In today’s Washington Post, columnist Anne Appelbaum contrasts the pathetic lies of James Frey - whose fabricated “memoir” has become a major embarrassment for Oprah Winfrey, the high-priestess of self-obessed emoting - with the pathetic lies of Lillian Hellman who in 1973 published her supposed memoir Pentimento, in which the author cast herself as heroic anti-Nazi fighter.

Appelbaum’s compares Frey’s made-up lie of victimhood to other recent faux memoirs whose writers created tear-jerking stories of personal hardship:

These fabricators reinvent themselves not as heroes but as victims, a status they sometimes attain by changing their ethnicity. Among them are Bruno Grosjean, aka Binjamin Wilkomirski, whose touching, prize-winning, “autobiographical” tale of a childhood spent in the Majdanek concentration camp turned out to be the fantasy of the adopted son of a wealthy Swiss couple. Another was Helen Darville, aka Helen Demidenko, whose touching, prize-winning “autobiographical” tale of a Ukrainian girl whose father was a former SS officer turned out to be the fantasy of a middle-class British girl living in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia.

And the trend continues: In the past few days, yet another prize-winning author, who calls himself “Nasdijj” and claims to be the son of a violent cowboy and an alcoholic Native American woman (and who, as a child was “hungry, raped, beaten, whipped and forced at every opportunity to work in the fields,” he told an interviewer) — has also been “outed” as a white writer of erotica named Timothy Barrus.

A parallel development is the absence of real-life military heroes in public life. Event though many have been minted in the our current wars overseas, none of them have been embraced much by the wider public, and certainly none of them has become a household name. They aren’t invited to latenight talk shows to discuss what they did and why, and they aren’t held up as role models.

To be more specific: Sales of these faux memoirs are driven by women. Why is it that women prefer lies about pretend bums over true stories about knights in (metaphorically speaking) shining armor?

By leading the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl victories in four years (2001, 2003, 2004) Bill Belichick has established himself as one of the greatest coaches in the history in the National Football League, and his team’s recent loss to the Denver Broncos doesn’t change that, especially since it was the players who fouled up, rather than Belichick.

Belichick is at least superficially quite unlike most of the great NFL coaches. He keeps everything close to the vest, he puts great emphasis on team work and dicourages star systems. He is not an emotional or charismatic leader, but rather a planner, scouter, schemer, and, above all, teacher. He wins through exhaustive preparation and meticulous execution. He isn’t married to any particular system or philosophy, but instead will devise whatever combination of formations and plays necessary to win any given game.

Needless to say, none of that is half as important as the fact that he won three Super Bowls in four years, and with today’s celebrity culture (which puts the ‘cult’ in culture) and a publishing industry that is always on the prowl for a sure thing, it is remarkable that Belichick hasn’t spawned a small industry of how-to-succeed books. Instead of adding his name to slap-dash hagiographies, Belichick has limited his book-industry foray to giving access to Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam of The Best and the Brightest fame. In turn, Halberstam’s book, The Education of a Coach, focuses less on Bill Belichick’s many recent successes and more on the process that led him to them.

That process begins with Belichik’s grandparents who in 1897 moved to America from Croatia, then a part of the slowly decaying Habsburg Empire, which finally imploded during World War I. Belichick’s grandfather was an illiterate, but a man of tremendous work ethic. He ended up in the heart of the Ellis Island-era immigration experience: The steel mill and coal mine towns of western Pennsylvania and central and eastern Ohio, where football quickly, almost instantly, became an ecumenical church of sorts for people from all over Europe who were trying to find their way in an unforgiving but promising land, a time and place captured so well by James Wright’s poem “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio”:

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

The Ohio - Pennsylvania axis of football excellence is an important piece of America’s identity, a shining example of toughness, can do-ism, and assimilation. It is fitting that the latest, and maybe greatest, of football’s masters can trace his American roots to that region.

Halberstam’s book on Bill Belichick is not great, but it is good and it offers a detailed description of how Belichick was molded, what people and institutions molded him and how. The book has received a lot of praise, and I would say that all of it is deserved.

