We've all had enough of your yapping.
So, reading a non-personal blog that will remain nameless recently, I found that all the articles were, in fact, friggin huge. The world needs opinions, not epistles.
This is because there's so much content out here that we're finding that leisure time (unless you are very fortunate or lazy) is a prohibitive factor on consumption. That's never been a problem before--back before the internet was TV (you know, when TV was still TV), those in front of the Tube could not change the amount of content they got in an hour; it was an hour of TV in an hour of real time. Those in front of the Tubes, however, have a whole A/V multimedia freakshow smorgasbord in front of them: an hour of TV (real TV from Hulu or whatever) in 42 minutes, an hour of numbing user-created YouTube content in an hour + however much time you use to search it. Blogposts on your wpm reading, and webcomics in a flash. Flash comics: not in a flash, ironically, though still enjoyable.
Keep it simple, get to the point, and stop destroying the internet. Thanks.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The death knell
Why Hillary is finished after last night's primaries.
For those unaware, Indiana and North Carolina each held primaries last night. Barack Obama had long been projected to win North
Carolina, and Hillary Clinton was supposed to win Indiana. Then the recent Rev. Jeremiah Wright imbroglio started up again, and people thought Obama would do much worse than expected. Hooray for lowered expectations! Obama won North Carolina by 15 points (which is actually less than he was supposed to win it by a couple of weeks ago) and narrowly lost Indiana, effectively murdering any remaining spark of hope Clinton had of winning the race.
How can that be, you ask? Isn't Obama's lead only 150 or so delegates? Aren't there still several more contests to go? Actually, the primary season is very nearly over. (FINALLY.) There are only six more primaries to go, with a total of 217 delegates left. Obama's lead is roughly 150 delegates. Hillary would have to win something like 86 percent of the remaining delegates to get a lead in pledged delegates, and even then she has to convince about 70 percent of the superdelegates. (I'm not just pulling these numbers out of the air. You can see for yourself by using Slate's delegate calculator.) This isn't even close to realistic. Hillary has only won one blowout state, and that was her home state of Arkansas. She doesn't have a prayer anymore. In the next few days and weeks, you can expect to see superdelegates flocking to Obama in droves.
The moral of the story? Clinton can't win unless it comes out that Obama was caught having gay sex with Adolf Hitler's corpse while defecating on a lapel pin. Or something like that.
For those unaware, Indiana and North Carolina each held primaries last night. Barack Obama had long been projected to win North
Carolina, and Hillary Clinton was supposed to win Indiana. Then the recent Rev. Jeremiah Wright imbroglio started up again, and people thought Obama would do much worse than expected. Hooray for lowered expectations! Obama won North Carolina by 15 points (which is actually less than he was supposed to win it by a couple of weeks ago) and narrowly lost Indiana, effectively murdering any remaining spark of hope Clinton had of winning the race.How can that be, you ask? Isn't Obama's lead only 150 or so delegates? Aren't there still several more contests to go? Actually, the primary season is very nearly over. (FINALLY.) There are only six more primaries to go, with a total of 217 delegates left. Obama's lead is roughly 150 delegates. Hillary would have to win something like 86 percent of the remaining delegates to get a lead in pledged delegates, and even then she has to convince about 70 percent of the superdelegates. (I'm not just pulling these numbers out of the air. You can see for yourself by using Slate's delegate calculator.) This isn't even close to realistic. Hillary has only won one blowout state, and that was her home state of Arkansas. She doesn't have a prayer anymore. In the next few days and weeks, you can expect to see superdelegates flocking to Obama in droves.
The moral of the story? Clinton can't win unless it comes out that Obama was caught having gay sex with Adolf Hitler's corpse while defecating on a lapel pin. Or something like that.
Monday, May 5, 2008
The Political Horse Race
The queen mother of all bad omens.
The Kentucky Derby was run this weekend, and predictably, was made into a political metaphor. The field was packed full - 20 horses were entered - but was devoid of a clear favorite. Making headlines was filly Eight Belles, the first female horse to be entered in the Derby in nine years. Starting to sound like the Democratic primary season yet? It certainly did to Hillary Clinton, who announced before the race that she was endorsing Eight Belles to win. Eight Belles ran valiantly, making a big push through the home stretch to come in second. Pretty good for a filly.
