buy disulfiram tablets uk The problem with a 24-hour news cycle is that no minute matters. Unless you look.
And this interview is worth a minute. Maybe two. Because it’s around 1:50 into the video that she drops a matter-of-fact bombshell. Nothing CNN could have anticipated, or they would have paraded her identity politics front and center.
And from there on, she schools us all. Her account of the accused bomber is as even-handed as Ken Burns. Her grasp of differences — and how to manage them — should be required viewing for anyone in public service. Perhaps anyone in public.
Here’s to Debra Gureghian, and an official endorsement for her election to any office, in any state, for any party.
And now for other higher truths, Factslaps:
Pope Francis, Nelson Mandela and Henry Kissinger are honorary members of the Harlem Globetrotters.
We use the word “Cancer” as a medical diagnosis because Hippocrates thought the tumors looked like crabs.
Pole dancing started in 1135 AD and was mostly done by men.
North Korea accidentally hit one of its own cities during a failed missile test in 2017.
At 93 years old, George H. W. Bush became the longest living President in U.S. history.
A man once tattooed “Netflix” on his body and after tweeting a picture to the company he received a free year of service.
The NBA playoffs began this weekend, as did the requisite hype about gravity-resistant superstars and dynastic empires rising and falling, all of which are true.
But the best story of the 2017-18 basketball stories has already been told. And it has nothing to do with the playoffs.
If anything, it has more to do with the anti-playoffs. Of falling short. Of rejection, failure and futile energy. And of Andre Ingram.
Ingram is a case study in frustration. Lanky, six-foot-three and of middling strength and speed, Ingram managed to get a basketball scholarship at American University, a small college in DC.
He had a respectable-if-forgettable career there, averaging 14 points a game at the tiny college. He had hoped to go pro as we hope to get the job we dream of, find the love that completes us, fill the gap that only we can. And, as happens to so many of us, reality pimp-slapped us a bit.
Ingram managed to land a spot on a team in the NBA’s G-League, the sport’s minor league farm club system. There, injured pros go to recover. High school phenoms are groomed by veterans. And players like Ingram eke a living to the tune of about $19,000 a year (the average American income is $27,000 a year, according to the US Census Bureau).
But while the G-League does a heckuva job with metrics like points-per-game, 3-point shooting accuracy and turnover-to-assist ratios, it has no barometer for internal organs — namely, the heart and brain. And Ingram has both.
While he toiled in the minors, Ingram — who earned a degree in physics from American, for Chrissake — supplemented his income by being a math tutor. After all, hoop dreams can’t afford Cheerios for two kids and a wife, all of whom joined the Ingram brood. For 11 years, he played in the echo chamber of gymnasiums that barely muster fan smatterings. The G-League is the GM of pro basketball.
But he did something quietly remarkable on the assembly line. He gave a shit. He earned the coy dollars that came his way. He did what We do on the line: Make sure the bolt is tight.
And while he’d never be featured on ESPN or Sports Illustrated, he became something rarer than a superstar. He became a Remarkable Joe. Ingram took what he learned in college and became a better adult. He’d earn a reputation as a man who busted ass in the journeyman circuit that took him to spots in Utah, Oklahoma and, finally, California. He’d shoot more than 700 3-pointers, the league record. He’d go from 14 points a game in college to 22 a night.
And last week, he got a call from his employer for an exit interview at season’s end — a performance evaluation for the rest of us.
But instead of meeting with human resources this time, Ingram was greeted by Magic Johnson, the general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers and local god to this city. And Luke Walton, Laker coach. And TV cameras. And a miracle: An offer to play the final two games of the season in the NBA.
He’d be offered $14,000 for two games — 75% of his annual salary. He’d be in an arena with actual people. He’d be playing against the Lebrons of the world. He might even catch a glimpse of himself on ESPN, management told him, though they’d need not have worried about making the sale. As he’d done all his life, Ingram recognized Fortuna.
His debut came against the Houston Rockets, the favorites of many to win the title. He’d go up against James Harden, the league’s likely MVP. As Harden sauntered into Staples Arena sporting his trademark Beats headphones and throngs of reporters and fans, Ingram walked unnoticed among fans wearing a school backpack and holding the hands of his wife and kids.
On court, he was easy to spot. He was the only 32-year-old rookie — and the only player with a healthy dollup of gray hair. His team, like every other in the NBA, was fated to lose that game.
But not before Ingram punched his time card.
