We Love Rankings

The newest U.S. News & World Report college rankings are out. We now have the most up-to-date way of calling alumni other schools illiterate morons.

The rankings are stupid. We know this¹. They weight importance of things weirdly. Different schools exist for different reasons, specialize in different things, and serve different constituencies. You can't objectively rank Cal Poly against Bard College. You just can't. And rankings can't measure the ways a person can grow as a citizen of the world. I can go on and on giving reasons why this list holds no weight. I can get on board with comparing individual programs, but not entire schools.

At the same time...

Ohio University fell to 124^th, down from 115 last year. It's still Tier I. But that is completely unacceptable. 124 is nothing to shake a stick at; there are thousands of schools in the US and 124 puts us squarely in the top 1%. Expand that to the 6 billion in the world and there's zero room to complain. Bobcats are truly among the world's intellectual elite.

However, we can and should do better. We have so much going for us and to see our gradual slide down the rankings² is profoundly sad. The opportunities and surroundings OU and Athens provides are extraordinary, and there's no way 123 schools can top it. So what is causing our tumble down the educational ladder?

In a word, money. We're in a bad way. We have too many majors and too many administrators. We can't get rid of either because of a penis-size contest between the faculty³ and the administration/trustees⁴. There's no trust between either side, so they can't work together. We all suffer as a result.

Under Robert Glidden, we refurbished, acquired, and built too much and we have a lot of debt. We're caught up in the amenities arms race and have committed a ton of resources to attracting students with shiny bells and whistles⁵. Many of our dorms are crumbling and slated for a much-needed renovating. This all costs a lot of money.

In case you haven't noticed, very little of this has to do with actual education. All of these projects, combined with a sharp decline in revenue, have taken its toll. We can't pay faculty competitive salaries, so promising young professors move on. We've cut staff to the bone and beyond, so our landscape and buildings aren't maintained as well as they should be.

All this is in the face of the fact tuition is absurdly high and going up.

More than one person has suggested the problem is the trustees are treating the university as a business. It's possible, but it doesn't matter how the place is run as long as everyone has lost sight of why OU exists in the first place. That goes for the faculty, no matter how loudly they claim they have the educational mission of the university in mind. Right now, everyone is concerned about everything other than what is being taught. We need to take a step back and look at everything we're doing honestly. What are we doing? What do we need to do? What can we do without?

Ohio State has 38,479 students and about 160 majors. Miami has 14,671 students and about 100 majors. OU has 17,176 students and more than 250 majors. Do we see the logical detachment here?

There are wonderful things going on in Athens. OU is a leader in sustainability, and the school and the town has a great tradition of social awareness and activism. In learning things that can't necessarily be taught in the classroom, we're near the top of the nation. We need to climb back up the mountain in the classroom and on the ledger, too.

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1 We know this, yet we still regard them as authoritative. It's insane.

2 We're below schools like LSU, Buffalo, Dayton, and Tennessee.

3 Faculty Senate has zero problem putting a scarlet letter on athletics but will not yield a single major or program, no matter how superfluous. Also, they either need to unionize or not. Stop talking about it and decide already.

4 The powers that be have fallen into the same trap many corporations fell prey to. They hired too many officers that do too little and are either unable or unwilling to look at themselves when trimming the fat. The Board of Trustees, meanwhile, has proven itself deaf to the needs and desires of the people they're supposed to be serving. Instead, they treat the OU community as a nuisance.

5 We spent $10.4 million on Shively Dining Hall! $10.4 million!

No Change to Believe In

I suppose things only looked like they were going to change.

I was excited when Susan Gwinn was unseated from the Athens Country Democratic Party Central Committee¹, guaranteeing she would no longer chair the party. Naturally, a letdown followed. Establishment candidate, Athens City Council President, and Gwinn ally Bill Bias won the party chair by a 38-26 vote despite the efforts of a reform faction.

In the end, it will be more of the same. I can only hope that the reform wing of the party continues to gain momentum and can accrue enough members to affect real change². Maybe I can just hope that guys like Alan Swank³ will have the balls to say whom he voted for after giving a speech in support of one of the candidates.

