Lead, transitive verb: (1): to direct the operations, activity, or performance of <lead an orchestra> (2): to have charge of <lead a campaign> (3): to suggest to (a witness) the answer desired by asking leading questions b (1): to go at the head of <lead a parade> (2): to be first in or among <lead the league> (3): to have a margin over <led his opponent>.

Sidney Crosby — captain, prodigy, wunderkind, man-crush of several thousand otherwise heterosexual Pittsburghians — does not lead the Pittsburgh Penguins. If he did, they wouldn’t be in the Stanley Cup final. In fact, it would be unfair to criticize him for not leading, despite the ‘C’ on his sweater. So can we all stop pretending this series is some sort of referendum on his ability to “lead”? Because we won’t know the answer to that question for another ten years or so.

Crosby is 21, he’s the captain of his team and his team is in the Cup final and they’re in trouble. So the natural cliche is to ask if the young star can “lead” them from the depths of despair and to the promised land. Yeah, sure … an easy article to fill inches on an off-day, but…

Leadership doesn’t work like that. The two definitions above, in bold, are probably the ones that best apply how we use the verb in the cliche-ridden language of sports … but neither of them are something I would be comfortable applying to a extremely talented 21-year-old kid.

I know, because I’m Canadian, that to disparage a Canadian captain’s leadership ability on the ice is to emasculate him in the eyes of our collective tribe. Our leadership, after all, is what separates our boys from the Russians and Swedes, at least in the eyes of Don Cherry.

But I don’t care whether you’re a commie, a viking or a hoser from Kingston … you ain’t leading shit at 21 years old.

You can fit right into the fabric of the team. You can get along with everyone in the dressing room. You can use your otherworldly talent to take over games and tally impressive statistics. But you’re not leading by the actual definition of the word and the concept.

I mention this because Crosby is nominated for the Mark Messier leadership award:

Boston’s Zdeno Chara, Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Calgary’s Jarome Iginla are the three finalists for the 2008-09 Mark Messier NHL Leadership Award presented by Bridgestone, the National Hockey League announced today.

Mark Messier solicits suggestions from club and League personnel and NHL fans in compiling a list of potential candidates. However, the selection of the three finalists and the ultimate winner is Messier’s alone.

And good for him. Mark Messier needs to perpetuate the image that he was actually a wonderful leader instead of a great hockey player who’s teams missed the playoffs more than they made them. So he gives out an award every year. I can dig it — though I would point out that a real leader *cough*Yzerman*cough* would never stoop to such shameless self-doctoring of his Real Leader Of Men image.

Anyway, examine those three nominees. Think hard about them. This is an exercise. I want you to picture them each, in their respective dressing rooms in between periods with their team down two goals; then, I want you to picture them each working with coache and teammates on a set play in a hasty huddle at the bench with 30 seconds left and the team down one; then I want you to picture them facing the media after an ugly loss, explaining why it happened and how the team can improve; and finally, I want you to picture them speaking to their teammates, one-on-one, about each player’s role on the team and how he can better handle the responsibilities of that position.

I’m not asking you to picture them all Mark-Messier-esque — with that carefully contrived fire in his eyes and that store-bought hateful stare drilling a hole through an opponent in the faceoff circle. That’s not leadership anyway,that’s competitiveness, and nobody would deny that Sidney Crosby has tonnes of that.

I’m asking you to picture the nominees performing the quiet, day-to-day responsibilities of someone who, in the words of those definitions above, “directs the operations, activity or performance of” and “has charge of” the hockey team.

That’s true leadership. It’s why good coaches are so very valuable and why the best captains aren’t the loudest or even the most outspoken, but are without fail the most determined, the most dedicated and the best communicators in the dressing room. They’re also often the ones who have the bright, shiny rings.

And I’m not intending for this post to be a slight on Sidney Crosby’s hockey skill, which is off-the-charts phenomenal. Nor is it intended to portray him as the petulant crybaby that some fans enjoy depicting. Though he should stop talking to the refs so much, if only so that they’ll take him more seriously when he does.

I like Sidney Crosby. I do. I’m just saying that, a 21-year-old in is position — no matter how talented and nice and fake-plastic-athlete he may be — is not the guy who will lead a hockey team to victory.

He might “lead” a victorious team in scoring. He might “lead” the parade if they somehow win. But the quiet, competent, level-headed leadership that authors true success in sports and everything else…. Dude. He’s 21. He’s not leading Bill Guerin and Sergei Gonchar anywhere. So stop talking about it.

I wrote a post the other day that drew a little bit of attention to our little corner of the internet. Who would have thought that unleashing amusing insults about another hockey team and finding great YouTube clips of players you really like would receive more attention than an earnest discussion about the future of the newspaper industry?

Oh … everyone would. Right.

Regardless, we got about 50 comments on that piece about the Wings and Ducks, though if you discount the ones without any semblance of coherence, insight or even sentence structure the number probably goes down a bit. Such is the nature of the Internet, and of course it’s well known that most Ducks fans cannot even speak, let alone type, in proper English.

Okay. Stop. See that? That was a good-natured joke. I know lots of Ducks fans who can read and write and speak. Okay, actually, I don’t know any Ducks fans, but I’m sure the vast majority of the ones that do exist are literate.

But we digress. That’s only tangentially related to the point I want to make today. And that point is this:

A lot of people are retarded. I already knew this, but reading random comments from Ducks fans has driven the point home. I’m not from Detroit and neither are all (perhaps even the majority of) Red Wings fans. Neither (for the most part) are the players, the coaches, the management and anyone employed by the organization above the level of, say, the valet or the beer-and-popcorn-guy.

