Junior's dignified 600th stroll

Posted: Monday June 9, 2008 11:30PM; Updated: Tuesday June 10, 2008 2:00AM

Jack Wilkinson > VIEWPOINT
SI.com



Like Nos. 200, 300, 400 and 500, Ken Griffey Jr.'s 600th home run came on the road.
AP

In the annals of Junior Achievement, this milestone looms large, even on his considerable, Cooperstown-bound résumé. It's not every night that someone hits home run No. 600, even in these pharmaceutically enhanced times.

It happened for just the sixth time in major league history Monday evening. If only the setting had been more apt. It's OK to hit No. 600 on the road, as long as that road isn't an exit off the Florida Turnpike. But there was Ken Griffey Jr., in the left-hand batter's box at godforsaken Dolphins Stadium, a fine setting for football, an abomination for baseball.

Before a gathering of 16,003 -- a smattering of whom congregated near the right-field foul pole, all seeking a piece of history -- Griffey joined a most exclusive big league club. He became the sixth player to reach the 600-homer plateau. On a 3-1 pitch in the bottom of the first inning, Griffey got the best of Mark Hendrickson. The Marlins' 6-foot-9 left-hander hung the most tantalizing curve this side of Jessica Biel, and Griffey smacked it into the dying sunlight of a South Florida night.

Or as George Grande, the Cincinnati Reds' longtime play-by-play man, put it so nicely: "The 3-1 to Junior ... That's going back! ... Yessirree! That's gonna be ... gone!! One more step up the ladder to Cooperstown and the Hall of Fame for Ken Griffey Jr.!

"Celebrate, Griffey family. You deserve it!" Grande continued, as TV zeroed in on Griffey's wife and their two youngest children, sitting in the stands, his wife, Melissa, wiping away a tear. Too bad it didn't occur in Griffey's hometown, Cincinnati, where he grew up the namesake of a Big Red Machine icon, starred himself at Moeller High and returned home in 2000 after spending 11 stellar seasons in Seattle.



Cincinnati Reds Ken Griffey Jr. watches after connecting with his 600th career homerun during first inning action against the Florida Marlins in MLB National League baseball action in Miami, Florida June 9, 2008. REUTERS/Hans Deryk (UNITED STATES)

One, two, three steps out of the box, Junior finally went into his home run trot Monday. He'd just joined five other men in baseball's exclusive 600-homer fraternity. Of course, only three of those five -- Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays -- are untainted. Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa? Please.

"Griffey's clean. If anybody in baseball is clean, I'm pretty sure he is," said Jeff Herzenach, 39, who grew up a Twins fan in Minnesota and is now a bartender in Atlanta at the Brewhouse Café and an astute observer of the sporting scene. "He's one of the only ones."

On Herzenach's current reading list? Vindicated, by former All-Star-turned-tell-all author Jose Canseco. "I wanted to hate Jose Canseco so bad, that [jerk]. But now, I'm reading it and he didn't even mention Ken Griffey Jr. once." Indeed, few -- if any -- people have used the words "steroids" and "Junior" in the same sentence.

"If he didn't get injured," Herzenach said, "I bet he'd be going for 700. Now that 500's been wrecked [Rafael Palmeiro, come on down!], you're gonna have to hit 600 to get into the Hall of Fame. Bonds is juiced. Sosa?" He smiled. "Babe was a drunk," he said, laughing. Prohibition be damned. "Hank Aaron was clean-cut. And Willie Mays was Willie Mays."

At 7:51 p.m. EDT Monday, less than a half-hour after Griffey went deep and into posterity, this was posted on the Cincinnati Enquirer Web site by Justin M. Gibson of Taylor Mill, Ky.: "I am a Cleveland native and have been a Junior fan since I was 12. I couldn't have been more prouder [sic] of him than if he was my dad! Only three players in history [have] done it clean, with him being the fourth. I wish Cincinnati would have been a more gracious city for him, but the fans here are terrible. Go back to Seattle, Griff, where a true legend like you is appreciated. But I will miss seeing you play!"

If South Florida was no country for old men to make home run history, Griffey's hometown hasn't exactly enveloped him in a warm, welcome-back embrace. Since a second-place finish in 2000, the Reds have had seven straight losing seasons and are well on their way to an eighth. Griffey, who belted 40 homers in his 2000 return, has had just two 30-homer seasons since. He's been chronically injured, hamstrung by hamstring woes in particular. Blessed by good genes and bad legs. "General soreness" is how the Reds' recent pre-game notes describe his physical condition.



Cincinnati Reds' Ken Griffey Jr., left, laughs with Florida Marlins' Andre Dawson, center, and Tony Perez during the Reds warm up before a baseball game against the Marlins Monday, June 9, 2008 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami.
(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Yet he's rarely alibied, and never honked his own horn. Never had to. When Griffey hit his 600th, his was a dignified, major-league loll around the basepaths. Not too slow, not too fast, not showy in the least, before hugging his oldest son, Trey, in the dugout. It was the antithesis of Bonds' preening, look-at-me sashay after his 756th dinger.

Give Hendrickson credit for pitching to Junior, who was 5-for-8 lifetime off the elongated lefty, with one homer. Since hitting his 599th homer, Griffey was 7-for-17 (.412) with nine walks (think they were pitching around him?) during that seven-game stretch. It's a pity Griffey didn't wait until Tuesday, when the Reds begin a nine-game homestand in the bandbox that is the Great American Ballpark, to hit No. 600. He deserved to do so at home, literally home, even if he and his family now live in gated-community, sequestered splendor in Orlando in the offseason.

He's still a Cincy kid at heart, a Skyline Chili-fed son of a key cog in the Big Red Machine. Yet the Queen City has never really warmed to Junior. Not as you'd expect, or he and the club hoped. The team has a 21st-century stench to it, Griffey hasn't been the Kid who smote 398 homers in 11 seasons in Seattle (209 in his last four seasons alone), and this may well be another endless summer for the last-place Reds.

Come late July, the question may be this: Will Griffey, the sixth man to belt 600 homers, become the first to be traded in the same season? The eight-year extension he signed in 2000 has a club option for 2009. Whatever the Reds decide, Griffey, at 38, still has aspirations to join the 700 club. Who knows how high they'd have been had he not been injured so often this decade? Say, 800? The one 800 club member? Who'll know?

Know this: Junior's achievement was not only extraordinary, but untainted. Welcome him home properly, Cincinnati.

A monument to Griffey's legacy

By Paul Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer
June 10, 2008



MIAMI - JUNE 9: Ken Griffey Jr. #3 of the Cincinnati Reds hits his 600th career home run against the Florida Marlins in the first inning on June 9, 2008 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images)

You are known by the company you keep, and that has only a little to do with hitting a lot of home runs.

Willie Mays was at home near San Francisco when the phone sounded. He picked it up on the first ring. Mays’ voice was a little faint, even as his words were anything but. Even now, 35 years after he last played, it’s hard to imagine the Say Hey Kid turning 77 in May.

