It's really hard not to love California's chief law enforcement officer, Bill Lockyer. He has caused quite a stir the last few months, both with his attacks on Gray Davis (esp. his warning to the governor not to use "puke politics" in the recall campaign) and his ingenious ability to take whatever position on Ahnolt Ziffel that would best position him with voters. Before the vote, when Davis appeared to be gaining, he affirmed Davis' charge that Ahnolt should be investigated over the groping allegations for potential criminal liability. Last month, he announced in Berkeley that he had pulled the switch for the governor-elect in the replacement election, and that, after everything was said and done, he felt that Ahnolt didn't know he was engaging in "frat boy" behavior on movie sets. His sycophancy delighted hacks like Jill Stewart, who gullibly proclaimed that his new-found "bipartisanship" might lead to a new era of pro-business rationality in Sacramento.

Well, now he's really gone and done it. Hours before the future California strongman leader was to announce that he would authorize an "inquiry" into the groping allegations against him, the State Attorney General demanded that any such inquiry be independent (as Hacker would say to Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister, not an official inquiry, a real inquiry), stating that the charges were a continuing "black mark" against the governor-elect. And, oh yes, he now wishes to belatedly nethercutt his earlier remarks: "frat boy behavior" wasn't meant to excuse A.S.' antics, since it all depended on the perspective (from "rowdy drunkenness to date rape" was how the A.G. put it). And he told all this to Ahnolt when they discussed the matter earlier in the week.

This has pissed off the Wilson cronies surrounding Mr. Ziffel no end, since they were under the impression that conversations between Mr. Lockyer and their sock-puppet were somehow protected by the "attorney-client privilege". Unless Mr. Lockyer is representing clients on the side, the claim is absurd, especially considering that a) A.S. is not governor yet; and b) the A.G.'s "client" is the people of California. But it is entertaining to see Ahnold being suckered by one of the most oleaginous public figures in the state, before he's even been sworn into office.

George Bush finally gets his own Monica Lewinsky.

San Francisco just moved a step closer to becoming the largest city ever to elect a Green mayor....

Henceforth, any time a public figure tosses in an insincere, phony line at the end of a speech that is used to obfuscate the meaning of everything that he has just stated (ie., "...but it would be wrong, that's for sure," or "...not that there's anything wrong with it,"), it will be known as a Nethercutt.

Saadi Gaddafi, the soccer-playing son of the Libyan strongman and the subject of this July 26 piece, has tested positive for the banned substance Nandrolone. He faces suspension from the Italian Serie A team Perugia, which signed him in the off-season but has yet to play him in a game.

Those of you who own DirecTV will get to see the long-hyped NFL Network's debut this evening. This event will not spur me to buying a dish for my home, however. The planned schedule includes no live football games, no rebroadcast of classic games, and little in the way of go-to programming for viewers unsure of what they want to watch. What you will get is hour after hour of NFL Films, post-game news conferences and interviews, and football news 24-7; no doubt we will see made-for-TV movies, along the lines of "Shack: The James Harris Story".

I understand there is a market for this sort of thing, but one of the reasons I no longer watch ESPN Classic is the repetitive programming: SportsCentury documentaries on Ken Dorsey and the bi-weekly rebroadcast of the '81 Clemson-South Carolina classic really test my obsession with sports, when what I really want to see are games. It is hard to believe that ESPN, which is run by the same outfit as ABC, can't get the rights to classic Monday Night Football games (Howard, Frank and Dandy Don, of course). The Golf Channel gives the viewer live coverage of European events, and all the NationWide Tour; football fans are going to be stuck with A Portrait in Pride: the 1990 Cincinnati Bengals and other chestnuts from the vault of NFL Films.

This is probably the death knell for serious network dramas on television. Granted, I usually tend to avoid getting my history from television mini-series, but this is a sure a sign as any that over-the-air television isn't going to risk putting something on that might offend the political sensitivities of a powerful minority. I mean, heaven forbid Reagan should be portrayed as unfeeling about the victims of his policies !!! The next time some bigot whines about political correctness, we should just point to how the GOP mau-maued CBS into yanking the Reagan miniseries, and ensured that the only way people can watch anything with bite on TV is to pay for it.

My breakdown of the weekend's games, the BCS rankings, and the selection of the new "Song Girl of the Week" can be found at sister-site Condredge's Acolytes.

