by John Walters
Tweet Me Right
Starting Five
Nobody’s Perfect
Despite the play above the Seahawks beat the 49ers in overtime, 27-24, in San Francisco Santa Clara. With the loss, the Niners drop to 8-1. There are no unbeatens left in the NFL, which I think means that Alabama has renewed hope to make the college football playoff.
Bubble Screen-Worthy
Too bad I did not see this until Monday. A small moment that will go viral because it’s so genuine. I’ve never met Marty Smith but he didn’t have to do this. And it obviously made a world of difference to this young reporter. After a long, long day in Tuscaloosa Smith still had time to make someone else’s. Fantastic.
Another Dominant Russell In S.F.
Remember when the Lakers selected D’Angelo Russell with the 2nd overall pick in the draft and he never seemed to blossom and then they traded him to the Nets. Remember when the Warriors picked up Russell last summer as sort of a salve for the losses of Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson this season and figured he’d at least help Stephen Curry carry the load for what looked to be around a .500 season?
In Russell’s first four games with the Dubs, all of which he shared the backcourt with Curry, the 6’4″ guard from Ohio State averaged 16.3 ppg. Then Curry broke his left hand and Steve Kerr handed the keys to Russell.
In the four games since Russell has averaged 36.3 points including a 52-point effort in last Friday night’s overtime loss at Minnesota. Last night he put up 33 in a loss to Utah. The Dubs have lost all four of these games and they’re going to lose many, many more. But Russell may wind up leading the league in scoring and becoming the West Coast James Harden, circa 2015.
He’s the most dominant Russell to play in San Francisco since Bill.
Billionaires (Cont.)
“Are you a socialist?” he was asked.
“No,” he replied. “I just think that if you have 100 people and 100 potatoes that it’s somewhat unconscionable for one person in the community to have 99 of them and leave the other potato to be split among the other 99 people.”
“But what if,” asked the interrogator, “if that one person has worked HARDER than the other 99 people combined?”
Ah, and here is the fallacy with the very, very, very wealthy (and worse, with the wealthy who aspire to put a few “very’s” in front of their wealth): being wealthy has a lot to do with working hard, but it also has a little something to do with what career you chose. The hardest-working teachers and cops and firemen and soldiers, all of whom are indispensable to a functioning society (bloggers and sportswriters, not so much), will never be very wealthy. It’s not happening.
And so you say, “Well, if they’d worked harder maybe they could have been in private equity or become a doctor or lawyer, etc.” Maybe. Maybe that’s not the career they (or yes, I) wanted.
But the question here isn’t whether someone in a middle- or lower-class career deserves to have someone in a better career, making five to ten times their salary, having the latter carry their load (answer: of course not). And that’s what I consistently find incredible about people I encounter who do much better than the average American (than I) being so vociferous in their defense of BILLIONAIRES.
(You may recall that last week I seemed to defend billionaires here; my argument is that I don’t believe there should be a cap on income; on the other hand, well, let me explain below…).
Having someone who earns $500,000 to $1 million per year defend billionaires to the average American (like me) is like having a squirrel tell a mouse why they shouldn’t have a problem with an elephant. Or a blue whale. In terms of size.
Look. It’s not about wealth; it’s about scale. And I think that so many Americans have a very difficult time truly appreciating that scale. So allow me to provide this analogy. If you’ve ever run a 10-K, that’s 10,000 meters. One meter is roughly the distance of one stride when you’re running. So, if you are someone who earns $100,000 per year, which is a pretty decent salary in the United States, you have taken one step in this 10-K race whereas the billionaire has already arrived at the finish line. Your one step in the 10-K is equivalent to the entire 10-K, in relation to income disparity.
Now, couple that with the fact that last year for the very first time billionaires paid a lower percentage of income tax (23%) than did average Americans (28%) for the first time in U.S. history, and the lowest percentage since income tax was created here, and well, you’ve got the seeds of a populist uprising.
We know what Jesus said about being rich, but I don’t think even Jesus was talking about the relative wealth of billionaires. Again, if you earn $1 million per year, bully for you. You earn 10x as much as someone with a decent job making $100,000. You also earn 1/1,000th of a billionaire. So why do you think of yourself as being more like a billionaire than that $100,000 per year earner?
Finally, there are roughly 750 Major League Baseball players when you consider 30 teams and 25-man rosters. There are just over 600 billionaires in the U.S.A. That’s how rare it is. So again, why do so many Americans align themselves with them? Just because you hit a home run for your Zog Sports softball team doesn’t mean you’re Juan Soto, ya’ know?
Five Films: 1953
- Roman Holiday Gregory Peck falls for an AWOL princess played by Audrey Hepburn in her captivating screen debut, for which she won the Oscar 2. From Here To Eternity Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed and Montgomery Clift. A steamy soap opera set amongst the days leading up to the invasion of Pearl Harbor. Ol’ Blue Eyes won a statuette in a supporting role but Clift is the heart of the film. 3. Stalag 17 William Holden had quite a career going for himself in the Fifties (Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, Bridge on The River Kwai and this) and won the Oscar for this German POW flick 4. Shane A simple Western allegory with one of the more memorable lines in filmdom (“Come back, Shane”) 5.
