I get why sensible people choose to vote Republican. Despair is a sin and something be avoided, whenever possible. Trudging off to vote for the least dangerous option at least offers the hope of postponing the bitter end for a little while. At the same time, you cannot blame people for thinking that a vote for the GOP is a vote for prolonging the agony. Look at this story from New Hampshire.

Stephanopoulos will be hosting Thursday night’s debate between former Sen. Scott Brown and Shaheen, despite this conflict—he’s on video as a political activist accepting Shaheen’s endorsement of President Clinton—and another conflict. As Breitbart News reported on Tuesday, Stephanopoulos has a longtime personal and political relationship with Shaheen campaign adviser Mandy Grunwald.

Stephanopoulos has a history of flubbing debates, and he is widely credited with creating the “war on women” in a 2012 GOP primary debate—inserting the issue of contraception into the debate when nobody was discussing it at all.

Why in the world do these GOP candidates keep falling for the same gags? Stephanopoulos was a prominent Clinton rump-swab and his chief toady for years. Brown may as well have agreed to have Wasserman-Schultz moderate the debate. Maybe she was busy. How about Shaheen’s husband?

This happens all the time with the GOP. Romney signed off on the obese woman from CNN moderating a debate, despite her long history of supporting the Cult. Her lunging to the defense of Obama in the debate may very well have saved the day for Obama. Instead of talking about Obama’s defects, the post debate coverage was about the moderator slapping Mitt around at the end. It is why they are called The Stupid Party. They never learn. Instead, like Charlie Brown and the football, they keep thinking this time thinks will be different.

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Democracy is a system where the very dumbest citizens are given the power to decide the fate of the people. The smart fraction fights with one another in an attempt to convince and cajole the stupid into selecting wisely. Sometimes it works, but given enough time the stupid will live up their reputation and the democracy murders itself. Massachusetts is a good example.

Forget about Charlie Baker crying. The ones who should be crying are the voters.

Would you rather win the Lottery or the election?

What’s your signature dish in the kitchen?

What’s the best Halloween costume for your opponent?

Those were actual questions in a debate that will be the last time most voters see Baker and Democrat Martha Coakley in a televised, face-to-face confrontation.

Baker’s cry will get the most attention in this bizarre debate showdown. And that’s not a bad thing for a Republican accused of being a heartless budget cutter. Baker’s cry did not look contrived — he looked like a dad watching the last scene of “Field of Dreams.” And it certainly won’t hurt him among the most important voters in this race — women.

But let’s face it, the question — when was the last time you cried? — was designed to get the candidates to cry. Great for a Barbara Walters interview, but for a gubernatorial debate?

There’s nothing wrong with asking an offbeat question that could show voters a more human side of the candidates. But the gimmick has gotten old fast. Pretty much every debate now ends with a “What actor should play you in a movie?” question.

But now we need to know whether Baker or Coakley would throw away the election with a chance to be rich. Is there any chance either of them would go with the Lottery? No, even Coakley wouldn’t be that clueless.

And there were other head-shaking moments. Like one of the panelists repeatedly pressing Baker or Coakley to take a “pledge.” Apparently just saying you’re against something is not enough anymore. Now you have to pledge not to do it.

There were some telling moments in the debate that will probably be more significant than Baker’s weep show. Baker looked like his old, snippy self at times — not his best side. When Coakley joked she had heard Baker’s question before, the Republican shot back, “Sort of like the ones you asked me before?”

But the crying pretty much wiped out that moment.

Massachusetts is home to many great colleges and universities. Tens of thousands of very bright people move to Boston every year for work. Yet, this is the best they can do for governor. One Senator is a pathological liar and the other has not lived in the state for decades. They have one of the most corrupt legislatures on earth.

There’s your choice for governor. A blubbering fool or a semi-retarded hack.

