More Skip Gates--Updated--Final Update--Final Final Update (Bumped)

It's bad enough that I have to side with Gates, but now I'm siding with Obama, too. Ugh.

I'm a little troubled by how quick some people (particularly on the right) are to make Gates' behavior the crux of the issue. Even without videotape, I think it's reasonable to surmise that Gates acted badly (though not illegally). From there, the general consensus on the right seems to be of a piece with this bit of folk wisdom from Tom Maguire:

Back in 1986 I was in Beverly Hills for a friend's wedding. While out jogging at about 9 in the morning I was hassled by a cop for jaywalking and threatened with a trip downtown since I didn't have any ID. A trip "downtown" in shorts and a t-shirt really didn't appeal to me or fit into the wedding schedule, so rather than summon forth the memory of centuries of British oppression of the Irish I employed the power of positive groveling. Don't cop an attitude with the cops - is that rule too complicated?

The general assumption being that if you're rude to a police officer, they then have carte blanche to abuse the law. This seems like an awfully dangerous idea to accept.

Let's leave aside the First Amendment implications for a minute. (Even though they're pretty substantial, haven't a lot of American soldiers died so that you can cop any sort of attitude you want towards the police, so long as you don't break the law?) The problem with Maguire's dictum is that it demotes police officers to the level of private citizens, giving them no greater expectation or accountability.

That simply can't be. Police officers are entrusted with the state-sanctioned use of force. We give them the power to arrest and kill. When police employ any of their powers, they do so not on their own behalf, but on behalf of the whole of society. (Remember that criminal offenses are, properly understood, offenses against society itself. That's why, in a murder trial, it's the state against the defendant, not the victim against the defendant.)

Because police are acting not as private citizens but as agents of the state, they should be expected to enforce the law fairly and dispassionately at all times. Not just during business hours. Not just when they had a good night's sleep. Not just when the citizen in question is especially winsome or accommodating. If an offender breaks the law, groveling and sniveling before an officer should not affect the officer's judgment. By the same token, someone who does not break the law should not be able to change an officer's judgment by being rude and inconsiderate. The law is the law is the law. (And besides, as I said yesterday, the police don't do this stuff out of the kindness of their heart. Cops are paid precisely to endure such abuse in the course of their duties. That's why they're compensated and don't work as volunteers.)

All of that said, the consensus view seems to be that, political theory aside, in the real world one must expect police officers to be incapable making such fair-minded, dispassionate distinctions. Steve Sailer writes,

[Yo]u don't make serious unfounded accusations at a cop if you don't want something bad to happen to you. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.

But is that really true? Are no police officers capable of tolerating a rude civilian, making an even-handed judgment about the law, and concluding an encounter without letting their egos take control the situation (leading to poor applications of the law)? I very much doubt that. And if even one police officer would have been capable of handling the Gates situation better, then we must expect all officers to live up to that standard. The "that's just the way the world works" shrug we're seeing is the worst sort of defining deviancy down. That way lies the police state.

Update: More great moments in policing here.

In the comments, Anonymous Super Trooper, who in the past has claimed to be a cop, begins his argument by asserting, "Gates did break the law." Once again, Anonymous Super Trooper does more to injure his cause than to assist it. Gates did not break the law. Gates is not even alleged to have broken the law. The police arrested him, charged him, and then dropped the charges. With neither a judgment nor a charge against him, there are no grounds to assert that Gates' behavior transgressed the boundaries of the law.

The fact that Anonymous Super Trooper can't make even this basic distinction--and that he feels no compunctions about rendering illiterate legal conclusions--should serve as a broader caution for those who would give cover to the police to handle social (rather than legal) transgressions as they see fit.

Final Update: The great Mark Steyn takes a line similar to most other conservatives:

I certainly sympathize with the general proposition that not all encounters with the constabulary go as agreeably as one might wish. Last year I had a minor interaction with a Vermont state trooper and, 60 seconds into the conversation, he called me a “liar.” I considered my options:

Option a): I could get hot under the collar, yell at him, get tasered into submission, and possibly shot while “resisting arrest”;

Option b): I could politely tell the trooper I object to his characterization, and then write a letter to the commander of his barracks the following morning suggesting that such language is not appropriate to routine encounters with members of the public and betrays a profoundly defective understanding of the relationship between law-enforcement officials and the citizenry in civilized societies.

I chose the latter . . .

What strikes me here is how analogous this response is to how the left viewed the Danish Mohammed-cartoon crisis. Sure, they said, free speech is nice in theory. But it's rude to purposefully provoke another religion. And when Muslims the world over riot and kill people well--what do you expect? That's just what they do. Better to keep your voice down, make nice, and never offend them.

Substitute "cops" for "Muslims" and you have the conservative position on police misconduct.

In both cases, the sentiment is wrong-headed and pernicious.

Final Final Update: Radley Balko makes the case against Officer Crowley much better than I did, so we'll let him have the final word. I'm going to excerpt heavily, but you should read it all:

By any account of what happened—Gates', Crowleys', or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. "Contempt of cop," as it's sometimes called, isn't a crime. Or at least it shouldn't be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The "disorderly conduct" charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest.

He won't be, of course. And that's ultimately the scandal that will endure long after the political furor dies down. The power to forcibly detain a citizen is an extraordinary one. It's taken far too lightly, and is too often abused. And that abuse certainly occurs against black people, but not only against black people. American cops seem to have increasingly little tolerance for people who talk back, even merely to inquire about their rights. . . .

If there's a teachable moment to extract from Gates' arrest, it's that arrest powers should be limited to actual crimes. Instead, the emerging lesson seems to be that you should capitulate to police, all the time, right or wrong. That's unfortunate, because there are plenty of instances where you shouldn't.

The most obvious case where deference to authority can be counter-productive—both in practice and in principle—is when police attempt an unlawful search or seizure of your person and property. But there are plenty of other instances as well, particularly with the spread of information technology.

Photographing or videotaping police ought to be a protected form of expression under any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution. Yet at the website Photography Is Not a Crime, photographer Carlos Miller has tracked dozens of cases in which police have unlawfully demanded someone cease photographing on-duty cops. Typically, police demand photographers hand over their cameras, and those who refuse are often arrested. In some of the cases, the preserved video or photographs have vindicated a defendant, or revealed police misconduct. Miller started the site after he himself was wrongly arrested for photographing police officers in Miami. . . .

Just days before Gates was arrested, Philadelphia newspapers reported on a local cop who was captured by a convenience store's security video brutally assaulting a woman who had been in a car accident with his son. He then arrested her and charged her with assaulting him. The officer then demanded the store clerk turn over surveillance video of his attack. The clerk says other officers made subsequent demands to turn over or destroy the video. To his credit, the clerk refused. The video vindicated the woman. The officer has since been suspended. . . .

This [conservative] deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply. . . .

Verbally disrespecting a cop may well be rude, but in a free society we can't allow it to become a crime, any more than we can criminalize criticism of the president, a senator, or the city council. There's no excuse for the harassment or arrest of those who merely inquire about their rights, who ask for an explanation of what laws they're breaking, or who photograph or otherwise document police officers on the job.

What we owe law enforcement is vigilant oversight and accountability, not mindless deference and capitulation.

Case closed.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I'm only two weeks late to seeing it, which is kind of remarkable in its own right. All in all, quite enjoyable. It was my favorite of the Potter movies until the last 10 minutes, in which it went a little off the rails. Some thoughts (if you haven't seen it, there will be SPOILERS):

* Daniel Radcliffe is better when they let him be funny. He still can't do serious. Emma Watson seems to be getting worse with each film. Rupert Grint should actually have a career as an actor if he wants it.

* I'm not sure if it was intenionally done with make-up, but Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon looked suddenly very, very old.

* Jim Broadbent's Slughorn was truly wonderful. It's a very different interpretation from the book--much more sad than blustery. It worked for me.

* For the first time ever, quidditch looked both real and interesting. Compare the quidditch scene in HBP with Sorcerer's Stone on blu-ray. What a difference eight years makes.

* Overall, the f/x was pretty great, which it should be when money is no object. But there were a couple moments when the green screen was so glaringly obvious that it was a little jarring. Such as the final scene with the kids in the Hogwarts tower looking down at what might as well be painted back-drops.

The other moment which was distracting in its poor execution was the set design for the hidden horcrux. The crystal island looked straight out of Return of Superman. After being in a world that felt, for the most part, lived in and real, all of a sudden we're on a soundstage with what is obviously a movie set. I wouldn't complain except that for this franchise, the money really does grow on trees. Every single set should be perfect.