And then disaster struck.
Galloping through the second turn, Eight Belles broke both of her front ankles in a freak accident, collapsing to the track. Veteranians were summoned to the scene immediately, but there was nothing that could be done, as the filly was euthanized on the track. Eight Belles was the first horse in the history of the Kentucky Derby to die on the track.
That alone would be an awful political omen for Hillary Clinton. Watching the horse you endorsed to win become the first to DIE ON THE RACETRACK has to be sobering. It gets better, though. The winning horse was a largely untested young phenom named Big Brown. Wow. I'm not given to superstition usually, but this is pretty alarming.
Pre-race favorite Colonel John finished fifth.
AP Photo/Brian Bohannon
The Kentucky Derby was run this weekend, and predictably, was made into a political metaphor. The field was packed full - 20 horses were entered - but was devoid of a clear favorite. Making headlines was filly Eight Belles, the first female horse to be entered in the Derby in nine years. Starting to sound like the Democratic primary season yet? It certainly did to Hillary Clinton, who announced before the race that she was endorsing Eight Belles to win. Eight Belles ran valiantly, making a big push through the home stretch to come in second. Pretty good for a filly.
And then disaster struck.
Galloping through the second turn, Eight Belles broke both of her front ankles in a freak accident, collapsing to the track. Veteranians were summoned to the scene immediately, but there was nothing that could be done, as the filly was euthanized on the track. Eight Belles was the first horse in the history of the Kentucky Derby to die on the track.That alone would be an awful political omen for Hillary Clinton. Watching the horse you endorsed to win become the first to DIE ON THE RACETRACK has to be sobering. It gets better, though. The winning horse was a largely untested young phenom named Big Brown. Wow. I'm not given to superstition usually, but this is pretty alarming.
Pre-race favorite Colonel John finished fifth.
AP Photo/Brian Bohannon
Thursday, May 1, 2008
A Democratic Primer
A refresher course on the Democratic primaries.
Are you confused on the situation of the Democratic primary race? How did we get to this point, anyway? Slate has put together a seven-minute video explaining how the whole race went down. It's interesting, entertaining, and a great way to catch up on the last few months. Even if you don't want to watch the entire thing, it's worth taking a look.
Are you confused on the situation of the Democratic primary race? How did we get to this point, anyway? Slate has put together a seven-minute video explaining how the whole race went down. It's interesting, entertaining, and a great way to catch up on the last few months. Even if you don't want to watch the entire thing, it's worth taking a look.
The Trouble With Elitism
Elitists come out of every form of music culture. If you like a band, and you get to know them, you become and expert and eventually you become an elitist. Elitists tend to think they are the cock of the walk, that there are no elitists that came before them. Unfortunately for them, they are wrong, so if you're one of those current Elitists, enjoy it now because soon you'll be in the past.
We've all run into them, the person who thinks they are the expert on music. They've explored music and they know what's exciting. You ask them their music choices and they say a little bit of everything, so you decide to test them, and they've never heard of any of the bands you say. But then they tell you the bands they know, the ones within a particular genre of which they seem to be the expert on. That is when you've found an elitist. You can find elitists in almost every form of music, and some are more bearable then others. But the ones who are bearable are the ones who were once the newbies but now see they've grown up.
The New Kids on the Block, the newest Elitists forming, are those of the Indie generation. They think they know music, they're the big men on campus and they know all there is to know about music. But soon they'll be a thing of the past and go through what all past genres have done. Classical, Jazz, 50s Rock, Woodstock, Disco, The 80s, Grunge, Alternative, Pop/Punk. Each of these and many more have gone through being the elitist faction who comes into the music scene and thinks they are the only ones around. Now those who are still elitists of these groups look on the new kids and think, "If only you knew."
The funny thing is, and Indie person would look at this article and think, "ah, but those were all the popular genres, Indie isn't popular, Pop and Rap are. We're under the mainstream. We're the rebellious ones." But let's look at all these genres, all of them were created to be rebellious to what was currently popular. New Music is created when someone wants to go beyond what everyone else is listening to. Soon enough they are what everyone is listening to and the circle of life continues. Those in these other music cultures, the ones of the past, they don't even compare themselves to the current Pop and Rap scenes, they don't need to, they're in a different league. But Indie constantly has to remind us that they aren't the currently popular group while still maintaining they are better. Which soon enough will breed into popularity. Just you wait Indie fans, soon you'll have people becoming rebellious of you because you're too mainstream for them. It's already starting to happen, so live it up now, you don't have long left.
