Shame, Shame

Doug Gillett is at SB Nation Atlanta, doing his part to make the college football offseason roll by a little quicker by trying to find out which of the many rivals could count as the Georgia Bulldogs' biggest.

Last week, he asked which rival is the most fun to beat. One guess as to which team got the most votes.

This week, he's asking which rival brings the most shame in a loss. I know that I'm in a minority. Our Atlanta-centric fan-base will answer this question resoundingly with "Georgia Tech."

Look, I completely understand that answer. But for me, that team is Auburn.

When it comes to the Bees, I understand they're going to catch the Dawgs every once in a great while. They'll just be up for the game, the Dawgs won't and the story will write itself in a close loss. The braying of their more obnoxious fans is more comical than anything else, and I feel no shame listening to them prance about the internets because they've won one football game this decade.

Auburn, on the other hand, is a more evenly matched foe for the Dawgs. Their fans have tasted the sweet nectar of championships, no matter how they were acheived. When they beat Georgia, they just kind of pat Dawg fans on the back and act as if their victory was always assured, has been in the past, and always will be.

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Misinformation

On Sunday, John Stewart went on Fox News and claimed that Fox viewers are the "most consistently misinformed media viewers."

Politifact looks at some polling data and calls this claim false. (HT: Andrew Sullivan.)

I read the Politifact article and I have only one word: bullshit.

The devil is in the details, folks. While Fox viewers have demonstrated a high capacity for answering questions like "who is the Vice President," "who is the British Prime Minister," and "which political party controls the US House of Representatives" that wasn't the kind of thing Stewart was talking about.

These are all current events questions, and those only tell part of the story of viewers being misinformed. To gauge the true level of mininformed viewer, you have to go into the narratives.

Questions that may prove Stewart correct, on the other hand:

1. Barack Obama was born in what country?
2. What religion does Barack Obama follow?
3. Has Barack Obama increased federal income taxes?
4. Did Barack Obama sign into law the bank bailout, known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program?
5. Is the Dow Jones Industrial Average higher or lower than when Barack Obama took office?
6. How many women is New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner accused of having sex with?
7. Radical Islamic fundamentalists are planning to build a victory mosque at what location in the United States of America?
8. How many state governments operate under Sharia law?
9. How many United States Supreme Court Justices are Muslims?
10. True or False: The majority of United States Democratic office holders are members of the Communist Party.
11. In what Midwestern state did public sector union members riot when their Republican governor eliminated their right to collectively bargain in early 2011?
12. How many states have outlawed Christmas-themed displays on private property?
13. Which United States President famously included Death Panels in their proposed health care overhaul?
14. What foreign nation did Sarah Palin claim to see from her house?
15. Would a Federal income tax rate of 37% be an increase or a decrease for most Americans?
16. What year did the United States Supreme Court overturn Barack Obama's ban on gun ownership?
17. Earlier this year, Barack Obama sided with violent Muslim Brotherhood protesters to overthrow the pro-American leader of what Middle Eastern nation?
18. Operatives of ACORN were convicted of voter fraud in how many states?
19. Which former United States President signed a law granting amnesty to illegal immigrants if they entered the country before 1982?
20. In what year did Barack Obama sign a Presidential Order creating the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)?

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"The United States of Stepford"

Maitri puts American puritan cultural hypocracy on blast. In a just world, this would be more than a t-shirt slogan:

Get over it, you frustrated, misprioritizing tensionball of a nation just waiting to burst.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey quotes Glenn Greenwald, who's also calling for a realistic perspective.

You know who's not calling for perspective? GOP Chair Reince Preibus. But I've got two words and four letters for RP: David Vitter. STFU.

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Credibility Matters (Mea Culpa Update)

Well, I guess that's one that Breitbart finally got right. Now this is all we'll hear about, regardless of his long line of previous failures, lies, misrepresentations, and video splices. He and his cohorts are still deeply in the red when it comes to credibility, and they remain so.

