Listening to Charles Barkley speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN the other night, this quote knocked me down: “It’s exhausting being black…especially if you’re a celebrity. I love Tom Brady, but nobody asks him what it’s like in white America.”
The brief NBA work stoppage earlier this week—Wednesday through Friday—demonstrated that athletes are able to be unified in terms of social justice and have even ruminated, seriously, about putting their money where their mouths are. That is, surrendering massive pay days in order to work toward justice.
The National Football League season is slated to begin in less than two weeks. And while I’d never expect Brady, or Drew Brees (or Jake Fromm) to threaten not to play, it’s important to remember that 70% of the players in the NFL are black. 70%.
Tom Brady can’t do much at quarterback with no one to throw to or no one to protect him.
(Tom Brady is the old face of the NFL)
The GOP is annoyed by the NBA’s protest—during the RNC, no less—but you have to think that Donald Trump believes that in terms of sports the NBA is, to use a term the president once used about the now-defunct USFL from decades ago, “small potatoes.”
However, if the 70% of the NFL that is black refused to play in two weeks, well, now that would be something. No league draws the type of television ratings, commands the nation’s attention, quite like the National Football League. An NFL strike would embolden both the NBA and MLB to go on strike. I hope you like hockey, America. Like, very much.
If NFL players simply chose not to play and announced that they were going to dedicate the next two months to helping people register to vote, to do everything in their power to promote the idea of voting on November 3rd, that would send a most powerful message.
It was less than six months ago that, in this space, I wrote that Colin Kaepernick would go down as the most important NFL player of this era with the possible exception of Brady. I wonder how many readers scoffed at that. In the time since I wrote that, Kaepernick’s legacy has only grown in stature.
Do I expect an NFL players strike to take place? No, not unless a few more black men (or women) are shot or killed under the most questionable of circumstances by the police in the next 10 days (and yes, who are we to say that cannot happen?). But if you are asking me what I’d like to see, this is it. No sports of any kind, or at least no black men playing those sports, between now and election day.
That is the most powerful statement these men (and women) could make.
From what we were able to ascertain, the president gave a speech blaming Joe Biden for what’s wrong with America. Which might have been effective rhetoric if Biden had been president the past four years as opposed to the man who was speaking.
And Ivanka spoke but did not wear her wedding ring. No explanation on that one so we won’t presume to guess why.
As for Trump’s speech, Frank Bruni does a good job of sifting through the bullshit in his column this morning. “It’s not a lie if you believe it, Jerry.”
Also, we thought David Brooks did an excellent job here illustrating what Trumpism is attempting to do: create a Mean World that doesn’t necessarily exist. It’s Bogeyman America.
Meanwhile, we hear that Trump PROMISED that there would be a vaccine “by the end of the year, if not sooner.” And why not promise that? The election is on November 3rd. If he’s wrong and he loses, who cares? And if he’s wrong and he wins, he won’t care. It’s the kind of guarantee a seasoned con man knows how to make, because there’s no downside in promising this lie. And if you think this president hasn’t lied about this pandemic already, well, you’re too dumb to be reading this blog.
A Farce In The Crowd
Meanwhile, the attendees of the RNC on the South Lawn of the White House numbered in the hundreds, seated close to one another, with few wearing masks. Apparently the president invoked his dead brother, Robert, whose death remains a mystery (did he go to a farm upstate to live with other overshadowed siblings?), and you had to wonder how many folks in this Sturgis East gathering might now meet the same fate. Wilbur Ross didn’t look so good, did he?
Posting Dale
This nerdy rant by CNN’s Daniel Dale is magical. You can hear the astonishment and earnestness in his voice as he fact-checks the president’s lies from his speech. Watch Cooper’s reaction at the end of his breathless polemic (“Well, that’s it?”). What’s truly incredible is that there’s no way Dale is reading off a teleprompter. He has all of that stored up in that gigantic brain of his and he’s simply flushing it out. Outstanding.
Lute Leaves
Arguably the most successful big-time coach in the history of Arizona sports, Lute Olson passed away earlier this week at the age of 85. Olson led the University of Arizona to the national championship in 1997—the Wildcats became the first and still only team since teams began being seeded in 1979 to defeat three No. 1’s en route to cutting down the nets in April.
Olson was the head coach in Tucson for 24 years and beat more No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tourney (7) than any coach has with the lone exception of Mike Krzyzewski (8). He took the Wildcats to 23 straight NCAA tourneys and a quartet of Final Four appearances.
