Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sergeant James Crowley apparently enjoyed their beer summit with the president so much that they’ve decided to have another round.  Minus the president.

In a setting a tad less formal, with no president or national press on hand, the Harvard professor and the Cambridge cop at the heart of last summer’s White House “beer summit” met for a second round – this time, at a local pub.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley met for drinks Wednesday at River Gods, a popular River Street bar outside Central Square, not far from where their lives first intersected.

Exactly what they discussed is their business.

The news being slow, the press and the blogs are all over it. Jules Crittenden,  Jason Zengerle,  Anahad O’Connor and the Gawker gang all weigh in, with different degrees of insight and snark.  Crittenden’s is the best at the former.

Gates, when he was expounding on a CNN stage in the middle of Times Square last summer, said he not only wanted an apology, he wanted Crowley to submit to a lecture about the history of racism in this country. Gates has made a decent Ivy League career out of that subject, and even done some useful documentary work about the realities of people’s lives across generations. But imagine what kind of figure he could be in this nation’s tortured history of race relations if he actually played a role, a real person engaged in real events, in getting us past it. If he has learned the lesson of his own experience, maybe he’s the one who can lead us … 45 years after the Civil Rights movement and 145 years after the Civil War … out of this endless cycle of race-baiting, racial assumptions, racial preferences and racial discrimination, in both directions. Maybe the pair of them together … Irish cop and black Harvard prof … can serve as example for all of us of how it is done, how people can be met on their own merits. Judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

I don’t have much to add except to note that the two reportedly frequent the bar, separately.  Which makes their original encounter all the more bizarre.

Mark Liebowitz had a piece for NYT over the weekend titled “Man’s World at White House? No Harm, No Foul, Aides Say.” At first blush, it reads like some feminists are genuinely concerned about a male-dominated culture in the West Wing. After awhile, however, one begins to suspect it’s a PR exercise to make President Obama seem more manly.

President Obama and golf partners, including the White House assistant chef Sam Kass, right, during his vacation in August. Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Does the White House feel like a frat house?

The suspicion flared in recent weeks — and not for the first time — after President Obama was criticized by women’s advocates and liberal bloggers for hosting a high-level basketball game with no female players.

The president, after all, is an unabashed First Guy’s Guy. Since being elected, he has demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of college hoops on ESPN, indulged a craving for weekend golf, expressed a preference for adopting a “big rambunctious dog” over a “girlie dog” and hoisted beer in a peacemaking effort.

He presides over a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities like Rahm Emanuel, the often-profane chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, the brash economic adviser; and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, who habitually speaks in sports metaphors.

The technical foul over the all-male game has become a nagging concern for a White House that has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that Mr. Obama’s closest advisers form a boys’ club and that he is too frequently in the company of only men — not just when playing sports, but also when making big decisions.

Uh huh.

“Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,” said Dee Dee Myers, a former press secretary in the Clinton administration whose sister, Betsy, served as the Obama campaign’s chief operating officer. Ms. Myers said women have high expectations of the president. “Obama has a personal style that appeals to women,” she said. “He is seen as a consensus builder; he is not a towel snapper and does not tell crude jokes.”

Ooh, so he’s not only a Guy’s Guy, but he’s mature and sensitive, too? Oh, my!

Mr. Obama, in an interview with NBC on Wednesday, called the beef over basketball “bunk,” saying that the players were largely picked from a regular Congressional game and that the list of invitees was reviewed by women on his staff. “I don’t think it sends any kind of message or signal whatsoever,” said the president, who often points out that he is surrounded by strong females at home (where he is the only non-canine male). He added, in the interview, that he had hired women into “some of the most important decision-making positions in this White House.”

OK. He loses a couple of Man Points here for 1) blaming the selection of his basketball team on female staffers and 2) having female staffers pick his basketball team.

Mr. Obama is hardly the first commander in chief whose penchant for sports and other guyish stuff (comic books, “Star Trek”) has become part of his presidential persona. The first President George Bush presented himself as a horseshoe-playing, pork-rind-eating Texan. He was followed by the Big Mac-gobbling, cigar-chomping Bill Clinton and the brush-clearing, bike-busting George W. Bush. It worked to good effect, said Mark McKinnon, a media adviser and mountain bike companion of the latter Mr. Bush.

