FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2022
See you in September: BREAKING! Croatia has defeated Brazil, 1-1, in a high-scoring World Cup match.
Even stranger are the recent twin anomalies from the world of the NFL:
On Monday night, Tampa Bay defeated New Orleans, 17-16. In the game's first 55 minutes, the Buccaneers had scored exactly three points. At that point, they gained control of the ball and staged two lengthy touchdown drives, winning the game with three seconds to go.
Last night, the same darn thing! Las Vegas kicked a field goal with twelve minutes left. As a result, they were leading the Los Angeles Rams, 16-3.
The Rams had scored exactly three points in the game's first 48 minutes. Inevitably, they proceeded to stage two extremely long touchdown drives. They too won by the mandated score of the week, this time with ten seconds left in the game.
We're reporting one notable difference. Tampa Bay was quarterbacked by Tom Brady, greatest QB of all time. Los Angeles was led by Baker Mayfield, who had been on the team's roster for something like two days.
True story! Mayfield was cut by the hapless Carolina Panthers on Monday. He showed up in Tinseltown on Tuesday.
Two days later, he savaged the Raiders. On this basis, NFL teams have found yet another way to save a couple of bucks.
Why in the world should NFL teams waste time with such outmoded conventions as practice or training camp? Next year, teams can simply message their players:
We open on Sunday, September 10. Try to get here by Thursday at noon!
Also this local event: This past Sunday, the Baltimore Ravens had scored exactly three points in the first 55 minutes of their game against Denver.
Under backup quarterback Tyler Huntley, they then staged a 91-yard touchdown drive and won the game, 10-9.
Long story short. In the modern NFL, everyone's the greatest QB of all time—but not till there's five minutes left!
Blue Crush is looking great right now.
ReplyDeleteFrom Digby:
ReplyDelete"On Thursday, the Democratic staff of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs released its report on the government’s handling of the pandemic, focusing on the first six months...It’s a devastating document that describes, the first months of the crisis “one of the worst public health responses in U.S. history.” Multiple failures, including in threat recognition, cohesive response, clear communication and timely mitigation measures “resulted in the avoidable yet devastating loss of human life.”
We all saw this happen in real time but the details of how chaotic it was behind the scenes are downright chilling. The administration “failed to take decisive action and adequately convey the threat to the American people” and “remained focused on containing the virus by trying to keep it out of the U.S., rather than implementing needed measures to mitigate its spread within the country.” (You may remember Trump’s comments at the CDC that he was eager to “keep his numbers down.”)
The report cites example after example of how “contradictory and inadequate communications left Americans confused and unclear on what to do to minimize their risk and over time, eroded public trust in public health guidance.” That’s an understatement. Tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, died unnecessarily because of Trump’s refusal to back the social distancing and masking measures that were all we had in the beginning as scientists were trying to understand the scope of the crisis.
And what went on within the Trump administration, as it abruptly shifted responsibility from one agency to the other and injected politics into every aspect of the response, was even worse than we knew. The report reveals that the administration’s “influence in CDC’s guidance expanded to the point where political officials within HHS altered public health guidance and reports.” Former CDC chief of staff Kyle McGowan is quoted saying that “every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won.” It was a disaster. But the report does indeed credit the administration with quickly approving Operation Warp Speed, which, as I said, is the one big thing Trump did right — and the one thing his followers resent him for."
https://digbysblog.net/2022/12/09/desantis-plans-to-run-on-his-nihilist-covid-policy/
This might be something Somerby could discuss, instead of inane trivia about sports -- the kind of thing he regularly derides when it appears in the Washington Post.
Sports are doo-doo.
ReplyDeleteBroncos are having a tough season, but this reaction seems a bit extreme.
Delete“This might be something Somerby could discuss, instead of inane trivia about sports -- the kind of thing he regularly derides when it appears in the Washington Post.”
DeleteNo,Anonymouse 3:13pm, he derides putting a slew of less impactful stories (such as sports news) under an important report as though they were all of a kind.
Anonymouse distortion never quits.
And he has never said that himself.
DeleteNo, he has only talked about the placement of such pieces, relevant to important news articles, every time he brings the matter up.
DeleteSports are malarkey.
DeleteCecelia, you don’t speak for Somerby. You don’t understand what he says, most of the time.
DeleteCecelia is a good, decent person.
