Well, I don’t know what there is to say today other than oh, this again.
There’s apparently a lot more to say, if you’re watching cable news. You know what I love best about C-SPAN? How, when they’re covering a big news event live, like a presidential inauguration or something similar? They shut up. They assume their audience have functional brains and don’t need to have every detail pointed out to them, nor do they need some eyewitness dragged in off the street to say that people were screaming, not when they can observe this fact by simply watching the video, the one that’s running without commentary.
Because they’re not stupid.
I really, really tire of Wolf Blitzer. Why is he always the first guy they go to in these breaking-news deals? He’s awful. So, change to MSNBC, and OMG, it’s Al Sharpton. He’s so freaky-looking since he lost all that weight. It transformed him into the original lollipop person, a giant head balancing over these narrow shoulders.
You wouldn’t think an event like this would need so much embellishment — the meaningless noting that yes, Boston calls itself “the Hub,” of the universe, yes. etc. There’s a subway, too — it’s called the T? I know why this happens. It’s the same reason people jabber through uncomfortable silences, but here’s a thought — let’s just let the silence happen. Sometimes silence is all you need to hear. Sometimes silence is far more eloquent.
We all know how the next 24 to 36 to 48 to 72 hours are going to go. Let’s let them happen. And let’s talk about it.
And if you don’t want to do that, here’s some Asian carp. You know, we’ve proven many times that when we want to make a species extinct, we can do it pretty easily. So why don’t we want to do it with this one?
Let’s mop up the blood.
Brandon said on April 16, 2013 at 1:09 am
Well, I don’t know what there is to say today other than oh, this again.
May we never get that jaded.
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coozledad said on April 16, 2013 at 1:22 am
We’ve come a long way from Walter Cronkite and Robert Trout- intelligent people who were willing to appear baffled. What we got now is fuddled people struggling to appear functional.
This is the danger inherent in rewarding people whose sole talent is a kind of vague inoffensiveness. You get the impression Wolf underwent a period of product testing in front of the same set of forlorn creatures who taste test cat food and children’s cereal. To them, him looked like news anchor.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 3:39 am
I just found out my keedos and the grandkids and the Son in Laware fine. I thought they might have gone to the race. I wil be surprised if this isn’t the act of some sort of teabanger. Yaknow. Boston. All those colleges, and yaknow, smart people. It’s a drag being smarteeople in a fucking stupid world.
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Basset said on April 16, 2013 at 6:46 am
Watching CNN in a hospital waiting room right now… among the “breaking news” this morning, “investigators are on alert.”. Ya think?
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David C. said on April 16, 2013 at 6:49 am
I’m happy every month when I don’t have to sign a big-assed check to Time-Warner for cable. When things like this happen I’m doubly glad. I can just go to the BBC or NY Times and find out what I need to know in about 10 minutes without the stupids telling me everything they don’t know.
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James said on April 16, 2013 at 7:41 am
I was watching Brian Willams on NBC. what a tool.
He kept saying that having an initial blast, followed by a secondary blast to catch the first responders was the hallmark of overseas terrorism. Where’d he get that little piece of incorrect knowledge?
I think back to the OtherSide lounge (away bar) bombing here in Atlanta when that tactic was used in 1997. The culprit was Eric Rudolph, who later did the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. He was a domestic (Christian) terrorist obsessed with “soddomites.”
Not saying this is domestic, but lets not jump to conclusions until we get facts.
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beb said on April 16, 2013 at 7:58 am
Bruce Schneier offers advice and some history on terrorism
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/print/2013/04/the-boston-marathon-bombing-keep-calm-and-carry-on/275014/
I have avoided most TV coverage of the bombing for much the reason Nancy gives. The announcers are just awful. I happened to flip to MSNBC and immediately flipped away because there was Chris Matthews in full outrage mode yelling at us about how we can never feel safe again. Thank you Chris.
While it could always have been foreign attack I’d lay odds that its domestic, being set on the day Massachusetts observes as the start of the Revolutionary War. Following the recent murder of the Colorado chief of corrections and the Texas DA and his wife, this sounds a lot like the opening blast of a new civil war.
Perhaps the one thing to be thankful about is that compared to the bombings in Iraq where dozens of people at a time get killed, the casualties here have been few. May these terrorists never live long enough to get better.
Finally, Bassett I hope your wife’s operation went well. It’s bad enough to be stuck in a waiting room worrying without have news of a bomb blast add to your misery.