However, it is somewhat surprising that one little aspect of the book has gone, as far as I can tell, unnoticed by the media. In chapter two, Halberstam writes the following:

The entire region of western Pennsylvania and eastern and central Ohio was great football country, both high school and college football. Everyone seemed to care passionately about the game. This was, after all, a part of the country where tough men endured great physical hardship to earn a living - only the strong succeeded, and not surprisingly, they produced big, strong, athletically gifted children who had no fear of ferocious physical contact - indeed, they seemed to relish it. In the era before the coming of the great black athletes, when power was blended with speed and game stayed just as physical but got a lot faster, no area produced as many great football players or as many distinguished coaches as this region.

Compare that to the, reputedly drunken, outburst that cost Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder his job at CBS in 1988:

“During the slave period, the slave owner would breed his big black with his big woman so that he would have a big black kid—that’s where it all started.”

Essentially, Halberstam makes the same argument, only about ethnic Whites rather than African-Americans.

Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch let’s off a gigantic oestrogen bomb in his “My television wish list” piece on SI.com’s Scorecard Daily section. In a list if 10 things he would like to see on sports television this year he includes this bizarre suggestion:

ESPN should create a female version of The Sports Reporters… why not develop a half-hour show featuring both ESPN and female sports journalists from around the country debating the sports issues of the week? Talent isn’t an issue. There are hundreds of women in various mediums who provide sports content on a daily basis… I guarantee such a show will get better ratings than ESPN Hollywood. Why? Because men will actually tune in, for starters.

Does Deitsch watch The View a lot? I rather doubt it, and I seriously doubt that a lot of men would tune in to see what a bunch of women with an unusual interest in competitive team sports have to say about the Yankees newest batter or the Arizona Cardinals’ draft picks or what have you.

Not that it really matters a heck of a lot what kind of prattle-shows ESPN puts on. I can’t imagine that many people watch the turgid all-male “The Sports Reporters” to begin with. But Deitsch has an even worse idea:

Networks should aim to break the play-by-play gender barrier

Dietsch is “stopped cold” by the fact that “[n]o network is using a woman in the booth for the NFL, NBA, NHL or Major League Baseball.” Personally, I’m stopped cold by Pam Ward calling a college football game. Luckily, there’s almost always a half-dozen or so other college games to choose from on my cable system, and it would be really nice if things stayed that way.

Finally, Dietsch wants NBC to “flood the zone” with the Olympic Games in Turin.

[W]ith no ready-made television superstar heading into Turin (I’d bet even money that eight out of 10 Americans would not recognize Bode Miller or Daron Rahlves on the street), the TV public is going to need a major primer on the likes of Lindsey Kildow, Chad Hedrick and Catherine Raney. So unleash the hounds, Mr. Ebersol. As the the Lord of the rings in this country, NBC controls the volume on the hype of an Olympic Games.

For some reason I just don’t feel a need for a “major primer” on the likes of Mr. Hedrick and Ms. Raney. What I would like NBC to do is to show more college football. Sans female commentators.

Update: Chris Chase agrees that female play-by-players just don’t make sense:

[I]t just doesn’t work. Pam Ward isn’t terrible on ESPN, but she’s totally unwatchable. Meanwhile, Kenny Albert is terrible on FOX, but I don’t change the channel just because of him. I had to actually stop watching a Maryland football game earlier this season because I couldn’t listen to Pam Ward’s voice. It’s irritating. It’s out of place. It’s just not right.

Nice, decent, educated, sensitive people take exception to the old “Merry Christmas” greeting since some people - very few in America, mind you - don’t celebrate Christmas and hence might be offended by such a well wishing.

Yet I don’t know of anybody who holds back on hearty “Happy New Year” exclamations for fear of offending somebody who might recognize a different date as the first day of the year - as Chinese and Muslims do.

The discrepancy is telling. The anti-Merry Christmas faction isn’t afraid of “offending” people, its mebers most likely want to offend and their targets are Christians.

On that note, have a Happy New Year and welcome to 2006!

