The Super Bowl half time show is always lame, but the promised tribute to Craig Stephen Hillenburg was a 2 second clip of the Spongebob episode “Band Geeks.”
Lame, lame, lame, as my son Charlie, a fan of the series, observed.
Tag: Sports
This is Like the Super Bowl of TV Ads
I am referring, of course, to ……… Uh ……… The Super Bowl.
I have no dog in this hunt, so I am looking at the ads, and what sort of tribute to Craig Hillenburg, the late creator of Spongebob Squarepants will happen in the half time show.
What the Performers at the Superbowl Should Do
Go down on one knee, and sing the Star Spangled Banner.
F%$# the cowardly owners, and f%$# Trump.
Tweet of the Day
— black, booked & busy (@mordkhetzvi) January 15, 2019
Some context, if you don’t get it, Donald Trump hosted a meet and eat with the NCAA football champions, and served them fast food on a silver service with candles.
Who’s an Antifa Icon Again?
Liberté, Egalité, Gritté!
At his day job
My favorite non political Gritty meme
It appears that the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty has become an icon of the left:
Last week, a headline on neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer read like something from an alternate universe: “Alt-Right Icon Gritty Seeks to Follow Adolf Hitler’s Footsteps and Become Time’s 2018 Man Of The Year”. It was at least the third piece the site has posted in the last month proclaiming Gritty – the googly-eyed, giant, orange, hockey-playing monster mascot for the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers – as a symbol of the far right.
As it happens, the Daily Stormer is playing catch-up, in reality trying to re-appropriate Gritty as a symbol – to take him away from their ideological opponents on the left. Because, you see, Gritty was already a partisan. Gritty, this smiling muppety nightmare on skates, is antifa.
………
When Gritty was unveiled in September, the immediate reaction was horror and revulsion (including from this very publication). But within hours, the tide began to turn, thanks largely to Gritty’s early Twitter activity – particularly when he told cross-state rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins to “Sleep with one eye open tonight, bird” – as well as his instant visual meme-ability. The gigantic face, the wide mouth set in a permanently crazed smile, and the massive swirling eyeballs made Gritty a grotesque underdog in a social media world of aesthetic perfection. He is hideous, yes, but one cannot help love him for it – recalling for many hockey fans the historically rough-and-tumble Flyers, or, for others, the city of Philadelphia itself and its famously aggressive sports fans. His entrance to the Flyers’ first home game of the season further solidified his status as a sympathetic destructive force: he came in on a wrecking ball.
Then, very quickly, Gritty’s relationship to hockey, or sports, fell by the wayside. Into the mix, another underdog cause attached itself to Gritty: the political left.
A few days after Gritty first appeared, Jacobin magazine, a socialist publication, tweeted simply: “Gritty is a worker.” Whether it was this tweet which sparked what has come since, or whether Jacobin caught on very early to Gritty’s leftist memeification is difficult to ascertain, but in the weeks since, Gritty’s image has been used by anti-fascist protesters, anti-Trump protesters, and in countless left-wing memes.
I am amused, and completely flummoxed.
There’s the Bad Day at the Office, the Terrible Day at the Office, the Apocalyptic Day at the Office, and then There’s………
And then there is waking up in the morning, and not only do you realize that you are running the Cleveland Browns, but you discover that you have to deny that you are interviewing Condoleeza “130,000 Ton Dead Weight” Rice to be your next football coach:
Condoleezza Rice and Cleveland Browns General Manager John Dorsey shot down the day’s most surprising NFL report, that the team wanted to make the former U.S. Secretary of State and national security adviser the first woman to interview for a head coaching position.
Rice, a lifelong Browns fan, used the buzz generated by the report, from ESPN’s Adam Schefter, to call for an increase in the number of women in the coaching ranks. “I love my Browns — and I know they will hire an experienced coach to take us to the next level,” she wrote (via the Associated Press).
“On a more serious note, I do hope that the NFL will start to bring women into the coaching profession as position coaches and eventually coordinators and head coaches. One doesn’t have to play the game to understand it and motivate players. But experience counts — and it is time to develop a pool of experienced women coaches.
“BTW, I’m not ready to coach, but I would like to call a play or two next season if the Browns need ideas! And at no time will I call for a ‘prevent defense’!”
