Alec Mouhibian

This is the best defense of sports fanaticism I’ve come across since Norman Mailer’s 54,000-word essay on the testicular virtues of finger-foam. From Roger Angell, in the New Yorker:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

Another point. The more somebody cares about a lifeless ball or inanimate wooden object, the more likely it is that they’ll care about you.

It’s voting day in Washington, and I feel so left out. I won’t vote. It’s too tough to decide between a) Hope and b) Change.

Hope seems swell enough (if a tad too audacious for my mild-mannered soul). Change can be very useful sometimes, especially when a long-buried Jujubee craving kicks in while you’re by a vending machine. Perhaps New Change is the thing to go for: blue pennies, black dimes, red quarters, and a new $0.00 silver coin with the face of William Jennings Bryan.

Let’s face it. Like most Americans, I spent the primary season in bitter discontent, wondering what the hell to do with all those Carol Mosely Braun posters I saved so hopefully from 2004. Hope can’t get you Carol Mosely Braun; and it can’t get you any Jujubees. Screw democracy.

I review a new biography about director Otto Preminger in the new issue of Commentary Magazine. It’s not available in full online, but the issue is worth getting for other reasons, including: Joseph Epstein on Arthur Schlesinger, Terry Teachout on Sweeney Todd, and an essay on Jewish beards.

Later I’ll post some thoughts about Preminger which had to be edited out of the review to make it handicap-accessible.