Colbert and the Correspondents

I have little to say about whether or not Steven Colbert, whose show I love, was funny at the White House Correspondents Association dinner a couple of weeks ago. I thought parts were funny, parts were biting -- and were meant to be -- and that the fact that he was so acerbic toward the media meant that they were not going to be inclined to give him much of a fair shake. James Wood has the best analysis I have seen.

Events like the coverage of Colbert at the dinner help to give the lie to the intellectually vacant myth of the liberal media. Conservatives seem to know this, finally, because in the last two years they have embraced this meaningless construct, the "mainstream media," which no one has ever defined, because when used (and the left has adopted this dopey nomenclature as well) all the speaker or writer really means is "stuff I read or hear that disagrees with me."

Jacob Zuma's Future in the ANC

Today's New York Times editorial page rightfully excoriates the behavior of Jacob Zuma, the former South African deputy president who was acquitted of rape charges on Monday. As the editors argue, "during the trial he admitted to behavior so irresponsible that his future political activity deserves to be limited to voting."

The question remains: Will this be the case? Will Zuma be relegated to the role of political observer? The Mail & Guardian indicates that Zuma's return to the ANC is not just a formality.certainly his ability to return as deputy president has been compromised. Zuma was caught up in several corruption scandals as well, and indications are that the rape charges were simply the last straw, and not the whole reason, for Mbeki and his cohort giving Zuma the gentle push from the ANC fold. Zuma has been sending mixed messages for the last couple of days about whether he believes the party will welcome him back.

My guess is that he will be allowed to return to the party, but that the deputy presidency is a nonstarter. He will work to claw his way back, and because he has significant support, he will be reasonably successful, but I highly doubt whether he will be able to re-enter the rarefied air that had him one step removed from succession. Those days are gone. Zuma's decision will be whether to be a good soldier, or instead to play the populism card and be a burr within the party, or to leave and pose a challenge from without.

Barry Bonds and 713

I want Barry Bonds to pass Babe Ruth. I've made the argument a number of times -- Barry Bonds allegedly taking steroids, especially in an era when such use was rampant, and when they were not banned, no more warps his run for 714 than the fact that the Babe never faced black pitchers or outfielders or catchers who undoubtedly would have diminished his numbers. By how much we have no idea. But if that argument is good for Ruth, it is also good for Bonds. We do not know the effect that steroids have had on his numbers and we never will.

One of the main ways that critics of Bonds have concocted to counter the "steroids were not banned" argument is by asserting "yes, but they were illegal." On a number of occasions I have countered that response by pointing out that the 1986 Mets were as coked up as Tony Montana, and I have not yet heard an outcry to grant the Red Sox the 1986 World Series title. But forget the peripheral analogy. Let's be more explicit.

One cannot read, watch or hear anything about Babe Ruth these days without references to his lifestyle. And in those references we always hear about how he lived large. Babe Ruth loved to eat. He loved women. He loved alcohol. But here is the thing: Among the women he loved were a good number of prostitutes. Prostitution was illegal then as now. (Ask the ghost of heavyweight Jack Johnson about prostitutes if you want a perspective on how some athletes could get caught up in the legal system for consorting with hookers. By the way, Jack Johnson was black. Have I pointed out that had he been a baseball pitcher of comparable talent he never would have been able to strike out Babe Ruth?) Oh, and alcohol? In the 1920s? I'll let you complete the thought. But let's just say that steroid use never prompted a successful Constitutional Amendment allowing for their prohibition.

So enough on the illegality of Bonds' steroid use being in and of itself sufficient to make him unworthy of as player whose very reputation was predicated on blithely breaking the law, and whose numbers are inflated by the fact that he did not get to face some of the best players of his era. We can talk if and when Bonds approaches Henry Aaron's record. Until then, I am more than happy to have the greatest player I have ever seen (and, if you are younger than 40, the greatest player you have ever seen too) pass the Sultan of Strumpets.

Jacob Zuma: Not Guilty

South Africa's beleaguered former Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, has been found not guilty of charges that he raped a 31-year-old HIV positive woman. This case has electrified South Africa and have led to a tectonic shift in South African politics. reactions, not surprisingly, have been mixed. What remains to be seen is what place Zuma will have at the table of South African politics. much like another pariah figure, Winnie Madikazela Mandela, Zuma has a loyal and vocal following. The African National Congress now has a tightrope to walk.

Buddy Holly Goes to College

The Boston Globe has a fascinating story on Weezer frontman and pretty smart dude Rivers Cuomo, who is soon set to graduate from Harvard, where in his tenure he has only earned two grades -- a B+ and an A- -- that were not A's. Plus Weezer is a pretty freaking great rock band.

More TNR on Sudan

Melissa Katz accuses the US of appeasement in Sudan, which sounds about right. For a deeply affecting slideshow of Michal Ronnen Safdie's photographs, go here.

Who Can Teach?

Alison Lobron, a teacher at the elite Concord Academy in the shadow of Walden Woods outside of Boston, announces "I'm Unqualified to Teach Your Kids." In so doing she reminds us all of the silliness of most state teacher licensing systems, and of course of the utter vacuity of the fact that "education specialists" (I blame the university education departments, which should be seriously pared down to only dealing with elementary and special education) so often are in charge of education.

Her solution is so obvious, we know it will likely never happen:

. . . when it comes to teacher hiring, the Department of Education would do well to consider how independent schools define qualified. At the very least, the department should expand its definition so applicants who have taught in private schools or universities can substitute work experience for additional education credits. Ideally, the state would create a waiver system so that a series of positive evaluations from parents, students, and supervisors -- typically the method private schools use in deciding whether to retain new hires - could serve in lieu of state tests and education credits.

Unfortunately, there aren't too many academically accomplished people eager to work for a teacher's salary. But for the few who are, we shouldn't make life any harder.

Maybe someday these sorts of changes can occur. But I would not hold my breath as long as education theorists are in full self-preservation mode.

Stupidest Assertion This Week

In today's H-Afro-Am listserv digest, someone made the following assertion: "Walmart is the modern slave plantation."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but are you fucking kidding me? We have to consider this as being at least as offensive as misplaced Nazi or Stalin analogies. Should we really have to explain to someone the difference between slave life on a plantation in the Old South and conditions as a worker for Wal Mart? In particular, should we really have to explain that difference to someone contributing to a scholarly listserv of African American studies? A couple of years back I had a student in my Modern Africa class who was grappling with the Rwandan genocide, and she blurted out "that's exactly like what is going on in West odessa." I had to correct her and point out howe monumentally offensive an assertion hers was, and how it lacked any sense of perspective. But that was a student who had never been exposed to African atrocities on that level. In this case, we are talking about someone aware enough to participate on a scholarly listserv, probably a professor or a graduate student.

Wal Mart has significant problems with how it treats its workers and a whole host of other issues. I am not about to defend the company, its ethos, or anything else. But can we not take its shortcomings on its own terms? Are we that intellectually bankrupt that something can not be just bad, or bad on its own terms, but rather it must be "slave plantation" bad? One would think that this analogy would be especially offensive to people who are descended from slaves. I will be curious to see if this person gets a free pass. Given that we inhabit an academic climate where in some circles inane hyperbole is not only the fashion, but is seen as legitimate, reasoned argument, I'm afraid I do not hold out much hope.

Speaking Truth to power, Big Papi Style

Big Papi has this to say about umpires:

''Some of them, you walk by and say, [so much as] 'Hi,' to them and they act like they are the [show]. What is that? You aren't the [show]. I'm the [show]. They come here to watch me, not you, so why you got to take it personal?"

Amen, Papi. Amen.

Tom v. Sportsguy

Over at Cleveland '64 Tom is none too kind to Sportsguy's analysis of LeBron. I'll second being tired of his LA columns, and I know I am just getting a dose of the medicine the rest of the world probably felt that they were stuck with when he wrote about Boston. But here is the thing: LA sports fans suck. Boston sports fans don't. And everyone on the planet has had enough of his Clippers slurping, whereas any time the Red Sox or Patriots are on national television, ratings are high.

That said, is there anyone right now who cannot wait for Steve Nash to carry the Suns to a game seven win over the Lakers to take that series? Is there anyone who, after all of the talk that Kobe deserves the MVP, and this series proves as much, (See my take on Kobe here) cannot wait to see Nash win series MVP? (From all of the talk, I am just assuming that these rounds have an MVP trophy.)

Oh -- and to address one of Sportsguy's preferred tics -- is there anyone else who is tired of him presenting his argument against MVP with arguments like this one (I am paraphrasing something he has written at least two or three times now): Any one who kinows anything about basketball knows that there are only two serious MVP candidates, Kobe, Lebron, (and maybe Nowitzki). Sorry. Lots and lots of people who know lots and lots about basketball are going to vote Nash MVP. We can dispute that decision. We can argue that Kobe or Lebron or Nowitzki (who, the more I think about it, may be the most deserving) warrants the award more. But let's not privilege your own position in such a way that it dismisses the knowledge of others out of hand ona debate that ultimately, you are losing. This year the MVP race is so close because there are at least four or five guys who were both outstanding players and who also brought their teams to hegihts that no one else expected. Who, inj sum, defined the idea of MVP as most of us understand it. On my ballot, Kobe is no higher than fourth, behind Nowitzki, Nash, and Lebron, probably in that order. I guess that means I know nothing about basketball. Yet something tells me that my ballot will look remarkably like that of the professionals who actually do vote for the award. All of his self-professed expertise aside, Sportsguy does not, to my knowledge, get one of those votes. I guess it must be true that genius really is not appreciated in its own time. Or else maybe, just maybe, there are lots of folks who write about the NBA, know something about it, and are respected enough to get those votes. Just maybe.

Oh -- and to add onto something Tom addresses. Forget about whether or not Lebron's beard is good or bad. Who cares? Why do men suddenly decide that it is ok to judge other men's fashion in analyzing sports? Only in the world of professional athletics is something like Johnny Damon's hair or Lebron's beard remotely unconventional and worthy of discussion. And certainly, after mentioning it, is it seriously warranted in a column to the extent that Sportsguy raises it? Mindboggling. It almost makes me pine for the days when at least once a column Sportsguy would make the absolutely inexplicable reference to a "salad fork sticking out of [player X's] back." Why the hell is a salad fork sticking out of his back? If the reference is to "stick a fork in him to test if he's done," why a salad fork? It would be a meat fork, right? One of those big, two-prong carving forks? In any case, this bugged me for about two years until presumably someone told him that he had used that reference in 275 straight columns.

Peace in Sudan? (Not Off the Hook Yet Edition)

After a week in which negotiations in Sudan appeared futile, including reports as recently as this morning that the sides were too far apart to reach an agreement, it appears that the leading rebel group in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement and Army, has agreed to a peace agreement with Khartoum. While this is good news, it hardly means that the Sudan is on the road to peace. Expecting peace to last in the Sudan is about as wise as looking to Italy for stable governments, and two other main, but smaller, rebel groups have refused to sign on to the accord. Furthermore, this peace agreement should not allow the rest of the world to pat itself on the back in self-congratulations. This morning president Bush seemed to hint proudly of America's central involvement in the accords which is, to be kind, hogwash. We had representatives there, but to claim even a sliver of credit would be a cynical gesture aimed at covering up our feckless inaction in the Sudan.

The latest issue of The New Republic is devoted what they are calling "the century's first genocide," a title fraught with the tragic recognition that where there is a first there is bound to be a second. The editors sum up what many of us have been saying in "Never Again? What Nonsense." Andrew Loewenstein, in "Words Fail" shows the almost inevitable failings of the United Nations, including the organization's unwillingness to utter the word "genocide" in relation to the Sudan. Even Colin Powell acknowledged genocide in Sudan, even if the government he represented has proven about as worthless as tits on a bull when it came to actually addressing the issue in the nearly two years that have followed Powell's utterance. Eric Reeves, the Smith College professor who has been perhaps the best voice on Sudan in the United States for the past few years, weighs in with "Next Casualty," a pessimistic but to my mind reasonable reading of the tea leaves of what the future offers in Darfur. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, chairman of the Sudan Social Development Organization, writes from his own experiences "Inside a Sudanese Prison."

Let us not be fooled that we can now move on, that there is nothing to see in Sudan and Darfur. Now more than ever is a time for vigilance. We cannot undo the past. But perhaps we can do better in the future. I am not all that hopeful, at least when it comes to United States involvement, but I do try to maintain hope for the people of Darfur, of southern Sudan, of Chad and beyond where inaction has made nearly untenable situations worse. "Never again." We said it after World war II. We repeated it after Rwanda. Have emptier words ever been spoken?

Speaking of No Winners . . .

Foreign Policy has just released its second annual "Failed States Index." There are no surprises. Four of the top (bottom?) five are African, with the sole interloper being, not shockingly, Iraq. As are six of the ten and and eleven of the twenty most failed states. ( Sudan is the most failed state in the world, which, again, will come as a surprise to no one.)

Today has been a pretty grim day of commentary here at dcat. Attribute it to either my foul mood or that, at least today, the world just looks a little bit craptastic from my office window.

Chad: No Winners

As this article in the Mail & Guardian shows, the situation in Chad is misrable and the upcoming elections hardly seem poised to improve matters. There is the Sudan refugee crisis. There is the country's own poverty. There is the ruthless dictator, Idriss Deby, gunning, in the fashion of so many African dictators before him, to change the rules and run for another term in office. There are those intriguing against Deby, who look not to improve Chad but to get their hands on the oil riches pouring into the country even as the people see none of its benefits. There are the (maybe, maybe not) Sudan-sponsored militias. There are the western oil interests willing to overlook all of this. Read the whole thing. If those of us who watch Africa closely had not seen this so frequently, we'd say that it is unfathomable. Unfotunately, we have to fathom it; it is the grim reality.

Haley Barbour and Race

I did not intend for today to be "pick on Republicans for their stands on race" day at dcat. really, I didn't. Nonetheless, I am handcuffed by the news cycle. Today's New York Times reports that Mississippi's governor Haley Barbour will not grant a posthumous pardon to Clyde Kennard, who was falsely convicted of attempting to steal chicken feed after he attempted to enroll at, and thus desegregate Mississippi Southeren College (now the University of Southern Mississippi). This is appalling on so many levels. The refusal to allow Kennard to enter Mississippi Southern for his last year (after three years at the University of Chicago) of course, and the way Kennard was treated by state authorities (some of whom discussed, and possibly even plotted, to kill Kennard). But what possible rationalization can there be for not granting this man, who received a seven-year sentence on false charges and who died in prison of cancer in 1963, a pardon? Barbour's lame answer is grating:

"The governor hasn't pardoned anyone, be it alive or deceased," said Mr. Barbour's spokesman, Pete Smith. "The governor isn't going to issue a pardon here."

Mr. Smith added that a pardon would be an empty gesture.

"The governor believes that Clyde Kennard was wronged, and if he were alive today his rights would be restored," Mr. Smith said. "There's nothing the governor can do for Clyde Kennard right now."

Barbour acknowledges the wrong that has been perpetrated. Yet he sees no problem with the fact that in the eyes of Mississippi law, Kennard still goes down as guilty. barbour, with the stroke of a pen, could right a histroical wrong. he has chosen not to do so. This ghastly and loathsome decision couldn't possibly have anything to do with election year politics, could it? Barbour could not possibly be weighing his constituencies and deciding that the white supremacist vote in Mississippi still resonates. Could he? Alas, I think we all know the answer to this question.

George Allen, Presidential Candidate, RIP

The New Republic has more on George Allen's Confederate Flag Fetish. I'm going out on a limb right now to assert that this marks the beginning of the end of George Allen for president . It has died aborning. While one of John McCain's consultants might admit that Allen's romanticization of the Confederacy will win Allen votes in the primary, even some conservatives are beginning to blanch.

On the right, a debate is now brewing about what Allen's four-decade embrace of the Confederate flag means for his presidential ambitions. Some are bothered by the revelations. At the influential conservative website Redstate.com, the blogger TheCollegian, who volunteered for Allen in 1993, writes, "George Allen did not simply adopt an affection for the South, but the South at a certain time: a time when it was fighting to keep slavery legal. Even this would be ok if he had some family tie to the region at that time, but he doesn't. I find that to be disturbing."

George Allen may well be a good man. He may well be reformed, and this is an unfortunate issue that will haunt him in disproportion to what he stands for now. But in the end, it is not as if we are newly coming to the realization that embracing the Confederacy is wrong. This criticism is not presentism at work. Even in the context of 1973, to embrace the Confederacy was also to embrace Neoconfederate thought, to embrace opposition to the Civil Rights movement and all that it gained. But in the context of 1993 or 1997 0r 2000? Allen chose the symbolism by which he rose to prominence. That such symbolism will now prove politically limiting seems like the perfect form of poetic justice. It is, as C. Vann Woodward might have observed, an irony of Southern history.

Ohio Football Player Punches Horse

Holmes sent this little tidbit about an Ohio University football player punching a horse in Athens. Holmes and I had a rather, how shall I say, eventful night in which we did the infamous Shuffle (with a pitstop at a party) and so he asked "Did we do the Shuffle with this guy?" The answer? We may well have, though he would have been about 14 at the time.

Africa and Terrorism

J. Peter Pham, a 2005 Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Fellow, has a vitally important piece in World Defense Review that FDD has republished on its website. Pham explicates some of the important reasons why we ought to be paying attention to Africa in the context of global, and especially Middle Eastern terrorism. he emphasizes the circumstances regarding the awful Sierra Leonian civil war, but then expands his focus:

The web of intrigue and violence surrounding the Sierra Leonean civil war is just one example among many others that could be cited where the conflicts of the Middle East, including the terrorist phenomena, have spilled over into Africa. Yet U.S. diplomatic and intelligence officials persist in minimizing links between challenges faced in Africa and those in the Middle East, including terrorist organizations and other militant Islamist groups. America needs to take Africa more seriously, for the sake of U.S. security interests if not for its own sake. The conditions that favored the emergence and success of terrorist groups elsewhere-corruption, lack of government control, little understood "informal networks," etc.-are present in abundance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa's "failed states" have been and continue to be ideal operating conditions for terrorists groups that threaten the precarious balance of our world.

Almost two-and-a-half years ago I wrote an article that was a broader cri di couer for greater American engagement with Africa. One of my main arguments was that terrorism could and will be a factor in Africa, and that if for no other reason than self interest, we really needed to start paying attention to events on that most overlooked of continents:

In the past, the mantra of the realpolitik crowd, those who insist upon a clear self-interest before America gets involved in foreign affairs, has always been predictable: "What's in it for us?" But with the massive oil interests we have on Africa's Atlantic Coast and with the clear and present danger of terrorism a daily factor in American lives, a lack of demonstrable interests is no longer an acceptable cry. But beyond this, Africa, for all of its misery, for all of the demagoguery of some of its leaders, for all of the seemingly inscrutable violence, represents both hope and opportunity.

Supporters of the war in Iraq have claimed that one of the main reasons to support our actions was that we could bring democracy and justice, in short, a better life, to Iraq's people. For many of these proponents this justification was mere revisionism, a convenient fallback position when WMDs and links to Al Qaeda proved elusive. But at its essence, there was a kernel of truth in the minds of many of the war's proponents. They truly believed that for all of its flaws, the United States can do good and do well at the same time. This should be a foundation for our approach to Africa: Do good. And then, when possible, do well.

I believed it to be true then. I think that it is just as true now. Maybe moreso. I am glad to see professor Pham's piece and hope that it draws the attention that his arguments warrant.

For Tom

This review of George Destefano's new book An Offer We Can't Refuse: The Mafia in the Mind of America brought to mind about a thousand conversations I've had with Tom about anti-italian/italian-American bigotry and the role of popular culture in proliferating it. Here is how destafano addresses the gist of the discussion that we have had:

What troubles De Stefano and other cultural critics whose views he surveys here is that these images of Italian-Americans as Mafia godfathers, wiseguys, goodfellas and goombahs acquire their glamour by reinforcing pernicious clichés about Italian-Americans as mobbed-up guys. Adding irony to indignity, De Stefano (who has written for The Nation and Film Comment) points out that "it is often Italian-Americans themselves who write, direct and act in these films and TV shows, which makes Italian-American stereotyping different from that of other groups."

I can hear Tom scurrying to Amazon now.

Conservatives on the Oil Crisis

Loyal dcat readers (all seven of you) probably think you know what to expect based on this post's title: dcat is going to engage in one of his joyously acerbic eviscerations of conservative environmental and oil policy. Point out muddled thinking, intellectual sloppiness, hypocrisy, cravenness, that sort of thing. But why go for the obvious? No, today dcat comes to praise, not to bury. Dcat is about to pull the bait and switch. Two prominent conservatives, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' Clifford May and George Will over at Newsweek engage in earnest discussions of how to address what may well be the big issue of the summer. Now obviously it is very much in the self-interest of conservatives to try to come to grips with rising oil and gas prices and America's oil dependance generally, but it strikes me that Will, and especially May, are motivated by more than bolstering Republican hopes for the midterm election.

George Will pretty much eviscerates current GOP policies, continuing his maverick (or, many would say, sincerely disgruntled true conservative) diversion from party talking points. (Thanks to Tootle for the heads up on the link.) While I appreciate Will's sentiment, his solution is a tired stopgap, and not a long-range palliative. he also presents it in a hamhanded and, frankly, silly manner:

A modest proposal: Among the federal entitlement programs is the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which gives states block grants to help pay energy bills, and for weatherization and other energy-related home repairs. Congress should amend that law to say: No such funds shall be spent in any congressional district or state that elects a representative or senator who votes against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or in currently closed portions of the Outer Continental Shelf.

Forget for one moment the practicability of punishing select constituents because of the votes of their representatives. It seems to me that drilling in Alaska and elsewhere is a stopgap. It is a temporary paliative. It is not a long-range soluition. Most of the data that I have read indicates that the production we would get from Alaska and the shelf sounds more impressive than the actual impact it would have. And ultimately, it would perpatuate oile dependance. Unless we can become wholly self -sufficient with those reserves, isn't the problem still going to be that we need oil from the Middle East and elsewhere?

This is where Cliff May's more far-reaching thinking comes in. In "Break the Oil Monopoly" May engages in what among most of what passes for conservatism today amounts to apostasy:

A hundred years ago, Americans could use typewriters, the telegraph and primitive telephones. Today, Americans have computers, the Internet, cell phones, satellite television and radio, DVDs, iPods, email and instant messaging.

A hundred years ago, Americans could have personal vehicles powered by internal combustion engines running on gasoline. Today, Americans can have personal vehicles powered by internal combustion engines running on gasoline.

You see the problem?

For a long time, oil products have enjoyed a monopoly because oil has been cheap and easy. But it's getting less cheap and Americans ought to be growing uneasy about sending billions of dollars to corners of the Earth where terrorism is both preached and practiced.

The whole thing is worth reading, as May calls for a "new Manhattan project" and consciously aligns himself with a think tank, Set America Free, "which former CIA director James Woolsey calls 'a coalition of tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, hawks, and evangelicals.'"

And once we consider options beyond how to fuel automobiles, planes, and the like, shouldn't we also be considering growing viable alternatives such as solar, water, and air-power? These are not new ideas, to be sure, but they are old ideas that critics have long derided or ignored. Can we honestly afford to do so anymore? Economically we do not want to. Geopolitically and strategically we cannot.

Iran and the UN

Just when we thought that the UN could not possibly top itself after letting such paragons of human rights as Zimbabwe, Syria, and Libya sit on the UN Human Rights Commission, it somehow manages to do so. Cliff May has the scoop in this week's Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' "Notes & Comments":

IRAN DEFIES U.N.; IRAN REWARDED BY U.N.: The International Atomic Energy Agency last week confirmed that Iran is accelerating its efforts to enrich uranium and hiding crucial information about its nuclear program.

U.S. and European officials said they hoped to present a legally binding resolution (only Chapter 7 resolutions have the force of international law) requiring Iran to cease enrichment and increase cooperation with U.N. inspectors.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in response: "We do not give a damn about such resolutions." Also in recent days: The U.N. announced that Iran will co-chair the organization's "Conference on Disarmament."

U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who heads the House subcommittee on the Middle East, called that the equivalent of "appointing a serial killer to serve as a juror in a murder trial."

Last week, too, the U.S. State Department issued a report citing Iran as the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism." The report says Iran plans and supports terrorist acts in Syria and Lebanon and is "increasingly involved in supplying lethal assistance" to violent Shia militias in Iraq.

How long will it be before the U.N. gives Iran a vice chairmanship of a commission on terrorism, as well?

Shocking. Yet somehow not surprising.

Sox V. Yanks, 2006

Tonight the Red Sox and Yankees face off for the first of what will be a minimum of nineteen games, and could well end up being as many as 26 if they meet up in the ALCS and it goes seven. It's the greatest rivalry in sports now, it's the greatest rivalry in sports history. And this year the new twist is that Johnny Damon sold out and is now a Yankee. Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy provide stories in the Globe. If you will be in Fenway tonight, here is your guide to proper Damon Reception Etiquette: Introduction/First At-Bat: Wild applause -- he was and always will be one of the 25. Remind him what it means to be on our side. Thereafter: Boo him like he kicked your dog (He may well have). Let him know what it means to be on the other side.

Holmes and I have a side bet going on, a gallon of Vermont Maple Syrup up against a similar volume of Texas barbecue sauce. I get the former if the Sox have a better season (measured by how deep the team goes in the postseason or, if they go the same, which team finishes ahead of the other in the east) he the latter in the unlikely event that the Yanks do. Any other takers, let me know in the comments.

It. Is. On.

Confused About Kobe

So, let me get this straight. Kobe spends all year playing the role of the biggest gunner in basketball since Chris Heiser on my 5th grade basketball team, and according to many, he is the MVP because without him doing so, the Lakers have no shot. Now in the playoffs, Kobe, if all of the experts are to be believed, deserves the series MVP because the Lakers are shockingly up 3 games to 1 on the favored Suns, and Kobe is the reason, because he has decided to score less (he is down more than ten points from his regular season average) and distribute more (he has something like 1.5 more assists per game, which hardly seems cause for hosannahs, but no matter). But aren't these things completely contradictry? If the Lakers are doing better against the Suns than their regular seaosn record would indicate, doesn't that tell us that Kobe's teammates all along were a whole lot better than advertised, and that his regular season was indicative of a guy who is utterly self-absorbed? Kobe's defenders cannot have it both ways. And it seems clear that the idea that Kobe's performance this season was so spectacular because without it the Lakers would be cooked is a farce. The fact is, the team is playing at its best with Kobe playing a diminished role. If this redounds to anyone's benefit, shouldn't it be to Phil Jackson's first, and then, I dunno, Kobe's overshadowed teammates second? I know that some people have established that it is in the NBA"s interest for Kobe to be prominently featured, but it seems to me that facts are facts.

(By the way -- we know that LaBron has truly made the big time, because on that game winning shot against the Wizards the other day he took four, and almost five steps. Had he travelled any more, a stewardess would have offered him peanuts mid-trip. the sequence went like this -- step, jump stop, step, step, another jumpstop, step, shot. LaBron took over that game, but Wizards fans, all seven of them, have a right to feel aggrieved.)

The Draft

It has been a bizarre pre-draft period. We have seen the fortunes of the Big Three, Reggie Bush, Vince Young and Matt Leinart, rise and fall and rise, most often for dumb reasons. We have seen North Carolina State defensive lineman Mario Williams mysteriously become a player in the top choice sweepstakes, and into the top five has emerged a curiously named offensive tackle from Virginia, D'Brickshaw Ferguson. Any of them might be a star. Any might be a bust. We have no idea, and the more certitude someone presents before the draft, the more you know they are selling something. No one knows, and we all only look like geniuses after the fact.

I am still not fully sold on Reggie Bush. I certainly am not sold that he is a lock for Canton, or that he is destined to be a playmaker and superstar. Don't get me wrong -- he may well. We just do not know and won't know for years. But I do know that a guy who is used to 15-20 touches at most a game against the University of California at Berkeley has not, no matter what Sean Salisbury says, proven that he will star against the Patriots and Steelers on Sundays. Every year guys are touted as being can't-miss prosects, only to miss. I could be a fool, but were I Houston, I'd think seriously of trading down or of taking Mario Williams. And don't give me this nonsense about putting asses in the seats -- if you cannot sell out an NFL stadium eight weeks a year, you do not deserve to have an NFL team. Do not give me this nonsense about the Texans having to take Reggie Bush for the sake of the fans, fans who, by the way, want them to draft Vince Young anyway.

I am also a little perplexed when I hear people say things like "Matt Leinart may be as good as he is going to get right now." We have a young, smart, talented quarterback who led his team to a phenomenal record and a national championship, won the Heisman Trophy, and somehow he has peaked? I tend to doubt it. I can see Vince Young's upside. He is a tremendous athlete. But how much will offendsive coordinators and head coaches allow him to run in the NFL? And is the NFL really the league to be learning on the fly how to play under center? Vince Young will probably be a great player, maybe a phenom. But I would maintain that Leinart is going to be a potential star for years to come. Young is going to need the right offense and he is going to need to be in a position where he is not expected to play right away. As for the other quarterback in the draft who has been mentioned in the same breath as these guys, I find Cutler to be intriguing. People talk about his record in college, as he won only 11 games as a starter. But he was a starter at Vanderbilt, meaning he played an SEC schedule (and since Vandy is almost always the worst team in the SEC, he played the toughest possible SEC schedule) for his entire college career and this past season produced a better team than any in Vandy's recent memory. His receivers and running backs were subpar. Yet against SEC defenses he was the conference player of the year, and apparently he is the one guy of the three big quarterbacks who can make every throw on the field.

As for the Patriots, I have always loved Belichick's philosophy -- pick the best player, do not go for need, because if you draft for need and don't get it, you miss out on better players and you are back in the same boat next year. I am always astounded when other factors take precedent over what a guy did on the field in college. Pick the best football player. You'll find a spot for him. That said, if he is still available, I would love to see the Pats pick Ohio State's "other" linebacker, Bobby Carpenter, or else one of two running backs -- D'Angelo Williams or Lendale White, who has been (too) much maligned of late.

When Will We Learn?

During the Cold War we jumped into bed will all sorts of baddies under the presupposition that we were confronting a greater evil. This was dubious logic, but understandable in the context. Ronald Reagan famously called Mobutu Sese Seku "a voice of good sense and good will" when he was neither. He was a murderous tyrant who ruled by chaos and kleptocracy. he stood for everything the United States is supposed to oppose, but his putative anticommunism made him an ally. It was a noxious policy then. But those days are gone, and with them such crass opportunist reductionism, right?

Not so fast. Condoleeza Rice recently referred to Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang as a "good friend." The question is, a good friend of whom? because he certainly is not a good friend of his countrymen. In 1996 oil was discovered in what was then a nation in dire economic straits. Since then, the country has enjoyed one of the highest per capita incomes on the continent, yet the people subsist in abject poverty. Obiang has siphoned off millions of the country's oil revenues in the familiar pattern of kleptocracy and patronage. Obiang is a ruthless dictator who steals from his hopelessly poor people, tolerates no dissent, imprisons and tortures his critics, and operates a skewed judicial system. Senator Carl Levin and the Washington Post have both spoken out about this shameful moment. It is time far more individuals and groups do. There is no excuse.

Bud Selig is a Craven Titwillow

So Bud Selig has decided that there will be no MLB celebration if and when Barry Bonds passes Babe Ruth's home run total because ''We don't celebrate anybody the second or third time in."

Funny, I recall a few years ago that Selig was explicit in praising both Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, not to mention then-third-place Roger Maris during the great home run chase of 1998. Funny, baseball still celebrates that very second-place status of Babe Ruth almost daily. Funny, this smacks of an ad hoc decision based on innuendo and allegations and with nothing proven.

Every year, Major League Baseball presents trophies for second place teams. Makes sort of a big deal of it too. Now Babe Ruth is no great shakes? Suddenly, Bonds looks like he is going to settle in to second place in the history of the game's most hallowed record, and Selig becomes a stickler for primacy and primacy only? Bud Selig might be the most incompetent commissioner in the history of sports. I'll get to this at some point, but for the record, Fay Vincent may be the most underrated commissioner in history, and the owners drove him from the job. Selig, meanwhile, couldn't find his ass with a Global Positioning System, and he keeps right on rolling along. It baffles the imagination.

She Says What We All Think!

Michelle Cottle hits it on the mark when she writes that the much-ballyhooed appointment of Tony Snow to the position of White House Press Secretary is, well, too much ballyhooed. For one thing, while this move has been touted for the fact that Snow will supposedly have a role in formulating policy, I have two comments: 1) Bullshit. He might get to talk in meetings, but I do not for one minute believe that Tony Snow just became a player in policymaking circles. 2) This is a good thing? The press secretary is now going to be deciding policy, and then he is going to be a conduit to the press about that policy? So much for the idea of the honest broker.

Furthermore, in many circles, folks are making a big deal about Snow's alleged criticisms of this administration. I'll let Cottle field this one:

Let's not overstate the guy's credentials as an administration critic. With the possible exception of Fred Barnes, Karl Rove's personal Stepford scribe, it is increasingly hard to find even conservative journalists who haven't taken the occasional swipe at this bumbling administration. It's not as though Snow, prior to joining Team Bush, was ever talked about as a notable administration critic--and certainly not on hot-button issues such as Iraq or the administration's antiterror efforts. The White House's hiring George Will would have been ballsy. Snow? Big deal.

It seems to me that Republicans are so starved for anything approximating good news and the media is so caught up in their own onanism that they honestly believe that this is a big story. Meanwhile the four pillars of incompetence, corruption, chaos and carelessness continue to swirl around the White House and the GOP Congress. But at least the media has one of their own to spin lies and now, apparently, save the Bush administration from itself with his new role as an inside player. Harrrumph.

Mosquito Nets

Rick Reilly's column in Sports Illustrated this week is among the most execrably written that he has produced (which is saying something -- there may not be a more overrated sportswriter alive today). It also happens to be perhaps his most important. For in it he pushes the idea of providing mosquito nets in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year in Africa from malaria, a largely preventable disease for which mosquito nets are a secure first line of defense. Please consider donating to the United Nations Foundation campaign against malaria. Say what you will about the UN -- I sure have -- this is their bread and butter. This is what they are generally good at. This justifies the organization's existence. This saves lives.

KC Johnson at TNR on the Anti-Israel Lobby

Friend of dcat KC Johnson has a piece on faculty unions and the anti-Israel lobby in The New Republic online. Basically, the unions are acting like fatuous ideologues. Read it.

George Allen's Race Problem

It would not be fair to say that Virginia Senator and almost certain GOP presidential primary candidate George Allen is a racist. But it would also be premature and disingenuous to slough off the possibility. This piece in the forthcoming issue of The New Republic at minimum raises questions, and at worst is pretty damning. His Confederate flag fetish and his willingness to jump into bed with neo-Confederades merely buttress his dubious past policies on matters of race. Now, to be fair, Allen appears to have worked hard to overcome his past. He says and does the right thing now more often than not. But there is a fine line between opportunism and core beliefs. Were I a Republican, I'd be more than a little wary of George Allen becoming my standard bearer. Then again, I am not a Republican.

Baseball's "Golden Age"

Timothy Gay, the author of 'Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend reminds us that baseball's "Golden Era" was never quite so golden.

As Bonds bids to surpass Babe Ruth's home run record, we (self-appointed) custodians of the game need to take a deep breath and remember two unshakable truths: The pastime will survive this latest mess; and Ruth's era, baseball's ballyhooed ''Golden Age," was seriously tarnished.

Gay's piece deals with the longstanding tradition of gambling in baseball during Ruth's era, including allegations that games were tarnished even after the martinet Kennesaw Mountain Landis supposedly cleaned up the game in the wake of the "Black Sox" scandal. I have long argued that those who ring their hands over Bonds passing Ruth need to take a step back. Ruth's record is no cleaner or more virtuous than Bonds -- and in all likelihood it is less so. Keep in mind that steroids were not banned in baseball during the period when Bonds was alleged to have been taking performance enhancing drugs. So by baseball's own rules, Bonds did nothing wrong. Ruth, meanwhile, never had to play against black players. Never had a swift black outfielder rob him of a home run by leaping the fence. Never faced some of the great Negro League pitchers who while improving the overall Major League talent pool would have taken more than a few of the bums off of whom Ruth jacked home runs out of the league. The multiplier effect for this is baffling, and nearly limitless. (How many extra at bats did Ruth get a year that he might not have had better pitchers and fielders been able to cut innings short before he got another appearance?) And, as Gay reveals, baseball was not always on the up-and-up during Ruth's era. How many times did pitchers, on the take or with a bet on the game, groove a fastball to Ruth -- after all, who is going to suspect a guy for giving a home run to Ruth? Did Ruth ever bet on games in an era when betting was rampant?

"So," as Gay writes, "as Bonds rounds the bases after whacking number 715 -- and Selig and George Mitchell perhaps fail to touch every base in their steroids inquest -- don't despair. Our beloved pastime has been through worse."

The College Athletic Conference That Does It Right

With each passing year, I not only feel more connected to the larger sense of what my undergraduate alma mater, Williams College, represents, I also increasingly appreciate the idea of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC). It's hard to imagine a comparable conference in all of college sports. Geographically (well, ok, Hamilton seems like something of an interloper), in size, scope, mission, philosophy, student body, and place in the academic hierarchy, NESCAC is a unique manifestation of places that, The Game of Life be damned, still try to do it right and succeed a lot more often than they fail.

As a former athlete at Williams, I feel an affinity with Middlebury and Bowdoin and Tufts, hell, even with Wesleyan and Amherst. (OK -- I admit, I feel somewhat dirty typing that last bit.) I am apparently not alone in my sentiments about the conference, and not merely Williams' (dominant) place within it. NESCACNation.com is, in its own words, "a community connecting NESCAC students, alumni, and fans." NESCACNation gives a pretty good feel for not only the vibrant goings-on in the conference, but also of the nature of NESCAC. Plus, it doesn't hurt that Williams features prominently on the site.

Anti Apartheid Movement

South African History Online has a fabulous new feature on the Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM). Historians are in the process of developing an important literature on the global dimensions of the anti-Apartheid struggle. This will only contribute to that process.

Sudan Spillover

Last week I wrote about the potential humanitarian and political disaster inherent in darfurians spilling across the border into Chad. Today Smith College professor Eric Reeves, who has been one of the strongest, smartest voices on Sudan in recent years, has an op-ed in the Boston Globe in which he discusses other potential calamaties that might befall Chad as a result of its unfortunate luck of geography.

Idriss Deby, the president of the central African country of Chad, may soon lose power to a group of variously motivated rebel movements. The deposing of Deby might not seem occasion for much regret: he is a cruel, tyrannical, and corrupt man who has squandered a great deal of Chad's new-found oil wealth. But the rebels who would replace him have the deeply troubling support of the genocidal regime in Khartoum, Sudan. In recent months, as Human Rights Watch has authoritatively reported, the National Islamic Front in Khartoum has supported the Chadian rebels, even as it has loosed its own murderous Arab militia allies on the non-Arab tribal populations of eastern Chad. Indeed, Human Rights Watch reports that ''the Janjaweed militias have carried out attacks inside Chad accompanied by Sudanese army troops with helicopter gunship support."

While the long-term goal of removing Deby from office would be a good and decent one, this is not how it ought to happen and these are not the people to do it. The crisis in Sudan is beginning to have a multiplier effect that is going to result in further chaos. Chad and Darfur are becoming inextricable, and there is no reason to believe that it has to stop there. Cross-border destabilization in Africa tends to find fertile ground. This is yet another reason for ardent action from the outside world.

Advice to the Indians

Here is my free advice to Eric Wedge, a former catcher in the Red Sox system and now the manager of the Indians: I do not care if first base is open. I do not care if you have to face David Ortiz. It does not matter how Manny has started the season: You do not intentionally walk anyone in order to face Manny Ramirez. That is never a favorable matchup. Manny makes silly men pay. Silly men paid big tonight.

See Abhinov Blog (Or At Least Read After He Does!)

Dcat friend Abhinav Aima has a blog. He is an old grad school colleague with whom I had lost touch, even though for a brief period we were just a few hours apart in the frigid upper Midwest. He blogs about a host of matters, including his bread and butter, Middle East politics. Aima is a journalist, and a good one. Read him.

The Nebraska Governor's Race

Winning the Republican primary for the governorship in Nebraska today is like winning a Democratic primary in the South in the century after the Civil War: It was the only competition that mattered even if a putatively bigger one follows. The race for the Cornhusker State's chief exacutive office is especially fascinating this year, pitting as it does incumbent Governor Dave Heineman against state icon and former Big Red football coach-turned Congressman Tom Osborne. For a year or so now, the presupposition has been that Osborne would wipe the floor with Heineman. But as Lee Corso might say in evaluating an event in Osborne's past career, "Not so fast, my friend." According to Chris Cilizza's Washington Post blog "The Fix," the race is now in a dead heat with two weeks to go before the primary.

There is lots of time, though I think people need to cease with the football metaphors, especially in assessing the last weeks of the race. If Osborne wins, it will not be, as one analyst says, because he had close calls in his former job and knows how to win. I'm as big a sports fan as they come, but let's not pretend that politicians need to learn any lessons about competition from football coaches. Osborne may win a popularity contest. He may win because the voters trust him more. He may win because of America's moronic attachment to celebrity. He may win because he is the best man for the job. He is not going to win because his competitive skills are more finely honed than the sitting Governor's.

On Sudan, Private Security Companies, and Osama

In Sunday's Boston Globe Rebecca Ulam Wiener, a fellow at the Kennedy School, has an article about the prospects of private security firms being the potential solution to the situation in the Sudan. In a situation that has been handled imperfectly, to say the least, perhaps an imperfect stopgap is what we must call for.

J. Cofer Black, vice president of Blackwater, a private security firm, believes that his company and others like it might be able to help aid and strengthen the African Union.:

A few weeks ago, at an international special forces conference in Jordan, Black announced that his company could deploy a small rapid-response force to conflicts like the one in Sudan. ''We're low cost and fast," Black said, ''the question is, who's going to let us play on their team?"

On the whole I am fairly ambivalent about private security and military firms. I worry about their potential lack of accountability. I worry in particular about what system of law and justice -- both domestic and international -- these companies are beholden. I wonder if our leaders, upon appointing such a group, would in turn pass the buck on their own accountability, wash their hands of matters if they go awry. I have seen private security firms in southern Africa run amok, showing up on the scene of alleged crimes and using the sort of force that police officers often do (and usually worse) but without the capacity to be held responsible, or at least not in the same way, and I have wondered what right they had to act that way. If you call yourself a security firm, does that give a license to do violence against other civilians? Furthermore, the responsibility of a military or a police force is quite different from that of a private company, the ultimate purpose of which presumably is to reap a profit.

At the same time, the administration, the world, continues to dither in the Sudan. Private military organizations have, under the ambit of the US military, worked reasonably well at times in Iraq, albeit with some glaring exceptions. If nothing else, such proposals are thought provoking. And under the right guidance, with the right mission, and given both a clear mandate but also made sternly aware of accountability (and repurcussions), such firms might be able to do some good. At this stage, the intermediate step of private security firms may not be perfect, but that imperfection should not be the enemy of the good. If governments are not going to act directly, why not do so indirectly through firms on a short leash and with a clearly spelled out mission?

On a different but related note, in today's New York Times Nicholas Kristof and in this week's Foundation for the Defense of Democracies "News & Comments," Cliff May help explain Osama bin Laden's support for atrocities in the Sudan. Could the unintended consequence of Osama's latest pronouncements be to provide a wedge for increased American action in the Sudan? It has been quite some time since the administration's cynicism with regard to invocation of Osama and 9/11 at every turn has actually resulted in improved policy. Could this not be one of those rare confluences?

On Pedro Martinez and Midgets: Onion Sports Edition

What is there to say? The Onion (America's Favorite News Source) does it again.

This might be the best graf from the piece. But read the whole thing:

"Over the years, I've learned the secret to longevity in this game: Whenever your mechanics aren't working or your shoulder starts tightening up during starts, it's time to get a new lucky midget," said Martinez, whose midget friends have each "disappeared" following their dismissal, although Martinez's critics note that the drained corpses of midgets identified as his former good-luck charms have been found on ancient Egyptian holy sites at times coinciding with the start of spring training or immediately following prolonged slumps. "You can't rely on the same old midget for your whole career."

(A Hat Tip to friend, Colleague, and Reader, Dr. Brian B.)

Duke Lacrosse: Alumni Weekend Edition

The Duke lacrosse situation has settled into the realm of the ongoing scandal, as opposed to being constantly breaking news. With last week's indictments and arrests, the waiting game begins. The extremists on each side -- those comparing the alleged victim to Tawanna Brawley and those calling for the heads of all of the lacrosse players -- have been shown to be spewing gasbags of vitriol, and those who preached letting the process play itself out seem vindicated. The newest information is that the latest, more sophisticated round of DNA test results may not be available until May 15 or so.

Duke held alumni reunions the last few days, and the Thunderstick, loyal Blue Devil that he is, was there. Here are his impressions:

My first hand account of the lax thing--I thought it would be a bigger deal on campus--maybe it's just reaching that point where it's been hanging around for a while now and people are gearing up for finals and such and it's just starting to die as a daily story there. When I got to Duke on Friday afternoon, I picked up my registration packet and there was a one-page sheet in there about how to handle the media if you are asked. It wasn't a "this is what we want you to say sheet"--the major points were only that there would be media on campus, that you aren't required to talk to them if you are approached but that if you do talk, you should assume that your comments will be aired so make sure that you think about what you say before you say it and that it comes across as what you want to say--nothing like "this is what you should say--Duke is doing...", just a reminder that you don't have to talk if you don't want to and think before you talk because you never know where it will be picked up. Nothing about the school's position was included except that if you wanted info on it, they gave the web address. On campus, it wasn't really an issue. I didn't see any reporters (although a front page story on usatoday.com today about how alumni are reacting to the lax case illustrates they were there [The story to which he refers is here.]). My general feel from alumni and friends that I talked to down there was essentially that most alumni feel the same way--they are concerned about the school--most of them, me included, feel that the school has sent a strong message concerning the behavior of athletes by killing this lax season just for their behavior up to that point and for having a party with underage drinking and strippers and while a lot of people feel bad for those at the party that are innocent, but are none the less losing their season and the kids that didn't do anything that now will likely have to transfer to play again or worse the seniors who are innocent but are having their job offers rescinded. But what we all hope is that this message is communicated loudly, not only to athletes but all students that while you may not do anything illegal or immoral, you have to know that guilt by association is a very real thing and to make sure you stay out of situations where you can get nailed by this. I'm sure there were plenty of 21+ year olds at that party that said "I'm drinking, I'm not giving any alcohol to anyone and I'm going to watch a stripper which is fine since I am over 21" and they did just that, but the bottom line is that you go to a party with strippers, aggressive kids and drunkenness and there's the chance of bad things happening whether you take place in them or not and rather than say "it's too bad for these kids that didn't do anything wrong to lose their jobs" most people think that the message being sent is "yeah, it's too bad, but this is what happens when you don't remove yourself from potentially being a the wrong place at the wrong time." Bottom line is that I think the alumni are largely happy with the way school is handling things--some people don't like certain aspects, but there's no way to please everyone in a situation like this--they'd like to see the message about wrong place/wrong time being sent a little stronger and that most importantly everyone hopes that, despite how bad a situation this is, it's also an opportunity that doesn't come along very often--it's a chance to better relationships with the community and to lay down hard and fast policies as to how students and student-athletes will behave and everyone hopes the school doesn't let that pass them by.

This story won't be going anywhere soon, and now that it has settled down a bit, it seems likely that reason may prevail to some extent. That said, when the results come down, Duke and Durham may well be in the national limelight again for reasons far removed from the university's status as one of the elite intitutions of higher learning in the United States.

Tyranny in Africa

Several Africa-related items:

At the Washington Post's Sunday "Outloook," they have a list of overlooked autocrats listed under "Department of Moral Outrage." Basically, the Post surveyed folks in the know about overlooked baddies running amok on the planet. Of the eight dubious honorees, four come from Africa, including Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Nominated by Senator John McCain), Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch), Eritrea's President Isaias Afwerki (Chris Smith, Congressman from New Jersey), and the leader of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army Joseph Kony (Nina Shea, Director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom). Ruthlessness, autocracy, fueling anarchy to maintain power -- these are clearly not trends unique to African leaders, but they are trends too abundant in Africa. (Hat tip to Tootle, who posted this at Big Tent.

Presumably Robert Mugabe is too passe, or too obvious, or has retired his place at the table of the devilish and demented. The Mail & Guardian has yet another article on the sad plight of Zimbabwe. I am perplexed by the editors' choice of title, though: "Zimbabwe Starts to Fall Apart." Starts? Zimbabwe has been in the process of crumbling for at least a half dozen years, with warning signs extending back a decade or more. That quibble aside, though, this is a pretty good reminder of what Zimbabwe faces. Were there a viable way to remove Mugabe today, by force if necessary, I would fully advocate taking those steps.

Meanwhile in response to Darfur, Lwrence Kaplan has a piece over at TNR online that originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times in which he provocatively, but wrongly, tries to claim that students who support intervention in Darfur have to take another look at Iraq. Kaplan apparently lumps all actions abroad as being findamentally the same. This is what most internationally cognizant folks would call "silly." It is wholly possible for one to oppose invading Iraq but to support action, including military action, in the Sudan. Kaplan seems to think that it is the nature of the action, not the reason for the action, that most matters. Kaplan is right that it may take some sort of unilateral action to prevent further destruction in Darfur. And he is equally right that many calling for action in the Sudan did oppose intervention in Iraq; a few may even be hypocrites. But at essence, it is fully justifiable to support the use of force in the Sudan and oppose it in Iraq, just as it is viable to support intervention in both places. The circumstances are different, and so should be our analysis of them. Kaplan unnecessarily muddies the water in trying to connect two phenomena that are not linked in any significant way. He blurs far more than he elucidates.

Comes the Deluge

The wave of Sudanese immigrants crossing from Darfur into Chad to excape the army and government-backed janjaweed militias has familiar contours. In 1994, for example, waves of Rwandans fled their genocide-besotted nation for Uganda and Zaire, destabilizing both of those countries and fueling regional tensions. When some of the overwhelmingly Tutsi refugees were able to mobilize with the exiled Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) they returned to Rwanda, engaged in massive (and largely overlooked) reprisal killings, which produced another wave of refugees, this one primarily Hutu, many of whom were deeply implicated in the earlier genocide.

At the risk of being reductionist, in Africa (and probably most places) if you scratch a refugee, not so deep below the surface you will find a victim of gross atrocities (though as in the Rwanda example, you also sometimes find perpetrators). Chad is in no way equipped to handle the onrushing thousands desperate to escape the situation in Darfur. But they will keep coming, a human caravan that serves as eloquent and tragic testament of both man's capacity for evil and the world's capacity to look the other way.

Ohio Politics Watch

Today's New York Times covers the fascinating gubernatorial race playing out in Ohio. Very much appearing like one of the "Purple States" that increasingly give the lie to the Red State-Blue State division supposedly tearing America in two, Ohioans appear set to face a choice between a black Republican (Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell is the frontrunner in what has been a vitriolic Republican primary campaign) and Democratic frontrunner Ted Strickland, who has for six terms represented the Congressional district in which Ohio University is located. Ohio is very much in play for the Democrats, who could benefit from rife corruption by state Republicans, the rapid loss of manufacturing jobs, commensurate population and brain drain, disenchantment with the presidential administration, and Iraq fatigue. Already the campaign is shaping up to look like something from the Progressive era, with each candidate fighting to position himself as the more active proponent of reform. The Ohio race bears watching because it could signal just how much Americans desire change.

Angry Tom

We like Angry Tom. We like Angry Tom when he has someone on which to focus his anger. Over at Cleveland '64 Tom focuses his glorious anger at Adam Schefter, a bloviating pus-bladder and NFL columnist who shows no real sign of actually liking, never mind knowing, football. Anger will set you free!

The Hick From French Lick and $80 Wine?

Larry Bird has lent his name to a high-priced wine label. Dan Shaughnessy has the scoop. This is just weird.

Diversity v. Dilettantism

Jonathan Malesic, in a clunkily titled piece ("The Subcategorical Imperative") in the Chronicle of Higher Education asks a question that hits close to home for dcat: "By saying that my scholarly interests are broad, will I run the risk of being labelled a surface-skimming dilettante?"

I have not been very good about narrowing my professional interests. If forced to answer the "what do you do?" question, a query for which we are all supposed to have developed a glib, rote answer by the time we are ABD, I say something like "race and politics in the US and Africa. Plus some stuff on global terrorism. Oh, and sports." And it is true. These are all areas in which I have written, published, researched, and taught. But in a profession that sometimes seems to want to narrow its practitioners beyond the bounds of relevance, that answer sometimes meets with askance glances.

But here is the thing: So what? At the end of the day, shouldn't my work speak for itself? If some people think that a young scholar cannot pursue a variety of interests without actually seeing the work that the person has produced, if they simply use their own framework based on their limitations to decide what is within the realm of the possible, isn't that their problem, not mine? Since when is being a generalist a bad thing? Since when did trying to be a renaissance man become reason for scorn?

Like Malesic, I take some solace in one of his key points:

I take some comfort in knowing that in their research, many of the big names in the humanities deal with a broad range of topics. If resisting easy categorization is good enough for Martha Nussbaum (she of the 25-page CV), then it's good enough for me.

Some of the historians I most admire have a diversity of interests. Furthermore, historians tend to think thematically. Yet my interests do have a coherence -- I am a contemporary historian. I deal with currents in the twentieth century that are not all tied to one geographic nexus point. I am working hard on being a comparativist. So in my rather narrow chronoloogical focus, I end up wearing lots of hats -- I am a southern historian, but I am probably not your man if you want to discuss 18th century settlement patterns in Virginia. I look at global terrorism in places as diverse as Northern ireland and Israel and the South and South Africa. But i may not be the guy to talk to to get a sense of Ireland before the potato famine, or the Middle east since antiquity. I am an African historian, but I'll be the first to admit that my focus on things before the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century is pretty episodic. I also acknowledge that in my breadth, there are blind spots. I know little about Asia, though for reasons I'll explain down the road, I may get the chance to go to China for a week or two this summer.

Is this so bad? Since when is the fact that I love and am conversant in sports and music and can talk across traditional scholarly boundaries a bad thing? And since when, short of looking at the work itself, is it even acceptable to dismiss someone's work because it crosses those boundaries? So what do I do? Lots of stuff. I cannot really answer it in one sentence. But do you want to grab lunch? We'll talk. I just got this great new album. I am worried about the Sox lineup when Bard catches for Wakefield. And I've been thinking a lot lately about the South African Treason Trials, the Baton Rouge bus boycott, and the Enniskillen bombing. Maybe it'll all make sense after a while. Or maybe not. It does to me.

Bob Ryan on the Celtics

Bob Ryan has a great article on the promise and reality of the Celtics that reminds us of why basketball writing is his bread and butter and how no one is better than he is at it. The Celtics are young, exciting, and in five years may be dominant. They are also young, inconsistent, and endlessly frustrating when they play like they did this year, which is poorly enough that they could not make the playoffs in the NBA's paltry Eastern Conference. The sobering reality is this: It has been twenty years since the Big Three last brought a championship home to the most stories franchise in NBA history. If you came of age in the Larry-Magic years that revived the NBA, you probably are feeling pretty depressed right now. I know I am.

On Hamas and the Tel Aviv Bombing

It is a sad fact that Monday's bombing in Tel Aviv, the most deadly in Israel in nearly two years, should come as a surprise to no one. Though Islamic jihad, and not Hamas, carried out the bombing, Hamas and a host of Palestinian leaders have supported this wanton act of terrorism against dozens of civilians in a fast food restaurant on a holiday weekend as being "legitimate."

In January, I wrote a piece on the elections that brought Hamas to power in which I argued that while the knee-jerk response was to decry the election, that I was not ready to dismiss summarily the prospects that a Hamas leadership would transform itself.

The reasoning ran as follows:

1) I believe people have the right to choose their leaders. People have the right to make disastrous decisions. We sometimes lost sight of this during the Cold War -- imagine if we had simply allowed the South Vietnamese people to choose their own fate in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But the flip side of that right is that the rest of the world gets to react accordingly. No one today can blame Israel for adjusting to the facts on the ground. The facts on the ground are that the Palestinian electorate has chosen an organization that may provide them bread, but that has also avowed the destruction of Israel. No one can hide behind Arafat's demogoguery or assert that the majority of Palestinians just want peace. They chose Hamas knowing full well what that organization represents. Perhaps Hamas can change. maybe they will (see #3). But until they do, Israel has a right to adjust to what it knows, not what some may hope.

2) Hamas now has a choice -- the organization can lead and build a Palestinian state. Or it can destroy and negate. Suddenly Hamas must be accountable. more to the point, Hamas can be held accountable. I am not optimistic that this will happen, but participation in democratic processes, even when the participants are by their very nature authoriatarian, carries with it certain burdens, burdens the Palestinian people can hold Hamas to or that the outside world can. In a sense, Hamas just moved out of the shadows, even if unwittingly. We can hope that sunlight is really the best disinfectant, or we can know that it is easier to shoot into light than into darkness if we must.

3) I find it as distasteful as anyone that we sometimes have to hold our nose, swallow hard, and deal with that which we find unpalatable. But rhetoric aside, we are not likely to wipe out everyone who was, is, or might be a terrorist. Sometimes our best hope is to co-opt them. No one sleeps well knowing that murderers sometimes not only walk free, but benefit from their crimes. But time and time again we have to settle for what is possible and not for what we would like. Three examples spring readily to mind: South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Russia. In each of these cases the perpetrators of evil, far from being wiped out, were brought to the table and sometimes rewarded. There is a reason for this -- in none of these examples was it possible to destroy completely the bad guys. Does anyone really think that Margaret Thatcher's (or Tony Blair's) ideal scenario would have had the IRA having a say in the peace process, sitting in negotiations, or having seats at Stormont? Did Mandela lie awake at night in Robben island and Pollsmoor hoping, did Govan Mbeki and Oliver Tambo dream, that one day they would negotiate with the National Party, the party of Verwoerd and Botha, the party behind Vlakplaas and the securocrats, rather than wipe the Nats and their apartheid system off the face of the earth? Would Harry S Truman or John F. Kennedy or Richard M. Nixon have looked forward to a Russian ally that did little to punish the thugs and criminals who made the Soviet Union run? No, no, and no. Perhaps similarly Hamas being in the fold will be the option that breaks the logjam, that a combination of a place at the table and a chance to create a Palestinian state will lead Hamas to give up its dreams of destroying Israel and driving the Jews to the sea.

Make no mistake, this is not my preferred outcome. I would as soon see Hamas destroyed, wiped off the face of the planet for good, driven into the very sea they claimed was Israel's fate. But it is likely not going to happen. Instead the Palestinian people have made their choice (as Mr. Burns once said, "Look at those slack-jawed troglodytes, Smithers. And yet if I were to have them killed, I'd be the one to go to prison. That's democracy for you."); Israel can adjust accordingly and serious people cannot blame them if those preparations entail defensive and protective measures; and everyone can adjust to the realities on the ground. This might not be the ideal solution. But in the long run, it might be the only solution that will work.

Hamas leads what could become a Palestinian state. In the light of last month's Israeli elections, they apparently have chosen to support terrorists whose goal it is to destroy Israel. No one should be shocked when Israel chooses to defend itself at least in part by cracking down on the governing body that has given its approval to the recent attacks against innocents in Tel Aviv.

On Evolution and Theory

It shocks me that the evolution issue is still with us. A few months ago Jon Stewart had a toss off line that encapsulates how I feel pretty brillantly. He was referring to creationism,and said closed off his point with: "it all depends on if you think the world is 6000 years old, or if you are right." Mike Anderson, an evolutionary scientist and philosopher, has a piece in the Mail and Guardian, "Evolution: Fact or Theory" that deserves wide attention.

Anderson writes:

On the street, theories are held to be -little better than airy-fairy conjectures, whereas statements of fact are held to be true. But -- and this is key in coming to understand the “evolution is a fact … evolution is a theory” issue -- theories are not necessarily less certain than facts as is popularly thought. Facts are confirmed observations, not truth.

Facts do one job, theories quite another. Theories explain facts. They are models or maps or abstractions that make sense of data. Alfred North Whitehead pointed out that the genius of science is its twin concern with the particular (the facts) and the general (theory). If science were merely concerned with statements of fact then reality would be the best model of itself. Such a model would be useless to humans and biology would be “merely stamp-collecting”, as Lord Rutherford famously claimed.

The Thunderstick is dcat's normal source on matters scientific, so hopefully he will weigh in to remind folks of the difference between the common conception and the scientific meaning of "theory."

On (And On and On and On) Cleveland Sports

The NFL draft is just around the corner. For you Cleveland types, Tom has an insanely long but really good post over at Cleveland '64. Given that the Cavs are in the playoffs and the Indians are visiting his backyard in Kansas City, it's safe to say that things are giddy at Hacienda Bruscino.

Making the Rounds

First Family Shakeup?

The PhD Versus the MA: Community College (Sort of) Edition

Carlton Myers (a pseudonym) has written a fascinating piece at the Chronicle of Higher Education about controversies in his community college regarding promotion to full professor. The gist of the disagreement? Whether those without the PhD ought to be able to gain the rank of full professor at his college. He raises many good points -- for example, if someone is teaching truck driving, or industrial arts, areas that do not have PhDs, not allowing them to become full professors effectively ghettoizes them. By and large I have little to say about the community college experience specifically -- I did not even realize that one could be a full professor at community or junior colleges.

But "Myers" makes some general points that do merit response.

First off, it should be pointed out that it sounds as if Myers works with some world class jerks -- folks with the PhD who lord it over colleagues who don't. If I wanted to be snide I'd have Myers remind himself that his colleagues with PhD's almost inevitably slid through the sluice pit of academia and are at a community college precisely because among PhD's the majority of them (though I'm sure not all of them) were not competitive among their peers.
Myers writes:

The crux of the conflict was driven by a group of faculty members with Ph.D.'s and Ed.D.'s who tried very hard to convince the rest of us that people who don't hold a doctorate aren't worthy of the highest professorial rank. . . .
They argued that it takes far more work to achieve a doctorate than to get any other kind of qualification, and that it doesn't matter how long you've been a practicing nurse or welder; without a Ph.D., you're never going to have the same kind of academic experience -- and therefore the academic qualification -- to merit the title of full professor.

I'm a bit surprised that each discipline did not get some say in how one rises to the rank of full professor. At most four-year places, in any case, the first stage is for the disipline to establish what is expected in the field. For welders, of course there ought to be different standards than for historians. And for historians, the PhD is, as one of my advisors used to say, "the union card" in this profession. The status of "full professor" is not just an internal mnatter -- it is also a sign to the outside profession. This is why, at least in history, I am somewhat surprised that community colleges have a lot of full professors in liberal arts disciplines.

Then:

At one point it was proposed that we pick a general number of academic credit hours needed to earn a doctorate. Then, since nonacademic faculty members accrue education and experience by attending workshops, seminars, and conferences rather than academic courses, we tried to find a way to translate "continuing education units," "continuing professional education credits," and a host of other nonacademic but professionally valuable experiences into the equivalent of academic credit hours.

Again, I can only speak to disciplines in which the PhD is offered. I should note that this proposal went nowhere at "Myers'" school, which is a good thing. Anyone who has both an MA and a PhD knows the vast difference between the two. This is one fact that people with MA's seem to forget -- that most of us with PhD's have MA's as well -- we are not merely people who chose to pursue a different route, we chose the same route, succeeded, and then went a whole lot farther. The gap between my PhD and my MA is much, much wider than that between my BA and MA in terms of qality, the amount of work that went into it, and the "expertise" that came from it. In fact at a good many places the MA is a lot easier to get than a good BA. And I know this not based on some abstract dismissal of the MA, but rather because I have an MA. I know precisely the level of attainment that the one degree represents as opposed to the other. It might be a useful rhetorical tool to pretend that MA's and PhD's inhabit different worlds. We don't. To use a baseball analogy, having the PhD is like making the majors. Getting the MA places you somewhere in the minors, and not necessarily in Triple A -- a wonderful accomplishment and one relatively few people attain, but still along way from Fenway Park.

And so this idea that one could simply accumulate credit hours equivalent to a PhD is hopelessly silly -- which Myers more or less acknowledges, kind of, sort of. In my mind there is a three tiered process to receiving a PhD. That differential in credits is merely the first. Yes, the average PhD requires another couple of years of coursework, but unlike the patchwork approach that many of Myers' colleagues seem to have advocated, that coursework is fairly well organized and structured. More importantly, it is geared toward the second stage of the PhD, and the one that truly separates an MA from a PhD in terms of expertise, awareness of the field, and so forth, and that is the process of studying for, taking, and passing the comprehensive or general exams.

The exams are the process that advances one to candidacy, the one that creates the "ABD," or "All But Dissertation." Every school structures their process differently, but effectively the exam process requires candidates to pass three or four four-to-eight hour written exams in the space of a month, followed by an oral exam that tends to run toward the antagonistic. The exam process is a weeding process, and weed it does. Once you have passed your exams, if they are all anything like they were at Ohio and other places I have heard of, the gap between you and an MA student, even the brightest, is best measured in light years. The synthesis of literally hundreds of books into four make or break exams, plus the historical content as well as analysis contained therein, followed by the cat and mouse game that is the oral exam is an immense process, and it is one that no one would go through, however much of an autodidact they are, without the compulsion of the comprehensive exam process.

Then of course there is the dissertation, the production of a piece of original scholarship that in this day and age usually requires two to three years or more, and that in most cases today is the draft for what will become a book. This immersion, this establishment of mastery over a topic, establishes the often insurmountable gap between the ABD and the PhD, a gap that I have already maintained is leagues removed from even the most rigorous MA.

And don't forget that in this day and age, during all of these steps most PhD students are presenting at conferences, beginning to publish, pursuing fellowship support, working as teaching or research assistants and, let's not forget, by the end teaching their own classes.

I guess this is my roundabout way of saying no, allowing one to take a mishmash of continuing education credits does not at some point equal a PhD.

Myers continues with what will to some be the heart of his argument but for me is a giant red herring:

We can all agree that earning a Ph.D. makes someone an acknowledged expert in their discipline. I've heard it said that on the day of your doctoral defense, you know more about your research topic than anyone else in academe. That's probably true. . . .But we are a teaching institution, and you'll never convince me that having a doctorate makes you a better teacher. It may make you a better scholar, but it does not automatically confer excellence in the classroom.

There are several problems with this argument. For one, while no one may be able to "Convince" Mr. Myers that "having a doctorate makes you a better teacher," he also does nothing to prove the converse. And since teaching at the postsecondary level is a knowledge-based profession, since the coin of our realm is knowledge and ideas, I know I am going to take the expert. And that's the one with the PhD in favor of the one with the MA. I am going to assume -- because it is true -- that the PhD knows incalculably more about his topic than someone with the MA in the same field, and that the gap in knowledge almost inevitably is going to mean that from a content-perspective, which is what we deal with, the PhD likely is the better teacher. It is a fallacy from the education departments that teaching is somehow separate and distinct from what is being taught.

I also love the silly usage of the grandiloquent, self-aggrandizing, but ultimately meaningless phrase "we are a teaching institution." Every college and university in the country is a teaching institution. Some also happen to be a whole lot more. Mr. Myers can pretend, if it makes him sleep better at night, that at his institution teaching is valued but at Harvard it is not, but I would surmise that he is wrong. Every institution with which I have ever been affiliated was a "teaching institution" even if none of them were only teaching institutions. And in all of them, some teachers were better than others. While I'm sure that everyone at Mr. Myers' community college is a star teacher, sparkling, erudite, and chock full o' commitment to the classroom, I would suspect that his school has as many marginal classroom instructors as any four year institution. Or is Mr. Myers arguing that those thousands of students clamoring to get into Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Williams and Swarthmore would really get better educations at his institution than at the places I just mentioned or a couple of hundred others?

Which brings us back to Mr. Myers' own situation, which is telling:

So how will the new policy affect me? I'm not a nonacademic faculty member or a Ph.D. I'm in a third group of people who got lost in the debate -- faculty members who teach in the arts and sciences but only have a master's. I have a modest record of peer-reviewed research publications and, by all accounts, I'm a good teacher. . . .The new policy benefits me: I was not eligible for full professorship before the change, and I am now. I'm happy about that. . . However, I'm more conflicted now about my place in the college, and about my standing among my peers. The Ph.D.'s will tell me, to my face, that they think I do a good job and that they respect me. But what do they really think? . . . I suspect I know the answer, at least in part. After the vote, I told one of my colleagues that I thought the faculty senate had done the right thing and mentioned how glad I was that I would have the chance to advance to the highest professorial rank some day. My colleague looked startled and asked in an incredulous tone, "So now you think you're eligible?"

At first Mr. Myers' collegue seems like an absolute prick. But look a bit more deeply. Mr. Myers is not the welder whose cause he purports to champion. He is not someone who happens to be in a field in which there is no PhD, and so if some snooty colleagues had their druthers he could never get to full professor through no fault of his own. He teaches in a field in which the PhD is offered and in which several of his colleagues clearly have attained this not-modest step. Why on earth should he be eligible for what is, at most places, a relatively rare and honored position? Being a good teacher is a necessary but not sufficient condition for any sort of promotion in higher education. In a world trading in knowledge, Mr. Myers has not done all that he could do to develop the mastery that others have. He couches his sense of entitlement in a sort of "woe is me, I'm underappreciated" solipsism:

And I'm keeping an eye out for other job openings. I like academe. I like my subject matter. I love the freedom to think about things, and, most of all, I love teaching college students. I genuinely like and respect most of my colleagues. . . .I'm just not so sure they feel the same way about me.

And yet at the end of the day, why should he have ever expected to be able to take the shortcut into a community college full professorship? Universities are littered with folks who never attain the rank of full professor. Are we supposed to feel that Mr. Myers has somehow been done wrong because he has found out that some of his community college colleagues don't buy into the concept of skipping steps on the path to career advancement? Perhaps from a professional vantage point Mr. Myers' colleagues feel just about exactly as they should.

Success

Black business owners on rise

Try Charles Taylor in Sierra Leone

In yesterday's New York Times John Leigh, former ambassador to Sierra Leone from 1996 to 2002 calls for Charles taylor's war crimes trial to be kept in Sierra leone, and not farmed out to the Hague. There are reasons to move the case -- the Hague is better equippped to deal with such a trial; The criminal proceedings could provoke unsavory elements (Taylor loyalists in particular) to act up in violent ways, destabilizing a country still reeling from catastrophes. Nonetheless, as Leigh argues:

Such a transfer would defeat a principal purpose behind the establishment of the special court in Sierra Leone — namely, to teach Africans, firsthand and in their own countries, the fundamentals of justice and to drive home the democratic principle that no one is above the law. The special court has the potential to help raise West Africa's standards for accountability, transparency, fairness and the humane treatment of defendants.

Taylor's crimes in Sierra Leone add up to but a small fraction of his transgressions. Within his own country he was dictator and tyrant, one in a long string. It is unlikely that he will ever be called to account for his crimes against humanity. But a trial in Sierra Leone, if handled properly, could provide a model for future proceedings that we can only hope will happen across the continent in the years to come. The emergence of stable, liberal institutions such as courts are vital to African progress. And sending a message to Africa's Big Men that they can and will be forced to face accusers in Africa might provide yet another spur toward good, responsible governance on a continent that has so often lacked even a modicum of accountability on the part of heads of state and their hangers-on.

Oooooh, That's Gotta Sting

Over at the New York Post chameleon (sleazeball?) extraordinaire Dick Morris brings the hammer down on the administration. According to Morris, "Bush has truly become the Republican equivalent of President Jimmy Carter, out of control, dropping in popularity, unable to resume command."

Since I got this tidbit from Michael Crowley over at The Plank I may as well echo his sentiment: "Ouch." Bush has had a historically awful second term. All but his most blinkered cheerleaders admit as much. And as of right now, things do not look poised to improve. The problem, of course, is that we should want things to improve irrespectiove of who occupies the seats of power in government. At the same time, we can wish in one hand and spit in the other and we all know which will fill up faster, so while many of us would like to see some improvement in the whole host of areas that Bush seems incapable of improving, it is not untoward to hope that the result of this will be a fairly dramatic shift in American politics.