From NoMaas.org:

10.19.2007

Thanks for proving our point

Joe Torre never spent hours pouring over statistics or videotape like a lot of young managers do these days. He wasn't a workaholic type who obsessed about getting to work earlier than his peers. He would have a nice lunch, and then he would shave cleanly after games -- wins or losses -- as he prepared for a late dinner at a restaurant.

It has never been his style to simmer in the aftermath of success or failure, after all. In an era when managers seem to put in more hours than first-year lawyers or hospital residents, Torre might've put in the fewest office hours of any manager in the game. (Source)

Buster Olney is one of the many sheep who are mourning the exit of Joe Torre. He led off an article in support of Torre by first writing the above two paragraphs. That's where we stopped reading. How can anyone in their right mind read those excerpts and think that Torre deserved to come back?

If you're an employer, are you going to hire a person who puts in minimum effort?

So basically, the Yankees should have given a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal to someone who doesn't do what's in their job description. Sure, that makes sense.

From FOXSports.com: Another great column from Whitlock.

NFL buffoons leaving terrible legacy

Jason Whitlock

You get one NFL Truth today. Watching Chad Johnson and Larry Johnson undermine their respective head coaches, Marvin Lewis and Herm Edwards, on Sunday gave me a singular focus, forced me to contemplate an uncomfortable truth.

African-American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a justifiable reason to whiten their rosters. That will be the legacy left by Chad, Larry and Tank Johnson, Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens, Michael Vick and all the other football bojanglers.

In terms of opportunity for American-born black athletes, they're going to leave the game in far worse shape than they found it.

It's already starting to happen. A little-publicized fact is that the Colts and the Patriots — the league's model franchises — are two of the whitest teams in the NFL. If you count rookie receiver Anthony Gonzalez, the Colts opened the season with an NFL-high 24 white players on their 53-man roster. Toss in linebacker Naivote Taulawakeiaho "Freddie" Keiaho and 47 percent of Tony Dungy's defending Super Bowl-champion roster is non-African-American. Bill Belichick's Patriots are nearly as white, boasting a 23-man non-African-American roster, counting linebacker Tiaina "Junior" Seau and backup quarterback Matt Gutierrez.

For some reason, these facts are being ignored by the mainstream media. Could you imagine what would be written and discussed by the media if the Yankees and the Red Sox were chasing World Series titles with 11 African-Americans on their 25-man rosters (45 percent)?

We would be inundated with information and analysis on the social significance. Well, trust me, what is happening with the roster of the Patriots and the Colts and with Roger Goodell's disciplinary crackdown are all socially significant.

Hip hop athletes are being rejected because they're not good for business and, most important, because they don't contribute to a consistent winning environment. Herm Edwards said it best: You play to win the game.

I'm sure when we look up 10 years from now and 50 percent — rather than 70 percent — of NFL rosters are African-American, some Al Sharpton wannabe is going to blame the decline on a white-racist plot.

That bogus charge will ignore our role in our football demise. We are in the process of mishandling the opportunity and freedom earned for us by Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Doug Williams, Mike Singletary, Gale Sayers, Willie Lanier and countless others. And those of us in the media who have rationalized, minimized and racialized every misstep by Vick, Pacman and T.O. have played an equal role in blowing it.

By failing to confront and annihilate the abhorrent cultural norms we have allowed to grab our youth, we have in the grand American scheme sentenced many of them to hell on earth (incarceration), and in the sports/entertainment world we've left them to define us as unreliable, selfish and buffoonish.

I take you to Arrowhead Stadium this past Sunday when two competent and respected black head coaches led the Chiefs and the Bengals in battle, and their efforts were periodically sabotaged by Chad and Larry Johnson, the two players Lewis and Edwards have defended the most.

Football fans are aware of Lewis' love affair with Chad Johnson, the Flavor Flav of the gridiron. Johnson's insistence on conducting a minstrel show during games has long been reluctantly tolerated by Lewis. Johnson, I guess, is just too talented, productive and well-compensated for Lewis to discipline. So Lewis has chosen to enable, going as far as making excuses when Johnson's selfish behavior extended to an alleged locker-room shoving match with coaches (including a swing at Lewis) at halftime of the Bengals' Jan. 8, 2006 playoff loss to the Steelers.

Coming off an 11-5 regular season and having been crowned the toast of Cincinnati, Lewis responded to that Johnson meltdown by vowing to cut the player who leaked the fight information to the media.

Since then, the Bengals have been one of the league's biggest disappointments, finishing 8-8 last season and starting 1-4 this season. Injuries have played a significant role in Cincy's troubles, but so has a lack of on- and off-field discipline and focus. Lewis' coddling of Chad Johnson has destroyed the chemistry that made the Bengals a playoff team in 2005.

On Sunday, with the Bengals trying to rally out of a two-score deficit, Johnson failed to finish a pass route, which contributed to Carson Palmer throwing an interception.

Not to be outdone, Larry Johnson continued his season-long pattern of immature behavior, spiking the football in frustration with 4 minutes to play and the Chiefs attempting to run out the clock. The Bengals were out of timeouts and the spike stopped the clock, giving Cincy one last chance to make a comeback.

Johnson, despite receiving a new $45-million contract, has brooded, pouted and complained all season. He spent the off-season promising to be a leader and has spent the first six weeks of the season spreading locker-room cancer. Edwards-coached teams have traditionally been the least-penalized squads in the NFL. This year's Chiefs are one of the most-penalized squads. Nickel back Benny Sapp drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Sunday, had to be dragged off the field by Donnie Edwards, and was spotted on the sideline arguing with players and coaches.

Race is not the determining factor when it comes to having a good or bad attitude. Culture is.

Hip hop is the dominant culture for black youth. In general, music, especially hip hop music, is rebellious for no good reason other than to make money. Rappers and rockers are not trying to fix problems. They create problems for attention.

That philosophy, attitude and behavior go against everything football coaches stand for. They're in a constant battle to squash rebellion, dissent and second opinions from their players.

You know why Muhammad Ali is/was an icon? Because he rebelled against something meaningful and because he excelled in an individual sport. His rebellion didn't interfere with winning. Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc. rebelled with dignity and purpose.

What we're witnessing today are purposeless, selfish acts of buffoonery. Sensible people have grown tired of it. Football people are recognizing it doesn't contribute to a winning environment.

Whether calculated or not, the Patriots and the Colts have created settings in which Brady and Manning can lead and feel comfortable. I remember back in the 1980s when some black sports fans accused the Celtics of being racist for having a predominantly-white roster when Larry Bird was the star. No one remembered that Red Auerbach occasionally fielded an all-black starting lineup during Bill Russell's heyday.

My point is that it makes sense to cater to your stars. And it makes even more sense to fill your roster with players who don't mind being led, even if you sacrifice a little 40-yard dash speed.

If things don't change quickly, we're going to learn this lesson the hard way.

From Real Clear Politics:
Sandy Berger and the Real Hillary Clinton
By Ronald A. Cass

Elections are not just about platforms but character. Republicans were shocked by Harry Truman's election as President, certain that the Missouri ward politician had neither the intellect nor the expertise needed for the presidency. The public, however, wasn't looking for someone polished or intellectual. They responded to Truman's no-nonsense style, his sense of personal responsibility, and his instinctive grasp of the essence of his charge. Harry Truman didn't duck hard decisions and didn't shy from asserting the power of his office or his nation.

Likewise, Democrats were - and remain - perplexed over Ronald Reagan's popularity. They underestimated Reagan's intelligence and misunderstood key aspects of what he stood for. But most of all, they missed that he was popular as much for who he was as for what he did. Reagan radiated optimism, faith in America, and conviction that he could spread a gospel of liberty and freedom through a combination of good humor and military might. Americans trusted him and his vision, even when they might not have chosen all of his policies.

Voters still want to know if a candidate shares their views and values, if he seems like "one of us," and if he - or she - is likely to respond to a crisis in a way that gives us comfort in his or her leadership. Those are more matters of gut instinct than analysis. In today's scripted and staged political world, it's especially difficult for voters to get a fix on the character issues they care about. When a misguided comment or look can de-rail a candidacy, it's no surprise that an entire profession now exists to coif, dress, coach, and produce the candidates' appearances, as well as to tell us afterward what we saw and heard and what to make of it.

But sometimes, you can still see a glimpse of who the candidates really are.
**********
According to reports in Newsweek, The Washington Post, and other liberal news media not commonly associated with a "vast right wing conspiracy," Hillary Clinton has selected a team of national security advisers led by the "triumvirate" of Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Sandy Berger. All three were prominent members of Bill Clinton's national security team when he was president. Ms. Albright was President Clinton's Secretary of State. Mr. Holbrooke was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. And Mr. Berger was President Clinton's National Security Advisor. While conservatives generally give them negative reviews, all three have substantial experience, close ties to the senator and her husband, and are exactly the sort of "old hands" who become key insiders in a campaign.