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I’m always skeptical about memoirs and tell-all’s, because the writer is highly motivated to lie. In the former case, self-promotion is at the heart of a memoir and no one promotes the negative things about themselves. The tell-all is the dead tree version of click bait. The writer says bad things about people or reveals embarrassing things about a public institution in order to sell books. In both cases, the bullshit ratios are way out of whack.

Sharyl Attkisson left CBS claiming they are a bunch of lefty hacks, something we all knew for decades. Her tell-all is being flogged by Drudge. He has a link to this story in America’s Paper of Record.

A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer.

In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.

“This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,” Attkisson quotes the source saying.

Maybe. It is also possible she is just like most users and foolishly loaded all sorts of spyware on her laptop. Most people have no idea how their PC works. Apple users are the worst because they think they know how it works, even though they don’t. People see this stuff on TV and they think “hackers” can magically take over your PC.

She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.

This is pretty common stuff. The #1 way people load malware onto their PC is by opening an attachment. Once it is loaded, it sits there calling home and updating itself. It’s why you should never put your personal stuff on a laptop, by the way.

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

This I doubt. This is the sort of thing you see on TV, not in real life. Loading spyware to take over a webcam is one level of clever. Stealing a Skype password and then re-engineering the program to function as a listening devise is quite another. It’s not impossible, but to deploy that type of resource on this woman sounds unlikely to me. There’s a small number of people able to do this work and they are in high demand.

Attkisson says her source — identified only as “Number One” — told her the spying was most likely not court-authorized because it went on far longer than most legal taps.

But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.”

“They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.

Again, this reads like a bad TV script. There are no hidden places in your operating system. There are places where code can be hidden away, but not documents. The value in hiding docs on her computer is also questionable. If you can go to these lengths to frame her, you can just have her killed in an accident, which is much easier than this.

If you cover the foreign policy operations in Washington or Europe, you are being followed, wiretapped and scrutinized. This has been true for a long time. Counter intelligence is a part of every nation’s toolkit and that naturally sweeps up the reporters. Most of the people talking to reporters are mid-level bureaucrats lacking the security clearances to access the good stuff. It’s very rare for a high level career spook to be known to the press, much less have a relationship.

Where the high level leaks come from are from the political class. The guys like Richard Armitage who are part of the permanent Washington policy elite. They are the guys spilling the beans to reporters about some program or policy. A gal like Attkisson is not privy to those people. She’s meeting the low-level nobodies at the Starbucks so they can dish the local scuttlebutt. They may know some things so this sort of reporting can leave a mark, but it is not worth the trouble of deploying A-level technicians to exploit her laptop.

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Sextus Julius Caesar I was the man who killed the Roman Republic. He was not  the Julius Caesar, but he was the man who started the line that would eventually give us the Julius Caesar. In 208 BC, no one could have possibly known that a man of his line would bring down the Republic. If they did, I’m sure he would have been murdered along with all of his kin. But, we can never know these things. You just have to hope you get lucky and the fates handle it.

No one could have known that an eccentric school master would found a line whose men would bring about the end of the American republic.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “moving forward” on a potential 2016 White House run and it appears more likely he will enter the Republican field, according to his son, who’s running for office in Texas.

George P. Bush told ABC’s “This Week” that his father is “still assessing” a presidential bid, but suggested it was more likely that he would seek the White House this time. The ex-governor declined to run for president in 2012 despite encouragement from Republicans.

“I think it’s more than likely that he’s giving this a serious thought and moving — and moving forward,” said the younger Bush, who is running for Texas land commissioner.

Asked if that meant it was “more than likely that he’ll run,” George P. Bush responded: “That he’ll run. If you had asked me a few years back … I would have said it was less likely.”

Jeb Bush, the brother of former President George W. Bush and the son of former President George H.W. Bush, would stand out in what could be a crowded Republican field in 2016.

Bush has headlined fundraisers for Republican candidates and committees and helped campaigns for governor in Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, three of the first four states to hold early presidential primaries.

