I’m old enough to remember when a great head NFL coach in New England named Bill Belichick tortured a young Peyton Manning to death by moving around his corners and safeties and getting very physical with receivers from the Indianapolis Colts. Manning looked like a below average high school quarterback against the Patriots, and couldn’t beat them. Nothing the Patriots we’re doing violated NFL rules, but people hated watching it. Hence, the league basically banned what Belichick was doing. Manning soon won his first Super Bowl.
The NFL’s commitment to parity is stupid and unmatched, and now we hear today’s version of it in rumblings about getting rid of the Eagles’ “tush push.” The play is a completely legal variation of the classic “quarterback sneak,” which the Eagles do on third and fourth down and short yardage situations. As you can see above, the Eagles put three players behind quarterback Jalen Hurts, and when he runs a quarterback sneak, they get behind him and push him forward. There’s nothing illegal about it, it just works nearly (not entirely) all the time. Other defenses still have the same number of guys on the field to stop. They just basically don’t.
So now of course there are writers and opposing fans who want the play banned. Not because it’s illegal now, of course. They call the play boring. I guess it is boring to watch a play work against you all the time now. They really just want it banned because it works.
I know there’s nothing the NFL hates more than potential dynasties. I get it. The way to stop things from working is to innovate and find a defense. These are professional athletes, not little leaguers. If the Eagles are simply so good that no one can stop them from gaining a yard or two on short yardage downs, maybe they don’t belong in the league. Just saying.
A little over a decade ago I took a job with the NJDSC’s coordinated campaign for Senator Bob Menendez’s 2012 re-election. I must admit it was one of my favorite jobs in politics. Menendez is a tremendously gifted politician, one who remembers everything about local elected officials, party leaders, and communities he represents. He understands politics at a higher level than most other elected officials and leaders. His operation ran professionally, even as a hurricane destroyed the state. Not only do I not harbor any ill will at them, I enjoyed my first New Jersey experience. I learned a ton and made some good friends from the experience.
For as good as Senator Menendez is at politics, trouble has followed him around. As soon as he was appointed by Governor Corzine to replace Corzine in the Senate, the Bush DOJ investigated him. As he was being re-elected in 2012, stories of him not paying prostitutes in the Caribbean surfaced. Then there were stories about his sex life in Washington. Then the Obama Justice Department indicted him and lost at trial. Now he’s accused of betraying our national security and selling policy for bribes by the Biden DOJ. He’s never quite “in the clear.”
It was easy to dismiss the Bush DOJ investigation as politically motivated. His personal life never really interested me either way, even if it wasn’t a good thing. The Obama DOJ indictment might have been an issue, if I didn’t get that Obama world didn’t like Menendez both for his political style and his differences of opinion on foreign policy matters such as Iran, Cuba, and Israel (note here, I worked for Obama too, in particular when the Menendez investigation was ongoing, and in Jersey). Everything previous to this either could be dismissed as politics or inconsequential. The current allegations are neither.
I do have to admit I still have issues with this indictment, things that probably will be answered in time though. It’s not a crime that Menendez took meetings with foreign leaders as Senate Foreign Relations Chair. It’s not a crime to have a bunch of money and gold in his house. It’s not even necessarily a crime that businessmen paid his wife, particularly if she had some sort of affiliation with them. Prosecutors are going to need to prove that he either gave them information or policy help for a bribe, or gave them classified information, or received gifts that he didn’t properly disclose (which may be an ethics issue over a criminal one). That part isn’t fully clear yet to me, but I’d imagine the Attorney General already had to be satisfied by the investigation for these charges to be filed. So I guess we’ll see.
Really though, how stupid? Here is a Senator who has a safe seat for life, but a history of near troublesome issues, and he’s hanging around with these characters? His wife is receiving luxury cars from them? Gold bars in your house? Even if we assume Menendez is right, and there are administration and DOJ folks that have wanted to get him for years, then why did you allow even the possibility that they could make you look like a crook again? Honestly, I’m not even sure innocence makes him look better here. If I were a voter, I’d consider kicking him out because I’m just tired of it.
