Uhh, sorry about that, Derek

I think it was me (yeah, it was) that wrote:

So, do I think the Browns are suddenly going to be awesome, now? Hardly. But, the trade was a necessary move that I think they'd been planning/hoping to make, whether it was sooner or later. It's now Brady Quinn's team. The players know it, and the front office just confirmed it with this move.

I watched the Berea Report last night, and it's fun watching all of our players trying not to say the wrong thing when the reporters try to bait them into picking allegiance to one of the QBs. Braylon Edwards looked like his head was going to explode Scanners-style when they asked him about it. He must have said, "I support whoever goes out there. I just want to play football," at least 7 times. Winslow was similar. Anderson's good, yea, we're fine. If you employ the fine art of listening to what they're not saying, it's pretty obvious they're all ready for Quinn.

I never thought I'd agree with Mary Kay Rotten-Crotch (Cabot), but she was like, You get the sense that they all want Quinn on the field, that it's time. You could tell in the Denver game in pre-season that Brady coming in kind of charged them up, and that they like the way he plays and the way he gets them the ball. The only one to come close to openly saying it was Steve Heiden, who (when asked if Quinn was “ready” before the start of the season, even) said: "You'll have to ask Brady that. But from what I've seen, I think he is."

Now, I don't think the Browns are going to the playoffs, or even going .500, with Quinn. But I think Quinn would give the offense a chance to be a lot better the rest of the year... Quinn's about as ready as he'll ever get at this point, and if the other players on offense want him in there (whether or not they'll come out and say it), it's clear that he probably gives them the best chance to win.

Wow. So, if I told you that a Browns QB went: 20-of-33, 328 yards, and five TDs, one INT, 121.0 rating... you'd probably think that Quinn had started, right? And that I looked like an idiot, right?

Well, you'd be right on one count.

Hey, Derek Anderson... my bad. Anderson played the whole game, and after starting 0-for-5 and hearing the boo birds, he simply went off. Jon and I sat there in astonishment. Edwards and Winslow both had 100-yard receiving days, Edwards had 2 TD catches (including one of the more amazing catches I've ever seen), Winslow had 1, and Jurevicius had two himself.

I can only imagine the "Charlie Frye Suicide Watch" in the Seattle locker room was at Defcon 1.

Add to that the 216 yards Jamal Lewis put up. Jon turned to me after Lewis had broken off the second of his insanely long runs and said something to the effect of, "Man, it sure is nice to see him doing that for us, and not to us."

It was just an offensive outburst... it was like the whole team had been offensively constipated for about 18 months, and finally got a chance to let it all out. The biggest thing that all of these stats say without actually spelling it out: The offensive line looked good yesterday. A 216-yard rusher, NO SACKS. It has to be the best "offensive-line-game" this team has played since they came back in 1999. This was the o-line we thought we were getting in training camp before Steinbach got hurt. Now he's back and looking more comfortable, and he and Joe Thomas simply owned the Bengals d-line on that left side. All of Lewis's big runs came behind Thomas and Steinbach. Also, Tucker comes back after two more games, which will only add more depth to the right side, a side that definitely improved from last week to this. And who knows... Bentley might be able to play some time in the second half of the season, which is even more depth... something the Browns have not had up front in a long time.

This is not to say there weren't things to be concerned with as a Browns fan... like the defense giving up 45 points themselves, including 6 TD passes by Palmer. But, the Bengals' offense is a well-oiled machine. The Browns defense is banged up, but there are some holes that need to be fixed, pronto. While it sucks not having a #1 pick next year, the Browns had better spend early and often in the draft on defensive linemen that can stop the run. The defense still plays this bend-but-don't-break game, but a good offense like the Bengals exploits the cushions they give. Until the Browns can get some push up front with their three down linemen, that's going to continue to be the case.

But, I gotta admit... I don't always like some of what he does (I thought bragging about jumping into the Dawg Pound was disrespectful, but then doing it and bitching about getting showered with beer is cry-baby/punk), but Chad Johnson is a fucking player. He was unstoppable, and some of the catches he made, I would just turn to Jon and say, "He caught that?? How in the fuck did he catch that?"

