I was over at the supermarket an hour ago and they were playing the original Toy Story on the nifty HD TVs. There, on a hypercool screen, they played this song. Now and then, someone writes something that channels a guy's soul. It's embarrassing that the song that does this for me is sung by Buzz Lightyear, a kid's toy. But there I am, brothers and sisters, soul laid bare for the world to see.
This is from an e-mail reply to an ex-student and friend who is applying to grad school (God help him):
Dear Josiah,
> Of course I know the litany, you said "fear is the mind killer"It probably says something rather bad about my character that I don't recall all of this “Gary Gygax/Dune calling out” until I'm reminded of it. One of my character defects is that I get so focused on the task at hand that I sometimes don't take in enough of people as people. My intellectual strength is that I can focus. My intellectual weakness is that having a gift for focusing means I'm not good at relaxing.
These references are opaque for most people. I really should remember when someone actually gets the references.
I'll work on this.
> The ironyWhat? Being afraid? Being a geek? Being human?
What's truly ironic is that being human is something that we fundamentally are (a biological fact) but is something we must also practice a great deal to be any good at (because it is also a constructed, idealized identity). These two conflicting constructions of the word drive liberalism as a political ideology and account for its deep tensions and contradictions.
Did they make you read The Republic before you left here? For Plato, the foundation of recognition, hence of knowledge, is the form of the good. You recognize an object by its virtue. How do you know a knife if there's a chunk missing from the blade and the handle is broken? Because you know what a good knife is supposed to be and you can see that the defective knife is "trying" to be a knife, but not quite making it. You have to know the good knife to be able to recognize the defective one. So how do you recognize a man? Plato thinks you do it in just the same way—because you know what a good man is supposed to be. A man who doesn't live up to the standard isn't a good man. But you can only recognize him as a man because you know what a good man is. For Plato, the precondition for knowledge is morality.
You could be immoral, says Plato, but you have to admit that you are absolutely ignorant in order to do so. Evil is fixed as ignorance for all eternity. There is something good in this argument, as it forces you to wake up and be moral. There is something wicked in it, as the Bene Gesserit forces your hand into the box and, if you flinch, you clearly never were human. Those who do not live up to the standard are forced into the category of the sub-human. It's only a hop, skip and a jump to Hitler's death camps from there.
Weber's critique of this argument is that it confuses logical perfection for moral perfection. Yes, you do have to have a specific "form" in your head in order to marry sensory stimuli to the constructs that exist in your mind. Further, you do compare sensory stimuli to those forms and they do, "more or less" fit (remember Piaget? You accomodate or assimilate). But if you are a scientist, the fact that the real, palpable object does not accord to the image is the result of the fact that the image, not the object, is defective. Weber consciously uses the term "ideal-type" rather than "form" as he is very frank that human beings create ideal-types, which do not exist at some transcendental level, some realm of the forms. Moreover, Weber is very frank that it is the ideal-type which is "one-sided" and not reality that is imperfect from the vantage of logic. Reality is complex and the imagination is limited. We do our best to understand reality with limited resources.
Weber is very clear that epistemology is divorced from morality. What is entailed in morality is embracing a one-sided ideal and rejecting reality for not "living up" to it. There is no one who does not do this and it is at the heart of being human. Knowing that its origins may be a logical fallacy in no way means that you will or even could give it up.
This deliciously fucked-up moment is both the origin of postmodernity and perhaps the clearest ideal-type to date of the human condition. Weber, more than any other philosopher, understands tragedy.
So, no, you don't have to be a geek to know a geek. You can model it as a logical category, even if you can't really understand it through empathy. You may not really know what a "good" geek is. You don't have to know that it's good to be a geek or that a geek is a good thing.
Foucault ends The Archaeology of Knowledge by saying of the modernity that emerged from the Enlightenment, "They cannot bear (and one cannot but sympathize) to hear someone saying: 'Discourse is not life: its time is not your time; in it, you will not be reconciled to death; you may have killed God beneath the weight of all that you have said; but don't imagine that, with all that you are saying, you will make a man that will live longer than he.'"
