January is indeed almost behind us. Celebrate with a look back at people who hurt themselves on camera in the past 31 days.

A slideshow on the history of the English pub? Where the first one is named Ye Olde Fighting Cocks? Um, yes please. [Via]

Sad hip-hop news: Clive “Kool Herc” Campbell, whose block parties in the Bronx in the 1970s gave birth to hip-hop, is sick with an undisclosed illness and having trouble paying his medical bills. A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip suggests, “maybe island/defjam, warner, interscope, can pay dj kool herc’s hospital bills?” That would be nice.

“Researchers have found a way to predict how successful a smoker will be at quitting by using an MRI scan to look for activity in a region of the brain associated with behavior change.” This sounds like phenomenal news for people who don’t really want to quit smoking and now have the ability to blame it on their brains!

There are countless reasons that the makers of U.S. policy have been caught flatfooted by the uprising in Egypt. As is often the case in human affairs, the most compelling reason is also the basest: We spend $1.2 billion in Egypt to provide “security” and support for U.S. interests in the Middle East — and all that money buys both parties the privilege of looking the other way as the sclerotic Mubarak regime grew more unresponsive to a restive democratic oppostion.

In broader terms, however, American leaders are puzzled by the uprising because so far it has failed utterly to conform to the “Clash of Civilizations” playbook. That is to say, popular revolts in Islamic countries are supposed to be rearguard Islamic protests against Western modernity, unto its innermost parts. That’s why the confrontational rhetoric favored by the Samuel Huntingtons, Dinesh D’Souzas and Daniel Pipeses of the world typically resolves into dark and foreboding talk of the “existential threat” that the antimodern masses in the Arab world represent to the West. That’s also why U.S. political leaders keen to play on such fears harp on their own gift for descrying “moral clarity” amid all that dangerously muddled tolerance preached by the liberal appeasers who shun the brute fact of evil unloosed among a ghastly group of medieval-minded imam-brainwashed zombies, who hate us because of our freedom.

So the wise men seeking to delimit U.S. diplomatic options in the region are rushing to depict a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood as the gravest threat in the uprising — even though there’s no evidence that the Islamist faction is involved in any real leadership capacity at all, or would come into power. The 1979 Iranian revolution is the most prominent instance of a theocratic seizure of power in the Middle East — and the country’s Shia majority, together with the overall assholic comportment of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, have made the Iranian regime widely reviled among its regional rivals, as the WikiLeaks cables have made abundantly plain.

What’s more, at the level of civil society, Egypt supplies few conditions for a militant Islamic movement — for the simple reason that mass Islamic observance is noncontroversial and already key to much of Egyptian identity. As Haroon Moghul argues at Religion Dispatches, “Egyptians know their religious identity is not under threat.” Despite the secular outlook of Mohamed ElBaradei, who may become an opposition leader, Moghul observes he took part in the “Angry Friday” protest by joining in Friday prayers “before going out into the streets. Whether Egyptians identify with political Islam or secular democracy, their Arabness and Islam tend to be mutually supportive, and certainly not incompatible.” That’s yet another strong point of contrast with the Iranian revolution, Moghul notes:

Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other.

The other argument for popular sovereignty in the Muslim world is far more straightforward: It’s what the vast majority of Muslims actually want. The 2005–2007 Gallup World Survey of more than 30 Muslim majority countries found that, far from hating Western freedoms, most respondents coveted them — especially the freedom of speech and worship. It’s true that they also overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of Sharia law — but that is not a prescription for jihadist theocracy, as witless American commentators and state legislatures are prone to conclude. Sharia, rather, is a cultural tradition seeking to imbue broad ideals of personal conduct under the rule of law — and far from a monolithic regime of hand-amputating, honor-killing and adulterer-stoning one encounters in dispatches from the American right. Here, yet again, the Iranian theocracy has been made the poster regime for a wide panoply of Muslim believers it does not, in fact, actually represent. You’d think a conservative movement so besotted with lip service to the idea of democracy in the Islamic world would pay closer attention to such pesky details.

