Kyoto's Expensive? Bill Moyers.

PBS's smarmy propagandist Bill Moyers investigated the recent evangelical interest in environmental issues on a program called "Is God Green?" the other night. It was typical Moyers, carefully crafted to make his side (leftist environmentalists) look virtuous and the opposition appear evil.

Nonetheless, the online transcript of the fascinating unedited interview he did with Dr. E Calvin Beisner of Knox Theological Seminary (who also appeared, much abridged, on the broadcast program), a drafter of the Cornwall Declaration and one of the chief spokesmen for the skeptical view of environmentalist alarmism, is informative and enlightening. Tellingly, it demonstrates how impervious Moyers can be to facts and logic when they contradict his ideology.

(And if you're new to the debate, I sketched it out a bit last February, which you can find here.)

Related Tags: Bill Moyers, PBS, Is God Green, E. Calvin Beisner, Knox Theological Seminary, Cornwall Declaration, climate change, evangelicals, environmentalism

Jimmy On The Spot

In light of the current mess in North Korea, my hope is that PBS will run its excellent Frontline documentary "Kim's Nuclear Gamble" from a couple of years ago. If you find yourself wondering how we ended up here, this program will tell you (and the transcript of the show, which I highly recommend, can be found here).

In short, how do we find ourselves in this fix today? You can sum it up in two words: Jimmy Carter.

In 1994 Carter cut an appeasement deal with North Korea's dictator to try to get them to abandon their nuclear program, and then forced the deal on the weak-kneed Clinton administration. Unfortunately for the world, the massive damage Carter always wreaks wasn't limited to the four years of his presidency. It continues and spreads to this day.

In 1994, the North Koreans ramped up their nuclear program leading to high tension with the U.S. From the transcript of the Frontline program (I've added titles for some of the speakers):

ROBERT GALLUCCI [Clinton Asst. Secretary of State]: And so that led us to that one now somewhat famous meeting of the National Security Council, which the president held in the Cabinet Room, attended by the secretary of state, secretary of defense, the vice president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- a whole lot of people involved -- in which the secretary of defense presented three military options.

WILLIAM PERRY [Clinton Secretary of Defense]: I advised President Clinton that we ought to reinforce our military forces. We had gone over the war contingency plans very carefully and had concluded that we-- in the event of an invasion from the north, we would undoubtedly win. We would be successful in defeating the north. But how many casualties we'd suffer would depend very much on how well-prepared we were. We were literally in the process of giving the briefing to him, laying out the three alternative options, when the call came in from North Korea

ROBERT GALLUCCI: The phone call comes from Jimmy Carter, who is in Pyongyang at the time, talking to Kim Il Sung, in which Jimmy Carter tell me-- I step out of the meeting with the president to step into a small room to talk to the former president. And Jimmy Carter then describes a possible way out of this situation.

NARRATOR: Former president Jimmy Carter had gone on a private trip to Pyongyang to broker a peace deal, even though some senior members of the Clinton White House opposed his effort.

Pres. JIMMY CARTER: I was given a list of all the U.S. demands concerning nuclear program, primarily, but a few others. And when Kim Il Sung agreed with me directly and personally that he would comply with all those demands that I relayed as a messenger, then I was very relieved about that.

ROBERT GALLUCCI: There was in the room some unhappiness over the deal. But even--

MARTIN SMITH [Frontline Correspondent]: Carter had freelanced.

ROBERT GALLUCCI: Well, it wasn't only that Carter had freelanced. It's that President Carter also told me he was about to go on CNN and say what the terms of this would be. [Gallucci here adds in the full interview transcript, though it doesn't appear in the program, "That was not only freelancing, but it was also, to some degree, boxing in the sitting president, President Clinton."]

-Video clip-

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANCHOR: It is now past midnight Friday morning in North Korea. And later today, former president Jimmy Carter plans a second day of--

MARTIN SMITH: You made a decision to go on CNN while you're sitting there--

Pres. JIMMY CARTER: Yes.

MARTIN SMITH: --negotiating with Kim Il Sung.

Pres. JIMMY CARTER: I felt that it was important for the commitments that Kim Il Sung had made to be revealed to the public. It would have made it much more difficult for him to reverse himself or to violate his commitments.

MARTIN SMITH: But it wasn't a chess move on your part to try to get this thing aired--

Pres. JIMMY CARTER: Yes.

MARTIN SMITH: --in order to box in both sides to bring them together?

Pres. JIMMY CARTER: Well, I can't deny that I hoped that it would consummate a resolution of what I considered to be a very serious crisis.

NARRATOR: Kim Il Sung told Carter he would freeze the reactor at Yongbyon and go back to the negotiating table. But a month later, he suddenly died of a heart attack.

Needless to say, North Korea didn't cease it's program. Jimmy Carter, in a breathtaking stroke of hubris and audacity, usurped the authority of the president of the United States and obligated the U.S. to a peace deal in which the North Koreans would supposedly halt their nuclear program while the U.S. would send them a half million tons of oil and build them two nuclear power reactors. Of course, North Korea continued right along with the development of their weapons program anyway, as everyone (except apparently Carter) knew they would, while the U.S.'s hands were tied by the agreement.

