"Until a Left-leaning Supreme Court Justice clears the way for a viciously partisan Democratic Special Prosecutor to take control of a high-profile, endlessly-funded investigation that has already cleared Bush of wrong-doing and extend said investigation into areas that aren't covered by its mandate (and are, indeed, being manufactured and promoted by Hard Left lawyers with funding from wealthy Leftist crackpots) in order to force Bush to perjure himself so that the inherently totalitarian House of Representatives -- controlled by insanely partisan Democrats -- can draft and pass embarrassingly weak Articles of Impeachment (but only after illegally presenting waffling moderates, outside of the House chamber in a Democratic headquarters, with "evidence" that wouldn't hold up in any court that Bush was a rapist) - all enabled by some of the most factually-impaired reporting since Hearst's heyday and a television pundit corps that skews heavily to the Left, I think we can safely say that the "Devious Shit" award goes to the reigning champion GOP."
"Tell you what, Jonah. As soon as the most popular liberal editorial page in the country accuses George Bush of murdering one of his aides, maybe I'll give your argument a hearing. And as soon as one of the most influential liberal interest groups in the country starts distributing hundreds of thousands of videos suggesting that George Bush ran a coke ring out of Austin, then I'll really perk up. And when Senate Democrats spend $70 million investigating the Valerie Plame affair — compared to the current $0 — and end up bringing impeachment charges against George Bush, then you'll have me. You'll really have me."
While I appreciate the warm support my previous post has generated, there are a few minor misperceptions I'd like to address.
It seems that a not-insignificant portion of readers interpreted the letter addressed to the Kerry campaign as an exhortation to go absolutely balls out, rhetorically. This was not my intention. I actually believe that sticking to the relative high ground is a very smart strategy. Bush's approval ratings on almost every subject are plummetting - something that I believe was inevitable, given his policies, but that I also believe was expected by Bush's handlers to happen several months in the future, after the election. The best route to go seems to be to hold off massive fire on Bush, and build a strong following, person to person, in the swing states. This is exactly what Kerry appears to be doing.
My main concern is that since the President is in such trouble, his allies have begun a massive smear offensive against Kerry. As many people have pointed out, building Bush up seems pretty well beyond reach; what is left is to tear Kerry down.
It seems clear to me -- and from the response my last post received, many others -- that the Kerry campaign's response to this massive bit of mud slinging has been somewhat lukewarm. This is inexcusable, and, given the stakes involved and the margin for error, very dangerous.
My suggestion, stripped of the anger/annoyance I feel justified in displaying, is rather simple and, given the resources available to the campaign, quite workable:
1. Hire a group of people to immerse themselves in the media world of the Right. Listen to Limbaugh. Listen to Hannity. Read Rightwing publications. Read Rightwing blogs - particularly InstaPundit, The Corner, and RedState. Read Rightwing forums - particularly FreeRepublic. As a very poor shorthand, I will refer to these staffers as the immersion group.
2. Give these people some kind of access to the top level of the campaign - 15 minutes a day on the phone with Kerry himself would be nice, but is most likely unfeasible. A good chunk of time with top-level media staff would probably be a decent substitute, as long as they don't minimize the importance of the immersion group.
3. As the immersion group sees themes, quotes, and lines of attack move from the fringes into the semi-mainstream (for example, once something makes the jump from Free Republic to InstaPundit), have them coordinate with press staff (actually, I'd prefer it to be with Kerry himself - this is why I'd like them to have direct access, but again, I understand that it might not be workable) to get everyone on the same page and up to speed with what the truth is, and what documentation exists to prove it. This is no time to have multiple agents floating their own personal explanations which may conflict or need to be retracted later.
4. Set up a very user-friendly website where each individual smear is decontructed at length, with as much documentation and citation as possible. Put it on either johnkerry.com, or, if people who know better than I do think that isn't appropriate, put it on the DNC's website. This is so that it has an official quality, and cannot be dismissed as a "product of far Left fringe group." Such an accusation can still be used by Righties, of course, but the power of that charge is significantly lessoned when it is directed at an official party source.