Except for one small detail. Sandy Berger isn't just a former National Security Advisor - he's also the only National Security Advisor in U.S. history to be convicted after stealing and destroying classified documents.

For those who missed the story, Berger was President Clinton's designated representative to the 9/11 Commission investigating intelligence-gathering and analysis preceding the terrorist attacks that took the lives of 3,000 innocents on American soil, by far the worst such attack in our history. As President Clinton's representative, Berger was granted access to specially classified material in the National Archives relating to the handling of information respecting the threat from al Qaeda and the Clinton Administration's response in preparation for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Berger willfully removed classified material, hiding documents first in his pants and then under a construction trailer, destroyed them, and lied to officials investigating the theft.

We'll never know just what information Berger destroyed. The only people who know aren't likely to talk - after all, they wanted the information destroyed. The 9/11 Commission did not know of Berger's theft and destruction of classified documents when he testified in front of them, trumpeting his former boss's handling of terrorist threats and faulting President Bush for failing to do enough to prevent the attacks.

But we do know that, whatever it was that Sandy Berger destroyed, it had to be exceptionally damning for a man of Berger's professional stature to risk disgrace, disbarment, and imprisonment in order to keep it from view. Shockingly, he was able to obtain a relatively lenient plea agreement before most of the truly damning facts about his actions came to light and, when the DC Bar began a proceeding, Berger voluntarily surrendered his license to practice law in order to close down the only remaining avenue of inquiry into what he'd done.

For a nation that will live for decades with the legacy of 9/11 and the need to be vigilant in identifying and defending against future attacks, the loss of that information could prove tragic. The missing information could have helped determine what happened in the run-up to 9/11, what went wrong, and what could be done to prevent another 9/11. Sandy Berger plainly cared less about that than he did about protecting someone from being called to task for what happened during his and President Clinton's time in the White House.
**********
So, what does it say that Hillary Clinton chose Mr. Berger as one of her advisers, and that she will rely on the advice of a convicted criminal who is barred from access to the sort of national security information a party's candidate for President is routinely briefed on during a campaign?

Many politicians are loyal to their friends. Many Presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, have kept in place people who turn out to be engaged in activity that no one should endorse. And many politicians maintain friendships with associates who have fallen from grace, not condoning their misdeeds, but not abandoning personal ties.

Hillary has done something entirely different. She selected a key adviser she knows has scandalously flouted the law, lied to deflect blame onto others, and subverted the democratic processes that provide accountability for officials' conduct. She selected someone who has destroyed documents that could be crucial to America's security to be a trusted councilor on national security matters - documents that could have contained hand-written notes by her husband or information that would have called his judgment into question.

Hillary has had to renounce associates before. She's had numerous fund-raising scandals involving criminal wrong-doing by people she should have known to be criminals, Norman Hsu being the most recent and notorious. But in all of those instances, she has had the plausible excuse that she didn't know what they had done wrong.

In Sandy Berger's case, there is no excuse. Hillary's inclusion of Sandy Berger in her circle of advisers demonstrates that, notwithstanding her law license, she really doesn't care about the law. She doesn't care whether someone violates the law if they're on her team, if the violation in some way helps the Clintons. Hillary's indifference to criminal wrong-doing suggests that she sees herself as above the law, breezily ignoring law when it's an impediment to something she wants.

During Bill Clinton's administration, there was no shortage of indications that perhaps the Clintons, husband and wife, were a bit casual about legal niceties. Although the accusations fixated many and resulted in convictions for more than a few Clinton associates, in the end, though he was disbarred for five years, Bill Clinton got something of a break because he was personally charming and his accusers seemed less so. Public reaction was that you might not want him around your daughter, but you'd be happy to go have a drink with Bill.

Hillary, whose stiff demeanor won't garner the same slack, doesn't just remind us of prior scandals. Sandy Berger didn't lie about sex or do something ordinary that isn't strictly in keeping with law - like speeding on a road where citizens regard the posted limits as advisory rather than mandatory. Sandy Berger committed a serious crime, intentionally, and lied about it, intentionally, and put his nation at risk. Hillary isn't bothered by any of that. Whatever she says about the rule of law - which limits official power to safeguard all of us - she evidently doesn't believe it was intended to place limits on her.

Picking Sandy Berger tells us something important about Hillary's character. We should listen now - while it can do some good.

Ronald A. Cass is President of Cass & Associates, Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law, and author of "The Rule of Law in America" (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Joe Torre acknowledges fans in this Newsday file photo.
Torre turned down a one-year contract for $5 million plus incentives,
officially ending his 12-year run as Yankees manager. (Newsday)

Newsday.com:
Torre's 12-year run filled with ups and downs
BY JIM BAUMBACH

Joe Torre's enormously successful and celebrated 12-year run as Yankees manager is over.

Torre's Yankees career closes with an impressive resume: four world championships, two more World Series appearances, 10 American League East titles, 12 straight postseason appearances and 1,173 regular-season wins, second only to Joe McCarthy's 1,460 wins in Yankees history.

Torre's teams won titles in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

The Yankees have been ousted in the first round of the playoffs for three straight seasons -- and that comes on the heels of their humiliating and unprecedented loss to the Boston Red Sox after taking a three-games-to-none lead in the 2004 American League Championship Series. Including those four defeats, the Yankees have lost 13 of their last 17 in postseason play.

Torre, 67, was nearly fired a year ago after the Yankees sleepwalked through a four-game loss to the Tigers in the Division Series. But general manager Brian Cashman and then-general partner Steve Swindal lobbied George Steinbrenner to honor the final year of Torre's three-year, $19.2-million deal.

Displaying his calm, soothing presence and never panicking, Torre was credited with turning around the Yankees' season after an injury-plagued 21-29 start, rallying his team with a strong second half to finish 94-68. Once thought to have little chance of earning even the wild card, the Yankees finished on a 56-27 run to clinch a playoff berth. But that accomplishment quickly was overshadowed by their third straight first-round exit.

Steinbrenner put Torre on official notice the day of the Yankees' ALDS Game 3 against the Indians, telling The Bergen Record, "His job is on the line ... He's the highest-paid manager in baseball, so I don't think we'd take him back if we don't win this series."

That proved to be the last of a long line of public needling by The Boss, which at times bothered Torre. They even stopped talking for months during the 2005 season, with Torre incensed at the owner's post-game jabs to reporters in addition to the team's use of the YES Network to ask pointed postgame questions.

But aside from his team's world championships and remarkable regular-season consistency, Torre's pinstriped career will be defined by the fact that he worked for Steinbrenner far longer than any previous manager. Before Torre, the only manager to work more than two straight years for The Boss was Buck Showalter, Torre's predecessor. Showalter lasted four seasons.

When Torre was hired Nov. 2, 1995, he was largely considered an unsuccessful manager, having compiled an 894-1,003 record with the Mets (1977-81), Braves (1982-84) and Cardinals (1990-95). One New York paper dubbed him: "Clueless Joe."

But he was a native New Yorker, having grown up in Brooklyn, and that registered with Steinbrenner.

Torre welcomed the challenge of working for The Boss and signed a two-year, $1.05-million contract against the recommendation of his brother Frank, who worried about the effects of working for Steinbrenner.

Two weeks earlier, Torre turned down an offer to be the Yankees' general manager, believing he was better suited for working in the dugout and clubhouse.

"I wouldn't have taken this job if I was worried," Torre said at his first news conference. "I know the direction that I want the Yankees to go and I believe George Steinbrenner shares that direction. I come here with my eyes wide open. Coming to an organization with a burning desire to win means a lot to me."

Torre's laid-back managerial style didn't exactly fit the Steinbrenner preference in a manager (think Billy Martin, Lou Piniella). But Torre's act immediately worked in pinstripes. In 1996, his first season, he led the Yankees to their first world championship in 18 years and captured the attention of the baseball world.

He dealt with the death of his brother Rocco during the season and then managed through the postseason as his brother Frank awaited a heart transplant in a hospital bed. Frank received his heart the night the Yankees won the title.

With Torre an instant fan favorite, Steinbrenner ripped up his original contract that off-season and signed him to a three-year, $2.8-million contract.

The 1997 season ended in disappointment with a five-game Division Series loss to the Indians. But Torre and the Yankees more than made up for the quick exit with one of the greatest seasons in baseball history in 1998. They won a then-record 114 regular-season games and then breezed through the postseason, sweeping the Padres in the World Series to set a tone of postseason dominance that would continue through 2000.

Just as they beat the Braves in the final four games of the 1996 World Series, the Yankees swept Atlanta in the 1999 World Series and beat the Mets in five games in 2000. The Mets' Game 3 victory snapped the Yankees' record-setting streak of 14 straight World Series wins.

