Smythe's World

It's about time--Jose Offerman is finally back in baseball, with the Bridgeport Bluefish of the independent Atlantic League. His first game: vs. Rickey Henderson and the Newark Bears. Perform your magic, Jose !!

For those who are thinking of starting a blog (that includes you, Smilin' Jr.) or who have a blog with a low volume of readers, Volokh Conspiracy has a few helpful tips on making it into the Big Time. Me, I'm quite content to have the traffic I now have, knowing that I'm at the top of the Google search request for "Tanya Ballinger" (the blonde in the Miller Lite ad), and on the first page for those searching for nude pictures of "Hayden Christenson" [sic] or "Phoebe Nicholls". I rule !!

Of the tips Volokh provides, I can't say that I vouch for any of them. I suppose I've gotten a few hits from some well-chosen words on the comments section of other blogs, but I doubt anyone has ever included me on their blogroll because of that. The whole notion that I'm supposed to ask someone to include me on their blogroll is offensive to me, and kind of defeats the whole purpose; at least here, the blogroll is primarily for my own use, and includes several sites that linked to me for a time, then dumped me. If I like a site, I'm not going to lose sleep over whether it generates any reciprocal traffic for my benefit. This isn't an audition, so if someone likes my posts, I don't expect to get renumerated for the privilege. On rare occasions, I will send Atrios or Capozzola a link to a news story, but that's only because I feel the story deserves the attention that blogs which generate a higher volume of traffic can give it.

My advice is to blog for a few months before deciding to follow Volokh's tips. In the meantime, just use the word "nude" once a month, and make occasional references to obscure models or character actors in your posts. The traffic will come eventually...btw, for those really interested in Ms. Ballinger....

Rishawn Biddle seems to be the only one who gets the significance of the Dixie Chicks cover: a middle finger to the morons and necks who boycotted their music and sent death threats to the group (come to think of it, the group is posed in the shape of a "finger"). Historically, the whole controversy reminds me of the aftermath of John Lennon's infamous comparison of the Beatles' popularity with that of Jesus Christ; the Fab Four suffered a temporary backlash, but their popularity soared thereafter, as fans came to see the group (and Lennon in particular) as being honest generational spokesmen.

The Musician Currently Known as Beck has a blog [link via Ken Layne], and it's pretty good, or at least better than that execrable Roger Avary blog that I had up for a month; god, I would rather watch Killing Zoe again than have to read another post about an advance screening for The Rules of Attraction. For someone who has to work to make this site presentable, it's more than a bit frustrating seeing a politician or celebrity start a "blog" that is little more than a collection of stump speeches and press releases, and is clearly the work of a third party. A good blog should occasionally inform the world of something it doesn't know about the writer.

The JS Giguere of blogging, Matt Welch, has a nifty little piece attacking the virus known as francophobia. Interesting that our relations with the nations that nurtured the 9/11 criminals is more amicable than that with our "oldest democratic ally", especially since the non-discovery of WMD has pretty much vindicated Chirac's position.

I haven't forgotten to comment on last night's debacle at Staples. I'm just more comfortable talking about my beloved Mighty Ducks right now. Once you get past the 100-minute mark of a game, their opponents are toast !!

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: "...many establishment Republicans believe that the criminalization of private gay sex is a legitimate position, even when they personally disagree with it. That's how close they are to the fundamentalist right. That's how little they care about individual liberties. I guess, as so many gloating liberals have emailed me to point out, I have been incredibly naive. I expected a basic level of respect for gay people from civilized conservatives. I've always taken the view that there are legitimate arguments about such issues as marriage rights or military service and so on; and that fair-minded people can disagree...(B)ut something this basic as the freedom to be left alone in own's own home is something I naively assumed conservatives would obviously endorse - even for dispensable minorities like homosexuals. I was wrong. The conclusions to be drawn are obvious."--Andrew Sullivan, disparaging the civilized tendencies of mainstream conservatives over l'affaire Santorum.

Obviously an issue near and dear to my heart: a writer employed by the Hartford Courant was ordered by the paper to cease publishing a blog on his spare time. The writer, Dennis Horgan, complied, even though the contents of the blog didn't conflict with the travel column he was paid to write by the newspaper. His editor, Brian Toolan, asserted an interesting rationale for silencing Mr. Horgan:

"Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to The Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant," Toolan said. "That makes the paper vulnerable."

The editor added that allowing an employee to set up his own opinion blog was a bad precedent. "There are 325 other people here who could create similar [Web sites] for themselves," Toolan said.

So much for the free press. In the meantime, Mr. Horgan (and the others so situated) should discovery the joys of pseudonymous blogging. Let 325 flowers bloom.