I guess that's the kind of thing that wins one a Nobel Peace Prize these days.

Cards Vs. Pond Scum

The National League Championship Series gets underway tonight, and I'm still not getting my hopes up. The Cardinals are huge underdogs, and for good reason. LaRussa has a brutal NLCS career record (11-19 by my count), Rolen's hurt, Weaver and Suppan are the one/two starters, and the Mets have a lefthanded Murderer's Row while the Cards have no lefthanded pitching to face them.

Still, being the heavy favorite has never helped them, so maybe being the underdog will finally take some of the pressure off. If Weaver and the bullpen keep holding to current form, and if the Mets pitch to Pujols....nah, I'm not going to get my hopes up. Yet.

A few notes on the game:

• I asked this in the comments section of a previous post, but I want to throw it out there for general consumption. Has there ever been a fatter infielder (excluding first basemen) than Ronnie Belliard? Seriously, I'm taking nominations. He makes Terry Pendleton look like Ann Coulter.

• Here's Belliard's publicity photo from the beginning of the season:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Discuss.

• I think Chris Duncan should be required to wear his batting helmet out in right field. The kid's gonna get hurt out there.

• It's too bad that ESPN isn't doing any of the ALCS, where the Oakland A's are competing for the pennant with one of the ten lowest payrolls in baseball. I'd love to hear another nine innings of Joe Morgan again explaining exactly why the A's "Moneyball" approach just doesn't work.

• I just saw that both LCS games will be played tonight at the exact same time, meaning some of the country will see one, some of the country the other. I'm honestly starting to think that MLB executives don't want people to watch their games. I don't know that there's ever been a greater collection of dolts in any major business, and I'm including those guys at RJ Reynolds who came up with the smokeless cigarette.

Related Tags: NLCS, Cardinals, Mets, Tony LaRussa, Fat Ronnie Belliard, Terry Pendleton, Ann Coulter, Chris Duncan, Joe Morgan, Moneyball, Oakland A's

Monday Morning Roundup

• Happy White European Imperialist Pig Day, everybody!

• So Fatboy Wells wouldn't agree to be traded to the Cardinals last month (and so instead ended up with the Padres). I guess he had a golf outing this week he just couldn't cancel. Enjoy the offseason, tubby.

• Buck O'Neil, the Negro Leaguer made famous to a new generation of fans by Ken Burns' "Baseball" documentary (and who was also on my surprised-they're-still-alive list) died this weekend at 94. I got to meet him around 1994 when I was working in St. Louis sports radio and he came into town for a promotional appearance. I drove from one end of the county to the other just to pop in our remote broadcast (which was at some restaurant) so I could shake hands with him and say hello. He was a very classy, dignified guy, and it was fascinating to sit and listen to him tell stories.

• Oh yeah, I almost forgot--it looks like we're all going to die soon.

• But in the meantime, it will be fun to follow Mizzou's progress. They convincingly beat Texas Tech over the weekend and climbed up to #19 in the AP poll. They're for real. And that's something I've never said about Missouri football in my life.

• Newsweek has an interview with former president Jimmy Carter on his solutions to the problems in the Middle East. I haven't read the article yet, but I remember his presidency pretty well, so I'm guessing his solutions involve a combination of ineffectual passivity and crashing some helicopters in the desert. Keep up the good work, Jimmy. You were an inspiration to us all. (Oh yeah, and that's current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the right of the hostage there. He speaks at the UN now. You really showed 'em, Mr. Carter.)

Related Tags: David Wells, Cardinals, Buck O'Neil, North Korea, Jimmy Carter, Mizzou Tigers, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Show Me The Sports

A big sports weekend is on tap for we Show-Me State types.

First, one of my 17 college alma maters, the University of Missouri, is actually ranked, (number 23!) for what I think is the first time in my life. On the down side, while they're 5-0, they haven't actually beaten anyone yet, with their only conference game (and win) so far coming against putrid Colorado (who's a loooooong way from the Coach McCartney/fifth down glory days). But still, normally Mizzou loses all those nothing games too, so winning them is a big start. This weekend, they take on almost-ranked Texas Tech in their first real test.

[On an only tangentially-related note, I discovered by reading the above Wikipedia "fifth down" article that today marks the 16th anniversary of that game. Oh my, is my life flying past me.]

Second, the Cardinals play the Padres in Game 3 of their divisional series. The Cards have a 2-0 lead in the series, and the next two are at Busch. Like I said, I'm not going to get my hopes up. But for much of the season, I was predicting they'd get swept in the first round. Suddenly they're looking different. Izzy's out (which is a plus in my book), Eckstein's back, and Tony LaRussa has finally discovered middle relievers.

Now I'm not going to get carried away with rosy scenarios. BUT...IF this bullpen of unknown guys keeps going the way they've been going, and IF Jeff Weaver keeps doing whatever pitching coach Dave Duncan has taught him and doesn't suddenly turn back into Jeff Weaver, and IF somebody can bury Tony LaRussa out in a field with a straw for oxygen right around game one or two of the League Championship Series, who knows what could happen this fall? Suddenly neither the Mets nor the Dodgers look all that imposing.