In the midst of that highly successful five-year run, Torre faced perhaps the most serious personal obstacle of his life. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer during spring training in 1999 and missed the first 36 games of the season while recovering from the surgery, with bench coach Don Zimmer running the team in his absence. Torre returned as manager in Boston on May 18, 1999, and the usually anti-Yankees crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Another memorable ovation during the Torre era occurred after the Yankees won the Subway Series in 2000. With Shea Stadium filled with cheering Yankees fans, a teary-eyed Torre was carried off the field, producing an image that perhaps best illustrates his years in the Bronx.

One year later, the Yankees provided a timely distraction to a city in desperate need of one. A month after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the Yankees were in position to win their fifth world championship in six years. But despite taking a lead into the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7, they wound up watching the Diamondbacks celebrate, thanks to a stunning comeback against closer Mariano Rivera.

That started a downward spiral, at least in comparison to their late-'90s postseason success. There were first-round exits in 2002 and 2005 (Angels), 2006 (Tigers) and 2007 (Indians).

They made the World Series in 2003 after a thrilling seven-game ALCS victory over the Red Sox, capped by Aaron Boone's pennant-winning home run in the 11th inning. But they lost to the Marlins in six games in the World Series, ending what was to that point of Torre's tenure his most tumultuous season working for Steinbrenner.

Torre went public with his frustration with the Yankees' disjointed organizational setup split between the New York and Tampa factions, citing an incident involving the handling of Jose Contreras' demotion as the final straw. That set the tone for a season in which Steinbrenner repeatedly made postgame statements meant to criticize Torre, or at least put pressure on him.

With only one year remaining on his contract, it seemed as if Torre's time might be up. But the trade for Alex Rodriguez days before spring training began in 2004 instantly changed everyone's tune. Steinbrenner and Torre made up, and by the beginning of the regular season, Torre had agreed to an extension -- the three-year, $19.2-million deal that just expired.

Torre did not receive much heat from The Boss for suffering the historic postseason collapse that season against the Red Sox. But the next year was another rocky one for the Torre-Steinbrenner relationship.

When the Yankees struggled early, Steinbrenner publicly pointed his finger at pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, Torre's close friend, which irritated the manager. And Steinbrenner was just getting started. Throughout the season he released statements through publicist Howard Rubenstein, usually taking aim at Torre in some way.

After the Yankees lost to the Angels in the first round, Torre went into hiding at his Westchester home for more than a week while contemplating his future. Finally, at the suggestion of Swindal, Torre flew to Tampa to meet with Steinbrenner to discuss their working relationship. Torre stressed that he wanted to return, but not under the same conditions. They pledged to work more cohesively and to eliminate the back-biting in the organization, which actually stayed true through 2006.

Until ...

October, which brought another first-round exit by the Yankees. This time they looked lifeless, and Torre's moves -- such as dropping the slumping Rodriguez to eighth in the Game 4 batting order -- seemed to make it even worse.

Steinbrenner's immediate impulse after that series was to fire Torre, but club officials talked him out of that after a few days. Still, on the day it was announced that Torre would return, Steinbrenner released a tersely worded statement that all but demanded a World Series in 2007 ... or else.

"I deeply want a championship," said Steinbrenner, who turned 77 July 4. "It's about time."

But it wasn't to be. When the Yankees fell far short of that this year, The Boss' decision to wave goodbye to one of the most successful managers apparently was an easy one.

Torre has been aware for years that he's been on borrowed time with the Yankees, considering Steinbrenner's well-established history of changing managers on a whim. He often has said, "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be here this long."

It has been a job with great stress, on and off the field, but also great perks. He's financially secure, having made nearly $50 million plus endorsements. He's created a highly successful foundation, Safe at Home, that raises awareness of domestic violence. He won't ever have to wait for a table in New York City. And he will always have a place among the most sought-after public speakers.

Torre -- a fine player who once batted .363 for the Cardinals -- undoubtedly is bound for the Hall of Fame, thanks to his managerial success.

But in February, when pitchers and catchers report to Tampa, Torre will not be welcoming them.

For the first time since 1995, the Yankees are in the market for a manager.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.

From The New York Times:
A very good article by the always reliable Kepner.
Torre will be missed but it was time for him to go. This is especially true since he was unwilling to accept a more than reasonable contract based not just on the team's not winning the Series during the duration of his last contract, but on the way they have faded during the postseason. His early years were great for the Yankees, and gave me some of the most enjoyable times of my life as a fan.
Torre Says No to Yankees’ Offer and Ends 12-Year Era
By TYLER KEPNER

It was the longest-running and most successful show in the Bronx in decades, running from 1996 through 2007 and stretching into October every season. By the end, it was playing to sold-out crowds almost nightly, and there were moments of magic that may never be repeated.

But the curtain fell on the Joe Torre Era yesterday when Torre, who will someday enter the Hall of Fame for his work as the Yankees manager, rejected the team’s one-year contract offer to stay. The Yankees said they would begin a search for a new manager.

Torre flew to Tampa, Fla., yesterday to meet with the team’s principal owner, George Steinbrenner, after two days of organizational meetings had ended with no announcement. The Yankees offered Torre $5 million, but he could have earned an additional $3 million — and a guaranteed $8 million salary in 2009 — if he had led the Yankees to the World Series next season.

The salary would have kept Torre as the highest-paid manager in the majors, but the guaranteed portion would have represented a cut from his present salary, which averaged $6.4 million over the last three seasons. In each year of that contract, the Yankees lost in the first round of the playoffs.

“It’s no one person’s fault that we didn’t win the World Series; it’s collectively all our fault,” the Yankees’ president, Randy Levine, said. “His contract was over. Obviously, the manager, like all of us, has a responsibility. All of us have the same goal. That goal wasn’t met.

“Yet we recognize the stature of the manager. Under this offer, he would continue to be the highest-paid manager in all of baseball, with an opportunity to make more if, in fact, we made it to the World Series.”

Torre has long understood the expectations of Steinbrenner, who, at 77, is ceding more control to his sons, Hank and Hal. Incentives tied to the team’s performance were also included in the contract he signed after the 2001 World Series. But Torre had never worked for the Yankees under a one-year deal.

Torre’s wife, Ali, said last night that Torre would hold a news conference today. Torre, 67, said after the division series loss to Cleveland last week that he was not ready to stop working.

“I don’t think the flame is out for Joe,” Larry Bowa, the Yankees’ third base coach, said yesterday. “I think he wants to manage somewhere.”

Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, said he had told Torre what kind of offer the Yankees were preparing, and Torre suggested to Cashman that he fly down to meet with the Steinbrenners in person.

Bowa said he was surprised that Torre would fly to Tampa if he knew he was going to reject the Yankees’ offer, echoing a widely held sentiment. But Cashman said Torre was undecided.

“I asked him on the plane down, and I asked him last night on the phone where his mind was at, and he honestly didn’t know,” Cashman said. “And I can honestly represent to you that on that plane today flying down, and when we were getting off the plane, I was uncertain what direction this was going to go.”

Torre met with Steinbrenner; his sons, Hank and Hal; Levine; Cashman and perhaps others at Legends Field. Hal Steinbrenner explained the rationale behind the offer, which was nonnegotiable. Calmly, Torre considered the offer and said he simply could not accept it.

“Joe was very respectful,” Levine said. “He was the dignified man he’s been since all of us have known him. There was no acrimony.”

Steinbrenner had publicly threatened to dismiss Torre if he did not guide the Yankees out of the first round. But Hal Steinbrenner said that declaration played no role in the team’s discussions over the last few days.

The biggest factor in formulating the offer, Hal said, is that the Yankees, their fans, and their business partners expect to win the World Series, and Torre had not done so since 2000. Hank Steinbrenner explained that mandate, using the same kind of football analogies his father has used.

“The point is, the objective of the Yankees since the ‘20s has been to win a championship every year, just like the objective of Lombardi with the Packers or Belichick with the Patriots,” Hank Steinbrenner said.

“Our goal is to win it every single year, even though we know, obviously, you can’t win it every single year. But nothing less than a championship is considered really acceptable.”

Torre is second among all Yankees managers in victories, with 1,173, and he guided the Yankees to the playoffs in each of his 12 seasons. Yet simply making the playoffs is the minimum expectation for the Yankees, who won the World Series in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000, and lost it in 2001 and 2003.

That early success, and Torre’s popularity among players, reporters and fans, made him all but bulletproof, even to an owner who habitually changed managers before Torre arrived.

Torre’s last contract was a reward for the success of those pennant-winning teams. Since his last three seasons finished so poorly, yesterday’s offer was for less guaranteed money, even though pay cuts in baseball are rare.

