lullaby pit

Time for America’s Freddie Mercury moment: there are more than 100 gay pro athletes in the US, and the sooner they get out of the equipment closet the better

Posted on 2010.12.17 by winterSmith 6 comments

In a recent discussion on one of my political lists Sara Robinson (easily one of the brightest folks in the blogosphere) made an important point about what often causes people to migrate from socially conservative perspectives to more progressive points of view. In describing her experiences with a particular activist group that helped people leaving fundamentalist religions (something that can

RIP Rapid Robert Feller

Posted on 2010.12.16 by winterSmith Leave a comment

Baseball legend Bob Feller is dead at 92.

Sports

Americans and employment: the dehumanizing toll of efficiency

Posted on 2010.12.14 by winterSmith 12 comments

A few years ago I invented a word: euphemasia , a hybrid between euphemism and euthanasia. euphemasia – noun: the act of putting the truth out of its misery by cynically substituting an inoffensive expression for one that is considered offensive or damaging to the personal, political or economic interests of the party using the term. Also, the inverse, cynically

Please help: Brazil soccer team threatened by a tragic shortage of cool names

Posted on 2010.12.11 by winterSmith Leave a comment

When it comes to football – some of you may know it by its American name, “soccer” – Brazil is a land of legend. Five World Cups. Two runners-up. Two thirds and a fourth. That’s more championships than any other nation and only Germany has more top four finishes. At the club level, Brazilian players dominate every league in the

Sports

Please help: Brazil soccer team threatened by a tragic shortage of cool names

Posted on 2010.12.11 by winterSmith One comment

Turn out the lights…and imagine

Posted on 2010.12.08 by winterSmith Leave a comment

It’s been a tough week in the Famous Death Department. First we lost Dandy Don Meredith, whose work with Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford in the Monday Night Football booth was one of the most important factors in the explosion of the NFL’s popularity over the past several decades. Then Elizabeth Edwards left us the other day. I try to

Lawyers, guns and money and Shari’a Law and air conditioning the desert: how the hell did the US lose World Cup 2022 to Qatar?!

Posted on 2010.12.02 by winterSmith 7 comments

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the governing body of world soccer, today awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. The move is regarded by most as an upset – the odds-on favorite to land the event was the United States, which hosted the most successful Copa in history in 1994. Also in the running were Australia and a combined

TunesDay Special: We miss you, Freddie

Posted on 2010.11.24 by winterSmith 2 comments

Freddie Mercury died 19 years ago today. If you’re a Baby Boomer you probably remember how you felt when John Lennon died. Freddie was my John Lennon. I finally wrote something about his death a few years later. In truth, it’s not a very good poem at all, but I kept it around and treated it with reverence because it

The great depression of 2010

Posted on 2010.11.22 by winterSmith 19 comments

It’s the end of the world. At least it feels that way. Back in September I noted that 2010 was shaping up as the worst year ever. My marriage fell apart and a lot of terrible stuff happened to people close to me. For instance: A close friend who happens to be one of the brightest guys I know got

Go ahead, squirrel. Make my day.

Posted on 2010.11.19 by winterSmith One comment

If you’ve spent any amount of time walking dogs, you may have noticed that for squirrels, it isn’t enough to be up a tree. They need to be up their tree. And so, this particular squirrel had a problem.

What would a progressive society look like? The Tricentennial Manifesto

Posted on 2010.11.19 by winterSmith 24 comments

One of my lists is currently engaged in a fairly dynamic discussion about “what is a progressive?” In thinking about the issue, I realized that it might help to ask the question a slightly different way: what would a progressive society look like? Maybe I can better understand what it means to be progressive in 2010 if I reverse-engineer the

Civility and truth: Keith Olbermann lays the boots to Ted Koppel and the myth of objective journalism

Posted on 2010.11.15 by winterSmith 11 comments

A few days ago Ted Koppel uncorked on the “partisanship” of today’s broadcasting news in an op-ed at the once-proud, once-respectable, but now utterly reprehensible Washington Post. In doing so, he attracted a great deal of praise from all kinds of people, including at least one or two of my highly respected colleagues. As I argued in a perhaps ill-tempered

It’s time for progressives to forget about winning the battle and start concentrating on winning the war

Posted on 2010.11.15 by winterSmith 18 comments

It was Sun Tzu, I believe, who first suggested that in order to win the war, you sometimes have to lose the battle. This precept has been on my mind quite a bit since the results of the recent election began rolling in. For instance… Earlier today one of my political lists was discussing the aftermath of the elections and

Gallup poll reveals that public questions PR industry credibility: are PR practitioners to blame?

Posted on 2010.11.09 by winterSmith 11 comments

A Gallup poll released in August indicated that the advertising and PR industries aren’t viewed very favorably by the American public. One-third of respondents voiced a positive view of the advertising/pr industry (6 percent “very,” 27 percent “somewhat”). Twenty-seven percent were “neutral.” Twenty-five percent expressed a “somewhat negative view,” while 11 percent were “very negative.” (The rest didn’t venture an