This has to be close to a record for alcohol-consumption, not counting Jim Morrison or Christopher Hitchens. The telling point is that for the person involved to reach that percentage, he had to drink 14 beers, or 18 shots of booze, in an hour.

America: Love it or leave it !!!

Potential Supreme Court nominee Alex Kozinski wrote a dissent so convincing in an appeal of a criminal conviction that the prosecution agreed to dismiss the charges, the L.A. Times reports. The Ninth Circuit judge, as well known for his literary, often ascerbic, opinions as for his conservative leanings, voted to overturn a conviction of an illiterate Mexican defendant charged with smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S., on the grounds that nine potential witnesses who could have backed up his protestations of innocence were deported before trial, and before his attorney could interview them.

The Times points out that the most telling argument in the dissent came from the sort of typically unusual device that has earned the Reagan-appointee such a cult following among local attorneys:

"Perhaps the most striking part of Kozinski's opinion was a simulated dialogue he created to describe how Ramirez's lawyer might try to explain the decision.

'Lawyer: Juan, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the 9th Circuit affirmed your conviction and you're going to spend many years in federal prison.' Then the lawyer gives Ramirez the good news: 'You'll be happy to know that you had a perfect trial. They got you fair and square!'
Ramirez questions this conclusion, but the lawyer explains that government agents 'talked to everyone, they took notes and they kept the witnesses that would best help your case. Making sure you had a fair trial was their number one priority. Is this a great country or what?'
Then, Ramirez asks, 'Don't you think [the jury] might have had a reasonable doubt if they'd heard that 12 of the 14 guys in my party said it wasn't me?' The lawyer responds: 'He-he-he! You'd think that only if you didn't go to law school. Lawyers and judges know better.' "

As a result, the U.S. Attorney, fearing that the full 9th Circuit would agree to rehear the case and establish precedent effecting other convictions involving potential witnesses who had been deported, acceded to a motion to dismiss the case.
(Note: former Kozinski clerk Eugene Volokh, subject of this piece last month, has more on this dissent)

While other commentators, left and right, opine on l'affaire Santorum, now is as good a time as any to revisit last month's GOP jackass, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn), who gets taken apart here by Al Franken.

Minnesota 119, Lakers 91:
Perhaps the most ominous news for Laker fans since October, 1991: Kobe Bryant claims he has a "jammed rotator cuff".

Nothing else to say, really; the T-wolves shot lights out in the first three quarters, someone named Troy Hudson scored 37 points for Minnesota, and Shaq clearly was still affected by the emotional swings of the past week. Game 3 is tomorrow at Staples, and the Lakers are not likely going to stink up the arena two games in a row.

How the mighty have fallen--I knew that Hitchens had fallen a long way, but this story is truly sad. No matter what your opinion of the man is, no one should gloat over his misfortune.

Happy Easter, indeed--Political Aims reports that Tom Daschle's bishop is attempting to force the Senator to refrain from describing himself as a Roman Catholic, due to his stand on abortion rights.

It's been over a month, and we still haven't found any of Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction", but we do have some idea about the most devastating weapon in use against Coalition forces in our latest adventure: the Patriot Missile. The LA Times reports this morning that the Patriot, which is typically used to bolster the arguments of supporters of missile defense systems, is coming under scrutiny again after three separate "friendly fire" incidents:

The Patriot attacks on allied planes were particularly puzzling given that throughout the war, no Iraqi aircraft were aloft.

"Why were the Patriots even shooting at aircraft?" asked Philip Coyle, former assistant secretary of Defense and director of operational testing and evaluation for the Pentagon. "We ruled the skies in Iraq, so almost by definition any aircraft up there was either ours or British."

The Patriot system, designed in the 1970s to shoot down enemy aircraft, should have been able to distinguish between relatively slow-moving planes and speedy rockets fired by Iraqi forces, Coyle said.

"If they can't tell the difference between a missile and an airplane, then they need much more restrictive rules of engagement," he said.

The Pentagon claims that nine Iraqi missiles were shot down by the missile, which was revamped after the first Gulf War, but similar claims about its effectiveness were made last time as well, only to be later discredited.

Lakers 117, Timberwolves 98: I have a hard time believing the T-Wolves are going to be this easy. The Lakers are going to have to fight complacency for the rest of the series, or at least until Minnesota reclaims the home court edge. Game 2 will be indicative of whether a four-peat is in the cards: another Laker blow-out, and a sweep will be in the works, whereas a Minnesota win puts the pressure on the Lakers to hold serve in LA or face a long series, which they can't afford right now.

Quickie Trivia Question: Name the three people who are pictured to the left of Satan in the ad on p.28 of this morning's L.A. Times?

Happy Easter, or Happy Palm Sunday, depending on what church you belong to...

Laker game in two hours, so leave me alone.

Comments are off, for the time being (although that might change by the time you read this). I'm adding pictures to this site, for those of you have trouble with big words.

