That is indeed a fine sentence. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

I have to agree with Bart Hobson. Mr Somerby's chief complaint about any number of liberal media figures, Mrs Walsh included, is their failure to identify mainstream media--NYT, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, and others--as key players in the anti Gore (and anti Clinton) business. The famous "right wing noise machine" plays a role, but would be much less effective without the complicity of the MSM, and the MSM won't change its ways so long as liberal columnists, including Mrs Walsh, ignore their role. It seems to me that Mr Somerby is right to note that "Swooning over Gore" continued to ignore this role; it seems to me that this post of Mrs Walsh's also ignores it.

I share Mrs Walsh's view that Mr Gore was a flawed candidate, but I agree with Mr Somerby that this is basically irrelevant to Bush's taking the White House in 2001. Mr Gore, flawed as he was (and is), would have won handily without the campaign *by the mainstream media* against him. It is time the liberal chattering class started giving this the attention it deserves.

Well said. Thank you for making this important point.

On that topic I'd like to draw attention to this interview at someplace called http://sheafaithful.blogspot.com/2007/03/interview-with-bill-james_26.html. Pat Andriola is the interviewer.

Pat Andriola: The St. Louis Cardinals had an 82-Pythagorean-win season last year, but went on to win the World Series. Are there any changes to the system that could make it less of a chance affair, and would you want to make those changes if you could?

Bill James: I'm not a great fan of the Wild Card. But it is tremendously important, for the health of the sport, that the best team doesn't always win. That's the real problem with the NBA. . .the best team is going to win in the long run, and everybody knows it. The season becomes a long, crushing battle in which, ultimately, you have no chance to escape justice. . .as opposed to college basketball, which is vastly more exciting, simply because you never know who will win, and therefore have to do everything you can do to maximize your chance. In the NBA you don't really HAVE a chance to win, if you're not one of the two or three best teams, and everybody knows this on some level. . .therefore, why play hard, why dive for the ball on the floor, why fight for the rebound, why sacrifice your body to score a point, when you ultimately can't win. No sport can survive if the best team always wins.

If there's an aging running back out there with some tread left on his tires, why wouldn't an NFL team sign him, pay him, hand him a playbook and tell him to learn it, stay in shape, walk through noncontact drills, come to meetings and be ready to play around Week 10?

Except for the "aging" part, that's pretty much what the Raiders did with Bo Jackson, isn't it? Jackson played closer to 10 games a season, and of course he was missing the first third of the season because he was playing baseball rather than just to save the mileage...

I seem to recall reading at the time that part of what attracted the Raiders to signing Jackson was the thought that he'd have fresher legs than the rest of the league, when he finished his annual baseball stint. He certainly performed at a high level while he lasted.

--that is, apologize and promise to do better next time--gets left out a lotta the time.

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