Martin Schneider writes:
I’m living in Cleveland this summer. I spent the weekend in Chicago, and thus it was odd to be not in Cleveland on Thursday night, when LeBron James made his announcement to join the Miami Heat. My friends and compadres in Cleveland had to suffer that one alone—maybe it’s just as well, because my Cleveland identity is a little bit thin for that level of pathos and identification: it’s not my city, in that sense. Anyway, then I return to Cleveland this morning and find out that Harvey Pekar has died. A fun weekend in Chicago bookended by these oddly related events.
So much has been said about LeBron and Dan Gilbert’s angry letter. There were still a few points I thought could add to the discussion.
1. It doesn’t really matter either way. There’s been a lot of commentary about the sheer scale of LeBron’s ESPN announcement, which was, after all, merely an athlete’s announcement of a free agency decision, which happens all the time. It was a very hollow event, inflated by hype and potential and some shrewd PR machinations. I have a friend who is in the business of re-selling Nike sneakers, and he was telling me that LeBron’s decision would be a major deal for Nike, for him personally.
I don’t quite buy this. The NBA has a lot of incredible young players, the number of teams that will win titles in the next five years is still capped at five, and whether it’s LeBron and Wade or Dwight Howard in Orlando or Kevin Durant in Oklahoma City or Derrick Rose in Chicago who becomes the next major NBA star….. is pretty moot. True, LeBron already has a Jordanesque shoe deal and maybe only he could approach the Jordanesque heights of marketing, but I don’t quite buy that this makes any more difference than a butterfly’s fart. Cleveland’s odds of winning a title are down, Miami’s are up, the number of people who like the NBA or Nike sneakers is going to stay about the same.
2. LeBron James isn’t that good. I’ve been hearing about LeBron for years, watching some of the incredible highlights but basically paying no attention. This year, for the playoffs, knowing that I would soon be visiting Cleveland, I started watching the Cavaliers for the first time. I was shocked by what I saw. What I saw was a player who, because he is bad at free throws, declined to drive to the basket. LeBron James is a six-foot-eight shooting guard who is built like a small forward or even a small power forward and who fancies himself a point guard, in the sense that he usually “runs the offense.” LeBron’s is the type of player, against good teams in the playoffs, whose best weapon ended up being a decent, but not great, 18-foot jump shot. I’ll be honest with you, that’s quite a package, but I don’t know what the hell that player is. He’s not a power forward, he’s not a shooting forward, he doesn’t drive to the basket, he’s not a point guard but plays like one………….. I don’t know what that is. No matter how good or talented LeBron is, if he’s at the center of a team’s offense, I can’t see that team winning a title.
Secondarily, I’m not convinced that LeBron values hard work, self-improvement, or, by far most important, winning basketball games more than he values his brand, his popularity, or generally being liked. He’s still young and there’s room for development, but I’m unsure that he will ever get the competitive fire that Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan have. He may get it once he reaches the age of 29 with no titles (if that happens) and has to retrench and eliminate all distractions.
3. Closely related to his … insufficient game is the fact that his entire profile is built on potential. When the Cavs won the rights to draft him in 2003, that was a huge story that had all of Ohio drooling over all the titles LeBron was going to bring to the area. Those titles never happened. Seven years later, it’s the same thing all over again. It’s all based on a speculative future, and in that sense LeBron is not much different from a speculative bubble in the financial world.
4. I had a realization a few days before the big ESPN announcement on Thursday. The wise move for LeBron would have been to quietly re-sign with the Cavs and go back to work. Given that his Miami announcement has been something of a PR disaster for LeBron (he was actually booed at Carmelo Anthony’s wedding the other day), I think I was right about this. LeBron got his hype, and he got his money, but LeBron isn’t about wisdom, he’s about his brand, so he made what I regard as an unwise choice here. Like a speculative bubble, it’s essential that LeBron cash in as quickly as he can, and that’s what he did. Showing some humility would have been a move nobody could have faulted. As it was, he pleased one city and annoyed everyone else.
5. LeBron is an athlete, and as such has every right to handle his career any way he sees fit and conduct his negotiations as he pleases. In that sense I fully endorse Mark Kleiman’s wise post, “What’s LeBron supposed to have done wrong?” Kleiman is right: People feel a deep need to judge wealthy athletes, and those judgments are inextricable from class and race issues. Read the whole thing.
6. Having said that, there is a difference. LeBron’s announcement circus did not exactly highlight LeBron’s finest features, and if it has put him in a bad light, that’s his own fault. It’s not so much about the size of the contract or that he was driving events that bothers me, but I have no problem with the idea that his treatment of his home region and his hankering for a shortcut to a title reflect poorly on him. It’s not much different from when Roger Clemens signed with the Yankees in 2007. There are valid reasons why sports fans don’t respect “title grabs,” and LeBron is right in line with that.
7. Also, there is the consideration of Cleveland itself. Cleveland is a working-class midwestern city, and the last few decades have not been an easy time in the Midwest. This is where the LeBron argument collides with serious national topics like the economy, urban renewal, retraining of laid-off workers, and so on, topics that LeBron could never solve by himself. But the fact is that Cleveland was perceived as depending on LeBron for economic reasons, in a way that will never be true of Miami. It’s not exactly fair to LeBron, but he contributed to a dynamic in which he was going to help revive Cleveland’s downtown area; now that that downtown area may experience some hard times, it’s not unjust to think poorly of LeBron for “abandoning” it, even if that word is way too strong and melodramatic. In short, the LeBron saga touches on issues of the American City. As a nation, we have to divert emphasis from diversions like sports, with its one-winner or oligopolistic logic (so few haves, so many have-nots), and towards pursuits like urban renewal. It ain’t his fault, but LeBron’s decision is relevant to that story.
8. So, to wrap up, I never found LeBron all that appealing, more Darryl Strawberry than Tony Gwynn, and now that he has chosen to indulge in a bath of hollow PR and scamper towards a “sure-thing” title (even if I think it’s not a sure thing at all), I feel justified in saying, he ain’t all that and he never was all that. I’ve got my doubts about his effectiveness on the basketball court, and I’ll be happy to see those doubts justified in the years to come. And off the court, he’s a big handsome PR creation—who cares?

