Gigi Datome Has Dunk Blocked By The Backboard

Professional basketball player Luigi "Gigi" Datome is an Italian player who had a brief stint in the NBA playing for the Detroit Pistons and later the Boston Celtics. Unfortunately for Gigi it soon became apparent to the decision makers in the NBA that Gigi, smooth as he might have looked in the European leagues, was truly not ready to compete with the men of the NBA. He lacked the speed and strength to keep up defensively. Unforgivably, against tougher competition with the pressure on, Gigi turned out not to be the deadly three point shooter which he had been marketed as being. Like many players stuck on the far end of the bench Gigi became something of a crowd favorite during his short time in the NBA. I still like to think that he could, in the right situation, offer something to a few teams. But that's neither here nor there. Gigi returned, not so triumphantly I suppose, to European basketball where he resumed being a key member of championship caliber teams. Recently however Gigi showed why as far as the NBA was concerned his presence wasn't missed. Gigi took off for a baseline dunk ala Wilkens/Jordan/Dr. J but somehow managed to have his shot blocked by the backboard. One minute you're in the NBA. The next minute you're the poster child for "Don't try this at home kids" public service announcements. So it goes.

New Yorker Pilot Cartoon

“These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?”

You may have seen this cartoon from the New Yorker magazine. It points out via parody that there really are such things as experts. The obvious comparison is to the election of Trump. An intelligent person wants the expert to be able to do his job without being second guessed by people who lack such expertise. No one wants a non-pilot trying to fly a plane. If you're charged with a crime you want someone who understands and is trained in the law. If your car breaks down then you want it repaired by someone who is mechanically inclined and keeps up with all the relevant certifications. If you discover that you have a life threatening disease then you want someone who has spent the requisite amount of time in medical school and has a proven track record of battling and hopefully curing the malady. If you want to learn how to act or write then your best bet probably is to train under/listen to successful actors or writers. Not many people have an issue with any of that, or at least not many smart people. The issue arises when you try to frame this "let the experts do their thing" idea into a rule of thumb for politics. Not only is that not how our system is set up (the only requirements for holding office tend to be things like age, citizenship and residency) but this sort of comparison misses the point by a country mile. There are indeed objective criteria that qualify someone to call himself a doctor, lawyer, or auto mechanic. If a doctor tells me that doing x, y and z is a bad idea then I should probably listen to him. If a lawyer informs me that the law means such and such then I should probably give a little more weight to that opinion. 

Free Speech and Violence

The whole idea of free speech in the United States and to a lesser extent what is referred to as the West is that the State, that is government authority, can not sanction or prevent people from expressing their views. There are of course exceptions to this. I don't really have an interest in detailing or debating every last single court decision or legal argument around such exceptions. I'm not a lawyer. That's not the point of this post. The basic concept of free speech is that each individual is free to distinguish between truth and fiction, good ideas and bad on his or her own, using the logic, free will and intelligence that he or she has been granted by their Creator. In the US at least (again exceptions duly noted) there is no such thing as blasphemy. That is the state generally can't outlaw your speech because the state says it has bad content or is hateful. You can write nasty things about Jesus or Muhammad or Moses. You can make fun of other races or genders. You can't be arrested or put in jail because of bad thought nor can the state prevent you from speaking because of bad thought. These free speech protections do not apply to private actors nor do they allow you to use free speech as part of other illegal actions and claim that the illegal action was protected because of free speech concerns. Free speech doesn't allow you to demand that other people listen to you. Free speech doesn't mean that you can heckle someone and prevent them from being heard. Free speech doesn't mean that you can't be harshly criticized for what you say. Free speech may not even mean that if you say or write something on your own time and dime which your employer or business partner doesn't like that you may find yourself out of a job or business relationship. If you annoy someone on social media that person is under no obligation to talk to you or let you use their platform. 

Movie Reviews: The Calling

The Calling
directed by Jason Stone

This movie had a pretty good cast but wasted them in a story that is by turns stolid and confusing. It has greater than normal amounts of exposition. But these scenes probably won't make the viewer more interested in the story. This film works the same side of the street as Solace and as Seven. But it's not as good as those films. The film is set in Canada but that's not really all that important to the story. Police Superintendent/Chief  Hazel Micallef (Susan Sarandon) is the top law enforcement officer in the Canadian town of Fort Dundas. Fort Dundas is a small sleepy place where most everyone knows everyone else. About the worst crime Hazel has to deal with is tourists or drivers taking shortcuts over someone else's property. It's just as well because Hazel is definitely in the downshifting area of her life. She's old, embittered due to career and romantic setbacks, burned out and for reasons which are wisely not completely explained is dealing with some serious back pain. As a result of this pain and other emotional problems Hazel has become a high functioning alcoholic and a prescription pill addict. She's low energy. She just wants to go to work, spend all day doing mostly nothing, and go home to have a drink. Waiting to get home before having a drink is not a requirement as far as Hazel is concerned. These failings are generally but not always overlooked by Hazel's live-in mother (Ellen Burstyn) and her perceptive and empathetic if occasionally impatient second-in command (Gil Bellows). We may not all have had run-ins with addicts but many of us have dealt with people who show self-destructive behavior or just do things which work our last nerve. When the object of your irritation is someone whom you love, finding a way to tell them about themselves, let alone getting them to stop the bad behavior can be tricky.

Neil Gorsuch: Should Democrats Fight or Roll Over?

