Happy Opening Day

At least I think it's Opening Day. The Red Sox and A's played a week ago on the other side of the planet, and the Nationals and Braves kicked things off last night, so things are a little sketchier than when I was a kid. The modern definition of Opening Day is the day your team plays its first game. I'm a Mets fan, ergo today is Opening Day. So allow me to share a few things with you...

• If you haven't already, go to Fire Joe Morgan. The guys at FJM don't necessarily want Joe Morgan fired. But they have declared war - well, not war exactly; something funnier than war - on the sportscasters and sportswriters who believe that winning baseball is all about chemistry and grit, as opposed to things like getting on base and not making out. Here they are mocking Rob Dibble:

"There's too much movement now," former Reds reliever Rob Dibble says. "Chemistry is a big deal. You need to come up with the same guys, stay with them, get to know their tendencies and their inside jokes. Otherwise, it doesn't work."

Exactly. How am I supposed to field a ground ball when f*cking Gomez over there doesn't laugh when I say "Do I make you horny, baby?" It's from Austin Powers. Jesus, Gomez. Santana understood me. Santana laughed every time.Oh shit, the ball got past me. F*ck. Well, it's my turn to bat. I'm so depressed I guess I'll hit into a triple play. I hate Gomez. He told me he never even saw Meet the Parents. How am I supposed to do my "I have nipples, could you milk me?" routine?I just struck out.

If you're the kind of person who wants to pull your hair out when Rick Sutcliffe goes on and on about David Eckstein means so much to his team because his uniform gets dirty, check out FJM.

• The Rock Star, who played some college ball, once had a great line about Eckstein: if I was pitching, I'd throw at that guy in the on-deck circle.

• Mets-Marlins are on as I type this, and as if on cue Keith Hernandez just had an FJM moment. The Mets have scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 4th, have men on first and third with one out and Luis Castillo up. 3-1 count. And Hernandez says "I'd love to see Luis swing here." Now look, Keith Hernandez knows more about baseball than I'll ever know, but isn't it F*#+ING OBVIOUS that Luis should do anything but swing? The pitcher is struggling, David Wright is on deck, and Luis isn't exactly an RBI machine. Thankfully, Luis takes ball 4 in the dirt to load the bases for David Wright, who hits a 3-run double into the gap.

• The thing about Keith is, he says stuff like this all the time. Gary Cohen, the Mets play-by-play guy, who has never played ball on any level, is always artfully correcting Keith on game strategy. The odd thing is that Keith, like Joe Morgan, was an incredibly intelligent on-field guy. It's a mystery...

• I just did a google image search on Gary Cohen, trying to find a picture of him that showed how obviously non-athletic he is, and instead found a blog called The Mets are Better Than Sex. It's worth a peek.

• The Mets' opening day left fielder is named Angel Pagan. The moral implications are staggering. And it got me thinking, Hispanic culture has more overtly religious first names than Anglo-American culture. I mean, you don't see a lot of guys Anglo-American guys named Jesus, as you do in Hispanic culture. What about other European cultures? Are there Dutch guys named Jesus? French?
  


• Maybe I'm a little OCD, but it drives me crazy that the AL West has 4 teams, the NL Central has 6, and the other four divisions have 5 teams. Isn't that unfair? Everything else being equal, an AL West team has a 25% chance of winning the division, whereas an NL Central team has a - um, hold on, let me get my calculator - shoot, I dunno, a 17% chance. Something like that. And it's not like this is a hard problem to fix. You simply take the Brewers, who used to be in the AL anyway, and move 'em to the AL West. Voila! Six teams with 5 divisions each! Why don't they do that? Oh wait, I remember...

• Had my Fantasy Draft last night. We've been doing the Madisox League since 1992, and of the 230 guys drafted last night, only 4 of them were drafted in the inaugural draft in '92, and all of them were pitchers. Mussina, Glavine, Smoltz, and Johnson. I won't be surprised if somebody picks up Maddux at some point.

• Also, we drafted 3 Ians last night (Kinsler, Kennedy, and Snell). Seems like a lot of Ians...
  

• Mets are up 6-2 but the Marlins are threatening. Gotta go. Happy Opening Day!

From Left to Right

Most people believe that to be “liberal” or “conservative” implies a certain set of policy positions. For example, if one favors abortion rights, believes the earth is warming at an untenable rate, and thinks that somebody who earns $106,000 should be taxed at 30% rather than 28%, he is a liberal. Someone who holds the opposing viewpoints is a conservative.