“We kind of thought something was going to happen after we didn’t win,” left fielder Johnny Damon said last night. “They gave Joe an opportunity, but with a pay cut and with the pressure that, if you win, here’s more money — which was pretty decent. But he’d have had to deal with the same thing he dealt with this year. Maybe Joe just didn’t feel like it anymore.”

Scott Boras, the agent for Damon and Alex Rodriguez, told SI.com that Torre would have lost respect among the players if he had taken a pay cut.

“It is difficult, near impossible, to accept a salary cut,” Boras said. “Successful people can afford their principles. They understand if they accept the position, there is a great risk the message to all under him is dissatisfaction.”

Torre’s future is not considered a factor in whether Rodriguez returns to the Yankees, but it could play into the decisions of Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte. All three are loyal to Torre and can be free agents this winter.

“You’re just hoping it doesn’t change the feelings that Posada and Mariano have,” Damon said. “Joe’s been the only manager they’ve known, with the exception of Buck Showalter for a year. It’s definitely going to be strange.”

Damon said he hoped the Yankees would hire the bench coach, Don Mattingly, because it would ease the transition from Torre. Like Torre, Mattingly commands respect as a former most valuable player yet can still relate to all kinds of players.

Mattingly has never managed, but his agent, Ray Schulte, said this week that he would be ready for the job. Yesterday, Schulte said the Yankees had not contacted Mattingly, who wanted to reserve comment until Torre speaks publicly.

The YES broadcaster Joe Girardi, who managed the Florida Marlins in 2006, is another candidate, but Mattingly has long been the favorite of Steinbrenner. Tony La Russa, who was rumored as a possible replacement last week, is close to re-signing with the St. Louis Cardinals.

“We will start assembling what we think is the best fit for managing the Yankees,” Cashman said. “I will discuss potential candidates with ownership, and I can promise that the process is going to take some time. I ask for everybody’s patience as we review and interview the individuals and make recommendations to ownership.”

The only criteria, Cashman said, is that the new manager can lead the Yankees to a title. Torre did that four times, and the Yankees offered significant financial incentive for him to do so again. But Torre said no, and an era is over.

From The New York Times:
Unbelievably, a column by Chass about the Yankees that I agree with.
Losing Ally in Swindal Left Torre Vulnerable
By MURRAY CHASS

Where is Steve Swindal now that we want to blame him for the breakup of the Yankees and Joe Torre? Swindall isn’t around because of his own breakup with his wife, Jennifer née Steinbrenner.

Calls to known telephone numbers for Swindal did not locate him yesterday. An automated voice messaging system on what had been his cellphone said the number “is not available.” The automated message at what had been his home number said, “We’re sorry. You’ve reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”

Swindal’s divorce from George Steinbrenner’s daughter cost him not only his marriage but also his position as managing partner of the Yankees.

Last year when Steinbrenner was asked who would succeed him as the person in charge of the Yankees, he said, when he retired, Swindal would be the man in charge.

Two problems with that. Steinbrenner never intended to retire, and Hank Steinbrenner had a different idea.

Subsequent to the elder Steinbrenner’s comment, a group of people, including Hank, the elder son, were in the owner’s Yankee Stadium office, and someone mentioned that Swindal was the heir apparent.

“Like hell he will be,” Hank responded, according to a person who was there. Then he pointed to Steinbrenner’s large leather chair and added, “When my father goes, “I’ll be sitting in the chair.”

Hank knew whereof he spoke. All he had to do was check family history. An earlier Steinbrenner son-in-law, Joe Molloy, was in front-office power until he and his wife were divorced. Molloy has not been heard from in years, disappearing completely from Yankeeland just as Swindal has.

But three years ago, when Swindal was married and functioning in the front office, he was assigned the task of negotiating a new contract with Torre. Swindal liked Torre. At that time everyone, even Steinbrenner, liked Torre because the Yankees had won four World Series and played in two others in an eight-year span. So he gave him a nice raise on what was already a lavish contract.

From a three-year, $16.5 million contract to a three-year, $19.2 million deal, Torre’s salary kept escalating, all the way to $7 million this year. This was not Tom Hicks and Alex Rodriguez, but Steve Swindal and Joe Torre.

Hicks, the Rangers’ owner, was playing with his own money when he gave Rodriguez $252 million. Swindal was spending his father-in-law’s money when he gave Torre that extension in April 2004.

In retrospect, the problem Steinbrenner had with that contract extension was the results he got from it. The Yankees were humiliated by the Red Sox in the 2004 postseason, then knocked out of the postseason in the first round in each of the three years of Torre’s new contract.

Torre has often talked about understanding what it meant to work for Steinbrenner. The managers and the players, he knows, are paid to produce.

Forget that the Yankees did not have the ingredients — primarily the pitching — to go farther than the first round in any of the past three years. They were stagnant, in a rut, a playoff rut, to be sure, but Torre didn’t get them out of the rut.

In these three years, they did not match their 2004 appearance in the American League Championship Series. They went backward. Does a manager deserve a raise for going backward?

Maybe in these times he does. A player hits .220 and gets a raise. But the Yankees’ offer of $5 million would have left Torre as the highest-paid manager, $1.5 million ahead of the next highest, Lou Piniella.

The three $1 million incentives the team included in the offer addressed Steinbrenner’s concern that the Yankees go beyond the first round.

Maybe Torre rejected the offer because the guaranteed salary represented a paycut. Maybe he rejected it because it was for only one year (with a second year automatically vesting if the Yankees reached the World Series). Maybe he rejected it because of the way the Yankees treated him for the week after the team lost the division series, forcing him to wait to learn his future.

But for $35.7 million over just the latter half of his 12-year employment with the Yankees, the wait wasn’t so awful. The contract offer wasn’t so awful. How many managers would be insulted by a $5 million offer?

In their offer the Yankees did not say anything about the awful job Torre had done with their bullpen. It had not been the best, but Torre made it worse by not using relievers he did not trust and using those few he trusted to exhaustion.

That’s just one of the negatives that detract from Torre’s reputation as a terrific manager but that his fans choose to overlook. When Gabe Paul left the Yankees as club president after they won the World Series in 1977, a resentful Steinbrenner said, “What was he before he came with me?”

Torre might not like it, but Steinbrenner could ask the same question about the manager who failed in three previous stops where the owners did not provide a bottomless supply of money.

Joey Bishop, 89; comedian was last
surviving member of Rat Pack
Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
12:44 PM PDT, October 18, 2007

Joey Bishop, the deadpan comedian who was ABC's answer to NBC's late-night talk show king Johnny Carson in the late 1960s and was the last surviving member of Frank Sinatra's legendary Rat Pack, has died. He was 89.

Bishop, who had been in failing health for some time, died Wednesday night at his home in Newport Beach, according to his longtime friend, publicist Warren Cowan.

An adept ad-libber with a dry, underplayed sense of humor, Bishop achieved his greatest fame in the 1960s. He was master of ceremonies for President Kennedy's inaugural gala and joined Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford for the Rat Pack's historic "summit" meetings on stage at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

Time magazine referred to Bishop as that swinging, fun-loving group's "top banana."

Jack Benny called him "one of the funniest men I've ever seen."

And Danny Thomas was so impressed with Bishop, he had a weekly situation comedy built around him, which Thomas' production company sold to NBC. .

For four years -- from 1961 to '65, first on NBC and then CBS -- Bishop starred in the "The Joey Bishop Show," whose character, Joey Barnes, was changed from a low-level public relations man living with his mother the first season to being a married, late-night talk show host.

It was a fitting fictional occupation for the quick-witted Bishop, who had become nationally known in the late '50s for his regular late-night appearances on "The Jack Paar Show." (Paar once likened Bishop's dour demeanor to that of "an untipped waiter.")

Bishop frequently filled in as host for Paar and later for Carson. In 1967, ABC signed him to host his own 90-minute late-night talk-fest.

"The Joey Bishop Show," with Regis Philbin as Bishop's announcer-sidekick, ran for 2 1/2 years.

"It was the thrill of my life to be chosen by Joey as the announcer for his talk show," Philbin said in a statement to The Times on Thursday. "I learned a lot about the business of making people laugh. He was a master comedian and a great teacher, and I will never forget those days or him."

In November 1969, with "The Joey Bishop Show" third in the ratings behind Carson and Merv Griffin's new late-night talk show on CBS, ABC told Bishop it was canceling his show at the end of December.

A day later, Bishop shocked his Hollywood studio audience during his opening monologue by saying that he and the network had decided to end the show. After praising his staff, he announced that he was going home to have dinner with his wife. Then he walked off the stage, leaving Philbin to preside over the remainder of that night's show.

"It didn't bother me a bit," Bishop said of his show's cancellation during a 1998 interview with The Times. "I don't consider success doing a show for 30 years; I'm sorry. To me, you're successful when you graduate from something. I did a series, I did a talk show, I did movies, I replaced Mickey Rooney [on Broadway] in 'Sugar Babies.' You understand?"

