Wednesday, April 09, 2003

I've Moved The dojos in charge told me I need to be briefer and more link oriented. Check on my new web log, Ham On Rhino, to see how I'm doing. 3:44:05 PM    comment []

	Sunday, March 16, 2003

The Plucky Wolves   You’ve gotta love this year’s edition of the Timberwolves, a snakebit team that continues to suck the venom out of their myriad wounds and plugs ahead in their quest for home court advantage in the playoffs. They drop the first three games of their brutal five-game road trip earlier this month, then bounce back to beat Phoenix and Dallas. They get mashed at home by San Antonio—would have lost by 30 if Troy Hudson hadn’t gone insane for 20 points in about six minutes of the third quarter—then go up by five with four minutes left in the third quarter against the Lakers, only to lose Rasho Nestoveric to a sprained ankle in the third quarter, a game-turning event that produces another loss. That was five defeats in seven games going into Sunday afternoon’s tilt with Portland, their chief contender for fourth place and home court in the playoffs. Coach Flip Saunders, who prefers to downplay the drama unless it really matters, informed his club before the game that this was a must-win contest. Indeed, with another defeat, the Wolves would have been four games behind the Trailblazers in the loss column, with only 13 games remaining (16 for Portland). So, playing without Rasho, their second-best performer this season, the Wolves’ rose up and spanked the Blazers, 111-95, on the strength of another triple-double by KG, an inspired game from back-up center Marc Jackson, and superb three-point shooting. Nobody has defended Garnett better this year than Rasheed Wallace in the Wolves’ first game with Portland at the Target Center back in December. On Sunday, with seven feet of ‘Sheed in his face, KG missed his first five shots. Rasho, his favorite interior passing partner when his own jumper isn’t falling, was on crutches behind the bench. It looked like a long afternoon. But Garnett steadily got better. Twenty-five seconds after ‘Sheed went to the sidelines for a breather, Anthony Peeler found him for an alley-oop dunk, his only points of the period. In the second quarter, he added two more buckets and three assists, then went off for nine points, five boards and three more assists in the decisive third quarter. With five minutes left in the game and Wolves up by 19, he fed Wally Szczerbiak in the corner for a trey that secured his tenth assist and fifth triple-double of the year. Call it MVP exhibit #429 or so. Meanwhile, Jackson was erupting for a near double-double—ten points, nine rebounds—in the second half alone. When Kevin McHale traded Dean Garrett for Jackson in the middle of last year, he was an overweight lug, who, after a brief flurry of “I’m outta Golden State!” inspiration, was a pathetically slow, undersized pivot man with a bad attitude that contributed to the team’s locker room funk down the stretch and into the playoffs. This year, he showed up in shape and ready to bang. I was skeptical: Jackson has always been best as a mid-range jump shooter and doesn’t really have the size to defend well down near the basket. Force-feeding him into the back-up center role seemed ill-advised. For the most part, my suspicions have been confirmed, and Wolves fans still must habitually hold their breath, or grit their teeth, when Saunders subs in Jackson and similarly undersized Gary Trent at the same time in close games. But to his credit, Jax has continually been a great communicator on D (even when his body can’t fulfill what his mind and his mouth demand), and has unofficially taken on Tom Hammond’s old role as the team’s enforcer. (As opposed to Trent, who looks a hell of a lot meaner than he plays.) And on Sunday, in the Wolves’ most important game thus far this season, he came up big in more ways than one. Reason number three for the Wolves’ win was their outside shooting, specifically their nailing ten of 19 three-pointers, which combined with their marksmanship against the Lakers, makes them 17 for 32 from trey-ville in their past two contests. To produce points as efficiently inside the arc, the team would have to convert 80 percent of their two-pointers. Even before Sunday’s shooting spree, the Wolves’ ranked sixth in the NBA in three-point accuracy (and near the top since January), yet next-to-last in total three-point attempts. With Szczerbiak, Hudson, Peeler, Gill, and even KG (not to mention Mike Wilks, who bagged two of three treys on Sunday), Minnesota has its best complement of outside shooters in franchise history. It is their best hope of springing a playoff upset against one of the NBA’s four elite teams—San Antonio, Dallas, Sacramento, and the Lakers—should that be the matchup. Right now, of course, it looks like the first-round opponent will be Portland, and the odds are about even-money that the Wolves will have home court advantage. Sunday’s win gives them the fourth-seed tie-breaker with the Blazers, who will have an inferior record versus Western Conference teams even if they beat the Wolves in Portland next month and tie their individual season series at 2-2. Portland is still a half-game ahead—with one less win but two fewer losses than the Wolves—but confronts a tougher schedule down the stretch. It’s unlikely that Joe Smith and Jackson can fill in for Rasho as admirably as they did on Sunday, but the way this team has countered adversity thus far, it is time to begin suspecting they’ll find a way to surmount Portland. Even if Minnesota takes care of business (like winning all four remaining games against also-rans Miami and Memphis, for example) and does secure home court, however, a seven-game series against Portland will be close to a toss-up. It’s worth noting that in their two losses to Wolves thus far, the Blazers have been without Wallace and point guard Scottie Pippen (absent on Sunday), respectively, who are their two most valuable players this year. But for now, Wolves’ fans can savor a “must-win” win, and a legitimate shot at the team’s best finish in history. Notes: * It’s common for NBA observers to underestimate San Antonio as being Tim Duncan and a bunch of shmoes. That’s because team defense is continually overlooked. Against the Wolves, no-name defensive stalwarts Bruce Bowen and Malik Rose did yeoman work guarding Szczerbiak and KG, and, more importantly, were complementary cogs in the league’s best overall team D. Furthermore, with vastly underrated coach Greg Popovich at the controls, the Spurs burned the Wolves’ most effective defense at the other end of the court. Whenever Minnesota would flash out KG or Rasho to challenge a guard on the perimeter, the double-teamed Spur would deliver a bounce pass to a teammate at the foul line, who would then turn and either hit a cutter going to the hoop, or feed the corner for an open jumper. It was immaculate surgery, a heart removal on the hometown Wolves. * Bogus MVP candidate Kobe Bryant spent most of the second half against Minnesota either spreading his hands and hollering for the ball, or becoming a jump-shooting black hole once he received the rock. As good as Kobe plays in the clutch, that’s still toxic chemistry. The Lakers’ playoff fortunes will depend only in part on continued magnificence from Kobe and Shaq, and equally on the ability of wizened playoff winners like Robert Horry, Rick Fox, and Brian Shaw to set aside their resentment of Bryant and step up their game. * Should the Lakers ascend in the standings to the point where they play the Wolves in the playoffs, Rasho, as well as Minnesota’s three-point shooting, will be the X factors. Like the rest of the NBA, Rasho can’t stop Shaq from ringing up points. But at the other end, Rasho’s improved footwork and sweet baby hook shot has enabled him to sink 15 of his past 21 attempts against the Big Aristotle over the past two games. * After sinking a wide-open 17-footer during his two minutes of action on Sunday, Loren Woods blew on his “hot” hand coming down the court. We’ll all miss these classy displays of self-awareness when Loren is summarily booted from the squad at the end of the season.   9:18:44 PM    comment []

