Bryan Joiner

Football Sunday: An Odyssey

For the first time this year, I headed out to the bar to watch the Patriots. And oh, what a decision!

From the friendly confines of O’Keefe’s on Court Street in Brooklyn, fivethirtyeight.com and I watched the late-afternoon games over Jamesons, alternatively splashed and on the rocks. There were also beers, but not until overtime of the Jets/Bills game. Which was later. These things take time.

For the first time this season, yr. author skipped the 1 p.m. games at home. After a long day on Smith Street enjoying the college football action—and arguing the merits of our public education system—I was football’d out by the time Vikings/Ravens rolled around. I was even man enough to head over the lady’s house for some Trader Joe’s Indian food and some HGTV. DO YOU REALIZE THE TYPE OF HOUSE YOU CAN GET IN CHICAGO FOR $600,000? I bet you didn’t, because you were sucked in by Giants/Saints.

(That is not an altogether bad thing.)

I came home in the “Feels like 36 degrees” weather only to head back out to the bar at 4:15, as Joe Flacco was setting his team up to miss a game-winning field goal. Nevermore, bitches! There was no place to sit at O’Keefe’s due to the preponderance of Eagles fans. One World Series isn’t enough, their demeanor said. It’s hard not to respect that. Then the Eagles lost to the Raiders. Then the situation changed.

John Doe has the upper hand. Or maybe JaMarcus Russell.

I was throwing back whiskey-and-waters as I watched the Eagles choke, and the Patriots exert their dominance over the hapless Titans. 59-0? That’s the biggest Patriot win in history. Tom Brady threw 5 touchdowns in the second quarter alone. That’s also a team record. Also: an NFL record. My favorite part was everything. But something ringed in the back of my head. A question.

Isn’t football bad?

It’s true: after reading Malcolm Gladwell’s article on the consequences of football hits, it’s hard to retain the same enthusiasm for the game that I did before. There’s basically a concussion on every play. We may not be long from a maximum age of 30. That the NFL is underwriting studies that may torpedo the league is the height of irony, but it was inevitable. The game is simply too violent to continue unabated. I think. But I digress, because Pats/Titans didn’t involve a lot of hitting, unless the football hitting the endzone after being spiked counts. Take that, “No Fun League!”

I will admit: I partook of everything that was advertised during the NFL game. “Tailgate tested? Tailgate approved!” Really, Miller Lite? THEN BRING IT ON! It’s the best way to enjoy the Pats, according to the people on TV. Saving that money to enjoy it at home, or just kicking back with an-ice cold soda? Humbug!

In the end, I schlepped my drunk ass after the game to Trader Joe’s, where I was too glassy-eyed to find Indian food, but I managed to buy $20 worth of pizza, burritos and french onion soup. It is, I am told, good value. Enough to offset the nearly $30 I spent on booze at the bar? Probably! Let’s face it: I’m going to drink either way, so I might as well make money on the back end. The Pats’s 59 points don’t carry over, but I can make sure my buzz translates into savings. I can apply that savings to things that really matter, like real estate. Don’t you know what kind of house you can get for $600,000?

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October 18, 2009

Bryan Joiner does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Of all the posts I’ve written for this blog, the one that reliably gets the most return hits—even years later—is one entitled “Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle,” about a blog with something close to that name. Apparently, people who love crossword puzzle blogs also love to read about crossword puzzle blogs, which is something I never would have anticipated. In fact, having not read the post since I originally wrote it, I couldn’t tell you what’s in it offhand.

I will, however, read it now. Here it is, in its entirety:

I just noticed that I have been added to the sidebar at Rex Parker Does The NYT Crossword, a blog that tackles my the NYT XWord with far more skill and panache than I do — and wanted to direct anyone interested over there. If you like the puzzle at all, it’s worth a look. The drawings by Emily Cureton are pretty special as well.

In fact, I was thinking of entering the annual crossword tournament in Brooklyn just after reading the blog. On the same note, I took the annual Jeopardy! online test on Tuesday. It did not go so well.

I distinctly remember the fallout from this—”Rex Parker” himself (a pseudonym)—wrote a comment admonishing me to enter the tournament. I did not, partially because of the expense involved and partially because the train ride from Astoria to downtown Brooklyn is a pain in the ass, and one not worth it for someone of my skill level. The New York Times crossword puzzle gets harder as the week goes on, and at the time, it took me a long Saturday of staring into a mostly-blank grid, scouring through every esoteric index in my brain to fill even half the puzzle. Despite what sounds like a cordial and warming atmosphere, I would have been paying upwards of $200 to come and get squashed like bug.

