My Secret apology.

Blanket replies are tacky, but for what it's worth, I want to take a moment to thank all of you who've been writing to me off-blog, and whom I haven't had a chance to contact personally. I owe a special thanks to our new fans from Down Under for keeping me up to date on Secret-mania, which, not unlike the nuclear cloud in that grim Cold War classic,* has finally made Australian landfall and seemingly is just now building to the kind of critical mass that it achieved in the U.S. as winter yielded to spring. On its surface, the lag is somewhat puzzling, since Secret creator and Patient Zero Rhonda Byrne is, of course, from Australia. Then again, I can think of several excellent (for her) reasons why the project would've been kicked off in the U.S. Maybe I'll even have time to talk about it before the New Year, the way things are going...

Obviously I continue to operate in emergency mode, so all I can do at this point is promise to get SHAMblog back to its customary flow of fresh material as soon as possible.

* On The Beach (1959).

Hot dogs before horror.

Scheduling exigencies have prevented me from kicking off the series of self-help horror stories I'd planned to begin posting this week. I don't want to just rush them up onto the blog before I feel they're ready—fully/properly researched and/or edited. And once I commence posting them, I want to know that I can continue posting in a more-or-less orderly sequence. I'm simply "not there" yet.

I'm sure it's for the best, anyway. Do you really want additional reasons to be depressed going into a holiday weekend?

You read it here first!

SHAMblog has obtained an advance copy of the new oath to which Muslims will swear when testifying in American court cases, pursuant to a ruling by Carolina Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway. As follows:

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Mohammed. Death to America!"

....It's a joke, people. (What I wrote here, that is. Not the ruling. Though reasonable people may differ.)

P.S. I guess technically it should be "Allah." But I liked the rhythm.

Forgive and regret?

You'll recall that earlier this week we talked about Jon Corzine. Governor of a state with one of the most unforgiving seatbelt policies in America (New Jersey), Corzine suffered near-fatal injuries in April as a result of not wearing his seatbelt. Well, today the Governor is out with a new public service announcement in which he clearly is trying to defuse the outrage over his hypocrisy by almost making it sound as if he didn't wear his seatbelt on purpose so he could have a near-fatal accident that served as a warning to the rest of us. In an opening meant to echo the chilling Yul Brynner anti-smoking spots—filmed before the actor's death from lung cancer, then run post-mortem—Corzine opens with the words, "I'm New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine...and I should be dead." He then goes on to explain that yes indeedy, he should've been wearing his seatbelt that day. Anyway, Corzine's courageous admission (because, after all, what else is he gonna say? Hey, I'm the governor of the state, so SCREW YOU! I'll do what I please!) got me thinking about other celebrity regrets, and how they might be expressed. Here are a handful that come readily to mind:

Britney Spears: "Even if they were dirty, I should've worn a pair."
Barry Bonds: "I should stop telling people I thought it was flaxseed oil."
Richard Pryor: "I should've stuck to mainlining."
Simon Cowell: "I should either do something about my man-boobs, or stop wearing the tight tee-shirts."
George Bush: "I should've settled for being owner of the Texas Rangers."
Dick Cheney: "From now on, I should only pull the trigger if I'm sure it's not a primate."
Don Imus: "I should've said they're headed for the pros."
Bill Clinton: "I should've personally taken that damn dress to the cleaners."
Alexander Litvinenko: "I knew I should've brought my own bottled water with me."

Other nominations?

On wishing The Big One away.

I took a circuitous route to this piece by John Gravois and the anti-Secret backlash he represents—via Cosmic Connie, a Google search, an email or two I received off-blog, and even a link on AOL's news page. (And let me be the first to admit, it is a very bad sign indeed when the author of SHAM is getting his news on the SHAMscape from a mass-market source like AOL.) In my defense, I've been very busy and in large part have been trying to keep the blog going with "maintenance text," as I put it once before. But if you haven't yet looked at Gravois' facetious "letter to Oprah" in Slate, you owe it to yourself to do so now. It may be the best enunciation I've seen—arguably including, it pains me to say, my own work—of the downside of today's personal-Empowerment juggernaut. With very few words (and a handful of striking examples), it details the broad and colossal damage that this tide of "wishful thinking" has wrought in such diverse realms as parenting, health care, the war on terror, and even the U.S. space program as run by NASA. Gravois points out that because of the prevailing hopefest, among other things, "Only a third of American sunbathers use sunscreen, and Californians are almost twice as likely to play the lottery as they are to buy earthquake insurance." (Hence, the title I chose for this post.) He also writes compellingly of how even the lexicon is structured to reward whimsy and punish caution: "Just think of all the pejorative and even pathological terms we have for doomsayers. Like, for instance, doomsayer. Also alarmist, naysayer, paranoiac, complainer, defeatist, downer, and killjoy. Rack your brain: It is hard to think of a laudatory term for contemplating the worst-case scenario."

