Andy's Angle

Okay, so it's a sad day in Ohio. King James is packing up and heading to South Beach. Is he now the most hated sports figure in Ohio? Gary Jackson tells me that statistically speaking, Art Modell is still the most despised figure in Ohio sports history. He had some polling data to back him up.

I have a startling admission to make: I'm not all that disappointed. Here's why: while I feel for the true fans, and for the people in Cleveland in general, LeBron James leaving town may be the guy check the Cavaliers need to step up and seal the deal in the playoffs. If they couldn't do it last season (and one could argue that LeBron's performance left something to be desired), they need something intangible to put them over the top. That certain something might just be a little dose of reality: LeBron James is not, nor will he ever be, God brought to the basketball court.

Here's the second thing that most folks probably won't say today: sports fans need a nice tall glass of "wake up and get real." Sports figures, while exciting, energizing, potentially motivating, are just people. They are humans, and as Charles Barkley put it so infamously, not role models to be idolized. More to the point, LeBron should also be considered as "LeBron, Inc.," and one should assume that he will make rational decisions in his own self interest - NOT in the interests of any specific team, city, or state.

In this case, that means that LeBron's most rational move was moving to Miami. He's going to have a much nicer tax base in which to rake his multi-million dollar endorsement deals, and while reports indicate he's actually taking a pay cut on the court, his salary with the team is one of the smallest contracts he'll sign this year.

Likewise, it's in his best interest to actually win a championship, something he's been unable to do in seven seasons with the Cavs. For a player of his magnitude, there isn't much else to accomplish that doesn't involve winning a title somewhere. While I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he'd have preferred to win it in his home town, great players have almost always had to make big moves to win big. Michael Jordan didn't grow up in the Windy City.

My friend Scott McKain has a great business perspective on this situation, most importantly how the reality of the James debacle relates to your business and loyalty.

A final, somewhat related thought: I'm tired of hearing all the moaning about the "big money" in sports, both at the collegiate and professional levels. At the end of the day, players play to earn a living. While their salaries in a single game may eclipse the yearly income of many of their fans, that is irrelevant. The market will bear a fair price for a given set of talents and abilities, and in the case of professional athletes, that figure is often tens of millions of dollars.

With that in mind, how many of those fans have ever left a job, career, or employeer they really enjoyed or respected to take more money somewhere else? A WHOLE LOT of them!! If it's okay for you and me to consider improving our circumstances by accepting a "better" position somewhere else, why hold elite athletes to a less reasonable standard?

This is similar to my position on college athletes turning pro early. Take the example of Greg Oden: Oden could have potentially won a National Title for Ohio State with another year or two under his belt. OR, he could have blown his knees out and never played the first minute of professional ball. As stands now, he signed a good deal while he was healthy, got some endorsement deals of his own, and can now afford to support himself regardless of his future in the NBA.

People act in their own rational self-interest. Athletes are people, too.

"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - General George S. Patton, Jr.

Many of us made the mistake of thinking we were going to war, proudly carrying the battle standard for farm families, consumer rights, truth, justice, and the American way. Staring back across the mud and the blood were a group of idealists one Ohio farm leader popularly referred to as "radical anti-meat terrorists."

The problem is we weren't really fighting terrorists; we were fighting a sophisticated regime of well-funded mercenaries intent on destroying us from within. We thought we were fighting for General Patton across Western Europe, when really we were fighting the Cold War. The good guys blinked, and last week Ohio farm leaders brokered a compromise with the Humane Society of the United States.

General George Patton is one of my favorite historical figures. The greatest wartime General in modern history, Patton was as famous for his efficiency in defeating Nazis as for his inability to navigate politics. Patton's writings are particularly applicable to the feelings of many Ohio farmers following the "Ohio Compromise" between farm groups and animal rights activists.

"America loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser," Patton said of the fighting American. That spirit may explain the disappointment and outrage expressed by many farmers following the Ohio Compromise. The Animal Agriculture Alliance stated flatly: "Ohio's agricultural leadership succumbed to pressures from a national animal rights group that has effectively undermined the authority of the newly-established (Livestock Care) Board."

While I agree with the Alliance position that "HSUS is an extremist animal rights group that does not deserve a seat at the discussion table on issues of farm animal welfare," I also appreciate the position from which Ohio's commodity executives agreed to HSUS' demands. Patton counseled "a good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later," suggesting the Compromise, while not the most popular decision in Ohio agriculture history, may indeed be in the long term best interests of Ohio. Governor Strickland agreed, noting, "Instead of expending tens of millions of dollars and unproductive energy fighting an acrimonious campaign through the fall, both sides will continue investing in our agricultural base and taking care of animals."

