Incidentally, did you see the look or Roger Goodell's face?

Just a quick hit before I get out the door to go to work.

Did you get a clear look at Roger Goodell's face as he exited the court building yesterday? He looked like someone had kicked him in the balls with an iron boot, and then hit him with a vicious upper-cut to the jaw. That was a look of profound distress, like he was trying to shake off one hell of a hit.

I am not exactly sure who instigated the current labor strife. I don't know if it was the owners who pushed this on the Commish, or if it was the Commish who had the bright idea and proposed it to the owners. In any case, the strategy is not working. The NFL has already lost it's lockout insurance policy from the networks, and now the players have basically defeated the lockout.

I think this has to be viewed as a crisis point for management. Not that it will last forever, but we could have a temporary blast of absolute baseball free agency that could see marquee players like Peyton Manning moving around at NASA moon-shot prices.

If this whole adventure was designed to peel back some labor costs, you just might have another thing coming. This is a very good object lesson in Conservatism. This is the doctrine of unforeseen consequences come home to roost. Don't upset a delicate financial balance when you have one. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Don't sew to the wind.

These guys sewed to the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind in the next 72 hours. Folks, all hell is going to break loose when the 8th Circuit orders the injunctive relief to be implemented.

Rush Limbaugh and the PC HQ of the NFL

When I got home from work last night, I was rather amazed by some of the things I saw on ESPN. Less so with the NFL network. Before playing a nice game of "He said, She said" let us establish the ground rules for the interpretation of PC statements.

First, let us forever dismiss in the Kindergarten of social inquiry the preposterous notion that PC is about being Liberal. That is simply not true. Second, we must dismiss the misguided theory that PC is about avoiding offending anyone. Third, let us also dismiss, with some consideration, the idea that PC is about establishing a fascist-enforced liberal orthodoxy of speech and thought. That was almost true for a time during the early 1990s.

No folks, PC is not about any of those things. Rather, it is about outright intellectual dishonesty. It is about not saying what you think. It is about not dropping a card which can be used against you at a later time; ostensibly when you are running for office, or when you need a favor. It is about making ambiguous statements that people can interpret as they please, without clarity. This allows you to become all things to all people. That is something most politicians want to do.

Did Roger Goodell say he would oppose Rush Limbaugh as an NFL owner? Nope. You read that into his statements. You had some help. Remember PC is about outright intellectual dishonesty, and making unclear statements that people can read as they will. Did Jim Irsay say that he was a liberal and would never allow a conservative to buy an NFL franchise? Nope. You may have interpreted it that way, but you would be wrong.

No folks, what these two gentlemen said was more like this: "We of the NFL market a product. We want to sell to everybody. We have a lot of Black customers. Right or wrong, Black folks tend to hate Rush. Ergo, we just can't allow him in the organization because he just might spoil one segment of the market. We don't want that."

When you strip the unclarity from Roger's statements, he basically said that the NFL cannot afford to have a highly political owner of any type. That's all he said. Any highly political dude is going to be controversial with some segment of the vast NFL market. Ergo any highly political owner would polarize the NFL market. This cannot be allowed. It would be bad for marketing.

Let's do three bits of truth telling while we are at this. I hate PC with all my heart and soul, so let me be brutally honest with you.

1. Reports of Rush Limbaugh's racism are vastly over-stated. Regrettably, the Black community--or at least certain bad leaders like Jessie Jackson--have had a tendency to pull the race card against any guy who might oppose social welfare policy or affirmative action. Any opposition to these two planks gets you blacklisted as a racist immediately. There is a massive logical fallacy in this reasoning, but this has always been the argument.
2. Reports of the NFL's anti-racism are fairly exaggerated. If you could really see inside the minds of some NFL owners, you would find a degree of racism there that would dwarf anything inside the mind of Rush Limbaugh.
3. Owners are going to be required to be a-political for marketing reasons, not for any egalitarian reasons. It's a financial thing. It has nothing to do with ideology.

So what about the famous Donovan McNab statements made by Limbaugh? Truth be told, he was absolutely and completely right. Those statements were made in the run up to the 2004 Super Bowl which featured the Eagles and the Patriots. Donovan's horrendous performance in the 4th quarter sure justified everything Rush said about Donovan. Donovan made Rush look great in that terrible 4th Quarter.

Do you remember the game? Did you watch the game? Did you actually really watch the game? I saw the Eagle defense absolutely hammering the Patriot offense by the 4th quarter. The Patriots were on the Ropes. The Eagle offense had ample opportunity to win that game in the 4th quarter. They did not. Terrible passing and horrendous clock management by McNabb lost the game for the Eagles. It was one of the most pitiful performances I have ever seen by a QB in the clutch moments of a game.

I am not the only one who knows this to be the fact of the matter. Why don't you consult Terrel Owens about this question. He sure felt that way, and with good reason. Donovan fucked it up. Instead of admitting that Donovan fucked up the Super Bowl, the NFL powers that be label Terrel a big trouble maker, they throw Rush off of ESPN, and they deride all the Philly fans who know that Donovan fucked the game up.

To this day, many Eagle fans know they cannot win the Super Bowl with McNabb at the helm. They know this because of that terrible Super Bowl performance. Both ESPN and the NFL Network continue to beat Philly fans for expressing themselves on this subject.

You know why? Because it messes up the marketing campaign, that's why.

Oh God, how I hate twitter!

Of all the preposterous foolishness the Internet has given rise to, Twitter takes the cake. I know that is saying an awful lot, but I believe it is true. I can just here my critics now saying, "Oh come on, Dave! The Internet gave rise to the German Scat flick! Surely Twitter is not that bad." No, Twitter is worse.

Do you realize what this is? It is collection of Morons writing three lines of bullshit a couple of times each day. That is all. Only this and nothing more. You follow people who write three lines of bullshit several times per day. This is evidently a public diary, and the new spin on social networking. People boast that they have 20,000 people following their tweets. They boast that they are one of the top 1,000 twits on twitter.

WTF...?

Do you really believe that 20,000 people read your 3 bullshit lines 3 times per day? If you do, I have a nice bridge on the moon I would like to sell you. It has a lovely view of the lunar sea and thousands of commuter cars must cross it each day... at a nice toll.

Do really believe that any of the celebs are actually letting you in on anything truly personal, private or intimate in their lives? Do you believe they are psychologically naked before you? Do you really believe you are closer to the celebs because of this? If you do, you probably also believe that the Republicans are conservative, and that the Democrats are liberal, and they are really opposed to each other on the fundamentals.

All of this would be okay for the genetically impoverished fucktards of the world, save 2 serious problems.

1. The NFL network is covering the tweet of the day. Goodell is also tweeting (allegedly).
2. We now have absolute assholes on websites reporting on twitter, these blogs about micro-blogging events are polluting and corrupting my custom news page on new.google.com
3. There is a heavy flow of this bullshit appearing on the default new.google.com

I cannot believe the NFL network is wasting time with the tweet of the day. I cannot believe I am going to have re-jigger my custom news page to eliminate any and all rubbish from twitter.

So why fight it, Dave? Why be upset about it? Because they are wasting my time with meaningless babble about nothing. I do not care if you are all into it, and sharing a delicious (but brief) fad-mania with each other. I don't want to waste the minutes of my life discovering:

• That a Corner Back from Tampa Bay had to available between 9:00am and 4:00pm for the arrival of the Cable TV man. Rich Eisen was wonderful enough to pitch that in for his buddies at the DirectTV company.
  
• That my main man Steven Jackson is "totally being fatty-boy" or that he had a good workout and dropped 6 pounds.
• That Kim Kadashian has a new workout DVD called 'fit into your jeans by Friday' and she wants Reggie Bush to try it out.
• That Heidi Montag and Miley Cyrus are in a twittermance... WTF...?

If you want to see the insane level that this depravity has reached just have a look here. The notion is to get people to visit the MTV website by insinuating that Heidi Montag and Miley Cyrus are beginning a lesbian relationship, when nothing of the kind is actually taking place.

But the Ultra-Gay clientele of MTV would like that, wouldn't they?

Let this be a lesson to you twits out there: If you cannot express yourself clearly in writing, you should not be writing. Anything you jot down in twisted, misshaped, incomprehensible English can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion. You may wind up on the cover of public scandal mags for no valid reason.

You know, I am totally ashamed to admit that Twitter is the very first showcase of the Scala language. It was originally done with Ruby on Rails, but the message queue performance was so bad, they had to abandon ROR. Ruby fans are still consternating about that one, explaining how ROR could have been saved with the use of any open source message queue, but the real-world architects of this website think otherwise.

It is unseemly that such a state-of-the-art language is going to be showcased for the first time in such an incredibly bullshitish fad.