So, it turns out that Sarah Palin wasn't entirely wrong when she -- allegedly -- butchered her history regarding the "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."
Pity. You don't know how much I wish she was. I'd consider her one of the lighter lightweights on today's American political scene, except that she continues to be much too divisive not to take seriously at some level.
But just as nobody's right all the time, nobody's wrong all the time either. Not even Sarah Palin, as it turns out.
In 25 (or so) words or less, Palin turned Paul Revere's ride from a warning to colonists that the British Army was on the move to something in the order of an anti-gun control mission.
Palin may have the facts somewhat correct, but she's got the context horribly wrong. It was much different time -- obviously. If you're trying to launch an insurrection against the established authority, it's realistic to expect that you need weapons at some point. You need to defend yourself against reprisal.
That makes sense. It also makes sense that these weapons are not going to be in plain view, where they can be seized in a matter of minutes. It also makes sense that the established authority -- threatened as it obviously is -- is going to do whatever it can to seize those arms to rid itself of the problem.
Today, we ARE the established authority. And we'd better hope that another insurrection doesn't come up and bite us someday, because I suspect the results won't be very pretty. And I can almost guarantee that the people who cry the loudest against some form of reasonable gun control will not garner much sympathy from whatever forces may ultimately bring the government down. And to me, that's the absolute irony of the whole issue.
But back to Sarah. I think half the problem here is that she stumbled along, sounding as if she was making the thing up as she went along. That's not uncommon in politics, where candidates (or would-be candidates in her case) often have to think on their feet and sound intelligent when hit between the eyes with questions they don't expect. Slip up, just once, and you own it for life.
During the campaign, Barack Obama said he'd visited all "58 states." Now, everyone (and even, I'm sure, Obama) knows there are only 50. But there are territories where citizens vote. And if you've been asked a question at the end of a day in which you might have jetted into four or five states, I can see where you might, just out of sheer fatigue, say the wrong thing. It was harmless. And our president does, I'm afraid, have a tendency to give out flip answers sometimes ... oblivious to how they might sound to (and how they might be construed by) his opponents.
Palin's rambling version of Paul Revere's ride does, however, contain quite a few elements of truth. The first is the obvious one. The Redcoats were going to Lexington and Concord to seize weapons. They weren't interested in having a fight on their hands. Who really is? I mean, other than the U.S., which has -- in its recent history -- gone out of its way to initiate military action.
It's been said that the British also wanted to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, but that one's still in play. It's also been said that arresting Hancock and Adams was the last thing Gen. Gage wanted to do, lest the move inflame already-intense feelings by the colonists (who were, after all, still British subjects) toward the authorities.
But it is absolutely correct that the Redcoats were massing, and were about to cross the Charles, and ride into Concord and Lexington to seize weapons. Paul Revere and William Dawes got ahead of them. In fact, the colonists had set up an intricate warning system a few years earlier for this very purpose: to make sure the militants were caught by surprise by the British regulars.
Paul Revere was also confronted by the British at a checkpoint, and he did tell them that he and his fellow couriers had warned the countryside that they were on march ... and there would be a healthy contingent of Minuteman soldiers to greet them when they got to their destinations. But like everything else in life, context is key. He certainly didn't set out to do that. That would have almost made him a traitor.
By the time the "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" was over, there were many, many colonists "sounding the alarm to every Middlesex Village and Farm," which -- basically -- consisted of what is now Cambridge, Somerville, Medford and Arlington. And we all know what happened after that.
I guess what I object to is Palin's hints that Paul Revere's ride was some sort of lesson about the sanctity of weapons. In the context of the times, maybe it was. But that was a much different era, and the purpose for having weapons was much different too.
If anyone's ever seen "Assume the Position" with Robert Wohl, he said one thing about the American Revolution that -- sarcastic or not -- kind of rings true. He said the movement was led by "rich, white men who didn't want to pay taxes." There are still plenty of them around.
One of the frustrating things about U.S. history is that what we learn in grammar school (and even high school) is a purified version of what really happened. And it does make you wonder how our times are going to be portrayed 300 years down the road.
The reality is that revolutions don't just happened. They evolve over a period of years ... sometimes decades. It took an incredibly long time for the seeds for the American Revolution to sprout. The issues that exploded in 1775 were born 12 years earlier, at the conclusion of the French-Indian war, when the British upped the tax ante (as well pass enacting other measures), citing the high costs of keeping the American colonies in the empire.
There were several boiling points ... the two most notable being the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Part (1773). There were many other smaller fires that erupted before shots were fired in Lexington and Concord (and that's Concord Massachusetts, lest any congresswomen from Minnesota gets confused).
As a footnote to all of this, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861, just as South Carolina was about to secede. Longfellow was an avowed abolitionist, and the poem was undertaken as a means to rally Northerners to the cause of saving the union. He cited Paul Revere (some historians note, cynically, that it's easier to rhyme words with "Revere" than it is some of the others who also participated in the ride) as a courageous man ... and said that history favored such action.
It is not entirely accurate, both in small details in in the bigger picture. For example, Revere did not receive the lantern signals from the Old North Church. It was he who devised them.
He did not row himself across the Charles ... he was rowed.
It wasn't just Paul Revere who rode through the countryside. It was a series of men, some of whom have not survived history, and it was part of an elaborate warning system devised to alert colonists in a hurry that the British regulars were on the march.
No matter. As Wohl said in "Assume the Position," "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
That in itself is a line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." And it means if a legend has taken hold, it's useless to fight it with facts. The legend is what endures.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Some morning-after thoughts
So what happens when two of the proudest, most traditional National Football League franchises meet in the Super Bowl?
The team with the most long-standing tradition ends up winning. And I'm kind of happy about that.
When I was a kid, the Patriots were an American Football League franchise -- and a bad one at that. So we had to root for other teams if we wanted to experience the exhilaration of winning ... at least in football.
Since all we ever saw up here were New York Giants games on TV, I adopted Y.A. Tittle as my go-to quarterback (soon to be supplanted by Johnny Unitas when I got a little older).
But when it came to teams, and coaches, and legacies, and all the things that make sports so meaningful in the lives of their fans, I was a Green Ban Packers fan. Some of this might have to do with the fact that one of my favorite high school teachers was a big Vince Lombardi guy (he had us convinced that he was personal friends with Vince). That was my freshman year of high school, when The Packers won the Ice Bowl over the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Kramer threw the celebrated "instant replay" block on Jethro Pugh that allowed Bart Starr to sneak in with the game-winning touchdown (imagine, having a name like Jethro Pugh ... I half expect to hear him singing Aqualung!).
The Steelers were official NFL doormats until 1969, when they hired Chuck Noll, who was the defensive coordinator for the Colts team that the New York Jets upset in 1969 (little known fact; he also interviewed for the Patriots head coaching job that ended up going to Clive Rush; how history might have been different, eh?).
With Noll, the Steelers slowly transformed themselves into an NFL power, with Mean Joe Greene, Franco Harris, Rocky Bleier, Terry Bradshaw (didn't like him then; like him even less now) and Lynn Swann, et al. Ever since, the Steelers have been one of the model franchises in the NFL, despicable as they can be sometimes, and have more Super Bowl victories (6) than any other NFL team.
But the Steelers are Johnny-come-latelies compared to Green Bay, so in this case, historic tradition won out over recent tradition.
And I'm glad for a number of reasons. First, it's tough for me to root for anything good to happen to Ben Roethlisberger. If ever there's a man who needs to have Humble Pie thrown in his face -- Three Stooges style -- it's Big Ben, who -- twice within a calendar year -- was accused of rape and finally suspended for four games for conduct detrimental to the image of the NFL (whatever that is!).
And the idea of seeing him "redeemed" by winning a Super Bowl, as is so often the case in pro sports, was nauseating to ponder.
Second, it's tough not to like this year's Packers. They are living proof of the age-old cliche that injuries are not to be used as excuses, but circumstances to overcome. The Packers had 15 players -- many of them projected starters -- on injured reserve. They lost three of their key players (Charles Woodson, Donald Driver and Sam Shields) during the game, yet absorbed the hit and hung on after going up 21-3. That is something you can truly admire.
You had a sense that the Packers learned an awful lot about themselves in that oh-so-close loss to the Patriots in December, when Rodgers was out with a concussion and their backup quarterback almost pulled off the upset of the year.
Third, how can you root against Aaron Rodgers? Brett Favre's monstrous and monumental ego kept Rodgers on the bench perhaps a year or two longer than he should have been, yet you never heard him complain; never heard of him wanting out. He waited his turn, said all the right things, and performed well when he finally got his chance.
All season long, Rodgers has been mentioned in the same sentence with all the other NFL elite quarterbacks, and all season long my attitude has been "win something before you allow yourself to be Tony Romo'd." Sunday, was clearly his time. You don't get many opportunities to experience your time, and the great ones recognize this and rise to the occasion. Tom Brady's "time" came early in his career and he was smart enough to realize it and respond. Romo's time may have passed, and he's never capitalized. Rarely does your talent transcend your accomplishments. Peyton Manning and Dan Marino were great quarterbacks despite never having won a Super Bowl. But that is rare. Most other quarterbacks need at least one trophy.
It couldn't have been laid out any clearer for Rodgers. His defense was depleted, and his No. 1 go-to receiver was out. The receivers who could play were dropping passes as if the ball was a collection of hot coals. If the Packers were going to win Sunday, Rodgers was going to have to get them there.
He didn't have his best game ever. The Steelers do play defense, and they made it a pretty tough slog for the Packers offensively. They were hoist upon their own petard by coughing up the ball three times (two picks by Worthlesberger ... YES!) and Green Bay scored on all three of them.
That's OK. Like I said, when opportunity knocks, you answer the door and embrace it. When Green Bay had to put together a drive to eat up some clock and keep the Steelers at bay, Rodgers engineered one. True, it only resulted in a field goal.
The Packers, for reasons I really don't understand, went exclusively with the pass, which -- you'd think -- would have made Rodgers a sitting duck. Instead, he never got sacked. And if you factor in the passes that were right in his receivers' hands that were dropped, Rodgers was incredibly accurate.
As Al Davis was so fond of saying, "just win baby." That's all. Win. This isn't theatre (well it is in some cases, but not when it comes to the final score). You don't get extra points for drama. If your team has more points than the other team when the gun goes off, whatever multitude of sins potentially waylaid you along the way are quickly forgotten. Especially in a championship game.
So, you have to give Rodgers his props for rising to the occasion. Because we all know that had the Packers lost, Rodgers would have been in for a boatload of blame.
Finally, and strictly from my perspective, Woodson -- who is a very good player -- finally gets a ring. Woodson, you may recall, was the defensive back who stripped Brady of the ball in that 2002 Snow Bowl in Foxborough ... the play that introduced to all of us who'd never heard it "The Tuck Rule."
Oakland Raiders fans treat the implementation of "The Tuck Rule" as if it's the football equivalent of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. But while I think it was a terrible call (or, at least, a terrible rule), it isn't as if incompetence has never been an issue in pro sports. This might have been a bit more egregiously incompetent, but there isn't a team out there that hasn't felt as if the officiating crew represented the 12th man on its opponent's side.
But while Raiders fans boo-hoo about how the team got jobbed (which, translated, means they were deprived of experiencing that rush of winning a championship ... which I totally understand as Ed Ambrister is still standing in front of Carlton Fisk today ... and Jorge Orta still hasn't touched first base), what about Woodson?
If the Raiders got jobbed, how do you define what happened to Woodson? He was the hero. He saved the day for the Raiders ... clinched what would have been a heroic victory, on the road, in a freakin blizzard ... the stuff of legends.
Instead, the play is overturned by an NFL rule that seems to me to forever blur the definition of "fumble." Hey, I like the Pats as much as anyone else who grew up in Boston, but if you deny the fact that this single play could easily mean the difference between "dynasty" and "just another one-and-done playoff team," you're delusional. Well, there is the matter of Belichickian skulduggery too ... but we're not talking about that now.
Woodson has never forgotten ... nor would I if it had happened to me ... nor did Ray Hamilton (he of the phantom "roughing the passer" call in 1976) ever forget what happened to him (just thought I'd throw that in to remind Raiders fans that they've benefited from some outrageous calls too).
Woodson was having a whale of a game Sunday until he got hurt. And it would have been terrible had Roethlisberger been able to pick apart a depleted Packer secondary affected by his and Shields' absence, and ended up winning the game. First you lose a chance at a title because of the zebras; and then you break your collarbone and watch a truly detestable quarterback engineer the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.
Only this time the Packers hung on, and Woodson finally gets to experience what it feels like to win this thing.
So, this was the best possible outcome. Big Ben will have to wait a year for true redemption, NFL-style (maybe even longer if there's a lockout), and a group of guys who sucked it up when things got tough and found a way to win despite all their setbacks get to have a parade. For once, the good guys won.
----------
What's left are some random observations ...