Players leaving college early to turn pro hardly raise an eyebrow anymore. I have to admit, though, that I've never heard of a player dropping out of high school to turn "collegiate" until this week. John Booty, who was thought to be the top prep football prospect in the Class of 2004, decided to bypass his senior season and enroll early at USC, where he intends to play quarterback. The Trojans have an immediate hole at the position, thanks to the departure of Heisman winner Carson Palmer, so Booty may well be in the line-up by mid-season. Apparently the kid is an academic phenom as well, but I always assumed that a student couldn't just arbitrarily skip a year of high school, simply to play semi-pro college football.
Still, there are plenty of good reasons for an eighteen year old to wish to matriculate at USC, and it is his life. Fight on....

Earlier this week, the Orange County Register reported that numerous American athletes tested positive for certain banned substances, but were nevertheless cleared to compete in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics, including Carl Lewis. The substances were commonly found in over-the-counter medications, not steroids, so the U.S.O.C. looked the other way, even though, by the letter of the law, those athletes should have been banned from competing.

The article speaks to what was seemingly a more innocent time, when Sudafed was viewed as an appropriate athletic stimulant, and so long as an athlete wasn't caught juicing himself, the powers-that-be would look the other way. For sports fans who remember Rick DeMont, the Olympic swimmer who was stripped of a gold medal in 1972 after the asthma medication he was cleared to take triggered a positive result on a drug test, it has been easy to take the side of the athlete when it comes to the performance-enhancing effects of ordinary, over-the-counter medication. It's an awfully slippery slope, however. [link via Off-Wing Opinion]

UPDATE: The LA Times followed up this story the following week, and concluded that the trace amounts of ephedrine in Carl Lewis' system were so minute that he would only have been suspended if it were proven he had intended to take performance-enhancing drugs. Since there was no other evidence he had, his exoneration by the USOC was appropriate.

For all the talk about "bankruptcy reform", one area that never seems to get debated by Congress is the threatened use of bankruptcy by corporations as an extortion device against workers. Now that the unions have awakened to discover that for all the concessions they were forced to accept to keep American Airlines afloat, management was prepared to make out like bandits, it seems like the airline will go double-toothpicks after all by the beginning of next week.

I wonder why unions don't call the bluff of management more often in these situations. Obviously, most of the time they will get screwed by the bankruptcy court in terms of benefits and pensions, but every once in awhile, the potential damage to the worker is exceeded by the devastation to management when an aggressive judge or trustee examines the whys and wherefores of a company's collapse. Of course, it probably wouldn't make any difference over the long haul anyway; if enough CEO's get grilled by a bankruptcy judge over the salaries and benefits they made while their company nosedived, Congress will reform the bankruptcy code to make sure they don't have to answer those questions in the future.

Michael Kelly's last article for The Atlantic is up. When he's not deriding the people who disagree with him as appeasers and baathist-sympathizers, the article seems almost poignant. In his valedictory, he writes

On the whole, I'd say, the phoniness quotient is down this time. We are spared, at least, much of the death-and-destruction-and-quagmire talk that preceded the last conflict here. The lessons of the campaign in Afghanistan, adding to the lessons of the campaigns in Kosovo and Bosnia, have sunk in. The U.S. armed forces enjoy a technological superiority like nothing the world has seen before; they are, in a real sense, not even fighting the same war as their opponents—or in the same century. No one argues much now about whether these forces are capable of crushing even very serious opposition, and almost no one argues that Iraq offers serious opposition.

Alas, poor Mary McGregor....

Provocative piece by Paul Krugman today on Neo-isolationism, the foreign policy that has become embraced by a new generation of conservatives, now ascendent in the White House and the Republican Party. Old-School isolationists took a jaundiced view of any American role in the affairs of other countries, and led the opposition to the League of Nations, Lend-Lease, the draft, etc. The Neo-isolationists, recognizing our role as the world's only superpower, support American unilateral involvement overseas, but oppose American participation in international treaties and alliances, in which the U.S. is but one country among many, as well as adherence to international law. According to Krugman, both isolationist traditions share "the same impulses — an assertion of moral superiority, an unwillingness to consider alternative points of view...(w)e obviously can't ignore the world, but many Americans reject the idea that other countries should have any say over what we do." In the long run, of course, we have to accept reality; if we expect other countries to play by the rules, we have to as well.