We've all run into them, the person who thinks they are the expert on music. They've explored music and they know what's exciting. You ask them their music choices and they say a little bit of everything, so you decide to test them, and they've never heard of any of the bands you say. But then they tell you the bands they know, the ones within a particular genre of which they seem to be the expert on. That is when you've found an elitist. You can find elitists in almost every form of music, and some are more bearable then others. But the ones who are bearable are the ones who were once the newbies but now see they've grown up.
The New Kids on the Block, the newest Elitists forming, are those of the Indie generation. They think they know music, they're the big men on campus and they know all there is to know about music. But soon they'll be a thing of the past and go through what all past genres have done. Classical, Jazz, 50s Rock, Woodstock, Disco, The 80s, Grunge, Alternative, Pop/Punk. Each of these and many more have gone through being the elitist faction who comes into the music scene and thinks they are the only ones around. Now those who are still elitists of these groups look on the new kids and think, "If only you knew."
The funny thing is, and Indie person would look at this article and think, "ah, but those were all the popular genres, Indie isn't popular, Pop and Rap are. We're under the mainstream. We're the rebellious ones." But let's look at all these genres, all of them were created to be rebellious to what was currently popular. New Music is created when someone wants to go beyond what everyone else is listening to. Soon enough they are what everyone is listening to and the circle of life continues. Those in these other music cultures, the ones of the past, they don't even compare themselves to the current Pop and Rap scenes, they don't need to, they're in a different league. But Indie constantly has to remind us that they aren't the currently popular group while still maintaining they are better. Which soon enough will breed into popularity. Just you wait Indie fans, soon you'll have people becoming rebellious of you because you're too mainstream for them. It's already starting to happen, so live it up now, you don't have long left.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
In which the author loses his mind
Why this primary season is driving me insane.
(In this article, the author will replace his traditional style of summarizing news stories without editorial bias with RAW UNBRIDLED SARCASM. Please be forewarned that the following statements will be purely opinion and not meant to be construed as fact. Thank you. --ed.)
The dominant story in the headlines today was that Barack Obama all but officially cut ties with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his controversial pastor who has been causing problems for him on the campaign trail. (I've already documented my feelings on the Wright imbroglio previously; feel free to refresh yourself on them.) After laying the story to rest a few weeks ago, Wright has taken it upon himself to go on a speaking tour in an effort to clear his name. To his credit, he sounds much more polished and intelligent than the sound bites you hear on YouTube. And to his credit, Obama really didn't have any other political recourse than to once again publicly distance himself from Wright. That's all good and well. But why does this story have to be the top item on my Google News page? It's a story that's already been put to bed several weeks ago. It didn't affect the polls the first time around, and it won't affect the polls this time around. (Pro-Obama voters would love him even if he ate babies, anti-Obama voters would hate him even found a way to cure cancer and turn it into gold, and undecided voters will vote based on the economy.) Let it go already! It doesn't matter!
I know I sound like a broken record here, but the fact is that none of the election coverage over the past few months has really mattered. Almost without exception, each state has gone for the candidate projected to win there weeks and months earlier. The only exception has been Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire, which showed Obama leading on the day of the primary. Can we please skip to the end already? Clinton DOES NOT have a chance to win the nomination. She can take the race all the way to the convention, sure, but in the end, she's going to end up as close to winning the nomination as Dennis Kucinich. Taking second place isn't any different than taking twentieth. You still lose.
Don't believe me when I say she's not going to win? Take a look at Slate's Delegate Calculator, which shows how many delegates each candidate has and stands to win in each state. As I'm writing this article, Obama holds a 155 delegate lead. That may not sound like much when there are over 3100 delegates that have been awarded, but that's more delegates than there were at stake in Ohio. (Remember when Ohio was a big deal?) Obama's lead is huge, and Clinton isn't doing much to chip away at it. The major media outlets made a huge deal about her win in Pennsylvania last week, saying that she was back from the dead and that maybe Obama was the underdog now. This is lunacy. Absolutely ridiculous. She ended up with a net gain of 12 delegates from that primary. If she wanted to make a legitimate claim that she could win this race, she would have needed at least twice that to start making a dent in Obama's lead. As it stands, Clinton needs to win the remaining nine primaries by forty points each to even catch up to Obama. Forty points. That means she needs to get at least 70% of the vote in nine more contests if she wants to take the lead and start convincing superdelegates that the has the voice of the people.