It really doesn’t matter if anyone thinks Menendez is innocent or not, he is entitled to the legal presumption of innocence. Family and friends have asked if I think he’s guilty or not, and given that I never worked in his official government office, I wouldn’t know enough about these meetings to say. With that all said, let’s be logical here. Yes, President Obama was angry at Menendez for opposing him on the Iran nuclear deal, but I have no reason to believe President Biden would target him personally. I would imagine this White House and Justice Department would be super reluctant to indict a Senator on any charges they believed they would lose, given the scrutiny they’re under between indicting the former President and the current President’s son. I have to believe this case is more than spite or spin. Make of that what you will.
Ultimately Menendez will face a jury, and we’ll see what happened. That is the proper venue to judge him. I generally do not believe most politicians should resign from office over most allegations, as that is typically a Nixonian strategy to avoid any price for bad behavior. I also generally believe that most political leaders who call for other politicians to resign over a scandal, don’t do so out of principle, but more so out of embarrassment over inconvenient associations with the scandal. With that said, I think the Menendez era is reaching it’s end in New Jersey. His term is up next year, and Democratic voters should pick a new Senate candidate next June, whether he retires or not. Senate rules already removed him as the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but given the accusations, that’s not enough. Senator Schumer should remove him from the committee altogether (yes, I know they may not be able to replace him), and any other Senate post that allows him near our national security. I don’t know if President Biden can yank his clearance to view classified documents as a Senator, but he should look into it and try. Democrats are already stepping forward to run against him in 2024’s primary, as they should. They should make life very difficult for Senator Menendez, under the circumstances. All of this leads to the question of whether he should resign, which my opinion is a bit of an outlier on. The last reason he should resign is that other politicians want him to resign and get out of the news. They’re the last judges we should all want sitting in judgment. Menendez should consider resigning because it’s over though. When your defense is stupidity over corruption, that’s not going to fly with the public. Normally I say that juries and voters should decide a Senator’s fate, not group think mentality. If you’re that Senator though, and the outcome looks pretty clear to you though, you probably shouldn’t waste your time. Sure, Washington always bends it’s morals for politicians they like, and no one likes realizing they aren’t in that crowd. It doesn’t change the reality though.
From the world of the frivolous- Barstool shock jock Dave Portnoy is in a fight with the Washington Post and reporter Emily Heil. The short version? Barstool hosted an event in New York City called “One Bite Pizza Fest” in New York City, Washington Post reporters Emily Heil & Tim Carman started writing a preview piece about how Barstool President Dave Portnoy is problematic for his sponsors, Portnoy caught wind of it and confronted Heil, and the whole thing went viral. For the most part, you don’t need to care, I don’t. But this sort of nonsensical story does get into some larger stories.
I’m going to spend one paragraph, and one paragraph alone addressing Portnoy and Barstool. It’s pretty clear to me that Portnoy is a Trump voter type, and obviously I worked against Trump twice, so I don’t take political cues from Portnoy. With that said, Portnoy and his Barstool brand cover things I take at least some interest in (namely sports and pizza), and I do find he and his brand to be usually entertaining. Sometimes it can get cringe, but it is entertaining. I get that most people on the left right now don’t typically like shock jock types, but that’s for them. If anything, I will say that usually a pizza review from Portnoy can be good exposure for small business pizza shops, so I’ll try to find the good in it. Basically, in short, I know a lot of you who might read me aren’t big Portnoy fans, but I don’t quite share those issues.
Ok, so to this story itself, there’s a couple of larger stories worth diving into. First is the decision to write the article from a negative viewpoint to start. The second was the effort to create the viewpoint the article is written from. Basically a major newspaper reporter in Washington treating the story as though there’s a “shared societal viewpoint” on Portnoy and his behavior, then the effort to weaponize said viewpoint with the sponsors. There are some assumptions made that get into disputed areas in society.
