Gregg Easterbrook passes on an imaginary post-modern football encounter:
Coach: How could you throw that crazy pass? Didn’t you see the safety?
Quarterback: I did see the safety, but then I thought, how do I know the safety really exists? My eyes perceive a safety and he seems to be covering the receiver, but this might only be from my frame of reference. Someone in the stands might perceive the safety to be covering another receiver, or no one at all. Who am I to say that my perception is correct and theirs is wrong? Then I thought, maybe the safety does exist! But the taboo against throwing into double coverage is just an oppressive ideology used by the dominant hegemony to maintain the imperialist power structure. So you see, I had to make the throw in order to liberate myself.
Philosophy, courtesy of NFL.com.
WHOPPER OF THE WEEK: This from Howie Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources”:
KURTZ: But you’re a reporter, do you want Kerry to win?
DANA MILBANK: In one sense only, and that is his vacation spot is in Nantucket and in Idaho, and it’s not in Waco. So in that sense, absolutely.
As a reporter, Milbank can insist he’s unbiased. But as a human being, he’s full of it.
INSTA-BIAS?: Now, even Howie Kurtz is writing about Glenn Reynolds’ bias. Glenn is perfectly entitled to be as opinionated as he wants. He doesn’t claim to be a news service. Yes, if you read him, you wouldn’t be able to understand why there is even a debate about the management of the war in Iraq. But you can read me if you want to do that (and not many Bush-supporters want to hear a word about it). The only issue here is two-fold. Glenn is such a huge clearing house for blogs that he has become, willy-nilly, a kind of blog-service, and so people complain when he only links to pro-Bush sites or opinions. But since Glenn regularly tells people not to rely on him alone, he’s completely in the clear. But secondly, I do think there is an issue of intellectual transparency here. I was a strong backer of the war in Iraq and still am. But precisely because of that, I feel compelled to grapple with the obvious difficulties that have ensued. I feel I missed certain important things, was deluded on a couple of important points (WMDs, for example, and Bush’s competence in general), and now I’m making amends, of a sort. It’s not pretty and I’ve been slammed and ridiculed for this. I’ve lost thousands of readers. But I cannot see I have much of a choice. Bush’s failures are so glaring you have to put blinders on to ignore them. But Glenn carries on as if nothing that major has gone awry, and sometimes as if the only reason there are problems in Iraq is that the media is biased. When he does mention Bush’s failings, he rarely elaborates. That’s disappointing, although, it’s still his prerogative. And he has managed to retain a far more even keel than my sometimes overly-emotional posts have been able to. I envy that. But that’s him; and this is me; and the blogosphere has plenty of space for all of us.
The Dish 