Fri, August 22, 2003

My friend and Athletic Reporter co-creator (and newlywed – congrats!) Joe Mulder tells a story about Adam Carolla that I like. Somebody is having lunch with somebody (I think one of the somebodies might be Jimmy Kimmel, but don't hold me to that; it's not the point of the story anyway), and they're discussing Carolla and why he's so funny. Somebody A tells Somebody B that it's because Carolla has an opinion on everything. Soon after, they encounter Carolla and test the theory. "Adam, what do you think about swizzle sticks?" somebody asks. Carolla jumps in, "Here's the thing with those swizzle sticks..." and goes on to gripe about how there's no need for the holes if nobody's ever going to drink through them, and on and on. I like this story because it relates to the reason I write for this website. (The main reason, of course, is that it's my website. It would be weird if someone else wrote for it. Or if I wrote for theirs – I digress.) I wouldn't dream of comparing myself to Carolla in terms of humor. (Hygiene, manners, taste, class, perhaps. Humor, no.) But I like to think I'm pretty good at having an opinion on anything, too. Which is why I thought it would be fun to have a dressed-up blog in which I rant about whatever I have an opinion on that day.

So, I often ask myself, why is it sometimes so tough to come up with something to rant about?

Here's another story: This week, Athletic Reporter co-creator (ARCC) Joe Mulder is on his honeymoon. (Congrats, again!) Because he normally does all the writing for the Athletic Reporter (which is a sports news parody site, as if you didn't already know; chances are you came here from there anyway), we needed a plan for new content while he was away. The good news is that there are several funny, intelligent guys (myself among them) who are friends with Joe. Many of them follow sports rather closely (myself not among them). Joe doesn't do all the writing because he has to, he's just made it clear that he wants it that way. So, because of the special circumstances, he's opened the site up to a larger group and we're accepting submissions for this week and next week. As a result, my position at the 'Porter has risen from webmaster/graphic artist/moral support to editor/all that other stuff. (It just so happens that this occurred the same week that Aaron Gleeman of Aaron's Baseball Blog, a popular daily rant site, augmented our recent reciprocal link by making the Athletic Reporter his Link of the Day. Our site's traffic has increased ten-fold, nearly reaching 400 homepage views every day since. This is great, but it's a shame that Joe's not here to enjoy it. It's just about the best match for the 'missing baby's first steps' metaphor short of literally missing your actual baby's real first steps.) Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun as editor, because it means I'm going back and forth with lots of funny guys, and piecing the content of the site together rather than just waiting until Sunday for my graphic assignments and then reading the articles later if I have time. I stand in as the voice of the 'Porter when making judgment calls about content, etc., which is lots of fun. It's reminded me what a big part of the site I am, which is something I knew before but never fully realized. But, my point is this: I'm steeped in sports. More sports than I've seen since the Braves used to go to the World Series every year (the early years, when doing so didn't just seem like a big practical joke) or Georgia Tech's football team went undefeated. And it struck me why following sports would be so fun. Why SportsCenter would be such a great show to be obsessed with. It's damn easy to have an opinion about something in sports. Tons of stuff happens every day, and there are numbers and statistics and facts which you can use to support your opinions about them. It's no surprise that Gleeman can come up with a couple thousand eloquent, witty words every day.

But me, no. And the main reason why appears to be this: I don't always have that much to say about the thing I have an opinion about. Carolla probably couldn't fill a page with his feelings on swizzle sticks. He just has a few cute remarks, a bon mot or two, and then he's onto a new subject (working construction, most likely, or women's breasts). So, I end up knocking myself out trying to fill a page, and either turning in a not-quite-there column or scrapping it altogether because I can't sustain the rant long enough for it to feel "real."

So, today, I'm trying something new. Combining the ease of the ratings micro-rant with the substance of the usual full-length columns, and creating the following Ratings of Things I Have an Opinion About. (We'll see how it goes – here's hoping!)

The California Recall Election

Jesus Christ.

(I'd love to leave it at just that. "Jesus Christ. 0 stars out of 5." But, as ridiculous as it is, there's too much going on to leave out the disussion.)