I am well aware that Detroit, as a city, is not doing very well right now. Here in some parts of Southern Ontario (where I do actually live) we have a substantial part of our workforce employed by the automakers as well, and they are also struggling. So I definitely understand the tragedy of the situation, though our economy is more diverse and we certainly aren’t in the same dire perdicament.

But … all that, as sad as it is, has fuck all to do with anything about hockey, aside from who can afford to buy the tickets to the games.

You could demolish everything in the city of Detroit except for Joe Louis Arena and make homeless every man, woman and child … and Pavel Datsyuk could still deke the shit out of Ryan Getzlaf with his eyes closed and one of his beautiful Russian hands tied behind his back.

So comments like these, and there are hundreds of them out there every time someone talks about the Red Wings …

-u gona watch us win in ur stupid bankrupt fuckyng detroit…

-This from some buffon from shit hole detroit. Ducks in 5. Will give you one win at home to keep the natives from rioting and burning down what’s left of your shithole city.

… accomplish nothing but to make you look like a fool. The Internet is free for the perusal of fools, haters and idiots alike, but you guys really shouldn’t make it so easy to spot you.

Anyway, the only reason that I wrote these 500 words, and made a point already obvious to anyone with a brain, is to ask you guys who do engage in this kind of trash talk … why?

Theoretically at least, you guys are all American. The economic situation in Detroit hurts industry in the country as a whole. Bashing the city has no impact whatsoever on its very talented hockey team composed largely of Canadians and Europeans, and all you’re doing is rubbing the fear and uncertainty of a nasty recession into the faces of a city that is on the front lines of it.

I realize, intellectually, that sport goes back to the whole my-clan-is-superior-to-your-clan thing, and that we’ve sublimated the desire for full clan-on-clan warfare into the spectacle that is modern professional sports. And I’m grateful for that, both because I love sports and because I dropped out of karate too early to learn to be an effective warrior.

But still … taking on the city to spite the fans of a particular team makes little to no sense, especially when the two cities are located in the same country. How hard is that to understand?

If you want to bash the shit out of the Wings, or any other team, have at it. I realize there’s not a hell of a lot of stuff you can say about a franchise that’s been at the top of the pile for close to 20 years now … but you can still make fun of Chris Chelios with a well-placed diaper joke, or claim that Osgood’s a terrible goalie playing behind a dominant team, or even misguidedly call them they “Yankees of hockey”.

I promise you that last one would provoke me enough that you would get a lengthy screed in response.

But bashing the City of Detroit? You’re just being petty jerks and saying hurtful things to people who have nothing to do with the conflict you’re purportedly discussing. It’s dumb and should be beneath any fan with neurons still firing.

For instance, I would never say that someone from Anaheim is so stupid they can barely comprehend basic spoken instructions; so ugly and stench-ridden that waitresses cringe when duty compels them to get within four feet of them; so mean-spirited and hateful that nearly everyone acknowledges mention of their name with an ‘Oh … that asshole’ and so completely rejected and dismissed by society as a whole that they have to resort to skull-numbingly stupid invective and violent cries for attention just to feel as though they’re a part of the human race.

Of course I wouldn’t, because that doesn’t describe a random person from Anaheim.

That right there describes Chris Pronger.

Soon we will return to juvenile rants about why the Detroit Red Wings are God’s gift to hockey. And whooo boy, they sure look the part these days.

It is, after all, springtime, and this is what we do every Spring.

But first, I read something today that helped clarify an idea I’d been wrestling with — and since it’s about preserving the very fabric of the industry that employs me … I figured the hockey could wait.

Before we begin, a shout out to an excellent blog penned a by a friend who puts forward an idea that is fascinating, if unwieldy, and — apologies for the bluntness, but it’s how we do things here — would kill the damn beast faster than just lining copy editors up against the wall and shooting them in the head.

(But it’s totally a gloriously creative new idea, and well worth a look, so go take one so we’re all on the same page here.)

“What it really means is that newspapers are spending far, far too much money on far, far too many people producing far, far too many stories on far, far too many pages.”

As a senior editor at a free daily newspaper that publishes in five markets with a staff of, roughly, 17 … I could have told you that without all the math.

And I’d argue with both Gerson and LaPoint to say that it’s not unused content in the form of totally unread stories on pages that people just  don’t read — it’s the final 400+ words of EVERY story that go consistently unread because less than 5% of the population really wants to read all 800 damn words some daily reporter lugged back from a city hall debate about garbage. I’d argue that readers have no problem reading 24 pages, or 24 stories, if those stories don’t take them five minutes or more apiece to read.

Frankly, if it wasn’t part of my job to see who put what in which story … I’d only read the first seven grafs of 80% of a newspaper’s content. And I love to read, but I know I’m not alone.

An 80 page newspaper costs a lot of money to print, especially now that it won’t be close to paid-for by advertising revenue … but if you chop the last half off of almost every story (we’ll say, for the sake of maintaining some sort of journalistic integrity here, that we’ll leave a few Important stories, as well as most of the columnists, alone) you can go from an 80-page paper to a 45-50 page paper and, I promise you, nobody except the writers and other journalists would care.

But the central idea in the Gerson’s post is one I want to talk about. There’s more to it than I’m quoting (because it’s easier to make my point that way, of course), so go read it already, but here’s the gist. She thinks that focusing on giving people exactly what they want is one way for newspapers to maintain some profitability:

“Why not divide the product up, sell it separately and publish according to readership? So, you maybe have a 10-page, quality news section in tabloid format that comes out daily for free. Your sports is the next big money maker, but your readership and game schedules means it makes sense to publish it only on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, for example. Charge 25 cents for each of those. Sell the arts sections once or twice a week for $1 a pop. Then offer a high quality weekly newsmagazine on weekends that sums up the week’s news and contextualizes in long-form, combined with features. You could charge $1.50 to $5.00 on that alone. Then take your fashion and lifestyle sections, put them into a monthly glossy magazine format and sell them on magazine newsstands at standard magazine rates.”

