A Wee Sojourn

I am leaving this morning for a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, where I'll be participating in the British Association of American Studies meeting. Blogging will be light to nonexistent until Tuesday. Have a great weekend and keep an eye on Saturday's election in Zimbabwe.

Spam For You, Spam For Me

Although this is a cumbersome and inefficient way to deal with a techie problem, if any of you have received emails from me that seemed really peculiar the reason is most likely because some sort of worm invaded my computer and has been sending emails to everyone in my address book. I have received more than a hundred emails showing that many of the deliveries failed, but I also know that many are getting through. I have no idea how to stop this or what the ramifications might be, so bear with me if you are one of the lucky ones whose spam firewall is not up to snuff. The irony is that the hijacker is a Chinese company (or says that it is) called "HonestestSeller." Honest(est)ly.

Obama and the Black Man's Burden

Derrick Z. Jackson of The Boston Globe addresses the dramatically overblown Obama-Wright-race issue in a generally perceptive column. From the conclusion:

Once again, America's white leaders play footsie with white intolerance while Obama was pressured to bring the nation the head of Jeremiah Wright. Once again, a black person holds the nation's bag of racial burdens. Whatever discussions Obama started across America with his speech, the fact that Huckabee and McCain offer more comfort to Obama than Clinton is evidence that at the top, the conversation is tongue-tied.

This situation will only hurt Obama among the camp of white voters looking for an excuse not to vote for Obama and for those who never would have voted for him in the first place. The former group might hurt him. The latter presumably will not.

Opening Day!

The Sox-A's season kickoff in Japan starts in just a minute or two. Perhaps you'll find this Jason Stark column on this brave new world we have entered in which the Sox are favorites and frontrunners and in which the pre-2004 mindset is a distant (unpleasant) memory. Opening Day should be a national holiday.

Play Ball!

[Hat Tip to the Thunderstick.]

The Not Out of Africa Debate Revisited

The Chronicle Review revisits the debate surrounding the work of Mary Lefkowitz whose challenges to Afrocentrism in the early 1990s became a cause celebre in academic circles. Lefkowitz contributes her own thoughts as well. These pieces are as much about academic controversies as about the case in particular, though readers interested in finding out about the debate will be given more than enough of a foundation.

The Red Sox Take Japan

As the Sox prepare to open their season against the A's in Japan Dan Shaughnessy has a lot of scattershot observations about the scene in Tokyo on the eve of the game. I'll be up and in front of the tv at 5:00 tomorrow morning to see Daisuke Matsuzaka kick off what I expect will be a sterling sophomore season.

Mocking Falwell

As a tenure-gift to himself, a friend recently published in a British horror-zine this horror-satire that is in no small part a mockery of Jerry Falwell's self-importance in building this monument. (By the way, an I just get it straight: It is not ok for Obama to be loyal to someone he has known for a long time but whose words he condemns, but it is ok for McCain to have once condemned Jerry Falwell, who makes Jeremiah Wright look like Pollyanna, but now to hold Falwell close to his bosom? How, exactly, does that work? I suppose it has something to do with those looking for an excuse to oppose the blacks also hating the gays, but the logic is just too Byzantine for me.)

The Oxford American on Sports

The Oxford American (which you should be reading) has devoted its latest issue to sports. Great writing + Sports = Yummy Goodness.

An Easter Gift You Should Buy Yourself

I hope you are all having a happy Easter. Why not buy yourself a holiday gift? I'd recommend my friend Matt Guenette's book of poetry, Sudden Anthem. The man is about to have a baby. The least you can do is buy a copy of his book to make sure the kid gets diapers and clothes!

Sox Take a Stand

While many of us partake of the secular holiday known in America as "March Madness" (look it up Brits, South Africans, and others) I thought I'd simply praise the Red Sox for taking a stand on behalf of their coaches and support staff (be sure to click on the video link at the top of the story from Bob Ryan's PTI-style show on NESN). Basically the players refused to play yesterday's exhibition game or to go to Japan without MLB following through on its promise to pay coaches and other personnel a $40,000 stipend for making the trip. The Sox since 2004 (when they voted record shares for non-players) are a far cry from the often unlikable Sox of the 1980s who notoriously shafted the little guys in their 1986 playoff shares and who were reknowned for being a "25 guys, 25 cabs" group.

(My Final Four are UCLA, Georgetown, Texas, and Carolina. Texas and Georgetown in the finals. Texas to win it all. Just a gut instinct. Now you can bet heavily against it happening. Enjoy the games.)

Obama, Wright, and Race

I have been mute on the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright imbroglio because, frankly, I was sick of it before the whole thing turned into the latest excuse for mock outrage. First, Obama's speech yesterday encapsulated everything I like and admire about the man. It was sophisticated and smart and powerful and inspiring and it will do little to dissuade those who are either looking for reasons not to support him or who, such as Republicans looking to win a general election in the fall, were never so interested in an Obama presidency in the first place.

Let's just say that I find the demand that Obama do more to separate himself from Wright and his church comical coming from at least two groups of people. First, if you are a Catholic, I do not want to hear it unless you have disavowed the entire Catholic Church after years of priests raping children, protecting those who did it, and covering up the crimes to begin with. Second, the Republican Party has largely suckled at the teat of the religious right for two decades now. And that religious right has spewed so much hatred it is hard to fathom where Wright's crimes alleged and real and that happen to have a foundation in some reality -- America's racial history is so loathsomely terrible it is hard to take seriously those who assert that Wright's assertions amount to racism -- rate, but they rate pretty low.

