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Author Jeannette Belliveau:

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An Amateur's Guide to the Planet

Romance on the Road
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Now reading:
Ace of Spades Ace of Spades
by David Matthews
Harrowing but compelling look at growing up mixed race in Baltimore.
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Now watching:
The Office: Season 3The Office - Season Three
Subtle brilliance from the leads and the minor characters -- Angela, Phyllis, Kevin, Oscar, Toby and Ryan -- only increase the hilarity exponentially. .........................
Now listening to:
Complete Studio Recordings Complete Studio Recordings
Led Zeppelin
Incredibly, Zep now have an entire station to themselves (Channel 59) at XM Radio.

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March 22, 2004

Maryland's season

Back on Jan. 3, I watched the Terrapins play in Comcast Center against little Mount St. Mary's zone defense. There might was well have been an acrylic shield walling off everything within the three-point arc. Whereas the Terps of yore would have piled up a 50-point victory, these "baby Terps" showed no ability to penetrate, even against a minor, non-ACC foe. They won by 33, but even so, they struggled to find half-court points.

Did Syracuse's coach Jim Boeheim see this weakness on video? No doubt, for it remained a problem throughout the season against more widely watched contests. On Saturday vs. Syracuse, this technical deficiency, along with blown foul shots, finally did Maryland in.

Players were further hampered by erratic foul calls, especially the outrageous one called against John Gilchrist when he was pinned by the neck by a huge Syracuse player. Jamar Smith wore a look of disgust after the whistles for just touching his opponents' shirt.

Gary Williams got a wee bit outcoached by his off-season golf buddy. Maryland's coach needed to have players drive the lane, not pass into it (which lead to whole series of interceptions). Williams did have the Terps deny Syracuse guard Gerry McNamara, but that left a lot of slack for Hakim Warrick to exploit. Coaches need to see three steps ahead of a rival, not one.

Nonetheless, the Terrapins played with colossal heart and nearly came back to tie the game. The contrast between the never-say-die Maryland players and North Carolina, which in its game later on Saturday seemed to punk out on coach Roy Williams despite his begging for some effort on defense, was obvious.

Every player on Maryland needs to spend the spring and the summer working on his perimeter and mid-range shots. And Gary Williams needs to scout the junior colleges to find someone who can either run with Gilchrist into the lane or provide some Lonnie Baxter-style heft under the basket.

Meanwhile, Ekene Ibekwe showed flashes of future talent. Nik Caner-Medley, however, has got to find the toughest summer league going if he is going to survive the ACC. Still, next year's team should be something to watch. As the Washington Post quotes Gary Williams:

"We have a history of working in the offseason in this program," Williams said. "That's when our best teams have really gotten better."

Next season will be different, for the Terps will be more of a known commodity. The expectations will be right back where they have been for the last 10 years, to win games in the ACC and easily earn a berth the NCAA tournament.





Excruciating boredom ...

... has been the problem with the endings of many of the NCAA tournament games as they became a foul fest. Two seconds of play, a foul or a time out, and a return to the same Burger King, Microsoft, Cialis or pickup truck ad. (The only funny commercial shows a guy in a pickup truck singing Shania Twain's "I Feel Like a Woman" as his friends edge away from him. Maybe he needs some Cialis?) Norman Chad relates:

No game changes its nature more than college basketball in its final stages. For the first 38 minutes, college basketball flies by like the Indy 500; in the last two minutes, it becomes a bumper-car concession. So first we get athletic, graceful, fluid motion up and down the court, then down the stretch we get stoppages piled on top of stoppages.

(It's a jolting, out-of-character transformation -- imagine going to an Andre Previn concert in which he plays selections from Brahms, Chopin and Tchaikovsky for a couple of hours, then wraps things up with the Notre Dame fight song and Chop Sticks.)

Say what you will about soccer, but you don't see AC Milan going to the foul line every 20 seconds in the final minutes of a 1-0 match against FC Barcelona.





March seeding madness

Well, after this weekend my bracket showing Maryland beating Gonzaga in the final got slammed into the recycling bin! (What a homer, I know!) What is also noticeable is the lack of blow-out games, even among a lot of the No. 2 vs. No. 15 teams. See Michael Wilbon:

While the elite programs lose their best players early and also miss out on the very top high school kids, UAB has five seniors. Nevada's experienced players (juniors Kevinn Pinkney and Kirk Snyder plus senior Todd Okeson) are simply better than Michigan State's players and it showed Thursday. Only the No. 1 seeds have a decided advantage anymore, and only for one game.

"Twenty years ago, this never happened," [Syracuse coach Jim] Boeheim said. "If you were an [elite] program, you'd win your first-round game by 20 points, your second by 15, and you'd maybe have a tough game [in the round of 16]. That's not the case now."

Still, those elite programs expect to win. And we expect them to win even though their players aren't much better than those of schools that don't have pedigree. The losses, even the close games, are a reflection of how little separation there is between the top 10 teams and those between 30 and 50.





Bill Walton, pundit

Last night, in a game vs. the Sacramento Kings, Steve Francis reamed out an official after a no-call that left the Houston Rocket playmaker gasping on the floor, having taken an elbow to the groin. ESPN analyst Bill Walton indicated that profanity was part of Francis's outburst and that he will be fined or suspended.

Then Walton put in a bizarre plug for us to read the latest Frank Rich column in the New York Times.

I have no doubt that 99 percent of the viewers had no idea what Walton was talking about. I barely know anything more than that Frank Rich is a darling of my one liberal friend who reads him and that Rich receives a fair share of criticism on conservative Web sites. Imagine then a Venn diagram (those intersecting circles from math, or logic class) showing the universe of NBA TV viewers and those who also read Frank Rich. Maybe a handful of Knicks fans are in both camps?

So thanks to Walton, just now I read Frank Rich for the first time. He ties in Sept. 11, Janet Jackson's breast-baring and Bono's dropping of the adjectival form of the F-bomb. Rich provides usual tired liberal hyperbole and de rigueur Taliban analogy: "Washington's latest crew of Puritan enforcers — in the administration, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission — are all pandering to a censorious Republican political base that is the closest thing America has to its own Taliban."