In the starkness of the world that Foucault describes, there is a deep solace in the fact that at least some individuals who have been initiated and acculturated into a world of contradictory identities can find a common identity with others from a radically different context. This identity offers a certain freedom from the institutionally enforced basis of family life or the all-pervasive disciplinary influence of the modern state. Both of these identities, despite their value, have their Schmittian fascist undertones which cannot easily be reconciled with human freedom. Being a geek is a strange, unexpected identity born from self-imposed discipline that emerges from the simple personality trait of being a compulsive, obssessive thinker.
Having such a mind hurts. It hurts because its own disposition forces it to experience a lack of psychological resonance as it looks at the contradictions of its given identities. Such a mind is forced, as a result of its own proclivity for probing the world, for making rational sense of the world, into seeing the interstices where the constructs come together and where their artificiality is most apparent. The resulting awareness that the content of identity is not natural, not "of" some transcendent, divine world of forms, but created, fallible and constantly revised, and yet utterly necessary to our psychological well-being, is traumatic. It forces you into solitude and isolation. It disconnects you from an assumptive world shared by all those that you love. This has been the greatest source of pain and sorrow in my life.
Yet, if the person who has such a mind has a desire or a drive to be an agent of healing, there is deep meaning to be found in such a life, and in this love, there is a balm for one's suffering.
Moreover, there is always someone else, from some strange, far away, bewildering context, who shares this experience. That person is a geek. And if you are lucky, he or she is a good geek. And while this still does not offer a Platonic moment of recognition, it sure doesn't suck to know that in this crazy world there are others who are just as fucked-up as you are.
And who knows? Maybe together, the geeks can heal the world.
Cheers!| Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score | ||
| Category | Your Score | Average |
| Hacklust | 52.83% Will kill for XP | 53.5% |
| Sensitive Roleplaying | 34.18% All the game's your stage | 54.6% |
| GM Experience | 55.07% Puts the players through the wringer | 69.3% |
| Systems Knowledge | 95.48% Played in a couple of campaigns | 90.4% |
| Livin' La Vida Dorka | 70.11% Goes nuts on the weekends | 63.2% |
| You are 65.65% pure Average Score: 68.7% | ||
Chris Davis just dropped me a line (old friends are working their way out of the woodwork, these days) and reminded me of this letter that established my ultimate geek credentials. Sadly, I was totally wrong about Lucas. I like my letter better than his new trilogy. But it belongs with that old Brett Favre post as an identity-confirming document.
September 2, 1999
Dear Charles,
Thank you so much for your letter! It was so nice to get one so soon after arrival. The trip to
I am drinking a creamy pint of Guinness. I love Guinness.
Okay, Star Wars. Well, I guess that I have to warn you that I am an unabashed Star Wars fan. Charles, on this topic, I am shamelessly partisan. I'm a little younger than you, so for me, Star Wars has been a formative experience. Star Wars was quite literally the first movie I ever saw. So, there will never likely be a Star Wars movie bad enough for me to dislike it. The saga is just too close to my core for it to happen. Not to say that it's impossible for it to get bad enough. Rather, it's just unlikely.
That aside, it surely wasn't the best of the bunch. But it did have some redeeming value for a die-hard Star Wars fan. To appreciate the better points of the movie, you have to see it in context. Like Star Wars, it's a first movie. But unlike Star Wars, Lucas knew that he would be able to make the sequels to The Phantom Menace. This makes a lot of difference in the comparative quality of the two films. You see, Lucas wrote the whole episode IV-VI storyline in a single sitting, realized that he had too much and then raided all three to make a single condensed story. In my own opinion, that is why there is a Death Star in both Star Wars and in The Return of the Jedi — when he was able to go on, he probably went on with a lot of his original script.
