This may end up being the most exciting four game sweep in the history of the World Series.
“White Sox breeze through postseason” was ahead only of “Padres dominate on way to championship” on my list of expected outcomes. It certainly looked staggeringly unlikely halfway through September.
What I’m watching…
Regularly:
My Name is Earl: They haven’t yet managed to equal the pilot, and I thought that the last episode was a little bit weak. Still, I have confidence; the concept is strong, and they’ve demonstrated they can be real, real, real funny.
The Office: I’ve been a bit happier with Steve Carrell this year, and Rainn Wilson has really begun to come into his own, which is unsurprising given his previous work. My favorite part of the show remains the sweet relationship between Jenna Fischer and John Krasinski.
Lost: The first two episodes were weak, the third and fourth stronger, and the fifth quite good. The nerds are out with the long knives, though. It always happens this, way, usually two or three years before a show actually starts going stale. Nerds who just last year had furiously mashed there keyboards in message boards around the internet trying to divine the meaning of the numbers now furiously mash their keyboards in competition to be the first to declare “Worst. Episode. Ever.” For my part, I’ll try to be a bit more patient.
The Simpsons: I don’t want to talk about it.
Arrested Development: Forgot about it because of the baseball playoffs. I fear it is not long for this world.
Rome: Probably deserving of its own post. I’ve been pleased with the way that the show has developed. In the last two episodes, Ciaran Hinds (as Julius Caesar) has really begun to display a clear personality, which I think is crucial for any depiction of this period in Roman history. The role is an exceptionally difficult one. The normally good Jeremy Sisto was astonishingly bad in the reprehensible Julius Caesar miniseries. I remember being displeased by Joseph Mankiewicz’ version of Julius Caesar because, even though Brando was magnificent as Antony (“these honorable men”), Louis Calhern seemed arrogant and stupid as Caesar. Thinking more on it (and re-reading the original text), I think that the flaw is with Shakespeare, and not with Calhern or Mankiewicz. Brutus says “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more,” but we never, from the text, get any solid understanding of why Caesar was deserving of such love. What you need is an actor who can simultaeneously depict danger, arrogance, competence, intelligence, and accomplishment, all the while leaving enough character to explain how someone in his position could make the mistakes that he did. Hinds, especially in the past two episodes, is doing a creditable job. His reaction to the death of Pompey was remarkably well done, as was his acceptance of the surrenders of Cicero and Brutus.
I am not displeased with the historical accuracy. For the most part, the writers have identified the crucial events and compressed the unnecessary. We don’t see, for example, Caesar’s year long campaign in Spain before Pharsalus, because it doesn’t matter. The depiction of Rome the city seems appropriate to me; a wealthy core surrounded by slums. Most importantly, the series has not seen the need of inventing new characters or of cutting out particularly important historical ones. The writers have, cleverly, channelled much of their creativity into a pair of soldiers who have only left us their names, but manage to be part of every great event that involves Caesar, Antony, and the rest. The adventures of Vorenus and Pullo are certainly false, but their creation isn’t too far afield from the way Robert Graves imagined the Caesars in I, Claudius. On the question of historical accuracy, Kierkegaard disagrees, largely because the Romans behave in an manner insufficient to the degree of virtue likely found in a pagan, imperial, slave-holding society. Which is to say that they don’t behave in the manner he thinks modern day Republicans do. Whatever.
I quite like the rest of the characterizations, particularly James Purefoy as a charming, brutish Mark Antony and Kenneth Cranham as the doomed Pompey Magnus. Oh, and incidentally, I love and plan to marry Lyndsey Marshal, who plays an excellent, wonderful, excellent Cleopatra.
Sporadically:
Law and Order: As I’ve suggested before, it’s a little bit stronger this year than in previous. Still not quite enough for me to set the DVR.
On Hiatus:
Deadwood: Through the magic of On Demand, I’m halfway through the second season. I must confess that the series didn’t really capture me until Swearingen’s illness at the beginning of the second season. The concern that Al’s lieutenants have for his health was weirdly touching. William Sanderson is great as E.B. Farnham.
The Sopranos: Nothing needs be said.
Entourage: Every episode has a happy ending.
Battlestar Galactica: More on this later.
Shows I wish I watched but haven’t had the time:
Veronica Mars
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Wire
According to Noam Scheiber and Peter Beinart, the way to solve the problem of attacks by conservatives on the mainstream media is, well, to hand the mainstream media to conservatives.
