Shots in the Dark

I’ve been holding off writing about Joe Lieberman because his current campaign so appalls me that I’m afraid that, once I start writing about him, I’ll go on and on and on, boring you folks to tears and distracting me from the stuff that actually pays the bills.

Pause. Deep breath. Attempt at self-control.

Lieberman has become the de facto Republican Party candidate for senator from Connecticut. He’s been endorsed, in so many words, by Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ most prominent figures are opposing him: John Kerry, both Clintons, John Edwards, even Connecticut senator Chris Dodd.

For the Republicans, Lieberman is a useful idiot. His presence on the ballot divides the Democratic party both in Connecticut and nationally, making the Dems look fractious while taking attention away from the GOP’s troubles. If he wins, he’ll be a more frequent supporter of the president than Ned Lamont would be. And, who knows, he might even defect and become a Republican.

And yet, Lieberman continues to insist that he’s running for “the good of the party” and the good of the country. The man’s arrogance knows no bounds.

(Meanwhile, the media continues to play into Lieberman’s hands, giving him far more attention than it is paying his opponent.)

Lieberman is also becoming increasingly disingenuous and dishonest on the campaign trail. On “Face the Nation” on Sunday, he claimed that “I don’t think there’s anyone who wants more to end [the war] than I do.” This is clearly not true. The parents of every deceased soldier want the war to end more than he does; the relatives of every dead Iraqui civilian want the war to end more than he does. Ned Lamont wants the war to end more than he does.

Lieberman, meanwhile, argues that setting a withdrawal date for the removal of our troops in Iraq would increase sectarian violence.

When Bob Schieffer (in an otherwise softball interview) sensibly pointed out that sectarian violence is already on the rise in Iraq, that it’s basically out of control there, Lieberman could say only, “Well, we have to look at different things to do to help [violence] go down.”

Like what, Joe?

“The United States and our allies the Brits, particulalry, ought to try to convene an international crisis conference on Iraq, bringing in the Europeans and particulalry the other Arab countries…”

An international crisis conference.

This is a deeply dumb idea. What would such a conference achieve? Does anyone think for a second that any other country is going to commit more troops to Iraq? Truth is, Colin Powell was right about our involvement in Iraq: You break it, you own it. Right now, the United States is like a big dumb kid who’s picked up a rabid raccoon in his bare hands and doesn’t know what to do with it. You loosen your grip, it bites you. You put it down, it bites you. And no one else is going to say, “Here, give it to me…”

Lieberman’s other prescriptions for winning the war in Iraq? Fire Don Rumsfeld, which is about as bold a position these days as saying that you have a strong suspicion that Barry Bonds used steroids. “Put severe pressure on the Iraquis to contain the sectarian violence that is there.” Yeah, because they just love that violence now—even when it kills their friends, family members and themselves!—and don’t care about stopping it. “And then we’ve got to get the other Arab countries and hopefully some of the Europeans in with us to help to reconstruct Iraq.” See above.

Would any of the inside-the-Beltway pundits who have so vociferously supported Lieberman—they all know him, after all—claim that these are the words of a serious and intellectually honest man? Or the desperate dissembling of a craven politician clinging to power?

Joe Lieberman has become a profoundly dishonorable man who is bringing shame to his party and staining what was once a credible record in politics. He may win this election battle, but he is losing the war for his own soul.

“Everybody in the system is scared to death. Professors are scared of department heads. They’re just scared little people hiding out. And these other scared little people come and sit in a scared little class and tremble. I didn’t want to do that. Let’s do something memorable, and if we can’t do something memorable, then let’s go home. Or we’ll go across the street and get a drink.”
—“Aging wild man” writer and former professor Harry Crews

Your thoughts?

The Yankees have taken five straight from the Sox in Fenway, the first time that’s happened since 1943, and Sox fans are in despair. How quickly the memories of the Curse return!

Well, I can understand why. The Red Sox were humiliated over the weekend, beaten in every possible aspect of the game—pitching, hitting, defense, base-running. (The Yankees won yesterday because of a run on a passed ball.) Yankee hitters feasted on Boston pitching for three games…and then, when Curt Schilling and David Wells pitched well, the Yanks somehow scratched out wins. A number of Yankees picked the perfect time to have big moments: Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, even Melky Cabrera. And then you have A-Rod, Jeter, the newly acquired Bobby Abreu… It’s hard to remember that the Yankees were thoroughly trounced by the Orioles, 12-2, the day before the Sox series began.

So…is it over for the Sox?

