This one is may favorite:

I’m really not sure what to say.

Whitney Houston, once one of the biggest stars in American popular culture, has died.

AP (“Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies“):

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston’s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony. Houston’s longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

“I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney’s passing,” music producer Quincy Jones said in a written statement. “I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly.”

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”

She had the perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

A tragic waste.

Even if your kid is good at sports in high school, gets a scholarship, and excels in college, there’s almost no way they are going to go pro.

Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg tweeted a link today to the NCAA’s official estimated probabilities that athletes in six major sports become professionals.

Only one sport (baseball) had more than 2% of NCAA players go pro.

Here are some of the numbers

• 11.6% of college baseball players play professionally, 0.6% of high school baseball players do
• 1.7% of college football players play professionally, 0.08% of high school football players do
• 1.3% of college ice hockey players play professional, 0.1% of high school ice hockey players do
• 1.2% of men’s college basketball players play professionally, 0.03% of high school men’s basketball players do
• 1.0% of men’s soccer players play professionally, 0.03% of high school soccer players do
• 0.9% of women’s college basketball players play professionally, 0.03% of high school women’s basketball players do

The higher numbers for baseball can be explained largely by the fact that, in addition to Major League Baseball, there are also a large number of minor professional leagues in all parts of the United States. Though the numbers aren’t broken down, I would imagine that the percentage of college baseball players playing for the Major Leagues is about as low as it is for professional football and basketball. Baseball is also unusual in that it was drafting players out of high school, usually into a team’s farm system, long before most other major sports were doing so.

The lesson? Don’t assume little Johnny is going to be set for life just because he’s doing really, really well in Little League.

REUTERS/Rupak De …

A lot of good captions for this picture, its worth checking them all. Here are the winners…

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: PeterOly – “I think we better get indoors. The Sand People are easily startled but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.”

Second: Peterh – Auditions for the Indian version of “What’s My Line” is about to get very monotonous…

Third: Alan Bourdius – It will take more than just the ‘stache to win this year’s John Bolton Look-Alike contest.

HONORABLE MENTION

Hibernian Hillbilly – In a touching ceremony, Wes Welker’s moustache,is laid to rest.

Jazz Shaw – The fallout from Newt’s plan to have children work as janitors continues.

Michael Hamm – Hindu’s come prepared for the Mexican Pinata party.

John425 – Lunch break for US manufacturer’s Call Center employees.

Maggie Mama – Typical liberal: Calling me a racist because I made the off-hand remark that “they all look alike to me”.

LorgSkyegon – Despite the popularity of the “Where’s Waldo?” series, India’s attempt at a “Where’s Gandhi?” was deemed far too easy.

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

In the line at the Burger King, orders were rather monotonous, “Make me one with everything, please.”

In an unprecedented act of generosity Donald Trump donated his hair, providing ‘staches to hundreds of the indigent.

the solemnity of the Ghandi event aside, boys will be boys. It only took one “Do or do not, there is no try,” and they were all yodas with light sabers.

When the First Lady, who misread the memo, showed up as Condi, all hell broke loose.

The Thursday Contest is already really pumped up.

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Winners will be announced Monday PM

(Photo/ Stein Coppens)

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: Brian – Where most Republican candidates seem to feel gay marriages take place.

Second: Robert W. Armijo – Physicist at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) finally find Jesus – I mean the “God Particle” [Higgs boson].

Third: Neil Hudelson – “Who doesn’t believe in Xenu now, mofo?” -L. Ron Hubbard.

HONORABLE MENTION

DCTrojan – Welcome to the Democratic National Convention powered by Solyndra

Jazz Shaw – The headlamp of the oncoming train barely noticed until too late for the throng of worshippers.

APL – December 21 2012. A great throng gathered at the “Magnificent Cathedral” Awaiting the “End of Days”, only to discover later that it was really a production of Lady Gaga’s latest new music video.

Allan Bourdius – Prototype of the set for President Obama’s speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention

OzarkHillbilly – When the Muslims X-mas decorations outshine the most lavish Christians can dream up, you just know Sharia is right around the corner.

Doug Mataconis – Sources indicate that the set for Madonna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show is likely to cause controversy

ℛODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

The Shrine to Betty White actually began to attract more pilgrims than Mecca.

“Uh… When was the electric bill due?”

The Komen Foundation continued to flourish despite their slashing ties with Planned Parenthood.

Are you ready for some football?

♬ There’s a Light… Over at the Frankenstein Place… ♬

The Monday Contest doesn’t even know what mustache rides are.