The whole game was just surreal. It was like watching Louisville and West Virginia play... no defense to be found anywhere!

So, where does this leave the Browns? Certainly not the 0-16 disaster that some were predicting. .500? I doubt it... the schedule is still really tough. But, there's some hope on offense, now, and hopefully there's no longer the distraction/rush of the Brady Quinn soap opera. I'd still be surprised if he's not starting shortly after the bye week, but at this point you ride the hot hand as long as he stays hot, and Anderson earned another start or two yesterday, without a doubt.

They *should* be able to go to Oakland and have a good chance to win, if they play offense like they did yesterday. Ditto with Miami in week 6. Baltimore at home will be tough, and New England on the road is basically a loss. But, if they could somehow sneak into the bye-week at 3-3, it would be cause for serious optimism for the Browns, especially since their schedule lets up just a bit after the bye week. Again, this was just one game. But, if they can build on what they did offensively yesterday going forward, 7 wins isn't entirely out of the question anymore. We'll just have to wait and see.

Most importantly, though... I also said:

As I said to a friend Tuesday: there are so many holes in the dam, but if they could patch one, it would give them the opportunity to bail water from the other problem areas. And, while trading Frye and paving the way for Quinn may look frantic and disorganized to the collective NFL media as a whole, Savage may have just stuck his finger into that hole in the dam.

At least for one week, the offense didn't leak any water. Now, if they can keep it that way and figure out how to bail some water out of the defensive boat, they might just have something here.

At least Norm MacDonald used to overtly call it "the fake news"

"Good evening everybody... and now, the fake news."

So began every Saturday Night Live Weekend Update sketch with Norm MacDonald at the desk. Perhaps ABC should consider adopting something similar...

The more I read about this whole Alexis Debat thing, the more it stinks. For more background, consider the following:
Washington Post
Attywood (this is a good one; very comprehensive of all of the ramifications and dovetails)
ABC News Blotter

From the Post:

A former consultant to ABC's investigative unit admitted yesterday that he put his name on a purported interview with Barack Obama that he never conducted.

Alexis Debat, a former French defense official who now works at the Nixon Center, published the interview in the French magazine Politique Internationale. He said he had hired a freelance journalist to conduct the interview, in which the Democratic presidential candidate supposedly said that Iraq was "already a defeat for America" that has "wasted thousands of lives." Debat said he had been unable to locate the intermediary, and the Obama campaign says no such interview took place.

From ABC:

Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant.

See a connecting thread between all of these "fake interview" subjects? If the Obama quotes are any indication, they're all anti-war people on the left, and are/were all painted as hippie pinkos in an effort to make them politically weak (although, how Gates fits in is a bit of a mystery to me... maybe the terrorists use Macs?).

From Attywood:

Debat -- a former French defense official who now works at the (no, you can't make these things up) Nixon Center -- has also been a leading source in pounding the drumbeat for war in Iran, and directly linked to some bizarre stories -- reported on ABC's widely watched news shows, and nowhere else -- that either ratcheted up fears of terrorism or that could have stoked new tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Good God... though ABC's Brian Ross says his information about Al-Qaida was generally "spot on," dude apparently could never prove he had a Ph.D., and is blaming these ghost interviews on free-lance consultants who apparently don't exist and/or can't be tracked down.

I, along with many, blamed the media's rubber stamping of the Iraq war on simple journalistic incompetence. But, does it run deeper than that? This dude is the "terrorism expert" on one of the major networks, and at the same time is publishing/reporting shit that either never happened or can't be corroborated--all while holding a prominent seat in a Washington conservative think-tank group?

Here's the one that kills me (from the ABC Blotter):

In fact, Stephane Dujarric, the deputy communications director for the U.N. secretary-general, said he called the fabricated interview to the attention of the editor of the magazine, Patrick Wajsman, in June 2005.

"I told him that if he went ahead with it, we would denounce the interview as a fake," the U.N. official said. "This was not some obscure guy. This was the sitting secretary-general of the U.N., and the magazine was told it was a fake," he said.

Despite that, Debat continued for the next two years to be cited as the author of interviews with a range of prominent U.S. public officials in Politique Internationale.