In his 2002 biography of Bishop, "Mouse in the Rat Pack: The Joey Bishop Story," New York Post TV columnist Michael Seth Starr painted a picture of a perfectionist who "clashed with his writers, producers, directors and co-stars" on his TV series, among others -- a man who in general could be charming one minute and prickly the next.

"He was very demanding, and I think a lot of that came from the fact he had to work his way up, playing clubs," Starr told The Times a few years ago. "He really went through the school of hard knocks."

Born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb in the Bronx on Feb. 3, 1918, Bishop was the youngest of five children of Jewish immigrant parents from central Europe. When Joey was still an infant, his family moved to South Philadelphia, where his mechanic father opened a bicycle shop.

While growing up, Bishop learned to tap dance, do imitations and play the banjo and mandolin. At 18, he dropped out of high school to pursue a career in show business.

In time, he teamed up with two pals in a zany comedy act. They called themselves the Bishop Brothers.

Bishop went solo in 1941, the same year he married his wife, Sylvia. He honed his quick wit and flair for ad-libbing in a Cleveland club for nine months before being drafted into the Army in 1942.

Resuming his show business career after his discharge in 1945, Bishop soon gained a reputation as a promising young comic known for his pointed and sarcastic observations.

"I call it an open mind," he once said of his onstage attitude. "I just go out and talk. I don't have any mental file of jokes. If I did, I wouldn't ad-lib. It's usually based on adversity. My own adversities or those of others."

In 1952, Bishop was earning $1,000 a week at the Latin Quarter in Manhattan, where he caught the eye of Sinatra, who asked him to open for him at a popular New Jersey club.

Bishop continued to open for Sinatra in New York and occasionally on the road, his relationship with the powerful Sinatra paying big career dividends.

When President-elect Kennedy asked Sinatra to produce his inaugural ball, Sinatra in turn asked Bishop to emcee the star-studded event. (Glancing over at John and Jacqueline Kennedy that night, Bishop said, "I told you I'd get you a good seat.")

Bishop appeared in 14 films, joining Sinatra and fellow Rat Packers in "Ocean's 11" and "Sergeants 3," as well as "Texas Across the River" with Martin.

It was in 1960 while Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Lawford and Bishop were in Las Vegas filming "Ocean's 11," a crime comedy about a scheme to rob five casinos in a single night, that they performed nightly at the Sands Hotel in what was dubbed "the Summit."

Theirs was a freewheeling show in which Davis might mash a cake in Bishop's face and Martin would lift up Davis and hand him to Sinatra, saying, "This is an award that just arrived for you from the NAACP."

In 1998, the same year Sinatra died, the Rat Pack's glory days underwent a revival of interest with the publication of several books and an HBO movie, "The Rat Pack," in which comedian Bobby Slayton played Bishop.

Those events, along with Bishop's old sitcom turning up on cable's TV Land, spurred a succession of reporters to pass through the then-80-year-old comic's waterfront home in Newport Beach. Bishop, who wrote most of thematerial for the Rat Pack's stage act, was quick to remind visitors of the important role he played. And he always had proof within reach.

He'd pull out a copy of a 1960 Time magazine article that said, "Theoretically, Joey has bottom billing -- fifth man after the show's four stars. But happily as soon as he starts talking he's recognized as the top banana in the newly assembled comedy act that is breaking up Vegas."

The magazine quoted Sinatra himself as saying that the nightly "meetings could not have come off without the speaker of the house, Joey Bishop, the hub of the big wheel."

Bishop also would reach for journalist Richard Gehman's 1963 book "Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack." He knew which page to turn to:

"Bishop is the only member of Sinatra's gang who can tell the leader what to do with himself and not only get away with it, but actually and incredibly enough become more firmly entrenched in favor."

Indeed, Bishop could get away with delivering the line: "Mr. Sinatra will now speak of some of the good things the Mafia has done."

On stage, he was never at a loss for words.

While opening for Sinatra at the Copacabana in New York in 1954, Bishop was in the middle of his act when Marilyn Monroe walked in wearing a floor-length, white ermine coat. Bishop waited for her to be seated before saying, "Marilyn, I told you to wait in the truck."

Bishop, whose wife of 58 years died of cancer in 1999, is survived by his son, Larry; two grandchildren; and longtime companion Nora Garabotti.

Services will be private.

Instead of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to the Children's Hospital of Orange County.

From The Village Voice: A good analysis of the movie. This is an excellent film, a nearly perfect adaptation of Lehane's novel. The two principals, Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan are outstanding.
Beantown Boys Make Good
The Brothers Affleck come through with a complex,
sophisticated Boston crime drama
by Jim Ridley

October 16th, 2007

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid," Raymond Chandler wrote in 1950's "The Simple Art of Murder," smacking the ascot off the drawing-room mystery and all its crime-solving dilettante dandies. "He must be . . . a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it." Chandler was laying down the archetype of the hardboiled detective, the hero with a thousand trench coats; he might as well have been summoning Patrick Kenzie, the dark-city crusader of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone, who hails from the broken glass of Boston's hard-knock Dorchester district.

From the moment Kenzie, played by Casey Affleck, promises a hard-living skank named Helene that he'll find her missing girl, we know he's going to make good on it or die trying. That's what the heroic shamus does in detective fiction: He honors the code—a creed somewhat more refined than the law of the jungle, with a higher return of something like justice. But the great strength of Gone Baby Gone, adapted from the fourth book in crime novelist Dennis Lehane's series, is its ruthless undermining of the juvenile good/bad certainties of that code. In his strikingly downbeat directorial debut, Affleck has created something of a blue-moon rarity: an American movie of genuine moral complexity.

Aided by girlfriend/girl-Friday Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), Kenzie goes trawling for the little girl through an underworld of roughneck bars and drug hideouts, earning the skeptical regard of a transplanted Cajun cop (Ed Harris, all macho authority) and the wary stink-eye of a police chief (Morgan Freeman) whose interest in the case is as personal as it gets. Scared of sliding down a shit trail with nothing but slime and sorrow at the bottom, Angie fears the worst. Kenzie can't let it go. He's made his promise.

It's not giving away much to say that the central crime peters out halfway through the movie, after a botched ransom effort brings only shame. But Kenzie continues his investigation and uncovers a conspiracy of other would-be saviors doing seriously ugly things for all the right reasons. They have a code, too. In a grimly ironic reversal of the detective's role as restorer of moral order, the harder Kenzie pokes around, the murkier and more damning his choices get—even the seemingly obvious one of whether to protect the innocent.

As director, Affleck (who scripted with Aaron Stockard) relishes the close-quarters volatility of Lehane's Balkanized Boston, split along myriad fracture lines of class, loyalty, address, and ethnicity. The novelist's specialty is the neighborhood noir, in which the (usually sordid) history of a place shadows his characters like the whip hand of doom. Whatever the movie version of his Mystic River may have lacked in grimy location detail, it captured the book's claustrophobia, the inescapable shared past that is the mixed blessing of community.

Gone Baby Gone, by contrast, creates a more turbulent, textured sense of the city as a character. The opening credits' somber street-scene montage—less a city symphony than a city threnody—situates the film in concrete particulars even before it rolls up outside the girl's home, a Dog Day Afternoon madhouse of gawkers, live-at-five news crews, and neighbors momentarily diverted from their grills.

The setting is more persuasive than the plot, which recalls Chandler's gripe that even good detective fiction falls prey to the same contrivances as bad. It hinges upon improbable slip-ups and a naiveté that's unlikely even for the desperate. Indeed, the movie's most generic scenes are all crime-drama standard-issue, although Affleck does invest a familiar ambush scenario with the nerve-rattling use of limited perspective and convincing confusion.

Where Affleck proves unfailing, though, is in the superbly scaled performances he elicits from his cast, free of the operatic overplaying that occasionally edged Mystic River's needle into the red. That starts with brother Casey, a major talent coming into his own, whose strangled voice and stifled calm make Kenzie a compellingly fallible guardian angel; it goes double for the brilliant Amy Ryan, who embodies Helene as a pathetic, needy creature.

Typically, we want detective fiction to translate aberration into a solvable puzzle. Gone Baby Gone instead saves its bleakest ethical quandary for last. Faced with two wrenching choices, Kenzie must weigh his own sense of right against what may be a greater good. Yet either way, justice will be shafted and lives ruined. The backbone of the detective's code—the restoration of order—has rarely seemed so hollow. The ending resonates cruelly in this time of war, as our national susceptibility to clear-cut good/bad options keeps us from frankly considering (or avoiding) likely choices of bad or worse. But that is the scorched earth the detective walks. "It is not a very fragrant world," Raymond Chandler wrote, "but it is the world you live in."