“Great kid," Mays decided. “What else is there to say? Respectful. Aware. Has both his feet firmly on the ground."

Willie Mays was talking about Ken Griffey Jr.: One Kid to another. Each a little older than we imagine, both keenly aware of what really matters, and it’s not necessarily 600 home runs.

“Good family. You could tell he was raised right," said Mays. “He’d always come over to our (San Francisco Giants) clubhouse and find me. Even when he was little. Just to say hello, ask me how I’m doing."

A few years back, Mays visited Griffey’s adopted home state of Florida. Griffey knew Mays’ affection for children. Junior made sure his kids met Willie, and understood the significance of Mays’ baseball achievements.

Griffey has 600 home runs now. Only five other players in history can say the same. Mays is at 660. Three current players have a chance to hit 600: Alex Rodriguez, barring severe injury, seems a lock. Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome have outside chances.

There is something different in the way Griffey got to 600, of course. It’s a difference that restores some of the joy to the history. Griffey’s 600 is entirely honorable and free of the cynicism that coats like rust the longball achievements of his peers.

Sammy Sosa hit No. 600 last year. It passed with little notice, save the knowing nods of fans who by now know taint when they see it.

What we take from Griffey’s 600th is more than a milestone reached. His 600 showed respect for the game, respect for the record book and respect for those who came before him. It’s not just that Griffey honors Mays, or that he was the first to suggest players wear Jackie Robinson’s No. 42 on the anniversary of Robinson’s first Major League game. Or that he was the only current Reds player to attend Joe Nuxhall’s visitation and funeral.

It’s not even that Griffey has persevered through an orthopedist’s list of leg ailments to get to 600. It’s that he has cared enough about the game, about himself and about those most dear to him to make his achievement fully worthy.

Griffey has been asked a thousand times in the past few years about performance enhancers: Did you think about using them? What do you think of those who might have used them? And so on. He never answers, directly. The best I got from him came last year, after this question: “What would you like your kids to take from your career?’’ or some such.

Griffey’s answer, paraphrasing: “That I can look them in the eye and say I did it the right way." Which, of course, means more than any home run he ever hit.



The Say Hey Kid led the NL in homers four times and posted 11 30-homer seasons. His 600th career homer came on September 22, 1969, against Mike Corkins of the San Diego Padres. The 24-time All-Star is perhaps still best remembered for his over-the-shoulder catch of a Vic Wertz fly ball in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series.
Photo: John G. Zimmerman/SI

Willie Mays won’t talk about steroids. “That junk," he calls the subject. He is not one to pass judgment, he says, about people he doesn’t know personally. He isn’t big on the whole, tired notion of athletes as role models, either. “First mistake you make, (media) jump all over you," Mays says.

What he has done is be good by example. “Stop and talk to kids," Mays says. “Sign autographs. If kids liked what I did and they try to emulate me, that’s good. Role models should be parents."

Griffey shares something else, then, with Willie Mays, beyond 600 home runs: He’s a role model without advertising it. Never has a great player enjoyed talking about himself less. Never has a player done more behind the scenes for children. Never has a baseball player honored his game more thoroughly. Six hundred home runs might shine a brighter light on that legacy. But it’s always been there.

Willie Mays once said that Ken Griffey Jr. was the current player who most reminded him of himself. He was talking about the way Griffey played baseball. But the comparison extends beyond the diamond. “Great kid," says Mays. “What else would you like me to say?"

Music Review: Emmylou Harris - "All I Intended to Be"

By Nate Chinen

The New York Times

June 8, 2008

EMMYLOU HARRIS

Emmylou Harris has always embraced the urge to excavate. She has a folk singer’s air of resourceful humility and no compunctions about approaching other people’s songs. Shaping her own music, she can be graceful and evocative. But like the best of her fellow inductees in the Country Music Hall of Fame — she joined their ranks just a couple of months ago — she doesn’t bestow strict privilege on originality.
Ms. Harris confirmed that point last year with “Songbird: Rare Tracks and Forgotten Gems” (Rhino), a boxed set spanning the breadth of her career, with plenty of borrowed songs. Now she’s releasing “All I Intended to Be” (Nonesuch), which features just five originals, two of which were written with Kate and Anna McGarrigle. The other songs are largely the work of contemporary artists like Tracy Chapman and Patty Griffin, and Ms. Harris sings them just as lovingly.

The material seems to have been chosen for its precision of image and ease of melody, and perhaps for some inherent ruminative languor. Ms. Harris, rarely singing more than two notches above a murmur, settles into a realm of sweet sorrow, contemplating life and death and several strains of disillusioned love. This isn’t a lighthearted romp of an album.
Instead, it urges introspection, musically as well as lyrically. Ms. Harris recorded “All I Intended to Be” in bits and pieces over the past three years. She enlisted her old producer, Brian Ahern, who also plays some guitar parts; among those contributing background vocals are the McGarrigles, Buddy Miller and Dolly Parton. Karen Brooks lends not only her voice but also her old backing track for a Jack Wesley Routh tune, “Shores of White Sand.”

That Ms. Harris chose to open the album with that recycled track, which Mr. Ahern originally produced more than 25 years ago, speaks volumes for her instincts as a scavenger. It also attests to her quiet but steely confidence as a singer, which is still extremely well placed. Ms. Harris is scheduled to perform at Town Hall on June 18 and 19, and it’s a safe bet that she’ll make every song feel personal, whatever its pedigree.

GAGGED IN CANADA

By Rich Lowry
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com
June 10, 2008

SPEECH POLICE RUN AMOK

http://www.redplanetcartoons.com

At its best, Western civilization has fostered freedom of speech and of thought. But Canada has a better idea.

Last week, a Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia considered a complaint brought against journalist Mark Steyn for a piece in the Canadian newsweekly Maclean's. The excerpt from Steyn's best-selling book "America Alone" argued that high Muslim birthrates mean Europeans will feel pressure to reach "an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots."

The piece was obviously within respectable journalistic bounds. In fact, combining hilarity and profound social analysis, the article could be considered a sparkling model of the polemical art - not surprising, given that Steyn is one of North America's journalistic gems.

The Canadian Islamic Congress took offense. In the normal course of things, that would mean speaking or writing to counter Steyn. But not in 21st century Canada, where the old liberal rallying cry "I hate what you say, but will fight for your right to say it" no longer applies.

The country is dotted with human-rights commissions. At first, they typically heard discrimination suits against businesses. But since that didn't create much work, the commissions branched out into policing "hate" speech. Initially, they targeted neo-Nazis; then religious figures who'd condemned homosexuality; and now Maclean's and Steyn.

The new rallying cry is, "If I hate what you say, I'll accuse you of hate." The Canadian Islamic Council got the Human Rights Tribunal in British Columbia and the national Canadian Human Rights Commission (where proceedings are still pending) to agree to hear its complaint. It had to like its odds.

