[Note: “Republicans 101” is a continuing series designed to help my liberal friends understand what conservatives think.]
No one put it better than Chief Justice John Roberts in PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SCHOOL DISTRICT, a 2007 Supreme Court case: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Few conservatives would disagree with this sentiment. We’re just sick of it. All of us believed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the end of government-approved race discrimination in America, but now, with quotas in education and hiring, and “racial balancing” plans and “diversity,” it seems there’s just no end to it.
Clarence Thomas made the same point in a different way in his brilliant dissent in GRUTTER v. BOLLINGER (2003), the case concerning race-based admissions at the University of Michigan. The University had admitted using race discrimination in admitting minority students (without this finding, there would have been no case), but Justice O’Connor ruled it was permissible for an agency of government (the U of M) to discriminate on racial grounds even though race discrimination is outlawed. The pursuit of diversity on campus, she ruled, was MORE important than the ban on discrimination. Thomas began his dissent by quoting Frederick Douglass, from a speech in 1865:
“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…. I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! … [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury.”
Douglass’ message, wrote Thomas, had been lost on the majority of justices in the Grutter case.
But while all of us low-brows would agree we’re sick of race discrimination, and disgusted by the way it has been rehabilitated (as a positive good!) by leftists, the effects of affirmative action are viewed somewhat differently by white conservatives and black conservatives.
White conservatives focus primarily on those whom affirmative action programs discriminate against---its direct victims. The two most often mentioned are Asians and Jews, who (on average), tend to do well in school but lose positions at university to African-American students with lower grades and lower test scores. The other victims are poor white children who may live in dangerous neighborhoods and go to bad schools, but nevertheless somehow manage to excel. They too will lose out to African-American children who had many more advantages but did not do as well in their studies.
Men like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly, however, tend to decry affirmative action programs for their effect on the minority students they supposedly benefit. In particular, the stigma that now attaches to all black college graduates and professionals is often referred to as a modern version of Jim Crow. Since there is no way of telling whether a particular person was an “affirmative action student,” the suspicion falls on ALL black students and follows them through life. The brilliant black student who would have succeeded under any circumstances becomes difficult to distinguish from the student who was underqualified to begin with and then was eased through school to satisfy a quota.
For black conservatives, the inescapable nature of this stigma is the true horror of affirmative action, for it undercuts the public perception of everyone with a dark skin and an education. And the fact that polite people do not mention such concerns makes the situation worse, because it can be almost impossible to allay the suspicion. If you ever require brain surgery and you are referred to a specialist who happens to be African-American, you will have at least a nagging doubt about that person’s competence. This will happen no matter what color you are yourself, and it is an inevitable result of affirmative action programs in education.
It is somewhat ironic that, before affirmative action, the opposite was true. In the 1950s and 1960s, when you met a black professional, college professor, or the like, you would assume from the outset that this was probably the smartest person you had ever seen. The question of how he got his degree was not a concern. On the contrary, you would think, “Wow. Considering all the crap you probably had to put up with, you must be pretty damn good.”
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
FORT HOOD: A GUN-FREE ZONE
The very first question that occurred to me when I heard about the shootings at Ft. Hood was this: how is this possible? How does a guy on a military base manage to shoot 45 people before someone puts him down? Where were their guns?
In “Virginia Tech and the Massacre,” I explained why gun-free zones are the most dangerous places in America. Trolley Square was a gun-free zone, as were Columbine and Virginia Tech, the Nickel Mines School, various post offices, and a dozen other sites of mass killings. For a determined killer, a gun-free zone is a target-rich environment full of helpless victims. If you want to kill as many people as possible, a gun-free zone is the best place to do it. By contrast, you never see anyone “go berserk” at an NRA convention or a gun show because there are always a hundred people walking around with loaded weapons at the ready.
We now know the answer. American military bases are gun-free zones (or more precisely, ammunition-free zones). Regulations issued in March 1993 forbid military personnel, including officers, from carrying loaded weapons. And the exceptions are few. A soldier will be issued ammo at the firing range, and then will have to return any unused rounds before leaving the range. MPs can carry, but most MPs get deployed to combat zones, so there are very few such people in a place like Ft. Hood. That is why the person who finally shot Major Hasan was a civilian police officer.
There will be many lessons from Ft. Hood, and we can only hope that those in charge of our military are not so blinded by their political biases that they are incapable of learning them. One lesson is the utter irrationality of the gun-banners’ belief that rendering people defenseless makes them safer. At Ft. Hood and on other US military installations, this idea has been carried to its ultimate absurdity when those with the duty of defending all of our lives are disarmed and made targets for a mass murderer. If the soldiers at Ft. Hood had been armed, it is unlikely Major Hasan would even have undertaken his deadly mission, but if he had, there is no way he could have claimed as many victims as he did.
The wife of one of the soldiers shot at Fort Hood said it more eloquently than I can. In an interview on CNN Monday night, Mandy Foster was asked how she felt about her husband's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. She responded: "At least he's safe there and he can fire back, right?"
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
In “Virginia Tech and the Massacre,” I explained why gun-free zones are the most dangerous places in America. Trolley Square was a gun-free zone, as were Columbine and Virginia Tech, the Nickel Mines School, various post offices, and a dozen other sites of mass killings. For a determined killer, a gun-free zone is a target-rich environment full of helpless victims. If you want to kill as many people as possible, a gun-free zone is the best place to do it. By contrast, you never see anyone “go berserk” at an NRA convention or a gun show because there are always a hundred people walking around with loaded weapons at the ready.
We now know the answer. American military bases are gun-free zones (or more precisely, ammunition-free zones). Regulations issued in March 1993 forbid military personnel, including officers, from carrying loaded weapons. And the exceptions are few. A soldier will be issued ammo at the firing range, and then will have to return any unused rounds before leaving the range. MPs can carry, but most MPs get deployed to combat zones, so there are very few such people in a place like Ft. Hood. That is why the person who finally shot Major Hasan was a civilian police officer.
There will be many lessons from Ft. Hood, and we can only hope that those in charge of our military are not so blinded by their political biases that they are incapable of learning them. One lesson is the utter irrationality of the gun-banners’ belief that rendering people defenseless makes them safer. At Ft. Hood and on other US military installations, this idea has been carried to its ultimate absurdity when those with the duty of defending all of our lives are disarmed and made targets for a mass murderer. If the soldiers at Ft. Hood had been armed, it is unlikely Major Hasan would even have undertaken his deadly mission, but if he had, there is no way he could have claimed as many victims as he did.
The wife of one of the soldiers shot at Fort Hood said it more eloquently than I can. In an interview on CNN Monday night, Mandy Foster was asked how she felt about her husband's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. She responded: "At least he's safe there and he can fire back, right?"
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
UPDATE: FORT HOOD
My previous article was, in large part, inspired by my annoyance at being told not to “jump to conclusions” about Major Hasan and not to beat up Muslims or attack mosques. I’ve never attacked a mosque in my life and I’m not going to start now, so it’s an insult when I’m told not to do something evil that would never occur to me in the first place. I mean, I’M NOT A MEMBER OF A DEATH CULT, OK??? That’s the other guys, the ones who want to kill us, like Major Hasan.
But “annoyance” no longer describes my feelings about what I’m reading in the papers and seeing on TV. Now that we have another two days of news, we know he tried to call al-Qaeda. How do you do that? How do you even start to think about how you would do that? How do you go about discovering what the area code might be? (And by the way, if you happen to know what al-Qaeda’s area code is, don’t even THINK about coming over to my house for Christmas.) We also know he was in regular contact with his terrorist Virginia imam, who now lives in Yemen. And various army doctors and students have come forward with new tales of his rants and anti-American rage.
You would think this would be the end of the diversity blather and the “unsure-about-his-motives” idiocy. Ah, the chattering classes would say, now we see. He’s a jihadi, a terrorist, and he wanted to kill infidels. That’s what they do, all over the world, and this time it happened at Ft. Hood, in Texas. Maybe we need to look for these guys and try to stop them before they flip on the kill switch. You would think EVERYONE would now see what we are facing.
Apparently not. Instead, we get Chris Matthews on “Hardball,” saying, “It’s not a crime to call up al-Qaeda, is it?”
Much more revealing was an opinion column by Elmer Smith in the 11/10 Philadelphia Daily News:
“There is little evidence that Hassan (sic) and the two 9/11 terrorists had been seen together at the Falls Church mosque or that they had ever spoken with each other or had ever conspired to do anything except pray facing the East.
“That trail will go cold. The [investigators] will find only the most tenuous connections between Hassan (sic) and terrorist affiliations just as it has found no terrorist links on his computers.”
Get it? It only counts as terrorism if Osama told you to do it. I have found the commentary on the shootings bizarre, and offensive, and mystifying, but Elmer Smith gives away the game. The enemy, the ONLY enemy, is some guys who live in caves in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and you can only be a “terrorist” if you have gotten your marching orders from them or from somebody who has been in touch with them and who told you what to do. An ideology can’t be the enemy because a lot of people have ideologies and, you know, who are we to judge another man’s ideology? This is the view EVEN IF THAT IDEOLOGY GLORIFIES THE MASS MURDER OF INNOCENTS.
The frightening thing is that Elmer Smith’s view is shared by General George Casey and the others who run our military. And it is frightening because it renders them (and us) helpless against the next Major Hasan. If you’re going to tolerate (and promote!) people with this jihadist ideology, you are going to have more of them.
In fact, Hasan was far from the first.
* In 1998, Army Sergeant Ali Mohamed stole military secrets for al-Qaeda and helped plan the bombings at three US embassies.
* Army Specialist Ryan Anderson was convicted in 2004 of passing military intelligence to al-Qaeda terrorists.
* In 2008, Navy Signalman Hassan Abujihaad was convicted of giving sensitive information regarding troop movement to al-Qaeda.
* Army Reservist Jeffrey Battle in 2003 confessed to waging war against the US, and said he joined the military to receive training he could use against America.
* Army reservist Semi Osman was arrested in 2002 for providing support to al-Qaeda, and testified against other terror suspects.
* Sgt. Hasan Akbar, in Iraq in 2003, attacked 17 fellow soldiers, killing two. He did so because he was opposed to the Iraq War and the killing of Muslims. Sound familiar?
It’s not like the military can’t find guys who harbor dangerous ideas and get rid of them. There are programs in place to weed out supremacists and other hate-group members, gang members, etc. They have been in place for years, and have been very successful. But they won’t go looking for jihadists. It would be insensitive, you see. Somebody might be offended.
The enemy we face is not a nation. It is not a hierarchical military organization. It is not even the religion called Islam. It is an ideology that justifies and even celebrates the murder of any innocent person who is not a Muslim. And this enemy is here in America just as it is in every nation on earth. The guys in the caves are symbolic, and important, and to the extent the enemy is capable of building an actual military organization with dangerous weapons, that is where it may get done, so those guys must be stopped.
But the guys in the caves are not coming down Broad Street anytime soon. Major Hasan, and the many like him, are here now.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
But “annoyance” no longer describes my feelings about what I’m reading in the papers and seeing on TV. Now that we have another two days of news, we know he tried to call al-Qaeda. How do you do that? How do you even start to think about how you would do that? How do you go about discovering what the area code might be? (And by the way, if you happen to know what al-Qaeda’s area code is, don’t even THINK about coming over to my house for Christmas.) We also know he was in regular contact with his terrorist Virginia imam, who now lives in Yemen. And various army doctors and students have come forward with new tales of his rants and anti-American rage.
You would think this would be the end of the diversity blather and the “unsure-about-his-motives” idiocy. Ah, the chattering classes would say, now we see. He’s a jihadi, a terrorist, and he wanted to kill infidels. That’s what they do, all over the world, and this time it happened at Ft. Hood, in Texas. Maybe we need to look for these guys and try to stop them before they flip on the kill switch. You would think EVERYONE would now see what we are facing.
Apparently not. Instead, we get Chris Matthews on “Hardball,” saying, “It’s not a crime to call up al-Qaeda, is it?”
Much more revealing was an opinion column by Elmer Smith in the 11/10 Philadelphia Daily News:
“There is little evidence that Hassan (sic) and the two 9/11 terrorists had been seen together at the Falls Church mosque or that they had ever spoken with each other or had ever conspired to do anything except pray facing the East.
“That trail will go cold. The [investigators] will find only the most tenuous connections between Hassan (sic) and terrorist affiliations just as it has found no terrorist links on his computers.”
Get it? It only counts as terrorism if Osama told you to do it. I have found the commentary on the shootings bizarre, and offensive, and mystifying, but Elmer Smith gives away the game. The enemy, the ONLY enemy, is some guys who live in caves in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and you can only be a “terrorist” if you have gotten your marching orders from them or from somebody who has been in touch with them and who told you what to do. An ideology can’t be the enemy because a lot of people have ideologies and, you know, who are we to judge another man’s ideology? This is the view EVEN IF THAT IDEOLOGY GLORIFIES THE MASS MURDER OF INNOCENTS.
The frightening thing is that Elmer Smith’s view is shared by General George Casey and the others who run our military. And it is frightening because it renders them (and us) helpless against the next Major Hasan. If you’re going to tolerate (and promote!) people with this jihadist ideology, you are going to have more of them.
In fact, Hasan was far from the first.
* In 1998, Army Sergeant Ali Mohamed stole military secrets for al-Qaeda and helped plan the bombings at three US embassies.
* Army Specialist Ryan Anderson was convicted in 2004 of passing military intelligence to al-Qaeda terrorists.
* In 2008, Navy Signalman Hassan Abujihaad was convicted of giving sensitive information regarding troop movement to al-Qaeda.
* Army Reservist Jeffrey Battle in 2003 confessed to waging war against the US, and said he joined the military to receive training he could use against America.
* Army reservist Semi Osman was arrested in 2002 for providing support to al-Qaeda, and testified against other terror suspects.
* Sgt. Hasan Akbar, in Iraq in 2003, attacked 17 fellow soldiers, killing two. He did so because he was opposed to the Iraq War and the killing of Muslims. Sound familiar?
It’s not like the military can’t find guys who harbor dangerous ideas and get rid of them. There are programs in place to weed out supremacists and other hate-group members, gang members, etc. They have been in place for years, and have been very successful. But they won’t go looking for jihadists. It would be insensitive, you see. Somebody might be offended.
The enemy we face is not a nation. It is not a hierarchical military organization. It is not even the religion called Islam. It is an ideology that justifies and even celebrates the murder of any innocent person who is not a Muslim. And this enemy is here in America just as it is in every nation on earth. The guys in the caves are symbolic, and important, and to the extent the enemy is capable of building an actual military organization with dangerous weapons, that is where it may get done, so those guys must be stopped.
But the guys in the caves are not coming down Broad Street anytime soon. Major Hasan, and the many like him, are here now.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Monday, November 9, 2009
GENERAL GEORGE CASEY TALKS ABOUT FORT HOOD
So the bodies were not even cold before we were all being warned not to blame Islam and take out our rage on our Muslim brothers. The real horror, you see, was not the dead and the wounded, but the possibility of us good folk erupting in the anti-jihad jihad that always seems to be in danger of happening but, of course, never happens. As one blogger (Seraphic Spouse) put it, “[The media and Muslim] groups suspect us of wanting to attack mosques now, even though we didn’t the last ten times a Muslim killed innocent people in the name of Islam. What are they afraid of? Graffiti?”
Meanwhile, as military officials tell us the motive behind the shootings “remains unclear,” and Chris Matthews reports that “We may never know if religion was a factor at Ft. Hood,” the basics of Major Hasan’s thought patterns seem obvious enough.
His students in the master’s program at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences complained about his “anti-American propaganda,” but no formal complaint was ever filed for fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim. Various colleagues also report hearing him rant against the war on terror and the US government. Internet postings under his name praise and justify suicide bombers. Even patients complained because he tried to convert them to Islam.
In 2001, he regularly attended the notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, along with two of the 9-11 terrorists. The preacher there was the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who was recently barred from England for advocating attacks on British soldiers.
The day before the shootings, he cleaned out his apartment and gave various of his possessions, including a new Quran, to a neighbor, saying he was being “deployed” the next day. And on the morning of his rampage, he dressed himself in traditional Muslim robes and prayed. Shortly thereafter, shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”), he methodically emptied 100 rounds, from two handguns, into more than three dozen human beings.
Why are we not allowed to say the word “Muslim?” Why are we not allowed to say the word “terrorist?” When a Pashtun warrior kills American soldiers in Afghanistan, we have no such taboo. But when Major Hasan, who says and believes the same things as that Pashtun warrior, kills American soldiers in Texas, we are not allowed to say these terrible words.
If the foolishness of politically correct speech and thought were confined to the Chris Matthews and Katie Courics of the world, I wouldn’t be writing this article. But of course, it is not so confined. It has infected the US Army as well, and with fatal consequences. Major Hasan, in a time of war, openly expressed his solidarity with the enemy. He did it often, with colleagues, with subordinates, and even with superior officers. He was vehement about it. He wouldn’t shut up about it apparently. And yet, none of it mattered. In May of this year, he was promoted from Captain to Major. Hey, we’re all Americans, right? Admiring suicide bombers? Well, that’s just free speech, I guess.
