The McWizard of Oz

John McCain, Yesterday's Man for Tomorrow's Problems [TM], made a nice speech on the last night of the Republican National Convention. He was one the few speakers at the convention to say something nice about Barack Obama and sound genuinely sincere - a sign, I think, of his fundamental decency.

But what a strange speech it was. He was the one who would bring change. Change from what, inquiring minds want to know?

He was coy about saying. He couldn't mention George W, Bush, the president he votes with 90 percent of the time and whose intellectual laziness and general incompetency set everybody talking about change in the first place. After all, the delegates in the hall still loved Bush.

He did mention the Congress, which for six years of the last eight has been controlled by his own party. But in saying how the Republicans had lost the trust of the people, he managed to bring the Democrats into it.

He also mentioned his own captivity at the hands of the North Vietnamese, just in case the delegates and the folks at home had missed the same thing said by any of the dozens of previous speakers. Again, with more candor than anyone else, he did correct the impression that he had never been broken under interrogation.

Of course, there's not a decent soul in America who holds this against him, although it's a good thing his name isn't John Kerry. It's not hard to imagine what indecent souls would have floated their swift boats out of the sewer to sink Kerry if he had admitted to the same. That's because while there's plenty of crazy and vile people on the left, when it comes to pure evil, the right-wingers are the experts.

So the political proposition coming out of the convention is this: Forget the issues and the abysmal Republican record - John McCain was a POW, therefore he has a better character and is more patriotic than Barack Obama.

I wonder about this. Yes, John McCain is a war hero. But are you and I and 300 million other Americans who were not in a North Vietnamese cell any less patriotic or less firm of character for being spared such an ordeal? Perhaps.

But if the Republicans are right about this, why did they pick George Bush with his minimal service and untested character before John McCain in 2000? And how do we know that John McCain will lead the party back to the principles of Ronald Reagan now when he and the rest of them have been content to go along with Bush for eight years?

And what did John McCain's character count for when he showed that poor judgment in the Keating 5 scandal? And was he keeping faith with his fathers when he got the divorce from his wife who stood by him during his POW years? Questions, questions, and I grant you those last two are nasty but I think they are completely fair after his deification in St. Paul.

The truth is that he is a good man but he has his flaws of judgment and character like most of us - and like Barack Obama.

Further, he is not going to end bitter partisanship of the Bush years. His party is absolutely wedded to it. They imbibe it in their mother's milk and the proof is this: You can't spend a couple of days gleefully slandering your opponents and then suddenly declare that happy days are here again. But I could be wrong: Maybe Sarah Palin is the tooth fairy along with everything else she is.

All hail the Queen of Mean

When I woke up this morning after fitful dreams of unthinking moose marching in lockstep, I switched on the TV and happened upon the Fox morning crew in full political crow because of the events the night before. A well-fed man - didn't catch his name - was telling the faithful that the Democrats can't stand a woman candidate, especially one who is so threatening to them.

Apparently this fellow was out to lunch when Hillary was racking up those 18 million votes. So much for not favoring women.

But the round fellow was right to this extent: Sarah Palin does represent a big political threat. Last night at that great consciousness-lowering event known as the Republican National Convention, she gave a great speech - I have never heard such twaddle so expertly delivered.

She spoke better than any of the warm-up acts. I liked Mike Huckerbee the best. Unlike Fred Thompson the previous night, he was not dismissive of the historical significance of having an African American running for president. In his decency, he went out of his way to pay it tribute.

Unfortunately, he ended his speech with a surpassingly silly story about a teacher who supposedly took the chairs out of a classroom to make a point about the value of service by veterans. Some teacher - wastes a precious day of learning to make a point that could have been delivered in five minutes.

Still, at least one got the impression of a well-meaning soul. By contrast, Rudy Giuliani was Dr. Strangelove, punctuating his bilious remarks with his hand as if possessed by demons. The low point for me is when he turned Barack Obama's early career as a community organizer into a mocking joke.

Yeah, what a laugh! Fancy someone spending part of his youth trying to help poor people! Hilarious! (Mrs. Palin was also to join in this fun later). Of course, the previous day at the convention had been dedicated to Service. Did I mention that this gathering is an irony-free zone?

But the highlight was Sarah Palin's populist speech. She ignited the crowd, which admittedly was not difficult. This crowd could have been doused with a fire hose for half an hour and would have self-combusted at the sight of her.

