Lame First Talking Blog

Crummy Entry

I never write anymore. Sorry about that. Life has been busy. It's not even worth telling you I've been unfocused. Let's face it--I'm always unfocused. It's part of my personality now. I don't know they day will ever come that I've gotten used to it being a part of my personality. Assuming I live a normal lifespan, I will be an unfocused twit for far longer than I ever was together, competent individual. Health was the aberration. The twit is the real me.

I guess, as Gregory Maguire said, "You get used to never getting used to it."

The Dissertation

I've made some skips and jumps in the proposal. I still need to rewrite again, but it's coming along. Craig and I are supposed to go to Tel Aviv in September. Let's see what happens.

Teaching

The second iteration of POL S 436 went okay. I was deeply blessed to have a good friend and committed teacher, Pam Stumpo, as a TA this term. That was a fantastic blessing. I perfected my France section only to discover that I may jettisson it in favor of Jordan. I want to simplify the assignment structure to focus their skills on writing in a single genre.

Blog Entries I'd Like to Write

I never write blogs anymore. This entry sucks. I want to do a bunch of entries. Craig wants me to go to sleep. It's two am. I guess I'll do that instead. Sorry this sucks.

Imagine There's No Heaven

A woman who audited my Arab-Israeli course this summer named Marzieh Goudarzi wrote to me recently to ask my opinion on what was going down in the Gaza Strip. She asked me a follow-up question about the conflict as a whole and my interest in it. Her question really got me thinking and I wanted to post the answer as a blog. Here's the note:

Thanks for your response.
There is no short supply of humanitarian crises in this world but I find that my head swims and my blood boils over this conflict between Israel and Palestine. From my perspective, which I realize is quite limited, it seems they see each other as foreign species. I suppose I really despise the institutions of religion and culture that give them their identities and make them seem so foreign to each other. And I don't take issue with embracing culture, not in the least; I only feel that it plays an unnecessarily destructive role in the globalizing world, where cultures are invading each other's "bubble". But religions... my issues with religion are at the root... I don't just have problems with certain aspects of it.
You chose to teach a class on the subject. Why? Do you feel drawn to it as well? If so, why this issue?
If you have time.
Thanks.
Marzieh

Dear Marzieh,

> Thanks for your response.

My pleasure.

> There is no short supply of humanitarian
> crises in this world but I find that my head
> swims and my blood boils over this conflict
> between Israel and Palestine.

You’re not alone. Arab-Israeli Conflict is a staple Middle Eastern politics class. Lots of people are quite passionate about the subject.

> From my perspective, which I realize is quite
> limited,

Not so limited, I hope! You sat through the course!

> it seems they see each other as foreign species.

This is essentially correct. The enemy is never “of” the self. By definition, the enemy is always the other and can never be the self.

> I suppose I really despise the institutions of
> religion and culture that give them their
> identities and make them seem so foreign to
> each other.

Then I failed completely as a teacher. The argument I tried to give you guys was that this ingroup/outgroup distinction is natural to us. It has a genetic basis. It aided us for millenia spent as hunter-gatherers because it helped us cling to our group of twelve or so people and that helped us survive. Seeing the outgroup as foreign and alien is not the product of “unnatural” institutions that were imposed upon some sort of “naturally peaceful” humanity. The objectification of the outgroup is fundamentally a part of human nature. If the institutions were not there to reinforce existing identities, we would simply invent new ones and fight over them. Violence is eternal. We will never “get over it.” The most we can hope for is to hold in check through discipline.

> And I don’t take issue with embracing
> culture, not in the least; I only feel that
> it plays an unnecessarily destructive role
> in the globalizing world, where cultures
> are invading each other’s “bubble”.

I’d say just the opposite. What’s really destructive is the globalizing world that places individual human beings that have a hunter-gather set of biases into a world in which those biases can now destroy us as a species rather than save us in small groups. We are not conditioned at all by the process of evolution to live the way we do under capitalism. Our natural impulses are all wrong for it. As a result, our original biases which saved us as hunter-gatherers are the cause of so much of our grief as capitalists. We are the victims of our own success as a species.

> But religions... my issues with religion are at the root...

I can’t see why. Recall that Muslims and Jews lived together for the greater part of a thousand years without serious acrimony of the sort we see in Palestine today. There is nothing about Islam or Judaism that must make Muslims and Jews fight one another. Religion is not a causal variable in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I do hope you aren’t going to succumb to the John Lenonesque sentiment about “imagining there’s no heaven.” In my view, it’s drivel of the worst sort. I must advise you in the strongest terms to discard it from your intellectual repertoire. We fight and kill for all sorts of reasons. Religion is just one more ostensible reason and, like most of the others, I think it’s not a real causal variable. Without religion, we’d still kill one another. We hate the outgroup because it is in our nature to do so. If there were no religion, we’d still slaughter one another. There is no fundamentally peaceful humanity to liberate from “evil institutions” or “regressive backwards thinking.” We’re killers, pure and simple, just as we’re healers and lovers, pure and simple. It’s part of our complex nature.

A world in which violence is regulated to create what we call “the civil society of liberal democracy” is not at all natural. It is assiduously constructed. As we are learning in Iraq (although probably not well enough), it is not easy to create such a world. Simply put, “it isn’t natural.” Please remember that “natural” does not mean “good.” I favor the civil society of liberal democracy above all others. I like capitalism and am loathe to give it up. But the civil society of liberal democracy is very likely the least “natural” way for human beings to live. On the first day of class, I talked about the bias of the American peacenik, who asks, aghast, “Why can’t they stop fighting?” My response is, “That’s a stupid question. The interesting question is ‘how is it that there are human beings on the face of this planet who can actually believe that people with different identity markers can mix and interact without fighting at all, as if it were natural?’“ This is the question that is genuinely worth investigating if you want peace.

The John Lennon consciousness is the product of remarkable bias. It stands in the face of all evidence to the contrary because its adherents live in the civil society of liberal democracy and, due to their sensory bias, actually believe that their life is somehow “normal,” even “natural.” Their lives are nothing short of extraordinary, even if the extraordinary quality of their lives is in no way a reflection of their own conscious thinking. Their bias is a tremendous luxury, the result of their insulation from the violence that makes their way of life possible. But if you care about liberal democracy, human peace and human compassion, you can’t afford to succumb to this luxury. The civil society of liberal democracy is fragile. When we take it for granted, we lose it to decadence and corruption. We have been flirting with this for the past decade. Once it is destroyed, it is very difficult to recreate. We must remain conscious of this fact if we are not to lose it. We cannot afford to “imagine there’s no heaven,” and by that I mean we cannot afford to imagine that our present way of life is simply what happens when you free human nature to be itself. It is nothing of the sort.

> You chose to teach a class on the subject. Why?
> Do you feel drawn to it as well? If so, why this issue?