As Georgetown’s John L. Esposito argues, the ultimate basis for Western antipathy among Muslims is not religion or culture, but rather diplomacy: The vast majority of the world’s Muslims dispute that the United States is sincere in its agenda of promoting democracy in the Middle East.

The same Gallup World Survey shows that:

only 24 percent in Egypt and Jordan and only 16 percent in Turkey agreed that the United States was serious about establishing democratic systems…. Failure to respond to the subversion of the electoral process in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Musharraf’s Pakistan, the attempt ‘to manage’ and determine the process of democratization in post-Saddam Iraq, and the refusal to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza must be avoided if the West, and America in particular, is to avoid the charge that it operates on a clear double standard.

These perceptions of great-power hypocrisy stand out in still higher relief when contrasted with the benign Muslim views of other Western powers, as Esposito notes elsewhere:

while 74 percent of Egyptians had unfavorable views of the United States and 69 percent said the same about Britain, only 21 percent felt unfavorably toward France. These policy disagreements become especially sharp when we compare Muslims’ perceptions of the United States with their views of its neighbor to the north, Canada — i.e., America without the foreign policy. Sixty-six percent of Kuwaitis… reported unfavorable views of the United States, while just 3 percent assented to unfavorable descriptions of Canada.

Perhaps, in other words, it’s long past time for our exuberant exporters of the American ideal abroad to revise some of the most stubborn articles of their own delusionial faith.

Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist.

Oh, what a joy it was for me to watch BYU beat San Diego State in Provo, Utah on CBS College Sports last Wednesday. It had next to nothing to do with the game itself — a mighty performance from white basketball pundit boner-inducer Jimmer Fredette. No, my whole week was made when, at the halftime break, I was treated — all of us were, really — to the sight of Alaa Abdelnaby in the CBSCS studio.

Former Final Four participant and awkwardly oblong center with Duke, Abdelnaby arrived straight from the “Holy shit! It’s that guy!” file. Smiling, wearing a sharp suit, Abdelnaby looked relaxed and polished as he kidded around with his studio mates and offered his uniquely Abdelnabyian insights into the first half of the game.

I don’t remember any of the insights, honestly. Not that they were particularly bad or anything. At least then I’d probably remember them. No one really remembers much of anything studio hacks say at halftime unless they start making absurd, overly bombastic statements (e.g. “If Fredette stays this hot, he’ll be the number one pick in the draft!” Which he definitely will not.). But I do remember the rising elation I experienced at seeing Abdelnaby’s mug grinning at the camera. Right there, talking at me, was the first Egyptian player in the NBA!

CBS College Sports is just one of the many cable channels that have emerged in recent years to accommodate our country’s apparent insatiability for live sports. As a total college hoops nerd, I applaud and support the continuance of this in theory. But there’s an element of the growth of the sports television industry that concerns me and which could prove upsetting if it remains unchecked: ex-jocks forever finding employment.

Sitting directly across from Abdelnaby in the CBS College Sports studio was former Miami (Ohio) All-American and one-time NBA All-Star Wally Szczerbiak. A serviceable player for a while in the NBA, Szczerbiak fits the bill of former jock commentator to a tee. Once a recognizable basketball figure? Check. From Long Island/New York area? Check. Dark-haired white guy? Check. Gelled hair that could pop a balloon and/or double as a weapon in a pinch? Check and check. Adored by hoops reporters for his slight resemblance to a reporter’s theoretical imagined athletic ability and complexion? Oh, checkitty freaking check check.

The other two guys at the CBSCS table were one Jon Rothstein, who I guess I am supposed to just assume is an expert — it turns out, he’s some MSG network guy — since no chyron emerged to tell me why I would want to listen to him. C’mon, people, what am I supposed to do without a chyron? At least I knew who Abdelnaby and Szczerbiak were. The only other guy was the host. He looked and acted like a host. Hosts are there to keep the other guys from having brain freeze, get the whole thing to commercial on time and keep the ex-jocks from losing focus and repeatedly calling players by the wrong name. I have no real beef with hosts insomuch as they avoid talking much.

