Journamalism at its finest

ABC News' Brian Ross, so hard-working he has his own Investigative Unit (teehee, unit), has uncovered the single-most important issue of the campaign. I'll let the headline and subhead tell the story:

Hillary At White House on 'Stained Blue Dress' Day

Schedules Reviewed by ABC Show Hillary May Have Been in the White House When the Fateful Act Was Committed

Oh my God! She may have been in the same building! Stop the fucking presses! Finally, American journamalism cracks open this crucial issue! You can call Brian Ross and leave him a message praising his investigative unit at 212-456-7612 (seriously, it takes less than two minutes to leave a message). Suburban Guerrilla and Glenn Greenwald have more on this.

Blowjobs, blowjobs, blowjobs! Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!

I want to stop posting about Hillary Clinton. . .

but her campaign keeps trying to paint Barack Obama as a Republican. They've compared his campaign tactics to Karl Rove's, and Paul Krugman insinuates that Obama is merely a Republican in Democratic clothing. The latest, from Clinton's spokesperson, Howard Wolfson:

I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is not the way to win the Democratic primary.

Wow, really? Ken Starr? I understand the Clinton campaign has a lot of ground to make up in the delegate count, but a campaign willing to be this intellectually dishonest offends me.

Tee hee

Affirming America's fictional heritage

A quick note from Examland:

You may recall that late last year, the House of Representatives passed a resolution to acknowledge how important Christmas is. If you think that was a silly waste of taxpayer resources and time, now there's House Resolution 888. The title?

"Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as "American Religious History Week" for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith. "

Guess which religion gets all the attention? Would you like some time? I'll give you a hint: it's not Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism, Agnosticism, Pan-Agnosticism, or Pan-American Agnosticism.

That's right, it's the vaguest, most meaningless kind of Christianity, with examples quote-mined from speeches and, in several cases, completely fictionalized. Chris Rodda at Talk to Action has detailed most of the falsehoods; both his posts are long but worthwhile reads.

Disturbingly, the resolution continues to add co-sponsors; as of this posting, seventy two members of the House have signed on to co-sponsor the resolution. Right now, it's sitting in the house Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Go call or email Committee Chair Henry Waxman, and call your representative. (Note: my representative is one of the co-sponsors; when I called her office, the man who answered the phone had never heard of the resolution. Yikes.)

I just want to add that I find the bill personally offensive. I live in a poly-faith household. I'm an atheist, my wife is a Christian, and my dog worships the both of us, at least when we're about to take her on a walk.

Talk Radio Host Reinforces Stereotypes About Talk Radio Hosts

As you may have heard, ESPN employs a vandal. His name is Colin Cowherd, who hosts a show called "The Herd with Colin Cowherd." Like most radio talk show hosts, he's generally unlistenable, mainly because he sees his job as sparking controversy. Now he's done something that violates FCC regulations, asking his listeners (as others have pointed out, who knew he had an audience) to launch a denial-of-service attack on The Big Lead, a good sports blog that's been kind enough to link to me.

I mention this mainly because it's brought to my attention a new favorite word: schrutebag. Thank you, guys at Kissing Suzy Kolber (in this case, Big Daddy Drew, my favorite of the bunch).

For a full list of great blog posts, see One More Dying Quail and Awful Announcing. Also, I'm happy to report that The Big Lead is back online after several days being down.

Bill Simmons, stop. Stop. Please. Stop.

For the love of Jebus, Bill Simmons, don't ever again write about college basketball or race. Please. Stop. Is this the legacy you want to leave your child?

I know I've written about Simmons before and nothing's changed. He couldn't care less about what I have to say. Fine. I understand I'm not on an MTV "reality" show, I don't live in Boston, I'm simply one of those pesky New Media bloggers who don't work for a legitimate news organization, and I'll disappear from the face of the earth and no one will mind. I'm fine with that.

But I'm begging you, please, listen, just this once: don't ever, ever again write about college basketball or race. Here's why:

How Bill Simmons is wrong about college basketball:

Point #1: He is not an expert, yet he writes with exasperation that college coaches and journalists can't fathom what is obvious to him. "Watched three college hoops games since my last report on Tuesday." Wow. Three games in three days? I'm not the first to make this point, but you cannot pretend expertise on college basketball if this is your access to the state of the game. (Especially when you're watching the same teams every week.) Why doesn't Rick Barnes run every play through Kevin Durant? You can't think of one good reason? How about this: Durant is a college freshman. He's playing a season that's much more physically and emotionally demanding than high school ball, and it's late in the season, with tournaments coming up. I don't pay attention college basketball and I know this.

