by John Walters
/https://www.thespec.com/content/dam/thestar/sports/football/2020/10/24/mertz-no-14-wisconsin-rout-illinois-45-7-in-big-ten-opener/WIMG114-1023_2020_120021.jpg)
Wiscons-out
The University of Wisconsin will not play football this Saturday. After freshman quarterback Graham Mertz (20-21 in his debut) tested positive for the coronavirus, and then an additional eleven players and staff did, the Badgers suspended all football-related activities for seven days.
Their game at Nebraska this weekend has been canceled. The Huskers have replaced Wisconsin with Chattanooga, which I’m fine with as long as the request to play began with, “Pardon me, boy…”
You Don’t Know Jack
This week’s Lou Holtz Award for ” ’80’s Sports Legend Who Reveals Himself To Be Out Of Touch With Reality” goes to golf icon Jack Nicklaus, who won a thrilling Masters in 1986 when he was 46.
Wondering how many white male golfers will admonish Jack to “stick to sports.”
The Million Dollar Highway
A buddy of mine is embarking on this road in southwestern Colorado this morning and I’ve already paid him my last respects. Not that I respect him all that much, but he is a fun guy.
The MDH, a.k.a. Highway 550, stretches from Bernalillo, just north of Albuquerque, up to Montrose, Colorado. But it is the stretch between Durango and Ouray, an Alps-like area with hairpin turns, that garners the most “oohs” and “ahs” and “oh no’s!”
Cult 45 (or “The End Of The Innocence”)
Every word of this opening from Frank Bruni’s essay in The New York Times this morning. Every. Word.
It’s always assumed that those of us who felt certain of Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2016 were putting too much trust in polls.
I was putting too much trust in Americans.
I’d seen us err. I’d watched us stray. Still I didn’t think that enough of us would indulge a would-be leader as proudly hateful, patently fraudulent and flamboyantly dishonest as Donald Trump.
We had episodes of ugliness, but this? No way. We were better than Trump.
Except, it turned out, we weren’t.
How do you put it any more succinctly, candidly and accurately than that?
I had conversations with two Uber drivers yesterday (my very first day as a customer). Both were white, one was a 26-year Marine veteran, and both indicated they “could not vote for Trump.” I’ll go out on an extremely short limb and say that both of them voted for him in 2016.
(Kind of the perfect metaphor for the Trump presidency).
Both of these men were decent guys, and good thinkers. I don’t know why so many people like them were hoodwinked four years ago. To so many of us, it was obvious. Those who continue to willingly be hoodwinked, well, I don’t know what’s up with them. Or would rather not entertain what the answer is.
They Don’t Even Care
Here’s yet another metaphor for what’s wrong with this country. The challenger here, Jon Ossoff, pointing out both the greed and the corruption of the incumbent, David Perdue, a literal stuffed shirt, who doesn’t seem all that bothered about having his past sins exposed. After all, he’s got the money and enough white supremacist/evangelists will always be in his corner because they don’t want those damn immigrants taking “their jobs,” even if they are unemployed, on government assistance and perhaps running a family meth lab.
Sad, I had not read before that Jack Nicklaus is suffering from dementia.
Good one, Susie B!