Contemporary authoritarian conservatives, as usual, confuse violence with strength, bullying with leadership, and body count with victory. Knight racked up a lot of numbers, but in the end he skulked off "on his own terms", leaving his team in the lurch in the middle of a difficult season, after a career of wearing his fear on his sleeve and being ruled by his infantilism.

But, oh my, the authoritarians love him. Because he's a ranter and a raver, so that must make him a tough guy. Lotsa laffs.

If you respect a "leader" who hits you, you're respecting their weakness, not their strength. You're respecting their fear, not their leadership. You're respecting their failure of imagination, not their source of inspiration. Your respect for all these many failings says as much about you as it does them, and none of it good.

During my years in the Army and then on a city police force, I encountered plenty of Bobby Knights, superiors who confused physical and verbal abuse with leadership. They weren't leaders, though they often got their way, same as tantrum-throwing pre-schoolers may get their way--the same way Bobby Knight often did.

The real leaders lead by example, by resolve, by respect, and by teaching and guiding, and by accepting responsibility for their mistakes at least as much as they accept accolades for their successes. Of course they yelled. No one who has been led well frets being chewed out. No one who has been led well frets firm discipline. It's not about wanting to be coddled. No good leader coddles his charges, and no one who has been led well would ever want that.

Bobby Knight was not a leader. He was a bully who, if he'd been in a more dangerous role, might not have lived long, given his "leadership style." He got away with it for so long because his chosen venue was safe, and his controlled management of who his charges were kept him safe. He was not unintelligent, which serves to make the fact that he could never mature all the more unfortunate. A man with his knowledge who actually knew how to lead, rather than bully and berate, might have done even more. How many championships did Bobby Knight teams NOT win because he let his cowardice control him?

/chuckle

How did we get from Mike Wallace to Chris Wallace?

And they keep finding new lows.

Does America mean nothing anymore?

Did you actually READ the story? Apparently not.

Would Shuster, or anyone else on teevee, say the same about Jenna or Not Jenna, about Cheney's offspring, about the five Mittrons who served their country by working on their father's campaigns? Why is it always okay to badmouth Chelsea for doing nothing more or less than the multitudinous children of other candidates and political figures?

I have to say that NONE of you true believers are doing a thing to win me over. Basically what I see are two candidates who differ from each other in the style with which they present themselves, but otherwise are essentially conservative Democrats. Yeah, there are a few areas where they part in a minor sense, but otherwise, it's a difference between a candidate who hides cold, political calculation behind high-falutin' phraseology and other another candidate who hides cold, political calculation behind so-called experience and staying-power.

I will give Obama credit for being better at hiding his cold, political calculation though. And he also gets points for voting correctly on telecom immunity this morning, but otherwise, his affection for bogus non-partisanship makes him as suspicious to me as Clinton's infinite parsing and triangulation.

So we've got angry, self-righteous Clintonites vs. angry, self-righteous Obamanites, and both sides look pretty ridiculous to me. As someone who's candidates are long gone, I'm left hoping simply that we can clear the refuse out of the White House in the fall. So Obama or Clinton, either/or, has my November vote. But either/or, I confess to some nervousness. Obamanites strike me as more likely to take their ball and go home in a petulant huff if their guy doesn't win, which might give us the Hell of Darth McCain, but Clintonites seem only marginally better in that regard.

Both of these candidates face an uphill battle, whether it's against pernicious racism, pernicious sexism, pernicious Clintophobia, pernicious Husseinophobia, or any other a host of shit the Repubs will throw at them. The real differences between is so minor, particularly when compared to Darth McCain, which makes all this pissing and moaning and "see gotcha!" "no gotchu!" particular disappointing and, yes, irritating.

Either way, come fall, I'm no more looking forward to working side-by-side with my local version of cythera than my local version of Slackie. You both are freaking annoying as hell.

Good lord!

Wimmins wants my dee-en-aye. The world is achin' for Bukk64, Bukk65, Bukk66, Bukk......1020394, and so on.

I knew the first letter would be something like yours.

Now comes the Obama/Clinton badminton match, except each side just whacks the other repeatedly over the head with their rackets, making the rest of us really, really, REALLY wish we still had ANY of the other candidates still around to choose from. Gravel? You still out there? Anyone? Please?

...only if he was beaten to death with the rock, and then the brooms were used to sweep his shattered remains into a ditch.

Then there could be curling.

So bitter.

Oh well. I enjoyed it.

I suspect you walked right into ol' Anon's trap, Thadster. Heh.

You'll just have less time for eating and sleeping, Alec.

Sorry about that.