I go back to the subtitle of my book: "how the self-help movement made America helpless." This stuff is not benign. In most settings, as applied by most Americans, it is likely somewhere between counterproductive and downright devastating. Like the so-called and well-documented paradoxical effects in medicine, today's empowering brand of self-help too often causes the exact problem you were hoping (literally) to avoid. If not a worse problem...as we'll show here, in a few days, when I begin posting some of the horror stories I've received.

In sum, Gravois has put together the kind of piece where I just sort of sit there afterwards and think, Damn, I wish I'd written that!* It even makes me guardedly optimistic that maybe we're reaching an important bend in the road of this latter-day, check-your-brains-at-the-door silliness.

Then I look at the best-seller lists and my heart sinks again.

* See? I have wishes too.

You (still) couldn't make this stuff up.*

I can't really think of a way to lay the blame for what follows on self-help, but certainly these items are worthy of comment. If nothing else they represent a beat of comic relief after yesterday's heavy sledding, and before we confront more self-help horror stories later in the week.

We'll start with the most obvious one; though you've probably heard something about this, it's a good table-setter, if you will. Jon Corzine is the governor of New Jersey, a state that's locally famous (if you live in the east) for the stringency of its seatbelt laws and the aggressiveness of its enforcement of same. Back on April 12, Corzine was almost fatally injured in a highway accident. It was later determined that not only was Corzine not wearing his seatbelt, but the vehicle in which the accident took place had been humming along at 90+ mph. Driven by a New Jersey state trooper.

On the heels of the primaries, Democrat Willie F. Singletary was considered the frontrunner to become Traffic Court Judge for the City of Philadelphia in the November general election. Monday an investigation by Philly's ABC affiliate disclosed that Singletary has dodged $11,412 worth of traffic-related tickets and fines, and that his own personal driver's license is under suspension until 2011. Among his miscellaneous infractions were nine separate tickets for driving with an invalid/revoked license. Further, a bench warrant for Singletary's arrest, pursuant to his failure to answer such charges, had been pending before yesterday, when he hurriedly settled his fines. He now declares through a spokesperson that he doesn't see why any of this should render him unfit to take the bench in the fall, should voters elect him. Can you say "Marion Barry"?

John Acerra was the well-liked principal of a Bethlehem, PA, middle school, until officials brought forth evidence in early March that he was dealing crystal meth and had a fondness for watching porn in his school office. Naked. In its official report on the episode, the school district says it can find no indication that anyone saw Acerra (shown left, fully clothed) as a threat to students.**

Kinda makes you wonder...what's next? Pretty soon we'll start hearing about priests molesting kids or some foolishness...!

* I think I might've used that title, or that opening line, once before.
** In the first version of this post, this line contained a link to a hilarious blurb about Acerra on the site ratemyteachers.com. The site has now taken down that rating.

"Believe"... It rhymes with "bereave."

A guest column, today, from Australian writer Neil Jenman. Any elaboration on my part would only diminish it:

"I wanted to share a personal story regarding The Secret.

"I am 52. Today, May 20, a friend of mine, Peter, had his 51st birthday.

"Last year, in 2006, by a strange twist of fate, both Peter and I were diagnosed with cancer within weeks of each other—me in August and Peter in October. My treatment began in September. Peter's began in October.

"At the start of this year, I appeared to be cancer free. Peter appeared worse. And then Peter discovered The Secret.

"He gave me a copy of the book and the DVD and said, 'This will save us both.' I remember how he hugged me; he was so thin. I said this was 'dangerous tripe' and that I was writing about this nonsense in my new book. He told me that he 'respected' me but to 'trust' him. I went home and watched the DVD. It made me angry.

"As I said, today was Peter's birthday. But he wasn't here. He died on April 26.

"I think The Secret is wicked and dangerous mumbo-jumbo."

