Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Friday

Alex Massie

Cricket and Baseball II

From our UK edition

Ross responds to my gentle tweaking about baseball and cricket here. He makes some fair points. But thinking about it just now, it occurs to me that there's another major difference between British sports and their American counterparts that sets British sports apart. Namely, participation. With the obvious and notable exception of basketball, it's notable that very few people actually play the major American sports. Sure, kids play American football and baseball in school and some - a minority obviously - will do so in college but very few adults actually play these sports.

Alex Massie

Department of Sports Journalism

From our UK edition

If Furman Bisher (great name!) is typical of the sports staff at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution then, you know, newspapers probably do deserve to die. Baseball used to be a game played with nine men to a side, two managers, four umpires, and the major-league season always opened in Cincinnati. Come to think of it now, that would be sort of like “Gone With the Wind” opening in Valdosta. But Cincinnati had a deal, see. The first “major league” baseball game was played in Cincinnati on June 1, 1869. The locals, the Red Stockings, eked out a 48-14 victory over Mansfield, whoever Mansfield was. So, several years ago — even the league office isn’t sure when — it became a custom that every major-league season opened in Cincinnati.

Alex Massie

Sir Walter’s Gorgie Boys

From our UK edition

John J Miller at The Corner: I've always had some fondness for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens because their team name is a literary reference. Last weekend, while visiting the in-laws in South Carolina, I went to an NCAA baseball game featuring the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers. Literary references in team names don't get much better than that. Up to a point Lord Copper. Turns out the Chanticleers have only been so-nicknamed since the 1960s when the University tired of being just one more bunch of Trojans. Still, not bad but not nearly as good, obviously, as Heart of Midlothian FC, Edinburgh's finest. Now if only the club favoured a more literate, cultured style of football...

Alex Massie

The Small, Quiet Tragedy of Hillary Clinton

From our UK edition

Fine Peggy Noonan column today: Many in the press get it, to their dismay, and it makes them uncomfortable, for it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work. But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion. They are offended by how she and her staff operate. They try hard to be fair. They constantly have to police themselves. Not that her staff isn't policing them too. Mrs. Clinton's people are heavy-handed in that area, letting producers and correspondents know they're watching, weighing, may have to take this higher.

Alex Massie

Department of Trying Too Hard

From our UK edition

Travis Daub at Foreign Policy:         A couple weeks back, we pointed out that John McCain likes to refer to America as "She," a habit that I assume builds some linguistic distance between himself and Hillary Clinton. Hillary could never refer to America as "She," so McCain subtly infers that a president Clinton could never protect the country in the same way that a masculine figure could. David Corn over at Mother Jones took the analysis a step further: Could the implication be that Barack Obama is not quite American and that he is not interested in protecting our country, which the ad describes with the feminine pronoun. In other words, the half-black dude with a funny name--who might be a secret Muslim--can't protect her. Has Lee Atwater been resurrected?

Thursday

Alex Massie

Nurse Bloomberg for Washington?

From our UK edition

Add this to the reasons to be skeptical of Barack Obama... Vice-President Bloomberg*? I want to thank Mayor Bloomberg for his extraordinary leadership. At a time when Washington is divided in old ideological battles, he shows us what can be achieved when we bring people together to seek pragmatic solutions. Not only has he been a remarkable leader for New York –he has established himself as a major voice in our national debate on issues like renewing our economy, educating our children, and seeking energy independence. Mr. Mayor, I share your determination to bring this country together to finally make progress for the American people. Because obviously what the United States needs is more nannying. *Still seems unlikely to me, mercifully.

Alex Massie

Hillary of Belfast (Again)

From our UK edition

Gosh, from this remarkable exchange with Jamie Rubin you could almost be forgiven for thinking that Hillary Clinton had more to do with the Northern Irish "peace process" than, hmmm, David Trimble. As Toby Harnden relates: You can watch the video here. The relevant part starts about 5 minutes and 30 seconds in. Andrea Mitchell is asking him why Hillary Clinton appears to be exaggerating her role, which the former First Lady recently described as “instrumental”. He pulls out a piece of paper and reads a quotation from the late Mo Mowlam, former Northern Ireland Secretary, about Hillary helping to bring about an economic boom. Mitchell: “As you know, there are others, like David Trimble, who disagree.” Rubin: “I’ve met David Trimble.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

A New Cultural Revolution

From our UK edition

I wish this surprised or even shocked me. True, this is Dundee, but even so... Six young brothers and sisters face being taken from their parents and put into care because they are overweight. Social workers have warned they will intervene if three of the youngsters – including a 12-year-old boy who weighs 16 stone – do not shed several pounds in three months. The parents have been told they risk losing all their children if there is no improvement in the 12-year-old or two of his sisters aged 11 and three – who weigh 12 stone and four stone – by June. The family have also been ordered to send their children to dance and football* lessons to help them lose weight.

Alex Massie

Why oh why oh why indeed?

From our UK edition

Is this Glenn Reynolds post a plea for more coverage of Tibet or less of Palestine? GOOD QUESTION:  Why Do Palestinians Get Much More Attention than Tibetans? But, just perhaps, the Israel-Palestine question receives lots of coverage because it's a question, at root, of competing rights, not because the media has an incurably anti-Israeli bias or is, in this instance at any rate, acting in an especially hypocritical fashion. The other answer, of course, is that readers, are much more interested in the Middle East than they are in China and Tibet and, consequently, this is just market forces at work. Shocking!