5. Sum up each deconstruction/response in quick, snappy soundbite fashion, and forcefeed it to your spokespeople, every single day. Make sure they point to the website frequently.
This should go a long way in minimizing the impact of various smears, because it will:
1. Give your spokespeople grounds to speak with authority when refuting bogus charges, minimizing rhetorical gotchas and allowing your spokespeople to stand their ground and continue to push the message they are supposed to push that day.
2. Give allies in the media an authoritative source for refutation material, so that they aren't left floundering when someone on the other side gets backed into a corner and becomes dramatically anal about citations.
3. Give mainstream media sources an easy means of "balancing" their story if and when they decide to run wiuth a particular rumor. Spoonfeed them the definitive rebuttal, rather than hoping they quote the right part of a random spokesperson's response. If rebuttals are definitive enough, the campaign may even be able to prevent a rumor from being picked up at all. After all, the mainstream media prides itself on its important role in American public life, and even if you and I think they sometimes do a horrendous job of it, most of them won't knowingly run blatantly false information.
4. Allow anyone interested to access the rebuttal themselves. With the prevalence of blogs and other internet media, this becomes especially useful as an alternate means of rapidly distributing your information.
It is no longer useful to sit back and hope that the media is too responsible to pick up any given rumor. The Right has proved that it can inject damn near any rumor it wants into mainstream discourse by distributing it along its own media network and then having the respectable press -- pathologically adverse to being scooped -- scramble to catch up. The internet has accelerated this process to the point where something can go from faint whisper on the fringes to RNC talking point on CrossFire in a matter of days. However, because all of these sources are open to the public, they can be monitored and countered in real time, if the Kerry campaign is smart enough to use its resources to do so.
I don't know what's going on in your heads, but you guys need to seriously get your shit together.
You are trying to get a man elected to the most powerful office in the world. You are running against liars and thieves who have a coordinated smear apparatus with branches throughout the national media. You have the example of the 2000 campaign, and indeed the entire Clinton presidency, to learn how this apparatus operates.
You know this. So why in God's name am I seeing interview clips that involve your spokespeople beginning sentences by stuttering, looking nonplussed, and saying things like "I believe" and "That's not entirely correct"?
I don't know, maybe you're hiring your favorite nieces or the neighbor children to be your spokespeople, but whatever it is, it ain't gonna cut it my friends. Anyone who goes in front of a camera with the imprimatur of the campaign and is blindsided by quotes, allegations, or outright lies that I have already heard needs to be fired immediately. There's a lot of dirt gonna be thrown your way in the next few months, and the time to pattycake with this bullshit is over.
Your fundraising efforts have been extremely effective and have won you accolades from various sources. Congratulations. Now tell me why the fuck you aren't paying some college kid $300 a week to do fulltime what I do for an hour or two a day? You have the unique opportunity of seeing the other side's talking points at least a day or two before they go into effect nationwide. How? Read their freakin' blogs. Hell, you'd be infinitely more prepared for this crap if you just read the goddamn InstaPundit, whose mission in life appears to be to collect as much bullshit as possible from as many questionable sources as possible and spray it hither and yon into the media winds. I believe in a Just God, and as such I know that Reynolds and his family will be punished unto the fourth generation, but for now, you can use his sin to do good. It's what Jesus would do, and you love Jesus, right?
Sure, most people who hear the various false charges, distortions, and lies about your candidate are skeptical, and realize that they are bogus. But the other side doesn't need most people. They need a small handful of undecideds to break their way in a few critical states. That's why every little smear, no matter how ridiculous, is potentially devastating.
There's only one way to deal with this: every lie, distortion, and false charge needs to be crushed, immediately and irrefutably, to the point where journalists will be mocked for repeating them.