Apparently Walton meant to indicate that creeping Puritanism would ensnare Steve Francis as well? Who knows?

If you Google on "Bill Walton" and "Frank Rich," you will come up with four instances of Walton praising Rich in his columns for Espn.com and NBA.com.

We all know Walton's a crunchy granola type, but he might be better off keeping his endorsements of a partisan columnist to Walton's own opinion columns rather than his broadcast persona.





March 17, 2004

Currying favor with foreigners

John Kerry seems to think it is a good thing to assert that foreign leaders want him to replace President Bush.

Which foreign leaders, Colin Powell asks (without receiving an answer). Wait, let us guess -- the Euroweenies! As led by France and Germany.

Well, Kerry's not saying, probably because this is either an Al Gore moment of sheer imagination on his part (in other words, it never happened), or the answer might be, the French and Germans.

This country learned from the time of its revolution to turn its back on Western European decadence and anti-democratic tendencies so as to make its own way. It is quite puerile for Kerry to curry favor with people now, as before, whose elites are openly at war with American values and simultaneously deeply envious of our strengths. Meanwhile, more ambitious rank-and-file Europeans, disgusted with their nanny states, are desperate like people the world over to live and work here. A million people a year (!) vote with their feet to emigrate to the United States.

Let me share one conclusion I drew from living in Europe for more than three years and traveling there over the course of 20 years: Nothing America does will ever, ever please them.

I've had French strangers excoriate me for Carter's failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. Brits furious that Reagan was siting cruise missiles at Greenham Common. Greeks upset about something with NATO. You could have Europe go right ahead and just elect the U.S. president, and the crescendo would continue unabated, because the criticism is kneejerk, cuts across party lines, and is immune to logic or reality.

My three years in Britain, I worked as a journalist, mainly with anti-Americans from the U.K. and other Commonwealth nations. We had some spirited debates. What struck me was while the educated elites had it in for the United States, the receptionists at the front of the office would ask how to get their kids a visa -- what could be a clearer testament to which is the land of opportunity?

Let John Kerry go run for president of Europe. Let Americans decide for themselves who has their best interests at heart.





Travel writer as ambassador? Not.

You've heard of the Ugly American? Welcome to the latest incarnation of ourselves abroad: The Anti-American American.

John Kerry's absurd belief that it's good to win the approval of anti-American elites reminds me of a topic I've been meaning to address for some time now, that of the leftish American traveler disparaging her homeland to foreigners -- people who have highly positive impressions of our nation!

There's an irritating example in a Bay Area travel writer's book, BurningSomebody's Heart Is Burning. Tanya Shaffer travels in Africa, doing her best to tear down the country that gave her the historically unprecedented freedom and wherewithal to be a woman journeying halfway around the globe:

Traveling in Africa brought my Americanness acutely into focus. Everyone I met had such strong ideas about the U.S. that I found myself adjusting my descriptions to counter each individual's perceptions. Since most Ghanaians imagined a promised land, I was quick to paint for them a troubled nation, rife with injustice [emphasis added]. For the Europeans who believed all Americans were fervid imperailists, gung ho to impose our brand of corporate capitalism on the world, I hastened to explain that the American people aren't the government -- that there is, in fact, a vibrant counterculture within the U.S that rejects our role as a global bully. [emphasis added] (pp. 182-83)

This is the voice of a politically correct, incredibly privileged American who deigns to right the misperceptions of Ghanaians who dared voice the mistake of thinking the United States sounds pretty darn good. Oh, please. This drips with the condescension of the "right-thinking" postmodernist for whom everything Western is bad, who can't wait to share the news with those backwards West Africans who retain the common sense to correct assess, for themselves, the opportunities for themselves and their families in the West vs. the Third World.

Isn't a tad arrogant to lecture people perfectly capable of coming to their own conclusions? Being an Anti-American American requires swallowing whole a vision of matters wholly confined to U.S. campuses, Sweden, Greece, Britain, and certain elites in Continental Europe and fringe Canada. Anyone who is open to a wide swath of information -- including Ghanaians with cousins who drive taxis in Chicago -- has a far more balanced and positive view of the United States than those living in the Echo Chamber of Envy.

The "global bully" remark also begs for an explanation. Let's see, who have we bullied ... the Taliban? Saddam Hussein? Kosovars?

Most people around the world are quite proud of the land that nurtured them. Whatever they can justiably brag about, from historic high points to the local soccer team, will be happily proclaimed. National or at least ethnic pride is close to a universal trait, in my experience.

The left-wing Westerner, and especially the anti-American American, must be a pitiable, confused creature to anyone from anywhere from Bolivia to Thailand. She has so much to be grateful for, they must think. I just don't understand. That is the land that raised her. Is she confused, or ungrateful?

I give a talk called "Becoming the Beautiful American" loaded with examples of hip, culturally sensitive Americans who far outshine European travelers in empathy and good behavior abroad. I also discuss the Beautiful American (p. 237) in my chapter on Brazil in An Amateur's Guide to the Planet.

At the same time, I stress that Americans should be proud to say who they are overseas. Leftists who put the Canadian flag on their backpacks thinking to fool foreign critics are as lame as it gets. Be who you are. All you do is confuse the heck out of foreigners dying to move here by hiding your nationality, or heaping criticism.

By all means, give a balanced view of your homeland. Hollywood depicts us as a nation of the outrageously rich (Dallas and Dynasty had huge worldwide impact) and also as a place of mean streets ridden with criminals.

Everywhere I've traveled, people have been obsessively curious about what is not on display in Hollywood's products, that is, routine suburban life: our grocery stores, houses, cars and jobs. Conversing with foreign people about daily routine, and honoring the U.S. genuine founding vision as a place of opportunity, are the hallmarks of the Beautiful American.





Thank you, Spain ...

... for rolling over and playing dead after your train attacks. Now you too have a "Black Hawk Down," a public demonstration that you lack the will of your terrorist enemy.