* One of the complaints leveled against the movie is that it adheres too slavishly to the book. That criticism strikes me as off the mark. There's lots of deviation from the book done specifically for the purposes of story-telling. Some of it, like Harry hanging around in the Underground in the beginning, works very well. Having the Weasley Burrow burned to the ground is also a nice bit of shorthand to show us the loss that peripheral characters are sustaining without going character by character.

* My big complaint is actually about a piece of adaptation that I thought didn't quite work: the final battle at Hogwarts.

Once Harry and Dumbledore return to Hogwarts, Malfoy has let Voldemort's crew of Death Eaters into the castle. But all they do is sneak upstairs to confront Dumbledore. There is no pitched battle for Hogwarts. After Snape kills Albus, they high-tail it off the grounds.

This didn't work for me for a few reasons:

(1) We don't get to see the students and staff of Hogwarts suddenly thrown into combat. Everything has changed by the end of HBP not only because Dumbledore is dead, but because the professors and the students have suddenly become soldiers. By keeping them out of the battle, at the end of the movie, they're still just on-lookers, essentially the same position they've been in at the end of all the other movies.

(2) Malfoy's big vanishing cabinet plan doesn't make much sense without a larger assault on Hogwarts. Why bother importing Belatrix, Greyback, et al for the sole purpose of letting Draco kill Dumbledore? The only reason to have them there is for it to be an all-out invasion.

(3) I understand that cleaving a little more closely to the book would have incurred significant costs of both time and money. But couldn't that have been conserved by eliding the intro where we see London under assault from the Death Eaters? Shifting the set piece to the end seems a net plus in terms of story.

* My only other real quibble is with the portrayal of Snape. In the book, his role is quite ambiguous by the end. In the movie, not so much. I think it's reasonably (though not totally) clear that he's ultimately on Dumbledore's side. I missed that extra layer of complexity where no one knew if he was a triple- or quadruple-agent. Also, his final encounter with Harry--the last time they'll see one another until Snape dies, I think--felt a little rushed for such an important moment. In the movie's own terms it didn't even make much sense for Snape to cop to being the Half-Blood Prince. Why not just leave that a mystery?

LeBron Samizdat

The dunk tape is out.

And it makes LeBron look even worse because there's no reason he should have been so sensitive about it. He's not the one guarding Jordan Crawford. Crawford blows by his man and LeBron steps over to help from the baseline where he had been guarding the post man. He's a little late, but, in fairness to him, he needed to stay home an extra millisecond because otherwise Crawford drops a short pass to the post for a sure dunk.

LeBron made the right play from the help side. Crawford made a really good move and finished well. What's embarrassing for Bron-Bron isn't that he was dunked on.

I'm with Skip Gates

For the first time ever.

Taranto's piece is even-handed and fair, but I'd add one (important) thought to this:

This is not to say that the police are always right, and it seems to us that arresting Gates was an unwise use of the officer’s authority. Having ascertained that the burglary report was false, the cop had no reason to remain on the scene. This appears to have been a misunderstanding between two stubborn men, both of whom would be better off had one of them exercised some maturity and forbearance.

The difference is that in encounters between the police and the public, it is the police officer who is being paid to exercise maturity. If a citizen acts less maturely in such an encounter, he is simply behaving poorly. If a police officer acts less maturely, he is doing his job badly. That's a substantial difference.

One Shining Moment

Don't get me wrong--I'm very much rooting for Tom Watson at the British Open. He is, however, currently tied with Steve Marino. The UVA golfer has yet to win a major tournament and the weekend is still ahead of us. (His best finish was earlier this year at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial where he placed second.) But at least for the moment, Marino is in the spotlight. And it brought to mind a piece in the Washington Post Magazine, in which staff writer Eli Saslow invites Marino to play a round at one of the District's public courses. Being accustomed to the carpeted greens of Turnberry and Augusta, Marino finds it a bit of a challenge at the rough-and-tumble Hains Point.

Watchoo talkin' 'bout Willis?!

Willis Group Holding, a London-based insurance firm, has purchased the naming rights of Sears Tower, rechristening it Willis Tower. Not that anyone will call it that.

Sears Tower will always be Sears Tower, even if you haven't been to a Sears since 1983. Just like the PNC Bank Arts Center will forever be the Garden State Arts Center, where I once saw Hall & Oates. Did I just admit that? (Next stop, Brigantine Castle!)

Gasquet Was Innocent!

Remember when Richard Gasquet was suspended from the tour for cocaine use? No? Well play along anyway.

An ITF panel has now found that level of cocaine Gasquet was found to have in his system was no more than a grain of salt" and that he had ingested it by making out with some chick at a club and that "the amount of cocaine in the player's body was so small that if he had been tested only a few hours later, his test result would be likely to have been negative."

As if he hasn't had enough bad breaks already.

Dept. of Statistics

Did Jon Bon Jovi really see a million faces? Did he really rock them all?

Two Four Years Late to Everything

That Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a heck of a movie, isn't it? Maybe too clever by a third at some points, but overall, it's pretty rewarding. And Val Kilmer's best work since Tombstone.

I wonder if Shane Black will ever get another bit at the directing apple.

Bang & Olufsen Do It Again!

One time, at band camp . . ."

Civony / Evony

Ever been curious about what's behind those weird web ads?

Here's the answer.

Update: And even more about Evony. Evidently, it's the brainchild of a Chinese gold farmer.

That. Just. Happened.

Simply put, a masterpiece:

30 ROCK plays like NBC went to JJ Abrams and told him to reboot THE MUPPET SHOW. "Do what you did with STAR TREK. Make it hipper, more adult. Maybe lose the puppets to allow more time for product placement."

Once your eyes have been opened, the world will never been the same.

UFC and Anti-Trust

So the black-balling is true. To recap: EA Sports is making a videogame called "MMA" which seeks to license the likenesses of real MMA fighters. The rumor had been that UFC head Dana White had threatened to black-ball any fighter who sold their private rights to EA. And on Saturday night, White confirmed that the rumor is true. The other important fact in the case is that the UFC currently has a license with another game producer, THQ, for their own game.

White is particularly savvy about the values of intellectual property. He built the UFC by purchasing the video rights for the nascent company and then using that leverage to buy the rest of the UFC outright. You could make an argument that any enterprise organized around a pay-per-view model needs to smartly manage its IP, striking the right balance between giving away enough product to stoke demand and keeping enough product walled-off to generate revenue. I suspect that White sees the EA-UFC fight as another instance where his company needs to aggressively control what they see as their intellectual property (even if the IP they're trying to lay claim to isn't actually theirs).

This brings up two questions: The first is whether or not White's stance violates anti-trust (or employment discrimination) laws. I doubt that Acme Widgets could, as a matter of company policy, refuse to hire people who made side-income selling comic books on eBay. (Acme Widgets might be able to demand that employees not sell other widgets in their spare time, which is the nature of non-compete clauses. But I'm not sure that licensing your likeness to another videogame is direct competition to the UFC. Direct competition to THQ, maybe, but not to the UFC itself.)

The second question is whether or not White is smart to create a point of labor friction with this fight, even if he is within his legal rights. The UFC is the dominant organization in its space (at least in the U.S.). But it's still a relatively small operation. I don't think UFC's dominance is so total as to be able to ward off any potential competitor. Creating dissatisfaction in the labor market is practically begging for the creation of a rival brand and the barrier to entry seems pretty low. A rival could duplicate most of the UFC's distribution (save the Spike reality series) relatively easily. UFC's competitive advantage lies with its fighters. Unless the company's position is more dominant than I understand (a very real possibility!), White should be trying to protect that advantage while creating other areas of strength.

He's a long way from having Vince McMahon levels of monopoly power.

Plasma Beats LCD, Again

There's a reason some of us keep clinging to the dying tech.

An American Hero

Carl Cannon: Anti-anti-Palinite.

Unbelievably damning. And for whatever it's worth, I suspect it took a great deal of courage for Cannon to write this. He's not some guy from the conservative ghetto hurling stones at the establishment. He is the establishment and he's taking dead aim at his peers. Good for him.

Comic Book Notes

I have a short piece in the WSJ about how President Obama has overrun the comic book industry. Of particular interest is a bit of art which didn't fit on the page, the cover of the first issue of a new independent book, Barack the Barbarian:



Of much more importance was the decision handed down on Wednesday by Judge Stephen "Dredd" Larson (who's a total IP stud) on the damages in the fight between the heirs of Jerry Siegel and DC Comics (meaning Time-Warner). (You can find the background on the original suit here. I had written it originally for the Philadelphia Inquirer, but my three years of columns for them have been disappeared from their archives.)

