I have not said a lot in recent days about pop culture, because it doesn't seem relevant at the moment. I also have not said much about the financial crisis because a) My knowledge of the issue is limited, and b) I have family members that work in the industry and I am mainly concerned for what they face each day.
The numbers are beyond the comprehension of most of us who don't work in this realm. We see news reports of losses that we simply can't understand. Where will it end? How long will this harm the average person? I certainly don't know. Panic doesn't seem to make sense in terms of what most governments advisements say, but it is the obvious emotion.
A less obvious emotion is that of attendees at McCain/Palin events. It has been widely reported that people in the crowd at their speeches have yelled sentiments such as "Kill Him" or "Terrorist" when the top two on the republican ticket are speaking about Obama. So far, the republicans have not made any publicized attempt to stop this kind of genuinely frightening behavior.
Deomocrats didn't make any similiar calls for violence when they were frustrated by being behind Bush in 2004, at least to my memory. Granted, those folks were not in such horrific financial times. Their retirement didn't seem to be in the balance at the moment.
But the man they elected so proudly has apparently trashed their retirement, and they are directing anger at an African-American who has run a decent campaign. They can't stand it and they are getting unruly. It honestly frightens me when I look at the video of McCain supporters who seem to be "erratic", as the disputed word in this campaign goes.
If Obama wins, as it seems we'll see, will this frightening anger be an issue beyond election day? I honestly worry about that based on the anger of what I have seen.
By the way, can you imagine John McCain telling his angry crowd to stop with the dangerous rhetoric?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Joke's Over?
"Did you hear the one about Sarah Palin and the...."
Chances are, you've heard a few sentences that started that way in recent weeks. Maybe they came from friends. Perhaps it was from the host of your favorite late night talk show. Lots of e-mails probably began that way.
But after last night's vice presidential debate, you won't hear near as much Sarah Palin humor.
Why? Well, she wasn't a flaming, unmitigated disaster. She wasn't great, but she wasn't the awful mess that her interviews leading up to the debate had made so many of us expect.
Democrats all over the country likely settled in to watch Palin get tangled in her own words and embarrass her party. Instead, they got a rigidly rehearsed speech crammed into a debate setting, with equally rehearsed folksy words and phrases tossed in for down-home effect. Not the stuff of genius, but also no blunders that will be played ad nauseum on cable news. The bits that we'll likely hear will come in the form of a highlight reel of her "Wasilla-isms".
But did she look presidential? Much has been made of the fright caused by her being just one breath from a 72 year old man in poor health away from leading the free world. And rightly so. In this area, nothing has changed. The thought of her as commander in chief still makes me want to check immigration laws for other countries.
However, I will admit that it is a bit easier to understand how she became the governor of the fourth least populated state in America. I've always heard it said that Alaskans are an odd bunch. She showed enough savvy on the stage in St. Louis to demonstrate how she convinced these quirky masses in the land of the midnight sun to put her in charge. But not much more than that. Decent, but not at all great
So how did she manage to make a respectable showing, when all recent indications were that she would get pummeled by an experienced guy like Joe Biden? We'll never know for sure what happened at the McCain home in Arizona during the Palin cram sessions. But I'm guessing that it must have made anything most of us experienced in college look small time. Imagine having Warren Buffet tutor you for an econ final.
So while Palin didn't swallow a bottle of genius pills, she did make as decent a showing as could be expected. The best outcome of this for the McCain campaign will be a reduction in Palin jokes, which will focus things for this last month of the campaign itself. That's not a bad situation for anyone. Good fodder for comedy is always nice. But there are issues in our country right now that are much more important than laughter generated by current events.
Now, as you always ask after debates...who won? Check with the debate coach at your old high school and I'm confident they would say that it was Biden. He was polished, overly polite, knowledgeable and followed proper debate procedure. And from an intellectual standpoint, he was FAR superior.
Palin avoided questions, inserting answers to items she wanted to discuss. She at one point told the moderator she wasn't going to stick to the requested topics, basically daring anyone to hold her feet to the fire. She also offered very few specifics. Her style above substance performance had the likes of Pat Buchanan giggling and giddy. But all of this does not constitute victory, and the polls conducted afterward clearly said Biden was the winner.
Chances are, you've heard a few sentences that started that way in recent weeks. Maybe they came from friends. Perhaps it was from the host of your favorite late night talk show. Lots of e-mails probably began that way.
But after last night's vice presidential debate, you won't hear near as much Sarah Palin humor.
Why? Well, she wasn't a flaming, unmitigated disaster. She wasn't great, but she wasn't the awful mess that her interviews leading up to the debate had made so many of us expect.
Democrats all over the country likely settled in to watch Palin get tangled in her own words and embarrass her party. Instead, they got a rigidly rehearsed speech crammed into a debate setting, with equally rehearsed folksy words and phrases tossed in for down-home effect. Not the stuff of genius, but also no blunders that will be played ad nauseum on cable news. The bits that we'll likely hear will come in the form of a highlight reel of her "Wasilla-isms".
