BLCKDGRD

On Defending Points of Honor Using Jackson Browne Lyrics

Obama gave a speech and gave nice platypuses to Vietnam war veterans:

One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country’s call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated.

Predictably, Jerilyn Merritt goes shitwhack:

In other words, Obama intends to battle the war-hero McCain by throwing us under the bus.

And get this: she quotes a Jackson Browne lyric to anchor her moral position.

Jackson Browne? Jackson Fucking Browne?

I don't know about Obama, but I'm throwing your musically-illiterate ass under the bus.

To recap, your Clorg Democrats:

...

Your kind author:

...

   *

• This is a more important constituency than aarpers.
• Snakehead concedes.
• Make them make them make them make them.
• Bayard on Wilentz on Reagan.
• Friend/Enemy Distinction.
• Jingoing to Hell.
• I had noticed Swift's hiatus but hadn't thought much of it, but Simon emails me and asks, Where's Swift?
• Also MIA is Rake.
• Old Dirty Bama is talking to YOU!
• Any excuse to write Dick Advocaat.
• On middlebrow mediocrity.
• The Great Lit War of '58.

   *

Max Boot writes, sans irony as only Max Boots can, about Ricardo Sanchez in a review of Sanchez' book:

The general's denunciations of others would be more convincing if he were prepared to admit the painful truth about himself.

Jeebus, Max Fucking Boot.

....

Strauss steps over the bodies.

Fifty-Eight Today

The best concert I ever saw was Gabriel at Warner Theater in '83 on the Security tour.

I was four rows back, center. When he fell into the crowd during Lay Your Hands on Me, I was one of those who caught him.

Rubiest Days of Their Lives

How can Clorg quit without permanently disaffecting her most ardent, without ensuring they'll never vote Democrat again without ache, which is their deepest desire?

Rubes, Clorg's rubes are invested to their moral marrow, and these are the best, most preciously intense days in their lives of rubiness, and I'm not mocking them, I'm envying them.

A new friend asked me how I separate soccer and politics, and I said, Huh?

   *

• Clorg, more annoying than Billy Mays!
• Symbolic interactionists or goffmanian chain ritualists?
• The Hillary-ization of Michelle Obama.
• Elric 7 gets drunk in Calgary, thanks you for your tax dollars.
• An appreciation of Zukofsky, who perhaps I have not spend enough time with.

UPDATES

• Blathersnooze.
• Stupid metaphors applied predictably.
• Fan of toast writes toaster maker.
• History of CLINTON INC trench-bitterness explored.
• Am I being detained?
• Surveillance state update.

   *

Fleabus, much rain lately?

..

Seventy-Eight Years Ago Today

Stanley Elkin, my favorite novelist, was born.

I've written this before, but the most beautiful moment in any novel I've read is in Magic Kingdom:

And it was wondrous in the negligible humidity how they gawked across the perfect air, how, stunned by the helices and all the parabolas of grace, they gasped, they sighed, these short-timers who even at their age could not buy insurance at any price, not even if the premiums were paid in the rare rich elements, in pearls clustered as grapes, in buckets of bullion, in trellises of diamonds, how, glad to be alive, they stared at each other and caught their breath.

Read Bad Man, read all the novellas in Searches and Seizures, read The Franchiser and Dick Gibson and George Mills and Mrs Ted Bliss, read them all if you can, but you must read Magic Kingdom, the bravest, most generously and fiercely human novel I've ever read.

Downgrade

Mike Wise's column today about Ben Olsen makes appropriately obligatory reference to Olsen's missing heart contributing to United's woes, and since I've been making the same point since game one I certainly can't dispute.

Olsen's absence hurts, but is not the root problem. Here's my abridged version:

Ownership went to management in the off-season and said crashing out of every competition but Supporter's Shield sucks, make next season AWESOME! and thank Ba'al for that. But...

Ownership/management negotiations with Gomez, whoever was at fault and in what proportion, had already soured before the Veron negotiations crumbled. After the Veron talks broke down, ownership said, buy me the splashiest name available within our working budget and that player was Gallardo, and since the relationship with Gomez was already poisoned, Gallardo's signing could be justified as replacing an already departing Gomez.

Gomez, the ten, was United's strength, not the problem. For a few extra $100K United could now have Gomez and a DP on the wing or Gomez and a DP as withdrawn forward or Gomez and a DP in midfield behind Gomez in a 3-5-2 or Gomez and the DP in hand.