Islamic terrorists must be feeling pretty happy about now. Every attack they mount succeeds beyond their wildest dreams. Osama wanted hijacked airplanes to crash into the World Trade Center; he is shown in a videotape giddy that the towers, to his surprise, fully collapsed, and fairly quickly. The train bombing in Madrid easily toppled Spain's ruling party and will likely lead to withdrawal of its troops in Iraq.

Mainly, however, you have just radically increased the U.S. risk of a major terrorist attack before our November election and at no real net gain in your own security (see this column by Mark Steyn). George Will believes, however, that such an event would be less likely to have its intended effect of ousting President Bush.

Europe is constitutionally incapable of learning anything, is it. Let's appease Hitler, let's appease the terrorists in our midst, and the problem will just go away. If you blow up a bunch of our innocents, well, we must have had it coming for daring to displease a terror master.

Here's a gem from a Washington Post editorial: "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists," European Commission President Romano Prodi said yesterday.

As David Frum writes:

People are not always strong. Sometimes they indulge false hopes that by lying low, truckling, appeasing, they can avoid danger and strife. Sometimes they convince themselves that if only they give the Cyclops what he wants, they will be eaten last. And this is what seems to have happened in Spain.




March 15, 2004

Terps Unbelievable

My very first blog described five problems with the Maryland Terrapins. This team did not seem headed anywhere, except into the same wilderness the once-great Redskins occupied.

Looks like all five problems have been addressed, after the Terrapins stunning negotiation of road to beating the Nos. 3, 2 and 1 seeds in the ACC tournament!

Has any other college basketball team made such an advance through its conference tournament? You can't have a harder road than that.

The team made its foul shots, scored in the paint, played the fast-break correctly, defended the opponents' three much better, and showed a will to improve commensurate with what Maryland needs to be considered a great program.

And Gary Williams clearly made the half-time speech of his career Saturday during their match vs. NC State. The team, down 19, returned with a clear mandate: help John Gilchrist score his way past their opponent.

Everyone first noticed Gilchrist last year as Steve Blake's substitute. He brought frantic, Energizer Bunny energy to the court but didn't always make decisions as well as did Steve.

Well, Gilchrist grew up over the past week. He slams the ball so hard on the dribble the TV nearly shakes, and after he passes the ball, takes an almost comical hop. Now he's channeling that strength and energy into his jump shot, which has become a reliable weapon. He's up in the air, flying, before the defender knows it.

The most surprising wins to me in the tournament were on Friday and Sunday. Friday's opponent, Wake, had beaten Maryland twice this season. So after Maryland upset Wake, it had some momentum against N.C. State on Saturday, whom the Terrapins had split 1-1 with.

On Sunday, Duke had Shelden Williams in the center; how could the Terps' erratic interior expect to compete? Well, victory was sweet, and one gets so sick of Duke's arrogance, Chris Duhon beating his chest ... on the way to defeat! Kudos to Mike Grinnon and Mike Jones, contributing key points in overtime as one player after the other fouled out.





Fuke Duck, or Duck Fuke

Any Duke-haters out there can have a good bit of fun over at the occasionally hilarious Fark.com site, run by Drew Curtis, a Kentucky fan who hates Duke, and thus, running a very Maryland-friendly site. The site got its 15 minutes of fame when it was all over the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, literally within minutes, way ahead of the media curve.

Yesterday's threads included one here. Sample quote:

my beef against duke is that EVERY year they get ALL the best recruits; being a private school they have all kinds of ca$h to spend on recruting and such; so it's no wonder that they usually put a great team on the floor.

that and i got my BS at maryland.

god i hate those stuck-up duke bastidges.

and:

It used to be that some Duke dorks would show up in these threads and try to throw up some resistance...it was funny watching them get their asses handed to them.

On another thread, the little Duke kid crying made the days of many a sentimental fan, including Jeepgirl: "the little kid was very amusing i choked on my drink." TwistedTenacity asked innocently, "I'm confused as to what Fark.com's stance on Duke is. Could someone be so kind as to enlighten me?" Richbob replied, "Sure. Duke sucks. You're welcome."





Terps No. 4 seed in NCAAs

Beating Duke for the ACC tournament win needs to be savored for a few hours, days, weeks or months yet, but for anyone who wants to look ahead at the NCAA tournament, see John Feinstein here. He sees Maryland as capable of beating Syracuse and meeting Stanford. Michael Wilbon, however, sees the Terps as still missing too many free throws to compete effectively, but regardless, "Maryland goes into the tournament one of the very pleasant surprise stories."





John Kerry, fog machine

Wryly amusing column by David Brooks on the presumptive Democratic nominee:

The 1990's were a confusing decade. The certainties of the cold war were gone and new threats appeared. It fell to one man, John Kerry, the Human Nebula, to bring fog out of the darkness, opacity out of the confusion, bewilderment out of the void.

Kerry established himself early as the senator most likely to pierce through the superficial clarity and embrace the miasma. The gulf war had just ended. It was time to look back for lessons learned. "There are those trying to say somehow that Democrats should be admitting they were wrong" in opposing the gulf war resolution, Kerry noted in one Senate floor speech. But he added, "There is not a right or wrong here. There was a correctness in the president's judgment about timing. But that does not mean there was an incorrectness in the judgment other people made about timing."

A prediction: Kerry's lack of both achievement and popularity in the U.S. Senate make him a national version of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland's failed nominee for governor that Democrats simply could not get excited about. We'll see if enough Pavlovian anti-Bush fervor will truly transfer to the fog machine.





Gay marriage

See article at OpinionJournal.com on "Save Marriage? It's Too Late: The Pill made same-sex nuptials inevitable:"

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated.

In my opinion, the Pill is only half the equation: The other is assisted fertility, which allows everyone with money, from Michael Jackson to lesbian couples, to become a parent, without the slightest commitment to being in a genuine relationship with a member of the opposite sex.





March 13, 2004

Ehrlich vs. O'Malley

Dan Rodricks captures the cultural subtext surrounding those elk pawing the ground, namely, the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland, in his column here.

Now let's look at the substance of their debate, which is over Baltimore's insolvent school system, discussed earlier in this blog.