Anyway, the latest Larson decision is marginally a victory for Time-Warner because it limits the moneys the Siegel heirs are entitled to to simply profits from the Superman comic-book business. But the lawyer for the estate is making ominous noises about Superman's future with DC:

"To put this in further perspective, the entire accounting action pales in comparison to the fact that in 2013, the Siegels, along with the estate of Joe Shuster, will own the entire original copyright to Superman, and neither DC Comics nor Warner Bros. will be able to exploit any new Superman works without a license from the Siegels and Shusters."

At that point, we could conceivably see Superman imported to, say the Marvel universe. Which would cause spontaneous combustion among the continuity obsessives.

Who dunks on Bron-Bron? Nobody dunks on Bron-Bron.

Galley Brother B.J. sends us this awesome story of image control from The Chosen One (Basketball Division). Here's the story from CBS:

You want to see video of Xavier's Jordan Crawford dunking on LeBron James?

If so, too bad.

Because you're not going to see it.

Thanks to Nike.

Turns out, there were at least two cameras rolling Monday night when Crawford dunked on James during a pick-up game here at the LeBron James Skills Academy. It was a two-handed jam, the kind that would've circulated quickly on YouTube. But Nike officials eliminated that possibility shortly after the dunk happened by allegedly confiscating tapes from various cameramen.

Freelance photographer Ryan Miller was one of the cameramen shooting the game.

He told CBSSports.com that Nike Basketball Senior Director Lynn Merritt took his tape.

"He just said, 'We have to take your tape,'" Miller said. "They took it from other guys, too."

Worth noting is that there is no policy against filming at the LeBron James Skills Academy, and Miller said he had been filming all day without incident. Nobody ever told him to stop. Nobody ever said there was a problem ... until after Crawford dunked on James.

"LeBron called Lynn over and told him something," Miller said. "That's how I knew his name was Lynn. LeBron said, 'Hey, Lynn. Come here.'"

Minutes later, Miller said Merritt demanded his tape.

Maybe it was the Puppet LeBron who got posterized?

Fake Steve Jobs

Nearly as brilliant as Fake Michael Bay. Fake Steve Jobs is pissed about the Google OS:

What the fuck is going on inside Google? How much more out of control and undisciplined can this place get? How many new goddamn operating systems are they going to create? They've already got Android, and nobody wants it. Now they're going to make yet another operating system, this time out of a browser that nobody wants. What's next? A Gmail-based operating system? A YouTube-based operating system? Honestly, Google, is there anyone in charge over there? Is there anyone who knows how to criticize anything in that fucked up little Montessori preschool of yours? I mean I guess it's nice that you all get to spend 20 percent of your time dreaming up useless shit, and I guess you have to use the Montessori method and tell everyone that whatever little piece of shit they've created is just so wonderful and perfect and beautiful -- but really, as I've told Eric before, that doesn't mean you have to release everything these bozos dream up. There's a word for this. It's called "no." Have you heard of it? I mean, fine, let them fuck around with stuff. Engineers like to tinker. So let them tinker. Then when they bring you whatever it is they've made, first you say you're too busy to meet with them. Then you say you've changed your mind and you will meet with them after all. Then you wait until they're all in the conference room with everything set up, and you send Katie down to tell them that you're going to be a little bit late. You make them wait an hour. Then two hours. Then, at six in the afternoon, you send Katie down to tell them that you've changed your mind again and now you can't make it. Then, finally, you set up another appointment and this time you do meet with them -- but before they can even speak you just look at whatever it is they've made and you say, I'm sorry, that's a piece of shit, and you walk out. Trust me, engineers love this. They're all masochists. That's why they became engineers in the first place. . . .

But if that's your big goal in life, the chance to maybe put a stick in Microsoft's spokes -- well, we've come a long way from the days of Sergey and Larry with stars in their eyes, wanting to make the world a better place. If that's really what gets these guys up in the morning, well, friends, I will pray for your soul. Here at Apple we have better things to do. Like creating new devices that nobody else has ever created before, and restoring a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. Or inventing whole new multi-billion-dollar markets that didn't exist before.

Day One

If only BSG had been set in LA, by way of Lady in the Water . . .

I kid. The trailer for Day One looks pretty neat.

The Case for the Decepticons

Why didn't I think of this?

What is the status of the Transformers at the beginning of the film?
The Autobots have joined the military to hunt down the Decepticons. We're told the Decepticons are "doing things," but they appear to be hiding peacefully when the Autobots show up and brutally murder them.

What?
Yeah. The Decepticons aren't apparently doing anything, then the Autobots show up, the Decepticons run for their goddamn lives, and the Autobots hunt them down and brutally murder them. It's kind of weird.

This FAQ is DuPont-worthy in its awesomeness, by the way. More samples of excellence:

Can you explain Megan Fox's appeal?
Yes. She looks like a porn star and has the same acting talent as one, yet for some reason she makes mainstream movies. This tonal disconnect is what's so appealing about her.

If you had to pick a single scene that exemplifies Michael Bay's utter disdain for story and continuity, what would it be?
When five Decepticons sink to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve Megatron's corpse. A submarine tracks five "subjects" going down, and when they get there, one of the Decepticons is killed to give parts to Megatron. 5 -1 +1 = 5, right? No, because the sub somehow tracks "six" subjects coming up. Not only is this very basic math, this is the simplest of script errors. It could not possibly have been more than one page apart in the script. And yet Michael Bay either didn't care to notice or didn't give a fuck. "Math? Math is for pussies. My movies are about shit blowing up, man."

Dept. of Literature (and Video Games)

I'm not an expert on Italian literature and but I'm pretty sure that none of these scenes from the video game version of Dante's Inferno were in the actual book.

Galley Wife S.L. will have to weigh in.

After we get the game, that is.

Summer Reading

I just caught up with Brian Azzarello's Joker and if you missed it, like I did, you might want to grab a copy. Chris Nolan and Heath Ledger must have been leaning on this pretty heavily for Dark Knight (either that, or they came to surprisingly similar interpretations of the character on their own) and it's great stuff. First-rank comic book writing.

On a different plane is Chris Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe which is a stunningly smart, and detailed, look at the intersection of Europe, immigration, and Islam. I can't say enough about the book. Total hotness on every page.

Update: For those who don't understand how the comic book world works, a long graphic novel has an enormous lead time, often years. DC's parent company rode herd over both properties. And while I was trying to be polite, here's Azzarello talking less politely about the similarities between Joker and The Dark Knight:

Wizard: I know you and Lee came up with this almost out of Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, now that's way before "The Dark Knight" movie, and yet, this Joker that you've crafted and the story, fits so seamlessly into that "Dark Knight" interpretation. It's kind of eerie. What do you think of that?

AZZARELLO: Gosh, I don't know. You think someone might have saw the script or Lee's art? I don't know. Look, it's Batman. I can't be proprietary about that stuff. It's happened to me before. It seems like whenever I touch these company-owned characters, for some reason something that I do ends up somewhere else. It's the nature of the beast.

UFC Anti-Trust?

It's unclear whether or not this story has any merit. But I'm interested to know what the legal ramifications would be if it were true.

The contention is that UFC, which is kind of like the WWE of ultimate fighting (not in the sense that it's bogus, but in that it's the dominant company and it's run by a single owner), is telling fighters that if they sign deals with a mixed-martial arts videogame, they will be excluded from the UFC for life.

Again, who knows if this is true? But if it was, would the UFC be running afoul of any anti-trust laws, or would they be within their rights?

Worst Ever

Consider this a public service announcement: When it comes to stopovers, Charles DeGaulle International Airport is one of the worst. On my return trip from Prague, with roughly 50 minutes between landing in Paris and boarding the plane to Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the scene is nothing short of bedlam. Passengers have only signs to let them know vaguely in what direction is Terminal 2E. There is no one to direct you or to let you know you have to walk seemingly half a mile; that you must wait in a nondescript holding pen with other travelers packed-in like sardines, or on the nonworking escalator (a good thing too since people would have fallen on top of each other) with no air circulating and a rising temperature from all the body heat and heavy breathing—not to mention the fetid odors. Desperate passengers start forming their own lines, which leads to cutting and arguments and one American (already late for his plane to Atlanta) exclaiming, “And you wonder why we hate the French!”

Eventually we make our way through a door and find two customs officers casually stamping passports. One takes a break and the other continues at a leisurely pace. Planes are being boarded at this very moment. Once through customs, we wait to board a convoy of shuttle buses. Then we wait inside the bus until it is filled to capacity and proceed around the airport to eventually get to Terminal 2E but not before we come to a complete stop behind a construction vehicle with its hazards on. Arriving at the terminal, travelers race their way up more stairs and escalators and wait in another massive line to get through security. At this point tempers are flaring. Some are yelling at the screeners who have decided to prevent some individuals from entering the metal detector zone for no apparent reason—the security monitors are just standing around while passengers stare back at them and no one is getting through unless the screener lets you through in his infinite mercy. (And it doesn’t help that some travelers wait until the last minute to check their pockets, remove laptops, untie shoes, and drink bottles of water.) Finally through, it is a marathon past the duty free corridors and to the gates.

Needless to say the passengers boarding my flight had tense expressions. Inevitably this also led to a screaming match between two individuals—a woman telling a man not to touch her bags and the man defiantly moving them aside to make room for his own luggage. The woman’s husband gets involved and now these men are in a standoff, their noses mere centimeters away. Kudos to one of the flight attendants on Air France flight 26 who defused the conflict, urging them that “we’re going to have a happy flight,” and “now shake hands” so we can get a move on.

And move on we did, with only the occasional annoyance from the row in front of me: a Czech family brawl in which the teenage boy pushed around his sister until his mother started slapping him around.

In short, always go for the direct flight.

Talk You Off What, Pop-Pop?

Did anyone else know that the great Mitch Hurwitz went to Georgetown? And majored in theology? Hurwitz has this excellent story of his Hoya days:

Here’s a funny thing about Georgetown: At the end of each year the college would create this mathematical formula to figure out the average salary each major would eventually earn. English majors earned, on average, about $30,000 a year. But majors in the fine arts earned more than $1,000,000 a year. And that was because there were only six of them, and one had been [Knicks basketball-team center] Patrick Ewing.

More interview here, including some great stuff about the idea of "call-forwards." (Hand chair.)

"It's the form my grief has taken."

Rev's gotta eat.

PSA

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li is now available on a 3-disc Blu-ray special edition!

Because one disc simply wasn't big enough to contain it.

Exit question: Wasn't the big advantage of Blu-ray supposed to be that you could put an entire season of a TV series on one disc because the storage capacity was so immense? Do you really need more than one disc to hold all of the extras for Street Fighter: Chun Li? I could do without all the extra discs myself.

Harmonic Convergence

Just jump to the 3:09 mark. Now.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

There's lots to say about Michael Jackson, but above all else, I'd argue that he's the only entertainer who can be measured using the same yardstick used for Elvis.

(I'd be open to including Sinatra and The Beatles, but would probably say that they're more pure musicians than performers. In any case, this is a very short list.)

P.S.: Advantage blogosphere!

"Like The Mummy Returns on a Coke Binge"

M.E. Russell, who had previously created an intellectual space for the admiration of Michael Bay, goes after Transformers 2:

Aircraft carriers sink! There's a long sequence where our heroes break into the National Air and Space Museum to wake up an ancient Transformer who also happens to be decommissioned SR-71 Blackbird who uses one of his landing gear as a cane! There's a hot-chick Transformer with a really long tongue! There's a little Decepticon with a Jersey accent who humps Megan Fox's leg for no reason! Sam Witwicky's mom eats a pot brownie and starts tackling people! Sam Witwicky's parents go to France for a while just so Michael Bay can blow it up (again!). The disgraced John Turturro character turns up working in a Jewish deli, where he secretly runs a Web site that competes with the one run by Sam Witwicky's hysteria-prone college roommate!

Obama Backlash in Hollywood!!!!!

Evidently, Transformers 2 refers to President Obama by name, and depicts a fictional aid who is kind of a heel. Variety is outraged!

Cohen writes, "So as usual in these movies, the federal bureaucrats are portrayed as annoying if not villainous. The President's man, "Galloway," is a bespectacled blowhard who becomes an obstacle to our brave fighting men and their alliance with the noble Autobots. Operating specifically under presidential authority, he makes all kinds of mischief. He says the President wants to try "diplomacy" against the evil Decepticons and hints the President would consider handing over Shia LaBouf's character to be killed by them. He eventually is ditched by the fighting men (tricked into parachuting out the back of a transport). All this is par for the course in this kind of movie. In the first, there was a Rumsfeldian secretary of defense (played by Jon Voight) and a bit of dialogue from "the President" clearly meant to be Bush, with an obvious Bush impression on the dialogue.

"However, if memory serves, no real politicians were named in the first movie. The SecDef isn't Rumsfeld. The president is not called by name.

"In this movie, exactly one real-life politician is named: "President Obama." They went out of their way to make sure they named the craven, obstructionist president as Obama."

So what gives? I haven't seen the movie, so I am relying on David's take. But it strikes me as a bit unusual given the popularity of the president and the fact that so many people involved in the pic contributed to his campaign.

How dare they.

Uncharitable characterizations of the Dear Leader will not be tolerated, even in movies with giant fighting robots. Michael Bay will never eat lunch in this town again.

Update: Santino says that there are robots in blackface, too! You can see where this is going . . .

The Perfect Meeting of a Man and a Medium

Stephen A. Smith does Twitter.

When Obama Supporters Fight

Is this what the world has come to? will.i.am and Perez Hilton throwing down outside of a club? Our president would be so disappointed.

The details of the fight are kind of fascinating from a cultural standpoint, though. Hilton called will.i.am a "faggot," which resulted in will.i.am's manager beating Hilton up. Hilton seems to be seen as the victim in the incident.

The hate-speech possibilities here boggle the mind:

* What if Hilton had called will.i.am the dreaded n-word! Would he still be the victim, or would that have excused the violence on the moral, if not the legal, sense?

* "Faggot" is, I thought, a very bad word, no? Isn't it terribly insensitive and hateful for Hilton to have used it? Or is it okay, since Hilton is, himself, gay? Is "faggot" kind to new nigga that way?

* What if will.i.am had called Hilton a "faggot"? Would it have been socially acceptable for will.i.am to brag about it after the fact the way Hilton seems to be doing today?

Surely there's a university sensitivity commission which has already sorted this stuff out for us . . .

Gaming IMAX

Someone played Xbox 360 on the giant HD Jumbotron in the new Cowboys stadium. There's video.

Lebron and Kobe, One More Time

Absolutely fantastic.

Jason Campbell = Troy McClure?

KSK has a bit about Jason Campbell and a dolphin that is crazy fantastic. Go read it now; it's a small masterpiece.

Disney's New Advertorial

Jenny's site is running an ad for a new ABC Family series called Make It or Break It, which looks like a more family-friendly version of the Missy Peregrym movie Stick It.

The ad is mocked up to look like an actual blog post. But here's the thing: the text on the ad is mocked up to read like a blog post about the show--a kind of bitchy, snarky sideswipe that quickly morphs into a traditional ad. Here's the text:

This series is about world-class female gymnasts who work out at The Rock. Apparently this facility trains them to compete on a World Class level in jealousy, drama, and bitchiness as well. I haven't seen this many hairballs coughed up since Lindsey and Samantha's last holiday party. Hot girls spinning around on a mat, cat fights and backstabbing. Tune in for the series premiere of "Make It or Break It", June 22 on ABC Family.

Keep in mind, that ad copy was put together (or at least authorized) by the channel. Nothing wrong with it, but it is kind of interesting.

Night of the Walking Dead

Did anyone else know that Circuit City was still running an online store and still sending out email come-ons?

Gratuitous Violence

Amanda Seyfried, asked about Lindsay Lohan:

"Mean Girls was such a long time ago and we definitely haven't stayed in touch. And while we are on the subject, I can't stand her."

Kind of hot, no?

Brief Iranian Aside

I know very little about the Iranian election/protests. It's not clear to me if what we're seeing is a genuinely significant uprising (meaning that it has the potential to up-end the regime). Or even if it was a seriously stolen election. The possibility that Ahmadinejad actually commands a plurality of popular support from the rural areas and the underclass seems as plausible as the possibility that the ruling theocrats have passed some tipping point where their legitimacy is imperiled. Who knows.

Well, actually, Andrew Sullivan knows! Over the last few days, some conservatives have treated Sullivan as if he was a reasonable, reliable source. What are the chances that this Sullivan post will put an end to that.

Pletka is a hard-right neocon, very close to the Kagans, and a former aide to Jesse Helms. Her support for Ahmadinejad is the same as Daniel Pipes' and the Mossad's. What we're seeing is how much of the neocon agenda really was about freedom. I have long since stopped believing that, having observed them closely for the past few years. They are about warfare against Israel's perceived enemies, and extending US hegemony to eclipse any rival regional or global power. That is the prism through which you have to watch their every statement. But why is the New York Times giving a platform at this moment to people who got the Iraq war so terribly wrong? Are there no consequences for total neoconservative failure?

