The American Flag and What It Stands For

A scene from the Hard Hat Riot, March 8, 1970 (source)

by Gaius Publius

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave
— "The Stars-Spangled Banner"

Bottom line first. The main point of this piece is — we should stop pretending.

In light of the recent protests by black athletes during the playing of "The Stars-Spangled Banner" before football games — the "stars-spangled banner" being the American flag, so-named in Francis Scott Key's memorable (and musically deficient) American national anthem — it seems fair to ask, What does the American flag stand for?

Let me offer several answers.

A Symbol of Abolition and Militarily Forced Unity

During the Civil War, the American flag went from being a simple banner to a powerful symbol of the Union (and the union) cause (my emphasis throughout):

The modern meaning of the flag was forged in December 1860, when Major Robert Anderson moved the U.S. garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Author Adam Goodheart argues this was the opening move of the American Civil War, and the flag was used throughout northern states to symbolize American nationalism and rejection of secessionism. [emphasis added]

In the prologue to his book 1861, Goodheart writes:

Before that day [in December 1860], the flag had served mostly as a military ensign or a convenient marking of American territory, flown from forts, embassies, and ships, and displayed on special occasions like American Independence day. But in the weeks after Major Anderson's surprising stand, it became something different. Suddenly the Stars and Stripes flew—as it does today, and especially as it did after the September 11 attacks in 2001—from houses, from storefronts, from churches; above the village greens and college quads. For the first time American flags were mass-produced rather than individually stitched and even so, manufacturers could not keep up with demand. As the long winter of 1861 turned into spring, that old flag meant something new. The abstraction of the Union cause was transfigured into a physical thing: strips of cloth that millions of people would fight for, and many thousands die for.

Note two things about this transformation from flag to symbol. First, it represents military conquest — originally the reconquest of the South, "strips of cloth that millions of people would fight for, and many thousands die for."

Second, those conquests are always presented as defensive — in this case, "preserving the Union" as opposed to re-annexing territory whose inhabitants were exercising, however good or ill their reasons, the right of self-determination, a prime example of which was the nation's own Revolutionary War of 1776.

The Flag of a Warrior Nation

To expand the second point: We like to think of our warrior nation's wars as fought in defense — with the flag representing that brave defensive posture — but I can't think of a single defensive war after the War of 1776, save World War II (a war whose causative attack, some historians argue, we invited).

The War of 1812 was, in large part, a failed U.S. attempt to annex Canada while the British were tied up with Napoleon on the European continent (see also below). The Mexican American War was fought, ultimately, as a result of a dispute over Texas, which had seceded (irony alert) from Mexico and was subsequently welcomed into the U.S. In other words, a war of territorial expansion.

In the Civil War, the U.S. government took the position of the government of Mexico a decade and a half earlier and fought to disallow the secession of Southern states from the national government. One could call that war, among other things, a war to retain territory. Of course, the Civil War was also a war to abolish slavery, but that entirely moral motive came relatively late in the discussion.

The Spanish-American War was also a war of territorial expansion, as Gore Vidal, among many others, so well elucidated. Out of that war, along with other possessions, we acquired the Spanish-speaking island of Puerto Rico, which we're now mightily abusing.

World War I was certainly not a defensive war, whatever else it was. The sinking of the Lusitania, for example, owed as much to American banking and industrial support France and England and the resultant German blockade of England, one that ships carrying U.S-sourced war matériel refused to honor, as it owed to the barbarity of "the Hun," however propagandistically that attack was later portrayed.

Both the Korean War and the Vietnam War were products of U.S. intervention into the Cold War in Asia, though with some differences. In Korea, the U.S. was helping South Korea (a post-World War II created nation) repel an invasion from North Korea (a similarly created nation).

In Vietnam, the U.S. and its World War II allies violated an agreement with Ho Chi Minh, who had fought with them against the Japanese, not to return Vietnam, his homeland, to French colonial rule. Vietnam was returned to the French, however, and Ho went back to war. He defeated the French in 1954, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned so the defeated French could evacuate, and unifying elections were set for 1956. Realizing that Ho Chi Minh would win overwhelmingly, the U.S. under Secretary of State John Foster Dulles allowed Vietnam south of the demilitarized zone to be declared a separate nation, and Ho again went back to war, with results that are with us today. 

It goes without saying that neither of the Iraq wars were defensive, nor are the multiple places in the Middle East with insurrections we are currently bombing, droning, or supporting those (the Saudis, for example) who are doing both with our help.

What does the American flag stand for, militarily? Certainly not defending the nation from attack, since we've so rarely had to do it. Our enemies would say it stands for national aggression. Which leads to the next point.

A Symbol of National Obedience

Take a look at the image at the top. During the Nixon era, enemies of Vietnam War protestors and draft dodgers appropriated the flag as a symbol of their own aggression and anger — anger at "the hippies"; at free love (which to a man they envied); at "unpatriotic" protests against the nation's wrongdoing; at anything and anyone who didn't rejoice, in essence, in the macho, patriarchic, authoritarian demands for obedience to right-wing leaders like Richard Nixon.

That's not an overstatement, and everyone reading this knows it, given just a little thought. Why do cops wear flags on their uniforms, for example, but not nurses? Ignore the cover-story explanations and ask, is it "national pride" and patriotism the police are expressing, or something closer to the authoritarian anger shown in the image above?

To the Black Lives Matter movement, the answer is obvious. Thus it should be to the rest of us. The obvious reason why cops wear flags is rarely stated though, so I won't say more of it here, except to add the following: The complaint against football players who "took a knee" in protest to American racism — perpetrated in large part by aggressive, race-angry, flag-decorated police — is that they don't "honor the flag" and what it represents.

Perhaps, unknowingly, that's exactly what they're doing.

So we're back to the question — what does the American flag represent beyond its meaning as a heraldic device? What does the American flag stand for?

The answer, of course, is all of the above. Again: all of the above. We should stop pretending.

"The Stars Spangled Banner"

Which brings us back to Colin Kaepernick and the national anthem. Jonathan Schwartz (of A Tiny Revolution) astutely writes this at The Intercept in a piece subtitled "The National Anthem is a Celebration of Slavery":

Before a preseason game on Friday, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When he explained why, he only spoke about the present: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. … There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Twitter then went predictably nuts, with at least one 49ers fan burning Kaepernick’s jersey.

Almost no one seems to be aware that even if the U.S. were a perfect country today, it would be bizarre to expect African-American players to stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Why? Because it literally celebrates the murder of African-Americans.

Few people know this because we only ever sing the first verse. But read the end of the third verse and you’ll see why “The Star-Spangled Banner” is not just a musical atrocity, it’s an intellectual and moral one, too:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” Americans hazily remember, was written by Francis Scott Key about the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the War of 1812. But we don’t ever talk about how the War of 1812 was a war of aggression that began with an attempt by the U.S. to grab Canada from the British Empire.

And about those slaves...

[O]ne of the key tactics behind the British military’s success was its active recruitment of American slaves. ...

Whole families found their way to the ships of the British, who accepted everyone and pledged no one would be given back to their “owners.” Adult men were trained to create a regiment called the Colonial Marines, who participated in many of the most important battles, including the August 1814 raid on Washington....

So when Key penned “No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,” he was taking great satisfaction in the death of slaves who’d freed themselves. His perspective may have been affected by the fact he owned several slaves himself.

Thus we come full circle, from the Hard Hat Riot by those who would morph from "Silent Majority" into "Reagan Democrats" and then form part of the Donald Trump base (the racist part), to those who angrily hate the "anti-flag" protesters. All of them fans of police in their most brutal manifestation. All of them fans of American football, a violent sport, as Donald Trump admiringly reminds us. All of them fans of aggressive, manly, "no one pushes us around" wars. And all of them fans of obedience to authority, so long as it's the one they also obey.

