The Blind Side is the improbable true story of Michael Oher, a poor black boy from Memphis who ends up in the care of a wealthy white family across town and becomes a prized football recruit. It's also the story of how Oher's maturation coincides with a fundamental shift in pro football's economics. Join the discussion here.
The story of Michael Oher’s intellectual development is also the story of his body type. Michael Oher is rare. Huge. A freak of nature. He’s also an anomaly of nurture and it has taken a village to raise him. The Blind Side by Michael Lewis chronicles Oher’s turbulent childhood, his unlikely ascent into professional football and the importance and evolution, largely monetary, of the left tackle position in the N.F.L. The position Oher would come to play in college for Old Miss and, currently, the Baltimore Ravens.
Using a mixture of stark language and deftly placed insight, Michael Lewis describes the evolution of the left tackle with the language and rationale of free market capitalism. In the early nineties, the N.F.L.’s free agency system meant that teams could “buy the players they needed,” but as would soon become obvious, not all positions were created equal. “The price of protecting quarterbacks was driven by the same forces that drove the price of other kinds of insurance,” Lewis writes. “It rose with the value of the asset insured, with the risk posed to that asset.”
The person charged with protecting that million-dollar golden boy needed strength, speed, agility and bodily bulk— a massive butt and legs as well as long arms—to give the quarterback a few extra seconds in the pocket was unlike the other offensive lineman. It’s rare for someone to have all these specific physical traits, and for the players who had them, the price was high. Very high.
Since we’ve done a little fall cleaning around here, we figured this is as good a time as any to come up with a list of songs celebrating the spirit of change and novelty and newness.
5. I Feel Pretty from “West Side Story” (Quadmoniker)
6. Some Kind of Wonderful by Talib Kweli (Belleisa)
7. New by No Doubt (Brokey)
8. Welcome Back Home by The Dramatics (Blackink)
9. So Fresh, So Clean by Outkast (Brokey)
10. Golden by Jill Scott (Belleisa)
Is brokey, our resident R&B expert, the only person left who remembers Sista? I mean, really. That’s putting the “random” in the Random Ten. With a bullet.
And before we close out, I’d be remiss not to mention that blogmate slb is celebrating a birthday today. So please wish her ponies and unicorns and rainbows and the whole nine?
The problem with the new guidelines from the United States Preventative Services Task Force recommending only biannual mammograms for most women once they reach age 50, rather than annual ones for all women over 40, is that we all believe doctors should perform test after endless test and that, if they do, they can always save our lives. I blame it all on Fox’s hit House, and on Hugh Laurie’s devilish charm.
The faith in tests and the ability of the medical system to always stop death may explain why so many doctors and insurance companies are already objecting to the new standards. We just don’t believe it’s not better to screen. That idea is so ingrained that I heard someone chatting on NPR about how the panel’s study did not account for digital screening over older methods, but the panel did say there was not evidence that digital screeners performed any better than older tools. Rachael Larimore over at Double X (or XXFactor, whatever it is now) called it early health care rationing. Get ready ladies, no more preventative screening for us.*
All of this undermines the findings of the panel, which pointed out how real the risks of overtreatment are. We tend to want to stop cancer at all costs, but every time we let a surgeon cut us, there’s the potential for harm. That doesn’t count costs that might seem mundane in life or death situations, like the co-pays for uninsured women, which really matter for a woman on the edge of solvency. If she’s much poorer in the ensuing years, that might harm her health, too. The truth is, reducing the breast cancer rate by 15 percent for the 40 to 50 age group might not be worth the harm it does to other women.
Try telling that to the 15 percent who might have their lives saved. The problem is, everyone personally knows of a woman who got breast cancer at weirdly young age and had no risk factors. She either was saved or not. Either way you laud or blame the doctors involved, but things are a lot more open to chance and human ability than we care to admit.
As Igor Volsky pointed out over at The Wonk Room, this might have broader implications for the kind of comparative effectiveness research policy-makers hope will be part of health care reform. When Americans are asked, they might say that people have a right to health care whether they can afford it or not, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who says that the health care of the entire nation is more important than their own health or the health of their families.** Maybe that explains that, while people polled support the idea of reform, many people think it’ll make their own situation worse. If you’re lucky enough to have employer-provided health care, which the majority of Americans still are, the kinds of health care concessions you make might seem to be in your control. The government is just more open about the fact that concessions are necessary than private insurance companies are. It all depends on which kind of imperfect situation you think is better. We know what science tells us, but it’s a hard sell.
