High Fructose Corn Shit-faced Lies

Out of nowhere (to me at least), there's talk of a tax being levied on soft drinks to help pay for the health care bill. The NYT reported yesterday that the Obama administration is consider a bill to add a 50% tax to non-diet sodas, which has provoked outrage among... groups funded by the corn syrup lobby, it would appear. Americans Against Food Taxes is, per its mission statement on nofoodtaxes.com, "a coalition of concerned citizens opposed to the Government’s proposed tax hike on food and beverages, including soda, juice drinks, and flavored milks," which just happens to include the support of every major soda bottler in the U.S. Here's one of their ads:

Now, there's something to take immediate issue with here: that the tax "might not mean much" to "Washington," whoever that is. Actually, it would mean a whole hell of a lot, because Americans drink a lot of soda—the NYT article puts the figure at more than $14 billion per year. The flawed premise of "her" argument — that is, the argument of the soda companies — is that the cost of soda and other corn-syrup flavored beverages (despite the NYT's repeated use of the term "sugary," it's misleading) is at a fair price right now, all things considered. And, just like a large number of the foods we eat, it's not. From the number of man-hours it took to produce the corn that created the corn syrup (for which family farmers are paid piddling amounts, thanks to government intervention in the corn market) to the, ahem, back-end costs related to obesity, soda is already subsidized to a large degree. That is, it's really cheap to buy when it costs us a lot, and you can see the results of that money gap is taken out on the family farmer and, well, you, in your arteries. The proposed soda tax would merely take a step toward correcting this imbalance, and would, in effect, restore a free market balance to the equation by making the transaction better for everyone involved. The system, as it's set up now, screws some people in a decidedly un-American way so that you can pay 75 cents for soda. We can and do tax cigarettes and alcohol, so the argument that it's your God- or Consitution-given right to buy soda for below market value is false. Worse, it's plain ignorant.

Naturally, this scares the piss out of the soda bottlers, who have been launching a full-fledged defense of High Fructuse Corn Syrup since before the tax was even proposed. Here's a commercial I saw about a year ago:

Obviously this gal doesn't have the internet, where she could have read about the very real concerns over HFCS at length. But the kicker is the last line: it's fine in "moderation." Well, that's wonderful news, which puts it in the same class as everything except, oh, cyanide. How about not in moderation, which is how you would expect something priced below market price to be consumed in a free-market society? The American consumer is smart enough to find a bargain, and the corn lobby is smart enough to spend a portion of their ridiculous profits on retaining their market share. But it doesn't take a genius to know that if we're saving money and they're making money, someone is losing it. This tax wouldn't "punish" casual soda-consumers; it would help those that are already hurt by its consumption and production. To use the corn lobby's own words, those already enjoying soda in "moderation" would not be hurt by this tax—one suspects that if they were casual consumers, they could shift their purchases over to diet soda without being too affected. If they weren't enjoying soda in moderation, this would lead to healthier consumption patterns, like NYC's smoking ban did for smokers, and the tax dollars raised will go toward filling the dollar gap in the anti-free market production chain. I would argue that the net effect of a soda tax would merely counterbalance the effect that corn subsidies have wrought on the corn industry, and lead to government's having less control over what's bought and sold in the stores — as it stands now, consumers are directed to soda because it is unnaturally cheap.

It's not just soda, either, that has bottomed out in price because of corn excess. The same is true for meat and poultry. Cows are fed corn despite having stomachs that aren't naturally able to process it, and are put on a large dose of antibiotics to keep them from dying. The result is meat that contributes to heart diseaese for humans; but, of course, the meat is cheap because it's cheap to feed the cows. (Read more here). Of course, this meat would be safe in moderation, like the popsicle and soda above. Does this mean I think the price of meat should go up? Hell yes I do. I think the actual market price for meat is higher than we're paying, only the costs are hidden, and they're largely the same costs as soda production: the massacre of the family farm, health costs on the back end—plus, factory farms have the added bonus of below-minimum wage-paying, exceedingly dangerous jobs. Is someone paying that gap between the market price and what we're paying? You're damn right they are.