	Sunday, March 02, 2003

Saturday Night Quick Hits Spent last Saturday night like the good old days, with a bottle of  Bushmill's and random snatches of my record collection turned up LOUD on my headphones. Here are a few dominant impressions. Fela Kuti, Shuffering and Shmiling/No Agreement, MCA. Which of the dozens of Fela discs should a neophyte reach for? Damned if I know. They all galvanize in pretty much the same way. It's all reliable hypnosis, African voodoo for sturdy souls. Tracks are between 10 and 30 minutes long, begin with a riff that takes a few bars to kick into a canter, then lopes strong and effortless like a horse in a field working out the kinks on its own. It keeps going--trance-inducing like Steve Reich or Terry Riley but Afro-warped into serious funk--adding bits of sweat-foam texture, until the horns cross-cut, big and abrupt, like the public address speaker in a high school, and continue to break in on the canter, so you've got polyrhythms and fanfares, an irresistibly danceable tapesty of sound. Sometimes Fela grabs the mike and tells the rich to fuck off in plenty more than so many words, but that's optional to the overall pleasure of the thing. "Shuffering," a rerelease of a pair of discs from the late 70s, follows that template, and is otherwise of interest due to the presence of late Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpeter Lester Bowie, a majestic clown-shaman who died a few years back, shortly after I'd caught a marvelous gig with him leading another ensemble at St. Catharine's, of all places, in St. Paul. Anyway, Lester is said to have been influential on Fela after their collaboration. Could be, and makes sense. But both didn't need the other to be hot shits worthy of your time. And if you want to tumble into the beguiling, beautiful world of Fela Kuti, originator of "Afrobeat," this is as good a portal as any. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, A Night In Tunisia, Bluebird. Raw hard bop. When you hear this disc, all three of those words fight for italics. Bluebird shrewdly spins the marketing in the direction of collectors: "The only album ever recorded by the legendary drummer's first sextet..." But you should buy it (easy for me to say, on the music-promo gravy train, my mailman a Santa most every day) because this is jazz that's in your face, utterly of the moment 46 years ago, shortly after Bird and Dizzy had forced the bebop revolution on jazz and cats like Blakey were already coursing whitecaps on that new river, using the energy of swing jazz on bop changes, pushing relentlessly enough to create a subgenre inevitably called hard bop. The lineup here is notable for the saxophone tandem of Johnny Griffin and Jackie McLean (who was credited as "Ferris Benda" because he was under contract to Prestige), and each pulls colored strings of handkerchiefs out of their ass when they solo, but it's still Blakey who dominates. You want this album because of the two takes, both over twelve minutes, of "A Night In Tunisia." Dizzy's Latin-bebop gem had not yet become a jazz standard, but Blakey was clearly in love with the tune--he recorded six versions between 1954 and 1960--and these two takes are balls-to-the-wall bashing that documents what can happen when a drumming dynamo in his prime--Blakey was 38 in 1957--decides to stow inhibitions in his watch-pocket and simply call upon the lightning gods to help him wail the tar out of his Gretsch kit. Other band members initially join in on various percussion, adding to the beat deluge, but they're just tinsel to Blakey's angel at the top of the tree. Multiple "mistakes" are made, here and on other tracks, but perfection was obviously of no concern. These versions of "A Night In Tunisia" are break an egg into your beer and chug it after a shot of whiskey style of bebop. And from time to time, even the most sober among us can use a little of that. Missy Elliott, Under Construction, Elektra. God Bless Missy Elliott. It took me a long time to warm to her. As much as I dug her first three discs, it felt like Timbaland was doing all the work, an impression strengthened by a series of lackluster records on acts where Missy provided the A&R or production. Timbaland and The Neptunes have learned to save their best beats for Missy--and they are the hottest producers in the R&B/hip hop game right now--but "Under Construction" is Missy maturing into her own skin, and consequently becoming enough of a force in her own right to justify headline status over the killer beats. But that all sounds like crit-speak. What I mean to say is that Missy ratifies her heart this time out, credibly imploring folks not to let career-enhancing beef devolve into senseless murder as it did with Tupac and Biggie, and slinging attitude both on "Pussycat" and on the intro to the next track that explains why "Pussycat" is a feminist joint in gender-servile drag. "Work It" was appropriately the song of 2002--I urge the uninitiated to dance to it and see if it doesn't coax you into saucy-suave fantasy land--as much for Missy's command and triumphantly pelvic flow as for the beats, which deserve to bring the word "phat" out of anachronism. Put simply, I didn't buy Missy's goodtime mama schtick before and I do now. Whether that's growth from me or Missy is debatable. That "Under Construction" prods the booty and the brain at the same time is not. In closing, kudos to writer Michaelangelo Matos, a huge Fela Kuti fan who probably could tell you which three CDs to start with on the catalog, and who also big-upped Missy's new CD in City Pages, prompting me to pull it out of the pile again on Saturday night. 5:52:08 PM    comment []

	Friday, February 28, 2003

Mr. Rogers' Legacy My son Mingus may be the greatest Fred Rogers fan of all time. During the heat of his most addictive phase about 10 years ago, we restricted him to two Mr. Rogers episodes per day (he had taped about 200) because he would get angry at us not answering his questions in accordance with the text of the show. So, after viewing his two shows, he'd spend most of the rest of his free time mumbling quietly to himself, recreating verbatim the episodes he wanted to watch that were being denied to him. His wardrobe at the time was heavy on button-up sweaters and a huge impetus for him learning to tie his shoes--not an easy thing for him--was Mr. Rogers' daily example. Mingus was subdued when he came home yesterday afternoon, having heard the news from his 9th grade English teacher. He spent most of dinner in a lather about the dilemma he would face today in school, knowing that he needed to talk about his fallen hero, and anticipating the teasing that will inevitably ensue. His reading of the morning paper is usually confined to announcing the highs and lows of the weather, plus meteorologist Paul Douglas's pithy paragraph. But today, despite eyesight that makes gleaning the Strib's print very difficult, he plowed through a recitation of the entire Neal Justin story, and caught a little bit of the Nightline show about Rogers that we taped for him last night. Anyone who knows my son is captivated by his exceedingly gentle nature, generous temperament, and utterly guileless personability. Fred Rogers played a vital role in the formation of those traits. May he rest, as he lived, in peace.   5:18:35 PM    comment []

	Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Personal Pazz & Jop 2002   The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll came out today, prompting me to finally get off my ass and come up with my comprehensive list of favorite discs for the past year. The P&J is a completely incestuous affair, in which a majority of the nation’s self-regarded experts (yup, me included) try to pontificate in such a clever, inside-smartass shorthand that our brethren will marvel and rue in envy such compelling prose while the rest of the nation, a few die-hard music geeks aside, will collectively exclaim, “Whaaa?” I was a P&J star one year, sometime back in the mid-90s, with six or seven pithy phrases cited in their comment-roundup, most of which I’d dashed off in less than 45 minutes between writing assignments. In subsequent years, I labored mightily to duplicate my showing, only to be “rewarded” with at best one or two mentions. The couple of years, I’ve merely shipped in my ballot, sans comments, knowing that my cleverness factor has passed its pop-cultural moment. But that doesn’t mean I don’t devour the comments section and, worse yet, understand most every word uttered. This year, City Pages current stable of music scribes is well-represented by Melissa Maerz and Peter Scholtes, and our music section alumni puts in better showing than any other paper can boast, with Will Hermes, Keith Harris, Laura Sinagra, Michelangelo Matos, and most especially Jon Dolan, king of the P&J riff, offering up their wisdom. Congrats to all, and god help you. If any of you care (and Allah help you too), my following list does not exactly correspond with either my P&J ballot or the one submitted here at City Pages. In the former case, it is mostly because I don’t include my jazz picks for the Voice poll, which, despite its name, is skewed by writers who never give jazz a chance. In the latter case, it is simply a matter of me semi-changing my mind about the order of things. For that matter, this list could honesty change every day from here to eternity. Consider the order here to be a mild satisfying of my anal need to render judgments, and not a hard and fast preference. On the other hand, something in my top ten is indeed something I’ve enjoyed more than a disc down in the forties or fifties. Suffice to say, all these CDs are worth owning and listening to.   1)     The Roots, Phrenology 2)     Scarface, The Fix 3)     Tift Merritt, Bramble Rose 4)     Ruben Blades, Mundo 5)     Hugh Ragin, Feel The Sunshine 6)     The Tragically Hip, In Violet Light 7)     Cee-Lo, Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections 8)     Dave Holland Big Band, What Goes Around 9)     Badly Drawn Boy, About A Boy soundtrack 10) The Streetz, Original Pirate Material 11) Jason Moran, Modernistic 12) Joi, Star Kitty’s Revenge 13) Nappy Roots, Watermelon, Chicken and Gritz 14) The Donnas, Spend the Night 15) Various Artists, Red, Hot + Riot 16) Eric Alexander, Summit Meeting 17) Craig David, Slicker Than Your Average 18) Steve Earle, Jerusalem 19) Nas, God’s Son 20) Various Artists, Soundbombing III 21) Tori Amos, Scarlet’s Walk 22) Andrew Hill, A Beautiful Day 23) Avril Lavigne, Let Go 24) Lauryn Hill, MTV Unplugged 2.0 25) Bruce Springsteen, The Rising 26) Roy Haynes’ Birds of a Feather: A Tribute to Charlie Parker 27) Eels, Souljacker 28) Salif Keita, Moffou 29) Lil Wayne, 500 Degrees 30) Kinky, Kinky 31) Joe Lovano, Viva Caruso 32) George Brooks, Summit 33) Eliades Ochoa, Estoy Como Nunca 34) Sleater-Kinney, One Beat 35) Orchestra Baobab, Specialist In All Styles 36) Fred Hersch Trio, Live at the Village Vanguard 37) Patricia Barber, Verse 38) Missy Elliott, Under Construction 39) Sean Paul, Dutty Rock 40) Something Corporate, Leaving Through The Window 41) Coldplay, A Rush of Blood To the Head 42) Jorma Kaukonen, Blue Country Heart 43) Various Artists, Brown Sugar soundtrack 44) The Blind Boys of Alabama, Higher Ground 45) Jaguar Wright, Denials, Delusions & Decisions 46) Greg Brown, Milk of the Moon 47) Anouar Brahem, Le Pas Du Chat Noir 48) Boyz II Men, Full Circle 49) Elvis Costello, When I Was Cruel 50) Joe Zawinul, Faces and Places 51) Wayne Shorter, Footprints Live 52) Bryan Ferry, Frantic 53) Bob Mould, Modulations 54) For Against, Coalesced 55) Citizen Cope, Citizen Cope 56) Ron Carter, Stardust 6:56:51 PM    comment []