You not only need to say that their bullshit is ridiculous, but you need to explain in detail why it is ridiculous. Not on television - I understand the need for soundbite wisdom in the ADD nightmare that is cable news. No, what your crew needs to do is set up a resource, a central repository of factual bitchslaps across the jaw of all this character assasination. Bullet point it so that your representatives can quickly get the message across on TV, but make deeper detail available online for anyone who's interested, particularly journalists. Make it part of johnkerry.com, or have the DNC set it up and put it under their name, whichever you like. But make sure your people point to it in every interview in print, on television, and on radio.
You're good people, and despite what you say in public, God is on your side, but if you fuck this up, you will undoubtedly burn in hell forever. God is merciful, but He's getting sick of this shit. Don't let Him down.
Regards,
The Mighty Reason Man
PS - Also, I advise you to hire someone to beat the living hell out of Sean Hannity, on general principles. Contact me for further advice.
An experience that I am beginning to truly hate, that has been occuring with increasing frequency of late: I run into a pretty girl somewhere, strike up a conversation, get her to laugh, get her name, get the whole eye-contact thing going, decide that, yeah, this chick's cool enough to try to get her to go out for coffee or something, and then glance at her left hand and see my Nemesis: that fucking diamond on the ringfinger.
Great. Five minutes down the drain.
It's come to the point where I'm in favor of ditching the customary wedding/engagement ring and requiring women to tattoo "MOVE ALONG" on their foreheads.
I guess it's time to become more vocal in my support for gay marriage, so that the institution crumbles to the ground and life can become more convenient for me.
Or, you know, remember to look at the left hand first, as opposed to...well, I'm a straight male in his early twenties; you already know what I look at first.
I Wonder If The Authorities View With Suspicion The Disappearance Of Small Children In Glenn Reynolds' Neighborhood
As a casual observer of the art of dark insinuation in the absence of actual incriminating evidence, I direct you to this bit by the reigning expert:
"So Berger knew he was under investigation. As we've seen earlier, Bill Clinton says that he knew months ahead. And, I guess, so did Joe Lockhart, serving as Berger's "spokesman." (Hence the "we" and "our" -- and who else might be included in those terms? And why does a retired government official have a spokesman, anyway? Beats me.) Yet John Kerry says that he "didn't have a clue."
If I were Kerry, I'd worry about what else my staff wasn't telling me."
(emphasis mine)
You know, things like "the Niger uranium claim has very weak evidenciary basis," or "we have set up an internal intelligence operation made up of our own people because all of our intelligence agencies think we're full of shit."
Ha ha.
But seriously. The "you should be worried" formulation, and variations thereof, is an old Reynolds standard, directed at various people he dislikes - from the Europeans, to Chris Matthews, to the mainstream press.
It's yet another one of his little implied threats that really bug the shit out of me. I'm constantly tempted to call it the faintest glimmer of the fascist impulse which I suspect plays a larger part in the mentality of die-hard Bush supporters than they will ever admit, but that would make me a shrill, hysterical, shrieking Leftist, who wouldn't say that kind of thing if he knew what was good for him. After all, aren't I worried that real patriotic Americans would hurt me if they knew what I really thought?
Yeah...yeah.
Sidenote: On the subject of insinuations without evidence, in the same post Reynolds quotes a reader who reads dark happenings in the Kerry campaign's lack of angry response to the Sandy Berger story, the implication being that they have something to hide.
Right. Because the Kerry campaign is too stupid to realize that anything they say only prolongs what is, essentially, a non-story, and that the smartest response would be to shut the fuck up about the whole thing and let the 9/11 report knock it off the frontpage.
I know Glenn gets a lot of readers, but why do only the dumb ones bother to send him email?
I Must Face The Evil Warlock Who Killed My Father! Give Me The Boots Of Oruku, So That My Cyber-Psionic Power Will Be Unmatched!
