COULD YOU IMAGINE IF…?

One of my favorite phrases is: “Could you imagine if…?”

As in, “could you imagine if smartphones had never been invented?” Or: “could you imagine if Michael Jordan played in today’s NBA with the restrictions on physical play?”

 

Playing that forward, here are my two current favorite applications of that phrase:

 

1.       Could you imagine if the Republican National Convention allowed attendees to open carry firearms?

2.       Could you imagine if in addition to their regular customers, a group of black or middle-eastern men showed up to this restaurant with guns strapped to their sides?

I can. I can imagine.

I can imagine that devout First Amendment zealots like Trump and Cruz, would refuse to take the stage if hundreds or even dozens of delegates had Glocks or Smith & Wessons stuck in their Walmart reversible belts and Wrangler jeans. I could imagine The Donald and Lyin’ Ted holed up in their dressing rooms, yelling at their campaign staffs to demand a complete and total disarmament of the convention floor.

And at that Utah restaurant where guns are currently welcome…?

Come on. If a group of 20-somehting black men in ghetto chic and armed to the teeth started showing up and ordering the blue plate special, how long do you think it would take for the owners to hang a sign in the window prohibiting firearms in the establishment? A week? 10 days, tops?

And if that group included a dozen Muslim men in robes and beards and 9 mm pistols? How long then? I’m guessing there would be a sign in the window by closing time that day!

 

THE EXPENDABLES

 

Full caveat: I like Duke basketball and I think Mike Krzyzewski is a great coach and has shown class and humility his entire career.

That being said, I have a really bad taste in my mouth from his actions at the end of his team’s loss to Oregon in the NCAA Tournament.

Not, because he lectured Dillon Brooks about sportsmanship. Not totally because he lied about it, when confronted with an obvious discrepancy with the player’s account.

No, my biggest complaint is the fact that even the sainted Coach K – by his actions – showed that players are universally treated as lesser humans than coaches or athletic directors or NCAA administrators.

Follow me if you will.

There may be no person associated with sports who is more revered and loved than Coach K. He is widely considered to be not only one of the greatest coaches in history, but also considered one of the best people associated with sports.

Yet, when confronted with evidence that seemed to contradict his own words, the first course of action he took was to offer a lie at the expense of a 19-year-old’s integrity. Period.

Why? Why did he do it? I don’t think it was because he’s suddenly become a bad person, or because Mike Krzyzewski has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the sports world for decades. And I don’t think he did it because he was embarrassed at being caught red-handed.

I think he did it because despite his stellar reputation and celebrated character, Coach K threw a player under the bus, because whenever it comes down to coach vs. player, coach is always in the driver’s seat and player is always under the wheels.

Coaches own the manor and players are the help.  And who are you going to believe: the lord of the manor - a gentlemen who literally has a court named after him and is known around the world by a single letter – or some small forward from the University of Oregon who 99% of the country didn’t even know prior to the start of March Madness?

And If Coach K was ready to leave tire marks across a player’s chest, can you imagine what true bad guys like John Calipari or Rick Pitino would do? My god, they’d probably claim they told Brooks what a great game he played only to have him spit in their face and scream: “go to hell!”

Thus is the current landscape of big-time college basketball. Players are like disposable cameras: you need them to make a shot and take a shot, but once that’s done, toss em’.

 

SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY WANT TO

 

If I didn’t understand it before, this  really helped.  The clip of Samantha Bee, AKA “The one that got away from Comedy Central after John Stewart left” talking with Trump supporters finally helped me to understand what this is all about. 

No, Trump supporters aren’t supporters because of ideology or philosophy.

No, Trump supporters aren’t supporters because they believe he will make America great again.

No, Trump supporters aren’t supporters because they think he will do a great job as president.

Trump supporters ARE supporters because they want to be.

It’s finally become crystal clear to me. People are supporting Trump because he represents the best opportunity they have to say “F you” to a system that has totally left them behind.

Think about it.  If you fit the Trump supporter profile: white, relatively uneducated, lower middle to working class poor with no real hope of ever moving up, socially conservative and fearful of gays and liberated women - the two current political parties don’t work for you.

Liberals and democrats? They are too educated, socially tolerant, diverse and metropolitan to cater to Trump supporter’s fear of blacks, foreigners and independent thinking  women. And in a nation that is getting more diverse, younger and more tolerate, whites who long for the 1950’s can’t find safe harbor with this group.

