Indianapolis Chip Dip

Oh. How zesty.

In honor of the New Orleans Saints’ spicy victoire over the bland and tasteless Colts in Super Bowl 44, I humbly offer this little recipe — and a story to go with it.

It is an established fact that my mother could not cook. She was terrible at it, and for two good reasons: when she was a child her father made her get up every morning to make cornbread in an old cast-iron skillet. He didn’t feed his daughter; she fed him because she was a female and he lost his wife in childbirth, when my mother was born. His little girl was apparently supposed to be his substitute wife, because God forbid he should make his own damn cornbread. My mother quickly came to resent this, and my brothers and I never blamed her for it.

The second reason: when I was six, she went away to The Best Pharmacy School in the World™, four long years of terribly demanding study. (Now it’s six.) In the meantime our all-male household learned to slap bologna between two slices of bread and call it supper. When she got back home to our grandparents’ drugstore, she worked 8, 10, 12 hours every day on her feet, and didn’t see why she ought to have to keep on working once she got home. My brothers and I never blamed her for that, either. Who could?

The Bro’s and I all became good cooks, as men ought to be, because there’s not always going to be a woman around to do your bidding. If you’re Gay, there’s never going to be a woman around, so you’d better know the difference between asparagus and an anchovy.

My mother was good with a few dishes; her onion dip, her potato salad—and I’m trying to think whether there was a third one; maybe her fruit salad with the cute little ’60s marshmallows. That was the level she was on foodwise. Couldn’t fry a chicken to save her life. Then there was a dish so notorious that the mere mention of it now provokes groans: hamburger gravy on boiled potatoes, the most ghastly stuff you ever saw. (And saw, and saw, and saw.)

Women have every right to resent cooking. But since they invariably like to eat, the rational ones ought to learn a few recipes, just in case.

NOW IT HAPPENED that while my mother was lousy in the kitchen, she took a bit of interest in cookbooks; in fact, all the ones she bought date back to the first years after her lastborn son went to college. She didn’t have males to press into service anymore. (Not that we ever resented that!) When she died, we found 50 or 60 cookbooks in her kitchen, all © 1970, the year I left home. My brother Steve, who accepted his one-third share of the cookbooks, examined them all to see whether the pages needed cutting. He was certain she’d never cracked them open. He’d turn a page and say, “No ketchup stains here.” He’d turn another one in the casseroles section and declare, “Not even Campbell’s mushroom soup.”

(We all cooked for her when we went back home, and in her later years we teased her without mercy.)

This is a long prologue for announcing that I seem to have made it my mission lately to actually make some of the things in Betty Crocker’s New Cookbook. Page 1, recipe 1, dips.

I have kept this cookbook because in some ways, it’s not bad. It’s terribly out of date, the food has no sophistication whatever, everything is geared to time-saving devices and the TV Dinner Generation; but still, it has some good features, including an herb-and-spice chart on the inside covers that I use today. (The competing Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks, which she also bought, dump MSG in everything.) Betty’s pictures of vegetables are useful and so are the basic preparation hints. Ol’ Betty apparently assumed that young brides didn’t know jack-shit in the kitchen, so she would teach them to be Happy Homemakers. In other words, perfect for my mother—and not bad for a Gay guy just starting out.

I have made four of the dips so far. This adventure did not start out well. Cape Cod Dip calls for an envelope of dry onion soup mix, 2 cups of sour cream and a 7-ounce can of minced clams, drained. The accompanying commentary suggests using thin strips of turnip or zucchini, which it calls “surprises.” Well, yes, it would still be a surprise today to see a turnip on the cocktail table.

Anyway I tried it. The canned minced clams were like eating bits of rubber. Maybe tuna would work but I don’t guarantee it.

Harlequin Dip uses sour cream, mayo, ripe olives, snipped chives, Worcestershire, mustard and a tiny bit of curry powder. Well, do you know how old my mother’s curry powder was? The internet hadn’t been invented; neither had the Zip Code. A&P was still a grocery chain. Streisand was an unknown Jewish girl from New Yawk who could Get It For You Wholesale. Yes, the dip was edible, but why would you bother?

Next came Artichokes with Onion Dip; this I had hopes for, because I’ve eaten real artichokes. This Betty Special called for frozen artichoke hearts, sour cream, mayo and… a tablespoon of dry onion mix. The artichokes were tasteless; the dip was not as bad as feared.

Finally there was Peppered Cheddar Dip: sour cream, a cup of shredded cheddar, 1/4 cup of chopped onion, 3 tablespoons of minced bell pepper, a little salt, some milk, a few drops of hot sauce; refrigerate at least one hour.

Honey, four days wouldn’t give this dip any flavor. The sour cream overwhelms everything and the cheddar is undetectable. I wasted a dollar’s worth of cheese on this thing. (I also didn’t add the milk; the sour cream is plenty runny as it is.)

On future Super Bowl Sundays, to honor Drew Brees and the Saints’ victoire, you might try this, though it will still be bland:

Indianapolis Colts Dip

1 1/2 C sour cream
1/2 C minced onion
1/2 C minced bell pepper
1/2 t. flavored salt (garlic, celery, onion, seasoned, anything with some flavor to it)
1 t hot sauce
and all the dead curry powder in your house

Mix, cover, refrigerate “at least one hour,” and for God’s sake don’t serve it with a freakin’ turnip.++

Yes, There Is a God! Saints Win Super Bowl

Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees marvels at victory, while protecting his one-year-old son's ears from the crowd noise.

Like most Americans, but few Hoosiers, I am thrilled the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts tonight in the Super Bowl, 31-17, behind the brilliant Purdue quarterback Drew Brees — and a turning-point interception and touchdown return by Tracy Porter of That Other School.

I thought of titling this post “Super Bowl Theology.” Maybe a better headline would be “God Loves New Orleans.” But I’m walking on a theological minefield here, hoping to come out on top.

Most of the time (99%) I think God couldn’t care less who wins the Super Bowl, the World Series, the FIFA World Cup, the NCAA Championship or your 8-year-old niece’s gymnastics meet. The more hype there is, the more God’s bored, just like us mortals. God’s got better things to worry about than who gets a five-yard penalty for encroachment. Sports are trivial; they’re games.

But tonight I wonder if God did not choose his Saints to bless his city.

Divine intervention? Not in the least. God can’t be bothered with such things. (I do think God intervenes frequently in human affairs, but not over a stupid ballgame.) Instead God created a system that allows humans great freedom, so that we are mostly responsible for what happens to us. The same system that created life, on this earth and maybe elsewhere, out of hydrogen, carbon and eventually oxygen, has to allow for earthquakes, cancer, human stupidity, global warming and human mortality.

Which brings us to New Orleans and Vera.

The fact that God allows evil, including natural disasters and Federal floods, does not mean we can blame him for them. God had nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina. It wasn’t because of Gay people, or Bourbon Street, or Jack Daniels, or jazz. It was because of weather. (Federal floods are the Army Corps of Engineers’ responsibility.)

God also had nothing to do with the earthquake in Haiti, despite the pronouncements of jackasses like Pat Robertson. God is as bored by fundamentalist hypesters looking for ratings as she is by football.

(I’d like to think she’s slightly more interested in Gay Spirit Diaries, but who can say.)

