Saturday, June 1, 2013

What I ate: May 31


Daily Report for May 31, 2013

Daily Log
Breakfast445
Egg, Scrambled, Large2 Each204
Sausage, Patty, Original, Vgtrn, Morningstar Farms3 Each240
Coffee, Brewed5 Fluid ounces1
Lunch340
Dressing, Fat-Free Plicate Ranch, Qdoba1 Each45
Chicken, Grilled, Taco Salad Add On, Qdoba1 Each190
Lettuce, Taco Salad Add On, Qdoba1 Each15
Salsa, Corn & Black Bean, Taco Salad Add On, Qdoba1 Each80
Salsa, Pico De Gallo, Taco Salad Add On, Qdoba1 Each10
Dinner684
Lettuce, Romaine, Shredded3 Cups24
Chicken Breast, Skinless, Cooked1 Each142
Cheese, Parmesan, Grated1 Tablespoon22
Dressing, Caesar, Newman's Own3 Tablespoons225
Pizza, Cheese, 14", Fast Food1 Slice272
Snacks783
Strawberry banana Smoothie, Saxbys1 Serving250
No nutrient data for: Protein
Pear, Large1 Each133
Yuenling Lager16 Ounces180
No nutrient data for: Fat, Carbs, Protein
Popcorn, White, Oil Popped4 Cups220
Exercise186
Walking15 min62
Walking10 min41
Walking10 min41
Walking10 min41

Nutrients
Fat86g29%
Carbohydrates351g53%
Protein124g18%

Summary
Food Calories2,253
Exercise Calories186
Net Calories2,066


Believe it or not, this is well below the number of calories my app says I need to limit myself to to lose a pound a day. That's what happens when A) you fat and B) you have salad as two of your three main meals. (That's a chicken salad, actually, for both meals.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Here's what I ate today, May 26:

Here's what I ate today, May 26:

• Tofu scramble (peppers and onions), two pieces of Morningstar Farms veggie sausage, two cups of black coffee.
• Grilled chimichanga (black beans, jasmine rice, salsa and soy cheese in a vegan wrap).
• Large iced tea and a banana.
• Chicken, onion, garic, bell pepper, tomato, asparagus, mixed with pasta.

Here's what I physically did today:

• Walked two miles, to Broad Street and back.
• Played my way through a tournament of Real Boxing. My arms, at least, should get more toned.

Thoughts.?

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Here's what I ate today: May 25


  • Scrambled eggs and Swiss cheese on whole grain toast
  • Black coffee
  • Quinoa salad
  • Ribeye steak, roasted broccoli, mac n'cheese
  • Fresh strawberries and ice cream.
Given that I'm trying to go "Vegan Before 6"—which allows some latitude for dinner—this doesn't look like a bad day. I don't need to do ice cream every night, clearly. And I'd like to get to vegan at breakfast soon; something I can make that satisfies my salty craving. Oatmeal doesn't quite do that.

EXERCISE: I spent a chunk of my evening playing "Real Boxing" on my iPad. It captures your motions, like Wii or Kinect, though probably not quite as efficiently. I went 1-4 in my evening boxing career. But I worked up a hell of a sweat doing it. We'll see how my arms feel Sunday to see if this can become an everyday thing right away.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Here's what I ate today: May 24

Spicy pork kimchi rice bowl.
  • Veggie egg whites scramble on whole grain toast
  • Iced latte
  • Kati roll (peas and carrots with heavy Indian spices, wrapped in naan) 
  • Latte, brownie
  • Spicy pork kimchi rice bowl   
I'm imperfect, obviously. Wish I hadn't had the brownie. Trying to figure out how to have coffee that I enjoy tasting that isn't loaded down with milk. Still: The represents progress from a couple of weeks ago. It's more whole-grain and plant-based than I was eating a month ago, much less meat-oriented. Though I haven't been updating here, the truth is we're even eating salads in the evening a couple of nights a week now. And not to repeat this point too often: I haven't had a soda since my talk with the doctor.  I'm turning around, slowly but surely.

Things to work on:
  • Regular exercise.
  • Consistently documenting my food/exercise efforts.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Starting Over: Vegan Before 6

I want to thank everybody who has emailed me in recent days to share their own stories of weight loss, advice, or encouragement. I haven't had time to respond individually to everybody, but my plan is to do so.

