The Rockford Files

(James Garner as Jim Rockford)

One of the best shows ever to run on TV was The Rockford Files, which lasted from 1974 to 1980. The show has been in syndication ever since. I've watched a number of episodes recently (you can see them on Hulu.com).

The show starred James Garner as private eye Jim Rockford. Rockford was a departure from previous television heroes in that he would lose half the fistfights he got into, and was also a self-professed coward. All previous private eyes had essentially been superheroes. Garner was perfect for the role, exuding a regular guy-ness which was refreshing in that era.

Almost every show had a designated turkey, usually Rockford's friend or client, as well as a villain. The turkey -- often Angel Martin, played by Stuart Margolin with consummate sliminess -- was there to give Rockford a foil, as well as someone to rescue.

The Rockford Files ended mid-season in 1980, not because of sagging ratings, but because Garner's various injuries were causing him too much pain. (Garner did most of his own stunts.) There hadn't been any studio-related contractual dispute, either, as it was Garner's company, Cherokee Productions, which produced the show. (Garner is one quarter Cherokee.)

Watching the show now, the frequent car chase scenes seem curiously anachronistic. (Garner had raced cars when he was younger, and must have encouraged the inclusion of such scenes.) Rockford is a little too good to be true, though that's forgivable for a TV hero, and Rocky (his father) is a bit too cornpone. And the plots don't always make perfect sense.

But the shows are still worth watching, both for the dialogue and the humor.

Much of the humor is set up by each show's designated turkey. In one episode, Rockford is trying to help a young lady who is being scammed by a corrupt "guru" who is in fact only interested in her money. When Rockford asks her a specific question regarding her situation, she airily replies, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (This was a popular pseudo-mystical, Zen-derived expression of the era.) Later on, when the guru's scheme unravels and the girl provokes him, he slaps her. Rockford witnesses this, then informs her, "That was the sound of one hand clapping."

One of the funniest episodes revolved around Rockford's unwilling partnership with another private eye, Lance White, played by Tom Selleck (soon to become famous as Magnum PI). White is adored by all the characters Rockford is despised by, including the police lieutenant Rockford regularly locks horns with. White is also impossibly idealistic and naive -- but turns out to always be right, against all odds. In one scene when he and Rockford are held captive by an aging, legendary criminal kingpin (who has just been rejected for asylum in Israel), White high-mindedly informs the man, "You should know by now -- crime doesn't pay." (Of course, it has for this kingpin, and spectacularly so.) Both the kingpin and Rockford roll their eyes at this. But of course, White is able -- through a very lucky set of circumstances -- to bring the man to justice. And Rockford, though he saves White on several occasions, ends up looking like White's ineffectual sidekick.

Unfortunately, this episode is not available on Hulu, but many others, all worth watching, are.

Good witches, bad witches

(Above left, Sharon Stone; right, Megan Fox; below, Bette Davis)














I watched The Wizard of Oz (I must be part gay) for a few minutes last night, and happened to catch the scene where Dorothy first arrives in Oz. When she says she thought all witches were old and ugly, Glinda (the Good Witch of the North) informs her, "Only bad witches are ugly."

That got me to thinking, is there any correlation between looks and character? Most of the beautiful women I've known have been nice, if a tad spoiled.

Then I thought, how could the arrangement of features on a face have anything to do with the psychology on the inside of the skull? But then I thought, good-looking people are generally treated better, even in childhood, so maybe this somehow allows them to develop into more gracious, kindly personalities. And ugly people, who are more likely to be ignored, do have more reason to be bitter.

Then I thought of the one place where the most beautiful women congregate: Hollywood.

I thought of Angelina Jolie, Sharon Stone, Megan Fox, Anne Heche, Margot Kidder, Sean Young, Lindsay Lohan, Halle Berry, Farrah Fawcett, and Mischa Barton. Then I thought back a bit further, to Joan Crawford, Frances Farmer, and Bette Davis.

If you read the gossip pages, as I do -- as I said, I'm part gay -- you realize part of the job requirement for being an actress is, you have to be sorta insane. (Okay, scratch the sorta.) It's as basic a requirement for the job as having a narcissistic personality is for being President (unless you're an accidental President like George Bush Sr. or Gerald Ford.)

Conclusion: You can't believe everything you hear in The Wizard of Oz after all.

If you're thinking that I'm just using this ridiculously trite piece as an excuse to put up pictures of beautiful women (with reputations as bad witches), you're right. I've come to the conclusion that in order to hold peoples' interest, I can't just keep putting up dry political pieces (see "I'd vote for this guy" or "Blood" for examples of extreme aridity).

I have to make this blog more like a tabloid and tart it up a bit.

Barack Obama hard at work deciding what to do about Afghanistan

Okay, so you can outjump some white boys who are probably throwing the game anyway.

It's time to make up your mind, sir.

Charla Nash

The online edition of this morning's New York Post has a photograph of Charla Nash, the woman who was mauled by the chimp in Stamford earlier this year. I was going to include a link to it, but decided against it. I am usually less bothered by this kind of thing than most people, so I looked at the photograph. But I was quite disturbed by it.

In a case like this, it's hard not to think that she might have been better off dying. She's lost her eyes, her jaw, her nose, and all but one of her fingers. She says she is not bitter, which, if true, is testimony to a remarkable strength of character.