However, Ohio's farm groups spent two years warning voters against the evils of HSUS. In fact, as of this writing, the Ohioans for Livestock Care campaign website still cautions "A group of Washington D.C. lobbyists, lawyers and activists want to keep our Livestock Care Standards Board from doing its job with a petition drive to override the Board's authority." What changed?

Three things likely convinced Ohio's commodity and Farm Bureau executives to play "let's make a deal" with Wayne Pacelle. First, the compass of any political campaign is good polling. For the coalition of farm groups to deal, the numbers must have suggested we were fighting an uphill battle. Remember the "undercover video" released a few weeks ago from the Conklin dairy farm? Still think its release was a coincidence?

Secondly, the dollars and cents weren't making sense. "Ballot initiatives are expensive," Farm Bureau's Jack Fisher said when asked why his group agreed to compromise.

HSUS employed the Cold War strategy of spending its enemy into submission. Vowing to spend at least $10 million of its $200 million war chest to pass its ballot measure, HSUS effectively demonstrated their ability to buy the election.

Sources tell me the Ohioans for Livestock Care steering committee was extremely nervous about raising the funds necessary to win.

Perhaps most importantly, Gov. Ted Strickland needed this issue to go away. Strickland was instrumental in creating the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board and received high praise from the farm community for his stance against HSUS.

In February the governor told Farm Bureau members "If we want to eat, and if we want access to affordable and inexpensive food, it is important for the agricultural community not to be hamstrung and to have their hands tied behind their back by those who do not fully appreciate the value of what happens on our farms."

So why would Strickland suddenly become the key broker of a compromise with HSUS? Ask pollster Scott Rasmussen: "(Our) latest survey of the governor's race finds Republican John Kasich with a 47 percent to 40 percent lead over Strickland - for the second month in a row." Strickland won Ohio with 60 percent of the vote in 2006.

As The Columbus Dispatch reports, Ohio's rural counties are critical to winning the state. In the 2004 Presidential election John Kerry easily won the urban areas, but George W. Bush "more than made up the difference in the suburban and rural counties." President Bush carried 72 of 88 counties, and while "Kerry was racking up big margins in the big six urban counties...Bush more than matched that performance by winning 57 percent of the total votes in the other 82 counties, which accounted for 57.5 percent of the Ohio vote."

Rural voters would have turned out in force to defeat HSUS' proposed ballot initiative. Based on the historical data and Rasmussen numbers, high rural turnout could have been bad news for Strickland. Announcing the compromise, HSUS' Pacelle was quite clear that the governor made the first move in negotiating this deal. It seems plausible that the governor is much happier knowing he's taken a major rural get out the vote effort off the table, while freeing up $20 million of radio and television commercial inventory at the same time.

We won't know the true effects of the Ohio Compromise for months, probably years. I remain concerned that HSUS will redouble its efforts to force Ohioans into a radical vegan lifestyle, yet I have hope that the Livestock Care Standards Board will do the job it was created to do. As Farm Bureau's Fisher noted about the compromise, "One of animal agriculture's most vocal critics has agreed that the Livestock Care Standards Board is the proper authority to handle difficult questions about farm animal care." We may have to swallow the bitter pill of compromise for now, but we might stand at ease knowing the ball is in the board's hands now.

Editor's Note: I wrote this column last week prior to the announcement of a compromise between HSUS and Ohio farm groups. More on that in this week's column Thursday...

What do HSUS, labor unions, and the NRA have in common? If you said "not a whole lot," you're right on their principles, but wrong in one very key area: they all received a sweet deal from Congressional Democrats on a shadowy campaign finance bill known as the DISCLOSE Act.

Congressman John Boehner (R-OH), House Minority Leader, is very concerned: "(This) misguided campaign finance bill would give the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) a special exemption to influence elections and spread its radical agenda." More on the NRA/union connection in a moment.

As Congressman Boehner points out, HSUS is not to be confused with your local animal shelter. "HSUS is a special interest group that has been waging war on our agriculture community in recent years in an effort to impose its extreme animal rights agenda," Boehner said.

Waging ballot battles in states ranging from Florida, Arizona, and California in recent years, and this year in both Ohio and Missouri, the organization spends the vast majority of its $120 million annual budget on lobbying and political coercion.

"Ohio's farmers and producers work hard each day to provide for their families, and care for their livestock," Boehner said in a recent email to his constituents. "The last thing they need while trying to fend off HSUS during difficult economic times is Washington stepping in and tilting the playing field against them." Boehner contends that's exactly what will happen as a result of the backroom deal Democratic leaders struck with several special interest groups, including HSUS, Labor Unions, and the NRA, to secure votes in Congress for H.R. 5175, known as the DISCLOSE Act.

Boehner argues that when it comes to campaign finance reform, sunshine is the best disinfectant. "Every dime spent on behalf of a candidate or an issue should be public, so the American people have a clear view of who is supporting what. Passing campaign finance reform granting special interest groups like HSUS special First Amendment rights not only raises serious constitutional concerns, it threatens to devastate our agriculture community and Ohio's economy."

While agriculture is typically a non-partisan sport, here is one of those murky times where politics gets in the way of common sense. What does the DISCLOSE Act do, exactly?

From the Alliance for Worker Freedom: "The DISCLOSE Act marks a stark departure from the traditional treatment of corporations and unions by applying punitive measures to associations in the corporate form, but not to labor unions, even though these groups have traditionally been treated similarly in campaign finance law."

Specifically:

• Companies that received federal money during the financial crisis face restrictions on speech, but not unions: General Motors cannot engage in express advocacy, urging voters to support a candidate by name for example, while the United Auto Workers union can.

• Corporations, unions, non-profits and 527 groups will be required to report donors who give more than $600 if they engage in express advocacy; Average union dues, the source of the majority of their funds, in 2004 were roughly $377.

• Businesses with government contracts worth more than $7 million are not allowed to engage in express advocacy while public sector unions that receive their dues from the taxpayers are exempt from such restrictions.

• Companies where a foreign entity owns 20 percent or more of a company's shares are not allowed to engage in express advocacy while international unions are free to tell Americans how to vote.

Groups like HSUS, the NRA, and Labor Unions received these types of special exemptions to buy their support, and in the case of the NRA, their silence. The NRA, the strongest and most effective traditional supporters of the 2nd Amendment, should be expressing concern this week over the confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court due to her controversial positions on the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms. However, by selling out on the Kagan nomination, the NRA was able to exempt itself from some of the most onerous campaign finance legislation in the nation's history.

In short, special interest groups are running Washington and this Congress more aggressively than they have at any point in history. While the House passed the DISCLOSE Act by a very narrow margin, time still exists for the Senate to apply common sense, and either kill a bill designed to restrict the free speech rights of millions of Americans, or to at least apply the bill fairly to activist organizations like Big Labor and the anti-meat terrorists at HSUS.

The first is a well-reasoned piece on the decision by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association to suspend discussions on its proposed governance restructuring. As I've said in the past, critics of this proposal are missing the big picture, and as Beef magazine writer Troy Marshall puts it, "It’s way past time that we demand more and let it be known that this type of nonsense is beyond counterproductive; it’s harmful to our very survival."

Marshall's comments stem from what he calls a "meaningless" decision by the Executive Committee of the Cattlemen's Beef Board to call for a complete separation between NCBA and the Federation of State Beef Councils. "This is the kind of nonsense the industry can no longer afford. The decision was meaningless in that this was in response to NCBA’s governance and structural rule changes that would have allowed federation members to vote on certain policy issues," Marshall writes. "Never once had it been proposed that checkoff dollars would be used on policy issues."

The second item for your consideration is an article from the Atlantic suggesting that our conventional wisdom that "fat equals flavor" in beef is erroneous. Making some sound scientific observations regarding the role of phospholipids in beef flavor, freelancer Mark Schatzker nonetheless goes off the deep end in his criticism of traditional grain-fed beef: "Now we fatten cattle in feedlots on steamed, flaked corn and bulk them up with hormones, antibiotics, and drugs. The USDA asked for fat, and the industry has become exceedingly good at giving it to them. Beef today looks good, but it doesn't have much flavor."

Blaming the USDA grading system for our perspective on the role of intramuscular fat in making our steaks juicy, tender, and flavorful, the writer spends the better part of the article dissecting thirty-year old research conducted in England on the role of trim and marbling on flavor, versus "invisible fats" known as phospholipids. Based on that single study, the author concludes that we're all wrong about where flavor comes from, and if we'd just consume locally raised grass-fed beef, we'd be enjoying the most wonderful steaks ever!

The author, however, takes exactly three lines to obfuscate the entire point of his article: "Before anyone runs out and declare war on marbling, however, keep in mind that fat isn't the enemy of a good steak, either. It may not add much in the way of beefy flavor, but it does make a steak richer, smoother, and juicier. So as far as that lean piece of venison goes, I suggest frying it in butter." In other words, phospholipids are critical to flavor, but without the marbling he criticized throughout the piece, we'd be eating really flavorful shoe leather.

My Mother used to joke that when she and Dad were starting our family, she ordered boys from the Stork because girls "were too much trouble." There's a little truth in every joke, I suppose, because I can just imagine that many of Grandpa's snow-white hairs were nicknamed for my Mother. Times have changed, however, in the nearly 30 years since Mother got her first son, and boys, it seems, are now the problem children of our society.

Author and therapist Michael Gurian writes about this change of fortune in his book, "The Purpose of Boys."
"Girls outperform boys in nearly every academic area," Gurian writes. "Many of the old principles of education are diminished. In a classroom of 30 kids, about five boys will begin to fail in the first few years of preschool and elementary school. By fifth grade, they will be diagnosed as learning disabled, ADD/ADHD, behaviorally disordered or unmotivated."

Gurian goes on to point out that the challenge of educating boys gets even more difficult after being labeled: "They will no longer do their homework (though they may say they are doing it), they will disrupt class or withdraw from it. They will find a few islands of competence (like video games or computers) and overemphasize those."

Know any young boys who fit that description?

The author stresses that there are differences - some subtle, others more pronounced - between boys and girls of school age. "Boys have a lot of Huck Finn in them -they don't, on average, learn as well as girls by sitting still, concentrating, multitasking, listening to words. For 20 years, I have been taking brain research into homes and classrooms to show teachers, parents and others how differently boys and girls learn. Once a person sees a PET or SPECT scan of a boy's brain and a girl's brain, showing the different ways these brains learn, they understand. As one teacher put it to me, 'Wow, no wonder we're having so many problems with boys.'"

I found Gurian's thoughts in an op-ed at The Daily Caller entitled "In Defense of the Father" by a columnist referred to only as "Anchorman." In his piece, the writer shared his dual concerns over the absence of a strong male parental role in the lives of adolescent men: on one hand a developed hyper-masculinity in which the boy overcompensates for the lack of a male role model and never learns to properly control his strength and anger, or to focus his activity and energy. On the other hand exists the opposite effect, a hypo-masculinity, or what the columnists describes as an absence of appropriate masculinity.

"Portrayals of it abound in popular culture and everyday life," he writes. "Metro-sexualism, the sensitive male, the banning of dodge ball, padded playgrounds, back and chest waxing, feminized scents and colognes, TV commercials that portray the father figure as buffoonish, incompetent or absent."

I've often noted in our coverage of youth organizations like 4-H and FFA the shift in proportion of male to female students engaged in leadership positions within their organizations. The National FFA Organization, for example, reports that of its over 506,000 members, 38 percent are female and that women hold more than 50 percent of state leadership positions. That is outstanding news considering that women have only been allowed to join the organization since 1969. The concern, however, is that we are actively aware - and publicizing - that less than two-fifths of our members are female, and that those students occupy at least half of the leadership positions. My question is, in our efforts to justly establish equality between the sexes, are we losing the boys along the way?

Asking those questions, however, is risky business. Dr. Larry Summers resigned as President of Harvard University due in large part to a speech he presented at a conference on women in science and engineering in which he infamously suggested that the under-representation of women in the top levels of academia could be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end." Summers ostensibly suggested that there are differences in the way the minds of the male and female of the species work, and that one sex may be more gifted in some areas of academia and research than the other. While Summers was figuratively tarred and feathered for his remarks, author John Gray's seminal work "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" sold more than 11 million copies throughout the '90s for helping men and women understand that their minds work very differently.

While it may be taboo to suggest that there are, perhaps, differences between men and women at a physiological level, it is clear that both the absence of a strong Father-figure in the modern home, and the cultural denigration of the male in our society in general are causing significant problems in our society. It's time we recognize that equality and balance mean that we can't leave our boys behind at school or in our communities, and that a Father is a critical role deserving of our respect and appreciation.