Firefly Season 7 Review

Galley Friend M.R. points us to this fantastically in-the-weeds mock review of season seven of Firefly which, sharp-eyed readers will remember, never made it past its first half-season.

But to really, really get in on the funny, keep following down to the comments, where people take the gag and run with it. Sample:

At least Firefly season 4 stayed true to the fun action of the first season -- it could have gone completely dark like season 2 of Wonderfalls, what with Jaye going increasingly crazy and ending the season locked up in a mental hospital.

And who in the world thought it was a good idea to give Freaks and Geeks a 10th season -- all of the characters now are either homeless white trash victims of Reagan's Welfare reform, have contracted HIV, or are Wall Street yuppies. Did we really need to see Bill OD because he was trying so hard to fit in that snorted enough coke to kill an elephant?

And:

The third season kicked a@@! (They won three Emmys, for frak's sake! And I STILL say Joss was screwed over - Abrams is good, but "Lost" was [and STILL IS] just a 'gimmick' show!) But I thought Mal being on the other size of the law let them explore some "gray zones" of morality - the REAL cause of Bowden's Malady (with the great Gregg Henry reprising his role as Sheriff Bourne) - And Badger revealed as a paid snitch for Blue Sun - Or what about the two-parter where the crew finally gets their (legal!) revenge on Niska? And who didn't shed a tear over Zoe's pregnancy? Okay, Wash going undercover with the carnival was just a rip-off of "The Trouble With Tribbles" -except with baby geese - but it WAS funny! And speaking of funny, what about the episode with Jayne's mother and four sisters get quarantined aboard Serenity for a month? I usually don't care for Melanie Griffith, but I thought she was perfectly cast here...I could go on, but I urge everybody to go back and take another look at Season #3!!

The Daily Beast Lives Up to Its Name

Tina Brown has launched a fun looking site, The Daily Beast. Today's edition carries a story by Scott Horton about how my boss Bill Kristol put Sarah Palin on the McCain ticket. Horton contends that it all began when Kristol met Palin in Alaska on The Weekly Standard cruise.

I won't spoil the fun for you, but I've written a small bit about it here. Let's just say that the Daily Beast is living up to the very best traditions of British journalism.

All hail the New Media!

Great Moments in the Real Estate Profession

The Pig sends us to this amazing site collecting the most idiotic Realtor^TM ads you've ever seen. A sample:



This stuff can't be real, can it?

Netflix = Slightly Evil (cont.)

So if you get Blu-ray discs from Netflix, they're going to charge you more than a regular subscription.

I know it's only $1 a month, but still. Pray they don't alter the deal any further.

PS 3

Despite my constant belittling of Sony's Playstation 3, I'm about to buy one because Sony has found a killer ap--The Dark Knight on Blu-ray, coming to a store near you on December 9. Believe me, no one else is more horrified than I am.

Yet my impending purchase of a PS3 does little to convince me that they system represents an enormous failure for Sony. I had stopped following console sales for a while, but looking at the numbers now is pretty shocking: The PS2 sold over 50 million units in its first 36 months of release. In its first 24 months, the PS3 is on track to sell 15.7 million units.

And it's not like there's an army of losers (like me) rushing to reverse the trend. For September, the PS3 is predicted to see sales declining by 7 percent, to a paltry 160,000 units per month. This while the Xbox 360 is seeing a 31 percent increase in sales, to 320,000 per month. And all of this is just jockeying for second place, as the Wii is crushing them both.

Triumph of the New Media

You know how Hugh Hewitt is always, like, talking about how stupid and dead and moronic the, like, you know, Old Media is? You know, how it's totally like the difference between, like, steam power and the tall ships with the saily thingees?

Yeah.

The Dark Buzz Knight-year

Courtesy of Jenny.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Eva Longoria prefers Magnums

At least when it comes to ice cream. This caught my eye when I was in France last week. It also reminded me of how major movie stars do ads for products abroad that they would never do at home. Like George Clooney.

Palin Precog!

Who knows, maybe Sarah Palin will be dreadfully outclassed tonight and John McCain's campaign will enter full Hindenberg mode. But whatever happens in the actual debate hardly matters to the media horde--they're going to say the same thing, no matter what.

So I invite readers now to try to out-parody the Palin criticisms ahead of time. I'll give it a shot first:

Palin's performance tonight marked the low-point in modern vice presidential history. By comparison, she made Dan Quayle look positively Solomonic. This red-neck moron with her hackneyed down-home manner was an embarrassment to the Republican party but most crucially to John McCain. No candidate for president ever dared to place someone as manifestly stupid and unqualified so close to the Oval Office. The fact that McCain chose this woman is, alone, reason enough for America to reject him root and branch.

I'm certain you can do better.

Michael Bay Does Twitter

Self-explanatory.

MLB Playoff Notes

I'm not normally prone to apocalyptic hysterics, but let me say this: If the Tampa Bay Devil Rays meet the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series, I'm going to spend the next month locked in a bunker awaiting the seventh seal/rapture/end of days.

The Dark Cowboys

The Gormogons suggest that maybe Tony Romo shouldn't sip from that bottle of scotch he keeps in his desk drawer.

The Godfather and Blu-ray

Slate has an engrossing piece about the restoration of the The Godfather and Paramount's transfer of the film to Blu-ray disc. Well worth your time.

Considered Thoughts on the Paulson Bailout Plan and the Ultimate Risk to U.S. Credit Markets

Just kidding. But the Gormogons do have a very funny post with a picture (possibly) taken outside Wall Street:



Also, there's this:



It's long--8:50--but totally worth it. Particularly for you, CPW.

ESPN Does Something Right

Very right, actually. Tune into ESPN Classic at midnight and they're re-running AWA wrestling from the 1980s. It's pretty fantastic. The other night featured a match between a young Jerry Lawler and Kerry Von Erich. In the last week or so I've seen young Eddie Guerero (who was part of the Guerero Brothers), Cactus Jack, the Midnight Express, the Rock'n'Roll Express, and the Midnight Rockers--as a kid I could never keep them straight. There are even semi-famous recurring jobbers, such as Van Van Horn. It's a fabulous cultural artifact sure to rekindle many fond memories of childhood. A few observations:

* The crowds are very, very different than what you see at wrestling today. These audiences were not the state school frat boys, po-mo ironists, and NASCAR fans we see in wrestling arenas today.

* The actual wrestling is much, much better than today's product. Today's wrestlers are more like stunt-men, enduring dangerous accidents. Yesteryear's wrestlers actually mastered the craft of technical professional wrestling. You see lots of drop toe holds, spinning hammerlocks, suplexes, and piledrivers. The simple fact is that this is more fun to watch than what's aired on RAW.

* The commentary is particularly jarring in its difference from today's commentators. The guys calls the matches in the AWA days are sedate and professorial, treating the entire affair as if it's a real sport--they note changes in strategy and point out the amateur athletic backgrounds of the wrestlers; they offer critiques of the action as it unfolds. It's a far cry from the carnival barker schtick the WWE employs now.

* The most stunning aspect of these old broadcasts is how much of a difference it makes not having the governing body acknowledging that the preceedings are fake. When the WWE decided to become open about the fact that they were producing entertainment and not a sport, it created an existential disconnect for the product. I'm not suggesting that, while watching the old AWA stuff, you'll be fooled into thinking that it's real--of course you won't; we weren't even fooled watching contemporaneously as kids.

But it does make a huge difference in terms of entertainment value to not have the wrestlers acknowledging the fakery. In other words, it turns out that the kayfabe is tremendously important.

Anyway, go set your DVR and enjoy.

Dept. of Oops

In a post the other day I mentioned two giant, book-length mistakes. The first was by NAR "economist" David Lereah, who wrote Why the Real Estate BOOM Will Not Bust. The second was James Glassman and Kevin Hassett's Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market.

As it happens, the WSJ had a revealing piece mentioning both of these failed efforts in the September 10 issue.