I don't generally pay attention to the commercials, but the people I was with Sunday were riveted to them. There wasn't one of them that stacked up to the best from other years, but the ones that stood out were the little kid dressed as Darth Vader in the VW commercial; watching Rosanne Barr get steamrolled; watching the idiot tormenting the little pug dog get blown away; and the guy who sends an e-card to his honey for Valentine's Day and tells her, "I really think your rack is unreal." That one caused a splort ... On the other hand, the guy who licks everyone's fingers after they've eaten Doritos was creepy ... The less said about Christina Aguilera's butchery of the National Anthem the better, except that it really bothers me when people try to put their "personal stamp" on it. It's not about you, Christina and other like you. Sing the damn song straight up, and maybe you'll remember the words ... The Black Eyed Peas were awful. Whether that was just the sound, or I'm becoming my mother and father is subject to debate. But the show was terrible ... a complete waste of time ... There were some regurgitation moments, such as when the camera caught Cameron Diaz feeding popcorn to Alex Rodriguez ... a true "blech!" moment ... I got a lot of email from people celebrating the fact that President Obama's absence from the Super Bowl (he said he was going to go if the Bears had won) was a good thing for our national budget. Yet there were George W. and Laura Bush sitting in Jerry Jones' box, with Condi Rice. You don't suppose there was a detail assigned to them, do you? ... When I watch football, I'm prone to thinking out loud and getting emotional, much to the chagrin of those faced with the prospect of being in the same room with me. But I swear, Troy Aikman miked my house. Every time I made a pronouncement about how the game was going, Aikman followed a minute later by saying the same thing! ... Like just about everyone else who commented on it, I thought Michael Douglas equating the Super Bowl with some of American history's most iconic events was juuuuuust a bit over the top ... And, finally, what's with Sam Elliott's white hair ... and black eyebrows?? I couldn't watch!
The team with the most long-standing tradition ends up winning. And I'm kind of happy about that.
When I was a kid, the Patriots were an American Football League franchise -- and a bad one at that. So we had to root for other teams if we wanted to experience the exhilaration of winning ... at least in football.
Since all we ever saw up here were New York Giants games on TV, I adopted Y.A. Tittle as my go-to quarterback (soon to be supplanted by Johnny Unitas when I got a little older).
But when it came to teams, and coaches, and legacies, and all the things that make sports so meaningful in the lives of their fans, I was a Green Ban Packers fan. Some of this might have to do with the fact that one of my favorite high school teachers was a big Vince Lombardi guy (he had us convinced that he was personal friends with Vince). That was my freshman year of high school, when The Packers won the Ice Bowl over the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Kramer threw the celebrated "instant replay" block on Jethro Pugh that allowed Bart Starr to sneak in with the game-winning touchdown (imagine, having a name like Jethro Pugh ... I half expect to hear him singing Aqualung!).
The Steelers were official NFL doormats until 1969, when they hired Chuck Noll, who was the defensive coordinator for the Colts team that the New York Jets upset in 1969 (little known fact; he also interviewed for the Patriots head coaching job that ended up going to Clive Rush; how history might have been different, eh?).
With Noll, the Steelers slowly transformed themselves into an NFL power, with Mean Joe Greene, Franco Harris, Rocky Bleier, Terry Bradshaw (didn't like him then; like him even less now) and Lynn Swann, et al. Ever since, the Steelers have been one of the model franchises in the NFL, despicable as they can be sometimes, and have more Super Bowl victories (6) than any other NFL team.
But the Steelers are Johnny-come-latelies compared to Green Bay, so in this case, historic tradition won out over recent tradition.
And I'm glad for a number of reasons. First, it's tough for me to root for anything good to happen to Ben Roethlisberger. If ever there's a man who needs to have Humble Pie thrown in his face -- Three Stooges style -- it's Big Ben, who -- twice within a calendar year -- was accused of rape and finally suspended for four games for conduct detrimental to the image of the NFL (whatever that is!).
And the idea of seeing him "redeemed" by winning a Super Bowl, as is so often the case in pro sports, was nauseating to ponder.
Second, it's tough not to like this year's Packers. They are living proof of the age-old cliche that injuries are not to be used as excuses, but circumstances to overcome. The Packers had 15 players -- many of them projected starters -- on injured reserve. They lost three of their key players (Charles Woodson, Donald Driver and Sam Shields) during the game, yet absorbed the hit and hung on after going up 21-3. That is something you can truly admire.
You had a sense that the Packers learned an awful lot about themselves in that oh-so-close loss to the Patriots in December, when Rodgers was out with a concussion and their backup quarterback almost pulled off the upset of the year.
Third, how can you root against Aaron Rodgers? Brett Favre's monstrous and monumental ego kept Rodgers on the bench perhaps a year or two longer than he should have been, yet you never heard him complain; never heard of him wanting out. He waited his turn, said all the right things, and performed well when he finally got his chance.
All season long, Rodgers has been mentioned in the same sentence with all the other NFL elite quarterbacks, and all season long my attitude has been "win something before you allow yourself to be Tony Romo'd." Sunday, was clearly his time. You don't get many opportunities to experience your time, and the great ones recognize this and rise to the occasion. Tom Brady's "time" came early in his career and he was smart enough to realize it and respond. Romo's time may have passed, and he's never capitalized. Rarely does your talent transcend your accomplishments. Peyton Manning and Dan Marino were great quarterbacks despite never having won a Super Bowl. But that is rare. Most other quarterbacks need at least one trophy.
It couldn't have been laid out any clearer for Rodgers. His defense was depleted, and his No. 1 go-to receiver was out. The receivers who could play were dropping passes as if the ball was a collection of hot coals. If the Packers were going to win Sunday, Rodgers was going to have to get them there.
He didn't have his best game ever. The Steelers do play defense, and they made it a pretty tough slog for the Packers offensively. They were hoist upon their own petard by coughing up the ball three times (two picks by Worthlesberger ... YES!) and Green Bay scored on all three of them.
That's OK. Like I said, when opportunity knocks, you answer the door and embrace it. When Green Bay had to put together a drive to eat up some clock and keep the Steelers at bay, Rodgers engineered one. True, it only resulted in a field goal.
The Packers, for reasons I really don't understand, went exclusively with the pass, which -- you'd think -- would have made Rodgers a sitting duck. Instead, he never got sacked. And if you factor in the passes that were right in his receivers' hands that were dropped, Rodgers was incredibly accurate.
As Al Davis was so fond of saying, "just win baby." That's all. Win. This isn't theatre (well it is in some cases, but not when it comes to the final score). You don't get extra points for drama. If your team has more points than the other team when the gun goes off, whatever multitude of sins potentially waylaid you along the way are quickly forgotten. Especially in a championship game.
So, you have to give Rodgers his props for rising to the occasion. Because we all know that had the Packers lost, Rodgers would have been in for a boatload of blame.
Finally, and strictly from my perspective, Woodson -- who is a very good player -- finally gets a ring. Woodson, you may recall, was the defensive back who stripped Brady of the ball in that 2002 Snow Bowl in Foxborough ... the play that introduced to all of us who'd never heard it "The Tuck Rule."
Oakland Raiders fans treat the implementation of "The Tuck Rule" as if it's the football equivalent of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. But while I think it was a terrible call (or, at least, a terrible rule), it isn't as if incompetence has never been an issue in pro sports. This might have been a bit more egregiously incompetent, but there isn't a team out there that hasn't felt as if the officiating crew represented the 12th man on its opponent's side.
But while Raiders fans boo-hoo about how the team got jobbed (which, translated, means they were deprived of experiencing that rush of winning a championship ... which I totally understand as Ed Ambrister is still standing in front of Carlton Fisk today ... and Jorge Orta still hasn't touched first base), what about Woodson?
If the Raiders got jobbed, how do you define what happened to Woodson? He was the hero. He saved the day for the Raiders ... clinched what would have been a heroic victory, on the road, in a freakin blizzard ... the stuff of legends.
Instead, the play is overturned by an NFL rule that seems to me to forever blur the definition of "fumble." Hey, I like the Pats as much as anyone else who grew up in Boston, but if you deny the fact that this single play could easily mean the difference between "dynasty" and "just another one-and-done playoff team," you're delusional. Well, there is the matter of Belichickian skulduggery too ... but we're not talking about that now.
Woodson has never forgotten ... nor would I if it had happened to me ... nor did Ray Hamilton (he of the phantom "roughing the passer" call in 1976) ever forget what happened to him (just thought I'd throw that in to remind Raiders fans that they've benefited from some outrageous calls too).
Woodson was having a whale of a game Sunday until he got hurt. And it would have been terrible had Roethlisberger been able to pick apart a depleted Packer secondary affected by his and Shields' absence, and ended up winning the game. First you lose a chance at a title because of the zebras; and then you break your collarbone and watch a truly detestable quarterback engineer the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.
Only this time the Packers hung on, and Woodson finally gets to experience what it feels like to win this thing.
So, this was the best possible outcome. Big Ben will have to wait a year for true redemption, NFL-style (maybe even longer if there's a lockout), and a group of guys who sucked it up when things got tough and found a way to win despite all their setbacks get to have a parade. For once, the good guys won.
----------
What's left are some random observations ...
I don't generally pay attention to the commercials, but the people I was with Sunday were riveted to them. There wasn't one of them that stacked up to the best from other years, but the ones that stood out were the little kid dressed as Darth Vader in the VW commercial; watching Rosanne Barr get steamrolled; watching the idiot tormenting the little pug dog get blown away; and the guy who sends an e-card to his honey for Valentine's Day and tells her, "I really think your rack is unreal." That one caused a splort ... On the other hand, the guy who licks everyone's fingers after they've eaten Doritos was creepy ... The less said about Christina Aguilera's butchery of the National Anthem the better, except that it really bothers me when people try to put their "personal stamp" on it. It's not about you, Christina and other like you. Sing the damn song straight up, and maybe you'll remember the words ... The Black Eyed Peas were awful. Whether that was just the sound, or I'm becoming my mother and father is subject to debate. But the show was terrible ... a complete waste of time ... There were some regurgitation moments, such as when the camera caught Cameron Diaz feeding popcorn to Alex Rodriguez ... a true "blech!" moment ... I got a lot of email from people celebrating the fact that President Obama's absence from the Super Bowl (he said he was going to go if the Bears had won) was a good thing for our national budget. Yet there were George W. and Laura Bush sitting in Jerry Jones' box, with Condi Rice. You don't suppose there was a detail assigned to them, do you? ... When I watch football, I'm prone to thinking out loud and getting emotional, much to the chagrin of those faced with the prospect of being in the same room with me. But I swear, Troy Aikman miked my house. Every time I made a pronouncement about how the game was going, Aikman followed a minute later by saying the same thing! ... Like just about everyone else who commented on it, I thought Michael Douglas equating the Super Bowl with some of American history's most iconic events was juuuuuust a bit over the top ... And, finally, what's with Sam Elliott's white hair ... and black eyebrows?? I couldn't watch!
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Random Musings ...
It's been a while since I've attempted to write anything ... December 5, to be precise. That was the night I wrote about John Lennon as I waited for the Patriots to destroy the Jets.
Too bad the Pats couldn't have saved some of those points, eh?
Anyway, to get back into the practice of doing this, here are number of musings that I've gathered up since then ...
---
On the matter of Gabby Giffords. It was a horrible, horrible tragedy that I'm not sure is ever really preventable. This country is far too big, and far too populated, to expect that people aren't going to fall through the cracks now and then.
That said, I don't think you can escape the reality that -- even if the gunman was seriously mentally disturbed -- there is definitely an undercurrent of ugliness in how we relate to one another in the 21st century ... whether we're talking politics or any other type of discourse.
And, of course, with the internet and the blogosphere, people get to hide behind screen names and fake IDs on line and say some of the most outrageous, hateful, and bigoted things you can imagine.
It's easy to say "oh, well, it's only a blog ... it doesn't mean anything." But it's just as easy -- and just as much of a cop-out, to blithely pass this off as the act of a deranged man ... WITHOUT at least considering the context of the times.
I think it's fair to say that mentally disturbed people might possibly have a different -- less effective -- filter than the rest of us. I think it's fair to say that if the rest of us -- the ones who aren't mentally disturbed -- can shrug and see this stuff for what it is, an emotionally sick person might react differently. He might feed off such negativity and feel compelled to act on it.
I don't know this for a fact. But I sense that it's certainly possible ... and even probable.
Now, hate has no particular political ideology; no "official" religion; and no exclusivity. History is filled with instances where irrational hate has spurred monumental tragedies far more horrific than what happened in Arizona earlier this month. We saw it in World War II, we saw it in Oklahoma City, and we saw it on Sept. 11, 2001.
In the immediate aftermath, considering it was a political figure who was gunned down (along with six others who were killed), it seemed logical to conclude that the acrimony of public discourse might have had an influence on Jared Lee Loughner (and why is it, as an aside, that all assassins are referred to by their full names: Mark David Chapman; John Warnock Hinkley; this guy). And since Giffords is a Democrat, it might have further been a natural reaction that the continuous vitriol liberals and conservatives too routinely fling at one another might have also been a contributing factor.