I don't know why I maintain my Democrat registration.  I hate this party.

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1 That's a long name.

2 I considered running for Central Committee, but my time in Athens is drawing to a close, and I would be going up against arguably the strongest member of the party in Lenny Eliason.

3 If anyone embodies the elitist, you-can't-be-happy-if-I'm-not-happy stereotype of Democrats, it's Swank. I do not like the guy. I think he's a hypocrite and a phony. Yes, I've told him as much. He was drunk at the time, though.

Islands Are Not Rafts

Hank Johnson was unopposed in 2008. I'm glad someone is giving Georgia voters a different option this year, because maybe it's time Rep. Johnson took his leave from Congress, even though he voted against the TARP bill.

Why? Check this out¹.

We may disagree on things, but we can agree on this: High-ranking government servants should know how the Earth works. I hope I'm not being too controversial here. I mean... good gravy. He later said he was claiming it was a metaphor. To which I say: Dude, you make a capsizing motion with your hands. You absolutely did not mean that as a metaphor. And even if you did, that was a stupid metaphor, and someone should throw a pie at you.

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1 It's a miracle that video is only 2:48, given how slowly he talks. I can't imagine sitting for a speech of his.

Let's Play a Game

It's called: Who is the Most Wrong?

Have a bucket or something handy, then read this. Let me know when you recover.

Good? Great.

First of all: What. The. Heck. This can't be real. It just can't. I am not a man easily fazed, but... come on. Who does that? How? Why? You have to realize at some point: I'm boinking my grandmother. This is wrong. Everyone in the world will hate me. Right?

I love, LOVE the quotes about how they get harassed when they're out together in public. Gee, why could that be? The grandmother saying she feels sexually alive for the first time in years pretty much killed my sex drive.

So we have an inter-generational love connection. OK. Gross, unconscionable, but probably not the first time in the history of the world this has happened. But having a baby? How do you find a surrogate for this? How do you even come up with the idea? What do you say to the woman? “Hey, uh, gramma and I, we wanna have a kid, but seeing as her plumbing dried up years ago, we're gonna need some help.” And how do you AGREE to that? Really? You think that's a good idea? You're on board with this?

Have these people not read the considerable literature on the problems incest babies have? No. No, they have not, because that is something intelligent people do. Non-intelligent people have sex with their family and say it's OK because of some possibly made up “condition.”

There's gotta be an island somewhere we can send these three. We'll pick the child up in a few months.

So, Who is the Most Wrong? The geriatric siren? The 26-year-old that apparently needs to triple his age to get a date? The woman who decided she'd carry their baby? I know this: We all lose.

This Covers It

This sums up my feelings wonderfully. From Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008-09:

"Corporate news is a dying system. It has helped make itself irrelevant with it insatiable appetite for the inane, a strong reliance on commercialism, and an inability to inform the public on crucial matters of out time. What passes for news on the 24/7 cable broadcasts is more like a gossip rag or screed sheet, a veritable three-ring circus sideshow of spectacle and distraction. Even print media have succumbed to this inevitable purging, exchanging substance for style, fact for opinion, news for propaganda. On the key issues of the past several years, from election fraud and matters of torture to leaving single-payer health care and impeachment off the table of public discourse, corporate media have failed America."

Please, Just Stop

Has there been a sports star less interesting and compelling in recent memory than Michael Phelps? The man has the personality of a doorknob. Yet even one year after the Beijing Olympics, he's still all over the media. Why? Even the bong "controversy" was bland. Not even the media hype machine could generate much interest in the story.

Just let the man swim in pools and date strippers. That's all he's good for. Tell us about people that might actually capture our attention.

Barney Frank

You da man! In response to Obama's comment that there is only one president at a time, he said: "I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have."

Haw!

There Are Good Things Happening in the World, Right?

I'm pretty happy that Valentine's Day has passed us by for another year. Not because I'm single; I haven't had anyone to celebrate the holiday with since 2001, so I'm pretty used to it. And, believe it or not, I'm not taking the opportunity to whine about it like many people are. Fundamentally, I'm for things that promote and foster love. A day that recognizes it is a good thing in my book. No, my problem with Valentine's Day this year was something far, far more sinister.