DeleteDear darling dumb anonymices, read this. It is but one sample of Somerby bemoaning the placement of hard news with human interest pieces and ludicrous fluff.
DeleteA piece declaring it intrusive to call rather than text is featured as prominently as Covid deaths and rising sea levels.
Later in the day, the phone call piece has moved UP on the page, etc.
You don’t have to agree with his or anyone’s opinion, but you should try actually reading them first.
https://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2022/11/please-dont-call-family-or-friends-on.html?m=0
‘Bemoaning’? What an elitist word, sure to be mocked by regular people.
DeleteRighties, like Cecelia, using elitist words like "bemoaning", is why Republicans aren't getting as many bigots elected to the Senate, nowadays.
DeleteThis is an interesting video by David Pepper, posted by Tom Sullivan on Digby's blog:
ReplyDeletehttps://digbysblog.net/2022/12/10/fight-the-right-fights/
It is about the need to focus election strategies on state level battles, not just electing Democrats to serve in DC.
Don’t forget school boards.
DeleteWell, in personality/political programming,
ReplyDeletebeing into sports is always the way to
show the host is a regular, patriotic
guy. Now there is a part of Morning
Joe just for Bob.
Sports is for regular he-men, and its trivia are well worth contemplating, unlike the world of fashion, which is for women and gays.
ReplyDeleteWomen play sports, too.
DeleteThere are plenty of inequalities between men's and women's sports. The attempts to change that have evoked as much resistance as the efforts to encourage gender tolerance.
DeleteMany straight men like fashion.
Delete5:20: Not Bob Somerby.
Delete2:52: Somerby hails from a simpler time where only men played sports. He doesn’t currently follow women’s sports either.
Delete5:11: But the women could kick your ass.
DeleteI’m not an athlete.
DeleteFrom Amanda Marcotte:
ReplyDelete"I woke up like this." So sayeth the 2013 Beyoncé anthem "Flawless," a song that also features a speech by feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. When it was released, the lyric caused some grumbling among feminists who took it literally, but in my experience, fans understand it how Beyoncé almost certainly meant it, as an ironic joke. We do not wake up like this. Feminine presentation, in particular, can be a lot of work, with heavy investment in hair, makeup and clothes. Plenty of folks feel like genderless puffbags when they wake up, until they groom and doll themselves up.
In other words, Beyoncé boiled down reams of Judith Butler-style feminist theory for the masses: Gender is a performance. It's an idea that caused much angsty academic debate for years. But when you put it like Beyoncé does, it starts to sound more like common sense."
She then goes on to explain that it is the performative quality of gender that terrifies the right wing. Because masculinity is performative too, especially on the fringes with hypermasculine militia-style posturing with guns and camo and tough guy stances. Drag is a conservative issue because it threatens the idea that male and female are biological and not socially constructed, even though the presentation of both male and female identity in our society is clearly a dictated performance. As Marcotte explains, this isn't about gays or trans-people, it is about the threat men feel to their dominance in a society that is increasingly questioning their right to rule. Even the attacks on LGBTQ+ communities are about misogyny.
Sports is part of the male self-presentation of masculinity. It is an entire industry devoted to reassuring men that they are manly. Violence seems to be intrinsic to that performance of masculinity, as weakness and victimization seems to be part of the performance of femininity. This is why there is a connection between extremist violence and domestic violence, incels, and resistance to change for women. Misogyny is at the heart of conservative white anxieties and this is why Tucker Carlson is tanning his genitals. Conservativism and misogyny are inextricably intertwined. Women see this and that is why they vote more for Biden and do not admire Trump. Trump's 27 accusations of sexual assault cemented his attraction to his base for men. Melania's existence is to show Trump's base that he doesn't take crap from women.
When this stuff is so obvious that it appears in a pop song by Beyonce, yet no one in the media speaks about it except known feminists such as Marcotte, it seems unlikely the huge gulf between our two political parties is going to close any time soon. Somerby won't acknowledge what is happening. Men on the right cannot, because it would be akin to admitting they are too soft to perform their male role.
But football is flourishing, as are gun sales. Drag shows are the way out, and that is why the right is busy shooting at them, trying to kill their power by aiming at electrical stations. While Somerby condemns any interest outside his own restricted masculine self-definition as trivial.
Women play sports, too.