The fact is, everyone in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in Cajun country and upstate, most of the American nation, knows that tonight’s football game was a storybook ending to four and a half years of misery, suffering and death—the kind of ending that happens only in nursery rhymes and vintage Hollywood movies directed by Frank Capra.

God blessed New Orleans tonight, for a reason; God has hurt terribly these past four years over what happened to New Orleans and south Louziana, and the abysmal response by the world’s (self-proclaimed) Most Enlightened Government.

Did God tip the ball so Tracy Porter could catch it? No. Mr. Porter deserves the credit for a play he made all by himself.

Did God hire Drew Brees as a free agent four years ago? Did God decide who won the coin toss? Did God tell New Orleans Coach Sean Payton to start the second half with an onside kick?

No, no, no. God has to stand a certain ways off from us to allow us our freedom. We have, compared to most animals, highly developed brains. Puny compared to God’s, but nevertheless, we have brains. (It’s kind of like the relationship between me and my dog Luke. Most of the time he’s real dumb. But oh, do I love him; does he add so much to my life.) Since God is about relationships, he has to/wants to allow us freedom as independent actors. Otherwise God would simply be an imperialist oppressor, which is the opposite of God.

God is not a dictator.

This requires that God lets certain things happen that we’d much rather never occurred. Fires, floods, mudlsides in Southern California; an earthquake in Haiti, even that Katrina person. Create a world, then set it free; that’s God’s modus operandi. It’s the most loving choice he could make, so naturally it’s the one he did.

But God got highly upset with “Here Lies Vera,” and all the other suffering that occurred on the Gulf Coast (Texas to Florida) in 2005. The humans were responsible, not God; the humans deserve the recriminations.

New Orleans needed a group of saints; not any one strongman, but a whole group of hope-givers. No man or woman knows how to fix that place, it’s too overwhelming. All those parishes and jurisdictions, the river, the Feds, the racial politics, the history, the neighborhoods, the corporations, the restaurants: who could sort all that out? Not Ray Nagin. Maybe not Moon Landrieu’s son either. God has to let all that go—which doesn’t mean he isn’t intimately involved in whether a Black nurse and single mother finds a place to live with her kids. God’s passionate about that, just as she is in restoring former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, whose house was destroyed.

I’m not saying God involves himself in draft picks. But when Drew Brees, a free agent, came available in 2006, nursing an injury, wondering whether he was washed up, I wouldn’t be surprised if God said, “New Orleans might be a good place. He could help them.” So maybe there was a little nudge, or maybe not; I don’t know.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if God put it in mind of Saints executives that Brees might be a good fit; that’s how God works, just putting something in mind. The response of the mortals is not God’s job description; but every now and then he gets a hit.

Someone in New Orleans (I don’t know who) recognized that Brees is not only an extremely talented quarterback, but he has the character (personality, values) that would perfectly suit a devastated city. That he would plunge into rebuilding; that he’d be tireless in helping his city, and lead his team and his whole organization—thrown out of New Orleans by Katrina, forced to play games in San Antonio and Baton Rouge—to reinvest in the idea of New Orleans.

Did God win the Super Bowl for Drew Brees? No. Drew Brees and his Saints did that. God stayed above the fray. But this year, I think, unlike most years, God tuned in (at 6:30, not the pregame show) to see what would happen, to see what his kid could do.

The irony, the amazing thing, is that God supplied Indianapolis with a quarterback every bit as good as Brees is; a New Orleans kid, Archie Manning’s son, who has been as heroic (with less acclaim) in his adopted city as Brees has been in his.

These two guys are as old-school as they come in their community behavior, yet as high-tech and turned on as an athlete can be in 2010. Manning is sometimes called a robot; no one outprepares him. He recognizes the defense he’s facing better than anyone else in history. And oh, what a champion he’s been for good causes in the Circle City; the list is as long as Brees’s, multiplied by nine years, not four.

Tonight we saw a Clash of the Titans. Manning, the best QB ever, deserved the win; but prosperous Indy doesn’t compare to hurting New Orlins. Did God decide who won? No. But I do think he was pulling for Hurting Town, like most Americans. That’s what God’s like; down in the trenches with the people who hurt.

So if he kind of nudged the Saints management to look at this Brees kid and pick him up—implanting an idea, which the individuals were free to reject—you can’t blame God for the final score. New Orleans won, 31-17, and that devastated city, which has lost one-fourth of its population, tens of thousands of homes, billions of business, staged a blowout party tonight on Bourbon Street, and will keep on dancing all the way to Ash Wednesday.

One might imagine that God isn’t entirely pleased that Drew Orleans got drunk, smoked weed and fucked; but considering that the main street is named for bourbon, God cannot be terribly surprised. What else would humans do when they finally, finally win a world championship after 40-some years? Mortals don’t surprise God anymore.

God surprises mortals instead, with a storybook ending even Capra couldn’t have imagined. NEW ORLEANS MATTERS.

It’s called justice. Read Amos, Hosea and Isaiah if you’re not sure what justice is. Widows and orphans; strangers; the poor. Maybe even the queers.

Peyton Manning is not only the best quarterback in history, he’s one of the best citizens of the United States.

But then there’s this little Drewboy, 5′11″, with a mole on his face and a passion for children, the poor and oppressed. God blessed him with New Orleans, and New Orleans with him.

Purdue fans knew how good he was when he beat Wisconsin in the last minute in 2002. Don’t ever bet against Drew Brees. He’s gifted (by whom?).

God bestows gifts widely. But the honorees are seldom that good at living up to the charge. (I should know.)

I hope that in time my readers of fiction will come to understand Kent and Jamie, my Gay heroes. The great rap on them is that they’re “idealized,” but the criticism itself is false and cynical, from people who think “the dark side” is somehow attractive. It isn’t. It’s ugly, it’s violent, it’s murderous. Most commonly among Gay men, it’s dehumanizing. Invariably it’s selfish, and it’s time that Gay selfishness became as repulsive as a little limp dick.

Heroes do exist; ask Indianapolis, ask New Orleans. Peyton Manning is the best there ever was, and Drew Brees just whupped his ass. But these two men are among the greatest philanthropists—human-lovers—in their cities.

The game of football itself amounts to nothing; but a great American city now survives, thanks to an entire team made up of Saints. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

Angels are dancing on Bourbon Street tonight, right next to the queers and the Saints fans.++

Purdue’s Kramer Up for Senior Class Award

Chris Kramer, the Secretary of Defense.

Tonight, one of the most important annual events in my home state occurs, as the Purdue men’s basketball team travels to Bloomington to take on that hated Other School.

(I laughed, typing that. The fans do hate each other, but right now my dog Luke is sleeping under his IU blanket. It is, of course, fit for a dog.)

The Boilermakers, ranked 7th in the country according to the coaches’ poll, are expected to beat the hapless Hoosiers, but it will probably be a knockdown dragout battle. You can catch it on ESPN2 at 7 p.m. Eastern. I’ll be watching at the Colonial Inn downtown.

Both teams feature homegrown talent. Seven members of Indiana’s squad are in-state products, while Purdue boasts ten local boys—among them Chris Kramer of Huntington, who’s a finalist for the senior class award sponsored by a chain of home improvement stores. The winner is partly determined by fan voting; go here.

Kramer’s profile details a lot of things I didn’t know about his community involvement. He’s active with the Boys and Girls Club, an after-school agency for kids at risk. That means something to me, because it’s the favorite charity of my fictional hero Kent Kessler, a former Major League Baseball player. Boys and Girls Clubs provide sports and recreational opportunities to kids, as well as academic tutoring and mentoring, a chance to succeed. Sometimes the B&GC makes a difference in whether a kid stays in school or drops out, gets a decent job or turns criminal; a kid needs someone to take an interest in her, and Chris Kramer does.

He’s also active with the Southside Community Center (child abuse prevention, youth development, food pantry and family support) and Special Olympics. He majors in Organizational Development and Supervision at Purdue and carries a 3.12 cumulative grade point average.

He may not be that thrilled to be featured in a Gay Spirit Diary, but tough luck, bud. He’s awfully cute; this is not my fault. Best of all, he epitomizes what Purdue basketball is all about: tenacious defense, clutch shooting, self-sacrifice, teamwork, all while cutting it with the books.

I’m proud of him. I hope he has every success.

And let no reviewer on Amazon criticize the choice of a smart, principled, athletic hero; such men do exist, despite the all-pervasive culture that tries to drag them down. Every one of the Lowe’s senior all-stars deserves our accolades; Kramer’s just one of nine outstanding players who are becoming outstanding men. “Classroom. Community. Character. Competition.” — That’s the slogan for this website that hopes to do something good.

Go, vote for Chris Kramer or anyone else who strikes your fancy. In this age of horrible dehumanization, take a minute to reward some young guys for doing good. Text M7 to 74567.

Every photo I’ve ever seen of Kramer shows his tongue hanging out. I mean, what’s not to like? GO BOILERS!++

Kramer jogs off-court past Minnesota coach Tubby Smith after Kramer's halftime buzzer-beater. (Brent Drinkut/Journal and Courier)

Symbols: Plain Crosses & the Crucifix

Giotto di Bondone: Crucifix

Today on my prayer sites (here and here), I publish a photograph as above, of the crucifix by Giotto di Bondone, the first of the great painters of the Italian Renaissance.

As you can see, his Jesus has very long arms. He’s a bit skinny, and almost seems to have a pot belly. But maybe that’s a result of his suffering; I wouldn’t look my best nailed to a cross and neither would you.

But noticing these minor details reminds me of an old controversy in the depiction of Christ, and a conversation I had with Grandma Clara many years ago.

She did not approve of crucifixes. She informed me in a mild voice, “We believe Christ rose from the dead.”

She’s one of the gentlest persons I ever knew; I love my Grandma. Still, her rebuke stung a little, and struck me as rather odd; was she saying Catholics don’t believe in the resurrection? No, I don’t think she’d go that far; she wasn’t one to judge someone else’s religion. But she had a clear preference for a plain cross, as many Protestants do.

Sometimes that’s just a wholesale rejection of anything Catholic. It leads to absurdities like putting a steeple on a church building without a cross on top. If it doesn’t lift up the Cross so the whole city can see it, why is the steeple even there?

Protestants can be pretty ignorant sometimes. But so can we all. Catholic churches don’t put up crucifixes on steeples, but plain crosses; the cross is the symbol of Christianity, lifted high above the city. We all can agree on that.

But Grandma didn’t like a crucifix. I do. What’s behind that?

It seems to depend on what we think the cross means.

For all Christians, I think, the cross is a symbol of terrible persecution and death, turned into a badge of honor. In one way or another it’s displayed in hundreds of millions of Christian homes.

I prefer to see a depiction of Christ’s body on the cross. The corpus is important to me and moves me more deeply than a plain cross.

I don’t think the Protestant version tries to sanitize anything; Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians take the crucifixion as seriously as anyone else.

But they don’t like the body there. Why is that?

It’s probably just what they’ve been taught, what they’re used to. It’s likely they don’t realize their preference for the plain symbol relates to angry theological arguments 500 years ago. And that’s okay; they’re allowed to like what they like.

So am I. What does the corpus mean to me? Why does it have a power over my soul, such that I have three crucifixes in my house in all the important rooms? (Bedroom/office, kitchen, living room.)

Let me interpose this: I don’t like the dripping, gory, manipulative crucifixes formerly seen in ethnic Catholic churches. Neither do I like a hammer to my head.

High above my kitchen, in a place where I know to look but visitors seldom see, hangs a stylized metal crucifix, inexpensive, black cross, faded gold body barely visible. I bought it 40 years ago and it’s still my favorite. It doesn’t scream; it’s very quiet. Jesus died for your sins.

My most recent purchase, hanging in the living room opposite my prayer chair above the TV, is an iconic reproduction of the cross in the chapel of the Order of the Holy Cross. It reminds me of the brothers, and two Gay guys in their orbit, Chet and George, longtime lovers who may be better monks than the monks are. I visited OHC two years ago to find out if I had a vocation there, but I did not. God bless them all, especially Chet and George.

In my bedroom/office hangs the first crucifix I ever bought, with a brass-plated corpus on a wooden frame.

I remember buying it at a store in Market Square in Lafayette, which was once the predominant mall but has long since fallen upon hard times. I was barely catholic then, but I knew I wanted that cross.

What does the body mean?

It shows the man suffering, as I have and you have.

It shows his taking on the sins of the world, and forgiving us.

It shows his taking on my sins, and forgiving me, which feels very different from “the whole world.” He forgives my sins, a big wow. He and I are the only ones who know every way I’ve screwed up.

But I think the real reason I love the crucifix more than the plain cross is this: it’s a picture of the self-sacrifice to which all of us everywhere are called. When you love someone, you sacrifice for them.

I moved in with my mother to care for her as she died of cancer. At times that felt like a sacrifice. But I had previously cared for a lover through 14 amputations and two heart attacks – so I was used to it, and being with Mom as she died was just the right thing to do.

I don’t write this to get your praise – I don’t deserve it, caring for your loved ones is the right thing to do – but to mention that we need to see the body on the cross if we’re to understand Christianity at all. The whole point is self-sacrifice – which is why my beloved Grandma was wrong. We need the example before us, in our line of vision, because without it we won’t rise to the occasion.

Jesus died once for all and I don’t intend to repeat it. There was one Messiah and I ain’t it. I don’t deserve one bit of praise for doing the right thing; I thank God for knowing what the right thing is.

Where did I get that? From the body on the cross.

Fact is, there are many aspects to “self-sacrifice” which we do well to remember. There’s a certain reflected glory; “See me, acting like Jesus!” Yeah, right.

Much deeper, there’s the real pain of “God, my loved one is suffering, what can I do?”

“Why don’t my prayers help? Why are Jack and Mom still sick?”

We all have hopes and dreams that get crucified. In the immortal words of Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” “I coulda been a contender.”

Love gets crucified. That’s the nature of it. Your heart will always get broken. If you have a heart, you’re doomed to pain.

But as Grandma said, “We believe he rose from the dead.”

What kind of impact does that have on a ten-year-old boy?

It’s fine with me if you prefer a plain cross. But I respond better to a profound illustration of how I’m to live my life.

There was only one Jesus; I’m not here to duplicate him. But I’m here, we’re all here, to “take up our cross and follow him.”

I need the illustration.

But even more, there is a triumph and an ecstasy in the crucified Jesus as he takes away the sins of the world. This is not, as we imagine it, some SM fantasy. He does not glorify masochism; those nails fucking hurt.

