Mr. Softie

June 6, 2014 by Adam Cherry 1 Comment

Controversy continues to swirl around the prisoner swap our government entered into with Al Qaeda; not only were the numbers lopsided, but we failed to receive any future draft picks as compensation. Many are asking whether releasing five senior terrorists from Guantanamo Bay was worth securing the return of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured after deserting his post in Afghanistan’s Paktika province some five years ago. Given that subsequent search and rescue missions took the lives of six U.S. servicemen, it is no surprise that Bergdahl is coming home to less than a hero’s welcome. The vitriol has clearly been exacerbated by Bowe’s paterfamilias, what with the al-Zawahiri beard, Pashto dialogue, and direct Tweets to the Taliban. Sgt. Matt Vierkant, a member of Bergdahl’s platoon, expressed the feelings of many when he groused, “I was pissed off then, and I am even more so now… [He] deserted during a time of war, and his fellow Americans lost their lives.” What we’re saying, then, is that Bergdahl’s behavior (going AWOL, recklessly precipitating the unnecessary death of military personnel) neatly mirrored that of his Commander-in-Chief (recall: George W. Bush).

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel swiftly rejoined that the five detainees would have been free agents after the 2014 season anyway, because according to international law, prisoners of war must be released upon the cessation of combat operations. Nonetheless, experts continue to shake their heads in disgust while comparing the trade to the Pacers’ ruinous Danny Granger-for-Evan Turner deal.

As the San Antonio Spurs prepare to again be subjugated by the Miami Heat, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is breathing a sigh of relief; the hearing to exile Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling has been obviated by the team’s sale to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for a cool $2 billion. Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban was already laying the groundwork justifying a no vote on Sterling’s ouster: “We’re all prejudice in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie [think: Trayvon Martin], and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street.” To be fair, Cuban held no affinity for Sterling (who was, in the interim, diagnosed with dementia and diagnosed with dementia), but feared setting a precedent whereby any owner could be stripped of his own team if the content of private conversations was ever deemed not to comport with the ever narrowing constraints of political correctness.

The transaction comes at a propitious time; after three decades of stark ineptitude, the Clippers, with its all-star roster, has become a legitimate contender. But if fans believe that the Ballmer era will bring a Yankees-style dynasty, they might be in for a rude awakening. Ballmer’s tenure in Seattle saw Microsoft shares lose a quarter of their value while the S&P 500 notched a 5% gain. Ballmer personally orchestrated the takeover of online advertiser aQuantive for $6.2 billion; five years later the acquisition was written down to zero. And only now, that Windows XP is no longer supported, has Corporate America begun the arduous slog into Windows 7 (version 8 has proved a colossal flop). Perhaps most telling, Ballmer failed to recognize the unambiguous migration from desktop computing to high-powered mobile devices (e.g. tablets and smart phones) and, as such, ceded the vast majority of that market to Google and Apple. So while Mr. Ballmer will no doubt avoid the pitfalls visited by his predecessor, odds are neither he nor Sgt. Berghdal will be showered in tickertape anytime soon.

Basketball Jones

May 6, 2014 by Adam Cherry Leave a Comment

In 1996, Major League Baseball banned Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott because of racist comments. Before an owners’ conference call she grumbled, “I would never hire another nigger. I’d rather have a trained monkey working for me than a nigger.” Soon thereafter, she publically opined that Adolf Hitler “was good in the beginning…” To this observer, the private comments made by Clippers’ owner Donald Sterling to his mistress – “Yeah, it bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people.” – are far less offensive. Sterling, unlike most rap artists, did not utilize the n-word, when he decreed, “don’t bring black people [to my games].

But we live in a new era (the entire saga was germinated on Instagram and fertilized by social media), one in which the racial caricatures populating Cheech and Chong’s “Basketball Jones” video would not be tolerated. Unless, of course, they were conjured by Key and Peele. But no matter, because in the end, Sterling’s past indiscretions, including two lawsuits settled over housing discrimination, suddenly made the NBA dyspeptic. This is a league, remember, that expressed no judgment whatsoever five years ago when ESPN reported that Sterling complained his Ardmore apartment complex was malodorous “because of all the blacks… they smell, they’re not clean. And it’s because of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day.”

If league owners vote to force Sterling to sell his franchise (which I am not convinced they will do under secret ballot) he would circumvent the 30% state and federal taxes applicable to the rest of Californians. Section 1033 of the tax code allows owners of condemned or “involuntary converted” property to enter into a tax-free exchange for a new investment. Given that both the Sacramento Kings and Milwaukee Bucks (two small-market losers) recently traded north of $500 million, the potential surfeit to Mr. Sterling’s empire is substantial. Mrs. Schott, in retrospect, could have saved a bundle by eliciting a forced deaccession rather than selling under her own volition, but, hey, that’s the difference between a clumsy Kraut and a slippery Jew.

