Month: March 2012

To any observer of the NFL, it should be obvious what’s on the way: Fines. Suspensions.  Probably lost draft picks, possibly other things cooked up by the league.  In a truly ironic twist, the New Orleans Saints are about to die for the sins of the NFL – or if not die, suffer mightily, at least.

Because this isn’t new.  Apparently Gregg Williams and his bounty system have been all around the league, from the Titans to the Bills to the Redskins before arriving in New Orleans.  The only difference now is apparently somebody snitched.  But it would be a fool who assumed that this was limited to teams where Crazy Blitz Man was defensive coordinator or head coach – the Eagles famously ran afoul of the “bounty” rules in the late 80s and early 90s under Buddy Ryan, and the idea that a player would be incentivized to disable an opponent…well, let’s be honest: that’s called defense, and it gets incentivized every time ESPN shows another highlight clip on the “Jacked Up” segment or a particularly hard sack is on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

They’re not playing two-hand touch out there. That used to be the defense; now it’s the indictment. The NFL has always gloried in its image as modern gladiatorial bloodsport, the finest of real men battling for victory, while murmuring that we should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, or his MRI results, or his early death or mental illness or inability to walk.  Everyone knows what this game has become; the Saints defense was just paying accordingly.  But now, because the most important thing about the NFL is that everyone knows what a big swinging dick Roger Goddell is, the Saints are going to take it in the ass.  Because if they don’t, people might start to ask what kind of league this is, and why the interest in player health and safety is limited to making sure no under-the-table money contributes to the future lack of either.

Vanderbilt’s own Chris Marve, linebacker par excellence, is no dummy – he announced today that he’s passing on the NFL and heading for law school.  Of all his moves, this one is probably the best.  Meanwhile, it’s time to start asking how long this can go on in a world where parents are becoming ever more reluctant to let their kids play the sport, and whether the NFL’s move toward glorified Nintendo football eventually winds up with a sport that exists as one big 7-on-7 passing drill.

ETA: crap, Deadspin got there first.

 

The telling thing isn’t that AOL is suspending its advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show.  The telling thing is that AOL was an advertiser.

El Rushbo has managed a pretty sweet gig these last twenty years or so – he gets to be the id of the Republican party, without ever having to face a ballot box.  He is the exemplar of what the GOP stands for in the modern era: talk-radio bluster, safely insulated from little things like consequences.  Until he, like his Presidential candidates, inexplicably decided that 2012 was the year to nail the colors to the mast on the issue of birth control.

(Quick step back: Griswold v Connecticut is the dispositive Supreme Court decision here – in 1965, the Supreme Court threw out the Nutmeg State’s anti-contraception law by a 7-2 vote, finding that the right to privacy trumped any state interest in regulating contraception.  The reason the GOP is fighting to re-litigate Griswold is because the vast majority of modern law around privacy derives from findings in Griswold, and if you somehow kick the tentpole out from under Griswold you suddenly disrupt Roe in every way that matters.  Griswold is perhaps the only finding not concerned with black civil rights that occupies pride of place in the right wing’s hierarchy of “judicial activism”.)

In any event, Rush said some terribly uncouth things, because, well, that’s what he does.  And the hue and cry was palpable, more than it’s been in a long long time, and advertisers started jumping ship.  And so, at the very end of the Friday show, a mealy-mouthed sorta-apology was shat out, and…advertisers kept jumping ship. Right up to this morning when AOL announced it was suspending advertising on the show.

Nobody uses AOL.  This is a patently false statement, reeking of techno-elitism and Silicon Valley insider thought, but I’m going to repeat myself: nobody uses AOL. The only folks using AOL are people who haven’t needed to make any meaningful change in their online presence in, say, 10 years or so.  And in 2012, that overwhelmingly means…the Old Ones.

Jon Chait nailed this a couple weeks back: this really is last call. The GOP base is getting whiter, older – and shrinking.  This may be their last chance to capture the triple-play: Supreme Court, Congress and the White House, and even if it means holding their nose and voting for Romney, they will turn out in force. Because even Romney will serve as an agreeable rubber-stamp for the motive force of the Congressional GOP, which is what George W. Bush was intended to be until Osama bin Laden stopped the 21st Century dead in its tracks.  But if the Democrats hold on and Obama holds on, the odds are slim that the GOP will ever get a chance to pull the wheel hard to the right again.  The last chance to forestall gay marriage, to derail the health-care plan, to build the fence around the United States, to let Israel have sway over Middle East policy and cut taxes and preserve the vision of Nixonland – if the GOP doesn’t get its shot in now, the numbers are against them going forward, and the 50-year project of Kevin Phillips and the Emerging Republican Majority is cooked.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

So the Old Ones are calling the tune, and the GOP is dancing ever faster – and then, the country looks up, and all of a sudden we’re arguing about birth control pills.  And the Old Ones are against it, because they’re against sex in general and certainly against anything that grants agency to women beyond a future as a housewife, and the parts of the country not looking to live in 1952 say “wait, WHAT?”  And then George Will nails it to the wall on Sunday: “these guys want to bomb Iran but they won’t stand up to Rush Limbaugh?”

But that’s what happens when the intellectual engine of your movement is a drug-addled lard-ass bigot with a megaphone: eventually you lose the ability to cope with anything more difficult than a sport-talk zinger.  And then the rest of the world decides to move on.  AOL knows where its customers are…and they’re punting.  Because not even a fellow relic of the 1990s wants to get Rush all over it.

And speaking of the 1990s…but more on that later.

 

(Special thanks to Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer and Ronnie Vannucci Jr, who probably didn’t realize they were saving me the trouble of writing my own autobiography.)

 

It started with a low light
Next thing I knew they ripped me from my bed
And then they took my blood type
They left a strange impression in my head

You know that I was hoping
That I could leave this star-crossed world behind
But when they cut me open
I guess I changed my mind

And you know I might have just flown
Too far from the floor this time
‘Cause they’re calling me by my name

And they’re zipping white light beams
Disregarding bombs and satellites
And that was the turning point
That was one lonely night

Well, now I’m back at home and
I’m looking forward to this life I live
You know it’s gonna haunt me
So hesitation to this life I give

You think you might cross over
You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
You better look it over
Before you make that leap

And you know I’m fine
But I hear those voices at night
Sometimes they justify my claim

And the public don’t dwell on my transmission
‘Cause it wasn’t televised
But it was the turning point
Oh, what a lonely night

My global position systems are vocally addressed
They say the Nile used to run from east to west
They say the Nile used to run from east to west

I’m fine
But I hear those voices at night sometimes

The star maker says it ain’t so bad
The dream maker’s gonna make you mad
The spaceman says, “Everybody look down
It’s all in your mind”