Pick 'em Friday




St. Louis at DETROIT Who cares?











Trevor Keezer, Idiot





It gets better.


My MFA Place: Fayetteville




Just a few things I want to point out:



I've said my piece.

Cartoon Femininity






Pick 'em Friday Saturday
















The Also-Rans












Limbaugh pulls a Nixon

The Wall Street Journal--no surprise--gave over some space to Rush Limbaugh so he could cry about how he's not a racist. Much of Limbaugh's defense in his piece is centered around the one quote falsely attributed to him that suggested that he had supported, in the abstract, slavery. He didn't say it, plain and simple. But he has said many other racially charged things in the past, from calling then Senator Obama a "halfrican" to comparing black athletes to gang members just for starters. But the second I saw the swerve Limbagh was trying to put on this story, I knew I'd seen something similar--from Rick Perlstein's great book Nixonland.

You didn't have to attack to attack. Better, much better, to give up something to the mark: make him feel he has one up on you. Let him pounce on your "mistake." That makes him look unduly aggressive. Then you sprang the trap, garnering the pity by making the enemy look like a self-righteous and hyper-intellectual enemy of common sense. You attacked jujitsu-style, positioning yourself as you attacked, inspiring a strange sort of protective love among voters whose wounded resentments grow alongside your performance of being wounded. Your enemies appear only to have died of their own hand. Which makes you stronger.
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's close. Limbaugh is trying to spring the trap by arguing (correctly) that he didn't say the racist thing he was accused of saying and thus (incorrectly) all things that his enemies are saying are false. He's doing a bit of the "my accusers are shitbags" dance as well.

But the big thing he's doing--and with a moderate degree of success, it seems to me--is stoking resentment among his fans, and even among people who might not otherwise give Limbaugh a second's thought, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it. He's claiming the mantle of the common man; Rush Limbaugh, the highest paid radio host in the history of the world, so wealthy he broadcasts from his Palm Beach compound, so wealthy he can afford to be part of an NFL franchise ownership group, is playing the common man card. And doing it well, I might add.

Funny thing is that Limbaugh probably should be an NFL owner. He meets all the criteria--he hates higher taxes on the wealthy, he loves corporate welfare, he hates unions. How is he not qualified to own a team?

Limbaugh is doing one other smart thing here--he's not attacking the people who are responsible for denying him his dream. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn't force Dave Checketts to toss Limbaugh out of the ownership group. Neither did DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA leader. Neither did any of the players who said they wouldn't play for a team Limbaugh owned. Nope. The other owners, many of whom share Limbaugh's positions on taxes and unions and the like, didn't want him around. But he can't attack them, not if he's hoping, like Nixon, to be able to make a comeback, perhaps as part of another ownership group one day.

Pick 'em Friday

9-5 last week. I knew I was too hot to start the season. One of these weeks it's going to go completely bad and I'll get like 3 games right. Maybe this will be the week. Winners in all caps.

Baltimore at MINNESOTA I've let Brett Favre get into my head, picking against him because I'm so tired of the football pundit adulation for him, and it has cost me a couple of times this season. So I'm picking him, okay? Plus, I'm starting to think that the Ravens defense isn't as fearsome as it once was.

Detroit at GREEN BAY Green Bay can't stop anyone. Neither can Detroit. Green Bay has a better offense, I think, which means this will be a 6-3 game.

KANSAS CITY at Washington So far, Washington has given Carolina and Detroit their first wins of the season, and barely eked out wins against Tampa and the Rams. They have another winless team here in KC, and I think that if Washington loses this one, they might not win another game this season.

Cleveland at PITTSBURGH The Cleveland winning streak stops at 1.

St. Louis at JACKSONVILLE Seattle stomped the snot out of the Jaguars last week. Good thing Jacksonville isn't playing Seattle again.

Houston at CINCINNATI I'm starting to believe. They're a freak play away from being unbeaten this season.

New York Giants at NEW ORLEANS I said I would pick the Saints every week, and I have hopes for this game. The Saints, I am convinced, can hang with anyone this year. They won't go unbeaten--that's too difficult a task for any team to pull off in a league with this much parity--but they can legitimately win any game they play this year, and I hope they win this one.

CAROLINA at Tampa BayThis should be an ugly game--not quite the turdiest game of the week, but it's not a good one.

Arizona at SEATTLE Looks like the NFC West is going to be competitive this year after all. Seattle surprised me last week. I hope they can keep it up.

PHILADELPHIA at Oakland Some games are easy to pick.

Tennessee at NEW ENGLAND I'd be lying if I said I thought Tennessee would be winless at this point in the season, but I also didn't think they were as good as their 13-3 record last year. There are a number of NFL pundits who aren't willing to write off the Titans yet--I don't know why.

Buffalo at NEW YORK JETS The Jets have to be happy to get home after two miserable games on the road at New Orleans and Miami. And Rex Ryan has to be wondering what the hell happened to his defense against the wildcat. They'll get healthy against the Bills, who lost last week despite holding the opposing quarterback to 2 completions on 17 attempts. Sanchez should do considerably better.

