vinemaple

OK, you've gone and bundled up two topics that will take seperate screeds to address: The question of what to make of Howard Dean, and the thorny issue of contemporary "liberal" racial politics. I've been thinking about the latter lately, thanks to that incendiary anti-hiphop article by the seemingly omnipresent John McWhorter, and because I'm presently in Chicago, and visiting this city always gets me thinking about race.

I'm going to sit for another day or two on the full-length exposition I've been mulling over, and instead go off on a tangent based on one of your quips: if I saw a particularly white NBA team, I wouldn't think "Hey, those guys are racist;" instead, I'd think "hey, those guys are the Dallas Mavericks."

Since the Mavericks had the best record in the NBA last season, I'm inclined to think there's more than racial bias at work, there. It's no secret that a great deal of the new talent in the NBA for the past few years has been coming from Europe. These French and German and Former Yugoslavian players might not be selling a whole lot of sneakers, but they're certainly winning games.

The distinction between making money and winning games, incidentally, is my problem with that Michael Lewis book, Moneyball. In a book that supposedly delves into the economics and particularly the management of professional baseball, I am baffled by the almost total absence of any analysis of the profits made by baseball teams.

There is a brief platitude in the opening chapters, along the lines of "winning teams draw more fans, and thus make more money," and from that point forward, Lewis operates under the assumption that the goal of a baseball franchise is not making money, but rather winning games. With that said, I did enjoy the book immensely, and found it to be an excellent summary of Bill James' ideas, but it certainly isn't what it's been billed as in the press; that is, it isn't a discussion of the business of baseball. I mean, he doesn't even mention "revenue sharing."

Has anyone written a book about what makes one sports "market" more lucrative than another? Or is it just a simple matter of population?

PS: Haven't the surviving memebers of NWA already been reunited? I mean, how else could a group that only put out three records have a catalog of some dozen titles?

Graffiti Lands Dean in Hot Seat:

Dean takes a page from Sprite's playbook. Nothing says "African-Americans! Choose me!" like graffiti. Not everybody is happy, however.

Councilman James Oddo, a Staten Island Republican, says the backdrop is an insulting token of bygone 1970s New York.

"We have a pandering politician come in here and basically say to the country that what best symbolizes New York is graffiti and urban decay," Oddo said.

Dean, the former Vermont governor and a native New Yorker who left the city in 1978, was simply making the point that he's in touch with inner-city youth, according to his people.

Empty gestures! I won't be satisfied until Dean does something substantive, such as reuniting the surviving members of NWA.

Minorities await Dr. Dean's house call:

Howard Dean blitzed into Seattle the other day talking about how he was "a uniter not a divider" -- about how he believed in the pluralistic dream articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago this week.

An energizing message for the chanting, cheering throng of 10,000 in Westlake Center Sunday night? You bet.

Problem was Dean was preaching to a crowd of mostly white, mostly liberal, mostly converted voters from the People's Republic of the Emerald City.

The city's rainbow -- indeed our community's rich ethnic diversity -- was nowhere in sight, nowhere to hear this dreamer's message up close.

A scan of the crowd showed sprinkles of minorities, suggesting Dean and the Dems have their work cut out for them if they want to make inroads with crucial blocs of untapped voters, especially young blacks and Hispanics.

"I hear Dean is Chinese. Is he?" a young African American man asked me before Dean, a physician and former governor of Vermont, appeared on stage.

Talk about a disconnect.

There's not necessarily anything wrong with a crowd that's mostly white. Obviously, if you saw an NBA team with all white players, you would have to figure there was some racism behind that. On the other hand, you won't see many black people at an Oscar Peterson show, not because they're not welcome (Oscar Peterson is an elderly jazz musician, and black), but because his music hasn't appealed to black audiences for about forty years.

However, good liberals, myself included, would feel a whole lot better to see a bunch of racial minorities in the crowd, to prove that we're not racist. But what's Dean supposed to do about that? His positions are more in line with the average black American than white. Except for his support for gay rights, Dean's civil rights positions are pretty much what you would expect from the NAACP. He was against the war with Iraq, which blacks favored less than whites, he's for finding ways to cover the uninsured, which would help poorer people, he's for affirmative action, and would repeal the Bush tax cuts if elected. Short of advocating reparations for slavery, and not supporting gay rights, no further policy stances he could take would attract the attention of black voters.

