Annunciation and the Altered Scale

It's been a stunningly beautiful weekend in Minneapolis, warm and sunny, the sort of weather you hope to have on Mother's Day, only arriving two months early. It's the sort of weekend you cherish later on, one that you must take advantage of. These early spring days are often a tease, only to be followed by rain, cold, snow and general misery.

So, of course, I spent this afternoon in a conference room at the Southdale Library. It was the wise choice. We'll get to that in a moment.

We began the day attending Mass at Annunciation, a parish in South Minneapolis a bit east of Lyndale on 54th Street. As you may know, Mrs. D grew up in South Minneapolis and this was the parish of her childhood, the parish where she received First Holy Communion and where she was confirmed. The church itself was built in 1961 and it has that late mid-century look to it. It's a good sized church but it's not a suburban megaparish like the one we normally attend, St. John the Baptist. And because it's not a huge parish and the Archdiocese is retrenching, Annunciation is in the process of merging with another smaller parish, Visitation, which is located about a mile north on Lyndale. Annunication is a lively place and the Mass we attended had a lot of younger families with children. That's a good sign for a parish and a good sign for the mostly middle-class neighborhood that Annunciation serves.

It's always interesting to see the differences in how varying parishes in a diocese handle the liturgy. If there's one misconception about Catholicism, especially among non-Catholics, it's that there is a great uniformity from parish to parish. That may have been true at one time, but it hasn't been true in my lifetime, which has been post-Vatican II. Individual parishes in a diocese can vary greatly, depending on the desires of the parishioners and the proclivities of the pastor. The most famous parish in South Minneapolis, or most infamous depending on your perspective, is St. Joan of Arc, which is about a mile and a half northeast of Annuniciation. St. Joan is one of the most liberal parishes in the country and is usually on double-secret probation with the Archdiocese.

Annunciation isn't much like St. Joan -- while the Mass had modern touches, it was obvious that the liturgical approach was closer to what Archbishop Nienstedt would want, although the feel was less traditional than what you encounter at St. John's these days. In a time when many Catholics struggle to find a place that feels like home, the Mass at Annunciation was mainstream, in a good way.

After Mass, we had a nice brunch at Q Cumbers in Edina, which in our experience is one of the best places to get Sunday brunch in the Twin Cities. Then we went to the conference room at the Southdale Library.

We were in the conference room to attend the launch of a new online arts journal, Altered Scale. The editor of Altered Scale is Jefferson Hansen. Jeff is an old college friend of Mrs. D and me and he is attempting something that is different. Jeff has had an interesting career as a teacher, writer, poet and critic and with Altered Scale he has created something that brings a variety of voices and approaches to bear. In music, especially jazz, an altered scale is achieved by raising a normal scale by a half tone -- this link provides an example.

I could try to explain what Jeff is doing in the journal, but I'll let him explain:

I welcome performers, visual artists, and writers to submit to this journal. I have an eclectic—I don't consider that a bad word—taste. I want to see work on any topic, not just on music. As with any editor, I will make choices as to the ordering and arranging of the pieces. I will do this with an eye toward highlighting the musical aspects of works—tone, rhythm, harmony / disharmony, and improvisation—through comparison and contrast, not any explicit commenting on them. My editorial hand is light.

Today was the launch. A number of area writers performed their work, including poetry and fiction. It included poets who regularly read their work at coffee houses around town, including some with a fairly large footprint in the local literary scene. It was an enjoyable afternoon, watching and listening to people who spend their lives trying to find ways to alter the scale. And for Fearless Maria, who is an aspiring poet herself, it was a great chance to see how poets perform and think about the work they do.

I haven't spent a lot of time in recent years swimming in these waters. It's easy to become detached from the worlds of art and performance, especially when your professional writing is anonymous and necessarily geared to selling merchandise. My customers are more interested in metrics than meter, lithium-ion batteries over lyricism. It also takes an effort to get out of the suburbs and connect with the literary scene, especially when other duties call, as they inevitably do. It's an effort worth undertaking, though, and one that I take seriously. I commend Altered Scale to your attention, especially if you find yourself reading more Mark Steyn than Mark Twain these days. It's always worth it to expand your horizons. Or to alter the scale, so to speak.

Vikings to Plot of Land East of Metrodome II -- Hey Man, Pull My Pulltab Redux

A few days back we learned that the plan to finance the state's "portion" of the Vikings stadium would be to use electronic pulltabs. I know it's bad form to quote your own work, but at the time I said this:

So in other words, we once again are relying on projections from our old friend Rosy Scenario.

