Love, Fútbol & Africa

This is less a meaningful blog entry than my own shameful ode to the iPad.
I've tried not to become a Fan Boy. Ardently (check my prior posts for some meaningful Apple bashing, literally). I'm in the airport lounge typing away a rare blog entry. This is the first time this device has left my bag. No laptop-into-the-bin-through-security struggle. I'm rather Clooney-esque as I zip through the security line. Grumbling at the laptop-wielding cretins who held me up was entirely satisfying. How great is this thing? Great. Sorry.

That's not the point of this entry. I'm on my way to the mother continent to soak in a few days of futbol. Right here I'd like to insert some Roots-y reference to transcending 400 years of slavery to return to the homeland in its moment of glory. It's not true. My great-grandfather was a rabid Pan-Africanist, who shuttled back and forth to the continent. I'm always puzzled that he never lived out his convictions by actually moving to Liberia or something. Last man standing?

That's not the point of this entry either. This is mainly a response to the somewhat quizzical lemon-face that is a common response to futbol-fandom in the US. The lemon-face tightens on the mention of South Africa, along the lines of telling your folks you were moving to New York in the 80s. Why suffer hooligans, car-jackings and terrorist threats to watch a sport played mainly by small children and foreigners? If the egregious ball kick-and-chase isn't yet illegal in Arizona, it soon will be.

It's basically this: I speak one other language poorly (that's English) and three others barely enough to utter a few common phrases (or, in the case of Spanish, just enough to decipher the clever metaphorical insults of my in-laws, I think). My verbal expression is constipated. Futbol is the language I speak fluently. Most of the folks on the planet understand it. It's my own little Mandarin.

It leads to peace at home, for the most part. My entire fandom can generally be resolved between the hours on 5 am and 10 am on the weekends, leaving me free to my pursuit of ideal parenting and spousing. Cheerfully attending brunches and family dinners without score-check fumbling with my smartphone under the table or fighting for the seat facing the TV over the bar. No conflicts with Fantasy on Ice or other forms of men in sequins and feathers (except that the esteemed Martin Rogers, fútbol writer of the highest calibre,
inexplicably turns to figure skating every four years: Beats me). Mexico playing the US does not lead to household harmony. Glad that doesn't happen so often.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Post Way, Los Angeles, United States

Joe Wilson Ends the World

Michael Lind on Salon.com:

Like today's right, the '60s and '70s left was emotional, expressivist and anti-intellectual. (One of its bibles was Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book!") Like today's right, the '70s left favored theatrical protest over discussion and debate. The prophets of the Age of Aquarius and the "population explosion" were every bit as apocalyptic as Glenn Beck. And just as today's right-wing radicals play at Boston Tea Parties, so Abbie Hoffman dressed up as Uncle Sam. The teabaggers are the Yippies of the right.

Joe Wilson's guttural outburst in Congress deeply unsettled me. Sure, initially I, too, was disgusted at the absence of respect for the institution played out before the watchful eyes of the entire world (and, not at all surprised when the likes of Osama bin Laden and Vladimir Putin immediately joined the rousing chorus of disrespect). The "racist" angle really didn't offer much relief either -- even as endorsed by the prophet, and sometimes musician, Dave Matthews himself.

The right's rush to rationalize this buffoonery helped me out a bit. The basic defense turns on a flawed syllogism that concludes: "We've put up with all forms of civil disobedience from the left all of these years, so the right can give as good as it gets." There's the rub.

At the core of our democracy is the quasi-static equilibrium balancing conservative and progressive forces. It's a Kabuki piece where each player, acting out his prescribed role, insures that we will adapt to radical changes in a tolerable and predictable fashion. The conservative forces are meant to be the proponents of order, of the status quo, of our national traditions. Progressives urge us forward, ask us to question where we are, where we intend to go and shake our very social foundations in the process. Everybody has a role.

That conservative forces, with their tea parties and Congressional outbursts, have become this era's Yippies is dangerous and contrary to conservative tenets. It is a nuclear instability that will destroy our social construct as surely as any WMD. What is right for left-wing Yippies is wrong for social conservatives -- conservatives, sit down and speak rationally with the voice of our traditions.