Conservatives don't like hearing this, but too bad. Whether it was, or wasn't, a factor, the reality exists. My take on this is that it's much easier to arouse people to anger than it is to appeal to their better nature. We may be more highly developed, but we're still animals, with animal instincts -- which is to say we're hard-wired to worry about ourselves, and our survival, first before we become overly concerned with others.
Compassion and regard for others are qualities that need to be taught. Self-survival is instinctive.
So, it's much easier to rally people to your cause if you can easily convince them that the "other guy" is picking their pockets, or destroying all that they hold near and dear, or giving "them" all the breaks instead of "us."
Thus, George W. Bush was a "Nazi" to liberals; and Barack Obama is a "Socialist" to conservatives.
Both are buzzwords, political code, if you will. Bush, or course, was not a Nazi and Obama is not a Socialist. Half the people who throw those words around probably don't know the half of what they mean because -- sadly -- history is not a subject that is well taught, or even valued, in the United States of America.
It's much easier to throw those words around, though, because they result in visceral reactions in people not disposed to like particular people or their politics. I was not, and never will be, a George W. Bush supporter, but I can certainly acknowledge that there were elements about him that were likable. I also think that toward the end of his presidency, he had a better sense of how ill-used he'd been by some of his inner circle. I just think it's too bad it took him so long to realize this. He was not prone to introspection or curiosity, or -- as he famously said -- nuance. And I feel he allowed himself to be led too easily by people with agendas that didn't necessarily put the best interests of the country first.
I do support Obama, but -- again -- I can acknowledge that he could stand some improvement. I think he made the same mistake Bill Clinton did ... picking an issue right out of the chute (health care) that was hopelessly muddled in all kinds of arcane debate. He set himself up for what followed ... and what is yet to come.
I'd rather have seen him pick some winnable issues in Year One -- and take a few victory laps for them. He needed to establish some political cachet before picking an ugly fight ... and it WAS ugly. There's no getting around that.
We're off the track here, but this is only to show that ugliness has no preference. I think the entire tenor of public discourse is ugly, and I also think that mentally disturbed people have a different set of antennae than the more stable among us. Who knows what signals they're receiving ... and how they're processing those signals.
You put all of this together ... the free-wheeling blogs and bulletin boards where people who know they'll never be held accountable spew outrageous invective ... the stridency of the public discourse ... one obviously disturbed individual ... and you have the makings of an immense tragedy.
But what's curious about all this, to me, was the reaction for both liberals and conservatives. Whatever we may think privately, to come out in public (and by public I also mean blogs, bulletin boards and Facebook, as well as the mainstream media) and pin the blame solely on Sarah Palin's crosshairs advertisement was irresponsible. Even if I might not necessarily discount such stridency and hyperbole as contributing factors, to come right out and accuse her (or the Tea Party in general) -- especially in light of such a horrible tragedy -- struck me as outrageously opportunistic.
And I say this with the full admission that I do not buy -- even a little -- anything the Tea Party movement (or Palin, for that matter), says. It's just that Palin has become, in a very short time, the Ted Kennedy of her party ... which is to say she's made herself into a cheap and easy target that liberals can freely lambaste as sort of a symbol for all that they oppose ... the same way Teddy was a magnet for conservative missives.
Yet at the same time, I feel Palin -- and people like her -- certainly aren't blameless. The ad was there ... and whether she was or was not the first person to use the crosshairs theme, she certainly refined it and seemed pretty darn proud of it too ... until she took it down after the shootings. So obviously she felt some initial responsibility to tone her OWN rhetoric down (which is why I find it hilarious that she so vehemently denied culpability when she had a chance to think about it some more). In fact, if the basic liberal reaction was to blame Sarah, the basic conservative reaction was to say "not MY fault," and complain about attempts to stifle their First Amendment right to free speech.
I'm not sure which was more of an overreaction at this point.
Everything in life has context. Students didn't demonstrate at Kent State -- and end up with four of them being killed by National Guard fire -- in a vacuum. They were spurred on to do that by a systematic drumbeat of inflammatory rhetoric and violence (a lot of it by the radical LEFT) that funneled itself into this singular tragedy.
Likewise, people, mentally disturbed or otherwise, don't target politicians just because. There's a reason ... a context. And I think it's because we've reduced politicians and leaders in this country to evil caricatures, with each radical element demonizing the other to the point where shooting them might almost seem noble to a sick person. And when I say "radical element," I mean anyone who goes predictably nuclear whenever someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum says, or does, something.
I won't even get into the whole "blood libel" thing. First, I doubt Palin even knew the historical context of the term (if she did, and still used it ... God help us all if she's ever elected to anything ever again). And second, it's just typical hyperbole ... and again, hyperbole that adds nothing to the gravitas of the debate -- which is that we all could perhaps take a step back from the rhetoric and at least THINK about the damage it's doing to this country.
---
Onto other things ... New England is in one of those crazy winter weather patterns where it seems to snow every other day ... and then it gets so cold everything turns to cement. Cities and towns all over region are having a devil of a time keeping up.
But I fear we, the people, have become far too spoiled when it comes to how fast, and how effectively, the plows are cleaning up. Granted, I've seen better in my life, but there are factors to consider when it comes to snow removal.
The first one, obviously, is the amount of snow. Our first real serious snowstorm was a blizzard the day after Christmas, which lasted well into the next day. It was a 24-hour storm, yet by Tuesday -- the first full day after the storm stopped -- the whining about how awful the plowing was reached fever pitch.
Seriously, people. A foot and a half of snow fell! Life ain't a sitcom, and problems don't get solved in a half hour.
The next big storm was even worse. We got almost two feet. And this time, rather than the fine, powdery stuff that's easy to move, we got the heavy sludge that weighs a ton.
This one started around midnight and lasted through the afternoon. Not a 24-hour event, but a much more intense storm with a lot of wind. Again, the streets weren't down to pavement by the next day because ... well ... that would have been impossible. Still, you'd think nobody touched a plow the way people moaned and groaned.
Yesterday, we got snow that changed to rain ... and enough snow that the ground looked like that river of slime that flowed in "Ghostbusters." It was unplowable. How do you plow water?
But again, waaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. Why aren't my streets plowed?
Grow up, people.
---
Onto sports: It is indeed refreshing to see how thoroughly Shaquille O'Neal is enjoying his Boston Celtics experience. In fact, it's refreshing to see how much Shaq enjoys being Shaq. You can't help but like the guy. He's infectious ... and a perfect counterbalance to the dour, sour persona demonstrated in Foxborough.
I'd never go as far as saying that refusing to engage in trash talk translates into defeats. But I will say that Bill Belichick's reaction to Wes Welker's brilliant injection of the words "foot, feet or toes" into every sentence of his brief press conference last Thursday (he benched Welker for the game's first series) was idiotic.
To those who don't know the context, New York Jets coach Rex Ryan -- apparently -- has a bit of a foot fetish ... something that came out in a YouTube clip. Now, that is totally, totally harmless. There are far worse sexual fetishes one can have.
But Ryan, as we know, is a bit of a blabbermouth and blusterer in the finest sense of George Steinbrenner. And people who are like that are trying to get under the other guy's skin.
And while it's futile to match a blusterer word for word (by their nature, guys like Ryan are always going to win that game) it was rather brilliant of Welker -- after a week's worth of scurrilous insults by the Jets directed toward the Patriots and Tom Brady -- to offer a gentle, subtle dig at ol' Rex.
Consider: a guy who has fathered nine children by eight women, and who had to have his wages garnished by the Jets to pay back child support (Antonio Cromartie) is running around calling out Brady in the crudest terms possible. His coach (Ryan) thought that was just fine. Cromartie played the entire game Sunday and -- as much as anyone on the Jets did -- absolutely KILLED the Patriots. He was clearly the game's MVP.
Yet Welker very craftily responds -- and not even in KIND -- and finds himself benched for the first series of the most important game of the year? Ridiculous.
Maybe Welker should remind Belichick of HIS first amendment right to feet speech!
Bringing up Shaq in this context is my way of saying that maybe if the Patriots lightened up a little, and weren't so haughty about how much better "their way" is, and learned to allow their players even the simplest of latitudes in what they say and how they act, they wouldn't tighten up like a drum in big games against teams that do a lot of yakking (you'll recall Plaxico Burress did his share before that 2008 Super Bowl ... and caught the game-winning pass!).
Larry Bird was the worst trash talker ever ... and he has three rings. It doesn't necessarily follow that piously turning the other cheek accomplishes anything in the long run.
Besides, you can't fault Rex for understanding that pro sports, in this era, is as much about theater as it is about athletics. The objective is to keep people interested enough in what you're doing to attend, or watch, the games. Lack of interest will kill the golden goose.
And nobody can say there was a lack of interest in this game.
Too bad the Pats couldn't have saved some of those points, eh?
Anyway, to get back into the practice of doing this, here are number of musings that I've gathered up since then ...
---
On the matter of Gabby Giffords. It was a horrible, horrible tragedy that I'm not sure is ever really preventable. This country is far too big, and far too populated, to expect that people aren't going to fall through the cracks now and then.
That said, I don't think you can escape the reality that -- even if the gunman was seriously mentally disturbed -- there is definitely an undercurrent of ugliness in how we relate to one another in the 21st century ... whether we're talking politics or any other type of discourse.
And, of course, with the internet and the blogosphere, people get to hide behind screen names and fake IDs on line and say some of the most outrageous, hateful, and bigoted things you can imagine.
It's easy to say "oh, well, it's only a blog ... it doesn't mean anything." But it's just as easy -- and just as much of a cop-out, to blithely pass this off as the act of a deranged man ... WITHOUT at least considering the context of the times.
I think it's fair to say that mentally disturbed people might possibly have a different -- less effective -- filter than the rest of us. I think it's fair to say that if the rest of us -- the ones who aren't mentally disturbed -- can shrug and see this stuff for what it is, an emotionally sick person might react differently. He might feed off such negativity and feel compelled to act on it.
I don't know this for a fact. But I sense that it's certainly possible ... and even probable.
Now, hate has no particular political ideology; no "official" religion; and no exclusivity. History is filled with instances where irrational hate has spurred monumental tragedies far more horrific than what happened in Arizona earlier this month. We saw it in World War II, we saw it in Oklahoma City, and we saw it on Sept. 11, 2001.
In the immediate aftermath, considering it was a political figure who was gunned down (along with six others who were killed), it seemed logical to conclude that the acrimony of public discourse might have had an influence on Jared Lee Loughner (and why is it, as an aside, that all assassins are referred to by their full names: Mark David Chapman; John Warnock Hinkley; this guy). And since Giffords is a Democrat, it might have further been a natural reaction that the continuous vitriol liberals and conservatives too routinely fling at one another might have also been a contributing factor.
Conservatives don't like hearing this, but too bad. Whether it was, or wasn't, a factor, the reality exists. My take on this is that it's much easier to arouse people to anger than it is to appeal to their better nature. We may be more highly developed, but we're still animals, with animal instincts -- which is to say we're hard-wired to worry about ourselves, and our survival, first before we become overly concerned with others.
Compassion and regard for others are qualities that need to be taught. Self-survival is instinctive.
So, it's much easier to rally people to your cause if you can easily convince them that the "other guy" is picking their pockets, or destroying all that they hold near and dear, or giving "them" all the breaks instead of "us."
Thus, George W. Bush was a "Nazi" to liberals; and Barack Obama is a "Socialist" to conservatives.
Both are buzzwords, political code, if you will. Bush, or course, was not a Nazi and Obama is not a Socialist. Half the people who throw those words around probably don't know the half of what they mean because -- sadly -- history is not a subject that is well taught, or even valued, in the United States of America.
It's much easier to throw those words around, though, because they result in visceral reactions in people not disposed to like particular people or their politics. I was not, and never will be, a George W. Bush supporter, but I can certainly acknowledge that there were elements about him that were likable. I also think that toward the end of his presidency, he had a better sense of how ill-used he'd been by some of his inner circle. I just think it's too bad it took him so long to realize this. He was not prone to introspection or curiosity, or -- as he famously said -- nuance. And I feel he allowed himself to be led too easily by people with agendas that didn't necessarily put the best interests of the country first.
I do support Obama, but -- again -- I can acknowledge that he could stand some improvement. I think he made the same mistake Bill Clinton did ... picking an issue right out of the chute (health care) that was hopelessly muddled in all kinds of arcane debate. He set himself up for what followed ... and what is yet to come.
I'd rather have seen him pick some winnable issues in Year One -- and take a few victory laps for them. He needed to establish some political cachet before picking an ugly fight ... and it WAS ugly. There's no getting around that.
We're off the track here, but this is only to show that ugliness has no preference. I think the entire tenor of public discourse is ugly, and I also think that mentally disturbed people have a different set of antennae than the more stable among us. Who knows what signals they're receiving ... and how they're processing those signals.
You put all of this together ... the free-wheeling blogs and bulletin boards where people who know they'll never be held accountable spew outrageous invective ... the stridency of the public discourse ... one obviously disturbed individual ... and you have the makings of an immense tragedy.