A wicked description of the Green Party: a party best left to college campuses so grad students and their professor boyfriends have a place to meet which isn't obvious. [via Daily Kos]

How 'bout them Clippers? Nothing to play for, given up for dead months ago, they close out the season on a three-game winning streak, including last night's shocking blowout of the Portland Trailblazers. That was unprecedented: I can not recall the Clippers ever winning a game late in the season against a team that needed it more, and the notion that the beneficiary of their largesse was their co-tenants at Staples, the Lakers. For the Blazers, it's the difference between a first-round date with Minnesota or Dallas, a winnable series versus a likely sweep, whereas the Lakers now have an imaginable route to a four-peat, no longer having to beat the Mavs, the Kings, and the Spurs on the road just to reach the Finals. April 16, 2003 may have been the first time that the entire city (or at least the hoops fans within) of LA rooted for the Clips, or at least gave a rat's ass how the team did.

Jew, or not-a-Jew: The paper of record in the City of Angels makes a correction.

Two distinct views of America's Pastime: Tony Pierce, last night at Chavez Ravine, and ArchPundit, on the latest interaction between fan and players in Chicago.

Today's WaPost article about the effect of a consumer boycott of French wine has had in the last two months is a perfect example of how various forms of bigotry develop and are nourished within a society. Since there are perfectly acceptable substitutes for the products most affected, wine and cheese, that are sold by other countries, it's a painless statement (although some are starting to drink Australian wine, which gives me hope that Francophobia may be a temporary fad). Tourism, which isn't as fungible (unless you count Paris Paris in Las Vegas), has barely been affected: American tourism to France is down, but not as much as tourism to Great Britain, or for that matter, tourism to every other part of the world. There is no evidence yet that Bic lighters, Dannon Yogurt, or Universal Studios has been forced into bankruptcy. Even though Russia's opposition to Gulf War II was more pivotal to Bush's decision to bypass international law, no one has called for a boycott of Russian vodka (incl. VodkaPundit, from whence the above link came), since the available substitutes aren't as good. Same deal with German beer. Francophobia is now the hatred-of-choice in Deliverance Country, USA.

A former adviser to Bush I has a less-than-sunny view of Bush II's reelection prospects.

Damn fine deconstruction of the gossip trade, the surest indication of the dishonesty of any newspaper. Gossip is certainly fun, and I suppose it has its purposes (especially when it involves my many enemies), but journalistic endeavors always use it instead as a substitute for real reporting on entertainment, or, in this case, politics. In effect, gossip is a more benign version of what Eason Jordan fessed up to last week [link via Atrios].

Things not to do when you have the flu (or some flu-like disease): conduct a six-hour deposition of the opposing party in the principal case you're handling.

Operation Iraqi Freedom UPDATE: Hesiod points out that the U.S.' failure to protect the Iraqi National Museum, while taking great pains to save the oil wells, constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention. I wouldn't go that far, since there is no evidence that it was willful on our part, but it does spotlight the shortsightedness of much of the war planning by both the Administration and the Pentagon. Remember, the military victory was supposed to be the easy part.
OOPS: Philosopher David ("Smilin' Jr.") Johnson reminds me that it was the Hague Convention that was violated, so it was a mere violation of international law, not a war crime. Whew.

One of the stories that has generated a great deal of internet buzz over the past two weeks has been the revelation that CNN tailored its news accounts of conditions inside Iraq to appease its sources inside that nation's thugocracy. I haven't had much to say about it, since "Dog Bites Man" stories usually don't interest me. Of course, journalists perform fellatio on their sources; if the Falun Gong or the Palestinians are being treated like dirt, don't expect to get the real story from Fox. To me, what was curious about this story was the way the journalist in question blew the whistle on himself. That sort of mea culpa is an embarassing story for all concerned for about a week and a half, but only serves to bolster the long-term credibility of the media. When you assume that you're being lied to, the occasional flashing of the truth can be refreshing.

The World Turned Upside Down: the Mighty Ducks have a 3-0 lead on defending champs Detroit, and the Angels have lost two straight to Ismael Valdes. To be honest, would it surprise anyone if the Red Wings came back and won the next four? Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if the Ducks end up winning the Stanley Cup, considering the streak O.C. is on right now.

I'm not sure I agree with the title of the latest Krugman column, "Behind Our Backs". Voters have known since 1980 that electing a Republican President means that the public is going to get an economic policy consisting of little more than shell games; the conservative mantra of "small government" and "low taxes" has always been a euphemism for a government by grifters. Is anyone surprised that having just prevailed in Iraq, we are now threatening another nasty dictatorship with a weak military? This isn't a situation where people were caught off-guard: Bush's political base in the Red States has wet dreams about fighting wars while simultaneously slashing veterans benefits.

In the wake of last week's cancellation of the tribute to the movie Bull Durham at Cooperstown, Neal Pollack has a comprehensive history of other "Fifth Columnists" using the Baseball Hall of Fame to promote a left-wing agenda, including Catfish Hunter's controversial appeal in 1987 to his "fellow transgendered" comrades.