From Newsday.com:
Cosby, Gore as different as black, green
James P. Pinkerton

October 16, 2007

The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal once observed that mankind is suspended between two infinities - the infinitely large and the infinitely small. And so it is with two figures in the news: Al Gore wishes to speak for the planet, while Bill Cosby wishes to speak to the human heart.

And it's revealing, given the liberal biases of our culture, that one man gets so much attention and the other man, so little.

Gore, former vice president-turned-pundit-movie star, has chosen, as his topic, the infinitely big. And he has been rewarded hugely: He just won the Nobel Peace Prize, on top of many other awards showered down on him by the elite culture, including an Oscar and an Emmy. So Gore will ascend into the jetstream of world-renown - the same left-tilting empyrean occupied by such globe-trotters as Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates.

In the meantime, closer to the ground, the comedian-turned-reformer Bill Cosby has joined with Alvin F. Poussaint of Harvard Medical School to write a book, "Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors," which argues that many of the problems within the black community are self-inflicted, the result of a counterproductive culture of violence and victimhood.

Cosby has been making this point for years - and has been getting attacked by the left for years. Michael Eric Dyson, speaking for the liberal street-activism left over from the '60s, wrote an entire book attacking Cosby's "poisonous" view of black culture.

But Cosby and Poussaint have the cold terrible facts on their side: "In 1950, five out of every six black children were born into a two-parent home. Today that number is less than two out of six." Yes, white racism exists, but it was worse a half-century ago. Something bad is happening within black culture, and Cosby and Poussaint are not shy about naming it: the celebration of violence and ignorance emblemized in the "gangsta" lifestyle.

The unyielding truth is that any group climbs into the middle class only by embracing middle-class values. This is a "conservative" fact of life that was once equally embraced by liberals, before they "progressed" on to "liberation" as a new goal.

But after decades of disaster, black thinkers such as Cosby and Poussaint - and before them, John McWhorter, Juan Williams and, yes, Clarence Thomas - are leading a moral renaissance among African-Americans, which surely counts as the most hopeful social trend in our national life today. And yet with the remarkable exception of NBC's Tim Russert, who bravely devoted the entire hour of Sunday's "Meet the Press" to Cosby and Poussaint, the mainstream media seem little interested in this black renaissance.

Why is that? Perhaps because the liberal-leaning elites realize that they are losing the debate over poverty and uplift - the winners being those who speak for hard work, abstinence and delayed gratification.

No wonder the chattering classes, fleeing from their horror of such a "bourgeois" existence, have moved on to new, greener pastures.

But there's a problem looming ahead for Gore and his many fans: how to radically reduce "greenhouse gases." The environmentalists have their answer: some sort of global authority to restrict factories and cars - which would, not coincidentally, authorize them to rule the world. But maybe China won't cooperate. Maybe the Chinese will watch as we shut down our factories - and they keep theirs open. And then who will win the next war? Not a war of polar bears and the Prius, but a real war of ships and airplanes.

If Gore wants to be constructive, he will figure out to how to reduce pollution - while still preserving American industry. If he could do that, he would truly earn the respect and admiration of all Americans.

But in the meantime, Cosby and Poussaint have taken on a challenge that we can win, because the struggle will take place within our own hearts.

James P. Pinkerton's e-mail address is pinkerto@ix.netcom.com.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.

Why Be Pro-Life?
By Jonah Goldberg

I don't know if life begins at conception. I don't really know what "life" means. Consciousness? Possessing a soul? Well, if consciousness defines the issue, then life surely does not begin at conception. Not even the most adamant pro-lifer claims otherwise.

As for souls, I believe we have them, but I don't know how they work. Indeed, ensoulment -- the process by which God puts a soul in our bodies -- is a controversial topic among religious scholars, people who know a lot more about such things than I do. And I'm not sure any of them are right anyway.

If "life" simply means that fetuses are something more than inanimate objects, I'm with you. But that hardly seals the deal for me on the issue of abortion. After all, the world is filled with organisms that do not deserve any special consideration, let alone a claim on a human being's life or liberty.

In short, while I have great sympathy for "culture of life" arguments, if you tallied most of the above views on abortion, they'd appear to add up to my being pro-choice. And yet, when I get right down to it, I'm not. Why?

I've been trying to find my own answer to that question as the GOP comes to grips with the fact that its presidential front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, is pro-choice. I confess: A fully satisfactory answer eludes me, but I have enough of one to stay pro-life.

Part of my reasoning is politically pragmatic. Grover Norquist, the right-wing activist, once told my National Review colleague, David Freddoso, in an interview that anyone who can go to black-tie dinners and face the haranguing of rich donors for his pro-life stance has the backbone to support tax cuts too.

That's a crude way of putting it, but I know what he means. Being pro-life is so unfashionable, so uncool, I tend to trust politicians who are willing to hold the line.

This, in turn, points to why I have special contempt for antiabortion politicians who switch sides. Jesse Jackson used to call abortion "genocide." Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Dennis Kucinich and other pro-choicers all once championed the unborn. Did each of them revisit the moral, philosophical, scientific and theological issues involved and, after careful study, suddenly decide that abortion doesn't kill "babies" after all but, rather, merely evacuates "uterine contents"? I doubt it.

I could be wrong, obviously. But the fact that their conversions echoed the march of the Democratic Party and, for the most part, dovetailed with their own presidential ambitions suggests to me that they were willing to sanction the taking of what they had once believed to be innocent lives merely for political gain. That is disgusting.

Flip-flopping the other way (as George H.W. Bush, Mitt Romney and others did) may be no less cynical. To pro-choice voters, it's surely deeply offensive to watch someone sacrifice the individual liberty of women for political expediency. But, morally, it just doesn't seem as bad to me.

Every day, the government restricts what you can do with your body, from the drugs you can take to the surgeries you can subject yourself to. In other words, the line of personal autonomy is often blurry and narrow. The line between life and death is supposed to be bright and wide. Once a politician takes a stand that a certain population -- be they fetuses, Jews, blacks or anybody else -- has the right to life, their motive for changing their minds should be a lot better than fear of losing support from NARAL and the New York Times.

And that gets me to my more philosophical or principled reason for being pro-life: I just don't know. I confess that I lack passion about debates over RU-486, Plan B and other measures that terminate a pregnancy in the first few hours or days after conception, because that's when I'm least sure that a life is at stake. But when it comes to, say, partial-birth abortion, I am adamantly pro-life. I don't know if a fertilized egg has rights. But I am convinced that a baby minutes, days or weeks before full term is, simply, a baby. And despite what you constantly hear, Roe vs. Wade doesn't recognize that fact.

In death penalty cases, "reasonable doubt" goes to the accused because unless we're certain, we must not risk an innocent's life. This logic goes out the window when it comes to abortion, unless you are 100% sure that babies only become human beings after the umbilical cord is cut. I don't see how you can be that sure, which is why I'm pro-life -- not because I'm certain, but because I'm not.

From The New York Post:
UNFIT TO PRINT?

October 13, 2007

Every major daily paper in New York took note of President Bush's deci sion to bestow the first Medal of Honor of Operation Enduring Freedom on Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy - a Long Islander who gave his life for his country and his fellow SEALs.

Every paper but one, that is.

And it shouldn't be particularly hard to guess which one.

By now, most folks know exactly how much The New York Times despises the U.S. military.

How it detests any mission that involves U.S. troops - whether to protect Americans by killing terrorists or to help stave off a bloodbath in the Middle East.

How the paper works tirelessly to promote its anti-war, anti-military agenda - even in its supposedly objective news pages.

So while Bush's announcement merited stories and appreciative editorials in The Post, The New York Sun, the Daily News and even the front page of liberal Newsday, it shouldn't be all that surprising that the Times didn't publish a single word about Murphy's well-deserved honor.

What did the paper of record focus on yesterday? No fewer than three stories reported on how Americans had killed innocent Iraqi civilians.

Regarding the war, of course, the Times' "coverage" was pernicious long before the fighting began.

Since then, it has focused obsessively on the mistakes and sins of American GIs (Abu Ghraib, anyone?) - and rarely has it played up U.S. victories.

Indeed, it would be hard to cite a news outlet more responsible for sapping U.S. morale - and emboldening America's enemies - than the Times.

But Murphy was a New Yorker.

He served with unusual valor and distinction in Afghanistan.

When Taliban militants ambushed his four-man team in 2005, he risked his life scrambling to an open spot to radio for help. He got his call through, but was later killed in the battle.

Surely even editors at the Times could have had the heart to report - if not honor - such courage and self-sacrifice.

Unless, of course, they're so blinded by their disdain for America's fighting men and women and their missions that they just can't muster the decency to do so.

That must be it.

