More NBA

I really need to keep reminding myself that the Lakers will probably win in six/seven, reminding myself that the Pistons aren't going to quite be able to go the distance...but it's a tempting thought. (Last night watching the game one of my roommates asked me if I liked the Pistons or just disliked the Lakers. As a Celtics fan, I have historical reasons to dislike both teams, but the real answer is that I don't like theseLakers and I really like these Pistons - because I really like Rasheed Wallace and Larry Brown, I like Rip Hamilton's facemask, I like Ben Wallace, I like the defence, I like the scrappiness, I like that Tayshaun Prince is my weight but has arms like an octopus.) My two thoughts for the day on basketball are:

(1) The Pistons had that game last night. Everyone is complaining about how they should've fouled Shaq when he caught the inbounds pass with ten seconds left, and maybe so, but: when Detroit was still up six, Shaq caught the ball in the post and I yelled at the TV to "let him score! Don't foul him, just let him dunk it!" Even if the Pistons weren't able to score on the next possession (and they weren't), there wasn't enough time left for the Lakers to overcome a four point deficit. But Ben Wallace fouled Shaq, who dunked it anyway (duh) and got the three point play (because Shaq's right: he does make foul shots when it counts, or at least when he decides that it counts). What Detroit needs to do is not shake their heads and think "Damn! We could've had that!" and get down about it, they need to pound their chests and say "Damn! We almost took it from them!" They're facing up against two of the best players in history (and had to cope with an amazing coming-out demonstration by Luke Walton, who deserves his own verbiage some other time) and it required Kobe submitting a superhuman final seven minutes to lose. If Kobe can bring it every night, the Pistons are done anyway, but they can't assume that he will because he very well might not. Kobe's reaching for Jordan's status right now, but (a) he's not there yet, and (b) I'll take either of Jordan's supporting casts with the championship Bulls over the Lakers not named Shaq or Kobe (or Luke Walton!)

(2) Also, yesterday Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, and Carmelo Anthony were convened by Jim Gray (hack) to talk about bullshit Jim Gray things. Like greatness and rivalries and Magic v. Bird and LeBron v. Carmelo and the state of the league. Anyway, at some point Bird said the following:

"I think it's [having white stars] good for a fan base, because, as we all know, the majority of the fans are white America...And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited. But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American...The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was I really got irritated when they put a white guy on me...I still don't understand why. A white guy would come out (and) I would always ask him: 'What, do you have a problem with your coach? Did your coach do this to you?' And he'd go, 'No,' and I'd say, 'Come on, you got a white guy coming out here to guard me; you got no chance.' For some reason, that always bothered me when I was playing against a white guy."

And apparently some people are offended by this. Which is a load of crap. Bird is absolutely right on every point: he doesn't say that having white stars is good for the fans, he says that they'd be good for a fan-base - having white stars would make the league more popular. And he's right. The disconnect between the players on the floor and the people in the stands is startling sometimes. Before the game last night, the Staples Center played Van Hagar's "Right Now" before introducing the home team, and I thought: "Hmm...I wonder how many guys who are gonna be playing tonight are really into pop-metal?" They're by and large black men under thirty, whereas the fans are by and large white men over thirty, and there's a disconnect there; the freaking Detroit Pistons play in freaking Auburn Hills. The only exception to the three-and-four-year-college-players-don't-get-taken-early-in-the-draft rule (which in itself is idiotic) is when there's a highly touted white kid like Keith Van Horn or Raef LaFrentz, both of whom have carved out nice careers and both of whom haven't remotely lived up to the hype created to justify their high picks. Teams want a superstar, but they'd really love it if they could get a white superstar. That's just facts, that's just what's good for business - not, and Bird never said that it was - what's good for basketball. It's like when Marc Cuban said the Kobe scandal would be good for the NBA; he was right, interest in the season has increased and people are talking about it. That doesn't make it an intrinsically good thing, or a good thing for the game of basketball.