The Phantom Menace was written under very different circumstances. Lucas knew that there would be sequels, so he didn't replicate his original formula for Star Wars, which works well as a stand-alone movie (in my opinion). Rather, he fused a sort of James Clavell writing technique with a lot of glitz. I think you told me once that you had read some Clavell. Well, Clavell, while definitely fitting into the category that I think you once labeled as "throw away" can be a fascinating storyteller. But it takes him time to get warmed up. The first hundred pages are always hideously dry. But once he gets started, he can twist and plot with the best of them. Well, Phantom Menace is written in much the same vein. Lucas spends the time setting up very clever clues that will come in handy in the next two. I personally find the clues fascinating. What he doesn't do is give the first story the ability to stand independently. It will depend on its sequels. He tries to make it a saleable movie by going all
But it was a veritable mine of plot clues for the die-hard fan, which is where I had great fun. There's a lot going on beneath the surface of this movie. First, there is the issue of the Clone Wars, which are coming up. Remember Leia's holographic line in Star Wars, "General Kenobi, you served my father in the Clone Wars, now help me..."? Well, one can't help but notice that Queen Amidala is cloned. She doesn't refer to the girl who looks like her as her twin sister, so it seems likely that the woman who looks just like her is a clone.
This brings about some interesting possibilities. First, the ability to manipulate the Force has been made genetic. Now, at first, I balked at this because it tended to undermine the mystical nature of the world. It fits under Schiller's old rubric of disenchanting the world — there is nothing that science cannot explain. I've never been fond of that in life or in fiction. However, the possibilities of cloning, if the Clone Wars are done well (which, I admit is still an "if") are irresistible. Anakin is the galaxy's highest concentration of mitocholians. This means that he has become the ultimate weapon. Imagine churning out armies of Anakins trained in your very own ideology... To Palpatine, our megalomaniacal soon-to-be-Emperor, the possibilities are irresistible. He who controls Anakin (or at least his only good tissue sample) controls the galaxy. Assuming of course, that you can control Anakin. But, this is Palpatine we're dealing with. You know how well he thinks he controls people. In all fairness, later events do seem to bear his assumptions out.
Which brings us to Palpatine's motivations. What exactly is it that he wants? After all, it's rather odd that the Senator from Naboo would want the Trade Federation to swallow his homeworld. That's treachery par excellence, and okay, it's par for the course for the character we know to be the Emperor, but what does he hope to gain from the liquidation of his political power base? What does the Trade Federation have that would tempt him to sell the constituency that keeps him in power? Knowing Palpatine's overweening ambition, we know this isn't a simple Trade Federation bribe to a corrupt official to betray his people for short-term gain. Moreover, the Trade Federation Viceroy and his adjutant tell us that Darth Sidious cut a deal with them, not vice versa. Palpatine has something waiting in the wings.
My writing partner, Briggs, thinks that the Trade Federation has the capacity to exploit Naboo's very hidden technology. Naboo is a small, pretty and peaceful world with few weapons. It's clearly not a mover and shaker in the Republic. But they do have this little technology that they developed on the side that keeps the Queen intact — cloning. Well, Palpatine sees that they lack vision and the one think that rankles him more than anything is a lack of vision, because it's the one attribute on which he prides himself the most. Palpatine will show them the true value of this technology.
But Palpatine is a politician. He doesn't know anything about technology. But, the Trade Federation, already interested in creating mass armies, does. But, the Trade Federation is just a bunch of merchants looking to turn a quick profit and have only created these armies for the purpose of extortion. They, too, lack vision. He will show them too the true nature of their resources. In exchange for the paltry payment of Naboo on a silver platter, the Trade Federation will develop this technology for him. The rumor is that there are already carbon copies of Darth Maul that are on ice for Episode II.
The thing to remember is that while Lucas always casts his movies as if they were about the good guy (in this case Anakin and Obi-Wan) the movie is really about the bad guy. Lucas is better at anti-heroes than at heroes. After all, his own philosophy of heroism is "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes." Well, realistically, how appealing is that? Yes, it has sales appeal because you, the viewer, can also be a hero under this logic. But the problem with the approach is that it means the heroes will never be truly extraordinary. Villains, on the other hand, are unique individuals — aberrations. But, since the common man is not supposed to identify with the villains, the villains can have talent. That's why Darth Vader and the Emperor have always been more appealing than Luke and, to some extent, even Han Solo. The extent to which Solo is appealing is that he is, in the world of Princess Leia "a scoundrel." This trilogy is cast as the downfall of Anakin, but, frankly, my bet is that it will come off as the triumph of Palpatine.
All this brings us back to Palpatine, the Phantom Menace hatching out phantom menaces (the word "phantom" also meaning "copy" or "clone" as well as "hidden" or "ghostly"). Palpatine's genius is Roman. He is a short-term opportunist driven to imperial expansion by dreams of personal glory. But Gretchen North was very shrewd to point out that the Republic is very German and Palpatine's rise to power much more mirrors Hitler than it does Caesar or Augustus. Note the fact that the leader of the Republic, referred to as "The President" in Lucas' own novelization of Star Wars (which is worth a read in its own right) is now referred to as "The Supreme Chancellor." I don't know enough about the rise of Nazi Germany and the fall of the
"I will make it legal," Sidious responds.
But like all megalomaniacs, Palpatine's virtuoso strengths are countered by powerful weaknesses. As Luke points out, he is overconfident. My choir teacher, Mrs. Herbold, once said that you need ego, or you'll never get the guts to get on stage. But once you're on stage, you have suppress your ego utterly, because it will do nothing but interfere with your good judgment.
"Control, control! You must learn control!" chides Yoda.
You see, Master Yoda will be the first to tell you that the future is murky and hard to predict. But not Palpatine. "I have foreseen it," he whispers, sure of his own clairvoyance. But the Emperor is not particularly clairvoyant. He's dead wrong in Return of the Jedi. You see, Palpatine has the nasty habit of filling in the gaps in his vision with what he wants to see. During the period in which he is on the rise, Palpatine has no equal. That seems rather clear in looking at Lucas' ridiculous Senate. Moreover, the Jedi are refined and elegant. Remember Obi-Wan's line about "a more elegant weapon for a more elegant age." This is the height of the Republic and Couruscant is the bright center of the galaxy — the capital of a more elegant age. The Jedi in their gilded council chamber are no match for Palpatine. This is an age that, because of its refinement, is vulnerable to one thing alone: ruthlessness. There is no good man ruthless enough in all the Republic to counter Senator Palpatine. It's not that Palpatine is so gifted. Rather, it's that there is no one in that era who is able to stop him. His ludicrous Death Star plans to control the galaxy and the lack of security to defend these vital weapons show just how overconfident he can be. A shrewder imperial mind (a mind like Augustus') would have put his faith in a strong governing apparatus and disciplined military. It's cheaper, more effective and less risky.
But megalomaniacal villains need plans with flair and Augustus' approach is just too practical. It may work, but Augustus' genius is too understated to have any appeal to a Palpatine. After all, Julius is the one that we really remember, despite his errors. Think back to
Megalomaniacs care more about their fame than anything else. They want their brilliance commemorated. I remember my ex-roomie (now seminarian) Mark showing me a Batman comic where the villain, as always, leaves Batman to die in some complex trap. Batman, who frequently gets caught, manages to wiggle out. The villain, who is then captured, bemoans the fact that he simply didn't shoot Batman dead when he had the chance. "Why do I have to have such flair?" the villain wailed. But the only reason that Batman is alive is that all his opponents are megalomaniacs who make mistakes. I'm not a Batman fan so my facts may be wrong, but the one who actually gets him, Bane, is the only one who isn't a megalomaniac. I'm made to understand that he takes the easy kill. Batman is sloppy and is used to taking advantage of gargantuan mistakes. Bane gets Batman because he doesn't make any.
Well, Palpatine has his overweening overconfidence to contend with. Note that he underestimates Amidala at every turn. Darth Sidious dismisses Amidala as a guileless child who can be easily controlled. She disappoints him. Moreover, there is some question in my mind about whether or not Palpatine's machinations were aimed at rising to the Supreme Chancellorship. Briggs and I contend on this point. Briggs thinks he planned it. I think that it was short-sighted opportunism in the finest Roman style. As George Washington Plunkitt would say, "He saw his opportunities and he took 'em." It would be too cruel if, after all, what he really lacked was vision. He just sees the present and not the future.