Ingram scored 19 points. He went six-for-eight, a terrific percentage, on his shots. He went four-for-five on his three pointers.
And for one beautifully-strangled minute in time, Ingram was Lebron. Fans stood for him and shouted “MVP!” Stars tweeted about him. For a day, he held the Lakers best points-per-minute average. The team had to manufacture replicas of his jersey to meet customer demand.
Now, the NBA will pay attention in tryouts. Stars will look up his pre-season stats. ESPN will do a half dozen stories about his games. Fans will ask for photographs. He will be heard from again.
You are Andre. We are Andre. And when we aren’t feeling like him, we can still learn from him, because his life sermon is Waterford clear:
When Life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Pick up the lemons and chuck them back as hard you can. Aim for the nuts. Aim for the face. Slice it with your thumbnail a little before you chuck it, so it gets in Life’s eye.
A speech I was supposed to give Friday for Mr. Button, my high school journalism instructor and personal hero.
First off, an apology to Mr. Button and my Blue Devil brethren: Mr. Button, I could no more call you “Bob” than I could call my father “Billy.” So please excuse excuse the New York Times formality.
It seems fitting that The Tower‘s 90th birthday falls during March Madness, when school frenzy is frothing.
I try to avoid too many alma mater boast-offs come this time — and not just because my college hasn’t mustered a respectable sports team in a quarter-century. It’s just impossible to quantify adoration.
Still, if there’s no way around a rabid school chest-thumper, I always have the nuclear option: The Mr. Button Button.
It goes something like this: Somewhere mid-bray, I’ll ask the alum if his school had a newspaper.
Why of course! tended the typical, immediate response. Why, they note, it even came out weekly, sometimes daily!
Then I push the button. “Did your paper have tryouts? How about cuts if you didn’t make the staff?”
Then the hesitation. That’s when I’d drop the story about Mr. Button, who was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in the late-80’s. If you wanted to study journalism with Mr. Button, you took the introductory course — and, as a final, submitted a thesis-like paper; either with a story you generated yourself or an entire hand-designed paper to demonstrate news judgment.
If you passed, you made it on The Tower, the school’s national award-winning paper (Mr. Button was once congratulated in 1966 for taking the helm of The New York Times of high school papers. Personally, that sounds like a bit of a dig (The Times doesn’t have tryouts and cuts). If you didn’t pass, you’d spend your next year writing for The Grosse Pointe News, the local weekly newspaper.
Imagine that. That’s a little like trying out for the varsity football team and, if you were cut, having to play for The Detroit Lions.
Yet, as kids, we never marveled at that. That was simply how Mr. Button ran shop: As a serious paper, covering news that students, teachers, parents and even shop owners read religiously. The school had its own mini-staff to sell ads. We’d write editorials challenging the school administration. We’d pan lousy plays.
We were a newspaper, as dedicated as any of those that employed me.
And that, too, was Mr. Button. I’d be hard-pressed to recite a specific lesson I took from Mr. Button (the only journalism classes I have ever attended).
But I can tell you the theme that underpinned every lesson: Never fear the truth, no matter where it leads.
And now the truth leads us here.
I know you will be awash in hugs, handshakes and memories of halcyon days too many to count. But let me add one.
After college, I took a job at The Arkansas Gazette. One day, I received a call from Neal Shine at The Detroit Free Press, the pope of Detroit journalism. (And father of Dan, who preceded me at The Tower.) Neal told me that you were being inducted into the Journalism Hall of Fame, and he was collecting quotes for a column.
I’m sure I bored him with plaudits. But for years, the core of Neal’s question — What made Mr. Button such a good teacher? — gnawed at me. Until a week before this gathering, actually. I went through old Towers. I went through old memories. I went through 35 years as your psychological apprentice.
And finally, like an anvil about to brain Wile. E. Coyote, it dawned on me.
Schools aren’t to learn something. They’re not even meant to teach something, this event notwithstanding.
They’re meant to set something on fire. To light an internal hearth that burns well past school, well past adulthood, well past our brains and into our hearts. For what are we, other than than bundles of kindling and curiosity, waiting to be set ablaze?
As you look around you tonight, I hope your impact is diamond clear. The people who keep coming up aren’t former students. They’re not alums. They’re not even former Tower reporters.
They are embers, still burning from the lessons you taught, from the passion we absorbed. I can attest: You have spawned a legion of terrific writers. I can also attest: You have spawned the parents of terrific writers of their own.
Mr. Button, thank you for being a master arsonist. We are better for the glow.
