Ferguss the Everbrown: A (Mostly) True Christmas Fable

Many years ago, on the island of Oahu, a sturdy pine tree was unpacked in the parking lot of the Hickam Base Exchange. 

(For the purposes of this story, we’ll call him "Ferguss.”)

He was placed in a row with others of his kind, to be presented to dozens of families eagerly awaiting the first shipments of Christmas trees from the mainland. It was an exciting time to be a tree.

It was also an exciting time to be a Lueders. In my family, getting a real Christmas tree wasn’t just a tradition -- it was a core tenant of our belief system. Artificial “Christmas trees” were for families that didn’t love their kids enough to give them the real thing.  

And so, it came to pass that my dad happened upon Ferguss in that tree-filled lot. 

Choosing a Christmas tree is perhaps the single most important decision one can make during the holiday season. You can’t simply rush something that will determine the overall level of Christmas cheer for almost a month. But this one was perfect.

In short order, Ferguss found himself strapped to the family van, and ferried to the home he was destined to fill with delight. But as we lovingly adorned him with an assortment of decorative items, none of us were aware of the Christmas magic that awaited us.

For you see, Ferguss was not an ordinary tree. Like other trees, he could not speak. But if he could, he might have said something like this:

How nice it is to be here, surrounded by adoring faces, each one filled with the joy of the season! And this acapella Christmas album playing on the stereo -- simply magical! How do they make such a diverse array of sounds with only the human voice at their disposal? You are quite right to listen to this incessantly for so many hours. And now -- at last -- I can do what I came here to do, surrounded by so much love!  

I can die in peace. Farewell!

And verily, Ferguss passed away.

Unlike other Christmas trees, which had filled our living room with their jolly green boughs, and our nostrils with the perky scent of pine, Ferguss quickly began to do something else: decompose. In a few days, his needles were already turning brown, and falling out in alarming quantities. Ferguss was like that wretchedly touching tree from a Charlie Brown Christmas -- except that the more love we bestowed upon him, the more scraggly and depressing he became.

Dad did not take it well.

For years, Dad had prided himself on being a tree hunter extraordinaire. It was no small task to pick out a tree that fulfilled his standards from amongst the battered, lackluster shipments that arrived on the island. And with each year, his taste in trees had become more exacting. The tree had to be full, tall (but not too tall), with minimal shedding, and a price that wouldn’t deplete the general gift fund.

Other families had merely acceptable Christmas trees. Trees we would scoff at in private.

Now, we were worse than those other families, snookered by a deceptive nevergreen. Rather than a point of pride, Ferguss had become something else.

Not just a bad tree. The enemy.  

“I hate that tree,” Dad would say, staring at it from across the room.

“I really hate that tree.”

Still, the rest of us endured. We pretended that the piles of brown needles were a festive addition to our home decor. Maybe brown was just a different shade of green! Maybe the tree would even get better. If we just believed hard enough, anything could happen. This was Christmas, after all.

And when Christmas morning rolled around, all eyes were on Ferguss.

For you see...

… Nothing had changed.

Still brown. Still ugly. Still dead.

Ferguss was just a frickin’ awful tree.

Typically, Christmas trees in the Lueders home stuck around for a while after the big day. Ferguss, on the other hand, was quickly hauled to our backyard fire pit, to await his final judgment.

Some say that when Ferguss was lit ablaze, he burned more warmly and brightly than any other Christmas tree had. Perhaps he did. But in the glow of his light, someone was heard to remark,

“That was the worst Christmas tree ever!”

And it was.

THE END

A Balancing Act.

For those of us who don't see the debate over the size and role of government as a cosmic battle between good and evil, there was a glimmer of hope in Romney’s debate performance last week. In front of millions of Americans, the Republican candidate for president made a shocking admission: government regulation is not inherently evil:

From NPR's debate transcript: Regulation is essential. You can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation. As a business person, I had to have — I needed to know the regulations. I needed them there. You couldn't have people opening up banks in their — in their garage and making loans. I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work. Every free economy has good regulation.

This shouldn’t be that surprising, considering that few Republicans want to do away with all government regulation. But, they often make it sound like they do. Railing against the tyranny of federal regulation is a well-worn page in the conservative playbook.

Frustration with government regulation isn't without cause. For every sensible rule that benefits the marketplace, there's sure to be one that has unintended consequences that more than offset the intended good. But the conservative instinct to dissolve government’s regulatory function, and let corporations roam free, is ultimately destructive. Even more, it reflects an incoherent view of human nature.

Traditionally, conservatives have held a dim view of the human capacity to handle power. Conservatives believe that if too much power is concentrated in the hands of government leaders, it will inevitably be abused, regardless of any good intentions that may be present. Seen through this lense, the inefficiency of America's constitutional government is a feature, not a bug. Better a gridlocked congress than a charismatic leader with the ability to strip away our rights.