Point #2: Simmons freely contradicts himself with no one to call him on it. Here's Simmons on February 13:

"Speaking of [Joakim] Noah, I love how his draft stock dropped because he stuck around for an extra season and everyone started picking him apart . . . . Meanwhile, he's even better than he was last season -- if you applied my Table Test to him, he's still one of those guys who brings X amount of things to the table and takes absolutely nothing off it."

And here's Simmons on March 2:

"One more Florida note: Noah is quietly playing himself out of the top 5. Nobody is wasting a top-5 pick on a more polished version of Mikki Moore. Not this year."

Just for fun, read those again. Compare "everyone started picking him apart" to "Noah is quietly playing himself out of the top 5." What changed in a month, other than you watching more college basketball?

(Oh, and by the way, about your "Table Test": you once devoted a column to explaining a cliché, then acted as if that elaboration was a wholly new set of ideas. So it's not "your" table test.)

How Bill Simmons is wrong about race:

Here's how Simmons begins his column responding to Scoop Jackson:

"I hate writing a rebuttal to another writer's column. I hate it. These days on the Internet, people spend far too much time writing about other writers instead of just writing about sports. Pretty soon, there will be Web sites devoted to writers writing about writers who write about other writers. We're not headed in the right direction.

At the same time, I couldn't let Scoop Jackson's "Vegas wasn't that bad" column just fade away without disputing two crucial pieces of his argument . . ."

Two points here:

1. In other words, "Please don't criticize me for what I'm about to write. Please."
2. If Scoop Jackson's column would "just fade away" (and, honestly, it would--are there people who take Scoop Jackson seriously?), then why even write about it at all? (I have a theory on this, but it's for the next time Simmons pisses me off.)

Simmons then spends an inordinate amount of time criticizing Jackson for "Scoop's assertion that "only" 403 people were arrested during NBA All-Star Weekend, a number apparently obtained from Deputy Lt. E. Sterr Bunny of the Las Vegas Police Department. I don't think it's very smart to base the premise of a column around a leap of faith that Vegas police reported every single crime, mugging, brawl, assault, theft and indiscretion from that weekend (even the ones for which the perpetrators weren't caught)." Hey, not a bad point, except for the fact that Jackson compares the number of arrests with the number of arrests for New Year's weekend. So Simmons' logic about the number of arrests reported works for what Jackson compares it to.
(NB: Simmons isn't entirely wrong about Jackson's column; in fact, Jackson is an easy target because he's a sloppy writer and thinker.)

But that's not the disturbing thing. That's just the logic issue, not the unsettling way Simmons writes about race. Ever ready to reach into the well of cliché, Simmons writes that "he played the race card." Jesus fucking Christ on a stick, "the race card." Could we please obliterate that phrase from the language? I can't figure out why people of color in this country still see racism. Could it have something to do with the shorthand that white people use? (Fyi, I'm a white male. We can talk about this another time.)

But here's the kicker, the thing that made my anger about "the race card" stay up: "Once upon a time, the late Ralph Wiley repeatedly proved an African-American sports columnist could write intelligently about racial issues without using his skin color as a crutch." In other words, "Look, I have a black friend!"

To sum up, if you're still with me:

Bill, please, please, please stop writing about college basketball and race. Come to Funkytown; I'll buy you lunch, take you to a college game, and drive you to the economically depressed, largely African-American part of town. We'll have a blast. I can't afford your plane ticket, but I can promise you good food and bad basketball.

Your Ultimate Super Bowl XLI Pick

Why you should pick the Chicago Bears:

Do you really want to be in a group (other than, say, income bracket) with the Director of the CIA, Bill O'Reilly, Larry King, noted predictologist Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the guy who created Dilbert, Dick Vitale, Jack Valenti, Jim Christ Caviezel, Adam West, Vanilla Ice, Carrot Top, Terl, and Jim Cramer?

Of course, there is one very good reason not to pick the Bears.