Welcome to the ‘new’ PostBourgie. The new design has been up for a couple of days, but I thought we’d welcome you all formally to our new digs. On the front end, things are bright white, and on the backend we’ve moved to a new host. That’s right, y’all, we’re official.
G.D. and I spent many hours tinkering with things, and we’d like to thank the our co-bloggers for their helpful yeas and nays. And of course, many thanks to the lovely and talented Taytana Fazlalizadeh for the banner which we get to feature even more prominently. (Do go check out Taty’s work. I bet she’ll even trade you some of it for money!)
And finally, I’d like to welcome our new readers (and wave hi to the regulars). Feel free to settle in, read, talk to us, and to each other.
1% of Americans are millionaires, compared to 44% of Congress (237 elected officials, to be exact). The median income in the Senate is just under $2M, in the House it’s just over $600k. Median household income in the US is $50,303.
Just because an individual is rich does not preclude them from pursuing pro-poor or equitable policies, nor does it suggest that they cannot relate to poverty or economic inequality. But when the group norm is staggering wealth compared to the typical American, including in countless districts these officials represent, then it is understandably difficult to consider or develop policies that truly address economic hardship. Add to this wealth disparity the reality that 9 in 10 House incumbents and 8 in 10 Senate incumbents are re-elected each election year, and my despair over Congressional legislation benefiting the average American certainly deepens.
She’s not trafficking in easy populism here. Like she said, members of Congress live in a world with relatively high job stability. They pull in $170, 000/yr and make use of an extremely generous healthcare plan in which the government pays up to 75 percent of the premium. The major legislative players in health care reform have never worried about their employers switching to an inferior plan with a higher contribution or dropping their insurance outright. Their plans have no lifetime caps, they face no rescissions or any of the constellation of obstacles that are par for the course for their fellow insured Americans (to say nothing of the folks with no coverage at all). And then there are folks like John McCain, who despite his considerable wealth would have a hard time getting covered on the individual market thanks to his history of cancer, and has been insulated from from that reality by receiving government-funded care as a member of the Armed Forces, a veteran, and a U.S. Senator. Or Dick Armey, the former House majority leader-turned-professional-healthcare-reform-obstructionist, who received public health care as a young professor at a state university in Texas before spending the next several decades in Congress.
If the impression you’ve gotten from the way our lawmakers have handled the health care debate is that this whole thing is a big abstraction to them, that’s because it probably is.
The homie blackink12 said he was just finally getting down to watch ‘The Wire.” Better late than never, right?
Looking back at this clip got me all amped. How did this show get us to root for all the people we ended up rooting for? (Not the middle schoolers in season four; you had to root for them.) Stringer Bell? Prop Joe? Man.
My favorite quote isn’t here. When we first meet Bodie, he’s just a short-sighted, headstrong foot soldier. By the time we get to that scene with him and McNulty at the Arboretum a few seasons later, he’s just completely ground up. “I feel old,” he mutters to no one in particular. In context, it’s absolutely devastating.
You ever have one of those dreams wherein you’re taking your pet polar bear for his evening walk, strolling past random people you sort of know while Chubb Rock stands on the corner politely asking passersby if they can spare some Lemonhead money? And then you wake up and realize it’s because you left your tv on? That’s what last weekend was like, but in real life.
On Saturday, Alyssa Rosenberg and Shani headed to a Howard football game to watch the Bison get murked. (But Alyssa was really feeling the band.) Later that night, a motley contingent that included myself, quadmoniker, Spencer Ackerman, Matt Yglesias, Shani, belleisa, Mark Goldberg and Rhome Anderson repaired back to Alyssa Rosenberg’s apartment after a planned bar outing was thwarted when Jamelle’s I.D. failed to meet the completely arbitrary guidelines set forth by the District of Columbia. (His Virginia I.D. is vertical, and D.C. bars were recently prohibited from honoring them because they’re easy to fake or some such bullshit.)
But lo! Fun was had! Tweets were hastily tossed out into cyberspace. The rest of the folks arriving for the Cold Drank Summit were advised to meet us. Dayo Olopade rolled through, as did Dave Weigel and Ezra Klein. Ann Friedman, Phoebe Connelly and Alex Gutierrez dropped by. (Shani to the six-foot-four-ish Ann: “You tweet like a much shorter person.”) Gautham Nagesh and l bonded over our love for 90’s hip-hop, while Anna John professed her love for Rasheed Wallace. The next morning, I woke up ran five miles on city’s edge with Adam Serwer. Just two bloggers who jog, yo. Or…joggers who blog. (Yo, wtf? Does that not sound like some freely associative REM sleep shit?)