See what I mean? Now that is some ambitious shit. It takes an idea I’ve had for a while — that newspapers should not be afraid to change their style to focus on what they do best — and takes it to the sort of extreme that would send the industry over a cliff instead of slowly walking down the other side of the hill and off into the sunset. I love the spirit of the idea, but it would never work.

Newspapers  don’t do niches, which is essentially what this is. They can’t. Here’s why in three reasons.

1. The Internet exists. The biggest niche marketer in the history of humanity has cornered the market on that kind of stuff. In the quest to save newspapers from the Online Demons, a lot of people seem to come up with ideas that involve newspapers turning into some sort of World-Wide-Web-on-Paper. It can’t happen like that. The reason newspapers are still read at all in this age when info is everywhere and I can find the answer to any question you might want to ask me in 3.5 seconds is because some people want a simple island that has a little bit of everything they need for (intellectual) life without them having to risk the spooky forest to forage for it. That — and by this point, it’s pretty much ONLY that — is the advantage a daily newspaper has over the ‘net. It’s simple. It’s all here. It’s in one place, and you don’t have to hunt for a news site once you’re done with the sports site and then navigate yourself over to a site that has entertainment listings and then on to weather.ca. Just turn the page. But if I want just sports, or just arts listings or just politics … then I already know where to find as much of a specific subject as I want. I’ve got ‘em bookmarked.

2. Reporters aren’t experts, and neither are columnists. They’re good writers, adept at turning things around quickly, cleanly and spinning a tale about something they knew nothing about eight hours ago. Those are real skills, but with the exception of the shrinking club of beat reporters who haven’t been long ago stripped of their daily beats for budgetary reasons, they’re Just. Not. Experts. They can’t do as thorough a job covering those niches as the people I already go to for my “focused” coverage.

I’m not going to drop a buck to read a thrice-weekly from a bunch of writers from the Toronto Star sports section when there are publications like The Hockey News or Baseball Digest that already go way beyond what The Star is doing and focus entirely on the niche I really want — ie, all hockey, no baseball or basketball. Similarly, I’m not going to pay magazine prices for content that belongs in a newspaper lifestyle section. Why the hell wouldn’t I just buy Vanity Fair or Chatelaine or even Maxim? Pay $1 for a newspaper Arts section once a week?! How about I just grab Now — who do pretty much nothing but Arts and Life — every week for free? Drop $5 for a newsmagazine written by newspaper reporters? Ummm … naw, thanks. I already have Time or MacLean’s for that, and they’ve been dropping weekly newsmagazines since back in the days when people were actually paying $0.50 for a big ol’ newspaper.

3. This plan doesn’t save newspapers, anyway. It breaks them down to their basic components and puts them on the auction block, hoping in desperation for some bids. It’s like a contents sale at the home of a recently deceased person who died intestate. Newspapers, for good or ill, are what they are: A collection of stories that range from news and crime to lifestyle, and arts to sports and politics, and fashion to terrible advice columnists that make me want to throw my coffee against the nearest wall. I’m not trying to romanticize newspapers here, I’m just defining them. That’s what they are. Even our crummy little free daily newspaper has the same basic newspaper elements that you get when you purchase the New York Times.

I’m not saying this idea is without merit. For one thing, nobody is trying to think of things like this, and even though cynics like me love to throw darts, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth using here.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve often thought that newspapers should focus on what they do best, and include the other stuff behind it. Focused marketing, if you will, instead of straight up chopping it all up and going straight for the niches. For instance — and this is the example I always use — the Toronto Sun should make itself a Sports newspaper. Do it now, while people still recognize it as Canada’s best sports section. Throw the remaining money into sports. Make the cover a sports cover unless something so huge it can’t be ignored happens. Make sports the first section in your paper, then crime, then the Sunshine Girl, then everything else. That’s what Sun readers want, anyway. But the key thing is that everything else has to be there — because that’s what newspapers are, a collection of everything that happened yesterday.

You change that, even to help them survive, and you’ve killed them. And the seedlings you grow from the fertilizer provided by the corpse will die shortly thereafter — because while people are increasingly less willing to cough up a buck for a paper, they’d be even more hesitant to cough up a buck for a bastard publication that looks like a newspaper but only has one section.

I love nature. Hell, I’m a farm boy at heart, no matter how antsy I might get after going more than 36 hours without being able to check my email. I could wax poetic for several paragraphs about the power of clear skies and green spaces and the sheer, absolute wonder that some of the world’s creatures can instill in just about anybody. Suffice to say that nature can be breathtaking in scope and awe-inspiring in its complexity. It’s one of the things in this world — along with whispered words of unconditional love, fresh Montreal bagels steaming in a brown paper bag and Pavel Datsyuk’s breakaway goals — that can move me to tears.

But … I also really love cities. I figured out a long time ago that I am addicted to being places where things are happening and to riding the kind of raw energy you can only find in places where too many people live too close together and things happen with a frenetic pace that suggests we are all trying to outrace some important galactic alarm clock that may emit a jarring buzz at any moment.

It’s one of the more troubling dichotomies in my life, actually. And if it wasn’t such a minor thing — I mean really, I like both of them in their own way, so it isn’t exactly bad — I’d probably worry about it a lot more. But all of this is merely a preamble towards a description of a trip to the capital of British Columbia, and why it’s a beautiful, noble and peaceful city … that I could never, ever inhabit for more than a week or two without losing my mind.