Like all life decisions, it is a mixture of the sublime, the mundane and the luck of the draw. I grew up being passionate about the conflict because I was raised to be a good Arab and Palestine is the pan-Arab cause celebre. Certainly when I was at Georgetown, I was quite passionate.

Back in ‘97 or ‘98, I had a long argument with a Zionist named Maurice back in Washington. He was actually one of my next door neighbors. We were introduced because we both were from El Paso, TX, but he was Jewish and I was Arab. We both always skirted around the Arab-Israeli Conflict. What I thought was funny is that we both had a lot in common in terms of other political questions. We were both lefties. I don’t think either or us wanted to spoil our friendly rapport by discussing the elephant in the room. One day Maurice bumped into me with a buddy of mine named Brian (he was in formation to become a Maronite priest--don’t ask!) and we invited him up, because we were going to hang out and do some drinking. So we drank and talked and Brian, curious twit that he was, brought up the elephant in the room. So Maurice and I had the inevitable two-and-a-half-hour long, knock-down, drag-out debate about who’s right and who’s wrong in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Naturally, nothing was settled. I learned more about AIPAC arguing strategies and formulas than I did about the conflict. I was proud that he learned a few facts he didn’t know before from me, but I certainly didn’t sway him. Simply put, it wasn’t possible. I came to realize that the debate was futile. I have never rehearsed it again.

I actually really wanted to avoid the Arab-Israeli Conflict when I came to Seattle. I left a very pro-Arab program to go to a PhD program where I was the only Arab and both of the profs who were associated with Middle Eastern Studies in our department were Jewish. I didn’t feel very safe at all. Moreover, Zionists are very well organized in the United States and teaching a course on the Arab-Israeli Conflict that in some way would express what I thought was justice would be very likely to bring me a permanent phalanx of little campers outside my door from Hillel or one of AIPAC’s many campus organizations. I mean, they regularly trash people as dignified and scholarly as Rashid Khalidi. How was I going to fare?

Moreover, it was a crashing bore. There’s was nothing new to say about the conflict. It’s the same set of ethical arguments over and over and over again. Rinse, lather, repeat. I’d tired of debates that go nowhere. I wanted to study democratization. My original dissertation was to going to be about why Taiwan experienced a shift toward democracy but Lebanon didn’t. But, 9/11 changed much and my life was falling apart at the time anyway. After 9/11, democratization seemed a puerile and stupid research topic worthy of only the most giftless of romantics. We weren’t headed for a bright, beautiful future. The ‘90s were a joke. We were going into the bowels of hell. Moreover, I was diagnosed with MS and wound up coming out at the same time. There was a lot going on and it changed the way I looked at the world.

Moreover, I’m a Middle East specialist. I had to be practical. It’s not particularly easy for a political scientist who studies the Middle East not to teach Arab-Israeli Conflict. It is by far the most popular popular course in the field among undergraduates. Moreover, I soon realized that I had nothing to fear from Professor Goldberg, my committee chair. He was not a Zionist and is one of the finest human beings I have ever known. I respected him both as an intellect and as a human being. I really wanted to teach under him, so I signed up to be a TA for Arab-Israeli.

It was at that point that I was genuinely surprised when he told me that I wasn’t prepared to be a TA for Arab-Israeli. “You’re too angry, Talal,” he told me. “I’ve seen it in seminar. Because you’re intelligent, it shuts down debate. A person can be angry and not intelligent and debate will propser. A person can be intelligent and not angry and debate will prosper. But angry and intelligent scares the hell out of people.” I was taken aback, but he continued, “Moreover, this course is going to be your bread and butter. You need to find a way to work through the anger, because you can’t not teach the course.”

After a few days of hellish introspection, I realized he was right. I needed to do something. Moreover, my debate with Maurice several years ago was still nagging at me. I never understood how he could he a liberal except when he’s a fascist. But what I did realize is that I had more in common with him than I did with Brian, because he, unlike Brian, would never ask that mother of all insipid questions, “Why can’t they stop fighting?” Maurice’s answer and mine would be diametrically opposite answers, but we both understood that the conflict was not the result of insanity. I realized that all three of us were a product of very different biases. I wanted to understand why those in a conflict have mirror-image biases that negate one another but shared a single rhetorical structure and why those outside the conflict were biased into thinking that the violence of the conflict was not “of” them but of some weird foreign world that couldn’t be part of them (which it most assuredly can be and is). Looking at the conflict from that angle actually started to get me interested again. The class you observed was the product of that thinking.

I came to realize that our sets of values are packages that seem aesthetically to “go together” because we were raised with them as a cohesive whole. Because they are reflected by those who surround us, their internal contradictions are rarely obvious to us. This is the effect of sensory bias and attachment bias. Every package of values is likely to have glaring inconsistencies that will not be obvious to the believer. And because we need to believe that we are good people and because good people (our parents) gave us our package, we are loathe to betray the package. The problem is that most values can be brought into contradiction with one another. This makes politics a fundamentally tragic sphere of action and, depending on the tragic circumstances that bring these packages together, we get things like protracted conflict or arrogant assumptions that violence is “of” some other and not of the self. Simply put, combining hunter-gatherer instincts with capitalism generates this sort of behavior. To the extent we can recognize it, we may be able to subject it to a level of control. But that control will always be tenuous. The civil society of liberal democracy, like any political order, is always more fragile than it appears to be at the height of its success.

It’s not terribly uplifting, I know, but it’s not quite as insipid as crooning “Imagine there’s no heaven” and lighting a candle. So for better or worse, that’s my answer .

Cheers!

Talal

Envoi: Sean Michael McClure, Racist and Homophobe

I received this e-mail a few days ago from Sean Michael McClure, who sometimes posted to this blog. I have cut and pasted the text in its pristine form. I felt editing out the spelling and punctuation errors would lessen the impact.

From: Sean McClure

To: "T. S. Hattar"

Subject: RE: Stop harrasing me

Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 00:09:04 +0000

Dear Talal;

In the end I am quite pleased that your have a disease that is turning your mind to hummus. Nothing pleases me more than to know that as a gay man you will never have children. So even if before your mind turns to rot God has deprived you with any posibility of a legacy, since we all know that your poli sci views, being a Marxist as you are, is antiquated and irrelevant in today's day in age.

I hope the flames of hell lap at your peasent toes for eternity, which will happen since you, as a gay man are an abonimation before God. Which sadly for you would have happened anyway since you will always be a Saracen dog.

I only wish that I could report your family members to my overzealous DHS thuggy friends, for being terrorists, I do so enjoy putting Arabs up on the chopping plot. But, since you are disowned, their suffering really wouldn't hurt you so I wouldn't enjoy it all that much and when I got rid of that nasty old Paki professor who dared to give me a B, well the titilation only lasted so long.