CVS, in all its corporate opportunism glory, had a cavalcade of cheap crap for people to buy. Apparently, if your relationship was worth $3-$15 dollars, you were coming to me and buying your stuffed monkies and heart-shaped chocolate boxes. And if you were feeling especially demonstrative, you could buy some helium balloons. Some of them- for the low, low price of $13!- actually played music. There were two songs that the balloons played, one of them being "You're Still the One." Now, that's cute, right? What if you heard it 20-30 times a day, four days a week? After a month of that, you're willing to buy the balloons yourself just to get them out of the store. Of course, nobody was buying them because they were absurdly priced for balloons. So people would make them play the little song snippet again, and again, and again. I was ready to jab my own ear drums.

Of course, nothing says Valentine's Day like a sex scandal. But this isn't really a sex scandal as it is just weird. A teacher in Sweden was convicted of sexual harassment for flashing her breasts at a student. But the teacher claims it was for... disciplinary reasons? The story features one of the greatest lines I've ever read: "The teacher, 47, claimed that she had only revealed her breasts in reaction to the boy's provocative doodles and that there was nothing sexual about the act." Oh. She had to pay damages to the kid as part of her sentence. So the kid got to see a woman's breasts and get paid for it. On the downside, he can only go down from here.
Other headlines on the site: "Teacher charged in sex for grades scandal," "Victory for topless bathers," "Police get a grip on serial masturbator." Maybe I should bookmark.

South Korea had one of its big historic landmarks consumed by fire, and it looks to be intentional. Sad. Why set an old wooden structure ablaze? Maybe it's the historian in me, but stuff like that we need to keep around if we can.
Also, do we really need story highlights from CNN when it takes two minutes to read? Are we really that ADD? Geez.
While we're on CNN, a former Khmer Rouge commander died Friday. We're bound to see more of the former communist faction dying off pretty soon; it's been 29 years since their reign ended. For no particular reason, I remember a New York Times headline declaring the death of Pol Pot. What strikes me about this article is that this particular person, like many in the Khmer, were never brought to justice for their crimes. Instead, he fled to the jungle... and eventually joined the Cambodian government, even becoming a general in the army.
What. The. Heck? Where's the UN on that one? I mean, they knew about the killing fields, right? They didn't miss that one, did they? General in the army? And the people were OK with this? (Probably not.) Furthermore, why is this new knowledge? Isn't this something everyone should know about? I bet I could go out on a given day and ask 100 people if they know what the Khmer Rouge is... I'll give you an over/under that seven know of it. Of course, it didn't involve white people, so it's not taught in our schools.
By the way, there are still Nazis in hiding. They still refuse to confess to their crimes. At least they're being sort of dealt with.

And while there are a lot of poorly-run NGO's out there, I have to give it to the World Health Organization for its head-on efforts against tobacco worldwide. They're really focusing on limiting tobacco use in the poorer nations of the world, as the poorest tend to smoke a lot. Also, remind me not to go to Greece- 59% of men there smoke daily? Yuh-uck. And maybe the UN should ban smoking on its headquarters. Just a thought.
Probably the thing I really hate most about my job is selling cigarettes. I want to tell everyone that wants to by them, "No." It makes me sick sometimes. Stop it, please. Just stop. It's such a worthless, dumb thing to do.

And the Westboro Baptist Church, everyone's favorite pious protesters, has notified everyone they will be picketing the funerals of the NIU victims. In my mind, they've crossed the line from villains to pitiable figures. Their absolute hate for the world, frankly, is sad. They're so far gone they can't see the world anymore. Such unadulterated hatred is Satan's domain. If you didn't know, they're all lawyers. They use their controversy and attention-mongering techniques to lure people into doing something they can be sued for.
I can only hope there is enough good out there to counterbalance institutions like Westboro.

