Discussion Reset: The NCAA

The NCAA is shocked -- shocked! -- that former University of Southern California basketballer O.J. Mayo might have been given money and other goodies by an agent's go-between while he was in high school and during his one year in college. If that happened, NCAA rules have been violated. Not only that; according to ESPN, it's a misdemeanor in California for sports agents to give stuff to student-athletes. So Mayo, the agent, the alleged agent of the agent, USC, and everybody under the sun is gonna get investigated for this. Just like another recent USC star in another sport, Reggie Bush.

My question is: Why?

I understand that the NCAA has rules, and it wants to make sure that its participants abide by those rules. But in this case, I don't understand what evil the rules are meant to prohibit, and I don't understand why society at large would spend any of its resources to enact laws to enforce rules that benefit the NCAA, which is just a private club.

I get the NCAA prohibition on school boosters paying kids, and the expansive definition of booster: basically anybody who wants a kid to go to a particular school. If money could buy college rosters, Tiny College would stand even less of a chance of ever being competitive with Gigantic State than it does today.

But what's alleged in the Mayo situation, so far, at least, isn't that somebody was paying him to get him to go to a specific school. If that turns out to be the case, I understand the NCAA's desire to squash that kind of thing. Supposedly, though, some agent who figured Mayo to be a sure-fire NBA player wanted to start paying him to get on his good side early so that he could become his agent and get a percentage of the millions he'll make if that dream comes true. The stories surrounding Mayo when he was nearing the end of his high school days were that various advisers were looking to see if there were ways to avoid the need for college at all: the NBA rule against drafting guys straight from high school had kicked in, and the suggestions were that some folks around Mayo were looking to see if he could spend the year playing professionally in some non-NBA forum, like Europe or the Harlem Globetrotters. So if people were paying Mayo, it looks like it had nothing to do with his choice of college.

And if that's the case, who's it hurting?

It makes sense that the NCAA doesn't want its ranks filled with ringers: college kids are at a disadvantage if they have to play against professionals, and if the NCAA doesn't want the Tiny College kids to play against old guys from the Eastern Industrial League, fine. But does O. J. Mayo have any greater advantage over a Tiny College kid because some agent gives him some cash? No, I think it's the other way around: the agent wants to give Mayo some cash only because it's already clear he's better than the Tiny College kid. If that agent gave Mayo a Hummer, a wardrobe, and courtside tickets to the Lakers game, none of that gives him any on-court advantage. If these prohibitions are there to protect the Tinys, they don't make sense.

Nor do they make sense if they're there to protect some sort of outmoded ideal of what it means to be an "amateur." Maybe a century ago, there was some perceived nobility in playing collegiate sports purely as an afterthought and not very well. And that may still be true for many participants in many sports on many college campuses. But that isn't the case for top level basketball and football. Kids at the powerhouse schools in those sports are supposed to be the next best thing to the top professional ranks, with the best of their members clearly preparing as well as they can to take that next step up. How do they demean the sport by fixing their eyes on the pro prize? Why is a college athlete banned from participating in his sport just because he hires an agent in contemplation of turning pro? Does a kid in a college theater program get banned from the school stage if she gets an agent to try to get her auditions on Broadway? Does a journalism student get banned from the school newspaper for doing an internship with the Washington Post? I see no reason why preparation for professional sports should irrevocably taint a college student any more than any other half-step toward earning a living doing whatever you're doing in college.

Are we supposed to believe that these rules are there to protect the athletes themselves? I don't get that one, either. Colleges don't prevent students from getting into premature relationships with employers, creditors or significant others. Some of each are bad, and some of each are good, just like the agents who want to woo tomorrow's pro stars. The NCAA could limit authorized contact to those agents who are approved by the players' associations of the pro leagues the kids aspire to; the lists are already out there and readily available. Banning relationships with agents is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

If the baby you want to save is the kid's interest, that is. But it seems more likely that the NCAA is trying to preserve its own product. It wants to punish kids for even thinking about leaving the college game, and it holds over their heads a threat that only the smallest group of the most gifted players can ignore: if you're caught looking to the pros and you're not as good as you thought you were, you'll lose your chance to play in college, too.

That sense of self-preservation is natural. What isn't natural is that society spends its resources on enforcing NCAA rules. The NCAA is just a private club of member schools. If you don't follow the rules of your local Elks or Water Buffalo chapter, they'll kick you out, but there's no criminal law consequence. Why should there be for failing to follow rules of a bunch of well-to-do schools? How come it's a crime for an agent to give money to a student-athlete, and not to give the same amount of money to a student?

The NCAA has been getting the benefit of the doubt, along with a free ride on society's coattails, for far too long. If there's no apparent greater good, why should we continue to act as if they're on the side of right and justice?

Discussion Reset: "Free Markets"

"Free markets."

I see the term used as if everybody understands it to refer to an absolute good. The Cato Institute, for example, calls "free markets" a "traditional American principle," right up there with individual liberty and peace. As if everybody understands that regulation of markets is an unnecessary evil, only to be tolerated barely, if at all.

Like the way food products are sold with the term "all-natural." If it's all natural, it must be good, right? And free markets are better than markets with regulation, right?

Well, let's hold it a minute.

Unless I have my homespun medicine wrong, leprosy and bubonic plague are all-natural. And completely unregulated markets gave us feudalism and snake oil salesmen.

The bottom line: "free market" only describes an unequivocal positive if you're in a position to exploit it. If that free market puts you in a position to get exploited, or to have to clean up the fallout of someone else's exploitation, then "free market" probably describes an unequivocal negative.

When we're talking about what's good public policy, "free market" shouldn't be swallowed as necessarily a good thing any more readily than we'd take a big gulp of all-natural crude oil.

Discussion Reset: Unions

Sometimes, American conversation takes off down a path and stays on that path indefinitely, without recognition of obvious realities that should redirect things a bit. Sometimes it's worthwhile to take a look at those realities and step away from those well-worn paths.