Do we have any idea how utterly impossible it is to get 70% of the vote in any given state? Any??? It's only been done twice in this primary season. Obama did it in Hawaii (where he benefited from being a native son and the caucus format) and Clinton did it in Arkansas (again, with the native son). Obama couldn't do it in Illinois. Clinton couldn't do it in New York. John McCain is just barely pulling it off now, even though he's UNOPPOSED. Is this starting to make sense? HILLARY IS DEAD, PEOPLE. ACCEPT IT.
Seriously. Let's just agree to tune out all election coverage until June 4, when we wake up and see that Obama is STILL ahead after the Montana and South Dakota primaries. Clinton won't have a leg to stand on. She'll be completely finished and won't have anything else to fall back on. (Who am I kidding? Of course she'll come up with something else to justify staying in the race.) Anything else that happens between now and then can be safely ignored, unless we find out Obama is a convicted murderer, alligator rapist, or serial pope abuser. Almost every single primary (remember New Hampshire?) has gone according to the polls so far. There's really no reason to assume that it won't continue. Here, I'll even tell you who's going to win each of the remaining nine contests:
May 6: Indiana (Obama, close)
North Carolina (Obama, by a lot)
May 13: West Virginia (Clinton, by a lot)
May 20: Kentucky (Clinton, by a lot)
Oregon (Obama, close)
June 3: Montana (no polling data available, but probably Obama by a lot)
South Dakota (same thing)
There aren't any opinion polls taken for Guam and Puerto Rico, either. Even if we assume those to be virtual ties, there's no chance that Clinton will get 70% of the remaining vote. Even if she does, she still has to convince something like 80% of the remaining superdelegates to side with her. It's impossible.
Seriously. Come back and read this article on June 4 and see if I wasn't right.
(In this article, the author will replace his traditional style of summarizing news stories without editorial bias with RAW UNBRIDLED SARCASM. Please be forewarned that the following statements will be purely opinion and not meant to be construed as fact. Thank you. --ed.)
The dominant story in the headlines today was that Barack Obama all but officially cut ties with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his controversial pastor who has been causing problems for him on the campaign trail. (I've already documented my feelings on the Wright imbroglio previously; feel free to refresh yourself on them.) After laying the story to rest a few weeks ago, Wright has taken it upon himself to go on a speaking tour in an effort to clear his name. To his credit, he sounds much more polished and intelligent than the sound bites you hear on YouTube. And to his credit, Obama really didn't have any other political recourse than to once again publicly distance himself from Wright. That's all good and well. But why does this story have to be the top item on my Google News page? It's a story that's already been put to bed several weeks ago. It didn't affect the polls the first time around, and it won't affect the polls this time around. (Pro-Obama voters would love him even if he ate babies, anti-Obama voters would hate him even found a way to cure cancer and turn it into gold, and undecided voters will vote based on the economy.) Let it go already! It doesn't matter!
I know I sound like a broken record here, but the fact is that none of the election coverage over the past few months has really mattered. Almost without exception, each state has gone for the candidate projected to win there weeks and months earlier. The only exception has been Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire, which showed Obama leading on the day of the primary. Can we please skip to the end already? Clinton DOES NOT have a chance to win the nomination. She can take the race all the way to the convention, sure, but in the end, she's going to end up as close to winning the nomination as Dennis Kucinich. Taking second place isn't any different than taking twentieth. You still lose.
