carnage and culture

Sorry, Newt. Only the debt ceiling will reach the moon

2012-01-28T05:56:00.000-05:00

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
January 27, 2012

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans:

"The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You've been a terrific crowd!"

I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union's state – its unprecedented world-record brokeness – was not even mentioned.

If, as I was, you happened to be stuck at Gate 27 at one of the many U.S. airports laboring under the misapprehension that pumping CNN at you all evening long somehow adds to the gaiety of flight delays, you would have watched an address that gave no indication its speaker was even aware that the parlous state of our finances is an existential threat not only to the nation but to global stability. The message was, oh, sure, unemployment's still a little higher than it should be, and student loans are kind of expensive, and the housing market's pretty flat, but it's nothing that a little government "investment" in green jobs and rural broadband and retraining programs can't fix. In other words, more of the unaffordable same.

The president certainly had facts and figures at his disposal. He boasted that his regulatory reforms "will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years." Wow. Ten billion smackeroos! That's some savings – and in a mere half a decade! Why, it's equivalent to what the Government of the United States borrows every 53 hours. So by midnight on Thursday, Obama had already re-borrowed all those hard-fought savings from 2017. "In the last 22 months," said the president, "businesses have created more than 3 million jobs." Impressive. But 125,000 new foreign workers arrive every month (officially). So we would have to have created 2,750,000 jobs in that period just to stand still.

Fortunately, most of the items in Obama's interminable speech will never happen, any more than the federally funded bicycling helmets or whatever fancies found their way onto Bill Clinton's extravagant shopping lists in the Nineties. At the time, the excuse for Clinton's mountain of legislative molehills was that all the great battles had been won, and, in the absence of a menacing Russian bear, what else did a president have to focus on except criminalizing toilet tanks over 1.6 gallons. President Obama does not enjoy the same dispensation, and any historians stumbling upon a surviving DVD while sifting through the ruins of our civilization will marvel at how his accumulation of delusional trivialities was apparently taken seriously by the assembled political class.

An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth – that we can't have any new programs because we've spent all the money. It's gone. The cupboard is bare. What's Obama's plan to restock it? "Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary," the president told us. "Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense."

But why stop there? Americans need affordable health care and affordable Master's Degrees in Climate Change and Social Justice Studies, so why not take everything that Warren Buffett's got? After all, if you confiscated the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it would come to $1.5 trillion.

Which is just a wee bit less than the federal shortfall in just one year of Obama-size budgets. 2011 deficit: $1.56 trillion. But maybe for 2012 a whole new Forbes 400 of Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs will emigrate to the Hamptons and Malibu and keep the whole class-warfare thing going for a couple more years.

The so-called "Buffett Rule" is indicative not so much of "common sense" as of the ever-widening gap between the Brobdingnagian problem and the Lilliputian solutions proposed by our leaders. Obama can sacrifice the virgin daughters of every American millionaire on the altar of government spending, and the debt gods will barely notice so much as to give a perfunctory belch of acknowledgement. The president's first term has added $5 trillion to the debt – a degree of catastrophe unique to us. In an Obama budget, the entire cost of the Greek government would barely rate a line-item. Debt-to-GDP and other comparative measures are less relevant than the hard-dollar numbers: It's not just that American government has outspent America's ability to fund it, but that it's outspending the planet's.

Who gets this? Not enough of us – which is exactly how Obama likes it. His only "big idea" – that it should be illegal (by national fiat) to drop out of school before your 18th birthday – betrays his core belief: that more is better, as long as it's government-mandated, government-regulated, government-staffed – and funded by you, or Warren Buffett, or the Chinese Politburo, or whoever's left out there.

What of his likely rivals this November? Those of us who have lived in once-great decaying polities recognize the types. Jim Callaghan, Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in the Seventies, told a friend of mine that he saw his job as managing Britain's decline as gracefully as possible. The United Kingdom certainly declined on his watch, though not terribly gracefully. In last Monday's debate, Newt Gingrich revived the line and accused by implication Mitt Romney of having no higher ambition than to "manage the decline." Running on platitudinous generalities, Mitt certainly betrays little sense that he grasps the scale of the crisis. After a fiery assault by Rick Santorum on Romney's support for an individual mandate in health care, Mitt sneered back at Rick that "it wasn't worth getting angry over." Which may be a foretaste of the energy he would bring to any attempted course correction in Washington.

Newt, meanwhile, has committed himself to a lunar colony by the end of his second term, and, while pandering to an audience on Florida's "Space Coast," he added that, as soon as there were 13,000 American settlers on the moon, they could apply for statehood. Ah, the old frontier spirit: I hear Laura Ingalls Wilder is already working on "Little House In The Crater."

Maybe Newt's on to something. Except for the statehood part. One day, when America gets the old foreclosure notice in the mail, wouldn't it be nice to close up the entire joint, put the keys in an envelope, slide it under the door of the First National Bank of Shanghai, and jet off on Newt's Starship Government-Sponsored Enterprise?

There are times for dreaming big dreams, and there are times to wake up. This country will not be going to the moon, any more than will be the British or French. Because, in decline, the horizons shrivel. The only thing that's going to be on the moon is the debt ceiling. Before we can make any more giant leaps for mankind, we have to make one small, dull, prosaic, earthbound step here at home – and stop. Stop the massive expansion of microregulatory government, and then reverse it. Obama has vowed to press on. If Romney and Gingrich can't get serious about it, he'll get his way.

©MARK STEYN

Obama’s Vision for a Spartan America

2012-01-27T07:01:00.000-05:00

The president thinks America would be better if it was no longer America.

By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 27, 2012

President Obama’s State of the Union address was disgusting.

The president began with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory — he killed Osama bin Laden! — and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep.

He said of the military: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but for Spartan exceptionalism.

It’s far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn’t want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

Of course, Obama’s militaristic fantasizing isn’t new. Ever since William James coined the phrase “the moral equivalent of war,” liberalism has been obsessed with finding ways to mobilize civilian life with the efficiency and conformity of military life. “Martial virtues,” James wrote, “must be the enduring cement” of American society: “intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command must still remain the rock upon which states are built.” His disciple, liberal philosopher John Dewey, hoped for a social order that would force Americans to lay aside “our good-natured individualism and march in step.”

This is why Obama’s administration believes a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This is why Obama has been prattling about “Sputnik moments” and sighing over his envy of China and its rulers. This is why his spinners endeavored to translate the death of bin Laden as some sort of vindication of his domestic agenda: because he cannot lead a free people where he thinks they should go.

At the end of his address, Obama once again cast the slain bin Laden as the Vercingetorix to his Caesar. (Vercingetorix was the defeated Gaulic chieftain whom Caesar triumphantly paraded through Rome.) “All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves,” Obama rhapsodized.

The warriors on the ground “only succeeded . . . because every single member of that unit did their job. . . . More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other — because you can’t charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there’s somebody behind you, watching your back. So it is with America.”

“This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”

No. Wrong. It is not so with America. This nation isn’t great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness.

I don’t blame the president for being exhausted with the mess and bother of democracy and politics, since he has proved so inadequate at coping with the demands of both. Nor do I think he truly seeks to impose martial virtues on America. But he does desperately want his opponents to shut up and march in place. And he seems to think this bilge will convince them to do so.

What I can’t forgive, however, is the way he tries to pass off his ideal of an America where everyone marches as one as a better America. It wouldn’t be America at all.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can write to him by e-mail at JonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Book Review: "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun"

2012-01-27T06:27:00.002-05:00

By Robert VerBruggen - Special to The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com
January 23, 2012

GLOCK: THE RISE OF AMERICA’S GUN
By Paul M. Barrett
Crown, $26, 291 pages

It must be hard to write a corporate history that makes for gripping reading, but Paul M. Barrett has done just that with “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun.” Of course, he’s aided by the fact that Glock is no ordinary company; it makes a fascinating and deadly product, and its story features everything from come-from-behind victories to strippers to an assassination attempt. But with a readable prose style, a strong sense of narrative and a knack for brevity - “Glock” weighs in at fewer than 300 pages, index and all - Mr. Barrett offers a penetrating look at a company that revolutionized the firearms industry.

The underdog tale of how Gaston Glock - a 50-year-old radiator manufacturer who’d never made a gun before - won the right to make guns for the Austrian army in the early 1980s and brought the weapon to America with the help of a man who traveled the country selling guns from a recreational vehicle, will warm the heart of anyone who has one. And the engineering particulars will have gun nuts drooling: Mr. Barrett explains, in layman’s terms but with plenty of detail, what makes Glock guns so special.

Glocks are lighter than most other pistols because they are made largely of plastic rather than metal. They have far fewer parts, which means fewer opportunities for malfunction. They are designed to feel more natural in the hand. They have a light, steady trigger pull, and the safety is built into the trigger itself - the mechanism keeps the gun from firing by accident, but a police officer or a citizen faced with an armed attacker won’t forget whether his safety is on or fumble while trying to disengage it.

It’s hardly surprising that Americans went crazy for the product. Police departments began feeling outgunned after a high-profile 1986 Miami shootout left several FBI agents - who had wielded old-school revolvers - dead. They placed large orders, and Glock was happy to give steep discounts to law enforcement. Hollywood featured the guns in countless movies.

Political controversy only helped the fledgling company. Some activists were concerned that Glocks, being mostly plastic, would be difficult to detect via airport security. In arguing for a Glock ban, they touted one experiment in which a man managed to get a disassembled Glock past screeners. Of course, they never bothered to mention that a standard metal weapon made it through in the same experiment - indicating that lazy screeners, not the plastic material of the Glock, had created the problem. American firearms enthusiasts rally to the defense of any gun maker who is threatened with needless legislation, so the uproar was a boon to Glock.

Mr. Barrett lays out all of this - which is one reason the book is such a worthwhile effort. Mr. Barrett is no gun nut, but unlike many journalists who write about firearms, he bothers to nail his facts down before committing words to paper. You won’t catch him implying that the “assault weapons” ban was needed to keep criminals away from fully automatic machine guns. He can sound condescending from time to time - he seems baffled that a law-abiding citizen would want to carry a firearm despite the “small chance of being the unlucky customer paying for a Slurpee when a bad guy attacks” - but these missteps are entirely forgivable given the overall high quality of his reporting.

This is no love letter to Glock, of course. There are sordid elements in the company’s history. Once Gaston Glock hit the big time, he adopted a bizarre lifestyle that blended the personality of a corporate titan (mistresses, expensive meals) with elements of his frugal, humble former self. (He once chewed out a secretary for buying a headset to answer the phone more efficiently.) The company itself developed a reputation for bringing important customers to the Gold Club, an Atlanta strip joint; it even hired one of the dancers to draw attention at gun shows. (When the woman went through Glock’s training course, the company refused to tell her classmates - mostly from law enforcement - who she was. They figured she was CIA.)

Mr. Glock had a shady acquaintance set up shell corporations to avoid taxes; when Mr. Glock discovered that the man was embezzling money, the man hired an assassin, who made a bizarre and unsuccessful attempt on Mr. Glock’s life. Other employees stole as well.

One of the company’s most cynical moves - but also one of its funniest to a gun rights supporter - was its response to a law that forbade companies to sell ammunition magazines that held more than 10 rounds. The law didn’t apply to magazines manufactured before the ban went into effect, which therefore became extremely valuable. So, Glock offered its customer police departments - which also were exempt from the legislation - brand-new pistols to replace their current ones (which often were not more than a few years old). Those old guns and their magazines could be sold legally, and for a significant markup, thanks to the fact that they had been manufactured pre-ban.

It’s rare for a nonfiction book to read like a thriller, but that’s what happens with “Glock.” The book covers an intriguing and important topic, and it does so with panache and accuracy. Anyone interested in guns or gun control should read it.

- Robert VerBruggen is an associate editor of National Review.

Today's Tune: Chris Isaak - Two Hearts (Live)

2012-01-27T06:15:00.001-05:00

The president plays small ball

2012-01-27T06:02:00.000-05:00

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
January 27, 2012

Once upon a time, small ball was not Barack Obama’s game. Tuesday, it was the essence of his State of the Union address. The visionary of 2008 — purveyor of hope and change, healer of the earth, tamer of the rising seas — offered an hour of little things: tax-code tweaks to encourage this or that kind of behavior (manufacturing being the flavor of the day), little watchdog agencies to round up Wall Street miscreants and Chinese DVD pirates, even a presidential demand “that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.” Under penalty of what? Jail? The self-proclaimed transformer of America is now playing truant officer?

It sounded like the Clinton years with their presidentially proclaimed initiatives on midnight basketball and school uniforms. These are the marks of a shrunken presidency, thoroughly flummoxed by high unemployment, economic stagnation, crushing debt — and a glaring absence of ideas.

Of course, this being Obama, there was a reach for grandeur. Hope and change are long gone. It’s now equality and fairness.

That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it. As did Clement Attlee and his social-democratic counterparts in postwar Europe. Where does Obama take it? Back to the decade-old Democratic obsession with the Bush tax cuts, the crusade for a tax hike of all of 4.6 points for 2 percent of households — 10 years of which wouldn’t cover the cost of Obama’s 2009 stimulus alone.

Which is why Obama introduced a shiny new twist — the Buffett Rule, a minimum 30 percent rate for millionaires. Sounds novel. But it’s a tired replay of the alternative minimum tax, originally created in 1969 to bring to heel all of 155 underpaying fat cats. Following the fate of other such do-goodism, the AMT then metastasized into a $40 billion monster that today entraps millions of middle-class taxpayers.

There isn’t even a pretense that the Buffett Rule will do anything for economic growth or job creation (other than provide lucrative work for the sharp tax lawyers who will be gaming the new system for the very same rich). Which should not surprise. Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenue.

Obama said yes. In the name of fairness.

This is redistribution for its own sake — the cost be damned. It took Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels about 30 seconds of his State of the Union rebuttal to demolish that idea. To get the rich to contribute more, explained Daniels, you don’t raise tax rates. This ultimately retards economic growth for all. You (a) eliminate loopholes from which the rich benefit disproportionately (tax reform) and (b) means-test entitlements so that the benefits go to those most in need.

Tax reform and entitlement reform are the really big ideas. The first produces social equity plus economic efficiency; the second produces social equity plus debt reduction. And yet these are precisely what Obama has for three years steadfastly refused to address. He prefers the easy demagoguery of “tax the rich.”

After all, what’s he got? Can’t run on his record. Barely even mentioned Obamacare or the stimulus, his major legislative achievements, on Tuesday night. Too unpopular. His platform is fairness, wrapped around a plethora of little things, one mini-industrial policy after another — the conceit nicely encapsulated by his proclamation that “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or to Germany.” As if he can command these industries into existence. As if Washington funding a thousand Solyndras will make solar economically viable.

Soviet central planners mandated quotas for steel production, regardless of demand. Obama’s industrial policy is a bit more subtle. Tax breaks for manufacturing — but double tax breaks for high-tech manufacturing, which for some reason is considered more virtuous, despite the fact that high tech is less likely to create blue-collar jobs. Its main job creation will be for legions of lawyers and linguists testifying before some new adjudicating bureaucracy that the Acme Umbrella Factory meets its exquisitely drawn criteria for “high tech.”

What Obama offered the nation Tuesday night was a pudding without a theme: a jumble of disconnected initiatives, a gaggle of intrusive new agencies and a whole new generation of loopholes to further corrupt a tax code that screams out for reform.

If the Republicans can’t beat that in November, they should try another line of work.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

America and the Arab Spring

2012-01-26T09:38:00.000-05:00

The US’s rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/
January 23, 2012

Egyptian military council supporters set a US flag on fire during a demonstration against US policy outside the American embassy in Cairo - AFP

A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial. This week, the final vote tally from Egypt’s parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.

The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.

As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West’s go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt’s internal affairs.

This is bad news for women and for non-Muslims. Egypt’s Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed. Their churches, homes and businesses have been burned, looted and destroyed. Their wives and daughters have been raped. The military massacred them when they dared to protest their persecution.

As for women, their main claim to fame since Mubarak’s overthrow has been their sexual victimization at the hands of soldiers who stripped female protesters and performed “virginity tests” on them. Out of nearly five hundred seats in parliament, only 10 will be filled by women.

The Western media are centering their attention on what the next Egyptian constitution will look like and whether it will guarantee rights for women and minorities. What they fail to recognize is that the Islamic fundamentalists now in charge of Egypt don’t need a constitution to implement their tyranny. All they require is what they already have – a public awareness of their political power and their partnership with the military.

The same literalist approach that has prevented Western observers from reading the writing on the walls in terms of the Islamists’ domestic empowerment has blinded them to the impact of Egypt’s political transformation on the country’s foreign policy posture. US officials forcefully proclaim that they will not abide by an Egyptian move to formally abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. What they fail to recognize is that whether or not the treaty is formally abrogated is irrelevant. The situation on the ground in which the new regime allows Sinai to be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel, and as a highway for weapons and terror personnel to flow freely into Gaza, are clear signs that the peace with Israel is already dead – treaty or no treaty.

EGYPT’S TRANSFORMATION is not an isolated event. The disgraced former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the US this week. Yemen is supposed to elect his successor next month. The deteriorating security situation in that strategically vital land which borders the Arabian and Red Seas has decreased the likelihood that the election will take place as planned.

Yemen is falling apart at the seams. Al-Qaida forces have been advancing in the south. Last spring they took over Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. In recent weeks they captured Radda, a city 160 km. south of the capital of Sana.

Radda’s capture underscored American fears that the political upheaval in Yemen will provide al- Qaida with a foothold near shipping routes through the Red Sea and so enable the group to spread its influence to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaida forces were also prominent in the NATO-backed Libyan opposition forces that with NATO’s help overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in October. Although the situation on the ground is far from clear, it appears that radical Islamic political forces are intimidating their way into power in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Take for instance last weekend’s riots in Benghazi. On Saturday protesters laid siege to the National Transitional Council offices in the city while Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, hid inside. In an attempt to quell the protesters’ anger, Jalil fired six secular members of the NTC. He then appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gaddafi regime.

In Bahrain, the Iranian-supported Shi’ite majority continues to mount political protests against the Sunni monarchy. Security forces killed two young Shi’ite protesters over the past week and a half, and opened fired at Shi’ites who sought to hold a protest march after attending the funeral of one of them.

As supporters of Bahrain’s Shi’ites have maintained since the unrest spread to the kingdom last year, Bahrain’s Shi’ites are not Iranian proxies. But then, until the US pulled its troops out of Iraq last month, neither were Iraq’s Shi’ites. What happened immediately after the US pullout is another story completely.

Extolling Iraq’s swift deterioration into an Iranian satrapy, last Wednesday, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Jerusalem Brigade, bragged, “In reality, in south Lebanon and Iraq, the people are under the effect of the Islamic Republic’s way of practice and thinking.”

While Suleimani probably exaggerated the situation, there is no doubt that Iran’s increased influence in Iraq is being felt around the region. Iraq has come to the aid of Iran’s Syrian client Bashar Assad who is now embroiled in a civil war. The rise of Iran in Iraq holds dire implications for the Hashemite regime in Jordan which is currently hanging on by a thread, challenged from within and without by the rising force of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Much has been written since the fall of Mubarak about the impact on Israel of the misnamed Arab Spring. Events like September’s mob assault on Israel’s embassy in Cairo and the murderous cross-border attack on motorists traveling on the road to Eilat by terrorists operating out of Sinai give force to the assessment that Israel is more imperiled than ever by the revolutionary events engulfing the region.

But the truth is that while on balance Israel’s regional posture has taken a hit, particularly from the overthrow of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt, Israel is not the primary loser in the so-called Arab Spring.

Israel never had many assets in the Arab world to begin with. The Western-aligned autocracies were not Israel’s allies. To the extent the likes of Mubarak and others have cooperated with Israel on various issues over the years, their cooperation was due not to any sense of comity with Jewish state. They worked with Israel because they believed it served their interests to do so. And at the same time Mubarak reined in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because they threatened him, he waged political war against Israel on every international stage and allowed anti-Semitic poison to be broadcast daily on his regime-controlled television stations.

Since Israel’s stake in the Arab power game has always been limited, its losses as a consequence of the fall of anti-Israel secular dictatorships and their replacement by anti-Israel Islamist regimes have been marginal. The US, on the other hand, has seen its interests massively harmed. Indeed, the US is the greatest loser of the pan-Arab revolutions.

TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America’s losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. Mubarak was a strategic ally. Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.

Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.

One year later, the elements of the US’s alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US’s spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.

Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the antiregime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi’s courthouse.

US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.

In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.

Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.

Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America’s regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.

Obama’s behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US’s rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Obama’s Green Robber Barons

2012-01-25T09:45:00.000-05:00

By Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/
January 25, 2012

Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the “rich”? Well, brace yourselves. You’ll be hearing much more from the White House about the “wealthy few” who aren’t paying their “fair share” as Obama’s re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery.

As usual, there’s always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who’ve reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.

Obama’s State of the Union address defiantly pitched a new round of clean energy spending orgies to help the “middle class.” But how have the serial bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies of several federally subsidized solar companies — all under Obama’s watch — helped anyone but an upper-crust elite of eco-crats and their lobbyists and consultants?

Bankrupt Solyndra, billionaire George Kaiser. In the wake of the half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus bust, company officials revealed plans to hand out hefty bonuses totaling $500,000. Months before the politically connected solar energy manufacturer went belly up, it was doling out bonus payments of between $40,000 and $60,000 to several executives. Last week, a local CBS News crew caught employees at the Silicon Valley headquarters trashing solar panel glass tubes worth an estimated $10 million.

The now-abandoned Taj Mahal complex cost ordinary Americans more than $733 million. But billionaire Democratic donor and frequent White House guest George Kaiser, whose nonprofit foundation was Solyndra’s biggest investor, is still sitting pretty. He and the other private investors of Solyndra will recoup their losses ahead of taxpayers. And while they blast their GOP opponents, double-standard Democrats will remain AWOL on the glaring tax-avoidance strategies of the wealthy Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bankrupt Beacon Power, fat Democratic coffers. This green energy storage plant filed for bankruptcy last fall after a $43 million injection of Obama Department of Energy loan guarantees. Federal election record filings show that CEO William Capp contributed to the 2008 Obama campaign, as well as several left-wing New England Democratic candidates. Beacon Power lobbyist Steve Wolfe was a former aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Beacon sought bankruptcy shelter two days after the White House responded to fiscal watchdogs’ demands for a review of the DOE’s shoddy loan monitoring programs.

Bankrupt SpectraWatt, red-faced Goldman Sachs. A solar cell company based in New York, SpectraWatt went belly up last August despite a half-million-dollar federal stimulus boost and lucrative backing from politically connected Goldman Sachs — whose ties reach deep into the Obama Treasury Department, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, White House National Economic Council and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. itself. The eco-failure was dumped in a fire sale for less than $5 million.

Teetering Nevada Geothermal, cheerleading Harry Reid. Despite $150 million in federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies — not to mention personal lobbying by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — this alternative energy project is on the brink of failure. A Deloitte and Touche audit grimly concludes that the company “has incurred net losses over the past several years, has an accumulated deficit of $44.0 million and an anticipated inability to retire its long-term liabilities.” According to CBS News, the company’s latest SEC filings warn of multiple defaults.

My scouring of White House visitor logs shows nine visits from another Green Robber Baron, Illinois-based Exelon’s CEO John Rowe, who met with the president and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel multiple times. As Forbes magazine reported: The clean energy company “has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for president and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon” — where he raked in more than $16 million over two years.

Remember: “Fairness” is in the eye of the wealth redistributors.

Paterno's final days: no bitterness, just marveling at his fortunate life

2012-01-25T06:48:00.000-05:00

By Joe Posnanski
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/
January 24, 2012

Joe Posnanski is writing a biography about Joe Paterno, called PATERNO, that will be published by Simon & Schuster in September. Posnanski interviewed Paterno and family members multiple times in the last days of Paterno's life. He wrote a short piece for the Jan. 30 issue of Sports Illustrated about those final days and the lack of bitterness he found.

* * *

In the moments after Joe Paterno died, it became common for people to write and say that he died of a broken heart. He did not. Joe Paterno died of lung cancer and the complications it caused. He did not die a bitter or broken man.

I know this because I spent time with Paterno in his hospital room during the last weeks of his life. I am writing a book about Paterno. We spoke different times about many things -- from his days playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn, to his time in the Army after World War II, through his playing days and his many coaching days, to, yes, the day a graduate assistant coach told him about seeing Jerry Sandusky in the shower with a young boy -- and what stood out above everything else is that Paterno refused to be bitter or sad about the way it all ended.

"In every life," he told me, "there have to be some shadows. Look at me. My life has been filled with sunshine. A beautiful and caring wife. Five healthy children. I got to do what I loved. How many people are that lucky?"

This is how he talked in those final days. Oh, sure, he did not like the way the board of trustees fired him without asking him any questions. He was disappointed that so many people fastened dark motives to the way he handled what he was told about Sandusky, his longtime assistant coach. ("I made a lot of mistakes in my life," he said. "But I thought people could see that I tried my best to do the right things. I tried to do the right thing with Sandusky too.") He was hurt that the program he had spent his life building was in trouble.

But he kept coming back to his own good fortune and the wonder of his career and life. ("I read this book by Joseph Conrad," he said. "That was a mistake. It's depressing.") He watched M*A*S*H quite a lot ("I never got to watch it when it was on -- that's a good show," he said), and he spent most of his time with family, friends and former players. His 85th birthday party in December was a family celebration. He told stories, and he was full of life. Christmas was hopeful. When he would see bald people, like yours truly, he would point at his own head, bald from the chemo, and say, "Hey, at least mine will grow back."

The last week or so was filled with pain and goodbyes, but even then Paterno did not falter into self-pity. In the last moment of his life, his son Jay recalled saying to his father: "You've done all you can do." And then Jay saw his father's shoulders shrug and his eyes close, and he stopped breathing. "My father did not have a broken heart," his daughter Mary Kay says. "His heart was too strong. It couldn't be broken."

I asked Paterno at one point in that last month if he hoped that people would come to see and measure his full life rather than a single, hazy event involving an alleged child molester. "It doesn't matter what people think of me," he said. "I've lived my life. I just hope the truth comes out. And I hope the victims find peace."

Joe Paterno's true legacy

2012-01-24T09:51:00.001-05:00

By Rick Reilly
http://espn.go.com/
January 23, 2012

Adam Taliaferro and Joe Paterno in 2010, 10 years after the player and coach had formed a strong bond in the wake of Taliaferro's horrifying spinal cord injury. (Joe Hermitt/The Patriot-News)

Maybe you will never be convinced Joe Paterno was a good man who made one catastrophic mistake, but do you have time for just one story?

In 2000, Penn State freshman defensive back Adam Taliaferro had his spine crushed when tackling an Ohio State player. He lay on that September field paralyzed and panicked.

The first person he saw when he opened his eyes was Paterno, who died Sunday at 85.

"He could see I was losing it, but his eyes stayed totally calm," Taliaferro remembers. "And I remember that familiar, high-pitched voice, going, 'You're gonna get through this, Kid. You're gonna be OK.' And I just trusted him. I believed it."

Taliaferro wound up in a hospital bed in Philadelphia, everything frozen solid below the neck. Doctors said he had about a 3 percent chance of walking again. And every other week, Paterno would fly to Philly to see him.

"He'd bring our trainer and a couple of my teammates," Taliaferro says. "Nobody in the hospital knew he was there." Paterno would tell him all the dumb things his teammates and coaches had done lately. Pretty soon, Taliaferro would be laughing his IVs out.

"I can't tell you what that meant to me," says Taliaferro, now 30. "I'm stuck in that hospital, and here's Coach Paterno bringing a piece of the team to me, in the middle of the season. How many coaches would do that?"

One midnight, Taliaferro moved a toe and the first person his dad called was Paterno. His dad held the phone to Adam's ear and Paterno said, "You're gonna prove 'em all wrong, Kid!"

From then on, every visit, Paterno wanted to see Taliaferro move something new. "I got to where I wanted to be ready. A finger, a hand, whatever. I wanted to perform for Coach Paterno."

One day, five months into it, Paterno walked in and said, "What's new, Kid?" Taliaferro swung his legs over the bed, stood and extended his hand to shake.

"I'll never forget his eyes," he says. "They were already huge behind those Coke-bottle glasses, but they got even bigger." Paterno gave him a 10-second hug and then said, "Kid, ya make me proud."

A man is more than his failings.

I learned a lot about Paterno when I wrote a story about him in 1986 for Sports Illustrated. I've learned a lot about him since. He was a humble, funny and giving man who was unlike any other coach I ever met in college football. He rolled up his pants to save on dry cleaning bills. He lived in the same simple ranch house for the last 45 years. Same glasses, same wife, same job, for most of his adult life.