That's why I support the soda tax, completely independent of the $14 billion it would be estimated to earn for obesity awareness, prevention, and treatment. The things we do cost money, and we need to be aware of the actual consequences of our decisions. Right now, with HFCS-sweetened drinks, we're not. By levying a tax on things that are priced below market value, we'll make people realize what they're actually buying, and move toward making soda purchases work for everybody. Restoring market prices, and giving consumers a true view of the costs of the things they buy, isn't un-American—it's about as fundamentally American as it gets.

George W. Bush: Not Human

In exactly 56 days, George W. Bush will leave the office of President of the United States. Hot damn. It’s about time we had a human being back in office. You see, I am under the impression that George W. Bush is NOT a human being, as commonly understood.

The question of what makes us human has been debated, oh, for a good many years now, from Socrates to The Big Lebowski (“What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski? Is it doing the right thing, whatever the price?” “Sure, that and a pair of testicles.”) Of course, some buttoned-up scientist could barge into this column and point to 10 toes and 10 fingers and human parents and say: “Voila! There’s your human!,” but the real distinction here is what makes us human beings, instead of merely animals, and often this is attributed to our ability to have a wide range feelings like empathy, sorrow, pathos, etc.—the ability to see, if only fleetingly, life through another’s eyes, because only then can we appreciate and assess what we have in our own lives.

Or something like that. You could completely disagree, but you probably have some idea of what ideas and feelings you think are unique to the human experience. So here’s my question: at what point, ever, do you feel like George W. Bush has acted as if he is a vessel for these feelings?

The fact is that, to me, George W. Bush seems like someone whose investment in actual human beings is shockingly low, and thus his general outlook of and experience amongst other people is horribly warped. Perhaps the most mind-bending statistic from the 2004 election was the one where more people said they’d like to “have a beer” with GWB despite the fact that:

a) George W. Bush does not drink: and
b) What on earth would you talk about?

The question was loaded from the beginning, as it was an assault on Kerry’s supposed effeteness—which may in fact be real, but not so much as to forgive the question’s false premise. But the more than 50 percent of respondents who said “W” still have some explaining to do. What would you say to this man to provoke a real conversation? Not just small talk—as getting beers usually leads to the very opposite of small talk—but actual, meaningful conversation: how would you go about it? Do you think there’s a single question you could ask Bush in which he wouldn’t give an evasive, squirrelly answer?

Think about it: at what point has George W. Bush addressed the American people and said something that was, unambiguously, straight from the heart? You might find something in the aftermath of 9/11, but given what we know now about the strategy that was set in motion in the hours following the attacks with an eye toward Iraq—a strategy that almost no one denies, as even steadfast Iraq War proponents stress its long-term benefit—it’s hard not to see his announcements as threats to Saddam. Since then, there’s been nothing. Nothing. President-elect Obama may keep an even keel, but that’s an entirely different matter altogether. There’s a difference between balancing one’s emotions and not having them.

Perhaps Bush has just shut off his emotional barometer because reading it would be too much to handle in light of his epic failures. I don’t think so. Every time I see him meet with a sworn enemy—Obama, Paul Krugman—and flash the same empty smile he reserves for world leaders and the press, I think there’s a little less “there.” Bush is not a vessel for human qualities, but he’s a vessel for other people’s qualities. He has allowed himself, as a potent symbol, to be used to their ends. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rove are human beings, and angry ones. Rove realized long ago that his future in politics rested with someone who could deliver his Christian Conservative message without belying its soul-sucking message, and Bush was his guy. For the last eight years, Rove and others have been the puppet masters, pulling the strings on a willing supplicant who seems to have no regard for his fellow man. In 56 days, with no one to pull the strings any more, we probably won’t hear from Bush any more. He doesn’t care about us; I can’t imagine what he does care about.

This is our dually-elected President, America.