The U.N. official said a second supposed interview of Annan by Debat, posted earlier this year by Politique Internationale, was actually portions of a speech the secretary-general had given at Princeton University.

The magazine editor, Wajsman, told ABCNews.com he thought the problem with the Annan interview, one of the first he submitted, was "maybe a technical one" or a misunderstanding.

***

Debat told ABCNews.com yesterday the interview of Sen. Obama was not a fake but conducted for him by a freelance journalist named Rob Sherman in Chicago.

Debat says he believes he was "scammed" by Sherman, who he says he paid $500 to conduct an interview with the senator.

Repeated calls to a number for Sherman provided by Debat have gone unanswered, and today a reporter for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago told ABC News the address for Sherman on a fax that Debat said he received from him does not exist.

Now THAT'S some journalistic incompetence! It's called fucking FACT CHECKING. And, when a spokesperson for the fucking SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UN SAYS YOUR INTERVIEW IS FAKE, you should probably do a little legwork yourself. When they point out that it was pulled from a public speech he gave, maybe that should raise a red flag. And, I'm no free-lance journalist, but if you're sending me to interview a presidential candidate, I'm asking for a little more than $500. That would raise a red-flag for me, too.

But, what's the motivation? As Attywood asks:

But what is really going on? Is Debat pulling sensational stories from thin air, as was the case with Obama, to make a name for himself? Or in his role at the Nixon Center -- which still has close ties to Henry Kissinger and others in the conservatve foreign policy establishment like former Secretary of State James Baker, who spoke there recently-- is he serving a higher agenda of spin?

We may never know, as these people tend to circle the wagons better than any others in recorded history (see: Libby, Scooter).

The fact remains that Debat was the primary source for much of ABC's content relating to Iran and/or possible military/terrorist activity there. And, as we are all taught in kindergarten, where there's smoke there's usually fire.

Attywood:

His work should cause a re-examination of all of ABC News' investigative reporting on both terrorism and Iran over the last couple of years, because -- wittingly or unwittingly -- no other network has better served the Bush agenda in the Middle East.

For example, no story raised tension on the Iranian front more than this one -- which was instantly discredited by several knowledgable experts:

Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months, adding some 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material.

The development means Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009, sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade tell ABC News.

The sources say the unexpected expansion is taking place at Iran's nuclear enrichment plant outside the city of Natanz, in a hardened facility 70 feet underground.

Was Debat -- who was aggressively working with Ross on other Iran stories at the time -- one of the sources on this, as well? If so, it would fit with Debat's modus operandi on the Times of London article.

As noted at the top, there are two radically different ways to look at this scandal. Either Debat is a lone wolf, a deluded self-aggrandizer whose main agenda is promoting himself. Or he is acting in his role at the Nixon Center as a conduit, spreading information and occasional disinformation at the behest of others.

Either way, this is unarguably yet another huge black eye for the American media. But if the latter is true, it could also raise major questions about American foreign policy, and about the future of war and peace in the Persian Gulf.

Some of my questions:

• The righties howled at Dan Rather in 2004 about the Bush/Air National Guard stuff that, while probably still true, couldn't be substantiated and referenced an apparently forged document... where are they and their megaphones now?


• How far down does this rabbit hole really go?


• How much of the news that we get in this country can we actually trust anymore?


• When does the population of this country get off its collective ass and demand more--both in terms of substance and of accountability--from its government and its media?

The US may never attack Iran, but if it does, after what we now know about the 2002/2003 reports of Iraq's WMD capabilities--as well as the continuing grizzly aftermath of our invasion--how can we honestly allow ourselves to place faith in the decision-makers that we're being told the truth?

Scary/disheatening shit, man. And this right as we commemorate 9/11 for the 6th unfortunate time. I'm no tin-foil hat wearer by any means, but it makes you wonder.

After considerable (in)digestion

I can't believe I'm actually writing this. I've had a day or two to digest the frantic Charlie Frye deal made by my beloved Cleveland Browns. There are many ripping the move, calling it "the act of a desperate team," and saying the team has "no plan" and no idea what it is doing.

