{"id":46,"date":"2012-07-27T16:57:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T16:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/2012\/07\/27\/incredibly-stupid-letters-to-the-editor-1-dream-team-nightmare\/"},"modified":"2019-04-01T10:41:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T14:41:57","slug":"incredibly-stupid-letters-to-the-editor-1-dream-team-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/2012\/07\/27\/incredibly-stupid-letters-to-the-editor-1-dream-team-nightmare\/","title":{"rendered":"Incredibly Stupid Letters to the Editor #1: Dream Team Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"
I have been planning this series of occasional blog posts for some time now. \u00a0My local newspaper, the Citizens’ Voice <\/a>of Wilkes-Barre, PA often features very silly letters to the editors. \u00a0In fact, I had planned that they would provide the source material for the inaugural post in this series until I read something incredibly stupid <\/b>in the July 30, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated<\/a><\/i>. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Earlier in the month, SI<\/i>\u00a0ran a very interesting article about the 1992 United States Men’s Olympic Basketball team, otherwise known as the “Dream Team”<\/a>. \u00a0This was this first Olympics when NBA players were allowed to compete, and the Dream Team dominated the Barcelona Olympics. \u00a0In this week’s issue, SI <\/i>ran the following incredibly stupid<\/b>\u00a0letter to the editor:<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

What Could’ve Been<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With all the hype over the 20th anniversary of the Dream Team, most fans are forgetting that there were two squads, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, that could have given the Dream Team a run for its money had their countries not dissolved just before the Barcelona Games. \u00a0The Soviets were the defending gold medalist from the 1988 Games, and Yugoslavia was the ’90 FIBA \u00a0world champion. \u00a0It is a tragedy that colossal matchups among the three basketball superpowers never occurred in ’92.<\/i><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0C. Fred Bergsten, Annandale, VA<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
If you just read the letter, I am sure that you can spot the stupidity: \u00a0essentially Mr. Bergsten is upset that the Iron Curtain fell because it cost him the chance to watch a basketball game. \u00a0 Hey, any sports fan can relate to a certain degree. \u00a0I mean, what baseball fan wouldn’t want to have the chance to see Ty Cobb bat against Roger Clemens? \u00a0What devotee of the sweet science wouldn’t want to see how Joe Louis would handle himself against Mike Tyson? \u00a0But of course, this is impossible because time travel doesn’t exist. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, Mr. Bergsten is not wishing for the chance to see long dead legends compete against modern stars; instead, he thinks it is a “tragedy” that the USSR couldn’t put together a basketball team in 1992. \u00a0Most normal people would think it was a “tragedy” that the USSR was a communist, totalitarian state that jailed, persecuted and killed millions of its citizens in its seven decades of existence. \u00a0Most normal people would think that the end of the USSR was a victory for freedom and human rights, as well as the end of the Cold War that had forced the world to live under the threat of global thermonuclear war since the 1950’s.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
But C. Fred Bergsten is not “normal people”. \u00a0I don’t say this because I am trying to score cheap rhetorical points on a benighted basketball fan. \u00a0No. \u00a0This guy is actually a famous famous man. \u00a0In fact, I have given him short shrift above–I should have called him “Dr. Bergsten”.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n\"\"\"\"According to our friends at Wikipedia<\/a>, there is a C. Fred Bergsten who “is an American economist, author, and political adviser. He has served as Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the\u00a0<\/span>U.S. Treasury Department<\/a>\u00a0and has been director of the\u00a0<\/span>Peterson Institute for International Economics<\/a>, formerly the\u00a0<\/span>Institute for International Economics<\/i>, since its founding in 1981. In addition to his academic work he makes his opinions known to the policy making community and engages with the public with television appearances<\/span>\u00a0writing for influential periodicals such as\u00a0<\/span>Foreign Affairs<\/a>\u00a0magazine<\/span>\u00a0and by writing books.” \u00a0That is pretty interesting, but there is no way that\u00a0THIS<\/b>\u00a0C. Fred Bergsten could possibly be the person who wrote our incredibly stupid<\/b>\u00a0letter to the editor, right?<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
So then I used Google to search for “C. Fred Bergsten” and “Annandale”<\/a>. \u00a0It seems that there is a Mrs. Virginia Wood Bergsten who lives in Annandale with her husband Dr. C. Fred Bergsten. \u00a0That was confirmed in the Wikipedia entry. \u00a0And there seems to only be one C. Bergsten<\/a> in Annandale, who lives in a very nice brick house built in 1964<\/a>. \u00a0According to the Petersen Institute website, Dr. Bergsten “<\/a><\/span>was the most widely quoted think-tank economist in the world during 1997\u20132005<\/a><\/span>\u00a0“<\/a>. \u00a0He is a prolific author<\/a> as well. \u00a0But nowhere does it mention that this man, who “d<\/a><\/span>uring 1969\u201371, starting at age 27…coordinated US foreign economic policy in the White House as assistant for international economic affairs to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the National Security Council<\/a>.” was sorry to see the end of the Soviet Union. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Dr. Bergsten is still in the news, including a nice article in the recent edition of Foreign Policy<\/a>, in which the \u00a0“\u00e9minence grise<\/i>\u00a0in the world of international political economics” complains that “[t]<\/span>he problem is that the individuals who are at the top of the foreign-policy hierarchy, both at State and at the National Security Council, tend to be less than sophisticated, shall we say, about economic issues.” \u00a0But fortunately these unsophisticated, na\u00efve buffoons can turn to Dr. Bergsten. \u00a0Because there certainly has never been a more sophisticated analysis of the geopolitics of the Cold War than this:<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

It is a tragedy that colossal matchups among the three basketball superpowers never occurred in ’92.<\/i><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0C. Fred Bergsten, Annandale, VA<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/div>\n

Views: 248<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been planning this series of occasional blog posts for some time now. \u00a0My local newspaper, the Citizens’ Voice of Wilkes-Barre, PA often features very silly letters to the editors. \u00a0In fact, I had planned that they would provide the source material for the inaugural post in this series until I read something incredibly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[285,284,286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annandale","category-c-fred-bergsten","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}