So it is with some of the discussion that is provoked when the subject of unions comes up. Unions get blamed for plenty of problems. The state of public education, for example. Supposedly, a big part of the problem with public schools in America is the behavior of teachers' unions: they are accused of being more concerned with protecting their jobs and making those jobs easier and more lucrative than they are with teaching children.

Unions are prime suspects when an explanation is needed for the decline of America's auto industry. They demanded fat pensions and medical benefits whose costs drag down the potential quality and value of every vehicle that rolls off a Detroit assembly line. They insisted on work rules that filled factories with unnecessary employees and kept them paid whether those factories were making cars or not.

Darts get thrown at unions even in sports discussions. They're at least partly to blame for major league baseball's steroid woes, you know. After all, baseball's owners and commissioner wanted to have a strict testing and punishment policy long before all the juicing got out of hand. The only reason they couldn't implement one is that the players' union wouldn't allow it.

So there's this general background noise that's humming the tune that unions, since they are watching out for their own interests and are unconcerned with bigger pictures and greater goods, are doing something that is somehow wrong.

And that is where some rethinking is in order.

Unions, in attempting to ensure that their members get the hugest possible money for the smallest possible effort, and that they don't have to do anything that troubles them, are not doing anything that is remotely evil.

What they are doing is exactly what unions are supposed to do. They are using the power of collective bargaining to negotiate arrangements that are best for their members. While individual members of a union may feel an obligation to interests other than their own, the unions themselves are supposed to be looking out for their members.

When the battle between union interests and employer interests produces results that are bad for third parties, that's not the fault of a union; it is the fault of the belief that unregulated combat between opposing interests necessarily produces positive results for anybody other than the winner of the battle.

If we are willing to see corporate employers attempt to make as much money as possible, it is only right that we are willing to see their employees' unions try to take as much of that money for as little work as possible. When we don't like the fallout, we shouldn't blame the unions, we should blame our trust that those struggles are going to be good for us.

Changing Horse Racing

I'm a horse racing fan.

That would have been an unremarkable statement in 1948 America. But sixty years later, with racing now overshadowed by spectator sports that previously garnered only a fraction of its attention, racing fans are a bit more of an oddity. As a fan in today's America, I get the feeling that I belong to a steadily shrinking cult -- kind of like the players of straight billiards who have to explain to the rest of us how they can play pool on tables that don't have pockets.

Non-fans get to hear about the sport in mainstream media in no more than four instances in the average year: the three Triple Crown races and, to a lesser extent, I think, the Breeders' Cup. On those occasions, true racing fans speculate among ourselves about why the sport doesn't get the kind of attention it once did. There are some explanations that are beyond the capacity of the sport to change: for one, racing once had a state-sponsored monopoly on legal gambling, but there are now plenty of legal wagering alternatives, including many that offer a chance for a bigger win and demand no special attention or expertise.

Another factor, though, is a situation created entirely by people inside the racing industry. The modern American thoroughbred is more fragile than its predecessors. That fragility is displayed in one form that is certain, and in another that is suspected, but perhaps not proved. Neither is helpful to the sport.

Today's thoroughbred races less frequently than did his ancestors of just a few generations ago. Many commentators have compiled statistics demonstrating the decline in the average number of races run by horses in various categories. They prove the point, but there's an obvious, non-statistical shortcut to the same conclusion. Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, shares the spring racing calendar in Kentucky and does not open until one week before the Derby, which is run on the first Saturday in May. That one week before the Derby was traditionally considered plenty of time for a contender to get in a prep race and still be rested enough to be at his best in the Run For The Roses. In fact, five days was considered enough, as was demonstrated by the fact that Churchill's main prep, the Derby Trial, was run on the Tuesday before the big race. In 1948, 1952, 1953 and 1958, the Derby Trial winner was also the winner of the Derby itself. In 1949, 1959, 1964 and 1965, the Derby Trial winner started the Derby as the favorite. In the 1970s, Derby contenders still ran in the Derby Trial. In the 1980s, Churchill, recognizing the belief that horses were starting to need more rest between races, moved the Derby Trial ahead as much as they could, to the Saturday one full week before the main event.

Despite that move, no trainer pointing his horse for the Derby today seriously considers the Derby Trial to be what it is named. Not a one of the 20 starters in the 2008 Derby had run in the Derby Trial, because no trainer today would run a valuable three-year-old a mere week before a big race. Today, the Derby Trial, despite its name, is more likely to be a prep for the second jewel in the Triple Crown, the Preakness, run three weeks later. In 1975, each of the 15 Kentucky Derby starters ran in a prep race within two weeks of the big day. This year, not a single one of the 20 starters did.

Any sport will suffer when its performers don't perform often enough to build up some name recognition. Which is why the NCAA and the NBA don't like their basketball players going from college to the professional ranks so quickly: when your favorite college team isn't bringing back any of its stars from last year, it'll take you longer to decide that you care about the new squad; and when your NBA team spends its first round draft pick on a guy who only played three national television games in college, it's hard to get excited. Today's best horses tend to run only a few races, and as soon as they've shown a flicker of special ability, they're retired. Nobody's building up any Seabiscuit-style following.

The suspected but not proved manifestation of modern thoroughbred fragility may have reared its head in last week's Derby. As everyone now knows, Eight Belles, one filly running against 19 colts, ran a race outstanding enough to thrash all but one of her opponents, but some distance after crossing the line, broke both of her front ankles and had to be immediately put to death on the track where she fell.

There have always been tragic, fatal breakdowns in thoroughbred racing. Even in Triple Crown races. (Black Hills in the 1959 Belmont, for example) But the fatalities in the prime time events seemed relatively rare. Until recently. The grouping may just be happenstance, and the inclusion of the Breeders' Cup to the picture adds at least seven events to each year's ledger, so we're not talking about similar sample sizes, but each of the last three calendar years has produced a fatal injury in a marquee race: Pine Island in the 2006 Breeders' Cup Distaff, George Washington in the 2007 Breeders' Cup Classic, and Eight Belles. And not least: Barbaro. He was an undefeated Derby winner, with the look of one who was on his way to special achievements. More eyes than racing usually gets were anticipating a view of the best the sport currently had to offer. Potential fans got caught up in the story of the efforts to save him, and their hopes for him were dashed after months of emotional investment.