In the first case, the chief of Lereah's publisher, Doubleday Business, defends his book by saying, "In retrospect, everyone was fooled. I would certainly say I was fooled. No one saw what was going to happen with real estate."

In the second case, the Journal asks Hassett about Dow 36,000: "Kevin Hassett . . . says criticism of his book isn't something he's lost a lot of sleep over. He is now an economics adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain."

There you have it.

Terror in the Skies

Drudge is carrying a terrifying story, purportedly about a man crossing the English Channel with the aid of a "jet-propelled wing." Here's the pic:



But the man and technology in question are obviously aligned with the international terrorist group known as COBRA. Intelligence sources first identified the "jet-propelled wing" in 1984 as the C.L.A.W.

Blueprints compiled for the C.L.A.W. by American special forces showed the vehicle to look something like this:



And while the pilot who used the vehicle to cross the Channel did not initiate hostilities, here's an artist's rendering of what the C.L.A.W. is capable of:

All Hail the Gormogons!

Galley Friend B.W. has a new blog full of goodness, starting with this piece of must-have.



I'm amazed to find this image invokes nearly the same feelings as the brass bikini . . .

The Most Important Blogger In the World!

Okay, that's totally unfair of me and I already feel bad about it. What Andrew Sullivan actually calls himself is: "the most popular one-man political blog site in the world." I'm sure that that's true--I don't dispute it. But should you really go around saying stuff like that out loud? Maybe I'd feel differently if I had more than three readers. Who am I to judge!

(New GS motto: The fourth-least popular two-man non-political blog site in Washington D.C.)

All of this is prelude to today's Howard Kurtz story on Sullivan's using The Atlantic to question whether or not Sarah Palin is Trig Palin's mother.

I don't have much to add to the story except to (1) Congratulate Kurtz for taking a look at it; and (2) Observe that there is a bit of a double-standard going on with The Atlantic and the McCain campaign.

Sullivan complains that the McCain campaign has ignored his requests for proof of Trig's parentage.

This is, however, common practice in political journalism: Campaigns often don't respond to reporters they don't like or to questions they don't feel like answering. This rarely has any nefarious implications. I wrote a ton of fairly sympathetic copy about Hillary Clinton during the primary season and had, I think, good relationships with people on her campaign staff. But when I wanted to find out who was running her speech-writing shop, I spent almost two months making calls and sending emails and knocking on doors and getting not a single reply. This didn't mean that Clinton had no speechwriter, or was trying to cover up the fact that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney were penning her speeches. (Or does it!) For whatever reason, they just saw no advantage in playing along with that particular question. That's the way the world works.

But here's what's funny: I know at least one person who has emailed The Atlantic's head honcho, David Bradley, asking for comment on Andrew Sullivan's recent work. I was copied on the email that was sent; here it is:

From: xxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:10 AM
Subject: The Atlantic's official position re: Identity Theft
To: xxxxxxx@nationaljournal.com


Mr. Bradley,

Does The Atlantic Monthly endorse identity theft as a legitimate political vetting tool? I'm only curious because a Sr. Editor at your publication recently endorsed this tactic on an official Atlantic blog: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/vetting-palin.html

If this is not the official position of your publication you might want to publish a disclaimer disavowing Mr. Sullivan's recent endorsement of said crime.

xxxxxxxx

Bradley has yet to send a reply. Of course, Bradley is under no more obligation to answer questions from the blogosphere than the McCain campaign is. But perhaps Sullivan's gripe about not getting answers would carry more weight if his employer answered the questions being raised about him.

Update: Patterico goes all next level on Sullivan.

About That Financial Crisis . . .

I know that all the cooler heads will prevail and that the grown-ups are in charge and that the people who actually understand the intricacies of our financial markets will surely figure out the best course of action for our nation and our economy. If my time in Washington has taught me anything, it's that when great minds such as Barney Frank and George Bush come together, only good things can happen.

But while we're waiting for the big fix, you'll excuse just a moment of small-minded exasperation at the idea that a non-trivial amount of taxpayer money is about to be used not to build highways or kill jihadists, but to clean up the mess made by people who've been (transparently) peddling snake oil for the last five or ten years.

Is no one ever held accountable for their actions?



Update: Here's Kevin Hassett, co-author of the above book, explaining how incredibly simple the entire situation is. I'm certain you're as reassured as I am.

Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, and the Endorsement of Criminal Behavior

For the last two weeks, Andrew Sullivan has used The Atlantic as a platform to smear Sarah Palin, questioning over and over whether or not Trig is actually Palin's son.

But last night, Sullivan and The Atlantic went even further: An internet group hacked two of Sarah Palin's email accounts. And Sullivan celebrated the act.

Commenter P.G. puts this in proper context:

[T]oday he endorsed identity theft as a legitimate tool against Palin.

I cannot comprehend how he has not been fired today. The Atlantic Monthly, one of the great publications of the past century+, now endorses identity theft. This is far more shocking that the lunacy and rumor-mongering of the past 3 weeks. Identity theft is a truly insidious crime that destroys peoples lives every single day. Today a Sr. Editor of The Atlantic Monthly, on their own pages, proudly endorsed this tactic. That the Washington Post is not investigating this situation is a complete and utter sham. Howard Kurtz should be ashamed. I plan on calling The Atlantic tomorrow to inquire as to their official position on identity theft and their comments on Sullivan's endorsement of it.

P.G. seems right to suggest that at this point it's The Atlantic itself which is endorsing the commission of crimes against Palin--because no one else at the magazine has written to contradict Sullivan. Whether by design or not, Andrew Sullivan is now speaking for the entire magazine by applauding criminal behavior directed at Sarah Palin.

What does David Bradley think about this? Why are no media reporters interested in asking him?

Update: Tech Guru P.G. expands a bit on hacking and identity theft:

I've read elsewhere around the web the notion that hacking an email account does not qualify as identity theft, but may be covered by various anti-hacking laws.

This is not necessarily true. The method most likely used to gain access to the account almost certainly qualifies as identity theft.

I can think of only a few ways to gain access to a private email account: some sort of brute force password hack, or trick the provider to reset password and/or account info.
Brute force attacks these days are mostly defeated by security protocols in place designed specifically to stop such attacks. It is probably highly unlikely that this was a brute force attack, and if it were Yahoo has a huge problem on their hands regarding their security.

In all likelihood this was either a web-password-reset or some other form of reset that gained access to the account. If a web-reset occurred it is possible that with the plethora of personal Palin information available to the public someone might be able to answer the questions set up before a reset can occur (i.e. where did you attend middle school, what is your dog's name, etc...) If you read a EULA or any agreement, to answer these questions as though you are the account holder is identity theft. It is also possible that someone simply called Yahoo to get this information, again under the guise that they were Sarah Palin or someone authorized on her behalf. This constitutes identity theft.

Nonetheless, whether it violates a hacking law or identity theft laws, it was a crime. And The Atlantic sanctions crimes against Sarah Palin. Until a retraction or disclaimer is provided, this is their official position.

Update 2: Orin Kerr has more on the criminal actions in question.

Sullivan Issues a Retraction!--Updated!

Just not about the topic you think.

This morning Sullivan posted (on The Atlantic's website) an item attacking his Atlantic colleague Ross Douthat and raising factual questions about Sarah Palin and her family:

Ross Douthat tells us he is very comfortable with outright lies in politics. In fact, it is so faux to care about truth in politics (but never faux to display outrage at journalists asking factual questions about Palin's stories about her own family). He couldn't get worked up about Clinton's lies either, he tells us. Why? Because the ends always justify the means. If you're going to ban all abortion, you just have to tell a few whoppers and demonize a few opponents along the way:

The point of being in national politics is to win elections and govern the country in accordance with whatever goals led you into the arena in the first place, not to please columnists who disagree with you on ideological grounds but appreciate a finely-tuned sense of political principle.

