I know what you may be thinking but — despite the title in the header of this blog — this is not a website dedicated to the Chicago Blackhawks Game 4 performance.

In fact, one of the reasons we named the blog ‘Dirty Games’ is so that we could call that sort of cheap, thuggish and staggeringly impotent behaviour exactly what it is: An ugly, failed ploy from an increasingly desperate and outmatched hockey team.

We usually pride ourselves on being something of a thinking person’s sports blogger. When the topic turns to athletics, we try to provide the context, the overarching themes and the literary metaphors to lift the discussion from sports bullshit to somewhat more legitimate grounds. It rarely works, but we try to do it anyway, because there’s not enough of that kind of sports writing — or at least there’s not enough of that kind that’s any good — floating around the internet.

Today though? Fuck it. The Blackhawks deserved to get the shit pummeled out of them yesterday, if only to restore karmic balance to the universe. And one of the other reasons we started this blog is so that we could swear with motherfucking impunity.

The Hawks didn’t show up for the game and got their asses handed to them. You cannot ever bring less than your absolute best game against the Red Wings in the playoffs and expect to have a chance. It’s pretty much a given by now.

But the best part of this entire series has been the coaching matchup and the postgame press conferences. If the games themselves have been — in a metaphor the entire hockey world has slept with like a security blanket through the entire series — Big Brother vs. Little Brother, then the coaching matchup has been teacher vs. student. Or maybe principle vs. student. Or principle vs. special-needs-short-bus-riding student. It’s honestly not even that close.

The point is that Joel Queneville has been outclassed, out-thought, outmaneuvered and made to look like an increasingly frustrated and whiny little bitch. Basically, it’s May, so he’s doing what he does. But the meltdowns, as well as Mike Babcock’s explanations of what’s really going on, have added some much-needed drama to a series that has pretty much lacked it on the ice.

Here’s Babcock, explaining why Kronwall didn’t deserve a penalty, and why Quenneville is lying and he isn’t:

I guess to me, you hit the guy in the head, you hang out your elbow, hit the guy in the head, you’re headhunting for him, like when he’s… But that to me is not what I saw there.

So, now, good thing about it is you’re asking a biased guy. I heard Joel Quenneville talk about it. What he does is he comes in, whether he believes it or not, he tells you what he’s got to tell you. I actually believe what I’m telling you. It’s the facts.

I mean, I went over it a hundred times. Before I came in here, I wanted to see did he leave his feet. Kroner, what he does, usually he’s got so much pop in him, he explodes through the guy. At the end of the check when he’s done, he’s off the ice.

That wasn’t the case here at all in the situation. Anyway, enough of that. What else?

It’s fairly obvious that the Red Wings are more talented than the Hawks, but if you switch the coaches in this series, the Hawks would be at least tied and probably up 3-1 right now.

Consider: The Blackhawks had what one could call — without any sort of hyperbole — the best pre-game situation they could hope for:yesterday. Nicklas Lidstrom, the six-time Norris winner and best defenceman in the last 30 years? Out. Pavel Datsyuk, Hart trophy nominee, the team’s leading scorer and reigning defensive forward of the year? Out. Kris Draper? A heart-and-soul component of four cup-winners, a former Selke winner and the best faceoff man in the NHL? Out.

Add to that the motivation the Hawks could utilize to avenge the evil Niklas Kronwall for his “gutless” hit on their treasured teammate, Martin Havlat. Add to that the Willis Reed-esque motivation of Havlat demanding to play despite still being a little bit woozy. Add to that a raucous home crowd and the momentum of a miraculous overtime victory in the previous game.

I mean — what the hell else do you want? Aside from politely asking Johan Franzen if he would mind not playing the role of Force of Nature tonight, and him agreeing for reasons known only to The Franzen … you couldn’t ask for more.

And then you go out and get smoked 6-1?! With all those factors in your favour?! And you have nothing to say after the game but some reprehensible bullshit about “the worst call in the history of sports”?!

Meanwhile, Mike Babcock calmly gets his team ready to play, missing Hall-of-Famers or not. They play a balanced game, avoiding dumb penalties and emotional bullshit, and dismantle their opponent. And all Babcock says is that “I thought guys were gonna step up.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but everything about the Blackhawks’ effort in this game was moronic, pointless and self-defeating. They couldn’t even manage to extract proper thuggish revenge, if that sort of juvenile achievement was indeed their goal.

Mike Babcock finished the game looking like the same kind of classy coach he always does. He should have worn the fedora he sported at the Winter Classic, just to remind everyone how much of a pimp he can be.

Quenneville, meanwhile, looked like a harried father — a man who agreed to take his own kids, as well as the neighbours’, to the zoo, only to realize, with a dozen brats running wild everywhere and other patrons giving him increasingly dirty looks, that he’d bitten off far more than he could chew. He had, quite simply, no control of the situation. For a professional coach, that’s a pretty damning indictment.

Yep. Teacher vs. Retarded Student, indeed. It’’s called being out-fucking-coached.

I’m offering this without much comment, except to say that I hope Obama’s team is smart enough to dig this speech up and use it almost exactly the way this Youtuber has done. It’s a very effective argument.

As soon as I saw this, I thought of Eminem’s performance at the end of ‘Eight Mile’. If you reference everything your opponent plans to attack you with before he gets the chance to use it, it really cripples the effectiveness of the rhetoric.

A quick reminder, if you’ve never seen it:

Now check it out. It’s the same pre-emptive strike strategy. Slick:

There’s an old jpeg, or maybe it’s a gif, floating around the Web.

It says: “Arguing on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still retarded.”

The same could be said for “debating” Sarah Palin.

I’m not faulting poor Joe Biden. He did the best he could under difficult circumstances — those circumstances being that he could not just grab her by the shoulders and shake vigorously without being accused of misogyny and assault and evil meanie stuff like that — but to say that he “debated” Palin (in any true sense of the word, which implies a coherent argument back and forth) is silly.

