Category Archives: Poltiics

Let Robin Williams Rest

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterFurther proof of how out of step I am with mass culture is my reaction, or lack thereof, to the death of Robin Williams.

Like most, I was surprised to learn of his death, a bit more surprised to learn it was a suicide and not at all surprised that our commercial media seized on it for one of their periodic paroxysms of national eulogizing. Television news being equal parts celebrity marketing and reporting, (OK … 70/30 marketing), couldn’t find enough time to milk the tragedy of the “untimely death” of “a comic genius”. Hyperbole being an essence of marketing, Williams was suddenly and fully elevated into the pantheon of American culture.

I recognize that it is August and there isn’t a lot going on, if what you care about most is pop culture. And I have no animus toward Williams. He was one of thousands of actors crowding the media landscape, and at times (much) funnier than most. But I can’t escape the feeling that these exaltations are primarily a function of a media culture with an over-weighted investment in pop celebritydom and in playing minister to parish in times of common bereavement, especially as they control the magnitude of the mourning.

I only met Williams once, and he did induce a level of hysteria.

It was one of those movie press junkets. A hotel room in San Francisco where he was dutifully hyping his latest film, “Good Morning, Vietnam”. Every writer has a technique for these stagey encounters. Mine was often to begin with something completely unrelated to the obvious/pack line of questioning.

(I once asked William Shatner how he could spend an entire weekend in a hotel, 82 separate interviews at that moment, answering the same question … “How do you explain the enduring popularity of ‘Star Trek’.” His answer? “Drugs. LOTS of drugs.”)

That morning the whack job Governor of Arizona, a right-wing, arguably racist ex-car dealer by the name of Ev Meacham was making news again. The guy was an easy punch line, and assuming Williams followed such stuff I tapped the headline on the morning paper and said something to the effect, “Can you believe this shit?”

That was the last thing I said for 20 minutes. Williams launched into a completely spontaneous monologue, full of sleazy car dealer political pitches, racist rednecks, dessicated cowboy barroom bluster and … something about a coke-snorting pope.

I was in tears. It was (very) funny. But it was also … overwhelming. The compulsion factor was close to frightening. Clearly, he could not stop himself. I remember thinking, “This guy is going to collapse.”

I have a tape of this … somewhere.

Amid all the eulogizing has been talk of the pain underlying every gifted comic. Its a cliche. But there’s something to it. I felt it later in Williams’ career with his series of indigestible, maudlin film characters, chosen I kept thinking, to apply a balm to some wound he felt maybe worse than the audience. Likewise, there has been valuable conversation these past few days about the country’s appalling depression-driven suicide rate. 108 a day, if I heard right. More, if you can believe it, than we gun down exercising our precious Second Amendment rights.

Williams was a unique talent. Who could argue with that? In most ways he seemed a decent, if compulsive, human being. He brought far more to the pop scene than the latest hillbilly reality star du jour, or any preening Kardashian wannabe. More too than a sizable chunk of elected officials, many of whom in this Tea Party age are in it for the same personal aggrandizement as cheap celebrities and are shamelessly marketing themselves to much the same audience in much the same way.

So Williams will be missed. RIP, dude.

I just can’t get passed the feeling that these monumental outpourings are more about the marketing strategies of the media machinery than the “beloved geniuses” they proclaim to mourn.

But that’s just me.

 

 

Jesse Gets Lucky, Again

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterJesse Ventura is one lucky bastard. He got elected Governor in 1998, at the peak of the ‘90s boom economy, when thirty-some percent of voters decided, kind of like electing Floyd the Pig Homecoming King, they could afford a laugh. (The competition from two stiffs like Skip Humphrey and Norm Coleman didn’t hurt.)

Now a jury … of his peers … has decided, in a split but conclusive vote, that he was in fact “defamed”, or as I like to think of it “de-famed”, since Jesse believes the dead sniper’s memoir yanked the rudder of his good ship celebrity and crashed it on the hard rocks of horrible, desolate semi-anonymity. Frankly, I’m as shocked by the decision as the legal experts, scholars and pundits. In today’s free-fire publishing world no one is supposed to mount much less win a defamation case against anyone who has previously appeared on TV.

In a previous post I both said I doubted Jesse could prevail, but that I sincerely hoped he would, if only to throw a momentary chill into the fetid sub-culture of charlatans, hustlers and publicists pumping this — recklessly indifferent — memoir/tell-all offal with wearying monotony. That chill, if it is experienced at all, probably won’t last as long as their next tax deductible business lunch. But at least it’s out there.

Not being a licensed legal expert — although I am three for four in conciliation court (don’t bleep with me) — I am most confused over whether or how the issue of “harm” was considered. The “American Sniper” book, as we learned from depositions of the dead sniper, essentially took a “close enough” approach to the veracity of its claims about the Ventura incident. But as to the book being what cratered Jesse’s big money days? Mmmmmm … I’m not so convinced. And I fail to see how anyone could.

Immediate speculation is that the eight jurors voting for Ventura decided they were cool with their decision on the grounds that, yes he was defamed — the sniper’s tale, as written by a ghost writer, had a lot of funky holes that no one cared enough to correct and they all went ahead and publicized the victim of the incident as our guy The Body. All that equals defamation. But, the guessing is … the fact that damages will be paid by the giant publisher’s giant insurance company nailed the choice shut. (In modern America few entities are fairer game for a punitive scalding than insurance companies.)

The second, larger tier of damages, the $1.3 million and change part, may or may not also be covered by insurance. There seems to be some debate on that matter. But were I a juror in doubt about who was going to pay … not the poor, suffering widow! … I would still go ahead with a fat reward for Jesse’s loss of income, fully expecting that the judge and appeals will shave that number down … a lot.

That way the reckless publisher (and their ilk) would get a loud message, but the inncocent family of a “bonafide American hero” will never miss a meal. (Hell, Clint Eastwood, who’s directing a move of “American Sniper”, could write a personal check for the widow’s losses.)

Until a juror speaks up, we won’t know their thinking for certain. But I want to believe that Team Ventura struck a righteous, populist nerve. A nerve that says writers and publishers, especially big corporate publishing houses have to make at least a good faith attempt at accuracy, and … if you’re big enough to have insurance to cover screw ups, the bastards at Pan Global Monolith Insurance, Inc. can afford to cover the tab.

My Experience with Our “Best in the World” Health Care System

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterA personal experience with our best-in-the-world health care system … .

So my lovely wife and a group of friends are enjoying a long weekend in the Santa Cruz area this past April. Wine, cook outs, bawdy tales … the usual. All very relaxing. But after a stroll through some nearby redwoods we drop in at a pleasant little bistro .. where I’m attacked. By a pulled pork sandwich. One minute I’m happily hoovering the thing off the plate, sauce slobber splattering the one clean shirt I have left. The next moment a glob of ex-pig is lodged in my gullet, unwilling to move down … or up.

I’ll spare you the regurgitative details (with sound effects) of the next 90 minutes as I tried a range of contortions to get the fiend to shift and slide, except to say I was eventually convinced by the Mrs. and a couple pals to go to … a hospital, where an expert could do the Roto-Rooter work.

Three hospitals later we found an Emergency Room set up to do the job. Were I surfer with a shark bite I might have been allowed in at the first stop.

Once in the building we began treatment, by which I mean repeated visits from clerical workers checking insurance and painstakingly re-identifying me, my residence, my medical history and my family’s medical history. There were at least five variations of this, as though I might get mistaken for the only other patient on the floor at that moment, a very elderly woman suffering from a babbling dementia.

The decision was made to first — see if I could pass the demon on my own. When it became obvious the thing had its claws deep into my esophagus and wasn’t going anywhere without a fight, decision #2 was to summon the on-call doctor, who, this being a beautiful Saturday in California I assumed was either tending his vineyard, test driving a Tesla or trying to talk his trophy wife out of more liposuction.

Two hours later the doctor arrived. A very nice gentlemen — everyone was nice, even the series of accounting internists re-checking that I wasn’t 85, female and demented.