Gomez and a DP or Gallardo? (And please remind me if I'm wrong: Gomez wanted more $$$ and two years, not DP money and designation, yes?)

UPDATE: Goose corrects my memory (and thank you, sincerely):

If we re-signed Gomez, we would not have had the 400k free for a DP UNLESS Jaime Moreno did not re-sign.

This doesn't really change my argument that much in that while I love Jaime and honor his service and yadda, Gomez and a DP probably still trump Gallardo and Moreno, if that's the either/or.

I've nothing against Gallardo - yet, and hopefully never - but Gomez was the last player off last year's roster that needed upgrading, especially if United hoped to run a 3-5-2 this year.

Soehn will be the scapegoat if scapegoating is necessary because management can't fire the players and won't fire itself, but management fired Gomez when it could have had Gomez plus a DP. Management decided that McTavish and Burch are MLS starters, management decided not to upgrade the wings, management brought in Franco Niell to back up Jaime Moreno.

Yes United misses Olsen and his intangibles, and yes a healthy Olsen behind Gallardo would be a vast improvement over now, but Olsen plus Gomez plus a top-flight winger or withdrawn forward?

Whether Soehn gets the most out of the talent he has is one issue. That the talent he has is mediocre, that's on management.

Livery

I read with fascination (I'm sure she'd say condescension) my favorite pro-Clinton/anti-Obama blogger because the owner is smart and talented and passionate, and was, is, and will be me, rubed and rube-cubed, someday and everyday.

My fall-back delusion is that our overlords herd us, but we herd ourselves and look for an overlord, who bet amongst themselves who can create the biggest herd of servants. The worse day of the overlords is servicing the whiny servants while the best day of the servants is when our overlords' uniform wins.

Which is precisely why I want Obama to win. Our livery kicks your livery's ass, loser.

Of course he's going to disappoint us. Which has what to do with anything?

   *

• Maybe she's not the nominee because she fucked up and then refused to acknowledge the fuck up.
• What ever happened to that gas-tax holiday dammit?
• I suppose there's nothing to be gained by Obama pointing out that it's Clorg who's calling her supporters racist, not him.
• I don't think they're freaking out at all. If McCain implants the meme that ageism = racism, then at worse Obama shuts up about McCorpse (ageism!) and at best minutely blunts the racism.
• Please shut up about right-wing preachers and John McCain, or at least talk about them without pretending amazement that the right-wing preachers don't cause the same fuss as Jeremiah Wright.
•  Quitters never win, but then, neither do bitter and divisive losers.
• Inside Hillary's bunker. (Excellent and gratuitous cheap shot!) (Adding, this would have applied equally and oppositely if uniforms reversed.)
• Crisis and hegemony.
• Just what is the pime?
• Poor Man's new comix!
• Friday hope blogging.
• Visualization and reading.
• I admire Vendler, but she is a fascist.
• George Wills hates Perlstein's Nixonland! It must be good.

   *

Fleabus, would you rather anguish over livery or play?

United 0, Chicago 2

If I could chose a starting eleven out of the twenty-two players who started last night, at least eight, probably nine, maybe ten, wore red shirts.

Some guy standing behind kept shouting at United players as if it was faulty moral character that separated United from Fire players. He especially yelled at Rod Dyachenko for not getting to balls, screaming at Dyachenko for not trying.

Maybe it's not lack of effort. Maybe the team United put on the field last night doesn't have the athleticism and soccer skills to get to most balls and do anything productive with the balls they get to.

My working theory is United doesn't have particularly good soccer players. When their best player on the field is a great-grandfather in soccer years playing out of position - and, sincerely, thank you Jaime - that makes for a collection of middling mutts.

They're not fast, they're not quick, they're not foot-skilled, they're not soccer-savvy.

After a point, screaming about effort masks what's really wrong, and what's wrong is that they're not good.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Wells 6; Namoff 4, Peralta 4, Martinez 4; Quaranta 3, Simms 3, Dyachenko 3, Moreno 4, Burch 4; Niell 3, Emilio 3. Subs: Doe 4, Stratford no rating, Kirk no rating.

They're not dead, and in any case I said no autopsy after this game regardless of result, but they're seriously, if not critically ill, and something may soon need to be blown up for blown-up's sake.