It took a few weeks, but Bush's little adventure finally got the journalistic takedown it deserves. Remind me again: how many dozens of people were around Saddam's statue when it fell? [link via Eschaton]
UPDATE: Even better is this Frank Rich piece on media coverage, and the over-all public disinterest in the war. [link via Political Aims, a brand new blog that just debuted last week]. You could tell W was not going to get much a boost out of this event when CBS went back to NCAA tournament coverage on Day 2.

What I was hoping against hope was a mild cold, or maybe even the beginning of allergies, has turned into a full-fledged, stomach-churning, throat-eviscerating, nose-clogging flu. And I even got a f*****g flushot last October. I'm dying; why me?

Today I celebrate my roommate's birthday. My mom turns 64turns another year older today, and if I can make it out of my basement lodgings, I will have to buy her dinner.

Some random thoughts on the rumor that Affleck and J-Lo are remaking Casablanca:

1. I have a feeling that the whole thing is an urban legend. I have yet to see a reputable source (and that incl. the site I've linked to) report this;
2. If they are interested in remaking the film, won't they have to obtain the rights from someone? I mean, it's not so old a screenplay that it would already be part of the public domain;
3. What studio would be willing to back such a financially (and artistically) risky project?
As famous as they are, there is no evidence that either one can put fannies in a multiplex;
4. Why was there such a visceral reaction to this rumor (incl. my own little whine)? I'm not a film critic, studio exec, or related to either Affleck or Lo, so it's not as if I'm obligated to see any movie they're in. If they make this film, and it sucks, it won't really bother me, since I won't go to see it. For that matter, if the movie rocks, it's unlikely I would see it anyway, since movies really don't interest me that much in my old age.
5. If there is any truth to this rumor, then as surely as day follows night, we'll be seeing a story in the next few days about Gwynnie and Chris Martin wanting to remake A Star Is Born. I mean, that's how the show biz news cycle works, right?
Anyways, before you follow my earlier advice to sign a petition, you might like to turn on your bullshit detector until this gets reported in Variety.

For all my love of college basketball, it rarely avails me anything when it comes to winning a bracket pool. This year I finished toward the back of the pack, and had no team in the Final Four. So this I discovered too late to do me any good this year, but it's still interesting to study: a "game theory" model for picking brackets. It's for people who enjoyed A Beautiful Mind for the math, not for Jennifer Connally.

Finally, someone has compiled a comprehensive list of the awards handed out by Lord Haw-Haw this year. Ever since it became my life's goal to be nominated for a Begala (the award for the most politically-incorrect-but-truthful statement by a figure on the left), I have been disheartened by the seeming randomness of the award, and the deliberate snobbery of his decisions: the award always seems to go to a professor or columnist, never a lowly blogger.

Now, however, I'm not even sure I want the honor. There has to be some selectivity in choosing your nominees for a Begala, or a Sontag, or even a Von Hoffman, but handing out those awards every week waters down the achievement, making it as trivial as the "Player of the Week" award given by Major League Baseball. Standards are important. I dread the day that when I finally get picked, it will be for a post that I take little pride in.

Maybe it was all about Syracuse winning the other night. If this picture was taken right after Saddam's statue fell, then the media conned us big time on Wednesday.

Sign this petition NOW !!! If this movie gets made, where will they stop?

Fresh from predicting the defeat of Yankee imperial ambitions in the sands of Iraq, Mohammed Said Sahhaf prognosticates more woes for the Yankees (courtesy of Neal Pollack)

People who doubt the power of blogs should check out LT Smash today, a real-life Marine who gives a first-hand account of the fall of Baghdad and the "death" of Saddam. Then have any patriotic feelings that may have been aroused squashed into dust by the chickenhawk crowings of Mr. Samgrass and Lord Haw-Haw.

Senate Democrats have effectively plugged the nomination of Prescilla Owen, the President's wingnut de jour nominee for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, until at least mid-summer. As "Operation: Iraqi Freedom" becomes an 8-day story(although check out Oliver Willis, on why we shouldn't let that happen), with Halliburton execs set to follow the Marines into Baghdad, political reality sets in. Bad economy + divided country + public disinterest in foreign affairs=Replay of 1992.

