Superstar

 I was watching what everyone in the sporting community believes will be Ben Roeslithberger's last game in Pittsburgh. After eighteen years, the Steelers quarterback is hanging up his cleats and heading out to do whatever it is that quarterbacks do when they stop being quarterbacks. Except this guy won't have to worry about buying a steak dinner in Steel Town. In a career that spanned nearly twenty years, he took his team to the Super Bowl three times, winning two of them. The teams he has played with in Pittsburgh have never finished under 500. They have never had a losing season. 

There are a lot of sports fans who would love to have that statistic in their back pocket if it were to apply to their favorite team. 

And yet, there were those who believe Old Ben may have stuck around a little too long. It was this legend's appearance in the lineup that kept the franchise from moving on. The NFL is an entertainment business, and just getting by doesn't sell three hundred dollar souvenir jerseys. Nonetheless, at the ripe old age of thirty-nine years old, Ben Roethlisberger will be unleashed on the unsuspecting public with nothing to do on Sunday afternoons but count his money and wait for a call from the Hall of Fame. After two decades of being tossed around like a great big tackling dummy, there's not a lot left for him to prove, and his legacy will be paying off for years to come. He might put his name on a car dealership, or in front of that steakhouse where he won't be paying for those steaks. 

All of which is to say that he is now and will continue to be a sports hero. And he made a victory lap after he took his last snap at Heinz Field Monday night, soaking in the adoration and love from a city that worships its sports heroes. In a country that loves its sports heroes. 

Of course, nowhere in the mix of all this adoration was there any mention of the six game suspension he received from the NFL back in 2010 for "violating the league's personal conduct policy." This was for a case that didn't go to trial involving a twenty year old co-ed at a Georgia nightclub. That suspension was later lowered to just four games, probably once prosecutors declined to pursue the matter. Back then, the Pittsburgh Steelers were looking to unload their star quarterback just in case. Just in case he didn't straighten up and fly right. 

We can assume that the now thirty-something woman from Georgia who was assaulted did not attend Ben's farewell. 

US Anon

 January 6, 2021. A day that will live in infamy. We weren't attacked from outside. This one came from within. Like some poorly written piece of episodic television, the deposed "president" called on his mongrel followers to rise up and restore him to the throne. A year ago, I was at school taking a Zoom meeting with our staff when the news started to break: Insurrection. 

I had been expecting trouble with the electoral vote count. Plenty of voices in Congress had already been raised to insist that the election had been stolen. Never mind that this election, the Presidential Election of 2020, was one of the most carefully monitored outcome in our history. Never mind that all national polls showed the trends that were borne out when the votes were counted. Reality had been taking a beating over the past four years, and it appeared that there might be ongoing discussions about the math, as it relates to science and the outcome of the presidential race. 

But storming the U.S. Capitol? This had to be seen to be believed. And it was. The whole world looked on as an angry mob, stirred by the vitriol and lies that had been laying around getting old since November, pronounced by the acknowledged leaders of the rabble. Rudy Giuliani encouraged, "trial by combat," as he frothed more than he ever had before. His boss showed up later to exhort the mob to "Stop The Steal." 

What steal? At that point, there was no evidence of any voter fraud, certainly not in the size and number needed to overturn a singe state's results. And yet, there they stood, ready to be tipped into riot rage, attacking the seat of our country's government. Damage estimates to the Capitol range from one and a half to thirty million dollars. Five people died. By August, two more Capitol Police officers had committed suicide. And the price tag continues to be negotiated.

What did we really lose? Will we ever be able to trust one another again? Seven hundred twenty-seven people were charged for the insurrection on that day. More than fifty have been convicted for various felonies. Some of them are in jail. 

None of them are Rudy Giuliani. None of them are Steve Bannon. None of them are Donald Trump. 

2022 is an election year. 

Sleep tight, America. 

Representing What?

