College Football season has returned and so has the race to win the most unofficial, official championship in all of sports - The BCS National Championship. I could spill all sorts of ink over how awful, unjust and political the current system is, but how unoriginal would that be. Besides, despite the gross injustices of a system that only allows half the competitors a shot at the championship, who can honestly say that the rat race and luck of the draw that goes into getting a bid to Pasadena won't be the best soap opera on television this fall. This year they even have the personas and beefcake to match the drama.
So, who do we have tonight? A record nine FBS games are being played this Thursday with a double header on ESPN from 7 to well past midnight tonight. Since I can't be bothered to pick any games featuring Iowa State or Indiana outside conference play or Temple...just...at all, I think I'll keep it simple.
NC State rides the home crowd (or what passes for one in Raleigh) to a minor upset over the Gamecocks in Game One on the Network. Meanwhile, in Bowling Green, KY, expect Troy's 50 passes a game offense to be a little to much for a team breaking in a new head coach to overcome. Kent State should have little trouble with Coastal Carolina while Ball State makes burger patties out of the hopelessly pleasant Mean Green of North Texas.
As far as games that will have an impact on anything beyond the local drinking scene, I'll take Utah by 30 over the in-state "rival" Aggies and Boise State in a barn burner against the Ducks. The last game could really go either way and should be exciting, but the real fun will be in seeing if the final combined score of a game tops 100 in Week 1.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Politics is (or is it are) Conflict
Over at MSNBC they've had it up to here with the rabble at the traditional August break town hall meetings. Meanwhile, the folks at Fox think the punks over at MSNBC are a bunch of old men yelling at kids to get off the damn lawn. At CNN they're teaming with Pixar to come up with a way to simulate the town halls on a touch-screen while John Roberts watches the Titanic that was his career sink into the sea. What they all have in common however is a whole lot of nonsense coming out of their mouths.
From the aptly named Ed Show to fan favorite Countdown with Keith Olbermann the pundits on MSPeacock are up in arms about the "astro-turf" nature of the health-care protests, believing that if the ignorant masses only knew who was behind the information their getting about health care reform the citizens of this country would have a great liberal epiphany, take a deep breath and calm down. Also, the public option the network shamelessly shills for would be passed without opposition, but...you know... The problem here of course is that the commentators at MSNBC, like so many other well-to-do liberals with a mouthpiece before them, have chosen to treat their poor and middle class opponents like so many charity cases, deprived of any agency by their genuine and imagined oppressors.
Working class America isn't so dumb as to believe Insurance companies have their backs, they just seriously doubt that their government will give them a better shot at prosperity. And why shouldn't they doubt the lofty promises handed down by The Obama? Is this not the same American government that has spent the past forty years, virtually unabated, crushing union power, watching infrastructure crumble, starving every regulatory agency under the sun into abject powerlessness and repeatedly locking up protester after protester for voicing their opinion on public property? Anyone who watched Olbermann during the Bush years would have had a difficult time forgetting these and any of the other dismal, dismantling of the America that emerged from Depression and war. But in the age of Obama? Now those who believe the US government would willfully harm it's citizens under the guise of benevolence are just loons.
Over at Fox, the nominally conservative pontificators are rediscovering the joys of mass politics and infusing the health care debate with a pro-elite, counter-intuitive populism that suits their own fabulously wealthy preferences. As usual, those who sensibly point out how off topic the town halls frequently are, covering every thing from gun rights to Nazism, are the same old effete losers who screw everything up and turn "our values" inside-out. For these cynical, opportunistic cretins the increasingly fragile poor and middle classes are useful idiots whose initially well founded fears of the US government taking over anything are transformed into the specters of late Weimar Germany. Furthermore, they've indisputably given the small minority of folks who see Weimar Germany in their morning coffee a heavily disproportionate amount of media coverage and even given their leading prophet his own prime time slot.
The most dire mistake that both networks and their subsidiaries in Congress make however, is believing that "real Americans" are one hopelessly ignorant and homogeneous group. Some union workers enjoy the benefits of near total health coverage while others struggle just to maintain a living wage agreement each time a new contract is negotiated. To assume that two such sets of blue collar workers would have the same opinion on health care reform is absurd on its face. Even if a compromise between parties in such disparate parties could eventually be reached, the notion that wealth can be redistributed amongst dozens of heterogeneous classes and interest groups even slightly without significant conflict is a product of pure fantasy. Threats of strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and the open expression of rage are the only viable political cards most citizens have at their disposal and the ridiculous pleas ringing from Arlington to Georgetown for civility in the health care debate (or any other debate) would be hilarious if they weren't sincere.
From the aptly named Ed Show to fan favorite Countdown with Keith Olbermann the pundits on MSPeacock are up in arms about the "astro-turf" nature of the health-care protests, believing that if the ignorant masses only knew who was behind the information their getting about health care reform the citizens of this country would have a great liberal epiphany, take a deep breath and calm down. Also, the public option the network shamelessly shills for would be passed without opposition, but...you know... The problem here of course is that the commentators at MSNBC, like so many other well-to-do liberals with a mouthpiece before them, have chosen to treat their poor and middle class opponents like so many charity cases, deprived of any agency by their genuine and imagined oppressors.
Working class America isn't so dumb as to believe Insurance companies have their backs, they just seriously doubt that their government will give them a better shot at prosperity. And why shouldn't they doubt the lofty promises handed down by The Obama? Is this not the same American government that has spent the past forty years, virtually unabated, crushing union power, watching infrastructure crumble, starving every regulatory agency under the sun into abject powerlessness and repeatedly locking up protester after protester for voicing their opinion on public property? Anyone who watched Olbermann during the Bush years would have had a difficult time forgetting these and any of the other dismal, dismantling of the America that emerged from Depression and war. But in the age of Obama? Now those who believe the US government would willfully harm it's citizens under the guise of benevolence are just loons.
Over at Fox, the nominally conservative pontificators are rediscovering the joys of mass politics and infusing the health care debate with a pro-elite, counter-intuitive populism that suits their own fabulously wealthy preferences. As usual, those who sensibly point out how off topic the town halls frequently are, covering every thing from gun rights to Nazism, are the same old effete losers who screw everything up and turn "our values" inside-out. For these cynical, opportunistic cretins the increasingly fragile poor and middle classes are useful idiots whose initially well founded fears of the US government taking over anything are transformed into the specters of late Weimar Germany. Furthermore, they've indisputably given the small minority of folks who see Weimar Germany in their morning coffee a heavily disproportionate amount of media coverage and even given their leading prophet his own prime time slot.
The most dire mistake that both networks and their subsidiaries in Congress make however, is believing that "real Americans" are one hopelessly ignorant and homogeneous group. Some union workers enjoy the benefits of near total health coverage while others struggle just to maintain a living wage agreement each time a new contract is negotiated. To assume that two such sets of blue collar workers would have the same opinion on health care reform is absurd on its face. Even if a compromise between parties in such disparate parties could eventually be reached, the notion that wealth can be redistributed amongst dozens of heterogeneous classes and interest groups even slightly without significant conflict is a product of pure fantasy. Threats of strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and the open expression of rage are the only viable political cards most citizens have at their disposal and the ridiculous pleas ringing from Arlington to Georgetown for civility in the health care debate (or any other debate) would be hilarious if they weren't sincere.
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