In late March I wrote a piece called The Duper Level in which I argued that Lebron James needed the Big Apple to launch himself from mere Superstar to Super Duper Star (The Duper Level). At the end I speculated about how this year's post-season could affect his decision:
"I think the results of this year's playoffs could impact his decision. If, for example, the Cavs choke in the postseason, he may feel he needs to stay and win a title for Ohio. And good for him if he does. But if he wins a ring for Cleveland, and does so over Utah in a 6-game series that gets lower ratings than Conan O'Brien, he just might want to hear what those folks in the Garden have to say."
But here's the thing: when I said "choke in the post-season", I meant an upset in the Finals, not a 6-game ass-whupping in the Conference semi-finals*, one that included multiple blow-outs and the entire world calling into question whether Lebron is the second coming of Karl Malone or Patrick Ewing rather than the Second Coming of the Lord.
* It's May 14th, and the 2009-2010 seasons of Lebron James, Sidney Crosby, and Alexander Ovechkin are over, further proof that making sports predictions is for fools and con men.
This unexpected development could play into the Knicks hands. Here's the Sports Guy:
"See, there was only one way LeBron was leaving Cleveland this summer: if the team fell apart so badly and indefensibly before the Finals that he could get talked into a 'You just need a fresh start with a new team' case. He couldn't leave if they lost in the Finals to Kobe's Lakers; he'd look like a coward. He couldn't leave if they won the title; no great player leaves a defending champ at the altar -- it's never happened before. But if it plays out like this? He could leave. Absolutely. It's conceivable."
Now Bill Simmons knows more about the NBA than all of us combined, but he also predicted* the Celtics would lose in the first round and the Mavericks would go to the Finals. So who knows?
* Simmons is neither a fool or a con man, but makes more wrong predictions per week than most people make in a year. But hey, ssports passion makes us foolish.
I’d like to add one other thing into the mix. Here is what Kevin Garnett told reporters about his conversation with Lebon after the game:
"If I could go back and do my situation over, knowing what I know now with this organization, I'd have done it a little sooner. Loyalty is something that hurts you at times because you can't get youth back."
KG, of course, spent his prime in Minnesota getting booted out of the first round, then came to Boston and won a title. Now, I’m only a world-class superstar athlete in my dreams, so I don’t know about these things. But I bet that the words of Kevin Garnett – somebody who has walked in Lebron James’ high-tops - have more impact than those of agents, sneaker company executives, sports writers, and maybe even the members of your entourage. And what Kevin is saying is, “Get out!!!”
Who knows? Maybe he’ll end up with the Bulls. Maybe in his own heart he needs to stay in Cleveland. I’m not foolish enough to make a prediction.
But the futures market on Knicks season tickets just went up.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Old Buck and the Justice
How 1850s Presidents are like 21st Century Supreme Court Justices
When James Buchanan was elected President in 1856, his previous twelve years of job experience looked like this:
1845 – 1849: Secretary of State
1849 – 1853: Did not hold public office
1853 – 1856: Ambassador to England
Why is this interesting? Because in 1856 the political issues roiling America were entirely domestic. The fiery debates over slavery, which had sparked after the Mexican War in 1848 and would explode into Civil War in 1861, were burning brightly in 1856. And so the American people elected a man who…had lived in England the previous four years? A man who had not held a job connected to domestic politics in 12 years? A man who had expressed few public opinions on the major issues of his day?
And remember, when Old Buck was Ambassador (then called Minister to the Court of St. James), it’s not like he was zipping back and forth to Washington on the Concorde, reading the New York Times online, watching CNN over satellite, or exchanging emails via Blackberry with his friends in the Senate. Despite receiving numerous and eloquent letters from informed friends, he lived a life – and held a job – that was largely removed from the domestic political scenes.
So how did he become President? Well, as software engineers like to say, his remoteness from domestic politics wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. You see, since Buchanan didn’t have to win Senate elections or make domestic policy or vote on laws during this bumptious time, he didn’t have to express his opinion very often on the critical issues of the day. Which made him a bit of a blank slate – and being a blank slate was a good thing if you were running for President in the decade before the Civil War. His two predecessors – Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce – were similar blank slates. Both were former generals whose politics were a bit of a mystery – sort of the Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell of their day.