What does the American flag stand for? We may as well all stop pretending and admit it — it stand for all of the above. Every bit of it. Because that's what its wearers want it to stand for.

GP
 

How 'bout a round of cheers for the New England Cheaters and QB Tom "I Got Away with It, Suckers" Brady?

The New York Daily News points out: "Brady wasn’t wearing his wedding ring Tuesday night at a Patriots gala."



by Ken

Since I have devoted a certain amount of attention to the case of Tom "The Cheating Man" Brady (aka DeflateGate), it seems only fair to take formal note of the slapdown administered this week by federal judge Richard Berman of the Southern District of New York to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (see "After Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension tossed by judge, Gisele steps out looking relaxed"), voiding The Cheating Man's four-game suspension and reinstating him to the eligible roster of the New England Cheaters. Though he  sat out the Cheats' final preseason game against the NY Giants, he's expect to be taking snaps for the regular-season opener against the Steelers Thursday night in Foxborough.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took a beating for procedural high-handedness in the judge's ruling, though neither the judge nor the NFL Players Association, which is solidly behind The Cheating Man in his legal battle, seems to care about The Cheating Man's cheating. What's more, in complaining about the commissioner's procedural violations, the judge set out steps that should have taken which aren't part of the league's prescribed procedures either.

And there are legal naysayers. On HuffPost, Portland (OR) criminal defense attorney Kevin Sali cautions that "Tom Brady's Legal Victory May Be Short-Lived," arguing that "there's a good chance that ruling will be reversed on appeal." (The NFL has already said it will appeal.)

I have no idea what role Brady had in deflating footballs, or whether he did anything improper in connection with the investigation. Let's assume, for the moment, that as a factual matter he's entirely innocent. Let's assume, further, that the NFL's hearing and appeal processes were riddled with errors and that commissioner Roger Goodell incorrectly interpreted the collective bargaining agreement and made multiple other legal mistakes.

Under the law, even if that's all true, it still may be insufficient to justify vacating the suspension. The reason relates to the way the law treats arbitration agreements such as the NFL's CBA.

Meanwhile, the nice thing is that the ongoing dust-up (the NFL has already said it will appeal) makes it even more likely that the thing The Cheating Man will primarily be remembered for is being The Cheating Man. Then there are the rumors that The Cheating Man has, as the New York Daily News's Ethan Sacks characterized the rumors, "fumbled his six-year marriage to Gisele Bundchen over the tensions from his legal battle with the NFL." We take no position on Cheatin' Tom's possible marital woes, and offer him the consolation that even if his marriage is kaput, he still has his memories -- the memories of a Cheating Man. And a reminder that there are probably lots of hot babes out there who don't care about a player cheating as long as he's a player, and especially a star player.

So let's hope that Tom ("I Got Away with It, Suckers") Brady and the New England Cheaters can look forward to a season of spending as much of their time as possible thinking and talking about, well, you-know-what. There's reason to hope that everywhere they go they'll hear crowds chanting (come on, join in!): "Winners never cheat, and a winner never cheats."


IN THE INTEREST OF FAIRNESS, THERE'S A
SCHOOL OF THOUGHT SAYING, "TOM WON!"

The New Yorker's Ian Crouch claims, "Tom Brady Wins the Long Game," arguing that The Cheating Man --

managed, by prolonging Deflategate, to rather unexpectedly rehabilitate his image. The longer it stayed in the news, the more ridiculous the entire scandal began to seem. The more the evidence from the N.F.L.’s investigation was parsed in print and on talk radio, the more flimsy and bizarre it appeared. And the longer that the N.F.L.’s clumsy handling of the case was put on display, the more that people began to turn against the league and its commissioner. Even before Thursday’s ruling, the seemingly impossible had happened: people from places other than New England and San Mateo, California, had begun, begrudgingly, to root for Tom Brady.

I've always thought Ian's kind of a dim bulb, and this seems to me kind of nuts. Then again, when it comes to the perceptions of the public, it may be that a dim bulb is exactly the right sort of illumination.

All the same, I think The New Yorker is on firmer ground with this eye-opening Borowitz Report:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Minutes after overturning Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for the 2015-16 N.F.L. season, federal judge Richard M. Berman raised eyebrows by admitting that he had the Patriots quarterback on his fantasy team.

Responding to reporters’ questions, Berman said that Brady’s inclusion on his fantasy roster “played no role whatsoever” in his judicial decision.

“As a federal judge, I made this ruling based strictly on legal precedents and the merits of the case,” Berman said. “But, as a fantasy-team owner, sure, it’s going to be awesome to see Tom in there for all sixteen games.”

The judge said that he was especially looking forward to seeing how Brady takes advantage of what he called “an amazing array of offensive weapons.”

“Gronk is going to have a big year, and even if Julian Edelman isn’t ready for Week One, I think Reggie Wayne is going to surprise a lot of people,” Berman, who also has selected Wayne for his fantasy team, said.

For his part, Brady minimized the role that Berman’s fantasy team might have played in Thursday’s legal victory. “A win’s a win,” he said.

COME TO THINK OF IT, POSSIBLY
IAN CROUCH IS RIGHT AFTER ALL

What could be more American than that eloquently stated principle: "A win's a win"?

What was it that The Donald tweeted? "Tom Brady is my friend and a total winner!" That pretty much settles it, dontcha think?

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Football Watch: The NFL stands firm on Tom Brady's punishment -- plus suddenly Prince Tom apologists have more to apologize for

No, this isn't Prince Tom's actual smashed cellphone, it's just a smashed-cellphone stock photo. But the way these things go, it may be just a matter of time before we have cellphone video of the actual phonicide ordered by the prince.

by Ken

At 3:05 this afternoon washingtonpost.com posted this "Early Lead" item by Clinton Yates, "Tom Brady’s four-game DeflateGate suspension upheld by Roger Goodell":

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has upheld New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s four-game suspension for his role in the DeflateGate scandal, according to the NFL. In a statement released by the league office Tuesday afternoon, Goodell stuck with the initial punishment when he received information that Brady destroyed his cellphone.

“On or shortly before March 6, the day that Tom Brady met with independent investigator Ted Wells and his colleagues, Brady directed that the cell phone he had used for the prior four months be destroyed. He did so even though he was aware that the investigators had requested access to text messages and other electronic information that had been stored on that phone,” said the email from the league. “‎During the four months that the cell phone was in use, Brady had exchanged nearly 10,000 text messages, none of which can now be retrieved from that device. The destruction of the cell phone was not disclosed until June 18, almost four months after the investigators had first sought electronic information from Brady.”

Ten thousand text messages in four months. The further implication here could be that the appeal process potentially made things worse between Goodell and Brady. The conventional thinking, as is often the case with NFL suspensions, was that it would be reduced. Greg Hardy had his suspension — for a domestic violence accusation, no less — reduced from 10 to four games earlier this offseason. And now that Brady allegedly decided to destroy his phone, he’ll be out the same amount of time.

“The commissioner found that Brady’s deliberate destruction of potentially relevant evidence went beyond a mere failure to cooperate in the investigation and supported a finding that he had sought to hide evidence of his own participation in the underlying scheme to alter the footballs,” the NFL’s email said.

According to the report, “at the hearing, Mr. Brady testified that it is his practice to destroy (or give to his assistant to destroy) his cellphone and SIM cards when he gets a new cellphone.” Even if you do believe that, there has to be some question about how Brady is looked at as a quarterback now. How will this new destroyed phone scandal hang over his increasingly bruised legacy?

Goodell dismissed the notion because this was a first time offense of its kind, that the penalty was not appropriate. He went on to reference Bountygate, Brett Favre’s harrassment of a New York Jets employee and two other incidents involving tampered balls. “In terms of the appropriate level of discipline, the closest parallel of which I am aware is the collectively bargained discpline imposed for a first violation of the policy governing performance enhancing drugs; steroid use reflects an improper effort to secure a competitive advantage in, and threatens the integrity of, the game,” he wrote.