I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm just saying.

(And just to be clear, I fully advocate digging poor Tony back up right after they win the championship, with no harm done and only a few pounds lighter. He'd still get a ring and everything.)

Related Tags: Mizzou Tigers, University of Missouri, fifth down, Cardinals, Padres, Tony LaRussa, Jeff Weaver, Dave Duncan

The Strawman of Kansas

I see that the insane Fred Phelps is up to his usual tricks again, which means the media will have yet another opportunity to whip itself (and its consumers) into a lather.

In case you don't know, Phelps is the guy who has become known for picketing high-profile funerals. He and the members of his Kansas "church" stand outside these funerals and memorial services (whether they be for homosexuals, dead soldiers, astronauts who died in the Columbia explosion, or little Amish girls--the particulars don't really seem to matter to Phelps as long as it's high-profile) and prattles on about how they deserved their fate and that God killed them because he hated them. Obviously such behavior is idiotic. But what I find almost as idiotic is the relentless media attention he receives.

Here's something you need to understand: Fred Phelps is almost entirely a media creation. His "church" consists almost exclusively of his own family members. Indeed, when you see any of them interviewed, you'll see that they all bear the name "Phelps." This is nothing more than one fruitcake and his family. Yet these little demonstrations of his receive endless media coverage, with pundits on all sides of the political and religious world righteously and thunderously excoriating them. But to what end? Fred Phelps represents nobody but himself and his family. This is a tiny handful of kooks.

So considering their utter insignificance, why is the entire Phelps family dragged out for interviews on all the networks each time this happens? For two reasons:

1). They fulfill a necessary media stereotype. The reason this tiny inbred family is at the center of so much media controversy is because the media believes that they are (or more likely wants to present them as) representative of "fundamentalist" Christianity. Phelps' actual influence is nil (and indeed his "church" preaches nothing even approaching biblical, evangelical Christianity, instead advocating a salvation by lawkeeping), yet he's been featured on every broadcast and cable news network, written about in every prominent newspaper in the country, and even referenced in the entertainment media (on programs like "The West Wing").

2). It presents an opportunity to throw "red meat" at viewers and readers, thus allowing commentators to appear virtuous while ratcheting up ratings via viewer outrage. An example of this occurred on "Hannity and Colmes" last night, where H&C interviewed one of the deluded female members of the Phelps clan. For two minutes, Colmes told her what a despicable human being she was, followed by two minutes of Hannity telling her what a despicable human being she was. My question through the whole thing was: Why would they even be having her on? Answer: Her idiotic hate spewing, while representing no constituency, would outrage the audience and allow Alan and Sean to show us how morally upright they are. Which is a jackpot all around. Is it edifying? No. Is it shedding light on an important issue? No. Have they uncovered some massive, sick movement? No. But by gosh, the courage of it all is astounding. These guys are going to take the side of the murdered little Amish girls against the sicko claiming they deserved it no matter what the consequences! How inspiring.

But while Hannity and Colmes are allowed to feel superior because of their counterintuitive defense of dead schoolgirls, they don't address the moral ambiguity of the pink elephant standing in the room--namely their own blatant prostitution. What they (and those like them) are doing by having the Phelps people on (and this was a repeat performance for H&C--they've had the Phelpsies on numerous times) is virtually indistinguishable from pulling a nut who rants in Times Square about the Holocaust off the street and putting him on national TV for five minutes. He represents nobody, he's shedding no light on anything, and what he's saying is vomitous. So why have him on? For ratings and faux outrage, and nothing more.

The fact is, there have been very few people less consequential who have received more attention than Fred Phelps has. So the next time you see him on national television (and you will see him again), ask yourself: Why?

Related Tags: Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church, Hannity and Colmes, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes

Baby Don't Hurt Me, No More

Due to popular demand (well, okay, two of my friends and my son), I offer some thoughts on the Cardinals in the National League playoffs:

I've purposely kept my expectations low (read: non-existent), not only to blunt another inevitable October LaRussa disappointment, but because this team really isn't much good. I've been the proverbial wet blanket among those around me getting their hopes up for a Redbird post-season. Last year, the Cardinals were good enough to be a World Series team; this year, they don't even belong in the playoffs and are only there because of the blessing of playing in a crummy division.

That having been said, yesterday's win in San Diego is big, and I think puts St. Louis in a good position to again reach the League Championship Series (where they will undoubtedly fold like a cheap tent at the LaRussa family campout--which I imagine is usually scheduled in October right around what would be Game 5 of the World Series, which Tony never sees even when his team wins the pennant). The Cardinals' big problems are on the road, where they're pitiful. By winning Game One in San Diego, they take away the Pads home field advantage. They now have to win two games to advance--and they happen to have two games at Busch Stadium, where they are much more formidable.

With their starting lineup largely healthy again for the first time in months, it's just possible that they're not as bad as that late season skid made them look. And it's possible that the lower expectations will work in their favor. But they'll still need Jeff Weaver(!) to pitch like Sandy Koufax for a few weeks and Adam Wainwright to become the second coming of Mariano Rivera for this to be any more than a flash in the pan.

Personally, I'm not getting my hopes up. I've experienced too many years of TLR's postseason atmosphere-killing tension and hallucinogenic strategy moves (anybody remember Larry Walker's bunt in Game 4 of the disastrous '04 World Series when he was the only Cardinal hitting the ball?) to get geeked up over one win against a mediocre team in the least of the divisional series match-ups. Don't get me wrong--I want to see the Cardinals win a championship. But as The Who once said, I won't get fooled again. Call me when they've won one World Series game, and then I'll start getting excited.

(P.S. All of this whining goes straight out the window if Albert Pujols [A-Poo, as I now officially call him]--or any other Redbird, for that matter--hits a game-winning ninth inning homer in one of these contests. Then--who am I kidding?--I'll have bought my first-class sleeper car ticket on the Heartbreak Express as it hurtles off the rails and over the cliff again.)

(P.P.S. Since I mentioned my son, I should also mention my daughter. Namely, that she couldn't care less about any of this.)

Related Tags: Cardinals, Padres, baseball playoffs, Tony LaRussa, Albert Pujols

Oliver's Twist, And Other Meanderings

Oliver North makes a very interesting (and perhaps surprising) observation on Clinton's recent hissy fit (in which Bubba fumed, "I worked hard to try to kill [Osama]. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him"). I haven't seen North's point made elsewhere:

To put this little piece of braggadocio in context, it should be noted that no other American president has ever admitted to such a serious violation of law. Although assassination is specifically forbidden as a course of action open to U.S. officials, including presidents, no one seems to have noticed what was being said--perhaps because they were so caught up with the theater of what was happening on the screen.

....The tape of a former president arrogantly proclaiming on international television that he personally authorized the assassination of a foreign foe may be great stuff for the screenplay of "Rambo V," but U.S. and international law specifically forbid it. Over the course of fighting the jihad being waged against us, Mr. Clinton's intemperate words will come back to haunt us many times over. And of course, he won't be the one to pay the price.

I don't completely share North's view on assassination. If we had been able to assassinate, say, Hiter, we would have been right to do so, in my opinion. But a ban on the practice is unquestionably a fact of current U.S. and international law, and Clinton does seem to be admitting a blatant violation of it. I personally wish he had taken out Bin Laden when he had the chance, but this kind of language--"We contracted with people to kill him"--is the language of La Cosa Nostra, not the presidency. If George W. Bush uttered those words, we'd never hear the end of the Left's caterwauling about his "arrogance" and his "cowboy" ways. When Bush merely said we wanted Bin Laden "dead or alive," they practically got the vapors. So where's the pique now?

In any case, will anyone be shocked to hear Clinton's talk of hiring hit men to whack Bin Laden used to justify future acts of terrorism against the U.S.?

Some other bits from around the web:

• Nobody's been hitting President Bush harder than Pat Buchanan in recent weeks. Today he rips the president a new one on the economy--the one thing that seemed to be going rather well:

  America as the most self-sufficient republic in history is history. For decades, U.S. factories have been closing. Three million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since Bush arrived. Ford and GM are fighting for their lives.
  
  Bushites boast of all the new jobs created, but Business Week tells the inconvenient truth: "Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been created in the health care sector. ... Meanwhile, the number of private sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago."

• Slate has a piece from a baseball card fanatic who actually got to live out his childhood dream of working for Topps. Turns out it's pretty much just like working anywhere else:

  Upper management was a distant, nepotistic network descending from a mysterious, largely invisible septuagenarian CEO. Below that, departments feuded with other departments. Middle managers skirmished in snarky, caps-locked e-mails CC'd to higher-ups. "Good mornings" seethed with passive aggression.

• And while we're at Slate, they also give the ever-tiresome Mitch Albom a much-deserved ripping:

  Albom is literally a teller of fables, a peddler of shallow morality tales for the masses. You can see it in his risible sports writing, and you can see it in his best-selling books. A representative of Starbucks, which will sell For One More Day as part of its new books promotion, told the Los Angeles Times that the chain wanted its literary selections to be "deeply felt." Albom's writing is deeply felt, and dimly thought. He's a huckster evangelist for the soccer-mom set.

  If you hate Albom (and you should), you'll find the review cathartic.

• I've written about this before, but I can't remember where. But back in my sports radio days, I used to bump into Albom from time to time at the big events (i.e. heavyweight bouts, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, etc). The thing I remember most about him wasn't his writing, nor was it his broadcasting. It was his freakishly large head. He's a tiny guy--maybe 5-5, and his head seems to make up about a third of his body. To give you an idea, the sketch in the Slate review (at right) isn't a caricature--it's anatomically correct.
  
  All I know is that, of the first Five People I Meet in Heaven, this gargantuan cranium better not be among them.

Related Tags: Oliver North, Bill Clinton, assassination, Pat Buchanan, George W. Bush, Slate, Topps, baseball cards, Mitch Albom, Mitch Albom's freakishly large head

By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

Does anyone happen to have a high-powered sniper rifle I could borrow for a minute?