The conservative aversion to concentrations of government power is perfectly reasonable. But is government power the only power that can become dangerous? Conservatives may believe that people tend toward corruption in the context of government, but they simultaneously hold that unbridled power in the corporate world will only lead to affordable toasters and joy. This, we are told, is thanks to the power of the marketplace to harness greed for the common good.

In thousands of cases, this works. But what if a factory can save millions of dollars by dumping chemicals into a local river? What if the CEO of an investment firm can make millions in the short term through practices that will likely lead to disaster after he leaves the company? These aren't just rhetorical questions -- companies in the pursuit of profit have done bad things. Sometimes, really bad things. And it's not un-American to acknowledge the reality of capitalism's dark side.

Greed is sometimes good. But, as some guy once said, it can also lead to "all kinds of evil." Neither CEOs or congressmen are angels, and both can wreck havoc if left completely unchecked. The conversation we need to be having isn’t about whether all power should reside in the hands of the public or private sectors, but rather, how genuine public good should be balanced with economic freedom. We don’t need burdensome regulation, but we do need some regulation. Focusing on cutting the size of government alone distracts of from the real question: what regulations are a beneficial and proper exercise of the government’s power, and how can they be enforced in the most efficient way possible? Simply deriding the ineffectiveness of the federal government, and then gutting staff and budgets across the board, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Romney seems to get this, and that makes me kind of happy. Although that might have more to do with the brownies I just pulled out of the oven. BRB.

Downtown!

The tale of downtown revitalization has been a big one for the past couple of decades. Urban cores across America that had declined into post-apocalyptic chaos during the '60s and '70s have reinvented themselves as havens for the hipster swarm, called forth by their insidious overmind. Goodbye hobos, hello adorable lattes. And some new numbers from the Census Bureau seem to add weight to this trend:

Via Nate Berg at Atlantic Cities: Big city downtowns are becoming people places – again or, for some, for the first time. New figures [PDF] out from the U.S. Census Bureau show that downtown areas saw huge jumps in population between 2000 and 2010. The biggest of these metro areas, those with populations of 5 million or more, saw a collective growth rate of more than 13 percent in the areas within two miles of city hall, a stand-in measurement that, for these purposes, designates "downtown."

In all U.S. metro areas, 16.1 million people were living within two miles of City Hall by 2010, about six percent of the total metro area population of 258 million.

Combined with the populations slightly farther out, in the two to four mile radius outside city hall, the numbers increase dramatically. Together, the total metro population living within four miles of city hall is more than 54 million – almost 21 percent of America's metro population. That's 17.5 percent of the national population living within a quick car ride, 30-minute bike ride or hour-long walk of the center of a big city.
...
The report also shows that areas farther from city halls are still dominant population centers. And that's especially true in the largest metropolitan areas. While the close-in areas in these metros' downtown saw double-digit growth between 2000 and 2010, so did areas 30 miles and beyond. So while it's true that people are moving into downtowns, that doesn't mean they're still not moving out to the suburbs and exurbs as well.

As the commentator noted, the real story of downtown America isn't the death of suburbia, which is alive and well. It's likely that American cities will never become the dense, centralized places they were in the past. In most cases, downtown is simply becoming one thriving neighborhood among many, and an attractive regional destination. The end result is more choice for middle-class consumers and home owners/renters, which is generally a good thing.

On the other hand, the trends that are revitalizing downtown areas in big cities don't seem to be doing anything for the decaying inner-ring neighborhoods of mid-sized cities that were hit hardest by the changes in America's economic landscape. Pockets of persistent poverty and inequality remain the biggest challenges facing American cities. And no, these problems won't be solved by artisanal cupcake shops.

Election Thoughts.

I haven’t been writing a whole lot for the past couple of months. Or at least, I haven’t been finishing a lot of writing. Stringing together coherent thoughts is hard and tiring.

So, I won’t try to.

As you may know, there's an election going on. Better yet, it's the exciting kind where we get to pick a president! Because I graduated from college, I have many thoughts, or ponderances, when elections occur. I wrote some of these down, and am now putting them on the Internet for you to enjoy. If you don't want to read these thoughts, you can continue staring at the patriotic image above. It will undoubtedly stir the soul of all true patriots, due to its patriotic nature, and I'm very proud that I was able to find it via a simple Google image search.

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VARIOUS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ELECTION, PRESENTED IN BULLETED POINTS

- Joe Biden’s recent campaign trail gaffes reminded me that Joe Biden is still vice president. That, in turn, made me giggle.

- Does anyone truly believe that Obama personally dislikes people who start businesses, and is actively plotting to make people dependant on the government? Inventing secret motives behind an opponent’s policy is a mainstay of American political discourse, but it still manages to irritate me. See also: Republicans don’t really care about abortion -- they want to turn women into a perpetually pregnant slave-race!