The national commission has never found anyone innocent in 31 years. It is set up for classic Alice-in-Wonderland "verdict first, trial later" justice: Canada's Human Rights Act defines hate speech as speech "likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." That language is so capacious and vague that to be accused is tantamount to being found guilty.

Unlike in defamation law, truth is no defense, and there's no obligation to prove harm. One of the principal investigators of the Canadian Human Rights Commission was asked in a hearing what value he puts on freedom of speech in his work, and replied, "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." Clearly.

In British Columbia, the Steyn hearing proceeded with all the marsupial ungainliness of a kangaroo court. No one knew what the rules of evidence were. Hilariously, one of the chief complaints against Steyn was that he quoted a Muslim imam in Norway bragging that in Europe "the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes." If that insect simile is out-of-bounds, the commission should swoop down on Norway and execute an extraordinary rendition of the imam.

The hearing has appropriately exposed the commissions to ridicule - and maybe some hatred and contempt (if that's allowed). There are calls to strip them of their power to regulate the media. This would limit the damage, even as free speech is endangered elsewhere.

In Europe, saying the wrong thing about gays or Muslims is routinely sanctioned by the state. In France, the bombshell-turned-animal-rights-activist Brigitte Bardot just collected her fifth fine, for complaining about how Muslims kill sheep.

Free speech is a very clean, neutral concept - "Congress shall make no law . . ." Once a government begins policing offensiveness, things get much murkier. It has to decide which groups are protected and which aren't - the "who/whom" of Lenin's power relations. So, even though there are plenty of fire-breathing imams in Canada, no one ever pesters them about their hatefulness.

It is the genius of Muslim grievance groups to leverage Western anti-discrimination laws to their advantage. In his Maclean's essay, Steyn noted how in much of the West, "the early 21st century's principal political dynamic" is whether something offends Muslims. Indeed - but in Canada, truth is no defense.

comments.lowry@nationalreview.com

Today's Tune: U2 & Bruce Springsteen - Stand By Me (Live)

(This is for Craig...we attended this show together and more than twenty years later the moments captured in this video remain very powerful...I thought posting this song might be a meaningful way to express some measure of solidarity after reading his latest blog post (found at "Ice Shavings and Shinny" under "Links" below).



(Click on title to play video)

Today's Tune: The Del Fuegos - Don't Run Wild

(Click on title to play video)

HOW 'LIBERAL' CARE WOULD KILL TED

By ROBERT M. GOLDBERG
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
June 5, 2008


Kennedy: Getting care denied by 'liberal' health regimes.

Ironically enough, the dangers of the liberal health-care agenda are being made clear by the care that a liberal icon, Sen. Ted Kennedy, has received since his brain seizure last month.

One day after an MRI detected a tumor, Kennedy was quickly diagnosed with a malignant glioma - a rare and often-fatal form of brain cancer. Less than two weeks later, his tumor was being removed by one of the world's experts in brain cancer at Duke Univeristy Medical Center. He'll follow up with chemo and radiation therapy tailored to the genetic makeup of his cancer to keep the cancer from spreading.

He'll likely take Avastin, a drug that in experiments with brain cancer has extended survival by months. A new cancer vaccine being developed in partnership with Pfizer could extend his life by six years.

Of course, with his wealth and power, Kennedy would get good treatment anywhere. But the same care is available to every American.

Not so - if we make the health "reforms" called for by Kennedy and other liberals.

Filmmaker Michael Moore gives their standard line when he says: "There are problems in all health-care systems, but at least Europeans and Canadians have a health-care system that covers everyone."

Problem is, governments that promise to "cover everyone" always wind up cutting corners simply to save money. People with Kennedy's condition are dying or dead as a result.

Consider Jennifer Bell of Norwich, England. In 2006, the 22-year-old complained of headaches for months - but Britain's National Health Service made her wait a year to see a neurologist.

Then she had to wait more than three months before should could get what the NHS decided was only a "relatively urgent" MRI scan. Three days before the MRI appointment, she died.

Consider, too, the chemo drug Kennedy is receiving: Temodar, the first oral medicine for brain tumors in 25 years.

Temodar has been widely used in this country since the FDA approved it in 2000. But a British health-care rationing agency, the National Institute for Comparative Effectiveness, ruled that, while the drug helps people live longer, it wasn't worth the money - and denied coverage for it.

Barack Obama - and other Democrats - have been pushing a Senate bill to set up a similar US "review board" for Medicare and any future government health-care plan.

After denying this treatment completely for seven years, the NICE (did whoever named it intend the irony?) relented - partly. Even today, only a handful of Brits with brain tumors can get Temodar.

And if you want to pay for Temodar out of your own pocket, the British system forces you to pay for all of your cancer care - about $30,000 a month.

Things are no different in Canada, where the wait for an MRI (once you finally get a referral) has grown to 10 weeks. For Canadians relying on their government health care, the average wait time from diagnosis of cancer to surgery is beyond the guideline set by both the US and European societies for surgical oncology.

And HealthCanada, the government system, similarly refuses to pay for treatments that are often covered in America.

Chad Curley, a 37-year-old auto worker from Windsor, Ontario, had a brain tumor like Kennedy's but can't have surgery because his is too large to be operable.

His tumor didn't respond to Temodar and the same doctors now treating Sen. Kennedy told him and his wife that the Avastin combination could stop his tumor from growing and add months to his life. But HealthCanada wouldn't pay to use Avastin to treat his tumor.

Chad's family and friends scraped together the $5,000 for the first round of treatment in mid-November; they later saw Chad's left-side paralysis start to subside. But the money ran out - and he died on Feb. 21.

In pushing for government-run health care, liberals are pushing for a system where only the Ted Kennedys of the world can get cutting-edge - and life-saving - care.

Robert M. Goldberg is vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. bobgoldberg@yahoo.com

Abortion and the Catholic Vote

Catholics for Obama?
A tough case to make.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com
June 9, 2008 12:00 AM

Can a Catholic be for Barack Obama? The question has been recently raised by a law professor at Pepperdine who went from being a Mitt Romney adviser to an Obama supporter. The question is further raised by the appearance of the angry Fr. Michael Pfleger, a longtime friend of the Democratic nominee who recently preached at Obama’s (now former) Trinity church in the national news.

The answer to the question is not up to me. The answer comes to the individual Catholic through prayer and reflection on the demands of his conscience, informed by the teaching of the Church. Neither of those steps can be glossed over. And there can be no mistaking what responsibilities the Catholic voter faces.

When the topic was recently a matter of cable talking-heads’ concern, I was asked, repeatedly, in all seriousness, if Catholics can even vote. After all, war is bad. The death penalty is bad. Abortion is bad. John McCain supports the war on terror. He supports capital punishment. He is against abortion. Obama: antiwar, pro-abortion, functionally anti-death penalty. So neither wins. Or Obama wins? “Can Catholics vote for anyone?” readers asked.