She was just your average hockey mom appearing front and center at the modern equivalent of the Nuremberg rally. After telling us cheerily about her family, she got down to the business of sliming Obama in one long juvenile parody of his positions. She had all the smugness of someone who knows all the answers without ever bothering to ask any of the questions.

The low point may have been this genuflection to the politics of fear and loathing concerning Obama: "Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?"

This got a great cheer. Never mind that some suspected terrorists have turned out not to be terrorists, never mind that Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have been blots on the American conscience and have reduced our moral leadership in the world, offended allies and compromised our ability to succeed in the war on terror, never mind that mistreatment of prisoners may potentially make any future American POWs subject to revenge, never mind that Obama has promised to step up the war in Afghanistan against terrorists, never mind that John McCain himself was a principled opponent in the Congress against the use of torture, never mind that her own Christian principles demand decent behavior, never mind any of that. The hockey mom saw her chance to please the peanut gallery and she shot and scored.

And so it went, with one distortion after another. The Republican plan is clear: Lie about Obama's character and record, be bellicose at every opportunity, promote fear, encourage divisiveness, drape the flag over everything and pander to prejudices. All the while, avoid mentioning the inconvenient, unflattering record of George Bush and his party over the last eight years.

Yes, the Democrats handed out some tough criticism of their opponents too. But both Obama and Joe Biden took pains to praise John McCain's character. The contrast with the Republicans is striking: What little good comment has been made about Obama has been grudging and insincere.

So far this convention has pretty much been an anti-Democrat hate fest. If the Republican ticket wins, as well it might now that smearing has found an attractive, smiling and effective spokeswoman, it will be the bitter partisanship of the Bush years all over again.

Tonight it is the turn of John McCain - suggested campaign slogan: Yesterday's Man for Tomorrow's Problems.

The irony free zone

This much I will say of the Republican National Convention: It is an irony free zone.

Last night the theme was "Service" and a Minneapolis fire captain, Shana Hanna, who was a hero of the interstate bridge collapse last year, spoke of the tragedy in stirring terms.

It was not her place to be political, of course, but the context went unmentioned: The deterioration of the nation's infrastructure that was the underlying cause of the tragedy. It has been equal opportunity neglect, involving Republicans and Democrats, but it happened on the Bush administration's watch, so it takes more than a little chutzpah to bring it up.

More from the irony free zone: The delegates hold up cards saying "Country First." This is not so subtly meant to suggest that someone else - you know who - puts his political ambition before his country.

Yet there is no party in America that puts political partisanship ahead of country more than the Republicans. Why, in the first day of the convention, when Gustav was threatening the Gulf Coast, Cindy McCain had to remind delegates that it was time "we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats."

There was no doubt what hats were on last night, despite the desperate attempt to wrap the convention in the flag as insulation against the record of the Bush years.

Fortunately, I missed Joe Lieberman, being the happy turncoat, and also the lugubrious Fred Thompson, who quit the senate because he was bored with it and then ran a lazy campaign that justifiably went nowhere. I did see George W. Bush, who should have gone nowhere long ago and wasn't even welcome at the convention for where he did go and took the country sadly with him.

But it was something that Fred Thompson said, and which I saw in a brief excerpt, that got my goat. This is the quote as recorded by Fox News and printed on their Web site (the italics are mine):

Terrorists, rogue nations developing nuclear weapons, an increasingly belligerent Russia, intensifying competition from China, spending at home that threatens to bankrupt future generations, for decades, an expanding government, increasingly wasteful and too often incompetent, to deal with these challenges, the Democrats present a history-making nominee for president, history-making in that he's the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for president.

 This is insensitive as hell. I don't mind him knocking Obama - he's a big fellow - but don't downplay a truly historic moment in the history of this nation, the nomination of an African American to be president, with a cheap little quip to get applause. Clearly, Thompson doesn't give a damn about the aspirations of minorities, or indeed all Americans who care about justice. Heck, he doesn't give a damn about the history-making moments of his own country.

The fact that the delegates cheered this neo-racist remark showed the moral caliber of those sitting in the hall in their irony free zone.

That ill wind

The Republicans have apparently never heard the expression: It's an ill wind that doesn't blow someone some good.

Hurricane Gustav had blown George Bush and Dick Cheney off their convention program, but instead of thanking high heaven, they arranged for the worst president in history to speak tonight by electronic hook-up.

