Mother's Day

I lost my mother a few years ago (it was at the mall, between the Orange Julius and the 5-7-9, rim shot). No, she passed away, and so this day becomes, for me, more one of remembrance than of celebration.

This will not be one of those essays that tell you to treat your mother well, to value her while she's still here...not because you shouldn't, just because you can read that anywhere, especially today. No, what I would like to urge people to do is to try to see their mothers, whether they're still around or not, as humans, with the strengths and weaknesses of all humans.

You see, I had issues with my mom, serious life-shaking issues. When she passed away, we were not on the best of terms, and I have probably felt some guilt over that...but only briefly. I have also probably blamed her for that (which is not wholly unjustified)...but only briefly.

Because to see blame or guilt requires "shoulds," a set of assumptions as to what the relationship with a mother should be. And applying that set to the real person who was my mother somehow diminishes her, reducing her to a television mom who plays a certain role in my life, and I in hers, and everything should play out the way it would in a Hallmark Hall of Fame very special presentation.

But I'm not, say, Kyle Chandler, and my mom wasn't Ellen Burstyn, and we didn't have a scriptwriter creating false conflicts and even more false resolutions so we could achieve closure by the time the credits rolled. We were real people, struggling with our lives, our places in the world, our other relationships, our weaknesses, and, every so often, our lives would intersect in ways that were positive, as we built each other up, and, sometimes, we would bring out the worst in each other, as we could use our mutual knowledge to try to ease our own pains by hurting the other.

My mom was an interesting person, but not in the cliched ways. She lived through the Depression but had no interesting life lessons to convey from her untroubled passage through that decade. My father passed away when my brother and I were quite young; rather than creating him as a symbol of veneration, Mother never got over the hassles his death created for her, and her anger prevented us from ever getting a clear picture of the man.

But she was also a pioneer of feminism, not by choice after consciousness-raising, but by necessity because she had to support her family, however resentful she might have been of having to do so. She was ruggedly independent past the point of stubbornness, and was admired and appreciated for that by a wide range of people (even if her sons often failed to reap the benefits of that attitude).

Quite frankly, there are things about her I don't particularly miss - I have not, even at the remove of several years, been able to chuckle at her more obnoxious qualities. She could be a royal pain in the, well, one area of the body is not enough to describe the irritation. I am not now at, and may never get to, the point where the negatives become endearing.

But she wasn't a symbol, and I can't blame her for not being one. She wasn't June Cleaver or Margaret Anderson, but she was one fierce lady, and I'm glad I knew her, and I miss her on this Mother's Day. So, Mom, wherever you are, have an extra martini and an extra cigarette on me.

Choice

I've written before that one of our assumptions, that democracy goes hand in hand with free market capitalism, is flawed. They are two systems which really don't have all that much in common, given that one features "one person, one vote," while the other has as its centerpiece "one person, 40 billion votes" (if that person is Bill Gates). The tensions between the two systems become grossly apparent at various times in our history, and I believe one of those times is happening now.

However, there is one critical common factor of democracy and capitalism, and that factor is choice. Each of them gives a sense of choice that is not present in other systems; we can choose any from a number of candidates, and we can choose any from a number of toothpaste varieties. Of course, these are still constrained choice sets, as we see every presidential campaign when the voters of numerous states are presented with no choice at all, the decision already having been made. Even on the consumer side, choices are certainly not infinite. In general, though, we are usually satisfied that we are being given more rein for our selections than, say, people had in the old Soviet Union.

Naturally, choice requires knowledge, and, while we've made great strides toward making that kind of knowledge more available, it is still not clear that we want a gigantic number of choices for every single thing. Most people prefer Social Security to self-directed investments because there are too many options and the information is not 100% reliable (note that this is an inherent quality of anything that requires a forecast; information can never be complete, and has a cost that can exceed its marginal value).

Choice is also confounded by deliberate attempts to obfuscate and blur. We know this to be true in the political sphere and the economic. Misleading campaign ads, puffy advertising - these techniques have converged in modern marketing, which has become, essentially, the science of attempts to influence people's choices, even if the new selection contradicts their ultimate best interest.

What seems hard for people in these turbulent times is taking a consistent stand on one side or the other of the issue of choice. And it's not easy, especially as we each would like to have our own comfort level of choice (a lawyer who deals with health care issues might feel perfectly comfortable making a decision about a medical plan, and would find a national plan restrictive and unsuitable; the factory worker or software developer who is not immersed daily in these details would welcome the simplicity).

But that doesn't mean that we can't have individual clarity on these matters. If you believe that every home buyer made a free choice, that is, he or she was not defrauded, and you believe that choices have deserved consequences, then it's hard for you to support any kind of restructuring or bailout for homeowners.