UPDATES:

D, in his first impression's post, says:

It was that D.C. United didn't just look slow, they look frightened.  And that's a recursive function that eats its own.

I agree, and would add: there was a moment in the first half when Niell was running left on a wheel and automatically fed the ball to where his soccer lizard-brain had been trained to pass the ball, and Dyachenko, who should have received the pass but was fifteen feet away, was actually where his lizard-brain had trained him to be.

That's another reason I'm down on the talent: they aren't good enough, talented enough, imaginative enough, to exceed their academy training. Frightened robots, indeed.

Though better coaching should reduce this problem, theoretically, yes?

  *

Stoller says fire Soehn, based in part on perceived lack of effort on the players which Soehn seems incapable of fixing.

   *

Lifton concurs: United's just not very good.

   *

This will cheer you up. Or entertain you at least.

   *

OH! In the to be fair column, outside of ATM machines, which still had folks grumbling, a much better performance by management in terms of vending and parking. Thank you.

Inconceivable Capitulation

We egg-headed volvo-drivers assuaging our white guilt plus angry vengeful Negroes won't get to street rumble with elderly white jeebus-eaters and perma-pissed single mothers?

Now's when I feel my rubiness, manipulated again by flags and chants, herded again into a ridiculous barking circle.

A new friend asked, How do you keep the soccer and politics separate on the blog, and I said, Huh?

   *

UPDATE:

Though this Hey! Obamanigger! shit now raises the question, which is worse: race-baiting as campaign tactic or race-baiting as negotiation tactic?

Cause if she is negotiating with the lever "I'll shut up about the nigger if he pays off my debt," is that a different category of shittiness than "I'll shut up about the nigger after I'm elected?"

   *

• Perhaps Clorg is just stupid.
• Clorg campaign as mysticism where numbers don't count.
• Translated Clorg: I'm white!
• Another vaginal-American kingpin signals.
• Clorg as Cronus?
• Secret McCain memo leaked! (Do it.)
• They write letters about Yoo.
• Literary biography: the never designed to end debate.
• Billy Bragg-athon!

UPDATES

• Smartest thing you'll read today.
• Write something, even a suicide note.
• Gassed.
• Fatal Illuison of Opposition.
• True dat: PBR or IPA, either way Obama's a fraud.
• McCain's sugar-momma won't show no sugar.
• Regressing the error. Contains the line: "We have plunged deeply into this matter to clean things up, so that a redouche will not occur." In case folk doubted my maturity, I giggled for a minute.

   *

REPRESSION

C.K. Williams

More and more lately, as, not even minding the slippages yet,
the aches and sad softenings,
I settle into my other years, I notice how many of what I once
thought were evidences of repression,
sexual or otherwise, now seem, in other people anyway, to be
varieties of dignity, withholding, tact,
and even in myself, certain patiences I would have
once called lassitude, indifference,
now seem possibly to be if not the rewards then at least the
unsuspected, undreamed-of conclusions
to many of the even-then-preposterous self-evolved
disciplines, rigors, almost mortifications
I inflicted on myself in my starting-out days, improvement
days, days when the idea alone of psychic peace,
of intellectual, of emotional quiet, the merest hint, would
have meant inconceivable capitulation.

tlhih ghij jihyoj

She's not quitting.   

A cornered and dangerous Clorg is huddling, debating: dispatch the ninjas and janissaries, release the viruses and pathogens?

If Clorg takes the high road, it's because internal calculations concluded the low won't work.

UPDATE:

McGovern's just a penile-American. When prominent vaginal-American Democratic kingpins like Diane Feinstein start signaling, that's a big deal.

The pro-Clorg who see any criticism of Clorg as misogyny plain and simple can dismiss an old man, but gender-traitors?

   *

• UPDATE: My best googled hit yet!
• No, it's not.
• This season's atrocity asks good questions.
• Death's factotum.
• Turns sane people vegetarian.
• Choosing sides.
• What Dionne is politely saying is both Obama and Clinton are fucktards returning to default positions.
• Have you told John Edwards to fuck off today?
• David Brooks as hedgehog, not fox.
• Frederick vs Fredneck: microcosm.
• I say, let the dumb motherfuckers wear flip-flops and hope they catch a death-worm while having all their toe-nails wrenched off.
• Gaithersbleg, or: Look, The Grog was burglarized!
• Thank Lord Etcheverry I don't root for Asshat's team.
• On historical novels as teaching tools.