In the meantime, she's suing the state of Connecticut for $150 million, saying that they had been warned that the chimp which mauled her had been brought to the attention of authorities before, and they had done nothing about it (which is true).

Any jury with normal human instincts, when they see her, will award her a lot of money. At least her family will be rich when she passes on.

I'd vote for this guy

What we need is a no-nonsense leader who will say:

No more foreign adventures, we are not the world cop. Let's pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and unconditionally. And while we're at it, let's withdraw all aid from the Middle East, we shouldn't be in the business of propping up governments. Let the other countries destroy each other, it's not worth American lives and money.

Collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps must be regulated like any other security. Firms which want to trade these instruments must put up margin just as with futures and options. Wall Street firms must have capital ratios of no more than ten (times their equity in assets). With those regulations in place, if a Wall Street firm still fails from excessive amounts of the wrong kinds of bets, too bad. You're bankrupt, and so are your shareholders. No more gambling with taxpayer money. And at the banks currently on governmental life support, no one gets paid more than half a million a year. Period.

If a car company goes bankrupt, the bondholders own it. Not the unions. That's the law. The unions -- along with incompetent management and lousy engineers -- are what made the car companies bankrupt in the first place.

We have to take serious steps to balance the budget. Otherwise this is going to be the United States of China.

It's not the government's business to deal with victimless crimes. Let gays do what they want, including marry each other. The government's only role when it comes to sex is to protect children and nonconsenting adults.

No more racial politics. Disparate impact is inevitable in a diverse society. Not all groups have the exact same abilities or inclinations. Affirmative action or any other form of racial spoils systems are out. For college admissions offices to take into account an impoverished background is fine -- that's merely equalizing opportunity, not outcome. If proportionally more blacks than whites get helped, that's fine, too, because they're being helped because they're poor, not because of their race.

No special categories of hate crimes, which is merely affirmative action punishment favoring certain protected groups. The laws regarding violent crime are plenty adequate already.

If you feel abortion is immoral, don't get one. If you want one, go ahead; it just means people with your instincts will go extinct more quickly.

The borders need to be sealed. US citizenship is not the birthright of everyone in the world. And it's also not available to a child whose mother sneaks across the border to have her baby.

My guess is, this is how the majority of the electorate feels. The problem is, neither the Republican nor Democratics offers such a platform. The libertarians do, but they are considered a fringe group. Our two party system is superior to the communists' old one party system, but a system which made room for more than two parties would be even better.

Blood (the complete version)

The recent massacre brings up the issues of dual loyalties, affirmative action, and racial profiling, and places their outcome squarely in front of the American public.

It's not surprising that Nidal Malik Hasan, with his radical Islamic views, would open fire on US soldiers in Ft. Hood. What is surprising is that with all of the warning signs he gave off, no one did anything about him beforehand. Hasan was even promoted to Major earlier this year despite extremely poor performance reviews. When he "counseled" returning veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, instead of trying to help them heal, he evidently harangued them about the unjustness of the wars they had just fought in.

But he was promoted anyway, because the Army has unofficial quotas for minorities, including Muslims, and wants to appear a model of diversity.

Hasan told his fellow soldiers that infidels should be killed. He said that Muslims should wage war on Americans. He said he was a Muslim first and an American second. And he made absolutely no effort to hide his beliefs. (Sure enough, he yelled "Allahu akbar!" as he began his killing spree.)

Now it's emerging that he attended the mosque of a radical imam in Virginia and had tried to get in touch with al Qaeda. Yet the FBI, which had intercepted those emails, dismissed them as inconsequential.

So why did nobody do anything? Because the Army brass, the FBI, and everyone else involved in this sordid affair are all afraid of being called racist.

Race is, of course, America's great sacred cow. We are supposed to repeat, "Our diversity is our strength" until we actually believe it. But a Balkanized America -- which is what all these racial set-asides have resulted in -- is a much weaker America. Yet, we're not supposed to notice.

Over the past eight years, I've never once been singled out for individual attention when boarding an airplane. I'm swarthy, male, and vaguely ethnic (some would say fanatical-looking as well) in a way that should scream "terrorist!" to any half-awake security person. Yet I've always been whisked right by, while witnessing little old white ladies being pulled aside for special attention.

This certainly doesn't make me feel any safer. Call me silly, but I value my life over my (possibly hurt) feelings any day.

Japanese-Americans who live on the West Coast were interned during World War II simply because of their ancestry. No one today regards this as anything but a tremendous injustice. At the time, FDR -- that great liberal icon -- thought there was a possibility that Japanese who lived on the West Coast might side with the Japanese if they invaded America. This was not entirely unreasonable; blood is often thicker than citizenship. It certainly was with Nidal Malik Hasan. Or look at la Raza's stance on immigration.

During World War II, Japanese-Americans who were from Hawaii and elsewhere were allowed to serve in the US Armed forces, and they often served with distinction. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii won the Medal of Honor for having served on the European front. Yet Japanese-Americans were not allowed to serve on the Pacific front because it was thought that they would have mixed feelings about fighting people of their own ancestry.

While the internment was completely unfair, it seems reasonable that the Army would quietly steer soldiers away from situations in which they would be asked to kill their own kin.

What should have been done with Nidal Malik Hasan, a Palestinian Muslim whose sympathies lay entirely with the other side? First, he should never have been promoted. Secondly, he should have been fired from his job after his horrible performance reviews at Walter Reed. And the Army -- and FBI -- should have taken some sort of action when it became apparent he was trying to contact al Qaeda. He had tried to commit treason long before actually pulling the trigger.

