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Did you know? Daryl Gardener is out for eight weeks after being injured in a fight at an IHOP.
If you haven't read Tuesday Morning Quarterback, you should. It's written by Greg Easterbrook, who writes for the New Republic and the Atlantic Monthly - football's answer to George Will.
I had read that Broder thing yesterday. What he didn't say is that those 56% for Gore predictions were based exclusively on economic data, without any input from potential voters. I think he's right that the election will be close, at least by raw votes - but electorally, it isn't going to be close.
Bush wins 278-260 just by holding onto the states he won last time. That assumes that the Democrats hold the states where they won by less than 10,000 votes (including Iowa, where Bush leads all potential Dems by 9-10 points, 13 in Dean's case). So Bush wins with maybe 51.5%, but with 300 or so electoral votes.
Marc
Check out the latest Broder column about political scientists' predictions of the 2004 race. No joke, we are really flipping a coin...
According to Tony Kornheiser at the Washington Post The Danny has cut Danny Wuerffel taking away the sweet fruit of temptation from Steve Spurrier. It's a surprisingly good move and I'm glad to see someone make it. Wuerffel has never been able to play at the NFL level and never will. Thankfully, now I'll never have to think about him again...
For the sake of equal opportunity, check out Wilbon too...
I'll leave you with this. Is it me or is the undying love of the Ravens in this town weird to anybody else? I mean, the team just got here maybe ten years ago, after selling out their longtime home for greener pastures. I just got jokingly reamed out buy a guy who works here and then by his wife on the phone for being a Redskins fan. You'd think people in this town wouldn't have such short memories. On the other hand, football is a religion and it's just so damn fun to root for your hometeam and even more fun to hate everybody else's hometeam.
Peace,
Myrr
Marc
You could spin this the way Kerry is trying to and say that no one is thinking about the primary yet, so the race is wide open and that anyone could win. But what it really means is all the candidates except Dean are dead. All Dean has to do is hold on to 150,000 or so hardcore Democratic voters in Iowa and NH, and this race is over on January 27.
Once the rest of the country starts caring about the primary, it will be over.
Marc
Euphemisms aside, Mo'Nique is fat and probably morbidly obese, a phrase I choose carefully, not as an insult, but as a medical term that indicates an individual is dangerously overweight. It was how Carnie Wilson described herself before the stomach stapling surgery that saved her life. Wilson took a lot of heat for her action, as do many women who choose surgery to correct dangerous weight problems. They are seen as betraying their group. However, being fat and attempting to correct it is not like having light brown skin and attempting to pass for white. What bothers me most about Monique is that she stands up and shouts out: I'm fat and I'm proud!
The "I'm fat and I'm proud" message is a reaction, or more truthfully, a reactionary idea formulated after one is forced to sit through painfully thin waifs like Calista Flockhart on a daily basis. I'm willing to grant the fact that the media is out of touch with Middle America on the weight issue. Television seems to be so out of touch that in the several years that Friends has been on, Courtney Cox and Jennifer Ansiton have lost weight at about the same rate, as the rest of the country has been packing on the pounds. The media is filled with images based in a reality far, far away and one can assume it only natural that people who can't (and who can?) live up to this ideal would reject it and seek out something else. And while turning a fault on its head in order to reject criticism is certainly not new (Lincoln called himself ugly. He was) Monique goes one step further. Her message is not one of acceptance. She ridicules those who aren't overweight, attempting to create a cult out of one of the most rapidly growing demographics in this country: overweight Americans.
Like an increasing number of Americans, I myself am slightly overweight. And maybe this is an issue of degree, but I have yet to attempt to wear my fatness as a badge of honor. There is something that strikes me as decidedly un-American about Mo'Nique's efforts to aggrandize herself at the buffet of public opinion. She didn't get fat through discipline, hard work and self-denial, all traditional, albeit tenuous, American values. She did it by, according to an appendix of her book, eating at every schlock restaurant at every major American airport. Not only does she not emulate the things this country used to hold dear, she attempts to make these notions seem antiquated and those that honor them a bunch of fuddy duddies. Relax, she seems to be saying, have a sandwich.
And Mo'Nique's relative success in this country means that her message is taking root. That people who are overweight may soon not see this as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a trait to take pride in. Or as another group (we are a group joining people) they belong to. But being fat is not an ethnicity, it is not an admission to secret club (in fact, just the opposite) and it does not make you cool. Like stuffed crust pizza, it just makes you fatter. This country is the fattest it's ever been, and diet trends not withstanding, there is no evidence that we'll be getting skinnier anytime soon. While that may be good for Mo'Nique's career, it is not good for us as individuals or as a nation. And while attempting to take pride in our faults, like being overweight itself, may be normal, it ain't healthy.
---Tony (Myrr Jerk)
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