And the frightening thing is that even now, in the aftermath of Ft. Hood, nothing will change. Today, George Stephanopolous interviewed General George Casey. Asked about the motive for the shootings, General Casey said this:
“Speculation could heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. What happened at Ft. Hood was a tragedy. It could be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”
Get that? Read it again. Thirteen people are dead and probably twenty more will be living with terrible wounds for the rest of their lives, but losing the Army’s “diversity” would be a GREATER tragedy. General Casey is the Chief of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the US Army. He is the man responsible for allowing a culture to exist in the Army where the anti-American rantings of Nidal Malik Hasan are tolerated and even rewarded. Hasan was a Muslim, after all, and thus a testament to the rich tapestry of the Army’s multicultural wonderfulness. And whatever the blowback here, General Casey certainly would never want to jeopardize THAT.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Meanwhile, as military officials tell us the motive behind the shootings “remains unclear,” and Chris Matthews reports that “We may never know if religion was a factor at Ft. Hood,” the basics of Major Hasan’s thought patterns seem obvious enough.
His students in the master’s program at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences complained about his “anti-American propaganda,” but no formal complaint was ever filed for fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim. Various colleagues also report hearing him rant against the war on terror and the US government. Internet postings under his name praise and justify suicide bombers. Even patients complained because he tried to convert them to Islam.
In 2001, he regularly attended the notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, along with two of the 9-11 terrorists. The preacher there was the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who was recently barred from England for advocating attacks on British soldiers.
The day before the shootings, he cleaned out his apartment and gave various of his possessions, including a new Quran, to a neighbor, saying he was being “deployed” the next day. And on the morning of his rampage, he dressed himself in traditional Muslim robes and prayed. Shortly thereafter, shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”), he methodically emptied 100 rounds, from two handguns, into more than three dozen human beings.
Why are we not allowed to say the word “Muslim?” Why are we not allowed to say the word “terrorist?” When a Pashtun warrior kills American soldiers in Afghanistan, we have no such taboo. But when Major Hasan, who says and believes the same things as that Pashtun warrior, kills American soldiers in Texas, we are not allowed to say these terrible words.
If the foolishness of politically correct speech and thought were confined to the Chris Matthews and Katie Courics of the world, I wouldn’t be writing this article. But of course, it is not so confined. It has infected the US Army as well, and with fatal consequences. Major Hasan, in a time of war, openly expressed his solidarity with the enemy. He did it often, with colleagues, with subordinates, and even with superior officers. He was vehement about it. He wouldn’t shut up about it apparently. And yet, none of it mattered. In May of this year, he was promoted from Captain to Major. Hey, we’re all Americans, right? Admiring suicide bombers? Well, that’s just free speech, I guess.
And the frightening thing is that even now, in the aftermath of Ft. Hood, nothing will change. Today, George Stephanopolous interviewed General George Casey. Asked about the motive for the shootings, General Casey said this:
“Speculation could heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. What happened at Ft. Hood was a tragedy. It could be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”
Get that? Read it again. Thirteen people are dead and probably twenty more will be living with terrible wounds for the rest of their lives, but losing the Army’s “diversity” would be a GREATER tragedy. General Casey is the Chief of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the US Army. He is the man responsible for allowing a culture to exist in the Army where the anti-American rantings of Nidal Malik Hasan are tolerated and even rewarded. Hasan was a Muslim, after all, and thus a testament to the rich tapestry of the Army’s multicultural wonderfulness. And whatever the blowback here, General Casey certainly would never want to jeopardize THAT.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Thursday, November 5, 2009
IRAN TODAY
Huge demonstrations continue across the country, as reported by Michael Ledeen and others, and the pro-democracy forces are being met by even greater violence from the regime. I urge you to visit this link (here), which contains a selection of blogs, twitter feeds and so on from the protesters reporting on the beatings, gassings and other outrages.
Meanwhile, AS THE BEATINGS WERE GOING ON, President Obama today issued a statement on (and to) the Iranian regime which did not mention the protests and the government’s response to them. Rather, he begs the regime for some kind, any kind, of deal. Here's a piece that gives you the flavor of it:
“I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.
“We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”
Meanwhile, AS THE BEATINGS WERE GOING ON, President Obama today issued a statement on (and to) the Iranian regime which did not mention the protests and the government’s response to them. Rather, he begs the regime for some kind, any kind, of deal. Here's a piece that gives you the flavor of it:
“I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.
“We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
POST-ELECTION POLITICAL NOTES
I.
Sure, it would have been nice if super-nerd carpetbagger Doug Hoffman had won New York's 23rd congressional district, but it would hardly have changed Congress. Much more important were the results in the proxy war between the good old boys and the conservatives in the Republican Party.
The biggest winner was Sarah Palin, whose endorsement of Hoffman made him a real candidate, brought him hundreds of thousands in campaign dollars, and led ultimately to Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race. Potential candidates for 2010 are already lining up to get her blessing. Who would have thought that Palin's role would turn out to be "kingmaker?"
The biggest loser was Newt Gingrich, of course, who now has NO prospects in the 2012 presidential race. Others who have hurt themselves severely include Giuliani, Huckabee and Romney, all of whom tried to vote "present" on NY-23. For Romney, this is especially damaging since it reinforces his genteel, polite, milquetoast image (that everybody hates). If he couldn't "man up" for Scozzafava, he probably never can.
Another guy with serious problems now is Michael Steele. The head of the RNC can't really be blamed for supporting a nominated Republican, but it's not like he raised any questions about her either. He's simply a guy who is in the wrong position at the wrong time, and he probably won't have his job much longer. He's unacceptable to the conservative forces that now have all the momentum in the party.
II.
A puzzle.
There are about 40 Democrats in the House who can't support Obamacare because it contains public funding for abortion. Repeated attempts to get a straight-up vote on eliminating abortion funding have been rebuffed by Pelosi et al.
Public funding for abortion has always been a minority position in America---it has never had the support of more than 30% of the public. Yet the Democratic leadership seems unwilling to give it up, even if it means their beloved national healthcare bill will fail.
Why? In terms of the politics, wouldn't it make more sense to eliminate public funding for abortion from the bill, get it passed, and then sneak it in later?
III.
The last time conservatives took over the Republican Party, it was a reaction to another left-wing, anti-Israel Democratic president. The result was eight years of Ronald Reagan.
In my darkest hours of despair for America, this is the thought that sustains me.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Sure, it would have been nice if super-nerd carpetbagger Doug Hoffman had won New York's 23rd congressional district, but it would hardly have changed Congress. Much more important were the results in the proxy war between the good old boys and the conservatives in the Republican Party.
The biggest winner was Sarah Palin, whose endorsement of Hoffman made him a real candidate, brought him hundreds of thousands in campaign dollars, and led ultimately to Scozzafava's withdrawal from the race. Potential candidates for 2010 are already lining up to get her blessing. Who would have thought that Palin's role would turn out to be "kingmaker?"
The biggest loser was Newt Gingrich, of course, who now has NO prospects in the 2012 presidential race. Others who have hurt themselves severely include Giuliani, Huckabee and Romney, all of whom tried to vote "present" on NY-23. For Romney, this is especially damaging since it reinforces his genteel, polite, milquetoast image (that everybody hates). If he couldn't "man up" for Scozzafava, he probably never can.
Another guy with serious problems now is Michael Steele. The head of the RNC can't really be blamed for supporting a nominated Republican, but it's not like he raised any questions about her either. He's simply a guy who is in the wrong position at the wrong time, and he probably won't have his job much longer. He's unacceptable to the conservative forces that now have all the momentum in the party.
II.
A puzzle.
There are about 40 Democrats in the House who can't support Obamacare because it contains public funding for abortion. Repeated attempts to get a straight-up vote on eliminating abortion funding have been rebuffed by Pelosi et al.
Public funding for abortion has always been a minority position in America---it has never had the support of more than 30% of the public. Yet the Democratic leadership seems unwilling to give it up, even if it means their beloved national healthcare bill will fail.
Why? In terms of the politics, wouldn't it make more sense to eliminate public funding for abortion from the bill, get it passed, and then sneak it in later?
III.
The last time conservatives took over the Republican Party, it was a reaction to another left-wing, anti-Israel Democratic president. The result was eight years of Ronald Reagan.
In my darkest hours of despair for America, this is the thought that sustains me.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Saturday, October 31, 2009
THE DEATH OF EUROPE---Two Books
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.”---R.E.M., 1987
Two recent books, “America Alone” by Mark Steyn and “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” by Christopher Caldwell, detail the story of Europe’s demographic and cultural collapse, a topic of such exquisite political incorrectness that it has received virtually no attention in the American media.
Mark Steyn’s focus is primarily on the demographics, and his book provides something of a primer on that dismal science. The key number to remember is 1.3 births per woman, which demographers call “lowest-low” fertility. This is the level from which no civilization has ever recovered, and there are currently seventeen European nations reproducing at this rate. In theory, the population of such a country halves every 35 years, though in practice it happens faster than that, since young people tend to depart rather than live in an old folks’ home. In thirty or forty years, there will still be places on the map called Sweden and Germany and Spain, but it will be hard to find a Swede or a German or a Spaniard in them.
But of course, when you have a nice modern infrastructure, somebody is going to move into it. Those people are the Muslims who came in as guest workers beginning about fifty years ago and now do all the jobs Europeans won’t do, including the job of reproduction. In the UK last year, the ratio of Muslim babies to babies born of English/Scottish/Irish parents was 10 to 1. The most popular name for a boy baby in London is Muhammad, as it is in a number of other cities in the UK, and in Amsterdam, and in Malmo, Sweden, and in all of Belgium, and in many cities across the continent.
Steyn’s witty book was a best seller, and is now in paperback. It consists primarily of a description of Europe today---the infantilizing welfare state, the empty churches and full mosques, and the disappearance of nationalism and national cultures in the face of the growing power of the EU. The “message” is polemical: though Europe is irretrievable, America can survive the culture war with Islam if it learns the lessons of Europe’s demise.
Caldwell would have no disagreement with Steyn on the current situation in Europe, but his book is different. It is a cultural and political history of Europe since about 1960, when the first wave of third-world immigrants were brought in as “guest workers.” Different nations had vastly different approaches to the central problem of assimilating large numbers of immigrants, and the immigrants themselves differed over time. Gradually, as national sovereignty eroded through the growing power of the EU, what were once local issues became pan-European issues. In other words, the problems facing Germany in 1970 were very different from the problems in France. Today, though those differences still exist, they are not as important. It is not easy to make sense of the miasma of politics across numerous nations over a fifty year period, but Caldwell does an excellent and comprehensible job.
My recommendation: start with Mark Steyn. His writing is always entertaining, accessible, and obsessively documented. If, after reading “America Alone,” you want to delve deeper into how it all came about, give “Reflections” a try.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Two recent books, “America Alone” by Mark Steyn and “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe” by Christopher Caldwell, detail the story of Europe’s demographic and cultural collapse, a topic of such exquisite political incorrectness that it has received virtually no attention in the American media.
Mark Steyn’s focus is primarily on the demographics, and his book provides something of a primer on that dismal science. The key number to remember is 1.3 births per woman, which demographers call “lowest-low” fertility. This is the level from which no civilization has ever recovered, and there are currently seventeen European nations reproducing at this rate. In theory, the population of such a country halves every 35 years, though in practice it happens faster than that, since young people tend to depart rather than live in an old folks’ home. In thirty or forty years, there will still be places on the map called Sweden and Germany and Spain, but it will be hard to find a Swede or a German or a Spaniard in them.
But of course, when you have a nice modern infrastructure, somebody is going to move into it. Those people are the Muslims who came in as guest workers beginning about fifty years ago and now do all the jobs Europeans won’t do, including the job of reproduction. In the UK last year, the ratio of Muslim babies to babies born of English/Scottish/Irish parents was 10 to 1. The most popular name for a boy baby in London is Muhammad, as it is in a number of other cities in the UK, and in Amsterdam, and in Malmo, Sweden, and in all of Belgium, and in many cities across the continent.
Steyn’s witty book was a best seller, and is now in paperback. It consists primarily of a description of Europe today---the infantilizing welfare state, the empty churches and full mosques, and the disappearance of nationalism and national cultures in the face of the growing power of the EU. The “message” is polemical: though Europe is irretrievable, America can survive the culture war with Islam if it learns the lessons of Europe’s demise.
Caldwell would have no disagreement with Steyn on the current situation in Europe, but his book is different. It is a cultural and political history of Europe since about 1960, when the first wave of third-world immigrants were brought in as “guest workers.” Different nations had vastly different approaches to the central problem of assimilating large numbers of immigrants, and the immigrants themselves differed over time. Gradually, as national sovereignty eroded through the growing power of the EU, what were once local issues became pan-European issues. In other words, the problems facing Germany in 1970 were very different from the problems in France. Today, though those differences still exist, they are not as important. It is not easy to make sense of the miasma of politics across numerous nations over a fifty year period, but Caldwell does an excellent and comprehensible job.
My recommendation: start with Mark Steyn. His writing is always entertaining, accessible, and obsessively documented. If, after reading “America Alone,” you want to delve deeper into how it all came about, give “Reflections” a try.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Friday, October 23, 2009
WAITING FOR THE SERIES
As we all sit around awaiting the start of the Fall Classic, here are a few bits of baseball trivia that might amuse you. They are taken from “The Baseball Book Of Why,” by Dan Schlossberg. It’s a work of real baseball history (as opposed to all the books with great baseball stories that aren’t actually true).
They’re not as tough as they look. A little baseball knowledge and some logic will get you most of them. Answers at the end.
1. Why do the Yankees wear pinstripes?
2. On July 4, 1976, Phillies catcher Tim McCarver hit an apparent grand-slam homer in the 2nd inning, only to have it become a three-run single (and an out) when he passed the runner who had been on first base. Who was this well-known Phillie?
3. What pitcher holds the record for most strikeouts in an inning?
4. What non-pitcher posted career marks of 33 runs scored and 31 stolen bases, played in 105 games, and never batted?
5. With two strikes, a fouled bunt is strike three, rather than simply a foul ball. Why?
6. Who holds the record for highest career on-base percentage?
7. When a thrown ball hits an umpire, it remains a live ball. Why?
ANSWERS
1.Yankee management, after a dismal 1914 season, decided to emulate the dressed-for-success look of Wall Street bankers, so they designed a uniform with dark pinstripes on the standard home whites.
2. Garry Maddox.
3. Joe Niekro, with five. It WOULD be a knuckleballer, of course. His brother Phil is one of many pitchers who struck out four.
4. Herb Washington, the track star hired by Charlie Finley as a pinch-runner.
5. A foul bunt with two strikes was once a foul ball, but some players with good bat control could foul off a dozen pitches or more and eventually work themselves a walk. Luke Appling was especially skilled at this, and he is probably the main reason the rule was changed.
6. Ted Williams. Babe Ruth is second.
7. A thrown ball hitting an umpire was once a “do-over,” so fielders who couldn’t throw out a runner would throw the ball at the umpire instead. Umpires got tired of it.
They’re not as tough as they look. A little baseball knowledge and some logic will get you most of them. Answers at the end.
1. Why do the Yankees wear pinstripes?
2. On July 4, 1976, Phillies catcher Tim McCarver hit an apparent grand-slam homer in the 2nd inning, only to have it become a three-run single (and an out) when he passed the runner who had been on first base. Who was this well-known Phillie?
3. What pitcher holds the record for most strikeouts in an inning?
4. What non-pitcher posted career marks of 33 runs scored and 31 stolen bases, played in 105 games, and never batted?
5. With two strikes, a fouled bunt is strike three, rather than simply a foul ball. Why?
6. Who holds the record for highest career on-base percentage?
7. When a thrown ball hits an umpire, it remains a live ball. Why?
ANSWERS
1.Yankee management, after a dismal 1914 season, decided to emulate the dressed-for-success look of Wall Street bankers, so they designed a uniform with dark pinstripes on the standard home whites.
2. Garry Maddox.
3. Joe Niekro, with five. It WOULD be a knuckleballer, of course. His brother Phil is one of many pitchers who struck out four.
4. Herb Washington, the track star hired by Charlie Finley as a pinch-runner.
5. A foul bunt with two strikes was once a foul ball, but some players with good bat control could foul off a dozen pitches or more and eventually work themselves a walk. Luke Appling was especially skilled at this, and he is probably the main reason the rule was changed.
6. Ted Williams. Babe Ruth is second.
7. A thrown ball hitting an umpire was once a “do-over,” so fielders who couldn’t throw out a runner would throw the ball at the umpire instead. Umpires got tired of it.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
4. TOP DOWN
All of us have become so accustomed to the franchise model of doing business (e.g., McDonald’s), that we can be surprised when we discover a large and successful retail business that doesn’t work that way. Franchise outlets are owned by individuals under elaborate and detailed agreements with the mother company, but the headaches and the responsibility, and the profits, belong to the capitalist who stuck his neck out and bought into the deal.
Argus is different. All Argus stores are owned and controlled by Argus. Every truly significant decision about what happens in an individual store is made by executives who may never have seen that particular store. The job of those who manage a store is to carry out the directives they are issued from the head office as well as hire and fire the hourly workers. Managers have virtually no input on pricing, marketing campaigns, the mix of merchandise available, safety, wages, machines used, computer issues, or the physical plant. There are more than 1700 Argus stores, according to the Argus website. Actually, there is only one store, but it has more than 1700 locations. As far as I know, all of the big-box stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, operate this way.
The biggest advantage of a hierarchical structure like this is that it provides clear lines of responsibility, and little opportunity to shift blame for failure. If a marketing campaign doesn’t work, for example, it’s not the fault of the store manager. The guy who designed that campaign is in an office somewhere in Minnesota, and he will have to answer for his mistakes. If, however, shrinkage (shoplifting and employee theft) is higher in a particular store than it should be, the store manager is probably doing something wrong. There are measurements and parameters and rules for every job, from the lowest grunt to the CIO. Also, for each of thousands of tasks, there is a training program and a certification process, and if you do something you are not certified to do, you are in trouble no matter how well you do it, or how silly and pointless the certification process. Some things can’t be measured, of course, and a personable, high-energy employee is going to get recognized eventually, but the numbers are always more important. Every single employee is constantly being measured on how he is doing the very specific things he has been trained and certified and ordered to do.
