I sit here, smugly typing, as Number One Son sits in the living room, trying to forget that (at his own urging) we've just watched one of the scariest movies ever made: Alien. He's been quivering since well before John Hurt got his very close examination of the title critter, so I think he'd agree that the movie, made in 1979, still has potency.

Nonetheless, he felt compelled to express disbelief that such a good film could be made in the Seventies, even after I told him that most film critics regard it as the best decade American film ever had. I think it's because the decade of the Seventies has undeservedly become a joke, and that joke was told largely by Baby Boomers who wanted the decade of their adolescence to loom larger in the popular culture.

I'm 40, born in 1963, which makes me a Boomer to some misguided demographers, but I've never considered myself that way. Moreover, having had a chance to view a good chunk of the Sixties and all of the Seventies, I'm here to provide the latter decade with a little impromptu but long-overdue support.

40 Reasons Why the Seventies Were Better than the Sixties

1) Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Funniest movie ever made.
2) Who's Next and Quadrophenia, both better Who albums than Tommy.
3) Saturday night on CBS: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show. I defy anyone to find a better night of television in any decade.
4) Star Wars--waaaaaaaay better than Lost in Space.
5) First publication of The Silmarillion
6) Hank Aaron hits #715.
7) The Ramones. Nuff said.
8) Elvis Costello records My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces. Far better than anything Elvis Presley did in the Sixties.
9) Phil Ford shows the world how the point guard position is meant to be played.
10) Nixon gets the boot. And there was much rejoicing.
11) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next takes five Oscars.
12) Dave Sim begins publication of Cerebus the Aardvark.
13) Saturday Night Live debuts and is actually funny for a few years.
14) The heyday of National Lampoon, featuring brilliant pieces by P.J. O'Rourke, Henry Beard, Doug Kenney, Matty Simmons, Shary Flenniken, B.K. Taylor, and more.
15) Talking Heads record '77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, and Fear of Music.
16) Ms. Magazine debuts.
17) The Miami Dolphins go a perfect 17-0 for the only undefeated season in NFL history.
18) The 26th Amendment lowers the voting age to 18.
19) Television releases Marquee Moon and rewrites the rules of guitar rock.
20) Tiny Chaminade upsets the University of Virginia and its Goliath, center Ralph Sampson
21) Ursula K. LeGuin publishes Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, my favorite of her many wonderful books.
22) No U.S. Presidents are shot, though one is shot at.
23) Doonesbury wins a Pulitzer Prize.
24) Bob Dylan releases Blood on the Tracks--arguably better than anything he did in the Sixties, certainly as good.
25) John Varley publishes Titan, the first book in his Gaean Trilogy.
26) John Huston directs The Man Who Would Be King, possibly his finest film.
27) Monday Night Football debuts.
28) Big Star, the best Seventies band no one knows about, releases both #1 Record and Radio City.
29) Raquel Welch is at her most babelicious.
30) Coppola releases The Godfather Parts I & II.
31) Warren Zevon records Excitable Boy.
32) Roger Zelazny publishes The Chronicles of Amber.
33) Jaws scares people out of the water.
34) Barry Sadler does not top the charts with "The Ballad of the Green Berets" in this decade.
35) Bird (and Indiana State) vs. Magic (and Michigan State) for the NCAA title
36) Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne remake the X-Men.
37) Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers buckles the finest swash ever.
38) For every prog-rock excess (Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Works, Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans), there's a corresponding prog-rock gem: Genesis's Selling England by the Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Yes's Fragile, Jethro Tull's Aqualung, Pink Floyd's Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals, you name it.
39) XTC, the Soft Boys, the Cars, the Modern Lovers, and Joe Jackson release their debut recordings.
40) On March 2, 1974, with only 17 seconds remaining, the UNC Tar Heels engineer the greatest comeback in college basketball history by scoring eight points to force overtime and eventually defeat Duke.
7:32 PM

.................................

Disappointment is the word of the day, I'm afraid.

I'm disappointed because it's Tuesday, and there's no Tuesday Morning Quarterback column at ESPN.com. And therein lies a tale.

TMQ was a funny, literate column for people who enjoy pro football. Its author, Gregg Easterbrook, is also an editor at The New Republic, so he was qualified to talk about more than just football, but he took to the subjects of the gridiron with an informed and irreverent glee. He criticized coaches for calling stupid pass plays in the red zone, or for blitzing in inappropriate situations, but if a coach made a gutsy call--Dom Capers' sending David Carr on a quarterback sneak to win the game as the clock ran down, for example--Easterbrook would praise him and announce that the Football Gods would look favorably on such an individual.

