They Call it Uganda
Just the name “Uganda” should tell the educated observer that this country has internal security problems. “Uganda” is the Kiswahili name for the Kingdom of Buganda, which contains less than 20 percent of the Republic of Uganda’s population. A native of Buganda is a muganda, a group of locals are baganda and their language is called Luganda,
Got that?
The Republic of Uganda is named for the homeland of one of its dozen or so ethnic groups translated into the language of one of the other ethnic groups. In any language, that is pronounced trouble.
If you’re unfamiliar with African geography or history, think about it in European terms. Yugoslavia was a country with a Serb plurality with large helpings of other ethnic groups: Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Albanians and Hungarians. As you may recall, despite some periods of real prosperity, the federation did not end terribly well. The Serbs felt that they should be the dominant group to the consternation of the other nations. Now imagine that in order to soothe Serb demands the great powers had, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, named the country Serbia. (It was actually called the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). The other ethnic groups would have been furious. So suppose that in order to cushion the blow, Wilson, George and Clemenceau decided that the best option was to keep the name Serbia but to have the official name be in Albanian. Would these linguistic gymnastics have prevented the country’s disintegration in World War II and again in the 1990s?
And yet this seems to have been exactly the plan for Uganda. The British named their protectorate after Buganda, whose people make up a bare plurality at around 17 percent of the population, but translated the name to Kiswahili, the speakers of which, are not even a plurality in Uganda and are much better represented in Uganda’s giant neighbors Kenya and Tanzania. Of course, the whole exercise makes a great deal more sense when one considers that the British had no interest in promoting ethnic harmony. Divide and conquer is as British as black pudding.
Still, the British persisted in promoting the fantasy of Uganda as an organic whole. Winston Churchill called the Protectorate “The Pearl of Africa.” For the master of metaphor, a man coined the highly accurate term “Iron Curtain,” it was either a rare failure of imagination or a deliberate misrepresentation. A pearl is the smooth little moon of a jewel that emerges when a tiny irritant, perhaps a grain of sand, becomes lodged in an oyster’s flesh. If Anglophone Africa has a pearl, even in Churchill’s time it would not have been Uganda. A better choice would have been another former British protectorate, Botswana, where a scant population of three million, ethnic homogeneity and the lack of anything of particular value until diamonds were discovered after independence allowed it to emerge as one of the most progressive economies and functional societies on the continent. Uganda, by contrast, resembles what might happen if one crammed more than a dozen grains of sand into a single oyster. If it is a pearl, it is a misshapen one.
A better metaphor for Uganda might be the costume jewelry of Africa. Each element is beautiful and unique. Perhaps Busoga is a feather, Buganda a rhinestone and Acholiland a clasp of gleaming brass. But thrown together they clash garishly, a mismatched trinket on the wrist of a continent that is already mixing polka dots with plaids. Its continuous existence is, as much as anything, based upon the insistence of its leaders and the Westphalian system that it must exist.
It is at this point that I should concede that after six weeks, I know almost nothing first hand about Uganda. Buganda, I more or less understand. I live and work here; I have traveled and relaxed here. While my understanding is flawed, it is about as good as it can be such a short stay. Buganda, however, is not Uganda.
This may come as news to the Baganda, who, due to the sophistication of their ancient civilization, have long dominated neighboring tribes. At the core of Baganda civilization was the kabaka, the absolute monarch. For generations, Buganda enjoyed competent, though not always compassionate, governance because of the nation’s embrace of a strong monarch combined with its rejection of royal primogeniture. Whereas most dynasties pass the crown onto the monarch’s first-born son, the Baganda explicitly forbade the first-born son from becoming kabaka. Instead, a council of advisors chose the next kabaka from among all of the other sons. The kabaka’s polygamy gave advisors a large number of legitimate heirs from whom to choose, creating the likelihood of a truly talented prince taking the throne, instead of a mediocrity blessed only in birth order.
Buganda’s preeminence was not lost on British imperialists who identified the Baganda as a people to be used as the protectorate’s commercial and administrative class, though the Baganda would have a lesser role in the economy than Indians shipped in from their corner of the empire. However, in classic British fashion, the crown separated military power from economic power giving most opportunities in the armed forces to the Northerners who were largely shut out from commerce. The British used the relatively short stature of the Baganda to disqualify most of them from military service. In the long run, having shillings without guns proved disastrous for the Baganda.
Since independence, the Baganda have been stuck in the odd position of dominating commerce, culture and language without ever actually wielding political power. While Kabaka Mutesa II served as the ceremonial President of Uganda after independence, the real power lay with Prime Minister Milton Obote, a Protestant Lango. When the Kabaka and his largely Catholic people declared independence in 1966, Obote and his army chief of staff, a Muslim from the West Nile province named Idi Amin, shelled the Kabaka’s palace, ultimately driving Mutesa II into exile in London. The Kabaka died soon after, perhaps as the result of poisoning, ending any hopes of Baganda sovereignty, much less hegemony, and solidifying Obote’s position as the most hated man in Buganda.
When Amin overthrew Obote in 1971 he became, at least for a while, a hero to many Baganda by virtue of his outstanding quality of not being Obote. His key role in the attack on the kabaka’s palace was largely forgotten. However, he was a homicidal lunatic, who killed 300,000 people, and deported the Indian population of 70,000 before being deposed by the Tanzanian army in 1979 after an ill-advised land grab.
Still, Amin, internationally reviled as one of history’s great villains, is remembered more fondly in Buganda than in other areas of the south. Perhaps this is because Obote took another 100,000 lives, many of them Baganda, after returning to power in 1981 following a series of short-lived presidents.
One Muganda, who is too young to remember Amin, responded to a question about her opinion of the former dictator by pointing out “that guy, if you listen to his speeches, was so funny.”
It is a peculiar choice of words. While there is a certain terrifying comedy to Amin’s daft insistence that he was the rightful King of Scotland, his portrayal of Mussolini in two films, and his friendly advice to Richard Nixon that the best way to deal with Watergate would be to execute Dean, Woodward, Bernstein and friends, “funny” remains a painfully odd adjective. Somehow, it is difficult to image even a fellow Khmer Rouge describing Pol Pot’s wonderful sense of humor, or even the most ardent of Serb nationalists talking about Slobodan Milosevic’s gift for the pun.
Even when Obote’s second reign finally ended and order prevailed, the Baganda did not win power. Instead, the Banyakole tribe from southwestern Uganda ascended. After placing poorly in the rigged 1981 election that returned Obote to power, Yoweri Musseveni, a Banyakole, and his National Revolutionary Movement took to the bush. By the time General Tito Okello deposed Obote in 1985, the NRM already controlled much of the western part of the country, and in 1986, they took Kampala.
The Baganda, have undoubtedly done better under Musseveni than under Obote. The NRM government even restored the monarchy, albeit as a purely ceremonial institution, in 1993. And yet the trend continues. In the country that bears their name, albeit in a foreign tongue, the Baganda remain politically impotent.
However, the dissatisfaction of the Baganda is the least of Uganda’s problems today. Even with Musseveni’s Banyakole tribesmen dominating politics and advancing in commerce, the Baganda are, at a minimum, free to do business, grow crops, tend cattle, and promulgate their ancient culture. If Buganda faces an alienating identity crisis, other regions face more tangible crises as ethnic conflict bloodily persists.
The most pressing security concern comes from across the border in Congo where Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed “prophet of God,” continues to lead the largely Acholi “Lord’s Resistance Army,” in rebellion. The LRA, a force peopled heavily by child soldiers and renowned for mutilating dissident Acholi and anyone else they can, has no political agenda save for the vague manifesto that Kony should rule all of Uganda in accordance with the ten commandments. In many ways, Kony is a grandiose madman in the tradition of Amin. For example, he recently invited Ramoush Hardinaj, the former prime minister of Kosovo and an indicted, though acquitted, war criminal to come to Uganda to mediate between the LRA and Musseveni. Hardinaj has no Africa experience. When it comes to statecraft, Metternich, Kony is not.
In the East, the Karamajong remain among the most traditional of Uganda’s tribes, facing intense pressure to assimilate into the mainstream of Ugandan society, while at the same time continuing with traditions that are, at best, antisocial. The Karamajong believe that all of Uganda’s cattle belong to them. If someone else has a cow, the only possible explanation is that the individual or his ancestors stole a cow from the Karamajong at some point in history. The Karamajong believe this gives them the right and responsibility to take cattle from anyone whenever possible, including fellow Ugandans and nearby Kenyans. Even in some cities, Karamajong carry spears, an ominous warning to anyone whose ancestors might have stolen a cow. Cattle rustling is sadly not a strong basis for economic growth or democratic governance, thus the Karamajong have remained a nation apart within Uganda.
While the Buganda’s problems are not as pressing as the Acholi, the Karamajong or a handful of other tribes, the glittering gem on the costume jewelry that is Uganda remain a troubled people. The restoration of the monarchy and the omnipresent framed photos of the current kabaka hanging on walls throughout Buganda cannot hide Buganda’s identity crisis.
The Baganda, the monarchy’s restoration notwithstanding, appear to suffer from the same problem as many kingdoms and empires that have perished from the Earth. Just as the Austrians struggled mightily to figure out what their country was absent the Hapsburgs and the Serbs struggled to maintain preeminence when Tito’s partisans ended the Karadjordjevic and Obrenevic dynasties’ waltz with power, the Baganda seem to be struggling to determine their role in this hodgepodge of a country. Are they the rightful lords of Uganda or just another of its constituent pieces? Is their destiny their own, or is it tied forever to the future of people from the north with whom they share no language and no culture save that which the British crown imposed?
In light of all of these contradictions and conflicts, all of the division and diversion, it is unsurprising that I have seen fewer national flags in Uganda than in any other African country I have visited. The horizontal stripes of red, yellow and black fly above the government buildings in Kampala, appear in a few hip hop videos and that is about it. The crested crane, the national emblem, that perches in a white circle in the flag’s center does little to unite the country. How can a nation of more than 32 million be represented by a bird that appears in just a tiny sliver of its territory?
Perhaps a better symbol would be the marabou stork, the huge, hideous bird that subsists on the garbage of major cities. It is not that the stork is a scavenger that makes it a fitting totem, but rather that it is a survivor. Despite being a vast and gangly mishmash of seemingly incompatible parts, two huge wings, long pencil legs, a dull red scalp and a yellow needle of a beak, it survives. Somehow this bird that looks as though it was assembled from spare parts holds together, somehow it finds food, somehow its disparate parts, which have nothing in common save a body, manage to do what must be done to live for the next day.
It is inelegant but hearty. It is awkward, but resilient. It is not Buganda, but perhaps it is Uganda.
Tuesday, June 30
Thursday, June 25
Better than a Hole in the Ground
“Good morning,” says the old man. His hands, gnarled from a lifetime of dragging a hoe through hard soil, clutch a dusty plastic bag of clinking change.
“I am ready to put my money in the bank,” he says as he places fistfuls of dirt smeared 500 Uganda Shilling coins on the counter.
This is how a banking crisis ends, with an old man, his life savings and an empty hole in the ground.
For this old timer, the Ugandan banking system has at last become a better risk than a shallow pit in the brittle red earth.
You won’t see this scene repeated in Peoria, Salinas or New Bedford. It can’t happen, because there hasn’t been an American banking crisis—at least not the kind that makes a hole in the ground seem like a shrewd investment.
The U.S. “banking crisis,” for all the pain it’s caused, has played out like a night with three friends and ten bottles of cheap red wine. Banks got good and liquored up on mortgage backed securities, and after that eighth or ninth bottle of wine giving a $500,000 mortgage to someone with no job and no assets seemed like a lark, like giving your watch and house key to the homeless guy who you’re pretty sure is Bill Gates in disguise.
Of course, the next morning it doesn’t seem like the impromptu show of charity was the best idea. If it were Bill Gates, why would he want a $20 watch? Also, one of your buddies is in jail, one is dead and you’ve got tannins eating away at your frontal lobe and some purple stuff on your teeth that is probably wine but could be blood.
The fallout from the binge banking has been terrible. Americans lost their homes, saw their 401Ks become 201Ks and got dropped by employers who couldn’t borrow the money to make payroll. But you know what happened to the bank accounts of average people?
Nothing.
Even if everything else collapsed, people who had put their money in a good old savings or checking account got to keep their money even when their banks drove into the embankment. No one is digging in the back yard. God bless the New Deal.
There’s still a credit crisis in the U.S., which is economically debilitating, but there’s no real banking crisis. Having a credit crisis is like having a kidney stone. It is unbelievably painful, can take a long time to resolve and can make you want to piss yourself, but it’s not going to kill you unless you do something like taking treatment advice from Rush Limbaugh or Rosie O’Donnell instead of experts with long chains of initials after their names. Having a banking crisis, on the other hand, is like getting a railroad spike through the brain—even in the best-case scenario, you are going to be debilitated for a long time.
Let’s take a look at what an actual economic intracranial railroad spike looks like.
It starts with some guys coming to town, any town. Say… Nkokonjeru, Uganda. They probably wear nice suits and may even have a powerful patron, maybe a former mayor. These sharp looking fellows set up a nice building and put a name on it that sounds helpful and reassuring: “Microfinance Bank.” They hold a few events, they answer some questions, and presto! People start giving these guys money for safekeeping. After all, banking shouldn’t just be for the rich, right? And not many in the village can afford the international banks with their fees and minimum balances.
Microfinance Bank provides the community with valuable services, keeping money safe for a nominal fee and maybe even giving out loans to creditworthy customers. They smile when you come in, they keep careful records of every dime and then, one day, they leave.
Poof.
Gone.
There’s nothing but the missing cash to remind you that they were ever even there, that and the certainty that even if you could find them, their political connections make them untouchable, above the law.
This is just about the time, right when the $300 you’ve worked your entire life to save vanishes in a flash of naked greed, that digging a hole starts to seem like pretty savvy investing strategy. A hole may get robbed, but a hole will sure as hell never rob you itself.
This is what an actual banking crisis looks like. It looks like confusion. It looks like betrayal. It looks like a couple of guys in expensive suits laughing themselves silly.
And here’s the kicker. It’s not just that these grifters have hurt their marks; they’ve ransacked a community. People need a place to keep their money; people need access to credit and now that genial George Bailey has ripped off a mask to reveal a sneering Jesse James, who is going to be so brave as to put their money into a bank again? Whom can simple folks keeping shop or sharing crop possibly trust with their money ever again?
Each other.
It turns out we are our brother’s keeper—his bookkeeper.
The Nkokonjeru Savings and Credit Cooperative is four-years-old and three years past the crisis started by the “microfinance bank” across the street. The secret to its success, to its survival, is that it is an old fashioned credit union. The customer is the boss, literally. When a customer joins Nkokonjeru SACCO, as it’s called, he kicks in USh 20,000, about nine dollars. For that he gets a USh 10,000 ownership share, a passbook and a bank membership. And, as Karl Malden always told us in reference to a different financial institution, membership has its privileges. In this case the privileges are attending the annual meeting, voting for the board and running for leadership.
It’s still a struggle though. People remember that they were robbed for a long time. When one asks locals their opinions of banks in general, they’ll often respond matter-of-factly “They steal money.” But the sinister “they” does not include the SACCO. People are signing up with increasing regularity. In the last month, SACCO has signed up to a member a day.
A credit union can’t solve the economic problems of this little rural town. It can’t give the kinds of big loans people need to start businesses that have enough capital to hire people. It can’t pave the road to Kampala or eliminate the West’s domestic agricultural subsidies. But it can, at the very least, earn more trust than a hole in the ground, and when the banks are truly in crisis, being better than a hole should never be taken for granted.
“I am ready to put my money in the bank,” he says as he places fistfuls of dirt smeared 500 Uganda Shilling coins on the counter.
This is how a banking crisis ends, with an old man, his life savings and an empty hole in the ground.
For this old timer, the Ugandan banking system has at last become a better risk than a shallow pit in the brittle red earth.
You won’t see this scene repeated in Peoria, Salinas or New Bedford. It can’t happen, because there hasn’t been an American banking crisis—at least not the kind that makes a hole in the ground seem like a shrewd investment.
The U.S. “banking crisis,” for all the pain it’s caused, has played out like a night with three friends and ten bottles of cheap red wine. Banks got good and liquored up on mortgage backed securities, and after that eighth or ninth bottle of wine giving a $500,000 mortgage to someone with no job and no assets seemed like a lark, like giving your watch and house key to the homeless guy who you’re pretty sure is Bill Gates in disguise.
Of course, the next morning it doesn’t seem like the impromptu show of charity was the best idea. If it were Bill Gates, why would he want a $20 watch? Also, one of your buddies is in jail, one is dead and you’ve got tannins eating away at your frontal lobe and some purple stuff on your teeth that is probably wine but could be blood.
The fallout from the binge banking has been terrible. Americans lost their homes, saw their 401Ks become 201Ks and got dropped by employers who couldn’t borrow the money to make payroll. But you know what happened to the bank accounts of average people?
Nothing.
Even if everything else collapsed, people who had put their money in a good old savings or checking account got to keep their money even when their banks drove into the embankment. No one is digging in the back yard. God bless the New Deal.
There’s still a credit crisis in the U.S., which is economically debilitating, but there’s no real banking crisis. Having a credit crisis is like having a kidney stone. It is unbelievably painful, can take a long time to resolve and can make you want to piss yourself, but it’s not going to kill you unless you do something like taking treatment advice from Rush Limbaugh or Rosie O’Donnell instead of experts with long chains of initials after their names. Having a banking crisis, on the other hand, is like getting a railroad spike through the brain—even in the best-case scenario, you are going to be debilitated for a long time.
Let’s take a look at what an actual economic intracranial railroad spike looks like.
It starts with some guys coming to town, any town. Say… Nkokonjeru, Uganda. They probably wear nice suits and may even have a powerful patron, maybe a former mayor. These sharp looking fellows set up a nice building and put a name on it that sounds helpful and reassuring: “Microfinance Bank.” They hold a few events, they answer some questions, and presto! People start giving these guys money for safekeeping. After all, banking shouldn’t just be for the rich, right? And not many in the village can afford the international banks with their fees and minimum balances.
Microfinance Bank provides the community with valuable services, keeping money safe for a nominal fee and maybe even giving out loans to creditworthy customers. They smile when you come in, they keep careful records of every dime and then, one day, they leave.
Poof.
Gone.
There’s nothing but the missing cash to remind you that they were ever even there, that and the certainty that even if you could find them, their political connections make them untouchable, above the law.
This is just about the time, right when the $300 you’ve worked your entire life to save vanishes in a flash of naked greed, that digging a hole starts to seem like pretty savvy investing strategy. A hole may get robbed, but a hole will sure as hell never rob you itself.
This is what an actual banking crisis looks like. It looks like confusion. It looks like betrayal. It looks like a couple of guys in expensive suits laughing themselves silly.