We’ve always thought that one of the important factors in Olson’s success wast that in the 2nd through 6th seasons (five years) of his tenure in Tucson, he had a mature coach-on-the-court player by the name of Steve Kerr. In many ways Kerr has blossomed into the NBA style of coach that Olson was in college.
Gubernatorially handsome and always flashing a smile, Olson could have risen far in politics had he wanted. He had the look and the demeanor. Fortunately, he simply retired and enjoyed the 330 days of sunshine a year the Sonoran desert affords.
Karsten’s Koming
The oldest existing world record in men’s track? That belongs to Kevin Young of the USA, who in 1992 ran a 46.78 in the 400 hurdles at the Olympics in Barcelona. At the time Young became the first man in 20 years not named Edwin Moses to break the WR in that event.
But on Sunday in Stockholm Karsten Warholm of Norway, running in front of no fans during the pandemic, clocked a 46.87. That’s the second-fastest time in history…and Warholm struck the last of the 10 hurdles he needed to clear, which definitely slowed him some.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oynlRDGD6GI
The men’s 5,000-meter world record was broken earlier this month by Joshua Cheptegei (12:35.36) in Monaco. The previous record (12:37.35) had been set in 2004 by Kenenisa Bekele. So on August 14th a 16 year-old world record was broken and on August 23rd a 28 year-old world record was nearly broken.
This, from Maria Taylor, is eloquent and trenchant. I love how she says that “for years the black body has been a revenue-generating sport.” Or how she notes that the NBA players didn’t have a plan, but they didn’t have to. Because they did not create this problem. Love how she notes that Dylann Roof can shoot up a church of black people and be arrested as if he were jaywalking while Jacob Blake takes seven bullets to the chest for attempting to return to his vehicle.
Roof had murdered nine people. The cops were almost apologetic about it.
The Milwaukee Bucks become the first major pro sports team, at least in our memory, to refuse to play a game. The Bucks skipped out on their playoff game with the Magic last night to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisc., over the weekend by police. Blake was unarmed and it was broad daylight.
The Bucks’ action sparked a reaction all over sports. All three NBA games last night were not played and chances are that all three of tonight’s playoff games will also be called off. Certain Major League teams, including the Dodgers and Giants, also opted to not play.
The entire NBA postseason is in jeopardy. And why not? Players must be tired already of being part of the NBA Truman Show and meanwhile incidents like the Blake shooting continue to transpire.
If you read this space, you know we’ve been calling for black athletes to boycott playing for a variety of reasons over the past year. They do hold power and their leverage is their abstinence. Knowing how much the Bucks’ act must have pissed off POTUS on the third night of the RNC last night already makes it worth it.
We hope (perhaps selfishly) that the NBA players vote to end the season. It’s never mattered anyway after the mid-March interregnum. And those arguing that the players’ power comes from having the platform of playing are either being disingenuous or fooling themselves. Nothing would be more powerful than these players not playing and then being visible in communities extolling people to vote.
Finally, we loved Charles Barkley on CNN last night: “It’s exhausting being black, especially when you’re a celebrity. You know, I love Tom Brady, but nobody asks him about what’s going on in white America.” Yes. Damn!
This Is What ‘White Privilege’ Looks Like
I get tired of hearing “white privilege” used as a cudgel over and over, but to deny its existence is pure willful ignorance. This video clip from Kenosha is as pure example of it as you’ll ever see.
You can skip ahead to 2:30 of the video to get to the meaty part.
I imagine the Tucker Carlsons of the world will whitesplain that Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was under attack by the mob and was only defending himself. I guess the questions I have are why Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Ill., drove some 30 miles with a long gun to be a part of this scene. And why, if he was supposedly “defending businesses,” was he out in the middle of the street with his gun.
What is truly horrifying takes place after the shootings. There’s Rittenhouse walking down the center of the road as three police vehicles slowly approach. People are screaming “He shot somebody,” the gun is clearly visible, and the cops are apathetic. They clearly do not see Rittenhouse as a threat (in an earlier video Rittenhouse and other “vigilantes” are being given water bottles by the cops).
As Don Lemon asked on CNN last night, “What would happen if he had been Muslim, black or Latino?” I think we all know, Don. I share your frustration that the guest to whom you asked that question chose such a milquetoast response.
This was on the same night that AARP Ken Doll Mike Pence pledged “law and order.” How about law and justice, for once?
Oh, and of course, of course, this kid was in the front row of a Trump rally or two. Of course.