My guess is that he was plotting to take control of the Republic by force. To do that, he needed to crush the Jedi, not become Grand Chancellor. If one apprentice dies, he has number two waiting on ice. There can be only two, but Palpatine is prepared and won't let setbacks upset his plan. This much, he planned.
Of course, when a Grand Chancellorship is handed to him on a silver platter, he isn't about to refuse because it wasn't in his master plan. He'll just take credit for dumb luck. Amidala is an inadvertent partner in his glory. She was never supposed to leave Naboo. But when she gets away, she does what Palpatine can't really do himself: vote no confidence in Valorum. After all, he can hardly get the sympathy vote if he gutted his predecessor. But when the noble queen does it, with her rousing performance of desperation, he can easily be the beneficiary. People are no longer voting for Palpatine, scheming Senator. They are voting for the Queen and the small world of Naboo. After this, Amidala is never supposed to leave Couruscant. Well she goes back and is then not killed as Palpatine intends. Instead, she frees the planet from the Trade Federation, who, contrary to the master plan, are now screwed. After all, they don't know that Sidious is Palpatine and admitting to being in league with Sith Lords is not a particularly good legal defense. And the Courts take longer than the Senate. If we know Palpatine, they're probably still tied up in litigation years after the Republic has been restored. So much for them. Now for our Irish wars.
Amidala has thrown quite a wrench into things. But Palpatine would do well in
There is a second level to this. Ever notice that Palpatine has a penchant for apprenticing guys who can't steal his limelight? Take Darth Maul. He has a tattooed face. Now, I don't think a guy with tattoos and horns can have much of a life outside being a sith lord. While you're at it, try imagining Darth Vader drinking a beer with his buddies after work. Palpatine, on the other hand, has quite an active secret life. The question is which life is the secret one? Who is the real man? Batman or Bruce Wayne? Superman or Clark
Note that the name Darth Sidious is all but forgotten by the time of the original trilogy. The Emperor is known by the name Palpatine and referred to as "The Emperor." Darth Vader claims that the name "Anakin Skywalker," has no meaning for Darth Vader by The Return of the Jedi. He is Darth Vader, Lord of Sith. Moreover, while he offers to rule the galaxy with Luke as father and son, he seems more interested in the "father and son" part than he is in the "rule the galaxy" part. Vader sees himself as a Sith Lord and his son is a lifeline to the good, one that he has trouble cutting. But he doesn't seem to have much interest in politics.
Palpatine seems to be a political animal. But he seems to have recruited Darth Maul on the basis of getting revenge on the Jedi. How important is this grudge match to Palpatine personally? Granted, the Jedi are all but extinct at the start of the original trilogy. But is it all a means to getting power? Did he start as a Sith Lord and get seduced by politics or become a Sith Lord to advance in politics? I lean toward saying that Darth Sidious is a cover, whereas Palpatine is so arrogant that he must be himself above all. But what does this mean for the struggle of the Sith?
Moreover, according to Yoda, there can be only two Sith, but how seriously does Palpatine take this? He's apparently cloning Darth Maul. Moreover, there is the curious conversation between the Emperor and Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, where the Emperor wants Luke killed and Vader says if he can be turned, he could be a powerful ally. Well, if there can be only two, that conversation is fraught with danger. If Luke joins the fold, one of them has to be dead (my gut instinct says that Sith Lords don't just celebrate a triumph and retire to the farm). Unless, of course, Palpatine isn't all that committed to the "Sith Lord Code" or whatever it is that makes Yoda think that there can be only two. But, whatever his commitment to the Sith religion and its tenets, Palpatine uses it to control his apprentices. Darth Maul is much more interested in revealing himself to the Jedi and getting revenge than he is in any political machinations. Darth Vader serves his master faithfully, but seems to have little political agenda of his own. There's room for a lot of interesting development in there.
