Hillary, Hair and Heft

I remember a few years ago, my yoga teacher was telling me that one of her pilates students was working out hard so that she “would look good on her wedding day”. I looked at the two of them and said “how about AFTER the wedding; too many women look good on wedding day and then let themselves go. How you look after you are married is far more important.”

Of course, I got some cold stares and dirty looks, but that is how I feel.

Speaking of working out, last semester I swam at our university’s pool. I joked that one “could do a load of white clothes” in our pool water; I sometimes left my swims with puckered lips.

It wasn’t my imagination:

BY STAN MORRIS

OF THE JOURNAL STAR
When some of Notre Dame’s swimmers arrived at the Midwest Invitational on Dec. 16 at Richwood’s with fresh, closely cropped hair cuts, some wondered if the team was shaving to get a competitive edge.

Not exactly.

Team members needed the new look after noticing their hair falling out in clumps. The hair loss was attributed to an apparent problem with the water in Haussler Hall’s pool, the facility at Bradley University the Irish rent to practice and compete.

When enough athletes and parents voiced concern, Irish coach Shawn Ribordy knew he needed to do something.

Notre Dame and Bradley reached an agreement that the pool would be closed for three days, drained halfway and refilled with new water. The pool closure forced ND to seek out a new facility and the team ended up practicing at Manual from 8-10 p.m. for three nights last week .

Finally, there was a good article about Hillary Clinton in Mother Jones magazine. It seems as if she is one of those who is either loved or hated; on either side of the political spectrum!

Of course, conservatives hate her; but they hate her husband as well. But she isn’t popular with many liberals either:

So, yeah, I’ll probably vote for the Democrat, virtually every time. He may be a slimy, appeasing, conservative, Republican-ass kissing dickweed (Let’s call him Joe Ben um, Evan, for our purposes, shall we?), but at least I can count on his vote when it… Oops. Well, you know what I mean.

I’ll vote for the Democrat on a ballot in almost any case, except when that Democrat is a sure loser. If it’s a foregone conclusion the Democrat will lose, then I just might step outside the box and vote for someone else on the ballot — or a write-in.

For instance: If Hillary Clinton is the nominee in 2008 for the Democratic Party, then I will vote for someone else. I am absolutely convinced she will lose in a major landslide if nominated, and since I believe that to be the case — and since I live in California, where it really won’t matter HOW I vote — I will NOT throw away my vote on a compromise that makes me physically ill to contemplate.

But that’s not the only circumstance under which I will not vote for Hillary Clinton.

Even if she DOES have a chance of winning and even if my vote WOULD count in California… I will not vote for her. I cannot vote for her. Voting for Hillary Clinton would go against every fucking principle I have.

I will vote for a socialist, a third party candidate with leftist leanings, or write in my own name before I vote for that appeasing, centrist, unscrupulous, vanity-riddled asshole.

That’s right, you heard it here: Maryscott O’Connor will not vote for Hillary Clinton even if she is the Democratic candidate on the 2008 presidential ballot — EVEN IF THE POLLS HAVE HER NECK AND NECK WITH THE REPUBLICAN. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her — and I WILL NOT fucking vote for her.

So, why?

The Mother Jones article by Jack Hitt makes some interesting conjectures, many of which I think have some truth in them.

I recommend reading the whole article; I’ve included part of the beginning to entice you to follow the link to the whole article:

[...]
Almost every American has an opinion about Hillary. Consider her poll numbers. Hillary Clinton has favorables in the high 40s right now and unfavorables running about even. Her “no opinion” numbers are in the low single digits, approaching zero. Most politicians start with a huge swath of “no opinion” voters whom they can then try to convert. If Hillary runs, she will need to invent a whole new form of campaign strategy: She will need to flip voters who pretty much hate her.

Hillary-hating is such a national pastime, for both Democrats and Republicans, that it should be its own verb: “Hillarating.” Typically, even her supporters make the case for her only after plowing through a lot of caveats, lessons learned, and after muttered contempt for some aspect of her person. Hillarating is not like normal political hating—opposing someone’s ideology, for example. Loathing Hillary happens on multiple levels, ranging from her marital choices and fashion sense to her ambivalence on torture or support for a flag-burning amendment. And liberal feminists are as comfortable Hillarating as anyone else, perhaps more so.