The system, which has been developed over many years, works well for Argus as indicated by the only real measure of a company’s viability---profits. Argus makes money. It has made money for years. It is even making money today (though not as much), in a deep economic recession. A hierarchical, by-the-book system like this, however, does have unintended consequences. For example, it can be impossible to get a toilet fixed.
There are two staff bathrooms, both unisex, in the store. The one closest to the break room and offices has been broken, with a leaky pipe, for over two months. Yesterday, I asked our maintenance guy, Manny, if it would ever be fixed.
“I could fix that toilet in a half hour,” he said, “but they vendored it out. I’m not allowed to touch it.”
When Manny says it would take him a half hour, it means it would require fifteen minutes. Manny is one of those guys who can fix anything, and thus amazes those of us who can fix nothing. Manny can fix shelves, floors, electric lights, hard drives, carburetors, walls, doors, air conditioners, motorized wheelchairs, trash compactors, scissor trucks, Segways, alarms, cash registers, shopping carts and pipes. Manny could fix a heart-lung machine if you gave him the manual for it. If you gave Manny the right tools and stents and scalpels and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, I have no doubt Manny could perform a bypass operation. If Manny were in charge of Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program, Hawaii would now be a smoldering hole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
But Manny cannot fix the toilet in the middle of the store. He’s not allowed to. So everybody (including pregnant women) has to walk an eighth of a mile to get to the other one.
And this is one of the unintended consequences of the hierarchy. Showing any sort of initiative is irrelevant to job performance, and thus is discouraged, even where it would solve a small but real problem. There is simply no approved procedure for fixing a toilet when, for whatever reason, the outside contractor doesn’t fix it. It is literally nobody’s job to solve this problem, and if it’s nobody’s job, nobody can do it. Chuck, the store manager, has certain tasks just like the rest of us, and doing something not on his list would be a type of insubordination. No one is allowed to deal with the little things that “fall between the cracks” because, officially, there are no cracks. There’s a procedure and a training program and a certification ritual and a person responsible for everything that can possibly happen, except of course, there isn’t.
It’s tempting to view Chuck simply as a bad, or inattentive, store manager, but that’s unfair. It is true he is in one of those situations where it would be easier to obtain forgiveness than permission. If he disobeyed orders and told Manny to fix the bathroom, it is unlikely he would ever be chastised for it. But because of the culture imprinted upon him by the system, that course of action simply doesn’t occur to him, or to anyone. It never presents itself as an option.
In other words, no one who works there “owns” the store. Everyone, from the lowest grunt to the store manager, has responsibilities of various kinds and those responsibilities are generally taken quite seriously. Taking those responsibilities seriously is what gets you more money and gets you promoted. But no one feels any responsibility for the store itself, or the overall enterprise that is Argus.
I see the effects of this all the time.
Recently, the “market” section of the store was remodeled, and all the refrigerator and freezer cases were replaced. In the course of the remodeling, all sixty of the old cases sat empty for about three weeks, before they were removed. And nobody turned them off.
When I noticed the coolers were still on, I mentioned it to one of the executives. When nothing happened, I told another, and then another, and then another. It became a game for me; I was curious to see if anyone would ever take action. Over the course of two weeks, I quietly informed a dozen of my superiors, all of whom could have turned off the damn things. Nobody did. The cases remained on until the remodeling team (from Minnesota) removed them from the store. The orders to our in-store personnel were simply to empty the cases, and once that was done, our duties had been discharged.
On several occasions, when I brought up the subject to an executive or Team Leader, a surprised look would appear on his face. “Wow, you’re right,” he would respond. “We’re wasting a lot of money, aren’t we?” And that would be the end of it.
One day last summer, a patio-chair appeared in the back room with a paper sign on it: “DO NOT MOVE. BEING SAVED FOR GUEST INCIDENT. ---Leah.” When I asked Leah, an executive, about it, she told me that a customer (a large woman), had sat down in the chair to try it out, and had fallen over backwards. We were saving the chair in case of a lawsuit.
“You know,” I said, “a lawyer would tell you to give the chair to one person and have them store it in a locked room. If this turns out to be the main piece of evidence in a lawsuit, you want to have one person who can testify it wasn’t tampered with. It’s called a ‘chain of custody’ issue.”
She looked at me with that amazed look you sometimes see on the face of a manager or executive when one of the grunts says something worth thinking about that does not involve Beyonce. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “That’s a good idea.”
Three months later, the chair was still sitting in the same place in the back room, with the same paper sign on it. Though my advice had been sound, and though Leah had recognized what should be done with the chair, she had never been ordered to segregate the chair, so she never thought about the issue again. There were bathmats to be shelved, and cans of beans, and packages of toilet paper (there always are), and it was her duty to get those things on the floor. Custody of the chair was interesting in a theoretical way, but had nothing to do with her job.
Yet another example is the way PDAs, the hand-held computing devices, are allocated to employees.
Not everyone uses them. Food service workers, cashiers, security personnel, the pharmacy staff and administrators have little or no need for them. But for everyone else, everyone who deals with product in the backroom or on the sale floor, they are essential. By scanning a UPC barcode, or a label on the shelf, you can learn the price of an item, its proper location on the shelves, its proper location in the backroom, whether the store has the item (and how many it has and where they are), whether it can be found in other Argus stores or on-line, and whether it has recently been reduced in price. When an item is moved from one place in the store to another, it must be registered via the PDA. When a damaged item goes in the trash, a PDA must be informed. In conjunction with a printer, a PDA makes labels and signs, and changes prices, and makes lists of products that must be moved from one place to another. With a PDA, you can order more product from a warehouse. You can check on whether a particular employee is in the store, or has next Thursday off. There are many things you can do with a PDA, and there are very few things you can do without one.
With all the hardware and software in these things, each one is worth hundreds of dollars, and considering how important they are, you would think Argus would make a serious effort to keep track of them. You would think an employee would have to sign one out at the beginning of a shift and turn it in at the end. It wouldn’t be difficult to set up a system to do that, and put somebody in charge of the things, and hold employees responsible for them in some way. But no, that doesn’t happen. If there is one in the equipment room when you start your shift, you get one. If there isn’t (and you don’t have a manager who has tucked one away for you), you don’t.
Since there are never quite enough to go around (they break, get lost, and need to be recharged), an allocation system would also ensure that those with jobs for which a PDA is essential would have one. Others, perhaps those working on a team project, could share.
The failure to allocate a scarce resource like PDAs, or even keep track of them, has predictable results. Some people always have them but don’t really need them much. Other PDA-dependant employees who can’t get one will need twice as much time to perform their required tasks. If you leave your PDA unguarded, it may get stolen. Also, at the end of a shift, you don’t necessarily return it to the equipment room. Instead, you shove it in a hidey-hole (behind some towels, maybe, in aisle D35) and hope it’s still there when you start your shift tomorrow. This means, of course, that there is one fewer PDA available for the people who work while you are home sleeping.
It is obvious to everyone that the failure to track PDAs reduces the overall productivity of the staff, but there is no way to measure the overall amount of the loss or translate it into lost profits. The effects are intermittent, and scattered across the workforce. On the other hand, instituting a solution would mean devoting some (small) quantity of time and effort to administer it. Solving the problem would cost measurable time and money, and there would be no way to justify that expense because no one knows what the problem itself costs. There is thus no incentive for anyone at my Argus to do anything. A solution could only be implemented if there were orders to do so from Minnesota, and there haven’t been.
* * * * * * * * * *
I see that this article can be read as critical about the way Argus runs its business, but that is not my intention. I am surprised by the way the place works simply because I have never been part of an organization like this. I’ve been ignorant, in other words, but now that I have looked behind the curtain, I’m more amazed by what it does right than by what it does wrong.
Argus employs tens of thousands of people, many of whom are 18 years old, barely literate, and have never held a job before. You need a system of some kind, and rules, and a sense of priorities, in order to make this kind of business work. And Argus does. Argus pleases its customers, consistently feeds the gaping maw of the American consumer, and makes money. Of course, there are things that don’t work quite right or don’t make much sense, but this is true in any organization. The difference is that the things Argus deems important, its priorities, are actually done well. The system is designed, obsessively and compulsively, to accomplish them. In order to keep ten thousand products on the shelf, there are certain things you have to ignore.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Argus is different. All Argus stores are owned and controlled by Argus. Every truly significant decision about what happens in an individual store is made by executives who may never have seen that particular store. The job of those who manage a store is to carry out the directives they are issued from the head office as well as hire and fire the hourly workers. Managers have virtually no input on pricing, marketing campaigns, the mix of merchandise available, safety, wages, machines used, computer issues, or the physical plant. There are more than 1700 Argus stores, according to the Argus website. Actually, there is only one store, but it has more than 1700 locations. As far as I know, all of the big-box stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, operate this way.
The biggest advantage of a hierarchical structure like this is that it provides clear lines of responsibility, and little opportunity to shift blame for failure. If a marketing campaign doesn’t work, for example, it’s not the fault of the store manager. The guy who designed that campaign is in an office somewhere in Minnesota, and he will have to answer for his mistakes. If, however, shrinkage (shoplifting and employee theft) is higher in a particular store than it should be, the store manager is probably doing something wrong. There are measurements and parameters and rules for every job, from the lowest grunt to the CIO. Also, for each of thousands of tasks, there is a training program and a certification process, and if you do something you are not certified to do, you are in trouble no matter how well you do it, or how silly and pointless the certification process. Some things can’t be measured, of course, and a personable, high-energy employee is going to get recognized eventually, but the numbers are always more important. Every single employee is constantly being measured on how he is doing the very specific things he has been trained and certified and ordered to do.
The system, which has been developed over many years, works well for Argus as indicated by the only real measure of a company’s viability---profits. Argus makes money. It has made money for years. It is even making money today (though not as much), in a deep economic recession. A hierarchical, by-the-book system like this, however, does have unintended consequences. For example, it can be impossible to get a toilet fixed.
There are two staff bathrooms, both unisex, in the store. The one closest to the break room and offices has been broken, with a leaky pipe, for over two months. Yesterday, I asked our maintenance guy, Manny, if it would ever be fixed.
“I could fix that toilet in a half hour,” he said, “but they vendored it out. I’m not allowed to touch it.”
When Manny says it would take him a half hour, it means it would require fifteen minutes. Manny is one of those guys who can fix anything, and thus amazes those of us who can fix nothing. Manny can fix shelves, floors, electric lights, hard drives, carburetors, walls, doors, air conditioners, motorized wheelchairs, trash compactors, scissor trucks, Segways, alarms, cash registers, shopping carts and pipes. Manny could fix a heart-lung machine if you gave him the manual for it. If you gave Manny the right tools and stents and scalpels and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, I have no doubt Manny could perform a bypass operation. If Manny were in charge of Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program, Hawaii would now be a smoldering hole in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
But Manny cannot fix the toilet in the middle of the store. He’s not allowed to. So everybody (including pregnant women) has to walk an eighth of a mile to get to the other one.
And this is one of the unintended consequences of the hierarchy. Showing any sort of initiative is irrelevant to job performance, and thus is discouraged, even where it would solve a small but real problem. There is simply no approved procedure for fixing a toilet when, for whatever reason, the outside contractor doesn’t fix it. It is literally nobody’s job to solve this problem, and if it’s nobody’s job, nobody can do it. Chuck, the store manager, has certain tasks just like the rest of us, and doing something not on his list would be a type of insubordination. No one is allowed to deal with the little things that “fall between the cracks” because, officially, there are no cracks. There’s a procedure and a training program and a certification ritual and a person responsible for everything that can possibly happen, except of course, there isn’t.
It’s tempting to view Chuck simply as a bad, or inattentive, store manager, but that’s unfair. It is true he is in one of those situations where it would be easier to obtain forgiveness than permission. If he disobeyed orders and told Manny to fix the bathroom, it is unlikely he would ever be chastised for it. But because of the culture imprinted upon him by the system, that course of action simply doesn’t occur to him, or to anyone. It never presents itself as an option.
In other words, no one who works there “owns” the store. Everyone, from the lowest grunt to the store manager, has responsibilities of various kinds and those responsibilities are generally taken quite seriously. Taking those responsibilities seriously is what gets you more money and gets you promoted. But no one feels any responsibility for the store itself, or the overall enterprise that is Argus.
I see the effects of this all the time.
Recently, the “market” section of the store was remodeled, and all the refrigerator and freezer cases were replaced. In the course of the remodeling, all sixty of the old cases sat empty for about three weeks, before they were removed. And nobody turned them off.
When I noticed the coolers were still on, I mentioned it to one of the executives. When nothing happened, I told another, and then another, and then another. It became a game for me; I was curious to see if anyone would ever take action. Over the course of two weeks, I quietly informed a dozen of my superiors, all of whom could have turned off the damn things. Nobody did. The cases remained on until the remodeling team (from Minnesota) removed them from the store. The orders to our in-store personnel were simply to empty the cases, and once that was done, our duties had been discharged.
On several occasions, when I brought up the subject to an executive or Team Leader, a surprised look would appear on his face. “Wow, you’re right,” he would respond. “We’re wasting a lot of money, aren’t we?” And that would be the end of it.
One day last summer, a patio-chair appeared in the back room with a paper sign on it: “DO NOT MOVE. BEING SAVED FOR GUEST INCIDENT. ---Leah.” When I asked Leah, an executive, about it, she told me that a customer (a large woman), had sat down in the chair to try it out, and had fallen over backwards. We were saving the chair in case of a lawsuit.
“You know,” I said, “a lawyer would tell you to give the chair to one person and have them store it in a locked room. If this turns out to be the main piece of evidence in a lawsuit, you want to have one person who can testify it wasn’t tampered with. It’s called a ‘chain of custody’ issue.”
She looked at me with that amazed look you sometimes see on the face of a manager or executive when one of the grunts says something worth thinking about that does not involve Beyonce. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “That’s a good idea.”
Three months later, the chair was still sitting in the same place in the back room, with the same paper sign on it. Though my advice had been sound, and though Leah had recognized what should be done with the chair, she had never been ordered to segregate the chair, so she never thought about the issue again. There were bathmats to be shelved, and cans of beans, and packages of toilet paper (there always are), and it was her duty to get those things on the floor. Custody of the chair was interesting in a theoretical way, but had nothing to do with her job.
Yet another example is the way PDAs, the hand-held computing devices, are allocated to employees.
Not everyone uses them. Food service workers, cashiers, security personnel, the pharmacy staff and administrators have little or no need for them. But for everyone else, everyone who deals with product in the backroom or on the sale floor, they are essential. By scanning a UPC barcode, or a label on the shelf, you can learn the price of an item, its proper location on the shelves, its proper location in the backroom, whether the store has the item (and how many it has and where they are), whether it can be found in other Argus stores or on-line, and whether it has recently been reduced in price. When an item is moved from one place in the store to another, it must be registered via the PDA. When a damaged item goes in the trash, a PDA must be informed. In conjunction with a printer, a PDA makes labels and signs, and changes prices, and makes lists of products that must be moved from one place to another. With a PDA, you can order more product from a warehouse. You can check on whether a particular employee is in the store, or has next Thursday off. There are many things you can do with a PDA, and there are very few things you can do without one.
With all the hardware and software in these things, each one is worth hundreds of dollars, and considering how important they are, you would think Argus would make a serious effort to keep track of them. You would think an employee would have to sign one out at the beginning of a shift and turn it in at the end. It wouldn’t be difficult to set up a system to do that, and put somebody in charge of the things, and hold employees responsible for them in some way. But no, that doesn’t happen. If there is one in the equipment room when you start your shift, you get one. If there isn’t (and you don’t have a manager who has tucked one away for you), you don’t.
Since there are never quite enough to go around (they break, get lost, and need to be recharged), an allocation system would also ensure that those with jobs for which a PDA is essential would have one. Others, perhaps those working on a team project, could share.
The failure to allocate a scarce resource like PDAs, or even keep track of them, has predictable results. Some people always have them but don’t really need them much. Other PDA-dependant employees who can’t get one will need twice as much time to perform their required tasks. If you leave your PDA unguarded, it may get stolen. Also, at the end of a shift, you don’t necessarily return it to the equipment room. Instead, you shove it in a hidey-hole (behind some towels, maybe, in aisle D35) and hope it’s still there when you start your shift tomorrow. This means, of course, that there is one fewer PDA available for the people who work while you are home sleeping.
It is obvious to everyone that the failure to track PDAs reduces the overall productivity of the staff, but there is no way to measure the overall amount of the loss or translate it into lost profits. The effects are intermittent, and scattered across the workforce. On the other hand, instituting a solution would mean devoting some (small) quantity of time and effort to administer it. Solving the problem would cost measurable time and money, and there would be no way to justify that expense because no one knows what the problem itself costs. There is thus no incentive for anyone at my Argus to do anything. A solution could only be implemented if there were orders to do so from Minnesota, and there haven’t been.
* * * * * * * * * *
I see that this article can be read as critical about the way Argus runs its business, but that is not my intention. I am surprised by the way the place works simply because I have never been part of an organization like this. I’ve been ignorant, in other words, but now that I have looked behind the curtain, I’m more amazed by what it does right than by what it does wrong.