That Asian Logic is Just More Efficient is All

I know whaling is an issue that is on the forefront of everyone's minds; it certainly occupies much of my day. But I did notice in last month's National Geographic a short piece about suspicions that Japan is secretly commercially whaling, which was banned in 1986 because there were about 11 whales left alive. And then I came across this story a few minutes ago. It featured this gem:

" Japan says the annual hunt is necessary to prove whale populations have recovered enough to justify a return to commercial whaling, which was banned in 1986."

So let me see if I have their argument right. They want to show that whale populations have risen to the point where they can be hunted again. And in order to prove it, they're going to go out and kill whales. Isn't that sort of like arguing that I have enough money to retire with and trying to prove it by spending the retirement fund?
Also, I continue to love the Aussies. They're sticking up for the whales, and good for 'em. And they should, because whales are pretty cool. Think about it: If you saw a whale in the wild, wouldn't you remember that for the rest of your life? If someone you know says they've seen one, don't you ask them to tell you about it? Isn't that something worth protecting?

On a related yet coincidental note, I got my National Geographic Society membership card in the mail. Neat. With it is an offer to renew my dues/membership (it expires in July) early. And if I do so, I get to lop $15 off the price. Considering subscribing to the magazine has been nothing but an absolute joy, I intend to take full advantage of this.

I also feel impelled to pass this story along to you (assist to Cheryl). This is a very big, very important, and very unnoticed problem. You would think with all the horror stories that the Vietnam era had to tell would leave us better equipped and more willing to tackle this problem, but we seem determined to repeat our mistakes. People are paying a very heavy price for a war that was entered into in a cavalier fashion. The toll taken for war is not always told in the casualty count. This is why we as a people need to move forward and make war less and less common.

It also highlights a frustrating trait many in our society share: The fear and refusal of counseling services. There is still the sense that going to a psychologist or a counselor is a sign of weakness, of unmanliness. When people hold that mindset, they keep things in until they're killing their wives for reasons they don't even understand. Starting now, we need to teach our children: If you are troubled, get help. That is the right thing to do. There is no such thing as weakness.

Love is Not a Science

I was reading an article from Psychology Today the other day about compatibility and chemistry. I enjoy reading it; it's a good read for lay people like myself, and they touch on a wide variety of topics. Anyway, this article talked about what chemistry between two people really is, if it's something that comes natural or if it's made, how to keep it... that sort of thing. At the end, they had a number of quotes from psychologists and other people about the topic. Again, interesting stuff. But one stuck in my craw: Neil Clark Warren, the founder of eHarmony.com, said for a couple to be compatible, the two people must be within one standard deviation of intelligence.

And that statement really chafes at me. I'm sure you've seen the commercials of eHarmony with the really, really amazingly happy couples. You've probably been annoyed by them as well. And that Warren guy... kinda creepy, right? Anyway, if you ever wanted to get on that site, they have you answer a 258-question personal assessment. 258? Good gravy. They use the answers from your questions to set you up with matches.

I'm sure other sites do so in a similar manner (I haven't exactly been crawling the Web looking for e-dating), so this is probably just symbolic of everything else. But love is not a mathematical formula. It can't be rationalized, and it can't be put into a neat little box like people such as Warren apparently want to do. He didn't say couples should be within a standard deviation of intelligence, he said they must be. Many times, love doesn't make sense, and there's no hard and fast rules for who and why people fall in love. A smart person and a dumb person can, has, and will fall in love with each other. There is no logic to love, and it's high time people stop trying to turn it into math.

Also, their little formula for matches has never been published or been subject to peer review. Fishy? I think so. Of course, not every story is a successful one. Heck, there's a chance that even if you filled out a profile, you'd be rejected. And that's after you fill out the profile... 258 questions, remember?

Apparently people were able to find one another before the Internet. I don't think it's doing much to revolutionize love as much as people like Warren claim.

Pensivity

A few things have happened since I wrote here last. If I may, I'd like to reflect upon them.