He offered answers to some of the questions that were asked (which is why he “won” according to the undecideds, because Lord knows Palin didn’t answer shit). He railed against John McCain. He pushed for Barack Obama and added, hopefully, a little bit of grey-haired gravitas to the public perception of the ticket.

And he’s a more patient man than I, because if Sarah Palin took a few seconds in the middle of her hailstorm of bullshit to inform me that my plan for Iraq was “a white flag of surrender” … and if I was reduced to trying to battle phrases like ” Just everyday working class Americans saying, you know, government, just get out of my way” … I would have likely stopped right there, apologized to Gwen Ifill and to every American with more than twelve functioning brain cells and quoted the moderator from Billy Madison:

But as I say, Joe Biden is a more patient man than I.

Regardless of Sarah Palin’s mental difficulties however, Joe Biden was able to accomplish something important that hints upon the greater truth of this election:

Americans are a frightened people right now. They’re scared because their economy is crumbling and they barely even understand what’s really happened to the money. They listened to the ads from credit companies that told them they could manage these crazy mortgages and loans, and it really didn’t work. Now the whole system is starting to crumble and they’re freaking out because they never knew what it was built on in the first place.

This has brought about what I see as — and I think we’re all going to recognize it soon enough — a fundamental change in the way a significant chunk of America votes. Slowly but surely, America is getting ready to elect a professor.

This is the opposite of the Bush selection and reselection, obviously, but it’s also a departure from the Clinton administration, the HW Bush choice and probably even Ronald Reagan.

It’s completely antithetical to the GOP strategy of choosing of Palin as a running mate and the ensuing departure by the McCain campaign from the “trusted experienced hand” approach to the world of “outsider folksy Mavericks.”

And I think that’s why McCain’s campaign is floundering right now, Palin’s simpering cluelessness aside.

Americans — regardless of whether they do or not — feel that they really do ‘get’ and ‘understand’ the War on Terror and the fight against evil, so they’re willing to elect someone like themselves to fight it; someone courageous and brave and more than a little insulated, reactionary and xenophobic.

But now, as well as knowing that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea, Americans are also being asked to vote on the economy, which they have recently realized, much to their chagrin, they do not understand at all.

If you are a politician, this is not the time to come off as ‘Awww Shucks’ and ‘Doggone it, Joe.’

Now is the time to lecture these poor masses crying for information on what’s been going on. Joe Biden did a decent job of that last night, and was likable in the process. For the Obama campaign, that’s a job more than well done.

The average American will come away from that debate thinking, ‘that Sarah Palin sure is down-home and folksy and a nice enough gal with purty gams, but she don’t seem to understand the economy any better’n I do.’

And for the first time in a while, I don’t think that’s good for the McCain campaign politically.

And Joe Biden, at the cost of coming across (for the most part — though the speech about his wife and kids was brilliant and heartfelt) as a career politician, displayed an intimate understanding of ‘how the gawddamned economy works.’

That’s what frightened Americans are finally willing to look for in a leader now.

We saw this in the last Presidential debate, where Obama moved into “Constitutional Law Prof” mode, lectured the hell out of a stuttering old man who is also a war hero and still managed to score a “win” from undecided voters, who were (whether they knew it or not) being edjumacated on the realities of their situation.

So Biden deserves a lot of credit, not only for not reaching over there and grabbing that nasty, slanderous bitch by her hair when she mentioned the white flag of surrender, but for recognizing that laying low and coming across as infinitely more knowledgeable was far more important to his ticket’s chances than getting off a few good one-liners.

So good job, Joe Biden.

(Bonus free campaign strategy advice: If you’re the Dems, now that Biden played nice with the poor little woman candidate so as not to face criticism … now you take the gloves off Hillary and let her chew this simpering, gosh-darning, insult-to-female-politicians-everywhere slimebag up. You know she wants to. She’s not gonna get the presidency. Let her have the lipstick pitbull. Hillary is HUNGRY, dammit.)

Alternate title: The reason we’re going to start writing about hockey and basketball tomorrow.

From the Washington Post this morning:

In the Washington Post/ABC News poll released this week, 48 percent of respondents said the candidates’ positions on issues are their main concern, compared with 37 percent who said they place greater weight on personal qualities such as experience and leadership.

Among issue voters, Obama is leading McCain 56 to 37 percent.

Among so-called personal quality voters, McCain is ahead 56 to 39 percent.

Personal. Fucking. Quality. What else can I say?

If you want to fuck your country up, America, you go right ahead.

Meanwhile, the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings report for training camp in one week.

I could not be more in need of the distraction.

(NHL division previews, in Dirty Games infamous haiku format, begin on Friday.

I could use this space to write a 1,000-word ‘I-told-you-so’ post right here that would sum up everything I’ve been saying for the last few years about the Detroit Red Wings. I could wax poetic about how much joy it brings me to see a team of supposedly-weak foreigners hit back whenever they’re attacked, score goals that would make Aelx Ovechkin proud and generally dominate the NHL playoffs.

Trust me, I could easily do that, and once they win five more games (*knocks on wood*), I almost certainly will. The opportunity will be too good to pass up.

In the meantime though, we’ll have some fun. So, here’s the answer to the question you’ve all been asking: Which Red Wings are the on-ice equivalent of rap’s most dominant team, the Wu-Tang Clan?

Yes, I fully admit this is retarded. But fuck it, it’s my blog. So yes, I am glad you asked. We’ll let the Clan explain it:

It’s like this, I’mma start from the top

“Inspectah Deck, he’s like
He’s like that dude thatta sit back and watch you
Play yourself and all that right?
And see you sit there and know you lyin
And he’ll take you to court after that cuz he the Inspectah.”

Nothing describes Kris Drpaer’s play better than that. Draper will sit back in the neutral zone and let you play yourself and all that. He’ll let you stickhandle your way into trouble or convince you that you can complete a low-percentage pass. Then he’ll take you to court, aka the counterattack. Hell, it’s hard making rap-speak equate to hockey strategy, so take my word for it — he see you sit there and know you lyin.

