Non-apology apologies

Pet peeve time - sorry for going into Andy Rooney mode, but I wanted to warn you up front, in case you want to find something more edifying. Otherwise, stay tuned for a rant.

To my mind, one of the most useless things in the world is the non-apology apology. You know what I'm talking about - someone says or does something that is offensive, the person offended complains, and the offender says something like this:

"I'm sorry if you're offended by that."

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what the hell does that really mean? There's no regret for the offense; in fact, it's really a second insult couched in terms of an apology. The hidden message is this - well, dummy, you shouldn't have been offended by that, but since you're such a baby about it, I guess I'll put it back on you. You're not really entitled to your feelings, anyway.

I've been thinking about this in the context of two recent events: the controversy surrounding the MoveOn.org ad that referred to Gen. David Petraeus as "General Betray Us"; and the ginned up controversy about Rush Limbaugh allegedly calling soldiers who complain about war policy as "phony soldiers."

First, the Petraeus thing. In my view, MoveOn stepped in it by running this ad. It was intellectually shoddy at best, dishonest at worst, and clearly an insult. But having said that, it was also free speech. Immediately the calls went out for MoveOn to apologize for the ad. As of this writing, I don't think they have apologized. Any apology they would have offered would have been of the non-apology apology type anyway, so I'm glad that as of this writing they have not apologized for attacking Petraeus.

The ad clearly hurt MoveOn and its portsider allies. They received all manner of denunciations, including an official one from Congress. This was silly, of course, but it was instructive. It showed that the current Congress is a lot more interested in style points than in substance and the ad itself revealed the contempt that MoveOn has for the military. All in all, this bonfire of recriminations was perfect. And the Left was hurt by it.

Enter Limbaugh. During the course of his show last week, a caller brought up the case of Jesse McBeth, a soldier who had been drummed out of the army in basic training. McBeth had become a cause celebre on the Left because he had made a series of lurid (and false) charges about actions that soldiers had taken in the war. These charges were repeated and amplified in the news media for days before the truth came out. In discussing this matter, and a number of similar incidents, Limbaugh referred to "phony soldiers." Media Matters, which is a sister organization to MoveOn.org (both are supported by George Soros, among other things) immediately started beating the drums and claiming that Limbaugh had insulted the troops, especially those who had served yet did not support the war. Suddenly Limbaugh was on the defensive and was facing demands from the likes of Harry Reid that he apologize for his "slur" of the troops.

Limbaugh did not apologize, of course. His quote was deliberately taken out of context and used against him. Despite that, plenty of politicians jumped on the bandwagon, including Norm Coleman, who is currently in a tight re-election campaign against the highly silly Al Franken.

I am happy that, in both instances, apologies were not forthcoming. In my mind, Limbaugh has nothing to apologize for - he clearly didn't say what Media Matters claimed he'd said. As for MoveOn, there is no doubt their message wasn't garbled - they paid for the ad in question. But in both cases, the views expressed were worth hearing.

Here's the thing about free speech - we are free to speak our minds in this country. But that doesn't mean we get a free shot; by that, I mean that a dumb or mendacious statement can backfire on you. And it should. You get in the arena - you have to expect that you're going to take some shots. Our political discourse and our political culture would be better if we stopped looking for apologies and, more importantly, stopped accepting non-apology apologies. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Here's the irony - the two politicians in this country who actually say what they mean and mean what they say the most often are probably George W. Bush and Dick Cheney - especially Cheney.

There. I said it. And I meant it. And if you're offended, no apologies.

Blue and orange blues

After an exciting and ultimately enjoyable weekend of football, Cheesehead Nation is faced with the specter of something truly ugly. Something known for corruption, venality and evil. Something that calls for a thorough horsewhipping and probably some disinfectant wipes.

That's right - it's an Illinois double-feature.

Badgers vs. Illini
Packers vs. Bears

It's sometimes difficult for Minnesotans to understand, especially Vikings fans who consider the Packers their fiercest, most hated rival. But it needs to be said - Wisconsinites harbor their greatest enmity for the precincts to the south. For Illinois.

You will get arguments among Badger fans about the school they hate the most. The longest, most traditional rivalry is with the University of Minnesota, but the Golden Rodents have been rebuilding for most of my lifetime and, generally, the Badgers have owned them since Barry Alvarez came to Madison. Some people hate Michigan or Ohio State the most, but everyone hates those schools, so there's nothing particularly special about the rivalries. Then there is the University of Illinois. The Illini are a schizophrenic amalgam of ag school hickishness and Chicago Alderman chicanery. No school has been caught cheating more often than the Illini. They have employed rogues like Mike White and Lou (Shingle Head) Henson. The Illini have been up and down, and mostly down, for a while, but under new coach Ron Zook they look like they are coming back. And the Badgers, now ranked #5 in the land, are going down to lovely Champaign with a huge target on their backs. For me, a non-alum but longtime follower of the Badgers, my personal opinion is that beating Illinois is hugely enjoyable. As the parody version of the Illinois fight song goes:

You're out of the race, Illinois
We spit on your face, Illinois

Feel the love. Then there's this beauty:

Q. What do you call a dead pig on a tractor?
A. The University of Illinois homecoming parade.

Ah, but the hatred gets turned up a notch the next day.

The Packers have been playing the Bears (a/k/a Team Satan) since the dawn of the National Football League. This rivalry has been filled with insult, injury and chest-thumping for over 80 years now. George Halas was a giant, no doubt about it, but his Bears have been villains since the league began. The Monsters of the Midway (a name stolen from the University of Chicago, by the way). There are many enduring images of the Bears, including a snarling Dick Butkus, the impossibly graceful Gale Sayers, the indomitable Walter Payton and the google-eyed Mike Singletary. Oh, the players. Meanwhile, we've sent the Alabama Antelope (Don Hutson), the Golden Boy (Paul Hornung), the Good Soldier (Bart Starr) and Ol' Number 4 (Brett Favre) into battle. So much fun. So much hatred. And so much history. With the Packers coming into the game 4-0 and the Bears suffering through a disappointing start, this one has the makings of a real war.

And now that the Brewers/Cubs rivalry is heating up, it could be open war in places like Kenosha and Waukegan, Beloit and South Beloit, Dickeyville and Galena. The jawing starts here!

Ping ping PING

Apparently that means Sheriff Richochet Rabbit is in town, or I've turned the blog over to a golf manufacturer, or the bullets are flying again.

• Things are changing at the ol' Star Tribune. Shortly on the heels of the forced departure of Publisher Par Ridder, the great minds on Portland Avenue have forced out editorial page chief Susan Albright and moved the eternally useless ombudsman Kate Parry off to the "health" beat. Don't know if these changes mean that the Star Tribune editorial page, which has been as useful and pleasant as 55-gallon drum of duck vomit on most issues, will start to regain a little sanity. Probably not. But we can always hope that maybe, just maybe, the level of ignorant snark will start to come down a bit. After all, we'll give you ignorant snark right here and we don't charge you a thing! And I don't employ Sid Hartman either.
• My beloved Brewers aren't looking too good, following an embarrassing 9-5 loss to the Padres. The Cubs have been trying really hard to give away the pennant, but the Brewers do not appear to have the wit to take it. I hope that the Brewers can secure a few more reliable pitchers for next season, because they look like they're on their way otherwise. On the bright side, at least I'm not a Mets fan.
• We've been watching parts of Ken Burns's latest saga "The War," on PBS this week. As with all Ken Burns productions, it's very good, although it's a bit much for the kids at times, especially with all the corpses. It's somewhat amusing to see how such things get interpreted by my daughter. She was asking my wife about her 2nd grade teacher, whose surname is Opheim, which is a good Scandanavian name, I believe. My daughter had assumed he was Irish, since she knows various O'Briens and O'Doughertys and came to the conclusion that since her teacher's name starts with an O, he must be Irish too. My wife suggested that his name might be German. My daughter then said, horrified, "Oh No! That means he's from Hitler!" I believe my wife was able to set my daughter straight, otherwise it may make for an interesting conversation in the class next time.
• Even though "The War" is heavy going, it's a lot better than most of what's on television these days. Have you watched Cartoon Network recently? My goodness, it makes my eyes hurt. Some of the cartoons we used to watch when we were kids were pretty crudely drawn, of course - no one will ever say that "Clutch Cargo" or "Underdog" were exactly the pinnacle of the art form. I tell you, though, watching an episode of "Ed Edd and Eddie" is like having an allergic reaction.
• Savoir Faire is everywhere!
• Okay, cheesehead readers, here's one for you. Remember Biggie Rat? It was the best scary story going on the St. Therese playground back in the early 70s. Whatever happened to that?

Fearless Dilettante Football Predictions - Recriminations Version

Another week, more fun. Here we go:

Xavier Hawks 34, Fox Valley Lutheran Foxes 21 - it's the grudge match, the holy war, against the cross-town rivals. Since FVL is a WELS school, they tend to bring a fair amount of, shall we say, fervor to these games against my beloved representatives of the papist menace. But they won't win against the mighty Hawks.

ACTUAL RESULT - XAVIER 42, FVL 14. So much for the Lutherans.

Lake Forest Foresters 9, Beloit Bucs 2 - Another week, another weak sister for the Bucs. Problem is, the Bucs are weaker. Hope I'm wrong about this.

ACTUAL RESULT - LAKE FOREST 44, BELOIT 36 Beloit looks ahead and sees a 9, as in 0-9. Sigh.

Wisconsin Badgers 34, Michigan State Spartans 31 - after a two year hiatus, the Badgers get another look at the immortal Jehuu Caulcrick. Sparty is always hard to gauge, since they usually have talent but are almost always erratic. Bucky gets the nod on the Camp Randall turf.

ACTUAL RESULT - WISCONSIN 37, MICHIGAN STATE 34 That turned out to be a pretty good pick. The Badgers have work to do - the defense got gashed repeatedly. I think Sparty will end up having a pretty good year. The next two weeks (at Illinois, at Penn State) will really tell the tale.

Green Bay Packers 17, Minnesota Vikings 10 - I know, I know, the Metrodome has been the house of horrors over the years for ol' number 4. But I don't see how the Vikings will be able to score much under the leadership of the feared Kelly Holcomb. And no, Darren Sharper, Favre will not break the interception record this week. He very well might break the touchdown record, though, probably on a slant pattern to Driver. You know, the one where you get there late and miss him and watch his heels for about 40 yards. Yep, that one.