Aside from perhaps the brush-clearing, is there any reason to believe any of this is affect? There’s every reason to believe Bush 41 likes horseshoes and pork rinds and Clinton liked hamburgers and cigars. And all these men were demonstrably avid sportsmen in their day.

As to the merits of the culture clash issue, these passages put it in perspective:

In interviews, five women who work in the White House or advised officials there described the culture with more of a collective eye-roll than any real sense of grievance or discomfort. One junior aide, who like the other women spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about appearing publicly critical, said that the “sports-fan thing at the White House” could become “annoying” and that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating. And while this is not uncommon in any workplace, sports bonding can afford a point of entree with the boss.

[...]

Recreation is only one source of affinity within a White House culture, people there say. Obama veterans describe a camaraderie forged over a grueling campaign and a merciless nine months at the White House. It is not about gender, they say, but shared experience. “Many of us have known each other for a long time, and we have brother-and-sister kind of relationships,” said Jen Psaki, the deputy press secretary, who works in an office with seven other spokesmen under 35, all “brothers” from the campaign.

[...]

Ms. Dunn said that she recently hosted a baby shower for an administration official and that no men from the office were invited. She is comfortable with that — just as she is fine with never playing basketball with the president. “That is just part of the culture here that I am excluded from,” she said. “And I don’t care.”

Quite right. Women are in very powerful roles in this administration, as they have been in the last several administrations. That’s the direction our culture has taken over the last three decades or so. But it doesn’t mean that men and women aren’t going to still tend to have different interests.

Just once, I’d like to see Obama break out of campaign mode and give an honest answer to silly questions like this. He’s a very good basketball player, especially for a middle aged Harvard Law graduate with a busy schedule. Unless he’s going to invite elite level women’s players (i.e., people good enough for the Olympics or the WNBA) they’re not going to be very good competition. For that matter, aside from pre-pubescent children, who ever heard of co-ed basketball teams?

No worries, though, Obama invited Melody Barnes, his chief domestic policy advisor, to play golf with him Sunday.  Which, naturally, was widely reported.

If you haven’t been reading MANzine this week, here’s what you’ve missed:

• Can a Real Man Drive a Minivan? (James Joyner) – Despite what the advertisements may tell you, manhood has little to do with what kind of cigarettes you smoke, what car you drive, or how white your shirts could be.

• Emergency Flank Steak (Stephen Green) – What do you reach for when there’s a dinner emergency? Why, emergency flank steak!

• Best Dessert Ever: Tort & Port (Stephen Green) – An easy way to make a decadent after-dinner treat.

• Cheap Spanish Wine (Steven Taylor) – A look into some inexpensive, but surprisingly good, Spanish wines.

• How a Suit Should Fit (James Joyner) – Esquire’s advice on men’s suits is not taken by their own models. And it’s incomplete.

• Shopping with the Wife (James Joyner) – Sixty-year-old advice is insulting, wrong, and still rings true!

• Hemingway Motivational Posters (James Joyner) – The manliest of authors is posterized.

• Price of Steak and Beer To Rise (Alex Knapp) – It’s about to get more expensive to get manly staples while dining out. So eat at home!

• Jessica Biel Most Dangerous Celebrity (James Joyner) – The lovely actress is carry a nasty bug.

What you’ve missed the past week if you’re not reading Manzine:

Features:

• Mad About Mad Men (James Joyner) – “Mad Men” is the hottest show on TV, having somehow captured the zeitgeist with its meticulous portrayal of early 1960s Manhattan.

• Guide to Homebrewing Beer (Tim F) – Brewing your own beer is pretty easy. Here are answers to questions would-be homebrewers often ask.

• The Chrome Dome (Jon Stonger) – A masculine approach to baldness.

• Great Potatoes For Great Steaks (Matt Mehaffey) – Because you need a side dish worthy of your great steaks. And nothing goes with meat like potatoes.