- I think most people in the media were thrilled that Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate. Despite the best efforts of the Democrats to paint Romney as a Snidely Whiplash, and the Republicans to portray him as an heir to Reagan, he doesn’t really incite any emotion beyond mild like or dislike. Paul Ryan is a dynamic character in our current political story, and journalists are suckers for narrative. Like 2008, this is going to be an election cycle dominated by discussion of the GOP’s veep-to-be.

- Ryan’s infamous budget plan contains big cuts to almost everything the federal government does. These cuts would be very painful, and a more reasonable approach to reducing the deficit would likely include some sort of revenue increase. On the other hand, such a tough budget would actually tame many of our entitlement-related fiscal problems. Democrats who raise hue & cry over the Ryan plan should be willing to offer their own plan to reign in entitlements. Given the size of the projected deficits in medicare, social security, and other major programs, there will likely be some painful cuts no matter what.

- I am not really an expert on tax policy or entitlements. Luckily, no one in Washington is either, so I can get away with it.

- Even with Ryan on the ticket, I expect that entitlement reform will be pushed into the background. Old people vote, and they want what the guv’mint owes them, regardless of their political philosophy.

- Commentators say that Paul Ryan’s selection shows that Romney isn’t trying to sway women to his side. Ryan’s abs say otherwise.

- Paul Ryan was (is?) really into Ayn Rand, and her ever-popular novel Atlas Shrugged. This has set many folks in the punditsphere a-twitter. As for myself, I read Atlas Shrugged a few years ago, and it was terrible. To this day, I can’t figure out why it appeals to people, since the characters, plot, and morality of the book are all equally dismal. Even the numerous sex scenes manage to be preachy and disturbing. Gross.

- The fact that Paul Ryan has been selected as VP doesn’t mean Romney has to defend all of Ryan’s policy positions. The president sets the agenda.

- Mitt Romney has never been much of a foreign policy buff. Even worse, he seems to be filling in his gaps in this area with advice from dubious Bush-era hawks. Anyone who would like to avoid the mistakes of that presidency should be troubled by this.

- Fortunately for Romney, this race has never been about foreign policy. Voters seem to prefer picking their presidents based on an imaginary role the president doesn’t actually play (magical jobs fairy), rather than the ones he actually does (commander-in-chief of the armed forces, international head of state). Pity.

- Obama hasn’t made any terrible blunders in the realm of foreign policy and national security. He also hasn’t fundamentally changed the trajectory of Bush’s overall anti-terrorism policies. It seems that Democratic foreign policy boils down to, “the war on terror is a ridiculous construct designed to oppress us, but we can fight it better than Republicans!”

- The fact that Obama has largely pursued Bush’s war on terror policies doesn’t leave Romney with a lot of actual things he can contrast his own positions with. So, it seems that Romney plans to do the same things, but in a more American and assertive manner. Obama, for example, has said that all options (including military force) are on the table in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile, Romney says that all options are REALLY, TRULY, VERY MUCH on the table. I’m not sure what this means in practical terms.

- I could care less that Romney isn’t releasing his tax returns. If you’re wondering what they would reveal, I can give you some spoilers: Romney made a truckload of money, and like every other taxpayer, he paid as little as he could within the confines of the law.

- As a PR thing, maybe it would it would make sense for Romney to release his tax returns. But really, this is his choice to make.

- Note to the American public: Obama is not like you. Romney is not like you. People who become president are not normal, and that’s okay. An average Joe has no business running the most powerful nation on earth. Isn’t time we celebrated elitism? Just a little?

- "Celebrate Elitism" will be the name of an annual banquet, hosted by me, as soon as I become wealthy and powerful. If you think this sounds awesome, I'll gladly take donations to hasten my ascent to wealth and power. I accept Paypal.

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That is all, for now.

"LOUD NOISES!"

As long as people disagree with each other, there will be arguments. And as long as we have the Internet, there will be more arguments than you can shake a mouse at.

(The computer accessory, not the rodent. Unless you’re a terrible person.)

The problem is that what passes as an argument in the age of digital media and cable news isn’t always an argument. Confused?

Well, let’s say that I believe butter pecan is an excellent and delicious ice cream that should be enjoyed by everyone. (Which happens to be true). However, if given the choice, some people would rather eat vanilla ice cream. I feel this is wrong on a gut level, but to convince others, I need to provide reasons. Clearly, some sort of argument is called for.

Here’s one way I could approach it:

Butter pecan is a better ice cream than vanilla, due to the sophistication and complexity of its flavors. Whereas vanilla merely offers a single tone to the tip of your tongue, butter pecan is a veritable orchestra of flavor. One key difference between the diets of humans and lower animals is that while animals almost always consume one single item at a time -- grass, an antelope, etc. -- humans are capable of combining and blending multiple ingredients with multiple flavors. This ability to understand and appreciate complexity is a bedrock of civilization. A single note does not a melody make, and likewise, a single brush stroke doesn’t form a complete painting. To choose butter pecan ice cream is not only to enjoy a better dessert  -- it’s to be more human.