Heil used the words “misogynistic comments and other problematic behavior” in her email, so I’ll operate with those as our standard. My guess is that if we polled an audience (that knows who Portnoy is) that is more female and/or higher educated, like say Washington Post readers, at least a plurality might agree with Heil’s wording. If we asked an audience that was younger and more male, we probably get a different result. Broader society has decided some people- namely Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Jerry Sandusky, or Larry Nassar, to name some- are definite monsters. They’re criminal convicts, found guilty of crimes by a jury of their peers. Portnoy? He’s an edgy entertainer that may cross lines, well short of the systematic abuse carried out by those people. I would probably agree he’s objectionable, to some. The assumption that he is objectionable though is a problem in a news article, because at least a chunk of society wouldn’t agree. There’s an assumed societal value here that doesn’t exist.
This gets to our second issue here- the reporter reaches out to the sponsors and suggests Portnoy is problematic for them, but I’m not sure we get the context of how he is. It appears that in fact, Barstool held the festival in New York this weekend, a lot of people went to it, and the sponsors stuck with the event. I do assume some people are unhappy with that, but someone is unhappy with everything. Was there a real movement that threatened the festival? I don’t see it. In the recorded call between Portnoy and Heil, she admits that she used provocative language to get a response. Is this creating the story you want to write? It certainly feels like it.
I actually don’t have a problem with the article Heil wanted to write- basically that Portnoy is holding a pizza festival, and people are sponsoring it despite the controversy that is around him. My beef is that we’re calling it news. There are opinions assumed in the theme of the article that cannot be presumed as settled in society. It’s perfectly fine to debate Portnoy’s behavior, the controversy makes him money, but frame it as a viewpoint on the event. Call it editorial, or opinion, or even a feature. News? I’m not sure.
There are right-wing media rags that have popped up in recent years and gained a following, basically because people don’t trust the legacy media. For that matter there are left-wing rags too. If we would like, I could have written this same piece about legacy media coverage of Vice-President Kamala Harris and the presumption that she hurts Joe Biden. Opinion is injected into news every day by reporters with major national news outlets, and it diminishes confidence from the readers. Yes, major figures are controversial in our society. If that’s how you report on them, your piece is slanted from the start. If some chunk of the readers don’t accept the framing, they will tune out that outlet and find new ones. Hence, the echo chambers.
The last point here is specific to the largest, most elite media outlets of America, which the Washington Post is definitely a part of. Papers and networks like the Post are generally located in our largest, wealthiest cities, staffed by graduates of the biggest, most elite journalism schools in the country. Increasingly these outlets have audiences that are wealthier and better educated. Their coverage increasingly doesn’t match the values and life experiences of readers in different demographic groups. This is largely why they get things wrong like writing off Joe Biden in the 2020 primaries, but thinking Elizabeth Warren was serious and running a good campaign. It’s also why they continue to be astonished by Trump. This disconnect is dangerous though, and is pushing people towards less ethical and professional news outlets that tell people what they want to hear. When covering a deeply divided society and talking about cultural issues, losing a huge chunk of the audience at the jump diminishes your reach. Someone will fill that void. They may not be who we want them to be.
Let’s just make a distinction here- the Bush GOP had horrible policy ideas, but we were debating ideas then, unlike the Trump era GOP. No Child Left Behind was bad policy, but it was education policy. What is the stuff above, mostly coming out of conservative influencers?
We’re dealing with a cult. A grievance cult, often fighting wars that don’t exist. Let’s be clear, there is no John Fetterman body double, unfortunately. January 6th was actually a violent insurrection against America. The United States does not simply let trains full of migrants cross the border unchecked. And sure, there was a Pride event at the White House that you may not have liked, but Lauren Boebert did get caught in a heavy makeout session on a date (I don’t care, but for her moral edicts for the rest of us).
Notice that there’s literally no policy discussions here, just conspiracy nuthouse shit. We’re days from a government shutdown, although no one seems to have policy reasons why (now I guess Trump wants DOJ defunded?), but this is what’s animating the GOP.
As best I can tell, today’s GOP wants to cut taxes and regulation to the bone, ban some books, ban abortion, appoint some judges, pump every drop of oil out of the ground they can find, and maybe get rid of some “woke” people. There’s basically no vision, no policy left. No standing strong against Russia and China, no “faith based initiatives,” not even really getting rid of Social Security and Medicare (maybe just restricting who gets it?). Just arm everybody and ban behaviors they don’t like. Drown the state.