But he made a commitment to love and he kept it, no matter what.

I don’t see all that in a plain cross; maybe Grandma did, but I don’t.

I have a body — I am my body — so show me the body that was given for me.++

LewJack Gives Boilers a Boost to Beat Wisconsin, 60-57

Purdue point guard Lewis Jackson (23) saw action tonight for the first time since pre-season foot surgery. (Michael Conroy/AP)

Okay, his two points weren’t that significant. He only played 12 minutes. Fouled twice and had two turnovers to go with three rebounds. But make no mistake, the return of starting point guard Lewis Jackson from preseason surgery provided an important emotional boost as his Purdue Boilermakers defended Keady Court at Mackey Arena tonight against #16 Wisconsin, 60-57.

The #10 Boilers needed this win. After a 14-0 start and an AP ranking as high as #4, Purdue went on a 3-game losing streak starting at Madison, Wisconsin January 9, as the Badgers beat Purdue 73-66. The Cornfield Sailors then proceeded to lose to Ohio State in West Lafayette and again at Northwestern. Swan dive or belly flop?

But now Purdue’s back to fundamentals, with a 3-game winning streak that includes victories at Illinois and against Michigan at home. Tonight’s game was a typical Big Ten seesaw bruise-fest; Purdue led by two at halftime, then went on a big run in the second half to lead by 8 with under 4 minutes to go. Typically, the disciplined Badgers raced right back to take a 7-point lead thanks to Keaton Nankivil’s 25 points on 7-of-8 three-point shooting. Such is life in the Big Ten, where if you get too big for your britches, you’ll get beat.

As Purdue Coach Matt Painter stressed to his high-flying team after it crashed down to earth earlier this month, “Success messes with you.” He’s so right. Life is littered with stars, from Janis Joplin to River Phoenix, who couldn’t cope with success. It can be terrifying; what if people find out the ten million things you don’t know and can’t do?

I am hoping that Painter is a better sports psychologist than his predecessor Gene Keady, “the best coach who never made it to the Final Four.” Keady was a mastermind at teaching kids how to play beyond their capabilities. It’s a trait he passed on to his mentee Matt Painter, who played for him from ‘79-’83.

The biggest trap in sports is something I call “ego collapse.” You’re doing well, doing well, doing well, then all of a sudden you’re not—and you panic. Out goes the game plan, out goes what you’re good at, and in comes an anxiety attack and even stupid play. Purdue has always been prone to this. Keady, a superb coach and human being, never knew what to say or do to right the ship. It’s hard for older men to coach young guys. So much has changed between his day and theirs that an older coach suddenly lacks the vocabulary when adversity strikes.

Matt Painter is 39. He’s brought this year’s Boilermakers to the brink of real success—watched them falter, and brought them back. Purdue beat gritty, talented Wisconsin tonight, and is now a half-game out of second place behind Wisconsin and undefeated Michigan State.

So the surprise return of Lewis Jackson, after a fast and splendid recovery, is what the experts call an intangible. It’s always good to get one of your key teammates back. The last thought before the players fall asleep tonight will be, “LewJack’s back.” Then they’ll smile and make Z’s.

Their next to last thought will be, “Thank you God for John Hart.”

Purdue's John Hart (32) and Robbie Hummel (4) defend as Illinois' Mike Davis (24) goes to the basket at Assembly Hall in Champaign on Jan. 19. Purdue won 84-78. (AP Photo/Robin Scholz)

Hart provided as much emotional spark in the second half as Jackson did in the first. In a short stretch early in the second half as Purdue clung to a narrow lead, he led to an amazing run, doing everything you could ask of a player; he scored, defended, rebounded and blocked. Suddenly he was everywhere on every key play, and the veterans took over from there.

Basketball is emotional; all sports are. John Madden once said he thought football was the most emotional sport, but that’s simply not true. In American football, you run a play, then spend 20 seconds huddling up to discuss the next one. Hoops don’t stop nearly as much, the play keeps going. You’ve got the ball, then there’s a turnover and steal, suddenly you’re running the other way—but the shooter misses, you get the rebound, so run back again! Go go go!

The faster the game, the harder it is for players to keep their emotions in check, to not get too high or too low. The only game as fast and continuous as basketball is hockey—which uses goalies to prevent scoring, the dumbest athletic idea of all time. Audiences like scoring, and goal-tending is illegal in hoops. I wouldn’t give you one thin dime for soccer, no matter how much British thugs riot over it. Would you rather watch a game where the final score is 2-1 or 60-57, much less 102-101?

Hart was superb tonight; he played his role. He’s just a sophomore having to earn his time, but he brought fluid to the charcoal and lit a fire.

I haven’t even mentioned Robbie Hummel, who had a double-double (12 points, 13 fabulous rebounds) or E’twaun Moore (20 points) or JuJuan Johnson (14 points). Give them all credit; they each had their miscues but they played well enough to win despite Nankivil’s personal highlight reel.

Wisconsin’s backcourt combined for 57 points January 9 at Madison; Purdue’s defense held them to 25 tonight.

Losses help you learn; they toughen you up, so that success after success doesn’t make your head swell, knowing that failure is just around the corner. Don’t get too high when you’re high or too low when you’re low, just focus on your next opponent and find a way to beat ‘em.

One last note about another man who established himself tonight: Purdue radio broadcaster Larry Clisby’s new sidekick, Ralph Taylor, who played from ‘67-’69 on the National Runner-up team. He’s been part of the Purdue radio team off and on for four years, but (I believe) this year he replaced the previous color commentator, Steve Reid, the guy Bobby Knight threw a chair at (okay, deliberately missing), inadvertently becoming a YouTube sensation. Reid’s grammar was appalling, much less for a Purdue alumnus, but he knew the game and was an unabashed homer, and I liked him. Now we’ve got this guy named Taylor, the first African-American on Purdue’s broadcast team. I must have seen him play back in the late ’60s during the Rick Mount years (I went to Purdue ‘68-’69 and ‘70-’72), but I don’t remember him. From tonight, though, I will. He explained, time after time, how Nankivil scored all those points. Purdue’s Johnson repeatedly left the high post to help out a guard, which left Nankivil uncovered, and no one rotated over. Time after time!

Without Nankivil, Purdue might have blown out Wisconsin. But Johnson got suckered every time, and Wilson tracked the pattern. He added a lot to the broadcast.

So bye-bye Wisconsin and Nankovil, great game and yeah yeah; we won’t be surprised to see you again in the B10 tournament or the NCAA. But I’ll be very surprised if Matt Painter doesn’t kick ass and massage his boys into understanding: Success messes with you, but only if you let it. Stay centered, do what you’re good at, don’t panic, never say die, screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke, and stay confident even when (as they did tonight) the refs call the second half completely different from the first half. The officials started acting like they got paid by the number of fouls they called (though the teams ended up equal).

It’s hard on players when the rules seem to change at halftime, but they’ve got to roll with the punches.

Star of the game: Hummel. Best performance: Ninkivil. Best analyst: Taylor. Winner: Purdue.++

Mr. Taylor

C of E Loses Its Shirt on Stuyvesant Town

Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan (Getty/AFP)

What do the Church of England and a giant New York housing development known as Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village have in common? It turns out, quite a lot; they’re both worth a lot less than they used to be.

