Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1077

The NRA Wants to Protect Senators Who Voted Against Background Checks

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia hasn't given up on passing an expansion of background checks on gun sales. With polls showing that some senators took a hit for opposing the measure, the NRA is working to convince their constituents they did the right thing.

It's a sign that both sides learned a key lesson. After the Senate two weeks ago failed to stop a filibuster of the compromise Manchin worked out with Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, the president promised that "sooner or later, we're going to get this right." One point Obama made during his speech has come into sharp relief: Politics trump policy. Relying on senators to want to fight gun violence isn't going to cut it. Having them see a political cost just might.

Earlier today, Public Policy Polling, a generally left-leaning polling firm, released data from a series of surveys looking at how voters in some states reacted to their senator's vote on the compromise bill, adding to one it conducted last week in New Hampshire. The PPP data focuses on a decline in approval ratings for the senators — Jeff Flake of Arizona, Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Dean Heller of Nevada. That's a tricky measure; lots of things can contribute to a drop in approval ratings.

The more interesting question is buried a little deeper in PPP's results. The firm also asked voters how likely they are to hold the senators accountable for the background check vote at the polls. From that data, it's clear that the vote prompted a negative reaction from those polled. Votes from the six senators to uphold the filibuster, killing the compromise, had a net negative rating from voters at large. (The graph below shows the difference between those saying they were less likely to support the candidate after that vote and those who were more likely.) In every case, Democrats and independents were significantly less likely to vote for the senator. In only four cases did the vote offer a benefit from Republican voters — and even in those cases, the effect was mostly small. In other words: the vote hurt more than it helped, in every case.

There area lot of variables at play here. The margin of error is fairly high, for example. This is only a survey of six senators; others may have seen a different response from their constituencies. Three of those senators (the non-Alaska ones) were the target of ads funded by Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Flake in particular was hammered in an ad for flipping his position on background checks. That kind of air support may have played a greater role in the strongly negative response.

The NRA is banking on the value of ads to move support. The pro-gun group has launched print and radio ads supporting the anti-background check votes from Montana's Max Baucus (who is no longer running for reelection) and Ayotte. If, as the president argued after the measure's defeat, the struggle for these elected officials is whether or not they will be reelected, both sides are working to ensure that the senators at least think they didn't pay that highest cost for the vote.

Which is the last variable at work in those PPP polls. It's a long time before any of those senators are up for reelection — even Begich, who's up next year. The extent to which background check proponents prioritize this vote over everything else the senators have done is a big question mark. Once every six years, voters offer a real assessment of their senators' job performance. How long their memories are is an important question. Manchin may be best served forcing another vote before everyone forgets.

Photo: A woman who lost a loved one in the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, demands an apology from Flake. (AP)

       

Breezy Point, Six Months Later

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MSNBC on Queens after the hurricane Ben Mayer reports from the secluded neighborhood of Breezy Point, situated on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, which suffered from extensive flooding and numerous fires that razed over 100 homes when Hurricane Sandy made landfall six months ago: "A gaping hole remains where 125 homes burned down. Driving along other roads, there is spot after spot where homes, badly damaged in wind and storm surge, have been leveled and only sand remains. ... Laura’s parents, who have been living in Manhattan, do not know when or if they can afford to rebuild. They estimate they have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Far greater is the loss of personal mementos, and the blow to a community that prides itself on not just being close, but familial."

The Atlantic on the true impact of fossil fuels Responding to Charles Mann's recent cover story for The Atlantic, Michael A. Levi argues against the idea that decreasing amounts of fossil fuels will delay or neutralize the threat of climate change. "A shortage of fossil fuels isn't going to save us from dangerous climate change," Levi says. "And plans that depend on one or another technological breakthrough are far too risky to bet our future on. We need to move forward with gas, using it to edge aside coal, even as we push ahead on a host of zero-carbon opportunities. That's the best way to maximize the odds that we'll ultimately be able to deal effectively with climate change."