Dorsey added that Rice “has not been discussed” as a candidate to succeed Hue Jackson.
This has to be the most thankless job on the face of the earth.
I Don’t Get It
The Canadian curling gold medalist was just ejected from a competition for excessive drunkenness.
Ummmm……What could possibly posses someone do curling sober?
A Canadian curling team that includes an Olympic gold medalist was ejected from a curling event in Alberta on Sunday for being “extremely drunk,” breaking brooms and swearing.
Ryan Fry, Jamie Koe, Chris Schille and DJ Kidby were kicked out of the Red Deer Curling Classic, according to the CBC, and forfeited their final match. The event is part of the World Curling Tour.
Ken Starr is Pond Scum
While he was trying to coverup sexual assaults by athletes at Baylor, he planted a mole to spy on sexual survivor support groups.
What an awful, evil,, pathetic, little man:
Baylor University infiltrated sexual assault survivor groups to shape PR strategy and talking points on how to handle the groups and student demonstrations, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
A Title IX lawsuit, filed by 10 unnamed former students, has alleged Baylor downplayed sexual assaults at the university. Some of the Jane Does say they were assaulted as far back as 2004, according to court documents.………
In the same month that Ukwuachu was convicted, Baylor’s office of general counsel retained [big league PR flacks] Ketchum for comms support, according to Jason Cook, Baylor’s VP for marketing and comms and CMO.
James Peters, former partner and director of Ketchum South, served as the account lead. A Ketchum representative declined to make Peters available for comment.
………
One source familiar with the matter identified the “mole” as Matt Burchett, director of student activities at Baylor, whose job is to coordinate student pursuits such as picnics, parties, and demonstrations. The source said Burchett, acting as a liaison with university officials, played damage control on their behalf.
Burchett helped to arrange demonstrations for survivor groups and passed on what he learned to school officials and the communications department, sources said.
“Baylor had – I don’t know what else you’d call it – a mole that would interact with survivor groups,” said the source.
………
When these groups organized on campus to comfort each other and demand action from former chancellor Kenneth Starr, “[Burchett] would coordinate with them, befriend them, and pretend he was helping them organize vigils and demonstrations [about] sexual assault,” the source added.
Burchett would pass on what he learned to school officials, the communications department, and Ketchum, the source added. In an email described to PRWeek, Kevin Jackson, VP of student life and Burchett’s supervisor, said the director of student activities was “adept at this kind of thing.”
………
[Baylor VP for Marketing and Communications Jason] Cook objected to the notion that Burchett collected information without the survivor groups’ knowledge. When counsel for the plaintiffs deposed Burchett on July 31, “[Burchett] indicated in his deposition testimony that he had advised the students up front that he would be coordinating with university personnel, including media, security, parking, facilities, pastoral care, and so on,” Cook said. “This is standard operating procedure for any significant student event on our university campus.”
………
Since 2015, Baylor has jettisoned administration and athletic department officials, including former head football coach Art Briles, former athletic director Ian McCaw, and former chancellor Starr
Spying on rape survivors to undermine their efforts: What a bunch of contemptible excuses for human beings.
Baseball is Magic
If you don’t follow baseball, you might not understand, but the Mets just beat the Phillies by 24-4.
The kicker? This score includes Eleven unearned runs:
The New York Mets are the greatest baseball team of the past two days. Following up on a 16-5 drubbing of the Orioles on Wednesday night, one of the biggest laughingstocks in baseball took down the Phillies this afternoon by a staggeringly competent score of 24-4. Those 24 runs today are a Mets franchise record.
The Phillies, meanwhile, paid tribute to the slapstick Mets we all remember from, uh, last week, by running down some of their greatest hits. Were there throwing errors? Reader, there were throwing errors, part of four total miscues by the Phillies that led to eleven(!) unearned runs.
The kicker is that this was a double header, and the Phillies won the 2nd game.
This is remarkable
What Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Said
Writing in the Guardian, the basketball hall of famer excoriates the NFL for their incoherent and hypocritical actions on the national anthem:
Whew! What a tumultuous year for your league. Slipping attendance and ratings. Continuing concussion controversy. Lawsuits from cheerleaders who refuse to shut up and smile. Domestic violence accusations against players. The Papa John’s founder mouthing off about something or other. Players taking a national anthem knee (NAK, for short). President Trump’s “problematic” rambling. Commissioner Roger Goodell under siege from, well, everybody. Bet it makes you fellas long for the good old days when all you had to worry about was Janet Jackson’s nip slip. Where’s faithful Hodor when you need someone to hold the door against relentless attackers?
