Steelers stuff

As I live in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and work in the city, I am obliged to write something about the Steelers. I don't know if this is an actual law, but around here it just as well might be.

Lucky for me, this is not mere duty. I love the Steelers and I have my No. 43 jersey ready to put on come Sunday evening. I am going to be watching the game with a bunch of friends at a party.

My prediction for the game is as follows - if the Steelers can run the ball, they will win; if they can't, the Cardinals' quarterback is going to have plenty of time to make life miserable for the Steelers secondary, not to mention for those around the keg and food table at the party.

The Steelers have to win; otherwise, the whole of Pittsburgh will be in therapy. And if that groundhog on Monday then dares issue from his burrow and predict six more weeks of winter, someone will hit him with a snow shovel.

Go Steelers!

In other football news, that would be the round sort of football, a friend send me word that the Feb. 2 issue of Sports Illustrated carries the following Sign of the Apocalypse:

"A British Club soccer game was disrupted when a parrot brought by a fan started imitating the referee's whistle."

I guess it was a case of Polly wants a red card.

Weather forecast: Snow with periods of abuse

In terms of the weather, today was a prime candidate for the most miserable day of the year award. The only reason I can think that Pittsburghers didn't commit suicide in droves was that people were waiting to see the outcome of the Super Bowl.

The Steelers better win on Sunday. The psychiatric health of the region depends on it.

As if the rain, snow and sleet weren't enough, dozens of Rush Limbaugh fans reacted negatively to my column this morning "Do We Want Rush Limbaugh to Fail?" I was called an idiot, a lunatic, a crybaby, a hypocrite - and they were just the polite ones. I am not looking for sympathy here -- this is called occupational hazard in my line of work. I am just glad people are interested.  

There were also many nice notes from people with an actual sense of humor, which is always a certain sign of intelligence. These notes insulated me from the other batch.

Still, as much as the good notes were rays of sunshine, they didn't do much about the weather.

The decline of style

In the twilight of the newspaper industry - not to worry, twilight can go on for a long time and I am hoping to pay off my mortgage before the moon comes up - one of the first visible signs of strain has been in the decline of style.

By style, I mean not the manner of writing but the uniform way in which things are written. Do you spell out numbers? (Only from one to 10, with exceptions for ages and percentages.) Do you hyphenate African American? (Only when used as an adjective.) Is it Mt. Washington or Mount Washington (Mount Washington).

There are literally hundreds of these rules and they are written down, traditionally in a stylebook but now kept online as well. The Associated Press is the ultimate authority for the style of many newspapers, including the Post-Gazette, which also has its own local rules to supplement the AP commandments (Mount Washington).

In the heyday of newspapers, this was all taken very seriously and certain copy editors took upon themselves to be the sheriffs of style. Woe betide the young reporter who did not know that "under way" is two words in virtually all uses, except when used as an adjective in a nautical sense - "an underway flotilla."

Nowadays, you are apt to see any old style in the paper. The copy editors are just too few and too busy trying to get the news in the newspaper to worry about whether underway is one word or two.

To traditionalists like myself, this is a great shame and sorrow. And as an old fossil, I was saddened by an AP Stylebook Update that arrived electronically this afternoon.

In its imperial majesty, the AP style mavens have decreed that henceforth "the entry on Caesarean section has been changed to cesarean section."

I don't think it is right to mess with the names of Roman emperors. I know where this will inevitably lead: One day soon, the so-called cesarean section will be known by the AP as Bob's section or something similar.

I suppose they had decrees like this in the final days when the barbarians were at the gates of Rome.

Then, as now, the greater sadness for a person like me is that nobody now cares one way or the other.

Clint the curmudgeon

On Sunday night, I went to see "Gran Torino," directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, who is also the star of the film and is probably chief bottle washer, which I could have confirmed if only I had stayed for the credits.

It must be a hard thing to direct yourself - "Put more emotion to into it, you lazy person, me" - but Clint does an excellent job. He succeeds in the impossible - making a racist character seem human and sympathetic as he mellows over the course of the story.

The character he plays is an old, bitter, retired guy carrying the emotional baggage of war. He is a Korean veteran and ex-auto worker whose wife has recently died. He lives in a midwest neighborhood where lower middle class people like himself have largely fled but he hangs stubbornly on. Gangs roam the streets and his next-door neighbors are Hmong refugees, whom he instinctively dislikes.

From her porch, an old mamma-san character yells abuse in Hmong at him just as he yells at her in English. They don't understand a word of each other's language but they understand each other perfectly well.