Went and saw Shattered Glass this afternoon, and my gal did not disappoint. Probably the greatest movie ever about the internal workings of The New Republic; Hayden Christensen, as the needy, insecure fraud Stephen Glass, Hank Azaria ("Apu", et al., from The Simpsons), as the late Michael Kelly, Peter Sarsgaard (John Malkovich's son in The Man in the Iron Mask) as the editor who finally brought Glass down, and, of course, Ms. Lynskey playing a co-worker, all stand out.

After that, I ventured to Los Feliz to listen to a panel on L.A. history, featuring Kevin Roderick (of LA Observed), D.J. Waldie, and Mike Eberts. Each of the panelists had written books about the neighborhoods they had grown up in, and provided fascinating tips on researching and developing leads into the study of local history. More importantly, they approach their subjects without resorting to cliches and stereotypes; there is much more to Los Angeles (meaning the region, not the city) than Hollywood, and although Chinatown is a great movie, it's worthless history.

One thing Mr. Eberts mentioned that gave me some ideas for further research is about one of the greatest creations ever developed on the West Coast: the Pacific Coast League from 1903 to 1957. As the son of a Hollywood Stars fan, and the grandson of an LA Angels booster, I heard stories for years about Jigger Statz, Lefty O'Doul, Bobby Bragan, Steve Bilko and Carlos Bernier, great local ballplayers who only enjoyed marginal success in the Bigs, as well as afternoons spent at Gilmore Field (located next door to Farmers Market) and Wrigley Field, which lasted long enough for the big league Angels to play its expansion season there.

Through most of its history, the PCL enjoyed a great deal of independence from the major leagues; it developed (and held on to) its own stars, and maintained rivalries and pennant races of its own for fans to cherish. In the late-40's, the then-owner of the Stars, Bob Cobb (of Cobb salad fame) attempted to interest big league owners by seeking to bring the PCL en masse as a third "major league". Had it succeeded, west coast baseball might have been spared years of attendance worries in Seattle, San Diego and the Bay Area, since the PCL had longstanding outfits in each of those cities, and fans elsewhere would have avoided seeing teams hopscotch from city to city. In one of the most short-sighted decisions in history, major league owners turned him down.

Sadly, in 1957, the League was irrevocably altered by the decision of Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham to move their teams to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively. Overnight, the three wealthiest teams in the league, the Angels, Stars and San Francisco Seals, moved to smaller locations, and as with the Negro Leagues after Jackie Robinson integrated the Brooklyn Dodgers, its fans focused their attention away from their own local product and towards the Major Leagues. Today, the PCL has only a couple of teams on the Pacific Coast, and is just another minor league.

As it turns out, there is a dearth of information on the internet about the history, the lore and the trivia about the PCL. This site provides a general overview of the glory years of the league, while my late father would be charmed by the anecdotes this space has about his beloved Stars. For example, before the Hollywood Stars, there was another team that shared the area with the Angels, the Tigers, which alternated their seasons between Venice and Vernon (a small town north of L.A.), and which was owned for a time by Fatty Arbuckle.


To get a real taste of what the Angels-Stars rivalry was like, check out this story, about the Great War of 1953, an on-field melee so brutal the L.A.P.D. had to come on the field and separate the players.

As the situation in Iraq spins madly out of control, it is helpful to understand how so many "good Americans", at least temporarily, let the events of 9/11 suspend all reason and logic. Maureen Dowd sees it as an inevitable susceptibility people have towards believing the brazen lie, quoting one writer as observing that people tend to get duped by con men because they refuse to live in a world of cynicism. As a result, "[t]hose who go for the big con, who audaciously paint false pictures, think everyone else is stupid. They want to promote themselves based on the gullibility of others. For [Janet]Cooke, [Stephen]Glass and [Jayson]Blair, their editors were the marks. But at least that unholy trio only soiled newsprint. For the Bush crowd, the American people were the marks."

In this article, published in the always-terrific Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the writer examines President Bush's use of language in creating an atmosphere of fear and authoritarianism:

Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush's political agenda is out of step with most Americans' core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush's most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. Bush creates and maintains negative frameworks in his listeners' minds with a number of linguistic techniques borrowed from advertising and hypnosis to instill the image of a dark and evil world around us.

Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener's head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower.

Psychologist Martin Seligman, in his extensive studies of "learned helplessness," showed that people's motivation to respond to outside threats and problems is undermined by a belief that they have no control over their environment. Learned helplessness is exacerbated by beliefs that problems caused by negative events are permanent; and when the underlying causes are perceived to apply to many other events, the condition becomes pervasive and paralyzing.