And that attitude requires you to be consistent. As we see various companies using their federal money to pay bonuses to their employees (kudos for a job well done??), we hear an argument that is commonly made. Many of these employees are not the high-rolling decision makers who brought the world financial system down, they're clerks and secretaries and mailroom employees who happen to have large amounts of their compensation paid as a year-end bonus. Surely they don't deserve to be penalized for their innocent involvement in the scandals of overleverage.

But that argument ignores choice, the very real choice that each of these employees made when they decided to accept the job. Think of the secretary who is deciding between two jobs, one that pays $30K, the other $20K with a typical $20K bonus. We know that the hiring manager will tout that bonus as money in the bank, as something that has never failed to be paid. Choice, however, requires us to see through that argument to the very real possibility that conditions may not permit that bonus to be paid.

So I don't see how we, in effect, bail out that employee by looking the other way on his bonus simply because he doesn't make as big a base salary as someone who made the other choice. It still comes down to a matter of the choices people have made, and where an individual draws the line on how much we protect people from those choices.

Because then we get into a big argument as to which choices are protectable and which aren't, and I'm not real comfortable that we can reach an equitable conclusion. If there are larger considerations (we have to bail out the banks themselves because they are the blood of our global business system), then, fine, let's get that out on the table. If community stability is an argument for helping overextended homeowners, again, let's be upfront about that.

However, cherry-picking certain groups and their choices as being things we should shore up, and others we should not, runs a risk of being political pandering, and creates a very real possibility of social upheaval on a large scale. With everything else we've got on our plate, we sure don't need that.

The future

As I pondered today what I would write about, I realized that I'm tired of thinking. IBM is sending jobs overseas and inviting otherwise laid-off employees to follow them...but, of course, at the prevailing wage of the destination country. The stimulus package is wending its weary way through the halls of Congress, and people are disappointed that bipartisanship hasn't magically become the tone. Speaking of magic, the consensus is that the stimulus will work because of the magic multiplier, in which government spending is transformed into higher GDP (then why don't we always spend a whole lot of money we don't have?), and, moreover, this time that GDP increase will be spread among all the people. Large media companies are jumping on Facebook and Twitter, trying to "establish a presence," despite any proof that there will be tangible returns. And I've just come through consideration of the nature of Wikipedia.

In each of these cases, and others, I try to ask questions in getting to the heart of the future. If Wikipedia crowds out other information sources because of its ubiquity and positive press, will their casual attitude toward accuracy cause problems? If people spend a great deal of time formulating less-than-140 character Twitter messages, will that loss of productivity outweigh whatever positive applications end up being built on that platform? What will happen when reporters become "content producers" whose objective is to generate massive amounts of stuff for the multiple-platform media thing; will reporting and insight take a back seat to fast typing?

Will New Energy get off the ground now that gas prices have gone back down? Does our uncertainty indicate that the market model for energy innovation might have some flaws? Will New Energy necessarily lead to incremental jobs? If so, where will those jobs be, and what kinds of qualifications will they require?

Can a company like IBM move the home base of a consultant job to India, pay that wage, but require the worker to spend 100% of their time working with clients in the U.S., or is this somehow prohibited by current labor laws? Does this presage a drop in compensation for virtually everyone? If so, what happens to our economy?

Will applying more market discipline to education really make better schools? Can we really make 3 million great teachers through the carrot-and-stick approach? If we succeed, will we end up with large numbers of young people overtrained for the actual jobs that we'll have in the 21st century?

In each of these cases, writing a post would require me to think seriously and take some kind of position. Today, I don't want to do that, as I'm tired of thinking about the future.

The reality is, nobody knows the answer to these questions. I know what I think about them, but no one, no matter how emphatic they are, actually can see all the unforeseen consequences of our current decisions. The economy may come roaring back, with great jobs for all and a stock market that shoots through the 20,000 mark. Some American genius may come up with a breakthrough that brings dirt-cheap energy to the world, and reestablishes the U.S. as the dominant world power. And so on.

We just need to remember that no person, not Nobel Laureate or humble blogger, can tell us what the world will look like 5, or 10, or 50 years from today. We are all, through our daily decisions, creating that future, whether we're voting for someone or accepting one job over another or buying the Taylor Swift album, and it will depend on those 6 billion people making trillions of decisions.

So, just for today, I'm going to raise those questions, but give my brain a rest by not trying to answer any of them. Discuss among yourselves.

Happy 2009, please!

Interesting year, that 2008, full of hope that things in our political capitals will change (unless you're in Illinois, where you still have Blago to think about).

But we are also poised at the brink of a very difficult time, one which shows no signs of abating. We are compounding some of our recent great experiments with even more of the same, and the more consensus there is, the more I worry that no one really knows what they're saying, but that we are lapsing into the usual groupthink that has been such a hallmark of life these past years. I see us falling into a kind of covert protectionism that is, apparently, perfectly acceptable to all those same people who've been telling us that national interest must be subsumed to that of world efficiency, and I marvel at the inconsistency.