At the end of the 20-page report, Goodell said he had no choice to uphold the suspension.

“I entered in the appeal process open to reevaluating my assessment of Mr. Brady’s conduct and the associated discipline. Especially in light of the new evidence introduced at the hearing – evidence demonstrating that he arranged for the destruction of potentially relevant evidence that had been specifically requested by the investigators – my finding and conclusions have not changed in a manner that would benefit Mr. Brady,” the commissioner wrote in conclusion. “Notwithstanding my enormous respect for this accomplishments on the field and for his contributions and role in the community, I find that, with respect to the game balls used in the AFC Championship Game and the subsequent investigation, Mr. Brady engaged in conduct detrimental to the integrity of, and public confidence in, the game of professional football.”

Now hold on a second, partner. What's this about Tom Brady smashing his cellphone? Curious readers can follow a link included with this post to an earlier "Early Lead" post by Cindy Boren, "Stephen A. Smith says Tom Brady destroyed his cellphone during DeflateGate investigation," which originally went up at 11-something this morning but was updated at 4:50pm to reflect the new Goodell ruling ("Updated with Smith's information proving correct"). This is the original version:

As if the DeflateGate saga couldn’t get any odder, it took another turn for the weird Tuesday with a report that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady destroyed his cellphone — the one on which he allegedly communicated with equipment men about deflating footballs — during the NFL’s investigation.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith served up that steamy take Tuesday, telling Skip Bayless, his partner in bloviation on “First Take,” exactly what he was “hearing” without naming sources or saying that he was actually reporting it.

“Skip, remember when we had conversations about the text messages [between Brady and the Patriots’ personnel] and refusing to show it? I’m hearing that Tom Brady actually destroyed his cellphone.”

Of course, that’s not exactly how it works with cellphone technology, but Smith was on a roll.

“I just heard that Tom Brady’s suspension will likely be upheld. We all recognize that anything’s possible, um, obviously minds can change. But from what I’m hearing, in the next 24-48 hours the NFL will announce that they are upholding the four game suspension against Tom Brady,” he said. “He will serve his four-game suspension. They know and expect the [NFL Players Association] to appeal that decision.”

Brady’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation was part of the reason he was suspended four games for being “at least generally aware” that Patriots footballs were being underinflated. Since then, he has appealed the suspension and the world is waiting with increasingly less baited breath to learn whether it might be reduced by Commissioner Roger Goodell. After Goodell hands down his opinion, Brady and the players’ union will decide whether to head to court.

Smith wasn’t done connecting dots, though. He brought it all back to that other scandal.

“In Spygate in 2007, when [Coach] Bill Belichick and the Patriots were fined – apparently there’s some language in that agreement – in that fine that ultimately handed down to him, that if something like this happened again, you’re talking about Bill Belichick being banned. Which, in some folks’ eyes may have facilitated [owner] Robert Kraft showing a willingness to accept the penance and the penalty Roger Goodell handed down to him.”

So…there you go.

Now this last bit, about language in the league's Spygate decision "that if something like this happened again, you're talking about Bill Belichick being banned," well, it's interesting if awfully vague (not just the "apparently there’s some language in that agreement," but the definition of "something like this"), not to mention undersourced. In any case, while it does suggest a reason why both Pats owner Bob Kraft and coach Belichick, however grumbly, might be relieved that Commissioner Goodell's original ruling in DeflateGat wasn't worse, I don't think it's pertinent to the immediate question of Tom Brady's crime and punishment.

But this business of the cellphone smashing? Certainly Commissioner Goodell believes it happened, and believes it was ordered by Tom Brady with the intention of destroying the contents. Interestingly, Cindy's original observation, "Of course, that’s not exactly how it works with cellphone technology," has been changed in the updated version to: "Of course, that may not completely delete the cellphone trail (especially since the texts could be seen on the recipients’ phones)." Either way, it certainly makes a person curious to see what may lie among those four months' worth of 10,000 texts. Even allowing for the likelihood that, say, 90 percent of them deal with how talented and beautiful Tom is, that would still leave 1,000 others to riffle through.

Probably nothing there would impress the Post's Adam Kilgore, who before the new ruling had written a derisive screed about the commissioner, "NFL’s post-DeflateGate rule changes undermine league’s punishment of Tom Brady," breathlessly touting the revelation this weekend (linking to an "Early Lead" post yesterday by Cindy Boren) by Fox Sports analyst Mike Pereira, a former head of NFL officials, that the league has quietly overhauled its procedures for enforcing the rules regarding the handling of game footballs. Somehow Adam has concluded that, because the league has admitted that its old security procedures were inadequate and spottily enforced, Brady's flouting of those rules has somehow become retroactively okay.

It has apparently never occurred to Adam that the league's now-replaced system simply never anticipated the lengths to which people might go to break the rules. People like, say, the Crowned Prince of Belichickland. And so Adam raves on and on about the lamb-like innocence of his boy Tom and the horse's-assitude of Roger Goodell, and boy, are Tommy and the NFL Players' Association gonna whup Roger's ass in court if he doesn't have the sense to back down and kiss the prince's private parts.

Now I'm not here to defend Roger's stewardship of the NFL, though I think it's well to remember that he's not so much the commissioner of a professional sports league as the manager, hired by a bunch of billionaires, of a business enterprise that accounts for a key segment of the U.S. economy. But as between Roger and Tom, let's be clear here. Even before we heard about the smashed cellphone, it has to have been clear to anyone who read the texts of those equipment guys' texts which were made public that Tom:

(a) knew the balls he used were being doctored, in flagrant violation of league rules,

(b) believed he was nevertheless entitled to have balls supplied that suited his comfort,

and (c) demanded like the most imperious princeling (or spoiled brat) that the sniveling little people in the clubhouse take care of it without further inconvenience to a big person like himself.

Above and beyond that, it's well established that he not only stonewalled every aspect of the league's investigation but flat-out lied whenever he actually answered questions. Adam's ridicule of the NFL begins with the length of time the league has spent on DeflateGate, again without asking the really important question (somehow Adam never seems to have any idea what the important question is): Whose fault is it that the issue has dragged on this long?

I say it's the guy who cheated in the first place, then lied about it while stonewalling the league's attempt to find out what happened, and now -- it turns out -- did his best to destroy what sure looks like it would have been evidence? Why, it's Adam's golden boy, Tom!

Yes, Tom Brady is a superbly gifted athlete, and yes, he has worked relentlessly to master the game and his position. For which he has been rewarded as richly as any human being ever could be. And yet somewhere along the line he seems to have gotten the idea that he is entitled to bend and rewrite rules to suit his convenience -- that rules are for the game's little people, not for a handsome prince like himself. I'll stand by what I wrote in May: "Just 'cause you're as pretty (and, yes, talented) as Tom Brady doesn't mean you get to cheat -- and then lie about it."


POSTSCRIPT: This may not be the best time to ask
me to feel sympathy toward a pampered NFL star


An "inside" look at Episode 1 of Ballers

I recently got around to looking at the episodes of HBO's Ballers I had stored up on my DVR, and I watched with increasing fascination, and also increasing revulsion. As I've written before, by the last couple of seasons I'd lost pretty much all of whatever lingering interest I had in professional football, and now the thought of watching even a quarter of a game fills me with boredom. But the Ballers portrayal of the game's behind-the-scenes rings true in a way that suggests that those people -- players, officials, tycoons, and, yes, fans (and groupies too) -- form a closed loop of suckers and suckees who all deserve one another. But maybe that's another story for another time.

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Well, Tom Brady still has his agent in his corner -- plus the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ

It's hard to believe the Pulitzer people still haven't found a category to honor memorable writing like this.

by Ken

It's Dropping of the Other Shoe Week hereabouts. Yesterday I reported that now-former New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean "The Indicted (And My Boy Too)" Skelos, whose caucus was so solidly behind him in the belief that hell no, he didn't hafta step down, has in fact stepped down, because enough members of that caucus had paid brief visits to reality and discovered that reality was kind of killing them.