MarketWatch on our readiness for climate change "Recently, the American Society of Civil Engineers released its latest Report Card for America's Infrastructure, a measure of the condition, capacity, and maintenance of the nation’s vital systems, accounting for their ability to meet future needs and ensure public safety and health," note Ed Maurer and Eugene Cordero. "How did we fare? D+. That composite grade includes things like our energy systems (D+), drinking water systems (D), waterways and levees (D-), roads (D), schools, (D), transit (D) and on and on. The brightest spot was a B- for how we deal with solid waste." They offer good news, though: "Rebuilding the systems that have served us for decades, but have outlived their useful lives, can create millions of jobs. The return on these investments outpaces the economic benefits we would see from other stimulus options."

The Guardian on the U.K.'s climate change curriculum Bob Ward criticizes the U.K.'s decision to omit references to climate change from the state's national curriculum:  "The new national curriculum for geography omits any explicit reference to climate change, indicating only that pupils should be taught about 'weather and climate.' In contrast, current KS3 geography is expected to cover 'interactions between people and their environments, including causes and consequences of these interactions, and how to plan for and manage their future impact'. ... Given these radical changes, it was perhaps not surprising that learned societies and universities have objected to the cuts to climate change teaching and the removal of any reference to its societal impacts or ways of tackling it through mitigation and adaptation."

The Associated Press on fracking's impact on climate change As we detailed today, "The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?" The prognosis remains contentious: "The EPA said it made the changes based on expert reviews and new data from several sources, including a report funded by the oil and gas industry. But the estimates aren’t based on independent field tests of actual emissions, and some scientists said that’s a problem."

 

       

How Jeff Flake Became the Most Unpopular Senator in America

It wasn't easy dethroning Mitch McConnell as America's least favorite Senator, but Jeff Flake has done that in just three short months, a new poll out Monday reveals — and his fall from rising-star grace is not quite the head-scratcher you might think. In November, Flake won his Arizona Senate seat by almost 5 percentage points, but it was a lot closer than "the double-digit lead he held earlier in the year," ABC News reported at the time. Flake, a popular six-time Congressman who won previous elections with as much as 74 percent of the vote, strode into the seat of former Minority Whip Jon Kyl as a face of turnaround for the state and the Republican party. But, oh, how the mighty can fall in a time of guns, immigration, and constant polling.

The Numbers

Public Policy Polling, in their latest survey on the fallout of the recent vote on gun legislation, explains just how much people don't like Mr. Flake:

Just 32% of voters approve of him to 51% who disapprove and that -19 net approval rating makes him the most unpopular sitting Senator we've polled on, taking that label from Mitch McConnell.

Since December, it was hard to imagine anyone unseating McConnell because, according to PPP and despite the Kentucky Senator's internal numbers, the Senate Minority Leader was always' the old curmudgeon who represented the laughable state of America's hatred toward Congress. But whether it's because McConnell played the Nixonian sympathy card or not, that's changed. Polls upon polls confirm that everyone still hates Congress, and PPP is still very accurate despite it's occasional trolling and admitted lefty bias. So what happened to the junior Senator from Arizona? According to PPP's polling, conducted April 25-26 in the aftermath of the gun vote that killed legislation on background checks, it's blowback — Democrats and independent voters have really flaked on Flake: 

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Considering how partisan our government has become, it's not surprising that Democrats in a relatively red state would have strong feelings against a Republican Senator. But, there's a big reason why independents don't like the guy.

The Gun Vote

Did you catch that 58 percent disapproval from independents? Now look at the 71 percent of independents polled who support background checks:

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So, there might be a correlation there. Flake, unlike fellow Senator John McCain, voted to filibuster the background check bill. And PPP's poll shows that Arizonans trust McCain more on guns:

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But ... a Washington Post/Pew poll found that only 47 percent — less than a majority — of Americans felt "angry" or "disappointed" gun control failed. If the American public didn't feel that strongly about the gun bill failing, then Flake's vote didn't really matter, did it? Well, not exactly.