Mainstream conservatives? They are too tied to that exclusive club of rich and well educated elites that only want Trump supporters at election time and would never want them as full time members. And in a nation with massive income inequality, this group will continue to move further and further away from everyone else.

But Trump? He’s so crass and so simple sounding that he panders to them better than anyone has before. He even makes arguments the same way they do – by repeating the same simple words over and over again in an increasingly loud and blustery way.

And he’s become relevant and famous in a manner that is the only path toward relevancy and fame that they could ever really see for themselves: dumb luck. He inherited a bunch of money from his dad – enough in fact to weather his many unfortunate business decisions – and became a reality TV star. For Trump supporters, that kind of stumbling into fame and fortune fits their world view because they know they are never going to become rich and famous through intelligence, talent and hard work.

Their lives are dreary and boring. They are angry at the certitude of that condition. They want to strike out at the left’s tolerance and education and the right’s wealth and privilege.

And here comes The Donald. Supporting Trump is like the teenage girl who takes up with the tattooed biker dude to piss off her parents. She knows the guy’s a loser and a waste of her time, but at least he’s a leather-clad and spiked-haired middle finger to her overbearing and oppressive mom and dad.

They cling to Trump because they want to. They go to his rallies because by doing so affords them one last chance to have a voice in a nation that would just assume vote them off the island as the weak link.

“Why are you supporting Donald Trump?” we may ask.

“Because I want to and I can,” says a truly honest supporter, “and that’s all I might have left.”

Permission to be shot

Here’s a dilemma for a concerned father.

Soon, my daughter’s 5^th grade class will participate in an active shooter drill during school.  If you haven’t heard about these very 21^st century educational extras, this provides a pretty good overview.

Now, I hate America’s gun culture with every fiber of my being. I hate the fact that we cannot address common sense gun control in our country and I hate that a putrid, violent and wholly a-moral cabal of misfits and fraidy cat racists like the NRA hold complete sway over our political leaders.

I also don’t want to do anything within a micron toward consent of that wonderfully American sentiment best described as, “well, what are ya gonna do?” regarding the prevalence of guns in our culture.

Yet, I will willfully sign the letter of consent my daughter brought home which allows her to participate in the exercise.  I don’t have to. I could say no and have her simply go read some books in the school library while her classmates are learning how to throw binders and I-pads at a would-be assailant and how to swarm the active shooter from all sides so as to lessen the odds that everyone in class gets shot.

Indeed, I could protest our brain numbing cultural which happily accepts regulations that all but place land-mines around a woman’s reproductive systems, yet practically stuffs handguns and assault rifles down our throats at every turn. But I won’t. I want my daughter to take the class and be prepared.

Thus, we have lost the battle for our soul when it comes to guns in America. We will never have sensible laws that help protect innocent people from mass shootings. We will always have gun violence and we will always live with the real possibility that your child or mine will be killed at school or in a movie theater or in a mall.

And so, we will simply shuffle along and instead of taking on the route cause, sign permission slips which lets our children learn about defensive tactics.

When it comes to guns, Americans are sheep. We let our government regulate cars, medicines, air travel, sports, X ray machines, chemicals and thousands of other things that can cause harm. We willfully, register our cars and take tests to prove we can drive them, yet no one screams that the DMV is trying to take away our Hondas and our freedoms.

Nice work everyone.

 

NOT SAYIN’, JUST SAYIN’

 

Recently, two evil men grabbed their firearms and went on shooting sprees that respectively took the lives of six and three people.  This guy killed six and this guy killed three.

The first guy killed six people and was apprehended without incident by police.

The second guy killed three people and was immediately shot dead by police.

The first guy drove around for more than four hours and shot random people at three different locations, creating a massive public safety crisis and potentially endangering dozens if not hundreds of innocent people.

The second guy went to a single location with a limited number of people and was actively engaged in specifically targeting co-workers for a total of 26 minutes.

NOT SAYIN’, JUST SAYIN’

Recently, two evil men grabbed their firearms and went on shooting sprees that respectively took the lives of six and three people.  This guy killed six and this guy killed three.

The first guy killed six people and was apprehended without incident by police.

The second guy killed three people and was immediately shot dead by police.

The first guy drove around for more than four hours and shot random people at three different locations, creating a massive public safety crisis and potentially endangering dozens if not hundreds of innocent people.

The second guy went to a single location with a limited number of people and was actively engaged in specifically targeting co-workers for a total of 26 minutes.