But that is not what makes one a liberal or a conservative. Take global warming. Our planetary home is either warming at a rate that will flood Manhattan in my dotage, or it isn’t. My political ideology should not affect whether or not I choose to believe that.*

True liberalism and true conservatism comes more from your view of human nature and what form of government is best suited for how humans act. One way to think this through is to look at the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Both of these revolutions occurred in the 19th century, the Age of Enlightenment, when the smartest minds on the then-cooler planet were consumed with human nature and political philosophy. (As opposed to today, when the smartest minds on the planet are consumed with human nature and its interactions with social networking sites, video games, MP3 players, mobile phones, etc.)

The American Revolution was essentially conservative in nature. The Founders took a dim view of human nature, in particular how humans handle power. Therefore, they designed a government with checks and balances, believing that people with power would try to take advantage of that power. The French Revolution (which gave us the terms right-wing and left-wing) was essentially liberal, believing if you gave the people (rather than a monarch) power, they would wield that power with wisdom and benevolence and the world would be a better place. I’m massively oversimplifying here, but what do you expect – it’s only a blog.

[If you'd like a less simplified explanation, read Edmund Burke.]

I bring all this up because David Mamet, the playwright and screenwriter (Glengarry Glen Ross, The Untouchables, American Buffalo and much more) wrote a fascinating essay in The Village Voice about how the writing of his latest play was the catalyst for a political conversion:

"The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind."


Mamet's conversion isn't driven by Obama's healthcare plan, McCain's campaign-finance views, or whether or not Hillary dodged sniper fire in Bosnia. It's driven by the realization that his political ideology was out of kilter with his observations of human behavior.

The essay is smart, funny, honest, and (surprisingly for Mamet) drops very few F-bombs. I highly recommend clicking here and giving it a close read.


* That's not to say that our political ideology isn't revealed in our policy positions. One's opinion on Africa is an outstanding litmus test. Liberals, who have greater faith in human nature, tend to believe that Africa can be saved through the twin elixirs of foreign aid and debt forgiveness. Conservatives tend to believe if you keep giving African dictators money they will have no incentive to enact fundamental reform that will allow a free-market economy to take root. These are classic examples of political views that align perfectly with one's view of human nature.

July 1, 1776

If you could be witness to any historical event, what would it be? My choice is the Pennsylvania State House (later renamed Independence Hall), Philadelphia on July 1, 1776.

July 4, 1776 is the most famous date in American history. But that is merely the date independence was declared. If you had one shot at time travel and chose the original 4th of July, you wouldn’t see very much beyond a herald named John Nixon reading the Declaration to a small crowd.

July 2, 1776 is the day that independence was decided. It is of the 2nd that John Adams wrote to his wife:

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America…I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival."

John Adams was right about much, but not that.

But it was on July 1, 1776 that independence was debated. Throughout that day and into the evening the bold supporters of independence, led by the eloquence of John Adams, argued for severing the colonies’ ties with England. The opposition was led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and supported primarily by delegates from New York and South Carolina. Adams, of course, carried the day, and independence was declared.

Since time travel only exists in science fiction, I instead settled in to watch the HBO miniseries John Adams. The second episode, “Join or Die”, featured this memorable debate and all of the other momentous events of the Second Continental Congress: Richard Henry Lee’s resolution calling for independence; John Adams’ formation of a committee to write a declaration and his subsequent persuading of the young Thomas Jefferson to compose a first draft; the debate itself; the backroom wrangling with New York and South Carolina; and finally, the momentous vote itself, with Cesar Rodney from Delaware arriving at the final moment to tip the vote into unanimity (if you were wondering why the Delaware quarter has an engraving of a guy on a horse, that is Rodney racing to Philadelphia).

This is filmed history at its finest. And with any luck, John Adams will finally get his due.

“The Colossus of Independence”

Just as Americans have erroneously celebrated July 4th as Independence Day, we have also erroneously celebrated Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration, over Adams, the true leader of the independence movement. To the founders themselves, the document was just that, a document, however beautifully written. Independence itself was won largely by Adams. It was Jefferson himself who called Adams “the colossus of independence”, and rightly so.