Blank slates were good because the political fevers ran so hot in the 1850’s that politicians found it difficult to hem and haw and dart and dodge and bob and weave; they had to commit to positions– for or against the expansion of slavery – that made them unpalatable as a candidate for national office.
Indeed, in 1860 the country would elect as President an inexperienced politician who was on record as strongly opposing slavery. The South’s response was secession, followed by a civil war that killed 600,000 Americans.
1845 – 1849: Secretary of State
1849 – 1853: Did not hold public office
1853 – 1856: Ambassador to England
Why is this interesting? Because in 1856 the political issues roiling America were entirely domestic. The fiery debates over slavery, which had sparked after the Mexican War in 1848 and would explode into Civil War in 1861, were burning brightly in 1856. And so the American people elected a man who…had lived in England the previous four years? A man who had not held a job connected to domestic politics in 12 years? A man who had expressed few public opinions on the major issues of his day?
And remember, when Old Buck was Ambassador (then called Minister to the Court of St. James), it’s not like he was zipping back and forth to Washington on the Concorde, reading the New York Times online, watching CNN over satellite, or exchanging emails via Blackberry with his friends in the Senate. Despite receiving numerous and eloquent letters from informed friends, he lived a life – and held a job – that was largely removed from the domestic political scenes.
So how did he become President? Well, as software engineers like to say, his remoteness from domestic politics wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. You see, since Buchanan didn’t have to win Senate elections or make domestic policy or vote on laws during this bumptious time, he didn’t have to express his opinion very often on the critical issues of the day. Which made him a bit of a blank slate – and being a blank slate was a good thing if you were running for President in the decade before the Civil War. His two predecessors – Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce – were similar blank slates. Both were former generals whose politics were a bit of a mystery – sort of the Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell of their day.
Blank slates were good because the political fevers ran so hot in the 1850’s that politicians found it difficult to hem and haw and dart and dodge and bob and weave; they had to commit to positions– for or against the expansion of slavery – that made them unpalatable as a candidate for national office.
Indeed, in 1860 the country would elect as President an inexperienced politician who was on record as strongly opposing slavery. The South’s response was secession, followed by a civil war that killed 600,000 Americans.
The Blankest Slate
Why do I bring this all up? Because, from what I can tell, there isn’t a person on earth who truly knows what Elena Kagan believes about a single important issue of our times. As Dahlia Lithwick, the liberal court-watcher at Slate put it “Kagan has mastered the fine art of nearly perfect ideological inscrutability.”
How big a mystery is Kagan? Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, met Elena Kagan at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on the Supreme Court and has known her both personally and professionally for 27 years – and he doesn’t know what her views are. Here’s Toobin:
Judgment, values, and politics are what matters on the Court. And here I am somewhat at a loss. Clearly, she’s a Democrat. She was a highly regarded member of the White House staff during the Clinton years, but her own views were and are something of a mystery. She has written relatively little, and nothing of great consequence.
Her academic writings reveal little. Her decision to bar ROTC recruiters from Harvard Law School’s campus* isn’t as big a deal as the right will make it out to be (the full story is here; the short story is she mostly kept in place a reasonable compromise she inherited). She seems to believe in shareholder rights and executive power. But really – nobody knows.
* a word about the ROTC thing. Many colleges banned military recruiters from their campuses due to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; they considered it a discriminatory law and therefore barred the “employer”, in this case the United States Military, from recruiting. Putting aside for the moment that the military consists of men and women who are willing to die for our country, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” wasn’t Pentagon policy; it was a law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton. They should have barred them from campus.
This level of inscrutability has been de rigueur for Supreme Court appointees since the destruction of Robert Bork in 1987. Presidents want Justices who won’t be destroyed by the opposition and the easiest way to do that is to nominate someone with an impressive resume and a nonexistent paper trail.
But Kagan’s nomination takes it to a new level because she’s never even been a judge before. Judges generally have to rule on things and reveal a little about how they think about things. No such luck with Kagan.
Now I have no problem with non-judges ascending to the highest court in the land. The very first Chief Justice, John Jay, had no judicial experience, and the most consequential Chief Justice since World War II, Earl Warren, donned his first robes when he joined the court. But these were men deeply involved in the hurly-burly of politics - not academic cloisters like Kagan.
Elena Kagan is, by every account, a deeply intelligent and accomplished woman. And given her background from the Upper West Side, through the Ivy League and the Clinton White House, back to Harvard and ultimately in the Obama Administration - nobody will be surprised if she’s a true liberal.