You’re Dead To Me, Lou
Here’s former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz speaking at the RNC last night:
You can listen for yourself. What we here don’t understand is how Republicans are able to overlap their “values” with the glaringly obvious failings and/or corruption of Donald Trump. Here’s Charlie Kirk on Monday night:
“President Trump was elected to defend the American way of life…The American way of life means you follow the law, you work hard, you honor God, you raise your kids with strong values and you work to create a civil society.”
As Frank Bruni of The New York Times reacted, “Excuse me? Trump doesn’t bow to the law, not to go by the tax returns that journalists have gotten their hands on, by the hush money paid to a porn star, by his rescue of Roger Stone. The examples abound.”
This is what Trump Republicans don’t seem to get. It’s not (all of) their values that are so misplaced. It’s that they actually believe that Donald Trump is a gatekeeper of such values. It’s laughable. As are they.
By the way, pity the Republicans. In just four short years, Trump, a Democrat most of his life who only a dozen or so years ago seriously considered running for president as a Democrat, has completely hijacked their party. During the first three nights of the RNC speakers America has heard included Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Tiffany Trump, Melania Trump and Donald Jr.’s girlfriend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMRV0dx9_Vk
It’s like one of those King family Christmas specials from the 1970s when you didn’t quite know who the King family were, you just knew they were wealthy and they were going to occupy your screen for the entire hour.
Never mind, by the way, that the White House is not supposed to be prostituted out as a campaign backdrop or that the Secretary of State is not supposed to take sides in an election.
Man, I cannot wait until Biden is president and all of these same Republicans remember decorum and protocol and emoluments clauses and the like. It’s going to be rich, the irony. And they’ll be unapologetically shameless about it.
More Fun From The Graham Norton Show
Here in America, British expat James Corden attempts (or before Covid-19, attempted) to recreate the magic of The Graham Norton Show, but it just does not translate. How Norton manages to wrangle big stars (I believe the show airs just once a week) and then make them so comfortable with one another (I believe alcohol is involved) always amazes me.
Here, in just a two-minte clip, are two very funny anecdotes. Enjoy. And all four of the celebrities are clearly enjoying themselves. That’s what always stands out about the Norton show and what makes him such an extraordinary host: the guests want to participate and are clearly having a blast.
Laura Blows
The first of the two hurricanes slated to hit the Louisiana and Texas coasts, Laura, made landfall last night (love that word: landfall). Laura is a category 4 hurricane and its effects will be exacerbated by a pandemic that will cause locals to think twice about fleeing to a crowded shelter (thanks, Obama… that’s what I’m supposed to say when anything goes wrong, right? Even if none of the crisis is of his making?).
Anyway, more death. More property damage. More loss. But it’s mostly poor black people so don’t worry about it. You’ll probably hear little about it in the president’s remarks tonight from the RNC.
Tesla (Cont.)
Tesla stock, like the crime rate in New York City as described in the Rolling Stones’ “Shattered,” keeps “going up, up, up, up, up!”
You could’ve owned Tesla (TSLA) for as little as $805 on May 28th, or three months ago. Today, after yet another morning of the stock rising more than $50 (third consecutive day), it’s above $2,200. That’s nearly 200% up in three months.
Now, while we do hear you, Susie B. (“Tulips!”), you’d be wise to remember that the stock’s 4-for-1 split coming on August 31st is going to put the stock price back in the $500 range. And while it doesn’t technically change the value of the stock, you tell that to a millennial with a Robin Hood account who doesn’t care too much about EPS or P/E ratios.
Seeing the price of Tesla stock back at around $500 will stimulate more buying. Will Tesla, after the split, be up near $1,000 in value by year’s end? We think so.
Is Lionel Messi the best soccer player on the planet? Yes.
The best soccer player ever? Perhaps.
Now the diminutive Argentine , who has been a fixture in the No. 10 jersey at Camp Nou for F.C. Barcelona since 2004, wants out. Messi, 33, has informed his club that he wants to head elsewhere.
For a full decade, from 2009-2018, the world’s top two soccer players, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, played in La Liga, the top Spanish league. England may have been home to the Premier league, but due to these two, La Liga was soccer’s premiere league. It was sort of like Comedy Central when Jon Stewart hosted The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert his semi-eponymous show. You didn’t need the network for anything else, but these two made it must-see.