Well, you could certainly make a suasive case to that effect. The Yankees seem to have gelled at just the right time, while the Sox have fallen apart at just the wrong time. And the series showed some of the Sox’s weaknesses: starting pitching and relief pitching, to name two. Beyond that, you have to wonder: When you get past David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, just how good is this team? Especially—especially—without Jason Varitek.

But to play devil’s advocate…the Yankees have their weaknesses as well. Their hitting onslaught this weekend obscured the fact that their pitching wasn’t exactly stellar. Randy Johnson’s ERA is 4.98; Cory Lidle isn’t exactly a dominating pitcher; Jared Wright is an ongoing question mark; and Mike Mussina has tailed off since the first half of the season. Only Chien-Ming Wang is consistently outstanding. (And even he got pounded by the Orioles.)

Then you have A-Rod’s ongoing mental problems, and the possiblity of injuries, and the fact that the Red Sox have to be a little pissed. If they get a couple of breaks, and a little bit of heart…this divisional race could be a dogfight yet again.

Sportswriters and commentators have been bringing up memories of 1978, which I enjoy, as that’s the subject of my next book. It was in that season that the Yankees came from 14 games down to win the division, thanks in large part to a four-game series at Fenway in which the Yankees just obliterated the Sox. “The Boston Massacre,” it was called, and there’s been a lot of invoking its memory recently.

But what people seem to forget is that the Sox recovered from that massacre to win 12 of their last 14, including their last eight straight, to tie the Yankees and force the one-game playoff at the end of the season……

Aspen, Colorado, September 2001

I don’t know about you, but for me the violence in Iraq has deteriorated into a blur of grim headlines; there are so many bombs, so many acts of violence, that I can’t keep up with who’s doing what to whom and how.

Still, yesterday’s events stand out.

In Baghdad, as many as 200 insurgents attacked religious pilgrims on one of Shiite Islam’s holiest days.

Just to repeat: As many as 200 insurgents.

An estimated 16 people were killed and 230 wounded.

I’m just curious: What newspaper reporter will have the guts to start comparing Iraqi civilian casualties during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and civilian casualties since the U.S. invaded Iraq?

Why does that matter?

Because surely it matters to Iraqis who may start pining for the old days. It’s hard to imagine, I know. But then again, there were Russians who longed for Josef Stalin for decades after his death…. And in Iraq, the order of a dictator may be coming to seem preferable to the violent unpredictability of anarchy. If the United States can not keep civilians from dying at a faster rate than they died under Hussein, then what good have we done?

Was Hurricane Katrina the “9/11 of global warming,” as one researcher quoted in the Washington Post describes it? Another adds that the 250,000 Katrina victims who won’t be returning to their homes are “the world’s first climate refugees.”

This debate about the connection between hurricanes and global warming is far from over, of course. But I do think that seeing global warming as a kind of war is, though a limited analogy, a provocative one. I don’t know how many people died during and because of Hurricane Katrina, but surely the number must be comparable to the number of people who died on September 11th. And yet, consider the comparative reactions. 9/11 led to a mobilized nation in which everything is secondary to the “global war on terror.” Katrina led to the resignation of one hapless federal bureaucrat.

Why the difference? Because while 9/11 was the work of “evildoers,” the president and vice-president see Katrina as an act of God, toward which we contributed nothing and about which we can do nothing.

But what if they’re wrong about that? What if we’re causing global warming, and global warming really is contributing to more powerful hurricanes?

Imagine if the Bush administration put all the resources into fighting global warming that it has put into, say, the war in Iraq. Is there anyone who can doubt that the planet would be better off as a result?

And, in fact, fighting global warming—cutting down on our energy consumption, reducing oil imports, developing renewable energy sources, working with other nations on a common problem—would do much more to promote stability in the Middle East than our intervention in Iraq has accomplished….

After a trading deadline where the Yankees improved themselves considerably and the Red Sox stood pat, it was only a matter of time till the Boston media started reconsidering the brilliance of Theo Epstein. That the Yankees have now crushed the Sox in three straight games, with lots of help from weapons that the Sox could have had but chose not to (i.e., Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu), only made criticism of Epstein more imminent. Moreover, some of the moves that Epstein has made—signing Marlin’s pitcher Josh Beckett, for example—aren’t working out so well.

Now Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe weighs in.

The SS Red Sox is sinking fast in the American League. The sun no longer shines on the handsome head of young Theo (wonder if he’s signed his much-celebrated contract yet). The computer-geek management style has been thoroughly exposed in the last two days and there’s a perfect storm brewing upstairs on Yawkey Way.