Martin Schneider writes:
I just watched The September Issue, the documentary about Vogue and Anna Wintour. I must say it surprised me a lot. It’s very, very enjoyable, and anyone who likes fashion or magazines really ought to see it. (On the subject of magazines, I think I glimpsed an Ivan Brunetti cover from The New Yorker at one point, in the clutches of contributing editor André Leon Talley.)
I hope the movie serves as a corrective to The Devil Wears Prada (the movie anyway, can’t speak for the book). The portrait of imperious “Miranda Priestly” in that movie, ably embodied by Meryl Streep, did much to convince me that Wintour must be (while highly able herself) impossibly demanding, rude, and so on.
If that is true, I didn’t see any evidence of it in The September Issue. In the documentary she seemed extremely busy and capable, certain in her views, decisive (she calls this her most important trait), more than passably considerate. She didn’t seem demanding in petty ways; cheerful enough when engaging with people, quiet and composed when in observation mode (peering at the many catwalks, for instance).
Indeed, “grace under pressure” seems an apter slogan for Wintour than “ice queen.” It really makes you wonder about the way we view successful, nay powerful, women in our culture. I’ll take her over Jack Welch any day.
As far as I can tell, the movie is really about competence. Virtually everyone in the movie is a highly competent professional immersed in his or her work, thoroughly knowledgeable and fulfilled and accustomed to pressure and therefore calm and cheerful.
I appreciate this because it’s important to have on display arenas where excellence and talent and standards are valued—it’s so often not the case. Elsewhere we must put up with compromise and backsliding and shortcuts and limited budgets and on and on. It’s inspiring to see a place where excellence is valued as a matter of course, there’s no doubt that an imperfect photo shoot will be redone.
In the Wikipedia writeup for the movie it says that creative director Grace Coddington (who is awesome and steals the movie) is “the only person who dares to stand up to Anna Wintour.” What nonsense! Wintour is shown dealing with a lot of people, and I didn’t see too many frightened individuals in any of those meetings.
Wintour does make life difficult for Coddington by disagreeing about a couple of Coddington’s photo shoots, but if Wintour made any errors of judgment at any point during the movie, I must have missed them.
Finally, if you want to know what I think of the fashion industry, listen carefully to what Wintour’s daughter Bee Shaffer says about it. I’m with her.