Cheers;
Sean Michael McClure

Background:

Near the start of the last term, Sean was whining to me that he didn’t have any gaming buddies anymore. He wanted to get me and a group of my friends to play a game with him. I told him I didn’t have the time for gaming and it would be rough to find a game that we could all play, because my buddies live in different time zones. To his credit, Sean found a game called Legends of Elveron, that can be played realistically across time zones with players checking in at different time of days, but still coordinating their actions across timezones. So I got Kirk and Simon to join in our original group. Nelly joined at the start of our second round. A friend and ex-student, Josiah, hopped in for our third round. The game was fun. It was actually really fun. And it gave me a chance to catch up with old friends, especially Kirk.

The events that led to Sean's letter started at the tail end of our first round. We elected Sean our realm king (he clearly coveted the post). But he started bossing everyone around. The term primus inter pares didn’t seem to exist in his vocabulary. As he was pushing my friends around, whom I’d gathered primarily as a favor to him, I sent him a side e-mail advising him to cool it. He exploded in a fit of pique, quit our realm (teams in Elveron are called realms) and decided to play the game for a round separately. We left him alone. Since he was restarting the game after we had already “left protection”—the setup phase of the game, we could have hunted him and ruined his round. In the name of good sportsmanship, we left him alone. For this we were rewarded near the end of the round by several obsessive attacks by Sean. Sean built up a fairly strong defense and we weren’t able to hit him back. Needless to say, in gamers terms, we wanted revenge.

We got revenge near the end of the second round. He attacked us when he was vulnerable. We had changed our kingdom names, so he didn’t know it was us. He just thought he was bullying a random realm. We all came back and pounded him. Indeed, as a realm, Nelly, Simon, Kirk, Josiah and I collectively killed his kingdom. It’s not easy killing a kingdom in Elveron, but we did it. And we did it collectively as a realm. It was really great for esprit de corps. After the kill, Sean sent us this feeble protest message:

From: Sean McClure

To: "T. S. Hattar"

Subject: Stop harrasing me

Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:14:23 +0000

Talal;

I don't want to deal with you anymore as I am sure you have no interest in dealing with me. I found what you said shitty and condecending and I don't want to engage with you. Since i ma calling in the ghost with you, as I assume you want to do with me, then why the hell can't you leave me alone in the game.

Than you for runing the experience for me. Are you such a petty person that you feel compelled to keep coming after me? I don't want to interact with you. I accept an attack here or there, but you are constantly coming after me.

I would like to ask that you be civil and stop.

Thank you
Sean Michael McClure

This was my response:

From: "T. S. Hattar"

To: "Sean McClure"

Subject: Re: Stop harrasing me

Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:52:42 -0800

Dear Sean,

I think Kirk made our pack's position clear in his game message. We are satisfied with the outcome of this transaction and have no further need for interaction. If you are concerned that our word cannot be taken at face value, simply change your kingdom name. Indeed, like most strategic players, we change ours every round because camouflage is, simply put, good military practice.

In fact, we were all rather floored that you did not follow this sensible practice in the present round. But then, you could not have given us that "Batman villain" flavor that we savored so much for the past two rounds were you not insanely arrogant. Your gaming practice has added tremendously to the pleasure of our game. You gave us a personal enemy and, at length, you allowed us add, if you will, the spice of murder to our egg-nog. The hunt, particularly the end game, was deeply satisfying, for which I sincerely thank you. On the whole it's been a jolly good Christmas.

It's good to have friends!

Cheers!

Talal

I think it was pretty mild. He had been a real jerk in the game and, yes, I really did relish giving him his comeuppance. At any rate, I had never received such a vitriolic letter in my entire life. Indeed, while this was not the first instance of anti-Arab racism that has been directed against me (although most of these came on the playground on the seventh grade), it was the first homophobic slur I’ve received in my life. Well, I guess I had those in the seventh grade too, but no one, including me, knew that I was gay when they were calling me “faggot” back then.

I have recently learned something about prejudice. People interact with you, even pretend to be your friends, despite identities they consider to be undesirable. Prejudice doesn’t mean that they have a white sheet in their closet and plan on burning a cross in your yard. It means they pretend to be friends and consider it a “courtesy.” They think they’re being generous. It means when they’re pissed off and want to bludgeon you, they grab onto the identity and use it as cudgel. Racists and homophobes exist everywhere. Indeed, Sean Michael McClure is a government bureaucrat who first worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Africa Bureau and now works at the Department of the Treasury. They exist in your government.

In The Neverending Story, Michael Ende tells of the Old Man of Wandering who writes down the events of people’s lives so that they live forever as an ugly or beautiful story. I may not be the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, but this is definitely Sean Michael McClure’s ugly story. I hope for his sake it’s the only one.

Back to School!

Am I ready? Fuck no!

Season in Review I: Favre Again

Shawn Lee, one of the survivors of POL S 325 and a really great guy to boot, is a passionate football fan (who has developed a pronounced interest in pan-Arabism). He popped me an e-mail the other day about, well, Brett Favre. Here’s the text:

You said that you don't see how Favre could've saved the season for the Packers, but I don't know I have to disagree. Sure Favre is having a rough go now, but he has been really good for NYJ, and in spite of what happens tomorrow, the Jets are a better team with Favre than they would've been with Pennington. You don't shove a legend out the door unless you have and absolute stud waiting in the wings (see 49'ers Montana to Young transition). Now Aaron Rogers is a good and serviceable qb, and could have a good career, will it be a Hall of Fame career? Probably not. A charismatic leader behind center, even if he is old an over the hill and overrated, forces d - coordinators, not wanting to look the fool, to overemphasize ("respect") his passing game more which of course opens up the running game. This year Grant was a bigger threat out of the Packers backfield than Rogers was, allowing defenses to key on him. The year before the opposite was true, Favre was more of a threat, which allowed Grant to emerge. Simply put the NFC North might be won by a 9 win team this year, the Jets have 9 wins, and your Packers are on the no. 1 tee box with my Seahawks.

This, of course, requires some sort of response. So, point by point, then:

You said that you don't see how Favre could've saved the season for the Packers, but I don't know I have to disagree.

You share this opinion with many of the most colorful posters to the Green Bay Press Gazette’s Packers page, home to the most vociferous of the Farve fans anywhere.

Sure Favre is having a rough go now,

Let’s compare and contrast his statistical performance for this year with that of Aaron Rodgers:

Note the gap of 566 passing yards. Favre made slightly larger number of attempts and completed 2.1 percent more of his passes. That said, Rodgers averaged 0.8 yards more per pass. As much as I may resent it as on old guy, I attribute this to the “zing” of youth. Indeed, our young gunslinger “zinged” us six more touchdowns than Favre made for the Jets. Moreover, Rodgers did it with nine fewer interceptions than Favre. I think I’d have wanted Rodgers, not Favre, on my fantasy team this year.