I don't consider myself a permanent enough California resident to really follow the local politics. I voted in favor of gay marriage a few years ago, and I voted for Gray Davis last year, but beyond that I'm not very involved. In fact, I only voted for Davis for the same reason I'll be voting for him again in October: Republican = Bad. This whole recall thing is just a giant, preposterous side show, and it was that way even before Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gallagher, and 230-odd other candidates threw their hats into the ring. The concept of spending already-depleted state funds to re-do a perfectly valid election is just lunacy, and if I should sound like a hypocrite based on the fact that I called for a re-vote in West Palm Beach County in 2000, two things: a) yeah, I am. Wanna make something of it? b) those were people who were confused by their ballot, voted for Pat Buchanan when clearly none of them intended to, and the race was much, much closer anyway. Everybody in California voted for who they wanted to. A millionaire businessman and his right-wing millionaire friends just didn't like it and now they're causing a fuss. It's way too chaotic to predict anything, but people seem to think that they'll get what they want – that at the very least Davis will be recalled. How stupid.

What's even more frustrating is that he mis-managed his campaign against the recall so poorly at the start that he kind of gave them an opening. He should have stood firm from the beginning on the fact that the recall concept is hogwash and just let it go at that. Now, he's finally realizing that it's his best plan of attack, but it may be too late. Also, he runs the risk of being painted with the same brush as Hillary Clinton when she pointed out her "vast, right-wing conspiracy" theory back during her husband's second term. He's 100% right, of course. Just as they have with re-districting in Texas and the 2000 election and the impeachment proceedings before that, the Republican party has stepped in to derail the democratic process in another situation where it didn't get what it wanted. (The strategy continues to be deployed because it continues to be unchallenged by any viable action from the left.) It wants California now so that it can hogtie the electoral college in '04 and as ARCC Mulder deftly pointed out in his "Average Mulder" column recently, they put up Bill Simon as their guy last year, which was a big bonehead move because moderates couldn't identify with his religious conservative background. So, they lost and now they want another shot at it. Make no mistake: it has the potential to make the 2004 election even more challenging for the Democrats than it already is. (Read: The social, economic, environmental, and foreign policy armageddon that is the Bush Second Term would be even more certain.) Davis pointed this out recently, because he's gotten so desperate to beat this thing that he's pulled out all the stops. He came out in favor of gay marriage this week, despite the fact that a few years ago, over 60% of the state voted against it. Now, I know he's right on both counts. Gays should marry and there is a massive right-wing conspiracy. It reminds me of this exchange in Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion:

Aykroyd: You know, there's a word for people who think everyone is conspiring against them.

Allen: I know. "Perceptive."

But just because I know he's right, it doesn't mean anything. Davis has opened himself up for all kinds of attacks, which will be heard more clearly than his actual points. He has to hope that he can motivate sane people to get out to the polls in October, because he knows that the dirty-tricks Republicans will have all their people out, and apathy among those not fighting to overturn the last election is his biggest challenge. The "Oh, it can't possibly happen" factor. Folks who don't want the democratic system eviscerated will assume that nothing as wacky as a recall will ever pass, so they'll stay home. And the crazies who are frothing at the mouth because some expensive TV ads bought by rich Republicans told them to do so will be out in force, voting for Arnold or Gary Coleman or whoever. I'm so confused over the matter that I almost want to vote for Arianna Huffington, who I think is among few bright, political minds who are actually challenging the backslide into corporate pork-barrel favoritism of the Bush administration. But I know that's not how it works. I have to vote against the recall, for the same reason people shouldn't have voted for Nader. It's all well and good to support a worthy but unlikely cause, but you have to pick your battles. We all want the Green Party to get the percentages it needs in order to put Nader in the presidential debates, but in a year when the alternative is Satan W. Hitler, you have to throw your vote behind Gore and wait for a better opportunity to take on the two-party hegemony.

This ended up being long enough for a regular column. Oops. Anyway, I've got a thing going here, so I'm still putting a rating on it. We'll continue with more ratings tomorrow, hopefully returning to the "micro" part of the micro-rant concept.

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