Godwin and the End of the Democracy

The American political dynamic always seems to strike an uncomfortable equilibrium, making me exceedingly proud and deeply ashamed in similar portions. And, the greatest pride is generally followed by the deepest shame.

I'm ashamed.

I walked a little taller abroad, knowing that our profound commitment to democratic ideals made history last year and, more than any military invasion of foreign autocracies, made those ideals palpable to despots worldwide.

The source of my shame is complex. Did our Framers not understand that the precipitous decline in civil culture would twist the First Amendment so that pernicious reductio ad Hitlerum, criminal slander in more civilized nations, would become a staple of public policy discourse? Or, that the Second Amendment would be so malleable that the ill-intentioned could openly stalk our leaders in public with loaded semi-automatic assault weapons?

I bash the media gently and with great care. I'm one of them. I know that it's very hard to turn away from a train wreck. And, appreciating the recursive irony of this very post, I'm not sure that we should so readily give voice to these destructive slanders and self-accelerating excursions past civility.

I can't stop CNN. Nor, in another brush with irony, could I actually stop Yahoo!. But, I do think that our newer media have a deeper understanding of these cultural indicators. And, we can contextualize them in a manner that enhances understanding, rather than conceding to the prurient voyeurism of network news.

I watched the accompanying clip in disbelief. That an entire panel of network journalists could analyze this "Nazi" drivel without reference to Godwin's Law is incredible to anyone who's ever actually used "those Internets."

Godwin got it, in the old Usenet days, by identifying basic digital mob behavior:

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

As "those Internets" grew to include sophisticated commenting, it wasn't hard to see that Godwin's initially-humorous Law had legs. Check out any good-sized chain on HuffPo. My man was dead on. The Law applies to meat-space, too.

So, my point is that the MSM pundits missed the key conclusion, derived from the "jumping the shark" corollary to Godwin's Law:

For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished [.]

I guess, then, the remaining question is which "thread" has ended in this application of Godwin's Law? Is it our democracy generally? The healthcare debate more specifically? Our culture and civility?

Fistfulatechrevolt!

I chuckled a little when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, presumably in a fit of pompous rage, announced that:

I have loved the iPhone, but now I am quitting the iPhone.

Truth is, this train left the station a while ago. Before Om Malik and Arrington, anyone following the incessant tweeting of my man, @iancr, or his fistfulatyen blog got the distinct, sinking feeling that all was not well in the iPhoniverse of Apple acolytes (in early October of last year):

Anyone wanna buy a three week old iPhone 3G, 16GB? You don’t even have to stick with AT&T for two years to get a cheap price. Make me an offer.

I'm moving against the tide, having just picked up an iPhone after they added the Fat Finger Feature (horizontal keyboard).

The Gates of Hell

Obama/Gates '08?, originally uploaded by tabomabi12.

Oh, wait, that's Bill Gates. Not the esteemed Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates, but the Harvard dropout who likely has never locked himself out of his massive estate nor managed a wry disaffection while posing for a mug shot.

The really cool thing is if you haughtily insult the mildly educated, working class lout who's come, bristling with sticks, sprays and bullets, to protect your personal wealth from people who look like you --- you get to have not just a beer, but the beer of your own choosing, with the POTUS and said lout. They'll even throw in a loose-lipped Veep to provide the entertainment. This country rocks. This sh*t never happens in Jamaica.

Dry-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed

I wept. I admit it. Leatherneck-toughs like Colin Powell and Condi Rice did too. But it was hardly some grand personal catharsis. Give me a break.

The thought of this hapless pair, needle sharp instruments pressed into service as dull right-wing ear wax pickers, reminds me to give ol' W a few props. Sure ol' W carelessly played chicken with the $10 trillion public debt death train, ensuring an easy win for any quivering mass of protoplasm that the DNC could pile up behind the podium (to our great fortune, the DNC delivered an Obama, rather than a steaming pile). Both the MSM and Repub-pologists proffer this trite and vastly inane analysis of Obama's overwhelming victory.  But, admirably and incomprehensibly, ol' W first gave light to smart wonks in blackface. And, it is this light that shines on Obamadom.