He's also right that basketball is, has been, and will continue for the forseeable future to be a black man's game. Why isn't at issue; it is. Make a list of the best five, or ten, or twenty-five players in NBA history. Depending on length, the only non-African-American on that list is going to be Larry Bird himself. (Go above ten and you'll quickly have to recognize Bill Walton [white guy] and Hakeem Olajuwon [black guy from Africa], maybe Tim Duncan [light-skinned black guy from the Virgin Islands].)

As to getting annoyed when a white guy was brought out to defend him: it's an odd thing to say, and I frankly don't know enough about the league's rosters in the 1980s, but I suspect most of the white guys in the 80s were pretty lame, especially the ones not named Kevin McHale and not big enough to defend Bird. I mean, there weren't any Europeans around back then, and there weren't nearly as many athletic 6'10" swingmen as there are today. So can you imagine why (in today's terms) a coach would bench, say, Kevin Garnett and let Larry work his stuff against, say, Mark Madsen? Of course, it also needs to be said that Bird was and undoubtedly remains a cocky S.O.B., the sort of guy who routinely announced that he'd have a forty point game or walk over to the other team's bench just before the tip and point to the place from where he'd take the game winning shot. Thing was, he tended to be right. Still does.

Things I Didn't Learn in U.S. History

This is troubling in the extreme. I certainly don't remember ever learning the idea that the president of the United States could choose to break the law willy-nilly, since the authority to do so is "inherent in the president."

No. No it isn't. I don't care if you're talking about the prosecution of a war or the defense of the nation or the theft of a twinkie: the authority to set aside the law is not inherent in the president. If it were, then we wouldn't have a triangular system of checks and balances. Modern opponents of what they gleefully term "judicial activism" ought, for consistency's sake, to equally condemn e.g. Andrew Jackson for driving the Cherokee out of Georgia in defiance of the Supreme Court. "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it," ought to be remembered as a low-light in American history. If the president can inherently set aside the law, that makes him essentially a king-in-waiting. Recall how during the Clinton presidency the phrase "rule of law" was bandied about like a talisman by right-wing spokesmen? Dozens of millions of dollars were expended on a witch-hunt which concluded that, in the end, the president had lied under oath about consensual sex with another adult: but he committed perjury, and therefore deserved punishment. The law is the law, even for the president. Remember?

The authority to set aside the laws is inherent in the president? No. It's not. Find the passage in the Constitution and I'll acquiesce. Find the legal precedent and I'll concede - and then argue that the Constitution is wrong and the any such precedent ought to be ignored. Giving the president such authority - even in the most extreme of times - quietly dismantles the fundamental basis of how our country is supposed to function. Presidents are executives and executives alone. They can ratify laws, but they cannot create them and certainly not choose to break them.

Josh Marshall has an excellent discussion of Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, the gist of which is that: A president may find himself in a situation where he feels that for the good of the country he must break or bend an existing law, or exert authority in a way he is not empowered to do so. But inherent in this capacity is the requirement that the president must know that what he is doing may be illegal and that he (1) owes the public an explanation for his actions, perhaps even an apology, and (2) must be subject to the appropriate punishments should be judged unsympathetically. If I hunt down and kill a serial murderer in the belief that I must behave that way for the health of my community, the health of my community is equally dependent on my answerability for having broken a fundamental law.

The United States has ratified international treaties which state that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture," and that orders from superiors "may not be invoked as a justification of torture". That's pretty damn clear.

The one other issue which troubles me is the definition of torture, which seems to legally rest in the mind of the inflicter and not the body of the inflictee. The federal torture statue defines torture as any act intended to "inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering," and the same DoD report (prepared by general counsels who should goddamn well know better than to say things like "the president has the right to break the law") states (courtesy of the above link):

"The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture," the report advises. Such suffering must be "severe," the lawyers advise, and they rely on a dictionary definition to suggest it "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure."

I don't know much about legal definitions of torture, but as a common sense application this seems foolish. Who is supposed to judge where the sufficiency line of physical/mental suffering is crossed? When we're splitting hairs about what is really "severe," then who is to say what the mind of a putative torturer contained at the moment of his ministrations? Can't he claim that yes, he intended to inflict pain, but not severe pain?