Like I said, I don't know much about Iran, but it does seem to me that the Official Neocon Position^TM is probably pro-protest and anti-Ahmadinejad. It's the Obama administration which is going to pains to not jump to any conclusions or rush to support the protesters.

Strange New Respect

We now have the perfect blog post. Here's Hugh Hewitt blogging an open-message to Andrew Sullivan:

"Memo to Andrew Sullivan: E-mail to your aol account is bouncing back. I'd like to interview you today or tomorrow."

The full majesty of the blogosphere--from logos to ethos--is explicated in those two sentences.

Brief Foreign Policy Aside

It's not clear to me whether or not the Iranian election is blow to the Obama administration's view of the efficacy of diplomacy. But it is clear that the transformation of terminology describing Obama's worldview, from "soft power" to "smart power" is incomplete.

The correct formulation should be iPower, no?

Arlington

Provincial? Sure. Awesome? Very.

Why Isn't This in the Nike Commercial?

You know, the one with the cute puppets:

Detective Loya: Did you ever ask her if you wanted, if you could cum in her face?
Bryant: Yes. That's when she said no. That's when she said no. That's when she said no.
Detective Loya: So you like to cum in your partner's face?
Bryant: That's my thing. No always, I mean. So I stopped. Jesus christ man...

Brief Political Aside

Sailer has a great line on the Most Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

"To Wright, the Bible, and almost everything else, is just Chicago ethnic politics writ large."

Danny DeVito Is Drunk on TV in Philly

Pajiba is there.

Batman and Economics

Galley Friend B.W. sends us this link examining the economic theory behind whether or not supervillains should coordinate in their efforts to capture/kill the Batman.

Surprisingly the answer is, no.

Dept. of Things You Don't Want to Know

Airspeed and the Coffin Corner.

And more:

Remember, more often than not, an airliner goes down at the end of long chain of unrelated, seemingly innocuous decisions, malfunctions, mistakes and external factors. Remove any single link (or even change their sequence) and you have an on-time arrival at Charles de Gaulle.

Federer Wins the French

Believe me when I say that very few people were happier to see Federer win the French than I was. I think he's the best of all time and getting the French Open and his 14th major bolsters that case. (The only serious counter-argument, I think, is that he's had the best stretch-run of all time. I'm open to idea that at particular instants, other players were better. But I would need a lot of convincing.)

But does his victory really mean that the Age of Federer continues? I don't think so. Here's what I wrote after last year's Wimbledon final:

The age of Federer is over. He'll hang around near the top for the next 18 months. He'll be a regular in the semis and finals of the slams, but absent him getting some help (injuries to other players, a draw with lots of upsets) I don't think it's certain he will win another big one. It's hard to imagine how he could win three more.

I still think this is about right. Since Wimbledon he's won two majors. I'm still doubtful he can get another--unless Nadal is seriously injured and Federer continues to get very favorable draws.

It doesn't take anything away from Federer to note that during his run at the French Federer faced only one top-10 player (and only two guys from the top 20). He didn't see Nadal, Murray, or Djokovic or run a gauntlet of second-tier, top-fifteeners. Maybe other draws will shake out similarly. If Nadal pulls out of Wimbledon, or shows up hurt, and Djokovic continues his slide, and a bunch of flukey upsets clear a path for him, he can win more majors. But I still think that the days of Fed blitzing through a major thumping a string of guys like Hewitt, Haas, Murray, Gonzalez, Robredo, and Nadal are over.

David Carradine, R.I.P.

There's something remarkably sweet about how, in the wake of his death, David Carradine's family has rallied to protect his honor. For those of you just joining our program, Carradine was found dead, in a Thai hotel, hanging. By both his neck and his junk.

This would lead us to one of two likely explanations: (1) Carradine committed suicide in a somewhat different way; or (2) Carradine died accidentally as the result of a particularly strange sexual deviancy. In the immediate aftermath of his death, Carradine family members were telling anyone who would listen that David would never have committed suicide.

I'd like to think this is the product of some moral ordering which (rightly) sees suicide as a greater sin than sexual deviancy. In this world, the Carradine family is defending is honor by suggesting that he was a pervert.

Of course it's also possible that there is some sort of insurance policy which becomes inoperative in the case of the insured taking his own life. But I chose to believe the former explanation.

The Bloody Show

For whatever it's worth. The headline (for which I can claim no credit) is the best part of the review.

One of the little secrets of the trade is that writers write and editors write headlines. Writers frequently suggest headers; the editors usually come up with their own. All of the best headlines for my pieces have come from editors and "Present at the Creation" is up there with my other favorite. I reviewed a book about Jimmy Carter for Claremont a few years ago where the great John Kienker came up with the header "Malaise Forever."

I'll be forever grateful for that.

Microsoft v. Google

Was this actually the most important news of the week?

Keep Matus Away From Sharp Objects

Here's the trailer for the new Xbox game: The Beatles Rock Band.

More The Beatles: Rock Band Info

Land of the Lost

Variety's Brian Lowry has just reviewed Land of the Lost and it comes down hard:

Hinting at the perils in synergy, "Land of the Lost" conspicuously feels as though someone at Universal was already planning the theme-park ride spinoff before taking a painfully wrong turn with the movie. Modernizing a 1970s children's TV show known for its cheap special effects offered certain possibilities, but the filmmakers have traded in any kid-friendly elements for bathroom humor of dinosaur-sized proportions. The result is a movie with an exceedingly narrow target aud that should test Will Ferrell's appeal among boys maybe ages 12-14--about the only demo likely able to endure this laborious mess.

But maybe the ride will be fun.

Hulu on Your TV

That's the Holy Grail, isn't it? If you could easily put Hulu on your television set (and I don't count the current hack-arounds as easily), then you could basically check out of the cable grind. Today there's a rumor that Roku, the people who first put Netflix streaming onto your TV, might be trying to do the same with Hulu.

My first thought was, Hey, I'd drop Comcast like a bad habit.

But I'm not so sure, because cable has one totally killer app: sports.

I think it was Rupert Murdoch who said, on the occasion of his purchase of Manchester United, that sports broadcasting was the only content that couldn't be time-shifted or packaged as on-demand. For the most part, I think that's true. You can try to watch your French Open broadcast the day after on DVR, but for any mainstream sport, it doesn't seem practical. Who's going to watch an NFL game a day after?

But more to the point for cable, sports are the one area where there is no model for how their broadcast could be de-bundled from the cable package. And add to this, that sports benefit tremendously from high-definition. So if you love sports, it would be pretty hard to give up cable even if you were getting all of your scripted entertainment from a set-top interface with Hulu.

James Cameron and Hollywood Career Economics

A very interesting tidbit from a Q&A with Cameron:

He did take a non-Avatar question when someone asked about “having other people take over franchises that you created.” He got a huge laugh when he cut to the chase and said, “oh Terminator?” He then said that he basically traded the rights for Terminator for a directing career and then when Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to do T3, his heart just wasn’t in it, though he had a few ideas. He said the producers “ran off with the rights, which caused some bad blood” and so when Arnold asked him after they were going in a different direction, Cameron told him, “just do me one thing – ask for more money than anyone ever has.” Arnold said, “reeeeealllly?” He said, “yes. Because what idiots would make a Terminator movie without you?”

And then one other funny bit:

Somebody also asked about his reputation as a hardass on set and compared him with Michael Mann, to which Cameron jokingly replied, “What? Michael Mann’s a whacko.”

King of Kong

This is kind of cool--watch one of the guys from King of Kong try to set a new Donkey Kong high score. Live.

Watch live video from G4TV - Steve Wiebe Donkey Kong Cam on Justin.tv

Xbox > Wii?

Microsoft thinks they've found a way to trump the Wii. Will be interesting to see how it works.

Anchorman

Fast-forward to the 1:05 mark to watch a great moment in local news.

Realtors and Defamation

Galley Friend B.W. sends us this story about a pair of LA realtors suing CSI for defamation.

I don't know much about defamation law (specifically, how it's different from libel law), but I wonder if realtors who advertise extensively, using images of themselves, count as public figures.

The Left's Harriet Miers Non-Moment

The Harriet Miers nomination was one of the few bright moments for conservatives during the Bush administration. Nearly every conservative intellectual outside the precincts of Townhall.com stood up to oppose Miers--not because she wasn't conservative enough or reliable enough--but because she was, by any reasonable standard, neither smart enough nor accomplished enough for the job. Her nomination was the worst of mix of identity politics and cronyism. And for the first time since 9/11, conservatives were willing say, Hold on--I didn't sign up for this.