It's really come to this? Notice the avoidance of what is at stake here: the basic question of truth: empirical, checkable, verifiable truth. How naive to care about that.

Pretty amazing stuff, no? Sullivan is walking as close up to the line as he can on the parentage of Trig Palin without actually having the stones to say so out loud. Look at that phrase: "asking factual questions about Palin's stories about her own family."

Someone, perhaps one of his Atlantic colleagues, should ask Sullivan to clarify exactly what factual question about Palin's family he is referring to.

Remember that the only "factual" question about Palin's family that Sullivan had previously asked was whether or not Trig Palin was Sarah Palin's son. Unless he has a new, unarticulated question, it seems reasonable to assume that that's what he's still talking about. Irrespective of whatever arrangement he came to with David Bradley and the management of The Atlantic.

But wait! I promised you a retraction! Did Sullivan take back this barely-veiled attempt to question the parentage of Trig Palin? No.

In an item originally posted here Sullivan went after Douthat again, saying, "Mitt Romney calls McCain's and Palin's lies 'wrong and reprehensible' and a 'massive mistake.' So Mitt is now more concerned about basic levels of honesty in the McCain campaign than Ross Douthat. Yes, Ross is now officially more cynical than Mitt Romney."

Upon having it pointed out that the Romney video dates back to the primary season, Sullivan removed the post in its entirety and issued a correction. (Though not an apology to Douthat.)

This seems like an important development.

Because it proves that when Sullivan and That Atlantic believe that he has made an error, The Atlantic's policy includes not only explicit acknowledgment of the error, but also wholesale retraction of the item.

The fact that Sullivan's posts about Trig and Sarah Palin (here, here, here, and here) remain published must be an indication that the magazine and David Bradley are standing by Sullivan's writing on the subject.

Shouldn't Howard Kurtz ask Bradley why that is?

Update: Ace notes Sullivan's further insinuations. And Victor Davis Hanson finally goads Sullivan into breaking his omerta on the subject of Trig Palin. Here Sullivan is, speaking for The Atlantic Monthly:

As for blog "rumors" about a Down Syndrome pregnancy, all this blog has done is ask for facts and context about a subject that the Palin campaign has put at the center of its message, facts about a baby held up at a convention as a political symbol for the pro-life movement, and cited in Palin's acceptance speech. You do that, you invite questions about it. I make absolutely no apologies for doing my job.

I find the account of her pregnancy and labor provided by Palin to be perplexing, to put it mildly, and I have every right to ask questions about it, especially since we have discovered that this woman lies more compulsively and less intelligently than the Clintons. . . . And in the absence of any information from the Palin campaign, I have aired every possible view trying to explain it. What else am I supposed to do? Pretend these questions don't exist? Pretend her story makes sense to me? I owe my readers my honest opinion. That's not rumor-mongering, it's fulfilling my core commitment to my readers. . . .

All my factual questions of more than two weeks ago, moreover, remain unanswered by the McCain campaign. They are all factual questions demanding simple factual answers that any campaign that wasn't bent on deceit and lies would be more than eager and perfectly able to provide.

Why haven't they? When will they?

Well there we have it. Andrew Sullivan is once again openly using The Atlantic as a platform to demand that Sarah Palin "prove" that she is mother of her youngest child.

It is a disgrace for the magazine and everyone associated with it. One hundred and fifty years of storied history set ablaze in fortnight by a single writer.

Since dissent is obviously tolerated at The Atlantic (see above) at what point to other staffers at the magazine have a duty to publicly and explicitly disavow Sullivan?

Update 2: Is the great Jeff Goldberg moving in that direction, using Jill Greenberg in personas Sullivanas? Here's Goldberg writing about Greenberg. His comments seem eerily--perhaps not accidentally--applicable to Sullivan:

I don't know Greenberg (I count this as a blessing) and I can add nothing to what James Bennet told the Post except to say that Greenberg is quite obviously an indecent person who should not be working in magazine journalism. Every so often, journalists become deranged at the sight of certain candidates, and lose their bearings. Why, this has even happened in the case of John McCain once or twice. What I find truly astonishing is the blithe way in which she has tried to hurt this magazine.

Update 3: A blogger named Alex Massie who says that he once guest-blogged for Sullivan has spoken out about Sullivan's continued smearing of Trig and Sarah Palin.

I'm sympathetic to Massie's complaint, which is that Sullivan's sustained questioning of Trig's parentage is doing terrible damage to a valuable intellectual institution. But Massie misses the larger point: The institution in need of protection here isn't Andrew Sullivan's blog--it's The Atlantic Monthly.

I can't emphasize this enough: There is nothing especially note-worthy about a blogger repeating unsubstantiated smears about a politician's personal life. Troll around enough websites and you'll see plenty of it from the left and the right. You'll recall the right-wing nutters who thought that the Clintons ran cocaine shipments out of an airstrip in Mena and were responsible for the deaths of Ron Brown and Vince Foster. (They were just asking question about the Mena airstrip, mind you.) So this sort of dirty pool is nothing new or remarkable.

What is noteworthy is that Sullivan has injected this sort of behavior into a once-great magazine that's been at the forefront of American letters for 150 years. Institutions matter more--much more--than people.

Andrew Sullivan should be allowed to write whatever he wants about Trig and Sarah Palin. That's not a scandal. The scandal is that The Atlantic is allowing him to write these things under their name.

And as a remind of what sort of things Sullivan is saying from his platform at The Atlantic, here's his response to Massie:

Alex Massie is disappointed by my relentless vetting of Palin, specifically the bizarre facts in the public record about her fifth pregnancy. For my part, I stand by my skepticism of everything Sarah Palin says. [emphasis in original] . . .

[M]y working assumption now is that she is a pathological liar--even about things that are objectively checkable.

A pathological liar simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth about herself, even on a subject as routine as a pregnancy and infant son. I can't believe I'm asking these questions either. But in the absence of any answers, what am I supposed to do?

I know this puts me out of the mainstream of acceptable Washington opinion. But let me just remind Alex that doubting the existence of Saddam's WMDs put some people out of the mainstream of acceptable Washington opinion. Would the world be a better place if those people had refused to be silenced or intimidated?

That's right: The Atlantic is now comparing rumor-mongering about Trig Palin's parentage to the multi-national intelligence gathering operation about Iraq's nuclear and biological weapons capability.

David Bradley shouldn't try to "silence" Sullivan; he should simply disentangle his magazine from him.

"Mr. Sullivan, did you order the Code Red?"

Pursuant to last week's discussion about Andrew Sullivan's shifting opinion on whether or not Sarah Palin is Trig Palin's mother (all being done under the aegis of The Atlantic), it seems that Sullivan, having issued a brief forced sounding post saying that Gov. Palin had, in fact, been pregnant with Trig, now seems to be trying to coyly contradict that pose as often as he deems practicable.

To wit, Sullivan first claimed that Palin's ABC interview provided grounds for the media (including, presumably, David Bradley's Atlantic) to investigate everything about her entire life. Here's Sullivan, "She has therefore pulled a Gary Hart in inviting the press to examine her life in full." More:

when you agree to run for vice-president of the United States, you surrender any zone of privacy. Al Gore's sometimes wayward son; Dick Cheney's daughter and now granddaughter; Dan Quayle's wife; George H. W. Bush's extensive clan: all these families have been an "open book" to the press. . . .

The Edwards story - showing stunning recklessness in a potential president - legitimized the reporting of the National Enquirer, and made their reporting in this news cycle legit. And the story - subsequently reported and endorsed in the New York Times and every mainstream media source - was less relevant to public life than Palin's. Because by the time the story broke, Edwards was out of the race. Palin is not just in the race, she's ahead - and we have six weeks to go. It is, I'd argue, the duty of the press and the blogosphere to ask any factual and fair questions to which there can be clear and factual answers. . . .

In 2008, in mid-September, we are not even allowed to ask questions about Palin's real and actual life as a mother-as-governor? That notion is as absurd as the Palin candidacy itself, in my judgment.

