Day: January 12, 2004

Not just a liar, but an idiot

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

According to a commentary in the Washington Post by John Dowd, baseball’s lead investigator in the Pete Rose matter back in the ’80s, this is the deal that was offered to the schmuck-king once the extent of his gambling on the game was clear:

Pete would have to reconfigure his life. He would have to stop betting. He would have to make a candid response to all of the hard evidence. He would have to explain his association with all of the characters in the betting operation. He would have to submit to, and complete, a full rehabilitation. During his rehabilitation, he would be removed from the game of baseball.

I had been advised by federal authorities that if Rose agreed to these terms, he would not be prosecuted for tax evasion but would have to pay all taxes, interest and penalties due. Upon successful completion of his rehabilitation, he would have been readmitted to the game of baseball and could receive all honors which come with achievement and good conduct. He would have been eligible, if chosen, for admission to the Hall of Fame.

If this is true — and there’s not much reason to doubt Dowd on this — then it immediately puts the lie to one of Rose’s favorite rhetorical gambits, as evidenced in his latest scam book:

If I had been an alcoholic or a drug addict, baseball would have suspended me for six weeks and paid for my rehabilitation.

I should have had the opportunity to get help, but baseball had no fancy rehab for gamblers like they do for drug addicts. If I had admitted my guilt, it would have been the same as putting my head on the chopping block — lifetime ban. Death penalty. I spent my entire life on the baseball fields of America, and I was not going to give up my profession without first seeing some hard evidence. … Right or wrong, the punishment didn’t fit the crime — so I denied the crime.

In fact, Rose was given the opportunity to fess up and rehabilitate. No, it wouldn’t have been a six-week suspension, but it would have been an opportunity for him to acknowledge the harm he’d done, change his ways, and work to re-earn the respect of baseball and its fans. Instead, he chose to lie, go to prison for tax evasion, and hit the talk-show and card-show circuits in a desperate attempt to scratch out a living.

Even now he won’t stop gambling! On the one hand, he wants to claim the gambling-is-a-disease mantle to afford him special treatment, and then when “rehabilitation” is offered he refuses it.

Rose’s case is almost enough to make me believe in this “addiction is a disease” nonsense, since only a seriously damaged mind would cogitate as poorly as he has throughout this whole mess. I still think Rose, like Joe Jackson, deserves a shot on the Hall of Fame ballot, but he shouldn’t be allowed within a Sammy Sosa homerun ball’s distance of a job in professional baseball.

Yes, Rose really deserves to be on the ballot, because the all-time hits leader won’t come close to getting elected, and the ignominy of that feat — being such a schmuck that it outweighs the advantage of holding one of the greatest records in sports — is well-deserved indeed.

Has The Rocket launched?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

The Houston Chronicle says so, a one-year deal for $5 million. This is bad for the Cubs any way you slice it?

But might they respond by signing a one-year deal with another sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Fame pitcher — Greg Maddux? It just may be that the never-retired Maddux will wind up getting less money than the supposedly retired Clemens did.

I’d still prefer to land Pudge Rodriguez, but a low-cost, one-year deal for Maddux shoot a little air of the Astros’ balloon.

Homeowners can set own bedtimes

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

The above would probably not run as a headline in your local paper, yet the Chicago Tribune’s Metro section carried a story with a headline just as ridiculous: “Private schools can write own rules.”

“Many operate without scrutiny,” says the subhead to this story by Tracy Dell’Angela and Diane Rado, written in response to the closing of a small Chicago private school for fire code violations. The Loop Lab School obviously faced some scrutiny since it was shut down for not keeping up with code, a likely result of political pressure on the Chicago Fire Department after the E2 nightclub disaster.

But while the story begins with the pretense that parents have little reason to be assured of the physical safety of students in private schools, it quickly morphs into a diatribe against the lack of government regulation of private schools generally, including curricula.

To wit:

There is no state law that requires their teachers to be trained, college-educated or screened for criminal convictions. Private schools don’t have to have an established curriculum — or any curriculum at all. And while all schools must by law keep updated health and vaccination records on every student, government officials rarely try to verify this unless there is a complaint.

The only government inspections that are required at private schools have nothing to do with education — but rather cover fire and building safety codes.

The school, located on North Michigan Avenue, is derided in the story as merely a family-run business with 200 students enrolled and a $100 a week tuition, even though the only parent quoted in the story told the reporters, “I was pleased with what I saw, the way they handled the children.”

Non-parochial schools like my alma mater do seek accreditation from the Independent Schools Association of the Central States, as noted in the story, but about 800 parochial schools seek recognition from the Illinois Board of Education because, the reporters insist, it is a “selling point for private schools, because it suggests to parents that it has undergone the same scrutiny as a public school.”

Ah, yes. I’m sure that most parents in the market for a private school — already desperately seeking to pay twice (once in private tuition, once in taxes) just to get a decent education — want to be assured right off the bat that their child’s new school will be just as great as the government schools they are deserting.

But the process is flawed because it’s “voluntary and the state has no authority to impose public-school standards,” the reporters argue. Gee, if parents really wanted the great standards they’d come to expect from government-run schools, why would they essentially pay a double tuition to send their children to private schools?

“I really had no clue how they are run or what questions I needed to ask,” the Loop Lab parent said. “Even though I know private schools are different than public schools, I didn’t know they had that much leeway. … I just assumed there’s someone they have to answer to.”

Yes, there is someone they have to answer to — you! The government’s virtual monopoly over education in this country has gotten so bad that even some parents who take the initiative to opt out of the failing system don’t have the vaguest understanding of what it means for them to take an active role in choosing a school, and ensuring that it is responsive to their questions, concerns and recommendations.

That stunning development is what needs investigating, not how relatively little control politicians exert over private schools.

Come on, baby, light my Firebird

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

I downloaded Mozilla’s Firebird a while back and after some hemming and hawing decided to make it my default Web browser. Their development team has worked up a reasonable approximination of the Google toolbar, but still have plenty of bugs in their Yahoo! Companion imitation.

Tabbed browsing overcomes a lot, however, and Windows XP seems to cooperate pretty well with changing the default browser, which was surprising to me. Anyhow, I wanted to show Karen the tabbed browsing feature and she said, “Oh, Kevin!”

A smile crept across her face, her voice softened, her heart melted, her body writhed with desire.

“You know about Firebird? I’m so impressed!”

Yeah, I married the right girl.

UPDATE: Karen points out that her exact words were, “That is SO sexy!” Thanks for refreshing my recollection, babe.