Like any year in television, 2005 wasn’t all that, but certainly no worse than 2004 or (I dare guess) 2006.

The best moment in television this year was Kanye West’s absurd “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” ad lib. Telethons are awfully boring affairs, but West managed to breathe some life into a genre that’s beyond stale. Perhaps somebody can do the same for awards shows next year?

The second best moment was provided by another African-American, The Apprentice contestant Randal who stunned the audience by nixing Donald Trump’s lame and ham-handed attempt at creating a feelgood Everybody Wins moment at the end of The Apprentice 4’s final episode. After being the good teamplayer and solid leader for weeks, Randal decided enough was enough and hogged the winner’s crown for himself. As he should have.

I’m not sure what would be television’s worst moment in 2005, but I’m sure it had something to do with My Name Is Earl, The Office, or the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

As we have come to expect, HBO delivered the best scripted drama, this time in the form of Rome, an outstanding piece of work (no wonder Tony Soprano had such mommy issues, his ancestors did, too, apparently).

Chris Rock’s Everybody Hates Chris was the year’s funniest new show, but its formula ran out of steam before the end of the season. I gave How I met Your Mom more chances than it deserved and it blew every one of them. I really don’t care if Colbert doesn’t issue another Report.

MTV coupled the basic lure of The Real World with the excess lifestyle of vanity shows like The Anna Nicole Smith Show and The Osbournes in Laguna Beach, the talky reality show set in super-affluent Laguna Beach in California. It was almost like Beverly Hills 90210 but with better views and none of “issues” (date rape! gun ownership! homophobia!) that plauged the network show.

All in all, not that bad, I suppose.

WNBA MVP Sheryl Swoopes has announed that she is a lesbian, nonshocking the entire sports world. Meanwhile, Fisher DeBerry, the head coach for Air Force Academy’s football - the strongest of the three Academy teams - has lamented his team’s lack of black players, since black players tend to be a bit faster than than kids of other races (put more precisely: the very fastest sprinters are far more likely to be black than non-black). Swoopes will of course be celebrated for her courage, while the raking of DeBerry has only begun.

ESPN’s columnist Pat Forde serves up the very worst of sports columnism in condemning DeBerry’s remarks:

[I]t’s not like DeBerry was inventing something here — or even saying something many coaches don’t talk about in private. But given the decades of wrongly stereotyping black athletes as physically superior and mentally inferior — run fast, think slow — the coach was walking into a minefield. He was creeping toward Jimmy “The Greek” territory — and every coach knows that you don’t go there. Certainly not without great care.

I’m all for a more open dialog about race in America, and especially in sports. But sweeping generalizations about fast black players are going to get a coach in trouble.

Let’s see if I get this right: Forde is “all for a more open dialog about race in America” but he can’t even deal with the fact that the fastest players in football are overwhelmingly black? Nor is that fact something coaches only talk about in private: They put it on open display every single NFL Draft. You have heard about the NFL Draft, Forde? It’s shown on ESPN every year. You see the same thing in the starting lineups of every team in the National Football League: The speed guys (receivers, cornerbacks, safeties, runningback) are almost always black. Forde, DeBarry isn’t talking about some wild-eyed stereotype, he’s talking about reality, he is - ultimately - talking about his won - lost record, the one that is slipping, the one that you think should convince him to retire.

Michael Wilbon at Washington Post is a fundamentally non-moronic sports columnist and he writes the following in his October 29 entry:

But our fear of any discussion involving race should not eliminate common-sense observations. Since Jason Sehorn retired from the NFL a season or so ago, how many white starting cornerbacks are there in the NFL? The answer, as far as I can find, is zero. And even if I missed one or two, fact is that a position based largely on speed is 99 percent black in the NFL. That’s not the same as making a presumption about the intelligence or character of cornerbacks, black or white. It’s fact, jack. DeBerry didn’t offer any cultural or empirical evidence about cornerbacks; he just said he would like faster ones, and as the NFL demonstrates, the fastest ones are black. That isn’t even debatable.

Forde, you should read and learn.