Don't believe me when I say she's not going to win? Take a look at Slate's Delegate Calculator, which shows how many delegates each candidate has and stands to win in each state. As I'm writing this article, Obama holds a 155 delegate lead. That may not sound like much when there are over 3100 delegates that have been awarded, but that's more delegates than there were at stake in Ohio. (Remember when Ohio was a big deal?) Obama's lead is huge, and Clinton isn't doing much to chip away at it. The major media outlets made a huge deal about her win in Pennsylvania last week, saying that she was back from the dead and that maybe Obama was the underdog now. This is lunacy. Absolutely ridiculous. She ended up with a net gain of 12 delegates from that primary. If she wanted to make a legitimate claim that she could win this race, she would have needed at least twice that to start making a dent in Obama's lead. As it stands, Clinton needs to win the remaining nine primaries by forty points each to even catch up to Obama. Forty points. That means she needs to get at least 70% of the vote in nine more contests if she wants to take the lead and start convincing superdelegates that the has the voice of the people.
Do we have any idea how utterly impossible it is to get 70% of the vote in any given state? Any??? It's only been done twice in this primary season. Obama did it in Hawaii (where he benefited from being a native son and the caucus format) and Clinton did it in Arkansas (again, with the native son). Obama couldn't do it in Illinois. Clinton couldn't do it in New York. John McCain is just barely pulling it off now, even though he's UNOPPOSED. Is this starting to make sense? HILLARY IS DEAD, PEOPLE. ACCEPT IT.
Seriously. Let's just agree to tune out all election coverage until June 4, when we wake up and see that Obama is STILL ahead after the Montana and South Dakota primaries. Clinton won't have a leg to stand on. She'll be completely finished and won't have anything else to fall back on. (Who am I kidding? Of course she'll come up with something else to justify staying in the race.) Anything else that happens between now and then can be safely ignored, unless we find out Obama is a convicted murderer, alligator rapist, or serial pope abuser. Almost every single primary (remember New Hampshire?) has gone according to the polls so far. There's really no reason to assume that it won't continue. Here, I'll even tell you who's going to win each of the remaining nine contests:
May 6: Indiana (Obama, close)
North Carolina (Obama, by a lot)
May 13: West Virginia (Clinton, by a lot)
May 20: Kentucky (Clinton, by a lot)
Oregon (Obama, close)
June 3: Montana (no polling data available, but probably Obama by a lot)
South Dakota (same thing)
There aren't any opinion polls taken for Guam and Puerto Rico, either. Even if we assume those to be virtual ties, there's no chance that Clinton will get 70% of the remaining vote. Even if she does, she still has to convince something like 80% of the remaining superdelegates to side with her. It's impossible.
Seriously. Come back and read this article on June 4 and see if I wasn't right.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Save Our Sonics
Why NBA commissioner David Stern is killing basketball in Seattle.
For the vast majority of you who aren't die-hard sports fans like myself, I'm going to let you in on what might be one of the biggest outrages in professional sports in the last thirteen years. This is bigger than the current steroids scandal in Major League Baseball. Bigger than the brawl at the Palace at Auburn Hills in 2004. Bigger than anything.
Seattle SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is relocating the team to Oklahoma City.
You're skeptical. I don't blame you. You can't see why a team being moved is such a big deal. Well, let me fill you in on the details, and you'll see why this is a tremendous outrage not only for committed Sonics fans, but for everyday people like yourself who don't follow basketball.
Some background: the Sonics play basketball at KeyArena, which was renovated in 1994. I've never actually been inside KeyArena myself (since I'm a solid Portland Trail Blazers fan), but I'm led to understand that it's a pretty solid arena. The Sonics have been in Seattle since 1967 and have won an NBA championship in that time. And then in 2006, Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett purchased the team from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Fans were concerned that the team would be relocated from Seattle, but Bennett publicly promised that he was committed to the city.
He then asked for a $500 million tax bond to build a new arena since he felt KeyArena was "economically inviable." (His justification was that there wasn't enough space for bars and restaurants. The arena itself is just fine.) He submitted a plan for
residents of Seattle to foot the bill through taxes. (Guess how much of Bennett's personal money he was willing to spend on a new arena? Zero.) Voters refused, having just approved bills to build Qwest Field (for the NFL Seahawks) and SafeCo Field (for the MLB Mariners), BOTH OF WHICH COST LESS THAN $500 MILLION DOLLARS. Bennett, upon hearing this, declared that Seattle was not committed to professional basketball and announced his intention to move the team to Oklahoma City.
