Sports & Entertainment

You gotta love this. The right wing is up in arms because major league sports give respect to the sports expertise of Keith Olbermann while Rush Limbaugh has been unable to buy a team. Boo-hoo. What whiners!

The fact is, Keith Olbermann has long been one of the most respected sportsmen in media, as most sports fans know, long before he became a leading progressive host. He deserves respect. He has earned respect. He will get respect. He should. The right should stop whining about this.

My kids watch a comic news report about the unfortunate spouse or family member who lives with someone who watches “Lost” and suggests survival strategies. As this astonishing concoction of soap opera, Saturday matinee, and mythical religion draws to a close, it might be worth explaining to them what is happening. This is what is going on with that: In our time, the 2000 year ages known as Platonic Months have shifted. The Age of Pisces, which began when three Zoroastrian astrologers followed a star to Bethlehem, has ended. It ended technically on January 1, 2001 and the next 2,000-year link in the 24,000 year sun cycle, the Age of Aquarius, began on that date. This is what “Lost” is about.

It’s a little scary how often real life serves up these tidy morality plays. It almost makes you wonder if life has meaning after all.

Why bother to watch “Citizen Kane” when you can see the Masters, live and in high-definition color?
 
Day four at Augusta. Tiger bogeys three of the first five holes, then compensates with an eagle and two birdies on the next four. He is back, it seems.

Please note the headline is only a trick to get a Redskins lamentation past the editor of this political blog … (It worked. — Ed.)

The Washington Redskins won four games last year. By the end of the season, it was painfully obvious that they were many years away from contending for a Super Bowl. Some writers, players and fans quickly forgot all about that and instantly proclaimed the Skins contenders again when they acquired Donovan McNabb earlier this week. Do not let yourself be talked into believing Donovan McNabb can turn the Redskins into a playoff contender. The trade is not a sign of progress the Redskins are making, but a sign of their continued dysfunction.

Zen is the art of doing things in the unconscious, Winston L. King writes in his book, Zen and the Way of the Sword: Arming the Samurai Psyche. Doing without thinking. Internalizing knowing as close as can be got to the core of one’s being. This is Sgt. James, taking off the safety suit with eyes and mind and all of his being for the ordnance only and with total disregard to his own safety. He is Master Chief. He is Zen Man.

Since 2002, the Winter Olympics has been becoming more interesting for two reasons. First, the high point of the Games is getting to be the two hockey games at the end, the women’s and the men’s matches. Second, that healthy competition is increasingly looked forward to as a match between Canada and the Unites States. Real rivalries tell us who we are. In 1980, in the so-called Miracle on Ice, the game between the United States and the Soviet Union claimed our identity as Cold Warriors and as European outlanders with an ancient legacy of contention. But that century and millennium is past and a new century is upon us. And if sports help tell our story, Canada today is our growing friend and competitor. As it should be with two New World countries very much alike.

Either television's star is rising again or this is the final nova, exploding into the Internet black hole. It doesn't matter. Forget primetime. Stay glued to your sets for the Daytime Olympics. Or at least set your DVR.

The television spectacular began last Friday, as we cringed while watching that golf automaton mechanically recite the contrite words and phrases his advisers had programmed into him. It was eerily amazing to see how human he almost seemed to be.

While I am not exactly addicted to the Winter Olympics, I have been catching snippets of NBC’s coverage at least a little bit every day.

I have been most fascinated by the diversity of the Olympics. Not the racial diversity, but the diversity in sporting events. You have curling, snowboarding, speed skating, figure skating. You have the long tracks, short tracks, the moguls, the aerials, the jumpers and everything else under the sun.

No heart attack from digging out. That was a good thing, but there was little to do but spend the weekend mostly hunkered down inside. There were no newspapers, no delivery, but who missed them? We could read them just as easily online. And then, those of us who didn't lose power had plenty of TV to help pass the time.

As the anchors and frozen reporters repeated ad nauseam what we already knew, that it sucked outside, it would not have been much of a surprise to see a crawl at the top or bottom of the screen informing that the meeting of the Global Warming Action Group had been canceled. But the weather coverage was just one of the highlights.

The Tea Party Convention in Nashville on Saturday night was funky and alive. And what a contrast to the formulaic and phony interview with President Barack Obama — a government/network joint-venture infomercial really — that Katie Couric and CBS interjected inappropriately into the Super Bowl pre-game programming.