“And Shallah Raekwon he the Chef
He cookin up some marvelous shit to get your mouth waterin
On some “O shit”

I’m giving this to Val Filppula. Because he shows flashes of the shit he’s cooking up that definitely get your mouth watering, just like Rae did on the Clan’s earliest albums before exploding on his solo stuff. Filppula (or “Flip” as they call him in the D) has been brought along slowly, much like another couple of Wings from Europe I could name. Once they let him off his leash, he’ll be serving up some marvellous shit.

“Then, then it’s, then it’s the Method Man
It’s like mad different methods to the way I do my shit
And I’m tellin you, mine
Basically Method Man is like
Roll that shit, light that shit, smoke it.”

As much as I love the Method Man, and as much as I’d like to give this to one of the more notable Red Wings, there’s really only one man on the team who deserves the title of ‘Roll that shit, light that shit, smoke that shit.’ And it’s Darren McCarty, the only professional athlete I know to have his career publicly derailed and enter substance abuse rehab because of a fondness for smoking marijuana.

“And then Baby U, he a psychopathic
He a psychopathic thinker.”

As Mike Babcock says of Niklas Kronwall: He’s kind of like a predator … He’s trying to hunt you down … it makes (the other team) nervous out there.”

Darren McCarty backs him up: “Definitely, he’s quiet out there … You don’t hear him coming and BOOM, the next thing you know he’s laying somebody out.”

Predator … hunting … quiet … don’t hear him coming … BOOM … sounds like a psychopathic thinker to me. He’s been laying guys out since he was playing in the AHL. He straight-up enjoys hurting people … and he’s 5′10′, 190. People that small are supposed to protect themselves and play within their size, not cruise around the ice “hunting” guys that have a few inches and about 25 pounds on them, for God’s sake.

“And and, then we got, then we got the Ol’ Dirty Bastard
Cuz they ain’t no father to his style
That’s why he the Ol’ Dirty Bastard.”

This one shouldn’t even need an explanation. He’s been an Ol’ Dirty Bastard since I was a freshman in high school.

And he’s laughing. Of course he’s laughing. He’s playing professional hockey at the highest level in the world. He’s 46 years old. When I am 46, it is my solemn hope that I will not need help tying my shoes or getting limber for a game of beer-league softball.

Chris Chelios, by the way, trains like this. That would break me in 20 minutes, y’all.

“Ghostface Killah, you know what I’m sayin
He on some now you see me, now you don’t shit
Know what I’m sayin.”

‘Now you see me, now you don’t shit’? Why you must be talking about Pavel Datsyuk. I defy anyone to watch these two clips and tell me otherwise. That is one spirit-world type motherfucka right there.

“And and, the RZA, he the sharpest motherfucka in the whole Clan
He always on point, razasharp
With the beats, with the rhymes.”

Aside from the GZA, and possibly Method Man, the RZA is the key to the Clan. He was never the craziest, most violent, most outspoken or anything else — he just delivered solid line, some of the most incredible beats ever put to wax and was the undisputed champ of explaining the whole concept of the Clan in interviews. In other words, he held the whole thing together, doing whatever the team needed and doing it superbly. His solo albums were pretty genius, too.

The RZA, if it even need be said, is Henrik Zetterberg.

“And the GZA, the G is just the Genius, hee
He’s the backbone of the whole shit
…
It’s self explanatory, Genius
…
He the head, let’s put it that way
We form like Voltron, and GZA happen to be the head
You know what I’m sayin?”

The smartest hockey player ince Wayne Gretzky retired and the best defenceman since Bobby Orr. The head is Nicklas Lidstrom. Much like the GZA with his rhymes, Lidstrom is a master of economy. He won’t hit you when a pokecheck will do the job and he won’t pokecheck you when he can simply strip you of the puck.

Substitute hockey terms for rap terms, and tell me if this description doesn’t sound like Nick: “GZA uses the sword as a metaphor for the [stick], and views his [defense] as deadly sword techniques. His own technique is self-described as visual and descriptive, yet at the same time succinct. He is a firm proponent of “less is more” when it comes to [defense].”

The rest of the lyrics on this track fit our little scenario pretty well, too:

[Interviewer]
So what’s like, I mean what’s like your ultimate goal against in this industry NHL playoffs?

[Method Man]
Domination baby, fuck that

[Raekwon]
Can I say this one? can I say this one?
Right now, right now, we still, we still
Feel like we ain’t get what we want yet
When we get, when we get, when we get a little props
And really really get the way we gotta go?
That’s when you know it’s on?
…
But straight up and down, till we get the goal
We gon keep goin.
Sounds about right.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Is nothing sacred to this whore?

Shoes? Converse fucking shoes? The same kind of Chuck Taylor one-stars that everybody remembers from this iconic photo.

You are selling your dead husband’s lyric sheets to be reprinted on shoes? The same brand of shoes that he died in?

Do you need money that badly? I thought you were off the heroin.

In case you have forgotten, Kurt Cobain was against this kind of corporate whoring, and even if he wasn’t, I’m quite sure he couldn’t have been as tactless as your skanky ass if he was trying to sell his soul for profit.

Oh Courtney, may your mouth always be filled with the self-satisfied spunk of Billy Corgan, and may your legacy, when all is said and done, amount to nothing more than the fact that my generation’s most revered musician ejaculated inside your birth canal when he was to goddamn high to know what the fuck was going on.

And may Francis Bean see you, one day, for what you really are.

Sigh. More info and pics of the shoes are here.

Shoes? Really?

I hate you so much, Courtney Love. I really, really do.

I’ve been known, on occasion, to be somewhat crude and dismissive when faced with obvious media bullshit. Sue me. It’s what I do.

Which is why it is both surprising and extremely uplifting to see my favourite politician respond to the sort of non-issue, lazy-journalism, lowest-common-denominator pandering exactly the way that I would, were I smart enough to be in his shoes:

(You can, by the way, find the complete Obama response to that ridiculous debate, with sound and everything, right here.)

That about sums up both the mudslinging, politicking and tabloid-style discussion this Democratic party nomination battle has offered.

In keeping with this theme, we’re going to try an exercise in real-time journalism today.