This stirred up complete outrage in Seattle. ESPN.com's Bill Simmons asked fans to send him emails describing their plight, and he got over 3,000 of them within 24 hours. He lists an excellent sample of them here. It's informative, if time-consuming, reading. There are devoted fans who are shocked that anyone could call them unfaithful. One fan talks about being present during the 1996 NBA Finals and not being able to hear the announcer over the roar of the crowd...during the PREGAME INTRODUCTIONS! Seriously. What kind of dedication does it take to generate that kind of noise? This same group of fans filled KeyArena so they could watch Sonics playoff road games on the Jumbotron, and they were able to fill most of the arena on weekdays. That's dedication. And that's the sort of group Bennett is stealing a team from.
Did I say stealing? I meant it. There's no way you can call this a simple relocation. This is like someone coming to Wrigley Field, buying the Chicago Cubs, and saying fans aren't suitably dedicated to the sport and moving the team to Albuquerque. There aren't any words for how outraged I am.
But shouldn't there be someone who prevents crimes like these from happening? You're absolutely right. His name is David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA. And rather than step in and prevent such a travesty (which actually would have been a crime - part of his contract states that Bennett would not attempt to relocate the team), Stern chastised the city of Seattle for not being willing to support professional basketball. He said that if the Sonics left the city, there would never be another NBA team to take their place. Seriously. Here's his exact words:
"I'd love to find a way to keep the team there. Because if the team moves, there's not going to be another team there, not in any conceivable future plan that I could envision, and that would be too bad."
TOO BAD???? This is the man whose JOB it is to provide equality in the NBA and he says it would be TOO BAD if Seattle lost basketball??? This is ridiculous. This is unconscionable. This is reprehensible. And the worst part is that Bennett was a traitor from the start. Recent emails have come to light that state that Bennett bought the Sonics with the intention of taking them out of Seattle and into Oklahoma city. (I'm serious. I have documents.) The city of Seattle has started a motion against Bennett for breaking his contract, but it remains to be seen if that will affect the Sonics' pending move. You want to know how mad it makes me? Let me provide a comic to illustrate:
I want to find this ostrich and recruit him to kick Bennett in the groin until his eyes pop out.
Here's why this should matter to you.
Clay Bennett demanded $500 million to keep the Sonics in Seattle, an offer he knew would never be met. This is essentially the same as someone taking your child hostage and telling you they would shoot them in the head unless you paid an absolutely unpayable ransom. Bennett has shot Seattle basketball in the head, and he's still shooting. And kicking the corpse. And taking a leak on it. And in the future, someone could do the same thing to you. David Stern has set the precedent for the NBA. It's now perfectly acceptable to demand exorbitant amounts of money from your fan base for a new arena or else you can move the team. Do you know what they call that in the real world? BLACKMAIL. If this happened in any other business, Bennett would be facing trial right now. Instead, he's being vindicated by the very man who should be standing up to him.
In closing, let me provide you with an example of what will happen to Bennett if he successfully manages to steal the Sonics. In 1995, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced his intentions to move his NFL team to Baltimore. He succeeded, but not before earning the absolute hatred of the city of Cleveland. He hasn't returned to the city in thirteen years. When Browns kicker Lou "The Toe" Groza died in 2000, Modell didn't attend the funeral, saying he feared for his life. Do you think the same thing might happen to Bennett? Let me put it this way. I doubt he walks on the streets of Seattle anymore. If the Sonics get stolen to Oklahoma City, don't be surprised if you hear that Bennett was found murdered in a gutter in Seattle.
For the vast majority of you who aren't die-hard sports fans like myself, I'm going to let you in on what might be one of the biggest outrages in professional sports in the last thirteen years. This is bigger than the current steroids scandal in Major League Baseball. Bigger than the brawl at the Palace at Auburn Hills in 2004. Bigger than anything.
Seattle SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett is relocating the team to Oklahoma City.
You're skeptical. I don't blame you. You can't see why a team being moved is such a big deal. Well, let me fill you in on the details, and you'll see why this is a tremendous outrage not only for committed Sonics fans, but for everyday people like yourself who don't follow basketball.
Some background: the Sonics play basketball at KeyArena, which was renovated in 1994. I've never actually been inside KeyArena myself (since I'm a solid Portland Trail Blazers fan), but I'm led to understand that it's a pretty solid arena. The Sonics have been in Seattle since 1967 and have won an NBA championship in that time. And then in 2006, Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett purchased the team from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Fans were concerned that the team would be relocated from Seattle, but Bennett publicly promised that he was committed to the city.