Yesterday, we learned that, as always, Rosy Scenario is likely to be a no-show:

Standing with State Revenue Commissioner Myron Frans, Dayton said that allowing electronic bingo and pulltabs in the state's bars and restaurants would produce $62.5 million annually to finance the state's total $398 million stadium contribution.

That figure is $10 million a year less than a previous calculation. It was revised to satisfy charitable gambling officials who want tax relief for their industry as part of any Vikings stadium deal. "We feel confident that this is a revenue stream that we can rely on" for the stadium, Frans said.

And even that figure might be Rosy, but we'll leave that aside. The larger point is that there is no Plan B:

Frans said he was confident about this latest pulltab revenue estimate, but conceded that if electronic bingo and pulltabs failed to generate enough money, the state would have to look at a backup plan more directly supported by state money. "That's something we'll have to look at," said Frans.

State officials said that while $38 million to $40 million a year would be needed for debt service on stadium borrowing, bond houses might require twice as much because gambling is seen as an unstable funding source.

"That's something we'll have to look at" really means, "uh, we have no idea." How do I know this? In addition to the news conference that the Star Tribune article references, Dayton made the rounds of local radio shows. I heard Dayton's interview with KFAN's Dan Barreiro on my drive home yesterday. While I can't find a transcript of the conversation, Barreiro asked Dayton directly if there was a Plan B and Dayton admitted there wasn't. You can listen to the interview here.

So what happens if the funding source is vapor, as it appears to be? Cue Dave Senjem:

"If the electronic pulltabs just [don't] work why, then, no one can probably vote for it," said Senate Majority Leader David Senjem after his Friday meeting with Dayton. "We have to be assured there's a financing mechanism that works," the Rochester Republican said.

On whether the Vikings stadium legislation would pass the Legislature this spring, Senjem said: "We'll do the best we can. If it's not good enough, why, we'll have to, I suppose, set it aside and [do it] at a different time."

And of course, the money that Minneapolis is supposed to pony up won't likely be forthcoming, either.

It's been a fine run of kabuki theater for the past year and it's been very good for business on this blog, but after a while it's time to face reality. The stadium only gets built if one of two things happen.

1) Zygi Wilf pays for it himself. And he won't.
2) The state bites down hard and votes to pay for it out of state revenues. That's likely a non-starter, but it would be far more honest if the various politicians who have been spinning like Iranian centrifuges on the matter would just admit that's what it is going to take.

Tarryl Clark, Nomadic House Candidate

Remember Tarryl Clark? She ran against Michele Bachmann for the 6th District house seat in the last cycle and got crushed. Since she's deemed herself indispensable, she decided to move to Duluth to challenge Chip Cravaack in the 8th.

It hasn't worked so well for her up to this point, as she didn't get the endorsement, which instead went to Rick Nolan instead. Never mind that -- Clark won't take no for an answer:

Former state Sen. Tarryl Clark told supporters in a letter Thursday that she wouldn't abide by a spring endorsing convention's decision. That means Democrats won't know until August who will challenge freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack in the northeastern Minnesota district.

Clark says "the stakes are too high" to let a small group of activists pick the nominee. Democratic Party Chairman Ken Martin says he's disappointed in Clark because a primary will sap candidate resources.

I don't know what Clark will do if she loses. She's running out of congressional districts.

Love Train

It's a train you could have seen coming for miles:

Limbaugh, through his spokesman Brian Glicklich, turned aside Sleep Train's attempts to resume advertising on the show.

"Unfortunately, your public comments were not well received by our audience, and did not accurately portray either Rush Limbaugh's character or the intent of his remarks. Thus, we regret to inform you that Rush will be unable to endorse Sleep Train in the Future."

Lessons learned?

• What makes Rush Limbaugh so valuable? His huge, loyal audience. Emphasis on loyal.
• As Allahpundit rightly points out, this is a variation on the Susan G. Komen kerfuffle of earlier this year. You can't switch sides and expect to come out ahead.
• People who have the time to mount a noisy public relations campaign/boycott might not buy your products, even if you respond to them.

Going to the Videotape

Apparently there is a video out now from Andrew Breitbart's team that shows a young Barack Obama extolling a Harvard professor named Derrick Bell. Bell, who died last year, was notable for being the first tenured African-American professor at Harvard's law school. Bell had a few, ahem, interesting notions, and was known to be a fan of Louis Farrakhan.