Argus employs tens of thousands of people, many of whom are 18 years old, barely literate, and have never held a job before. You need a system of some kind, and rules, and a sense of priorities, in order to make this kind of business work. And Argus does. Argus pleases its customers, consistently feeds the gaping maw of the American consumer, and makes money. Of course, there are things that don’t work quite right or don’t make much sense, but this is true in any organization. The difference is that the things Argus deems important, its priorities, are actually done well. The system is designed, obsessively and compulsively, to accomplish them. In order to keep ten thousand products on the shelf, there are certain things you have to ignore.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Saturday, October 10, 2009
SCOTT HARSHBARGER, or GOLFING WITH O.J.
“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”
---Baron de Montesquieu, 1742
Those of you who have read my articles over the years are aware that I reserve a special circle of hell for two particularly loathsome categories of public vermin.
The first, which we will call “Spoiled-Rotten Irish-Catholic Prosecutors” (see here) consists of those DA’s and US Attorneys who use their offices to advance themselves politically or to grind their own ideological axes. The list is long---Elliot Spitzer, Mike Nifong, Arlen Specter (way back when), Patrick Fitzgerald, the squad that sent Martha Stewart to prison, the West Palm prosecutors who claimed, on every TV station in America, that they had Rush Limbaugh pinned to the specimen board on eleven felonies and then got him on NOTHING, and many others. There are times I wonder whether the only prosecutor in America who is NOT spoiled-rotten and Irish-catholic is Arlene Fisk, but I suppose there must be others.
The second category of miscreants consists of those who, having disgraced themselves in public in some morally repugnant manner, won’t go away. There was a time in America when a public personage who did something wrong would never be heard from again. He would retire to the country, raise root vegetables, pray for his immortal soul, and disappear. The shame of his disgrace would forever change him. I miss those days. I miss shame.
On January 22, 1987, the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a gentleman named Budd Dwyer, shot himself in the head during a televised press conference because he had been accused of financial improprieties. This, I felt, was carrying matters a bit further than necessary. For my money, it is sufficient if the gentleman simply retires to a lifetime of golf with O.J., or, since O.J. himself is currently incarcerated, the equivalent.
But they don’t, do they? Jim McGreevey writes a book and shows up on Oprah. Rod Blagojevich still holds press conferences for anyone who will listen. Spitzer is reportedly “exploring his options” on a return to public life. And Bill Clinton? It’s like he never even went away, isn’t it?
But enough about those guys. This is about Scott Harshbarger, who appeared in the papers recently as the guy hired by ACORN to conduct their internal investigation of themselves and tell them whether there is some institutional flaw that may have lead to ACORN’s numerous indictments, or whether it’s been merely a strange concatenation of circumstances. Mr. Harshberger is thus in the news, winning him my personal exacta of disdain. Not only is he one of the most despicable and ambitious Spoiled-Rotten Irish-Catholic Prosecutors of recent American history, but now, alas, he’s back.
In 1984, Scott Harshbarger was the District Attorney of Middlesex County, in Massachusetts, when Violet Amirault and her adult children, Gerald and Cheryl, were arrested for child molestation at their Fells Acres day care facility. This was one of many cases across the country in the mid-80’s where staff at day-care centers were accused of bizarre acts of child abuse. In California, there was the McMartin case. Little Rascals Day Care was the culprit in North Carolina. In New Jersey, a child-care worker in a Jersey church, Margaret Michaels, was hit with 2800 charges of child sexual abuse. Janet Reno pursued Grant Snowden, a decorated Miami police officer, through five trials before getting a conviction. In Wenatchee, Washington, a lone police detective brought case after case against more than twenty people, mostly members of a single church, accusing them of engaging in hideous sex rituals with numerous children.
In all these cases, which have been compared to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, children were “interviewed” by therapists (usually the same therapists, who traveled around the country), until they “disclosed” what had happened to them. Gerald Amirault, for example, took children to a “magic room,” blindfolded them, and performed sex acts on them, including anal rape with a long knife. One child claimed Cheryl Amirault killed a dog, drained its blood into a sandbox, and then had a robot threaten the child with death if he ever told. Other children reported ritual killings, being raped with sticks, and other outrages.
There was never any physical evidence produced, in any of the cases. Instead, children’s rehearsed testimony was presented to juries while the children were shielded from any cross-examination. Often, they testified on videotape and never appeared in court. Expert witnesses (the therapists) then told the jury to “believe the children” because children were incapable of lying about such things. Convictions, and long sentences, were automatic.
By the mid-90’s, once the mania had been exposed, all of the defendants in these cases had been released. (Some of the therapists went on to create the “recovered memories” scandal, where families were destroyed when adults in therapy, under hypnosis, would “remember” instances of abuse they had suffered as small children.) But the Amiraults remained in prison. Scott Harshbarger, who had used the Amirault case to advance his political career, was now Attorney General of Massachusetts and was about to run for governor. Thus, in 1995, when Violet and Cheryl were granted new trials, the state appealed the grant of new trials to the Supreme Judicial Court, and had them overturned. Violet and Cheryl’s convictions were finally overturned in 1999, after Violet had died.
But Gerald remained in jail, serving his sentence of 30-40 years. He continuously asserted his innocence, and refused all offers of sex-offender “treatment” in prison, maintaining that since he was not a sex offender, there would be no point in him attending treatment sessions. His stance on this matter was cited in parole hearings as evidence of his intransigence, and lack of remorse.
In 1998, Harshbarger tallied 47% of the vote, but lost the race for Governor to Paul Celucci.
Gerald was finally paroled and released, by a unanimous vote of the Massachusetts Parole Board, in 2004. He had served eighteen years in prison. Over the years, even after his political career had come to an end, Scott Harshbarger wrote numerous letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, which had campaigned for Gerald’s release. In them, he bitterly complained that the Journal was trying to cover up child abuse and even deny its existence. As late as 2004, more than a decade after the lunacy of the day-care cases had been exposed, he called the decision to release Gerald Amirault “unfortunate.” “I think,” he said, “we often forget there are a lot of victims out there, people whose lives have been dramatically changed.”
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
---Baron de Montesquieu, 1742
Those of you who have read my articles over the years are aware that I reserve a special circle of hell for two particularly loathsome categories of public vermin.
The first, which we will call “Spoiled-Rotten Irish-Catholic Prosecutors” (see here) consists of those DA’s and US Attorneys who use their offices to advance themselves politically or to grind their own ideological axes. The list is long---Elliot Spitzer, Mike Nifong, Arlen Specter (way back when), Patrick Fitzgerald, the squad that sent Martha Stewart to prison, the West Palm prosecutors who claimed, on every TV station in America, that they had Rush Limbaugh pinned to the specimen board on eleven felonies and then got him on NOTHING, and many others. There are times I wonder whether the only prosecutor in America who is NOT spoiled-rotten and Irish-catholic is Arlene Fisk, but I suppose there must be others.
The second category of miscreants consists of those who, having disgraced themselves in public in some morally repugnant manner, won’t go away. There was a time in America when a public personage who did something wrong would never be heard from again. He would retire to the country, raise root vegetables, pray for his immortal soul, and disappear. The shame of his disgrace would forever change him. I miss those days. I miss shame.
On January 22, 1987, the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a gentleman named Budd Dwyer, shot himself in the head during a televised press conference because he had been accused of financial improprieties. This, I felt, was carrying matters a bit further than necessary. For my money, it is sufficient if the gentleman simply retires to a lifetime of golf with O.J., or, since O.J. himself is currently incarcerated, the equivalent.
But they don’t, do they? Jim McGreevey writes a book and shows up on Oprah. Rod Blagojevich still holds press conferences for anyone who will listen. Spitzer is reportedly “exploring his options” on a return to public life. And Bill Clinton? It’s like he never even went away, isn’t it?
But enough about those guys. This is about Scott Harshbarger, who appeared in the papers recently as the guy hired by ACORN to conduct their internal investigation of themselves and tell them whether there is some institutional flaw that may have lead to ACORN’s numerous indictments, or whether it’s been merely a strange concatenation of circumstances. Mr. Harshberger is thus in the news, winning him my personal exacta of disdain. Not only is he one of the most despicable and ambitious Spoiled-Rotten Irish-Catholic Prosecutors of recent American history, but now, alas, he’s back.
In 1984, Scott Harshbarger was the District Attorney of Middlesex County, in Massachusetts, when Violet Amirault and her adult children, Gerald and Cheryl, were arrested for child molestation at their Fells Acres day care facility. This was one of many cases across the country in the mid-80’s where staff at day-care centers were accused of bizarre acts of child abuse. In California, there was the McMartin case. Little Rascals Day Care was the culprit in North Carolina. In New Jersey, a child-care worker in a Jersey church, Margaret Michaels, was hit with 2800 charges of child sexual abuse. Janet Reno pursued Grant Snowden, a decorated Miami police officer, through five trials before getting a conviction. In Wenatchee, Washington, a lone police detective brought case after case against more than twenty people, mostly members of a single church, accusing them of engaging in hideous sex rituals with numerous children.
In all these cases, which have been compared to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, children were “interviewed” by therapists (usually the same therapists, who traveled around the country), until they “disclosed” what had happened to them. Gerald Amirault, for example, took children to a “magic room,” blindfolded them, and performed sex acts on them, including anal rape with a long knife. One child claimed Cheryl Amirault killed a dog, drained its blood into a sandbox, and then had a robot threaten the child with death if he ever told. Other children reported ritual killings, being raped with sticks, and other outrages.
There was never any physical evidence produced, in any of the cases. Instead, children’s rehearsed testimony was presented to juries while the children were shielded from any cross-examination. Often, they testified on videotape and never appeared in court. Expert witnesses (the therapists) then told the jury to “believe the children” because children were incapable of lying about such things. Convictions, and long sentences, were automatic.
By the mid-90’s, once the mania had been exposed, all of the defendants in these cases had been released. (Some of the therapists went on to create the “recovered memories” scandal, where families were destroyed when adults in therapy, under hypnosis, would “remember” instances of abuse they had suffered as small children.) But the Amiraults remained in prison. Scott Harshbarger, who had used the Amirault case to advance his political career, was now Attorney General of Massachusetts and was about to run for governor. Thus, in 1995, when Violet and Cheryl were granted new trials, the state appealed the grant of new trials to the Supreme Judicial Court, and had them overturned. Violet and Cheryl’s convictions were finally overturned in 1999, after Violet had died.
But Gerald remained in jail, serving his sentence of 30-40 years. He continuously asserted his innocence, and refused all offers of sex-offender “treatment” in prison, maintaining that since he was not a sex offender, there would be no point in him attending treatment sessions. His stance on this matter was cited in parole hearings as evidence of his intransigence, and lack of remorse.
In 1998, Harshbarger tallied 47% of the vote, but lost the race for Governor to Paul Celucci.
Gerald was finally paroled and released, by a unanimous vote of the Massachusetts Parole Board, in 2004. He had served eighteen years in prison. Over the years, even after his political career had come to an end, Scott Harshbarger wrote numerous letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, which had campaigned for Gerald’s release. In them, he bitterly complained that the Journal was trying to cover up child abuse and even deny its existence. As late as 2004, more than a decade after the lunacy of the day-care cases had been exposed, he called the decision to release Gerald Amirault “unfortunate.” “I think,” he said, “we often forget there are a lot of victims out there, people whose lives have been dramatically changed.”
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
THE 2009 BASEBALL PLAYOFFS
Of the playoff teams in the National League, the Dodgers have hit the fewest homers, but have the best staff ERA. Colorado seems mediocre in a number of statistical categories but were the hottest team (.616) in the second half of the season. The Phillies hit significantly more homers than anybody else, but don’t seem to know who’s going to be on their pitching staff. St. Louis has great pitching and Albert Pujols, but scores the fewest runs of the bunch.
Anyone can win the National League this year.
The LA-St. Louis match may decide the issue, and I’ll take St. Louis. It promises to be a low-scoring affair characterized by pitching duels, with a dramatic homer or two, and it could go either way. St. Louis played .600 ball over the second half, however, while LA limped in with a 38-35 record, so that tips the balance.
I feel fairly confident the Phillies will handle the Rockies. They scored more runs, hit 34 more dingers, and they even have an edge in staff ERA. Also, Colorado does not have a lefthanded starter. Colorado’s chances are based on the legitimate questions about what sort of Phillies team will show up. Though Philadelphia had a strong second half (.587), both of their star starters (Lee and Hamels) have ERAs over 7.00 in their last three starts. Also, of course, nobody knows who Charlie Manuel will put on the mound should the Phillies find themselves with a one-run lead in the ninth. I have always argued that the best strategy for the Phils is to score ten runs in every game and let the chips fall where they may. That may be the only way they will advance very far in this year’s tournament.
The Yankees, of course, will beat the Twins or the Tigers. They hit better, they pitch better, and they won more games. And if that’s not enough for you, consider what the Yanks did to these teams in the regular season. New York was 5-1 against Detroit. Against Minnesota, they were 7-0.
Boston versus the Angels will probably be more interesting. Boston has a small advantage in HRs (207-172) and in ERA (4.34-4.47). On the other hand, my impression is that the Angels grabbed their division by the throat early on, while Boston rather meekly accepted its role as the second-best team in the AL East, and never seriously challenged the hated Yankees. Probably they ARE merely the second-best team in the AL East, but one has to wonder whether they enter the post-season fray with the correct attitude. Also, one cannot ignore the Angel’s 47-28 (.627) record in the second half, which is far superior to Boston’s 40-33 (.548). I wonder whether I am letting my emotions affect my choice here, but I’m still picking Boston.
(It’s not that I have any particular fondness for Boston, but if the Angels go out in the first round [like they did last year], they will become one of those loser teams that always win a lot of games, usually win their division, and never go anywhere. And that would be fine with me. I mean, let’s face it. The Angels are a sushi team. They’re not EXACTLY Los Angeles, but they’re still Southern California and the fans spend most of the game tweeting to their snotty friends about how good their seats are and then they leave the games early so they can get home and watch a Roman Polanski movie. They’re not really baseball fans.)
In the NL Championship series, the Phillies would have a decent chance against the Dodgers, but they will probably be playing the Cardinals. And the Cards would win. On paper, the match-up is reasonable. The St. Louis ERA is half a run better than the Phillies’, but the Cards have hit 63 fewer homers. The second series is best-of-seven, however, and it’s at this point that the Phillies’ pitching weaknesses will surface.
In the AL, it is fair to observe that Boston and the Yankees split their season series. Given that, as well as the history of the rivalry, we will all be told to “throw out the record book” and believe that anything can happen. Well, I don’t think “anything” can happen. I think these Yankees are one of the great teams in baseball history and only one thing can happen. I think the Yankees will beat Boston in less than six games and then do the same thing to whatever comes out of the National League.
The astonishing thing about New York in 2009 is not the home runs. The new Yankee Stadium has weird wind patterns or something and a lot of homers get hit there even though it’s a copy of the old Yankee Stadium, it’s right across the street from it, and it’s oriented directionally just like the old place was. So much for wind engineers. What is stunning about the Yankees is that, playing half their games in the most homer-friendly park in baseball, their team ERA is the lowest of any AL playoff contender. The Yankees won this year because they have the best pitching staff in baseball. En route to their crown, I would be surprised if they lose more than four games.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Anyone can win the National League this year.
The LA-St. Louis match may decide the issue, and I’ll take St. Louis. It promises to be a low-scoring affair characterized by pitching duels, with a dramatic homer or two, and it could go either way. St. Louis played .600 ball over the second half, however, while LA limped in with a 38-35 record, so that tips the balance.
I feel fairly confident the Phillies will handle the Rockies. They scored more runs, hit 34 more dingers, and they even have an edge in staff ERA. Also, Colorado does not have a lefthanded starter. Colorado’s chances are based on the legitimate questions about what sort of Phillies team will show up. Though Philadelphia had a strong second half (.587), both of their star starters (Lee and Hamels) have ERAs over 7.00 in their last three starts. Also, of course, nobody knows who Charlie Manuel will put on the mound should the Phillies find themselves with a one-run lead in the ninth. I have always argued that the best strategy for the Phils is to score ten runs in every game and let the chips fall where they may. That may be the only way they will advance very far in this year’s tournament.
The Yankees, of course, will beat the Twins or the Tigers. They hit better, they pitch better, and they won more games. And if that’s not enough for you, consider what the Yanks did to these teams in the regular season. New York was 5-1 against Detroit. Against Minnesota, they were 7-0.
Boston versus the Angels will probably be more interesting. Boston has a small advantage in HRs (207-172) and in ERA (4.34-4.47). On the other hand, my impression is that the Angels grabbed their division by the throat early on, while Boston rather meekly accepted its role as the second-best team in the AL East, and never seriously challenged the hated Yankees. Probably they ARE merely the second-best team in the AL East, but one has to wonder whether they enter the post-season fray with the correct attitude. Also, one cannot ignore the Angel’s 47-28 (.627) record in the second half, which is far superior to Boston’s 40-33 (.548). I wonder whether I am letting my emotions affect my choice here, but I’m still picking Boston.
(It’s not that I have any particular fondness for Boston, but if the Angels go out in the first round [like they did last year], they will become one of those loser teams that always win a lot of games, usually win their division, and never go anywhere. And that would be fine with me. I mean, let’s face it. The Angels are a sushi team. They’re not EXACTLY Los Angeles, but they’re still Southern California and the fans spend most of the game tweeting to their snotty friends about how good their seats are and then they leave the games early so they can get home and watch a Roman Polanski movie. They’re not really baseball fans.)