Family considerations could play a factor in his decision.

In an interview with The Associated Press this month, Jeb Bush said his wife, Columba, is “supportive” of a potential presidential campaign and his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, was now “neutral, trending in a different direction.” Barbara Bush declared last year there had been “enough Bushes” in the White House.

“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the challenges that this brings,” Jeb Bush told the AP. “This is ultimately my decision with as much consideration as I can to take into account the people that I really love.”

George P. Bush, in the interview aired Sunday, said his family would be “100 percent” behind his father if he decides to run.

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Back over Labor Day I was at Foxboro for the Boston College – UMass football game. The crowd was small; maybe 30K, but it could have been less. It was a “home game” for UMass so the Boston College fans were maybe half the crowd. Labor Day in Boston is not a great time to hold a sporting event, but for some reason they did it anyway. The small crowd meant I could get the full marketing blast from the people who run the facility. That means the blasting of music, video ads everywhere and constant haranguing by the public address man to pay attention to one sponsor or another. I think even toilet breaks were brought to us by some corporate sponsor.

This is why live sporting events struggle to maintain attendance. Across all sports all over the country, attendance is flagging. The magical thinking of the sports marketing people pushed them to do more of what they have been doing, with the belief they can cross some magic threshold that draws everyone back. More video boards. More screaming PA guys. More rock music. More side crap to draw our attention away from the game and our friends to pay attention to something or other brought to us by MegaCorp. The argument in favor of this is that sitting at home has become so good, they have to make going to the game like home, but with more ads.

I had club seats for the game so we went inside to avoid being screamed at by the PA guy and the deafening rock music. I asked someone about this nonsense and they informed that young people like it. That’s the catch all of all marketing campaigns. Young people like it. There’s never any evidence of this, but marketing people always say it. The fact that young people have no money is never mentioned. No one ever points out that the blaring music is thirty years old and the young people make sport of it when outside of earshot. But, it’s hardly the point. The point is no area of daily life can be free of marketing.

No matter what it is, if people like it, the dreary dickheads from the business schools will demand they ruin it with ads no one watches. This letter to the editor in the Roanoke Times gets to the heart of the matter. Being told by some dimwit when to cheer and where to look is insulting. Adults can tolerate a little of it, but there are limits. The same is true of the barrage of ads. Everyone gets that marketing dollars are a part of the business. The teams cannot live on the billions in ticket and merchandise sales. They have to “leverage” their fan base in order to “monetize” the popularity of their sport and maximize their market position.

It used to be that commercial TV and radio had ads because the service was free. You got the free service because they got to sell airtime to people trying to sell you stuff. Pay cable was supposed to be commercial free. Now it is not just packed with ads, they sell your personal data to marketing firms who use it to sell you crap on your phone or your browser. The whole racket now is to get you to pay them to send you ads. Sports fans are rationally forgoing the attendance costs because they can at least change the channel when the ads are jammed in their face during the game if they on their couch.

This is how it goes when everything is based on the madness of growth. It’s not enough to be a stable, profitable business. You can’t because the people in charge are systematically eroding those profits with currency manipulation. Your costs keep going up because your money keeps losing value. In 1984, I could get into the Red Sox game and have a beer for $10.00. The ticket was $6 for a bleacher seat and a beer was $3.50. If I did not want a beer, I could get a couple of dogs and maybe a coke, if I had some change. Adjust for inflation and that ten bucks gets half a beer today, as long as it is domestic. At the football game over Labor Day, I paid ten bucks for a slice of pizza.

That means everyone all the time has to be raising prices, lowering value and finding new customers. Big operations like football teams have to charge for everything. Breathing will soon be taxed. We’re not far from the day when the toilets will have credit card readers. The other option will be standing their watching ads while you wait for the hopper. Before you can sit, you’ll have to fill out a marketing survey.

