May 08, 2009

BETTER THAN HIS BROTHER JOE...

Growing up in the Bronx in the 1940's, Joe DiMaggio was God. Years passed, God turned out to be a flawed and rather disagreeable man, stingy, paranoid and friendless. His brother, a member of the enemy team, the Boston Red Sox, turns out to have been a fine family man, superb teammate, generous human being and all around good guy. His death reminds us of a ditty we heard in childhood.

Who hits the ball and makes it go?
Dominic DiMaggio.
Who runs the bases fast, not slow?
Dominic DiMaggio.
Who's better than his brother Joe?
Dominic DiMaggio.
But when it comes to getting dough,
They give it all to brother Joe.

April 17, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...OPENING DAY AT THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM

The new Yankee Stadium should be called the Yankee Shopping Mall. Baseball is secondary to buying, as the "fans" at Opening Day made clear. Oh well, they were certainly following the President's advice to consumers to resume spending. Once the game started, very few of these so called fans watched it. They seemed far more interested in being there than in actually watching baseball.

Anyone doubting the obesity epidemic should go to a game at the Stadium. Catering to the overweight are a variety of bars, Japanese noodle shops, sushi bars, Italian and Latin sandwich makers (pulled pork or chicken anyone?)Jewish delis and, for the high rollers, exclusive restaurants charging really big bucks. For $6 you can still get a lukewarm Nathan's hot dog, but real baseball fans would prefer all ballparks be like Wrigley field where a hot dog and beer pretty much exhausts the food possibilities.

The Yankees, for all their current failings, still know how to do ceremonial occasions. The high point of Opening Day, preceding the sloppily played game, was the performance by the West Point band of the Sousa marches that were played at Opening Day in 1923 by Sousa himself. The rollout of the American flag during the singing of the National Anthem and the spectacular jet flyover, as well as John Fogerty's guitar-sync, lip sync version of Center Field were all highlights. Then the game began.

The Yankees look to this long time Yankee fan like a team with too many long term contract guys who do their jobs without passion. An exception has been Nick Swisher, who is batting about 200 points over his lifetime average and who has the enthusiasm of a kid. If he hadn't been on a soon to end roll, their anemic batting, inconsistent bullpen, and lack of intensity would look even worse.

April 07, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

C.C. Sabathia looked like a 309 lb. injury waiting to happen on Opening Day. Maybe his collapse at the end of last season was meaningful. Another Barry Zito, anyone?

Our President's groveling apologies in Europe, coupled with his praise for all that Islam has done for the USA, (name one thing, please) makes us long for the return of Jimmy Carter. At least Carter's anti-Semitism was not disguised by effusive praise for an anti-Semitic religious ideology that openly calls for death to the Jews.

I half expect Obama to return from his magical mystery tour proclaiming that he brings 'peace in our time'.

When sharia law comes to America, no doubt jazz will be banned. We can still, however, celebrate the birthday of Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915. The tragic story of her life cannot tarnish the greatness of her art. To my ear, her best and most innovative singing came in the '30's with backing by great swing musicians like Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson and Lester Young. As the Wikipedia entry notes, "..Holiday's amazing method of improvising the melody line to fit the emotion was revolutionary..." I would argue that she has never been equalled; there have been jazz singers with far greater technical abilities, like Ella Fitzgerald, but one listen to the early Holiday recordings and you know that she expressed feeling like no other. My selection for the greatest female vocal of the 20th century would be her version of Without Your Love, accompanied blissfully by Lester Young on sax. None of the early performances are available on video, but here's a beauty.

March 28, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Two cheers for President Obama's declaration that our aim in Afghanistan is the defeat of our enemies--period. No nonsense about building democracy amongst the savages. Let them spend another 10 centuries killing one another in the name of Mohammed.

Make that one cheer, because the President will continue supplying billions to Pakistan, most of which will flow to those who wish to kill us.