Further, e-mailers asked, (I quote one of many): “You are, of course, aware that the Catholic Church also sees contraception as a sin, as well. Since means never justify the ends, voting for a candidate who promotes contraception as an alternative to abortion is also wrong. Without researching, I assume all major candidates have no problem with contraception, therefore, no candidate should get Catholic votes by your line of reasoning. I’m sorry for this rant, but I do not like people playing politics with my religion.”

No, no presidential candidate is going to call for a ban on contraception. That’s not a serious consideration.

But politics can never be wholly divorced from religion. Our religious morality necessarily informs our political judgments.

The thing about abortion is, it’s not just any other issue — as serious as so many others are. Abortion is not open to debate.

Pope Benedict, in a speech to European politicians in 2006, offered some instruction for the Catholic conscience: “As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today: the protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family — as a union between one man and one woman based on marriage . . . ; and the protection of the rights of parents to educate their children.”

That “not negotiable” is not to be missed.

So can a Catholic vote for a politician who supports legal abortion? Providing guidance, the Archbishop of Denver writes that a Catholic voter would “need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. . . . It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.”

Barack Obama says he would never want his daughters to be “punished” by the birth of an unplanned baby. The Catholic Catechism instructs that a child “must be treated from conception as a person.” Obama, as an Illinois state senator, opposed legislation that would protect babies born alive in botched abortion attempts. He explained, “whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a 9-month old — child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute.”

That would be a child, albeit not a nine-month-old child (forgive me for not being moved by his distinction), whose life he dismissed. This is the Democrats’ candidate for president.

Catholics need to know what their Church teaches. Know your candidate. Know abortion isn’t just any issue. It’s a grave offense and betrayal to fail to protect the most innocent human life. If you’re a Catholic who honestly can see how Barack Obama’s election as president won’t contribute to or compound that offence, go in peace. I don’t see it. I don’t see how anyone can see it. And so for those who don’t get a vote, for those who have been mutilated and murdered in the name of “choice,” this Catholic will caste hers against him in November.

— Kathryn Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

For God's sake, some athletes should leave Him out of it

June 8, 2008
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist



Yes, Roy Williams, you've had on-field problems. But God isn't getting involved. (Getty Images)

Dallas Cowboys safety Roy Williams sucks at zone coverage, but Jesus loves him.

No, wait. Sorry -- I made a mess of that sentence. Let me try it again:

Roy Williams sucks at zone coverage because Jesus loves him.

There. Better.

Why are you looking at me like that? Don't blame me. I'm not the latest athlete to play the God card so clumsily and self-centeredly. I'm not the "role model" who told an Oklahoma newspaper that a direct line can be drawn from his football struggles to his new-found faith in the Lord. That was all Roy Williams, who had been having a tough year before opening his mouth and inserting his Bible.

Williams went through the entire 2007 season without a sack. He struggled in Wade Phillips' 3-4 defensive scheme to the point Phillips didn't start him in two games. There was talk of a feud between Williams and coaches and even some teammates after Williams -- whose horse-collar tackles led to a rule banning them -- got himself suspended by horse-collaring the Eagles' Donovan McNabb.

Two Cowboys questioned him recently in the media. Greg Ellis said Williams has been whining and distancing himself from teammates. Terence Newman said Williams "had a bad season" in coverage thanks to his "deer in headlights type of reaction to some plays."

With that as context, here's what Williams told the Oklahoman last week:

"Ever since I've rededicated my life to Christ, I've caught way more persecution now," he said. "But it's a beautiful thing because I know it's a breakthrough coming for me. I welcome it. What makes me any better than Christ? He was persecuted and I've been persecuted. My teammates know where my heart is. They know where my mind is at."

Williams' heart may be in the right place, but his brain needs work if it sees parallels between the persecution of Jesus and the persecution of a $25 million safety. Beaten by Roman soldiers, beaten by Randy Moss -- what's the difference?

Athletes turn to God, and God loses. Have you ever met someone who was turned on after watching Jon Kitna thank God for a touchdown pass? Doubt it. Have you ever met someone who was turned off? Sure you have. There's a saying: Christianity would be great if it weren't for all those, you know, Christians.

Just so you know, I've walked both sides of this fence. Some of you might wonder, so here goes: I've not been to church in a year, but for a decade before that, I went weekly and tithed 10 percent of my salary, such as it is, to the church. There's my story.

Lots of Christians tithe. Nothing special about me. Hell, Darryl Strawberry told reporters he was tithing in 1991. In later years, he was strung out on coke and indicted for tax evasion and charged with soliciting prostitutes and assaulting a girlfriend and failing to support his kids. I'm not sure he was still a Christian, but I'm positive I wasn't the only one to remember his tithing and wonder what happened. And I'm positive that's not good.

Not that Christians are, or are supposed to be, perfect. They're not. On the day before Super Bowl XXXIII, Falcons safety Eugene Robinson was awarded the Bart Starr Award by the Christian group Athletes in Action for his "high moral character." That night he was busted for soliciting a prostitute. It happens. Christians are fallible too, you know.



Left behind: Eugene Robinson got caught out of position by Denver's Rod Smith (80) in Super Bowl XXXIII. (AP)

But when Christian athletes are fallible or narcissistic or just stupid, there are thousands of easily influenced people taking note. So when a whining malcontent like Roy Williams starts comparing himself to Jesus, he's not helping the bigger cause. He's hurting it. And he's just the latest in a long line of athletes to do so.

Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter is one of the most devoutly Christian athletes I've ever seen, but a few weeks ago, he was openly pining for Mets manager Willie Randolph's job. That's coveting. And it isn't very Christian.

When he played for the Marlins in 1997, Darren Daulton espoused his beliefs as a born-again Christian. He espoused them to me, and I listened. Now he espouses his belief in out-of-body experiences, numerology and his mastery of time travel. He might be crazy. He definitely isn't someone I should have been listening to in 1997.



Darren Daulton

As heavyweight champion of the world, Evander Holyfield sends one message when he speaks about his deep Christian faith. He sends another with his 11 children with various women, several out of wedlock.

Before the 2005 Super Bowl, receiver Terrell Owens said God had healed his injured ankle. Doctors had inserted two screws and a metal plate into the leg on Dec. 22, 2004. Four days later, Southeast Asia was decimated by a tsunami that killed more than 200,000. Maybe T.O. really does think God was healing an ankle at the same time He was allowing such death and destruction. Fine. But don't tell us.

Just the other day, Paul Pierce said God dispatched an angel from heaven to uplift him after Pierce went from a heap to a hero in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Said Pierce: "I think God sent an angel down and said, 'Hey, you're going to be all right. You need to get back out there and show them what you've got.'"

God is a Celtics fan. Good to know.