UPDATES

• On Obama's white strategy this fall.
• Not quite cultural Chernobyl.
• Best photo-shop of the day (scroll down).
• Remembering San Fransisco: the murder map (the very bottom two? Across street from our hotel.)

   *

Fleabus, feel like cat-yakking at the upcoming rounds of naDAa'ghach?

....

Your heart is Klingon.

Could Have Been Worse

.......

   *

UPDATED below.

VW will be picking up parking lot costs this coming Thursday, and you read it here first: suck will ensue as the assclowns running parking will fuck it up, down, sideways.

I don't care that I'm losing x-$s having already got my parking pass, but I better be able to show up at 7:15 and find a spot in Lot 4.

And hell, as long as I'm here:

Uncle Fiver reports (you do subscribe to Uncle Fiver, yes?):

After years of Darren Huckerby not being quite good enough for the Premier League, Norwich have now decided he's not quite good enough for the Championship either.

I forget where I read or heard the Huckerby to United rumor, but please, no.

   *

UPDATE:

Lifton refines his critique of Soehn in particular and United's player development in general via analysis of Brian Carroll's and Bobby Boswell's drop in form from Nowak to Soehn. Good stuff.

It gets at something I've thought about but haven't yet verbalized: Soehn seems to want to fit his players to a formation than fit the formation to his players. The old saw is a coach's responsibility is to give his players the greatest chance to succeed, and I'm not sure United's players, limited as they may be, are always given roles that utilize their strengths while minimalizing their weaknesses.

The evocation of Nowak's name gets at another issue: Nowak wouldn't tolerate United losing 60%+ of 50/50 balls or getting out-hustled and beat on opponent breakaways in part because of principle but in part because players were in positions to win 50-50 balls and fall back in defense.

(And not enough is being said about Olsen's and Gros' absences: those are two hits the front office and Soehn can't be held accountable for.

Who would you start in midfield, Olsen/Gros or McTavish/Burch or Dyachenko or Stratford or? That's easy, just in terms of soccer talent, and ridiculously easy when considering both Olsen's and Gros' intangibles.)

Like I said, this crisis is organizational - office, coach, players. I'm not sure who Dave is referring to who's calling for Soehn's firing, but it's far too early to claim one-third of the triangle is responsible for the failure of the whole. For what it's worth, I'm not sure the players are particularly good. For what it's worth, Franco Niell looks like one of the stupidest player acquisitions in recent memory, and the failure to sign a left-footed winger is on the office.

Soehn may be doing a shitty job, but with so much bad to spread around, who yet can tell?

I Can Answer That

Sebastian Mallaby, in today's Wash Post, asks:

First Obama was accused of anti-religious elitism. Then he was accused of identifying with the underclass anger of his spiritual mentor. Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader?

Yes.

   *

• Photoshops of the day need be true as well as funny. Viola.
• Did you know if you support Obama you hate Slovenians too?
• Clorg as Huey Long. Have you told John Edwards to fuck off today?
• Brooks, by IOZ.
• Shadow elites.
• 38 years ago yesterday.
• So, what's hot in social movement research?
• The leader of Bolivia's Right is named Branko Marinkovic?
• Speaking Pravda to bloggers.
• On conservative dreams of Wright.
• A floating haystack with a twit for a pendulum is not mayor of London.
• Distractions.
• A British political blogger's favorite team won promotion; he ponders fate.
• Bobby Jindel?
• Remembering Laura Nyro (and Charlotte McKeever, who made me listen to Laura Nyro as condition for my mckeevering.)
• Ways of looking at fiction.
• On self-enclosed novels.

   *

Born 65 years ago today, the host of Blackmail!

My favorite Python skit ever.

Colorado 2, United 0

..

I stand by this about this.

• The best scenario is United have the chops but, without Olsen, without Gros, there's no rallying engine to tell his teammates to stop their dickpulling and play, in which case United is fart.
• The second best scenario is that United haven't the chops to play every game as if it were important, that they physically can't compete except selectively, in which case United is fart.
• The second worse scenario is United bust ass but lack the talent to compete, in which case United is fart.
• The worse scenario is United has been busting its ass and, discovering they're not talented, athletic, deep, or good, then start dogging it. In which case this season is for suck.

Beating Chicago proves nothing. Chicago kicking United's ass up and down the field?

   *

Goff player ratings:

Wells 4; Namoff 5, Peralta 5, Martinez 5; Quaranta 3, Simms 5, Dyachenko 4, Gallardo 4, Burch 5; Niell 4, Emilio 4. Subs: Moreno 4, Doe 4, Kirk 4.

• Doe and Kirk. Jeebus.
• Quaranta's minutes might need measuring, as when he's struggling the bad habits come back.
• Simms seems half-cooked already; who plays Simms when Simms breaks down? (United made the right and necessary decision to expose Carroll to the draft, but either Brian Simms or Clyde Carroll was better than Clyde Simms alone.)
• What did Dyachenko do in the first half that didn't merit the same benching that Stratford got?
• Niell. Will be the poster-child of this season. And if someone that small has such a poor touch and can't out-run Pablo Mastroeni? That's on the front office.
• Wells is at fault in the breakdowns. Watch Peralta and Martinez.
• Burch is an unremarkable and replaceable mutt.
• McTavish, when he's back, is an unremarkable and replaceable mutt.
• Gallardo still gets a pass, if only because he's surrounded by so much suck other teams can triple him since they needn't worry about Gallardo's teammates. Who knows if he's any good?

     *

I'm going to wait past Thursday's game regardless of result and past both Toronto games, the back-to-backs, before thumping the chest of this season and declaring the corpse dead.

But everything feels wrong this year, from the front office to the coaches to the players to the stadium experience. Everything.

   *

Fighting Talker calls out Soehn.

Dave Lifton calls out Soehn.

I think Soehn's sucking, but what percentage of his suck is responsible I find impossible to say, the front office and the players sucking so much themselves. This is a group suck.

DCenter's debriefing is up.

Meh

When the highlight of the game is Thomas Rongen asking Dave Johnson whether Johnson's ever tried Rocky Mountain oysters, (and the Flying Dutchman in a Lucha Libre mask elbowing-dropping Johnson at half-time), meh is only the beginning of aargh.

Priming the Kaboom

Played 36 at Calvert Pitch and Putt with Dr.Z yesterday to a 104, discovering that forehand Destroyer merits further research, and Dr.Z and I were talking about these very people profiled today in Wash Post opinion piece, The Superclass.

Does the superclass know just how out of control the continuum is? And if it does, does it being beyond their control justify their accelerating the aggregating chaos like kids in grocery carts racing down steep hills? The crash is coming; might as well enjoy the speed, as if they had a choice?

    *

• I'd bet Chelsea's a bore, but she's in training for her run in 2016 (though what Clinton will succeed her in 2024?).
• Broder explores the groundwork for dumping Obama.
• Obama's attempt to move beyond shallow patriotism hindered by his lack of displays of shallow patriotism!
• Obama's attempt to move beyond shallow pandering to the masses hindered by his lack of pandering to the masses.
• And though it shouldn't be astonishing, it's still breathtaking to see blatant pandering to people Clorg clearly think are stupid while Clorg simulataneously claiming Obama an elitist and anti-Clorg sentiment undisguised hatred of white working-class voters.
• UPDATE: Clorg as Bush. As for the economists who call the gas tax holiday not just ick-ugly political pandering but dangerously bad policy, I await Clorgsters to instruct me on how the economists are all misogynists who both hate working-class whites and suffer from severe CDS.
• One bitter, working-class vote for Obama.
• Makes you wish he'd shut up about AIDS.
• Urban violence as virus.
• Resources of resistance.
• The next president's power.
• BTW, fvck John Edwards. Hard.
• Operation Anti-Chaos, or the fiction of white voters.
• How many mortgages would Jesus have?
• Small victories against the RIAA.
• Jeebus.
• Loyalty oaths.
• Wilentz' new book on Reagan.
• Love transformer.
• 1988 = 2008.
• Long review, from the Left, of Klein's Shock Doctrine.

   *

Hey! Look what I got my hands on:

.

Four chapters in, I've laughed out loud five times. More later. Or not.

Whose Team Now?

This breaks my heart.

I remember all last season, Benny's best, after final whistle of home games, wins, draws, losses, Olsen took off his boots and  - his ankles hurting so bad - hobbled over to sincerely applaud and thank Loud Side.

Seen anything close to that this year?