The Cretins Cloning and Feeding, and I Don't Even Own a TV

"I Dream of Denver" by David Brooks

The Pew Research Center just finished a study about where Americans would like to live and what sort of lifestyle they would like to have. The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present.

Second, Americans still want to move outward. City dwellers are least happy with where they live, and cities are one of the least popular places to live...

Cities remain attractive to the young. Forty-five percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 would like to live in New York City. But cities are profoundly unattractive to people with families and to the elderly...

Third, Americans still want to go west. The researchers at Pew asked Americans what metro areas they would like to live in. Seven of the top 10 were in the West: Denver, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento. The other three were in the South: Orlando, Tampa and San Antonio. Eastern cities were down the list and Midwestern cities were at the bottom.

Although Brooks did not address this in his column, I was, with a little wrangling, cajoling, and yes, outright bribery, able to obtain the release of the bottom three cities in the polling conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Here's what I found:

#7,345: West Memphis, AR

#7,346: Lubbock, TX

Let us not beat around the bush: Lubbock sucks. You and I have no love for Lubbock. Often, and this is just one man?s opinion, I could be wrong, I think Lubbock has about as much appeal as lard-fried Vienna sausages served in a pool of warm goat spit.

#7,347: Detroit, MI

This city has not always been a gentle place, but a series of events over the past few, frigid days causes one to wonder how cold the collective heart has grown.

It starts with a phone call made by a man who said his friend found a dead body in the elevator shaft of an abandoned building on the city's west side.

"He's encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks," the caller phoned to tell this reporter.

Ladies and gentlemen, G.O.B. Bluth may tell you that "the jury's still out on science", but the fact that those cities are at the bottom of the list is a fact as immutable as Pluto's status as a planet.

Wait, what's that?

Pluto's been downgraded?

Okay, forget you read any of this.

It Doesn't Matter What I Say So Long as I Sing With Inflection

Congratulations to Ms. Nina Patterson for correctly naming "The Way" by Fastball as the Monday Song of the Day.

Welcome back to 1998, kids. Welcome back.

Good stuff here (as always) from Malcolm Gladwell...

This is the quarterback problem. There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of fields have begun to wrestle with this problem, but none with such profound social consequences as the profession of teaching.

"Most Likely to Succeed: Who Do We Hire When We Can't Tell Who's Right for the Job?" by Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker.

The best part of that article might be Gladwell's subtle prediction that Chase Daniel will one day reach the same level of putridity as Joey Harrington, Tim Couch, and Ryan Leaf, but perhaps that's just me.

Plus, David Brooks offers his thoughts on Gladwell's latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success.

Searching For An Answer Where the Question Is Unseen

Forget Joe the Plumber. Meet the newest American archetype: Patio Man.

For all the talk of plumbers and investment bankers, populists and elitists, Patio Man is still at the epicenter of national politics. He is the quintessential suburban American, the service economy worker, the guy who wears khakis to work each day, with the security badge on the belt clip around his waist.

He lives in northern Virginia, along the I-4 corridor near Orlando, Fla., in or near Columbus, Ohio, along the Front Range of Colorado, in the converging megalopolis between Albuquerque and Santa Fe and in many other places.

"Patio Man Revisited" by David Brooks in today's New York Times.

You Didn't Get to Heaven But You Made It Close

Congratulations to Mr. John Middleton for correctly naming "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve as the Thursday Song of the Day.

If McCain is going to win this election, it will because he can communicate an essential truth — that people in a great and successful nation do not want change for its own sake. But they do realize that it’s only through careful reform that they can preserve what they and their ancestors have so laboriously built.

David Brooks--"The Coming Activist Age" in yesterday's NY Times.

She Says You're Not There and I Should Take Care

Perhaps the vast majority of Americans can relate much more easily to an "everyman" figure like Rocco Mediate rather than the Olympian persona put forth by Tiger Woods, but in the question of relation versus aspiration, I, in the words of Lt. Sam Weinberg of A Few Good Men fame, will take Tiger Woods "everyday of the week and twice on Sunday."