Guest blogger Neil Jenman (orange shirt) with Peter George Loizides (1956-2007). "This was the day he handed me The Secret," writes Jenman, who is working on his third book; it's about "get-rich coaches," he says.

[Photo courtesy Neil Jenman. All rights reserved.]

The law of extraction.

Another Secret success story comes to us today from Aussie Scott Pape, writing in the Herald Sun, Australia's largest daily newspaper. The title for this mini-post is taken from Scott's penultimate line, which is classic.

"Self-seeking, hypocritical sybarite on-board"?

[Mother waiting for child, outside kindergarten.]

It's been a v-e-r-r-y slow week in the SHAMscape, so I thought I'd fill time on this gloomy East Coast Friday by asking another one of my famously peevish questions*: How is it that so many young mothers—once they've got their own kids ensconced safely in their Escalades—seem to have no qualms at all about ignoring stop signs and roaring through school zones on their way home, thus posing significant danger to other people's children?

By no means do I impute universal truth to the underlying contention here, which is based on nothing more than my own anecdotal observations. But I've seen this happen often enough, as I jog by local schools and day-cares, that I feel at least some legitimacy in raising the question—which, by the way, is not rhetorical. If anyone out there has an answer, I'd love to hear it.

We'll get back to the self-help stuff on Monday.

* in the process, further affirming my growing rep as an Angry White Male.

"You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you an alternate universe."

Earlier I saw a report on ABC World News Tonight that epitomizes everything that's wrong with latter-day journalism, in my view. But before I proceed, I think it's necessary in this case to disclose a bit more about my political leanings than I've tended to. We'll do it in honor of Election Day.*

At the outset, I supported what George Bush was about—or seemed to be about. (There. I've said it.) Especially after 9/11, I guess you'd have to lump me in with those vengeful macho types who wanted to waltz in and shoot up Dodge...or, as one of my editorial acquaintances put it, "just fly B-1s over any country whose name ends in 'stan' and bomb it back to the Stone Age."** It didn't matter to me, then, who was right or wrong, and I didn't really care if, to any degree, we'd "invited" what occurred on 9/11. I saw things purely as a matter of survival—US vs. THEM—and I wanted people like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld front-and-center on behalf of US.

In recent years, however, it's safe to say I've lost just about all of my confidence in, and respect for, Mr. Bush. He has disappointed me gravely, in theory and practice, on more levels than I can enumerate here. My disenchantment is such that not long ago, I wrote a newspaper column in which I suggested that—if and when it's proved once and for all that Mr. Bush knowingly entangled us in Iraq under false pretenses—impeachment would be nowhere near a sufficient penalty. I argued that in light of the colossal loss of life in Iraq, were such a crime on the President's part fully and convincingly documented, I could see a case for invoking the death penalty, even though I am not generally a believer in that ultimate punishment. My editor ended up cutting that last thought as "too provocative and extreme." (He told me, "I'm saving you from yourself here, Steve.") However, if the pointless and premeditated death of 3000+ troops and countless Iraqi citizens would not qualify as mass murder, I don't know what possibly could. In Mr. Bush's home state, they've fried people for a whole lot less.

Having said that....

Tonight's World News report focused on one of Mr. Bush's better-but-lesser-known presidential initiatives, Reading First. Reporter Brian Ross spent 95 percent of his segment, encompassing at least five full minutes—that's a lot, in TV-news terms—documenting chicanery that went on in the administration of the program, including apparent sweetheart deals, no-bid contracts, and what seemed to be, in the overall, an appalling level of cronyism and political favoritism. Then, towards the tail end of his report, Ross said something, in-passing, like so: "...though reading scores have improved nationwide since the inception of the program...."

OK. Let's examine what happened here. Ross investigated a program that—by his own admission—works. It's achieving the results it set out to achieve, at least as judged by its major stated goal, which was helping America's kids to read better. Is that what Ross talks about for five minutes? Is that where he puts his emphasis? No. He introduces the program—which a fair number of viewers probably were hearing about for the first time from Ross, tonight—in terms of its dark side.