The Church was one of the investors in Stuyvesant Town when Tishman Speyer, a real estate firm, bought the complex from Metropolitan Life in 2005, the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history. Tishman paid $5.4 billion for those 11,000 apartments covering 80 acres on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, with views of the East River. It’s now worth $1.9 billion and Tishman has defaulted.

Apparently the Church’s investment philosophy is Buy High, Sell Low. “Hey, Bishop, I know how to repair your palace. Let’s speculate in foreign real estate, we’ll make a killing!”

The New York Times reports:

Housing Complex Goes to Creditors

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: January 25, 2010

The owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the huge middle-class housing complexes overlooking the East River in Manhattan, have decided to turn over the properties to creditors, officials said Monday morning.

The decision by Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty comes four years after the $5.4 billion purchase of the complexes’ 110 buildings and 11,227 apartments in what was the most expensive real estate deal of its kind in American history.

Don’t just blame it on the housing bubble, because this deal was a stinker from the get-go. Tishman’s plan was to spend a billion dollars on renovations, then deregulate the rents and triple them. Most apartments there are rent-controlled.

But New Yorkers don’t move out of rent-controlled apartments except by order of the coroner. The rent laws are strict, many lawyers specialize in housing issues, and the residents are savvy about their rights.

Met Life built Stuyvesant Town after World War II specifically as affordable, middle-class housing. The city and the whole country had a severe housing shortage—little had been built since the Depression—and the first tenants were thrilled with their apartments.

But in 2005 Tishman and the Church of England thought they could displace the residents and fill the apartments with rich people. The first targets were the tenants already paying market rates, who saw huge increases when it was time to renew the lease. Once that was accomplished, they’d move on the rent-controlled tenants.

Maybe Rowan Williams can preach to us again about justice for the poor.

The surrender of the properties ends a tortured real estate drama in which the partnership made expensive improvements to the complex and then tried to rent the apartments at higher market rates in a real estate boom. But a real estate downturn and the city’s strong rent protections hindered those efforts, leaving the buyers scrambling to make payments on loans due for the properties, which have been a comfortable harbor for the city’s middle class since they opened in the late 1940s.

The Times doesn’t say how much the Church stands to lose on this deal, but it’s a major partner with Tishman. The property has lost 65% of its value and $3.5 billion in cash.

Were they nuts? Or just greedy?

Why not both?

The property is currently worth an estimated $1.9 billion — far less than the purchase price, which means many investors will lose some or all of their money. Those investors include Gramercy Capital, an affiliate of SL Green Realty; Wachovia bank; CW Capital; Winthrop Realty Trust; the Church of England; and a Florida state pension fund.

For tenant advocates and urban planners, the sale underscored the loss of affordable housing in the city and the highly speculative financial structures that they warned would end in disaster.

If I were a state employee or retiree in Florida, I wouldn’t be too happy either. In fact, I’d make it a big issue in the Florida U.S. Senate race. Gov. Charlie Crist has decided he wants to be a senator now; oh really?

Wachovia Bank, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, went under because of deals like these and is now a subsidiary of Wells Fargo. The money just disappeared one day; “I thought it was in my wallet but I can’t find it.”

Did they think housing would only go up?

Were they nuts? Or just greedy?

Why not both?

Last October The Times reported on a devastating court decision revealing what the new owners of Stuyvesant Town were really up to:

The state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled Thursday that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village had wrongfully raised rents and deregulated thousands of apartments while receiving city tax breaks.

Meanwhile English bishops in the House of Lords continue to argue for their right to discriminate against LGBT employees.

Someone, anyone, tell me again why the Episcopal Church should be dragged down by these people.++

UPDATE: Episcopal Cafe details the Church of England’s mammoth losses here.

Hello, residents, meet your new landlord, the Archbishop of Canterbury! (Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

The Cleric & the Ringtone: A Lesson for U.S. Episcopalians

The Grand Mufti of Egypt.

Here’s a bit of strange news from Cairo, reported by the Associated Press:

January 21, 2010 (CAIRO) — Egypt’s top cleric wants Muslims to answer the call to prayer, but not when its ringing on their cellphones.

Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa issued a fatwa, or a religious edict, on Wednesday urging Muslims to do away with a popular fad — Quranic verses or the five daily calls to prayer as cellphone ringtones. The government-appointed cleric says such ringtones are inappropriate, misleading and demeaning to God’s words.

“God’s words are sacred. … He ordered us to respect them and glorify them,” Gomaa said.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day, and the time for this is announced solely with calls to prayers from mosques, Gomaa said. “The calls to prayer are to announce it is time … using it as a ringtone is confusing and misleading.”

I don’t entirely get this, or understand why the Grand Mufti thinks ringtones are wrong. As the Minister of Keyboarding for two Christian prayer websites (here and here) geared to the time of day, I’d be thrilled if people signed up for reminders to pray at 8, 12, 5 and 9 or any other time they could click. Every bishop and priest I know would be thrilled.

But the more I thought about this, the more I realized I’d skipped over the really interesting part:

The government-appointed cleric says…

What single fact more starkly illustrates the difference between the U.S. and Egypt, the West and the East, Christianity and Islam?

Suppose Barack Obama tried appointing a grand mufti, or archbishop or whatever you want to call him? The outcry would be instantaneous. Such an appointment would be blatantly unconstitutional.

Katharine Jefferts Schori as the Minister of Ministry—or Rick Warren, take your pick; Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, the archbishop of Boston, the head of the American Jewish Congress? It wouldn’t matter who Obama appointed, 90% of Americans wouldn’t take it lying down.

But in Egypt a grand mufti, appointed by the government to settle such earthshaking controversies as the ubiquity of ringtones, shows he’s a Really Important Guy with Big Things on His Mind.

Would it be better for Egyptians to receive a prayer call five times a day chirping, “We’re Off to See the Wizard”? I bet I could sell that one to Gay people.

Finally, though, I realized the point in the Episcopal Church’s Current Unpleasantness: the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom we’re all sposed’ta be “in communion” with, is himself a government-appointed cleric.

Has there ever been an idea more offensive to American democracy? It’s right up there with wiretapping your phone.

I would hope that President Obama, if he ever did take a notion to appoint a National Cleric, would at least find a guy with a decent barber. Man, those eyebrows have got to go.

Rowan Williams, aka The Grand Tufti

Why should Americans take dictation from an English Minister of Morality? It makes no sense. We’ve got a right to own any damn ringtone we want. We fought for that right against English redcoats and we won it.

The past few months I’ve found myself arguing that Episcopalians should consider dissolving our ties with the Church of England—and in particular, stop funding the Anglican Communion and its every-ten-years Lambeth Conference, which costs U.S. parishioners over a million dollars to have tea parties on the lawn of a decrepit London palace while H.M. The Queen’s perfume is piped in overhead.

Mind you, I don’t really want such a break—Americans created the Anglican Communion in the aftermath of 1776—but it seems increasingly necessary and ought at least to be a topic of discussion. I’d never want us to turn our backs on our old friends (in truth we’ll always maintain ties), but the Church of England is fast becoming an embarassment to the English people and to us. Everywhere you look the CofE is defending itself against charges of racism, sexism and homophobia. Tell me again why we need cousins like these.