“The source of the strong feelings goes all the way back to when we were introduced to her as Bill Clinton’s copresident,” says Nora Bredes, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership in Rochester, New York. After the health care defeat in 1993, Hillary retreated into being a wife and then a proper first lady before emerging again “as an international leader and then in the late ’90s re-creating herself as a victim of his infidelity and then again stepping out as a candidate for the Senate,” says Bredes. “People get uncomfortable when it’s not a neat story. Is she a progressive feminist or a cautious moderate? People don’t know exactly who she is, and so different reactions are almost invited.”

Not since Richard Nixon has the body politic been treated to so many variations on the same person. “The New New Nixon” was introduced with such frequency once upon a time that it became shorthand for a kind of political marketing joke. Hillary has assumed that cultural niche, always inventing a new look and more “humanized” self for each situation. And in turn, we’ve seized upon various elements of her changeling character to shape, à la Daniel Edwards, our own private Hillarys. She is a Cosmo quiz of an enigma, so let’s cut right to the answer key in the back pages and find out what kind of Hillary you see.

the martha stewart hillary: For you, the New York senator is, as Newt Gingrich’s mother once observed, “a bitch,” or, as William Safire phrased it, “a congenital liar.” You tend to relish the catty details that reveal her as a petty-minded overachiever, like when she peevishly denied her ghostwriters writing credit. You believed the 2003 rumor that Wesley Clark had been ordered into the campaign by some Clinton consigliere to serve as her stalking-horse. In the mid-1990s, you wanted to buy that Jerry Falwell tape alleging that she bedded and then killed Vince Foster, had him rolled up in a rug and dumped along the Potomac. You snarkily refer to her by the name that grates most on those who despise her, Hillary Rodham.

the tammy wynette hillary: The famous invocation of the country-western singer happened during a 60 Minutes interview in 1992. Hillary defended her husband’s philandering by saying, “I’m not sitting here some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” And this is where it can get tricky. Most people forget Hillary’s next line: “I’m sitting here because I love him.” The cognitive dissonance is confusing, because, of course, that is the Tammy Wynette position (“And tell the world you love him / Keep giving all the love you can”). When she dissed Tammy, she left the impression that the real reason she was standing by Bill was ruthless desire for power. Then after getting into hot water over health care reform, she assumed the Tammy position, that of doggedly loyal wife. This was the Hillary who beamed at Bill’s side and cut her hair in a prim, wifely fashion. Amid a flurry of sex scandals that would culminate in Monicagate, this Hillary allowed herself to be photographed in her one-piece bathing suit snogging with Bill on the beach—causing an entire nation to wince.

the eleanor roosevelt hillary: This Hillary first emerged at her 1969 college graduation, when her commencement speech was considered so controversially feminist that it landed her in the pages of Life magazine. The speech sent Wellesley’s president, Ruth Adams, into such a tizzy that, after spotting Hillary swimming, she had a campus security guard run off with her clothes to humiliate her. This is the Hillary who figured out, after the health care train wreck, how to be a good first lady, and quickly became the “Most Admired Woman in America” several years in a row. This Hillary had an office in the East Wing that handled the protocols of napkin folding, and an office in the West Wing that adroitly kept up her silent participation in the crucial political issues of the day.

the dianne feinstein hillary: You see her as a phony centrist always triangulating toward the ideological middle, willing to betray her true liberal self for power.

the barbara boxer hillary: You see her as a phony liberal, always playing to the amen chorus of the far left, willing to betray her true centrist self for power.

the lisa simpson hillary: We’re seeing of lot of this conscientious Hillary lately. When she ran for Senate, her critics said she was just running on name recognition. “But she was able to give milk prices to upstate New Yorkers,” says Helen Thomas, the former upi reporter who has covered the White House since John Kennedy. “Then, in the Senate, she acted like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, asking experienced Republican senators to ‘teach me’ how it all works.” This is the Hillary who got straight A’s; the law school graduate who in 1974 wowed the old D.C. pols on the Watergate Committee; the one who attempted to master health care in 1993; and who in 2000 visited Buffalo 26 times and earned its citizens’ votes. This Hillary first appeared at age four when, according to her mom, the future senator confronted the neighborhood’s meanest girl bully, knocked her down, and then exclaimed, “I can play with the boys now!”