I joked, months before the nomination battle was anything but a “gimme” for Senator Clinton, in a post in which I made fun of the the Los Angeles Times for declaring Barack Obama a “magical negro”, that I was going to register the blog title “Barack Obama’s Press Clippings” to keep track of the ridiculous stories that were bound to appear as mainstream America comes to grips with a “well-spoken” African-American running for the highest office in the land.

Well, it wasn’t a joke. I did register that blog, and once he secures the nomination, I may have to actually start writing it. (Only if the Red Wings and Raptors flame out in the playoffs though. I only have so much time to waste on the internet, and at least hockey and basketball are dirty games that come with rules.)

It’s a very good thing I didn’t start it yet, too, because I need about seven hours of sleep a night, I work eight hours a day, and I also enjoy drinking beer, having a life and occasionally trying to get laid. If I was to keep track of the idiocy that surrounds the Obama campaign right now, I’d be sacrificing at least the sleep and the beer, and I’d be so psychotically angry all the time that no woman would come within 20 feet of me.

But, as an exercise, just for today, in honour of my favourite moment on the campaign so far, we will try to keep track. Quickly.

So here’s the deal. It’s 10:44 a.m. I’ve got about 40 minutes before I force myself to go outside and enjoy this beautiful spring day. In that 40 minutes, I’m going to see how many “news” stories I can find about the Obama-Clinton race that simply aren’t news and don’t contribute anything useful to the political discussion.

Using news aggregators such as Digg and Fark and the ever trusty Google News, I’ll try to restrict myself to mainstream media and websites. However, if a blog claims to actually offer evidence or break news, we’ll count them, too.

This should not be considered an exercise in exploring media bias. The media is biased. Always. It’s a fact of life and we should all be smart enough to accept it and treat it accordingly. This, rather, is an exercise in finding humour in something that should piss everyone off. The contradictions and sheer exaggerations should be amusing enough themselves, without me having to take them apart.

If you want to, click the links I’ll provide and decide for yourself if this is helping Americans make a decision on the issues. I’ll just sit back, present them, and thank god that I live in a country where our elections aren’t world-changing events and as such don’t come with this healthy dose of insane inanity.

Seriously America, you guys are just fucked. I mean that.

Alright, timer starts now. Any breaks for phone calls, coffee or bathroom will be added on at the end, like injury time in soccer.

• The Los Angeles Times (The Magical Negro people!) wonders if Barack Obama was really scratching his face, or if he was giving the finger to Hillary Clinton (who was not present at the time).

(This, by the way, would be an outrage because no presidential candidate has ever flipped the bird before)

(I took two minutes off the clock to find this picture for your pleasure)

• Barack Obama — known Elitist — may have had a “welfare queen” for a mother. (This blog makes it because it does such a terrible job of offering proof, yet claims to do so. Check it out.)
• A CBS news reporter reports what Hillary Clinton says about George W. Bush and adds that she was “no doubt” taking a veiled jab at Barack Obama. If she was, Clinton is comparing her rival to W. And that’s stupid. If she wasn’t, he’s putting words in her mouth. We’ll never know because nobody asked her.
• OMG! Obama put the flag pin back on his lapel at a Veteran’s event, after saying months ago that he didn’t wear it anymore because he wanted to make a symbolic gesture in protest of the Iraq war. Hypocrisy, thy name is B. Hussein. (The best part of this one is the one-sentence update: “The pin was given to Obama by a disabled vet at the event.” Can you imagine the stories we’d be reading if he had refused the disabled veteran’s pin?)
• The AP chairman asked Barack a question about “Obama bin Laden” before the candidate gently corrected him. I don’t know what to think of this one.
• The US News “reports” (by asking a few people on the street) that Obama’s ‘bitter’ comments have “halted his momentum”. I mention this only to point out that, in research conducted on the same day (the key word is ‘research’ as opposed to ‘random streeters’) Gallup reports that Obama’s lead has held and even increased since he made those horrible, offensive and elitist, but pretty true, comments.
• Obama has ties to a militant ’60s radical member of the Weather Underground. OMFG! Those ties, factchecking finds, include a handshake at an event, a small donation to his senate campaign and an informal agreement to potentially sit on a committee together, which never happened. The best part of this one is that it was proposed by noted impartisan, fact-based journalist Sean Hannity and asked during Tuesday’s debate as though it were a legitimate question. Read more about the whole retarded saga here, if you must. The part where a noted Chicago rabbi calls the radical “wonderful, compassionate, thoughtful, serious” is interesting.
• Barack Obama’s wife’s college roommate’s mother was a racist who wanted segregated dorms. Interestingly enough, my ex-girlfriend’s college roommate’s mother was a blackhearted communist and total freedom-hater.
• Hamas — those totally bad terrorist guys — endorsed Barack Obama for President. Obama totally had something to do with that. He must have promised them free belts to hold their dynamite if he gets elected, or some shit like that. What a dirty terrorist. Oh wait — shit — Obama has denounced former Democratic President Jimmy Carter for engaging in dialogue with a terrorist organization like Hamas.
• This probably doesn’t count because it’s an opinion column and doesn’t claim to be anything but partisan, but it does win the ‘best headline’ award. I would like to know “What is it about Obama that Attracts Hamas, Communists, and Domestic Terrorists?”
• Fox News — in what must have been a soul-searching decision for the higher-ups — sides with the gay community by reporting that “Obama failed to grant an interview to the Philadelphia Gay News — the paper made its point this way — by publishing its interview with Hillary Clinton on the right side of its front page and leaving the space for Obama’s interview blank.” If you had “Fox News stands up for gay rights” in the Signs of the Apocalypse pool, you just took the pot.
• Obama’s campaign team is surely the only campaign team ever to rearrange where people are seated to give an impression of diversity. Nobody else has ever done this before, so that is why this is news.

Okay. That’s it. My 40 minutes are up. I had to take one coffee break and three minutes of injury time were added when the amount of links I had open on my computer made it stall. These links were not difficult to find, and had I not imposed a 40-minute limit, I would still be making this list. I had at least six more open in my browser when the buzzer sounded.