	Monday, February 10, 2003

Grumpy Old Men: A defense of the modern NBA and the Majesty of KG   Star Tribune sports columnist Dan Barreiro is a master of the diatribe, a spewer of bile of the first order. Consequently, I was somewhat disheartened to discover that his “the NBA ain’t what it used to be” feature on the front page of Sunday’s sports section was a decidedly lukewarm effort among his pantheon of screeds. Clearly, Dirty Dan’s soul wasn’t in it, either because his self-professed “complacency” toward pro basketball has quickly devolved into outright apathy, or because he doesn’t totally buy his own argument. I prefer the latter interpretation, mostly because I think that, despite his dispostion, Barreiro is an astute roundball observer. On that basis, here is a rebuttal to his Grumpy Old Man take on the NBA. Barreiro’s lack of imagination is evidenced by his use of Derek Coleman—a favorite whipping boy of GOM—as lead example of what is wrong with the game. I’ll grant that DC has pissed away much of his vast potential, but argue that all sports contain notorious underachievers—it’s an ongoing fact of life, not a sign of the apocalypse. Pro football has never been more commercially healthy and competitive, yet has there been a bigger dog among athletes over the past decade than Ryan Leaf? And as for Barreiro’s lament that NBA players often joke and fraternize with each other as soon as the game is over, well, when was the last time that didn’t happen after an NFL contest? The people Barreiro cites to support his position include Bill Blair and Quinn Buckner, two coaches who failed miserably because they weren’t flexible or accomplished enough to get players to buy into their methods; Vern Mikkelsen, a GOOOM—a Grumpy Old Old Old Man—who says money is a corrupting influence when you know if the bucks had been around when he was playing he would have snatched them; Jack Ramsey, another guy long past age 70; and Trent Tucker, who has big-upped many of the players, including Stephon Marbury, that Ramsey criticizes. Barreiro criticizes Allen Iverson for his lackadaisical attitude toward practice, neglecting to mention that teams—especially ones run by Iverson’s coach, Larry Brown--practice harder and absorb far more information than their predecessors did between games, and work much harder to stay in shape during the  off-season. (And perhaps Barreiro forgets that Michael Jordan, one of his heroes, occasionally was given practices off during his prime.) After complaining that players don’t care enough about winning and losing, he rips the antics of Ron Artest and Rasheed Wallace, two players who with extraordinary passion and competitive zeal, whose problems with anger management obviously stem from an unbalanced need to win. Barreiro claims that the ongoing effectiveness of Stockton and Malone is proof that the league has slackened its fundamentals. Well, when Stockton and Malone were in their prime, they made it to the NBA finals. Now, even with the leading candidate for Most Improved Player, Matt Harping, they are fighting merely to make the playoffs. If you’re comparing fundamental basketball and NBA history, cue up some reels from the 60s and 70s, when the primary play in pro hoops was someone coming down the floor and chucking up a shot: It wasn’t uncommon for a team’s leading rebounder to average 20 boards a game. Total shots are way down in the modern NBA because more set plays are run, complicated set plays as well as fundamental plays like the pick and roll. And defense is much better in the modern NBA. The Celtics won something like ten championships in 11 years back in the 60s primarily because they were one of the few teams in the league to emphasize defense. Today, the players are bigger, stronger, and more athletic and they concentrate on defense more than before. Hell, watch tapes of the NBA during its so-called “golden era” with Bird and Magic and see how soft it was, how little overt physicality there was compared to today. This is not an argument that today’s game is “better” than it was before, just that the game is constantly evolving, for better and worse, and that things are simply much different than 20 or 30 years ago. Ramsey rips the ability of modern guards such as Iveson, Marbury, and Steve Francis to create their own shot, which he claims forces their teammates to stand around and wait. I’d argue that roles have become less defined, and that your quality passers are as likely to be forwards and centers—Shaq, Yao Ming, Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Kevin Garnett, and so on—setting up shots out on the perimeter, where the implementation of the 3-pointer has altered offensive strategies. Today’s winning teams—Dallas, the Lakers, New Jersey, Sacramento, etc.—are all renowned for their ball movement, which is as good or better than the teams of yore. If you want to cite somebody who slowed down the game and made his teammates wait, look at another Barreiro favorite, Charles Barkley, whose interminable, stand-in-place dribbling in the low post helped initiate the move to zone defenses and a shorter shot clock for half-court possessions. In conclusion, what we have here is the latest of endless examples of the Grumpy Old Man syndrome, satirized by Dana Carvey on SNL. (“In my day, we used to walk home from school barefoot on broken glass…and we loved it!”) Let’s wrap this up with some deliberate provocation. I grew up with the Boston Celtics, and have been a lifelong fan of the franchise, through Cousy, Russell, Havlicek, Jo Jo White and Bird. (I draw the line at Antoine Walker, the example Barreiro should have cited for his story.) It is my no-bullshit belief that Kevin Garnett, on the basis of this year’s play, is operating at a higher level than the fabled Larry Bird in his prime. Imagine Bird and KG going head-to-head. Figure out where Bird has the advantage with KG guarding him, and vice versa. Ask yourself how many rings Garnett would have if his teammates were Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, Dennis Johnson, and Danny Ainge; and how many playoff series the Wolves would have won with Bird playing alongside Szczerbiak, Brandon, and the rest of KG’s revolving cast of teammates. In a future blog or Hang Time column, I’ll vent my displeasure over the commercially-driven hype accorded Yao Ming, or the tunnel-vision fans have toward scorers such as Tracy McGrady compared to all-around superstars like KG. But for now, I’ll just cite a recent email from the Timberwolves’ stat guy, Paul Swanson, who took the Wolves’ plus-minus point totals (vis a vis their opponents) with Garnett on the floor and off the floor so far this season, then extrapolated those totals over a 48-minute game, averaged it into total team points for and against, and arrived at wins and losses over an 82-game NBA season. It sounds very complicated, I know, but I think Paul’s email lays it out pretty well, and shows why anyone who doesn’t think KG is the league’s MVP this year is either stupid or crazy..   An update on Kevin Garnett's 2002-03 plus/minus at the All Star Break:  On the floor (1991 minutes): 4089-3877 (+212)    Per 48 minutes: 98.6-93.5 / Exp. record: 58-24 On the bench (376 minutes): 657-813 (-156)    Per 48 minutes: 83.9-103.8 / Exp. record: 2-80 Difference: +14.7 offensively, +10.3 defensively (+25.0 total)        P.S. He was also +15 in Sunday's 10-point All-Star Game win...   5:17:05 PM    comment []