In a period that has brought us instant messaging, multitasking, wireless distractions and attention deficit disorder, Woods has become the exemplar of mental discipline. After watching Woods walk stone-faced through a roaring crowd, the science writer Steven Johnson, in a typical comment, wrote: “I have never in my life seen a wider chasm between the look in someone’s eye and the surrounding environment.”

"The Frozen Gaze" by David Brooks of the New York Times.

Current Reading

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Karen DeYoung

Just Like Way Back in the Days of Old

In my ongoing argument for David Brooks as the best op-ed columnist currently writing, I submit today's offering.

It begins with this:

In 1950, Dr. Seuss published a book called “If I Ran the Zoo.” It contained the sentence: “I’ll sail to Ka-Troo, and bring back an IT-KUTCH, a PREEP, and a PROO, a NERKLE, a NERD, and a SEERSUCKER, too!” According to the psychologist David Anderegg, that’s believed to be the first printed use of the word “nerd” in modern English.

And ends with this:

Barack Obama has become the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes. They honor him with videos and posters that combine aesthetic mastery with unabashed hero-worship. People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority-figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers.

So, in a relatively short period of time, the social structure has flipped. For as it is written, the last shall be first and the geek shall inherit the earth.

Needless to say, it's worth a read.

"The Alpha Geeks" by David Brooks in today's New York Times.

There Was Nothing to Fear and Nothing to Doubt

They say the 21st century is going to be the Asian Century, but, of course, it’s going to be the Bad Memory Century. Already, you go to dinner parties and the middle-aged high achievers talk more about how bad their memories are than about real estate. Already, the information acceleration syndrome means that more data is coursing through everybody’s brains, but less of it actually sticks. It’s become like a badge of a frenetic, stressful life — to have forgotten what you did last Saturday night, and through all of junior high.

"The Great Forgetting" by David Brooks in today's NY Times.

I realize that at times this blog risks becoming a pro-David Brooks propaganda machine, but if you appreciate his opinion pieces, I would strongly suggest picking up both Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.

Also, if you needed more incentive to pick up those books, he's a first-ballot Hall of Famer!

Early Morning, April 4, Shot Rings Out in the Memphis Sky, Free at Last, They Took Your Life

On the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, a few thoughts from around the interwebs:

• Forty years ago, American liberalism suffered a blow from which it has still not recovered. On April 4, 1968, a relatively brief but extraordinary moment of progressive reform ended, and a long period of conservative ascendancy began.The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run for much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform.--"When Liberalism's Moment Ended" by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post.

• Martin Luther King Jr. at least left behind a model of how to repair the social fabric. He was scholarly, formal, assertive and meticulously self-controlled in public. If Barack Obama’s presidential campaign represents anything, it is the triumph of King’s early-60s style of activism over the angry and reckless late-60s style. King was in crisis when he was gunned down. But his inspiration is outlasting his critics.--"The View from Room 306" by David Brooks in the New York Times.

• Martin Luther King Jr. died at age 39; today, the 40th anniversary of his death, is the first time he has been gone longer than he lived.Figures such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have tried to claim his place on the American stage. But at most they have achieved fame and wealth. What separated King from any would-be successor was his moral authority. He towered above the high walls of racial suspicion by speaking truth to all sides. Now comes Barack Obama, a black man and a plausible national leader, who appeals across racial lines. But to his black and white supporters, Mr. Obama increasingly represents different things.--"Obama and King" by Juan Williams in the Wall Street Journal.

• King is widely remembered as an inspirational speaker and moral leader. But John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute concludes that his more mundane efforts may end up mattering as much: “I wish more people thought about the long, hard work he did behind the scenes on policy and negotiation.” Rows continue over the relative merits of race-blind policies and the need to level out America’s inequalities. Four decades after King’s death much remains to be done.--"A Dream Deferred?" in The Economist.

Whatever's In My Head Won't Go Away

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

"The Long Defeat" by David Brooks in tomorrow's New York Times.

With a Love So Hard and Filled With Defeat

Clinton had sounded like a traditional executive, as someone who gathers the experts, forges a policy, fights the opposition, bears the burdens of power, negotiates the deal and, in crisis, makes the decision at 3 o’clock in the morning.