You can see the videotape here. I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I'm not sure I'm going to bother, though. The tape dates back to 1990, when Obama was a student at Harvard Law School. You need to know two things about Harvard Law:

• It has been a controversial law school, because they have used something called "Critical Legal Studies" in their curriculum. CLS takes an essentially Marxian (not Marxist) view of the world.
• As a result, Harvard Law has not been as highly regarded as other top law schools. This was especially true at the time Obama was a student there.

Does the tape tell us anything we didn't already know about Barack Obama? Not really. That he came from a place that took a dim view of America, and was an acolyte of someone who took an especially dim view of America, is not especially surprising. You can find hard-core leftists all over academe, because it's one of the places where such muddled thinking is celebrated.

What will decide Barack Obama's fate is his performance in office. We now have a 3+ year sample of his work. I have a feeling most people have a pretty good fix on who he is now, which matters a lot more than who he might have been 20+ years ago.

The Play's the Thing

This poster is comedy gold:

If you click on the photo and look at the bottom left, you'll notice an interesting panelist, some Illinois state senator named "Baraka Obama."

Does it mean anything? Probably not as much as some people think, but as a former Chicagoan it's amusing to see the other notables on the panel. Hadn't thought about Leon Despres or Studs Terkel in a while, to say nothing of Alderman Helen Shiller, who as I recall represented Pyongyang on the Chicago City Council.

UPDATE:  I am trying to confirm this, but I believe that after its run in Chicago, this play was performed at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater, on a double bill with "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Only in the best families

It's a story they'd rather not discuss:

Barbara Nyhammer's decision to sign her daughter's name to an absentee ballot in 2008 became a cause célèbre in the raging Photo ID debate at the Capitol on Tuesday.

Nyhammer, a Christian mental health therapist from Andover who said she has never had "so much as a parking ticket," was originally charged with three counts of felony voting fraud. She eventually convinced a judge the vote was a mistaken attempt to help her daughter, not a crime. Two charges were dismissed outright, and the judge dismissed the third after Nyhammer paid $200 in court costs.

"I am a woman of faith and also a patriot," Nyhammer, 52, told the judge when her case was resolved last August. "I believe voting is a privilege that men and women fought and died for."

A hilarious synopsis from a highly sympathetic Jim Ragsdale in the Strib. Later we learn what actually happened:

With her daughter, Alexandra Lyons, away at her first year of college in Mankato, Nyhammer told the judge, an absentee ballot arrived in the daughter's name before the 2008 election. "Just fill it in for me, Mom," Alexandra told Nyhammer via telephone. The two of them went through every race over the phone and Nyhammer filled in her daughter's choices.

"I told my daughter that the ballot required her signature," Nyhammer said. "She said, 'Go ahead and sign it for me, Mom.'"

Uh, no. You don't get to do that. But the punchline came later.

After mailing in Alexandra's ballot, Nyhammer voted in person in Andover on Nov. 4. And the daughter, alas, did the same in Mankato.

Nyhammer said her daughter forgot she had already voted via the absentee ballot. "It was her first time," Nyhammer said Tuesday. "She said, 'Mom, I totally blocked it, I totally forgot.'"

A few thoughts:

• It's evident that Jim Ragsdale would rather not tell this story. "Alas?" Nyhammer is a "Christian mental health therapist from Andover?" So sorry to bring up something so unpleasant.
• If you sign a document and misrepresent yourself in doing so, in any other context, it's fraud. So is this. It doesn't matter whether you're a "Christian," either.
• It's ridiculous to imagine that the daughter didn't know what had happened, either. If she is a first-year student, it is quite likely this was the first time she'd voted in an election. You don't get to vote twice.

Meanwhile, I imagine that most defendants wished they could have a judge as sympathetic as the one Nyhammer faced:

"There's no doubt in my mind, none, that neither you nor your daughter would intentionally vote twice in an election, no doubt," Jasper said at the hearing "There's also no doubt that it happened, and that's unfortunate." The judge declined to accept the plea, ordered Nyhammer to pay $200 in costs and eventually all three counts were dismissed.

Yeah, subverting the election process is pretty unfortunate, all right.

il miglior fabbro

I was thinking about trying to write a synopsis of Super Tuesday and What It All Means, but there's no reason to do so, because our friend First Ringer has it covered over at Shot In the Dark. A little flava:

Nothing seemingly can break the GOP deadlock as Romney remains a front-runner who has to outspend his competition 6-to-1 in order to eek out a victory and loses when “only” outspending his rivals by smaller margins.  Not that Santorum or Gingrich ought to be bragging.  The Icarus primary of the Not-Romneys has seen both candidate’s wings melt under the media spotlight and while Santorum looks to have at least 3 wins and a “draw” in his Ohio loss, he did nothing on Tuesday to claim the mantle of front-runner. 