I will watch anyway, grumbling all the while that I am not paid enough. There will also be Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman in person, which sets the pulses racing, or it would if I were abnormal. A fuller report tomorrow.

By the way, the cricket matches against the visiting Toronto Police Association this past weekend (see last blog entry) were won by the gallant Pittsburgh team, narrowly on each occasion. The Toronto team was made up entirely of West Indians, mostly from Barbados, a cricket hotbed. I knew you could not sleep until you were told of the results.

Read all about it: Canadian cops here for cricket matches

Regular readers of my column -- and I am indebted to all half dozen of you -- will know that I play cricket during the summer in my role as a chronic eccentric. In fact, I am one of the founding members of the Pittsburgh Cricket Association.

This weekend, and this may sound like a joke but isn't, the Toronto Police Association is sending a team to play Pittsburgh. Games will be played Saturday (Aug. 30) and Sunday (Aug. 31) at Linbrook Park in Franklin Park.

Saturday's game starts at 1 p.m. and will go through to 4 or 5 p.m., although the opening festivities are scheduled to start at noon. The mayor of Franklin Park is said to be bowling (pitching) the first ball of the game, which I will be playing in.

The game on Sunday will be longer and will start at 9 a,.m. and go through to 4 p,m. or so. I am not in Sunday's team but will attend for at least part of the day. Both games will be fund-raisers for the Franklin Borough Police Department, to help them in their important duty of keeping the borough safe for cricket and other aspects of higher civilization. In short, you will be asked to make a voluntary donation.

If you would like to bring a picnic and acquaint yourself with baseball's ancient ancestor, I would be happy to explain the game to you personally provided I am not batting or fielding at the time. Please feel free to introduce yourself.

It's a rare opportunity: Where else can you watch Canadian cricketing police officers on a weekend in Pittsburgh?

One caution: If it is raining, stay home. Rain stops cricket matches. A sticky wicket is not a pretty thing.

The address of Linbrook Park is 2631 Big Sewickley Creek Road, Sewickley, Pa. 15143-8642. Here are the directions:

From the I-79 Warrendale Exit:

Red Belt West. Follow all the way to Big Sewickley Creek Rd (approximately 4.5 miles).

Turn left onto Big Sewickley Creek Rd.

Linbrook Park will be on the right, about 1/4 mile down. Once in the park, follow the road over the bridge and into the woods. You will soon come to the field on your right.

From the I-79 Wexford Exit:

Rt. 910 West. Follow past Stone Mansion Restaurant (on right) and Sts. John & Paul Church (on left) and all the way down the hill to the Stop sign (Dragun's on left)

Continue straight (or as straight as possible) onto Rochester Rd.

Follow for approx 1/2 mile. Bear to the right onto Big Sewickley Creek Rd (going toward Ambridge)

Linbrook Park will be on the left, about 3/4 mile down. Once in the park, follow the road over the bridge and into the woods. You will soon come to the field on your right.

McCain's nucular blast

Oh no! Not someone else that pronounces nuclear as nucular as Dear Leader George W. Bush does. Do our ears deceive us? No, that pronunciation did seem to come from the lips of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as she introduced herself to the nation at large today after being chosen by John McCain as his running mate.

So much for the experience argument raised by Republicans against Barack Obama. Mrs. Palin has more experience hunting moose than handling foreign affairs.

Admittedly, she would only be vice president, an office that hopefully will recede into its former obscurity once Dick Cheney retires as co-president. But we all should wish the 72-year-old Mr. McCain good health if he becomes president - talk about having a running mate unready to serve. Beyond being an interesting and attractive character, Mrs. Palin will have to put a rock on her resume to prevent it floating away.

Ah, but it was a cheeky move by Mr. McCain and I like a bit of excitement and daring as much as the next person. In some ways, I think her selection was a masterstroke of political guile.

You want a woman candidate, bitter Hillary supporters? We have one just for you. In fact, Mrs. Palin's pitch to them was plain: She even had the chutzpah to mention Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary in her speech.

The hard-core feminists won't buy this but plenty of Hillary supporters among the white working class, where pro-life Democrats abound, will lap up her personal history, all that hunting and fishing and beauty pageant stuff. Joe Biden, potentially irritating at the best of times, will also find her hard to debate without seeming patronizing. Any tough-guy bombast will go over like a lead balloon.