 On what is normally a day of rest, Twitter chose this past Sunday to permanently suspend the account of U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Some who would call this day Sabbath will take this as a blessing. "We permanently suspended the account you referenced (@mtgreenee) for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy," Twitter said in a statement. "We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy."

Which brings up a couple non-theological points: First of all, this doesn't mean that the Georgia Representative will be silenced completely on Twitter. She will still have access to her professional account, the one she uses for official business. The business of governance.

I will give you a moment to stifle the giggles. 

What was the second point? How about this: What does this person have to do to be suspended from the United States Congress? The five strike policy implemented by social media finally caught up to her, but what about any sort of decorum or behavior expectations for members of Congress? Whether it's repeating ridiculous conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, complained that social media had denied the former game show host and twice impeached "president" by suspending his account, and then there's all the nonsense she has been spewing about COVID-19. Like this one: 

"Every single year more than 600,000 people in the US die from cancer.

The country has never once shut down.

Not a single school has closed.

And every year, over 600,000 people, of all ages and all races will continue to die from cancer."

Not late-night parody. Just another day in the tiny little brain of Marjorie Taylor Greene. A very lonely, and scary place. That still holds an office in the United States Capitol. 

Still. 

The Lights Go Down

 There are plenty of opportunities for melancholy to creep in during the holidays. This has been especially true over the past couple of weeks. Neighborhoods on fire. Shootings in and around shopping malls. And all this playing out in front of the backdrop of COVID-19. Festivities were, in a word, muted. Friends and family were absent in many cases, and we had to content ourselves once again with the safety of our bubbles. 

Outside, the decorations that have adorned our lawn for all those years were put in place to be turned on the day after Thanksgiving. And there they stayed, bringing a welcome dose of sameness to a street that needed some. Each night when the sun went down, the switch would be flipped and the ordinary spectacular would begin. Again. And Again. In the midst of all this weirdness and uncertainty, there was a bit of magic in our front yard. 

Until New Years Day. While parades and football provided a bridge to some sort of consistency, I busied myself with the chore of unplugging all those plugs, reeling in all the extension cords, and freeing the limbs of the trees of all those wires and bulbs. At some point, I paused and looked around. All of that brilliance was being packed into a plastic tub, to be stored in the basement, to wait for the time when it would be retrieved and decanted again. Next year.

When it's time to drag all those lights to be spread out across the lawn, checked for missing bulbs, and eventually draped about the house and yard, what shape will the world be in? Will we still need more light? Certainly not less. 

Up

 So, the name of the movie is Don't Look Up. It's about scientists discovering a comet that is hurtling toward the Earth, and how the government and media choose to deal with it. I bring this up not so much as a review, but as a bellwether. In the days after I watched the film I clicked past not one but several articles on Al Gore's Internet in which astronomers assured us all that we need not worry about such an event actually happening. I skipped past those to read how there truly is only one ring to rule them all. 

It's not real. And, as it turns out, neither was the ring. It's fantasy, and just like the heart of Lord of the Rings can be found in World War I, you don't have to look all the way to the heavens to find the inspiration for the comet. 

Just look up. Not to the skies, but to the world around us. People are still arguing about wearing a mask during a plague that has killed more than five million lives. And taking more every day. "A hoax," they cry as their gaze continues to bore a hole into their navels. 

If they looked up, they might bear witness to the cataclysmic effects of climate change. Over the past few weeks drought stricken California has been gasping beneath an "atmospheric river" that has brought creeks and streams that had been dry to near flood stage. Feet of snow has fallen in the Sierras. And we all breathe a sigh of relief. Until some scientist reminds us that we would need months more of this kind of precipitation to alter the reality of the Golden State. 

In Colorado, just down the road from where I was born, a fire burned through subdivisions in a matter of hours, destroying businesses and hundreds of homes. It had been nearly a month since there had been measurable moisture in the area. This is just over the hill from the place we used to call Ski Country, USA. Now we call it rubble. Tens of thousands were evacuated from the area. During a coronavirus spike, and sent to shelters where they were kept safe from the hundred mile an hour winds and the firestorm that raced through their neighborhoods. 