I have mixed feelings about Japanese anime; the storytelling potential of animation is enormous, and I give the infiltration of America by anime all kinds of credit for slowly breaking down the absolutely tragic perception of animation as primarily a children's medium. However, the writing in most anime that I have seen is pretty shoddy - and the dialogue is almost uniformly atrocious. Now, I'm willing to attribute most of that to problems inherant in translating between vastly dissimilar languages, but at least some of it is due to differences between Japanese and American culture. What I'd really like to see is an emergence of American (or British) written anime intended solely for an adult audience, stripped of most of the cutesiness that infects virtually all Japanese anime to one degree or another. The Animatrix, for example, is a very promising development which I hope will inspire similar efforts in the future. See also: Samurai Jack, which is somewhat kid-oriented, but combines some very good storytelling with simple but very dynamic animation.
Why does the potential of anime excite me so much? Several reasons.
- You can do anything. An animation screenwriter doesn't have to worry about whether something can be realistically depicted onscreen - if you can draw it (or computer-generate it), you can do it. This could be particularly useful in the science fiction, fantasy, and historical genres, which in live action cinema require huge amounts of money to look anyhting but cheesy.
- Which brings us to cost. Compared to live action cinema, animation is dirt cheap, especially if you're talking about effects-heavy productions.
- Which brings us to specialization and risk taking. Since animated movies are cheaper, they don't have to do nearly as well at the box office to recoup production costs, which in turn means studio executives would be much more willing to take a chance on something experimental, or something that would appeal to a specific audience. The reason that big-budget movies are so often cringe-worthy is because, due to that big budget, they need to make lots and lots of money, which means they have to try to be all things to all people, which leaves most people disappointed in one aspect or another. This is particularly evident in the sci-fi genre, where people like myself would be willing, in order to get a movie that doesn't need to sacrifice a tight, smartly-written story in order to pay for the special effects, to kill somebody - particularly the idiots who produce ludicrous, bloated characatures of science fiction like Armageddon. I also really like the idea of a historical drama set in some little-explored period, without having to make it a star vehicle or fill it with anachronistic and ahistoric elements in order to broaden its appeal.
- Animation eliminates the need for actors to be pretty. Voice roles can be cast based solely on talent, instead of on whether someone looks right for a role. An example off the top of my head is the dude who played Kraven in Underworld. Yeah, he sure does look like the leader of a vampire clan, but everytime the guy opened his mouth, I wanted to put tire iron in it. In his defense, it appears that he was born in Ireland, which means his verbal awkwardness may have been due to the director forcing him to use an American accent - which of course only reinforces my point. Had Underworld been animated, he never would have been cast in the role.
So, um, yeah. Support adult animation1 in the US! Or something. I don't really have an action plan on this one.
Note: This post inspired by a post by DenBeste, which I read only enough of to see this summary of a particular anime series:
"In an alternate reality, in 1920's Japan, the capital is under assault by mystical forces. The primary attackers are called Wakiji, and they are partly mechanical, partly biological, and partly magical. They are also virtually invulnerable to conventional weapons which the military tries to use against them, and can only be defeated by rare individuals who have very strong spirit power and who can learn to control it.
They can use their spirit power with weapons such as swords or even pistols, but with sufficient training, they can also use their spirit power to move armored suits called Koubu, which are far more powerful. But that is very difficult. And there are four special enemies, particularly powerful and particularly menacing, who show up now and again who are not so easily defeated. Nor do the defenders know why the city is being attacked, or what the attackers hope to accomplish.
A small number of young people identified as having the greatest potential spirit power are collected together, in the desperate hope that they will master their power and bond as a team in time to be able to fight and defeat the enemy before its plan is completed. As an aid to development of discipline and teamwork, they operate as a theater company. But the enemy plan continues to unfold, and the team doesn't seem to be pulling together. Time is running out.
Sakura Shinguji is the last girl to join the group, and she is potentially the strongest of them all, for she carries the blood of the destroyers of evil, as her father did before her. The series begins as Sakura arrives in Tokyo to join the company, and culminates with a climactic battle between the Imperial Flower Division and the mysterious enemy seeking to destroy the capital, which can only end in total victory or complete defeat." (emphasis added)
Goddamn if that isn't a spectacular display of every crappy anime cliche in existence. Shit like that is the reason I don't like anime.