Now, things have changed. I do the puzzle every day, and I’m okay enough not to feel like I’m throwing my money away. More importantly, I moved to within four blocks of the Brooklyn Marriott, which hosts the convention. It was a complete coincidence, as far as you know.

What I’ve learned about the puzzle, though, goes beyond common answers like golfers Ernie Els and Isao Aoki, who were blessed to be born with short, vowel-started last names. Last year my grandfather died, which was kind of expected and kind of surprising. He was 90 years old and had lived through a long list of illnesses that never outwardly bothered him. He just kept pulling through and pulling through, and it never seemed like the last time was ever at hand.

Well, the two things I remember about my grandfather is that he was always doing crossword puzzles and taught me how to play chess. Not only that, but the only time I would play chess was with him—I love the game, but it’s hard for me to reconcile the intimacy of the game with non-family members. I can play my brothers, but if I play someone else, it’s uncomfortable. I’d rather beat their ass in Scrabble, or get my clock cleaned in checkers.

When my grandfather was not playing chess, though, he annihilated crossword puzzles. He was a quiet, mischievous WWII veteran and I’m a babbling, occasionally bumbling post-Draft city boy, and I have the exact same hobby. It’s certainly not an intentional homage (as much as I love my grandfather); it’s just something I love to do. To that end, I get upset whenever I hear crosswords or their constructors described in critical terms, which can happen. Everything that has an obsessive subculture can foster these sorts of things, and in truth, it probably makes the end product better over the long run. But for me, puzzles have always been about joy, and I think most puzzle lovers are in my camp. This year, I’m going to find out for certain. I’ll be the guy at the tournament with the smile on my face from start to finish. I probably won’t be the only one.

If any of the readers of this blog also like crosswords, today’s NYT puzzle is one of the finest Sunday puzzles I’ve ever seen and well worth your time, FWIW, and the partial inspiration for this post.

October 16, 2009

Into Thin Air

UPDATES: About 20 minutes after I posted this, I was sent the Balloon Boy Game. I know what I’m doing all morning. And then there’s this, which is just awesome—the Balloon Boy adventure as the Fresh Prince song, in Facebook comments. h/t TA.

The Balloon Boy story didn’t make sense from the beginning.

“URGENT,” a tweet from the Europe-based Breaking News Online blared over my Tweetdeck, “Six-year-old stuck in a hot air balloon near Denver.”

I wasn’t sure how that was urgent, to me, sitting at my computer in New York. Still, I pointed my browser over to CNN.com, where I saw a photo of the UFO-like spycraft floating east across Colorado. The whole thing sounded horrifying: a six-year-old kid had gotten into the inflated apparatus, unhitched it from the Earth, and had flown away? It sounded like a tragedy, or at least TV movie, in the making.

Doubt started to creep in when I heard the TV newsers describe the dirigible. I alternatingly heard that the compartment in which 6-year-old Falcon was stuck was made of “thin plywood” and then “cardboard,” leading the TV announcers to speculate that “he may have fallen out.” I came to a different conclusion: if the cab was that flimsy, how would the thing take off in the first place? Wouldn’t he just fall out the bottom?

But no. His brother had seen him elevate, flying far, far away. The ship kept going, and police needed to find a way to stop it.

I took an informal poll on Twitter, searching for solutions to a problem that sounds like something you’d hear at a job interview for a consulting agency. A six-year-old is stuck inside of a helium balloon. It will explode if ignited, and if it lands too hard, he will die. How do you save him? Responses included a net, a harpoon, and a Patriot Missile (that one was helpful). I thought that if a helicopter could get above the balloon, and match its speed of roughly 30 miles per hour, they could drop light weights on it and gradually bring it toward the ground.

Not a perfect solution, I know. But it was something.

As the drama unfolded, we learned more about the family. They were featured on ABC’s Wife Swap twice, the premise of which is that you’re a crazy family that will do anything for money. Why is it okay that America’s most family-focused network features a show that is directly inspired by ’70s-style key parties, and no one seems bothered by this? Of course, maybe a wife swap would have helped in this case, because maybe a replacement spouse would have pointed out the folly of keeping an INFLATED HELIUM BALLOON LOOSELY TIED UP IN THE YARD WITH A CABIN BIG ENOUGH FOR A SIX-YEAR-OLD.