The Army should also have some sort of clawback provision for soldiers who get hundreds of thousands of dollars of free medical education at their expense, but then for some reason prove themselves unfit to serve.

In the meantime, it's entertaining to watch the dance Barack Obama and the media are doing to steer public opinion away from any commonsensical conclusions about this incident. Obama's first response was that we shouldn't rush to judgment -- something he himself was all too willing to do in the Henry Gates affair. And the media has suggested that Hasan somehow caught PTSD from the soldiers he counseled (as if it were contagious, like a venereal disease).

Certain ethnicities are more likely to react in a certain ways, and commit certain types of crimes. If the authorities are prohibited from taking this into account, they will not be able to do their jobs effectively. Willful blindness has never been a wise policy.

It certainly wasn't in Ft. Hood, where our diversity proved to be our weakness.

The kind of husband you want

The following account is from this morning's NY Times:

The police say they have an audiotape that disproves claims by the 37-year-old wife of a wealthy health care executive that she was abducted from her Forida beach community by a 25-year-old mechanic. Investigators say that the audiotape proves that the wife, Quinn Gray, plotted the kidnapping with Jasmin Osmanovic, who the police say was her lover. The sheriff of St. John's Count, David Shoar, said Ms. Gray and Mr. Osmanovic, were heard plotting their extortion scheme on the tape. The authorities in Ponte Vedra said Ms. Gray's 38-year-old husband, Reid Gray, found a note from his wife on Sep. 4. The note said that three men wanted him to deliver a ransom of $50,000 and that he was not to involve the police. Mr. Gray is standing by his wife in the case, paying for her legal defense as she and Mr. Osmanovic face extortion charges.

Love to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. ("Oh honey, you know I'd never do that. I love you way, way too much to ever try to pull a crazy stunt like that. The police are just trying to make themselves look good. You're the most important thing in the world to me, you know you are.")

Sounds as if somebody needs an education in sociopathy. (Actually, he got one but seems to be ignoring it.)

This willfully obtuse fellow is a successful health care executive, too. If this incident is any illustration of the brains it takes to succeed in that field, well, no wonder a trip to the doctor costs so much these days.

Whither Steinbrenner?

It used to be in the old days, George Steinbrenner, owner of the NY Yankees, was a dominating, domineering presence. Back in the 70's, when he used to hire and fire manager Billy Martin, he made as many headlines as any two of the players combined.

I'm not a baseball fan, but learned enough through osmosis to know that he was a guy everyone loved to hate.

In all of the articles I've seen about the Yankees' World Series win, I have yet to see Steinbrenner's name mentioned. I checked Wikipedia to make sure he was still alive, and sure enough, he is, and still owner of the Yankees, although he is no longer chief executive, a role he has delegated to his sons Hank and Hal.

According to Wikipedia, Hank is similar in temperament to his father. But he either purposely keeps a lower profile, or the media has deliberately chosen to ignore him.

Good coaches, bad coaches

This article might actually be of slight interest to nonswimmers, as it is more about the relationship between coaches and athletes and less about swimming:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/22513.asp?q=Good%20Coaches,%20Bad%20Coaches

Our man in Afghanistan

(On left, Hamid Karzai; on right, actor Ben Kingsley)

President Obama evidently just made a congratulatory phone call to Hamid Karzai on his "election." Back in August, Karzai had stuffed the ballot box with more than a million fake votes. When this became embarrassingly apparent, it was determined that there be a runoff election between Karzai and runner up Abdullah Abdullah. Yesterday, however, Abdullah withdrew from the election, saying that it would be fraudulent as the first. So today Karzai was declared the "victor."

Personally, I think anyone who tries to steal an election should not only be automatically disqualified, but clapped in jail as well. But the White House seems to be figuring, well, we gotta bet on someone. Karzai may be corrupt, but at least the former CIA operative is our corrupt leader. (The current administration, hailing as it does from Chicago, may feel a certain sympathy for that particular foible.)

Karzai seems to bear a strong resemblance to Ben Kingsley, who is most famous for his Oscar-winning turn as Mohandas Gandhi back in 1982. In behavior, however, Karzai probably more closely resembles another Kingsley role: Meyer Lansky (in Bugsy, 1991). The resemblance resonates all the more when you consider that Hamid's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is reputed to be one of the biggest heroin dealers in all of Afghanistan.

This farcical "election" underlines more clearly than ever why we should get out of Afghanistan. We first went there with the intention of rooting out Al Qaeda and finding Osama bin Laden. We merely pushed al Qaeda into Pakistan and we never found Osama. But somewhere along the way our mission turned into an attempt to remake Afghanistan as a united, modern democracy. The only problem with that is that the various Afghan tribes have no interest in uniting, they have no interest in democracy, and they despise the U.S.-approved Karzai for being the corrupt man he is. And the longer we stay there, the more they hate us.

If you were at a party where everyone hated you, wouldn't you leave?

The problem is, Obama doesn't want to be seen as the one who lost the "war on terror" when he runs for reelection in 2012. Obama doesn't want to wage war on Muslims in some faraway land. All he cares about is making sure that black people get a larger share of the pie. But because he wants to be reelected, he'll let the Afghan war drag on in a desultory fashion with no satisfactory conclusion either way. This is why when he finally makes a decision, it will probably be to send more troops, but not as many as McChrystal wants. (This is the equivalent, as others have pointed out, of voting "present" in the Senate, something Obama was known for.)