For the third year in a row, the Super Bowl was the most-watched television program in history:

NEW YORK—For the third consecutive year, the Super Bowl set a record as the most-watched television show in U.S. history.

The Nielsen Co. said Monday that an estimated 111.3 million people watched the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots on Sunday night. That narrowly beat the 111 million who watched Green Bay’s win over Pittsburgh last year.

NBC was blessed by a competitive game between two teams that played in one of the Super Bowl’s most memorable contests four years ago, with one of them representing the largest media market in the country.

The game wasn’t over until Tom Brady’s last-second heave into the end zone dropped onto the turf. That play itself had the biggest audience of any play in the game, according to the digital video recorder maker Tivo. Nielsen said 117.7 million people were watching during the last half hour of the game.

The last two Super Bowls, along with the 2010 game between New Orleans and Indianapolis and the finale of “M-A-S-H” in 1983, are the only programs to exceed 100 million viewers in U.S. television history.

Madonna has some bragging rights, too. Her halftime show was seen by an estimated 114 million people — a higher average than the game itself — and was the most-watched Super Bowl halftime entertainment show on record, Nielsen said.

Given the plethora of television and other entertainment offerings, it’s likely that only other Super Bowls will break this record in the future.  Interestingly, four of the five most-watched television broadcasts, and five of the top six, are Super Bowls that have taken place between 2008 and 2012.

The commercial from last night’s Super Bowl that’s getting the most attention in the political world is the one that ran just minutes after the Giants and Patriots and returned to their locker rooms for halftime, and almost from the instant it started running it became subject of political debate:

A Chrysler commercial that aired during Sunday night’s Super Bowl has struck a chord in the political world. Narrated by actor Clint Eastwood, the ad drew a comparison between the championship football game and the state of the U.S. economy.

“It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half. It’s halftime in America, too.” Eastwood says. “People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re gonna do to make a comeback.”

Pointing to improvement in the auto industry as a positive sign, the “Dirty Harry” star goes on, “Detroit’s showing us it can be done. …This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.”

Though the commercial didn’t mention any politicians by name, Twitter quickly lit up with speculation: Was Eastwood giving props to President Obama for bailing out the auto industry?  And was the ad a veiled endorsement of his re-election?

David Axelrod, a top campaign adviser to Obama, seemed quick to interpret it that way, calling the ad a “powerful spot.”

But Chrysler denies that the ad is pro-Obama. According to a company spokesman, CEO Sergio Marchionne told Detroit WJR’s Paul W. Smith on Monday: “The message is sufficiently universal and neutral that it should be appealing to everybody in this country and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t get utilized as political fodder in a debate.”

If you haven’t seen the ad yet, and I can’t imagine there are many people who haven’t at this point, here it is:

Personally, politics was the last thing that entered my mind when the ad was running. Even before the subject of the ad was clear, there was no mistaking Eastwood’s distinctive voice. The message itself struck me as something that was so sufficiently general that anyone would agree with it regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum. However, as I noted this weekend, we now live in a culture where everything eventually becomes politicized, and it didn’t take long for Twitter to fill up with commentary on the ad’s supposed political message. From the left, of course, the reaction was fairly similar to what Axelrod said in his Tweet, that the commercial was somehow an endorsement of the President even though neither politics nor the President are every even mentioned in the had. People on the right saw the same thing, except of course they complained about government money being used for that kind of message and Eastwood taking money to convey it.

That complaint is being picked up by pundits on the right today. Karl Rove said on Fox News this morning that he found the ad offensive;

“I was, frankly, offended by it,” said Karl Rove on Fox News Monday. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

One columnist from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution agrees:

But the halftime Chrysler commercial starring Clint Eastwood, describing America as being in its own “halftime,” was just overtly politicized. After all, what else could “halftime” have meant, in the year 2012, than halfway through the eight years Barack Obama would be president if re-elected this fall? I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a prediction that the country will break up circa 2248 A.D.

Chrysler of course has a right to political speech. But it would be nice if the company wouldn’t be so brazen about its leanings while still owing the entire country — left, right and center — billions of dollars.

Now it’s perfectly fine to have opposed the auto industry bailouts. I did myself and Eastwood himself said he opposed the bailouts in a 2010 interview. It would have preferable if President Bush had listened to the will of Congress and the American people in December 2008 instead of giving billions of dollars of TARP money to General Motors and Chrysler. Had he done that then, the companies would have been forced into the only place they ever actually belonged, and the place where they ultimately ended up, United States Bankruptcy Court. The financial situation that they were in at the time were exactly what Chapter 11 was created for, and it would have been far better if they’d gone through the process sooner and before billions of dollars of taxpayer money were given away to protect the position of politically favored businesses and labor unions. That’s water under the bridge at this point, though, and it seems slightly absurd to me to argue that G.M. and Chrysler shouldn’t be advertising to promote their products. Presidents Bush and Obama made the foolish decision to engage in these bailouts, wouldn’t it be nice if these companies did what they needed to pay us back (not that I’m expecting most of that money to ever be paid back)?