But as dumb as it is, I actually like color guys and analysts, for the most part. My only real litmus test is that they have to have something to say that’s interesting. It doesn’t have to be about the reverse triple backdoor cut or what they learned playing for (fill in name of former coach with selectively remembered success/respect). Just tell me something I didn’t know already. Here, none of the three non-host guys could do that. In fact, none was honestly necessary. Just three guys (and a host) offering up bland thoughts on a half I just sat through. Seemed like a lot of nothing to me. Were two of them afraid to do it alone? Was it a tryout? The presence of the other guys made it seem like maybe none of them really could get it done solo. Just the four of them all sitting awkwardly around a table in various stages of comfort or discomfort.

By the way, is anyone teaching these guys how to sit? Because if so, they appear to be learning different ways or learning at different speeds. Szczerbiak looked as if he was driving a pimp car that he’d just clicked the three-wheel motion on. Meanwhile, randomly occasional ESPN studio guy and former Notre Dame standout LaPhonso Ellis sits so straight and smiles so much it’s creepy. LaPhonso, you don’t have to sit like that and smile like you just keep stealing glances at Erin Andrews from behind. We get that you’re happy to be employed. I digress…

It’s become a stretch to assume that because someone (a) played basketball or (b) spent a long time near a basketball is an expert and therefore is, by proxy, worth putting on camera. Don’t get me wrong: I understand the irony of someone like me calling this to anyone’s attention. But no one is putting me in front of a camera and gelling my hair up. Though it’d be pretty rad if that happened. I’d probably smile like LaPhonso Ellis the entire time. “Seriously, Scott Van Pelt, this is so awesome!”

My only real qualifier with former players in the studio is they should be someone people remember. Ellis was really good. Szczerbiak, too. Abdelnaby, fine. Every time I see former Ohio State star Jimmy Jackson sitting alongside whatever bronze-voiced white dude he sits across from in the Big Ten Network studio I remember how unbelievably awesome Jackson was as a Buckeye. Same with Mateen Cleaves. But there are so many outlets now, so many channels and games to cover, that we’re getting pretty deep into the bench.

If we’re not careful, such gigs can very easily become a Second-Chance Hotel for disgraced stars and nobodies, especially the deeper you go down the cable food chain. The Big Ten Network at one point had former Iowa recovering cokehead Roy Marble do studio work for them. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go smoothly. Honestly, Big Ten Network, there weren’t any other mildly employed former Big Ten stars? Where is former Hoosier Greg Graham? He was great! If you’re just going to let them pass right over you, Greg Graham…

Or maybe I have it wrong. Maybe stars don’t always make for the best analysts? After all, they were too busy being good to watch the plays develop. That’s why you’re much less likely to see Ed O’Bannon talking up Akron’s three-quarter-court press in a few years than you are Larry O’Bannon.

Then there’s the Doug Gottlieb sub-division. Gottlieb has inexplicably become a go-to college hoops guy for ESPN, but he’s pretty awful. His main vibe seems to be “I’ll piss fans off so they’ll watch.” He’ll toss out an informed comment every so often, but usually follow it up by looking and acting like the guy your friend brings to the bar who ruins everyone’s evening by buying disgusting shots for everyone before leaving without paying. Gottlieb himself was a decent college player — he led the nation in assists despite being literally unable to hit layups — albeit one with a shady past. This in some ways is the epitome of the jock-to-TV arc gone wrong. You trot him out to talk about some Renardo Sidney or Jacob Pullen infraction and a guy who was booted from Notre Dame for credit card fraud starts tsk tsking and shaming kids for what they’ve done. That’s rich, and predictable.

