I had two columns this week for subscribers to the Athletic – one on the Puerto Rican Winter League, and how MLB needs to support the league more; and one on the Starling Marte, Mark Canha, and Steven Matz signings.
My guest this week on the Keith Law Show was Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. You can subscribe and listen on iTunes and Spotify.
I appeared on the Five Games for Doomsday podcast, talking mostly about boardgames – my favorites, my interest in them, writing about games and about baseball, and more.
I’ll send out a new edition of my free email newsletter Monday or Tuesday this week. And, as the holidays approach, I’ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, The Inside Game and Smart Baseball, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.
And now, the links…
- Longreads first: An investigation by local TV channel 11-WXIA in Atlanta revealed corruption and sexual harassment among Johns Creek police officers, leading to the termination of three of the department’s officers – although others involved haven’t been sanctioned and remain on the force.
- This seems especially vile, preying on truly vulnerable people: scammers are using fake job ads to defraud would-be applicants.
- Over 200 American academics, researchers in history and political science in related fields, signed an open letter in support of the Freedom to Vote Act.
- Two conservative commentators quit lucrative roles at Fox News in protest of Tucker Carlson’s program that pushed false narratives and outright misinformation about the January 6th insurrection. One of them, Jonah Goldberg, explained his decision in an editorial for the L.A. Times.
- The QAnon JFK Cult in Dallas is tearing families apart. Did you know “Q” hasn’t posted in a year? Yet the hoax’s adherents still can’t let it go. The cognitive dissonance is strong with them.
- The Kenosha protests were not violent or deadly until Kyle Rittenhouse showed up. Media coverage of his acquittal is revising history.
- One of the co-creators of the game Oregon Trail says he never made any money off the game, but that was never his goal anyway.
- The USFL is coming back! I’ll believe it when we get the first kickoff, but I’ll wash my Tampa Bay Bandits jersey just in case.
- An epidemiologist wrote a lengthy overview of what the omicron variant of COVID-19 might mean. Dr. Peter Hotez says it’s a concern, but “the sky isn’t falling.” Our bodies aren’t helpless against new variants, though. The emergence of new variants is an inevitable outcome of rich countries hoarding vaccines (or destroying them).
- COVID denialists like to say that Japan used ivermectin to stop the virus’s spread there. They are wrong.
- It’s better than nothing, I guess: A St. Louis cop who assaulted an undercover colleague posing as a protestor was sentenced to a year in jail.
- The superintendent of Alachua County Public Schools in Florida wrote an op ed in the Washington Post saying that the state’s new ban on any future mask mandates or quarantines robs schools of critical tools to fight the virus and keep kids in school. DeSantis’s pandering is going to kill people.
- South Carolina Republicans are trying to cancel tenure, replacing it with five-year contracts and requiring at least a 2/2 course load, which will go a long way towards killing research at universities there.
- Civil Liberties International added the United States to its list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time.
- A Tory MP in the UK claims that having a woman play the main character in Doctor Who is hurting boys by removing a role model for them, and contributing to young boys turning to crime, never mind that the Doctor is a genderless alien who takes human form. He obviously doesn’t even watch the show, since the main character is not named “Doctor Who.”
- Jared Leto is unrecognizable in House of Gucci under prosthetics and a bald cap, part of a growing trend toward physical verisimilitude on screen. Is that a good thing for actors or viewers?
- A new paper published in Nature describes superionic ice, a newly-discovered phase of water that might resemble what’s found deep inside outer planets like Neptune.
- A “good guy with a gun” took down a mass shooter, and then was shot and killed by a cop who mistook him for the bad guy. That cop will not face charges.
- There will also be no charges for the man who “accidentally discharged” his gun and killed a 10-year-old boy the other day.
- Ark Nova, an upcoming heavy game from Capstone, is available for pre-order. The description and images make me think it’s at least inspired by Wingspan but more complex.
I actually do own a Chicago Blitz (yes, I’m puttin’ on the Blitz) t-shirt I found on Amazon earlier this year. I just think a spring football league is a very difficult needle to thread correctly. I think you’d need some sort of agreement with the NFL to use practice squad players. Maybe instead of playing in the host cities, like they say they’ll do starting in 2023, they should just play every game in one place. It would cut down on travel expenses. Just have the league as a developmental/content for gambling league. They could even keep all the old USFL team names. Otherwise, you’ll need enough teams in large markets to satisfy tv executives, and enough teams in cities without a NFL franchise that attendance isn’t so small it becomes the story. Still, nine year old me is getting nostalgic for the Memphis Showboats and Washington Federals again.
