Posts Tagged → writing
Another NFL season? Who cares
According to the aggressive internet advertising I have encountered, and clicked right through, another National Football League season has begun. And unlike my childhood and adulthood up until 2016, I now just don’t care. I won’t be watching any NFL games at home, I won’t be going out to a sports bar to watch a game, and I won’t be going over to a friend’s house to watch a football game.
The fact is, me and the NFL are splits-o, over, finis, done, parted ways, divorced. Oh, I did my part as a fan; it was the NFL that caused our breakup. When the NFL’s strange public policy positions got me mad in 2015, the disrespectful kneeling by spoiled brats in 2016 got me furiously disconnected. I could not then relate to a business that deliberately stuck its finger in my eye and then expected me to overlook it and keep on keepin’ on. Nope. In 2016 I turned off the NFL TV and never looked back.
The situation has not been helped by a woke, racist, anti-America ESPN and fellow sports “media” outlets, in which the NFL continues to appear and participate, as if nothing is wrong. The situation has not been helped by the NFL adopting certain flags, colors, etc as statements about sensitive social issues and political policies that are guaranteed to drive away people who take their business with them. I always wonder what the outcome would be, the response would be, if the NFL jerseys and helmets sported the National Rifle Association logo….we know it would not be positively received by the ESPN et al “sports media” entertainment complex, which is really now just an adjunct of communist anti-America Hollywood.
I don’t think the NFL misses me, either. Occasionally I will be at someone’s home, or out with family, and a football game will be playing on a TV. My eye or ears will catch snippets of the game, and sometimes bits of the advertising during the game. So far the advertising ratio seems to (roughly) be about 25:1 aimed at American blacks over American whites. That disproportionate advertising effort tells us that American blacks are still loyal fans of the NFL, and very much the target audience of NFL games, while American whites have left the stadium, euphemistically and statistically speaking.
Incidentally, my disgust with NFL rubbing my nose in its leftist politics also bridges over into Penn State football. “The house that Joe [Paterno] built” has also left me in the dust, not so much the team or its management with the silly names on the jersey shtick, but Penn State University itself. My alma mater has gone totally woke, adopting policies and political positions completely at odds with my values. And at odds with the university’s own stated values of fairness, dedication to academic excellence, etc.
The way Coach Joe Paterno was mistreated by the PSU board of trustees didn’t help my view of the school. Then there was the unjustified hiding away of the Joe Paterno statue, and unjustified general official abuse of the golden Paterno name. PSU has done nothing of substance to correct its poor behavior. Instead its administrators and trustees and staff just keep on keepin’ on with the leftist nonsense, expecting me to get on board. Every year since 2012 PSU has found some new way to alienate me.
Despite receiving constant emails from Penn State and the PSU Alumni Association begging me to contribute and participate, I have backed away and found other ways to spend my time and money. Not getting back on that PSU train, despite five decades of dedication and personal participation.
So, just like I won’t support an NFL that aggressively adopts political positions that I cannot agree with, I cannot support a Penn State University that has adopted policies and politics that I cannot possibly agree with. The same goes for Major League Baseball, the National Basketball League, the National Hockey League, and a cornuplethora (thanks to John Correia for this funny word) of other now leftist-woke sports-entertainment institutions. All of whom seem to be doing just fine without me, I might add. If they missed me and my business, then they would have been courting me by dialing back the leftist politics junk. And they have not done so, but rather increased their leftist politics activism.
I will bet that if there is ever a need to financially support sports teams and leagues that have deliberately alienated their audiences by adopting leftist politics, and thereby lost a great deal of money, the political establishment will find a way to bail them out with taxpayer money. And we know the GOPe will make it happen.
Meanwhile, with the NFL out of my life I now have a lot more time and money of my own to spend on things that really bring me happiness. Reading on the couch next to my wife, visiting with friends and laughing about our kids, reloading antique black powder cartridges that became obsolete a hundred years ago, but which are still plenty effective for taking wild game at sporting distances, splitting firewood, studying the Bible, writing, there are so many productive uses of the time I used to mis-spend on the NFL.
So long, Screwy, I won’t see ya in Saint Louee, as Bugs Bunny would have said.
Why I write and keep a blog
Most people keep their opinions to themselves, at least initially, and so they might wonder why a person maintains an opinion blog. Many other people simply do not like to write, and so they might wonder why other people do write on purpose. Hopefully both questions can be answered here.
