On Tap Award: Worst Idea of 2007
Cam: I’m beginning to think that my idea of taking the week before Christmas as vacation is the worst idea of 2007. I originally planned on going to Arkansas to help my mother move, but had to scuttle that idea hours before I was supposed to board a plane. Now I’ve been home all week, and I think it’s fair to say I’m going a little stir-crazy.
But surely there are worse ideas this year. Jamie-Lynn Spears thinking “Oh, he’ll pull out”, for instance. Hillary Clinton’s Christmas commercial. The mortgage bailout. Democrat leadership deciding to go after Rush Limbaugh for his “lack of support for the troops”. Alan Keyes getting an invite to the Iowa debate. The CNN debates in general. The Steinbrenners and their treatment of Joe Torre. Mike Gundy’s “I am a man! I’m 40!” comments. The list goes on and on.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, because it’s really hard to pick ONE bad idea. But how about Hollywood’s desire to make a successful anti-war film. We’ve seen the results. You could release a movie called “Bucky Takes a Dump” (featuring a talking cat and the wacky adventures with his litter box) and it would be more successful than Hollywood’s anti-war films have been this year. Yet we all know how well Hollywood listens to their audience, so I’m guessing 2008 will be filled with more of the same.
Jim: That’s an awesome nomination, Cam. Dang, it seems like there’s always more good nominees for the worst categories than the best categories. I think I’m going to go with the Earliest Primaries Ever and the Earliest-Starting Campaigns Ever. I’m with Karl Rove in his assessment.
Candidates start early because they think it will give them a leg up. I think we can now declare that the early bird does not always get the key worm endorsement. Ask Vilsack, Tommy Thompson, Jim Gilmore, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo… and Duncan Hunter, you’re overdue. Fred Thompson hasn’t run a fantastic campaign, but he’s more viable than quite a few other candidates who started a lot earlier. I salute his one-man struggle to return some semblence of order to this chaotic system.
The states have moved up their primaries in a Sisyphian effort to become more relevant, and have, in all likelihood, reinforced how important Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina are. Time to trash this system. Two options I prefer - start in the smallest states, and work your way up to the biggest - so that the race is interesting all the way until the end; or simply do what the PGA does and start in the good-weather states.
Marshall: Although the idea was born in 2006, it didn’t actually come to fruition until 2007, so I’m naming Senator George Mitchell’s investigation of steroid use in baseball.
Commission Bud Selig, who presided over the entirity of the steroid era, hatched this loser, and for that, he ought to lose his job.
The Mitchell report revealed next to nothing of any consequence about steroid use in baseball. The only real evidence it offered were from steroid dealers who had an incentive to exagerate. The players implicated were given no chance to respond. And the report and the information in it are an embarrassment to the game.
And what did the game get in return?
Nothing. No greater clarity on the steroid era. No closure. No concerns put to rest.
As one commentator said last week, it was like baseball had a big pile of manure in the living room, and decided to clean it up with a leaf blower. They got a little out the door, to be sure, but most of it ended up on the walls.