But what's curious about all this, to me, was the reaction for both liberals and conservatives. Whatever we may think privately, to come out in public (and by public I also mean blogs, bulletin boards and Facebook, as well as the mainstream media) and pin the blame solely on Sarah Palin's crosshairs advertisement was irresponsible. Even if I might not necessarily discount such stridency and hyperbole as contributing factors, to come right out and accuse her (or the Tea Party in general) -- especially in light of such a horrible tragedy -- struck me as outrageously opportunistic.
And I say this with the full admission that I do not buy -- even a little -- anything the Tea Party movement (or Palin, for that matter), says. It's just that Palin has become, in a very short time, the Ted Kennedy of her party ... which is to say she's made herself into a cheap and easy target that liberals can freely lambaste as sort of a symbol for all that they oppose ... the same way Teddy was a magnet for conservative missives.
Yet at the same time, I feel Palin -- and people like her -- certainly aren't blameless. The ad was there ... and whether she was or was not the first person to use the crosshairs theme, she certainly refined it and seemed pretty darn proud of it too ... until she took it down after the shootings. So obviously she felt some initial responsibility to tone her OWN rhetoric down (which is why I find it hilarious that she so vehemently denied culpability when she had a chance to think about it some more). In fact, if the basic liberal reaction was to blame Sarah, the basic conservative reaction was to say "not MY fault," and complain about attempts to stifle their First Amendment right to free speech.
I'm not sure which was more of an overreaction at this point.
Everything in life has context. Students didn't demonstrate at Kent State -- and end up with four of them being killed by National Guard fire -- in a vacuum. They were spurred on to do that by a systematic drumbeat of inflammatory rhetoric and violence (a lot of it by the radical LEFT) that funneled itself into this singular tragedy.
Likewise, people, mentally disturbed or otherwise, don't target politicians just because. There's a reason ... a context. And I think it's because we've reduced politicians and leaders in this country to evil caricatures, with each radical element demonizing the other to the point where shooting them might almost seem noble to a sick person. And when I say "radical element," I mean anyone who goes predictably nuclear whenever someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum says, or does, something.
I won't even get into the whole "blood libel" thing. First, I doubt Palin even knew the historical context of the term (if she did, and still used it ... God help us all if she's ever elected to anything ever again). And second, it's just typical hyperbole ... and again, hyperbole that adds nothing to the gravitas of the debate -- which is that we all could perhaps take a step back from the rhetoric and at least THINK about the damage it's doing to this country.
---
Onto other things ... New England is in one of those crazy winter weather patterns where it seems to snow every other day ... and then it gets so cold everything turns to cement. Cities and towns all over region are having a devil of a time keeping up.
But I fear we, the people, have become far too spoiled when it comes to how fast, and how effectively, the plows are cleaning up. Granted, I've seen better in my life, but there are factors to consider when it comes to snow removal.
The first one, obviously, is the amount of snow. Our first real serious snowstorm was a blizzard the day after Christmas, which lasted well into the next day. It was a 24-hour storm, yet by Tuesday -- the first full day after the storm stopped -- the whining about how awful the plowing was reached fever pitch.
Seriously, people. A foot and a half of snow fell! Life ain't a sitcom, and problems don't get solved in a half hour.
The next big storm was even worse. We got almost two feet. And this time, rather than the fine, powdery stuff that's easy to move, we got the heavy sludge that weighs a ton.
This one started around midnight and lasted through the afternoon. Not a 24-hour event, but a much more intense storm with a lot of wind. Again, the streets weren't down to pavement by the next day because ... well ... that would have been impossible. Still, you'd think nobody touched a plow the way people moaned and groaned.
Yesterday, we got snow that changed to rain ... and enough snow that the ground looked like that river of slime that flowed in "Ghostbusters." It was unplowable. How do you plow water?
But again, waaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. Why aren't my streets plowed?
Grow up, people.
---
Onto sports: It is indeed refreshing to see how thoroughly Shaquille O'Neal is enjoying his Boston Celtics experience. In fact, it's refreshing to see how much Shaq enjoys being Shaq. You can't help but like the guy. He's infectious ... and a perfect counterbalance to the dour, sour persona demonstrated in Foxborough.
I'd never go as far as saying that refusing to engage in trash talk translates into defeats. But I will say that Bill Belichick's reaction to Wes Welker's brilliant injection of the words "foot, feet or toes" into every sentence of his brief press conference last Thursday (he benched Welker for the game's first series) was idiotic.
To those who don't know the context, New York Jets coach Rex Ryan -- apparently -- has a bit of a foot fetish ... something that came out in a YouTube clip. Now, that is totally, totally harmless. There are far worse sexual fetishes one can have.
But Ryan, as we know, is a bit of a blabbermouth and blusterer in the finest sense of George Steinbrenner. And people who are like that are trying to get under the other guy's skin.
And while it's futile to match a blusterer word for word (by their nature, guys like Ryan are always going to win that game) it was rather brilliant of Welker -- after a week's worth of scurrilous insults by the Jets directed toward the Patriots and Tom Brady -- to offer a gentle, subtle dig at ol' Rex.
Consider: a guy who has fathered nine children by eight women, and who had to have his wages garnished by the Jets to pay back child support (Antonio Cromartie) is running around calling out Brady in the crudest terms possible. His coach (Ryan) thought that was just fine. Cromartie played the entire game Sunday and -- as much as anyone on the Jets did -- absolutely KILLED the Patriots. He was clearly the game's MVP.
Yet Welker very craftily responds -- and not even in KIND -- and finds himself benched for the first series of the most important game of the year? Ridiculous.
Maybe Welker should remind Belichick of HIS first amendment right to feet speech!
Bringing up Shaq in this context is my way of saying that maybe if the Patriots lightened up a little, and weren't so haughty about how much better "their way" is, and learned to allow their players even the simplest of latitudes in what they say and how they act, they wouldn't tighten up like a drum in big games against teams that do a lot of yakking (you'll recall Plaxico Burress did his share before that 2008 Super Bowl ... and caught the game-winning pass!).
Larry Bird was the worst trash talker ever ... and he has three rings. It doesn't necessarily follow that piously turning the other cheek accomplishes anything in the long run.
Besides, you can't fault Rex for understanding that pro sports, in this era, is as much about theater as it is about athletics. The objective is to keep people interested enough in what you're doing to attend, or watch, the games. Lack of interest will kill the golden goose.
And nobody can say there was a lack of interest in this game.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
You're Fired
I never watched Donald Trump's "The Apprentice." I never appreciated anything that made light of one of life ultimate indignities ... getting terminated from your job.
To many of us, our jobs define us. They give us a good sense of who we are, what we've accomplished, and -- perhaps most importantly -- how well we can provide for ourselves and our families.
To lose that ... even if the reasons are valid and unavoidable ... is no laughing matter. So when I see a rodeo clown like Donald Trump (even if he is a rich rodeo clown) on TV blabbering that "you're fired," I want to scream. And it makes me think that it's reason No. 124 (or something) about why our economic system in in such terrible shape. There are many reasons, of course, but once of them could be that we just don't appreciate what people do ... the contributions they make.
Yes, it's true. They get paid. But anyone who thinks this is strictly due to the largesse of the employer is hoplessly naive. Maybe that happens once in a while, but by and large, we get paid for what we do because our expertise is needed to keep the business going.
And that means it's a two-way street ... that our employees deserve a little dignity and respect along with their money, and that if there's ever the perception in the work place that one or the other (or both) is lacking, you'll see some pretty poor attitudes bubble to the surface in a hurry.
I've been fired. It was back in 1987, and it was from a job that I probably never should have accepted in the first place. It wasn't for me. It was too young, and too immature, and too used to the sloppy informality of the newspaper environment to adapt to the corporate protocol of an august company like NYNEX (now Verizon).
I lasted a year. And I walked on eggshells for probably half that. And it occurred to me that just like there are horses for courses, there are people better suited for certain jobs. Or, as the managing editor of the paper that took me back after I was let go said, "some people just belong in certain places.
And some people don't, too.
Getting fired was devastating. It just burrowed through to the very core of who I was, and it also struck a deep nerve of failure. Even now, 23 years later, I can rationalize about it only so much. Yes, it was a personality conflict between my boss and me. Yes, it was a job that I just wasn't cut out to do. Yes, it was very much a case of bad karma gathering momentum until events overtook me. And yes, despite anything I might have been able to do, I was powerless to do it once all this negativity was set in motion.
It took me a long time to understand this wasn't a reflection on me, but, rather, a chain of events that spun out of control. By the time I was called into an office and given the news, it was almost a mercy killing.
This isn't to say I enjoyed it. And this isn't to say that, even today, I have extreme bitterness toward the boss who chose to make it so difficult for me to thrive there. There are good bosses, and there are bad bosses. This one was definitely in the latter category.
The problem, as I see it, is simple. You, as an employee, get the sense (whether it's real or not) that you have a bull's eye on your back. Right away, that affects how you do your job. You cannot work effectively when your boss has his foot on your throat.
And it just becomes an unbreakable cycle. The harder you press, the worse you do ... the more mistakes you make, the worse the mistakes are ... and it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even when you do something that you perceive to be the right thing, it'll often be looked at as wrong simply because your employer is more interested in building a case against you than he is judging your work objectively.
These are all feelings I had when I got fired from that job 23 years ago. As I said, I never should have taken it. But at the time, it looked too good to pass up. The money was tremendous, and I thought this was my ticket to bigger and better things.
As an aside, the experience taught me, perhaps more than anything else, that money cannot buy you happiness in your job. It helps, but if the job keeps you up at night, there's not enough money in the world to compensate for that.
So when the axe finally fell, it was almost a relief. It was a simple meeting, really ... just my boss and me.
"This is unfortunate," he said, turning his back on me as he spoke and handing me an evaluation he'd done that had more misspellings and typographical errors than a third-grader's book report. "I'm letting you go."
I actually made him say "fired." I knew what he meant, but I wanted him to say it. So I said, "what do you mean, letting me go?"
He had to say it. And that's all he said too. "Fired."
I guess that's the thing that always stuck to my crew. He couldn't even look me in the eye to tell me this. He turned his back on me. And judging from the amount of professional care he put into his evaluation of me, he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about either.
Once the shock of it all wore off, there was relief. Whatever else I had to deal with (and the timing couldn't have been worse, as we were in the middle of buying a house), I didn't have to deal with the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
Life got pretty dicey for a while. But I was fortunate. I had people at the newspaper where I'd previously worked who thought enough of me help me get back on my feet in the immediate aftermath; and hired me back full time a few months later.
So why do I write this today? Someone at my office was let go yesterday. I can't say it was a huge shock. Even he knew it was coming (if you're honest, you know). Still, though, it took me back to that day, August 11, 1987, a Tuesday morning, when I got the news that I was being terminated. And no matter how much you suspect it's coming, and even know it's coming, there's a finality to it that just leaves you weak, even if it's only for a second. You have to sit down.
The purpose here isn't to judge the justification of whether the person should have been fired. All I can ever hope is that the reasons are valid, and that there was no other alternative. I don't dispute the fact that some people are just not meant for certain jobs, and I also don't dispute the fact that even if they are, it can reach a point where the situation just becomes untenable, whether it's performance or personality related.
In this case (and in most cases), that's between the employer and employee.
But it doesn't stop you from feeling badly that whatever happened, it couldn't be resolved ... that things just couldn't be worked out. It's an awful thing to have happen to you.
And it's also difficult for the people left behind, too. We don't know what to think ... what's next ... or who's next ... or even if anybody's next. You just don't know.
All you're left with is confusion. And the feeling that you'd better step a little livelier around the office.
But your last image -- or, at least, my last image is of someone who's just had his whole life pulled out from under him. That's not a good feeling. And a pox on anyone who treats it as if it's some kind god damned joke.
To many of us, our jobs define us. They give us a good sense of who we are, what we've accomplished, and -- perhaps most importantly -- how well we can provide for ourselves and our families.
To lose that ... even if the reasons are valid and unavoidable ... is no laughing matter. So when I see a rodeo clown like Donald Trump (even if he is a rich rodeo clown) on TV blabbering that "you're fired," I want to scream. And it makes me think that it's reason No. 124 (or something) about why our economic system in in such terrible shape. There are many reasons, of course, but once of them could be that we just don't appreciate what people do ... the contributions they make.
Yes, it's true. They get paid. But anyone who thinks this is strictly due to the largesse of the employer is hoplessly naive. Maybe that happens once in a while, but by and large, we get paid for what we do because our expertise is needed to keep the business going.
And that means it's a two-way street ... that our employees deserve a little dignity and respect along with their money, and that if there's ever the perception in the work place that one or the other (or both) is lacking, you'll see some pretty poor attitudes bubble to the surface in a hurry.
I've been fired. It was back in 1987, and it was from a job that I probably never should have accepted in the first place. It wasn't for me. It was too young, and too immature, and too used to the sloppy informality of the newspaper environment to adapt to the corporate protocol of an august company like NYNEX (now Verizon).
I lasted a year. And I walked on eggshells for probably half that. And it occurred to me that just like there are horses for courses, there are people better suited for certain jobs. Or, as the managing editor of the paper that took me back after I was let go said, "some people just belong in certain places.
And some people don't, too.