But I digress.

Soon enough, the balloon crashed in a dirt field. Cops and paramedics were on the scene in no time, and found no kid. He wasn’t there, and they soon devised an alternate theory: Falcon hadn’t flown at all, and would reveal himself soon enough. This is, of course, exactly what happened. Within a couple hours, he was found in the attic of his house, napping through the drama. He was the one who had the good sense not to watch. We could learn something.

On Larry King Live last night, Falcon inadvertently put his dad in an odd position when he said that he had been instructed to do something “for the show.” Dad got defensive and tried to explain it away. Cops are now looking into the whole episode as a hoax, but what does it matter? The damage has been done. That’s two hours of my life I’m not getting back and frankly, I’m glad the kid’s okay, physically speaking. Psychologically, who knows. Maybe this was just a huge accident, and his parents are just as down-to-Earth as the rest of us and have an explanation for everything. I’d just be surprised if it wasn’t flimsier than cardboard.

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October 15, 2009

Why I’m Skipping Blogs with Balls

One thing I’m not doing today is getting on a plane and going to Las Vegas. I’m not watching out the window as we pass over the Alleghenies, the Great Plains, the Rockies and, finally, the desert. I’m not, upon arrival, dropping 50 cents into a slot machine at McCarran Airport, and being happily greeted by the blast of hot air just outside baggage claim. And I’m not attending the Blogs With Balls 2.0 convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

I don’t think the conventioneers will take it as a real loss. Many of the sites that will be represented get more hits in an hour than I get in a month. Plus, I’m not really a sports blogger. I’ve tried, again and again (and again), but I can’t write about sports day in and day out. I find pretty much everything fascinating, inside and outside the lines. On the Internet, that’s a liability. The best way for success online is to find a small, unlit corner of the web and make it your own. Not like “Covering Cleveland sports” specific, but like “Covering Cleveland sports and gambling, taking a unique progressive/libertarian/Republican stand on social and political issues, and tying every post together under the guise of a curse against the region perpetuated the racist mascot for the Cleveland Indians” specific.

The blog in question is Cleveland Frowns. It’s written by one of my friends and it’s one of my favorite. Its proprietor is in the air as we speak, probably enjoying a complementary tomato juice and getting his “game face” on. This is the second Blogs With Balls convention in less than a year, and he’s attended both. The networking opportunities are unmatched: all the heavy hitters in this relatively new genre will be there.

But the whole thing strikes me as fundamentally odd. If blogging is the way of the future, why are sports bloggers meeting at a convention—an increasingly outdated mode of gathering and exchanging information? Doesn’t the Internet, the very thing that makes this convention possible, also make it redundant?

I’m not begrudging people’s chance to have a good time. If they enjoy hanging out with people they’ve never met, or only “met” online, that’s fine with me. Put $50 on black and toss back some G-and-T’s. They’re free!

What does affect me is the quality of sports blogging that I read on a daily basis. And I think that sports blogging needs a resolute kick in the pants if it’s ever going to be taken seriously.

What sports bloggers need to understand is that they’re no fundamentally different than the sportswriters to whom they are “alternative.” If Peter Gammons was born in 1985, he’d probably be a blogger today, and if Deadspin founder Will Leitch was born in the 1940s, he’d be the guy at the daily newspaper cranking out columns for you to hate. The point is, there’s nothing about blogging that exempts it from the rules of any other consumption. It needs to be interesting and fresh, sure, but it also needs to be true. And the more work you put into any one post, the better it will be. Bloggers need to focus less on how to increase their hits via keywords and headlines—though these are important—and more on how to reach out to teams, players and other writers to make their work better.

Bloggers have come a long way, the work only gets harder from here. Maybe that’s the point of the convention, but it seems more like a celebration to me of something that’s not yet worth the self-congratulations. Blogging is still an alternative to the mainstream, and simply outlasting the dinosaurs isn’t going to change that. Bringing light into a bigger corner of the Internet will. The better bet might not be to squeeze your arms into coach class, but to stretch them out, as it were, at home.

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October 14, 2009

The MLB Playoffs: Who Cares What FOX Wants?

One of my pet peeves kicks into high gear every October with the baseball playoffs, which invariably pit a few teams from large markets like New York, Boston and Los Angeles versus teams from smaller markets like Minnesota, Oakland and St. Louis. The conversation will go something like this:

ME: “Who do you think is going to make the World Series?”

YOU: “Well, FOX wants Yankees/Dodgers, I’m sure.”

I’m not sure there’s ever been a less interesting line of logic than this, but it seems to have invaded our national sports-watching culture. We’re constantly intrigued by what series will get the highest ratings, to the point that we’ve substituted this type of thinking for our own. I’m not saying that these observations are wrong; to say that FOX (yes, the network spells its name in all CAPITAL LETTERS, just to make the point) would prefer higher ratings to lower ones is probably not going to far out on a limb. It’s the implication that bothers me. If you’re concerned enough about what the networks want to speak it aloud, you probably want it too, and there’s a strong chance you won’t watch a Twins/Cardinals game.

I’m not telling you what to watch. But as Jerry Seinfeld famously said, we’re rooting for laundry out there. What does it matter where that laundry is washed and folded?

Recently, there’s been an attack on subjective baseball terminology by the more statistically religious members of baseball’s enormous fanbase. Words like “clutch” and “heart” should not be applied, they say, because they cannot be measured. Baseball analysts should stick with what is known, like batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. These things exist, they say. These measurements provide the framework for the game that is going to be played, and they are just as quantifiable as the size of cities.

The bigger the city, of course, the bigger the television market. The bigger the market, the more money the team has coming in. The more money the team has coming in, the better the players they’re able to sign. If you spend your money well, every extra half-million people probably nets you at least one more win a year. In markets like New York and L.A., those wins will add up quickly.

If the stat guys are right (and by and large, I believe they are), the playing field is fundamentally unfair. How is a team like the Cleveland Indians supposed to compete year in and year out? The last two A.L. Cy Young winners came from the Tribe, and this year they’ll both start game one of the Championship Series—CC Sabathia for the Yankees, Cliff Lee for the Phillies. They had to leave Cleveland because the Indians could no longer afford them.

If the stat guys are wrong, then who cares what FOX would ever want? If the game was based on as-yet ummeasurable quantities, the best series—from a pure baseball perspective—would include teams who were the best at… well, whatever. But certainly not just almanac-busting.

The truth is, baseball follows the stats on a macro level, but not a micro level, which is why anything can happen in the playoffs, and why the Yankees haven’t won in nearly a decade. The stat guys call this “luck”—I think it’s something more akin to the magic of the game. Things happen in October that defy logic, reason and stats, but I’m not willing to call it a fluke. There’s one goal every year: to win the World Series. FOX may want the teams from the biggest markets, but you should want the ones with the winners. Baseball is hard enough that you should stand in awe of anyone who makes it. And most importantly, you should watch.

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October 13, 2009

The War at Home

This column was started yesterday, but as “luck” would have it, the scene repeated itself last night. That’s right, I suffer for you to keep my columns fresh. We’ll get back to more topical/at all interesting topics tomorrow. That’s the plan at least.

I’m tired today. There’s no two ways about it: sleep is chasing me like I’m leading the Belmont Stakes. That’s the longest horse race in the world, and now the day seems so… long…

The culprit is a mosquito. He has invaded my personal space and bites me while I sleep. Could be a she, but there’s not a history of ladies sneaking into my apartment. (ed. note: see comments) Either way, as Walter Sobchak would say, worthy fucking adversary. I can’t even tell how he gets into the apartment. But when he does, he wreaks havoc.

Let’s set the scene: I live on the fifth floor of a five-story apartment building, and life is mostly good at the top. I’m free from most ambient ground-level noises, and there’s no pitter-patter of feet above my head. The roof is almost always completely vacant, except when someone’s installing a satellite dish or repainting it that searing, brilliant silver that burns your skin and eyes in the summer.

Up there, water collects in little pools. Up there, mosquitos breed, and then gameplan a way into my apartment. They come one at a time: there’s a Papacy of little buggers bleeding me dry. There’s one, I kill it, and then there’s one more. Always one, no more no less. But one can do a ton of damage.

This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this problem. When I lived in Queens, I lived in the first floor of a house, with a room facing an unkempt backyard. Weeds were everywhere, and the perennial plants were overgrown. It was a mosquito’s Shangri-La. I wasn’t surprised when they’d get in, and I devised a method to kill the bastards. I’d turn on my reading lamp, and look to the side of it. Bathing the whole room in light was too much, but the ambient light was just enough to catch a glimpse of the bloodsuckers. The goal was to end the ordeal with one well-timed clap.