When talking about a different movie, Tricia has told me that what I described to her was a lot more interesting than the movie she saw. I would guess my closeness to the topic in both this and that case might gives me an insight into both movies that less nerdy people might not have. This, in turn, lets me fill in a lot of blanks and make up for the filmmaker's deficiencies. I could be making the movie better than it is. That may well be true. But Star Wars is supposed to be mythology for our times and mythology is supposed to be a basic form from which one draws a multitude of meanings. To that extent, Lucas remains successful.
The other thing I guess I should address is your concern with plot inconsistency in that Obi Wan, Yoda et al. are unable to sense the presence of Palpatine, an evil Jedi, when the other movies are full of Jedi detecting each other's presence. I could try to develop some hole-filling argument like "The Sith have been hiding for a long while and probably know how to disguise themselves, whereas Jedi are more forthright and never do this," or some such rot. But doing so seems superfluous in a number of ways.
First, science fiction is only science fiction. It isn't, after all, the music drama of Richard Wagner. I pretty much think I got my seven bucks worth of stimulation out of the film. The original Star Wars had plot inconsistencies as well, so this is hardly surprising. It is unfortunate that science fiction is so closely tied with realism. Of course, that is the challenge: to create a realistic artificial world. But on the other hand, while much of the form is realistic, the actual endeavor of making Star Wars movies is romantic: telling a great mythological story in an entirely imaginary world.
To a certain extent, I think it is appropriate to judge Star Wars movies by the standards of romanticism, rather than realism. For example, Wagner's Ring remains one of the masterworks of romanticism and has quite a few plot inconsistencies. The thing is that The Ring is still a triumphant work. To sit and pick at plot tangles instead of throwing one's self into the maelstrom of sublime emotional conflict and deep meanings would be, in my opinion, pedantry of the worst sort. You'd be missing the point and, with it, quite an experience. While Star Wars movies are, in sum total, merely works of science fiction and can hardly compare to the music drama of Wagner, I still love science fiction and believe that it need not limit itself to the strictures of realism to be a good and fun story. Lucas created very black and white characters because he believes that film these days strives for too much realism, too much gray in its techniques and morality. Well, damn it, I personally miss the good guys winning and the bad guys losing and fuck realism. Realism has no potential to be grand and larger than life and we all need that now and then. I like a little romanticism. If that means bearing with the occasional plot hole, I'll live with it. That particular plot hole isn't so glaring that it ruins it for me.
I guess while I'll have to confess that this installment isn't nearly as good as the others, I did get a heck of a lot of fun out of it and I really can't wait to see what comes next. The next movies are supposed to get very dark and as I always believed that Empire was the best of the bunch (which makes sense, it's Vader's movie and I've always believed that Lucas does villains better than heroes) so I'm excited about the next two. I'm pretty sure that the James Clavell "first hundred pages" effect will be gone and I think they'll be pretty exciting. But I confess that I grew up on this stuff and am sentimental about it.
Commend me to your wife. While you said you may not get the chance to write again soon, I hope you do, because it was truly stimulating. Take care!
Your pal,
Talal
P.S. September 5, 1999. I forgot to mention that I think Jar-Jar Binx should die quickly at the top of the second movie so that it doesn't really do much to disrupt the flow of subsequent events and that we start the growth of a tragedy in a light-hearted and comic note.
I wrote this to my friend Kirk a few days before Christmas:
I don't know about
So yes, we come to the point. The Packers would have sucked this year without Favre and I don't think Favre's the reason our season's sucked. I'm not just being a queer little fanboy. I think you'll recall that I've been very hard on Favre in the past and have often whined and bitched about the game slipping away due to his cockiness. I whined and bitched about it when he was football god and the galaxy went our way and we had winning seasons every year. I've bitched about it since we lost the goddamned Superbowl to the Denver Motherfucking Broncos (to whom, after years of therapy, I am now able to refer by name, rather than choking out "That Team From Colorado"). I call on you to witness that. Just as everyone was willing to shield Favre from criticism when he was winning, so I argue that your John Dudley is ready to lay it on like peanut butter on toast, because there's nothing the media likes better than to frenzy like sharks when someone famous is bleeding. That's one way that sports, politics and
Let's look at the facts of his career and the structure of this year's Green Bay Packers team. First, Favre has always thrown a somewhat high number of interceptions. I have the stats for 22 QBs in my draft spreadsheet. Averaging their career averages is admittedly not the cleanest statistical move, but I don't have time to do anything more sophisticated at the moment. I should be working on my prospectus rather than self-indulgently writing football letters. But damn it, you can talk such a wonderful amount of shit about football, whereas with politics, because real lives are in the balance, it just hurts too much. I miss that sort of bar-room banter with my buddies. That's been really the only way in which marriage has been a little hard. I don't get to have as much non-sexual male bonding.
