Archive for September, 2016

exercises in tangential queries

Friday, September 2nd, 2016

A good puff-piece, for a topic that deserves a puff piece in the Willamette Week — the popular woman’s professional soccer team.  Yes, in the status of recording the verities and color of “Portland”, this is what you puff – I once had to reluctantly thought “A cover article that had to be done” while gritting my teeth on a Willamette Week cover focus on Voodoo Doughnuts.  (On the other hand, with that whole “shoe” puff piece of cover issue, my thought landed on “I hope Nike paid a good sum for this promotional issue.”)

Portland Thorns?  Deserves a fluffer of a cover story.  Record the city, record this.

All that being said, I’m struck on something.  And it’ll probably land as an atonal “huh?”

In this country, women vote more than men, watch more movies, buy more books, commit fewer crimes, and graduate from college more frequently. The one thing they don’t do anywhere close to as much as men is watch pro sports.

Random assortment of things, that don’t add up to anything.  Watching more movies is not a positive or a negative metric.  The rest are either surely a positive metric, or neutral but probably defined as positive.  Then we get to “the one thing they don’t do anywhere close to as much” — watch pro sports.  Something that for pro sports franchises have lead to pretty comical attempts at tapping the market, but beyond that is something meaningless…

“THE” throws me for a loop as “ONE thing”.  Surely there are other things men do more than women.  Of neutral, positive, and negative metric.  With whatever sociological scannings and attacks on the patriarchy you wish to apply.  Vote for Donald Trump, for example.  Men do that more than women.

the third party spotlight

Friday, September 2nd, 2016

Fiasco meets Jill Stein campaign, as she arrives in the wrong city for a speech.  Was aiming for Columbus, Ohio; had to make do in Cleveland instead.

Interesting.  Ohio.  Clearly not an adherent to that “targeted campaign outside the swing states” that so enthralled the Green Party’s 2004 run.

The good news about this snafu is that it’s about the only way Jill Stein will get any media attention… other than your “liberal lean-ers trying to scare you away from voting for her.”

Why I suspect Gary Johnson, who’s reportedly holding onto his half a dozen or ten percentage points pretty well, won’t land there by election day:  somehow has to burst onto some attention out of his underground bunker… The campaign is to try to get to 15 by Debate time… so, I suppose William Weld can kick Mike Pence and Tim Kaine’s butt in the vice presidential debate.

Meantime, I have to ask… as Washington State’s Evan McMullin runs about and picks up the endorsement of a former senator from Washington State (but no current Senator — isn’t Nebraska’s Ben Stasse supposed to say something?) — I want to know who his running mate is.  Arguably I have no reason to care — this campaign strikes me as particularly pointless and ill-designed.

Hey!  The Reform Party’s still kicking in Montana!