However, I then look at my lovely wife, who means the world to me, and I have a brother who's a great guy (neither of us, perhaps, is always good at keeping in touch when life is so full of the immediate, but ours is a relationship rooted in bedrock), and I got a call from a treasured old friend this holiday (and hope that we can establish something more consistent and sustaining), and there are people I've met through this blog who have become important in a virtual way, and I'm not in imminent danger of losing my home or going hungry, which means I have it better than a lot of people.

So the important elements of my life are there even if the big-screen TV isn't, so I am lucky. And I hope that all reading these words are as well, or will be, that you're well-fixed to deal with whatever comes your way, and with that, I wish you and yours a Happy New Year!

A joyous time for all

I know that there may be readers who celebrate other holidays at this time of year, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, even Saturnalia (we always suspected that this was the big one for our Latin teacher), but I was raised in the faith I have, so Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are the big ones for me. While the youthful excitement may have faded, there is still a quiet satisfaction at the peace that comes over most of us at this time of the year.

Our family tradition was always to go to some relative's on Christmas Eve, then to stay at home Christmas morning and spend that as a family. That's how it was for me growing up, and it is, now that my mother's gone, no longer the case; now it's dinner on Christmas Eve, and that pretty much wraps it up. But it is still a time of internal quietude, a chance to catch the breath.

So I won't rile things up by talking today about the decline of newspapers, or the possibility that Obama will recreate our Iraq mistake in Afghanistan, or the obtuseness of commenters, or anything about the financial mess.

No, I will hope that each of you out there is spending time with loved ones, even if they aren't all with you. I will hope that you take the time to remember those who will never be with you. I will hope that you are feeling the spirit of sharing, even if there is less to share this year. I will hope that you are wrapped in love and laughter; if not, at least warmth and contentment.

And, now, I bid all of you great joy and good tidings, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

I do not have "no comment"

I don't leave a lot of comments on other blogs, mostly due to time, and in no small part because I like to save my wit and insight for posts on this blog. Occasionally, though, I find myself doing so and, because I know my ardent fans don't want to miss a thing I'm thinking, I will create a post out of my own comments. A bit cheap, perhaps, but, if this blog is to be a record of my thinking, it seems valid. And today seemed like a big comment day.

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Greg Glockner at Dwaffler/Decidedly has been writing a series of interesting posts about the worst business decisions ever. Actually, most of his posts have something to do with that topic, but these four (from 12/1, 12/3, 12/5, and 12/8) are related and worth reading.

I don't often comment on Greg's posts because I usually have little to add - he's quite concise and self-contained - but the most recent, which argued that the auto makers have not made anything that would qualify as the "worst business decision ever," said this:

I'm unable to identify a single decision that led to the crisis at the American automobile manufacturers.

I think this is spot on, but I had a little more to contribute:

Neither am I qualified to talk in detail about the woes of our automakers, but I do have one more mistake to throw into the hopper.

I came out of business school in the early '80s, and the focus then was on the financing business. The car companies weren't looking for innovation in manufacturing. They preferred innovation in high-margin, low-involvement car loan products. It was during this period that the foreign companies, focused on making good cars at lower prices, began to build their share. The problem, of course, was that the Big 3 (and little 1, AMC was still around) got away from their core business, that of building cars.

To me, the other things you mentioned followed that decision (with the exception of labor strife; that's been around forever, but was controllable until management took its eye off the ball). And it's not just that they were focused on the wrong part of the business, but they also skewed the talent away from car people. That continues today - do we really think Nardelli has the deep knowledge of the industry that Chrysler needs now?

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Kevin Drum has been writing about the Illinois governor arrest today, here and a follow-up. He provides some good links, good so that I don't have to spend the time digging them out, but Kevin's real question is, "Is Blagojevich...the world's biggest moron?"

My answer is, almost certainly yes:

For those of us who live in Illinois, the answer is pretty much yes, he is the world's biggest moron. This is a guy who shamelessly uses the press to float his populist, but unaffordable, programs, but refuses to take a question. He has a Bush-like disregard for his approval rating, seemingly thinking that he has no problem if the people who elected him think he's not doing the job.

He won a second term (which is embarrassing to many of us) because the Republicans put up an old-time pol who was as do-nothing in her previous posts as Blagojevich is in his. He has promoted the interests of his wife above those of the electorate all the time he's been in office. The only surprise is that it's taken this long to hang some evidence on him.

He hasn't said it in a while, but I'm guessing he still has designs on national office, despite a lack of any real accomplishments.

By the way, I wrote that before the follow-up. It turns out that Kevin has a link that indicates that Blagojevich thought of appointing himself to the Senate to set up a presidential bid in 2016. I'm not sure "moron" even begins to cover it.