And here’s the kicker. It’s not just that these grifters have hurt their marks; they’ve ransacked a community. People need a place to keep their money; people need access to credit and now that genial George Bailey has ripped off a mask to reveal a sneering Jesse James, who is going to be so brave as to put their money into a bank again? Whom can simple folks keeping shop or sharing crop possibly trust with their money ever again?
Each other.
It turns out we are our brother’s keeper—his bookkeeper.
The Nkokonjeru Savings and Credit Cooperative is four-years-old and three years past the crisis started by the “microfinance bank” across the street. The secret to its success, to its survival, is that it is an old fashioned credit union. The customer is the boss, literally. When a customer joins Nkokonjeru SACCO, as it’s called, he kicks in USh 20,000, about nine dollars. For that he gets a USh 10,000 ownership share, a passbook and a bank membership. And, as Karl Malden always told us in reference to a different financial institution, membership has its privileges. In this case the privileges are attending the annual meeting, voting for the board and running for leadership.
It’s still a struggle though. People remember that they were robbed for a long time. When one asks locals their opinions of banks in general, they’ll often respond matter-of-factly “They steal money.” But the sinister “they” does not include the SACCO. People are signing up with increasing regularity. In the last month, SACCO has signed up to a member a day.
A credit union can’t solve the economic problems of this little rural town. It can’t give the kinds of big loans people need to start businesses that have enough capital to hire people. It can’t pave the road to Kampala or eliminate the West’s domestic agricultural subsidies. But it can, at the very least, earn more trust than a hole in the ground, and when the banks are truly in crisis, being better than a hole should never be taken for granted.
Monday, June 15
Pay Attention to me, PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!
Yup, I'm in the Philly Inquirer on the subject of Africa and Obama.
Thursday, June 11
The People in the Neighborhood
The Christmas songs string together like lights on a tree. Jingle Bells… Here Comes Santa Claus… They come eight bars at a time, the refrain from one substituting as the verse for another.
The lyrics are missing, too complicated for the simple computer chip that chirps out the melodies to replicate. This is okay; I do not need them. I know the words and what they represent. They represent ice cream.
It is 82 degrees out, it is June, and the sounds of Christmas do not signify the coming of Christ or even of old Saint Nick. Instead of eight tiny reindeer pulling a right jolly old elf and a sled full of toys, there is only a thin Muganda (a person from Uganda’s Buganda region) peddling a bicycle with a worn cooler lashed to the back. The orange cooler is full of a thin pink slush that passes for ice cream in these parts. It is far from the strangest thing that Baganda lash to the back of two-wheel vehicles. For sheer shock value and calorie content, nothing can compare with the two live hogs I once saw strapped to the back of a motorcycle.
The ice cream man is a fixture in Nkokonjeru. He is one of the people in the neighborhood.
When I was a kid, Sesame Street had a bit called “People in the Neighborhood,” wherein a rainbow of Muppets sang about the various people one could find about town.
The fireman’s a person in the neighborhood,
Somehow, it always seemed to be civil servants that you’d meet in the neighborhood. There was never a corporate lawyer or millionaire CEO, which seemed odd when you grew up in a wealthy bedroom community like me. One time, I vaguely recall they had on Martina Navratilova and sung about how the tennis star is a person in the neighborhood, but that didn’t resonate with me either; I was a Chris Everett fan.
If the song failed to describe the experience of walking down the street in Belmont, Massachusetts in the late 1970s, it captures the experience of strolling in Nkokonjeru in 2009 even more poorly. Thus far, I have yet to meet a fireman, a mailman or even a tennis star while walking down the street each day. If I were to retrofit the song for Nkokonjeru, the first 50 verses or so would be about how the shopkeeper is a person in the neighborhood. Walking through the heart of town, one moseys—it is the only way to walk in the equatorial heat—down the red-brown dirt of Main Street, between through two rows of concrete shops. The shops represent what Adam Smith would call a state of perfect competition. Each of the dozens of little shops carries identical goods at identical prices. Contrary to what econ 101 might lead you to believe, it is no basis for a healthy economy. An economy cannot grow when it consist almost entirely of people selling bottles of Coke and three foot lengths of fraying rope to each other. The theory is that under circumstances of perfect condition, with profits reduced to a “normal” rate, people will divert their investment to other avenues, to innovation. That is not how it works here. Instead a profusion of small shops leads to even more small shops. Call it a bodega, a canteen or a general store, but owning a shop seems to be the Ugandan Dream.
And why wouldn’t it be? Talk to any shop keep, and I talk to a lot of them, and it quickly becomes clear that he is doing okay. He is not the richest man in town, but he has a full belly, strong concrete walls and a sturdy iron roof. He is not complaining.
The other people in my neighborhood, the people who have skills and trades rather than shops and trade, do not do as well.
The carpenter is a person in my neighborhood. He’s a person that I meet, when he’s knocked out on his feet.
Before a stack of newly made bed frames and amidst the spicy bouquet of fresh cut wood, signs I would expect of a thriving business, he laments his poverty. In the past year, there have been 10 months where his family has been hungry at least one day. His savings have been reduced to 5,000 shillings per month, about two US dollars. At the same time he aspires to more. When I ask him, as part of a study on the local credit union, what he would like for a loan, he suggests that USh 1,000,000 would be the right sum. He could work his whole life and never pay it back. He will not get the loan. Too bad that he didn’t ask Bank of America for US$ 500,000 to buy a house in Florida in 2007. That loan he could have gotten
The teacher is a person in the neighborhood too. He is more educated than the shop keep, better dressed and more respected. He is also poorer. While Uganda, with its school uniforms and O-levels is more an imitation of British education than American, it has borrowed a few features from the States—poorly paid teachers lecture to classrooms filled to bursting. Whereas the shopkeepers speak confidently about their ability to save 100,000 a month, teachers struggle to save even 10,000. While shopkeepers nap between customers, teachers grade piles of exams written on wafer thin paper between classes.
The nun is a person in my neighborhood.
She is my landlord. I live in a convent. This was not something I ever saw coming. Of all the certainties in my life, the fact that I would never sleep behind convent walls seemed like one of the surest.
Whoops.
When I learned I was going to live in a convent, I asked my mother’s friend Joannie, a former nun in training, what happens when one lived in a convent? From the stories, I had heard, it mostly involves sneaking out to meet guys, which isn’t really my scene. Thankfully, that has not been among my activities thus far, though I have had to jump the gate a time or two.
To say I live in a convent is a bit misleading. I live at a convent, in a guesthouse, safely away from the judging eyes of the penguins. Still, there is no mistaking where I am. Most rooms are decorated with a suitably gruesome crucifix and a piece of construction paper with the recommendation to “Be Still and Know that I am God” or both. And then there is the Library, an old hardwood cabinet, filled with books with names like The Eucharist in the New Testament and copies as far back as 1981 of the periodical God’s Word Today.
It is not by normal living situation, but it is comfortable, dry, electrified and has not only a flush toilet, but half a toilet seat. It is a good setup.
The nuns, each of them a Little Sister of St. Francis of Assisi, are charming. I am glad they are in the neighborhood. They are not, as I intimated earlier, the penguins despised and feared by Catholic school students everywhere. They are kind and clever, and do not even wear black and white, instead sporting beige habits that hide the smudges of Ugandan dirt beautifully.
They are here, 111 years after Catholicism came to Nkokonjeru thanks to Sister Kevin, a tenacious Irish nun, who defied the local witchcraft, thereby winning converts, and fixed much of Nkokonjeru in the Catholic camp. To this day, there are dozens of girls and women in Nkokonjeru named Kevin. Don’t tell them it’s a boy’s name.
The policeman is a person in my neighborhood.
This one might actually fit on Sesame Street. Of course, I don’t see him each day. I have seen him exactly once. As I returned two empty bottles of President beer to one of the many shops on the main drag, a policeman whose great round belly barely fit into his khakis, emerged from the dusty police station to ask if I had any beers for him. I turned the bottles upside down.
“All done,” I said with a shrug.
He burst into laughter. It is possible that if I had offered him a full beer at nine in the morning he would have taken it. One of the police officers, a man with a bad habit of drinking heavily and sleeping with other men’s wives, had gotten himself killed while drunk. After a few too many in a nearby town, he had responded to a request to stay away from another man’s wife, a woman he had known in the past, with a stark drunken refusal. He was ambushed later that night while riding home on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle) and was gutted in a drive by knifing. He did not survive.
These are the people in the neighborhood. Livingstone had it right, Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, shop keeps and carpenters, nuns, and teachers and cops. It’s all right here in my neighborhood. What there isn’t, however, is the prosperity Livingstone imagined. The slave trade, the primary focus of the great missionary’s campaign is long gone, but is that all we can expect?
Nkokonjeru has the three Cs, but that is not enough. For the people of Nkokonjeru to not only survive but prosper they need different people in the neighborhood. The doctor has to be a person in the neighborhood. The factory owner has to be a person in the neighborhood. The lawyer has to be a person in the neighborhood. God help me, even the tennis star could be a person in the neighborhood. The shop keeps are decent people, and then nuns are holy and even the police are cheerful, but this town needs more.
It had more once. There was one shining star to come from Nkokonjeru, a singer named Paul Kafeero, who was perhaps the most famous musician to ever come out of Uganda. His music and videos still play relentlessly around town. The themes of his songs, all of his songs, are girls and his fear of death. He complains that Ugandan women have more lust for chicken and chips than for men, and then explains that this is why he likes white girls. Apparently, white girls don’t like chicken.
After a lifetime of singing about sex and death, he died of AIDS a few years ago. The resulting funeral crowds led to the first traffic jam in Nkokonjeru history. Perhaps, for once, the traffic cop was a person in the neighborhood, though somehow I doubt it. His grave, still lies not far from town. He is Elvis and Graceland, Morrison in Paris; he is the no longer a person in the neighborhood.
Still, I’ll take the dead pop star over a tennis star. I’d just really prefer to have a doctor in the neighborhood.
The lyrics are missing, too complicated for the simple computer chip that chirps out the melodies to replicate. This is okay; I do not need them. I know the words and what they represent. They represent ice cream.
It is 82 degrees out, it is June, and the sounds of Christmas do not signify the coming of Christ or even of old Saint Nick. Instead of eight tiny reindeer pulling a right jolly old elf and a sled full of toys, there is only a thin Muganda (a person from Uganda’s Buganda region) peddling a bicycle with a worn cooler lashed to the back. The orange cooler is full of a thin pink slush that passes for ice cream in these parts. It is far from the strangest thing that Baganda lash to the back of two-wheel vehicles. For sheer shock value and calorie content, nothing can compare with the two live hogs I once saw strapped to the back of a motorcycle.
The ice cream man is a fixture in Nkokonjeru. He is one of the people in the neighborhood.
When I was a kid, Sesame Street had a bit called “People in the Neighborhood,” wherein a rainbow of Muppets sang about the various people one could find about town.
The fireman’s a person in the neighborhood,
In the neighborhood, in the neighborhood,
Well, the fireman’s a person in the neighborhood,
He’s a person that you meet,
When you’re walking down the street,
He’s a person that you meet— each— daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!
Somehow, it always seemed to be civil servants that you’d meet in the neighborhood. There was never a corporate lawyer or millionaire CEO, which seemed odd when you grew up in a wealthy bedroom community like me. One time, I vaguely recall they had on Martina Navratilova and sung about how the tennis star is a person in the neighborhood, but that didn’t resonate with me either; I was a Chris Everett fan.
If the song failed to describe the experience of walking down the street in Belmont, Massachusetts in the late 1970s, it captures the experience of strolling in Nkokonjeru in 2009 even more poorly. Thus far, I have yet to meet a fireman, a mailman or even a tennis star while walking down the street each day. If I were to retrofit the song for Nkokonjeru, the first 50 verses or so would be about how the shopkeeper is a person in the neighborhood. Walking through the heart of town, one moseys—it is the only way to walk in the equatorial heat—down the red-brown dirt of Main Street, between through two rows of concrete shops. The shops represent what Adam Smith would call a state of perfect competition. Each of the dozens of little shops carries identical goods at identical prices. Contrary to what econ 101 might lead you to believe, it is no basis for a healthy economy. An economy cannot grow when it consist almost entirely of people selling bottles of Coke and three foot lengths of fraying rope to each other. The theory is that under circumstances of perfect condition, with profits reduced to a “normal” rate, people will divert their investment to other avenues, to innovation. That is not how it works here. Instead a profusion of small shops leads to even more small shops. Call it a bodega, a canteen or a general store, but owning a shop seems to be the Ugandan Dream.
And why wouldn’t it be? Talk to any shop keep, and I talk to a lot of them, and it quickly becomes clear that he is doing okay. He is not the richest man in town, but he has a full belly, strong concrete walls and a sturdy iron roof. He is not complaining.
The other people in my neighborhood, the people who have skills and trades rather than shops and trade, do not do as well.
The carpenter is a person in my neighborhood. He’s a person that I meet, when he’s knocked out on his feet.
Before a stack of newly made bed frames and amidst the spicy bouquet of fresh cut wood, signs I would expect of a thriving business, he laments his poverty. In the past year, there have been 10 months where his family has been hungry at least one day. His savings have been reduced to 5,000 shillings per month, about two US dollars. At the same time he aspires to more. When I ask him, as part of a study on the local credit union, what he would like for a loan, he suggests that USh 1,000,000 would be the right sum. He could work his whole life and never pay it back. He will not get the loan. Too bad that he didn’t ask Bank of America for US$ 500,000 to buy a house in Florida in 2007. That loan he could have gotten
The teacher is a person in the neighborhood too. He is more educated than the shop keep, better dressed and more respected. He is also poorer. While Uganda, with its school uniforms and O-levels is more an imitation of British education than American, it has borrowed a few features from the States—poorly paid teachers lecture to classrooms filled to bursting. Whereas the shopkeepers speak confidently about their ability to save 100,000 a month, teachers struggle to save even 10,000. While shopkeepers nap between customers, teachers grade piles of exams written on wafer thin paper between classes.
The nun is a person in my neighborhood.
She is my landlord. I live in a convent. This was not something I ever saw coming. Of all the certainties in my life, the fact that I would never sleep behind convent walls seemed like one of the surest.
Whoops.
When I learned I was going to live in a convent, I asked my mother’s friend Joannie, a former nun in training, what happens when one lived in a convent? From the stories, I had heard, it mostly involves sneaking out to meet guys, which isn’t really my scene. Thankfully, that has not been among my activities thus far, though I have had to jump the gate a time or two.
To say I live in a convent is a bit misleading. I live at a convent, in a guesthouse, safely away from the judging eyes of the penguins. Still, there is no mistaking where I am. Most rooms are decorated with a suitably gruesome crucifix and a piece of construction paper with the recommendation to “Be Still and Know that I am God” or both. And then there is the Library, an old hardwood cabinet, filled with books with names like The Eucharist in the New Testament and copies as far back as 1981 of the periodical God’s Word Today.
It is not by normal living situation, but it is comfortable, dry, electrified and has not only a flush toilet, but half a toilet seat. It is a good setup.
The nuns, each of them a Little Sister of St. Francis of Assisi, are charming. I am glad they are in the neighborhood. They are not, as I intimated earlier, the penguins despised and feared by Catholic school students everywhere. They are kind and clever, and do not even wear black and white, instead sporting beige habits that hide the smudges of Ugandan dirt beautifully.
They are here, 111 years after Catholicism came to Nkokonjeru thanks to Sister Kevin, a tenacious Irish nun, who defied the local witchcraft, thereby winning converts, and fixed much of Nkokonjeru in the Catholic camp. To this day, there are dozens of girls and women in Nkokonjeru named Kevin. Don’t tell them it’s a boy’s name.
The policeman is a person in my neighborhood.
This one might actually fit on Sesame Street. Of course, I don’t see him each day. I have seen him exactly once. As I returned two empty bottles of President beer to one of the many shops on the main drag, a policeman whose great round belly barely fit into his khakis, emerged from the dusty police station to ask if I had any beers for him. I turned the bottles upside down.
“All done,” I said with a shrug.
He burst into laughter. It is possible that if I had offered him a full beer at nine in the morning he would have taken it. One of the police officers, a man with a bad habit of drinking heavily and sleeping with other men’s wives, had gotten himself killed while drunk. After a few too many in a nearby town, he had responded to a request to stay away from another man’s wife, a woman he had known in the past, with a stark drunken refusal. He was ambushed later that night while riding home on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle) and was gutted in a drive by knifing. He did not survive.
These are the people in the neighborhood. Livingstone had it right, Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, shop keeps and carpenters, nuns, and teachers and cops. It’s all right here in my neighborhood. What there isn’t, however, is the prosperity Livingstone imagined. The slave trade, the primary focus of the great missionary’s campaign is long gone, but is that all we can expect?
Nkokonjeru has the three Cs, but that is not enough. For the people of Nkokonjeru to not only survive but prosper they need different people in the neighborhood. The doctor has to be a person in the neighborhood. The factory owner has to be a person in the neighborhood. The lawyer has to be a person in the neighborhood. God help me, even the tennis star could be a person in the neighborhood. The shop keeps are decent people, and then nuns are holy and even the police are cheerful, but this town needs more.
It had more once. There was one shining star to come from Nkokonjeru, a singer named Paul Kafeero, who was perhaps the most famous musician to ever come out of Uganda. His music and videos still play relentlessly around town. The themes of his songs, all of his songs, are girls and his fear of death. He complains that Ugandan women have more lust for chicken and chips than for men, and then explains that this is why he likes white girls. Apparently, white girls don’t like chicken.
After a lifetime of singing about sex and death, he died of AIDS a few years ago. The resulting funeral crowds led to the first traffic jam in Nkokonjeru history. Perhaps, for once, the traffic cop was a person in the neighborhood, though somehow I doubt it. His grave, still lies not far from town. He is Elvis and Graceland, Morrison in Paris; he is the no longer a person in the neighborhood.
Still, I’ll take the dead pop star over a tennis star. I’d just really prefer to have a doctor in the neighborhood.
Saturday, June 6
Certain Threats to Validity
There are certain issues that every researcher confronts sooner or later. What do you do if you discover that your research threatens the health or well being of subjects? How do you deal with a breakdown in random selection? What happens if your data is corrupted?
Thankfully, most basic statistics and econometrics classes provide at least a cursory overview of how to address these questions. I do not recall, however, any instruction on how to deal with interview subjects who are drunk. It must have been in Chapter 23 of Introduction to Econometrics; the bootleg Chinese edition, which I purchased new for 90% off, only had the first 22 chapters. Really.
The issue of drunken subjects raises other questions. Does it makes a difference whether the subject got drunk on beer or, for example, hooch made from sugar cane and bananas and consumed out of gourd through a long straw? In a study of banking habits, such as the one I am conducting, is it relevant whether the subject does his banking while intoxicated?
Circumstance forced me to address these issues only two days into my stint as a researcher in the rural Ugandan town of Nkokonjeru. While this may appear to be an awfully short time into a field research stint to run into an obstacle, it was not even the first challenge I had encountered. The first, and more urgent problem, was my discovery that field research is deathly boring. When I say “deathly,” I do not mean “very.” I mean that it causes symptoms that are indistinguishable from those of African sleeping sickness: fatigue, lethargy, coma.