Cities shouldn’t be ashamed of what they are. They aren’t conservancies, they aren’t wildlife reserves and they aren’t small towns. They shouldn’t act like it. It demeans both the city and the truly idyllic towns and countrysides. If I was a little less offensive than I actually am, I’d feel bad about drawing a parallel about period actors dressing in blackface — do the real thing or don’t go there at all.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with providing parks or greenbelts or areas inside cities where nature can thrive. Cities shouldn’t be cold grids of grey stone, by any means. But they should still feel like cities. And Victoria, pretty as it is, doesn’t feel that way.

So maybe that’s why I spent the better part of a week trying to figure out if I liked it there or not. There’s a point that all growing towns eventually hit when they’ve outgrown the notion that they’re a “town”. Usually it happens when skyscrapers start going up, or a swell of developers moves in and begins to throw up condos like they’re hucking

darts at the sky. It doesn’t matter when it happens — for the record, once you have a big ol’ fucking legislature building with gilded radiators, you’re a city — but when it does, you’re simply not a small town anymore and you have to start keeping your grocery stores open later than 6 p.m. and you have to ensure that last call for the neighbourhood pub happens well after 11 p.m.

It is around this point when you also might want to begin expanding your public transportation system so that buses are reliable enough that people actually want to use them. It isn’t that buses in Victoria don’t go anywhere, it’s that they’re so infrequent as to be practically useless. I saw one bus all week with more than a dozen people on it — the one heading out to the university campus.

None of my British Columbian friends should take umbrage, by the way. Vancouver Island itself is staggeringly beautiful and I could easily settle down and live on Quadra Island for the rest of my life and I’m reasonably sure I’d be content, so long as I could get a satellite TV with the sports package and a reliable internet connection.

It’s not about the province, or the scenery or even the hippies, though they are so numerous in Victoria that someone  might consider allowing reasonable humans to bag and tag up to four of them a year, much the way the Quebec government allows farmers to cull the coyote population.

It’s about authenticity, and the way Victoria seems to eschew the more convenient aspects of city-hood in a misguided attempt to cast itself not as another city on the ocean, but as some sort of stoner’s Utopian dream of what a British Columbia city should feel like — lots of parks, lots of ocean, little need for police or other trappings of the metropolises … a slow life riding a vibe that’s dull but benignly friendly and won’t ever change much.

That’s fine for, you know, a place that doesn’t have 400,000 people and is the capital of the province. It’s not a bad thing to have a city that doesn’t cater to tourists and isn’t ashamed to be a little smaller and more low-key than those other Canadian cities that want more than anything to be considered along with the big boys. But surely there is a happy medium somewhere. I mean, by no means should I be able to spend a day walking around downtown and realize I’ve seen everything the travel brochure boasts about.

Museum? Check, all three exhibits. Legislature? Beautiful building, no politicians present. Harbour? Lots of boats, very pretty view. Chinatown? Saw all three blocks of it. Live music venues? I saw two of the three main ones (Sugar, and Hermann’s, the city’s jazz bar), and if I had been able to get tickets to the Talib Kweli show at Element, I would have managed to see the three best-known venues within a week.

Bookstores? Plentiful and wonderful, almost as plentiful as the fucking coffee shops. The aquarium? I stayed away after hearing depressing stories of a bunch of fish and a very depressed octopus. The Bug Zoo took about twenty minutes and Beacon Hill Park was a really pretty walk. But they do have baby goats for petting, and surprisingly you can spend about an hour doing that and not get bored.

Anyway, the point is that, when the locals tell you that one thing you absolutely have to do before you go is check out the local Value Village … and the best tourist attraction in town is a bunch of incredibly cute baby goats … I don’t even know what to think about Victoria as a “city”.

I feel like Victoria is a slacker teenager, and all of Canada’s other cities need to tell it to grow up and get a job somewhere.

And it would be all indignant, like “Duuuude, a job?! Stop being a slave to the machine. Why would I buy into your version of how the world should be, man? Buildings are just buildings, dude, and they’ll fall down one day. Like, everything man does ends in dust, bro. Don’t you see that these trees and these cute goats are like, so much more real than anything you’ve got in your ‘real’ cities?”

And also? Even in a hippie/stoner utopia, you’d definitely be able to find some munchies in your neighbourhood grocery store after 8 p.m. So get it together, Victoria. You’re like a beauty queen with a history of abuse — gorgeous, but something is definitely not right in there somewhere.

It’s been a while. And that’s on me. For a multitude of reasons. The games that are supposed to be dirty had either peaked, gotten so filthy that it wasn’t fun anymore or were … well, just too depressing for words.

It’s pretty hard to top the combination of vacuous journalism, political intrigue and stump-dumb citizenry that was the 2008 election.

I’ve forced myself to try and ignore the fallout from baseball’s steroid scandal, because the 12-year-old kid inside me that thought he was going to join Jose Canseco in the 40-40 club one day wants to curl up in a ball and cry whenever I get too deep into that stuff.

And the media … well the media is dying the kind of slow and ugly death that brings to mind an MS patient, diagnosed with terminal cancer while battling full-blown AIDS. So I kind of felt like I shouldn’t kick the industry when it’s down, crying like a bitch for any semblance of mercy.

So yeah … I took a break.

(Also, I was writing stuff that was, you know, for publication. Which is okay, I guess, but you can’t fucking swear.)

And now it’s over.

Anyway, we’ll start by discussing the unusual honesty of Charles Barkley, because I used to like him a great deal. And I still might, though I feel that I really shouldn’t.