Shorts:

• World Bartender Championships (James Joyner)

• North Korean Compensation? (Jon Stonger)

• Quote of the Day – Drinking Edition (James Joyner)

• Prostate Cancer: Get Checked (James Joyner)

• The Benefits of Starting a Side Business (Alex Knapp)

While not that big a deal, this would seem to take the “appearance of impropriety” thing a mite far:

Four of the most powerful business leaders in America arrived at the White House one day last month for lunch with President Barack Obama, sitting down in his private dining room just steps from the Oval Office. But even for powerful CEOs, there’s no such thing as a free lunch: White House staffers collected credit card numbers for each executive and carefully billed them for the cost of the meal with the president.

The White House defended the unusual move as a way to avoid conflicts of interest. But the Bush administration didn’t charge presidential guests for meals, one former official said, and at least one etiquette expert found the whole thing unseemly – suggesting it was a serious breach of protocol.

“I’m sure they have their political reasons for doing that, but I think it’s not what quote, hospitality, unquote is all about,” said Letitia Baldrige, who headed Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House staff in the early 1960s. “We’ve got to relax about this. To have people to the White House and worry about the price of things is laughable.” “I don’t know what the menu was, but I’m sure it wasn’t braised pheasant,” she said.

The White House did not say what was served for lunch or how much the attendees were charged. A spokeswoman said White House staff collected the credit card numbers separately from the event.

Around the table with Barack Obama that afternoon were Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox Corporation; Muhtar Kent, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company; AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson; and Honeywell International CEO Dave Cote.

“From time to time, White House guests are asked to reimburse for their meals, the reasons include ensuring there is no conflict or appearance of a conflict,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “That is consistent with our tough ethics rules and we will continue the practice when appropriate.”

The former senior Bush administration official said meals with the president were covered by official entertainment expenses that fall under the Executive Residence budget or the White House’s annual account. But the Bush administration was so sensitive about appearing cozy with corporate America that another former high-ranking official cannot recall a single instance of President Bush lunching with CEOs in the White House.

No word on whether Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley were asked to chip in on their beers.

Photo by Flickr user blakeemrys under Creative Commons license.

Conor Friedersdorf rightfully notes that Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley should be having their beer at a local Cambridge pub rather than at the White House.   Bowing to the inevitable, however, ABC News moves on to the weighty issue of what beer will be served.

Crowley told the president he was more partial to Blue Moon. [...] Blue Moon, however, could be a problematic pick for the Democratic president, because while it is marketed as a small craft beer, it was actually created by Coors and today owned by MillerCoors. The Coors family has been a long-time supporter of the Republican party. Additionally, the AFL-CIO ran a decade-long boycott of the company’s beer in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Gates told The Boston Globe over the weekend that he was partial to Red Stripe and Beck’s. But both of those are foreign beers. The White House only stocks American beers, under a tradition dating to the Johnson administration.

Budweiser isn’t a slam dunk either. Some could argue that the beer is no longer an American beer after being bought out by Belgian-Brazilian beer giant InBev, maker of Hoegaarden, Leffe and Stella Artois.

Truly vexing.  Might I suggest they have refreshing mojitos instead?

Steven Taylor passes along a (somewhat old) scientific report that may spur a health movement:

Researchers at Granada University in Spain have come across a discovery that will undoubtedly please athletes and sports enthusiasts – a pint of beer post-workout or match is better at rehydrating the human body than water.

Professor Manuel Garzon, a member of Granada’s medical faculty, made the finding after tests on 25 students over several months. Researchers believe that it is the sugars, salts, and bubbles in a beer that may help people absorb fluids more quickly.

The subjects in the study were asked to run on a treadmill at temperatures of 104F (40C) until they were close to exhaustion. Once they had reached the point of giving up, researchers measured their hydration levels, motor skills, and concentration ability. Half of the subjects were given two half pints of Spanish lager to drink, and the other half were given just water.

Garzon said that the rehydration effection in those who were given beer was “slightly better” than those who were given only water. He also believes that the carbon dioxide in beer helps quench thirst more quickly, and that beer’s carbohydrates replace calories lost during physical exertion.

In additional to the methodological weaknesses Steven notes, I’m also a bit curious as to the approval process for this experiment.  I can scarcely imagine an American university countenancing an experiment where beer was given to dehydrated college students.

Naysayers might also note that, if one’s motivation for exercising in the first place is weight loss, then replacing calories lost during physical exertion may not be what’s most desired.  And if being non-thirsty is one’s primary objective, one could make a strong argument for skipping straight to the beer, bypassing the exercise altogether.