But Obama sounded like a cross between a social activist and a flannel-shirted software C.E.O. — as a nonhierarchical, collaborative leader who can inspire autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns.

Clinton had sounded like Old Politics, but Obama created a vision of New Politics. And the past several months have revolved around the choice he framed there that night. Some people are enthralled by the New Politics, and we see their vapors every day. Others think it is a mirage and a delusion. There’s only one politics, and, tragically, it’s the old kind, filled with conflict and bad choices.

Hillary Clinton has fought on with amazing resilience since then, and Tuesday night may well bring another surprise, but she’s always been the moon to his sun. That night in November, he defined the campaign.

"A Defining Moment" by David Brooks in today's NY Times.

What's going to happen in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, faithful readers of Running Down a Dream?

Any predictions, prognotistications, or views into the political crystal ball?

Here's my predictions:

For the GOP, I see McCain winning Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, but narrowly losing out to Huckabee in the Lone Star State. That would not exactly be the vote of confidence that McCain needs heading into the fall against an re-invigorated Democratic party, but it seems to be a result that would reflect the fractured state of the Republican party at the moment.
For the Dems, I see Obama winning by a fairly comfortable margin in Texas, winning by a close margin in Vermont, but losing squeakers in Ohio and Rhode Island. That means Senator Clinton will almost certainly stick around through the summer, even as her margin for error continues to diminish.

Wait a second, while we're in the predicting mood, here's my thoughts on today's second-leg Round of 16 matchups in the Champions League:

• Arsenal-AC Milan: Despite the fact that midfield maestro Clarence Seedorf will likely miss the match for Milan, the return of Kaka, Andrea Pirlo, and Alessandro Nesta bodes very well for the defending champions. Milan will advance with a 2-1 victory at their home ground, the San Siro.
• Barcelona-Celtic: After winning 3-2 at Celtic Park a fortnight ago, Barcelona are the heavy favorites to advance in this tie. Even though Celtic will fight hard to withstand the Barcelona effort at the Nou Camp, the Scottish side simply do not have the ability to hold back weapons like Henry, Messi, Ronaldinho, Eto'o, et. al. Barcelona advances with a rather comfortable 3-1 win.
• Manchester United-Lyon: Karim Benzema's 54th minute goal for Lyon in the first leg of this tie made things interesting, but Carlos Tevez's 87th minute equalizer put the Red Devils in prime position to advance to the Round of 8. Tonight at Old Trafford, I expect Man. U. to continue to push down on the accelerator and bring home a 2-0 victory. I don't like it one bit, but the Red Devils are going to be awfully difficult to stop this year.
• Fenerbahce-Sevilla: After capturing a 3-2 home win in Turkey, Fenerbahce heads into their match with Sevilla with a slight advantage, but the Spanish side always play well at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan. Despite a noble effort from Fenerbahce, I expect Sevilla to capture a 2-1 win at home to advance to the Round of 8.
  

Such is the Promise, Such is the Curse

On Friday, I mentioned the enshrinement of NY Times columnist David Brooks in the Running Down a Dream author/writer/columnist Hall-of-Fame. At the point when I made that famous declaration, said Hall-of-Fame was an entirely contrived entity, and I guess it still is, but I wanted to run with the idea and commit it to the firmament of the internet. That last clause is probably an oxymoron, but I'm moving ahead regardless.

If I had to construct my version of Canton, Grauman's Chinese Theater, or Cooperstown, it would look something like this:

First-Ballot Members (since Cooperstown had 5 initial members [Mathewson, Ruth, Wagner, Johnson, and Cobb] I'm going with 5 of my own) in no particular order:

David Halberstam

As if it were not enough to have written the definitive book on the Vietnam War (1972's The Best and the Brightest), the Pulitzer Prize-winner also authored one of the best sports books in the last half-century with 1980's The Breaks of the Game.

Over the years, he developed a pattern of alternating a book with a weighty theme with one that might seem of slighter import but to which he nonetheless applied his considerable reportorial muscles. “He was a man who didn’t have a lazy bone in his body,” said the writer Gay Talese, a close family friend. Obituary in the April 24, 2007 edition of the NY Times.