One thing I've been spending this first week doing is trying to find a plan that makes sense to me, so that I can apply a bit of rigor to the process instead of "merely" documenting everything I eat and hoping that will magically deliver me. I'm going to start with Mark Bittman's new book, Vegan By 6. Bittman writes about food for the New York Times, has inspired me to get creative in the kitchen, and his approach seems flexible to me. I think I need flexible.

The title suggests the essential plan: Part-time veganism. Before 6, Bittman eats a "super-strict" vegan diet, also getting rid of processed foods and "white" starches in bread and pasta—no alcohol either—and after 6, he eats pretty much whatever he wants, usually but not always in moderation. The result? He lost weight and maintained that loss, dramatically improving his health in the process.

He describes the benefits of "part-time veganism" thusly:


Same here. Veganism isn't an "ethical" choice for me—I grew up among ranchers; I've worked around butcher shops—so this approach seems, well, welcoming. I want to take a positive attitude and approach into this effort. I can maintain that positivity by changing my habits while preserving my freedom of choice.

I worry that I'll offend some friends with this choice: Everybody has an opinion about how to lose weight. My promise to you: I'll try this for a month, maybe longer. But if it doesn't appear to be producing results within a short period of time, I'll stop and try another approach.

It'll be a few days before I officially declare myself a Vegan Before 6. I want to read more deeply into Bittman's book, and in particular get some handy ideas for how to eat at breakfast without, you know, using milk or eggs.

In the meantime, you may notice I've been attempting essentially a "Vegetarian Before 6" routine—not completely rigorously—in order to get a head start. Thus, my meals for today:

May 8

Snack: 2 apples

Breakfast: Veggies and egg whites on ciabatta
Large iced latte with 2 percent milk

Snack: Peanut butter and oats bar from Trader Joe's

Lunch: Salad with goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, onion, pecans, mushrooms, and vinagrette.

Dinner: Steak salad. (Includes peas, corn, cherry tomatoes, cheddar cheese, hard boiled egg, lettuce, and steak. Italian dressing.)

Snack: PB&J  on extremely whole-grain bread.

I've been consciously altering my eating habits. I don't feel deprived. I sure hope this works.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Starting Over: Still Starting

At the same time (and for the same reasons) I've embarked on a mission to lose weight, I've been getting started on medicine to bring my blood pressure down. With it remaining persistently but moderately high, the doctor this week ordered me to double up on the prescription. Today? I was wiped out by a combination of bad headaches, light fever, and unsettled stomach that I understand to be side effects. I took a two-hour nap after work, and woke only because my son was sent to rouse me.

I feel like I'm starting this journey with a series of mistakes and excuses.

But my body really is doing the thing it's doing today. So I'm going to celebrate one thing: Consistency of effort is not going to be easy to come by. But I haven't had a soda in a week. So. That's something. Just gotta string a few more somethings together.

May 7

Weigh-in: --
Exercise: --

Breakfast: Bacon, egg and cheese on croissant
Large iced coffee with skim milk
Banana

Snack: Strawberry protein smoothie

Lunch: Qdoba veggie grilled burrito (brown rice, wheat tortilla, black beans, grilled squash, pico sauce, cheese, lettuce, guac.)

Snack: Trail mix (peanuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, carob chips)

Dinner: Two bowls of "Tex Mex mix"—beef, beans, Rotel, and spice—over corn chips.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Starting Over: Day Three

If am to be successful, I need to figure out how to deal with stress, anger, rage, and general grumpiness without eating a large bag of potato chips.

I don't wanna talk about it.


May 6, 2013

Weigh-in (doc's office): 279 lbs

Exercise: 1.48 miles of around-town walking.

Breakfast: Veggie sausage, egg, cheese on toast
Iced coffee with skim milk

Um...Breakfast two:
Iced latte with 2 percent milk
Egg white and cheese sandwich on whole grain

Lunch: Small bowl leftover chicken brown/wildrice

Snack: Cup of trail mix.

Snack: Greek yogurt

Snack: Salt-n-vinegar chips (ooooooh no!)

Dinner: Three bowls of salad (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheddar, hard-boiled egg, Italian dressing)

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Starting Over: Day Two

A bit more than a decade ago, after 9/11, I lost a bunch of weight. It made me happy, I felt confident, and not coincidentally—from both a pants-size perspective and confidence perspective—I dated more during that period than at any other time in my single life. It was great. And all I did was two things:

• I spent an hour on the treadmill at least four days a week.
• I quit soda cold turkey.

That's it. I ate whatever I wanted, and sometimes still ate too much. And I wasn't what you'd call slim: I'm never going to be what you call slim, I don't think. But I slimmed-down. It was awesome. And except for that hour a day on the treadmill—set at its highest hill settings, making me sweat like crazy—relatively easy.

