Friday, December 30, 2016

Sports, Politics, and ... "Anti-White Lives Matter" Protesters?

 - Have you ever seen so many one-handed catches in football? It must be the gloves. When I see NFL receivers wearing gloves in 75 degree weather, I am convinced the gloves given them an edge. Otherwise, why wear them?

Better to ban all gloves for eligible receivers in the NFL. Let them have their gloves in the college game, the way they allow college baseball players t use aluminum bats. When the cream of that crop reach the Major Leagues, they are stripped of those rocket-launching aluminum bats and made to prove themselves the old fashioned way - like men, with wooden bats. Strip NFL receivers of those gloves; let them earn their money the old-fashioned way - bare-handed, like men. Maybe, then we can see once more who has "great hands," and who doesn't.


- Have you noticed: Nearly everyone in the NFL has an effective two-minute offense. No one seems to have an effective two-minute defense.

- Speaking of football:  Are we tired, yet, of being remind that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? It's like the losing football team crying out:  "We gained the most total yards!" Who cares?


- Do you know what's wrong with basketball? Too many time-outs, especially at the end of close games. It's pure tedium. I watched this year's WNBA game between LA Sparks and the Minnesota Lynx. Both teams were out of time-outs coming down the stretch. Good. Bang! Bang! Bang! went the finish. It was fun.

Caught this CNN news flash on November 19, 2016:  "White Lives Matter" protesters face off against "Anti-White Lives Matter" protesters in Dallas, Texas.  What the heck is an "Anti-White Lives Matter" protester... and why?

Monday, December 12, 2016

Confederacy Rising

The Confederacy is loving it. Jeff "the Ku-Klux-Klan-don't-bother-me" Sessions is going to be the US Attorney General, and will head the Justice Department. Steve "I-love-the-Stars & Bars" Bannon is to be President Trump's top strategist. "We're taking our country back!" must be the modern version of "The South will rise again."

We often hear people say, "America is a divided nation." Let's be real: All nations are divided in one way or another - between Conservative and Labor, Hutu and Tutsi, Shiite and Sunni, rich and poor. It is natural to take sides. America's divide, however runs deeper than most because of one word: slavery. The Mason-Dixon Line which divided North from South - the Union from the Confederacy - existed long before the Civil War that finished the Confederacy as a physical entity. Relegated to an ideal, that state of mind continues to seethe in the former Confederate states that stretch from South Carolina to Texas.

Slavery is a difficult thing to get past, especially a system of slavery such as the one that existed in America - so rigid, so built to last. It seems, sometimes, that whites cannot get past the fact they once owned blacks. Neither has blacks gotten over that 250 year hump that has metastasized into the meanest callous ever visited upon mankind.

This country has come a long way since the Confederacy's physical body extinguished. But, its spirit lives on; it is divisive by nature. As the poet, Dylan Thomas, would say, it will "not go gently into that good night."