More, a lot more, at the link. Check it out.

Happy Motoring!

And for $41,000 or thereabouts, it could be yours.
Chevy Volt - Building a Better Tomorrow from Ben Howe on Vimeo.

Bounty Hunting

The ongoing story surrounding the New Orleans Saints, and their penchant for putting bounties on certain key players, is a tough one to parse. Apparently we're supposed to be outrageously outraged about it, because that's what I'm being told, especially concerning the punishment the Saints meted out to Brett Favre in the 2009 NFC Championship game.

I get it, but only up to a point. The Saints were not playing within the rules, especially concerning the payment of bonuses under the salary cap regime the NFL had in place at the time. And it's a nasty thing to target your opponents for physical injury. At the same time, the opposition has ways to deal with such matters, such as blocking the bounty hunters. And there's a big difference between what happened to Favre and what happened to Jim McMahon back in 1986, in perhaps the most shameful moment in the history of my beloved Packers:

Martin was suspended for two games after that horrible play. Somehow I think Gregg Williams will get something more than that.

Lost in the Funhouse

Four links, submitted with minimal comment, because they pretty much speak for themselves:

Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller provides a useful trip down memory lane (note -- exceptionally NSFW), including the memorable counsel of some of our more thoughtful guides to public discourse, and Guy Cimbalo's advice to the love-lorn.

Patterico offers two things worth noting. First, an analysis of where the grassroots grow, especially in and around Houston, Texas. Second, a policy recommendation/deep thought from the victim du jour.

Finally, a little trip down memory lane from John Hinderaker at Powerline, concerning career highlights of a Nobel Laureate.

All Apologies

I'm still not that interested in the Rush Limbaugh kerfuffle, because as Kristen Powers points out, if you want everyone who has said something that is demeaning to women to apologize, especially on the port side, you'll be here for a very long time.

A slightly more interesting case involves Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a the Instapundit. Reynolds seems to be talking the loss of Andrew Breitbart to heart and he jumped down the throat of the blogger Robert Wright pretty good:

Really, how pathetic is this piece? When it starts out “I didn’t know Andrew Breitbart,” and then praises an “acute” observation by David Frum, the cause is already lost. Robert Wright: You should apologize to your readers, and to everyone who actually did know Andrew Breitbart. This is unworthy of you. You schmuck.

Calling someone a schmuck is not very nice, of course, although in this case I think was defensible if not polite. Wright's piece was an old favorite of professional thumbsuckers, the psychoanalysis by 800-word column routine. And it was pretty pathetic, as all such pieces are.

Still, later on Reynolds thought better of his remarks:

But on reflection, one schmucky post doesn’t a schmuck make. Sooner or later, every blogger will make a schmucky post, so taking a contrary view would make us all schmucks or schmucks-to-be. But I’ve known Wright for years and in truth have not found him to be a schmuck. So I’ll retract my characterization of Wright, which on sober reflection seems unfair, though not my views on the post, which really was a stinker.

This is an important point. If you get into the arena and get any sort of audience, eventually you're going to write or say something you're going to regret. We all have reasons to apologize, every day, because we all are sinners. It's well nigh impossible to get through a day without doing something that you might, on reflection, want to take back. And that's worth remembering as you deal with these sorts of arguments, and your own reactions to them.

Don't Talk About What They Want to Talk About, Talk About What I Want to Talk About

Just give Zygi the money and move on. That's the message from that ever-reliable source of conventional wisdom, Lori Sturdevant:

Count this Twins fan among those rooting for a new Vikings stadium to be authorized this year. Not next year or some other someday. This year.

Why the haste, when the team hasn't (yet) summoned any moving vans?

Because as long as the state's most popular sports team's facility needs go unmet, discussion of those needs won't end. And all that talk depletes a valuable and finite resource -- the attention of the voters and their elected representatives.

As always, this is baked wind. The Vikings don't need a new stadium. They want one. They could continue to play in the Dome indefinitely, but they don't want to. And the Vikings are entitled to feel that way, but it doesn't compel anyone in the government to take action on their behalf.

