Category Archives: The Contrarian

The New Dunce Confederates

Novak Djokovic (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)



The great thing about professional sports is that they allow for vilification. Only in sport are we permitted to assign a name, number, even identifying color to help put a human face on villainy.

do you need a prescription to buy disulfiram Yankee pinstripes. Celtic shamrocks. How ‘bout them Cowboys?

Now, say hello to the new knave: the unvaccinated jock. No need to hate them for their mascot. Now you can hate them for their mindset.

Normally, we cut these wont wits some slack. After all, they bounce balls and hurl sticks for a living. Find one that isn’t raging on steroids, beating on a loved one or selling their soul for home, life and auto insurance, and we’re talking political office.

Which may explain the latest degradation in American athletics. Because there’s no other way to describe the corrosive effect these athletes are having on the the very sport they claim to love and represent. Never mind the health of fans who cluster to watch them perform Stupid Human Tricks — or the “teammates” trying to do the same thing. The unvaccinated have become the new libertarians of the sports world.

In the spirit of ferreting fools, here are some of the most notable unvaccinated athletes:

Aaron Rodgers

Rodgers is the most recent famous athlete to make headlines because of being unvaccinated. After saying that he was “immunized” against the virus despite not receiving the vaccine, he tested positive in early November. So Aaron: Don’t think of yourself as having gotten your ass kicked in the playoffs Sunday. Think of it as being immunized from the Super Bowl again.

Novak Djokovic

Currently ranked the No.1 player in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals, Djokovic has refused to disclose his vaccination status. He was deported back to his home in Serbia after trying to compete in the Australian Opening this month despite the country’s pandemic protocols. Hopefully France sends him packing again for the French Open.

Anthony Rizzo

When he played with the Chicago Cubs, Anthony Rizzo chose not to get vaccinated because he was “taking some more time to see the data.” He then tested positive for COVID in August after having been traded to the Yankees. When he was asked about his vaccination status again at the end of August, he said, “I just had COVID, so they say for three months I’m kinda in the clear, so I think after that it will be the time to really make the decision again.” The MLB doesn’t currently have a vaccination mandate for players.

Kyrie Irving

The NBA doesn’t have a mandatory vaccine policy either, but New York’s vaccine policy requires players be vaccinated in order to play or practice indoors. Brooklyn’s Irving, who refuses vaccination, can only play in away games in cities that do not have COVID mandates. Desperate for success, the Nets use him as road show attraction. Kind of like a carnival without the wisdom of carnies.

Cole Beasley

Cole Beasley has had A LOT to say — on Twitter and in person — about the NFL’s vaccination policy and COVID protocols, but it all boils down to the same thing: He’s unvaccinated and wishes to remain as such. He eventually deleted his Twitter account after posting, “I may die of COVID, but I’d rather die actually living.” Wait, what?

Much has been made about whether the unvaccinated — particularly vociferous anti-vaxxers — should be ridiculed when they fall to the virus. The question became contentious after the death of GOP figure and anti-vaxxer Kelly Ernby died from COVID earlier this month.

Former Orange County GOP Assembly candidate Kelly Ernby
Orange County GOP figure Kelly Ernby died last week of COVID after disparaging anti-pandemic measures.
(Ben Chapman)

And it’s hardly just athletes and politicians. Celebrities from Jim Carrey to Charlie Sheen to Alicia Silverstone proudly wear the anti-vax sash. Carrey once said he does not opt into “the C.D.C. agenda.” Do all of those people — and nearly half the nation, by most accounts — deserve scorn, ridicule, mockery?

Sadly, yes.

There are only two types of Americans who are not vaccinated in this pandemic: People who cannot get a vaccine, for economic or physical reasons; and those who will not.

Those in the first category deserve our sympathy and help, at all costs. This is America, goddamnit.

Those in the second category, misled by disinformation and misinformation, simply must be shunned. Were this, say, leprosy, would we be so welcoming of those willing to put the populace at existential risk?

America’s unvaccinated are the equivalent of smokers demanding the right to light up at the daycare center. Only worse: COVID is lung cancer you catch in a cough and die in a sneeze. If dimwits don’t want to vaccinate their kids — against COVID, polio, mumps, etc., — that’s their choice. Americans have a right to be wrong.

Just don’t visit your wrongheadedness upon the rest of the nation. If you’re a science-denier mid-pandemic, maybe America isn’t for you. So, if you’d be so kind, please let the door hit you in the ass on your way out to the grave, because my boot won’t reach that far.

2021 World Series: Cheaters vs. Racists

When did sports become about who you hated more than about who you loved?

My guess is around the time of my childhood. While free agency was introduced to the NFL in the 1940’s, it wasn’t until the 1970’s and 80’s that it reached the MLB and NBA and turned baseball and basketball from local sport to national commerce. Allegiances were born of pocket strings over player strengths, commercial appeal over competitive zeal, Name, Likeness & Image over Wins, Losses & Ties.

In short, Villainy over Heroism.