Chuck is funny. He’s smart and insightful. He can talk about things that aren’t basketball and he doesn’t feel the need to pump up the NBA or any of its stars. Barkley found himself a huge following by telling it like it is, while managing to make fun of Kenny Smith while he was telling it.

He co-wrote an excellent book — which is more of a series of interviews than a book, but whatever — with Michael Wilbon called Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?

It’s about sports, but it’s also about race and class and education and all sorts of relevant things, and it’s well worth a read. It shows off the side of Charles that his NBA on TNT gig only hinted at — that there’s some real thought behind a lot of those wisecracks and that the world could do worse than hear him out when he says he wants to run for governor of Alabama.

And then he went and got himself arrested for driving drunk. Which is a whole different kind of stupid.

I lost a little bit of respect for him, and so did a lot of other people, but mistakes happen. Chuck apologized, profusely, plead guilty and took his lumps like a man — a drunk driving idiot of a man, but he was at least took responsibility for his actions.

He served a few days in jail — literally, a few days, and got out this week. Whatever, right?

But the problem is that Chuck can’t give a disingenuous answer. It’s a gift and a curse.

Here’s Barkley on a Philadelphia radio station yesterday:

You never think about until something bad happens. But seriously, I can’t sit here and lie or BS you, I’m never going to be like that. But I’ve probably been out drinking and driving 100 times a year when, you know, you just eat and you drink or whatever, and you just get behind the wheel of a car and you don’t even think about it. This was, to me, I’m glad…it was a very valuable lesson for me. Because people never even think about that..I mean, I’m just going out drinking with dinner, or just going out drinking with you and the boys, and just like, “Let me go home.” It’s like, don’t even think about it. But this gave me, like, “Man, you could kill somebody!”

Yeah man, you could kill somebody, or something.

I don’t know whether I respect Charles more for being honest about some incredibly stupid behaviour on his part, or whether drinking and driving 100 times a year is so monumentally stupid that I don’t ever want him to open his mouth on television again.

It’s the quintessential problem with turning retired athletes and the like into commentators and public personas.

One the one hand, if they’re fake, most of us se right through it, and mock them accordingly for spewing platitudes to garner a paycheque in their twilight years.

If they’re real, and they talk about anything other than sports at any point, they’re inevitably going to say things — whether it’sabout public behaviour, drugs, women, race, homosexuality, etc. — that reflect how sheltered a life they’ve led and how out-of-step a lot of their behaviour and values are with what is socially acceptable for the rest of us.

So yeah, Chuck is a drunk driver, and he’s a fucking idiot for it, but how many other NBA, NFL and NHL talking heads have gotten into their car after having a few on several dozen occasions and would never, ever mention it, even after serving a three-day jail stint and displaying their stupidity to the world? Probably quite a few.

I’d say ‘Here’s to Chuck for being honest, even if he is a fool,’ but raising a glass to him seems wholly inappropriate.

At the very leas, however, I think any citizens of Alabama who were Afraid of a Large Black Man Running For Governor can probably rest easy.

Like so many other Canadians, and citizens in countries around the world, I offer my profound thanks to the American electorate for making the right decision. After the past eight years, a lot of us doubted you could arise from what seemed a collective stupor in time to act to preserve the ideals of the nation that, when handled properly, is truly the world’s most inspiring state.

That said — there are still more than 55 million rednecks, retards, racists and recidivists that deserve nothing but scorn and derision. They were the folks represented by those dudes who felt the time was right to boo every mention of their next president during John McCain’s concession speech last night.

To those 55 million people, and especially to the idiots who proudly declared their unabashed ignorance and pettiness during an historic live television broadcast, I as: Why do you hate America? Why are you not supporting your new President? Your nation is at WAR, remember? I thought criticism of the president during wartime was treasonous. Fox News taught me that!

I can’t ever remember being as proud of something I had nothing to do with than I am today. I’m still not sure how I feel about it all (okay, that’s a lie, I’m happy as fuck and I can’t stop grinning, but a picture of me looking like a blissful fool wouldn’t make a good blog post). What I mean is that I am at a loss for words. I can only hope that one day I get to feel the same way casting a ballot for somebody as huge majority of you guys did last night.

If that happens, that will mean my country got something right. Just as yours has done.

But this post is not about waxing poetic on the meaning of this historic event. That will come tomorrow, when hopefully I have a littl perspective.

No — this post is about being juvenile. It is about being an ungracious winner. It is about schadenfreude, revelling in the pain ofa long despised enemy and dancing on the carcass of the freshly-slain dragon.

Oh! I’m gonna have so much fun! I’m heading back to freeperville (aka FreeRepublic.com) to take in the sights and sounds of what a Bush-lovin’, Mavericky, Right-Wingin’ bunch of startlingly undereducated adults get a taste of their own medecine.

What follows has not been edited, except where poor spelling and grammar made it nearly unintelligible. Other than that, these are Republicans — self-proclaimed patriotic, country-first, God-fearing, Christian Republicans — reacting to the news that CNN has declared Barack Obama (“that one!”) the President Elect of the United States of America.

I will also attempt (remembering that I did pay to go to journalism school and that one should not wholly abandon fairness even in the spirit of juvenile victory celebrations) to display examples of Freepers who appear concillatory and willing to stand behind their new president. I do not expect much, but we shall see.

My comments are in parantheses. As you can see, most of these America-lovin’ folks are as classy in defeat as they were in victory. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

• I think reality TV started the decline of our culture. Seriously, when people like William Hung can be mega celebrities, something is wrong!