If they ever make a movie about this war, at least they'll know who to cast as Hamid. That will be the only straightforward part of this whole sordid, misbegotten venture.

For exercise addicts only

Training your body to do something is actually a fairly straightforward concept: you must train hard so that your body adapts to the training, and you must keep giving it progressively harder exercises to do, so that it becomes increasingly stronger.

At the same time, you must also recover let your body recover in between workouts. If you train hard and never give your body a chance to build itself back up, you'll simply wear yourself down to a crisp.

It's a simple concept, but one which a lot of people seem to get wrong.

What you're doing when you're exercising is actually tearing your muscles down. After you've torn them down, those muscles, with proper nutrition and rest, then rebuild themselves in ways that next time it will perform that exercise better. But without that recovery period, you'll just continually tear your muscles down and not give them a chance to recover.

Most people do either too little or too much. People who aren't into exercise just let themselves go, and wind up with minimal muscle and maximal fat. And people who are addicted to their exercise tend to overdo it, and get injured that way. Injuries tend to happen when someone doesn't give himself enough recovery time. And that period of recovery time needs to be longer as we get older.

The average jogger will run something like three miles a day, every day, at eight minute pace. What he is effectively training himself to do is run three miles a day at eight minute pace. Period. He'd be better off running five miles, every other day. He'd not only be training his body to run further, and therefore be stronger, but he'd be allowing it to recover in between runs.

He'd be even better off if he varied his exercise more, so his body adapted to different types of stress. If he ran sprints and did calisthenics Monday, took Tuesday off, ran long distance Wednesday, took Thursday off, then swam on Friday, he'd find himself feeling much stronger than if he just ran three miles every day. He'd have more speed and explosive power, more endurance, more looseness to his muscles, and healthier joints. He'd also look a lot better.

Look at the people you know who run daily but do nothing else. They mostly look like the before picture in the old Charles Atlas ads. Plus they develop a certain brittleness to their bodies. They'd be much better off varying their exercises, and incorporating yoga and other upper body exercises. With the advent of Pilates, body sculpting classes, kettlebells, yoga, etc, fewer people are getting it wrong than twenty years ago; but many still are.

A former Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates, trained each muscle group exactly once a week. He said if he went hard, that was all he needed to do. And he understood the damage that overtraining can do. Arnold Schwarzenegger, back in his Mr. Olympia days, once purposely sabotaged up and comer Lou Ferrigno by telling him that he himself trained with massive amounts of reps -- which wasn't true. (Not unlike the way the California legislature is now sabotaging Schwarzenegger.)

Think of the sprinters in both swimming and running. Most of them are basically lazy But as a result, many of them have more explosive power. Sprinters tend to look like studly, distance athletes geeky. Some of this is genetics, but some of it is the nature of their training. Be dedicated, work hard, turn yourself into a wimp.

Another concept that many people tend to lose sight of is specificity of training. If you're training to swim a 100 yard freestyle in under 50 seconds, doing endless repeats of 100 free's (or multiples of 100 free's) at 1:10 pace will do you next to no good, and it could even harm you. What you should be doing is repeats of 50 freestyles in as close to 25 seconds as you can get. These stressful days should be interspersed with easy days, which might include 100 yard freestyles at 1:10 pace. But if all you do is swim long distances slowly, your sprinting will never improve. (I use swimming as an example because serious track athletes tend not to get this concept wrong as often.)

My apologies for this boring post, but it's advice some would do well to take.

I suppose I could heed it myself. Last night my son mocked me by pulling his t-shirt over his chin (to represent my weak chin) and whining, "I can't get my books published." When I told him that he shouldn't be so hurtful to me during my formative years, he replied, "Yeah, formative -- formative of that spare tire around your stomach."

Without attribution

A friend forwarded this to me. I looked for it on the web in an effort to give credit to the author, but even though I found it several places, the author's name was never listed. Anyway, it's quite clever (you have to read it all the way through):

John was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets,' and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. He kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.

This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.

John's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover. To John's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring.

He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making.

Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention?

Vote carefully next year - the bells are not always audible.