But, whatever. Gottlieb is one guy. The issue is that ESPN has its own farm system of would-be Gottliebs. Guys like Sean Farnham, who apparently was on the basketball team at UCLA in the late 1990s. Farnham came from working out west with other notables from basketball days bygone like Don Maclean and Michael Cage.He’s one of those guys with good looks and enthusiasm and, like Gottlieb and unlike Abdelnaby and Szczerbiak, apparently no fear of offering his opinion on whatever topic you’re willing to have him comment on. If you asked him about the situation in Egypt, he’d have plenty to say on that, too. I guess he’s good looking enough to ditch radio, where he came from, though I have yet to see exactly what he adds. He is buddies with Turtle from “Entourage,” so I guess that means we’ll be seeing more of him? Yay.

At ESPNU — the Double A of Total Sports Networks — the trend of finding guys affiliated with college hoops as on-camera talent seems to have been taken to a new and more depressing level. Rather than pack its stable with former athletes, The U went a step further to become the de facto first phone call for failed and dismissed coaches. Alabama cast-off Mark Gottfried, St. Johns trou-dropper Fran Frachilla, former Eddie Sutton assistant/hangover cure Jimmy Dykes, Bob Knight protégé/whipping boy Dan Dakich are just a few of the assembled “talent” you’ll see on a given night on ESPNU studio shows. For game nights, the ESPN family of networks has even instituted a new feature where, after a timeout, the color man “coach” diagrams some play one of the teams is or might be running on a clipboard while wearing his headset on the sideline. Oh, I get it, it’s cause he used to coach! But honestly, what purpose does this serve except to make these guys sadder? If the guy was that good at diagramming plays, would he really be there wearing that tan Men’s Wearhouse suit and chatting up the dance team during breaks?

I guess instead of griping so much I should be thankful. After all, the preponderance of ESPN and FOX Sports Net and CBS-affiliated broadcasts has at least dragged us away from the old days of regional telecasts like the UK Basketball Network and its cousins around the nation. I’d listen to 4,500 Jimmy Dykes “violent cuts” comments before I watch another Zapruder-quality image of former UK All-American and former miserable Morehead State coach Kyle Macy. But even Macy was better than Kenny “Sky” Walker, who never totally seemed to grasp that folks weren’t listening to hear him and his sweet ass fade haircut talk.

Every school’s fan that suffers through the early season slate must deal with their versions of Macy and Walker, no doubt. For example, Louisville uses Bob Valvano, better known as Jimmy’s brother. I won’t even get into how bad that is … OK, I will. Imagine being locked in a Vietnamese prison cell with the worst person you’ve ever met. Now imagine you can never sleep or cover your ears. Now imagine the worst person you ever met just got cannibalized by Bob Valvano. You’re halfway there.

Of course, as the cable television market continues to grow and move online, there are exponentially more opportunities for these guys to find work. Someone has to do stock halftime interviews for the dead air of ESPN Full Court and ESPN3.com online broadcasts. Imagine my excitement at flipping around on Saturday and seeing Macy on one of the ESPN Full Court halftime feeds giving his “insights.” It was as if I’d gone on vacation and seen my gum-smacking office co-worker checking in ahead of me. Into my room.

I could always stop watching, or turn the sound down. But why does it have to be my responsibility? Isn’t it television’s job to cater to me? I refuse to believe there is this large and vocal segment of the population clamoring for more Kyle Macy or more Doug Gottlieb. Someone is rigging this shit.

CBS recently announced its new announcer lineup for the re-jiggered NCAA tournament in March. Among the new names are Steve Kerr, himself a Jimmer Fredette at Arizona years ago, and Steve Smith, a can’t-miss pro from Michigan State who missed. This, along with the usual batch of Seth Davises and Gus Johnsons and Clark Kelloggs. Now CBS, having partnered with TNT and TBS and truTV (do I even get truTV?), will also cross-pollinate its college coverage with TNT’s NBA team, meaning Chuck Barkley and Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson will bring their shtick to NCAA games. This is great, because what I really hated about the NCAA tournament up to now was the lack of self-important dudes injecting their jock-tainment into my basketball enjoyment.