Cutting the medical part of the story short, somewhere into the fourth hour, I was told to change into the inevitable butt-out-the-back hospital gown, helped into a wheel chair, rolled down a series of halls to an Operating Room, assisted up on the table, given a general anesthetic … (“100, ninety … zzzz.”), and woken back up 12 minutes later, free of the demon glob.

The “operating” doctor explained he simply rammed the auger in and pushed the monster down into my vast beckoning gut. No biggie. Very routine. He apologized for the inconvenience on my holiday, hoped I’d be back in Santa Cruz soon and told my wife the hospital would cover the cost of the half hour taxi ride back to where we were staying.

So … flash forward to three days ago when I received a bill from the hospital system controlling the facility where all these friendly, capable, fact re-checking people work.

Now, we all know that what hospitals charge for their services in not based on anything rooted in the natural world or competitive marketplace. It’s why our system is “the best in the world”. If you have insurance, which we do, no one gives a damn. All the hospital wanted from us was $75 … or roughly the cost of the complimentary cab ride.

As Steven Brill explained in his classic piece “A Bitter Pill”, hospitals pretty much make the numbers up. Like George R.R. Martin dreaming up character names and places in “Game of Thrones.” “Thousand” always sounds better than “hundred”. And who says an aspirin can’t cost $75? Or the plastic cup you’re spitting up in wouldn’t be more “fun” priced at say, oh , $400?

Anyway, given the (competent) service I was given in Santa Cruz and asked what I thought my insurance would be charged, and understanding the fantasy-based pricing that makes the cost of our health care far and away the most expensive in the world, I would have said the total coast, with ludicrous premiums and surcharges, might have spiked as high as … um … $5000. Wild guess. Crazy shit. The 12-minute Operating Room procedure being the only high-skill event of the day, unless you premium-price the medical history re-checkers.

Have you made a guess at the actual charge?

How does $16,000 sound?

Sixteen freaking thousand. I flipped the bill over to see if they were confusing me with the demented grandmother’s 40-day stay ICU stay and associated experimental drug regimen. Nope. Just me and my tangy pork bolus.

Naturally nothing was itemized. So I called HealthPartners here in Minnesota. Their policy does not allow them to give patients a hard copy of the itemized invoice, but the (very pleasant) woman was happy to read me the charges, which include $2000 for the “Recovery Room”. This would be the tiny curtained off space where I woke up and was allowed to struggle back into my underwear and pants.

After ranting a bit about the utter science fiction of this pricing, i apologized and told her I just needed to vent.

“It’s OK. I understand. It happens a lot. I think its crazy, too. But these costs fit with the contracts we have.”

“Do you ever challenge these costs?”

“Only somewhat. As long as they’re within with the contract range, we’ll pay.”

(Yesterday I had a follow-up visit with a local gastroenterologist. The allergy that sets off these glob attacks is under control. But I run the Santa Cruz action by him and ask him to guess at the bill. He thinks for a couple seconds, “Four, five thousand.” When I tell him $16,000, he shakes his head. “It makes no sense. It’s the worst system on the planet.”)

A second call, to the actual hospital’s accounting department, in California, was your typical phone tree hell. Four minutes of pressing “1”, pressing “3” and then “5”  and entering codes and invoice numbers before being connected to a woman who after taking the same information all over again put me on hold and then came back to say that my records had been sent another department, which she transfered me to … until I was disconnected.

Bottom line: The Health Partners of our “best in the world” system can afford to be completely sanguine about absurd hospital system charges because they have an epic cash flow, from you and me, sustaining their costs.

By contrast, can you imagine State Farm shrugging off a $10000 charge from some body shop for a new hood for your hail-dented Yugo?

 

 

Viking Coach Priefer Still Doesn’t Get It

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Mike_Priefer_nuke_gaysEveryone makes mistakes, but the key is to learn the right lesson from the mistake and move on.  That’s the message being stressed by the Minnesota Vikings leadership in the wake of discovering that their Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer had been lying to them about making breathtakingly ugly anti-gay remarks in an attempt to stop punter Chris Kluwe from championing gay rights off-the-field.

That’s a good message.  Yesterday we learned that Coach Priefer is all about the “move on” part of that message.  But the “learn the right lesson” part?  Not so much.

Priefer did appear to learn some lessons:  If you lie, you might get caught.  And if you lie and get caught, that can embarrass you, your family and your team.

Those are lessons all right.  But are they truly the most important lessons?

Coach Priefer was given the golden opportunity at the news conference to prove that he had learned the most important lessons.  As the Star Tribune reported:

Priefer got emotional when asked what he regretted most about what transpired between him and Kluwe.

“The biggest thing I regret is I brought a lot of bad publicity to the Minnesota Vikings and I felt like I let my family down,” Priefer said, choking up as he finished his sentence.

Wrong answer, Coach.

When you say that we should round up a group of human beings, put them on an island to be murdered, your biggest regret should not be that the remark created embarrassing publicity.  Your biggest regret should be that you said something unbelievably hateful and hurtful about your fellow man.  You should regret that you infected the world with verbal violence that, intended or not, really does feed and rationalize actual violence against gays and lesbians.   You should regret that you stood in the way of the cause of equality and freedom of speech when you bullied an employee who championed those uniquely American values.

Those are the right lessons, the more meaningful lessons.

Coach Priefer clearly still thinks everything is all about football.  Human rights?  Sure, whatever.  Hate speech feeding hate crimes?  Shrug.  Freedom of speech?  Whatever.  No, Mike regrets that he got caught slamming Kluwe and the gays because it created a distraction from football and an embarrassment to his football organization.  Football, football, football.

I hope someone is dreaming up an industrial strength sensitivity class for this guy, because it is going to take one kick ass class for him to get it.  In that class, they need to show Priefer how many morons with heads full of Priefer-esque “jokes” humiliate, maim and kill people, solely because of who they love.  They need to show examples of how power-drunk employers throughout history have punished African Americans, women, workers’ rights champions and others courageous enough to stand up for American values.

I also hope they line up a management class for Priefer’s boss, Vikings Head Coach Mike Zimmer who told the Pioneer Press:

“I’ve had a chance to visit with Mike Priefer on numerous occasions, almost every single day, to find out what kind of person he is,” Zimmer said. “I knew his father. I know what kind of family guy he is. He made a mistake. So I just go by what I see; I don’t go by what I hear.”

“I just go by what I see, not by what I hear.”  Are you serious?  This guy just repeatedly lied to you, and you’re still saying that you  just go by what you see when you look at the guy and his background?

With that kind of attitude, Coach Zimmer is poised to sweep all kinds of future personnel problems under the rug.  Allegations of sexual violence, domestic abuse, or criminal activity?  “I just go by what I see, not by what I hear about those allegations, and I don’t see a rapist when I look him in the eye.”

The Vikings organization’s words and actions show that it looks upon Priefer’s “nuke the gays” remark as a PR embarrassment, and little more.  Make it go away with some obligatory spin. But they need to take off their football goggles for a brief second to learn the truly important lessons stemming from this ugly episode.

– Loveland

Still Waiting for the State GOP’s “Winning Strategy”

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterJust a crazy, hysterical notion here … .

I’m not sure Minnesota’s Republicans have quite figured out the winning strategy for this November’s elections. The national crowd isn’t much better, but they’ve got games going in places like Kentucky and Mississippi and Georgia, hotbeds of 21st century conservative zealotry and deep-thinking, so they have an advantage.

Minnesota is a little different. The whole Kenyan Muslim Socialist selling the country out to terrorists while destroying our best-in-the-world medical system thing doesn’t play quite as well around here as in South Bogaloosa. Or at least it needs to be dressed up quite a bit to be presentable in public.

In part, that explains the four GOP contenders dialing back on the social issue pandering. But the recent assertion that the miserable state of the local economy, in particular Mark Dayton’s steering of said economy into a sludge-filled ditch will be the focus of the campaign also leaves me a bit skeptical in terms of efficacy.

Now, granted we are in the final weeks of primary season, when the game is all about rallying every registered Republican who listens to six hours a day or more of AM 1280 The Patriot. But still, the economy? That’s what they see as their best shot?