This is not a political party that we’re facing anymore. It’s a modern Heaven’s Gate Cult, following a fat, stupid orange guy.
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
You can’t control anything about other people. You can’t control what they think of you. You can’t make them like you. You can’t make them love you. You can’t make them be impressed by you. You can’t make them like things you like. You can’t make them live, or be healthy, or be happy. Basically, they are who they are. Maybe you can influence them. Maybe. Sometimes you can’t do that. If you’re lucky you can control yourself. You can’t control anything about other people though.
This Fall marks 21 years of political campaigns for me (20 years too long, frankly), which is to say my career is old enough to drink. It’s been interesting and rewarding, and I count my blessings for that every day. I got to be a part of some great shit. That’s the thing though- a part. The vast majority of what passes for a political campaign is totally useless. It’s stuff we create to stay busy, to justify jobs, and to appease candidates and activists. Most of it has no impact on moving actual votes.
Let’s start by establishing something from the start- anything that isn’t changing the behavior of actual voters, or building the infrastructure for the campaign to do so, is irrelevant. Campaigns are, at their essence, about talking to voters (either through paid communications or direct conversations). That takes man power and money. Volunteers and fundraised dollars. The talks you have with voters should only have three desired impacts on the voters- to motivate a non-voter to vote, to persuade an undecided voter to vote, or to convince a voter to not vote for the candidate they might have. Everything else is just a waste.
The primary jobs a political candidate has in their campaign is to raise money and motivate people to volunteer for their campaign and vote. These are the things candidates want to do the least, usually. When candidates want to get involved in strategy and mechanics of their campaign, they are almost universally, always wrong. 99% of them have absolutely no actual expertise in winning campaigns, and the other 1% carry the same biases (positive and negative) that we all carry about ourselves (we are our own worst enemies). No amount of graduate degrees or IQ points make someone an expert on campaigns. Being on campaigns is the only thing that teaches staff what to do, and even then it doesn’t always connect.
The biggest mistake that most candidates and operatives commonly make, beyond getting out of their lanes, is confusing campaigns and activism. Activism is great, God bless those who care enough about their world to get involved. That ain’t campaigning. Campaigns exist to win. If they happen to change the world too, good. Sure, operatives should have some values in picking their candidates (purity kills though), but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you want someone perfect for your views to run, run yourself. Otherwise you need to understand that what a campaign talks about, how they talk about it, and who talks about it should all be driven by what gets you to victory. Maybe health care or union rights brought you to politics. Maybe it was the environment. I don’t care much yet. You bet the candidate on that in the beginning, and if they’re good enough on your issue, you shut up and do what you need to get the victory. If you win a campaign you get to do everything you wanted to do, within the powers of the office. If you lose with 49.99% of the vote, you get to do 0% of what you wanted.
There are things that work, and campaigns should focus on them. Television ads, direct mail, and digital ads, all crafted by actual professionals, are proven to move voters. These should be the first things a campaign funds, after necessary staff. Direct communications are like hitting a home run with one swing, as compared to hitting singles with individual conversations. There is no more efficient way to move a lot of voters at once.
Don’t take the above to mean that I don’t believe in organizing and door knocking, I do. It’s just less efficient and much harder to do. Volunteers, activists, and increasingly even staff, have to be really, really well trained to talk to voters. The truth is that politically active people are more ideological and passionate than the voters they try to talk to at the doors- and that can be really, really hit or miss on the impact it has on voters. Lecturing a potential swing voter or sporadic voter on why your side is great and the other side sucks usually won’t work. To the extent possible, a good piece of literature handed out at the door should do more of the talking for the canvasser. I also tend to believe a well trained, well paid canvasser that does this consistently is better than most other canvassers. Honestly, just print a great piece of lit and lit drop most of the time.