Getting fired was devastating. It just burrowed through to the very core of who I was, and it also struck a deep nerve of failure. Even now, 23 years later, I can rationalize about it only so much. Yes, it was a personality conflict between my boss and me. Yes, it was a job that I just wasn't cut out to do. Yes, it was very much a case of bad karma gathering momentum until events overtook me. And yes, despite anything I might have been able to do, I was powerless to do it once all this negativity was set in motion.
It took me a long time to understand this wasn't a reflection on me, but, rather, a chain of events that spun out of control. By the time I was called into an office and given the news, it was almost a mercy killing.
This isn't to say I enjoyed it. And this isn't to say that, even today, I have extreme bitterness toward the boss who chose to make it so difficult for me to thrive there. There are good bosses, and there are bad bosses. This one was definitely in the latter category.
The problem, as I see it, is simple. You, as an employee, get the sense (whether it's real or not) that you have a bull's eye on your back. Right away, that affects how you do your job. You cannot work effectively when your boss has his foot on your throat.
And it just becomes an unbreakable cycle. The harder you press, the worse you do ... the more mistakes you make, the worse the mistakes are ... and it becomes almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. And even when you do something that you perceive to be the right thing, it'll often be looked at as wrong simply because your employer is more interested in building a case against you than he is judging your work objectively.
These are all feelings I had when I got fired from that job 23 years ago. As I said, I never should have taken it. But at the time, it looked too good to pass up. The money was tremendous, and I thought this was my ticket to bigger and better things.
As an aside, the experience taught me, perhaps more than anything else, that money cannot buy you happiness in your job. It helps, but if the job keeps you up at night, there's not enough money in the world to compensate for that.
So when the axe finally fell, it was almost a relief. It was a simple meeting, really ... just my boss and me.
"This is unfortunate," he said, turning his back on me as he spoke and handing me an evaluation he'd done that had more misspellings and typographical errors than a third-grader's book report. "I'm letting you go."
I actually made him say "fired." I knew what he meant, but I wanted him to say it. So I said, "what do you mean, letting me go?"
He had to say it. And that's all he said too. "Fired."
I guess that's the thing that always stuck to my crew. He couldn't even look me in the eye to tell me this. He turned his back on me. And judging from the amount of professional care he put into his evaluation of me, he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about either.
Once the shock of it all wore off, there was relief. Whatever else I had to deal with (and the timing couldn't have been worse, as we were in the middle of buying a house), I didn't have to deal with the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
Life got pretty dicey for a while. But I was fortunate. I had people at the newspaper where I'd previously worked who thought enough of me help me get back on my feet in the immediate aftermath; and hired me back full time a few months later.
So why do I write this today? Someone at my office was let go yesterday. I can't say it was a huge shock. Even he knew it was coming (if you're honest, you know). Still, though, it took me back to that day, August 11, 1987, a Tuesday morning, when I got the news that I was being terminated. And no matter how much you suspect it's coming, and even know it's coming, there's a finality to it that just leaves you weak, even if it's only for a second. You have to sit down.
The purpose here isn't to judge the justification of whether the person should have been fired. All I can ever hope is that the reasons are valid, and that there was no other alternative. I don't dispute the fact that some people are just not meant for certain jobs, and I also don't dispute the fact that even if they are, it can reach a point where the situation just becomes untenable, whether it's performance or personality related.
In this case (and in most cases), that's between the employer and employee.
But it doesn't stop you from feeling badly that whatever happened, it couldn't be resolved ... that things just couldn't be worked out. It's an awful thing to have happen to you.
And it's also difficult for the people left behind, too. We don't know what to think ... what's next ... or who's next ... or even if anybody's next. You just don't know.
All you're left with is confusion. And the feeling that you'd better step a little livelier around the office.
But your last image -- or, at least, my last image is of someone who's just had his whole life pulled out from under him. That's not a good feeling. And a pox on anyone who treats it as if it's some kind god damned joke.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Bruins bite; Celtics beat LeBron like a drum; Sox crack halos
I am, by trade, a sports writer. The reason I decided to do this blog is because while I make my living talking about sports, it's not the only thing on my mind on most days.
But once in a while, you just can't help it. And last night was a truly extraordinary one in Boston sports. We had three teams playing ...and three teams won. Two of them rather easily; the other in what is becoming, lately, thrilling fashion.
Choices are difficult. The Red Sox and Bruins started at 7; the Celtics at 8. Unless you were in one of those all-purpose sports bars, with six TVs split between the three stations broadcasting the game, your thumb got a workout.
As much as I love to watch sports, I find it difficult sometimes to watch them on television. First, there are the idiotic announcers who, rather than say nothing when nothing need be said, will the air with irrelevant drivel. In Boston, that is known as Jack Edwards, the Bruins play-by-play guy, who has a hyperbole for every occasion.
When the Bruins eliminated the Buffalo Sabres last week, Edwards cried out "Buffalo's hopes lie with the Edmund Fitzgerald, at the bottom of Gitche Gumee."
Uh, Jack, a couple of things. First, Gitche Gumee (however you choose to spell it) is actually Lake Superior, which is quite a ways away from the eastern shores of Lake Erie ... which is where one can find the city of Buffalo. Second, You'd think that in the 21st century, and with serious and heart wrenching tragedy all around us, we could refrain from using overblown, bombastic sports hyperbole.
Then again, what would you expect from a guy who, last year, compared the Bruins beating the Montreal Canadiens (sweeping them, actually), to the American Revolution. I didn't get that one at all. Other than the fact that the B's won the deciding game on Patriot's Day, there was no real connection.
We've already established (or I have, anyway) that Stanley Cup hockey is second to none. One of the reasons it's second to none is because emotions run so high that strange things happen in playoff games. Such as last night's episode where Marc Savard, fresh from a two-month layoff due to a concussion, was accused by Philly's Daniel Carcillo of biting him on the finger.
It wouldn't be the first time a Boston athlete got caught in a biting dustup. Back in '83, Tree Rollins (he didn't get the name because he was short) took a bite out of Boston's Danny Ainge (who, by NBA standards was short) in a playoff game. It was a case of Mutt biting Jeff. Instead of a "Man Bites Dog" headline, we got "Tree Bites Man."
It's tough to tell from the films whether anyone bit anybody. But Savard (and this is wonderful) said, in his version, that Carcillo tried to pull his teeth out, and his finger hit up against his choppers. Uh huh. Reminds me of the time I got sucker punched by the kid across the street and his mother actually told my mother, "well, Stephen's face got in the way of Jimmy's fist."
Myself? I think Savard was hungry and saw an opportunity to eat a chicken finger (do I need to elaborate on the pun?).
Anyway, Bite-gate happened early in an otherwise tense game where, much of the time, you had to cover your eyes and pray. The last time I was this nervous was during the 2004 playoffs when the Red Sox were busy coming from three down to beat the Yankees in seven games. I can remember, in one of those games, a co-worker literally covering her face with her jacket because she couldn't bear to watch. That's how I feel sometimes, too.
There were highlights -- at least from a viewing standpoint: No. 1 came at the end of the second period when the Flyers tied it after a sloppy line change by the Bruins. The goal wasn't so great (it was one of those times where you hope you have a soft, non-invasive object in your hands so when you throw it at the TV, the TV doesn't break), but coach Claude Julien's reaction was absolutely spectacular. He literally slammed his fist up against the boards and uttered clearly visible vulgarity.
I loved it, mainly because I was doing basically the same thing he was. Only I get paid a lot less to act that way, and my tantrums aren't broadcast all over Versus (thank God it was Versus, too, because they'd have had to scrape Edwards off the ice after that one).
The second, naturally, was Milan Lucic's game-winning goal with about two minutes left. Lucic's had a tough year. He was my favorite Broon at this time last year, but he couldn't keep himself healthy this season. It started almost immediatley, and he was in and out of sick bay for virtually the whole season.
He's had a stretch of decent health now, and he's starting to play like the Milan Lucic of a year ago.
The Gahhhhhhden just exploded. I remember when the TD Garden opened (it was the FleetCenter in those days), and people complained that there just wasn't any atmosphere there. It was too quiet.
Of course it was. The teams playing in it were awful. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were worthy of any emotion or atmosphere. Now, they are. And there was no lack of it last night. It was electric.
So now we had to Philly for two games, it would really be nice if they stole one down there. It's pretty obvious that the Philly fans, as well as the Flyers themselves, can't wait to sink their teeth into Da Broons, but that's OK. That's what makes hockey hockey. One can only hope, though, that the Flyers prove to be as pusillanimous toward the Bruins as the B's were to the Pittsburgh Penguins after Matt Cooke leveled Savard in March -- giving him the concussion that forced him to the sidelines for two months.
Somehow, I doubt it, though. The Flyers, even with all their injuries, haven't stopped being physical. They may not be the Broad Street Bullies of the 70s, but they don't have too many Lady Byng candidates either.
(Aside, in a rough, tough sport like hockey, does it strike you as odd that one of the NHL's major awards has the word "lady" in it?)
Expect at least one beat down in Game 3.
And speaking of which, what are we to say about the Celtics? They beat the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James like a drum. Take away that 15-0 fourth-quarter run by Cleveland (and you knew that was going to happen eventually) and the Celtics dominated the game.
I have to admit one thing: If either Boston team is fortunate enough to go all the way this spring, I'd prefer it to be the Bruins. But I won't complain if it's the Celtics.
My reasoning is simple: The Bruins haven't won the Cup since 1972, my freshman year of college. In '72, with Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, et al, Boston fans had every reason to expect that this team would just keep on winning.
Only it didn't. Things happened. Orr had major reconstructive knee surgery after that '72 season, and while even a half of an Orr was better than the whole of almost anyone else in the league at the time, the extensive surgery slowed him down a bit. Also, 1972 was the year the World Hockey Association pilfered many good players from the NHL with promises of piles and piles of Monopoly money, and several key members of Da Broons jumped (Ed Westfall, Derek Sanderson, Johnny McKenzie and and Gerry Cheevers among them).
They were never the same team. They got back to the Cup finals in '74, but became the first established, original NHL team to lose a final series to an expansion team (Philly, ironically), and then lost two straight finals to Montreal in '77 and '78. They were poised to beat the Habs -- finally -- in '79 and would have been favored to win the Cup, too, as the New York Rangers upset the Islanders in the other semifinal. But, alas, coach Don Cherry forgot how to count, and the Bruins caught caught with too many men on the ice. The Habs tied the game with about a minute to go, and won it in overtime.
The gaffe cost Cherry -- easily the most enjoyable coach in the history of Boston sports (well, my history anyway) -- his job. These days, "Grapes" is on Hockey Night in Canada, and is good for saying something totally outrageous, which he knows will piss people off royally, at least once a week. Good to see the man's still got it.
The Bruins made it to the Cup finals two other times -- in 1988, where they were swept by The Great Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers (that's the year the old Garden went dark during one of the games, and former Globie Leigh Montville wrote, famously, that "the gerbil -- the one who has to run the generator from a treadmill -- died"); and again, two years later, when they lost to the Oilers in five (a series that featured a triple overtime opener in which Glenn Wesley missed an open net ... a goal that would have won the game for the B's. Instead, Petr Klima scored for the Oilers and took all the starch out of the Bruins).
The Bruins have been plagued, for years, with an ownership that refused to spend money to bring talent into Boston. It got so bad that Ray Bourque, their best player since the days of the Big Bad Bruins, had to get himself traded to Colorado at the end of his career so he could win a Stanely Cup out there ... instead of here, where he should have been parading around Boston with several of them.
The Bruins also been plagued by awful luck. Orr isn't the only player to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when it comes to injuries. Other than Bourque, their best player since the Orr era was Cam Neely, and he had to retire early because of a hit he took at the hands of Ulf Samuelson. Another of their real good prospects, Normand Leveille, who was only 19, suffered a brain aneurysm and never played again.
And one of their top draft picks, Gord Kluzak, never saw his career get off the ground, as knee injuries cut it short.
Still, none of those guys died, the way Len Bias and Reggie Lewis did. Obviously, those were incredible tragedies in and of themselves. But, from a practical standpoint, they derailed the Celtics for a long, long time. Bias was going to be, to those 1980s Celtics, what John Havlicek was to the 60s and 70s team ... a transitional figure they could build around in their efforts to keep the dynasty going. Lewis was as pure a scorer as they had in many years, and he was truly coming into his own when he developed heart ailment, and collapsed and died while playing a pickup game in 1993.
The Celtics have certainly had their run, though. They won eight straight NBA titles in the 50s and 60s, and they've snagged 17 flags overall. Their last title was in 2008, and many of the guys who won it are still with the team -- albeit two years older.
I didn't expect the Celtics to make it out of the first round this year. They played horribly for the entire second half of the regular season (which reminds me, there has to be some kind of incentive for teams to stop screwing around from October through April. Judging from the way both the B's and C's are playing now, it's obvious they used the regular schedule as an extended exhibition season, and that's kind of insulting to the fans who plunk down valuable bucks to watch).
We need to work on that.