Clearly, the left has not gotten to that point with Obama. Because if they had, they'd be jumping off the Sotomayor bus rapido. The problem with Sotomayor isn't her politics. She's a lefty. So is Obama. He won and the Dems control the Senate, so that's their prerogative. The problem is that she's a grievance warrior with ideas about race and racialism that are supposed to be out of bounds. Absolutely nobody is making the argument that she's the most intellectually qualified person in America for the gig. And there seems to be at least some evidence that her temperament leaves something to be desired.

President Obama can appoint--and probably get confirmed--anybody he wants. So why not pick a devastatingly smart lefty? Was Elena Kagan busy? Was Cass Sunstein out of town? Shouldn't the left demand as much from Obama? After all, nearly anyone can give you the vote you want. It takes a good deal more to advance or defend an agenda. If I was a liberal Obama supporter, I'd be pretty despondent right about now.

(Mind you, there's one other possibility: It could be that the left sees identity politics itself as the core of their intellectual belief system. In which case they could rightly view the Sotomayor nomination as a victory, the medium being the message and all that.)

But all the evidence suggests that the left is in for a penny, in for a pound.

Obama keeps disappointing them--wiretapping; no Iraq withdrawal; an escalation in Afghanistan; support for torture; no movement on gay issues; little transparency--and they keep rolling right along with him.

Of course, on the one hand, you dance with the one that brought you. On the other, take a look at the GOP to see what loyalty in the face of mistakes gets you at the end of the day.

If you'll recall, liberals were thrilled with the idea of Harriet Miers being on the Supreme Court. They were prepared to pound the table and vote against her, but they thought she was the best they (if not the country or the law) could hope for. Conservatives are now in a similar position.

PS: The Gormogons note that in his introduction to Sotomajor, President Obama said that SCOTUS judges have to interpret principles first more on paper "20 centuries ago."

It sure is great to have a con-law scholar as president.


Update: Hugh Hewitt--pro-Miers and pro-Sotomayor! Paint the map red!

Is Sotomayor a Sailerite?

Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" > "White male" remark is getting all the attention (and why a White "male" and not a White "man," by the by?) but this is what snapped my head around:

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.” [emphasis added]

Isn't that viewpoint normally beyond the pale? (So to speak.) Or is it only career-destroying when Steve Sailer brings it up?

Update: For all her bravery in bringing racialism, it's pretty easy to "terrify" Sotomayor.

Also, I understand that the position of Supreme Court Justice is slightly higher on the prestige meter than Attorney General of the United States, but to argue that "to Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark" seems to completely forget AG A.G., no?

Or maybe the real lesson is: Only Democrats get credit for diversity hires.

Just Asking . . .

If the Denver Nuggets meet the Orlando Magic in the Finals this year, would you give up all conspiracy-theorizing about the NBA? I might.

Kinsley Watch

Can you name five less gracious journalists than Mike Kinsley? Journalism being what it is, this should be easy, but I can only think of two or three off the top of my head.

Oh, in case you don't have time to click through the link, Kinsley wants you to know how much he hates his former boss at Time--and how stupid the guy is! Which is weird, right, because Kinsley was such a class-act when he took job.

Even More Surf Porn

From Riding Giants, just for Galley Friend P.G.:

Change Is Coming

So you better get out of the way!

Who will be the first to read the new V as a critique of Obama-ism?

I don't know. But it would make a fantastic bookend to any LoTR-as-defense-of-Bush exercise . . .

The Ewing Fix

Always remember, never forget.

Voting Coalitions and American Idol

Most people seem surprised by Kris Allen's win over Adam Lambert last night on the Idol finale. I'd argue that the result wasn't as unexpected as you might think.

My household voted for Kris (almost entirely on the strength of his cover of "Heartless," which was the best performance of the season), but I submit that Adam was, at nearly ever turn, the superior candidate. His final night performance was better, his body of work over the course of the season was better, and he's a more saleable commodity as a recording artist in the future. By nearly every metric, he should have won.

Except that there were some indications that Adam had somewhat polarized the voters. Late in the show he finished in the bottom three. And when the show went down to three contestants two weeks ago, it was Adam and two other, virtually indistinguishable, guys. At that moment, it appeared most clearly that there might be a substantial "Not Adam" vote that had been split in the later stages of the competition, but was slowly congealing. From there, it hardly mattered whether it Kris or Danny in the final. One of them would get the other one's vote as the "Not Adam" vote finally consolidated.

So why not Adam? Drudge was teasing this as a Red State-Blue State showdown, but I think that's not quite right. Adam is personally pretty appealing, but his two wheelhouses--glam rock and showtunes--are violently at odds with the musical norms of the series. And worse, when he let them mix, became something weirdly unsettling: American culture has, thankfully, closed the book on the rock opera.

Ultimately, I think that's what did Adam in.

Mind you, I suspect he'll ultimately have the more productive career. But these things are hard to project. I don't know that you could have predicted that Carrie Underwood would have, by far, the best post-Idol career. Or that Jennifer Hudson would win an Oscar.

And anyway, I still find David Cook the most interesting performer to come out of the show. It would be nice to see him break big.

Faint Praise

For Inglorious Bastards:

"[I]t is Tarantino's most sophisticated film since part one of Kill Bill."

Since Kill Bill Part 1, Tarantino has directed one and a half movies.

Netflix, Apple, and Subscription vs. PPV

Fascinating stuff about Netflix's Watch Now streaming from the company's CFO. The most interesting bit is this:

“The big question around Apple and Amazon is not what are they going to do in the pay-per-view space, it is what are they going to do when they realize they are not being very successful,” McCarthy said. “And [theirs is] all new-release content. Something else is going on.”

Important, if true.

Sherlock Holmes: Action Hero

Can't tell if it this is Wild, Wild West or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or worse.

Great Moments in Law Enforcement

I'd love to hear the rationalizations for this. The video is pretty amazing.

But the real scandal seems to be that the Birmingham police department had the video, and knew about the officers' actions, for months. And did nothing about it. It wasn't until someone in the DA's office saw it and took made a beef that the officers were fired.

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

There's a trailer out for DC's new animated feature, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. It doesn't look like anything particularly special.

Which is a shame, because the original book, by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, contains what I take to be the single best distillation of the DC universe's bedrock characters. And it's all done in a spare, two-page prologue.

The prologue begins with a young Clark Kent playing baseball in a field in Smallville. Clark hits a ball way out over a fence by the road. He goes to retrieve it and sees a fancy car parked on the side of the road with a flat tire. A tall, thin gentleman--Alfred Pennyworth, as it turns out--is changing the flat. And sitting sullenly in the back of the car is young Bruce Wayne.

Bruce and Clark eye one another for a moment before going their separate ways. Clark head back to baseball; Bruce turns back to his plotting. In thought bubbles, Clark says, "I still wonder if we should've asked him to play. If it would've made a difference."

And Bruce's thought in reply is, "Sometimes, I wish they had asked me to play. But, by then, my life had changed. I had no time for games."

This is a masterpiece in 8 panels--8 panels!--and it lays out everything you ever need know about Superman and Batman. From here, it's a straight line to Book IV of Dark Knight Returns. It's comics writing at its very, very best, though I'm not sure it'll translate particularly well to film, even animation.

The side question in all of this is why DC has committed itself to direct-to-video animation for its properties. I realize they've had mostly bad experiences with live action, but this strikes me as a failure of management, not material. There's no foundational reason why DC can't build its own film universe the way Marvel has. And I suspect there's more than enough room at the multiplex for both.

More Surf Porn

I've been getting stoked for surf season the last few weeks, thinking about the 4' monsters I'm gonna shred down at the encee. Looking at videos like this is only filling me with more stoke.



It doesn't look so big until the helicopter starts pulling back. At which point you might be thinking, "No . . . oh no . . . dear God, no . . ."

Watch it all the way to the end, because a couple times you think he's dead and somehow he outraces the thing. Unbelievable.

Press Your Gladwell

We weren't the only ones obsessing over Malcolm Gladwell's understanding of the full-court press. More criticism at NY Mag and Deadspin.

Deadspin's coup de grace:

The writer who sings the praises of The Wages of Wins has traveled a vast distance from the writer who once declared that "Iverson is worth a dozen Larry Browns" and who took it for granted that "to be a great athlete, you have to care." It's a writer who seems to be doing quite a bit of thinking without thinking."

More Financial Planning

This is even more horrifying than the Obama stuff.