I guess so long as there is basketball on TV to cover there’s always hope for ever-fattening jocks looking for analyst work. Maybe we can even make a game out of it. We pick the ex-player and CBS or ESPN or whomever finds a place to fit him in. This is how we’ll get Khalid El-Amin bringing us Iona games and Chris “Fire” Corchiani telling us how The Citadel brings the pain. Even if it’s not creating four- and five-man broadcast teams for single games, ESPN or CBS can always create a few new channels to show MEAC and CAA games around the clock, can’t they?

If so, Harold “The Show” Arceneaux, you better get your agent on the horn.

THREE TO WATCH THIS WEEK:

Penn State at #21 Illinois

: Quick: name which of these teams has a better conference record? HINT: It’s not the recently-ranked one. I can’t guarantee this will be brilliant basketball, but I can guarantee that Illinois better not lose this game. Despite dropping four of their last five in the Big Ten, the Illini are still riding early season hopes (hype?). Bruce Weber has been given a few years’ leeway but how long will Illinois continue to accept losing games he should be winning? Meanwhile, Nittany Lions senior Talor Battle has played his team into bubble contention (again). PSU won the earlier meeting, kicking off Illinois’ current slide. Tuesday at 9 pm, Big Ten Network.

Harvard at Princeton: Harvard hired fleeing Michigan coach Tommy Amaker to turn its basketball program into the class of the Ivy League, then turned a blind eye to some decidedly non-Ivy recruiting practices. The result? The Crimson are finally dominating the league. Riding an eight-game win streak, Harvard travels to face their main rival for this season’s league title on national cable TV. Princeton has been reborn in recent seasons under coach Sydney Johnson. The Ivy does not have a postseason tournament, so the regular season takes on added significance as the decider of the league’s NCAA representative. Friday at 7 pm, ESPNU.

#16 Kentucky at #23 Florida: The SEC as a conference is even more down than usual this season. The battle for the Eastern Division will likely come down to these two teams (with Tennessee still possible). They also never much cared for each other to begin with, as despite back-to-back titles this decade, Florida can’t seem to usurp Kentucky as the class of the conference year-in, year-out. Expect more offense than defense from Florida, who will hope the good Kenny Boynton shows up and not the chucker without a conscience. Saturday at 9 pm, ESPN.

Originally from Kentucky, JL Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on politics, culture and sports can be found at The New Deterrence and on Twitter.

Did you want to pick up something with “stopping power” in a 9mm Glock? Get an Arizona state ID and you’re gold — no background check, no recording of the sale, nothing. This Mike Bloomberg-sponsored investigation into “casual gun sellers” at trade shows in Arizona is actually really amazing — particularly when the gun sellers nod and smile while being notified the undercover buyer couldn’t pass a background check. (Mike Bloomberg! Every time you want to start a mayoral recall campaign, he does something awesome.)

Julian Assange appeared last night on 60 Minutes to defend himself and his organization, WikiLeaks. He was interviewed by Steve Kroft, who made some amazingly dopey remarks for a press honcho.

Kroft: Do you want me to give you my characterization of what I think people think?

[No! we yelled at the television.]

Assange: Sure.

Kroft: Mysterious. Little weird. A cult-like figure. Little paranoid.

Kroft’s heavy-handed, old-white-guy shtick created something of an unsympathetic or “hard-hitting” impression, but it’s clear from the resulting program that the show’s producers were very sympathetic to Assange and his cause.

Kroft: There is an element of the press, most of the mainstream press, nobody wants to see you prosecuted, because it could affect the way that they do their business. But there’s also a feeling within the community that you’re not one of them, that you play a different game.

Assange: We do play a different game. And I hope we’re a new way.

Kroft: The point that they’re making I think is that you’re not — you’re — you’re a publisher, but you’re also an activist.