I didn't disagree with those assessments upon hearing the news, though I myself was not sad to see Frye go (as you might surmise from my post below). But, the more I read, see, and hear (and read between the lines of what the players and the GM are saying), the more you can see they really do have a plan. Quoth Bill Livingston:

This was a big reversal of field after General Manager Phil Savage pleaded for the chance to see Frye with all the components of a respectable offense in place. Anything that gets Brady Quinn closer to putting down the clipboard and taking the snaps, however, is a positive move.

It's really always been about Brady Quinn. Savage announced in pre-season that the club had two tracks: the Frye/Anderson track to keep the team afloat, and the Brady Quinn development track. The only thing he couldn't tell us was when those two tracks converged. Apparently, the Frye/Anderson road took a big turn toward the Quinn road on Sunday, whether or not the team wanted it to.

More from Livy:

Frye was ill-served here with a revolving door of offensive coordinators, but so was Bernie Kosar years ago. Kosar also lacked Frye's good, but not great, athleticism. The difference is that Kosar proved quickly that he could play.

The feeling is that most of Quinn's teammates have that sense about him.

Amen. Let's face it: Charlie Frye was horrible on Sunday, and showed no indication that he had improved AT ALL over the course of his two-plus years in Cleveland. Whether that's entirely his fault, who can say. What I can say with fairly strong certainty is that the man has little field vision, no ability to read a defense pre-snap, and little sense as to when to get rid of the football and to whom it should go, a trait that is highly amplified when he's under duress.

It's like you can almost see the little angel and devil on his shoulder debating whether he should take off and run and try to make some crazy, University of Akron style throw on the run into triple coverage or whether he should stay in the pocket and try to make his reads through his progressions. Usually, the debate would take so long that before he could do one or the other he'd just get buried under a pile of defenders.

So, where does that leave the Browns? Livy?

The Browns look chaotic by doing this now. Yet trading a below-average quarterback who beat up on stiffs after a debacle isn't a big deal.

Word. While it appears that they are in total disarray, I'm beginning to think that's not really the case--maybe they're only in moderate disarray. Phil Savage basically alluded to the fact that, had one of the QBs played better in the pre-season, this trade (or a similar one for Anderson) would have happened then.

It also makes sense from the standpoint that, should they have held onto Frye and he had gone out and sharted his pants again on Sunday, his value would be completely in the crapper. And finally, there is also some degree of truth to the fact that they could have missed out on getting Dorsey back as the "mentor" to Quinn as he ramps up to get ready to play. So, while it's embarrassing that the Browns are the first team since the AFL/NFL merger in 1970 to trade the QB that started week 1 before the next game even happens, it was also a necessary means to an end, and we're not exactly talking about the second coming of Joe Montana getting traded, here.

So, the plan always was to tread water until Quinn was ready, but the suckiness of both veteran QBs in camp and on Sunday made the water a little choppier and has now accelerated that process. This made one of them expendable. Frye probably had more value on the trade market (I honestly still can't believe they got a 6th round pick for him) than Anderson, and now Anderson keeps the seat warm for Quinn. Frye being gone means Quinn gets more practice reps, which means he's ready to play sooner.

Many ask the question: well, wouldn't it have been smarter to axe one of these chodes in the pre-season to make room for Quinn? Yes, but since neither of them appeared to be any good, and since Quinn missed SO MUCH time due to his hold-out, Savage had to keep them both as a quasi-insurance policy (granted, a shitty one, but you get the idea).

So, do I think the Browns are suddenly going to be awesome, now? Hardly. But, the trade was a necessary move that I think they'd been planning/hoping to make, whether it was sooner or later. It's now Brady Quinn's team. The players know it, and the front office just confirmed it with this move.

I watched the Berea Report last night, and it's fun watching all of our players trying not to say the wrong thing when the reporters try to bait them into picking allegiance to one of the QBs. Braylon Edwards looked like his head was going to explode Scanners-style when they asked him about it. He must have said, "I support whoever goes out there. I just want to play football," at least 7 times. Winslow was similar. Anderson's good, yea, we're fine. If you employ the fine art of listening to what they're not saying, it's pretty obvious they're all ready for Quinn.