ESPN’s ombudsman Solomon George (yes, ESPN has an ombudsman) made this grotesque statement after commenting on some brouhaha involving a play-by-play man and a female sideline reporter:

My take: Play-by-play commentators need to take sideline reporters — many of whom are women — more seriously. So does ESPN, which needs to give these reporters more airtime and more serious issues to address.

Take sideline reporters more seriously? Is he on crack? Or dating a sideline reporter? Or hoping to date a sideline reporter? Or overly committed to the company diversity policy? Sideline reporters are almost invariably the absolute worst aspect of any game coverage. Unless they are really hot babes they bring nothing to the table except for pointless drivel and useless questions (”Coach, what are you going to tell your team at halftime?”). They take up time that could be used for replays, or crowd shots of hot babes.

At no point and under no circumstances should sideline reporters be taken more seriously, be given more airtime or more serious issues to address.

Besides that buffo of an error, George’s column is good, to the point, fair, and informative.

I recently referred to WNBA as the NHL of women’s sports, thus declaring my disdain for both NHL and WNBA in one fell swoop. Well, perhaps not so much disdain as pity. Both leagues have TV ratings that suck (and ought to suck the life out of both organizations), albeit at different levels (yes, WNBA’s ratings are that bad. But the NHL at least used to be fun, with free-flowing breakaway play and lots of scoring. Over the last several years the NHL has become a major snooze fest, a carnival of holding, hooking, high sticking and zone trapping. I didn’t miss the NHL one bit when it went on its year-long labor-conflict hiatus. Heck, I hadn’t even missed NHL when it was around. Like most people, I couldn’t care less about the league.

But the NHL is back and its return has provided a publicity opportunity for feminist activist Martha Burk, whom you probably don’t remember from her bizarre crusade against Augusta National (a crusade that was whole-heartedly and over-the-top supported by New York Times, the newspaper that used to employ Jayson Blair). Burk has been upset by a new ad for the league, a commercial that shows an NHL player in a locker room with a vague but unmistakable Eastern feel to it. The ad features an ice hockey player who is dressed by a lightly dressed babe, a set up that made me think of warriors in ancient Greece and I figure that was the effect the league was looking for).

Unsurprisingly, Burk finds the ad “offensive on several levels,” which is pretty much how I feel about her.

She goes on, according to Toronto Star:

“The woman is dressed provocatively and when she asks the player if he’s ready, it’s a double-entendre in my view,” Burk said in an interview.

Yes, it probably is, but so what? A double-entendre is not the same thing as “let’s have non-stop sex ’til we die from dehydration!”

For all I know, the NHL may have hired Burk to create a stir. The league needs publicity in a real bad way, and with Burka, I’m sorry, Burk, running her mouth, offering quote-jobs in return for publicity, the league gets it, plus its fans get a cause to rally around. Realistically, though, Burk’s taken on this task all on her own, solicited by nobody but her ego.

You can watch the commercial at NHL’s website. WARNING:It’s only slightly more entertaining than an NHL game.

I’m not a real big fan of Jay Mohr, but, hey, when the guy’s right, he’s right, and Mohr couldn’t have been more right about the woeful WNBA, the NHL of women’s sports: It’s totally pointless and nobody cares.

Do you know anybody who has ever watched a game? Have you ever spoken about the WNBA at work? At home? Anywhere? The NBA and the networks that have aired the sport have tried in vain for far too long to prop up this league as entertainment. If you are entertained by 7-foot, 225-pound women from Poland who have less basketball skills than the worst NBA D-Leaguer then I guess you are one of the few people who cares.

What if you were a genius in a jock world? Or just a smart, hard working man in a jock world? What if all the chicks assumed you’re a nerdy smartie of little social value because of your skin color? Maybe then you would become one of the Bitter Asian Men, “the site made by bitter asian men, for bitter asian men… and also for all of you out there who might be curious as to why we, as asian men, are so bitter.”