Of open books, any sincere and legitimate factual question is askable. . . .

Sullivan never actually spells out which factual and answerable question, in specific, he's driving at. But I think we can make a fair inference. Here's the kicker:

It seems to me that if you are on record saying that your life is an open book, and you have a state-run web-page about your infant son, and your own children's travel is paid for by the state, and you presented your infant son at a convention televised across the entire world, and you sent out a press release outing your own daughter's current pregnancy, then it is not despicable, evil, vile or outrageous for the press to ask factual, answerable questions about Sarah Palin's experiences as a pregnant and non-pregnant mother and about her marriage and about her parenting of her children.

Hmmmm. I wonder what he means by "non-pregnant"? It's a term I haven't seen used before. Perhaps David Bradley knows?

Just for good measure, Sullivan later notes:

Now I begin to understand the intimidation I have been subjected to for simply asking questions. All I can reassure my readers is: I'm now more determined than ever to reveal the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about this dangerous, vindictive Christianist cipher being foisted on the United States.

Shouldn't someone ask Sullivan exactly what the factual, answerable question about Sarah Palin is that he's determined to reveal the truth of?

It's almost as if he's speaking elliptically in order to hold to the letter of some agreement with someone about a some subject which he isn't supposed to write about . . .

Andrew Sullivan's Quotes

So other people are noticing it, too: Something happened earlier this week with Sullivan. He stopped writing without notice. Then mysteriously reversed his position on the parentage of Trig Palin, without explanation or retraction of his earlier insistence that there was no reason to believe for certain that Trig was Sarah Palin's son.

And throughout all of this, Sullivan has been posting "Quotes of the Day" which seemed designed to function as a sort of Greek Chorus. During his period of radio silence, he posted the German "About which one cannot speak, one must be silent."

Today he publishes a quote reading, "It may be false. It may be true. But nothing has been proved."

For whatever reason, Sullivan seems to have backed away from smearing Sarah Palin, but his heart just doesn't seem to be in it. He's like Col. Nathan Jessep, just dying to tell us exactly who ordered the code red.

Update: Galley Friend Dean Barnett makes a fairly important point:

[The left] smeared Sarah Palin with a host of - um - imaginative charges like she wore a fat suit to fake a pregnancy that had actually visited itself upon her daughter. Even the chief disseminator of that rumor from his perch at the Atlantic has since bethought himself of that smear, publicly crediting Palin for bringing her fifth child to term on Wednesday (although of course neither admitting error nor apologizing for his role in spreading the rumor).

If Sullivan and The Atlantic are now walking back from their charge--and don't get me wrong, this is a good thing--don't they need to issue either an explanation or a retraction of the earlier stuff? Otherwise, how are we to know which is the real position?

Has Andrew Sullivan Been Muzzled by The Atlantic?

So it appears that Sullivan's earlier claim that no one is telling him what he can and can't write about might not be strictly true. He now posts a "quote of the day" which translates to roughly "About which one cannot speak, one must be silent."

This suggests that Sullivan has been in some way disciplined by management at The Atlantic. Surely this is enough to interest a mainstream media reporter? Right?

Seriously, is there a more interesting media story out there right now than one of the nation's oldest journals having an internal dispute over a staffer's writing, causing said staffer to temporarily cease work, and then post a barely-veiled dissent?

Oh, well, maybe there is. But still! America's media beat writers must be able to fight two conflicts simultaneously! If they can't, they're just daring rogue journalists to behave badly . . .

Update: The great Ace is all over this, with a comment from a tipster who claims to work at The Atlantic. (Ace has no idea if the tipster is genuine, fyi.)

Update 2: Sullivan seems to be back posting at The Atlantic, but has yet to mention Sarah Palin. I'm sure some industrious reader could tell me how many times he's posted about her since her nomination. We can then see how long he goes until mentioning her again.

Update 3: Big news! Sullivan is back on the Trig Palin story and he must have uncovered some new evidence, because he's now certain that Trig is Sarah Palin's child:

Say all you want about Sarah Palin's non-existent record on foreign policy, series of public lies, non-existent vetting and absurd, unprecedented shielding from the press. At least we know this for sure: she went through the psychological, emotional and spiritual test of eight months of pregnancy and a painful, difficult, endless labor for a cause she believes in.

Did he get a gander at the hospital records during his time out off?

Andrew Sullivan and The Atlantic, cont. and Updated!

Following last week's meltdown, Andrew Sullivan floated another unfounded smear against Sarah Palin from his perch over at The Atlantic over the weekend. Dean Barnett has the rundown.

Even MSNBC is reevaluating its HR decisions. Shouldn't David Bradley be doing the same? How long does it take to tear down a century-old reputation?

Update: Galley Friend A.W. sends in another example of Sullivan's shoddy reporting/analysis. Here's A.W.:

Sullivan, referring to "Troopergate," links to an ABC News video and concludes, "Palin clearly lied."

But if you watch the video, you find two things:

(1) Accusations from the fired state official that he believes he was fired because of the brother-in-law; and

(2) Audio recordings that literally include no reference to Palin intending to fire the police commissioner.

It's funny that Sullivan would call this, in effect, a "slam dunk." There's no evidence there! And Sullivan never hesitates to (1) bemoan the Bush administration's reliance on thin evidence in the run-up to the war, or (2) remind us all that "true" conservatives are skeptics.

Update 2: A little Kremlinology: So last night Sullivan posts what reads like a semi-CYA post saying that he really does admire Sarah Palin quite a lot.* Then he posts a nonsensical bit about the NYT Trig Palin story, which somehow suggests that the story was an "exposé" (as per Drudge's promise). (The story wasn't, by-the-by.)

And since then: silence. Well, not total silence, just one wordless picture out a window. People have been emailing me all afternoon speculating that management over at the National Journal group may be dealing with the Sullivan problem in some way. My guess is that he's just in transit somewhere. We'll see.

* A close reading of that semi-endorsement of Palin, however, shows that Sullivan is still peddling the smear that Trig isn't the governor's baby. Look very carefully at Sullivan's wording. He says, "I want to go on record again as saying that the decision to bring up a child with Down Syndrome is one of the most noble, beautiful and admirable decisions any person can make. That Sarah Palin is doing that says a huge amount in favor of her." [emphasis added]

Is it coincidence that Sullivan merely credits Palin with "bringing up" the baby, instead of, you know, "bearing him" or "having him" or "giving birth to him"? I don't think so. It seems pretty clear that even as late as last night, Sullivan was still hinting to readers of The Atlantic that Palin's youngest child isn't actually hers.

Update 3: Other writers for The Atlantic are beginning to address the question of Sullivan's disappearance. Ta-Nehisi Coates has now forbidden commenters from speculating about Sullivan, saying, "Frankly, I have no clue what the situation is--and neither do you."

That sounds kind of ominous. Marc Ambinder says "Lots of e-mails asking about Andrew's whereabouts. I checked in with him; he's fine. He's taking a few days off."

Does this mean that David Bradley has finally stepped in to take control of his magazine? Doesn't this, finally, serve as enough of a hook to get some media reporters to start making phone calls?

Update 4: More speculation. It would be nice to have some actual reporting, though. Romenesko? Kurtz? Anyone?

Update 5: Sullivan speaks! "I'm absolutely fine, nothing has changed with this blog, no one is pressuring me to write or not write anything . . ." Not quite a total denial that there is some friction with management. After all, he'd be free to write anything he wanted at andrewsullivan.com--and he could do it without embarrassing The Atlantic Monthly.

Why They Hate Her

I hate to be so stuck on politics, but I've been on the road for two weeks at the conventions so it's kind of what's in front of me.

To that end, I've done a little item for First Things trying to explore what it is about Sarah Palin that has so enraged the left, "Why They Hate Her."