I never thought I'd agree with Mary Kay Rotten-Crotch (Cabot), but she was like, You get the sense that they all want Quinn on the field, that it's time. You could tell in the Denver game in pre-season that Brady coming in kind of charged them up, and that they like the way he plays and the way he gets them the ball. The only one to come close to openly saying it was Steve Heiden, who (when asked if Quinn was “ready” before the start of the season, even) said: "You'll have to ask Brady that. But from what I've seen, I think he is."

Now, I don't think the Browns are going to the playoffs, or even going .500, with Quinn. But I think Quinn would give the offense a chance to be a lot better the rest of the year. As I said to a friend Tuesday: there are so many holes in the dam, but if they could patch one, it would give them the opportunity to bail water from the other problem areas. And, while trading Frye and paving the way for Quinn may look frantic and disorganized to the collective NFL media as a whole, Savage may have just stuck his finger into that hole in the dam.

Quinn's about as ready as he'll ever get at this point, and if the other players on offense want him in there (whether or not they'll come out and say it), it's clear that he probably gives them the best chance to win.

And, this trade brings us one step closer to that happening.

Don't let the doorknob hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.

Charlie Frye has been traded.

Meh.

I don't really have much of a reaction, other than it was time. Dude looked like he flipped a switch on Sunday after kickoff that caused him to revert back to total rookie form.

My guess would be Dorsey gets re-signed and starts on Sunday. While this isn't the greatest of solutions, it does two things:
1) It puts the guy who probably knows the offense the best into the game, and
2) It means they're ready to start preparing Quinn to start sooner rather than later.

If they had force-fed the fans five more games of the Frye/Anderson rotating carousel of cow-plop..... ugh.


What I can't figure out is why a team would willfully give up a draft pick for this no-field-vision-holds-onto-the-ball-too-long-weak-armed-porno-crustache-having clod.

In all fairness, I wish him the best. It was obvious from day 1 that Charlie cared, that he worked hard, and that he has nothing but the most in terms of moxie and heart. It's just too bad he doesn't have that much talent at playing QB in the NFL.

Is "shit-tacular" a word?

If it is, it would seem to be the best word to describe the football of this weekend.

Lloyd must go. Romeo must go.

Weighing In

Hello, all two of you. It's been awhile! So, what's going on in Dan Land? You guessed it... BULLETED LIST TIME!

• Browns went with Frye as the starting QB, and haven't yet named a backup. They kept Derek Anderson (which surprised me, as you might guess from my posts below) and got rid of Ken Dorsey. I don't know what God Anderson prays to, but I suspect many offerings were made over the weekend.


• I played two rounds of golf this past weekend, and am looking forward to another this weekend with my good buddy Jon, in advance of our pilgrimage to the Browns home opener this weekend. The courses look hard as hell, and I suspect my lunch will be handed to me early and often. In case you haven't heard, I'm not that good at golf.


• The Tribe went 5-0 against reigning Cy Young winner Johan Santana this season. I only feel safe in saying that since we will not face Santana again this year, thus making me unable to jinx any further 2007 appearances against him. First time ever a team has gone 5-0 against a reigning Cy Young winner.


• I'm only going to talk about this once, because I have grown tired of it already (thanks, ESPN). You all only get one free shot, so make it count. I can make no excuses for Michigan losing to Appalachian State. None. But, here are some things to consider, while trying to "rank" how "embarrassing" this game may have been. You may call them excuses if you wish, I don't care. Again, I'm making no excuses for the game itself; Michigan got outplayed, made too many mistakes, and had some questionable coaching moves. For your consideration:
  
  1. "Dan, it was the first time a 1-AA team EVER beat a ranked AP team!!! LOL!"
  Consider that it was the pre-season ranking, and that now Michigan is no longer ranked. Aren't there teams ranked too highly every year in the pre-season? If the BCS accounts for teams' rankings as they change, shouldn't it be the same, here, too? Michigan clearly is/was not the #5 team in the country, and it was a ranking assigned to them based on pre-season projections. Had this been week 7 and Michigan had already crushed two or three decently ranked teams, then by all means... call Elias Sports Bureau.
  
