All the hullabaloo over LeBron James’ decision to join the Miami Heat has focused, in my mind, on the heartless and tone-deaf way the decision (or I should say “The Decision”) was presented. Whether James intended to or not, presenting his free agency decision as a 1 hour special on ESPN seemed designed to ensure that a) everyone in Cleveland would hate him as much as humanly possible, and b) the rest of the sports-watching country’s opinion of him would plummet. After all, the last thing anyone in Cleveland wanted was for LeBron to leave the Cavaliers, but it absolutely made it worse when that breakup is broadcast on ESPN for a complete hour. And for those of us with nothing to win or lose from the decision, LeBron putting on a 1 hour special about himself wherein he referred to himself in the 3rd person multiple times does not give us much reason to doubt his ego.

Regardless, the only thing it really crystalized for me was the ability, or inability, of athletes to see just how much they mean to the people they play for. LeBron James grew up in Ohio and was drafted by the Cavaliers, two ingredients that make for an incredible love between a city and an athlete. He left. Dwayne Wade is loved in Miami nearly as much as James was in Cleveland. He stayed. The fact is that sometimes they break your heart, and sometimes they don’t.

I was listening to Bill Simmons’ The B.S. Report Podcast with Miami commentator Dan LeBatard, and they brought up a decent point: athletes don’t think the way fans do. We assume that because we feel the love and loyalty to our fans and our favorite players that they will be reciprocated (not like that). But they don’t think like us, and we can’t understand their reasoning. We attribute values like “loyalty” and “home town love” to them when they do decide to stick with our favorite teams, but the real reasoning is probably something along the lines of “money”, “$$$$$”, “state income tax laws” and “$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$”.

Why am I rambling on about this? Because these situations are fast approaching for my beloved San Francisco Giants. I’d like to believe that Tim Lincecum (or farther down the line, Buster Posey) is more Dwayne Wade and the Twins’ Joe Mauer than he is LeBron James. I’d like to believe that his status in the city of San Francisco will be enough for him to take a drastic pay cut to stay with the Giants compared to a team like the Yankees. But how do I know? Maybe the cheers we shower on him every 5th day don’t mean anything next to the gajillion figure salary the Mets will give him in a few years.

I hope not, but you never know. I would bet that Lincecum doesn’t go on national television to break up with the Giants, but if he wins another couple Cy Youngs everything is off the table.

Go Giants!

I am here to blog about politics – specifically national politics and the dysfunctions of surrounding many of the politicians and institutions in Washington D.C. Of a particular interest to me is the dysfunctions of Congress, particularly the Senate, and the difference between what the White House is expected to do and what it can actually accomplish. I plan to be opinionated, as I have a pretty solid set of beliefs about the current political actors, trends, and situations. I voted in my first national Presidential election last year (I was a month too young in November 2004) for President Obama, and I got bitten by a bug. I follow the horse-races, the policy debates, and just about anything else that comes out of D.C. So this blog will be about the things I find interesting about politics in the capitol of the United States. My audience is going to be young, engaged adults. I hope to find a public around my age who want to know more about politics and engage in discussion about it with me.

I am very opinionated, but I try to respect intelligence and legitimate difference of opinion, and on this blog will try to engage in these debates that I may find myself in (or purposefully put myself in). You never know, I may come away with a different opinion than I entered with.

The ultimate dream for me is to engage with the writers and thinkers who I follow – the people who have shaped much of my political thinking, who inform me, and who make me think. Wait, when I say the ultimate dream, I mean besides an A in Comm 217. People like Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein, Bill Simmons (well, he writes about sports, not politics, but still…), and many others. These people have taken a new technological platform – blogging – and turned it into a forum for debate, a place thoughtfully engage others about political ideas. They come from many different backgrounds and have many separate specialties, and have all gotten to where they are through different ways, but they have come together online to engage each other. I would love to join into the conversation, and I believe that my ideas and my writing could add something to these discussions. It is the Internet that is has given me a way to realistically interject myself and my thoughts into these incredibly interesting and influential debates.

So this is it – the end of my first blog post. I should warn my classmates in Comm 217 – I may go off topic. Sports, music, TV shows, movies, etc. These are things I love, and I will occasionally write about these subjects. I’ll try to stay on topic, but you know how it is. A particularly good episode of Friday Night Lights (airing Wednesdays on DirectTV) might spawn a blog post. So would a ridiculous NFL game (tonight’s Packers v. Cardinals game being a good example). You get the idea. Professor Rheingold: I promise these will be in addition to the two-posts-per-week limit. Fair warning!

PS: I’m going to try an idea that I’m stealing from Spencer Ackerman’s blog: each post will have a song attached to it that I believe fits with the theme of the post. So for tonight, I’m going with Bruce doing “The Rising“