Not to worry, though. The Dark Knight will come out on Blu-Ray some time in February and this site will then revert to its previous all-Dark Knight, all-the-time incarnation. I'm sure you're counting down the minutes . . .

The Atlantic Becomes a Laughingstock--Updated--Again, and Bumped--with Final Convention Post

Note: I'm just going to keep updating this thread, so keep checking back.

Double Note: I'm moving what was the final post up to the top, as it seems to be more useful as an into to this discussion, rather than a footer. Here it is:

Final Update of Convention Week: Believe me, I'm more relieved about that than you are. A friend sends along an email with this link and the subject header "Why David Bradley Doesn't Care." I'll spare you the click: It's Sullivan informing readers that his site has gotten 2 million views over the last two days.

So perhaps I should make a little more explicit why I've been so worked up about this whole thing.

I have no particular aversion to the smearing of political figures; or rather, no aversion greater than that of the average reasonable person. I find it ugly and distasteful, but I realize that it's part of the rough and tumble of politics. It has always happened. It will continue to happen. That's why you'll note that I haven't written a single word about what sites such as Daily Kos, Democrats.com, or Democratic Underground have said about her.

And I hold no particular brief for Sarah Palin, per se. As I've written elsewhere, there are reasonable criticisms of her both as a governor and as a vice presidential candidate. I don't think anything I've written about her would count as boosterism. (Although I do make the case that she was the best strategic pick available to McCain, as an analytical matter.)

What's caught my attention here, then is The Atlantic. I am, and always have been, an enormous booster for the Old Media, and smarty-pants general-interest magazines in particular. What's so notable in this whole affair isn't the tarring of Palin but the fact that The Atlantic Monthly is the vehicle for the irresponsible spreading of smears about Palin and speculation so inane that it can't be counted, by any reasonable measure, as analysis. (Here, I'm thinking of Sullivan's claim that he thought it possible both Palin and McCain would relinquish their nominations.)

If Andrew Sullivan were to have written everything he wrote this week at his own website, I wouldn't have said a word about it. The real scandal here isn't Sullivan: It's what The Atlantic has become by publishing him.

As for Sullivan's page views, I sincerely hope that David Bradley isn't making his editorial decisions based solely on eyeballs and dollars. Were that so, you could simply give The Atlantic's pages over to Perez Hilton or Slashdot or Matt Drudge or any other number of content formats. But the point of The Atlantic, like other great journals, is to be something different--to be a stage in the world of ideas, even if it's not the most profitable thing.

I find the prospect of The Atlantic devolving into some version of Free Republic or Daily Kos to be immensely worrisome. Hopefully David Bradley will do something to put his house in order. Soon.

Now back to the original thread.

After demanding that he be allowed to inspect Trig Palin's placenta all day yesterday, Andrew Sullivan is now suggesting that he thinks John McCain might withdraw from the election.

Yes, that's right. There's some serious political analysis from one of the nation's most prestigious general interest magazines.

I wonder what the other folks on the masthead think about having their credibility linked with Sullivan's.

Update 1: National Review, another of America's venerable journals, tries to save The Atlantic from Sullivan:

Once a respectable journalist, The Atlantic’s self-declared champion of respect for privacy and of civil discourse now obsesses over Miss Palin, airing baseless and abhorrent questions about the motherhood of Trig, Gov. Palin’s infant son, born this year with Down syndrome. One wonders if David Bradley bought The Atlantic — a venerable institution that once published Mark Twain and Martin Luther King — so that he could associate it with the most despicable ravings of the left-wing blogosphere. What price in reputation is Bradley willing to pay for increased unique-visitor numbers from among the fever swamps?

Sullivan has become a media story in himself. Howard Kurtz and Jim Romenesko should be taking note. There's dissension in the ranks at The Atlantic. Surely this is worth a reporter's call to David Bradley to ask if he stands by Sullivan?

Update 2: Ross Douthat courageously breaks into open warfare against Sullivan:

I think the coverage of Sarah Palin to date - by colleagues I used to respect and publications I normally admire - at least partially vindicates this theory about the reception that would greet the kind of GOP I'd like to see.

Other Atlantic colleagues seem close to doing the same. As I said above, Sullivan's coverage of Palin is becoming a media story in itself. Someone--Jack Shafer, Howard Kurtz, E&P, the NY Observer--should start poking around The Atlantic to see if Sullivan's tenure is sustainable.

Update 3: A friend writes in to ask whether or not the Sullivan taint really does spread to the magazine, since he is, after all, just a blogger. I'd argue that having "The Atlantic" in giant letters at the top of every one of his posts is pretty damaging to the brand. But then there's also this:



Sullivan's reaction to Palin puts his gushing cover story on Obama in an entirely new light. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Neither view is good for The Atlantic.

Update 4: Sullivan continues to demand to know the "details" of Trig's birth. And now he has new justification: Because Trig was present at the convention. Here he his, mere moments into Palin's speech:

Brandishing a Down Syndrome child as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him. And if you are going to hold the baby in front of the cameras, how can you say that the details of his birth cannot even be discussed?

Yes, we're now six days after Palin's announcement and Sullivan is still insinuating that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin's child on the web-pages of The Atlantic Monthly.

Update 5: Ace of Spades finds another bit of Trig Palin obsessing from Sullivan. He also gets that Sullivan is single-handedly destroying the reputation of The Atlantic.

Update 6: Now Sullivan responds to Ross Douthat, meaning we have an open, ongoing conflict between writers at The Atlantic.

Update 7: Reason takes note.

Geeks on Parade

So hot.

Dr. Horrible, Culture 11

A brief piece on Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible over at the new, and very excellent, Culture 11.

There will not be a quiz.

Andrew Sullivan, Updated--Again--And Again

Re-posted 8/31/2008, 11:30 p.m.

Original post: 8/29/2008, 1:29 p.m.: I don't mean to harp, but it took him only moments to make fun of Sarah Palin's kids' names.

What's the over-under on how long it takes him to use her Down's baby against her? Perhaps something along the lines of, What kind of family values lead a new mother to abandon her disabled baby in order to pursue her political future?

Maybe three weeks? Maybe less?

Updated from the comments: Whoever had 8 hours as the over wins.

Time for the next bet: How long until Sullivan suggests that Palin only had her Down's baby for political advantage? I'll give 3 weeks again. Seems like a sucker's line, though.

Second Update: Well, we have another winner! Sullivan passes on a rumor that Palin didn't actually even have the baby. And that the baby is fair game because, "This baby was a centerpiece of the public case for Palin made by the Republicans. They made it an issue - and therefore it is legitimate to ask questions about it."

At what point does David Bradley have a responsibility to protect his other writers and editors from association with Sullivan? If I were Jeff Goldberg or Ross Douthat or Jim Fallows or Mark Bowden--or any of the other very serious, very smart people at that great magazine--I'd be awfully uncomfortable having Sullivan as a colleague.

Sullivan is undermining the magazine's entire intellectual enterprise and laying waste to a brand that took a century to build. I hope someone over there is paying attention.

Third Update: Sullivan now says that there's a photo that "looks like it confirms" Palin's pregnancy. But of course, that's not enough either. He now demands "Just a simple confirmation from the doctor who was present at the birth."

The BSG Ticket--Updated

Watching Palin's introduction it became immediately clear that she looks uncannily like a young Laura Roslin.* This can only bode well for Palin. But the parallels don't stop at her looks. Like Roslin, Palin was basically a private citizen (Roslin was a teacher, Palin was a reporter) before being pulled into politics. Neither seems to have had any larger ambition, until events pulled them into prominence. And both were immediately discounted by outside observers as being unequal to the demands of their new positions.

But wait! There's more!

If Palin is Roslin, isn't McCain very much a Bill Adama? Both are Navy men. Both seemed destined to be passed over by a younger generation of hotshots, until a perfect storm elevated them to command. Both are tough old dogs with little patience for politics. Heck, Adama's staff even call him the Old Man.