Most notably, the Virginia Tech shootings. Normally, I'm one of the first to hear about breaking news. This isn't bragging on my part as much as a reflection of the eye I keep on the media. I want to know what's going on. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a reporter. And every so often, something that happens you will remember the rest of your life. I like to know when those things happen. That Monday, however, I did not know about the shooting until after my 12-1 class. I had heard the words "Virginia Tech" at one point, but nothing else made me suspect that something had happened. When I was made aware of the massacre, I threw myself into it. I watched with wonder and dread the video a student captured on his phone. I heard the pat pat pat of guns firing.
It's weird, juxtaposing actual shooting with the blam-blam action of Hollywood movies. If someone pulls out an assault rifle and sprays bullets everywhere, nobody blinks. But if an actual person fires a handgun, I'm rendered immobile. Perhaps we're not as desensitized to violence as we like to think we are. If so, that has to be a good thing, right?
The United States is a country of roughly 300 million people. 33 died that day in Blacksburg, Virginia. That's .000011% of the population. Yet the death of that .000011% of the people in this country is enough to completely stop us. We're stunned. We're shocked. I was so upset by what happened that I didn't go to my class at 3 p.m. I was genuinely disturbed and frazzled by this. I didn't know anyone shot that day, but it still got to me.
Why? Is it the intrinsic value we place in a human life? Is it the reminder of our mortality? Is it the feeling of helplessness, the inability to do anything but stand aside and watch tragedy unfold? It's likely it's some combination of all of that. The death of a single person is enough to shock a community. We really do find worth an value in every life. Shootings like this, like the shootings at Columbine, in Pennsylvania, they remind us that we're never truly safe, that at any moment, something can happen. And really, there's nothing we can do to stop it.
Rest assured, people will try and claim otherwise. People are already falling over themselves to try and use this incident to further their own goals. We need more guns. We need less guns. We should build walls. We should install land mines. We need laser-equipped robots. Certainly, there are changes that need to be made. There always are. Virginia would be well-served to take a hard look at its gun laws, and the federal government would be equally well-served look at interstate gun sales (the gunman got his pieces from eBay).
The striking part is the compromise of what we thought were safe institutions. We think schools are safe. We think a campus is safe. Reality is much different. If anything, they're more dangerous than walking through downtown Detroit at night. You have teenagers and young adults under a lot of stress and a myriad of other problems running around.
We have a bifurcation in regards to what we consider acceptable deaths. When someone dies in war, that's somehow easier to take than when an "innocent" person is killed. On one level, it's hard for me to understand how we can send people to their deaths (that is what a soldier's fate is) and take it in stride instead of someone suddenly being killed. On another, it makes sense. The death of those at war is never surprising. We brace ourselves for that. We're never ready for someone to run around and kill 32 strangers.

The psychology of this episode is interesting. It's a lot easier to understand what happens in a high school setting. It's fairly straightforward. But this is much different. We don't know if the shooter knew anyone, even the first person he shot down. The video he made complicates the matter further. What was he talking about in that rambling declaration? Why did he do this? Why complete strangers? I know criminologists are pursuing the victim angle, but that's a very superficial answer. What did he feel victimized by? Does it have to do with the fact that he's Korean? Is it something else?
We also have to face the fact that on some level, we failed that man. We could not get him the help he needed before it was too late. It seems as though he felt this was his only option.
The grief of the Virginia Tech community has been well documented. I can't imagine what they're going through. But what about the family of the shooter? I have to believe they're even worse off than the families of the victims. At least the parents of slain students can feel like their children were taken from them. They can live through positive memories. The parents of the shooter will forever be haunted by the fact their son is a mass murderer. That's the final memory of him. He's an infamous figure now. There's no way to put a positive light on that.

Like I said, I was watching the news all day that day, refreshing stories on the Web constantly. I had it on CNN nearly for the next 24 hours. In general, I thought the coverage was solid and done well. However, I started to see graphics declaring "Virginia Tech Massacre" in bold fonts and menacing music playing in the background. This is what I have a problem with. We don't need these things played up. Life is not a video game. It doesn't need to be made more exciting. If any story can speak for itself, it's this one. It doesn't need CNN's help in hyping it up. The American media is so far gone, though, that it can't recognize when such sensational marketing goes beyond even insensitivity and straight into hurtful.