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Jolene said on April 16, 2013 at 8:27 am
James, I’ve seen numerous reports of bombings in Iraq that involved one explosion, followed in a few minutes by another. The idea is that people will run to help the injured, and those who do will be killed by the second bomb. I’m not sure how often that has to happen to be called “a hallmark of overseas terrorism,” but it is, in fact, a strategy that’s been used fairly often.
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Kim said on April 16, 2013 at 8:30 am
You think TV is bad? Try AM radio for news. I was trying to get updates last night on the hour-long drive home from my youngest’s soccer game. I heard people speaking with such conviction about how North Korea was involved, Obama was to blame, it is terrorism we have brought on, it’s Muslims, it’s a conspiracy of insert offending ethnicity/culture/whatever noun fits here. Then there was some host, guesting for the regular guy, who spoke at length about how he knew what the folks in Boston were going through because he knew what it was like to be involved in multiple car-bombing attempts in places not named USA. He failed to note the big difference: He’d gone to a war zone where these things happen, not the finish line of an annual runners’ pilgrimage.
My hope for humanity would be lost but for all the people who helped when they might have run from yesterday’s carnage.
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Jolene said on April 16, 2013 at 8:38 am
beb, it seems a bit of a stretch to be referring to the start of a new civil war when what we have before us is three incidents that, so far as we know, have nothing to do with each other.
The authorities in Texas are exploring all sorts of possibilities, including the idea that the recent murders may have been carried out by a former justice of the peace who lost his license after being convicted of stealing public property.
http://news.yahoo.com/former-texas-official-arrested-probe-prosecutors-slayings-033144835.html
Seems pretty remote from what happened in Boston.
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Basset said on April 16, 2013 at 9:14 am
Thanks, Beb… they’re just getting started, got a call from the OR just now saying all is good so far.
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Jolene said on April 16, 2013 at 9:20 am
Worth checking out on PBS tonight, a White House concert featuring “Memphis Soul” and a Ken Burns special called The Central Park Five about the young men who were falsely accused and wrongfully convicted in the brutal assault on the woman who became known as the Central Park jogger.
http://www.pbs.org/inperformanceatthewhitehouse/
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 16, 2013 at 9:34 am
Well, this is my best take on matters, at 750 words anyhow, but for what it’s worth:
Faith Works (Newark Advocate 4-20-13)
Jeff Gill
The revelatory properties of terrorism
___
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.” (I John 4:18, KJV)
If I were to get all mathematical about matters of the heart, I might wonder if you could reverse that statement. Does perfect fear cast out love?
That’s the theorem of terrorism. An act so horrible, so senseless in itself but done in service of a cause, that through the inconsistencies of the human heart does not attach itself to the original intention (and to be fair, most terrorism is done in service to groups of people who would disavow the act taken in their name if they could).
Instead, the mechanism of terroristic acts is to provoke a counter-reaction that undermines the authority, moral and official, of the opposition to the terror group’s agenda. You blow up the oppressor’s guardhouse, the occupying force is, in response, harsher and more capricious towards the general population, which then drifts a little closer to being in your camp, whether they were against you to start or even just indifferent. Terror, terrorists like to say, reveals the “true nature” of the group being attacked, while is a regrettable necessity for those using it.
What gets complicated is when either there’s no vicious response, or when the people in general turn against you for having used too much violence, or being too random, or when there are too many innocent victims.
Let’s just say right now, whether it’s Andrew Kehoe in Bath, Michigan in 1926, or the Unabomber in the 1990s, sometimes the person setting the explosive devices is simply mentally ill and horrifically disturbed, even if their stated concerns about taxes or the environment are shared by many. When you have a Jane Alpert in New York or a Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, the line between psychosis and a mad passion for a cause gets blurry.
And when you have a large movement, with numbers of people involved, you reach a point where sanity seems beside the point somehow. Al-Qaeda or the Weathermen, Anarchism a century ago or the Ku Klux Klan more recently, and more locally: you can’t just call them crazy. They terrorized and killed with an intent to drive public policy and societal behavior in the direction they desired.
“Perfect love casts out fear,” and we might well ask, “does perfect fear drive out love?” To look at the rest of the equation as John puts it, then “one who loves does not fear punishment, but if anxiety can do the same, love might leave.” Or something like that.
If terror can control our thoughts, our emotions, it will certainly guide our actions as much as TSA gets to guide us in packing for an airplane trip. That’s the goal fulfilled on a small scale. We fear the impact, the inflicted punishment of another plane disaster, so we let fear guide us more strongly, and it becomes hard to even imagine another way.