For each interview, statistical rigor demands that I ask each question the exact same, boring way.
What is your20highest level of education?
How much do you save each month?
How many boats or canoes do you own?
The last one always draws big laughs, at least. Nkokonjeru is 10 km from Lake Victoria, making it inconceivable to residents that anyone would squander money on seafaring.
After the third or fourth interview, even the charming response to that absurd question (convulsive laughter at disbelief that even a mzungu could ask something so stupid) had lost its entertainment value to me, and while I had not yet contemplated the ethics of interviewing drunk research subjects, the ethics of conducting interviews while drunk had become a legitimate query. It would help pass the time, and what threats to validity or biases could it possibly introduce?
After an extensive review of the threats to internal, external and construct validity posed by researcher intoxication, I rejected the idea as unprofessional, dangerous and, worst of all, not something I could write about in a publi shed essay. Thus, I resolved to go into the field clean and sober, save for any intoxicating effects generated by the classic cocktail of malarone and immodium.
Paul, one of the nine interview subjects on my second day in the field, however, had a different approach. His approach to research seemed to be that getting drunk and answering questions from any strange white man who might happen by was an outstanding idea. Ignatius, one of the founders of the credit union with which I work, my interpreter for the day and a leader in the town was initially reticent about going ahead with the interview.
“This guy is drunk,” he pointed out with a toothy grin on his face. Just days before Ignatius, a teetotaler, had explained to me that there was no drinking problem in Nkokonjeru.
“Let’s give it a try anyway,” I said going with my gut. My hope was that Paul’s drunkenness would work in our favor. In my experience people who have been drinking are more likely to tell the truth, are friendlier to strangers, and speak second languages more fluently. Besides, with Paul the standard five-minute Luganda introducti on had already stretched beyond 10 minutes as he repeatedly forgot that he had already greeted me, so I figured we might as well proceed.
I was not disappointed. In his boozy breath Paul confessed to things that none of the 54 other subjects we have interviewed thus far admitted. He doesn’t save money anymore, his wife doesn’t have shoes, and he staged the lunar landing. In vino veritas, I suppose.
Yet, it leaves me with questions. I am not inclined to discard Paul’s interview. His intoxication aside, there was no evidence that he was lying, and discarding subjects is a poor way to maintain a random sample. But it did make me wonder about all of the other people I’ve interviewed, the ones who assure me that they save every month and have all of their children in school. Are they telling me the actual truth or is the truth like light, refracted by the confounding mists of sobriety until it appears as what the mzungu wants to see?
A colleague of mine in another African country, a doctor, once told me that if he believed what his patients told him, not a single person in the country had ever sex without a 0Acondom. This left the 18% HIV prevalence to be explained by heroin and blood transfusions. What could explain the stunning fertility rate? Well, maybe it is just a nation of Jesuses, or, far more likely, his data, and mine, would have been better if every interview came after a few shots of the truth serum called moonshine.
I don’t think I’m going to get that proposal by the Internal Review Board though—something about ethics and harm to subjects. That is, of course, unless they’ve been drinking.
Tuesday, June 2
Being Obama
“Obama!” yells one man.
“Obama!” chimes in another
“Obama, Obama, Obama!!!” echoes a sympathetic third.
They are referring to me. As a 32-year-old white guy, this is a novelty. I am rarely mistaken for this particular president at home. I am much more accustomed to being hailed by people yelling “Arthur, Chester A. Arthur!” Hey, it happened once. I was wearing muttonchops.
I learn quickly enough that I have not been mistaken for our new president, but that “Obama” has become the catcall of choice for Ugandan vendors attempting to flag down Americans in Kampala.
This is a distinct improvement over the old catcall of choice “mzungu.” While, being called “mzungu,” which translates roughly as “white man” is technically more accurate than being called “Obama” it is distinctly less pleasant, at least if one is a Democrat.
Obama has replaced more than just epithets in Kampala. Teens who once wore shirts bearing the graven image of Tupac Shakur or David Beckham now sport Obamawear. Little shack restaurants now bear his name and visage. One restaurant, at the impossible tangle of microbuses that passes for Kampala’s main bus terminal, has chosen the name “Obama Take Away.” The eatery’s marquee shows the President looking confidently into the future, a future that, I presume from the sign, includes a plate of matoke, Uganda’s ubiquitous mashed plantains, and beans.
I am not sure what to make of it all. I am an Obama supporter. I voted for him in part because I believed that his election would change how the world sees America, but now I am face-to-face with the reality of that change. I can’t speak for the rest of the world but to Africans, at least, we are Obama and Obama is us.
On the face of it, this is a good thing. It is proof to the world that in the U.S. everyone not only has a place at the table but even has a shot at sitting at the head. It is proof that American exceptionalism means more than exceptionally powerful or exceptionally rich. Long oppressed and despised minorities do not get voted into power in other countries. Either they seize power, as did the Sunni in Iraq, or the Alewites in Syria, or they remain forever oppressed. We have proved we are different. Yes, we are exceptional.
Since November, I’ve had a wonderful time asking my French friends, who were rightly haughty not so long ago, if they remember that time when France elected a Muslim of Algerian descent President. It never happened? Huh. How about that?
Yet I worry about the Obamamania in Africa; I fear that he is being set up to fail.
The American relationship with Africa is not in a particular state of disrepair. In Christian Africa, the Bush years were not the diplomatic catastrophe they were in the rest of the world. While Africans are generally ecstatic over the election of Obama, many have kind words for Bush as well. Bush’s PEPFAR initiative has provided massive assistance to African nations in their efforts to halt the spread of HIV and provide drugs to those afflicted. Whereas Bill Clinton sided with drug companies at every turn, Bush actually put U.S. resources and prestige into fighting HIV in Africa. The program is not perfect, some of the prohibitions on family planning border on madness, but thousands of Africans received anti-retroviral medicines thank to George W. Bush and are alive as a result. I give the former president credit for almost nothing. He was incompetent, and I find most of his ideology revolting, but if asked to say two nice things about Bush, I would commend him first on PEPFAR and then on his ability to duck shoes. His reflexes are admirable.
Following a more or less successful Africa policy leaves Obama with less room to meet the lofty expectations. In military affairs, not starting a calamitous war will be a huge improvement. In economic affairs, reducing unemployment to 7 percent will be a success. But in Africa, he might actually have to accomplish something to claim victory.
I also worry that Africans, themselves might expect too much. One of the 16 people crammed into a microbus with me on a recent trip to Jinja, where the Nile begins its flow toward Egypt, became the first African I have met with harsh words for Obama.
The criticism came from Ken, a chatty, a very chatty fellow, who as is the Uganda custom, was practically sitting on my lap.
After showing me some videos of other times he has been in a minibus and attempting to persuade me to give him my $20 Casio digital watch, Ken, my seatmate offered a revelation.
“I don’t like Obama,” said Ken. “He’s selfish. Can I have your phone number?” Ken may not have liked Obama, but his distaste was not intense enough to hold his focus for more than 30 seconds.
This is why I worry. Obama can do a lot for Africa. He can support democracy, increase aid, facilitate trade and treat Africa nations with respect. What he cannot do, however, is make Africa as rich as America. And I worry that that is what people like Ken are hoping for.
Fortunately, I don’t think we actually have to make Africa as rich as the U.S. to win over guys like Ken because most Africans have no idea how rich America is. They know we are rich, but the level of difference is unimaginable. If we help them to get a little richer, if we can increase access to medicine, clean water and decent governments, if we take their concerns seriously, that will be enough, it will be more than anyone has done since Europe eviscerated the continent. But risks remain. If Obama does not give Africa some speck of his attention, if he does not improve on the humane HIV policies of the Bush Administration, then Ken will be right. Obama will have been selfish, and because, to the people here, Obama is us, we will have been selfish too.
“Obama!” chimes in another
“Obama, Obama, Obama!!!” echoes a sympathetic third.
They are referring to me. As a 32-year-old white guy, this is a novelty. I am rarely mistaken for this particular president at home. I am much more accustomed to being hailed by people yelling “Arthur, Chester A. Arthur!” Hey, it happened once. I was wearing muttonchops.
I learn quickly enough that I have not been mistaken for our new president, but that “Obama” has become the catcall of choice for Ugandan vendors attempting to flag down Americans in Kampala.
This is a distinct improvement over the old catcall of choice “mzungu.” While, being called “mzungu,” which translates roughly as “white man” is technically more accurate than being called “Obama” it is distinctly less pleasant, at least if one is a Democrat.
Obama has replaced more than just epithets in Kampala. Teens who once wore shirts bearing the graven image of Tupac Shakur or David Beckham now sport Obamawear. Little shack restaurants now bear his name and visage. One restaurant, at the impossible tangle of microbuses that passes for Kampala’s main bus terminal, has chosen the name “Obama Take Away.” The eatery’s marquee shows the President looking confidently into the future, a future that, I presume from the sign, includes a plate of matoke, Uganda’s ubiquitous mashed plantains, and beans.
I am not sure what to make of it all. I am an Obama supporter. I voted for him in part because I believed that his election would change how the world sees America, but now I am face-to-face with the reality of that change. I can’t speak for the rest of the world but to Africans, at least, we are Obama and Obama is us.
On the face of it, this is a good thing. It is proof to the world that in the U.S. everyone not only has a place at the table but even has a shot at sitting at the head. It is proof that American exceptionalism means more than exceptionally powerful or exceptionally rich. Long oppressed and despised minorities do not get voted into power in other countries. Either they seize power, as did the Sunni in Iraq, or the Alewites in Syria, or they remain forever oppressed. We have proved we are different. Yes, we are exceptional.
Since November, I’ve had a wonderful time asking my French friends, who were rightly haughty not so long ago, if they remember that time when France elected a Muslim of Algerian descent President. It never happened? Huh. How about that?
Yet I worry about the Obamamania in Africa; I fear that he is being set up to fail.
The American relationship with Africa is not in a particular state of disrepair. In Christian Africa, the Bush years were not the diplomatic catastrophe they were in the rest of the world. While Africans are generally ecstatic over the election of Obama, many have kind words for Bush as well. Bush’s PEPFAR initiative has provided massive assistance to African nations in their efforts to halt the spread of HIV and provide drugs to those afflicted. Whereas Bill Clinton sided with drug companies at every turn, Bush actually put U.S. resources and prestige into fighting HIV in Africa. The program is not perfect, some of the prohibitions on family planning border on madness, but thousands of Africans received anti-retroviral medicines thank to George W. Bush and are alive as a result. I give the former president credit for almost nothing. He was incompetent, and I find most of his ideology revolting, but if asked to say two nice things about Bush, I would commend him first on PEPFAR and then on his ability to duck shoes. His reflexes are admirable.
Following a more or less successful Africa policy leaves Obama with less room to meet the lofty expectations. In military affairs, not starting a calamitous war will be a huge improvement. In economic affairs, reducing unemployment to 7 percent will be a success. But in Africa, he might actually have to accomplish something to claim victory.
I also worry that Africans, themselves might expect too much. One of the 16 people crammed into a microbus with me on a recent trip to Jinja, where the Nile begins its flow toward Egypt, became the first African I have met with harsh words for Obama.
The criticism came from Ken, a chatty, a very chatty fellow, who as is the Uganda custom, was practically sitting on my lap.
After showing me some videos of other times he has been in a minibus and attempting to persuade me to give him my $20 Casio digital watch, Ken, my seatmate offered a revelation.
“I don’t like Obama,” said Ken. “He’s selfish. Can I have your phone number?” Ken may not have liked Obama, but his distaste was not intense enough to hold his focus for more than 30 seconds.
This is why I worry. Obama can do a lot for Africa. He can support democracy, increase aid, facilitate trade and treat Africa nations with respect. What he cannot do, however, is make Africa as rich as America. And I worry that that is what people like Ken are hoping for.
Fortunately, I don’t think we actually have to make Africa as rich as the U.S. to win over guys like Ken because most Africans have no idea how rich America is. They know we are rich, but the level of difference is unimaginable. If we help them to get a little richer, if we can increase access to medicine, clean water and decent governments, if we take their concerns seriously, that will be enough, it will be more than anyone has done since Europe eviscerated the continent. But risks remain. If Obama does not give Africa some speck of his attention, if he does not improve on the humane HIV policies of the Bush Administration, then Ken will be right. Obama will have been selfish, and because, to the people here, Obama is us, we will have been selfish too.
Wednesday, May 27
Grand Marshal
Once I watched Bob Newhart serve as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses parade. I would watch Bob Newhart doing almost anything. I watched Newhart, where he played a Vermont innkeeper, religiously. After it went off the air, I would watch reruns of The Bob Newhart Show, the one where he played the psychologist in Chicago. I watched his failed shows too. I watched Bob, where he played a comic book artist and George and Leo where he hangs out on Martha’s Vineyard with Judd Hirsch and Justin Bateman. I even watched a few of the episodes of ER, which I don’t even particularly like, just because he was on.
I suppose that I had seen other grand marshals at other parades both on television and in person on a million different occasions, but I’ll be damned if I can remember a single one of them. I guess I just like Bob Newhart. Or maybe it’s what he did with the modest power accorded not just a marshal, but a grand marshal. As best I can tell, the weighty responsibilities of grand mashaldom are three: ride on a float, greet the captains of any affiliated sporting event and flip a coin.
For Newhart the coin flipping seemed to be the big deal, or perhaps less that he got to flip a coin and more that he got to have a coin. After Newhart had shaken hands with the captains of each Rose Bowl team, the referee handed him a large silver commemorative coin, a flip of which would be used to determine who kicked off.
Newhart shook the referee’s hand, pocketed the coin and began to walk off the field.
This made sense. Every character Newhart has ever played seems to be a grumpy comedic skinflint in the best tradition of Jack Benny. Still, while Newhart is a comedian, he could only take the joke so far. After ten yards or so, he turned, laughed sheepishly and walked back to the fifty-yard line. Finally, he flipped the coin. No damage done.
Well, almost no damage. After watching the spectacle, I concluded that I would like, someday, to serve as grand marshal for something. Anything. It falls under my umbrella policy of seeking self-esteem without sacrifice or, God forbid, strain.
But given my distinct record of non-accomplishment and tendency to have my finest moments in the shadows, quietly scoring points for my employer or cause, I have not had a chance to distinguish myself to the point where a grand marshal’s, I don’t know, Scepter? Float? Coin?, was a real possibility. Writing a baseball blog under a pseudonym does not get you noticed.
So I went on with life, as we must, hoping that someday, somehow, a chance to be simultaneously a marshal and grand might come my way. It wasn’t an obsession, or something I even thought about with any regularity. Instead, it was one of those vague life goals that one hopes to achieve somewhere over the course of 70 or more years, like visiting all seven continents, but will not go on one’s tombstone. In other words, if someone were to remake Citizen Kane but about me, “grand marshal” would not be my muttered final words in the opening scene. Those words would more likely be something like “Donald Duck Flip Flops.” I lost them on Cape Cod in 1982 or so, when the tide came in, and the fact that some kid in Spain probably ended up with them always bothered me. Still, being a grand marshal was something I have vaguely aspired to do for a long time.
I had always imagined that the Memorial Day parade in a small New England town would be my best bet. Significantly further down the list was being grand marshal of a municipal soccer match in an 11,000 person town in rural Uganda.
While enjoying an exalted position on a half unmowed grass, half parched earth field about 14 degrees north of the equator may not have the cache of marching in a town parade featuring both a high school and middle school marching band and two unfortunate reserve soldiers in a jeep with a recoilless rifle, the prestige of grand marshaling this match should not be dismissed. The stakes were frighteningly high.
There was a goat on the line.
Squads from some of the 12 villages that comprise Nkokonjeru, literally “White Chicken,” Uganda, had struggled and striven for this moment, for the right to compete for one delicious goat.
The two teams stood in a perfect line facing the crowd, half clad in red jerseys reading Nkokonjeru T.C. F.C. (Town Council Football Club) and half of them skin to the sun. And there they waited…. and waited… and waited… Finally, the referee called over Peter our lanky Uganda coworker and guide and chattered something to him in Luganda’s syncopated cadences.
Peter returned to us and stared directly at Alex, a fresh faced 20-year-old mechanical engineer on his first trip to Africa.
“Do you want to shake hands with the players?” Peter asked.
“Uhhh…” responded Alex.
Alex, while not shy about popping open an electrical contraption, jury rigging a mechanical contraption or otherwise indulging in the sort of madness for which engineers are know, is not nearly as fearless when it comes to interacting with people. Of the four in our group, his the most hesitant about using his limited Luganda and the most reluctant to enter the furious fray of market bargaining. Going out to shake hands with a bunch of strangers about to play soccer had precious little to do with the forces of physics and presented almost no risk of explosion, thus he was hesitant.
“Uhhh…” he repeated.
I, however, knew what was going on. I knew that this was a chance at being a grand marshal of sorts, a chance not to be squandered, so I did the only thing I could.
“Do it Alex, “ I cackled. “Go shake hands.”
That wasn’t right? I was supposed to say, “Don’t sweat it, man. I’ll go be the center of attention. I’ll be the one to walk of the field with the ceremonial coin.”
Didn’t happen. “Seriously man, do it.” I cajoled again.
At this point Peter chimed in and pointed out what should have been obvious—that he had not asked Alex, he had asked all of us.
And so we went, hesitantly, shyly even, down across the dried, almost brick, mud to the line of players. At last, I would be a grand marshal, chosen on the basis of a) being white b) having just shown up in a town where everyone knows everything about each other and strangers are an oddity to be investigated carefully.
Down the line we walked, shaking hands with each of the twenty-two players and the two-team managers. In Baganda society, this could be a lengthy process, as proper greeting might involve not only exchanges on how the day has been thus far but, obligatory inquiries on the condition of each others’ goats and so on, a discourse well beyond my limited Luganda. Thankfully, the magnitude of the project limited the length of introductions.
“Dan,” I introduced myself.
“Thomas,” the player would respond. We grasped hands and shook in the African fashion, a three part shake consisting of a standard hand shake clasp, then a quick move to an arm wrestling grip, and then back to the handshake.
“Good luck!” I pithily added for affect, or “The keeper!” when I could discern, by the curiously colored jersey’s that I was dealing with the goalkeeper.
The match itself was about what one would expert from a goat match, what wrestling commentators would call a slobber knocker. After a scoreless first half, red jumped out to a two goal lead in the second half before skins thundered back with a rocket from the penalty line and a header off of a corner kick to equalize. Ultimately, red won 4-3 on penalty kicks. It was an odd sort of shoot out. Neither keeper was eager to actually throw himself to the rock hard ground to make a save, so the only rules for shooters seemed to be do not kick the ball directly at the goalie and do kick the ball between the uprights.
In my expert analysis of the match the outcome came down to three factors. First, goal tending. Skins was a much better team, but their goalie had hands of stone. Second, shoes. Some players had proper sneakers, others had sandals and others played barefoot. I’m not sure which side had more shoes but it had to have been a major advantage. Third and finally, grand marshalling. I am not one to brag, but I am pretty sure that the red team shook hands with more enthusiasm and that it was decisive.