The Celtics handcuffed LeBron and his bad elbow until the game was pretty much over. Then, they let up and allowed the Cavaliers to pick up some steam. It may have made you squirm in your seat a little, just as the Miami Heat did in Game 5 of their series, but they were never in any real danger. It's an NBA axiom that teams that put it in overdrive for 15-0 runs generally lose some zip the first time something goes against them. So it was only matter of time before that run stopped.
The only thing about the Celtics I will say is this: Rajon Rondo, their point guard, is the marquee player on this team now. Maybe the older guys have been slow to realize that, but they'd better get with the program now. They are only going as far as Wajon Wondo (as Bob Cousy might say) will take them (oh, how I wish the Cooz was still doing games so I could hear him pronounce that name; reminds me of the time the C's had Rick Robey, and The Cooz said "ohhhh, fewocious webounding by Wick Wobey). The Cooz was/is our very own Babawa Wawters.
Acutally, Wondo reminds you little of The Cooz, because if there's a routine way and an, shall we say, artistic way of doing things, Wondo will do the latter. Nothing's ever routine with Wajon Wondo.
Last night, Rondo handed out 19 assists and scored 13 points. They don't do scoring in hoops like they do in hockey, where assists and goals have equal point value. But if they did, Rondo would go down in the box score as having scored 51 points. That's one helluva night's work!
Finally, and briefly, there were the Red Sox, fresh off an ignominious sweep at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles (who have won seven games this far this season; four of them against Boston). They took out their frustrations on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California, USA, North America, Planet Earth, to the tune of a 17-8 beatdown. Balls were flying out of Fenway Park like rockets.
For one night, anyway, they were the Red Sox, and not some feeble facsimile thereof.
Maybe they just got swept up in the surging tide of victory. If that's the case, then I approve!!
But once in a while, you just can't help it. And last night was a truly extraordinary one in Boston sports. We had three teams playing ...and three teams won. Two of them rather easily; the other in what is becoming, lately, thrilling fashion.
Choices are difficult. The Red Sox and Bruins started at 7; the Celtics at 8. Unless you were in one of those all-purpose sports bars, with six TVs split between the three stations broadcasting the game, your thumb got a workout.
As much as I love to watch sports, I find it difficult sometimes to watch them on television. First, there are the idiotic announcers who, rather than say nothing when nothing need be said, will the air with irrelevant drivel. In Boston, that is known as Jack Edwards, the Bruins play-by-play guy, who has a hyperbole for every occasion.
When the Bruins eliminated the Buffalo Sabres last week, Edwards cried out "Buffalo's hopes lie with the Edmund Fitzgerald, at the bottom of Gitche Gumee."
Uh, Jack, a couple of things. First, Gitche Gumee (however you choose to spell it) is actually Lake Superior, which is quite a ways away from the eastern shores of Lake Erie ... which is where one can find the city of Buffalo. Second, You'd think that in the 21st century, and with serious and heart wrenching tragedy all around us, we could refrain from using overblown, bombastic sports hyperbole.
Then again, what would you expect from a guy who, last year, compared the Bruins beating the Montreal Canadiens (sweeping them, actually), to the American Revolution. I didn't get that one at all. Other than the fact that the B's won the deciding game on Patriot's Day, there was no real connection.
We've already established (or I have, anyway) that Stanley Cup hockey is second to none. One of the reasons it's second to none is because emotions run so high that strange things happen in playoff games. Such as last night's episode where Marc Savard, fresh from a two-month layoff due to a concussion, was accused by Philly's Daniel Carcillo of biting him on the finger.
It wouldn't be the first time a Boston athlete got caught in a biting dustup. Back in '83, Tree Rollins (he didn't get the name because he was short) took a bite out of Boston's Danny Ainge (who, by NBA standards was short) in a playoff game. It was a case of Mutt biting Jeff. Instead of a "Man Bites Dog" headline, we got "Tree Bites Man."
It's tough to tell from the films whether anyone bit anybody. But Savard (and this is wonderful) said, in his version, that Carcillo tried to pull his teeth out, and his finger hit up against his choppers. Uh huh. Reminds me of the time I got sucker punched by the kid across the street and his mother actually told my mother, "well, Stephen's face got in the way of Jimmy's fist."
Myself? I think Savard was hungry and saw an opportunity to eat a chicken finger (do I need to elaborate on the pun?).
Anyway, Bite-gate happened early in an otherwise tense game where, much of the time, you had to cover your eyes and pray. The last time I was this nervous was during the 2004 playoffs when the Red Sox were busy coming from three down to beat the Yankees in seven games. I can remember, in one of those games, a co-worker literally covering her face with her jacket because she couldn't bear to watch. That's how I feel sometimes, too.
There were highlights -- at least from a viewing standpoint: No. 1 came at the end of the second period when the Flyers tied it after a sloppy line change by the Bruins. The goal wasn't so great (it was one of those times where you hope you have a soft, non-invasive object in your hands so when you throw it at the TV, the TV doesn't break), but coach Claude Julien's reaction was absolutely spectacular. He literally slammed his fist up against the boards and uttered clearly visible vulgarity.
I loved it, mainly because I was doing basically the same thing he was. Only I get paid a lot less to act that way, and my tantrums aren't broadcast all over Versus (thank God it was Versus, too, because they'd have had to scrape Edwards off the ice after that one).
The second, naturally, was Milan Lucic's game-winning goal with about two minutes left. Lucic's had a tough year. He was my favorite Broon at this time last year, but he couldn't keep himself healthy this season. It started almost immediatley, and he was in and out of sick bay for virtually the whole season.
He's had a stretch of decent health now, and he's starting to play like the Milan Lucic of a year ago.
The Gahhhhhhden just exploded. I remember when the TD Garden opened (it was the FleetCenter in those days), and people complained that there just wasn't any atmosphere there. It was too quiet.
Of course it was. The teams playing in it were awful. Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics were worthy of any emotion or atmosphere. Now, they are. And there was no lack of it last night. It was electric.
So now we had to Philly for two games, it would really be nice if they stole one down there. It's pretty obvious that the Philly fans, as well as the Flyers themselves, can't wait to sink their teeth into Da Broons, but that's OK. That's what makes hockey hockey. One can only hope, though, that the Flyers prove to be as pusillanimous toward the Bruins as the B's were to the Pittsburgh Penguins after Matt Cooke leveled Savard in March -- giving him the concussion that forced him to the sidelines for two months.
Somehow, I doubt it, though. The Flyers, even with all their injuries, haven't stopped being physical. They may not be the Broad Street Bullies of the 70s, but they don't have too many Lady Byng candidates either.
(Aside, in a rough, tough sport like hockey, does it strike you as odd that one of the NHL's major awards has the word "lady" in it?)
Expect at least one beat down in Game 3.
And speaking of which, what are we to say about the Celtics? They beat the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James like a drum. Take away that 15-0 fourth-quarter run by Cleveland (and you knew that was going to happen eventually) and the Celtics dominated the game.
I have to admit one thing: If either Boston team is fortunate enough to go all the way this spring, I'd prefer it to be the Bruins. But I won't complain if it's the Celtics.
My reasoning is simple: The Bruins haven't won the Cup since 1972, my freshman year of college. In '72, with Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, et al, Boston fans had every reason to expect that this team would just keep on winning.
Only it didn't. Things happened. Orr had major reconstructive knee surgery after that '72 season, and while even a half of an Orr was better than the whole of almost anyone else in the league at the time, the extensive surgery slowed him down a bit. Also, 1972 was the year the World Hockey Association pilfered many good players from the NHL with promises of piles and piles of Monopoly money, and several key members of Da Broons jumped (Ed Westfall, Derek Sanderson, Johnny McKenzie and and Gerry Cheevers among them).
They were never the same team. They got back to the Cup finals in '74, but became the first established, original NHL team to lose a final series to an expansion team (Philly, ironically), and then lost two straight finals to Montreal in '77 and '78. They were poised to beat the Habs -- finally -- in '79 and would have been favored to win the Cup, too, as the New York Rangers upset the Islanders in the other semifinal. But, alas, coach Don Cherry forgot how to count, and the Bruins caught caught with too many men on the ice. The Habs tied the game with about a minute to go, and won it in overtime.
The gaffe cost Cherry -- easily the most enjoyable coach in the history of Boston sports (well, my history anyway) -- his job. These days, "Grapes" is on Hockey Night in Canada, and is good for saying something totally outrageous, which he knows will piss people off royally, at least once a week. Good to see the man's still got it.
The Bruins made it to the Cup finals two other times -- in 1988, where they were swept by The Great Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers (that's the year the old Garden went dark during one of the games, and former Globie Leigh Montville wrote, famously, that "the gerbil -- the one who has to run the generator from a treadmill -- died"); and again, two years later, when they lost to the Oilers in five (a series that featured a triple overtime opener in which Glenn Wesley missed an open net ... a goal that would have won the game for the B's. Instead, Petr Klima scored for the Oilers and took all the starch out of the Bruins).
The Bruins have been plagued, for years, with an ownership that refused to spend money to bring talent into Boston. It got so bad that Ray Bourque, their best player since the days of the Big Bad Bruins, had to get himself traded to Colorado at the end of his career so he could win a Stanely Cup out there ... instead of here, where he should have been parading around Boston with several of them.
The Bruins also been plagued by awful luck. Orr isn't the only player to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when it comes to injuries. Other than Bourque, their best player since the Orr era was Cam Neely, and he had to retire early because of a hit he took at the hands of Ulf Samuelson. Another of their real good prospects, Normand Leveille, who was only 19, suffered a brain aneurysm and never played again.
And one of their top draft picks, Gord Kluzak, never saw his career get off the ground, as knee injuries cut it short.
Still, none of those guys died, the way Len Bias and Reggie Lewis did. Obviously, those were incredible tragedies in and of themselves. But, from a practical standpoint, they derailed the Celtics for a long, long time. Bias was going to be, to those 1980s Celtics, what John Havlicek was to the 60s and 70s team ... a transitional figure they could build around in their efforts to keep the dynasty going. Lewis was as pure a scorer as they had in many years, and he was truly coming into his own when he developed heart ailment, and collapsed and died while playing a pickup game in 1993.
The Celtics have certainly had their run, though. They won eight straight NBA titles in the 50s and 60s, and they've snagged 17 flags overall. Their last title was in 2008, and many of the guys who won it are still with the team -- albeit two years older.
I didn't expect the Celtics to make it out of the first round this year. They played horribly for the entire second half of the regular season (which reminds me, there has to be some kind of incentive for teams to stop screwing around from October through April. Judging from the way both the B's and C's are playing now, it's obvious they used the regular schedule as an extended exhibition season, and that's kind of insulting to the fans who plunk down valuable bucks to watch).
We need to work on that.
The Celtics handcuffed LeBron and his bad elbow until the game was pretty much over. Then, they let up and allowed the Cavaliers to pick up some steam. It may have made you squirm in your seat a little, just as the Miami Heat did in Game 5 of their series, but they were never in any real danger. It's an NBA axiom that teams that put it in overdrive for 15-0 runs generally lose some zip the first time something goes against them. So it was only matter of time before that run stopped.
The only thing about the Celtics I will say is this: Rajon Rondo, their point guard, is the marquee player on this team now. Maybe the older guys have been slow to realize that, but they'd better get with the program now. They are only going as far as Wajon Wondo (as Bob Cousy might say) will take them (oh, how I wish the Cooz was still doing games so I could hear him pronounce that name; reminds me of the time the C's had Rick Robey, and The Cooz said "ohhhh, fewocious webounding by Wick Wobey). The Cooz was/is our very own Babawa Wawters.
Acutally, Wondo reminds you little of The Cooz, because if there's a routine way and an, shall we say, artistic way of doing things, Wondo will do the latter. Nothing's ever routine with Wajon Wondo.
Last night, Rondo handed out 19 assists and scored 13 points. They don't do scoring in hoops like they do in hockey, where assists and goals have equal point value. But if they did, Rondo would go down in the box score as having scored 51 points. That's one helluva night's work!
Finally, and briefly, there were the Red Sox, fresh off an ignominious sweep at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles (who have won seven games this far this season; four of them against Boston). They took out their frustrations on the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California, USA, North America, Planet Earth, to the tune of a 17-8 beatdown. Balls were flying out of Fenway Park like rockets.
For one night, anyway, they were the Red Sox, and not some feeble facsimile thereof.
Maybe they just got swept up in the surging tide of victory. If that's the case, then I approve!!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Internet is for Porn
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Internet is for Porn
Well, OK, not really (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
But apparently the folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission think it is.
I woke up this morning -- as I always do -- to the local news on our ABC affiliate. I do this for many reasons, not the least of which is that Channel 5 has, at the moment, my favorite weather babe ... J.C. Monahan ... and it's somewhat more palatable to hear that it's going to snow, or rain for three days and flood my basement, from J.C. than it is to hear it from, say, grizzled old weatherman.
Hey, if you're going to get bad news, you might as well get it from someone who looks good. Right?
But I digress. After today's two-hour local news cast (which features so many spots of J.C. and her weather map I don't even count anymore), Good Morning America had a spot about how the watchdogs at the SEC -- you know, the people who are supposed to be making sure corporate pigs like Goldman Sachs and AIG aren't fleecing is all blind -- spend, in some cases, up to eight hours a day surfing the web for porn.