Flake's Flip-Flop

In the days following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Flake vowed not to be swayed by the National Rifle Association. He had an A rating from the gun lobby at the time, and that made him a unicorn of sorts — a Republican Senator not backing down. "I was troubled by that proposal, greatly troubled by that kind of Washington mandate, federal involvement in local schools," he said in January of the NRA's insistence to put more guns in schools. 

And in the days leading to his eventual vote to filibuster background checks, Flake told a mother of a man killed in the Aurora shootings that he still stood by her: "While we may not agree on every solution, strengthening background checks is something we can agree on." That's in his own handwriting.

Flake represents the same state where former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot. He recounted to The New York Times an encounter with Giffords after he said he could not change his vote to join the gun control crowd when it mattered. "I said I was sorry," Flake told The Times's Jennifer Steinahuer, "looking despondent." 

He was probably on to something there. The Post poll points out  that while some people don't really care that background checks failed, PPP shows that Senators Kelly Ayotte, Lisa Murkowski, Mark Begich, and Rob Portman all saw their approval ratings drops after the filibuster vote.

Does It Get Better?

The PPP poll focused mainly on guns and gun policy. But Flake is part of the so-called "Gang of Eigh" that introduced an immigration reform bill on April 18 — a legislative proposal that already has its fair share of conservative critics, and in just 11 days. Flake, in particular, is already being ripped apart for it. That probably isn't good for Flake's approval ratings. 

You know what else doesn't help? Conservative pundits, who aren't fans of the bill and who get a direct line into the ears of Arizonans during drive time, taking it out on Flake. Glenn Beck told Flake on his radio show last Thursday:

[Y]ou are talking to me on this issue like I’m a third grader. Like I don’t understand that we do need to do something on the border ... Could you please, without doing Washington double speak that sounds like John McCain from 1987, tell me how we are actually going to deal with this ... And there are not a lot of people that can come on the show and take this line of fire and do it with grace. You haven’t convinced me. But thank you for coming on.

Apparently, vintage John McCain is not a good thing in Republican eyes. And the right-leaning National Review reported that conservative critics think Flake and the Gang might be (shocker) selfishly acting in their best interest instead of doing their jobs. "Conservative critics of the Gang of Eight’s immigration-reform bill worry that the bill’s Republican backers, well meaning as they might be, are putting politics before policy by letting their desire to win over Hispanic voters blind them to what’s actually in the bill," writes the NRO's Andrew Stiles, insisting that the immigration deal doesn't do adhere to an "enforcement first" (a.k.a. more border security strategy). 

It's possible that Jeff Flake can't do any worse with Democrats and independents, but conservatives still like this guy — for now.

       

Black Voters Are Key to a Colbert Busch Win in South Carolina

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. – South Carolina’s First Congressional District is known for the churning Port of Charleston, growing suburbs to the north, and stately homes with wrap-around porches from Beaufort to Mount Pleasant. The white, well-heeled voters who dominate the district favored Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by 18 percentage points.

This coastal strip is also home to a more blue-collar, solidly Democratic population; about one out of five of the district’s residents are African-American. Their turnout in the May 7 special congressional election is key to an upset by the Democratic nominee, Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

Inside her campaign office here, having come straight from church in their Sunday best, Dot Brown and Ethel Campbell are planning an afternoon of phone banking and door knocking. Local television stations aren’t carrying the only debate pitting Colbert Busch against Sanford on Monday night.

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“Most people we come across tend not to understand the importance of a special election, so you have got to get out and let them know,” said Brown, 67 years old, dressed in a marigold suit and bright pink scarf.

Campbell, 62, who immediately kicked off her pumps once she sat down, said she tries to explain to voters that electing another Democrat to Congress will help President Obama. “I say, ‘You had his back in 2012. Do you have his back in 2013?’ "

But Colbert Busch has flaunted her independence from a president unpopular in most of the district, assailing his budget plan for raising taxes, not cutting enough spending and meddling with Social Security. “Not only does President Obama’s plan fail to put our finances back in order, it would cut benefits for our seniors, which is wrong,” she said in a statement. Colbert Busch also declined to say whether she would have supported Obama's economic stimulus plan in his first term.  “She’s trying to be all things to all people,’’ said Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer.