I'd rather watch Jacques Pepin making Creme Brulee, than Larry David making a fool of himself.

Greg Gutfeld's latest addition to the Red Eye cast, the talking New York Times puppet, is side-splittingly funny. The voice of Pinch Sulzberger, Greg's liberal sidekick Bill, perfectly captures the self satisfied, cant-spewing quality of the 'paper of record'.

Baseball predictions: C.C. Sabathia will win 8 games for the Yankees and blow out his shoulder by July.

A-Rod will return from surgery and after going hitless for 4 games will quit baseball to study kabbalah.

Derek Jeter will hit 45 home runs by September and then confess that his fathers's anti-drug foundation supplied him with HGH.

Danny Meyer will announce that he has bought out the Yankees and will convert the Stadium into 12 restaurants where Yankee fans can reminisce about the good old days, while eating tuna tartare.

March 22, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

The spectacle of our political class expressing faux outrage is a reminder that we live in a therapeutic age, where "feelings" trump ideas. The idea doesn't occur to congressional solons that slapping confiscatory taxes on businesses may make them reluctant in the future to work with govt. Or if it occurs, who cares, what matters is emotional catharsis. The emoter-in-chief is busily channeling collective anger, directing it away from himself, while at the same time showing how empathic he can be towards any and all dictators. He's so sensitive that he apparently removed the American flags from the Happy New Year video he sent to the Iranian tyrants.

The bursting of the sports economy bubble may be a good thing for real baseball fans who've been effectively screwed by corporations willing to ante up enormous sums for luxury suites and season boxes. Creative destruction could mean that capitalism will return baseball to its true supporters--baseball fans.

Youtube more than makes up for all the nonsense of the blogosphere. Here's the great Dave Mc'Kenna, the man who seemed to have 3 hands going, playing 42nd Street.

March 11, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Wahabbi University (Columbia) has outdone itself by appointing Michelle Moody-Adams Dean of the college. Here is part of her Wikipedia entry:

"...Moody-Adams responded to the September 11 attacks by asserting that "Vengeance is not the answer here," and that the result of an American military response could be the end of everything worth fighting for, "even the end of the species." [4]
In February, 2009, Moody-Adams co-sponsored with university funds a controversial student protest on the Cornell campus by the Islamic Alliance for Justice consisting of signs and 1300 flags representing dead Palestinians..."

The Jihad wins on Morningside Heights without a shot being fired.

March 03, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Matt Mc'Carthy's baseball memoir shows he is a well educated Ivy Leaguer, taught to believe that "narrative truth" trumps factual truth. Is this what we want in a physician?

February 26, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Watching Nancy Pelosi jumping up and smiling inappropriately at Barack Obama's every banality, I thought if she didn't exist, Mark Twain would have invented her.
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself."
---Mark Twain

After 6+ decades of Yankee fandom I now enjoy baseball despite the Yankees.

Barack Obama's budget represents the triumph of hope over experience. It assumes our war with radical Islam will wind down in coming years, hence our defense expenditures will decline. Perhaps he believes that George Bush's war on terror has been won?

February 20, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Our bold and courageous Attorney General Eric Holder ("America is a nation of cowards") just got his head handed to him by a girl. See Heather MacDonald in City Journal

February 18, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

It's time to grow up. Baseball is played by human beings, not by fictional heros.
List of ways to "enhance performance" in baseball (not including Viagra):

1) steal signs
2) steal bases
3) tip off batters as to what pitch is coming.
4) cork bats
5) scuff the ball
6) put vaseline on the ball
7) spit on the ball
8) pretend to tag a runner
9) come off the base to take a throw
10) scuff the ball with sandpaper
11) "Accidentally" throw at the head of the batter
11) cut the ball with a razor blade
12) hidden ball trick
13) pretend to be hit by a pitch
14) amphetamines
!5) steroids
16) anti-depressants
17) booze
18) HGH
19) new designer drugs.
20) Tommy John surgery.