Second, I'm hardly convinced that the talk concerning the stadium is really depleting "a valuable and finite resource -- the attention of the voters and their elected representatives." From what I can tell, most of the lege is puttering along on any number of other issues and has been waiting to see what is brought to them. I've personally blown through a lot of pixels on the matter, but it's hardly the only thing we talk about.

Sturdevant apparently wants to just cut a check and move on to other issues:

It's a distraction, just when demographic and economic change should rivet public focus on the Big Challenge that Minnesota is confronting.

And that is?

Rather, it's about finding the best possible answer to this question: How can Minnesota preserve and enhance the asset on which its prosperity depends -- its well-educated, highly productive workforce?

Maintaining Minnesota's education edge ought to command top billing at the Capitol from now until the last baby boomer "checks out" of her assisted-living facility. To thrive, an aging society needs to maximize the skills, productivity and incomes of its working-age members.

She left out the main thing -- maximizing the revenue one can hoover out of the wallets of the working-age members. Because the Lori Sturdevants of the world need to be the ones to figure this stuff out.

The conceit in this instance is the same as always -- the demographic problem is something the government needs to solve. Of course, lately we've been talking a lot about mandated access to birth control, so we seem a little bit confused on the topic. But that's nothing a legislative committee, or maybe a blue-ribbon commission or a public-private partnership couldn't solve, if only we had the will to do it.

Maybe it could work. Perhaps we could set up the commissions with equally matched numbers of males and  females and send them off to a offsite conference someplace, then pair them off for "research purposes." It would certainly be a way to get some folks who otherwise spend their time playing video games in the basement to get more involved in the political process.

Somehow, I don't think that's what Lori has in mind, though. Actually, it's this:

Last year's moves to bring the latest research to bear on the teaching of reading are highly promising. So is a start on a new teacher evaluation system. When it's in place in a few years, it's expected to provide a basis for teachers to be rewarded and/or weeded out based on effectiveness in the classroom.

The bill that would require employing the new evaluation system when determining who will get pink slips when schools downsize might be considered premature, given that the system is still in the works.

But it also might be considered a welcome affirmation from the people's representatives about this state's intention to meet its Big Challenge. The tenure-bending bill says that Minnesota is serious about preserving instructional quality, even and especially when money is tight.

Well, that's all fine in the abstract, but Sturdevant's beloved DFL remains the political party that can stop any reform from happening. It also happens to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Education Minnesota, which has been fighting seniority rules with hammer and tong.

And at bottom, this is why the discussion that Sturdevant wants isn't likely to happen any time soon. There's too much incoherence in it. Asking for reform, while favoring Education Minnesota, is a lot like looking to improve demographic situations while demanding universal access to the Pill. You can't reconcile it and therefore any discussion of the "Big Challenge" is going to be fruitless.

Limbaugh Says Something Outrageous? Now That's a Fluke

I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh unless I happen to be driving around when his show is on and remember to turn the dial, so for the most part the current controversy concerning his remarks about Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke aren't in my wheelhouse. But I did want to say two things:

First, I find this statement by Ms. Fluke amusing:

In a response to Limbaugh on Thursday, Fluke said, "We are fortunate to live in a democracy where everyone is entitled to their own opinions regarding legitimate policy differences. Unfortunately, numerous commentators have gone far beyond the acceptable bounds of civil discourse. No woman deserves to be disrespected in this manner. This language is an attack on all women, and has been used throughout history to silence our voices."

This is, of course, baked wind. Voiceless people don't get quoted in the Hollywood Reporter. And let's be clear: at this point in history, in this nation, there's no way in hell to silence anybody. Birth control may cost whatever Fluke says it does, but the entry cost for Twitter, Blogger and any number of means of communication is zero. Getting an audience is a tougher matter, but anyone can get into the game. And you might notice that Fluke is the one trying to do the silencing, not the "numerous commentators" who might question Fluke's math skills or overall deportment. And, as always, I'd be curious to know what the precise boundaries are concerning the "acceptable bounds of civil discourse," from the law student's perspective. But that would require a follow-up question that Fluke's temporary advocates would prefer not to ask.

Second, what will eventually "silence" Fluke is the same thing that has effectively silenced Cindy Sheehan. Once her usefulness in this matter runs its course, she'll likely lose whatever audience she might have now. Whatever you think of Rush Limbaugh, the reason he has had a 20-year career is that he's found and maintained an audience, one that advertisers find lucrative. You might see a few advertisers bail on Limbaugh temporarily, but he'll have no trouble finding replacements.

