1. Ok. It was a long time coming this year, but I'm finally and legitimately excited for the OSU-Michigan game tomorrow. Michigan's pathetic 3-8 is still not enough to taint what is the most anticipated football game for me every year The only exceptions to this would be if the Steelers were playing in the AFC Championship game or of course the Super Bowl. All other games of any level or importance would be secondary, even, believe it or not, an OSU national title game appearance (though I'm sure this opinion is colored by semi-recent events). So it will be fun tomorrow, and I'm semi-confident that the game might itself be interesting for quite a while, or at least long enough to give Michigan a victory against the historically-high 20.5 point spread.
After our game at noon, what I think might be the biggest game of the year is at 8:00 with Texas Tech and Oklahoma. TT is good and all, but I think a lot of people are forgetting how ridiculous Oklahoma is. I think they're going to put the hurt on Texas Tech, and I think they ought to get into the title game over Texas, even though they lost head-to-head.
This is a small digression, but this would be a great year for a playoff, maybe the best yet. I'm fairly certain there will be no major unbeatens (sorry Alabama), and at least 6-8 legitimately good teams to duke it out, in order of quality: Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Texas, Alabama, Texas Tech, Penn State. Add to that potentially-undefeated Utah and you've got a nice playoff lineup (first-round games: OU-Utah, Florida-Penn St, USC-TT, Texas-Bama. Excellent).

2. There has been a minor controversy online regarding a guy trying to use shady means to prove his theory that Obama was elected because the media covered the race unfairly. First, know that the guy at the center of this, John Ziegler, used to be a conservative talk-radio host, which really is about all you need to know about him. This guy cooked up a survey to show that Obama voters absorbed slanderous news about McCain/Palin better than about Obama/Biden, and that this obviously means that the liberal media played up the Republicans' faults while obscuring the Democrats'. Never mind that Obama is black and therefore belongs to a minority group that hasn't ever been portrayed remotely fairly by any form of media, or the fact that it would take some impressive kind of conspiracy in 2008 to effectively filter info.
Anyhow, I'm not as interested in that part of the debate. I'd like to look at a couple examples of why Ziegler/conservatives are angry about the media's treatment of the election, as found through his survey. People were much more likely to know that Palin has a pregnant teenage daughter and received $150,000 worth of clothes than they were to know about Obama's (out of context and misquoted) comment about the coal industry or Biden's past plagiarism. To any observer, partisan or not, this should come as no surprise. Even accepting Ziegler's general assumption--that this is because the media focused on the former stories and ignored the latter--should not be at all debatable. He--we--everyone, unfortunately--is assuming the media is operating with any kind of journalistic standards in mind, that the media is concerned with reporting honest stories and presenting honest pertinent information. Maybe it's archaic, but the major TV and radio networks are subject to federal oversight because they were originally intended to be responsible guardians of the public's information absorption. This has gone by the wayside, and is only really ever expected out of PBS anymore.
Instead, what we have now in almost all media outlets (and throughout all entertainment in fact) is a constant pandering to a least-common-denominator. The media doesn't give us what we ought to know, they give us what they think we want to know. We're interested in trivial scandal and personal details about politicians, cause lord knows those are the things that affect a person's governance (sometimes I know, they do, but you know what I mean).
I've criticized news and entertainment industries about this stuff before but so many people seem unfazed by this that it bears repeating. Our culture is different now, and not for the better. I don't care that Sarah Palin's daughter doesn't use contraception, I don't care that Eliot Spitzer sees prostitutes, I don't care that Bill Clinton got a hummer in the White House. I care that it's perfectly legal to discriminate against gay people, I care that U.S. leaders don't need to adhere to the same standards we hold to the rest of the world, I care that this country isn't remotely solvent.

3. The other day, I received an email from my good friend David Plouffe asking me for money again. (A reminder, Plouffe was Obama's campaign manager.) It was more or less your standard request for donation, this time to help fund the transition effort, except I noticed a couple lines that hint at something I find--at the risk of sounding naive--wholly remarkable and admirable:

For the first time, transition efforts won't be financed with donations from Washington lobbyists and PACs -- which means we'll need to keep asking for your help. Your generosity during the campaign helped get us here, but building a more transparent and open government means continuing to rely on a broader group of people to do this the right way.

First, the theme is the same as always, the same as it was since the day Obama rejected public financing and instead decided to raise all his money on his own. Through these constant emails from them, the campaign has been consistently proud of this fact. Although it sets a dangerous precedent toward ever-escalating money spent on political campaigns, I'm inclined to agree with their pride. Why not be supported quite literally from your supporters, and not some taxpayer funds or professional lobbyists? I know my ignorance on this forces such simplicity, but it makes sense. Again, I'd be worried about the path this could lead us down, but in this moment, I like it.
The much more interesting part of the quoted paragraph, though, is this: "building a more transparent and open government means continuing to rely on a broader group of people."
Obama has found himself in a difficult position after managing to somewhat transcend some of the usual politics in the eyes of millions of people. It's a corny cliche word here, but he's given hope that he might be different or run things differently than we're used to. In this task, and given these expectations, he will of course fail. He's a politician after all. He might represent better things to people but in the end he's one of them.
Nonetheless, if there is one thing that I've sorta noticed about how Obama and his people have gone about things, it's that he seems to genuinely be making an effort at transparency and accountability. Of course, after 8 horribly secretive Bush years, this is politically fruitful, but it seems more of an institutional mandate for the future from the future Prez himself, rather than a comment on the past. I'm too lazy to provide specific examples here from his campaign or the last couple weeks, but I'm happy to say that it seems to me at least that he's trying to deliver on a pretty important bit of promise that his victory represents. So good for him. But don't fuck it up.