ACTUAL RESULT - PACKERS 23, VIKINGS 16 Okay, so it was Greg Jennings. Same difference. An excellent win. Here's a question: for all the words written about Favre's supposed futility in the Metrodome, do you suppose any other NFL quarterback has beaten the Vikings in Minnesota on six different occasions? I doubt it.

High school bonus picks:

Mounds View Mustangs 34, Park of Cottage Grove Wolfpack 20 - Park is improved, it appears, but they aren't usually a factor in the rugged Suburban East. Mounds View is. The tough games are coming, though.

ACTUAL RESULT - PARK 21, MOUNDS VIEW 14 Park played a nice game.

Irondale Knights 35, St. Louis Park Orioles 7 - Irondale has improved a lot this season. St. Louis Park, not so much.

ACTUAL RESULT - IRONDALE 56, ST. LOUIS PARK 7. The fun stops this week - Irondale has a tough one against Benilde-St. Margaret. If they can beat Benilde, they could have a special year (and might be the #1 seed in their section).

Mahmoud Ring

I've really been trying to stay away from the recent contretemps surrounding the visit of the odious Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to New York, especially the silly Kabuki theater that was presented at Columbia University, the once proud home of such intellectual giants as Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling, now reduced to a geopolitical version of the Jerry Springer show.

Given everything that the Iranian government has done - the hostage crisis, bankrolling Hezbollah, threatening to wipe Israel from the face of the earth - it is amazing that anyone could, with a straight face, support the regime. But sure enough, people do. I've been doing a little jousting on the subject over at "The Big Question" again and I have learned remarkable things. Apparently, based on the earnest pleadings of the bien pensants over there, Iran has been undergoing a regular Prague Spring and that free speech is in flower, including protests against the malodorous Ahmedinejad. Why, if we would simply leave the Iranians alone, there would be the flowering of freedom there. Really, it's true.

Because I've been, shall we say, a smidge skeptical of some of these claims, I've been labeled "deliberately obtuse." Now that's a badge of honor - I sincerely hope that I'm never able to make enough distinctions that I would be willing to somehow excuse a government that routinely terrorizes its people and whose titlular head claims, with a straight face (pun intended), that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

I don't remember who said it, it may have been Orwell, but the quote that comes to mind is this - there are some ideas that are so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them.

Hate Crimes on Waveland Avenue

As readers of this feature may know, this blog recently joined the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (a/k/a the MOB). There are something like 100 blogs that are members and they span the spectrum of blogging. One blog I like to read is the Northern Alliance Wannabe (www.northernalliancewannabe.blogspot.com), which is hosted by a guy who happens to be a Cubs fan. The Cubs have been, to put it mildly, a bone of contention on this blog, which tends to be a bastion of Brewerdom. To make a long story short, the Wannabe linked to this blog and called one of my earlier Cub-bashing posts a "hate crime." While I suspect the Wannabe's tongue may have been pretty firmly lodged in his cheek, that sort of rhetoric practically begs for a response, no?

My particular cri de couer against the Wrigleyites stems from their long-standing charade as lovable loser underdogs. There is no question that the Cubs have been losers for a long time; they last won a World Series in 1908. There is also no question that they have been, at times, somewhat lovable. My father, God rest his soul, was a lifelong Cub fan, as were many people who came of age in Wisconsin prior to the arrival of the Braves (and later Brewers). I have strong memories of watching the Cubs on WGN back in the 1970s, when the Cubs featured the likes of Manny Trillo, Larry Biittner (not a typo, that's how it's spelled), Ivan de Jesus, Barry Foote and other such dubious luminaries. It seemed like every other game you'd see portly righthander Rick Reuschel on the mound, throwing his precise sinkers to various Pirates and Phillies and Cardinals. And accompanying the visuals would be the dulcet tones of Jack "Hey Hey" Brickhouse, with the high pitched yelpings of Lou Boudreau through the middle innings. The Cubs of that era weren't very good, but they were generally entertaining.

We are a long time removed from those days. The Chicago Tribune bought out the Wrigley family in the early 1980s and the Cubs went from being a mom and pop operation to part of a well-oiled corporate machine. The talent level improved and the Cubs began to feature some really good players, like Ryne Sandberg, Rick Sutcliffe, Andre Dawson, Mark Grace, Greg Maddux and Sammy Sosa. Money was never the issue; the Cubs were able to afford talent in ways that my beloved Brewers or teams like the Twins and Royals never could. But they didn't win anyway. The Cubs got really close in 2003, but have scuffled ever since.

This year it looks like they will win. They went out and bought the best free agent on the market, Alfonso Soriano, and they also brought on a number of other high-buck players. The lovable Cubs behaved more like the Yankees. And it looks now like this approach will at least get them into the playoffs.

So be it - I don't dispute that there are a lot of Cubs fans who have suffered their entire lifetimes, waiting for a chance to see a championship. It had to be especially galling for these folks to watch the downmarket White Sox win it all in 2005. Having spent five years in Chicago, I recognize the animosity between the North Side and the South Side. I used to eat at the Billy Goat at least once a month, so I know well the legendary curse. And, after watching the most insufferable of fans, the odious Red Sox Nation, celebrate a championship as well, Cubs fans have to be even more galled by it all. Perhaps this will be the year.

Enjoy it, Cubs fans. Just watch your back. The Brewers aren't going away. And for the first time in a long time, the eternal cry of "Wait until next year" has meaning in Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin.

A little gushing about my Packers

When I first looked at the schedule, I was worried that my beloved Green Bay Packers would start out 0-3 and would be limping into the Metrodome. Guess not, huh? The Packers won their third game in a row to start this campaign with a convincing 31-24 victory over AFC power San Diego yesterday at Lambeau. This is good stuff for a number of reasons:

• It looks like the Packers, even though they are playing well, have room to improve. They still haven't figured out how to run the ball effectively, but they are finding ways to score. Brett Favre is playing under better control now than he has perhaps in his entire career. He had a fantastic game yesterday, getting a number of receivers involved.
• After the renovation of Lambeau was completed in 2002, the Packers have not defended their home turf very well. Teams were not especially worried about playing in Green Bay, especially AFC teams. The Patriots and the Jets came into Lambeau last year and absolutely wiped the turf with the Packers. Things appear to have changed.
• There's no reason to believe the Bears are better than the Packers right now. While the Bears still have a tremendous defense, they are an absolute mess on the other side of the ball. Rex Grossman ought to be made an honorary Packer, given the way he's been sabotaging the efforts of the ursine wretches of McFetridge Drive.
• The Lions may be improved, but the Iggles just hung 56 on them. The Lions haven't played adequate defense since Alex Karras left. Where have you gone, Lem Barney, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
• As for our local fellas - I don't know about you, but I can't tell you how disappointed I am that the Packers never had a chance to interview Brad Childress. The Vikes are vanilla and not that talented - a bad combination. It used to be that the Vikings could plug in just about anyone at the quarterback position and they would still win. Not any more. I don't think the Packer defense is especially worried about Kelly Holcomb, Tarvaris Jackson or Brooks Bollinger.
• Since my boys are coming to town this weekend, the jawing will begin. Although the way the Vikes are playing right now, the typical stance of most Vikings fans will be something like "oh, I don't really like the Vikings that much anyway." Some will looking to see if they still have any greenish, mid-90s gear around. A lot of that sort of thing sold up here back then.

Kill the umpire/Talk to Mr. Ed

After a tough weekend in Atlanta, it appears that the Brewers are going to fall short to the po' faced Chicago Cubs, with their $100-$200 payroll and legions of addled fans. Too bad - the Brewers have been a nice story this year and while the future looks bright, this does not appear to be the year for them. So the Cubs will likely move on; if justice is served, they'll lose to the Padres, just like they did in 1984, or the Mets, just like they did in 1969, or maybe the Diamondbacks, just for variety's sake.

The frustration reached a head yesterday, following a 7-4 loss to the Braves. The Brewers were convinced that the umpiring in the game was substandard; based on the film I saw, they may be right. The problem is the same thing, however: if you really want to be a champion, you have to win games convincingly enough that if a referee blows a call, it doesn't cost you the game. I will never forget Jerry Rice's obvious fumble in the 1998 NFC playoffs that cost the Packers a hard-fought victory; in fact, it was the only time the 49ers have beaten the Packers in the Brett Favre era. But the larger problem was that the Packers should have put the 49ers away a lot earlier.

The problem now, of course, is that suspicion of officiating is running much higher, and rightly so after the revelations that have recently rocked the NBA in the wake of the Donaghy scandal. Baseball umpires have been notably imperious for at least the last 20 years and you'd be hard pressed to find a more obvious narcissist than NFL referee Ed "Check Out the Gun Show" Hochuli whose explanations of rules have enough distinctions to make Bertrand Russell's head spin. I've always believed that officials are best when they aren't noticed, but we seem to have some budding thespians in the officiating ranks in our modern era. It's too bad, really - no one pays to see Ed Hochuli or Ed Montague or Ed Rush. Why are all these guys named Ed, by the way? My dad would be aghast; I'm betting my nephew Eddie is, too.

Trash talking

My son, Ben, is a fine fellow. He's 11 years old and brings his father great joy. But he has one quirk - he really dislikes my beloved Milwaukee Brewers. And he's not subtle about it. I commend to your attention his blog, which features a fountain of Brewers bashing, along with my rejoinder to the calumnies Ben heaps on my beloved Brew Crew:

www.bens-sportsblog.blogspot.com

I'll say this for my son - for an 11 year old kid, he's got the trash talking thing down pat. He could take over for Jim Rome except that he's too young to grow a ridiculous goatee.

It's an odd sensation, 25 years on, to actually have the Brewers in a pennant race. And that the adversary is the Cubs is doubly odd. I remain hopeful that this particular pennant race will be the one in which the Cubs finally lose their cuddly, lovable loser persona. As we've said before, they are no such thing. Any team with a payroll over $100 million cannot be considered a plucky underdog. The irony is this - if the Cubs actually get in, this might be their best chance to get to the World Series yet. The rest of the teams in the NL are eminently beatable. The Diamondbacks have been winning with mirrors all season. The Padres have two dominant starters and not much else. The Mets are talented but incredibly erratic. Ditto on the Phillies.

All four prospective AL teams are better than anyone in the NL. Which one is the best? That's a topic for a future post.