__________ 1 Non-porn, that is. Animated porn is really fucking weird, and if you are into it you are a freak. No exceptions.
I hate agreeing with people from California, because California is so relentlessly rubbed in my face every freakin' day by the media, but Ezra Klein is right. The potential Ditka candidacy scared the shit out of me, for four reasons:
1. Obama is one of the Democrats' legitimate rising stars. A loss for him in November would knock the wind right out of his sails before he ever really gets off the ground - which is why the GOP is so desperate to throw someone, anyone, at him who can win - or at least seriously damage him.
2. And yes, Ditka really would have had a good shot at winning. Illinois can in many respects be divided into two states: the Chicago metropolitan area (generally, Cook county and chunks of DuPage county), and everything else. The former is one of the historical strongholds of the Democratic party, while the later is largely made up of smaller rural communities and a shitload of farmland - prime Republican real estate. The state population is roughly divided between these two Illi -- Jesus, what's the plural of Illinois? -- and statewide races tend to be a tug-o-war between them. Democrats tend to use Chicago for a base and try to make inroads toward the rest of the state -- witness Dick Durbin's senate campaign, a large chunk of which emphasized his independence from Mayor Daley -- while Repubicans do the opposite.
Among traditionally Democratic demographics - middle and working class Chicagoans - Ditka is worshipped as a god, or perhaps more accurately the ringleader of a group of gods; if he were able to pull them in in significant numbers, with his conservative politics giving him non-Chicago Illinois, the election would look like a rerun of 1985.
Some have opined that Ditka's notorious temper would ruin his chances, but I have the feeling that such people are not Chicago natives. Part of Ditka's entire appeal is that he's a no-apologies tough guy - I know one of my favorite sports photographs depicts Iron Mike striding the sidelines, giving the bird to the camera. I mean, come on, another one of Chicago's sports heroes is Dick Butkus, and that motherfucker tried to kill people.
3. The Democrats need to pick up Fitzgerald's seat - there are already too few Dem pickup opportunities this year, and throwing Illinois back into play would be a devastating blow to efforts to take back the Senate.
4. When all is said and done, I love Mike. Some of my earliest sports memories are of watching him coach Da Bears on TV with my parents. But let's face it, Ditka would be a really bad Senator. His personality virtually guarantees a meltdown of some sort out in Washington. I mean, if he thought the sports press was hard on him in his post-Superbowl years, wait 'til he encountered the lying scumfucks that haunt the Capitol.
Seeing his reputation tarnished by an ill-advised Senate career would really kind of upset me - I already have to pull off a massive bit of self-deception in order to pretend that his New Orleans tenure didn't happen.
So, good call on turning the GOP down, Mike. I can handle the Levitra ads - watching you go to jail for tackling someone on the Senate floor would kill me.
As a sidenote, the article Ezra links to has been changed - last night, it included a quote from a GOP official stating that Ditka was Chicago's only real sports hero, to which I can only reply thusly.
Update: The illustrious Mr. Sloane (who used to have a different blog, with a cool picture of himself with lots of hair and sweet sunglasses...but times change, people change, and the whole world generally goes to hell in my absence) disagrees, for reasons that are entirely valid. I still feel justified in fearing the Ditka, but, really, who the hell knows. He's not running, Obama's in for sure, and so I am content.
~ Because I'm having a hard time finding things written about it on the internet. ~
Maybe I just don't get around enough on ye olde internet, but I have yet to see the single most important accomplishment of Fahrenheit 9/11 -- and, not coincidentally, the most potentially damaging to the re-election efforts of George Bush -- explicitly stated. It has, in quite dramatic fashion, linked together two important and effectively irrefutable notions, to wit, that the President is a moron, and that the Iraq war has had devastating consequences for numerous people and their families.
