Unacceptable

This morning, on the fifteenth of April in the southern state of Arkansas, I had to scrape frost off the back windshield of my car.

In the words of James, “brethren, these things ought not to be this way.”

On Being The Bigger Person

I seem to find it constantly necessary in my job to put pettiness aside, swallow my pride, and “be the bigger person” than someone else.

Oftentimes, like, oh, let’s say yesterday for example, I’ll find myself in a position where I know that I’m in the right about something, and I know that someone else is in the wrong. And I really want nothing more than to respond to that other person in such a way that they will come to realize just exactly how right I am and how wrong they are.

And that’s when the bigger person thing comes into play.

Maybe it’s like that no matter what your job is, and maybe you find yourself having to do it all the time as well, I don’t know. What I do know is that if I’m honest, I sometimes have a fairly massive ego, and swallowing my pride and being the bigger person can be very difficult for me to do and I get tired of doing it (what seems like) so often.

The question is this: do I still get credit for stepping up and being the bigger person if I resent having to do so?

Bumpers Stickers: Proclaiming your Ignorance for the World to See

Occasionally, you may come across a particularly clever or humorous bumper sticker, and decided to affix it to your car, but there’s really no excuse for having more than a couple of them on your car at once.

At least around here, you always know you’re behind someone who is completely nuts when the entire backside of their car is completely covered with bumper stickers.


Of course, this phenomenon exists on both ends of the political and cultural spectra.

On one side, you have the tie-dyed, hippie types, who are in love with peace, freedom, and, ironically, Che Guevara. Then at the opposite extreme (and usually on the back of a pickup) you have the gun-toting, redneck types who decorate everything with antlers and most likely sleep in Confederate Battle Flag bedsheets.

Both of these extremes are stupid and drive me nuts, and are characteristic of people who need to be avoided, but it was one of the former group that I found myself driving behind the other day.

I didn’t have time to read all of the bushy-bearded driver’s adhesived inanities, but a couple which were right next to each other caught my eye:

The first said “BUSH, THE ONLY DOPE WORTH SHOOTING” and had a picture of a syringe on it, while the second whined, “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS?”

The irony of these two particular messages being side by side was just a little more than I could take.

I certainly don’t hate President Bush, but I realize that some people do. I understand that they are unhappy with many of his policies, and think he is a terrible president. But that doesn’t mean you have to be stupid about it.

Disregarding the questionable ethics of the assassination of the president and the tacit approval that the first bumper sticker gives to such an act, here’s my point:

If the US was really the fascist, freedom-deprived country that liberal extremists and the second bumper sticker claim it to be, don’t you think that publicly joking about killing the president would warrant a significant punishment?

The truth is that as Americans, we are so spoiled by our long history of freedom and prosperity that we wouldn’t recognize true fascism if it rounded us up, tattooed serial numbers on our arms and herded us into camps.

From what I saw the other day, I don’t agree with some of the political views of the man I was driving behind, and find his rhetoric to be excessive and irresponsible. But because he lives in a country like America (where he is apparently deprived of his constitutional rights), he has a right to his foolish opinions.

One more thing: I noticed this car as I drove behind it on my way to church Sunday morning. On my way to exercise another one of those rights that I wouldn’t have if things were as bad as the Nancy Pelosis of this world would have us believe.

The Apple of ESPN’s Eye, or The Yankees/Red Sox Rivalry

Although it probably shouldn’t be this way, I’ve pretty much decided that all forms of media are biased in some way.

The Fox News Channel is conservative, while virtually every other news channel is slanted to the left. Around here in Northwest Arkansas, some media outlets rabidly support Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt, while others are decidedly against him.

Bias is a part of media; I guess I shouldn’t expect ESPN to be any different.

Yesterday, the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets battled each other in a classic game. Future Hall of Famers and former teammates John Smoltz and Tom Glavine pitched gems through five innings.

Atlanta got to Glavine in the 6th to take a 3-1 lead, but the Mets responded in the bottom half of the inning. New York touched Smoltz for five runs, highlighted by a José Reyes bases clearing triple and Braves manager Bobby Cox being thrown out of the game for arguing balls and strikes.

Down 6-3 and facing the Mets’ formidable bullpen, Atlanta tied it up in the 7th with an Edgar Renteria three-run home run, and then surged ahead in the 8th with another three-run shot, this one by Kelly Johnson.

The Mets threatened in the 8th and 9th but failed to score, and Atlanta held on for the victory, which gave them a half-game lead over the Mets for the NL East lead and put the rest of the league on notice that the Braves are back.

It was quite a game, but apparently, only warranted about 60 seconds of the 90 minute ESPN Sportscenter broadcast that night. Certainly, there were a lot of sports to cover yesterday with the opening of the NBA playoffs, but ESPN may have had more time to recap the Braves/Mets game if they hadn’t spent 10 minutes going over the highlights the Yankees/Red Sox game.

The New York/Boston game was significant; the Red Sox win gave Boston its first sweep of the Yankees at Fenway since the early 1990s, the BoSox hit four consecutive home runs in the game for the first time in team history (the last time any AL team did that was in 1964) and Dice-K was pitching.

It was a good game, but it didn’t merit 10 times the coverage of the Braves/Mets game.

But if you watch much ESPN, this shouldn’t be surprising. The network that is infamous for portraying the Duke Blue Devils as a contender for the NCAA basketball championship in a season when they are barely treading water in ACC play always blows the New York/Boston rivalry way out of proportion.

The Yankees and Red Sox have been playing each other for a long time, since 1903 actually, which is part of the rivalry, and New York and Boston are geographically close to each other (only 214 miles separate the two cities, almost exactly the distance between Fayetteville and Searcy), which adds to it as well.

But actually, throughout most of baseball history, the New York/Boston rivalry really hasn’t been much of a rivalry at all, especially to the Yankees, who have basically been dominating their chowder-eating counterparts for 85+ years now—since 1920, New York has won 39 pennants and 26 World Series Championships while Boston has won 5 pennants and 1 World Series Crown during that same span.

Sure, there have been a few moments of intrigue and points of contention over the years—the Babe Ruth trade and resulting “Curse,” the personal rivalry of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams in the 1940s, the Bucky Dent home run to send the Yankees to the playoffs in 1978 and Boston’s dramatic come-from-behind ALCS victory over New York in 2004—but any two teams who had played in the same division for 100+ years would have similar episodes.

Is there a rivalry between these two teams? Absolutely, and it is one that has intensified over the last decade with the re-emergence of both teams as perennial contenders.

But it still remains the most overplayed and trumped-up rivalry in all of professional sports, more the product of myopic, overzealous northeastern sportswriters than of history.

And seriously, the rest of us are getting tired of it.