In the NL Championship series, the Phillies would have a decent chance against the Dodgers, but they will probably be playing the Cardinals. And the Cards would win. On paper, the match-up is reasonable. The St. Louis ERA is half a run better than the Phillies’, but the Cards have hit 63 fewer homers. The second series is best-of-seven, however, and it’s at this point that the Phillies’ pitching weaknesses will surface.
In the AL, it is fair to observe that Boston and the Yankees split their season series. Given that, as well as the history of the rivalry, we will all be told to “throw out the record book” and believe that anything can happen. Well, I don’t think “anything” can happen. I think these Yankees are one of the great teams in baseball history and only one thing can happen. I think the Yankees will beat Boston in less than six games and then do the same thing to whatever comes out of the National League.
The astonishing thing about New York in 2009 is not the home runs. The new Yankee Stadium has weird wind patterns or something and a lot of homers get hit there even though it’s a copy of the old Yankee Stadium, it’s right across the street from it, and it’s oriented directionally just like the old place was. So much for wind engineers. What is stunning about the Yankees is that, playing half their games in the most homer-friendly park in baseball, their team ERA is the lowest of any AL playoff contender. The Yankees won this year because they have the best pitching staff in baseball. En route to their crown, I would be surprised if they lose more than four games.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Sunday, October 4, 2009
TIME OF POSSESSION
On April 5, 1989, in one of the most famous games in NCAA tournament history, 16th-seed Princeton held the ball for most of the game, and lost 50-49 to Georgetown, the best team in the country. On every possession, the Tigers passed the ball, worked their weave, and usually managed to find a decent shot with 2 or 3 seconds remaining on the shot clock. And they almost won, though it was a game that should not have been close
In most games with a clock, “holding the ball” is a strategy employed by the weaker team, not the stronger. Reducing the number of possessions effectively shortens the game and introduces an element of luck. In a shorter game, the weaker team always has a chance. Back before the NCAA introduced a shot clock for basketball, it was not UCLA who would hold the ball for as long as they could, it was the St. Leo’s of the world. In a 4-possession game, St. Leo’s could beat UCLA; in a 120-possession game, UCLA would win by sixty.
Football teams often try to employ the same strategy, especially since Bill Parcells used it to win the 1991 Superbowl with what was probably the worst team ever to win an NFL championship. Holding the ball for 40:33 of the game, the New York Giants eked out a 20-19 win when Buffalo’s Scott Norwood missing a winning fieldgoal attempt in the final seconds. It was this game that made Parcells a certifiable football genius and sent every football coach in America scurrying for ways to manufacture 12-minute drives.
There is an additional factor that makes the strategy attractive. It simply takes more energy to play defense than offense. While this is true in any sport, it is even more important in football because of the extreme demands made on defensive players. Football coaches feel that if they can keep the opposing defense on the field for most of the game, they will wear down, become exhausted and make mistakes. Undoubtedly, there is some truth to this, though it would be difficult to quantify.
However, though reducing the number of possessions can help a football team win a game against a stronger opponent, there are three reasons shortening the game is not as effective a strategy in football.
First, it ain’t easy. On the basketball court, playing keep-away is relatively simple, even for the weaker team. In football, however, executing a 15-play drive that consumes eleven minutes on the clock requires you to advance the ball steadily down the field, getting first downs when you need them to keep the drive going.
Secondly, you are less likely to score. One of the biggest problems in putting together a 15-play drive is the likelihood something will go wrong---a fumble, an interception, a bad call by the refs, or a major penalty. In a 15-play drive, something going very wrong is three times as likely to happen as in a 5-play drive. A 15-play drive is notable BECAUSE it is so rare and difficult to achieve. Defenses, remember, are composed of large, extremely-fit, highly-trained, violent men, and their mission to prevent you from advancing the ball. While it may be possible to fool them or overwhelm them on occasion, a strategy that requires you to do that repeatedly is not likely to succeed. (This is why, by the way, every team that relies on the running game for most of its offense is doomed to failure.)
On September 21, 2009, the Indianapolis Colts beat the Miami Dolphins 27 – 23. The result was not surprising. What was notable about the game was that the Colts had possession of the football for just 14:53. The Dolphins had the ball more than three times as long as the Colts, yet lost. This brings us to the third reason that mitigates against holding the ball, at least in pro football.
Specifically, let’s consider the importance of Peyton Manning to the Colts. He is, after all, the highest-paid player on the team, and certainly the most valuable. It’s a solid organization from top to bottom, of course, but without Manning, it would have virtually no shot at making it to the Superbowl. With Manning, however, it’s one of the favorites. He is at least as important to the Colts as Tom Brady is to the Patriots. The Patriots are another great team, but look what happened last year when Brady was injured. The team played well, and were always dangerous, but they never really had a shot at the title.
Every play Peyton Manning is on the field is a play in which he might get his neck broken. It’s a violent game. And this possibility is something every sane general manager and coach has to take into consideration. If you want to get to the Superbowl, and your most valuable player is Peyton Manning, don’t you want him on the field for fifteen minutes a game rather than forty? Ideally, don’t you want to send him out for a four-play touchdown drive and then sit him down while your cheaper (and somewhat interchangeable) beasts go out for ten minutes to stop the other guys?
In the NFL, teams pay about as much money to the defense as they do to the offense, overall. However, the quarterback and the left tackle (and often the star wide receiver) usually get paid more than anybody else on the team. These three offensive players may get 30% of the team payroll. When you are that heavily invested in three players on the roster, you want to do everything possible to protect them from injury, and one thing you can do is design an offense that puts them in danger as little as possible. When Peyton Manning is your quarterback, the LAST thing you want is a 15-play drive, because it might mean the end of your season.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
In most games with a clock, “holding the ball” is a strategy employed by the weaker team, not the stronger. Reducing the number of possessions effectively shortens the game and introduces an element of luck. In a shorter game, the weaker team always has a chance. Back before the NCAA introduced a shot clock for basketball, it was not UCLA who would hold the ball for as long as they could, it was the St. Leo’s of the world. In a 4-possession game, St. Leo’s could beat UCLA; in a 120-possession game, UCLA would win by sixty.
Football teams often try to employ the same strategy, especially since Bill Parcells used it to win the 1991 Superbowl with what was probably the worst team ever to win an NFL championship. Holding the ball for 40:33 of the game, the New York Giants eked out a 20-19 win when Buffalo’s Scott Norwood missing a winning fieldgoal attempt in the final seconds. It was this game that made Parcells a certifiable football genius and sent every football coach in America scurrying for ways to manufacture 12-minute drives.
There is an additional factor that makes the strategy attractive. It simply takes more energy to play defense than offense. While this is true in any sport, it is even more important in football because of the extreme demands made on defensive players. Football coaches feel that if they can keep the opposing defense on the field for most of the game, they will wear down, become exhausted and make mistakes. Undoubtedly, there is some truth to this, though it would be difficult to quantify.
However, though reducing the number of possessions can help a football team win a game against a stronger opponent, there are three reasons shortening the game is not as effective a strategy in football.
First, it ain’t easy. On the basketball court, playing keep-away is relatively simple, even for the weaker team. In football, however, executing a 15-play drive that consumes eleven minutes on the clock requires you to advance the ball steadily down the field, getting first downs when you need them to keep the drive going.
Secondly, you are less likely to score. One of the biggest problems in putting together a 15-play drive is the likelihood something will go wrong---a fumble, an interception, a bad call by the refs, or a major penalty. In a 15-play drive, something going very wrong is three times as likely to happen as in a 5-play drive. A 15-play drive is notable BECAUSE it is so rare and difficult to achieve. Defenses, remember, are composed of large, extremely-fit, highly-trained, violent men, and their mission to prevent you from advancing the ball. While it may be possible to fool them or overwhelm them on occasion, a strategy that requires you to do that repeatedly is not likely to succeed. (This is why, by the way, every team that relies on the running game for most of its offense is doomed to failure.)
On September 21, 2009, the Indianapolis Colts beat the Miami Dolphins 27 – 23. The result was not surprising. What was notable about the game was that the Colts had possession of the football for just 14:53. The Dolphins had the ball more than three times as long as the Colts, yet lost. This brings us to the third reason that mitigates against holding the ball, at least in pro football.
Specifically, let’s consider the importance of Peyton Manning to the Colts. He is, after all, the highest-paid player on the team, and certainly the most valuable. It’s a solid organization from top to bottom, of course, but without Manning, it would have virtually no shot at making it to the Superbowl. With Manning, however, it’s one of the favorites. He is at least as important to the Colts as Tom Brady is to the Patriots. The Patriots are another great team, but look what happened last year when Brady was injured. The team played well, and were always dangerous, but they never really had a shot at the title.
Every play Peyton Manning is on the field is a play in which he might get his neck broken. It’s a violent game. And this possibility is something every sane general manager and coach has to take into consideration. If you want to get to the Superbowl, and your most valuable player is Peyton Manning, don’t you want him on the field for fifteen minutes a game rather than forty? Ideally, don’t you want to send him out for a four-play touchdown drive and then sit him down while your cheaper (and somewhat interchangeable) beasts go out for ten minutes to stop the other guys?
In the NFL, teams pay about as much money to the defense as they do to the offense, overall. However, the quarterback and the left tackle (and often the star wide receiver) usually get paid more than anybody else on the team. These three offensive players may get 30% of the team payroll. When you are that heavily invested in three players on the roster, you want to do everything possible to protect them from injury, and one thing you can do is design an offense that puts them in danger as little as possible. When Peyton Manning is your quarterback, the LAST thing you want is a 15-play drive, because it might mean the end of your season.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
FAT CATS AND SIPPY CUPS
One recent strand in the debate over Obamacare has been the argument over the expense of the program. Though the President claims great savings will be realized by nationalizing this sector of the economy, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office continues to peg the additional costs at around a trillion bucks over the next ten years. Other estimates are much higher and, of course, all of us know that government programs often cost many times the amount of the initial estimates.
Supporters of nationalization, while not directly addressing this criticism, have cited “obscene profits” currently being reaped by insurance executives, medical facilities, “Big Pharma,” and the like. Look at their millions in stock options and bonuses, we are told. Look at their corporate jets and lavish conventions! There are vast savings to be found simply by cutting these looters and brigands out of the healthcare loop. Obama himself has informed us that doctors who amputate feet and remove tonsils are often motivated to do so by greed alone.
All of which brings me to the sippy-cup aisle at Argus, which I discussed at some length in “Feeding The Maw” (here). In the American marketplace, there are more sippy cups than you can imagine, in different shapes, different sizes, different colors and different designs. There are sippy cups with screw-on tops and snap-on tops, and insulated sippy cups, and sippy cups with different sorts of handles, and sippy cups featuring cartoon characters and cute little animals and letters of the alphabet. Even Argus cannot possibly carry all the different varieties.
As I pointed out in that article, people on opposite ends of the political spectrum can have very different views of the profusion of sippy cups at Argus.
Personally, I regard them as a wondrous manifestation of the “invisible hand” of capitalism first described by Adam Smith. The only reason for the existence of, let’s say, a six ounce, powder-blue, Spongebob sippy cup with a snap-on lid is that there are people who want it. They want it enough to get in their cars, drive to Argus, take one off the shelf and pay money for it. And because these consumers exist, there is also going to be someone somewhere (or many people in many places), who will acquire the raw materials, fabricate them into the desired product, package it, advertise it, and ship it to Argus for sale. The process is entirely voluntary on all sides; in fact, the term “voluntary” makes it sound more willful than it is. It’s more of an autonomic process, like breathing, since it happens without anyone having to think about it or orchestrate it. And it occurs without sippy-cup czars or central planners or the approval of Nancy Pelosi.
For a liberal, however, the reaction is quite different. How many different sippy cups does America really need, they wonder. It’s ridiculous to have so many different designs and colors and shapes and decorations. Look at the inefficiencies and the waste of our resources! And look at all the sippy-cup executives with their $20 cigars and stock options and country clubs and corporate jets! Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if we cut the fat cats out of the system? Just think how much we could save.
It’s the classic Marxist analysis of the free market system, and the analysis is the same whether we’re talking about health care or sippy cups. It’s the people who invent things and make them and sell them, and become rich as a result, who are the problem. They are simply parasites, exploiting the poor schmo who works in the sippy-cup factory (or writes the health insurance policy), and getting wealthy by stealing bread from the mouths of the deserving poor. History, however, has shown us that there is no way other than capitalism to produce things that a) provide people with what they want, and b) create wealth.
There is a very simple reason for this. It’s because the incentives for businessmen and bureaucrats are completely different.
Though “profit” is a dirty word in the White House at the moment, it is only the allure of profit that gives someone the motivation to solve all the problems involved in making a product people desire at a price people will pay. It can’t be easy to make money in the sippy cup business, for example. For starters, barriers to entry are very low and the competition is fierce. In addition to finding a design that will catch the consumer’s eye, you will have to arrange all the details of manufacturing the item (probably in a foreign country), ensuring at all times that your product conforms to every clause and sub-paragraph of the 250 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations pertaining to “Things That Go In A Baby’s Mouth.” You will also have to reach an agreement with Spongebob’s snarling mob of entertainment lawyers (reputedly the meanest in Hollywood) for the rights to use his image. If you then succeed in transporting your sippy cups across thousands of miles of ocean, teeming with pirates, and your shipment is not stolen on an American dock by mobsters or destroyed by careless longshoremen, all you have to do is forge a marketing deal with Wal-Mart or Argus or Costco, none of which will pay you one single penny more than they absolutely have to and all of which will drop you like a white-hot anvil if your Spongebob cups don’t break all sippy cup sales records and excite infants to throw their Elmo cups out of car windows. In addition, you have probably done all this with money borrowed on the security of your other business and your house so that if you fail, you will lose everything you have worked for over the previous twenty years, including your wife, your girlfriend and your Labrador retriever.
A man like this is highly motivated to make the best possible product at the lowest possible price.
But the Sippy Cup Czar will have no such concerns. The desires of customers, for example, will hold little interest since he will preside over a monopoly that will give consumers no other option but to buy their cups from the government. It’s wrong even to call them “customers” or “consumers”---they will be “end-users,” a term we have all become familiar with, which describes the user of a product or service who has no market power in the transaction by which the product or service is acquired. And as we have all learned through bitter experience, if you are ever offered the choice of being an end-user or being waterboarded, the first thing you need to do is to put on your bathing suit.
The Sippy Cup Czar will not be a free agent, of course, and there will be a number of constituencies he will have to attend to. Congressmen, who will constitute his board of directors, will have many “suggestions” on the images that should appear on the cups (perhaps a picture commemorating the Stonewall riots?), the unionized factories that should produce them, the trucking outfits that should transport them, and so on. The Sierra Club will also bring pressure to bear on the Czar, perhaps relating to the carbon usage that the manufacture of sippy cups inevitably involves. One must assume that somewhere along the line, ACORN too will get a bone.
Cost and efficiency will not be an issue because it never is in a bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are not judged in that fashion. The clout of a government official is measured by the size of his budget and the number of people in his agency, which is why there is never even an attempt to save money. If, by accident, a bureaucrat fulfills his mission without spending his entire budget, his appropriation is cut for the next budget cycle and he loses prestige. It’s much safer to go slightly OVER your budget so you can claim you need a much larger number the following year. This is why government programs almost always cost more (and sometimes quite a bit more) than they were supposed to.
Given the results of central economic planning around the world, can there be any doubt what would happen if the government took over the sippy cup industry? There would be one kind of cup, perhaps in two colors, and there would probably be a picture of Rosa Parks on every one. From time to time, there would be an unexplained shortage, and the shelves would be empty for months. Half the cups would leak and occasionally, when little Johnny dropped one on the floor, it would explode. And each cup would cost $12.
Medicare (begun in 1966), now costs about thirteen times more, in real dollars, than it was supposed to. Bush’s Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003 was supposed to cost $400 billion over its first ten years. It costs at least twice that today (it’s difficult to get accurate figures on this), and in its second decade, the program’s costs will quadruple.
Obamacare will be no different, and the CBO’s projected cost of $1 trillion over the next ten years will turn out to be woefully low. The idea that the government can do anything more cheaply than the private sector is absurd, and the claim that vast savings will be obtained by taking away a few jets and spa retreats from evil fat cats is simply a disgraceful appeal to class hatred.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Supporters of nationalization, while not directly addressing this criticism, have cited “obscene profits” currently being reaped by insurance executives, medical facilities, “Big Pharma,” and the like. Look at their millions in stock options and bonuses, we are told. Look at their corporate jets and lavish conventions! There are vast savings to be found simply by cutting these looters and brigands out of the healthcare loop. Obama himself has informed us that doctors who amputate feet and remove tonsils are often motivated to do so by greed alone.
All of which brings me to the sippy-cup aisle at Argus, which I discussed at some length in “Feeding The Maw” (here). In the American marketplace, there are more sippy cups than you can imagine, in different shapes, different sizes, different colors and different designs. There are sippy cups with screw-on tops and snap-on tops, and insulated sippy cups, and sippy cups with different sorts of handles, and sippy cups featuring cartoon characters and cute little animals and letters of the alphabet. Even Argus cannot possibly carry all the different varieties.
As I pointed out in that article, people on opposite ends of the political spectrum can have very different views of the profusion of sippy cups at Argus.
Personally, I regard them as a wondrous manifestation of the “invisible hand” of capitalism first described by Adam Smith. The only reason for the existence of, let’s say, a six ounce, powder-blue, Spongebob sippy cup with a snap-on lid is that there are people who want it. They want it enough to get in their cars, drive to Argus, take one off the shelf and pay money for it. And because these consumers exist, there is also going to be someone somewhere (or many people in many places), who will acquire the raw materials, fabricate them into the desired product, package it, advertise it, and ship it to Argus for sale. The process is entirely voluntary on all sides; in fact, the term “voluntary” makes it sound more willful than it is. It’s more of an autonomic process, like breathing, since it happens without anyone having to think about it or orchestrate it. And it occurs without sippy-cup czars or central planners or the approval of Nancy Pelosi.