If this election is fought on ideas, I think the Democrats win. If it is fought on the usual obsessions - gun rights, abortion - the Republicans win. In short, I think Barack Obama and the Democrats should be worried because the obsession camp just got a nice new recruit.

My one hope is that Mrs. Palin will turn out to be a female Dan Quayle. The more she spoke today the more I got the impression of someone who drinks the Kool-Aid with her caribou steaks. That may not play well to a larger audience.

It's an irony worth noting that this most conservative of women would not have been standing at that podium but for the pioneering work of liberal women. Now she will bite the hands that fed her. I didn't think that this hugely interesting race could get any more interesting but it just did.

End of the gabfest

Before the impatient national eye turns from Denver to John McCain's VP pick, a quick wrap-up of the Democratic National Convention.

Wildly adoring crowds always make me nervous, but Barack Obama was in great form in accepting his party presidential nomination. If people don't know who he is now, they are living in a cave. He added substance to his poetry and, not to tempt the gods with hubris, looked presidential in the process.

Gabfest, Part III

On the third night in Denver, Bill Clinton endorsed Barack Obama - perhaps to spite Maureen Dowd's image of him as vengeful and bitter over Hillary's defeat. He said all the right things and said them forcefully without ambiguity.

The old rascal showed once more why he was such a successful politician. The crowd loved him and he played them like a sweet violin in a bluegrass concert.

Of course, sincere insincerity is the coin of the realm in politics and with the Clintons in particular it is hard to know what they are up to. So why this great show of support for Obama when they spent months dragging him down? Well, they are nothing if not smart and they can figure out that if Obama goes down without their support, they just might get the blame, which would kill Hillary's chances four years hence.

So it was all smiles - the smiles of still hungry tigers.

Pity John Kerry, who spoke after Bill. Talk about a hard act to follow. He was greeted by the audience with all the enthusiasm of someone announcing that the bar was closing. To his credit, Kerry got them going in the end with some uncharacteristic liveliness.

Joe Biden was a lively one too. Although he sometimes stumbled, his fighting words were necessary and fitting. But there is something about Joe Biden - perhaps the monumental ego barely constrained by his clothes - that I can't warm too. He made a good rabble-rousing speech last night, but I am not a rabble and I was not roused.

Gabfest, Part II

The second night of the Democratic National Convention was much more interesting than the first. The speakers got feisty, which the Democrats need to do to win. There was also Hillary Clinton's amazing speech.

I am no fan of Hillary's. The last speech I heard her make was at the end of the primary season when the reality of defeat was at last dawning. It was quite revolting - a wholly self-centered, ungracious, unrealistic, pointless and destructive piece of oratory unmatched in recent political annals.

On Tuesday night, she was magnificent. She articulated the Democratic message better than any other speaker to that point. She did all that she could possibly do to bring her supporters around. As she is personally responsible for feeding the sense of grievance that incited many thousands of them to personally hate Obama, she had a lot to do to make that up but she did rise to the occasion, matching the right words with a perfect delivery. So hurrah for her.

We shall see whether it works - and my guess is not completely and maybe not enough. Clinging to their resentments like a toy, some of them will cut off their noses to spite Obama's face. The feminists among them are going to love the McCain administration, which will appoint more judges of the conservative activist variety so that every woman has a chance to be Lilly Ledbetter.

As it happened, Lilly Ledbetter spoke earlier in the evening to remind everyone of the stakes in this election, that is, everyone not too busy hating Obama to care. Lilly Ledbetter was the worker in a tire and rubber factory who was paid less than male colleagues for years.

After she was tipped off, she sued and won at first, only to be eventually rebuffed by the Supreme Court, thanks to the legal gymnastics of its conservatives. They held that she had to complain within 180 days of the first act of discrimination, an impossibility given that she didn't know about it at the time.

So, ladies for Clinton, vote for McCain in spite by all means. Be sure, however, to learn the art of mind-reading at work.

Lilly Ledbetter is no polished, professional speaker but her tale had is own force.

In his own way, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania also did well at the podium that was once denied to his father because of his anti-abortion views.

Sen. Casey is a very nice and decent guy but he isn't the most animated person in the world. There are fiery speakers and there is Bob Casey, Mr. Mild. But on this night, he made a real effort to get his arms moving as he ripped into John McCain and he succeeded in waking up the crowd, even those perhaps who expected the Casey spot to be nap time.