From The Wall Street Journal:
The Grief That Made 'Peanuts' Good
By BILL WATTERSON
October 12, 2007; Page W5

SCHULZ AND PEANUTS: A BIOGRAPHY
By David Michaelis
(Harper, 655 pages, $34.95)

The comic strip "Peanuts" was more than a decade old when I started reading it as a kid in the mid-1960s. At that time, "Peanuts" was becoming a force of pop culture, with best-selling books and a newly burgeoning merchandising empire of plastic dolls, sweatshirts, calendars and television specials. The overwhelming commercial success of the strip often overshadows its artistic triumph, but throughout its 50-year run, Charles Schulz wrote and drew every panel himself, making his comic strip an extremely personal record of his thoughts. It was a model of artistic depth and integrity that left a deep impression on me. While growing up, I collected the annual "Peanuts" books and used them as a personal cartooning course, copying the drawings with the idea of someday becoming the next Charles Schulz.

At that time, most of the strip went over my head, and I certainly had no understanding of how revolutionary "Peanuts" was or how it was changing the comics. "Peanuts" pretty much defines the modern comic strip, so even now it's hard to see it with fresh eyes. The clean, minimalist drawings, the sarcastic humor, the unflinching emotional honesty, the inner thoughts of a household pet, the serious treatment of children, the wild fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous scale -- in countless ways, Schulz blazed the wide trail that most every cartoonist since has tried to follow. David Michaelis's biography, "Schulz and Peanuts," is an earnest and penetrating look at the man behind this comic-strip phenomenon. With new access to Schulz's personal files, professional archives and family, Mr. Michaelis presents the fullest picture we have yet of the cartoonist's life and personality.

Born in 1922, Schulz always held his parents in high regard, but they were emotionally remote and strangely inattentive to their only child. Schulz was shy and alienated during his school years, retreating from nearly every opportunity to reveal himself or his gifts. Teachers and students consequently ignored him, and Schulz nursed a lifelong grudge that so few attempted to draw him out or recognized his talent. His mother was bedridden with cancer during his high-school years, and she died long before he could prove himself to her -- a source of endless regret and longing for him. As a young adult, he disguised his hurt and anger with a mild, deflecting demeanor that also masked his great ambition and drive.

Once he finally achieved his childhood dream of drawing a comic strip, however, he was able to expose and confront his inner torments through his creative work, making insecurity, failure and rejection the central themes of his humor. Knowing that his miseries fueled his work, he resisted help or change, apparently preferring professional success over personal happiness. Desperately lonely and sad throughout his life, he saw himself as "a nothing," yet he was also convinced that his artistic ability made him special. An odd combination of prickly pride and utter self-abnegation characterizes many of his public comments.

"Peanuts" launched in 1950, appearing in just seven newspapers. The comic strip grew slowly at first, but as its vision expanded and the characters solidified, it caught fire with readers. Schulz's fixation on his work was total, and his private life suffered as a result. Mr. Michaelis uncovers quite a bit of Schulz's more personal tribulations. Schulz's strong-willed and industrious first wife, Joyce, grew disgusted with his withdrawal, and she often treated him cruelly. As the marriage finally unraveled, Schulz had an unsuccessful affair, and he later broke up the marriage of the woman who became his second wife. Schulz's life turned more peaceful after he remarried, but he never overcame the self-doubt and dread that plagued him. Work remained his only refuge. At the end, deteriorating health took away Schulz's ability to draw the strip, a loss so crushing that it can only be considered merciful that he died, at age 77 in 2000, the very day his last strip was published.

It's a strange and interesting story, and Mr. Michaelis, the author of a 1998 biography of artist N.C. Wyeth, paces the narrative well, offering many insights and surprising events from Schulz's life. Undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the book is the juxtaposition of biographical information and reproduced "Peanuts" strips. Here we see how literally Schulz sometimes depicted actual situations and events. The strips used as illustrations in "Schulz and Peanuts" are reproduced at eye-straining reduction and are often removed from the context of their stories, but they vividly demonstrate how Schulz used his cartoons to work through private concerns. We discover, for example, that in the recurring scenes of Lucy annoying Schroeder at the piano, the crabby and bossy Lucy stands in for Joyce, and the obsessive and talented Schroeder is a surrogate for Schulz.

Reading these strips in light of the information Mr. Michaelis unearths, I was struck less by the fact that Schulz drew on his troubled first marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his tormentor and by his ability to poke fun at himself.

Lucy, for all her domineering and insensitivity, is ultimately a tragic, vulnerable figure in her pursuit of Schroeder. Schroeder's commitment to Beethoven makes her love irrelevant to his life. Schroeder is oblivious not only to her attentions but also to the fact that his musical genius is performed on a child's toy (not unlike a serious artist drawing a comic strip). Schroeder's fanaticism is ludicrous, and Lucy's love is wasted. Schulz illustrates the conflict in his life, not in a self-justifying or vengeful manner but with a larger human understanding that implicates himself in the sad comedy. I think that's a wonderfully sane way to process a hurtful world. Of course, his readers connected to precisely this emotional depth in the strip, without ever knowing the intimate sources of certain themes. Whatever his failings as a person, Schulz's cartoons had real heart.

The cartoons are also terrifically funny and edgy, even after all these years. The wonder of "Peanuts" is that it worked on so many levels simultaneously. Children could enjoy the silly drawings and the delightful fantasy of Snoopy, while adults could see the bleak undercurrent of cruelty, loneliness and failure, or the perpetual theme of unrequited love, or the strip's stark visual beauty. If anything, I wish Mr. Michaelis's biography had devoted more space to analyzing the strip on its own terms as an art. Knowing the sources of Schulz's inspiration does not explain the imaginative power of the work.

I was also surprised that Mr. Michaelis largely glossed over the later years of the strip, despite major shifts in its focus and tone. As newer characters developed into dominant voices, Charlie Brown receded, becoming almost avuncular, and "Peanuts" abandoned much of its earlier harshness. It would have been interesting to learn how Schulz's conception of the strip changed over the years and what Peppermint Patty, Spike and Rerun offered him in the way of new expressive possibilities. I was not always enthusiastic about Schulz's later choices, but it says something for Schulz that he resisted the simple, robotic repetition of a successful formula. In this, too, "Peanuts" was unlike most other comic strips.

For all the influence that "Peanuts" had on me, I was content to admire Schulz from afar, and like most of his millions of readers I never met him. Mr. Michaelis has done an extraordinary amount of digging and has written a perceptive and compelling account of Schulz's life. This book finally introduces Charles Schulz to us all.

Mr. Watterson is the creator of the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes."

From NoMaas.org:
10.14.2007
If I ever need any guidance,
who's a better consiglieri than my father?

Hank & Hal now run their father's family business:

The George Steinbrenner era is apparently all but over.

According to a report in the New York Post, the “Boss” has handed over control of the New York Yankees to his sons Hank and Hal Steinbrenner as he faces up to declining health.

“George has taken on a role like the chairman of a major corporation,” team president Randy Levine told the Post. “He’s been saying for years he’s wanted to get his sons involved in the family business. Both of them have stepped up and are taking on the day-to-day duties of what’s required to run the Yankees.”

“There’s always been a succession — and that’s myself and my brother,” Hank Steinbrenner added. (Source)

Hank is already exercising his power
and said that Joba will be a starter next season.

From The Australian:
Doom if Saint Al loses carbs
Mark Steyn

October 15, 2007

A COUPLE of days before Al Gore was awarded his Nobel Peace prize, Michael Burton, an English High Court judge and apparently a fine film critic, ruled that Al's Oscar-winner An Inconvenient Truth was prone to "alarmism and exaggeration" and identified nine major factual errors.

For example, the former vice-president predicts a rise in sea levels of 6m "in the near future". "The Armageddon scenario he predicts," declared Burton, "is not in line with the scientific consensus."

I'll say. The so-called scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests rising sea levels across the next century of somewhere between 15cm and 60cm, with about 30cm being most likely. An Inconvenient Truth insouciantly adds a zero to the worst-case scenario.

And nobody minds. His Honour was examining the vice-president's acclaimed crockumentary because the British Government, in its wisdom, has decided to force-feed it to hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren. It would be nice to think it would have to be preceded by a warning that any resemblance between this film and any actual planet living or dead is entirely coincidental, but it seems more likely that the Nobel Peace imprimatur will completely insulate the picture from even the most modest quibbles.

A schoolkid in Ontario was complaining the other day that, whatever subject you do, you have to sit through Gore's movie: It turns up in biology class, in geography, in physics, in history, in English.

Whatever you're studying, it's all you need to know. It fulfils the same role in the schoolhouses of the guilt-ridden developed world that the Koran does in Pakistani madrassas. Gore's rise is as remorseless as those sea levels. I assumed Gore's clammy embrace would do for the environmental movement what his belated endorsement had done for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential candidacy: kill it stone dead. But governor Dean was constrained by actual humdrum prosaic vote tallies in Iowa and New Hampshire. The ecochondriacs, by contrast, seem happiest when they're most unmoored from reality.