Like Adama and Roslin, McCain and Palin should complement each other well. I eagerly await the moment in the VP debate when Palin is asked what she would do with Osama bin Laden if he were captured. One assumes her answer will be some variation of, "Put that thing out the airlock."

* Galley Wife S.L. observed this within seconds of Palin stepping on stage.

Update: Several astute commenters make the point that it's really more of a Tigh-Roslin ticket. I can buy that for a couple reasons: (1) The uncanny physical resemblance of McCain and Tigh; (2) Both McCain and Tigh were POWs; (3) McCain is reputed to have a temper somewhat approaching the Irish of Saul Tigh.

All of that said, in defense of seeing McCain as Adama, I'd argue that (1) Tigh is fundamentally, Adama's guy; McCain is his own man, for better or for worse; (2) Both McCain and Adama were hot-shot fighter jocks; (3) Most strikingly, Adama's Maverick-StreakTM long ago forced him to give up higher command ambitions. It's only by accident that he becomes head of the fleet. I think you could see very much the same thing in McCain's career. It's only a bizarre, perfect-storm of events--9/11, Huckabee, Rudy's crazy Florida strategy, Fred! siphoning votes in SC, Petraeus's brilliance in Iraq--which lead him to this moment. In a more ordinary time, McCain's constant tweaking of the base would have doomed him to the sidelines.

Also, McCain wouldn't resent Kara Thrace; he'd totally dig her.

Obama "Analysis"

You'll recall that I tried to preemptively top the praise of Obama's speech by doing a mock analysis of it earlier in the week. Other readers sent in their own attempts at parody. Below I'm going to reproduce a bunch of the parodies interspersed with the "real analysis" by various bloggers, commentators, etc from the last 12 hours. I defy you to tell which is which.

(A) Stunning. Simply stunning. This is the speech that changed America, that restored her to her erstwhile glory. Tears flood the eyes--and I am not someone who cries easily.

One forgets the native beauty of our founding commitment, and then one is reminded in words so powerful, so simple, so true. Mark my words: decades hence, we shall all look back on this speech and remember the brief shining moment when we were, truly, one nation, under God.

(B) This is a remarkable man at a vital moment. America would be crazy to throw this opportunity away. America must not throw this opportunity away.

Know hope.

(C) Indisputably the greatest political moment we have witnessed in many generations. Behold, America. You have been offered redemption. Seize the opportunity. Remind the world of the better angels of your nature. Now is the time. This is the place. Yes we can.

(D) But the dark moments pass, and this is why. There is still goodness in the land. It lives and walks among us, calling us back to our better selves. With this speech, Barack has brought light to the hinterland. No honest person, no decent person, could vote against him.

Know hope.

(E) It was as if the first three days were the Democratic Party's convention, when the usual lineup of pols and dignitaries got rewarded for their service, and the final night was Obama's convention, where Obama, all on his lonesome, defined the contours of the campaign and laid out what he meant liberalism to look like on his watch.

(F) In many ways it was less a speech than a symphony. It was a masterpiece.

Go ahead. Three of these are parodies and three are from various commenters. I'll even give you a hint by telling you who they are: Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein, and David Gergen. Tou tell me which is which.

Tomorrow's News Analysis Today!

I'm in Denver so that you don't have to be. In times of immense boredom, I've taken to writing news accounts of upcoming speeches, with the idea of putting them up against actual analysis after the fact. So far, I've done pretty well, I think. Here, for example, was my pre-fab analysis of Michelle Obama's Monday night speech, which I wrote earlier in the afternoon:

Can you imagine a better speech? A better First Lady? A better woman? If Barack is the savior of our world, Michelle is the savior of our soul. The way she bared her family for all of America to see, inviting us in, to join them. The strength and courage in her every word. Like Barack, America is lucky to have her.

And here's the account Andrew Sullivan gave afterward:

One of the best, most moving, intimate, rousing, humble, and beautiful speeches I've heard from a convention platform. Maybe she should be running for president. You don't need any commentary from me. This was a home-run. And sincere. Thank God that in the end, the truth struggles out there. Just look at her mother's face.

Pretty close, no? So now it's time to turn toward the main event. How will the press react to tomorrow night's Obama revelation? Here's one idea. Feel free to come up with your own.

The bar was impossibly high. This man has already given the three most seminal speeches in modern American politics. He has already changed our perceptions of the possible. And yet there he stood on this sacred day, the columns behind him reminding us of Martin. Of Lincoln. Of our best selves. And he told us the truth: That we are one nation. That we do not need to fear each other. That strength and bluster are not one in the same. America will be a different place when this man is president.

Because of him, it is a different place already.

Too over the top, maybe? We'll see if Sullivan or others can't top it . . .

Great Moments in Law Enforcement

Without comment:

DENVER--Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic Senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Police on the scene refused to tell ABC lawyers the charges against the producer, Asa Eslocker, who works with the ABC News investigative unit.

A cigar-smoking Denver police sergeant, accompanied by a team of five other officers, first put his hands on Eslocker's neck, then twisted the producers arm behind him to put on handcuffs.

A police official later told lawyers for ABC News that Eslocker is being charged with trespass, interference, and failure to follow a lawful order. He also said the arrest followed a signed complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel. . . .

Video taken at the scene shows a man, wearing the uniform of a Boulder County sheriff, ordering Eslocker off the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to the side of the entrance.

The sheriff's officer is seen telling Eslocker the sidewalk is owned by the hotel. Later he is seen pushing Eslocker off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic, forcing him to the other side of the street.

It was two hours later when Denver police arrived to place Eslocker under arrest, apparently based on a complaint from the Brown Palace Hotel, a central location for Democratic officials.

During the arrest, one of the officers can be heard saying to Eslocker, "You're lucky I didn't knock the f..k out of you."

I'm sure there's a perfectly legitimate explanation.

"The Eucharist and the presence of the body and blood of Christ is, in my mind, an overwhelming experience for me. I find that Communion for me is empowering. It's almost a feeling of a kind of high."

--Joe Eszterhas, who recently wrote Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith as well as Basic Instinct, Sliver, and Showgirls.

According to the Toledo Blade, Joe isn't faking. But if he converts, who's next? Tom Sizemore?

U.S. Open Notes

Cutie Pie Tennis.

Your one-stop shop for all the really important U.S. Open news.

BSG News

On ratings and sequels.

AWOL

Probably almost no posting here for the next two weeks, not that you'll miss it. I wouldn't dream of sullying these pristine pages with stuff like this.

If you're needing political stuff though, I highly recommend this.

When the Music's Over

If you're a Doors fan, you might have been surprised to learn that the surviving members of the band have been in a legal dispute against each other--specifically Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger versus John Densmore. As it turns out, the former two had been on tour as The Doors. Technically they couldn't use the name unless all three were in it, so the official title of the group was The Doors of the 21st Century. Hmmm.

In any event, a California court has ruled that Manzarek and Krieger owe money from their tour, approximately $5 million, to Densmore as well as Jim Morrison's father and the parents of Morrison's wife Pamela Courson. Manzarek and Krieger's appeal was just turned down by the California Supreme Court.

Does anyone else find it strange that Jim Morrison's father is still alive?

Got Hope?

I remember talking with Galley Friend and Women's Soccer Phenom H.W. about the Hope Solo mess while the U.S. women's team was getting crushed by Brazil a couple years ago. H.W. patiently explained to me that Coach Ryan's decision to pull Solo in favor of Briana Scurry was a judgment call, but that Solo's complaining about it in the press was a worse sin.

Well, the U.S. team just spanked the Brazilians in a re-match. The key difference was having Hope Solo in goal. You would think that women's sports would learn something about professionalism from this: The most offensive aspect of the Solo controversy was that the players on the U.S. voted not to let her play in the next game. Because you, now, sports teams are democracies. There's a deep lesson about professionalism in all of this. (At the time, Czabe had a great email about the entire affair.)