Photo by Flickr user Chaval Brasil under Creative Commons license.

USA Today reports on a proposal circulating in the Senate Finance Committee to fund health care through sin taxes on booze.

Beer taxes would go up by 48 cents a six-pack, wine taxes would rise by 49 cents per bottle, and the tax on hard liquor would increase by 40 cents per fifth. Proceeds from the new taxes would help cover an estimated 50 million uninsured Americans.

Matt Yglesias finds this proposal “pretty attractive,” even while acknowledging that the direct public health benefits from reduced alcohol consumption would be minimal.   He notes that this would be a “return to the level of taxation that existed a few decades ago” so it “would not be an unprecedented burden on the American consumer.”

That’s probably right, although it strikes me as highly regressive.  A flat rate based on the category of beverage is especially bizarre.  Why should someone buying a bottle of “Two Buck Chuck” pay the same tax as someone buying a $50 bottle of pinot noir?  Matt suggests that we should instead charge based on alcohol content, which would make sense if the aim was mostly to deter excessive drinking.  But, since we’re trying to fund a health care system, it would make more sense to tax based on price.

Matt asserts “universal health care is highly desirable and has to be paid for somehow.”  I agree with the former, if by “universal health care” we mean that all Americans can afford to get treatment when they’re sick or injured, and the latter necessarily follows.   It’s not at all clear, though, why the “somehow” ought to apply to those of us who use a legal, harmless-if-used-responsibly product.

Matt counters that “the incidence would fall overwhelmingly on a relatively small number of problem drinkers (rather than the broad mass of people who drink moderately on social occasions)” but that’s simply not true.  Sure, a “problem drinker” is likely to consume more booze than a “social drinker.”  But the latter vastly overwhelm the former in number and all of us would pay the tax.

[UPDATE:  In a subsequent post, Matt points to Igor Volsky's recitation of junk science haven Center for Science in the Public Interest data showing that moderate drinkers would pay almost no taxes -- and 35 percent would pay nothing at all! -- whilst the top 5% would pay $215 a year.   I have no data to offer in rebuttal but personal observation makes me exceedingly skeptical of the distribution.]

Given that we’re likely going to have some sort of taxpayer-funded health program passed during Obama’s run, why not simply impose a consumption tax, perhaps excluding food and medicine, instead? It would be less regressive and wouldn’t single out a single activity for punitive treatment.

Photo by Flickr user zsenya under Creative Commons license.

Glenn Reynolds links a Popular Mechanics story on “How Barefoot Runners are Shaping the Shoe Industry.”

My initial guess was “Buying fewer shoes?” It’s a wee bit more interesting than that.  Apparently, a Rick Roeber recently ran the Boston Marathon shoeless.

And a number of people—ultramarathoners, biomechanics experts and doctors included—think that’s probably the best way to run. Some go so far as to say running shoes are in fact causing injuries.

While entry into the Boston Marathon is a feat in itself—Roeber needed to have about an 8-minute-mile pace over 26 miles to qualify—attempting the race barefoot is something most runners would find an absurd, even obscene, gesture. Runners are hooked on shoes. For good reason, it would appear: Ranging from 5 mm to 22 mm thick and made mostly of polymer, running shoes are engineered to support feet for mile after mile of rough asphalt and rocky terrain. They protect vulnerable soles from glass and debris, provide padding and, shoe companies claim, help correct problematic twists and turns of our ankles and legs caused by excessive pronation.

>But to barefoot advocates such as Chris McDougall, author of Born to Run (Knopf, hitting bookstores in May), Roeber is one of the few in Monday’s race not drinking the shoe industry’s Kool-Aid. In his book, McDougall follows the Tahumara, a Mexican tribe of ultrarunners who race from 50 to 200 miles straight without shoes, yet remain healthy and injury-free. Science doesn’t support the shoe industry’s claim that “humans are born broken,” McDougall tells PM, and that running shoes exist to fix our stride. Humans have been barefoot for nearly 2 million years, but have had running shoes for only a little more than 40—when Nike-founder Bill Bowerman cobbled together the modern-day running shoe with glues, plastic and a waffle iron in his basement. Shoes cause runners to lose musculature in their feet, McDougall argues, and takes away the natural cushion in their stride.

