Baseball finally, mercifully, ends tonight. Which means that after tonight I can finally start thinking about . . . the next baseball season. The baseball season is dead; long live the baseball season! Oh, and have I mentioned before that I hate the Cardinals? The kind of burning, searing hatred that you could really cook a nice steak on.
Even though Halloween isn't till Monday, this is still the official honorary Halloween party weekend. Come to think of it, what's so sacred about October 31st? Can't we just say that Halloween is the last Saturday in October? I mean, if we can do it for Easter, Thanksgiving, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and MLK Day why can't we do it here? This sounds like the kind of pointless and trivial endeavor that I could really get behind. What cities and/or streets do I have to occupy to get this done?
This year the Delaney household isn't too geared up for Halloween. It's kind of an odd age for Anabelle. She's not yet old enough to really get into the idea of dressing up as something (well, for more than 30 seconds at a time) but she's old enough to rebel against anything we try to dress her up as. She has a cow costume and she tolerates that well, with the exception that she won't wear the bell and isn't too keen on the hood either. In any case, Christy and I will be off to Phil and Liz's 2nd annual Halloween Party tomorrow night. We're trying to come up with a coordinated outfit that incorporates her pregnancy; so far the best we've come up with is Christy being an 8-ball and me being a pool cue. Not sure if that's what we're going to end up with though.
I have been lamenting the lack of good scary movies this Halloween season. For the last 6 years we've always at least had a Saw film. Even though they haven't been any good since 2 it was at least something dependable. Now we're getting annual Paranormal Activity movies and they're just not doing it for me. I saw the first one and thought it was decent but that it was really just an extension of the Blair Witch concept and there's a definite "been there, done that" vibe for me. Even though it's not really horror (more horror spoof) I would like to give a very hearty recommendation to Dale and Tucker vs. Evil. It's a really funny and interesting take on the whole "college kids go to a cabin in the woods and run into a couple rednecks" horror cliche. The studio did this really awkward release with it where it was available on-demand before it got a limited release in theatres. It's still available On-Demand and at Amazon, or you can wait till it's released on DVD/Blu at the end of November. I would urge you not to watch the trailer though; it gives away way too much. And for any of you Serenity/Firefly fans out there, all you really need to know is that it stars Alan Tudyk (aka Wash).
And finally, on Monday this blog will officially be 5-years-old! Wow, it seems like just yesterday I was bringing it home from the blogosphere and it was typing its first words. How time flies! Pretty much the only thing that hasn't changed since then is my place of employment, but I'm working on that.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 07, 2011
My New Children's Book: Curious Hank and the Bad Simile
This story is going to be remembered this way: Hank Williams Jr. compared Obama to Hitler and ESPN fired him for it. It's a perfect microcosm of our news media today: succinct, sensationalized, and completely inaccurate.
First of all I'll put my linguistics/grammar hat on and analyze what HW Jr actually said. He said that Obama and Boehner playing golf together "would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu." So let's parse this down. Suppose that instead of using this poorly conceived wording, he had instead opted to say "Obama and Boehner is like oil and water." Would we then expect the headline to read "HW Jr. Calls Obama Oil". No; that would be nonsensical. But it's just as nonsensical here. The "point" he was trying to make is that Obama and Biden are the enemy and "our guy" (Boehner) should not be fraternizing with the enemy.
The reason it is important to draw this distinction is that when this becomes a "dumb celebrity says dumb thing" story, it completely buries the real issue here. And that's the fact that we have a large contingent of people in this country who believe what HW Jr believes: that Obama and Biden are not political adversaries that need to be engaged, persuaded, and/or voted out, but that they are enemies that need to be alienated and eradicated. Such is the political climate in this country right now. It was not created by the media but they have certainly done their best to stoke the flames. Thus, I did not want to see an apology from HW Jr. for the Hitler comment; I could care less about that. I want an acknowledgement that people on the other side of the political spectrum are not "enemies".
