I was on an airplane last night as the election was decided. As the plane landed after midnight on the East Coast, I confess that my hand was shaking as I turned on my phone for the news. I did not want to see dishonesty and divisiveness and raw political hackery rewarded. It is hard enough for anyone to actually address the problems, to move this country forward, to make the intransigent American ruling class yield even a yard of the past to the inevitable future. But going backwards last night would have been devastating. I read the returns in silent elation; a business trip had me traveling in business class and the gnashing of corporate teeth all around precluded a full-throated huzzah on my part. I abhor a gloat.

But the country is changing. And this may be the last election in which anyone but a fool tries to play — on a national level, at least — the cards of racial exclusion, of immigrant fear, of the patronization of women and hegemony over their bodies, of self-righteous discrimination against homosexuals. Some in the Republican party and among the teabagged fringe will continue to play such losing hands for some time to come; this shit worked well in its day and distracted many from addressing any of our essential national issues. But again, if they play that weak-ass game past this point, they are fools.

Read more →

Best comment of the night, from my younger nephew, a lifelong Baltimore fan:

“I don’t know how to process these feelings.”

Onward.

Friends, neighbors, fellow Baltimorons:

(And we can call each other Baltimorons, the rest of you can just back away from the term.)

I ask you to put down the torches and pitchforks on this obvious affront to the baseball gods.  When Sports Illustrated called and asked for an essay they said nothing — nothing — about the cover.  It’s a big magazine, with a lot of sports coverage.  And I undertook what amounts to a sidebar-next-to-the-main-baseball-piece.  And, hey, all of that runs inside the mag as a package right?

Had I known about the cover, I would have written half as long, and misspelled every other word, and scrawled it in crayon.

Yes, I am worried.  Yes, at this instant — if not three days ago — I believe the jinx to be an absolute threat.  An SI editor first mentioned the cover in a phone conversation with me on Monday, late afternoon.  The O’s had won the first game of the Monday doubleheader, they dropped the second.  And then they were shut out for the first time in almost two months last night.

Right now, I am so tight you couldn’t pull a pin out of my ass with a John Deere tractor.

Is there a better, more apparent argument for a return of collective bargaining and trade unionism as a core value in American life than the current NFL season?  I say this as a Ravens fan — and a secondary supporter of the Saints.  Have there been games played in which these scab refs haven’t butchered it at key points?  The season is fast becoming an irrelevant measure of anything.

And I say that having banked all the emotional equity from last night’s field goal.

Seriously.  It pays to go with the union label.

The Baltimore Orioles major league baseball team.

That is all.