Interviews with black voters on Sunday found few knew much about the businesswoman and political novice -- beyond the fact that she’s the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert.  If they vote, disgust with her Republican opponent, former Gov. Mark Sanford, is more likely to be the driving force. The governor left office in 2011, over a year after admitting he disappeared from public view for several days to visit his girlfriend in Argentina.

“We don’t need people like him who set a bad example,” said 78-year-old Virginia Rosemond, her wide-brimmed, red hat shielding her from a drizzly rain as left the Baum Temple AME Zion Church. Will she vote for Colbert Busch?  “If I get a ride,” she responded.

Fellow churchgoer Charles Logan, 67, said he “might” vote for Colbert Busch.  “I’m not messing with him,” he said of Sanford. “He left his wife. He left his office. What makes you think he won’t go to Washington and do the same thing?”

Colbert Busch’s campaign did not respond to e-mails and phone calls about its outreach to African-American voters. Appealing to moderate Republicans and independents is also crucial to her success, so there is a political risk in appearing eager to court black Democrats. When she campaigned at historically black Burke High School in Charleston last week, the event was billed as a rally for women voters.

But the campaign’s radio ad linking Sanford to allegations of voter suppression makes her intentions clear. With Isaac Hayes’ soundtrack from the 1971 movie about a black private detective as backdrop, the ad assails a new South Carolina law that requires voters to show photo identification.  A federal court blocked the law from going into effect until after the 2012 election. “Somebody doesn’t want African Americans to vote, and it doesn’t take Shaft to figure out who,” a narrator says in the radio spot. “Tuesday May 7th is your chance to show them they can’t get away with it.”

The spot doesn’t mention that the ID law was signed after Sanford left office by Gov. Nikki Haley. A spokesman for the Sanford campaign, Joel Sawyer, released a written statement when the ad first aired earlier this month that called it a “negative radio ad with some very unfortunate overtones.”

Jaime Harrison, vice chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, defended the spot.

“Voter ID has been a very hot button issue in the African-American community,” said Harrison, who if elected chairman next month would be the first black to lead the party in South Carolina. “Many folks who grew up in the civil rights movement have called it modern-day Jim Crow. The ad will help to pique the awareness of African-Americans in that district.”

Sanford is not opposed to the law, Sawyer said, but he did not recall the ex-governor ever speaking publicly about it. Sawyer also noted that Sanford appointed a record number of African-Americans to his Cabinet and joined the state Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2006 in calling for more diverse appointments to the bench. In 2003, Sanford offered an official apology for the “Orangeburg Massacre,” the 1968 shootings by South Carolina highway patrol officers that killed three black students  protesting a segregated bowling alley.

The uncertainty of black turnout in the May 7 special election comes on the heels of an Associated Press analysis that found blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and largely surpassed white turnout for the first time. If black turnout had matched 2004, Romney would have won in 2012.

In one of Colbert Busch’s only campaign events aimed at African-Americans, she spoke at a black history celebration in February at Summerville High school. “I give her credit for that,” said Ava Graham, a 44-year-old child care worker whose daughter sang with her church choir at the event. Colbert Bush spoke about the impact of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy on her life. “I hope the black community comes out,” Graham said, “because the Republicans want this seat and are going to do what they have to do.’’

       

Guess Who Found the Red-Bearded Exorcist That Brainwashed Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Last week, we learned about a curious character named "Misha," who was described by the media as a red-bearded radical Muslim who performed exorcisms and evidently mentored the Boston bombing suspects. The FBI obviously wanted to talk to this guy, and they have. Authorities stopped short of identifying him, so journalists have been sleuthing. You'll never guess who found him.