Boris Yeltsin died Monday. And for the life of me, I can't understand why this wasn't a bigger deal. His death passed incredibly quietly. We're talking about one of the most important figures of the late 20th century. I would argue that he was more important than Bush and Clinton in the 90s. Taking Russia from the smoldering ruins of the USSR to democracy and the "shock therapy" free markets was no small feat. There were a lot of people who did not want that to happen. Perhaps history will be kinder to him as time goes on, because he's not getting his due right now.

David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, also died Monday. Admittedly, I was surprised to hear the likes of Peter Gammons calling him the greatest sports journalist of his lifetime. I had never even heard of the guy. But when writer after writer talks about how amazing and wonderful the guy was, I owed it to myself to look him up. And after reading a few pieces of his, I'm wishing it hadn't taken me so long to find him. He truly is a gifted writer. He writes with a liquid smoothness and manages to write some profound things in a very accessible way. He strikes me as a high-class writer than anyone can read and appreciate. Note that I didn't say he lowers the intelligence of his writing or panders to the lower denominator. He is one of those people who is able to communicate intelligent things in a way a lot of people can understand. It's a very rare talent indeed.
A column of his that stood out to me was his musings on sports and 9/11. He wrote it in 2002, a year after the attack on the World Trade Center. He mused on the tendency for people to characterize sports as a way to unite a town, a country, a people, to lift them up and make them feel better in the face of hardship. We certainly did this in 2001, turning to sports as a way to heal our wounds. New York attached itself to the Yankees' World Series run in October. Halberstam said, though, sports are nothing more than a distraction. They don't heal any real hurts, and they don't really unite anyone. And he argued anyone that the more obsessed a fan is, the more his life is probably lacking. You know, there's a lot of truth to that. Everyone knows I'm a huge Bobcat fan... but more and more, I wonder how much it defines me and how much it should define me.
When I was in high school telling people I wanted to go to OU to study journalism, people said, "Oh, you're going to be a sportswriter?" with notable frequency. After a while, I became snippy at this. Why, I said, do people automatically assume I would be a sports reporter? There were more important things in life, more meaningful things. Sports does not define who I am. It doesn't matter in the long run. It's nice when your team wins, but does it really make your life better? And yes, I'm fully aware of the probably hypocrisy currently spouting from my fingertips.
I wonder... if pro sports went away tomorrow, would my life actually improve? It just might.

Crusade of Cynicism

As I've discovered, I'm not too old for 12-hour Dungeons & Dragons sessions. I started running a game on Thursdays. Last week, we started at 8 p.m. and ended at 8 p.m. It was fun, to be sure, but it was also quite exhausting. And of course, it threw my sleep schedule completely out of whack. So I'm working on about four hours of sleep because that whole class thing forced me to get up at a decent hour.

