Tough Sell

- Will try to get this post up before the internet goes down again. I started it on Monday when service came back up, but didn't finish before it went back down. Time Warner has fashioned a temporary solution with a Honda generator humming away across the street until Con Ed gets its act together (or so they tell us). But I dunno, I guess the generator is running on batteries, so no time to waste.

Pathfork is coming to run in the Breeders Cup Juvenile, and I mention that only because I'm eagerly looking for material to post in time, and because he has an interesting (and mostly turf-based) pedigree rather than that I could really give much of a rat's ass about him coming. Yeah, I suppose there's some appeal about Ireland's "top juvenile" (based on his three career races) coming here to run on a strange surface against what figures to already be an indecipherable hodgepodge of lightly races dirt horses. But it seems like a tough sell to all but the most devoted.

But then again, so is the entire Breeders' Cup event at this point, and most efforts to give it some mass appeal seems to have been abandoned entirely with too many races and the unwieldy (and untelevised) Win and Yer In races leading up to it. Last week they announced with some fanfare an initiative to draw in more foreign-bred horses to the annual Thoroughbred championships. And the reasoning behind this is not to entice new fans with even more unrecognizable names and a complete lack of any competitive context with which to promote the races, increase the anemic ratings on a cable network on which the event is amongst the lowest of its priorities, or make the races the kind of betting propositions that are attractive to those of us who prefer homework to guesswork (though, on the other hand, they could be successfully promoted to lottery players). Instead, the rationale is thus:

"While some of these initiatives are targeted at the overseas market, we believe that building our global Championships and strengthening the Breeders' Cup's international brand will directly support a stronger U.S. commercial Thoroughbred breeding and racing market," Breeders' Cup chairman Bill Farish said in a news release.

And I suppose that one can argue that supporting the high end of the breeding market could have a trickle-down effect on the health of the industry just as you might argue, as Farish no doubt would, that reducing taxes for the richest 2% of the population will boost the general economy (though past experience suggests otherwise). But we've recently seen boom times for the top Kentucky breeders, and look where we are now.

Anyway, Pathfork is a Kentucky-bred by Distorted Humor out of an Irish-bred Sadlers Wells mare who's a 3/4 sister to the BC Mile winner Spinning World; and this is also the distaff family of Grade and Group 1 turf winners Chimes of Freedom, Good Journey, Denon, and Saddex. And also the classy dirt miler Aldebaran.

- The race for Governor of New York is on and.... oh man. This ain't gonna be pretty, though it might be fun. Maybe. Andrew Cuomo is definitely off balance at this point, unsure how to respond to the GOP candidate Carl Paladino. “He didn't expect a real contender," Paladino said. Actually, he didn't expect a crude name-calling boor (as opposed to bore, which Rick Lazio is, and Paladino is decidedly not).

"If a guy says you have no cojones, how do you punch him back, call him an a--hole?" the Democratic gubernatorial candidate fumed in a secret talk to his team, one insider said.

"We have all this stuff [on Paladino] and we're on the defensive," Cuomo groused, the insider added. [Daily News]

"This stuff" of course are, mostly, the infamous racist and pornographic emails that Paladino enthusiastically forwarded to friends and associates, and if you think they're not that big of a deal, then you probably haven't seen them. [WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC MATERIAL] Paladino trotted out the former Buffalo Bills star Thurman Thomas (an ardent Republican [who] is highly critical of the policies and political stance of current United States President Barack Obama) to say that he's not a racist. Guys like Paladino always seem to be able to find some stooge from the offended ethnicity to vouch for them.

But whether or not he is racist isn't the main point here in my view; rather, it's a matter of judgment, sensitivity, wisdom, and class, qualities which Paladino is apparently quite lacking. (Though admittedly, when it comes to New York politicians of any stripes, he's certainly not alone in that regard.)

- The Jets won, and hmmmm.....funny, not many commenters out there this week. Oh, OK, here's this guy again chiming in about Braylon Edward's DWI arrest. I don't at all mind you coming around to give me the business when Gang Green falls flat, and I'm a good sport when they lose, always showing up and posting the appropriate photos that tell the sad story. So don't come trolling around here only when they lose or get arrested or injured. Otherwise I'll send your comments packing just as the Jets did to Tom Brady and company. And speaking of fair weather fans, the 2-0 Fins are up next.