This argument isn’t airtight, and other people could easily disagree with some of my premises. (We're talking about ice cream, for crying out loud.) But it is an active attempt to explain why I believe my position is the correct one. Delivering an argument, even a good one, won’t result in instant victory. It should, however, make your opponent think about what they believe, and come up with a response that deals with your assertions in a substantive way. The end result is that players on both sides of the argument are forced to develop their ideas with increasing complexity, and perhaps even cede certain points, if they must.

Unfortunately, all this complexity can be mentally exhausting. It’s almost, like, you have to think about things. This is where a second strategy comes in. A very popular strategy. This method of argumentation relies on proving something’s badness (or goodness) due to its mere association with a certain time period or group of people, and makes frequent references to either inevitable progress, or an idealized past. The “progressive” version of the argument would go something like this:

Lovers of vanilla ice cream want to send us back to the 1800s with a regressive flavor that reeks of a paternalistic society. In the last few decades, we’ve made strides toward a greater diversity of flavors in our ice cream, but the persistence of the vanilla crowd frequently makes me ashamed to be an ice cream eater. When our almost-certainly-butter-pecan-loving grandchildren look back at this moment in our history, they’ll wonder why it took us so long to give up the hatefully mono-flavored dessert that plagues us today. Stand up for butter pecan. Stand up for the truth.

The tone of this argument suggests that its author is very passionate about something, but doesn’t know why. So, reason is substituted with outrage, in an attempt to disguise the fact that there are no substantive arguments being offered. Rather than trying to attract a strong response from its opponent, the goal of this statement is to make people who agree with it feel righteous, and opponents feel ashamed about their life choices. Arguments like this also tend to be based on a painfully cheapened view of history that can only be accepted if you’ve never studied it.

In other words, it’s not really an argument at all. It’s noise.

I think it’s reasonable to believe that some things people did in ye olden times were wrong. Olden-times-people, like modern-times-people, were a little messed up, and sometimes had bad ideas. However, the very fact that a certain view was held by people in the past doesn’t make it wrong. Conversely, the fact that a certain view was held by people in the past doesn’t make it right.

So, if a liberal tells you that conservatives are wrong because they want take us back to the 1950s, or some other sinister time period, you should politely tell them that this isn’t an argument, and make them restate their case in terms of actual reasoning.

And if a conservative tells you that something is right because our leaders in the 1700s said it was, you should remind them that politicians in the 1700s were still just people, and they would probably be disappointed in such a shoddy argument.

After all, this is the 21st century! People who lean on chronological snobbery or golden age thinking will end up taking us back to the Manchu dynasty. Instead, we should return to the perfection of classical Greece, where reason and virtue reigned on jewel-studded thrones.

And we should all eat more butter pecan ice cream. It rocks in a big way.

In Good Spirits.

I’m not much of a liquor connoisseur.

But I’m definitely a liquor review connoisseur.

Liquor reviews are wonderful, because they are also ridiculous, and written by crazy people.

You see, when I evaluate something, I try to follow the Kind of Baffling First Principle of Reviewable Attributes:

Any object of evaluation shall be evaluated based on properties of an evaluatable nature within said object, with which that object may be evaluated in light of... those properties. Of the object.

For example, a review of an apple might involve references to its levels of crispness and sweetness, because those are actual things your mouth notices when an apple is inside of it.

If, however, I were to compare the apple’s flavor to, say, a rare steak or a garlic-roasted turnip, that would not be acceptable. Those flavors just don’t exist within the context of an apple.

Meanwhile, over in liqourland, such rules of reality are routinely cast aside, allowing the whiskey-soaked elite to craft odes to the distillery’s bounty that soar somewhere between the stratosphere, and Dick Cheney’s armored moon-home.

(Dick Cheney was once our vice president. If you haven’t heard much about him lately, you can probably chalk it up to his residence in said moon-home.)

To get a clearer picture of this phenomenon, let us examine one particular member of the liquor family: American bourbon whiskey.

Bourbon is the stuff you get when you distill alcohol from a corn-majority blend of grains, and let it mellow in new oak barrels for a while. It’s pretty decent, all things considered.

Taste-wise, bourbon is very, well, bourbon-y. It’s about 50% ethyl alcohol, so you have that flavor/burn going on in a big way. The barrel any given bourbon is aged in lends some flavor, usually an oakiness or slight smokiness. (Rhyming!) But basically, we’re not getting too fancy here. This is something good American farmers invented to get drunk on, because it’s sure as heck easier than wine-making, which despite California’s peculiar insistence, is for French people and Bacchus.

Bourbon enthusiasts, however, do not burden themselves with the dull physical reality that has been poured into their thick glass tumblers. As a slightly inebriated Yoda was known to remark, “luminous libations are these, not this crude whisky!”