The Best Day of the Year – 16th Anniversary Edition

Today is my wedding anniversary. I have had the great fortune to be married to Jill for 16 years; we have come through many challenges together and every day I continue to see something new because of our marriage. We’ve come a long way since that cool, cloudy September day back in 1991.

I’ve seen articles recently about the state of marriage generally; it turns out that over half of the marriages that took place 25 years ago ended in divorce, according to a recent study of the matter. It’s almost impossible to make generalizations about such things, but one thing I’ve noticed is that of our closest friends, including those made here and from our respective childhoods, hardly anyone has been divorced. I don’t know if it’s a statistical quirk, but we and our married friends are beating the odds.

You could speculate endlessly about the reasons for it, but I think the most important reason is simple: Jill and I work at our marriage and we fundamentally see the world in the same way. We’ve changed since those days – I have long since dropped the Angry Young Man pose I so enjoyed in my youth and Jill has gained wisdom and patience over the years. What we’ve seen in our friends’ marriages mirrors our own experience; no matter what happens, our friends have been able to adjust to the inevitable changes that come throughout a marriage.

So tonight we’ll go someplace, have a nice dinner and perhaps a libation or two. And when I look into her eyes, I’ll gain yet another reminder of how lucky I am.

Fearless Dilettante Football Predictions - Reader's Digest Version

Only have a minute or two to post, so here you go!

Xavier 31, Berlin 7 - the Hawks win their homecoming game against hated Berlin, which still uses the politically incorrect nickname of Indians. I didn't think that was legal in Wisconsin.

Beloit 2, Knox 2 - the only team in the league that Beloit might beat. But I don't think they will

Wisconsin 21, Iowa 3 - The Hawkeyes have trouble scoring. That's been a long-standing problem in Iowa (rim shot).

Green Bay Packers 24, San Diego Chargers 21 - If you're going to be a hopeless zealot, you have to be a hopeless zealot. And the Packers are playing pretty well so far.

Bonus local picks:

Mounds View Mustangs 24, Roseville Raiders 17 - I picked against Mounds View last week. Won't make that mistake again.

Irondale Knights 31, Robbinsdale Cooper Hawks 14 - The Knights are much improved. Cooper is, well, Cooper.

Rave on, Dilettante

For the bullets are flying again.

• People may not have noticed since the price of a gallon of gasoline has gone down nearly 50 cents here in the Twin Cities since Labor Day, but the price of oil is now sitting at over $80 a barrel, the highest it has been in recent years. Supplies are not a problem, so it would seem odd that we're seeing so much speculation about it. But I think there's a reason and the reason is the recent, barely publicized Israeli air strike on Syria. I would commend to your attention the account of Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, which you can find at www.opinionjournal.com . Couple this with reports from the British magazine Jane's that a Syrian-Iranian WMD joint venture went awry in recent days, killing a number of Syrian military officers and Iranian scientists, and you may have a better understanding. Events may be in the saddle again and if this stuff turns out to be true, those who have been calling for us to stop fighting in the Middle East are going to start to look even more foolish than before.
• In happier news, the Brewers have pulled back into a tie with the Cubs and may be back in the driver's seat in the Comedy Central pennant race. It seemed from my perch that the national media had written the Brewers off entirely, but this team is resilient. Maddeningly inconsistent, too, but let's focus on the bright side. If the Brew Crew can get through the weekend in Atlanta no more than one game back, I really like their chances. It's been 25 years since they've been to the playoffs and now would be a good time. And, not to put too fine a point on it, screw the Cubs. Their cuddly image, which hides the big-market, big-buck reality of their corporate ownership, has been a fraud for years. The Cubs are big-market bullies, just like the Yankees and the Red Sox. They are simply not as good at it.
• We've had a lively discussion on this blog about the relative merits of the two major college basketball programs in Wisconsin. My great friend Mark Miller, majordomo of Wisconsin hoops, roots for the Marquette Warriors (around here, they will always be the Warriors), while various other commenters are Badgerphiles. From my perch in Minnesota, I simply envy my friends. Based on the performance of the Golden Gophers, it is safe to say that we don't have major college basketball in Minnesota. Perhaps someday, though - a fella can dream, right?
• So we have O.J. in a courtroom, the Clinton campaign in trouble for taking dirty Chinese money, and Hillary rolling out a new scheme to nationalize the health care system by salami slice. I need to check a calendar to make sure it's not 1994. If I see Forrest Gump showing at the multiplex, I'll know for sure. I think it was Karl Marx who said that history happens twice, the first time as history, the second time as farce. Although when it comes to farce, my favorite Marx is probably Harpo.

Vegass and other things that I wish would stay there

So did we really need O.J. Simpson back in the news? Nope, I didn't think so either. But he was only one of a few unwanted things that happened over the weekend.

• Please, please, would someone telly Sally Field that America really doesn't care what she thinks about the war? I could have guessed she was agin' it.
• Now that Al Gore has been given an Emmy for his Current venture, which is a lot like YouTube except much less successful, I'm wondering what other awards he should get. Perhaps a Peabody, a Newbery, a Fulbright, a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, and certainly the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Sheesh.
• Alan Greenspan and Vicente Fox are the latest luminaries to come out with books that bash W. I may have to write one myself; there seems to be an almost-limitless market for Bush-bashing.

Condolences also to followers of Minnesota football. As much as I want to complain about the Badgers and their lackluster performance against The Citadel, at least they didn't lose to Florida Atlantic, which I thought was a tea company. And it's only a matter of time before the Vikings are looking like the late 90s Badgers, with Childress and Bollinger at the helm. All they need is Mike Samuel and it will be perfect. Was that gloating? Naahh, it couldn't have been gloating.

Q. What do you call a Viking with a Super Bowl ring?

A. A thief.

Still a great joke, 40 years and counting....

Time for a new look

Blogger has some new templates and I have decided to ditch the dots. I think this is cleaner and it matches the format I use for online activities. Hope you like it!

Yo, Manolo, choot that piece a chit

Manolo will oblige. Here come the bullets:

• We're back to the question of cheating with the latest exploits of Bill Belicheck and the New England Patriots. The penalty that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell slapped down was fairly severe; I know Belicheck makes millions but I think anyone would feel the sting of a $500,000 fine. What I'm hoping is that this gets the NFL to do the obvious, which is to give the defensive players a similar wireless communication system to what the quarterbacks currently have. It's never made any sense to give the advantage to one side of the ball. What will be interesting is to see how this change affects the Patriots. I've seen enough of the Patriots to wonder, at least retrospectively, how they were always able to figure out the right defense to stop the other team. Now we know.
• I've been writing a little less about politics these days because, to be honest, I find it depressing. I haven't heard an original argument from the Democratic Party in years; it seems like the intellectual peak of the party happened sometime around my 4th birthday, and as regular readers of this feature know, I'm a late Boomer and certainly approaching my dotage. I would really like it if we could actually see a substantive discussion about the issues underpinning all the ideological hectoring, but I doubt we will. As the old saw goes, ideas have consequences, but too many of our politicians are substituting invective for explanation. It's no wonder that both the president and congress are about as popular as Michael Vick.
• Have you seen the ads for the new Jodie Foster film, "The Brave One?" Thirty years ago she appeared in the movie "Taxi Driver," playing the role of a barely pubescent prostitute. Now she wants to be Travis Bickle. I don't know if this represents progress, or is simply another example of the utter bankruptcy of ideas in Hollywood. I went to college with a guy named Matt Tolmach, who has gone on from Beloit to a fabulous career as a producer in Hollywood. If you Google his name, you'll find that he's produced dozens of big films and is starting a production company with Tom Hanks. Matt was a good guy in his college days and I have no reason to believe that's changed. But Matt came up with more clever ideas when he ran the parody issue of the student newspaper than I've seen out of Tinseltown in recent years.
• Time for another Mr. Dilettante contest - name your favorite guitar solo. Since my daughter has decided she wants to be a rock star, it would be good to get a few representative samplings for her to hear. I will throw out two of my favorites: Denny Dyas's lyrical, stinging playing on Steely Dan's "Bodhisattva," and Roddy Frame's hilarious sendup of Eddie Van Halen on a cover of "Jump" with his band, Aztec Camera. Let's hear yours, readership!

Fearless Dilettante Football Predictions

Another week is here. Here you go!

Xavier Hawks 35, Clintonville Truckers 24 - yes, their nickname really is the Truckers. And they're in second place. But the mighty Hawks will prevail.

Monmouth Scots 42, Beloit Bucs 14 - This will be second time my beloved Bucs lose to a team with the nickname Scots. Perhaps they could beat a team from the Isle of Wight....

Wisconsin Badgers 55, The Citadel 14 - if this is even close, Bucky should hang his head in shame. Next year they plan to schedule Culver Military Academy.

Green Bay Packers 21, New York Giants 17 - No Eli Manning, no Brandon Jacobs. No chance. And maybe Brett Favre will actually throw a touchdown pass against the kerosene-doused Giants defense.

Bonus area high school pick - White Bear Lake 21, Mounds View 14. Adam Weber's alma mater will have a tough time winning in White Bear. Next week we'll weigh in on mighty Irondale in this space.

Exit Terry Ryan

As I was driving around this afternoon I heard the news - Terry Ryan, the GM of the Twins, is resigning, with all of his underlings essentially moving up one spot.

This is interesting news, especially given the timing. The Twins have had a magical run over the past 6-7 years, largely due to the efforts of Ryan and his team to keep finding good, low-cost players and building a pitching-rich farm system. Given the meager resources provided by the Pohlads, it's been nothing short of amazing to see what Terry Ryan has been able to do. This can't be good news that he's decided to take a smaller role within the organization.

It's good to know a Janesville Parker guy can make good, though.

I, Faith Formation Teacher

The call went out a few weeks back from our parish’s religious education/faith formation coordinator. We needed teachers – there’s a ton of kids who won’t have teachers unless we get some volunteers to share their faith with the impressionable youth of the parish.

Someone has to do it and these days I have the time. So I volunteered and am now teaching my daughter and seven other reasonably bright-eyed second graders each Wednesday night. Somewhere, I have to suspect that my favorite religion teacher, Sister JoLaverne, who paired arms that looked likes loaves of ciabatta and a religious fervor bordering on the wacky, is smiling.

I had my first session with the kids last night. Maria knew one of the kids, a girl who had been one of her classmates at Valentine Hills last year. One other Valentine Hills kid is also in the class, along with representatives of other local schools like Sunnyside and Island Lake. Since I only have the kids for an hour, it’s not too tough to keep their interest. In some respects, it’s a bit like coaching, although I can’t make them run laps if they screw around. If nothing else, it should be a rich source of material. I just hope my charges remember me more favorably than I remember Sister JoLaverne.