In the past several years the American Church has been split (95 to 5) by loud and bitter arguments over whether Gay people can be Christians and women can be priests. We’ve long since said yes to both. Meanwhile the English have theoretically approved women bishops, but can’t manage to actually get one, and an English bishop has lost a court case after blatantly discriminating against a lay Christian educator who’s Gay, on the theory that while he’s officially celibate now, he might get a boyfriend at some future date, and then all hell would break out.

England, the home of whoring kings, has staked its whole identity on sexual hypocrisy; do what we say, not what we do. And the Church of England is the principal defender of this nonsense. Anti-Gay discrimination is illegal, but that didn’t stop the Bishop of Hereford. He didn’t pay the court fine, his parishioners did.

The English, like we are, are struggling to build and maintain a modern society in the midst of financial meltdown; they don’t have time for these bizarre controversies, which are as meaningful as ringtones. Yet they’re stuck with these bishops, part of the National Church which everyone theoretically owns and belongs to.

Does this really help England, the nation and the Church in 2010? No.

Christians ought to elect bishops, not have them appointed by the Prime Minister. But as long as the English Church is “established,” Gordon Brown’s in charge of its spirituality. So every minor personnel decision, every internal controversy, becomes political, a contest between Tories and Labour and Liberal Democrats.

Ordinary people find this kind of Christianity unpalatable, and so do I.

The latest development is that a delegate to the Church’s ostensibly independent governing body, called General Synod, has introduced a monkeywrench resolution that seeks to import the American schism over Gay people and women clergy to England, so they can have a great big fight about it.

I doubt her resolution succeeds this year, but it appears the English Church is headed for a schism much worse than we Episcopalians have gone through.

The Church of England looks divided into three competing parties: neo-Calvinists, called “Evangelicals,” who hate Gay people but are okay with women priests; “Anglo-Catholics,” who are often Gay closet cases, but hate women priests; and a “Broad Church” that’s trying to hold everyone together by never mentioning who’s Gay or female.

All this was supposed to have been solved 400 years ago by something called the “Elizabethan Settlement,” in which everyone agreed to get along or else Good Queen Bess would chop off their heads.

Now it is all unraveling, thanks to aggressive “Evangelicals” from America and Africa, looking to export their homophobia while promoting a “Restorationist” theocratic agenda to control everyone and tap your phone.

Her Britannic Majesty has apparently told Rowan Williams, her government’s Archbishop of Canterbury, that if the Anglican Communion breaks up, she will have his head. So he’s steered hard to the right, even though he’s an Anglo-Catholic theologian who supports LGBT Christians in the Church.

However, the breakup of the Worldwide Communion ought to be the least of the Queen’s worries; her own Church seems headed for a crackup. And if that happens, the country will face a constitutional crisis.

I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point the Church is disestablished. And if that happens, you can kiss thousands of ancient churches goodbye; there simply won’t be money to maintain them. They’re barely surviving today. Clergy salaries and pensions have been slashed, the roofs are caving in, and Sunday service consists of ten old women, two old men and any stray cats they can coax inside.

Contrast all this with the current state of the American Church. A few months ago we held a convention in Anaheim, presided over by a female archbishop (called “presiding” in American lingo; her powers are limited) and a female president of the regular clergy and laypeople. The anti-Gay, anti-female schism is behind us; it wasn’t fun and we’re no doubt poorer for it, but the rebels only peeled off four dioceses and 75,000 believers (if that) among 2,000,000, despite the secessionists’ loudest PR efforts. The meeting in Anaheim was as peaceful as we’ve ever been, thanks to no longer having the bigots. LGBT Christians got everything they wanted from the convention, including approval to start compiling Gay and Lesbian wedding services. Since Gay weddings are legal in New England and Iowa, what are LGBT Christians supposed to do in those places, go to the justice of the peace? That’s not how Episcopalians usually marry; we do it up big in church, because we believe a lifelong commitment by two people under Christ is a holy thing.

So here we are, swimming free, while the CofE is headed for fireworks and the African churches are doing their best to export anti-Gay genocide. Can you wonder why I say Episcopalians don’t need the Anglican Communion? With the devastation in Haiti (our largest diocese), it is wrong to spend a million bucks on a Lambeth tea party from which Old Eyebrows excluded the Gay bishop of New Hampshire, while inviting (and being accepted by!) every other American bishop.

I hope, if a break does occur, that in future centuries we’ll get back together, once the English and the Africans come to their senses. But for now, it all stinks of politics, over issues of justice which history will surely decide, just as it did when the division point was race and human slavery. How many hundreds of animal species in which homosexual behavior occurs does it take before the bewigged House of Lords faces reality? Until then, who cares?

In Anaheim the Episcopal Church faced the consequences of its decisions and pushed full steam ahead. Lesbian and Gay couples can now get married in many Episcopal churches as if they were regular people.

I’m proud of that. I believe it’s God’s will. But staying with the Church of England, much less Uganda (with its U.S.-inspired “kill the Gays” bill), Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda? Let the Queen sell a painting if she’s dead set on preserving the illusion of a 19th century Anglican empire in the 21st. American parishioners have better things to do than waste money on tea parties or take orders from government-appointed muftis obsessed with ringtones, gender or sexual orientation. These things are minor, while “God is love” is not.++

Time to Move to Canada. Again.

Martha Coakley lost the Senate seat in Massachusetts. The “tea partiers” are seemingly on the rise. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) says Democrats need to move to the right—after they’ve spent all year moving right, right, right, failing to close Gitmo, upping the troops in Afghanistan, leaving all the troops in Iraq, doing nothing about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and selling out health insurance reform to Big Pharma and Big Insurance.

None of this has been sufficient to provoke a northern migration; Canucks have rested easy so far. But a Supreme Court decision today should make conservatives and liberals alike dust off their passports and get out their maps.

The New York Times:

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 21, 2010

WASHINGTON — Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

Now Evan Bayh, whose wife sits on the board of several large insurance companies, need never worry about re-election again. Maybe he’ll introduce a bill giving Eli Lilly & Company the naming rights to the Capitol dome.

Big business already dominates American life; now it gets to buy all the candidates it wants. Why spend all that money on lobbyists when you can simply buy the politicians and eliminate the middlemen?

In the guise of upholding free speech rights, the Supreme Court has swung a crowbar to the knees of the middle class. Archer Daniels Midland won’t just write the farm bill, they’ll vote on it. Doubtless Halliburton can find another country to invade and put its logo on all our tanks. I’m sure Mickey Mouse can’t wait to ride the space shuttle. Who will bring us relief efforts in Haiti, Kellogg’s Sugar Pops?

In the 1960’s young men fled to Canada to escape the Vietnam War, and liberals have often been tempted to run north since. We managed to avoid putting Gay men in concentration camps to stop the spread of AIDS; but old people in northern states ride buses into Canada to get their prescriptions filled. Now we’re about to watch America test whether it’s still governable.

Many of the news reports on this awful Supreme Court decision will say “corporations and unions” will now get to run their own campaign ads. But labor unions have been decimated in the last 30 years, with only 9% of adults covered by collective bargaining, according to a Gallup poll. No doubt a few unions will run TV ads for the midterm elections, but they’ll likely be swamped by Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

Evan Bayh’s not stupid—and it’s not just about campaign contributions. Lilly has 14,700 employees in Indiana and its economic impact of $8.03 billion represents 3.3% of Indiana’s gross state product. Wherever there’s a dominant industry, the politicians come running behind. Connecticut has lots of insurance companies, so Sen. Joe Lieberman is dead set against expanding Medicare to cover more people.