But that’s not even what this argument is about, I think. Isn’t it possible to look at this commercial as doing something than other than confirming the political views of the viewer? Frankly, I just thought it was a well done commercial with a great veteran actor, and a welcome sight in a year when most of the Super Bowl ads frankly stunk. You don’t have to view everything through a political prisim and, to some degree, it strikes me that it’s unhealthy to do so.

Clint Eastwood made a cool commercial. Can’t we just leave it at? Because a political argument over a car commercial strikes me as kind of stupid.

Update: For what it’s worth, Dirty Harry himself has spoken and denies any political motive behind the ad:

Following the fall out over the controversial Chrysler Super Bowl halftime ad, Clint Eastwood spoke exclusively with O’Reilly Factor producer Ron Mitchell…

“I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys, and there is no spin in that ad. On this I am certain.

l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about just about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK.

I am not supporting any politician at this time.

Chrysler to their credit didn’t even have cars in the ad.

Anything they gave me for it went for charity.

If any Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it.”

So, there you have it.

The NFL and NBC probably thought that hiring a headliner for the halftime show who was born before the Super Bowl even existed would keep the controversy to a minimum, but they were wrong:

The NFL and a major television network are apologizing for another Super Bowl halftime show.

There was no wardrobe malfunction, nothing like that glimpse of Janet Jackson’s nipple eight years ago that caused an uproar and a government scrutiny. Instead, it was an extended middle finger from British singer M.I.A. during Sunday night’s performance of Madonna’s new single, “Give Me All Your Luvin.”

In front of some 110 million viewers on NBC and uncounted others online, she flipped the bird and appeared to sing, “I don’t give a (expletive)” at one point, though it was hard to hear her clearly.

The NFL and NBC wasted little time in responding.

“The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing and we apologize to our fans,” said Brian McCarthy, spokesman for the NFL, which produced Madonna’s halftime show.

The risque moment came during the biggest TV event of the year. The screen briefly went blurred after M.I.A.’s gesture in what was a late attempt — by less than a second — to cut out the camera shot.

“The NFL hired the talent and produced the halftime show,” NBC spokesman Christopher McCloskey said. “Our system was late to obscure the inappropriate gesture and we apologize to our viewers.”

I was half watching the halftime show last night — although quite honestly I kind of tuned out in the beginning when Madonna came out dressed as an Egyptian Queen on a massive chariot being pulled by what appeared to be Roman soldiers — and I can’t say I even noticed this. Of course, I have no idea who M.I.A. is and wouldn’t recognize her if she was standing next to me. In any event, I have to wonder what the NFL is going to do when the Super Bowl is in New Jersey in 2014, that gesture is our official state greeting after all.

In any event, one more controversy like this and we’re likely to return to something like “Up With People.”

Here’s the video, if you care to watch:

Photo via CNN

REUTERS/Rupak De …

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

As long as I can remember, George Will’s response to any question about the Super Bowl on ABC’s This Week has been some variation on pointing out that baseball season is just around the corner. Given that Will has written several books on the game, and has been a regular presence at Nationals games since they came to Washington, this isn’t really a surprise. This year was no exception:

On Super Bowl Sunday, ABC’s George Will called football a “mistake” on the “This Week” roundtable.

“This is the second-highest calorie day in American life, second only to Thanksgiving, and people are betting and eating,” Will said. “Football, as I say, combines violence punctuated by committee meetings called huddles. It just replicates the worst aspect of American life.”

“That said, when it’s over, pitchers and catchers report in two weeks, and we can go back to reading the newspapers,” Will added.

After some prodding, Will guessed that the New York Giants would win the big game.

“I usually root for the team whose victory would make the most liberals unhappy,” he said, noting New England’s liberal population.

It’s nice to know some things never change, and that baseball season is just around the corner.

Here’s the video:

In today’s New York Times, Gail Collins opens a column about the Susan G. Komen Foundation/Planned Parenthood controversy that arose this week by observing the extent to which nearly everything in our society ends up becoming politicized:

This week we had a huge political fight about breast cancer. Clearly, we have now hit the point where there’s nothing that can’t be divided into red-state-blue-state.