Hiding beneath the caramel-colored surface of America’s native spirit, true bourbon lovers find... things.

Things like vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, leather, grapefruit, toffee, blueberries, mushrooms, orange rind, freshly-baked bread, and, I swear, persimmons.

Freakin’ PERSIMMONS.

To watch these flavors unfold through the written word is like witnessing a delicate ballet I do not yet understand, and likely never will.

Case in point: I recently bought a bottle of Old Grand Dad bourbon, because I wanted to make mint juleps, which in turn was because I wanted to pretend to be a fancy southern person like that guy from Gone with the Wind, or Colonel Sanders. If I were to write my thoughts on this comfortingly-retro-looking bottle of whiskey, they would be roughly as follows:

Old Grand-Dad seems pretty good to me. It didn’t cost very much, which is something I like, as I do not yet have very much money. It doesn’t burn in your throat too much, and it doesn’t have an unpleasant aftertaste. Sometimes, whiskey makes your mouth feel gross, and that wasn’t going on here. Props, Old Grand-Dad.


It made a heckuva julep, which made me feel adequately fancy, although not quite so much as I had hoped. The fanciest southern men I know of have what I refer to as “signature facial hair,” and I feel like this could be a missing piece in the puzzle. Will explore further.


Overall Score: 4 out of 5

If I were a bourbon enthusiast with a website called something like downthewhiskeyriver.com, things would be quite different:

Upon opening the bottle, I was enraptured by the heady aroma that filled my nostrils with pleasuresome vapours. It was like the calm of a field recently soaked by rain -- a well-needed respite from a drought, if I’m not mistaken. Also noted were mixed hints of a cherry pie cooling on a nearby window sill, and rich shampoo lather. After the first sip, I detected a robust flavor, like an entire grilled chicken stuffed with pine-nuts and quinoa. This was followed by the rich sweetness of a fudge-covered brownie, and the tart sting of a salt-encrusted lime. The viscosity was excellent, with a mouthfeel akin to a fresh ocean surf foaming betwixt my teeth. On the throat, I felt the soothing mellowness of a tiny cherub and his angelic cohorts massaging my uvula with gifted hands. The finish was strong, starting with a bushel of pomegranates, and then followed by the tears of a small child who has just learned a disillusioning truth about life, which left me emotionally drained, but eager for future tastings.


Overall Score: 3.8694 out of 4.94

To truly review a whiskey, one must transcend the immediate reality, and enter into a strange form of free-association poetry that reveals the deeper spiritual nature of booze some guy made from corn. The results are breathtaking, and in this writer’s opinion, should be extended to other fields.

Specifically, politics.

It’s only June, and we’re already sick of reading the same dull write-ups of each candidate’s performance on the stump:

Romney spoke to a small but enthusiastic crowd, in the wake of a new poll showing, blah, blah, momentum, etc.

You get it.

It’s time to whiskey-up some real journalism:

Romney’s voice wafted like the aroma of my late great-aunt Dorothy’s famous pecan crisp bars. The crowd was distinctly Mezozoic, and one could very clearly perceive a tension in the air, like the moment before a litter of kittens is born. This comes in sharp contrast to Obama, whose recent public appearances have evoked a mixture of grass clippings and slightly-burnt sage.


Altogether, a refreshing day, but one that lacked the strongly pronounced notes of unicorn and honeysuckle so prevalent in recent weeks.

The general populace will be unable to glean any useful information from these stories, thus maintaining the status quo. But the politically inclined among us would be able to have delightful debates over whether the correct random labels were attached to events, and then offer colorful-sounding, meaningless descriptions of our own to counter them. Then, instead of dealing with boring, weighty issues, political discourse could become an endless game for the amusement of the well-educated.

Completely different from the system we have today.

I’ll let the journalist-types sort out the details. My julep’s getting warm, and this “signature facial hair” isn’t going to grow itself.

A Tragedy, Not A Talking Point.

The previously little-known story of Trayvon Martin’s death has become an inferno of controversy during the past week. It’s shocking, heartrending, and it strikes at the core of America’s identity as a tolerant nation. Like many other stories, it might also prove to be more complicated that it seems.

These are the generally agreed-upon facts of the case:

Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American boy, is walking home after purchasing some candy and iced tea at a 7-11. He’s talking to his girlfriend on the phone. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, spots him, and immediately pegs him as a suspicious figure. Zimmerman calls 9/11, and pursues the boy. A struggle occurs, and Zimmerman shoots Martin. Trayvon Martin is dead by the time police arrive. Zimmerman claims the action as self-defense, and even though Trayvon was unarmed, he isn’t prosecuted.

I first heard the story on the radio. But in my mind, I could visualize Zimmerman clearly.

White.
Probably middle-aged or older.
A paranoid racist with too much time on his hands, and an itchy trigger finger.

Later, I googled “George Zimmerman,” to find out as much as I could. His picture was one of the first items that popped up. And it surprised me.