O'Reilly vs. Olbermann

The recent brouhaha between the White House and Fox News, and subsequent comparisons between Fox and MSNBC, spurred me to quantify an impression I’d had in the past: that primetime Fox News regularly has guests with opposing viewpoints, whereas MSNBC does not. To that end I watched both Bill O'Reilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC from 8 to 9PM on Monday and Tuesday evenings. (Olbermann wasn't on Wednesday night.) I flipped back and forth to make sure I didn't miss any guests. My impression was confirmed. On Monday evening, most of O'Reilly's guests had conservative views, but he did have Juan Williams, a liberal, and also Mary Ann Marsh, a Democratic strategist. Williams generally tones himself down when on Fox, so let's count Monday night's tally as one and a half Democrats. On Tuesday, O'Reilly interviewed Joe Sestak and Anthony Weiner, both Democratic Congressmen. He interviewed Alan Colmes, one of Fox's two token in-house liberals. And he had on legal expert Jennifer Smetters, who argued vigorously with O’Reilly, although she didn't seem a political animal. We’ll call that three and a half Democrats for Tuesday night. Keith Olbermann had on exactly zero Republicans Monday night. His guests included Chuck Schumer, Ariana Huffington, Chris Hayes (the Washington editor of The Nation), Richard Wolffe, an MSNBC analyst, and author Susie Essman. Tuesday night’s lineup also featured zero Republicans. Olbermann had on Senator Wyden, Rose Ann Demoro (from the National Nurses Organizing Committee), Howard Fineman, an MSNBC analyst, and Gene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist. This trend tends to continue, by the way, for the next hour. Sean Hannity of Fox does occasionally have Democrats on (though generally not as many as O'Reilly), whereas Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has no Republicans on her show. What does it say about a talk show host that he won’t allow any opposing viewpoints? Is he afraid to get into an argument because he knows, or at least senses, that the facts won’t back him up? Is it intellectual laziness? Is he afraid that the brittleness of his personality will be exposed by having to face an actual opponent? Is it all of the above? Liberals are always forever congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness. Yet one would think true open-mindedness would require at least hearing the counter argument. But neither Olbermann nor Maddow is willing to do this. (So much for "diversity.") This is in keeping with attitude of liberals on campus, who will often shout down conservative speakers in an effort to prevent them from getting their message across. Part of the reason for this, of course, is their fear that an audience might be swayed by their opponents' arguments. (Conservatives on campus simply don’t do this to liberal speakers.) In election years, candidates will often try to make it appear that their opponent is the one unwilling to debate. Fox seems to have won this battle. Watch O'Reilly, and after a while it becomes apparent that crocodile smile exudes smugness. His driving force seems to be egotism. Watch Olbermann, and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s driven by hate, the emotion liberals love to disparage yet themselves indulge in so frequently. With Olbermann, it’s his very lifeblood. You’ll never hear him say much positive about the left; he far prefers to spend his hour insulting Republicans. There are also undercurrents of hysteria and compulsiveness that pervade Olbermann's presentation. He doesn't seem able to help himself: he absolutely must sneer at every Republican he mentions. On Tuesday night alone, Obermann referred to Rick "Mad Dog" Santorum," "Failed presidential candidate Fred Thompson," "Lead teabaggist Dick Armey," "apparent Adirondack expert Newt Gingrich" (who had gotten into an argument with other Republicans over whether to support the Republican or Conservative candidate in a local race), "streetwalker for the insurance industry" (in reference to a Republican who didn't support the health bill, I didn't catch the name), and "the torture President" (Bush). The reference to Armey, for those unfamiliar with it, was Olbermannn's way of twisting the Republican term "tea parties," named after the famous Boston one which preceded the Revolutionary War, into "teabagging," a sexual practice among gay men. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, making this a completely gratuitous and nonsensical reference on Olbermann's part. Had a Republican said this, he would of course have been accused of being homophobic. When O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have Democrats on their show, they are generally polite, if argumentative. One gets the sense that this would be beyond Olbermann's capacity. This isn't even an indictment of all of MSNBC. Chris Matthews, a liberal who hosts an earlier show, exudes earnestness and good will. Pat Buchanan, of all people, is a regular commentator. Unfortunately, MSNBC has reserved prime time for their most rigid, strident voices.

Socialism 101

Barack Obama, in an excerpt from a radio interview with WBEZ in Chicago from 2001:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.

And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

Keep in mind, these are all Obama's words. It wasn't as if the interviewer gave that speech and then asked Obama if he agreed, and Obama replied, "Yeah, I guess so." You don't talk at length about how the tragedy of the civil rights movement is that if failed to bring about redistributive change unless it's something you've thought long and hard about, and feel strongly about.

Any time you hear the phrase "redistribution of wealth" used in a positive way, or the phrase "economic justice" used in any way, you're listening to a socialist.

Now ask yourself, what are the odds that Obama had a major change of heart between 2001 and 2008 and shifted his world view rightward?

(I agree.)

Will the real Barack Obama please stand up? Well, he did, back in 2001. He stayed in his chair in 2008, but he's standing again now.

I have no problem with Obama being socialist, that's certainly his right. But I do have a problem with the way he posed as something else during his Presidential campaign.

Ask and tell

The reasoning against allowing openly gay people in the military is roughly as follows: the other soldiers would be uncomfortable with a homosexual in the barracks, and it might hurt the esprit de corps. 

But the guys most comfortable with gays tend to be those most secure in their own masculinity, and you'd think the macho types in the barracks wouldn't be upset by their presence. (Though this does tend to be truer of 30-somethings than 18-year-olds.) 

Gays abound in corporations. Yet you never hear people complain, "We can't get any business done, those homos are just blowing each other left and right and are really hurting the company morale." (My impression is that they make great workers.) 

Some might point out that coworkers at a corporation don't have to sleep in the same room, which is true enough. But students often room -- and even shower -- with gays in college dormitories. You never hear anybody complain that they can't get any studying done as a result. 

Gays are certainly omnipresent on Capitol Hill. Well, that may not be the best example of a place which remains functional despite their presence. 

Heteros tend to imagine that any gathering of gays will automatically turn into a big orgy. But this is not so. I went to a gay-themed swimming meet once (it was held in conjunction with the Pride festivities of 2004, and I was looking for a meet in a fast pool). I was apprehensive beforehand, and was one of the few non-gays there. But the meet was well run, people were polite and helpful, and there were zero public displays of affection that I saw. 