The miniseries perfectly captures Adams the statesman, Adams the orator, and Adams the politician as he moves the tentative Congress towards independence. With Benjamin Franklin (played by the excellent Tom Wilkinson) coaching him, we see Adams almost single-handedly moving this body of men into their place in history as Signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Paul Giamatti, a gifted actor, plays the title role. His casting violates Keatang’s Third Law of History Movies: never cast familiar actors in the roles of famous historical figures. When an actor is famous, you can’t help but see the actor playing a historical figure rather than the historical figure himself. Shows like The Sopranos and The Wire have taught us there are plenty of gifted unknown actors out there, but filmmakers can't help themselves. Giamatti is a brilliant enough actor to pull it off, though when he raises a glass of madeira in toast I half expect him to make some snarky comment about the vintage.

Further Reading

The miniseries is based on the popular biography by David McCullough (pictured above, with Giamatti). This is a bit odd. Nothing in the book or the miniseries is McCullough's invention; in fact, the vast majority of the events featured have been written about thousands of times. HBO could have easily made the exact same movie without Mr. McCullough's permission.

But the approval of one of America's finest historians lends a sort of imprimatur on the whole proceeding. Producer Tom Hanks and HBO have produced something that lives up to the standards of McCullough's work.

But...if you want to learn more about the great John Adams, I'm partial to a pair of books by different authors: John Adams and the American Revolution by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Passionate Sage by Joseph Ellis. The former focuses specifically on Adams role as Colossus; the latter on his days as a lion in winter.

And who knows? Maybe one day John Adams will get his own monument...

The Financial Crisis Explained

Not by me, of course. I'm an English major and a history buff. If you want to know which Shakespeare plays take place during the War of the Roses, I'm your guy. But this whole sub-prime mortgage crisis has made me feel like, well, an English major during a financial crisis.

Which was why I was encouraged to read these words today by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

"Raise your hand if you don’t quite understand this whole financial crisis. It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don’t, not really....I’m here to urge you not to feel sheepish. This may not be entirely comforting, but your confusion is shared by many people who are in the middle of the crisis. "

My hand shot up, of course. For the full article, go here. I read it, and for a brief shining moment I think I understood the crisis. Alas, I think the moment has passed...

Gael-Mheiriceánach

What St. Patrick's Day Means to Me

Saint Patrick’s Day is one of the High Holy Days on our family calendar. Family legend holds that one of our clan has marched in every New York St. Patrick’s Day Parade since the 1920’s, not long after my paternal grandparents arrived here from County Clare. I myself have marched since childhood.

Some people mock the New York Irish and our embrace of March 17th. They say, with the hint of a sneer, that in Ireland they don’t go this crazy about St. Pat’s Day. They note that nobody in Ireland listens to Irish music anymore – that they disdain it as “trad” (i.e. traditional). Or if they’re feeling particularly snide, they’ll take a shot at the creeping Hallmarkization of the holiday, as beers and bagels are dyed green and businesses try to get a piece of the action.

What they are really saying, of course, is that Irish Americans don’t truly understand Ireland, and that our celebration of the holiday is somehow inauthentic. But here is what they don’t understand: on March 17th, we are not really celebrating Saint Patrick, and we are not even celebrating Ireland. We are celebrating Irish Americans and their story, the story of our ancestors. And for the people gathered on 5th Avenue between 44th Street and 86th Streets, we are very specifically celebrating being New York Irish Americans.

My Irish Epiphany
I didn’t realize this for many years. St. Patrick’s Day was just something our family did. I was excited that it got me out of school. I enjoyed walking up 5th Avenue staring at the skyscrapers. It was fun to see the occasional “celebrity” like Ed Koch or Gerry Cooney wearing Irish sweaters. And I loved the soda bread at my grandmother’s apartment in Astoria afterwards.

Then one year in my early 20’s, I wanted to blow off the parade. I was working in the city and began to believe marching was a little ridiculous. It would be more fun to have a late Guinness-soaked lunch with work friends. But I knew how much my Dad cared, and reluctantly headed from my office to the parade.

As I walked over, though, I realized that the city was somehow…different. I’d been working in New York over a year, and it had become commonplace to me. But as I continued my stroll over, though, I noticed the changes. Bagpipes skirled in the distance and the rat-a-tat-tat of drums ricocheted off the skyscrapers. Street vendors barked out their wares. I passed Irish bars, filled at 10:30 AM, resounding with good cheer and good music.

And the faces! Pretty young ones with shamrocks emblazoned on their cheeks; old men with ruddy cheeks ‘neath twill caps; cops and firefighters, in dress blues, with bushy moustaches. And my favorite, Hispanics and Italians and African-Americans and Asians in Irish sweaters or green plastic hats. If you don’t understand the expression “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”, go to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City, and you’ll know.