And as far as the Packers’ future goes, I really don’t think Rodgers has peaked yet. By the by, let's compare Rodgers with Favre's renaissance year last season:

Note here that Rodgers has nearly as many yards, an equal number of touchdowns and two fewer interceptions. Rodgers, incidentally, was sacked way more often this year than Favre was last year. Rodgers performs under pressure. Plus, the kid, like Favre, isn't made of glass. He played through a shoulder injury and started 16 times. Certainly, QB injury was every cheesehead's big worry going into the season. It turned out to be a red herring. The Kid is tough. Remember when making this comparison that 2007 was an exceptional year for Favre. We don't have enough data yet to be certain that Rodgers can keep this performance up, but you have to admit the numbers are deeply encouraging.

but he has been really good for NYJ, and in spite of what happens tomorrow, the Jets are a better team with Favre than they would've been with Pennington.

Does anyone debate this? Certainly I don’t. Favre was an excellent deal for the Jets even if he retires this coming season. Jersey sales alone probably made the deal a financial success, and I think Favre was a genuine asset for the Jets offense.

You don't shove a legend out the door unless you have and absolute stud waiting in the wings (see 49'ers Montana to Young transition).

Now, I’m not a Niners fan (far from it!), but did everyone know the year Steve Young took over that Steve Young was going to be Steve Young? I’d be interested in reading the first year rhetoric surrounding the young QB and his reception on the Niners.

Now Aaron Rogers is a good and serviceable qb, and could have a good career, will it be a Hall of Fame career? Probably not.

For what it’s worth, let’s compare the Kid’s first year with Favre’s and Young’s. Since Favre didn’t start all sixteen games in 1992, I threw in 1993 as well. Likewise, I threw in 1992 for Young.

First, note that Rodgers threw for more yards this year than either of these giants did in theirs. Of course, in Young’s case, this is an unfair comparison, as he made far fewer attempts. Young's average pass was longer than either Rodgers or Favre. Moreover, his low number of interceptions put both Favre and Rodgers to shame. But note that Rodgers is far more attractive than Favre in his opening two years. I see nothing in his cards that suggests that Rodgers can’t be one of the greats. You are correct that the odds are against him are high simply because of Favre’s exceptional talent (i.e. Favre is already exceptional and has been for a long time. In contrast, it's hard to spot an exceptional player before he has a reputation), but can you see why the Packers would risk a great deal to prevent losing Rodgers to free agency? Favre certainly didn’t start his career with better credentials than Rodgers.

A charismatic leader behind center, even if he is old an over the hill and overrated, forces d - coordinators, not wanting to look the fool, to overemphasize ("respect") his passing game more which of course opens up the running game. This year Grant was a bigger threat out of the Packers backfield than Rogers was, allowing defenses to key on him. The year before the opposite was true, Favre was more of a threat, which allowed Grant to emerge.

I would like to see you provide some sort of evidence that this process actually happened. At the very least, I’d like to see documentation of some sort of coaches arguing that they can relax on the Packers’ passing game and focus on corking up Grant. I watched every Packers game this season except the second Bears game just before Christmas. I saw little to suggest major fault on the offense other than the size of the linesmen and the injuries on the offensive line. Moreover, recall the rhetoric in 2005 and 2006. Everyone (but me, I felt) said Favre was washed up and a has-been. Fantasy guides systematically downgraded him. His reputation is far better now than it was then. No one predicted that Favre would have a blockbuster year in 2007. I need stronger evidence to be persuaded by your theory.

Simply put the NFC North might be won by a 9 win team this year, the Jets have 9 wins, and your Packers are on the no. 1 tee box with my Seahawks.

Compare QB performance on the Packers this year with Rodgers to our even more disastrous year under Favre in 2005, when the O-line collapsed after Wahle and Rivera were lost to free agency. I feel these years are quite comparable:

Rodgers had eight more touchdowns and sixteen fewer interceptions. Favre’s reputation didn’t keep us from going 4-12 in 2005, the last time the O-line collapsed. This time we’re 6-10. Why not admit that Rodgers did a better job than Favre under the real pressure of a no-win situation? It never matters who is behind the O-line when the O-line sucks. Tip steak or filet mignion, once the meat goes through the grinder, it's all hamburger. For what it's worth though, Rodgers, at face value at least, is a greater asset when the O-line falls apart completely. Among other things, this is due to Rodgers' exceptional mobility, an attribute he has in common with Young, not Favre.

I’m so sick of everyone dumping on Aaron Rodgers. The decision at QB this year was probably the most sound decision undertaken by Ted Thompson (I sure wish he could pick a punter). Sorry, Shawn, I just don’t miss Favre. Who needs a freaking prima donna who makes you go through this "will he/won’t he" routine about retirement every fucking year? Who needs a guy who basically comes out and says, "Well, yeah, I retired. But you were supposed to come after me for the next six months, wooing me into coming back, because I'm God's gift to football. I need to feel more special than this!" To be honest, I miss Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera more than I miss Favre. When they left, our O-line died. Favre should have retired. 2007 was an excellent ending. Everything after has been pure ego.

Sorrow as a Reminder of Joy

Back in August, I read a novel and it gave me, almost by accident, words that I’ve been searching for. The words were, “It was a condition he’d need to get used to, or to tolerate never getting used to—not exactly the same thing, more’s the pity.” Gregory Maguire wrote them about Liir, the son of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and his loneliness, something I haven’t had to deal with in years. That freedom is a sublime joy that I’ve gotten very used to. The words apply to me when it comes to the brain damage and chronic fatigue that come along with MS.

The words express my problem. The reason why this is hard is that I keep expecting that I’m going to get used to it—that I’ll get over the loss. That’s the trick. You don’t get over it. That’s what makes it real loss. My difficulty in adapting has resulted from the fact that my goal for psychological healing has been too ambitious. This year of progress results from the fact I am learning to tolerate that I’ll never get over the loss.

Anthony Swofford said, “There is a wreck in your head, part of the aftermath, and you must dismantle the wreck, so you move it around and bury it. It took years for you to understand that the most complex and dangerous conflicts, the most harrowing operations, and the most deadly wars, occur in the head.” I didn’t understand it when I first read Jarhead, but I get it now.

This sense of loss will always be my companion. I will never be able to reflexively imagine myself as I am, to curb my ambition to my present capacity for achievement. I will always need to scale back and control as best I can for the disappointment entailed in always falling short of my ambition. I will do this for the remainder of my life. The pain and the shame are gone. But the sorrow will always linger. This is now my psychological baseline, my normal. Whatever else I will feel (and I will feel much, make no mistake, I am not giving up on life), this sorrow will underlie the texture of my emotional life. It is by no means all of me. But it will always be part of me. Though I did not choose it, it has become a fundamental part of my identity. So much for Schmitt’s assumption of existential identity—it turns out choice hasn’t much to do with it—at least not as much as we might like to think.

