Grade This! - Spring Break Edition
The weekly wrap-up with a little politics, a lot of television and sports. We’re going light on you as you bask in the glory of a hard-earned vacation. Back to class on Monday, folks.
Nerds vs. Jocks: Senators Settle Score With Major League Baseball
Sweeping aside inferior complaints like Abu Ghraib, the outing of Valerie Plame and vindictive leaks of classified information by top government officials, Tom Davis’s (R-VA) House Government Reform Committee got down to business this Thursday with an exhaustive investigation into the grave matter of…steroids in baseball. It was, if not the best use of Congress’s time, at least a lot of fun to watch. Struggling to fit into their seats, the mountain muscled sluggers of Major League Baseball recited their love for baseball, America and small children one after the other, in vain attempts to placate our country’s guardians against government corruption and fraudulent home run records. The most touching moment came when former home run king Mark McGwire, his neck pouring over his collar and bunching up towards his chin on all sides, broke into tears, so moved was he by…his own commitment to abused children. Not that those red faced tears distracted us from noticing McGwire was the only player not to deny using steroids.
Government Reform Committee: B+ (Hey, it was good TV)
Major League Baseball’s Testing Policy: D
Mark McGwire’s work with abused children: A
Mark McGwire’s likely abuse of steroids: F
Jon Baskin, Progress Report
Mighty Morphin’ PR Ranger
MTV’s latest entry into its ongoing pseudo-celebrity reality wankathon, Power Girls, focuses on four interchangeable wanna-be divas at Lizzie Grubman Public Relations. The women plan parties, complain about each other, and jostle for Grubman’s favor. This miniature hothouse of nothingness is self important, unbearably meta (the newest entry in a genre obsessed with celebrity is a show about being obsessed with celebrity on a channel that has lately been in the business of making bozos into uber-celebrities), and so completely void of substance that it nearly folds in on itself. Ms. Grubman herself drops in occasionally to feed celebrity dirt to tabloids or bask in the glowing admiration of her lackeys; somehow there’s no mention of the 2002 incident in which she backed her SUV into a crowd at a Hamptons party. What do you know, Lizzie’s a celebrity!
PoweR Girls: D
Lizzie Grubman’s personal PR makeover: A-
Jacob Ganz, Washington D.C.
Using American Idol to Bluff Through an NCAA Pool
When my office first opened its NCAA pool last year, I had no intention of joining – I have never followed a team sport, much less wagered money on one. I know nothing of basketball, but I did learn a thing or two about single elimination competitions from American Idol – namely, that one poor showing can abruptly land you out of the game, no matter how well you’ve performed up to that point. Armed with this wisdom along with some cursory internet research, I submitted my five bucks, made my picks and plunged into the pool. After leading a fifty-person pool for the first half of the tournament, my luck ran out on Syracuse and I lost my five dollars.
Applicability of wisdom gained by watching American
Idol: A-
Entering NCAA pool as a good use of money: D+
Likelihood of me ever entering an office NCAA pool
again: B
Sam Brenner, Partnership for Public Service
Bolton to UN, Wolfowitz to World Bank
There was a brief shining moment when President Bush appointed country clubish Republican / semi-multilaterist trading guy Robert Zoellick to be the new Deputy Secretary of State—instead of appointing, say, neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz or ultraconservative John Bolton to that job—and people might have thought there was a shred of hope that the Administration might return to the kind of not-inspiring-but-at-least-not-insane foreign policy of the Bush 41/Scowcroft/Rice I years. That day is done. As Undersecretary of State in this Administration and as a long-time right-winger, Bolton has consistently slammed the UN, other international institutions, other countries, and almost anything else that moves that isn’t American. Now, President Bush has nominated Bolton to be our … Ambassador to the UN! Meanwhile, as Deputy Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz was a key architect of the deceptively-marketed, poorly-conceived, and horribly-executed Iraq war and reconstruction. In the past, he has aggressively swatted away suggestions that there is a connection between poverty and violent unrest. Now President Bush proposes to put this bad manager and cloudy thinker in charge of the World Bank and its quest to fight poverty and build opportunity. When President Bush did his weird little heh-heh Beavis and Butthead laugh at this week’s press conference (don’t even need ya, Gannonball!) the joke, unfortunately, was on us. Hard-headed, serious national security policy means seizing opportunities, not swaggering around making over-the-top, irresponsible statements and being a slave to ideology.
Selection of Zoellick: B (given the alternatives)
Selection of Wolfowitz: D- (extra points for praising democracy)
Selection of Bolton: F+ (extra point for some good nonproliferation efforts but, still, wrong man for job)
David Halperin, Campus Progress
Food For Thought
I can, without much effort, imagine the seed that sprouted the new crop of ads from the Grain Foods Foundation. Starchy executives panicked at the loss of consumers who have tossed bread for low-carb diets try to instill equivalent fear in Americans by painting Atkins adherents as self-destructive. Billboards sport vague threats such as, “Your brain needs carbohydrates to function properly” and “Carbohydrates help muscles recover faster and grow stronger” and “Folic acid in enriched grain foods helps prevent birth defects.” Loaves of bread double as body parts accompanied by the tagline, “Bread. It’s Essential.” There’s no chance these ads will make bread sexy, but they’re not all empty calories. It’s a valiant effort, and if nothing else, they’re yeast for some amusing sci-fi scenarios. Picture it: you wake up one morning, only to discover that everyone on Atkins has suddenly lost proper brain function! Crazy lean zombies! With mutant carnivorous babies in their wombs! At least they’ll have under-developed musculatures.
Grainpower advertisements: B
Composure of GFF in the face of fad diets: C-
Bread: A
Jacob Ganz, Washington D.C.
Little Rascal
Robert Blake’s story is that he went back into the restaurant to retrieve his gun and meanwhile someone else shot the grifter-turned-Mrs. Blake whom he despised. No sign of another killer or someone else’s motive, but no gun or eyewitness either. Reasonable doubt maybe. But he got away with murder. And that’s the name of that tune. Next tune: “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” —the Phil Spector trial.
“Baretta” TV show: C+
Dominick Dunne’s sympathy for Blake despite being “almost always pro-prosecution” because Blake is a lovable old Hollywood rascal (and former Little Rascal): C+
Grifters who prey on and deceive lonely people: F
Murdering people: F
Back To Mono 3 CD Phil Spector anthology: A
Kendra Brown, Tacoma, Washington
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