KC Sports - Rednecks Preferred?

Ancillary Adams raises a fine question: "What is it about this town's athletics franchises that makes them want to portray themselves as the Official Teams of Hee Haws everywhere?" At Royals games, the family atmosphere is shattered every game by a public singing of a country song celebrating threatening behavior and problem drinking. Now, the Chiefs have decided that Trace Adkins - with no apparent Kansas City ties - should be the pitchman for the Chiefs. Trace Adkins?

If it hadn't been for Ancillary Adams, I confess that I would not have any idea who the guy in black leather on the screen was. After a little research, I've discovered that he is an anti-union conservative who appeals to a heavily caucasian audience. The only obvious tie to the Chiefs I could find is that he sings a song called "You're Going to Miss This", which I haven't heard, but it might be directed toward the receiving corps.

Like Ancillary Adams, I'm sick and tired of having our sports teams portray us to the world as a bunch of drunk rubes. If I recall correctly, it was Kansas City that made a $2 million donation to the stadiums, not some rural cowpatch. Maybe we ought to be promoted by Kansas Citians instead of boot-wearing bumpkins from Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Polar Ice and Polarization

A couple months ago, I saw An Inconvenient Truth, and thought it was excellent. It was a fact-based presentation on global warming, and it led to some frightening conclusions. Like much of the science surrounding global warming, you can quibble with a few details, but the evidence is overwhelming that something big is going on, and fossil fuels are at the heart of it.

Yesterday, NASA released data that shows a chunk of Antarctica the size of California melted in January of 2005. That's NASA, not some blogger with a vivid imagination.

Despite it all, the rightwing bloggers are almost unanimous in dismissing global warming as a fraud. Their hostility to the concept and to the science behind it is impressive in its baseless vehemence. Any contrary "evidence", even when it consists of a snowy afternoon, is trumpeted, and any outlying "scientist" who staggers out of a revival tent and rejects the scientific method becomes a leading voice. I swear I once heard Rush Limbaugh mocking global warming concerns because of a news story that the largest iceberg ever had been found floating off Antarctica - he completely mistook the import of that fact.

How did a scientific concern become a political schism? Is it because one of the leading voices of that concern happens to be a Democrat whose "loss" to W remains doubtful? It is because Bush happens to be in the White House now that concensus has formed, and action is required (if so, would it make any difference if I agreed that Clinton should have gotten on board with this, too)? Is it because contemporary rightwingers have lost their environmental way? Is it just a healthy cynicism toward scientific theory, to be expected from a group which is still struggling with the concept of evolution?

It doesn't have to be this way. It's not like global warming is a Republican phenomenon, to be blamed on the Bush Regime - it's been building even during the Golden Days of the Clinton Presidency of Peace and Prosperity. It's not like solutions to global warming are going to hurt the big business interests that control the Republicans - many of the more clever large businesses are already paying attention to how energy consumption hurts their bottom lines, and others are lining up to profit from the necessary changes. This could be as big a boon for business as the Iraqi quagmire has been for Halliburton.

In this case, the left is pretty obviously on the correct side of the science. We're listening to real scientists, not pundits. We're looking at evidence, and it's mounting.

It's time for the rightwingers drop the anti-scientific knee-jerk cynicism and join us. Come on in, the water's (disturbingly) warm.

I Might Have to Start Watching Malkin

Home early from the inaugural ball, I channel-surfed for a while last night and happened upon Michelle Malkin hosting O'Reilly's No-Spin Zone. Honestly, it was one of the funniest shows I've seen, because she was soooo bad at it. At least two of the guests completely demolished her in debating points, despite her heavy-handed use of the mute button so that she could screech over their voices. In one particularly funny moment, she closed off with the "final word", but she mis-timed it, so the guest was left with a few seconds to respond, and he made her look completely foolish.

I would love to post links to the segments, but they aren't yet available. I'll update when they are, and I'll encourage you to watch the demolition.

(Update: Apparently, someone within the O'Reilly/Malkin machine has decided that I was right - they are not posting the clips from that day, though they have the previous program and the next program available. Someone didn't want her to suffer further embarrassment on the internet.)