On A More Partisan Note...

I don't like Michael Moore. Granted, the only movie of his that I've seen is Bowling for Columbine. I've skimmed Stupid White Men. I'm clearly basing this opinion on his interviews and televised appearances, therefore - lots of the things that come out of Mr. Moore's mouth seem too reactionary even for my taste, and I can't support a guy so un-pragmatic as to boost Ralph Nader in 2000. But Bowling for Columbine really cemented my dislike and wrapped it all up in a nice package. There was:

(1) The distortion of facts, both overtly and by omission.
(2) The way Mr. Moore presents himself as an Average Joe voice of the people and then spends long portions of the film using his power in the editing room to make average Americans who undoubtedly aren't nearly as well read as he is sound like idiots as a method of discrediting them. I have particularly in mind the scenes with the Michigan Militia and the small-town policeman relating the story of the dog which shot its owner; Mr. Moore seems to like to let his camera run just long enough for the subject the make himself sound like a buffoon and then cut away as if that was all you needed to know for a judgment.
(3) The flashier and emptier of his attention-getting tactics.
(4) The painfully didactic and heavy-handed cartoon history of America.

On the other hand, Mr. Moore does exhibit a positive flipside - he publicizes facts the mainstream media won't talk about, he does seem to genuinely want to stick up for the little guy, and in particular some of his stunts are meaningful and effective, frequently getting interviewees to say shocking things. (In Bowling for Columbine, see especially the Kmart sequence and the Charlton Heston interview, where Moore is a little nasty but Moses espouses some astounding and unpleasant beliefs.)

According to Roger Ebert's Cannes coverage, Fahrenheit 911 has toned down a lot of the things I happen to dislike, gone for less flash and more interviews, etc. I'm not sure if Kos is right that this is the best anti-Bush ad possible, but it's pretty friggin' great. It serves as a prime example of my divide about Mr. Moore's stunts - going around with Armed Forces recruiters trying to hand congressmen promotional materials for their children = cool, riding around in an ice cream truck reading the Patriot Act to congressmen = eye-roll. I don't like the trailer's pause on John Ashcroft's flabbergasting "Let the Eagle Soar" - I mean, I did send the link to all my friends when it first came online, but I don't think it serves any purpose in a serious movie other than to try and make Ashcroft look like a fool. What puts this trailer (and, I hope, the move) over the top is the footage: interviews with U.S. Congressmen, footage of businessmen at conferences talking about how to profit from the Iraq war, and most of all footage of President Bush. Things I've read about but never seen because this stuff gets buried, now live and in 3D. Classic G.W.Bush like:

"Some call you the elites. I call you my base."

and

"[Call for unity in the war against terror]...Now watch this drive."

This stuff looks just dreadful on tape because it's exactly counter to the image President Bush has carefully cultivated for himself.

I'm a little bit excited.

Knute Rockne - All American is a Fine Movie

It's been a little odd for me observing the various reactions to the death of Ronald Wilson Reagan. My first awareness of politics was the: the United States had a boss called the president, currently the president was named Reagan, and my parents thought he was a very bad man. I've seen a lot of people on the internet who tend to have my political leanings struggle with emotions like "I really oughtn't feel glad that he's dead, and yet I have such a vested dislike for him..." I basically work the problem by noting - perhaps with the benefit of personal removal from the Reagan era, since I was too young to have firsthand experience of it - that my issue is with the man's politics and not the man, and furthermore that as long as he thought he was doing the best things he could for his country (and no one would dispute that he did), he has my respect.

Also: I have never seen an entire Ronald Reagan movie. In fact, the only movie I've seen with him in it isn't his movie; I've watched about two-thirds of Knute Rockne, All American in which Gov. Reagan plays George Gipp. It was very late at night and I was perhaps not entirely sane while watching, but I thought Gov. Reagan displayed a great deal of charisma, which he obviously kept during his political career - although my favorite parts of the movie were towards the beginning, when Knute Rockne was still a player and Notre Dame developed the forward pass as a potent offensive weapon, revolutionizing football and crushing the Army team.

