Bill Russell

 Bill Russell has died. He was certainly the most successful basketball player of all time, winning two NCAA championships, an olympic gold medal, and eleven NBA titles (and probably would have had twelve if he had not been injured one year during the finals). By the criterion used by those who call Tom Brady the greatest football player ever, that of being the key player on the most championship teams, he was also the best basketball player of all time. People using other criteria besides winning might select someone else, and that might not have bothered him. Winning was his criterion. I have read that when some outfit selected him as the athlete of the 1960s and the 1969 Mets as the team of the decade, he was displeased – pointing out correctly that the only two real candidates for the team of the decade were the Packers and his Celtics and saying he could not take his individual award seriously coming from people who did not realize that. He was also the head coach of the Celtics in the last years of his playing career and an amusing, insightful, and interesting television commentator after he retired.

I think people will miss him. I know I will, and not just because he was one of the great stars of my boyhood, though that’s part of it.

Stop the Presses! Change the Definition.

 

For years it has been understood commonly that the definition of a recession was a period of two or more consecutive quarters of decline in a nation’s gross domestic product. By that definition the United States is now in a recession after declines in the first and second quarters of this year. That is simple and easy to understand, but it also is politically inconvenient for the Democrats. So Morningstar and some others in the financial media have given us articles declaring that in the last couple of of days the definition has become inoperative, and thus there is no recession at all. (The implicit new definition seems to be a period of two or more consecutive quarters of decline in the gross domestic product unless there is a Democrat in the White House.)

Morningstar once was a respectable, politically neutral financial site. Others in the financial media have tried sometimes to give the impression that they were the same. With this they not only are making it clear that they have become public relations agents for the Democrats, but also are insulting their audiences’ intelligence. Clever party hacks could have said something such as “the country is barely in a recession, but this one may be mild and lack some of the characteristics of other recessions”, but they didn’t. By expecting to get away with something so obvious as changing the definition just before the news came out, they effectively are announcing they think their readers are credulous fools and morons. That may not pay off. Most investors I know are fairly smart.

Ducking the Question

 One indication that people know their arguments are weak is their repeatedly focusing on minor or irrelevant aspects of a subject while avoiding the essential ones. So Democrats, instead of admitting and defending the teaching of false history and anti-white bigotry and even racism in the public schools and the anti-everybody nonsense claiming that reason, objectivity, a can do attitude, and the scientific method are toxic characteristics of whiteness being pushed in “equity and inclusion” training sessions in governments and corporations, harp on an irrelevant point of nomenclature -arguing that critics are wrong to call this stuff critical race theory since, as a technical matter, that term is more appropriately applied to something else.

One sees the same thing with Trump’s defenders. They point out that the rioters from January 6^th are being treated far more harshly than leftist rioters, and that the Democrats’ public relations people in the traditional media ignored or excused far worse rioting by leftists in 2020. They suggest that there were agents provocateur from the FBI in the crowd on January 6^th. They point out that the notion of the guy in the buffalo horns overthrowing the government is farcical. They remind people that one thing in Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony was improbable hearsay. They mention the many false claims and exaggerations about the riot in the traditional media, including allegations of murder.

What they do not do is deal with the essential points. Trump finally and officially lost the election beyond any fancied hopes of lawsuits or legal appeals on December 14^th, 2020. From that point forward he planned and attempted to remain in power illegally and unconstitutionally. The rally and riot on January 6^th were part of those plans. There is no other plausible explanation for having a rally at that place on that day. He fired up the mob and sent it to the Capitol for a purpose – doing something to “stop the steal”. He clearly attempted a coup d’etat when he ordered Pence to overturn the election.

People denying this should give reasons for their denial. People defending Trump without denying it should explain how they excuse what he did and still claim to believe in the Constitution. I have not seen any of his followers or public relations people in the conservative media taking a shot at either.

Fun with Pronouns

 A person does not have to go far on TV or the internet, even among sites of large news companies, to find enough bad diction, awkward phrasing, lousy grammar, and poor choices of words to earn a failing grade from a moderately strict mid-century sophomore English teacher. Stephen Cox at Liberty has written several amusing pieces full of examples. Historians have written that people such as Petrarch compared the inferior Latin writing of their day harshly to the fine Latin of writers from the time of Virgil and Cicero. One can see something similar by reading not only the works of good or great authors but also compositions such as letters and military reports written by ordinary educated people in the 19^th Century and comparing them to what passes for English prose in lots of places these days. As Mr. Ed - who handled the language better than many present day journalists – might have said, it’s pathetic, Wilbur.

Then there are the pronouns. The distinction between singular and plural is important, and the English language uses different pronouns to denote it. Until recently that was a noncontroversial and well understood notion not only among grammarians but also among literate people in general. It still should be. If people want gender neutral singular pronouns, they do not have to hijack “they” and “them”. English has a perfectly good one in “it”. For example, while there really is nothing wrong with saying “a person should be careful when he pays taxes” when one means a person of either sex, it can be avoided by one who wants to do so by using “he or she” or following the the convention of male authors using “he” and female authors using “she” or alternating the two from time to time. Those enthusiasts comfortable only with full neutrality who find such solutions unsatisfactory can say “a person should be careful when it pays taxes”. That sounds funny, but it is less bad than “a person should be careful when they pay taxes”. There is no need to be semi-literate to be politically correct.

Using “it” could help with other things as well. It does the job with individuals who wish to avoid “he” or “she” because they call themselves “gender fluid” or claim to be of some invented non-biological gender or genders, making such things as “xe” and “xir” and so on unnecessary. Relying on “it” is just a good way to go all around for those seeking neutrality.

It ain’t hard.