For a liberal, however, the reaction is quite different. How many different sippy cups does America really need, they wonder. It’s ridiculous to have so many different designs and colors and shapes and decorations. Look at the inefficiencies and the waste of our resources! And look at all the sippy-cup executives with their $20 cigars and stock options and country clubs and corporate jets! Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if we cut the fat cats out of the system? Just think how much we could save.
It’s the classic Marxist analysis of the free market system, and the analysis is the same whether we’re talking about health care or sippy cups. It’s the people who invent things and make them and sell them, and become rich as a result, who are the problem. They are simply parasites, exploiting the poor schmo who works in the sippy-cup factory (or writes the health insurance policy), and getting wealthy by stealing bread from the mouths of the deserving poor. History, however, has shown us that there is no way other than capitalism to produce things that a) provide people with what they want, and b) create wealth.
There is a very simple reason for this. It’s because the incentives for businessmen and bureaucrats are completely different.
Though “profit” is a dirty word in the White House at the moment, it is only the allure of profit that gives someone the motivation to solve all the problems involved in making a product people desire at a price people will pay. It can’t be easy to make money in the sippy cup business, for example. For starters, barriers to entry are very low and the competition is fierce. In addition to finding a design that will catch the consumer’s eye, you will have to arrange all the details of manufacturing the item (probably in a foreign country), ensuring at all times that your product conforms to every clause and sub-paragraph of the 250 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations pertaining to “Things That Go In A Baby’s Mouth.” You will also have to reach an agreement with Spongebob’s snarling mob of entertainment lawyers (reputedly the meanest in Hollywood) for the rights to use his image. If you then succeed in transporting your sippy cups across thousands of miles of ocean, teeming with pirates, and your shipment is not stolen on an American dock by mobsters or destroyed by careless longshoremen, all you have to do is forge a marketing deal with Wal-Mart or Argus or Costco, none of which will pay you one single penny more than they absolutely have to and all of which will drop you like a white-hot anvil if your Spongebob cups don’t break all sippy cup sales records and excite infants to throw their Elmo cups out of car windows. In addition, you have probably done all this with money borrowed on the security of your other business and your house so that if you fail, you will lose everything you have worked for over the previous twenty years, including your wife, your girlfriend and your Labrador retriever.
A man like this is highly motivated to make the best possible product at the lowest possible price.
But the Sippy Cup Czar will have no such concerns. The desires of customers, for example, will hold little interest since he will preside over a monopoly that will give consumers no other option but to buy their cups from the government. It’s wrong even to call them “customers” or “consumers”---they will be “end-users,” a term we have all become familiar with, which describes the user of a product or service who has no market power in the transaction by which the product or service is acquired. And as we have all learned through bitter experience, if you are ever offered the choice of being an end-user or being waterboarded, the first thing you need to do is to put on your bathing suit.
The Sippy Cup Czar will not be a free agent, of course, and there will be a number of constituencies he will have to attend to. Congressmen, who will constitute his board of directors, will have many “suggestions” on the images that should appear on the cups (perhaps a picture commemorating the Stonewall riots?), the unionized factories that should produce them, the trucking outfits that should transport them, and so on. The Sierra Club will also bring pressure to bear on the Czar, perhaps relating to the carbon usage that the manufacture of sippy cups inevitably involves. One must assume that somewhere along the line, ACORN too will get a bone.
Cost and efficiency will not be an issue because it never is in a bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are not judged in that fashion. The clout of a government official is measured by the size of his budget and the number of people in his agency, which is why there is never even an attempt to save money. If, by accident, a bureaucrat fulfills his mission without spending his entire budget, his appropriation is cut for the next budget cycle and he loses prestige. It’s much safer to go slightly OVER your budget so you can claim you need a much larger number the following year. This is why government programs almost always cost more (and sometimes quite a bit more) than they were supposed to.
Given the results of central economic planning around the world, can there be any doubt what would happen if the government took over the sippy cup industry? There would be one kind of cup, perhaps in two colors, and there would probably be a picture of Rosa Parks on every one. From time to time, there would be an unexplained shortage, and the shelves would be empty for months. Half the cups would leak and occasionally, when little Johnny dropped one on the floor, it would explode. And each cup would cost $12.
Medicare (begun in 1966), now costs about thirteen times more, in real dollars, than it was supposed to. Bush’s Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003 was supposed to cost $400 billion over its first ten years. It costs at least twice that today (it’s difficult to get accurate figures on this), and in its second decade, the program’s costs will quadruple.
Obamacare will be no different, and the CBO’s projected cost of $1 trillion over the next ten years will turn out to be woefully low. The idea that the government can do anything more cheaply than the private sector is absurd, and the claim that vast savings will be obtained by taking away a few jets and spa retreats from evil fat cats is simply a disgraceful appeal to class hatred.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
3. GUESTS
The first week in January, the weight-loss and low-fat items went on sale in order to draw in all the folks who had resolved, on New Year’s Eve, to lose twenty pounds. That’s when I met the Lean Cuisine Lady. She accosted me as I was filling the freezers with cases of the stuff.
“Which one of these was recalled because it was made in China and had pieces of plastic in it?” she wanted to know. She was 5’2,” 95 pounds, with dark beady eyes that never blinked. Her short black hair seemed headed in several directions, as if trying to escape.
I didn’t know the answer to her question. In fact, I didn’t know there had been a recall at all, but I assured her that whatever type of Lean Cuisine it was, and if we had ever stocked it, it was long gone. (With modern inventory systems, any contaminated food with a UPC code is instantly found.) But she still wanted to know, and she was rather insistent about it. Looking at her, taking her all in as it were, it occurred to me that the plastic-infested Lean Cuisines might actually be the kind she wanted because, on her planet, they were a rare delicacy.
She spent 45 minutes at the LC cases, considering the dozens of different flavors and selections. She apparently viewed the information on the nutritional labels as merely starting points in her investigations, and she peppered us with further inquiries that none of us could answer. At one point, she asked rhetorically, “Why don’t they ever tell you the ratio of carbohydrate grams to sodium?” Then she laughed bitterly and returned to her work. Gradually, she filled a shopping cart---a couple hundred dollars worth of Lean Cuisine dinners.
The crew reacted in various ways. Georgette went to lunch. I tried to work around her for a while, then grabbed all the ice cream and went to a different aisle to shelve it. Robin continued to work the LC cases as he patiently and politely answered all her questions, or tried to. Tamika kept working too but tried to push her out of the way with repeated “Excuse me’s.”
You remember the crazy ones, of course. The vast majority of guests (who are never called “customers”) are polite and friendly and just want to know where the peanut butter is, or the mayo, or the motor oil. And if they want to banter for a minute or two, well, that’s fine too.
The Coupon Guy needs more than a minute or two, but I’m always happy to oblige him. Though he’s every bit as insane as the Lean Cuisine Lady, hers is the brooding, muttering, worried-about-gluten sort of lunacy, while his is the manic glee of a man who has been released (perhaps briefly) into the wonders of Argus from a restricted facility and who intends, until his burly keepers arrive, to make the most of it.
No matter how many of us are working in the market area, the Coupon Guy always finds me and, with his stack of coupons in hand, dragoons me for his shopping adventure. The coupons themselves are odd looking items he gets direct from manufacturers. Typically, they say something like “Good for $3.63 on any Kraft product.”
“Show me all your Kraft products,” he begins. This takes five minutes or so, considering they are spread over twenty different aisles. When he has decided, he moves to the next coupon. “OK, now show me everything you have that’s made by Claussen [or Tombstone, or Old El Paso, or Kikoman],” he says, and off we go.
His choices are based in part on his taste preferences, but only in part. The price is much more important. Holding an Oscar Meyer coupon for $3.50, for example, he will not buy a pack of wieners that costs $3.51. “I don’t come here to spend money,” he confides. In his coupon universe, it is essential that everything he obtains is free.
When I ask him where he gets the coupons, he reaches out and grabs a jar of something, randomly, off the shelf. “See this?” he says, showing me the back label. “It’s an 800 number. They all have them. So I call them up and I say I bought something they make and there was something wrong with it.”
At this point, he leans into me to whisper, “Sometimes you have to lie a little bit.” Then he continues, “And a few days later, they send me a coupon! I get $300 worth of these every month! Free beans! Free mayo!” He’s getting excited now, and he grabs my arm. “And it’s a free call! They’re all 800 numbers!!!”
“Well, God bless America,” I say, at which he snaps to attention and executes a crisp salute.
“Brother,” he says, “you got that right. God bless America. Now show me everything you’ve got from Pepperidge Farm.”
T-shirts I’ve seen:
(On a woman who was 5’4” and 280 pounds):
AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL
FOR GOOD LUCK, RUB MY TUMMY
LET’S FLIP A COIN
HEADS, I GET TAIL
TAILS, I GET HEAD
Front: ECAC
Back: I chose Division II
(Sure. Duke offered you a scholarship to play volleyball, but you decided to go to Moravian State instead)
Hang Out
With Your Wang Out
Property of Hogwarts Athletic Dept.
(On a 10-year-old boy):
FREE MY FAMILY
Ask me what I can do with my hands
No Shirt
No Shoes
No Juicy
(Cartoon picture of a man holding a hamburger against his ear):
I’m Talking On My Burger Phone!
(On a woman with a very large chest):
SAY HI TO THE GIRLS
*
(On a short Pakistani-looking guy):
Good things come in small Pakis
I suspect there are more loonies at my Argus than at other places because there is more of just about everything. It’s a very busy place, mostly because there are no other big-box stores for miles in any direction. Also, since it’s on the city’s edge, it draws from both the poorest areas in West Philly and the richest suburbs off the Main Line. There are a number of hospitals and rehab facilities and retirement homes in the area. It’s the closest Argus to a dozen colleges and universities. There’s a large and wealthy Jewish community about a mile away. The Muslim American Society claims there are 200,000 Muslims in Philadelphia (which I doubt), but however many there are, most of them live in Germantown, or North Philly west of Broad St., or West Philly, and my Argus is the closest big-box for all of them. The largest town in American where Indians from India are a majority is three miles away.
The peculiar demographics of the area have a number of curious effects. For one thing, our Back-To-School is bigger than our Christmas, and there can’t be a lot of retail establishments in America where that is the case. Also, the parade of nations that strolls past me every day would make the bar scene in Star Wars look like the crowd on a Tuesday night in a corner taproom in South Philly. You like diversity? We got diversity. You really don’t understand how many different types of people there are in Philadelphia until you see them all in one place. That place is Argus.
Every day, I hear people speaking languages I don’t recognize. I also regularly hear Greek, French, German, Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Polish, Tagalog, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, Ukrainian, and Arabic. Many of the speakers, but not most, are foreign students.
I see yarmulkes every day but Saturday. Often I see orthodox Jewish families with five or six kids, Dad with a beard and all the males in skullcaps. I always steal a glance at the mom to see if she’s wearing a wig, but it’s usually hard to tell.
A while back, I started counting the women in headscarves and the women who are fully veiled. There are some delicate judgments to be made with head coverings, but for census purposes, I am fairly strict. The haven’t-washed-my-hair-this-week do-rag is easy to recognize, as well as the babushka. Those I discard. The I-danced-for-Shatner bangled head adornment is often featured on women from India or the Caribbean, however, and it can be difficult to distinguish (at a glance, anyway) from Islamic dress. In close cases, I will give the woman a second look and determine whether, from a male perspective, it is possible in even a theoretical way to regard her as potentially hot. If so, I assume the purpose of the garment is not modesty.
There are a hundred different words for these garments, and they describe dozens of styles that are quite distinct, so I’ll just give you the basics. “Hijab” is the basic concept of modest dress, and the original and basic meaning of the word is the practice of covering up in public. More commonly, however, “hijab” refers to the headscarf itself since this is the fundamental unit of Islamic modesty for women. It covers the head (including all hair), but not the face.
Hijab come in different shapes and different colors, including patterned prints, and there are several ways to wrap them on the head. There is sufficient stylistic variety in the hijab that a certain “Muslim chic” can be found among young African-American girls who are not, in fact, Muslims. Tamika has girlfriends who wear headscarves just to look cool and to save time fixing their hair every day. These same girls remove it on Saturday night, do up their hair, and hit the clubs.
I see a dozen or more women in headscarves every day, and most of them (the real Muslims) combine it with the abaya, the long overgarment that covers the arms and legs and all the other things that drive men wild. This is truly a diverse group, from America and Turkey and Morocco and Iran and the West Bank and God knows where else.
For the veiled ensemble, there are several options, the most famous of which is the burqa. This features a screen over the eyes so no part of the woman is visible (and her vision is obstructed). I’ve never seen a burqa at Argus and I don’t believe I’ve seen one in Philadelphia. Women here wear the niqab, a veil that covers the face and forehead, but not the eyes. At Argus, the niqab is always black and is worn with a black abaya. I usually see five or six of these; it’s a rare day when I do not see at least one fully-veiled woman.
Unlike the headscarf wearers, none of these women is foreign. As far as I can tell, every one of them is American, Black, English-speaking and native. They sound exactly like all the other sisters who shop at Argus, they just happen to be covered from head to foot (except for their eyes and hands) in black cloth.
These women have always puzzled me and now that I see them every day, they puzzle me even more. I have read that when women leave Saudi Arabia, the first thing they do, once they’ve cleared Saudi airspace, is remove their “coverings.” Makes sense to me. Yet these Americans don the niqab voluntarily.
At least, I assume it’s voluntary, for most of them, anyway. Across the Middle East, there is nothing voluntary about it; women are beaten or killed, often by their own families, for failing to obey the rules of “modesty.” It also happens here in America, in ethnic enclaves of Somalis or Pakistanis. But the women I see in the niqab are not Somalis. They grew up at 10th and Diamond in North Philly and went to Ben Franklin High School. Even if they now happen to be in a situation where they don’t really have a choice about it, they did have a choice at one point in their lives, and they chose to place themselves in what some feminists call “the moving prison.”
I don’t get it. I never have. Anyone can become a Muslim, of course, for perfectly rational and spiritual reasons, but what would a modern American Black woman see in the trappings of 7th century misogyny that are not even especially Islamic? I mean, you can be a perfectly proper and devout Muslim woman without living your life in a bag and walking ten feet behind your husband and carrying all the suitcases in the airport. Isn’t it bad enough you never get to eat a pork chop? I just don’t get it.
Let’s be candid here. It may not be the best thing in the world to be Black and a woman, in America, but if you haven’t let liberals turn you into a welfare-dependent, badly-educated, reparations-demanding single mother and victim, you can be anything you want to be. You can go to college, and you can have a career, and you can make money. MILLIONS OF BLACK WOMEN HAVE DONE SO. This is not 1920, when there were impenetrable barriers that even the cleverest women could not overcome. Today, the only barriers are Democrats telling you there are racists somewhere (Kentucky? Wyoming?) who, for some reason, will hold you back, somehow.
Polygamy in America is not something on which official statistics are kept. It’s a secretive practice that is hard to pick up by handing out a questionnaire asking, “Are you in a plural marriage?” Nevertheless, those who study these things tell us there are more polygamous marriages in Philadelphia than anywhere else in the country---more than Utah, more than Nevada, more than Arizona.
I see them. They shop at Argus. Hubby will be wearing a skullcap, gown and sandals, and the wives will be fully-veiled, in black, shopping and chatting with each other. They will be near Hubby, but not really with him. Then Hubby will glance at them and with a subtle movement of his head, command them to follow as he moves to a different area of the store. They do.
And I think: “Don’t you girls ever watch Oprah?”
Walking past aisle B24, a young athletic-looking guy calls me over with a question about ironing boards. He shows me the board he is considering and asks whether a different cover is available. I examine the offerings and tell him no. He could buy a replacement cover, of course, and discard the one that came with the board he wanted, but that would cost another $20. He looks troubled.
“What’s wrong with this cover?” I ask finally.
“It doesn’t match my hallway,” he replies. “It’s just wrong.”
I spend the rest of the day wondering about him. What has happened to guys? I mean, if a guy is buying a couch and he wants it to match his rug---well, OK, I can live with that. I still don’t want that guy on my hockey team, but I can live with it. But an ironing-board cover?
A woman walks by, glances at me, and says, “Hi, how you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Can I help you find something?”
She looks at me, surprised, and says, “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you.” It is only then I see the Bluetooth in her ear.
There are times it seems every shopper at Argus is talking on a cell phone. Not true, of course, but the perception is unavoidable because people who do talk on cell phones in public places intrude on everyone around them. The practice shatters one’s expectations of the line we all have traditionally drawn between public and private behavior.
When you are in a store, or on a bus, or in the bank, and you are surrounded by strangers, you give up a certain level of privacy. People may glance at you, or speak to you in certain ways we all accept as part of the price we pay for living in society. On the other hand, I do not consent to hear the details of someone’s hysterectomy just because I happen to be in a public place.
A young, attractive blond calmly shops as she carries on a lengthy fight with her boyfriend on the phone. “How can you be such a jerk, John?” she says, taking a jug of Tide off the shelf and putting it in her cart. Later, as she examines the hotdogs, I hear, “Do you have any idea how big an asshole you are?”
A college girl on her cell, dispensing moral advice to a girlfriend: “Well, if you’re looking for a simple hook-up with him, that’s OK. But Sue, I’m your friend and I’m just not sure you’re capable of that.”
