World Cup fever (oh wait, it's probably indigestion)

[Sit back and enjoy the glib generalizations, my fellow Americans.]

The World Cup is back, and again some effort is going into attempting to get the American public to regard it with the same fervor that is demonstrated by other countries. Nike has ads running tying in to the games. ABC is airing matches on national TV. And while likely there will be better ratings than there were four years ago, it's unlikely that will reflect a greater interest in football (soccer) by those who weren't interested previously.

There's many theories (I assume) about why football (soccer) is not as popular here as in other countries, and all hold some credence:

• It's a slow game with little (or possibly no) scoring, that doesn't play well on TV.

• It's not a game that we invented. (Although baseball can be traced to cricket and our football perhaps to rugby, both are uniquely ours. Basketball is ours, and hockey... comes from a country right next door, so, uh, that's close enough.)

• We don't call it the same thing the rest of the world does.

• We already have plenty of sports where we're good.

All those apply, but I don't think that's the ultimate dilemma that proponents of the sport face.

Americans love a winner. The Olympics come every other year (between the summer and winter games) and there's enough sports involved that there's some American athletes doing well in at least some of them. Heck, we can even pretend to care about ice dancing for a few weeks. But when it comes to World Cup football (soccer) the U.S. has never won. Many times we haven't even made the tournament, and even when we have our team hasn't fared impressively well. I'm not criticizing the efforts of the American players; these are the best players from around the world, and their countries take it more seriously.

And those other countries are willing to follow their team every four years whether it does well or not. Which only proves more profoundly they aren't Americans.

If the U.S. won a World Cup trophy that would spike interest for a while, but one win does not make one a winner; the U.S. must win multiple to prove that we can be consistently powerful. Only with a reasonable likelihood of victory in tournament after tournament can we change the public's perception about paying attention.

Americans fancy ourselves the best country in the world (and I'm not saying we aren't), but the World Cup suggests that there's at least one area where that's not quite the case. But if there's one thing where Americans are unmatched it is in our ability to ignore what doesn't reinforce our national psyche. There, we're #1. We're #1! We're #1!...

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But it would help if the rest of the world would just get on board with calling it "soccer." I'm sure that would seem like meeting us halfway.

A story of determination and 'America: The Story of Us'

About seven weeks ago the History Channel started running a 12-hour series chronicling the history of the country called America: The Story of Us. It seemed like it might be interesting, so I recorded the episodes on the DVR but didn't get around to starting to watch until a couple weeks ago.

I'm still only part way through viewing them. I'll explain.

As the subtitle suggests, it is intended as a story of the U.S. for the U.S. and by the U.S. There's a lot of computer-generated graphics and live-action re-creation with actors (with voice-over narration by Liev Schrieber, who has done narration for a number of such productions), with bits of interviews interspersed. Those interviewed include professors and authors and journalists who presumably have expertise with history as well as celebrities who appear to have paid attention in their high school U.S. history classes.

Clearly the inclusion of the celebrities is trying to appeal to an audience who ordinarily would not sit through 12 hours of a documentary, and in this era of celebrity obsession it's an understandable ploy; it's obviously not an inexpensive production, so they need to get good ratings to justify that. (And it appears the premiere episode got the highest ratings for any show the channel has ever had.) It is very intentionally populist in its tone, and having Sheryl Crow comment on the achievements of Clara Barton rather than a less-famous academic might make it more palatable to a mainstream viewership.

Although they don't gloss over the dark episodes in the nation's history, the overall tone is very much a pep rally for America. However, "the story of us" certainly suggests such a tone before one even starts watching. Besides, populist works tend to be optimistic in their approach to subjects; it's unlikely that a wide audience will sit through 12 hours of a depressing, look-how-awful-we-were diatribe.

I was willing to put up with the interspersed interview footage featuring Donald Trump that the producers included; as annoying as he is, he does technically meet the modern definition of a "celebrity." His scenes were generally less than 30 seconds, so it wasn't too arduous a trial to sit through--although it was far more arduous than I expected viewing the series would be before I started watching.

On writing

The compulsion to write is a curse I would not wish upon my worst enemy. (If I had a worst enemy.)

Vote or we'll make you vote: an initial reaction to Prop. 16's ad

Back on April 1 (no foolin') I saw an ad on TV that morning in support of a proposition coming up in the June primary election. Knowing nothing more about Proposition 16 than what I saw in 30 seconds I composed the following on the train ride in to work. With that election now only days away it seems worth sharing, to let those who are behind the commercial how effective it was.

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There's an initiative on the upcoming ballet where if it passes it would require any takeover of a power company by the government would require a 2/3 majority of voters to approve. The commercial on TV I saw closed with the rationale that such a decision should be up to the voters, as we'll be the ones paying for it.

Well, technically it would be the taxpayers who would be footing the bill, and only a percentage of that group actually vote, but I see where they're going with it.

The movement to put such a topic on the ballet seems to have been motivated by dismay over the government allocating funds without the direct approval of the voting public. In a democratic society it does seem fair to have some say in how the tax money collected by the government are spent.

Of course, ours is not a democracy but a republic, where one's input is achieved through elected representatives in the government, so conceivably the way such a process should occur would be that if one had a specific opinion regarding whether tax money should be used to bail out a major utility company one would tell one's representative, and he or she would gauge the level of support or opposition to the topic in the district and issue a recommendation to those making the decision on that basis. However, that is more likely to be a reflection of those who are most vocal about it (either pro or con), which may or may not be the view of a majority of those in the district.

Voting is flawed in that it only tracks the figurative voices of those who actually participate, but conceivably that collects more opinions than would relying on people to actually contact their representatives.

Who's primarily conservative?

In a week California will hold its primary election where one of two rich people will get the Republican gubernatorial position on the November ballot. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday after next the two potential candidates, Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman, have been running commercials in prime time (Whitman ran one during the finale of Lost, for example) where they're essentially vying for the title of who is most conservative. Or rather, they're attacking each other with accusations that the other is actually liberal, and thus undermining their collective credibility as genuine conservatives, leaving the only potential prize that of who is less objectionable to conservatives.

Conceivably either one could approximate conservatism better than the Democratic candidate would, but nonetheless they are presumably spending a bunch of money tearing each other down in an attempt to sway the hardcore base who is apt to vote in the primary. Not that they're so much touting their individual strengths but pointing out their opponent's weaknesses. It's wooing the conservative voters with the implication that the other one sucks even worse.