Uncle S(h)am Wants You (For His Next Scam)!

Just Make Sure You Ask For A Gift Receipt

"Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. "

--Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.), Foreign Policy, May/June 2006

"Not for a long time will people listen to US officials lecture on the virtues of free financial markets with a straight face."

--Martin Wolf, The Financial Times, 12/12/2007

"It hurts to see our national pastime ripped apart by allegations and scandals. I am seeing former teammates and opponents go under the HGH/steroid crosshairs, and it makes me wonder what else was happening in the 15 seasons I was part of [Major League Baseball.]"

--Doug Glanville, ESPN.com, 12/20/2007

As the Bush Administration counts down its final months, we Americans can look forward to picking ourselves up and shaking off a bit of the dust. It has been a rough few years for our country; a period of self-examination is in order. And what we find on the threshold of 2008 is the following: a foreign policy that inspires revulsion across the globe (witness the string of electoral defeats suffered by key Bush allies such as the sitting governments of Spain, Poland and Australia, as well as the retirement of Britain's Tony Blair); a financial system that will face dozens if not hundreds of lawsuits over the coming months for fraudulently presenting packages of subprime mortgages as "investment grade" to international clients; and a national pastime -- baseball -- whose fans literally cannot believe their eyes because so many players have been artifically pumped up on steroids. Even for a nation where the snake oil salesman has thrived for centuries, and where millions believe that a New York farmer named Joseph Smith found gold tablets left on his farm by God, this is a lot to take.

Yet one can assert that there is no reason to be pessimistic. The US has put its disheveled house in order countless times before, following the Civil War; the Great Depression; Vietnam; Watergate; and the S&L crisis. Next up for resolution are the grotesque aftermath of the housing bubble and the morally (and financially) disastrous occupation of Iraq. As the country goes about tackling these issues, it seems the best advice for the citizenry is to be reticent to trust its self-anointed "leaders," and instead insist that humane and intelligent policies percolate from the enlightened grassroots upward. Because when Uncle Sam comes strolling down the sidewalk, eager to tout a needless war or to sell a bundle of worthless paper, the best thing is to grab the kids, check the wallet, and cross over to the other side of the road to join your neighbors.

Jackie Robinson and the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team

I am tired of Jackie Robinson. More precisely, I am tired of Major League Baseball exploiting the courage, integrity and talent it took for Robinson to break baseball's "color line" sixty years ago. Through the various commemorations around the nation's baseball stadiums this weekend, MLB will have turned a substantive achievement into an innocuous cliche. The legend of Jackie Robinson will be neutered, fawned over by the masses, and safely put back in the petting zoo stable for another ten years.

A few facts: the percentage of African-American major leaguers reached 19% in 1995, and now stands at just 8%. Baseball as a sport is either increasingly irrelevant or inaccessible to blacks nowadays, and that is hardly cause for celebration. Moreover, since the Jackie Robinson story is presented as a microcosm of America, we should look at society at large over the last few years. Here we see that the proportion of blacks living in poverty has risen from 22.5% in 2000 to 24.9% in 2005, exactly triple the rate for whites; the number of black adults attaining a college degree in 2000 was 11.5% below the rate for whites, while the gap in 2005 had grown to 12.8%; and the percentage of blacks in the US Senate is one.

Now, let's look at the demographics of ownership among the 30 major league teams: 100% white, 100% male. In other words, there is not a trace of the Jackie Robinson legacy here. That this close-knit group of often reactionary oligarchs would have millions of baseball fans bask in the glow of Robinson's aging breakthrough represents either a subterfuge or rank hypocrisy. MLB is very, very far from being a paragon of fairness. In fact, while these team owners try to paint a pretty picture on the social front, they are often busy picking the public's pocket by demanding government money for new stadiums. Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins and a man with a net worth of $2.8 billion dollars, has just succeeded in wresting $392 million from Minneapolis residents for a new ballpark built specifically for the use of his private business.

Meanwhile, on the field, one of Jackie Robinson's African-American heirs -- Barry Bonds -- looks set to break Hank Aaron's hallowed all-time home run record of 755 sometime this season. Normally, this would be cause for delirious celebration and heated discussion involving historical comparisons. What are the meanings of Babe Ruth's 714, Aaron's 755, and now Bonds' 755-plus? But no such conversation among fans will take place, because the thirty MLB owners have been running a dirty racket: the use of illegal steroids has been rife in baseball for at least two decades, and nowhere more conspicuously and more certainly than in the case of Barry Bonds. The American public now can have no more confidence in the legitimacy of a baseball statistic than in the certified outcome of a presidential election in Florida or Ohio.

Beyond baseball, too, race and sport do not look so glittery as an ESPN graphic. The 2007 Rutgers women's basketball team are runners-up to the national champions, but better known for being the target of a racist insult by a nationally-syndicated radio host. Unfortunately, the insult is identical in spirit to the thousands Jackie Robinson had to endure in 1947 and afterwards. So, some of us perhaps can be excused for not joining in MLB's self-congratulatory antics this weekend.