  2. Appalachian State isn't a run-of-the-mill 1-AA team.
  First, let me say I'm NOT letting my boys off the hook: Michigan still should have won the game, and if they played 10 times this year, UofM would probably go 9-1 against them. That said, remember that Appalachian State is probably going to be the #1 ranked 1-AA school the entire year (two-time defending national champs with a win against Michigan now), whereas Michigan is now currently out of the polls (see above); the AP voters certainly don't think they're one of the top 25 in the country anymore. And, one could argue/guess that, if ASU was in division 1-A, they would probably come in as maybe 70th out of 119 teams (let's be honest, there are some SHITTY 1-A teams out there). So, does it make the ASU win look a little less of a monumental upset if you consider it a 70-over-at-least-26 upset? 16-over-a-1 in the basketball tournament, I don't think so. This isn't some team with a 15-19 record winning a play-in game beating Florida in the baseketball tourney. Applachian State is a good fucking team, albeit playing in a smaller division. I mean, hell... the Cleveland Browns beat two AFC playoff teams last season! Consider this post from a sports blog, which I read as part of CNNSI's coverage:
  
  I do not think Appalachian State is getting enough respect here. If I believed everything I'm reading, I would think a ragtag group of high school kids just beat the Colts or the Patriots. This is HARDLY the case!
  
  Appalachian State is, obviously, the best team that 1-AA has to offer. They have won the 1-AA title two years in a row and have some really good players on there. While I don't think they would be worldbeaters in 1-A, I do think that in the right situation they would be respectable and make it to a bowl.
  
  Put another way: I would consider Michigan getting beat by some sorry 1-A also-ran like UCONN, Florida International or even Indiana a MUCH bigger upset than this. (BTW that hurts, because I am a UCONN fan). This is an upset for all time, but let's chill out on the hyperbole, just a little bit.
  
  3. Big Ten fans should remember where they come from.
  Make fun of us? Sure, why not? I've lived in Columbus long enough that I've heard it all. But, rememeber, after 9 months of hearing how bad the Big Ten is, how does this help you, OSU fan? Or you, Penn State fan? It doesn't. It makes your team look just a little bit worse, simply by association. What if Michigan beats you later this season? I'm sure you can all take the Peter Gibbons defense ("Yeah? Well that may be. But at least I never slept with Lumberg."), I guess, but you can't deny the fact that it makes the conference look worse.
  
  4. At least we didn't lose our home opener by 30, like Notre Dame did.
  This doesn't really help Michigan at all. It does, however, make me feel just a little bit better. Why? Because fuck Notre Dame, that's why.
  
  I've said my piece. I'm over it. It's like I told friends: I look at it now like the beginning of any Browns season. Whatever expectations I had are now gone, so I'm not going to dwell on it anymore. I'll just drink my beers, eat my chicken wings and bratwursts, and enjoy the so-called football. Everything else is gravy.


• House of Cards played a lack-luster show this past Saturday night at Scarlet and Grey. Nothing really important here, other than we're at least back to playing after my self-imposed hiatus while changing jobs and going to Ireland.


• Speaking of which, I changed jobs. Not sure if I mentioned that here. Onward and upward! I now work for my old company's parent company's Global Production and Manufacturing group, doing project management for our Pegasus online LMS/Assessment platform. I'll leave you all to discuss what that might mean in the grand scheme of things.


• And, speaking of Ireland, we finally got pictures uploaded and sent around on Snapfish. If you were not one of the lucky ones to receive the honor of seeing these pictures, please e-mail me and I will send them your way. Also, I do actually plan to document our trip here, but as we know I'm a lazy blogger and that has fallen pretty far down on the old "to do" list of late.


• Along the lines of e-mailing me, if anyone reading here was planning on finding themselves tailgating/pre-gaming for the Browns home opener this weekend, and would like to meet up for a drink (*cough*Steve*cough*), please e-mail me as well.