Again, the targeted primary voter would rip Dayton even if he cut their taxes to Medtronic levels, brought in the reincarnation of Ayn Rand to home school their kids, re-paved their driveway and gassed up the family Yukon — the one with the star-spangled license plate and the waving flag sticker that says, “Fear This.” But what then for the general election, back in the pesky world of the “reality-based”? What does the GOP have for that rather crucial slice of the electorate?

There probably aren’t five people of any persuasion who don’t think “the economy” should be better. Every “corporate inversion”-minded CEO, every hardware store operator and Caribou barista will tell you they’d like more money — i.e, a better economy — in their pockets. But given a choice between the party who many will remember wasted its recent majority at the local legislature on tone deaf notions like Voter ID, opposing gay marriage and multiple votes to suppress or rollback abortion rights and the guy who had to restore some order and discipline after the godawful fiscal mess left from Tim Pawlenty’s careerist reign, the choice is pretty easy.

And it remains fairly easy even when the various candidates try to roll “the horror” of Obamacare, or (gasp!) the MNsure website, into their economic message. Where for example do they get a credible metric that says Obamacare isn’t considered an asset by the majority of Minnesotans? Moreover, when “shrewd” businessmen like Mike McFadden wander off the empirical ranch and start talking about replacing Obamacare with something else … something “market-based” and “patient-oriented” — a Minnesotan who actually intends to vote is by now familiar enough with Mitt Romney-style boardroom gobbledygook and corporate-speak to dismiss him as yet another political variant of Gertrude Stein’s Oakland. You know: “There’s no there there.”

And speaking of tone-deaf out past the barbed wire … . Where do you even begin with a guy like Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson promising to “go all Scott Walker” on Minnesota if he can just, A. Get elected himself, and B. Get that dang majority of anti-abortionists, homophobes and election fraud conspiracists back at work?

Scott [bleeping] Walker !? I have to assume that a self-proclaimed smart guy like Johnson has, again, some credible metric showing how much better Wisconsin’s economy is performing than Minnesota’s, because it sure as hell hasn’t appeared in any study or survey produced anywhere other than low-power talk radio.

As I mentioned after Romney cratered two years ago and the national GOP began its extensive soul-searching, (okay they issued a press release and then roared back to tin foil hat business-as-usual), the GOP has a future if it can talk coherently and credibly about some issue, any issue, presumably economic, that has direct positive effect on the middle-class. Screw all the trickle down blather. At this point the public is hip to how little reducing corporate taxes benefits them.

It’s loony, I admit, but let me repeat my advice. Find something that gives the middle-class something they truly want — better schools, better roads, better/cheaper health care — and apply actual brainpower, not glaze-inducing messaging, to constructing such legislation and demand the DFL cooperate in passing it.

In other words: Try credibility for a change.

 

Will Singing SD Senate Candidate Be The Next Wellstone?

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Mike_Rounds_jetFormer South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds (R-Pierre), has been running for U.S. Senate the modern way.  The conservative insurance executive been  jetting around the country to raise  money from ultra-wealthy donors.  Governor Rounds also has the billionaire Koch Brothers as covert sidekicks, bringing their dark money to the state to do his dirty work.

Rick_Weiland_on_the_roadMeanwhile, Rounds’ Democratic opponent Rick Weiland has been campaigning the old fashioned way.  He is staying grounded, traveling the dusty byways in a minivan.  Weiland is the first candidate in South Dakota history to campaign face-to-face in all of the state’s 311 towns.  A couple of them are not metropolises.

Getting to all 311 towns is not just an impressive tactical feat, it’s also serves as a statement about the candidate’s values.  In a state that prides itself on hard work and personal connections, South Dakotans are noticing the hardest working man in the political business.

At one point, Weiland tried to get Rounds to join him on the gravel roads.   He challenged Rounds to reject big national money and discourage dark money, and to replace wall-to-wall campaign ads with a lengthy series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates in small towns around the state. Rounds rejected Weiland’s suggestion, and returned to the fundraising circuit.

To stress his populist “Take It Back” campaign theme on the road, Weiland sometimes belts out parody songs in an imperfect voice. When you are being badly outspent, you need to get creative to get noticed and remembered.  Weiland has long liked to relax by making music with his family and friends, so a few months back he rounded them up to videotape  a well-received parody of “I’ve Been Everywhere” to chronicle his epic campaign journey.  Today, Weiland released a parody sung to the tune of Miller’s “King of the Road.” An excerpt of the lyrics:

My vote’s not for sale or rent,
I just won’t listen to the one percent.
I’m not campaignin’ in corporate jets,
I’m meetin’ voters in luncheonettes.
I’ve been in three hundred and eleven towns.
Still lookin’ for that guy named Rounds.
I’m goin’ everywhere I can, man. Bring on the road!

Rick_Weiland_singingCorny?  You betcha.  But it’s on-message, fun and unique enough to get noticed and remembered amidst the election season media clutter.   The self-deprecating Weiland readily acknowledges he is no threat to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but he is determined to connect with South Dakotans on a deeper level than Rounds’ formulaic political ads do. (In one of his pre-fabricated TV ads,  Rounds famously imported stock photography of faux Dakotans, including one woman from, ahem, Paris, France.)

To the surprise of many, the South Dakota U.S. Senate race is in play. A May 2014 Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey shows  Governor Rounds, a long time political institution in the state, stalled out with just 40% support, while the lesser known Weiland is already within striking distance at 28%. In a small state where only a few hundred thousand people will vote in a non-presidential election, Weiland’s hyper-local approach to campaigning could make a difference.  The Koch Brothers would not have set up shop in a deep red state if they thought their guy Rounds was safe.

But can Weiland’s unabashedly populist message really sell in a solidly conservative state? The PPP survey says it can.  It found that South Dakotans, by a 15-point margin, prefer Weiland’s “Medicare for all” proposal to Rounds’ call to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. By a 24-point margin, South Dakota voters also reject Rounds’ embrace of the scorched earth federal budget proposed by conservative Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI).

The wild card issue in the race could be something called EB-5.  Rounds continues to take on heavy tri-partisan criticism for his championing of the state’s scandal-plagued EB-5 program, a controversial economic development initiative that allows wealthy foreign investors to jump to the head of the citizenship line.  A steady stream of news coverage has focused on missing money, the death of a key figure, and a number of investigations.

Finally, Weiland could further close the gap as three prominent conservative candidates on the November ballot carve up South Dakota’s  conservative vote.   Former Governor Rounds,  former Republican U.S. Senator Larry Pressler (I-Sioux Falls), and former Republican State Senator Gordon Howie (I-Rapid City, Tea Party-backed) are all competing for conservative voters.  Political chameleon Pressler occasionally tries to impersonate a moderate, but with a 100% conservative rating from American Conservative Union in his last year in the Senate, the news media shouldn’t let him get away with that.  With a fragmented conservative electorate, a lone Democrat on the ballot could eke out a victory in November.

Despite all of this, some still are writing off Weiland. In the July before election day, nobody in Minnesota thought Paul Wellstone or Jesse Ventura had a chance to win either. But a populist message and an entertaining approach helped both of them sneak up on their opponents.  Could the warbling Weiland be the next upper midwestern candidate to use a similar approach to shock the world?

– Loveland

Why Doesn’t Chris Kluwe Just Shut Up?

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Kluwe allegations?  Meh.  Why doesn’t former Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe just quit all of his blathering about Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer and the gays? Kluwe had his time in the limielight, and it’s time for him to let it go already.  With training camp just around the corner, it’s time to let the home team have a fresh start. The last thing the world needs is another lawsuit.

If you listen to sports talk radio, that’s the dominant vibe from  diehard Vikings fans. Kluwe’s allegations are just a tiresome buzz-kill for them. They’re indifferent about the issue.  For them, it’s all about “let’s play!”

If Kluwe is lying about Priefer, then the fans are right. Kluwe not only should shut up, he probably should get the Jesse Ventura treatment from Priefer.

Truth_to_PowerBut if Kluwe’s boss did ridicule and threaten Kluwe for championing civil rights, and wish genocide on a whole category of human beings, then Kluwe has a moral obligation to sue the Vikings to get the truth out.