My first reaction to this was that I thought only the death and the leftfield wall at Fenway Park were the great equalizers. Little did I know that porn falls into that category too.
No matter how important, or indigent, we are in life, death makes worm food out of us all. As one friend put it to me once, we're in that box, and in the ground, for eternity. Our lives here are tantamount to a mere blink of an eye.
As for Fenway, all you have to do is mention the name Bucky (Bleeping) Dent. If a guy like him can hit one out of the yard, then you know what I mean about that park being the great equalizer.
But porn? Actually, I should have known. We're all hard wired the same way in the end. We are all slaves to our sexual stimulations, even if some of us are more stimulated than others.
We all have sexual needs, desires and fantasies, and we all have aspects of each that we'd just as soon nobody knows about.
All of which is why porn is a natural for the internet. Back in the good old days, when we all hid Playboy and Penthouse under our mattresses, we lived in fear that our sexually explicit material would find itself in the wrong hands (such as snoopy mothers).
My mother was a snoopy mother. And unduly paranoid, too. She once took the cover to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band down the basement, and parsed every lyric of every song for drug references. She came back upstairs, convinced she'd uncovered the key to some nefarious plot by the Beatles to get every kid in America hooked on drugs ... and damn near banned us from listening to the album, or them, ever again.
(I should add, she bought me the record for my birthday).
So you can imagine how my mother would have reacted had Forum Magazine popped up between the mattresses while she was changing the sheets. And we won't even get into what she'd have said, had she seen one of those disgusting periodicals, about any undefined stains on those sheets.
For the record, I was way too smart to import pornographic material into the Krause House -- or even on the Krause property.
Most people, when they think of the internet and porn, undoubtedly have this visual of a bunch of schieves in their sleeveless T shirts, pleasuring themselves while sitting in front of a computer in their parents' basements. I know that's the image I have.
And while I'm sure there plenty of them, and that they're doing what they do even as we speak, I guess the SEC circle jerk proves that porn has no bounds. It knows no class distinction. Doesn't matter if you're a Harvard lawyer or a hard core voyeur (gee, can I make a poem about that??). If you're hooked, you're hooked.
I work at a place where one of our top executives got caught downloading porn on his computer. Of course, he was pretty stupid. He supervised an office of mainly women, and his computer screen was situated in such a way that they could see the images reflected through the window in his office.
Someone complained (well, obviously!) and next thing you know, our executive was shown the door. And as a result, the company drew up this list of rules and regulations governing use of the internet more explicit, in its own way, than any of those letters you used to read in the Penthouse Forum. Of course, we all named this document after the poor soul whose weakness for the internet flesh cost him his job.
We are nothing if not twisted people ourselves!
Anyway, back to the SEC. I wish some of these guys could get dragged into court someday (who knows, maybe they will). I would love to hear some crusading attorney get one of them on the stand, and ask, "what were you people doing while Bernie Madoff was making Ponzi look like a Boy Scout? What were you people doing while AIG and Bear Stearns were driving themselves -- and the rest of us -- straight through the ground and halfway to hell?
"Well, your honor, we were busy. One of the guy downloaded the latest episode of 'Alien Space Fembots,' and it was just too good to pass up."
I can just see one of these guys thumbing through the latest porn catalogue (with one hand, of course) and then going into a meeting where they're charting statistics, and having his chart look like a parabola.
(For the math-challenged, a parabola, on a Cartesian graph, charts all the possible solutions to quadratic equations. They can, in many cases, resemble a well-proportioned male member.)
Of course, now, the double entendres will just come pouring out. Today, on the ABC website, there's a sidebar to the main story that asks, "How Big is the SEC's Porn Problem." Sort of reminds me of the time the Buffalo Sabres had a hockey player named Michael Peca. The Bruins were about to face Buffalo in the playoffs, and one of its reporters -- a female, no less -- wrote a story about him. Some Globie, and I'm convinced it was meant for in-house purposes only, wrote a headline that said, "Buffalo's Peca really big."
Alas, it got through ... and got into the paper the next day.
It also reminds me of that Year from Hell, when I worked in public relations for the company that is now known as Verizon. There was a whole list of expressions we could not use when we wrote press releases, and one of them was "enter the market." I, in my naivete, thought that was pretty innocuous, until it the urban connotation of the word "enter" was pointed out to me. Now, I wouldn't call myself a rube when it comes to this stuff by any stretch. But even I thought that was a bit too paranoid.
all of his only proves that when it comes to porn, and and prurient interests, we are all teenagers whose hormones still rage out of control.
Well, at least now we know why the economy tanked as badly as it did. All this time, we were led to believe it was Bill Clinton's fault (man, don't even go there ... can you just imagine? ... no, never mind ... the thought of that is just too gross, even for me). Or Barney Frank's. Or the head of AIG. Or General Motors.
Turns out it was none of the above. It was Debbie Does Dallas. It was Larry Flynt's fault. Or Hugh Heffner's (though to be honest, that stuff's pretty tame compared to what you can find on line if you really care to look).
And here thought, all this time, that Monica Lewinsky's dress was the only article of clothing floating around the American power structure that also served as the host for someone's incriminating DNA.
Thank God for Net Nanny, though, and other inter-office internet tracking devices. I'm sure that's how all these Wall Street Wankers were found out. Otherwise, we'd have to get Bulah Balbricker from Porky's to feret them out. That would have been a hoot.
So, in closing, I leave you withthis ... perhaps the real theme song for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Enjoy it.
The Internet is for Porn
Well, OK, not really (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
But apparently the folks at the Securities and Exchange Commission think it is.
I woke up this morning -- as I always do -- to the local news on our ABC affiliate. I do this for many reasons, not the least of which is that Channel 5 has, at the moment, my favorite weather babe ... J.C. Monahan ... and it's somewhat more palatable to hear that it's going to snow, or rain for three days and flood my basement, from J.C. than it is to hear it from, say, grizzled old weatherman.
Hey, if you're going to get bad news, you might as well get it from someone who looks good. Right?
But I digress. After today's two-hour local news cast (which features so many spots of J.C. and her weather map I don't even count anymore), Good Morning America had a spot about how the watchdogs at the SEC -- you know, the people who are supposed to be making sure corporate pigs like Goldman Sachs and AIG aren't fleecing is all blind -- spend, in some cases, up to eight hours a day surfing the web for porn.
My first reaction to this was that I thought only the death and the leftfield wall at Fenway Park were the great equalizers. Little did I know that porn falls into that category too.
No matter how important, or indigent, we are in life, death makes worm food out of us all. As one friend put it to me once, we're in that box, and in the ground, for eternity. Our lives here are tantamount to a mere blink of an eye.
As for Fenway, all you have to do is mention the name Bucky (Bleeping) Dent. If a guy like him can hit one out of the yard, then you know what I mean about that park being the great equalizer.
But porn? Actually, I should have known. We're all hard wired the same way in the end. We are all slaves to our sexual stimulations, even if some of us are more stimulated than others.
We all have sexual needs, desires and fantasies, and we all have aspects of each that we'd just as soon nobody knows about.
All of which is why porn is a natural for the internet. Back in the good old days, when we all hid Playboy and Penthouse under our mattresses, we lived in fear that our sexually explicit material would find itself in the wrong hands (such as snoopy mothers).
My mother was a snoopy mother. And unduly paranoid, too. She once took the cover to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band down the basement, and parsed every lyric of every song for drug references. She came back upstairs, convinced she'd uncovered the key to some nefarious plot by the Beatles to get every kid in America hooked on drugs ... and damn near banned us from listening to the album, or them, ever again.
(I should add, she bought me the record for my birthday).
So you can imagine how my mother would have reacted had Forum Magazine popped up between the mattresses while she was changing the sheets. And we won't even get into what she'd have said, had she seen one of those disgusting periodicals, about any undefined stains on those sheets.
For the record, I was way too smart to import pornographic material into the Krause House -- or even on the Krause property.
Most people, when they think of the internet and porn, undoubtedly have this visual of a bunch of schieves in their sleeveless T shirts, pleasuring themselves while sitting in front of a computer in their parents' basements. I know that's the image I have.
And while I'm sure there plenty of them, and that they're doing what they do even as we speak, I guess the SEC circle jerk proves that porn has no bounds. It knows no class distinction. Doesn't matter if you're a Harvard lawyer or a hard core voyeur (gee, can I make a poem about that??). If you're hooked, you're hooked.
I work at a place where one of our top executives got caught downloading porn on his computer. Of course, he was pretty stupid. He supervised an office of mainly women, and his computer screen was situated in such a way that they could see the images reflected through the window in his office.
Someone complained (well, obviously!) and next thing you know, our executive was shown the door. And as a result, the company drew up this list of rules and regulations governing use of the internet more explicit, in its own way, than any of those letters you used to read in the Penthouse Forum. Of course, we all named this document after the poor soul whose weakness for the internet flesh cost him his job.
We are nothing if not twisted people ourselves!
Anyway, back to the SEC. I wish some of these guys could get dragged into court someday (who knows, maybe they will). I would love to hear some crusading attorney get one of them on the stand, and ask, "what were you people doing while Bernie Madoff was making Ponzi look like a Boy Scout? What were you people doing while AIG and Bear Stearns were driving themselves -- and the rest of us -- straight through the ground and halfway to hell?
"Well, your honor, we were busy. One of the guy downloaded the latest episode of 'Alien Space Fembots,' and it was just too good to pass up."
I can just see one of these guys thumbing through the latest porn catalogue (with one hand, of course) and then going into a meeting where they're charting statistics, and having his chart look like a parabola.
(For the math-challenged, a parabola, on a Cartesian graph, charts all the possible solutions to quadratic equations. They can, in many cases, resemble a well-proportioned male member.)
Of course, now, the double entendres will just come pouring out. Today, on the ABC website, there's a sidebar to the main story that asks, "How Big is the SEC's Porn Problem." Sort of reminds me of the time the Buffalo Sabres had a hockey player named Michael Peca. The Bruins were about to face Buffalo in the playoffs, and one of its reporters -- a female, no less -- wrote a story about him. Some Globie, and I'm convinced it was meant for in-house purposes only, wrote a headline that said, "Buffalo's Peca really big."
Alas, it got through ... and got into the paper the next day.
It also reminds me of that Year from Hell, when I worked in public relations for the company that is now known as Verizon. There was a whole list of expressions we could not use when we wrote press releases, and one of them was "enter the market." I, in my naivete, thought that was pretty innocuous, until it the urban connotation of the word "enter" was pointed out to me. Now, I wouldn't call myself a rube when it comes to this stuff by any stretch. But even I thought that was a bit too paranoid.
all of his only proves that when it comes to porn, and and prurient interests, we are all teenagers whose hormones still rage out of control.
Well, at least now we know why the economy tanked as badly as it did. All this time, we were led to believe it was Bill Clinton's fault (man, don't even go there ... can you just imagine? ... no, never mind ... the thought of that is just too gross, even for me). Or Barney Frank's. Or the head of AIG. Or General Motors.
Turns out it was none of the above. It was Debbie Does Dallas. It was Larry Flynt's fault. Or Hugh Heffner's (though to be honest, that stuff's pretty tame compared to what you can find on line if you really care to look).
And here thought, all this time, that Monica Lewinsky's dress was the only article of clothing floating around the American power structure that also served as the host for someone's incriminating DNA.
Thank God for Net Nanny, though, and other inter-office internet tracking devices. I'm sure that's how all these Wall Street Wankers were found out. Otherwise, we'd have to get Bulah Balbricker from Porky's to feret them out. That would have been a hoot.
So, in closing, I leave you withthis ... perhaps the real theme song for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Enjoy it.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Invasion of the Stick People
I cannot say I was always the biggest fan of the Boston Marathon. I've kind of had a love/hate relationship with it for my entire professional life.
It was barely on my radar through high school. I knew about it, but that was as far as it went. In those days, it was the BAA Marathon, and it was a race for amateurs who were (in my humble opinion) crazy enough to run 26 miles from the western suburbs to the Pru for the honor of throwing up the bowl of beef stew they got when they finished.
And that was, literally, my first experience covering the race, too. I was still 19 years old in 1973 when assigned by United Press International (my first professional job) to the bowels of the Prudential Center in Boston, where the post-race triage unit was set up. There, I saw enough digestive distress to turn me off from EATING (let alone running) forever.
And it caused me, for a time, to be as derisive about these runner as possible. I thought the whole thing was overrated. It permeated everything in its wake, including the Red Sox, who had to play early on Patriots Day. To me, that was simply a craven accommodation to a bunch of narcissistic freaks who thought that a 26-mile road race was an excuse to shut the whole city down.
Of course, I can say, now, that a lot of that ill-will was masqueraded envy. I had no idea, when I was 19, what it was like to work feverishly toward setting a difficult goal and then experience the euphoria of achieving it. That is the essence of the Boston Marathon. The story here isn't which African professional flew in here to win it. The story involves the rest of the pack ... the ones who began in this year's second wave. They are the reason this race remains an indelible civic institution.
