing for them last year. He might become again the young stud-hoss he was for the Mariners, but who can say?
There might be more talent in their minor league system, but it hasn't become obvious yet.
The Yankee bullpen looks to be a strength. Mariano Rivera is back as the closer, though he is ancient by baseball standards. (He's twenty years younger than I am, but then I'm not trying to throw fastballs past big league hitters.) The corp of set-up men looks solid, but Joba Chamberlain gets hurt every year, it seems.
The Yankees might yet sign someone off the baseball scrap heap and get good service from him, as they did with Andrew Jones the last couple of years. They might swing a trade for another team's veteran player to fill one of their talent gaps. When A-rod, "Tex" and Granderson all return they might be very good again. Possibly there will be a rookie who emerges to give them a lift. Possibly yes, but probably no.
So Yankee haters, take heart. This looks like a down year for the pinstripes.
Now, can Lester and Buchholz carry the Bosox?
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Being Outrageous
This is a reprint from the CNN page. I put the part that appeals to me in bold.
Joan Rivers' Holocaust joke criticized
Editor's note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is a political comedian and frequent commentator on various TV networks including CNN. He is the editor of the politics blog The Dean's Report and co-director of the upcoming documentary, "The Muslims Are Coming!" Follow him on Twitter: @deanofcomedy.
(CNN) -- Never have so many been so outraged by so little.
We live in a time of instant outrage. The explosion of social media and the demands of the 24-hour news cycle let us immediately express our self-righteous anger about any incident, while the content-desperate media eagerly report -- and repackage -- our rage.
Outrage has become conveniently instantaneous. In the years before social media, people who were truly outraged would have to get a piece of paper, type a letter, put it in an envelope, stamp it and drop it in a mailbox. In contrast, today you can use your thumb to type a tweet on your phone and simply click "Tweet." Your rage is communicated to the world.
Dean Obeidallah
Just this week, we saw instant outrage on full display in response to Seth MacFarlane's jokes at Sunday's Oscars. Amazingly, MacFarlane offended almost every group in America in one show. He was accused of being sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist. (It has to be an Oscar record.) Did Oscar organizers possibly hire MacFarlane to trigger our instant outrage for their own benefit? After all, they knew he'd say outrageous things.
Any chance they wanted the public backlash to make the show, which has seen ratings woes in recent years, more relevant? (And ratings did rise for Sunday's Oscar telecast 11% in the coveted 18-49 age group.) Make no mistake: Our outrage has value.
More recently, comedian Joan Rivers found herself the subject of outrage for a joke she made this week invoking the Holocaust. The media are now filled with people debating the "important" question: Did Rivers go too far? (Will the media ever stop asking that tired question about comedians' jokes?!)
Instant outrage, however, is not just reserved for comedians; it crops up all over the news cycle. We saw it this week over Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's new policy banning telecommuting in the company she's been hired to revive, meaning people have to work from the office every day or quit. Twitter lit up: It's outrageous!
It even happened to me last weekend when I was on CNN with anchor Don Lemon and playfully joked about Canada. Bingo! My Twitter feed was instantly filled with Canadians incensed that I had the audacity to poke fun at their beloved country. Just to be clear, I have nothing against Canada. In fact, it's my third favorite country in North America.
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There's so much more: Beyonce's halftime Super Bowl outfit; Hulk Hogan tweeting a photo of his daughter's legs; Kim Kardashian tweeting a photo of her diamond-encrusted gun; NBA star LeBron James wearing a T-shirt that some claim was about devil worship and/or a symbol for the illuminati.
I get it. We all want to have our opinions heard. When we are mad about something, we want others to know about it. When we are offended, we want to call out the person who has offended us. I'm no different.
But here's the thing: Why not also unleash our collective fury over issues more meaningful than just a comedian's joke or a celebrity's tweet? I'm not suggesting we ignore those -- because even if I did, no one would listen. But in addition to those, take a moment to express your powerful outrage over issues that might tangibly benefit your life and the lives of others.
Joan Rivers' Holocaust joke criticized
Let's get collectively angry that every nine seconds, a woman in the United States is assaulted or beaten. And let's get even angrier that three women a day in the United States are killed by domestic violence attacks.
Let's get really pissed that 22% of American children are living in poverty. And please save some (actually a lot) of outrage for Congress, which has become the political equivalent of Lindsay Lohan: We only see it in media coverage doing bad things.
Sure, go ahead and be outraged over Joan Rivers' and Seth MacFarlane's jokes if you must, but let's show some anger about the fact that almost 10,000 Americans died in gun violence last year and still Congress hasn't passed a universal background check to ensure that criminals and mentally ill people can't legally buy guns.
So let's collectively tweet away about the issues that outrage us, be they stupid comments or Syria, comedians' jokes or the growing income inequality in America. But please don't just reserve all your outrage for celebrities. They simply aren't worthy of it.
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