Perhaps our greatest achievement in electing Barack Obama is not electing a black man, which has been so long discussed, but electing a human being at all.

Is Mad Men the next Vladimir Guerrero?

(Here's something I wrote a couple weeks ago but completely forgot about. Naturally, it's Mad Men-related. I think most of the relevant facts are still true, but it should be noted this is straight-up conjecture from someone who knows little about the inner workings of TV.)

From the Things I Didn’t Know Department: while the television program Mad Men has been renewed for a third season, neither the show’s creator and driving force (Matthew Weiner) nor any of its stars (including Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm), are currently signed to return. This would seem to be a problem that is going to work itself out; as a San Francisco Chronicle article states, “If you have the best drama on television — the It Show — you pay to keep the creator. End of story.”

Now I love Mad Men and think it’s a great show, but having been a baseball fan in the modern era, I can see how it could easily float away to another network. That is to say: the television landscape isn’t all that different the baseball landscape, with respect to who can afford to spend what. There are the premium networks like HBO and Showtime, the major networks, there are mid-tiers like USA and FX, and specialty channels. AMC falls solidly into the third category, and they’re rather like the Montreal Expos used to be, or the Pittsburgh Pirates (or Minnesota Twins or Kansas City Royals) are now. They serve a niche audience and don’t have a lot of money to deal with. How do they try to get around it? By buying low. When Mad Men was created two years ago, there was no guarantee it would be a hit, and Hamm was a relative unknown. So everybody came relatively cheap, and signed through two years. Now AMC has the problem — a good problem to have — of knowing that they’re going to have to pony up some serious cash to save their flagship show or risk losing it and everything about it except the P.R. buzz it created for the network. Let’s face it, a lot more people know where AMC is on the dial now than they did back in 2005.

For AMC, that might be enough.

If AMC is far more well-known that the other channels in its class, it might be willing to cut its overhead now and ride its newfound reputation as long as it lasts. Given the extraordinary success of Mad Men, it seems quite unlikely that a show will fall past the six other networks that figure to be rewarded handsomely from it — HBO, Showtime, FX, etc. AMC got Mad Men because everyone else fucked up, and they’re not likely to fuck up that badly again. If AMC wants to move into another tier as a network, its brass could use Mad Men as a platform to do so, but that seems unlikely to me — it would probably require a sustained effort over a period of years and would be thrillingly expensive. That is to say, it seems a lot like if the Montreal Expos had, back in 2003, decided that, with their limited payroll, it was a better idea to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into player acquisition AND spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the superstar player Vladimir Guerrero — who was pretty much out the door once his low-paying rookie contract ended — and thus it seems pretty unlikely (Guerrero bolted to Los Angeles for a hefty, hefty sum). The cost structure of doing business in the sports and entertainment industries seem fairly similar: you can get unproven talent for cheaper than proven talent, but when you have to pay, you have to pay. AMC has to decide right now whether or not they’re going to pay. Knowing nothing else about it, it seems like a good idea for them to cut bait right now. If they really want to move the network into a new tier, the way to do, I think, it would be to improve steadily across the board, rather than depend on one “Superstar” show. If they don’t really want to improve, they needn’t worry about losing Mad Men. It certainly won’t have hurt the network’s reputation, or its bottom line.

The point is this: Mad Men will be on television somewhere next year. It won’t be a gutted version bearing merely the title of the show, and without its creator: it will be fully recognizable. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it waltzed away from AMC. High-profile shows rarely switch networks, but they rarely start out on fringe networks to begin with. This is a special case in almost every way, and one that might have a special resolution.

Howard vs. Pujols

It’s easy to like Ryan Howard. He’s got the homers and the RBIs, stands 6’4” and has a smile wider than Broad Street. He’s got a gravity about him. This year, he’s the signature face of the World Series champions, and for that, many people feel that he should be the National League’s most valuable player.