Name that tune

Do you remember, the way we used to dance
In September

Sometimes I wonder. We're six years on now from 9/11/01 and whatever amity there was in the wake of the attacks, it's gone now. MoveOn.org has made it clear, running an ad in the New York Times yesterday that referred to Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, as Gen. "Betray-us." Petraeus is up on Capitol Hill now, getting berated by Tom Lantos. And just about all the worthies in Congress on the left side of the aisle are on record as saying they don't believe that anything Petraeus will tell them is worth hearing.

Try to remember, the kind of September

I remember that day very well - I don't think anyone will ever forget the sense we had that the world had changed, irrevocably. But now, six years on, the politics have become so poisonous that we ignore the general who is actually fighting the war, even as Osama bin Laden reappears on video, coming on like Noam Chomsky in a turban and a jet-black Santa Claus beard.

And now the days grow short/I'm in the September of my years

Do you get the sense that the days are growing short? Are we letting our short attention spans and our addiction to spectacle, our devotion to 1080p technology and our iPhones and all the other gadgetry in the array, all well beyond our imagining only a few years earlier, distract us from maintaining the steady gaze necessary for eternal vigilance?

Fantabulous night to make romance, 'neath the color of October skies

Or are we putting it off for next month? Should we?

Turn up your radio

Now the caravan is on its way.

Dilettante Football Weekend Roundup

Here are the scores that matter:

Green Bay Packers 16, Philadelphia Eagles 13
Wisconsin Badgers 20, UNLV Rebels 13
Carroll College Pioneers 35, Beloit College Bucs 6
Xavier Hawks 39, Ripon High School 34

All told, a good weekend for the teams I support. And the Brewers are now back in first place too, having dispatched the Reds 10-5 yesterday behind an early barrage of home runs, while the benighted Cubs fell to the Pirates. At least sports-wise, things are going well.

A few quick thoughts on these results:

• The Pack didn't muster much offense but they are becoming a much more fearsome looking defense. It remains to be seen how much gas Eagles QB Donovan McNabb has left in his tank following four consecutive injury-filled seasons, but the pass rush was ferocious for the short time I was able to watch. And I think Johnny Jolly goes on the short list of fun D-Linemen in Packers history, along with Gilbert Brown and Dave Roller. He was a treat to watch.
• The Badgers nearly blew it in Vegas; of course, millions of people have blown it in Vegas, so why should they be any different. Meanwhile, they are playing a FUBAR level team, the Citadel, on Saturday. The Badgers had better kick the Citadel's butt or they'll be really embarrassed. On the bright side, I'm glad that I'm not a "Go Blue" fan these days. I'm even more glad I'm not Lloyd Carr. Oregon laid waste to Michigan on Saturday and it was astonishing to watch.
• Beloit is clearly not going to be a good football team this year; Carroll is pretty good in the sorry context of the Midwest Conference, but that's two embarrassing losses in a row for my beloved alma mater. On the other hand, Macalester went out and beat the crap out of lowly Principia College on Saturday to the tune of 63-0 or something like that, so maybe Mac has improved.
• Meanwhile, a team I support has finally managed to beat Ripon. Too bad it was my beloved high school Hawks and not the Bucs against Ripon College. Sounds like it was a wild one. Still, the X is now 3-0 and is doing well in its new conference. I'll be curious how they do against hated Omro. Can't get used to these new conference rivalries.

Finally, a big shout-0ut for the Irondale Knights, who got an enormous monkey off their backs by beating Totino-Grace on Friday, 21-20. Irondale hadn't beaten Totino in a long time and its a big win for this eternally rebuilding program. Since there's a good chance that Ben will attend Irondale, I'm trying to pay some attention to these guys, who are Menasha-like in their overall athletic prowess (that's a reference for my cheesehead readership, and they'll know precisely what I mean). I'm used to rooting for historically bad teams, so Irondale is a natural.

Maria helps me discuss the Brewers

Since various anonymous posters have asked me to talk about the Brewers, I have asked one of my favorite co-bloggers, my lovely daughter Maria, to help me discuss the Brewers. So, Maria, what do you think about the Brewers?

Well, the Brewers have to be normal citizens that play baseball and when they were babies, they wore diapers. So, anonymous, whoever you are, go ahead and see what this means to you and, if you like the Brewers, you should be thankful that the other co-blogger on Mr. Dilettante isn't here - my brother Ben, who would probably be discriminating against the Brewers. -- Maria

Maria brings up a great point - one of the reasons the Brewers are having some trouble down the stretch is that they are so young, they are barely out of their diapers. This first pennant race will not be the last one, I would imagine, and if they can get through on this one it would be pretty impressive. The Brew Crew has assembled a very talented young team, but they are young. Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, J. J. Hardy, Corey Hart, Rickie Weeks, Bill Hall and the rest are potentially as good a nucleus as the Yount/Molitor/Cooper/Gantner group of my youth, but that squad took 3-4 years to get over. We'll see how this goes; the Brew Crew is playing far less formidable competition than the 1978 Yankees, but it's still hard to win it the first time around. We'll see what happens.

What can you say in five minutes?

Let's find out.

• Badgers play UNLV? Should win. Packers play Eagles? Think the Pack will win, for a change.
• Luciano Pavarotti died yesterday. The great Italian tenor was an opera superstar and was up for any number of things, including performing with James Brown and Barry White, among others. The clips are all over YouTube if you don't believe it. I may be the only person who remembers this, but when I think of Pavarotti my first thought is an offhand comment from "Ned the Dead," a host of a local late night horror movie show that used to be on television back in Green Bay. At one point, he interrupts the movie to analyze the plot. A monster is terrorizing a town. Ned says: "How will we stop this monster? I have an idea. Let's lure him out into a field, then get a plane and drop Luciano Pavarotti on him!" No respect for the classics, that guy.
• The kids are in school this week and the early returns are promising. Ben is attending middle school and he is excited by the pace of events, the changing classes, having a locker, etc. Maria's new teacher is very young - pretty much fresh out of college, but he's enthusiastic. We're hopeful they'll have a good year.
• The Vikings managed to avoid the blackout because the local television station that was to air the game bought out the final 1,200 tickets. I have a feeling they'll need to make this a budget item for the rest of the season, particularly if Tarvaris Jackson can't make the grade.

That's not bad - four bullets in five minutes. Just call me Roland the Headless Thomson Blogger.

The Big Uglies

It starts tonight – one of the most impressive marketing machines around, the National Football League, opens its season with a game between the defending champion Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints, the feel-good story of 2006. It should be a compelling game featuring some of the biggest names in the league, Peyton Manning and Reggie Bush.

After all the events that have taken place in the offseason, I’m guessing the NFL is happy that the focus will now return to the games, rather than the anti-social and sometimes illegal behavior of its players. We’ve all had our fill of Michael Vick, Tank Johnson and various and sundry Cincinnati Bengals. Now the game is on and the Big Uglies (a Keith Jacksonism) are striding onto the field.

As regular readers of this feature know, I am a lifelong Green Bay Packer backer. I come by this affliction honestly, having grown up in lovely Appleton, Wisconsin, Green Bay’s better looking kid brother 30 miles to the southwest. Like most Cheeseheads, I am intensely loyal to the Green and Gold. The boys closed well last year, finishing 8-8 after enduring a dismal 4-12 campaign in 2005. Brett Favre returns for his 475th season at quarterback, this time surrounded by a young offensive line, the reliable Donald Driver and a cast of unknowns. Fortunately, the defense is pretty good, especially a talented front seven. The Packers could be a winning team this year but the tale may be told early. The first game is against the talented but flawed Philadelphia Eagles, who have lately been pounding the Packers on a yearly basis, although most of the recent contests have been in Philadelphia. If the Pack wins on Sunday, expect a good season.

The Packers have the great fortune of being in the NFC North, which has been a weak division for some time now. The hated Chicago Bears emerged from the slough last year and were able to make it all the way to the Super Bowl, even though they feature the execrable Rex Grossman as their quarterback. A lot of things went well for Team Satan last year and I suspect they’ll not be able to duplicate the results they got last season. Meanwhile, our purple-clad locals will take the field with the mysterious Tarvaris Jackson at quarterback, along with a flashy, injury-prone new running back (Adrian Peterson) and a stout but aging defense. If Jackson proves worthy, or even competent, the Vikings could be a lot better, but I’m guessing that Pat Williams and Darren Sharper will start to slip this year, which makes progress dicey. Meanwhile, the long-suffering Detroit Lions, who have not won a thing since 1957, really think that this year will be different. They said that in 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962….

What does it mean? It means the Packers have a chance to win the division. They also have a chance to finish last. But I’m guessing my boys will be 9-7 or so, which may just be good enough to make the playoffs in the NFC. Does ol’ number 4 have enough left to lead a final charge to glory? It’s the same question we’ve been asking for at least 6-7 years. I’m looking forward to finding out.

…1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005….

An embarrassing Saturday

College football began in earnest over the weekend and a lot of what happened was cause for chagrin here at Mr. Dilettante. While my beloved Badgers took care of business against a respectable opponent, Washington State, the rest of the day was pretty grim. Three scores indicate why:

Macalester 34, Beloit 21. I am a proud alumnus of Beloit College, a lovely liberal arts college with a dubious football tradition. My Bucs came north to St. Paul on Saturday to take on the Macalester Scots, historically the worst college football school in Minnesota. Back in the 1970s, Mac lost 50 games in a row and over the years the Scots have usually been on the receiving end of 79-0 scores, especially when the Johnnies came to town. Because Beloit has not been strong itself, scheduling Mac has usually been the football equivalent of a bowl of chicken soup – warm, tasty, good for what ails you and ultimately rewarding. Beloit has played Mac on a fairly regular basis over the last decade and had won every time, generally by comfortable margins. But not on Saturday. We went to the game and things started out as we’d come to expect, as our beloved Bucs jumped out to a 14-0 lead. But then it changed. Mac ran a kickoff back for a touchdown and suddenly turned into an offensive juggernaut, scoring five unanswered touchdowns. The Bucs had no answer and lost meekly.