As with any system, teacher salaries are the bulk of the operating costs and the first place to look for savings. Rodricks however places teacher union contracts as sacrosant and scolds Ehrlich for daring to look at the most obvious area of savings.

This places Rodricks as committing the classic liberal error of linking school spending with quality of education. As someone who spent grades 1-8 in a Catholic school, and 9th grade in public school, I can attest first hand how much better the education can be in a school with far lower spending.

Liberal thinking also routinely places the welfare of teachers above the welfare of pupils. Unfortunately, teacher welfare can be antithetical to student welfare. Just look at the "liberal" and teacher union screams against vouchers to private and parochial schools.

From what I can see of the public school students in my neighborhood, every administrator, principal and teacher needs to hand back at least half of his or her salary immediately. Whatever is going on in Baltimore classrooms, it's not working.





The errant police chief's striking wife

What a stunning fall for former Baltimore police chief Ed Norris, who pled guilty to corruption and tax fraud in his misuse of a slush fund, in part to entertain multiple girlfriends. Now he may lose his pension.

And what a rotten set of circumstances for his wife.

Kathryn Norris is tall, blond, striking, intelligent and talented artist, whose large-scale abstract paintings used to hang in her husband's Baltimore office. That tidbit according to the chief himself. I met Ed, Kathryn, and their little blond, curly-haired son at an art gallery down the street from my home about a year ago.

I know I am not the only woman mystified by his apparent running around.

In December, the local noon news was on TV at a physical therapy exercise room I went to for treatment of my broken wrist.

Local TV news reported the charges against Norris. It turned out that I was not the only one of several women in the room who had met or seen the high-profile couple around town.

Speculation ran rife among us just how furious Kathryn Norris might be. Mike Olesker notes he didn't have the class to even spend his own money on his flings.





Weight watching

Can you guess how many Hershey's Kisses are in "one serving" according to the nutritional information on the package?

ONE!

What a crock.

I am trying to lose weight before soccer season starts and it took a lot of willpower to hold myself to "four" "servings" yesterday when Lamont left me a small packet of Hershey Kisses. Usually "20" servings would feel about right.

Now it looks like the FDA will crack down on this nonsense. See this useful article in the Washington Post (it also tells you how to calculate your body mass index, which I never knew before):

The agency also sent letters to food manufacturers warning that it planned to be more aggressive about policing how labels count the number of servings in a package. Some labels are inaccurate or mislead people into overeating by dividing packages into unrealistically small serving sizes, officials said.

There is a suggestion in the article that restaurants begin to provide nutritional information, which I would love to have, even though on the other hand, this sounds bureaucratic and anti-"The Joy of Eating." I guess if we weren't a nation of fatties this wouldn't be necessary.

Your thoughts?





Terps prevail!

How about those Terps?! They defeated Wake Forest in a seesaw battle last night, and showed that they can win when they make those foul shots. Gary Williams certainly did a masterful job having them play their best game of the season just in time to take out the No. 2 seed at this marvelous, marvelous tournament for the Atlantic Coast Conference, or as Michael Wilbon aptly calls it, the "Atlantic Most Conference."

Hasn't it been fun in past years' postseasons to see ACC teams, when they're on, rip through the Stanfords, Indianas and Connecticuts that we have to hear about all year and watch at the top of the Top 25 polls? Bring on the NCAAs.





Takoma Park's resident spy

A resident of the People's Republic of Takoma Park, Maryland's crunch granola town just outside Washington, D.C. and a "nuclear-free zone," has been arrested on charges of spying for Iraq. Susan P. Lindauer describes herself as an "anti-war activist." The manager of the local food co-op in Takoma Park, with unintended comedy, notes in a Baltimore Sun article, "I'm surprised that [she] could be from around here."

If not Takoma Park ... where?

Reminds me of the time last year I arrived early to meet a friend at an organic cafe in Baltimore's Hampden neighborhood and noted a "No Bombing Iraq" sticker on the front door. "So, you're pro-Saddam?" I pleasantly asked the waiter who seated me. "What?" she said. "Your bumper sticker," I nodded toward the door. "It's not as simple as that," she said in consternation.

"It's not?" I asked.

Don't everyone be so shocked, shocked when fringe liberals give concrete comfort to sworn enemies of this country.

Lindauer's black Mazda apparently sports a "War Is Not the Answer" bumper sticker. An identically worded banner often appears outside the Quaker's building on North Charles Street in Baltimore. It made me realize as I drove by that to the contrary, war is the ultimate answer to tyranny.

As P.J. O'Rourke noted in a book title, War"Give War A Chance" !

Let me suggest some new bumper stickers for Lindauer:

"Treason Is Not the Answer"
"Feminists for Tyranny"
"Activists for Dictators' Sons' Rape Squads"

Oh, speaking of nutty feminists, did anyone see the hilarious Arrested Development last Sunday (Fox, 9:30 p.m., offbeat comedy) where the smitten son, George Michael, makes a poster for his "ethics" teacher who "loves" Saddam Hussein?!





Camp X-Ray ... oh, the horror!

The U.K.'s Daily Mirror runs wild with a breathless, one-source story on the alleged horror of captivity for suspected terrorists at Gitmo.

A freed captive alleges treatment that would send Howard Stern careering toward voluntary imprisonment. Prostitutes said to stroke themselves were dangled in front of the more pious inmates.

Oh, and bad inmates had their shampoo taken away!

Does anyone believe Word One of this? It's corroborated by exactly ... nothing. When an interview reads like a parody of a paranoic, editors might want to think twice about running it. Oh wait, they paid perhaps $75,000 for this drivel. See 2nd-to-last item here, subhed "War heroes."





March 11, 2004

Evil stalks

The entire premise of the question in this Washington Post headline, Victims' Relatives Still Ask, Why -- Snipers' Motives Remain Unresolved is based on the secular humanist belief in man as essentially good and perfectable.

Reading further, we learn:

During the trials of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, Larry Meyers often attended the proceedings, a poignant figure on a wooden courtroom bench trying to learn something about the men who killed his youngest brother, Dean.