That’s why, in a muddle headed but somewhat understandable way, officials said after 9-11 that we should go out and shop and visit malls “because otherwise, the terrorists win.” That quickly earned some well-deserved scorn, but there was a nubbin of a point to it. And the counterpart is that line at the airport, where we shuffle in our socks to the metal detector.
But we are told, if we are New Testament people, that “perfect love casts out fear.” It is the only real counter-terrorism that works, in the long run. It’s not hearts and flowers and candy sort of love, but the Greek root “agape” that C.S. Lewis wrote so powerfully about, a love that empties self and is open to understanding and learning and listening and yes, even forgiving.
That sort of love casts out fear. It doesn’t screen for bombs or defuse improvised explosive devices, and there’s no promise in this verse that if you can use love as your lens to look at “the other” you will cast out all future harm. Jesus did say something about peacemakers and those who stand for righteousness.
But if you can stand with and for and IN love, even as you are attacked, I wonder if you aren’t reversing the reversal. That terror, spending itself, whatever the motivation, on those who refuse to hate them in response, might well cast itself out, and leave room for something more.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; tell him when fear was cast out for you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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brian stouder said on April 16, 2013 at 9:56 am
Seems pretty remote from what happened in Boston.
True enough, Jolene. Another troubling aspect of the Texas story is that chucklehead in the Caddy who killed the Colorado corrections chief, before himself being killed back in Texas. That suggests some more advanced planning, and reach, by the angry white chuckleheads.
Whoever was behind the Boston Marathon atrocity, the one constant that it reinforces, to me, is that people are mean; humanity has within it a remorseless mean-streak. It’s a fool’s errand (or a calculated marketing ploy) to try and ascribe it to a particular culture or region of the world.
My short version of Jeff’s excellent post is: All we can do is bet on the good guys to hold off the chuckleheads (as they mostly do), and live our lives.
Aside from that, here’s wishing strength to Mr and Mrs Bassett
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Deborah said on April 16, 2013 at 10:09 am
This isn’t new, you’ve probably seen it before, but it helped me feel “better” this morning http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7I9d/anti-defamation-league-imagine-song-by-john-lennon
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Julie Robinson said on April 16, 2013 at 10:24 am
They’ve got to fill the air somehow, even when they don’t have any real information. So they blather and speculate. We tuned away after watching an hour of the same video over and over.
As Jeff, Brian and Deborah point out so eloquently, let’s focus on what is good and who is important to us. Prayers for all the victims, but prayers for Mrs. Bassett too. Thanks to all the first responders and medical personnel, but thanks also for beautiful music that helps us cope. Every time I walk in the kitchen I see a huge bouquet of daffodils and I can’t help but smile at their cheerfulness. There is still beauty, and there is still good in this often-rotten world.
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Jenine said on April 16, 2013 at 10:44 am
Patton Oswalt’s response on Facebk yesterday:
Boston. Fucking horrible.
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”
But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.
But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.
But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.
So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always
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Jenine said on April 16, 2013 at 10:45 am
will.”
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Mark P said on April 16, 2013 at 11:00 am
It will be interesting to see where this goes, but I think it might take a while. I doubt the FBI is going to be too quick to jump in with a bunch of stupid profiler crap. I think they got their hands burned pretty bad with the Olympic Park bombing, when they ruined the life of a perfectly innocent man.
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James said on April 16, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Jolene at 8:
I think you misundstood me. I was trying to say that it’s a tactic that was used before our involvement in the “War on Terror,” as I mentioned in my example. To say that it in any way marks it as foreign terrorism (vs home-grown) is short-sighted.
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Jeff Borden said on April 16, 2013 at 12:49 pm
I actually listened to a couple of sports gabbers –Dan Bernstein and Lawrence Holmes– on the SCORE as I drove home from teaching about 1:15 after the initial blast. Frankly, I was impressed.
Both repeatedly pointed out that no one really knew anything, though they did keep quoting the &@#$#@ New York Post that 12 were dead and a Saudi national in custody. They repeatedly gave out the numbers to call for information. . .the Chicago Marathon is a qualifier for Boston so there were hundreds of our folks running there. . .and they warned listeners to beware of graphic images on their computers lest young eyes see the blood and gore.