Okay, it’s possible that the Scots are finally turning it around under their new coach and that Beloit may have been the victim of a budding football renaissance along Snelling Avenue. But it doesn’t seem likely. Even at the lowly D-III level, you cannot lose to Macalester. Unless you are playing the University of Tennessee, you should never lose to a team wearing orange pants. My kids were calling Mac “Mac & Cheese” because of the resemblance of Mac’s uniforms to Kraft products. I suspect that Beloit may be headed for an 0-9 season. Still it could have been worse. You could be a Gopher.

Bowling Green 32, Minnesota 31. We’ve got trouble in River City. The Music Man-style hype that has been emanating from the Bierman Building has been impossible to avoid ever since new coach Tim Brewster came to town. We’ve learned that there is a Gopher Nation that is headed for Pasadena. Historically, membership in Gopher Nation has been secured with an AARP card, but with the Vikings generally moribund there’s a yearning for some better football entertainment round these parts and at least a few people really wanted to believe that Coach Brewster was the real deal. Guess not. There’s no way the Gophers should ever lose to Bowling Green. One game is not enough time to pass definitive judgment, but the first results weren’t good. Bowling Green is slated to be a mid-level MAC team at best and a better MAC team, Miami of Ohio, is coming to town this week. Coach Brew better have more than hype or he’ll be headed out of town faster than you can say Smokey Joe Salem. Ash-canned Gopher coach Glen Mason may be smiling, but we wouldn’t know since he’s working for the Big 10 Network. His next appearance may be on a milk carton. Still, it could be worse. You could be a Wolverine.

Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32. After I came home from Macalester, I turned on the television and the first thing I saw was this score. I blinked and it was still there. Appalachian State is a powerhouse in what used to be called Division I-AA, what the NCAA now refers to as FUBAR, or something like that. They are a quality opponent and a team that will likely win many games this season. The thing is, they usually play teams like Lenoir-Rhyne, Furman and make occasional road trips to places like North Dakota State when they need to get out of lovely Boone, North Carolina. Somehow these fellows ended up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They were in the Big House, one of the most intimidating places in sports, with 106,000 Go Bluers waiting to watch the slaughter. But the Wolverines gagged. The Mountaineers came in and beat the pride of the Big Ten straight up in the Big House. Michigan has had a penchant for stubbing its toe in recent years, but usually the loss has come against an opponent with a little higher pedigree, like Notre Dame. It’s possible that the Wolverines will still come back and win the Big Ten, but I hope they don’t; it’s hard to argue the quality of the Big Ten when its top team cannot beat Appalachian State.

Required reading

As most readers of this feature know, I have an 11-year old son named Ben. Ben will be heading off to middle school this week and thus returning to the tender mercies of the Mounds View School District. Ben loves to read; a fella could get a hernia hoisting all the library books we get during the summertime. Since Ben is such a voracious reader, he manages to cover lots of literary territory. But there's a catch.

Because he's 11, he's quickly moving into oppositional mode when it comes reading suggestions from his dear old Dad. I put together a brief summer reading list for him and he fought me all the way on it. I had three books that I wanted him to read:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
Animal Farm, by George Orwell

I think these are sensible enough choices - the first two concern boys and the challenges of growing up in a world where adult supervision is either absent or lacking, while the third is one of the best treatments of the Soviet Union ever recorded, but written in the form of a fairy tale. Well, the boy balked at all of them. He read parts of all three, but put them all aside, instead turning his attention a variety of other books, including several by one of my favorite contemporary authors, the sportswriter John Feinstein. He's also read at least a dozen history-themed books this year, including works on World War I and the American Revolution.

As I ponder Ben's reading choices, I can certainly understand why he might not want to read what I present to him. I was 11 years old back in 1975 and my interests then were similar to his; I read and re-read "Hockey Stars of 1975" at least a dozen times that year. I also muscled up to read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that year, mostly to show off. Eleven year old kids are, in the main, contrarians; it would be unfair of me to expect my son to be any different.

But it got me to thinking: what are the books an 11-year old boy should know? One of the biggest challenges we have is that we don't have a commonality of knowledge in ways we used to. You may recall E.D. Hirsch's late 1980s book, "Cultural Literacy." In it Hirsch laments the lack of common knowledge among Americans. I've long agreed with him about this - common knowledge, like common courtesy, common sense and common decency, are actually uncommon these days.

So I'm throwing it open: what are the books an 11-year old boy should know? My readership is usually pretty intelligent and sophisticated, only rarely slack-jawed and drooling, so I'd be curious to see what you think.

The worst day of the year, 17th Anniversary Edition

Seventeen years have passed, but I remember it like yesterday. It was a very long day - I left my apartment in Oak Park, Illinois and took the El to Union Station, where I caught the Amtrak to Milwaukee. My sister met me there and we traveled north to Neenah, Wisconsin, to the Theda Clark Regional Medical Center. She recounted her attendance at the fateful concert at Alpine Valley that had taken place earlier that week. She'd seen Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, guitar heroes all. That night the helicopter carrying Stevie Ray and members of Clapton's road crew slammed into a hillside, killing all aboard and adding Vaughan's name to the roster of rock legends who perished in the Upper Midwest.

It was a beautiful late summer day, sunny and a bit hot, but comfortable enough. My father had been transferred to Theda Clark from St. Elizabeth's in Appleton following quadruple bypass surgery. He had a heart attack two weeks prior and was not really getting better even after the surgery. The doctors explained the dilemma: since Dad had not been able to get up and around, he was in danger of suffering from a pulmonary embolism. While drugs were available to break the clots, they might jeopardize healing from the surgery he'd recently undertaken. Dad was caught between Scylla and Charybdis, as the Police once sang.

We were now there, all six of us. I, the eldest, newly engaged, had been the last to arrive. Two of the siblings were still in high school. And we waited. The doctors and nurses would come and go, bringing periodic reports, decidedly non-committal in tone. My dad's best friend, himself a doctor, came by and told us that he didn't like what he'd seen. The longer we waited, the better it might be, but a pulmonary embolism is a serious problem and it could happen at any time.

As night fell, we left the hospital to get something to eat. We headed to the Appleton outpost of George Webb, the legendary greasy spoon that was a Wisconsin tradition, with locations seemingly on every street corner in Milwaukee. We tucked into massive plates of grease and tried to forget, if only for a moment. With visiting hours over, we headed home, hopeful that the silence was golden and that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out. One of my brothers returned to his home in Milwaukee, hoping that maybe he'd not need to return that night.

Around 10:20, the phone rang. I picked up the call. The nurse said that Dad wasn't doing too well and that we should come back to the hospital. "We're on the way," I replied, without inflection. We piled into a few cars and headed back to Theda Clark. Once we got there, the news was grim. A clot had formed and had traveled to Dad's lungs - a pulmonary embolism. The only hope was surgery, and the odds weren't good. Could someone give us permission to perform it? My stepmother said, yes, yes, please perform the surgery.

We headed for the chapel and prayed. Meanwhile, my brother sped back from Milwaukee, hoping to arrive in time to provide his support and prayers. But the odds were against us and eventually the news was bad. At 11:50 p.m., Dad was gone.

So many things have happened since that day, 17 long years ago. I married my fiancee and we've had a wonderful marriage that has produced two beautiful children. My siblings have long since entered adulthood and two of them are now parents as well. We've had tremendous fun and more than a few heartaches since that day. We lost our stepmother 8 years later and our mother two years after that, both victims of their 40+ year addictions to cigarettes. Those days were horribly sad, too, but likely inevitable.

The sense I've always had was that Dad wasn't ready to go. On his deathbed, he was gripping the railings, as if fighting to keep himself from leaving. He knew, I'm guessing, that he was leaving way too soon, and fought like hell to stay, even if Heaven beckoned. I can only hope that they have wonderful windows in Heaven, because I'd want him to know how wonderful his grandchildren are, that the young lady he admired has turned out to be a fantastic wife, mother and daughter-in-law, and that his boy is proud to be his son. Seventeen years on, even as I shed a tear or two, I trust he does know these things.

12-inch collars again in Milwaukee

This is getting really old. For what seems like the millionth time, my beloved Brewers are fading as the pennant races get serious. This year the starting pitching has gone south, featuring kerosene-drenched Chris Capuano, Jeff Suppan and Dave Bush and their DL list pals, Ben Sheets and Claudio Vargas. The Brew Crew should be running away in the dismal NL Central; indeed, they were running away back in May. But now that August is fading into September, the Brewers find themselves in 3rd place.

The beneficiaries of this slide may turn out to be the Chicago Cubs, who haven't won a pennant in over 60 years. They make a fine role model for my Brewers. As much as I love baseball, the cruelty of rooting for these silly Brewers makes me think my son Ben is correct; Ben is an avid Twins fan and hates the Brewers with a passion that defies reason. The kid may be on to something....

The senator from Ida-ho

Bugs Bunny put it best: what a maroon. For about 20 seconds, once I read the writeup in today's Star Tribune about Senator Larry Craig's wide stance and close encounter with a vice cop out at the airport, I was thinking that it was possible for that maybe, just maybe, his actions had been misconstrued. But then I remembered experiencing similar behavior in a public rest room in Milwaukee years ago, when I was still young and generally unaware of such things. I never did tumble to the meaning of the commotion in the stall next to mine and I went about my business and left without understanding what it was about. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

So, what do you do with this guy? My personal wish is that he goes back to Boise or wherever he's from and leaves our vice cops alone; perhaps he can join the cast of the Napoleon Dynamite sequel or something. But he clearly doesn't belong in the Senate. One other thing - I wish these dudes would stop dragging their wives up on stage with them. He should have had Jim McGreevey or someone vouch for him, rather than forcing a victimized spouse to share the withering glare of the spotlight.

Will the last member of the Bush administration please turn out the lights?

First it was Rove, now it's Alberto. Pretty soon the D's won't have anyone left to have indignant press conferences about. Alberto Gonzales has resigned as Attorney General, hounded out in large measure because of a completely phony scandal.

I'm torn. On balance, I don't think he did a very good job on a lot of issues. He also was singularly ineffective in dealing with the demagoguery currently emanating from Capitol Hill. But at the same time, I surely don't enjoy seeing Charles Schumer and Pat Leahy taking victory laps right now. The standard-issue Washington politics these days have gotten way to Borgia-esque for my blood. Of course my blood is the least of Washington's concerns these days.