He is still in the dark. Dozens of witnesses, hundreds of pieces of evidence and two sentencings later, he cannot comprehend what drove two drifters to become coldblooded snipers.

"I will never understand the total depravity of mind that causes something like this to occur," Meyers said this week as he left the Prince William County courtroom where Muhammad was sentenced to death. "I can never walk in those shoes and understand."

My heart goes out to Larry Meyers, in his quiet loyalty to his slain brother, but there is a good reason the snipers' crimes elude rational comprehension.

Religious believers know that man is flawed and struggling on his way to a relationship with God. There is good and evil in the world, and Muhammad and Malvo are evil made plain. One can readily envision the same Satan as strolls with a Mona Lisa smile on Golgotha in Mel Gibson's Passion as present in the sniper's blue Caprice as they mowed down innocents in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. [As A. Larry Ross notes today, The Passion is really a war movie, pitting good against evil.]

I recall a conversation in my kitchen with a housemate with a housemate holding a Ph.D. in psychology. I had just read a gripping biography of John Wayne Gacy (Tim Cahill's Buried Dreams). As with the sniper victims' families, the author ultimately could find no complete explanation for Gacy's murders -- achieved with careful calculation that suggested a sane mind -- without concluding that he may have simply demonstrated the real presence of evil. I asked my housemate about this explanation and she was utterly dismissive -- "It's not important."

So much for the ability of psychology to grapple with society's most dangerous individuals.

One can look forever for "motives" for the inexplicable monsters of history, and come up empty, if one holds that there is no higher presence in the world than that of humankind.





Europeans as slaves

Interesting article, A million Europeans enslaved, on an Ohio State historian's book, SlavesChristian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800.

In course of researching my second book, Romance on the Road, I learned that some individual women had ended up as captives in the royal harems of Turkey after high-seas piracy. The most famous example is Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, whose story is told in The Wilder Shores of Love. It makes sense that such abductions were part of a larger patterns of white slavery.





Baseball and steroids

Senator McCain raked the baseball union leader over the coals yesterday, see Thomas Boswell, who demonstrates once again how crucial reporting is to quality column writing.





March 10, 2004

O'Malley: Huge blunder

What was Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley thinking when he pulled his stunt Monday, misleading the City Council into approving a bailout of city schools by wiping out the city's rainy-day fund instead of letting the state handle the loan?

And then calling Annapolis to say the city no longer needed a state bailout?

Jaws of hard-working homeowners dropped across the city as the repercussions began to roll in: Possibly lower bond ratings for the city, possibly burned bridges with the state legislature, and no doubt the image of living in a city that overnight feels like a banana republic, with an incompetent school board, gullible city council and petulant, partisan mayor feuding with his Republican governor.

How likely are the schools to repay a "loan" from a political mayor, vs. one from a state agency? I can smell my taxes rising now.

The situation is complex, obviously, but none of this helps either the suffering residents of this city, or its legions of almost perfectly empty-brained public school students. I have in the past hired local kids for various tasks, 14-year-olds who cannot tell me their wages (hours times rate) at the end of the day, or read labels in my workshop well enough to put a tool away.

Someone is criminally negligent in mishandling not only school money but the lives of young Baltimoreans who can't manage their way into religious or private schools.

And under O'Malley's plan, the clueless school board gets to stay in office!!

No doubt Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan is smiling as he contemplates the backlash against his rival for future Democratic statewide office.

O'Malley came to Baltimore as the good guy who cared about crime. He is now re-branding himself as a petty politician mad at himself because he blew a good chance at being governor by not facing the inept Kathleen Kennedy Townsend in the Dem primary. His dealings with Gov. Bob Ehrlich look nakedly like male elk pawing the ground.

Voters are without a doubt taking note. I have friends on my soccer team with no children, who barely follow city politics, shocked at what is going on.

It's personally tough to watch, because I've considered O'Malley the best candidate for the mayor's job and have a good friend in the administration. Friend -- give Martin some better counsel!





Martha Stewart, martyr

If you don't exactly know what to make of the Martha Stewart case, trying reading this interesting article by John O'Sullivan, who explains that she wasn't even charged with insider trading:

She was charged instead with obstructing justice during the FBI investigation into whether or not she had committed the crime. She had falsely claimed to FBI investigators that she had instructed her broker to sell the ImClone stock when it fell below a certain price.

Now, you can lie quite legally to private persons or to the state police (though it is highly inadvisable, as well as immoral, to do so). Lying is a crime either when the liar is under oath or when he is talking to federal investigators. And though Stewart had not committed the crime, she had lied about not committing it. If the law were not an ass, she would have been charged with obstructing injustice.

And, in today's breezy, anything-goes climate, Sullivan asks, "Was there any sign of the leniency generally shown first offenders? Quite the contrary: The prosecutors alleged that for her even to maintain she was innocent was itself a crime. "

Maybe this isn't exactly a case of a butterfly broken on a wheel, but it sure smells of big bad prosecutors with too much time on their hands.





March 9, 2004

Spalding Gray, R.I.P.

The noted monologuist has dropped off the twig, in dramatic fashion, his body found in New York's East River.

His SwimmingSwimming to Cambodia enthralled me, with his observations of Thailand's pro-pleasure culture, and his daringly minimalist presentation ... sitting at a desk speaking. Geographers will love the fact, however, that he performed the monologue with a map on stage. I had lost track of his post-Swimming oeuvre, see books here and DVDs here, and VHS here.





Houellebecq's Platform

In Slate, Meghan O'Rourke compares French writer Michel Houellebecq's PlatformPlatform to Jill Nelson's SexualSexual Healing, noting correctly that both books acknowledge the move of sex into the realm of commodification, a theme of my forthcoming Romance on the Road.

You can see my brief take on Platform and related books here.





Don't miss Jodie Allen

One of Washington's smartest women -- and therefore, one of Washington's finest minds -- is Jodie Allen, who understands and thinks about the big picture. She had an interesting piece, Maybe We Could All Deliver Pizza, in the Washington Post Outlook section on outsourcing jobs to foreign companies. Money graf:

So, short of crass protectionism, what remedies might we pursue? ...