But let me be even clearer in making the point. On November 5, 2004, the NBC newsmagazine Dateline ran a "special investigative report" on gastric bypass surgery. The segment was a natural for the show and NBC, inasmuch as the network's lovable Al Roker, The Today Show weatherman, had undergone the surgery and achieved a dramatic weight loss, and now did much of the reporting for the Dateline segment. Before handing off to Roker, anchor Storm Phillips noted that the expected mortality rate for gastric bypass is 1 in 200. (Real-world translation: The survival rate is 199 in 200, or 99.5 percent.) Roker spent a few cursory moments detailing his own success, then quickly found his somber face and segued to the tragic saga of one Mike Butler, who had died following his own gastric bypass. The Butler story, which included the obligatory tearful soliloquies from his young widow, went on to consume roughly 30 minutes of the hour-long broadcast. So what do we have here? In covering a procedure that succeeds, or at least does not kill people, almost 100 percent of the time, NBC and Dateline chose to tell the story through the lens of the .5 percent who suffer tragic results. This may sound pedantic, overly analytical and perhaps even insensitive, but it bears saying nonetheless: Had Dateline sought to equitably and honestly represent the upside and downside of gastric bypass, it would've devoted 1/200th of the show—a mere 18 seconds—to Mike Butler. Because statistically speaking, that's the prominence a single death should enjoy in a fair-minded 60-minute discussion of the risks and benefits of gastric bypass. That Dateline show was a terrible example of "hit man" journalism. Regrettably, it was not an uncommon example.

This is why I often say that all-news stations that use the slogan, "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world," have actually, in most cases, got it precisely backwards. What they more likely give you is the inverse of the world: the equivalent of a photographic negative image.

* Primary elections are taking place in municipalities large and small throughout America today.
** Though let's face it, many such nations have never advanced very far from the Stone Age as it is.

The hit parade.

For the first time in SHAMblog history—which began, tentatively enough, on July 17, 2005—we have completed a four-week span, April 15 to May 15, in which the blog exceeded 40,000 hits. As noted once before, that doesn't exactly put us in competition with the likes of DailyKos or The Huffington Post. Plus, my current stat-analysis program isn't sophisticated enough to tell me some of the things that the big mainstream bloggers like to know about their audiences. Still, I regard 40,000 as a nice milestone. And since so many of the comments we generate are about other comments rather than my initial posts, per se, I attribute the blog's growth as much to our faithful readers as I do to anything I come up with to write about.

In the next week or so I'm going to decide what to do with the "non-success stories" I've been quietly accumulating via the boxed-off solicitation at right. I thank all of you who participated in that outreach, which has now generated over two dozen stories. (And keep encouraging people to weigh in, btw, if you know others who seem to qualify.) Some of these vignettes need to be fleshed out, but many of them are already quite powerful, and credible, in documenting the "downside of being uplifted," as one editor titled a piece I'd written about Empowerment and its failures. More on all this soon.

"Oh, by the way, I think he also got glasses...."

First of all, I do realize that there are other sports besides baseball, and that baseball isn't even really the "national pastime" anymore; in truth, sentimentality aside, it ceased being that a good while ago, and has probably been overtaken nowadays by football and basketball, at least in the hearts and minds of younger sports fans. Also, as one of our regulars pointed out, baseball isn't necessarily the athletic endeavor where Sportsthink looms largest. For such reasons I apologize to anyone who thinks I'm wasting people's time, or inflicting my own preferences on everyone else, by constantly dragging baseball onto the blog.

All that said, you'll seldom find a more striking statement of Sportsthink stupidity than I found upon opening my copy of ESPN this month and turning to the article about the profound resurgence of Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez. For those who may not follow baseball that closely, A-Rod, as he's called, got off to a blistering start in which, among other things, he tied baseball's all-time record for home runs in the month of April. This was quite a turnaround from last year, when things got so bad for A-Rod* that Yankee fans (and, reportedly, even team owner George Steinbrenner) talked about unloading the slugger—and the vast sums remaining on his record $252 million deal—to some other team.

And how does ESPN's writer, veteran baseball analyst Buster Olney, explain this phenomenon? Two ways, in back-to-back paragraphs on page 62.

First there's this from Yankee third-base coach Larry Bowa (as dyed-in-the-wool a Sportsthinker as exists anywhere): "Alex shows you the importance of confidence." The line is set up in such a way as to give it the primary emphasis.

Then, a line or two later, almost as an afterthought, Olney adds that A-Rod's "leg kick [shown above] was so dramatic last year that it altered his line of vision. His head would descend as he began his swing. Imagine trying to hit a pitch as you travel the downslope of a roller coaster." Olney then quotes batting coach Merv Rettenmund: " 'If the head is going down, the barrel of the bat is going down.' " Presumably this is why so many pitchers last year were able to get A-Rod out on high heat: his bat was going in the opposite direction as the ball sped into the hitting zone.

So much for confidence, huh? Amazing how much more confident a player can be once he makes the mechanical adjustments that enable him to actually, like, hit the ball.

I don't blame guys like Bowa here as much I blame guys (and gals) like Olney, the writers and broadcasters who uncritically parrot the Sportsthink mantra as it's supplied to them, without resolving the obvious contradictions or even bothering to address the honest questions it raises. As one of my favoite colleagues at the IU School of Journalism used to put it, There's a difference between reporting and repeating. Plus, of course, the Sportsthink lens provides a far better story line: It's so much more compelling and even romantic to talk about confidence and determination than to get bogged down in the details of leg kicks and batting stances....

I'm kidding about the title for this post, incidentally. To my knowledge, A-Rod didn't need, or get, eyeglasses. But it wouldn't be much sillier for a sports analyst to mention that in passing, either.

* At least based on the usual standards and commensurate expectations that he has set for himself. In absolute terms, A-Rod, even at his "worst," has always been a superlative player and at this point of his 14-year career is as sure-fire a first-ballot Hall of Famer as there ever was.

Fang mail?

Sometime during the wee hours last night, a really, really, really nasty comment came through regarding Tuesday's skeptical post on Robin McGraw. Though I seriously doubt it was from anyone in the actual McGraw family, it had that kind of enraged, "taking it personal" tone. In fact, in overall tenor and, um, word choice, it reminded me of some of the vicious emails I received back in June 2005, when SHAM was first published. Actually, I was already getting emails attacking my book even before the book was out (and thus before anyone really knew what was in it), which gives you some idea of the platoons of insiders and sympathizers that self-help's leadership is capable of mobilizing at a moment's notice to combat any perceived threat. Those forces can be brought to bear in engineering page after page of Amazon reviews...or in a coordinated hate-mail campaign directed against an author who takes on one of their own. (For the record, let me say here that, while I was admittedly satiric in my handling of Mrs. Dr. Phil, the basic question I raised was legitimate and above-board, to wit: Who is this woman, and why do we value her advice?)

Last night's comment is far too over-the-top to see the light of day on this blog; too profane, too ad hominem. And that's a shame, in a way, as I think it would be helpful and illuminating for readers to have a better idea of the true nature of the adversary here. I am also reminded of my long-ago "debate" with Mark Victor Hansen on Anderson Cooper 360. Mr. Chicken Soup became a vulture that night, flaying me with his talons from the word "go," and showing little regard for truth in the process. He simply made stuff up to make me look bad. As Barbara Ehrenreich documented with great eloquence and verve in her January piece for Harper's, these folks talk a great game about happiness and positive energy and the like, but confronted with a non-subscriber to their little cult of hope, boy can they close ranks and get ugly.

P.S. I'd be remiss if I took leave of this topic without referencing our own Cosmic Connie's fine article, "Wrath of the Secretrons," for the Skeptical Inquirer site. In it, Connie details her own treatment at the hands of the positive-thinking community.

It's good to be (married to the) king.

Would someone please explain to me how—other than being Mrs. Dr. Phil—Robin McGraw has now emerged as Femaledom's unimpeachable authority on, seemingly, everything? In recent weeks I've seen The Lady McGraw quoted or at least invoked in matters pertaining to marriage, cooking*, anti-aging, religiosity, education, childhood disease and other elements of daily living that slip my mind at the moment. There's even a special "Ask Robin" section on the Dr. Phil site these days. And, of course, her book, Inside My Heart, which "speaks directly to the heart of every woman" (as its PR material puts it), continues to sell well, benefiting from regular mentions on hubby's show. Clearly RoMac is being positioned as the poor man's (rich woman's?) Oprah. Or perhaps she's positioning herself; unlike others who were always so taken with her down-home mien, I've long thought I discerned a fair amount of quietly smoldering ambition in the lone distaff member of the McGraw Empire.

Yet I keep asking myself: What gives this woman standing to expound on anything, let alone everything? (I recently heard someone say, "Well, it's like Jackie Kennedy"...which is a pretty scary comparison.) I will admit that I never got this culture of celebrity to begin with. Where does Sean Penn come off thinking he's entitled to tell us how to fix Iraq? And why does Larry King give him a platform to do it? And why do we tune in to watch? But at least Penn has done something that makes us admire him; think what you will of his politics (and for the record, I'm not just saying this because the guy leans left; I get just as impatient with the likes of Dennis Miller, or the thoroughly rancid Ann Coulter, for that matter), the man is a brilliant actor. What did Robin McGraw ever do, besides agreeing to cohabit with the blowhard who eventually became Oprah's jury consultant? Even Robin's official bio seems to tout her marriage to Dr. Phil as her foremost achievement in life, making no reference to anything else in her background that would equip her to solve America's myriad problems.

And you know, I wonder how Oprah really feels about all this. Oh sure, in public she shows lots of love for McGraw & Family. And of course, one would assume that a woman who's sitting on a net worth of around $1.5 billion could care less about potential challengers. But who knows whether Oprah's public display of solidarity is the same brand of united front that, say, Rosie and Barbara Walters were putting up in the final days—that is, before it was suddenly announced that Rosie would be leaving The View, which is Barbara's show in both the literal and figurative senses. Plus, some of these hifalutin media folk have egos as big as, well, Robin's next book advance. You'd think it has to grate a bit to see your protégé making such an earnest run at both broadening and consolidating the media franchise that once was yours and yours alone.

P.S. I was just reminded off-blog that the "expanded" McGraw Clan actually includes a second female member these days: former Playboy centerfold Erica Dahm, who last August became wife to Jay McGraw, the clan's No. 1 son, who of course fashioned his literary career out of appending the words "For Teens" to several of Pop's best-sellers.... Hmmm.... Wonder when Dahm's first book comes out? And let's see—what to call it? How 'bout Inside My.... No, let's not go there.

* particularly in support of her husband's embattled best-seller, The Ultimate Weight Solution.

"Now what I want you to do is just get everybody out from now on so we can win. OK? OK."

Wonderfully validating anti-Sportsthink moment from tonight's ESPN Monday Night Baseball telecast. Yanks vs. Mariners. Third inning. The Yanks' rookie pitcher, Matt DeSalvo, is having trouble finding the plate. (Note to non-baseball fans. That means he's throwing balls when he should be throwing strikes.) He walks the first two Seattle hitters, with the heart of the order coming up. Pitching coach Ron Guidry calls time, visits the mound for a chat. Guidry departs, DeSalvo promptly throws a pitch that's hit on the ground to all-everything shortstop Derek Jeter, who smoothly converts a twin killing. (Note to non-baseball fans: That means you get two outs on one play. Also known as a double-play.) One had to smile at the ensuing banter between former star pitcher/current ESPN analyst Rick Sutcliffe (a diehard Sportsthinker if ever there was one, thus a tireless fount of related cliches) and play-by-play man Dave O'Brien (who has cultivated a reputation as a more cerebral/cynical announcer in the Vin Scully/Bob Costas mold).

Sutcliffe says: "Well, whatever Guidry told him worked."
O'Brien replies: "Yes, he said, 'Make him hit it to that guy at short, he's pretty good.' "

...All right...maybe you had to be there. But I found it gratifying, so humor me.

Just believe that you may not achieve it.

Interesting item in Parade from Marilyn vos Savant, who, as her bionote tells us, is "listed in the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame for 'Highest IQ.' "* Faithful readers will recall that I chose a quote from vos Savant—about the finite nature of "possibility"—as one of my opening epigraphs for SHAM. Here, responding to a reader who asks, "What does 'living abundantly' mean to you?", she writes, in part, that "nature and your five senses will provide great abundance. That includes making love, rearing children, enjoying food, and all that goes with a good life." Notice that she does not talk about acquiring a Lamborghini or even a nice pair of Manolos, living in that seaside villa in Tuscany, becoming President of the U.S., or acting opposite Daniel Craig in the next James Bond flick. In further expansion on the meaning of "good life," she puts the following text in a highlighted box at the center of her column:

"Living abundantly" can mean not desiring what is beyond reach.