The question remains: what to do. Back in March I made a somewhat tongue in cheek suggestion that Bush should replace Alberto G. with Amy Klobuchar, the silly woman that Minnesotans inexplicably sent to Washington last fall. My rationale was that she wouldn't be able to refuse the job, and by accepting the appointment, T-Paw could name her replacement and turn control of the Senate back to the Republicans, thereby putting Schumer, Leahy, Biden, Levin and the rest of the worthies back in their cages. Or, in a better alternative, we'd have her on record as refusing to help her country, or better yet, have the spectacle of the Democrats rejecting her nomination in order to keep her in the Senate. Lots of potential mischief there....

It won't happen, of course, but I still would like to see Bush do something that would really upset the applecart. I continue to believe that the Democrats have wildly overplayed their hand since taking control of Congress and that a little presidential jujitsu might lead to a very surprising and gratifying result in the 2008 election cycle.

But I'm guessing boldness is not going to be forthcoming. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the choice turns out to be someone like Patrick Fitzgerald. The rumors appear to be Michael Chertoff, but he's probably too closely aligned to Rudy Giuliani and the D's would look to sink him in any confirmation hearings.

I'm telling you - send Amy K to Justice!

State Fair

Minnesota, Minnesota
We are south of Manitoba
We are east of North Dakota
We’ve got something really rare

And that would be, in the words of Ann Reed, the State Fair. And that’s where the Dilettante clan was yesterday, wandering the soggy fairgrounds and ducking half-eaten corndogs and various corn-fed fairgoers, often attired in ways that are, shall we say, interesting, in the Chinese curse sense of the term.

We went there on opening day, also known as “Thrifty Thursday,” because some of the prices are somewhat reduced, a primary consideration these days. Since I have relatively young children, we end up spending a lot of time on the Kidway, where my motivated children blow through hard-earned cash at an alarming pace. If you buy in advance, you can get 20 ride tickets for about $10; if you don’t and succumb to the whining, you pay about 75 cents a ticket at the Fair itself. Considering the rides usually require 4-5 tickets, a kid can blow through $10 in about 20 minutes time, even on a “Thrifty Thursday.” Our strategy is to come and go from the Kidway as much as we can; temporary departures allow the Mrs. and I a bit of sanity and a few less whiffs of the carnies, to say nothing of keeping the kids from getting bored while we view things that are more interesting to us.

So what’s interesting at the Fair this year? Here are a few things:

Prices are up on food, in some cases a lot. Like most fairgoers, we have a usual ritual for the food we buy; the kids and I always have a “Pickle on a Stick” and we usually go for some Sweet Martha’s cookies at the end. The pickles were up 50 cents this year, from $1.50 to $2, while a bucket of Sweet Martha cookies is now a stiff $13, up $2 from last year’s $11. We didn’t bother with the bucket this year; the cookies are good, but not $13 good. If you plan to go to the fair and do it right, expect to pay at least $25/person for food. We didn’t try anything new, but early word is that O’Gara’s has a new version of corned beef and cabbage on a stick that’s pretty good; kind of combination corn dog/Irish egg roll, from what I could tell.

We managed to get the kids on television last night – we sat in the stands for Channel 4’s 5 p.m. newscast and the last shot of the broadcast featured Ben and Maria, waving wildly for the camera. Their grandparents saw it, so my kids have now used up about 15 seconds of the 15 minutes of fame they are allotted. It’s interesting to sit in on one of these newscasts, just to watch the producers and camera people at work. There’s a lot of artifice involved in television production and the process of putting together a broadcast requires a lot of work. I also enjoyed being a quiet smart-aleck while sitting in the stands. I’ve always had a little Statler and Waldorf in me and I made a few of my fellow spectators laugh by suggesting that Channel 4 anchorette Jeannette Trompeter has a cousin named Jeanette Saxophonist.

The best deal for kids is the “Little Farm Hands” exhibit on the far north edge of the Fairgrounds. It’s free and the kids get a good feeling for how a farm actually works. Last year we volunteered to help at this exhibit and it was exceptionally hard work, but from the customer side it’s pretty neat. And the kids can even get a free can of green beans for you to lug around the Fairgrounds the rest of the day.

We didn’t see it, but there’s a new North Woods exhibit, also on the far north edge of the Fairgrounds, which looked pretty cool.

Since it’s an off year for elections, we didn’t see a lot of politicians. That itself is a big improvement, although you can still be the first kid on your block to get an Al Franken button if you really want something like that. I sure don’t, but such things are available.

Barney's Clubhouse Pow

If you grew up in the Green Bay area during the late 70s – early 80s, you’ll remember this reference. But all it does is set up another round of bullets. Sorry about that, fellow nostalgic cheeseheads!

• The blame game continues on the bridge, with the odious Nick Coleman now feeling bold enough to assign the entire responsibility to T-Paw and his henchwoman, Carol “Frau Blucher” Molnau. But now word comes that the NTSB is investigating something that I suspected from the moment I first heard about the collapse – the automatic de-icing system that had been installed on the bridge back in the late 1990s. That would have been during the administration of Jesse Ventura, whose MnDOT commissioner was Elwyn Tinklenberg, the fellow who was first out of the gate in blaming the current administration for the collapse. Tinklenberg managed to get his shots in on the day of the collapse itself, so sure was he of culpability. Here’s the thing – the de-icing system is likely one factor, since it released chemicals that may have helped to corrode the structural steel bridge supports. But it’s only one factor – the 288 tons of construction equipment parked on the bridge, the years of pigeon guano (as always, minty fresh!) and the normal wear and tear of 40 years of extraordinarily heavy use were all factors. But let’s not reality get in the way of a good witch-hunt. Nick Coleman would have felt right at home in Salem, Mass back in 1692.
• Some weird stuff in baseball over the past few days, and all you have to do is look at one team that was involved – the woebegone Texas Rangers. The Rangers were absolutely handcuffed by our Johan Santana on Sunday, striking out 17 times over 8 innings. This same team went into Baltimore and put up 30 runs in a single game last night. Baseball is the most capricious of our games – while the better team usually wins, strange things like this happen. Meanwhile, I know the Rangers lead the league in twill lettering on the back of their uniforms, thanks to Frank Cattalanato and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. They ought to get those two on an Olive Garden commercial or something.
• We’re going to the State Fair this afternoon. The kids really love going and we rarely miss it. It’s difficult to explain to a non-Minnesotan how big a deal the State Fair is in this state; it’s really part of the DNA. I didn’t understand it until I went – growing up in Wisconsin, the State Fair there is not really that big a deal. But it is here. We’ll have a full report on our exploits anon.

Three feet high and rising

Things 'round here are getting almost Biblical. The Month of Ghosts began with the horrific 35W bridge collapse and now we have seen torrential flooding in southeastern Minnesota over the weekend. Some of the footage from the area is simply mind-boggling and the sudden fury of the water reminds us of how little control we really have over our world. While I have struggled with my health and my continuing lack of suitable employment, I really haven't lost anything that absolutely matters in the last 16 months, least of all my life.

While I am faithful, I do struggle with my faith from time to time. God's plan is so far beyond my reckoning that I find myself chafing at the limitations of my own intellect. I marvel at the certitude of so many people, especially those whom I find myself disagreeing with politically. It must be comforting to have all the answers.

It's now been nearly 17 years since I lost my father and 7 years since I lost my mother, both in the month of August. It's long been a bad month for me, but 2007 has been a bad month for many other Minnesotans. I do hope that we all get some peace in the remaining time we have this month.

A boy like that will kill your brother

That’s because he’s got a gun and he’s not afraid to use it.

• Don’t look now, but here come the Cardinals. The Brewers have apparently decided that they aren’t ready to dispense with their 25 years of ineptitude and the team that beat them way back in ’82 is now coming on. What a terrible week in Milwaukee so far. It’s been so much fun watching this young team play, but they’d better get their act together soon. A healthy Ben Sheets would help, too.
• So my beloved alma mater, Beloit College, now ranks 67th in the U.S. News survey of national liberal arts colleges, tied with Kalamazoo College in both academic prestige and odd-sounding names. There’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about the U.S. News rankings, which are positively Byzantine in how they are derived, but it’s not especially encouraging to see your school graded as some sort of poor man’s Bard or (worse) Lawrence. I think we beat out Normandale Community College, so that’s something, I guess. One thing I did learn from the rankings – I had no idea that Grinnell (ranked 11th) is sitting on a $1.4 billion endowment. They’ve got more money than King Canute.
• They’re still fighting over the bridge here, not surprisingly. The design that has been put forth is sadly lacking in sacred light rail amenities, which seems to irritate people who had never thought of adding light rail to 35W before the bridge collapse. The train seems to hypnotize people here, who continue to talk about a great success it is and how it could change everything, even as we continue to provide multi-million dollar subsidies to keep it running. It doesn’t look like the choo-choo fans are going to screw up the timetable for rebuilding because of their kvetching, but it won’t be for a lack of effort. Maybe R.T. Rybak and his fellow light rail fans can get Grinnell College can help pay for the light rail – won’t hurt to ask, right?

Blogging with the Benmeister

So my son Ben is here with me this afternoon and he's going to help me out with this particular post. Since he hates my beloved Brewers, I'm going to censor him from commenting on that particular subject, but he may have something else to say - let's find out, shall we?

What's the matter with you? You let me guest blog, and now you're going to censor me? Well, I'm going to rip you in an attack ad right now, so bring it on, Dilettante! Actually, I'm not as hostile as I sound on the blog. After all of these violent words, I'm going to leave it to my associate here, who is going to tell you how glorious I really am. And don't forget to read my blog, www.bens-sportsblog.blogspot.com, for all the latest rips.

Ben is actually a sweet kid, although he comes on like Jim Rome without the cheesy mustache sometimes. No one in our family has a cheesy mustache - we leave that sort of thing to certain California-based associates of ours.

Actually, Ben has a beef that we're currently investigating. Ben is the proud owner of a Game Boy Advance gadget and he has long been known as an inveterate gamester. He has eagerly purchased the three previous versions of EA Sports' Madden video game juggernaut. Unfortunately, it appears that Madden o8 is not going to be available in the Game Boy format. This is part of the usual planned obsolescence scam that is so prevalent in this industry - essentially, by no longer making new titles in the GBA format, kids (or more to the point parents) are forced to buy newer, more expensive systems (like the Nintendo DS, which is roughly double the price of the GBA and has the added feature of a flimsy stylus that is easy for children to lose and has about a $10 replacement cost). Ben is, not surprisingly, pretty p.o.'ed about this and he may consider launching some form of protest. I hope he succeeds - he shares the family loudmouth traits and he can be articulate, even when he's ripping my beloved Brewers. He'll have plenty to say about this in the coming days. And I just might, too.