the diana prince hillary: Bill’s wife is the secret identity of Wonder Woman. Is there anything she can’t do? Even if you hate her, you admire her fundraising ability and her $8 million book advance. You hear that joke about Bill seeing Hillary chatting with an old boyfriend pumping gas at a filling station and Bill says, “Just think, if you’d married him, you could have been the wife of a gas station attendant,” to which Hillary replies, “Bill, if I’d married him, he would have become the president”—and you think it’s just good reporting.

the lady macbeth hillary: You fixate on pictures of Hillary wearing big dark sunglasses, behind which she conspires to take over the world. Ruthless, conniving, calculating, icy, and manipulating, this Hillary crafted that phony post-Monica talking point—”I could hardly breathe”—as evidence of her “emotional side.” This Hillary spooked her potential senatorial opponent K.T. McFarland, a former Pentagon official, into charging that she “had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures.” This Hillary will abandon her principles for short-term political gain and will coldly undercut her oldest friends if need be—remember Peter and Marian Wright Edelman? This is the Hillary who, hours after hearing the truth about Monica, was in the solarium considering whether to help Bill’s speechwriters draft his dodgy confession. This version of the senator is known by the name that elevates her into the pantheon of scheming one-named women such as Medea and Evita. She is, simply, Hillary.

It’s not just that Hillary herself is seen in half a dozen ways, but that each variety of Hillary is embraced across the political spectrum. [...]

I’ll admit that I actually like her even though she is more conservative than I’d like. After all, she says in her book that she “didn’t so much leave the Republican party as it left her.” She is a centerist, pure and simple, and she went along with the Iraq war (unlike Senator Durbin and Senator Boxer).

Nevertheless, I would back her if she won the Democratic nomination in 2008 and would back her whole-heartedly. And I think that she has a bona-fide chance of winning.

And I should point out, at least some liberals are getting tired of all of the Hillary bashing. Katha Pollitt is one of them:

If people keep making sexist attacks on Hillary Rodham Clinton, I may just have to vote for her. That means you, Elizabeth Edwards!

As tabloid readers know, the wife of John Edwards told guests assembled at a luncheon hosted by Ladies’ Home Journal that she felt her “choices” had made her “happier” and more “joyful” than HRC. Translation: I’ve parked my legal career on the shelf to mind the kids, support my husband’s political ambitions and tend our wonderful marriage, unlike Hillary, a bitter ambitious career woman with a philandering husband.

Well, isn’t that special! Isn’t she the fulfilled woman of the year! Why are we talking about whether or not a woman senator who, maybe, wants to run for President is less joyful than a (former) senator’s wife who, maybe, hopes to be First Lady? Nobody would dream of measuring a male presidential hopeful on the happiness scale. If they had, Abraham Lincoln would never have been elected. It is sad to think that Ms. Edwards would play the happy-homemaker card to help her lightweight husband best a woman with about ten times as much political experience. We all know Edwards did such a great job running for Vice President–the man was everywhere!–and made such a fantastic impression in his debate with Dick Cheney.

Still, I might have gone for him in the 2008 primary, because every now and then he pops up out of nowhere and says poverty is bad. Now I dunno. We bitter ambitious career women have to stick together.
[...]
In her essay Eisenstein argues that HRC is a “female decoy” whose election would harm women because it would put a pink pseudo-feminist gloss on militarism and neoliberalism. There’s something in this, but it comes close to holding Senator Clinton’s femaleness against her: Logically, a man with the same positions would be less bad, because he couldn’t use feminism (or female stereotypes of caring and nurturing) to disguise them. But since anyone with a realistic hope of becoming President will necessarily have made all sorts of unsavory bargains with the status quo, this amounts to saying we’ll never have a woman in the White House. We’ll continue on as now: “expecting more” of women and tacitly expecting less of men.