All the thanks to this goes to Alyssa, who made the bold decision to throw this bloggy get-together, and the no-less audacious decision to down a beverage comprised of grape drink and vodka. (Ain’t no vitamins in that shit.) Seriously, not a bad way to spend a weekend.
It took 12 years, but here we go again! Ridiculous Moments in R & B, part deux! In no particular order, the winners are:
1. Who let your drunk uncles in the studio?? I have no idea how ‘Float On’ by the Floaters came about, but I’m guessing it went something like this:
Larry: Ay! Ay y’all, this where my nephew Ronnie J come in here and do his music shit at…I think he got some beer in a fridge here somewhere down here since Paul done drank up all the everythang.
Paul: You cain’t put that on me, man! You know I don’t drink no beer if it ain’t malted anyway, you hear me??! *pimp runs around the room*
Charles: WHERE THE ‘YAC AT??!
Ralph: Shut up, fool! Hey Larry, what you say Ronnie ‘nem do in here? Music? Aw, shit, we could do that! We can make somethin’ for the ladies, man!
Charles: AIN’T NO MAD DOG OR NOTHIN IN HERE, MAN!
Larry: Yeah! Say, man, that ain’t a bad idea! There’s this redbone that work at the Snackin’ Shack I been tryin’ to get at for the longest!
Ralph: Awwww yeah! I’ma get on that microphone, talkin’ bout some “I’M A SCORPIO! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEAN, GIRL??!” *inappropriate hip gyration*
Charles: THIS SOME BULLSHIT!!!
Gotta hand it to ‘em though. The foot action is *crazy* and this song is better than ANYTHING that Trey Songz will ever do in the history of his life. More…
In a recently published study, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers assessed the subjective happiness of women and found that despite greater opportunities, higher wages and increased education, their perceived feelings of well-being have decreased steadily over the last 35 years. In addition they identified a widening gap in the levels of subjective happiness experienced by men and women. This finding touched off a flurry of responses and rebuttals, in the attempt to determine whether we really are unhappy and if so, why. Among the popular hypotheses for female misery was the stress of motherhood due to the disproportionate role of women in child-rearing, along with the lack of supports within society for those who are struggling to balance parenting and careers.
Did all this depress you? Need a pick me up? Then maybe you should forget everything you just read and go pop out a baby instead of popping pills.
Dave Weigel for the win on Twitter this afternoon: “Weird, Oprah has some unemployed conservative blogger on today”:
For a second, I was confused. I thought he was talking about Lou Dobbs.
Regardless, once I finish this round-up, I’m putting together a proposal to make our next book-of-the-month selection “Going Rogue.” I hear all the kids are reading it:
1. The NYT’s Michiko Kakutani reviews Sarah Palin’s much-hyped memoir. “Just as Ms. Palin’s planned book tour resembles a campaign rollout — complete with a bus tour and pit stops in battleground states — so the second half of this book often reads like a calculated attempt to position Ms. Palin for 2012. She tries to compare herself to Ronald Reagan by repeatedly invoking his name and record. She talks about being ‘a Commonsense Conservative’ and worrying about the national deficit. And she attempts to explain, rationalize or refute controversial incidents and allegations that emerged during the 2008 race.” (G.D.)
2. By now, you’ve heard that Sept. 11 co-conspirator Khalid Shaik Mohammed and four others will face trial in New York for their roles in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Glenn Greenwald, Juan Cole and Amanda Marcotte offer their takes on the completely predictable right-wing whining about the Obama Administration’s failure to indulge totalitarian notions of justice. (Blackink)
4. More about vets: Tara McKelvey uncovers how Bush-era officials substituted pop-Christianity for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders and depression. “God doesn’t like ugly,” one political appointee told Paul Sullivan, an analyst in the VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration, in a clumsy attempt to reduce the cost of caring for psychologically traumatized veterans. “You need to make the numbers lower.” (Blackink)
13. Residents in a rural Maine town (really, is there any other kind?) are opposing a multifamily housing complex that would expand housing options for immigrant laborers. The aforementioned Dobbs would be proud. (Blackink)
14. The Philadelphia-area swimming pool that was embroiled in controversy during the summer for allegedly discriminating against minority campers has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. (Blackink)
16. Over at Bitch Ph.D., M. LeBlanc has an interesting post about pseudonymity and sexual shame. “I look back and think, man, if I were writing under my real name, would I ever have written any of those things, all of which I’m proud of? I know I wouldn’t have. But why?” (Blackink)
17. Why Amanda Hess hates “I love women.” Chris Brown and Wendy Williams are involved. (Blackink)
18. Double X will be absorbed back into Slate. Can’t say I’m that sorry when good pubs like the Washington Blade are dying. (Shani-o) *Ironically (if that’s even the word, this item was a last-second addition to the round-up. I initially had the NYT Magazine’s profile on Megan Fox here. Guess I still do).