Our boss, Peter Beinart, has a theory about how to undercut the conservative punditry’s assault on the mainstream media: coopt it. The basic idea is that most of the conservative animus toward the MSM comes from feeling spurned by it. If that’s true, then the easiest way to fix this would be for establishment media institutions to hire lots of bright young conservatives. (This is already happening to some extent, but probably not nearly enough to change the MSM-bashing calculus on the right.) Conservatives would become invested in the institutions that employ them; they’d embrace the norms of empirical rigor, intellectual honesty, and objectivity (or, as conservative media critics would have it, “empirical rigor,” “intellectual honesty,” and “objectivity”) that govern the profession. Pretty soon the problem might be solved.
Clever. As James Fearon suggests, conflicts can always be solved by unilateral surrender.
Lots of good ideas coming out of that New Republic these days. I wonder, just how out of touch do you have to be to come up with things like this? What, precisely, has to have gone wrong with the way you think in order to make this make sense? I’d like to think that this is a joke, but I don’t really see any reason to believe it is.
Via Crooked Timber.
My blog is worth $168,797.46.
How much is your blog worth?
Heh. I think I speak for my co-bloggers when I say:
Woo hoo! [dances about a bit] Ahem. I grudgingly accept.
Shorter Glenn Reynolds:
Neoconservatism didn’t fail, it was never tried.
From the same post, we learn that the difficulties facing the Harriet Miers nomination are evidence of success in Iraq.
Via the Editors.
Although I must agree with the reviewer of Tropic of Cancer, and commend his or her ability to ignore sunk costs. I read, I think, four Henry Miller novels, and all would figure prominently on my “worst ever” list. I don’t know why I kept reading; it was kind of like repeatedly hitting myself in the head with a hammer in the hopes that the next time, it would feel good.
Via Dr. B.
Yavuz Sultan Selim had an active war career. The Russian Navy has historically been crippled by exceptionally bad geography, and war with Turkey helped exacerbate the problem. The Black Sea fleet could not move through the Dardanelles and play any larger role in the war while the Ottoman Empire continued to fight. In essence, the Black Sea became a large lake which the Turks and Russians fought over for four years. For the first year, Yavuz was the big fish in the small pond. The Black Sea Fleet included five pre-dreadnoughts, none of which could equal Yavuz but which were, in numbers, capable of damaging and deterring her. One of the Russian battleships was named Panteleimon; its name, before 1905, had been Potemkin. Yavuz‘ political importance made her service particular delicate, as it was thought that her loss might demoralize the Turkish people. Thus, the Germans and Turks were careful. When Yavuz hit a mine in late 1914, shipyard workers elaborately concealed the damage. In the long term the Russians had the upper hand, as three dreadnoughts were under construction in Black Sea yards.
The Ottoman Empire also faced a threat from the Mediterranean. Winston Churchill got it into his head that Royal Navy battleships, if able to penetrate the Dardanelles, could force Turkey from the war. If Constantinople could be bombarded, he reasoned, the Ottoman government would collapse. To this purpose he launched a series of attacks on the Dardanelles. The most spectacular naval attack, on March 18, 1915, was led by the new British dreadnought Queen Elizabeth and included the battlecruiser Inflexible and 14 French and British pre-dreadnoughts. In case the Allied fleet broke through, Admiral Souchon was instructed to fight to the death in defense of Constantinople. The Allied operation was not a success, as six of the battleships hit mines and three sank.
Churchill was not the sort of man to be dissuaded by failure. He reasoned that ground troops might seize critical points along the passage and allow for the movement of the battleships down the straight. This is a classic example of mission creep. British, French, Australian, and New Zealander troops invaded in April of 1915. The scattered Turkish defenders were commanded by a thirty-four year old colonel named Mustafa Kemal. The land battle for the Dardanelles was brutal on both sides, and eventually cost the 45000 dead and the Ottomans 88000 dead. The Allied troops, unable to make progress, withdrew in January of 1916.
Yavuz tangled with the Russian battle squadron three times in the first year of the war, but was never able to corner and destroy a portion of it. The five Russian ships, conversely, lacked the speed to force an engagement with Yavuz. The balance of power in the Black Sea tipped decisively towards the Russians in the latter part of 1915, however, with the commissioning of Imperatritsa Maria and Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya, two new dreadnoughts. Each was more powerful than Yavuz, and gave the Russian fleet the capability of employing three different squadrons capable of killing the annoying Turkish/German battlecruiser. Yavuz exchanged fire with Imperatritsa Maria to little effect in early 1916. Fortunately for the Germans and Turks, the Russian fleet was none too careful with its gunpowder. Imperatritsa Maria exploded and sank at anchor in late 1916.
Then, in March 1917, Russia went and had a revolution. Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya became Svobodnaya Rossiya, and the new dreadnought, Imperator Alexander II, became Volya. Panteleimon became Potemkin again, briefly, then Boretz Za Svobuda. Sometimes I think that the failures of the Russian Navy in the 20th century are largely due to the frequent changes in long, long names. Confuses the sailors, I presume. Anyway, Russian operations steadily grew more sporadic as the revolution took its toll, and Yavuz resumed its predominance in the Black Sea. The Bolshevik Revolution completely shut the Russian fleet down. Admiral Souchon departed in September 1917 to claim the command of a squadron in the High Seas Fleet.