The site is boiling with reasoned anger about the place and role of Asian men in contemporary America. The site details several examples of how Asian men are hated on, so to speak, but I found the piece on Asian parents most interesting. Here’s an excerpt:

The first factor is the pressure. Oh, the pressure. If you think you know what parental pressure is, and you’re not Asian, you are wrong. Asian kids are consistently expected to do more and do better than their peers, and hell, even kids twice their age. Therefore, almost all Asian children 1) will play an instrument (a dignified classical instrument at that, and certainly not electric guitar) 2) will study math at an accelerated pace - I was doing calculus in middle school 3) will participate in as many extracurricular activities as possible (all academic though, never sports) and 4) take standardized tests early and as many times as necessary to achieve a perfect score.

Asian parents instill the notion of ‘you must succeed’ (by which they mean academic success, not social success) so early that by the time they reach high school, Asian kids are walking zombies reciting scientific facts like gospel. This problem is only exacerbated by the Asian trait (so common I swear it must be genetic) to compare children. Inevitably in any Asian child’s life, they will hear a line similar to “Why aren’t you taking calculus yet? Jim Wong’s son is a year younger than you and he is!”, or “You only got a 1550 on the SAT? Sally Lee’s daughter got a 1590!” or “What, you mean you’re not valedictorian!?” Though all Asian kids are driven by their parents to be geniuses, of course, only a few of them are actually capable of being geniuses. Those that aren’t live constantly under the vague impression that their parents wish their kids were better, while those who ARE, of course, live constantly under the vague impression that their parents believe they COULD be doing better.

Obviously such academic pressure leaves no time for a social life. Dating isn’t mentioned in the Asian household, and girls only come up as a topic of discussion if they’re horrifically smart and if your parents want to compare you to them. If dating is allowed, of course, the girlfriend must be Asian and must be smart (though not as smart as you, of course, as that would hurt the Family Honor). The end result is that Asian kids are disproportionately Book Smart over Street Smart. They can explain to you the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus but never grasp the fundamental rules of dating.

This complaint sounds like a Turbo-powered version of the ye olde Baby Boomers criticism of and eventual revolt against the bourgeois values that were so widespread in Europe and America until they were basically swept away by the Counter Culture in the 1960’s (more so in Europe than in America).

I really, really hope that Bitter Asian Men isn’t a prelude to a similar development among Asian Americans, because, damnit, we can’t afford to go through that kind of personal hedonism and societal waste again.

BAM’s feelings are understandble, though. Popular culture really does shaft Asian men, who rarely land movie roles as anything other than martial arts experts - not even as geeks, since Hollywood for some reason likes to cast African-Americans as computer experts. While Asians have made inroads in professional baseball in America, baseball itself has lost a good deal of its standing as America’s Sport, a role now carried by the National Football League, where, I believe, Dat Nguyen is the only Asian.

To add insult to injury, golf ace and self-described Cablanasian Tiger Woods is marketed exclusively as black in America.

Basically, America doesn’t allot much social status to areas which Asian men quite frankly dominate (such as computers) while it obsesses over those where Asian men do poorly (like football). Yet, as Bitter Asian Men points out, Asian females are coveted by whites. Why wouldn’t that piss you off if you were an Asian-American male? I know several interracial couples where the woman is Asian, but not a single one where the male is Asian (excluding a gay couple, for fairly obvious reasons).

(It should be noted that “Asian” in this context refers to Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese et al, and not to Indians, who, in American parlance, are lumped in with Asians. Interracial dating/coupling seems to be far less of a concern to Indians, and also far less common among them).

Part of the problem is that America is simply stuck in a Black and White worldview. Whites are the norm, Blacks are interesting and everybody else can essentially go screw. Or more to the point: There are people who are neither black nor white? How strange. The critically acclaimed, and in my opinion overrated, movie Crash spends a lot of energy on the Black/White divide, but treats Latinos and Asians as some kind of sideshow, even though Los Angeles, where the movie takes place, is 60% Asian and Latino. Considering that Asians and Latinos make up a rapidly growing proportion of America’s population, it could be in Mainstream America’s interest to pay them a little bit more attention.

From a national perspective, Asian American men present America with an intriguing dilemma: Should they assimilate into the less productive, more violent mainstream, or should they maintain their strenghts at the risk of further alienation?