The greatest moment in baseball history, Bobby Thomson's "shot heard round the world" was on a pitch he'd been tipped to expect.

Here's our check on the utopian moralists: ask a group of young athletic physicians if they would take HGH or steroids to give them a chance to play major league baseball, knowing the health consequences. I've done this. If they're honest they'll almost all say 'Yes'.

Here's the great jazz guitarist John Pizarelli doing Take Me Out To The Ballgame.:

February 16, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

The recent beheading of a Muslim wife by her "moderate" Muslim husband prompted us to revisit this essay.It first appeared in The American Thinker in Dec. 2007

Jihadism, Liberalism and Perversion
By Stephen Rittenberg, MD

Our frequent exposure to the exhibitionistic snuff porn of Jihadis has prompted numerous attempts at psychological explanation. Clinicians know how comforting it is to have a diagnostic label. Correct diagnosis can be the first step to cure.

There are problems, however, with psychological diagnosis. In totalitarian states, dissidents are often locked up in ‘mental hospitals' for their ‘crazy' behavior. They are diagnosed as ‘sociopaths' and ‘narcissists', interested in individual freedom rather than behaving like ‘normal' conformists to the system. Shrinkwrapped (Sophisticated Diagnosis) has commented on the various problems with psychiatric diagnosis in our own culture, including its tendency to relieve the ‘sick' person of responsibility for his actions.

Psychological explanations offered for Islamic savagery are useful, as far as they go. However, they can be overly generalized and undynamic when applied as labels to Jihadis. Writers like Dr. Sanity and the Sanity Squad have highlighted the narcissistic insecurities of Islamic males and their defensive need to control women to shore up their own masculinity.

However, clinical experience tells us that many men suffer from the same narcissistic insecurities and don't resort to violence to assuage their deficiencies. Only Islamic clerics sanction the murder of women who have been raped. Only Islamic clerics issue murderous fatwas, celebrate murder of artists, and mobilize sword-wielding men to demand death for a female teacher who allowed children to name a teddy bear 'Mohammed'. Only Islam proudly exhibits videos of throat-cutters torturing helpless victims.

It is the intense pleasure derived from religiously sanctioned murderous lust that makes the jihadis so dangerous. The degree of narcissism matters little; these are not people who can be 'treated' by shoring up their narcissism, and bolstering their self esteem. It is our very civilized, therapeutic culture that makes us flinch from taking the necessary measures needed to deal with such foes. In truth, it may be our own narcissism -- the need to reassure ourselves of our superior civilized nature -- that causes us to obsess about whether necessary measures for waging war, like water boarding, and Guantanamo constitute 'torture'.

In our politically correct age, the word ‘perversion' has been banished from the circles of multicultural academia, literary and journalistic usage. It is, we are instructed, ‘judgmental', tends to unfairly ‘normalize' heterosexuality and is, like the ‘N-word', insulting. It creates hierarchical differences and that is illiberal.

Nevertheless, despite the efforts to remove it from the language and/or because of that effort, it still carries an emotional charge. In a time when gleeful murderous terrorists blow themselves up daily, it behooves us to face the reality that militant Islamic jihadism is a perversion and its practitioners derive a gratification that is more than simply defensive against feeling of inadequacy. It is the pleasurable charge that comes from throwing off all inhibitions on the discharge of murderous rage.

The late Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel was a French psychoanalyst and holocaust survivor who devoted her clinical efforts to understanding sexual perversions*. She realized there was a connection between individual sexual pathology and political movements.

Her intuitive insight was that Nazism's appeal, on both the individual and mass psychological level, derived from its power as psycho-sexual perversion. (See, for instance, Cabaret and Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood.) Having seen and survived what happened in the heart of civilized Europe, she discovered, through her clinical work, that perversions were not just the sexual kinkiness of a small minority.

