The Yin Blog

Clay Aiken's RNC bashing -- blame MSNBC?

Check out this little spat between former Celebrity Apprentice contestants (not on the same season, though) John Rich and Clay Aiken:

Aiken posted the following comment on Tuesday evening while apparently taking in the Republican National Convention: "Playing drinking game with my brother now. We drink every time we see a black person on screen at the RNC convention. #soberasamormon."

Rich responded, "CLAY! You should be ashamed for racist comments like THAT! WOW." He noted, "I wonder how long it will be till @clayaiken takes that idiotic post down. Clay, you're better than that...I hope."

When Aiken did not respond, Rich fired off yet again: "And to finish it off,  hashtags soberasamormon? I thought your charity was for inclusion, not EXCLUSION. What happened?"

Aiken, who competed on Apprentice this year for the National Inclusion Project (a charity that encourages an integrated environment for disabled and able-bodied children), did respond to that one. "My charity is. Why isn't your party?" he asked, adding a winking emoticon.

Hey, I think I know what happened! Clay Aiken must have been watching the first night of the Republican National Convention on MSNBC, which apparently cut away from every almost every single minority RNC speaker last night. NBC's video archive of notable speeches includes ones by Ann Romney, Chris Christie, John Boehner, Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, and Nikki Haley (who is part-Indian; Asian Indian, that is), but not ones by Artur Davis or Mia Love.

It's always preferable to presume lack of malice where possible. I liked Clay on American Idol and The Celebrity Apprentice. So let's give him the benefit of the doubt and figure that he was watching on MSNBC and that's why he's "sober as a Mormon." (HIS WORDS, NOT MINE)

Terrifying math (global warming and the federal budget)

I've seen a number of Facebook friends link favorably to Bill McKibben's article "Global Warming's Terrifying Math," and it is a certainly terrifying article.

It got me wondering, however, what the overlap is between people who agree with McKibben, and those who are similarly terrified about the massive unfunded liability that the federal government faces with regard to Medicare (not to mention Social Security). Both problems share the feature of requiring significant economic pain now in order to forestall (potentially) greater economic/other pain in the future.

I'm genuinely curious what the overlap is. I haven't canvassed this, but off the top of my head, the only prominent blogger I can think of who has affirmatively expressed concern about both problems is Megan McArdle.

Yes, I *am* an independent, at least, by The Fix's test

Chris Cilizza, a Washington Post political reporter, runs a fun and interesting blog at The Fix. He has a post up today that takes a close look at independent voters and sorts them into four categories: disguised Ds, disguised Rs, detached, and defibrillators (true independents).

Well, I've voted for both Democrats and Republicans (and others) for the White House, so I'd think I'm not really a disguised D or disguised R, but you never know.

Here's why I think I match up with the true independents, whose policy preferences are:

• 62 percent want to hold the line on spending rather than spend more in an effort to create jobs;
• A majority favor legal abortion and gay marriage;
• Most volunteer that “neither” party does a better job representing their views on taxes, or foreign policy. They feel especially strongly that neither party is working for them on the economy and the deficit.

That is 3 out of 3 for me. I especially agree with the last policy point.

By contrast, I'm about 0.5 out of 2 with disguised Republicans, maybe 2.5 out of 6 with disguised Democrats, and about 2.5 out of 5 with the detached crowd.

Oregon Drizzles, version 2.0

I took part in a second fantasy football draft (ESPN Public League, 8 teams) and ended up with the following team and evaluation from FootballGuys:

QB: Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III, Matt Ryan
RB: Ray Rice, DeMarco Murray, Ryan Mathews, Willis McGahee, David Wilson
WR: Julio Jones, Dez Bryant, Torrey Smith, Antonio Brown, Reggie Wayne
TE: Tony Gonzalez
PK: Sebastian Janikowski
TD: San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers

Overview:

Congratulations! You seem to have grabbed quality players at every turn of this draft. It's rare indeed to be better than the average team at the three core positions (quarterback, running back and receiver), but we think this team is.

You must be among the favorites in this league and have positioned yourself to grab one of the playoff spots. But before you start engraving the trophy, realize that the draft is not the end of the story. Things can and do go wrong, so you need to remain diligent throughout the year to ensure you remain strong until the playoffs.

Players we particularly like on this team include Julio Jones, Robert Griffin III, Cam Newton, Dez Bryant, DeMarco Murray, Antonio Brown, Ryan Mathews, and the Packers defense. We have all these guys ranked ahead of where they are typically being drafted.

Bottom line:

• With great inseason management, we think you have about a 90 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With good inseason management, we think you have about a 85 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With average inseason management, we think you have a 80 percent chance of making the playoffs.