Bush is a master at inducing learned helplessness in the electorate. He uses pessimistic language that creates fear and disables people from feeling they can solve their problems. In his Sept. 20, 2001, speech to Congress on the 9/11 attacks, he chose to increase people's sense of vulnerability: "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. ... I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight. ... Be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat." (Subsequent terror alerts by the FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security have maintained and expanded this fear of unknown, sinister enemies.)

Contrast this rhetoric with Franklin Roosevelt's speech delivered the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He said: "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. ... There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our armed forces with the unbounding determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God." Roosevelt focuses on an optimistic future rather than an ongoing threat to Americans' personal survival.

The writer sees the best anecdote to this politics of pessimism and fear as a return to the optimistic rhetoric about the future perfected by FDR and Ronald Reagan. [link via Pandagon]

It's not every weekend that a Melanie Lynskey movie gets released, and there are some insane match-ups today in college football, so I probably won't be back 'til Monday. Go Blue !!!

My lil' nephew wishes you all a Happy Halloween !!

Dixiecrat Watch: Former Lester Maddox aide (and gay rights opponent) Zell Miller has endorsed George Bush in the 2004 election.

Awhile back I removed all the pseudonymous sites from my blogroll, out of fear that I might have legal exposure if one of those sites made a defamatory statement or criminal threat against a third party. As it turns out, that fear was unfounded, although I kept the general policy of not linking to anonymous sites. I made an exception for Eschaton, the wildly popular website of the blogger known as "Atrios". I figured that since I went to his site several times a day anyways, and people whose judgment I trusted, such as James Capozzola, vouched for him, I might as well.

In any event, the issue in the blogosphere the last couple of days (mentioned here on Wednesday) is the threatening letter sent from an attorney for another blogger, Donald Luskin, accusing "Atrios" (whose real name is "Donovan McNabb") of libeling him by calling him a "stalker" of esteemed columnist Paul Krugman, and of tolerating the presence of third-party commenters, who supposedly said even crueler things. Obviously, a successful lawsuit would irreparably damage the internet, and the fact that Luskin has jokingly admitted to being a stalker of Prof. Krugman in the past makes this an example of everything people hate about the legal system. For those of you who are interested, though, TalkLeft has a legal analysis of blogger liability for third-party comments with which I concur.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the post-Vail era in Laker history has been the "revelation" that Kobe Bryant is not a popular person within the Laker organization. For a number of writers, the fact that he remains a beloved figure with fans is difficult to fathom; after all, if Shaq doesn't like him, and reporters think he's an a-hole, and he's currently facing rape charges to boot, then how dare the fans give him a standing-o at Staples. This article is typical of the emerging meme, that for fans to disbelieve the rape charges against Kobe is itself an outrage, even though, as this writer puts it, no one has seen the evidence yet.

In fact, the reason why the fans are waiving "Free Kobe" signs is the same reason political activists thirty years ago were demanding freedom for Hurricane Carter: they believe that the charges are bogus, and that the notion that Kobe Bryant may spend the rest of his life in prison for the actions of that night is itself an outrage. To put it another, they think (with good reason after the preliminary hearing) that the accuser is lying, that real rape victims don't party up a storm and boast about their assailant's "size" several days after the attack, as this woman supposedly did, or, when she was examined only hours after the attack, wear a pair of undergarments stained with another man's semon. Rape is not a victimless crime, not when the accused may go to prison for a long, long time, so where is the injured party here? The fact that Kobe can afford Atticus Finch to represent him does not make him any more guilty, nor does it make his fans sexist pigs for supporting him.

And, in any event, since when does Shaq have any credibility as a team leader? The Lakers' drive for a fourth straight title was thwarted last year when Shaq chose not to get surgery until the last second, and played most of the season out-of-shape. Until Kobe became "the Man", the go-to guy on the floor, O'Neill had won a total of zero rings, and having the Mailman and Payton on the floor with The Big Diesel this season will not mean a thing come the last week of May against the Spurs (and considering how the Lakers obtained The Three Tenors who starred opening night, it would be hypocritical for fans to disparage Kobe's wish to test the free agency waters at the end of the season).