The only place which has a widespread homosexual harassment problem is prison. And it seems that most of the rape there is committed by animals whose orientation would be straight on the outside, but who will jump on anything that moves. (This is not a brief for abolishing prisons, though something should be done to protect prisoners from homosexual rape. On second thought, if their crimes were odious enough, maybe not.) 

As it is, gays are not banned from the military unless they "tell," which means that some are serving now. Yet you never hear of cases of gay-caused disruption. ("We were attacked by the Taliban, and we might have held them off, but Bruce and Geoffrey were too busy painting their nails to bother to pick up their rifles.") 

Army culture will always be macho -- as it should be, if you're interested in winning wars -- but that doesn't have to exclude gays. The gays drawn to the military are probably a fiercer breed than the ones drawn to fashion. 

Some of the biggest Olympic stars have been gay. Given that sport is essentially stylized, nonlethal combat, many of those gay athletes would undoubtedly have made great soldiers. Greg Louganis, after suffering a concussion from hitting his head on the springboard in 1988, continued to compete, and went on to win the gold medal. If it had been me, I probably would have listened to the doctor and quit. Louganis would have made a better soldier than me. 

Spartan soldiers were known to have homosexual relations with each other. The case could be made that soldiers thus bonded would be even more loyal to each other. (Check out the movie 300; it's proof that soldiers who wax their chests make incredibly effective warriors.) 

In 2002, the military saw an increase in enlistments because of the surge of patriotism which followed 9/11. But as the war dragged on, enlistments faltered and the military had to lower its standards in order to make its quotas. 

More recently, enlistments have risen again because of the economy, and the standards have risen commensurately. (The Army can once again insist on high school diplomas and a minimum IQ of roughly 92.) 

If gays knew that they would be accepted, they would enlist in larger numbers, and that might allow the Army to raise its standards even further. (Who knows, they might also improve the decor of those drab barracks.) 

It's hard enough to recruit people willing to die for our country. Turning some of them down on the basis of their sexuality seems wasteful. (Rather than turning them away, we should be honoring them.) Gays have always been with us, and always will be. The military might as well take advantage. 

Any fighting force brave enough to face enemies with guns is more than brave enough to face gays in their barracks.

What insurance is

The biggest controversy attached to the ever-evolving health bill is whether to include a public option. There seems to be much less publicity about the insurance companies being forced to take on people with pre-existing conditions. This stands the idea of insurance on its head.

If, once you develop a serious -- and expensive -- illness, no insurance company can turn you down, there is little incentive to purchase insurance beforehand.

You can't wait until your house burns down to buy fire insurance, and then expect to be paid off for the fire. Neither can you buy life insurance on people who are already dead. When you buy insurance, you're guarding against the small possibility of a catastrophe. If a lot of people are willing to pay a small amount for a tiny chance of a large payout, then insurance companies can make money and survive.

In that sense it's not unlike the lottery, which is a government program to make money.

If, once you found out what the winning number of the previous lottery was, you could then retroactively order a ticket with that number, and demand a payout, the state would soon go bust. Yet this is what Obama is recommending for insurance companies.

Several versions of the new plan make it compulsory for everyone to buy insurance of some sort, and include a $3700 penalty for people who don't. But how could this possibly be enforced? And although Obama has said that he won't raise taxes a single dime to pay for this health plan, that $3700 smells an awful lot like a tax, just under a different name. I suppose that would be one way to pay for the new "insurance."

The fundamental problem is that you can't repeal the basic laws of economics, any more than you can repeal the law of gravity. Yet this seems to be what the Obama administration is attempting. They did it when they shortchanged the GM and Chrysler bondholders in favor of the unions. And they want to do it here. To be fair, the Bush administration also did it with their TARP program. They also did it when they changed the rules for mortgages in an effort to get more minorities into houses. (That sure worked out well.) In fact, any interference on the part of the government can be construed as interfering with the laws of economics. But most government interference, at least to date, is meant to gently nudge things in one direction or another, not turn economics on its head. In general, the more government interference there is, the more the laws of economics are disrespected.

But that's sort of like messing with Mother Nature. Many drugs have side effects, which is why in that field, pharmaceutical companies which want to mess with Mother must have their products go through very extensive testing, including double blind experiments to measure every conceivable side effect.

The health insurance bill will go through no such testing process. It will just be sprung on the public immediately, full force.

In a way, though, Obama's effort to nationalize and unionize as much of the economy as possible has been tried before. It was tried in the Soviet Union starting in 1917. It was tried with a number of Eastern European countries a little later. And it is still being tried in Cuba and North Korea now.

Judge for yourself how successful those experiments have been.

Fake votes

The widespread fraud behind Karzai's election in Afghanistan makes it apparent that the appropriate response for a rigged election -- there and elsewhere -- ought to be more than just having those votes not counted.

When someone doesn't pay his taxes, his punishment isn't merely having to then pay them. There is always an extra penalty assessed. Otherwise there is no disincentive for tax evasion.

It ought to be the same way with any sort of chicanery around election time. If you somehow arrange for 5000 fraudulent votes, not only should those be disallowed, but you ought to have 10,000 legitimate votes subtracted from your total as well. Or something like that.

Of course, this could result in a situation whereby a politician's enemies try to arrange obviously fraudulent votes on his behalf. But politics has always been a blood sport.

The best thing the U.S. could do for Afghanistan is arrange for a legitimate election overseen by the U.S. military.

And then have the U.S. military leave.

That would also be the best thing for us.