 

2012 Oregon Drizzles fantasy football team

This morning, my assistant GM (i.e., my 8 year old son) and I took part in a fantasy football draft in a league run by Professor Bainbridge. We picked 11th out of 12 teams, which kind of wiped out my initial plan of drafting either a top 3 QB (Rodgers, Brees, or Brady) or Calvin "Megatron" Johnson. In fact, by the time it got to me, after players I'd excluded because of injury concerns, etc., the top two choices were TEs -- Rob Gronkowski or Jimmy Graham(!).

Yeah, I didn't like the idea of spending a first round pick on a TE, but I went ahead and picked Gronk.

After that, my picks went:

Larry Fitzgerald (WR). I wasn't too keen on this pick either, given the considerable disaster that makes up the Arizona QB situation, but Fitz had a nice year last year with the same problem. And it's a PPR league, so he should do well.

Mike Wallace (WR). I felt like I should take a RB here, but no one jumped out.

Michael Turner (RB). Not feeling good about having him as my top RB.

Tony Romo (QB). Going into the draft, my son N said, "Maybe we should take Tom Brady." (This was before we found out our drafting position.) I said there were three really good QBs, but if we didn't get one of those, we should wait because there were lots of good ones. I did say, however, that I was worried about Romo because his most reliable receiver, Jason Witten, is out possibly for the year with a spleen injury. Naturally, we ended up taking Romo.

Frank Gore (RB). I seem to recall times when Gore was a monster. I feel those were years past.

Michael Bush (RB). Unfortunately, this isn't a spread offense game where you can keep rotating RBs. Quantity does not beat quality. However, maybe Forte blows up or something.

Roy Helu (RB). We were in the middle of lunch, so some of these picks were made quite quickly.

Green Bay (D/ST). I had thought about taking SF a few picks ago, but there was a run of D/STs at this point, and I didn't want to get left with the dregs.

Santonio Holmes (WR). Just some bye week insurance.

Nate Washington (WR). Surprised at how many yards he had last year.

Matt Schaub (QB). Hopefully, he'll last long enough for me to use during Romo's bye week, if not other weeks when Romo has a tough matchup.

Rashard Mendenhall (RB). This guy was my first round pick last year (in a different league). Obviously, a crushing disappointment. I took a flier on him just in case he can regain some of his 2010 form in the later part of the season.

Buffalo (D/ST). Dunno, they seem okay, and cold/bad weather should help them later in the season.

Mike Nugent (K). Is there any difference in kickers?

FootballGuys.com has this to say about my team:

Your starting lineup is respectable, but the lack of depth is a serious problem. If you're lucky enough to avoid the injury bug, you might be OK. But that's a tough thing to have to count on.

To make this team into a serious contender, you are going to need to be extremely active in trades and on the waiver wire. You esentially need to turn over significant parts of this roster. Last year running backs like Michael Bush, Darren Sproles, and Fred Jackson all could be had dirt cheap at the draft. Additionally, wide receivers like Victor Cruz and Laurent Robinson were available after a lot of the drafts. Quarterbacks like Cam Newton last season, Michael Vick in 2010, Brett Favre in 2009, Matt Cassel in 2008, and Derek Anderson in 2007 could all be had cheap just after draft time. You are likely going to need to land many of this year's top waiver plays to make any significant noise, so pay close attention to increased workloads, targets, injuries, etc.

 Players we particularly like on this team include Nate Washington, the Packers defense, and the Bills defense. We have all these guys ranked ahead of where they are typically being drafted.

Bottom line:

• With great inseason management, we think you have about a 55 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With good inseason management, we think you have about a 40 percent chance of making the playoffs.
• With average inseason management, we think you have a 19 percent chance of making the playoffs.

 

Can you separate actors from characters?

One of my favorite current TV shows is USA Network's "White Collar."

It's kind of like a TV version of what would happen after the ending of that Leonardo DiCaprio movie Catch Me If You Can, where a convicted con artist ends up helping the FBI catch other cons. The con in question, Neal Caffrey, is a smooth, debonair, expert at all trades played by Matt Bomer. His FBI handler, Peter Burke, is played by Tim DeKay. 

Bomer is hunky enough to have been cast as one of the, um, performers in this summer's male stripper movie Magic Mike, and his character Caffrey is played as charming and irresistible to women, including a particular insurance investigator played by the somewhat anoxeric-looking Hilarie Burton.

I don't think it was a secret that Bomer is gay, but he did come out relatively recently in a very low-key way. A commenter on the TiVo Community Forum wrote in response:

We won't be watching. Matt Bomer's coming out pretty much shattered the sense of romance I had about the series.