Whether this is another disturbed yahoo with a homicidal grudge like Adam Lanza, or some right-wing jag like Eric Rudolph or some jacked-off foreigner out to settle a score with the Great Satan like Mohammad Atta seems unimportant. A psychopath struck. Innocents suffered and died. Brave men and women ran toward the blood and the thunder. Government entities like police, fire, FBI and others began their work.
Our job is to not panic. . .not point fingers. . .not further a political animus. Patton Oswalt has the best commentary up at the moment, reminding us that despite the many sick, diseased, violent people among us, most of us are essentially good and we outnumber the bastards. And, of course, the great Fred Rogers, who reminded us that whenever tragedy strikes, whether natural or man-made, there are so many who run to help.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 1:36 pm
On the Asian carp: they should import some brown pelicans and some ospreys. Those fish would be lunch, toots sweet.
Beautifully said, both Jeff and Jenine. Best wishes Basset.
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Dexter said on April 16, 2013 at 1:57 pm
I was driving in to work some early overtime the morning of April 19, 1995, when I heard about OKC’s Murrah Federal Building being reduced to bricks, mortar, and death.
I walked into work and told some friends what had just happened, and everybody just instantly assumed it was Middle Eastern terrorists. I think I did, too…we had all been conditioned, after all. Who knew that when Idaho resident Randy Weaver and his family were attacked in Ruby Ridge , and also the Waco, Texas burn-out of David Koresh’s clan would inspire a frustrated American named Timothy McVeigh to unleash such carnage?
After that episode, I figure there’s no sense in trying to guess who did this awful deed in Boston, but like most, I try, inside my own head anyway. Patriot’s Day, tax day, Hitler’s birthday coming up Saturday, Columbine anniversary, paranoia over guns + mental illness and “men in black helicopters coming to take my guns away…”
I just try to reason , who could do this?
HBO has a little series called “Vice”. I watched the first half-hour episode Sunday night. It was about politics in The Philippines. Lots of gun battles, bloody assassinations of announced candidates…explosions, even a totally blown off human head lying on the ground.
Yes, Boston was horrible, but in the msn I never read anything about massive public deaths via assassinations / explosions which happen all the time all over the world, in my case here, the Philippines, but also in Lebanon when Israel goes crazy, in Baghdad weekly if not daily, and in Mexico where 70,000 have died in the drug war in the last five years.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Wise point , Dexter. 46 people were killed in bombings in Iraq yesterday. Interesting take on the Boston bombing from Juan Cole:
http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/bombings-increase-sympathy.html
David Koresh or his second in command murdered all of the Branch Davidians by shooting them, and the murdered agreed to their own murders. Randy Weaver shot two FBI agents after firing on ATF agents that were at his place with a warrant; his wife and kids were his accomplices. I’m all for blaming the government, but in those two cases, the nutjobs were responsible. And Elian Gonzalez’ mom kidnapped the kid, but that didn’t stop Wayne LaPierre from making a jack-booted thugs comment.
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adrianne said on April 16, 2013 at 2:17 pm
Best commentary I’ve seen so far on this is from Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/15/perfect-day-turns-evil/W7KQHq1NWFqukte3VQ14DJ/story.html
Second best is Charlie Pierce: “You are not safe here”
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/boston-marathon-bombings-update-from-boston-041513
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Jolene said on April 16, 2013 at 2:24 pm
More good commentary, this from Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/after-boston-why-the-terrorists-cant-win/2013/04/16/4aa3c04e-a6a0-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html?hpid=z2
James, you are right. I did misunderstand you. Still, I don’t think Brian Willams is a tool.
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BigHank53 said on April 16, 2013 at 2:31 pm
It’s not a secret that the ATF used to like to have a high-profile raid early in the year, just before their budget reauthorization hearings. They miscalculated badly with the Branch Davidians; people anticipating the Apocalypse aren’t particularly frightened by prison.
I’ve no idea who planted the bombs. But from the tiny amount of information that’s been turned loose (black powder fueled fragmentation devices are 500-year-old technology) I’m going to say it wasn’t even a cell, just a single dimwitted hate-filled nutjob. Be glad he stuck to pipebombs; I can think of two other attack modes that would have upped the body count by an order of magnitude, and they’re even easier than making pipebombs.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 3:20 pm
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Dusty Springfield. Adele? Madonna? Katy freaking Perry? Not in the same universe. Lulu? Sure. Those gals could sing. No autotune nor Diane Warren required. Jackie DeShannon was her American counterpart. DeShannon and Springfield were accomplished songwriters. The former wrote songs with Van Morrison and Jimmy Page and the great Randy Newman. Jackie DeShannon made the original, and finest, version of the great song Needles and Pins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbM_Zmx9kA
And I think some Mad Men stylist saw that album cover when they designed Betty Draper.
