"Did you poison this?"Aggregated thoughts:
- On Barack and Hillary: In which we get to debate who are the bigger victims: women, or African-American men? The first (or at least most audible) volley was fired by the inimitable Gloria Steinem in the pages of the New York Times ("Women Are Never Front Runners", 1/8) when she tried to make the case that, as bad as black males have it, they're only on the second-to-bottom rung when compared with women. Steinem preemptively denies this charge in the piece, claiming that she's "not advocating a competition for who has it toughest." Of course, three paragraphs earlier she says, "Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter)."
Were this piece was about the perils facing women globally, or African-American women in particular (Steinem starts out rhetorically asking whether or not a woman with Barack Obama's biography would be considered a serious contender for the White House) perhaps there would be some merit to it. But the point is to knock Senator Obama down a few pegs while placing Sen. Clinton, whom Steinem supports, on a loftier pity pedestal. Steinem's logic is laid bare when she says, "What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age." Thus a vote against Clinton (and implicitly for Obama, winner of the Iowa caucuses) translates into a docile acceptance of subservience and a rejection of feminist ideals, while a vote for her is both an act of rebellion and an affirmation; by this logic New York State, having gone almost 70% for Clinton in '06, must be a progressive wonderland, with even the menfolk getting on board en masse.
- On baseball: Listened to Mike and the Mad Dog on the way back from lunch (Cobb salad - best of all the salads?), and they were discussing today's installment of Doesn't Congress Have Anything Better To Do?, in which the House Oversight committee grandstands while interviewing celebrity guests Bud Selig (Commissioner of Major League Baseball) and Donald Fehr (head of the player's union) about performance enhancing drugs (a phrase that has now received it's own annoying insider abbreviation - "PEDs"). Both Mike and the Dog (Chris Russo) were laying into union honcho Fehr for doing a disservice to his "clean" players by dragging his feet on mandatory random drug testing. A fair point, if you think that adopting a more robust testing policy up front would have forestalled the present cloud of suspicion that taints any achievement that deviates from the mean. Russo then goes on to blame the clean players for not standing up for themselves (again, a fair point, though I hardly think that steroids in baseball is an issue on par with, say, McCarthyism), and accuses them of having been led around on a leash by Fehr & Co.
Methinks that this final assertion might be putting the cart before the horse. After all, though you will always have the "nothing to hide" contingent (otherwise known as Curt Schilling), is it not far-fetched to assume that even most clean players would blanch at the idea of having to piss in a cup on Bud Selig's say so? Having to produce bodily fluids at your employer's demand, which sadly, many of us have to do when seeking a job, is a fairly invasive and, in some respects, humiliating process. It certainly cedes a great deal of authority to whomever is demanding the sample. Frankly, I don't think that Don Fehr would have been doing his job to represent the players if he rolled over just because baseball (which made a mint off of the 'Roid Rally that was the '98 home run chase, and hasn't coughed up a refund) abruptly changed its tune. Sure, the decision looks bad in retrospect, but let's face it, part of Fehr's job is to be the bad guy and take the heat on the players' behalf.
- On Blockbusters and Oscar: As part of an "Eight Oscar Longshots We Love in '08" web featurette suggesting The Bourne Ultimatum be considered for Best Picture, EW laments that "Oscar's memory must be as short as Jason Bourne's. Action blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Fugitive were once legitimate Best Picture contenders." Speaking of short memories, someone ought to remind EW that Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, certified "action blockbusters" both, have not only been nominated, but indeed won Best Picture statuettes in 2001 and 2004 respectively. Furthermore, despite the Academy's alleged preference for so-called "prestige pictures", lists of recent Best Picture nominees have been littered with good old fashion entertaining fluff: The Departed (2007), the first two Lord of the Rings films (2002 and 2003), The Sixth Sense (2000), Titanic (1998), Braveheart (1996), and The Silence of the Lambs (1992) have all gotten at least a nod in the past two decades. Certainly there used to be a higher correlation between box office and Oscar: in the '70s hits like The French Connection, The Godfather, and Rocky were all winners, with nods going to commercial behemoths like American Graffiti, The Exorcist, Jaws, and Star Wars. However, all of those films endure as classics of American cinema; I don't know whether or not anyone will be waxing rhapsodic about the bland Bourne Ultimatum three decades hence.