Try our hubris, I swear! No really, I'm swearing! #@(!

Once in a while I pop in and visit a nest of liberals at the Star Tribune. They have a number of blog sites, including The Big Question, which is their ostensibly political blog. It was originally started by their long-term political reporter, Eric Black, who was one of the bigfoots who left the Strib during the recent wave of buyouts. The site is now run by D.J. Tice, who directs political coverage for the Strib and used to be the house conservative columnist at the Pioneer Press.

The format there is typical of many political blogs - the host posts an article or question about something political, then turns it over to various posters. I would estimate that probably 75% of the posters there are lefties of varying degrees, including at least one fairly active political operative named Bill Prendergast, who is a regular contributor to the "Dump Bachmann" website dedicated to the political destruction of our favorite Minnesota holy roller congresswoman (you can find the link yourself if you're so inclined).

As I said, I like to stop by from time to time and throw a few turds in their punchbowl. While Tice and his predecessor Black always have sought some measure of civility, the lefties are like most lefties; i.e., arrogant and condescending. On that site I have been compared to a trained monkey and to Benito Mussolini because of my views, which not surprisingly I find quite persuasive. I have to bow before such erudition.

I've suggested to a few posters there that, if they really interested in having their side run the country, they might be better served to limit their invective and actually try to make cogent arguments and take a less, shall we say ad hominem approach. Interestingly, they have no use for my advice. The tone is usually something like "if you want me to be civil toward the people who have destroyed this nation and brought us Chimpy McBushsatanhitler Buscho corruption and sank our international reputation to an all time low and [insert your favority lefty talking points here], I refuse! #@* *(#&@(#, I won't be silent about it!"

Oh, and #@*#( Halliburton, too. And #@*(# Dale Carnegie, for that matter. @*#(@(#.

Sometimes I wonder, do these people really understand what they sound like? Do they understand that the dripping condescension and arrogance they display is singularly unattractive? Or are they so committed to their hatred, their rage against the injustices they perceive, that they can't get how crappy they appear?

Guess not. And that's why I think the Democrats may not want to be too sure of their inevitability in the next election cycle. One of the many reasons why Karl Rove was successful is that he often simply let the Democrats monologue, as they say in "The Incredibles." No matter what you think of W's performance, and the performance of the Republican party in recent years, they don't go around actively insulting vast portions of the populace. That might at least partially explain some of their electoral success over the past 30 years.

Weaponless in Seattle

Q. What do you have when you have to bring in half your AAA team as position players?

1) The Minnesota Twins
2) The Rochester Redwings masquerading as the Minnesota Twins
3) No chance
4) All of the above

The answer is obviously 4). And that is why the Twins are getting their butts beaten up and down the West Coast. You cannot win if you cannot score. And typically, AAA lineups do not beat big league teams, especially the very good ones in the AL West.

There’s been a lot of speculation about the job Terry Ryan has done this year, but I think it’s been pretty evident from the start that this year’s team was going to be short. There was a lot of magic in the air about the Twins last year, which led to some unrealistic expectations. There was a reason why Nick Punto had never held a regular job in the major leagues before last season, to use just one example. The Twins are scrappy and have some legitimate star power, but their everyday lineup simply does not compare to that of the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Indians, Angels or Mariners. Not surprisingly, those are the teams that are leaving dust in the faces of the Twins. Remember, Twins fans – there’s always plenty of room on the Brewers bandwagon!

Rove if you want to

So Karl Rove is leaving the White House. What does it mean?

My guess - not as much as you'd think. I've long suspected that Rove's main role in the White House has been more as a sounding board than as a brilliant strategist/surrogate brain. One of the more amusing memes of the Bush presidency has been the dichotomy between Bush the dumb-ass and Bush the Evil Genius. Over the course of W's presidency, he's been called both, often by the same people. It's not really possible to be a dumb-ass Evil Genius, so there's more than a little bit of cognitive dissonance in this critique. Thus, Karl Rove, Bush's closest advisor, must be some sort of Rasputin who manipulates Chimpy McBushitler (or whatever the current apellation is) to come up with the evil yet bumbling machinations that have characterized the last 6-7 years. Bush couldn't have come up with anything on his own, because he's too stupid, the reasoning goes. Never mind that a lot of these critics of Bush's acumen tend to have their terminal degree from places like Inver Hills Community College, not Yale and Harvard. Perhaps the evil genius side of Bush was able to trick these august institutions into awarding him degrees. But I digress.

Anyway, it's never made a lot of sense to assume that Rove is doing Bush's thinking. He is a key adviser, without question. He is also a very good, not great, political strategist. But I suspect we'll learn that his influence in the Bush White House, while substantial, was not necessarily decisive. And I suspect that we'll learn, 20-25 years on, that Bush is a lot smarter and more sophisticated than his critics have portrayed him. Reagan has recently gone through this sort of revisionism. When the historians get to the subject, it's going to look a lot different than it does now.

Five minutes

That's all I have today. How much blogging can I get in? Let's find out. Go!

• Packers 13, Pittsburgh 9. Defense is good. Brandon Jackson appears serviceable. Aaron Rodgers leads three scoring drives. A good start.
• Rams 13, Vikings 10. No offense. Tarvaris Jackson appears to be as good as the 70s dance band Tavares. Heaven must be missing an angel....
• Revised global warming data from NASA indicates that 1934, not 1998, is warmest year on record. Yep, let's fundamentally alter our way of life because of computer models that end up getting revised.
• Romney wins Iowa straw poll. Of course he did. Still not sure we'll ever have a president named Mitt.
• Booker T and the MGs play Dakota with local drummer pinch-hitting. Doesn't matter; any drummer worth a darn would know their material. Wish I'd been there.

I love a parade

We’re now in the middle of my community’s annual summer celebration. I live in the blissfully non-descript community of New Brighton, Minnesota, and each August we celebrate New Brighton’s quasi-agricultural past with the “Stockyard Days” celebration. At one point, about 100 years ago, New Brighton was a railroad stop and was the site of some stockyards, which eventually lost out to the massive operations in St. Paul and South St. Paul. The centerpiece of the celebration is the Stockyard Days parade, which runs down Old Highway 8, one of the ugliest streets in the Twin Cities. Using Old 8 for the parade route is a lot like holding a home tour in the mud room, but that’s what we do. I guess if it gets dirty, no one cares.

Stockyard Days is a good peg for such an event, because it gives a discernible theme for the parade and it thoroughly confuses all the neighboring suburban beauty queens on display. The lovelies from Hopkins and Anoka and Lino Lakes and Vadnais Heights and other such places show up with tiaras, permanents and ball gowns and then end up smashing a Stetson on their heads. Suddenly they all look vaguely like Debra Winger circa 1980 and you want to look for the Lone Star and the mechanical bulls. But that’s not what this parade is about, ultimately.

Candy is what the parade is really about. Just ask my son, who brought a plastic shopping bag to the parade and collected about 4 pounds of candy that had been tossed from the various parade units. I am not exaggerating this – he typically hauls in a lot less candy at Halloween than he does at this parade. My favorite part was when a local dental clinic was just about carpet bombing the crowd with hard candy; this is an excellent way to drum up business.

My daughter Maria had a chance to march this year with her Brownie troop. She was very happy to do so and she managed to fling candy at her brother, just like everyone else did.

Since this is an off year for elections, there weren’t nearly as many politicians on display. It also seemed like the air was cleaner, but I have to assume that was coincidental.

Stampeding over a collapsed bridge

Even as the work continues and the sixth body is removed from the river, the politics of the 35W bridge collapse are starting to heat up. Frankly, it's beginning to feel like a stampede.

Yesterday our old pal James Oberstar, the wizened Iron Ranger who has managed through seniority and attrition to become one of the most powerful Congressmen in Washington, announced that he was going to seek a 5 cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax to fund infrastructure. This would be on top of whatever increase the state might add in a special legislative session. The ever-earnest Oberstar swears that the federal increase would be "only" for 3 years. But that's not how it works in Washington - as I recall, the AMT was a temporary measure as well, but it's still on the books and has been steadily capturing more and more unsuspecting taxpayers since its introduction in the late 1960s.

You can make an argument that the nation's infrastructure has been neglected. The 35W bridge actually looked better to my untrained eye than many other bridges I've traveled over the years; if you want to see a really scary bridge, take the U.S. 52 bridge over the Mississippi at Savanna, IL some time. I have seen estimates that it would take something like $1.3 trillion to bring the current infrastructure "up to code." If we think doing this is a priority, we're talking Marshall Plan type numbers.

But here is the question - is it necessary? While the 35W bridge collapse was a horrific event, does it follow that we're going to see a whole bunch of other bridges collapse in the near future? Or, more likely, will this one event cause local governments throughout the nation to step up their efforts to monitor and repair the infrastructure they have jurisdiction over? And will these repairs require an increase in the gasoline tax? Or could the money come from judicious cuts of other programs, like (to use local examples) the subsidies for the Guthrie Theater and the new Twins ballpark?

I know, it's impolitic to ask these sorts of questions, especially in the wake of a tragedy. It's "playing politics" and it's crass. Only Democrats are allowed to do these things. By the way, have we put Carol Molnau on the pyre yet? C'mon, c'mon, it's getting late.

Mischievious mysteries (featuring guest blogger Maria)

I'm here this afternoon with Maria, my lovely seven year old daughter. Maria would like to discuss mischievious mysteries. So, let's see what happens:

First, let's ask - how's Lenny doing? Lenny is my nickname for my brother, Ben. Second, who are the teachers for me and Ben/Lenny this year? Well, oh well, we'll find out. That's the mysteries part.

Now on the mischievious part. I'll bet Ben is up to something today. Like, when we were playing with Ben's GameBoy, he kept talking to the Pokemon and saying stuff like, "Yes, power! Yes! We're going for the death!" I kept telling him, the game isn't just about getting power. You can actually have some love with the Pokemon. Oh well, we'll find out what he's up to. Now, back to Dad. Ahhhhh, barra barracuda!

I would note that the classic rock reference contained therein is completely Maria's. She has a lot of musical influences and wants to be a rock star some day. There is the matter of getting the electric guitar and amp, and putting up with a little bit of screeching before she learns how to do the wailing solos, but I wouldn't bet against her. At a minimum, I'd guess she'll be better than most of the mopes who appear on American Idol.