George Zimmerman, as it turns out, isn’t white, or middle-aged. He’s a 28-year-old Hispanic of mixed ancestry. According to his family, he has many black friends and family members. Given that his town’s population is 30% African-American, that doesn’t sound like a stretch. None of those things preclude racism as a motive. But, they do raise several questions.

How does a young, middle-class Hispanic man living in a racially diverse town end up with a level of racial paranoia that leads him to snuff out an innocent life for no reason besides “walking while black”? Upon further inspection, the racial aspect of the story doesn’t disappear, but it certainly becomes cloudier.

Regardless of the circumstances, prosecuting Zimmerman is the right thing to do. Trayvon Martin’s family deserves justice. But we shouldn’t be too quick in forming simplified narratives about the motives behind the case before all the facts are known. Turning an unspeakable tragedy into an opportunity for grandstanding on the state of race relations in America is a mistake.

We should push for justice, but remain patient for the details.

The Sporting Life.

Based on the general rumblings emerging from the Internet-o-sphere, I’m aware that basketball-related events are happening right now. Basketball-related events that somehow fall under the banner of “March Madness.”

I literally have no clue what this is. None.

As it stands, my interest in sports is exactly equal to the amount of interest a porcupine has in knitting tiny hats for human babies. Which is quite low, unless you happen to be Knudsworth, The Knitting Porcupine Who Loves.

My first instinct is to ridicule everyone who thinks that sports are significant in some way. However, since everyone else on the planet falls into that category (with the exception of Knudsworth, whose legendary abundance of love does not extend to sports), I’ve since learned to suppress my instincts.

In fact, if you’re totally into sports, I respect your lifestyle. I don’t understand it, but I respect it.

You see, if you follow sports, you have a crazy amount of stuff going on in your brain. The casual sports-talk that normal Americans are able to rattle off is completely mystifying to me. Sports people know a mind-boggling number of things. They know hundreds of teams, and the players on those teams, and the records of those players, and players in the past they can compare them to. They know about coaches, league organizations, strategies, obscure lingo, and rules.

And they know all that without any sort of formal education on the subject. By any measure, that’s pretty darn impressive.

Granted, my inner-Knudsworth can only think, “Gosh, if people devoted a fraction of the brain-space they use for sports to local politics, think about how healthy our communities would be!” But I know this is a false choice. There are people who are completely savvy and politically engaged, and know millions of sports factoids as well.

Again, my tiny, non-sports brain can’t comprehend this. I don’t know how people can seemingly know everything about the constantly changing world of sports, and all the personalities therein, and also fit other information into their brain. But millions of people do.

I don’t like sports. But I respect anyone who knows many things about things, even if those things are things I don’t understand.

So, to all those who know what “March Madness” is: I salute you.

You make America great.

Now, go back to doing... your brackets... for the games. I hope Michael Jordan scores lots of touchdowns!

(And Knudsworth sends his reluctant blessing as well. He's already knitting hats for your present and/or future babies.)

Not S'Mitten.

Mitt Romney's belly-flop in the South is yet another demonstration of Romney's inability to purchase the hearts and minds of GOP voters. The delegate math is still in his favor, but votes for Romney tend to be more motivated by antipathy toward Obama than anything else. Romney isn't oozing toward a presidential nomination because he's loved. It's because he's electable.

But the logic behind the electability assumption seems a little flawed. Is a man really electable if he can't muster enthusiasm among his own supporters? If flooding media markets with absurd amounts of cash still results in narrow wins alternating with narrow losses?

A politician has a lot of jobs, and being likeable is one of them. It's not as trivial as you may think. Presidents aren't elected by a neutral council of performance analysts who sit in a dark room crunching numbers. They're elected by humans, with human emotions, and human reasons for the votes they cast. Connecting matters. Being liked matters. In races where less than half the population votes, the deciding factor is generally the level of enthusiasm behind either side.

So if Romney can't fire up his own party, what does that say about his electability? Yes, some of the things that make Republicans hesitant about Mitt -- like his moderate record -- will be assets in the general election. But let's be honest: Willard Romney will never be confused with Slick Willy. He does not regularly charm tiny birds from their nests. When Romney opens his mouth, he tends to say things that alienate normal people. No one likes his style, and activists from both sides of the political spectrum dislike his substance. If the economy continues to improve, the single issue he's based his campaign on could be swept from under his feet.

Electability is important. But being less crazy than other candidates isn't necessarily the same thing as being electable. Just ask President Dole, or President McCain.

Paywalling.

Newspapers have been grousing for years about the best way to pull in the revenue they need to survive the digital onslaught. The so-called paywall has lots of critics, but an increasing number of news sources are adopting it. It’s a pretty straightforward idea: good journalism doesn’t happen without money, so the public ought to pony up some dough to access it.

Which brings me to a handy little anecdote: after months of stalling, I’m now a paying subscriber to nytimes.com.