But Presidents have been surprised before at the judicial picks. The aforementioned Eisenhower called his selection of the aforementioned Warren as the “biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made”. And Ike is the guy who let Monty launch Market Garden.
As for Elena Kagan, I guess we’ll find out. It just may take a few decades.
How big a mystery is Kagan? Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, met Elena Kagan at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on the Supreme Court and has known her both personally and professionally for 27 years – and he doesn’t know what her views are. Here’s Toobin:
Judgment, values, and politics are what matters on the Court. And here I am somewhat at a loss. Clearly, she’s a Democrat. She was a highly regarded member of the White House staff during the Clinton years, but her own views were and are something of a mystery. She has written relatively little, and nothing of great consequence.
Her academic writings reveal little. Her decision to bar ROTC recruiters from Harvard Law School’s campus* isn’t as big a deal as the right will make it out to be (the full story is here; the short story is she mostly kept in place a reasonable compromise she inherited). She seems to believe in shareholder rights and executive power. But really – nobody knows.
* a word about the ROTC thing. Many colleges banned military recruiters from their campuses due to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”; they considered it a discriminatory law and therefore barred the “employer”, in this case the United States Military, from recruiting. Putting aside for the moment that the military consists of men and women who are willing to die for our country, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” wasn’t Pentagon policy; it was a law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President, Bill Clinton. They should have barred them from campus.
This level of inscrutability has been de rigueur for Supreme Court appointees since the destruction of Robert Bork in 1987. Presidents want Justices who won’t be destroyed by the opposition and the easiest way to do that is to nominate someone with an impressive resume and a nonexistent paper trail.
But Kagan’s nomination takes it to a new level because she’s never even been a judge before. Judges generally have to rule on things and reveal a little about how they think about things. No such luck with Kagan.
Now I have no problem with non-judges ascending to the highest court in the land. The very first Chief Justice, John Jay, had no judicial experience, and the most consequential Chief Justice since World War II, Earl Warren, donned his first robes when he joined the court. But these were men deeply involved in the hurly-burly of politics - not academic cloisters like Kagan.
Elena Kagan is, by every account, a deeply intelligent and accomplished woman. And given her background from the Upper West Side, through the Ivy League and the Clinton White House, back to Harvard and ultimately in the Obama Administration - nobody will be surprised if she’s a true liberal.
But Presidents have been surprised before at the judicial picks. The aforementioned Eisenhower called his selection of the aforementioned Warren as the “biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made”. And Ike is the guy who let Monty launch Market Garden.
As for Elena Kagan, I guess we’ll find out. It just may take a few decades.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The Lost Ending
I am a Lost fan. In response to that statement you probably have one of three reactions. They are:
a) Who cares?
b) You poor sap. You’ve given six years of your life to that narrative nightmare?
c) Me too! How do you think it will end?!
I am not a hard-core Lostie. I don’t post on fan sites or download podcasts, and even though I blog I’ve never mentioned it in the 130 posts I’ve written since 2007.
But still, I’ve been there from day 1. I watched the pilot on September 22, 2004 and have seen every single episode since, nearly always with Mrs. Keatang, a fellow Lostie. We swap theories afterwards, read some of the fan site stuff the next day, hit pause during the show to clarify a point or take a closer look at something (“Wait! Did that shark have a Dharma Initiative tattoo? Hit rewind.”)
Put me in a room with a fellow Lostie and we’ll begin swapping theories about the Candidates, the Numbers, The Smoke Monster and whether or not Jacob and/or Widmore are on the side of good or evil. We’ll wonder what happened to Walt, speculate about the nature of the characters’ names, and marvel at the amazing hygiene of our island-bound heroes.
In other words, even though I’m a fairly casual fan I’ve engaged with the show in a way that I never have with any other television show. My personal arc with Lost has gone something like this:
Season 1: Tremendously entertaining television –one of the genuinely great accomplishments in the history of the medium.
Season 2: Very, very intriguing…old questions are being answered as new ones are asked.
Season 3: More questions…but I’m losing interest in the answers. Is Fonzie about to jump the Dharma Initiative shark?
Season 4/5: Okay, I’m still watching but only because they announced they’ll have everything wrapped up by Season 6 and I’ve come this far. Enjoying it but doing the television equivalent of looking at my watch waiting for it to end.