... the White House is right that tort reform could reduce incentives for lawsuit-ridden employers to flee. Even more potent: detaching health care coverage from payrolls -- a move, [Kerry pollster Doug] Usher notes, that would also reduce worker anxiety about job loss.

Do look for health care at some perhaps distant point in the future to be untracked from employers and paid directly by individuals. Watch job creation explode at that point -- and huge pressure to cut health care costs from people who will shop around the way they do for groceries.

A discussion of Allen's article appears here.





March 8, 2004

Tom Brokaw, Veep?

Three reactions to John Fund's column today, on the possibility of Tom Brokaw as John Kerry's running mate:





Terps survive

Maryland's Terrapins live to fight another day after beating Virginia last night in a game so ugly that I switched during all the commercials to Fox comedies (Bernie Mac, Malcolm in the Middle, Arrested Development) even at risk of missing some of the game.

Anyone know how to shoot the basketball into the basket? This team seems to work too hard for every single point, as if it were playing soccer. Go up, get fouled, miss two at the line, give up an uncontested three at the other end, then wake up to the situation and claw back.

And the Comcast crowd seems strangely muted and cowed at times, compared to the madness that was Cole Field House.

Yet as Nik Caner-Medley tanks offensively, he stepped it up a bit defensively last night, running full court to block a layup from behind. Meanwhile the overlooked Chris McCray is emerging as the emotional force of this team, determined and ... able to make his free throws!

Probably like a lot of other people, I thought Gary Williams would have the cream of the crop given the national championship and the new playing arena and start coasting to Final Fours. Something is amiss with his recruits from California, D.C. and points in between ... no perimeter shooting, sketchy in the paint. They all seem too much like works in progress -- and not on a two-year path to excellence, either, but something much slower.

In attendance was former guard Juan Dixon fresh off scoring 25 points for the Wizards.

Sports roundup: The Terrell Owens case is getting more and more curious, as he plainly doesn't want to come here to the Ravens and will not report for his physical.

Sound like his agent just screwed up and doesn't want to pay the penalty for missing the deadline for making Owens a free agent.

Will the Ravens make him come against his will? Ravens fans are an order of magnitude more ferocious than Redskins fans and will harrass him I am sure. That's if my husband Lamont is any guide -- he never forgave John Elway for balking at coming to the Colts.





Guardian angels at tragedy?

How fortunate were the victims of the water taxi accident on Saturday off Fort McHenry in Baltimore?

Their vessel capsized as potential rescuers, with access to an emergency vessel suitable for an improvised flip of the overturned water taxi, watched.

If not for the actions of Henry Zecher and other sailors stationed at the Naval Reserve Center at Fort McHenry, about 1,000 feet from the scene of the accident, many more would likely have perished, authorities said.

Zecher and 24 other Naval Reservists and career sailors in a combat landing craft arrived at the shuttle within minutes of the accident. It was precious minutes before fire and rescue crews were able to get to the scene.

A wee parallel to the heroism of the World Trade Center firefighters, that is, an example of the manly man's altruism: "Two sailors dived in the water to begin pulling out people. One, Petty Officer 2nd Class Jeffrey King, became entangled in ropes after entering the water, so the sailors spent some of their time rescuing one of their own."

"They're real heroes," said a survivor in this Baltimore Sun account. "They're amazing. Many of them were giving us the coats right off their backs."

Lt. Cmdr. Art Eisenstein didn't hesitate to jump in to rescue a floating, unconscious 8-year-old girl.

Bless him and his colleagues.





March 7, 2004

Huntington and Mexican immigration

Also see the latest Foreign Policy wherein Huntington asks whether we really want Mexican immigration in such numbers that we lose the founding principles of the United States. Money graf:

[Lionel] Sosa identifies several Hispanic traits (very different from Anglo-Protestant ones) that "hold us Latinos back": mistrust of people outside the family; lack of initiative, self-reliance, and ambition; little use for education; and acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven. Author Robert Kaplan quotes Alex Villa, a third-generation Mexican American in Tucson, Arizona, as saying that he knows almost no one in the Mexican community of South Tucson who believes in “education and hard work” as the way to material prosperity and is thus willing to “buy into America.” Profound cultural differences clearly separate Mexicans and Americans, and the high level of immigration from Mexico sustains and reinforces the prevalence of Mexican values among Mexican Americans.




Sex in the Middle East

Fine article from Foreign Policy on "The True Clash of Civilizations" notes:

Samuel Huntington was only half right. The cultural fault line that divides the West and the Muslim world is not about democracy but sex. According to a new survey, Muslims and their Western counterparts want democracy, yet they are worlds apart when it comes to attitudes toward divorce, abortion, gender equality, and gay rights--which may not bode well for democracy's future in the Middle East.

My forthcoming Romance on the Road will make this point in a somewhat different way. Sexual repression in the Middle East has contributed to both to fervid fundamentalism and bottled-up young males pursuing tourist females.





March 5, 2004

Maryland by the numbers

Here's an analysis of the Terps' problems by an actual statistician, Harry Davey, who describes himself as "a disgruntled Maryland fan":

A look at Maryland’s numbers – both overall and game-by-game – makes it clear why Maryland is struggling this year. In a number of games, Maryland has been overmatched in:

Field goals

Maryland’s field goal percentage of 44 is the worst in the Atlantic Coast Conference, except Clemson. Four teams in the conference have a shooting percentage of 47. Maryland is second in the conference in field goal attempts (1607) but sixth in the league in field goals made. Maryland’s three-point percentage of 33 is sixth in the league. Maryland is last in the conference in three-point shots attempted (382) and three-point shots made (125). Duke has made 78 more three-point shots, Georgia Tech has made 82 more three-point shots, and Florida State has made 131 more three-point shots.

Free-throw shooting

In comparison to the rest of the conference, Maryland fares even worse in free-throw shooting. Maryland’s free-throw shooting percentage (61) is last in the conference. Only Clemson (63) is even close to Maryland in free-throw shooting ineptitude. The next worst team is Virginia at 66%. The top three teams in the conference are Wake Forest at 71%, Duke at 75%, and North Carolina State at an unbelievable 79%. Maryland is fifth in free-throw attempts (615) but last in free throws made (373). Maryland has attempted 125 more free throws than N.C. State but has made 15 fewer free throws.