(Why did I quit? I got sick—sick with what now seems likely to have been a precursor to the diverticulitis that took me out in 2011. That at least consoles me on one level: If I got sick when I was fit, the illness was probably more genetic than God's retribution on me for living my sinfully excessive lifestyle. It took me more than a month to recover, and I never quite got back on the treadmill with the same vigor I previously had.) 

While I'm figuring out what my food consumption will look like—and thanks to all the many of you who have written me with your stories and advice—there are two things I know I can do: Give up the soda. And devote an hour of my day to moving.

The second might sound difficult: I think I have to let it not be. For example: My wife was in Maryland today on a previously scheduled trip, leaving me to take care of our son. That doesn't exactly scream "gym time," does it? But the great thing about living in Center City Philadelphia is that if you want to get moving, all you have to do is go somewhere and not take the bus.

So Tobias walked out to get lunch and coffee today. By the time we made it home, we'd covered nearly two miles. Was I sweating? No. Did I move? Yes. Something is better than nothing.

Tomorrow: Another doctor's appointment!

May 5

Weigh-in: None

Exercise: City walking with Tobias: 1.93 miles

Breakfast:
Spinach-mushroom quiche
Iced coffee, splash of half-and-half

Snack:
Cup of wasabi peas

Lunch: (Easily the worst-chosen meal of my twodays so far. Mediocre and flavorless)
Falafel wrap (includes rice, roasted red pepper, sauce)
Hummus with red peppers, olives, garlic/pita

Snack :
Iced coffee, splash of half and half

Dinner:
Two bowls of brown/wild rice, topped with tomato-basil marinated chicken

Addendum: A finger of Laphroaig scotch, two squares of dark chocolate. I'm not going to be an ascetic.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Starting Over: Day One

Clearly chunky. Lucky for me
the black T-shirt has slimming qualities.
Thanks to everybody who contacted me today, either through the comments here, my Facebook page, or via email, to encourage me and offer advice. I'm only a day into my weight-loss mission: One thing I haven't done yet is figured out how I'll do it. There are as many approaches as, well, people who have lost weight.

I'm averse to strict calorie-counting—though it may be the way I have to go ultimately. I know from previous attempts that calorie counting actually made me obsessed with food. It's not wrong to think about what you're eating or how much; the calorie-counting process, though, triggers something in me that to think about food constantly, when I'm eating, when I'm not eating, mostly wishing I was eating. It actually works against healthy weight loss for me, I think.

But: It may ultimately be that I have to calorie count in order to accomplish this.

I'll be exploring the merits of several plans in coming weeks. I want something that's more than just a crash diet, but a new lifestyle that I can somewhat comfortably maintain. In the meantime, I'll be documenting my exercise and eating, anyway, just as a way of beginning to be mindful.

So. Here goes.


Weight: 281 lbs

Exercise: 60 minutes on elliptical, 3.02 miles

Breakfast:
Bowl of Kashi GoLean cereal
Mixed in with cup of honey Greek yogurt
3 small cups of coffee, two of which had a splash of half and half.

Snack: 1biggish apple
Snack: Baby carrots and hummus

Lunch: Veggie Wrap from Almaz Cafe



Snack: Two cups of wasabi dried peas

Dinner: Two bowls of salad: Lettuce, chicken, tomatoe, broccoli, asparagus, some small chunks of cheddar, Italian dressing.

There may be an after-dinner snack later. If so, I'll put on an addendum. You can see where the emphasis is, though: Heavy on veggies. I had maybe a quarter-pound of chicken in the salad, but probably not even that much. What's more: I feel fine. Did I lose weight today? No idea. But thinking about what I'm doing is already changing what I'm putting in my body. Hopefully that counts for something.

Starting over

So the blog is about to take a left turn, for reasons that will become apparent. 


I keep thinking I've bottomed out. I keep finding not.

Let's get up to speed very quickly: Two years ago this week, I went into hospital with stopped-up bowels. Turned out I had diverticulitis, a nasty infection on top of that, and was about to die. They performed a colostomy on me.

Two months later, the doctors did a second surgery: A colon recission. That means they shortened up my colon. In practice, it meant cutting out old dead colon that had wrapped itself around my bladder. Oh, and: They punctured my bladder during the surgery.