So Hank, when I stage a revolution, I should count on your expertise for explosive ordnance?
And I think Joel Achenbach is a national treasure.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 3:23 pm
And apropos of zip, don’t you think it crushes Henry’s shriveled little nads that Betty will always be Betty Draper, not Betty Francis.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Absolutely perfect song for the day after something evil happens.
Common sense about guns:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/newtownaddress
I would not give gun licenses to the vast majority of people I have ever encountered. Scalito wants to give grenade launchers to every yahoo with an American birth certificate. I think I’d be a better Supreme Court justice.
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Bitter Scribe said on April 16, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Julie @16: Yes. I have little use for Wolf Blitzer, but in fairness, in those situations, you have to talk and talk with little or no new info at hand. Anyone would stumble occasionally in a task like that. If you don’t like hearing it, turn off the TV.
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BigHank53 said on April 16, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Prospero, you’d first have to convince me a revolution would be an improvement. And neither of my two paths involve explosives; things that go bang (a) tend to have adverse effects on one’s life expectancy, and (b) be carefully watched, as they attract dimwits like flies.
Whoops, thought of a third. Ugh.
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brian stouder said on April 16, 2013 at 4:23 pm
I think I’d be a better Supreme Court justice.
Yes, indeed you would. ‘Course, a potted plant would be an improvement over that guy, too!
Today is the birthday – 70 years ago – of LSD. (so says my day by day calendar) Thanks to Sandoz in Basel, Switzerland. (and it wasn’t illegal until 1966!)
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Sherri said on April 16, 2013 at 4:24 pm
turn off the TV.
This is my recommendation with respect to TV news. Don’t watch it. It’s not good for you.
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Hattie said on April 16, 2013 at 4:24 pm
The news sources are not covering themselves with glory, are they.
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Brandon said on April 16, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Madonna is not a belter, but she’s made hits without Autotune and without Diane Warren (because she’s written most of her own songs).
But I like Dusty Springfield (she was on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack) and Lulu had a great Bond theme, “Man with the Golden Gun.”
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 4:34 pm
Brian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joZnVNEeBlA
I love the Animals.
It is, in my opinion, a great invention. In my opinion, LSD should be available over the counter. I mean, it was back when I was in colllege.
And I’d be a better Justice than a potted plant.
Wolf Blitzer: ahole flamer. Where is Arthur “Scud Stud” Kent, who was out on the rooftops with bombs bursting in air when Wolf was huddling under a desk soiling himself?
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Deborah said on April 16, 2013 at 4:39 pm
Charles Pierce’s college age daughter has a good piece up on his blog http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/we-all-run-together-041613
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 5:08 pm
And Madonna was actually Manti Te’o’s girlfriend. And she doesn’t steel note for note from Prince. Sorry, Brandon. I couldn’t help myself, being an asshole and all. And in my mind, Madonna wrote one song and modifies it occasionally. If one of the two was going to be a hot commodity, it should cave been Cyndi Lauper, clearly, who’s miles more talented. And Cyn writes better songs than Madge can imagine. Way better singer, too.
And the Lulu theme song from Man With the Golden Gun was excellent, but it couldn’t touch To Sir, With Love. And singing Bond movie songs in the wake of Goldfinger is a losing proposition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Wg6k9cWhM
One very sexy woman with an astounding voice.
Jonathan Winters with Jack Paar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zrhnMUhKzI
Funny as hell.
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Catherine said on April 16, 2013 at 5:36 pm
I wish I were a quarter as eloquent as Dan Chiasson: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/04/a-poem-for-boston.html. When I lived in Boston, near the route, we cheered the marathoners every year; friends ran it, everyone partied afterward. He captures the experience beautifully.
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Basset said on April 16, 2013 at 5:51 pm
Meanwhile… surgery over, went well, thanks for the support… she may come home tomorrow. Meanwhile, the rescue golden retriever we’ve had for twelve years is near her end, kidney failure… she quit eating over the weekend and we’re just keeping her comfortable.