Today we report the aftermath of another development yesterday: the meting out of punishment by NFL Exec VP Troy Vincent to superstar QB Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the Deflategate scandal, in the wake of the Wells Report commissioned by the league: a four-game suspension for Cheating and Lying Tom and a $1 million fine and loss of two draft picks for the Pats.

Well, Cheating and Lying Tom's agent, Don Yee, is hopping mad. He thinks the punishment meted out to his meal ticket boy is "ridiculous." Says Agent Don:

The discipline is ridiculous and has no legitimate basis. In my opinion, this outcome was pre-determined; there was no fairness in the Wells investigation whatsoever. There is no evidence that Tom directed footballs be set at pressures below the allowable limits.

No, actually, it looks like investigator Ted Wells did his darnedest to find out the truth, and was hardly helped by the fact that Agent Yee's client the Golden Boy lied his golden guts out. Here, for the record, is what Vincent wrote to Cheating and Lying Tom:

With respect to your particular involvement, the report established that there is substantial and credible evidence to conclude you were at least generally aware of the actions of the Patriots' employees involved in the deflation of the footballs and that it was unlikely that their actions were done without your knowledge. Moreover, the report documents your failure to cooperate fully and candidly with the investigation, including by refusing to produce any relevant electronic evidence (emails, texts, etc.), despite being offered extraordinary safeguards by the investigators to protect unrelated personal information, and by providing testimony that the report concludes was not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.

Your actions as set forth in the report clearly constitute conduct detrimental to the integrity of and public confidence in the game of professional football. The integrity of the game is of paramount importance to everyone in our league, and requires unshakable commitment to fairness and compliance with the playing rules. Each player, no matter how accomplished and otherwise respected, has an obligation to comply with the rules and must be held accountable for his actions when those rules are violated and the public's confidence in the game is called into question.

Poor Agent Don, sort of like those NYS Republican senators, is caught in a head-on collision with reality, and it almost brings a tear to one's eye to see him fighting back so manfully. Is this man earning his Brady Megabucks or what? I mean, if a feller can't trust his very own agent to make a jackass of hisself in his behalf, who can he trust to make a jackoff of hisself in his behalf?


OOH, IT'S THE BIG RAT BASTARD GUMMER OF NJ!

Well, in Cheating and Lying Tom's case, there's always the patron saint of cheaters and liars, the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ, Kris Krispy. You know, the CEO the State of New Jersey Inc., and the managing general partner of the Gummint of NJ LLP. By great good luck the Krispyman happens also to be the patron saint of bullies, as Cheating and Lying Tom kind of emerges in those embarrassing e-mails with the locker-room stooges who handled the ball doctoring and switching for him.

The Big Rat Bastard thinks people are just jealous 'cause Tom has it all -- the gorgeous wife, the dimple, the whole enchilada. The Big Rat Bastard isn't jealous. Like any dedicated jock-sniffer, he's happy just to get a smile from the big guy -- plus maybe a chance to lick his toes, on account of he is after all a Really Important Person in his own right. Come on, he's a personal acquaintance of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones! (Some would say he even made Jerry J a limited partner of the Gummint of NJ LLP.) Watch this KrispyKlip:



Okay, Tom cheated and Tom lied. But then, maybe this is why he's still the bee's knees to the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ? And as a connoisseur of bullying, the Rat Bastard Gummer might appreciate that the locker-room stooges who performed Cheating and Lying Tom's dirty work have lost their jobs as a result, while Cheating and Lying Tom has come out, comparatively speaking, not badly at all with just that four-game suspension.


OKAY, HERE'S ANOTHER CLIP TO WATCH

The comedy here is less off-the-wall than in the previous one.

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Football Watch: Just 'cause you're as pretty (and, yes, talented) as Tom Brady doesn't mean you get to cheat -- and then lie about it

Oh Tom, Tom, Tom! You stood there at that January 2015 news conference, looking pretty as a picture, and just fibbed your pretty head off.

"We found these claims not plausible and contradicted by other evidence."

-- the Wells report, on Tom Brady's claims of Deflategate ignorance

by Ken

Since we had our share of fun with the Deflategate story when it broke, it only seems fair to pick up the story now that an NFL investigating commission has brought forth its report. And it appears that I for one may owe the Super Bowl champ New England Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, an apology.

I titled my January 21 post " 'Cheating' is such a harsh word, but strange things just seem to happen around New England Pats' coach Bill Belichick," but now it appears that all our Bill may have been guilty of was running a football team where the star quarterback felt entitled to cheat. Well, that and then doing such a stunningly piss-poor job of getting to the bottom of the story when the scandal broke. And, oh yes, venting all that indignation and frothing persecution mania, denying any possibility that his team could be at fault, when in fact the source of the problem was in his own locker room, and his star player was lying his guts out.

While the NFL report stops short of directly pointing at finger at beloved heartthrob-QB Tom "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" Brady, the inescapable conclusion is that not only did our Tom have to know that he was tossing around illegally under-inflated footballs, but that the under-inflating was done at his instigation, even insistence.

Here's the Washington Post's Mark Maske ("DeflateGate: 'More probable than not' Patriots violated rules, Tom Brady aware"):

Citing the actions and text messages of two team employees, the report by attorney Ted Wells [the link is to the full report -- Ed.] concluded that it is “more probable than not” that the Patriots deliberately used under-inflated footballs during their AFC championship game victory over the Indianapolis Colts.

The report is the culmination of a highly unusual situation in which the NFL, for the second time in less than nine years, investigated whether one of its most successful and highest-profile teams circumvented rules to gain a competitive advantage. In 2007, the league found the Patriots had improperly videotaped opposing coaching signals. These most recent accusations dominated discussion in the two weeks leading up to February’s Super Bowl, raising scrutiny of Brady and the Patriots’ competitive integrity even as they were pursuing their fourth title.

It remains unclear what — if any — punishment awaits.

The report’s most compelling evidence are colorful and frequently profane text messages between John Jastremski, a Patriots equipment assistant, and Jim McNally, the officials’ locker room attendant at Gillette Stadium. McNally, in a text message to Jastresmski in May 2014, referred to himself as “the deflator,” according to the report.

“Based on the evidence developed in connection with the investigation and summarized in this Report, we have concluded that it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the NFL Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate attempt to circumvent those rules,” Wells wrote.

“In particular, we conclude that it is more probable than not that Jim McNally and John Jastremski participated in a deliberate plan to circumvent the rules by releasing air from Patriots game balls after the examination of the footballs by NFL game officials at the AFC Championship Game.”

Wells wrote that investigators also concluded “it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.”

"At least generally aware"? Um, well, yes. This seems an understatement, to the extent that it's possible to believe the report's conclusion that neither Head Coach Bill Belichick, his assistant coaches, or the team’s ownership were involved.

By all means continue reading Maske's report, which does a fine job of covering the report and the size and shape of the scandal radiating out from it. But I think we want to go back to those e-mails, partly because they're pretty hilarious, but also because I think they give a rather clearer picture than the above suggests of the nature and extent of His Prettiness's involvement, and kind of an alarming image of who and what he has become.

For this we turn to Matt Bonesteel's Post sidebar piece, "If nothing else, the Wells Report gave us hilarious text messages about Tom Brady, Deflategate." "The NFL’s findings," Matt notes, "hinge on incriminating text messages sent between McNally and Jastremski. And boy, are they incriminating. And hilarious."