David Brooks

I was introduced to the writing of Brooks through the Op-Ed page of the NY Times, but his best work, at least in my opinion, is found in his two books, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. When viewed as two parts of a larger whole, they represent one of the most accurate pictures of modern America that I have read.

Bill Simmons

Even though his rampant homerism for the Great Satan this year has been a bit too much to handle, the Sports Guy still holds down a spot in the Pantheon (I know, I'm mixing my metaphors), due to the fact that he has introduced me to The Ewing Theory, the Manning Face, the Levels of Losing, the Tyson Zone, and "Yup, these are my readers." His first book, Now I Can Die in Peace, chronicling the 2004 World Series run by the Red Sawx, may just be required bedtime reading for my (non-existent) children or grandchildren when the Rangers, Cowboys, and Liverpool still have not won a title.

Malcolm Gladwell

Out of the Top-5, Gladwell is easily the figure that I have read the least, but his ability to present technical, jargon-laden information in an engrossing and engaging manner is a skill that I greatly admire. Whether it was 2000's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, 2005's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, his pieces for the New Yorker, or his blog, almost all of Gladwell's writing makes me view the world in a new way that I had never before considered.

Jon Krakauer

Krakauer rose to prominence based on his first hand-account of the 1996 Everest Disaster in Into Thin Air, but 1990's Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, 1996's Into the Wild, and 2003's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith are just as good, if not better than Into Thin Air. Krakauer's writing is reminiscent of the settings he describes: stark and often unforgiving. If the sign of a great writer is the ability to remove himself from the story and place the characters on center stage, Krakauer is surely near the pinnacle of the modern non-fiction genre.

Honorable Mention (Maybe next time, fellas)

• Ernest Hemingway
• John Grisham
• Stephen Ambrose
• John Steinbeck
• Bob Woodward
• Chuck Klosterman
• William Manchester
• Edmund Morris
• David McCullough
  
  
  
  

Been Fooled Again, The Search Continues

Congratulations to Ms. Stacy Villescas (Running Down a Dream's resident Beatles expert) for correctly naming "Here Comes the Sun" by the Fab Four as the Thursday Song of the Day.

I realize that I'm dangerously close to replicating the "Chris Farley Show" segment with Paul McCartney in my frequent promotion of NY Times columnist David Brooks, but until further notice, he has taken a place in the Running Down a Dream author/writer/columnist Hall-of-Fame.
"In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness. 'People often act without knowing why they do what they do,' Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, noted in an e-mail message to me this week. 'The fashion of political writing this year is to suggest that people choose their candidate by their stand on the issues, but this strikes me as highly implausible.'"

"How Voters Think" by David Brooks.

She Says You're Not There and I Should Take Care

A few Friday morning links to articles/editorials/columns that I thought everyone might enjoy:

• Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal on Mitt Romney's speech yesterday in College Station at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library: "Mormon in America"
• "The nation’s founders knew the answer to that question says nothing about a candidate’s fitness for office. It’s tragic to see it being asked at a time when Americans need a president who will tell the truth, lead with conviction and restore the nation’s moral standing, not one who happens to attend a particular church."--The NY Times editorial board in "The Crisis of Faith."
• "Religion can certainly be conducive to freedom. But does freedom require religion? Is religion always conducive to freedom? Does freedom not also thrive in far more secular societies than our own? Isn't the better course for our nation to seek solidarity among lovers of liberty, secular as well as religious? After all, as the Princeton scholar Jeffrey Stout has noted, it was a coalition of believers and secularists that sent a communist dictatorship tumbling down in Pope John Paul II's native Poland."-- E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post in "Boldness, Watered Down."
• "Romney’s job yesterday was to unite social conservatives behind him. If he succeeded, he did it in two ways. He asked people to rally around the best traditions of America’s civic religion. He also asked people to submerge their religious convictions for the sake of solidarity in a culture war without end."--David Brooks of the NY Times in "Faith v. the Faithless."
• "Hollywood is in somewhat the same position as Las Vegas these days. It went from being the capital of sin to Disneyland, and now it’s landed somewhere in between. It tries to keep the sins hidden away and outwardly present itself as a defender of American virtues: justice, individual freedom, and the power of one innocent soul to save the world. The Golden Compass should not offend, or be controversial at all, Weitz swears. It will certainly not, heaven forbid, offer any critique of religion. 'The movie’s first job is to beguile the audience for a couple of hours,' he says, and that much it can promise to do."--Hanna Rosin of The Atlantic Monthly in "How Hollywood Saved God."
• "When Barry Bonds walks into the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Friday, it will be only the beginning of an unpredictable legal odyssey. A few days after the fourth anniversary of his BALCO grand jury testimony, Bonds will surrender to U.S. marshals, go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of being arrested and later appear in court to enter a plea on four counts of perjury and one of obstructing justice."--Mark Fainaru-Wade and T.J. Quinn of ESPN.com in "Answers to Key Questions as Bonds Begins Legal Journey."
  