I realized that on this day, the city again became the magical place of my youth. Magical in a way that Christmastime, with its massive influx of tourists, could never be. This wasn’t about Ireland. Or rather, it wasn’t just about Ireland. It was about being an Irish-American descendant in the greatest city in the world.

"The Golden Door"

And of course America, and New York, is where the Irish came in massive numbers for hundreds of years. In the 2000 census, over 30 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry, 11% of the total U.S. population, and 7 times greater than the population of Ireland. Twenty-three American Presidents, including Washington, Jackson, Grant, TR, and of course JFK can claim Irish ancestry. It's something the Clintons and Bushes share. Our greatest living writer is Irish-American, as is the last movie star, and America's newest sports hero. Even Barack O’Bama’s great-great grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, comes from Moneygall in County Offaly.

The point is that Irish-American culture isn't just a pale imitation of Irish culture; it is a formidable culture unto itself. It dates back hundreds of years, counts numerous notables among its members, and has a powerful and fascinating history. Many Gael-Mheiriceánach, or Irish-Americans, myself included, have stories of our own family’s emigration, stories that are as powerful to us as creation myths. On Saint Patrick’s Day we are not trying to imitate Ireland – we are being Irish America.

So don’t worry about the differences between the Irish in America and the Irish in Ireland. Instead, take a day off work on Monday, grab the kids out of school, and head to Fifth Avenue in New York to soak in some Irish-American culture.

And one tip…Tullamore Dew looks an awful lot like apple juice, so if you’d like a little nip now and then, grab a Snapple Apple bottle and fill it with the juice of the barley…

Book tip: For years I've tried, without success, to persuade book-loving friends to read Thomas Flanagan's excellent trilogy of Irish history. This blogger does as good a job as any of summing up this excellent trio of novels.

"The Inequality Myth"

We've heard a lot about the growing income gap between rich and poor - a common theme around election time. In the Wall Street Journal today, economist Brad Schiller breaks down the details. He says the idea of inequality rests on two facts, but many other facts mitigate those two.
The two facts in favor

• The top 20% earners have increased their share of the pie from 43% in 1970 to 50% today while the bottom 20% have decreased their share from 4.1% to 3.4%.


• The middle 60%, meanwhile, have seen wage stagnation. The median household income is at $48,200, only $200 more than 1998 totals.

The mitigating facts

• First, the pie is much bigger. GDP is three times larger than it was in 1970, so that 3.4% slice actually represents a 36% increase in income. It's a nearly indisputable fact that the poor have significantly higher purchasing power than in 1970, even if they are farther away from the rich in income.


• Second, the population has grown by 20 million since 1970, most of it through immigration, legal and illegal. Which means that the newest Americans are poorer. Schiller gives the metaphor of a line of people moving forward...the line keeps moving, but new people keep getting on the end of the line, so that the line in fact gets longer - the people in front are even farther away from the people in back.


• And finally, and this was very interesting...all of the data is based on household income. But the combination of divorce and people marrying later has dramatically changed households. The average "population" of a household has decreased from 3.14 to 2.57, so that even if wages stagnated, the actual income has increased, because it is supporting fewer people.

My one complaint about the piece is that he uses 1998-2006 for some comparisons, and 1970-2006 for others. Clearly when Democrats talk about income inequality, they are talking about the Bush Tax Cuts. I wish Schiller had used 1998-2006 as the comparative period for all of the data points.

A point of annoyance with both parties...the Democrats hammer away at the first two points, never mentioning the latter three. And Republicans generally stay mute on the subject, instead of engaging in debate. Perhaps it's because they realize that true populist campaigns, like that of John Edwards, tend to flame out. A majority of voting Americans, it appears, don't like being told how poor they are.

Note: WSJ is a paid subscription, but I believe the opinion page is accessible for free.

Time After Time

Last week I mocked Time magazine's cover story on George Clooney. This week I notice the cover story is very similar to the first long piece I wrote, The Dubious Value of Experience, in which I argue that experience hasn't been a very useful predictor for White House success.

I think mine is better, but it's possible I'm biased. More interestingly is the accompanying piece, The Science of Experience, in which it is argued that "the number of years of experience in a domain is a poor predictor of attained performance."

Which plays right into my theory that you should hire inexperienced head coaches...

Okay, I think I've patted my back enough for one day...

Monolingual Americans

If you’ve traveled around this world of ours – in continental Europe, in South America, in many parts of Asia – you have noticed that many of the world’s citizens speak two languages, and some speak three or more. In fact, there are more multilingual people in the world than monolingual.