When the sun came up the next day, the area looked like a war zone. Snow began to fall as if to provide ironic counterpoint. Folks are beginning to line up to point out that it was downed powerlines that caused all that devastation. Not climate change. There will be an equal number popping up to argue with them. Meanwhile, scientists will have to go back to being interviewed about how we can get William Shatner back up into space.

Doing Better

 As noted previously, this is 2022. Looking back at that year that was, I will note that there were some wins in the big book of justice. Ahmaud Arbery's murderers were sent to prison. As much as we may have been conditioned to expect that the lives of Black Americans did not matter as much as their white killers, this was a refreshing notice that maybe things have begun to change. On June 25, 2021, Derek Chauvin was sentenced to twenty-two and a half years in prison for killing George Floyd. Kim Potter, former Minnesota police officer, was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of Daunte Wright. That was just a couple days before Christmas. 

So maybe 2022 will be the year when Institutionalized Racism is kicked to the curb. Or maybe these verdicts are still just a faint glimmer of hope on the horizon. Recently Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke not about our criminal justice system, but our infrastructure: “I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach — or it would have been — in New York, was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices. I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality.”

Yup. How high you build a bridge can make a huge difference. And yet, the same right-wing voices that snickered about Secretary Buttigieg taking paternity leave found this notion hilarious. How can roads be racist? The fact that these were almost exclusively white voices making these comments shows just how long the road we still have to travel really is. 

And then there's medical care. The disproportionate loss of black and brown lives to the COVID-19 pandemic is as unsettling as the practices and policies that keep families of low income and minority groups from getting the health care they deserve. 

Which is a continuation of the cycle of poverty that exists for people of color in the United States. A survey from 2019 showed that a typical white family had eight times the wealth of a typical black family. 

It's 2022. If you believe that the past two years have made everything right again because a few years back we elected our first black president, then we have a lot further to go than we had imagined. It's time to stop imagining. It's time to start doing. Better. 

More Trouble On The Way

 Hello, and welcome to 2022. I'll be your host for the foreseeable future, so don't bother trying to adjust your set. This is the way things are, and I apologize. We are currently busy trying to keep a shooting war from breaking out between the United States and Russia over the Ukraine, as well as attempting to limit the spread of a deadly disease before the planet becomes uninhabitable for those of us left standing. 

Oh, and the Denver metro area was witness to yet another mass shooting. Before I go on, I feel it is worth mentioning that Colorado seems to have been on the ugly end of the stick when it comes to nimrods with guns. 2021 was a pretty rotten year for victims of multiple homicides. Or a pretty good year if you happen to be a psychopath. 

Like the guy in Denver, who killed five, wounded two others, and was eventually cornered and killed by a police officer returning fire. This was a guy who had already been investigating for being a whacko in 2020 and earlier in 2021, but was not taken into custody. You may note here that I did not attempt to euphemize his mental condition or state. This is because I believe that would be an insult to those who are mentally ill. After shooting three people, he set a van on fire, and that's when police began to take chase. 

It is possible that they might have done everyone a favor for locking him up after he wrote three books and sold them on Amazon. Books that received many five star reviews. Books that were called "An epic story about the human condition. It's about artificial intelligence. It's about the emasculation of the alpha male. It's a love story, a hate story. It's mean. It's poetic"

And were described by others in less gushing terms: “It’s important to note, as another one-star reviewer did, that this book presents characters who give full vent to their sexism, racism, and every other -ism kept out of mainstream discourse.”

Yeah. I know. Free speech. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to publish his fantasies about hunting down other human beings? It's when that poison pen starts leaking into the real-life water supply. It's about when the fantasy becomes reality. If you happen to be a member of Congress and post videos that show you attacking colleagues with a sword, you can get censured. It feels as if the veil between these worlds is getting mighty thin. 

And now it's 2022. I'm certain that things will only get better from here. In the meantime, feel free to see what's on other channels.