Covering the Marathon for a wire service makes it difficult to see it from that perspective. You're there to report news ... and the news is who won, who almost won, and any other noteworthy events that take place along the way (and a lot of that involves celebrities who jet into Boston for a day to run). We never got to hang back and talk to the dedicated runners who do this to realize their OWN dreams.
Because in the end, it doesn't matter whether you're Robert "Swing Low, Sweet" Cheruiyot or some anonymous runner with a five-digit bib number. Everyone who runs, and who finishes, gets to cross that line. They all get to hear the cheers along the way. They've all trained, often alone, and often in unforgiving weather conditions. The course offers the same harsh realities to all, whether they're elite runners or plodding through for the first time.
And when it's over, they all have something extremely, wonderfully important in common: They've all conquered the 26.3 mile Boston Marathon course ... Natick and Wellesley, Heartbreak Hill, Cleveland Circle, Kenmore Square, Mass. Ave., Hereford Street, and Copley Square ... and they all deserve an equal amount of credit.
I rode the media bus in 1975 when Bill Rodgers won this race for the first time; and rode it again in 1976, when it was 95 degrees at the starting point in Hopkinton and in the low 60s at the finish line (the notoriously strong New England sea breeze having taken effect). I've seen the toll the elements can take on the runners, particularly when the race -- which begins well inland -- wends its say to the coast and the winds and temperatures can change wildly. I've seen runners so cramped up, and in such intense pain, that you wonder why on earth they put themselves through the ordeal. It just doesn't make any sense.
The answer comes with a very positive aspect of human nature ... and one that, I'm afraid, is lacking in more people with each generation: the desire to challenge ourselves ... to continually raise that bar to (to use another track analogy).
We've lost that desire, I'm afraid. I don't know if it's because we've just had too many things handed to us, or whether technology has made it unnecessary. Maybe we're just not conditioned anymore to accept challenges. You can see it everywhere you go.
Nobody has any desire anymore to embrace the tough challenges. In fact, if anything, we go out of our way to deny they even exist Problems that have left geniuses vexed for generations are now reduced to simplistic, easy solutions by today's pundits.
And I don't want to get overly political here, because there's an equal amount of guilt here. We all do it, whether we're liberal or conservative. We just don't have the patience anymore to sit down and work out complicated solutions. There's no glory in it.
You won't get elected to office if you admit you have no idea, for example, how to stop a recession from getting worse, and that, to you, the only solution is to try different things and see how the markets react to them. You can't do that because nobody wants to hear that there isn't an answer that cannot be found in the same time it used to take Ward Cleaver to solve The Beav's weekly dilemma.
I think if I were to profile my ideal political candidate, he or she would have to be a distance runner. I don't mean someone like Bill Clinton, or George W ... one who dabbled in it for show (though I suspect Bush was probably more dedicated, on the whole, to fitness than The Fantastic Billy C was). I mean someone who understands the commitment to keeping your eye on the prize, and who won't let a couple of setbacks along the way derail them. I mean someone who has trained patiently, in all kinds of elements, and understands that true achievement often comes after an extended period of great pain and frustration.
After all, wasn't it Thomas Edison who said, "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration?"
We do not have a government of long distance runners today. I don't think we even have a government of sprinters. Or hurdlers. We have a government of hucksters ... car salesmen ... people who will say anything to anyone to close the deal, and worry about the ramifications later.
Of course, all of this is contingent on an electorate who understands the same things, but that's just not the case either. Some of it has to do with the fact that our problems tend to reach such a critical stage (and that's because their complicated nature is counterproductive to them even being address by today's politicians) that people just cry out for easy answers. And there just aren't any.
But a lot of it is simple conditioning. We're not conditioned to think long-term anymore. Everything is "now," whether we're talking about stopping terrorism, losing weight, getting rich, building and maintaining our national infrastructure, curbing recessions, health care ... the focus seems to be to achieve the maximum results with the minimum output.
That is why you see these commercials for Bowflex home gyms, or Jenny Craig ... why there's Judge Judy on TV ... why we ever thought we could eradicate terrorism by killing every last terrorist (which is akin to trying to kill every last cockroach that lives in the walls of your house) ... why, for the longest time, we thought the solution to every social problem was to throw money at it.
We remain married to anything that allows us to get around life's complications ... that reduces the overly complicated to the overly simplistic ... and (and I hate to use this expression because it's become such a cliche) dumbs us down.
People often dismiss sports as being totally artificial and irrelevant ... and the exclusive domain of tremendously self-absorbed athletes who no longer have the slightest thing in common with the rest of us.
And a lot of ways, that is true, especially the major professional ones where even being an elite athlete isn't enough. This is why we have so many instances of cheating, whether it's steroids, growth hormones, blood doping, and the rest.
The last bastion, to me, of old-fashioned American perseverance and tenacity is distance running, because there is absolutely no way to get around anything. If you're going to succeed, you have to work. You have to take risks. You have to protect your body so that it can withstand those risks. And you have to know, going in, that even if you do everything right, things might not go your way ... and you have to prepare to accept whatever comes.
You compete not against Robert Cheruiyot, but against yourself. You answer only to the person on the other side of the mirror, and we all know that person is absolutely the toughest one of all to please.
Congratulations to those who dared, even if they didn't finish. For they have done something that nobody can take away from them ... and they've dedicated themselves to something much bigger, collectively, than they could ever be individually.
A few years ago, on the local sports radio talk station (a refugee for exactly the type of people on whom this entire screed would be totally lost), an angry caller got on there (aren't they all angry??) the day before the race and complained that the "stick people" were going to be clogging up his streets for the next couple of days. His streets. Stick people.
I thought the use of the term "stick people" was as humorous as it was pejorative, and in some of my more caustic moments, I've come to refer to the Boston Marathon as "The Invasion of the Stick People."
But I also know that running a Marathon requires dedication, discipline, a bit of fire in the belly, and a lot of patience and endurance ... all traits that, I'm afraid, we, as a people, could do well to learn a little better.
It was barely on my radar through high school. I knew about it, but that was as far as it went. In those days, it was the BAA Marathon, and it was a race for amateurs who were (in my humble opinion) crazy enough to run 26 miles from the western suburbs to the Pru for the honor of throwing up the bowl of beef stew they got when they finished.
And that was, literally, my first experience covering the race, too. I was still 19 years old in 1973 when assigned by United Press International (my first professional job) to the bowels of the Prudential Center in Boston, where the post-race triage unit was set up. There, I saw enough digestive distress to turn me off from EATING (let alone running) forever.
And it caused me, for a time, to be as derisive about these runner as possible. I thought the whole thing was overrated. It permeated everything in its wake, including the Red Sox, who had to play early on Patriots Day. To me, that was simply a craven accommodation to a bunch of narcissistic freaks who thought that a 26-mile road race was an excuse to shut the whole city down.
Of course, I can say, now, that a lot of that ill-will was masqueraded envy. I had no idea, when I was 19, what it was like to work feverishly toward setting a difficult goal and then experience the euphoria of achieving it. That is the essence of the Boston Marathon. The story here isn't which African professional flew in here to win it. The story involves the rest of the pack ... the ones who began in this year's second wave. They are the reason this race remains an indelible civic institution.
Covering the Marathon for a wire service makes it difficult to see it from that perspective. You're there to report news ... and the news is who won, who almost won, and any other noteworthy events that take place along the way (and a lot of that involves celebrities who jet into Boston for a day to run). We never got to hang back and talk to the dedicated runners who do this to realize their OWN dreams.
Because in the end, it doesn't matter whether you're Robert "Swing Low, Sweet" Cheruiyot or some anonymous runner with a five-digit bib number. Everyone who runs, and who finishes, gets to cross that line. They all get to hear the cheers along the way. They've all trained, often alone, and often in unforgiving weather conditions. The course offers the same harsh realities to all, whether they're elite runners or plodding through for the first time.
And when it's over, they all have something extremely, wonderfully important in common: They've all conquered the 26.3 mile Boston Marathon course ... Natick and Wellesley, Heartbreak Hill, Cleveland Circle, Kenmore Square, Mass. Ave., Hereford Street, and Copley Square ... and they all deserve an equal amount of credit.
I rode the media bus in 1975 when Bill Rodgers won this race for the first time; and rode it again in 1976, when it was 95 degrees at the starting point in Hopkinton and in the low 60s at the finish line (the notoriously strong New England sea breeze having taken effect). I've seen the toll the elements can take on the runners, particularly when the race -- which begins well inland -- wends its say to the coast and the winds and temperatures can change wildly. I've seen runners so cramped up, and in such intense pain, that you wonder why on earth they put themselves through the ordeal. It just doesn't make any sense.
The answer comes with a very positive aspect of human nature ... and one that, I'm afraid, is lacking in more people with each generation: the desire to challenge ourselves ... to continually raise that bar to (to use another track analogy).
We've lost that desire, I'm afraid. I don't know if it's because we've just had too many things handed to us, or whether technology has made it unnecessary. Maybe we're just not conditioned anymore to accept challenges. You can see it everywhere you go.
Nobody has any desire anymore to embrace the tough challenges. In fact, if anything, we go out of our way to deny they even exist Problems that have left geniuses vexed for generations are now reduced to simplistic, easy solutions by today's pundits.
And I don't want to get overly political here, because there's an equal amount of guilt here. We all do it, whether we're liberal or conservative. We just don't have the patience anymore to sit down and work out complicated solutions. There's no glory in it.
You won't get elected to office if you admit you have no idea, for example, how to stop a recession from getting worse, and that, to you, the only solution is to try different things and see how the markets react to them. You can't do that because nobody wants to hear that there isn't an answer that cannot be found in the same time it used to take Ward Cleaver to solve The Beav's weekly dilemma.
I think if I were to profile my ideal political candidate, he or she would have to be a distance runner. I don't mean someone like Bill Clinton, or George W ... one who dabbled in it for show (though I suspect Bush was probably more dedicated, on the whole, to fitness than The Fantastic Billy C was). I mean someone who understands the commitment to keeping your eye on the prize, and who won't let a couple of setbacks along the way derail them. I mean someone who has trained patiently, in all kinds of elements, and understands that true achievement often comes after an extended period of great pain and frustration.
After all, wasn't it Thomas Edison who said, "genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration?"
We do not have a government of long distance runners today. I don't think we even have a government of sprinters. Or hurdlers. We have a government of hucksters ... car salesmen ... people who will say anything to anyone to close the deal, and worry about the ramifications later.
Of course, all of this is contingent on an electorate who understands the same things, but that's just not the case either. Some of it has to do with the fact that our problems tend to reach such a critical stage (and that's because their complicated nature is counterproductive to them even being address by today's politicians) that people just cry out for easy answers. And there just aren't any.
But a lot of it is simple conditioning. We're not conditioned to think long-term anymore. Everything is "now," whether we're talking about stopping terrorism, losing weight, getting rich, building and maintaining our national infrastructure, curbing recessions, health care ... the focus seems to be to achieve the maximum results with the minimum output.
That is why you see these commercials for Bowflex home gyms, or Jenny Craig ... why there's Judge Judy on TV ... why we ever thought we could eradicate terrorism by killing every last terrorist (which is akin to trying to kill every last cockroach that lives in the walls of your house) ... why, for the longest time, we thought the solution to every social problem was to throw money at it.
We remain married to anything that allows us to get around life's complications ... that reduces the overly complicated to the overly simplistic ... and (and I hate to use this expression because it's become such a cliche) dumbs us down.
People often dismiss sports as being totally artificial and irrelevant ... and the exclusive domain of tremendously self-absorbed athletes who no longer have the slightest thing in common with the rest of us.
And a lot of ways, that is true, especially the major professional ones where even being an elite athlete isn't enough. This is why we have so many instances of cheating, whether it's steroids, growth hormones, blood doping, and the rest.
The last bastion, to me, of old-fashioned American perseverance and tenacity is distance running, because there is absolutely no way to get around anything. If you're going to succeed, you have to work. You have to take risks. You have to protect your body so that it can withstand those risks. And you have to know, going in, that even if you do everything right, things might not go your way ... and you have to prepare to accept whatever comes.
You compete not against Robert Cheruiyot, but against yourself. You answer only to the person on the other side of the mirror, and we all know that person is absolutely the toughest one of all to please.
Congratulations to those who dared, even if they didn't finish. For they have done something that nobody can take away from them ... and they've dedicated themselves to something much bigger, collectively, than they could ever be individually.
A few years ago, on the local sports radio talk station (a refugee for exactly the type of people on whom this entire screed would be totally lost), an angry caller got on there (aren't they all angry??) the day before the race and complained that the "stick people" were going to be clogging up his streets for the next couple of days. His streets. Stick people.
I thought the use of the term "stick people" was as humorous as it was pejorative, and in some of my more caustic moments, I've come to refer to the Boston Marathon as "The Invasion of the Stick People."
But I also know that running a Marathon requires dedication, discipline, a bit of fire in the belly, and a lot of patience and endurance ... all traits that, I'm afraid, we, as a people, could do well to learn a little better.
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