Horse racing isn't just failing to attract new fans, it is horrifying fresh batches of would-be fans every year. With this year's Derby fresh in our minds, fans of the sport are again asking what should be done.

Animal rights activists have a simple answer: abolish racing. There is inarguable consistency to their argument. Even in the safest form imaginable, the training and racing of thoroughbreds will cause some of them to suffer injuries, including many which will be fatal. They suffer those injuries and fatalities for the profit and entertainment of humans; if there is any great intrinsic good for the horses themselves in being raced rather than being treated to a pet's life of leisure, I'm not aware of it. And unlike humans who risk life and limb in pursuit of the rewards granted to the winners in our spectator sports, the horses aren't thought to be able to understand the risks we're asking them to take. "Stop racing," the animal rights folks say, "and you'll at least stop all the harm people subject the horses to by asking them to run."

I can't disagree.

I'm just not that noble yet.

I may be that noble someday, but for now, I have to admit that I am willing to know that other living creatures are risking their lives for my entertainment. I've seen other racing fans write that the horses want to run, that they risk their lives running on their own in fields every day, and that the fatal injuries in racing are relatively rare. None of those responses disproves the notion that injuries and deaths that would not otherwise occur happen as a direct result of racing. The reality, as I see it, is that most fans are willing to abide that fact if the injury/fatality rates aren't beyond some unspecified level that constitutes "too much." It's feeling like "too much" now, though, and so many fans are weighing in with their thoughts on steps that might reduce injuries to a level that makes them feel really rare again.

Since everybody else is, I'll join in -- with the same solution I've been mumbling to myself for a couple of years now: instead of changing the game to follow the trend in breeding, change it in the other direction to provoke the breed to change for the better. Lengthen the races instead of shortening them. Introduce participation bonuses for horses who can finish in the money for multiple objectives in a season.

It can't just be done at the top of the food chain, though. And it can't be done overnight. Announce a participation points-based series of distance stakes for older horses starting next year, and you'll have nearly as many no-shows as the races get now, plus a few horses taped together to trot around the track to try to get an appearance fee when they should be in the barn.

No, this kind of thing has to be done throughout the condition book, and over a period of time. A track could announce that in five years' time, five and six furlong races will be carded as rarely as two-mile races are today. Starting four years from now, two thirds of all of the races in the condition book would be at least one furlong longer than currently carded, maybe two, and maybe a half mile. The most common distance on a day's program would be a mile or a mile and an eighth instead of six furlongs. More than half of the races carded would be a mile or longer, and a third would be ten furlongs or longer. Beyond that four-year mark, races would gradually stretch out even more.

At the same time, the track could restructure its purse program to skew some of its rewards toward participation bonuses. At all levels of racing. Races for individual conditions, whether in the claiming ranks or in stakes, could be grouped together over the course of a meeting, with a race or two at the end as climaxes, and bonus payouts for high point totals achieved by in-the-money finishes.

The other notion that would accompany these announced changes: when they came, they'd bring with them a race-day ban on medications like Lasix and Bute.

What would result? Some might speculate that the result would be empty barns and no entries for the races of the track that announced these changes. And I do agree that they'd be pretty drastic for any one track to be able to pull off.

But the reason I think they could be implemented now to an effect not possible in previous generations is that there is an unprecedented level of consolidation in race track ownership. NYRA has been a big fish since the 1950s with its ownership of New York's three biggest tracks, Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. But there are other whales besides NYRA these days. Churchill Downs Inc. owns its namesake track, the home of the Kentucky Derby, plus Arlington Park, Fair Grounds and Calder. The Magna Entertainment Group owns Pimlico, the home of the Preakness, plus Santa Anita, Gulfstream, Laurel, Golden Gate, Lone Star and Thistledown.

When a single state announces that its racetracks are going to have a reasonably well-funded program of restricted races and purse bonuses for horses bred inside its borders, that's enough to change trainer behavior in what kind of horses they buy and where they choose to race them. Eventually, it changes the behavior of owners and would-be breeders as well. If a single state's breeding program can have an impact, I have to believe that any two of NYRA, Churchill and Magna implementing changes like these would be impossible to ignore.

The change I'd expect is that there would be less demand for the kind of horses that look like speedballs early. And less demand for bloodlines that carry iffy prospects for durability and stamina. Maybe it will still be the case that the horse able to run the fastest mile and a quarter on the first Saturday in May of his three-year-old season will be a grandson of Mr. Prospector out of a granddaughter of Storm Cat. But without medication, maybe that horse won't make it to the starting gate at all. Today, I imagine that the midlevel buyer or breeder gambles that some slightly above average descendants of the aforementioned Mr. Prospector and Storm Cat will be throwbacks far enough that they can achieve greatness, look the part well enough to make a good impression at a sale, or throwback at least far enough to be the quickest at six furlongs in Thursday's third race at Nowhere Downs. After these changes, I'd expect that same buyer or breeder to think more about an offspring of an Ascot Gold Cup winner.

If you know that there are good places for you to run them, you'll be more likely to buy and breed horses that have stamina. If durability brings with it extra money-making potential, you'll be emphasizing that more, too. I'm no horseman, but I hear tell that the physical types that lean toward stamina also tend to be more sound.

So maybe then the Skip Aways of the world, who aren't quite as fashionably bred as some of their less accomplished contemporaries, would get some more love from breeders because of their proven toughness over multiple campaigns. Maybe a Silver Charm would be too big a star at stud to be sold away to breeders outside the United States. Maybe winners of the St. Leger or the Melbourne Cup could become relevant and start showing up in American pedigrees again.