That couple dancing on the roof in silhouette in the LowerMyBills.com online ad has popped up on my browser one too many times. I'm gonna take 'em out once and for all.

But they move around a lot, so it might take a few extra shots.

Related Tags: LowerMyBills.com, dancing couple, murderous rage

A Prophet In His Hometown...

An actual conversation in my home last night:

WIFE (to daughter): You're such a good writer. You should start one of those blogs!

DAUGHTER: But I don't have anything to write about.

WIFE: That's okay, neither does Daddy.

Around the Horn

• Bill Clinton's fevered rant against Chris Wallace the other day is the talk of the web. His former political advisor Dick Morris, who knows him better than most, writes a fascinating column today on the incident. As usual, you can tell Clinton is lying because his lips are moving:

  From behind the benign face and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace’s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation.

• Philosopher Edward Feser has a thought-provoking take on why conpiracy theories persist:

  A clue to the real attraction of conspiracy theories, I would suggest, lies in the rhetoric of theorists themselves, which is filled with self-congratulatory descriptions of those who accept such theories as "willing to think," "educated," "independent-minded," and so forth, and with invective against the "uninformed" and "unthinking" "sheeple" who "blindly follow authority." The world of the conspiracy theorist is Manichean: either you are intelligent, well-informed, and honest, and therefore question all authority and received opinion; or you accept what popular opinion or an authority says and therefore must be stupid, dishonest, and ignorant. There is no third option.

  It's not harmless, and it's not neutral. Chronic conspiracy theorizing is a character flaw. It's as simple as that. (Hat tip: Joe Carter)

• This may only be of interest to me, but Slate magazine reviews the oddly-vanished career of erstwhile super-director John Hughes and discovers (surprise!) that he was a Republican.

• Christianity Today has finally published online it's excellent story about the resurgence of Reformed theology. The piece springs off of a conference I was fortunate enough to attend back in April.

Related Tags: Bill Clinton, Chris Wallace, Dick Morris, conspiracy theories, Edward Feser, Slate, John Hughes, Christianity Today, Reformed theology, Together for the Gospel

Halloweenies

Maybe I just live in a weird neighborhood, but...for over a week now, at least three homes near us have already been decked out with Halloween decorations. And I'm not just talking about some little witch-smashed-into-the-phone-pole decoration (and that one just gets funnier every year)--I'm talking mock graves in the yard, lit ghosts and witches, and orange lights in the trees.

I mean, it's September 22. People always complain about how early the Christmas decorations seem to go up, and I agree it's overdone. But I don't know anybody who puts up Christmas decorations six weeks ahead of time.

I'm not one of these wildly anti-Halloween people. I don't get all wadded up about it like some of my fellow Christians. But I've gotta wonder about an adult who gets so excited about a "holiday" in which kids dress like Superman and go begging for Milk Duds that he can't even restrain himself until October before running out to plug in the full-yard spinning-goblin-in-a-lit-plastic-dome.

"No, honey, I ain't letting Halloween season get away from us again this year. We get so busy during the season it'll just suck all the joy out of you if you let it. Well not me. This year, I'm going to savor it. It's already Labor Day--get me all our white sheets."

I could never let somebody with that sort of Halloween fetish operate on me or represent me in court. Change my muffler, maybe. But that's it.

Related Tags: Halloween

"...Only I Can Call The President The Devil!"

Why am I skeptical of the sudden Democratic denunciations of Hugo Chavez and his inflammatory (but disagreeably amusing) comments before the United Nations yesterday?

(An aside: I know this is politically incorrect to say among conservatives, but I actually laughed out loud at the "I still smell sulfur up here" bit. Is Chavez dangerous and evil? Of course. But he's got a way with words, I've gotta give him that.)

The thing is, Chavez didn't say much that Howard Dean doesn't say on any given day. So why the umbrage? Is it possible that some folks are starting to realize that having your general sentiments voiced at the podium of the U.N. by a communist dictator doesn't do much for the polling numbers? It's better to say the right thing than the wrong thing, but nobody's going to convince me that Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel didn't agree with Chavez's comments until they stuck a finger in the wind and gauged the strong public reaction against the speech.

Related Tags: Hugo Chavez, United Nations, George W. Bush, Charles Rangel, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean

Around The Horn

• The final memorial service for Steve Irwin was held earlier this week in Australia. So in one last tribute we offer you a good laugh from "The Crocodile Hunter" himself in this ESPN SportsCenter promo taped only a couple of years ago as part of the most consistently brilliant (for something like ten years now) ad campaign in television history. This alone is worth your visit today:
  
  

• As long as we're on the subject of ESPN, it's good to see baseball guru Peter Gammons back in the game after nearly dying of a brain aneurysm this past June. His column, after recounting his medical experience, delves into heavy-duty pitching analysis. And he'll be back on the tube (in a limited role, for now) beginning tonight.

