Light weekend reading

I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking, I need something to read this weekend, preferably a well-researched history of the conservative political movement in the U.S. over the past 40 years. Well, you're in luck - when folks ask what you did this weekend, you can dazzle them by talking about the New Yorker article you read.

In all seriousness, this is a brilliant examination of recent political history, with plenty of insight on the future. It's also a great window into the mind of conservatives. If you're inclined to think of of Republican politicians as "evil," you'll definitely find some evidence to support that view. But it's rather amazing how rational and self-critical some of the conservative movement's most divisive voices, such as Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan, appear in the piece. 

Of course, those guys aren't in the thick of politics anymore, so they have more freedom to be sensible, but that in itself is a reminder that most politicians are a lot brighter than their media sound bites suggest.

Read it. The people you like will love and respect you. The people you don't like will never ask you about your weekend again. Win-win.

Theeeooooo...I would like to talk to yooouuuuu...

...about your chest-bumping the President!

Bush looks so uncomfortable in this photo that it's actually kind of endearing. As a former Texas Rangers owner and baseball enthusiast, he probably would have preferred to give Shiveley a pat on the ass - the customary (and undeniably homoerotic) gesture of celebration in that sport. But perhaps, with his tight white pants and exquisitely arched back, Shiveley was simply too Bootylicious for the Prez.

Awesome.

HMV clarification

Further to yesterday's post, I should clarify that HMV will still be selling CDs. I imagine they'll be relegated to some back corner, and that the young cashiers' eyebrows will raise with incredulous contempt when you bring one to the counter.

From the strange bedfellows department

HMV is opening the first edition of its "store of the future" concept in downtown Toronto on June 17 (Yonge and Bloor location for the locals among you). Since CDs are a thing of the past, HMV's redesigned stores - about 20 or so Canadian stores are scheduled for renovation this year - will sell other items such as cell phones, video games and iPods. There will also apparently be computer stations set up in-store so patrons can log on to their favourite social media sites.

Hmmm...phones, video games, computers, iPods. It's incredible that no one has thought of putting all of these "store of the future" elements together in one place before. And, I don't know, maybe called it Future Shop.

But what I find most interesting about the story is that the store's opening bash will feature a performance by Billy Bragg. Not Nelly Furtado or Michael Buble or Feist or some other big-selling Canadian artist. Billy Bragg.

Because no one's going to sell more iPods to a tech-obsessed young target audience than a middle-aged, acoustic guitar-wielding, anti-capitalist British folkie.

I am essentially a five-year-old because...

...stuff like this cracks me up.

Thought I'd throw a curveball with a bit of ultra-lowbrow. 

Reuse, recycle and...what was the other thing?

Had an interesting, if depressing conversation with a co-worker today, inspired by this excellent post from the Cultureby blog. The gist: consumers are shifting away from a gluttony model of consumption - more, more, bigger and more - to what poster and all-around awesome cultural thinker Grant McCracken calls a "just enough" mentality. Counterintuitive and, like most of the stuff on that blog, thought-provoking.

For me, the thoughts it provoked had to do specifically with the environment. It's finally fashionable to be an environmentalist now, and even some of the world's most wasteful corporations have dedicated themselves to greener practices - or at least the appearance of greener practices. We have or will soon see reduced packaging, greater use of recycled material and all that good stuff.

The problem is that no matter what a product or its packaging is made of, none of it will make any environmental difference if people keep buying more of it. The single greenest decision that any human being can make is to consume less. A lot less. Plain and simple. (Another candidate for greenest choice would be to not have children, those little consumers of resources. Good luck legislating that!)

There are folks who hold out hope for a market solution to global warming, arguing that consumers will use their dollars to force companies to go green. But economic growth depends on ever greater consumption by an ever greater number of consumers, while halting or stalling global warming depends on less consumption by fewer people (or at least as few people as possible). 

From my perch, it seems like an inescapable fact that the economy and the environment stand in fundamental opposition. On the other hand, maybe consumers and businesses really can learn to get by with "just enough."

Anyone want to take that bet?

Justice!

He's scrappy! He's gritty! He's Stubby, and he's going to the Olympics!

Last week, I threw up a post about Stubby Clapp, Canadian baseball hero, being denied the chance to play for his country at the Beijing Olympics by the Houston Astros, who employ him as a coach. The Astros have obviously changed their minds.