Fact of the matter is, the fans like Kobe because they see in his drive to excel, his passion for the spotlight, something they hadn't seen since Magic Johnson. I fell in love with the guy in Game 5 against Utah in 1997, when he threw up two airballs in overtime with the game on the line. This was someone who wanted the ball, who knew he was a star, even if his talent wasn't at that level yet, and the unbelievable yarbles of a rookie off the bench insisting that he was The Man won me over, even if it ended the Lakers' playoff run early that year. I suspect that a lot of other Laker fans share that feeling, and that is why the sports media is barking up the wrong tree on this one.

Another thin-skinned wingnut is heading to the courts. It's amazing that for all the whining conservatives do about "frivolous lawsuits" and trial lawyers, they're the first ones to threaten litigation when their feelings are hurt.

Death Is Just a Statistic Dept.: This is a truly despicable quote, which, which, heaven forbid, is awful.

"Professor" Camille Paglia, on blogging:

Blog reading for me is like going down to the cellar amid shelves and shelves of musty books that you're condemned to turn the pages of. Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose! There's a lack of discipline, a feeling that anything that crosses one's mind is important or interesting to others. People say that the best part about writing a blog is that there's no editing -- it's free speech without institutional control. Well, sure, but writing isn't masturbation -- you've got to self-edit.

I'm so glad we got that cleared up. You should also read her tribute to Rush Limbaugh; it's easily the funniest thing I've read this year !!

I doubt this bill will ever get out of committee, or be signed by Herr Ziffel if if comes to that, but a pair of influential legislators in California have finally put the NCAA's feet to the fire by introducing a bill that would forbid colleges in the Golden State from obeying regulations mandating amateurism for student-athletes. It's always amazed me the amount of newsprint that gets wasted on investigating whether some booster gives a campus superstar a loaner to drive around town, and perhaps some spending money for dates and such, as if it were a sin to receive something that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if the beneficiary weren't a college athlete. Colleges rake in hundreds of [CONTINUED]

Mickey Kaus has an already much-commented-on piece defending blogs as a method of communication, or journalism, or whatever the hell it is. Most of his argument is devoted to justifying the one thing that all blogs have in common: that the editor and the author are the same person. A "blog" with a third-party editor, such as the SacBee columnist Daniel Weintraub, is entirely different fauna, like comparing a man with a mannequin, or a Sierra Nevada P.A. to a Samuel Adams.

If I have an argument with Kaus, it is over a specific weakness that blogs have which he seems to gloss over (in comparing this type of journalism to Matt Drudge, for instance), something that might be alleviated with an editor, but is really more a reflection of the blogger himself. That is, the lack of due diligence paid to making sure you get the post right. Sometimes, it's just a matter of using spellcheck a little more faithfully. But more often, it is the nasty habit a lot of bloggers have of publishing something because it sounds like a good story, rather than checking to ensure its accuracy. Spreading discredited stories undermines our craft, and it happens all too frequently with blogging.

For example, last month several right-wing bloggers picked up and ran with the story that actor Ed Asner had made some glowing remarks about Joseph Stalin, to the effect that he was "misunderstood" and that he would love to portray him in a movie. The story came from a conservative radio host who was recounting a conversation he had with the man some time ago. As it turns out, the Limbaugh-wannabee had gotten it wrong, and to his credit, retracted his accusation; an audio recording of the conversation revealed that Asner had merely noted the lack of movies and TV portraying Stalin, and had stated that he would like to take a crack at the role.

Those in the blogosphere who had so uncritically linked to a story smearing one of our most distinguished actors reacted with outrage towards their source's retraction, when a sense of humility would have more appropriate. Did any of these people think to contact their source for this story, to see how legitimate it was (the way a real journalist-blogger e-mailed me to find out how much of my October 6 posting on Gray Davis was truthful)? Did they exhibit any skepticism about what was clearly hearsay evidence? Obviously not. Asner's alleged quote fit within the prism of their ideological worldview, one that views any leftist thought as per se treasonous, and they fisked away. Those who bothered to make a correction blamed their source, rather than questioned their own methods.

This isn't the only example that comes to mind; some of you might recall the bogus definition of the MeChA slogan that made it's way from racist websites to bloggers to Fox News. Nor is this limited to the right; if Michael Moore were to claim that President Bush relieved himself on a homeless person while on the way to this morning's press conference, you can be rest assured that MWO would link to that account before the afternoon, just as it tried to spread a rumor about the homosexuality of one of Bush's judicial nominees last spring. Since not all of us can hire factcheckers to work on our vanity sites, it is incumbent on bloggers to act ethically when posting, and that means treating all outside information with skepticism.