But did she look presidential? Much has been made of the fright caused by her being just one breath from a 72 year old man in poor health away from leading the free world. And rightly so. In this area, nothing has changed. The thought of her as commander in chief still makes me want to check immigration laws for other countries.
However, I will admit that it is a bit easier to understand how she became the governor of the fourth least populated state in America. I've always heard it said that Alaskans are an odd bunch. She showed enough savvy on the stage in St. Louis to demonstrate how she convinced these quirky masses in the land of the midnight sun to put her in charge. But not much more than that. Decent, but not at all great
So how did she manage to make a respectable showing, when all recent indications were that she would get pummeled by an experienced guy like Joe Biden? We'll never know for sure what happened at the McCain home in Arizona during the Palin cram sessions. But I'm guessing that it must have made anything most of us experienced in college look small time. Imagine having Warren Buffet tutor you for an econ final.
So while Palin didn't swallow a bottle of genius pills, she did make as decent a showing as could be expected. The best outcome of this for the McCain campaign will be a reduction in Palin jokes, which will focus things for this last month of the campaign itself. That's not a bad situation for anyone. Good fodder for comedy is always nice. But there are issues in our country right now that are much more important than laughter generated by current events.
Now, as you always ask after debates...who won? Check with the debate coach at your old high school and I'm confident they would say that it was Biden. He was polished, overly polite, knowledgeable and followed proper debate procedure. And from an intellectual standpoint, he was FAR superior.
Palin avoided questions, inserting answers to items she wanted to discuss. She at one point told the moderator she wasn't going to stick to the requested topics, basically daring anyone to hold her feet to the fire. She also offered very few specifics. Her style above substance performance had the likes of Pat Buchanan giggling and giddy. But all of this does not constitute victory, and the polls conducted afterward clearly said Biden was the winner.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Save Your Boos For Halloween
Been to see your favorite team lately? If so, and if they happened to be having a bad day, was their performance greeted with a chorus of boos from the home crowd?
In this era of expensive tickets and unlimited fan expression, it is nothing to hear a thunderous negative response from the crowd at a home stadium. And when that crowd is questioned about their actions by the host on the local sports talk station, you will hear an endless parade of callers defending their right to let the coaches and athletic director know that they don't like what they are getting for their money.
The fans are certainly within their rights to let the coaches have it on game day. Indeed, that instant gratification probably provides some minor amount of relief to a guy in the stands suffering through a lousy performance.
But cooler-headed fans often try to be the voice of reason, asking the boo birds to think about the possible consequences of their actions. In reading about some recent recruiting news in the SEC, I think these folks now have a stronger argument.
Josh Nunes, a high school quarterback from Upland, California who is rated as the number twelve prospect in the country at his position by Rivals.com, had committed to play football for the University of Tennessee in the fall of 2009. He is a big kid with a strong arm, good high school stats and a four star rating, and he was headed for Knoxville.
But after his commitment, Nunes attended the UT game against Florida a few weeks ago in Big Orange country. As you know if you watched, Tennessee looked especially flat in losing 30-6 to the Gators and the crowd let them have it. According to sportswriter Ron Higgins of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Nunes family expressed concerns to UT officials about this booing, as well as the crowd response at other UT home games.
Now, a couple of weeks later, Nunes has changed his commitment and will attend Stanford next fall. BOOOO!!!!!!
Anyone who has seen UT play this fall knows that their offense looks awful. In conference games against Auburn and Florida, they have scored a total of 18 points. Junior quarterback Jonathan Crompton has looked as though he is in over his head, and the prospects for improved offensive outputs against other top defensive teams in conference are not good.
Under these circumstances, the idea of losing a highly rated quarterback prospect should be a painful thing for UT fans. An elite QB who comes in and starts for three years can be a program changing talent. How different would things have been in Knoxville if fans had discouraged a visiting Peyton Manning with their reactions, and instead of going to UT he had followed in his dad's footsteps and enrolled at Ole Miss? And as you ponder that question, think about how the folks in Oxford, Mississippi would answer.
However, if you read some of the Tennessee fan message boards, they consider Nunes a wuss and question whether he would have been a good long term fit for their program if he didn't like hearing a little bit of booing from the crowd. And certainly a tough guy like Peyton wouldn't have been influenced by crowd response, would he?
It's important to remember that the people we are talking about in the recruiting process are 17 or 18 year old high school seniors. Judging the sort of things that might influence their decisions through adult eyes is the sort of reactionary mistake made by people who also shower boos down upon teams of 18 to 22 year old college students when they play poorly. And though you are certainly entitled to do both, you might ask yourself if you should.
Let me put it another way. A kid on a recruiting visit at any university is treated like a future hero. He is told he will be the big man on campus at a school that worships football. He is shown the finest facilities, fed the best food and pampered in any way that fits within NCAA rules. But what happens when the biggest event of his weekend visit, the football game, is memorable mostly for the deafening boos from the crowd after a fumble or an interception? Any recruit that your program truly wants will have plenty of options, and some of the schools he visits may have fans who are a bit more polite.