Then you made it worse.
In May, you implemented a childish policy about how grown men must respond to the national anthem: a player can stay in the locker room during the anthem, but if he takes the field and then protests, the team and the player can be fined. Oh, Dear Owners. You stood at the precipice of history tasked with deciding whether to choose the principles of the US Constitution over profits of commerce, patriotism over pandering, morality over mob mentality, promoting social justice over pushing beers. Sadly, you blinked. Courage, it seems, is expected only of players.
It is a well deserved condemnation.
Read the rest.
What a Whiny Bitch
It appears that the man with a merkin on his head is too much of a crybaby to deal with the fact that some football players disagree with him:
President Trump abruptly called off the White House celebration honoring the Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles after nearly all of the players and coaches said they would boycott the visit after the president’s demands that players stand during the national anthem at games.
White House officials said that fewer than 10 members of the team were planning to attend the celebration on Tuesday afternoon on the South Lawn despite weeks of planning for the event, which is usually a nonpolitical celebration of a football victory.
Instead, this year’s event to honor the Eagles has become a bitter reflection of the deep divisions in the United States over race, patriotism and Mr. Trump himself. When it became clear that most members of the team would not attend, Mr. Trump issued a blistering statement disinviting them.
“The Philadelphia Eagles are unable to come to the White House with their full team to be celebrated tomorrow,” Mr. Trump said in a statement released Monday evening. “They disagree with their president because he insists that they proudly stand for the national anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.”
Yeah, this is the guy to protect us from the would be terrorists.
When he’s not playing golf, he is cowering under his desk.
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi Will You Please Go Now
Nancy Pelosi is refusing to condemn the NFL’s attempt to silence black players protests against police brutality:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to unequivocally condemn the National Football League’s new rules — designed to prevent players from protesting by kneeling during the national anthem — is one of the reasons many black voters, particularly black millennials, question whether the Democratic Party has their best interests in mind.
At a CNN town hall Wednesday, anchor Chris Cuomo asked Pelosi whether she was okay with the rule change.
“I would be more okay with it if they had consulted with the players,” Pelosi said, referring to the NFL Players Association’s claim that athletes had not been given a chance to weigh in on the new rules. “I don’t think the players agreed to this. This is the owners, and, by the way, it’s the owners who would be fined.”
“I love the national anthem,” she added. “I’m from Baltimore. That’s where it was written during the War of 1812. So I’m very possessive of it. Sometimes people say, ‘Maybe we should change the national anthem.’ No.”
“I love the national anthem. I love the flag,” Pelosi said. “And I love the First Amendment, and I’ll just leave it at that.”
As one Twitter commenter noted, “Pelosi is unwilling to take a stance on an issue that’s literally killing Black people.”
This sort of prevarication is endemic to the Democratic Party establishment, and it loses elections.
Cowardice never gives good policy, and almost never gives good politics.
It’s this sort of sh%$ that makes potential voters wonder whether you will ever stand up on THEIR behalf.
Poem, apologies to Theodore Geisel, after the break:
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don’t care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don’t care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi
I don’t care how.
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion’s tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi
Don’t you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!
Please Nancy P.!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon . . .
Or broomstick.
Or
You can go by camel
In a bureau drawer.
You can go by bumble-boat
. . . or jet.
I don’t care how you go.
Just get!
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi!
I don’t care how.
Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi
Will you please
GO NOW!
I said
GO
And
GO
I meant . . .
The time had come
So . . .
Nancy WENT.
Another Stopped Clock Moment
Donald Trump has granted a posthumous pardon of former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson:
For more than 100 years, Jack Johnson’s legend as the first black heavyweight boxing champion has been undisputed, but his legacy had been tarnished by a racially tainted criminal conviction.
His battles against white opponents, in the ring and outside of it, gave rise to “The Great White Hope” play and movie and he came to be lionized as a barrier breaker.
But the criminal conviction from 1913 that most would find abhorrent today — for transporting a white woman across state lines — haunted Johnson well after his death in 1946 and motivated politicians and celebrities for years to advocate for a pardon, however symbolic.