So I got to be a grand marshal, to see one of my lesser dreams fulfilled. This seems to be how it has been in Africa for muzungu ( white men) for some time. White men come here to pursue what they cannot have at home. People of modest means and low standing in their native countries can come here and be dignitaries. The Boers who came from the lower rungs of Dutch society violently asserted predominance in South Africa and fancied themselves as God’s chosen people. A tubercular nobody named Cecil John Rhodes founded an empire on the continent. The colonizers of many nations came to Africa and lived like kings, demanding tribute from their unwilling vassals. Even the NGO workers today have cooks to cook for them, maids to clean for them, drivers to drive for them and guards to protect them. These are not typically people who would have servants at home.
While my time as a grand marshal is just the manifestation of a silly and petty dream, in many ways indicative of nothing more than the friendliness and congeniality of the Baganda people, it does bother me that while at home I am just another guy, here I am noteworthy. I am not Rhodes, I am not Stanley, I am not even a scraggly diplomat in a compound in Kampala, but it is clear that here, I am someone. I’m just not sure that there is any reason I deserve to be.
I suppose that I had seen other grand marshals at other parades both on television and in person on a million different occasions, but I’ll be damned if I can remember a single one of them. I guess I just like Bob Newhart. Or maybe it’s what he did with the modest power accorded not just a marshal, but a grand marshal. As best I can tell, the weighty responsibilities of grand mashaldom are three: ride on a float, greet the captains of any affiliated sporting event and flip a coin.
For Newhart the coin flipping seemed to be the big deal, or perhaps less that he got to flip a coin and more that he got to have a coin. After Newhart had shaken hands with the captains of each Rose Bowl team, the referee handed him a large silver commemorative coin, a flip of which would be used to determine who kicked off.
Newhart shook the referee’s hand, pocketed the coin and began to walk off the field.
This made sense. Every character Newhart has ever played seems to be a grumpy comedic skinflint in the best tradition of Jack Benny. Still, while Newhart is a comedian, he could only take the joke so far. After ten yards or so, he turned, laughed sheepishly and walked back to the fifty-yard line. Finally, he flipped the coin. No damage done.
Well, almost no damage. After watching the spectacle, I concluded that I would like, someday, to serve as grand marshal for something. Anything. It falls under my umbrella policy of seeking self-esteem without sacrifice or, God forbid, strain.
But given my distinct record of non-accomplishment and tendency to have my finest moments in the shadows, quietly scoring points for my employer or cause, I have not had a chance to distinguish myself to the point where a grand marshal’s, I don’t know, Scepter? Float? Coin?, was a real possibility. Writing a baseball blog under a pseudonym does not get you noticed.
So I went on with life, as we must, hoping that someday, somehow, a chance to be simultaneously a marshal and grand might come my way. It wasn’t an obsession, or something I even thought about with any regularity. Instead, it was one of those vague life goals that one hopes to achieve somewhere over the course of 70 or more years, like visiting all seven continents, but will not go on one’s tombstone. In other words, if someone were to remake Citizen Kane but about me, “grand marshal” would not be my muttered final words in the opening scene. Those words would more likely be something like “Donald Duck Flip Flops.” I lost them on Cape Cod in 1982 or so, when the tide came in, and the fact that some kid in Spain probably ended up with them always bothered me. Still, being a grand marshal was something I have vaguely aspired to do for a long time.
I had always imagined that the Memorial Day parade in a small New England town would be my best bet. Significantly further down the list was being grand marshal of a municipal soccer match in an 11,000 person town in rural Uganda.
While enjoying an exalted position on a half unmowed grass, half parched earth field about 14 degrees north of the equator may not have the cache of marching in a town parade featuring both a high school and middle school marching band and two unfortunate reserve soldiers in a jeep with a recoilless rifle, the prestige of grand marshaling this match should not be dismissed. The stakes were frighteningly high.
There was a goat on the line.
Squads from some of the 12 villages that comprise Nkokonjeru, literally “White Chicken,” Uganda, had struggled and striven for this moment, for the right to compete for one delicious goat.
The two teams stood in a perfect line facing the crowd, half clad in red jerseys reading Nkokonjeru T.C. F.C. (Town Council Football Club) and half of them skin to the sun. And there they waited…. and waited… and waited… Finally, the referee called over Peter our lanky Uganda coworker and guide and chattered something to him in Luganda’s syncopated cadences.
Peter returned to us and stared directly at Alex, a fresh faced 20-year-old mechanical engineer on his first trip to Africa.
“Do you want to shake hands with the players?” Peter asked.
“Uhhh…” responded Alex.
Alex, while not shy about popping open an electrical contraption, jury rigging a mechanical contraption or otherwise indulging in the sort of madness for which engineers are know, is not nearly as fearless when it comes to interacting with people. Of the four in our group, his the most hesitant about using his limited Luganda and the most reluctant to enter the furious fray of market bargaining. Going out to shake hands with a bunch of strangers about to play soccer had precious little to do with the forces of physics and presented almost no risk of explosion, thus he was hesitant.
“Uhhh…” he repeated.
I, however, knew what was going on. I knew that this was a chance at being a grand marshal of sorts, a chance not to be squandered, so I did the only thing I could.
“Do it Alex, “ I cackled. “Go shake hands.”
That wasn’t right? I was supposed to say, “Don’t sweat it, man. I’ll go be the center of attention. I’ll be the one to walk of the field with the ceremonial coin.”
Didn’t happen. “Seriously man, do it.” I cajoled again.
At this point Peter chimed in and pointed out what should have been obvious—that he had not asked Alex, he had asked all of us.
And so we went, hesitantly, shyly even, down across the dried, almost brick, mud to the line of players. At last, I would be a grand marshal, chosen on the basis of a) being white b) having just shown up in a town where everyone knows everything about each other and strangers are an oddity to be investigated carefully.
Down the line we walked, shaking hands with each of the twenty-two players and the two-team managers. In Baganda society, this could be a lengthy process, as proper greeting might involve not only exchanges on how the day has been thus far but, obligatory inquiries on the condition of each others’ goats and so on, a discourse well beyond my limited Luganda. Thankfully, the magnitude of the project limited the length of introductions.
“Dan,” I introduced myself.
“Thomas,” the player would respond. We grasped hands and shook in the African fashion, a three part shake consisting of a standard hand shake clasp, then a quick move to an arm wrestling grip, and then back to the handshake.
“Good luck!” I pithily added for affect, or “The keeper!” when I could discern, by the curiously colored jersey’s that I was dealing with the goalkeeper.
The match itself was about what one would expert from a goat match, what wrestling commentators would call a slobber knocker. After a scoreless first half, red jumped out to a two goal lead in the second half before skins thundered back with a rocket from the penalty line and a header off of a corner kick to equalize. Ultimately, red won 4-3 on penalty kicks. It was an odd sort of shoot out. Neither keeper was eager to actually throw himself to the rock hard ground to make a save, so the only rules for shooters seemed to be do not kick the ball directly at the goalie and do kick the ball between the uprights.
In my expert analysis of the match the outcome came down to three factors. First, goal tending. Skins was a much better team, but their goalie had hands of stone. Second, shoes. Some players had proper sneakers, others had sandals and others played barefoot. I’m not sure which side had more shoes but it had to have been a major advantage. Third and finally, grand marshalling. I am not one to brag, but I am pretty sure that the red team shook hands with more enthusiasm and that it was decisive.
So I got to be a grand marshal, to see one of my lesser dreams fulfilled. This seems to be how it has been in Africa for muzungu ( white men) for some time. White men come here to pursue what they cannot have at home. People of modest means and low standing in their native countries can come here and be dignitaries. The Boers who came from the lower rungs of Dutch society violently asserted predominance in South Africa and fancied themselves as God’s chosen people. A tubercular nobody named Cecil John Rhodes founded an empire on the continent. The colonizers of many nations came to Africa and lived like kings, demanding tribute from their unwilling vassals. Even the NGO workers today have cooks to cook for them, maids to clean for them, drivers to drive for them and guards to protect them. These are not typically people who would have servants at home.
While my time as a grand marshal is just the manifestation of a silly and petty dream, in many ways indicative of nothing more than the friendliness and congeniality of the Baganda people, it does bother me that while at home I am just another guy, here I am noteworthy. I am not Rhodes, I am not Stanley, I am not even a scraggly diplomat in a compound in Kampala, but it is clear that here, I am someone. I’m just not sure that there is any reason I deserve to be.
Wednesday, May 20
Two Capes, Two Countries
I am facing north, due north. To my left lies the green Atlantic, turbulent and cold. To my right, the Indian Ocean, warmer, more placid. Behind me they converge, two distant oceans melting harmoniously into one. Or do they collide? Perhaps their meeting is a swirling clash of distant rivals drawn close. Am I on the Cape of Good Hope or the Cape of Storms? Either way all of Africa, hell, all the world lies before me.
But what kind of a world is it? It is too big a question, so I refine it to what kind of a country? The answer, at least metaphorically, lies in the seas behind me, whether they converge or collide, whether they clash or commingle.
In the 1990s, South Africa went from being the Apartheid State to the Rainbow Nation. The pass laws are gone, the planned Bantustans are a distant nightmare, the ANC is in power and the nation rests upon one the world’s most liberal constitutions. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reconciled as much as it can, Mandela is as respected and beloved a figure as anyone alive today and the World Cup is coming in 2010. If South Africa is indeed a rainbow, then why do I still see so much here in black and white?
One explanation is that I am the issue, that as a white man, an American, or even just as a student of history, I am unable to escape my prejudices and preconceptions and see the world as it is, instead of as it was.
Another possibility is that my itinerary has dictated my mindset, that it is impossible to think of anything but race when Robben Island and Drakenstein Prison, Mandela’s first and final places of imprisonment, and the Cecil Rhodes Memorial are prominent on the itinerary.
The final possibility is that I perceive only what it there; that in South Africa, much is still about black and white.
The trite yet probably true explanation is that it is a combination of factors, yet I find myself fascinated by the itinerary theory. While Robben Island’s long history as a leper colony, political prison and, finally, a monument has been the worthy subject of extensive thought and commentary, the contrast between the Rhodes Memorial and the tribute to Mandela at Drakenstein seems to reveal more about today’s South Africa, and certainly reveals more about my perceptions of it.
The memorial to Cecil John Rhodes is a masterpiece of colonial grandiosity and grotesquerie. In a forest of ionic columns, Rhodes’ spirit, though not his body, which rests in Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, is guarded by a pride of eight bronze lions. Within the temple sits a bust of the brooding Rhodes looking out over the city from which he ruled a personal empire.
He looks exhausted and sour. Even the inscription seems to agree that this was a pissy man.
The epitaph is somehow ennobling and antagonistic at the same time, perhaps due to Rhodes’ complicated relationship with the Boers—he courted them and cursed them alternatively as it served his interests. A man must be astonishingly dour for even his eulogizers to describe him as “brooding.” And while the assertion that Cecil John Rhodes was the land in life and her soul in death, when he was not even from the land in question is breathtaking in its colonial arrogance, the expression that he shall “still quicken and control” does hint at the magnitude of his lust for power. Here is a man who knew what he wanted, and more importantly, who he wanted to be, and was prepared to do anything to achieve his goals.
Yet despite the bravado of the inscription, the bronze Rhodes inside the temple seems to know that he is beaten. He wearily rests his heavy head on his right hand while his left arm lies flat, bracing his body against his pedestal, as if trying to support the colossal weight of empire.
Forty minutes away in Paarl, just outside the front gates of Drakenstein prison, know as the Victor Verster Prison while Mandela spent his final years of confinement there, stands a statue of the great man erected in 2008. The bronze Mandela, looking tired but triumphant, raises his right fist in celebration of his victory, looking every bit the boxer he once was. He has taken his lumps and rolled with the punches—the fight has aged him—but after 15 brutal rounds, he has emerged victorious. The judge called History scores the fight for Mandela, noting that he will be remembered as one of history’s giants, a man with the patience and purpose to rope-a-dope an entire nation, absorbing blow after blow from the Apartheid regime with the certainty that it will punch itself out, leaving itself vulnerable to one well-place left hook. The judge called Morality scores the fight for Mandela too. While Mandela was not a pacifist, he supported armed insurrection, the justice of his cause, his reliance on sabotage rather than bloodshed, and his extraordinary ability to choose reconciliation over retribution has given him Morality’s card decisively.
But the fight was not scored unanimously for Mandela. The third card remains blank. The judge called The Future has not yet submitted a score. Rightly or wrongly, Mandela will be judged to some extent on the men who follow him. To be sure Mandela himself cannot be held responsible for the acts of Mbeki, Zuma or any of his other successors. But he is the father of the country, and rightly or wrongly, the behavior of the child reflects on the father. Mandela’s willingness to relinquish power was extraordinary. It showed an awareness of his limitations that is rare in politicians and an understanding that he was not the state. But the outcomes still matter. George Washington, who like Mandela yielded power freely, is judged a great success by history not only for his revolutionary achievements but for establishing the role of President. Had that role of a powerful but limited executive been undermined by his early successors, as John Adams nearly did with the Alien and Sedition Acts, Washington’s legacy would have been different. Perhaps he would have been the good man who preceded the age of tyrants, rather than the father of liberty.
If the new South Africa someday descends into chaos, if crime continues to expand, if vast inequalities in wealth persist or worst of all, if a South African Mugabe emerges, than Mandela may not win on that final scorecard. He will have won, the fight to be sure, but it is still too early to tell if the bronzed man standing on a platform of marble etched with images of barbed wire won by a unanimous or a split decision. Will his legacy be unambiguous or mixed?
It is puzzling that these two monuments can exist in the same country, that victorious Mandela and defiant Rhodes, that the liberator and the colonizer can both be lauded in the same province, can both be addressed with reverence.
The conventional wisdom is that this is the genius of Mandela; in victory he was magnanimous, that now even as Rhodesia is no more and South Africa has come under majority rule, Rhodes can be allowed to have his temple and his scholarships in peace. One hotel even ups the ante, taking the name the Mandela Rhodes Place, attempting to suggest that they are both, in their own ways heroes of South Africa.
But magnanimity is much harder in defeat and is perhaps even unwise, suggesting an excess of passivity. Which leads me to ask: Who really won? DeKlerk’s goal in negotiating the end of Apartheid was not to end white privilege, but to preserve it. Continuing to preserve white dominance with a legal system based on the presumption of white superiority was never defensible, but as the world changed and the cold war ended, it began to look absurd and even self-destructive. At some point, the black population would have launched a violent, full-scale revolt against Apartheid, and the consequences would have been terrible for the white minority. DeKlerk turned to negotiation because it offered the best chance for the survival of his people and his lifestyle.
And as we look 15 years after Mandela came to power, it seems from a walk around Cape Town that DeKlerk may have succeeded and that perhaps old Cecil Rhodes had as many tricks in death as he did in life.
After a week in the country, entirely in the Western Cape province save for one night in Johannesburg, I am hardly qualified to reveal any deep truths about South Africa. All I can report is what I see. And what I see, small sample though it is, is a country where, despite the overwhelming black majority, almost all the faces in the fine restaurants are white, where the shantytowns are exclusively black and where DeBeers, the company that Cecil Rhodes purchased and transformed into the world’s diamond monopoly is still an overwhelming presence.
So who really did win? Mandela or Rhodes? Do the oceans clash or combine? The answer seems to be both. Today’s South Africa is Mandela’s country. People of all races are free, elections are basically fair and there is a black elite that has earned a share of the country’s wealth. Today’s South Africa is still Rhodes’ country. The wealth is still controlled by a tiny elite consisting disproportionately of whites.
South Africa is the Cape of Storms and the Cape of Good Hope. While storms rage throughout the country, storms of crime and violence, storms of poverty, storms of inequality, Good Hope remains.
But what kind of a world is it? It is too big a question, so I refine it to what kind of a country? The answer, at least metaphorically, lies in the seas behind me, whether they converge or collide, whether they clash or commingle.
In the 1990s, South Africa went from being the Apartheid State to the Rainbow Nation. The pass laws are gone, the planned Bantustans are a distant nightmare, the ANC is in power and the nation rests upon one the world’s most liberal constitutions. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reconciled as much as it can, Mandela is as respected and beloved a figure as anyone alive today and the World Cup is coming in 2010. If South Africa is indeed a rainbow, then why do I still see so much here in black and white?
One explanation is that I am the issue, that as a white man, an American, or even just as a student of history, I am unable to escape my prejudices and preconceptions and see the world as it is, instead of as it was.
Another possibility is that my itinerary has dictated my mindset, that it is impossible to think of anything but race when Robben Island and Drakenstein Prison, Mandela’s first and final places of imprisonment, and the Cecil Rhodes Memorial are prominent on the itinerary.
The final possibility is that I perceive only what it there; that in South Africa, much is still about black and white.
The trite yet probably true explanation is that it is a combination of factors, yet I find myself fascinated by the itinerary theory. While Robben Island’s long history as a leper colony, political prison and, finally, a monument has been the worthy subject of extensive thought and commentary, the contrast between the Rhodes Memorial and the tribute to Mandela at Drakenstein seems to reveal more about today’s South Africa, and certainly reveals more about my perceptions of it.
The memorial to Cecil John Rhodes is a masterpiece of colonial grandiosity and grotesquerie. In a forest of ionic columns, Rhodes’ spirit, though not his body, which rests in Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, is guarded by a pride of eight bronze lions. Within the temple sits a bust of the brooding Rhodes looking out over the city from which he ruled a personal empire.
He looks exhausted and sour. Even the inscription seems to agree that this was a pissy man.
THE IMMENSE AND
BROODING
SPIRIT STILL SHALL QUICKEN
AND CONTROL
LIVING HE WAS THE LAND
AND DEAD HIS SOUL SHALL BE HER SOUL
BROODING
SPIRIT STILL SHALL QUICKEN
AND CONTROL
LIVING HE WAS THE LAND
AND DEAD HIS SOUL SHALL BE HER SOUL
The epitaph is somehow ennobling and antagonistic at the same time, perhaps due to Rhodes’ complicated relationship with the Boers—he courted them and cursed them alternatively as it served his interests. A man must be astonishingly dour for even his eulogizers to describe him as “brooding.” And while the assertion that Cecil John Rhodes was the land in life and her soul in death, when he was not even from the land in question is breathtaking in its colonial arrogance, the expression that he shall “still quicken and control” does hint at the magnitude of his lust for power. Here is a man who knew what he wanted, and more importantly, who he wanted to be, and was prepared to do anything to achieve his goals.
Yet despite the bravado of the inscription, the bronze Rhodes inside the temple seems to know that he is beaten. He wearily rests his heavy head on his right hand while his left arm lies flat, bracing his body against his pedestal, as if trying to support the colossal weight of empire.