I think, no specific information or anything, just a feeling, that the Boston explosions will prove to have been the work of a domestic loner or at most a very small group, far-right probably.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 5:51 pm
Did any of y’all know that Dorothy Kilgallen, (the nice, pretty lady from What’s My Line, that Frank Sinatra hated, and when the biggest asshole ever hates you, you must be doing something right,) claimed to have interviewed Jack Ruby out of earshot of the Dallas police? And she died in Marilyn Monroe fashion? What she said about the unfortunate Warren Commission:
The Warren Report made a great effort to note that the FBI and the Secret Service were delinquent in their duty, and that the press media – TV, radio and newspaper – also were responsible for the confusion that made Oswald’s murder possible.
Baloney.
Oswald was not killed by a newspaperman. He was killed by a nightclub owner well-known to the police – Jack Ruby.
How can the Warren Commission pretend to forget that?
And nobody suspected Sinatra?
I was just looking up Elbert “Golden Wheels” Dubenion, my second favorite AFL player of all time, after Abner Haynes. Wiki says he went to Bluffton Colllege, in Ohio. Was there ever such a place. And Golden Wheels is the greatest sport nickname oof all time, and I wouldn’t deign to listen to arguments on that fact.
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Deborah said on April 16, 2013 at 6:13 pm
Basset, glad to hear the good news about Mrs. Basset, so sorry about the golden retriever.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Welcome good news about Mrs. Basset.
Is there anybody on the face of the earth that thinks the Warren Commission had the slightest semblance of credibility. I’d like to sell the nitwit my bridge to the mainland.
And Dexter and Sherri(if you’re old enough) and some of you sports types, how about those 45-43 Thanksgiving Day games. The AFL rocked. Otis Taylor sprinting 60 yards to spear the villainous Ben Davidson. My kinda football. Bastard deserved it. Conrad Dobler notwithstanding, Ben Davidson was the dirtiest player ever. And in Dobler’s defense, his accuser was Alex fracking Karras, who was nearly blind and used to tell a story about roughing up an opponent and only realizing after the game it was his brother Ted. Alex was a gentle giant type and a great host at the Greektown Festival, but a rowdy sumbitch. I loved me some Loins baack in those days. Awe inspiring defensive line, great LBs, Lem Barney, LeBeau, Pietrosante, Gibson ( we saw them at the Fox and Hounds in Bloomfield Hills after a game and they were very cool about a coupla ahole teenagers interrupting their dinner for autographs.) Jim Gibsson was like a prototype. Big and fast, and an outstanding blocker. The Loins had camp at Cranbrook. They were a buncha relly nice guys. Particularly Roger Brown, who was the biggest human being I had ever seen at that point in my life, and Darris McCord, who was almost as
hugehuge. Contrary to their communal nickname, they were a bunch of nice guys.I mean, they were gigantic, but they all acted the way Alex did on his TeeVee show.Nice fellows.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 6:38 pm
Any discussion of the Loins requires some comment about Van Patrick. What a Bozo. Hearing footprints. That is Van Patrick. Hearing footprints? Holy shit you moron. I find it confusing to keep y’all in geographic perspective. In part, it’s because it’s feudal and tribal. There’s the Fort and CHICChicago and Detroit. I’d guess I know Detroit as well, or better than, the rest of you. Spent my formative years there. Good place to be a kid. Sort of. Got into all sorts of trouble. Met my first love, and I loved her fiercely, Was in my first play.
Was there ever a better db than Lem Barney until Champ Bailey. Neon was great, but he chickened on the tackle, Well not wo much, but kinda, and he didn’t drive the hammer like Champ.
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JWfromNJ said on April 16, 2013 at 7:11 pm
Big Hank – Be careful what you war game in your head. A few months after 9-11 a friend who works for a homeland defense agency asked me to come up with a viable threat scenario for an attack on a commercial jetliner. I took less than three hours and within a week precautions were in place for the modus operandi I suggested. And no, it’s not the stupid rules on liquids being in tiny bottles in zip lock bags.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 9:24 pm
Seems likely the Lions are whatever. So the fuck what.
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Prospero said on April 16, 2013 at 9:30 pm
Lem Barney was so good it was ridiculous, but he was not a good as Champ Bailey. Deion wasnt that good. Champ basically ate db alive. Nobody was better at that position.Care to let whatever? Lem Barney was not as good as Champ. and nobody else was either. best DB that ever played. And I was a freaking good one.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 16, 2013 at 10:43 pm
As Philip Bosco’s judge in “Nobody’s Fool” said to the police chief: “You know how I feel about arming morons. If you arm one, you’ve gotta arm them all.”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 16, 2013 at 10:45 pm
“Otherwise, it wouldn’t be good sport.”
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