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Kevin went on to post about how, just maybe, our kids aren't doing as poorly in math and science as we seemingly want to believe. My point was that, whatever competence they have, they have little incentive to drive toward careers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields:

This shows yet again, that the hue and cry about the dire situation in our schools is far overblown. If we are falling behind the rest of the world in technology, it's not a supply-side problem, that is, it's not that we have students too dumb to embrace STEM subjects. It's that we are offering no hope on the demand side.

When the head of a company like Cisco goes on a talk show and bemoans the lack of qualified graduates, note that he never commits to hiring any of those graduates. We're losing the competition on price, not quality, and it is misleading to suggest otherwise.

I live in a town that was built on technical companies, companies that are now greatly reduced or gone altogether. I would bet that there isn't a student who doesn't have a parent of a friend or a friend of a parent who was affected by the convulsions in the tech industry. So why would that student, no matter how well they do on a test, go into one of those fields?

Businessmen like the idea of making the talent pool bigger - it gives them more leverage - and politicians like supporting expensive educational programs with a lot of computers and lab equipment - you can never go wrong supporting the kids - but no one as yet has demonstrated a magic implication that more graduates mean more jobs; cause and effect are exactly backwards there.

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The interesting Cognition and Language Lab blog, which discusses human reasoning, had a post about grammar and made this observation:

It has been remarked by more than one Southerner that Yankees think they are dumb just because of their accent. If you've never done this, then I ask you, have you really never assumed someone with a West Virginian accent was dumb?

While I think there is a degree of truth to the observation of that prejudice, there's at least one area in which it seems to be quite the opposite:

Only peripherally on topic, but isn't it odd that, in the world of football, the Southern accent signifier is exactly the opposite? That is, a Southern accent is actually the one with prestige, especially when we are treated to the expertise of a retired coach. Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer might be regarded negatively, but their accents actually seem to give them cred.

Heck, even Terry Bradshaw is seen as an expert.

Happy Thanksgiving

I think I'll just kick back today, enjoy the holiday, and urge anyone who happens by to do the same. I suppose I could come up with something issue-related for my Canadian readers (if there are any), but I was vacationing in Montreal once, quite a few years ago, and stumbled across the fact that Canada celebrates its Thanksgiving in October. It seems to me that, if you can't open some more things on your Thanksgiving to accommodate a traveler, there's no reason for me to come up with some Canadian-oriented stuff for you. (However, if you haven't gotten up to Montreal, go, holiday or none, because it's a fabulous city.)

I could also enumerate the list of things for which I'm thankful, or do one of those cheesy counter-intuitive things where I list the things for which I'm not thankful, but I'll save that for dinner. I am thankful for each of my readers whether you engage in conversation or not, and I'm thankful for the other bloggers who have so illuminated my thinking.

At any rate, please have a nice holiday (or Thursday), count your blessings, and I'll be back with more topical stuff on Friday.

Quick hits

A post in which I take the easy way out and link to a few things that have come across the computer lately:

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There have been several news stories the past few days about the result from a University of Chicago that uses functional MRI scans to prove that bullies like to bully. The blog called Cognition and Language Lab takes the time to point us to a Slate post by Daniel Engber which pretty effectively takes the study apart. He points out that the subjects exceed any standard one might apply for bullies; "They're more than bullies; sociopaths might be a better descriptor. Or rapists." The study didn't actually make these kids hurt anyone, it showed them pictures of people in pain. And, perhaps most importantly, the claim that the brain scans demonstrated the conclusion derived is almost certainly wrong. This kind of "test," while interesting, is not conclusive enough to qualify as science (and he provides a link to a Wired article that shows that).

Engber is not satisifed to poke holes in this hyped story, he goes on to discuss some larger flaws in science reporting by the New York Times. It's well worth reading how reporters take press releases and essentially put them wholesale into print.

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I was going to write something on this two-week old article by Robert Samuelson (and has anyone ever milked confusion over his identity more effectively), but I never got around to it, then I found that Brad DeLong has already handled it for me. The article, which appeared in Newsweek and the Washington Post (and how does someone get paid twice for the same work?) is remarkably fatuous, claiming that making rich people poorer doesn't help poor people, largely because rich people are magical:

The larger truth is that much of the income of the rich and well-to-do comes from what they do. If they stop doing it, then the income and wealth vanish. No one gets it. It can't be redistributed because it doesn't exist. Everyone's poorer.

That he uses the new poverty of rich Wall Streeters to illustrate this demonstrates the weakness of the argument. The wealth that these geniuses created was the result of paper profits that they converted into real things for their benefit, but the debt that the system took on as a result is being paid for by everyone now. Much of the financial innovation we've seen over the past several years was ultimately unhelpful to society, no matter how personally profitable it might have been.

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Mark Thoma points us to a book review by Robert Solow that intelligently discusses risk and economic efficiency, and certainly makes me interested in reading Peter Gosselin's book, High Wire. Even without reading the book, however, Solow makes some good points.