Boston Celtics forward Paul Pierce (34) is carried from the court by teammates Brian Scalabrine, back left, and Tony Allen, right, after an injury in the third quarter during Game 1 of the NBA basketball finals against the Los Angeles Lakers in Boston, Thursday, June 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

These athletes don't get it. After Kobe Bryant is accused of sexual assault, we don't want to hear him tell us, as he did then, "we need your prayers now more than ever." After Michael Vick is sentenced to jail for the killing of dogs, we don't want to hear him say, "Through this situation, I found Jesus and asked Him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God." After Pacman Jones made it rain in Las Vegas, triggering a melee that left a man paralyzed, we don't want to see him handing out boxes of food in a staged photo-op at an Atlanta church.

There's a reason Madison Avenue doesn't want anything to do with famous athletes like the ones in this story: People don't like them. People don't want to be like them.

So if these are the kinds of men who join the Christian club and shove their faith down my throat ... maybe that club's not for me.

McKay remembered as a reporter with soul of a poet

By Jeremy Schaap
Special to ESPN.com
June 7, 2008



When ABC was able to confirm that the German attempt to rescue the Israeli Olympic hostages in Munich had failed and all the hostages were dead, Jim McKay wasn't thinking about the tens of millions of viewers who were waiting for him to communicate what had happened. He was thinking only about two of them: David Berger's parents, sitting at home in suburban Cleveland. He knew that in all likelihood, his would be the voice -- the first -- telling them that their son, a 28-year-old Olympic weightlifter, was dead.

Sad and visibly tired, but composed, McKay gathered himself and said, "They're all gone." The Bergers, whose hopes had been raised by false reports that the hostages had been freed, then knew the truth.

That was 36 years ago, and McKay's reporting during the Olympic hostage crisis will endure as the standard by which all such reporting is judged. Not sports reporting. Just reporting. Of all the news, bad and good, terrifying and uplifting, that television hosts have delivered to the American people, perhaps the only moment that compares was nine years earlier, when Walter Cronkite removed his glasses, dried his eyes and told the nation that John F. Kennedy had died.

Shortly after McKay delivered the tragic news in Munich, he received a telegram. "Dear Jim," it read. "Today you honored yourself, your network and your industry. -- Walter Cronkite."

McKay was special not just because he was a solid reporter in a field dominated by men who had been trained to call games. He was special because he was a reporter with the soul of a poet, his twin talents perfectly matched to his assignments.

In the hands of someone less sincere, it might have seemed maudlin to recite several lines from A.E. Housman's poem "To An Athlete Dying Young," even in the Munich aftermath. But when McKay memorialized the slain Israelis by saying, "Now you will not swell the rout/Of lads that wore their honors out/Runners whom renown outran/And the name died before the man," it could not have been more poignant or more fitting. Of course, long before Munich, the American people had come to trust McKay.

As the host of "ABC's Wide World of Sports," McKay spent the 1960s and 1970s spanning the globe, calling everything from mainstream events, such as the Indianapolis 500, to the most obscure and seemingly silly sports, such as barrel jumping. Unfailingly, he treated the barrel jumpers and cliff divers and bicycle polo players with the same respect he afforded Mario Andretti and Mark Spitz and Bill Shoemaker. If there was a defining McKay characteristic, that was it. He respected his subjects. He never stripped them of their dignity. It would have been all too easy to play the small sports for laughs. McKay didn't. Sure, he would have fun -- he was by no means a stick in the mud -- but not at the expense of the athletes or their families.

Case in point: the 1965 world barrel jumping championship. (Barrel jumping, long a staple of Wide World, is simply long jumping on ice skates, over uniformly sized barrels). A young man from Lake Placid, N.Y., named Ken Lebel was attempting to break the world record by clearing 17 barrels, and when he succeeded, McKay was almost overcome with emotion. "Nobody in the history of the sport ever did it before," he said. "There's Kenny's wife, just as tearfully excited as if her husband had just won the World Series." Looking now at the grainy footage, it's clear that McKay was just as excited as Mrs. Lebel.

And it was McKay who was the primary voice at the Olympics for a quarter-century -- the quarter-century when the Olympics mattered most, when the games were all but defined by the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, when for two separate fortnights every four years little else seemed to matter. With McKay setting the tone for Olympics coverage, first on CBS and then on ABC, the athletes from behind the Iron Curtain were never demonized, even if it was clear that the system that nurtured them was morally reprehensible. McKay and his boss, Roone Arledge, did not resort to Hollywood tactics. They never made Olga Korbut or Sergei Makarov or Nadia Comaneci into Ivan Dragos. In his heart, McKay might have preferred to see the American pixies defeat the Red pixies and our amateurs defeat their pros, but it never showed.

In the end, McKay will stay with us because of all the ways in which he exemplified journalistic professionalism, informed by true grace, a poet's touch and simple humanity. Unlike Housman's athlete, he lived long -- 86 years -- but not long enough to see his renown outrun.

It's unlikely that it ever will be.

Jeremy Schaap is an ESPN anchor and national correspondent, based in New York since 1998. He is the substitute host of Outside the Lines and the Sports Reporters. He is also a frequent contributor to ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline.

Today's Tune: Junior Brown - Highway Patrol

(Click on title to play video)

Mark Steyn: Obama the humble savior

Saturday, June 7, 2008
Orange County Register


The short version of the Democratic Party primary campaign is that the media fell in love with Barack Obama but the Democratic electorate declined to.

"I felt this thrill going up my leg," said MSNBC's Chris Matthews after one of the senator's speeches. "I mean, I don't have that too often." Au contraire, Chris and the rest of the gang seem to be getting the old tingle up the thigh hairs on a nightly basis. If Obama is political Viagra, the media are at that stage in the ad where the announcer warns that, if leg tingles persist for more than six months, see your doctor.

Out there in the voting booths, however, Democrat legs stayed admirably unthrilled. The more the media told Hillary she was toast, and she should get the hell out of it and let Obama romp to victory, the more Democrats insisted on voting for her. The more the media insisted Barack was inevitable, the less inclined the voters were to get with the program. On the strength of Chris Matthews' vibrating calves, Sen. Obama raised a ton of money – over $300 million – and massively outspent Sen. Clinton, but he didn't really get any bang for his buck. In the end, he crawled over the finish line. The Obama Express came a-hurtlin' down the track at 2 miles an hour.

But what does he care? Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton's: If you behave like a star, you'll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his "victory" speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way:

"I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . 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 – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation."

It's a good thing he's facing it with "profound humility," isn't it? Because otherwise who knows what he'd be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008 – the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick. Just a small test program: 47 attendees of the Obama speech were taken to hospital and treated for nausea. Everyone else came away thrilled that the Obamessiah was going to heal the planet and reverse the rise of the oceans: When Barack wants to walk on the water, he doesn't want to have to use a stepladder to get up on it.

There are generally two reactions to this kind of policy proposal. The first was exemplified by the Atlantic Monthly's Marc Ambinder:

"What a different emotional register from John McCain's; Obama seems on the verge of tears; the enormous crowd in the Xcel Center seems ready to lift Obama on its shoulders; the much smaller audience for McCain's speech interrupted his remarks with stilted cheers."

The second reaction boils down to: "'Heal the planet'? Is this guy nuts?" To be honest I prefer a republic whose citizenry can muster no greater enthusiasm for their candidate than "stilted cheers" to one in which the crowd wants to hoist the nominee onto their shoulders for promising to lower ocean levels within his first term. As for coming together "to remake this great nation," if it's so great, why do we have to remake it? A few months back, just after the New Hampshire primary, a Canadian reader of mine – John Gross of Quebec – sent me an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign:

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."

I thought this was so cute, I posted it on the Web at National Review. Whereupon one of those Internetty-type things happened, and three links and a Google search later the line was being attributed not to my correspondent but to Sen. Obama, and a few weeks after that I started getting e-mails from reporters from Florida to Oregon, asking if I could recall at which campaign stop the senator, in fact, uttered these words. And I'd patiently write back and explain that they're John Gross' words, and that not even Barack would be dumb enough to say such a thing in public. Yet last week his demand in his victory speech that we "come together to remake this great nation" came awful close.

Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.

Marc Ambinder is right. Obama's rhetoric is in a different "emotional register" from John McCain's. It's in a different "emotional register" from every U.S. president – not just the Coolidges but the Kennedys, too. Nothing in Obama's resume suggests he's the man to remake America and heal the planet. Only last week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew," said the senator, in what's becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn't the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he's known for 20 years.

Yet at the same time as he's being stunned by the corruption and anti-Americanism of those closest to him, Obama's convinced that just by jetting into Tehran and Pyongyang he can get to know America's enemies and persuade them to hew to the straight and narrow. No doubt if it all goes belly-up, and Iran winds up nuking Tel Aviv, President Obama will put on his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face and announce solemnly that "this isn't the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew."

Every time I hear an Obama speech, I start to giggle. But millions of voters don't. And, if Chris Matthews and the tingly-legged media get their way and drag Obama across the finish line this November, the laugh will be on those of us who think that serious times demand grown-up rhetoric.

©MARK STEYN

President Reagan at Point Du Hoc

[I was out of town so I'm a little late. - jtf]

Ronald Reagan's speech at Point Du Hoc on the 40th anniversary of the launch of "Operation Overlord"...the D-Day landing of 150,000 allied troops at Normandy.

Posted by Human Events

06/06/2008



President Reagan greeting former U.S. Rangers at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France. 6/6/84.


We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers--the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''

I think I know what you may be thinking right now--thinking, "We were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him--Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, "Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.



President Reagan giving speech on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy, France. 6/6/84.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's "Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge--and pray God we have not lost it--that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They thought--or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.

There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance--a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, Allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose--to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

Film Review: True Grit

[Aside from the some of the usual left-wing silliness that so often creeps into movie reviews, this is a nice piece on one of my favorite movies of all time. I still have of fond memories of watching it at a drive-in theater when I was a mere lad. - jtf]

RvB's After Images: True Grit (1969)

http://www.cinematical.com
Posted Jun 3rd 2008 6:02AM by Richard von Busack

Filed under: Classics, After Image, Western

Before it opened, there was much public mulling over whether Harrison Ford had the stamina at age 65 to play Indiana Jones one more time. Apparently the box office grosses answered that question. It was an irrelevant question, anyway. In those Indiana Jones movies, the machinery is what mattered. Ford was there for the ride, just like the audience. I think what was missing in ...Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the elegiac qualities of a late period performance ... for example, the aging heroism in John Wayne's last great movie.

True Grit isn't just the sword outwearing the sheath, and the soul outwearing the breast, as Byron put it. It's also about remaining power in an old carcass. Wayne's rallying of that power in the film's memorable duel: blinking his one good eye at the shock of being called a fat old man, he takes his horse's reins in his teeth and rides down four gunmen. The film is often a comedy, with lines worthy of Mark Twain in it; so much so that the emotional content blindsides you. Every film class in the world quite justly talks about the end of The Searchers, John Ford's image of Wayne framed by a doorway, never at home or really at ease. True Grit has a scene to equal it: a gentle if tersely written scene at a snow-covered grave yard in the high country, with approximately the emotional fire power of the finale of James Joyce's The Dead.

Tom Wolfe claimed that Charles Portis, his colleague at the New York Herald Tribune, was the only journalist he'd ever heard of who had done what journalists always claim they'll do someday. Apparently Portis really did take three weeks off, went to a cabin, and wrote the novel that got him straight out of the newspaper business. Portis' book True Grit was reputedly written with Wayne in mind, but the part of deputy Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn is as juicy a role as Long John Silver. Mitchum or Lancaster could have done it proud; Tommy Lee Jones or Nick Nolte would carry it out now. The movie is very much Wayne's world, though, bringing out the peculiarly musical qualities of his voice, and his gift for understatement and low comedy. Director Henry Hathaway and photographer Lucien Ballard's cameras went to just about the noblest quadrant of the country to film it, Mammoth Lakes in California and Montrose Country, Colorado in the west side of the Continental Divide: high country, lit by the golden shimmer of aspen leaves.

The book is more down and dirty, specific to the river towns, and set in the foothills of the Ozarks and the Ouichita mountains in southeastern Oklahoma. I hate remakes in principal, but there's an anti-western that could be made out of this fine book someday, and it would look a little something like The Assassination of Jesse James...; certainly Rooster's uneasy past as one of Quantrill's men demonstrates that Rooster was a graduate of the same riding academy as Jesse. The Arkansas federal marshal, profane, old, fat and given to whiskey either out of the jug or the bottle, is recruited by one Mattie Ross (Kim Darby). The farm girl's father was killed by a career criminal who was taking some time off, posing as a hired hand. Cogburn is reluctant to go across the border from Ft. Smith, Arkansas into the Indian Nation (later Oklahoma).

Mattie motivates the old man with a $50 reward to bring the villain back alive. While mulling over the offer, Cogburn meets up with a cocksure Texas ranger called LaBoeuf (the musician Glen Campbell), who has the same quarry as Mattie. LaBouef has too much gun, too much spurs and too much self confidence. Mattie insists on accompanying the lawmen into the Territory, despite every discouragement they can muster. The trio braces some squealers (one is Dennis Hopper) by smoking them out of their cabin. Now they're certain that the fugitive is one of the new henchmen of a robber called Lucky Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall), who has previously had his face rearranged by one of Rooster Cogburn's bullets. The ambushers are ambushed themselves, and it takes a gunfight and an ordeal in a skeleton-lined pit of rattlesnakes to set things right.