Hope y’all learned something. And I hope you’re as sincerely fed up as I am with this bullshit.

Once more, I’m not trying to claim the media is biased against Barack Obama — some outifts surely are, and some are surely spinning in his favour. That’s a fact of life. The point I was trying to make is that saturation of news agencies, national networks and 24-hour cable news outlets has made elections a round-the-clock exercise in finding stupid shit to use as content.

That’s it. That’s all. I just wanted to see how many I could find in less than an hour. The total: 12 in 40 minutes, with six more that didn’t even make the cut. That includes taking the time to vet some of the more ridiculous claims.

As a professional reporter, that 40 minutes it took to find and (halfheartedly) factcheck these stories, would cost you about $22 for my services. As an editor, it’ll run you about $26. I did it for free because I think that issues are more important than inane bullshit. It’s one of my major failings as a mainstream journalist.

So in conclusion, “if you feelin’ like a pimp, n—a, go and brush your shoulders off. Ladies is pimps, too, so go and brush your shoulders off. N—az is crazy too, don’t forget the boy told you. Get. That. Dirt off your shoulder.”

So … the whole ‘OMG! Obama’s Pastor hates Amerikkka! Can’t ever vote for him!’ bullshit of the past few days has brought about an interesting result:

I have a great deal more respect for a completely crazy Evangelical Conservative who wants the Constitution to more properly reflect the values of the Bible.

Don’t get it twisted — Mike Huckabee would be a dangerous, dangerous man with his fingers pushing the buttons that move the lumbering giant that is America. If I were religious, I would be praying to whatever the heck I believed in that a fundamentalist never again finds himself wielding political power in the United States of America.

But Huckabee is a rational person about non-religious matters, it seems. And about race. And he’s got Obama’s back on this whole Pastor-taints-candidate’s-campaign idiocy.

If you managed to miss the whole thing, I’ll sum up briefly with links:

• Obama’s pastor, it turns out, has a history of saying some very inflamatory and occasionally racist and hateful things.
• Obama’s political critics use this material to illustrate why this ‘militant black man’ should never be allowed to become President.
• Pundits from both the Republican and the Hillary Clinton (that blog is terrible!) side of the blogosphere, nearly pee themselves with glee because they finally have something to turn their dirty politics on.
• Obama uses the occasion to give — what else? — a fairly open and moving speech, finally addressing racial issues in this campaign and condemning his pastor’s remarks without denouncing the man himself. A quick excerpt:

“And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Full text and video of the speech.

Anyway, so where does Huckabee come in? Well, here. After Obama’s speech, when his supporters are fellating him and his detractors are claiming that he hasn’t distanced himself enough from Wright’s remarks, the most conservative, religious and just plain fundamentalist of all the Presidential candidates gets on a radio program and says that … he totally understands. Wuh-Huh?

A transcript from ‘Morning Joe’ this morning:

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it’s a valid one, that you can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can’t. Whether it’s me, whether it’s Obama…anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say “Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.”

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS…

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you’re not. I know you’re not. I’m just wondering though, for a lot of people…Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what’s the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don’t think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it’s not October. It’s March. And I don’t believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: It’s the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going “boy, there is some deep resentment there.”

So there you go. Mike Huckabee. Still religious and crazy as hell, but with a healthy dose of common sense where race is concerned. Like the title says … who knew?

“The dinosaurs will slowly die
And I do believe no one will cry
I’m just fucking glad I’m gonna be
There to watch the fall
Prehistoric music industry
Three feet in la brea tar
Extinction never felt so good”

— NOFX

Oh, Rosie. You won’t go down without a fight, will you?

No, of course not.

So, how about we deconstruct this idiocy? (The Harry Potter community calls it ’sporking’)

“Last week, the Newspaper Audience Databank numbers were released, measuring readership results for 2007. I have no idea what they mean. You, reader, will have no idea what they mean.”

Actually, I do have an idea what they mean. So does anyone who bothers to read a real article that defines them or — gasp — look them up on the internet.

NADbank numbers are used to determine, in a general sense, how many people are reading a given publication on a daily and weekly basis. This helps newspapers and their advertisers determine rates. It also allows papers to ‘keep score’ in an anything-but-friendly competition.

“You will especially have no idea what they mean if you were to read news stories about the NADbank statistics in any of Toronto’s four major papers. Newspapers are never so selectively spinning as when reporting on their own state of the union.”

But not you, Rosie. You’re gonna take us on board John McCain’s Straight Talk Express, right? You fixin’ to give us a little bit of that patented, unbiased DiManno commentary that so many people fork over their $0.75 to read three times a week? Aimin’ to set us straight and preserve the journalistic integrity that the Photoshopped picture of you wearing dangly hippie earrings atop your column has come to embody?

Lay it on me, DiManno. I’m all ears.

“It does appear grim, however, the prognosis for my business, or at least the core dead-tree product from which everything else – thus far – devolves, all the online bells and whistles, the videography, the blogs, the interactive shunts.

We are endlessly talking at each other but, alas, not reading so much anymore, falling away from the habit of a tactile newspaper experience, or so the doomsayers cluck.”

Please notice, on this street of objectivity we are currently strolling down, the loaded language that we’re using. We are not ‘moving’ but ‘falling’ away. The online stuff is ‘devolved’ from the newsprint version. The doomsayers are not ‘predicting’ or even merely ’saying’ — they are ‘clucking’. You know, like chickens. (Chickens are bad. Chickens, especially little ones, think the sky is falling. See how it works?)

Also the prognosis it not grim. It only ‘appears’ that way. Right. Got it? Good.

This is the kind of insincere writing, designed to only display force-feed us one viewpoint narrow worldview, that David Frum was guilty of back when he worked for whored himself out to the Bush administration. (See how easy it is?)

Nevertheless, let’s see how we ‘cluck’:

“And, because everyone who reads a newspaper believes they know newspapers, opinions are thick on the ground about what ails us.

Because no opinion can be allowed to go unshared and every email author is a quasi citizen-journalist – or citizen-editor – the unsolicited advice, inexpert analysis and shallow exposition is cacophonic.”