(Incidentally, I refer to Gov. Reagan by that title for the reasons enumerated in the discussion here. Multiple parties [co-bloggers, girlfriends] have pointed out to me that the same logic of "there's only one President at a time" should leave him as "Mr." since there's only one "Governor [of California]". I maintain my position since the notion of the implied specific in Governor can be stretched indefinitely - to, for example, [Junior] Senator [from Massachusetts] Kerry"; so at some point we'd need to start calling everyone "Mr." and that's another discussion.)

So re: the late Gov. Reagan, the thing that interests me is that the last president who died within my memory was Richard Nixon, and the occasion of his death as I recall it was clouded by the fact that many Americans regarded him with resentment and dislike. The blemish of Watergate was powerful, and blemished the fact that he was such a fascinating, brilliant, idiosyncratic figure. For all the negative things about him, something compelled e.g. my grandfather (whose favorite president was Harry Truman) to vote for him. (On second thought, my grandfather's presidential estimations, thought liberal, were themselves idiosyncratic. He hated FDR, which is why he never mentioned serving in his [FDR's] funeral procession. He also loathed Al Gore and was a vehement Bradley booster. I think he liked the cockiness evident in an advertising campaign that trumpeted: "Rhodes Scholar. NBA All-Star. U.S. Senator. Basically the guy you hated in high school.")

Gov. Reagan, on the other hand, is supposed to be universally beloved. Eulogists fondly remember him as the most popular president of the modern era. Which is where my problems really set in. I have respect, by and large, for the man, but distaste for many facets of his legacy, and a greater distaste for the distortion of the truth which accompany his death. Procrastination in composing this post has rendered obsolete many of the points I originally intended to make. But he was not, in fact, the most popular president of the modern era. The last years of his presidency were darkened by the Iran-Contra scandal, which to my mind was a far more serious matter than Watergate (if for no reason other than that I think international scandals are always more serious than intranational ones). He followed what was then the biggest tax cut in U.S. history with what remains the biggest tax increase. His major contribution to the ending of the Cold War was not, in my (admittedly currently underinformed opinion) spending the Soviets into oblivion, but sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev like sane men and talking about how not destroy the world. In a NYTimes essay, Mr. Gorbachev (how on earth do you address the former leader of a collapsed political entity?) agrees with me.

Much of the previous paragraph is of a piece with the sort of instablogging practiced by Atrios, Kos, and others on this site's blogroll, which The Virginian tends to dislike as a style because of the skewed snark : serious political content ratio. My defense of those sites is that they stem from the constant persecution of Gov. Clinton during his presidency, and the vengeful notion that if one president could be subjected to such intense and constant critical scrutiny, so should his successor. I'd lay a hundred bucks that if Gov. Clinton died tomorrow, no television news broadcast would observe that, according to Gallup polls, he had the highest average approval ratings of any two-term president since LBJ. (G.H.W. Bush crushes all the post-Kennedy competition, but he couldn't win re-election. Odd.) No one's going to be stepping up and naming things after Gov. Clinton any time soon, where the last decade has seen a scary binge of naming and renaming shit after Ronald Reagan, including a skeezy deal wherein National was going to be renamed for the Gipper while the Justice building was going to be named for Robert Kennedy, the latter half of which deal took far too long to go through. Naming things right and left after a living individual strikes me as somewhat creepy, although obviously the genesis was the weird sort of death-in-life Alzheimer's imposes upon the late-stage sufferers.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it angers me when a man is made more than he was, when things untrue are attributed to him, when the inevitable deficits that everyone has in some way are glossed for purer adulation, when a man's legacy is distorted to be co-opted for personal and political gain. A man's legacy ought to stand on its own, and - regardless of my distaste for his policies and methods, as well as my often virulent attitude towards his defenders (Dinesh D'Souza, I'm looking at you) - Gov. Reagan's life needs no embellishment. Requiescat in pacem.

[That was too long]