At first blush, a Kluwe lawsuit may seem like a money grab.  But Kluwe has said he will donate any lawsuit proceeds to LGBT rights groups.

At second blush, a lawsuit may seem punitive and petulant. But at this point, a lawsuit is really the only way the truth can be revealed. A lawsuit is the only way Kluwe can put former teammates under oath.  It’s the only way he can compel them to tell “nothing but the truth” about what they heard Priefer say. That looks to be necessary, because these are people who would surely be scared to speak out about their current boss.  After all, Priefer could release those players Kluwe-style, costing them millions of dollars. Talk about your inconvenient truths.

What’s the Big Deal?

So before an indifferent Vikings Nation rushes to cry “shut up and let’s play,” let’s step back and reflect for a moment. Here is what Kluwe alleges Priefer said:

Coach Frazier immediately told me that I “needed to be quiet, and stop speaking out on this stuff” (referring to my support for same-sex marriage rights). I told Coach Frazier that I felt it was the right thing to do (what with supporting equality and all), and I also told him that one of his main coaching points to us was to be “good men” and to “do the right thing.” He reiterated his fervent desire for me to cease speaking on the subject, stating that “a wise coach once told me there are two things you don’t talk about in the NFL, politics and religion.” I repeated my stance that this was the right thing to do, that equality is not something to be denied anyone, and that I would not promise to cease speaking out. At that point, Coach Frazier told me in a flat voice, “If that’s what you feel you have to do,” and the meeting ended. The atmosphere was tense as I left the room.

Throughout the months of September, October, and November, Minnesota Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer would use homophobic language in my presence. He would ask me if I had written any letters defending “the gays” recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance.

Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible. He said all this in a semi-joking tone, and I responded in kind, as I felt a yelling match with my coach over human rights would greatly diminish my chances of remaining employed. I felt uncomfortable each time Mike Priefer said these things. After all, he was directly responsible for reviewing my job performance, but I hoped that after the vote concluded in Minnesota his behavior would taper off and eventually stop.

Near the end of November, several teammates and I were walking into a specialist meeting with Coach Priefer. We were laughing over one of the recent articles I had written supporting same-sex marriage rights, and one of my teammates made a joking remark about me leading the Pride parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: “We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.” The room grew intensely quiet, and none of the players said a word for the rest of the meeting. The atmosphere was decidedly tense. I had never had an interaction that hostile with any of my teammates on this issue—some didn’t agree with me, but our conversations were always civil and respectful. Afterward, several told me that what Mike Priefer had said was “messed up.”

After this point, Mike Priefer began saying less and less to me, and our interactions were stilted. I grew increasingly concerned that my job would be in jeopardy.

If that’s true, that’s not just rude or insensitive. It’s dehumanizing, abusive and bigoted.  It’s unbecoming of a team representing Minnesota. More importantly, it’s the kind of verbal violence that, intended or not, feeds and rationalizes actual violence against gays and lesbians.

Double Standard

What if Priefer had ridiculed and threatened an employee who marched to champion equal rights for African Americans, women or Jews?  Society wouldn’t tolerate that.

Imagine Priefer had said we should round up all the African Americans, women or Jews to be nuked.  Again, that would not be met by shrugs from an indifferent news media, NFL and  Vikings organization.

So why are so many seemingly indifferent about these allegations?  We should be standing up against this bigotry, just as most of us would if African Americans, women or Jews were the target.  As Hitler death camp survivor Elie Wiesel observed: “The opposite of hate is not love.  It’s indifference.”

I’m not blind to the possibility that Kluwe could be lying. But if he is lying, I can’t believe he would sue, as he has promised he will do if the Vikings don’t release their internal investigation report.   If Kluwe is lying, I would think he would quietly slink away.   If Kluwe moves forward with a lawsuit, I’m much more inclined to believe he is probably telling the truth about Priefer’s outrageous behavior.  After all, why would he put his former teammates on the stand if he knew the truth they would be compelled to tell — under threat of perjury charges — would show Kluwe to be a liar?

Viking Nation, I want to move on to football too.  I want to see if Teddy can throw, Captain can cover the slot and Mike and Norv can coach.  But as difficult as it may be for the face-painting crowd to grasp, some things are bigger than the game. Getting closure on these extremely ugly allegations is bigger than the game.

– Loveland

Minneapolis Stepping On It’s Applause Line

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Betsy_Hodges_begs_for_applauseSo Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges is directing Minneapolitan social media mavens to tweet on over to #bragmpls to brag about Minneapolis, and run down other cities.

 “When you go to their cities,” she joked, “talk about how disappointing they are compared to Minneapolis.”

I can hear it now.

“Yeah, New York City is nice and all, but frankly Central Park is a little disappointing compared to The Yard.”

“Chicago? I hate to be mean, but I was a little disappointed that the architecture was all so old, kind of like Minneapolis had before we had the good sense to demolish it, and replace with a fresh 1970s look.”

“San Francisco, meh. I looked everywhere to find a Culver’s, but was sooooo disappointed to learn that they haven’t arrived there yet. I couldn’t wait to get home.”

Okay, I acknowledge Mayor Hodges was making a joke when she talked about expressing disappointment in other cities.  Still, the hashtag cheerleading campaign is no joke to Mayor Hodges and her public relations team.   And to me, her public begging for hashtags is a wee bit #pathetic.

Of all of the contrived things about contemporary professional sports stage management, nothing is more inauthentic than the Jumbotron exhortations for fans to “Make Some Noise!” The piped-in artificial rhythmic clapping and the mind-numbingly chirpy D.J. Casper song “Everybody Clap Your Hands” fall into the same category.   Inevitably these perky little pick-me-ups come when the bats are silent, the defense is porous, and the hometown ownership is starting to worry about meeting its beer sales targets.

But here’s the thing: Minneapolis’s bats are not silent.

rainbow_all_star_gameIn fact, Minneapolis is kicking some serious ass right now. Two new mega-expensive LRT lines are flowing through Minneapolis, and a third appears to be on the way. An iconic billion dollar football palace is rising out of the ground to replace the embarrassing  Metrodome. The metro area has the lowest unemployment of any metro area in the nation. Minnesota has the second lowest uninsured rate in the nation. The city’s population is growing, driven by a remarkable residential housing boom in the downtown area.  The Super Bowl, the most visible sporting event in America, is coming.  And baseball fans from around the world are watching professional baseball’s All Star Game in one of the best ballparks in the world, with a rainbow framing it, right here in our Minnie Apple.

The applause is happening organically. So turning on the flashing “Applause!” sign and publicly waving the mayoral pom poms in the midst of genuine, unprompted applause constitutes stepping on your own applause line.   Methinks we’re trying just a little too hard.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured on MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

Here’s Hoping Jesse Wins

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterIt hard to take Jesse Ventura’s defamation suit seriously. Too much irony keeps getting in the way. I mean Jesse Ventura outraged that someone put too much show biz in their shtick? Gotta love it.

But whether he wins — which is doubtful, despite, I believe being warranted — I’d like to think his willingness to mount an attack will have, if only a momentary, impact on our vast, fetid “non-fiction” industry.

Our guy Jesse is many things. Among them: A grasping, self-serving, self-aggrandizing, thin-skinned galoot. But he is also positively reverential about the Navy SEALs and the bond of macho brotherhood with those who have served. Similarly, he has been unabashedly vocal about the War in Iraq since it was launched, saying rational, reality-based things about that misbegotten adventure I’ve still never heard from the likes of John McCain or Lindsey Graham.

For those reasons alone it is nearly impossible for me to believe that he ever said the SEALs “deserve to lose a few” to anyone, much less a group of actual (half drunk) SEALs practically in their own backyard. Even if he too was drunk or hell, on mescaline, like some sage native mystic, asking me to believe Jesse Ventura urged death on any of his brothers-in-shark-infested-waters is a bridge … way too far.