Let’s start with why I write.
Simply, I write because I really like to write. Just like other people really like chocolate, or listening to certain music. It is an urge in me like some people have to play music, paint, sing, perform in plays, or downhill ski. I enjoy writing because it gives me a sense of satisfaction that very few other things provide. Writing comes naturally to me, and although I am a good public speaker and I always welcome opportunities to speak publicly, writing really gives me my best opportunity to be creative.
And that is it in a nutshell; writing is my own best possible act of creativity. Because I suck crap with tools and wood. My mechanical skills are up there with Cro Magnon man inventing the stone wheel, maybe. No one wants to hear my opinions any more, so writing is what I got left.
I was not always a competent writer. Although I did pretty well writing for English teachers in high school, it was a couple writing classes at Penn State that helped me focus on writing as an act of personal self-expression. As opposed to simply reporting facts. One of the courses was business writing and communication, and the other was creative fiction writing. Were any of my kids to take these college courses today, I would accuse them of wasting my hard-earned money on tom-foolery. But for me, some 38 years ago, these two courses brought together an inner passion, a need, and the mechanics of how to meet that need.
Now, when we couple that urge to write with perhaps the most openly opinionated person you have ever met, the blog naturally follows. A blog gives me the ability to explain why and how I think about substantive issues, and also to exercise that creative urge.
You might ask how or why I became so opinionated. And the simple and honest answer is, I have always been a pain in the ass in this department. That is, The Niggling Facts and I Want to Know Why and That is Not Fair Department. Maybe that is three separate departments, but I am putting them all in one. Probably my best personal trait is the one that gets me into the most scrapes, the That is Not Fair department. What most people simply accept as a daily parade of selfish and dishonest acts, I just cannot take. My sense of justice and my severe opposition to all forms of injustice is hard-wired into me. I hate cheating and lying, double standards, and general acts of phoniness. Can’t help it.
It all started because I was that little kid at the super market who said loudly “Mom, that man has three eyes. Why does that man have three eyes, Mom? Hey mister man, why do you have three eyes?”
And in fact, the art of being annoying and articulate just kept on improving from that point over the years. Add some adult experiences and voila!, we have a blog writer.
Most people do not have the luxury of expressing their opinions on everything from toilet paper hoarding to three-eyed politicians and the scum-sucking self-serving sycophants who enable them. I am not sure I have this luxury, either, but I have made sure to be able to afford it. Because if I did not express myself through politics and or public policy, I would have to find some other way to convey opinions that I believe are well reasoned and fair. Having failed to attain elected office, and having self-quarantined myself from taxpayer-funded public agency death-trap jobs that most Americans would kill for, all I have left is either sitting at a bar somewhere, getting drunk, and ranting away about politics to whoever will sit close enough to listen to me, or writing the blog.
I choose the blog.
So much to write about, so little time to do it!
Upcoming subject matter includes: Boy Scouts of America policy on sexualizing children (don’t do it), immigration ‘reform’ and the Boston bombing (don’t do it), trading off the Second Amendment for the First Amendment after Muslims blow up the Boston Marathon (don’t do it), the lack of coverage of mainstream media of the Gosnell Abortion House of Horrors and Freak Show (msm is not doing it), and the Obama administration’s odd handling of a young Saudi Arabian kid who was caught up in the Boston bombing and then whisked away by federal officials and scheduled for deportation, without being brought to justice in America….
Separately, thank you to Kim Stolfer and FOAC who organized yesterday’s wonderful Second Amendment rally at the PA state capitol. I enjoyed catching up with many friends and fellow activists, including Shira Goodman, an activist for the other team. Shira works for CeaseFirePA, a gun prohibition group. Yet Shira continues to surprise me, saying she reads this blog regularly (Hi Shira! Thank you!), and that she is taking shooting lessons (DO IT!).
Thank you also to the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, which held its annual Legislative Shoot yesterday at the Mechanicsburg Sportsmen’s Association. Well over 50, maybe 60 members of the PA House attended, as well as quite a few state senators. It was my great pleasure to teach a young Democrat how to shoot an AR-15, so he could see that it’s not a weapon of war, nor is it inclined to jump up and immediately start shooting people of its own accord.