The colostomy, for what it's worth, created a hernia. And the doctors tried to fix that hernia when they reversed my colostomy in November 2011. But the fix didn't take. Today, I'm overweight AND lumpy in a way that being merely overweight doesn't describe. A CT scan a few months ago shows I basically have no abdominal wall between my belly button and my sternum. Oh, and I weigh 280 pounds—this being a chicken-and-egg thing: Am I *this* fat because I can't exercise much ( get tired, and frankly sit-ups are out of the question) or do I not exercise much because I'm fat?

Doesn't matter. A surgeon told me yesterday he won't operate to fix me because, at this weight, there's an 85 percent chance the repair would fail. He wants to see me in three months. He wants me to lose 50 pounds. And if I can't do it the old fashioned way, then I need to look at "surgical" methods for dropping the weight. For my health.

So that's the story. I'm 40, fat, and herniated like a motherfucker. And I don't really have many good stories to tell about how I got this way. I've spent a lifetime making undisciplined, mediocre choices. Now I find I'm falling apart. "You can't continue to live at that weight," the doctor told me. He's right. So what the hell do I do?

I'm giving myself a month to see if I can start to lose that weight in a natural and meaningful way, before I call the weight-loss surgeon he named. I'm not entirely sure  how it's going to happen. I think it means an hour on the treadmill or eliptical, every day. I think it means no more cheeseburgers, wings, pizza, sausage breakfast sandwiches. I think it means weighing myself every goddamned day. I think it means tracking every thing I eat. I'm not sure I can be a strict calorie counter. I've done that before, and it drives me nuts.

But this is where I start. This is how I start. I'm a freelance writer. I largely shape the schedule I work. My son is in school so I don't have to drag him around during the day. I'm on the road very little. If anybody has the space in their life to reshape their eating and exercise habits, it's me. So, fuck it, it's time.

I'm a compulsive oversharer. Everybody who knows me knows this. I'm aware of this. But it's not easy for me to share this stuff, because it reveals me to be weak in a lot of ways I don't want to be seen as weak in public. This is humiliating. But I suspect I'm going to need support and ideas from people.

I want to be a vigorous and vital partner to my wife for decades to come. I want to be an active and energetic dad for my son for as long as I can. I want to live, and live with a good quality of life, instead of quickly crumbling to an early grave. This is where it starts. I'm out of delays, out of excuses, out of time.

Starting today—later today—I'll post what I'm eating and how I'm exercising at the end of each day. I don't expect a huge audience for this. But I am interested in hearing from folks. I guess I'm crowdsourcing my survival.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Sour Grapes: A Reply To Christopher Caldwell

The conservative writer Christopher Caldwell appears in this month's Claremont Review of Books, reviewing Closet to the Altar, a history of same-sex marriage by Michael J. Klarman. I'm going to leave most of Caldwell's arguments alone—Klarman can defend his own work—but I do want to contest Caldwell's seeming assertion toward the end of his piece that what makes the gay marriage movement particularly odious is its use of nasty strong-arm tactics:
The most troubling aspect of the gay-marriage movement is that, more than any social movement in living memory, more than feminism at its bra-burning peak in the 1970s, it aims not to engage in lively debate but to shut it down. Scurrility has become a norm. In April 2009, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, told a Miss America judge she thought marriage should be between a man and a woman and got called a "dumb bitch" for it on the judge's website. If it is now easier to call people dumb bitches, then it makes no sense at all to extol the gay marriage movement as a moral advance.
Let me condemn in the strongest possible fashion the use of the term "dumb bitch" as a response to Carrie Prejean. It seems to me that fighters of sexism and fighters of homophobia should be natural allies, and to deploy hateful sexist terminology on behalf of gay rights isn't just odious, it also seems to surely be missing the point.

Nonetheless, it surely seems that Caldwell's trying to make the case that "dumb bitch" entered political terminology as a means of shutting down Prejean's anti-gay-marriage views. This, of course, is poppycock. As I've written elsewhere—and as basically any woman who writes for public consumption knows—the term is used to silence women all the the time, particularly—I would guess—women coming from a lefty or feminist point of view. Caldwell's shock at the term in this context is either naive or, I suspect, disingenuous. He's right to point out that it's an ugly bit of business; but's far from a unique weapon of gay marriage forces, nor particularly common to them.