Bachmann Gets Bridge, Betty Gets Bupkes

It almost got by us because of the continuous loop dog-and-pony show going on regarding the Vikings stadium, but a far more consequential construction project is now on the way:

Decades of debate over the proposed St. Croix River crossing ended Thursday with a five-minute vote in the U.S. House, which approved the plan overwhelmingly and sent it to President Obama for his signature.

The 339-80 vote easily surpassed the two-thirds needed to fast-track the project, a move made necessary after Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton gave Congress a March 15 deadline before reallocating state funding.

"This is it!" said Rep. Michele Bachmann, who carried the bill in the House. "After decades of bureaucratic holdups and frivolous lawsuits from radical environmentalists, the people of the St. Croix River Valley will finally have their bridge."

A few thoughts:

• It is a win for Bachmann, who currently represents the district but will not be representing the immediate Stillwater area next year. For all of Bachmann's visibility on the political scene, getting this bridge built is one of the most important accomplishments of her career.
• Although she won't admit it, this is also a break for Betty McCollum, who will now face Stillwater's voters for the first time in 2012. McCollum noisily opposed this bridge and while some might consider the vote a political defeat for her, it's actually a good thing. Her opposition to the project was certainly going to be a campaign issue that would have hurt McCollum. She can get her harrumphing out of the way now and concentrate on her primary campaign task, which is avoiding debates with opponents.
• The reason this bridge wasn't built 40 years ago is because of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, a goo-goo law that Walter Mondale shepherded back in the early 1970s. While the St. Croix is scenic enough, especially upriver from Stillwater, there's a giant power plant on the shoreline that dominates the view for miles, so it's always struck me as silly that environmentalists were so hellbent on keeping the St. Croix pristine. It hasn't been a pristine river for a very long time now.
• Some people are bitter about the bridge because they assume that it will spur increasing development in Wisconsin. That development has been happening for a very long time now and wasn't going to stop in any event. If Minnesota wants to slow that development, the job is make Minnesota a more desirable place to live. And if government wants a role in making that happen, perhaps they ought to consider what is happening across the St. Croix these days.

Home Truth

Jonah Goldberg gets to the essence of it:

One thing that he [Breitbart] and Bill [Buckley] shared was this basic contempt for the premise that the mainstream liberal elite institutions in the United States are in a position to judge and adjudicate the worth of conservatives. That they are in a position to judge our souls. That if we disagree with liberals, that proves that we are somehow wanting or lacking in compassion; lacking in humanity. That is a fundamental thing that enraged Andrew, this idea that if you disagreed about public policy, if you disagreed about how to organize society, that proved you were a racist. That proved you were a fascist. That proved you were a homophobe. It was the fundamental bad faith of the leading liberal institutions that controlled the commanding heights of this culture that infuriated him. And he refused, at the most basic level, to give them that authority over him or his ideas, and that is was fueled his Righteous Indignation, as his book title called it.

This goes back to the topic I was stumbling around with the other day. There's a lot of certitude on the Left regarding these fundamental questions. If you are on the Right, you are essentially compelled to deal with the arguments the Left makes every day because we live in a society in which the Left's worldview is only rarely challenged. Breitbart, like Buckley before him, was fearless about challenging that worldview. And that is why he mattered.

Vikings to Plot of Land East of Metrodome - Hey, Man, Pull My Pull-Tab

So now we know how the state is going to pay its "share" of the cost of the Vikings stadium:

The state would raise its contribution through an expansion of charitable gambling. Under the plan, the state would authorize electronic pull-tabs, which would allow bars and restaurants to operate hand-held gambling devices. State officials are banking that the iPod-like devices would be more appealing to consumers, causing the state to get a higher take from gambling proceeds. The state would sell bonds to pay for its share of the stadium and then use increased gambling profits to pay them off.

Would the "iPod-like devices" be more appealing to consumers? And more appealing than what? More appealing than other forms of gambling? More appealing than a blunt stick in the eye?

It made me wonder -- just how well are the pull-tabs doing today? The latest figures I could find were in this report from Minnesota Public Radio's website:

In 2009, paper pull-tabs generated $36.6 million in revenue for the state. Electronic pull-tabs could bring the state as much as $42 million more, according to House Researcher Pat McCormack and the Allied Charities of Minnesota, unless charitable organizations succeed in winning a tax break, which would lower that figure.