This obviously presupposes that some things are beyond reach, which reprises vos Savant's repudiation of today's Secret-style, "believe it, achieve it" gospel. But let's not forget the context here: She has written these things in response to a query about "living abundantly" and the components of a good and happy life. I point this out in rebuttal to the people who've attacked me for "being so damn negative." If you read her column often, it's clear that vos Savant is anything but negative; actually, she comes across as one of the most "up" people you'll ever encounter. I'm not about negativity, either, and for the same reason: I simply believe that happiness requires a more realistic lens on life. Kind of like the Dirty Harry theory of human aspiration: "A man's got to know his limitations." (What are those limitations, for any given individual? How can we know them in advance? Ay, says the Bard, there's the rub. Be that as it may, I would argue that the sooner we begin to get a concrete sense of what's not in the cards for us, the sooner we can begin organizing our thoughts around deriving a sense of purpose and fulfillment from what is.)

One of my early mentors in writing, Andrew Tobias, once put it thusly: "Happiness is about the ability to make do with as little as possible." I know: It sounds sort of...nihilistic? depressing? almost un-American? (Plus being a bit hard to take from a guy who was Harvard-educated and generally a child of some privilege.) But I think what Andy meant—and I also think he was sincere in this—is that if your expectations are modest, worst-case, you'll seldom have to deal with disappointment, and best-case, you'll end up living your life in a constant state of pleasant surprise.

And what's wrong with that?

Happy Cinco de Mayo. Don't overdo the margaritas.

* listed at 228.

Deconstructing Drake.

The PR wire crackles today with The Art of Office War, the latest from one Simon Drake, who prepped for his foray into the elite regions of career-building strategy by writing, previously, Love Data, which tells the story of an "inventor with futuristic vices" who tries to "bring back a dead lover." (NOTE: Though one assumes from his spellings that Drake is a Brit, he does not appear to be the same Simon Drake who practices magic in London and thereabouts.) Without further ado, I provide below my comments on his release, and translations thereof as appropriate.

"The Art of Office War is a guide to navigating behaviour and politics to get where and what You want...."
TRANSLATION: "Here's another book, like The Secret, that gives you permission to be as narcissistic as humanly possible."

"...It empowers knowledge workers…”
COMMENT: I'd supply a translation here, if the line had any meaning.

"…and explains how and why colleagues compete, the methods they use, and what You can do for your own advantage...."
TRANSLATION: "Because—did I mention this already?—we know that it's ALL and ONLY about YOU! [and with a capital Y, no less!]"

"...Reviews range from 'Insightful and funny…' to '… Drake's evidence of having worked within both the corporate and public arenas is clear. His metaphor of the office as a battlefield is pinpoint accurate…"
COMMENT: His metaphor? Has the man never heard of Clausewitz? Larry Donnithome? The "business-as-war" model has been entrenched in American commerce for decades, at least. One of my most valuable sources for SHAM, Jay Kurtz (of KappaWest), was already a leading figure in business wargaming when I first met him in Orange County, Calif., circa 1984.

"...and 'The more you read, and the longer you work in offices, the funnier it gets!'..."
TRANSLATION: "This is what I think of my own book. If these were testimonials from real people whose names meant anything to you, I'd attribute these quotes to them by name."

"...The author, Simon Drake..."
TRANSLATION: "Meaning me, which is to say, the guy who wrote this glowing press release about himself."

"...explains the appeal, 'For many people the office is they make or break it..."
TRANSLATION: "I could really use a good proofreader. You know any?"

"...The Art of Office War provides real solutions to real problems, without dumbing down its message to please the masses..."
TRANSLATION: "My writing is completely self-indulgent." And: "Though I'm keeping my hopes up, I don't really expect too many people to buy this book."

"...If you seek answers to your problems, this is the book for you...”
COMMENT: Gee, now where have I heard that before?

"...The edge of The Art of Office War is that unlike most self-help and how to books, it is independently published. As Simon explains, 'In writing The Art of Office War I gathered so many opinions, ideas and facts from people that I realized I had a dangerous title on my hands… Publishers don't like risk, they want safe titles that don't pull punches, but I could, so the book is out there for others to profit from and enjoy."
TRANSLATION: "I couldn't find a publisher. No one was willing to bring out this book. So I paid to have it done myself."

I guess Albert never cared that much for Josh.