Nonetheless, Caldwell continues down this track:
Shutting down debate can be more effectively done now that the internet has solved the organizing problem of mobs. Anyone who expresses the slightest misgivings about gay marriage can become the object of boycotts, blacklists, and attempts to get him fired. Restaurant chain Chick fil-A was boycotted when its chief operating officer speculated that gay marriage might be "inviting God's wrath." A theater director in Sacramento resigned his post after having been shown to be a donor to Proposition 8. The law firm King & Spalding refused to allow Paul Clement permission to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act on behalf of the House of Representatives. Defending O.J. Simpson will not get you booted from your firm, but defending a federal law will. Most companies are probably brave enough to defend their employees' freedom of opinion, but cowardice of King & Spalding's sort risks becoming the norm.
What I recall about the Chick fil-A boycott is that it turned out to be a tremendous success for the company after social conservatives rallied to its success. I recall, as well, that about the same time an anti-marriage-equality group calling itself One Million Moms (probably, ahem, a misnomer) vowed to boycott JC Penney after the retailer ran ads featuring Famous Lesbian(™) Ellen DeGeneres in holiday ads. If boycotts are an attempt to silence debate, rather than a form of it, then one would expect Caldwell to be shocked by the JC Penney action—or, at least, acknowledge that that Chick fil-A boycott comes in a context of back-and-forth boycotts over the subject of gay rights that have been going on for years.

The Southern Baptist Convention voted to boycott Disney in 1997 because of that company's perceived gay-friendly direction. It lasted eight years. The National Organization for Marriage is behind the Dump Starbucks campaign for similar reasons. Conservative Christian groups do this stuff all the time. The evangelicals I grew up with sometimes had trouble keeping track of all the companies (and sub-companies, and sub-sub companies) they were supposed to boycott: Were these paper towels the right ones to buy, or not? If boycotting is a pernicious form of trying to silence debate, Caldwell might want to pluck the log from his side's eye before pointing out the speck in his neighbor's eye. And, too, he might want to tell Martin Luther King Jr. about the moral illegitimacy of boycotts as a political measure.

Blacklisting is rather more problematic, admittedly. Does that term apply to Scott Eckern, the theater director to whom Caldwell refers? Possibly. But that seems tricky to me. Adults understand they have the right to make political statements—but they also recognize that that doing so might affect their ability to do their jobs. But again: Social conservatives feel free to deprive jobs to those who don't share their values on this topic.  If everybody should keep their job despite their political views, then everybody should get to keep their job despite their political views.

As for Mr. Clement, well: He wasn't booted from his firm, as Caldwell has it—he quit, after the firm decided it didn't want the job of defending the Defense of Marriage Act. It's an important distinction, a factual error that clearly undermines the case that Caldwell is trying to make.

Caldwell concludes:

In a decade, gay marriage has gone from joke to dogma. It is certainly worth asking why, if this is a liberation movement, it should be happening now, in an age not otherwise gaining a reputation as freedom's heyday. Since 2009, if Klarman's estimates are correct, support for gay marriage has been increasing by 4 points a year. Public opinion does not change this fast in free societies. Either opinion is not changing as fast as it appears to be, or society is not as free.
This is a baseless assertion, but I think it gets at the deeper conservative frustration on this issue: They're losing not just politically and legally; they're losing culturally. And when you lose the culture, that's when the debate really is over, at least for awhile. Conservatives never lost the culture entirely on abortion, which is why we're still debating the issue 40 years later. Will we still be debating gay marriage 20 years from now? Forget my answer: I'd like to know what Caldwell thinks.

Besides, Caldwell's wrong about public opinion: Big cultural shifts often happen little-by-little, then a lot all at once: It's fascinating to look at Gallup's list of long-term poll trends, measuring attitudes for most of the 20th century in America.

On the question of "would you be willing to support a woman for president," for example, barely half the country—53 percent—said yes in 1969. Two years later, than number was at 66 percent: A movement of 6.5 points per year, on average. It's about what you might expect with the women's liberation movement getting underway at the time. Similarly, in 1962, only 48 percent of Americans said they would support a black president—a number that rose 18 points, to 66 percent, by 1968: Around 3 percent a year. That's not quite as dramatic, but it's still plenty dramatic, and certainly indicative of a massive shift in racial attitudes underway during the era. Does Caldwell want to suggest that American society wasn't "free" then? Perhaps, but I don't think the case he'd make would be recognizable to most Americans.

Anti-gay-marriage conservatives have failed to convince an increasing majority of Americans of their views.  Of late, they have resorted to a final argument: That allowing gay marriage will lead to the victimization of those who believe in traditional marriage. It's an argument that does the neat trick of sidestepping the worthiness of gay marriage itself in favor of creating a needless zero-sum contest of rights. But the loss of privilege—the privilege, in this case, to disdain your gay neighbors' relationship without social consequence—is not the same thing as a loss of rights. If Caldwell believes he can win the gay marriage debate by painting a falsely negative portrait of the gay marriage movement, he should understand the lies will only comfort true believers on his side: For everybody else, facts and a sober examination of history will show his errors.

