This was the title of a Firesign Theater album of the 1970s and on the cover, there was a dais of people under pictures of John Lennon and Groucho Marx.
That said, there have been people who have said that I am a socialist, a communist, anti-American, and anti-capitalism and I’d like to prove all those people correct. With the word that the former champion in auto safety and quality, Toyota has purposefully cut corners and cost people’s lives by diluting and evading safety regulations, it is time to look at the modern corporation.
There was a book and documentary released in 2003 each called “The Corporation” that was a Canadian study of corporations, and it showed them, as entities, as immoral and unfeeling to the pledge of customers and workers. The movie and book trace this proclivity back to judicial rulings that made corporations like “people,” with similar rights and protections. Add to that the diffuse decision making structure of most corporations and difficult if not impossible attempts to document an audit trail, corporations, with their size, numbers of people working for them, and huge sums of money at their control, have eclipsed normal people, and have the government working for them, at our expense.
The book and movie’s suggestion is to roll back 170 years of jurisprudence and make new rules for corporations to make them more responsible and transparent. However, this will not happen. I have a simpler suggestion – if corporations are like people, let’s impose people-like punishment on them, and more of the Biblical variety. If a division of a corporation makes a decision to break safety laws, then world governments can take possession on these units from the parent and liquidate them. AIG was nearly brought down by one group within the company; then let the government take possession of that unit, liquidate it, and fire everyone who worked for the division. And, if there’s an audit trail, find the person who made the decision, or just make it the CEO, and prosecute them. Most states have murder statutes that include “depraved indifference,” that is, while not actually killing someone, your failure to act had a part to play in that death. We use it for parents all the time – why not for the heads of Toyota? And why stop there – if there is a financier or major shareholder like a Warren Buffett who went along with the depraved indifference, and you put them on trial, you would see corporate misdeeds falling sharply.
And last, if a company, for example Exxon Mobil, has more than 3 oil tanker accidents/spills in a 5 year period, the company is broken-up, liquidated, and all senior managers who had anything to do with lax standards and controls, get hauled up before a judge and jury. We’ve had AT&T and other giant conglomerates broken up on anti-trust grounds – why not for failure to be a good corporate citizen?
I know – you think this is unworkable, evil, sinful, unpatriotic, etc.. While I don’t believe that the death penalty stops criminals from committing murder and other capital crimes, I do believe that with the threat of liquidation, a “corporation” might think twice before cutting a few corners to save money at the potential cost of a few lives.

I am very glad that the White House finally put forth its own health care reform legislation. Democrats are so damn scared of Republicans that no one can take them seriously. It’s not the public option, but health care costs need to be placed under control and people have a right to good, affordable health care
But, Mr. President – let’s stop even using the word “bipartisan.” The Republicans would disagree if Mr. Obama said that today was Tuesday. They’re not going to change, and the Democrats are scared of hurting someone’s feelings. Let them filibuster – let them talk for 24, or 48 hours. Let them talk all day and all night. Make sure that it’s recorded by CSPAN so that if they make any slip, it’s on the front page of every newspaper in the world tomorrow.
But let’s do something for people; not corporations; not for the lunatic fringe; but for the greatest number of normal people who are struggling. Now, before it gets even worse.