And based on the deposition of Chris Kyle, the now-deceased “American Sniper” himself, the whole incident at the bar in San Diego, with all the chest bumping, swaggering, taunting and brawling sounds deeply flaky, as in it made for a much better story when you’re trying to sell a tough guy/uber-patriot memoir. Certainly a lot better than letting Ventura get away with an anti-war crack. When your target audience is gun-worshipping, flag-waving, hoo rah wannabes, you slap that shit down … even if you actually didn’t.

Jesse’s fight coincides with right-wing fantasist Edward Klein’s latest best-seller, “Blood Feud”, in which we’re too believe the Obamas and the Clintons are, behind the scenes, in private, barely different in their connivery and blood lust than the Lannisters and the Starks on “Game of Thrones”. If Jesse thinks he got unfair treatment in Kyle’s book (ghost-written, of course) imagine how Hillary feels with Michele Obama calling her the “Hilldebeest”, and how about Barack pounding down the vino and bad-mouthing Bubba to his face? I always knew that guy a drunk and a boor. I mean, hell, did you see him boozing it up in Texas? W* never behaved like that.

Point being of course we rarely have any good reason to believe anything in a memoir — really, any memoir, including Hillary Clinton, Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachman, every tired old statesman, jock, pop star, etc. — although, personally I’d actually read Vladimir Nabokov or William Styron in their own words than the ghost-written, demo-targeted tale of an expert rifleman, who despite the hagiographic lurches would never have been mistaken for Vasily Zaytsev defending Stalingrad from the Nazis.

And why stop with memoirs? The publishing industry has only the most loosely defined and even more loosely policed definition of “non-fiction”. It hardly matters to the average publisher, and not at all to the partisan houses pushing precisely what their demographic wants to hear, if no one can corroborate the author’s astonishing verbatim dialogue from private episodes between characters who’d rather flatten him under their limo wheels than grant him an interview.

House attorneys may scour books for the most egregious slander, to avoid time-sucking litigation. But once into the realm of “celebrity” or “public person”, why waste time checking and deleting the juicy stuff that might accelerate on the Interwebs and move product? If the aggrieved celebrity yob wants to declare the whole thing an insult to nature and a hideous, despicable lie, well hell, thank them for being stupid and vain enough to goose the publicity effort.

According to reports from the Ventura trial, Jesse’s original complaints about the Kyle book spiked sales and delighted the publisher, proving again that the best offense in the face of obscene offense is … nothing. Ignore it. The shelf life of the average, under-publicized unlitigated memoir is about as short as a mayfly, or a jihadi in a sniper’s crosshairs.

Hillary Ain’t No LBJ Either.

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterAs we watch our political leaders try to deal (and not deal) with the flood of Central American kids over our southern borders, and as the pundit class wiles a few summer days offering variations on the same themes they always play — Why is Barack Obama ineffective in this crisis? Why is “Washington” broken? Why, darn it, does everything have to be so hard? I’ve heard several “experts” invoke (again) the name of Lyndon Johnson. LBJ is the kind of guy, they insist, who would … get something done. There’d be no mealy mouthed politesse about him. No bogus “reaching out” to virulent enemies crapola. What they’re wetting themselves over is a guy who, on reflex, would threaten your livelihood, your reputation and the well-being of the family dog to get you to do what he wanted done.

Although a lot of them look old enough, the same pundits seem to have overlooked a handful of serious misadventures — The Domino Theory/Vietnam — in Lyndon Johnson’s career of unmitigated success. Likewise, few of them spend much energy imagining LBJ maneuvering through Texas politics, circa 2014. Even fewer bother to wade too deeply into the much more recent reality of the current GOP (House variety to be absolutely specific) blocking the “Gang of Eight” immigration legislation, then cutting off all discussion of a coherent immigration policy, with adequate funding while howling about Presidential ineffectiveness …  in order to stay “true” in the eyes of their most rabid, primary-voting base in an election year.

Likewise, I don’t hear much from liberals and Democrats on how the current scenario, with the Tea Party dictating total gridlock to their “leaders”, will be any different with Hillary Clinton in the White House. The Clintons may be more ruthless and better connected through the bureaucracy than Barack Obama. But I don’t see Hillary having any magic wand ability to break the Tea Party spell over the few traditional Republicans left in DC.

My wife has just finished listening to the John Heilmann-Mark Halperin book, “Game Change”,and has been reporting her surprise at how badly the Clintons come off — in the early stages, before the arrival of Sarah Palin and uttter batshittery makes Bill and Hill look like petal-strewing cherubs by comparison. Simultaneously, I finally pulled Seymour Hersh’s late ’90s book on JFK, “The Dark Side of Camelot” off the shelf and have been refreshing my memory of what a gangster the Old Man was and the bubble world of reckless privilege and double-standards Jack and Bobby were born into, molded by and never ever worked too hard to escape.

Point being, the average American knows very little about the true nature of any high-profile politician and an enormous number of us, credulous pawns to a celebrity culture, don’t want to know. We actually prefer the slickly marketed hagiographies, perhaps because raw reality has a nasty way of leaving us even more cynical than we already are. (How we as a culture have clutched at the lacquered veneer-over-rotted wood Camelot myth for so long, proves my point.)

All elections come down to “the choice”, and given the imbecilic levels the GOP has fallen to, the choice these days is profoundly easy. At least with Hillary Clinton or the average Democrat you’re not dealing with someone who is dubious of evolution, climate change, women’s reproductive and employment rights, the desperate need for affordable health care, a less ideological Supreme Court and immediate immigration reform.

But anyone wistful about a “new LBJ” really should read Nick Confessore and Amy Chozick’s piece this week, titled, “Wall Street Offers Clinton a Thorny Embrace”. The reminder, in case you’ve forgotten, is that Bill and Hill are about as tight with the true barons of American-style democracy as any two people can get, and give no indication that they’d go “all-LBJ” on the crowd best-positioned to drain the juice out of the lunatic Right.

Most likely the game has changed so much since Lyndon Johnson’s, uh, uninterrupted march of success that we’ll never see his kind again. But fodder for another post is the peril underlying Democrats’ near-unanimous embrace of a Clinton Restoration.

For the Moment, Aereo Will Not Loosen TV’s “Sports Tax”

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI’m of the belief that far fewer people understood the implications of Aereo, the tech company smacked down by the Supreme Court yesterday, than understand their own health insurance. In others, almost no one is conversant in what Aereo, with its tiny little antennas, might have done to the way you and I consume, and more importantly, pay for television entertainment.

Most of the large, national papers, (and here), break down the legal arguments in the case, decided by a 6-3 vote with the Court’s resident trolls — Scalia, Thomas and Alito — actually dissenting in favor of Aereo’s “disruptive” technology. (So yes, let the record show I’m actually aligned with those three … on this one.)

Aereo’s case was always a hard sell. It smells pretty densely of someone making a buck off someone’s else’s investment, and god knows we can’t allow that kind of thing to happen here in the US of A. But the concept of paying one company maybe $80 a year to deliver network programming … instead of handing $50-$120/month to some cable or satellite giant like Comcast or DirecTV … has a lot of appeal, and, more to the larger point, seems an utter inevitability in the age of streaming media … (which I think is going to last a while.)

The Court was careful to assert that it wasn’t going all Luddite with this case. It says it has no quarrel with new technologies, just that this one was pretending to be an antenna company when in fact it was a “retransmitter” like Comcast and the satellites, and therefore should pay ABC, NBC, PBS etc. … like cable and satellites do.

But with Aereo’s defeat goes another opportunity to loosen the grip professional sports has on our wallets. Had Aereo won, the betting was that millions of people would have begun dumping Comcast, et al, since viewers wouldn’t have needed them to get “Two Broke Girls” and “America’s Got Talent” and all the other high-quality, advertising-glutted programming the networks are “providing” for their viewers.

Moreover it would have been, some argued persuasively, an evolutionary moment in the war-on-bundling, the preposterous practice whereby Grandma Millie pays $100 a month for 300 channels of cable/satellite service even though she only watches six shows, none of which are the NFL or local pro sports teams like the Twins and Timberwolves. (I find it odd that our legions of raging, anti-tax zealots never complain too loudly about this kind of flagrant, no-freedom-of-choice scam.)