Because of its difficulty at the foul line, Maryland has found it difficult to compete with better-shooting teams. In its first loss of the season – to Gonzaga – Maryland led at the half 34-30, but, in the second half, Maryland couldn’t match or stop Gonzaga’s hot shooting – especially Gonzaga’s barrage of three-point shots – and lost the game 82-68. Gonzaga shot 48% overall and was 14 for 25 from the three-point line. Maryland shot 36% and was a woeful 4 for 20 on three-point shots. From the free-throw line, Gonzaga shot a mediocre 63%, but Maryland shot only 52%.

At Florida State, Maryland lost a close game because of poor shooting from the foul line. Maryland was 10 for 18 while Florida State was 24 for 33. Maryland was outscored from the foul line by 14 points in a game it lost by 4.

Problems in all areas

In its 81-71 loss at Georgia Tech, poor field goal shooting, poor three-point shooting, and poor free-throw shooting all cost Maryland a game it could have won. In field goal percentage, Maryland was outshot 42% to 36%, and in free-throw percentage, Maryland was outshot 75% to 63%. But it was the difference in three-point shooting that really did Maryland in. Georgia Tech was 9 for 21. Maryland was 4 for 17.

When Maryland played Georgia Tech at home, Maryland wasn’t even able to make the game close because of its dismal shooting. Maryland was down by four at the half and continued to be outplayed in the second half to lose by 11, 75-64. While Georgia Tech was shooting 51% overall and 45% from the three-point line, Maryland was shooting 32% overall and was a miserable 3 for 20 from the three-point line.

In its home loss to N.C. State, Maryland actually had a higher field goal percentage than N.C. State (48% versus 47%), but again Maryland’s ineptness from the three-point line and the free-throw line resulted in an 81-69 loss.

From the three-point arc, Maryland was 2 for 14 while N.C. State was 10 for 19. The difference in free-throw shooting was an embarrassment. N.C. State was 23 for 25. Maryland was 9 for 18.

At Duke, Maryland’s poor shooting resulted in a humiliating defeat that was far worse than the 86-63 score would indicate. Maryland was down by 17 at the half, and it’s hardly likely that Duke went all-out in the second half. Duke didn’t crush Maryland with a barrage of three-point shots – Duke was only 9 for 23 from the three-point line – but Duke did shoot 50% from the field and 79% from the free-throw line. Maryland was characteristically poor from both the free-throw line (52%) and the field (37%). Maryland seemed incapable of getting back on defense or stopping Duke from getting open shots both inside and outside.

In another embarrassing (and not particularly close) loss at home to Wake Forest, Maryland was again unable to stop the barrage of three-point shots that gave Wake Forest a 46-34 halftime lead and a 91-83 win. While Maryland shot as well as Wake from the field and the free-throw line, the difference in three-point shooting made it almost impossible for Maryland to stay with Wake. Wake made 13 of 23 three-point shots. Maryland was 3 of 14.

Rebounding

According to the statistics, Maryland is the leading rebounding team in the conference, but one wonders if Maryland was able to inflate those numbers against weak opponents because Maryland has lost several games because of poor rebounding.

In Maryland’s loss at home to Duke (by a somewhat respectable score of 68-60), Maryland was a little lucky that Duke didn’t have an especially good shooting night. In fact Maryland outshot Duke 42% to 34%. But Duke was able to overcome its poor night of shooting by grabbing 21 offenseive rebounds and outrebounding Maryland 44-30. Because of the rebounding difference, Duke was able to take 12 more shots than Maryland. If Maryland had rebounded decently, it would almost certainly have won the game.

In Maryland’s loss at Wake Forest, Maryland blew a 10-point halftime lead and lost by 8, 93-85. Maryland uncharacterically shot well from the field, the three-point line, and the free-throw line, but Maryland was badly outrebounded, 37-26.

Maryland’s defense put forth a miserable effort against North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Maryland again was badly outshot from the both the field and the free-throw line. North Carolina shot 55% from the field and 72% from the free-throw line. Maryland’s numbers were 39% and 67%. And while North Carolina didn’t shoot particularly well (5 for 14) from the three-point line, Maryland again shot miserably – 6 for 21. But Maryland still might have won the game had it rebounded respectably. North Carolina outrebounded Maryland 47-32.

It has already been noted that, in its home loss to Wake Forest, Maryland was unable to score or stop Wake Forest from scoring from the three-point line, but Maryland still might have won the game had it not been outrebounded 37-23.

A lack of hustle?

There may not be much Maryland can do about its own poor shooting, but the fact that Maryland’s opponents often have high shooting percentages – especially from the three-point line – and the fact that Maryland has been badly outrebounded in some of its losses suggest that Maryland isn’t hustling on defense. Maryland’s defenders are often out of position, and it doesn’t appear that Maryland’s players help out much on defense. Once an opposing player beats his Maryland defender, he seems to have an open shot.





Tina Brown. Whatever.

More on Mel Gibson's The Passion:

Check out the last sentence of this excerpt from a Tina Brown column:

Hollywood pros marvel at how Mel got the world press to report that the pope had endorsed the movie after a Vatican screening. The pontiff's alleged blurb, as supposedly passed on by a Vatican spokesman and later disavowed by his secretary, was five short words long: "It is as it was." (The papal equivalent, perhaps, of "whatever.")

"It is as it was" connotes that Gibson captured the heart and soul of the Gospel. Tina Brown -- anyone following the logic here? -- somehow equates the Pope's statement with that of a dismissive Valley Girl. I sense a whiff of the English variety of anti-"papist" prejudice overlaying standard Mandarin anti-Catholicism.

[Side note: Can Tina Brown and the incomparable Peggy Noonan really be friends??? See last sentence here.]