(Edited for clarity, spelling, boo-boos.)

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Look elsewhere

Over the last year, my blogging energies have been increasingly consumed by my work for Philadelphia Magazine. If you're looking for my thoughts on politics, that's probably the place to go. Thanks to those of you who have followed me here. I may return someday, who knows?

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The Olympics are meaningless

Interesting story in NYT today about how an American who won silver at the 2004 Athens games may now take the gold. Why? Retroactive drug testing:
Doping protocols allow for officials to store samples for eight years and retest them for substances they may not have been able to detect at the time the sample was taken. When Bilonog’s sample was analyzed in 2004 at the Olympics, the results were negative, doping officials said. Eight years later, with new tests at their disposal, officials decided to re-examine about 100 samples from the Athens Games, focusing on certain sports and medalists.
I'm kind of at the point that I don't care about athletes doping—I suspect that it's so widespread that it's no longer a competitive advantage, but rather a leveling of a dope-saturated playing field. I don't think that makes the competition that much less interesting: The drugs can't make the human body do more than it's capable of, ultimately.

The testing protocol might actually do more damage to the Olympics. What this means is that every competition you watch, the results are only provisional—and will remain so for up to a decade. The agony of defeat? The thrill of victory? Well, sure, as long as an asterisk is placed on each gold medal, a disclaimer read before every playing of the national anthem, noting that the results won't be official and final for another eight years. That sure seems to diminish the moment of competition.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Tabor College, my alma mater, ends up in Sports Illustrated for all the wrong reasons

Well, I'd love to hear from some of my Tabor friends about this, but the story SI describes doesn't seem terribly different from what things were like when I was a student at Tabor 20 years ago, at least in my mind.

I even did a little research into WHY Tabor had a football team when I was there, digging through old stacks of the student newspaper. If memory serves, the team didn't exist until 1969. It started (and an existing soccer team shut down) more or less in order to stay in the KCAC—the worry being that the college wouldn't survive unless it maintained its membership in the athletic conference.

The football team seemed to exist in a different universe than the rest of Tabor, which was no lip-service denominational college: It really did (and does) take seriously the mission of Christ-centered learning. The student body was pretty white and devout. The football team …much, much less so. Every year or so, there'd be one or two players who really participated in church-related events on campus in a major way, and they drew a lot of attention, but often they were gone the next year, just like most of the rest of the team.

So the team didn't seem to square, even then, with either Tabor's spiritual or educational missions. I recall, in fact, my senior year of college putting the question directly to David Brandt, then Tabor's brand-new president. Why did Tabor persist in keeping a program that seemed to fit the campus so badly?

I don't recall his answer, in fairness: I do recall he answered it with a kind of smiling frustration reserved for the "you don't get how the world works, son," and I guess I did and didn't.

I'm disappointed that the current president, Jules Glanzer, elected to try to avoid attention by declining to speak about this with SI's reporter. In fairness: I'm no longer an ideal Tabor alum myself, being an agnostic liberal. And the story of who benefits and who loses from the existence of the football team at Tabor is complicated by hundreds of individual stories.

But I also suspect that the conflict between how Tabor presents itself, how it thinks of itself, and the different reality lived by much of the football team—well, public embarrassment of some sort was going to come at some point. I'm sorry that it took the death of a young man, a father, to heighten those contradictions. I hope, however, that Tabor will wrestle with the questions posed in this story with honesty, integrity, and fidelity to the faith it proclaims in the world.

Update: Final thought: It was clear 20 years ago that Tabor might not live without football, but would live in a compromised state *with* football. It seems like little has changed. I'm more clear-eyed than I was when I was a self-righteous 20-year-old about the need for and nature of compromise, but I still wonder if it's all ultimately to the good.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Lying liars in the Philadelphia Daily News: Obama and Israel

I understand that a newspaper applies somewhat looser standards in its letters-to-the-editor section than it usually does its own reported news and opinion columns, yet it's a source of unending irritation to me that the Philadelphia Daily News often lets blatant misrepresentations of fact reach its readers uncontradicted.