Anyway, that admittedly lackluster stats move suggests that the average competitive QB (I tracked the careers of last year's top 30) throws 10 interceptions a year. Favre throws an average of 16. So he's higher than average. Moreover, in his career and has only thrown fewer than 12 in one year: his first with
There's the rub. Passers don't have unlimited control over their accuracy. Receivers are involved. This is a problem for the Green Bay Packers because WE HAVE NONE. Donald Driver (whose potential, you recall I heralded when he was just a benchwarmer) is good, but he does not an offense make. Receivers are not like the Highlander--there must be more than one. Javon Walker practically died in the first game of the season. Run the ball, you say. There are, after all, other options for scoring in football. Well, fuckin' A, we don't have any running backs either. Ahman Green went out at the start of the season, and between you and me, he's not as young as he used to be. Najeh Davenport went out. Goddamnit, even Gado, our Nigerian Miracle Worker who was doing such an awesome job of just popping out of a clump of defensive players like a young Ahman Green, got injured on Monday night. THERE'S NOBODY LEFT.
What is the cause of this? Well, we started the season with a gaping hole in our offensive line. We lost both Marco Rivera and Mike Wahle to free agency. Sadly, the line has improved a little over the season, but not before we lost two of our top RBs and one wide receiver to injuries. The damage was done. Now this is the heart of the problem. Well, unlike hockey, football is a sport that creates heroes. In hockey, the whole team gets the goal. Yeah the guy who's a leading scorer gets laid, but the truth is most players other than goalies do score occasionally, moreover, the really good players (like Stevie Y) are the ones who know that more assists and more games won is way more important than his or any players' scoring record. Moreover, no one player is pivotal to hockey. A hockey team is a network, a little like the Borg on Star Trek.
Everyone says that Favre works the magic, and its true, he does. But football is fundamentally unfair in that no matter how good your passers, receivers and runners may be, if the line sucks, they're all ground meat. But, ironically, the line can be great and if the backs and receivers all suck, it doesn't matter. So a good O-line is a necessary condition for victory, but it's hardly sufficient. When the action happens, the camera centers on the backs and runners, so either way they get blamed or get the glory. Offensive linemen are just as necessary to victory as a star QB, but they don't get credit or blame. I hope they get laid. Recent team antics on the Minnesota Vikings suggest that isn't a problem. I don't know what everyone is so upset about. If a bunch of teammates want to hire some hookers and have an orgy on a boat, it sounds good for bonding and morale. The only thing I'd do differently is forget the boat and hookers and just get right to it in the locker room. The good stuff's already there.
Anyway, the point is this: No matter how many players it takes to make a successful team, the QB is the ultimate hero. Accordingly, Favre has an ego the size of a Buick. His ego makes him believe that he can make the difference in every game. He doesn't have an ego of the sort that Terrell Owens has--Owens doesn't need the team, doesn't need the line, doesn't need anyone. Owens is an asshole. Favre is a genuine leader. But he believes that no matter what goes wrong, he can compensate. The line goes, no problem, he can handle it. The RBs all die, no problem, he can adapt. No one but Donald Driver to throw to, great, he'll throw Donald a Hail Mary and be back home in time to crack open a beer and throw a steak on the grill. Psychologists call this having "positive illusions." We all have illusions that we believe in to great effect because believing in them helps us adapt when hardship comes along. Try remembering me at USAID or you at that shithole company when that bitch who flashed her rack everywhere left you holding the bag. We both suffered due to our positive illusions, illusions that had previously helped us adapt. It sure sucked ass, didn't it? I LOVE my positive illusions--they're better than weed. And once they're gone, they're gone. You can't buy a nickel bag of positive illusions no matter how good your connections are.