Here is a photo of the first guy:

 

And here is a photo of the second guy:

I’m sure that there were different circumstances involved in both crimes and that police at each scene did what their training and experience dictated.

But, I’m not sayin’, just sayin’: A white guy drives around for four hours and shoots six random people in a populous American city yet in the end, he’s taken peacefully into custody. Meanwhile, a black man is shot dead after a 26 minute rampage in a single location, targeting a specific group of victims.

Doesn’t it seem just a tad bit strange?

 

 

On Steph and the Oscars

On Saturday night this happened. On Sunday night this happened.

What do they have in common? Griping and sour grapes from people who should know better, making feeble attempts to protect selfish legacies.

First, the Saturday thing. Steph Curry broke his own record for 3-pointers in a single season – with 28 games remaining. He is shooting a three point field goal percentage better than most NBA players have for layups and dunks. It is in short, one of – if not THE – most impressive season in all of sports history. Not just basketball, but in all human sporting endeavor.

The Sunday thing was the 88^th Academy Awards. And of course this year, there was a big hue and cry about #oscarssowite – the rather uncomfortable fact that all nominees for actor and director were white. In a biting monologue and throughout the show, Chris Rock, AKA, “the man with the toughest job in the world,” did a pretty damn good job humorously laying waste to the racist Hollywood system and the white privilege that keeps it churning on.

If you are blessed with sight, and you came to both the Saturday thing and the Sunday thing as a normal person, you could only come away knowing both to be true: Steph Curry is a transcendent and brilliant player having the season of all seasons, and Hollywood is very racist. There really is no other honest position to take.

But some, blinded to this reality by their own sense of legacy and privilege, have.

With Steph, old guard stars like Oscar Robertson, Isiah Thomas and Stephen Jackson have weighed in and claimed that Steph couldn’t do what he’s doing, “back in the day.” That relaxed rules about physical play and a commitment to better defense would stop him in his tracks 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. These basketball chirping elders are of course doing what many chirping elders tend to do: refuse to acknowledge that a younger savant has come along and torched their talent and their memories.

Isaiah Thomas for example, a two-time NBA champion, hall of famer and 12-time NBA all-star, standing 6’1” and 180 pounds, averaged almost 20 point per game during his career – a career solidly located during that bygone NBA era of tough defenses and physical play. Steph Curry is a 1,000 percent better shooter than Thomas; has exponentially better ball handling skills and is bigger and faster than Isiah. Yet, Thomas says Curry couldn’t excel in his era? If I didn’t know better, I’d say that is the ravings of a lunatic.

But, despite his abysmal record as a coach, GM and owner, Isaiah is not a lunatic. He knows what he’s doing. He’s employing an argument as old as argument itself. To bask in the safe harbor of a point that is utterly unprovable. Just as kids squabble about who would win a fight; Godzilla or King Kong, Isaiah is casting shade on Steph because he knows that until someone actually invents a time machine and transports #30 back to 1989, he’s safe in his accusations. Thomas, or Robertson or Jackson or other retired stars can sit back and cast aspersions, because they can’t really be taken to task.

With the Oscars, the tactic is a bit different, but the sentiment is the same. Hollywood Royalty, Meryl Streep, Michael Cain and Charlotte Rampling, when confronted by the claim of racist Hollywood all took turns ham-handedly saying that either A.) Whites suffer too, or B.) Prejudice against minorities is overblown.

Here the attempt is not so much about preserving memories of greatness and glory, but more about attempting to preserve the status quo and cutting down competition.

Streep, Rampling and Cain are served well by an entertainment industry that goes out of its way to make acting, directing and producing opportunities much easier for those of their same skin tone. Further, these great actors don’t want to have to answer uncomfortable questions about how their path to fame and fortune was made much easier than that of blacks, Asians and Latinos. In an industry that celebrates the fantasy and fiction of the humble everyman waiting tables by night and auditioning by day overcoming long odds to become an Oscar Winner, no one currently supplying air to that dream balloon wants to confront the truly impossible odds of black actors and directors making it big.

Before pro sports integrated, many insiders knew that the glory of all-white teams in basketball; football and baseball were fool’s gold. It’s the same for Hollywood today. Do you really think that Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny; Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, or Kevin Costner as director for Dances With Wolves would have taken home Oscar gold if Hollywood was truly open to everyone with talent? Really?

