Saving Our Skins

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Tom Garrett

With 10 of the 435 members of Congress calling for the Redskins to change their name, despite recent polling that suggests only 11 percent of the public objects, I thought it might be a good time to re-run this post from a few months back.

Again, I think what is so telling about this issue is how unrepresentative the media is of the way the public feels.  As I discuss in this piece, every major public opinion poll ever taken on this topic (including one exclusive to Native Americans) suggests that the vast majority have no issue with the nickname. However, the media is essentially 100% against it.

Hell, even Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless of the ESPN (contrived) debate show “First Take” found common ground, here, which is a bit alarming. In the piece below, I not only discuss the substance of the debate, but also explore just what is at work with the mainstream media not only being in lockstep, but being in lockstep in a way that is totally at odds with the way the public feels.  The media will continue to bring this story up until a critical mass of people agree with their position.  And, if that never happens, it will nonetheless persist in perpetuity.  Enjoy.

Tom Garrett's avatarThe Axis of Ego

I didn’t think much of it one way or the other when Harrison Weinhold brought up the Washington Redskins’ nickname during the podcast we recorded over a week ago.  The conversation meandered from weighty issue to weighty issue, and the brief detour into sports felt unremarkable.  After all, the Redskins’ nickname has been mildly controversial in some circles for a couple of decades now, with the anti-“Redskins” sentiment never gaining much traction.

ChiefZWe’d get a disposable opinion piece once in a while, and the odd publication here or there would announce with a modest dash of self-congratulation that it would henceforth refuse to use the team nickname in its NFL coverage.  Generally, this was the sports equivalent of the intermittent, scary “summer of the shark attack” story: A few people would get riled up, we would worry about it and discuss it for a few weeks, but all was forgotten…

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Has Arrested Development Made a Huge Mistake?

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Tom Garrett

With the return of Arrested Development mere days away, I keep thinking about Joe Gibbs.

I didn’t really have sports heroes in the traditional sense growing up, but Gibbs, the legendary Washington Redskins head coach, is probably the exception.

It wasn’t just that he coached my favorite team, or that they were wildly successful during my childhood.  It was also that he projected an image of good character and integrity.

So, when he returned to coaching in 2004, I was ecstatic.

JoeGibbsI actually closed my office door for about an hour the day the Redskins announced Gibbs was coming back, peppering my friends with phone calls at work as we gleefully giggled like schoolgirls as visions of Lombardi Trophies filled our heads.

Except things didn’t go so well.  He went 6-10 his first year.  He quickly followed that up with a very good 10-6 season that included a playoff win, and all seemed well.  But 2006 wound up with a disastrous 5-11 campaign after seeming so full of promise at the outset.  2007 turned out to be one of his best coaching jobs ever, though, as his team rallied from the death of Sean Taylor (and a Gibbs blunder in the Buffalo game right after Taylor’s funeral) to post four straight victories at the end of the season and qualify for the playoffs.

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A Subtle Lesson of the Woolwich Attack

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Tom Garrett

By now, everyone has likely heard the awful story of the brutal attack perpetrated in the London district of Woolwich yesterday.  To recap, two “suspects”[1] attempted to run a man down with their car, then, after crashing their vehicle, attacked the man with knives and a machete.  They eventually beheaded the man, reportedly a British soldier.

After doing so, one of the men issued a statement of sorts to a nearby camera.

It was something the man said that struck me as the most profound element of this entire sad, grisly saga.  Here was his quote, in full:

We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day.  This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth.  We apologize that women had to see this today, but, in our lands, our women have to see the same.  You people will never be safe.  Remove your government. They don’t care about you.

The fact that a vague threat is made isn’t remarkable.

The fact that he cites an antiquated legal principle isn’t remarkable.

The fact that he invokes religious fervor as a motive, sadly, isn’t remarkable.

No, all of these are to be expected, given the facts of the case.

What intrigues me is this: ” . . . but, in our lands, our women have to see the same.”

“But, in our lands . . . ”

His lands?

Yesterday’s attack appears to have been perpetrated by a British citizen of Nigerian descent who only converted to Islam in his 20s.  The attack resembled other plots in certain respects, including one bombing plan from earlier this year formulated by three British-born Muslims.

And that’s important.

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One Long, Last Look at The Office

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Tom Garrett

Last week’s penultimate episode of The Office gave us a frustrating glimpse of what might have been.

In a season filled with mediocre comedy, intelligence-insulting plot choices[1], and inexplicable character development, we got a flawed but good episode centered largely around a familiar dynamic, with Dwight as regional manager and Jim as assistant to the regional manager.

Where has this version of The Office been the last two years?

TheOfficeJimAndDwightThe Jim / Dwight interplay wasn’t some groundbreaking revelation—it was merely a smart and natural extension of their original relationship.  That evolution of the show would have been a logical choice that could have lead into a nice season-plus send-off for the venerable NBC program.

Instead, viewers were treated to absentee Andy, an Erin / Pete romance that suddenly stopped being referenced at all, a failed backdoor pilot, evil Andy, the Jim / Pam debacle, pathetic Andy, and Dwight being told he was the father of Angela’s baby after all (despite being told by a doctor that he wasn’t in an earlier episode).[2]

But I’m putting all of that aside.  Tonight is the final episode of this show.  I can’t really call this “SitCombat,” per se, since the only competition for tonight’s finale of The Office is the series’ own legacy.  But I see no reason why I can’t use the tried and true SitCombat format.