President Donald Trump, and it still feels funny writing that, nominated Neil M. Gorsuch, Appeals court judge from the 10th Circuit, to serve on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch would replace the late Antonin Scalia and restore the Supreme Court to its full roster of nine justices. Gorsuch, is by the estimates of most of those who work or teach in the legal filed, or observe it closely, quite qualified. He has the requisite Ivy League education, pedigree and connections, clerkships, experience and judicial decisions that many would agree that you want in someone who is being considered to serve on the Supreme Court. Most people on the conservative side are predictably thrilled. They see Gorsuch as someone with the intellectual chops of Scalia and the same dedication to conservative outcomes. Of course they would claim that Gorsuch is only correctly applying the law as written. Even some liberal legal scholars are singing the praises of Gorsuch, stating that he's beyond reproach and actually someone even people who may not politically agree with Trump should nonetheless support.

Just as predictably some people on the left are saying that Gorsuch is a bad choice. And they can point to opinions or statements which would certainly back up their stance. In some respects this is all neither here nor there. Trump was not going to nominate a liberal justice. The only concern that many conservatives have is that Gorsuch doesn't turn into a David Souter-i.e. someone nominated and supported by conservatives who reveals himself on the bench to be a less than reliable conservative vote. Most conservatives seem to think that that won't be the case. Under normal conditions it would probably not be worth having a fight over Gorsuch, especially since he's replacing a conservative voice on the Supreme Court, not a liberal one.

Book Reviews: In the Midnight Hour-The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett

In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett
by Tony Fletcher

This was a gift from my brother. This is a beautiful book. As far as I know this is the only complete biography of Wilson Pickett (1941-2006) that exists. There is a quote within the book that really tells you everything about the man who was also known as "Wicked". Picket said in 1979, speaking to another musical journalist that, "James Brown to me is strictly small time. Just some Georgian kid working in some cramped sweaty bar where the stage is so damn small there's only room for him and the drummer.". That Wilson Pickett was quite comfortable calling Soul Brother Number One "small time" and making fun of his show lets you know that if nothing else Pickett had a very healthy ego. It was this ego and drive, along with his earth shattering voice, leonine good looks, and regal stage presence that took him out of the Alabama backwoods to Detroit success and later stardom with New York based Atlantic records. Pickett pioneered the sort of hard soul singing that was strongly based in the black gospel in which he had grown up and first made his mark. Whereas James Brown was a screamer who could sometimes sing, Pickett was a singer who could and did scream in key. Brown might have been funkier but Pickett was soul. I thought the book was at its most interesting when it was detailing Pickett's early days on the Detroit music scene. People who would later become legendary were just kids trying to learn their craft while occasionally getting ripped off along the way. Some famous people went to my neighborhood school. There are also some uncomfortable facts which the book brings up. I knew that Reverend C.L. Franklin, Aretha Franklin's father and a civil rights activist and supporter, had a certain reputation as a ladies' man. I didn't really think less of him for that. Most musicians/celebrities have similar reps when you get right down to it. I didn't know that the good Reverend had fathered a child with a twelve-year old. Ugh. 

There's no evidence that Pickett knew about that sordid history. But it is a fact that the previously devout Pickett, who was a friend to Aretha and sang at the Franklin church, grew tired of singing to drunk people on Sunday mornings. As Pickett told friends, he might as well be performing secular music if that was going to be his audience. There are a few other unpleasant warts revealed but this is not a gossipy salacious tell all type of book. It doesn't dwell on the bad side. It just tells it like it was. 

Donald Trump, John Lewis, Legitimacy, Normalization and The Rust Belt

You may have heard that Democratic Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) ,who also happens to be a civil rights icon, recently stated that he wasn't going to attend the inauguration for Donald Trump in part because he felt that Trump was not the "legitimate" President. As he is prone to do Trump responded with a mostly inaccurate tweet telling Lewis to spend time on his crime ridden district. At this point no one should be surprised that the next President is an incredibly thin skinned individual who takes everything personally. Lewis' views on Trump aside, Lewis has only been to one Republican inauguration after he was elected to Congress. This suggests that Lewis' issues are not so much with Trump as they are with Republicans in general. But Lewis is not alone with his take on Trump's legitimacy. At least 60 Democratic elected officials have said that they won't be attending the inauguration. One writer argues that Clinton is the legitimate President and that courts should intervene to depose Trump. An actress who has feuded with Trump is calling for martial law. Various other intellectuals, bloggers, media and political personalities seemingly spend all day on twitter styling themselves the Resistance, plaintively asking what can be done to prevent Trump from taking office, or arguing that Trump should be arrested for treason. Republicans and conservatives are, in a display of hypocrisy that should surprise exactly no one, are attacking liberals and Democrats for being divisive, saying that everyone should respect the office of the President or saying that being a sore loser diminishes our system of governance. Well.

You should also remember that many conservatives and Republicans steadfastly refused to believe that President Obama was born in the US. This included Donald Trump. Some people also believed that President Obama was a secret Muslim (who for some reason ate pork and attended a Christian church) who wanted to destroy the US from within. Many Republicans still think that and worse about President Obama. Some conservatives could not talk about the President unless they were also calling him and his family apes or monkeys, threatening to kill him, wondering why no one had killed him yet, burning him in effigy, calling him a witch doctor, saying he wasn't their President, or making other statements to let everyone know they rejected Barack Obama as President or as human.