Forty minutes away in Paarl, just outside the front gates of Drakenstein prison, know as the Victor Verster Prison while Mandela spent his final years of confinement there, stands a statue of the great man erected in 2008. The bronze Mandela, looking tired but triumphant, raises his right fist in celebration of his victory, looking every bit the boxer he once was. He has taken his lumps and rolled with the punches—the fight has aged him—but after 15 brutal rounds, he has emerged victorious. The judge called History scores the fight for Mandela, noting that he will be remembered as one of history’s giants, a man with the patience and purpose to rope-a-dope an entire nation, absorbing blow after blow from the Apartheid regime with the certainty that it will punch itself out, leaving itself vulnerable to one well-place left hook. The judge called Morality scores the fight for Mandela too. While Mandela was not a pacifist, he supported armed insurrection, the justice of his cause, his reliance on sabotage rather than bloodshed, and his extraordinary ability to choose reconciliation over retribution has given him Morality’s card decisively.
But the fight was not scored unanimously for Mandela. The third card remains blank. The judge called The Future has not yet submitted a score. Rightly or wrongly, Mandela will be judged to some extent on the men who follow him. To be sure Mandela himself cannot be held responsible for the acts of Mbeki, Zuma or any of his other successors. But he is the father of the country, and rightly or wrongly, the behavior of the child reflects on the father. Mandela’s willingness to relinquish power was extraordinary. It showed an awareness of his limitations that is rare in politicians and an understanding that he was not the state. But the outcomes still matter. George Washington, who like Mandela yielded power freely, is judged a great success by history not only for his revolutionary achievements but for establishing the role of President. Had that role of a powerful but limited executive been undermined by his early successors, as John Adams nearly did with the Alien and Sedition Acts, Washington’s legacy would have been different. Perhaps he would have been the good man who preceded the age of tyrants, rather than the father of liberty.
If the new South Africa someday descends into chaos, if crime continues to expand, if vast inequalities in wealth persist or worst of all, if a South African Mugabe emerges, than Mandela may not win on that final scorecard. He will have won, the fight to be sure, but it is still too early to tell if the bronzed man standing on a platform of marble etched with images of barbed wire won by a unanimous or a split decision. Will his legacy be unambiguous or mixed?
It is puzzling that these two monuments can exist in the same country, that victorious Mandela and defiant Rhodes, that the liberator and the colonizer can both be lauded in the same province, can both be addressed with reverence.
The conventional wisdom is that this is the genius of Mandela; in victory he was magnanimous, that now even as Rhodesia is no more and South Africa has come under majority rule, Rhodes can be allowed to have his temple and his scholarships in peace. One hotel even ups the ante, taking the name the Mandela Rhodes Place, attempting to suggest that they are both, in their own ways heroes of South Africa.
But magnanimity is much harder in defeat and is perhaps even unwise, suggesting an excess of passivity. Which leads me to ask: Who really won? DeKlerk’s goal in negotiating the end of Apartheid was not to end white privilege, but to preserve it. Continuing to preserve white dominance with a legal system based on the presumption of white superiority was never defensible, but as the world changed and the cold war ended, it began to look absurd and even self-destructive. At some point, the black population would have launched a violent, full-scale revolt against Apartheid, and the consequences would have been terrible for the white minority. DeKlerk turned to negotiation because it offered the best chance for the survival of his people and his lifestyle.
And as we look 15 years after Mandela came to power, it seems from a walk around Cape Town that DeKlerk may have succeeded and that perhaps old Cecil Rhodes had as many tricks in death as he did in life.
After a week in the country, entirely in the Western Cape province save for one night in Johannesburg, I am hardly qualified to reveal any deep truths about South Africa. All I can report is what I see. And what I see, small sample though it is, is a country where, despite the overwhelming black majority, almost all the faces in the fine restaurants are white, where the shantytowns are exclusively black and where DeBeers, the company that Cecil Rhodes purchased and transformed into the world’s diamond monopoly is still an overwhelming presence.
So who really did win? Mandela or Rhodes? Do the oceans clash or combine? The answer seems to be both. Today’s South Africa is Mandela’s country. People of all races are free, elections are basically fair and there is a black elite that has earned a share of the country’s wealth. Today’s South Africa is still Rhodes’ country. The wealth is still controlled by a tiny elite consisting disproportionately of whites.
South Africa is the Cape of Storms and the Cape of Good Hope. While storms rage throughout the country, storms of crime and violence, storms of poverty, storms of inequality, Good Hope remains.
Thursday, May 14
Dining Alone
Tonight, I dine alone.
Don’t pity me. This is an upgrade on my earlier plan. Had I gone with that plan, the previous sentence would have read “Tonight, I dine alone in my room on a king sized Snickers bar while watching the Michael Rappaport comedy ‘The War at Home.’”
See, upgrade. Hooray for me. I am dining alone!
Dining alone, as opposed to not dining at all, is an accomplishment for me. It has taken a fair amount of psychic energy to leave my room this evening. It is not that I don’t want to leave, though the jet lag is a factor, but rather that leaving seems like such a burden. I am not one to fall for the Chicken Little warnings of guidebooks or, even worse, the U.S. State Department, but I have to be honest—South Africa intimidates me.
Actually, let me take that back a step. Johannesburg intimidates me. Joburg is the sort of place where if you ask one of its defenders how she likes it, she will cheerfully reply “I love it there. Sure, I’ve been carjacked a few times, but you can’t let that get to you.” This is not an exaggeration; I have had this conversation.
See, it is reasonable to be intimidated by Joburg. Of course, I am not in Joburg, so that explanation doesn’t carry much weight; I’m in Cape Town. Cape Town is not Johannesburg. Hell, Cape Town isn’t Baltimore. Rather than being a glorified mining town, Cape Town is one of those cities that positively must exist.
“The Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean, there? Well, of course we need to build something, and it had better be cool.”
And so it is. I went into town in the afternoon. At about 1:30, after sleeping off what I hoped would be the last of my jet lag, I hit the streets with Velaphi, my scruffy-bearded, Zimbabwean guide, friend and confidant. Velaphi will dispute my characterization of him as having a scruffy beard, retorting, “that’s just what happens when I don’t shave.” But I don’t believe him. I think it’s a fashion thing.
The last time I had seen Velaphi, nine months ago in Malawi he had pointed out, as I boarded my plane, “I will probably never see you again.” Wrong. I win he loses. Ha ha.
Our four hours of wandering, a brief time in a big city, revealed enough for me to conclude that Cape Town is, as advertised, a great city. Fine dining? Check. Art and culture? Check. Ocean adjacent? Check, check. African totem statue with numerous Bart Simpson heads sticking out of it in a prominent city square? Check with an exclamation point and a circle around it. Great city from A to Zed.
So why then do I feel intimidated after the sun goes down? Why after Velaphi and I part ways at 7PM, am I inclined to stick to my hotel room? You’d think it would be a reaction to sketchiness or a vague air of menace about the place. You’d be wrong. More than anything, it is the utter normality, the peace and passivity of the place that frightens me.
I like urban decay. I like decrepitude. Or at least I like what they signal, how they provide a clear warning that there is danger or risk. I like decay in the sense that I like rattlesnakes. A rattlesnake may kill you, but at least it gives you fair warning with a shake of its tail. A puff adder will get you in silence. It will kill you before you even know it’s there. All I can tell in Cape Town was that there is potentially some danger somewhere. Hell, Lonely Planet, not an alarmist source, warned me not to let the relaxed atmosphere get me to let my guard down, but I’d be damned if I can tell where the danger is. In the tin-roofed shantytown suburbs, sure, but in the city? Who can tell?
My reluctance to leave my room is not out of fear of danger, but more out of a fear of moderate inconvenience and embarrassment. I hate having to ask the hotel deskman whether it is safe to walk in a particular direction at night when, to the naked eye, it seems so perfectly safe. Somehow I feel that it denigrates both South Africans and myself at the same time, like I am asking “Are there people here so cruel that they might rob me on a safe seeming street, and am I such an obvious tourist that I look like an easy mark?” Or alternatively, “Am I a yahoo racist who has bought in t stereotypes of African cities?”
Finally I build up the courage to ask.
“Is it reasonably safe at this time of night to turn right down Main Street and walk to a restaurant?” I ask the man at the reception desk. He looks surprised, and then nods with a smile, saying only “No problem.”
I feel like an idiot. This may be because I am an idiot.
Nevertheless, with my excuses gone, I walk out the door and turn right into the cool evening air. I immediately start feeling stupider. The street is lively with a restaurant every block or two and a guarded hotel even more frequently.
After walking back and forth a few times, inspecting a few menus and even sitting down at one restaurant, before leaving without ordering when the American woman dining solo next to me starts to complain about aggressive panhandlers, I settle on the Hussar Grille. I am drawn in by the lively crowd and the promise of kudu on the back wall blackboard. I am a sucker for game meat. I like games; I like meat. How can I go wrong?
As I slice into my kudu, a dark lump of meat tangier than beef, yet less sweet, I realize that I am dining alone only in the sense that I am a table by myself. But in my isolation, I am at the center of everything. Conversations revolve around me, as though I am the sun. To my right, a conversation about a rosy-cheeked blonde’s birthday sets into orbit around me. But the gravity of the conversation behind me is far greater. A white American is talking about the consequences of the election of Barrack Obama to some white South Africa friends.
“The thing about Obama is that he’s already changed the racial dynamic in America,” explains my white haired countryman authoritatively. “People can’t say now, that ‘you owe me because by ancestors were slaves 140, 150 years ago.’ They know now that if they work hard and get an education they can make it.”
“Not so different from here,” responds the South African. “It’s only been 15 years but people know that since now that the ANC has power, and with our new President…. Well, they don’t have any more excuses.”
I look around the room. All the diners are white.
How lucky we all are to live in societies where at last merit is the only determining factor of success. How blessed we are to be able to discuss the end of racial inequality from the comfort of a restaurant peopled only by our own kind, save for a few black waitresses. How fortunate we are that freed from the demon of racial discrimination, we can all say with conviction that everyone gets what he deserves. The rich deserve their wealth; the poor have earned their poverty. And far away from the creeping decay of urban slums, we have nothing to fear but the chance that beauty is no guarantee against evil, or even just unpleasantness, lurking around the corner.
I cannot speak for South Africa. I have been here for three days. It is not my country, and I do not know it. But I can speak for my country, of which I have lately been so proud. I can remember that Obama is not an end anymore than Mandela was. I can remember that both men are means; they are transformers rather than the transformation itself. Obama does not signal the end of race in America any more than Mandela singled the end of race in South Africa. In a way, both are Bart Simpson heads sticking awkwardly out of an African fetish object, mockeries of the old ways, sublime in their sophisticated satire of the ignorance of the past generations while almost absurd to those viewing them out of context.
I suck the last bite of kudu; I slurp the last drop of pinotage and then walk out the door without fear, without anxiety, but filled with the humbling melancholy of the knowledge that however far we have come, we—I--have so much longer still to go on our long walk to freedom from fear.
Don’t pity me. This is an upgrade on my earlier plan. Had I gone with that plan, the previous sentence would have read “Tonight, I dine alone in my room on a king sized Snickers bar while watching the Michael Rappaport comedy ‘The War at Home.’”
See, upgrade. Hooray for me. I am dining alone!
Dining alone, as opposed to not dining at all, is an accomplishment for me. It has taken a fair amount of psychic energy to leave my room this evening. It is not that I don’t want to leave, though the jet lag is a factor, but rather that leaving seems like such a burden. I am not one to fall for the Chicken Little warnings of guidebooks or, even worse, the U.S. State Department, but I have to be honest—South Africa intimidates me.
Actually, let me take that back a step. Johannesburg intimidates me. Joburg is the sort of place where if you ask one of its defenders how she likes it, she will cheerfully reply “I love it there. Sure, I’ve been carjacked a few times, but you can’t let that get to you.” This is not an exaggeration; I have had this conversation.
See, it is reasonable to be intimidated by Joburg. Of course, I am not in Joburg, so that explanation doesn’t carry much weight; I’m in Cape Town. Cape Town is not Johannesburg. Hell, Cape Town isn’t Baltimore. Rather than being a glorified mining town, Cape Town is one of those cities that positively must exist.
“The Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean, there? Well, of course we need to build something, and it had better be cool.”
And so it is. I went into town in the afternoon. At about 1:30, after sleeping off what I hoped would be the last of my jet lag, I hit the streets with Velaphi, my scruffy-bearded, Zimbabwean guide, friend and confidant. Velaphi will dispute my characterization of him as having a scruffy beard, retorting, “that’s just what happens when I don’t shave.” But I don’t believe him. I think it’s a fashion thing.
The last time I had seen Velaphi, nine months ago in Malawi he had pointed out, as I boarded my plane, “I will probably never see you again.” Wrong. I win he loses. Ha ha.
Our four hours of wandering, a brief time in a big city, revealed enough for me to conclude that Cape Town is, as advertised, a great city. Fine dining? Check. Art and culture? Check. Ocean adjacent? Check, check. African totem statue with numerous Bart Simpson heads sticking out of it in a prominent city square? Check with an exclamation point and a circle around it. Great city from A to Zed.
So why then do I feel intimidated after the sun goes down? Why after Velaphi and I part ways at 7PM, am I inclined to stick to my hotel room? You’d think it would be a reaction to sketchiness or a vague air of menace about the place. You’d be wrong. More than anything, it is the utter normality, the peace and passivity of the place that frightens me.
I like urban decay. I like decrepitude. Or at least I like what they signal, how they provide a clear warning that there is danger or risk. I like decay in the sense that I like rattlesnakes. A rattlesnake may kill you, but at least it gives you fair warning with a shake of its tail. A puff adder will get you in silence. It will kill you before you even know it’s there. All I can tell in Cape Town was that there is potentially some danger somewhere. Hell, Lonely Planet, not an alarmist source, warned me not to let the relaxed atmosphere get me to let my guard down, but I’d be damned if I can tell where the danger is. In the tin-roofed shantytown suburbs, sure, but in the city? Who can tell?
My reluctance to leave my room is not out of fear of danger, but more out of a fear of moderate inconvenience and embarrassment. I hate having to ask the hotel deskman whether it is safe to walk in a particular direction at night when, to the naked eye, it seems so perfectly safe. Somehow I feel that it denigrates both South Africans and myself at the same time, like I am asking “Are there people here so cruel that they might rob me on a safe seeming street, and am I such an obvious tourist that I look like an easy mark?” Or alternatively, “Am I a yahoo racist who has bought in t stereotypes of African cities?”
Finally I build up the courage to ask.
“Is it reasonably safe at this time of night to turn right down Main Street and walk to a restaurant?” I ask the man at the reception desk. He looks surprised, and then nods with a smile, saying only “No problem.”
I feel like an idiot. This may be because I am an idiot.
Nevertheless, with my excuses gone, I walk out the door and turn right into the cool evening air. I immediately start feeling stupider. The street is lively with a restaurant every block or two and a guarded hotel even more frequently.
After walking back and forth a few times, inspecting a few menus and even sitting down at one restaurant, before leaving without ordering when the American woman dining solo next to me starts to complain about aggressive panhandlers, I settle on the Hussar Grille. I am drawn in by the lively crowd and the promise of kudu on the back wall blackboard. I am a sucker for game meat. I like games; I like meat. How can I go wrong?
As I slice into my kudu, a dark lump of meat tangier than beef, yet less sweet, I realize that I am dining alone only in the sense that I am a table by myself. But in my isolation, I am at the center of everything. Conversations revolve around me, as though I am the sun. To my right, a conversation about a rosy-cheeked blonde’s birthday sets into orbit around me. But the gravity of the conversation behind me is far greater. A white American is talking about the consequences of the election of Barrack Obama to some white South Africa friends.
“The thing about Obama is that he’s already changed the racial dynamic in America,” explains my white haired countryman authoritatively. “People can’t say now, that ‘you owe me because by ancestors were slaves 140, 150 years ago.’ They know now that if they work hard and get an education they can make it.”
“Not so different from here,” responds the South African. “It’s only been 15 years but people know that since now that the ANC has power, and with our new President…. Well, they don’t have any more excuses.”
I look around the room. All the diners are white.
How lucky we all are to live in societies where at last merit is the only determining factor of success. How blessed we are to be able to discuss the end of racial inequality from the comfort of a restaurant peopled only by our own kind, save for a few black waitresses. How fortunate we are that freed from the demon of racial discrimination, we can all say with conviction that everyone gets what he deserves. The rich deserve their wealth; the poor have earned their poverty. And far away from the creeping decay of urban slums, we have nothing to fear but the chance that beauty is no guarantee against evil, or even just unpleasantness, lurking around the corner.
I cannot speak for South Africa. I have been here for three days. It is not my country, and I do not know it. But I can speak for my country, of which I have lately been so proud. I can remember that Obama is not an end anymore than Mandela was. I can remember that both men are means; they are transformers rather than the transformation itself. Obama does not signal the end of race in America any more than Mandela singled the end of race in South Africa. In a way, both are Bart Simpson heads sticking awkwardly out of an African fetish object, mockeries of the old ways, sublime in their sophisticated satire of the ignorance of the past generations while almost absurd to those viewing them out of context.
I suck the last bite of kudu; I slurp the last drop of pinotage and then walk out the door without fear, without anxiety, but filled with the humbling melancholy of the knowledge that however far we have come, we—I--have so much longer still to go on our long walk to freedom from fear.
Friday, May 8
Manny Being A-Rod
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Well, there’s no getting around this.
For a couple months now, Jose has been meaning to do a piece on performance enhancing drugs and he just never got around to it. First, he didn’t feel like he wanted to bring it up so early in the season. Then he got sick of you all and just stopped writing. But now, with Manny Ramirez being proven to take (note: though not testing positive for) the female fertility drug HCG, there is only one thing Jose can do.
He has to write about A-Rod.
That A-Rod—what a jackass. He did steroids. According to some writer he may have done them back in high school. And he only tips 15% at Hooters. He’s such a tool!
Actually, what Jose originally wanted to write about with regards to A-Rod was taking responsibility. As long time readers here know, Jose has an issue with people “taking responsibility” for something and then suffering no adverse consequences. For example, when Don Rumsfeld “took responsibility” for Abu Ghraib, that meant that he kept his job, suffered no formal discipline, and some young stupid soldiers went to jail. PEDs are kind of the same.
When A-Rod took responsibility for his actions, what happened to him? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No suspension, no loss of money. The only thing that happened was he took a huge PR hit, but one can argue that the hit was already coming once it was clear that he was guilty, and that “taking responsibility” may even have diminished it.
So here is what Jose suggests. Alex, if you are serious about taking responsibility give back the money. Jose is not saying that you should give it to the Rangers. Hell, they benefited from your malfeasance and should be giving back the money (note: if any) they made on you. Give it to some charity, any charity.
If you are really sorry for what you’ve done take the salary for the years you were on PEDs, you admitted to two if Jose recalls, and give it to an African AIDS charity, given to inner city kids, drop it from an airplane, but if you actually feel bad, don’t keep the money.