She realized that perversions were not even merely ‘sexual' in the narrow behavioral meaning of the word, but that erotic pleasure could be intensified by the discharge of aggressive wishes, including the inflicting of, and submitting to, pain up to the point of death. She broadened our understanding of perversions to include, not just behavior but modes of thinking.

What she found was that perversions are an essential way in which the human mind and psyche rebel against and seek to evade reality. That reality is rooted in biology: the male-female difference. The intolerance and fear of such differences can result in the practices of Wahabbi Islam, wherein women are so feared that they must be hidden and brutalized like beasts of the field. Muslim men's terror of women is undoubtedly accompanied by a high incidence of hidden (not so hidden when they travel to the Riviera) perverse sexuality.

Long before there was a Norman Mailer proclaiming his artistic right to transgress bourgeois laws constraining sex and aggression, there was the Marquis de Sade. Chasseguet-Smirgel wrote about the celebrated French author, and pointed out that in his fantastical world of perversion, (see Mailer's preoccupation with ‘buggery') the incest taboo is violated, and thus the generational boundaries are breached.

Sade celebrates non-genital sex which is celebrated as an outlet for violence (sadism); bodies are dismembered, children are the targets of violent sexual discharge, humans and animals copulate and all differences are obliterated. Sade's work was designed to overturn the biblical injunction against perversion, but also to overturn the differences laid down at the beginning of the Old Testament, between the sexes, the animals, in fact between differentiated life and inanimate chaos.

God brought order out of chaos and Sade wishes to return to chaos. For Sade, the elimination of God means all sexual and aggressive behavior is permitted, including mass murder. Love is repeatedly mocked and dismissed. The release of all constraint on aggression maximizes pleasure.

The most intense Sadean pleasure is sexual murder, since no need exists to protect the object of sexual desire from aggression. Love cannot exist in the Sadean world because it puts limits on the pleasurable indulgence of murderous wishes. Perversion aims at destruction, destruction of difference, of the living order of the universe and its replacement with chaos and deadness. Long before Hitler put Sade's ideas into practice, Sade celebrated mass murder and the erotic pleasure to be gotten from torturing victims.

Chasseguet-Smirgel's insight revealed that, besides perverse behavior there are perverse modes of thinking, with the same aim of erasing distinctions and eliminating systematic thought itself. Thus, for example, Post-Modernism represents perverse thinking in its denial of the difference between truth and falsehood, good and evil, superior and inferior cultures. When it argues that ‘male' and ‘female' are ‘constructed' identities, it argues against the immutable differences imposed by biological reality.

Socialism is similarly perverse in its radical egalitarianism, denying differences of talent, intelligence, motivation, skill. Liberalism's affirmative action is perverse in its effort to impose an egalitarianism that is unattainable. It seeks to correct the "socially constructed" discriminatory differences. (Under its strictures shouldn't there be affirmative action for white basketball players?) This is perverse thinking. Modern politically correct liberalism is shot through with perversion. Renouncing her early socialist utopianism, Chasseguet-Smirgel became a conservative.

Ideas are perverse when they seek to undermine distinctions that are necessary for thought itself to exist. When such distinctions are eliminated, anything goes. When liberalism asserts that al Qaeda and America are equal threats to the world, it is being perverse. In fact, when liberals argue that modern Christianity and Islam are both ‘religions of peace' they are being perverse.

When language is debased by perverse thinking war becomes peace and all distinctions are rendered meaningless. Socialism embraces perverse thinking when it argues for a utopian egalitarianism that constitutes an assault on human differences, the differences that exist -- of talent, motivation, achievement, skill, and worth. It is perverse in ultimately reducing the vitality of difference in favor of deadening sameness.