My fear, however, is that some other lesson will be learned. The team will take away how important conflict resolution skills are, or forgiveness is, or some other crap.

As Czabe puts it, "Hey Greg Ryan? How does my ass taste now?"

In Defense of Czaban

I wrote a tiny bit about Daniel Snyder taking over Washington's only semi-respectable sports talk station before, but I've now blown that out a bit.

The takeaway: Snyder runs his radio empire the way he runs the Redskins, and with similar results.

Day by Day

Variety reports that the current financial climate has had an impact on Broadway. Writes Gordon Cox, “Producers report some investors would now rather hold onto their money rather than pony up for a risky Rialto show, and many worry that the usual September downturn in ticket sales will be particularly brutal this year.”

Sadly, one of the shows to be cancelled is Godspell. Damn this economy!

Olympic Notes, 2008

I don't want to look like I'm down on Michael Phelps because I'm not--he's great and his endorsement deal with Frosted Flakes makes me like him even more. But in a certain way, Usain Bolt's performance is even more impressive.

Bolt shattered the world record in the 100M, running it in 9.69. The last 10M he was so far ahead that he dropped his arms and started looking off to his right. I've never seen anything like it. He might have 9.50 in him.

Then tonight Bolt won the 200M by breaking Michael Johnson's record, which was once thought to be unbeatable. Bolt finished in 19.30 and I haven't seen the 100M split, but I'd be surprised if he didn't run one of those pieces under 9.20.

And what's really crazy is that we have no idea how Bolt might run the 400M. He's only 22. And because of his build he could be a singularity in the sport--a dominant big man. Bolt isn't going to get 8 medals, but I think he's the more dominant athlete and my intuition is that he's the only person who's going to challenge his records in the medium-term future. He's going to places that no one thought possible, changing the perceptions of how those two distances can be run.

And one other thing: Bolt's the first athlete I've seen at these Games who looks like he's actually having fun. Lots of it. Every minute. He's such a joy to watch after sitting through all of the tough-guy swimmers and grimly determined gymnasts. He actually looks like he's thrilled to have all of us along for the amazing ride he's on.

That's pretty great.

Olympic Notes, 2008

That's Leryn Franco, who competed in her second Olympics today, throwing the javelin for Paraguay. She finished 51st, just a spot or two from last. Somehow, I don't think that matters.

No Comment

I just want my kids back.

Star Destroyers Over San Francisco

I mean it literally. Kind of amazing.

Your Amazon Gold Box Pick of the Day!

Big Balls: All-Male Nude Workout.

Olympic Notes, 2008

Trampoline?

Do the other gymnasts look down on the trampoline types? Is it like the cheerleaders sneering at the color guard?

On Men's Synchro

Steve Sailor finds a great quote by Simon Barnes about men's synchronized diving:

It all looks like a wonderfully elegant gay suicide pact.

Trautwig Watch

Not only does Al Trautwig look like Dr. Emil Skoda, he sounds like him, too!

Olympic Notes, 2008

* First off, who knew the Jackson Five was still big in Japan?

* Second, did you see that great final in the 100M Fly? Boy, it would have been really embarrassing if the clock had showed Phelps winning by 0.01 seconds and he had finished in third!

I kid. Upon further review, Phelps did win, fair and square, despite how it looked at first to the naked eye. But two thoughts occurred to me watching that race:

(1) How in the world would they have called that finish before touchpads?

(2) Imagine the outrage there would have been if these Olympics had been held in the U.S. All of Europe would have cried about how we had somehow fixed the results. Thank God for the ChiComs!

* So how great is Phelps? He's plenty great. The greatest swimmer of my time, to be sure. (And by the way, did you see who was seated in front of Ma Phelps for the final race? The Thorpedo! He did not look particularly pleased at Phelps's achievement. Maybe Xenu can comfort him.)

But I think the fixation on his 8 gold medals in one Olympics is a little much for two reasons. First, only swimmers have any shot at winning that many medals in a given Olympics because of the number of different events open to them. They have a bunch of distances very close together (50M, 100M, 200M) in different styles. Plus the medleys. Plus the relays. It takes major greatness to be able to compete in different distances in different styles--don't get me wrong. But if you play tennis, you've only got two medals open to you. Most of the sports at the Olympics only have a couple medals at stake. Even track and skiing don't have that many opportunities for one athlete. It's no accident that the two most decorated Olympians are both swimmers. And if someone breaks Phelps's record, it will almost certainly be another swimmer.

Second, because of the reliance on medals from relays, only swimmers from a handful of countries have a realistic shot of winning 8 golds (Russia, Italy, France, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, USA, and a couple others). If you were the greatest swimmer of all time--even faster than Phelps in all of his events--but were from Rhodesia, probably couldn't win more than 5 golds because you wouldn't have the athletic infrastructure around you to create other top-level teammates to win in the relays.

So when people talk about how long Phelps's record will stand, it's as much a function of the very, very small pool of athletes who can challenge it (only swimmers from big, organized, developed countries) as it is the untouchable nature of the sheer number of gold medals.

* Finally, I did a small item about the theological sophistication of boxer Demetrius Andrade over at First Things. Omitted in it is my non-understanding of Olympic boxing. It seems like the safest sport at the games--badminton players probably get hurt more often. I understand why you'd want to design a set of rules to protect the boxers from injury since they're fighting so many times during a fortnight. I get that and understand that this necessarily leads to an arrangement guaranteed to produce almost no knock-downs, let alone knock-outs.

But what's with the scoring system? So far as I can tell--and if anyone actually understands the Olympic rules, please correct me--the system they use only counts clean blows to the head. Which means there's almost no reason to go for, or to guard, the body. If both fighters are just guarding their head, and punching for the head, doesn't that make what they're doing sufficiently different from real boxing that it's almost not the same sport? It's like have basketball without allowing layups.

(And when does MMA come to the Olympics? Oh sure, you can scoff, but if I had asked you 25 years ago when snowboarding would be an Olympic sport, you would have laughed at that, too.)

Is It okay to laugh at this?

Let's stipulate to the fact that the following WWTDD post about Lindsay Lohan leaving her girlfriend for a dude is definitely mean and probably very offensive. But dear God, the funny:

I’m still amazed Lindsay held out this long. Lindsay is a whore. Whores need dick. God only knows how Sam kept her happy. The vibrators in that bedroom must be all next generation stuff.

Got ahead, try not to laugh.

Brief Political Aside

I have not followed the Wehner-Sullivan cage match with any diligence, but one point in this Wehner broadside strikes me as obviously incorrect. Wehner writes:

For Andrew, almost everything comes back to the Bush Administration’s policies on interrogation and water-boarding, Guantanamo Bay, rendition, and whether the Geneva Conventions ought to apply to non-state actors and terrorists.

For Sullivan, everything comes back to Bush's fleeting, half-hearted endorsement of the Defense of Marriage amendment.

Olympic Notes, 2008

A few thoughts:

* Yes, the Phelps kid is a physical specimen and in very good shape and whatnot. But the French 100M free stud, Alain Bernard, is the scariest dude on the planet. He's not a Frenchman so much as a Gaul--he reminds you why they were a feared people several centuries back. Here, have a look:



Vince McMahon (or Freddy Prinze Jr.) should sign him up for the WWE tomorrow. He'd be the greatest heel since the Nature Boy.

* Roger Federer lost--in straight sets--to James Blake.

Let that sink in for a minute.

I love Blake. A lot. But he's a head-case with a terrible record against top players. He survives by beating the people he should beat but never, ever overachieving. He was 0-8 against Federer before today.

Blake played a pretty good match, but Federer looked terrible. As he has all year long, there were frame balls and mis-hits. At times he looked alternately frustrated, scared, and sad. His run as the greatest player of all-time is over, more suddenly and decisively than anyone ever could have imagined. The other players know it. None of them fear him anymore. Where they used to fear a match with Federer, they now look at it as a golden opportunity to get a big win over player who's vastly over-ranked. Drawing Federer is now like winning the lottery.