So a guy who has a prestigious New York Times gig hasn't made a payment on his house in eight months. And the bank hasn't bothered to foreclose on him. And he's sold the story of how he fucked up his financial life as a book.

That's not journalism. It's grifting.

Where was this story during the TARP debate?

Avatar

A friend sent me a 63-page "scriptment" for James Cameron's forthcoming Avatar. I'd heard about the project beforehand but had no idea what the story was actually about. Turns out, it's Last of the Mohicans meets Apocalypto meets the Battle of Endor, meets an Earth Liberation Front Recruiting video. With dashes of Jurassic Park and The Matrix thrown in for spice. Crazy, crazy stuff.

Kind of awesome, too.

The Quotable Ron Artest

From last night:

"I was pretty messed up in the head. I’m always messed up in the head, but I was even more messed up in the head."

It Depends on the Definition of the Word "Definition"

From Galley Friend P.G.:

"The commenters, of course, use the plain English term "torture" immediately, because outside of the MSM, English is still used to mean what it has always meant." --Andrew Sullivan 5/14/2009 [Emphasis mine]

Marriage:

–noun
the social institution under which a man and woman establish their decision to live as husband and wife by legal commitments, religious ceremonies, etc.

the legal or religious ceremony that formalizes the decision of a man and woman to live as husband and wife, including the accompanying social festivities [Emphasis mine again]

Dictionary.com definition of Marriage

Heck, let's throw the Merriam-Webster's definition in while we're at it:

Main Entry:
mar·riage Listen to the pronunciation of marriage
Pronunciation:
\ˈmer-ij, ˈma-rij\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English mariage, from Anglo-French, from marier to marry
Date:
14th century

1 a (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage b: the mutual relation of married persons : wedlock c: the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected ; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities3: an intimate or close union

Is IMAX the New New Coke?

I was excited when my local AMC recently put up signs announcing that they had installed an IMAX screen. The only other IMAX screens in the area are down on the Mall and out by Dulles Airport; neither which is a fun trip. Having an IMAX 3 miles away in a place designed for easy access sound almost too good to be true.

I haven't gotten over there to see a movie on the new screen, but it turns out it probably is too good to be true.

This development (putting the IMAX stamp on large screens that are not actually IMAX format) is particularly disappointing coming from AMC, which is otherwise a great company.

Financial Planning

Wow.

I Was a Columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer

And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Surf Porn

The cover of the latest issue of The Surfer's Journal. Click for the larger version.

More on Gladwell, the Press, Etc.

In a discussion with Galley Friend A.W. I was pressed to explain more fully why I think Gladwell's full-court press/David/Goliath piece is such bosh. Here's a more unpacked expansion of that first post:

1) Gladwell's central premise, that overmatched parties in any sort of conflict need to alter the rules of engagement to maximize their chances of victory, seems so broad and obvious as to be not worth writing about at all. It's like doing 5,000 words on "Hey! In any sort of physical confrontation, the high ground provides an advantage!"

2) Gladwell's specific point about changing the rules of engagement in basketball is, as I've said, ridiculous. There's a reason he had to find a middle-school girls basketball team to bear out his example of the press working as an equalizer: Because the press almost never works as an equalizer; to the contrary, it almost always acts as a multiplier on the talent/skill differential between teams. The press actually stands for exactly the opposite of Gladwell's central premise: It's used by better coached, better skilled, more athletic teams to multiply their advantage over less athletic, skilled, etc. teams.

The reason most "Davids" don't try the press against the "Goliaths" is that the press is *very easy to break* if you're more athletic and skilled than the people pressing you. When weaker teams press stronger teams the result is usually fast-break points for the stronger team as they throw over the top of the press and wind up with a 2-on-1 advantage near the bucket.

The reason Gladwell had to go all the way down to middle school girls basketball is because at that level *none* of the teams--even the really good ones--are particularly skilled or athletic. Using that team to hang his entire piece on is like finding something that worked once in pee-wee soccer and saying the premier league teams should try it. Middle school girls don't play the same game as even junior high school boys, let alone elite Division I men. I wouldn't expect Gladwell to know this, but nearly every strategic aspect of the game changes once you reach the level where people on the court are playing above the rim.

3) Because of this, I suspect, Gladwell doesn't mention the most noted example of a pressing team--Nolan Richardson's "40 Minutes of Hell" Arkansas Razorbacks who won a title and went to a couple other Final Fours. The reason Gladwell doesn't mention them is that those teams were so much more athletic than everyone else that they pressed *and* fast-broke--on almost every made shot offensively and missed shot defensively. The reason Richardson had his team do this was precisely to magnify the advantage his guys already had.

4) Why is it that presses maximize a strong team's advantage? Because it creates more possessions. If Team A shoots 45% and Team B shoots 30%, Team B's best strategy is to cut the number of possessions in the game to the point where they have some chance of winning. The more possessions there are, the better the chance that the law of averages helps Team B pull an upset.

5) As it happens, there are two basketball strategies which underdogs have used throughout the ages to to alter the rules of the game. Gladwell mentions neither of them.

The first is the Four Corners. The four corner offense--spreading the ball in the half court and taking as much time off the clock as possible--was used all through the '60s and '70s and parts of the '80s by underdog teams to give themselves a chance at upsetting better teams. Because if you're an underdog, you could win a game 20-18; but if the score got into the 60s, your chances diminished. The NCAA eventually fought this strategy--because it was so effective--by instituting the shot clock.

The second is the zone defense. The zone presupposes this: The further you get from the basket, the smaller the difference in shooting percentages between good and bad teams. That's generally (though not always) true. So overmatched teams often pack into a zone determined to cut off any shots closer than 10 feet on the assumption that they have a better chance dueling with outside shots where the differential between good and bad is most often no more than 10 percentage points.

6) The other time-worn way to score upsets is by using a gimmick. Paul Westhead, of Loyola-Marymount fame, devised an offense in which his team never held the ball for more than 10 seconds. They fast-broke on every possession, even made baskets, often pulling up and shooting 3s. His teams would average something like 80% more points than the NCAA average; playing them was a nightmare if you saw them for the first time in the tourney; they scored a number of NCAA tourney upsets. Yet Westhead's teams were not, as you might imagine, totally dominant in their own leagues. Why? Because if you see a gimmick a couple times a year, its weaknesses become obvious. Other gimmicks include Syracuse's match-up 2-3 zone and Temple's 1-3-1 trapping zone. These defenses aren't pure gimmicks, but are played infrequently enough that teams seeing the Orange or the Owls for the first time are often given fits by them.

7) Gladwell doesn't mention this, but reason they don't press in the pros is that zone presses (or even true zone defenses) aren't allowed. The NBA--even with it's modified "help-zone" rule--is designed for man-to-man.

So why is Gladwell so enamored with the press? I suspect it's not because he was actually concerned with finding a way for underdogs to lessen their disadvantage in basketball because, as previously stated, there are strategies for that which Gladwell ignores.

It seems obvious that Gladwell fixed on the full-court press because he thought he could use it as a stalking horse for his Outliers contention that great people (or in this case, teams) aren't really great--they just had the luxury of getting 10,000 hours of practice, or having rules tailored for their traditional success, or whatever. Gladwell's middle-school girls let him tell his readers that the ability to work hard is what's rare, not physical talent. Using statistcs-based strategies (like the four-corners or the zone or even Princeton's back-door weave) wouldn't allow him to make that claim.

I think that's what I find so offensive about this piece. As someone who was a mid-level high school player who spent literally thousands of hours practicing basketball, I can assure you that, at least on the court, physical talent trumps perseverance nine times out of ten. Here's the nub of what Gladwell wants to tell his readers:

We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability—legs, in Saxe’s formulation, can overpower arms—because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coördination.

Merely confining himself to strategies which minimize the differential between stronger and weaker teams--like the Four Corners, or zone defenses--wouldn't allow Gladwell to make this grand claim. So Gladwell needed the press, because the press lets him pretend that effort is what makes the difference.

Again, Gladwell's argument might be true at the level of pee-wee soccer, or middle-school girls basketball, but it strikes me as being self-evidently untrue when applied to more advanced arenas. America's playgrounds are teeming with kids throwing themselves into serious, rigorous practice for all kinds of sports. But if you can't throw a baseball 90 mph, you're never going to be a big-league pitcher, no matter how relentless your effort. Which is more rare, a kid who practices basketball relentlessly, like me, or someone who is 6'10", with soft hands who can hit from 15'?

Chrysler Humor

Galley Friend C.W. sends a link to this Megan McArdle post--she seems to be having maybe-sorta second thoughts about Obama! Who knew!