Nothing. The other day I saw a blog called “I Dig My Garden” that had a forum on whether Republicans could truly love gardening. And there was a little dust-up in Albany over politicization of a local pet blog, which had featured a discussion on Mitt Romney’s driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.

But breast cancer would seem like the last thing to go. Everybody hates cancer and everybody likes breasts — infants, adults, women, men. Really, it’s America’s most popular body part.

Indeed, part of the reason for the overwhelming success that the Komen Foundation has had over the years is the extent to which it has been able extend its pink ribbon campaign into so many different parts of our culture. You see pink-adorned packages in grocery stores, for example, and both the NFL and Major League Baseball have taken up the cause at various points during their respective seasons. Some on the outside have criticized Komen in this regard because of its aggressiveness in defending its trademarks, not to mention the fact that it often seems that “Breast Cancer Awareness” crowds out attention that should also be paid to other diseases, some of which are even deadlier. Nonetheless, up until this week, it was hard to think of anything more non-political than being against breast cancer and in favor of the most well-known foundation dedicated to fighting it.

That’s all over now, of course. I don’t know how long Komen has been giving grant money for early breast cancer screenings to Planned Parenthood, but I can honestly say that until this week I neither had any idea that they were doing it, nor would I have particularly cared had I found out about it. For reasons that are worthy of a post all its own, though, Planned Parenthood has become a political lightning rod in recent years thanks largely to the fact that a relatively small portion of what it does, by most reasonable estimates no more than 10% per year, includes abortion services (not the 90% that Jon Kyl once claimed and then deleted from the Senate record after his staff emphasized that what he said was “not intended to be a factual statement.”) Its understandable why people who feel strongly about that issue would have strong opinions about Planned Parenthood, but when one takes into account the fact that the organization also provides services to poor women, including providing contraceptives and screenings for breast and cervical cancer, the notion that the entire organization and anyone who donates to it must be condemned strikes me as completely nonsensical. (Note that I am not addressing here the issues surrounding Federal funding of Planned Parenthood, which is an entirely separate issue in my mind, although it is worth noting that polling indicates that the public opposes the Republican position on that issue).

In a rational world, it strikes me that one should be able to make a distinction between those aspects of an organizations practices one approves, and those one does not. In Komen’s case, they had obviously made the determination that helping to fund Planned Parenthood’s early breast cancer screenings was compatible with the mission of the Foundation which they have described in the past as including both funding research to find a cure for breast cancer and increasing the survival rate for those diagnosed through better early detection methods. As with any form of cancer, the early breast cancer is detected, the more likely it is that someone will survive. Viewed from that perspective alone, the decision to provide grants to organizations like Planned Parenthood makes perfect sense.

Of course, once an issue that people feel strongly about gets involved, the possibility for rational discussion goes out the window. When Komen decided to cut off the grant to Planned Parenthood, pro-choice groups reacted negatively and rallied around Planned Parenthood. Now that they’ve changed their mind, it appears that pro-life groups are reacting the same way. For the most part, this is because it appeared from the beginning that Komen’s decision was based in politics, not in any objective evaluation of whether or not the grant was in the Foundations interest. So, whether it intended to or not, the Komen Foundation has now become known as an organization that took sides in the culture war, then switched sides, under circumstances that look perfectly amateurish from a Public Relations point of view.

Why these seemingly simple health issues should become so politicized is the question Collins asks.

But of course, it’s not just health issues that seem to have become politicized. Just this past fall, while he was leading the Denver Broncos to a series of seemingly improbable come from behind victories, a young Quarterback named Tim Tebow found himself the latest battleground in the culture wars. Tebow’s successes were touted by many Christians as proof of the power of his faith, and his losses were often cheered by obnoxious atheists like Bill Maher.  Tebow was even being courted by Republican candidates for President for an endorsement. To his credit, Tebow didn’t encourage any of this nonsense and remained far more sanguine about his success than the people who had latched on to him. Nonetheless, just like women’s health for a time something as seemingly non-political as professional football quite literally became a football itself in the culture wars.

Those are just two examples of how seemingly innocent subject have become politicized for no rational reason. Some of it, no doubt, is based on cultural differences between different parts of the country, but that alone doesn’t explain it all.  Perhaps it’s a reflection of how polarizing the Red State/Blue State divide has become in recent years that even the things that should unite us end up dividing us. Perhaps it’s the pervasiveness of the cable news/talk radio culture.  Whatever the cause, it doesn’t strike me as very healthy that we have, as Collins notes, reached a point where quite literally anything can become a battleground between Team Blue State and Team Red State.

One wonders why any Republican politician would want to be associated with this image.