Especially because who Congressman Weiner flirts with - even inappropriately and outside his marriage, even over the internet - is only anyone's business if A) he did something illegal or B) if he ran campaigns based on "traditional family values."

Hell, there's a fairly high-value US Senator from the state of Louisiana who survived a much more sordid scandal, and he focuses almost exclusively on family values issues. Of course, he'd never have to feel threatened by the likes of Breitbart & Co....

Though in the age of the internet, I am constantly shocked to find out how many dudes, especially those with high profile jobs, think they can get away with this kind of drunken, college level type behavior. This is bush league stuff, and lacks class. At some point, fellas, it is time to start behaving like grown-ups.

But unless there's something we haven't heard yet, someone's position as a US Congressman is beholden only to voters and the law. Being a classless tool is not a career ending offense last time I checked.

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Credibility Matters

Look, I don't know a lot about New York congressman Anthony Weiner, and I really don't have the time to follow him closely. I think maybe I've seen some video of him in the past, probably regarding the "GOP's War on Women" narrative, and that was the last time I heard about him.

Which is probably why I'm I'm hearing about him now.

Of course, I'd find the whole thing far move believable if the first people to report on the scandal weren't the credibility deficit-running likes of Andrew Brietbart & Co. One of the golden rules of prank-playing is to let someone else discover your handiwork, so your involvement isn't immediately clear to anyone paying attention.

But after Brietbart's reporting on ACORN and NPR were proven to be manufactured, and after the Big Prankster spliced Shirley Sherrod's anti-racism speech into the last Common Sista Soulja music video and called it "news," his involvement with any story degrades its crediblity almost to the point of laughability.

Weiner could have made a solid case that his Twitter and Yfrog accounts were hacked in the first place. Brietbart's almost immediate involvement in the scandal-story only solidifies Weiner's claims, and tells us all we really need to know about this.

How does this get MSM play, though?

I've explained in the past why the GOP, with their lock-step talking points and reliance on winning elections based on emotional cultural issues rather than effective policy goals, is more vulnerable to scandal "coattails" than the Democrats. When your whole party choses to die on the hill of "traditional values," and the folks standing with you on "traditional values" get caught in decidedly non-traditional scandals, you're more likely to all look like fools. You all get hit with the charge of hypocricy, and the photos you took together get rolled out come election time (with typically mixed results based on your voting base).

The Dems, on the other hand, hardly agree on policy matters, much less talking points or stances on values. That's why Democratic sex scandals usually only affect those who engage in illicit behavior, and the staffers who help them keep things covered up. The scandal coattails usually don't extend very far (outside a typical demographic), even though the other side spends limitless talk radio wattage to do so.

And that's the rub. That's why right-wing operatives go to such lengths to try and manufacture scandals surrounding Democratic, liberal, progressive, and left-wing operatives, even when plenty of real (but boring) policy failures exist. These scandals A) play to the base, who love to hear a good scandal like the tabloid followers they are, B) pay the bills, because fake scandals = page views and advertising dollars, and to some limit C) control the narrative, because "Democratic Congressman Tweets Lewd Photo" is a headline people everywhere will remember if it gets picked up by the MSM.

What I can't figure out is why the MSM keeps falling for Brietbart's scams. Then I remember that he and his folks are running five or six or seventy of these types of scams every week, and not even the MSM can keep up.

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"Barbecue" Rymes with "Argue"

Though mostly good natured arguing. Because at the heart of the matter, we are talking about sharing food with family, community, and culture,. Sauce and style have become more of a team effort in the internet age. Wear your Eastern Carolina jersey proudly, y'all, I'll be over here onboard the Southern Soul train reppin' Island City barbecue 'till I die.

Where I grew up in Georgia, we had a lot of barbecue at a lot of different places. Some was pork, some was beef, some was chicken or sausage or venison cooked over the same coals. Because if you've already got the coals working, what's the harm in more meat over the fire?

There was usually a selection of sauces: vinegar based, tomato based, mustard based. There were even flavors: hot, sweet, and regular. And you could order it chopped or pulled.

Now that I live in New Orleans, there is cochon-de-lait. Which is either very similar or entirely different from "barbecue" depending on who you are talking to. And, of course, barbecue shrimp - which is its own culinary category altogether.

For some folks, "barbecue" is a noun: the pork and/or beef that is cooked for a long time at "low" heat over a pit of coals. Chicken or sausage or venison didn't count as "barbecue," but were just the sauce covered side-items to the "barbecue."

For others "barbecue" is the verb of cooking any or all meats at "low" heat over a pit of coals. As someone who grew up in Coastal Georgia, this is the closest to my cultural upbringing.

Though there is one line I draw with my inclusiveness: grillin' is not barbecue.

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Politics & Football

Most sports blogs I read try to stay away from politics as best they can. Hell, one of the reasons I started this weblog six years ago was so my friends and I would have a place to chew on politics away from the tailgate.

But with so much public money tied up in sports, at the college and professional levels, sometimes those paths are going to cross. This is what happens when they do.

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The New Belt

I'll let Cliff tell you about it.

[S]top saying we are in a crisis and just explain what’s really going on. The rich and corporations want to keep all of the money they can and have the power to make more with no restrictions. The middle class can’t be taxed anymore without starting a revolution and the poor have no lobbyists. When you don’t have enough money coming in to pay for what you have and you are not willing to do anything to change that something has to go.

Another friend summed it up thus:

America: Where the people with most of the money have convinced the people with some money that the people with no money are the greedy ones.

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Tu Quoque

Newsflash: human beings still prone to outbursts of violence, threats of violence, advocacy of violent policies and behaviors, and extreme cases of government sanctioned violence - regardless of religion or political affiliation.

One of the dumbest things about stereotyping and demonizing one group of people for a universal human flaw is the cognitive dissonance required to ignore your own demographic's similar behaviors.

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That Baptist Ain't Right

Another Georgia small-town blog. I've only read through posts made in March, and I'm already a fan.

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For the Record

They're just calling it "The Report."

The full version is a massive, 150 page excoriation of a police department that has structurally operated outside the law far too often for far too long. The executive summary alone reads like 19 page thriller novel of every Hollywood stereotype associated with the "bad cops." But you keep scrolling down to another example of malfeasance and miscarried justice. Some of these couldn't be made up.

Some folks have a lot to say about it. Others don't have to say much at all. They are truly the ones most vindicated by these findings, as they have been telling everyone who would listen what has really been going on for painfully far too long. They have been the ones telling us how deep the cancer grows.

And now the United States Department of Justice has concluded their investigation, and we find out just how right those voices have been.

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The Furnace

Editor B describes the blogging of Ashley Morris.

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Sports Tawk

Yule unnerstan wen yoo click awnit.

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Japan vs. New Orleans

This train is never late.

There are many comparisons and contrasts that reporters and punditry could make between the disasters in Japan and the disasters in New Orleans. A short list could include a comparison where officials ignored warnings of impending danger, you could contrast the differences in response, or you could examine the parallels of energy safety failures.

Instead of those policy failures at the hands of highly placed officials, who have so often let us down while serving as mouthpieces for well-moneyed interests let us focus on the "real" story here - why there isn't any "looting" going on in Japan.

You don't have to wonder what they're trying to say.

But if we're going to go down this road, maybe we should ask why certain Japanese citizens and local police didn't start gunning down other citizens for "looting".

Update: You knew the narrative would get busted (at least in some quarters). The news is just in - the Japanese people are just as human as the rest of us, and while they might be more "culturally resillient" in the face of many natural disasters, they still experience thieves at a fire like all other cultures.

Update 2: Yet another comparison between Japan & New Orleans and the corners cut that made local energy infrastructure unsafe. More deregulation, anyone?