Martin Schneider writes:
The New Republic, as it did in 2006, is running an eclectic World Cup blog by a large group of admitted enthusiasts, non-experts. Most of the posts are personal, idiosyncratic, confessional. It’s been a fun read.
After today’s 2-1 defeat of North Korea by Brazil, Luke Dempsey posted a poem “written” by Martin Tyler and Ally McCoist, the commentators who called the game on ESPN, featuring exclusively phrases uttered during the broadcast, in chronological order.
I’m no expert in poetry, but I just adore this work of structured whimsy. My favorite line is “A voracious appetite for silverware,” a line that struck me at the time as being bizarre and kind of great (it was a reference to the Brazilians’ habit of winning a lot of trophies).
It also reminds me that I should pick up a used copy of O Holy Cow, a similar project involving the delirious ramblings of Phil Rizzuto, whose Yankee broadcasts I grew up on. My memory is hazy, but I believe Hart Seely and Tom Peyer’s project of curating Rizzuto’s “poems” started in The Village Voice about twenty years ago.

Martin Schneider writes:
In 2005 I attended a debate on the then-hot topic of “Social Security Reform,” featuring Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, and Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute. I was reading a transcript of the debate earlier this evening, and I was struck by an odd parallel or perhaps mirror relationship between that political fight, which the Democrats won, and the fight to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2009-10, which the Democrats won.
The parallel I’m interested in is not that the Democrats won both fights. Rather, the resemblance has to do with what a ruling party does when it pushes an ambitious reform that is not very popular.
A little bit of context. The debate took place on March 15, 2005. After his reelection in 2004, George W. Bush chose to move forward on a favored policy idea of his, Social Security Reform. The Republicans had initially called the project “Social Security Privatization,” but after noticing how poorly that term polled, they switched up their terminology and began accusing Democrats of having attempted to demonize them with this term, “privatization.” (Something very similar happened later the same year with the term “nuclear option.”) The “private accounts” morphed into “personal accounts”—Republicans generally began running away from their own terms.
That spring, Marshall had a huge amount of fun trying to make Republican congresspersons squirm by asking them whether they supported Bush’s plan on Social Security (whatever name you gave it). Over those weeks, it became harder and harder to get any Republican congressperson to state on the record that they supported privatizing Social Security. The plan fizzled out, in the face of Democratic unity in favor of preserving the current system for the time being.
(I mentioned that Marshall got some enjoyment by embarrassing and neutralizing these Republicans. That is a massive understatement; I think when Marshall looks back on his illustrious career of Internet muckraking, this episode, in which he tarred this or that Republican a “bamboozler,” will be on the short list of the most satisfying moments of all.)
In the debate, Marshall was asked to describe the political aspect of the battle over Social Security reform (as opposed to the substantive side). In his opening remarks, Marshall said this:

The second thing is, and Democrats did this very quickly, is their party unity took away all the political cover. It was really going to be up to Republicans to make privatization an entirely Republican enterprise, and they were too afraid to do it because a lot of those representatives could see how their constituents were going to react and so forth.

Re-reading the transcript tonight, it was this passage that reminded me so much of the fight to pass the ACA (what used to be known as “the health reform bill”). That phrase, “an entirely Republican enterprise”…. that’s the position the Democrats were in all of last year, wasn’t it? You bet it was.
A person might conclude from this that Democrats and Republicans both obstruct, but that the Democrats happened to be better at it (aided by a larger minority than the Republicans now have). But I think there’s something more fundamental going on that tells you a great deal about the two parties and what they stand for.
Consider these two statements:

In 2005 the Republicans, in control of the White House and Congress, proposed a bold new reform that would affect a key area of American life, and it didn’t poll very well, and as soon as the unpopularity of the proposal was made apparent, the Republicans dropped the policy when they realized that it would be associated solely with Republicans.

In 2009-10 the Democrats, in control of the White House and Congress, proposed a bold new reform that would affect a key area of American life, and it didn’t poll very well, and as soon as the unpopularity of the proposal was made apparent, the Democrats, with a great deal of difficulty, passed the policy even though they realized that it would be associated solely with Democrats.

To put it more simply, both parties were given an opportunity to foist their favored policies on the nation in a unilateral way. The Republicans did not want to be associated with their own stated policies, but the Democrats were willing to be associated with their own stated policies.
I have a few conclusions about this, which may reflect my political bias.
Conclusion 1: By and large, Republican positions are minority positions, and Democratic positions are majority positions. Or to put it another way, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress of 2002-2007 found it difficult to implement their ideas because they were favored by such a small portion of the electorate. The Democrats of 2010 do not have this problem; their ideas held by a great many people, broadly speaking.
Conclusion 2: Democrats are sincere about their policy ideas; Republicans are not. I don’t want to overstate this too much, but there is more than a kernel of truth to it. Republican ideas ideas sound appealing and have some populist appeal but would have pernicious effects. Republicans express generalized distaste for the government services, but a lot of that is just rhetoric, and when push comes to shove, they are not very interested in decreasing those services. Contrariwise, the Democrats are more willing to argue for the benefits of social services and intelligent deployment of government generally, and when the going gets tough, it turns out that they actually do believe that.
And lastly,
Conclusion 3: Democratic ideas are good ideas; Republican ideas are bad ideas. Again, don’t want to take this too far. But the fight in 2005 was between a group that wanted to kill or at least diminish Social Security in favor of retirement accounts tied to the stock market in some broad way. Surely, the stock market crash of 2008 reveals this to have been a terrible idea.
Similarly, the fight of 2009-10 was between a group that wanted to provide uninsured people with health care and a group that was quite happy to keep them uninsured. Democratic ideas are easier to defend not only because they are popular but also because they are genuinely good ideas.
Thus endeth the sermon.

