On athletic violence; Trump Jr. as Bible salesman; MAGA under oath; Tiger Woods; Paul Silas; David French; and more
Last October, I did a podcast with George F. Will. We got on the subject of football. About football, Will was very stern. He said, “Today, we look back at some practices and appetites and habits of earlier generations and say, ‘How could they have done that?’ This is ‘presentism,’ and we are all guilty of it. I like to pause and think, ‘What will they be saying about us, 100 years from now?’”
I have paraphrased Will — and will continue to do so — but closely. If you’d like to listen to our podcast, go here.
Will said that he could think of two things that future generations will marvel at, or be disgusted by. “One is late-term abortions, obviously. I think people will think we were absolutely barbaric to allow that: to have a legal regime of abortion-on-demand throughout all nine months of a fetus’s gestation.”
And the other thing?
“I think people will think it was really unseemly for us to have this multi-billion-dollar industry, built around getting young men to do what we know causes brain damage.”
Will went on to say that, once upon a time, boxing was very popular. It contributed to the growth of television. People watched the fights. Everyone in America knew the name of the heavyweight champion, whoever he was: Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali, and on and on.
Today, however, people in general feel differently. “We know that, when we are watching a boxing match, we are watching something disgusting,” said Will. “We are watching two people trying to injure each other. We know enough about concussions — concussions large and small — to know that this is awful business.”
And the same is true of football, said Will. “We know what’s going on out there. The kinetic energy of the sport now exceeds the capacity of the human body to cope with it. Most of football takes place within 20 yards, and you have enormous linemen who are almost as quick as running backs, and the kinetic energy that players unleash upon one another is terrifying.”
I will tell you: When I was listening to George Will, I thought, He has a point, but this goes too far. Football carries risks, yes. But is it as barbaric and indefensible as all that? I love football, always have. But, more and more, as we see these horrifying injuries, these horrifying collisions . . .
I don’t know. I just don’t know. Maybe something has to give. I don’t know what that something is. The elimination of the sport, surely not. But intelligent modifications? Even if such modifications make the game less “exciting”?
I don’t know. Opinion columnists are not supposed to say “I don’t know.” But I don’t.
• In September, the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iranian state agents set off the wave of protests that are still going on in that country. Nazila Maroufian interviewed Mahsa Amini’s father. She was warned not to publish her interview. She went ahead and did it anyway. She has been in prison since October 30.
The journalist Omid Memarian tweeted about her last week and circulated a picture of her: here. “Incredible courage & commitment in telling the truth,” he said. “Respect!”
Indeed.
• The thing about the “Christian nationalism” that is appearing throughout our land: It is often easier to see the second part — the nationalist part — than the first. At any rate, Donald Trump Jr. is now hawking Bibles. He has become a Bible salesman. To see him selling, go here.
He is selling the “We the People Bible.” In his pitch, Trump says, “Made in America. Printed in America. Assembled in America.”
Okay. But this is a curious thing to say about a Bible — any Bible. This book, or collection of books, originated a long way away from our shores . . .
• Here is a headline: “In Testimony, Hannity and Other Fox Employees Said They Doubted Trump’s Fraud Claims.” Here is the subheading: “On Wednesday, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems shared some of the strongest evidence yet that some Fox employees knew what they broadcast about the claims was false.” The article is here.
Trump people often say that anti-Trumpers treat Trump voters — the rank and file — with contempt. I say: Leaders of Trumpism often treat Trump voters with contempt. The attitude is: Yeah, we know it’s all horsesh**. But we’re feedin’ it to the folks, because that’s what they want.
When you really respect someone, you tell him the truth. You don’t lie to him or keep him in darkness.
• “The Invention of Elise Stefanik.” That is an eye-popping piece. Stefanik is a Republican congresswoman, the one who replaced Liz Cheney in the party leadership. Stefanik transformed herself into the most MAGA of the MAGA. I have seen a lot of shape-shifting in the last many years — transformations, self-reinventions, that would curl your hair. But what this Stefanik has done — it may take the cake.