Assange: Wait, whoa. We’re a particular type of activist. In the U.S. context, there seems to be communist activists or something, so it’s a…

Kroft: Right. Agitator.

Assange: It’s a dirty word in the U.S.

Kroft: It’s a dirty word. And people think that what you’re trying to do is to sabotage the workings of government.

Assange: No. We’re not that type of activists. We are free press activists. It’s not about saving the whales. It’s about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling. Why? That is the raw ingredients that is needed to make a just and civil society. And without that you’re just sailing in the dark.

The influence of 60 Minutes on American public opinion has historically been hard to overstate. The program has been on the air since 1968, and while they have made their share of bloomers over the years (the fiasco regarding George W. Bush’s National Guard service, the Biovail affair, accidentally trashing Audi sales in the US, and so on), they go around interviewing controversial figures all the time, and are far from inexperienced at the art of spin. Particularly the olds, I suspect, mostly take their word as gospel. (The show still registers in the double-digit millions of ratings, although those same ratings also show the age of the audience.)

I’d expected 60 Minutes to really go after Assange because the administration wants to prosecute him so badly, but what happened instead is that he was given a massive soapbox from which to promote the core principles of WikiLeaks, one that may well bring public opinion to his side.

In the past Assange has been criticized for grandstanding, for arrogance and recklessness, but none of these qualities were in evidence last night. Perhaps he has been taken down a few pegs by the extraordinary effects of his efforts; it is not too much of a stretch to say that WikiLeaks played at least some part in unleashing the tidal wave of unrest that is at present engulfing the Middle East; you could make this case based on their Tunisian disclosures alone. Or perhaps the editors at 60 Minutes are more sympathetic than we know, or are likely to learn. In any case, Assange’s performance was spectacular. Restrained, intelligent, on point every step of the way.

Kroft: There are people that believe that it has everything to do with the next threat. That if they don’t come after you now that what they have done is essentially endorsed small, powerful organization with access to very powerful information releasing it outside their control. And if they let you get away it, then they are encouraging…

Assange: Then what? They will have to have freedom of the press?

Kroft: That it’s encouragement to you…

Assange: And? And?

Kroft: …or to some other organization?

Assange: And to every other publisher. Absolutely correct. It will be encouragement to every other publisher to publish fearlessly. That’s what it will encourage.

Also encouraging was Assange’s spirited defense of Bradley Manning:

Kroft: You’ve called him as a prisoner of a conscience, correct?

Assange: I’ve said that if the allegations against him are true then he is the foremost prisoner of conscience in the United States. There’s no allegation it was done for money. There’s no allegation it’s done for any other reasons than a political reason. Now, I’m sorry if people in the United States don’t want to believe that they are keeping a political prisoner. But in Bradley Manning’s case, the allegations are that he engaged in an illegal activity for political motivations.

Kroft: People in the United States think he’s a traitor.

Assange: That’s clearly not true.

It is too bad that the interview cuts away after this — an elaboration regarding the fact that Manning appears to have acted out of patriotism, rather than the reverse, would have been helpful — but I suspect that even what we saw will have a positive effect on Manning’s fortunes.

For anyone who doubts that the program was a resounding victory for press freedom in general and for WikiLeaks and Assange in particular, there’s just a bit of anecdotal evidence on the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll attached to the program (which you can watch on line; there’s also a transcript available.) I took the poll this morning, and the results appear on the right; presumably the results on the left came from polling conducted before last night’s broadcast.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

“Life at a publication such as Harper’s is far from easy. The pay is bad, chances for advancement are almost nonexistent (during my tenure at the magazine, only two people on the editorial staff received a promotion due to merit rather than attrition; I was one them), and with each day, the sense that the magazine and the nation’s readers hold less and less in common only seems to increase.”
 — Theodore Ross on having just been laid off from Harper’s after six years

.

Here’s an interview with Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker frontman David Lowery, who apparently has a solo record coming out that I will almost certainly buy.