I want to say a couple of things…..

It’s really depressing to be a San Francisco Giants fan during the winter meetings. We never get *anything* for Christmas! Please! Santa! Send us some pitching!!!

That being said, I think the Giants are going to win the World Series next year. Why, you ask? Because the Red Socks won last year and the White Socks won this year. We are the last cursed team left: the last former powerhouse to do something heinous and not win since. Well, some people think the Cubs are cursed, since they won the first world series and haven’t won since, but I’m not so sure they are cursed as simply in love with failure.

I’ve said often on this site that the various Law and Order TV shows are among the most conservative shows on TV. Even the title says so—law and order being conservative issues (and the ones that got Ronald Regan elected). But I’d be hypocritical if I didn’t mention that they have taken a solid stance against the war in Iraq. On this week’s Law and Order: Criminal intent, for example, the story revolved around a psychiatrist who had helped to torture inmates at Guantanamo Bay. It wasn’t as strident as say, Boston Legal, but it was still pretty damning. For the sake of consistency, I thought I should point it out. It’s still one of the most conservative shows on TV overall, but it has given the opponents of the media yet more ammunition.

Somebody recently called Dick Cheney “the Velcro Veep.” I kind of like it.

If a free and independent press is the faoundation of a healthy democracy, what are we to make of a Presidential administration that is openly contemptuous of the press, rarely stages presidential press conferences, and pays reporters for positive press coverage, a president who refuses to read the papers, and a staff that routinely intimidates the fourth estate? One Whitehouse staffer told a reporter that it didn’t matter what the press wrote because the Whitehouse creates its own reality. We all know that the first thing a tyrant does is seize the TV and radio stations. What do we make of an administration that manipulates the press through a spin campaign so blatant it can only be analyzed in Orwellian terms? Can democracy flourish under this administration, with its allies in the conservative press and on the Christian right?

Or do we even care?

Just asking.