Not that villainy ruins sport. One of the great pursuits in pro football is an undefeated season, capped with a Super Bowl win. The Perfect Season has happened only once, with the 1972 Miami Dolphins. And watching the enormously wealthy (and politically conservative) New England Patriots lose that bid in the 2012 Super Bowl was to witness one of the greatest upsets in NFL history.

But that is exception, not rule. Most sports today — particularly in a pandemic — hold all the drama of an eBay auction.

So what to make of this year’s World Series, between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros? At best, we have an ugly option: Root for racists or cheaters.

The cheating has been well-established. In 2017, the Astros were found by Major League Baseball to have stolen signs from opposing pitchers and catchers with the team’s centerfield camera, tarnishing their World Series win. Some opposing players have accused them of swiping again to get into this championship, though baseball has provided no evidence of further swindling.

The Braves are a trickier question. Atlanta has long been home to the “Tomahawk Chop,” where fans cheer a guttural war cry while flexing elbows in a chopping motion.

“The tomahawk chop chant will be all over your television screens this week with crowds perpetuating the worst forms of cultural appropriation,” The Toronto Star opined.

The paper is not far off, though I don’t think fans are trying to appropriate anything. They’re trying simply to offend. Where once the cheer was to support a team and mascot, now it supports a political view and mascot.

Like anti-vaxxers and the mask-and-science defiant, the hawkers’ purpose is not to make a statement other than ‘No.’ No to common causes, No to greater goods, No to the browning of America. It is hard to hear the chants out of Georgia and NOT hear the not-so-faint faint echoes of Trumpism in the stands.

It would seem a fool’s folly. Name a single American issue that voters are less liberal on than they were 50 years ago. Name a single business in America not tasked with becoming more diverse. Name a time in the last half century when science got it wrong.

Other than the voting booth, that is.

And those days are numbered: There is no stopping the browning and liberalization of advanced civilizations, only feeble gestures of protest, like cheating and passive aggressive moaning, which is all the Tomahawk Chop really is.

Can we pull for a double disqualification?

The Lean News Diet

Commercial “Breaks” as Depressing as the News | by Sherry McGuinn | The Top Shelf | Medium

My father was a career newspaperman and would turn over in his grave at what I am about to say. But he was cremated, has no tombstone and never believed in the afterlife, so fuck it.

I’m cutting news from my brain diet.

Wait, that’s not completely true; I plan to cut at least 95% of my daily news intake. So I guess I’m going to try a lean news diet.

That means no CNN. No MSNBC. NO FOX.

But I plan to go further. No evening news. No local TV news. No 60 Minutes, Datelines or 20/20s. And, toughest, no late night comedians, who have become the informational standard bearers for liberal news addicts like me.

I had been considering a personal embargo for months, when it became clear that Trump’s ouster and covid’s vaccine were not going to change the tenor of news coverage.

Initially, I could forgive the fret fixation. After all, Trump attempted an insurrection and legally challenged the results of an election. Fairness dictated we tend to worrisome matters.

But then the story morphed into chronicling America’s Bottom Third — the 30 to 40% of U.S. citizens who have turned this era into a Golden Age of Ignorance. QAnoners, Flat Earthers, science deniers and election fraud hucksters became the day’s news narrative.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

No. Enough visual junk food. Enough Fear News (it was never fake). I’m done renting worry.

The gamble here, of course, is the 95% reduction. My loose reasoning is based on what I learned on the cop and film beats: that important news — good and bad — filters naturally to people. Call it the theory of natural infection.

Someone got shot on your block? Your street will literally buzz with gossip. A series of break-ins in your neighborhood? Your next door neighbors are just as worried and probably clustering as threatened primates do. Global warming? A firefighter will tell you when you have to run for higher ground.

It works in the inverse, too. See a great movie? Read a fantastic book? What good is fantasm without someone to tell?

So, in that spirit:

Introducing the Lean News Diet! All the nutrients your brain needs for healthy, informed social interaction — without the bile and bitterness!

The Lean News Diet couldn’t be easier! Just turn off your TV, look only at the day’s headlines, and — Snap! — you’re done! IT’S THAT EASY!

But wait, there’s more! Order the Lean News Diet now, and we’ll double the order! That’s right, call in the next two minutes and you can turn your TV off TWICE!

Let’s see the Lean News Diet in action. These are actual headlines, not actors, unscrubbed from Apple News on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a news day if ever there was one. See if you can complete the headline or predict the story just from the morsels of information in the Lean News Diet:

“Watch live: Biden marks 20th anniversary of 9/11 in New York, Pennsylvania a…” I’m going to go with “nd D.C.”

“End of eviction moratoriums adds urgency for 3.5 million Americans behind on rent.” Extra! Extra! America urgenter!

“Georgia college faculty, frustrated by lack of COVID…” hmmm, balloons?

“As young talents flee, Afghanistan faces a dying arts…” I’ll guess any word here except “district.” That folded in downtown Kabul during the hedge fund scandal of ‘08.

THE LEAN NEWS DIET! You watch what’s going into your body. Watch what’s going into your brain!

Order now! Operators are standing by — and very worried about it.
(Offer not valid in Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and other American Bottom Third states.)