Well, evidence is pretty good that Favre has always had his illusions. He's always tried to pull the miracle out of every bad situation and, often enough, it's worked. But the truth is that his miracles are quite delicate and require a host of talented supporting players. I don't remember if you remember me comparing Favre to Steve Young before he retired. Favre is a fancy player. Young would just do anything to get the ball downfield, even run with it himself if he had to. Favre has actually improved on that front and has shown more practical resourcefulness in recent years. But the truth is he's about the fancy, high tech passing. Just like Liz Taylor can't be Cleopatra without sumptuous wardrobe changes in every scene and a cast of thousands, so Brett Favre can't be THE quarterback without a quality O-line, good receivers and some good RBs to help spread it around (how fucking gay is that analogy... I guess I have changed a little over the past few years, eh?).
But just because you and I know that, it doesn't follow that Favre knows that. So instead of conservatively grinning and bearing it, saying "OK, we have no prayer of winning under these conditions, how do I stoically bear it, making sure we don't look so bad" he tries to pull a miracle out of his hat several times a game. Remember when I said the top QBs are the guys who can increase the number of attempts while maintaining accuracy? Well, he's trying to increase attempts, but there's no way to be accurate with so few passing choices. Favre needs his quality receivers and he's only got Driver. He's trying what's worked in the past, but he's facing his Kobiyashi Maru. He can't win under these circumstances, and he really doesn't know how to play like a respectable loser. He's never lost before. So he throws more hoping to make the magic play and because there's no one to catch the fuckin' ball, he racks up interceptions.
Favre, like many of the assholes who follow him in the media and write articles like the one you forwarded, has always believed that he could work the magic and that he was the magic ingredient. Give him his due--yeah, he is a legendary quarterback. But great quarterbacks don't win games on their own. A team with a great O-line and shit at QB may never be a force to be reckoned with, but a team that has a great QB and no one else in the offense still isn't going to win many games. In all fairness, most of our losses this season have been close. Our defense actually improved from total shit to moderately shitty over the course of the season. And Kirk, I saw almost all the games: my boys went down fighting. Even though we lost, there were some great moments there. They fought a good fight.
But myth is only a myth; legend only a legend. Even drunk Bears fans have to admit that Mike Ditka can't take on a whole football team all by himself. One man versus a team? Fuckin' A, Kirk. Even drunk Bears fans on Saturday Night Live have to admit that's complete bullshit. No, I don't think that Brett Favre and Donald Driver can somehow carry a shitty O-line with no other offensive players, especially with a crummy defense. That sort of miracle is the domain of God alone. Don't think I haven't asked for His help.
Bottom line: Favre is the same guy he's always been. There's no variation at QB. If our O-line and our best receivers and RBs were all out ten years ago, he'd have lost like this ten years ago and probably have been a much different man for the rest of his career. Bottom line: Favre is still a go-to guy. If you want to find blame for the disaster that is this year in Green Bay Packers football, you have to look elsewhere.
Where do I look? Well the first person I blame is Mike Holmgren. He fucking lost the '98 Superbowl and then goes off to become the coach and general manager of the fucking Seahawks because he had to get all of the action into his big, strong hands. He gives up what he openly admits is the best job in football to move to
If Holmgren had stayed and waited two years, he could have been our GM, sucked with us, given up the being GM with us, gone back to just coaching with us and WE'D be back to dominating the NFC. And we'd have loved him for it, because while he might have been a prima donna bastard, he was at least OUR prima donna bastard. And he can win at football.
The other person I blame is Mike Sherman. For most of the years after
But yeah, I don't think Favre has changed. The team and the times have changed. Except for a little grey hair, Favre hasn't faded. Come on, he threw 30 TDs and 4088 yards last year. Over the past three years he's come to camp leaner and more muscular every year. The difference is that Favre had a team last year and this year, he doesn't.
Your pal,
Talal
