Great stuff in the LA Times

I have a backlog of very cool articles that I found in the LA Times over the past couple of weeks. Instead of posting about them individually, I'm going to put them all in one post. Hopefully this works.

First, some nostalgia for the Baseball Encyclopedia, published in 1969. An effort to set the record straight about history and records, it wasn't entirely successful; some things are lost to history. The book itself, however, made a bit of history: it was "the first American trade book to be typeset entirely by computer." This review also resolved, for me, the question of asterisks next to records: no. Moral debates and records should be kept separate for their separate purposes:

It is the job of the scholar, not the record keeper, to provide context to the game's narrative; an unadulterated statistical register is critical to that task.

On the Op-Ed page a couple of days ago, our erstwhile governor, Arnold, wrote about why he opposes a bill imposing restrictions on some California state pension funds. Apparently the bill would prohibit investment in some private equity funds that do business with selected sovereign wealth funds. This sounds like an obscure issue, and it is, but it's also fairly wide-ranging. It could affect hundreds of millions of dollars and relationships with a number of foreign countries. I haven't heard from the other side, but judging from this essay, I agree with Arnold. Sounds like a good idea going too far.

George Skelton, who covers Sacramento and therefore is in a position to be continuously disillusioned, yet continuously entertained, has a wish list for spring cleaning in the California legislature. It's not people that he wants to get rid of, although I'm sure he could think of a few, but structural and legal impediments to getting things done. The absurd two-thirds majority required for passing money bills, term limits, gerrymandering, closed primaries, initiatives. Get rid of them, or dramatically change them. Ain't none of it gonna happen for a while, but what's politics without impossible dreams?

Gregory Rodriguez, one of the only pundits I would describe as a radically centrist Democrat, spoke at a college in Mexico. The title of his column says a lot: "A 670-mile-long shrine to American insecurity." Attempting the very difficult task of bridging the cultural barriers, he tried to answer this question from a student:

"How," he said politely in Spanish, "could such a rich and powerful country be so self-centered as to build a wall on its border to keep people out?"

That's a good question. Rodriguez uses it to dive into the contradictory impulses of America, at once powerful, belligerent, arrogant, and yet insecure. One of the best pieces on immigration I've read in a while.

One of the things that the editors of the LA Times understand is that in this town, coverage of the entertainment industry better be first-rate, or at least better than most of what else is out there. Carina Chocano is an excellent recent addition to the movie reviewing team, and a great replacement for Manohla Dargis, who wrote for the LA Times for about a year before landing at that other Times, on the East Coast. Chocano is one of my favorite reviewers in the country. She had a particularly eloquent appreciation for Charlton Heston and the meaning of his career:

To behold Heston in chains, behind bars or even in a morally compromised situation was to behold the classical ideals of moral clarity, youthful vigor and civilization oppressed by the depraved, the primitive, the corrupt. He stood, he observed, he suffered. Heston's muscular body and hard, determined jaw were made to endure injustice, to absorb and transform it into virtuous action.

She manages to appreciate him for what he was way back then, nostalgic without being maudlin. And I think she got it exactly right.

Finally, from the human interest department, comes a story about a guy who served some serious time in prison, got out and turned his life around, but still struggles every day to stay on the straight and narrow. He developed a specific "convict code," sort of the ultimate tough-guy philosophy. But then it broke down, and he had to relearn how to live a normal life. It's almost like a Russian novel. But without the aristocracy.