He was a man who had two national championships, five undefeated seasons, and yet for years he drove a white Ford Tempo. In 46 years as a head coach, he never had a single major NCAA violation.

He was the only coach I've ever known who went to the board of trustees to demand they increase entrance requirements, who went to faculty club meetings to hear the lectures, who listened to opera while drawing up game plans.

He was a Depression kid who wouldn't allow stars on helmets or names on jerseys. And he hated expensive tennis shoes.

He'd see a player wearing Air Jordans and say, "It's not the sneakers, Kid, it's the person in them."

One day Taliaferro wore an entirely different pair into his office, a pair of "Air Paternos" he'd made himself. "He freaked out," Taliaferro remembers. "He was about to call Nike. He thought they were real!"

If a player was struggling with a subject, Paterno would make him come to his house for wife Sue's homemade pasta and her tutoring. One time, he told a high school blue chipper named Bob White he wouldn't recruit him unless he agreed to read 12 novels and turn in two-page book reports to Sue. They were the first books he ever finished. White wound up with two degrees and a job at the university.

Paterno was other things, too, like controlling and immovable. He lingered as head coach when he promised time and again he wouldn't. And when he needed to follow up on what he'd been told about Jerry Sandusky and a child in the shower in 2002, he failed miserably.

But he followed up for thousands of others.

Even though Taliaferro would never play football again, Paterno stayed on him to keep moving. "I came to Penn State to become a lawyer," he told him. "But I never made it. You could, Kid. You're smart."

He got the fully recovered Taliaferro a summer internship with the NFLPA in New York and, before you knew it, Taliaferro was a corporate lawyer in Cherry Hill, N.J. He successfully ran for local office there and is now running for the Penn State board of trustees, where he wants to help his school heal from a scandal Paterno made worse with his neglect.

"The last three months, I've just wanted to go up on a rooftop and shout, 'I wish you knew him like I do!'" Taliaferro says. "I know, in my heart, if he'd understood how serious this situation was, he'd have done more."

I believe that, too. But if you don't, I respect that. I only ask this:

If we're so able to vividly remember the worst a man did, can't we also remember the best?

For more of Adam Taliaferro's memories of Joe Paterno, click here.

Follow Rick on Twitter @ReillyRick

Love the column, hate the column, got a better idea? Go here.

Rick Reilly is the 11-time National Sportswriter of the Year. He contributes essays and commentary to "Monday Night Countdown," "SportsCenter," and ESPN/ABC golf and tennis coverage. He's also the host of "Homecoming," ESPN's unique, one-hour interview show set in the hometowns of legendary athletes. For more Rick, check out the archive.

Feel like taking a detour from sane sports? Try Rick's latest book, "Sports from Hell."

Joe Paterno: 1926-2012

2012-01-24T00:19:00.001-05:00

The hugely complicated problem of remembering a hugely complicated legend

By Michael Weinreb on January 23, 2012
http://www.grantland.com/

"Virgil's ability to plumb the complexity of human affairs is a key to his greatness, a key to his relevance for us today. We live in an age in which simplistic versions of reality — simplified social and political perspectives, philosophical world pictures, moral principles — are privileged over nuanced understanding." — From an introduction to Virgil's The Aeneid, by Fred Will

"There is hypocrisy in me. And a little of the con man and actor, too. Look, I'm not trying to fool anybody. But I want things to be difficult. It's more fun to win with handicaps. If you have the best players and no problems and you win, that doesn't intrigue me." — Joe Paterno, to Sports Illustrated's Douglas S. Looney, 1980

All great football coaches eventually fade into myth. These days, we attend Broadway plays about Vince Lombardi; we romanticize Al Davis as a countercultural icon and Woody Hayes as a Pattonesque disciplinarian raging against the rising tide of hippies. In the frenzy on Bourbon Street leading up to this year's national championship game, Alabama fans born long after Bear Bryant's passing found new and sartorially perplexing ways to appropriate houndstooth as a fashion statement. It is the nature of the job; in order to exert influence, football coaches have to appear larger than life. In death, they become muscular symbols of authority.

This is why it's so goddamned complicated to write an obituary for Joe Paterno: His mythology was grounded in an utter lack of pretense. He was the football coach who lived in a modest house, with a listed phone number, whose preferred method of propulsion was the fullback belly play. He was the football coach who walked to work, who wore Poindexter glasses and flood pants, who became a towering figure because his whole ideal was based in the notion that football coaches should not become larger than life in the first place. Once, in college, a few of us student-newspaper reporters strutted through the locker room on our way to a press conference, and there was Paterno, waving at us from a urinal. We made him extraordinary for being ordinary.

That's what's been so perplexing about these past couple of months, for those of us who grew up around his Penn State football program: The final act of Paterno's career was a fundamental contradiction, a repudiation of all we'd come to believe. We knew he wasn't like us, but he made us think that deep inside he was, and maybe we were naïve for believing it in the first place, but that doesn't make the shock and surprise about Paterno's potential culpability in the Jerry Sandusky child-rape allegations any less real.

There is, obviously, nothing inherently surprising about Paterno's death: He was an 85-year-old man with cancer in his lungs who had just endured the worst emotional shock of his lifetime. The Sandusky charges (and Paterno's firing in the midst of the university's reaction to them) were included in the first paragraph of his New York Times obituary; it is an overstatement to say that he was killed by events rather than by biology, but it is a poetically tragic twist for a man who embraced the complexities of Virgil's Aeneid — whose hero values a higher purpose above his own happiness — while a teenager at a Brooklyn Catholic school.

A few months back, before the Sandusky scandal broke, I e-mailed William Peter Blatty, the writer of The Exorcist, who was a couple of years behind Paterno at Brooklyn Prep. Like everything else that was written about Paterno before November 2011, it now seems sadly ironic. "I cannot recall one of my classmates — okay, then, maybe one — who weren't what I now perceive to have been total innocents, including Joe and (his brother) George," he wrote me. "Sad thinking about that, really — where can you find Joe DiMaggio today? I think it stops at Joe Paterno."

I picked up my own version of the Paterno story on August 17, 1978, the day a Bekins moving van angled into the driveway of our new home in State College. I was 5 years old; by then, of course, I was more the innocent than Paterno. I do not remember how long it took me to figure out who he was, but I know it wasn't very long at all. I discovered him at an impressionable age: Even though I never knew him, it's not an overstatement to say that if it wasn't for Paterno and his football teams, I might not have become a writer, and I almost certainly wouldn't have become a sportswriter.

Even then, the coach's likeness was a pervasive presence in store windows downtown, but he was not yet universally beloved. He was a source of both consternation (for his conservative play calling; golf balls with Paterno's likeness were guaranteed to run up the middle three out of four times) and idolatry (for the seeming sincerity of his Grand Experiment, that balance between academics and big-time football). Fourteen days after we arrived in town, he commenced his 13th season as Penn State's football coach, won 11 straight games, and then lost the national championship on a goal-line stand in the Sugar Bowl, a defeat so crushing that it clouded Paterno's vision for several seasons afterward.

But that's when it got interesting: In 1979, Penn State went 8-4, and one player was arrested for rape and another for drunk driving, and several were declared academically ineligible, and star defensive tackle Matt Millen quit the team in the middle of a conditioning drill. The whole Grand Experiment was called into question, not for the first time and (obviously) not for the last. "There are a lot of people who think I'm a phony and now they think they have the proof," Paterno told SI's Doug Looney, and that became the headline of the story.

Yet Paterno somehow righted the program, as he often did. Success transformed his ordinariness into a fable of its own. In 1982, he won his first national championship, and four years later, he won another. His ability to adjust to changing epochs and new generations of college students was remarkable; in every decade from the 1960s to the 2000s, he had at least two 11-win seasons. Did he stay too long? Of course he did. Was he often controlling and authoritarian and bitterly afraid of this day coming too soon, the way it had for Bear Bryant shortly after his retirement? Of course he was. This hubris, this encroaching fear, especially in his octogenarian years, was his tragic flaw; it was evident in that heartbreaking final interview with Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, when a man schooled in the classics pleaded ignorance about men and rape.

The ending will simplify the vision for some, but if there's one thing we should take away from the life of Joseph Vincent Paterno, it's that his reality was never as facile as it will become now that he is gone. He may have grown into something larger than life, but he was also the first football coach who truly symbolized complexity and nuance, and in that way, he will always be more man than myth.

Michael Weinreb is a Grantland staff writer and the author, most recently, of Bigger Than the Game: Bo, Boz, the Punky QB and How the '80s Created the Modern Athlete.

For Paterno, Lover of Classics, Tragic Flaw to a Legacy

2012-01-23T09:26:00.000-05:00

By PETE THAMEL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
January 22, 2012

Joe Paterno loved the classics. He quoted Shakespeare to his team, devoured the poems of Virgil and donated his money to help save Penn State’s classics department, even endowing a scholarship in the name of his high school Latin teacher, the Rev. Thomas Bermingham.

With Paterno’s death at 85 from lung cancer on Sunday morning, the final thread of his narrative is one fit for the literary tragedies he adored.

Paterno arrived at Penn State in 1950, and did more than any one person to help the university transform athletically and academically over the ensuing decades, but his final legacy will be indelibly stained by not doing enough.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more,” Paterno said in regard to fulfilling his legal obligation, but not his moral one, when informed that the former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was suspected of sexually assaulting a boy in the shower of the Penn State football facility — one of a number of allegations of abuse levied against Sandusky in a grand jury report.

Classic literature is filled with stories that focus on the tragic hero, cautionary tales of fatal flaws and mistakes. And Paterno’s failure to alert police of Sandusky’s suspected actions in 2002 ultimately ended his coaching career and added a shocking controversy to a legacy that had been stunningly uncomplicated.

“I think this last tragic series of incidents probably took his will to live,” said Larry Foster, a friend of Paterno and his family for 60 years. “It probably bore down on him because it was so opposite to what he was used to. When he made the decision of handling it the way that he did, I think he felt like he was doing the right thing. And it turned out to be the wrong thing. His words, ‘I should have done more,’ I think I’ll keep in my memory.”

What Paterno did on the football field may be unmatched. He won 409 games in his 46 seasons as a head coach, led 5 undefeated teams and 23 times guided Penn State to a top-10 finish. He did so in his own uncompromising style, demanding that his players go to class and achieving consistently high graduation rates long before the N.C.A.A. essentially forced universities to make sure their athletes were being led toward receiving their degrees.

Paterno’s effect on the campus was also outsize. A wing of the library is named for Paterno and his wife, Sue, and he helped Penn State transition from a being a state-centered university with 9,500 students to a booming, internationally renowned institution with nearly 45,000 students. The influence Paterno had on Penn State on and off the field is so vast that it is almost unquantifiable. It is hard to think of the university without picturing Paterno’s dark glasses, unadorned black coaching shoes and khaki pants rolled up over white socks.

The breadth of Paterno’s accomplishments makes it seem even more tragic that he was fired from Penn State while wishing he had done more. Paul B. Harvey Jr., the head of the university’s classics and ancient Mediterranean studies department, said that Paterno helped raise more than $150,000, some of it his own money, for his department over the years, essentially saving it from extinction.

Harvey saw his department grow in direct relation to the support provided by Paterno, who would tell friends looking to donate to the athletic department to give money to Harvey’s department instead. When asked about Paterno’s legacy Sunday, Harvey let out a long sigh. “Boy, that’s the magic question isn’t it?” he said.

Ultimately, Harvey determined that Paterno’s stature on campus would endure longer than his role in the Sandusky scandal.

“I know quite a few of us hoped that he would continue coaching forever,” Harvey said. “Not because his direction of the football team was perfect. But rather, Joe had a standard of academic excellence that he wanted his students to strive for. I don’t see that in too many other universities or college football programs.”

Bobby Bowden, the former Florida State coach, often said half-jokingly at banquets and booster functions that he was not looking to retire because after that, there was only one big event left in life.

In a phone interview Sunday, Bowden pointed out that the legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant died a few weeks after he retired and wondered how Paterno dealt with all the emotion and controversy that surrounded his departure.

“You just have to think that something like this hastens death,” Bowden said. He added of Paterno: “He did it the right way. He graduated his players and ran a real good program. He donated to his university. He’s the perfect example. Then this thing occurs. I just don’t know how he dealt with it.”

Paterno was not perfect. His players, especially for a stretch in the last decade, had too many brushes with the law. E-mails emerged in the wake of the Sandusky scandal that showed how Paterno attempted to bully and manipulate administrators. He had a short temper, cursed frequently and remained the team’s coach for far too long. In his final few years, he had little effect on the day-to-day machinations of the program. Paterno did not work nearly as hard at recruiting as many of his competitors, especially in his later years, but Penn State administrators, knowing what he had accomplished and built, swallowed hard and settled for having a living icon on the sideline.

Considering the scope and success of his career, however, especially amid the ethical morass that is modern college sports, Paterno was the consummate example of how to handle the tricky duality of athletic success and academic integrity.

“He’d talk about the university and Penn State before he’d talk about football,” Foster said. “He always had the broader vision of improving the education programs, he was so involved in the libraries. I think that the people who criticized him after his departure from the university need to understand that the university came first.”

In the end, Paterno leaves a portrait of contrasts. He was a coach fired by the board of trustees, the same board that now wants to honor him. He was an academic respected on his own campus in an era when the separation between faculty and athletics has never been greater.

Ultimately, Joe Paterno, after decades of what had appeared to be the most straightforward and laudable of careers, leaves a complicated legacy, an epic tragedy seemingly penned by one of the writers whom Paterno himself so adored.

Requiem for the soul of Penn State

2012-01-23T09:12:00.000-05:00

By Phil Sheridan
The Philadelphia Daily News
http://articles.philly.com/
January 22, 2012

A woman pays her respects at a statue of Joe Paterno outside Beaver Stadium on the Penn State University campus in State College, Pa. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

When time does what it does, and the full measure is taken, Joe Paterno’s legacy will be a fine and remarkable thing. It will be very close to what the great man hoped and dreamed during his decades as a college professor whose discipline happened to be football.

Paterno was a winner, on the field and in almost every area that mattered.

He was not perfect, which was true before the terrible Jerry Sandusky story broke. That dreadful scandal may have robbed Paterno of the appropriate end to his coaching career, and almost certainly sped up the end of his life, but it will not ultimately rob him of his reputation. That was built carefully, brick by brick, over decades of hard work, uncommon decency and unyielding integrity. It is a sound structure that was rocked, but not destroyed, by the hurricane that has blown through State College since November.

Death and mercy came to Joseph Vincent Paterno Sunday. Surrounded by his beloved wife Sue and their family, the coach was carried off on the phantom shoulders of the hundreds, even thousands, of young men whose lives he enriched over six decades at Penn State.

Death comes to us all. It is mercy when it eases pain too great to bear. For Paterno, the pain of what transpired over the past few months was surely as great as the cancer that officially claimed him. He is free from that pain now.

There was pain over the loss of his job, of course, and over the inability to leave it on his own terms after such a long and stellar career.

But his deepest pain was for the university to which Paterno devoted his life. To say he was the Nittany Lions football coach would be to say Steve Jobs worked in computers, or that Walt Disney was a cartoonist. The man was larger than the university where he worked, than the sport that he coached.

That was both his greatest achievement and, in the end, part of his downfall. If you appreciated Paterno for assuming his position as a much needed conscience of college sports, and for his singular status as the most important man in Happy Valley, then you had to be disappointed by his failure to meet his own standards when confronted with Sandusky’s heinous alleged behavior.

This is not a contradiction. Indeed, you got the distinct impression that Paterno was disappointed in himself. He said in an early statement that he wished he had “done more.” His interview with Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post last week – which turns out to be his final say on the matter – was tinged with sadness and with regret. If you cared about Paterno, if you believed in him, you detected sorrow in every word.

This is the third and final time Sandusky’s name will appear in this column. It is unfortunate that his name is linked with Paterno’s at all. There is no getting around the connection – not after the breathtaking sequence that began with the release of the grand jury report, the dismissal of Paterno, the housecleaning in the PSU administration, the revelation that Paterno had lung cancer and now, with shocking finality, his death.

For decades, Paterno made time stand still in State College. His team dressed and (sometimes to its disadvantage) played as if the calendar still said 1965. Paterno conducted himself like a courtly gentleman of some previous era. He wore the same thick glasses, sported the same thick black hair, ran onto the field in the same high-water khakis.

Nothing ever changed. And then everything did. Suddenly, cruelly.

It is possible to believe that Paterno could not continue representing Penn State as its head coach and also believe that he’d done so with great distinction for an incredibly long time.

It is possible to believe he should have done more when confronted with real evil and also believe that he was a good and decent and admirable human being.

It is impossible to turn back time and give everyone involved a do-over. Joe Paterno, the man, is gone now. It is sadly true that much of what he believed in and represented was already gone from college sports and society at large. But quite a bit of what remains does so because he instilled it in lives he influenced directly and indirectly, in former players and Penn State alums and those who admired him and his teams from afar.

Joe Paterno was a force for good for most of a long and wonderful life. When the full measure is taken, that will outweigh the terrible events of these last few months.

Penn State already has hired a new football coach. It will never have another soul. That was Paterno. That is Paterno. Time will take care of the rest.

Contact Phil Sheridan at 215-854-2844, psheridan@phillynews.com, or @Sheridanscribe on Twitter. Read his blog, "Philabuster," at www.philly.com/philabuster. Read his past columns at www.philly.com/philsheridan

Paterno was PSU, heart and soul

2012-01-23T07:02:00.000-05:00

By Kevin Gorman, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/?_s_icmp=nav_sports
Monday, January 23, 2012

There was a common belief in the college football world that Joe Paterno was haunted by Paul Bryant, determined to break the legendary Alabama coach's records because he never beat the Bear and worried about walking away because of Bryant's death a month after retirement.

If only Paterno could be remembered by his pursuit of excellence at Penn State, the way Bryant is at Alabama. Today, we would be talking about his 409 career victories, seven undefeated seasons, two national championships and, more importantly, his philanthropic and philosophic impact on sport.

Six words separate Paterno from such a legacy:

"I wish I had done more."

Joseph Vincent Paterno succumbed to lung cancer Sunday morning, two months after Penn State fired him following the release of those six words in his statement amid a child sexual abuse scandal that shook the foundation of the football program with which he was both sacrosanct and synonymous.

For critics, those six words should serve as an epitaph for Paterno. Supporters believe Paterno should be measured by all that he did during 61 years at Penn State, not what he failed to do when told of heinous allegations against the former defensive coordinator and architect of Linebacker U.

Take into consideration what Paterno, whose relationship with the media ranged from amiable to acrimonious, told the Tribune-Review in June 2008 about the "COMM 497G: Joe Paterno, Communications and the Media" class offered to Penn State students regarding the revered coach:

"I'd tell them to have a little pride in their writing, try to be accurate and don't go in with a slanted attitude. I'd tell them to be fair and open-minded."

After 85 years, Paterno deserves as much in death. There never will be another like him, for reasons good and bad. No coach will last six decades at one university, like Paterno did at Penn State. Nor will they be allowed to with such absolute authority, like Paterno had at Penn State.

The university capitalized on Paterno's name, brand and image, making him an iconic figure on its campus and around the country. Penn State sold everything from cardboard cutouts to coffee mugs in his likeness. The Creamery named an ice cream flavor, Peachy Paterno, in his honor. His statue stands outside Beaver Stadium, whose capacity expanded from 46,284 to 107,282 in the five decades he strolled the sidelines in cuffed khakis, white socks, black cleats and those trademark Coke-bottle glasses.

"Penn State lost its heart," former Nittany Lions cornerback Adam Taliaferro told ESPN, adding via Twitter: "Joe is and always will be Penn State."

There is danger in deifying a man, even one with great accomplishments. No one is infallible.

Too often, we looked at Paterno through only a narrow prism — deity or devil, depending on your rooting interest — that turned one of college football's charismatic characters into a caricature.

He was either the grandfatherly figure who donated millions to the library and symbolized his "Grand Experiment" by holding his players to a higher standard and demanding they get a degree. Or he was the sanctimonious figurehead whose refusal to retire left most of his loyal assistants jobless when he was handed a note with a number and fired by phone.

In truth, Joe Paterno was all of these things. He was a husband, a father of five, a grandfather of 17, a father figure to the thousands of players he coached at Penn State and a beloved coach to Nittany Lions fans. He also could be unforgiving and vindictive to those who crossed him.

In the end, Paterno made a decision that many deem unconscionable. He either followed protocol, by taking Mike McQueary's eyewitness account of Jerry Sandusky molesting a boy in the showers of the Lasch football building to his superiors. Or he did only what was required by law, minimizing McQueary's allegations and passing off the problem when he should have called the police himself and reported the crime.

Either way, he stayed silent until an alleged cover-up became public.

That's as much a part of his legacy as winning more games than any coach in the history of major college football. Paterno was so successful because he held himself and his players to a higher standard: success with honor. Yet, when faced with the most critical choice of his career, Paterno failed to live up to the standard he set.

Joe Paterno is gone, and with him so is Penn State's heart.

If not its soul.

Reaction to Paterno's death

From a former U.S. president to a former Penn State president, notable people offered their perspectives on Sunday:

"I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Joe Paterno. He was an outstanding American who was respected not only on the field of play but in life generally -- and he was, without a doubt, a true icon in the world of sports. I was proud he was a friend of mine." — Former President George H.W. Bush

"I am saddened to hear about the death of Joe Paterno. He did so much for the game of football, and he was a good person with integrity who cared for so many people. I considered him a dear friend." — Dan Rooney, Steelers chairman emeritus and ambassador to Ireland

"We grieve for the loss of Joe Paterno, a great man who made us a greater university. His dedication to ensuring his players were successful both on the field and in life is legendary, and his commitment to education is unmatched in college football. ... The university plans to honor him for his many contributions and to remember his remarkable life and legacy." — Rodney Erickson, Penn State president

"It was my privilege and honor to work with Joe Paterno for more than 16 years. He was a distinguished American, a legendary coach and Penn State's greatest ambassador. He provided unprecedented leadership for academic advancement, philanthropy and athletic excellence and integrity for more than 60 years." — Graham Spanier, former Penn State president

"Dottie and I would like to convey our deepest sympathy to Sue and her family. Nobody will be able to take away the memories we all shared of a great man, his family and all the wonderful people who were a part of his life. ... Joe preached toughness, hard work and clean competition. Most importantly, he had the courage to practice what he preached." — Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State defensive coordinator

"Words cannot express the sorrow my family and I feel. Joe has been an integral part of my life for more than 35 years. Joe coached me, mentored me, taught me what it meant to compete with integrity and honor, and above all demonstrated with each day that he lived, the power of humility." — Tim Curley, former Penn State athletic director

"I had the sincere honor and distinct pleasure to work with Joe for many, many years at Penn State. No one loved Penn State more than Joe. We will all miss him." — Gary Schultz, former Penn State vice president

"The terms 'icon' and 'legend' have been often used to describe Joe Paterno. ... But to those of us who played for him, to those of us who coached with him and to those of us who had the privilege to call him a friend, Joe Paterno was much more. ... Coach Paterno never believed that his role as 'Coach' ended after practice, or when the fourth quarter wound down or when a student-athlete graduated. He was a coach for life. I am deeply grateful to have had Coach Paterno in my life. He was the epitome of class, and his spirit will live on in all of us who had the great honor of knowing him." — Tom Bradley, former Penn State interim head coach

"His legacy as the winningest coach in major college football and his generosity to Penn State as an institution and to his players stand as monuments to his life. As both man and coach, Joe Paterno confronted adversities, both past and present, with grace and forbearance. His place in our state's history is secure." — Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania governor

"On behalf of alumni here in Pittsburgh I would like to thank Joe for all he has done for Penn State the past 62 years. ... I promise we alums will fight FOREVER to defend this great man's good name and honor." — Daniel Byrd, president of Penn State Alumni Association Greater Pittsburgh chapter

"To Sue and the Paterno children: Thank you for so unselfishly sharing your husband and father with so many of us for so long. Through him, we all witnessed and learned lessons of respect, loyalty and, of course, 'Success with Honor.' Further, he taught us how to be elite without being elitist. ... The most significant tribute to Joe Paterno is the millions of fans -- everyday men, women and children — he not only entertained but inspired to be better human beings. When we lead our lives with generosity, commitment and humility, we carry on the legacy of Joseph V. Paterno." — Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship

"The Penn State football program is one of college football's iconic programs because it was led by an icon in the coaching profession in Joe Paterno. There are no words to express my respect for him as a man and as a coach. To be following in his footsteps at Penn State is an honor. Our families, our football program, our university and all of college football have suffered a great loss." — Bill O'Brien, Penn State football coach

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of Joe Paterno. His passing marks a tremendous loss for Penn State, college football and for countless fans, coaches and student-athletes." — Jim Delany, Big Ten commissioner

"Joe Paterno's impact on the game of college football was great, as was his influence on the countless number of players who called him 'Coach.' The University of Pittsburgh offers its heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones." — Statement on behalf of the University of Pittsburgh

"One of the greatest college coaches of all time and a great man." — Jimmy Johnson, former Miami coach

"Joe Paterno was an icon above icons in the football coaching profession. What he accomplished as a football coach will never ever, ever, be threatened. When you think of a word to describe Joe Paterno and what he did at Penn State, the word 'unimaginable' comes to mind. That a man could give that much of himself to coach football and shape young men's lives at one school for that many years speaks volumes for what that man is about." — Don Nehlen, former West Virginia coach

"He loved college football & coached with commitment to excellence. He loved his players & his players loved him." — Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame coach (via Twitter)

"I've coached around 300 college games, and only once when I've met the other coach at midfield prior to the game have I asked a photographer to take a picture of me with the other coach. That happened in the Citrus Bowl after the '97 season when we were playing Penn State. ... I still have that photo in the den at my house. That's the admiration I have for Joe Paterno." — Steve Spurrier, South Carolina coach

"Keep the Paterno family in your prayers during this tough time. To the greatest R.I.P Joe P" — Maurkice Pouncey, Steelers center (via Twitter)

"Deeply saddened about the loss of my coach & mentor, Joe Paterno. You have been a positive influence to so many young men on & off the field" — Derrick Williams, former Penn State wide receiver (via Twitter)

"At a loss for words... One of the most influential men in our nations history. By his passing PSU nations grows even stronger. Love you Joe" — Jordan Norwood, former Penn State wide receiver (via Twitter)

"R.I.P Coach. I owe you so much! My prayers are with the Paterno family and the Penn State Family." — Kermit Buggs, former Penn State assistant coach (via Twitter)

"RIP Joe...thank you" — Derek Moye, Penn State senior receiver (via Twitter)

"RIPJoePaterno Nothing but love and gratitude!" — Nate Stupar, Penn State senior linebacker (via Twitter)

"Rest In Peace Coach. You have been my idol. You are a one of a kind man. Words cannot express all my feelings." — Graham Zug, former Penn State wide receiver (via Twitter)

"We should not be discourage by his death but encouraged by his life..it would be a blessing to impact others the way he did" — Devon Still, Penn State senior defensive tackle (via Twitter)

"I had the great opportunity to meet and get to know Joe Paterno through college recruiting and he truly was an amazing person." — Brian Cushing, Houston Texans tight end (via Twitter)

"So sad to hear the news of Joe Pa's passing! What an impact he made on college football! Many prayers for the family" — Jason Witten, Dallas Cowboys tight end (via Twitter)

Joe Paterno by the numbers

409: Career victories (all at Penn State, the most in Division I history)

247: Players drafted into NFL

78: First-team All-Americans

62: Years as a coach at Penn State (46 as head coach)

49: Academic All-Americans

37: Bowl appearances (all-time record)

35: Teams that finished in the Top 25

33: First-round selections in the NFL Draft

25: Appearances in New Year's Day bowl games

17-8: Record in New Year's bowl games

24: Bowl victories (all-time record); 24-12-1 overall

24: Times that Penn State won the Lambert-Meadowlands Trophy, emblematic of Eastern football supremacy

23: Finishes in the top 10 of the national rankings

12: U.S. presidents, starting with Harry Truman, who have served since he joined Penn State's coaching staff

8: Former players in the College Football Hall of Fame (John Cappelletti, Keith Dorney, Jack Ham, Ted Kwalick, Lydell Mitchell, Dennis Onkotz, Mike Reid and Curt Warner)

7: Undefeated regular seasons

6: Fiesta Bowl victories (Paterno never lost the game)

5: AFCA Coach of the Year honors

5: Undefeated, untied seasons (1968, 1969, 1973, 1986 and 1994)

4: Former players enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (Ham, Franco Harris, Lenny Moore and Mike Munchak)

3: Big Ten titles (1994, 2005 and 2008)

2: National championships (1982 and 1986)

1: Heisman Trophy winners (Cappelletti)

Joe Paterno dies, leaving a record for others to debate

2012-01-23T06:51:00.001-05:00

By Sally Jenkins, Published: January 22
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com

Joe Paterno could outtalk anybody in that Brooklyn beat cop’s voice of his. But the lung cancer and the chemo had left him breathless, and what emerged in two days of conversations with him, the last interview he would give, sounded like a series of sighs. Some of them satisfied, some of them regretful, all of them aware that his life was drawing to a close and 85 years were being relentlessly and reductively defined.