He then asked for a $500 million tax bond to build a new arena since he felt KeyArena was "economically inviable." (His justification was that there wasn't enough space for bars and restaurants. The arena itself is just fine.) He submitted a plan for
residents of Seattle to foot the bill through taxes. (Guess how much of Bennett's personal money he was willing to spend on a new arena? Zero.) Voters refused, having just approved bills to build Qwest Field (for the NFL Seahawks) and SafeCo Field (for the MLB Mariners), BOTH OF WHICH COST LESS THAN $500 MILLION DOLLARS. Bennett, upon hearing this, declared that Seattle was not committed to professional basketball and announced his intention to move the team to Oklahoma City.This stirred up complete outrage in Seattle. ESPN.com's Bill Simmons asked fans to send him emails describing their plight, and he got over 3,000 of them within 24 hours. He lists an excellent sample of them here. It's informative, if time-consuming, reading. There are devoted fans who are shocked that anyone could call them unfaithful. One fan talks about being present during the 1996 NBA Finals and not being able to hear the announcer over the roar of the crowd...during the PREGAME INTRODUCTIONS! Seriously. What kind of dedication does it take to generate that kind of noise? This same group of fans filled KeyArena so they could watch Sonics playoff road games on the Jumbotron, and they were able to fill most of the arena on weekdays. That's dedication. And that's the sort of group Bennett is stealing a team from.
Did I say stealing? I meant it. There's no way you can call this a simple relocation. This is like someone coming to Wrigley Field, buying the Chicago Cubs, and saying fans aren't suitably dedicated to the sport and moving the team to Albuquerque. There aren't any words for how outraged I am.
But shouldn't there be someone who prevents crimes like these from happening? You're absolutely right. His name is David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA. And rather than step in and prevent such a travesty (which actually would have been a crime - part of his contract states that Bennett would not attempt to relocate the team), Stern chastised the city of Seattle for not being willing to support professional basketball. He said that if the Sonics left the city, there would never be another NBA team to take their place. Seriously. Here's his exact words:
"I'd love to find a way to keep the team there. Because if the team moves, there's not going to be another team there, not in any conceivable future plan that I could envision, and that would be too bad."
TOO BAD???? This is the man whose JOB it is to provide equality in the NBA and he says it would be TOO BAD if Seattle lost basketball??? This is ridiculous. This is unconscionable. This is reprehensible. And the worst part is that Bennett was a traitor from the start. Recent emails have come to light that state that Bennett bought the Sonics with the intention of taking them out of Seattle and into Oklahoma city. (I'm serious. I have documents.) The city of Seattle has started a motion against Bennett for breaking his contract, but it remains to be seen if that will affect the Sonics' pending move. You want to know how mad it makes me? Let me provide a comic to illustrate:
I want to find this ostrich and recruit him to kick Bennett in the groin until his eyes pop out.
Here's why this should matter to you.
Clay Bennett demanded $500 million to keep the Sonics in Seattle, an offer he knew would never be met. This is essentially the same as someone taking your child hostage and telling you they would shoot them in the head unless you paid an absolutely unpayable ransom. Bennett has shot Seattle basketball in the head, and he's still shooting. And kicking the corpse. And taking a leak on it. And in the future, someone could do the same thing to you. David Stern has set the precedent for the NBA. It's now perfectly acceptable to demand exorbitant amounts of money from your fan base for a new arena or else you can move the team. Do you know what they call that in the real world? BLACKMAIL. If this happened in any other business, Bennett would be facing trial right now. Instead, he's being vindicated by the very man who should be standing up to him.
In closing, let me provide you with an example of what will happen to Bennett if he successfully manages to steal the Sonics. In 1995, Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell announced his intentions to move his NFL team to Baltimore. He succeeded, but not before earning the absolute hatred of the city of Cleveland. He hasn't returned to the city in thirteen years. When Browns kicker Lou "The Toe" Groza died in 2000, Modell didn't attend the funeral, saying he feared for his life. Do you think the same thing might happen to Bennett? Let me put it this way. I doubt he walks on the streets of Seattle anymore. If the Sonics get stolen to Oklahoma City, don't be surprised if you hear that Bennett was found murdered in a gutter in Seattle.
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