Well, count me out. The contemporary women’s movement is almost forty years old, and after all that time exactly one woman has managed to reach the point where she can make a credible run for the White House. And I don’t see another one around the corner, do you? Polls consistently show the castrating satanic robot way ahead of her potential primary rivals. In general election match-ups she trumps every Republican but Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Maybe Barack Obama will alter the dynamics, which would be amusing, since I’ll bet few of his fans can name even three positions he holds. But right now, if HRC were a man, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But then, if she were a man, she wouldn’t be almost universally perceived as unelectable.

I’m not saying I’d vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary–although by 2008 I expect she’ll have come around on the war. I’d like a lefter candidate. But I want respect for women–and power is what gets you that. “It’s natural,” Medea Benjamin told me, “to want the people who are like you to be especially good.” Actually, the history of politics in America demonstrates the opposite: Suppressed ethnicities and communities have put up with everything from drunkenness to corruption to outright criminality in their politicians, as long as those politicians delivered–even just a little–back home. Maybe women should forget about being angels and start being more like Italians, Irish or blacks. Let me put it this way: Any candidate who wants me to vote for him instead of her had better have a whole long list of reasons, beginning with what he will do for women that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t do.

Bowl Season so far:

Bowl favorite spread underdog pick-spread pick-win
poinsettia, December 19 TCU 13 Northern Illinois TCU TCU
LasVegas, Dec. 21 BYU 5.5 Oregon Oregon Oregon
New Orleans, Dec. 22 Rice 7 Troy State Troy Troy
Papa Johns, Dec. 23 South Florida 4 East Carolina USF USF
New Mexico New Mexico 5 San Jose State San Jose San Jose
Armed Forces Utah 3 Tulsa Tulsa Tulsa
Hawaii, Dec. 24 Hawaii 8.5 Arizona State Hawaii Hawaii
Motor City, Dec. 26 Central Michigan 11.5 Middle Tennessee Middle Tenn.
CMU
———————-
As you can see, I am 5-3 against the spread so far; I lost last night’s game though I picked the winner correctly.

Tonight’s Emerald Bowl should be interesting. You have two teams with big-time names and big time traditions but with not so hot records. (Florida State 6-6 and UCLA 7-5).

UCLA, of course, finished strong with a big win over USC and was 30 seconds away from upsetting Notre Dame, even with their backup quaterback.

UCLA is rated 20′th with a 83.77 rating and Florida State is 50′th with a 74.24 rating.

Florida State lost 4 of their last 6 but played Florida and Boston College very tough; they did get drummed by Wake Forest 30-0. UCLA won their last 3 in a row, all against bowl teams. They were killed by a 4 game losing streak which featured losses to Oregon, Notre Dame and California. UCLA was favored by 4.5 points and the spread is down to 3.5. I am standing by my original pick for UCLA to cover the 4.5 point spread.

Workout wise: 3100 yards in the pool (some fist 50’s) and 3 miles of easy to moderate racewalking. Things are feeling better.

LSU-Notre Dame Sugar Bowl

This is a repost of what is on my archive; this should be a bit more readable.
LSU-Notre Dame Football History

Notre Dame takes on LSU in the Sugar Bowl; the Tigers are currently a 8.5 point favorite and not many people are giving Notre Dame a chance.

I disagree; what people forget is that Notre Dame beat several good teams along the way to posting a 10-2 record, including bowl teams Navy (9-3), Purdue (8-5), Penn State (8-4), Georgia Tech (9-4) and UCLA (7-5).

Where is is true that Notre Dame played some weak teams, LSU played some patsies as well, but they played most of them at the beginning of the season, whereas Notre Dame’s schedule was mostly “front loaded”.

Here is a brief history of football between the two schools; this is taken from my faulty memory and a couple of references. I welcome corrections and additions.

1970: ND plays a strong LSU team with a Cotton Bowl birth on the line. ND wins a hard hitting defensive battle 3-0 in South Bend with the field goal set up by a run by Joe Thiesman.

1971: This time the Tigers are better and rout the Irish 28-8 in Baton Rouge. LSU starts with a 14-0 lead. A key series of plays is a goal line stand where the LSU defense stuffs ND on 4′th and inches at the goal line. Parsegian finishes 1-1 against LSU.