Paterno studied his own end, and knew it wasn’t going to be storybook. So much for the old-fashioned narrative he had built, of bookish yet vigorous young men filling a stadium in the Alleghenies, men he had uplifted such as Franco Harris and Lydell Mitchell and Brandon Short, autumn leaves swirling softly over their heads.

“There’s the kind of stories I wish we could tell,” Paterno whispered.

But a modern grotesquery intervened, and there were too many other boys who allegedly had been damaged.

For most of his 61 years as a football coach at Penn State, Paterno built a record of thorough decency and good intention. He loved his wife, reared five nice children, taught his students well. He turned down big money for the role of a tenured professor, and strolled every day from his modest home to his unpretentious office. He acquired real power, and generally tried not to abuse it, and if sometimes he did, he covered for it by insisting on paying for his ice cream cones. He set out to prove that staying in one place could be as rewarding as climbing to the next rung. He meant to walk away sooner. He stayed too long.

He stayed so long that he became more of an ideal to his followers than a person. Then the horrific happened, and the quaint success story in the peaceful hamlet was destroyed by allegations that Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s assistant coach for 30 years, was a serial child molester and that Paterno, when told of an incident involving Sandusky and a small boy in the Penn State showers, did his duty but no more, passing the report to his superiors. The only way to give the tragedy the gravity it deserved was to topple the icon who behaved so fallibly.

“You got what you got,” he says he told himself, after he was fired by the board of trustees in November. “You did about as much as you can do, on the field and off the field.”

Yet Paterno also understood he was the face of a terrible inaction. He had done more than some people, yet less than he should have when he failed to press his superiors about Mike McQueary’s report of seeing Sandusky doing something sexual to a small boy in the Lasch football building.
“I should have said ‘Hey where are we with this thing?’ ” Paterno said. He described himself as paralyzed by the unthinkable subject matter. He had “backed away,” he said, and trusted his bosses to handle it.

“I didn’t know which way to go,” he said. “And rather than get in there and make a mistake . . .”

A week ago, Paterno invited this reporter into his home because he wanted to defend his record and give his version of events in the Sandusky case. He often seemed to be trying to explain his actions to himself as much as to others. It was a difficult conversation because it was not only his first interview on the subject of Sandusky but quite possibly the last interview he would ever give. His health was clearly precarious, and his answers often trailed off or wandered. Shortly afterward, he failed badly, and slipped in and out of consciousness over the next few days.

The enraged who demand hard answers as to why Paterno didn’t do more will have to wait until eternity. Why didn’t he follow up? “I don’t know,” he said.

You will have to decide for yourself if Paterno could have reached the age of 85 in modern society without ever really knowing what man-boy sodomy was. “I had never heard of, of, rape and a man,” he said.

For what it’s worth, there was genuine distress in his voice when he said it. And it’s hard to overstate just how insulated Paterno was. His home was a time warp, all old wood and creaking floorboards. But he most likely overstated his ignorance. He did, after all, belong to a Catholic Church wracked by pedophilia scandals.

Still, I thought I understood what he meant. He seemed to reflexively recoil from such deviancy; it baffled him, and to connect it to a longtime colleague was almost impossible.

“It was shocking for me, and too, sadness,” Paterno said. “Was he sick? I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s guilty.”

It would be a mistake to think that Paterno didn’t care enough about the potential victims. “I’m sick about it. I think about a 12-year-old boy, a 10-year old boy. In the shower, a physical touching, it’s sickening.”

According to Paterno’s wife Sue, the two of them spent agonized hours talking about whether, if Sandusky is guilty, they should have noticed something.

If nothing else, Paterno said, maybe the Sandusky scandal would help drag the subject out of its dark corner. It was one of the last sentiments he expressed. On the final morning he would ever spend at home, he sat propped in bed and insisted on answering a few more questions — that’s how important it was to him to talk. In just a few hours he would be taken to the hospital, and remain there until he died Sunday morning.

“I’m happy in one sense that we called attention, throughout this state, and throughout the country probably, that this is going on,” he said. “It’s kind of been like a hidden thing. So maybe that’s good.”
According to a family spokesperson, it was among his last lucid remarks to anyone outside of his immediate family.

Paterno’s critics will say his inaction in the Sandusky case ruined his legacy and that he had the power to do more. But Paterno denied he was the ultimate moral authority in Happy Valley. He had always tried to refrain from flexing his muscle, he insisted. “In all the years I’m here, we went the way the university wanted,” he said.

One reason I suspect Paterno decided to talk with me, as opposed to another writer, was because it brought his career full circle. In 1968 a Sports Illustrated writer named Dan Jenkins went to State College to do a story on a rising coach who had turned a cow college into a national football power, yet who emphasized academics like an Ivy Leaguer. No fewer than five times, Paterno asked, “How’s your father?” I replied that my father is 82 and still typing, and didn’t like the idea of retirement either.

Back in 1968, Paterno told my father, “We’re trying to win football games; don’t misunderstand that. But I don’t want it to ruin our lives if we lose. I don’t want us ever to become the kind of place where an 8-2 season is a tragedy. Look at that day outside. It’s clear, it’s beautiful, the leaves are turning, the land is pretty, and it’s quiet. If losing a game made me miserable, I couldn’t enjoy such a day.”

Had that perspective gotten lost? Did Paterno feel that somewhere along the line, football had become too important — and somehow allowed a real tragedy to go overlooked?

“Well, I don’t think it got lost,” he said. “I just think there was a series of situations that maybe people, a little bit, maybe they neglected something, and maybe they got a little bit frustrated. Whether they had good intentions or not, you’d have to ask them.”

His record will show that he was a great, indomitable champion who amassed a record 409 victories, as well as an intelligent advocate who worked tirelessly for poor and minority athletes his whole career. It will show that he was utterly devoted to his players, regularly graduated more than 75 percent of them, and had 47 academic all-Americans. It will show that he made mistakes and omissions, one of them possibly truly costly. It will show that he mostly maintained his perspective and remained true to himself.

“He didn’t preach one thing and live a different way,” Sue said.

It will show that he was not a statue made of bronze, and that he was defined as much by what he failed to do and say, as by what he did. Which merely made him, in the end, human.

For Sally Jenkins’s previous columns, go to www.washingtonpost.com/jenkins

Film Reviews: 'Haywire'

2012-01-22T09:44:00.001-05:00

Girl Fight: Soderbergh and His MMA Star Make Impact With Haywire

By Nick Pinkerton
The Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/
Wednesday, Jan 18 2012

There's a point in Haywire when the film's protagonist, ex-Marine Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), gone rogue from her job as hired muscle for a private government subcontractor, takes a fall while scaling down a drainpipe and hits the ground with a crunch that knocks the wind out of you.

It's a short drop, but that landing hurts. As cartoonish live-action and photorealistic cartoons reign at the multiplex, all but obsoleting the laws of gravity, Haywire puts the impact back into screen violence, brings it back to earth.

Haywire's plot is boilerplate triple-cross, cloak-and-dagger stuff, written in pulpy blank verse by The Limey screenwriter Lem Dobbs, picking up with his old collaborator, director Steven Soderbergh, who evinces a second-sense ability to frame every shot for maximal effect. Mallory is introduced evading her old employer's attempt to corral her, in a scene that establishes the film's tendency to ambush assault. After half-kidnapping a teenage escape driver, she flashes back to the hectic last week that has put her on the lam: two jobs that shuttled her between Barcelona and Dublin and ended in a setup.

Mallory looks for answers from her boss and former lover, Kenneth, played by Ewan McGregor; the rest of his network is played by famous faces, including shadowy operative Antonio Banderas; Channing Tatum as Mallory's sometimes partner, Aaron; Michael Douglas as Kenneth's liaison to Washington; and Michael Fassbender as a freelance agent, Paul, with whom Mallory is reluctantly partnered. Haywire is, however, very much a vehicle for Carano, the retired MMA fighter and former American Gladiator regular, now appearing in her first film. The casting is more than a stunt, for Haywire makes full use of Carano's particular physical capabilities (something decidedly not true of porn star Sasha Grey's casting in Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience). There are several long, unbroken shots of Carano hustling along city streets in foot chases and bounding across rooftops like a muscular Irma Vep, and, of course, there are fights. Soderbergh makes ingenious use of confined spaces—corridors, hotel rooms, the narrow aisle of a boxcar diner—with combatants using walls for leverage and as ready bludgeons. The music of fist on face, the punting kicks, all have a rib-cracking resonance that recalls the days when Phil Karlson (Walking Tall) was directing actioners.

Carano is also photogenic: The symmetry of her sharp features has survived her fighting days, though she carries a scar on her jawline as a souvenir. This is important because Haywire is, after a fashion, a slapstick-violent, mercenary sex comedy, with Mallory romantically involved, however fleetingly, with each of her major opponents in turn: In addition to her history with Kenneth, she has an on-the-job FWB relationship with Aaron, while she's attached to Paul as a decoy date. ("MI6 wants me to be eye candy?" she asks, incredulous.) The combat duets don't have the weight of moral outrage behind Karlson's punch, but, as Soderbergh jauntily outlines the combatant's business/pleasure interactions, each fight takes on an individual chemistry, as any couple does. With Aaron, it's a brutal spat. The prelude to their confrontation—him hungover, Mallory marked up—reads like an abusive boyfriend coming to collect his woman, an assumption that Soderbergh quickly upends. Mallory's outing with Paul is a parody of a swank first date, complete with a consummation in which he gets more than he bargained for. (The only bit that doesn't quite register is Mallory impersonally dispatching two Irish Gardaí officers, precisely because it's impersonal.)

Where faux-empowering The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo confines sexual power play to the old rape-revenge matrix, Haywire is a real war-of-the-sexes tournament, briskly paced with a tickling sense of black humor. (One encounter concludes with a smothering thigh lock that leaves its victim with a priceless sated and insensate expression before his black-widow goodnight kiss.) In contrast to Rooney Mara's overkill Hot Topic pout, Carano can play dom femme and express vulnerability, backed up by her physique.

How'd she get so tough? Bill Paxton shows up as Mallory's ex-leatherneck father, teasing the pop-psych explanation that she has never found somebody who can measure up to Daddy—but Daddy's expression when witnessing Mallory at work shows he knows he has been surpassed. Mallory might find her culprit, but she doesn't find anyone on her level.

Details

Haywire
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Relativity Media
Opens January 20
ALSO: Gina Carano and Channing Tatum Talk Haywire with Karina Longworth

ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas talks softly by TV standards

2012-01-22T08:26:00.000-05:00

But his words resonate with audiences full of varied, complex agendas

By J. Brady McCollough, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/
Sunday, January 22, 2012

ESPN College GameDay basketball analyst Jay Bilas, dressed for the waist up on camera shots, goofs around on a partially broken-down set Friday, a day before the show goes live. The show travels around the country to a new destination each week, and Saturday's show featured the Pitt vs. Louisville matchup at Petersen Events Center. (Bill Wade/Post-Gazette)

Jay Bilas' parents schooled him to embrace opportunity, so, when officials at Duke nominated him to sit on the NCAA's long-range planning committee as an undergraduate in the early 1980s, Bilas said yes.

Then a 20-year-old standing 6 feet 8 with a full head of brown hair, Bilas was the starting center on Duke's basketball team and had not met much resistance in life. He was a Southern Californian with a quick wit, and, in the Blue Devils' locker room, there was a feeling that Bilas could do just about anything he wanted.

But Bilas ran into a wall in those meetings with the NCAA. He had ideas about how to improve the life of a college athlete, but it felt like nobody in that room was listening.

One time, Bilas had brought up a grievance about NCAA transfer rules. For instance, if a head coach was fired or left for another job, Bilas did not feel the coach's players should have to sit out a year if they were to transfer from the school.

"You would have thought I said every athlete should be paid a million dollars," Bilas recalled.

He was told that an athlete's commitment was "a marriage between player and school," but Bilas pleaded his case.

"When I got to campus," Bilas said, "I was picked up by the coach. I was shown the university through the eyes of the coach.

"I understand the marriage analogy, but, if I were to get divorced, that doesn't mean I have to stay and live with my wife's parents after she leaves me."

Thing is, Bilas was not saying half of what he felt. He understood that it would have been a futile exercise to tell the committee that players should be compensated for the money they bring into universities.

When Bilas left the NCAA committee, he was discouraged, but he has spent much of the past three decades acquiring experiences that have combined to make him one of the most powerful voices in college athletics.

His platform as an ESPN college basketball analyst is big enough on some nights that he can be heard by millions, and Bilas does not want to abuse that power.

He is meticulous in his preparation and fearless in saying what he thinks about any topic -- a refreshing quality in a world where talking heads just keep talking louder and louder.

Bilas rarely turns up the volume, and his words hold more weight among fans with each passing year. In 2010, Sports Illustrated named Bilas college basketball's best game analyst. His Twitter page has 227,000 followers.

All day Saturday, it was Bilas' job to prepare the nation for the Pitt-Louisville game at the Petersen Events Center on ESPN College GameDay. It is a role he relishes because it keeps him on the inside with the coaches and the players -- the scene he gave up in 1992 when he took a job as an attorney at a large, corporate Charlotte firm.

"I don't look at myself as a broadcaster," said Bilas, 48.

"I look at myself as a basketball guy, and this is my avenue."

If Bilas could cut off his brain from everything else and just think about basketball, his life certainly would be simpler. He would love to do nothing but sit around and diagram plays as he did at one point Friday afternoon, but Bilas cannot shake the big picture.

Friday night, he settled into a booth in a seafood restaurant at the Westin Convention Center and relaxed with a glass of pinot noir. Saturday morning, he would take his place in the machine, promoting a sport that brings in billions for the NCAA and pays the organization's president $2 million a year.

Bilas and the crew will talk glowingly about Pitt's Ashton Gibbs and Tray Woodall, whose skills on the court make lots of other people money.

"We cover them like pros," Bilas said, "and they're not pros. But they should be pros."

Bilas said it would be a lot easier for him to be an NBA analyst.

"Only 30 teams," Bilas said, "and everybody is getting paid; nobody's got amateurism violations."

But Bilas said he would never cover another sport, no matter the money someone offered him. He is a basketball guy, after all. And, while he is living very comfortably off the game with his wife and two kids, he is willing to go with less if the right decisions are made.

"It's better for me if the players are never compensated," Bilas said. "In my job, if the players were allowed to be compensated, I would make less money.

"It's way better for me if they don't get a nickel. But I don't think it's right."

Bilas is a noted NCAA critic, and, for those on his side, they could not have a more well-rounded guy leading the charge. He has a Duke law degree, litigated cases for seven years before going into broadcasting full time and is a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild. In 1990, Bilas played an alien cop in "Dark Angel," a movie starring Dolph Lundgren, the actor who played Russian boxer Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV."

Trying cases taught him how to argue a point without losing his cool, and acting made him unafraid of the spotlight.

"He's very talented," said Harvard coach Tommy Amaker, Bilas' teammate at Duke and a lifelong friend. "He can talk in different languages to a lot of different people."

Last summer, ESPN aired a show called "College Football: Blueprint For Change," which featured a roundtable of important voices. Bilas was the only person with no affiliation to football who was invited to join the panel.

Surrounded mostly by skeptical ears, Bilas described his plan to fix college athletics: an Olympic model in which players are not paid directly by their schools but can benefit from outside sources using their name or likeness.

"A music student who's on a full music scholarship can cut a record," Bilas said that day, "can play at Carnegie Hall, can be on TV, can be in a movie, whatever they want. Regular students get paid all the time."

At one point, Alabama coach Nick Saban, who makes more than $4 million a year, said "It's not a business. ... Nobody's really making money. I mean, we get paid salaries."

Bilas responded, "I'll say."

ESPN analyst Rece Davis recalls Urban Meyer leaning over to him as Bilas was speaking and saying, "I don't really agree with anything he's saying, but, boy, he's got a heck of a way of making you think he's right."

When reminded of Meyer's comment, Bilas said, "That's what my wife calls 'that lawyer [BS].' "

It may not work on Wendy Bilas, but the people at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis are beginning to pay attention.

Last fall, Bilas got a call from NCAA president Mark Emmert, asking if he could spend some time with Bilas talking about the issues his organization faces. Bilas gladly agreed and welcomed Emmert and two other officials to his country club in Charlotte for lunch and a round of golf.

"I didn't expect anything to come out of it," Bilas said. "It was a wonderful opportunity for me.

"He doesn't have to talk to me or acknowledge me."

Just like when he was a student nearly 30 years ago, Bilas always will say yes to an opportunity -- especially one for discourse. He is open to being convinced that he is wrong about the future of college sports. It just has not happened.

"I'm not one of those that would say, 'See, I told you so,' " Bilas said. "Whoever wants on this bandwagon, welcome."

Etta James: 10 classic performances

2012-01-21T10:21:00.002-05:00

Richard Williams remembers the great blues and soul singer at her absolute finest

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/

20 January 2012

Soul legend … Etta James. Photograph: Eamonn Mccabe

Etta James was born in Los Angeles and spent some of the key years of her professional life in San Francisco and Chicago, but there have been few more convincing interpreters of soul music associated with the southern states. Many of her classics were indeed cut in Muscle Shoals and Memphis, but it didn't really matter where she was standing at the time. In LA or the Windy City, Etta could dig out the heart of a good song and present it raw, with the blood still running red. So this list of 10 personal favourite Etta James tracks contains a preponderance of deep-soul ballads with a southern accent.

1. Let's Burn Down the Cornfield (1974)

Etta turns Randy Newman's great song into an epic portrait of sexual conspiracy. Gabriel Meckler's restrained production sets her suplhurous voice against Lowell George's slide guitar, which takes centre-stage for a piercing solo that ends with a gorgeous dying fall. From the album Come a Little Closer.

2. Almost Persuaded (1968)

Co-written by Billy Sherrill, produced by Rick Hall at the Fame studios in Muscle Shoals, this is a piece of prime late-60s Memphis soul: a black singer taking a country song and turning it inside out. Etta meets a man at a party, and they take a shine to each other. They drink and talk. He puts his hand on hers. Come away with me, he says. Then she looks into his soft brown eyes, and sees the reflection of her wedding ring. "I was almost persuaded …" One of her finest 45s.

3. Damn Your Eyes (1988)

Another country song taken for a walk through the shadows on the other side of town. This one is by Barbara Wyrick and Steve Bogard, and comes from the album Seven Year Itch, its title referring to her prolonged absence from the recording scene. Produced by Barry Beckett in Muscle Shoals, it features Reggie Young's guitar. Etta could shout the blues with the best of them, but she could also under-sing when necessary, and she pitches this one perfectly. Impossible to play just once.

4. Pushover (1963)

A playful slice of pre-Beatles black pop, co-written (with Roquel Davis) by Tony Clark, a Northern Soul hero ("Ain't Love Good Ain't Love Proud", "Landslide", "The Entertainer"). "Pushover" itself was an early favourite with that audience, and demonstrates Etta's versatility.

5. I'd Rather Go Blind (1968)

In her 1995 autobiography, Rage to Survive, Etta wrote that she heard an early version of this song from its writer, her friend Ellington Jordan, before helping him to complete it. Recorded with Rick Hall at FAME, it ended up on the B-side of "Tell Mama". A year later Christine Perfect sang it with Fleetwood Mac, paving the way for countless cover versions. The original is still the greatest, by a country mile.

6. Misty Blue (2011)

Bob Montgomery, Buddy Holly's songwriting partner, wrote this yearning ballad in 1966 for Brenda Lee, who wasn't interested. Ten years later Dorothy Moore gave it the soul treatment and had a huge worldwide hit. This heartfelt version comes from The Dreamer, Etta's final album, sensitively produced by her sons Donto and Sametto – long a part of her road band, on drums and bass respectively – to minimise the limitations of a voice losing its range and flexibility but none of its intelligence and interpretive power. "Listen to me good," she urges.

7. If I Can't Have You (1960)

After her initial run of hits dried up, Etta signed with the Chess brothers in Chicago. This wailing duet with Harvey Fuqua takes its place in a tradition running from Brook Benton and Dinah Washington to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

8. Lovin' Arms (1975)

Tom Jans was a folk singer from southern California who toured and recorded with Mimi Farina, Joan Baez's sister, and died of an overdose in 1984, aged 35, a year after a serious motorbike crash. He left this wonderful song, which exists in powerful versions by Elvis Presley and Millie Jackson but also drew the best out of Etta, even though she insists on changing "Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains" – the key line – to "Looking back and hoping for the freedom of my chains".

9. I Worship the Ground You Walk On (1968)

Written by Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, in the grand tradition of their majestic country-soul ballads ("Out of Left Field", "Dark End of the Street" and so on). Produced by Rick Hall and released as the B-side of Etta's cover of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You, Babe".

10. In the Evening (2011)

Another track from The Dreamer, this stately and perfectly understated version of the old Ray Charles song goes deep into Etta's heritage, with an excellent band purring through the altered 12-bar changes as she meditates on the most basic verities of the blues: in the evening, when the sun goes down, and your good lover is not around … No more to be said.

Etta James dies at 73; acclaimed blues and R&B singer

2012-01-21T09:46:00.000-05:00

Etta James, perhaps the quintessential R&B diva, was equally at home singing unadulterated blues, searing R&B and sophisticated jazz. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and her biggest hit, 'At Last,' has been enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/
January 20, 2012

Muhammad Ali chats with Etta James at the piano at the Kinshasa Hotel in Zaire in September 1974. James and other African American musicians were in the country to perform at the Zaire 74 music festival. The concert was organized as a promotional event to coincide with the heavyweight championship boxing match between Ali and George Foreman. (Horst Faas / Associated Press)

Etta James, the earthy blues and R&B singer whose anguished vocals convinced generations of listeners that she would rather go blind than see her love leave, then communicated her joy upon finding that love at last, died Friday. She was 73.

She died at Parkview Community Hospital in Riverside, said her sons, Donto and Sametto James. The cause was complications from leukemia, according to her personal physician.

James had been in failing health for years. Court records in the singer's probate case show she also suffered from dementia and kidney failure. Her two sons had battled their stepfather for control of her $1-million estate but in December agreed to allow him to remain as conservator.

James spent time in a detox facility for addiction to painkillers and over-the-counter medications, Donto told Reuters in 2010. And she had wrestled with complications since undergoing gastric bypass surgery in 2002 to remedy a lifelong struggle with her weight.

After that procedure, which actress Roseanne Barr had recommended to her, James lost 200 pounds. Before the surgery, her weight had gone past 400 pounds. When she performed, she often had to be escorted on and off the stage in a wheelchair. "I was constantly worried that I was going to have a heart attack," she told Ebony magazine in 2003.

Perhaps the quintessential R&B diva, James, who was born and lived much of her life in Los Angeles, was equally at home singing unadulterated blues, searing R&B and sophisticated jazz, the latter receiving special attention in her recordings over the last decade. Her dusky voice, which could stretch from a sultry whisper to an aching roar, influenced generations of singers who came after, from Tina Turner to Bonnie Raitt to Christina Aguilera. And pop-R&B singer Beyonce carefully studied James before portraying her in the loosely historical 2008 film "Cadillac Records."

"Etta James was one of the greatest vocalists of our time," Beyonce said in a statement on her website. "Her musical contributions will last a lifetime. Playing Etta James taught me so much about myself, and singing her music inspired me to be a stronger artist. When she effortlessly opened her mouth, you could hear her pain and triumph. Her deeply emotional way of delivering a song told her story with no filter. She was fearless, and had guts."

Multiple Grammy-winner Raitt said Friday: "I don't know that there's ever been a singer that knocked me out as much as Etta. The mark she made was setting the bar so high for the depths someone can sing from. The ache and the pain and the ferocity and the soul and the sexiness — it all came through in the space of one three-minute song."

Despite her early commercial success, James wrestled for much of her life with her weight, addictions to drugs and alcohol and with her tumultuous relationship with her mother, who was just 14 when she gave birth to Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan. 25, 1938.

She was adored by rock's elite, including the Rolling Stones, who drafted her as an opening act on their 1978 U.S. tour, and voters at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who inducted her in 1993.

"Etta James was a pioneer," said Terry Stewart, president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Her ever-changing sound has influenced rock 'n' roll, rhythm and blues, pop, soul and jazz artists, marking her place as one of the most important female artists of our time. From Janis Joplin to Joss Stone, an incredible number of performers owe their debts to her. There is no mistaking the voice of Etta James, and it will live forever."

James' six-decade recording career began at the top of the R&B charts when her bawdy 1955 single "The Wallflower," better known as "Roll With Me Henry," quickly made her a national star.

In the rollicking early days of rock 'n' roll, James' saucy song answered Hank Ballard's then-recent hit "Work With Me Annie," a ribald, thinly veiled invitation to a woman to have sex. James' response, in which she assertively put forth the same offer on her own terms, was wildly popular but equally controversial coming from a 17-year-old girl long before the sexual revolution of the '60s upended traditional sex roles.

She is best known for "At Last," the powerhouse ballad that became a hit in 1961 and which has been enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Bending and stretching the notes of the bluesy melody to reflect the hard-won realization of a lifelong desire, and channeling a sense of joy that sounded as though the gates of heaven had just opened to welcome her in, James sang: "At last, my love has come along/My lonely days are over/My life is like a song."

The other song with which she became inextricably connected was "I'd Rather Go Blind," which she said she co-wrote in 1968 with her friend Ellington Jordan while he was in prison. He outlined the song and James finished it, but for tax reasons she gave the co-writing credit to Medallions singer Billy Foster, to whom she was briefly married. It conveys the desperation of a woman who prefers losing her sight to seeing her man with someone else. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh included it in his 1999 book "The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made." It was subsequently recorded by artists including Rod Stewart, B.B. King, Koko Taylor and Beyonce in "Cadillac Records," but it remains most closely associated with James.

Etta James performs at L.A.'s Cocoanut Grove nightclub in 1976. Despite her early commercial success, she struggled for much of her life with her weight, with addictions to heroin, cocaine and alcohol and with her tumultuous relationship with her mother, who was just 14 when she gave birth to Jamesetta Hawkins on Jan. 25, 1938. (Los Angeles Times)

James, the child of a single teenage mother growing up in South Los Angeles during World War II, never knew her father but remained convinced throughout her life that he was pool shark Minnesota Fats.

With her blond curls and light complexion, she stood out in the African American community, and she started to make a mark singing in the choir of St. Paul Baptist Church. The church's music minister, a prominent figure in gospel circles known as Professor James Earle Hines, quickly singled her out for solos when she was just 5 or 6, said David Ritz, who collaborated on her 1995 autobiography "Rage to Survive."

The church was frequented by Hollywood stars such as Lana Turner and Robert Mitchum and had a weekly radio broadcast that helped spread word of the girl's talents. James' mother left her to be raised by foster parents, but when her foster mother died when James was about 12, she was reunited with her biological mother and they lived for a time in San Francisco.

"One of the peculiar things about Etta's story — one that's a twist on the idea of the reverend-preacher who doesn't want his child to sing rhythm and blues — is that her prostitute mother, the sophisticated prostitute mother, didn't want her to sing raunchy rhythm and blues, but wanted her to sing jazz like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan," Ritz said.

As a teen, James formed a trio called the Peaches, which was discovered by R&B musician and promoter Johnny Otis (who, coincidentally, died Tuesday at age 90). Soon, she was in a duo called Etta & Harvey with Harvey Fuqua of the Moonglows, the R&B group behind the 1955 hit "Sincerely."

Early on, she toured with Johnny Guitar Watson, the Texas singer, songwriter and guitarist, in an association that figured prominently in her approach to music for the rest of her life.

"Her real role model was not a woman, it was Johnny Guitar Watson," said Ritz. "Johnny also could do all three things: blues, R&B and jazz. ... Where he really influenced her was in his vocals. He would sing standards and then kind of bluesify them. Just as Nancy Wilson modeled herself on Little Jimmy Scott — a man — Etta James modeled herself on Johnny. ... He had an enormously healthy and rich influence on her."

She also fell under the positive and negative influences of musicians she revered, such as Billie Holiday, as well as some with whom she crossed paths on the road, including Ray Charles and Chet Baker, all of whom struggled with addiction.