	Monday, February 03, 2003

Hero Worship Chalk me up not only as a heartless cad, but as someone who hangs around with unfeeling ingrates. In casual conversations with people over the last couple of days, I have tentatively let it slip that I am surprised and increasingly annoyed at the wall-to-wall hero worship that the media has given vis a vis the Columbia disaster. I guess I am also surprised that people have almost unanimously agreed with my callous attitude.  That seven people from NASA were killed in an unfortunate accident is clearly news, and deserving of page-one, top-story coverage, at least for a 24-hour period. But the breathless depth, breadth, and length of time given over to this story feels like overkill--pun intended. Yes, this was a tragic event. But what is the greater resonance here? Why are these peoples' lives worth more, in a media sense, than, say, the U.S. soldiers who have blown themselves up in military hardware over in Afghanistan, or the people who were killed last week in that chemical explosion in North Carolina? If it were to call into question our commitment to NASA and space exploration, then why has there been of chorus of support for NASA, from President Bush down through the families of the deceased who have chosen to go public with their feelings? Why do the media want us to wallow in the intimate details of lives that nobody would know or care about had they made it back to earth safely? There is some weird, patriotic vibe at work here that I don't trust. It is almost like the nation--and the backslapping, pro-government media--is having a dry run of grief in anticipation for the heroes who will lose their lives in Iraq in the next few months. 1:07:46 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Britt Robson. Last update: 4/9/03; 3:44:19 PM.