This has to end. By that I mean, it cannot go on like this forever. I’m saturated. I can take no more. Even those with a higher threshold for this stuff have a finite amount of time and money. The stone will run out of blood eventually. Then what?

The autocratic core of the prevailing religion is never more obvious than the treatment of old people. The Cult hates old people almost as much as they hate blacks. It’s why their idealized future is devoid of old people. It is also why mandatory euthanasia was a must have in ObamaCare. Here’s an example where the war on men converges with the war on old people.

Ted Bishop was ousted Friday as president of the PGA of America over a sexist tweet and Facebook post directed at Ian Poulter.

Bishop was irritated by remarks Poulter made in his book on the Ryder Cup captaincy of Nick Faldo in 2008 and Tom Watson this year. He referred to Poulter as “Lil Girl” on Twitter when stacking up Poulter’s feats next to Faldo. In a Facebook post, he noted that Watson (with eight majors) and Faldo (with six majors and the Ryder Cup record for most points) were getting “bashed” by Poulter.

“Really? Sounds like a little school girl squealing during recess. C’MON MAN!” he wrote.

The PGA of America board voted Friday to remove him, meaning Bishop will not be invited to future PGA Championships and Ryder Cups, or any other courtesies extended to past presidents. He is the first PGA president to be ousted. Bishop had one month left on his two-year term.

Bishop, who has two daughters, apologized to Poulter and “anyone else I might have offended” in a statement.

But the head pro from Indiana went down swinging.

Bishop said his fellow PGA officers asked him to resign Friday and he refused, wanting instead to apologize in person to the board and let the process run its course.

“The board heard me out and then voted to impeach me,” he said. “That is the due process and I respect that, as painful as it might be.”

In removing Bishop as president, the PGA of America board said the remarks were inconsistent with association’s policies.

“The PGA of America understands the enormous responsibility it has to lead this great game and to enrich lives in our society through golf,” PGA chief executive Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. “We must demand of ourselves that we make golf both welcoming and inclusive to all who want to experience it, and everyone at the PGA of America must lead by example.”

They could have let the old guy leave in a month, but that would be humane. Instead, they had him officially excommunicated and publicly humiliated. These idiots can talk about their great until they are blue in the face, but this is all about the demand of the Cult. That comes before everything. If the Cult decides players must be sodomized on the 9th hole, the PGA will mandate it at their next meeting.

As I’m fond of saying, we live in a different kind of Iran.

In science, a lot of time and effort is put into framing a problem. You have to have an agreed upon set of rules before you can investigate the natural world. Those rules need constant updating as new information is discovered. You can’t test something unless you know what you are testing and how to evaluate the possible outcomes. In the gum-flapping game, an old rhetorical trick is to frame your argument in such a way that the only good conclusions just happen to be those you are asserting. The point here is that framing an issue is a big part of understanding it, or not understanding it as the case may be.

That’s what we see here with this column by Ross Douthat. Since I’m prone to saying horrible things about people I don’t like, let me just say I have no opinion of Mr. Douthat. For some reason he is widely read by the commentariat. There are a lot of writers out there and I can’t know all of them. What got my attention is the cornucopia of incorrect premises in this one piece.

Some years ago now, when the conservative media group Newsmax put in a bid to buy the limping, failing Newsweek, I wrote a post arguing that trying to reinvent one of the newsweeklies as a (moderately) right-of-center publication was as good a bet as any. Here was the nub of my argument:

What’s “right-of-center”? This expression gets used a lot, but no one ever bothers to define it. It seems to be a label for non-liberals the Cult does not want to murder. Otherwise, right-of-center is the Bigfoot of political positions.