"All of my role models at that time, the ones I looked up to most, were heroin addicts," she told The Times in 1993. "I think subconsciously I thought that was a cool thing."

In the mid-1970s, after getting caught writing bad checks to support her drug habit, James was offered a choice between prison or rehab. She chose the latter and kicked heroin, but she started using cocaine a few years later. A spiritual epiphany led her to give up cocaine and alcohol, and in the 1980s she began a personal and professional renaissance, reestablishing her credibility in the music world.

She coaxed esteemed R&B producer Jerry Wexler, who had been pivotal in the careers of Aretha Franklin, Ruth Brown, Otis Redding and many others, out of retirement to oversee her 1992 album "The Right Time."

At the time, Wexler said, "I've never done anything better, and I've done a lot of records."

In 1994, James saluted Holiday with an album of jazz standards called "Mystery Lady," which yielded the first Grammy Award of her career, for jazz vocal performance. She collected two more Grammys: for the 2003 contemporary blues album "Let's Roll," and 2004's "Blues to the Bone," named best traditional blues album.

Those works became family affairs when she enlisted her two sons as co-producers. The family moved to Riverside in the 1980s because James said she had had enough of gang violence and other troubles in South Los Angeles. She lived in a simple ranch-style home.

In addition to her two sons, James is survived by Artis Mills, her husband of 42 years;and several grandchildren.

Her sons were unaware of the scope of their mother's fame until seeing her perform at the 1983 Grammys. Donto, then a young teen, was sitting next to members of rap group Run-DMC, and they went wild when James took the stage.

"That's when I realized my mother was truly a star," he said.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.

Today's Tune: Etta James - Something's Got A Hold On Me

2012-01-21T09:39:00.002-05:00

No more ‘women and children first'

2012-01-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

When Western civilization hits the iceberg, will the response be more like that of the crew on the Titanic or that on the Costa Concordia?

By MARK STEYN
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
January 20, 2012

Abe Greenwald of Commentary magazine tweets:

"Is there any chance that Mark Steyn won't use the Italian captain fleeing the sinking ship as the lead metaphor in a column on EU collapse?"

Oh, dear. You've got to get up early in the morning to beat me to civilizational-collapse metaphors. Been there, done that. See page 185 of my most recent book, where I contrast the orderly, dignified and moving behavior of those on the Titanic (the ship, not the mendacious Hollywood blockbuster) with that manifested in more recent disasters. There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos punctuated by individual acts of courage from, for example, an Hungarian violinist in the orchestra and a ship's entertainer in a Spiderman costume, both of whom helped children to safety, the former paying with his life.

The miserable Captain Schettino, by contrast, is presently under house arrest, charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship. His explanation is that, when the vessel listed suddenly, he fell into a lifeboat and was unable to climb out. Seriously. Could happen to anyone, slippery decks and all that. Next thing you know, he was safe on shore, leaving his passengers all at sea. On the other hand, the audio of him being ordered by Coast Guard officers to return to his ship and refusing to do so is not helpful to this version of events.

In the centenary year of the most famous of all maritime disasters, we would do well to consider honestly the tale of the Titanic. When James Cameron made his movie, he was interested in everything except what the story was actually about. I confess I have very little memory of the film except for Kate Winslet's lush full breasts and some tedious sub-Riverdance prancing in the hold, but what I do recall traduced the memory of honorable men: In my book, I cite First Officer William Murdoch. In real life, he threw deckchairs to passengers drowning in the water to give them something to cling to, and then he went down with the ship – the dull, decent thing, all very British, with no fuss. In Cameron's movie, Murdoch takes a bribe and murders a third-class passenger. The director subsequently apologized to the First Officer's hometown in Scotland and offered £5,000 toward a memorial, which, converted into Hollywood dollars, equals rather less than what Cameron and his family paid for dinner after the Oscars.

On the Titanic, the male passengers gave their lives for the women and would never have considered doing otherwise. On the Costa Concordia, in the words of a female passenger, "There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboat." After similar scenes on the MV Estonia a few years ago, Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine: "There is no law that says women and children first. That is something from the age of chivalry."

If, by "the age of chivalry," you mean our great-grandparents' time.

In fact, "women and children first" can be dated very precisely. On Feb. 26, 1852, HMS Birkenhead was wrecked off the coast of Cape Town while transporting British troops to South Africa. There were, as on the Titanic, insufficient lifeboats. The women and children were escorted to the ship's cutter. The men mustered on deck. They were ordered not to dive in the water lest they risk endangering the ladies and their young charges by swamping the boats. So they stood stiffly at their posts as the ship disappeared beneath the waves. As Kipling wrote:

"We're most of us liars, we're 'arf of us thieves, an' the rest of us rank as can be,

But once in a while we can finish in style (which I 'ope it won't 'appen to me)."

Sixty years later, the men on the Titanic – liars and thieves, wealthy and powerful, poor and obscure – found themselves called upon to "finish in style," and did so. They had barely an hour to kiss their wives goodbye, watch them clamber into the lifeboats, and sail off without them. They, too, 'ope'd it wouldn't 'appen to them, but, when it did, the social norm of "women and children first" held up under pressure and across all classes.

Today there is no social norm, so it's every man for himself – operative word "man," although not many of the chaps on the Titanic would recognize those on the Costa Concordia as "men." From a grandmother on the latter: "I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls."

Whenever I write about these subjects, I receive a lot of mail from men along the lines of this correspondent:

"The feminists wanted a gender-neutral society. Now they've got it. So what are you complaining about?"

And so the manly virtues (if you'll forgive a quaint phrase) shrivel away to the so-called "man caves," those sad little redoubts of beer and premium cable sports networks.

We are beyond social norms these days. A woman can be a soldier. A man can be a woman. A 7-year-old cross-dressing boy can join the Girl Scouts in Colorado because he "identifies" as a girl. It all adds to life's rich tapestry, no doubt. But I can't help wondering, when the ship hits the fan, how many of us will still be willing to identify as a man.

A day or two after the cruise wreck, I read the obituary of a man called Ian Bryce, who found himself at Dunkirk in 1940, when an ad hoc flotilla of English fishing boats, pleasure cruisers and other "little ships" evacuated Allied troops cut off by the advancing Germans. Young Bryce, a 17-year-old midshipman, singlehandedly rescued 109 British soldiers, eight Belgian officers, two Frenchmen and two Jewish refugees in multiple trips in a motor boat under Luftwaffe fire. Nobody asked Captain Schettino to do anything extraordinary, only his duty.

Abe Greenwald isn't thinking big enough. The Costa Concordia isn't merely a metaphor for EU collapse but – here it comes down the slipway – the fragility of civilization. Like every ship, the Concordia had its emergency procedures – the lifeboat drills that all crew and passengers are obliged to go through before sailing. As with the security theater at airports, the rituals give the illusion of security – and then, as the ship tips and the lights fail and the icy black water rushes in, we discover we're on our own: from dancing and dining, showgirls and saunas, to the inky depths in a matter of moments.

Today the wealthiest nations in human history build cruise ships rather than battleships, vast floating palaces dedicated to the good life – to the proposition that, in the plump and complacent West, life itself is a cruise, sailing (as the Concordia's name suggests) on a placid lake of peace and harmony. Since the economic downturn of 2008, the Titanic metaphor – of a Western world steaming for the iceberg but unable to correct course – has become a little overworked, the easiest cliché for any politician attempting to project urgency. But let's assume they're correct, and we're heading full steam for the big 'berg. When we hit, what's the likelihood? That our response will be as ordered and civilized as those on the Titanic? Or that we will descend into the hell of the Concordia?

The contempt for "women and children first" is not a small loss. For soft cultures in good times, dispensing with social norms is easy. In hard times, you may have need of them.

©MARK STEYN

The Land of Obama Make-Believe

2012-01-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

By Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/
January 20, 2012

U.S. President Barack Obama unveils a strategy aimed at boosting tourism and travel in front of Cinderella's Castle at Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Orlando January 19, 2012.

Where did President Obama go after killing off thousands of Keystone XL pipeline construction and manufacturing jobs? Why, Disney World, of course. Sabotaging work is hard work for Goofy and his pals.

And where’d he head after that? Why, up to Manhattan for more high-priced campaign fundraisers charging up to $38,500 per partier. The business of wining and dining politically connected donors ain’t child’s play, you know.

Obama touted a White House foreign tourism initiative on Thursday with Cinderella’s castle as his backdrop. “America is open for business,” he proclaimed chirpily to the rest of the globe.

Tell that to the Keystone managers in Canada whom Obama and his State Department rebuffed — after years of planning and review — in order to appease militant environmentalists and Hollywood celebs. The Animatronic Divider robotically lambasted Republicans for pushing him to make a decision this week. But Senate and House Democrats issued the sharpest rebukes to White House obstructionism:

“President Obama’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline is a major setback for the American economy, American workers, and America’s energy independence,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., said.

“The rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline permit is a missed opportunity to drastically turn this economy around. This pipeline would have created thousands of new jobs and helped to ensure our energy independence,” Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., lamented.

“This delay is just playing politics with American jobs and American energy security,” Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, pointed out.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle scratched their heads as the job-snuffer-in-chief bolted to Orlando’s fantasyland to promote economic growth. But there’s no more fitting place on Earth for the man whose escapist administration occupies the land of make-believe and no consequences. (Bonus moment: Obama got to shake hands with Mickey Mouse, who infamously turned up on a Florida ACORN voter registration form in 2008. Constituent outreach at its most surreal.)

On the very same day he quashed Keystone, Obama released his first campaign ad of 2012 — hyping his stellar record on energy jobs. It’s Opposite Day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 365 days a year. Even more comically, the ad touted his exemplary ethics record by quoting a moldy three-year-old endorsement from left-leaning Politifact. And as bipartisan Capitol Hill outrage over the half-billion-dollar Solyndra solar stimulus bust mounts, Obama had the nerve to sprinkle his inaugural campaign spot with — wait for it — solar panels.

Instead of supporting new infrastructure jobs in America through an energy independence-enhancing project that has bipartisan legislative support on Capitol Hill, the president flew to Disney World to peddle looser visa restrictions in China and Brazil by executive order. He also will expand the Visa Waiver Program (a security loophole-ridden program that was suspended temporarily after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) to speed foreign travel.

In case anyone needs reminding, it was the relentless drive of the tourism industry and kowtowing State Department bureaucrats that led to the Bush-era Visa Express Program, which relaxed visa policies, eliminated in-person consulate interviews and opened the door to the 9/11 hijackers. Brazil is just the latest base for al-Qaida and other Islamic jihadi groups. It does not consider Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist groups, and it disbanded its anti-terrorism force in 2009.

The Visa Waiver Program and other efforts to expedite the tourist visa process also pose continuing security risks because — as the Government Accountability Office itself admitted last year — there is still no comprehensive, systematic way to track the 70 million-plus foreign visitors who enter the country on tourist and other short-term visas. Indeed, half of the nation’s estimated 20 million illegal aliens are visa overstayers.

How many of the new Disney foreign tourists whom Obama is touting as America’s economic salvation will fail to return to their home countries after their Obama World visas expire? We’ll likely never know. And Team Obama doesn’t care.

In his opening campaign ad salvo, Obama accuses his opponents of being “untethered to facts.” But this is an administration that believes lowering visa standards and risking homeland security to pump up Disney foreign tourism is a better path to economic recovery than supporting direct American job creation and enhancing energy security. Like the Disney characters he posed with this week, our cartoonish president is wholly untethered to reality.

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He Wrote the Book on Raylan Givens

2012-01-20T01:02:00.001-05:00

But FX’s Justified understands Elmore Leonard’s greatest character better than Leonard does.

By Tara Ariano
http://www.slate.com/
January 17, 2012

How good is FX’s Justified, returning for its third season tonight? Some TV series inspire conventions, cosplay, and speculative fiction from their fans. Justified may be the first show to inspire fanfic from its creator. Elmore Leonard introduced U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in the novel Pronto, but hadn’t revisited the character since “Fire in the Hole,” the 2001 novella which became the basis for Justified. The show reignited his interest, and Leonard’s new novel Raylan—so inextricable from Justified that the cover image is of actor Timothy Olyphant in character—is out this week.

Leonard has explained that he wrote the book to give Justified producer Graham Yost more story ideas for the second season and seasons to come. Given that the writers of Justified wear bracelets reading WWED (What Would Elmore Do?), you might think they’d slavishly followed Leonard’s lead. But Raylan, surprisingly, reads like an alternate-universe version of Justified, Season 2, with tantalizing possibilities for Season 3. The changes Yost made, in fact, led to a much better story. It’s possible that the writers of Justified understand Elmore Leonard’s best character better than Elmore Leonard does.

First of all, if Yost and the Justified writers had followed Leonard’s blueprint exactly, viewers would have been cheated out of the series’ best character and juiciest storyline. Mags Bennett is not even a character in Raylan; in the book, the crime-bossing parent of hapless nitwits Coover and Dickie is their dad, one Pervis Crowe. For the show, of course, Yost crafted a rich yet tragic story for Mags (Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy for the role), the alternately diabolical and soft-hearted criminal mastermind who contrived a way to steal the daughter she always wanted.

Leonard is known for his laconic style, and in Raylan, little space is given over to the hero’s reflection upon his own motivations. But the author’s reluctance to devote much of his work to describing a look, or a pause, or the tension of a moment—all three of which are trademarks of Olyphant’s Raylan—requires Leonard to ... make his Raylan talk. Book Raylan is taciturn by any reasonable measure, but compared to TV Raylan, he’s a chatterbox. Right from the book’s first chapter, this essential difference is inescapable. “Give me his name,” Raylan asks a victim whose kidneys have been stolen and are being held for ransom. “I swear on my star you won’t have to pay for either one.” “I swear on my star”? Try to imagine Olyphant’s Raylan saying anything so melodramatic. I sure can’t.

Leonard’s economy of prose does help to give Raylan the same propulsive pace fans enjoy on Justified. That said, when one subplot puts Raylan in the compromising position of facing down a perp while wearing only cowboy boots, some readers might wish Leonard would, you know, slow down just a little and paint more of a picture. Sure, one of the conspirators does take a moment to admire the figure Raylan cuts when he’s unconscious and naked and lying vulnerable and exposed in a bathtub, but since the book jacket has already put Olyphant’s likeness in some readers’ heads, if Leonard devoted more detail to the scene, some readers probably wouldn’t complain. This scene didn’t appear in Season 2—trust me, you’d remember—but Leonard’s told an interviewer it might be used in the show, so … those readers who’d enjoy seeing Olyphant play it out can hope that Yost will make it happen.

My own prurient preferences aside, Raylan offers Justified producers plenty of story ideas that could lend themselves to TV, like a grabby subplot that revolves around a trio of bank-robbing strippers. There’s also a 23-year-old woman putting herself through Butler University with the proceeds from her poker winnings; her plotline culminates—as all poker stories must—with a climactic showdown at the gaming table.

If Justified producers do pluck those characters from Raylan, though, it won’t be right away; the explosive Season 2 finale left numerous messes that will need to be cleaned up in the early episodes of Season 3. Coming off the shootout of “Bloody Harlan,” the Season 2 finale, Raylan and Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) are still in an uneasy truce—that is, until the season 3 premiere, “The Gunfighter.” Harsh words between Raylan and Boyd quickly escalate to a physical fight—and as tends to be the case when Boyd is concerned, his anger is not what it seems. Still, both the exchange and its outcome neatly lay out both the conflict between these two characters and the ways their shared Harlan background continues to inform their lives into the present. All this is to say that there’s plenty on Justified’s plate before it trots out the felonious gyrators.

What’s the best evidence that, at least right now, Yost and the Justified writers have Raylan Givens and his world pegged in a way even Leonard can’t match? It wasn’t Leonard who wrote a storyline bringing the awesome Karen Sisco to Kentucky. Oh, sure, she’s named Karen Goodall when she appears in episode 2, and mentions a name change following a brief marriage, but given that she’s played by Carla Gugino, it’s clear she’s meant to be the heroine of Gugino’s sadly short-lived ABC series Karen Sisco. (Though Leonard created Sisco, who was also played by Jennifer Lopez in the movie Out of Sight, interviews suggest they’ve changed her name for legal reasons.)

Anyway: Regardless of her maiden name, Gugino’s Karen is an intriguing addition to the show. In both Raylan and Justfied, Raylan’s (justified) shooting of gangster Tommy Bucks (Peter Greene) didn’t just catalyze Raylan’s return to Kentucky; it’s become a kind of legend that precedes Raylan everywhere he goes. Every crook whose path he crosses has heard about it. Karen’s return into Raylan’s life suggests the possibility that we could learn more about what else happened to Raylan in the time between his leaving Harlan and his return. Plus, Karen’s just a great character, with both coolness under pressure and fire smoldering under the surface to match Raylan’s. Bringing her to Justified is a fantastic idea, and it’s Yost who made it happen.

There are hints that Raylan and Karen shared A History when they were both posted to Miami—a development which could the Justified door to any number of indelible Leonard characters—but the start of Season 3 finds Raylan still planning a future with Winona (Natalie Zea) and their unborn baby. But while Leonard’s Raylan ends with the hero (somewhat implausibly) finding a measure of happiness and peace, the story isn’t near over for the Raylan of Justified—which means Yost will be able to continue borrowing from Leonard’s plots, and continue improving upon them.

'Abortion Is as American as Apple Pie'

2012-01-19T11:22:00.000-05:00

Meet abortion provider Merle Hoffman, who has her own way of marking the Roe v. Wade anniversary.

By George Neumayr
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org
January 19, 2012

Merle Hoffman: "Abortion is as American as apple pie."

In 2004, Planned Parenthood began selling T-shirts emblazoned with the declaration, "I Had An Abortion." This was part of its campaign to "demystify and destigmatize" the practice. Prominent abortion advocates felt at the time that their movement had grown too timid.

Alexander Sanger, the grandson of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, argued that feminists needed to go beyond the rhetoric of "choice," jargon he regarded as cowardly and vague. They should celebrate abortion directly and unapologetically, he said. After all, the unborn child, as an annoying interloper, deserves to die. "The unborn child is not just an innocent life," he wrote, but a "liability, a threat, and a danger to the mother and to the other members of the family."

Amidst such comments, the website Imnotsorry.net sprung up. The founders of the site explained that it "was created for the purpose of showing women that exercising their legal right to terminate their pregnancy is not the blood-splattered guilt trip so many make it out to be." Space was provided on it for women to post testimonials expressing their "relief" and "joy" after an abortion.

Ron Fitzsimmons, president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, also found "choice" rhetoric insipid. "We have nothing to hide," he said to the press. "The work we're doing is good. We are there to help women, and it's important to talk about abortion so that it's not a stigma."

Abortion, he said, is more than just a choice. It is a good choice: "We can no longer respond to [pro-life arguments] with 'it's your right to choose.' We need to recapture the notion that abortion is a difficult moral choice for women, but one that is, in fact, a moral choice."

These days abortion advocates are considerably more circumspect, returning to the "safe, legal, and rare" formula that Bill Clinton popularized. But a few still hunger for raw honesty. In apparent anticipation of the upcoming Roe v. Wade anniversary, Salon interviewed one of them on Monday. Merle Hoffman, a New York "abortion provider," told the online publication that the "pro-choice movement is uncomfortable with itself," as it still treats abortion as a regrettable act. "I've always said that, and I've always believed that," she said. "We're not comfortable with the banner we're under."

This makes no sense to Hoffman, given the large number of Americans implicated in abortion. "You know how many women have had abortions?" she said. "Abortion is as American as apple pie. I think it's one in three. But we'll go on TV and say, 'I just had my tits done or had a bikini wax,' but not had an abortion. If you could see that constituency rise up at one point in time -- but they don't, because there's this cloud."

Hoffman bluntly acknowledged that abortion involves killing an unborn child: "In the beginning [pro-lifers] were calling it a baby. We were saying it was only blood and tissue. Let's agree this is a life form, a potential life; you're terminating it. You don't have to argue that abortion stops a beating heart. It does." Nor does she insist that abortion is a minor medical procedure: "I can't say it's just like an appendectomy. It isn't. It's a very powerful and loaded decision."

Like Alexander Sanger, Hoffman sees abortion as a laudable act of self-defense against the encroaching unborn child. Referring to her own abortion, Hoffman writes in a soon-to-be-released memoir, Intimate Wars: "With my choice I was fighting for the right of all women to define abortion as an act of love: love for the family one already has, and just as important, love for oneself. I was fighting to reclaim abortion as a mother's act. It was an act of solidarity as significant as any other I had committed."

Hoffman's career as a founder and owner of an abortion clinic has been lucrative. Salon describes her as a bejeweled millionaire: "Impeccably coiffed -- signaling more Upper East Side doyenne than die-hard boomer activist -- she wears an enormous glittering ring she designed with the symbol of Choices, combining the caduceus and infinity symbols." The "Choices" to which the ring refers is the euphemistic name of the abortion clinic Hoffman runs. So her brutal honesty evidently has limits.

The subtitle of her memoir is: "The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room." Last January, abortion advocates marked the anniversary of Roe more mutely, as they dealt with fallout from the life and times of a man who brought abortion from the back alley to main street Philadelphia. Remember Kermit Gosnell? Shortly before the nostalgic remembrances of the Roe ruling were set to begin, a grand jury in Pennsylvania charged the longtime Philadelphia abortionist with seven acts of infanticide and the killing of one adult.

Gosnell's specialty was late-term abortions bordering on infanticide. He practiced his craft in the open. Prosecutors blamed the lack of investigation into his clinic on the "pro-choice" atmosphere in the state. Nail salons are more closely monitored than abortion clinics, they said. Indeed, local abortion advocates knew all about Gosnell, only badmouthing him in public after the indictment came down.
At his bail hearing, Gosnell appeared puzzled. He had performed the very late-term abortions pro-choicers urged George W. Bush not to ban. "Is it possible you could explain the seven counts?" he asked the judge. In a culture that lionizes late-term abortionists as bravely defiant, the answer to his question remains unclear. Perhaps he should have called his clinic "Choices."

- George Neumayr is a contributing editor to The American Spectator.

Ron Paul: Wrong on the Taliban

2012-01-19T09:44:00.000-05:00

They protected al-Qaeda even at the cost of their own power.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 19, 2012

Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich listen to Rep. Ron Paul of Texas at Republican presidential candidates debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, January 16, 2012. (REUTERS/Jason Reed)

Ron Paul knows even less about the history of our enemies than he does about their proper treatment under the Constitution. He actually interrupted Monday night’s Republican candidates’ debate so he could interject the following:

I would like to point out one thing about the Taliban. The Taliban used to be our allies when we were fighting the Russians. So Taliban are people who want — their main goal is to keep foreigners off their land. It’s the al-Qaeda — you can’t mix the two. The al-Qaeda want to come here to kill us. The Taliban just says, “We don’t want foreigners.” We need to understand that, or we can’t resolve this problem in the Middle East. We are going to spend a lot of lives and a lot of money for a long time to come.

Everything in this statement is wrong. Everything. Let’s start with the most basic point. The Taliban most certainly were not “our allies when we were fighting the Russians.” How could they have been, considering that the Taliban did not exist at the time of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan?
I won’t belabor the point that it was not the United States but the Afghan mujahadeen, with the help of non-Afghan Muslims (mostly Arab), who did the actual fighting against the Soviets. We did, after all, fuel the anti-Soviet jihad with billions of dollars in materiel and other assistance — through our intermediary, Pakistani intelligence, with the Saudis matching our aid dollar-for-dollar. Presumably, this is what Representative Paul was talking about. Nevertheless, while a number of the Taliban’s eventual founders were veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad, the fact is that the Taliban was not established as an organization until 1994. That is five years after the Soviet Union skulked out of Afghanistan and three years after it collapsed.

Paul’s claim that the Taliban is just opposed to foreign interference in Afghanistan is patently absurd. To begin with, the Taliban’s creation was a direct result not of foreign invasion but of Afghanistan’s internecine tribal warfare after the Soviets left and the Americans lost interest. Its unabashed goal was to crush Afghan factions that impeded its establishment of a retrograde sharia state.

Moreover, the Taliban craves foreign interference, without which it would never have come to power. A Pashtun movement driven by Islamic scholars and spearheaded by Mullah Mohammed Omar in Kandahar, the Taliban owes its existence to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These Muslim nations, two of the only three nations in the world to recognize the Taliban-led government in Kabul, nurtured, armed, and financed the Taliban in its origin. They did so precisely because the Taliban was an effective ally in their machinations against regional rivals — India for the Pakistanis and Iran for the Saudis. The alliance was also grounded in the Taliban’s espousal of Deobandism, an uncompromising construction of Islam propagated in Afghan madrassas built by the Saudis’ Muslim World League in conjunction with Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s supremacist Islamic movement.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Taliban willingly gave al-Qaeda safe haven, knowing full well that bin Laden’s network was engaged in a global jihad that targeted the United States as its primary enemy. Al-Qaeda struck American interests several times while it had sanctuary from the Taliban, attacking American embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen before orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. By quite consciously accommodating and protecting an international terrorist organization that was at war with the United States, the Taliban joined al-Qaeda and became an enemy of the United States. It was thus every bit as much a part of al-Qaeda’s attacks on the U.S. as was al-Qaeda itself. That is not only how war works, it is a straightforward application of the criminal-law principles that Representative Paul claims to like so much — a conspirator and an aider-and-abettor is responsible for the actions of his confederates.

Speaking of the criminal law, it bears remembering that the American invasion of Afghanistan was not inevitable. Contrary to Paul’s offensive depiction of a ravenous, empire-building America ever on the prowl for the next military conquest, the Bush administration did not rush to war. As I’ve pointed out before, in the weeks after 9/11, even after Congress authorized the use of military force, President Bush pointedly asked the Taliban to hand bin Laden and his organization over to the United States so that they could be tried — bin Laden having been indicted years earlier by an American grand jury. The Taliban repeatedly refused. Our choice at that point was either to invade, overthrow the Taliban, and smash al-Qaeda, or to let it be known that the United States would tolerate a massive attack on our homeland. That was no choice at all.

Ron Paul is dangerously delusional about the Taliban’s Weltanschauung. To be fair, these are delusions he shares with leftists — including members of the Obama administration– who insist that we must purge all references to Islam from our consideration of the threat we face.

The Taliban does not say, “We don’t want foreigners.” If you are an Arab jihadist, an operative of Pakistan’s heavily Islamist intelligence service, or a Saudi Wahhabist royal ready to build Afghanistan’s next-generation madrassas, the Taliban is delighted to have you in their country. It is non-Muslims they don’t want. And it is non-Muslim superpowers that they especially despise, since these they see as standing athwart their divine mission to subject the world to the rule of Islamic law.
That is why they protected al-Qaeda even at the cost of their own power. That is why negotiating with them is self-defeating and leaving them alone, as Paul would have us do, is suicidal. Of course we should avoid unnecessary wars. But when we find ourselves in necessary wars, we need to win them. To adopt the Paul rationalization that such wars are our own fault and that we can secure ourselves by shrinking from them is just as fatuous as rationalizing that democracy will tame the jihad.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Bruce Springsteen's new album title revealed

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Wrecking Ball, the Boss's 17th studio album, will be his first since the death of E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons

By Sean Michaels
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
January 19, 2012

Bruce Springsteen's manager has revealed new details of the singer's forthcoming album, Wrecking Ball, promising an "experimental" and "big-picture piece of work". The LP – described by Jon Landau, who has managed Springsteen since 1976, as having "social overtones" – includes contributions by Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, as well as members of the E Street Band.

"It's a rock record that combines elements of both Bruce's classic sound and his Seeger Sessions experience, with new textures and styles," Landau told Rolling Stone magazine. "It extends and deepens the vision that has animated all of Bruce's work." But according to a recent article in the Hollywood Reporter, the songs are more strident than usual: "[Bruce] gets into economic justice quite a bit," explained an "earwitness". "He feels it's the angriest album he's ever made."

This is Springsteen's first record with rock producer Ron Aniello, who has previously worked with Candlebox, Jars of Clay and the Barenaked Ladies. "Bruce and Ron used a wide variety of players to create something that both rocks and is very fresh," Landau said. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the arrangements include electronic loops and percussion, as well as hip-hop and Irish folk influences.

The album is Springsteen's first since the death in June 2011 of his long-time colleague Clarence Clemons. The E Street saxophonist is believed to appear on one new song, "Land of Hope and Dreams", which will be dedicated to him.

Wrecking Ball is due on 5 March. The single "We Take Care of Our Own" is out now.