I’m writing all of this before the episode begins, but my fear is that we’re going to get a run-of-the-mill, C-plus wedding episode.  The fact that the creators chose to go out with one of the most cliched plots in television is disappointing yet somehow appropriate.

But, as always, I sit down in front of my television with an open mind.  Let’s begin . . .

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Sometimes, I’m a Hero

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Tom Garrett

AbercrombieAndFitch

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Imbeciles React to a Story About Swimming

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Tom Garrett
SwimmingStoryHeadline

This is controversial, apparently.

I saw a fairly innocuous local news story come across my Facebook feed today.  The piece was the sort of semi-fluff that local stations like to show on their 5 o’clock broadcast.  The underlying news item was that data indicates that drowning is the fifth-leading cause of unintentional death among all Americans, but that African-Americans are about six times more likely to drown than other ethnic groups.

In the piece, a local news anchor who happens to be African-American goes through the process of learning how to swim.  The idea was to do a lighthearted story that spotlights a not-so-lighthearted problem.  No one is suggesting that drowning is as serious a threat as, say, heart disease, but that’s why this is a 5 o’clock story and not a 6 o’clock story.

Enter the astute denizens of Facebook.  By all means, weigh in, gang:

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BioShock Infinite

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Tom Garrett

BioShockCover2K Games released BioShock Infinite to acclaim and mild controversy a little over a month ago.  In development for five years, the game was much-anticipated by fans of the series, but the subject matter raised some eyebrows in the gaming community and beyond.

An internet friend tweeting about his excitement over the game upon its release piqued my own curiosity.  I made an impulse buy on the PlayStation Network a couple of weeks back, and powered through it over the course of a few evenings and a weekend.

There’s a lot I want to say about the game, but, before I do, I feel obligated to mention that this commentary will naturally contain loads of spoilers.  Anyone considering playing this game in the future, or anyone who hasn’t yet finished the game, should probably stop reading here.

Now, then—the game itself is a first-person shooter set in a massive city in the sky called “Columbia.”  The city is run by a religious zealot named Zachary Hale Comstock, and the society that lives in Columbia is based on an extreme vision of turn-of-the-century American exceptionalism with a healthy infusion of religious zealotry and white supremacy.  Players control Booker DeWitt, who is charged by an unknown party with finding a mysterious girl named Elizabeth in Columbia and returning her to New York City in order to pay off a debt of indeterminate character.  DeWitt must fight through various diverse locales within Columbia in a mostly-standard “move to an area, kill everyone in the area, search for stuff in the area, move to the next area” format in an effort to find, rescue, and escort the girl to the designated coordinates.

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An Incomplete List of Words Katy Perry Has Attempted to Rhyme

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Tom Garrett

Katy Perry is a charismatic musical performer who has delighted millions of fans—including this one!!!   Her catchy songs, spot-on pop sensibilities, and colorful videos have established her as one of the top acts in the world.

Here’s an incomplete list of words Katy Perry has attempted to rhyme[1] in some of her many, many ultra-successful, super-duper-mega-hits:

“Room” and “Pool”

“Loving” and “Poison”

“Peacock” and “Bee-otch”[2]

“Barbecue” and “(or a) bruise”

“Intention” and “Discretion”

“Ground-shaking” and “Amazing”

“Greener” and “Water”

“Shine” and “July”

“Floating” and “Glowing”

“Energy” and “Battery”

“Tree” and “Seed”

“Alien” and “Foreign”

“Dark” and “Hard” and “Heart”

“Car” and “Floor”

“Vegas” and “Vegas”

–

A stone is heavy and sand is weighty.  I hope Katy entertains us ’til she’s 80!

__________________

[1] Or at least pair / couple
[2] I honestly do like Katy Perry (judge away).  But “Peacock” is an aggressively bad song.  “Peacock” metaphorically murdered subtlety, then crashed subtlety’s funeral, continued to assault the now-deceased concept, then returned to the cemetery under cover of night, dug up subtlety’s corpse and kept stabbing the body until dawn.
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The Worst Commercial on Television

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Tom Garrett

I’ve written and spoken often about my concerns regarding the social norms of younger Americans.  There’s a fairly stark line of demarcation between those who made it through their formative years without the influence of the internet and social media, and those who were already texting and e-mailing before they were out of puberty (which more or less covers most of the current population under 30, and certainly those under 25).

I saw a commercial recently which not only underscored my preexisting fears, but fostered new ones.  Here it is:

To recap: There’s a nice family dinner in progress.  A soft-spoken, late-middle-aged woman begins to tell a story about shopping at the market for items related to her now-aged pet cats.

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Hey, It’s Not the End of the World

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Tom Garrett

One of the temptations of our disposable and wildly narcissistic modern culture is to presume that whatever is happening now must be more important than anything that has happened previously—not only more important because it’s happening to us, but also objectively more important.

WallStreetBomb

The 1920 Wall Street Bombing

This happens all the time in a sports context when athletic endeavors filter through the hyperbolic prism of modern media.  A great game becomes the greatest game. A bad error becomes the worst error.  The best basketball player of the day is immediately compared to Michael Jordan (until the new new best player of the day comes along).

As I’ve said before, nothing can be a “3” or a “7.”  Everything is a zero or a ten.  Otherwise, why bother?

Likewise, a recurring theme in contemporary political and news-related discussion is how little people actually know about the basic history of our nation—even among the educated segments of our citizenry.

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