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A lot of people have mentioned this rant of a month ago by Rush Limbaugh about the future of the Republican Party. In my opinion, this is a sure way of permanently impairing the party for decades to come; nevertheless, it's indicative of a certain mindset currently afflicting those on the right, the kind of thinking that will propel Sarah Palin into a leadership position.

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And a question with no links: why do I find the music of Natasha Bedingfield kind of endearing, and the "music" of Katy Perry so irritating? (And don't get me started on the new Britney Spears "song," Womanizer.)

Michael Crichton has died

And so this year, in which we've lost so many big names (just last week, both Gerald Arpino and Studs Terkel), we can add another. Author Michael Crichton has died at 66.

In April, I wrote a review of a book containing essays on the science found in his books. I praised The Andromeda Strain, while being somewhat dismissive of his later works. But, whatever the flaws in his work, I appreciated the intent, that of bringing science into popular fiction. It was frustrating to see the science distorted, especially when there are authors who are scrupulous in their use of technology who were far less successful, but the intent was worthwhile. Many people who would otherwise have avoided any science were brought in by Crichton's best-sellers, and that's a good thing overall. He will be missed.

Happy Double Ten Day

To any readers I might have in the Republic of China (and I recognize that the time difference makes this post too late - sorry), Happy Double Ten Day.

Another who will be missed

A lovely remembrance by Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, paying appropriate tribute to Paul Newman, who was by all accounts a truly class guy, and a heckuva actor. I can't add too much to that, so I won't try.

However, this really has been a tough year for the obituary column. I'm not going to pore through the past twenty years of deaths, but it seems to me we've lost a ton of well-known, significant people this year, more than other recent years.

One starts with the two Hollywood giants, Paul Newman and Charlton Heston, pushing the great Richard Widmark, Paul Scofield, and Roy Scheider to the supporting cast. Then there are a bunch of folks who were the kind of solid performers who brighten up our films, and they'll be missed: Bernie Mac foremost among them. And two great directors, Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella.

We cannot forget two great young talents who had more to offer, if only they could have escaped their personal demons: Heath Ledger and Brad Renfro.

Television brings its own kind of intimacy, and, even though many of these folks were not front-burner any more, they still occupy a special place in many of us: Allan Melvin, Lois Nettleton, Barry Morse, Ivan Dixon, Harvey Korman, Estelle Getty, and, a particular favorite of mine, Suzanne Pleshette. And, of course, we lost the unclassifiable George Carlin.

Two of the truly great writers, similar only in their talent, are gone: Arthur C. Clarke and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. William F. Buckley, Jr. has left the building, not one of my top choices, but a large figure. And Robin Moore, and Tasha Tudor, and Gregory McDonald.

In music, Eddy Arnold, little-remembered today but a giant in country music, Bo Diddley (and how many people get a rhythm named after them?), Isaac Hayes, Jerry Reed, Jeff Healey, all gone.

And some other big names, Edmund Hillary, Bobby Fischer, Robert Jastrow, no longer with us (though, in so many sad ways, Fischer left us years ago). And Christopher Bowman, who seemingly yesterday brought a unique quality to a sport which constantly threatens to devolve into a bland sameness.

Too many folks, some before their time, others after long and productive lives, have passed away. While I don't like to write major downer posts, I didn't want to let these folks get away without saying something.

So put on a Newman movie, or catch the relentless Lt. Girard on a Fugitive rerun, or watch Bob Hartley and his lovely wife Emily, read 2001: A Space Odyssey, listen to the remarkable Theme from Shaft, take a look at a picture of Mount Everest, and remember.

Truth

Truth is very much in the news this week, with numerous reports coming out of the Olympics about misleading aspects of the Opening Ceremonies and questions about the ages of Chinese girl gymnasts. There is a new book out about Barack Obama; it's going to be a bestseller even though it states things that are demonstrably false, and the author admits his "goal is to defeat Obama." Every day, polls come out, and the media dutifully reports on them in the most misleading way. The Chicago Tribune (and I'm really not trying to pick on them) prints a letter today:

The term "recession" is well-defined and leaves no room for debate:

It is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the American economy.

Letter writers and the many columnists and pundits who write for the Chicago Tribune should be reminded of this fact.

They should realize that no matter how often they write it or say it or repeat it, a recession hasn't happened.

Their dislike of the current administration doesn't justify falsely portraying the facts of the economy.

As a semi-frequent reader of this blog will tell you (and I'll agree; my contention is different, and I'll not repeat it today), this is absolutely wrong. It is not a matter of opinion, and the Tribune should not be publishing this under the guise of presenting a point of view.

The Obama book is beneath contempt, and has been written about well by other writers (by Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, among others). What is appalling is that this book has been published by Simon and Schuster, under the auspices of political whore Mary Matalin. (Timothy Noah at Slate does a good job of dismantling this here, and Joe Klein has some interesting comments here.) I've written about Matalin before, my objections to her are not political (I find her husband equally odious). It shocks me that she continues to be a respected part-time pundit, when her connection to the truth was severed the day she fell in love with Dick Cheney.