Chicago at ATLANTA If I could choose one game to be wrong on, it would be this one. I really don't have a feel for either team just yet; rather, I don't have a feel for how good Chicago is yet. I suspect they're not as good as their record, but I could easily be wrong.

Denver at SAN DIEGO This is my upset special for the week. It just feels like a trap game--Denver is coming off a huge win and going into the bye week; they've exceeded expectations and are riding high; and San Diego has started slow. It all adds up to an upset in my eyes.


This guy isn't a racist either, I guess.



Figured as much.

This story hurts a little more because I lived in and around Hammond for about ten years. I got my B.A. there, got married and divorced there, completely changed my life there. Hammond is where I became politically aware, where I learned to tend bar, where I moved started writing poetry again. It's also where I became aware of just how ingrained and institutionalized racism is, and saw firsthand the ways the inhabitants of small southern towns negotiate racially charged situations, which is to say the ways African-Americans often shrug off insults most white people would get incensed about.

So it's not surprising to discover that a white man in Tangipahoa Parish feels perfectly fine with enforcing his idea of what is good on a biracial couple, because that's the way it's always been. That's what unquestioned privilege will do for you--it'll make you think that it's your place to deny a couple the legal right to get married because you're sure you know what's best for them and any kids they may decide to have. It's the arrogance of ignorance writ large across a community.

And it makes me sad because there's a lot about Hammond I really love. It's the place where I was reborn, where I went from being an unhappy Jehovah's Witness to a happy hedonist, where I rediscovered my love of poetry and discovered a love of politics and journalism, and where I saw my black friends and white friends eye each other with caution and suspicion, unconsciously at times, the white ones often unaware they were doing it at all. Hell, I was unaware I was doing it half the time or more.

I love Hammond because it's the place where I started my journey to become the person I am today, and it's times like these that I understand the closing line of Natasha Trethewey's "Pastoral." Trethewey is biracial, an example that someone like Bardwell would no doubt point to as confirmation of his theory that mixed-race couples don't last. Trethewey's poem puts her beside the Fugitive poets posing for a photograph, and the photographer tells everyone--Robert Penn Warren is the one fugitive named in the poem--to say "race" as they smile for the picture. She ends the poem this way:
My father's white, I tell them, and rural.
You don't hate the South?
they ask. You don't hate it?
I don't, even though I hate much of what happens there.

Rush Limbaugh and the NFL

So it looks like Rush Limbaugh won't be an NFL team owner after all, due in part to the outcry from players, the public, and even some other team owners. But before the NFL throws its shoulder out of joint patting itself on the back for having rebuffed Rush and his often racist rhetoric, let's remember that the NFL has a racism problem of its own.

This is the logo for the second most valuable team in the NFL right now, the one located in the nation's capital, and it's highly offensive. The term "redskin" is, for Native Americans, the equivalent of the n-word. This isn't like other team names that evoke Native Americans--Braves, Indians, Chiefs, Seminoles--though some Native American groups have often objected to those as well. This is a derogatory word, a throwback to a time when casual racism was, well, casual, and it's long past time that the NFL mandated a change in the team name.

There's not even an economic reason to fight the change--sales of new merchandise would be incredible as people moved to support the new name, and there would no doubt be a market in "vintage" merchandise as well. Sure, there would be some pushback--there always is when social change takes place--but the result would be a net good.

One group that could help make this happen is sports reporters, both in newspapers and on television. If they refused to use the word, if they only referred to the Washington team as Washington (which I do and have done for quite some time on this blog), the name would lose some of its current cachet, and changing it wouldn't be a big deal, especially if the reporters acknowledged why they were doing it.

Part of the reason for the lack of movement on this has no doubt to do with the lack of visibility that Native American groups suffer as a tiny minority. They're not a large part of the population, and their populations tend to be concentrated, so their already limited political power is diffused even more. But that's no excuse--if the NFL wouldn't have a team named the Wetbacks or the Spics or Gooks, it shouldn't have a team named the Redskins. It's offensive, and it's long past time that the team changed its name.

This is my story






Pick' em Friday


















Amy and I have been dieting--safely and along with a moderate increase in increase--in an attempt to lose some weight. I was pushing 275 in April, and that's not healthy for anyone who's only 5'10, no matter what your bone structure, and I'm currently at about 258-260. One of the tools we've been using it the Lose It! iPhone app, which is basically a calorie counter that credits you for exercise and tells you how many calories you should aim for daily in order to lose to a target weight over the long term. It also gives you numbers for maintaining your weight once you've gotten there.

I bring this up because of this piece from the Freakonomics blog about the NYC initiative to require the posting of calorie amounts for menu items in hopes of raising awareness about healthy eating. The early results are not encouraging for people who were hoping to get people to stop gorging.

We found that 27.7 percent [of people] who saw calorie labeling in New York said the information influenced their choices. ...However, we did not detect a change in calories purchased after the introduction of calorie labeling.
Dubner wonders if the nudge is too subtle, and if a something more pushy would be more effective. My guess, in large part because before I started this move to lose weight I had no idea how many calories I was taking in or how many was reasonable, is that people are looking at the options in a vacuum. The numbers aren't having an impact because there's no context for them. A 600 calorie burger doesn't seem so bad until you realize that it's between a third and a quarter of your recommended caloric intake for the day (in my case, if I want to lose a pound and a half a week), and that it'll take you an hour and a half of brisk walking to work it off. The people who came up with the idea are probably so in tune with what they consider a healthy caloric intake that the context is obvious for them--not so much for the rest of us.

The problem is that because bodies are so different from each other, there's no way to put up a table that gets this message across. I'm allowed more calories than Amy according to Lose It! because I've got 5-6 inches (and significantly more poundage) on her, but those numbers go down as I lose weight. Short of an interactive calorie system installed in restaurants, you're not going to be able to put across that kind of personalized information, and so the numbers will continue to exist in a vacuum. And most people won't put them to use.

Pick 'em Friday

Three weeks in a row I've gone 11-5 straight up. Well, that won't happen again, if only because there are only 14 games this week. Hooray for change!

As always, winners are in all caps, and you're welcome to challenge me in the comments.

CINCINNATI at Cleveland I'm still not convinced that Cincinnati has returned to respectability, but they're playing Cleveland this week, so they get the nod.

TAMPA at Washington All the experts are saying that this will be a rebound game for Washington after their loss to the Lions last week. Jim Zorn better hope it is, or he'll be asked where he wants the stuff from his office shipped. My question: FedEX or UPS?

NY GIANTS at Kansas City This one might be closer than expected since it's the Giants' third game in a row on the road, but KC really isn't very good on either side of the ball, and while I think the Giants aren't quite the dominant team all the experts are anointing them as, they're certainly good enough to handle the Chiefs.

Detroit at CHICAGO I picked the Lions to break their losing streak last week, but that was mostly because I thought Washington was ripe for a fall. I don't see the Lions traveling to Chicago and knocking them off, not this year anyway. Maybe next year.

Oakland at HOUSTON For three straight weeks, Houston has won when I've picked them to lose and lost when I've picked them to win. Oakland, you're welcome.

Tennessee at JACKSONVILLE I'd be lying if I didn't admit that watching Kerry Collins go oh-fer-thirteen in the second half of last week's game against the Jets gave me a little jolt of evil glee, even though I'd picked the Titans to win. He'll probably go 27-30 for 356 yards and 3 tds this week just to get back at me.

BALTIMORE at New England This season, the Ravens have been winning with offense, which is good against New England, whose defense has been shakier than normal. This game might be close, but I'm guessing it won't be, not really.

Seattle at INDIANAPOLIS I'd pick Indy even if Hasselbeck were 100%. As it stands today, he's questionable, and Indy is at home.

NY Jets at NEW ORLEANS This is probably the most interesting football game of the week. It won't get the most coverage--the Monday night game will, for reasons I'll get into below--but it's the most interesting matchup. The Jets defense has gotten a lot of praise for shutting down opponents, though I'd counter that Houston and New England have both been, if not a disappointment, at least not up to the offensive standards most people expected at the start of the season. Are the Jets that good or have their opponents not been as good as expected? Probably a little of both. The Saints, if they can maintain their success running the ball, have the potential to drop 35 on the board on any given week, and the defense has gotten good enough to keep opponents below that. The Saints defense doesn't have to pitch a shutout for the team to win, though they did last week--they just have to do a decent job. I think they do it at home against a rookie QB.

BUFFALO at Miami Buffalo's defense did a good job against the Saints last week, at least until the fourth quarter, and the Chad Henne era begins in Miami. Miami will have to get 300 yards rushing if they're going to win this game.

St. Louis at SAN FRANCISCO I'm in a pick'em league where one of the tie-breakers is to choose who will score the least number of points for the week. My choices are always either St. Louis or Cleveland.

Dallas at DENVER I've decided I'm going to pick Kyle Orton until there's a reason not to. Dallas is way shakier than even I expected them to be. Maybe they'll play better away from that monument to Jerry Jones's ego known as the new Texas Stadium, but I hope not.

San Diego at PITTSBURGH If I had a clue what was going on with either of these teams, I'd tell you. I'm going with the home team here.

GREEN BAY at Minnesota Minnesota-Green Bay game is the most interesting drama of the week, not the most interesting matchup. When it comes to hype, the drama will overshadow the game, which means I won't be watching much of the inevitable Brett Favre tongue bath ESPN will broadcast, which will get an extra day of coverage thanks to this being the Monday night game. This game will be discussed in tragedic terms; it will be described as an epic battle. There will be talk of revenge and betrayal, of usurpation and hubris, but in the end, it'll be a game between two pretty evenly matched teams. Since they're both potentially playoff opponents for the Saints (well down the road), I'm rooting for injuries here, but I'm picking the packers to win.

With a soundtrack straight from the 80's baby.

Tell me a way this isn't awesome. You can't. I mean, it lacks ninjas, but it's got a goddamn polar bear that blows up a planet with a hockey stick. There's no universe in which that isn't awesome.

Why yes, I was up until 2:00 in the morning grading papers and have been on campus since 8:00 this morning. Why do you ask?

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