From Smythe's World, March 19, 2003:

D-Hour has passed, and our country is about to go to war. Here are a dozen things we need to keep in mind:
1. Saddam Hussein is bad, and he has bad intentions;
2. Iraq has not attacked us, and is not presently attacking its neighbors;
3. Iraq has not been shown to be involved with the attack on September 11;
4. For the first time in our history, we are attacking a nation that is not engaged in hostilities with us or its neighbors; in fact, we are not even claiming a pretext that they are, as we did with Mexico and Spain in the nineteenth century;
5. There has been no failure in the inspection regime under Resolution 1441 to require that we go to war this instant;
6. The U.S. withheld evidence from the inspectors that might have made discovery of WMD’s possible, but didn’t provide it so as to not minimize the case for going to war;
7. The difference between the relative strength of the US and Iraqi armies is enormous; we are literally going to be tearing the wings off of a fly;
8. Many thousands of civilians will be killed;
9. Most of what we will hear being reported on American television will be untrue, especially in the first few days of conflict; overseas reporting, even Al Jazeera, will be more accurate;
10. No matter how lopsided the battles will be, each soldier and sailor has family back home, who will be worried no end over the fate of their loved ones, EVERY DAY OF THIS WAR;
11. We will discover the full extent of Hussein’s brutality and tyranny when Baghdad is “liberated”;
12. History will not look kindly at us for our prevarications used to justify going to war, for our manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 to justify these acts, and for the bloody-minded lust that this Administration has pursued this war.

Lord, I'm brilliant !!!

Looks like Baghdad is finally getting the word that Syracuse won the other night.

It's now official: the Lakers own Dallas. Shaq and Kobe score only 14 apiece, and they still beat the Mavs for the 25th straight time in LA. Dallas is now tied with San Antonio for the division lead, while the Lakers are now a game behind Minnesota, and a half-game back of the number two team in the East, Detroit. If they finish with a 5-seed, it's 50-50 they four-peat.

For those who were offended by Senator Kerry last week, here are some more terms for the current Administration that may be more to your liking, courtesy of Max Sawicky. Note: the last one is particularly nasty !!

BTW, today is the first anniversary of Smythe's World. My first-ever post was here. A special thanks to my friends Matt, Carolyn and Chris, for reading me everyday; to James Capozzola, for his kind words and generosity(esp. w/regards to the Blogger ad); to Jeralyn Merritt, who single-handedly doubled my visitors; and to Matt Welch, Oliver Willis, and "Atrios", for being good at what they do, and inspiring me to do better.

This story almost throggles the imagination (as Alexander Haig might put it). I sensed last November that a lot of the criticism of the Wellstone Memorial was actually an effort to denigrate the late Senator, and I think Sen. Coleman's classless remarks about his predecessor are evidence of that.

Back when we was still an engaging political commentator, Jeff Greenfield wrote a book called Playing to Win. In it, he gave aspiring politicians tips on how to successfully campaign for office, often in a tongue-in-cheek style. Perhaps the best known tip he gave was something called "political jujitsu": using the force of an opponent's attack against him, for your own advantage.

Last week's controversy over the remarks made by John Kerry for "regime change" in Washington brilliantly illustrate the theory. After a bad week, when the focus was on Kerry's anemic fundraising, and the sudden emergence of Howard Dean as a candidate more in tune with the progressive (ie. "Democratic") wing of the Democratic Party, Kerry was able to turn all that around with a stunning display, turning what had seemed a gaffe into a rousing knockout at the expense of the chickenhawks.

First, he allowed his opponents on the far right to attack his rhetoric, and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Racicot, Tom Delay, and others took the bait. Then, his staff responded, with a not-so-subtle dig at the non-service of Delay, et al., during Vietnam. Reminding voters that he was a decorated war hero, while Limbaugh sat out the war with a boil on his butt, and the rest of the chickenhawks had "other priorities", makes it impossible for any attacks on Kerry to get traction. On the other hand, he invigorates Democrats, and enables them to more easily oppose the Bush war policies. Any candidate who can score points at the expense of Rush Limbaugh or Tom Delay instantly wins credibility in the party base. Not a bad display !!

The last two years, I never motivated myself to go out to the ballpark until late-September. This year, I held out until game four of the season, attending last night's Angels-A's game in Oakland. To no one's surprise, Kevin Appier stunk; the A's (especially Miguel Tejada and new acquisition Erubiel Durazo) teed off on the weak s*** he was tossing, and ended up winning, 7-3. The highlight of the evening was convincing three-year old daughter of my host, Annamae Parsons, that the reason why the A's have an elephant as a mascot was because of the alcohol-induced halucinations of Jimmy Foxx.

CAL alums go crazy over this sort of article: an athletic team so successful that rival coaches bemoan it as being harmful to the sport. Of course, its rugby, a sport the Bears have dominated for 120 years. This year's team just beat Stanford, 98-0(!), usually have to insert the back-ups early in the game just to prevent the other side from suffering serious injuries, and appear headed for yet another national championship. Well, they used to say the same thing about the Wooden Era teams at UCLA. GO BEARS !!

Far right columnist Michael Kelly was killed in a humvee accident in Iraq this morning. My condolences to his family, and my thoughts to the soldiers and civilians who each day face the consequences of what he wrote. It is appropriate to remove the quotes from the blogroll link; he turns to have been all too real.

