The Colts sacrificed their perfect season amid angry boos from a home crowd.  Like everything in sports it was trivial. Going 19-0 is trivial, winning a Superbowl is trivial, a ball flying through two sticks in the ground is trivial, etc.  So all’s relative in the ‘Caldwell’s a jerk’ versus ‘He did the right thing’ debate.  I think it was the wrong way to go, but that’s not what interests me about this mini controversy: I want to know why the fans weren’t even a part of the discussion.

Kudos to Howard Bryant for at least bringing up the fan factor.  He’s in the minority.  Last night I watched oh-so-serious football men Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison sagely opine that the Colts had no responsibility to anyone but the team.  Really?  What about all those angry people who bought tickets for that game? What about all the Colts fans who wanted a perfect season?  I understand Caldwell’s perspective on the matter, but the arrogance of the talking heads is staggering.

For all the daily sports jibber jabber about what team’s number one, what team’s a fraud, and which coach is on the hot seat, the fans get ignored with alarming frequency.  These all-important sports moments are presented as though they occur in a vacuum and that we intrinsically understand their profound impact on our lives.

I didn’t hear or read one argument like the following: Caldwell has a right to pull his players, but he should have informed ticket buyers ahead of time.  Or how about this one:  The Colts should have put their decision to a local fan vote, seeing as how the fans watch the games and buy the tickets.  Such arguments are considered subversive and deviant in the ultra corporate NFL, a league that can’t possibly fathom a world where Americans no longer care about football.  Hey, we’ll blackout your games in a recession, our coaches will intentionally roll over upon clinching playoff berths, and our sport will cripple your heroes for life…but you suckers will never turn away, right?

The NFL has an underlying assumption that Americans will do anything for pro football—as though it’s encoded in our national DNA.  That’s a mistake.  Football is popular here, but it’s continued dominance isn’t assured.  The United States boasts one of the fastest changing, most diverse populations in the world.  Not everybody wants to hunker down and watch the start-stop-timeout-challenge ‘action’ of the NFL.  I do, but most of my friends who emigrated here don’t.  Soccer and basketball have done far more to ride the globallization (get it??) tsunami.  I’ll still root for the Chargers, but part of me wants America’s other sports to overtake this self-important, fan-hating concussion mill.

Podcast

http://1984watch.com/?feed=rss2&p=173

Test Vid

Back from an extended vacation. I’ll find more projects. Promise.

I look at the CNN electoral map, and confusion ensues. Perhaps it’s just not updated, but the wisdom of these metrics eludes me. Here’s a breakdown of the strange CNN cartography:

Safe Obama-153 (CA, IL, NY, VT, MA, CT, RI, MD, HI)
Safe McCain-125 (AZ, UT, ID, WY, ND, SD, NE, KA, OK, TX, MS, AL, KY, TN, SC, AL)

Leaning Obama-37 (OR, WA, ME, NJ)
Leaning McCain-69 (MT, NM, AK, LO, GA, NC, WV, IN)

Toss Up-154 (NV, CO, MO, IA, MN, WI, MI, OH, VA, PA, FL)

First off, what separates “toss-up” from “lean”? It’s currently blurrier than the line between “gaffe” and “flub.” Obama is ahead by 13% in the latest Wisconsin poll, but somehow Farvetown is completely up in the air (Yes, I know that Kerry took WI by the slimmest of margins, but still, 13 points!). The same can be said for Meen-ah-soh-tah, where Obama leads by 15 points in the latest Rasmussen.

New Mexico is probably a T-up, though Obama leads by 9% in the last Rasmussen poll. Somehow it lies in McCain’s lean column. Some of McCain’s safe states seem quite poachable. South Carolina, and some of the oft forgotten plains states are currently competitive (It’d be nice if I could actually find recent polling from the urban futurevilles of North Dakota).

And there is one big decision that helps Obama’s numbers. The gator state is in the T-up column, when it should really be spotted to McCain—maybe even as a “safe” state.