• My tears are for the nation and for the babies who will die as a result of this election. (No. Your tears are for me, and everyone like me who had to suffer through the time when people as backwards as you thought the world’s most important country was moving in the “right” direction. And your tears are as sweet as well-aged mead.)
• And to think Michelle Obama will be the first lady. Why do I have a feeling many people are going to wake up tomorrow and think “my God, what have we done?” The scandals Obama brings with him are going to make the Clintons look like saints. I believe Obama will eventually be ousted in disgrace. Are America’s enemies dancing in the streets yet? (If by “enemies” you mean, people who hated the fact that your ilk ever had a controlling voice in American foreign policy … then yes. Yes. We. Are.)
• I’m also seriously entertaining the idea that Obama may indeed be THE Anti-Christ. Nothing else explains the mass hypnosis effect among the sheeple. If so, be ready, for the Lord draweth nigh. (Wow.)
• Kiss, hug and tell all your family they love you. FReepers will be the first to go. Can’t allow any opposition to the New World Order. (It is this type of comment that makes me wish that this type of comment was true, if that makes any sense.)

• I have the post hammered feeling and I don’t even drink. But right now, I wish my stomach could take it. I lost my best girl friend over this election and have no shoulder to cry on because she’s probably jumping for joy over our new Marxist overlord. (I am so goddamn happy for this dude’s ex-girlfriend right now.)

That felt really good. Now hopefully all Americans can put partisanship aside and get behind President-Elect Obama. Right?

There’s surely going to be a final act in this damned play, so let’s get on with it already.

I understand too much about the nasty rules of life’s overarching narrative to believe that the third presidential debate is over, Barack Obama has a large enough lead to coast home and that Senator John McCain — who has sadly managed to turn himself into the villian of this piece — will not empty his bag of tricks in a last-ditch play to find at least one thing that can stem or reverse the tide.

These are important times and the muse of history demands a fitting conclusion. This story doesn’t end with a slow run up to an unsurprising vote while the world just kicks it and waits for an inevitable verdict. Can’t happen like that. Won’t happen like that. Good guys don’t triumph that easily, and if they do they don’t end up being the good guys.

So what happens now? When does the other shoe drop? What kind of shoe is it? When will the Republican masses get their long-awaited October surprise?

As it stands, here’s what you will be looking at for the next two-plus weeks: A McCain campaign hunting desperately for a silver bullet will be throwing anything and everything at the wall in the flailing hope that something, anything will stick to Obama.

If you want to get a true sense of what’s out there that might actually be considered as ammunition in the home stretch, you have to delve into the depths of the Republican strongholds.

I felt brave on a cold Tuesday morning, so I went there, and these — according to those who are desperate to bring about the downfall of Barack Obama — are the issues that need to be raised before America votes, Obama wins and the rest of the world breathes an enormous sigh of relief:

TREMENDOUS ISSUE NO. 1: Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Apparently Mr. Hussein is not an American citizen. Even though his birth certificate has been posted on factcheck.org, the Republican masses would like to see the “real” birth certificate. Which is not this one. This one is a fake. Why? Because it’s on factcheck.org, a biased website. So …. the angle of attack? Obama is NOT visiting his ailing grandmother in Hawaii. He has gone back there to help fake his own birth certificate (again, apparently) so that he can produce yet another birth certificate which will quiet all the people (meaning these Republicans) who were not satisfied with the first faked birth certificate. By the way, they are intimating in advance that the next one will be fake, too. If you would like to delve further into this theory, please check it out.

Obligatory retarded post on freerepublic.com about this theory: “I question the timing too. Sick grandma? When did he ever care about her before? He’s going over there to get his newly-forged copy of his birth certificate — it was too dangerous to have it FED-EXED. He’s going to crease it up in a letterfold and bring it
back in a book he took with him on the plane.” — More fun like that one, right here.

TREMENDOUS ISSUE NO. 2: OMG! And you thought Rev. Jeremiah Wright was bad. Wait until you hear about this dude that Obama talked to and mentioned in his book authored a book about having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. And get this — this book is totally autobiographical, too. Not fictional at all. This dude is a sick and twisted pervert, the kind we stomp into the ground and leave bloody on the curb of life. His association with Barack Obama serves only to illustrate exactly how un-American and pro-sex-with-13-year-olds Barack Obama really is. If Obama was any kind of man, he would step up right now and categorically deny that he enjoys making sweet love to pubescent girls. But he won’t do that so we are left to guess. Was Obama trained in pro-kid-sex viewpoints by this man whom he has spoken to in the past? Or did he reach his pro-kid-sex stance on his own, through years of kid-fucking experience? A website named Confederate Yankee has all the information you need.

Bonus fun quote about this theory: (The headline on Free Republic says it all: “OBAMA SEX PERV SCANDAL”. But quotes are not hard to find, either) “I got the distinct feeling from something I read recently, that his grandfather was a pervert, too. He introduced (Obama) to this dirtbag and apparently, they all sat around drinking together. Someone else pointed out something interesting; that Davis states he molested a 13-year-old girl named Ann. They speculated this could be (Obama’s) mother and that this loser fathered (Obama) — they do look alot more alike than BO Sr. Apparently, Davis also lived in Kansas for a while.”

You can’t teach this kind of creativity, folks. But I’m more partial to this succint reply: “So, if true, we could end up with a Pedophile in Chief.”

Nice. Very nice. More like that here.

TREMENDOUS ISSUE NO. 3: This one is not crazy just disingenuous, and it will undoubtedly be used at the first sign of stagnating poll numbers for Obama. If I were a McCain adviser, I would certainly suggest they use it as soon as McCain has a good day in the polls.