I was watching SportsCenter yesterday, and they had a feature of sorts on Bob Knight, the former coach of Indiana and the current coach about Texas Tech (this isn't really about sports, I promise). The report was filed by Jeremy Schaap, one of ESPN's top "issue" reporters and the son of sports journalism icon Dick Schaap. Part of the way through the story, Jeremy mentions the interview he had with Knight after he was fired from Indiana University. It shows Knight getting surly with Schaap and refusing to shake his hand after the interview concluded. Makes Bobby K look pretty bad, right?
Well, the voiceover immediately says something along the line of the thing that stuck out to him (Schaap) the most was Knight's "personal attack" on him (Knight was getting mad for Schaap interrupting him and said, "You've got a long way to go to be like your father"). And this is the problem I have. First of all, it wasn't really an insult. But Schaap is a whiny sissy, and he frequently injects himself into the story. Schaap has developed a history of interviewees getting hostile with him. Is it asking the tough questions, or is it provocation? It's a fine line, to be sure, but I don't believe he comes down on the correct side of it.
He's also one of those people who feel the need to tell the viewers what they should think, why something is so terrible and that you should be outraged, offended, or saddened by it. And I hate that. Schaap is emblematic of the generation of journalists that make the story about themselves as much as the angle. You get their opinions on things. You see them "confronting" their interviews.
If you've seen "Shattered Glass," you know what I'm talking about (and if you haven't, do yourself a favor and watch it). There's this class of reporters out there that are trying to make themselves more important than the story. They think they're the vanguards of what they cover. The importance isn't what they cover, but the fact that they're covering it.
That is wrong.
Journalism hasn't really changed in theory. The landscape of the profession has- as much as any has in the last 10 to 15 years- but the idea has not. Report the story, present the facts. The problem is that people have come along who have twisted the game and have stuck themselves between the truth and the consumer. And in the process, that truth gets distorted. The idea is that the story speaks for itself. Now, the reporters are speaking for themselves. That ideal of objectivity (which I think is crap, but that's another rant) gets destroyed in the process.
That's why I love how the BBC does things. British journalism, sadly, is far superior to American journalism in some respects. In the US, journalism is all about the story. What's the angle? What's the hook? In England, it's about the facts. Here's what's going on, here's what a couple people said... draw your own conclusions. And you know what? It works. It's more reliable. It's more trustworthy.
This is the system we used to have. Why don't we go back to it? Our journalists shouldn't be the guardians of morality or culture. I don't care what Neil Cavuto thinks about the Anna Nicole Smith saga- or, for that matter, why she's dominating the headlines. But once again, the media's obsession with stupid celebrity stories is another rant.

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

Welcome to Ohio... Democratic stronghold? Sometimes, I thought Ohio would forever remain a red state. Sure, the Buckeyes helped lift Clinton to victories in 1992 and 1996, but the GOP has been running the state since Richard Celeste was term limited out of office 20 years ago.

Tonight, though, that's changed. Ted Strickland beat the holy crap out of Ken Blackwell with nearly 60% of the vote today, giving the fiery Congressman the governor's seat. Sherrod Brown unseated career politician Mike DeWine in the Senate. Betty Montgomery, as popular a Republican there is in this state, lost in her bid for attorney general. In fact, the only major state-level race the Republicans won was the auditor race. It is indisputable now that Ohio is a blue state, all in one sweeping night. Remarkable, if you think about it.

It took nothing less than unmitigated disaster for the Republicans to lose their death grip on Ohio, of course. Bob Taft's approval ratings were historically low to the tune of 6% in March 2005. Six percent! Even six percent of women like me. That's not disapproval. That's hatred. Has anyone even seen him in the last two years? He might be dead. No one knows.

The people have handed the keys to the elephants; now it's their time to take them and start the engine. People are going to want results. If they don't get them, the Republicans are going to sweep right back into power. It is probably a good thing, then, that Strickland is the standard-bearer for the Democrats, as he is a no-nonsense man who pursues his agenda with a rabid, dogged determination. The Republicans look to have kept control of the General Assembly, so he's going to have to work on a bipartisan attitude, and that's not easy for him. His feud with Blackwell has been sizzling the past handful of years. He doesn't like the Republicans. They don't like him. It would not be surprising to see the GOP gridlock everything in an attempt to get him out in 2010.

Interestingly, more people more people voted for Issue 5 (smoke free) than for the governor's race. The economy and whatever is fine, but don't mess with people's lungs. That's not going to be tolerated around here. While I abstained from voting on the issue, I am happy it passed. Of course, the immediate 50 feet around restaurants and bars are going to suck to be around now.

Issue 2 passed. I'm stunned and delighted. More money for everyone! This is great. Of course, people will whine, "it hurts business!" Yeah, all those previous minimum wage increases really screwed everyone, didn't they? They didn't seem to mind raising prices and profits. It's about time we took some of it back. $6.85, baby!

Issue 3 failed, which is good. I am very much in favor of legalized gambling, but I want the money going to the people, not the casino owners. Give us a good profit sharing plan, and I'll support it.

Issue 4 failed. Anytime you can stick it to Big Tobacco, I'm happy. I really thought the confusion ruse would work. Kudos to the American Cancer Society for rolling out the war drums on this one.