And maybe, with their opportunities for generating cash at stud somewhat diminished when they haven't proven their durability, the Smarty Joneses and Afleet Alexes of the world wouldn't be rushed off to stud quite so quickly.

The hope, obviously, is to make it more attractive to breed some of the types that will stay on the track longer -- both in each individual race and over the course of their careers. It seems to me that this would be in the interest of a racetrack owner who is planning to stay in the game with multiple properties for the long haul. The benefit is apparent at both ends of the sport. The states and tracks need their racing revenue, so they'd like to see the number of dates and races stay up; if there are more healthy horses running more often, there are fuller fields everywhere, which makes for more betting and more money for everybody, even in Thursday's third at Nowhere. At the top end, every sport benefits when star performers get onto the radar screen and stay there for a while. Horse racing tells potential fans that a star is on the horizon, and more often than not, they're gone by the time anybody pays attention: Point Given in 2001, Smarty Jones in 2004, Afleet Alex in 2005 and the tragic Barbaro in 2006 were all gone from the track by September of their highlight seasons. No matter how fast his speed figures were, most folks outside of hard-core racing fans never heard of Ghostzapper; racing wins fewer new fans from a dozen Ghostzappers than it would from a single Kelso.

So this is a shout-out to NYRA, Churchill and Magna. Get together -- no, I won't be holding my breath in the meantime -- change the game, force a change in the breed, and we'll all reap the benefits of the sport you're so heavily invested in.

If You Remember Beta vs. VHS . . .

You might remember some of these other battles for the American consumer's affection:

Hot Wheels vs. Johnny Lightning: I hear tell that Johnny Lightning cars were faster. And they did have a corporate sponsorship deal with Al Unser's Indy 500-winning race team. But I was a Hot Wheels guy. Cooler car designs, easier to lay out the track. Righteousness prevailed in this one.

Wrestling vs. Roller Derby: Hard to imagine it now, but the two had approximately equal profiles at one time. Nobody except kids took either seriously. In fact, where I grew up, the wrestling audience was a little younger; at about ten, you forgot about Moose Cholak, Baron von Raschke and Dick the Bruiser and started paying more attention to the Joanie Weston, Earline "747" Brown and Ralphie Valladeres. The fact that Roller Derby was a bit more popular and more appealing to a slightly older audience is evidenced by the making of the 1972 Saturday-afternoon-for-kids-at-the-movies flick Kansas City Bomber, starring Raquel Welch. Roller Derby's proprietors probably still can't understand how wrestling got to be so much bigger in the last couple of decades -- which is why we keep seeing attempts to revive the skating spectacle.

Direct Drive vs. Belt Drive: It used to be a young man's job to be well-informed on the merits of the latest consumer electronics technology, in case he ever fell into enough money to buy some of it. Back when music was listened to in homes and generated by the scraping of phonograph needles across grooves in vinyl discs, there was a period of some disagreement about the best method for rotating the platter that turned those discs. This disagreement wasn't of the "reasonable minds can come to different conclusions" variety. In fact, it was somewhat more intensely argued than spats about religion, because you could at least understand how someone would adopt the religion of his parents and not want to think any more about it. Turntables, on the other hand, were items you were free to choose on your own, and only a fool would choose anything other than the best kind when spending the kind of money we hoped to be shelling out some day. The best kind was either the kind that connected the record platter directly to the rotating motor (Pioneer, Technics, Denon) or the kind that drove the platter with a belt from the motor (Dual, BIC, AR, Thorens). The winner? Almost all DJs embraced direct drives, and if they still play records, that's the kind they use; home listeners have mostly settled on belt drives. As a reflection of the split decision, I have one of each.

Texas Instruments vs. Bowmar: Who was going to be the leading seller of the newfangled reasonably small, affordable calculator? Texas Instruments calculators were generally bigger and clunkier than the Bowmar Brains, which looked cooler, had a better display and wittier commercials. Seems as if there was some difference in the relative successes of the decisions made by the respective corporate management teams, though.

Atari vs. Intellivision: If it was for kids, Mattel would dominate the market, right? After all, where was Johnny Lightning in the 1980s? Well, not so fast. Intellivision had games with more detailed graphics and play. But there were fewer of them. And the controllers were clunkier and less intuitive. On top of that, Mattel made an interesting branding choice: it tried to position itself upmarket from Atari, with a more expensive system, more involved games, and ads featuring author George Plimpton as the spokesperson. The video game system for grownups who like to read? Don't think it sold quite as well as Mattel might have hoped.

VHS vs. LaserDisc: No, the battle with Beta wasn't the only format war for VHS. There was also LaserDisc. Then again, LaserDiscs couldn't record and needed the size of a record album to hold no more information than today's DVDs. Their prime advantage was picture quality, at a time when most consumers didn't see much wrong with over-the-air TV signals retrieved by an antenna. So maybe this was more of a minor skirmish.

Hyundai vs. Yugo: Car prices were creeping up through the 80s: though $7995 was the base price for a sports car as cool as a Mazda RX-7 in 1979, the same amount was only getting you an entry level economy car eight years later. A couple of carmakers decided that America could appreciate a bit less car for a bit less money; the Yugo and the Hyundai Excel both advertised base prices of under $5000 for the 1987 model year. The country that produced the Yugo has since separated into component parts that survive and, I hope, thrive. The cars had the separating part down, but I haven't seen any evidence of any Yugo bits surviving. Meanwhile, Hyundai is going upscale, aiming its new Genesis models at the customers who had happy experiences with the early cheap cars and are ready to spend a bit more on their transportation. If you're stumped by the concept of an "upscale" Hyundai, you might want to consider the possibility that your parents were probably similarly stumped by the concept of an upscale Toyota. Lexus marketeers ignored them to focus on you and seemed to do okay with that approach, so it may be time to face the possibility that you've entered the age group that sellers of trendy consumer goods willingly shun.