The tracklisting for Wrecking Ball:

'We Take Care of Our Own'
'Easy Money'
'Shackled and Down'
'Jack of All Trades'
'Death to My Hometown'
'This Depression'
'Wrecking Ball'
'You've Got It'
'Rocky Ground'
'Land of Hope and Dreams'
'We Are Alive'
'Swallowed Up' (Bonus Track)
'American Land' (Bonus Track)

Today's Tune: Bruce Springsteen - We Take Care of Our Own

2012-01-19T06:34:00.002-05:00

Mark Levin: Egalitarianism Creates Hell on Earth

2012-01-18T09:46:00.000-05:00

'Ameritopia' Explodes Into 2012 Campaign

2012-01-18T09:37:00.000-05:00

Mark Levin's literary dynamite detonates in midst of GOP primaries.

Buy the Book

By Jeffrey Lord
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org
January 17, 2012

And… BOOM!

Mark Levin has an uncanny knack for writing a book that isn't simply a popular bestseller. Levin's last book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, became a major political player in the 2010 elections. Literary dynamite, if you will, tossed into the political scene with the fuse lit.

Now comes the just released Ameritopia, making it plain Mark Levin has done it again. In fact, without doubt, Ameritopia should be considered the companion book to Liberty and Tyranny.

And yet again it is the historical rarity of a book as major political player -- this time at the very heart of the 2012 presidential election itself.

Liberty and Tyranny was a detailed reply to the liberal assault on the Constitution, a combined history lesson and tribute to cherished constitutional beliefs of individual freedom and liberty. Replete with a conservative "how to" manifesto suggesting ways to fight the Leviathan.

That book sold a stunning 1.3 million copies. To understand a fraction of the impact Levin's Liberty and Tyranny had on Americans, take a look at this video of a Levin book signing for L&T in Virginia, a mere glimpse of the striking phenomenon the book became in the onrush of the landmark 2010 congressional elections. The book quickly emerged, in the words of House Tea Party Caucus Chair Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, as the "intellectual balance and foundation" for the emerging Tea Party movement itself. The Tea Party -- the now famous political fuel that rocketed the GOP to that major success in the 2010 congressional elections.

Why will Ameritopia make such an explosive impact in 2012?

Because this time Levin gets to the core of what drives not just the American left in the Obama era but what has driven left-wingers through the millennia of human existence itself.

That would be?

Utopia, of course. Or, as Levin refits the word to describe the American version of utopia --Ameritopia.

Levin's analysis is deadly to liberalism. Deadly.

Once Ameritopia is read and understood, no cognizant person will not understand what is unfolding around them in 21st century America -- and for that matter what has been unfolding in spurts and stops right from the get go of humanity itself, not to mention America. Ameritopia is historical X-ray vision in book form.

Typically, Mark Levin has done his homework… a lot of it….and it shows. With apologies to J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, you might say Levin uncovers the philosopher's stone of American liberalism. Make that philosophers in the plural. And in doing so connects the dots from the likes of Plato, Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, and Karl Marx straight to what every day Americans are experiencing not simply with life in the Obama-era but with the very essence of liberalism itself. A liberalism that is more properly called statism, a term Levin resurrected from the past that now increasingly floods the public dialogue surely as a direct result of the popularity of Liberty and Tyranny.

WHAT IN THE WORLD makes any of these people relevant to today?

Everything. Everything.

If you want to understand what's really at work with the mentality that has produced everything from Obamacare to the EPA, campaign finance reform, Roe v. Wade, gay marriage, the controversy over Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, the New Deal, the Great Society and Fannie Mae -- to name a small handful of historical political programs and controversies --Ameritopia is the "must read" of 2012. And beyond.

Plato as American political player in the 2012 campaign? While Levin notes that the famous Greek philosopher wasn't, even way back in 380 BC, the first to enthuse about a utopian society, he is surely among the most prominent. Plato's Republic was all about the construction of what Plato called an "ideal city" filled with "Guardians" -- Guardians, Levin notes, who will decide who gets what.
Stop right here.

Remember this line from the 2008 campaign?

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation…

In short, this is Obama as Plato. This vision is not the vision of the Founding Fathers. This is utopianism. Or, in its Americanized version, exactly what Levin calls it in his title: Ameritopia.

What Barack Obama is describing is a fantasy. A world where there is no imperfection. A world in which he personally --assuming the modern-day role of Plato's Guardian -- will see to it that every last one of a population of over 300 million has care when sick and always a good job. Like King Canute, Obama will be able to command the oceans when not busy healing the planet.

How will he do it? That's right. Obamacare. The stimulus. The EPA. Withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, cutting the military budget. And on… and on and on.

These are the modern signposts of utopia. If they are but done, Obamaites and statists insist, there will be utopia in America.

A concept Levin finds as laughable as it is dangerous, summing up the reality in Ameritopia's subtitle: "The Unmaking of America."

All of which makes the book Ameritopia not just a political player in 2012 but a very, very dangerous political player to Obama and his fellow statists.

Why?

Ameritopia rips the veil off of statism. In a precise, detailed, just-the-historical-facts ma'am fashion, Levin demonstrates that the Obama worldview -- indeed the entire worldview of the American left -- is now and has ever been nothing more than an ancient historical shell game. A sham from start to finish. Or, in the words of Plato, a "noble lie." Except, of course, as Levin documents repeatedly, there's nothing noble about the lie.

FROM PLATO, LEVIN MOVES on to Sir Thomas More's famous novel from 1516. That's right -- 1516, some 496 years ago. What was the title of More's novel? Right again. It was More's novel Utopia that gave title to the concept of a world where, as Levin notes, a society exists "in which every need is answered and every want is either met or made results in near-perfect existence."
Chillingly, More anticipated Obamacare by almost 500 years. In Thomas More's Utopia there is -- wait for it --free health care. Writes More:

For in the circuit of the city… have four hospitals, so big, so wide, so ample, and so large, that they may seem four little towns.… These hospitals are so well appointed, and with all things necessary to health so furnished… there is no sick person in all the city that had not rather lie there than at home in his own house.

And what happens in More's Utopia to those who are very ill? Writes Levin of More's idea:

Therefore, individuals who suffer from incurable diseases or fatal conditions, and who are no longer of use to the society in general are encouraged to commit suicide to ease their pain and alleviate the burden they represent to island civilization.

And then specifically quotes the great concept of health care in Utopia as written by More himself:

They that be persuaded finish their lives willingly, either with hunger, or else die in their sleep without any feeling of death.

In other words, Thomas More as an early enthusiast of what Sarah Palin called the "death panels" of ObamaCare.

Thus Barack Obama's philosophy at work in the 16th century.

LEVIN CONTINUES this devastating tour of various utopias and the always present authoritarian mindset. On through Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, and finally that most influential utopian of modern times -- Karl Marx and his utopian vision of class struggle: The Communist Manifesto.
Forget, if you can, the sheer evil, the mass murder, the totalitarianism that history now records in considerable detail as accompanying Marx's idea of utopia.

Focus on present-day America and one will understand why Mark Levin calls his book Ameritopia and exactly why this book is destined to attract the utter fury of today's utopians.

Take a look around your own home -- a good, long look (that is, if you haven't lost your home as a result of the utopian quest for homeownership for all). Take a good look. What do you see? Levin describes Ameritopia as it appears in your American home:

Inside the home, the federal government regulates washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, dishwasher detergents, microwave ovens, toilets, showerheads, heating and cooling systems, refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans and boilers, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, lightbulbs, certain renovations, fitness equipment, clothing, baby cribs, pacifiers, rattles and toys, marbles, latex balloons, matchbooks, bunk beds, mattresses, mattress pads, televisions, radios, cell phones, iPods and other digital media devices, computer components, video recording devices, speakers, batteries, battery charges, power supplies, stereo equipment, garage door openers, lawn mowers, lawn darts, pool slides…toothpaste, deodorant, dentures…

In case this list hasn't staggered, Levin cites a report from the Heartland Institute that performs the same Ameritopia checklist on your automobile. Sure enough, in the land that has become Ameritopia the cumulative utopian list of mandates for your car includes standards for your car's

engines, bumpers, headrests, seat belts, door latches, brakes, fuel systems, and windshields" as well as side-door guard beams and energy absorbing steering columns…airbags, a centered/rear brake light and electronic stability control system…

And that doesn't even included the federal government standards the Cato Institute reports that require, Levin notes, "new car fleets to average 35.5 mpg by 2016."

Is it any wonder, then, that with Ameritopia so intimately woven into the fabric of your everyday life that the larger, more cosmic world of government policy is chock-a-block with the Ameritopia mindset?

Beginning with the famous entitlements of Social Security and Medicare, there is not an area of American life untouched by the unsatiable government mandates of Ameritopia. Levin points out a fraction of them:

Homebuilders must comply with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.

And on it goes. And on and on it goes.

Is it any wonder than that Americans in 2012 are rebelling? Is it any wonder that Tea Partiers were waving Levin's Liberty and Tyranny in the air at their rallies?

One of the more interesting aspects of Liberty and Tyranny was Levin's ability to popularize a very old and practically vanished word: the "statist." Meaning someone who believes in the supremacy of the state -- which, of course, describes the modern American leftist perfectly.

In Ameritopia, Levin will do for John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu what he did for the term statist. Make them famous -- if famous again.

Why?

Because it is Locke, Montesquieu, and the always well-known Alexis de Tocqueville who have long ago recognized the threat of utopians and detailed the proper response.

It was the English philosopher and physician Locke, one of the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment, and the French philosopher Montesquieu, who together provided a considerable amount of the thinking that would later be used by the Founders as they carefully crafted the Constitution.

It was Locke who insisted on understanding the true nature of man, says Levin, as opposed to utopians and their lust for "insensate societies based on their own prejudices and fantasies." And that true nature is, among other things, imperfect. Utopia, is, then, unobtainable. Yesterday, today, tomorrow -- and forever.

LET'S GO BACK for a moment to but two examples of utopian imperfection that Levin provides in his book. Two examples that are well familiar to every American: the "entitlements" of Social Security and Medicare.

What, after all, was the real origin of these two programs aimed at the elderly and health care for the elderly? Who thought them up? If you are under the impression these programs were the work of assorted 20th century liberal intellectuals and politicians you would be wrong. Yes, Levin names the names of those involved in creating these programs. Columbia University professor Henry Rogers Seager came up with the modern idea of Social Security in his 1910 study Social Insurance: A Program of Social Reform. There is the later bread-crumb trail of American liberal politicians like Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and 1960s-era House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills.

But, in the end, of course, the real origin of these twin modern problems was that each of these people (and more) were busily trying to create utopia in America.

And, oh by the way, there was that political side benefit of thinking this would elect fellow liberals through eternity.

What was the original utopian concept? Social insurance for seniors and medical care as well. What could possibly go wrong? What went wrong, of course, is the point Levin highlights throughout his book. In the quest for a perfect world, utopians time and again and always crash into the rocks of reality.

Says Levin of these two pillars ofAmeritopia:

… in 2010, the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] estimated that unfunded obligations for Medicare and Social Security are $25trillion and $21.4 trillion, respectively. Both programs are economically unviable.

In other words: Oops.

Or, as Ronald Reagan might say: There they go again.

Why is this happening to Social Security and Medicare? Why are they destined to crash on the rocks of economic unviability?

Because while on the surface these two programs were supposed to be dealing with social insurance and health care for seniors -- in fact what they were really were nothing more than 20th century efforts at bringing utopia to America. Establishing a country where, in complete violation of Locke's principles about the nature of man, nothing could go wrong. Benefiting politically from selling the whole thing to the gullible.

Now -- with the predictability of the sun rising in East -- economic disaster looms. Shocker!

SO. LET'S BRING THIS BACK where we started.

The idea of Ameritopia as a political player at the dead center of the 2012 presidential campaign.
What Mark Levin has done with this book -- exactly as he did with Liberty and Tyranny -- is shine a blinding spotlight on what's really going wrong in this country. (And the favorable reviews are already coming, as here at PJ Media.) He has illustrated in vivid terms the considerable danger posed by utopian masterminds who have led this country, by leaps and bounds when not by degrees, to what Levin accurately calls a "Post-Constitutional America."

With considerable hard work Levin has managed to pull together for modern consumption a serious understanding of what Americans are really hearing and seeing when they hear, say, Barack Obama go on and on about being a transformational president halting the rise of the oceans or Obamacare or the need for an almost trillion dollar government stimulus.

Discerning conservatives will have their own reasons to be discomfited when they hear Mitt Romney defend Romneycare or Newt Gingrich attack Bain Capital or Rick Santorum discuss why he supported earmarks.

In their own fashion, each and every one of these people, the presumed "great men" of our era, are looking for a slice of utopia. Looking, as Levin has noted elsewhere, "to create ideal societies." Ideal societies that can in fact never exist but inevitably wind up creating totalitarian regimes.

It also needs to be said here that Mark Levin is thoroughly establishing himself as a serious public intellectual -- a William Buckley, a Daniel Patrick Moynihan (a John Locke?) of today. Yes, yes, yes, the talk radio "get off the phone you big dope" persona is entertaining. But make no mistake here. Mark Levin is a considerably serious man, a serious thinker whose books matter.

What Mark Levin has accomplished here is to write a book that, figuratively speaking, blows up the whole, long on-going game centered around Plato's "noble lie." Thanks to Levin, John Locke, the "profound" influence on the Founders, is, finally, ready for his close-up.

Ameritopia is not just a book, it's a dangerous book. A serious political player. Dangerous to utopians from the White House to your neighbor's house who, in the eternal human quest for a perfection unobtainable by definition, are possessed in trying to construct a society that will -- can only -- lead to disaster and despotism.

It asks, in its author's words, the central question of campaign 2012 and beyond:

"So, my fellow countrymen, which do we choose --Ameritopia or America?"

BOOM!

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

Today's Tune: The Pierces - Glorious

2012-01-18T09:21:00.002-05:00

Why the GOP Candidates Should Talk about Russia

2012-01-18T09:17:00.001-05:00

By Daniel Vajdic
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 18, 2012

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, war veterans and cadets watch the military parade in Red Square (Photo: REUTERS)

There’s a tendency to emphasize the obvious when critiquing President Obama’s foreign policy. Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons continues unchecked. The Israelis and Palestinians are no closer to finding a solution that would ensure Israel’s security and establish a functional, responsible Palestinian state. Meanwhile, a complete U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq has unleashed sectarian tensions, perhaps bringing into question Iraq’s viability as a unified state, and creating the conditions for an expansion of Iranian influence.

But Obama’s Russia policy — the so-called “reset” — has gone largely unnoted. This is especially surprising given that the administration advertises the Russian reset as one of its principal foreign-policy triumphs. Most casual observers don’t seem to be aware that if the president were asked to rank his achievements in the realm of foreign relations, he would probably list an “improvement” in U.S.–Russia relations behind only Osama bin Laden’s death and perhaps the jumbled Libya operation.

Obama has boasted of a number of successes in the context of the reset. First among those is the New START nuclear-arms-reduction treaty, which caps U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arms at 1,550 warheads and limits each side’s deployed and nondeployed delivery vehicles. In Moscow, Obama negotiated an expansion of Russian supply routes to Afghanistan for nonlethal matériel. Moreover, since Obama announced the reset, Russia has agreed to an additional round of U.N. Security Council sanctions against Tehran and canceled a sale of its advanced S-300 air-defense system to Iran.

However, most of the reset’s supposed achievements are much less substantive than Obama claims, in some cases simply don’t exist, and, taken as a whole, represent nothing more than a well-devised marketing ploy to mask a scarcity of foreign-policy triumphs elsewhere. Unless unilateral U.S. disarmament is the underlying objective, New START should not be seen as an accomplishment. Russia was already below the new ceilings in both strategic nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles when the treaty came into force. The U.S. has had to reduce its stockpile as Russia increases its own.

Supply routes to Afghanistan via Russian territory — the northern portion of the Northern Distribution Network — have become increasingly important since Islamabad shut down transit corridors through Pakistan in late November. U.S. relations with Pakistan are arguably at a post-9/11 nadir.

Still, there are a few problems with the Russian option. First, Russia limits NATO to nonlethal equipment and only allows the alliance to ship supplies from the West to Afghanistan, not in the reverse direction. Second, the Kremlin may prove to be no less erratic than Pakistan. Moscow’s ambassador to NATO recently threatened to cut off Russian transit routes to Afghanistan unless the U.S. agrees to scale back its missile-defense plans in Europe. Finally, an expansion of the Russian route makes the U.S. even more reliant on the Kremlin, which may use its leverage to extract concessions in unrelated areas. In addition to missile defense, Russia’s demands could include reduced U.S. engagement with the countries of the former Soviet Union — Moscow’s “sphere of privileged interests” — and a diminution in U.S. criticism of what can mildly be called the Putin regime’s democratic shortcomings.

Moreover, to suggest that the Kremlin is cooperating over Afghanistan because of the reset is patently wrong. Perhaps more than any other country in the world save the U.S., Russia fears the return of the Taliban and the further diffusion of Islamic fundamentalism into Central Asia, which threatens its southern periphery. In the words of Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Moscow assists the U.S. in Afghanistan because “it serves our security interests.”

On Iran, the reset has not fundamentally altered Russia’s approach. As evidence to the contrary, the administration most often points to the Kremlin’s support for a fourth round of U.N. Security Council sanctions and its decision to scrap delivery of the S-300 air-defense system to Tehran. But none of this represents a real shift in policy. From 2006 to 2008, Russia backed three rounds of sanctions against Iran. Since the inception of the reset three years ago, however, Russia has supported only one set of multilateral sanctions.

In fact, Russia now opposes sanctions, claiming that the option has been “exhausted,” and its intransigence on the issue has only grown in recent months. The Kremlin condemned an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report in November that provided further evidence of Iran’s ongoing efforts to weaponize its nuclear program. Meanwhile, Russia’s state nuclear-energy corporation, Rosatom, has expressed readiness to construct additional nuclear reactors in Iran.

The decision to cancel sale of the S-300 — an advanced air-defense system capable of guarding Iran’s nuclear installations — was certainly a positive step. However, rather than resulting from the reset, the move is simply an indication that the Kremlin adheres to some semblance of caution. It doesn’t want to see recently delivered Russian military equipment killing Israeli or American pilots in the event of a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. There’s also some evidence to suggest that Moscow had further interests in abandoning the the S-300 contract: Dropping it may have been part of a quid pro quo in which Israel agreed to sell drones to Russia in exchange for the Kremlin’s pledge to halt delivery of the S-300 to Iran and MiG-31s to Syria. Moreover, Russia’s commitment to sell other weapons to Tehran dilutes the significance of its S-300 reversal. Most recently, Russia sent Iran a set of sophisticated radar jammers.

In its categorical praise for the reset, the Obama administration also glosses over Russian threats to target U.S. missile-defense components in Europe, to station tactical ballistic missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave, and to develop new weaponry aimed at the U.S. and its allies. What’s more, Moscow has blocked sanctions against Syria and continues to sell arms to the Assad regime.

But the Republican candidates should raise the issue of Russia for reasons that go beyond President Obama’s misrepresentation of the reset. Last month’s massive protests in Moscow and other cities have shaken the Putin regime to its core. In September, Prime Minister Putin and his on-again-off-again rival, President Dmitry Medvedev, shamelessly announced that they would switch jobs after Russia’s March presidential election — and openly admitted that they had made this decision “years ago,” thus proving that Medvedev’s entire presidency was staged to give the illusion of competitive politics.

Putin’s brazen proclamation that he intends to reclaim the Kremlin was followed three months later by Russia’s December 4 parliamentary election, in which widespread ballot-box-stuffing allowed the United Russia party — Putin’s party — to fraudulently win a majority of seats. The second event coming so soon after the first roused many Russians from their state of political numbness. Since then, tens of thousands have taken to the streets of Moscow on two separate occasions. And more demonstrations are being planned in the coming weeks.

Even if these protests fizzle out, however, the underlying frustration with Putin’s rigid and increasingly ineffective governance will remain, and undoubtedly grow, in the absence of substantive reforms. The March presidential vote could become a flashpoint. An evidently rigged Putin victory, with 60 to 70 percent of the vote, coupled with the exclusion of genuine opposition candidates, would create the conditions for an explosive situation in which the regime may very well resort to violence.

For the first time in over a decade, Russia is on the verge of fundamental change, and the GOP candidates would be wise to voice support for the country’s burgeoning democratic movement. President Obama’s tendency to exaggerate and, in some cases, fabricate the reset’s achievements, and his refusal to acknowledge Russian misbehavior, shouldn’t be ignored in favor of criticizing the administration’s more obvious foreign-policy failures.

— Daniel Vajdic is a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute.

I believe in Tim Tebow

2012-01-17T06:44:00.000-05:00

By Rick Reilly
http://espn.go.com/
January 13, 2012

Tim Tebow with Jacob Rainey, one of the many people dealing with health problems Tebow hosted at Broncos games this season. (Tim Tebow Foundation)

I've come to believe in Tim Tebow, but not for what he does on a football field, which is still three parts Dr. Jekyll and two parts Mr. Hyde.

No, I've come to believe in Tim Tebow for what he does off a football field, which is represent the best parts of us, the parts I want to be and so rarely am.
Who among us is this selfless?

Every week, Tebow picks out someone who is suffering, or who is dying, or who is injured. He flies these people and their families to the Broncos game, rents them a car, puts them up in a nice hotel, buys them dinner (usually at a Dave & Buster's), gets them and their families pregame passes, visits with them just before kickoff (!), gets them 30-yard-line tickets down low, visits with them after the game (sometimes for an hour), has them walk him to his car, and sends them off with a basket of gifts.

Home or road, win or lose, hero or goat.

Remember last week, when the world was pulling its hair out in the hour after Tebow had stunned the Pittsburgh Steelers with an 80-yard OT touchdown pass to Demaryius Thomas in the playoffs? And Twitter was exploding with 9,420 tweets about Tebow per second? When an ESPN poll was naming him the most popular athlete in America?

Tebow was spending that hour talking to 16-year-old Bailey Knaub about her 73 surgeries so far and what TV shows she likes.

"Here he'd just played the game of his life," recalls Bailey's mother, Kathy, of Loveland, Colo., "and the first thing he does after his press conference is come find Bailey and ask, 'Did you get anything to eat?' He acted like what he'd just done wasn't anything, like it was all about Bailey."

More than that, Tebow kept corralling people into the room for Bailey to meet. Hey, Demaryius, come in here a minute. Hey, Mr. Elway. Hey, Coach Fox.

Even though sometimes-fatal Wegener's granulomatosis has left Bailey with only one lung, the attention took her breath away.

"It was the best day of my life," she emailed. "It was a bright star among very gloomy and difficult days. Tim Tebow gave me the greatest gift I could ever imagine. He gave me the strength for the future. I know now that I can face any obstacle placed in front of me. Tim taught me to never give up because at the end of the day, today might seem bleak but it can't rain forever and tomorrow is a new day, with new promises."

I read that email to Tebow, and he was honestly floored.

"Why me? Why should I inspire her?" he said. "I just don't feel, I don't know, adequate. Really, hearing her story inspires me."

It's not just NFL defenses that get Tebowed. It's high school girls who don't know whether they'll ever go to a prom. It's adults who can hardly stand. It's kids who will die soon.

For the game at Buffalo, it was Charlottesville, Va., blue-chip high school QB Jacob Rainey, who lost his leg after a freak tackle in a scrimmage. Tebow threw three interceptions in that Buffalo game and the Broncos were crushed 40-14.

"He walked in and took a big sigh and said, 'Well, that didn't go as planned,'" Rainey remembers. "Where I'm from, people wonder how sincere and genuine he is. But I think he's the most genuine person I've ever met."

There's not an ounce of artifice or phoniness or Hollywood in this kid Tebow, and I've looked everywhere for it.

Take 9-year-old Zac Taylor, a child who lives in constant pain. Immediately after Tebow shocked the Chicago Bears with a 13-10 comeback win, Tebow spent an hour with Zac and his family. At one point, Zac, who has 10 doctors, asked Tebow whether he has a secret prayer for hospital visits. Tebow whispered it in his ear. And because Tebow still needed to be checked out by the Broncos' team doctor, he took Zac in with him, but only after they had whispered it together.

And it's not always kids. Tom Driscoll, a 55-year-old who is dying of brain cancer at a hospice in Denver, was Tebow's guest for the Cincinnati game. "The doctors took some of my brain," Driscoll says, "so my short-term memory is kind of shot. But that day I'll never forget. Tim is such a good man."

This whole thing makes no football sense, of course. Most NFL players hardly talk to teammates before a game, much less visit with the sick and dying.

Isn't that a huge distraction?

"Just the opposite," Tebow says. "It's by far the best thing I do to get myself ready. Here you are, about to play a game that the world says is the most important thing in the world. Win and they praise you. Lose and they crush you. And here I have a chance to talk to the coolest, most courageous people. It puts it all into perspective. The game doesn't really matter. I mean, I'll give 100 percent of my heart to win it, but in the end, the thing I most want to do is not win championships or make a lot of money, it's to invest in people's lives, to make a difference."

So that's it. I've given up giving up on him. I'm a 100 percent believer. Not in his arm. Not in his skills. I believe in his heart, his there-will-definitely-be-a-pony-under-the-tree optimism, the way his love pours into people, right up to their eyeballs, until they believe they can master the hopeless comeback, too.

Remember the QB who lost his leg, Jacob Rainey? He got his prosthetic leg a few weeks ago, and he wants to play high school football next season. Yes, tackle football. He'd be the first to do that on an above-the-knee amputation.

Hmmm. Wonder where he got that crazy idea?

"Tim told me to keep fighting, no matter what," Rainey says. "I am."

Follow Rick on Twitter @ReillyRick
Love the column, hate the column, got a better idea? Go here.

Rick Reilly is the 11-time National Sportswriter of the Year. He contributes essays and commentary to "Monday Night Countdown," "SportsCenter," and ESPN/ABC golf and tennis coverage. He's also the host of "Homecoming," ESPN's unique, one-hour interview show set in the hometowns of legendary athletes. For more Rick, check out the archive.

Feel like taking a detour from sane sports? Try Rick's latest book, "Sports from Hell."

Between the Covers: Stephen Hunter on "Soft Target"

2012-01-17T05:20:00.000-05:00

[Click on article title to hear interview - jtf]

Charles Dickens’s Inner Child

2012-01-17T05:14:00.000-05:00

While it’s tempting to see Charles Dickens as a fusion of his heroes and villains, on the great British novelist’s 200th birthday his true gifts should be recognized: a respect for childhood and a willingness to atone for his mistakes.

By Christopher Hitchens
Illustration by André Carrilho
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/02/hitchens-201202

Those who study Charles Dickens, or who keep up the great cult of his admiration, had been leading a fairly quiet life until a few years ago. The occasional letter bobs to the surface, or a bit of reminiscence is discovered, or perhaps some fragment of a souvenir from his first or second American tour. The pages of that agreeable little journal The Dickensian remained easy to turn, with little possibility of any great shock. At least since The Invisible Woman, Claire Tomalin’s definitive, 1991 exposure of the other woman in Dickens’s life—the once enigmatic Nelly Ternan—there hasn’t been any scandal or revelation.

And then, in late 2002, The Dickensian carried a little bombshell of a tale: it seemed that in 1862, during Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s visit to London, he had met Dickens. And not only met him but elicited from him the exact admission that we would all have wanted the great man to make. Here is how it goes in English, as summarized by Dostoyevsky in an 1878 letter to a certain Stepan Dimitriyevich Yanovsky. According to this, the two men met at the offices of Dickens’s own personal magazine, All the Year Round. And here’s how the confessional session went:

He told me that all the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been, and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of causeless enmity towards those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort, his shrinking from those whom he ought to love, being used up in what he wrote. There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters; from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life. Only two people? I asked.

So convenient and neat was this package that many first-time recipients endorsed it without even bothering to cut the ribbon, let alone ask why something as tasty as a Dostoyevsky original had lain unscrutinized for so long. Original? Come to think of it, where is the Russian version? Between 1862 and 1878—in other words, the dates of the meeting and the report of it—what was S. D. Yanovsky doing to busy himself? We know little about him, other than that he treated the great writer’s hemorrhoids. The Russian version of their correspondence doesn’t seem at all traceable now.

So it was sweet while it lasted, the rumor of a meeting between two great literary titans: an encounter that one of them didn’t even find interesting enough to put in a letter. It could have happened, but I doubt it. That’s the wonderful thing about the celebration of Charles Dickens: he truly is ranked among our immortals, and it truly doesn’t matter if the legend should sprout and then drop a Dostoyevsky or two.