I learned last night that PBS is the channel for serious students of politics. Too often the other networks wouldn't show what was going on, unless it was someone like Hillary. They preferred to have their talking heads chatter away as a speaker behind them provided the background noise. It struck me as the height of arrogance - commentators forgetting who was the story.

Tonight, Bill Clinton. He could turn over the whole apple cart.

The great Denver gabfest

In his farewell address of 1796, President George Washington warned of the potential evils of political parties ....

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it."

We are now in the midst of the periodic repudiation of George Washington's wisdom. Whether the Democratic National Convention leads to despotism, even of that incomplete and incompetent sort pioneered by George W, Bush, I do not know, but the first night in Denver did impose on me the tyranny of tedium.

Political conventions strike me as weird. Weirder still are the people captured in the audience by the camera with looks of vacant hero worship reminiscent of some crackpot sect. No way would I sit at a political convention waving someone's name on a stick while making delighted noises, and I console myself that George Washington wouldn't have done it either. There are not enough hospitality suites at a convention to make me act like that in public.

While I sympathize with Sen. Ted Kennedy's brave battle against brain cancer, I was not moved to weeping as some in attendance apparently were. He raises in me mixed emotions. I think he should have had the good grace to retire completely after the tragedy that his actions triggered at Chappaquiddick almost 40 years ago.

On the other hand, he has done more good for American society since than most people achieve in their lifetimes - certainly more than most of his critics, which would include me.

But, even if I had felt emotional, I still would have been struck by one great burst of fatuousness. He said at one point:

"We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor, but when John Kennedy called of going to the moon, he didn't say it's too far to get there. We shouldn't even try."

Who told us this? Apparently the mysterious "they" who are always saying ridiculous things to put us off. However, I have never heard anybody say that Barack Obama "believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor." They have said many things about Obama and this has never occurred to them as far as I know.

As for Michele's speech, I thought it was nice but not great. To me, it was obvious as a matter of political necessity that at some point she would have to counter the claim that she is unpatriotic by saying she loved America - and so she did. And so she doubtless does. And so do we all. Ho hum and pass the flag.

Still, the Obama kids are cute, but, as I've always said, it's easy to be cute if you are a kid - the trick is to do it after age 60.

While all this was going on, Joe Biden was sitting there like the cat who swallowed the canary and was just dying to tell us about it at great length.

I always thought that Biden was insufferable in the various Supreme Court nomination hearings but I do think his choice as the VP candidate makes some sense in giving the ticket some foreign policy experience.

Moreover, there is a certain pleasing irony in Obama, who supports new sources of energy, teaming himself with a great font of hot air and natural gas to energize his campaign.

Liberals at the sensible center

In a column last year about smoking, I gave my definitions of liberals and conservatives. I wrote as follows:

A liberal: A person who believes that consenting adults may have any sort of sex they like but shouldn't be allowed a cigarette afterwards.

A conservative: A person who has his underwear perpetually in a bunch but blames the laundry for the situation.

My definition of a liberal is true enough, alas, but now I would add an alternative definition for a conservative: A person whose personal prejudices are arranged into a political theory to justify their innate selfishness.

My greater point is that plenty of conservatives are not conservative and plenty of liberals are not liberal. If these definitions are not already elastic enough, it's nothing compared with the terms "left" and "right." No wonder these terms are confused. Their origin can be traced back to where the deputies sat in the French National Assembly of 1789.

I am proud to describe myself as a liberal, heir to an honorable tradition, but I don't believe I am a leftist. And as a liberal centrist who shares something in common with conservative moderates, I was put off by the lead story in today's Post-Gazette" "Liberals a Sideshow in Denver: But Move to Center Is Clear."

No, there are liberals at the center, too, and it plays to the talk radio stereotype of liberals to suggest otherwise.

I'll drink to that

My hat is off to that distinguished group of college presidents who wish to start a national debate about possibly lowering the drinking age from 21.

While I am delighted to see a ridiculously counter-productive social policy attacked on grounds of common sense, I think these academics might have more hope of getting concrete blimps off the ground.

Very few countries in the world assume like the United States that their adult children are such babies. But there is strong support for this proposition in various quarters, especially in the lawmaking community, which breaks into a cold sweat at the very mention of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

You got to hand it to MADD, though. They are the spiritual descendants of those lantern-jawed temperance ladies who gave us Prohibition. (Witness their opposition to privatizing state stores in Pennsylvania, when there is no evidence that the existence of state stores makes us any better off in regards to alcohol abuse compared with most other states).