Pro sports have had a fine, long run at the trough of bundling, via the way cable and satellite operators cover the fantastically large costs of paying the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL for game rights by requiring sports fans to buy packages of 40 other channels to watch them, or in sweet Grandma Millie’s case, in order for her to watch HGTV and the Food Channel.

The bet is that very soon someone will invent a way to grab live streaming of sports broadcasts via the internet and stick a dagger in the heart of the cable/satellite business plan. It may not be free, but it’ll be tough to duplicate the $50-$75 a month bundling up-charge most of us pay to have “free access” to any Twins game when we want it.

Beyond all that though is the threat to the standard, laughably ossified TV advertising model. Even as a geezer, the appeal of the DVR/Apple TV/”cloud” experience is simple: Better picture, no commercials. Watching hackneyed pitches for pickups, beer and Cialis is not a quality use of my time, and who in their right mind, especially younger consumers, will ever accept it any other way? I, for example, had no problem paying $2.99 an episode for “Fargo” sans the interminable three and four minute commercial blocks. (Also, as I say, the streaming picture is far superior to the compressed signal coming in via Dish satellite. The picture quality difference was particularly noticeable with “Breaking Bad’, a virtuoso moment in small screen cinematography.)

So let’s get real. Pay-per-view is the natural future for everything. It’s what we do with everything else. Buy only what you really want. Especially when post-bundle, you’ll find you have plenty of jing leftover at the end of the month for programming that you actually watch. Someone, maybe even a re-considered Aereo, will eventually construct a business model that provides exactly that service to every corner, holler and mountain top of the country.

But it won’t be happening right now.

– Brian Lambert

From Redskins to Warriors?

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The professional football team in Washington, D.C. has an offensive mascot, the Redskins. There have been endless debates about the historic use of the name.  Some argue the name “redskins” was used as a slur and to refer to bounties on Native American scalps, while others say the usage has been more benign.  But historic usage aside, if the name is offensive to the Americans it depicts, it is offensive to keep using it.

Because of a recent court ruling removing trademark protection for “redskins,” the name may finally change in the fairly near future. That’s a good thing.  But according to a survey by the Huffington Post, the favorite to replace Washington Redskins is Washington Warriors (57% support).  That’s a bad thing.

Washington_Warriors_logos“Warriors” has long been pushed heavily in social media.  The suggestion is often accompanied by a logo depicting the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. Other options show  soldiers in video game style art.

We’re all eager for this debate to be over, but I have to say I hate this idea.

If the U.S. only entered necessary wars, such as World War II, I would be slightly more comfortable with this. But the fact is, over the last half century, the military industrial complex that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about, has made a habit of regularly leading us into a series of  unnecessary wars that have had tragic consequences for brave American soldiers and the entire nation.

Part of the way the neoconservatives and defense contractors promote profit-generating military interventions is to glorify wars and warriors with cartoonish depictions like those used in the Washington Warriors logos.   Haliburton’s version of “support our troops” is to send young kids to unnecessary wars, and then salute them at sporting events. My version of “support our troops” is to keep our troops the hell out of unnecessary wars. Haliburton’s version is carrying the day, and that needs to stop.

There are 15 cabinet level departments in the federal government. Others promote learning, economic security, scientific discovery,  natural resource management,  environmental protection, justice, law enforcement, and health improvement. Those are heroic pursuits in their own right, so why does the department responsible for getting us mired in Vietnam and Iraq get singled out for glorification?  Of all the things we want our nation’s capitol to be known for, we choose it’s checkered record of war-making?

Relax, I wouldn’t advocate naming the football team after any of those departments or their work. There are hundreds of possibilities, so digging into the bureaucracy for the name isn’t necessary.

But the last thing America needs is more glorification of the military industrial complex’s war-making machine.   We have had enough of making bloody wars look like a cartoon video game back home.  We have had enough of wars that are rarely fought by the sons and daughters of those getting us into the wars.  We have enough American men and women unnecessarily maimed and killed. We’ve had enough of federal debt driven by trillions of dollars in unnecessary wars.

Starting with the name of Washington’s football team, let’s stop glorifying all of that. Just stop.

– Loveland

State of the Obamacare Debate

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I’m too uninspired to write anything new, and am about to go on vacation, so I’m just posting the best recent distillation I have seen of the state of that Song That Never Ends, the Obamacare debate.

Take it away, Jonathan Chait from the New York magazine:

Republicans Finally Admit Why They Really Hate Obamacare

By JONATHAN CHAIT

Conservatives spent years predicting Obamacare would collapse in all manner of gloomy scenarios. But those predictions all occurred in the run-up to the law coming on-line, on the basis of sketchy, preliminary data or pure conjecture. But in the months since the law has come into effect, a steady stream of far more solid data has come in, and the doomsaying predictions are being hunted to extinction. The right’s ideological objections to Obamacare remain, but I can’t think of a single practical analytic claim they made that still looks correct.

Just within the last week, numerous predictions of Obamacare skeptics have suffered ignominious deaths. Consider a few:

1. Obamacare is mostly just signing up customers who already had insurance. The basis for this claim was a preliminary survey conducted by McKinsey last year, well before the first enrollment period for Obamacare was complete. It generated massive coverage in the right-wing media. Since then, newer data has shown much higher figures. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that 57 percent of enrollees lacked insurance previously.

2. Obamacare isn’t even significantly reducing the ranks of the uninsured. This claim built on the previous one — it combined the prediction few people would sign up for new coverage with the prediction that those who did were mostly insured. “CBO has projected that 14 million previously uninsured Americans would gain coverage under the law. With about ten weeks left in this year’s enrollment period, we’re looking at a coverage expansion of less than a million,” suggested Republican health-care adviser Avik Roy.

Obamacare_uninsured_decline_chartMeasuring the population lacking insurance is historically complex and imprecise, but we now have a bevy of measures showing that Obamacare has already made a huge dent in the uninsured population. Gallup has showed the uninsured rate dropping by about a quarter. A report finds the uninsured rate in Minnesota has fallen by 40 percent. A study of numerous cities by the Robert Woods Johnson foundation projections projects declines of about 60 percent by 2016 in municipalities whose states expanded Medicaid, and half that in states where Republicans have maintained the party’s boycott of Obamacare.

3. Insurance will be so expensive that few people will want to buy it. We spent weeks and weeks debating “rate shock.” Also, nope. The average plan purchased on exchanges costs customers only $82 a month. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of people who used to have individual insurance and now have the regulated insurance on the exchanges — finds that the number of customers reporting lower premiums exceeds the number paying higher premiums.

Obamacare_premiums_char

4. But premiums will shoot up next year! As premiums have turned out to be cheap — indeed, cheaper than initially projected — Obamacare skeptics slowly retreated to a new prediction: Rates would rise next year.

Another nope. As state-by-state information trickles in, it appears conservatives won’t get the premium spike next year, either. Insurers are jumping into the market, putting downward pressure on prices. Expected premium increases appear to be on par with, or perhaps a bit lower than, historic levels:

Will all this data produce a grand bipartisan consensus on Obamacare? Of course not. Nor should it. The practical objections to Obamacare are collapsing, but the philosophical ones remain in place. Suppose you strongly objected to the idea that your city should own a bunch of buildings where people can go borrow books for free. (Some people do!) If you couldn’t persuade a majority of fellow citizens of your conceptual objections to libraries, you might try arguing that the library scheme was doomed to collapse in cost overruns, or that nobody would ever use them, or that shelves of heavy books would be routinely toppling over and killing small children. But the fact is that running buildings where people can check out books, and running exchanges where people can purchase basic health insurance packages, are both things that governments can do.

And so conservative objections to Obamacare are finally turning from the practical to the philosophical. In response to reports that Obamacare insurance turns out to be affordable, Roy, who has spent months warning of rate shock, mocks that “other people’s money will pay for it.” Conservative columnist Byron York likewise argues “Obamacare’s ‘good news’ applies only to the poor.”