In spite of all the good words of Democratic administrations, it took the second Bush to transcend bare tokenism in the non-HUD political appointment of black folks (mercifully limiting abject ineptitude to his white appointees for the most part).  Geez, from the Clinton administration riding a big, black wave, you get a lilly white cabinet -- save the resume-lite token Ron Brown. And from 41 you get the monumentally under-qualified proto-jurist Clarence "Coke Can" Thomas. I could recruit more articulate and knowledgeable brothers at my barber shop.

Ol' W gives you Condi Rice and Colin Powell,  duly qualified and exuding competence, and hands them real honest-to-goodness meaty cabinet jobs. (Ironically, this competence made them perfect shills for delivering on Bushie's moronic policy excursions). (As an aside, I was lucky enough to have Condi teach me an obscure graduate course in the sunny Western US.  Even in those days, when you couldn't imagine a future outside of teaching or authoring for even the most capable black academician,  I had little doubt that this clear-thinking, Russian-fluent, concert pianist was headed somewhere huge. She is truly one of the most remarkable people I've ever encountered. Colin, like me, is a second-generation Jamaican, so...). The upshot is that Collier's 94-year grandmother, G-d bless her soul, turns on her TV in East Texas, sees black folks competently working in the international sphere and pulls the lever for Obama. A sea change begins.

That the "other white folks" demurrer was never flung along with the other McCain dirt missiles gives this some credence. The "other white folks" demurrer goes like this "we're OK with this, but we're just worried about the other white folks who aren't enlightened as we are." Although OWF has largely lost it's domestic legs (except when some NYC power-Betty steals my cab, blaming the racism of the unwashed immigrant behind the wheel), it still works in the international sphere. But for Condi and Colin, we undoubtedly would have heard the poison strains of how the monkey chanting, Nazi saluting football (ugh, soccer) thugs that populate our EU allies are not quite ready for our enlightened political selection. Instead, we get 200,000 Germans screaming for Obama without a single monkey chant. Samuel Eto'o should be so lucky. 

Thanks, Colin. Thanks, Condi. Thank you, Shrub.

PC's Perfect Storm

An American election devolves into a seamless confluence of political correctness? I'd like to show you a Venn diagram of the vast territory of acceptable political discourse at the intersection of the buffer zones carved out in this election around ageism, sexism and racism, but my monitor's resolution is not fine enough to illustrate that sliver. If you add the culturally unassigned zone (I can't think of the "ism") that protects the Vietnam veterans and the dynamically-defined "war hero," that sliver evaporates.

Poor Joe Biden, middle-aged, white male left out in the cold to fend for himself, without a PC blanket to give him warmth.

In a good-faith effort to have everyone get along in our diverse and potentially volatile society, we've all retreated into little PC shells. Even our last, best hopes against PC hegemony, the rappers and the Republicans, have cleaned up their discourse. Snoop Dogg is busting country tunes n-word free (see infra below) and the GOP, finally, has warmed up to MLK (Geez, did anyone else see the Bubbas cheering wildly for the RNC intro video?).

I do want to Kumbaya with y'all, but, heck, I don't want the war of the "isms" to get in the way of meaningful discourse and inquiry. The non-Fox press (assuming that the Fox drivel-mongers still get credentials with a big "P") are getting pummeled with their own PC stick and can't even gin-up a respectable probing question to any non-Biden candidate. Get real.

Welcome to Wasillia

This is Wasillia, Alaska. Apparently, if you crawl to the top of the heap of ambitious young politicos in this hotbed of democracy, you learn to lead the free world.

You know, history will be made this election because, no matter who wins, there will be a respectable roundballer in the halls of power. Booyaka.

All Together Now...

This is the best. Thirty-odd aggregate years of parenting actualized in an instant. Diapers, dad-I-hate-yous and summer camp deposits all seem small. I can't remember the terror of last week or worry about the next.

Ronaldo and Me

Ronaldo and Me, originally uploaded by defmonk2007.

I've never done this before, because I'm rarely a sports fan in the sense that relates to the glorification of an individual. But, I'm so appreciative of Ronaldo's (yes, I think he no longer requires a first name to distinguish him from the Brazilian international) season in the Premiership. As much as I despise Man U, his headed goal in the Champions League final was a beautiful sports spectacle - control, power, grace, timing, intelligence. I can't wait to see him in a Los Blancos kit.