So in other words, we once again are relying on projections from our old friend Rosy Scenario. Now the Vikings are not exactly a charitable organization, except to opposing offenses in the NFC North (I keed, I keed), so it's more than a little unseemly as well. But it's easier to try to get in on charitable gaming action than it is to take on the tribes that run Mystic Lake, Treasure Island, etc. And the ballot box would be a pull-tab that no one associated with the deal wants to play.

If this deal goes through, I imagine that the state will find buyers for the bonds. What I wonder about is what the state will do when the revenue streams they claim they have turn out to be "disappointing" in a few years. It's not as though they'll be able to claw back any extra money from Zygi Wilf.

 Bottom line on this one is simple -- it really doesn't matter what R. T. Rybak, or Zygi Wilf, or Ted Mondale tell you -- the taxpayers are going to be paying for this stadium. It would be better if all these eager folks would stop pretending otherwise.

R.I.P. Andrew Breitbart

I'm not sure that I have much more to add concerning the sudden and sad departure of Andrew Breitbart from the world. Stacy McCain sums him up this way:

He may have been the greatest genius I’ve ever met, with a keen, intuitive mind. Although he had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder — he had a freewheeling quality about him, and his schedule was quite improvisational – Breitbart was also capable of a laser-like focus on whatever subject captured his interest. There were times you’d be talking to him and, if that spark of passionate interest hit, his luminous blue eyes would glow with an intensity that was almost frightening.

I guess for me, Breitbart was sort of a post-modern William F. Buckley:  fearless, charming when necessary and ruthless, too, but always a happy warrior for the conservative cause and entertaining as hell. You can read any number of tributes to Breitbart around the internet today, along with a few nastygrams, too (n.b., the link is NSFW). But one of the nicest comments came from Josh Marshall, who in some ways has built a portside version of the same sort of New Media empire that Breitbart did:

There are some people who live for the fight. It’s something I try not to be part of. Yet it’s a big, punchy, vivid and outrageously honorable tradition in the American public square. I cannot think of many people who lived more out loud than he did, more in primary colors. I remember thinking at some points even the name — the way it rolls off your tongue — has this rough, brickbat, unsmoothable sound: Breit / Bart.

And more:

Beneath all the layers of our public life, we’re sons, daughters; parents to sons and daughters: naked people at our most vulnerable, true moments. This is way, way too young to die, something I know palpably since Breitbart was only a week or so older than I am.

Marshall understands it well -- no matter the swords we wield, or the masks we don, we share humanity. And it's a fragile thing.

Vikings to Plot of Land East of Metrodome - Deal, or No Deal

So, do we have a deal?

A tentative deal has been reached to build a Minnesota Vikings stadium near the site of the team's current home, the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis.

The tentative deal was reached Wednesday night, sources confirmed. A news conference laying out the details is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday at the Capitol.

Word of the agreement emerged after a working group met behind closed doors at the Capitol.

The parties were said to have reached a tentative deal nearly two weeks ago. But stumbling blocks remained, apparently over how to divide the costs, how the parties would divide stadium revenue from non-NFL events and over the design of a large plaza-like park that would be built on the downtown side of the new stadium.

So if there's a deal in place, that must mean the Minneapolis City Council is on board, right? Oh, wait:

Even if the bill were to pass at the Capitol, the deal still could need approval by the Minneapolis City Council. At least seven of the council's 13 members are on record as opposing the city's participation in a stadium deal without putting it to the people for a vote.

Guess not. I'm sure Mayor R. T. Rybak has things in hand, though. Oh, well, it shouldn't be difficult to flip one of the seven in opposition, especially since the other six are strongly on board, right?

Rybak is pushing the stadium deal, which has so far garnered support from all three council members who represent north Minneapolis -- Council President Barbara Johnson, Don Samuels and Diane Hofstede -- and Council Member John Quincy, whose district is in south Minneapolis. Council Members Meg Tuthill and Kevin Reich haven't publicly stated which side they're on, though Reich said Friday that he may have to support a citywide vote.

Guess you have to flip two, then.

So what does this deal mean, really? Well, if the past is any indication, it means essentially nothing. The bottom line hasn't changed in any significant way -- "local" funding is a chimera. It fell apart in Ramsey County and there is little or no appetite in Minneapolis to commit the city to hundreds of millions of dollars in new costs, either -- hence the calls for a referendum. Meanwhile, the entire legislature is on the ballot this time around and the politicians can't relish the  idea of having to put the state on the hook, either. The gambling revenue is going to fall short, too. All this in the service of building a stadium in which the average ticket price for a game will likely be north of $100, when everything is said and done.

But hey, we have a deal.

