| steamroller rollin through my head saaiiidd attached to loco power up coal |
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| Well |
[14 Apr 2008|04:49pm] |
www.aaroncrossen.com
Not that I flood everyone's page with posts or anything, but that's where I'll be posting from now on. BOOKMARKS, ASSHOLES.
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[10 Apr 2008|06:49pm] |
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I'm pretty sure I won't be accepted into TFA. I've spent the past few weeks reflecting on my interviews, and there were a couple of crucial mistakes and omissions that I can't see the interviewers overlooking. I know I certainly wouldn't. Even so, it's still my favorite non-profit. The work it does is really just exceptional. If I was a billionaire, I'd found the collegiate version of it, plucking kids from underprivileged and fucked up schools and educating them in an insanely rigorous liberal arts curriculum.
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| Germany |
[21 Mar 2008|05:13pm] |
Must be a great place to work for a newspaper.
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[10 Mar 2008|05:23pm] |
I've been invited to a final interview with Teach for America on March 27 at MSU. It sounds pretty intense, basically 6 hours of workshops, discussion, lecture and activity followed by an hour-long one-on-one interview. And it all starts at 8:30 a.m.
I'm looking forward to it, though. I've done a good amount of background research on TFA, reading third-party and first-party material and I must admit: I'm sold. It seems like a really effective organization. My only serious complaint is that the 2-year assignments might encourage flakiness: "I'm just doing this until I get that interview with J.P. Morgan." And the Princeton-types doing it to burnish their resumés don't help, either. It appears as if there is indeed some sort of mechanism by which you can stay on with the school you've been assigned to though, which I'd very much appreciate. I'd strongly consider putting in four to six years before ducking out and looking for work in government. Interestingly, TFA has a program for alums that helps organize campaigns for political office. No shit. I wouldn't be averse to giving that the ole' college try. Fuckin Aaron Crossen: Road Commissioner. No, I won't fix your potholes, dickhead. And pour me another martini. DON'T SHAKE IT SO MUCH. There are also numerous AmeriCorps benefits (of which TFA is associated with) including student loan forgiveness and other financial bonuses, which I'd likely take advantage of.
I'm also quite enamored with the very corporate, non-bureaucratic atmosphere it's tried to engender since my initial communication with the organization. Everyone I've spoken to has been incredibly professional, polite, and intelligent. For being a federally-supported agency, it doesn't at all remind me of a trip to the Social Security Administration. These people do not fuck around.
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[08 Mar 2008|10:37pm] |
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Rest in peace, Judy Robbin.
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[01 Mar 2008|12:59am] |
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Rest in peace, Lee Potter.
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[21 Feb 2008|01:24pm] |
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I've been invited to phone interview for TFA. Excellent.
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[16 Feb 2008|01:33am] |
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Just applied to Teach for America. I'm quite enamored with the program's mission/vision - here's hoping it all works out.
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| On taxes |
[26 Jan 2008|02:25am] |
Campaign stump speeches and the looming recession have produced a torrent of editorials on the economy. And from what I can tell, nothing seems to have changed. The Wall Street Journal still worships supply-side economics in its unsigned and signed editorials. The New York Times is still the bastion of 1970s liberalism that it was in 1970. I'm surprised the paper's editorial board hasn't endorsed Kucinich (yet).
Both papers have been critical of the candidates' economic proposals (or lack thereof, in the case of John McCain) in their news pages, which is heartening. There are some rather extreme proposals floating about (Huckabee's FairTax, and everything Ron Paul says, period), and some more predictable ones. Most of them have received a fairly equitable amount of coverage.
Yet, despite all the coverage the economy is receiving right now in extremely high-level media outlets, I think something's missing. That something: a discussion on the role of government spending in the economy.
Most writers try to make their views implicit in their columns. But to most readers, I think that's lost. Like politicians, I think columnists should have a separate page on their sites which detail their core beliefs (as should newspaper editorial board members). By neglecting to do that, the public at large is deprived of a very fundamental debate about the nature of government spending. That discussion is relegated to people that already think about this stuff all the time.
There are probably more than two schools of thought on the issue. But the two 'biggies,' if you will, go something like this:
One school of thought argues that government spending can prod the economy and serve as stabilizing force, or simply promote economic growth in the private sector. Examples of this abound in history. For instance, the numerous programs of the New Deal, or the private-sector spending that came about as a result of a massive injection of government funds after WWII. To a lesser extent, some Great Society programs of LBJs. Liberal economists look to these historical examples as proof positive that government funds – wisely spent – can lead to economic growth.
Another school of thought argues that government funds are best used with extreme caution. Conservative economists note that, throughout history, governments that have printed too much money have created inflationary conditions which can often break faith in the currency, leading to a severe decline in consumption and trading. They also argue that government spending is usually wasteful, meaning that the return on the average investment of taxpayer funds is usually minimal, and that keeping the money in the taxpayer's hands would be more economically sound.
Of course, both sides are right, to an extent. And most politicians, economists, and sore-eyes adopt parts of both philosophies, which shape more specific views on economies of various scale, from the local to international levels.
So the battle lines are drawn between those who fundamentally see government spending as a stimulant or even a cure, and those who see it as a strain on the economy.
I've thought long and hard about the issue. And one thing keeps coming back to me:
Government spending is largely spending in the private sector. For example, the federal government orders its office supplies from Office Depot. State governments also purchase most of their materiél and other needs in the private sector. More importantly, the government is a collection of humans. When our taxes go to fund 'programs,' they, more often than not, go on to fund the salaries of humans who direct these programs. Now, tell me if I'm missing something, but don't government employees buy what they need in the private sector? I mean, I'm pretty sure every teacher in Millington lives in a house with a mortgage. I don't think there's some taxpayer-funded housing complex in the woods that's tax-exempt and nothing but a drain on the local economy.
The government is, after all, a bunch of people. So calling whatever programs a 'drain' on the economy seems kind of contradictory in principle, since the people that are these programs live their lives like anyone else: purchasing goods and services from private businesses.
So when we speak of government spending, we are speaking of spending on people. Now, whether or not these people are a drag or a drain on the economy depends on program that is being directed. But it seems incredibly strange to think of a program being a drain on the economy if the people running it are spending money like everyone else. I've never met a government employee that just hoards his or her money or invests solely in 30-year Treasury bills.
The conservative notion of government spending always being bad seems to stem from the 18th century definition of 'government,' specifically, the military. In 1798, the bureaucracy that defines state and local government was a fraction of its size today. But the military was there - and it was expensive.
Classical economic conservatives have studied Europe's economic follies throughout history and have noted, like any decent historian, how remarkably stupid any given state could behave at any given time. And if you're doing traditional history, you know all about the wars. Wars ruined the economies of Western Europe throughout the middle ages and into the early modern period.
Why? Because the government printed money like it was going out of style. Governments paid down debt with more debt. And they wasted so much wealth on needless wars.
Military spending has to be inherently wasteful, at least to a degree Why? Because military spending is not like other government spending. The majority of money that goes to finance the DNR goes to finance its employees' salaries. But a far bigger slice of money that goes to finance the Navy goes to finance weapons and equipment, which are much bigger drags on the economy since they could only in a political sense be considered investments. How does an aircraft carrier pay you back? It doesn't. It just sails around costing you money until it stops moving and becomes a museum in Korea.
But the salary of an employee is a direct investment in an economy. Part of that salary comes back to the government in the form of taxes – sales taxes, real estate taxes, sin taxes, and so forth – first of all, and second of all, that money is basically money spent on your economy, since an employee is going to contribute to the economy by dining in restaurants, buying a car and paying off a mortgage.
That's not to say that the military is sheerly a waste of resources, since like any government program there are people involved. Those people make money. And they spend it in the private sector, like anyone else. There are hundreds, if not thousands of military towns (especially in the South and in California) in the country that hardly resemble some Soviet-planned economies. They're just towns - towns with robust private enterprise that government spending helped to propagate.
Look at the Virginia/Maryland/D.C. corridor. An economically prosperous sector of the country, and why? Because government employees buy houses, eat at restaurants, go to operas, and have kids. Those kids watch movies, go to the mall, and do whatever. It's all done in the private sector – Dick Cheney might have his own personal tax-exempt Wal-Mart, but I don't think any other government employee does. But it's supported by generous federal spending.
I think modern economists who argue that tax cuts and spending cuts are the only way to help remobilize the economy are economists that have been influenced by their 18th-century heroes who considered government spending wasteful because back then, it almost always was. But government spending has come to acquire an altogether more complicated definition than it did 200 years ago. It is not inherently wasteful as it was then.
I'm not trying to argue that it's never wasteful, since that's clearly not the case. Some programs, perhaps most of them (especially federal ones) are probably not worth the investment. But they have to be judged on a case by case basis economically, not politically. For example, a state-funded animal shelter might be the first thing to go in a budget crisis. But you can't just say "animal shelters aren't a crucial service, let's cut it." Of course they're not, politically speaking. But if you take into account a shelter's entire economic footprint, you might find that the 50 animal shelter employees have a massive economic impact on a random town somewhere, which in turn has an impact on another town, and so forth. Any singular economic entity is ultimately part of an economic ecosystem. What if Vassar just disappeared from the map? All of its neighbors would affected.
So programs must be judged individually. What kind of return is the economy as a whole getting on its investment? Government ledgers might bleed red, but government entities can't be expected to profit.
This is why I've always been extremely skeptical of tax cuts. Tax cuts have the potential to change the permanent projected income of any given individual, adjusting his or her spending habits and contributing to the economy in the long run.
But can't raising taxes do the same thing? If more taxes fund more programs, there will be more government employees, who will spend more money and so forth.
It seems to me that European nations and Canada do well enough with high taxes because free markets are not the natural enemy of government spending, like most conservative economists will argue. Free markets can be bolstered by government spending, and often are. For example, in France, taxes are absurdly high. But its economy, while it grows very, very slowly, is hardly some socialist basketcase. France is home to numerous extremely powerful private industries and other interests in the financial and service sector.
This is not to say that government spending is always going to benefit someone. It depends on the program. If a program doesn't do anything while its employees sit around and collect checks, that's not really beneficial. But if a program serves a practical purpose in addition to providing the inherent economic stimulus – and is reasonably efficient in doing so – I can't see how that drags the economy.
The major ingredient missing in my logic is inflation. If there's too much spending, there's too much money, and inflation takes hold. And needless to say, deficit spending drives down the value of the dollar which in turn drives up inflation. So you can't just spend however you want. There has to be a balance.
But arguing that tax cuts are the only way to give the economy a boost is a simple minded solution to an incredibly complex problem. And saying cutting spending will help the economy as a matter of course reflects a shoddy analysis of any given situation.
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[18 Jan 2008|11:05pm] |
A question to New York Times executive editor Bill Keller in a letter:
Q. The colorful lead is the bane (or at least one of the banes) of my time spent with The Times. So often, I have tried quickly to get the gist of a story (this happens in the Sports section more often than in the news sections) only to find that I must read something like "it was a dark and dreary night" before finding the point, or the score, or even a notion of what the article is about.
Whatever happened to the inviolate rule that a lead was 35 words or fewer, telling us where, why, what or who?
-- Peter C. Boulay, Bronx, N.Y.
A. As the sun blazed above the snow-lacquered peaks of the Hindu Kush, the weary editor flipped down his clip-on sunglasses and booted up his laptop.
It had been a long week, a soul-sapping, disorienting and yet strangely satisfying week.
Past the simple campsite where he awaited his digital connection to the modern world flowed all the human mystery of the East: the women shrouded in burqas of azure, or possibly cerulean, he was not too good on blues; the camel-borne warlords draped with belts of bullets; the shoeless boys in filthy "I Heart New York" T-shirts; and all the rest, all separated by semicolons and swaddled in colorful cliches.