Charles Krauthammer also attacks The Passion for its portrayal of the Jews as wicked killers of Christ. He has a point, resting his argument on post-Vatican II teaching and the portrayal of Satan moving among Jewish leaders. It is simplistic to say The Passion is not anti-Semitic, for the Jewish leaders in it are indeed villainous and portrayed as not only rejecting the Messiah within their midst but aggressively seeking his annihilation. I think Krauthammer's objection to 10 minutes shown of scourging falls apart, however ... the reality of what happened to Jesus is encapsulated in this segment. And there's no way around the fact.





Welcome back, Rafael!

From Thomas Boswell this morning:

On the first pitch of his first at-bat back in an Orioles uniform, Palmeiro ripped a fastball past Beckett into center field to drive home a run.

Against Marlins' World Series ace Josh Beckett!

A good omen.

My husband Lamont: "I guess Viagra really does help."





Redskins, Ravens renovate

Good news for the Redskins: Players want to play here! The Washington Post reports in this article that new running back Clinton Portis "said he received myriad calls from other NFL players who expressed their desire to play for the Redskins."

Gibbs magic!

Not so fast. New cornerback Shawn Springs "was impressed by the wrapped candy in the bathroom of RedskinsOne, owner Daniel Snyder's private plane."

Meanwhile, the Ravens signed 49ers bad boy Terrell Owens. Yes, he's a jerk, but he's "our" jerk now! In fact, Owens may be just what the doctors ordered for the Ravens with their great running game -- and crud receiving.

Anyone following the pattern here? Miscreant Owens would probably not be welcome on the Redskins if he were the last receiver on the planet, but Billick, the Man in Black, says the Ravens team is "satisfied that he won't create more headaches." The Ravens have a far higher tolerance than the Redskins for NFL Bad Boys, witness the fact that they are God's gift to Atlanta's lawyers.

Note to readers: I am a Redskins fan but happily follow the Ravens too.





March 4, 2004

The ever-wise Peggy Noonan

From today's OpinionJournal:

"Mr. Kerry seems to me not a man of deep belief but of a certain amount of sentiment and calculation. One has the sense he is a liberal Democrat because of the time and place in which he was born, that he inhaled a worldview as opposed to struggling through to one."

What a marvelous turn of phrase! My entire first book describes a worldview achieved by walking on the ground of foreign lands as a route to learning. Worldviews achieved through struggling along seem so much more articulated than those received from "inhalation."

A quiz: Anyone remember the book that popularized the term "worldview" ? Post a comment if you do!





March 3, 2004

Reading tea leaves: Md. to miss NCAAs?

Certainly, Virginia’s win over Wake Forest does not bode well, as the Cavs have decided to peak at the best time. And as noted last week here, this Maryland team has faults galore.

Is the ACC murderer’s row this year, or is Maryland weak? A whole lot of both.





“The Passion of Christ”

Enjoyed seeing Gibson's film last Friday with my friend Janet Cook’s church group. I found it faithful to my vision of the Passion formed by reading my parent’s copy of
ChristThe Day Christ Died by Jim Bishop many, many decades ago. Bishop’s book according to my musty recollections was fairly explicit about the actual details of the misery of dying on a cross.

The scourging was the part of the film that was perhaps the most inhumane of all. Gibson finds a style closer to Fellini than that of any American filmmaker to depict the hideousness of Jesus’s flaying alive -- a touch of the impossible, the unreal, a call to a buried awareness that such bullying could part of human nature.

I wondered as Christ staggered to Golgotha whether modern crucifixions would deter the crime rate. Certainly scourging looked like it would give pause to any post-Renaissance mind, even the knucklehead population of our drug-dealing street corner here in Upper Fells Point, Baltimore.

Here’s Richard Cohen’s take on the Passion, terming it “fascistic,” buttressing this observation with rather inpenetrable logic. He does acknowledge not being a typical viewer. One wonders about the futility of this column, an atypical viewer professing incomprehension, which could be summed up by the headline “member of the Mandarin class takes platform to demonstrate Mandarinness.”





Stevie Blake helps to win one for the Wizards!

See this mis-headlined piece (“Arenas, Wizards Give a Little Extra,” oh, ha ha) about our beloved former standout point guard at Maryland!

Blake and Juan Dixon are two winners with heart stuck on a dysfunctional NBA team. My dream, so far-fetched that I hesitate to acknowledge it, would be for them to mold the Wizards into, if not champions, at least a gutty, no-quit unit.

Wouldn’t that be nice?!





Another question re: gay marriage

David Frum recently posed eight questions regarding gay marriage, pointing out the legal quagmire that awaits us as practical questions arise.

Here’s another: Will gay sex tourists be able to bring their foreign boyfriends home on fiance, or spouse, visas?

I sense that any test cases will arise out of attempts to bring in Thai boys. First, wasn’t there a Washington area university administrator that brought a young Thai man in under a pretext? (Can any readers help me here ... I can’t seem to find the details readily, as this happened quite some time ago.) Second, Thai women seem to predominate in news report out of Germany and Scandinavia of Thai “wives” brought in and forced to continue in prostitution by their European husbands.

Thailand is an all-comers (excuse the expression) sex boutique, as my forthcoming Romance on the Road will examine, including lesbian and straight women (especially from Japan) as well as male sex tourists.

As I wrote in my first book, An Amateur’s Guide to the Planet , of the Thais: they face “The perils of being a beautiful people” (page 140).

One final point: An estimated one-third or more of fiance and spousal visas are requested for fraudulent relationships. Look for green card seekers to exploit fake gay marriages, too.





March 2, 2004

Mail Order Husbands

This site cropped up while researching my second book, Romance on the Road. Read it and hoot!





Is Jerry Stackhouse a bit weird?

Raise your hand if you were baffled by the Wizards player with the hurt knee announcing on Saturday that he was done for the season -- sans physical, sans discussions with team officials. Today (March 1, 2004) Michael Wilbon examines the strangeness of the announcement.

Media question: Why wasn’t this angle in the original story (Feb. 28) by Steve Wyche? Usually teams in all sports announce that a player is sitting out, or done for the season. Wire services even send out lists of, say, football players who are hurt. Stackhouse obviously wasn’t following the normal procedure.

Maybe Jerry’s just busy looking into vacation rentals, so he can create more consternation as