I'm not against the Daily News printing opinions I dislike, understand. But I hate actual lies and untruths. And the latest emerges today from Pat Dougherty:

Benghazi coverup?
When will you do your duty to the American people and cover this tragedy honestly? You have covered for this corrupt administration for far too long. Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of this administration has the blood of those four dead Americans on their hands. You are complicit and their blood stains you also. Would you be so uninterested if this was a Republican administration? No, your headlines would scream of it daily! You are in bed with a man that, in his own words, said he would stand with Muslims against Israel. Nice. A leader of America standing with those that say they want us dead.

The lie? That Obama, "in his own words, said he would stand with Muslims against Israel." I don't have to even look this up. Know how I know this is a lie? Because this is such an Israel-supporting nation that any major political figure who ever said such a thing would see his electoral career finished. Instantly. Especially if that politician were running for president.

But, hey, let's give Mr. Dougherty the benefit of the doubt that he didn't make up this quote out of whole cloth. Where did it come from? Well, it's a popular trope among the darker corners of the conservative blogosphere that Obama once said this: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Which, you'll note, is not the same thing as saying he'd stand with the Muslims against Israel. But heck, lets look at the context even of that. Turns out it emerges devoid of its context from his book, "The Audacity of Hope." Snopes.com has it covered:


So, the then-future president said he would stand with Muslims to preserve their civil rights! Great! He didn't say he'd "stand against Israel?" Even better!

Maybe the Daily News expects its other readers to know that Mr. Dougherty is purveying mistruths and lies. But it's frustrating to see such fakery perpetuated in the newspaper, no matter which page it's on.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Rich Lowry: 'Racialized politics'

You almost get the feeling that Rich Lowry deliberately misunderstands:
"One of the most extraordinary things about the post-election discussion is how Democrats and the media are hailing a more or less explicitly racialized politics in this country."
Only if by "racialized" you mean "inclusive of more than one race." But I don't think that's what Lowry intends.

Here's the breakdown: Roughly 72 percent of Americans are white. 12 percent are black, 5 percent are Asian, and 16 percent are Hispanic or Latino (which gets included in the "white" count, which is why this adds up to more than 100 percent.)

Romney voters were 88 percent white. "We find that 2 percent of Romney's voters were black, 6 percent were Latino, 2 percent were Asian, and 2 percent had some other ethnic classification."

And Obama? "Obama's support was 56 percent white, 24 percent black, 14 percent Latino, 4 percent Asian, and 2 percent other."

Neither set of voters is entirely demographically representative of the United States population. But one set is a lot closer. And that set happened to be on the winning side.

This isn't rocket science: Republicans have spent decades appealing to white voters and deliberately repelling minority voters, usually screaming in anguish when anybody points that out. That's racialized politics. My advice to Republicans, if they want to be true to themselves but also win elections: You don't need to pander to minority voters. Just stop being jerks to them. And stop kidding yourselves that pandering to white voters is "colorblind." It's not.


Republicans should stop alienating minorities

That's my suggestion in this week's Scripps Howard column, taking stock of the election results:
Here's a bit of friendly advice to my friends in the Republican Party: It's time to stop being so afraid of minorities. It's the only way you'll survive future elections. 
Save me the talk about how you're not afraid of minorities. Your party spent 40 years pursuing the "Southern Strategy" of demonizing blacks to curry favor with Southern whites. Your party held up Arizona's anti-immigration law -- along with its racial-profiling practices -- as a model for the nation. Your party just this year passed voter ID laws that were a clear attempt to suppress minority votes. And your party tried to win the 2012 election by digging up an old videotape of Obama just weeks before this election, suggesting (falsely) that it was proof of his reverse racism. 
Republicans have sent a clear, unmistakable message. It has been just as unmistakably received. The result? Romney earned the support of a whole lot of white male voters -- and not a whole lot of anyone else. 
Women? African-Americans? Latinos? They ended up mostly voting for Obama. And Obama won re-election, you may have noticed. 
It doesn't have to be this way. There's nothing inherently "white" about a desire for limited government, or lower taxes or even "family values." If the GOP were seen as a welcoming place for a wider cross section of America, it would earn the support of a wider cross section of America. White guys can't deliver an election on their own anymore. 
Really, all you have to do is rethink your "severely conservative" rhetoric on immigration policy, and you might find a quick change in your electoral fortunes. Pass the DREAM Act. Start printing up visas for guest workers. These are measures that had GOP support in the past.
Support them again -- and change nothing else -- and you might win again.
I would love for this to happen, actually, would love for us to untangle our politics from tribalistic identity battles and instead really just be competitions between competing ideas. That's perhaps overly idealistic of me, but I would love it. And I don't think it requires much of a philosophical change on the part of conservatives--just (ahem) a bit of an attitude adjustment.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