It’s not like you won’t still be rich. $25 million out of your lifetime earnings still leaves you fat and happy. Hell, challenge MLB to match you, they made out like bandits on your cheating too.
Jose doubts that you are sorry. He doubts that you really do take responsibility. But maybe he is wrong. Maybe you aren’t just a vapid, mirror-kissing douche.
Then prove it. Give the money away.
2. This brings us back, of course, to Manny, who whatever else you want to say, is giving money back. Under the terms of his suspension, Manny will lose $8 million. (Note to the Dodgers: Give it to charity.)
Jose will be honest that, perhaps naively, he never saw this one coming. The idea that someone with a swing as sweet as Manny’s would never hit 50 home runs while juicing just seemed inconceivable.
But Jose must conceive it now. Funny how that works. Jose has never heard of fertility drugs making someone who isn’t taking them conceive.
Manny was the Ruth to Papi’s Gehrig, but if instead of eating lots of hot dogs, Ruth had shot himself full of female hormones. But now? Well, Jose doesn’t know what he is now.
The punditry of course, is now driven by Manny haters gleefully declaring that he’s been a bum and a fraud all along and Manny fans, sadly shaking their heads and hoping against hope for the only reasonable explanation to emerge—that Manny is incredibly stupid.
But it’s not happening this time. Stupidity can take you far. It can take you to the top in our society, it can take you to Wall Street corner offices or the presidency itself, yet it cannot scrub that incriminating crimson off of red hands.
Jose could have believed anything. If he heard that Manny was violating the Endangered Species Act by buying powdered rhino horn to improve his sexual performance, he would have believed it. Had Manny been caught buying crack, and claimed that he didn’t even want the popcorn, he just wanted the prize, Jose would have bought that too.
But to buy that Manny was taking a drug used when cycling off of steroids to enhance his sex drive? Nope. That Jose can’t buy… not even from the lovable idiot named Manny.
3. Over the next three months, you will notice some changes at KEYS TO THE GAME. Most notably, Jose is basically never going to write about baseball.
In a few days, Jose will head off for equatorial Africa, the part of the world referred to as “darkest Africa” by people who do not know that the sun shines most directly on the equator. While there, Jose will have limited access to the Internet, no access to American television and will be surrounded by people whose native language includes no words for infield fly rule.
Jose plans to continue posting on keystothegame.blogspot.com, but he will be posting a radically different kind of writing. It will be first person. It will not be tripartite. And it will never, ever compare the political situation in Congo to the Buddy Leroux coup attempt. That said, he may occasional attempt to explain crop rotation in terms of batting DJ Dru lead off as part of shuffling the batting order.
If there is a major development, for instance, if Manny is proven innocent when he conceives twins in his womb, Jose may drop a little baseball, but don’t count on it. However, for those of you interested in a ground level view of life in Uganda written in Jose’s dreaded “serious voice” check in often.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Well, there’s no getting around this.
For a couple months now, Jose has been meaning to do a piece on performance enhancing drugs and he just never got around to it. First, he didn’t feel like he wanted to bring it up so early in the season. Then he got sick of you all and just stopped writing. But now, with Manny Ramirez being proven to take (note: though not testing positive for) the female fertility drug HCG, there is only one thing Jose can do.
He has to write about A-Rod.
That A-Rod—what a jackass. He did steroids. According to some writer he may have done them back in high school. And he only tips 15% at Hooters. He’s such a tool!
Actually, what Jose originally wanted to write about with regards to A-Rod was taking responsibility. As long time readers here know, Jose has an issue with people “taking responsibility” for something and then suffering no adverse consequences. For example, when Don Rumsfeld “took responsibility” for Abu Ghraib, that meant that he kept his job, suffered no formal discipline, and some young stupid soldiers went to jail. PEDs are kind of the same.
When A-Rod took responsibility for his actions, what happened to him? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No suspension, no loss of money. The only thing that happened was he took a huge PR hit, but one can argue that the hit was already coming once it was clear that he was guilty, and that “taking responsibility” may even have diminished it.
So here is what Jose suggests. Alex, if you are serious about taking responsibility give back the money. Jose is not saying that you should give it to the Rangers. Hell, they benefited from your malfeasance and should be giving back the money (note: if any) they made on you. Give it to some charity, any charity.
If you are really sorry for what you’ve done take the salary for the years you were on PEDs, you admitted to two if Jose recalls, and give it to an African AIDS charity, given to inner city kids, drop it from an airplane, but if you actually feel bad, don’t keep the money.
It’s not like you won’t still be rich. $25 million out of your lifetime earnings still leaves you fat and happy. Hell, challenge MLB to match you, they made out like bandits on your cheating too.
Jose doubts that you are sorry. He doubts that you really do take responsibility. But maybe he is wrong. Maybe you aren’t just a vapid, mirror-kissing douche.
Then prove it. Give the money away.
2. This brings us back, of course, to Manny, who whatever else you want to say, is giving money back. Under the terms of his suspension, Manny will lose $8 million. (Note to the Dodgers: Give it to charity.)
Jose will be honest that, perhaps naively, he never saw this one coming. The idea that someone with a swing as sweet as Manny’s would never hit 50 home runs while juicing just seemed inconceivable.
But Jose must conceive it now. Funny how that works. Jose has never heard of fertility drugs making someone who isn’t taking them conceive.
Manny was the Ruth to Papi’s Gehrig, but if instead of eating lots of hot dogs, Ruth had shot himself full of female hormones. But now? Well, Jose doesn’t know what he is now.
The punditry of course, is now driven by Manny haters gleefully declaring that he’s been a bum and a fraud all along and Manny fans, sadly shaking their heads and hoping against hope for the only reasonable explanation to emerge—that Manny is incredibly stupid.
But it’s not happening this time. Stupidity can take you far. It can take you to the top in our society, it can take you to Wall Street corner offices or the presidency itself, yet it cannot scrub that incriminating crimson off of red hands.
Jose could have believed anything. If he heard that Manny was violating the Endangered Species Act by buying powdered rhino horn to improve his sexual performance, he would have believed it. Had Manny been caught buying crack, and claimed that he didn’t even want the popcorn, he just wanted the prize, Jose would have bought that too.
But to buy that Manny was taking a drug used when cycling off of steroids to enhance his sex drive? Nope. That Jose can’t buy… not even from the lovable idiot named Manny.
3. Over the next three months, you will notice some changes at KEYS TO THE GAME. Most notably, Jose is basically never going to write about baseball.
In a few days, Jose will head off for equatorial Africa, the part of the world referred to as “darkest Africa” by people who do not know that the sun shines most directly on the equator. While there, Jose will have limited access to the Internet, no access to American television and will be surrounded by people whose native language includes no words for infield fly rule.
Jose plans to continue posting on keystothegame.blogspot.com, but he will be posting a radically different kind of writing. It will be first person. It will not be tripartite. And it will never, ever compare the political situation in Congo to the Buddy Leroux coup attempt. That said, he may occasional attempt to explain crop rotation in terms of batting DJ Dru lead off as part of shuffling the batting order.
If there is a major development, for instance, if Manny is proven innocent when he conceives twins in his womb, Jose may drop a little baseball, but don’t count on it. However, for those of you interested in a ground level view of life in Uganda written in Jose’s dreaded “serious voice” check in often.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, April 14
Statement of Interest
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose spent a good chunk of a recent afternoon writing a proposal to go to Japan under a program that identifies promising, young U.S. leaders. As part of the application process, Jose had to write a 500-word essay explaining his interest and what he would like to learn in Japan.
It was hard enough for Jose to stick to a miserly 500 words, it was harder still for him to use the dreaded first person singular, but the hardest thing of all was to hide what he really wanted to write. Jose wrote a more or less (note: less) competent essay about his interest in learning the underpinnings of the Japanese economic miracle and seeing Japan take a leading role in international economic development, but that’s not what was in his heart. What he really wanted to write was
Japan is a most extraordinary nation. From its stunning transformation from a feudal backwater at the mercy of Perry’ s black ships to conqueror of the Tsars in just 50 years, from being conquered by Tom Cruise to convincing American children that Pokemon makes sense, Japan has been a nation capable of constant innovation and reinvention, without losing the ancient and serene traditions that underlie its civilization. But despite its brilliance, despite its marvels of technology, lies a dark and disturbing truth—Japan cannot produce a “national treasure” pitcher who can throw strikes.
How can the nation that invented the Walkman also produce… the Walk Man. How is it possible that Daisuke Matsuzaka can be so good, yet so infuriating? And before we push Japan to take a lead in international development, shouldn’t we consider this problem? Would we really want Japan to advise and assist the Dominican Republic on economic development if it turned walk rate of some budding Pedro Martinez into that of Dice K?
2. Okay, so this season is staring to turn into sort of a downer. There are a lot of things about the slow start that concern Jose, but none more so than the risk of 2009 turning into another 1996. As you may recall, in 1996, the Kevin Kennedy led Red Sox came into the season completely unprepared and started the season with Roger Clemens bowing to Texas’ Lynn’s own Ken Hill (note: never take Clemens over Ken Hill in a big game) before getting off to a 2-75 start.
But there are graver issues at play here. As you recall, the 1996 season turned around when the Red Sox traded Jamie Moyer to Seattle for Darren Bragg and Jeff Frye. Moyer, of course, went on to pitch effectively for another 90 years, whereas Darren Bragg emerged as a gritty white guy and perhaps the greatest man to ever come out of Waterbury, Connecticut save for noted war hero, Hogan from Hogan’s Heroes. Jeff Frye was nicknamed for a corn chip.
Jose has no interest in seeing Jon Lester traded for a midget and a gritty player, so Jose would really like to see the Red Sox turn it around, say, now.
3. A sideshow of this week’s trip to Oakland is that it represents the first time in his career that former Red Sox legend-to-be Nomar Garciaparra has played against the Red Sox. The natural temptation at a time like this would be to look at what has become of Nomar’s career, shake one’s head sadly, and wonder what might have been. Since Garciaparra left, the Red Sox have used five different regular starting shortstops, most of whom have performed poorly, and none of whom have managed to stick.
On the upside, the Red Sox did win two world championships and avoided paying big money to a player who declined rapidly. On the other hand, Nomar famously kept a red line around his locker that reporters could not cross, and given the cost of getting on the red line these days, the Red Sox really could have benefit from that revenue stream.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. Jose spent a good chunk of a recent afternoon writing a proposal to go to Japan under a program that identifies promising, young U.S. leaders. As part of the application process, Jose had to write a 500-word essay explaining his interest and what he would like to learn in Japan.
It was hard enough for Jose to stick to a miserly 500 words, it was harder still for him to use the dreaded first person singular, but the hardest thing of all was to hide what he really wanted to write. Jose wrote a more or less (note: less) competent essay about his interest in learning the underpinnings of the Japanese economic miracle and seeing Japan take a leading role in international economic development, but that’s not what was in his heart. What he really wanted to write was
Japan is a most extraordinary nation. From its stunning transformation from a feudal backwater at the mercy of Perry’ s black ships to conqueror of the Tsars in just 50 years, from being conquered by Tom Cruise to convincing American children that Pokemon makes sense, Japan has been a nation capable of constant innovation and reinvention, without losing the ancient and serene traditions that underlie its civilization. But despite its brilliance, despite its marvels of technology, lies a dark and disturbing truth—Japan cannot produce a “national treasure” pitcher who can throw strikes.
How can the nation that invented the Walkman also produce… the Walk Man. How is it possible that Daisuke Matsuzaka can be so good, yet so infuriating? And before we push Japan to take a lead in international development, shouldn’t we consider this problem? Would we really want Japan to advise and assist the Dominican Republic on economic development if it turned walk rate of some budding Pedro Martinez into that of Dice K?
2. Okay, so this season is staring to turn into sort of a downer. There are a lot of things about the slow start that concern Jose, but none more so than the risk of 2009 turning into another 1996. As you may recall, in 1996, the Kevin Kennedy led Red Sox came into the season completely unprepared and started the season with Roger Clemens bowing to Texas’ Lynn’s own Ken Hill (note: never take Clemens over Ken Hill in a big game) before getting off to a 2-75 start.
But there are graver issues at play here. As you recall, the 1996 season turned around when the Red Sox traded Jamie Moyer to Seattle for Darren Bragg and Jeff Frye. Moyer, of course, went on to pitch effectively for another 90 years, whereas Darren Bragg emerged as a gritty white guy and perhaps the greatest man to ever come out of Waterbury, Connecticut save for noted war hero, Hogan from Hogan’s Heroes. Jeff Frye was nicknamed for a corn chip.
Jose has no interest in seeing Jon Lester traded for a midget and a gritty player, so Jose would really like to see the Red Sox turn it around, say, now.
3. A sideshow of this week’s trip to Oakland is that it represents the first time in his career that former Red Sox legend-to-be Nomar Garciaparra has played against the Red Sox. The natural temptation at a time like this would be to look at what has become of Nomar’s career, shake one’s head sadly, and wonder what might have been. Since Garciaparra left, the Red Sox have used five different regular starting shortstops, most of whom have performed poorly, and none of whom have managed to stick.
On the upside, the Red Sox did win two world championships and avoided paying big money to a player who declined rapidly. On the other hand, Nomar famously kept a red line around his locker that reporters could not cross, and given the cost of getting on the red line these days, the Red Sox really could have benefit from that revenue stream.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Wednesday, April 8
Being Drunk is the Optimal Explaination
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. As Jose rolled into the bar somewhere during the third inning and settled in for seven hours of Yuengling pitchers, bacon cheese fries and baseball, Jose made a starling, shameful and disturbing mistake.
He looked up and the screen noted that Jason Varitek was at bat, and immediately went into a tirade about the captain’s diminishing skills. He was quickly shut up, however, by stinging shot to the gap. Jose was stunned. It just didn’t add up.
And then it hit him.
That wasn’t Jason Varitek. It was Kevin Youkilis.
The fact that Jose, on a casual glance, mistook Youk for Tek, has several possible implications—all of them bad.
Jose sees the following possibilities:
• Jose has been away from Boston for way too long, and can now do a better job of telling white Duke basketball players apart than two goateed Red Sox.
• Youk’s swing has gotten long, looping and terrible.
• Jose was drunk at four in the afternoon.
Jose, to be frank, is hoping for the third. There is so much less stigma to public drunkenness than to confusing two Red Sox… unless of course it is Hideki Okajima and Dice K, who as David Ortiz pointed out, look exactly the same.
2. Today marks the first Red Sox start for former Ray’s outfielder Rocco Baldelli, also know as the “Woonsocket Rocket.” He is, of course, known as the Woonsocket Rocket because he hails from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and, much like the rocket recently launched by the North Koreans, has a tendency to fall apart before achieving his objective.
Still, as aeronautic nicknames go, it does appear to be an upgrade on Manny “Unmanned Drone” Ramirez, Curt “Goodyear Blimp” Euro and Kevin “Midgetman Missile” Millar. That’s right Millar, Jose knows your humiliating secret.
3. Like many native Bostonians Jose was touched by Senator Edward Kennedy’s trip to the park yesterday to throw out the first pitch. It was hard for him to watch though.
Just watching Senator Kennedy make that sad, weak little toss that fell to the ground so short of its target brought back too many memories, too many gossamer recollections of days gone by. Who could help but think of past days of youth and achievement? Who could resist dwelling on images of Camelot lost?
Yes, who among us, while watching that sad toss couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for Johnny Damon?
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. As Jose rolled into the bar somewhere during the third inning and settled in for seven hours of Yuengling pitchers, bacon cheese fries and baseball, Jose made a starling, shameful and disturbing mistake.
He looked up and the screen noted that Jason Varitek was at bat, and immediately went into a tirade about the captain’s diminishing skills. He was quickly shut up, however, by stinging shot to the gap. Jose was stunned. It just didn’t add up.
And then it hit him.
That wasn’t Jason Varitek. It was Kevin Youkilis.
The fact that Jose, on a casual glance, mistook Youk for Tek, has several possible implications—all of them bad.
Jose sees the following possibilities:
• Jose has been away from Boston for way too long, and can now do a better job of telling white Duke basketball players apart than two goateed Red Sox.
• Youk’s swing has gotten long, looping and terrible.
• Jose was drunk at four in the afternoon.
Jose, to be frank, is hoping for the third. There is so much less stigma to public drunkenness than to confusing two Red Sox… unless of course it is Hideki Okajima and Dice K, who as David Ortiz pointed out, look exactly the same.
2. Today marks the first Red Sox start for former Ray’s outfielder Rocco Baldelli, also know as the “Woonsocket Rocket.” He is, of course, known as the Woonsocket Rocket because he hails from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and, much like the rocket recently launched by the North Koreans, has a tendency to fall apart before achieving his objective.
Still, as aeronautic nicknames go, it does appear to be an upgrade on Manny “Unmanned Drone” Ramirez, Curt “Goodyear Blimp” Euro and Kevin “Midgetman Missile” Millar. That’s right Millar, Jose knows your humiliating secret.
3. Like many native Bostonians Jose was touched by Senator Edward Kennedy’s trip to the park yesterday to throw out the first pitch. It was hard for him to watch though.
Just watching Senator Kennedy make that sad, weak little toss that fell to the ground so short of its target brought back too many memories, too many gossamer recollections of days gone by. Who could help but think of past days of youth and achievement? Who could resist dwelling on images of Camelot lost?
Yes, who among us, while watching that sad toss couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for Johnny Damon?
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Tuesday, April 7
All This Has Happened Before
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. All this has happened before, all this will happen again.
That’s how it is on opening day.
The sweet smell of fertilizer, the piquant stench of watery beer, the first pitch thrown in anger, up high and tight on a hated rival.
All this has happened before, all this will happen again. In fact, it all happened before yesterday.
Then it rained.
Then Jose had to adapt this KEY that he had written furiously to today.
All this has happened before, all this will happen again.
It will happen, we know, because God decided that it will. Jose had never been terribly amenable to these creation science arguments. You know the ones.
“If it’s really complicated, God must have done it.”
Ben Stein (note: who, according to Jose’s sources, once gave a girl for whom he pined a bag of his toenails) couldn’t convince Jose, that creation museum in Kentucky that Jose didn’t visit couldn’t convince him, but Battlestar Galactica?
Sure.
Have some fictional angels resembling a fictional person and a fictional robot tell Jose God did it all, and he will buy right in. (Note: The subhead for Ben Stein’s creationism movie Expelled was “No Intelligence Allowed.” Jose almost went to see it thinking it was about the Grady Little era.)
Which bring Jose to his thesis statement, let’s see, eleven dubious paragraphs in (note to Jose’s students: never do this, it’s only cool when Jose does it)—Thank God for Opening Day.
Of course, as long as Jose is purporting that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again, he should probably concede that there are a few things that don’t seem to have happened before, and a few things that he hopes won’t happen again.
For instance, Jose does not really remember Seal ever singing the national anthem (note: though has he ever sung crazy for Papelbon’s entrance?) He remembers a seal barking out the national album, but it is possible that it was the Cowsills. (Note: Would Buster Bluth from television’s Arrested Development freak out if he saw Seal, or is it just the mammals that scare him?) Oh, but now, Seal isn’t performing the national anthem. See? Things are falling into alignment.