We can certainly count the coincidences between his biography and his fiction among the things that make Dickens eternally fascinating. Opening his own memoir, the most inept fictional narrator of my generation showed that he was out of his depth by dismissing “all that David Copperfield kind of crap.” Mr. Holden Caulfield may one day be forgotten, but the man who stumbled across the little boy trapped in the sweatshop basement, and realized their kinship, will never be. In the second chapter of David Copperfield, and not in any tongue-in-cheek exchange with the expert on the lower depths of St. Petersburg, is where we find the clue:

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

Charming, is it not—seductive even—the manner in which that somewhat overpunctuated Victorian sentence suddenly gives way and yields a deposit of “freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased.” It is all there to emphasize the one central and polar and critical point that Dickens wishes to enjoin on us all: whatever you do—hang on to your childhood! He was true to this in his fashion, both in ways that delight me and in ways that do not. He loved the idea of a birthday celebration, being lavish about it, reminding people that they were once unborn and are now launched. This is bighearted, and we might all do a bit more of it. It would help me to forgive, perhaps just a little, the man who helped generate the Hallmark birthday industry and who, with some of his less imposing and more moistly sentimental prose scenes in A Christmas Carol, took the Greatest Birthday Ever Told and helped make it into the near Ramadan of protracted obligatory celebration now darkening our Decembers.

But imagine the power that Dickens had. By a few brilliant strokes of the pen, he revived and restored a popular festival and made it into a sort of social solidarity: a common defense against the Gradgrinds and the Bounderbys and the men who had been responsible for the misery of the Hungry Forties. For the first time, the downtrodden English people were able to see a celebrity, a man of wealth and fame, who was on their side. We have verbatim reports—sometimes in letters from the author himself—of the speeches he made to enthusiastic crowds in halls across the nation, just as we have the author’s cue cards for the electrifying evenings in 1869 when he staged the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes, so it’s clear that Dickens had the sort of demagogic power that could have been dangerous in other hands. It’s also quite clear that he can’t have modeled a villain like Sikes, or a heroine like Nell, on his own character. No, he was drawing on much wider and deeper sources of potency. The main one was the sheer stubborn existence of so many people whom the system had disregarded. Begin thinking about it and you start to whisper a list to yourself: the pathetic Jo, the crossing sweeper; Smike; Mr. Micawber; Amy Dorrit; Mr. Dick—all of them with pain to feel and a life to lead, and many of them kept going (like poor Dick Swiveller) only by a certain unique sense of humor and the absurd. Dickens was able to mine this huge resource of London life, becoming its conductor and chronicler like nobody since Shakespeare himself, and always remembering, as he noted in the last stages of The Old Curiosity Shop, to “keep the child in view.”

And here’s my birthday or anniversary present to you. You can forget that sense of guilt you have. The one about being not quite sure which character is from which book. None of us really knows, and there is no shame in it. Probably Dickens himself wasn’t certain much of the time. As Jane Smiley notices in Charles Dickens:

The first ten parts of Oliver Twist were written at the same time Dickens was writing the last ten parts of Pickwick. Each section of Oliver Twist ran to about eight thousand words, and each section of Pickwick ran to about that or a bit more, so Dickens was writing ninety pages a month of these novels, while also working on other essays, articles, speeches, and plays. Evidence is that he would write the dark, ironic chapters of Oliver Twist first, then the light, comic chapters of Pickwick.

So it’s all right to confuse Podsnap and Pecksniff, or to ask whether the incident of the mutton chops in the fireplace is at Mrs. Todgers’s establishment or Mrs. Jellyby’s, and whether the missing baby belongs to either or both of them, or to Mrs. Gamp—a character over whom Dickens quite lost control. The same goes for the settings: the Circumlocution Office and the High Court of Chancery—indeed the whole vast apparatus of the Jarndyce-and-Jarndyce lawsuit—are all part of the same narrative. Cut into it at any point and you have taken a simultaneous tranche out of Sydney Carton and the “infant phenomenon.” That Dickens should have had the nerve to call himself, simply, “the Inimitable” may seem conceited. All right then, so it was.

We can’t hope to “read” all of Dickens by the light of this single candle of access to boyhood. He showed his biographer John Forster a section from the autobiography he never completed that said quite a lot about his apprenticeship to the grime and shame of the blacking factory so that Forster could write about “the attraction of repulsion” as the spring of David Copperfield, and indeed of everything he wrote. This leaves a nice little area of darkness in which we can speculate about the motives of the lad as he maneuvers for his liberty. On the other hand, we don’t have so much guidance on which to rely when it comes to the pallid, worried, wraithlike little girl who slips disturbingly through so much of Dickens’s fiction, taking here the shape of Little Dorrit, and of Florence Dombey with her brother, and then the infant Agnes and—above all—Little Nell. It seems impossible that no such rapidly evaporating diminutive female haunted Dickens’s own life at some stage. Possibly he simply and shrewdly “knew” that Victorian guilt about the endangerment of such creatures was a continuous “draw” (“Is Nell dead?” they say the New York crowds cried out as the dreaded installment of The Old Curiosity Shop was freighted to the waiting wharf), but we have to draw our own conclusions from scanty evidence.

For instance, and from a deep boiling layer of anxiety and rage that goes well beyond anything Dostoyevsky might or might not have been told about, we have the Dickens who wrote to his best female friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts, in 1857, telling her of his yearnings to “exterminate” the Indian rebels against British rule. We have the Dickens who joined his friends Thomas Carlyle and Ruskin against Darwin, T. H. Huxley, J. S. Mill, and the other Victorian humanitarians, to support Governor Eyre of Jamaica in his war of torture and execution and reprisal against the rebels of that country. We have—this is in some ways the most depressing of all—Dickens’s surreptitious hatred for Americans, even as he was making his way from one scene of their immense hospitality to the next in the 1840s. Admittedly, he had a qualified beef with those Yankee publishers who wouldn’t part with royalties, but this hardly licences what he wrote in private to his friend the actor William Macready about America’s being “a low, coarse and mean nation” that was “driven by a herd of rascals Pah! I never knew what it was to feel disgust and contempt, ’till I travelled in America.” The Dickens mean streak is quite something when you strike it.

This renders it all the more impressive when he tries to make restitution. For instance, he was obviously very impressed when a prominent Jewish lady, Mrs. Eliza Davis, wrote him an anguished letter after the 1838 publication of Oliver Twist. She was obviously terribly upset about the character of Fagin and was not even quite willing to concede that some Jews had been involved in the stolen-goods racket. At any rate, Dickens went into the matter and convinced himself that he’d been part of an injustice. He thereupon did three things: He softened the description of Fagin in later versions of the book. When he himself took part in public “readings” from the story, he downplayed the “Jewish” characteristics of the villain. And he then created a whole new character to order. In Our Mutual Friend, we encounter a Jewish moneylender named Mr. Riah, who is friendly and helpful to Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. I admit that I find this personage almost too altruistic to be true, but it says something for Dickens, surely, that he would take someone who had the same occupation as the infamous Shylock, but none of Shylock’s vices, and insert him at the heart of business, at a time when vulgar prejudice was easy to stir up. The story isn’t as well known as it ought to be.

The next instance of the victory of the large spirit comes from his second visit to the United States, in 1867. Dickens did his very best to clean up after himself, once again accepting lavish hospitality, but this time not taking revenge for it in a nasty, boring novel named Martin Chuzzlewit or a cruel and hastily written travelogue named “American Notes” (For General Circulation), in which the not-too-clever pun suggests that American currency is bankrupt. Having successfully miscalculated the exchange rate, Dickens publicly offered to include a speech of praise for the U.S.A. in reprints of his two books about the country—and actually kept the promise even after the wild applause had died away and he had gone back home to England. Possibly he would not be an American hero if he had not performed this now forgotten act. But then, the “attraction-repulsion” principle, of which he spoke so readily, seems to have meant that he could sometimes let himself be “claimed” by those—from his neglected children to the mobs that he so feared—who loved him in spite of himself.

Joe Paterno’s first interview since the Penn State-Sandusky scandal

2012-01-17T04:28:00.000-05:00

By Sally Jenkins
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
January 14, 2012

Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno gestures at his home in State College, Pa., during his first interview since being fired two months ago. (John McDonnell / Associated Press)

STATE COLLEGE, PA. — Joe Paterno sat in a wheelchair at the family kitchen table where he has eaten, prayed and argued for more than a half-century. All around him family members were shouting at each other, yet he was whispering. His voice sounded like wind blowing across a field of winter stalks, rattling the husks. Lung cancer has robbed him of the breath to say all that he wants to about the scandal he still struggles to comprehend, and which ended his career as head football coach at Penn State University. The words come like gusts. “I wanted to build up, not break down,” he said.

Crowded around the table were his three voluble sons, Scott, Jay, David, daughter Mary Kay, and his wife of 50 years, Sue, all chattering at once. In the middle of the table a Lazy Susan loaded with trays of cornbread and mashed potatoes spun by, swirling fast as the arguments. “If you go hungry, it’s your own fault,” Paterno likes to say. But Paterno, 85, could not eat. He sipped Pepsi over crushed ice from a cup. Once, it would have been bourbon. His hand showed a tremor, and a wig replaced his once-fine head of black hair.

Paterno’s hope is that time will be his ally when it comes to judging what he built, versus what broke down. “I’m not 31 years old trying to prove something to anybody,” he said. “I know where I am.” This is where he is: wracked by radiation and chemotherapy, in a wheelchair with a broken pelvis, and “shocked and saddened” as he struggles to explain a breakdown of devastating proportions. Jerry Sandusky, his former assistant coach at Penn State from 1969 to 1999, is charged with more than 50 counts of sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period. He maintains his innocence. If Sandusky is guilty, “I’m sick about it,” Paterno said.

How Sandusky, 67, allegedly evaded detection by state child services, university administrators, teachers, parents, donors and Paterno himself remains an open question. “I wish I knew,” Paterno said. “I don’t know the answer to that. It’s hard.” Almost as difficult for Paterno to answer is the question of why, after receiving a report in 2002 that Sandusky had abused a boy in the shower of Penn State’s Lasch Football Building, and forwarding it to his superiors, he didn’t follow up more aggressively.

“I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” he said. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”

Former athletic director Tim Curley and school vice president Gary Schultz face charges of perjury and failing to report suspected child abuse, based on their inaction. They have pleaded innocent. Though he is not charged with a crime, Penn State president Graham Spanier was fired on Nov. 9, along with Paterno.

Paterno is accused of no wrongdoing, and in fact authorities have said he fulfilled his legal obligations by reporting to his superiors. Nevertheless, the university Board of Trustees summarily dismissed him with a late-night phone call four days after Sandusky’s arrest. At about 10 p.m., Paterno and Sue were getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. An assistant athletic director was at the door, and wordlessly handed Sue a slip of paper. There was nothing on it but the name of the vice chairman of trustees, John Surma, with a phone number. They stood frozen by the bedside in their nightclothes, Sue in a robe and Paterno in pajamas and a Penn State sweatshirt. Paterno dialed the number.

Surma told Paterno, “In the best interests of the university, you are terminated.” Paterno hung up and repeated the words to his wife. She grabbed the phone and redialed.

“After 61 years he deserved better,” she snapped. “He deserved better.”

The firing provoked a riot on campus that night.

To Penn State students, Paterno was less a person than a beloved monument. He had arrived at a “cow college” in 1950 as an assistant coach armed with a flathead haircut, a Brooklyn accent and a degree from Brown. As the head coach from 1966 on, he struck an austerely iconic pose, managing to be both fierce and bookish, with his black cleats and his thick black-framed glasses. To his rivals, he was a holier-than-thou prig who intimated he was more principled than they were.

Under his leadership Penn State football became a kind of gross national product as he won more games than any other coach in history, yet regularly posted high graduation rates — his team was ranked No.1 academically out of the top 25 football teams in 2009 and 2011 by the New America Foundation’s Academic Bowl Championship Series. The “cow college” grew into a public research university with $4.6 billion in revenue and buildings as large as airplane hangars. Beaver Stadium was renovated and enlarged six times during his tenure.

But after 61 years on the campus, Paterno cleared out his office in the space of one day. It was an end he was unprepared for. Yet it came with the realization that as the face of the university, people assign him greater responsibility than other officials.

“Whether it’s fair I don’t know, but they do it,” he said. “You would think I ran the show here.”

Over two separate conversations on Thursday and Friday, Paterno discussed his career and his actions relating to Sandusky. His attorney Wick Sollers of the Washington law firm King & Spalding, and a communications adviser, Dan McGinn of TMG Strategies, monitored the conversations, in part to be sure Paterno was lucid, since he has experienced fogginess from his chemo treatments, one of which he underwent the day before the first interview.

Since the scandal broke, Paterno has been largely silent while dealing with his health issues, despite scathing criticism that included accusations that he protected Sandusky and wielded more power in the cloistered community known as Happy Valley than the university president.

Paterno was initially reluctant to speak because “I wanted everybody to settle down,” he said. But he is so eager to defend his record that he insisted on continuing the interview from his bedside Friday morning, though ill. He was hospitalized for observation later in the day due to complications from the chemo but, according to the family, had improved by Saturday morning.

Mostly he sat in his wheelchair covered by a blanket, surrounded by pictures of his children and grandchildren, in the modest stone-and-plate-glass home he bought for $9,000 in 1966. The home, and the fact that his address and phone are still listed in the State College phone book, have oft been cited as evidence of his regular-Joe values. A good deal of what he earned has gone back to the university, in the form of donations to a library that bears his name and a campus spiritual center.

“My father said about money: ‘You have to have some. But you don’t have to have all of it. Just be honest with yourself.’ ”

He displays only a few mementos of his football career, jumbled in a glass case in a dark corner of his old study, a small, woody space. Most of the items in the case are personal souvenirs. Tucked in one corner is a card that says, “This marriage is interrupted for football season.” There are game balls, the most prominent one from Oct. 29, 2011, when the Nittany Lions defeated Illinois, 10-7, to make Paterno the winningest coach in the annals of major college football, with 409 victories.

Sandusky was arrested just a week later.

What Penn State officials knew about Sandusky and when is the subject of no fewer than five formal investigations. They range from state Attorney General Linda Kelly’s criminal investigation of Sandusky, to an NCAA inquiry, to Penn State’s in-house inquiry led by former FBI director Louis J. Freeh. The best-case scenario is that the institutional leaders were guilty of blindness, and an unfeeling self-absorption. The worst case is a criminal cover-up to protect a wealthy university’s reputation.

This is Paterno’s own account:

On a Saturday morning in 2002, an upset young assistant coach named Mike McQueary knocked on Paterno’s door to tell him he had witnessed a shocking scene in the Penn State football building showers. Until that moment, Paterno said, he had “no inkling” that Sandusky might be a sexual deviant. By then Sandusky was a former employee, with whom Paterno had little to do. Although Sandusky had been his close coaching associate and helped fashion Penn State defenses for three decades, their relationship was “professional, not social,” as Paterno described it. “He was a lot younger than me.” Sandusky had been out of the program for three years, and in fact, Paterno said he cannot recall the last time he had seen or spoken to Sandusky. “I can’t,” he said.

Sandusky retired in 1999, shortly after Penn State made the Alamo Bowl. The timing was curious. Paterno’s understanding was that Sandusky took early retirement on his recommendation after Paterno told him frankly that he would not become his successor. The state was offering 30-year employees a handsome buyout, and Paterno believed Sandusky should take it. Paterno was frustrated that Sandusky spent so much time working on his youth foundation, The Second Mile, that he was not available to help in recruiting and other coaching duties. Authorities now say Sandusky used Second Mile to meet and groom his alleged victims.

“He came to see me and we talked a little about his career,” Paterno said. “I said, you know, Jerry, you want to be head coach, you can’t do as much as you’re doing with the other operation. I said this job takes so much detail, and for you to think you can go off and get involved in fundraising and a lot of things like that. . . . I said you can’t do both, that’s basically what I told him.”

Paterno insists he was completely unaware of a 1998 police investigation into a report from a Second Mile mother that Sandusky had inappropriately touched her son in a shower. The inquiry ended when the local prosecutor declined to bring charges. “You know it wasn’t like it was something everybody in the building knew about,” Paterno said. “Nobody knew about it.”

Paterno contends that ignorance was the context with which he heard McQueary’s disturbing story in 2002. McQueary, sitting at Paterno’s kitchen table, told him that he had been at the football building late the evening before when he heard noises coming from the shower.

“He was very upset and I said why, and he was very reluctant to get into it,” Paterno said. “He told me what he saw, and I said, what? He said it, well, looked like inappropriate, or fondling, I’m not quite sure exactly how he put it. I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do. So I sat around. It was a Saturday. Waited till Sunday because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. And then I called my superiors and I said: ‘Hey, we got a problem, I think. Would you guys look into it?’ Cause I didn’t know, you know. We never had, until that point, 58 years I think, I had never had to deal with something like that. And I didn’t feel adequate.”

At that point, Paterno set up a meeting for McQueary and Curley, the athletic director, and Schultz, who oversaw university police. McQueary has testified that he gave both men a far more graphic description of what he witnessed, which he believed to be Sandusky sodomizing a boy of about 10, who had his hands against the shower wall. At the preliminary hearing for Curley and Schultz on Dec. 16, McQueary said he had been reluctant to go into similar “great detail about sexual acts” with Paterno, out of respect for the coach, who was 75 at the time.

Schultz and Curley have maintained that McQueary failed to impart the seriousness of what he saw to them as well. They never told police about the allegation, instead informing Sandusky he could no longer bring children to university facilities. Prosecutors say Sandusky continued to abuse boys for six more years.

Paterno has said, “In hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

Paterno’s portrait of himself is of an old-world man profoundly confused by what McQueary told him, and who was hesitant to make follow-up calls because he did not want to be seen as trying to exert any influence for or against Sandusky. “I didn’t know which way to go,” he said. “And rather than get in there and make a mistake . . .”

He reiterated that McQueary was unclear with him about the nature of what he saw — and added that even if McQueary had been more graphic, he’s not sure he would have comprehended it.

“You know, he didn’t want to get specific,” Paterno said. “And to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it.”

Paterno declined to judge Sandusky, or his other Penn State colleagues. “I think we got to wait and see what happens,” he said. “The courts are taking care of it, the legal system is taking care of it.”

According to Sollers, the attorney, Paterno has no legal exposure in the Sandusky case. Paterno has cooperated fully with the investigation, and has “met on multiple occasions voluntarily” with representatives from the attorney general’s office, Sollers said. “In my judgment Coach Paterno has no legal liability in this matter. In fact, he acted completely appropriately in reporting the only allegation he received to his superiors and had every expectation that the allegation would be investigated thoroughly.”

Paterno has felt smaller repercussions.

His son Scott says Paterno has been “shunned” by many in the university, though he did hear from current Penn State President Rodney Erickson last week when he made a $100,000 donation to the school. His name has been removed from trophies. The Maxwell Football Club of Philadelphia has discontinued its Joseph V. Paterno Award, which was to be given to coaches who made a positive impact. A nomination for the Presidential Medal of Freedom was withdrawn.

But Joe Paterno is not the victim here, he reminds you.

“You know, I’m not as concerned about me,” he said. “What’s happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen great grandchildren. I’ve had a wonderful experience here at Penn State. I don’t want to walk away from this thing bitter. I want to be helpful.”

The Paternos say they think about the real potential victims every time they look at their own children. “I got three boys and two girls,” Paterno said. “It’s sickening.” His knee-jerk response is to go back to Flatbush. “Violence is not the way to handle it,” he said. “But for me, I’d get a bunch of guys and say let’s go punch somebody in the nose.” Sue Paterno is more blunt. “If someone touched my child, there wouldn’t be a trial, I would have killed them,” she said. “That would be my attitude, because you have destroyed someone for life.”

She sighed. “It’s a bad scene for this happy valley.”

The Sandusky investigation has torn apart a cloistered town-and-gown community where everyone knows everyone — including Sandusky. Old friends cannot talk to each other because criminal trials are imminent. Recently Sue went to the funeral of Tim Curley’s mother. The Paternos have known John Surma for years — Paterno recruited his brother. Underneath the tension is the complicated knowledge that if Sandusky is guilty, he was as good at seducing the adults as he was the children.

If nothing else, the Paternos say, perhaps the Sandusky case will raise consciousness in other communities the way it has been raised in theirs. “We are going to become a more aware society,” Sue said. “Maybe we will look for clues.” She wonders what signs she missed all those years, when they felt so successful and sure of themselves.

“I had no clue,” she said. “I thought doctors looked for child abuse in a hospital, in a bruise or something.”

It remains to be seen, barring any new revelations, whether there will be a reappraisal of Paterno’s life and record at Penn State. Eventually, his family hopes, there will be healing and forgiveness in the community, and the outlines of the man they insist Paterno is, and not the monument or monumental target, will reemerge: A modest, decent, fundamentally devoted coach who always loved books more than money.

His starting salary was just $20,000. In 1972 the New England Patriots offered him $1.3 million to become coach and general manager. But at 5:30 a.m. on the day he intended fly to Boston to accept, Paterno woke up and realized it was mistake. He said to his wife: “You went to bed with a millionaire but you woke up with me. I’m not going.” He stayed at Penn State, though he was making just $35,000. In 2008 his salary of $1.03 million was still fractional compared to peers, some of whom now make $4 million.

Paterno’s record is not perfect. Anyone who won on his scale has an ungenerous competitive streak and nascent ego. His love for higher learning — he likes to name-drop Puccini and Virgil — could tip over into superiority. He could show a temper, as he did in 1995 when a camera caught him delivering a profane on-field tirade.

His football program was not immune to the problems of big-time college athletics. An ESPN inquiry found that from 2002 to 2007, 46 Penn State football players faced criminal charges. But he liked working with problem cases and turning them around. “Hotshots,” he still calls them today. The 2007 team had 19 players who earned Academic all-Big Ten honors. “The bigger the problem the guy was, the more I enjoyed it when we had success,” he said.

Over the course of his career, 47 of his players made Academic all-American, the third-highest total among institutions playing at the championship level.

He loved his work. “They were all days I looked forward to,” he said. His philosophy was simple. “My thing was play as hard as you can, don’t be stupid, pay attention to details, and have enough guts in the clutch that you’re not afraid to make a play,” he said. “Some things I thought were important for a young man to know.”

Early on, Paterno vowed that he would try to never lose perspective. In 1968 he said: “We’re trying to win football games, don’t misunderstand that. But I don’t want it to ruin our lives if we lose. I don’t want us ever to become the kind of place where an 8-2 season is a tragedy.”

Asked if he succeeded in keeping the vow, he said: “I stayed on the track I wanted to stay on. I don’t think I deviated from what I’m all about and what I thought was important. Whether you want to call that a legacy, or whatever you want to call it.”

These are the things Paterno would prefer to reminisce about. Instead, he is tying up the loose ends of the abrupt end to his career. There are mounds of mail to deal with, 12,000 letters (his grandchildren counted them). Former Penn State running back Franco Harris, the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer, checks in regularly and is leading a furious campaign to depose the Board of Trustees for their handling of the scandal and Paterno’s dismissal. Paterno tries to play peacemaker, although he admits his first reaction was, “Raise hell.” There are still details to work out with the school, because he remains a tenured professor. On Jan. 2 the university sent him a retirement letter.

“Right now I’m trying to figure out what I’m gonna do,” he said. “Cause I don’t want to sit around on my backside all day.” He grins and there is a light behind his glasses. “If I’m gonna do that I’ll be a newspaper reporter.”

Nevertheless, sitting is mostly what he does, surrounded by the photographs that have accrued on the walls for almost a half-century. They provoke memories. His father, Angelo, studying late at a kitchen table to become a court clerk, impressing on him the open-endedness of learning. His deep pride at being admitted to Ivy League schools, followed by chagrin when he visited Princeton and no one in the eating clubs would speak to him. “Bunch of stuffed shirts,” he said. His wound when frat boys at Brown frowned at him for wearing sweaters instead of tweeds and said, “How did that dago get invited?” His mother, when he called to tell her that he was finally ready to wed at 34, to a young woman he had met, of course, in the library.

“I’m getting married.”

“To who?”

“Susie. You know Susie.”

“That big German girl?”

“Yes, Ma, she’s German.”

“What the hell are you gonna eat?”

The big German girl is in fact slender as a schoolgirl and still has world-class cheekbones at 75. She tends to Paterno gently, ushering him from kitchen table to bedroom and back again, clasping his hand when it trembles. “Speak up,” Sue tells him. Paterno smiles and rasps, “Ordinarily she tells me to shut up.”

Every little while, Sue pulls a picture from a wall and shows it to Paterno or shares it with one of his many visitors. They are invariably photos of children, of sons and daughters and grandchildren. The children are captured in time and they are all beautiful. They are new, unmarked, angel-faced, radiant. These are the images the Paternos cling to, through all the levels of distortion, the press maelstrom, the impending trials, the grotesqueries described on witness stands. Whenever someone in her family loses their emotional way, and sits at the kitchen table weeping for something that’s been lost or torn down, Sue holds a frame out to them and shows them a photograph of unspoiled familial innocence.

“Look at this picture,” she tells them. “This is who we are. And no one can take us from us.”

MORE ON THE PENN STATE SCANDAL:

Complete coverage

Excerpts from interview with Joe Paterno

Photos: Images of Paterno at home and through his career

Video: Sally Jenkins discusses the interview

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Poll: How do you feel about Paterno’s actions?

From the Ranch to the Vatican

2012-01-14T00:53:00.000-05:00

A ride with Ronald Reagan and his first ambassador to the Holy See, Bill Wilson.

By Nick Hahn on 1.12.12 @ 6:03AM

The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

President Reagan horseback riding with Earle Jorgensen and William Wilson at Rancho Del Cielo. 7/2/83.

If you ever find yourself in Ronald Reagan's bathroom, you may notice something peculiar about it. There's nothing all that unusual about the facilities themselves. It's a plain old bathroom. But one decoration stands out.

Hanging on the wall above a towel rack is an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ child. I suppose a bathroom wall isn't a typical place to hang such an icon, but it is rather curious that it would be hanging in a so-called Protestant bathroom (not that I have any clue what a "Protestant bathroom" ought to look like).

The icon was a gift from the Reagans' longtime friends William and Betty Wilson. Bill, himself a convert to Roman Catholicism, presented the icon to President Reagan while serving as the country's first Ambassador to the Holy See. On this week's 28th anniversary of his nomination to the post, it might be suitable to commemorate the late Ambassador's enduring relationship with our 40th President.

Ronald met his friend Bill through Nancy, who was a close friend of Bill's wife, Betty. From dinner parties to buying houses, the couples did nearly everything together. The latter activity helped change the world.

Edmund Morris, Reagan's official, controversial biographer had this to say about his subject in Dutch: "Go to the Ranch. That's where you'll find his soul."

Rancho del Cielo, as Reagan would never hesitate to say, was found by Bill Wilson. The Wilsons had lived on an avocado ranch just down the mountainside north of Santa Barbara, California, and knew that Ronald would fall in love with the property.

Indeed he did. Reagan would often refer to it as his "open Cathedral." It was where he retreated from the Washington gridlock and where he gathered his strength. It represented his vision of America: its vastness, fertility, potential, and life.

Wilson was Reagan's ranch sidekick. They both found solace in riding the boundless horse trails. It was a deeply personal and spiritual activity the two men did together. One that seemed to steel their backbones in the war against the Evil Empire. Without the Ranch, Reagan's son Michael once said, "the [Berlin] Wall still stands."

And without Bill Wilson, the United States would still be stuck in 1867, the year Congress repealed funds for diplomatic relations with the Vatican. That didn't stop Reagan from appointing his friend Bill as a Personal Representative of the President to the Holy See in February of 1981. He even complained in his diary that the State Department was too slow in processing the appointment and suggested that someone ought to "get off his ass" and get this done.

Reagan then maneuvered his way through a Democratic Congress to establish full diplomatic relations with the Holy See and elevated Wilson to Ambassador.

Reagan was anxious to meet the newly elected Pope John Paul II and wanted Wilson to help develop a historical relationship. In June of 1982, Reagan and the Pope sat alone in the Vatican Library for almost an hour discussing their "divine mission." Reagan said to the Pope of their surviving assassination attempts: "Look how the evil forces were put in our way and how Providence intervened."

As Paul Kengor explains in his spiritual biography God and Ronald Reagan, "Reagan and the Pope translated their divine mission into a practical mission to maintain Solidarity." A close Cardinal to the Pope admitted that "the Holy Father and the President committed themselves and the institutions of the church and America to such a goal." Reagan and Wilson sought, and received, the Vatican's invaluable participation in assigning the Soviet Union to the ash heap of history.

Even though Wilson resigned from his post in 1986 amid some controversy, he remained close to his old friend. As compiled in Reagan: A Life in Letters, Wilson wrote Reagan in February of 1987 to tell of a troubling meeting he had with William Cardinal Baum. The Cardinal expressed concern that Europe is "beginning to experience a spiritual fatigue leading to a moral fatigue."