On adulthood, Iran, and war

A reader writes to me:
  I don't know why it is that grown adults like yourself "cringe" everytime the subject of war comes up.  It reminds me of the rebellious reaction a child displays when asked to wash his hands or take a bath.  It's as is we exist in a vacume where no evil exists and some magic force will automactically protect us from doom.  This attitude is what lead the U.S. and the rest of the globe to downplay the role of Adolph Hitler until he secceeded in murdering 11 million souls. 
   But if we follow this path in regards to Iran we will face an outcome even more destructive than the fallout from WWII.  And "fallout" is the operative term.  If Ahmed Adinojhad reaches the ability to produce nuclear warheads he will either use them to wipe out Israel or as a threat to our efforts for peace.  And if you don't think he will do these things remember that the same thing was said about Hitler. 
   In short Mr. Mathis I suggest it's time for you and your liberal followers to grow up and start acting like adults. When it comes to war we simply can't avoid it solely on the basis that we don't like it.  That is unless you feel your opinion is more important than the rest of us living.  
Ed
I respond (with slight edits):
Ed: 
If reluctance to war is a sin, though, let me suggest that over eagerness to attack and invade and bomb is another. Americans not so long ago were told that the invasion of Iraq was necessary to prevent the occurrence of a "mushroom cloud" demonstrate Saddam Hussein's evil powers. Oops. Turns out that many people died--mostly because of the violence that we unleashed.   
If it is "adult" to face up to the sad necessities of war and childish to want to avoid them, let me submit that it's also more than a little puerile to unleash such forces with little apparent regard for the tens of thousands of innocents who die as a result. Iraqi civilians suffered because of a mirage; you now propose that Iranian civilians be maimed and die because this time it's REALLY true that a Middle Eastern regime will commit genocide and suicide in one fell swoop. Me? I'd rather be cautious. I think it might save more lives on both sides.  
I once was a pacifist. No longer, though I remain a skeptic of war and its benefits. Some wars are probably necessary. But they are few in number, and certainly fewer than you seek to justify.  

Friday, November 2, 2012

We don't owe jobs to fallen police, firefighters

Today at The Philly Post, I urge voters to reject Ballot Question 3 in next Tuesday's election. It guarantees jobs to grandkids. Really:
Again, there’s no doubt we owe much to fallen officers and their families. No one doubts that. The fact that Philadelphia voters approved a similar measure in 2006, giving preference to the sons and daughters of police and firefighters killed on duty, makes sense. Those kids were directly affected by the loss of a parent. After that, though, the question is less clear—if we’re going to give grandkids a leg up in city hiring practices, why not great-grandkids, too? How far down the genetic line can we go? Do we ever get to stop providing full-time employment to the descendants of the fallen? If we can never fully repay the debt, does that mean we have to pay it forever?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Barack Obama for president

My final endorsement, at Scripps Howard News Service:

Four years ago, I was an enthusiastic Obama voter. Come Tuesday, I'll be a chastened Obama voter -- but an Obama voter nonetheless. 
Civil liberties-minded liberals have reason to be disappointed in this president. He has built up the imperial presidency bequeathed him by George W. Bush, adding some new wrinkles of his own. Americans do not leave an electronic footprint that is not collected, in some fashion, by the federal government. Obama has given himself the power to assassinate citizens suspected of terrorism. It's uncertain whether we're more secure; it is likely we're less free. 
So why vote for Obama? Because Romney would be worse. 
Romney, with his memorable talk of "double Gitmo," would probably continue fortifying the security leviathan Bush and Obama have built since 9/11. 
Along the way, it seems more likely that a President Romney would get us in a shooting war with Iran. 
It seems more likely that a President Romney would appoint Supreme Court justices who would undermine the rights and freedoms of women to control their own reproductive health, or who would turn a cold shoulder to the rights and freedoms of gay and lesbian Americans to make their own families. 
It seems more likely that a President Romney -- a man so vocal in private about his disdain for the poorest 47 percent of the population -- would undermine and dismantle safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the name of reducing the deficit, all while cutting taxes for his rich friends. 
And despite a week that saw a massive hurricane hit the East Coast, it seems more likely that a President Romney would be less than dedicated to preserving and strengthening federal agencies that assist states and cities in recovering from such disasters. 
President Obama is imperfect. President Romney might be a disaster. 
It's an easy choice to make.
Ben gives an anti-Obama endorsement of Romney. You'll have to click the link to read his take.
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