In any case, there is plenty of coverage of the Wright fiasco and Obama's response. The Washington Post had worthwhile pieces here,
here, and here. The New Republic asked several people to weigh in on the politically salient question of whether the speech was effective here and here. The New York Times' praiseful editorial is worth perusing, and naturally Andrew Sullivan has peppered The Daily Dish with Obama and Wright. And finally, I think one of the more thoughtful (and historically based) reflections, which came before Obama's speech, is Ralph Luker's Jeremiah, which the Atlanta Journal-Constitution republished in slightly modified form. The topic of the religious tradition in the black community plays right into Ralph's wheelhouse.

The Cold War and the Terrorist Threat: Self-Indulgence Alert

So it appears that the government is beginning to look to the Cold War to provide a model for how to combat terrorism. That seems like a sound idea. You know when it also seemed like a sound idea? In January 2006 when I proposed just such an idea in an op-ed distributed by History News Service.

Talking Wire

Over at The Atlantic online Mark Bowden, Jeffrey Goldberg, and Ross Douthat discuss The Wire in four segments.

Conservatism and the 1970s

The Chronicle Review has an article by historians Bruce Schulman and Julian Zelizer on the 1970s roots of modern conservatism. Here is a taste of the first three paragraphs:

Today is a puzzling time for American politics. In many ways, conservatism dominates the political landscape. Unilateralism and militarism seem to rule U.S. foreign policy, while in domestic affairs, Washington resists robust federal controls on energy consumption or greenhouse-gas emissions. The nation battles over creationism in the public schools and financing stem-cell research, and every few years, Republicans and Democrats scramble to cut taxes. The conservative President Ronald Reagan has become the iconic figure for the current generation of voters that the liberal eminence Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the 1950s and 1960s.

Yet conservatives' vulnerabilities sometimes appear as prominent as their strengths, and not just because of particular problems facing President Bush. The reality of "conservative" America is that the federal government remains a large presence in American life. When disasters strike, we turn to government. When we retire, we turn to government. When we face external threats, we turn to government. Republicans failed to curb the growth of federal spending between 2001 and 2007, when they controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. In fact the Republican leadership developed new forms of government, ranging from the No Child Left Behind Act in education to a sweeping domestic-surveillance program. Notwithstanding the hawkish rhetoric flowing out of Washington, Americans are not flocking to volunteer for the war effort in Iraq. Public opinion of the president's military programs remains at historically low levels. With all the talk about the power of the religious right, popular culture is replete with the brash sexuality that conservatives have repeatedly decried. Such racy material is just as popular in the so-called red states as it is in the coastal cities of New York and Los Angeles.

We can understand the current situation only by unraveling the origins of the conservative movement — and the incomplete revolution that took place in the 1970s. The 70s unlock the mysteries of today because the decade constituted a decisive turning point in American history and set the foundations for current debates. The policies, social movements, leaders, and institutional changes that emerged from that decade continue to define the American political scene.

Tootle is working on a book on the 1970s, and he is a conservative and a Republican, so I'd be curious to know what he thinks about their argument. I certainly agree with them that the 1970s represent a more vital decade than most historians and political and cultural critics have heretofore acknowledged (and Schulman has persistently made this case for some time now) and that it is a decade that warrants as much attention as the sexier 1960s even if its narrative isn't as seductive or easy to capture.

On Bill James

Last week Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe had a great feature on the incomparable Bill James, father of sabermetrics and Red Sox advisor. Just thought you ought to know.

Can They Do It?

Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe addresses the question that is on the lips of the entirety of Red Sox Nation: Can they repeat. His answer, which is hardly revelatory: It isn't an easy task to accomplish. The American League is once again stacked. The Red Sox are relying on player development, rather than free agency or trades, in their quest to win back-to-back World Series championships. This is smart from a long-range perspective but requires the development of the young guys to be steady rather than episodic. Still, the Sox seem built to contend for a long time, and that is all any fans can ask from their team.

The Never-Ending PED Controversy

There is so much hypocrisy, inconsistency, and overwrought fulmination over the supposed scourge of performance enhancing drugs in baseball that the critical mass of opinion has buried the ability of most observers to sit back and take a reasoned, rational look at the issue without the moralization snd mock outrage that characterizes the state of the debate. Malcolm Gladwell's recent postings on this issue at his blog are thus welcome. He has four salient posts, here, here, here, and here.

Sportsguy on An Athlete Dying Young

For a reminder of what Sportsguy is like when he is truly on, I would strongly recommend that you take a look at this article on the death of a high school athlete in Los Angeles. This is heartbreaking, essential reading.

Vegas Bound

The Southwest Social Science Association, under which the Southwest Historical Association is a constituent organization, is holding its annual meeting this week in Vegas. Mrs. dcat (who will be experiencing Vegas for the first time) and I are both presenting papers (and I'm chairing two panels), as is this guy. Posting may, I suspect, be light, though I'll recount any noteworthy shenanigans.

Supporting Torture, Diminishing the United States

So, apparently the President feels that we cannot win wars in which our strongest claim is that we are better than our enemies without doing things that cast into doubt whether we are actually better than our enemies. That is the message I draw, anyway, from President Bush's decision to veto a law that would have limited the CIA's ability to torture prisoners.

I really do not know what more there is to say. There was a time when the very idea of Americans engaging in such noxious practices inspired outrage. But too many have acquiesced. Does torture make us safer? Does it give us actionable intelligence? We have seen scant cases where either would be the case. in the meantime what we do is diminish ourselves while exposing our own troops to even worse treatment. I would just strongly encourage you all to read every one of the articles in the latest Washington Monthly, which is devoted to advocating stopping these policies. As long as this administration, which has done so much harm and so little good, is in power such cries will represent little more than lamentations. But a better day will come.