[...]

The problem modern-day runners face, according to Hugh Herr, Popular Mechanics 2005 Breakthrough Award winner and head of the biomechatronic group at MIT, isn’t presented by our bodies but by the evolution of running surfaces. Humans that ran to scavenge or hunt for their food weren’t pounding concrete. Herr is in a unique position to weigh in on shoe technology. He defended the double-prosthetic sprinter, Oscar Pistorius, in his appeal to the International Association of Athletics Federations board last year against charges that his Cheetah prosthetics provided a mechanical advantage. Herr also invented the iWalk Powerfoot One, the most advanced robotic ankle in existence.

Bare feet just aren’t meant to support running on modern day hard-top surfaces, Herr says. In his research, Herr focused on two problems with both shod and barefoot running-pronation angle and impact force. While barefoot running is best for a natural, stress-free pronation angle, Herr says, it is not ideal for coping with roads and sidewalks that can lead to stress-impact injuries. Shoes, on the other hand, excel at diminishing the force of impact on hard ground. But they do so at the cost of the natural stride-all the padding added to the shoe exaggerates the foot’s rotation. “It’s hard to design a shoe with pronation as small as what exists naturally,” Herr says. “When you’re barefoot, you have the advantage of the heel being very thin [and thus diminishing rotation].”

Methinks the best advice for those wishing to avoid injury from miles of pounding the pavement is to grab a beer and tune in SportsCenter, instead.  Of course, that may lead to other issues.

In separate posts, Tyler Cowen wonders why Heinz ketchup and Miller beer remain so much more popular in their home towns of Pittsburgh and Chicago* than elsewhere in the country and whether it’s a good sign if cops frequent a particular restaurant.

As to the first, he offers two competing alternatives:  “Do area consumers develop the brand habit and pass it down across the generations? Or is the brand from a particular area better suited for people of that area in the first place, perhaps for reasons which are demographic or ethnic in nature and somewhat persistent through time?”   I’d guess the former; people get used to brands and simply associate them with the product.

Since Cowen doesn’t see cops in the restaurants he likes, he figures they’re not a reliable quality indicator.   But that’s a bit unfair.  Presumably, cops eat in places that are 1) relatively inexpensive and 2) where they can get served quickly.  Beat cops tend to make less money and have less schedule flexibility during their working hours than economics professors.

Tying the two stories together, I’m guessing cops don’t drink a lot of premium beer, either.

*Commenters are pointing out that Miller is based in Milwaukee.  Cowen doesn’t assert otherwise, merely that it was introduced in Chicago quite early and remains popular there.  I made it a “hometown” beer out of sentence parallelism rather than accuracy.

UPDATE: Dave Schuler notes that police officers make more than most of us think, pointing out that “a Chicago police officer starts in the middle income quintile and that many, many Chicago police officers are in the fourth or fifth income quintiles.”  In follow-up discussion in his comments section, he adds some national figures:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics . . . the middle 50% earning from $35,600 and $59,880 with a median of $47,190 in local government.

Starting salary for a police officer in Washington, DC: $48, 715
Starting salary for a police officer in Alexandria, VA: $43,167

Then again, if the comparison is Tyler Cowen, I’d note that BLS figures for postsecondary eduction show that “The middle 50 percent earned between $39,610 and $80,390″  The median salary for professors at American University (DC) is $93,850. At Cowen’s George Mason (Fairfax, VA), it’s $92,000.

So, I’m guessing your average full professor of economics is still dining more extravagently than your average uniformed policeman.  But, no, cops aren’t relegated to fast food joints by virtue of their meager earnings.

Reacting to a Rachel Lewis feature touting Barack Obama as a man-about-town in Washington, attending ball games and plays and dining out, Ann Althouse wonders, “Should the president be working harder?”

Glenn Reynolds quips, “I think he should take as much time off as he wants.”  Heh. Indeed.

Aside from that, though, it’s an absurd criticism.

First, like all modern presidents, Obama puts in a ridiculous number of hours.  Even when he appears to be not working — such as when he goes to his ranch to chop wood Hawaii or Chicago to visit — he’s getting briefed, making decisions, and on call for emergencies.  He’s still the president when he takes his tie off.