Reagan wrote back agreeing that secularism "is so prevalent today," especially in public education. He concluded by reminding his friend that churches that "stick closely to the Bible are showing an increase in followers. Maybe there is a clue there for all of us" -- Catholic and Protestant alike.

Ron Paul beckons GOP to Fortress America

2012-01-14T00:48:00.000-05:00

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
January 13, 2012

In the 2010 election the New Hampshire Republican Party took 298 out of 400 House seats, 19 out of 24 state Senate seats, and all five seats on the Executive Council. A little over a year later, in the state's presidential primary, the same (more or less) electorate gave over 56 percent of its votes to a couple of moneyed "moderates," one of whom served in the Obama administration and the other of whom left no trace in office other than the pilot program for Obamacare. Another 23 percent voted for Ron Paul. Supporters of the three other "major" candidates in the race argue that, if only the other two fellows would clear off, a viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney would emerge. In fact, even if you combine Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum's share of the vote, it adds up to a mere 19.5 percent: Were Bain Capital to come in and restructure the "conservative" candidates into one streamlined and efficient Newt Perrtorum, this unstoppable force would be competitive with Jon Huntsman.

According to George Mason University's annual survey of Freedom in the 50 States, New Hampshire is the freest state in the union, so one would expect there to be takers for Ron Paul's message. On the other hand, facing a very different electorate in Iowa, Paul pulled pretty much an identical share of the poll. It may be time for those of us on the right to consider whether it's not so much the conservative vote that's split but whether conservativism itself is fracturing.

No candidate is ideal, and we conservatives are always enjoined not to make the perfect the enemy of the good – or in this case the enemy of the mediocre: sitting next to me last Tuesday on Fox News, the pollster Frank Luntz said that Romney in his victory speech was now starting to use words that resonate with the American people. The main word he used was "America." On Tuesday night Romney told us he wants to restore America to an America where millions of Americans believe in the American ideal of a strong America for millions of Americans. Which is more than your average Belgian can say. The crowd responded appreciatively. An hour later a weird goofy gnome in a baggy suit two sizes too big came out and started yakking about the Federal Reserve, fiat money and monetary policy "throughout all of history." And the crowd went bananas!

It's traditional at this point for non-Paulites to say that, while broadly sympathetic to his views on individual liberty, they deplore his neo-isolationism on foreign policy. But deploring it is an inadequate response to a faction that is likely to emerge with the second-highest number of delegates at the GOP convention. In the end, Newt represents Newt, and Huntsman represents Huntsman, but Ron Paul represents a view of America's role in the world, and one for which there are more and more takers after a decade of expensive but inconclusive war. President Obama has called for cuts of half a trillion dollars from the military budget. In response, too many of my friends on the right are demanding business as usual – that the Pentagon's way of doing things must continue in perpetuity. It cannot.

America is responsible for about 43 percent of the planet's military expenditure. This is partly a reflection of the diminished military budgets of everyone else. As Britain and the other European powers learned very quickly in the decades after the Second World War, when it comes to a choice between unsustainable welfare programs or a military of global reach, the latter is always easier to cut. It is, needless to say, a false choice. By mid-decade the Pentagon's huge bloated budget will be less than the mere interest payments on U.S. debt. Much of which goes to bankrolling the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Nevertheless, faced with reducing funding for China's military or our own, the latter will be the easier choice for Washington.

So the assumptions of the last 60 years are over – and not just because of the cost. If America's responsible for 43 percent of global military expenditure, why doesn't it feel like that? Why does the United States get so little bang for the buck? It is two-thirds of a century since this country won a war (and please don't bother writing in to say: What about Grenada? Or Panama?). In the days after 9/11, many Bush administration officials assured us that this time it would be different, and even liberals believed them. A decade later, Washington can't wait to get the hell out of the Hindu Kush, and the day after they do it will be as if they never set foot on that benighted sod. Illiterate goatherds with string and fertilizer have tied down the hyperpower for twice as long as it took America to win the Second World War. Something is wrong with this picture.

Ron Paul says he would pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan "as quickly as the ships could get there." Afghanistan is a land-locked country, but hey, that's just the kind of boring foreign trivia we won't need to bother with once we're safely holed up in Fortress America. To those who dissent from this easy and affordable solution to America's woes, the Paul campaign likes to point out that it receives more money from America's men in uniform than anybody else. According to the Federal Election Commission, in the second quarter of 2011, Ron Paul got more donations from service personnel than all other Republican candidates combined, plus President Obama. Not unreasonably, serving soldiers are weary of unwon wars – of going to war with everything except war aims and strategic clarity. I would hazard that the recent video of U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses is a coarser comment on the same psychosis, and the folly of fighting a determined and murderous enemy by distributing to your officers bulk orders of that charlatan's best-seller "Three Cups of Tea." There is a logical progression from three cups of sweet tea to those acts of micturition that the Pentagon would do well to ponder.

That said, the isolationists are delusional. Two centuries ago, when Napoleon sold a constrained Appalachian republic the port of New Orleans, he crowed, "I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride." Instead, a young America enjoyed (excepting one or two hiccups) the blessings of the Pax Britannica for over a century. It's relatively easy to be a romantic isolationist republic when the Royal Navy's out there enforcing global order. Likewise, after 1945, Britain's imperial decline was cushioned by Washington's assumption of the old lion's role as order maker. But the notion that America can retain all the comforts and prosperity of global dominance while shrugging off all the responsibilities is fantasy. "Fortress America" is less a fortress than a state of denial, yet it's one with increasing appeal to many Republican voters.

With characteristic timidity, Mitt Romney says that as commander-in-chief his Afghan strategy would be determined by the "commanders in the field." More tea and sympathy! But a lazy deference to the inviolability of the present arrangements for another two-thirds of a century of unwon wars will not suffice. I am in favor of a leaner, meaner military – emphasis on both adjectives. A broke America will perforce wind up with the first. But, if we want the second, the foreign-policy right will have to make a better case than it has this primary season.

©MARK STEYN

Today's Tune: The Horrible Crowes - Joey

2012-01-13T09:41:00.001-05:00

WHO WOULDN'T ENJOY FIRING THESE PEOPLE?

2012-01-13T09:33:00.000-05:00

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
January 11, 2012

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney got into trouble for saying, "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." To comprehend why the political class reacted as if Romney had just praised Hitler, you must understand that his critics live in a world in which no one can ever be fired -- a world known as "the government."

(And a tip for you Washington types: Just because a person became rich without working for government doesn't mean he is "Wall Street." A venture capital firm in Boston that tries to rescue businesses headed for bankruptcy, for example, is not "Wall Street.")

Romney's statement about being able to fire people was an arrow directed straight to the heart of Obamacare. (By the way, arrows to the heart are not covered by Obamacare.)

Talking about insurance providers, he said:

"I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn't give me a good service that I need, I want to say I'm going to go get someone else to provide that service to me."

Obamacare, you will recall, will be administered by the same people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will operate under the same self-paced, self-evaluated work rules that have made government offices the envy of efficiency specialists everywhere.

And no one will be able to fire them -- unless they're caught doing something truly vile and criminal, such as stealing from patients in nursing homes.

Oops, I take that back: Government employees who rob the elderly also can't be fired.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, after a spate of burglaries at a veterans hospital in California several years ago, authorities set up video cameras to catch the perpetrators. In short order, nurse's aide Linda Riccitelli was videotaped sneaking into the room of 93-year-old Raymond Germain as he slept, sticking her hand into his dresser drawer and stealing the bait money that had been left there.

Riccitelli was fired and a burglary prosecution initiated. A few years later, the California Personnel Board rescinded her firing and awarded her three-years back pay. The board dismissed the videotape of Riccitelli stealing the money as "circumstantial." (The criminal prosecution was also dropped after Germain died.)

But surely we'll be able to fire a government employee who commits a physical assault on a mentally disturbed patient? No, wrong again.

Psychiatric technician Gregory Powell was working at a government center for the mentally retarded when he hit a severely disturbed individual with a shoe so hard that the impression of the shoe's sole was visible on the victim three hours later. A psychologist who witnessed the attack said the patient was cowering on the couch before being struck.

Powell was fired, but, again, the California Personnel Board ordered him rehired.

Now, let's turn to New York City and look for any clues about why it might be the highest-taxed city in the nation.

For years, the New York City school budget included $35 million to $65 million a year to place hundreds of teachers in "rubber rooms," after they had committed such serious offenses that they were barred from classrooms. Teachers accused of raping students sat in rooms doing no work all day, still collecting government paychecks because they couldn't be fired.

After an uproar over the rubber rooms a few years ago, Michael Bloomberg got rid of the rooms. But the teachers still can't be fired.

Wherever there is government, there is malfeasance and criminality -- and government employees who can never be fired.

In 2010, 33 employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission -- half making $100,000 to $200,000 per year -- were found to have spent most of their workdays downloading Internet pornography over a five-year period. (Thank goodness there were no financial shenanigans going on then, so the SEC guys had plenty of time on their hands.)

One, a senior lawyer at SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., admitted to spending eight hours a day looking at Internet pornography, sometimes even "working" through his lunch hour. Another admitted watching up to five hours a day of pornography in his office. (Would that Bernie Madoff had posted naked photos of himself online!)

Not one of the porn-surfing employees of the SEC was fired.

In 2009, the inspector general of the National Science Foundation was forced to abandon an investigation of grant fraud when he stumbled across dozens of NSF employees, including senior management, surfing pornographic websites on government computers during working hours.

A senior official who had spent 331 workdays talking to fully or partially nude women online was allowed to resign (but was not fired). I hope they gave him his computer as a parting gift.

The others kept their jobs -- including an NSF employee who had downloaded hundreds of pornographic videos and pictures and even developed pornographic PowerPoint slide shows. (And you thought PowerPoint presentations were always boring.)

They weren't fired or even embarrassed. One appealed his 10-day suspension, complaining that it was too severe. The government refused to release any of their names.

These are the people who are going to be controlling your access to medical services if Obamacare isn't repealed. There will be only one insurance provider, and you won't be able to switch, even if the service is lousy (and it will be).

Obamacare employees will spend their days surfing pornography, instead of approving your heart operation. They can steal from you and even physically assault you. And they can never be fired.

That's one gargantuan difference with "Romneycare" right there: If you don't like what your insurer is doing in Massachusetts, you can get a new one.

Now, wouldn't you like to be able to fire people who provide services to you?

COPYRIGHT 2012 ANN COULTER

Defined by a Smile and a Drawl

2012-01-12T06:42:00.000-05:00

By Jeremy Egner
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
January 5, 2012

IN the premiere of the new season of “Justified,” beginning Jan. 17, a dashing psychopath makes a casual reference to this Kentucky crime drama’s signature prop, the Stetson worn by the protagonist, United States Marshal Raylan Givens.

“Not much call for cowboys these days,” the thug says in a syrupy, menacing drawl.

The lawman responds, “You would be surprised.”

The line is an in-joke, a reference to the baroque backwoods adventures that Raylan, a sort of 21st-century Gary Cooper with a dry wit, has endured during two acclaimed seasons of this FX drama. But the exchange also functions as a career appraisal for the man who plays him. Timothy Olyphant, 43, has worked steadily since the 1990s, but in this easygoing, volatile marshal he has found his defining role. Not that he’s willing to admit it.

“The bottom line is, someone gave me a television show and I figured I’d make the most of it,” he said during a recent visit to New York. “The words do all the work for you.”

Based on stories by Elmore Leonard, “Justified” captures his darkly funny, morally murky tone and spikes the traditional crime procedural with hooch and Oxycontin, tracking its hero’s attempts to thwart colorful drug dealers and gunrunners and negotiate his own fractured relationships. The series unspools in an oddly captivating alternate South peopled by whimsically twisted archetypes and marked by sudden shifts between folksy black comedy and graphic violence. (The thug in the premiere is known as the Ice Pick.)

Last year the series won a Peabody Award, and its second season was among the most lauded of 2011, netting four Emmy nominations, including a first for Mr. Olyphant and a supporting actress win for Margo Martindale, who played a crime matriarch. Ratings for Season 2 increased 15 percent in total viewers, and an average of just under 2.2 million watch each new episode on Tuesday nights, an audience that grows to nearly 4 million each week when it includes DVR viewers, though they still lag behind those of FX dramas like “Sons of Anarchy” and “American Horror Story.” The challenge for the show’s producers is to build on the series’s momentum from last season and transform from critical favorite into critically acclaimed hit.

“It’s coming off one of the best seasons any series put forth last year, and that’s a really tough act to follow,” said John Landgraf, the president of FX. “But when you have a virtually ideal central character and central performance, audiences are going to find it.”

As the face of the series Mr. Olyphant has perhaps the most impact on whether the show will continue to succeed. By all accounts it’s a job he takes most seriously, playing an active role behind the scenes as well. Mr. Leonard himself calls the actor’s performance the best screen adaptation ever of a Leonard hero, a category that includes names like George Clooney and John Travolta.

“He played Raylan exactly like I heard him when I was writing him,” said Mr. Leonard, an executive producer of the series. (“Raylan,” a new novel by Mr. Leonard about the character, comes out on Jan. 17 as well.)

Mr. Olyphant expressed appreciation for that appraisal but inserted a note of pragmatism. “If George Clooney was starring right now in a big Elmore Leonard thing, I bet Elmore would be very complimentary of George as well,” he said, laughing.

An actor of rangy grace and wolfish good looks — his easy grin seems designed to induce swoons and suspicion in equal measure — Mr. Olyphant has carved out the career of a man Hollywood isn’t quite sure how to use. He has seesawed between charismatic criminals in films like “Go” and “Live Free or Die Hard,” and checkered heroes in projects like the FX legal thriller “Damages” and HBO’s Shakespearean western “Deadwood.” (Another hat role, it was Mr. Olyphant’s most notable performance before “Justified.”)

“People just like him, and yet there is something a little dangerous there,” said Graham Yost, the creator of “Justified.” “So he gets the combination of the good-guy, bad-guy thing.”

Walton Goggins, who plays Boyd Crowder, Raylan’s longtime friend and nemesis, added, “Tim’s hat is never entirely white.”

Such shades of gray are right at home in the Kentucky of “Justified.” The same sharp-edged nonchalance that makes Mr. Olyphant something of a square peg in a conventional blockbuster is well suited for a place where smooth-talking cops and robbers trade both barbs and gunfire with something like affection.

“In the world of Elmore Leonard, people are defined not by good and bad but by whether you’re a jerk or not,” Mr. Olyphant said.

He expounded upon that world from a perch about as far removed from it as possible. At an airy ninth-floor restaurant in the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan, he sipped a cappuccino as he looked out toward the bristly gray winter canopy of Central Park.

A laconic presence on “Justified,” Mr. Olyphant is affable in person and projects less a lawman swagger than the ease of a former athlete; he swam competitively at the University of Southern California. His face is striking, if unconventional — all smooth, wide planes and chiseled edges. His hair is more brown than gray, but the gray is climbing from both sideburns. A wispy array of white whiskers curls around his chin like smoke.

“The camera does not hate the dude,” said Natalie Zea, who plays his ex-wife and current love interest on “Justified.”

Neither did the nearby patrons who sneaked glances over the rims of their coffee cups. Mr. Olyphant professed a delighted but measured attitude about the recognition that has come from “Justified.”

“You see a bus drive by with your picture on it, and you think, ‘That’s cool, that’s new,’ ” he said. “I try to embrace all that comes with it and at the same time know that most of that stuff has nothing to do with me. It’s just part of the job.”

The museum was his idea. Mr. Olyphant majored in fine art at U.S.C. and was a frequent visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1990s, when he lived in New York with his wife of 20 years, Alexis. (They have three children.) Of his artistic output now, Mr. Olyphant grinned and said, “I can doodle with the best of them.”

It was a moment of wry, Raylanesque self-deprecation in a day spent mostly trying to convince a reporter that he was nothing like the character. But ask nearly anyone involved in “Justified” about Mr. Olyphant, and before long it comes out: The reason Mr. Olyphant works as Raylan is because in various ways he is Raylan. His colleagues point to his sharp sense of humor and casual verbosity, a gift of gab common to Leonard characters. (He also has a Leonardian flair for profanity, as exemplified by an unprintable reaction to an outré Korean art installation at the museum.)

Most often they mention a charged quality that Mr. Olyphant shares with the character, an understated intensity that animated previous projects like “Deadwood” but has “reached its sort of apotheosis in Raylan,” said Mr. Landgraf, who first proposed him for “Justified.” As David Milch, the creator of “Deadwood,” put it: “I think Tim is a guy that doesn’t let himself be known easily. It’s what allows him to continue to do such interesting work.”

Mr. Olyphant, who grew up in Modesto, Calif., began acting in New York in the mid-1990s with roles in short-lived television projects and brief appearances in movies like “The First Wives Club.” Larger roles followed. He was a killer in “Scream 2,” a boy-toy in an episode of “Sex and the City.” As a sardonic drug dealer in “Go,” from 1999, a frenetic cult comedy about young night crawlers in Los Angeles, he showed off his comic chops with a caustic riff on “The Family Circus.”
“There have been roles that, had the movies been bigger, would have probably changed my life,” Mr. Olyphant said. “If ‘Go’ had been a huge box office success, I would have had tons of opportunities, I imagine.”

Instead, it was followed by mostly forgettable films until Mr. Olyphant joined “Deadwood” in 2004 as the conflicted sheriff Seth Bullock, the simmering straight man to Ian McShane’s silver-tongued rogue. The role revealed in Mr. Olyphant a capacity for explosive, nuanced performance barely suggested by earlier roles.

“He seemed to understand the contradictions in the character as well as his most fundamental purposes, and that’s a terrific mix,” Mr. Milch said.

But the show’s sudden end after three seasons cast him back into the wilderness of the working actor. The period that followed included some high-profile roles — he was a nefarious super-hacker in “Live Free or Die Hard” in 2007 — but not much fulfillment. Mr. Olyphant finally reached a sort of breaking point during the shooting of a film he declined to identify, when, he said, he found himself in some Eastern European country doing risible junk. “And you think, ‘How did I end up here?’ ”

(It’s perhaps worth noting that “Hitman,” a 2007 action film starring Mr. Olyphant that was based on a video game, was filmed largely in Bulgaria.)

“You go from working with David Milch to just doing stuff to pay some bills,” he said. “You think, ‘There’s got to be a way to bring these two things together.’ ”

The answer, he decided, was to play a larger role in shaping the projects he acted in, beginning with “Damages” on FX. “Justified” brought his first producer credit.

“Often on shows that really doesn’t mean much,” Mr. Yost said. “On this show it actually doesn’t reflect the depth of his involvement, which would be an even bigger credit.”

Mr. Olyphant’s co-stars joke that he leaves no scene unturned during filming, constantly proposing new angles and questioning whether a piece of action or dialogue is true to the show’s founding sensibility. He comes to the set on his off days to coach guest stars and admitted that anyone not willing to really dig into the material is “of absolutely no use to me.”

Mr. Goggins said: “Tim is the biggest reminder for everyone that we’re in the Elmore Leonard world. And that it needs to be funny and dark and twisted, and it needs to speak with all of those voices at the same time.”

Mr. Olyphant can be evangelical about Mr. Leonard’s stories, praising the specificity that breathes believability into gonzo characters and situations. But he predictably plays down his behind-the-scenes contributions to “Justified,” even as he allows that his own deep involvement has helped to reinvigorate a career that felt as if it had gone awry.

In that respect the show has gotten Mr. Olyphant back on track toward the deceptively simple goal he set when he began acting nearly 20 years ago.

“What I hoped is that it would be something I could do for a long time and would want to do for a long time,” he said. “So — so far, so good.”

Terror in Tampa

2012-01-11T10:56:00.000-05:00

By Jacob Laksin
http://frontpagemag.com/
January 11, 2012

Earlier this week, the FBI announced the arrest of Sami Osmakac, a 25-year-old Muslim man from the former Yugoslavia. In the process, the agency thwarted what might have been a horrific terror spree targeting populous civilian and commercial areas in Tampa, Florida.

According to the FBI’s criminal complaint, Osmakac, a naturalized American citizen, had been planning a massive terror attack targeting everything from businesses to nightclubs and bridges with the aim of killing and injuring as many people as possible. As part of the attack, he intended to set off a weapon of mass destruction planted in a parked car, then capping off the attack by detonating a suicide belt. Instead, Osmakac’s plans were foiled by a masterful FBI sting operation. Undercover agents tracked the would-be terrorist for months, monitoring his every move and even supplying him with the (secretly non-functional) weapons that he had planned to use before moving in this week to make a decisive arrest.

But what should be an open-and-shut counter-terror success is now being called into question by groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and further obfuscated by academic apologists for Islamic radicalism. No sooner was Osmakac in handcuffs than CAIR spokesman Hassan Shibly suggested that the FBI was more culpable in the case than the jihadist in their custody. “The weapons and explosives were provided by the government. Was he just a troubled individual, or did he pose a real threat?” asked Shibly, before expressing his “concern about a perception of entrapment.”

A closer look at the facts of the case shows this perception to be wholly unfounded. While it’s true that the FBI provided the weapons, the fact remains that it was Osmakac, an al-Qaeda-sympathizer, who had sought them out. Moreover, according to an FBI affidavit, the undercover FBI agent who sold Osmakac his non-working arms had repeatedly tried to convince him to give up his plans and seek a normal life. In one recorded conversation, the agent urged Osmakac to consider getting married and having a family rather than going ahead with his plan. That is the opposite of entrapment. In the event, Osmakac refused, insisting that he would be rewarded by Allah in paradise for carrying out his attack. Given his intention of doing just that, it’s to the FBI’s great credit that the agency made sure Osmakac never had access to anything but defective arms.

Osmakac’s clearly expressed conviction that Allah required him to commit terrorism points up another emerging and equally misguided assessment of the case – namely, that religion had nothing to do with Osmakac’s motives. “I don’t think his Islamic religion has anything to do with what’s going on,” claimed Dr. Barbara DeGeorge, identified by local Florida media as an “Islamic studies expert,” following the arrest. Even the FBI made a concession to political correctness, with the head of the agency’s Tampa Bay division assuring the press that Osmakac’s case “is not about the Muslim religion.”

All the available evidence indicates otherwise. In an eight-minute video laying out his intentions, Osmakac declared that he felt no compunction about killing innocents because non-Muslim “blood” was less valuable than that of Muslims. Osmakac also had a message for non-believers: “My message is if you don’t accept Islam you’re going to hell.”

Nor did he spare his co-religionists. “What’s the matter with you?” Osmakac demanded in the video. “Trying to follow their ways? Trying to go to nightclubs, like them? Trying to fornicate, like them? Trying to get with their women? . . . Submit to the rule of Allah.” Not least, Osmakac yearned for a death as a Muslim martyr, announcing that the authorities “can take me in five million pieces,” a reference to the suicide belt he planned to explode. Notwithstanding the apologists, it’s clear that, in Osmakac’s mind at least, the “Islamic religion” had everything to do with his planned attack.

Rather than pandering to political sensitivities, the FBI would be better served by touting the truly salutary aspect of the case: the crucial cooperation of the Tampa Muslim community in securing Osmakac’s arrest. An unidentified Muslim citizen, who became alarmed at Osmakac’s request for al-Qaeda flags when he visited his or her store, first tipped off the agency to his intentions. Thanks to that tip, the FBI was able to track Osmakac every step of the way. If the FBI truly wanted to bolster American Muslims’ image, it should focus on their commendable efforts in helping to stop an Islamic fanatic from killing in the name of his religion.

Gehry’s Ghastly Eisenhower Memorial

2012-01-10T09:15:00.001-05:00

An aesthetic and historical travesty

By George Weigel
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 10, 2012

Frank Gehry and members of the Memorial Commission view model of Gehry's Eisenhower proposal

Introducing his two-volume biography of the 34th president of the United States, Stephen Ambrose offered a simple, and accurate, judgment: “Dwight Eisenhower was a great and good man. He was one of the outstanding leaders of the Western world of [the 20th] century.”

He also spent more consecutive time at the center of national and international affairs than any other American of his time: longer than either of the Roosevelts, longer than Henry Stimson, longer than anyone. For 18 years — from the moment in November 1942 when he took command of the Allied Expeditionary Force whose invasion of North Africa began the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich, until Jan. 20, 1961, when he handed the burden of the presidency to John F. Kennedy — Dwight David Eisenhower was in the cockpit of history. And it made a great difference that he was there.

He was supreme commander of the greatest political-military coalition in history, holding it together despite great centrifugal forces (both political and personal) until that coalition won what Eisenhower memorably called its “crusade in Europe” and the “Thousand-Year Reich” was no more. He led an Ivy League university; he helped forge NATO into one of the instruments that prevented another totalitarian power from dominating Europe; he helped keep the Republican party from drifting into the irrelevance of isolationism. Despite the criticisms of the nation’s high-cultural and journalistic tastemakers, he was a successful (and crafty) president, one of the few two-term chief executives who left the Oval Office a highly popular man. Americans, now and in the future, ought to know that this country can produce men of such accomplishment.

No one will learn any of this, however, from the Eisenhower Memorial that will soon be built in the heart of monumental Washington: unless, that is, Congress moves quickly to force a reconsideration of a historical and aesthetic travesty.

The present Eisenhower Memorial design, by postmodernist Frank Gehry, has virtually nothing to do with the Dwight David Eisenhower of history. Plans call for Ike to be memorialized in sculpture as a barefoot farmboy on the Great Plains: not the great wartime leader; not the soldier-diplomat; not the chief executive of the United States who presided over eight years of peace and prosperity. The Gehry conceit seems both obvious and entirely in tune with the postmodern deconstruction of history: There are no great men; there are no great virtues; there is no great striving; nor is there great accomplishment or great service to others. No one, visiting the Eisenhower Memorial as designed by Frank Gehry, would have the slightest reason to grasp the truth of the man himself, as Stephen Ambrose once described him:

As a soldier, he was, as George C. Marshall said at the end of the war, everything that the U.S. Army hoped for in its finest products — professionally competent, well versed in the history of war, decisive, well disciplined, courageous, dedicated, and popular with his men, his subordinates, and his superiors. His leadership qualities also included a high degree of intelligence, integrity, commitment to basic principles, dignity, organizational genius, tremendous energy, and diplomatic ability. As a man, he was good-looking, considerate of and concerned about others, loyal to friends and family, given to terrible rages (which he learned to control), ambitious, thin-skinned and sensitive to criticism, stubborn and inflexible about his habits, an avid sportsman and sports fan, modest (but never falsely so), almost embarrassingly unsophisticated in his musical, artistic, and literary tastes, intensely curious about people and places, often refreshingly naïve, fun-loving — in short, a wonderful man to know or be around. Nearly everyone who knew him liked him immensely, many — including some of the most powerful men in the world — to the point of adulation.

None of this is conveyed by the sculpture of a barefoot boy on the plains. None of it is conveyed by the other elements in the Gehry design: 80-foot-tall, nondescript cylindrical posts (they can’t even be properly described as pillars) holding up perforated metal “tapestries,” creating what Gehry himself once called a “theater for cars.” But what does a “theater for cars,” or any other kind of postmodernist knock-off of a Fifties drive-in, have to do with creating a memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander who planned the invasion of Normandy, the president who ended the Korean War and who proposed “Open Skies” as a means to lower the temperature of the Cold War?

Nothing. And that, one is forced to conclude, is the idea: Visitors will be asked to admire a barefoot boy, one of many from the Kansas plains, not the unique and historic figure the barefoot boy became. No wonder that Eisenhower’s grandchildren now oppose the design of his memorial.

It is not only history and aesthetics that are travestied in this fiasco. The Gehry design was chosen in a closed competition, which itself suggests that the fix was in for Frank Gehry from the beginning. Having seen his design for a new wing of the Corcoran Gallery of Art go unrealized, Gehry and his acolytes at the General Services Administration now seem determined to get a Gehry into monumental Washington, even if, in the process, they distort history with another postmodernist confection that speaks to no one outside their small, gnostic sect. Yet if the National Capital Planning Commission gives a favorable review to the Gehry design in February, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission may well seek to break ground immediately in order to create a fait accompli.

Congress will have a lot on its plate in the first weeks of 2012. But it should move quickly to stop the current Eisenhower Memorial process and order an inquiry into precisely how and why a design that says nothing about the great achievements of the man being memorialized was approved. And when the answer becomes clear — that this was a closed, opaque process unbefitting a democracy intent on honoring one of those who helped save democracy in an hour of peril — Congress should order the present design scrapped in favor of an open process of design competition and selection, like those that produced the World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials. Moreover, Congress should ensure that that process is not dominated by those determined to impose a postmodernist architectural vocabulary, irrespective of its distortion of history, on monumental Washington. Meanwhile, Congress would do well to put a hold on the funding for the Eisenhower Commission that was hastily approved as part of an end-of-the-year omnibus spending bill.