What does Jamieson want Dean to do? The closest he comes to advice is to mock a Dean supporter:

One woman demanded: "For the barbecue, is there a vegetarian or vegan option? Or is it just carnivorous?"

Is Jamieson suggesting Dean should court black voters with meat?

I don't know, I think replacing some US soldiers with Bulgarian soldiers is a fine idea. We might need our guys to fight North Korea!

I think we can always rely on the members of the Arab League to ... blame Israel. Besides, which country would send soldiers? Bahrain? Libya? I guess maybe Egypt, since we do pay them $2 billion per year. I don't think we're getting our money's worth.

No, the country that could really help is Indonesia. It's a great big Muslim country, terrific food, and that cool gamelan music. And they just stopped occupying East Timor, so we know they've got the men to do it. And if five years from now Iraq is a nice normal boring democracy like Belgium, I'd be happy to have the US share credit with Indonesia. Of course, it's not going to happen. Too bad.

Why are we looking to the UN to stabilize Iraq?

Yes, we need to somehow turn the American military occupation into a reconstruction project, preferably one widely regarded as legitimate and just. That much I understand. What I don't understand is how more French, Russian, Norwegian or Japanese troops on the ground are supposed to accomplish this.

You're bright enough to spot the first problem here: the recent debate over increased "UN" involvement seems largely to be a proxy for increased European involvement; it's as if the US administration is only looking to the UN because NATO can't plausibly deploy troops outside of Europe, and the G8 isn't in the troop-deploying business.

This leads us to the second problem. With the American occupation becoming a magnet for jihad, drawing mercenaries from throughout the Muslim world, why on earth are we scrambling to put more infidel troops in there? Is the Bush administration's goal to transform a local ongoing battle between the US and radical Islam into a local ongoing battle between radical Islam and all of the West?

What Iraq could really use, it seems, are Muslim peacekeeping forces, preferably forces that are Muslim without being percieved as sectarian. There are, of course, Islamic states in the UN, but from what I've heard, recent "UN" negotiations are not aimed at soliciting the help of those states.

What has the Arab League been up to lately?

Their web site isn't all that helpful, at least as far as opinion on Iraq goes. Oh, yes, I realize bringing in Arab nations would be a diplomatic challenge, what with the Arab League's preoccupation with Israel, and its opposition to US involvement in Iraq from the start, but what diplomat worth his salt couldn't make the case for Arab military involvement in Iraq?

For all I know, of course, there might already be just such an effort underway, all quiet-like, and I'm quite sure there are diplomatic intricacies and complications involved that I'm utterly oblivious to, so I can't go and accuse the State Department of ignoring an opportunity.

I'm just not convinced that "UN" involvement in, or even control over, the Iraqi occupation will hasten the day when that occupation is no longer necessary. Changing the makeup of the forces in Iraq should be sought for better reasons than just sending home a few American troops, damn it.

So what will happen if we capture or kill Saddam?

This question worries me. The easy, half-joking answer is, "well, if it happens in a certain timeframe, then George is definitely going to have a second term." But that's not the part that bothers me most. What worries me is how Saddam's death or capture might change Americans' perception of the ongoing military/humanitarian (militarian?) operation in Iraq.

See, I think the whole Weapons of Mass Destruction catfight is a red herring. I think most Americans believe we invaded Iraq in order to bring Saddam Hussein to justice. This begs the question, of course, but the phrase does neatly cover many of the reasons suggested, plausible or no— the WMD threat; ending Saddam's oppression of the Kurds and other Iraqis; resolving an unfinished "feud" from Poppy's day; preventing Saddam from aiding terrorists; taking down an Arab scapegoat; and so on, ad boredeum. The importance, plausibility, or prudence of any one of these encapsulated "Saddam-centric" reasons is no longer important, once the goal has been rephrased as bringing Saddam to justice.

The problem with this, of course, is that bringing Saddam to justice does not cover the reason dearest to the heart of liberals who, to one degree or another, supported the war; it does not include helping Iraqis create a better way of life.

I'm afraid that if Saddam is brought to justice, there might be a sea change in American public opinion; I am afraid that the chorus of "US out of Iraq / No Blood for Oil / Impeach Bush" coming from the, er, "angrier" parts of the Left will be drowned out by chants of "Bring Our Boys Home, the Job is Done" coming from various points Right and Center.

Bush isn't feeling any political pressure on the home front right now; capturing Saddam might change things significantly. And that, I fear, would be bad news for the people of Baghdad.

Hello, Ed!

Hello, world!