After a game between the Patriots and Jets on Oct. 16, 2014, Brady “complained angrily about the inflation level of the game balls,” leading to the following text-message exchange between the two equipment managers:

McNally: Tom sucks … im going make that next ball a [expletive] balloon
Jastremski: Talked to him last night. He actually brought you up and said you must have a lot of stress trying to get them done …
Jastremski: I told him it was. He was right though…
Jastremski: I checked some of the balls this morn… The refs [expletive] us…a few of then were at almost 16
Jastremski: They didnt recheck then after they put air in them
McNally: [Expletive] tom … 16 is nothing…wait till next sunday
Jastremski: Omg! Spaz

Here’s some texts from Oct. 21. They’re still a little salty at Brady.

McNally: Make sure you blow up the ball to look like a rugby ball so tom can get used to it before sunday
Jastremski: Omg

Oct. 23, 2014. Still plotting against Brady ahead of the upcoming game against the Bears.

Jastremski: Can’t wait to give you your needle this week
McNally: [Expletive] tom….make sure the pump is attached to the needle…..[expletive] watermelons coming
Jastremski: So angry
McNally: The only thing deflating sun..is his passing rating

The next day, McNally seemed to indicate that Brady would need to pay up if he wanted the balls the way he liked them.

Jastremski: I have a big needle for u this week
McNally: Better be surrounded by cash and newkicks….or its a rugby sunday
McNally: [Expletive] tom
Jastremski: Maybe u will have some nice size 11s in ur locker
McNally: Tom must really be working your balls hard this week

What seems to be something of a smoking gun, when McNally calls himself “the deflator” and mentions taking the story to ESPN, came on May 9, 2014, before the start of the season.

McNally: You working
Jastremski: Yup
McNally: Nice dude….jimmy needs some kicks….lets make a deal…..come on help the deflator
McNally: Chill buddy im just [expletive] with you ….im not going to espn……..yet

Does anyone believe that Jastremski and McNally were making this stuff up? Does anyone see any possibility that, however the under-inflating scam may have started (conceivably, someone suggested it to our Tom), it was being driven by the superstar himself?

To return to Mark Maske:

[T]he investigation’s conclusions about Brady threaten to taint his legacy as one of the sport’s greatest quarterbacks. [You think? -- Ed.] While lacking concrete evidence that Brady orchestrated or ordered the balls’ deflation, the report is starkly critical of his honesty in cooperating with investigators.

Brady insisted he had no involvement in any efforts to deflate game balls and that he did not know McNally nor his role, but the report states, “We found these claims not plausible and contradicted by other evidence.” McNally, the report added, also divulged to NFL Security that Brady had told him personally of the quarterback’s preferences regarding air pressure.

What's fascinating about all this is that it was, in fact, so unnecessary. As our Tom himself pointed out so ungraciously, the Pats didn't need to futz around with the footballs -- just look at how dominant they were in their path to Super Bowl victory. Unfortunately, Tom was offering this as, er, proof that Deflategate wasn't real, and now we know he knew perfectly well that he was fibbing. It just seems to have suited his convenience to have those balls inflated the way he liked theme, and fuck the rules. Hey, who's the superstar?

It's also a fascinating problem for the Pats' coaching staff and management. Coach Belichick at least so far hasn't been heard from, but you have to wonder what he's feeling now, since presumably his star player lied to him. At least I presume he asked Tom if there was anything to the story and Tom told him no. Does anyone expect Coach Bill to apologize for having, however unintentionally, wildly misinformed the public? I don't.

As for Pats owner Robert Kraft, he might do better to keep his trap shut. Mark Maske again:

Patriots owner Robert Kraft called the investigation and its findings “incomprehensible.”

Kraft said in a written statement he was “convinced” that Wells’s investigation “would find the same factual evidence supported by both scientific formula and independent research as we did and would ultimately exonerate the Patriots.” Kraft said that to “say we are disappointed in its findings, which do not include any incontrovertible or hard evidence of deliberate deflation of footballs at the AFC Championship Game, would be a gross understatement.”

Kraft also said the Patriots would accept the findings of the report and any discipline dispensed by the league, but he went on to opine that “the time, effort and resources expended to reach this conclusion are incomprehensible to me.”

Apparently calling the report "incomprehensible" and blithering moronically about his team's moronic "scientific formula and independent research" is his way of accepting the findings of the report. Hey, Bob, you lying jackass. Your "independent research" was a fraud. It was a put-up job with no goal except to make it look like there was no football deflation. The only thing is, we know now that there was, and that the balls were being switched after the official pressure checks. At this point, any further claims about "scientific formula and independent research" have to be taken as out-and-out lies and flagrant cover-up.

I sure hope the NFL considers this as it weighs disciplinary action, which sources are indicating may not be as powder-puffy as one would normally expect.

Possible penalties against the Patriots could include a fine and the loss of one or more draft picks. [League Commissioner Roger] Goodell fined Belichick and the Patriots a total of $750,000 in 2007 and stripped the team of a first-round draft choice in the “Spygate” scandal in which the Patriots were found to have improperly videotaped opposing coaching signals.

One person familiar with the league’s inner workings said decisions regarding potential discipline are “coming soon.” Possible discipline of Brady, as well as a fine and prospective loss of a draft choice, are “all under consideration,” according to that person, who requested anonymity because no official announcements had been made. . . .

The Patriots’ latest scandal intensified the public debate as to whether the team’s accomplishments have been tarnished. Detractors have called them cheaters. Supporters of the team counter that such feelings result from jealousy over the franchise’s unmatched success.

Oh, I imagine there's jealousy over the Pats' success. But there's also a lot of resentment at their record of cheating and lying.

And then there's Tom Brady's "legacy as one of the sport's greatest quarterbacks." Here's the Post's Adam Kilgore ("Tom Brady lied; only the consequences are open to debate"):

Tom Brady is one of the greatest players in NFL history, the only quarterback to play in six Super Bowls, the undisputed on-field leader of the sport’s most successful franchise in this generation. He is also a liar. Brady probably cheated, an NFL-commissioned report found, and he lied about it. The actions do not invalidate his career, but they incinerated his golden-boy image and made messy the once-simple assessment of his place in history.

Adam notes that of course Brady knew he was cheating, and expected an advantage from it -- or he wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to do it. He points out that one reason the NFL investigation "could not determine the full scope of Brady's cheating" is his "lack of cooperation and his lack of veracity."

Brady refused to turn over electronic communication such as text messages and cell phone records. Even more brashly, Brady told lies during his interview with Wells’s team.

Adam writes: "Wells’s report turned anyone who believed Brady into a fool," and while that isn't going to change the record of his on-the-field accomplishments, it sure seems likely to change the way the public regards him. You would have thought that if any star athlete could ever look forward to having the world at his fingertips when his playing time came to an end, it was our Tom. Now, I'm thinking, maybe not so much.


NOW, AS TO OUR TOM'S PUNISHMENT --

THE BOROWITZ REPORT
N.F.L. Sentences Brady to a Year with the Jets

By Andy Borowitz
May 6, 2015


FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (The Borowitz Report) – In what football insiders are calling an unexpectedly severe punishment, the National Football League has sentenced the New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady to a year with the New York Jets for his role in the so-called Deflategate scandal.

The punishment drew howls of protest from Patriots fans and management, with many calling it the harshest in league history, but N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the decision as “a necessary deterrent.”

“We need to send the message that this league has zero tolerance for cheating,” Goodell said. “We believe that a year of playing quarterback for the Jets sends that message loud and clear.”

Brady was reportedly in a state of shock when he heard the news of his punishment. He later met with reporters in a hastily called press conference during which he frequently seemed on the verge of tears.

“I am going to fight this decision with every fibre of my being,” Brady said. “This is America. You can’t force a person to play for the Jets.”

At a sports bar in Manhattan, the reaction to the impending arrival of the Jets’ longtime nemesis was muted. One Jets fan observed, “Look, Brady’s a dick, but even he didn’t deserve this.”