I thought back to that piece when I read this week’s big Pew report on media and political polarization. The report includes lots of fun tidbits (conservatives have more friends who share their views, but liberals are more likely to break off a friendship over politics), but like a lot of people I was most struck by this chart, showing where, roughly, on the ideological spectrum different publications and channels find their audiences. You’ll see that the overwhelming majority of the media properties surveyed had audiences clustered somewhere on the left-of-center, with Yahoo! News and the Wall Street Journal claiming audiences closest to the political middle. Meanwhile, exactly one property, Fox News, had an audience that was more conservative but within hailing distance of the center, and then there was a small cluster of shows and programs with audiences to Fox’s right (Breitbart, Drudge, Limbaugh, The Blaze, etc.).

What’s a “conservative”? The term liberal is easy as they make the boundaries clear. Throwing the Reason Magazine crowd in with the National Review types and then sprinkling in The Weekly Standard people is the definition most liberals give, when pressed. That still leaves a vast area of political thought outside the Hive that does not fall into the conservative bucket.

Then we have the mythological political spectrum, upon which all of us my reside somewhere – or else. Liberals claim Hitler is the extreme right so that puts him right next to Thomas Sowell somehow. The fact that neither man have a thing in common does not seem to matter. Putting that aside, how can someone be sort of a Stalinist? That’s what left-of-center must mean, if the commies are over on the left end of this spectrum. Therefore, being left of center means you want to starve some Ukrainians, but not all of them, I guess.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found it tough to pay much attention to people who play along with the Cult’s bifurcated view of the world. Putting Steve Sailer in the same bucket as Jonah Goldberg is useless if you are trying to understand the ideological map of the country. The reason this is popular with the Cult of Modern Liberalism is they are only interested in who is and who is not in their movement. If that’s not obvious to you, I’m not sure if you have anything to contribute to the debate. That and it is simply boring. A lifetime of watching guys like Mr. Douthat try to fit the world into the fantasy map of the Left has just been done to death.

What tries my patience even more than that is the insistence that there are two morally equivalent ideological forces battling it out for the soul of the people. No one in the ruling class has any serious thoughts about changing things. Why should they? It’s a good deal for them. What we have is a jostling for minor status points amongst the political parties. No matter who wins, nothing will change. Both parties talk big in the same way beer companies subtly promise you their product will get you laid. Carrying on like there’s a real ideological battle being waged with real consequences just makes the writer a sales rep for the status quo.

The weird emotionalism of modern times is one of those things that no one seems to address. I read a lot of cultural writers and it seldom comes up. Maybe it has always be thus, but it seems like the propensity to burst into tear in public is stronger now than ever. After 9/11, I remember watching Bush get choked up on camera and thinking, “He’s no Churchill.” Can you imagine Eisenhower blubbering on stage after the Normandy invasion?

Anyway, this was in my sports feed.

When Boston was rocked by bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, the Bruins and their fans received unconditional support from the NHL and the other 29 teams. Now, the Bruins will return that favor.

On Wednesday, a gunman entered the Parliament area in Canada’s capitol city of Ottawa and killed one solider and injured another person. The Senators were scheduled to host the Toronto Maple Leafs Wednesday night, but the game was postponed.

The tragedy in Ottawa hit close to home for members of the Bruins. Coach Claude Julien is a native of Ottawa, while Zdeno Chara and Chris Kelly both played for the Senators.

“It was very shocking, especially for that area. It’s a capitol city but it’s fairly quiet and not a busy area, so to see something like that happening is very shocking, very surprising,” Chara said. “Obviously, you’re feeling for everybody in the city and in the country. I know when it happened here we received so much support from everywhere around the league, across the country and around the world, so for sure it’s something we’re thinking about and people in Ottawa and Canada are in our thoughts and prayers.”

Julien said Wednesday’s situation in Ottawa was unsettling.

Last night, a dozen people were murdered in Chicago. Toronto is not a crime riddled city, but they have plenty of homicides. Why is this one so emotionally unsettling?

Added Julien, “Every city rallies around its own city and I’ve talked to a few people, including my family that’s still back there. My parents and brothers and sisters, it’s affected them even if they weren’t around that area. It affects the whole city like the bombing affected us here. They’ll have to get used to it in a way where that’s reality, unfortunately, and it’s happening. Again, Ottawa is a pretty — or Canada is a pretty laid back country that tries to continue to be laid back. But it’s also a country that supported the U.S. in some of its decisions and more than likely those are the consequences that it faces because of that.”