UPDATE: Over the course of the day, I've had an opportunity to read some of the reaction elsewhere to Mr. Kelly's untimely passing. As expected, conservatives have been devastated, while liberal reaction has ranged from expressing sympathy to his family and a grudging respect for him having the balls to put himself in harms way, to schadenfreude, noting in particular how common that reaction was among the wingnuts following the deaths of Paul Wellstone and Rachel Corrie. More than a few have taken the line expressed by Joshua Marshall, which was to call him on his hysterical pontificating in his columns, but granting him his props for his abilities as an editor (focused usually on his tenure with the Atlantic Monthly; his shameful tenure at the New Republic in the mid-90's, where he published just about every discredited rumor about the Clintons, and championed the career of Stephen Glass, is conveniently forgotten). I drafted a comment over at Daily Kos that I will re-publish here, as it best reflects how I feel about this tragedy:

It's possible to mourn the loss of someone, to give condolences to the family he left behind (as well as the unnamed soldier who died with him), and still remember that his columns were a principal factor in the decline in political civility over the past decade. I won't miss his nasty, unkind shots at each and every left-of-center public figure, but, as with the death of Barbara Olsen, I grieve for the loss. Maybe having seen the war up-close, he would have been less enthusiastic about sending others into harms way; he was one of the few chickenhawks who put his ass on the line in Iraq. For all we know, had he lived, he may have a mid-life conversion, in the same way David Brock did. Dying before his time means we'll never know.

Light blogging this weekend, as I am in the Bay Area, tending to matters personal and familial. FWIW, the English language site for Al Jazeera is back on-line.

The two Marines from SoCal who died in the first days of the war have been posthumously granted citizenship, including one who was probably in the country illegally. For those who support the troops, regardless of whether you believe this war to be legal or moral, it would be a positive progressive step to demand that any green card-holding member of the Armed Forces currently fighting in Iraq be immediately eligible for citizenship. One Vietnam vet quoted by the LA Times who only recently qualified for citizenship put it best: "You're part of an American team out there...[I]t's a big disappointment when you have to stand in line to get what you think you deserve."
P.S. And while you're at it, light up the phones everytime some jackass in the media refers to a certain rescued P.O.W. as "Jessica", rather than her name and rank ("Private Lynch"); considering what she's been through, she's earned the right not to be treated as if she were a swimsuit model or tennis star.

Today's reading assignments: Matt Welch, on Patriot Act II (like most sequels, even worse than the original), and the ailing Avedon Carol, on suggestions that U.S. soldiers "pray" for the President.

It's sad that this idiot is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and not Ron Santo, Gil Hodges, or Pete Rose.

The most recent Bush nominee to win confirmation, by a 58-41 vote, is Tim Tymkovich, to the 10th Circuit . I didn't have a strong opinion on that pick; the reason most often given to oppose was that he had argued before the Supreme Court in support of an anti-gay initiative that passed in Colorado. I guess it would be something else entirely if he had actually drafted the monstrosity, but making an argument on a case is what a lawyer does. But as a matter of principal, I hated to see him confirmed, so here are the Democrats who voted in favor: Bayh, Breaux, Conrad, Lincoln, Miller, Nelson, and Pryor (Lieberman was absent, Jeffords opposed, and every Republican voted in favor). [Link via TalkLeft]

Those who remember history are also condemned to repeat it…

Right now, I’m in the middle of reading Garry Wills’ splendid justification of his faith, Why I Am a Catholic. It helps to have had a background in theology or philosophy, neither of which I possess, to understand his religious reasoning, but his book is still readable for another reason: the detailed history of the papacy he provides. Part of his thesis is that since the Pope is not part of the original doctrines of Christianity, his emergence is in direct response to the institutional needs of the Church; Peter, far from being the "Bishop of Rome", never even visited the city, and the true center of the Church’s power, both politically and spiritually, for centuries thereafter was in Greece and North Africa, not Rome.

How the Bishop of Rome eventually became the powerful spiritual, and for a time, temporal, power is a fascinating story. Some of the early “popes”, lets just say, were a rather seedy lot. The papacy was little more than a pawn for various rulers, emperors and kings, and a progressive ruler, like Justinian, Charlemagne, and Otto (the first Holy Roman Emperor) could yield enormous influence over the spiritual tenets of the faith without ever being the pope. For the most part, unfortunately, the power behind the throne was not so beneficent, which leads me to the Theophylact family, and to a period in church history popularly known as the “pornocracy”.