So, Tiger Woods finally emerged from seclusion and sex addiction rehab to speak to the media for the first time since his Thanksgiving car accident and all of the revelations of multiple marital infidelities. The announcement contained no real surprises other than Woods trying to quash rumors that wife Elin had hit him which led to the car accident.
What had the media’s “undies in a bunch” was that Woods made his statement, then left, having notified the media that they would not be allowed to answer any questions. Golf Magazine, which negotiated with the Woods camp for six seats at the press conference from their initially allotted three, ended up boycotting the event altogether. Lots of people are saying that the announcement was not enough, and that Woods has some explaining to do.
In actuality, Tiger Woods owes answers to his family and the companies that remain his sponsors. He really doesn’t owe the media or us, the fans a damn thing. There’s no need for explanation here: a rich, famous, popular and good-looking athlete tried to have sex with every woman who he came in contact with. As a man, I understand that – if I had been in Tiger Woods’ position as a single man, I know for a fact that I would have done similar things. And there are plenty of women very happy to throw themselves at a celebrity like Woods.
The problem was that he continued after he got married, and, with 2 young kids at home, he should have given more respect to his marriage and his family. What do you want Tiger Woods to confess to? How many women did he sleep with? What kinky things does he like? What difference does any of that make? Do we deserve an accounting from Warren Beatty as to whether he slept with 14,000 women as written in a recent biography? Did Wilt Chamberlain owe anyone an explanation for the reported 25,000 women he bedded? NO! There have been no allegations of rape, nor have there been any reports of child molestation. So, it really is his and his family’s business, not ours.
Now, I know there are many who disagree – they figure that as a public figure who profited greatly from the public, he “betrayed” them too and owe them an apology. An apology, yes, which we received in writing in December (I believe) and publicly today. He is paying for his activities monitarily with the loss of sponsorships. But Tiger Woods never asked us to deify him because he is among the best to ever play golf. Michael Jordan may have done as much fooling around as Woods and he’s still treated like royalty. Woods, like Jordan, did what he does well, and people jumped on the bandwagon. Even through all of this, the PGA, the sponsors, and all of the major television networks are lighting candles hoping for Woods’ return to the tour. Honestly, people may like other golfers more, but who really gives a sh@$ about Phil Mickelson and the other guys on the Tour?
And that’s really what Tiger Woods “owes” us – to play the best golf he can. And he’s done that for over a decade. And, if he’s up to it, he “owes” us the privilege of watching him play, and the right to follow his quest to win more major tournaments than anyone in history. I’m not a golf fan, and rarely watch it, but I do pay attention to tournaments that Tiger’s playing in and I want to know how he’s doing.
And that’s it.

Some people have asked why I’ve done nothing on the Winter Olympics, currently running from one of The Indignant Wife’s favorite places in all the world – Vancouver, British Columbia? The honest answer (besides having been as busy as two people over the past week) is that I’m ambivalent. It honestly hasn’t been as captivating as it was when I was much younger.
In the 1960s and 70s, I watched the Olympics thoroughly. I watched all of the skiing, the hockey, even the figure skating. With the Soviet bloc countries and the Cold War, it was the only way that the truly best athletes would get to compete against one another. But today, the best are already competing against one another. Maybe that’s what takes something away? Some reporter on television said he couldn’t get excited due to the fact that by alternating the Summer and Winter Games every two years, it wasn’t special anymore. Perhaps, but not to me.
This will change over the weekend in my house when my wife’s home country hockey team: the Canadians, play the U.S. team. We have to come up with an appropriate bet…

As a “semi-pro” sportswriter, there is nothing that aggravates me more than when someone who is getting paid to report sports makes an egregious error, or obviously either don’t know what they’re talking about or haven’t done their homework. An honest mistake, or simple misstatement is one thing, but when they obviously are incompetent, it makes me angry – simply because I can and have done better. So, now, Dutch speedskater Sven Kramer is my new hero.
Kramer won a gold medal on the first full day of the Vancouver Olympics. Afterwards, he wasn’t too happy about a request from NBC, which has never done a particularly good job of covering the Olympics and deserves to lose millions of dollars on the broadcast.
After winning the event, the NBC reporter assigned to cover the event asked Kramer, “If you can say your name and your country and what you just won here.” Huh? Kramer rightfully got angry and quickly interjected: “Are you stupid? Hell no, I’m not going to do that.”
Speaking later in a Dutch interview, Kramer explained himself. “Come on, this is ridiculous,” he said. “You’ve just become Olympic gold medal winner. She was there when it happened and then you have to sum up your whole biography, etc. She’s crazy.”
I didn’t see the event and didn’t watch the clip that was posted (along with the article) on The Huffington Post, but it sounds like it was another one of these eye-candy bimbos who get hired to add fluff pieces to sporting events. As a male, middle-aged, long term sports watcher, it insults my intelligence when they trot out these women who can barely read, much less cover a sporting event.
Now, I like watching beautiful women as much as the next guy, but on television, reporting either news of sports, I prefer hearing from someone who obviously knows what they are talking about, and I feel the same way about men. Current Good Morning America host and former sportscaster Robin Roberts, ESPN’s Linda Cohn, Andrea Kremer, Suzy Kolber, and many others are not bad to look at, but they are informative and obviously are very good journalists. They aren’t just eye candy.
And that’s always been the problem with Olympic television reporting – if the winner is not American, or the prohibitive favorite, the American television networks don’t bother to even do their homework, and instead look like idiots when they thrust a microphone in an athlete’s face. With the Internet and facebook and so many sports outlets, the reporter could take a few minutes to learn who the athlete is, or at least how to pronounce their names correctly before they go off to “interview them.”