To which Bush supporters immediately object, asking how such a slander against the President can be irrefutable - Moore's movie has been thoroughly debunked1, anyone supporting Moore is a sociopath of one variety or another2, the fires of insane Bush-hatred are anathema to patriotic Americans3, and what are your qualifications to judge such things4?
Fair enough, but you will notice the qualifier "effectively." The clever thing about Moore's portrayal of Bush is that he doesn't do the stupid thing and try to change the public's perception of him (by, say, arguing that he wants to take over the world), he does the smart thing and merely reinforces a theme which most Americans already agree is essentially correct -- the aforementioned moron thesis -- while stripping it of the various positive qualities (moral clarity, vision, strength of will) that Bush backers would have you believe bloom in the fertile mental soil an absence of intelligence begets. There are a number of things one could potentially see in the President's visage during the now-famous seven minutes immediately following Card's informing him that the country was under attack, but blossoming determination is not one of them unless one is tempermentally predisposed to see good in everything Bush does, which would place one in a demographic already lost to both Democrats and hope.
As to the second point, I don't see anyone arguing that there have not been adverse consequences to the war; the most common (and really, the only workable) rhetorical tactic is to try to drown said consequences in a flood of positive news - the deservedly maligned "re-opened schools" line of argument. The importance of F9/11 is that it highlights, in an undeniably visceral manner, the impact the war has had on the people that both Left and Right have spent three years talking up: soldiers and their familes. There is a vast difference between reading "3 marines killed in Iraq" on the front page of the newspaper and watching a blood-soaked soldier screaming in pain while being carried by stretcher to the medic, and that difference is what gives F9/11 its power.
Essentially, the true force behind the movie is not the intricate connections between the Bush family and the Saudis (although the fact that people who a few months back were yelling "John Kerry Jane Fonda John Kerry Jane Fonda John Kerry Jane Fonda" are angry at people saying "George Bush the Saudis George Bush the Saudis George Bush the Saudis," despite the greater accuracy and relevence of the later, is most amusing to me), nor even the explicit charge of misleading the country into war, but rather the question implied by the juxtaposition of the above theses: "Were Americans unnecessarily hurt or killed because the President is stupid?"
Yes, this is merely a crude version of attacks on the Administration's competence that have been coming from Democrats for years. And yes, there is not, and by definition cannot be, proof that Bush's personal lack of intelligence directly resulted in harm to Americans.
But so what? Merely asking the question (especially in an easy-to-digest visual format) raises doubts about the wisdom of re-electing George Bush, and crude is another way of saying "appeals to the lowest common denominator," and while appealing to the lowest common denominator is justly reviled, the reason people do it is because it's the best way to reach the most people, and I fully support the mass-distribution of the idea that stupidity in the Oval Office is a bad thing.
And to those that would call this an endorsement of dishonesty, please explain to me why the difference between "the President is stupid and got people hurt" -- which is the message I want put out -- and "the President is unable to understand, due to personality or lack of capacity, the complexities of foreign policy, and is therefore incapable of refereeing inter-departmental feuds or evaluating the merits of alternate courses of action, which leads to a foreign policy determined by inflexible ideology, personal agendas, and amount of access to the President, which resulted in costly mistakes that didn't have to happen" -- which is what I actually believe -- is vast enough to be characterized as "dishonesty."
__________ 1 No it hasn't, you are wrong.
2 No they aren't, you are wrong.
3 It's not hate in the sense that you mean it, it's not insane, it's not antithetical to patriotism, and you are an asshole.
On Monday, I bought the Nike Sport mp3 player. I was aware of its existence before that, but had dismissed it as the unholy result of some branding scheme cooked up by marketing folk desperate to cash in on "this mp3 thing the kids are crazy about" by slapping a swoosh on a third rate device and jacking the price to levels that border on extortion.