#

Looking back XLVIII years to the "Supergame" -- or Super Bowl I, as we know it now

Plus update: Howie's headed home! (See below)

For Chiefs QB Len Dawson, the road to the Hall of Fame led
through the L.A. Memorial Coliseum this day in January 1967.

by Ken

Talk about great moments in history! Here we are at the very first Super Bowl halftime, on Jan. 15, 1967, in the luxurious expanse of the lovely L.A. Coliseum. ("Lovely" is maybe not entirely serious, folks. This may be the first time that "lovely" and the L.A. Coliseum have ever appeared in the same paragraph, let alone sentence.)

Of course it wasn't called Super Bowl I. It was called something like the First AFL-NFL World Championship Game, aka the "Supergame" (aren't you glad that one didn't stick?), but we know better. But here, amidst all the glitter and pomp, sitting on his Super Bowl folding chair, is future Hall of Famer Lenny Dawson, QB of the AFL-champ Kansas City Chiefs (that's right, it was still the AFL, an independent league, not yet the mere AFC), er, catching his breath, with "a puff and a Fresca," as my friend Paul put it in passing this historic photo along. (Hey, at least it wasn't a brewski.)

At halftime Lenny D could take pride in keeping the Chiefs within 14-10 striking distance of Vince Lombardi's NFL-champ Green Pay Packers. Alas, the offense of Hank Stram's Chiefs turned out to be done for the day, en route to a final score of 35-10. Traditionalists who insisted that no AFL team had any business being on the same field with any upper-tier NFL team turned out to have a point.

It was a big day -- or maybe just another day at the office --
for Vince Lombardi and his still-powerhouse Packers.

Over the weekend I heard a lot of chatter about a supposed lack of respect for the Super Bowl evidenced in several posts. This should show just who's got the Super Bowl Spirit. On to L!

The lovely Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a National Historic
Landmark since July 1984, is still home to the USC Trojans (below).

UPDATE: HOWIE'S HEADED HOME!

I just spoke with Howie, who was waiting for the final details of discharge (and for his ride) before heading for home -- feeling, he says, "a lot better than I have been."

#

For Super Sunday, one last game note and one last alternative-programming suggestion

Have you been watching The Great British Baking Show on PBS? Today Episode 5, "Pies and Tarts," airs (or aired) in most locations.

by Ken

Okay, Bob, makes sense

This afternoon about I happened, totally inadvertently, to land on NBC's pregame coverage. It was still about four hours before game time, so that would put it at about our 13 of the pregame festivities. And I paused to listen to Bob Costas talk about the possibility that in this day and age it is still possible under the rules for a Super Bowl that goes into overtime to end with the team that wins the extra-period coin flip to score and win the game without the other team touching the ball -- the game thereby being decided by the coin flip. This isn't good, Bob said, and it's hard to disagree. He proposed that the overtime rules be changed, just for the post-season, to provide for a succession of ten-minute periods, as many as are necessary for the game to end with a clear winner.

Obviously, as Bob pointed out, it's too late to do anything about Super Bowl XLIX, but there's plenty of time to fix this for Super Bowl L. Well, okay, I thought, that makes sense. And as I made my escape, I wondered if that might not be the high point of the Super Sunday festivities. That or maybe the commercials. I know a lot of people watch the game just, or mostly, for the commercials. Which would be fine except that most of the commercials suck too. You have to hand it to the NFL marketing team. Making a big annual production out of the things that your customers are paying you -- through the nose -- to show and you're forcing your viewers to watch! There are several life lessons buried in there, none of them encouraging.

In my never-ending spirit of public service, I've been trying to come up with an angle that might lend the game itself some actual football interest. Of course there's always the possibility that it might be a good game. It has happened. Not often, but it has happened. Still, nobody can control that part of it, and we don't want to leave the thing to chance.

No doubt there's some interest in the fact that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is matched up against the team, and indeed the owner, that fired him after three decreasingly successful seasons, 1997-99, a decision that owner Bob Kraft has said was one of the hardest he'd made. Carroll's replacement was none other than -- Bill Belichick! That was Pete's last NFL job until his 2010 return with the Seahawks, following his shaky-starting but ultimately triumphant run with the USC Trojans -- triumphant, that is, if you don't count the small matter of the Reggie Bush recruiting violations, which led to the NCAA's retroactive giant smackdown, in the process undoing a good deal of what Pete did at USC. You could say that he got out of town just in time. And now here he is in Seattle as the defending Super Bowl champ.

Okay, that's something. But it doesn't pack all that much drama. I'm thinking that the gut-level connection here is the grudge match between two former NY Jets head coaches from the Jets' now-decades-long Era of Despond.

I know people complain that I spend an inordinate amount of time making fun of Washington Redskins buffoon-owner Daniel Snyder, considering that my hometown New York Jets have been showcasing managerial buffoonishness for as back as the normally burdened mind can encompass. But Jets fans are used to it by now, and really don't know any other way. More importantly, I don't see why this has to be an either-or situation -- ridiculing either the Redskins' ownership or the Jets'? Isn't it possible to ridicule both?

I've already called attention to the bizarre episode of Belichick's almost-seconds-long tenure with the J-E-T-S Jets, which remains for me one of the strangest episodes in the annals of professional sports. Here again is Wikipedia's summary:

Belichick had two different stints as Head Coach of the Jets without ever coaching a game.

In February 1997, Belichick, who had been an assistant coach under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants and New England Patriots, was named the Jets interim Head Coach while the Jets and Patriots continued to negotiate compensation to release Parcells from his contract with Patriots and allow Parcells to coach the Jets.[10] Six days later, the Patriots and Jets reached an agreement that allowed Parcells to coach the Jets and Belichick became the team's assistant head coach and defensive coordinator.[11] When Parcells stepped down as head coach in 1999, he had already arranged with team management to have Belichick succeed him. However, Belichick would be the New York Jets' head coach for only one day. When Belichick was introduced as head coach to the media—the day after his hiring was publicized—he turned it into a surprise-resignation announcement. Before taking the podium, he scrawled a resignation note on a sheet of loose leaf paper that read, in its entirety, "I resign as HC of the NYJ." He then delivered a half-hour speech explaining his resignation to the assembled press corps.[12]

Soon after this bizarre turn of events, he was introduced as the Patriots' 12th full-time head coach, succeeding the recently fired Pete Carroll. The Patriots had tried to hire him away from Parcells/the Jets in the past. Parcells and the Jets claimed that Belichick was still under contract to the Jets, and demanded compensation from the Patriots. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue agreed, and the Patriots gave the Jets a first-round draft pick in 2000 in exchange for the right to hire Belichick.[13]

Pete's Jets career was a good deal less strange. Here's Wikipedia again:

His success [as defensive backs coach] with the Vikings led to his hiring by the New York Jets, where he served as defensive coordinator under Bruce Coslet for four seasons (1990–93). When there was an opening for the Vikings' head coach position in 1992, he was a serious candidate but lost the position, again to Green.[8]

In 1994, Carroll was elevated to head coach of the Jets. Known for energy and youthful enthusiasm, Carroll painted a basketball court in the parking lot of the team's practice facility where he and his assistant coaches regularly played three-on-three games during their spare time.[11] The Jets got off to a 6–5 start under Carroll, but in week 12, he was the victim of Dan Marino's "clock play"—a fake spike that became a Miami Dolphins game-winning touchdown. The Jets lost all of their remaining games to finish 6–10. He was fired after one season.[11][12]

Considering the levels of futility at which more recent Jets coaches have managed to hold on to their jobs, a single 6-10 season and out seems a trifle harsh. Then again, there's that late-season fold that happened again in New England, and it could be that both the Jets' and Pats' ax-wielders had it right. Clearly the Pete Carroll who built the Seahawks into the solidly competitive team they are today isn't the same coach who cut such an appealingly earnest young figure only to bomb out of his first two NFL head-coaching jobs.


