Heroes and Villains

One of my heroes is profiled in today’s NYT:

Chris Chelios is having another fine season as a top-four defenseman for Detroit, averaging 19 minutes of ice time a game. There is nothing unusual in that — except that Chelios is 45, making him the second-oldest player to compete in the N.H.L.

“I never thought I’d be in that situation 10 years ago,” Chelios said Thursday by telephone from Phoenix. “To be right behind Gordie Howe is kind of neat.” Howe played in the N.H.L. when he was 52.

“I’ve just been fortunate,” said Chelios, who has 182 goals, 936 points and 2,823 penalty minutes in 1,528 regular-season games over 23 seasons. “I think genetics, Lady Luck, my trainers. I’ve had some pretty significant knee injuries that I never thought I’d be able to overcome. It sounds crazy, but basically I feel as good as I did 10 years ago.”

With ALL due respect to Chelios, I can’t see him doing what Howe did: i.e., playing a complete season with an NHL team (the Hartford Whalers, aka the Carolina Hurricanes) at age 51. What Gordie did was amazing, given he played in every game, racked up 41 points (15 goals, 26 assists), served 42 penalty minutes, and was even selected for the All-Star game that year. At age 51. Still and even, it wouldn’t surprise me if Chelios did manage to pull that off. It’s only six years from now…

Also in today’s NYT: “The L Word… Leftward, Ho?”

“A potentially liberal moment,” Mr. Frank says, “assuming that liberal politicians can seize the moment and get beyond their usual plague of incompetence.”

Oh, snap. Liberal optimism, thy name is caution and caveat.

But it is optimism nonetheless, and well-founded, too, say Mr. Frank and a broad spectrum of political thinkers and leaders. And, they say, the evidence goes beyond the obvious indicators — the ascendance of Democrats in the House and Senate, President Bush’s second-term belly-flop and poll numbers showing the Democratic Party trending left and the nation’s political center trending Democratic.

[…]

Even in the sweetest of times, liberals tend to be congenitally averse to walking tall, as if they’re always half-expecting to be one step away from getting decked by a falling piano.

Years of ridicule, battering and electoral defeat will do that. The liberal imprint has been trashed by generations of conservative candidates and commentators drilled in every unbecoming association (“tax and spend liberal,” “big government liberal,” “ivory tower liberal,” “limousine liberal,” “commie, hippie, purple haired, weak kneed, bleeding heart, limp-wristed, weepy eyed, take your choice liberal”).

Ah, yes. Their “…usual plague of incompetence” and being “congenitally averse to walking tall.” Big problems, those. These past week’s events, capped with the ignominious vote of no-confidence in the President’s Iraq policy (among other things), would seem to reinforce the perception of the Left’s incompetence and an inability to walk the walk, wouldn’t they? There are valid reasons the Right have assigned all those pejorative labels to Lefties, or, in other words…they got them the old fashioned way: they earned ‘em.

Conan O’Brien makes teh funny: “According to a new survey, 26 percent of people say they have a crush on someone they work with. Unfortunately, the survey was taken at NASA.”

Today’s obligatory Barack bashing…

Take a look at Obama's arguments for a speedy US withdrawal. Speaking on the Senate floor on January 30, he asserted that "redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve ... political settlement between its warring factions".

The key is "to give Iraqis their country back", since "no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war". He repeated these words when he announced that he was running for the presidency last weekend.

But Obama's claim that an American withdrawal would somehow "pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace" is a fraud.

On the contrary, an American withdrawal is much more likely to lead to an escalation of the conflict that is tearing Iraq apart. In a devastating paper for the Brookings Institution, Daniel L Byman and Kenneth M Pollack have pointed out that, given the vast potential for violence that exists in the Middle East, we ain't seen nothin' yet.

And then there’s this, from Rich Lowry:

Obama is smart enough to be able to talk intelligently about nearly anything, but it usually feels like he's a glib amateur. He has a troubled relationship to policy plans, which risks making his campaign of hope against cynicism seem merely hackneyed verbiage. It's hardly a new idea to attack the political process as too small-minded, money-grubbing and negative. In fact, it's commonplace.
Obama insists that he doesn't need more policy because he's written two books. But only if Obama were running on "finding himself" would his (beautiful) memoir of his early life, Dreams From My Father, be a detailed manifesto. His new book, The Audacity of Hope, has policy in it, but it's scattershot thoughts about addressing all of the nation's problems, not detailed plans.

More to follow in the coming days/weeks/months/year. Dang, it’s just too early! (PS: he’ still not smoking, though, from all indications. Me too.)

Today’s Pic(s): My father’s automotive lust object—the incomparable Mercedes-Benz 300SL. This particular example is in the National Auto Museum (otherwise known as The Harrah Collection) in Reno, NV. I’ll have to admit: The Ol’ Man had excellent taste in automobiles. Kinda runs in the family, it does.

May, 2000.