That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".

Wow. It's not just the Maldive Islands, but the balance of energy between Earth and the rest of the universe. You wouldn't happen to have the stats on that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Gore is the logical reductio of what the popular Australian blogger Tim Blair calls global warm-mongering: Worst-case scenario, with all the zeroes you want on the end, and then a few more for holes in the ozone layer as yet undreamt of. Anyone can, as the environmentalists advise, think globally and act locally, but only Gore thinks cosmically and acts not at all.

One can forgive youthful indiscretions, like his 1988 presidential candidacy, when he became the first and only politician in US history to hire a herd of cows for the launch of his campaign, positioning them attractively around him for the photo op at the supposed Gore "family farm". The contribution to global warming from increased methane from bovine flatulence in the Gore neighbourhood was no doubt "offset" by reduced flatulent emissions from whichever farm he'd hired the cows from: it was, in that sense, a "carbon-neutral" event.

But since then there's been a pronounced pattern of behaviour. In 2000, it was revealed that his tenant, Tracy Mayberry, has asked her distinguished landlord to fix the plumbing. The toilet overflowed and the tank was held together by bread bag ties. This was after Gore had inflicted federal toilet regulations on the rest of the country in the interest of water conservancy, yet he let his own tenant's lavatory overflow for months on end. Americans have to make do with cisterns that hold less than a supersized cup at McDonald's, but Environmental Boy had a Niagara-sized torrent running through his tenants' bathroom and down the stairs 24 hours a day. After Channel 5 in Nashville ran a story, he eventually called Tracy and invited himself to dinner so they could get to know each other. But Mayberry, a Democrat, told the vice-president he could "kiss my ass", which given the state of sanitation on the property was probably not a wise idea.

An isolated incident? Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.

221,000kWh? What's he doing in there? As his spokesperson explained it, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you wastrels to use less electricity. Insofar as he's made any contribution to global peace, it's in persuading large swaths of a narcissistic Western world to busy itself with non-solutions to pseudo-crises to such a distracting degree that al-Qa'ida may wind up imposing the global caliphate without having to fire a shot.

As for the climate, you could take every dollar spent on "global warming" and blow it on internet porn, and the Earth's climate in 2050 will be pretty much what it would be anyway. Meanwhile, Gore is now being urged to jump into the presidential race and save Democrats from the allegedly too-hawkish Hillary Clinton. I doubt he will.

But you'll know he's considering it if he starts slimming down faster than the Antarctic shelf. When Al Gore starts getting carb-neutral, we're really in trouble.

Mark Steyn is author of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

From Eye Weekly:
Reborn to run
A look at how, in the eyes of a new generation of rock stars,
Bruce Springsteen went from guilty pleasure to golden oldie
By Michael Barclay

Why Springsteen, and why now?

Sure, he has a surprisingly strong new album, Magic, with the E Street Band, and he's playing the Air Canada Centre on Monday. But in the past five years Springsteen has moved from persona non grata in indie-rock circles to a major influence: you'll find him cited in endless interviews and reviews of Arcade Fire, The Hold Steady, Wolf Parade, The Constantines, The National, Bright Eyes and dozens of others. Even The Killers started growing scruffy facial hair and singing about the open highway.

Fans of all those acts might not necessarily be lining up to buy copies of Magic, but you can bet they all have a few Springsteen albums lying around somewhere. And not just the cliché gateway drug Nebraska, either (his low-key, lo-fi 1982 four-track classic). Just about any album from Springsteen's 12-year golden period (1975-1987) will do. This was unthinkable in the irony-laden '90s, when any serious talk of Springsteen's oh-so-earnest showmanship was usually laughed out of the room.

For the last 20 years, being a Springsteen fan has been a minor chore. Wading through albums that tarnished his towering reputation could be exhausting. The fact that he had laid off his E Street Band in 1989 added salt to those wounds. And it didn't help when the bonus disc of rarities in 2003's Essential Bruce Springsteen collection boasted a wealth of material that superceded anything he'd put out during the creative coma that followed 1987's Tunnel of Love. As far as most people under 30 knew, the only good song he wrote during the '90s was “Streets of Philadelphia.”

That changed in 1998. Not because of his clearing-house box set Tracks, which was greeted with a shrug. But the first clue came in John Waters' 1998 film Pecker – about the co-option of a working-class photographer into New York's pretentious art scene – which closed with an enthusiastic barroom toast to the Death of Irony, a precursor to Vanity Fair's post-9/11 zeitgeist assessment.

Irony, of course, is kryptonite for Springsteen and his followers. The post-ironic age led directly to Springsteen's comeback with the 9/11-themed The Rising. Disappointing though that album was – despite the return of an invisible E Street Band 12 years after he pink-slipped them – it proved he could still connect commercially.

The first clue that Springsteen's reputation was recovering was his cameo in the major music-geekfest film High Fidelity in 2000, where a character who loves Stereolab, Belle and Sebastian and Royal Trux turns to The Boss for relationship advice. At the time, Springsteen's inclusion in the film struck some as a wrong note. For others, it was only the beginning.

Next, Springsteen returned as an acceptable name-drop with Toronto's Constantines, whose career launched in 2001 when this paper's own Stuart Berman compared them to both Springsteen and Fugazi. Soon enough, every rock critic in North America used the exact same points of reference.

Constantines lead singer Bry Webb says that when the band formed, Springsteen was one of two artists that they all agreed on. The other was The Clash – a pairing that Arcade Fire's Win Butler echoes. “I always saw a real similarity between Bruce and The Clash,” says Butler, who was once embarrassed to discover that he was misquoted as calling Springsteen “a poor man's Dylan.”

“Obviously, I first heard both of their catalogues years after they were out,” he says, “but there is a certain energy and heart and social conscience that I always related to.”

Butler and his bandmates once met Springsteen at a post-Grammy party; they said it was the only reason worth attending the awards at all, with Springsteen standing out like the only honest man in a room full of fools. With them was their label boss, Mac McCaughan of Merge Records, who has been a fan since his parents took him to see the No Nukes concert movie in 1980.

Though McCaughan has covered Springsteen songs in his band Portastatic (as have fellow Merge artists Crooked Fingers) he says he's a bit baffled as to Springsteen's current renaissance, “because to me he was equally relevant five or 10 years ago. The kind of themes he's talking about, bringing this dark element to pop music without it being dour, is something that [Arcade Fire's] Neon Bible does. There are depressing themes there, but the overall feeling of the record is not: ‘You should just kill yourself now.' Springsteen does the same thing.”

Even when delivering his bleakest songs, Springsteen thinks the audience should feel better about themselves, not worse. He can deal with darkness head-on, while other performers either wallow in it or pretend it doesn't exist. He doesn't want us to feel his own pain; he wants to present us with pain that we all feel and put it in the context of a celebration where we're all going to get through it together.

And that, ultimately, is what makes his songs so universal all these years later. Although he's back on track with a hat trick – 2005's sparse Devils and Dust, 2006's folkie barnburner We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions and now the raucous Magic – it's the dichotomies of his earlier work that still engages the most.

The side of Springsteen best known to his new disciples – many of whom were toddlers when Born in the USA came out – is the '70s performer who co-wrote with Patti Smith, covered Tom Waits and Suicide (something he's been doing again lately), appeared on Lou Reed's “Street Hassle” and originally wrote “Hungry Heart” for the Ramones. They don't know the ubiquitous MTV star. They don't know how horribly misinterpreted the song “Born in the USA” was at the time, most famously by Ronald Reagan.

“I think people gloss over the disturbing side of him,” says the Constantines' Bry Webb. “When I look back at his older music, he does seem more countercultural than his image now would suggest. His persona is so iconic that people don't notice the strangeness behind some of what he does. Covering Suicide's ‘Dream Baby Dream' [which Springsteen resumed doing in 2005] is a great example of that. There's a mischief behind a lot of his songs and his persona.”

But academic attempts at reconstructing his cool factor are futile next to the visceral pleasure of the music itself. “Production values aside,” says McCaughan, “Springsteen songs were timeless even when he was making them. Listen to his records from the '70s: he was putting out '60s-style productions of rock and pop and soul and R&B at a time when the two biggest things going were disco and punk rock. He was such a throwback at a time when people did not want throwbacks – they wanted the future, whether that was punk or disco.

“It's not the kind of thing that will go out of fashion, because it is what it is,” McCaughan concludes.

Now that he once again has our full attention, even Springsteen himself won't take it for granted. “My love will not let you down,” he promised when the E Street Band got back together in 1999, and on the new album he still promises: “I'll work for your love.” We know his love is wild; we know his love is real. So is our own.