I’m not saying that online subscription fees are the best solution for every organization. My reluctant payment isn’t an endorsement of the business practice. But I paid nonetheless, because it was simply more convenient than constantly trying to work around the free article limit.

I read the New York Times a lot. Even if you’re a Palin-esque conservative who believes that The Grey Lady is a bastion of communism and vice, there’s no question that the New York Times produces more original journalism at home and abroad than any other single source. Every day, I visit the New York Times because I know I’ll read things there that I won’t find anywhere else. It offers a blend of opinion, hard news, and cultural reporting that I’ve relied on for years.

And that, I think, holds the true key to journalism’s survival. The digital space is still a harsh frontier for the news industry. No one knows what things will look like in 20 years. Are online subscriptions the answer? Micro-payments? Non-profit corporate structures?

Frankly, I have no idea.

But I do know that if you offer something essential -- something that people can’t live without -- there’s a good chance you’ll survive. As a consumer, I’m annoyed that I have to pay for something I used to enjoy for free. But I’ll pay anyway, because I want what the New York Times has to offer.

The business side of the newsroom has a long way to go in developing sustainable business models. But unless journalists are creating content people depend on, the most innovative corporate minds won’t be able to save the industry from collapse.

In other words: make the news awesome. The money will come, eventually.

Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

Every morning, I head over to my inbox to skim Mike Allen’s daily Politico Playbook news summary. Today, the subject line promised something about a feud within the Cato Institute. But on the inside, I was confronted by six stunning words that appeared to have been inserted at the last minute: BULLETIN - ANDREW BREITBART DIES AT 43.

My first thought was that it was all a Tom Sawyer-esque hoax. I could imagine Breitbart gleefully watching the media’s reaction to his own death, a glass of pinot noir in hand, relishing yet another chance to humiliate the establishment he despised. But at this point, I’m not holding my breath.

Andrew Breitbart is dead.

I think there are two senses in which someone can be considered great. One is a complete, moral sense. There are great men and women who are admired for what they fought for, and how they fought for it. But there’s another, lesser sense. Some men and women have a greatness that isn't always the same as goodness. They’re great in an earthly sense, because of the shadow they manage to cast during their short time in the sun. They make a dent in the fabric of society, for good or ill.

In that sense, Andrew Breitbart was a great man.

If William F. Buckley Jr. was emblematic of the last generation of conservatives, Andrew Breitbart was the heart and soul of the current one. Buckley was an erudite Ivy League elitist, always ready to disarm opponents with a verbal flourish. He was part of an intellectual conservative establishment that at the very least seemed to value high culture and the search for meaning. Breitbart was an unabashed bomb-thrower to his core. Every action he took was animated by anger against a vast liberal elite, and those he felt had been brainwashed by them. Buckley may have scoffed at liberal protesters in witty columns; Breitbart would march right out to them and yell until he lost his voice. He didn’t just want to fight his enemies. He wanted to destroy them, in hand-to-hand combat if necessary.

And often, he succeeded. Anthony Weiner resigned in disgrace. Shirley Sherrod lost her job. ACORN was cut off from federal funding. Breitbart harnessed his anger to the anger of thousands, and used it to relentlessly push stories online until mainstream news sources could no longer ignore them. He mastered the new media to beat the old media at its own game.

By any account, Breitbart was not a particularly religious person. But the enemy of his enemy was always his friend. His Big Hollywood blog often featured voices ranging from culture-warrior evangelicals to gay libertarians. As long as you wanted to take a wrecking ball to the ivory tower, you were welcome on Team Breitbart. The battle was an all-consuming obsession for him. In Breitbart’s mind, Hollywood elites, liberal newscasters, and hippy protestors weren't just wrong -- they were at war with the country. Somewhat ironically, Breitbart’s tactics were self-consciously modeled after the left-wing radical groups of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Now that they had taken over, he felt that it was his turn to give them a taste of their own medicine.

In style and substance, I never had a whole lot in common with Breitbart. But out of all the conservative political figures in the country, I always felt he would be the most fascinating to have a conversation with. He was a colorful political oddity in a country that manufactures characters by the dozens. He may not have been Limbaugh, but he loved to talk, rambling combatively about the communist plot to take over the country, while making obscure pop culture references and praising the goodness of middle-Americans. The persona he projected was a strange combination of poise and sloppiness, something like a disgruntled think-tank fellow who had just crawled out of bed after a night of heavy drinking. Breitbart was a political conservative who didn’t care for maintaining a clean-cut image. You always got the feeling that he was the guy you’d want to have a beer -- or several beers -- with. But my own chances of grabbing a pint with Breitbart have dropped from .001% to 0.

The man is gone. The media landscape he helped transform remains.