Jose also doesn’t recall opening against the defending American League Champion Tampax Bay Rays. He recalls opening against the Rays before, just not with them as champions of anything. Jose is pretty sure they were not even the champions of Tampa the last time the Red Sox opened against them. Well, maybe Tampa, but not. St. Pete. As Jose recalls, the last time the Sox opened against the Rays, there was then, as now, a Kennedy involved. Whereas today Sen. Ted Kennedy will throw out the first pitch, in 2003, his nephew Rep. Joe Kennedy started for the Rays. (Note: God rest his soul.) This one doesn’t seem to have been fixed by the delay. The Rays are still the champions of the American League… technically, in the sense that they beat us in the ALCS.
Jose just thought of another difference. He vaguely remembers us having a lunatic in left field last year, but maybe that was just a dream, a long, strange, sure thing 30 HR 100 RBI dream.
Also, there is this weird thing where Jose is not in Boston for opening day for the first time ever, and Jose must concede it is very, very strange. Here in Durham, North Carolina, Jose looks around and he only sees three people wearing Red Sox caps. Pathetic! And only one of them is wearing a jersey. And it’s a freaking Mosey Nixon jersey. Seriously, it’s like Jose has gone to hell, a temperate, basketball-loving hell with good BBQ and inexpensive housing.
But these small details aside, it’s all terribly familiar. It’s April in Boston, and the chance of rain is 90% (note: 100%)... so is the chance of a Red Sox victory. (Note: Damn it the chance of precipitation today is 20%, however, Jose has identified several threats to the construct validity of likelihood of precipitation as a measure of the Red Sox’s chances of winning. First, Tampa may play sweet baseball, but they are not made of sugar. Second, Jose can’t remember what construct validity is. Still, writing KEYS while in the warm afterglow of a statistics class is the closest Jose will ever get to being a SABR guy.
Oh, and so say we all.
So say we all.
2. Among the elements missing from the Red Sox roster this year will be Curt Euro’s contract. Euro’s contract retired recently after a season where it put up an impressive 0.00 ERA with 0 home runs allowed, while collecting $8 million in what the CEO’s call “compensation.” The actual person to whom the contract used to be attached retired at the end of 2007.
3. In today’s opener, St. Josh Beckett takes on the man they call “Big Game” James Shields. Jose says “they” because it is not Jose who says it. Actually, Jose is not sure who says it, so let’s try the lead again in the passive voice.
In today’s opener, St. Josh Beckett takes on the man who is called “Big Game” James Shields.
Better.
Jose prefers to call him “Soul” James Shields. As you might imagine, there is a story behind this. Not a good story, but a story nevertheless. When Jose was a senior in high school, and a hot shot trombone player in the marching band, section leader in fact, there was this freshman clarinet player named James. James was a skinny, freckly red haired kid, who in addition to suffering from the handicap of playing the clarinet, also suffered from not having a soul. Check that, not having soul.
This proved to be a problem when the band was playing Stevie Wonder’s classic “I Wish.” On the breakdown, the band was supposed to go into a maneuver called the “spread, tilt and wail” which, even though it sounds like one of those made up sexual maneuvers like the Dirty Sanchez or the Fat Free Agent Bust, is an actual band move, wherein musicians put their legs shoulder length apart, tilt back and play to the gods.
Poor James just couldn’t swing it—both literally and figuratively. He was too square, too shy, too James. It was as if, to quote the band teacher referring to something completely different, you’d taken this hip, swinging mariachi band and dropped it in a box.
So the teacher did the only thing he could. He tried to pump James up by giving him a nickname. Sure, in the last eight years nicknames have proven to be a poor basis for a system of government, but this was 1994, and we didn’t know that yet.
And so Soul James was born.
And he played with soul. He had a soul. At least he thought he did. And people looking at him thought so too. But if you looked long enough, if you focused hard enough, he was still just a skinny, ginger freshman.
“Big Game” James Shields is not so different. You can give him the nickname, you can start him on opening day, you can have him spread, tilt and wail before the entire world. And he might get lucky. The bravado might fool some people, but not forever. He is still the same scared little rookie with an ERA approaching five on a terrible team, and on that third or fourth at bat, hitters age going to notice.
Maybe some day the man will match the name, but that day is not today. Today, he is just plain James.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
1. All this has happened before, all this will happen again.
That’s how it is on opening day.
The sweet smell of fertilizer, the piquant stench of watery beer, the first pitch thrown in anger, up high and tight on a hated rival.
All this has happened before, all this will happen again. In fact, it all happened before yesterday.
Then it rained.
Then Jose had to adapt this KEY that he had written furiously to today.
All this has happened before, all this will happen again.
It will happen, we know, because God decided that it will. Jose had never been terribly amenable to these creation science arguments. You know the ones.
“If it’s really complicated, God must have done it.”
Ben Stein (note: who, according to Jose’s sources, once gave a girl for whom he pined a bag of his toenails) couldn’t convince Jose, that creation museum in Kentucky that Jose didn’t visit couldn’t convince him, but Battlestar Galactica?
Sure.
Have some fictional angels resembling a fictional person and a fictional robot tell Jose God did it all, and he will buy right in. (Note: The subhead for Ben Stein’s creationism movie Expelled was “No Intelligence Allowed.” Jose almost went to see it thinking it was about the Grady Little era.)
Which bring Jose to his thesis statement, let’s see, eleven dubious paragraphs in (note to Jose’s students: never do this, it’s only cool when Jose does it)—Thank God for Opening Day.
Of course, as long as Jose is purporting that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again, he should probably concede that there are a few things that don’t seem to have happened before, and a few things that he hopes won’t happen again.
For instance, Jose does not really remember Seal ever singing the national anthem (note: though has he ever sung crazy for Papelbon’s entrance?) He remembers a seal barking out the national album, but it is possible that it was the Cowsills. (Note: Would Buster Bluth from television’s Arrested Development freak out if he saw Seal, or is it just the mammals that scare him?) Oh, but now, Seal isn’t performing the national anthem. See? Things are falling into alignment.
Jose also doesn’t recall opening against the defending American League Champion Tampax Bay Rays. He recalls opening against the Rays before, just not with them as champions of anything. Jose is pretty sure they were not even the champions of Tampa the last time the Red Sox opened against them. Well, maybe Tampa, but not. St. Pete. As Jose recalls, the last time the Sox opened against the Rays, there was then, as now, a Kennedy involved. Whereas today Sen. Ted Kennedy will throw out the first pitch, in 2003, his nephew Rep. Joe Kennedy started for the Rays. (Note: God rest his soul.) This one doesn’t seem to have been fixed by the delay. The Rays are still the champions of the American League… technically, in the sense that they beat us in the ALCS.
Jose just thought of another difference. He vaguely remembers us having a lunatic in left field last year, but maybe that was just a dream, a long, strange, sure thing 30 HR 100 RBI dream.
Also, there is this weird thing where Jose is not in Boston for opening day for the first time ever, and Jose must concede it is very, very strange. Here in Durham, North Carolina, Jose looks around and he only sees three people wearing Red Sox caps. Pathetic! And only one of them is wearing a jersey. And it’s a freaking Mosey Nixon jersey. Seriously, it’s like Jose has gone to hell, a temperate, basketball-loving hell with good BBQ and inexpensive housing.
But these small details aside, it’s all terribly familiar. It’s April in Boston, and the chance of rain is 90% (note: 100%)... so is the chance of a Red Sox victory. (Note: Damn it the chance of precipitation today is 20%, however, Jose has identified several threats to the construct validity of likelihood of precipitation as a measure of the Red Sox’s chances of winning. First, Tampa may play sweet baseball, but they are not made of sugar. Second, Jose can’t remember what construct validity is. Still, writing KEYS while in the warm afterglow of a statistics class is the closest Jose will ever get to being a SABR guy.
Oh, and so say we all.
So say we all.
2. Among the elements missing from the Red Sox roster this year will be Curt Euro’s contract. Euro’s contract retired recently after a season where it put up an impressive 0.00 ERA with 0 home runs allowed, while collecting $8 million in what the CEO’s call “compensation.” The actual person to whom the contract used to be attached retired at the end of 2007.
3. In today’s opener, St. Josh Beckett takes on the man they call “Big Game” James Shields. Jose says “they” because it is not Jose who says it. Actually, Jose is not sure who says it, so let’s try the lead again in the passive voice.
In today’s opener, St. Josh Beckett takes on the man who is called “Big Game” James Shields.
Better.
Jose prefers to call him “Soul” James Shields. As you might imagine, there is a story behind this. Not a good story, but a story nevertheless. When Jose was a senior in high school, and a hot shot trombone player in the marching band, section leader in fact, there was this freshman clarinet player named James. James was a skinny, freckly red haired kid, who in addition to suffering from the handicap of playing the clarinet, also suffered from not having a soul. Check that, not having soul.
This proved to be a problem when the band was playing Stevie Wonder’s classic “I Wish.” On the breakdown, the band was supposed to go into a maneuver called the “spread, tilt and wail” which, even though it sounds like one of those made up sexual maneuvers like the Dirty Sanchez or the Fat Free Agent Bust, is an actual band move, wherein musicians put their legs shoulder length apart, tilt back and play to the gods.
Poor James just couldn’t swing it—both literally and figuratively. He was too square, too shy, too James. It was as if, to quote the band teacher referring to something completely different, you’d taken this hip, swinging mariachi band and dropped it in a box.
So the teacher did the only thing he could. He tried to pump James up by giving him a nickname. Sure, in the last eight years nicknames have proven to be a poor basis for a system of government, but this was 1994, and we didn’t know that yet.
And so Soul James was born.
And he played with soul. He had a soul. At least he thought he did. And people looking at him thought so too. But if you looked long enough, if you focused hard enough, he was still just a skinny, ginger freshman.
“Big Game” James Shields is not so different. You can give him the nickname, you can start him on opening day, you can have him spread, tilt and wail before the entire world. And he might get lucky. The bravado might fool some people, but not forever. He is still the same scared little rookie with an ERA approaching five on a terrible team, and on that third or fourth at bat, hitters age going to notice.
Maybe some day the man will match the name, but that day is not today. Today, he is just plain James.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE GAME.
Thursday, January 22
One...Two.. Off-Season Review
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. With pitchers and catchers reporting in just a few weeks and ending the darkest part of the winter, Jose thought this was as good a time as any to for Jose to review the Red Sox’s major off-season acquisitions. Unfortunately, they haven’t made any, so Jose will talk about two injured pitchers and a rehashed catcher instead.
Brad Penny
Of all of the Red Sox acquisitions this off-season, Jose loves this one the most. Yes, Penny struggled his way to a 6-9 record and 6.27 ERA last year, but Jose just sees so much upside in the guy. It’s not just that he had a terrific 2007, starting out 12-1, it’s his broader history.
When Penny was just a child of 11, he was already doing most of the work in helping his uncle, Inspector Gadget, solve mysteries and counter a major terrorist network. How could you not want someone with that kind of background on your team? Jose noticed that when he was with the Dodgers last year, Penny appeared to have neither his laptop computer or his laser wristwatch, which may explain his struggles. Both were critical in Penny’s success as a crime fighter. Also, as Jose recalls, Penny got a lot of help from a sidekick named Brain, so the Sox should consider signing Dave Brain, who last played in 1908 to catch for him. Sure, Brain was mostly an infielder, but a 107-year-old infielder can’t be dramatically worse than what we have catching now.
An option as starter number five?
2. John Smoltz
The way Jose sees it, Smoltz is really a replacement for Curt Euro. It is a tremendous upgrade. Basically, The Red Sox replaced 42-year-old usual starter and sometime closer with a 127 career ERA+ with a 41-year-old usual starter and sometime closer with a 127 career ERA+. Smoltz has 210 career wins, Euro has 216. Smoltz has a 3.26 career ERA playing exclusively in the easier National League, Euro has a 3.46 career ERA in a mix of the two leagues. Smoltz has a career WHIP of 1.17, Euro’s career WHIP is 1.137. Smoltz has 3,011 career strike outs, Euro has 3,116. They are practically the same guy. Almost the only difference is in saves and that Smoltz broke his labrum and Euro broke his diet.
So why is this a big upgrade? Because the Red Sox will only be paying Smoltz $5 million not to play, substantial savings over the $8 million they paid Euro not to play last year.
That makes Smoltz 37.5% better than Euro. It’s really a no brainer. On the other hand, you do lose Euro’s medical expertise, which came in handy when evaluating the game readiness of guys like Scott Williamson.
3. Josh Bard
For all of the griping about the sudden appearance of time travel on Lost last night, Jose has yet to hear any complaints about the Red Sox dabbling in time travel. But shouldn’t fans be griping? As we all know, the consequences of time travel for plot continuity are terrible, and Jose doesn’t want to create any paradoxes that wipe out the 2004 World Series.
The mess began when the Red Sox traded Bard and Cla Meredith to San Diego to bring Doug Mirabelli back in 2006. This was an effort to travel back to 2004 and was nothing short of a disaster. Bard and Meredith played well, and Mirabelli caught the knuckleball and did little else of consequence; the Red Sox missed the playoffs.
Now the Red Sox are trying to undo the paradox by bringing Bard back, but that’s not how it works. The timeline is already changed, and the consequences are dire. Cla Meredith eclipsed Jose Melendez’s San Diego Padres record for most consecutive scoreless innings pitched, and thereby all but erased Jose from history.
Jose supposes the Red Sox could try to reacquire Meredith to set things right, but you know how it is with time travel, trying to fix things only makes them worse. With Jose’s luck trying to correct the time line would have completely changed history, the Red Sox would never have acquired Jose, Phil Plantier would have gone down as one of the great Red Sox busts and this feature would be called Dario Veras’ KEYS TO THE GAME.
I’m not Dario Veras, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. With pitchers and catchers reporting in just a few weeks and ending the darkest part of the winter, Jose thought this was as good a time as any to for Jose to review the Red Sox’s major off-season acquisitions. Unfortunately, they haven’t made any, so Jose will talk about two injured pitchers and a rehashed catcher instead.
Brad Penny
Of all of the Red Sox acquisitions this off-season, Jose loves this one the most. Yes, Penny struggled his way to a 6-9 record and 6.27 ERA last year, but Jose just sees so much upside in the guy. It’s not just that he had a terrific 2007, starting out 12-1, it’s his broader history.
When Penny was just a child of 11, he was already doing most of the work in helping his uncle, Inspector Gadget, solve mysteries and counter a major terrorist network. How could you not want someone with that kind of background on your team? Jose noticed that when he was with the Dodgers last year, Penny appeared to have neither his laptop computer or his laser wristwatch, which may explain his struggles. Both were critical in Penny’s success as a crime fighter. Also, as Jose recalls, Penny got a lot of help from a sidekick named Brain, so the Sox should consider signing Dave Brain, who last played in 1908 to catch for him. Sure, Brain was mostly an infielder, but a 107-year-old infielder can’t be dramatically worse than what we have catching now.
An option as starter number five?
2. John Smoltz
The way Jose sees it, Smoltz is really a replacement for Curt Euro. It is a tremendous upgrade. Basically, The Red Sox replaced 42-year-old usual starter and sometime closer with a 127 career ERA+ with a 41-year-old usual starter and sometime closer with a 127 career ERA+. Smoltz has 210 career wins, Euro has 216. Smoltz has a 3.26 career ERA playing exclusively in the easier National League, Euro has a 3.46 career ERA in a mix of the two leagues. Smoltz has a career WHIP of 1.17, Euro’s career WHIP is 1.137. Smoltz has 3,011 career strike outs, Euro has 3,116. They are practically the same guy. Almost the only difference is in saves and that Smoltz broke his labrum and Euro broke his diet.
So why is this a big upgrade? Because the Red Sox will only be paying Smoltz $5 million not to play, substantial savings over the $8 million they paid Euro not to play last year.
That makes Smoltz 37.5% better than Euro. It’s really a no brainer. On the other hand, you do lose Euro’s medical expertise, which came in handy when evaluating the game readiness of guys like Scott Williamson.
3. Josh Bard
For all of the griping about the sudden appearance of time travel on Lost last night, Jose has yet to hear any complaints about the Red Sox dabbling in time travel. But shouldn’t fans be griping? As we all know, the consequences of time travel for plot continuity are terrible, and Jose doesn’t want to create any paradoxes that wipe out the 2004 World Series.
The mess began when the Red Sox traded Bard and Cla Meredith to San Diego to bring Doug Mirabelli back in 2006. This was an effort to travel back to 2004 and was nothing short of a disaster. Bard and Meredith played well, and Mirabelli caught the knuckleball and did little else of consequence; the Red Sox missed the playoffs.
Now the Red Sox are trying to undo the paradox by bringing Bard back, but that’s not how it works. The timeline is already changed, and the consequences are dire. Cla Meredith eclipsed Jose Melendez’s San Diego Padres record for most consecutive scoreless innings pitched, and thereby all but erased Jose from history.
Jose supposes the Red Sox could try to reacquire Meredith to set things right, but you know how it is with time travel, trying to fix things only makes them worse. With Jose’s luck trying to correct the time line would have completely changed history, the Red Sox would never have acquired Jose, Phil Plantier would have gone down as one of the great Red Sox busts and this feature would be called Dario Veras’ KEYS TO THE GAME.
I’m not Dario Veras, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
Tuesday, January 20
KEYS TO THE INAUGURATION
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE INAUGURATION.
1. Jose does not often write politics in this space. It’s not that Jose doesn’t think about politics, aside from baseball and… something else, it’s almost all that he thinks about. It’s just that injecting politics into something as pure and virtuous as baseball, what with its illegal drugs and “beaver shooting,” seems like a bad gamble.
There is an old adage in politics, maybe from Barney Frank, that the problem with your candidate winning is that you will inevitably be disappointed. Jose doesn’t need that; he has gotten enough disappointment from baseball, at least prior to 2004. Thankfully, Jose hasn’t backed a lot of winners in politics, so it has been a minimal source of post inaugural disappointed. (Note: Jose just signed up on Facebook as a supporter of Michael Dukakis today. He’s no fair weather friend.)
But this year is different. This year Jose is not only setting himself up for disappointment, he is embracing it. He knows that President Obama will not make everything better, that he will not do everything right, and that he will invariably and categorically disappoint Jose and legions of other supporters sometime in the next four years. But Jose is up for it. He is eager to be disappointed by a president rather than disgusted. At this point disappointment would be a huge step up. George W. Bush disgusted Jose with his arrogance and complacent idiocy. Bill Clinton disgusted Jose with this willingness to put his personal appetites and power above the common good. George H.W. Bush, a man known for nothing if not civility, disgusted Jose with an effective yet cruel and gutless 1988 campaign against a decent man, and Ronald Reagan disgusted Jose with his indifference to the poor and his love of substituting his own Horatio Alger fantasies for the real lives of Americans.
