House of Eratosthenes

With Joe Biden and John Kerry holding down the international fort, President Obama fulfilled an annual obligation:

President Barack Obama, the nation’s first basketball fan, took marker to bracket with ESPN again at the White House and selected Michigan State to defeat defending champion Louisville in the NCAA men’s tournament title game.

The path Obama took to arrive at his national champion, an event that has come to be known as “Barack-etology,” was revealed on SportsCenter at 9:30 a.m. ET Wednesday. It is the sixth consecutive year he’s made them with ESPN’s Andy Katz.

“Tom Izzo is a great tournament coach,” Obama said. “I’ve got Michigan State going all the way. … He know how to motivate folks and he knows how to coach. My pick: Michigan State. Bring it home for me. It’s been a while since I’ve won my pool.”

Based on past “Baracketology” national champion predictions, Michigan State might want to request a waiver.

I remember how impressed I was, two weeks ago, when President Obama was asked during lunch about that inconvenient other thing and completely ignored the Ukraine question. “Asked what he ordered, Obama said ‘A Korean beef sandwich, along with some chili. So I’m going with beef. I’m going with meat.'”

Bread-and-circuses to distract the populace. Fundamentally Transformed America’s First Pharoah is going with Michigan State, and meat.

Psychologists really should check out the phenomenon taking place here. Oprah Winfrey has been doing this for years. From what I can tell, you don’t get famous doing this, you have to already be famous, and you have to be famous in a certain way. You need to have a large fan base, and most of that fan base has to strangely work your identity into the maintenance of their own. They must see themselves, as real objects in the universe who bear some legitimacy of claim for taking up that space, as fans of you.

Betting... Once you have that, it doesn’t matter which book Oprah chooses to put in her club. It only matters that she chooses something. That having been done, word gets around. But, again, there’s much more going on.

The word getting around is a very quick process. I have to wonder what it takes to get other news traveling that fast, more helpful assets in the arena of human knowledge, like “affect is a verb, effect is a noun, they’re not interchangeable.” When the picking-by-deity has to do with future events, accuracy is absolutely and positively not part of the equation. Not even close.

I see the hoi polloi plays the game, too, and again accuracy doesn’t even come close to being part of it. “I’m picking [blank] to make it to the final four,” for the future, or “I could certainly imagine Michelle Bachmann saying that” for what should have taken place in the past. Did it pan out? Is that what she said? It’s rather alarming how little they care.

It’s almost like…in fact, I might be persuaded to amend that, saying it is exactly like…their existence is affirmed, or legitimized, through the expression of these opinions. The expression, and the display of confidence behind the opinion. The confidence is always total, I see. They have no idea how many chips they’d want to put in the pile, nor do they care. The content of the idea is the point of the outburst, but at the same time, the outburst is calculated to produce the same effect it would produce if it was about any ol’ other thing. President Obama is producing the same social effect by “going with meat” that He would be producing if He went with kale, onions, arugula, avocados and sprouts. It’s the “I’m going with” effect.

And it’s for idiots, frankly. There is an inverse bell curve going on, because when President Obama says “I’m going with,” half the country drops whatever they’re doing, racing to the idea like piggies running to the trough, and the other half says to itself something like “if I were ever on the bandwagon, this is where I’d be jumping off.”

So clearly, either those who follow this stuff have something in their lives that the haters are missing, or else it’s the other way around.

I think what we’re talking about is the maturity you’re supposed to acquire when you become an adult, and it’s the other way around. Yes Virginia, there is a Ukraine crisis out there, along with a big long list of other things involving people, places and situations that are affected by the wisdom of good ideas, as well as by the idiocy of wretched ones. Actions have consequences. Expressing a preference doesn’t actually make anything better. It can be a first step, sometimes, but nothing more than that.

Wait, wait, wait…. don’t I have tinnitus to this very day from all the screeching about “abdicating responsibility” the left did whenever George W. Bush did, well, anything while “American interests are at stake” or “American troops are in harm’s way”? Didn’t Bush once get photographed watching a baseball game on tv in the White House, and that was proof of his irredeemable frivolity?

I seem to remember something like that.

You know, there are times I really, truly long to be a liberal. Think of how wondrous it would be, if the whole of human existence reset with every new day. Think of all the things you’d get to do all over again — your first kiss, your first bike ride, your first home run. And it wouldn’t matter how much indisputable video evidence there was that you’d in fact done all these things before. You’re a Democrat! History begins anew each sunrise.
- Severian | 03/21/2014 @ 07:39

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BaracketologyThursday, March 20th, 2014

Baracketology
Thursday, March 20th, 2014