Mike Tyson

I watched "Tyson" Saturday night. It's not something I would have seen on my own, but my son has a bit of an obsession with Mike Tyson, so I tagged along. Much of the movie consists of just Tyson talking; these scenes are interspersed with clips showing various highlights (and lowlights) of his life.

Before the movie started, my son asked me, "Is Mike Tyson a sociopath?" I said I wasn't sure. (But I did come to a conclusion by the end of the movie.)

The obvious answer would be yes. Tyson seems to be out of control. His run-ins with the law, including his rape conviction, his almost bestial quality in the ring, including the infamous ear-biting incident, and his numerous colorful quotes ("I'm going to eat his children," etc.) all emit the odor of sociopathy.

But sociopaths are always, at root, dishonest creatures. A sociopath is concerned with presenting a certain image, and to that end will try to hide his true nature. Tyson is the opposite. His personality is basically just one big primal scream. It can be a scream of joy (when he was on top of the world), of rage (when more duplicitous types took advantage of him), and of regret (more recently). There is an almost childlike quality to the way he talks so honestly about his life, and the way he doesn't try to hide his emotions, raw as they may be. This was particularly apparent when he spoke of his early criminal history and other bad behavior.

The most poignant scene in the movie came when Tyson talked about his relationship with Cus d'Amato, the trainer who semi-adopted him: Tyson's tears welled up and for a while he was unable even to talk. Whenever I've seen a sociopath cry, it is always out of self-pity. (Witness Leona Helmsley breaking down after her arrest.) You can say that Tyson broke down partly out of self-pity, since d'Amato was the only one who ever gave him love and consideration. (You can also say that d'Amato's "love" was also somewhat selfish, since he wanted a heavyweight champion and saw Tyson as that vehicle.) But there also seemed to be genuine affection, on both sides.

Verdict: Mike Tyson, though he lacks self-control, is not a sociopath.

One aspect of Tyson's makeup inseparable from his behavior is his hyperandrogenization, giving him his own inbuilt genetic supply of "steroid rage." He was in the grip of this rage when he bit Holyfield's ear. Evidently Holyfield had continually head-butted him during their match, and referee Mills Lane, an avowed Holyfield fan, had refused to call Holyfield for it. So Tyson became enraged and lost control.

Tyson has certainly had other, better reasons for rage. (At the head of that list would be Don King, who most definitely is a sociopath. Second on the list is Robin Givens, a probable sociopath.)

Another person who may have exploited Tyson is Desiree Washington, the woman whose "rape" he went to jail for. Tyson claims he didn't do it. He admitted having "taken advantage of" other women in the past, but insisted he hadn't done so with her. Given how honest Tyson is in every other aspect of his life in the movie, it seems telling that he is so bitter against her.

Google "Desiree Washington," and you'll find nothing. But look at the Wikipedia entry on Tyson, and you'll see a paragraph about the trial. It came out there that Washington had a history of leading other men on, and despite her original statement, she later admitted that she had had several opportunities to leave his hotel room that evening, but hadn't taken them. The jury was evidently put off by Tyson's demeanor during the trial, which they read as sullen and arrogant. (That may in fact have been a function of his resentment about the false charges.) Such an attitude may be good reason to dislike someone, but it is not reason to convict him.

We'll never know, but my guess is that he was innocent of those charges. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a man has been sent to jail on false rape charges. One can say, given Tyson's admission that he had "taken advantage" of other women, that his conviction was in fact poetic justice. And maybe it was. But our legal system is not set up to render poetic justice.

Tyson represents everything that the black middle and upper classes like to dissociate themselves from: he is primitive, uneducated, lawless, and out of control. (Talk to any member of these groups, and you'll find they almost invariably prefer -- and prefer to identify with -- the lighter-skinned, eloquent and elegant, playful and politicized Muhammad Ali.) But watching this movie, I was left with the impression that Tyson is, in his own way, far more noble than most members of the black -- or white -- upper classes.

There is a nobility in the way Tyson is brutally honest with himself, and the way he makes no attempt to be anything other than what he is. There is a nobility to the way he fought in the ring. (In an earlier era he might have been referred to as a valiant warrior, and not just because of his ferocity; against both Buster Douglas and Lennox Lewis, although he was losing from the start, he kept battling until he was well and truly knocked out. It's called "going out on your shield.") There is a nobility -- as well as a naivete -- to the way he was so trusting of others. (People almost always assume that others are as honest as they themselves are.) Tyson even looks noble, with his outsize cheekbones, arched eyebrows, fierce eyes, and shaved head. (The hulking physique doesn't detract from this impression.) Even the way he tattooed his face with that Maori war motif, at a certain level, showed a certain reckless courage.

You can interpret all of these things as simple-mindedness, and there may be some truth to that as well. But while he is more childlike than most, he is also more manly than most of us could ever dream of being. And I don't mean that in just the physical sense.

If you've seen any of the King Kong movies, you know that King Kong was a scary, elemental force of nature who knew only the laws of the jungle. Everybody loved to marvel at and be scared by his primordial strength and ferocity. He was not well versed in the ways of humans, and eventually fell prey to some cunning showmen. But he was at heart an honest creature who was capable of love. And by the end of the movie, you know that he was essentially far better -- far more noble -- than the people who exploited him.

I emphasize, strongly, that I am not calling Mike Tyson an ape; I am merely making an analogy.