Unfortunately for them, even more people think Albert Pujols of the St. Louis Cardinals should be this year’s NL MVP. Pujols won rather handily, and Howard finished second, a direct reversal of the 2006 vote. Pujols led Howard in virtually every stat category except home runs, RBIs and team wins, but these categories—combined with a little intellectual elbow grease—are paramount to the MVP race in the eyes of some voters.

The cases for Howard and Pujols could hardly be more emblematic of the old school versus the new school of baseball thought. Both sides have compelling cases, because the Baseball Writers of America have made this award into an annual word game: What does it mean to be “valuable?” There are two schools of thought on this issue. The first is that the best player, as measured by individual statistics, is the most valuable. The second is the best player—as measured by individual and team statistics, performance in the “clutch” (usually September), and what we like to call in these parts general schtee—is the most valuable. It is surprising how often these are at odds, or maybe it’s not surprising at all: after all, you’d think the BBWAA’s main goal, if its members were acting in their own self-interest, would be to create better opportunities for themselves as writers. That is, the second definition allows writers to expound at length on each year’s definition of “value,” the subjectivity of which inspires passion amongst readers; you want impassioned readers, because they come back whether they love you or hate you.

Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post is an old-school writer who voted for Ryan Howard and is flabbergasted that Howard did not win the award. He wrote a column to this effect, stating, “Sometimes, you have to underline the obvious; for example, a first baseman with 146 RBI is ‘more valuable,’ especially when he plays on a first-place team, than a first baseman (Pujols) with 116 RBI on a fourth-place team.” Also: “It’s said that, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To a modern baseball writer, unfortunately, reality often looks like an excuse to apply statistics and then torque our opinions to fit them.”

I like how he admits he’s not a modern baseball writer, except he very much is, by his own defition: he’s “applying” statistics (Really, how do you apply statistics? They are measurements. You don’t apply measurements; they merely exist.), they just happen to be very old-fashioned ones that even Cy Young talked about in between mustache waxings. (Did Cy Young have a mustache? I don’t know.) But I could write for hours and not strike at the heart of the argument as well as the inimitable Joe Posnanski (Whom I have, actually, been imitating this entire paragraph):

The key line in Boz’s column seems to be this:

When stats WILDLY contradict common sense, always doubt the stats.

That sounds good. It really does. I read that sentence, once, twice, five times, and each time I read it I liked the rhythms of it, I liked the construction, I liked the use of all-capital letters in WILDLY. When stats WILDLY contradict common sense, always doubt the stats. Yes, this seems a solid premise.

Only, you know what? It isn’t. It is, when you think about it, a horrifying premise — I cannot believe that Tom Boswell, my hero, really believes that. Common sense says that the universe revolves around the earth. Common sense says that thunder clapping means God’s angry. Common sense says that when your car is sliding you want to turn your wheel away from the skid. Common sense says that a fast guy with no power who might or might not get on base is the perfect guy to put in the leadoff spot. Common sense that the queen of spades is the middle card. Common sense says that if you put Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg together, you will get an entertaining movie. Common sense says that the best way to hit a golf ball far is to swing harder. Common sense says a lot of incredibly stupid things and if you are going to automatically choose common sense over, you know stats and facts and results, well, that’s a good way to crash into trees and lose your shirt in a card game and get stuck with Omar Moreno.

You can imagine where it goes from there, but I’ll sum it up: for Posnanski and others, the definition of the most “valuable” player in a given year is the one you’d most like to have on your fantasy baseball team, or “fairytale” baseball team, as my brother (and apparently Adam Corrolla) call it. Something that can be measured by a stack of computer printouts, or via a few visits to baseball-reference.com.