Right along these same lines, I think massive coordinated party organizing campaigns are like 90% a waste of time and money. Hiring like 300 field organizers and dropping them into random swing states, then telling them to make 300 dials a day to recruit volunteers, basically from the same list for weeks at a time, does next to nothing. There’s a better chance of a yard sign getting someone to vote. If someone said no on Tuesday to volunteering, the answer will probably be no on Friday. Some of them will just block the numbers or stop answering altogether. The nice ones might decide to say yes and then just not show up. The breed of people who are passionate, motivated, and who can stay on a political message is rare. The money poured into trying to make that happen isn’t efficient.
Oh, and speaking of yard signs- just buy them. I get that they don’t vote. They do help drive name recognition through repetition. Also, a lack of sign visibility can be mistaken for a lack of support by average folks. Nobody wants to turn out and vote for a loser.
There are other things that are complete wastes, or mostly wastes. Most events that candidates attend are total wastes, because there’s not a single persuadable vote, new volunteer, or new donor in the room. Once you’ve done one trip through the circuit, you’ve done them all. Fundraising events are useful. Presidential candidates are mostly useful. Community events where candidates can talk to less ideological voters in a relaxed setting are useful. Everything else is just an echo chamber of politicos engaging in group think. Politico group think is basically always a waste of time. Regular people aren’t like us. Go talk to them and you’ll see.
Maybe the only bigger waste than events that exists is when people in politics call each other to gossip and give “advice.” If you don’t know the budget, polling, and message, you might just be injecting chaos into the campaign. Especially if you do this directly to the candidate. The last thing they need is more ideas they can’t pay for and don’t actually help.
Political campaigns are hard. You can do everything right and lose because it was the wrong moment. The truth is that 94% (yes, exactly that) are pretty much decided voters to start (every Democratic Presidential nominee since 1996 got at least 48% of the vote, every Republican Presidential nominee since 2000 got at least 46% of the vote). Margins are simply so small that even one wrong guess is fatal. Just showing up one day and thinking you know what to do because you went to a rally or interned in a legislative office is as stupid as me saying I can do open heart surgery because I went to a doctor once. It’s silly.
With all of that said, staff probably needs to consider this more than the casual activist. You don’t need to look busy to be worth your money. Don’t do busy work and stay in the office to all hours of the night so the candidate likes you. Most of those candidates will be gone after November. If you can do actual quality work- influencing voters- I guarantee you can get a good job in any field you want, and excel. Work smarter, not harder. Doing three quality things in a day beats doing ten things that look good. Seriously.
Over 20 years have passed, and I really don’t have much new to say. Some days are consequential. 9/11/2001, a Tuesday morning in the early days of my senior year of high school, will never be forgotten. The sky was a perfect, clear blue that morning. The temperature was nice. It felt like it was going to be a great day when I drove to school that morning. Instead it was one of the most heartbreaking days in our history.
For those of us who live out here on the East Coast, the reminders didn’t stop with the smoke. For quite a bit after the attacks, every exit along I-78 from here in Easton all the way to the city had American flags hanging from the bridges over the highway. I have no idea if they were all in Memorial of the lost officially, but basically every community on that road across Jersey lost people that day. Those flags always reminded me of that.
Within a month I had been past all three wreckage sites, as I was going to look at colleges, attend conferences in Washington, and simply because New York has always been a regular part of my life. I’ve lived in and around Washington and New York at various times in my life. It is no exaggeration to say both cities feel the pain of that day, even today. Life was altered, history was altered. Friends of mine were sent to fight in the War on Terror, while life here changed dramatically. I even was involved in the anthrax scare at the U.S. Capitol. Watching the years that followed 9/11 in real time was something that changed most of us forever.
For those still grieving today, we feel you. To America today, we love you. To the New Yorkers and Washingtonians that were back on their feet, living their lives just days after the attacks- we appreciate you.
Basically, the main problems with recycling plastic are that, a.) there are a lot of different substances called “plastic,” b.) plastics have to be pretty pristine to be recycled, and c.) it’s cheaper to produce new plastic than to recycle it. You can’t mix some types of plastic together when you recycle them. If you get past that, the plastic has to be in great condition to be recycled. Even if you survive those, plastic makers don’t want. So most of the plastic in your recycling bin never gets recycled, unlike say paper.