I now understand that those things that give meaning to our lives must perforce one day bring us to sorrow, for life is ultimately a matter of loss. Nonetheless, I am no longer depressed or dejected. To remain in such a state would be an immature response to life. Rather, I now understand that sorrow serves a purpose in the divine economy of our emotional lives. It brings awareness and vitality to our joy. I did not know to cherish the experience of power while I had it, while I could change the world around me and be productive, creative. I was too young to know loss yet. Yet the sorrow I feel for this loss, if I am committed to life, awakens me to my present joy. It reminds me to cherish what I have while I have it. It reminds me above all to cherish Craig while he is mine to love, before Death comes, for Death is coming.

When I was younger, this thought would have filled me with fear and desperation. It does no longer. For if I can fill my senses with love for him and truly cherish what God has given me in my partner, then, I know I will have sucked the very marrow out of life (even Henry David Thoreau has his uses, apparently). And my memory of him will be as full as possible and it will lend me comfort in my waning years. For if I am Christian yet, I know that love never dies. And if I have fallen from grace, the fullness of this memory of life lived in love remains the greatest thing I can achieve. My sorrow awakens me to what is most glorious in life. And whether my soul is immortal or not, it will have been beautiful. And mortal that I am, I cannot ask for more and so am content.

Because of the brain damage, my life is always accompanied by alarms set on the stove or my cell phone to remind my poor wandering mind to do things like take the laundry out of the washer and place it into the dryer, to take my medicines, turn on the broccoli streamer just before dinner. The alarm bells drive poor Craig crazy. It makes good thematic sense that God would give me another alarm bell. This sorrow, when it swells in my soul, is one more reminder to cherish Craig while he is mine to love. I who was once so distracted by the future needed this reminder to cherish my present and my partner. I have lost my formidable sense of focus so that I would focus on what was truly important before it is too late.

And so I am grateful. I hope I can carry this feeling with me as well. This must be my discipline.

Shift in Consciousness

The brain is a fucked-up and funny thing. A couple of weeks ago, I felt I was getting on track. I was even working out again. Then I got sick. A really nasty stomach flu. I spent a lot of time running back and forth to the toilet. Naturally, I got off track. But I’m okay with that. That’s who I am now. I’m not efficient. I’m not a machine. I’m not a force of nature. I’m just a geeky guy with low focus and low energy. The most important part of my life is that I’m married to Craig and that we live each day together. And that’s fine. That’s more than fine. I’m happy. I don’t need to be more.

I’ve been playing an on-line strategy game with Kirk, Simon and Nelly. Josiah is joining in the next round. What’s funny is that it’s making me feel really upbeat. I didn’t realize that it would. I miss teamwork. I miss the common struggle toward a goal, the camaraderie, the humor. I feel so much better about life. It’s strange. It reminds me of the good parts of working at USAID without the evil parts. So strange that something that seems so silly can make me feel so upbeat.

I really want to write. I miss writing. I was good at it before and I want to be good at it again. I know I won’t be what I intended to be—a publishing machine. That’s okay. But I want to write again, anyway. I’ve learned how to be a good teacher with this illness. Now I want to learn about how to be a good writer.

Little things change. I’ve changed. I can quite put a finger on it. But I feel a little excited.

A Problem of Inspiration

This passage in Talal Amin’s essay “What Might an Anthropology of Secularism Look Like?” triggered a visceral emotional response in me:

Johann Sulzer, a theorist of the fine arts, wrote in more general terms: “All artists of any genius claim that from time to time they experience a state of extraordinary psychic intensity which makes work unusually easy, images arising without great effort and the best ideas flowing in such profusion as if they were the gift of some higher power. This is without doubt what is called inspiration. If an artist experiences this condition, his object appears to him in an unusual light; his genius, as if guided by a divine power, invents without effort, shaping his invention in the most suitable form without strain; the finest ideas and images occur unbidden in floods to the inspired poet; the orator judges with the greatest acumen, feels with the greatest intensity, and the strongest and most vividly expressive words rise to his tongue.” Such statements, Flaherty argues, are strongly reminiscent of accounts of shamanism—in this case of a shaman described not skeptically but in wonderment. They employ the idea of inspiration metaphorically—as control of an “instrument” from outside the person, or as a “gift” from a “higher power.” But these remain metaphors, covering an inability to explain a this-worldly phenomenon in natural terms.

My problem after multiple sclerosis is that I cannot have this experience as a writer. The experience of exaltation when one is flooded by imagination and converts that imagination into a structured, final product was my primary motivation to work. Charisma is the experience of exercising transformative, creative power. You have to see transformation and creativity in real time for it to be charisma.

The difficulty is not that I cannot be flooded with imagination anymore. That will still happen all the time if I don’t work to control it. The problem is that my organizational skills have been so badly compromised by the brain damage that I can’t keep up with an intense flow of imagination. I can’t organize the flood of images quickly enough to experience imagination as a high, because the high is the product not only of pseudo-religious awe at the flow of images flooding one’s consciousness, but also of mental power in processing it all. Instead, the result is distress. I’m still flooded with sight, but I can’t shape it effectively. Trying to do it in real time, I write disasters like the damned Lebanon paper.

The obvious solution is to let in less at a time and developing means of putting the pieces together slowly. The problem isn’t that the processor is bad (low intelligence) or the hard drive is bad (compromised long term memory problems, like Alzheimers), but that I’m running on too little memory (short-term recall problems) and simply can’t keep and manage all the images flooding into my conscious mind all at once.

The problem is that working on turning imagination into theory bit by bit just isn’t a high. Remember, I have to see the creative transformation in real time, i.e. “right before my eyes,” to experience that exalted high. If creative transformation happens incrementally, there’s no euphoria at all.

Is it any wonder I’m not getting anywhere?

	Teaching	Writing
Financial incentives	Regular if scanty pay at regular intervals when I teach.	The vague possibility of gainful employment without regular pay interruptions that seems to recede into an impossible to attain future.
Time constraints	Structured allotments (the course meets at regular times) with immediate selective incentives that force efficient use of off-schedule time (if I walk in unprepared I die of embarrassment). Top prioritization because I must teach to receive an income.	Chronic fatigue greatly reduces my “off schedule” time outside teaching and real life (funerals, doctor’s appointments, family crises, etc.) eats away at this time. Writing is consistently interrupted.
Pleasure in the work	Immediate high of watching the students experience new ideas they’ve never experienced before.	Slow boring of hard boards. Perspective erodes passion. Lack of self-confidence, as I can’t see the results happen in “real time.”

A Letter to Kirk

Dear Kirk

This is a link to the only thing that has come close to a locker room analysis in the aftermath of our third consecutive loss.