This is what I’m getting at. Why do public figures have to pretend to be emotionally distraught over events happening far away from them? If the gunman shot someone he knew, then sure, he should be upset. If it happened at his place of work, I can see it. Further, how is a hockey game healing anything? What in the hell does healing even mean in this context?

It seems like the high status males in modern times feel the need to blubber in public. I’m not sure why that is or what it means. Like the stoic male lead, the level headed male leader is a thing of the past. Instead, the hallmark of high status is the ability to emote on cue.

I admit to having a Karl Denninger habit. The guy is nuttier than a fruitcake, but often quite entertaining. He’s also right about a few things. I once knew a man who was a brilliant mathematician. He worked for Goddard. He was also a complete wacko. A harmless wacko, but a wacko nonetheless. Denninger seems like one of those people. In a handful of narrow areas, he is very incitement. In others, the ones he talks about a lot, he is batshit crazy. Here’s one of them.

This makes for a few interesting new observations, dove-tailing with what I had previously suspected and so-stated.

First, one of the wounds in Brown’s hand was apparently caused when the cop’s gun went off in the SUV as residue was found in the wound.  That does not happen unless the gun discharges very close to where the bullet goes in.  The lack of stippling (powder burns external) is unusual but not unprecedented, and the presence of residue in the wound is solid evidence of a contact (or near-so) shot.  Further, tissue evidence was recovered from the police SUV and matches Brown.

This would appear to many to exonerate Wilson (the cop.)  Not so fast, kemosabe!

Had the fatal shot been delivered in the vehicle that would be true, but that’s not what happened.  The discharge of the firearm in the SUV, in a tightly-confined space right near the ears of both Brown and Wilson, means they were both almost-certainly temporarily deafened by the blast.  This means that Brown could almost-certainly not hear any commands given by Wilson after that, and Wilson could almost-certainly not hear anything Brown said beyond that point in the encounter either.

Maybe. I’ve been a round a lot of guns going off and you don’t go deaf. Wilson was most certainly disoriented initially. Brown, having been shot, would have been stunned, at the minimum. Of course, adrenaline pumping would have exaggerated some things, but mostly the terror of being in a life or death confrontation.

The tox report shows recent (but undifferentiated, that is, not quantified) marijuana consumption; that is, he (presumably) smoked weed some time close to the encounter, but whether he was actively high at the time cannot be discerned with any sort of reliability.

The problem remains those gunshot wounds to the head.  The round to the top of the head was recovered in the lateral right facial area with a 12cm travel path.  The other round to the head is the one that exits the jaw and re-enters the upper right chest.

The forensic findings are roughly congruent with the previous private autopsy and present the same problem in terms of physics for those two wounds.

However, there is one further finding — and that is entrance wound #5 which is unpaired.

This shot may be that which the entire situation turns on — specifically, exactly when was that shot delivered.  The problem for Wilson is that the path is not straight-on, but rather downward, implying that it did notproduce Brown falling forward (and thus providing a clean explanation for exactly how the other two shots got delivered to his head in the orientation they were, without Brown being on his knees or otherwise in a submissive posture) but rather was delivered while he was either (1) falling forward or (2) below Wilson’s plane of fire (that is, Wilson aimed downward because Brown was on his knees!)

Conspiracy nuts always fixate on one fact. That fact either unravels (allegedly) the official explanation or confirms their pet theory. In this case, Denninger is convinced the cop deliberately murdered the gentle giant. It’s popular with libertarians.

I’m no fan of the police. That’s clear, I’m sure. Further, the problems with the cops in this country are going to get a lot worse before they get better and I doubt they ever get better. That does not mean the cop was wrong or the gentle giant was murdered. The gentle giant chose to attack a cop. He tried to get the cop’s gun. After he was shot, he could have fled or surrendered by getting on his knees. He chose poorly.