DeleteOne issue for female athletes is the pressure not to appear gay, which arises from the perception that sports are for men and any woman who likes or does well in sports must not be feminine. See A League of Their Own.
DeleteOf course women watch and play sports too. That is because sports itself is not gendered, but sports are used by men to bolster their self-presentation as masculine. Women are threatening the gender performance aspect of sports by becoming coaches and players on male teams. That is putting more pressure on the men who feel threatened by such participation. Look at the history of Title IX and how male-dominated sports reacted to incursions by women. Participation in sports, including women's sports, is the #1 way of empowering girls and women and helping them step out of feminine stereotypes to achieve other goals. Sports is as much a culture war battleground as animosity to non-traditional gender presentations like drag shows, and the intersection is participation in sports by trans-people. It shouldn't matter, but look how much it does.
Some men like to play on all-male teams, just like some women like to play on all-female teams.
Delete5:18: Football, the sport where close, physical male gay-adjacent cameraderie was acceptable in a macho society.
DeleteJeanne Dielman was shown on TCM several years ago. This is where I, who am nobody, saw it, and enjoyed it:
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sltpo53JKJ8
You sat through three hours of that?
DeleteBeing long isn't the problem. Here are some of the longest movies:
DeleteGone With the Wind -- 3 hr 58 min
Once Upon a Time in America -- 3 hr 49 min
Lawrence of Arabia -- 3 hr 36 min
Ben Hur -- 3 hr 32 min
Cleopatra (Burton & Taylor) -- 4 hr 8 min
The Irishman (Scorsese) -- 3 hr 29 min
Apocalypse Now -- 3 hr 22 min
Lord of the Rings (Return of the King -- 3 hr 21 min
The Godfather Part II -- 3 hr 20 min
Spartacus -- 3 hr 17 min
Schindler's List -- 3 hr 15 min
Titanic -- 3 hr 14 min
The Right Stuff -- 3 hr 13 min
The Green Mile -- 3 hr 9 min
JFK -- 3 hr 9 min
Magnolia (Tom Cruise) -- 3 hr 8 min
King Kong (2005) -- 3 hr 5 min
The Deer Hunter -- 3 hr 2 min
Dances with Wolves -- 3 hr 1 min
The Wolf of Wall Street -- 3 hr 0 min
Jeanne Dielman -- 3 hr 21 min
Some long films are time well spent, but others aren’t.
DeleteAnd you know that by either watching them or reading critical reviews of the type Somerby denigrates.
Delete2:56: I fully admit to not being a “regular” person, using the apparent, fascistic definition of “normal” as used by Bob Somerby and Tucker Carlson. And I praise ‘god’ for it.
DeleteI’m an irregular person.
DeleteAnyone who decides they like something that regular people don’t is a cosseted elite, probably liberal.
ReplyDeleteUnless it’s John Galsworthy. Or Yevtushenko.
I bemoan sports.
ReplyDeleteRawstory features an article by Paul Rosenberg of Salon about how the NY Times helped Republicans win House seats via its misleading coverage of issues such as crime and inflation.
ReplyDeleteHe begins by explaining how the Columbia Journalism Review documented the NY Times unfair coverage of Hillary Clinton in 2016:
"In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, there was a lot of attention focused on the role of "fake news," but a year later, a study published in the Columbia Journalism Review told a very different story, with the blunt title, "Don't blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media." Instead of fake news — which was a real but relatively small problem in 2016 (all fake Russian ads amounted to 0.1 percent of Facebook's daily advertising revenue) — it centered on an analysis of the New York Times' agenda-setting campaign coverage: America's paper of record ran as many front-page stories about Hillary Clinton's emails (10) in the last six days before the election as it did about all policy details combined in the two months before the election."
Then he continues to describe how NY Times coverage affected House races in our recent midterms.
https://www.rawstory.com/gop-house-2022/
Somerby used to point out these NY Times imbalances in coverage, but he has not done so recently and perhaps not in decades. He didn't do Clinton any favors over media coverage, insisting that she was a "deeply flawed candidate" and blaming her loss on her own actions, even in the face of Comey's last-minute statement, instead insisting that liberals made Comey "a God" and thus deserved what he did.
A real media critic might devote some time to discussing this article. I'll bet that Somerby instead wastes time complaining again about the placement of article on his digital Washington Post webpage subscription. First things first.
Somerby lost his way long ago.
Delete