Apparently evolution works quickly, because that method doesn’t work anymore. That or Brooklyn mosquitos are just a tougher nut to crack. Or smear all over your wall, as it were.

These guys are spastic. They don’t buzz me until the lights are off. And they drink like an alcoholic at an open bar. More details are probably not necessary, but during the summer in my sleeping-without-a-shirt phase, I was sure a spider had taken up residence at Casa Joiner, and not one of the silly, functional kinds. I’m talking the kind you name sports teams after (I’m looking at you, University of Richmond). These bites were big.

But no.

The problem is, and always has been, mosquitos. That’s why, in the words of Montgomery Burns, I want to destroy the sun. Lacking any real mechanism to do so, I can only root hard for the onset of fall. Our summer was a largely contented one except for this.

I know what you’re thinking: Why don’t you just close your windows and doors? Well, they are closed. I’m at a loss to figure out why I’m still getting buzzed, the only real remedy to which is… getting buzzed. (A couple beers, and you’ll sleep right through the pain.) But that’s no way to go through life. The mosquitoes’ drinking breeds my own. That’s a downward spiral no one wants.

The only downward spiral I want is the sight of a wadded-up tissue with the last of the insect kings, meeting his watery grave. Down the stretch we come. Bring on winter.

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October 12, 2009

The Sox, Pats and the Moon

I’m not sure this column makes any sense.

In last night’s episode of Man Men, hotel impresario Conrad Hilton tells ad genius Don Draper that he wants a campaign so grand it would put a Hilton Hotel on the moon. When Draper returns with a clever, modern pitch that emphasizes Hilton comfort in all corners of the globe—Rio, Toyko, Paris—Hilton admonishes him. “I wanted the moon,” he said. He leaves in a snit, and it’s unclear who’s at fault: Hilton, for making such a grand request, or Draper, for failing to take it seriously.

A handful of hours earlier, the Patriots lost the Broncos in overtime in their once-and-present house of horrors in Denver. A few hours before that, the Red Sox lost in tremendous fashion to the Los Angeles Angels, giving up a two-run lead with only one strike to go in game three of their best-of-five series. The Sox are done for the year, a year in which they won 95 games and almost by acclimation just “didn’t have it” this year.

That’s quite a luxury as a sports fan, but it’s wholly understandable. Red Sox fans never asked for the moon. We just wanted them to win a World Series in our lifetime, and they did it. I’m not sure what we want from here on out, other than to have a great team that plays with passion. The adjustment from title-starved to dignified in defeat has been difficult, but I think it’s finally been achieved. We’re finally okay with losing. Insofar as things like passion, heart, and hunger actually exist for a baseball team, it always seemed like this team didn’t have it. A good team gave it a good try and came up short.

Can the same be said for the Patriots? Maybe, but it feels different. With the Patriots, we’ve asked for the moon. Any loss is unacceptable, a result of the Pats’ lapses more than their opponents’ greatness. Two years ago, a large subset of the Pats fan population would have been crushed by a regular-season loss, and Bill Belichick plunged his team into the space race. He would go for the moon. When the ship crash-landed on the surface, it was made to feel like the problem was one or two plays that could have gone either way, not that the Giants were simply the better team. The fact is, it doesn’t matter what the reason was. They lost. The lesson should have been learned.

Pats fans weren’t always this way. The first Super Bowl season, it was good enough just to make the playoffs. Then beating the Raiders was pride-inducing, and beating the Steelers was divine. By the time the Super Bowl came around, the Pats could see the Rams and their NASA-inspired gameplan, and they licked their chops. The brought the pass-happy Rams back to Earth, and won in dramatic fashion. Does anyone doubt now that the Pats were the better team? And if we don’t, what does that tell us about the 2007 Giants?

I put these pieces together, and yesterday didn’t crush me the way it would have 10 years ago. Part of it is growing up, and part of it is seeing my teams succeed, but most of it is knowing that sports can’t bring you the moon. I wish the Sox won, but if they can’t close out a game like that, they’re not champions anyway. It’s still early for the Pats, and I’m confident they’ll do well, even as Tom Brady enters his golden years. The oughts are finally starting to pass us by, and, like a traveler in a foreign country at the end of his trip, I’m only now starting to get used to them.