It's a terrific film and I highly recommend it, although the racist language will offend some. Still, it is in service of some profound themes having to do with aging, manhood, the bitterness of war, loneliness and cultural misunderstanding. (By the way, the "Gran Torino" of the title is a reference to the man's beloved old car, which is central to the plot).

I have an anecdote of my own about war and cultural misunderstanding, which I got to thinking about when I got home.

In 1970, I was stationed in Saigon with the Australian Army. One night, I went out with a mate named Mike. We had too much to drink - as was customary at that time, your honor - and we took a common cyclo-taxi back to our billet in Cholon, the Chinese section of the city. For the price of a few piastres, we crammed in with perhaps six other Vietnamese.

Mike was never a good advertisement for drunks and started to abuse the Vietnamese in general and the poor guy opposite him in particular. While I was no enlightened soul, just another clueless soldier in somebody else's country, his racist abuse did bother me a bit - then, as now, I was against stupidity in all its forms.

So I said: "Mike, don't abuse this poor gentleman. He is not some ignorant bloke. He went to Oxford University."

This was meant as a joke, something to distract Mike and lighten the situation, and my reference to Oxford was merely my idea of an excellent school.

But no sooner did I mention Oxford, than a look of astonishment came over that poker-faced Vietnamese man.

"How did you know?" the man said softly but in perfect English.

Oz Day in Pittsburgh

Monday is Australia Day, the Down Under equivalent of July 4. It marks the moment on Jan. 26, 1788, when Gov. Arthur Phillip unfurled the Union Jack and claimed the colony of New South Wales for the British crown.

It is an odd day for a national holiday, because it's hardly the commemoration of a noble declaration of independence. After all, Phillip was there with his contingent of convicts and redcoats who had come over from England on the First Fleet to establish a penal colony. (They might have gone to the American colonies otherwise but you people had earlier caused the British to search elsewhere). The aboriginals who had been in the continent from the dawn of time were not consulted.

None of this is ideal but Jan. 26 comes in summer in the Southern Hemisphere, making it perfect for beer drinking, throwing things on the barbie and going to the beach. In short, most people say "no worries" to the question of historical baggage.

In Pittsburgh, the resident Aussies, which I estimate number about 100, many of them associated with the universities or Alcoa, usually celebrate Australia Day on the closest weekend next to the day - this weekend. Last year, we had a private room at the aquarium. We drank like fish but we had designated pikers to drive us home,

This year the day creeped up on us. Only today, I received an invitation for drinks on Saturday evening at Roland's in the Strip District. I am hoping to attend but, as of this writing, negotiations are proceeding with Mrs. H., the lovely Priscilla, whose idea of a good time is not spending an evening with a bunch of Aussies yelling "Up the old red rooster and more booze" and "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oy, oy, oy." I can't understand her sometimes.

Whatever happens, let me be the first to wish my blog readers "goodonya" (good on you) for Oz Day.

Bush's homecoming

In the left-leaning reaches of the wishful thinking community, it was hoped that George W. Bush would become a pariah in his retirement, a lonely fellow left like a hermit in a cave as his various sins weighed down on him, bringing him by degrees to recognize the grim reality of what he had wrought over eight troubled years in the White House.

To those well-wishers who thought like this, I say: Pull my other leg, it's got a bell on it. The sad truth is that Bush will never get it and, unfortunately, fawning armies of admirers stand ready to help him not get it.

When he returned to Texas on Tuesday night, he was greeted by thousands of cheering people. I am not in the least surprised. But what the heck is wrong with these people? Why would anyone want to do such a stupid thing? Frankly, I don't know. I am not afflicted by this particular type of perversion.

I do know that reactionaries cannot help being reactionary and that the more sensible people assert the truth, the more insensible people cling to fantasy.

Sadly, this is the way of the world. Ignoring reality is how Flat Earth Societies continue to exist. I remember that nostalgic groups used to gather at the Kremlin to pay homage to the good old days of Stalin - the mass murderer Stalin! (And, no, I am not comparing Bush with Stalin, just pointing out to what depths human folly will descend.)

I just hope that future displays of gratitude to the 43rd president will be kept out of sight in deference to those Americans who have not lost their minds.

Inauguration fashion notes

After seeing the coverage of the inauguration, I realized that I was remiss in not paying enough attention to the fashion aspects of the event. Apparently what people wore is a matter of great public fascination.

So, belatedly, I mention today what I wore for the inauguration. Of course, I wasn't actually there; I was here at the office, but I cut a fine figure with the cafeteria ladies.

For this historic day, I chose a pair of brown corduroy pants. They have that earthy, man-of-the people look to which I aspire and which was in keeping with the inauguration of a president for all the people all the time, to mangle the quote from Lincoln.

I noticed later that a gravy stain of some sort had attached itself to my right leg but I felt it enhanced rather than sabotaged the image. I teamed these pants with a yellow shirt, because it seemed a neutral ground between blue and white and suggested a touch of rainbow coalition. It also happened to be laundered.

The tie was a bit of a problem. My favorite tie is darkish blue decorated with kangaroos jumping over hurdles, the story of my life but hardly America's life. In the way of patriotic ties, I have one with Republican elephants on it but they are now in full stampede back to the elephants' graveyard, bellowing recriminations all the way. So instead, I chose a simple blue tie, reflective of the shining seas that gird this great nation.

With all this, I sported a Navy blue jacket of the type always worn by editorial writers because without this essential part of the uniform pontificating is impossible, or so we old hands believe.

On my feet, I wore a sturdy pair of brown felt and rubber clogs ideally suited to wading through snow drifts or the sands of political commentary. They did not go with anything else I had on but that was their beauty. They said to the world: His brain goes one way, his feet another. This point was reinforced by my Steelers knit cap.

What designers did I employ? you may ask. I eschewed designers and instead went the Macy's, Old Navy route. According to the reaction in the cafeteria, I did not suffer for lack of the designer look.

I hope these fashion descriptions will suffice. I am new to this sort of thing.

President Obama

President Obama, eh? That says a lot that is good about these United States of America.

I thought the spectacle of the inauguration was grand. One thing about flat screen modern TVs is that they make the experience almost as good as being there - probably better, because you can see everything without freezing your butt off. The cameras picks up every errant hair and pimple (remind me, please, never to appear on television).

Obama struck me as amazingly calm and confident. His speech was a good one, delivered firmly and confidently, but it did not quite reach the heights of great - but perhaps he has become the victim of his own reputation for eloquence, and now he always has to satisfy inflated expectations

It's a small quibble. The day was great and that's the main thing.

The day that I feared would never come

George W. Bush has now less than a day left in office. Call me paranoid but there was a time when I feared this day would never come.

At the height of the terrorist scare post-911, I wondered whether Bush might not use the terrorist attacks as an excuse to suspend the normal workings of democracy.

I would argue that this is not so nutty as it might seem. As a self-proclaimed war president, Bush plainly disregarded laws that he though inconvenient under the grand scheme of presidential power championed by Dick Cheney. As a logical extension of this reckless thinking, why not forego pesky elections that might bring alleged appeasers into power?

People forget that Rudy Giuliani proposed a three-month emergency extension of his term as New York City mayor on the theory that nobody else could possibly be competent to keep the city safe. He did not succeed but it's just the sort of vanity that I could see Bush believing in.

Those were crazy times. The idea that Bush was somehow like Winston Churchill or FDR as a commander in chief in wartime always struck me as preposterous, as was the idea that the war on terror was similar to World War II or the Cold War.

We were attacked by 19 terrorists on 911 - 19! It was less than a platoon action. That does not lessen the carnage, of course; the terrorists had obscene luck and killed more than 3,000 people. But Bush was always ready to give them way too much credit as a fearful foe.

These goons were never comparable to Hitler's massed divisions - they were just a bunch of criminals - but so vivid were the images of the falling towers and devastated Pentagon that keeping a sense of proportion back then was near impossible. If Bush had suspended the Constitution, any number of hard-liners would have thought it prudent.

Churchill said of his Battle of Britain pilots that never in the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

I have a feeling that future historians will say of the 911 terrorists that never in the history of human conflict were so few held in such fear by so many.

But at least Bush is leaving. If any president might have stayed on, I reckon it would have been him - and he would done it while waving the flag.

Life on Mars

The question of whether life exists on other planets has always been a fascination of humankind - and a discovery on Mars has revived this debate.

I learn from an Associated Press story in my Post-Gazette this morning - "Martian Methane Belch; From Rocks or Microbes?" - that a 'surprising and mysterious belch of methane gas on Mars hints at possible microbial life underground, but also could come from changes in rocks,' a new NASA study found."

Why such unimaginative thinking? Why do scientists not entertain the obvious thought?

If belching and flatulence are coming from Mars, then we need to look for more obvious culprits than rocks (ever see a rock burp? me neither) or microbes (which would require huge numbers just to rustle the curtains).

No, this emission is more likely the infamous little green men of Mars doing their thing, eating their alien beans and fouling the interplanetary environment. Men of all hues and sizes do this on Earth all the time.

In fact, that is why the little green men of Mars are green. They are constipated. Heaven help us if they should come here after being cramped up on their flying saucers.

While that is a scary thought, it is a good bet that some earthling scientist will get a nice grant to study the phenomenon. On Mars as on the Earth, it's an ill wind that doesn't blow somebody some good.