NOW AS TO THAT PROGRAMMING ALTERNATIVE


At the starting gate: The 12 original Great British Baking Show contestants

I've already called attention to TBS's Law and Order Super Sunday marathon. Alternatively, depending on where you live, you may still be able to check out PBS's offering of what it's calling The Great British Baking Show, a runaway hit on British TV as The Great British Bake Off. (That name couldn't be used here because of trademark restrictions.) If I've got the schedule right, today they're at Week 5 of a 12-week run, and in some places today's episode hasn't aired as of the time this post goes up. Here in NYC, I gather WNET is airing the show Sundays at 4pm. (DVR-equipped Gothamites take note: There's a repeat airing Tuesday morning at 4am.) However, in the D.C. area, where Bonnie S. Benwick has just been extolling the show's virtues ("'The Great British Baking Show’ on PBS: Food Network, take note."), it airs on WETA at 8pm. As the prophets say, check your local listings.

I haven't seen the show myself, but it should be possible to catch up with most if not all of it online. (On the WNET website, I see, as of this moment you can watch Episodes 2-5.) Bonnie Benwick casts her piece in the form of a letter to Food Network; regular readers may recall that I have been transformed from a TVFNaholic to a Food Network hater, now that its motto has become "Sure, our programming eats toxic sludge, but you barfbrains are watching it, aren't you?" So I'm pleased to see that Bonnie has some nicely nasty things to say about Food Network. Here's what she has to say about the show:

Dear Food Network,

Loving the new baking show — on PBS. Even those of us who would rather pluck a bucketful of fresh thyme leaves than watch competitive cooking on television are, in a word, enchanted. We are eating up every episode of “The Great British Baking Show,” nee “The Great British Bake Off,” whose last-season finale drew more than 13 million U.K. viewers, a 50 percent audience share.

Want to know why? Here’s hoping you do. It’s partly about culinary education, but mostly about authenticity.

As in, contestants are allowed to be real, not presented as archetypes. Everybody’s civil, respectful, even — judges and funny hosts, too. We get the impression they’re all mates who like to share a pint at the pub. In fact, the amateur bakers did just that, each week, before the cameras began rolling.

“We don’t like editing people to look mean,” says British food writer and former BBC producer Diana Henry.

Contrast that with American reality TV. Here, said PBS chief programming executive Beth Hoppe, “we cast for LOUD” (with the exception of PBS).

Exactly.

The show tests the skills of 12 home bakers over the course of 10 weeks, as they all perform in a specially outfitted tent on the grounds of a manor house in county Berkshire; we see black lambs gamboling between action shots. Men and women, teens and sexagenarians, shire-born and immigrants are vying for the title of top baker. They have regular lives and jobs. They practice at home during the week, based on a list of broad categories provided by the show, and spend 10-hour weekend days on the set. Each episode comprises three types of “bakes,” and a star baker is crowned.

Judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry
and hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc

The competition doesn’t lack for drama. It’s writ small, though, like in a home kitchen (with the exception of Iain Watters’s BakedAlaskaGate). [Hint: You definitely want to check out the BakedAlaskaGate link. It's a pip. -- Ed.] Cakes crack, fillings ooze. Thanks to a spot-on production crew, we get to see those moments, plus the kind of second-guessing and oven anxiety we’re prone to ourselves. When contestants are chuffed, we surrender to Anglophilia. When an effort falls short, judgment is delivered with kindness and understanding.

Sometimes judges Mary Berry, something of a national culinary institution, and celebrity baker Paul Hollywood throw a spanner into the works, but the challenge is reasonable: The baking time or oven temperature might be omitted from the directions, and the bakers manage based on their experience. The lesson to be gleaned from crafting a “Chopped” main course from, say, fish heads, peanut brittle and lime gelatin seems less significant, in comparison.

Lincolnshire grandmother Nancy Birtwhistle has a homespun contraption to aerate her fennel and rye crackers. Must try that. North London builder Richard Burr’s chocolate fondants are perfectly proportioned and executed, prompting Berry to pipe up, “Now that’s what I call a sauced pudding!” Enwezor Nzegwu, a business consultant from Portsmouth, alas, is gone too soon. But there will be no clawing his way back into the competition through cutthroat capers.

And now we know from sauced puds, Victoria sponges, Swiss rolls. To U.K. viewers and expats, it’s the stuff of memory and tradition. For America, it’s a window on the world of the baked goods Brits hold dear. “When I grew up, you were supposed to be able to be good at an eggy sponge, a light cake,” says food writer Henry. “It’s in the DNA here.”

The production crew seems to capture the technique involved in every step along the way, for each baker. Those comparisons offers much insight, really, into how home bakers perform similar feats and achieve different results.

We have long looked to public television for helpful cooking instruction. (Cue “The French Chef” theme music.) “GBBO,” as the Twitter hashtaggers call it, proves that the format can offer genuine entertainment as well. Hoppe says she tried to acquire the British series a couple of years ago but was outbid by CBS, which effectively took “GBBO” off the table so it could develop and air 2013’s “The American Baking Competition.” (That judge-host combo didn’t work so well, and poor ratings canceled the show.)

When “GBBO” became available again, “it had gone bonkers in the U.K., along the magnitude of ‘Downton Abbey,’ ” Hoppe says. So she brought it to PBS and promises we’ll see the next season as well. U.S. viewership thus far stands at 2.5 million, for a network whose prime-time average is about 1 million viewers.

Yeah, Food Network, your ratings are up around that number on Sunday nights. But some of us have been turning the sound down for years.

And what does the last baker left standing on “GBBO” get? Neither prize money nor a Ford truck nor his or her own show that will wind up in a desperate time slot. The winner receives an engraved cake plate.

What fame brings ’round afterward has gotten formulaic, even in Great Britain. Media coverage of contestants’ home kitchens and cookbook deals are common; Richard Burr this week is putting the finishing touches on his collection of 78 recipes, a project that took him away from work for two months. He has 30K Twitter followers.

“Third of February, I’m fitting kitchens again,” Burr says. “But it’s been nice getting messages from a lot of men who bake. It makes me happy for fellas to go and make a mess in the kitchen.”

P.S., Food Network: Can you forward this to your buddies at Bravo?

#

Home Safety Watch: Say, it's Super Bowl weekend -- watch out for bedroom TVs toppling over onto the kiddies!

"From 2011 to 2013, an average of 11,000 children under age 18 were treated in emergency rooms for injuries involving TVs or injuries involving both televisions and furniture, according to a new report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. From 2000 to 2013, 279 people were actually killed by falling TVs and furniture."

-- from "TVs tip over on toddlers with surprising frequency,
causing injuries and deaths," on washingtonpost.com

by Ken

Super Bowl weekend means different things to different people. To me, for example, it means that maybe I should check out which episodes TBS is including in that all-day Law and Order marathon (and never mind that I've got the whole thing on DVD -- it still strikes me as a way superior option).

Apparently, to a lot of people the Super Bowl means it's time to buy a new TV or two. And the Washington Post's Lenny Bernstein makes a further connection I wasn't aware of. It seems that buying a new TV frequently means moving the old TV it's replacing into the bedroom, where with alarming frequency it may topple over onto a household kiddie. And whereas old-style CRT TVs perched atop a dresser pack humongous force when they topple over onto an unsuspecting toddler, even much lighter flat-panel sets can seriously mess up a kiddie-size body lying in its descent path.

Well, what the heck? It's only kiddies, right? Pass the nachos.

To Your Health

TVs tip over on toddlers with surprising frequency, causing injuries and deaths

By Lenny Bernstein January 30 at 2:48 PM

It's not your imagination — Americans buy nearly three times as many televisions before the Super Bowl as they do before any other sporting event (the World Series is second, the NBA Finals third), according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

It's what happens after you get that new set home that creates a largely unrecognized health hazard. The old TV often goes in a kid's room or some other part of the home, usually on a dresser or another piece of furniture that's not built to handle it. Curious kids climb the unstable TV-furniture combo and the whole thing tips over, resulting in a surprising number of injuries.