The computer flickered to life. The keys clicked like castanets until up came a complaint from the northern part of a far-off metropolis at the eastern end of a troubled superpower. The editor read. He frowned. Then he squinted down at the keyboard and typed:
"Amen, Mr. Boulay. Amen."
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[17 Jan 2008|07:53pm] |
This Kylie Minogue cd is just amazing. Where was I when this came out last year? God damn.
Just caught up with what happened at MacWorld. MacBook Air, who gives a shit. I don't know why anyone would want one of these. Apple's industrial design is as impressive as ever, but it's basically a laptop that can't do shit (it doesn't even have a goddamn cd drive) that costs a shitton. I don't even know what audience it could possibly be aimed at. Not professionals, since it's not powerful enough. Not the everyday consumer, since it's too expensive (and weird). Apple fanboys/girls? Sure. But Maddox said it best: it's a computer, not a social movement.
The MacBook is an incredibly reliable, cost-efficient and useful machine. Apple could take over the portable market if it updated the line and lowered the price point of the base model to $900 or so. There would literally be no other machine that could touch it. But this MacBook Air shit is a Virtual Boy-esque flop if there ever was one. The top-of-the-line model is $3,000 and has specs just about identical to my oldass computer. Ridiculous. Hopefully the company will continue to implement its 'gestures' technology in its future laptops and other portable devices, since it has a lot of potential.
Back to Kylie Minogue.
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| Reading |
[07 Jan 2008|12:18am] |
I've had some trouble doing any reading over break. The only book I've finished so far is Into the Wild which was phenomenal. But I've struggled to even break into Postwar, which is something I've wanted to read for some time now. I saw myself absolutely devouring that book over break, but I've ended up watching football games and dicking around online for the past couple of weeks.
Although I am very much looking forward to continuing jiu-jitsu on Tuesday. I've never been so in love with a hobby. I am thinking about training somewhere else on some other day of the week, since twice a week just doesn't cut it. I wish there was some gym with open hours so I could just do it all the time, but the pickins around here are pretty slim.
On another note, I've dearly missed my punching bag while living away from home. When I lived there during the summer, I spent hundreds of hours in front of that thing, and I've never felt more physically invigorated than after a good session with the heavy bag. It reminds me of how I ultimately favor the striking arts over the grappling ones, if only by a small margin. If I had a consistent training partner, I'd box it up every day for many hours. The feeling of punching someone in the face and receiving punches in the face is just something that cannot be duplicated. There is a Muay Thai trainer working out of Midland for a small monthly fee, and I'm quite tempted. But with the defining work of my editorship yet to emerge, and the need to procure some form of employment, I fear the time constraints my schedule will impose might be a bit too much to allow for a thrice-weekly Muay Thai regimen.
In other news, I've been struggling to come up with some ideas for features stories this next semester. I've settled on a couple for sure: a feature on SVSU's NFL players and a pre-summer drinking guide, written by yours truly. Yeah, that's it. I've toyed with the idea of a reader-authored issue, which I've seen discussed, but never implemented. Basically, we'd offer monetary prizes to readers that write the best news stories, features, commentaries, and reviews and publish them like any other issue. It's pretty out there, but I certainly don't see anything wrong with it, as it engages the readership in a way that few newspapers attempt to do. Plus if it totally bombs, we can just fuck it and publish an issue like we normally would.
I've settled on the cuts I have to make for the winter semester. None of them are pleasant, and I can't help but feel as though this entire matter could have been avoided. I'm working to set up some kind of system wherein the editor is constantly informed of the financial situation of the paper with detailed weekly reports from the business and advertising departments. As of now, the only information I, or any other editor since the paper's inception have gotten is a monthly account review from the controller's office. How previous editors made hiring, firing and purchasing decisions based on such a scant amount of information boggles me. As does the lack of any protocol or precedent in the relationship between the accounting/advertising branch of the paper and the editor. We've been winging it all semester, and now people are going to lose their jobs because of it. I place the blame on myself, of course, since this is not something that should have required a trial-and-error experiment, and I should have had the foresight to prevent this from happening in the first place.
