On sports, William F. Buckley Jr., Donald Trump, Anthony Weiner, Lance Morrow, Jimmy Cagney, Bob Hope, and more
The Algo keeps feeding me “trash talk.” By “Algo,” I mean the algorithm, that thing in the Internet that thinks it knows what you want to look at. (I have used highly technical language here, I realize. The kind of language they must use at Caltech.) Last summer, I wrote an Impromptus column headed “Me ’n’ my algo, &c.” (I guess I have now decided to capitalize “Algo,” to denote its supremacy.)
Anyway, back to “trash talk.” I keep seeing things like “Best Trash Talk from ‘The Match.’ ” “The Match” is a golf event — a television show, really — involving both professional golfers and celebrities. The trash-talk ethos of our era has infected even golf. Some think it makes the game cooler. I think it stinks on ice. (Is there trash talk in hockey, or just brawls?) This relates to the general vulgarization of our society.
I keep seeing videos of Tom Brady saying, “I’m a f***ing athlete,” “I’ve got seven Super Bowl rings,” and so on. Look: Someone so great as he ought to be far, far above that. His record speaks for itself.
Are my views fuddy-duddy? I suppose. They are also conservative, in a pre-modern sense of that word.
• Some more of the same: A headline from November 30 reads, “Michigan, Ohio State players fight as Wolverines try to plant flag after fourth straight win in The Game.” (Article here.) My Michigan Wolverines beat the Ohio State Buckeyes in one of the greatest upsets anyone can remember. And they did it on Ohio State’s field. Amazing.
But that wasn’t enough, apparently. The Michigan players, or some of them, had to plant a flag on Ohio State’s field. Hadn’t they already planted a flag, metaphorically, by winning the game? Did they need to add insult to injury? Have they never lost? (They have, a lot.) Does the loser of a game need added humiliation? Have my guys never heard of sportsmanship?
“In victory, magnanimity.”
From what I know, Mickey Mantle was a hard-livin’ guy, no Boy Scout. Fine. But he was also a gent, at least in one respect: his home-run trot. When he hit a home run, he would trot around the bases with his head down, unshowily. He wouldn’t pump his fist or egg on the crowd or anything like that. Talking about his career later in life, he explained, “I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.”
That’s the spirit.
• It’s a little early in my column for a language item, but let’s have one, because it relates to the Michigan–Ohio State game. Commenting on the post-game fracas, OSU coach Ryan Day said, “Those guys are trying to put a flag on our field and our guys weren’t going to let that happen. This is our field, and we are obviously disappointed we lost the game, but we have some prideful guys on our team who just aren’t going to sit back and watch that happen.”
I seldom hear the word “prideful.” Is it the same as “proud”? Yes, in a way: Merriam-Webster says “full of pride.” But “prideful” has a more negative connotation than “proud,” I sense.
• William F. Buckley Jr. made a point that has always stayed with me: There are Americans who pretend that people in other countries don’t have patriotism. Yet people everywhere have patriotism. And this ought to be acknowledged and respected.
WFB stressed this in the Panama Canal debate: You think Panamanians don’t have patriotism?
I thought of this point when seeing the following:
• Trump has won the “Patriot of the Year” award from Fox News — check it out. Everyone has his own conception of “patriot,” and “news.”
• A report from the Associated Press is headed “Ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner, jailed for sexting child, eyes political comeback in New York City Council.” That is an extraordinary headline — or is it? Is anything disqualifying, in our age of “lol nothing matters”?
• A different headline: “Monarch butterflies to be listed as a threatened species in U.S.” (article here). Life without monarch butterflies would be poorer indeed.
• “Two Pearl Harbor survivors, ages 104 and 102, return to Hawaii to honor those killed in 1941 attack.” (Here.) Pretty soon, they will all be gone.
• Lance Morrow has died at 85. WFB called him “a show-stopping wordsmith, one of those masters associated with Time magazine, in the company of James Agee, Whittaker Chambers, and Robert Hughes.” Morrow was the son of Hugh Morrow, a longtime aide to Nelson Rockefeller. Lance went to Harvard, majoring in English, and would go on to a 40-year career at Time. He authored reports and essays and other things.
How good was he? Reviewing one of Morrow’s books, WFB said, “He writes as if the language were at once a dutiful son, an enchanting mistress, a Strad violin, and Houston Control Center, programmed to deliver his message to the moon and the stars. The language is at his bidding, as completely as to any other writer alive.”
High praise, baby.
• Clarke Reed has died at 96. Jon Meacham has written an obit of him, here. Reed built the Republican Party in Mississippi — built it from scratch. Today, that party, like the national party, is something very different, but that is a subject unto itself. I met Reed through WFB. WFB had a date at Ole Miss — a Firing Line debate — and we traveled from New York on Reed’s plane. His only plane? I’m not sure. Bill referred to “the Clarke Reed Air Force.” He (Bill) had often traveled via that air force, I understood.
Reed was charming, smart, fun. I’m glad I had the chance to meet him. And that Meacham obit is darn good.
• Luis Buñuel was a famous surrealist, a filmmaker. In 1962, he made The Exterminating Angel, a classic. (Since then, Thomas Adès has composed an opera on it. I reviewed the opera’s premiere at the Salzburg Festival, here.) Silvia Pinal was in the movie. The actress has now died at 93. (For the New York Times’s obit, go here.) Interviewed in 2006, she said, “To this day, I don’t know what that film is about.”
That is such a comfort.
• On social media the other day, someone asked me, “Any relation to Eric Nordlinger?” That is just what Jeane Kirkpatrick asked me, the first time I met her. I can’t claim a relation, no. Here is some of the Times obit, June 9, 1994:
Eric A. Nordlinger, a foreign affairs expert and professor at Brown, Harvard and Brandeis universities, died last Friday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 54. . . .
Dr. Nordlinger was a professor of political science and an associate at the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at Brown, where he had been a faculty member since 1972. He was also an associate of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, and taught at Brandeis.
He graduated from Cornell University and received a doctorate from Princeton University.
I would have liked talking with Professor Nordlinger, about many things.
• Some music, in the form of reviews? For the Czech Philharmonic, under Semyon Bychkov, with Yo-Yo Ma, cello soloist, go here. For a recital by Piotr Beczała (tenor) and Helmut Deutsch (piano), go here. For a recital by Filippo Gorini, an Italian pianist, go here. For a New York Philharmonic concert, guest-conducted by Kazuki Yamada, with Yunchan Lim, piano soloist, go here.
That oughta hold ya.
• I began this column by griping about the Algo. But God bless the Algo for feeding me Jimmy Cagney and Bob Hope, dancing — here. One of them is remembered mainly as an actor; the other is remembered mainly as a comedian. But, holy smokes, what dancers. I did not coin this phrase, but: That’s entertainment.
Thank you, my friends.
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