The terrific script by Marguerite Roberts gave Wayne what he called his favorite scene ever, when Rooster tells about his own drifting life running a restaurant up in Cairo, Illinois, in those days before the roughneck in him drove away his wife and his son. In the telling, there's sarcastic humor...and humor will never be respected as much as drama...presumably that's why this moment of Wayne at his finest isn't referred to in film lore, as often as similar moments in The Searchers. The scathing interplay between Rooster and LaBoeuf is true wit, too. It includes my all time favorite cinema warning against Texan self-esteem. After LaBoeuf tells of how real Texas Ranger sometimes have to drink water out of a muddy hoof-print, and be glad to have it, too, Rooster grunts "If ever I meet one of you Texas waddies that didn't drink out of a hoofprint, I'll shake his hand, or buy him a Dan'l Webster cigar." Against Wayne's aura of heroism is always a W. C. Fields like lightness that keeps this stirring film buoyant...as well as autumnal.

Considering the complexity of the emotions Wayne brings up, It's no surprise that his centenary last year went relatively unremarked. (A fine summing up of the actor is Garry Wills' loving yet unsparing biography.) This was true even in the American west, one place where they still revere Wayne with no mixed feelings. But there, the actor's image is often an icon of reactionaries. Images of Wayne's face, the face that in countless movies welcomed strangers to the west, is sometimes used to ward off outsiders. Wayne's legend isn't happily remembered by Native Americans, who quite rightly remember the way Indians were treated in his films. In the 1950s, Wayne fell in with a very bad crowd of politicians and commentators, the kind of spoilsmen and bullies who he once upon a time used to punch out in his movies.

The films Wayne made in the 1960s and 1970s were often dreadful, wearing down his audience. Wayne made True Grit in 1969, but he also made The Undefeated (recently released as part of a box set with the startlingly advanced 1930 Raoul Walsh western The Big Trail). The Undefeated is typical Wayne in decline, lummoxy work that grinds the political axes of its day; watching it in the midst of Vietnam War, it was pretty easy to decode a bit about a Civil War draft dodger getting busted in the mouth for not getting out on there on the firing line. Speaking of Vietnam, Wayne also spent his capital as an actor in The Green Berets: propaganda, and bad propaganda at that (here's New York Times critic Renata Adler hitting the film about as hard as it deserved). Considering Wayne's most careless public pronouncements, I'm not sorry that I enjoyed the Pogues anthem of disappointment "The Body of an American" ("Fare thee well, John Wayne, there's nothing left to say"), or the even far more furious MDC punk-rock tune "John Wayne Was a Nazi".

Because of that fury, I'll explain: What people cherished in Wayne is evident in the last moments of True Grit, where Rooster Cogburn is offered a space in Mattie's family graveyard. And the hero explains to Mattie gently that when she grows up, she'll want her husband and family buried next to her. In fact, both of them are a pair of outcasts about to separate for good. The novel was written from the point of view of an independent old single woman. This seems to have been part of the movie, because it seems unlikely, in this summing up, that Mattie will never met a man who could tolerate her own grit, except for one old rogue back in the 1880s.

I was watching this final scene at home with my wife, and we both became quite helpless with tears as Wayne rode away. We would both like to be simple, in the good sense of the word, and good in the simple sense of the word. We'd like to be open, direct and fearless people, but that's not going to happen. We're city dwellers, dealing on a daily basis with more snakes than you'd find in an Oklahoma cave. Straight shooting can't kill what we're up against. Rather, each new day requires more triangulation, and ever more elaborate trick shots. And Wayne's peculiar beauty and common sense appears to be gone forever, too, and we wept for that loss as well.

Today's Tune: Wilson Pickett - In the Midnight Hour

(Click title to play video)

Mark Steyn: The Last Laugh

Steyn on People
Tuesday, 03 June 2008
HAPPY WARRIOR
from National Review

Of late I’ve been having some sport with a fellow called Oscar van den Boogaard. He’s a novelist over in Europe, and, while I’m not the most assiduous reader of Continental fiction, my eye was caught by an interview he gave to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard. Reflecting on Europe’s accelerating Islamification, he concluded that the jig was up for the Eutopia he loved, but what could he do? “I am not a warrior, but who is?” he shrugged. “I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

This seemed such a poignant epitaph for the Continent that I started quoting it hither and yon. And one thing led to another and I started explaining that Mr van den Boogaard is a Dutch gay humanist, which is, as I like to say, pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool. A cheap joke, but it got a laugh. And before you know it Mr van den Boogaard was playing the same function in my act that Elizabeth Taylor does in Joan Rivers’. (I haven’t seen Miss Rivers since, oh, 1973, so this may have changed.)

Anyway, what with this Internet thingy that the young people are crazy about, it was inevitable that at some point the Dutch novelist wallah would be Googling himself and discover he was now a household name in Cedar Rapids, or wherever I’d last used him as the butt of my Eurowimp mockery. And so it came to pass. The other day in the newspaper De Morgen, Mr van den Boogaard noted that he had recently attracted the attention of “de Canadese oerconservatieve commentator Mark Steyn” who had derided him as “een Nederlandse homoseksuele humanist”, which is “de heilige drievuldigheid van Eurocool”. And he attempted to put my soundbite in context. It was a sentimental, writerly and contrived meditation on his dad’s lifelong service to the Dutch Army, but it ended with what he regarded as the best hope of saving his beloved Netherlands: “De islam moet eindelijk om zichzelf leren te lichen.”

“Islam must learn to laugh at itself.” Good luck betting the future on that. As the Ayatollah Khomeini lui-meme put it: “There are no jokes in Islam.” And, in the event that there are, it’s best to make sure the laugh’s not on you. As it happens, the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal is about to begin hearing a case brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress into my “flagrant Islamophobia”. Among the evidence cited is my review of a Canadian sitcom, “Little Mosque On The Prairie”, which I failed to find sufficiently funny, and as a result am now being prosecuted for. Appearing at the Heritage Foundation in Washington last year, I was asked a question about the new sitcom and replied, with the careless insouciance of one who’s unaware he’s being YouTubed around the planet, “Muslim is the new gay.” Alas, this line also appears in the Canadian Islamic Congress’ indictment of me. I tried to explain that I meant it as a compliment, but that only appears to have made things worse.

My point was that back in the Nineties Hollywood movies and sitcoms began introducing gay characters who were the most likeable and got all the best lines, and that Muslims were likely to be the lucky beneficiaries of a similar dispensation. In both cases, the intent is the same - to make Islam, like homosexuality, something only uptight squares are un-hep to. But it seems to have gone down about as well as the University of Amsterdam study into the recent increase in gay bashing by Dutch Muslims, which concluded that “the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity”. Amazingly enough, suggesting that these Muslim chappies are most likely a bit light on their loafers doesn’t seem to have done anything to ease inter-communal relations in Europe’s “most tolerant city”.

