---

Any Given Sunday

---

Some observations from Super Bowl Sunday...
yes, of course i know it's late.

Early in the day Fox broadcast "Howie Long's Tough Guys" wherein Howie Long decides who the "toughest" players are in the NFL. Naturally, they taped Howie's stand-ups at various military bases around the country, with Howie basking in the unassailable toughness of the marines, navy etc.
Both in and out of every break they featured a nostalgaic inteview with people affilliated with the NFL who served in the military. When they ran out of NFL vets, they interviewed regular military. One marine said, "Being a marine means standing up for what is right, even if it is unpopular," which everyone knows doesn't get you anywhere. Just ask this marine.
While Ari Fleischer may insist that the president has not made a decision on war, it seems that Fox has. Also, one can take the military/sports metaphor too far. If some players were killed in the Super Bowl and also a few hundred fans, then you would have a closer comparison.

Celine Dion, a canadian, singing God Bless America; very unAmerican. Troyal said, "Maybe she's singing God Bless NAFTA."
(btw, props to Urban Therapy for their "First Annual Super Bowl Partay." It's always nice to attend UT events, especially since, as everyone knows, i don't have friends of my own.)

The ads by the Office of National Drug Control Policy...ya!
One had the tagline "Drug money supports terrible things," well hell, so does tax money, QED.

---

The World is a Ghetto

---

Somehow, let's not go into details, i ended up watching Joe Millionaire on Monday. One of the contestants when asked what she would do if she inherited millions of dollars replied that she would "go to third world countries and bathe their children" because she is a "mercenary kind of person."

Did she mean that she would go to the third world as a mercenary and "bathe" their children in blood?
Has Fox been recruiting at the School of the Americas?
To be fair, it's now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

---

The Phantom Menace

---

I've been hearing, in the media, people talk about the role of U.S. power in the post-Cold War world. I've even heard the word "empire" mentioned on more than one occasion. This is an important discussion to have.
Jerome McDonnell of Chicago Public Radio's Worldview, discussing the Bush administrations efforts to put weapons in space, asked one of his guests, "Is there kind of an empire-ry thing going on in space?"

i know i should put some sort of punchline here, but i can't find one.

---

I Am Music

---

For absolutely no rational purpose whatsoever, as far as i can discern, i began to compile a "Top Ten Albums of 2002" list, when i realized that i haven't heard some of the likely candidates for such a list. So, considering that i have yet to evaluate 2002 recordings from Beck, Patricia Barber, Blind Boys of Alabama, Sigur Ros and others, here is the list of ten as it is at present:

1. Wilco
   Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
   


2. Common
   Electric Circus
   


3. Flaming Lips
   Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
   


4. Neko Case
   Blacklisted
   


5. The Roots
   Phrenology
   


6. Peter Gabriel
   Up
   


7. Ely Guerra
   Lotofire
   


8. Queens of the Stone Age
   Songs for the Deaf
   


9. Steve Earle
   Jerusalem
   


10. Brad Mehldau
    Largo
    

Some of these links may be sketchy. Do people still say sketchy?
Anyway, tell me your favorites or criticize mine. The list is evolving.

---

A Theory of Justice

---

Whenever i take the Metra downtown and the U of C types board at 59th St., (students or academics, or maybe hyde park residents) they are not unlikely to be well dressed. Perhaps, i have concluded, the best dressed college students in the area, although this of course is only an anecdotal sample.
Two such young women were seated in front of me and my interest in their conversation was piqued when i heard the phrase "moral authority." They were discussing, i believe, an ethics class and one posited to the other the following moral dilemma raised in class:

"What if a terrorist planted a bomb that would kill 1,000 people and was in custody but would not, under any circumstances tell where the bomb was located. However, you know that if you subjected the man's eight year old son to torture, the man would provide the information needed to find and disarm the bomb."
So, what would you do?

---

The Hands That Built America

---

I went to see Gangs of New York, which i was excited to see having read the book "How the Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev, which got me interested in Irish immigration and it's impact on American society.
On thursday in my useless Business class, (actually the course title is "Git you some Bid'ness") the instructor, while reading a passage about a successful Asian immigrant entrepreneur, editorialized various "These people in your country..." comments; not altogether a dissimiliar sentiment from that of "Bill the Butcher" in Gangs. So have we learned any lessons from the turbulent past?
This link is to a January 21 Financial Times article entitled: "Lessons from the last war on terror" about the demonizing of immigrants in the early 20th century leading to the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. But, i see the article is archived for subscribers now. So if you are an FT subscriber or would like to become one...