So as the Cards continue to lose—again last night to the streaking Brewers—predictably, much of the tenor of the coverage is like so, linking the team's plight to the loss of pitcher Josh Hancock. It is true that St. Louis has not won any of the three games since Hancock's untimely death. It is also true that they lost the two games immediately preceding his death as well, and have, in fact, been playing poorly the entire season thus far, Hancock or no Hancock. Among other things, the cornerstone of their batting order, the (normally) unstoppable Albert Pujols, was off to a lousy start. Albert actually began hitting better shortly before Hancock's fatal accident, and his recovery ongoes in the games since. He got three hits last night.

Look, I don't want to seem insensitive or make a mountain out of a Sportsthink mole-hill; we already invest far too much of our brainpower and emotional energy into sports in this country as it is. I just think this is an object lesson in how, throughout American society, we feel the need to contrive lofty explanations for things that may have no explanation (at least, not one that we can know, or do anything about). We overintellectualize and label everything. Here's just one minor, non-sports example that comes to mind: Used to be that boys who ran amok and couldn't seem to pay attention for more than two minutes at a time were, well, being boys. Now they've got Attention-Deficit Disorder. And we medicate them.

The problem with jumping to conclusions is that we constantly misguide ourselves; we leave ourselves vulnerable to flawed thinking and wind up taking "corrective" actions that may have nothing to do with the root problem. If indeed there is a problem. Once you decide that you know what's responsible for something, you stop looking for other answers, in much the same way that a homicide cop who thinks he's found his perp stops looking for other suspects and—worse—begins forcing all subsequent evidence to conform to his newfound theory of the crime. That is a serious mistake in criminal justice: Many men erroneously on Texas' death row would tell you as much. And it's a serious mistake in the rest of life as well.

I think my gut check is affecting my game face.

In recent days comes still more evidence of how selective and silly we are in using the so-called Truths of Sportsthink to explain whatever happens on a ballfield, court, gridiron, etc.

It started last week, after St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock was killed in a car accident. The Cards canceled their game that night, then played the next day, April 30, as scheduled. Now, ever since Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne's immortal "win one for the Gipper!" speech*, we've been conditioned to think that when teams go out after a tragedy and win the next game, they're doing it "in tribute" to the person at the heart of the tragedy. So, had the Cards won the game, I'm sure we would've seen stories about how their fallen comrade's spirit "lived on inside them, driving them to victory." Except, the Cards didn't "win one for the Josher." They got their butts handed to them by the Milwaukee Brewers. Needless to say, there was a ready-made Sportsthink story line for that, too: They were "too distracted" to play, and just "couldn't stay focused on the game." (Question: How come opposing pitcher Jeff Suppan, who played for the Cards last year and was friendly with Hancock, wasn't "too distracted" to beat his former team?) In fact, the Cards haven't won a game since, and media reports keep talking about how "flat" the team is on the heels of Hancock's death. I'm sure beyond a doubt that when St. Louis finally wins again, the revised theme will be that they're "coming to terms" with the tragedy and are now "energized" to "find inspiration in this terrible loss." Until their next losing streak.

On the other hand we have the New York Yankees. The Yanks went out last night and, according to the popular story line this morning, "responded" to owner George Steinbrenner's latest public tirade about the team's "unacceptable" play, pounding the Texas Rangers 10-1. (I guess that means they'll never lose again. Or maybe Rangers owner Tom Hicks needs to throw a tantrum of his own to balance the scales.) Last Friday, the rumor was that if the Yanks got swept by the Red Sox in this past weekend's three-game series at the Stadium, manager Joe Torre would be fired on Monday. After the Yanks pulled out one of three, a commentator actually opined that the team "knew they had to step up in order to save their manager." Huh? If they had the power to pretty much win at will, why didn't they sweep the series? Or was this commentator actually implying that the Yankees' response to the rumor was to play just well enough, by design, to save Torre's job? Besides, the team already knows full well how tyrannical and publicly belligerent Steinbrenner can be. Why would they need to see and hear the latest installment of "As George Burns" in order to feel motivated?

As I said in SHAM, nobody just wins and loses anymore....

The whole thing is asinine—arguably the most asisine element in the entire SHAMscape. Especially when we broaden the focus and try to apply Sportsthink to life as a whole.

* Not surprisingly, there is some controversy about whether this original event even occurred as depicted. Notre Dame itself admits as much.

In laughter, there is truth.

Great line from Jay Leno last night, on Amtrak's celebration of the snakebit commuter-rail line's 36th anniversary: "They wheeled out a giant cake, and rolled it down an embankment...."