To my surprise, I found that the price was actually somewhat lower than that of similar players. When I realized that it also comes packaged with a rechargable battery and a charger, I was sold. So I took it home, and was happy. So happy, in fact, that the next day I returned it and bought the 256 Mb version for a few dollars more - and yes, I repeated that last bit several times to every customer service representative in earshot, hoping someone would pick up on the reference and associate me with a squinty-eyed Clint Eastwood, and tremble in fear. No one did. Well, the girl waiting on me stumbled a little bit, but that was most likely due to the fact that she was in what looked to be her 12th month of pregnancy.
The point, though, is that this machine has changed my life. For the first time ever, I finally have an actual soundtrack to accompany the one that constantly plays in my head, and the delivery of such is accomplished through means that I can ignore completely.
My problem with walkmans and discmans and other such things has always been that they require constant fiddling. You have to flip the tape, or change the CD after an hour, or walk with an unnatural gait so as not to make the CD skip. Beyond that, it's a pain in the ass to walk around with a music-making device, because where the hell do you put it? Cassette players and CD players are too big to fit in your pocket, and I have always felt ostentatious and dorklike wearing such things clipped to my belt on the very rare occassions when I have done so (a feeling that I carry over to cellphones as well). Something along the lines of, "Look, I have an electronic device that makes sounds in my head! It's almost as if I were using magic! Don't you wish you had one of these? I am supercool." Distasteful in the extreme.
Which doesn't mean that I want to fit such devices in my pocket - there was something of an incident a year or so ago in a bookstore where I was trying and failing to skip to the next track on the last mp3 player I owned, which was in my pocket, and my gaze just happened to alight on the chest of an attractive female at a nearby table, where, despite my best efforts, it remained for a good ten seconds. When I finally managed to force my eyes upwards, I realized she was looking at me, and was Appalled. Put the vigorous fiddling-around in my pocket together with the atypical (ha!) ogling, and I really can't blame her for what she was undoubtedly thinking.
Enter the Nike Sport. With both a slim profile and a waistband to which it can be very securely attached, I can wear this thing on my hip just above my belt, hidden underneath my shirt. By running the cord to the headphones down the back of my shirt, the visibility of this thing is nonexistent, with only the headphones to betray the fact that I am not paying attention to you, I am paying attention to the Kinks.
Well, that and the fact that I tend to dance in public a bit more now. My inner boogie needs to be let out, and this device is the key.
The Lakers, along with the Yankees and the Cowboys, are part of the unholy trinity of teams from which I derive endless amounts of pleasure watching get kicked in the nuts. Don't get me wrong, I like Shaq, and, as an exiled Chicagoan, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Coach Philip (he ain't Ditka, but, short of the Second Coming, who is? [Alright, Jesus Christ versus Ditka? Is Ditka coaching or playing? Coaching, but he can play in an emergency. Ditka by a safety.]). However, basic patriotism requires a hefty disdain for anyone with a sense of entitlement, no matter how many sportswriters agree with them, and this Lakers team, along with their pretty little LA fanbase, saw this as a season-long coronation requiring only the smiting of a few minor usurpers in Minnesota and San Antonio.
BOOyah, fuckers.
The Lakers' loss is pretty sweet in and of itself, but the really satisfying part is that they were completely thrashed by the Pistons.
Wait, what? I'm a Pistons fan? What the hell? I'm from Chicago, that is Not Right.
The explanation for this misbegotten basketball loyalty is twofold. For one, Michigan is now the state that I call home - well, that I call residence, at least. By itself, this is not enough to justify the outright betrayal of the land of my birth that rooting for the Pistons is. However, because I moved to Michigan two years ago, I met one of my very best friends, who eats, drinks, and breathes the Pistons. It is damn near literally impossible to be this guy's friend and not be a Pistons fan. In fact, it was his constant prodding that revived what I had thought was a long-dead interest in the game itself (mortally wounded by my [completely justified] failure to make the sophomore team in high school, and then killed off a few years later by Michael Jordan's departure from Chicago).