It is true that Obamacare is far more helpful to people lower down the income scale. The poorest people get Medicaid, which is free. Those higher up the income ladder get tax credits, which phase out at $45,000 a year for an individual, and $94,000 a year for a family of four. (I wouldn’t call people earning under those levels “poor.”) Of course, people who get employer-sponsored insurance also get their coverage paid for with “other peoples’ money.” The difference is that employer-sponsored insurance uses a tax deduction, which gives the largest benefits to those who earn the most money, as opposed to Obamacare’s sliding scale tax credit, which gives the most to those who earn the least.

But at least conservatives are now representing their true bedrock position on Obamacare. It is largely a transfer program benefitting people who either don’t have enough money, or pose too high a health risk, to bear the cost of their own medical care. Conservatives don’t like transfer programs because they require helping the less fortunate with other peoples’ money.

– Loveland, but really Chait

One Headline GOP Gubers Won’t Chase

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RantThe St. Paul Pioneer Press reported today that Republican gubernatorial candidates have been having daily one up-manship contests over who can have the earliest and nastiest news conference railing about a Dayton-related headline of the day.

Minimum wage adjustment! Pant, pant.  Sex offenders!!  Lather, lather.  Medtronic acquisition!!!  Podium pound, podium pound.

That’s their savvy strategy — cry “wolf” daily.  They read the morning news, race to the podium and rant.  In their (bulging) eyes, every Dayton-related development is an outrage, the next “-gate.”

That’s what passes for their policy agenda.  That’s the even keel leadership style they are showing voters.

But here is one headline the gunslingin’ gubers won’t be chasing today:

Minnesota adds 10,300 jobs in May; jobless rate lowest in 7 years

Kurt?  Jeff?  Scott? Marty?  Anyone?

– Loveland

Revisiting “The Amazing Race:” LRT Versus Car

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lrt_pencil_linesI’m not an unquestioning LRT lackey.  Some questions about LRT strike me as very fair.

For instance, could we have a better overall transit system if we invested the same amount of public money – billions of dollars — in buses, vans, taxis and bus rapid transit instead of trains? Given how sprawled our metro area has become, would an expanded web of bus routes be a better way to serve the region’s far flung citizens than a few mega-expensive fixed rail transit lines?

Those are fair questions that I think the ardent trainophiles are too quick to dismiss.  And just because I ask them doesn’t make me a shallow-thinking Joe Soucheray parrot.

But other questions about LRT strike me as completely unfair. For instance, some are now asserting that LRT is clearly inferior to cars on the grounds that LRT travel wastes more time. The Star Tribune fueled some of these claims when it conducted an interesting “Amazing Race” feature that tested the amount of time it took various modes to travel the length of the Green Line route. The Star Tribune’s Amazing Race feature found that:

  • A car took 26 minutes
  • A bike took 31 minutes
  • The LRT took 42 minutes
  • The bus took 59 minutes

Interesting, but is a car ride really saving more time than train ride?

A car may get me from downtown-to-downtown faster than the train. But on days when I have reading or writing that need to be done as soon as possible, which is pretty much every work day, I can’t safely accomplish those things while driving a car.  But I can accomplish those things while riding the train.  LRT travel allows for time-saving multi-tasking that is  not available when I’m driving my car.  On the train, travel time becomes office time.

Of course, time saving is just one factor travelers and leaders have to weigh. The LRT has  advantages associated with the environment, encouraging development density, and reducing parking costs. Cars have enormous advantages in terms of route flexibility, which is a very big deal to people with unpredictable personal and professional lives, and those who live far from our two LRT lines.

But when it comes to saving time, the LRT is the real winner of the Amazing Race, at least for those who live close to the two LRT lines.

– Loveland

Note:  This post also appeared on streets.mn and MinnPost.

Eric Cantor dies by the sword of paranoia

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterI’m tempted to say something like, “Just when you thought they couldn’t be any more frightened … .” But when it comes to today’s conservatives the fear factor has no reverse gear. It only accelerates forward. For politicians like truly loathsome Eric Cantor, fear is what propelled their career, and for the even more fear-struck voters in his carefully gerrymandered district who threw him out of office last night, fear — lacquered in a farcically distorted righteousness — is the staple of their informational diet. Paranoid-filled coconuts for the culturally marooned.

Fear the “illegals”, (i.e. “everyone who isn’t as white as we are”). Fear and arm yourselves against “street crime”, (i.e. “people who aren’t as white as we are and who are violent for different reasons than us”.) Resist anything — anything — suggested by Barack Obama, (i.e. “a guy who is both not white and clearly … “, well, you get the idea.)

If you’re a fan of Chuck Todd’s morning show, Cantor’s opponent, college professor/economist Dave Brat, was on both yesterday and today and couldn’t sound more like a very poor (old and white) man’s echo of Newt Gingrich. Begging off a question as simple as, “What do you mean by ‘amnesty’?”, on the grounds, he said, that it wasn’t one of the “important issues”, Brat’s standard rhetorical technique is to drop the names of James Madison and other Constitutional leaders into every other sentence. If he was ordering at the Taco Bell drive through it’d sound like this: “Good morning, American! I’d like to exercise my right, as provided by James Madison, to enjoy the freedom of a burrito supreme with extra sour cream and then eat it in a place of my choosing without fear of federal oppression.”

Brat’s appeal, like Gingrich’s and Paul Ryan’s, is that he is what not-so-bright people think a smart guy sounds like. A frappe of grandiloquent slogans and catch-phrases amid constant reminders of imminent peril to body and soul. Brat — with enormous help from talk radio — actually benefited from the assertion that Eric Cantor — Eric friggin’ Cantor — was too cozy with Barack Obama. That’s how cluelessly angry Republican voters are in Virginia’s Seventh. (Not that that is unrepresentative of the Tea Party everywhere else.)

Given the effort Cantor went to to wall his district off from any Democratic voter, Brat is dead certain to be elected in the fall. (His “liberal” challenger is another professor from the same college.)

But that same deep-Tea Party base exclusivity is also a reason there may be a false message here. Gun-crazy Ayn Randers will certainly be ermboldened by Cantor’s defeat, (look out Thad Cochran in Mississippi), but in any race outside the Laura Ingraham/Mark Levin inflated talk radio bubble, Tea Party nuttery and paranoia is a catalyst for the rational-minded. Drop a nattering demagogue like Brat into any contest with a viable alternative and the rather sizeable chunk of the population repulsed by Eric Cantor’s greasy, big money/faux populist obstructionism will stampede to the polls.

The obvious peril — a fear-inducing peril to be sure — is that that there has been so much gerrymandering of “safe” Republican districts, invariably away from urban areas and toward heavily white rural enclaves, an emboldened Tea Party, (and their fear has them in a state of constant high agitation) could actually increase its strangehold over what’s left of the GOP this fall. That would — if it were possible after the most do-nothing Congress in generations — create even more gridlock in D.C.

… which is what James Madison would say is what “the people”
want.

– Brian Lambert

Six Died for a Deserter! It’s a Facty.

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It is summer(y) and already the slow-news season, unless you’re one of the millions still hyper-ventilating over last weekends’ party conventions here in Minnesota. (By all indications, this guy McFadden will be an endless supply of good copy.) But knowing how desperately politicians and news organizations require conflict to spike fund-raising and traffic I knew within a half a heart beat that this “prisoner swap” business was headed for the Great Conflictinator.

Lambert_to_the_SlaughterWhy? Because … A. Obama did something, and B. It involved “sworn enemies” of the American way of life.

And so, like mushrooms after a rain, the talking heads — several poisonous — sprouted, outraged (“Outraged!” I say!) that “Congress wasn’t informed”, and that “Obama had released the worst of the worst” in exchange for one piddly U.S. soldier. Who was … a deserter at that … .

But the real hook wasn’t releasing five cunning, homicidal Muslim psychopaths against whom all of America stands helpless for a nutty kid who probably should never have been in the Army, it was that … six brave soldiers died while out looking for this squirrely Bergdahl deserter guy. I’m sure you’ve seen that. Their pictures have been on all the best cable channels … over and over again. To the point that as far as any single-source cable viewer cares, that Bergdahl killed them is God’s honest truth.

Except for that part where no one can say for certain … .