• I like all of Aaron Sorkin's stuff, for some strange reason. (It might be because he and I seem to be interested in the exact same subjects--the presidency, sports, television production, sketch comedy, etc.--though from wildly different perspectives.) But TIME Magazine has his style absolutely nailed this week in their review of his new behind-the-scenes-style take on sketch-comedy television shows, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip":

  In terms of craft, Studio 60 is very good. Sorkin is probably incapable of writing a bad show. But self-satisfied, self-serious and self-congratulatory--that he can do. From the mood lighting and stirring music to the hot-button story lines to the characters' arias on the august legacy of their show, Sorkin makes running a comedy program seem like negotiating an arms treaty. Is your beef with sketch shows that they used to be daring social critiques--("Chizzburger! Chizzburger!")--or that they used to make you laugh? Worse, Studio 60 fails to show us that Matt [Matthew Perry] and Danny [Bradley Whitford] are actually funny. (Witty, yes, but so was President Bartlet.) In Episode 2, Matt has to come up with a knock-'em-dead opening sketch for his first show. His idea is--wait for it--a Pirates of Penzance parody. Studio 60 treats it like comic genius.

  It's the single most accurate paragraph on Sorkin's work I've ever seen. Yet the guy still manages to sucker me in every week.

• I don't get to watch much television these days, but I do read a lot about television. Out of nowhere, the HBO show "The Wire," heading into it's fourth and final season, is suddenly getting all kinds of rapturous buzz. I don't think I'd ever seen a thing written about it before this month. What gives? Because of all the hubub, I went to Blockbuster and rented the DVD of the first three episodes of season one to take a look myself. It was reasonably good, but it's not like it changed my life or something. It was like "Law and Order" with more graphic cursing. Did HBO suddenly send every TV critic in the country a Beamer?

• I also rented the first disc of "Lost." Never seen it, but I'm tired of hearing about it. So I'll take a look. But I think we need to go back to the days of sitcoms, where you could jump in at any point. I feel like I'd have to clear aside 60 hours just in order to get caught up to date on any one of these supposedly-engrossing, narrative shows I keep hearing about. "24"? There's no way. They're telling me right up front how much time I'll have to invest in it, and I just don't have it. Who has time to get engrossed in one of these deals? Do a miniseries called "5" and I'll think about it.

Related Tags: Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter, ESPN, Peter Gammons, Studio 60, Aaron Sorkin, The Wire, 24, Lost

Another Incendiary Quote

More from Gregg Easterbrook's review in the liberal Slate e-zine of physicist Lee Smolin's book The Trouble With Physics, which claims (from within) that the scientific establishment is ignoring massive flaws in string theory because of greed and ideology:

Maybe string theory eventually will prove out; maybe the apparent vibrating nothing on which we are based is but a slice of some far grander reality. But string theory seems to contain significant helpings of blather designed to intimidate nonscientists from questioning the budgets of physics departments and tax-funded particle accelerator labs. And consider this. Today if a professor at Princeton claims there are 11 unobservable dimensions about which he can speak with great confidence despite an utter lack of supporting evidence, that professor is praised for incredible sophistication. If another person in the same place asserted there exists one unobservable dimension, the plane of the spirit, he would be hooted down as a superstitious crank.

Materialism--the philosophical view that matter is the only and ultimate reality--rules modern science, despite the fact that it is a scientifically unprovable assumption. Materialism cannot prove that material is all that exists; it can only assert it. This assertion (though inconsistently held, as the above example shows) is, by definition, driven by motivations other than the emprical, whether they be philosophical, psychological, (anti-) religious, or some combination therof.

The sooner we all realize that, the sooner science will be able to resume its rightful place in human endeavor as one way of discovering a certain kind of truth and abdicate its modern status as the mediator of all truth. Such a return will benefit society and science. But don't hold your breath. "Arbiter of all truth" is a powerful position, and not one many are likely to give up too easily.

Related Tags: Slate, Gregg Easterbrook, Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics, string theory, science

The String Unravels

Slate reviews a new book by former Yale and Penn State physicist Lee Smolin, which says that string theory is kaput. String theory has been the recent dominant theory of the smallest, fundamental particles of matter, popularized in books and PBS documentaries by Brian Green (The Elegant Universe) among others.

According to according to Gregg Easterbrook’s insightful review of Smolin’s book, The Trouble With Physics,

String theory became a media obsession about 20 years ago, with one of its proponents a cover boy of a New York Times Magazine article proclaiming string theorists were super-ultra geniuses cracking the ultimate riddles of creation. Smolin's book suggests that this caused string theorists to believe their media hype and to speak of their concepts as if they were proven…. Yet after decades of attempts, no experiment has detected any hint of additional dimensions, branes, or other core elements of string theory. Meanwhile string theory failed to predict the biggest astrophysical discovery in decades….

Now, see if this begins to sound like anything you’ve heard of before. And keep in mind, this is all happening in that empirical, objective, ultra-rational realm of science, which we are told contains all the answers to all life’s questions:

If you worry that even in the 21st century, intellectual fads have as much to do with university politics and careerism as with the search for abstract truth, The Trouble With Physics is a book you absolutely must read. "String theory now has such a dominant position in the academy that it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field," Smolin writes. Yet since string theory became ascendant about three decades ago, "there has not been a single genuine breakthrough in understanding of elementary particle physics." Not only is string theory rife with malarkey about imperceptible dimensions, Smolin fears, it may be holding back legitimate science.