In these cases, the question is about the decision tree that lead to this result. The gentle giant could have made a number of decisions that would have altered the outcome. Right up until the final confrontation, the gentle giant held his fate in his own hands. The cop’s fate was decided by the gentle giant. This criminal put him on that street in that situation. Asking that the cop, under extreme duress, to save the gentle giant from his own bad choices is unreasonable. Yeah, maybe the cop could have done something different. Maybe. Demanding that of him is simply unreasonable.

But, crazy people like Karl Denninger can never accept that.

This is what I was talking about earlier. Black solidarity is toxic to black people.

After Percy Harvin was traded to the Jets, the leaks began almost immediately. Harvin physically fought teammates. Harvin pulled himself out of games. Harvin may have been about to “launch a mutiny” against Russell Wilson. Though (presumably) Wilson’s camp spread word through ESPN’s Chris Mortensen that Wilson wanted to keep Harvin aboard and help the troubled receiver through his “anger and trust” issues, it seemed, as someone watching from afar without inside access, that Harvin’s alleged issues with Wilson held the most efficacy in his ouster.

Today, Bleacher Report’s Mike Freeman shed some light on issues that Harvin had with Wilson, and seemed to back Mike Florio’s assertion that the Seahawks feared the receiver would not be alone in a coalition against Wilson:

Players said Harvin was an accelerant in a locker room that was quickly dividing between Wilson and anti-Wilson. … There is also an element of race that needs to be discussed. My feeling on this—and it’s backed up by several interviews with Seahawks players—is that some of the black players think Wilson isn’t black enough.

This, again, was similar to the situation with McNabb [versus Terrell Owens]. And this, again, will be denied by Seattle people. But there is an element of this. This is an issue that extends outside of football, into African-American society—though it’s gotten better recently. Well-spoken blacks are seen by some other blacks as not completely black. Some of this is at play.

Freeman notes that he doesn’t agree with some of the Seattle players’ sentiment, and cites a tweet from the NYDN’s Manish Mehta that Marshawn Lynch was irate and almost didn’t board the team bus as evidence that there were other teammates who liked Harvin.

This discussion is a minefield that I’ll admit I’m hesitant to jump into, but I’m going to try to do it without inciting Internet mob backlash. On the surface, it seems crazy that we’re even talking about this now. The Seahawks are six games removed from a Super Bowl. Three weeks ago, it was a genuine debate as to whether Wilson would be the first overall pick if you were starting a team from scratch tomorrow. But success is so fleeting in the NFL and there have been some cracks in Seattle’s facade this year.

This past August, SI’s Greg Bishop profiled Wilson’s entourage, all of whom are white guys. Wilson appears in too many commercials to count. There always seem to be cameras around for his community service work. Announcers always talk about his HARD WORK and devotion to THE GAME. Since he entered the league he’s demonstrated precociousness in the Derek Jeter art of speaking in a manner which will draw praise from the sports media, but convey nothing of discernible value.

Freeman also notes that there’s frustration amongst some of Wilson’s teammates when he doesn’t take responsibility for errant passes, but that the same could also be said for Peyton Manning, who faces no such perceived threat of a mutiny. While Wilson was the quarterback of a Super Bowl team last year, however, he does not have nearly the same longevity as Manning.

Aside from Wilson’s entourage, those things could all breed resentment amongst teammates regardless of race. The words not “black enough” are there with Freeman’s sources, and the connotation is that some of Wilson’s teammates perceive that the quarterback lacks sincerity. That he’s always a step ahead of the sappy old media, and manipulates their coverage accordingly. I’m not remotely qualified to diagnose the racial undercurrents of what is reportedly going on, but I can understand the idea of being bothered by the exposure to relentless, fluffy PR.