SACD vs. DVD-Audio: Scratching your head at this one? Don't recognize either of the combatants? You're not alone. This was a battle with no winners. After selling us on the idea that the Compact Disc would give us perfect sound forever, audio equipment manufacturers turned their attentions to improving on perfection. They came up with "high resolution" audio formats: they used the same sort of discs as the familiar CD to provide sound that was as much of an improvement over standard CD quality as high-definition TV was over standard broadcasts. Sony and Phillips came up with Super Audio CD, while Panasonic developed DVD-Audio. The two discs were incompatible, which meant one thing: format war. Consumers, remembering Beta vs. VHS, decided to get some answers before plunking down their cash on new players and a bunch of new discs. Like, "Which format sounds so much better than CD that I won't be able to resist replacing my old music with new discs?" Answer: Neither. And, "Which format is used in so many new releases and reissues of old favorites that I'll have the chance to start making most of my music purchases in high-res form?" Answer: Neither. Plus, "Which format will make portable players, players for cars, and players for some place other than a audio snob's home system?" Answer: Neither. Which means that the burning question for audiophiles circa 2001, "Which will become the format that wins?" got the same answer: Neither.

The Hard World Of Grown Folks -- Brought To You By Bill Withers

The music that was being played when I first started paying attention was early-mid 60s R & B and pop. Lots of Motown. Dionne Warwick singing Bacharach-David tunes. East coast vocal groups doing Brill Building songwriters. Curtis Mayfield songs done by the Impressions and Major Lance.

So as a kid, I got the pop lyricist's take on love gone wrong. "I cry so much just like a child that's lost his toy . . . Make believe that you don't see the tears; just let me grieve in private, 'cause each time I see you, I break down and cry . . . Sentimental fool am I, to hear an old love song, and want to cry . . . "

It wasn't hard to get the picture. Somebody went away. Or came and went. Or spent time with somebody else. Or stuck around, and was mean. Whatever went wrong, the response was lots of crying. It sounded so standard, so routine, that it didn't seem much more serious than the sniffles brought on by a December cold. In fact, some supposedly sorrowful songs didn't have much sorrow in them at all. Like the Temptations' Girl, Why You Wanna Make Me Blue? Bright and breezy enough to be your on-the-way-to-a-party soundtrack.

As I got older and closer to adolescence, the sad songs didn't change; they stayed inside the safe, abstract boundaries I'd heard since preschool: "I found love on a two-way street, and lost it on a lonely highway . . . Every street you walk on I leave tear stains on the ground . . . I spend my nights alone, crying bitter tears . . . "

Then, all of a sudden, I heard a dramatically different take on the Love Gone Wrong concept from Bill Withers.



The rolling, ominous bass line that starts in the intro and remains an undercurrent throughout the song is more surely a harbinger of coming trouble than the shark's theme in Jaws.

A man we passed just tried to stare me down
And when I looked at you, you looked at the ground.
I don't know who he is, but I think that you do.
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

The lyrics of Love Gone Wrong songs had always included rhetorical questions of the "Why Do You Treat Me So Bad?" and "How Long Must I Suffer?" variety. This question, though, was demanding an answer. And it provoked a couple of thoughts. First: if the answer isn't the right one, there will be tears, but they won't all be his. Second: there might not be any right answer.

Something in my heart and in your eyes
Tells me he's not someone just passing by.
And when you cleared your throat, was that your cue?
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

As my almost-teen brain was trying to nail down a concrete concept of the ill wind that was blowing through the song, Withers was kind enough to provide some interpretation assistance from real life. Withers was married to actress Denise Nicholas, who was, in my estimation, about as pretty as women needed to get. Rumor had it that Nicholas had suffered injuries bad enough to require hospital treatment (the juiciest of the rumors reporting those injuries to include a broken arm), and that those injuries were caused by her husband.

When I add the sum of you and me
I get confused, and I keep coming up with three.
You're too much for one man, but not enough for two.
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

My life experiences as of that time left me short of the imagination necessary to think of exactly what I'd do with Denise Nicholas if she'd been my wife. But I knew that hitting her wasn't it. I couldn't imagine anybody doing such a thing. And yet I wasn't hearing loud denials from either of them.

You tell me men don't have much intuition.
Is that what you really think, or are you wishing?
Before you wreck your old home, be certain of the new.
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

This didn't sound like it was coming from some standard pop songwriters' toolbox. It sounded personal, three-dimensional, real, and tangible. And it opened my eyes to an idea that I hadn't really grasped before: the business of romance -- that inspired so many cute and nonthreatening songs of woe -- was a business that set in motion forces that were potentially dangerous. Those forces had to be handled carefully: you didn't want to be a person who couldn't manage his own internal storms, and you didn't want to end up stuck with somebody who failed that management test, either.

Back when, drivers' ed classes for teens used to show students pictures of car wrecks to let them know that the motoring world they were about to enter contained not just the fun and frolic they imagined, but also a serious, potentially deadly side. That kind of lesson might not be a bad addendum to our teaching of the birds and the bees. Who Is He? plus a little of the Withers backstory would make for a great intro to that part of the lecture.


[YouTube video courtesy of 19urban72].

Poor Aaron Rodgers!

I'm no Green Bay Packer fan.

And I save real sympathy for folks who are truly suffering. Generally speaking, the travails of being a professional athlete in America don't qualify for that rank.

But in that little corner of the brain reserved for emotions devoted to the trivialities of spectator sports, I've gotta feel some of the pain of Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

He was drafted late in the tenure of the most beloved Packer of a generation, Brett Favre. His mere presence was a prod to the team's faithful that time was running out for their active love affair with the former MVP and Super Bowl winning QB. Favre himself didn't seem to want that kind of prod: asked whether he would mentor the rookie who was clearly brought in to replace him somewhere down the line, Favre said that mentoring wasn't his job. Favre kept playing, Rodgers was the quiet understudy, and it was clear that that status would remain quo as long as Favre wanted it to.