Nothing ever changes—and that’s what the voters of Massachusetts rejected on Tuesday. Everywhere there’s a tone-deaf Democrat, out they go.

Martha Coakley might as well have been Helen Keller. Two weekends before the special election, she wasn’t out shaking hands of Bay State voters, she was in Washington, D.C. at a fundraiser held by her friends at Big Pharma.

We can’t even get a Consumer Financial Protection Agency out of this Congress; the credit card companies object. In Connecticut, Sen. Chris Dodd’s about to lose his seat for getting a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide Financial. He was a “Friend of Angelo,” y’see. Dodd’s the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee!

If you've got something to show, you show it; if not…

Scott Brown, the former Cosmo centerfold, waltzed to victory over Coakley. We haven’t seen much in the way of talent or brains out of him yet; he’s an unknown, pickup-driving state senator now headed to Washington to vote no, no, no on everything that’s put before him. Do I think Massachusetts voters will eventually regret their choice? Yes, but not today. They’re too busy being pissed off today—and I don’t blame them.

A significant number of Brown supporters voted for Barack Obama in 2008. The vast majority of those Brown/Obama supporters back a public option for health insurance, and they are sick to death of double-talking politicians.

Let the “tea partiers” and the Faux News demagogues have their moment in the sun; I suspect the electorate could turn on them as fast as it’s turned on the Democrats. This isn’t a Republican year, it’s an anti-incumbent year—and they’re not the same thing.

President Obama had better clean out the White House as fast as he can get his vacuum fired up. He’s received miserable advice and made terrible appointments—Tim Geithner? Ben Bernanke?—and if he doesn’t institute wholesale firings soon he’s going to get fired himself.

He can go back to Chicago (or Hawai’i in the wintertime; we’re getting freezing rain right now) and write a new book, “The Stupidity of Hope.”

The health care debate was never going to be easy and it certainly hasn’t proved to be. But it’s mostly theoretical to people, a distant future plan, when people are worried about jobs and keeping their houses. Tone deaf? Obama’s been a deaf-mute.

I’ve frankly been surprised that we’ve not seen public violence this past year. You know the potential was there, with crackpots taking guns to “tea parties” and Faux News doing everything it could to whip up frenzy (and ratings). But there were other interesting signs of powder being loaded into the keg; buses showing up at the homes of Wall Street bankers, and their wives complaining that they couldn’t be seen carrying their Bergdorf bags after their latest shopping spree.

These girls do like showing their tits, don't they.

But the public mood hasn’t boiled over; Americans have waited for a shot at the ballot box instead. Now Massachusetts has given us that, and there’s much more to come.

I hope security is good at the Supreme Court building, because what the justices have just unleashed threatens to bring the whole country down. Corporate political advertising is surely the world’s worst idea.

Let’s say the Dems lose big this year and Obama’s voted out in 2012; neither of those would be a catastrophe. The Republicans would take over and promptly run their ship aground. They haven’t had a new idea since George W. Bush was a fratboy, and they’re not getting new ideas anytime soon from Scott Brown.

Instead, imagine this: what goes around nationally will surely go around locally. The XYZ Corp., the biggest employer in your town, threatens to pack up and move unless Mayor Smith is defeated. Smith has already given them tax breaks and training grants, but now XYZ wants more. XYZ floods the airwaves with blackmail, “We will impoverish you unless you give us what we want.” A job’s a job, buddyboy; what are you going to do?

After all, the Supreme Court has declared XYZ a “person” with free speech rights, including the right to lie, cheat and steal on TV. The First Amendment, remember?

The minute one XYZ gets away with it, they’ll all do it. If you think we’ve got gridlock now in Washington, D.C., wait till it hits your town.

Zoning. Taxes. Pollution controls, not to mention global warming. Your air, your water, your schools. “If we don’t get what we want we’re moving to Mexico (China, Haiti).”

Life’s one big Monopoly game, bucko, and you’re about to lose your last little house on Mediterranean.

But I don’t want to go to Canada. It’s even colder there than it is here, and Smart Gay Boys Move South.++

At least they've got maple trees up there.

Badgers Knock the Boilers Down a Peg or Two, 73-66

Jordan Taylor against Duke. (Wisconsin State Journal)

It’s a cold, cold day in northern Indiana. The temperature hasn’t been above freezing since well before Christmas, and the #4 Purdue Boilermakers lost to #17 Wisconsin this afternoon in Madison, breaking their record-tying win streak at 14.

No Big Ten fans can be terribly surprised by this; Bo Ryan’s a great coach, Wisconsin’s a tough team and it’s very hard to win on the road in the power conferences. The Badgers outplayed Purdue today, led by Jordan Taylor, who had a career day with 23 points. The bench play from Wisconsin (33 points) was outstanding, and the Cheesehead guards shot the lights out.

Still, it’s a very disappointing loss for Purdue fans; the Boilermakers beat themselves in the most fundamental aspect of the game, free throw shooting. Every one of them native-born Hoosiers deserves a whuppin’.

JaJuan Johnson (7 miserable points, 1 of 7 free throws), I don’t even want to see your face for a week. Robbie Hummel (3 of 13 field goals), your little white ass is gonna turn red.

Free throws win ballgames! Wisconsin made them and Purdue did not.

Even Chris Kramer ought to be tossed in the dungeon with the Ledermeister. What a sorry spectacle to start off 2010.

In a free throw, here’s what happens. You have been fouled; an opposing player made an illegal move against you, so the clock stops. You get the ball; you walk to the free throw line, which is 19 feet from the baseline, 15 feet from the basket. You get to shoot the ball with no one opposing you. Your shot is free! There is no one opposing you whatsoever. Your opponents are required to stay away from the basket while you shoot. They can’t even move until your ball touches the rim.

Because of these rules, players who decide to become good free throw shooters (that decision is the essential ingredient) can practice the same motion over and over and over until they get it right. There isn’t a damn thing your opponent can do to stop you; you get to shoot for free.

Hoosier schoolboys excel at free throws, because in basketball, every last point you score matters. Many games are decided by one point. Championships rise or fall on free throw shooting.

It’s both the least glamorous and the most important aspect of the game; you get a throw that’s free. Judas Priest, get it through your thick head!

However, many modern players don’t like practicing free throws, because they never get on SportsCenter by successfully converting a static play. TV demands action, motion, bodies moving, a picture that mesmerizes the couch potatoes. Casual fans don’t like free throws, because they stop the action; and casual fans are where the money gets made by TV networks, teams and stars. Hardcore fans will watch every aspect of a game, but casual fans doze off. Nothing is happening, so they grab another beer and a bag of pretzels, even though the game itself hangs in the balance.

Wisconsin was superb at the charity stripe today. Purdue sucked. JuJuan, get the fuck out. You’re not even allowed to get your ass beat by the Ledermeister.

Here’s why free throws should matter to Indiana schoolboys; for reasons historical, ethnic, cultural, biological and demographic, we tend not to be very tall, when basketball is a game that rewards height. The closer you can get to the basket the more likely you are to score.

