Subway Microcosm of Society

On the subway this morning a man raced down the car and pushed aside two women to sit down. Even in New York's numb transit culture, it was egregious enough that people shook their heads and forced annoyed, wry smiles. It was enough for him to notice, even with nose embedded in paper and ears attuned to iPod.

"I had my eye on this seat from across the car," he offered, as if he could sense his douchebaggery and needed to make everyone understand.

I thought that was a very odd defense of his actions, but I think it struck him as completely defensible. In his mind he wanted it more, so it was deservedly his. I really think this line of thinking is in wider evidence, in the more self-centered corners of our culture.

Not to say that this isn't a good notion on its face. We are taught early on that working hard, being competetive and putting your goals first will eventually being good things and I agree with that. But, you know, there is a line.

Gangsta's New Paradise

One of the funniest Q&A's I've ever read is Newsweek.com's recent one-on-one with Gangsta rapper turned balding chef Coolio.

Watch the video, read the interview, and as icing on the cake, read the linked recipe.

Mental Beer Shits: President's Day Edition

Thanks to Ty Conklin and Evgeni "Geno" Malkin, (love how he's assigned a blue collar name) the Pens are tied for first atop the most competetive division in the NHL...and the best player in the world is practicing at full strength. This could be the year if they catch a wave.

Deeply disappointed that Dan Rooney is showing his NFL good ol' boy colors by saying he's "satisfied" with Roger Goodell's bizarre and absurd response thus far to spygate. What a crock. His team was taped in two championship playoff games and he's fine with how the league handled it? This is what infuriates me about people howling over Arlen Specter's investigation. The NFL is not going to put it's golden goose on trial. You can't let the fox investigate the henhouse. Or any other barnyard analogies that apply...

Yahoo sports blog had a good post about Spygate

Here's my comment to it:

If other teams were doing it, where's the evidence, or even an accusation? Maybe Goodell knew if he slapped the Pats with a harsher punishment, the thing would blow wide open and the league would be in turmoil. But until that story leaks out, we don't know why he destroyed the tapes. What we do know is that Goodell, for some reason, didn't feel the need to disclose his knowledge that the Pats were cheating their ENTIRE SUPER BOWL RUN until someone held his feet to the flame. There's a lot more to this story, and ESPN and others' lack of coverage is disgusting.

Hat tip to one commenter who made this classic analogy/reference to Belichick's faux prostests of ignorance on taping rules:

Boss: I'm going to get right to the point. It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office. Is that correct?
George: Who said that?
Boss: She did.
George: Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ingnorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices and I gotta tell you people do that all the time.

All this anti-Specter vitrol that is surfacing is just depressing. It's more of the "let's attack the questioner and not focus on the cheating" bullshit that seems to have permeated our society. WONDERFUL lessons for our kids. Sure he's an Eagles fan and that's a lot of his motivation for investigating. Who cares. He has the power to do it and he's speaking for his constituency and for all sports fans who want a solid product. Now if he would start investgating roids in football too we'd be on to something.

Mainstream Media and National News Choices

A gunman killed 4 people plus himself at Northern Illinois University today, three days after a similar incident at a Memphis high school, and a week after a woman killed two students at Louisiana Technical College. Yet MSNBC's 24-7 political analysis drones on. Last year, the Virginia Tech shootings blanketed the mainstream news for weeks. What changed? Does a Thurdsay between some primaries necessitate the revisiting of the same campaign questions ad nauseum? Hillary or Barack. Barack or Hillary. Yes a compelling story to be sure. But no top mention of these rash of shootings. No analysis for this pattern.

My point is that news producers have a responsibility when they set the agenda for their nightly newscasts. They have more power than they know in terms of what the country is talking about and what issues need to be addressed. I realize the Va. Tech shootings were on a much larger scale than these recent ones, and there are sexier stories out there right now (or so their ad people tell them) but the residue of gravitas the mainstream media leaves in its wake seems callous here.

Update: Clemens Hearings

Ah. Okay, one 'splanation to the question I raised yesterday about why GOP Congressmen would go rougher on McNamee than on Clemens. If Emery is right about this, there is pretty much nothing left to tell our kids on the subject of justice, let alone "work hard to achieve." Just lie and cheat, to protect your name, kids, forget honor!

This article is really amazing. It offers an insight into why Clemens would go full bore at Congress and try his luck lying under oath.

"When all this happened, the former president of the United States found me in a deer blind in south Texas and expressed his concerns that this was unbelievable, and stay strong and hold your head up high," Clemens testified.

Unreal. Just unreal.

Everything I need to know I learned in Tecmo-garten

Roger Goodell claims that he knew all along that Belichick was taping defensive signals since 2000, but Billy Boy's explanation was that he thought it was within the rules to steal defensive signals by taping other teams' closed practices and then using that knowledge during games by calling offensive plays which would work against foreseen defenses.

When I was in college, I played a lot of Tecmo Bowl. If you looked your opponent's controller while he called a play, that was pretty cheesy. Know why? Cause if you did it all the time, it made the game no fun. The defense would swarm the offense before it had a chance to breathe and the offense could advance at will on the other side of the snap if it knew a run or pass play would be called.

It's not that much different to my mind in the real world, and at the pro level.

Mr. Clemens goes to Washington. And Heaven.

Roger Clemens appeared before congress today and basically 1) told the truth about never taking steroids or 2) has ordered work to begin on his bust for the Imbecile Hall of Fame beside George W. Bush, Gallagher and Jeff Gilooly.

This, from the transcript is just bizarre:
Update 12:53 p.m. - The committee has taken a break. Clemens was questioned by Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., about why he continued to employ McNamee after incidents of mistrust. She concluded by telling Clemens she was sure he was "going to heaven."

One thing I found interesting after reading the ap report on the hearings is this passage:
Eventually, the committee split largely along party lines, with the Democrats reserving their most pointed queries for Clemens, and the Republicans giving McNamee a rougher time.

Other than the odd notion that this didn't surprise me, why would this be? Is it coincidence? Are Democrats intrinsically more apt to believe the whistleblower/minion and grill the bully? Are Rebublicans intrinsically more apt to hero worship to a seemingly absurd point and stomp on the meek dissmbling trainer, the enabler, the bad kid from the broken home down the street who got Roger mixed up with drugs and it's our job to get him back on the straight and narrow?

One thing is for sure, Roger Clemens took steroids. He did it before baseball had a test for it. He did it to morph from Hall of Famer to Legend. And he did it when a whole lot of other, younger people were passing it around the back corners of locker rooms like joints or lines at a party--only the edgy kids were doing it, but everybody knew it was going on and that was cool.

That doesn't condone it. There were plenty of good players not doing it. I'm getting tired of hearing analysts say they're over steroids or doesn't congress have better things to do. Baseball, internally, has nothing to lose by doing, and denying knowledge of, steroids, in every facet of its makeup. I get the inkling the John Rocker is telling the truth when he claims Bud Selig and the front office looked the other way. Why wouldn't they. Baseball was getting its sea legs again after the strike season, and in 1998 fans,owners and players cheered the long ball and looked the other way (sportwriters literally looked the other way to the point that McGwire kept a bottle of andro in plain sight in his locker and not many murmured when he said it was on the up-and-up). They may have wanted to put that together with his middle age acne problem, but why rehash that.