Monolingual Americans – and if you are American you are likely monolingual – invariably feel a twinge of shame about this. In Germany or Singapore, Moscow or Rio, folks switch from their language to ours because it’s understood us backward Americans can’t switch from ours to theirs. We live in the land of the single tongue, and surely this must be because we are less cultured, less intellectually curious, more barbaric even. How much more sophisticated would we be if we could only parlez-vous francais?

Nonsense. Any first-year economics student can tell you that people do things when they have an incentive to do so. Americans (and Canadians) have very little incentive, economic or otherwise, to invest the time and energy required to learn a foreign language, and very little opportunity to maintain it if they did. Europeans, on the other hand, have an enormous incentive to learn the languages of their neighbors. And, along with affluent, educated, or ambitious South Americans and Asians, they share an enormous incentive to learn the language of the world – English.

Do You Speak Jersey?
I live in New York. The New Jersey border is four miles South, and Connecticut is about a half hour to the East. Let’s imagine that each of these three states spoke a different language.

Welcome to Switzerland. Switzerland is not a very big country – if it was an American state it would rank 42nd in square mileage, between West Virginia and Maryland. But it is bordered by five other countries speaking 3.5 different languages: France (French), Italy (Italian), Germany and Austria (German), and Lichetenstein (a dialect of German called Alemannic).

It doesn’t stop there, though. Switzerland is in the European Union, and the EU alone recognizes 23 official languages.

Many Swiss can speak French, German, and English. This is not because they are a particularly cultured people – in fact (and I apologize to my large Swiss readership), Switzerland hasn’t contributed very much to world culture. The list of Swiss writers and composers, painters and pop stars, is alas, rather small. No Shakespeare or Twain, no Mozart or McCartney, no Picasso or da Vinci. They speak multiple languages for the simple reason that they have to – they are economically and geographically impelled to do so.

English is the Frankish Language

The term lingua franca literally means “Frankish language”, but the actual definition of lingua franca is the unofficial language of the world, the language that is used in business, science, aviation, and diplomacy.

Many languages have played the role of lingua franca. Greek, Latin, then the aforementioned Frankish language (which wasn’t a real language, but a pidgin mix of Italian and other romance languages). French was the language of global diplomacy from the 17th century until very recently.

But now it is English. English ranks only 4th in terms of number of speakers. But it is the global language of scientific papers, of business conferences, of air control towers, of treaty negotiations.

So in addition to their neighbors' languages the citizens of Switzerland need to know English, especially if they want to go work at the bank. The same is true of educated people around the world. English is, at this particular point in world history, the most important language in the world.

For an educated New Yorker, there is no real incentive to learn another language. He can travel to New Jersey and Connecticut, and they speak the same language. He can travel 2000 miles to the South, 3000 miles to the West, across most of Canada, its giant neighbor to the North, and all points in between - and the people, with little exception, speak English. (And things aren't looking good for the exceptions this week...)

He could then hop on a plane East to the United Kingdom, and except for a few odd words, they speak the same language too. Even more, in business meetings from Berlin to Beijing, Reykjavik to Rio, Honolulu to Hong Kong, the lingua franca will be English.

For the Swiss, as for the German and Singaporean, learning another language is often a necessity. For nearly all Americans, it is a luxury.

What about the English?

The English themselves, incidentally, are a fairly monolingual people. Sure, the particularly affluent might know French, which is a train ride away. But like Americans, with their Mother Tongue in ascendancy, they have little reason to dedicate the time required for a second language, and little opportunity to maintain it if they did.

Unable to tout their language skills, the English instead revel in their passport superiority. Very few Americans, they point out, even have a passport. True, but remember too the range of travel an American can enjoy without owning a passport. He can travel from the volcano islands of the South Pacific to the glaciers of Alaska; from the Big Sky country of Montana to the theme parks of Florida. From the metropolis of New York City to the badlands of the Dakotas to juke joints in the Mississippi Delta to the coffee shops of Seattles. He can surf the waves of Southern California and ski the slopes of Utah, he can hit the Vegas Strip, the French Quarter in Nawlins, and catch autumn in New England - he can go to all of these places without once passing through customs. Or for that matter, breaking out a foreign language phrasebook.

The English have, as you can imagine, significantly more incentive to get themselves a passport.

Confucius Say

So the next time you are abroad, and find yourself humbled by the effortless fluency of your hosts, or even for the paucity of passports we have, remember that there is a perfectly good reason for this.

But don't get too cocky. Lingua francas only last so long, so you might want to send your kid to this site.