While it would be racist to say that Jews possess differentiating attributes based on genetics, it might be fair to say that a long history of persecution (see: Masada, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust) has selected for the crafty and hyper-vigilant. So it was on the eve of Passover when former KKK leader and professed anti-Semite Frazier Glenn Cross gunned down a teenager and his grandfather outside a Kansas City Jewish community center, and a woman at a nearby Jewish retirement home, that the victims turned out to be two Methodists and a Catholic. Upon discovering the old switcheroo, Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK told USA Today, “I definitely condemn what happened.” By way of contrast, not one of the six Mormon newborns strangled by Megan Huntsman in her suburban Salt Lake City home between 1996 and 2006 attempted evasive maneuvers or even donned a disguise before their mother could seal them in plastic bags and store them the garage. So who knows, a few thousand more episodes like this and we may find, several generations from now, a plethora of Utahans that can slip the both taxman and the Angel of Death.

Once is Enough

April 5, 2014 by Adam Cherry Leave a Comment

In 2005, the film Be Cool was released as a follow-up to the cult-hit adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty. In the opening scene, Chili Palmer disparages Hollywood and expresses remorse for having produced a movie sequel: “the only time I gave in in my life.” A mordant exemplar of self-deprecating humor, Chili’s lamentation nudges us to examine various other second acts.

More often than logic would dictate, an appalling opening – say George W. Bush’s first term or the canine dromedy Beethoven – leaves us dumbfounded by demand for an encore for which any declination would have to defy the laws of nature. On the other hand, following a sensation is far more difficult: while most can never ascend to the rarified heights of the original (e.g., Frank Sinatra,Jr.), a select few actually do (see: The Godfather Part II). Then there are those sequels so God-awful, so heinous that they conspicuously debase their own heritage, like leaving bloody afterbirth on the floor of the Sistine Chapel (think: Caddy Shack II).

It was this kind of desecration that took place on the campus of Kent State University Wednesday evening when 24-year old freshman Quavaugntay Tyler shot himself in the hand during a dispute with two female students. Sure, there is an element of irony in that Tyler, who is the subject of a campus theft investigation and who served probation in another case, is a criminology and justice studies major. Beyond that, his sorry escapade failed in any way to measure up to the Kent State massacre of May 4, 1970 wherein Ohio National Guardsmen fired M1 rifles into an unarmed crowd of Vietnam War protestors, killing four students and wounding nine.

Perhaps only slightly less egregious were the recent actions of Army Spc. Ivan Lopez, who shot 19 people — three of them fatally – with his .45-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun at Fort Hood, TX. Lopez turned the gun on himself long before he could equal the carnage (13 dead, 32 injured) inflicted by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan at the same base in 2009. Though Lopez saw no combat during his brief deployment, he claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Predictably, his psychiatric evaluation uncovered “no violent or suicidal tendencies”, but even if it had, they would have paled in comparison to the Islamic radicalization that turned Maj. Hasan against his fellow soldiers. The Lopez shooting lacked many of the ostentatious elements (terrorism, Muslim infiltrators, etc.) that gripped the attention of a war-weary nation five years ago and therefore takes its place far behind World War II or even the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

I once pitched a very novel virtual reality story to a Hollywood agent only to have him condescend that there hasn’t been an original idea since Shakespeare… or the Greeks, he seemed to have forgotten which. Nonetheless his point was this: everything is rehashed. Though I disagree with his premise, it is clear that we have become inured to mass shootings; of the 57 so far this year, less than a handful made the national news. Why not, then, freshen up the plotline? I have a script, for example, about a guy who walks into an elementary school and doesn’t shoot anybody. Imagine that.

I Told You So

March 20, 2014 by Adam Cherry Leave a Comment

After tweeting that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s ban “bossy” campaign was adversative, a friend chided my restraint via Direct Message. I should have been more malicious (viz. Oil slick suggests Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was swallowed by Sandberg’s genital maw) because without “bossy”, he noted, we glide rather swiftly from amenable to “cunty”, as in:

Use of such b- and c-words does help compose a more nuanced and measured spectrum of descriptors; you’d probably fashion a pretty good take on my domestic situation if I said my wife might be bossy, but Jan Brewer is downright cunty. And lest you think me a misogynist, I believe Gov. Christie (R-NJ) is fairly cunty, too.

Back before Valentine’s Day, I noted that Christie, whose lap-band surgery betrayes his utter lack of discipline, was buying political allegiance with Port Authority funds and, more disturbingly, withholding Hurricane Sandy relief from recalcitrant mayors. The New York Times has since chronicled a far wider and more blatant system of graft: By killing a much-needed tunnel project, Christie was able to divert Port Authority resources into New Jersey’s near-bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund. At the same time he pushed for a useless retrofit of the Bayonne Bridge as a means to secure the endorsement of unions that had previously opposed him. Trenton’s inner workings had become so Machiavellian that nothing was overlooked when it came to buying votes; even the steel recovered from the Twin Towers was alchemized into political bitcoins.