  
  
  

If You Ever Change Your Mind, About Leavin', Leavin' Me Behind

You might be a news/political junkie if...

While flipping through the channels you notice David Brooks and George F. Will on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and yell, "David Brooks, I love that guy. He's the man!"

Not that I've ever done something like that, though. Goodness knows how embarrassing that would be to admit something like that to a worldwide audience.

Nobody Knows, Nobody Sees, Nobody Knows But Me

Quick Hits on a Friday spent studying for Finals:

• David Brooks (NY Times) envisions Sen. Hillary Clinton channeling Jack Nicholson's Col. Nathan Jessup. It's as entertaining as it sounds.
• In a statement that will surely anger one Cris Carpenter, I cannot believe that the (Super)Sonics are likely moving to OKC. I realize that the Hornets received a warm welcome in Oklahoma's state capitol, but it just does not seem right for Oklahoma City (metro area pop. 1,266,455) to have an NBA team instead of Seattle (metro area pop. 3,263,497). I know that the relative sizes of the metropolitan areas are not the only concern, but due to the large possibility that the NBA will not grant a new expansion franchise in the near future, Seattle basketball fans may be entering a very dark period.
• It looks like Uncle Ridley (Scott) has produced a riveting film with standout performances by Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe:

  "Washington is brilliant. He makes sense of a man who could move his mother into a mansion and love the joy on her face, and yet coldly place a Browning 9mm against a competitor's forehead and reply to the question "What are you going to do, Frank, shoot me in front of all these people?" by shooting him in front of all those people. Washington seems to have a secret mechanism by which he turns his face off; it goes from a vibrant, expressive projection of humanity and empathy to a stone-killer executioner's mask so fast it's scary. He makes you fear Frank. Yet he also makes you love Frank. That's the key to the thing, the charisma of the man who triumphs over the system. And so identified with this theme is American Gangster that its other hero, Richie, is also defined as an outsider. The movie seems to be saying: When the inside is so corrupt, you must turn to outsiders. "
  

• Update: An American Gangster review from Running Down a Dream's most widely read-commenter (though he would probably prefer to be identified otherwise), Mr. Dan Carlson.
  

When the World Was Younger and You Had Everything to Lose

I've decided to move away from my recent choice of Radiohead lyrics for the Song of the Day contest into territory that is hopefully more familiar for those who frequent the hallowed halls of Running Down a Dream.

"There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood. During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another. "

Since I'm pretty sure that those words from a column by David Brooks in today's New York Times apply to roughly 80% (that's really an arbitrary number) of those who probably read this blog, I think you will enjoy the rest of the piece, which can be read here.

Maybe I'm feeling nostalgic tonight because I've been listening to "The Blues" by Switchfoot on repeat, but sometimes I have to listen to songs over and over and over again to truly understand them. A few days ago, it was "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" by Radiohead, and a few weeks before that it was "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" by David Gray. Eventually the song fades into the background and the music no longer holds my immediate attention.

Instead, the music accomplishes its highest purpose. It causes me to remember events and people that have not crossed my mind in a long time and those who cross my mind each and every day. I am reminded that music has the ability to cause great happiness and great sadness, sometimes in the same instant. I'm reminded that each of us have this gift inside of us, this spark of God, and so much of our lives is determined by how we choose to exercise that gift.