I don't know what's wrong and neither does the media. I'm pretty sure it's in their fucking minds, though. Maybe McCarthy is too soft-spoken to be a real leader. I know its unfair to compare him to Vince Lombardi, but fuckin' A. Sports, like life, requires passion. Thompson is always going to be detached, always going to be zen. Fuck, Kirk, he reminds me of you, which is why I trust him. But Thompson is a general manager. McCarthy's a coach and a coach can't be detached. It's the same as being a teacher. You have to evoke passion in your players. You have to do what they cannot—force them to draw on that reserve or embrace higher discipline or do whatever unnatural, counterintuitive act they need to win—a coach has to motivate. You can't do that with distance and reserve. They have to know that they're not alone, because they can't make it on their own. They need leadership.

I'm wondering if McCarthy's the problem. You can't be "just a manager" as a coach. I dunno, Kirk. All I know is that they suck and they shouldn't. They're better than this.

Favre may have meant a lot to them. I don't see why, though. None of these guys were there for the glory days, except Donald Driver. In 2005 we saw that Favre is only as good as the rest of the team. He isn 't a magician. They can win without him. People said that Favre led the team to 13-3 last year, but I think that's bullshit. We had Favre in 2005 and we sucked. Last year, the team gave Favre the opportunity to win.

I'm proud of Rodgers. If this is Favritis, I don't understand why they aren't proud of Rodgers. He was beautiful today. I was so proud of him. Rodgers is giving from his very soul. I don't see why that's not inspiring enough for anyone. It inspires me.

Damn it, he's the hungriest guy on the team. I just don't get why the rest of them aren't hungry. This team has the potential to be great. I don't know why they can't find it in themselves to believe in themselves.

I mean, I'm fucking ninth year graduate student with lesions in his brain. I'm not giving up. And I'm not going to win the Lombardi Trophy—that's obvious now. I'm no fool. It's enough for me to get a paying job as a teacher. But they can win. They can still go all the way to the Super Bowl. It pisses me off that they don't care enough to at least try to comport themselves with dignity, the fucking tattered bit of cloth that's survived the ruin of all of my dreams—to show that they have some self-respect.

This is Week 5. Who the fuck gives up the ship in Week 5?

Your pal,

Talal

On Being A Geek

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"
> in class once and I called you out as a Dune geek!

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 irony
> of accusing someone of something which, by your very
> accusation you admit to being as well...

What? 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!

Talal

The Kid Sure Doesn't Suck!

Sorry it’s taken me a while to write this up. It’s been busy. But what a night! I am so stoked! We beat the Vikings, despite all the hoopla. And most importantly for our future, Aaron Rodgers had a great night—178 yards, 18 completions out of 22 attempts, one passing TD and one rushing TD. He was a busy boy.

Before serious discussion, just as a bit of trivia, it may interest you to know that our acting center, Jason Spitz (C, #72) can actually leg press 1100 pounds thirty times! At least this is what Lori Nickel of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. Fuckin’ amazing. There are no photos of his legs on the web. I’d really like to see legs muscular enough to leg press half a ton thirty times.

First quarter was a little dodgy and I’ve got to say that the offensive line had problems. Chad Clifton (LT, #76) and Tony Moll (RG, #75) racked up three penalties each. Darryn Colledge (LG, #73) and Mark Tauscher (RT, #65) racked up one each. Of the total, five of these penalties were levied in the first period. The most heartbreaking penalty nullified Rodgers’ 68-yard touchdown throw to Donald Driver. I thought that Tony Moll would undoubtedly be answering for that one Monday morning, but according to Jason Wilde of the Wisconsin State Journal, apparently there was a communication problem that led to the penalty:

Neither McCarthy nor offensive coordinator Joe Philbin were excusing the penalties as a first-game issue — “We were just a little bit out of sync,” Philbin said — but the coaches also weren't coming down hard on Tony Moll and Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila for two penalties that proved costly.

The second of Moll's two ineligible man downfield penalties wiped out a 68-yard Rodgers-to-Donald Driver touchdown pass, which came on a run-pass check made by Rodgers at the line of scrimmage.

As a result, Moll was unaware of the play change and was run-blocking, so he got upfield about 5.5 yards, just beyond the allowable distance.

So the O-line is rough around the edges, but they held up against the Vikings alleged “doomsday defense” and Rodgers wasn’t sacked the whole evening long. While watching, I felt that this absence of sacks was at least partially due to Rodgers’ own mobility. My initial response was to say, “I’m glad the Kid can dance, but he really shouldn’t have to.” But I just pulled up this interesting interview with LeRoy Butler, who claims

Q. How much can you see them getting out of his running ability? Can they incorporate that into their offense?

A. They do a lot of play-action and bootlegs and a lot of sprint options to get him out of the pocket anyway. They can use that. You have to give McCarthy a lot of credit for moving his quarterback around. He can be a scrambling quarterback, he can be a pocket passer, he can do it all. He can make all the throws. A lot of veterans can't make all the throws. He can throw the ball 56 yards with a tight spiral, he can throw a 25-yard comeback, he can dump it over the middle. But he also knows he's not going to complete 18 of 22 every time. That's why I like him. He's mentally tough.

So, according to Butler at least, this highly mobile quarterback stuff is actually part of the plan. That blows my mind. The Kid is definitely not Favre. Butler couldn’t help selling Rodgers up:

Q. Overall, what did you think of the performance of quarterback Aaron Rodgers?

A. I thought he went through his progressions really well. I wasn't surprised that the offense started slow. I think it was good play-calling by (Mike) McCarthy to get him out of the pocket. People probably didn't know he was that fast. The pass he threw to (Greg) Jennings - the long pass - the pass he hit (Donald) Driver on that was called back and another pass he threw over the middle to Driver, he showed that he can throw with velocity. I was very happy with his overall performance. I think everybody in the stadium was shocked; I wasn't. Aaron has the mind of a golfer. You can hit a bad shot or you can hit a 50-foot birdie putt and it's the same to him. He doesn't get rattled, you can't intimidate him, he's a cool, calm guy. It didn't bother him all those comments the Vikings made during the week. He doesn't care that there are 40 Jets jerseys in the stands. It doesn't bother him. It doesn't bother him if he looks in the stands and see's a sign about Brett. This is one of the mentally toughest guys for someone in his age group I've seen in a long time. You have to be mentally tough to fill Brett Favre's shoes.

There were none of those suspicious drops that plagued our receiver corps during the preseason. That was exciting. They did a great deal to cork the great Adrian Peterson. He was damned fast, that’s for sure.

The defense had two glorious moments. The most important was an Atari Bigby interception at the end of the game that effectively ended the Vikings final drive and clinched the victory. And Aaron Kampman had a sack in the first quarter.

Oh! Let's not forget: Will Blackmon returned a kick-off for a touchdown! All in all, I had a happy Week 1!