(I would venture a guess that some people who read newspapers don’t think they know newspapers. I imagine that some people read newspapers to — Heavens! — see the news. DiManno, as she so often does, is assuming the average person cares about her own axe-to-grind-du-jour. Some of your readers, Rosie, are just readers, nothing more or less. They want to read your bitter, jealous rants about Kids These Days and then get back to their coffee with a knowing smirk on their face.)

Anyway, I certainly agree that opinions are thick on the ground about what ails the newspaper industry. I’m also sure that some of those e-mails that you don’t read also provide, not advice, but confirmation that your medium is, indeed, dying. Whether or not that advice is inexpert is up for debate. Whatever. You don’t like negative feedback. Gotcha.

Plowing on:

“It’s touching that many readers have a proprietary relationship with their gazette of choice, but the scolding can get a bit much. And where one reader sees genius, another sees abomination, conspiracies and editorial agendas run rampant.

It’s just a newspaper, people. If you don’t like what’s in it today, come back tomorrow – it’ll be different. But it’s pretty much always published in good faith, by professionals passionate about that thing they do.”

These paragraphs comprise a fairly ridiculous premise: The idea that readers’ opinions are touching, but that sharing them with the paper is unnecessary because people all feel differently. Also, she postulates that criticism of the newspaper’s ‘editorial agendas run rampant’ is invalid because there will be a new newspaper (with, she seems to be claiming, different editorial agendas run rampant) in the boxes tomorrow. Also, she whinges, (like the blogs she will decry later) ‘be nice to us because we really like our jobs’.

Ridiculous. The Star’s editorial agenda (and that’s a topic for a whole ‘nother rant) is fairly consistent from day to day— readers who care about the paper have every right to point that out. As to the passion, where on EARTH does one get off claiming that passion for one’s job matters one iota when the axe falls or the death knells sound? Nobody who ever worked in a defunct industry was ever passionate about it?

But we’re straying from the point, and I’m starting to get pissy …

“In my own newspaper experience, which has been a little bit at The Globe and a lot at the Star, I’ve been privileged to write for Canada’s two best dailies, though I have immense respect for the National Post and Sun as well, especially on their goofier days.

Don’t want to see any newspaper die, or go completely online, or lose their precious share of the market to ubiquitous giveaways slapped together from wire copy and outright thievery, without substance or an original thought.”

Here, once we get past veiled potshots at two competitors and an improper sentence construction that appears to be asking a rhetorical question that never comes, Rosie is referring to commuter dailies. In Toronto, those are Metro and 24 hours.

She makes four claims about them: Slapped together from wire copy, outright thievery, no substance and no original thought. Let’s go one-by-one.

Slapped together from wire copy: Guilty. Most of the stories in commuter dailies are from the Associated and Canadian Press(es), as well as Reuters and AFP on occasion. All four of those wire services, as an aside, also appear in Toronto’s four major dailies. With less frequency, true, but often with a lot less credit (witness: ‘Star Wire Services’ as a frequent stand-in for ‘the Associated Press’).

Outright Thievery: No. Just no. 24 hours doesn’t use copy from other newspapers, except for some Sun Media pieces. And that’s not thievery, since the two papers are owned by the same company and have agreements that allow them to share stories and photos. Metro is co-owned by The Star’s parent company, Torstar, and as such has a similar agreement. A LOT of Star copy ends up in Metro, and we’ll assume Rosie is pissed about this. So they use newspaper copy — but it is NOT thievery.

No substance: Maybe, but that’s because various readership surveys continue to show that readers want quick, short bursts of news, not long, involved pieces in which ‘context’ and ’substance’ is all-too-often an excuse to let a hack ‘get his write on’. But, as a hack who lurves to get his write on (and has, many times over) I do understand. That’s why I have a blog. The point here is that, if daily commuters lack substance, it is by design. I think it’s better to say they lack sufficient substance to please Rosie DiManno.

No original thought: Untrue. Perhaps it isn’t up to Rosie DiManno’s standards, but these papers are not written for Rosie’s tastes. A quick check of the two commuter dailies today finds that Metro has nine original columnists (not counting non-column, bylined stories by exclusive reporters) over 36 pages and 24 hours has six original columnists (ditto for not counting non-column, exclusive stories) over 32 pages.

She just went 1-4. Heck she could fill the middle of the ‘White Jays’ order with those numbers. Sigh. Continuing:

“They don’t dispatch reporters for a you-are-there keyhole view of world events or even the local ones because they are not, in the main, part of the fabric of their community. There is no interpretation, no context, no texture and – worst sin – no story-telling. They are newsprint spam.”

Both commuter dailies have their own reporters who cover local (but, she’s right, not world) events. They tell stories, just not at the length that DiManno demands. Also, if lots of people are reading it, writing in to the columnists inside, and complaining when the newspaper does something they don’t like — then those papers are also a part of the fabric of the community. Why wouldn’t they be? And when did newspapers start wanting to ‘be part of the fabric of the community’ anyway? Standing up for the little guy? Maybe. Asking questions of those in power? Sure. But I don’t know where the fabric stuff comes from.

*deep breath*

Anyway, what does it SAY Rosie, when the average citizen, who used to read your newspaper, is now picking up ‘Newsprint spam’ instead? Turn that poison pen on your own employer for a second. What are you not giving your readers that they feel, in increasing numbers, that picking up 24 hours or Metro will serve them just as well?

“At the other end of the spectrum are the online “content providers,” blogs and “social media” networks that are all view, all comment, all personal whinge, graceless, and devoid of source reporting.

Surfers go to these fonts of blather not for illumination but for validation of their own beliefs and to group-bitch.”

Which sounds to me, if you’ll pardon the snark, like the same reason Liberals with white guilt buy the Toronto Star.

Bud-dum-ching!

For the record, I source everything possible on my font of blather to a reputable news organization. I do write it to validate my own beliefs though, and Rosie’s article is really helping with this right now.

I also take issue with the ‘graceless’ comment, Rosie. I am a blogger. Am I not graceful? If we dance together, do you not swoon?