I'm sure I've had something to say about polls before, but a quick search didn't turn up anything. The media tends to mischaracterize poll results, it is clear that they don't understand them, and the public deserves better. First, there is a confidence interval attached to polls; it is not impossible that the pollster just happened on 418 people who all rabidly support Obama (just as it is possible for a coin to turn up heads 418 straight times). It isn't likely, but it can happen, which is why even the plus or minus 4 points you hear only represents a 95% probability.

Second, the increasingly irritating trope that any result within the margin of error is "a statistical tie." Kevin Drum has an interesting post on this. To sum up the post, if Obama leads McCain by 2% and the margin of error is 3%, this will be reported as a statistical tie. In truth, Obama has a 74% chance of being ahead.

But which of these does the public get exercised about? Of course, it's the revelation that the Opening Ceremonies featured a little girl singing who really wasn't, because the actual singer wasn't cute enough. And the Chinese gymnastics team may have faked ages of their "women's" gymnastics team to let fearless and flexible youngsters compete in contravention of the rules.

Which of these do you object to? Are these all wrong because they represent untruth, or does your opinion depend on your nationality or political party? We easily accept that Natalie Wood didn't sing in West Side Story (she looked more like a Maria than Marni Nixon, I guess). We ignore Bela Karolyi's solution to the age problem, even though he made it front-page news (he doesn't think there should be limits at all).

I don't have anything profound to say here. Once we start regarding the truth as relative, we open the door for all kinds of things. As long as we let each person determine where the line of "acceptable truth" is, we're going to have numerous versions of it. And that makes communication difficult, for if you define your truth, and I define mine, and they're far enough apart, we won't have any basis to talk at all. And that's what we see more and more in public life.

Congrats, Jetstream

I would be remiss indeed if I didn't congratulate fellow Chicagoan Jesse Jackson on once again finding his way into the news. For those of us who have seen his odious influence-peddling and blackmail techniques up close, we really aren't surprised, but it's interesting to see the rest of the country start to wake up (after only 40 years!) and get a glimpse of the true nature of this petty, egomaniacal self-aggrandizer. (For a particularly pointed account of the Reverend and the media's love affair with him, see this column from the Chicago Daily Observer.)

Taking it easy

I was planning to write some lofty post about the ideals of the United States, how this great experiment is, despite the compromises we've made and the failures we've had, the most noble in the history of man. I believe all that, but I'm barbecuing today, and I'm sure there are more insightful observations than mine to be had, so I'm going to confine myself to one observation.

If you are a music composer, and you want to be sure of being played, write a classical (or quasi-classical) piece about some aspect of America. Based on what we hear most of today on the Chicago classical station, WFMT, pretty much everything with an American theme will be played, no matter how ghastly. Sure, it's a lot of Copland, but it's also a lot of stuff you've never heard of, and wouldn't want to hear. So fire up the quill and get writing your own "American Story" or "American Portrait."

May everyone out there have a wonderful Fourth of July, even if you're not American and it's just another day at work. I'm out.

Ah, technology

If there is a funnier story than this this week, I'll be surprised.

it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site have a few other tricks up their sleeves, such as automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run

This actually might be a good parlor game, where players try to find terms that can be sanitized through the use of technology. How about Catch-22 novelist Joseph The Bad Placeer, or hockey player Miroslav Lucifer, or, perhaps the best (but I won't repeat for my sensitive readers), commenter #4 here?

Changing times

I've written before (here and here) about my respect for the exuberant Canadian cross-country skier Chandra Crawford. It's a case where I'm glad not to know too much about someone in the public eye; one of the worst manifestations of the celebrity culture is the demystification of people one could otherwise admire. There are those who say we need to know the truth about, say, Babe Ruth, that his whoring and drinking were an integral part of understanding him as an athlete and a man, but most of those people are trying to sell newspapers and magazines.

I haven't had an athlete as a true hero since I was a real little kid; I always kind of got that these were real people who ought to be respected for their accomplishments, but that one couldn't invest any more of one's soul than could be discarded. There are actually two threads here: athletes are people too, with the same flaws as any other people (and, I came to learn, in many cases more flawed because of the bubble we put them in from the time their talent is recognized); and they are not necessarily more admirable than other people, just a lot more famous.

Perhaps part of this clear-eyed (or cynical, take your pick) view came from my early involvement in math competitions, where it dawned on me quite quickly that the third-teamer in football would forever receive more accolades and social acceptance than the state champion in math. So, while I greatly enjoy sports and admire the accomplishments of the participants, I have never abandoned myself in the process.