I was forced to watch the 2003 playoffs, held hostage by his wife's constant attempts to set me up with her friends1 and the fact that all my beer was in his fridge. To my surprise, I found myself getting into the games in a big way -- hey, you try to sit in a room with your best friend, drunk beyond all reason, and not join in when he leaps up every five minutes screaming, "YEAH MOTHERFUCKER! GET THAT SHIT THE FUUUUUUCK OUT, YOU PUNK BITCH!" As the Pistons advanced, as Tayshaun Prince became a breakout rookie, as Chauncy Billups kept hitting those threes, as Ben Wallace proved again and again that he is a badass of Shaft-like proportions, my own contributions gradually increased from "Damn, that was a nice shot," to "Holy- wow, that was cool as hell," to "Eat THAT, punk!" to "I shit on your mother, Jason Kidd, you goat-fucking bastard! You hear me? You fuck goats, and I shit on your mother!"
The loss to the Nets was devastating, but I was hooked.
At the beginning of this season2, I was convinced that, the loss to Jersey in the semis acting like a forging fire and the aquisition of Larry Brown being the single best thing any team can do to improve itself, the Pistons would actually make it to the Finals this year. "One step at a time," I kept telling everyone, "last year the semis, this year the Finals, and in 2005, the trophy."
But my friend didn't see it that way.
He had a feeling, you see, a sense of destiny. From day one, he refused to consider the idea that the Pistons would be anything less than the NBA champions come July 2004. This was not the futile optimism that every sports fan feels every year (Bears Uber Alles!), but a real conviction that his boys were flat out better than everyone else.
He was not alone.
It's funny, when you think about it, the way that sports can act as a common language between men3. My friend and I were both at work when another guy we work with came running into our building, shouting to everyone the news that the Pistons had traded for Rasheed Wallace. Productive work ceased for about ten minutes as we all got together in a small crowd, cheering and jabbering to each other about stomping the rest of the league into oblivion.
"The final piece!"
"Another scoring option!"
"Two Wallaces on defense! No one will score on them ever again!"
"Lebron can suck my nuts!"
"Hey, fuck you!" from the one Ohio transplant in building.
These are the things I heard and said that day, months ago, things that I just started hearing about a week ago in the national sports media.
You see, the thing about the Pistons' win is that it didn't come as a surprise to anyone who was really following them. Everyone, including me, talks about how the Lakers felt certain they could win. Well, the Pistons did too. The difference was that the Pistons didn't talk about it - they let their fans do that.
And in the end, we were right, and those losers in LA were not.
The hardest series for the Pistons this year was against New Jersey. Goddamn Jason Kidd is good.
The Pacers put up a good fight, but I'm convinced that that Tayshaun's famous block of Reggie Miller's layup early in the series broke their spirit. After all, that was a feat that could only be accomplished by a minor deity, and who can summon the will to seriously resist the might of a team composed of supreme beings?
The Lakers controlled the Finals for a grand total of five minutes in game two. Other than that, they were treated like little sissy men, and for their efforts have become the official bitches of every person in the state of Michigan.
And yes, it is indeed sweet.
1 An effort that is ultimately doomed to failure due to my being an unrelenting asshole and her inability to come up with anything resembling a redeeming quality in my unshaven person. "Um...my husband thinks he's pretty cool...and he never beats our dog...and...um...no, he wasn't ogling your breasts. He was...there was something on your shirt. And the ass of your pants. He sneers like that when he likes someone. Really. No, he didn't mean what he said about wishing he was gay so he wouldn't have to deal with lunatic women. He was being funny. Um..."
2 Sure, everyone says that they are a Pistons fan now, and that the Pistons were better all along now. Where was I a month ago, when the biggest debate in sports was whether the Lakers would win in four games or five?
That's right. July of 2003. That's when I predicted Pistons dominance, all official-like, for all the world to see.
Ignore the word "Darko" in those posts.
3 Yes, women like sports too, I know. But not once in my life have I started a conversation with a strange female by mentioning a sports team, whereas that is almost exclusively how I initiate conversations with guys I don't know.