The New York Review of Books, typically the place to catch up on some literary criticism rather than breaking news, scooped everyone on Sunday night. It tracked down Misha, whose real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov, living with his parents in a run down area of Rhode Island. And as any sane person would, he doesn't want anything to do with the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev or his brother Dzhokhar, who remains in custody as the chief suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent madness. "I wasn't his teacher," Allakhverdov told NYR. "If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this."

Well, this isn't what Tsarnaev's family said. The brothers' ever press-friendly uncle Ruslan Tsarni told CNN that this Misha character "just took his brain." He said, "He just brainwashed him completely." However, we now know that Tamerlan brain was prime for washing. The 26-year-old Islamist was into all kinds of conspiracy theories and as a regular listener of Alex Jones's tin foil hat radio talk show Infowars. Why uncle Ruslan blames it all on Misha is a mystery, but apparently, the red-bearded exorcist isn't that interesting to authorities either. Allakhaverdov said the FBI is about to close his case.

       

The CIA Gave Karzai Bags Full of Cash for Over a Decade

Afghan president Hamid Karzai has a sugar daddy, and its name is the Central Intelligence Agency. Or at least it had a sugar daddy. For over ten years, American spies greased Karzai's palms about once a month with suitcases, backpacks and even plastic grocery bags full of cash. And not those relatively worthless Afghanis either. According to a New York Times investigation, the CIA delivered tens of millions of dollars in cash right to Karzai's office. "We called it 'ghost money,' " Khalil Roman, Karzai's former chief of staff, told The Times. "It came in secret, and it left in secret."

This is nuts. It's absolutely bonkers. This is the sort of thing you'd expect to see in some Clive Owen movie about Americ's distopic future when we're ruled by mobsters with eye patches or something. Or at the very least, it's something that read about happening in a corrupt Central African dictatorship. In fact, a similar thing happened just a few days ago in Uganda where the president thought it would be a good idea to distribute a photo of him handing a giant bag of cash to some voters to show how generous he was. Bad idea, because handing out big bags of trash typically a sign of rampant corruption. (Well behaved people just write checks.)

Evidently, that's exactly what's happening in Afghanistan. "The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan was the United States," an America official said to The Times. To give you a sense of the scale of corruption, the only other country found to be delivering bags of cash to Karzai was none other than Iran. And what do we get for all that bread? Officials on both sides say that "the agency.s main goal in providing the cash has been to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the agency's influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan's highly centralized government."

Can you believe that? We have to sneak tens of millions of dollars into the palace just so we can talk to the president? What the heck is the CIA thinking? And for that matter, what the heck is Afghanistan thinking? It's not like we just stormed into their country and started a war or anything. Oh wait yes we did.

       

Looks Like Obama's Cabinet Will Finally Get a Little Diversity

Anonymous government sources revealed on Sunday night that Charlotte mayor Anthony Foxx will soon be nominated to replace Ray LaHood as the new Transportation Secretary. If confirmed, Foxx will be the first black person to serve on the Obama's cabinet. He'd also be the first black person even nominated. This news should come as a welcome surprise to critics who think that the president's administration is just a bunch of old white men. They think that because it's true, with just a couple of exceptions. 

It's immediately obvious that Obama wouldn't pick Foxx just for his race, though. The 41-year-old is something of a whiz kid when it comes to transportation and is currently as the deputy general of a hybrid bus manufacturer DesignLine. Foxx is also responsible for jazzing up Charlotte's infrastructure, adding a modern electric tram system, expanding the airport and extending the city's light rail system. These are a few reasons that early reports that Foxx was in the running for the top job at the DOT made so much sense. Foxx's not running for reelection as mayor is also a clear signal that he's up for something bigger. 

As we all know, none of this is final until Obama formally nominates Foxx. Then we have to sit through the confirmation process, and LaHood has to say so long. Only then can Foxx dig in and do whatever environmentally friendly thing that people must be anticipating. Heck, he might even do something with that $53 billion high speed railroad project that Obama used to talk about. Remember that?

       

This Is Not Where You're Supposed to Wear Your Google Glass

Did you expect to see someone wearing Google Glass in a box? Did you expect to see someone wearing Google Glass with a fox? Did you expect to see someone wearing Google Glass with a mouse? How about a mouse? You probably didn't expect to see them in the shower, that's for sure.

Unexplainable tech human Robert Scoble shared this picture of himself wearing those unmistakable  Google Glasses in what's probably the last place Google expected someone to wear them: the shower. Except they're waterproof, he says, so maybe Google is just as crazy.

I wore Google Glass into the shower today. plus.google.com/11109108952772… Yes, they are waterproof. Still work just fine!

— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) April 28, 2013

See, Scoble wrote this ridiculous review of Google Glass where he promised to never take them off ever again. Scoble is a bit of an odd duck in the tech world. He doesn't do much besides take new tech things and then cheer them on and then move onto the next cool thing. He's like a teen being influenced by subliminal messaging in Josie and the Pussy Cats: 

It was Scoble's irresponsible enthusiasm for anything, literally anything, that caused such a strong reaction from most tech observers. "Scoble is an indiscriminate evangelist; he embraces virtually any new technology with inhuman enthusiasm," writes Buzzfeed's John Herrman. "This makes him useful as a sort ofreductio ad absurdum product processor: he takes a new service or thing and gives himself to it, both testing it and inadvertently demonstrating the logical conclusion of its creators' visions." Valleywag's Sam Biddle cut through more of Scoble's ridiculousness and parsed this simple picture upload to what it really is: a marketing ploy. "Glass isn't just the newest status bauble of Scoble and his buzz-crazed ilk: it's a future moneymaker, and this is marketing," he writes. "So the next time he explains how great Glass is for live-broadcasting sex with his wife, a bank robbery, or telling children they're adopted, remember this evangelism for what it really is: publicity."

This is hopefully nadir of Scoble's Google Glass obsession, or at least his obsession with proving he's obsessed with Google Glass. No one wants to know where else he could wear them. Google's already fighting off the impression that Glass will get you beat up, and the adoption of the phrase "Glasshole" to describe Glass wearers. (And there's no debating Scoble is a glasshole.) Heck, most people think Glass is just plain weird. No one needs to see Google Glass in a stranger place or situation than the shower. No one needs to see a Google Glass sex tape. Because really this is further than anyone wanted in the first place: 

This isn't what Google intended

— Laura June (@laura_june) April 28, 2013

       

The NFL Passed on Its Chance to Draft an Openly Gay Player

As the clock wound down during the final rounds of the NFL draft on Saturday, only two kickers were chosen — and 23-year-old openly gay former Middle Tennessee State placekicker Alan Gendreau was not one of them. 

Gendreau caused a bit of a media storm heading into the draft thanks to a lengthy profile from Cyd Zeigler over at OutSports. His story got picked up by a number of outlets and he did the rounds on some of the morning television shows. ABC's Good Morning America did a nice profile on the kid:

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Gendreau could have been the first openly gay pro athlete in pro football if any of the NFL's 30 teams took a chance on him on Saturday. The league has been struggling to keep up with the pressures of social acceptance since the Super Bowl, when San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said a gay teammate wouldn't be welcome in the locker room. NFL coaches asking players about their sexuality during the draft combine -- the regular forum for rookies to show their physical skill to impress scouts -- didn't help matters, especially considering it was against league rules. So Gendreau's story was a potential breath of fresh air for the NFL when other leagues were making huge strides towards acceptance and they were still tripping over their shoelaces. 

To say Gendreau's college career was a bust would be a lie. He was a star kicker on the small Middle Tennessee State football team. They're no powerhouse in a mega conference like the S.E.C., but the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders are good enough to be a division one NCAA squad in the Sun Belt Conference.

His fellow Blue Raiders knew Gendreau was gay, but they didn't care. The whole world didn't know about his sexuality, but his family, friends, coaches and teammates were all well aware of it. He was just another dude in the locker room who made jokes and played football. "Everyone just saw him as a football player," former teammate Josh Davis told OutSports. "He was just one of the guys. The fact that he proved himself on the field, there was a respect for him. He's a good guy. He's a lot of fun to be around. With all the coaches and players, he had a good relationship."