Hmmm. A scientific theory based on little more than suppositions and wishful thinking, which has been largely disproved by the evidence, but yet which cannot be safely challenged because of fear of reprisals from the level-headed and dispassionate scientific establishment, which blocks attempts to follow the actual evidence. Why, where have I ever heard of such a thing happening? I’m shocked, shocked.

Perhaps one day people will start to realize that scientists are--just like everyone else--biased by nonempirical philosophical and metaphysical presuppositions, career concerns, desire for professional prestige, and power, among other things. Is empirical science valuable? Of course it is. But we should always bear in mind that most of the scientific beliefs of any generation are overthrown by the next generation. Scientists are not inspired priests mediating all truth of the universe to us. They are people trying to secure grants and get promotions just like everyone else. The sooner we understand this and learn to weigh their opinions accordingly, the better off we—and science itself—will be.

Related Tags: Slate, Gregg Easterbrook, Lee Smolin, Brian Green, science, string theory, The Trouble With Physics

From The Bizarro Universe Of Truth

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
The White House
September 14, 2006

Hearing this morning about the death of former Texas Governor Ann Richards, I have to be honest: I never really cared for her. I found her to be a boozy, sharp-tongued harpy, and this is coming from a guy who’s hoisted a few Miller Lites of his own.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m glad that she’s dead. But I won’t miss her, that’s for sure. Texans will fondly remember many things about Ann, but probably my own favorite memory of her is when I whupped her tail in the 1994 election. I mean, I booted her sad caboose right out of the governor’s mansion. I wiped the floor with her, and considering that thing she said about my dad at the ’88 convention, I enjoyed it. I wanted to make her hurt. Beat her like a red-headed stepchild.

Well, now she’s dead. And that’s too bad. I suppose.

God Bless America,
President George W. Bush

Related Tags: Ann Richards, George W. Bush

Hey, Hey, I'm A Monk-ee

After a few kind notices of Your Humble Servant over the past week, The Internet Monk, Michael Spencer, asks for some sidebar love and receives. (And perhaps this will even be a step towards rectifying my own inexplicable absence on the his blogroll...)

And while we're on the subject, imagine my suprise to find the iMonk get a shout-out in this week's TIME magazine cover story on the health and wealth gospel. (Like with the Salon article, you have to watch a short--and LOUD--ad in order to read the whole thing online, but it's worth it. One of the fairest pieces on evangelical Christianity I've ever seen in the mainstream media.)

Says TIME:

Respected blogger Michael Spencer--known as the Internet Monk--asked, "How many young people are going to be pointed to [Joel] Osteen as a true shepherd of Jesus Christ? He's not. He's not one of us."

I'm sure he's getting a lot of fun reactions to that one.

If all this back and forth linking keeps up, people are either going to think that I've become a squishy emerging Christian, or that Michael has started believing the Bible again. (Oh, c'mon, it's a little joke! Settle down, everybody.)

Related Tags: Michael Spencer, Internet Monk, iMonk, Boars Head Tavern, TIME magazine, Joel Osteen

A Trip To Mars

Lauren Sandler, author of a hysterical new screed against Christianity called RIGHTEOUS: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, spends some time at Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church in Seattle and....hates it. Not surprisingly.

Writing for Salon magazine (you have to watch a brief commercial in order to access the full article, and be warned there is some strong pornographic language from rapper Snoop Dogg quoted in the article for no discernible reason), Sandler, who used to be a producer for that taxpayer-subsidized bastion of fairness, National Public Radio, manages to dredge up a couple of admittedly unappealing congregants (if they are quoted and described correctly, which is never a given), and extrapolates from them to the rest of Driscoll's several-thousand-member church to fulfill her "Christianity is evil" thesis:

Driscoll and his Mars Hills followers epitomize the mounting evangelical youth movement in America. Within this movement lies something as old as America itself, and as terrifying and alluring as anything Orwell predicted; something that is at once political, emotional, deeply anti-intellectual, and more galvanized than you can imagine. I call this population of fierce young evangelicals the Disciple Generation.

(Cue "Psycho" music.) And then they killed kittens and ate babies!

Now, while I don't agree with everything Driscoll does (though I do respect him), I'm willing to bet a great deal that he reads more books of intellectual heft in a month than Ms. Sandler does in any given year. Her manifest lack of rigor, insight, or nuance perhaps betrays her own subpar cerebral abilities. But putting that aside, why does she launch such a vicious attack on people who are obviously trying to be nice to her?

While cultural specifics -- media, music, dress, attitude, and so on -- vary widely in the churches that [Driscoll's church planting organization] encourages nationwide, cultural politics do not. Most significantly, in founding the network, Driscoll has established a nationwide apparatus to push back women's rights through the "liberation theology" of submission. The online application for church planting is an extremist screening device to this effect. It begins with a lengthy doctrinal assertion that every word of the Bible is literal truth; the application plucks out the examples of creationism and male headship of home and church to clarify this doctrine. "We are not liberals," it says. "We are not egalitarian."