This is a problem to environmentalists and progressives who want there to be less plastics, because it’s better for the Earth. The solution many have taken to is to get rid of plastic as often as possible, which most of the public rolls their eyes at. What they miss is that most of the public would say get rid of recycling altogether, if they knew and cared that recycling plastic doesn’t work, not to get rid of plastic altogether.
What I’ve come to is that you have to change behavior here. Kill the “single use” plastic culture. Banning bags or making people pay for them annoys people who use bags. I suppose attaching fees to the amount of plastic people put out to recycle probably is super imperfect, but it might get people to reuse plastic products, lowering the amount being discarded. In reality the problem is probably far enough along that we need to think outside the box. Far outside the box.
Earlier Kanye West’s “Good Morning” came on, and I founded myself nodding along with the beat. Let there be absolutely no doubt that Kanye is an absolutely detestable piece of shit human, but that musical genius put out absolute fire music. It just hit different this time. It bothered me. As great of a rapper as Kanye is, this dude is awful. This dude said vile lies about Jewish people, about African slaves, and plenty of other folks. He ran an insulting sham of a Presidential campaign. He is just a bad dude. But I listen to his music. He’s not the only dude that’s slightly objectionable or worse that I listen to either. It’s amazing what talent will make us accept.
Call me a child of the “Bush era,” where moral gymnastics was just part of life. I’ve never really bought into “boycott politics,” mostly because I watched all the right-wing snowflakes try to destroy stars they disagreed with, like the Dixie Chicks. I watched them rail against “San Francisco” and “Massachusetts” values, or call for Bill Clinton’s head, when God knows what was going on in all of their bedrooms. The judgmentalness of these people made it easy to just eschew any level of moral judgment for others. Judging anyone but the very worst for their actions frankly feels naturally dirty for me. Osama Bin Laden and Jerry Sandusky deserve to go to hell, but that’s quite a low level of scum we’re talking about.
There was no lacking of irony in 2017 when long time Clinton cheerleader and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand came out and said Bill Clinton should have resigned from office for his affair with former intern Monica Lewinsky, in direct contradiction to her position on the matter when she worked in the Clinton Administration (quite literally under Andrew Cuomo) at the time. The truth was kind of clear- the Clintons were no longer “cool” in Democratic circles in 2017, and continuing to defend Bill would get in the way of calling the then-President (Trump) an absolute sleazeball for cheating on wives, having sex with porn stars, and hitting on his daughter. Bill Clinton, Al Franken, you name it, they could go if they got in the way. Trump was gross, so it was worth it. Let’s be honest though, we were seeing the disposability of even the most talented people.
It didn’t really pay off for Gillibrand though, or many of the folks that engaged in “cancel politics” in recent years. There’s been a bit of backlash. Morgan Wallen is selling out stadiums, after all. Society recoiled a bit from the 180 degree turn it took from Bill to Donald. Kanye West got away with a lot, until he went full Third Reich. People are allowing for at least some level of bad behavior from others. As long as you’re not him, or him.
Some of this is as old as civilization. Jesus once said “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” to the Pharisees, when they wanted to stone an adulteress. The conflict of accepting the humanity of others, versus wanting accountability for bad acts, is basically the essence of our society. In no small part, our hesitancy to judge the behavior of others is self motivated- every single one of us is full of shit if we try and say we’ve got nothing we’d like to keep in the past. Being judged for every poorly timed comment or action is terrifying. How many Americans justify the bad behavior of our leaders and stars because “it ain’t that bad.” If we really wanted to go down this road we’d have no one at all to elect, watch, or listen to. Everyone sort of knows they screwed up at some point in life too. Maybe it wasn’t criminal. Maybe it wasn’t entirely in our control. But yeah, people would prefer to not all be condemned.
So yeah, we’re sort of full of shit. We accept a certain amount of bad from others. “They’re only human.” Some people just tuck it away and try to be better people in the future, and thereby judge others far more cautiously. Other people are so full of their own shit that they think their bad acts are actually good. Their opponents get a “lock her up chant though.” For my friends justice, for my enemies? The law.
When I was younger, the contradictions didn’t bother me. Now, I definitely notice them.
Replacement Manager Rich 