From this morning’s New York Times:

“The furious search for Sergeant Bergdahl, his critics say, led to the deaths of at least two soldiers and possibly six others in the area. Pentagon officials say those charges are unsubstantiated and are not supported by a review of a database of casualties in the Afghan war. …

The most intense search operation, leaked war reports show, wound down after eight days — well before the deaths of six soldiers on patrols in Paktika Province in late August and early September. But, complicating matters, some soldiers contend they were effectively searching for 90 days because of clear orders: If they heard rumors from locals that Sergeant Bergdahl might be nearby, they should patrol the area. …

“A review of the database of casualties in the Afghan war suggests that Sergeant Bergdahl’s critics appear to be blaming him for every American soldier killed in Paktika Province in the four-month period that followed his disappearance.”

To which I say, “Well, hyeah!? That’s what you do when it’s goddam June and ratings and fund-raising need a good goosing.” Let the nuancy pointy heads figure out what’s what later. Right now we need an audience, preferably a pissed off one.

Though not a big military guy — I’ve skipped the last half dozen Little Big Horn reenactor get togethers — I am aware of the hard and fast military policy that “we bring ours home”, and that fine, decent and brave soldiers have died picking dead bodies off battlefields. I’m also aware that to date, Comrade/King/Mullah  Obama has not ruled out young Mr. Bergdahl facing the music once back in the States.

But how many dottering old codgers are going to get purple-faced with rage over Standard Military Procedure?

– Lambert

The Yard Canard: Presenting Our Featureless New Corporate Playground

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Marred_YardA few days ago, I noted an evolution happening with The Yard, the park planned for west of the new Vikings Stadium.  In the 2018 Super Bowl bid put together by corporate leaders, images of The Yard  were changed from depicting the public playground Minnesotans were initially pitched as part of Governor Dayton’s “People’s Stadium” vision into the more lucrative corporate playground the Vikings’ wealthy owners and their corporate partners covet for  Super Bowl soirees.

This weekend, a Star Tribune editorial bemoaned the Super Bowl bid committee’s proposal for The Yard:

“The public first glimpsed the Yard as depicted in Ryan’s initial renderings: a lush public expanse of grass and trees framing the city skyline. Even in winter, with snow on the evergreens and skaters on a pond, the Yard was to be the “money shot” that defined our city and state to viewers worldwide, as well as a bustling activity zone for fans on game days and for neighbors and downtown workers on the other 355 days of the year.

But a newer image adds tents of various sizes and exclusive activities for Vikings ticket holders for at least 10 days a year, plus events sponsored by the (Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority) MSFA on part of the park for as many as 40 additional days. During rare mega-events like the Super Bowl or the Final Four, garish tents could cover nearly the entire park space, largely to accommodate national security requirements.”

First, national security officials are obviously capable of securing a small public park on Super Sunday.  Maybe skaters would have to walk through metal detectors.  Maybe snow fences and security personnel would have to be temporarily used on the perimeter, as is frequently done on the much larger Mall in Washington, DC.  Come on Star Tribune, are you really buying the Vikings’ claim that ice skaters are some kind of utterly unmanageable national security risk?

But it gets worse.   The Star Tribune then explains that the de-parkification of The Yard goes well beyond Super Sunday.

The upshot is that, yes, the Yard still aims to be both active and attractive, but unfortunately with fewer trees and fewer permanent amenities (public art, fountains, cafes, etc.) than originally imagined, and with more open space for flexible programming, most of it public but some private.

While that doesn’t rule out public skating in winter or soccer and outdoor movies in summer, all of the setting-up and tearing-down of tents and platforms will damage grass and other natural features and, more than that, will consume beauty and time that the public had expected to get.”

So, let me get this straight.  The Yard will be exactly like a park, except with few trees,  gardens, water features, art or recreational-oriented equipment or structures.  Other than lacking those typical park features, and being regularly shut down and ground to a pulp by corporate parties, The Yard will be exactly like all the best urban parks.

The Star Tribune, which will be relocated very close to the Yard, seemed disappointed to learn of the newly marred Yard.  But ultimately the editorial staff did what it often does when powerful downtown interests are in play.  It pretty much fell in line with the corporate viewpoint.

It’s nearly impossible to accomplish anything big — say, a Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis or an adjacent park — without the financial contributions and willing cooperation of various governments, private companies and nonprofit groups, all with competing interests. The result is often a compromise that doesn’t measure up to every expectation.

“Nearly impossible.”  So that’s what we’ve come to.  Public representatives can no longer create a public park that serves public needs, even after making a half a billion dollar public investment in the development of the area?

The next time you go to Lakewood Cemetery, take a copy of this “nearly impossible” editorial and lay it on the ground.   That rumbling you feel is one Charles M. Loring rolling over in his grave.

– Loveland

It’s Good to Be Here

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterTo first mind my manners: Thank you, Joe Loveland, for inviting me to post here at WWP from time to time.

There’s a Noel Coward-allows-feral-urchin-into-drawing room quality to the invite, but I’m conscious enough to (attempt to) respect the established decorum. Joe and I were together before as part of the late, lightly-lamented Same Rowdy Crowd. But when Joe moved on to start WWP the “Crowd” part of SRC was pretty much reduced to a voice of one, as often happens in the heavily-trafficked, highly-paid universe of unsolicited opinion writing.

Anyway, I’m happy to be here and have made myself a couple promises which I’ll probably break before lunch. I: To be briefer than my usual “Lawrence of Arabia”-meets-“War and Peace” posts at SRC, and 2: To mix in a bit more culture than in the past. (Also, for the pedants who focus more on punctuation than content, I’ll do everything in my limited power to re-check the apostrophe when using “it’s” instead of “its”. Sheesh.)

That all said a couple (brief) thoughts on media stories “out there” recently.

The canning of Jill Abramson at the New York Times reignited the familiar complaint about women being held to a higher standard than men when it comes to being overbearing misanthropes in executive offices. My old pal, David Carr tread as fine a line as an employee could when decoding the equation of the episode for his readers, and of course Ken Auletta has maintained vigilance throughout. Neither though has aggressively fingered Abramson’s boss, Arthur O. Sulzberger as the critical putz of the story.

While there is an interesting walk-through-the-minefield discussion to be had over whether (some) women breaking through the glass ceiling exaggerate the obnoxious qualities of male executives as a way of asserting their new sheriff/tough as any y-chromosome, pretty clearly Sulzberger — the scion of the family-controlled enterprise — couldn’t deal with Abramson. This despite the fact, as Carr and Auletta have pointed out, that unlike a couple of her sausage-bearing predecessors the paper suffered no egregious ethical lapses under her reign — like, you know, not policing a serial plagiarist or failing to fact-check a credulous reporter carrying water for a White House ginning up a fraudulent case for war

Point being, if Sulzberger had a boss he’d have been whacked a decade ago. He hired Abramson. If her personal style annoyed him, it was his job to work it out.

Next … Ann Hornaday, the movie critic of The Washington Post rips into … Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen as inspiration for the latest/this week’s heavily-armed nut job’s mass slaughter? Rather than risk making the obvious point that here in ‘Murica our sexually repressed nuts can accumulate an arsenal of firepower (and yes, I realize this Rodger kid stabbed three of his victims to death), Hornaday points her finger at popcorn comedies that suggest — horror! — that nerds can get hot chicks.

Talk about ineffectual editing.

Never Forget How You Made Them Feel

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 “People will forget what you said.

People will forget what you did.

But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

angelou_inauguralAt the first Clinton inauguration where Maya Angelou read, I somehow found myself on the Capitol lawn.

But I made a bad rookie parent mistake, and brought my two-year old toddler daughter along to the solemn (and freezing) event.  So unfortunately I was more focused on keeping my restless daughter quiet than on Angelou’s words.

I truly don’t remember a single word Angelou read.

But I distinctly remember how uplifted and hopeful it felt when she walked away from the podium. I remember that more vividly than I do about any other part of that day.  I know it sounds contrived, particularly from a cynical guy like me, but we all seemed to be feeling the “pulse of morning,” with new leadership and new optimism.

That was a hell of a long time ago.  That restless two-year old daughter is now out of college.  But “people will never forget how you made them feel.”

– Loveland