That same article contrasted Russia’s ursine audacity with America’s rodent-like furtiveness. While our attempts at boldness rarely work out (think: Vietnam, Iraq), Mr. Putin gobbled up Crimea in less time than it would take Mr. Christie to deterge his feculent bedclothes. Though President Obama responded by freezing the assets of high-ranking Russian diplomats, White House sources admit that the amounts in question are rather de minimis; State Department records show seizure of two Naughty America porn accounts and a Subway sandwich rewards card.

I had also predicted that Darren Sharper would face rape charges beyond those in California and Louisiana. Since then, Arizona has handed down multiple indictments although slow-footed investigators in Nevada and Florida say they need bit more time. His “consensual sex” defense, I posited, held little promise given the sheer volume of accusations. At this point, his only chance at avoiding a life behind bars is to join the military, where sexual assault convictions are exceedingly rare — in fact, the Pentagon estimates only 2.5% of cases are even prosecuted — as evidenced by the plea bargain obtained by Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair. Under terms of the agreement, the General will plead guilty to adultery and mistreating his accuser in exchange for the Army dropping charges of sexual assault and sodomy (purportedly Sharper’s “go to” move).

While Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) duel over whether prosecutorial powers should remain within the chain of command, the stain of politics is sloshing over military courtrooms. Last year, in an interview on the subject of rape in the ranks, the President declared, “I expect consequences. If we find out somebody’s engaging in this, they’ve got to be held accountable — prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period.” Unfortunately, the President’s forthrightness has undermined his very directive. To wit: Defense attorneys in two military sexual assault cases convinced Navy Judge Cmdr. Marcus Fulton that the defendants could not be punitively discharged because the above comments made by President Obama as commander in chief would unduly influence any potential sentencing. In the Sinclair case, Presiding Judge Col. James Pohl cited the same “unlawful command influence” as a basis for dismissing the most egregious charges. In the final analysis, then, both the unwitting Mr. Obama and cunty Ms. Sandberg would have been better served by keeping their respective opinions to themselves.

There Goes the Neighborhood

March 12, 2014 by Adam Cherry Leave a Comment

The Wall Street Journal and USA Today recently accused Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson of hypocrisy when he sued to block fracking near his Bartonville, TX horse ranch. The virulent backlash (e.g., former Mobil executive vice president Louis W. Allstadt’s open-letter rebuke) spurred Tillerson’s attorney into a hasty two-step: Michael Whitten noted that the lawsuit seeks only to ban erection of a 160-foot water tower — that might offer leftover supplies to drillers — and was quick to point out that while several other petitioners worried the cavalcade of heavy trucks required by hydraulic fracturing would create “a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” the Exxon honcho “never expressed that to me or anyone else.” How then to explain Tillerson squandering $25 billion of shareholders’ funds acquiring XTO Energy Inc. (natural gas prices have tumbled 21% since the deal) after the smaller rival fracked a shale well within a mile of his house.

Look, each of us unquestionably benefits from the existence of airports, prisons and water treatment plants, yet none of us would welcome one of these facilities in our own backyard. One could imagine, then, even greater reluctance to harbor an institution the polity views adversely, such as a needle exchange or clown academy. For Palestinians, Jewish settlements are such an intrusion. More than half a million Israelis now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, on land seized during the six-day war. Because the Geneva Conventions forbid construction on occupied territory, the United Nations (and most countries) regards the settlements as illegal. Unmoved, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that the suspension of settlement activities “would serve nothing.” In fact, last year Tel Aviv doubled the number of units coming out of the ground (2,530) over the year before. Nonetheless, acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas is pushing to reestablish pre-1967 boundaries as a precursor to peace negotiations. Many Israelis, meanwhile, fervently believe the Palestinians vitiated any claims of dominion by rejecting the original partition of the British Mandate in 1948. No matter, because in the larger scheme of things, these fine points of cartography become moot: regardless of the era, any map of the area resembles gerrymandered (see: stacked and packed) U.S. congressional districts and simply belies sovereignty.

While the Israeli annexation is a slow burn, Moscow’s move on Crimea has been mercurial. The Russian army, or in Putin’s words, “local defense forces,” have in little more than a week taken over an Ukrainian naval missile instillation, a military hospital and an airbase all without firing a shot. In addition, the Russian navy trapped Ukrainian warships inside Lake Donuzlav by deliberately sinking three of its own vessels astride the inlet to the Black Sea. Rhetoric aside, there is little politicians in the West can do, except liken these events to Hitler’s 1938 usurpation of the Sudetenland, and in the process establish their lack of naivety regarding Putin’s designs for a much larger land grab. On Sunday, in an attempt to put on an air of legitimacy, Crimeans will vote on a referendum to formally secede and join the Russian Federation. No doubt the outcome will be every bit the cinch yesterday’s North Korean election bore out, though the pro-Russian faction is taking no chances: Several opposition activists have gone missing while organized mobs have stolen or destroyed the passports (read: required voter IDs) of ethnic Ukrainians. Given that these are the types of events that spawn World Wars, it is perhaps easier to fixate on Mr. Tillerson and the specter of adequate hydration.