WhiteThe Big Heat Susie B. will give me hell for not including Bandwagon or even Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but this is classic film noir starring Glenn Ford. And we’d also highly recommend another noir gem, less known, titled Pickup On South Street.
Reserves
–In The New York Times, fired Deadspin Editor-In-Chief Barry Petcheskey writes an Op-Ed titled “I Was Fired From Deadspin For Refusing To Stick To Sports.”
–In Canada, SportsNet fires Don Cherry. Never begin a patriotic rant with “You people…”
–Beloved former NBC executive (you rarely see those words strung together) Rick Ludwin passes away. He was the exec who staked his meager budget on early episodes of Seinfeld when no one else believed in the show. Go to the Twitter feeds of John Mulaney and Ken Tremendous to read wonderful vignettes about him. It’s nice to be nice.
GREAT LIST! However, I think #5 is a typo & the Glenn Ford flick you’re thinking of is The Big Heat. I just saw this movie for the 1st time this year & couldn’t take my eyes off the TV screen. Can’t believe I’d never seen it before! Ford as the good cop & even more decent man takes on the mob & corrupt officials in his city. Lee Marvin as a bad guy (a REALLY, really bad guy!) & Gloria Grahame as the moll who turns ‘good’. What’s not to love?!
Other ’53 films to love – yes, The Bandwagon. 🙂 Also, By The Light of the Silvery Moon (Doris & Gordon again! Can’t help myself!), How to Marry a Millionaire (Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable & Marilyn Monroe), Titanic (this version with Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, Robert Wagner & a bunch of others. Have I ever mentioned I have a sort of ‘fixation’ with sinking ship movies?), & The Robe, a biblical epic starring Richard Burton, Jean Simmons, & Victor Mature. The 50s were THE era of biblical epics! 🙂
I am convinced the folks who don’t want to “overly tax” the billionaires & the rest of the 1% think they REALLY, REALLY have a shot at winning millions in the lottery themselves & don’t want to pay the tax. 😉
It’s not just the obscene amount of money itself; it’s what comes with it – the POWER, the ‘get-out-of-jail-free-over-&-over-&-over-again-card’, & most of all, the sheer imbalance in the society which leads to corruption & injustice in a downward spiral.
Do we really want America to be ruled by an immoral, avaricious OLIGARCHY?
Here’s the problem for the Democrats – the white percentage of our population is dwindling & it is striking FEAR & ANGER in what had been the majority in this country since inception. (Did you know the majority of kids now in public school nationwide are non-white? You think that isn’t perceived as threatening to the dwindling white majority?) The GOP Nazis are feeding on this, fanning the flames, ludicrously convincing these folks that their party is “on their side” which could NOT be farther from the truth. How do the Democrats convince these fearful, angry people NOT to be fearful & angry? That it won’t matter that they are no longer the majority? That THEY will benefit? THAT’s this coming election & all future elections in three questions.
On The West Wing, when discussing the estate tax (“death tax”), it was asked why so many Americans favored a repeal/rollback of the tax considering that only the very wealthy would benefit from it. Bartlet replied, “It doesn’t matter if most voters don’t benefit. They all believe that someday they will. That’s the problem with the American dream. It makes everyone concerned for the day they’re gonna be rich.”
I don’t think most Americans think they will be billionaires, but they do think that because they live in the US there is a chance that they (or more likely their children or grandchildren) may some day make enough money that any efforts to tax the wealthy more heavily will hurt them.
More fundamentally, American society, built on capitalism, has bought into the idea that the more you earn, the more you deserve wealth. And the American wealthy class has been able to convince the nation, ever since Reagan, that the more money that corporations and the wealthy get to keep, the better it is for everyone. That’s why 21st-century Americans have never clamored for higher taxes on the 1%, even though during most of the 20th century, the tax rates on the highest earners were much higher than they are now.
I confess I was only slightly aware of the “poppy-wearing” in Canada on Remembrance Day until yesterday. Has the tradition lessened in the past few years & that’s what triggered Cherry? Had a lot of money been traditionally raised with the sale of the poppies & has it evaporated, hurting various social causes?
Apparently, this Cherry guy is not backing down & unless he’s always just been a racist blowhard, I wonder if there is something more going on in Canada than we oblivious folks to the south realize? Have you asked Moose for any insight?
As a matter of fact, I did phone Moose for insight. She answered the phone and in the most droll voice possible asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
But eventually she provided the history of the poppy (something something about a poem and Canadians taking part in WW1…on whose side she didn’t say….and how France is filled with poppies but not like the opium ones in Cambodia).Anyway, apparently Don Cherry wouldn’t back down or apologize so he got fired but will probably be our next Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary.