The iTunes Shuffle

In one of the (too) many magazines to which I subscribe they have a little feature where they ask a musician to listen to their iPod on shuffle for five songs, with no fast forwarding, and then to talk about each song. Part of the purpose is to get a sense of what they might actually listen to as opposed to what they might want everyone to think they listen to. But it also allows them to talk and think about music without filters.

It seems like a good idea, so I'm going to try it on dcat. I'm just going to click on play on my iTunes and see where it takes me. It could pretty much give us anything, as I have some 17,500 songs downloaded, which is something like 45 days straight of music if I were to turn it on today and just let it play straight through with no repeats 24/7. So away we go with the iPod Shuffle:

Sebadoh, "Mystery Man" from Bakesale: Sebadoh, Lou Barloh's post Dinosaur Jr. project, had a little two album run with this album and Harmacy that captured just about perfectly the early 90 indie rock ethos. My impression of Barlow, both from what I know of the way things went down with Dinosaur Jr. and from a couple of interactions with him after live shows, is that he seems to be a bit of a dick. This song as well as any embodies Sebadoh's sludgy guitar fuzz-driven indie pop rock. (Holy crap, songs go by fast when you're doing this.)

Sheila Chandra, "Speaking in Tongues," Virgin Records: Signed, Sealed, Delivered 2: I have no memory of this "song" (which really is just this woman making weird percussive noises with her voice) and I have nothing interesting to say about it other than that I imagine that in anything but very small doses it would grow tedious.

Nirvana, "Territorial Pissings," Nevermind: Nirvana helped to transform the way many of us listen to music even if we did not know it to be the case at the time. What then seemed unbelievably raw holds up pretty well over time but there will always be a subtext, in listening to Nirvana, of melancholy over what might have been.

Sol White (Quote From History of Colored Baseball, 1907) as Read by Ossie Davis from Ken Burns: Baseball Soundtrack: Ossie Davis is one of America's underappreciated gems. Baseball is awesome. And this little excerpt from the soundtrack to Ken Burns' monumental documentary on baseball is so brief that I'm already typing into the next song on the playlist.

Neil Hefti, "Coral Reef," Kings of Swing, Vol. 1: I have always been a huge fan of big band music from the 1940s. Perhaps it is from my grandmother on my dad's side, for whom this was the music of being a teenager. Maybe it comes from playing in jazz band in high school and naturally playing a lot of big band classics. This was rock and roll before rock and roll, but with a lot more glamour, and frankly, significantly better musicianship.

Well, that was fun. And remarkably fast. I'm already into Oasis' "My Big Mouth" from Be Here Now, which I bought in South Africa in 1997 the day it came out. I think this could become a regular feature.

Link Linkity Link Link

Just a few links that sparked my interest:

Kelefa Sanneh recently had an interesting essay on the idea of whiteness in The New Yorker. Oddly Sanneh has one important gap, the World War II era, which is why you should all be reading (and thus buying) this.

Independent historian Ed Sebesta has put together this site on the Citizens' Councils, which includes access to copies of the Councils' newspaper. This will prove invaluable to my work on a number of projects, so for that I am very thankful. The Citizens' Councils were all kinds of crazy, but no less important for being so.

Finally, since I will be traveling tomorrow (for this, remember) I would like to second the idea of the airlines that have taken so very much from us being asked to give something back, or at least to stop seeing those of us who fly as wallets with legs.

Newberry Library Rugby Talk (Self Indulgence Alert!)

This Friday, April 23, at 3:30 I will be giving a talk, "Stopped at the Try Line: Rugby, Race, and Nationalism in the New South Africa," as part of the Newberry Library's Seminar on Sport & Culture. The seminar is co-sponsored by Northeastern Illinois University and the Dr. Wm. M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture and the Newberry Library is located at 60 West Walton Street. If any dcat readers are in Chicagoland, I'd love to have you stop by.

Conflicts in American History (Self Indulgence Alert)

If you have the capacity to order resources for a university or other school library, please consider ordering this, and not just because I contributed a chapter to the volume on Civil Rights.

Prize Winners! We've Got Prize Winners!

Friend of dcat Marc Selverstone recently won the 2010 Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Not only is Marc, who plies his trade at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs, a fine scholar (obviously), he is also a truly great guy. So go buy Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945–1950 (Harvard, 2009).

Go West, To San Antonio

From significant personal experience I can tell you that there are worse things you can do than spend 36 hours in San Antonio.

I'm still digging myself out from the consequences of six fun, crazy, chaotic, and intermittently fruitful days in Washington. Hopefully I'll resume regular posting soon.

Pedro Returns!

Simply chill inducing:

dcat's National League Preview (With World Series Pick!)

And now for a much briefer take on the National League. (World Series pick at bottom.)

NL East
1. Phillies: This quasi-dynasty in the making had a peculiar offseason, effectively swapping proven postseason commodity Cliff Lee for Uber-Ace Roy Halladay. Very good rotation, strong lineup, postseason experience: I think you'd be a fool not to pencil Philly in to the postseason.

2. Braves: They have the most exciting young position player in baseball in Jason Heyward. The rotation is sneaky good. But they are rolling the dice with Takaski Saito and Billy Wagner at the back of the bullpen.

3. Mets: The sun will rise, the sun will set, Mets will get injured, and they will disappoint their fans, aka the fans of New York's other team.

4. Marlins: They have Hanley Ramirez going for them, which is nice. Although keep in mind that some years this front office really tries to win. But what a lousy team to root for as a consequence in all of those other years.

5. Nationals: I have Stephen Strasburg on my fantasy team just because at some point they are going to have to bring him up just to get people to go to games. This will be an improved team, but by how much, and will it matter?

NL Central:
1. Cardinals: Always good, rarely great (even when they won the World Series in 2005) but they have the best player in the game, a strong rotation, and a decent lineup. It is difficult to begrudge this team and their fans their success.

2. Cubs: Remember last year when they were a hot choice to win it all? That was then. Expectations are low, which might benefit this team. But I look at their lineup, their pitching staff, their bullpen, and I just see nothing that makes me think that the best thing about Wrigley this year won't yet again be Wrigley itself.

3. Brewers: Or maybe the Reds.

4. Reds: Or maybe the Brewers. Though I have to say, I love them stepping up for the moderate-risk, high-reward Aroldis Chapman signing.

5. Astros: Ever since they made their improbable run to the World Series a few years back it seems as if this team has just disappeared. I will root for Brad Mills, their first-year manager and Terry Francona's long-time right-hand man with the Sox. By the way: Is it me, or is the NL Central really freaking dull?

6. Pirates: It is nearly impossible for casual fans to have any reason to understand that this is one of the great franchises in baseball history. We need to find a way to get them in the same division as the Royals.

NL West:
1. Rockies: Every year this is a competitive division, and it seems that every year someone different wins, and someone good fades. They have done a good job of developing an organization that produces players and they have built the team to their ballpark. The lineup is really disciplined too, drawing loads of walks and therefore seeing lots of pitches. It will pay off this year.

2. Dodgers*: The Dodgers seem to be in the running every year. This year won't be any difference. Manny is flying below the radar, the Broxton-Sherrill bullpen combo should shorten games, and they seem to be made up of solid if not spectacular guys up and down the lineup. That's not a key to a World Series championship, but it should keep Chavez Ravine open into October.

3. Diamondbacks: If they can just improve their OBP slightly this is a team that should score tons of runs. And if they can score lots of runs they can win lots of games, or at least keep fans entertained in the Valley of the Sun.

4. Giants: Largely because I don't see Tim Lincecum, with that frame, continuing to be an ace without dealing with some injuries. This is not, to say the least, a great hitting team. And without Lincecum it could get ugly. And yes, I am predicating my entire guess on the San Francisco season in 2010 on an injury that has shown no sign of coming.

5. Padres: Sure -- if the Pads are in the crapper in July it increases the odds that the Sox are in the Adrian Gonzalez sweepstakes. But it's not like I wish ill on them. I just suspect that illness is coming no matter what, and if I can provide a gentle nudge, well . . .

* Denotes Wild Card Winner
NLDS:
Phillies over Dodgers
Rockies over Cardinals

NLCS:
Phillies over Rockies

World Series:
Red Sox over Phillies

dcat's MLB Preview: American League

I do not have the time to write up a full preview of this year's MLB season, which began in rousing fashion with last night's Sox come-from-behind victory over those dastards from the Bronx. Nonetheless, here are predictions for the American League with brief commantary that is all sure to be wrong. I hope to follow with the NL as soon as practical, hopefully before I leave for DC.

AL East:
1. Red Sox: Look, by now you should be used to homer picks from me. But since I've been writing dcat, there has never been a year when picking the Sox to succeed has exactly been pie-in-the-sky stuff. The narrative for this year's Sox is pretty well set: They decided to go with pitching and defense at the expense of offense, as indicated by letting Jason Bay sign with the star-crossed Mets and placing Mike Cameron in center field and Adrian Beltre at third. And this is true for what it is worth. But they also upgraded at shortstop on O and D by bringing in Marco Scutaro from the Blue Jays, who had a peculiarly late-blooming career year at the plate. Meanwhile, they went and added Angels ace (the word "bulldog" usually accompanies most descriptions) John Lackey. The fact is, the Red Sox will be in the top five and maybe better in offense in the American league, and whatever drop-off they have at the plate will be more than countered by runs saved on the mound and in the field. Thus their Pythag prediction should have them projecting out to more than 95 wins, and 95 wins is always the target on Yawkey Way. Obviously we worry about Big Papi's bat -- will he be the hitter of April, May and October of last year, or will he be the guy who pounded the ball in June, July, August and September? The answer to this question will go a long way in determining just how much offensive dropoff the Sox experience.

2. Yankees*: Trust me, I wanted to go with the Rays here, and the Rays are a popular choice not only to make the playoffs, but in some circles to win the East. And the Yankees have holes -- their D is not all that good. Their bullpen bridge to Rivera is far from secure, and Joba Chamberlain throwing 93 mph is a long way from him throwing 99 mph. One always assumes that they will get old. But that team can bash. It has enough starting pitching to be competitive on most nights. They seem to be nearly everyone's choice to repeat, and the middle of that lineup is going to pucker the sphincters of a lot of pitchers in the American League. But they have some holes that their supporters do not want to acknowledge even if their detractors (allo guvnah!) play them up too much.

3. Rays: This is an absurdly precocious bunch. And if they all peak at the right time, they could be an even better team than they were two years ago when they went to the World Series. But in this crazy game as much goes wrong as goes right for even the best teams, and I just don't think that Tampa has given themselves a depth of experienced talent that will be able to compete day-n-and-day-out with the Sox and Yanks. That said, I kept expecting them to fold two years ago and it never happened. If they are there in September they just might be there through October. The rest of the country gets sick of hearing it, but goodness, the AL East is loaded, and yet these teams still win 95 or so games a year.

4. Orioles: Another team that has embraced a youth movement, the O's are, simply enough, victims of geography. That's not going to change any time soon. If this team can win some games it will revive what has historically been a pretty good fan base. But when they play the Sox at Camden Yards it becomes Fenway South, and it turns into the Southern Toilet when New York is in town. Win games, fill stands, make money, get better players. That's a blueprint for every team in baseball, of course, but is vital in the AL East with the two leviathans and the upstart Rays.

5. Blue Jays: This was a team that seemed to be on the rise three years ago. I suppose they can find solace in the fact that in most divisions they would not be slotted in to last place. In this one however, if a lot goes right they can pick off the Orioles. That's a rousing thought when trying to inspire a ticket base.

AL Central:
1. Twins: Every year Minnesota is in it to win it. If by "It" we mean the American League Central. In a world where everyone now plays Moneyball (the rich Red Sox every bit as much as any small market team) they still actually have to try to find ways to exploit inefficiencies in the market because they have little money to spend. The new outdoor facility should be a boon to them -- though would you want to attend a game there in October? -- as will be signing hometown All American Boy Joe Mauer to a lengthy extension that all but assures that all of his important years are spent in a Twins uniform. Yeah, losing Joe Nathan is tough, but what does Moneyball tell us about closers? This will be a competitive, if somewhat mediocre, division. the winner might emerge with only 90 wins. I think the Twins will hit that target first.

2. Tigers: Look at that lineup. Pretty cobbled together -- Damon and Ordonez and Cabrera and Everett all have come in from elsewhere in the last year or two. Dontrelle Willis has claimed their third starter spot, which could be a sign of redemption or of desperation. Yet Jim Leyland has this team in a position to compete every day, and they have done so for three years now, playing the role of the Rays before the Rays did.

3. White Sox: I have to admit, the idea of the Windy City Madman having a Twitter account and the wherewithal to use it was almost enough to inspire me to figure out how the hell Twitter works. Almost. This team will frustrate the hell out of Guillen all summer as they struggle to reach 80 wins. That should make for fun reading, assuming you are not sensitive to profanities.

4. Indians: Remember when these guys were one win away from winning the American League and thus getting to face the Rockies and likely winning the World Series in 1997? Yeah, it seems like a long time ago. Maybe Fausto Carmona will return to form. Travis Hafner too. But it's probably going to be a long year at the Jake.

5. Royals: The Royals. it will surprise you to hear, will probably not be very good in 2010. Wash, rinse, repeat.

AL West:
1. Rangers: I suppose this could be seen as a surrogate homer pick since I have lived in Texas for nearly six years. I think the West is going to be wide open. Seattle is a trendy pick. The Angels are the safe pick. The A's are no one's pick. I thought last summer that the Rangers were one year away. By that math it's one year later. That pitching staff will be legitimately decent. The bats will rebound from a disappointing 2009. Neftali Feliz is about to make the leap at the back of the pen. The only reservation I have about the Rangers is the one I have always had: Do you know how freaking hot it gets in Texas for the entirety of the summer? It's 90+ today in West Texas and it's not uncharacteristic. DFW might be mildly cooler, but there will be a ton of 100 degree days in Arlington this year. Try playing in that weather every home game for three (or more) months straight.

2. Angels: The Angels are always good. And they got over the hump of beating the Red Sox in the postseason last year. But they intentionally got a lot older in the offseason (Matsui and Abreu and Hunter -- oh my!) while losing the closest thing thay had to an ace in Lackey. Plus I hate small ball. Though they will have a harder time playing it this year. I may well be most wrong on this one, but I think the Angels might be fighting for third this year.

3. Mariners: If you want to talk about run prevention over run scoring, don't look to Fenway, look to the trendy choice to win the West, which plays at Safeco. But look at that lineup. Eesh. Milton Bradley is slotted in as their cleanup hitter. Ruminate on that for a few minutes and get back to me as to how they win the West.

4. A's: Don't think that Moneyball has been discredited just because Billy Bean is no longer using duct tape and chewing gum to cobble together a team that wins 95 games and the AL West every year. the rest of the league caught up with them. It's harder to exploit inefficiencies when the rest of the league knows what those inefficiencies are, can pay for them, and can pay for stars, the lack of whom led to Moneyball (Not Billy Bean's coinage -- you knew that, right?) in the first place. But, yeah, the A's are going to get last in this division.

* Denotes Projected Wild Card Winner

Postseason:
ALDS:
Sox over Twins
Yanks over Rangers

ALCS:
Sox over Yanks (What, you expected something else?)

Off to DC, Defending Ben's Chili Bowl, and Assorted Self Indulgence

I am off to Washington, DC tomorrow for this year's Organization of American Historians annual meeting where I'll be giving a paper on a panel (1:45 Wednesday if you're in the area) with a couple of names familiar to my regular readers. I'm going to try to hit a lot of my favorite haunts in the city where I wrote my dissertation in a state of pretty much absolute poverty. One of those haunts is Ben's Chili Bowl, which is featured in a recent Guardian (UK) blog post.

But listen, my limey friend, you watch yourself when you write: "Sadly, the only problem with Ben's Chili Bowl is that while the atmosphere is great, the food is mediocre, even by fast food standards." I will find you and I will beat your arse.

Picturing Civil Rights

The New York Times' "Lens Blog" has a fabulous slide-show (and accompanying story) from the Civil Rights Movement.

Considering Friedman's Rules

There are, to my mind, two Tom Friedmans. When the longtime New York Times columnist writes about the Middle East he is quite strong. I know many people see him as being too tepid or too centrist, but his book From Beirut to Jerusalem is still the one book I would advise someone to read if they wanted a primer on the Israel-Palestine question. Then there is the Tom Friedman who keeps insisting to us that "the world is flat," his metaphor for the effects of globalization. This Friedman is more miss than hit, his tepidness really becoming a problem when he veers away from an area he knows as well as the Middle East.

Friedman had an op-ed last week that kept spinning in my craw. It deals with American Middle East policy, and so plays to his strengths. In the piece he lays out "three cardinal rules of Middle East diplomacy." While I'm not convinced that he is wrong, on each of the rules I take issue.

"Rule No. 1: When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. Karzai brazenly stole last year’s presidential election. But the Obama foreign policy team turned a blind eye, basically saying, he’s the best we could get, so just let it go. See dictionary for Vietnam: Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky."

But in diplomacy there are times when you call things by their "real name" and there are times when it is, after all, diplomacy so you need to be diplomatic. I'm not convinced the Obama team "turned a blind eye" so much as they knew that we had limited capacity to make a difference. The question is, do we need Karzai more than we can afford to alienate him? And will any difference that we make happen behind the scenes or in front of them? In other words, what we call things seems to matter a whole lot less than how we deal with them once they become reality.

One reason you violate Rule No. 1 is because you’ve already violated Rule No. 2: “Never want it more than they do.”

If we want good governance in Afghanistan more than Karzai, he will sell us that carpet over and over. How many U.S. officials have flown to Kabul — the latest being President Obama himself — to lecture Karzai on the need to root out corruption in his administration? Do we think he has a hearing problem? Or do we think he believes he has us over a barrel and, in the end, he can and will do whatever serves his personal power needs because he believes that we believe that he is indispensable for confronting Al Qaeda?

This rule applies equally to the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. There is something wrong when we are chasing them — two men who live in biking distance from one another — begging, cajoling and pressuring them to come to a peace negotiation that should ostensibly serve their interests as much as our own.

Not to get Clintonian on you, but this all depends on what "it" means. If by "it" we mean democracy in Afghanistan or a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestine question, then yes, our partners need to want "it" more. But if the "it" in question is democracy in Afghanistan or a peaceful solution to Israel-Palestine in order to establish greater security for the United States, then we should want "it" every bit as much as they do and in some cases more.

"Which leads to Rule No. 3: In the Middle East, what leaders tell you in private in English is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language."

To a degree this is probably true. But a lot of this depends on how much what is said in private is tied to conditions. We know you are going to say certain things to the public to save face or to present the best spin on negotiations with the United States. But the key is sticking to agreements whether we are talking about Karzai or Netanyahu. Countries are allowed to have their own policies, their own sovereignty. But the United States should not be expected to fund that sovereignty or to fight for that sovereignty. And if their sovereignty conflicts with ours, well, that's a problem.

I have been unequivocally strong in my support of Israel, much to the chagrin of many of my more left-leaning friends. But if we ask the Israelis to stop building in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem, and the Israelis imply anti-Semitism or simply spit in our faces, well, I'm inclined to delay some checks for a few weeks and to have third-rank State Department functionaries return phone calls (at their leisure) that otherwise would have gone directly to Hillary Clinton. Yes, we should worry about what they say to their publics. But they should worry even more about the things we can do once they speak ill of us.

Links Deluge

As often happens, I see a bunch of stories that interest me and want to write about them, and the next thing I know I have ten tabs open and they just sit there because it all seems too much. So it's time to clear out some of those tabs:

Jane Mayer's absolute hammering of the insufferable Mark Thiessen's new book is a thing to behold. The review is all the more damning because The New Yorker tends not to traffic in withering reviews.

A couple of weeks back the New York Times Book Review had an essay on the venerable presidential election campaign book, which seems to have made a comeback just a few years after having been left for dead. I may as well use this time to point you all to the University Press of Kansas' fantastic new series on presidential elections. There are a dozen or so books already out. I have used the ones on the 1980 and 1912 campaigns in classes with a great deal of success. This is one of the rare series (including the one that Freedom's Main Line is in) for which I plan to own every single book, and I hope they eventually cover every presidential election in US history.

Recent events (and the tone of some political discussion) should remind us of the long strand of anti-government (generally) right-wing violence that too many people conveniently elide in discussions about terrorism.

Ezra Klein reminds us that the recent health care legislation is not especially left-wing and uses that to pivot to the point that the current Republican stance has been politically driven, not policy driven. The Republicans have decided that being the party of no is their path back to power. I suppose we'll see if that works. It might be the path to power. It is definitely the path of irresponsible governance.

The Last Bastion

At The Bygone Bureau Josh Fischel has a great feature on the only high school ski jumping league. This story is particularly close to my heart because I competed in this league back when I was on my high school ski team. My high school has one of the jumps from the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics and we often hosted the state meet, though insurance issues have kept NHS from fielding a ski jumping team for quite some time. As for my own ski jumping career? I was decent enough for a guy picking up the sport as a teenager. A guy a few years ahead of me was a multiple-time Olympic ski jumper and by the time he was in his early teens he could no longer use our jump because he would have out-jumped the incline and thus killed himself. Oh -- and there were only two "agony of defeat moments" that I saw. One came when a friend and teammate wiped out on the ramp in Plymouth, which was humiliating for him and so hilarious to us. The other one came when a jumper from Concord High crossed his tips in the air and we all thought we'd just seen someone die. he walked away with a concussion and broken nose.

Me on Health Care (Self Indulgence Alert!)

I was interviewed by one of the local stations on health care yesterday. You can access both the video and the online writeup here.

I was a bit nervous about how I would come across (I look terrible -- much worse than I actually do, too much close-up) because I try to play the ideological aspects pretty close to the vest when I am interviewed. In those situations my job is to be analytical and descriptive. It's not my job to ride some political hobby horse. But in the interview yesterday (you have to understand if you have not done these sorts of things before, they film a good deal of footage and then truncate it down to less than a minute of separate soundbites) they really could have made me look like a flaming liberal. They did leave out my best line, though, which was "Republicans had begun asserting that health care would be Obama's Waterloo only to find themselves on their own private Elba."

So how do I feel about the health care? (You won't gather it from the interview, which was almost wholly about Constitutional issues, and of course any answers with any depth are on the proverbial cutting room floor.) It is landmark legislation, the most important since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Joe Biden hit it just right: It's a Big Fucking Deal.

This is, of course, all theory now. We'll see what it looks like when it is implemented. But I think the passage of the act completely changes the trajectory, at least in much of the public mind, of the Obama administration, as well it should. I think that it finally accomplishes the biggest frustrated liberal goal of the last sixty or so years. And if anything, I wish it did more by incorporating a real public option.

The politics got really ugly. Obama did everything he could to reach out to a GOP that has decided that being the "Party of No" is a winning gambit. Politically it may well be. But from a governing and policy vantage point it is irresponsible. Some have tried to diminish the accomplishment by asserting that some Democratic defectors and no Republican votes somehow makes the law invalid, which reveals a silly misunderstanding of the benefits of holding a substantial majority, not to mention providing remarkable insight into how Republicans view important issues solely through the prism of partisanship.

Another popular argument is that Democrats will lose seats in the fall elections because of health care. The Democrats were going to lose lots of seats anyway. That's what happens during midterm elections. I would argue that the Democrats would have lost more seats had they not passed health care and that passing the law is a net plus. Now Republicans will have to go out on the stump on a platform of repealing something that is concrete and no longer theoretical.

And of course right-wing racism, sexism, homophobia and invocations of Stalin and Hitler continue unabated.

Gipperwatch

RoJo, of Armitage Shanks and (long dormant) Amiable Dunce fame has a new blog, Gipperwatch. As the name implies, the newly doctorized RoJo's fabulously entertaining and insightful blog (he describes himself as "Professional Gipperwatcher") is committed to all things Ronald Reagan.

Defying Parody

I love the headline of this Matthew Yglesias post, drawn from this Ben Demiero Media Matters Post:

"Glenn Beck Denounces Civil Rights Activist John Lewis For Comparing Himself to Civil Rights Activist John Lewis"

Given my profound admiration for John Lewis, my sincere hope is that Glenn Beck's fifteen minutes of fame for being the Mayor of Crazytown are nearly up.

Remembering Alex Chilton

While a huge bummer, the death of Big Star and Box Tops singer/songwriter/guitarist, producer, and postpunk icon Alex Chilton this past week served to remind us what a vital artist he was. It also had the added effect of bringing my favorite group of all time some much-deserved attention. One of the Replacements great songs, "Alex Chilton," is devoted to their hero. Paul Westerberg, the Mats' lead singer and songwriter, wrote a short piece on his "mentor" Chilton in today's New York Times and last week Carrie Brownstein of another of my favorite bands, the late and lamented Sleater Kinney, remembered Chilton (and the Replacements) at NPR.

Williams National Championship Game Liveblog

I'll be liveblogging the Williams v. Wisconsin-Stevens Point DIII men's championship game over at Ephblog. The game starts at 1:00 eastern time, noon from where I'm sitting.

Alma Mater Hoops Update

Good weekend so far for the alma mater men's hoop teams.

Yesterday Ohio smacked Georgetown around as if their seeds were reversed, running away with a 97-83 victory. Georgetown only managed to come as close as 7 at about the five-minute mark of the second, but OU responded with a three and controlled the game the whole time. I don't want to count chickens, but there is a better-than-outside chance that OU could end up facing Ohio State, which might well qualify as the biggest sporting event in OU history. The Bobcats beat Kentucky in the tournament in 1964, but given that Ohio State is the big in-state bully, and given how much bigger the NCAA's are now, a Sweet Sixteen matchup with the Buckeyes would surpass anything I know about in Athens.

Closer to my heart, Williams defeated Guilford today in the DIII national semis 97-88 in a game that was a nailbiter until the end. Williams was actually down eight at the half but shot the lights out in the second half. Williams won the national championship in 2003 and has gone to one other championship game. The Ephs will face the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point tomorrow.

Remaking Memory or Getting it Right

At the Michigan War Studies Review Tom Bruscino has a great article, "Remaking Memory or Getting It Right? Saving Private Ryan and the World War II Generation." I am teaching a US history through film class for our Maymester this year that will cover the US since 1945 but I may well start with Saving Private Ryan (and Tom's essay) before moving on to The Best Years of Our Lives (one of my favorite movies of all time) and the twin pillars of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement that so defined American life in the generation and more after World War II.

I suspect that Tom likes Saving Private Ryan more than I do, but I think he does a really good job of placing the movie within the larger filmography of which it is a part and in putting forward a useful argument about the ways in which memory and history interact and how we think of World War II as a result.

Rahabilitating Grant

I hope you've all seen Sean Wilentz's New York Times op-ed piece in which he debunks the myth that Ulysses S. Grant was a bad president. A representative paragraph:

In reality, what fueled the personal defamation of Grant was contempt for his Reconstruction policies, which supposedly sacrificed a prostrate South, as one critic put it, “on the altar of Radicalism.” That he accomplished as much for freed slaves as he did within the constitutional limits of the presidency was remarkable. Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Revisiting the Greatest Idea Ever

As long as I am discussing the NCAA tournament, I may as well throw out one of the ideas that I have long put forward. I may as well pull it out again as I watch the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff defeat Winthrop in this year's "play-in game" to continue their improbable run.

Every year it seems the same debate plays out when addressing the bubble teams and the field of 65. It is a field of 65 because in its infinite wisdom the NCAA decided to make the two weakest teams go to Dayton and hold that "play-in game." But rather than subject these teams to that insult, why not take the last four at-large slots and have four play-in games, one for each region, pitting the last four teams from major conferences against the last four teams from mid-majors. It would make for a hell of a Tuesday, would help settle the mid-majors versus majors debate, and would allow every conference tournament winner a guaranteed slot. Reserve the 13 slot for the winners of these games, as customarily the 13 seeds are among the last into the field.

You're welcome.

Alma Mater Hoops Watch

We are about to embark on one of the great weekends in all of sports with the tipoff of the NCAA tournament. Each year my loyalties fluctuate. Unlike in professional sports, where my loyalties are firmly based in Boston, my college sports loyalties fluctuate. I grew up in a state without any real Division I presence in football or basketball (though UNH hockey is a perennial contender, albeit one that has yet to scale the top of the NCAA mountain). By default I have always been a Boston College fan as a result.

Going to college did not make a lot of difference on this front. I bleed purple and gold for Williams athletics, but Williams is a Division III athletic program, and while we have the greatest athletic program in all of DIII, it is simply not the same as the spectacle of major-level DI sports. I pursued my MA work at UNC-Charlotte (which now goes simply by "Charlotte" for athletic branding purposes). Charlotte has a respectable basketball program, once made a Final Four, and had a run in the period from the mid 90s to the middle of the decade just past when an NCAA run was the norm. Nonetheless, Charlotte straddles that line between major and midmajor-level program. For my PhD I attended Ohio University in the Mid-America Conference, for which the term "mid-major" was pretty much coined.

Otherwise my loyalties come and go. I have been a fellow at both Virginia and South Carolina, so I have tried with middling levels of success to appropriate those schools. I teach in the UT system and my paycheck (and tenure decision) come from Austin, so I gravitate toward the Horns. Duke was the most prominent and persistent college to recruit me for track out of high school, so I am not only not a Duke hater, I actually like to see them do well. Despite the appeal of being a free agent, it's a lousy way to go through life as a college fan, and I have always said that if I were to get a job at a college with big-time sports I would engage in full immersion and would write a book called "Becoming a Fan" based on that first year of overcompensation.

In any case, as usual, my alma maters are experiencing various levels of involvement with the Madness of March. Williams is ranked second in the country and has made the DIII Final Four, which is played every year in Salem. Williams has been there before, having won once, and has a good shot again this year. The Ephs will take on Guilford College on Friday for the right to play for the national championship. Guilford was the alma mater of one of my (late) college track coaches and is a Quaker school in North Carolina which will come into the national semifinal with a 30-2 record (Williams is 29-1) and that made the national semis last year as well.

Ohio University made an improbable run through the MAC tournament, its only shot at going to the Big Dance. Their prize? A trip to Providence (freakin' sweet!) and a meeting with historical powerhouse and #3 seed Georgetown. OU took a really good Florida team to the wire a few years back, though, and while far from a national power, OU has been to a dozen NCAA tournaments and will hopefully give the Hoyas a game. I'll proudly wear my OU green and am looking forward to the game on Thursday.

The news is not so good in Charlotte. The university inexplicably (to my mind) fired Bobby Lutz, the winningest coach in program history. In a dozen seasons Lutz compiled a 218-158 record. The team had its worst record in a long time last season, but was in a position for an NCAA berth this year until a collapse toward the end of the year and in the first game of the A-10 tournament scuttled any hope to make the field of 65. I have no idea what AD Judy Rose, the university administration, and the trustees want from the basketball program, but if the next dozen years look anything like the dozen just passed, it seems to me that it will be a rousing success and Lutz should have categroically been part of the program going forward. Lutz has been at least arguably the best coach in the history of the program, is a Charlotte alum, is one of the truly good guys in the profession and the community, and had weathered the toughest storm he was likely to face after last season. He had some of his best recruits on campus and had in the past turned down opportunities to move up in order to remain at his alma mater. I will continue to root for Charlotte to do well, but this is a lousy, knee-jerk decision no matter what rationalization comes from the athletic department.

In the meantime: Go Bobcats! And, above all, Go Ephs!!!

Coupe du Monde (Self Indulgence Alert!!!)

What do the following four World Cup games have in common?

Serbia v. Ghana, 13 June, Pretoria

Slovenia v. USA, 18 June, Johannesburg

Nigeria v. Tolerable Korea, 22 June, Durban

Commie Korea v. Ivory Coast, 25 June, Nelspruit

Give up?

Dcat's gonna be at all four of 'em. Laduma!!!!!!!

Nomahhhhh!!!

I don't want to get all Tommy-From-Quincy on everybody, but Nomar Garciaparra's retirement as a Red Sox brought about equal parts wistfulness and happiness when I saw the news. In the years since he left the Sox Nomar dealt with a spate of injuries. He was one of those guys whose career went downhill fast, with one injury leading to another. But in his first few years in the league Nomar was a Hall of Fame quality player, ARod's equal and Jeter's superior in what was the high-water mark for the shortstop position. The best analogy for Nomar's career in my mind is Fred Lynn, another preternaturally talented Californian whose potential was crushed due to injuries and whose departure from the Sox was on less-than-amicable terms. Nomar also served as something of a bridge between my youthful fandom and adulthood, and so the march to middle age continues unabated.

Hungover From Summer

I've now seen more than half of the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture. And two of the movies I have not seen I know in my bones suck. (Avatar and The Blind Side: Hello!) There were not five movies in 2009 that were better than The Hangover or (500) Days of Summer. In fact, I would make the case for those as two of the best movies of 2009, though Up remains my favorite from 2009.

Let's Don't Forget Bill Russell

I'm tired of hearing increasing discussions about whether Kobe has matched Michael for the mythical "best player ever" title. I have an answer to that debate:

Bill Russell.

I win. Mine beats yours. Eleven championships. One as a coach-player. (How's Micheal's career in management worked?)

Oh, and in terms of social significance? This becomes a laughable discussion. Plus, I'd take Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or LeBron James over Kobe in any case.

Pavement Front(wards) and Center

The Pavement reunion: Greatest News Ever? Greatest news ever.

Salt Lake City Bound

Am off to Salt Lake City tomorrow for a boys' ski weekend. I have not gone skiing in ages, so here's to not breaking myself. Utah is one of the very few states I've never been to, so I'm happy to break that seal, Mormon-style.

Justice Obama?

Would Barack Obama make a fine Supreme Court justice some day? Absolutely. And he is young enough that following in the footsteps of Williams Howard Taft might happen. But it is just silly to propose, (even as just a thought exercise) as Jeffrey Rosen does here, that Obama should appoint himself to the court.

Northern Ireland's Peace

Well, this is alarming news, especially as there are signs that it may not be a one-off, isolated incident. I began talking about Northern Ireland in my Global Terrorism class today (I always start off with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" from Rattle & Hum in order to have them hear Bono's awesome speech that is all the more powerful because it came on the day of the Enniskillen Bombing in November 1987) and had to try to convey to my students that the Troubles once seemed every bit as intractable as the Israel-Palestine question. The peace has held in Northern Ireland for more than a decade now (and really ought to be seen as the signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Clinton administration) and so presumably is strong enough to weather the occasional flareup. But if the IRA is determined to return to the way of the gun the way of the gun will prevail.

Just Asking

Is it unreasonable of me to expect my coffee to be full when I spend the bulk of a five-dollar bill on it? Because when I ask the barista to top me off they look at me like I've offended them.

Ways Texas Might Ruin America

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Charles Pierce's Blog

While I'm trying to catch up with life after my trip to eastern Pennsylvania (My rule of thumb is that it takes two days for every day I am away to get back to where I was when I left) you should check out Charles Pierce's sports blog at The Boston Globe.

Off to Penn's Woods (Self Indulgence Alert)

I'll be away for the next three days for a trip to southeastern Pennsylvania. Opportunities are afoot.

30 Books in 30 Days

At the National Book Critics Circle's Blog Critical Mass members of the NBCC Board are featuring "30 Books in 30 Days" for the month leading up to the announcement of the NBCC Book Award winners. Each day a new finalist for this year's awards will get the spotlight.

Um, Congratulations?

The far-right-wing British National Party has decided to abandon its whites-only policy, allowing black and Asian members into the party, albeit largely to skirt anti-discrimination laws. (Assaulting journalists? Apparently still ok.) Of course this raises the question: What black or Asian person in their right mind would consider joining the BNP?

Burning Scholarship

When I saw this story, about a Columbia University historian who lost a decade's worth of research to student radicals in the 1968 uprisings at that campus I experienced pangs of what can only be called sympathetic pain. For all of the legitimacy of protest in the 1960s, some of the worst and most indulgent excesses of the late years of that decade seriously undermined the legitimate claims.

Commemorating Black History

Scottsboro, Alabama has opened a museum to document the case that made the town infamous. In the words of Garry Morgan, a white man who helped establish The Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center, "We want to end the negative stereotype of Scottsboro, to let the world know we've moved into the 21st century."

Meanwhile today in Louisiana the Eddie G. Robinson Museum will open, honoring not only the legendary Grambling football coach, but also taking an honest look at segregation.

A Tragedy, Not a Case Study

Can't we stipulate that cases such as this one provide especially bad contexts for arguments about either gun control or the tenure system in American universities? Discussing an outlier as if it were a mean ends up just warping the conversation. Let's just recognize the story for what it is: A terrible tragedy perpetrated by a disturbed person.

Mandela's Long Walk

Over at the FPA Africa Blog I commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, one of the great moments of the 20th century.

Weather is not Climate

People who assert that a current snowstorm refutes long-range climate trends are complete fucking morons. Weather and climate are not the same thing.

Wolfe TKO's Sowell

At TNR's The Book Alan Wolfe has a glorious takedown of Thomas Sowell's new screed, Intellectuals and Society. Here is the opening paragraph:

Let’s get my judgment of Thomas Sowell’s new book out of the way first. There is not a single interesting idea in its more than three-hundred pages. Purporting to deal with the role that intellectuals play in society, it offers no discussion of literature, music, and the arts. While containing copious references to Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, its index lacks references to Lionel Trilling, Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Daniel Bell, Jürgen Habermas, Raymond Aron, Mary McCarthy, Michael Walzer, Amartya Sen, and countless others known to have put an interesting idea or two into circulation. It recycles ancient clichés about the academic world and never questions its author’s conviction that those who share his right-wing views are always right. Jonah Goldberg calls it “an instant classic.” Case closed.

The rest does not disappoint.

I love those who have made their way in American intellectual life who nonetheless make a career out of cracking wise about intellectuals (an issue that Wolfe mines to great effect). And I especially love those who have made their way in intellectual life cracking wise about academics. Very cute. In a self-parodic sort of way.

Update: Russell Jacoby is no kinder to Sowell's quite clearly bad book over at The Chronicle Review.

Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

Yesterday I highlighted Jeff Herf's review of Robert Wistrich's book A Lethal Obsession. Well, Jeff is having a big few weeks. On January 31 he was interviewed by Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm about his most recent book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World.

WH: Some Critics 'Serving the Goals of al Qaeda'* - Political Punch

WH: Some Critics 'Serving the Goals of al Qaeda'* - Political Punch

Going to the Dump

I got me a new laptop this weekend while in San Antonio and so need to do some serious housecleaning in the office. Thus it's time to do a links dump of all of the tabs that have accumulated on my perpetually-stretched-to-capacity Firefox window:

You would never know it from the madding crowds of tea partiers and talking heads, but this Congress has been a whole lot more productive than you think.

For all of the insults going Obama's (and Eric Holder's) way for allegedly radically changing how we deal with accused terrorists, it turns out that this administration has pretty clearly followed many of the precedents of its predecessor. So, yeah -- Obama's critics are largely uninformed. Shocking, I know. If anyone has a right to be angry it would be Obama's critics from the left, but they tend to wallow in their own blissful ignorance. All of this simply serves as a reminder that today's conservatives would reject much of what Ronald Reagan represented in reality (as opposed to in their purist caricature of him) but then you knew that already.

At TNR William Galston takes on some of the more sophisticated conservative critiques of Obama (they are out there, believe it or not). In so doing he mounts a nice defense of liberalism, something that should have never needed a defense.

Finally, at TNR's The Book, dcat friend and former mentor Jeffrey Herf reviews Robert Wistrich's A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad.

President of the Other America

I am pleased to report the publication of regular reader and commenter Ed Schmitt's new book, President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty. The University of Massachusetts Press, which has been putting out some really good books of late, just released it. By your copy and grab another for a friend.

Questioning the Book Review

I am often perplexed by some of the decisions of The New York Times Book Review. And I will gladly admit that some of my vexations stem from what probably qualifies as jealousy: Why is that person writing a review and not me? Why is that book being reviewed and not mine?

But take my own solipsism out of it and the questions are fundamentally the same. Why is that person writing a review of X and not (Persons Y, Z, A, B, D) who are clearly more qualified to do so and at least one of whom would surely respond to en email from the Times? Why is this book being reviewed at length and not all of these books that have come out lately?

Two examples speak volumes from Sunday's Book Review:

Why does Kaiama Glover get to review Chinua Achebe's new book, The Education of a British-Protected Child? Glover is an assistant professor of French at Barnard, and from what I can tell, most of her work has been on Haiti. Chinua Achebe is from Nigeria, which was not even a Francophone colony. When Nigerians looked to the metropole (and looked to pull away from it), they looked to London, as the title to the new book of Achebe's essays makes clear. Look, I do not resent Glover taking the assignment. She'd be a fool not to and I would accept an assignment to review an astronomy textbook to get to write about books for the Times. But are there really no, say, tenured professors of African literature out there? Are there no tenured professors of Anglophone literature who would have fit the bill?

Perhaps more vexing, why on earth does Catherine Millet's new book, Jealousy, get two full pages in the Sunday Book Review when it is a quite clear that it is not a very good book. Millet is the author of a controversial memoir about her sexual profligacy. Jealousy is a memoir about her jealousy over her kinda-sorta significant other's dalliances with a handful of other women during a time period when Millet admits to sleeping with hundreds of other men herself. The subject matter, if self indulgent, is not the problem. The problem comes in the fact that the reviewer, Toni Bentley is pretty withering. Bentley does a great job. It is a fun review to read as a result. And again -- given two full pages in a publication of that status I'd happily review the worst crap imaginable and would have a hell of a time doing it. But there are hundreds of authors of good books who would kill for that real estate for their own much better books.

I've always thought that reviews of bad books, except for books that are clearly important (and Millet's does not count, sorry), should go into a sort of dustbin in which the reviews are truncated to the length of those included in the "Fiction/Nonfiction/Poetry Chronicle" that the Book Review runs near weekly, opening up space for books worth reading, and thus worth reading about. In the meantime, editors -- email me. The answer is yes.

Starbury in China

Over at Deadspin Anthony Tao has a great, and lengthy, piece on Stephon Marbury's debut in the Chinese Basketball Association, "The Lone Wolf Goes to China."

The Greensboro 4 at 50

Monday marked the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Greensboro sit-ins. The actions of those four students -- Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond and Joe McNeil -- set in motion a new wave of civil rights activism.

Indeed, when I talk about the Civil Rights Movement I often try to hold two wholly contradictory ideas in my head at once, knowing they cannot both possibly be true. On the one hand, I embrace the idea of the Long Civil Rights Movement. In Freedom's Main Line I trace the story of the fight to desegregate interstate transportation back in considerable depth to the 1940s and recognize movements well before that decade (Plessy v. Ferguson, after all, involved transportation and not education.) In one of my current book projects I am looking at bus boycotts in the US and South Africa in the period between about 1940 and 1960.

On the other hand, there are times when I think that what began with the sit-ins really represents a new stage in civil rights, and that we might be as well served thinking of the period from February 1960 as almost sui generis in its new approach to direct-action protest. In that view, the Long Civil Rights Movement still holds, but that we then begin to think of the movement in terms of phases. This might help both to revive looking at Brown v. Board as a starting point (something that has been passe with the Long Civil Rights Movement's recent sway) for a phase of the movement while still recognizing that Brown really was not the start or beginning of anything when it comes to the movement as a whole.

I think the emphasis on the 1940s in particular has been essential. But I do not think we should let that swallow up the significant shift that the Greensboro 4 helped usher in and that the Freedom Rides helped connect. In the next few years prepare for a lot of 50th anniversary celebrations and commemorations and reflections of the lightning storm of events of the period from 1960 to 1965 or so.

Something Awesome Found Surfing the Web During a Break in an All-Night Writing Binge

This is awesome. Hat tip.

Honey, Can You Take Out the Trash?

There are thousands of writers and intellectuals who would kill to have just one of their opinion pieces appear in The New York Times. And they would confess to another crime they did not commit to have that piece appear in the Sunday "Week in Review" section. Count me in as one of those people.

Which is why it is so incredibly dispiriting to read a piece like this one, by Sandra Tsing Loh, in last week's Sunday Times. The purpose of the column, from what I can tell, is to brag that she makes more than the man in her life; to allow her to concoct an idealized and self-indulgent picture of a romanticized 1950s scene domestic bliss; and in ways that are not clear to tie it all into the difficulties of modern life. This is a column we've all read ten thousand times before. Surely the Times received a hundred potential contributions this week that the editors did not even deign to recognize with a response that were more substantial and more coherent than this flatulent garbage.

Howard Zinn, Not a Good Historian, RIP

Perhaps now is not the time. And so I'll gladly time stamp this for any future date that readers find more appropriate. But with Howard Zinn's passing this week I think we need to keep one salient fact in mind: He just was not a very good historian.

Zinn was an incredibly popular historian whose advocates somehow pretended had been overlooked despite the fact that he wrote one of the all-time best-selling works of history in A People's History of the United States. But popular is not the same as good. Bad books sell all the time while good books languish on shelves and in Amazon's warehouse. This is especially the case with works of history, where the best-selling book on a subject has literally nothing to do with its quality as a work of history.

A People's History is not only not very good, it is quite bad (this 2004 takedown by Michael Kazin in Dissent is a pretty damning indictment). It is thesis-driven history that is selective with its evidence and manages to be condescending and to deny agency to the very people it purports to celebrate (essentially: You've all been duped by corporate interests and the elites). It is cartoonish in its shallowness and lack of complexity.

Zinn was a polemicist. He could be a remarkably good reporter. (His insider's account of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is still useful for historians even if it is not in any meaningful way a work of history.) And he wrote well. But as a historian he fell far short. And he could be an incredibly shoddy thinker. His simplistic leftism (and by any measure I am what would have been called in another time "a man of the left") substituted ideology for historiography and agitprop for scholarship.

Buyer's Disappointment

We have all heard of buyer's remorse. Hell, we've all experienced it. You walk from the store, and the post-purchase euphoria fades quickly and you ask yourself: Did I really need this? Or: Should I have spent that much on this?

But there is something worse. Buyer's disappointment. We all know it. The movie you really looked forward to seeing that sucks. The book everyone is raving about that you cannot get into. The cd that you read about that fails to match the reviews.

We all live with buyer's remorse because it's our own damned fault. But buyer's disappointment? Well, that's someone else's fault. The director, the author, the musician: They disappointed you. Worse, they fooled you, or the hype machine fooled you.

I think I might be a victim of the hype machine. A while back I bought an ep by a South African quarter whose buzz was enormous. Blk Jks are supposed to be everything I like about music: A little bit indie, a little bit rock, a little jazzy. They play to my work by being South African, and to my curiosity by transcending the provincial South African music scene (hell, it seems they surpassed the South African music scene -- I had never seen or even heard of them until the past fall, well after my last trip to South Africa.

So I spent the ten bucks on their ep, Mystery. The ep aspect may be part of the problem. Four songs is not enough to get a feel for a band, especially one with eclectic influences. And to be fair, I did not know what to expect. Would I hear standard South African rock (which more often than not is pretty derivative)? Would there be Kwaito influences? Hip hop? Mbaqanga? I had no idea.

I still am not sure exactly how to describe Blk Jks. But if I had to come up with a sonic parallel, I would say that they sound an awful lot like TV on the Radio, a much hyped band that I like, but whose sonic experimentation can go awry and veer toward the atonal. But it did not grab me, and I continue to feel disappointed, if not in them (they promised me nothing, really) then in myself for not quite feeling gripped, which is always how one wants to feel when taking in new music (or for that matter books or movies).

But I'm going to give Blk Jks another chance. They have a full album that came out last fall, After Robots, and I'm going to hope that a full disc of songs will capture me in a way that Mystery's small handful did not. So, Blk Jks, maybe it was not you, it was me. But if After Robots disappoints? Then I think maybe it will have been you.

Premature Celebration

Ed Kilgore tells those of you anticipating Republican dominance in November's midterm elections to slo yo roll. It's good advice. For one thing, November is a lifetime away in American politics. For another, here is a guess: Republicans clean up if unemployment is near double digits. It is a pretty even race if unemployment drops near 5 or 6%. The calculus really is just about that simple.

Reagan and Modern Conservatism (With Bonus Self Indulgence!)

At TNR William Galston asks a quite reasonable question: what sort of reception would Ronald Reagan's actual policies and actual ideas receive in today's conservative movement? Galston's post gives me the opportunity to remind you of my History News Service op-ed from a couple of months, back, which is finally posted on their website even though it went out to newspapers and websites back in November. I asked many of the same sorts of questions in putting together the piece.

NBCC Book Award Finalists

The National Book Critics Circle (of which I am a member) has announced its book award finalists for 2009. Very few of the books that I nominated managed to make the cut. I'm ok with that in most fields, such as poetry (where I did nominate Louise Gluck) and even in fiction (I simply cannot believe, however, that any of those five books was as good as, never mind better than, Colum McCann's Let the Brave World Spin). But I have a real hard time with some of the nonfiction selections, and particularly with some of the works of history that were ignored over those that were chosen. (Springing to mind immediately is Gordon Woods' Empire of Liberty, or Pat Sullivan's book on the NAACP, or Robert Norrell's Up From History -- and this is without even looking at my shelves and reminding myself of some of the great new books I have read this year.)

Down Goes WaPo!

The New Republic has a lengthy and withering profile on the decline of The Washington Post. Donald Graham, chairman of the board of The Washington Post Company responded with a letter so tepid and so picayune that it only serves to make the TNR profile all the more damning.

A Rule

If you are going to write a review about three books on basketball, as Andrew Ervin did for yesterday's Washington Post, you simply cannot write a sentence such as this one about a book on Ivy League basketball:

Understandably, perhaps, it's not every season that an Ivy League team participates in the hysteria surrounding the annual March Madness tournament, yet the teams share a long and exciting history of extremely competitive basketball.

. . . and then complain about "the terrible writing in The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy."

Read the excerpted sentence. I have no idea what it means. For one thing, what is its subject? And since the regular season Ivy League champion receives an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament every year, the sentence seems factually wrong if it says what I think it is trying to say. I know it's sort of unfair to cherry pick one sentence from a review like this. It's a bit like criticizing someone for grammar or a spelling error or a typo in a blog comment. But when you lead off your discussion of a book by saying it is terribly written, you really cannot afford a shit-storm of a sentence like that in your 800 words.

The Oxford American Loves Books

The Oxford American ("The Southern Magazine of Good Writing") is one of my favorite magazines. Its burgeoning online component is fast coming to match its print content. For example, check out "Books We Love" in which "editors gush about some recent books that knocked our respective socks off."

I can vouch for Colum McCann's Let The Great World Spin. I nominated it for the fiction category for this year's National Book Critics Circle Awards. Despite being set in 1974 it is in many ways our greatest 9/11 novel.

Freedom Riders Preview (Self Indulgence Alert)

Yeah, I'd say this looks pretty awesome:

Given my small part in the documentary, I cannot wait to see the whole thing. If you are so inclined, you can always get a head start by reading this . . .

Me on TV Re: Terrorism (Self Indulgence Alert)

On a couple of occasions in the last few weeks I have been featured in stories on terrorism at our local ABC affiliate. You can see the first of these stories (with both online text and the videos) here (in a story on terrorists using technology such as Facebook for recruiting). I am still waiting for the second, on my Global Terrorism class this semester, to go online. .

Aguila Bait

At TNR's The Book Tom Bissell reviews Elizabeth Fraterrigo's Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America. The opening graph:

The historian Elizabeth Fraterrigo asks us to accept a somewhat unlikely premise, which is this: A titty magazine that has been culturally irrelevant since the late 1970s was at the forefront of many of this nation’s most important social upheavals and reconfigurations. It is to her book’s credit—and, it must be said, to Playboy’s—that one closes her book largely convinced that she is right.

Hopefully this guy will weigh in, as he knows of which he speaks on this particular cultural question.

FML Review (Self Indulgence Alert!)

They like me! They really like me!

FPA Africa Year in Review (Self Indulgence Alert)

Over at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog I have published my (very long) annual Year in Review post. It includes my predictions for 2010 (and an assessment of my predictions for 2009).

TNR's The Book

In an age of declining print media when newspapers are shuttering their book pages and coverage of books generally seems to be less of a priority than ever we should always welcome any attempt to give serious writing about books a platform. The Book: An Online Review at The New Republic represents an attempt by TNR to expand on an area in which it has always been widely respected. Here is Isaac Chotiner's introduction to this exciting new effort.

At the Movies: An Etiquette Primer

When did it become acceptable to talk during a movie in the theater? Today Mrs. Dcat and I went to see Sherlock Holmes, which we had both really wanted to see since its release but had not managed to fit into the schedule. She loathes going to crowded movie theaters and she absolutely hates the teen crowd, especially the one that flocks to the theater at the local mall. So we figured: It's a Thursday, 1:15 in the afternoon, school has started. We would have preferred the other multi-plex in town, but Sherlock Holmes is only playing at the mall. Still, we thought we were safe, especially when there were no more than thirty people seated when the lights went down and the previews came on.

We thought wrong. From almost the beginning a couple at the end of our row was yammering on. They were not kids. And they were not old people. I'd guess 50-something. I am no shrinking violet, so I asked them, loudly enough to encourage a public shaming from what I hoped would be an equally exercised vox populi, to "Stop Talking, Please!" They actually glared across the empty seats to me. And they talked for the remainder of the movie. Constantly. I said nothing else, not wanting to be a hypocrite and wanting to maintain the moral high ground, but I fumed for the next two hours or so. And they were not alone. Two guys, maybe a bit older than I am, on more than one occasion shared their comments with us all from nearly directly behind our heads.

Finally, Mrs. Dcat, who is not as aggressive as I am, finally had it. She went and fetched security. The security guard sat in the back. The two guys behind us, in his row (we sat second from back) did not realize he was there and started talking loudly. They got tossed. But that other couple somehow kept quiet for the two minutes the guard was there, and as soon as he left continued their conversation up into the closing credits. I literally had to wait until they left, because, and this is no hyperbole, there would have been physical violence. It was probably the most self-control I have ever shown in my life. I hate myself for it. These cretins talk throughout the whole movie, and if I punch the guy's lights out, I'd be the one to go to jail. This is an unjust world.

When did this behavior become commonplace? (And it is soul-crushingly common.) It ruined the movie for us and pretty much ensured that we do not go to the movies in the theater for a long, long time. Fortunately we have a great drive-in that does first-run double features for $5 a person, so we'll still get to see movies as they come out, but we will still miss many that we want to see and will be restricted to the time and circumstance that the format demands. No more matinees for us. No indie films, or documentaries, or short-run films that cannot be paired with fairly mainstream fare. Thank God for Netflix, I guess.

[I am exempting movies geared toward the kiddie crowd. Different situation, different rules, different expectations.]

What follows is the sort of advice that should be so obvious that no one has to say it. Or so I would have thought.: If you are one of those people who thinks it is ok occasionally to chat, or to compare notes, or to talk to the screen, or to share your brilliant witticism with us, or to ignore the "turn off your cell phones" rule, it is not. It is not ok. You are a fucking asshole.

Walk The Plank to Chait

Happy New Year. I hope 2010 is your best year yet.

Although I've read it less closely and linked it even less frequently in the last year or so, I was bummed out to see that The New Republic's Blog "The Plank" is closing its doors. The good thing is that Jonathan Chait, one of TNR's best and most astute writers, is starting his own blog, though it seems that it may just be a place for him to aggregate his magazine writing.

Disunity in South Africa (Self Indulgence Edition)

The Foreign Policy Association recently published my latest opinion piece, "Disunity in South Africa." It explores one of my evergreen topics, the possibility that the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) will break away from the African National Congress' (ANC) Tripartite Alliance.

[Cross-posted at the Foreign Policy Association's Africa Blog.]

In the Changer: New(ish, Mostly) Stuff Edition

It has been quite a while since I imposed my musical tastes on you for one of my "in the changer" posts. The title itself is anachronistic in many ways. Yes, I still buy cd's, though my music listening is becoming increasingly digital even if I have not been able to make the transition to actually buying my music digitally. I like the idea of having hard copies of music, and someday when my iTunes crashes and my iPod dies or it all mysteriously gets erased I'll be thankful for being the guy who still has my music in some tangible configuration.

This is all stuff that I've listened to a lot in the second half or so of 2009. I imagine this will be a multi-post edition. (And just a reminder: for those of you wondering why the grades end up being so high, these are filtered reviews of music I've been listening to. When people start sending me music indiscriminantly to review, I'll be able to bear fangs. Until then, this is generally stuff I liked over the last few months, even if all of it did not come out this year). Without further ado, here is the first batch:

Amadou & Mariam -- Welcome to Mali: This is my favorite West African music produced by a blind married couple since at least their last album. And it should be yours too. What the hell is it with Mali? Per capita that vast but sparsely populated West African country must produce more great music per capita than any country on earth. A polyrhythmic confluence of blues and pop and jazz and highlife and rock and a melange of African styles, Welcome to Mali continues the run this duo has had over the last decade or so when they first exploded into public consciousness (they have been recording together since the mid-1970s). Use this as your introduction to them and work backward. Grade: A

Arctic Monkeys -- 'Humbug': I think it is a law that all writers who tackle the Arctic Monkeys must refer to them as "lads from Sheffield," so consider that requirement fulfilled. This is their third album and it's good. It also represents a modest but clear attempt at departure. Arctic Monkeys have done well with snide and cynical postpunk-pop songs about suburban pub life and poseurs and the various dipshits one runs across in daily life, especially in suburban pubs. And there is still more than a hint of that here. But 'Humbug' feels a bit brooding, a bit down tempo, a bit sludgy, all of which can probably at least in part be attributed to the production of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme. And given that the lads from Sheffield are no longer really lads and they have moved their worldview from Sheffield, change was to be expected. Lead singer Alex Turner writes his own lyrics and he knows his way around a clever phrase. ("What came first, the chicken or the dickhead?" is intended to be rhetorical. I think.) The question becomes whether this will remain a very good little band or whether it will grow to the scale that they promise. 'Humbug' tells me that this is a band in the process of becoming. The question remains: What will they become? Grade: B+

Bon Iver -- For Emma, Forever Ago: I have one question for Bon Iver and Damian Rice and Cat Power and to a lesser extent Fleet Foxes and Animal Collective and their ilk (Grizzly Bear, eg.) and a whole host of other bands and artists I really do like: What the fuck's up with recording in a whisper? I'll get three minutes into a Damian Rice song before I realize: This shit isn't going to get any louder; it's not all part of a languid introduction that's going to go somewhere. So, Bon, maybe Emma left (I'm assuming she did -- why else would you devote such a mopey effort to her?) because you wouldn't fucking speak up. It's ok to be both introspective and audible. If I want to fall asleep to you or have you as background music, I know how to turn the volume knob (they still have those, right?) down. But now if I put in an AC/DC album, which I am wont to do, glass in my home will shatter when I turn it on because I had to have your damned music cranked up just to hear it at all over the dryer whirring away in the other room. So: Good songs? Check. Nifty instrumentation and interesting vocals? Yep. Folk-indie rock hybrid? Oh yes. A few glorious moments? Yessir. But given that any ambient noise whatsoever makes this album nearly unlistenable, please, pal, next time turn it up just a little? You can be bummed out. Just do it a little louder. Grade: B

Jeff Buckley -- Grace: It's hard to believe that it has been more than 15 years since Buckley's lone studio album in his lifetime came out, scoring tail for a million savvy guys who could get this onto their stereo when they got a girl back to their rooms. The story is familiar: Buckley, the insanely talented progeny of the insanely talented Tim Buckley, revealed his endless promise with this album, only to die tragically swimming in a chennel near the Mississippi, eerily reminiscent of his father's own equally mysterious passing (well, dad died of a drug overdose, but give me some narrative license here). I did not really arrive at this album until about 1999 when I had a girlfriend who was in love with it introduced me to it (thus turning the table on the savvy guys). My thoughts now are just about what my thoughts were then: This guy is insanely talented and the music is in some ways uncategorizable. But it does not quite have the songs. It has moments that are quite sublime within what are supposed to be the songs, and the sings, such as they are, are geared toward these moments of sublime talent. But the whole does not quite cohere. But then came track #6. Hellelujah. You probably know the Leonard Cohen original. The Jeff Buckley version brings tears to my eyes every time. It is one of my single favorite renderings of any kind of music ever. It is nearly perfect, and in the light of what would later transpire, heartbreaking. Grade: B+, Hallelujah: A+

Neko Case -- Middle Cyclone: Neko Case is like the super-cool, super-hot chick in your favorite bar, the place where all of the indie bands play when they come into town. Just when you muster up the courage to say something to her, the break between bands is done and she steps on stage as the lead singer of the second band, the one that comes on before the headlining act, a band whose music, but obviously not the personnel, you know. Middle Cyclone is her sixth solo album, something all the more shocking when you realize that she also is part of the glorious collective that is The New Pornographers (and in fact the quality of a New Pornographers album is directly related to the amount of Neko Case contained therein). There was a time when case could easily be slotted into the alt-country/y'alternative category, but Middle Cyclone transcends that limiting category, much as does Wilco's career trajectory after their first album. And like Wilco, Neko Case produces guitar-and-singer-driven rock and pop, in the best traditions of both rock and pop music. She has a clear, strong voice that sings clear, strong songs. But don't kid yourself -- she's going home with someone else tonight, unless she chooses to go home alone. Grade: B+

Dirty Projectors -- Bitte Orca: How you feel about this album will be directly related to how you feel about "complicated" or "experimental" music. Because Dirty Projectors is a pretty self-consciously difficult band. I am fine with complicated, or at least complex, but "experimental" oftentimes ain't my bag and so I shied away from this album, recommended to me all over the place, for much of the year. This is a band, after all, whose last full-length album recreated a Black Flag album from memory, which strikes me as a bit too meet-cute. Nonetheless, I succumbed, and while the album has not blown my mind it is one that improves on multiple listenings. I could still do without some of the atonality. And sometimes the playing around with key signatures comes across as a bit gratuitous. And in the end I suspect that a lot of people who like this album actually like people knowing they like this album more than they actually like this album. Grade: C+

At the FPA Blogs (Semi-Self Indulgence Alert)

There are a great deal of changes under way at the Foreign Policy Association Blogs. We are consolidating the largest network of global affairs-related blogs into a series of categores. My Africa Blog will now be in the category of "Africa and the Middle East" and will include Africa, Egypt (not up yet), Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and Middle East. I will be serving as both Senior Blogger and the Senior Editor for this category. I hope you'll continue to check out my Africa blog, the blogs in my category, and the network as a whole.

The newest addition to these blogs is Reza Akhlaghi, the first addition under my watch. He is our new blogger on Iran and his first post is must-read stuff. Here is my introduction of Reza at the Iran Blog.

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas, and a happy holiday season. If it's your thing, I hope that Santa Claus brings you everything that you asked for and a few things that you did not.

Taking on the Dumb Jock Stereotype (Again)

At Critical Mass, the blog for the National Book Critics Circle's Board of Directors, Deirdra McAfee has a post with which I take issue. I responded in the comments with the following:

I want to take issue with the following assertion in this post:

“A culture that idolizes physical skill (sports of all kinds) and has no use for intellectual skill (the smart or knowledgeable stigmatized as nerds), that places physical passion above all possible other passions, except perhaps that for winning, is not one that believes books are important.”

This is just plain silly. It is possible, just possible, that millions of Americans can value both sports and books. Folks like Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway and George Plimpton and John Updike and Doris Kearns Goodwin (the list could go on for pages) all managed to value (and write about) sports and yet still somehow also to care about books. The creation of false dichotomies and strawpersons in a post that would seem to celebrate the intellectual life is ironic, because it shows poor analytical skills and sloppy argumentation, the opposite of what intellectuals are supposed to value.

There are lots of problems with our culture with regard to books. But a passion for sports has nothing to do with it. Blaming jocks is commonplace amongst too many intellectuals, which does not make it any less dumb.

I want to augment this a little bit here. When I was in grad school there were lots of social divisions. One of the more pernicious ones came between jocks (which included former athletes but also simply fans of sports) and non-jocks. And of course the non-jocks possessed that air of superiority that McAfee reveals in her post. Which was somewhat problematic since almost universally the jocks were also the better graduate students in our program. But the very stereotype allowed the non-jocks to feel superior despite the fact thet their superiority was unearned and undeserved. There is something bizarre about certain circles in intellectual life that allows being anti-athlete to be not only acceptable, but to be heralded.

When I wrote that the list of intellectuals who demonstrably care about sports could go on for pages, I was not kidding. Stephen Jay Gould and Gay Talese. David Halberstam and George Will. Michael Lewis and David Foster Wallace. Stewart O'Nan and Frederick Exley. Not to mention those academics who write about sports -- Chuck Korr and Charlie Alexander and James Carroll and Amy Bass and dozens of others spring to mind. And the ranks of those who are predominantly sportswriters yet who write well enough to transcend the stereotypes of that genre warrants more than scorn -- Bill Simmons and Sally Jenkins and Bob Ryan and Bud Collins and John Feinstein and Dick Schaap and Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon and Rick Telander and John Ed Bradley and myriad others. (Unless I am misreading McAfee's website and Amazon and Worldcat, she has not ever actually published a book, unlike all of these people, with their crazy sports affinities.)

The idea that sports is the enemy of books or the intellectual life is a muddleheaded argument put forward by people who have decided they are the enemy of sports and who have elevated their prejudice to the realm of virtue. But it's not virtue. It's ignorance. And it is not to be lauded. It is to be scorned.

As a perhaps relevant aside, or at least for the sake of full disclosure, I am a member of the National Book Critics Circle. I also have written a couple of scholarly journal articles on sports, have written at least a dozen reviews of books on sports, am working on a project that may become a book on sports, and have published a book on a sports-related topic. I was one of the jocks in my graduate program, and in some circles of detractors was seen as the jock ringleader. I also care deeply for books, for book culture, and for American intellectual life. False dichotomies and strawmen are dumb. They are also deeply intellectually dishonest and indeed are anti-intellectual.

6 in 10 for 3

Bob Ryan reminds us all that the decade now concluding has been a damned fine one for Boston sports. Three championships for the Patriots, two for the Red Sox, and one for the Celtics is a good run. Not many cities have won six titles in a decade, never mind having three teams win rings in an (admittedly arbitrary) ten-year span.

Patricia Marx is an Ass

You want to know why a lot of people think the east coast (read: New York) intellectual class are effete assholes? How about these opening two sentences from Patricia Marx's brief "On and Off the Avenue" piece in The New Yorker on the arts and crafts store Michael's:

New York is rich in culture, cuisine, and commerce. The suburbs have parking spots and fast food, and they also have Michael’s, the largest arts-and-crafts supply chain in North America.

I love cities. I love the east coast. Outside of its sports teams (and fans) I love New York. I live in West Texas, decidedly not an enclave of the east coast elites. But I am associated with of those folks by background, by politics, by temperament and by preference. Patricia Marx, you are the reason why a mendacious drizzlewit like Sarah Palin can plausibly differentiate "real America" from her stereotype of a segment of the east coast. I hope you drown in a yachting accident. I hate nothing more than when my own side frags me with their idiocy.