The narrative goes thusly: Why can’t Barack Obama close the deal? Why do his supporters balk when the finish line is in sight? He rolled to a huge lead over Clinton before almost letting her come back to catch him (things didn’t quite happen exactly like that, but it’s close enough to drive the story). He built up a big lead during the summer, only to let john McCain close the gap after the convention. Now he’s built a nearly-insurmountable advantage, and his supporters are backing away? What is it about Obama that makes voters get cold feet at the last minute? Is it his arrogance in assuming he has already won? Is it laziness on the part of his campaign? Or is it something else — something voters can’t put their finger on, but intuitively understand: Electing Obama as President would be a big step in the wrong direction. Voters know this in their hearts, even if they are bombarded with “facts” from the “media” telling them that Obama is “the One”.

This is the line of attack I am expecting. I think it would resonate with independents, who are hopeful but are also a little afraid. It would certainly fire up the base and it also manages to inject, without being too blatant about it, the “otherness” that the Republicans must hope scares voters away from Obama at the last minute.

That, or a they’ll pull out a busted terror cell that was planning to attack America on the night of the election if Barack Obama was elected. That fits much more with the action-thriller of danger and International intrigue that could swing voters towards McCain in a time of fear.

Those are the sort of things I am waiting for. And I know that something wicked this way comes. The spider-sense is tingling. Historic shit like this doesn’t just happen in a cakewalk. And if it does happen that way, it shouldn’t. What are we going to tell our grandchildren we did in the three weeks leading up to an historic occasion? “Oh, we sat around and watched the poll numbers stay steady. Obama held a few rallies, McCain said some stuff and then we voted.”

Where’s the thrill of a narrow victory for the Forces of Good in that? I want my damned epic narrative arc — not an overdone denouement masquerading as the climax of an epic tale. If I wanted that I’d just watch The Return of the King on DVD.

You can see it in their eyes.

It’s the best part about watching sports. Or watching politics. Sometimes — and it is rare enough that it should be treasured — a person who makes their living in the public eye goes to a place where they are simply beyond the competition. Other people do it, too — but these are the ones we get to witness and remember.

The guys who make their living by filling dead air during sports broadcasts will tell you “he’s taken his game to another level,” that “he’s really got his best stuff today,” or that “he’s really locked in.”

They overuse the phrases; partly because it’s their job to sell the spectacle, and partly because overusing cliches is what being a sports broadcaster is all about. But sometimes they mine a nugget of absolute truth — and the ‘locked in’ cliche is the one that comes closest to describing that moment.

It’s rare, but it’s not hard to recognize. First, the eyes are a giveaway — they’ll be staring down whatever’s in front of them. If there’s nothing there, they’ll be staring down air. Second, there’s no hesitation in their actions. They know what they’re going to do, and they are so certain it’s the right move that they honestly haven’t considered the possibility of it failing. Third, they almost seem to want someone to challenge them. They’re so certain they’ve got it that every situation is another chance to prove it.

When a baseball pitcher has it, you’ll see him throw one fastball after another into the strike zone, daring a batter to swing. You’ve seen it in the NFL, in Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, when their opponents are driving to take the lead in the fourth quarter and they’re on the sidelines, barely paying attention — they know they’ll get the ball back and they’re planning to score.

You’ve seen it on the ice, when Nicklas Lidstrom waltzes along the outside inch of the blueline, daring a defender to challenge him and offer an opening by reaching for the puck. When Tiger Woods sinks an incredible putt and then solemnly walks to the next hole without celebration, hand-slapping or chit-chat.

When you watch a basketball player who is locked in, you don’t notice it because he’s making his baskets. You notice it because there’s not a moment of hesitation once the ball is in his hands — at this point, he’s so completely in his element that his mind and body have reached a harmony that not too many people experience without the aid of psychotropic substances.

This is how Barack Obama is feeling these days. And I’m fairly certain he’s not high.

Bad. Ass.

Since Friday’s presidential debate, it seems from Obama’s public appearances like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. It could be attributed to climbing polls numbers or an increasingly embarrassing campaign by his rival.

But I don’t think so. I think it’s because Obama reared back and threw his best heater at the debate, and he knows John McCain swung and missed.

That debate has been called a slight win for Obama, or a draw. But the polling numbers aren’t what this is about. What Obama takes away from that debate is the unshakable belief that John McCain can’t hit the fastball.

Obama was almost completely honest during that debate. He didn’t take the opportunity (as John McCain did) to misrepresent his opponent’s position; he didn’t lie, cheat or twist anybody’s words; he didn’t dumb down his platform or back down from statements that he knew McCain would use against him. In short, he was himself, and it seems to have worked.

And that seems to have given him back his fire. The man has been killing it. Not just with rhetoric (which was always there) but with purpose and decisiveness and humour. He’s loving this.

Below is the footage from a speech in Virginia yesterday. It’s 26 minutes long, but if you take the time to watch it, you’ll see exactly what I mean.

The man is locked in. He knows that the platform he’s offering is better than the other guy’s. He believes in his own message. He likes the people he’s talking to. You would have to come down with an ugly case of cynicism to not at least enjoy what you’re seeing in this speech.

Using sports cliches has become a cliche in itself on this damned blog. But when it comes to politics, the comparisons really are apt, especially in America.

Both rely on a vicious ebb and flow of momentum, the fervent support of large numbers of people, an epic sense of spectacle and bearing witness to history and ultimately the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the loser’s anthem of ‘wait ’till next year.’

Obama’s played ball. He knows how it feels to get hot from long-range; to take a few shots and watch gleefully as everything swishes. But by his own admission he’s not an incredible basketball player. He’s been ‘hot’ on the court but never ‘locked in’. As a politician however …

… he is absolutely locked in right now. The ability is always there, but right now the mind is perfectly aligned with his goals. He’s so calm and intense at the same time. It is, in all honesty, a spectacle worth seeing. There’s a kind of awesome inevitability in the way he is carrying himself right now — like Mariano Riviera jogging in from the bullpen to ‘Enter Sandman’ played at 11.