Second, leaders need downtime to stay sharp.  If he’s going to Bulls games and drinking beer, that’s a good thing.

Third — and more importantly — the idea that, If only the president stays up late enough and works hard enough, why, everything will be fine is infuriating. The president of the United States is arguably the most important single individual on the planet but he’s not Master of the Universe.  He’s the leader of one branch of a tripartite federal system in system where most of the power is vested in 50 states and thousands of municipalities.   The economy is a global one and mostly out of the control of the 200-odd national governments on the planet.

The attempt by California to tax sweet malt liquors as spirits in order to extract higher tax revenues under the guise of protecting minors from themselves isn’t working out so well.

Substance-abuse foes cheered last year when state officials cracked down on sweet, sometimes fizzy, intoxicating drinks such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade that — save for their alcohol content — bear a remarkable resemblance to soda pop.

The sugary beverages had long been taxed as flavored beers. But state authorities reclassified them as liquor, raising the levies on a six-pack by a factor of 16 to match the rate consumers pay on vodka, rum and other distilled spirits. The move was supposed to generate $38 million in annual revenue for the state.

Now the numbers are in: The state has collected about $9,000 since the new tax rate kicked in Oct. 1. Some officials and activists suspect fraud.

Beverage makers admit they aren’t paying the new taxes. They say they don’t have to because they have reformulated the drinks — more than 6,000 varieties — to transform them into simple beers by limiting the amount of distilled spirits they contain.   They won’t explain how. The formulas, they say, are trade secrets. And beverage-industry officials and federal regulators say there are no tests to determine how much distilled spirits the drinks contain.

Kevin Drum is amused by this, as am I.   He’s mostly tickled by the “brazenness” of the companies while my joy is derived from making the lawmakers look silly.  Such is the nature of bipartisan consensus.

As an aside, I always presumed Zima and Mike’s were aimed at chicks, not kids.

Photo by Flickr user faeryboots, used under Creative Commons license.

Hilary Bok is rather bent out of shape at a Washington Whispers poll which asks “If you had a choice of four daycare centers run separately by Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi, which would you choose for your kids?”

She suggests some alternative poll questions:

If you needed some yard work done, would you hire Mel Martinez, Henry Cisneros, Xavier Becerra, or Bill Richardson?

If you needed a rap DJ for a party, would you hire Barack Obama, Charlie Rangel, John Lewis, or Michael Steele?

If you needed an interior decorator, would you choose Jim McGreevey, Barney Frank, Larry Craig, or the disinterred corpse of Harvey Milk?

She believes that “they would probably recognize any of these other appeals to stereotypes as offensive. And yet, oddly enough, asking which one of four prominent women we’d like to have running our children’s day care center is A-OK. ”

Are these really comparable?  None of the men listed have any association aside from ethnicity, race, or sexual orientation with said stereotypes.  Conversely, all four women are, in fact, mothers.

Is it any worse than asking whether you’d rather have a beer with George W. Bush or John Kerry?  Heck, Bush doesn’t even drink! Ditto, “Who would you rather be in a foxhole with” questions.

Further, as it turns out, we do in fact ask “Who would you rather have watch your kids for a couple of hours on a Saturday?” and “Who would you rather have as your dad?” about male presidential contenders.

Beyond that, leaving aside that this was just a fun poll rather than a deep psychological exercise, it is simply true that women are generally the primary caregivers to their children and that we judge women with children on that basis more than we do men.   And while some of that is a function of culturally imposed norms, it’s not entirely a social construct but rather hard-wired into human biology.

My wife’s an educated, successful career woman.  She’s the Chief Operating Officer of a major polling firm.  My jobs give me more flexibility than hers, in that I can often work from home and time shift and she can’t.

We do not have equal roles in raising our daughter.

I’m an active father and try to do my fair share of diaper changes, burping, bouncing, and so forth.  I was there for the ultrasounds, labor, C-section, and have made all the pediatrician visits so far.  But, for example, because of my biological limitations, my wife did one hundred percent of the gestating.  She also endured the lion’s share of the pain associated with labor and delivery.  She’s still recovering from the C-section.  She plays a role in every feeding, whether by actively nursing or having pumped milk that I later bottle feed.   She got two months’ paid maternity leave, whereas I went back to work immediately.  (It helped that Katie was born on New Year’s Eve and our office was closed until January 5th).