Years after Prohibition crashed and burned, this new generation of alcohol's enemies were able to reinvent themselves and come back with a vengeance with a genuine call on public sympathy and a narrower focus on the young.

To be fair, they have done some good, because drunken driving laws were absurdly lax when they first started out.

That the drinking age is 21 is a perfect example of the folly of legislating on the basis of religious beliefs. Yes, thou shall not kill is a commandment along with thou shalt not steal, but you don't have to be religious to see the wisdom of those edicts. Drinking liquor is different. Not withstanding the turning of water into wine, some denominations think alcohol is the work of the devil. That has hugely influenced attitudes toward young adults drinking.

Nothing is going to change. Many kids will go on drinking to excess while learning the highly subversive lesson that it is fun to disrespect the law - a law that, being so removed from reality, is almost begging to be disobeyed. In our folly, we have made drinking the final proof of real adulthood - so of course kids are going to drink in college and elsewhere.

If I were dictator, I would reduce the drinking age and raise the driving age. I would certainly crack down on drunken driving if the drinking age were lowered.

I have previously written about this in a column.

After writing that column, I got an email from a reader recounting a sad story involving his college-age son who was not yet 21. The kid had gone to a college party and had some beers - which is what kids regularly do - and then decided to walk home rather than drive.

Although I got the impression he was not visibly staggering, cops like to hassle kids because many think it is in their job description and he was stopped and subsequently arrested after admitting to the beers. He would probably have been alright had he driven instead. He was caught out for ultimately making the right choice, for being responsible at the last. That conviction will likely come back to haunt him later in life.

What a fine lesson to teach. What a crazy social policy.

This sporting life

I am not one to get too excited about meeting famous people but on my recent vacation I met someone from my boyhood whom I was genuinely excited to meet: Roy Emerson.

Back in the '60s, when the great tennis tournaments were restricted to amateurs, he was the No. 1 player in the world. He ended up winning 12 Grand Slam singles titles and 16 Grand Slam men's doubles titles (according to Wkipedia). That was the era when Australia dominated tennis with players like Rod Laver, Neale Fraser and Roy Emerson, aka "Emo."

I am a tennis player myself, unfortunately, a poor one, but that was not the only fascination. Emerson also attended the same high school as I did, the Brisbane Grammar School, a venerable all-boys private school, although he had left years before I got there .

I happened to meet him in a brief visit to Martha's Vineyard, where we attended a cocktail party hosted by The Boathouse in Edgartown. The Boathouse has built a new and fancy tennis and fitness club outside Edgartown and Emerson, who is a fit 71, was on the island to play an exhibition match (full disclosure: My nephew has been working this summer as an assistant tennis pro at the new club).

In 1964, after Emerson had won his first Wimbledon singles title, he came back to address the boys of Brisbane Grammar. I remember the occasion very well and I started by telling him, only 40 years or so too late, how much I had enjoyed his inspirational comments.

To my dismay, he couldn't remember a thing about it, although he was obviously a sharp bloke. I guess he had made tons of speeches over the years and that one had long ago slipped into the black hole of memory. After that embarrassing setback, we had a very nice chat.

At the end of the evening, I bid him goodbye and expressed my pleasure in at least meeting someone from the old school, a rare occurrence in these parts.

"Ah," he said, "if you stayed longer, we could have chanted the school fight song." And he proceeded to repeat the opening stanza: Wong, wong, tarry ya,

The Brisbane Grammar School fight song is justly famous for being totally inane, with insane lyrics thought up by a mad person to embarrass generations of boys. So at his prompting, I could only repeat the next line: Light dark. ya ya.

 Some things you never forget.

The bikini games

I love the Olympics but this year I feel cheated. The Olympics provide a smorgasbord of events but what fare are we served up by Bob Costas and his NBC crew every night in prime time?

A restricted diet indeed. It consists of gymnastics (not my favorite but what they do is pretty amazing,) swimming and now track and field events (no problem with any of that), diving (which is a sort of wet gymnastics) and women's beach volleyball, always women's beach volleyball, the cheesiest event in the games. Sometimes they will show the men too, but you get the feeling that is only to cover their flank from allegations of sexism.