Santorum, OutKast, Punch and the New Left

Another thought on the subject of snobbery. But first, a muscial interlude from a place you might not expect:


I know you'd like to think your **** don't stink
But lean a little bit closer
See that roses really smell like poo-poo-oo
Yeah, roses really smell like poo-poo-oo


-- "Roses," OutKast, 2003

Academe is full of roses. Which might be what Rick Santorum was trying to say, in his somewhat demagogic style.

Sometimes you need to call in someone who is a smidge more, ahem, erudite than your typical politician, to get the message across. Enter Steven Hayward, writing at Powerline:

Instead, we should entertain the idea that in calling Obama a “snob,” Santorum has actually struck very close to the philosophical core of the contemporary Left.  And my witness for this case is a long ago article from the late John Adams Wettergreen titled, “Is Snobbery a Formal Value?  Considering Life at the End of Modernity,” published in the March 1973 issue of the Western Political Quarterly.  (Only available online if you have J-STOR access, unfortunately.)  This very theoretical article surveys the leading thinkers of the “New Left” at the time, including Marcuse, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and especially the French Hegelian, Alexandre Kojeve, whose own peculiar gloss on Hegel’s “end of history” became the basis of Francis Fukuyama’s blockbuster book The End of History and the Last Man.

When we start namechecking French Hegelians, we're headed for the weeds, of course. But Wettergreen's point does come into focus, in discussing the career of William Makepeace Thackeray, who edited the venerable British humor magazine Punch in the 1800s. Just to keep track, this passage quotes Hayward, quoting Wettergreen, quoting Thackeray. Pretty meta, but stay with it:

 Now Thackeray’s Book of Snobs was intentionally anti-snobbist and so it seems that snobbery may have had some content, something worthy of opposition. What was it in snobbery that Thackeray opposed? In a perhaps too serious moment, he wrote: “As long as [newspapers publish a "society page"] how the deuce are people whose names are chronicled in it ever to believe themselves the equals of that cringing race which daily reads that abominable trash?” . . .

One might argue that Thackeray's opinion was a bit snobbish, but we'll set that aside. Back to Wettergreen:

According to Thackeray, the footman who grovels before the royal footman is equally a snob with the royal footman (or the royalty itself) that expects such groveling. Today, when all footmen have disappeared, Thackeray’s understanding remains: anyone who thinks that he is superior (in a way that society ought to take notice of) is a snob. In the age when groveling is strictly taboo, in the classless society, only the expectation of groveling can produce a snob. Therefore, in modem times snobbery has progressed from the objective condition of the lower or lowest class to the merely subjective preference for an upper class. This late kind of snobbery, almost the reverse of original snobbery, is what Kojeve hopes will save man’s humanity.

So let's reel it back a bit. Here's Hayward again:

Likewise, today’s leftists have so fully absorbed their own “betterness” over the rest of us that they can’t be bothered with a serious philosophical defense of it.

Based on my experience, there's some truth to this observation, but not enough to be entirely satisfactory. I do pick up on a tone of dismissiveness among many college-educated people, especially from my tribe -- that is, liberal arts majors. Certitude in anything is dangerous. If anything, I'm a lot less certain that I understand the world than I was 20-25 years ago.

Is certitude due to college education? Probably not. I certainly encountered Hegel, Marcuse, Heidegger and Sartre during my college years. And I also read Baudelaire's "The Flowers of Evil." Which brings us back to OutKast.

I suspect that Rick Santorum and many of his critics both believe their **** don't stink. What Santorum's more educated enemies recognize in Santorum is something they often fail to see in themselves, which is certitude. It's no surprise that what often drives Santorum's critics to their greatest rage is his views on matters sexual. It was also no surprise that one of Santorum's greatest enemies, Dan Savage, has turned Santorum's surname into a term for an, ahem, especially nasty byproduct of a specific form of sexual activity. Santorum offers, with his sweater vest and his particular form of piety, a direct challenge that many people had hoped was buried a long time ago.

If you can get by with refusing to deal with someone simply through being dismissive of their concerns, or through ridicule, you're going to come across as a snob, or worse. And Santorum, since he tends to intersperse a measure of ridicule in his piety, throws it right back in a way that pushes people's buttons. This is a populist moment, but not necessarily in an economic sense. Santorum understands this in ways that Mitt Romney never will. In the end, the Santorum candidacy will fail. It deserves to. But by raising these issues, he's giving both sides of the culture war a chance to look at some things that ought to make everyone involved uncomfortable. As Baudelaire said:


Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!