If the NFL did something illogical or absurd, Easterbrook would jump on it like a lion on a wounded gnu and roar across the veldt. Thus, the two New York franchises, the Giants and the Jets, neither of which plays in New York, became "Jersey/A" and "Jersey/B," while the Seahawks ("Blue Men Group"), Bengals ("Fudgsicles"), and Titans ("Flaming Thumbtacks") were mocked for their uniforms and/or logos. The Washington Redskins were subject to special mockery because they a) are not located in Washington, and b) use an ethnic slur for a nickname; TMQ took obvious delight in referring to them as the "Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons," and announced that he would not use the team's name unless they changed their mascot from an Indian to a redskin potato.

It's thus more than a little ironic that TMQ has vanished from ESPN.com because of an ethnic slur. Well, "slur" may not be precisely the word, but certainly because of an offensive stereotype. In his online blog, an unedited spur-of-the-moment journal much like the one you're reading now, Easterbrook took to task the makers of the new film Kill Bill. Offended by the film's bloody and incessant violence (I haven't seen it, so I'm taking the reviewers' word for this), he criticized not only director Quentin Tarantino, but the CEOs of Miramax studios and Disney, Miramax's parent company. To Easterbrook's way of thinking, putting such material in front of the public was irresponsible and wrong, and he concluded that the only reasons Miramax and Disney would do so would be to make money.

I personally don't doubt that money is a motivator for everyone in Hollywood, but that fact alone doesn't make me want to publicly dress down executives. Easterbrook, however, feels rather more strongly about the matter, and his fury led him to do something which I can only describe as stupid: he noted that both Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, and Miramax's chief, Harvey Weinstein, are Jewish; he criticized them for being greedy; and he noted that of all people, Jews should dislike entertainment that suggests violence as a solution to one's problems.

Well.

If you want to critize someone for being greedy, by all means jump in. I've done it myself from time to time. What I don't understand is why Easterbrook felt that Eisner and Weinstein's faith was relevant to the discussion of their greed. Surely any sensible writer would recognize that using "greedy" and "Jewish" in the same sentence calls up an old and reprehensible stereotype, right? (Wouldn't a writer hesitate before linking "lazy" with "black," "murderous" with "Italian," or "drunken" with "Irish"?) Unfortunately, by bringing up the two executives' religion in a discussion about movie violence, Easterbrook looked as if he were trying to connect Judaism with greediness, and that is, I'm sorry, stupid. Illogical. No better than the ownership of the P.D.B.I.P.s. It's disappointing, to say the least, to see such foolishness from a writer whose work you respect.

The good news is that Easterbrook recognized this; almost immediately after his blog hit the web, he issued an apology (you can read it by clicking here) in which he took reponsibility for writing something so stupid. He didn't back off the criticism of Kill Bill, but he did apologize for bringing up a thousand-year-old stereotype, even if it was unintentional. His apology was written with the skill and good sense I'd gotten used to seeing in his work, and I have no reason to doubt its sincerity. I don't think he meant to slur Jews in general--just the two men who green-lighted Kill Bill, both of whom happen to be Jewish. But he didn't need to bring this last fact up.

The bad news is that ESPN, which is owned by Disney, apparently did not take kindly to the criticism of its CEO and/or his faith. By Saturday evening, every TMQ column in ESPN.com's archives was gone, replaced by an error message, and Easterbrook's name and face were gone from the site's masthead.

And that leads me to my second disappointment. If ESPN feels Easterbrook's comments were offensive, they certainly have the right to fire him; heck, if they simply think he has no business criticizing the boss, they have the right to fire him. What disappoints me is that they have made no public statement. Today, the following brief note appeared on the site's Page 2: "To our readers: Tuesday Morning Quarterback will no longer be available on ESPN.com." That strikes me as too little information, too late in coming.

When Rush Limbaugh made a fool of himself on ESPN's pre-game show, the network spent a good deal of airtime making sure the public knew what had happened and why. But with Easterbrook, whose comments hadn't even been made on ESPN, the network not only didn't explain its actions, but seemed to be trying to erase any evidence that Easterbrook had ever existed. I'm sure I'm not the only reader to feel as if ESPN is giving TMQ the Trotsky treatment, removing him from the official photographic record in order to better fit current political dogma.

It's one thing to fire a man. It's something very different to pretend you never hired him.

So now I'm left disappointed on all fronts. I'm disappointed in Easterbrook, but I can accept his apology. He at least showed courtesy to his readers by making a public statement about his actions. Problem is, I'm disappointed in ESPN, too, and I'm likely to stay that way. After all, how can I accept an apology that hasn't been made?


11:48 AM

.................................