Saying that all blog writing is ‘graceless’ would be akin to a blogger such as myself lumping all of your ink-stained ilk at the Star together and labelling them a room of old, entitled hacks scared of a changing world. But that wouldn’t be fair to your colleagues, some of whom are excellent journalists, graceful writers and not at all afraid of the future that has you bawling with denial in this column.

“The tall foreheads in my business are spending a great deal of time and energy trying to reinvent the newspaper wheel so that it will eventually become a square, or a pinprick on the cluttered media landscape.

It was shocking, at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, when the publisher of The New York Times told a Haaretz reporter: “I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing The Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either.”

Woah! ‘Tall foreheads’! I totally KNOW who she’s talking about in the Star newsroom.

Just kidding. But seriously, shouldn’t they be trying to reinvent the newspaper? The entire world is going online, readership for paid dailies is falling at a pretty steady pace, the over-saturated media resorts to eating itself and lashing out at new mediums to stay alive (this column is a nice example) and Rosie doesn’t seem to agree that the ‘Tall Foreheads’ should be rethinking their business model.

That would be why she’s the columnist, I suppose, — her brow is furrowed; her forehead is slanty and short. Big pictures? Not for DiManno. Just keep your realist nose out of her old-timey, idealist corner of the world and don’t you dare touch that creaky old typewriter at her desk. That’s an antique! And so is she! And she’s a newswoman, dammit, and she’s NOT a dying breed!

Rosie will not go gently into that good night. She will rage and bitch and cuss up a storm; using loaded language, false premises, outright untruths and anything else she can get her hands on. Rosie is here, in the nick of time, to haul up that sputtering, drowning idea that paper and ink newspapers are here forever, because they are the only places that people like you can have people like her tell you how to feel about the latest Important Thing.

Let’s just get this over with:

“Arthur Sulzberger Jr. later tried to redact that comment, predicting the paper will be around for a long time, even as it transitions from print to Internet. “The point of view is not about nostalgia or a love of newsprint. Instead, it is rooted in fundamental business realities.”

He got it wrong on two counts: Revenue streams for papers with online versions come overwhelming [SIC] from the hard-copy product.

And it is, very much, about the love.”
It’s all about the love. Except for the blogs, and the email, and the newspapers that are free and accessible to anyone who gets to the box before they’re all gone. Rosie hates those. She also only likes the Post and the Sun when they’re cute, not when they’re competing with Dos Star.

She is right, however, when she says that “revenue streams for papers with online versions come overwhelming [SIC] from the hard-copy product.” That is very true, and it is true because nobody has done the thankless, tedious work to find a way to change it. Probably because every time they try columnists like Rosie pick up their pens and threaten them with ridicule and scorn. Which is why newspaper revenue is drying up, and daily papers are raising their price and advertising is falling.

Rosie uses the last — and one of only a few— truthful fact in this column to prove a point which inadvertently reinforces just how wrong she is. Newspapers are dying because, while the content has moved online and people are still reading it there, the industry has not found a way to adapt and utilize the new medium to create revenue.

In short: Rosie’s pissed, and wrong; I’m laughing, and weeping for the kiddies in journalism school who are still being taught the Way of the Paper And Ink; and I wish that —just once — a columnist would do as we bloggers often do and acknowledge how horribly biased they are before beginning a rant.

That’s all. And sorry, Rosie, but damn … why you gotta be like that?

R.I.P. Toronto Maple Leafs’ 2007/08 NHL hockey season.

R.I.P. Hillary Clinton’s decisive mandate as the Democratic Presidential candidate.

Yes, you both still have a chance. Technically. By the numbers. In a perfect world. If the dice comes up seven. Then eleven. If the 8-ball breaks the right way. If you catch a card on the river. If you get a favourable lie in the heavy rough, if the puck takes a bad bounce off the boards, if the refs blow some calls, the game gets called after five innings on account of rain or the Hand of God knocks the soccer ball mysteriously into the goal.

In other words, you have a chance, but not the solid puncher’s chance or the outside shot both you and your supporters believe you do. The false hope and desperate optimism has gone past endearing and veered into the realm of harmful delusion.

Hillary Clinton — with wins in both the Texas and Ohio primaries — has the justification she needs to continue her campaign for the nomination. She still trails Barack Obama by more than 100 delegates amid whispered rumours abound that Obama has a few dozen superdelegates waiting for the opportune moment to jump from the Clinton ship.

Obama still has the lead and the clock is winding down. It’s not garbage time yet, by any means, but it’s time to play fast-and-loose with your possessions. If you’re Clinton and you want to have any real shot at a comeback, now would be the time to start launching three-pointers with 20 seconds left on the shot clock and throwing out the full court press on the defensive side.

But she’s already done that. The last two weeks have seen Sen. Clinton running across the map, on very little sleep, looking increasingly haggard as she calls in favour after favour, rallies troop after troop and (if you’ll pardon a very male expression) blows her wad in an attempt to prove that the race isn’t over.

So congratulations, Senator. You’ve proven the race isn’t over. But at what cost? Your party is fractured, the opposition is rallying behind their candidate, the Republican fundraising machine will now have extra months to scare up cash and Democrats can cement their reputation as the party you can count on to Find A Way To Fuck Things Up.

If this race comes down the Democratic Convention this summer, how much of a head start does that give John McCain on fundraising, organization and dirt-digging?

I understand not wanting to give up the fight, and obviously a couple of wins are encouraging. But a simple breakdown of numbers will show you that it will take some convincing wins of the sort that Texas and Ohio were not, the continued support of superdelegates who are prepared to cast their ballot against the will of voters in their districts and a heavy dose of backroom dealing.

Who is served if Clinton comes by the nomination in this manner? What would such a prolonged fight do to the core of the Democrats? Why on Earth does anyone think that stretching it out like this is a good idea?

It’s not. It’s going to cost them the election. And maybe then they will learn.

Meanwhile … In Canada …

Speaking of Finding A Way To Fuck Things Up, I present the 07/08 Maple Leafs: A team with no future, 40 years of a wasted past and a present that they just can’t leave alone in the woods to die.