Reading Between the Defensive Lines

Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently published an interesting article on the education of Aaron Rodgers. I think if we read between the lines, we can see some of the motivations the management had for unloading Favre on the Jets and their strategies for achieving it. Sadly, I can’t analyze football worth a damn, but I can definitely analyze institutional politics.

Analysis

Silverstein recounts what we all remember—Favre was fairly hostile to Rodgers at first

When Rodgers arrived, Favre made no bones about refusing to be a mentor to him, stating in an interview that it wasn’t his job. Nobody had done it for him, and besides, Favre’s No. 1 responsibility was to win games.

Rodgers had to accept that, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to watch Favre.

“The best way to describe it was we were teammates the first year,” Rodgers said. “It was a very business relationship. But I was kind of in his hip pocket. My biggest thing was if we’re not going to be friends yet, which is fine, I’m still going to be in his hip pocket until he tells me to get lost.

“So I’d stick my head in there when he’s talking in the huddle and lean in and listen to what he’s saying and listen to him in practice. I’d watch him like a hawk. This guy is one of the greatest quarterbacks to every [sic] play, so I better figure out what he’s doing.”

As far as I can tell, Brett Favre was the fucking queen of the team during the Sherman years. The problem was that the team was run around Favre’s sensibilities. Well, as any opera manager can tell you, the company will not be a success when the prima donna and not the director and conductor rule the roost. Yes, we may all “ooo” and “ah” to her lilting voice, but an opera is a play with a cast. Like football, opera’s a team effort. After Holmgren packed up and left, there was no one to reign Favre in. He always got his way. The problem was, as talented as Favre is, he needed good coaching to keep him in line. Favre the prima donna was unleashed. He frequently got cocky and was not pulled back into line. Sherman wasn’t tough enough as a coach. When Sherman got his hands on general management, the core of most of the team’s personnel rotted away. The final straw came when the offensive line broke—Rivera and Wahle were lost to free agency before the 2005 season. The team collapsed.

After the 2005 season, Sherman was fired and McCarthy hired.

All of a sudden there were new demands on Rodgers. He was required to attend off-season quarterback school, six hours of it several days a week. Then McCarthy got on him about his weight. Rodgers weighed 228 at the time and measured about 15% body fat. McCarthy wanted the body fat down to 10% to 12%.

“I fought it and I was like, ‘Why?’ ” Rodgers said. “But I think it definitely helped me out. I’m 217 right now, the lightest I’ve been before my sophomore year at Cal, and I’m a lot stronger and more fit. But I fought the system. Change has always been tough. Any type of change in my life I’ve always met with some resistance, so we butted heads the first year a little bit.”

Favre didn’t attend McCarthy’s quarterback school and didn’t make his decision to return for another year until just before the draft. When he showed up, he didn’t know any of the terminology of McCarthy’s system.

With Nall gone to Buffalo, Rodgers was the only familiar face in the quarterback room, and he was able to lean over and tell Favre which plays under the Sherman system corresponded to the ones McCarthy was teaching. It was at that point that Favre and Rodgers started to become close.

I'd always wondered how it was that Favre went from looking at Rodgers like a leper to getting all “shits and giggles” with him, at least in front of the camera. Silverstein has isolated the moment. Favre found a use for the kid when it was clear that the Packers were installing a new system and he had to learn the new terminology. It was either that, or show up to quarterback school. Favre isn’t about to get schooled. Moreover, showing up at quarterback school would undoubtedly contribute more to Rodgers’ education than Favre would like. After all, Rodgers was already spending his days following Favre around with a notepad. Favre wasn’t about to help Rodgers ease him out of his own job!

But apparently, last year, Rodgers had gotten cozy enough for McCarthy to get Favre to actually contribute—

Rodgers’ education continued into ’07. McCarthy urged Favre to spend more time mentoring Rodgers, and Favre responded.

“My first year, he was kind of like, ‘Yeah, he needs to grow up and this and that,’ ” McCarthy said. “I told Brett, ‘You need to give back now. You’re at the point now where you’re older than most the quarterbacks coaches in the league. You can give back, not only to Aaron.’ Brett really embraced that. That’s one of the things you don’t really hear about.”

In my opinion, the fact that McCarthy has gone to lengths to point Favre’s goodwill out shows just how good the Packers are at PR and team-building. It probably helped that, at least according to his retirement speech, Favre was feeling older and older as the season wore on. In his retirement speech he spoke of how little pleasure and how much stress he was feeling. He became more malleable with respect to Rodgers, probably thinking of his legacy. This was a triumph for management.

Besides continuing to study coverages and meeting with Favre on the sideline during games, in ’07 Rodgers was given a scouting assignment. As soon as the game was over, he started working on the next opponent, providing a report on Wednesday morning to the coaches and other quarterbacks.

He would watch tape on Mondays and Tuesdays and write the report Tuesday night. It started out being a report on the cornerbacks Favre would be facing that week, but it advanced into in-depth reports on schemes, tendencies and other players.

Favre used to joke that Rodgers’ presentation was his least favorite part of the week, but Clements said the work was invaluable for Rodgers. Soon he was coming up with the same evaluations as the coaches.

Damn, but they were good. Favre’s outright hostility and refusal has now become passive-aggressive snarkiness vented while providing complete cooperation. That is, of course, if Favre was even being snarky. He may have been simply referring to the pain of having to look at the next week’s challenge. I’d like to think it was the latter. Again, he did mention those feelings in his retirement speech. Either way, by the end, Favre was actively abetting in his own downfall. By November of last year, they knew what they had what they needed:

It wound up being especially valuable when Rodgers got pressed into action against Dallas on Nov. 29. When Favre got knocked out of the game, Rodgers came in and completed 18 of 26 passes for 201 yards and a touchdown, nearly rallying the Packers to victory on the road.

“The touchdown I threw was exactly what we saw on film, the exact defense we were expecting,” Rodgers said. “It was the exact play call we talked about during the week, the play I had seen on film on Tuesday. I said, ‘I hope we get this look during the game.’ And sure of enough we’re on the 8-yard line and they give us that look and I hit Greg (Jennings) and he scores.”

As the season begins, there should be many more opportunities like that one. Rodgers carries with him a Harvard degree in quarterbacking, the kind only a few have the luxury of obtaining. Rodgers won’t outwardly resemble the quarterback Favre was, but there will be subtle similarities that coaches and teammates will recognize.

Indeed, that Cowboys game was the first convincing performance we ever saw from Aaron Rodgers. Unlike his other two ugly debuts, he played beautifully. And now we know why. He studied his ass off. He’s learned to play the pro game.

Synthesis

People have been pissed about the way the Favre retirement was handled, but as far as I can see, Thompson and McCarthy won at the lowest probable cost. They had what they really needed from Favre—time for Rodgers to grow. My instinct was that TT was never going to ask Favre to leave. But the minute he was out the door, there was no way he was going to prevent the installation of his new centerpiece. Think of the lost investment they’d placed in their first round draft pick. They needed this break. Favre is simply too old to build a new team around.