• Mark Esper was the U.S. secretary of defense from July 2019 to November 2020. He was interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee and asked about his firing. His firing by Trump. He said,
“I was informed by chief of staff Mark Meadows on the — around lunchtime on November 9th. And his basic message was something along the lines that I was terminated because I was insufficiently loyal or not loyal to the president. And I responded that my oath was to the Constitution and not to the president.”
As you remember, Trump people — including Trump himself — mocked Esper as “Yesper.” Because he was a yes-man. “Yesper,” get it? I guess he turned out to be not yes-man enough, or not a yes-man at all.
• A headline from the Anchorage Daily News: “An Aleutian volcano will be named after the late Alaska Rep. Don Young.” To read the article, go here. To hear a U.S. senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, speak about this, go here. About Young, she says,
“I’ve known him in his softer side and certainly in his gruff and more explosive side, and so as we were looking for something that might be fitting, we looked not only at mountains but we looked at mountains that continue to blow their top to this very day and selected a volcano . . .”
Fitting indeed.
• Everyone likes to dunk on New York Times corrections. Corrections published in that paper. One of the reasons that such dunking is possible — is that the Times publishes corrections. Not matter how large or small the matter is. This is very rare in journalism.
Under an article about the friendship between Groucho Marx and Dick Cavett, we read that an earlier version of the article “misquoted the punchline of a Groucho Marx joke in ‘Animal Crackers.’ It is ‘How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know,’ not ‘How he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know.’”
That’s cutting things pretty fine . . .
• From Golf magazine, a funny article. Fred Couples, the great golf champion, uses a yellow golf ball. Tiger Woods, when he was growing up, “always thought yellow balls were for hacks.” Those are his words — Tiger’s words.
More Tiger: “We give [Fred] grief all the time about using the yellow ball. But he absolutely loves it because he can’t see anymore. You should see the font on his phone; it’s like one letter per screen.”
And yet: “My eyes are getting so bad that I need my readers and cheaters, but I can still see” — on the course, that is. “I don’t need a yellow ball. But if it’s guaranteeing me a 60” — a score that Couples shot in a seniors tournament last October — “I’m using it every day.”
Great stuff.
• Did you see this story? “Real Estate Agent With Same Name as Golfer Is Invited to the Masters.” An amusing, almost touching series of events. The story I have linked to begins, “It is the stuff golfers’ dreams are made of . . .” Because you know your Shakespeare, you know that he said “on,” not “of”: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on” — but I think that golf story’s opening sentence is just fine.
• Paul Silas, the basketball player and coach, has passed away at 79. As this obit tells you, he made a statement in 1972: “You can’t play this game mad — your own game just falls apart. I play fierce, but I never play mad. There’s a difference.”
Wise.
• As readers may know, David French — formerly of National Review — is one of my favorite writers and people. A dear friend and colleague. He will now be a columnist for the New York Times — which I think is great news: for conservatives, for the country, and for the English-speaking world, frankly. David is an exemplary American conservative: in economics, in national security, in the law, in the cultural arena. And he will now be in a position to say important things to a huge audience.
To see the Times’s announcement, go here.
Bill Buckley always wanted conservatism — intelligent, conscientious American conservatism — to go mainstream. He did not want it confined to a ghetto. He wanted the biggest audience possible. He himself should have been a columnist for the Times. (I could nominate several others, too.)
David French is a free-market man. A limited-government man. An individual-rights man. A constitutionalist. A pro-lifer. A military veteran. A man aware of the dangers of the world and what it takes to combat them. A man with a big heart, a keen mind, and a spine of steel.
One of the most important qualities for an opinion journalist — for a writer, for a person — is unbullyability. David cannot be bullied — by tribe, by the fashionable; by the Left, by the Right; by majorities, by minorities. He has a “true north.” At the Times, he’ll tick off readers of various sorts — and keep on truckin’.
You keep on truckin’ yourselves, dear readers. Talk to you soon.
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