Put it like that, and it seems less appealing. Would the award consistently go to the better individual player? Probably. But there’s that trick again: we’re measuring “value,” not “ability” or “performance.” Or, more accurately, the BBWAA is. For fun, I looked up “value” in an actual hardbound dictionary with a red cover and everything. Definition the first was “a fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged.” Egads! I don’t think we’re measuring return in relation to salary, but if we were, Dustin Pedroia would have definitely won the AL MVP (Oh wait… he did). Okay, let’s skip ahead to the most relevant definition to the present circumstances:

value: to rate or scale in usefulness, importance, or general worth

Now we’re getting closer to the second definition I outlined at the top of this article. “General worth” would get rejected by Wikipedia as a “Weasel Words” term as fast as the site’s unpaid sentinels descended upon it, but it’s the BBWAA’s major arguing point when it comes to disputes. It’s powerfully vague, but maybe not powerfully enough: Howard did lose, after all. I generally think it’s disingenuous for Boswell to claim the end of an era based on one year’s vote, regardless of the speciousness of his reasoning, but I tend to get annoyed with statisticians who think that the numbers are the be-all, end-all of the MVP discussion, or pretty much any discussion for that matter (see, for example, this).

Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus has a passionate, fairly wonderful-to-read vivisection of this year’s voting over at Baseball Prospectus; sadly, it’s subscription-only (you should buy the subscription). By sorting through the ballots, even though “his guys won,” he gets the sausage-factory effect of being disgusted with the final result, calling for an evolution toward better accounting practices of player performance. It’s a fairly airtight argument. The only problem I have with it—and I’m not sure it’s really a problem—is that it acknowledges that the award exists solely for the purpose of propping up the BBWAA, which is pretty arbitrary in who it does and does not allow into its ranks. The main criteria is being a quote-gathering, on-site reporter, which leads to all sorts of closed-mindedness and stupid individual votes, in Sheehan’s eyes, and the exclusion of otherwise intelligent baseball writers. Sheehan says he’s waiting for an “evolution” in MVP voting processes, but doesn’t sound confident that it’s happening very fast, given the latest results. He seems to be trying to tell himself to stay calm in the face of a storm he expected to be long gone by now.

While his arguments are convincing, I wonder if statistics-minded people such as Sheehan (and, to a certain degree, myself), can’t learn something from these individual ballots. What do they tell us? I’m not content to say that it tells us people are “aggressively ignorant,” as Sheehan is—I’m not really repulsed by the sausage factory of making an MVP. If the end product it tasty, so be it. If it’s less tasty, it’s still good—it’s baseball. I understand that I’m likely conditioned by the fact that the MVP voting has never been particularly scientific; I think it would be just as dangerous to start handing out the award to the top WARP-er (Wins Above Replacement Level) as it would be to continue giving it to the cognescenti’s choice.

I think the mythos of baseball is important, even in the face of evolution. We go to museums to see crazy animals like sea cows and dodos that were obliterated because of evolution, and we do it because they’re awesome. If someone can rank Prince Fielder above Albert Pujols on their MVP ballot, I’d like to hear why they did it. Baseball invites a million perspectives, and for all Sheehan’s salient points about how the BBWAA is selectively restrictive, there’s no telling what the effect of expanding the membership base would have, or whether the results would be that much different if the voters were 50 random baseball fans. For all the complaints about the process, it, like annual Hall of Fame discussions, is endlessly interesting, and not in the fleeting way like the MVPs of other major sports. People will argue Pujols vs. Howard for decades, and would have, no matter the result. There’s the wisdom of numbers and the wisdom of crowds. Let’s try to respect both sides. Hell may be other people, as No Exit suggests, but even those characters eventually threw up their hands and said, "Well, let's get on with it." This is a long-haul problem. Let's get on with it.

Mad Men's America, Part II

We left off with America's pitfalls of relying too much on history. This is part of the reason why I'm not as ecstatic about the Obama election as everyone else. I cried, and I took the day off, but it's only a step. There's a long way to go.

One thing that commentators all over the TV are saying is that Obama has a chance to "restore America's place in the world." I'm not sure what I think they're proposing is possible. The moral high ground America won in World War II may have been completely ceded by George Bush. I'm not saying it is that way, but it sure feels like it might be. America's new role in the world won't look anything like it's old place, at the very least, and that simple, sad fact is reminiscent of something Peggy says to Pete (spoiler alert about as loud as you can make it) in the signature scene of the final episode of season 2:



I feel like the world's acceptance of America will forever, from Bush on out, be assessed not on the greatness of the idea of America, but on our actions. This is the correct way to judge us, but I feel that Bush's power grab has exposed some serious flaws in our democratic system that are permanent. What is to stop future Presidents, even Obama (while it's quite unlikely), from using the very legal processes meant to ensure the rights of Americans as a delaying process in order to abuse citizens? What's to stop another President from exploiting a dangerous situation for the sake of starting a war because Foreign Leader X hated his daddy? Are we really counting on the threat of low approval ratings to correct this flaw? We've seen what David Addington, Dick Cheney and those who want to abuse the power of the Presidency can do when motivated. There's a part of me that looks back to the pre-Bush years, and wants to hope that under Obama et. al, that could never happen. But, like Peggy said, that part of me is just gone.

Or is it? Mad Men makes a convincing case that, as adults, we are subject to the same capricious thought processes as children, and act according. Don Draper constantly cheats on his wife, but, until he is found out, keeps a romantic view of his life alive by refusing to grow up. In the first season's signature scene, also in the season finale, he admits as much:



As a stand-alone statement, it's pretty powerful. But this clip and the clip of Peggy above aren't all that different; in fact, they're identical. Once a part of you is gone, it's gone. Children don't realize that yet, so they think in circles rather than a straight line. The Bush years have exhausted every last American resource, tangible and intangible, domestic and internationally, in support of its own agenda. In return, all we've ever gotten was an assurance that everything will be okay in the future. That's how Don talked to Betty, before her awakening this season that he was in no way a model father. No matter what their fate as a couple, the damage has been done. You can't put it back in the box. Like Mad Men as Don Draper's marriage hangs in the balance as America enters the turbulent sixties, the question is where our America goes next.

(For part I, click here.)

Mad Men's America, Part I

I've been watching exactly two kinds of television for the last few months: Mad Men and election-related coverage. There is some overlap here. The prospect of an Obama presidency represented a culmination of some of the social reforms that begin to boil in the 1960s—era show, where the elevators at the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency are operated by uniformed black people and women have just started to make their way from the secretary's desk to the agency's creative staff. Part of the show's appeal is the retro kitsch, the look back at a time that some would reflexively call "better" and show just how much different things are today, and why. The viewer watches the indulgence of the main characters as they have three-martini lunches and down oysters on the company tab and might feel a twinge of jealousy at all the hedonism, but there is, alas, no going back. There is a line to be drawn from those reforms to today, with Barack Obama as our President-elect, as the entire country continues to try and overcome the Sisyphean burden of slavery, one that no one who is alive today is responsible for creating, but, in our inability to even discuss racial issues with any sort of honestly or clarity, we are still grappling with.

Mad Men tackles the problem of memory head-on. Its main character, Don Draper, has a huge, shameful secret from his past, which he keeps at arm's length and seeks de facto therapy from by cavorting with women, drinking to excess, and keeping an astonishingly high outward self-regard. He rejects the premise that such a thing as "the past" exists, both internally and externally, as when he brainstorms for a new advertising campaign for American Airlines after one of its planes crashes near the now-Kennedy Airport. After a few lackluster campaigns that suggest to passengers that American is safer than ever, Draper walks into the middle of his office, stands on a chair, and implores his staff to look to the future for answers. "There is no such thing as American history," he says. "Only a frontier." The solution, he says, is to see what 1963 (the following year) looks like, not spend time dwelling on the past.

This is similar to advice he gives to Peggy Olson, his onetime secretary turned creative staff member, after she has an unwanted child with a co-worker. On an indefinite leave of absence, Draper finds her in the psych ward of a hospital, unable to speak and unwilling come to grips with what has happened to her. He tells her to pick herself up, come back to work and forget about the baby because "it never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened." There is no American history, only a frontier. Peggy follows his advice, returns to the office and continues her business as if nothing had happened, even under scrutiny. She keeps moving forward.