Epstein, of course, is saying nothing, and no one on the team will admit that the season’s over. (Nor should they; if they take the next two games against the Yankees, it’s only a 2.5 game deficit with 38 left to play.)

But Seth Mnookin’s Feeding the Monster is instructive here. Mnookin portrays Epstein as being so obsessed with the pressure, so worried about the hype, that he’d rather have a losing season or two and build for the future than encourage fans to think that the Sox can win it all every year.

As I read, I found Epstein’s attitude curious. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with not trading away young players and minor-league prospects for an aging superstar who’ll give you a boost for three months, as the Yankees used to do. (That hasn’t happened since Yankee GM Brian Cashman started to get freer rein.)

And yet, Epstein conveyed the sense that he would be almost relieved to have a season or two when the Sox weren’t in contention, as if it were a little mental down-time—a vacation not unlike the one he took when he quit the team for a few weeks.

And, of course, here in New York George Steinbrenner has promulgated the notion that the Yankees should win every year, that there needs be no such thing as a rebuilding year.

Epstein would say that he’s working with a much more limited budget than is Brian Cashman, and I’m sure that’s true. Still, you have to wonder if there isn’t something in the Boston GM’s mental composition that is now contributing to the Sox’s breakdown.

Concludes Shaughnessy, The cruise is over and so is the free ride for Theo. No disgrace in that, it happens to all of them, but the Sox need a quick turnaround to keep Epstein out of the shark-infested waters that devoured the likes of Lou Gorman and Dan Duquette.

Hard to believe that 2004 was only two years ago….

New Mexico governor and presidential hopeful Bill Richardson is giving campaign contributions from pervy billionaire Jeffrey Epstein to charity.

Writes Steve Terrell in the New Mexican, “Epstein, who owns a 26,700-square-foot hilltop mansion in southern Santa Fe County, allegedly had sex with five teenagers as young as 14 in his Palm Beach home after luring them to give him massages.”

What will Harvard do with Epstein’s millions?

So someone has finally done it: written a piece about the worst-kept secret in sports journalism, George Steinbrenner’s bizarre and somewhat sad retreat from public life.

If you follow the Yankees, you know that the 76-year-old owner, once omnipresent and involved in virtually every aspect of the Yankees’ operations, hasn’t been around much lately. When he goes to games, he is guarded by New York City police, who keep reporters at a distance. (Weird, huh?) The rest of the time, he is guarded by PR flacks and the executives who cash his checks.

When Steinbrenner does make public comments, they are monosyllabic: “A good win,” that kind of thing. Not too long ago, he nearly fell walking down a short flight of stairs. And when he appeared yesterday at a ceremony to mark groundbreaking for the new Yankee Stadium, his remarks constituted fewer than 25 words, and he said—not once, but three times—that the stadium was being built for “you people.”

Asked about a halting and awkward interview Steinbrenner gave on the Yankees YES network last year, team president Randy Levine said, “His performance was a question of subjective opinion. I can tell you that his interview on YES was one of the highest rated.”

Boy, is that an interesting quote.

And yet, until today, the New York media hasn’t written a thing explicitly addressing the question of Steinbrenner’s health. Why? It isn’t out of sensitivity, as Paul Lo Duca will tell you. It’s because reporters feared that if they wrote the piece, they’d suffer a backlash from the Yankees’ press machine. That’s why the two reporters bylined on the Times piece aren’t the Times’ regular Yankees beat writers; to try to cushion the inevitable pushback. But the piece is clearly informed by the observations of the beat writers….

Steinbrenner’s new absence—and reticence—are surely a good thing for manager Joe Torre and general manager Brian Cashman; dealing with Steinbrenner has probably been the toughest part of their jobs. Both men are among the finest in baseball at what they do; both have come perilously close to leaving the Yankees because of Steinbrenner’s role in the past.

And yet, there’s something sad about Steinbrenner’s current condition. It’s hard, of course, to see any human being reduced to a fraction of his former capabilities. But Steinbrenner was, for better and worse, particularly engorged with life. He was rich, powerful, insecure, egomaniacal, obnoxious, generous, blustering, and caring; Steinbrenner was every adjective, and he was its opposite. This is not a simple man.

Now time is whittling away at him. He is reduced to a shell of his former self, at a relatively young age. He got all that he seemed to want: fame, admiration, attention…winning. Above all, winning. And yet one wonders, if Steinbrenner were to look back on his life, if he were ever truly happy.

And in the answer to that question, George Steinbrenner, slipping into the lonely winter of a life devoted to the boys of summer, might serve as a lesson for all the rest of us.