Ideas do have consequences. Mass murder, idealized by Sade, became mass murder carried out by Hitler. Civilization is a fragile thing, and once perversion rules, there are no limits to the human imagination. We thought Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were the worst, but now we see Islamic Jihadis strapping bombs to babies and blowing them up. Once again, we are in a struggle between civilization and perversion. Some remain puzzled by the alliance between modern day left-liberalism and jihadism. Perversion explains the puzzle.

To the perverse jihadis who constitute large numbers of Muslims, the existence of the female sex is threatening, hence women are treated as little more than cattle, with fewer rights than some lower animals. Why do Western feminists keep their mouths shut? Because many are themselves leftist utopian perverts, who also cannot tolerate the existence of two sexes and secretly long to submit to the appealing sadism of the jihadis.

One of the great fascinations of the Marquis de Sade was with child murder. In Justine he offers a lengthy argument for why parents should sexually assault, then murder their children. The most primal human bonds exist to be destroyed to the accompaniment of erotic pleasure. Deriving pleasure from sexual assault on and murder of children is the ultimate denial of God, the moral distinction between good and evil, and the distinction between humans and animals. It is ultimately the assertion that man is no different from the lowest form of matter.

What Sade imagined and longed for has come to pass.

In recent years, since the exhibitionistic torture and beheading of Daniel Pearl, the world has been exposed to depravities that would delight the Marquis. Palestinian (Let's give them a state!) children are repeatedly celebrated as little jihadis ready to blow themselves up while murdering Jews.

They are indoctrinated in the erotic pleasures instantly available to mass murderers: all those eager virgins. There has been a strangely muted reaction from the civilized world. We have heard repeated calls for restraint on our part, warnings against "Islamophobia", and we take pride in minimizing casualties when fighting the Sadean jihadis.

Why is it that our media are so reluctant to report such occurrences as the recent successful effort by a jihadi in Pakistan to turn his year old infant into a bomb, killing more than 100 innocent bystanders? Readers of the New York Times would not have known of this ‘martyrdom'. You would have to turn to the Pakistan Tribune to learn the following:

"KARACHI: The Oct 19 bombing on Benazir Bhutto's procession in Karachi which killed over 170 people, was carried out by a person who used a one-year-old child strapped with fatal bombs..."
The very idea of making a living, breathing baby into an inanimate object, a bomb to slaughter hundreds, is straight out of the Sadean universe and the religious system that justifies it is properly called ‘perverse'.

The reason we hear so little condemnation, much less military resolve to annihilate these savage perverts, is Western culture's thralldom to contemporary, politically correct liberalism, which is itself perverse. Post-modern Liberalism shares the mindset of the jihadis and unconsciously enjoys their enactment of liberal fantasies.

Civilization has been built painstakingly on difference: male and female, yes and no, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. There are rules, laws, customs, hard-won scientific knowledge. Civilization is a fragile guardian of reality, which must be defended from the onslaught of barbarians wishing to abolish rules and differences.

In each of our psyches the perverse temptation must be fought, if civilization is to survive. The more advanced the civilization, the more intense the appeal to throw off constraints. Often individual rebels are rewarded with the title of ‘artist', but Sade was an artist whose ideas were realized in Nazism.

When the discharge of polymorphous perversion is united with murderous aggression we get Jihadism. Such perverse ideologies could be more easily fought if not for the politically correct liberal urge to submit to them in their crudest totalitarian form.

*Creativity And Perversion, Janine Chasseguet Smirgel, 1996

To the memory of Mme. Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel.

Stephen Rittenberg, MD is a psychoanalyst.

February 14, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A suburban Buffalo man who founded a cable TV station to promote better understanding of Muslims in the U.S. has been arrested on charges he beheaded his wife.

Orchard Park police arrested Muzzammil Hassan, 44, on Thursday for investigation of second-degree murder, The Buffalo News reported.
Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Her body was found at his business, Bridges TV.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for President Obama to unclench his fist, reach out to Islam and recognize that under sharia law Mr. Muzzamil Hassan was simply carrying out his religious obligations. At the same time doing so would bring America into greater congruence with multi-cultural Great Britain, where Muslims freely preach 'death to the Jews' while Geert Wilders is barred from entering the country to warn of Islam's threat.