• Michael Vick. Hmm. Jon touched on this in his most recent entry (in short, he's tired of hearing about it, thinks Vick shouldn't be allowed back in the NFL, and is annoyed by people crying that it's a race issue). Rather than leave a huge-ass comment, I'll post my thoughts here:
  I totally agree. The climate of the news media in this country over the past five to six years has become such that I can barely even watch anymore. It's become all about selling papers/magazines, and getting eyeballs glued to TV sets. In the world of infinte 24-hour news (including ESPN) channels, everyone is clammoring for something to broadcast, to get people to watch, to get the ad dollars. They no longer care as much about the news as they do about being unique, and making money off of people (and, one could argue, off of people's tragedy). I mean, I love "Showdown: Iraq!" and "Terror at Virginia Tech" graphics and theme music as much as the next guy, but...
  
  It gives platforms to people who shouldn't have them, be they political hacks and blow-hards from both sides of the aisle, the Nancy Graces of the world who will say anything to be controversial, and have no real business being on TV, and in the sports world, people like Pedro Gomez (whose only job most of the last two years has been filing daily reports about Barry Bonds). It trivializes journalism to the point where the real journalists left in this country are so hard to find, it drives people like me away from the media altogether, and creates a largely dumbed-down population who only get sound bites and watered down news.
  
  The reason I take this round-about relative to Michael Vick is twofold:
  1: This allows people to further agendas, such as "Oh, this is about race." No, it really, really isn't. Just like Chris Rock's old rant/joke about OJ Simpson: "This isn't about race, it's about fame. If OJ wasn't famous, this wouldn't be news. If OJ drove a bus, he wouldn't even be OJ. He'd be Orenthal, the Bus-Drivin' Murderer." But, I digress. There's no way to say that Vick is being treated in a racially unfair way, because a white NFL quarterback has never been federally indicted for running a dog-fighting ring and executing dogs. How can you compare and say Vick is being treated unfairly because he's black? If anything, he's being treated unfairly by the media, but not by the Justice System. And, do we honestly think the media would let a story about a famous white person go, if he/she we accused in a federal trial for *anything*? It's not like the Feds had some circumstancial case and Vick is/was being railroaded. It really is all about fame. If it was me going to trial for this, seeing as how I don't have any money to hire awesome lawyers, I'm going to the clink for a long time, and I can damn-sure bet you wouldn't be hearing about this on your 6 o'clock news unless you lived in Columbus, and even then the story would come and go in a matter of days. Vick's going to be getting off easy, if anything.
  
  And, 2: I love my dog, and neither my wife nor I could imagine our lives without him. I think what Vick and his co-defendents are/were accused of doing is horrible, and I could never imagine doing such things to ANY living thing, for entertainment or otherwise. But let's not miss the bigger picture as well: while this stuff is totally cruel, inhumane, and makes my stomach turn, it also saddens me that there are tens of millions of adults and children in the country without health care, and there are American soldiers dying every day for no discernable (to my eyes, anyway) reason in Iraq. Shouldn't the media be talking more about that shit, too? I know Michael Vick puts butts in seats and gets the protesters out in force for both sides, but can't we all agree that there are bigger fucking issues that we should be dealing with?
  
  As to whether or not Vick should play again, I'm fairly ambivolent. He's going to have to prove a lot to ever really get a chance to do so, because the American public will not be quick to forget this. The other thing to remember is that new commish Roger Goodell is ruling with a pretty iron fist, and this thing has been embarrassing to him and his league. He won't let that go by lightly. Vick has AT LEAST a year to sit AFTER he gets out of the can, if not longer. I've heard 2010 at the earliest. That makes him 31 (I believe), and having not played NFL football for 3 years. Again, he's going to have a lot to prove, even just from a physical standpoint, to make it back to the League. And this is a QB who was never that great a passer to begin with, a QB who runs first, and who will at that time be past his relative prime as an athlete. As Red said in The Shawshenk Redemption, "They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take." Time slows for no one, man.


• Damn, that was a long-ass, John Kerry style bullet point! Karl Rove would fire my ass immediately!


• My work fantasy football draft was yesterday. My team eats it. Raw. My Browns-Tailgater-Crew team is much better, and that was a computer auto-draft as I was out of town. The lesson? I think you know.

Well, that's all folks. Hope your eyes don't hurt.