And now my reply to Drew is in the wrong place, and I can’t even see a way to DELETE the comment and re-post it in the right place. WTF. Was this website intentionally designed to irritate people with every possible inconvenience?
The article about rittenhouse and the media coverage does not state that there was no violence before rittenhouse showed up.
Drew,
“It is most certainly true that the violence caused Rittenhouse to go Kenosha. That’s the ONLY reason he went there! If not for the violence, why else would he have gone?”
I don’t know whether there was violence before Rittenhouse got there or not. I wasn’t there. I’m trying to gain more information, but it’s no easy task, since all I see are opinions and not actual sources.
I explained my issue with the article linked to in Keith’s blog – the author of that article says there was no violence before Rittenhouse showed up, but doesn’t offer any sources, and I have no idea why anyone would be able to determine from that article whether the author is correct or incorrect.
Your assertion has the same problem. You claim there “must” have been violence, because there’s no other reason for Rittenhouse to have gone.
Surely you (or anyone) can see the fallacy in this????
For starters, none of us should presume to be inside the head of a 17-year-old or be able to determine his thought process. Only one person truly knows why Rittenhouse went there, and you’re not that person.
Among the possible reasons:
1) Because he thought there MIGHT be violence.
2) Because he wanted to be seen in public with his firearm, thinking it makes him look cool.
3) Because he wanted to have a “cool” story to tell about the time he participated in the situation in some capacity.
Getting even more speculative, since I have nothing to base this one, but you asked “why else would he have gone”, so here we go:
4) Maybe he disagreed with the philosophy of the protest, and went there to do….. any number of things?
5) Maybe he was hoping someone would confront him, thus giving him a chance to fire his weapon in self-defense? After all, aren’t all tools and instruments more fun if you actually use them?
6) Maybe he wanted experience toting his AR-15, getting a feel for the weight, the grip, etc, in an actual field situation?
Or probably dozens of other possibilities.
It’s astoundingly presumptuous that you claim to know the one and only possible reason he would have gone there.
Frank-just because you weren’t there, you don’t know if there was violence? To quote John McEnroe: YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!
Google “Kenosha riots” and you will find any number of factual, reputable print and television sources that show what happened.
I live in Milwaukee, and everyone here wanted it to be over as soon as it started, and was very nervous that the bad actors would make their way 45 minutes north to be on a bigger stage. The violence was very real.
I agree with you that Rittenhouse’s exact specific mindset, motives, and endgame can only be known to him. But there was no other reason for him to be roaming around with a gun that night. Your list of potential motives supports that argument – all of them are predicated on the fact that he knew there was violence there. While the specifics are known only to him, the general premise was the unrest.
It’s similar to someone at a baseball game – if not for the game, they are most definitely not at the ballpark.
Everyone may have a different specific motive to go – to score the game, general entertainment, a favorite player, to be with a friend, etc. However, the ballgame is the one and only reason they were at the park, just as the unrest was the one and only reason Rittenhouse was in Kenosha.
Look, the entire situation is sad and horrific. As I said before, everyone should have been at home, there is no “good guy” in this. Rittenhouse inserted himself into a violent situation, and made it worse. But Keith stated that the Kenosha protests were not violent, which is a falsehood. I asked why else Rittenhouse would go, and you listed six reasons, all of them supporting the idea that he went because of the violence.
To pretend the basic facts of a discussion are not true is just not ok, and it tears at the fabric of society. It’s exactly what Trump and his acolytes did (and are doing) with election fraud, and it’s what’s happening here.
Drew,
I was indeed being serious. I don’t know which sources of online information are legit and which ones aren’t. Especially when there seems to be some disagreement already as to whether there was violence occurring before Rittenhouse went there. Some online sources apparently say there was, other sources say there wasn’t. This doesn’t help me.
I’m glad, however, that you are mentioning the larger point, which is that regardless of WHY Rittenhouse went there, he made some poor choices (regardless of whether he had a valid self-defense claim at the moment he fired his rifle).
As to your other point – I don’t see your baseball park analogy as valid. People go to a baseball stadium because there is a baseball game. People go to a protest because there is a protest. How can you say that the only reason Rittenhouse went to the protest was “because obviously there was violence!” ?
Weren’t there dozens of people there (hundreds, maybe?) simply because there was a protest? And isn’t it possible Rittenhouse was one of them? I don’t understand why you think you’ve proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that violence was occurring before Rittenhouse got there. His mere presence doesn’t prove or disprove whether there was violence occurring before he arrived, yet you think it does. I don’t see your basis for this conclusion.
What reputable source shows there wasn’t violence before the third night of unrest?
And to answer your questions, there were people protesting all day. At night, legitimate protesters went home, leaving the streets full of lawlessness.
Keith, there definitely was violence at the Kenosha protests before Rittenhouse was there (the National Guard had already been called in). That was the excuse he had to go there with an assault rifle to play superhero and save the town.
I thought what your link was trying to say was that the news articles were implying he was caught up in some greater violence as part of the protest and not that he caused his own situation. Whatever violence there might have been with the protests was not what caused him to shoot people so the articles conflating the two are misrepresenting what happened.
Not sure if you saw this, but it reminded me of this NYTimes article about police putting themselves in danger so they have to use “justified” force: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/30/video/police-traffic-stops-danger-video.html.
I thought the Kenosha article was very disappointing. I clicked the link hoping to learn more about something I don’t know much about, but that article is almost completely empty. The author states his opinions, presents those opinions as facts, and offers no sources to contradict the news articles he’s criticizing. I’m not saying the author is wrong – I have no idea whether he’s 100% right, 100% wrong, or anything in between, and that’s my point. The article in no way clarifies things one way or the other.
Based on what little I know, if I had to guess what Rittenhouse’s motivation was, I’d say he was, as Ulysses373 suggested, looking to play superhero, or play some real-life Call of Duty, or something like that. I find it improbable that he went to all that trouble just to protect some places of businesses that he had no affiliation with. Also, it seems likely to me that Rittenhouse’s inexperience in tactical situations made the situation more dangerous, not less. If he was there to help keep the peace, he obviously went about it wrong.
I also don’t understand why the officers on scene didn’t ask Rittenhouse what his intentions were, or whether he actually had any training relevant to the situation. If they had, and Rittenhouse had stated he was there to help keep the peace, then perhaps he (Rittenhouse) could have been given some useful tips in how to actually do that.
One final point about the article – it doesn’t help the situation to refer to the firearm as a “military-style” rifle. What does that even mean? The rifle Rittenhouse used is a semi-automatic 22 caliber rifle. My understanding is that a military-style firearm would be fully automatic, and that people do not use semiautomatic .22s in military situations. Also, my understanding is that the AR-15 is a solid choice for home defense – offering several advantages over a shotgun, for example.
why do I not see a way to edit posts here?
My 3rd paragraph has a typo – it should read, “…and Rittenhouse HAD stated …” (Meaning, that was part of the original hypothetical in the sentence.)
I got you. (And I don’t think WP offers a way to edit comments – if it does, I’m happy to enable it.)
Yes, that is why I included the link – the media coverage after the verdict has implied, at the least, that any violence in Kenosha somehow provoked or caused him to go there. That’s just not true, and it seeks to justify his actions.
It is most certainly true that the violence caused Rittenhouse to go Kenosha. That’s the ONLY reason he went there!
If not for the violence, why else would he have gone?
I am not defending him or his actions – everyone involved should have been at home. There were no good actors involved here. However, to say that violence didn’t provoke Rittenhouse to go to Kenosha…well, it’s not as bad as saying JFK Jr. is coming back, but it’s just as wrong.
(And wow, that JFK Jr. article – I knew those people were crazy, but yikes.)
Keiths got that CogDiss
Says the guy whose last comment was a garbage story pushing the “lab leak” hypothesis that is still unsupported by any evidence.
A quiz:
1. Silence is violence
2. Words are violence
3. Property and business damage is not violence
4. Violence in the name of a movement is justified
5. It doesn’t matter