all-star game

Kim Campbell schools the U.S. right, Naomi Campbell’s ‘Frost-Nixon moment,’ and Nabokov was right

Folks, I’m as pumped about the Habs centennial as the next guy. But when six of the seven Montreal Canadiens on the All-Star ballot are leading the vote their categories, even nutters for La Sainte-Flanelle like me have to admit the system has gone pear-shaped. This isn’t ballot-stuffing. This is a cyberfarce that risks turning the mid-season classic into an exhibition game for the host team. Saku Koivu has three times the votes Ovechkin does in the Eastern Conference. He’s got double Alex Semin’s total—and Semin’s the hottest forward in the league, with 27 points to Saku’s 13.

Based on the incredible quantity of saccharine praise Fox’s ESPN’s broadcast team offered the Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton as he belted 28-and-counting “homers” out of Yankee Stadium tonight, I think younger viewers could be forgiven if they concluded that getting hopelessly addicted to drugs and then belatedly discovering functional, adult sobriety was roughly the moral equivalent to winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry.