Things

(1) As a new blogger I’m clearly not aware of all internet traditions, as I didn’t realize that deleting a post I had put up a couple of minutes earlier after I realized that I was linking to a satire is considered a breach of blogger etiquette. Is there more or less a consensus on this point?

(2) As a fanatic Michigan Wolverine football fan I think I can picture the exact interpretive lens through which McCain supporters are going to be watching the debate tonight. For complicated reasons Michigan’s starting quarterback in the team’s first game this season was a true walk-on (an ordinary college student without an athletic scholarship). He seems like a hard-working kid and I don’t mean to pick on him, but it turned out that he simply didn’t have anything like the talent necessary for the job he was thrust into. But for an entire game we fans talked ourselves into believing that he wasn’t doing that badly. “See, that five-yard swing pass was really accurate!” “See, that go route wasn’t really that overthrown!” “See, he had a pretty solid game if you just don’t count those five horrible passes!” But by the next day everybody sobered up and realized we had to find somebody who could play quarterback.

(3) I’m doing this roundtable Saturday afternoon in NYC. It could be interesting. (The chances of Sarah Palin’s name not coming up can be calculated as approximately zero).