But the whole sport is about sex. NBC is obsessed with women's beach volleyball and those leaping gals in their bikinis. I have the strong sense that if the players were wearing T-shirts and shorts like the men, they would disappear off the screen.

Meanwhile, traditional games of volleyball - as played in high schools and colleges - are also being played at the Olympics but many hours are not devoted to showing that. From this, NBC's attitude can be fairly deduced: To heck with them! They are not wearing bikinis!

Many other sports are slighted too. I have yet to see one boxing match in prime time. What of the rowing? Field hockey? Soccer? Softball? Cycling? Hardly a mention amid the leaping bikinis. To get NBC's attention, the traditional athletes need to shed some clothing and play rock 'n' roll.

I have one other beef - this one also perpetrated by newspapers, including the Post-Gazette. We are told we are No. 1 in the medals tally. Hurrah for us!

No, we aren't. The truth is that we are trailing the Chinese in achievement. Consider the medals table in this morning's PG. The United States leads with 72 medals total, followed by China with 67 and Russia with 36.

But that makes sense only if all the medals are equal in value. They aren't. They come in three categories, gold, silver and bronze, each one different from the next and worth more in honor and prestige. (If this were not so, the gold medal winner would stand level on the podium, not be placed above the rest).

When I worked on The Times of London in the sports section many years ago, they had a more sensible system: Gold medals were given the value of three points, silver medals were given two and bronze one - which reflects reality (a gold is at least three times the honor of a bronze and twice that of a silver).

Let's recalculate that table.

The United States had 22 gold medals (66 points), 24 silvers (48 points) and 26 bronzes (26 points) for a total of 140 points. Pretty good.

China had 39 gold medals (117 points), 14 silvers (28 points) and 14 bronzes (14 points) for a total of 159 points. China leads in a more realistic accounting.

But at least we all know that our leaping bikinis are doing better than their leaping bikinis - and that's the main thing.

What I did on my vacation (Part II)

Given that the economy is sour and that George W. Bush has made Republicans about as popular as polecats, John McCain remains very competitive in the presidential race against Barack Obama, at least according to public opinion polls.

There are various explanations for this, some sinister, some straightforward, but the one I would like to focus on today is this: John McCain is likable. I am not talking about his policies or his record; I am talking about him as a human being.

Of course, his record can't be completely separated from his personality. Still, being likable remains a formidable political asset. John Kerry would be president today if he had possessed that trait. (I voted for him, of course, but I also wrote at the time that you couldn't get a spark out of that guy if you attached jumper cables to his ears.)

On my vacation, I decided to read the autobiographies of the two candidates. I started off with John McCain's "Faith of My Fathers." This was written in conjunction with the help of an aide, Mark Salter, and the reader doesn't quite know how much is Salter and how much is McCain. I can only say that it rings consistently true to McCain's voice as we know it.

That is an appealing voice because it is so candid. He freely admits his own shortcomings in a way that is rather unusual and daring in American leaders (When was the last time George Bush ever suggested his did anything wrong?). I couldn't help thinking that if McCain were a Democrat, some Swift Boater would appear to use his words to slander him.

Of course, that would be totally unfair. Although he admits that he eventually broke under torture as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, it is also clear that he bore much more than most of us could bear in the same horrible circumstances. By any decent measure, his behavior was heroic, even if it wasn't perfect. His story is all the more believable because he does not shy away from describing his own midnight-of-the-soul moments.

The book is not a true biography. The first eight chapters describe the illustrious military careers of his grandfather and father, both of whom were admirals. With their exploits setting the stage, he doesn't start talking about his own life until Chapter 9. The story ends after his release from the POW camps. While his first wife is mentioned, there is nothing about his subsequent life with his second wife Cindy or his career in Congress.

What we have here is a half life revealed - the naval pilot who was heir to a great naval tradition. That faith of his fathers is not just religious but patriotic, the faith of warriors serving their country.

This is what used to be called a ripping yarn, harrowing at times but still exciting. I am not sure it tells us much about McCain the politician other than that his views owe a lot to the prevailing sentiments of World War II (one of his earliest memories is the attack on Pearl Harbor). But as I read the book, I thought: I like this guy. That doesn't mean I am going to vote for him. George Bush started off as a likable guy, too, and look where that got us.

After finishing the McCain book, I turned to Obama's "Dreams of My Father." I am not far enough into that to give a verdict. Stay tuned.