24 November 2003

Head on a Swivel

It may be the last morning to get calibrated before the Holiday. I could tell by the news from Europe. The BBC was mostly concerned with the special relationship with France that has suffered so badly over Britain's relationship across the Atlantic. The politics of the EU are the focus, but of course, the Continent is not consumed with preparing for the celebration of our survival in a wild and hostile wilderness.

The local news this morning is saying that traffic is light, as though the commuters had "flown the coop," left town and got an early start on the Holiday. I have plans, too, and will be scrambling the World's Fastest and Least Maintained Pickup Truck on the roads north and west tomorrow.

This is a chilly steel-gray Monday with a football hang-over. The Skins did not play until late yesterday, kick-off at 8:30pm in Miami. I had to work, preparing for a Monday morning meeting.

I didn't want to do it, but they say my company's name means "Sunday's Are Included," and so it was Hi-ho, Hi-ho.

After all the excitement of the college games on Saturday, I was prepared to be optimistic for the night game. t was an ugly beginning to the game, and Redskin QB Patrick Ramsey got mugged in the first quarter. Badly beaten, he was, like a street crime. It looked lke the offensive line just gave it up to the Doplins, let the big defensive tackles blow right by and cuff him savagely to the ground. God bless him, he went down still trying to throw the ball, but in so doing his head was slapped to the ground. I suspected concussion as he was slow getting up. He should have kept his head on a swivel, alert to the thundering linemen. He should have protected himself.

It would have been easy to slip into despair, but one of those magical moments in sports seemed to be happening. A young kid named Tim Hasselbeck came in behind Ramsey, the only other QB on the sidelines. He has been with the team exactly a month. He is one of those players who has bounced around the league for a couple years, played in Europe, never quite right for whatever offense was being run, and let go. Perhaps embarrassed by what they had permitted to happen to their starter, the offensive line shored itself up and gave Hasselbeck some protection. He had only thrown three passes in the National Football League, and he came on the field and promptly orchestrated scoring drives in his first three series over center. It looked like a fairy tale was going to happen.

I got to halftime, watching the highlights and began to yawn. Why the league does this to us I don't know. I gave it up and hoped that things would work out. After a deep REM interlude I began a series of dreams, business dreams, which were are quite new. I have never had to worry about profit magins before. Eventually the red numerals on the clock showed 4:45 and the alarm kicked in. I hit it brusquely and laid there for a moment before getting on with the Monday program.

I logged on the computer to see what events of significance had occurred while I slept. The first Port Authority Trans-Hudson train arrived at the station where the World Trade Center had been. They used the last train out on 9-11 to commemorate the first arrival. Governor Pataki had the flu and didn't make it, but the Governor of New Jersey and the city-state Mayor Bloomburg were there to honor the occasion. I grunted. They are still calling it the World Trade Center Station and they left some of the travertine flooring between the tracks and PATH Hill, the escalator banks that goes 70 feet to the surface. The final rankings are out and Michigan moved up a notch to number 4 in the national rankings. There is a huge controversy on which bowl game will get what team, but we are going somewhere good and our season is done except for the game on New Year's Day.

I had to hunt a little, since the game ended so late, but the Skins fell apart in the fourth quarter and lost b y a point 24-23. The Dolphins apparently got Hasselbeck's number and the fairy tale died, as they usually do. They wouldn't be fairy tales if they happened all the time.

By the quotes, it seemed like Coach Spurrier was pretty philosophic about it, there being not much alternative to being on the kids as he is. It is hard to go from a popular regional college football coach to being the most despised coach, in the employ of the most despised owner in the league. Poor Dan Schneider. You spend a billion for a football team and you wind up being called a demented dwarf. It is a hard world.

Harder some places than others. I saw that the news had it wrong yesterday. The reporting is much more detailed on the murder of two 101st Airborne troopers Saturday in Mousl, up in Northern Iraq. The original reports claimed the two had their throats slit, a grisly bit of news. Then the U.S. military made a statement to the effect that they were actually just shot, as though that were better.

This morning's version appears to be something closer to the truth, and is part of an orchestrated campaign, calculated and quite stark. What they say this morning is that the two soldiers were shot as they drove through the city center and the HumVee crashed into a wall. The soldiers were then dragged from their wrecked vehicle and pummeled with concrete blocks. There is no reliable testimony as to whether they were alive or dead at that point. But witnesses, who failed to do anything about it, described a frenzy similar to that in Mogadishu. The radio here is adding the naked-dragged-through-the-street thing, as well, and the mutilation word is being used. The vehicle was looted and the kids hung around for an hour before U.S. troops secured the area.

We'll see if some video shows up on the Al Jazeera network out of Qatar later this morning. If this savagery is part of a campaign, the videotape will be a critical element of the operation. It is perfectly in keeping with the modus operandi of the old Baathists. They loved a colorful flourish for prisoners bound for execution.

In Baghdad, military officials confirmed the Mosul deaths but refused to provide details. Senior officers insisted they were making progress in bringing stability to Iraq, and I imagine they are. Most places in the country nothing whatsoever happened. The U.S.-appointed Governing Council named an ambassador to Washington. It is an Iraqi-American woman who lived here in Washington for thirty years. She spent the last decade lobbying Congress to promote democracy in Iraq. I imagine she is actually a pretty logical choice as a rainmaker for aid. But I shake my head at what sort of message we will get from her.

All I can say to her is what I would have said to Patrick Ramsey last night. Hope that the offensive line takes care of you. But keep your head on a swivel.