Monthly Archives: June 2018

Muffing the Punt

 

Donald Trump is to football what, well, Donald Trump is: out of his depth.

He put that on display this week when he un-invited the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles to the White House, a once-annual tradition for champions in professional football, basketball and baseball.

In depositions from NFL owners obtained by the Wall Street Journal last week, as part of a grievance case filed by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones testified the president told him in regard to the issue: “You can’t win this one.”

“This is a very winning, strong issue for me,” Jones recalled Trump saying. “Tell everybody, you can’t win this one. This one lifts me.” Like a Super Bowl-winning coach, I suppose.

But is this the hoist he expects? Certainly, Trump has managed to turn the national anthem into a political atom-splitter. While kneeling for the anthem is actually a  protest of police conduct, the administration has Frankensteined it into a protest of patriotism.

Consider the wording from the bone-spurs-in-chief: “The Philadelphia Eagles Football Team was invited to the White House. Unfortunately, only a small number of players decided to come, and we canceled the event. Staying in the Locker Room for the playing of our National Anthem is as disrespectful to our country as kneeling. Sorry!”

To Trump’s credit, he spelled ‘canceled’ correctly (though I would pay money to learn his capitalization code: Locker Room?). And his followers, as fervent as holy rollers, will amen the ‘I dumped him, he didn’t dump me’ stratagem.

But, as with all Trump’s words, a few need parsing and correcting. First, not a single Eagle took a knee or stood in the lOCKER rOOM for the anthem last year. Zero.

Also, Pennsylvania was a critical swing state for Trump, who beat Clinton by about 44,000 votes in ’16. Clearly, the state was split over Hillary’s viability.

One thing Pennsylvanians are not split on, however, are the Eagles. They love ’em the way Trump loves bronzer. When the city won the Super Bowl, its first, Eagles fans nearly burned down the city in victorious fervor. They tipped over police cars. They punched patrol horses. They broke off and carried traffic signs, for some reason.

And you’re going to un-invite them to their first White House recognition?

This deserves the math refresher. You won PA by 44,000 votes. Lincoln Financial Field, which hosts the Eagles, holds 69,176 spectators. And you want to piss off that many people?

Even Jerry Jones would think twice. And he’s Republican.

 

 

America’s Irritable Vowel Syndrome

 

There are two questions that continue to ember in the wake of Roseanne Barr’s sudden disappearance from prime time TV.

One is the speed of her firing. Within hours of  her tweet describing a black woman as a cross between the Muslim brotherhood and Planet of the Apes, ABC ruled she was done. Gone.

We have seen this warp-drive character melt before. Surely there is an island where people like Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey and others must be gathered to commiserate their fates sans trials. It might even be an entertaining Survivor-esque show.

But don’t expect networks to line up for a bidding war. The assumption of guilt on matters of conduct is that latest byproduct of the steroid issue facing the U.S. economy, which has become so powerful on the Darwinian scale it has surpassed politics. That the U.S. government does not believe in global warming would be more ominous if U.S. businesses agreed. But they don’t.  Donald Trump may not believe in the benefits of solar power. But Apple does. Which do you think will have a greater impact on your life?

Same with social diplomacy. American businesses have decided that it’s not affordable to offend customers. So they have contorted themselves into the least-offensive costume possible, one made of Nerf as to prevent bruising. Jemele Hill was suspended and later left ESPN for tweeting that Trump was a white supremacist. Laura Ingraham was forced to take a week’s vacation and issue an apology for a tweet offending a Parkland high school student. Alec Baldwin issued an apology and deleted his Twitter account after he publicly eviscerated a flight attendant who asked him to turn off his Words with Friends game for takeoff.

The upside is that an economy can’t afford to see race — unless that race is Mint Green. The downside is finding any nuance in that hue. For all the Sturm and Drang that followed Roseanne‘s cancellation — including a valid argument of the double standard afforded Samantha Bee  — not a single major network swooped in to pick up the series. Including Fox, the most vocal critic of the cancellation. Perhaps morality extends only as far as a purse string.

Secondly, why does Twitter seemingly exist solely within the confines of complaint? You never hear of a sage tweet sent by a public personality. Or a pearl of wisdom tweeted from a politician. Instead, anger trends. Perhaps that, too, simply reflects a nation that has so much wealth but still feels swindled. Despite its P.R.-guided mission statement to give voice to the masses, Twitter is like any other media: driven by celebrity.

Which makes the recent phenomenon so befuddling. The very people taking the most heat for dumbass tweets are the people who already have a platform. The internet’s societal explosion in 2008 made the prima facie case that Americans, as a people, are dying to be heard.

And it turns out tweeting celebrities are people, too. Petty, aggravated, attention-starved people.