One last note...Nunes went to football camps at Stanford and told the daily paper in Knoxville that contributing factors in his decision were "distance and difficulty of getting there (Knoxville) from my home". He also said that he had mistakenly thought he would not have a chance to play at Stanford.
While this might sound like UT's fans are off the hook for souring the kid on their school, I suspect he was just trying to fib in order to be nice.
In addition to interest from UT, Nunes was being recruited by Florida and Oklahoma. These are two of the best programs in the country, while Stanford has been at the bottom of their conference for a few years now. So the chances that such an elite QB who attended the Stanford football camp did not get a scholarship offer from that school until very late in the process, after he had already committed elsewhere, are extremely slim. And it was not a matter of wondering whether he could get into Stanford, because one of the other schools considered by Nunes was Harvard.
The best guess here is that Nunes committed to UT, but changed his mind after the Florida game. He didn't want to go halfway across the country to get booed, so he went the safe route and stayed close to home at Stanford.
In this era of expensive tickets and unlimited fan expression, it is nothing to hear a thunderous negative response from the crowd at a home stadium. And when that crowd is questioned about their actions by the host on the local sports talk station, you will hear an endless parade of callers defending their right to let the coaches and athletic director know that they don't like what they are getting for their money.
The fans are certainly within their rights to let the coaches have it on game day. Indeed, that instant gratification probably provides some minor amount of relief to a guy in the stands suffering through a lousy performance.
But cooler-headed fans often try to be the voice of reason, asking the boo birds to think about the possible consequences of their actions. In reading about some recent recruiting news in the SEC, I think these folks now have a stronger argument.
Josh Nunes, a high school quarterback from Upland, California who is rated as the number twelve prospect in the country at his position by Rivals.com, had committed to play football for the University of Tennessee in the fall of 2009. He is a big kid with a strong arm, good high school stats and a four star rating, and he was headed for Knoxville.
But after his commitment, Nunes attended the UT game against Florida a few weeks ago in Big Orange country. As you know if you watched, Tennessee looked especially flat in losing 30-6 to the Gators and the crowd let them have it. According to sportswriter Ron Higgins of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the Nunes family expressed concerns to UT officials about this booing, as well as the crowd response at other UT home games.
Now, a couple of weeks later, Nunes has changed his commitment and will attend Stanford next fall. BOOOO!!!!!!
Anyone who has seen UT play this fall knows that their offense looks awful. In conference games against Auburn and Florida, they have scored a total of 18 points. Junior quarterback Jonathan Crompton has looked as though he is in over his head, and the prospects for improved offensive outputs against other top defensive teams in conference are not good.
Under these circumstances, the idea of losing a highly rated quarterback prospect should be a painful thing for UT fans. An elite QB who comes in and starts for three years can be a program changing talent. How different would things have been in Knoxville if fans had discouraged a visiting Peyton Manning with their reactions, and instead of going to UT he had followed in his dad's footsteps and enrolled at Ole Miss? And as you ponder that question, think about how the folks in Oxford, Mississippi would answer.
However, if you read some of the Tennessee fan message boards, they consider Nunes a wuss and question whether he would have been a good long term fit for their program if he didn't like hearing a little bit of booing from the crowd. And certainly a tough guy like Peyton wouldn't have been influenced by crowd response, would he?
It's important to remember that the people we are talking about in the recruiting process are 17 or 18 year old high school seniors. Judging the sort of things that might influence their decisions through adult eyes is the sort of reactionary mistake made by people who also shower boos down upon teams of 18 to 22 year old college students when they play poorly. And though you are certainly entitled to do both, you might ask yourself if you should.
Let me put it another way. A kid on a recruiting visit at any university is treated like a future hero. He is told he will be the big man on campus at a school that worships football. He is shown the finest facilities, fed the best food and pampered in any way that fits within NCAA rules. But what happens when the biggest event of his weekend visit, the football game, is memorable mostly for the deafening boos from the crowd after a fumble or an interception? Any recruit that your program truly wants will have plenty of options, and some of the schools he visits may have fans who are a bit more polite.
One last note...Nunes went to football camps at Stanford and told the daily paper in Knoxville that contributing factors in his decision were "distance and difficulty of getting there (Knoxville) from my home". He also said that he had mistakenly thought he would not have a chance to play at Stanford.
While this might sound like UT's fans are off the hook for souring the kid on their school, I suspect he was just trying to fib in order to be nice.
In addition to interest from UT, Nunes was being recruited by Florida and Oklahoma. These are two of the best programs in the country, while Stanford has been at the bottom of their conference for a few years now. So the chances that such an elite QB who attended the Stanford football camp did not get a scholarship offer from that school until very late in the process, after he had already committed elsewhere, are extremely slim. And it was not a matter of wondering whether he could get into Stanford, because one of the other schools considered by Nunes was Harvard.
The best guess here is that Nunes committed to UT, but changed his mind after the Florida game. He didn't want to go halfway across the country to get booed, so he went the safe route and stayed close to home at Stanford.
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