From 2011 to 2013, an average of 11,000 children under age 18 were treated in emergency rooms for injuries involving TVs or injuries involving both televisions and furniture, according to a new report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. From 2000 to 2013, 279 people were actually killed by falling TVs and furniture.

"This is just one of those things that we need to educate people about, because it's so preventable," Marietta S. Robinson, commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety agency, said in an interview.

In tests conducted by the consumer agency, a 32-inch CRT (old style) television dropped from a height of 36 inches hit with an average force of 12,703 pounds. Flat screens hit with 2,100 pounds or less, still a sizable impact on a small child's body. Forty-one percent of U.S. households still have at least one CRT set, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.



Nor is there always a loud crash to alert parents. Brett Horn of Kansas City, Mo., lost his 2 ½-year-old son, Charlie, in 2007 when a 30-inch-high dresser tipped over on the child who was supposed to be napping. Despite having an audio monitor on, Charlie's nanny heard nothing. When she went to check on Charlie and his two brothers, she found the child, who was later declared dead of asphyxiation.

"When that [dresser] tipped over and fell on him, it didn't make a sound or much of a sound, because obviously there was something there to break his fall," Horn said. He and his wife later founded Charlie's House to help spread the word about accidents to children in homes.

Lisa Siefert of Barrington, Ill. found her son, 2-year-old Shane, under his dresser after his nap. There was no television, no toys on top, but presumably he had pulled out the drawers and tried to climb to the top when the furniture tipped over on him. She also has started a child safety organization, Shane's Foundation, to reduce future deaths and injuries.

Siefert and her husband had child-proofed the house for an older sibling of Shane's. "We had outlet covers, drawer latches, netting for the balcony, play gates, door-knob covers," she said. "This is not something that we were aware of."

Robinson said the government works with furniture manufacturers to improve furniture stability, and the Consumer Electronics Association is part of a group that promotes National TV Safety Day on Saturday. The solutions are pretty simple: anchoring TVs and furniture to walls as part of childproofing a home, and recycling old, heavy CRT televisions that are rarely used.

When parents put knives out of reach and childproof cabinet doors, "they should also think about anchoring their furniture to the wall," Robinson said. "This is a danger that people just don't think of."

"We’re asking families to add one important, and perhaps overlooked, task to their pregame prep,” Kate Carr, president and chief executive of Safe Kids Worldwide, said in a news release. “Take a look around your home. Can the flat-panel TV tip over? Have you moved the old CRT to a bedroom dresser where it rarely gets watched? On National TV Safety Day, recycle that old TV. Your home will be safer for it.”

TVs and furniture can be mounted on walls or anchored with straps and brackets, all of which can be purchased at low cost wherever the sets themselves are bought, officials said. If that's impossible, TVs should be placed on low, stable piece of furniture, with the television pushed back as far as possible to the wall.

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Football Watch update: Coach Bill the Science Guy seems to be stronger on football than on science

The New Yorker's "Daily Cartoon" for Friday, January 23rd



by Ken

Okay, we get it. New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick really, really doesn't care for the NFL front office. He thinks they don't like him, and try their darnedest to make his job harder, whlie they're screwing up stuff they're supposed to be doing. Also, he wishes this whole confounded Deflate-gate thing would go away, and since he gets that he can't ignore it or just wish it away, he finally decided to tackle it head on, sort of.

Now in his dim opinion of the league office, who's to say he isn't on to something? The Fiscal Extraction Dept. seems on top of its game, but otherwise the league hasn't been showing itself to stellar advantage in recent times. And certainly one understands that people in hsi organization understand that their jobs include doing whatever falls within their job description to do everything possible to maximize the team's chances of winning. And so maybe it wasn't entirely a coincidence that 11 of those 12 footballs officials impounded after the Pats' 45-7 trouncing of the Indianapolis Colts in the NFC Championship game apparently came up clearly under the league-mandated minimum air pressure.

The league says every team supplies the game balls it will use for a game, subject to pregame checks, and so if there's any way a team can massage those balls to its advantage within the rules, well, it would be irresponsible of the team's people responsible for preparing the balls not to do it. The Pats' balls, alas, seem to have fallen to an eerie extent outside the rules, however, and this is a problem. It was promptly noted that those under-inflated balls are widely thought to be easier for receivers to handle and hold onto, especially in wet conditions. Well, the team is likely set to do what it did back when its people got caught spying electronically on opponents. Everybody does it, they said, but they paid the fine and moved on.

Unfortunately, Coach Bill, who clearly has one of the great minds in the history of the game for focusing all aspects of his team's operation on maximizing the chances of winning, isn't so adept at public-relations niceties. And the worst time to be fumbling your way through a mess like this is in that first week of the two-week gap between the conference championsihps and the Super Bowl, when media stiffs have next to nothing to do, and are apt to be reduced to interviewing one another.

Coach's first line of defense, that he had never spent a day of his life thinking about the internal air pressure of game footballs, was a nonstarter, because clearly somebody in his organization clearly had been devoting a lot of thought to the subject and was spending a lot of time before every game doing something about it. As, again, they should be. I don't think anyone was suggesting that Deflate-gate was his personally concocted scheme. But did he really expect anyone to believe that he runs an operation where nobody deals with the question?

So naturally Coach Bills' next move was to make it worse. As ESPNboston.com reported:

During Saturday's impromptu meeting with reporters, Bill Belichick said more than once that he wasn't a scientist. But he sure sounded like someone who had been buried in his lab conducting experiments when detailing measures he and members of his staff took to simulate the team's steps to prepare game balls.

Their conclusion was that part of their preparation process -- perhaps the way they rub down the balls to get them to the preferred texture -- raises the air pressure inside the balls.

I hope you're strapped in, because we've got a rocky science ride coming up.

“We simulated a game-day situation in terms of the preparation of the footballs and where the balls [were] at various [points] in the day or night, as the case was Sunday,” Belichick said Saturday. “I would say that our preparation process for the footballs is what we do -- I can’t speak for anybody else, it’s what we do -- and that [preparation] process we have found raises the PSI approximately 1 pound [per square inch]. That process of creating a tackiness, a texture, the right feel, whatever that feel is, a sensation for the quarterback, that process elevates the PSI approximately 1 pound [per square inch] based on what our study showed, which was multiple footballs, multiple examples in the process as we would do for a game. It’s not one football.

“Now, we all know that air pressure is a function of the atmospheric conditions, it’s a function of that. So, if there’s activity in the ball relative to the rubbing process, I think that explains why when we gave them to the officials and the officials put it at 12.5 [PSI] if that’s in fact what they did, that once the ball reached its equilibrium state, it probably was closer to 11.5 [PSI]. ... So the atmospheric conditions as well as the true equilibrium of the football is critical to the measurement.”

Asked further about his research, Belichick invited others to replicate his experiment.

“The situation is the preparation of the ball caused the ball to I would say be artificially high in PSI when it was set at the regulated level and it reached its equilibrium at some point later on, an hour or two hours into the game whatever it was,” he said. “That level was below what it was set in this climatic condition. I think that’s exactly what happened. And I think anybody that wants to do those experiments should go ahead and do them themselves. Don’t take my word for it. I’m telling you, we are trying to get to an answer to this and that’s what we have.”

Well, Good Morning America called on Bill Nye for his thoughts, and the Science Guy isn't impressed.



"What he said didn't make any sense," says the real Science Guy. He doesn't see how rubbing the ball can change the internal air pressure. For that, he says, you would need to use an inflation needle to change the amount of air inside.

And there it stands. Unless we get really lucky, the Super Bowl will go ahead as scheduled Sunday after the usual 11 hours of pregame festivities. We may yet look back nostalgically on Deflate-gate.


DWT SCHEDULE NOTE: Next post at 11am PT/2pm ET

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