Which is by way of saying that, if Mr van den Boogaard is banking on the old Islamic funny bone to preserve his Eutopia, it’s a bit of a long shot. More to the point, he’s looking at the problem the wrong way round. It’s not about “them”, it’s about him – or, if you prefer, us: much of the western world has a big hole where its sense of identity ought to be. As Ruth Gledhill, the Religious Correspondent of The Times of London, put it: “It feels as if the soul of Britain is dying.” She was discussing a new report projecting that by 2050 Christian churchgoers in the United Kingdom will be outnumbered three to one by Muslims. But the hole-in-the-soul line applies just as well to another new report, on the “evolution” of the European family: The marriage rate fell by 24 per cent between 1980 and 2006. One in five pregnancies ends in abortion. One million fewer babies were born in the EU last year than in 1980. Europe has six million more over-65s than under-14s. Two out of three households have no children…

The first comment on the Times story was from “Mark”, who wrote: “I may be mistaken, but I believe that Muslims tend to have larger families. If that is the case, wouldn’t it make more sense to encourage/accept more Muslim immigrants?”

Why, yes, it would – if you don’t mind ending your days in a Muslim society.

You can’t beat something with nothing – which in the end is what those grim Euro-statistics represent. Islam reckons it’s one almighty something, and that’s all it has to be up against contemporary Eutopians. Islam doesn’t need to laugh at itself because it’s too busy laughing at them.

Ann Coulter: Obama Was Selected, Not Elected

http://www.anncoulter.com/
June 4, 2008


Words mean nothing to liberals. They say whatever will help advance their cause at the moment, switch talking points in a heartbeat, and then act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago.

When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College -- or, for short, "the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents" -- anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.

But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the "popular vote" has any relevance whatsoever.

It's the exact same situation as in 2000, with Hillary in the position of Gore and Obama in the position of Bush. The only difference is: Hillary has a much stronger argument than Gore ever did (and Hillary's more of a man than Gore ever was).

Unbeknownst to liberals, who seem to imagine the Constitution is a treatise on gay marriage, our Constitution sets forth rules for the election of a president. Under the Constitution that has led to the greatest individual liberty, prosperity and security ever known to mankind, Americans have no constitutional right to vote for president, at all. (Don't fret Democrats: According to five liberals on the Supreme Court, you do have a right to sodomy and abortion!)

Americans certainly have no right to demand that their vote prevail over the electors' vote.

The Constitution states that electors from each state are to choose the president, and it is up to state legislatures to determine how those electors are selected. It is only by happenstance that most states use a popular vote to choose their electors.

When you vote for president this fall, you will not be voting for Barack Obama or John McCain; you will be voting for an elector who pledges to cast his vote for Obama or McCain. (For those new Obama voters who may be reading, it's like voting for Paula, Randy or Simon to represent you, instead of texting your vote directly.)

Any state could abolish general elections for president tomorrow and have the legislature pick the electors. States could also abolish their winner-take-all method of choosing presidential electors -- as Nebraska and Maine have already done, allowing their electors to be allocated in proportion to the popular vote. And of course there's always the option of voting electors off the island one by one.

If presidential elections were popular vote contests, Bush might have spent more than five minutes campaigning in big liberal states like California and New York. But under a winner-take-all regime, close doesn't count. If a Republican doesn't have a chance to actually win a state, he may as well lose in a landslide. Using the same logic, Gore didn't spend a lot of time campaigning in Texas (and Walter Mondale campaigned exclusively in Minnesota).

Consequently, under both the law and common sense, the famed "popular vote" is utterly irrelevant to presidential elections. It would be like the winner of "Miss Congeniality" claiming that title also made her "Miss America." Obviously, Bush might well have won the popular vote, but he would have used a completely different campaign strategy.

By contrast, there are no constitutional rules to follow with party primaries. Primaries are specifically designed by the parties to choose their strongest candidate for the general election.

Hillary's argument that she won the popular vote is manifestly relevant to that determination. Our brave Hillary has every right to take her delegates to the Democratic National Convention and put her case to a vote. She is much closer to B. Hussein Obama than the sainted Teddy Kennedy was to Carter in 1980 when Teddy staged an obviously hopeless rules challenge at the convention. (I mean rules about choosing the candidate, not rules about crushed ice at after-parties.)

And yet every time Hillary breathes a word about her victory in the popular vote, TV hosts respond with sneering contempt at her gaucherie for even mentioning it. (Of course, if popularity mattered, networks like MSNBC wouldn't exist. That's a station that depends entirely on "superviewers.")

After nearly eight years of having to listen to liberals crow that Bush was "selected, not elected," this is a shocking about-face. Apparently unaware of the new party line that the popular vote amounts to nothing more than warm spit, just last week HBO ran its movie "Recount," about the 2000 Florida election, the premise of which is that sneaky Republicans stole the presidency from popular vote champion Al Gore. (Despite massive publicity, the movie bombed, with only about 1 million viewers, so now HBO is demanding a "recount.")

So where is Kevin Spacey from HBO's "Recount," to defend Hillary, shouting: "WHO WON THIS PRIMARY?"

In the Democrats' "1984" world, the popular vote is an unconcept, doubleplusungood verging crimethink. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

George F. Will: The Gas Prices We Deserve

The Washington Post
Thursday, June 5, 2008; Page A19

Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, explained: "I rise to discuss rising energy prices." The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek an increase in its oil production, and Schumer's gorge was rising.

Saudi Arabia, he said, "holds the key to reducing gasoline prices at home in the short term." Therefore arms sales to that kingdom should be blocked unless it "increases its oil production by one million barrels per day," which would cause the price of gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately."

Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply? Schumer does know that if you increase the supply of something, the price of it probably will fall. That is why he and 96 other senators recently voted to increase the supply of oil on the market by stopping the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which protects against major physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the 97 senators who voted to stop filling the reserve also oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today's senators -- including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain -- have voted to keep ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.

So Schumer, according to Schumer, is complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline. "Democracy," said H.L. Mencken, "is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." The common people of New York want Schumer to be their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline prices, which are a predictable consequence of their political choice.

Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent to Washington senators and representatives who have voted to keep ANWR's oil in the ground and who voted to put 85 percent of America's offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that restricted area contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- 10 times as much oil and 20 times as much natural gas as Americans use in a year.

Drilling is underway 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.

ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware), and drilling along its coastal plain would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles airport. Offshore? Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill. There has not been a significant spill from an offshore U.S. well since 1969. Of the more than 7 billion barrels of oil pumped offshore in the past 25 years, 0.001 percent -- that is one-thousandth of 1 percent -- has been spilled. Louisiana has more than 3,200 rigs offshore -- and a thriving commercial fishing industry.

In his book "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence,' " Robert Bryce says Brazil's energy success has little to do with its much-discussed ethanol production and much to do with its increased oil production, the vast majority of which comes from off Brazil's shore. Investor's Business Daily reports that Brazil, "which recently made a major oil discovery almost in sight of Rio's beaches," has leased most of the world's deep-sea drilling rigs.

In September 2006, two U.S. companies announced that their Jack No. 2 well, in the Gulf 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, had tapped a field with perhaps 15 billion barrels of oil, which would increase America's proven reserves by 50 percent. Just probing four miles below the Gulf's floor costs $100 million. Congress's response to such expenditures is to propose increasing the oil companies' tax burdens.

America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy.

georgewill@washpost.com