So what does this all mean? Is CNN trying to augment the argument for a close ‘horserace?’ Are they just lagging on their numbers? Are they over-relying on the 2004 map? Do I need to get out more?

Some rehashed numbers, here. I’m recycling them in hopes of getting a broader context. For those new to the program, I’m going through the stats on my grueling 50 day binge of Washington Post Op-Ed pieces (I read Novak so that you can escape uninjured). Here are some numbers regarding the most popular topics in my 139 tracked editorials (2/14-5/6). Again, these are from a sampling of all the presidential race related pieces written in that time frame.

Reverend Wright-28

The Suicidal Nature of the Democratic Primary battle-11

Obama’s Condescension-4

Hillary’s Condescension-2

How Little We Know About Obama-4

Since I’m reading Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland,” I decided to focus on the “Liberal condescension” trope. Perlstein has posited that it is really the only way older conservatives know how to talk about liberals. He could be on to something. Oh, and of the 139 presidential race editorials, 49 were on the specific, pressing topics, of Reverend Wright, primary hand wringing, perceived liberal condescension, or Obama’s unknown quantities. And those are only the dumb topics I had time to chart this morning.

Primary Doom

A major trope in the 50 days (2/14-5/6) of WaPo presidential race editorial tracking was the “suicidal Dems” theme. I often found myself snickering at this repetitive, hyperbolic, primary handwringing. Of the 139 total Op-Ed pieces (28 in February, 47 in March, 52 in April, and 12 in May), 11 had the specific message of, “The Democrats are hurting themselves with this protracted primary battle.”  This very narrow topic comprised a whopping 8 percent of all tracked articles.

Now, intuitively, this thinking made sense. The fight between Clinton and Obama often seemed ugly and counter productive.  But these pundits did not make a compelling case for the damaging impact of an extended primary fight. More importantly, aren’t there other pertinent issues to harp on?

Some horserace pundits had serious addictions to this chicken little special. Most amusingly, David Broder (who led all pundits with 3 primary concern pieces) wrote about this topic on 4/20, and then wrote about the exact same thing on 4/24. Sigh, here are the listed doomsayers.

February

2/25 Bob Novak

March

3/6 Harold Meyerson

3/6 David Broder

3/6 Bob Novak

3/11 Richard Cohen

3/17 Bob Novak

April

4/15 E.J. Dionne Jr.

4/20 David Broder

4/24 David Broder

4/25 Eugene Robinson

Theme Counts

I tallied up some basic themes in my fifty day overview (2/14-5/6) of WaPo presidential race editorials. The first trope I charted was the “not getting enough scrutiny” topic. Allow me to explain. This is the somewhat common theme of stating that a candidate is getting a “free pass” from the media on a certain issue. What I love about this theme is the sadly predictable lack of pundit corroboration that comes with it. This claim is lazily thrown out there without even the easiest of Lexis Nexis searches to back it up. Anyway, here are the numbers for this theme, by month. Oh, and keep in mind that all the listed editorials have the same message of “X candidate is getting a free pass.”

February

Obama: 2/7 David Ignatius

March

Clinton: 3/8 Colbert I. King

McCain: 3/6 Harold Meyerson, 3/11 E.J. Dionne Jr

Obama: 3/3 Bob Novak

April

Clinton: 4/26 Colbert I. King Jr.

McCain: 4/1 Eugene Robinson, 4/22 Eugene Robinson

Obama: 4/4 Charles Krauthammer, 4/25 Geoff Garin

May

McCain: E.J. Dionne Jr.

So the counts are as follows: Clinton got two such themes, Obama got four, and McCain led with  five. Here’s the interesting wrinkle, though. Every column that posited a lack of McCain scrutiny did so with a specific attribution: The Democratic dogfight was to blame. In my next post, I’m tallying up how many WaPo columns were specifically dedicated to hand wringing over the Democratic nomination battle.