Over his four years with the team, Gendreau racked up enough points to secure the conference's career points record (295). But a mediocre senior season (he went 8 for 14 on his kicks that year) led to him losing coupled with an admittedly "half-assed" attempt at getting drafted in the NFL led him to take a year off from football. He had put that dream on the back burner. He stayed in shape but started working a residential real estate job in D.C.

But this year he was making a renewed push to get there. "Right now, looking back when I’m 40, I can’t say I gave it my best shot," Gendreau told OutSports. "I can’t say I really tried to make it into the NFL. Last year I did it half-assed. If I don’t give it everything I have now, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life."

Part of the reason he didn't get drafted was that he wasn't quite there in terms of professional football shape. He estimated in the Out Sports profile that he was still a month of training away from being ready for an NFL tryout. And clearly there wasn't a big market of teams looking for kickers this year. But injuries happen all the time, and it's only the beginning of the summer. At the very least, he's on the radar now. "I could have him out there 40 hours a day right now, doing TV, radio, and print," his publicist, Howard Bragman, told the Boston Globe. "But the object for this kid is not to be an activist. Yeah, he’s gay, and that’s all good. But the story, what he wants to do, is for him to make it to the NFL."

So at least we know he's focused. Gendreau should be in shape on time for training camps to begin at the end of the summer. That'll be his next chance to crack an NFL roster. You never know, he could get signed as an undrafted free agent. It's happened before with kickers. You might know this one guy. He kicked for the New England Patriots a few years back. He wasn't so bad, and he didn't get picked in the draft either. 

       

Michael Bay and The Rock 'Gain' Just Enough to Win the Weekend

Welcome to the Box Office Report, where we're reluctant to live in a world where The Rock is a real movie star. 

1. Pain & Gain (Paramount): $20 million in 3,277 theaters

Didn't you kind of love it when The Rock's movie career was mostly filled with duds like The Tooth Fairy? Are you as hesitant about this year -- the year where The Rock has already had three successful movies come out -- and it's not even May 1st yet? This $20 million haul is sort of disappointing for Michael Bay, the guy used to making zillions off mega movies like Transformers. (Maybe they shouldn't have marketed Pain & Gain by comparing it to the Coen brothers? Don't confuse people. Compare it to Bad Boys.)

But we still haven't seen what is inarguably his biggest movie of the year, Fast & Furious 6. And that thing it going to make a mint. Sure, you could make the case that in each movie he's walking tall on the shoulders of bigger stars and bigger franchises (Channing Tatum in G.I. Joe, Mark Wahlberg and Michael Bay in Pain & Gain, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker in Fast & Furious) but he's still there. Despite the other guys, he's still one of the biggest names in those movies and huge part of their success. I think I need to lay down. This is all a little too much. 

2. Oblivion (Universal): $17.4 million in 3,792 theaters [Week 2]

Someone on Twitter said this last week, but because of the service's archival limitations and my not remembering who it was I'll say it again here: Oblivion's success doesn't say anything about how good a movie it is. It says Tom Cruise is still a bankable movie star. 

3. 42 (Warner): $10.7 million in 3,405 theaters [Week 3]

It's disappointing that 42 ended up being, by all accounts, competent but unexceptional. Jackie Robinson deserves so much more than that. You should listen to this Grantland podcast that has some fun history on past Jackie Robinson biopic developments. 

4. The Big Wedding (Lionsgate): $7.5 million in 2,633 theaters

This movie looks disturbingly tolerable for a romantic comedy with Katherine Heigl in it. 

5. The Croods (Fox): $6.6 million in 3,283 theaters [Week 6]

Here's something that might blow your mind: The Croods is the second high grossing movie of the year so far. Ahead of Identity Thief and behind Oz: the Great and Powerful, this animated flick has racked up nearly $165 million.