This proves two things:

1) The Astros actually have a heart.

2) Astros management reads this blog. It's the only reason I can possibly think of for this reversal.

Fall from grace

In the previous post, I mentioned Hillary Clinton's repeated efforts to point out Barack Obama's difficulty winning over working-class white voters, most famously in a USA Today interview from last week. She's since semi-retracted her words, admitting that they weren't terribly wise. 

But since I didn't let Barack Obama off the hook very easily for his remarks about working-class voters "clinging to guns and religion," there's no way Clinton's remarks can be allowed to pass. Thing is, there's nothing I can say that wasn't said better in this article from The Root, which spells out how this kind of race-baiting from Clinton is, more than anything, incredibly disappointing and sad. The Clintons have historically been known as champions of equality, and have enjoyed great support from black voters. That she would tarnish this well-deserved reputation in order to keep the faint heartbeat of her campaign beating reflects poorly on her.

Sadly, she may have a point when it comes to electability. It is possible that there are enough American voters who simply won't vote for a black candidate that Obama will fall short in November. But this is no reason to deny the nomination he's earned. Moreover, it's a  dismissal of all that civil rights leaders have achieved to suggest that, on the precipice of making history, a black candidate should be pushed aside because "people aren't ready" for him. 

If not now, when? To back away from this moment due to real or perceived racism is to give in to it.

Endorsement Deal?

John Edwards has hopped off the fence to officially endorse Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee for president, a move that takes the edge off Hillary Clinton's massive win in the West Virginia primary and pounds yet another nail into her candidacy's coffin. Obama now has the lead in pledged delegates, superdelegates, popular vote, states won and high-profile endorsements. He is going to win. It has actually been this way for a long time. Despite suggestions from the Clinton camp, it's no longer a contest - victory for her is a near-impossibility in mathematical terms, and the only way for her to win is to convince the superdelegates who haven't picked sides yet to go against the will of the people. And pretty much the only way that's going to happen is if Obama's photographed throwing a baby out of a high-rise window. While high-fiving Osama bin Laden and stomping on a crucifix.

Clinton keeps sticking around, though, poking holes in Obama that John McCain will hope to tear wide open in the general election campaign. Specifically, she keeps bringing up that he has trouble attracting white working-class voters. So it obviously helps to have Edwards on board, a white Southern guy whose signature issue is fighting poverty.

Edwards waited almost four months to make this move. Obama must have promised something - an increased focus on poverty, a cabinet position. But did he go so far as to whisper the words "vice president" in Edwards' ear? 

An Obama-Edwards ticket would be high on charisma, funding and dashing good looks. However, it might also skew a little too liberal. I wonder if Obama might be better off aligning himself with someone who has more pull with conservative Democrats and independents (I'm not sure who that would be - safe to say Clinton isn't likely to be asked, or likely to accept if she is).

I am curious to find out what political collateral Obama spent on the Edwards endorsement. But we won't know until Obama officially wraps things up, which should happen in the next two or three weeks.

Re: Union

Anonymous was nice enough to explain his/her comment blaming some prominent Republicans for the way that so many labour unions behave. My apologies for taking so long to see and respond to it (damn confusing Interweb!). 

Your grasp of history is fearsome, Anonymous, and I understand your point a lot better now. My apologies for any mistakes in my attempt to paraphrase it for those who don't click to read your comment: The gist of what Anonymous is saying is that hard-line anti-unionists like Nixon and Reagan only encouraged union leaders to adopt more hard-line perspectives and tactics in response, making it more difficult to reach a timely and satisfactory compromise.

All true, I'm sure. But regardless of who was the chicken and who was the egg, can we also agree that some responsibility must fall on labour leaders themselves? They might not be as famous or as politically polarizing - we might have a harder time remembering their names - but they have also learned to be obstinate, often to the detriment of the public and their own members. 

Also, the politicians Anonymous refers to are American. How have Canadian unions, such as the TTC's evolved to become such hardliners?

I should be working right now, but...

...I stumbled on this article, the reading of which was akin to drinking a warm cup of validation (on a cold day. On a hot day, validation would be best served cold). I imagine others might feel the same way. 

40 meaningless points in some never-to-be-explained game will be awarded to those who guess the article's source before clicking the link.