In January 1918 the prospects of the Turkish/German navy looked bright. The Germans were on the verge of seizing the Russian dreadnoughts (they eventually captured and pressed into service Volya). However, things were going poorly for the Turks on the ground. The new German admiral hoped that a foray by Yavuz and Midilli (formerly Breslau) into the Mediterranean would draw the Royal Navy from the supporting positions it had taken around Palestine. The Dardanelles were defended by several old British and French ships, including the advanced pre-dreadnoughts Agamemnon and Lord Nelson. The British admiral, however, had divided his fleet and was left with only Lord Nelson to engage Yavuz. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, Yavuz and Midilli ran into a minefield. Midilli struck a mine first, and Yavuz hit a mine while attempting to tow Midilli to safety. Yavuz broke off the operation, allowing Midilli, her partner in operation after operation since 1913, to sink. Yavuz then hit another mine, but managed to make it back to the Strait before running aground because of a navigational error.
Goeben’s war was over. The Turks managed to drag Yavuz to safety before the arrival of British submarines and surface ships, but the battlecruiser was no longer in condition to fight. By the time Yavuz was battleworthy, the German High Seas Fleet, the German Empire, and the Ottoman Empire would all be gone.
To be continued.
I predict that pitching, hitting, and defense will be decisive.
White Sox in 6.
Let this serve as an open game 1 thread.
Redbeard has some strong opinions about standardized testing and NCLB.
I’ve seen a fair amount of this lately:
The crucial difference between fans of the Red Sox and Cubs and those of the White Sox and Astros is that the latter had the decency to keep their suffering to themselves.The White Sox have gone longer than the Red Sox went without a world championship, but did Stephen King write about their angst? Did Jimmy Fallon make a movie about their pain? Did their fans whine about some ridiculous curse? No. In fact, if you so much as bring up any nonsense about a curse, the White Sox will set you straight.
I yield to no one in my contempt for Cubs fans, but I think that this is misplaced. To clarify, I have no sympathy for fans whose identity as fans is carefully constructed around the fact that their team loses all the time. Cubs fans don’t actually want their team to win; if the Cubs won a World Series, then Cubs fans would merely be baseball fans, undeserving of the self-pity they manage to lavish upon themselves. They ought to have given Steve Bartman a parade; an actual pennant would have emptied Wrigley and gutted team revenue.
Red Sox fans are a bit different, because it was clear that they actually found their defeats agonizing. Although Red Sox fans managed to wallow in their own pit of self-pity, their commitments also carried actual pain. Unlike the Cubs, the Red Sox came close to victory on several occasions, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion. Their victory in 2004 made them a normal team, but did not undercut the identity that Red Sox fans have developed for themselves.
Now, no one has ever accused White Sox fans of the self pity that Red Sox and Cubs fans are guilty of. They have had less success than the Red Sox, but don’t have any of the “curse” mythology that has infused Red Sox support. Caple wants to applaud them for this, but I am uncertain.
The curse of the Red Sox evokes sympathy because it is undeserved. Lots of teams trade great players. Ruth is the greatest player, yes, but the sin of the Red Sox is different only in degree from that of every other team in baseball. The appropriate penalty for trading Ruth to a league rival is simply a lack of Ruth, in the same sense that the Mariners trade of Jason Varitek is simply a lack of Varitek. The Red Sox need pay this penalty only as long as Ruth remains in the league, then the price, as such, should no longer apply. The curse evokes sympathy because the ghost of Ruth is vengeful and vindictive. The Red Sox are made to pay with failure even long after Ruth has passed from the game (and this world).
This is not the case with the White Sox. The trade of Babe Ruth, great as he was, is not a crime against baseball in the same sense as the 1919 Black Sox scandal. The failure of the White Sox IS deserved; the franchise was the scene of the greatest crime against the fans in baseball history. There is nothing unfair about vengeance being visited upon the White Sox. Indeed, the failure of the White Sox is less a curse than a case of just punishment by a vengeful baseball deity.
This is why White Sox fans don’t whine about a curse. They understand, on some level, that their team has committed the most egregious sin possible against baseball. The Red Sox can justly claim that their punishment is unwarranted, but the White Sox cannot. They can only hope that whatever greater power that apportions forgiveness in baseball will smile upon them.
That said, I’m cheering for the White Sox, mostly because I hate the goddamn Astros.
Paul Campos, Above the Law 2011 Lawyer of the Year
Erik Loomis, HNN Cliopatria 2011 Best Series of Posts