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Unions Oversimplified

Saw this easy to distribute explanation of unions on Facebook. It is a stunning oversimplification, that revises whatever history it doesn't ignore. Unions have problems and so do state budgets, to be sure, but why can't those folks who play "conservatives" on quirky internet videos discuss the real issues? Why do they feel they have to make stuff like this up?

Once these clowns are done destroying the rights of free Americans to assemble and petition for grievances from their employers, I can't wait to see what other civil rights they go after.

The quirky video they make to explain how integrated schools are bad is going to be a doozy!

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The Five Hour Abita Twitter Revolution

Twitter isn't just for toppling Middle Eastern autocrats, anymore. Down in Louisiana, outrage can be expressed and dealt with swiftly, when beverages are at stake. This was over before I even realized it existed.

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This

I can't remember the exact moment during my first year of teaching when I realized every one of my students, colleagues and I had been set up to fail, and there was no way out of the trap, but it felt a little like this.

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Two Acts of Violence

There are tens of thousands on the streets right now demonstrating support for Labor and "liberal" causes. So why isn't the mainstream media telling you about all the incidents of violence these thugs are accountable for? Because the list really isn't that long.

If you want the media to treat conservative activists as generally good people who have bad apples and assholes in their midst, you have to treat left-wing activists the same way.

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Outlaw Tunes

First-Draft has more video footage of continued union "thuggery" in Wisconsin.

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"Quirky Strategies"

Continuing the New Orleans Needs a Population Explosion line of thought, Brad Vogel envisions the use of "quirky strategies" to encourage young entreprenuers to move to New Orleans.

We need to break through the static to attract residents from around that nation and beyond. Detroit, to cite one tactic worth pondering, is basically giving away houses to attract residents. Lately, the Louisiana Land Trust is sending rafts of hundreds of blighted New Orleans houses through the demolition approval process – although these properties could instead be sold off very inexpensively to prospective residents looking for a true fixer upper. While there are daunting legal logistics to overcome, it’s time to start brainstorming about things as unorthodox as a vacant house lottery on a national television program – how about The Colbert Report — in which a well-known New Orleanian – Wendell Pierce? — who invites people to come on down not just to grab beignets at Cafe du Monde, but to fix up a camelback in St. Roch and live here, even if the living is a bit spartan at first.

While I agree in concept with the increased population model, I do not think New Orleans needs to "look outside the box" or develop "quirky strategies." I find that kind of thought process counterproductive, as it does not address the controllable root causes of either the blight or emigration problems. As a matter of fact, I think it covers them up in an effort to "trick" prospective residents to move here and fix up homes, going so far as to use the term "bait."

I know we live in Louisiana, and crying "Tiger Bait!" is the counterintuitive rallying cry for the local college football franchise, but "bait" is usually employed to lure some unsuspecting creature into a trap that doesn't turn out well in the end.

"Thinking outside the box" in a productive way would actually require New Orleanians to rely on significant and lasting civic reform instead of hip marketing or appearances on the Colbert Report. Just as you can't advertise BP's oil off the beaches of Mississippi (as Jeffrey spent the better part of last year reminding us), you can't advertise your way out of urban blight.

You don't "bait" new residents to move to New Orleans by offering to give away ramshackle homes in high-risk neighborhoods. If it were that easy, the city would be full already. At some point, you have to figure out that the folks who want to come here to live that "urban pioneer" lifestyle < / rolling eyes > have already done so. That type of marketing is basically preaching to the choir, and you need to expand your marketing demographic if you really want to bring in new residents.

That means you have to figure out what institutional practices are driving people out or keeping people out of New Orleans in the first place, despite the climate and culture and all the advantages of the area. You have to figure out what is keeping people who already live here from addressing these issues themselves. That involves a lot of civic introspection, and a lot of difficult political and cultural work.

It may not be as trendy as sending Wendell Pierce to the Colbert Report, but that is the only way to sustain a robust, dynamic, sustainable and realisitic population expansion.

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