Some of the election-related coverage I've watched is not on MSNBC or CNN, but on HBO, which has been running the election-related movies Recount and Primary Colors fairly regularly for the last few months. Primary Colors is the story of a gifted young political aide in a Hollywood version of Bill Clinton's first campaign; while somewhat turned off at "Jack Stanton's" boorish behavior, he agrees to join the campaign full-time after a night-long conversation with Stanton's intelligent, patient and no-B.S. wife, who is played by Emma Thompson. During the conversation, the aide talks about how Stanton is so much different than all the other candidates, how he could be the rare candidate that's worthy of the office he seeks, noting some of the failed candidates in history. "We're all about history," Thompson's character says. "What else is there?"

What else, indeed? It turns out, however, that making history can be messy. Stanton's former affairs bubble to the surface, making his march to "history" that much more difficult. The gravitas of the campaign is undercut by the candidate's former dalliances outside of wedlock. And thus the campaign begins the actual day-to-day job of fighting the allegations and tacking back and forth to making "history" happen. It's the egg-breaking of the Presidential omelet, so to speak. There is no such thing as "history" in real time. It's about work. If you think Barack Obama's Presidential campaign proves otherwise, think again. For all the talk about the "historical" aspect of the campaign, the reason it will be something more than a footnote in history is the sheer amount of work it did. In an era where we have realized the power of correctly applying numbers to various disciplines, the Obama campaign focused on a single ratio — 1 in 12. Knock on 12 doors, and one of the people on whose door you knocked will vote for you. That's the math. It's the same type of math that baseball general managers apply to setting their lineups: have guys that get on base more often, you'll score more runs. Score more runs, you'll probably win. Don't pick the guy who looks like the traditional ballplayer; pick the ballplayer. Don't pick the guy who looks like the traditional President; pick the President.

See also: Mad Men's America, Part II

Dear Douglas MacKinnon: Don't Blame The Messenger

I have an answer for your NYT "Campaign Stops" article which calls for country to do a big 'ol political auditing of the media coverage of the 2008 election once the whole thing is finished. (God willing, this will be Wednesday.) You ask, in conclusion:

My point is, regardless of whether the news media are right or wrong about an Obama win, shouldn’t they still be concerned about that “shred of credibility they have left?” Shouldn’t they be concerned with numerous studies and the observations of various journalists that the business has tilted too far to the left?

Here is my answer: NO.

The ENTIRE media bias argument is a red herring, employed by embittered conservatives to push a false narrative on the American public. Now, I'm not the type of person to make blanket partisan statements, because I believe no party has a monopoly on, well, anything (That's why in another blog I recently wrote that John McCain would have made a good President in 2000). But the "media bias" argument lacks any sort of credibility whatsoever, even from "independent" sources like Politico.com, which found that 80 percent of its coverage has tilted toward Barack Obama during this campaign. Politico should not be ashamed of this. Consumers drive the media narrative, and if consumers want to read about Barack Obama, the news organizations that write about Barack Obama are going to stay in business, while the ones that don't will go under. It turns out, actually, that conservatives love the free-market argument right up until the point that they don't. It's similar to something I just read about baseball, where MLB lobbied Minnesota back in the 1980s to build the Metrodome for the Twins because of the intangible assets baseball would bring to the community; when MLB wanted to move the Twins in 2003, and argued that normal businesses would be allowed to leave if they compensated those aggrieved by their departure, a judge threw the "intangible assets" argument back in their face. It's the same thing here: the mechanism for any "media bias" that actually exists is a fundamental part of the Republican platform.

