by John Walters

Jerk Store*

*The judges will not accept “Angel With Dirty Faces” because that’s racist!

Two headlines related to The Incident that I came across this morning:

1. “Only Racists And Squares Have A Problem With Angel Reese’s Antics” from Buzzfeed
2. “Angel Reese Trashing Caitlin Clark Was Weeks In The Making” from Newsweek*

*The hed is inaccurate, and the story never corroborates this assertion. More crappy work from the post-James Impoco/Bob Roe era of Newsweek.

My two nickels: One, that first hed is absolute trash and everything that is wrong with Wokeness and very similar to what I experienced last spring in the classroom. If you dare to disagree with us, it’s not about the validity of your argument; it’s that you’re a racist or a GOML’er. That shuts down meaningful conversation and debate immediately.

Two, Angel Reese has the power to behave any way she damn well pleases. And, similarly, you and I have the power to react to her, or anyone’s, behavior, any way we damn well please. I never saw Caitlin Clark’s initial use of the gesture versus Louisville and I’m not fully aware of the back-and-forth that may have gone on between Clark, who by the way became the first female player to put together two 40-point games in one tourney, and her Cardinals counterpart Hailey Van Lith. Regardless, it had nothing to do with Reese.

Three, if a player from UConn had done this to a player from San Diego State immediately after Monday’s final, a similar double-digit win in a championship game, fists are flying. Let’s not pretend that wouldn’t have happened.

Four, and most importantly to me, it all seemed so contrived. Am I offended as a sports fan? No, I’m offended as a comedian. It reminded me of Costanza’s “Jerk Store” comment, in which he was dissed on the fly, then waited weeks in order to exact verbal revenge. But his retort, as it happened, was stale and not witty and then the object of his wrath once again provided the wittier comeback (“You’re their biggest seller”).

Reese manufactured animus between herself and Clark that did not authentically exist, other than the fact that they are two of the best players in their sport. She retaliated against Clark for a gesture that Clark had not used against her. It was more of a stunt than a moment of genuine catharsis. And, at least for me, that phoniness is why I was turned off by it. Because it was never about Reese releasing some emotion at a player who had dissed her first. It was all about Reese calling attention to herself.

Trash talk is part of the game, they say. Fine. Let it be. But when it’s calculated, then it’s not, at least to me, entertaining. It’s childish and immature.

Finally, let’s be real here. Half the reason most of the people in the media who are defending Reese are defending her is because the black girl smacked a Karen. If the Karen had smacked a black girl, these takes, I suspect, would be 180 degrees opposite. No one would be defending Caitlin Clark for rubbing it in Reese’s face. They’d be saying that her behavior marred an otherwise brilliant performance.

Postscripts: 1) Yes, Jill Biden’s gesture toward Iowa was dumb and poorly thought out. If the White House needs a czar of sports, there are plenty of available applicants, 2) As much as the media is trashed for supposedly not respecting Reese, they did vote her Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.

King Leer

I’ve been on a deep dive into Shakespeare of late, and with each passing day the tale of the above fella looks more and more like one of the Bard’s trademark tragedies.*

*An aside: Finding out how much Shakespeare ripped off The Lion King in order to create Hamlet has been somewhat disappointing. If I were Elton John, I’d be furious.

Paying a porn star hush money so that the story of their tryst would not derail his presidential campaign was 1) ineffective, obviously (i.e. never has someone so not gotten their money’s worth in paying someone to remain silent) and 2) pretty much the least of 45’s crimes against humanity. As we will continue to see.

If you know the story of King Lear, he is a king who retires and then goes insane and paranoid after leaving his kingdom to his children. That’s far from an apt comparison to The Donald, who has always been a little mad. In fact, almost all of Shakespeare’s tragic figures (Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar) at least had a redeeming quality or two. Not so with Trump. He was, is and will continue to be, as long as he breathes, an amoral (not immoral) person and an incorrigible pu**y hunter, self-confessed, whose only goals in life are to satisfy his appetites: lust, greed and power. That’s it.

I doubt that Mr. Trump has ever truly loved anyone or anything other than himself. You know that scene in Good Will Hunting where Sean lays that smackdown on young Will, telling him the same thing? The difference is that Will was just a brash kid, that he was on cusp of evolving. Mr. Trump is 76 years old. He hasn’t learned, has no interest in learning, and he never will. This is one human who could really use a pet, dog or cat.

And I’ll remind you that Mr. Trump was at a fundraiser in the Hamptons, with plenty of powerful NY-based GOP donors, on the summer evening when Jeffrey Epstein (ahem) hung himself (cough, cough) in his jail cell (though for some reason Epstein screamed beforehand, as so many suicidal people do before hanging themselves) in Manhattan. That’s how far Mr. Trump will go to protect himself.

I’m reminded of another quote from Shakespeare, from another tragedy based upon another power-hungry autocrat bent on turning a republic into a dictatorship: The evil that men do lives after them.

Dollar Quiz

1. In which general direction does the White House face (front doors face)?
2. Who was the last 30-game winner in baseball?
3. Who was the previous last 30-game winner before him (hint: alliterative name)?
4. What two states have a significant chunk of land connected not to rest of state but rather to another state (separated from same state by water)?
5. There are four NBA franchises in California. Name their four origin or at least previous cities.