But this is also something that should be impossible, with preventative measures in place to ensure that it doesn't happen. I know that I've inherited control of a student newspaper which, according to all reports, are usually haphazardly run by disaffected dilettantes. Yet I can't help but feel a little blindsided by all of this.
What sucks the most is that my entire reorganization plan hinged on the ability to give salary raises to key employees and create new positions. With the cuts, the reorganization will be only half-realized. It's terrible, because the last two issues of the fall semester came out of a well-oiled machine. I've never seen anything like it during my tenure - everything just came together, and all I had to do was read the product and send it to press. There were some hiccups, of course. And a big story broke that had to be dealt with. But that's what the editor should be doing, is dealing with that kind of a stuff. I think what prevented the paper from really taking off under previous editors - at least partially - was the fact that the editors always bogged themselves down in menial stuff to the point where strategic reform and even oversight was quite difficult. In any case, the lack of my reorganization plan to realize itself will force me to do a lot more stuff that should be delegated to desk editors, which is going to hurt the paper and the people working for it in the short and long term, since it deprives other students of vital experience.
So I'm not so sure about what to do this semester. I've always been a 'big idea' type of person. I like to think about the long term. I like effective methods. I like consistency. I like efficiency. Most importantly, I like leading organizations with people who are excited to work. Well, now, it seems, I'm not going to be able to do much of that. I'm going to have to focus on the very short term by pinching pennies. I'm going to have to think about the small ideas - tactics, not strategy. So I'm definitely going to be leading an organization with people that are a little less excited - and maybe even disappointed - about their jobs. So I'm even more anxious now than I was when I first took over the paper as a noob over a semester ago. And less motivated.
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| On liberty |
[16 Dec 2007|10:51pm] |
On Liberty
What is liberty?
There are at least two competing definitions which people adopt parts of. The first definition goes something like this:
Liberty is the natural state of humanity. It is the ability to make choices and decisions free of outside interference. For example, the the liberty to walk around outside.
But, living in a state with laws, some liberties are restricted. For example, we are not at liberty to murder one another. The state maintains what specific liberties we are able to exercise. These liberties are often called "civil liberties."
So liberty is then neither inherently beneficial or detrimental. It just is, like the natural state of humanity. The state regulates liberties, purporting to serve the greater good by limiting what we normally perceive as man's more destructive behavior.
In a nutshell: Liberty is the ability of a people to do whatever they are capable of doing. States regulate liberties to maintain order, or whatever else (the latter more often than the former).
The second definition goes something like this:
Liberties are bestowed upon individuals, by a god, by the state, or by one another, and operate as entitlements or privileges. For example, under this definition, the ownership of a car might be conceived as a civil liberty. Or the ability to buy food at the grocery store, or the ability to enroll your child at a private school, or the ability to vote in elections.
In the common usage of this definition, the state grants liberties. The state gives people the right to vote, the right to a free education, the right to social security in old age, the right to medical care to the impoverished.
I agree with some of the first definition, because it seems more consistent across cultures. Owning a vehicle would be an absolutely foreign notion to most Africans, for example, who would consider it a privilege. As would, it seems, just about anything: sanitary water (or any water at all), reliable, effective medical care. All of what most Americans would consider the most basic social and physical infrastructure.
Looking at it like that helps put liberty into perspective. Do those Africans have any liberties of the first definition, though? If you subscribe to it, they do – the fact that their water is poisoned or that cholera is rampant hasn't infringed upon their fundamental liberty. Those Africans are still free to their villages, despite whatever forces have colluded to prevent that.
But that's where I stop taking the first definition seriously. It seems to me that the above example is the seedy underbelly of the first definition of liberty. Under that definition, the only way liberty can be undermined is through a state or a divine actor. For example, if leaving the village was banned by Niger. What if a conglomerate of village elders got together and threatened to forever curse the outcast that dared leave the village? Unless the power is natural or legitimate in some way, it seems as though liberty cannot possibly infringed. In the above scenario, the villager's liberty was not threatened by the mere threat of banishment, although it would almost certainly be threatened if he were to disobey their dictate. An incredibly slippery slope, if there ever was one.