Indeed, this past weekend brought us ample evidence that for some, if history and reality are not on your side, better do your best to rewrite history and create a new reality.

So here’s to you Steph Curry and Chris Rock. Steph, keep shooting and keep pushing Isaiah and Robertson further down the list of all-time NBA greats and Chris, keep telling the truth and pushing Cain and Streep further into oblivion.

 

 

 

MAKING AN IMPACT SOMETIME BETWEEN THE YEARS OF 2017 AND 2021

... How the presidency is now like your cable provider

Has it really come to this? Is it even possible that Donald Trump is going to garner millions of votes to become the President of the United States?

When did the office of president become as pitiful and inevitably dysfunctional as Comcast or Time Warner?

Here’s what I mean. We all know that cable TV sucks and cable TV operators are devil-spawn. Everyone, I mean everyone, completely agrees that cable TV is unnecessarily s costly, provides Soviet-era levels of customer service, dictatorially forces you to bundle with a useless landline phone and –perhaps most egregious of all - requires you pay for The Oxygen Network for gods sakes!!

Further, most of us know that salvation from this hell scape currently exists in the form of video streaming and Netflix and Hulu and unbundled network apps and a host of other technologies which right now render cable TV as obsolete as cassette decks.

Yet there are millions and millions of us who still have cable. Why? Because like the scientific experiment of learned helplessness where dogs subjected to continuous electric shocks eventually learn to just lie down and take it, we have learned to just roll over and send a check to Big Cable.  We rationalize: because the damn cable connector is already wired into our houses or apartments; because, well, we’ve just always had cable; because all that other technology would require us to learn it and spend a little time and effort creating our own TV viewing ecosystem and despite its horrible graphics and useless networks, the cable guys have already done that for us, and we are too lazy to start from scratch.

And that my friends, is what the presidency has become: a failed institution which for mostly reasons of sloth, inattention and the learned helplessness of the modern American political system has devolved into an office where someone like Trump could actually occupy.

Even the most egregious, mouth-breathing supporter knows deep down that Trump is assuredly NOT going to make America great again. Even his angriest, whitest, oldest, racist and misogynist fan understands in his heart-of-hearts that there is not going to be a bejeweled wall of opulence which keeps all those Mexican rapists out of America.  From Nevada to South Carolina, the inarticulate and under-educated rabble – with their fanny packs, sensible shoes and sans-a-belt slacks – understand that Trump in the White House will become a cavalcade of stupid comments, embarrassing meetings with world leaders and the greatest recruiting tool for a democrat-controlled congress in history.

But he’s new and shiny and says stuff that is super easy to digest and makes many feel good for 30 minutes. Just like when they click on the TV and watch The Bachelor, or Moonshiners or American Idol. They know they are getting screwed by the cable guys, but hey, it keeps them entertained and they don’t have to think too much.

That’s what a Trump presidency would represent. National acknowledgement that the office of the president is old and kind of crappy, but like the cable adapter already drilled into our living room, we’re force to kind of sigh and muddle on. We know we are not getting the very best, heck, we know we are getting something pretty substandard, but well, who has the time to really consider other options?

Let’s further prove the point. Trump’s main claim of relevance is that he is a well-known businessman. But would the board of directors for Apple or Google ever approve a motion to name Trump as CEO? Of course not. His business record is way too spotty for a real company to even consider. I’m not sure Trump could even land a vice president gig at either of these two leading companies.

What about his entertainment experience? Do you think NBC or CBS would turn over their entire operation to Trump as CEO? Only if they want to sink further and further away from relevance in the TV landscape.

OK, he once founded something called Trump University. Could you see him every become president of Harvard or Yale or Stanford? Sorry, but I had to ask.

So Trump is clearly not qualified to become a leader in a vast away of positions and industries. He really is only qualified to be a celebrity – The Donald.

Yet, he is ever-increasingly seen as the next President of the United States?

Wow.

We’ve actually come to the point in our nation’s history where George W. Bush, by comparison, is seen as an Einstein-level Brainiac next to Trump. That Bill Clinton’s foibles in the Oval Office would seem classy and dignified compared to Trump.

And despite this, millions of Luddite voters will say yes to Trump and, by doing so, basically proclaim that POTUS is a job befitting an extremely underwhelming businessman who probably wouldn’t get a second interview to run 450 of Fortune 500 companies.

I give you the President of the United States – We promise to do something positive for the country sometime during the years of 2017 and 2021.