But they’ve treated Favre with kid gloves the entire way. They were deeply aware that the break would have to come at some time and they definitely wanted Favre to initiate it. Once he had crossed to the other side, they promptly closed the door. Management preferred that he stay retired than to return, but if he were to return, they clearly needed to trade him. They managed to trade him to the best possible team that they were unlikely to meet. From the PR perspective, it was a triumph. If the Packers have a good season this year, the bitter fan feelings will fade. Thompson and McCarthy will have won control of their team.

It’s not that they didn’t think Favre was good. Hell, they knew he was good. It was that they stood to lose Rodgers. Rodgers was their last, best chance to have a durable quarterback for the long-haul. Rodgers contract extends to the end of the 2009 season. At that point, they’d lose him and everything they invested in him to some other team who picks up the next hot QB for cheap. They wind up training someone new, who may not be as fine an athlete and who will need a few years to hit his stride. By that time, they may start losing larger parts of the team to free agency. Kirk said it first, and I think he’s right (and should write a fucking football blog, damn it)—the team as a whole would never peak because the quarterback lag would hold the rest of the team back as they reached their peak. When the new QB started to get good, they would be trying to repair the cracks in the rest of the team.

Favre’s extraordinary talent is an article of faith for many. It has been for me. I was a believer back in the aftermath of the 2005 season when lots of people called him a washed-up has-been. And I didn’t even like him very much then, even though I wore his shirt all the time because he was a god and the legendary quarterback of my beloved Green Bay Packers. But Favre, physical god that he still is, is going to retire soon. In my opinion the bottom line is, if you are really a Packers fan, we needed for Favre to leave before they lost Rodgers. In my opinion, management made the correct decision.

Is this ingratitude? Certainly there are many who will argue this, especially those who worship exceptional athletic talent. I have previously argued strongly on this position. I do believe football players should be paid millions of dollars because exceptional athletic talent is far rarer than exceptional business talent. Moreover, it is obscene to me that the bodies of these men should be destroyed to enrich the pockets of others.

That said, I don’t think that Brett Favre has the right to hold back the whole team’s development. I believe the Packers’ rhetoric when they claim that they were okay with him reversing his retirement when he talked about it last spring, But June is too late. The train has already left the station.

It was really clear that Favre wanted to be talked out of retiring. His response was like that of the hurt prima donna. But that drama could be re-enacted on a yearly basis. The bottom line is Favre isn’t going to be a quarterback in this league three years from now. He’s going out. Management had to think of the transition. After that Cowboys game, the Packers weren’t going to try to talk him out of retiring. If he came back, they’d welcome him. There was one more year on Rodgers contract and firing Favre would he a PR disaster. They could afford one more year. But they really wanted Favre to retire. Rodgers was ready to start. And indeed, one has to imagine that they really were ready to have full control of their team again, and that includes a quarterback that they can force to go to quarterback school and who will lose weight on command (although I point out immediately that Favre has been coming to camp leaner and more fit every year—no one can fault him on that count).

Is this a bad deal for football? Actually, I think it’s a great deal for football. Favre was increasingly a bad match for the Packers, because the Packers have been rebuilding and, at this juncture, they need to install the new QB if the rebuild is to have longevity. In contrast, the Jets, while improving their offense, really aren’t engaged in a rebuilding process. They’re simply trying to upgrade the existing team. There’s no reason to think of their approach in that same “investment” framework. They aren’t thinking of the long-term. They seem to just care about winning this year. They didn’t really have any good QB options. Favre, in contrast, will this year remain among the strongest QBs in the league. Moreover, he will rally their fan base and increase merchandising sales. This is a total no-brainer for the Jets. While I’m not a Jets fan per se, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for them. Certainly, I like them way better than the Giants. Moreover, and most importantly, Favre will still play football. It’s definitely in the interest of the sport as a whole that Favre play as long as he’s able.

Reflection

When this drama began, I overreacted. I was pissed off at Favre because I wanted him to be a personal hero. Seeing him come back last year really helped me as I’ve tried to pull myself back together and learn how to be a researcher again. I wanted him to be noble. Instead, he was a prima donna. But I forgot that I never wore Favre’s shirt because he was a personal hero. I wore it because, not only was he our quarterback, but he was our legendary quarterback. That’ll never change. Sure, no doubt, he isn’t alone. In fact, Bart Starr is a hero to me in many ways that Favre could never be. But I can’t cancel what Favre has meant to me.

Favre was deeply human in the ways we like to forget when we contemplate the ways that human beings can approach perfection. His perfection as an athlete engaged in the game is not the same as is his perfection as a sportman in the sense of the best sportsmanship. Favre did what he did because he combined talent with a love of the game. How many Sundays did he make magic for me and every other Packers fan?

I wore his shirt yesterday, and I’ll probably keep wearing his shirt. Because personal hero or no, I’ll never forget the magic he made every Sunday. I came of age wearing Brett Favre’s jersey. I won’t take it off now.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Have I been yearning for the start of football season? Absolutely. Am I ready, i.e. prepared? Fuck no! I’m a multiple sclerotic with two teaching jobs this summer. I have two fantasy teams that I didn’t pick, one of which my brother-in-law actually signed me up for because I forgot to enter the league. I did, apparently, correctly order the NFL Sunday ticket, so I don’t have to hit any bars this season. Naturally, I ran out of milk, so I used the last of it for my morning coffee, but have eaten no cereal. I may head over the 7-11 to rectify the situation. So am I ready? Fuck no.

Favre has been all over the news this morning, whining but how the Green Bay Packers don’t feel like sucking his cock. Naturally, I’m not strong enough not to be watching his season premiere as a New York Jet. I won’t do this too much, but fuck it, the Pack doesn’t play till Monday afternoon. I don’t hate the guy and have a morbid curiosity. Favre is wearing a black jock strap today, which shows nicely through his football pants. Admittedly, he doesn’t have the greatest ass in the world, but what queer football fan doesn’t love white football pants?

I just noticed that ex-Longhorn prima donna Ricky Williams is back. I guess I should be upbeat on their behalf. I’m a Longhorn, right? The gods know that I spent enough time at UT to qualify, although I have been at the UW longer than any other academic institution, now. I guess I ought to root for the Huskies, but college ball doesn’t float my boat. So far Chad and Ricky aren’t helping the Dolphins much. They seem to punt gloriously. And now Favre has just thrown his first touchdown throw of the year (56 yards to number 89, Jerricho Cotchery).

It looks like that Pats are having a really shitty morning. It looks like Brady is already injured and Randy Moss has already fumbled.

Craig is getting back from his morning meeting. We’re going to get some breakfast. I’m going to watch football, fall asleep on the couch and then get up and grade the last of the Antioch papers. I need to get back to my own stuff this week.