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October 10, 2009

Amateur Hour

Third, and probably angriest, column from yesterday. If you read all three, you’ll notice something familiar in here.

If you want to know why Democrats can’t govern, look no further than the fallout from the announcement that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Europeans are injecting their politics into this, one liberal friend wrote on Twitter. Isn’t diplomacy part of the job description? blared another, on Facebook. Way to lower the bar, Nobel Committee, said a third. And finally, the most common criticism: He hasn’t done anything yet.

Sure he has! He won the Nobel Peace Prize!

Just as Obama’s “flunking” the International Olympic Committee test brought about a nauseating response from Republicans, Obama’s Nobel Prize victory was Amateur Hour for the left. On Twitter and Facebook, self-professed Obama supporters shat all over his credentials for an award handed out by a small group of people in Norway.

Why today? Because we are mad that the Europeans are getting involved in our politics, fearing, I guess, that praising Obama during the tough times will embolden him. These are the same people who literally believed “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” as literally as fundamentalist zealots believe the Bible. He was too smart to let them in on the real secret, that in many, many ways he’s more similar to George W. Bush than he is different. Those differences, however, are of paramount importance to the country and the world, and they are so big that transcending them resonates from Washington to Oslo in fundamental ways.

Are the Europeans “injecting their politics into the decision?” Yes! Of course they are! The better question is when this wouldn’t have been the case. In effect, the Nobel Commitee has said: We know how hard of a time President Obama has had governing, dealing with a system that gives a minority of its citizens power to stop his nearly every move domestically, but we will overlook that in favor of the good he has done for world relations. They see our system and laugh at the roadblocks other politicians have put up for him. Many of these people come from Obama’s own party, eager to “get theirs” now that the gettin’s good. They want what’s good for them, not necessarily what’s good for the country. They waited eight years for this!

Well, I’ve got news for them: so did the rest of the world. They want American leadership that isn’t regressive and inward-looking. They admire certain qualities in an American President, and they’ve found those in Obama. His prize is that he gets to answer questions back home from a skeptical media about whether he thinks he “deserves” it—questions taken straight from the GOP playbook, but intoxicating to too many on the left as well. Why is it? I have no idea. Maybe it’s sheer egoism, or maybe it’s just ignorance that a commitee of European award-givers has no power to sway, alter, or morally ratify the foundations of America. The Nobel Prize is, like all trophies, just a trophy.

Am I happy Obama won? Yes. But I’m happy when the movie I prefer wins the Best Picture award too. When it doesn’t, I’m annoyed, but I don’t put too much stock into it. The world is no different today than it was yesterday at this time, except a gold piece of hardware will be transferred from Norway to the White House. While some people have taken it as such, it’s no more an opportunity for anyone to pass judgment on the President than each sunrise is. That‘s what makes this country great. Let’s not forget that.

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October 10, 2009

You won the Nobel Peace Prize. Defend yourself!

Column two that I didn’t post yesterday.

The last 10 years have been revolutionary for the science of baseball. The best team, it turns out, doesn’t always win, according to the number-crunchers. The winners just get lucky in October. The World Series title doesn’t really mean anything—it’s just won, year in and year out, by the team with the best combination of luck and skill in October.

This puts the fans of some World Series winners in a bind. You’ve won, the writers say, Now defend yourself. How could you be better than team X? Well, you’d say, we beat them. They would have a simple response: So what?

Today, the President of the United States won the Nobel Peace Prize and he is being asked to defend himself. For an award. Bestowed upon him.

At the press conference just now, a reporter actually asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the award was based on talk more than action. Gibbs responded that the award signified America’s restored place of leadership in the world. Here’s what he should have said: it’s an award! Ask them what it’s about! They gave it to us!

The award is big news on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has become something of a parliamentary chamber for debating out Obama’s chops. BARACKSTAR, one friend writes. An award by socialists, for socialists, writes another. Those in the middle hew against the committee, feeling this sends the wrong message to the President. It’s a bad precedent, they say. He hasn’t accomplished anything yet.

Sure he has: he won the Nobel Peace Prize!

Look, I haven’t agreed with every Best Picture winner at the Oscars. And I haven’t thought the best team has always won the World Series. But once it’s over, it’s over. The awards are handed out, and it’s time to move on.