I think liberty must be contextual. For example, there were some that argued that the government's slow response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina did not affect those victims' liberties in any way. To me, that's an incredibly claustrophobic definition of liberty. Those peoples' ability to live out their lives was seriously curtailed by Katrina; the government's response in restoring some of those liberties was lackluster. So perhaps the victims' civil liberties weren't violated by the government's slow and initially ineffective response to the disaster. But, in paying taxes to support FEMA, a government agency designed to manage disaster and provide relief to the afflicted, do the people not invest in their government a promise to protect liberties should something uncontrollable happen? The government had a responsibility to defend those peoples' liberties, and it didn't wholly fulfill that responsibility, as evidenced by the many dead that Katrina left in its wake.
That particular contextual view of liberty wouldn't make sense in a country that doesn't have an emergency relief organization funded by the taxpayers. Or a country that had no government at all. Or if there was a provision in FEMA's charter that explicitly stated it wouldn't be responsible for maintaining the population's liberty during a disaster.
What has gotten me thinking about this is the more or less constant debate about social security and medicare that is likely to heat up as the election season ages. Conservatives – some of them Republicans, others, fiscal conservatives in the Democratic party – usually argue that rolling back government is the best way to preserve liberty at the individual level.
But in many ways, the money we pay to sustain government sustains our civil liberties since our government, being a democratic one, promotes the freedom of the individual and in many ways protects it. The classical definition of liberty seems terribly insufficient to deal with the challenges to liberty that modern life proposes. The restrictive definition of liberty might apply liberally to an anarchic society, that is, one without a state or government. Any arbitrary application of power that limits the liberty of the individual could then be directly traced to the organ which was responsible for the limitation of liberty. But citizens in a state in which publicly-funded organizations are tasked with the protection of the individual's liberty are, if only as a matter of course, due certain privileges, if only because they pay for them.
As the presidential contest comes to a close, you'll find those that argue that rolling back government is the key to restoring civil liberties. In some ways, that is true. But in others, it does the exact opposite. Small-government conservatives, in actuality a rare breed but in rhetoric omnipresent, think about liberty in a vacuum. Context is key to understanding the liberty of any individual. It's unsophisticated to presume smaller government is the only way to preserve individual liberty.
Not that I'm arguing for big government. But liberty cannot be understood in black and white terms.
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[05 Dec 2007|09:41am] |
1. Curtis Granderson
2. Placido Polanco
3. Miguel Cabrera
4. Magglio Ordonez
5. Gary Sheffield
6. Carlos Guillen
7. Edgar Renteria
8. Jacque Jones/Marcus Thames
9. Ivan Rodriguez
1. Jeremy Bonderman
2. Kenny Rogers
3. Justin Verlander
4. Nate Robertson
5. Dontrelle Willis
When one of the best catchers ever is batting ninth, you've put together a decent team.
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| A decent interval |
[12 Nov 2007|01:13am] |
Call it graduation anxiety, or whatever you will, but I've been convulsing at night thinking of exactly what I'm going to do with this silly degree and all this newspaper experience. I've settled on a couple of dream jobs, but negotiating the interim should prove most difficult.
I've all but abandoned any hope of a career in academia. The professional environment in which academics work is absolutely poisonous, and I couldn't even function in it even in the most routine of positions. Curricula are a mess. Grades hardly reflect an individual's learning. Bogus disciplines and POSTCOLONIAL CONQUEST NARRATIVES are given equal time (and funding) with history and mathematics. Dumbass, new-age DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING STYLES haunt good lecturers. Get that fucking PowerPoint off the screen, you morbid piece of shit. No, I'm not grouping up with these adolescent fucking dweebs. I have cooties, leave me the fuck alone. What went wrong with the classical liberal education? Languages, history, arts?
And the entire industry rests on the shakiest of foundations. All those high-paying jobs at public universities rely on a great deal of public funding to prop them up. If that base was ever seriously threatened, either by economic recession or by policy, I wonder whether or not the whole system would crumble. Would students be willing to pay 50, or even 60 percent more for an education? Would academic types be willing to take a pay cut, after burying themselves in debt just to secure their own futures? And how would the surrounding communities react? Would Saginaw deteriorate into anarchy without SVSU?
That's a shaky system on which to base our future. The government is propping up a whole lot of universities, and in turn, a whole lot of communities. I feel as if though, in forgetting its roots, higher education has expanded beyond its means, and beyond its duty.
While I'm on government...
I've made my peace with next year's elections, no matter how big of a joke they'll be. In all likelihood, we'll get to choose between two gaping assholes, and I'll be forced to pick the one that has light at the end of of the sphincter.
But really. If Hillary Clinton is the pragmatist's vote, I'm scared to fucking death. She wants to preserve (if not improve) medicaid, medicare, and social security, but she'll never get elected if she's too antiwar. And at the same time, if a recession were to hit around election time, her platform would just crumble regardless.
Barack doesn't exactly seem like a shot in the arm, either. If anything, he seems even more satisfied with the status quo than Hillary. As far as the Republicans are concerned, well ... one of them wants to destroy the world economy, and all the others are fucking mongs.
So here's my prediction: Clinton wins the nomination, takes New York and California, but loses the presidency to Giuliani, who takes Jesusland. Clinton is simply too reviled by anyone who has ever leaned one degree to the right. Now let's just hope none of that shit happens.
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| Agreed |
[12 Oct 2007|10:31am] |
Is Dana White Bad for Mixed Martial Arts?
by Michael David Smith
Filed under: Fighting, Featured Stories, The Word, MMA
Imagine if, in October of 1993, Michael Jordan had said he was retiring from the NBA not just because he had nothing left to prove in basketball, but because he was sick of the lack of respect that Commissioner David Stern had shown him. And then imagine if Stern had responded by saying Jordan was retiring because of his "scumbag agent," whom Stern claimed he had "bitch slapped."
If that had happened, there would have been a whole lot of people saying it was time for Stern to go. Sports leagues are big businesses. The heads of big businesses aren't supposed to drive valued employees away, and they're supposed to conduct themselves with some decorum.
But that's exactly what has happened in the UFC this week. Its best and most popular fighter, Randy Couture, has retired, and he cited his belief that UFC President Dana White takes advantage of him. White responded by calling Couture's agent a "scumbag" and saying he had "bitch-slapped" him.
White has been great for UFC and the sport of mixed martial arts. In fact, the sport of mixed martial arts literally might not even exist in the United States if it weren't for White, who saved it when legislators were calling it "human cockfighting" and threatening to make it illegal. But just as the kid who launches an internet start-up out of his parents' basement eventually needs to bring in an MBA if he really wants to turn it into a legitimate business, the sport of mixed martial arts might now need to push White aside.
That's not to say UFC can push White aside, because in many respects White is UFC. I guess it's technically possible that the Fertitta brothers, the co-owners of UFC, could force White out, but that's not going to happen.
But maybe another mixed martial arts organization needs to hire a commissioner in the David Stern / Roger Goodell mode, someone who's a businessman and a marketer, someone who understands how the head of a sports league needs to conduct himself. Someone who can attract the best mixed martial arts talent, pay the fighters a fair wage while still running a profitable enterprise, and not infuriate the talent.
Randy Couture is the best thing going in the sport of mixed martial arts, a guy who's smart, articulate, great at what he does and doing something absolutely extraordinary, stepping into the Octagon at the age of 44 and beating guys who are 20 years younger than him. If Dana White has driven Couture out of the sport, then Dana White is bad for the sport.
http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2007/10/12/is-dana-white-bad-for-mixed-martial-arts/
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[10 Oct 2007|09:43am] |
I love this paper's design.
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