The piece is about procrastination, and how procrastinators should learn to embrace their nature rather than fight it. This rings true to me, as I have a habit of doing things at the last minute and often, hours before a deadline, resolve that from this point on I will always get started on projects well in advance. Of course, I rarely if ever live up to this resolution. It's just an endless cycle of putting things off, growing increasingly agitated about the unfinished (or unstarted) state of said things, putting them off some more, wallowing in existential guilt about the fact that I am the kind of awful person who puts things off, and, finally, putting things together in a hasty scramble with minutes to spare. This is usually followed by a brief, endorphin-fueled period that can be understood as the intellectual equivalent of post-orgasmic afterglow (provocative!).

All of which makes me more common than unique. But the issue of procrastination raises questions about the way people process their own bad habits. When it comes to procrastination, I am slowly teaching myself that it's not a big deal - that I actually do my best work when my laziness has backed me into a corner. What I'm trying to remove isn't the procrastination but the guilt that I feel about it, guilt that tends to inform other aspects of my life and self-esteem in general.

What I'm getting at is: what's more destructive, a bad habit or the guilt one associates with it? Obviously, if your habit is meth or child porn or terrorism, your guilt is the least of your concerns. But I have a feeling that a lot of people would be better served by giving themselves a break about certain habits, rather than enduring the endless guilt cycle.

I'd be interested to hear what bad habits people have that make them feel especially guilty, and whether they think the bigger problem is the habit or the guilt. Please weigh in.

I meant for this to be a really short post, but it didn't turn out that way. I must be trying to avoid something.

The Clapper

To this point, this blog has been concerned primarily with "serious" issues. And an inordinate number of scare quotes. I would like to get away from both of these habits - well, the first one at least - for at least one day.

And so I bring your attention to this outrage.

Don't feel like clicking? Here's the deal: Stubby Clapp, longtime member of Canada's national baseball team, has been denied permission to play in the 2008 Olympics by the Houston Astros, for whom he coaches at the minor-league level. 

Richard Keith Clapp was drafted in the 36th round by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1996 and played 28 games in the majors, all with the Cardinals in 2001. In 25 at-bats, he had five hits, one RBI and no home runs. In nine minor-league seasons - including a stint in the Toronto Blue Jay organization in 2004 - he hit .268 with 43 home runs and 323 RBIs. How did I become such an authority on Stubby Clapp? I went here.

As mediocre as Clapp was, he always suited up for Canada in international events, providing some helpful offence and giving a country not known for its baseball prowess a sense of credibility, by virtue of being named Stubby Clapp. 

That's why the Astros' decision is such a slap (clap?) in the face - the Olympics are the absolute pinnacle for a career minor-leaguer like Stubby Clapp. And did I mention that his name is Stubby Clapp? Stubby friggin' Clapp? It's a name that just reeks of baseball, of dirty uniforms and pine tar and head-first slides. Go ahead and try to find a current player with a better baseball name - you'd have a better chance of identifying a guy whose name sounds like a breakfast cereal.

Guys named Stubby Clapp are good for baseball, and deserve a chance to shine on an international stage. Shame on you, Astros.

PS: (to read a blog by funnier guys who know more about baseball and about writing funny stuff about baseball and sports journalism, go here.)

What kind of name is Miley, anyway?

By now I'm sure everyone's seen the supposedly controversial picture of 15-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus that caused a media tempest last week. If not, here it is. 

I don't know. My gut reaction to the shot is an emphatic "meh." Maybe that speaks to how pervasive the sexualization of young girls is in popular culture. Maybe I've been desensitized. But I certainly feel like the after-the-fact "outrage" manufactured by Cyrus and Disney is just that - manufactured. They signed up for this shot, and even a 15-year-old knows when she's topless and tousled, and what that might ever-so-coyly suggest to the viewer. I'd be interested to hear what others think.

For an interesting point of view on teen sexualization, here's a great piece by music journalist Elizabeth Bromstein, who argues that the young stars who sell purity are actually, by implication, selling sex.

Upstaged

I'm away for a week, dealing with a seemingly endless string of minor ailments, and I come back to find that the lovely people taking time to comment on some earlier posts are, not surprisingly, doing a better job of talking about the issues than I am. This is a good thing, and I hope you keep doing it.

Anonymous, I wonder if you could elaborate on this comment. I'm willing to lay responsibility for many things at the feet of Reagan and the Bushes, but I confess I don't understand the union connection.