On Thursday in the Oval Office, Johnson posthumously found an unexpected champion: President Trump.
Although his own record on civil rights has come under question, often harshly, Mr. Trump, flanked by boxing champions and Sylvester Stallone, the actor who brought the case to his attention, signed an order pardoning Johnson.
The president called Johnson “a truly great fighter” who “had a tough life” but served 10 months in federal prison “for what many view as a racially motivated injustice.” Mr. Trump said the conviction took place during a “period of tremendous racial tension in the United States.”
………
Still, in Johnson, Mr. Trump found a way in one swoop of the pen to stake a claim on civil rights and rebuke his predecessor, Barack Obama, for not taking action on an issue that seemed in line with the principles of fighting injustice that he had championed.
Though other presidents passed up the chance to pardon him, Mr. Trump noted that the last resolution in Congress calling for the pardon was while Mr. Obama was in office, in 2015.
“They couldn’t get the president to sign it,” Mr. Trump said.
It’s not surprising that Obama did nothing about this: he was parsimonious in his pardons, and he was remarkably timid regarding any issue that involved the intersection of bigotry and law enforcement.
FWIW, I give very little credit to Trump for this: As a casino owner, he’s made a lot of money from boxing, and he has long of history of being involved with the sport, so for him, it’s about boxing, not race.
Gawd Help Me, I am Praising New York Jets Management
I am not a Jets fan, and as such, it probably makes me more likely to praise the management of that football franchise, but still, this is not something that I would have anticipated doing.
The short version of this is that the owner is saying that he’s going to cover the fines for anyoneone on his team kneeling during the anthem:
The Jets are not standing with the NFL in regard to standing for the national anthem.
After the league announced a rule change Wednesday — saying players must either stand for the anthem or stay in the locker room while it is being played — Jets Chairman and CEO Christopher Johnson said the team would support players who might choose to kneel anyway, and not issue any team fines.
“I plan to sit in the very near term with Coach (Todd) Bowles and our players to discuss today’s decision regarding the National Anthem,” Johnson said in a statement.
“As I have in the past, I will support our players wherever we land as a team. Our focus is not on imposing any Club rules, fines, or restrictions. Instead we will continue to work closely with our players to constructively advance social justice issues that are important to us. I remain extremely proud of how we demonstrated unity last season as well as our players’ commitment to strengthening our communities.”
Under the new league rule, if a player does go on the field and protest during the anthem, the team would be fined by the league. The new policy also enables each club to have its own rules if a player is on the field and does “not stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem.”And, Johnson told Newsday, the team will absorb any league-imposed fines.
“I do not like imposing any club-specific rules,” he said. “If somebody (on the Jets) takes a knee, that fine will be borne by the organization, by me, not the players.
Good for them.
They are doing the right thing, and they are doing the smart thing.
They might want to consider extending this whole, “Doing the right thing and doing the smart thing,” bit to the game of Football, where their performance over the past two seasons has been lackluster.
Tweet of the Day
I hope the NFL decides to completely stop all concession stand sales during the anthem as well. We wouldn’t want people buying a $10 beer and an $8 hot dog during our sacred anthem.
All TV camera crews must stop filming and direct attention at the flag too.
Just seems fair.— Sage Rosenfels (@SageRosenfels18) May 23, 2018
This is in response to the NFL announcing that they are banning players kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner.
What a group of cowards.
And They Have Lost LeBron
Mr. James has described the NCAA as corrupt and beyond fixing:
In the wake of what appears to be a massive scandal breaking in the world of college basketball, NBA icon LeBron James blasted the organization as “corrupt” and beyond fixing, per ESPN.
“I don’t know if there’s any fixing the NCAA. I don’t think there is,” James said Tuesday. “It’s what’s been going on for many, many, many, many years. I don’t know how you can fix it. I don’t see how you can fix it.”
He went on to say, “I don’t know all the rules and regulations about it, but I do know what five-star athletes bring to a campus, both in basketball and football,I know how much these college coaches get paid. I know how much these colleges are gaining off these kids. … I’ve always heard the narrative that they get a free education, but you guys are not bringing me on campus to get an education, you guys are bringing me on it to help you get to a Final Four or to a national championship, so it’s just a weird thing.”
The fiction of the “Student Athletes” is little more than slave labor, and the NCAA itself has used forced prison labor as a justification for its practices in court cases.