My wife will go back to work soon and the division of labor will shift somewhat to a more balanced role.  In a few months, once Katie starts eating solid foods, things will balance even further.  But the reality will almost certainly be that she’ll cry out for mommy more than for daddy for years to come.

Getting back to the poll, then, it strikes me as an interesting way to get at public attitudes about these women.

Two of the women, Clinton and Obama, played second fiddle to their husbands’ careers during their children’s formative years while the other two, Pelosi and Palin, are the public faces of their marriages (although Pelosi’s husband is a multi-millionaire investor, he’s a virtual unknown; nobody outside Alaska and perhaps the “snow machine” racing community had ever heard of Todd Palin until his wife got tapped to be John McCain’s running mate).

They’ve all been pretty good moms, it would seem.  The Pelosis raised five children to adulthood, largely keeping them out of the national spotlight.  So far as I’m aware, they’re all productive members of society. The Clintons raised one daughter to adulthood entirely in the spotlight.  They managed to mostly shield her from the worst of it and she’s doing well for herself.  The Obama girls are living their formative years in the White House.  By all accounts, they’re doing well. The Palins, too, have five kids including, famously, one with Down Syndrome.   Their oldest is serving as an infantryman in Iraq while their middle daughter has had some well publicized issues.

If I had to send Katie to day care with one of them, I’d pick Obama, who’s warmer than Clinton and Pelosi (at least in public persona) and brainier than Palin.

When Glenn Reynolds linked the Sam Adams Alliance Contest, I clicked hoping it had something to do with craft beers. I was disappointed.

At least it doesn’t involve Joe the Plumber.

Thomas Barnett took his son to Soldier Field to watch last night’s game between the Bears and his beloved Packers. Not surprisingly, his team lost a close one. He was, however, surprised about the atmosphere: the two spent the night being verbally abused by drunken buffoons who questioned their sexuality and threatened them with physical violence for having the temerity to sport Packers logowear.

What depressed me most about the situation (and about which I apologized repeatedly to Kev–born and largely raised in the East in military-dominated communities), was realizing this was the fabled Midwest I brought my family back to live among: on full, bullying, drunken, homophobic display (hardly unique to my native region, I realize). I kept waiting for the adult voices to emerge that I typically hear in Green Bay when such moments begin (awfully rarely) at Lambeau, but all I found was gleeful hard stares from older fans (again, I remember the one older gentleman in the suite section for his consideration), and that ashamed me most of all as a native Midwesterner (because that was the kind of behavior that, in my little town growing up in the late 60s/early 70s, would get you a firm talking to or a slap upside the head from any number of adult males if they caught you-whether you were their kid or not).

I know Chicago is cool and ascendant with Obama and all, but I swear to God, I will go out of my way for the rest of my life to avoid spending another dime or minute in this town (believe me, I edited this sentence down repeatedly to delete the various expletives).

I’ve only attended a handful of NFL games in person, including three at FedEx Field (Washington Redskins – Landover, Maryland), one at LP Field (Tennessee Titans – Nashville) and one at Texas Stadium (Dallas Cowboys – Irving). The only truly pleasant experience of was in Nashville. It was Vince Young’s debut as a starter and my Cowboys won handily. Everyone behaved quite decently, however, despite their team losing and my rooting for the visitor.

The Texas Stadium experience (at last season’s beatdown against the Patriots) was generally pleasant, except for the drunken idiots in front of us who were variously cursing between themselves and going back and forth to procure additional alcohol, despite having smuggled in various bottles of hard liquor.

Two of the three games I saw at FedEx were ones where I had no rooting interest; the third, last season’s closer, featured a Cowboys team who had already won 13 games and secured home field throughout the playoffs and didn’t show up. For the most part, Redskins fans are decent, actually, even towards people in Cowboys gear. But there are still way too many drunken idiots to walk through between the ridiculously distant parking lots and the stadium.

The League announced a crackdown before this season, saying they would throw out drunkards and those foul language. But it’s mighty tough to police tens of thousands of people in close contact, especially when a significant number of them are intoxicated. The fact that the stadium is making money hand over fist selling beers at $8 a pop doesn’t exactly create a great incentive structure, either.