Favre retired this offseason, apparently kicking off the Rodgers era. Then, even before training camp or any opportunity for Packer backers to miss him, Favre seemed to have second thoughts, commenting publicly that he'd consider unretiring if the Packers needed him because of a Rodgers injury. How Favre could fail to see the tackiness of that kind of comment is a mystery: the prospect will certainly cause at least some Packer fans to wish and hope for Rodgers to get hurt just enough for the Brett cavalry to come riding to the rescue, and at least a few of those folks will be expressing those wishes and hopes every time Rodgers is slow to get up from a sack. Rodgers is a big boy and has already been made a rich man to put up with just that kind of aggravation, but that doesn't excuse Favre's lack of professional courtesy in exposing him to an extra helping of it.

And as if that wasn't enough, the Packers went to the second round of this weekend's NFL draft and drafted another quarterback, Louisville's Brian Brohm. It's one thing for a team to start looking for your replacement when you're 35, and been on the job for 13 seasons, but it's something else altogether when you're 24 and haven't even been tried out for a full season yet. The Packers say they drafted Brohm to be a backup, but second round picks are generally too important to be spent on guys unless those guys are going to play. Brett Favre was a second round draft pick. So when Rodgers has an off play or two, and he doesn't look hurt enough for Favre to be called back to save the team, fans are gonna be thinking that they have a promising young QB standing on the sidelines who should be given a chance. Again, Rodgers is being well paid to endure ill wishes and fond hopes for other guys. I just imagine that it's no fun to be overshadowed by your predecessor, and while you're still living in that shadow, have to be overshadowed by your successor.

Maybe Prince Charles can send him an encouraging text message?

How To Bring The Family Together?

The commercial has a familiar theme and set up.

Mom says to the kids, "See ya later," and each of the kids, like caricatures of busy executives, rattles off the intense afternoon schedules that will make getting together later undoable. The littleist kid says that she can move some things around to make a 3:45 get-together possible.

Cute. Innocuous. Mom will see that they're doing the scheduled, fragmented life too much, and she's going to put a stop to it. We're going to be sold something that promotes family togetherness. I was suspecting some sort of quick, easy comfort food: mom could say, "There's always time for X," and X would be a convenient and irresistible breakfast item. Or soup.

I wasn't expecting what the product turned out to be.

A new model of flat-screen TV, from Panasonic.

After we see the product, we see the whole family sitting down in front of the new screen, all smiling together at the same program.

I think we've passed some sort of milestone here.

I remember a campaign for one new season of ABC's fall programming; the concept was that you should watch more TV because it was good for you. And it was obviously tongue-in-cheek. We all knew that TV wasn't good for you, and it was funny for a TV network to make the Joe Isuzu-ish claim that it was.

But there was no evidence that this Panasonic ad was meant to be funny at all. The idea that a busy family can be pulled from its hectic routines by the warm, fuzzy glow of a new TV is apparently to be taken completely at face value. "Bring your family together with television!" I might have expected that in 1951, but now?

Maybe we're supposed to be taken by the charming naivete of the suggestion that a husband, wife, and three kids ranging from toddler to teen would all find suitable entertainment on a single screen rather than scattering to their respective satellite niches, video games, DVDs, chat rooms and text messaging.

The Monkey's Paw vs. My Super Sweet 16

Somewhere around fifth grade, my class was assigned to read a short story called The Monkey's Paw. If I learned at the time that the story was written by English author W. W. Jacobs and published in 1902, I forgot those facts pretty quickly.

What I did not forget was the essence of the story. A mother, father and son come into possession of a monkey's paw, said to be enchanted with a spell that would allow three wishes to be granted merely by grasping the paw and speaking them aloud. After being warned by the paw's previous possessor not to mess around with it, the family wishes for a specific sum of cash. The next day, the mother and father are waiting for the son to come home from work, and the person who comes to the door instead is a visitor from the son's employer. He brings bad news: the son has been killed on the job, mangled in machinery. The visitor also brings compensation from the employer: the exact sum of money the family had wished for the previous day. After a few days, the mother and father use the second wish to wish the son alive again. Late that night, there is a knock at the door. Mother rushes for the door, assuming that it is the son returned to life. Father, mindful of the fact that the son had been mangled beyond recognition and horrified at the thought of what the reanimated body might look like, rushes for the paw and uses the third and final wish to wish the son gone for good before his wife can open that door.

As grade schoolers whose lives and times included heavy doses of Dark Shadows on weekday afternoons, Christopher Lee Dracula movies on Saturday afternoons, and Creature Features on Saturday nights, our discussions of The Monkey's Paw focused on its supernatural aspects. Did the wishing actually work, or did the family suffer a single, tragic coincidence that they inflated into an irrational belief in the paw's magic? If the paw really did work, could they have headed off future trouble by making the first wish for unlimited wishes?

But another aspect of the story lurked around in my subconscious and popped up several years later, in college. A bunch of us were killing the hours between dinner and late Saturday night partying in the dorm TV lounge, watching Fantasy Island.

(Don't get smug: the show was on for years, so some of you had to be out there watching it, too. And if not you, somebody you know.)

I don't remember the details of the episode at all; I just remember that the moral of the three stories that made up the hour was that you shouldn't go around wishing for wealth or fame or glory or status, because all that stuff brings with it problems that you can't imagine, so you're better off making the best of whatever it is that you have.

A light bulb clicked on. "Hey, that was the real message of The Monkey's Paw!" Plenty of folks in the TV lounge at the time had read the story, had it read to them, or were familiar with some variation of it. And it wasn't hard for us to think of other times we'd seen reinforcements of the "You're Better Off Staying In Your Place" message. Gershwin's "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'" from Porgy and Bess was an obvious example. There was special scorn for the Florida Evans character from the TV series Good Times: "Ohhhh, Jaaaames! We don't need money for food if we have to get it by doing a commercial for floor wax that I don't think is the best!"