So (and we are getting closer to the point of this post) to Chandra Crawford, who is probably a fairly typical 24-year-old who happened to be born with a high maximal oxygen uptake and was fortunate enough to live a trail's length away from an Olympic training center (centre). But she is not a big celebrity in the United States, and so receives very little attention - I am free to enjoy what she does, her apparent attitude toward it (which is marvelous), and her charming writing at her web site.

But here's the thing that shows me how much times have changed: in Chandra's most recent post of 6/23, she writes about how well things are going for her. She has an "awesome new coach," her training is fine as she builds toward a home-country Olympics in 2010, and, oh yes, "my boyfriend Devon has moved in with me in Canmore."

I'm sure that, if you're of a certain age, this is unremarkable to you, that cohabitation would be tossed oh-so-casually into a blog post or essay. But I am just old enough to remember when no one lived together (well, they did, but it was mostly Bohemian types), and it certainly wasn't something that would be publicized. I'm pretty certain that this revelation won't hurt Chandra's Canadian hero status (and it shouldn't), but it was not so very long ago that it probably would. While we may have a way to go before we iron out every social issue, we shouldn't forget that we've made great progress in accepting changes in race, sexual roles, status, that would have seemed impossible just two or three decades ago. It seems slow if you're living through it, particularly if you're affected by whatever lingering difficulties exist, but, on a human time scale, it's actually going very fast.

Can we get more stupid?

I try not to rail too often against so-called celebrity news, because it's all so ridiculous. Occasionally, however, I run across something that is so far away from rationality that it makes me giggle. A headline on Google News, linking to a People story, did that for me just now:

John Legend & Natasha Bedingfield Congratulate Jamie Lynn

That headline links to a "story" titled "John Legend, Blake Shelton Think Jamie Lynn Will Be a Good Mom." I'll quote the whole thing because, well, why not?:

The music industry sang notes of congratulations to Jamie Lynn Spears Thursday night at a Songwriters Hall of Fame event in New York.

Spears's infant daughter, Maddie Briann, made her debut Thursday morning.

"Congratulations Jamie Lynn. Wow, I've not had a baby yet," English singer-songwriter Natasha Bedingfield said at the soirée. "She'll be able to give us all advice when it happens to us."

The performers and songwriters told the Zoey 101 star not to get too discouraged by the overwhelming media coverage of her early pregnancy and engagement to 19-year-old Casey Aldridge, a Mississippi pipe layer.

"My sister had a child at a young age, too, and I understand what that is like," soul singer John Legend said.

"You just hope that her family supports her and helps her with the baby and she'll be all right."

Country singer-songwriter Blake Shelton echoed the sentiments of many of Spears' friends and family, saying he expects she'll be a wonderful mom.

"I'm from a small town in Oklahoma, and any time you have a teenage girl that is pregnant and has a baby that's going to be the focus," he said. "It doesn't mean she's not going to be a great mother."

Let's leave aside the extolling of an unwed, 17-year-old mother. It's not a great situation, but I'll stay off my moral high horse on this one; kids, don't try that at home.

What made me laugh was the idea that the opinions of John Legend, Natasha Bedingfield, and Blake Shelton mean anything. I actually like the music of each of these people, though I wouldn't consider any of them essential, but it is risible that this is even a story. I know the Web is content-greedy, but, really, is there anyone in the world who cares about John Legend and Jamie Lynn Spears and his opinion on her baby? I mean, really?

(And Natasha, maybe part of the problem is that Jamie Lynn saw it as something that just "happens to us.")

Happy Father's Day

I never really got to know my father, he passed away when I was five, and I never really heard a lot about him, as my mother couldn't get over his leaving her with the problems of forging a career and raising two boys (I'm not sure she ever advanced beyond anger in the five stages). And I am not a father, as my life didn't really work in a way that could have made that happen.

So Father's Day is not a concept that has a lot of resonance to me, I just don't feel it as I've never celebrated it. But being a father is an incredibly important job, one that has, I think, been overshadowed by the concept of "mother." Fathers are often treated as uninvolved buffoons in popular culture, maligned in a way that no other group could be these days. While there has been some progress, our court system still systematically downgrades the rights of fathers.

And so, to all of you guys who are fathers or are about to become fathers, enjoy your day, take some real pride in what you do, no matter how maligned, the other 364. Happy Father's Day, all!

Five small comments

I've got nothing big to say, I'm feeling a little played out right now. Perhaps I'm in something of a "blogpression," but I just haven't been really into this for several days. So today I'm going to kick back, link to a couple of good posts, make some negative comments on some other things, and regroup.

1) Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast expresses my sentiments about the Scott McClellan revelations precisely in Scott McClellan's Lee Atwater Moment. I don't know that we'll ever quite understand the trance of those around 43, the man- and girl-crushes that blinded rational people to his willingness to sell out the ideals of the nation he purports to love, but Jill at least describes where we are.