The parallels to the Clinton campaign are startling. The situation, however, is even more ridiculous.

The fans, even moreso than Clinton’s supporters, are desperate for excuses to keep believing. After a 4-1 loss last night to the New Jersey Devils, I received the following excerpts in an email from arguably (because most of them are pretty crazy) the most diehard Leafs fan I know:

Look, I am not one to kick diehard fans when they are down. But when they should be down, and refuse to be, you have to do the humane thing and kick them until they go down. So watch me work:

In the NBA, the New York Knicks (the most valuable and popular franchise) are hit with conspiracy theories about how the refs and the league are trying to give them a hand up because it’s in everyone’s best interest to see them succeed. If you google ‘NBA conspiracy Knicks Ewing’, you’ll get a whack of responses, many from fairly respected sports websites. If you ask any non-Knicks fan about the team with John Starks that lost to the Rockets in the 1993 finals, they’ll tell you the Knicks got all the calls. Lots of fans complained this season about the Patriots getting calls, because the Perfect Season would be good for the NFL…

… But yet for some reason the NHL has knives out for the franchise that makes them more cash and has arguably the a more widespread following than any other team in the league? Nope. Not buying it.

Add poor Don Koharksi to the list of longtime, well-respected NHL officials (trusted enough by the league to officiate some of the most important games) who have allegedly conspired against this poor franchise.

“Entering the 2005-2006 NHL season, Koharski had officiated over 1,400 regular season games, 235 playoff games, 11 Stanley Cup Finals, two All-Star Games, two Canada Cups, and the 2004 World Cup. He is currently the league’s second most senior official behind referee Kerry Fraser. On April 8, 2006, Koharski reached the 1,500th regular season milestone when he officiated a game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning.”

— from Wikipedia

Kerry Fraser, of course, is the man that Leafs fans still blame for “costing them the Cup” in 1993. Never mind that the call wasn’t even made in the Stanley Cup finals … Surely, the two longest-tenured officials currently reffing hockey games are out to get the league’s most valuable franchise. Uh-huh.

(As a brief aside here, Barack Obama points out another similarity between Hillary and the Leafs: complaining about the refs:

“There’s no doubt that Senator Clinton went very negative over the last week,” Obama said. He said the Clinton campaign’s multiple attacks “had some impact” on the election results “particularly in the context where many of you in the press corps had been persuaded that you had been too hard on her and too soft on me.”

“Complaining about the refs apparently worked a little bit this week,” he said, equating members of the news media with referees in a sporting event.)

You can’t blame the referees. It’s cheap and stupid and it makes you a sore loser. You can’t blame Toskala or Sundin at all for this mess. Nor can you really blame Antropov and Kaberle. I feel bad for Ian White, Carlo Coliacovo, Alex Steen and Matt Stajan, who are all good kids who would give everything they possibly can to be the kind of heroes Leafs Nation wants so desperately. I feel bad for Chad Kilger and Wade Belak, who had finally found places where they could settle down and do their thing, and were most definitely not part of the problem.

Other than that, though, you get what you foolishy pay for. This applies to the Maple Leafs front office, and to 9/10ths of Leafs Nation.

I have never, ever liked the Leafs. I never will. But the agony of fandom and circle-jerk of the media is approaching Red Sox proportions. Which means that, if the Leafs can ever conspire to scratch out a Stanley Cup, it will be More Than Sports — in the same way a Black American President would be More Than Politics.

And that would present a real conflict for me. Because I am all about things that are More Than Sports. If there were two teams I hated growing up as a Blue Jays fan, it was the Tigers and the Red Sox. But I made up with baseball because of the ‘04 Sox, and I was rooting for the Tigers when they went to Series two years ago.

The Maple Leafs are, for a team that is quite possibly the most integral to the economics of its sport, pathetic right now. The franchise and the fan base are beaten down. Sneaking close to the playoffs again and falling short would be, in a way, the ultimate low-point.

So here is where we draw the parallels: The Leafs, much like Clinton, will in all probability fail. By failing NOW, or by failing months ago, they have (or had) a chance to build a future that is good for their respective parent organizations (Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Inc. and the Democratic Party, respectively).

A concession by Clinton, instead of a long, drawn-out fight that she will likely lose, would give the Democratic Party new unity and direction heading towards an election in which the Republicans have already chosen their candidate and begun rallying behind him.

A concession by Paul Maurice and his gritty, never-say-die bunch (and a concession would be embodied by consecutive starts for Andrew Raycroft and more playing time for some of the Marlies) would allow long-suffering fans to abandon a futile belief that a simple playoff berth means the season is a success, and provide an increased chance of a top draft pick that could actually be a positive step in turning the franchise around.

But neither will concede. The pride of the Clintons and Maurice and his troops, coupled with the unfailing backing of Leafs Nation and the Clinton supporters, will not allow them to give in so long as the candle of hope burns with even the dimmest of flames.

Hillary declares, ‘This isn’t over yet,’ saying “millions of Americans haven’t spoken yet. In states like Pennsylvania and so many others, people are watching this historic campaign”.

Maurice talks about ‘only six points’, and Alex Steen says the math doesn’t matter and all they need is, “one more point than the ninth-place team.”

But Clinton won’t mention the fairly large margins of victory she needs going forward to have a shot at catching Obama. Her wins in Texas and Ohio have garnered her, as I type this, a 12-delegate swing in total.

Maurice doesn’t speak of the teams in between that six-point spread that have an even greater chance of catching the eighth-place team should the Philadelphia Flyers falter. Even last night while the Flyers lost, the Panthers pulled even with the Leafs and the Sabres and Islanders both moved further ahead.

Nothing changes. The failures happen in slow motion like a cinematic car wreck in a Will Smith movie. And both normal Democrats and sane people who root for the Maple Leafs suffer through the damage that sheer stubborn perseverance is doing to their beloved organizations.

Give it up, both of you, for the good of things which are larger than one season, or a battle for a nomination. Think of The Big Picture, for once.