Black like me

It's a worthwhile exercise for whites to occasionally imagine what it's like to be black. So imagine for a moment that you are a black with an IQ of, say, 120.

Most white people you meet probably assume you're stupid, even though you're smarter than the vast majority of them. Thanks to affirmative action, even a degree from a prestigious school won't help, because everybody just assumes you got in because of your race. Every time you meet a new white person, you must prove your intelligence. You're guilty (of being dumb) until proven innocent.

I don't blame whites for making the assumptions that they do, but if you're black, it's got to be wearying.

Every single white person you meet you wonders if you're dangerous. You must be friendly and soft-spoken in order to slowly earn their trust. Again, I don't blame whites for fearing blacks; but if you're black, constantly having to work to set people at ease must also be tiresome.

The police are more likely to be suspicious of you and stop you. Again, for the police not to be more suspicious of the group which commits the most crime per capita would be silly. But if you're the average law-abiding black, and you've personally done nothing to deserve this type of suspicion, it would be hard not to be resentful.

These days blacks rarely encounter overt hostility. Most whites are far too cowed for that. But because of that fear, most whites become much more guarded around blacks. So the racism blacks encounter these days is far more likely to be of the subtle variety -- the kind liberals exhibit. Whites who are overly friendly to black people in a way they would never be to other whites make black people uncomfortable.

Liberals also judge black behavior by a different (and lower) standard. Black people are aware of this -- and will sometimes take advantage of it -- but the implications are not lost on them. When less is expected of you, this is merely a different form of racism.

Liberals also have a tendency to use blacks to prove something about themselves, namely, that they're good, i.e., nonracist, people. This type of behavior makes blacks realize that whites often see them as a generic black person, rather than as an individual. (The fact that whites sometimes mistake one black for another doesn't help.)

If you're black, this kind of reception has to make you feel -- at some level -- like the unwanted guest at the party.

An example. My son recently took an African History class at his high school. There was one black kid in his class. Whenever the teacher -- a confirmed liberal -- didn't know something, he would ask the black kid, as if the fact that he was black meant that he would know something that took place in Africa hundreds of years ago. My son also said that whenever the teacher would defer to the black student this way, the student would just say he didn't know and look extremely uncomfortable.

Liberals may not be threatening, but they are effective at making blacks feel their sense of otherness.

Even prominent liberal white politicians who publicly decry racism never seem to want to actually live among blacks themselves. What do blacks make of this?

Blacks see other "liberation" movements who've taken their cue from blacks, for instance women and gays. These groups like to paint themselves as oppressed. And, at a certain level, they are. But they haven't suffered nearly as much from discrimination as blacks have. They've never been slaves, or even segregated. White women have always been taken care of, and white gays can just hide their sexuality. Blacks can never hide their race.

Blacks see young white men who adopt ghetto mannerisms and wonder, who do they think they're fooling? What do they think, that being black is an affectation? They can go back to being white any time they want.

Whites often get tired of slavery being used as a reason to demand special privileges, or an excuse for bad behavior (as do I). But imagine again, for a moment, that you are black. I remember thinking when I was eight years old that if I were black, the very thought that someone else owned my ancestors would make my blood boil. One person owning another person? You might have been someone's property? What right do they have? Yes, this happened a long time ago, and no one alive is guilty of it. But that has to be part of every black person's psyche.

If you're white, your life is not about your race. Given current sensibilities, you're pretty much colorless. Your life may be about your job, your hobbies, or your passions. Your race simply doesn't loom that large. But if you're black, your race permeates your daily existence in all sorts of insidious ways.

If you're black, every time another black miscreant hits the news, you wince a little, thinking, oh no, another black person making us look bad. When whites hear about a new white serial killer, for instance, they never think, oh no, he's making white people look bad. (Instead they often react with ghoulish fascination.)

At a certain level race relations are more strained now than ever. Fifty years ago whites weren't beset by a constant paranoia about being called racist. So they acted more natural. Maybe that naturalness incorporated some corrosive condescension, and that obviously wasn't good. But on a personal level, the current awkward dance that some whites do around blacks doesn't do anything for race relations either.

This blog is largely about pointing out the essential dishonesty of political correctness. But if you want to understand an issue, you have to look at it from both sides.

Aging

When I was young and I saw older guys with hair coming out of their ears, I would think, ugh, how gross.

Now, of course, I need to groom there.

When I was young and I would see old guys with their stomachs sagging over their belts, I would vow never to get let that happen to me.

But skin is basically like a rubber band that just loses its elasticity over time, and there's little that can be done about it. As I have discovered.

When I was young and would see old guys fall asleep in front of the TV, I would think, how pathetic: why don't they just turn it off when they feel themselves getting tired?

Now my television is like a second mother, singing me lullabies every evening.

I was always nearsighted, so couldn't get my mind around the concept that some people needed glasses to see things up close. After I got LASIKS, I was proud to finally see both near and far.

Now I have a hard time focusing on the crossword puzzle in the morning. But I still refuse to get reading glasses. Nothing says old (and disapproving) like staring over a pair of half-moons.

When I was young and would hear about older people not being able to sleep through the night, I would think, they're just not exercising hard enough.

Now I know that's not the case.

When I was young, I never actually thought that I wouldn't get old. But I did sorta feel that way.

Mark Twain was right: life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Now that I think of it, that would actually make death a lot sadder. (Death is easier to face if you're half dead already.) But life would certainly be happier.