The memory of Dwight David Eisenhower deserves better than the travesty that has, to date, steamrollered through the federal bureaucracy. So does the country Eisenhower served so well, and the city where he lived as both soldier and statesman.

— George Weigel is distinguished senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center and is an adviser to the National Civic Art Society. The Society’s comprehensive critique of the Gehry design for the Eisenhower Memorial and the closed competition that led to its being chosen is available at www.civicart.org.

Billy Joe Shaver returns to Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom - Jan 13

2012-01-09T09:43:00.000-05:00

By Julie Wenger Watson
The Current
http://www.currentland.com/
January 2012 (Vol 9, No 1)

TULSA (OK) - Texas musician Billy Joe Shaver and his band are riding into Oklahoma this month. They will play Grady’s 66 Pub in Yukon on Thursday the 12th and the Cain’s Ballroom on lucky Friday the 13th. Book Smart Tulsa will also host a book signing with Shaver at Dwelling Spaces at 5:30 pm prior to the Cain’s concert. Shaver will read excerpts from and sign copies of his book Honky Tonk Hero, which will be available for purchase. In anticipation of this Oklahoma run, I recently spoke with Shaver.

The historic Cain’s Ballroom and this Outlaw Country icon would seem to be a match made in roadhouse heaven, and indeed, Shaver has played this venue before. “Oh, yes, many times,” he told me. “I wrote a song years and years ago called ‘Oklahoma Wind’ and I wrote it at the back of the Cain’s Ballroom. Yeah, I sat down in my truck and wrote it.”

He laughed and went on about his previous visits to the Cain’s, “Yeah, I was kind of shook up when I saw the floor kind of moving, and I thought ‘what in the world is going on?’, and it was that they had springs in the (dance) floor. Everybody had played there..Hank Williams and everybody, I guess. Yes, it’s quite a thing for me. I always thought it was great.”

Like a classic Country Western song, Shaver’s life has had its share of passion, heartbreak, hard times, and a close brush or two with the law. There’s even religion and redemption, if you’re looking for it. It’s easy to imagine that Shaver has never had to search too far for songwriting material. His own life has been one long honky tonk tune.

Shaver’s 2007 Grammy-nominated release, Everybody’s Brother, was produced by John Carter Cash. His songs have been recorded by the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and even Elvis Presley. “Yeah, I’ve been around a while. It just seems like a lot of stuff happens to me. I think I was born to be a songwriter. I’ve been writing songs since I was a kid...I don’t know, I guess I’m lucky, well, I know I’m lucky that I’ve been blessed with that ‘cause I’ve always got a job,” Shaver reflected.

Shaver’s talents aren’t limited to music. He’s met with success as an author and actor, as well. The autobiographical Honky Tonk Hero was published in 2005. “Bobby Duvall got after me. Robert Duvall, the actor, you know,” Shaver commented by way of explanation. “He and his wife Luciana (Pedraza), they just kept telling me I ought to be writing a book, so I finally started writing one. I wish I’d waited a little longer ‘cause a lot of crazy stuff happened to me after that, and now everybody is after me to write another one. I think I might do it because it seems like it might be more exciting than the first one.” Shaver paused and laughed, “The first one is pretty good. It ain’t bad.”

Shaver’s association with actor/producer Duvall has led to Shaver’s appearance in several movies, including The Apostle (1999) and Secondhand Lions (2003). Duvall and his wife Luciana Pedraza even produced and directed a documentary about Shaver’s life, The Portrait of Billy Joe (2004). Says Shaver of his friend Duvall, “He’s a really down to earth good guy. Just a regular fella. I enjoy being around him. Everybody else does, too.”

Shaver believes his experience as a musician helps with his acting. “I’ve done a lot of acting. Sometimes you have to do a lot of acting to entertain and keep from getting people down, ‘cause that’s the last thing you want to do is get anybody down.” The transition to film was a natural one for him. “It worked out good for me ‘cause I just had to be myself, which was really easy...The first thing Bobby (Duvall) told me...he said, ‘Billy, every chance you get, don’t act.’ I said, ‘Okay. I can handle that.’”

Shaver’s days of hard living and years on the road have taken their toll on his health, although the 72 year-old Shaver shrugs it off with good humor. “Yeah, I’m doing all right. I ain’t having much trouble. I’ve had a few stints and things put in and stuff like that. I’ve had shoulders that went out on me. Ahh, you don’t want to hear all this, “ he laughs. “I’m wired together, but I’m still getting around all right. You could jiggle me out, I guess, and get more than what I’m worth. I’ve had a lot of screws and bolts and things in me. Both shoulders and broke my neck three times and a heart attack and a four-way bypass, good lord, and got a new knee put in, and that helps. Yeah, it’s really pert near everybody that is a performer that’s been around for a while has a lot of pain. It helps you with the blues songs.”

As a genre now mainstream enough to justify its own satellite radio station, it’s hard to remember a time when “outlaw country” was rebel music. However, when Shaver and his contemporaries first bucked the Nashville trend with their scruffy appearance and raw-edged honky tonk, they were the counterculture. “Back in the day when (Waylon Jennings’) Honky Tonk Heroes came out, we were kind of like ‘outcasts’ more than anything up there in Nashville,” Shaver recalled. “More of the ‘outcasts’ than the ‘outlaws’. The way it just went against the grain. They had a big machine. It was sequin suits and stuff...It wasn’t working that good, but they didn’t realize it. We came in there just being ourselves, wearing blue jeans and playing, and all the guys that had anything to do with it were from Texas, really.” He paused a minute, then continued, “It just caught a hold. It caught a hold and changed things around. In a good way, ‘cause now they’re building on that foundation. It’s good for them.”

For tickets to the Cain’s show, go to www.cainsballroom.com For more on Shaver, including some great stories from his past, tune into Folk Salad Radio Show www.folksalad.com this Sunday January 8 at 7:00 pm on KWGS 89.5 FM.

Photo: http://www.countrycalifornia.com/hardly-strictly-bluegrass-2009-recap/

Government: The redistributionist behemoth

2012-01-08T11:43:00.000-05:00

By George F. Will
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
January 6, 2012

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.

This includes generational strife. Most transfer payments redistribute wealth from workers to nonworkers in the form of pensions and medical care for retirees. The welfare state’s primary purpose is to subsidize the last years of Americans’ lives, and the elderly are, after a lifetime of accumulation, better off than most Americans: In 2009, the net worth of households headed by adults ages 65 and older was a record 47 times that of households headed by adults under the age of 35 — a wealth gap that doubled just since 2005.

The equalizing effects of redistributive transfer payments are less today than in 1979, when households in the lowest income quintile received 54 percent of such payments. In 2007, they received 36 percent.

Because Social Security and Medicare are not means-tested, the share of transfer payments going to middle- and upper-income households tends to increase, for several reasons. The retirement age is essentially fixed, but people are living longer. And because the welfare state is so good to them, the elderly are unusually diligent voters and are especially apt to vote on the basis of protecting their benefits.

Beyond transfer payments, redistributionist government is itself governed by the law of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits: For example, sugar import quotas confer substantial wealth on a small cohort of producers already wealthy enough to work the political levers of redistributive government. The increased cost of sugar substantially penalizes consumers as a group but not so noticeably that individuals protest.

The tax code, government’s favorite instrument for distributing wealth to favored factions, has been tweaked about 4,500 times in 10 years. Generally, the beneficiaries of these changes are interests sufficiently strong and sophisticated to practice rent-seeking.

Not only does redistributionist government direct wealth upward; in asserting a right to do so, it siphons power into itself. A puzzling aspect of our politically contentious era is how little contention there is about the ethics of coercive redistribution by progressive taxation and other government “corrections” of social outcomes it considers unethical or unaesthetic.

This reticence, in an age in which political reticence is rare, reflects the difficulty of articulating principled defenses of these practices. They go undefended because they are generally popular with a public that misunderstands their net effects and because the practices are the political class’s vocation today. The big winners from these practices are that class and the interests adept at collaborating with it.

Government uses redistribution to correct social outcomes that offend it. But government rarely explains, or perhaps even recognizes, the reasoning by which it decides why particular outcomes of consensual market activities are incorrect. When taxes are levied not to efficiently fund government but to impose this or that notion of distributive justice, remember: Taxes are always coerced contributions to government, which is always the first, and often the principal, beneficiary of them.

Try a thought experiment suggested decades ago by University of Chicago law professors Walter Blum and Harry Kalven in their 1952 essay “The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation,” published in their university’s law review. Suppose society’s wealth trebled overnight without any change in the relative distribution among individuals. Would the unchanged inequality at higher levels of affluence decrease concern about inequality?

Surely not: The issue of inequality has become more salient as affluence has increased. Which suggests two conclusions:

People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have. And when government engages in redistribution in order to maximize the happiness of citizens who become more envious as they become more comfortable, government becomes increasingly frenzied and futile.

georgewill@washpost.com

Press Pass: Jason and The Scorchers

2012-01-07T15:28:00.000-05:00

By Leslie Poster
Falls Church News-Press
http://www.fcnp.com/arts/
Wednesday, January 04 2012

When the hard-rocking country outfit Jason and The Scorchers were looking for a place to celebrate their 30th anniversary - and ring in the New Year - it made sense to go back to where it all began.

"Our first real show was 30 years ago in Nashville," frontman Jason Ringenberg said of the group, first formed in 1981. "So we thought we should do it back in Nashville, of course. It's our hometown, and there are a lot of good vibes here for us."

The Nashville show will be the basis for an upcoming DVD.

"Doing it in our hometown made it much more exciting," Ringenberg said of chosing to record that performance for the DVD. "It just seemed like the right thing to do."

While the DVD is focused on the band's 30th anniversary, it won't be a sweeping historical look back at the band's three decades of music-making, Ringenberg said, adding that the footage will show how the group and its fans celebrated the milestone and brought a close to 2011.

Their anniversary tour, several dates lined up this winter which will see the band perform Thursday at Iota Club and Café, is a celebration in itself.

"We don't play as much as we used to, so just to be out and playing is something special for us, and special for our fans, I hope," Ringenberg said. "We just want to show that the band is still capable of delivering good shows, and that it is still a viable musical entity, creating new music and moving forward."

In that vein, the band will be performing from the long catalog that fans have come to appreciate, but will be focusing on songs from the group's latest record, 2010's Halcyon Times.

The record, a punk-rocking romp which again sees the band finding the middle ground between aggressive rock and roll and twanging country and blues, ended a 14-year hiatus from the recording studio.

"It was very exciting to be creating with the band again," Ringenberg said, explaining that the break from recording came in part because of Ringenberg's outside projects - like performing as his children's music character, Farmer Jason - but also because lineup changes in the band left its remaining members with the struggle of filling those roles.

With the addition of bassist Al Collins and drummer Pontus Snibb in 2008, Ringenberg and longtime guitarist Warner E. Hodges had found the final Scorchers.
"They really have a good understanding of what the band is about," Ringenberg said of the new members. "They are good roots rock and roll kinds of guys, and they can really rock like crazy. It's American roots music, but you have to rock like the devil - that's what the band is all about."

Band members coming and going has been a constant for the band, since its inception as Jason & the Nashville Scorchers. While some may look back to the mid-80s glory days when the band members were praised for being alternative country innovators, Ringenberg believes the current lineup rivals the Scorchers that once were.

"I think this is as good as the vintage band was," Ringenberg said. "Certainly, I think we play better than we did back then, and we're smarter players."

In 30 year of playing with the band, Ringenberg has learned a few lessons, in particular that not every performance will be great and not every song will be a great - and that it isn't something to let "drive you crazy." But looking back, he says it might have been nice to have a hit song.

"And I think back when we were really happening, in the mid-80s, we should have slowed down and savored it a bit more," Ringenberg said.

Today's Tune: Jason & The Scorchers - White Lies (Live)

2012-01-07T15:12:00.001-05:00

Politics trumps Left's empathy

2012-01-07T07:48:00.001-05:00

By Mark Steyn
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/
January 6, 2012

National Review Editor Rich Lowry (L) and Liberal commentator Alan Colmes clashed on Fox News Monday when Lowry interjected to rebuke Colmes’ criticism of the way Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of their infant newborn Gabriel, who lived for only two hours in 1996.

Lest you doubt that we're headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within 10 minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the "crazy things" he's said and done.

Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America's political class, but the "crazy thing" Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum's "taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home," whereupon he "played with it." My National Review colleague Rich Lowry rightly slapped down Alan on air, and Colmes subsequently apologized, though not before Mrs. Santorum had been reduced to tears by his remarks. Undeterred, Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist, doubled down on stupid and insisted that Deadbabygate demonstrated how Santorum is "not a little weird, he's really weird."

The short life of Gabriel Santorum would seem a curious priority for political discourse at a time when the Brokest Nation in History is hurtling toward its rendezvous with destiny. But needs must, and victory by any means necessary. In 2008, the Left gleefully mocked Sarah Palin's live baby. It was only a matter of time before they moved on to a dead one.

Not many of us will ever know what it's like to have a child who lives only a few hours. That alone should occasion a certain modesty about presuming to know what are "weird" and unweird reactions to such an event.

In 1996, the Santorums were told during the pregnancy that their baby had a fatal birth defect and would not survive more than a few hours outside the womb. So Gabriel was born, his parents bundled him, and held him, and baptized him. And two hours later he died. They decided to take his body back to the home he would never know. Weirdly enough, this crazy weird behavior is in line with the advice of the American Pregnancy Association, which says that "it is important for your family members to spend time with the baby" and "help them come to terms with their loss."

Would I do it? Dunno. Hope I never have to find out. Many years ago, a friend of mine discovered in the final hours of labor that her child was dead but that she would still have to deliver him. I went round to visit her shortly after, not relishing the prospect but feeling that it was one of those things one was bound to do. I ditched the baby gift I'd bought a few days earlier but kept the flowers and chocolate. My friend had photographs of the dead newborn. What do you say? Oh, he's got your face?

I was a callow pup in my early twenties, with no paternal instincts and no great empathetic capacity. But I understood that I was in the presence of someone who had undergone a profound and harrowing experience, one which it would be insanely arrogant for those of us not so ill-starred to judge.

There but for the grace of God go I, as we used to say.

There is something telling about what Peter Wehner at Commentary rightly called the "casual cruelty" of Eugene Robinson. The Left endlessly trumpets its "empathy." President Obama, for example, has said that what he looks for in his judges is "the depth and breadth of one's empathy." As he told his pro-abortion pals at Planned Parenthood, "we need somebody who's got the heart – the empathy – to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom." Empathy, empathy, empathy: You barely heard the word outside clinical circles until the liberals decided it was one of those accessories no self-proclaimed caring progressive should be without.

Indeed, flaunting their empathy is what got Eugene Robinson and many others their Pulitzers – Robinson describes his newspaper column as "a license to feel." Yet he's entirely incapable of imagining how it must feel for a parent to experience within the same day both new life and death – or even to understand that the inability to imagine being in that situation ought to prompt a little circumspection.

The Left's much-vaunted powers of empathy routinely fail when confronted by those who do not agree with them politically. Rick Santorum's conservatism is not particularly to my taste (alas, for us genuine right-wing crazies, it's that kind of year), and I can well see why fair-minded people would have differences with him on a host of issues from spending to homosexuality. But you could have said the same thing four years ago about Sarah Palin – and instead the Left, especially the so-called feminist Left, found it easier to mock her gleefully for the soi-disant retard kid and her fecundity in general. The usual rap against the Right is that they're hypocrites – they vote for the Defense of Marriage Act, and next thing you know they're playing footsie across the stall divider with an undercover cop at the airport men's room. But Rick Santorum lives his values, and that seems to bother the Left even more.

Never mind the dead kid, he has six living kids. How crazy freaky weird is that?

This crazy freaky weird: all those self-evidently ludicrous risible surplus members of the Santorum litter are going to be paying the Social Security and Medicare of all you normal well-adjusted Boomer yuppies who had one designer kid at 39. So, if it helps make it easier to "empathize," look on them as sacrificial virgins to hurl into the bottomless pit of Big Government debt.

Two weeks ago I wrote in this space: "A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present and future." Whatever my disagreements with Santorum on his "compassionate conservatism," he gets that. He understands that our fiscal bankruptcy is a symptom rather than the cause.

The real wickedness of Big Government is that it debauches not merely a nation's finances but, ultimately, its human capital – or, as he puts it, you cannot have a strong economy without strong families.

Santorum's respect for all life, including even the smallest bleakest meanest two-hour life, speaks well for him, especially in comparison with his fellow Pennsylvanian, the accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, an industrial-scale abortionist at a Philadelphia charnel house who plunged scissors into the spinal cords of healthy delivered babies. Few of Gosnell's employees seemed to find anything "weird" about that: Indeed, they helped him out by tossing their remains in jars and bags piled up in freezers and cupboards. Much less crazy than taking 'em home and holding a funeral, right?

Albeit less dramatically than "Doctor" Gosnell, much of the developed world has ruptured the compact between past, present and future. A spendthrift life of self-gratification is one thing. A spendthrift life paid for by burdening insufficient numbers of children and grandchildren with crippling debt they can never pay off is utterly contemptible. And to too many of America's politico-media establishment it's not in the least bit "weird."

©MARK STEYN

(Related: Alan Colmes Apologizes to Santorum and His Wife for ‘Hurtful Comment’)

Penn State football takes first, slow step out of swamp

2012-01-07T07:40:00.000-05:00

Friday, January 06, 2012

By Gene Collier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/

Bill O'Brien, the Patriots' offensive coordinator, will become Penn State's new head football coach.

The first football coaching search at Penn State in nearly half a century seemed to last nearly half a century; but it was over in less than two miserable months.

There were times when it seemed like you'd soon hear that the Coast Guard had joined the search, or that the search would henceforth be aided by highly-trained coach-sniffing dogs. By Thursday of this week, the Penn State job was the last of 25 such positions at the major college level still not filled for 2012.

The low point in a process that had the external appearance of a full-blown bumblethon was when Tom Clements was reportedly interviewed on Skype.

Holy Skype, isn't that the way Joe Paterno managed his final recruiting visits? Was Clements, the former Steelers assistant and the quarterbacks coach of the Green Bay Packers, on the inside track to be the world's first Skype hire? Why not just turn the whole program into a video game? Don't think someone doesn't have Grand Theft Auto-State College in the works right now.

In the end, new coach Bill O'Brien got described as hard-nosed and old-school, probably because Penn State had easily taken long enough to sift through the entire soft-nosed, new-school population of these United States.

Throughout the process, Penn State proved still again that it could keep a secret, which is, with still another heapin' helpin' of down-home irony, exactly what got it into this unholy mess in the first place. Maybe dear old State was going to be conducting a coaching search this winter anyway. Maybe had he been allowed to coach in the 100 percent tradition-free Ticket City Bowl, Paterno would have called a press conference to say that after 62 years on the sideline, the last 46 as head coach, maybe someone who could still stand erect for three hours should run the show.

Nothing so quaint happened, not remotely.

All of this happened instead because in about 72 hours, former Paterno assistant Jerry Sandusky was to be arraigned on the lurid charges that he sexually abused 10 young boys over the past 15 years, and because every Penn State employee who ever got so much as a whiff of it abandoned those kids just as demonstrably as if they had left each of them on the shoulder of I-80 in a Centre County blizzard.
So maybe that's the reason the coaching search took so long, no?

Your typical college coaching search doesn't start with the question, "Who among the nation's great football minds and motivators of young college men would best be qualified to get plopped down into the middle of an open-ended child rape scandal?"

Your typical college coaching interview doesn't start with the question, "Hey coach, if one of your grad assistants came to you with a story about a former assistant improperly touching a child in the shower of the football building, what would you do? We'll need a full explanation."

No, this was an extra sensitive, ultra-pressurized process that needed to transcend every pedestrian football question, such as salvaging a recruiting class, for example.

If Penn State thinks that's its primary concern for the moment, it still doesn't get it. State needs a transformational figure, a statesman to lead it out of Sandusky Swamp toward its own new testament. That's why, by my interpretation, it wanted Mike Munchak more than anyone.

The head coach of the Tennessee Titans is a former Nittany Lion All-American, with all the fresh psychological wounds and chronic heartache so many alumni are experiencing as Penn State struggles for its equilibrium. It was someone with that kind of stake in this, Penn State searchers felt, preferably someone whose Penn State experience predated any allegations, who would have been best equipped and thus best motivated.

Depending on how injurious to the school's bloodied reputation the Sandusky trial becomes, depending on what further abominations are brought forth in criminal and civil trials that stretch to the horizon, and depending to a lesser extent on the academic, interpersonal, and on-field performance of the Lions of O'Brien, Penn State might decide that its new coach looks better as a seat holder for someone who can start over still again if the nightmare ever ends.

For the moment, though, it looks as though Penn State has itself a good, relatively young football coach, something it hasn't been able to say in a very long time. The last irony is that in the years just before he built Penn State into a leading athletic and academic brand, Paterno turned down a fortune from the New England Patriots to see the process through. In Penn State's darkest hour, the fact that a highly valued coach with the New England Patriots would leave a top NFL brand to coach where Joe coached might now, nearly 40 years later, be the signal that all is not lost.

Gene Collier's "Two-Minute Warning" videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.

Mother With a Gun

2012-01-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

She and her baby are alive, and their would-be killer is dead, because she was armed.

By Rich Lowry
http://www.nationalreview.com
January 6, 2012

Sarah Dawn McKinley and child.

If the National Rifle Association had an award for Mother of the Year, it might already have a winner. When two men began to break into her home on New Year’s Eve, Sarah Dawn McKinley of Blanchard, Okla., popped a bottle into her crying three-month-old baby’s mouth and reached for her guns.

According to her account and that of police, she defended herself and her child in terrifying circumstances. To say McKinley was in the middle of nowhere would exaggerate the centrality of her location in a sparsely populated area about 25 miles outside of Oklahoma City. To say her home was vulnerable would exaggerate the security of a trailer with no alarm system or safe rooms. To say she was on her own would probably exaggerate her sense of connectedness, by herself, tending to her infant, after her husband had died of lung cancer on Christmas Day.

This is the stuff of nightmares. But McKinley never lost her cool. We know because, after shoving the couch in front of her door, she called 911 from her cell phone. The recording of the call should be put in a time capsule to capture the odd juxtaposition in 21st-century America of hardscrabble common sense on the one hand and a polite solicitousness toward the authorities on the other.

“I’m here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?” she asked. Note the instinctive civility of the “please.” The answer was basically “no.” With three deputies covering 12,000 square miles, no one could get to her soon. McKinley stayed on the line an incredible 21 minutes. Then, she got to the crux of the matter. “I’ve got two guns in my hand,” she told the operator. “Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in the door?”

This would seem a superfluous question if you believe your safety is at risk at the hands of someone forcibly entering your home. But not all states have the same “castle doctrine” as Oklahoma that gives homeowners an unambiguous right to shoot unlawful intruders. And not all jurisdictions are rational about firearms. Visiting New York City from Tennessee, where she has a gun permit, Meredith Graves brought a pistol in her purse to the 9/11 Memorial. When she saw a sign saying “No Guns Allowed,” she innocently asked guards where she could check her pistol. This query prompted her arrest on — yes — suspicion of carrying a loaded weapon. She could face jail time, in what promises to be the most pointless trial of the century.

Back in Oklahoma, the 911 operator was cagey, if unmistakable: “I can’t tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby.” That’s all the permission McKinley needed. The confrontation ended badly for Justin Martin, a 24-year-old who McKinley says had been harassing her. Police found him dead of a single gunshot wound, armed with a knife. His accomplice told police that they both were high on prescription painkillers and thought they could find medications used by McKinley’s late husband.

McKinley says she is sorry about Martin’s death, but would do it again. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in a case nearly a century ago, “detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.”

Instances of self-defense are the anecdotes that gun controllers never want to hear. The NRA keeps a running list of them on its website: attempted armed robberies, home invasions, and other attacks rebuffed every month by the would-be victims. Surely, Sarah McKinley’s assailants thought the young, slender, widowed mother was an easy mark. Her shotgun meant they were wrong. Who would have it any other way? Otherwise, the intruder has the knife and she has nothing except a cellphone and the wan hope that someone armed with a gun makes it to her in time.

― Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2012 by King Features Syndicate

A worthy challenger

2012-01-06T06:05:00.000-05:00

By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
January 6, 2012

Rick Santorum addresses supporters at his Iowa caucus victory party, Jan. 3, 2012, in Johnston, Iowa.

(Charlie Riedel/AP Photo)

After every other conservative alternative to Mitt Romney crashed and burned (libertarian Ron Paul is in a category of his own), from the rubble emerges Rick Santorum. But he isn’t just the last man standing. He is the first challenger to be plausibly presidential: knowledgeable, articulate, experienced, of stable character and authentic ideology.

He’d been ignored largely because he appeared unelectable — out of office for five years, having lost his Senate seat in Pennsylvania by a staggering 17 points in 2006.

However, with his virtual tie for first in Iowa, he sheds the loser label and seizes the momentum, meaning millions of dollars’ worth of free media to make up for his lack of money. He’s got the stage to make his case, plus the luck of a scheduling quirk: If he can make it through the next three harrowing primaries, the (relative) February lull would allow him to build a national campaign structure before Super Tuesday on March 6.

Santorum’s electoral advantage is sociological: His common-man, working-class sensibility would be highly appealing to battleground-state Reagan Democrats. His fundamental problem is ideological: He’s a deeply committed social conservative in a year when the country is obsessed with the economy and when conservatism is obsessed with limited government. Republicans, after all, swept the 2010 election on economic concerns and opposition to big government. The Tea Party revolution was not about gay marriage. Which is why so much Tea Party fervor attaches to Paul.

Santorum did win the Tea Party vote in Iowa. But because he was such a long shot, his record did not receive much scrutiny. It will now. He is no austere limited-government constitutionalist. He participated in George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism, which largely made peace with big government. Santorum, for example, defends earmarks and supported No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. It’s a perfectly defensible philosophy — but now he’ll be called upon to actually defend it.

Moreover, Iowa is anomalous. It’s not just that the Republican electorate is disproportionately evangelical and thus highly receptive to Santorum’s social conservatism (as to Mike Huckabee’s in 2008). It’s that Iowa’s economy is unusually healthy with only 5.7 percent unemployment, high agricultural prices and strong real estate values. Although the economy did rate as a major issue in the entrance poll, in such relative prosperity it registers more as a concern for the nation than as a visceral personal issue — diminishing the impact of Romney’s calling card, economic competence.

For his part, Romney remains preternaturally inert. His numbers, his demeanor, his campaign are flat-line steady: no highs, no lows, no euphoria, no panic.

With one minor exception. Romney wasn’t expected to do very well in Iowa. A top-three finish would have been good; a first or second, a surprising success. But feeling his Iowa prospects rise, he let fly a last-minute high. (Two hairs were seen dangling over his forehead.) He began touting his chance of winning, thus gratuitously raising expectations.

That turned a hairline victory into something of a setback, accentuating his inability to break out of his flat-line25 or so percent support. How flat? His final 2012 Iowa vote count deviated from his 2008 total of 30,021 by six votes. (Not 6 percent. A party of six.)

For a front-runner who can’t seem to expand his base, he’s been fortunate that the opposition has been so split. But the luck stops here. Michele Bachmann is gone. Rick Perry will skip New Hampshire, then dead-man-walk through South Carolina. And then there is Newt.

Gingrich is staying in. This should be good news for Romney. It’s not. In his Iowa non-concession speech, Gingrich was seething. He could not conceal his fury with Paul and Romney for burying him in negative ads. After singling out Santorum for praise, Gingrich launched into them both, most especially Romney.

Gingrich speaks of aligning himself with Santorum against Romney. For Newt’s campaign, this makes absolutely no strategic sense. Except that Gingrich is after vengeance, not victory. Ahab is loose in New Hampshire, stalking his great white Mitt.

What a lineup. Santorum and Gingrich go after Romney, whose unspoken ally is Paul, who needs to fight off Santorum in order to emerge as both No. 1 challenger and Republican kingmaker, leader of a movement demanding respect, attention and concessions. And Jon Huntsman goes after everybody.

Is this any way to pick a president? Absolutely. It works. It winnows. And it has produced, after just one contest, an admirably worthy conservative alternative to Romney.

Today's Tune: Jason & The Scorchers - Shop it Around (Live)

2012-01-05T11:20:00.000-05:00