The Milwaukee Brewers announced this week that they would be unveiling a 7-foot, bronze statue of the team’s former owner and current baseball commissioner Bud Selig to be placed outside of Miller Park. Selig led a group that bought the bankrupt Seattle Pilots and moved the team to Milwaukee renamed the Brewers.
Some will recall Selig’s tenure as commissioner for: the lockout that cost the end of the 1994 season and World Series; and the resurgence in attendance, interest and revenues that showered down on Major League Baseball afterward. But Selig’s greatest legacy will be as the “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” ostrich with his head in the sand who looked away from the use of performance enhancing drugs that caused ridiculous production from players and a slew of records broken as a result of “juicing.”
Selig, former used car salesman (which is how he got the money to buy the Pilots), has tried to defend himself saying he didn’t know. I think that former Union Head Donald Fehr and Selig should hold hands in sharing the blame for drug abuse.
Personally, I think that a bronze statue is completely appropriate – Selig’s head certainly should be bronzed for his woeful tenure as commissioner (maybe when he dies, someone can cut it off and have it frozen, next to Ted Williams).
Sometimes, I wish I was a pigeon.

I admit that I had a couple of John Mayer CDs – they were pop music with nice hooks, and I admit that I was impressed with some of his attempts to be taken seriously as a blues musician. He can play, and if he wanted to follow in the footsteps of the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, fine with me.
And I don’t care that he’s dated Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston – Ms. Simpson is a talent less bimbo, and Ms. Aniston has some talent and I’ve always thought she was pretty, even though I never watched “Friends.” I think she has been a bit needy from what little I read about her relationships, but I don’t really care.
In these media fueled days, I couldn’t help but know that Mayer has a new CD (but I was “over” him after his second CD), but now he’s a pretty boy, clean cut enough to be listened to by 50-year-olds, but with enough tattoos to be “hip” to younger people. So, I saw him on the cover of Rolling Stone, but despite the fact that I’ve been a subscriber since the 1980s, I avoided his interview – I just didn’t care what he had to say.
Perhaps I should have paid some attention. He said that his relationship with Ms. Simpson was his addiction, and he regrets ending his relationship with Jennifer Aniston, but hey, he’s 32. but I guess Mayer made some racially insensitive remarks; one of them using the “n” word. From what I hear, that comment among some others have started a social media backlash of sorts against Mayer, and he has since apologized via Twitter.
CNN.com reported that around 4:50 p.m. Wednesday, hours after news first broke of his interview, Mayer tweeted, ” Re: using the ‘N word’ in an interview: I am sorry that I used the word. And it’s such a shame that I did because the point I was trying to make was in the exact opposite spirit of the word itself.”
Mayer added that “It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it, because I realize that there’s no intellectualizing a word that is so emotionally charged.”
After a bit of rumination, Mayer once again took to Twitter – the same social media site that allegedly was a point of tension in his relationship with Aniston – and said around 5:15 p.m., “And while I’m using today for looking at myself under harsh light, I think it’s time to stop trying to be so raw in interviews.”
“It started as an attempt to not let the waves of criticism get to me, but it’s gotten out of hand and I’ve created somewhat of a monster,” he tweeted. “I wanted to be a blues guitar player. And a singer. And a songwriter. Not a shock jock. I don’t have the stomach for it. Again, because I don’t want anyone to think I’m equivocating: I should have never said the word and I will never say it again.”
As I said above, I haven’t read the interview, but maybe now I will. I’d like to see what he said, in the context of the interview. After all, one of my all time favorites, Elvis Costello made some drunken comments in his youth that he has had to carry around for years, and I am still one of his biggest fans. And, black people, myself included, use the “n” word, right or wrong.
But it’s not like I expect John Mayer to have anything profound to say about anything. I don’t think he has much to say musically, either, which is why I’ve avoided his music like the plague. I would have expected someone who professes to emulate black musicians to be a little more sensitive in using derogative terms that were used on his idols.