February 08, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

A-Rod's use of steroids is not surprising to this observer who assumes all professional athletes will take whatever they can to improve their performance and add to their income. What surprises me is the stupidity of Yankee management. The policy of giving long term contracts to aging players is to guaranty long term failure. Alex Rodriguez's immaturity was well known, and unlike another troubled player, Manny Ramirez, A-Rod at bat in the clutch is feared only by Yankee fans. Maybe the Yankees could approach Madonna to buyout A-Rod's contract and start a new League of her own.

I'm not one of those Yankee fans who insists they must win the World Series or the season is a failure. What irked me the most about the Yankees last season was not that they lost but they played with zero intensity, as if they were bored and eager to get back to their celebrity lives after the game.

It's tough to be a Yankee fan these days. This observer is cringing in anticipation of the new Stadium. Will the sound system assault the ears at even higher decibels, instructing fans to "get loud" and "clap"? Do we really need 10 restaurants in the Stadium and bland, barely warm hot dogs that will no doubt sell for $10?

To balance the sense that baseball has become just another branch of the entertainment industry, rather than being the heart and soul of America, here's a clip from Bull Durham, the best baseball movie ever made.

February 06, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Apparently our hope and change President really meant gloom and doom. Despite this, and in the midst of a dreadfully cold winter in the Northeast, real hope arrives with the following bulletin from Boston.

At 2:15 PM Feb 6th Johnny Pesky (age 89) hit the ignition button on equipment truck headed to Fla.
"It's always exciting to go to Spring Training---to see the new kids and all that stuff," said Pesky "I was in Sarasota for my first spring training....with Ted and Bobby and Dom and Jimmie(Foxx)"

Joe Torre's whining third person account of his travails as Yankees manager adds up to less than Casey Stengel's one sentence explanation: "The secret of managing is keeping the 10 guys who hate you away from the 15 who haven't made up their minds."

We now have documentation by the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction of the massive fraud, mismanagement of funds and outright theft during the U.S. Government's efforts to rebuild the Iraqi economy. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in our Government's efforts to rebuild our own economy.

To those of us around his age, learning that Sandy Koufax was one of Madoff's victims was particularly awful news. By comparison with today's players, Koufax pitched for a pittance and had a short career. Let's hope he socked away lots of money from endorsements. It's just too bad that Sandy can't launch a 100mph heater at Madoff's head.

January 27, 2009

NOBODY ASKED ME BUT...

Red Eye regularly displays the most creative humor on TV since Ernie Kovacs. Host, Greg Gutfeld dares to ridicule every politically correct target, including Islam--unlike all the liberal comedians whose humor consists in reassuring their audiences that conservatives are evil and stupid. Set your tivos; it's on at 3AM on Fox. Kudos to Roger Ailes for daring to put the program on--though we wish there weren't so many comments 'bleeped' out. After all, it is 3AM.

The steady decline of civilization can be seen in the field of humor (with rare exceptions as per above). Anyone who remembers Jean Shepard knows where Garrison Keilor got his shtick. However, Shepard never had Keilor's smug disdain for his supposed political inferiors.

To this observer, Joe Torre's book is of interest not for its comments about A-Rod, but its account of the clash between the sabermetric approach of Brian Cashman and the subjective appraisal approach of Torre. Torre has many virtues, but he undermines a couple of them with this tell all book: personal loyalty and no finger pointing following defeat. This Yankee fan is not sorry he's gone.

I thought President Obama swore to defend and protect America. His deference to the Jew hating, America hating audience of al Arabiya suggests he has different ideas. Asking a paranoiac to forgive you for implanting commands in his tooth filling, doesn't make him kinder and gentler. Asking a barbaric culture to forgive America is similarly absurd.