The goal is close enough now that he can taste it. All he has to do is keep hauling back and daring McCain to hit the heater.

(Here’s the video: Passionate, funny, uplifting, absolutely stinging criticism of the McCain/Republican ideology … just watch it. It’s quite possibly the best stump speech you will ever see. It’s a hell of a performance.)

“I am running for president because the dreams of the American people are too important to have EIGHT more years, FOUR more years, ONE more year of this NONSENSE! Enough is enough!”

You know what? If Barack Obama honestly believes this, then he’s finished. Done. Cooked. Hopeless. Expired.

And in some of his strongest language yet, Obama suggested that, in its new ad, the McCain-Palin ticket was simply trying to “make stuff up.”

Senator Obama, I know you have spoken time and again about listening to opinions from the global community. You’ve mentioned the need to allow the rest of the world to whisper in those overlarge, Will-Smith-as-Fresh-Prince-style ears that you have. You’ve stressed that the United States cannot exist in a vacuum and that our — speaking as a non-American citizen — views count, too.

So, on behalf of the rest of the world, I offer: Yes, you fucking idiot. Yes, they are.

There is reams of data from all walks of life to back this argument.

There are studies that place the American national IQ at 98, the lowest national average among the world’s developed countries.

There are surveys that find that only 20 – 25 per cent of American are “scientifically savvy and alert.” The rest of them are embarrassingly ignorant:

Dr. Miller’s data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

There are dozens more articles, studies and surveys exactly like these, and you can find them by typing “American stupidity” or “Dumb Americans” into Google. Doing that, Senator, will no doubt depress you. And it should.

But fear not. If you type the same thing into Youtube, you get all sorts of amusing clips:

Who could forget that shining example of how retarded the populace you are currently courting can be?

You have probably never heard of a man named Rick Mercer (or maybe you have, you sometimes seem like you might be into that kind of humour — you know, the kind tinged with ‘elitism’), but I urge you to consult his research before placing your faith in those mouthbreathers who will be punching ballots in two months.

Senator Obama, Americans can be good people and they can do good things, and I hope to God they elect you President.

But a solid percentage of them are so fucking dumb that they can’t find any country aside from America on a map and the depths of their ignorance continues to reveal itself on an almost-daily basis.

If you honestly believe the statement you made above … you are as stump fucking dumb as the rest of them.

Sincerely,

A Canadian Dude

Hey, McCain campaign. You guys wanna talk sexism?

I’m pretty sure that’s a discussion Hillary Clinton is itching to have with you. Her and a few other notable female politicians.

The conventions are over, and now this election is about to get gully. Barack Obama is going to keep himself above the flailing, let loose the Hilldogs of War and force-feed the GOP some of their own medicine.

I may be biased, but I’m also a fan of watching American politics as though it were a new type of sport; some sort of full-contact hybrid of chess, the NFL and Calvinball.

From that perspective — the Obama camp’s response to cries of ’sexism’ by the GOP could be something of a coup.

John McCain has tried to siphon away Hillary Clinton voters by running a woman as his VP, while at the same time choosing a hard-right, private-health-care, book-banning woman in an attempt to solidify his somewhat shaky standing with the Republican base.

Not only that, but his campaign has then turned around and played the sexism card in response to any criticism of this woman. Keep in mind, that’s the same card they mocked mercilessly when Clinton tried to play it in March.

I am sure there is some lingering bitterness between Clinton and Obama. They are human, after all, and it’s only natural.

I’m also pretty sure that Hillary Clinton is a feminist and a politician first. So I’m pretty sure she’s been getting royally pissed off over the last few days of the GOP convention. There’s also a slight chance that she has been watching this clip and debating which pantsuit would look better on her during the evisceration she is about to perform:

You see, judging by what I’ve noticed in the past three years or so, if you’re a female politician who is very new to the national stage, has repeatedly voiced loud opposition to a woman’s right to choose, has mocked the idea that the government should provide health care for everyone and then called sexism whenever someone tried to call you on it … you don’t really wanna fuck with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Whatever rancor may exist between Hillary and Barack, it’s nothing compared to challenging everything she has fought for as a legislator, and as a woman, over the past 20 years.

That’s the problem with playing the sexism or racism or even ageism cards — you take the risk that your opponent won’t just find an accomplished woman, black person or old dude who can tear you to shreds while saying, ‘Hey — I’m female/black/old, too, and these people are still retards.’

And the problem with having a very inexperienced and (in the opinion of many) unqualified woman play this card, is that you risk having women with far more clout behind their names blow you out of the water.

It’s not just Hillary itching to get after Sarah Palin. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius kicked things off yesterday:

“She mastered the words written by the Bush speechwriters and delivered them well. But what we didn’t hear was what people talk to me about every day,” Sebelius told reporters.

The real feminists also don’t like it when you pander to them. And it is difficult to charge Gloria Steinem with sexism and be taken seriously:

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

So what are you going to do? Barack Obama didn’t say any of this. He doesn’t have to. He just gets to keep making awesome speeches and rising above the fray.

Unless, of course, the competition is also dumb enough to make fun of community organizers, then he gets to join in on the fun:

“The question I have for them is: Why would that kind of work be ridiculous?
Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for?”

Every time the GOP trots out condescending smears like “Ooooohh, he’s a community organizer …” I get all nervous for about 30 seconds. Then I remember that Barack Obama is not John Kerry and that he really does know how to brush that kind of dirt off his shoulder.

I don’t always enjoy speaking in Internet and video game lingo … but that, as the kids say, is pwnage.