Is there any wonder against this backdrop of indifference, arrogance, cruelty and will to power that Jose would crave the soothing salve of disappointment?
2. But today there will be no disappointment. Tomorrow perhaps, a year from now most likely, but not today. Today, like millions of Americans and perhaps a billion people around the world, Jose will witness one of those rare moments that suggests that America might be just as good as we aspire to be.
It is cliché, at this point to say that Jose never expected to see a black man elected in his lifetime, but he did not. It is not that Jose did not believe America had made progress since those gloomy days of Jim Crow or even that we are a heart a racist nation. Instead, Jose relied on practicality. He did not think that a person of color could emerge from the political process who could be viewed by the nation’s majority not as a “black politician” but as a politician who is black.
But Jose was wrong. Wonderfully deliriously wrong.
When we wake up on Wednesday, there will still be racism in America. There will still be poverty and we will still be at war. But everything will not be the same. We will not be a society that is “post-racial” whatever that means, but we will, at least, be a society that is capable of looking beyond race, at least on Election Day. Much like, baseball after Jackie Robinson opened the majors to black players, America will be, more than ever, a place where at the highest levels we are using the greatest talents of our finest citizens.
3. It hit Jose this evening as he was watching a clip of Pete Seeger singing, “This Land is Your Land” at the concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The old man was plucking away on his banjo and shouting out verses to the crowd with a gleam in his eye that hinted at joy bordering on disbelief.
It’s not that Jose agrees with Seeger’s politics, Jose is far too cynical for that, but he is enamored of the idea that someone who was literally blacklisted can be invited into the heart of the American celebration. Redemption, restoration, reunification, these are good values. These are American values. Jose only wishes that Lee Greenwood or Ted Nugent had been invited to sing along, though Jose doubts either would have accepted.
Jose hopes that Seeger’s inclusion is a symbol, a sign that not only will this administration be about moving beyond the racial and cultural politics that have been so divisive, but beyond the endless refighting of old battles. Jose no longer cares what you thought about Vietnam, he never wants to hear it in another election again, nor does he want to hear liberalism decried as communism or conservatism as fascism. He cares about a politician’s opinion on Vietnam about as much as he cares about his opinion on the Spanish-American War. Jose cares about someone’s red sympathies about as much as he cares about someone’s sympathies for the Cincinnati Reds.
What Jose saw it Seeger’s eyes that was so delightful was the acknowledgement that perhaps America really can change, that it really can be the place that we want it to be. And for today he is right. Today, if not tomorrow, America is as good as its promise.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE INAUGURATION
1. Jose does not often write politics in this space. It’s not that Jose doesn’t think about politics, aside from baseball and… something else, it’s almost all that he thinks about. It’s just that injecting politics into something as pure and virtuous as baseball, what with its illegal drugs and “beaver shooting,” seems like a bad gamble.
There is an old adage in politics, maybe from Barney Frank, that the problem with your candidate winning is that you will inevitably be disappointed. Jose doesn’t need that; he has gotten enough disappointment from baseball, at least prior to 2004. Thankfully, Jose hasn’t backed a lot of winners in politics, so it has been a minimal source of post inaugural disappointed. (Note: Jose just signed up on Facebook as a supporter of Michael Dukakis today. He’s no fair weather friend.)
But this year is different. This year Jose is not only setting himself up for disappointment, he is embracing it. He knows that President Obama will not make everything better, that he will not do everything right, and that he will invariably and categorically disappoint Jose and legions of other supporters sometime in the next four years. But Jose is up for it. He is eager to be disappointed by a president rather than disgusted. At this point disappointment would be a huge step up. George W. Bush disgusted Jose with his arrogance and complacent idiocy. Bill Clinton disgusted Jose with this willingness to put his personal appetites and power above the common good. George H.W. Bush, a man known for nothing if not civility, disgusted Jose with an effective yet cruel and gutless 1988 campaign against a decent man, and Ronald Reagan disgusted Jose with his indifference to the poor and his love of substituting his own Horatio Alger fantasies for the real lives of Americans.
Is there any wonder against this backdrop of indifference, arrogance, cruelty and will to power that Jose would crave the soothing salve of disappointment?
2. But today there will be no disappointment. Tomorrow perhaps, a year from now most likely, but not today. Today, like millions of Americans and perhaps a billion people around the world, Jose will witness one of those rare moments that suggests that America might be just as good as we aspire to be.
It is cliché, at this point to say that Jose never expected to see a black man elected in his lifetime, but he did not. It is not that Jose did not believe America had made progress since those gloomy days of Jim Crow or even that we are a heart a racist nation. Instead, Jose relied on practicality. He did not think that a person of color could emerge from the political process who could be viewed by the nation’s majority not as a “black politician” but as a politician who is black.
But Jose was wrong. Wonderfully deliriously wrong.
When we wake up on Wednesday, there will still be racism in America. There will still be poverty and we will still be at war. But everything will not be the same. We will not be a society that is “post-racial” whatever that means, but we will, at least, be a society that is capable of looking beyond race, at least on Election Day. Much like, baseball after Jackie Robinson opened the majors to black players, America will be, more than ever, a place where at the highest levels we are using the greatest talents of our finest citizens.
3. It hit Jose this evening as he was watching a clip of Pete Seeger singing, “This Land is Your Land” at the concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The old man was plucking away on his banjo and shouting out verses to the crowd with a gleam in his eye that hinted at joy bordering on disbelief.
It’s not that Jose agrees with Seeger’s politics, Jose is far too cynical for that, but he is enamored of the idea that someone who was literally blacklisted can be invited into the heart of the American celebration. Redemption, restoration, reunification, these are good values. These are American values. Jose only wishes that Lee Greenwood or Ted Nugent had been invited to sing along, though Jose doubts either would have accepted.
Jose hopes that Seeger’s inclusion is a symbol, a sign that not only will this administration be about moving beyond the racial and cultural politics that have been so divisive, but beyond the endless refighting of old battles. Jose no longer cares what you thought about Vietnam, he never wants to hear it in another election again, nor does he want to hear liberalism decried as communism or conservatism as fascism. He cares about a politician’s opinion on Vietnam about as much as he cares about his opinion on the Spanish-American War. Jose cares about someone’s red sympathies about as much as he cares about someone’s sympathies for the Cincinnati Reds.
What Jose saw it Seeger’s eyes that was so delightful was the acknowledgement that perhaps America really can change, that it really can be the place that we want it to be. And for today he is right. Today, if not tomorrow, America is as good as its promise.
I’m Jose Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO THE INAUGURATION
Tuesday, January 13
Jose to City: Drop Dead
It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. Jose has always thought that being a headline writer must be a wonderful job. Hell, it may even be the best $30,000 a year job in the world.
You get to take someone else’s work, something he struggled, sweat and perhaps even bled over if they are John Stossel covering pro wrestling, slap a label on it, which may or may not have anything to do with the piece, and then have many more people look at your work than the actual authors. Even better, you occasionally get to be incredibly clever and write a headline like the Boston Herald’s “Dr. Doom and Va-va-va-vroom” to describe the 1990 Massachusetts Democratic ticket of John Silber and Marjorie Claprood.
Perhaps the most famous American headline is the one penned by the New York Daily News’ William J. Brink on October 30, 1975 “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Jose would like to pay tribute to this brilliant, and technically untrue headline (note: Ford never said it, though he did say “things are more like they are now than they’ve ever been”), by writing the following headline some time this year.
As you may have noticed, The Yankees laid out $400 million to just three players in the last few weeks.
In unrelated news, the Bronx Borrowers also recently requested “$259 million in tax-exempt bonds and $111 million in taxable bonds, on top of $940 million in tax-exempt bonds and $25 million in taxable bonds already granted for its $1.3 billion stadium” according to ESPN.com.
Wait a second. That seems incredibly related. The Yankees spend about $400 million on Teixeira, Burnett and Sabathia and suddenly they want $370 million in tax-exempt bonds. Huh. Funny that.
When New York City, where from what Jose understands many wealthy people live, is entering a financial crisis so grave the Mayor Judas Bloomberg, a former Red Sox fan, must, for the good of the people, overturn term limits, does it really make sense to give the Yankees another $370 million on top of the $900 million they already got?
Jose can understand why smaller cities, say Pittsburgh, might feel obliged to subsidize a team—that’s the only way they can have one. But New York? The Yankees were going to flee to Jersey? Sure…
So here’s the thing. At some point, it seems possible that New York City may once again need a bailout; after all, everyone else is getting one. So what will America say? Jose’s simple response echo’s Ford, DROP DEAD.
Get it from the Yankees. Get it from A-Rod or CC or AJ or anyone with initials and a contract worth north of $75 million.
It’s bad enough that the poor, and apparently, incredibly stupid, people of New York are subsidizing this scam, but keep Jose out of it.
Really, paying the Yankees to be in New York? It’s like paying Paris Hilton to be a whore. She’s going to do it anyway, why bother paying?
Cows, milk, free etc.
A message for our times?
2. Jose noticed that Mark McGwire got fewer votes for the Hall-of-Fame this year. Jose wonders if his stats final had anything to do with it. There was a question on the exam in which Jose had to calculate a Z score (note: which Jose knows has something to do with either Carlos or Victor Zambrano, but he forgets which) related to McGwire’s record setting 1998 season.
Of course, Jose couldn’t remember how to calculate a Z-score, so he just wrote down “Jose doesn’t want to focus on the past, he wants to do something positive for the future.”
It had mixed results. On the one hand, for some reason the teacher seemed to think that Jose could not calculate a Z-score and gave him a zero for the problem. On the other hand, Jose has not been indicted, unlike several classmates, who issued sworn affidavits that they could calculate Z-scores even though they couldn’t.
3. Before everyone gets al upset about the Yankees swiping Mark Teixeira from the Red Sox, can we take a minute to think about this linguistically? The first baseman’s name is pronounced Tesh-era.
Did anyone really want to have a Tesh Era in Boston? John Tesh is terrible. Not very good at all. Except for that old NBA music, that was pretty good. Seriously, Jose would rather sign a player named Yanniera. At lest Yanni has a Kevin Kennedy moustache.
I’m Jose Melendez’s, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
1. Jose has always thought that being a headline writer must be a wonderful job. Hell, it may even be the best $30,000 a year job in the world.
You get to take someone else’s work, something he struggled, sweat and perhaps even bled over if they are John Stossel covering pro wrestling, slap a label on it, which may or may not have anything to do with the piece, and then have many more people look at your work than the actual authors. Even better, you occasionally get to be incredibly clever and write a headline like the Boston Herald’s “Dr. Doom and Va-va-va-vroom” to describe the 1990 Massachusetts Democratic ticket of John Silber and Marjorie Claprood.
Perhaps the most famous American headline is the one penned by the New York Daily News’ William J. Brink on October 30, 1975 “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Jose would like to pay tribute to this brilliant, and technically untrue headline (note: Ford never said it, though he did say “things are more like they are now than they’ve ever been”), by writing the following headline some time this year.
JOSE TO CITY: DROP DEAD
As you may have noticed, The Yankees laid out $400 million to just three players in the last few weeks.
In unrelated news, the Bronx Borrowers also recently requested “$259 million in tax-exempt bonds and $111 million in taxable bonds, on top of $940 million in tax-exempt bonds and $25 million in taxable bonds already granted for its $1.3 billion stadium” according to ESPN.com.
Wait a second. That seems incredibly related. The Yankees spend about $400 million on Teixeira, Burnett and Sabathia and suddenly they want $370 million in tax-exempt bonds. Huh. Funny that.
When New York City, where from what Jose understands many wealthy people live, is entering a financial crisis so grave the Mayor Judas Bloomberg, a former Red Sox fan, must, for the good of the people, overturn term limits, does it really make sense to give the Yankees another $370 million on top of the $900 million they already got?
Jose can understand why smaller cities, say Pittsburgh, might feel obliged to subsidize a team—that’s the only way they can have one. But New York? The Yankees were going to flee to Jersey? Sure…
So here’s the thing. At some point, it seems possible that New York City may once again need a bailout; after all, everyone else is getting one. So what will America say? Jose’s simple response echo’s Ford, DROP DEAD.
Get it from the Yankees. Get it from A-Rod or CC or AJ or anyone with initials and a contract worth north of $75 million.
It’s bad enough that the poor, and apparently, incredibly stupid, people of New York are subsidizing this scam, but keep Jose out of it.
Really, paying the Yankees to be in New York? It’s like paying Paris Hilton to be a whore. She’s going to do it anyway, why bother paying?
Cows, milk, free etc.
A message for our times?
2. Jose noticed that Mark McGwire got fewer votes for the Hall-of-Fame this year. Jose wonders if his stats final had anything to do with it. There was a question on the exam in which Jose had to calculate a Z score (note: which Jose knows has something to do with either Carlos or Victor Zambrano, but he forgets which) related to McGwire’s record setting 1998 season.
Of course, Jose couldn’t remember how to calculate a Z-score, so he just wrote down “Jose doesn’t want to focus on the past, he wants to do something positive for the future.”
It had mixed results. On the one hand, for some reason the teacher seemed to think that Jose could not calculate a Z-score and gave him a zero for the problem. On the other hand, Jose has not been indicted, unlike several classmates, who issued sworn affidavits that they could calculate Z-scores even though they couldn’t.
3. Before everyone gets al upset about the Yankees swiping Mark Teixeira from the Red Sox, can we take a minute to think about this linguistically? The first baseman’s name is pronounced Tesh-era.
Did anyone really want to have a Tesh Era in Boston? John Tesh is terrible. Not very good at all. Except for that old NBA music, that was pretty good. Seriously, Jose would rather sign a player named Yanniera. At lest Yanni has a Kevin Kennedy moustache.
I’m Jose Melendez’s, and those are my KEYS TO THE HOT STOVE.
Thursday, December 18
Henry: Red Sox are not X-Factor
According to the Boston Globe the Red Sox will not "be a factor" in the bidding for Mark Teixeira. The Red Sox were long believed to be the favorites for the All-Star first baseman.
Jose isn't exactly sure how he feels about this. On the one hand, if it was really going to take $200 million to sign the guy, Jose is sort of happy to let him walk, at that kind of value he would be far too appealing a target for Somali pirates. (Note: Jose is pretty sure he stole that joke from someone, but he has no recollection of who.)
On the other hand, Jose was looking forward to Teixeira coming here, so he could finally get an explanation for how the hell the "X" in his name makes a "zh" sound.
Of course, this might all be nonsense, as Sox owner John W. Henry sent word by email. Maybe he was just really, really mad about how things were going so he wrote down an angry email, with no intention of sending it, but then accidentally clicked send. That seems at least as plausible as Texiera getting $200 million from Baltimore or Washington.
The other possibility is that the Yankees have suddenly jumped into the running. This would make sense. As usual the Yankees can exceed any cash offer the Red Sox might make. Also, unlike the Red Sox, the Yankees have an open Senate seat to offer.
Oh, Jose just though of one other possibility. Maybe the word "factor" in the statement is a clue. As Jose recalls, in the early days of the comic X-Factor, the original X-Men joined together and pretended to be a group of vigilantes called X-Factor that captured mutants. After they seized a mutant, they would secretly train him and take care of him. Maybe the Red Sox have a similar plan. They are going to pretend to be anti-Teixeira, and then will capture him and secretly train him to play catcher, thereby allowing Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis to remain on a team including Teixeira.
Come on, it's at leastas likely as the guy actually wanting to play in Baltimore.
Jose isn't exactly sure how he feels about this. On the one hand, if it was really going to take $200 million to sign the guy, Jose is sort of happy to let him walk, at that kind of value he would be far too appealing a target for Somali pirates. (Note: Jose is pretty sure he stole that joke from someone, but he has no recollection of who.)
On the other hand, Jose was looking forward to Teixeira coming here, so he could finally get an explanation for how the hell the "X" in his name makes a "zh" sound.
Of course, this might all be nonsense, as Sox owner John W. Henry sent word by email. Maybe he was just really, really mad about how things were going so he wrote down an angry email, with no intention of sending it, but then accidentally clicked send. That seems at least as plausible as Texiera getting $200 million from Baltimore or Washington.
The other possibility is that the Yankees have suddenly jumped into the running. This would make sense. As usual the Yankees can exceed any cash offer the Red Sox might make. Also, unlike the Red Sox, the Yankees have an open Senate seat to offer.
Oh, Jose just though of one other possibility. Maybe the word "factor" in the statement is a clue. As Jose recalls, in the early days of the comic X-Factor, the original X-Men joined together and pretended to be a group of vigilantes called X-Factor that captured mutants. After they seized a mutant, they would secretly train him and take care of him. Maybe the Red Sox have a similar plan. They are going to pretend to be anti-Teixeira, and then will capture him and secretly train him to play catcher, thereby allowing Mike Lowell and Kevin Youkilis to remain on a team including Teixeira.
Come on, it's at leastas likely as the guy actually wanting to play in Baltimore.
Monday, December 8
Delcarmen for President (of Zimbabwe)
For the last few days, Jose has been working furiously on a paper about the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe. But he will confess, it has been a struggle. First and foremost, it is challenging to write about a government so thoroughly destroying a country without becoming terminally depressed. However, Jose has also struggled with confusion.
It’s not just that he can’t click properly for the Ndebele words, it’s that he can’t figure out the opposition. Among the big issues is whether the duly elected MDC will actually get to take over the government. Here’s where it gets complicated. Jose cannot figure out for the life of him, why Manny Delcarmen would do a good job as President of Zimbabwe. Does he know anything about agriculture? Banking?
Besides, if Zimbabweans are looking for someone who performs erratically when things are their worst, why wouldn’t they stick with their current President Robert Mugabe?
But seriously, the Mugabe regime is as though Zim were run by, well, Zim. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is run a lot like Zimmer’s Red Sox. Arbitrary use of power? Check. Senseless commitment to an old way of doing things? Mmm hmm. Ability to turn something fantastic into a humiliating disaster? Yup.
So what Zimbabwe really needs is not Manny Delcarmen but for someone to sent Pedro Martinez there and toss old Mugabe to the ground. Or South Africa could just stop coddling him. Either is good.
It’s not just that he can’t click properly for the Ndebele words, it’s that he can’t figure out the opposition. Among the big issues is whether the duly elected MDC will actually get to take over the government. Here’s where it gets complicated. Jose cannot figure out for the life of him, why Manny Delcarmen would do a good job as President of Zimbabwe. Does he know anything about agriculture? Banking?
Besides, if Zimbabweans are looking for someone who performs erratically when things are their worst, why wouldn’t they stick with their current President Robert Mugabe?
But seriously, the Mugabe regime is as though Zim were run by, well, Zim. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is run a lot like Zimmer’s Red Sox. Arbitrary use of power? Check. Senseless commitment to an old way of doing things? Mmm hmm. Ability to turn something fantastic into a humiliating disaster? Yup.
So what Zimbabwe really needs is not Manny Delcarmen but for someone to sent Pedro Martinez there and toss old Mugabe to the ground. Or South Africa could just stop coddling him. Either is good.
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