23. Would football be safer – i.e. prevent more head injuries – without helmets? Possibly. (Blackink)
24. Milwaukee Bucks rookie point guard Brandon Jennings on the challenge of the NBA: “‘Sometimes it feels like Oak Hill (Academy) out there,’ he said. For Jennings, the NBA is already akin to high school. Rookie dominance seems assured. Stardom is the next stop.” (Blackink)
25. And finally, on a much more somber and tragic note, I want to learn a lot more about Shaniya Davis than Sarah Palin over the next couple of days. But not really. If you all know what I mean.
I’m sure there will be lots of talk about health care reform, “30 Rock” and good hair, which neither blacks nor Jews are credited with having much of. And there’s really not much more that can be said in this space.
But if we had a seat at the table, and say, Alyssa or Jamelle or Adam turned on the iPod, this is what they would probably play:
Am I the only person who didn’t know that Carlton from Fresh Prince was hosting a lame-looking show on a network I’ve never heard of?
I caught a brief glimpse of a commercial for it when I went to my water cooler and, frankly, wish I didn’t even know. Though for a minute I thought he was just in the commercial, and that was even more sad.
Rick Perry doesn’t seem to like his fellow Texans (via Politico):
Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of “punishing” Texas and being “hell-bent” on turning the United States into a socialist country.
Speaking at a luncheon for a Midland County Republican Women’s group, Perry said that “this is an administration hell-bent toward taking American towards a socialist country. And we all don’t need to be afraid to say that because that’s what it is.”
Perry praised the tea party movement to the Republican activists in attendance, crediting the grassroots groups with discouraging some Democrats in Washington from pushing for a public option in the health care bill.
Under Gov. Perry’s wise leadership, Texas has consistently won the coveted title of “nation’s least-insured state.” Texas leads the nation in uninsured adults and children; a staggering 25 percent of Texans – or 6 million people – live and work without health insurance, and that includes nearly 1.4 million children. What’s more, Texas is ranked near the bottom when it comes to health care utilization, especially among children: overall, Texas is ranked 43 in terms of prevention and treatment, and among children Texas is ranked 40, with only 67.3 percent of Texas children receiving a preventative medical and dental visit in the past year.
Those of us without a sociopathic disregard for our fellow citizens recognizes that absent some serious intervention in the health care system, this trend is sure to continue, with more and more Texans losing their health insurance, and more and more Texans dying because of it. I’d like to think that Gov. Perry knows this and is working diligently to find a solution to his state’s health care catastrophe. But judging from his comments and his steadfast opposition to health care reform, I think it’s safe to say that Rick Perry is mostly unconcerned with the growing humanitarian crisis in his state. Which makes sense. The large majority of the uninsured are located in the South and the West, which also happen to be the last remaining Republican strongholds. And as such, Rick Perry’s casual disregard for the uninsured puts him in close company with most of his ideological fellow-travelers.
To jump on Matt Yglesias’ point from this past weekend, if we operated with a slightly less absurd set of political institutions, a minority of legislators from sparsely populated states – or even larger states – wouldn’t be able to obstruct efforts to provide millions of people with potentially life-saving insurance. Moreover, if we had a more responsible media, obstructionist legislators and leaders would be treated with disdain and opprobrium, not regularly trotted out as respectable members of the political elite.
We’re tinkering with some stuff below PB’s hood, which is why all of our links are so janky right now. Our bust.
Here’s some of what we missed:
Conor Fredersdorf defends the Stupak Amendment in the House health care bill, which bars public money from being spent on any healthcare plans that might cover abortion.”…I’d feel uncomfortable with the notion of my tax dollars being used to fund abortions — just as I am presently uncomfortable that my tax dollars are used to fund the death penalty — and wish that they weren’t, even as I strongly support all sorts of reproductive health care for women, including abortions in cases when the life of the mother is at risk.” Ann Friedman pushes back. “The thing about the Stupak Amendment is that it goes beyond the Hyde Amendment, which bars public funding for abortion under Medicaid. Stupak would actually prevent employer-based plans — ones that are not supported by your tax dollars — from covering abortion.”
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