The DangerRuss Files: Savory Collection Vodka Cream Sauce

In the world of dollar-aisle foods, none are more intriguing than the elusive Savory Collection Vodka Cream Sauce. This legendary consumable promises to combine the romance of a fine Italian meal with the raw despair of a Russian hangover.

Unfortunately, with great promise comes the chance for great disappointment. Can a single dollar really buy you the delicate balance of cream and vodka needed to fulfill your most fevered dreams of pasta bliss? As with the question, "are those berries poisonous?", there's only one prudent way to find out: you gotta put that thang in yo' mouth. 

Packaging:

Savory Collection Vodka Cream Sauce comes draped in the fanciness one would expect from an item in a collection of savory. Of particular note is the enticing copy on the back of the jar, which proclaims that Savory Collection Vodka Cream Sauce provides an "Italian" style dinner.

Yes, that's in quotes. Who could "resist" such an "authentic" sounding "meal"? Certainly not "me."

Flavortaste:

The jar suggests adding shrimp to the sauce, to transform it into true "Italian" comfort food. So, I added shrimp to the sauce. I served it over angel hair pasta. And here's the thing: it was pretty good. Having never experienced any sort of vodka cream sauce, I wasn't sure what to expect. But it turned out to be a solid tomato sauce, with just a little extra somethin'-somethin'. The shrimp was a nice touch, taking the meal beyond the level of your average weeknight pasta dish. It won't knock anyone's socks off, but for a dollar, this is a legitimately good sauce choice. And unlike pricier brands of pasta sauce, Savory Collection Vodka Cream Sauce has a surprisingly wholesome formula, devoid of an alphabet soup of additives. The top ingredients? Crushed tomatoes, cream, and vodka. Seriously. If you're like me, and you enjoy spicing things up yourself, this is a good thing.

The bottom line -- a decent sauce for a great price. Or, as the Italians would say, "the dire economic straits our country is facing, combined with the broader euro zone crisis, is threatening to destabilize the entire world!"

Final Score:

3.5 / 5 Narwhals

Fighting For A Truthier Tomorrow.

Even though the GOP primary field has been essentially whittled down to two terrible candidates, it’s hard to tell who will be leading the charge against Obama in November. But, it’s not hard to tell what rhetoric the Republican's anointed leader will be spouting. When they’re not busy proclaiming that every other candidate eats babies, the presidential hopefuls have been refining their line of attack against our arugula-lover-in-chief. The script has been well rehearsed:

"Obama doesn't believe in work."

"Obama doesn't believe in America."

"Obama wants to foster a culture of dependence."

"Obama thinks America should apologize for itself."

"Obama believes in equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity."

Now, the problem I have with these anti-Obama soundbites is that they aren't true.

I think it's perfectly valid to argue that Obama's policies are bad for economic growth. It's valid to argue that he hasn't created enough jobs. But to say that he doesn't want people to get jobs at all, or doesn't respect the concept of private-sector employment is silly. And silly anti-Obamaisms like this have been at the center of every GOP candidate's stump speech.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what Obama says, or what he does. Republicans will always see an amalgamation of left-wing clichés sitting in the oval office. For example, it doesn’t matter that Obama has followed Dubbya's defense policy to a tee, and aggressively (perhaps even illegally) expanded the war on terror beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. It doesn’t matter that he ordered the death of Bin Laden. Obama’s a liberal, and we all know that liberals are hippie-flower-child-pot-smoking-draft-dodging-America-hating-one-worlders! The man’s obviously too busy eating fancy cheese to keep us safe.

Straw-man arguments like this bother me. They bother me because I think America could be having real political debates right now, over issues like the effects of taxation on growth, the best way to control healthcare costs, and what America's proper role in the global arena should be. Republicans should argue vigorously with Barack Obama. But they should be arguing with the real Barack Obama, not the arbitrary set of liberal stereotypes they've pinned to him.

There are real differences between Obama and his would-be GOP opponents. But with the exception of gadfly Ron Paul, the differences are not as black and white as people would think. The vast majority of Republicans, like Democrats, believe in a social safety net. They believe there's a proper role for government regulation, and that taxes are necessary. Democrats and Republicans both love America, and would like America to remain a powerful global player with a strong military. Republicans and Democrats both believe that capitalism is the best way to generate wealth. The differences often lie in the details of how they would balance competing concerns. And as we all know, details are boring, and sometimes contain the devil.

Once the GOP picks their candidate, and the race starts in earnest, it’s a pretty sure bet that Obama will set up his own set of straw men to knock down. And millions of Americans will accept this as the way politics are, and always have been. We don’t care that politicians are lying, because we expect politicians to lie. We accept a comically shallow level of political discourse, because it’s what we’ve been raised on.

But should we accept it? Will we ever stand up and demand that our leaders say things that are actually connected to reality? Will we collectively reject horserace journalism that treats issues like colorful props in an ongoing soap-opera?

Probably not.

Goodnight, America. If you need me, I’ll be looking at hilarious pictures of cats doing things.