You don't want the kind of troubles that go along with wealth. Trying to get rich is going to bring you misery. You can find happiness and true nobility in the humble surroundings that are right where you are.

We weren't conspiracy theorists, and didn't decide that the omnipresence of those messages was Official Trilateral Commission One World Policy. But on the other hand, it didn't seem like random coincidence, either. It occurred to us that maybe the sort of people who approved the short story compilations on grade school reading lists and gave the green light to television scripts and movie musicals might have thought that those were fine, noncontroversial messages to spread through mass media. It also occurred to us that those people might not have been so willing to spread messages showing the happy results of overt ambition in the lower classes.

Monkey's Paw messages seem a bit harder to find these days; there doesn't seem to be a whole lot out there to tell us how great it is to be of humble station. Every now and then, some rapper or singer will let us know that it's tough to have to deal with the haters. But they've generally spent more time telling us exactly why they're getting the hate: they're not skimping on the details about the magnitude of the lives they live.

And that's the more common message in today's America. 'Tis better to live large, and to show everybody every millimeter of that largeness. As a shining example, there is MTV's My Super Sweet 16, which demonstrates just how far out of hand things can get when parents with fat wallets decide to indulge their kids with 16th birthday celebrations. Some human abilities, like the ability to learn new languages, are best developed in early childhood, so if you are above the age of consent, have ever needed to hold a job, and haven't seen the show, it's probably too late for you to develop the talent to imagine the ways the kids on the show use mommy and daddy's money to buy attention and indulgences previously known only to royalty.

Youngsters watching the show aren't being told that it's best to be satisfied with what you have. Nor do they see quaint, 1980s, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-era wonder at the abundance the birthday kids get to wallow in. No, the moral of the story doesn't seem to be that they have lots of nice stuff and enjoy it all; it's that things won't be sufficiently fun for them if they don't get to emphasize how much they have, how important they are, and how different that makes them from everybody else. The birthday kids are notably sensitive about the preservation of the exclusivity of their largeness. The typical show subject is hyper-concerned about the making of the guest list, about ensuring that there is enough security to keep the uninvited from crashing, and about keeping the invited guests from overshadowing her entrance, stepping on her stage, or trying to share her spotlight. If any of these kids is ever pressed into service as a monarch, they've got the attitude down.

The behavior of the Super Sweet 16 teens is only natural, given the culture they've grown up in. They've heard rappers bragging about the brands they wear, carry, drive and drink, and they've gotten visual confirmation of the nature of large living from entertainers and athletes on MTV Cribs. "Diva" behavior is good, shopping is an end, not a means to an end, and the government encourages citizens to spend rather than save. Telephones aren't functional tools that last for decades, they're fashion accessories that require replacement every other year for lack of stylishness.

Somewhere, in that wide space between random happenstance and coordinated plot, the message minders seem to have abandoned the "Be Content Where You Are" idea and replaced it with something closer to "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Is Jealous Of You." It's easy to be horrified at the direction that mindset takes us. But in this case, pining away for the old days isn't quite right, either; they were just as rotten in the opposite direction.

Isn't there a happy medium? Can't we have some "up from poverty, made it big, stayed modest, lived happily ever after" stories to show our kids?

Our Founding Fathers -- And Their Underemphasized Legacy

What was really so special about America's Founding Fathers?

Washington's integrity? Franklin's worldly ingenuity? Jefferson's brilliance? Madison's visionary statesmanship?

All of the above, right? American folklore tells us that the Founding Fathers were giants among men, the most Alpha of Alpha males. We've distilled their best characteristics down to a simple archetype, one easily found on display in the form of the John Wayne character in at least a dozen movies. You know the character: bigger, stronger, tougher, smarter (practical smarts, not that egghead book-learning stuff) and more righteous than anybody else.

That self-image neglects one of the most significant characteristics of the Founding Fathers and the legacy they established for us, though. And that characteristic is the ability to recognize what Benjamin Franklin told the Continental Congress just prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence: "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

We don't know, and can't prove whether Washington was more brave than Kosciuszko, or whether Madison was a more enlightened thinker on the subject of people and their relationship to government than was Rousseau. But we can judge the Founding Fathers objectively on one item of evidence that demonstrates that in the measure of the concept identified by Franklin's words, they were men ahead of their time.

In the 18th century, position at or near the head of a nation wasn't something that you politely handed over to someone you neither fathered nor chose. Wars of succession were the order of the day, and in the generations immediately preceding the American revolution, such wars were fought in Spain and Prussia. Catherine the Great came to power in Russia via a coup that ousted her husband, and violent overthrows of heads of state wouldn't go out of style there for more than a hundred years. England had exiled a king, James II, in 1688, and in 1745, his grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie, was still leading armies into battle on English soil to try to restore their male line to the throne.

As for France, the perception of insufficient devotion to the cause led to the imprisonment and exile of one of the revolution's fathers, Lafayatte, and the execution of two others, Danton and Robespierre. The resulting chaos allowed an opportunistic and charismatic military leader to take advantage, and General Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor Napoleon I.

There were no such happenings in America. Though there was some support for an expansive executive role in American federal government, the historical evidence does not suggest that George Washington actively attempted any power grabbing before or after taking office, and he willingly stepped aside at the conclusion of his second term as head of state, though he surely could have held power longer.

John Adams was no fan of Thomas Jefferson or of Jefferson's politics. Adams promoted the passing of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which allowed his government to harass and intimidate political opponents. But Adams' use of governmental power against those opponents stopped far short of the global norms of the day, and when Jefferson defeated him in the election of 1800, Adams didn't fight the result, he went home to Massachusetts.

In fact, whatever might be said about the various forms of legal and political chicanery that have impacted American presidential elections, it still must also be said that transfers of the powers of the head of state in this country have always been peaceful. To date, no one has taken that power by taking up arms against the incumbent holder.