In the first half of the 10th Century, the Theophylacts were the preeminent family in Roman society (Wills, pp.118-9). They did not use their power wisely or well. The patriarch of the family, Teofilatto, and his ambitious wife, Theodora, handpicked several popes, including Sergius III in 904. He was a real piece of work; he became more closely allied to the Theophylact family when he began a relationship with the eldest daughter, Marozia, when she was around thirteen, an arrangement the family seems to have encouraged. Marozia, by all accounts a stunningly beautiful young lady, was married off sometime after that, to Duke Alberic of Spoleto, and bore a son, John. It remains in dispute whether Pope Sergius III was the father. After Sergius went to his just reward, the family chose a loyal retainer who became Pope John X, who had the additional benefit of having been a former lover of Theodora.

By all accounts, Marozia had a bit of an edge to her. More accurately, she may have been the most evil, dissolute woman ever to hold anything close to absolute power anywhere in Christendom. Well, it's either her or Catherine de Medici. Normally, I would be hesitant to rely on the accounts of ancient or medieval historians concerning the lives of powerful women. I think it’s safe to say that Livia did not poison half the men in Rome when she was married to Augustus. The Empress Messalina probably did not compete with a prostitute to see who could sleep with the most men. Contrary to Livy’s account, Tullia (if she even existed) did not run over her old man with a chariot so that she and her husband could seize power. I will even go so far as to assert that the wife of the Emporer Justinian, Theodora the Great, probably held a better social position than her contemporaries claimed. Any strong, ambitious woman would run afoul of the misogynists who have written history over the years. If Tacitus were writing today, he no doubt would have accused Hillary Clinton of all sorts of nasty shenanigans in her ruthless pursuit of power and lust.

Marozia, though, was the real deal. In terms of wickedness, she was all that. I sort of imagine her as having the face and figure of Elizabeth Hurley and the mind and temperament of Ann Coulter. After her father died, she seized control of the family business, which included governing the Holy See, and held the official title, Senatrix. When Pope John X began to act independently of her family, she had his brother executed for treason, then had Pope John arrested, put out his eyes, and suffocated. She hand-picked the next two Popes, both of whom were chosen not for any spiritual insights or piety they might have possessed, but for their willingness to act as caretakers until her aforementioned son was old enough to become Pope. That son, John XI, combined a lack of education with a taste for debauchery, and generally lowered the prestige of the Church.

Finally, Marozia went too far. She allegedly murdered her second husband, then persuaded her son to consecrate her marriage to his brother, Hugh of Arles, the King of Italy, who also happened to be her brother-in-law, in 932. At that point, another son, Alberic II, perhaps concerned about appearances, and reportedly stinging from an insult he received at her wedding party, besieged his mother’s castle, and arrested her and the Pope (King Hugh escaped, apparently realizing that this was one family dispute he didn't need to be a part of). What happened thereafter to our heroin isn’t entirely clear. Most accounts have her dying soon afterwards, while she was in custody, at the age of 37. Another tale has her living well into her nineties, at which time the Church lifted her excommunication, "exorcised" her demons, and executed the former Senatrix of Rome. Better late than never, I suppose.

In the meantime, while Pope John XI lived as his virtual slave, her other son became the power behind the papacy, and for the next two decades handpicked five different popes, culminating with the election of his 16-year old son, John XII. His was not a happy papacy for the devout, as he had taken the licentious proclivities of his family up another notch. Disgruntled bishops organized a synod to remove him, claimed that he was in league with the Devil and accused him of

"... committing incest with two sisters, of playing dice and invoking the Devil to assist him to win, of creating boy bishops for money, of ravishing divers virgins, of converting the palace into a seraglio or stews, of lying with his father's harlot, with a certain Queen Dowager [his mother] and with a widow called Anna and his own niece, of putting out the eyes of his father confessor, of going hunting publicly, of going always armed, of setting houses on fire, of breaking windows in the night ..."

Allegations that he kidnapped and raped female pilgrims visiting the city of Rome were said to have been a drain on church coffers.

It gets better. After being forced to flee Rome by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto in 962, John XII led a revolt two years later, and returned to the papacy. His attempts to resume the life that late he led were thwarted when, according to whichever source you want to believe, he was murdered the same year, either by an irate husband or by family members angered by his unwillingness to share the spoils of victory. Among historians, the consensus appears to be that whoever killed him hammered in his skull, although Wills states he suffered a stroke while having sex with his mistress (p.119). Depending on the source, he was either 25 or 27.

After that, the power of the Theophylact family began to diminish. The grandson of Marozia’s sister Theodora became Pope John XIII, who was by all accounts, a pious and decent man, and Marozia's great-grandson became Pope John XIX. Through marriage, the family gradually melted into the aristocracy of medieval Europe. Life went on.

Two bits of worthwhile morning reading: Paul Krugman's analysis of the political dimensions of "homeland security" spending by the Bush Administration, shaped by political expediency (a "red state" like Wyoming is getting 7x the money per capita than New York, even though no terrorist group has revealed any interest in blowing up Yellowstone); and Joshua Marshall showing what a serious writer thinks about the state of the Iraq War.