Kids have a lot of dreams. So do I. And we're working on them every day. Always good to have my guest blogger Maria around - you can also find her at www.aboutmaria.blogspot.com, and you can also find my son at www.bens-sportsblog.blogspot.com, where we rages eloquently against Barry Bonds. We do present all sides here at Mr. Dilettante.

Bonds gets the record

So it happened last night. The lovely wife and I saw the shot live on ESPN. Now he’s got the record. Mrs. D was not happy and my son was incensed this morning when I told him about it. I say: Go get ‘em, A-Rod….

p.s. Henry Aaron’s pre-recorded message was quite effective and classy. Totally in character and great to see, just like Hank Aaron’s career.

Comparative Literature

Most colleges have a comparative literature program, which typically allows young people to spend lots of their parents’ hard-earned money and plenty of Pell Grant taxpayer largesse to read obscure authors in tandem with the deep thoughts of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and similar literary parlor-trick artists. You can learn something in such programs – like how to bore the crap out of someone at a cocktail party. But it’s usually not a productive venture, no matter how much you spend on tuition, and it’s often a ticket to a post-grad barista gig.

Despite those caveats, I was thinking about the value of comparing ideas from different realms because of two books I’m currently reading. The first is a book I’ve been meaning to get to for some time now, Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower,” which provides a valuable and readable history of the origins of Al-Qaeda by detailing the careers of Osama bin Laden, Zayman al-Zawahiri and the various blackguards and henchmen that are part of the Al-Qaeda orbit. At the same time, I have been re-reading one of my favorite novels, William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.” I have put “Lord of the Flies” on my 11-year old son’s summer reading list and I wanted to refresh myself with it before he starts into the book. I have long believed that “Lord of the Flies” is one of the best parables of modern life that you could find and in re-reading it, I remain convinced of it. I think every boy should read this book, because the story explains, in ways better than I am capable, the principal problem of civilization. That is, how do you control the impulses of young men?

As I look at “The Looming Tower,” I am struck by how much the problem in the Middle East, and in Islam generally, is really not that exotic at all, despite the barbarism that has marked the Islamist movement. The problem in so many of the places is pretty simple – you have a lot of young men who have directionless lives, filled with boredom and arbitrary rules. Poverty is not the problem; as has been consistently demonstrated, some of the worst of the Al-Qaeda operatives have been scions of the middle and upper classes in their respective countries. What has happened is that the Salafist strain of Islam, combined with the notion of takfir, have been combined in a way that essentially allows these folks to take whatever action they need to accomplish their goal, even if that means killing thousands of innocent people, often in the most barbaric ways. Al-Qaeda gives these directionless youths something to believe in, and something that is especially powerful since it gives them dominion over others. It becomes pretty easy to see the similarities between Jack Merridew and bin Laden, to say nothing of the similarities between Piggy and, say, the modern Democratic Party.

I commend both books to your attention. If you’d like another book that would also make a good companion to this topic, try Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer.”

I'm in the MOB now

Groucho Marx famously remarked that he would never want to be part of any club that would have him as a member. But I don't hang on Groucho's every word, so it was high time that I finally moved this enterprise into an orbit with other bloggers. As a result, I have now joined the MOB, i.e., the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers. This group of bloggers includes a number of particular favorites of mine and I highly recommend that you stop by. I will be constructing a blog roll that contains the name of all these blogs and will add it to this site in the coming days. Make sure you visit some of the other blogs in the MOB; as Bill Cosby used to say on "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" you just might learn something before it's done. Hey hey hey!

35W

We're now five days on after the collapse of the 35W bridge over the Mississippi River. There's a lot of work to be done in surveying the site, removing the debris and most of all recovering the victims who remain trapped underneath tons of concrete and the murky waters. There's no doubt that this has been a traumatic time around here, but I sense that we won't be wallowing in the event too much longer. There's simply too much work to be done and Minnesotans aren't generally in the habit of indulging self-pity.

We went downtown on Saturday to see the Twins game, but our trip was fairly circuitous, so we didn't get very close the bridge itself. Since it was a weekend, it wasn't especially difficult to get around the downtown area. We decided to avoid the 3rd Avenue bridge, which is the closest to 35W, instead choosing to go about 1/2 mile further to the west to use the Hennepin Avenue bridge. That worked very well and it is very easy for us to take East Hennepin over to Stinson Boulevard, then snake our way through the industrial areas of Nordeast back to Highway 88 and home. This is a workable trip under normal circumstances; when I used to work downtown and had to drive, I would often take this path to get home, especially if the traffic reports for 35W were not promising, and they often weren't. One of the advantages of living where we do is that it is pretty easy to get most places in the Twin Cities; although New Brighton is technically a St. Paul suburb, we live only 2 miles from the edge of Nordeast. Although we'll have to see how things develop, the immediate impact of the bridge collapse has not been that onerous for us personally; it's quite possible that many of us who relied on the bridge will be able to figure out ways to minimize the impact.

We've only seen glimpses thus far, but it's inevitable that the long knives will be coming out about this matter. Personally I don't think it makes any sense to blame anyone for what was clearly a multi-factorial disaster, but there have already been some calls for the head of Carol Molnau, who runs MnDOT. Not surprisingly, the calls have come from the hyperpartisans among us, like the ever-frothing StarTribune columnist Nick Coleman. But I don't think Molnau will ultimately take a bullet on this; while there are reasons to wonder about the bridge inspection program, most of the people who have been complaining loudest about it are people like me, i.e., people with no particular expertise on bridges and/or structural engineering. My guess is that once the investigations run their course, it will turn out that no one factor was decisive in what happened. Sometimes people do the right thing and the result is still terrible.

One thing that unfortunately hasn't surprised me is that many of the victims are neighbors of ours, including two people from neighboring Mounds View and another from my former town of Shoreview. 35W is best known as the main path to the southern suburbs, but those who cross the bridge are, in the main, headed for the staid enclaves of northwestern Ramsey County. There are a lot of us who live up this way and generally the communities we live in are not especially newsworthy; my town is most noteworthy for its complete lack of noteworthiness. Most of us live quiet lives, filled with church picnics, Little League games and neighborhood parades where the dignitaries throw fistfuls of candy to the kids along the route. Those routines won't change much, I think - the kids got enough candy from the St. Anthony parade on Friday that their haul rivaled what they get at Halloween. Life goes on.

The media bigfoots are leaving town now; W was here, but he's gone on to other matters as well. While it may not be normal for a long time, we'll adjust. We're Minnesotans. That's what we do.

A new venture

I'm starting a new side venture blog - Comedy Acres. You will find this blog at www.comedyacres.blogspot.com. Comedy Acres will be a gathering place for my old collegiate chums. We'll be posting lots of things there, although I have no idea what it will ultimately develop into. Mr. Dilettante remains as it is.

More soon, including thoughts on the ongoing story that is dominating things here, the collapse of the I-35W bridge.

A terrible beauty is born

The images, now ubiquitous, are horrifying. The twisted green metal superstructure, tangled and jutting out at bizarre angles, providing a reminder of the incredible force unleashed. The slab of concrete blocks the river flow, with equally large slabs jutting out from the shoreline below, pointing toward the hazy, August sky. The cars, buses and trucks are scattered throughout the site, with unknown numbers of late model vehicles submerged under tons of steel and concrete.

It’s a horrifying thing, the collapse of a major bridge. The rumble of death will reverberate here for a long time. This is the stuff of disaster movies, a Jerry Bruckheimer image writ large and real. We’ll live with the consequences of August 1, 2007 for many years.

Still, there is beauty if you look for it. The performance of the first responders was magnificent; the death toll could have easily reached 100, maybe 200 people, but most likely will be far less. The police and fire departments of Minneapolis, so often the well-deserved targets of invective and ridicule for their petty corruption and silly political correctness, performed with grace, professionalism and amazing calm, given the extent of the calamity they found. The paramedics and doctors arriving on the scene were ready, moved quickly, and saved dozens of people. The Red Cross, whose Minneapolis headquarters sits nearby the scene, provided valuable services and comforted the victims and their families. Even the politicians, so often a hindrance rather than a help, performed with grace and restraint, with at least one notable exception, about which more in a moment.

We were far away from the event as it happened, fetching the weekly groceries. We had no idea what had happened and had turned on WCCO radio, more because we noted a line of storms on the western horizon and were looking for a weather update. As we drove home from the store on 35W, about 10 miles north of the site, it became clear that something horrific had happened. The answering machine was already filling with concerned calls from my relatives in Wisconsin. I have crossed the 35W bridge thousands of times in the 15 years I’ve lived in Minnesota and my relatives knew that. It is quite possible that when the list of victims becomes known, I will know someone who was on that bridge at the fateful moment; many of my friends and neighbors use this bridge each day. I hope not, but all of us who live and work in the northern suburbs must prepare for the possibility. All the victims, whether we know them or not, will need our prayers and support.

I am certain that the recriminations will start coming, even before the scene is cleared and the victims identified. It already started last night, as I watched the execrable Elwyn Tinklenberg on KARE television essentially state that the bridge collapsed because the state had not raised the gasoline tax up to a level of his liking. There will be others who will blame Carol Molnau, or Tim Pawlenty. We could just as easily blame Karl Rolvaag or Harold LeVander, the respective governors who presided over the construction of the bridge back in the late 1960s. Neither of them is available for comment at this time.

I hope the recriminations don’t come, though. They are not helpful. What matters now is identifying the victims and comforting their families. What matters next is rebuilding the bridge. We have work to do.

Return to the Month of Ghosts

We're back to August, the month of ghosts. As regular readers of this feature will recall, this is the month in which both of my parents died; my father in 1990, my mother in 2000. While there's a lot to like about August, especially in the Upper Midwest - the warm days, the beautiful sunsets, the State Fair - it's personally difficult for me to not think about the losses my family has had during this time of year.

Still, I'm trying to face the future. Sadness is normal enough, I suppose - I think about my parents every day. I long for their counsel, their support, their love. You don't realize how much you miss those things until it's too late. But the lessons I learned from my parents work in new contexts as well. When I consider how Jill and I are raising our own children, I can clearly see how my own childhood has profoundly affected the decisions I've made in my life, especially where the kids are concerned.

Okay, I promise not to go all introspective this month. There's plenty of stuff to write about in politics, sports, music, etc. But know that the ghosts are out again. And they may alight here in the next month on more than one occasion.