The other nations that can make the same claim do not readily come to mind. In a world of deposed monarchs and wannabe emperors, and in a world whose future held plenty of Duces, Presidents for Life and Generalissimos, our Founding Fathers recognized that establishing and playing by orderly power transfer rules was more important than keeping power for themselves and their allies.

In today's world, the idea of winning by any means necessary seems to have been elevated to the pantheon of true-blue, inherently American ideals. But it ain't so. Our Founding Fathers realized the truth of what Ben Franklin was telling them: even when you are in direct competition with your neighbor, there are times when your own interests are better served by watching his back than by stabbing him in it.

We may just be in one of those periods right about now.

You Do Not Want This Car

This is the 2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8.

As a public service, I am warning you that this is a car that you do not want.

As some of you may remember and others of you may have seen or read, Dodge previously produced a model called the Challenger that looked a great deal like this one. The 1970 version of the car has been said to be the inspiration for the new model.

Which should serve as an alarm bell for careful automotive shoppers. The 1970 example of the Challenger was a typical example of what was known at the time as a "muscle car." For those who are not aware, "muscle cars" were created by throwing big, powerful engines into small and/or stripped down bodies. Muscle cars were not created by upgrading the suspensions or brakes of those bodies as much as they should have been. Which meant that muscle cars were notoriously indifferent to even urgent requests to stop or turn. Is that the kind of vehicle you want as inspiration for a car you buy in 2008?

And let's not so quickly bypass the supposedly positive feature of the muscle car: the big, powerful engine. 425 horsepower isn't as practical now as it was then. The lower speed limits and greater congestion of today's America make for very few opportunities to use any more engine than a nice, sensible four-cylinder provides. And even though engines are more efficient than those of 35 years ago, the Hemi powerplant of today's Challenger still guzzles quite a bit of gasoline. That might have been fine and dandy when gas cost less than .40 a gallon and we thought we could pump oil out of the ground indefinitely, but now that prices are closer to 4.00 and peak oil is rearing its ugly head, who can afford to be so irresponsible?

"I can," you say?

You must be of the sort who went around throwing money at vintage Challengers and Barracudas and Chargers and Road Runners in the last twenty years, driving up the demand and prices so much that folks of modest means couldn't afford to buy a reasonably priced example.

Or so I hear.

But even if you can afford to disregard the cost considerations, think of the style statement you would be making with the purchase of this car. Let's say you were born in 1954 or before, which would have made you old enough to have driven a Challenger in its original incarnation. If you didn't have one then, a purchase of this one will make you look as if you are trying to claim coolness you lacked at the time.

If, on the other hand, you did drive one then, buying this one will make you look like your current life isn't decent enough for you to let go of the early 1970s. I will leave it to you to decide which image is more pathetic. Neither is what you want to look like.

Nor do you want the image you'll have if you were born too late to have even remembered the original Challenger: say, any time from about 1968 on. Since I'm doing a public service here, I'll go ahead and spell out what that image is: POSEUR. What do you know about Challengers, or muscle cars at all? Whatever it is, it's after the fact and/or second hand. How would you look driving a Challenger? About the same as you'd look wearing a letterman's jacket when you weren't on the team. Or wearing a captain's cap when you aren't in the navy, don't own a yacht, and aren't married to Toni Tennille. Do you even know who Toni Tennille is? Well, if you didn't hear her on AM radio or see her on VHF television, you have no business buying a Challenger. Save yourself some embarrassment and stay away from your local Dodge dealer, unless you're shopping for an iconic name that doesn't look anything at all like its predecessor: the Charger. Help yourself to all the Vipers and Caravans you want.

In fact, there's an entire automotive brand for your demographic. It's called Scion, and I'm sure their dealers will be happy to see you coming. But take it from me: the Challenger is not for you.

When was I born?

What difference does that make? We're trying to help you out here.

Now, I hope that these magnanimous and unselfish words of warning are heeded. And one of these days, I may just check to see that they are. So in passing by some random Dodge dealer, on my way somewhere else, of course, when I take a brief glance to see what is sitting around on the lot, I will expect to see vast stocks of unsold and unwanted Hemi-engined Challengers. Especially in orange. Dodge may recognize that if it is to truly wallow in the degradation that is retro nostalgia styling, it must also offer the Challenger in the color once known as Plum Crazy; if it does, I expect to see even more of those on their lots.

That is all.

No need to thank me.

[Photo from Dodge.com. Nothing to see there.]

The Stages Of Life -- In Food Terms

1. Can He Chew It? (Parental Concern)

Teeth check in, and with them, the ability to handle solid food.

2. Will I Like It?

For a kid, the potential for trauma lurks behind every meal. "You're gonna sit there until you eat everything on that plate." "I didn't pay good money for you to waste that food." "Don't you know that children in (insert Third World reference here) are starving for that food?" It's why the Happy Meal is so happy -- you know it, you like it, and they give you a toy to boot.

3. Can I Afford It?

You grow up, you get the autonomy to eat pizza all day every day if you want to. The rub: you need to assemble five other guys to go in with you to order one.

4. Will It Make Me Fat?

You can afford to make the move from subsistence eating to recreational eating. But you're realizing that there suddenly aren't enough calorie-burning opportunities in a day to manage equilibrium entirely on the output side. More and more frequently, there's food you like and can pay for, but you still turn down.

5. Can I Digest It?

You knew that Jerry Seinfeld's parents and the other seniors at the Del Boca Vista retirement home thought that 6 was an absurdly late hour for dinner, but there was an element to the joke that you didn't quite get. Until you started to realize that an ill-timed, excessively ambitious meal could be enjoyable for an hour, then a far bigger nuisance for twelve. Midnight steak? When it means trying to sleep on a bowling ball, no thanks.

6. Can I Chew It?

Teeth check out, and with them, the ability to handle solid food.


If you live in a locale where the traditional late night/early morning on the way home meal is a stop at a 24-hour White Castle, rest assured that when you're in the drive-through line at 3 a.m., that's not me in front of you.