Tomorrow, MLB’s warts will be on display for everyone in the U.S. who has basic cable. CSPAN-3 will be covering the live Congressional hearings with CSPAN-2 running a slimmer — albeit still six hour — version afterwards. In light of all of the bad publicity, one would expect the owners and players to present a positive united front. There is indeed some unity, but I don’t think recent develops cast a particularly positive light on the game. Baseball’s policy, a still-unsigned 27-page document, was released today. Too call it cynical and disingenuous would be an understatement. No mandatory suspensions. No mandatory out-of-season testing. A banned substance list that falls well short of comprehensive and a testing policy that falls short of rigorous.
For those of you who are tuning in, my father will be doing a one-on-one call-in show on CSPAN at 8:30 AM. He’ll then be on Panel 2 during the hearings. And should you think that this proceeding is nothing but grandstanding (and I don’t deny that some of it probably is), I invite you to look at an excellent piece by Keith Olbermann. He rightly points out that baseball has periodically needed a kick in the rear.
Countering claims that his perceived association with the Democratic party helped cost John Kerry the election, Michael Moore asserts that his involvement (combined with other celebs) was actually helpful: “…what we did was we prevented a Bush landslide.”
“For the last month, we’ve had to listen to a lot of conservative pundits talk about how Democrats need to run away from Hollywood,” Moore said. “It’s actually the opposite. Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.”
Moore’s experience is different than mine. Most of the conservatives I know are licking their chops at the prospect of the Democrats’ continuing to court celebrities. On the other hand, those who supported Kerry’s candidacy think that the Democrats need to fundamentally change the way they approach the public. In a country that had endured horrible terrorist attacks, an economic downturn, the disappearance of a balanced budget, and a war whose end the President celebrated with the “Mission Accomplished” landing, but that threatens to be a long-term quagmire, stories are unnecessary. The Bush Administration’s less-than-stellar record needed not the Hollywood touch, but rather some simple clarity. One of the reasons for the mixed message was doubtless the myriad talking heads from Beverly Hills, who for much of America, were de factro proxies for the Democratic party. Moore suggests that Bush “had a more compelling story to tell and the Democrats didn’t.” Interesting, isn’t it? The party that eschews Hollywood was able to develop a clear, consistent narrative, ultimately turning four years of lemon policy into lemonade.
Moore points to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s victory in California as proof that “America loves Hollywood. America loves the people in the movies and on TV. And the thing that the Republicans have already figured out is that America likes to vote for Hollywood…” Perhaps the rabble-rousing filmmaker failed to note that the Governator now leads a state that was handily won by Kerry. California and New York were not in play in the last election; pandering to two coastal powerhouses is not sufficient to elect a president. An inability to recognize that his approach was fundamentally flawed resulted in Ralph Nader’s 2004 candidacy, forever tarnishing his reputation as a force for positive change in the U.S. Michael Moore seems destined to join Nader among the ranks of the American political undead. These vampires stare into the mirror, they remain unable to see what is reflected back.
Everyone’s favorite icon of female sexuality-cum-cultist is sounding off on the U.S. election. In an article on the ABC News Website, the one-time Material Girl said, “In terms of the elections, I don’t agree with so many things and the decisions that George Bush has made and I’m not happy with the situation in Iraq. I do believe that the American public has been manipulated to a great degree.” I have no quarrel with her there. The part that concerns me is the sentence that follows:
“In the end, we have to say, ‘OK, we didn’t win, but there’s other ways to fix the problems, so now what else can I do to help?’ ”
The reason that I’m troubled by the previous sentence is that it seems to be a rhetorical question. Does Madonna really want to know what she can do to help? She can stop pontificating. This election demonstrated quite clearly that she, Puff Daddy/P.Diddy, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, Sean Penn, and a host of others were absolutely ineffective at rallying the Democratic base. I suspect that there are few things on television more galling that rich celebrities pushing their agendas. Interesting, isn’t it, how the Democratic party — the party that looks after labor unions, the poor, and blue collar workers — has been tagged with the elitist label? If one looks at the Democratic platform, it’s quite clear that this isn’t a policy issue, but a marketing issue. So I urge them to get off the boob tube, dig into their pocketbooks, and put their money where their mouths were.
I wonder if my 50 or so daily readers can guess my political affiliation. I don’t think it’s surprising, but what the hell do I know? Anyway, here are some interesting pieces that have caught my eye the past few days.
One of the many (many, many, many, many) things that bothered me about celebrities’ taking to the streets to encourage young people to go to the polls was that they missed the issue. Of course I’d like every eligible voter to take part in the democratic process, but I’d rather have a smaller number of voters who have done their homework than a massive turnout by the ill-informed. Bob Herbert points out that “nearly 70 percent of President Bush’s supporters believe the U.S. has come up with ‘clear evidence’ that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda.” Yikes! How about opening a newspaper because voting in ignorance can undermine the goals of a free society.
Yasir Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize less than a decade ago. Now Thomas Friedman thinks that he’ll be remembered as the man who padded his pockets while standing in the way of a Palestinian state.
Do tax cuts stimulate growth? History seems to bear this out. Do tax cuts curb spending? Au contraire. It seems as if federal spending rises whenever taxes are lowered. That is not a good formula for a healthy economy in the long term.
Much has been made of Karl Rove’s “brilliant” plan to put the “morality” behind sexual preference to a vote. Even my buddy, Doug, suggests this. Although I agree with much of what he wrote in his blog entry, I don’t think that “the gay issue” tipped the election in Bush’s favor. The statistics (and Paul Freedman) seem to agree with me.