Martin Schneider writes:
I’m still reeling from the resentments and denial and misguided assumptions inherent in Laura Bush’s interview with Chris Wallace of FOX News, as quoted in this Jezebel post, anyway. (I haven’t watched the interview itself.)
The takeaway is that Laura Bush censored herself in order to conform to the image of a good conservative wife, and now she’s upset that she doesn’t get the fawning press that Michelle Obama gets. Something like that. For me, the whole thing is resonant in tons of ways, as if the cross-section of gender, politics, and society isn’t generally volatile.
Bush’s mild griping about being placed in a “box” proves yet again that when it comes to femininity, even relatively shrewd choices that involve denying one’s own power as a woman are counterproductive. Laura Bush, who I believe is pro-choice, anti-war, and in favor of increased civil rights for homosexuals, took one for the team, played the quiet wifey, and now she envies liberal women who, whether it works out well or badly, express their entire selves, come what may.
It’s also interesting that she identifies liberal women as getting some big break from the media—is she familiar with Hillary Clinton?
Given her political beliefs and her apparent disappointment about her role as First Lady, I’d suggest that she consider voting Democratic next time.
Beyond that, it’s fascinating to see just how much denial is tied up in the conservative, or at least Bushian, worldview. Laura Bush had to lobotomize her public persona, and is today not so happy with the outcomes that flowed from that choice. Meanwhile, conservatives of all stripes took a “don’t talk about Daddy’s drinking problem” attitude towards Bush’s deficiencies. There’s something deep going on here. Liberals may be blinkered on all sorts of things, but we don’t have the specific problem of getting tied up in knots because we refuse to countenance this or that.
Jezebel has it right when it observes that Michelle Obama didn’t exactly rush to be placed in a “box.” Laura may tell herself that it’s not proper for a First Lady to do X or Y, but for once, the “trickle-down” logic of Republicans turns out to be on the money. If it’s not proper for the First Lady to do that, then doesn’t that logic extend to “ladies” of all descriptions? How far down the chain of power do you have to go before it’s all right for a wife to have a different public opinion than that of her husband?
The problem with George Bush’s ideas about executive privilege is that you can’t draw a circle around the presidency and say, “We believe in accountability in life, but not in this area”—people are going to draw logical conclusions from a move like that, for instance that you are ipso facto opposed to accountability.
And the exact same thing holds true for the First Lady. When you issue yourself a gag order, you can’t then turn around and complain that your complexity has been silenced or whitewashed. And that predicament has everything to do with the limitations of conservative visions of propriety and femininity.
Update: Having now watched the video, I now confess to a suspicion that this post is just a tad too strident. Most of her assertions are fair enough, taken at face value. For example, First Ladies are in a box, and that doesn’t have that much to do with Laura Bush or any specific person. Plus she comes off as really sensible and likable. However, the logic I’m responding to is still inherent in certain utterances and elisions, and as such, I still think that my take and also Jezebel’s take are both entirely in bounds.

Martin Schneider writes:
Kevin Drum flags an interesting comment by Woody Allen on the benefits of belief, from an interview with Ronald Lauder:

I was with Billy Graham once, and he said that even if it turned out in the end that there is no God and the universe is empty, he would still have had a better life than me. I understand that. If you can delude yourself by believing that there is some kind of Santa Claus out there who is going to bail you out in the end, then it will help you get through. Even if you are proven wrong in the end, you would have had a better life.

It reminded me that a few weeks ago, I watched Woody Allen interview Billy Graham on The Woody Allen Show (1969). That telecast was a curious kind of variety show that also featured some sketches and a performance by The Fifth Dimension. (The commercials, all for Libby’s canned vegetables and featuring Tony Randall as an inept sleuth, are quite amusing in a Mad Men-ish way.)
In the interview, Allen and Graham treat each other with affable respect; it’s quite fascinating to watch them discuss the merits of legalizing marijuana. It’s easy to see why Graham was so greatly admired during his life. It’s funny that we consider 1969 the high-water mark for cultural turmoil in the United States, but after a generation’s worth of culture wars, it’s very difficult to imagine such a civil conversation between, say, Zach Galifianakis and Rick Warren. (Even on Oprah.) You also get to see Allen in a rabbi getup (but not during the interview).
You can watch the entire show here.
I am indebted to WFMU’s “Listener Kliph Nesteroff” for making this show known to me, in his detailed and engrossing account of Allen’s early years. Nesteroff has done the same noble service for David Letterman, George Carlin, Betty White, and others. Look out for those as well.

Martin Schneider writes:
A week or two ago, Jonathan Taylor flagged an interesting post by Tyler Cowen, in which he remarked that

In the longer run I expect “annotated” books will be available for full public review, though Kindle-like technologies. You’ll be reading Rousseau’s Social Contract and be able to call up the five most popular sets of annotations, the three most popular condensations, J.K. Rowling’s nomination for “favorite page,” a YouTube of Harold Bloom gushing about it, and so on.

I note for the record that Amazon has started to make users’ favorite passages in its Kindle books available on the Internet. (Hat tip: Kottke.)
(* Having written that title, I must now put on my “reader” hat and object that it makes no sense whatsoever—Cowen never objected to this future, after all. It was Benjamin Chambers who expressed worries about this, in the comments to Jonathan’s post. With any luck, future readers of this post will pick up on my gloss down here. —MCS)