(Messi and Guardiola in happy times)
Messi, whose six Ballon d’Or trophies (world’s best soccer player) are a record, has designs on reuniting with his former FC Barcelona manager, Pep Guardiola, who’s now the manager at Manchester City. It would be a shot in the arm for the Premier League if Messi, even at this stage of his career, migrated north. And devastating for La Liga, which two years ago lost Ronaldo to Serie A, the top Italian league.
The Screen Door Slams
It was 45 years ago yesterday (August 25, 1975) that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released Born To Run and changed everything. None of the songs on Springsteen’s third album were radio hits (the title track charted highest at 23 on the Billboard charts; decades later Rolling Stone would place it higher, 21st, on the list of greatest rock songs of all time) but that didn’t really matter to the thousands of fans who would soon be swept up in the gospel of Bruce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5kXnq5IjdU
I did not discover the album until five years later, which is odd because our family lived on the Jersey shore when Born To Run was released, but, we had to get out while we’re young, so in 1978 we moved to Arizona. Also in that interim my grade school friend Charlene Accardi, who wrote me once our family moved, found Bruce’s wallet on the boardwalk (perhaps Asbury Park, I’m not sure). This would’ve been in late ’78 or ’79. She really did because she somehow got in touch with Bruce and he showed up at her home in Red Bank, N.J., to retrieve the wallet and snap a few photos. She sent me one. He’s wearing the same outfit he wore on the cover of Darkness On The Edge of Town.
It’s really him.
Anyway, I discovered the album in 1980, during the first semester of high school. Put it on a list of albums as I joined the Columbia Record & Tape Club. Within two days it was my favorite album of all the ones I’d purchased for a penny. Within two weeks I knew every lyric on the album (they were printed on the inside cover, but I would’ve learned them anyway by osmosis) from “The screen door slams…” to “Tonight, in Junglelaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.”
In November, during announcements at my high school, they staged a contest and said the first person who could come to the office and recite the first ten lines to “Jungleland” would win two concert tickets (alas, not to Bruce, but to see Kansas). I raced out of my Latin class and ran down the hallway of Loyola Hall and blurted, “The Rangers had a homecoming/In Harlem late last night/And the Magic Rat pulled his sleek machine/Over the Jersey state line/Barefoot girl–“
“Stop!” I was ordered. And the vice principal handed me the tickets.
It would be a full 12 years after before I finally saw Bruce live in concert. In 1992.
As the decades pass, I consider Darkness On The Edge Of Town to be this album’s equal, at least. But Born To Run was the album that assured Springsteen that he would never be one of those broken heroes with which the highways are jammed, on a last-ditch power drive.
This is the sound of the Jersey shore where I grew up. And it’s nice to have a soundtrack to your youth that places you right there. Thanks, Bruce.
Cremation Nation
Our latest get-rich-slow scheme: a nationwide franchise of crematoriums. Funeral homes seem to be the last businesses that have yet to go box-store or franchise on us, and meanwhile no one ever seems to talk about how they got a great deal on roasting Uncle Ernie.
But why not? Why not a crematorium that offers low, low prices? We’ve even got our slogan: “We’ll incinerate your loved one without raking you over the coals!”
So who wants to invest in Cremation Nation?
Runaway Model
Sorry to sound catty, but I did not get much past the catwalk entrance stage of the First Lady’s speech last night. After all, that’s what she did best professionally, so why not exploit it? If you’re scoring at home, Melania Trump’s entrance took 44 seconds and required two left turns. Which is odd, considering it’s the GOP. You’d think they’d have reconfigured the setting so that she’d have to turn right.
We lasted until Mrs. Trump, with a look of either paralyzed fear or the type of brainwashing last seen in The Manchurian Candidate, said something about “energy and enthusiasm.” It’s incredible that someone can freeze a smile onto their face for that long in support of a POTUS husband (but Hillary will tell you, it is possible).
Lovely woman. Stunningly beautiful. Rhetoric is not her forte. I don’t know why they force it upon her.
Why Isn’t There Even More Jennifer Garner News?
We visited cnn.com yesterday (okay, perhaps our first mistake) and spotted not one but two Jennifer Garner headlines. The first story had something to do with the effortlessly appealing actress doing a dance routine in what seemed to be her backyard with a professional ballerina. The second story informed us, the pandemic public, that Garner and her children were in tears…having just finished watching The Office from start to finish (and they didn’t even watch the far superior British version).
What Garner-ian headlines will tomorrow bring? And why aren’t Reese Witherspoon’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s publicists working more diligently? How many other people recall that Garner and Bradley Cooper got their starts on the same Fox TV show (Alias) in the early 2000s?