And the worst, most tragic aspect of all of this, is that Federer seems to understand all of this.

I'm more and more convinced that he'll never win another Slam. I now believe that it's possible (albeit unlikely) that he'll retire at the end of this season.

Galley Friend R.M. posits that what Federer should really do is retire from singles and commit himself totally to doubles, as an act of generosity to the sport. It would instantly create an audience for doubles, which is criminally underappreciated.

* Is it possible not to root for Misty May-Trainor and Kerri Walsh? I dare you to try.

I'm as averse to pre-packaged hype machines as anyone on the planet. But I've also been following beach volleyball since Karch Kiraly was still on the hardwood. I remember the halcyon Randy Stoklos-Sinjin Smith days. (Belmar AVP represent!) And May and Walsh are the real deal. Unlike Gaby Reese, they're really fun to watch, not just to look at. Here's hoping they get gold.

Marvel vs. DC

Turns out Robert Downey Jr. hates DC Comics:

“My whole thing is that that I saw The Dark Knight. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved The Prestige but didn’t understand The Dark Knight. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? Fuck DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.”

If you couldn't get enough of the New York Observer's profile of Steve Guttenberg, here is the sequel by Spencer Morgan:

“You know,” he said, “what actors are, are living pieces of art, and that’s what the museum gives me, too. You being on that screen, you’re a piece of art hanging on a wall!

“That’s why I like being really nice to people—they’re not seeing me,” he said, referring to fans who approach him. “They’re seeing a piece of art that they can’t believe came to life.”

Truly compelling stuff.

Meeza tinks sheeza in trouble!

The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday dares to take on George Lucas:

Friday marks the release of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," an animated spinoff that Lucas executive produced and that looks like precisely what it is: a television show that has been puffed up into a feature-length advertisement for itself.... But it's time to admit it: He's not a storyteller. For all of Lucas's command of myth, symbol and sweep, the nuances of narrative still elude him.... Once "Star Wars" became a multi-billion-dollar economy unto itself, when the movies increasingly served not "the story" but the games and the sound systems and the effects business and the lunch boxes, Lucas's weakness became his greatest strength. Who needed story when the audience would be satisfied with spectacle? He got rich, and we got Jar Jar Binks.

Hornaday compares Lucas to Thomas Edison (and not in a good way). She goes after THX 1138 and American Graffiti. And now she and anyone related to her will never, ever, ever, ever be invited to Skywalker Ranch. Ever.

David Effin' Grann

David Grann is one of the three or four best writers working today--his stuff is an unmitigated joy to read. Seriously, think of how rarely you actually get excited by a byline. His new piece is routinely brilliant.

(Don't forget, The Lost City of Z comes out in February!)

But Galley Friend D.S. sends in a keen observation:

I was just reading David Grann's latest essay in the New Yorker. It's about a sort of con man named Frederic Bourdin, who, oddly enough, adopts the identities of young wayward boys. And the article quotes a notebook Bourdin keeps, in which he muses on his fate and his own chameleon-like nature. Anyway, a line from the notebook is used as a caption beneath a photo of Bourdin. "Bourdin once wrote, 'When you fight monsters, be careful . . . you do not become one.'" He should also be careful not to become a plagiarist as that very famous line was written Friedrich Nietzsche. It's funny that the New Yorker missed this; and it's funny that the con man should even in his own diaries pretend he is someone he is not.

Anyway, Grann's article is, as usual, not to be missed.

Dark Knight Box Office Watch

At some point in the next couple days Dark Knight is going to pass Star Wars to become the #2 grossing movie (domestic, unadjusted) of all time. There's a font of interesting trivia about the DK's numbers here.

The two most interesting are the most weekends at #1 charts (consecutive and non-consecutive. Now these numbers only go back to 1982, so they don't include monsters like Snow White, Gone with the Wind, Jaws, etc. But still, if you had to guess the picture since 1982 with the most weekends at #1, what would you say? I wager that you'd get it right on the first or second or third try.

But if I asked you what two movies tied for third on the list of most #1 weekends, I bet you'd never guess, not in a million years. Don't cheat before you click through.

Get Me Re-Write!

This Variety story is great:

"Edwin A. Salt" is about to undergo a gender change.

Once expected to star Tom Cruise, the Columbia Pictures espionage thriller will be redrafted by screenwriter Kurt Wimmer as a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie. Philip Noyce remains attached as director and Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash are producing.

Jolie is close to a deal to play the title character, a CIA officer who's accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy and must elude capture long enough to establish her innocence.

At least it's not based on a true story.

"They say Ricky Watters blacks out anytime he sees a green shirt."

So far as I can tell, the only thing I missed from the blogosphere last week was the return of the Emo Eagles fan.

But it's fucking awesome.

Down some dark defile of the mind, terra incognito to the blithe and bourgeois notions of normalcy, lies a swath of consciousness shrouded in a substance as dark as Kevin Curtis is light. Shawn Andrews has seen this place. So, too, have I. Indeed, I’ve felt its wintry contours and been contained within its clammy manacles.

There is no 4th and 26 in this place.

Harry Potter Puppet Pals

My gift to you:



Courtesy of Galley Sis K.P.

Oh, by the way, there's more. This bit on wizard swears is fabulous:

Olympic Notes, 2008

It occurs to me that this very silly blog basically began as a vehicle of writing about The Khorkina. (Peace be upon Her.) The Olympics are back and Galley Slaves has only devolved in terms of its ambitions. So some thoughts on these Olympics:

* NBC deserves enormous credit for a number of aspects of their broadcast--starting with the Glorious High Definition. It's the best my plasma screen has ever looked--even Discovery HD Theater's Sunrise Earth looks like foggy gunk by comparison.

* Also, NBC is putting Mary Carrillo to use doing feature packages. Awesome. She's a huge talent. Could be the next Costas.

* All of that said, could Jack Donaghy please send out a memo forbidding the color commentators from using the phrase "It's all about [insert name, skill, result, etc]!"

* Also, you know what's a lot of fun to watch during the Olympics? Actual events. Packages telling us Olympic Stories to Make Us Care are boring. So are long studio interviews with people like the president of the United States.

* The ads are pretty impressive, too. My favorites are the incredibly detailed and beautiful spots for United Airlines. They must have cost a fortune. Southwest never has gorgeous, awe-inspiring ads. Hmmm. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere . . .

* Visa's ad featuring the Morgan Freedman voiceover, on the other hand, is ridiculous. Their catchphrase: "Go World." Sure thing. Let's give everyone gold medals!

* Watching Women's Synchro 3-meter Diving (I told you, I'm a sucker for this stuff), I couldn't help but notice that the judge from the Netherlands was the Paula Abdul of the event, spitting out 10s and 9.5s by the bucket. She was the high score for almost every dive NBC showed.

* During some prelim heat, the broadcasters were breathlessly recounting the twisted tale of French swimmer Laure Manaudou: She moved to Italy to be with her Italian boyfriend; she broke up with him; he posted naked pictures (and a sex video!) of her on the interweb, and--this is the best part--started dating her chief rival.

Hearing all of this it struck me that with the exception of the really big sports, the interior workings of most sports--not just figure skating and gymnastics--must approximate the world of ballroom dance.

* Did you know that Bart Connor and Nadia Comaneci are married? Oh sure you did. But did you know they also have their own website, BartAndNadia.com? I think not. They do speeches and personal appearances. I'm just saying.

* Is it just me, or is it hard to root against the Chi-Coms? During the Cold War, I not only wanted our jocks to crush the godless Reds, I wanted the Ruskies to suffer, too. I never forgave that mean Russian boxer for killing Apollo Creed. It just wasn't right.

But I kind of like the Chinese athletes. They aren't in the least bit threatening. Instead, the all seem vaguely put-upon. It's more apparent that they're victims of their government. So I guess I'm sort of pulling for them.