The Mendoza Line

Back in the day before Geary Boulevard was re-named Uber Street and Van Ness Facebook Avenue, there was a quaint notion known as The Golden Mean, attributed to the Greeks. The Golden Mean meant what it said--that the middle between two extremes is the most desirable.

The Golden Mean was replaced by The Mendoza Line somewhere between the administrations of FDR and LBJ. The Mendoza Line derives its name from a professional baseball player named Mario Mendoza whose lifetime batting average was in the low .200s and who established, symbolically, the absolute, rock-bottom line of tolerable poor perfomance: in other words, for a player to go below The Mendoza Line would almost automatically assure that he would be sent to the minor leagues. The Mendoza Line is now colloquial, with its own special place in the US vernacular, indicating the level at which no compensating quality is enough to make up for a major deficiency. 

There can be no doubt The Mendoza Line's been reached by at least three branches of government--the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial.  The fourth branch, The Media, soon to be re-named Social Media, is hitting about .230, well above The Mendoza line, somewhere between the batting average of SF Giant catcher Buster Posey (.246) and Giant first-baseman Brandon Belt (.229.)