I’m not sure what Obama’s detractors are expecting. Would they like him to refuse the award? To say something like: “I’m humbled and honored that the Nobel Prize committee has chosen me for this prestigious award. I, however, regretfully must decline accepting this honor, because I feel have not met the standards upon which I was apparently judged. I can do so much more for the world by rejecting an award promoting peace and togetherness. In the eloquent words of LOLCats, Pease Awards: UR Doin It Rong.”

It seems like just two weeks ago that member of the media were piling on Obama for pushing Chicago’s Olympic games bid. He’s too arrogant, they said. His campaign will never work, they said. It’s unbecoming of a President. He should focus on his job. Then Chicago lost the games, and the right celebrated. He got served! The world showed him what was up!

Now, having done nothing in the way of campaigning for another international award, and having gained it, Obama is being chastised for not deserving it. The hypocrisy would be oozing if it was just coming from the right, but it’s not. It’s coming from everywhere. Everyone’s got an opinion. His detractors say he’s simply undeserving. His supporters ask if he could do better.

That’s like asking if the Yankees could win five games in the World Series instead of four. It doesn’t freaking matter The Nobel Prizes go to the best candidates they can find. Barack Obama was the best candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize this year, by the criteria for which it is judged. You know this, because he won. By being himself.

That’s the last thing he should have to apologize for.

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October 10, 2009

Peace

I wrote three columns about the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday that I declined to post because I figured angry posting is bad. Calmer today. Here’s the first one.

So Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and, to put it simple, people be’ buggin.

A random sampling of my Facebook friends’ status updates tell me as much, at least.

“BARACKSTAR!” one writes.

“Way to lower the bar, Nobel Committee. What’s the opposite of congratulatons?” blares another.

“[T]he Nobel Peace Prize: Awarded by socialists for socialists,” a final one laments. “Sadly it’s not what it once was.”

Wait, so the Nobel Peace Prize is The Simpsons? Or Brett Fav—nevermind.

The truth is, I’m fairly surprised at the announcement, but as usual, the reactions to it probably say more about the respondents than it does about the award. Why would the prize be any different now than it was in the past? What sort of objective standard was there before? Can anyone answer that? Any one my 100+ Facebook friends, that is?

I doubt it. I’m guessing that people’s reactions are in direct proportion to their feelings about Obama. My right-wing friend, who reliably attaches the adjective “socialist” to any Obama policy, is still a die-hard George W. Bush supporter, and one suspects he’s a big fan of the right-wing talk radio and TV circuit that reveled in Obama’s Olympic “failure.” Sadly, he was on his honeymoon at the time, so the world didn’t get to hear his tweets and clucks at the news, so we’ll use one from a Weekly Standard writer:

As a citizen of the world who believes that No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation, I’m glad that the Obama White House’s jingoist rhetoric and attempt to pay back Chicago cronies at the expense of undermining our relationships with our allies failed.

I wonder what the writer, John McCormack, will come up with today, now that the other nations of the world have effectively decided Obama has done anything but attempt to dominate them. Once happy with the world pushback, now McCormack will have to go on the offensive against the world’s love affair with the, yes, BARACKSTAR! There ought be a tornado watch in McCormack’s vicinity as he attempts to untangle himself from his own logic.

At the same time, it does seem to me to be a bit early for President Obama to have won the award—until you realize that he’s been America’s de facto world representative since before he gave a speech to two million Germans before the Brandenburg Gate. Other countries still needed the signatures of Cheney/Bush et. al, but they bought up the Obama “hope” message in bulk. Turns out, they really believed that message, which a majority of Americans did as well. And now some Americans are calling them fools.

One need to look no further than the Olympic decision to know that Barack Obama can’t push other countries around at will. America can lead the world, but the world won’t blindly follow us around. Having failed to snag the games for Chicago, Obama will have hopefully learned his lesson.

A final friend lamented that the Europeans “injected their politics” into the decision. He said it was “gross.” I say it’s probably always been that way, and even if it hasn’t, why is it bad that Europeans like our President? I, among others, chastised George W. Bush for alienating European countries—and now we’re going to complain when they show appreciation for our choices? How does that make any sense?

The Nobel Prize is what it is, and nothing more—a committee of people handing out awards. If you think it’s more important than that, be proud. If you don’t think it’s more important than that, then what’s the big deal?

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