1981: Faust takes over, the ND campus is completely out of control with unrealistic expectations. This is about the only time I was ashamed to be an Irish fan; ND hires a HIGH SCHOOL coach and people expect a string of national championships? (can you say “superstition”?) Anyway, LSU comes to South Bend haven been blown out at home by Alabama. ND wins 27-9 and is elevated to no. 1. ND goes on to lose 4 of its next 5 on its way to a 5-6 season.

1984: ND comes in to Baton Rouge with a 3-4 record. Everyone is expecting no. 7 LSU to blow ND out and LSU starts with a 7-0 lead. ND turns to its ground game and outscores LSU 30-7 over the next 3 quarters or so and hangs on to win 30-22. LSU wore its purple jerseys at home.

1985. Faust announces his retirement after the game; ND loses 10-7 to no. 17 LSU in South Bend. The next week, ND goes on to “go through the motions” against a hungry Miami squad and gets blasted 58-7. Faust finishes 2-1 against LSU.

1986. Holtz takes over and a winning season is in reach. But in Baton Rouge, ND fails to score in the red zone repreatedly and loses 21-19 to the no. 7 Tigers. Holtz gets a 15 yard pentalty for protesting some bad calls. Holtz finishes 0-1 against LSU

1997: Davie takes over. Davie takes in a team that has lost 5 of its first 8 games against the top 20 Tigers. The Irish play very well in Baton Rouge winning 24-6. Former ND standout guard Gerry DiNardo coaches LSU (he played on Parsegian’s 1973 National Championship team)

1997: ND agrees to a rematch with LSU in the Independence Bowl. LSU shows up in retro uniforms (gold jerseys, white pants, white helmets) and it is close at the half (6-6) but LSU pulls away in the second half to win 27-9.

Note: for a nice history of LSU’s uniforms and helments, see
http://nationalchamps.net/Helmet_Project/sec.htm

and scroll down to LSU.

1998: ND hosts LSU in South Bend and brings a 8-1 record into the game. ND is up 39-34 and tries to take an intentional saftey at the end of the game. Jarius Jackson (ND quarterback) gets tackled in the end zone and gets hurt. ND wins over struggling LSU 39-36, but then ND goes into the next game (against USC) and loses 10-0 with an offense that can’t do anything with the no. 2 quarterback. Davie finishes 2-1 against the Tigers.

In short, LSU brings in the better team against Notre Dame six times. Twice, they win in a blow-out. Twice they win in close games, and twice Notre Dame scores an upset. Once, the teams are evenly matched: it is a close game with ND winning. Twice, ND comes in with a better team, and once ND wins in a blow-out, and once ND wins a close game.

Current: according to the Sagarin computer ratings, LSU is rated at 92.07 (4′th in the nation), Notre Dame is 13′th at 86.33, though currently LSU is a 9 point favorite. LSU is 1-1 against the top 10, Notre Dame is 0-2. LSU and Notre Dame are both 2-2 against top 30 teams.

And, despite what many say, Notre Dame’s schedule strength is rated 20′th with a score of 74.22, whereas LSU’s is rated at 29′th with a score of 73.40.

So, this game is NOT the mismatch many think; I look for Notre Dame to pull off an upset.

As far as what is in store for Notre Dame:

And here is what is in store for LSU:

It should be a pretty good game!

Speaking of football, I also watched the Cowboys get soundly whipped by the Eagles 23-7, in a game that was more lopsided than the score would indicate. The Eagles got over 400 yards in total offense, including over 200 rushing, whereas the Cowboys barely had half of that.

To give an idea of what went on, the first time the Cowboys really threatened they had the ball first and goal at the Eagle 2. On first down, they made it to about the 1 foot line on a run. On second down, they lost about 1 yard. They had no gain on third down, and got dropped for a loss on 4′th down.

On another occasion, they had the ball first down at about their own 20. The center snapped the ball over the quarterback’s head, he scrambled and found a receiver for a 6 yard gain. And that was the BEST play of that particular series as they lost yardage the rest of the time!

On a side note, I’d wish that the Cowboys would ditch those retro uniforms. After all, why go back to an era where they lost almost all of the time? Their first good season was 1966, and their first “second place” season was 1965, when they switched to their current uniform scheme (silver and blue).

Of course, uniforms don’t block, tackle, nor do they execute plays.