Shockingly, I'm going to make a sports analogy here. My team is the Bears. Every Sunday I want them to beat the living crap out of their opponents. I will get angry when my team loses, and in the middle of the game I don't have fond feelings for the other team. But once the game is over I don't balk when I see players from both teams shake hands and maybe hug in the middle of the field. The game's over, there are winners and losers, and you move on. So it should be in politics. You fight, you win/lose, you shake hands and move on. Opponents today may be allies the next and vice versa. You're not enemies; just on different teams.
The "HW Jr" mentality isn't like that though; it's more akin to gang warfare. You're wearing the wrong colors and therefore you're my enemy and I hope you die. It's sad because politicians generally DO have the NFL and not the gang mentality. You would hope that when the public sees politicians on different sides of the aisle socializing together that it would dawn on them that "hey, they just disagree; they don't actually hate each other." Sadly, that doesn't happen. Politicians could do a lot to help their own cause by placing a lot more emphasis on stating that they are attacking a position and not a person. Yeah, I don't see that happening either.
Now we come to the 2nd part of the story, which is that HW Jr got fired from ESPN as a result of his comments. I've already written about this kind of thing numerous times on here so I won't harp too much. But it's absolutely ridiculous that someone loses their job over something like this. He wasn't on the air representing ESPN, or the NFL, or anyone other than himself. Yeah, it's not technically a violation of his free speech rights since the government isn't doing anything to him, but it's still a croc. It's becoming a de facto law that what you say in public cannot contradict the position of your employer. That's just very dangerous, especially considering that the definition of "in public" is expanding by the day.
First of all I'll put my linguistics/grammar hat on and analyze what HW Jr actually said. He said that Obama and Boehner playing golf together "would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu." So let's parse this down. Suppose that instead of using this poorly conceived wording, he had instead opted to say "Obama and Boehner is like oil and water." Would we then expect the headline to read "HW Jr. Calls Obama Oil". No; that would be nonsensical. But it's just as nonsensical here. The "point" he was trying to make is that Obama and Biden are the enemy and "our guy" (Boehner) should not be fraternizing with the enemy.
The reason it is important to draw this distinction is that when this becomes a "dumb celebrity says dumb thing" story, it completely buries the real issue here. And that's the fact that we have a large contingent of people in this country who believe what HW Jr believes: that Obama and Biden are not political adversaries that need to be engaged, persuaded, and/or voted out, but that they are enemies that need to be alienated and eradicated. Such is the political climate in this country right now. It was not created by the media but they have certainly done their best to stoke the flames. Thus, I did not want to see an apology from HW Jr. for the Hitler comment; I could care less about that. I want an acknowledgement that people on the other side of the political spectrum are not "enemies".
Shockingly, I'm going to make a sports analogy here. My team is the Bears. Every Sunday I want them to beat the living crap out of their opponents. I will get angry when my team loses, and in the middle of the game I don't have fond feelings for the other team. But once the game is over I don't balk when I see players from both teams shake hands and maybe hug in the middle of the field. The game's over, there are winners and losers, and you move on. So it should be in politics. You fight, you win/lose, you shake hands and move on. Opponents today may be allies the next and vice versa. You're not enemies; just on different teams.
The "HW Jr" mentality isn't like that though; it's more akin to gang warfare. You're wearing the wrong colors and therefore you're my enemy and I hope you die. It's sad because politicians generally DO have the NFL and not the gang mentality. You would hope that when the public sees politicians on different sides of the aisle socializing together that it would dawn on them that "hey, they just disagree; they don't actually hate each other." Sadly, that doesn't happen. Politicians could do a lot to help their own cause by placing a lot more emphasis on stating that they are attacking a position and not a person. Yeah, I don't see that happening either.
Now we come to the 2nd part of the story, which is that HW Jr got fired from ESPN as a result of his comments. I've already written about this kind of thing numerous times on here so I won't harp too much. But it's absolutely ridiculous that someone loses their job over something like this. He wasn't on the air representing ESPN, or the NFL, or anyone other than himself. Yeah, it's not technically a violation of his free speech rights since the government isn't doing anything to him, but it's still a croc. It's becoming a de facto law that what you say in public cannot contradict the position of your employer. That's just very dangerous, especially considering that the definition of "in public" is expanding by the day.
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