Don't get me wrong... I think he should be able to live any way he wants to in his private life. It's just too much of a stretch for me to watch him playing a debonaire ladies' man.

Someone else then replied:

I know exactly what you mean.

I used to think I loved Firefly, but then I found out that Nathan Fillion was only faking being a spaceship captain, and I realized the show sucked. 

Ha ha ha!

But assuming good faith on the part of the first commenter (i.e., that it wasn't an anti-gay rant), how much separation can a viewer draw between an actor and a character? There are a lot of factors that go into this, chief among them the thespian skills of the actor in question. Take Top Gun. I've always thought the flying scenes were fantastic, but that the ground scenes, especially the ones between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis, were awful. Now that McGillis has come out as gay (in 2009), maybe part of the explanation is that she wasn't a good enough actress to generate chemistry with Cruise.

Of course, Top Gun is kind of the reverse situation from White Collar, since in 1986, I certainly didn't know that McGillis was gay; I just happened to pick up on the lame-o ground scenes. In White Collar, by contrast, I now know that Bomer is gay, but in fact, I have no trouble disassociating the actor Bomer from the character Caffrey.

Besides Bomer, there's a much bigger actor/character separation controversy going on right now. I speak, of course, of the Kristen Stewart/Robert Pattinson/Twilight scandal. I gather that some number of Twilight fans are heartbroken that Stewart cheated(?) on Pattinson, as if this would also mean that Bella cheated on Edward. I don't quite get it. They're actors!

I guess I have a relatively high threshold for disassociating actors from their characters. I mean, I find Tom Cruise to exhibit some very strange behavior, and I thought his public criticism of Brooke Shields following her admission of post-partum depression to be quite nasty. I thought the jumping on Oprah's couch to proclaim his love for Katie Holmes was very weird. Despite all that, I've enjoyed many of Cruise's movies, and when I watch them, I don't find myself thinking, What a weirdo. (I do wonder why he's playing 6'5" Jack Reacher in the forthcoming movie, but I'll probably give it a chance.)

However, I do have my limits. I don't think I can watch another Mel Gibson movie.

NBC and Olympic (indoor) volleyball

Dear NBC:

I realize I am probably in the minority here, but some of us do like watching indoor volleyball at the Olympics, and indeed, even prefer it to watching beach volleyball. (Not to take anything away from the skills and athleticism of the beach volleyball players.) It was annoying enough that indoor volleyball was relegated to the daytime "live" hours only, or the 12:30 am telecast.

And the U.S. women's volleyball team was dominant, crushing everyone on its way to the gold medal match against Brazil.

Finally, that match was designated for prime time airing. And yet, even there, you screwed things up!

Showing the first game, where the U.S thrashed Brazil, made it seem like a foregone conclusion that we'd get the gold. Then there was a cutaway to Bob Costas, announcing upcoming NBC programming Sunday morning, and then he matter-of-factly said that we would be rejoining the match, with Brazil now up 2 sets to 1.

Wha????

Not only that, when we "rejoined" the match, it was 18-11 in favor of Brazil in set 4. So between where we left off and where we picked up, either Brazil started playing out of its mind or the U.S. fell apart or both, but we viewers were shown . . . nothing.

At some point, one of the announcers said something like, "This is one of the most amazing comebacks I've ever seen."

Yeah? Well, I would've liked to have seen it too.

What is it with USC (current and ex-) coaches?

Check this out -- today's USA Today has not one, but two stories with USC football connections, and neither one makes the subject look good.

First, we have the Pete Carroll-coached Seattle Seahawks admitting that the team broke an NFL rule by having new signee Terrell Owens in pads on his first practice day. Apparently, that's not allowed until day 4. Ah, well, that does sound like kind of nitpicky rule.

So on to the other story. Here we see that current USC football coach Lane Kiffin said publicly that he would not vote for USC #1 in the first preseason poll, but in fact, he did. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he lied, since the exact quote is "I would not vote USC no. 1, I can tell you that." That is, he didn't say, "I didn't vote USC no. 1." You could argue in a Clintonesque way that the use of the conditional "would" denotes a hypothetical situation, which does support his contention that he was speaking as if he were not the USC coach.

Still, he should have stopped there, instead of continuing on with further explanation:

When everybody has the same record, I can't go into a meeting with our players and have them say, 'You put that team and that team ahead of us.' That's why I did that.

As the USA Today story noted, how would the players find out? The vote is secret, unless you publicly lie, in which case the paper will burn your confidentiality.