Alex Massie

Craven Research Can’t Possibly Harm Your Throat

From our UK edition

It's entirely possible that the research cited in this New York Times story has been corrupted by the fact that it seems to have been sponsored, in part or at "arm's length" , by a tobacco company. That's fine. But I would have thought a more useful article would have spent its time demonstrating that this researcher's conclusions were, on the evidence, bunk rather than seeking to dismiss them on the grounds of where their funding came from. Or, to put it another way, can we expect the NYT, or any other newspaper, to treat smoking-related claims made by government or other branches of the health industry that have just an obvious agenda with quite the same degree of skepticism? Of course smoking can help cause cancer and other nasty, painful diseases that can kill you.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Score one for common sense instead…

From our UK edition

So I see this at The Corner: British Future "Muslims ‘to outnumber traditional churchgoers.’" Score one for Steyn. Interesting (well, sort of) if true! But it turns out that the Telegraph story reports that: The increasing influence of Islam on British culture is disclosed in research today that shows the number of Muslims worshipping at mosques in England and Wales will outstrip the numbers of Roman Catholics going to church in little more than a decade. Projections to be published next month estimate that, if trends continue, the number of Catholic worshippers at Sunday Mass will fall to 679,000 by 2020. By that time, statisticians predict, the number of Muslims praying in mosques on Fridays will have increased to 683,000.

Alex Massie

There’s Romance in the Union

From our UK edition

One of Gordon Brown's flunkies* writes in today's Telegraph: More than a year ago I argued that a debate about the future of the United Kingdom was long overdue. I suggested that, unless we start to focus more on what unites us than we do on what divides us, there     is a real risk that one day people will wake up and find that the benefits of the Union - which they had taken for granted for so long - had disappeared. I was accused of crying wolf. But when secessionist forces are loudly at work it is not the time for silence and passivity. We must be resolute in defending the Union and argue against those who put it at risk.

Alex Massie

Last Word on Hillary of Tuzla

From our UK edition

Hillary's latest*: On saying last week that she landed under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia in 1996, when she was first lady: "I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke." That's what will happen when you insist upon answering the telephone at 3am. *Of course, her story was in her prepared remarks.

Alex Massie

The Greatest Game of All

From our UK edition

Today, being perhaps the best day of the year*, is a good moment to consider Ross Douthat's assertion that John Rawls was right. We do not speak of philosophy, of course, but of something much more important: sport. More specifically, Rawls' belief that "baseball is the best of all games."There's something to this, for sure, though really it would be better rendered as "Baseball is the best of all American games" - a sentiment with which it would be hard to quibble, much though I also admire and enjoy college football (Go Blue!). Ross elaborates: One could go on to note the perfect balance that baseball strikes between team effort and individual performance, a balance at once deeply Christian and deeply small-d democratic.

Monday

Alex Massie

Wouldn’t it be easier to just lock-up the kids?

From our UK edition

The latest salvo in the War on People of Smoke: Displaying cigarettes in shops could be banned under government plans being considered in a bid to reduce smoking and discourage children from starting. Ministers are also considering tougher controls on vending machines in pubs and restaurants. A public consultation due to start within months will call for the public's opinions on these issues. Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said it was "vital" to teach children that "smoking is bad". "If that means stripping out vending machines or removing cigarettes from behind the counter, I'm willing to do that," she said. Whatever next? I suppose there's little point in arguing that Ms Primarolo is in no position to determine whether or not "smoking is bad"*.

Alex Massie

Hillary Abroad

From our UK edition

As I've argued here on several previous occasions, Hillary Clinton's pretence that she was a serious foreign policy player during her husband's administration is simply laughable. Now her White House schedules have been released, prompting the New York Times to publish a piece that demonstrates that she was an important player in precisely zero foreign policy areas. And the courageous, unintentionally hilarious, headline the NYT gives this? Clinton's Schedules Offer Chance to Test Assertions. Well, yeah, that's one way to put it.

Alex Massie

What’s the worst movie ever?

From our UK edition

How do you measure a truly awful movie? Joe Queenan explains: To qualify as one of the worst films of all time, several strict requirements must be met. For starters, a truly awful movie must have started out with some expectation of not being awful. That is why making a horrific, cheapo motion picture that stars Hilton or Jessica Simpson is not really much of an accomplishment. Did anyone seriously expect a film called The Hottie and The Nottie not to suck? Two, an authentically bad movie has to be famous; it can't simply be an obscure student film about a boy who eats live rodents to impress dead girls. Three, the film cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever, as this is cheating.

Sunday

Alex Massie

A Scots-Irish candidate for a Scots-Irish people?

From our UK edition

Megan McArdle is surely right that Jamie Kirchik's prediction that Massachusetts may vote Republican this November seems, shall we say, implausible. Kirchik suggests that: a Scots-Irish war veteran as the Republican nominee complicates predictions about whom Kennedy Country will support come November. Well, up to a point Lord Copper. As Megan says, "Irish" America is largely catholic, whereas the descendants of the Scots-Irish, er, are not. More to the point, not many of them live in New England. The Scots-Irish constituency, to the extent is still exists, is found in Tennessee, southern Virginia and the Carolinas. Still, in pointing out Kirchik's mistake, Megan commits one of her own.