2) Dunkin' Donuts has stopped running an on-line ad because of complaints that ever-perky Rachael Ray was wearing a Muslim-esque scarf. Apparently the perennially-addled Michelle Malkin led the charge, believing that Ray was wearing a kaffiyeh, and so might be confused with Yasser Arafat or other jihadists. Are people insane?

3) Northwestern University graduates, showing a keen appreciation for the realities of the world they're about to enter, are unhappy that their commencement speaker is Richard M. Daley, mayor of Chicago. I'm not a big fan of Daley, as I believe that his administration's corruption is not, as he chooses to present it, totally disconnected from him. Added to his imperiousness, his behavior is not all that laudable.

But that's not why students are unhappy. They want more of a "name," an Obama, a McCain, or even someone with the wit and insight of last year's speaker, one-note sitcom actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus. One telling comment: "NU made a mistake and shafted the seniors on the 150th commencement," Weinberg senior Rachel Gandell said. "I expected a lot more." That's right, Rachel, you're entitled to someone way cooler, and you've been cheated.

4) Speaking of Northwestern, their women's lacrosse team won its fourth consecutive NCAA title this past weekend. It's an accomplishment, to be sure, but a fairly minor one given the fringe status of lacrosse in this country. To watch local media, though, you would have thought it a truly big story; every station and newspaper had reporters and camera crews out to welcome the team back to Evanston. And it's good they did, because, if the media hadn't been there, apparently the team would have been alone. The videotape showed almost nothing resembling a crowd other than "journalists." It didn't seem the campus was exactly galvanized with excitement. Why should we be?

5) Sports coverage hasn't exactly covered itself with glory in motor sports, either. Sports Illustrated, which has taken to running frequent book excerpts in lieu of feature stories, has decided that Danica Patrick, cover girl and swimsuit model, is the main focus in every possible open-wheel racing story. In the current issue, the winner of the Indy 500, Scott Dixon, gets a postage stamp-sized photo, barely visible under the two half-page spread of a mad little Danica preparing to confront the driver she believes knocked her out of the race (the on-line story has no photo of Dixon at all).

I understand that Patrick offers some icy glamor to a sport desperately scrabbling for attention, but she really doesn't have to be the focus of every story. If Indy car racing is in such trouble that they have only one celebrity, one with only one career victory, then it's time to pull the plug. No sport can be healthy that relies on one thread for interest, and I include horse racing there.

If you build it, they will come

In this Web 2.0 world, where every comment is equal to every other, and we "create" our own entertainment environment and share it with everyone else, the level of commentary and thought is bound to decrease. This is why I don't post on every ludicrous web comment or letter to the editor; there are just too many, and there is too little logic or rationality behind them.

Occasionally, however, we see one that exposes a larger way of thinking. A letter published in Sunday's Chicago Tribune:

I had to comment on your May 20 editorial "Pump pain." The premise of your editorial is flawed. You sound like Al Gore speaking when you say, "In an age of global warming, high prices are partly a blessing."

I do not believe there is any global warming whatsoever. I think you are giving the human race too much credit. And to say the higher the prices the better is just crazy thinking.

I know you base that statement on your belief global warming will kill us all. Get real. I agree we have to stop paying the Mideast for oil. If the market creates high prices based on global demand, then we should be drilling for more oil in the United States, and building more refineries. (And paying ourselves.)

I am of the belief there is more than enough oil in the world to carry us to the next energy source.

New energy will come some day and that will be great.

But in the meantime let's use the oil we have and not look for ways to tax the U.S. and world population on a hoax called "global warming." It's just silly.

There's a lot here, and I'm going to bypass most of it. There are people who don't believe that there is any global warming, and people who believe there is, but it's part of a natural cycle, and that man's actions have nothing to do with it. I don't think the facts support either view, but some people simply won't believe something until they're required to.

The letter's ignorance of economics, the belief that we can find enough oil in the U.S. and build sufficient refineries, so prices will inevitably be held down, is awesomely uninformed. One needs only point out that China will still be willing to pay higher prices, so the oil we find will still be sold there...why bother? Reality won't sway folks who think like this.

No, the key to this thinking is in the paragraphs near the end. The writer believes that there is "more than enough oil in the world," that "new energy will come some day."

This would be hilarious if it weren't about such an important topic. This is the end result of the Harry Potter, Field of Dreams school of thought, that magic will occur and solve our problems. New energy will come, zapped into existence by use of a magic wand, and it will come in time to solve whatever difficulties we might have. If you just believe that there is enough oil, regardless of how much there actually is, and if you believe that a new source will arise, regardless of the incentives that are provided, then everything will be OK.

That may be comforting in a kind of, "don't worry, Apollo's chariot can't fall out of the sky," way, but it's a hugely irresponsible approach to living a life or running a nation. Laissez-faire works until it doesn't, but when the doesn't side has such potential dire effects, it is a mark of profound stupidity to wait around to see what will happen.