Oh, the humanity. It turns out that her main criticism of Driscoll's church is that it preaches and practices orthodox, biblical Christianity, including believing in Heaven, Hell, sin, male leadership, the inerrancy of the Bible, the blessing of family and children, and the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus. You know, pretty much like the faithful church has always preached over the last 2000 years.

Who knows? If Driscoll can find a few more enemies like this, he might finally get a little deserved respect from some of his leery fellow evangelicals.

UPDATE: Judy, one of the members of Driscoll's church made to look so unappealing in the article, has written a letter to Salon saying that--big suprise--she was horrifically misrepresented. (Thanks to Scott for the heads-up.) She writes:

I’m nothing short of furious that Ms. Sandler felt it was ok to pick & choose snippets of our conversation and weave them together to create a more controversial story. I write this, not so much to defend myself, but to defend my family who she’s dragging through the mud in the name of journalism.

Sandler's article had "disingenuous hit piece" written all over it. Now we know.

Related Tags: Lauren Sandler, Righteous, National Public Radio, Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, Salon, Come as you are

9/11 Coverage

• CNN and Fox News, on their websites yesterday, offered streaming video in real time of their original 9/11 coverage. I had it running on my computer in the background all day long, and even fired it up on my home computer after work. Why, after five years, do I find it impossible to turn away from this? Every ten minutes while watching 9/11 stuff, I think to myself "I still can't believe this actually happened."

• On the more trivial side of the 9/11 coverage, I couldn't help noticing something that permanently changed (in a small way) cable news: At 11:11am, CNN suddenly introduced a running scroll at the bottom of the screen recounting the known facts and developments to that point. The scroll remains there to this day, and was also quickly adopted by Fox News and MSNBC.

• While looking through the coverage yesterday, I was also introduced to a fetid little swamp I had heard of but not heretofore experienced: the world of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts. The longer I live, the more convinced I become that chronic conspiracy-think is actually a character flaw. These 9/11 people are impregnable to reason and apt to attack anyone and everyone who disagrees with them in the harshest terms. My own personal experiences tend to bear this out with Konspiracy Kooks of all stripes.
  
  Popular Science magazine has a new book out debunking the most widely-held of the paranoid fever dreams. They've now also launched a blog that contains links to interesting material on all this. The original, comprehensive article that spawned the book can be found here.

• Sports Illustrated's cover story for it's September 11 issue is on Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals player who quit the NFL to become an Army Ranger in the wake of 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. It's one of the saddest things I've ever read. (Be warned that it contains some salty barracks language.) Though I honor his tremendous sacrifice, my image of him as a heroic patriot has been replaced by an image of a tragic, existential Hemingway character, a lost soul taking ever-increasing risks in the vain search for a meaning he never found. Clearly he was a guy with an admirable internal code of honor and a courage most people (including I) will never know. But in the service of what?
  
  Writes SI's Gary Smith:

  Braveheart. That's who he wanted to be, said a friend who saw the glow in Pat's eyes as he watched the movie about the Scottish warrior. Trouble was, Pat's wisdom quest was too honest, had carried him clean past that plane where good and evil are fixed and far-flung from one another, to a higher ledge up in the swirling fog where a man could see how right and wrong might rotate and trade places. It just became harder and harder to be Braveheart.
  
  Until 9/11, when for a moment there was moral clarity, a clarion call to arms, a chance to be that man. Sitting atop that bunker, 11 days into the invasion of a country that had hatched none of the 9/11 terrorists, it was dawning on Pat with each blast-wave lighting up the desert: That moment already was gone. Dawning on him that he'd flung himself into thin air on faith, in search of his highest self, toward a hollow tree that might not hold his weight.

  Later, though Tillman apparently no longer believed in the war, he declined an opportunity to be discharged after a tour in Iraq and go back to football--because he hadn't yet "tasted enemy fire." His story is a tragedy in the fullest sense of the word.

• I watched "The Path to 9/11" on ABC Sunday and Monday night. The whole family was riveted to it. I had no idea it would be as compelling and well done as it was. In five hours, I didn't detect an ounce of fat on it. By the second night, though, I was starting to wonder if Richard Clarke had written it himself. While casting aspersions on both the Clinton and the Bush administrations, the film fawned on Clark to the point where I was expecting him to pull open his shirt revealing the red and yellow "S," fly out the window, and stop the hijacked planes himself. Does anyone really believe Clark was this perceptive, authoritative, or heroic? Me neither. Nonetheless, still an outstanding piece of television. If you missed it, you should see it on DVD or online.

• If, like many who saw the movie, you're interested in knowing more about John O'Neill, the FBI's former top Al Qaeda expert who was run out of the FBI, only to ironically die as the World Trade Center's head of security on 9/11, check out Frontline's excellent documentary, "The Man Who Knew." It's an important piece of work.

Related Tags: 9/11, 9/11 coverage, 9/11 conspiracies, 9/11 truth movement, Popular Science, Debunking the 9/11 Myths, Sports Illustrated, Pat Tillman, Gary Smith, The Path to 9/11, Richard Clarke, John O'Neill, Frontline, The Man Who Knew