Like all Americans, Indiana kids are slowly getting taller as evolution and better nutrition make that possible. Any given kid might be tall (Hummel’s 6′8″), but as a group we tend to lag behind a bit, especially in rural areas, where shorter moms and dads hook up and produce shorter babies. I’m 5′5″—and taller than both my parents. It’s still rare in my hometown to come across a 6-footer, even though kids are taller these days.

Thus it’s in the interest of Hoosier schoolboys who want to get good at basketball to become very, very skilled at sinking foul shots. It’s a way to overcome our natural disadvantage; no defense allowed!

So today Johnson missed and missed and missed; Hummel hit his freebies but missed everything else, Kramer missed, none of them were any good. Wisconsin won by 7 points; Purdue missed 11 free throws, for no good reason. I’m disgusted. I’d whup ‘em all if I could.

Though I admit I’d start with Kramer, easily the hottest stud of the bunch.

I mean, it’s not like they grow ‘em any taller in Wisconsin!

Maybe the colder it is, the more isolated the bleak and lonely landscape, the more inclined schoolboys are to practice free throws and perfect their move. The Badgers missed 5 (22 of 27) today, the Boilers missed 11 (13 of 24).

I swear, I’d take a belt to every one of these Purdue kids. Our freshmen played like freshmen; Wisconsin’s played like men. Purdue will drop in the rankings, even though it isn’t a bad loss. Now we will see whether Hummel, Johnson, E’Twaun Moore (24 points, Purdue’s only real offense), Kramer and the abysmal Keaton Grant (4 lousy points in 18 minutes) have learned they are not invincible. I bet coach Matt Painter chews ‘em a new one and makes it personalized.

Myself, I’d just throw ‘em all in a cage with the Ledermeister. It’s time somebody made a man out of ‘em.++

Oldie but goodie.

Conservatism for Profit

UPDATE: The New York Times profiles Fox News’s Paranoid-in-Chief, Roger Ailes; click here.

Face it, folks, we’ve been Murdoched.

He told us he would do it, and he has.

Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, has pulled off an incredibly daring stunt, highjacking democracy for the sake of his own fat wallet.

He figured out how to commercialize politics—to simply make money off it.

He’s done it here the same as he did in Australia and Britain. We knew in advance what his agenda was. He doesn’t have to win elections (indeed, he cozied up bigtime to Hillary Clinton in 2008, when he thought she might win the presidency—and she cozied up to him). Regardless of who wins elections, he makes billions of dollars by giving people what they want: the Old Regime. The Way Things Usedta Be.

What amazes me is the stupidity of American politicians and traditional news organizations, who cower before the Mighty Mouse.

Fox “News” sets the national agenda, by serving up a steady diet of outrages, lies and innuendoes. When the outrages (say, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s coddling AIG and Goldman Sachs) run thin, Murdoch’s minions simply invent more. “No global warming! Obama wasn’t born in Hawai’i! Death panels, socialized medicine, Hitler, Stalin!”

The politicians and media whores don’t know what hit them. Glenn Beck’s on the cover of Time magazine!

Tea parties, orchestrated by discredited Republicans like Dick Armey. Terrorism, thanks to a wannabe Muslim fanatic over Detroit! Obama isn’t protecting us, because he’s a foreign-born Muslim/Nazi/Commie who attended a madrassa in Indonesia!

This is Murdoch’s schtick. He doesn’t care about facts and neither do his followers. They gladly pay for their spoonfed phony “news.”

Sarah Palin is dumber than a bag of rocks, an ex-beauty queen who doesn’t even read the newspaper—but then, neither does anyone else, thanks to pay-TV and pay-Internet, “where everything is free.”

Go Google yourself. In the immortal words of Perry Mason, Sarah Palin is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.

Yet the poor ink-stained wretches still don’t know what hit them. The New York Times recently admitted no one on the staff monitors Fox “News,” so it was constantly behind the curve in understanding what’s going on in the country.

In the runup to the illegal invasion of Iraq, NBC News execs told their reporters not to question the Bush Administration’s flimsy rationales (“weapons of mass destruction!”), and the dumbfucks did what they were told. Questioning the president was unpatriotic, ya see. Nine-eleven and all that.

No matter what happens in the world, good news or bad, Murdoch profits. He figured out long ago that facts don’t matter to people nearly as much as confirming their previous worldview. People will pay big money when you reinforce their prejudices.

He could have taken a liberal tack instead of a conservative one—when you’re commercializing ideology, the content of the ideology doesn’t matter that much—but conservatives are far more gullible. There isn’t anyone in Hawai’i who doesn’t believe Barack Obama was born there, but in the other 49 states, maybe he’s a foreigner!

As P.T. Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute. And Murdoch has simply exploited that.

What does he care if his lie-telling paralyzes democracy?

He doesn’t, which makes him the Worst Person in the World. Osama bin Laden is chump change by comparison. Bin Laden’s too damn dumb to realize that the way to bring down America isn’t to fly airplanes into skyscrapers, but to undermine it from within—to use its capitalist system for ultimate profit. Billions of dollars are a lot more satisfying than 72 mythical virgins in heaven, especially when you can get someone else to do your dirty work. Suicide bombers are cheap and easily amortized.

The British and Australian media told us exactly what would happen when Murdoch invaded America. Still, U.S. media and politicians are awestruck by the teabaggers, As Seen on TV. “But wait, there’s more!”

You can never go wrong underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

That’s the saddest aspect of this, but democracy exposes us to this very danger, Rule by the Stupid.

Beck’s got the ratings, while Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow do not. (Murdoch’s making a big mistake not giving Beck the prime-time slot of the eclipsed has-been Bill O’Reilly. Make money, Rupert, don’t be a loser.)

Maddow’s amazingly brilliant, a genius at what she does, an incredibly facile talker and analyst, easy on the eyes to boot. Why is she stuck on MSNBC?

Olbermann’s good too, though he does get overwrought at times. He writes well, but his delivery is over the top, even for liberals.

MSNBC, the not-Fox network, proves Murdoch’s thesis that there’s more money in right-wingnuttery than in left-wing. He’s just looking to make a buck, and he’s good at it.

Meanwhile we’re led by Barack Hussein Obama, the madrassa-trained Kenyan Black man born of a White mother in our distant-most state, where it’s still morning when the New York Stock Exchange shuts down for the day. He fancies himself a Lincoln, but hasn’t the courage of Honest Abe to tell the truth. He’s surrounded himself with toadies (Geithner, Rahm Emmanuel) who should be fired at once. Bring back Volcker, you idiot! He’s the one man who really understands this economy, where Wall Street robs every taxpayer.

Lincoln was cautious at times like Obama is; he kept bringing back McClellan, a failed general who trained incessantly but wouldn’t fight; three times Lincoln foisted McClellan on us and three times he fired him, until McClellan ran against him in the ultimate act of disloyalty, the presidential election of 1864. How many times do you gotta learn this, Abe?

How many times, Barack? When will you fight?

Meanwhile Fox “News” continues to lead the cable ratings, and Western democracy itself gets Murdoched. Brit Hume says Tiger Woods should convert to Christianity, and the Gay-haters at Stand Firm (another commercial enterprise) eat it up.

I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don’t believe in TV flacks pimping for him.

Consider the source; Murdoch made money the instant Hume opened his mouth.++