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Commentaries for the Week of March 18, 2002 |
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Week of 08/05/2002
Week of 05/20/2002
Week of 05/13/2002
Week of 04/22/2002
Week of 04/08/2002
Week of 04/01/2002
Week of 03/25/2002
Week of 03/18/2002
Week of 03/04/2002
Let Doyle be Doyle
Week of 02/25/2002
Put Rhinos in Rochester
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I begin with a confession. I’ve loved ESPN-TV since it debuted in 1980. I also love ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and ESPN News. You know what I mean. It’s a sports junkie’s Bible. Another confession. I have written such ESPN documentaries as Voices of The Game and helped research the current “SportsCentury” series.
To me, ESPN mixes news and show-biz -- that’s why it’s called the Entertainment and Sports Network. Fine. What’s not is what ESPN did last week, unveiling its first original movie based on John Feinstein’s book on basketball coach Bobby Knight. On the Brink is a movie not even a mother could love.
The film, starring Brian Dennehy, didn’t use obscenity. It was obscenity -- with profanity its story line. I don’t let my college students use such words. If my own kids used them,
I’d wash their mouth out with soap. ESPN’s film could have etched Knight’s nuances and complexities. Instead, it flaunted trash TV.
ESPN is owned by the Walt Disney Company. Walt must be turning in his grave. What turns in me is my stomach -- at what a once-great network has become.
One of the few good things about the cesspool 1960s is how they warrant ridicule. Remember their mix of free love, empty minds, and hatred of the middle class. Robert Nisbett said: “It would be difficult to find any decade in American history with as much calculated onslaught against convention.” Fast forward to today: There they go again -- wretched seed of an awful generation.
Recently, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York televised an American Religion Identification survey. It found more than 29.4 million Americans have no religion -- double a decade ago. One women said she had discarded Catholicism. “Our kids learn the philosophy of all religions,” she said, “and that’s enough.” Ask the families of 9/11 if it is. A man and his son go camping Sunday. Says he: “You can’t help but be spiritual out there.” Attaboy: Those elk just love their hymns.
No church for Jason Wilson, 32, of Seattle. “I don’t fret about the meaning of the universe.” Another Washingtonian, Linda Shells, of 56, practices Zen. “The real spiritual center is inside us all.” Spoken like an empty and narcissistic fop.
I can’t wait till they someday meet God. God. “Why do you belong up here?” Baby Boomer: “I’m a member of the Sierra Club.”
Me, myself, and I is what New Age spirituality teaches. What a symbol for the decade of the ‘60s. Four decades later, its stench keeps on stinking.
Running for President in 1992, Bill Clinton first vowed to feel our pain. Actually, he caused our pain. To him, feeling was
a read your cue, turn on the light phenomena. Recall the reddened eye, and twitching lip? Remember how Clinton embraced every stranger within the periphery of a camera?
One day in 1995, Clinton attended the funeral of his Commerce Secretary, Ron Brown. The camera caught him laughing. Then he saw it. Instantly, he became Mournful Bill, imbued with empathy and pain. Feeling was a fraud, an act. Emotion on command.
Contrast that to a real man of real emotion. Recently President Bush spoke in Florida. In the front row were the mother and dad and other relatives of two soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Bush’s voice caught as he said to them, “God bless America.” For a moment he couldn’t speak. Wiping tears, Bush continued, “I know your heart aches. We ache with you.” It was a riveting moment -- because it came from the heart.
At its heart the Clinton Administration was pretense and posturing: empty vessels shedding empty tears. How wonderful it is to again have a President worthy of the name.
Check the best-seller list lately? Notice who’s leading the parade? For decades liberals have deemed themselves better-read and educated. Talk about walking down a distant memory lane. Today it’s conservatives who dominate the New York Times weekly list. What grief it must cause them to even print their names.
Start with the runaway best-seller Bias, by former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg. For weeks it was No. 1. President Bush was spotted taking a copy to a weekend at Camp David. What he read documents how divorced from Middle America is the left wing, anti-middle class, elitist press.
Continue down the list. For two months Barbara Olsen’s Final Days made the top 10. Wonder about Bill Clinton’s honesty? Reading this book, you won’t wonder any more. Add Patrick Buchanan’s The Death of the West, the Times No 10. The newspaper calls him a “right-wing pundit.” Actually, Pat’s simply right.
Completing the conservative rout is Sandra Day O’Connor’s memoir about growing up in the Southwest. In truth, the best-seller list should make liberals grow up. To many people, only conservatives are writing books worth reading. Friends, get thee to a bookstore, now.
Feeling gloomy? Here’s a fact to brighten your day. This year the Queen of England celebrates her golden jubilee. In 1952, Elizabeth II became Queen upon the death of her father, George VI -- since then reigning as head of state -- and embodiment of her land. Shakespeare wrote of “this isle, this realm, this blessed plot, this England.” The commonwealth has been blessed to have Elizabeth. So has America -- bound to England by culture, language, blood, and law.
Recall how, at 21, Elizabeth claimed the throne. People doubted she could fill the monarchy’s robes. They stopped doubting long ago. She has outlasted nine prime ministers, toured the world, and quietly shaped policy. National Review says: “The part the Queen has personally played in the morale of the armed forces is beyond computation, as all its senior commanders will testify.” The general populace testifies to her dignity, and aplomb.
Every nation needs a center. The monarchy is Britain’s. Each center needs a symbol of continuity. Elizabeth is the British Empire’s. Remember how she wept at a special memorial service for victims of September 11; ordered the National Anthem to be played at Buckingham Palace; and espoused courage v. terrorism. Long live the Queen -- especially, this Queen. Here’s to her 24-carat jubilee.
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