(NOT BAD) NOTES FROM A (GOOD) FRIDAY AFTERNOON
hopping the bunny trail of my
mind.
For your consideration: another curious collection
of thoughts, reactions, and observations that didn't make it into a full-length
post this week. So they're sort of like all the Easter candy that'll still on
the shelves of retail stores on Monday morning. But without those sad little
clearance sale signs...
• First, a nod to unfortunate realities: it's been pretty crazy end of the week here at TWM Headquarters, with an upcoming holiday, a couple of boys home from school, and a couple of huge, I'm-actually-getting-paid-for-these writing deadlines fast approaching. So we'll keep these notes today, in the grand tradition of jelly beans and Cadbury Mini-Eggs, short and sweet.
• I've been wanting to do a full-scale, magnum-opus kinda TWM deconstruction of Senator Obama's big speech, but I just haven't had the time. Watch for that sometime next week. In the meantime, here's the short version: a few bursts of honest and interesting stuff that, in the end, were overwhelmed by more of the same political and rhetorical hoo-ha. And made all the more disappointing -- if not at all surprising -- for the way it danced on the borders of the issue it most needed to address.
• Perhaps by the time I get around to writing about it, Senator Breath of Fresh Air will have explained this comment, made to a Philadelphia radio station in the wake of his speech, in an attempt to explain what I thought was -- despite its abundant praises from the punditry -- one of the more odious and dubious portions of it: The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person, who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's bred into, uh, our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society.
• That's right, folks. The great uniter and uber-thoughtful racial harmonizer used the phrase a typical white person. And meant it. (I imagine you have not heard that he did. Go figure. But if you'd like to hear him say it for yourself, click here.)
• Anyone care to speculate whether you'd have heard about it if, say, Hillary Clinton or John McCain, while talking about race or bigotry or any damned thing else, had used the phrase a typical black person?
• New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, no doubt nosing around for a Vice Presidential nomination, yesterday endorsed Barack Obama, calling him a once-in-a-lifetime leader. He can tell this, of course, from Senator Obama's long and impressive track record of leading... what, exactly?
• Oh, that's right. A presidential campaign that, despite the greatest blow job in the history of modern media coverage, still can't put away a typical white person as divisive as Hillary Clinton.
• In response to yesterday's post about that repulsive Roomful Express commercial, one of TWM's most favorite readers and writers -- we'll call him Mr. R. -- emailed to note that [his] own personal grievance on that sort of silliness came from the Berenstain Bears books: Did you ever notice that among the trio, Papa Bear was always the clueless doofus? The Bears books... just grind me down.
• I agreed, of course, because I always hated the Berenstain Bears books. But Mr. R.'s email reminded me of a series of children's books I hated even more. A series of books that -- and I know this is sacrilege to many people who, for some reason, hold these things in high esteem -- ground me down and then laughed at what was left of me: those damned Clifford the Big Red Dog books. Norman Bidwell never -- and I mean never -- used an active verb. In fact, I don't think he could find an active construction if you gave him a map and a compass. To this day, I'm convinced he earned a bonus for every passive verb he included in those damned, stultifying books. I used to hide them under the couch so I didn't have to read them to Adam. By the time Ethan was born, I'd taken even more proactive measures: I threw most of them away before he ever had a chance to ask me to read them.
• Forget the unbelievable hypocrisy of the Pittsburgh Steelers' selective, no-tolerance, but-baptism-makes-it-okay policy for players who assault their girlfriends -- it's already been well-covered here and here and beautifully satirized here -- and focus instead, for a moment, on the other astonishing thing that came out of Dan Rooney's hypocritical, self-serving pie-hole yesterday. Explaining why the Steelers are hiking ticket prices next year -- which, for the record, I do not begrudge them -- Mr. Rooney said, We needed to increase the prices to remain competitive. For those of you still struggling to regain your senses, I'll repeat that last bit: to remain competitive. You know, in a league with a hard salary cap. And the world's most lucrative sports television contract. In a market that worships his team so much, it happily shrugs its collective shoulders when he tries to claim the moral high ground by cutting his girlfriend-punching 4th wide receiver, all the while coddling his girlfriend-slapping Pro Bowl linebacker.
• The more I've thought about it, the more (and more uncomfortably) I've been wondering: if James Harrison's girlfriend had been a Satanist, do you suppose, in Dan Rooney's world, it would have been worth it for Harrison to kill her? Or at least to beat her a lot more than he did? Or would that have gotten him a couple of extra sprints in training camp and maybe a tsk tsk from the owners' box? At least until his first sack of the season?