It needs to be shut down.
The Most Contemptible People in the World
That would be the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is literally arguing that its “student athletes” are slaves:
In the United States, college athletes — particularly those who compete at some of the largest football and basketball programs — generate not millions but billions of dollars for universities, brands, and television networks. In 2015, the top programs made a combined $9.1 billion. The NCAA, for its part, just signed an $8.8 billion dollar deal with CBS to air March Madness, the college basketball championship tournament.
………
That very obvious dynamic undergirds a lawsuit filed by former NCAA athlete Lawrence “Poppy” Livers asserting that scholarship students who play sports are employees and deserve pay. The Livers case argues that student-athletes who get scholarships should at least be paid as work-study students for the time they put in.
What the NCAA did in response to the lawsuit is as vile as anything going on in sports right now. I had to see it for myself before I believed it. At the root of its legal argument, the NCAA is relying on one particular case for why NCAA athletes should not be paid. That case is Vanskike v. Peters.
Only there’s an important detail: Daniel Vanskike was a prisoner at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois, and Howard Peters was the Director of the state Department of Corrections. In 1992, Vanskike and his attorneys argued that as a prisoner he should be paid a federal minimum wage for his work. The court, in its decision, cited the 13th Amendment and rejected the claim.
The 13th Amendment is commonly hailed as the law that finally ended slavery in America. But the amendment has an important carve-out: it kept involuntary service legal for those who have been convicted of a crime. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” the amendment says. It’s that phrase — “except as a punishment for crime” — which allows American prisons to force their inmates to do whatever work they want or need them to do.
The use of the case stems from several other law cases alleging unpaid labor; two of them are previous lawsuits against the NCAA in which the case was cited as precedent, and the NCAA won.
………
In their response to the NCAA’s motion to dismiss, Livers’s lawyers are arguing that the precedent was mistaken for applying the 13th Amendment exception for unpaid prison labor in a case dealing with non-prisoners.
“Defense Counsel’s insistence that Vanskike be applied here is not only legally frivolous, but also deeply offensive to all Scholarship Athletes – and particularly to African-Americans,” Livers’s rebuttal to the NCAA’s motion says. “Comparing athletes to prisoners is contemptible.”
The NCAA is showing an incorrigible nerve to use this case, Vanskike v. Peters, as one of its justifications for not paying student-athletes. The Vanskike case has been cited in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals 14 times before, but in each of those 14 cases there were prisoners arguing that they should be paid a fair wage for their work.
Yet the NCAA wants to rely on this case and to call on the 13th Amendment. The body that runs college sports wants to use a justification for the slave labor of convicted criminals to justify its outrageous greed.
I have an idea for a sporting event, it would involve senior NCAA officials fighting each other to the death.
We could call it the Hunger Games.
About the Only Super Bowl News That Matter
No one took a knee during the national anthem.
Righteous Anger
Burn it all down. That is the calm and reasoned conclusion to which I have come as one horror story after another unspooled in the courtroom. Nobody employed in the upper echelons at USA Gymnastics, or at the United States Olympic Committee, or at Michigan State University should still have a job. If accessorial or conspiracy charges plausibly can be lodged against those people, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Those people should come out of civil courts wearing barrels. Their descendants should be answering motions in the 22nd Century. In fact, I can argue convincingly that none of those three institutions should continue to exist in its current form. USA Gymnastics and the USOC should lose their non-profit status forthwith. Michigan State should lose its status within the NCAA for at least five years. American gymnastics is no longer a sport. It’s a conspiracy of pedophiles and their enablers.
—Charlie Pierce, on the complicity of people with authority at all levels for the pedophile predator Larry Nassar
And that might not be the angriest thing in his Sports Illustrated article.
Cheer the Orioles
The Baltimore Orioles posted a rather innocuous Tweet wishing everyone a happy Kwanzaa.
The flying monkey crowd proceeded to have a butt-hurt hissy fit.
The team’s response was to tell the racist Neanderthals to go Cheney themselves:
A common love of the Orioles is what brings everyone together on this page. We’re happy to have a diverse fan base of the best fans in the world. If you cannot show respect for others, kindly unfollow us. There is no room for hate or bigotry on our social media or in our ballpark
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) December 26, 2017
As a Red Sox fan, I cheer the Orioles today.