Monday Medley

What we read while the Supreme Court forced us to get gay married…

• It was a big week at the Supreme Court, first as the Court knocked down significant parts of the Voting Rights Act. Then the Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (while also the lower court’s dismissal of Prop 8 in California stand). The latter news is especially good for gay immigrants. But let’s not rush to cheerlead the Supreme Court just yet.

• Glad to finally see a prosecutor go after real criminals at Bank of America.

• More revelations about the NSA: This time that it stored American emails in bulk for two years under President Obama, and continue to harvest online data. Here’s a brief look at the history of the NSA’s targeting of innocent Americans. And don’t believe assurances that all these programs are legal.

• Meanwhile, the media continues to focus on Edward Snowden’s whereabouts and personality, as well as his relationship to Glenn Greenwald, instead of covering the surveillance scandal itself. Meanwhile, The Guardian has been blocked by the Army.

• Joe Posnanski on Mariano Rivera. Will Leitch on the Pirates.

• The Norm MacDonald Book Club!

• Wendy Davis became a folk hero last week as she filibustered a restrictive Texas abortion law for 13  hours. Her fans have invaded Amazon shoe reviews. Of course, the law she stopped will probably just be passed in the next session. The Texas state legislature has been targeting women’s health for a while now.

• This weekend was the annual Del Close Marathon at the UCB Theatre in New York.

• Beware the police state’s War on Bottled Water…

Monday Medley

What we read while celebrating Veinte y Nueve de Abril…

• Jason Collins became the first active professional athlete in one of the four major leagues to come out of the closet (well, sort of the first). Most of the sports world was supportive, including Collins’ former fiancee, though obviously there was a predictable share of ignorance and intolerance.

• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could avoid the death penalty.

• The issue of Guantánamo Bay was raised again, thanks to the prisoners’ ongoing hunger strike. Some are now being force-fed, which is as bad as it sounds. President Obama reiterated his desire to close the prison, though once again took no tangible steps to make that happen.

• Read this, and you’ll never have to read anything else about Tim Tebow again.

• Grantland tries to match the NY Times when it comes to the visual presentation of stories inexorably tied to the cold.

• Would open borders end poverty?

• Good journalism.

• Scenes from the early days at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

• An interview with David Graeber, whose new book The Democracy Project was reviewed by John S yesterday.

• The fall of standardized tests in Texas.

• Jazz scholars analyze the new soundtrack for The Great Gatsby.

• Beards make you healthy and handsome.

NPI Comes Alive!: The Double Bonus Podcast

Welcome to NPI Comes Alive! It’s the podcast branch of the NPI network. Our first edition brings back The Double Bonus, with Tim and John S finally breaking down this college basketball season. Click here to listen.

The Worst College Football Season Ever

Perhaps we all should have seen this coming from the start. I found myself unusually excited for this college football season (likely due to the misery surrounding the Mets’ baseball season) and, for the first time ever, actually tuned in to the season-opening Thursday night game between South Carolina and North Carolina State. It was a horrid football game, the kind of game where neither team deserves to win.

Two days later, BYU scored one of two big upsets of this college football season,* beating Oklahoma with the help of a Sam Bradford injury.

*Washington 13, USC 10 the other.

The tone for the season was set.

Here are the six worst things about the 2009 College Football Season:

The Top 173 Things in History: #155. Manifest Destiny

Note the Native Americans and buffalo fleeing the “Westerners.”

Let’s call a spade a spade: Manifest Destiny was a pretty scumbag thing to do.

—Hey, this land you’re on, we’re gonna have to take it.

—But we were here first.

—Yeah, we know that. The thing is, and I know this kind of sucks, but it’s our destiny to have it.

—Your destiny?

—I know, man. We wish it were different, too. But yeah, this is our land now.

This was imperialism at its most boldfaced. Come on, like we even tried to come up with a valid justification? Because let’s be honest: Divine Providence isn’t a valid justification for anything.* This was nothing more than an older brother deciding he wanted the couch AND the remote control. And that’s when being there first or even “calling” it go out the window.

*And I’m the religious one in this group.

And here’s my biggest problem with Manifest Destiny: the syntax. It’s a verb with a direct object, so it sounds ridiculous in sentences. It’s not even like, “Mission: Manifesr Destiny” or “Operation: Manifest Destiny.” Think of it in candid terms by replacing “Manifest Destiny” with “Take Land.” Now try to respect this sentence in a history textbook: “The United States, under the direction of Take Land, expanded westward to the Pacific Ocean.” Impossible.*

*You can make the argument that “manifest” is meant as an adjective, meaning something akin to “evident.” Fine: “The United States, under the direction of Evident Destiny, expanded westward to the Pacific Ocean.” It still sounds terrible.

And I, for one, would never trade proper syntax for Texas.