But that's not the point. The real gold is in these two comments down below, where some cranky conservatives are venting about past and future Chrysler bailouts.

Comment #1:

Meet the new Amtrak, same as the old Amtrak.

Comment #2:

Yancey, that's completely ridiculous. Chrysler is NOT the new Amtrak.

The new Amtrak is building a "high-speed" rail network that everyone will be forced to ride because the Chrysler they got in lieu of a tax refund is in the shop drawing on our new universal coverage car-care plan ("Car care is a human right!"). The waiting lists for oil filters are going to be awful, don't you know, and you won't be able to get "life-extending" care after 50,000 miles.

Well played, sir.

Sailer Puts the Press on Gladwell

Steve Sailer has what may be his most devastating deconstruction of a Malcolm Gladwell article yet. The subject is sports and underdogs, and in particular the full-court press in basketball.

Gladwell's hypothesis--that weaker teams should press stronger teams to even the odds--is so divorced from basketball reality that I wonder if he's ever played organized ball at any level. Just one season of 8th grade ball would have taught him that the press (like the fast-break) is a way stronger teams (and by strong I mean "more athletic and better skilled and coached") maximize their advantage over weaker teams.

My middle-school team was pretty insane in 7th and 8th grades. We had probably 10 guys who could dunk and we went undefeated over those two seasons. (My family moved and I wound up at a different high school, but my teammates would go on to win states in our senior season.) We started every game out in a press, either a 2-2-1 or a 1-2-2, depending on whether or not they showed an ability to pass over the top. Typically, we'd call it before half-time since we'd be up by 20. On the rare occasions other teams tried to press us, they'd give up after a couple possessions.

On an semi-related note, we would mostly alternate between running man and a 1-3-1 zone in the half-court on defense. (Our coach was pretty nuts about throwing different defensive looks at people, which had the effect of doing a great job teaching us about the spacial-relations of the game.) The 1-3-1 has the practical effect of acting like a half-court press, with the ball getting trapped every time it goes near a corner. And it has the same overdrive advantage of a true full-court press--it maximizes the better teams advantage.

Also, it was amazingly fun to play. The reason it's not taught more often, however, is because it's only effective when used by very good teams.

Star Trek

Saw the new Star Trek last night and have some assorted thoughts. I'll try to keep this spoiler-free, so it'll be necessarily oblique at times. If you're just looking for a quick take-away, overall there's a lot to like and admire about the movie, but it isn't an instant classic.

Let's start with the good:

* Time travel makes me nervous as a conceit because it tends to open up a narrative Pandora's Box. The Abrams Star Trek (written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) revolves around a single instance of time travel, which is the engine for the entire plot. And the writing here is exceptionally elegant. Again, without getting into any details, the conceit allows Abrams to create his own Star Trek universe without disavowing or re-imagining the original. It allows the new Trek to have both continuity and freedom to go in whatever new directions it wants. I can't overstate my admiration for this thoughtfulness.

But to make it even more impressive, the writers do it with such little fanfare that I suspect most audiences (and critics) won't even realize what's been done until long after they've left the theater.

* The casting is great. Ever single performer succeeds in creating interesting characters from the icons. They're helped enormously by the writing, of course, but even so, the featured players do really solid, organic work. Even in this group, though, were some standouts.

Chris Pine looks, to my eyes, like a serious, bona fide movie star. He's charismatic and interesting; the camera loves him. I haven's seen a star turn like this since George Clooney took over ER. He's already a far superior Kirk. Zoe Saldana turns Uhura from a background token into an actual human being. It's fantastic, subtle, and even touching work. And Bruce Greenwood makes Christopher Pike into a presence that anchors the film even when he's not onscreen. But then, Greenwood is one of those actors who adds value every time he shows up.

* The film really moves. The pacing is brisk and unrelenting. There are very few wasted beats. Nearly every aside has pay-off integral to the story. As a for instance, when Capt. Pike is first taking the Enterprise out he tells Sulu to engage the warp drive. Sulu flubs it and the episode become a joke--a funny little character moment. But it also provides two important narrative points--(1) the minute the Enterprise loses waiting for Sulu to figure things out turns out to be critical and (2) it gives Sulu motivation for another action he takes which might otherwise be out of character. Again, the writers deserve a great deal of credit for this.

With all of that, I feel a little guilty complaining about a few things that didn't quite work for me:

* The villain, Eric Bana's Nero, isn't quite heavy enough (or interesting enough) to hold his own. The best villains are the ones who act as though the story is really about them. Nero is really never more than an afterthought, a guy keeping us from spending time with the really interesting people: Kirk, Spock, etc.

* At times the production felt a little TV-ish. The CGI space battles were less convincing that what was concocted for Battlestar Galactica and some of the sets felt a lot like sets. I don't know what the budget for the production was, but if it cost more than $80M, then I don't know that they got every last dollar up on the screen.

* There were, to my mind, maybe three in-jokes too many. Part of the appeal of this project is that it's a chance to bring in new, non-Trek fans and convert them. I think the movie still has a very good chance of doing that, but newcomers will be aware that there are moments passing over their heads.

One final note: Growing up, you could be either a Star Trek guy or a Star Wars guy. You could like both, but could really only love one. (I was a Star Wars guy.)

Watching flicks like Trek's Search for Whale Songs or whatever that dreadful movie was, I never would have imagined that there could come a time when the Star Wars universe would become such a joke that nobody could thoughtfully embrace it and Trek would be the only serious sci-fi game in town.

But here we are.

Another Reason Not to Live in D.C.

You can get parking tickets in your own driveway.

Figure of Speech

Galley Friend M.G. takes a swipe at TNR's Chris Orr for this paragraph:

I am no military historian, but it's my understanding that many armed conflicts that we might consider pre-civilized concluded with just this kind of slaughter (and pillage, enslavement, etc.), and that the widespread recognition of civilized rules of war has saved literally countless lives. As bad as the Nazis were, I think it's unequivocally a good thing that we were not forced to depopulate Germany. The reason we weren't was that Germany surrendered, and the reason Germany surrendered was its well-placed faith that we wouldn't depopulate (or torture, enslave, etc.) the nation anyway.

Leave aside everything else: How do you use the phrase "literally countless" without giving yourself whiplash.

Brief Political Aside

Ross Douthat, the New York Times's new conservative columnist, has a piece up today doing a What If Dick Cheney had been the nominee in 2008. Douthat seems to think that if Cheney had run he would have lost in such a landslide that it might have jump-started conservatism on the road to intellectual recovery:

[T]he conservative movement might – might! – have been jolted into the kind of rethinking that’s necessary if it hopes to regain power.

One quick question: Why is it that everyone assumes political movements need intellectual renewal to be successful? After John Kerry's defeat, the general consensus was, If the Democrats can't beat a weak incumbent like Bush they're doomed as a political party! Remember how the end was nigh for Democrats in January of 2005? Yet two years later they scored big in the mid-terms and then two years after that expanded their congressional majorities while recapturing the White House.

Did liberalism undergo an intense intellectual renewal between 2004 and 2006? I don't think so. Instead--the other side presided over a series of intensely bad events.

Look, I don't mean to sound like a Marxist determinist here, but let's strip away, for a moment, the more complicated questions of blame and look at the bare facts. After George W. Bush took office:

* Lower Manhattan was devastated in the 9/11 attacks

* America launched two wars, which were conducted with varying levels of success and failure

* New Orleans was destroyed

* Gas prices rose by more than 200 percent

* Home prices fell by something like 40 percent (in some areas)

You don't need intellectual renewal to run against that! (Again, it isn't fair to blame President Bush for all of these events; and he did have some successes. But we're talking about crude political matters here.)

Yet even with that litany of failures, John McCain was still leading Barack Obama until Lehman Brothers collapsed in mid-September, triggering an enormous financial crisis which destroyed a goodly portion of voters' personal wealth. (Funny how McCain's campaign--which was highly imperfect!--went from being perceived as brilliantly obsessed with tactics before the Lehman collapse to "feckless" afterwards.)

In sum, it would be nice for conservatism to find some intellectual energy in the coming months. But that is hardly a precondition for electoral success.

If President Obama proves to be as callow, arrogant, and counter-productively impulsive as President Bush was--and there is much evidence to suggest he will--then there's a good chance that Republicans will regain their political potency irrespective of the state of conservative thought.

On the other hand, even if conservatism's Bright Young Things rescue the movement's hearts and minds from the Bad Old Guys, but the economy quickly recovers, Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize, and the international scene remains stable--then it won't make a bit of difference. Obama and the Democrats will remain politically dominant.