A woman is pushing her cart with an infant in the seat and a toddler walking alongside. Both are screaming, non-stop, yet she ignores them completely as she shops and chats on her phone. Five of us working in the market actually stop working to marvel at her. I turn to Hayley, who is pregnant, and tell her, “You know, Hayley, if I ever see you shopping and talking on a phone while your kid is screaming, I’m gonna have to smack you.”
“Oh no you won’t,” says Tamika, “’cause I’ll smack her first.”
A fat, loud woman on her cell: “I have to get out of here, Mary. I’m telling you, MY RECTUM HURTS!!!”
I can’t help but notice the tattoos.
I should confess my personal biases here because I am out of step with current sensibilities on this matter. Today, many doctors and lawyers and pillars of the community have tattoos, in addition to the carnival workers, gang members, merchant seamen and felons, who always had them. I see them on middle-aged, respectable-looking women in office-appropriate dresses and sensible pumps, (and I’m not talking about a discrete butterfly or flower---I’m talking about an entire sleeve of design from wrist to shoulder). I see them on college athletes who are bursting with vigor and energy and good health.
But I basically disapprove. I can’t help it. For one thing, my parents were quite clear on the subject. They felt that tattoos were a desecration of the body God gave us, and that people who had them were low-lifes. My father was a veteran of WWII, and he was more lenient toward a guy with an anchor on his shoulder or a “Semper Fi” on his forearm (I am too), but he never entirely approved.
In addition, I grew up in a largely Jewish neighborhood in NE Philly in the 1950’s, and some of the first tattoos I saw as a child were serial numbers on the wrists of concentration-camp survivors. These were some of the saddest people I have ever encountered, and that early experience still makes it difficult for me to view tattoos as fun or cool or hip.
But they’re everywhere. I can count the veiled women and the headscarves and the yarmulkes, but if I tried to count the tattooed people I see every day, I would never get any work done. And these are just the visible ones, of course. Many people still get them in places that are not normally exposed. Also, there are some that are only visible in warm weather---I never see the “license plate” on a girl’s lower back in the winter. (Actually, you don’t see license plates as much in the summer either---they are not as fashionable as they were a few years ago, so girls don’t display them as much.)
And not only are they everywhere, they’re terrible. The vast majority of tattoos I see are ugly and cheap. I don’t care for the artistic ones either, as I’ve confessed, but I can tell the difference. I’m amazed that people who are getting a permanent marking on their bodies won’t take the trouble (and spend a few extra bucks) to find somebody who knows how to do it properly.
I asked Robin about this one day because he’s 22 and very hip and savvy, and I’m not. When I started at Argus, we were the only two guys who worked in the market; the rest were all women. That’s why we’re buddies, and it’s also why we call each other “Girlfriend.”
So I asked him one day if all the tattooed people I see each day had gotten their tats in prison.
“Yeah, they’re nasty, aren’t they? I want to get one someday, but if you’re going to do it, you have to find the right guy.”
“So why are there so many bad ones?” I ask.
“Well, there are tattoo parties, you know, where a bunch of people will get together and hire a guy, so they’re cheap. A lot of people get them at those things. Also, there’s no law that says you have to be smart to get a tattoo.”
The most annoying for me are the cleavage tattoos, which always seem to be words, in script, across the top of the breasts. The quality is generally terrible, which means the words are difficult to read, and you wind up staring at the girl’s chest until you begin to fear you are running the danger of getting slapped in the puss, or at least eliciting the dreaded, “What the hell are YOU looking at???” It’s not fair, really. They’re a hazard to navigation. I mean, they get the damn tattoos, and then they wear a plunging neckline to show them off, and then innocent bystanders like me are put at risk.
There was, however, one cleavage tat I will never forget. The girl was pleasant enough to look at, though perhaps a bit plump, and lying horizontally across the top of her breasts was a tattoo of a red, long-stemmed rose. It was a well-executed drawing, in muted tones, and had obviously been done with care by a tattooist with some artistic ability. The highlight, however, was the low-cut pastel jersey she wore. On it, repeated twice, was the same horizontal long-stemmed rose.
Though I spend most of my time putting products on shelves, rearranging displays, and so on, the most important job for all of us is to help guests find whatever it is they are seeking. Ignoring somebody, or blowing them off because you’re too busy, is just unthinkable, and I assume any employee who did it would be fired on the spot. Also, one of the few psychic rewards in a job like this comes when you have actually answered a question or found them the Pop-Tarts, and they thank you. It’s a little thing, but it’s a reaffirmation that civility can exist in what is sometimes a harsh world.
I was shelving some cookies one day when a 60ish woman asked me where we keep the bath mats, so I stepped away from what I was doing and started leading her to the right area. As people sometimes do, she said, “Sorry to take you away from your work.”
“Ma’am,” I said, “your satisfaction is my highest priority.”
We walked another couple steps as she thought about that. “You know,” she said, “it’s been a long time since a man said that to me.”
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
“Which one of these was recalled because it was made in China and had pieces of plastic in it?” she wanted to know. She was 5’2,” 95 pounds, with dark beady eyes that never blinked. Her short black hair seemed headed in several directions, as if trying to escape.
I didn’t know the answer to her question. In fact, I didn’t know there had been a recall at all, but I assured her that whatever type of Lean Cuisine it was, and if we had ever stocked it, it was long gone. (With modern inventory systems, any contaminated food with a UPC code is instantly found.) But she still wanted to know, and she was rather insistent about it. Looking at her, taking her all in as it were, it occurred to me that the plastic-infested Lean Cuisines might actually be the kind she wanted because, on her planet, they were a rare delicacy.
She spent 45 minutes at the LC cases, considering the dozens of different flavors and selections. She apparently viewed the information on the nutritional labels as merely starting points in her investigations, and she peppered us with further inquiries that none of us could answer. At one point, she asked rhetorically, “Why don’t they ever tell you the ratio of carbohydrate grams to sodium?” Then she laughed bitterly and returned to her work. Gradually, she filled a shopping cart---a couple hundred dollars worth of Lean Cuisine dinners.
The crew reacted in various ways. Georgette went to lunch. I tried to work around her for a while, then grabbed all the ice cream and went to a different aisle to shelve it. Robin continued to work the LC cases as he patiently and politely answered all her questions, or tried to. Tamika kept working too but tried to push her out of the way with repeated “Excuse me’s.”
You remember the crazy ones, of course. The vast majority of guests (who are never called “customers”) are polite and friendly and just want to know where the peanut butter is, or the mayo, or the motor oil. And if they want to banter for a minute or two, well, that’s fine too.
The Coupon Guy needs more than a minute or two, but I’m always happy to oblige him. Though he’s every bit as insane as the Lean Cuisine Lady, hers is the brooding, muttering, worried-about-gluten sort of lunacy, while his is the manic glee of a man who has been released (perhaps briefly) into the wonders of Argus from a restricted facility and who intends, until his burly keepers arrive, to make the most of it.
No matter how many of us are working in the market area, the Coupon Guy always finds me and, with his stack of coupons in hand, dragoons me for his shopping adventure. The coupons themselves are odd looking items he gets direct from manufacturers. Typically, they say something like “Good for $3.63 on any Kraft product.”
“Show me all your Kraft products,” he begins. This takes five minutes or so, considering they are spread over twenty different aisles. When he has decided, he moves to the next coupon. “OK, now show me everything you have that’s made by Claussen [or Tombstone, or Old El Paso, or Kikoman],” he says, and off we go.
His choices are based in part on his taste preferences, but only in part. The price is much more important. Holding an Oscar Meyer coupon for $3.50, for example, he will not buy a pack of wieners that costs $3.51. “I don’t come here to spend money,” he confides. In his coupon universe, it is essential that everything he obtains is free.
When I ask him where he gets the coupons, he reaches out and grabs a jar of something, randomly, off the shelf. “See this?” he says, showing me the back label. “It’s an 800 number. They all have them. So I call them up and I say I bought something they make and there was something wrong with it.”
At this point, he leans into me to whisper, “Sometimes you have to lie a little bit.” Then he continues, “And a few days later, they send me a coupon! I get $300 worth of these every month! Free beans! Free mayo!” He’s getting excited now, and he grabs my arm. “And it’s a free call! They’re all 800 numbers!!!”
“Well, God bless America,” I say, at which he snaps to attention and executes a crisp salute.
“Brother,” he says, “you got that right. God bless America. Now show me everything you’ve got from Pepperidge Farm.”
* * *
T-shirts I’ve seen:
(On a woman who was 5’4” and 280 pounds):
AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL
*
FOR GOOD LUCK, RUB MY TUMMY
*
LET’S FLIP A COIN
HEADS, I GET TAIL
TAILS, I GET HEAD
*
Front: ECAC
Back: I chose Division II
(Sure. Duke offered you a scholarship to play volleyball, but you decided to go to Moravian State instead)
*
Hang Out
With Your Wang Out
*
Property of Hogwarts Athletic Dept.
*
(On a 10-year-old boy):
FREE MY FAMILY
*
Ask me what I can do with my hands
*
No Shirt
No Shoes
No Juicy
*
(Cartoon picture of a man holding a hamburger against his ear):
I’m Talking On My Burger Phone!
*
(On a woman with a very large chest):
SAY HI TO THE GIRLS
*
(On a short Pakistani-looking guy):
Good things come in small Pakis
* * *
I suspect there are more loonies at my Argus than at other places because there is more of just about everything. It’s a very busy place, mostly because there are no other big-box stores for miles in any direction. Also, since it’s on the city’s edge, it draws from both the poorest areas in West Philly and the richest suburbs off the Main Line. There are a number of hospitals and rehab facilities and retirement homes in the area. It’s the closest Argus to a dozen colleges and universities. There’s a large and wealthy Jewish community about a mile away. The Muslim American Society claims there are 200,000 Muslims in Philadelphia (which I doubt), but however many there are, most of them live in Germantown, or North Philly west of Broad St., or West Philly, and my Argus is the closest big-box for all of them. The largest town in American where Indians from India are a majority is three miles away.
The peculiar demographics of the area have a number of curious effects. For one thing, our Back-To-School is bigger than our Christmas, and there can’t be a lot of retail establishments in America where that is the case. Also, the parade of nations that strolls past me every day would make the bar scene in Star Wars look like the crowd on a Tuesday night in a corner taproom in South Philly. You like diversity? We got diversity. You really don’t understand how many different types of people there are in Philadelphia until you see them all in one place. That place is Argus.
Every day, I hear people speaking languages I don’t recognize. I also regularly hear Greek, French, German, Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, Polish, Tagalog, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, Ukrainian, and Arabic. Many of the speakers, but not most, are foreign students.
I see yarmulkes every day but Saturday. Often I see orthodox Jewish families with five or six kids, Dad with a beard and all the males in skullcaps. I always steal a glance at the mom to see if she’s wearing a wig, but it’s usually hard to tell.
A while back, I started counting the women in headscarves and the women who are fully veiled. There are some delicate judgments to be made with head coverings, but for census purposes, I am fairly strict. The haven’t-washed-my-hair-this-week do-rag is easy to recognize, as well as the babushka. Those I discard. The I-danced-for-Shatner bangled head adornment is often featured on women from India or the Caribbean, however, and it can be difficult to distinguish (at a glance, anyway) from Islamic dress. In close cases, I will give the woman a second look and determine whether, from a male perspective, it is possible in even a theoretical way to regard her as potentially hot. If so, I assume the purpose of the garment is not modesty.
There are a hundred different words for these garments, and they describe dozens of styles that are quite distinct, so I’ll just give you the basics. “Hijab” is the basic concept of modest dress, and the original and basic meaning of the word is the practice of covering up in public. More commonly, however, “hijab” refers to the headscarf itself since this is the fundamental unit of Islamic modesty for women. It covers the head (including all hair), but not the face.
Hijab come in different shapes and different colors, including patterned prints, and there are several ways to wrap them on the head. There is sufficient stylistic variety in the hijab that a certain “Muslim chic” can be found among young African-American girls who are not, in fact, Muslims. Tamika has girlfriends who wear headscarves just to look cool and to save time fixing their hair every day. These same girls remove it on Saturday night, do up their hair, and hit the clubs.
I see a dozen or more women in headscarves every day, and most of them (the real Muslims) combine it with the abaya, the long overgarment that covers the arms and legs and all the other things that drive men wild. This is truly a diverse group, from America and Turkey and Morocco and Iran and the West Bank and God knows where else.
For the veiled ensemble, there are several options, the most famous of which is the burqa. This features a screen over the eyes so no part of the woman is visible (and her vision is obstructed). I’ve never seen a burqa at Argus and I don’t believe I’ve seen one in Philadelphia. Women here wear the niqab, a veil that covers the face and forehead, but not the eyes. At Argus, the niqab is always black and is worn with a black abaya. I usually see five or six of these; it’s a rare day when I do not see at least one fully-veiled woman.
Unlike the headscarf wearers, none of these women is foreign. As far as I can tell, every one of them is American, Black, English-speaking and native. They sound exactly like all the other sisters who shop at Argus, they just happen to be covered from head to foot (except for their eyes and hands) in black cloth.
These women have always puzzled me and now that I see them every day, they puzzle me even more. I have read that when women leave Saudi Arabia, the first thing they do, once they’ve cleared Saudi airspace, is remove their “coverings.” Makes sense to me. Yet these Americans don the niqab voluntarily.
At least, I assume it’s voluntary, for most of them, anyway. Across the Middle East, there is nothing voluntary about it; women are beaten or killed, often by their own families, for failing to obey the rules of “modesty.” It also happens here in America, in ethnic enclaves of Somalis or Pakistanis. But the women I see in the niqab are not Somalis. They grew up at 10th and Diamond in North Philly and went to Ben Franklin High School. Even if they now happen to be in a situation where they don’t really have a choice about it, they did have a choice at one point in their lives, and they chose to place themselves in what some feminists call “the moving prison.”
I don’t get it. I never have. Anyone can become a Muslim, of course, for perfectly rational and spiritual reasons, but what would a modern American Black woman see in the trappings of 7th century misogyny that are not even especially Islamic? I mean, you can be a perfectly proper and devout Muslim woman without living your life in a bag and walking ten feet behind your husband and carrying all the suitcases in the airport. Isn’t it bad enough you never get to eat a pork chop? I just don’t get it.
Let’s be candid here. It may not be the best thing in the world to be Black and a woman, in America, but if you haven’t let liberals turn you into a welfare-dependent, badly-educated, reparations-demanding single mother and victim, you can be anything you want to be. You can go to college, and you can have a career, and you can make money. MILLIONS OF BLACK WOMEN HAVE DONE SO. This is not 1920, when there were impenetrable barriers that even the cleverest women could not overcome. Today, the only barriers are Democrats telling you there are racists somewhere (Kentucky? Wyoming?) who, for some reason, will hold you back, somehow.
Polygamy in America is not something on which official statistics are kept. It’s a secretive practice that is hard to pick up by handing out a questionnaire asking, “Are you in a plural marriage?” Nevertheless, those who study these things tell us there are more polygamous marriages in Philadelphia than anywhere else in the country---more than Utah, more than Nevada, more than Arizona.
I see them. They shop at Argus. Hubby will be wearing a skullcap, gown and sandals, and the wives will be fully-veiled, in black, shopping and chatting with each other. They will be near Hubby, but not really with him. Then Hubby will glance at them and with a subtle movement of his head, command them to follow as he moves to a different area of the store. They do.
And I think: “Don’t you girls ever watch Oprah?”
* * *
Walking past aisle B24, a young athletic-looking guy calls me over with a question about ironing boards. He shows me the board he is considering and asks whether a different cover is available. I examine the offerings and tell him no. He could buy a replacement cover, of course, and discard the one that came with the board he wanted, but that would cost another $20. He looks troubled.
“What’s wrong with this cover?” I ask finally.
“It doesn’t match my hallway,” he replies. “It’s just wrong.”
I spend the rest of the day wondering about him. What has happened to guys? I mean, if a guy is buying a couch and he wants it to match his rug---well, OK, I can live with that. I still don’t want that guy on my hockey team, but I can live with it. But an ironing-board cover?
***
A woman walks by, glances at me, and says, “Hi, how you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Can I help you find something?”
She looks at me, surprised, and says, “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you.” It is only then I see the Bluetooth in her ear.
There are times it seems every shopper at Argus is talking on a cell phone. Not true, of course, but the perception is unavoidable because people who do talk on cell phones in public places intrude on everyone around them. The practice shatters one’s expectations of the line we all have traditionally drawn between public and private behavior.
When you are in a store, or on a bus, or in the bank, and you are surrounded by strangers, you give up a certain level of privacy. People may glance at you, or speak to you in certain ways we all accept as part of the price we pay for living in society. On the other hand, I do not consent to hear the details of someone’s hysterectomy just because I happen to be in a public place.
* * *
A young, attractive blond calmly shops as she carries on a lengthy fight with her boyfriend on the phone. “How can you be such a jerk, John?” she says, taking a jug of Tide off the shelf and putting it in her cart. Later, as she examines the hotdogs, I hear, “Do you have any idea how big an asshole you are?”
* * *
A college girl on her cell, dispensing moral advice to a girlfriend: “Well, if you’re looking for a simple hook-up with him, that’s OK. But Sue, I’m your friend and I’m just not sure you’re capable of that.”
* * *
A woman is pushing her cart with an infant in the seat and a toddler walking alongside. Both are screaming, non-stop, yet she ignores them completely as she shops and chats on her phone. Five of us working in the market actually stop working to marvel at her. I turn to Hayley, who is pregnant, and tell her, “You know, Hayley, if I ever see you shopping and talking on a phone while your kid is screaming, I’m gonna have to smack you.”
“Oh no you won’t,” says Tamika, “’cause I’ll smack her first.”
* * *
A fat, loud woman on her cell: “I have to get out of here, Mary. I’m telling you, MY RECTUM HURTS!!!”
* * *
I can’t help but notice the tattoos.
I should confess my personal biases here because I am out of step with current sensibilities on this matter. Today, many doctors and lawyers and pillars of the community have tattoos, in addition to the carnival workers, gang members, merchant seamen and felons, who always had them. I see them on middle-aged, respectable-looking women in office-appropriate dresses and sensible pumps, (and I’m not talking about a discrete butterfly or flower---I’m talking about an entire sleeve of design from wrist to shoulder). I see them on college athletes who are bursting with vigor and energy and good health.
But I basically disapprove. I can’t help it. For one thing, my parents were quite clear on the subject. They felt that tattoos were a desecration of the body God gave us, and that people who had them were low-lifes. My father was a veteran of WWII, and he was more lenient toward a guy with an anchor on his shoulder or a “Semper Fi” on his forearm (I am too), but he never entirely approved.
In addition, I grew up in a largely Jewish neighborhood in NE Philly in the 1950’s, and some of the first tattoos I saw as a child were serial numbers on the wrists of concentration-camp survivors. These were some of the saddest people I have ever encountered, and that early experience still makes it difficult for me to view tattoos as fun or cool or hip.
But they’re everywhere. I can count the veiled women and the headscarves and the yarmulkes, but if I tried to count the tattooed people I see every day, I would never get any work done. And these are just the visible ones, of course. Many people still get them in places that are not normally exposed. Also, there are some that are only visible in warm weather---I never see the “license plate” on a girl’s lower back in the winter. (Actually, you don’t see license plates as much in the summer either---they are not as fashionable as they were a few years ago, so girls don’t display them as much.)
And not only are they everywhere, they’re terrible. The vast majority of tattoos I see are ugly and cheap. I don’t care for the artistic ones either, as I’ve confessed, but I can tell the difference. I’m amazed that people who are getting a permanent marking on their bodies won’t take the trouble (and spend a few extra bucks) to find somebody who knows how to do it properly.
I asked Robin about this one day because he’s 22 and very hip and savvy, and I’m not. When I started at Argus, we were the only two guys who worked in the market; the rest were all women. That’s why we’re buddies, and it’s also why we call each other “Girlfriend.”
So I asked him one day if all the tattooed people I see each day had gotten their tats in prison.
“Yeah, they’re nasty, aren’t they? I want to get one someday, but if you’re going to do it, you have to find the right guy.”
“So why are there so many bad ones?” I ask.
“Well, there are tattoo parties, you know, where a bunch of people will get together and hire a guy, so they’re cheap. A lot of people get them at those things. Also, there’s no law that says you have to be smart to get a tattoo.”
The most annoying for me are the cleavage tattoos, which always seem to be words, in script, across the top of the breasts. The quality is generally terrible, which means the words are difficult to read, and you wind up staring at the girl’s chest until you begin to fear you are running the danger of getting slapped in the puss, or at least eliciting the dreaded, “What the hell are YOU looking at???” It’s not fair, really. They’re a hazard to navigation. I mean, they get the damn tattoos, and then they wear a plunging neckline to show them off, and then innocent bystanders like me are put at risk.
There was, however, one cleavage tat I will never forget. The girl was pleasant enough to look at, though perhaps a bit plump, and lying horizontally across the top of her breasts was a tattoo of a red, long-stemmed rose. It was a well-executed drawing, in muted tones, and had obviously been done with care by a tattooist with some artistic ability. The highlight, however, was the low-cut pastel jersey she wore. On it, repeated twice, was the same horizontal long-stemmed rose.
* * *
Though I spend most of my time putting products on shelves, rearranging displays, and so on, the most important job for all of us is to help guests find whatever it is they are seeking. Ignoring somebody, or blowing them off because you’re too busy, is just unthinkable, and I assume any employee who did it would be fired on the spot. Also, one of the few psychic rewards in a job like this comes when you have actually answered a question or found them the Pop-Tarts, and they thank you. It’s a little thing, but it’s a reaffirmation that civility can exist in what is sometimes a harsh world.
I was shelving some cookies one day when a 60ish woman asked me where we keep the bath mats, so I stepped away from what I was doing and started leading her to the right area. As people sometimes do, she said, “Sorry to take you away from your work.”
“Ma’am,” I said, “your satisfaction is my highest priority.”
We walked another couple steps as she thought about that. “You know,” she said, “it’s been a long time since a man said that to me.”
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Saturday, August 29, 2009
TED KENNEDY---A POTPOURRI
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit down at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of democracy.
---Ted Kennedy, on the floor of the Senate, in a speech about Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court, 7/1/87
I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.
--Ed Klein, former editor, NYT Magazine (on Diane Rehm’s radio show), 8/28/09
We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.
Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.
Who knows — maybe she'd feel it was worth it.
---Melissa Lafsky, Huffington Post, 8/27/09
Like all figures in history - and like those in the Bible, for that matter - Kennedy came with flaws. Moses had a temper. Peter betrayed Jesus. Kennedy had Chappaquiddick, a moment of tremendous moral collapse.
---Joan Vennechi, Boston Globe, 8/27/09
Both a plane crash in Massachusetts in 1964 and the ugly automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 almost cost him his life, and the Chappaquiddick incident ultimately ended his bright prospects for still higher office.
---Ted Sorenson, Time Magazine, 8/26/09
It is after midnight and Kennedy and [Senator Chris] Dodd are just finishing up a long dinner in a private room on the first floor of the restaurant’s annex. They are drunk. Their dates, two very young blondes, leave the table to go to the bathroom. (The dates are drunk too. “They’d always get their girls very, very drunk,” says a former Brasserie waitress.) Betty Loh, who served the foursome, also leaves the room. Raymond Campet, the co-owner of La Brasserie, tells Gaviglio the senators want to see her.
As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following a friendly argument between the senators over the check.
---Michael Kelly, GQ, February, 1990
If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.
---Charles Pierce, Boston Globe, 1/5/03
---Ted Kennedy, on the floor of the Senate, in a speech about Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court, 7/1/87
I don't know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "Have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" That is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.
--Ed Klein, former editor, NYT Magazine (on Diane Rehm’s radio show), 8/28/09
We don't know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she'd have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don't know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.
Still, ignorance doesn't preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn't automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.
Who knows — maybe she'd feel it was worth it.
---Melissa Lafsky, Huffington Post, 8/27/09
Like all figures in history - and like those in the Bible, for that matter - Kennedy came with flaws. Moses had a temper. Peter betrayed Jesus. Kennedy had Chappaquiddick, a moment of tremendous moral collapse.
---Joan Vennechi, Boston Globe, 8/27/09
Both a plane crash in Massachusetts in 1964 and the ugly automobile accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 almost cost him his life, and the Chappaquiddick incident ultimately ended his bright prospects for still higher office.
---Ted Sorenson, Time Magazine, 8/26/09
It is after midnight and Kennedy and [Senator Chris] Dodd are just finishing up a long dinner in a private room on the first floor of the restaurant’s annex. They are drunk. Their dates, two very young blondes, leave the table to go to the bathroom. (The dates are drunk too. “They’d always get their girls very, very drunk,” says a former Brasserie waitress.) Betty Loh, who served the foursome, also leaves the room. Raymond Campet, the co-owner of La Brasserie, tells Gaviglio the senators want to see her.
As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following a friendly argument between the senators over the check.
---Michael Kelly, GQ, February, 1990
If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.
---Charles Pierce, Boston Globe, 1/5/03
Monday, August 24, 2009
VICK, UPDATED
I don’t know anyone who has returned their season tickets to the Eagles or anyone who has been protesting at training camp, and I don’t know anybody who will be picketing at the stadium when the regular season opens. There are such people. There just aren’t a large number of them and I don’t personally know any.
But I do know people who feel the way I do. I’ve talked to a few, and I suspect there are a lot of them. These are people who don’t carry signs or make a spectacle of themselves, but they’re done with the team. They just don’t care anymore. They cannot be entertained by a football team with Michael Vick on it. Maybe they will adopt another NFL team or maybe they will follow the league in a general way or maybe they will just take the season off, but they won’t be Eagles fans, at least not this year.
So here’s what will happen. Eagles games will still be sold out, as they have been for years, but all the ancillary measures of the team’s popularity will be down. Local and national TV ratings will be down and memorabilia sales will plummet. Also, the team (perhaps after an initial flurry of interest), will be less likely to be chosen for national TV games. It’s even possible that local ad rates for Eagles broadcasts will go down. At least, I hope they do.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
But I do know people who feel the way I do. I’ve talked to a few, and I suspect there are a lot of them. These are people who don’t carry signs or make a spectacle of themselves, but they’re done with the team. They just don’t care anymore. They cannot be entertained by a football team with Michael Vick on it. Maybe they will adopt another NFL team or maybe they will follow the league in a general way or maybe they will just take the season off, but they won’t be Eagles fans, at least not this year.
So here’s what will happen. Eagles games will still be sold out, as they have been for years, but all the ancillary measures of the team’s popularity will be down. Local and national TV ratings will be down and memorabilia sales will plummet. Also, the team (perhaps after an initial flurry of interest), will be less likely to be chosen for national TV games. It’s even possible that local ad rates for Eagles broadcasts will go down. At least, I hope they do.
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
Friday, August 21, 2009
PENNANT RACES
Tex and I keep records on our Scrabble games---the results, the scores, the bingos. We’ve been doing it for about two years. He wins three-quarters of the games. I’m good enough to give him competition, which is why he continues to play me, but there’s no question about who is better.
The games I win are almost always those where I get a little bit lucky. I’ll get the s’s, the blanks and other good stuff, while Tex has to look at racks with five n’s on them. And I’ll win those games by 40 or 50 points. When the situation is reversed, and Tex has the luck, he thrashes me by 100 or more. My wins are by relatively small margins; his wins are often blow-outs. If you review our records, and look only at games decided by 100 points or more, Tex wins 95% of them. In other words, his record in blowouts is better than his overall record.
It’s the same in any sport.
In baseball and football and basketball, you always hear a lot of “expert” opinion about the importance of one-run games or games decided by a field goal or less. It’s hooey. It’s always hooey. Of course, it’s never a bad thing to have a great field goal kicker or a 96mph closer (or LeBron with two seconds left), but a team’s record in close games is not a reliable measure of whether that team can win a championship. The St. Louis Cardinals, for example, have a 13-12 record in one-run games so far, but if you think the Cubs are going to catch them in the NL Central, please call me tomorrow and get your money down. The Padres are dreadful this year, at 49-66, but they have a .500 record in one-run games. Close games are often decided by luck---a grounder squirts through the infield, a kick hits the left upright, or Iverson bounces the ball off his foot.
When one team beats another by a large margin, however, it usually means they’re a better team. We tend to remember the huge upset, of course, but what almost always happens when Duke plays St. Leo’s is that Duke wins by 40. The Bengals get clobbered by the Patriots. The Yankees sweep the Royals.
In every sport, championships are most often won by teams with great records in blowouts rather than teams with great records in close games. Usually (like Tex), a good team will have a better record in blowouts than its overall record. A team with a lower winning percentage in blowouts than its overall record makes you wonder whether they’re good, or just temporarily lucky. This simple fact is what allows us, in mid-August, to look at the pennant races and make observations about who is for real and who ain’t. (Note: “blowout” is here defined as a win by five or more runs. All numbers are as of 8-16-09.)
And, of course, my primary concern in all this is my beloved Phillies. And I’m concerned. I thought I was concerned about the Florida Marlins because they’re young and just learning how to win and they’re pretty good already, but now I’m concerned about Atlanta because they have the best record in the NL (21-10) in blowouts. The Marlins are only 15-14 in those games. As for the Phillies, they are 20-17 (.541) in blowouts, which is worse than their overall record of 65-48 (.575). This is not generally a good sign. Last year, the Phillies were 92-70 for a winning percentage of .568; their percentage in blowouts, however, was .600. Teams with worse records in blowouts than their overall record will often fizzle in the playoffs. Last year, the only two playoff teams like that were Milwaukee and the Angels, both of whom lost in the first round. The Angels were especially disappointing since they had the best record in baseball during the regular season.
Concerning the rest of the NL, I’m calling the NL Central for St. Louis. Their lead is only four games, but their record in blowouts is 21-16, while the Cubs’ record in blowouts is only 14-16. That race is over.
I am not as quick to anoint the Dodgers, however. Though they lead the NL West by 4 ½ games, and even though they have a 20-10 record in blowouts, Colorado is 22-12 in blowouts, and is a serious contender. (SF is only a game behind Colorado, but their record in blowouts is only 15-14; I’m discarding them.)
Turning to the AL, one looks first for a reason to doubt the Yankees, but since they have a 20-10 record in blowouts, I don’t see any. Those of you in RedSoxNation, however, have every reason to expect your team to be in the playoffs as well. Boston’s 21-11 (.656) record in laughers is much better than that of Tampa (22-16, .579) and Texas (18-14, .563).
In the West, the Angels may be for real this year, at 22-12 in blowouts.
In the other race, Detroit is leading the weakest division in baseball with a 61-54 record, with 12-18 mark in games decided by 5 or more. Chicago and Minnesota are only .500 teams in those games, but somebody has to win that division, and it’s not going to be the Tigers.
My predictions:
Division winners: Philly, St. Louis, LA, NYY, Chicago, LAA
Wildcards: Colorado, Boston
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
The games I win are almost always those where I get a little bit lucky. I’ll get the s’s, the blanks and other good stuff, while Tex has to look at racks with five n’s on them. And I’ll win those games by 40 or 50 points. When the situation is reversed, and Tex has the luck, he thrashes me by 100 or more. My wins are by relatively small margins; his wins are often blow-outs. If you review our records, and look only at games decided by 100 points or more, Tex wins 95% of them. In other words, his record in blowouts is better than his overall record.
It’s the same in any sport.
In baseball and football and basketball, you always hear a lot of “expert” opinion about the importance of one-run games or games decided by a field goal or less. It’s hooey. It’s always hooey. Of course, it’s never a bad thing to have a great field goal kicker or a 96mph closer (or LeBron with two seconds left), but a team’s record in close games is not a reliable measure of whether that team can win a championship. The St. Louis Cardinals, for example, have a 13-12 record in one-run games so far, but if you think the Cubs are going to catch them in the NL Central, please call me tomorrow and get your money down. The Padres are dreadful this year, at 49-66, but they have a .500 record in one-run games. Close games are often decided by luck---a grounder squirts through the infield, a kick hits the left upright, or Iverson bounces the ball off his foot.
When one team beats another by a large margin, however, it usually means they’re a better team. We tend to remember the huge upset, of course, but what almost always happens when Duke plays St. Leo’s is that Duke wins by 40. The Bengals get clobbered by the Patriots. The Yankees sweep the Royals.
In every sport, championships are most often won by teams with great records in blowouts rather than teams with great records in close games. Usually (like Tex), a good team will have a better record in blowouts than its overall record. A team with a lower winning percentage in blowouts than its overall record makes you wonder whether they’re good, or just temporarily lucky. This simple fact is what allows us, in mid-August, to look at the pennant races and make observations about who is for real and who ain’t. (Note: “blowout” is here defined as a win by five or more runs. All numbers are as of 8-16-09.)
And, of course, my primary concern in all this is my beloved Phillies. And I’m concerned. I thought I was concerned about the Florida Marlins because they’re young and just learning how to win and they’re pretty good already, but now I’m concerned about Atlanta because they have the best record in the NL (21-10) in blowouts. The Marlins are only 15-14 in those games. As for the Phillies, they are 20-17 (.541) in blowouts, which is worse than their overall record of 65-48 (.575). This is not generally a good sign. Last year, the Phillies were 92-70 for a winning percentage of .568; their percentage in blowouts, however, was .600. Teams with worse records in blowouts than their overall record will often fizzle in the playoffs. Last year, the only two playoff teams like that were Milwaukee and the Angels, both of whom lost in the first round. The Angels were especially disappointing since they had the best record in baseball during the regular season.
Concerning the rest of the NL, I’m calling the NL Central for St. Louis. Their lead is only four games, but their record in blowouts is 21-16, while the Cubs’ record in blowouts is only 14-16. That race is over.
I am not as quick to anoint the Dodgers, however. Though they lead the NL West by 4 ½ games, and even though they have a 20-10 record in blowouts, Colorado is 22-12 in blowouts, and is a serious contender. (SF is only a game behind Colorado, but their record in blowouts is only 15-14; I’m discarding them.)
Turning to the AL, one looks first for a reason to doubt the Yankees, but since they have a 20-10 record in blowouts, I don’t see any. Those of you in RedSoxNation, however, have every reason to expect your team to be in the playoffs as well. Boston’s 21-11 (.656) record in laughers is much better than that of Tampa (22-16, .579) and Texas (18-14, .563).
In the West, the Angels may be for real this year, at 22-12 in blowouts.
In the other race, Detroit is leading the weakest division in baseball with a 61-54 record, with 12-18 mark in games decided by 5 or more. Chicago and Minnesota are only .500 teams in those games, but somebody has to win that division, and it’s not going to be the Tigers.
My predictions:
Division winners: Philly, St. Louis, LA, NYY, Chicago, LAA
Wildcards: Colorado, Boston
Copyright2009MichaelKubacki
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