Beginning of Season 6: WTF is going on?! Lost?! Damn right I’m lost! I hate this show!!!
Middle of Season 6: Hmmmm….the hook is back in. The battle of good vs. evil is heading towards some sort of conclusion. But who is good? And who is evil?
End of Season 6: Well, we’re about to find out, won’t we?
And that’s the interesting part, isn’t it? Has any fictional endeavor ever had so much at stake with its ending?
It is one of the great truths of writing fiction – and I use the term broadly to include novels, short stories, movies and television shows – that endings are the hardest part.
In some genre fiction – particularly the detective novel - the entire point of the exercise is the ending. The butler did it. And television episodes of a certain kind of show are also about the ending. The butler's DNA proves he did it.
But in television series, the ending is rarely the point. Hugely popular shows like M*A*S*H had big finales, and people cared about the ending, but the ending was never the point. Even shows with long narrative arcs aren’t designed to head toward some sort of climax, since the creators never know when it is going to end.
An interesting parallel is The Sopranos. Like Lost, The Sopranos ran for six seasons. Like Lost it had devoted fans and strong ratings (The Sopranos had fewer viewers than Lost, but its ratings were more impressive because it was on pay cable).
The Sopranos finale was a huge cultural event, and millions of Americans believed they had an emotional investment in the finale. And it’s fair to say that most were disappointed and many were enraged. A Journey song playing while the family sits in a diner? No big showdown with the New York gangsters? No answers to unresolved plot lines like the Russian in the woods? No resolution or climax to anything, at all? Even viewers who appreciated what Sopranos auteur David Chase was doing couldn’t help but feel let down.
But Lost has even more at stake. The whole point of the show has been questions and answers, mysteries and puzzles. No Lost viewer in his right mind expects resolution to every puzzle, but we want a satisfying climax, we want an epiphany, we want nothing less than a big a-ha moment that we'll talk about for years after. We want a return on our emotional investment. If we don’t get one, we’ll feel cheated out of the hours of viewing time we’ve dedicated to the show.
This is arguably an unfair proposition. The very fact that the writers have created this level of desire among millions of intelligent viewers* is a feat unto itself.
* Yes, us Losties are more intelligent than the rabble watching The Biggest Loser
But that’s the situation. I wish them luck. I really really wish them luck.
Sidebar: Desert Island Albums
Lost is not without humor, thanks mostly to Hurley and Sawyer, but it is without banter. The inhabitants of the island never just sit around shooting the shit. How great would it have been if they hired Nick Hornby to write an episode where the main characters talk about their desert island albums? It would have been funny, insightful, maybe even created some more puzzles.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share with you my desert island album list. Of course, you need rules for this sort of thing and here are mine: Greatest Hits albums, live albums, and compilations with a unifying theme (covers of an artist, for example) are acceptable, but box collections are not. If you don’t like those rules, write your own damn blog.
Also, please note that these are not my idea of "The Greatest Albums of All Time", or even my personal favorite albums, necessarily. Just the ones I'll need if my plane ever splits in half due to a seismic event over an uncharted island. They are in no particular order, and with apologies to REM, Bruce, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Johnny Cash, and many others...
Astral Weeks, Van Morrison
Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
Legend, Bob Marley
One More From the Road, Lynyrd Skynyrd
London Calling, The Clash
The Last Waltz, The Band
The Christmas Album, Nat King Cole
Making Movies, Dire Straits
Original Musiquarium, Stevie Wonder
Oil Change, Drive Shaft
August and Everything After, Counting Crows
Hard Promises, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Revolver, Beatles
a) Who cares?
b) You poor sap. You’ve given six years of your life to that narrative nightmare?
c) Me too! How do you think it will end?!
I am not a hard-core Lostie. I don’t post on fan sites or download podcasts, and even though I blog I’ve never mentioned it in the 130 posts I’ve written since 2007.
But still, I’ve been there from day 1. I watched the pilot on September 22, 2004 and have seen every single episode since, nearly always with Mrs. Keatang, a fellow Lostie. We swap theories afterwards, read some of the fan site stuff the next day, hit pause during the show to clarify a point or take a closer look at something (“Wait! Did that shark have a Dharma Initiative tattoo? Hit rewind.”)
Put me in a room with a fellow Lostie and we’ll begin swapping theories about the Candidates, the Numbers, The Smoke Monster and whether or not Jacob and/or Widmore are on the side of good or evil. We’ll wonder what happened to Walt, speculate about the nature of the characters’ names, and marvel at the amazing hygiene of our island-bound heroes.
In other words, even though I’m a fairly casual fan I’ve engaged with the show in a way that I never have with any other television show. My personal arc with Lost has gone something like this:
Season 1: Tremendously entertaining television –one of the genuinely great accomplishments in the history of the medium.
Season 2: Very, very intriguing…old questions are being answered as new ones are asked.
Season 3: More questions…but I’m losing interest in the answers. Is Fonzie about to jump the Dharma Initiative shark?
Season 4/5: Okay, I’m still watching but only because they announced they’ll have everything wrapped up by Season 6 and I’ve come this far. Enjoying it but doing the television equivalent of looking at my watch waiting for it to end.
Beginning of Season 6: WTF is going on?! Lost?! Damn right I’m lost! I hate this show!!!
Middle of Season 6: Hmmmm….the hook is back in. The battle of good vs. evil is heading towards some sort of conclusion. But who is good? And who is evil?
End of Season 6: Well, we’re about to find out, won’t we?
And that’s the interesting part, isn’t it? Has any fictional endeavor ever had so much at stake with its ending?
It is one of the great truths of writing fiction – and I use the term broadly to include novels, short stories, movies and television shows – that endings are the hardest part.
In some genre fiction – particularly the detective novel - the entire point of the exercise is the ending. The butler did it. And television episodes of a certain kind of show are also about the ending. The butler's DNA proves he did it.
But in television series, the ending is rarely the point. Hugely popular shows like M*A*S*H had big finales, and people cared about the ending, but the ending was never the point. Even shows with long narrative arcs aren’t designed to head toward some sort of climax, since the creators never know when it is going to end.
An interesting parallel is The Sopranos. Like Lost, The Sopranos ran for six seasons. Like Lost it had devoted fans and strong ratings (The Sopranos had fewer viewers than Lost, but its ratings were more impressive because it was on pay cable).
The Sopranos finale was a huge cultural event, and millions of Americans believed they had an emotional investment in the finale. And it’s fair to say that most were disappointed and many were enraged. A Journey song playing while the family sits in a diner? No big showdown with the New York gangsters? No answers to unresolved plot lines like the Russian in the woods? No resolution or climax to anything, at all? Even viewers who appreciated what Sopranos auteur David Chase was doing couldn’t help but feel let down.
But Lost has even more at stake. The whole point of the show has been questions and answers, mysteries and puzzles. No Lost viewer in his right mind expects resolution to every puzzle, but we want a satisfying climax, we want an epiphany, we want nothing less than a big a-ha moment that we'll talk about for years after. We want a return on our emotional investment. If we don’t get one, we’ll feel cheated out of the hours of viewing time we’ve dedicated to the show.
This is arguably an unfair proposition. The very fact that the writers have created this level of desire among millions of intelligent viewers* is a feat unto itself.
* Yes, us Losties are more intelligent than the rabble watching The Biggest Loser
But that’s the situation. I wish them luck. I really really wish them luck.
Sidebar: Desert Island Albums
Lost is not without humor, thanks mostly to Hurley and Sawyer, but it is without banter. The inhabitants of the island never just sit around shooting the shit. How great would it have been if they hired Nick Hornby to write an episode where the main characters talk about their desert island albums? It would have been funny, insightful, maybe even created some more puzzles.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share with you my desert island album list. Of course, you need rules for this sort of thing and here are mine: Greatest Hits albums, live albums, and compilations with a unifying theme (covers of an artist, for example) are acceptable, but box collections are not. If you don’t like those rules, write your own damn blog.
Also, please note that these are not my idea of "The Greatest Albums of All Time", or even my personal favorite albums, necessarily. Just the ones I'll need if my plane ever splits in half due to a seismic event over an uncharted island. They are in no particular order, and with apologies to REM, Bruce, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Johnny Cash, and many others...
Astral Weeks, Van Morrison
Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
Legend, Bob Marley
One More From the Road, Lynyrd Skynyrd
London Calling, The Clash
The Last Waltz, The Band
The Christmas Album, Nat King Cole
Making Movies, Dire Straits
Original Musiquarium, Stevie Wonder
Oil Change, Drive Shaft
August and Everything After, Counting Crows
Hard Promises, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Revolver, Beatles
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