But even disregarding the free market argument, the "media bias" argument is complete poppycock. I'm not sure I've ever used that word before, but there it is. MacKinnon talks about the media's "fascination" with Obama, but it's not the "media" that is fascinated with Obama; it is the American people. (Mr. MacKinnon will find this out tomorrow.) He writes that 80% of journalists are likely to vote for Obama and says that journalists, their editors, their management and the American people should care about this fact. Here's my question: why? Why should they care? The myth of the non-partisan journalist is along the same lines as the myth of the Vegas Sportsbook: that they want to be even on both sides, and collect the fruits that result from hanging out in the middle. The Sportsbook example is demonstrably false; they're not aiming to be "fair" in some nonsensical way; they're aiming to be right. If 90 percent of the bets come in on one side of an initial line and they think they're going to lose money if the bets keep coming in thusly, they move the line. If, however, they think they are going to win money on that proposition, they do not move the line. They are gamblers just like the gamblers, the same way journalists are human just like the voters. Journalists don't endeavor to systematically break down one candidate without either finding themselves out of a job or moving to a nakedly ideological outlet. (Think, like, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone.) But to imagine that journalists should be devoid of political opinions themselves is not only an anachronism, it never happened in the first place. Here's a story.

About four years ago, I applied for a job at a newspaper in Prescott, Arizona, which is about two hours north of Phoenix and is an old west town gone boom with California transplants. It's growing at a phenomenal rate. I had a one-hour-long writing and editing test followed by two hours of interviews, during which I was interviewed by the Editor in Chief of the paper. We got to talking politics, and I think I avoided disclosing my political affiliation, but I was a Massachusetts boy living in New York City — I don't think there was much of a secret. The question was, what is the role of partisanship in coverage, and my answer was to call them as I see them. The editor was fine with that, and said that he had never registered with any political party nor any group that was directly associated with them, which is to say, the NRA. Which, he said, he admired enough to join the completely non-partisan "Friends of the NRA." Which meant he actually had political opinions — he just didn't want to be tied to them, should, I guess, the shit go down.

From what I can gather, MacKinnon sees Obama's likely victory as the shit going down. It is not, in any way, shape or form. The freedom of the press ensures that, unless regulated, the media has the right to publish pretty much any slate of news it seems fit. Should that news be "slanted" in one direction, it will always be the media doing what's best for the media — the same way the New York Times, the GOP's bugaboo, published MacKinnon's essay itself, and features a weekly column from William Kristol, who's about as ideologically far from Barack Obama as you can get. The myth of the down-the-middle media can be divined from my would-be editor (I didn't take the job); "the media" does not exist per se; it's a bunch of people writing stories, and people have opinions, even if they try to keep them at arm's length. What's more,tThey always have had opinions. To ask the 80% of journalists to be ashamed of their votes is not only disingenuous, it's dangerous for the freedom of the press. Does MacKinnon think we should capital-R Regulate our news outlets? And if not, what's the solution? Policing from the inside? Policing what? Do you want newspapers to have an "affirmative action" program to hire Republican-leaning journalists? Do you want them to end virtual "affirmative action" programs to hire minorities, which would almost certainly lead to a cessation of coverage of certain communities? Is that okay, because you feel that John McCain has not been covered properly? I would suggest that you would say yes, and then the argument would be that newspapers should do what's in your self-interest, and not theirs, and now we're just arguing apples and oranges, but you really want oranges. Well, that's great and all, but we're still choosing between them, thanks. You can blame "the media" for Obama's win, for coverage of disparate communities, or whatever you want, but the fact is that more people have more access to different news sources now than ever before, and if you can't control the narrative, it's your fault, not that of the collected journalists. Writers act in their own self-interest, like anyone else: editors, publishers, anyone. So if you're not making a compelling enough argument to anyone, what does it matter who they're voting for, when as my old would-be editor shows, they can divorce it from their jobs should they choose to? Why not look inward, instead of looking outward? The "media bias" argument is a junk food argument: you'll never go hungry, but that doesn't mean it's good for you. Alas, you can eat junk food forever until your body can't take it any more and your heart explodes. The fact that the media has been so "pro-Obama" isn't a referendum on the media — it means your party has suffered a collective heart attack. It's a referendum on you. From a political or journalistic standpoint, you've earned it. Don't blame the messenger.