• First, a nod to unfortunate realities: it's been pretty crazy end of the week here at TWM Headquarters, with an upcoming holiday, a couple of boys home from school, and a couple of huge, I'm-actually-getting-paid-for-these writing deadlines fast approaching. So we'll keep these notes today, in the grand tradition of jelly beans and Cadbury Mini-Eggs, short and sweet.
• I've been wanting to do a full-scale, magnum-opus kinda TWM deconstruction of Senator Obama's big speech, but I just haven't had the time. Watch for that sometime next week. In the meantime, here's the short version: a few bursts of honest and interesting stuff that, in the end, were overwhelmed by more of the same political and rhetorical hoo-ha. And made all the more disappointing -- if not at all surprising -- for the way it danced on the borders of the issue it most needed to address.
• Perhaps by the time I get around to writing about it, Senator Breath of Fresh Air will have explained this comment, made to a Philadelphia radio station in the wake of his speech, in an attempt to explain what I thought was -- despite its abundant praises from the punditry -- one of the more odious and dubious portions of it: The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person, who, uh, you know, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's bred into, uh, our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way. And that's just the nature of race in our society.
• That's right, folks. The great uniter and uber-thoughtful racial harmonizer used the phrase a typical white person. And meant it. (I imagine you have not heard that he did. Go figure. But if you'd like to hear him say it for yourself, click here.)
• Anyone care to speculate whether you'd have heard about it if, say, Hillary Clinton or John McCain, while talking about race or bigotry or any damned thing else, had used the phrase a typical black person?
• New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, no doubt nosing around for a Vice Presidential nomination, yesterday endorsed Barack Obama, calling him a once-in-a-lifetime leader. He can tell this, of course, from Senator Obama's long and impressive track record of leading... what, exactly?
• Oh, that's right. A presidential campaign that, despite the greatest blow job in the history of modern media coverage, still can't put away a typical white person as divisive as Hillary Clinton.
• In response to yesterday's post about that repulsive Roomful Express commercial, one of TWM's most favorite readers and writers -- we'll call him Mr. R. -- emailed to note that [his] own personal grievance on that sort of silliness came from the Berenstain Bears books: Did you ever notice that among the trio, Papa Bear was always the clueless doofus? The Bears books... just grind me down.
• I agreed, of course, because I always hated the Berenstain Bears books. But Mr. R.'s email reminded me of a series of children's books I hated even more. A series of books that -- and I know this is sacrilege to many people who, for some reason, hold these things in high esteem -- ground me down and then laughed at what was left of me: those damned Clifford the Big Red Dog books. Norman Bidwell never -- and I mean never -- used an active verb. In fact, I don't think he could find an active construction if you gave him a map and a compass. To this day, I'm convinced he earned a bonus for every passive verb he included in those damned, stultifying books. I used to hide them under the couch so I didn't have to read them to Adam. By the time Ethan was born, I'd taken even more proactive measures: I threw most of them away before he ever had a chance to ask me to read them.
• Forget the unbelievable hypocrisy of the Pittsburgh Steelers' selective, no-tolerance, but-baptism-makes-it-okay policy for players who assault their girlfriends -- it's already been well-covered here and here and beautifully satirized here -- and focus instead, for a moment, on the other astonishing thing that came out of Dan Rooney's hypocritical, self-serving pie-hole yesterday. Explaining why the Steelers are hiking ticket prices next year -- which, for the record, I do not begrudge them -- Mr. Rooney said, We needed to increase the prices to remain competitive. For those of you still struggling to regain your senses, I'll repeat that last bit: to remain competitive. You know, in a league with a hard salary cap. And the world's most lucrative sports television contract. In a market that worships his team so much, it happily shrugs its collective shoulders when he tries to claim the moral high ground by cutting his girlfriend-punching 4th wide receiver, all the while coddling his girlfriend-slapping Pro Bowl linebacker.
• The more I've thought about it, the more (and more uncomfortably) I've been wondering: if James Harrison's girlfriend had been a Satanist, do you suppose, in Dan Rooney's world, it would have been worth it for Harrison to kill her? Or at least to beat her a lot more than he did? Or would that have gotten him a couple of extra sprints in training camp and maybe a tsk tsk from the owners' box? At least until his first sack of the season?
Posted: Fri - March 21, 2008 at 12:15 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM