Food for Thought as you Head to the Voting Booth

 

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

 —JOHN ADAMS, statesman, diplomat, Aldrin to George Washington’s Armstrong

“It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican or a good Democrat.”

—GIFFORD PINCHOT, guy you’ve probably never heard of

“Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

—GEORGE ORWELL, English novelist and journalist

“Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.”

—JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, American novelist

“There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.”  

—BENJAMIN DISRAELI, nineteenth-century British Prime Minister

“I find myself  . . . hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”

—ALEXANDER POPE, eighteenth-century English poet

“I hate all politics. I don't like either political party. One should not belong to them—one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.”  

—RAY BRADBURY, American novelist

“The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.”

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT, twenty-sixth President of the United States of America

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

—GEORGE WASHINGTON, dollar bill guy

“I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.”

—GEORGE WASHINGTON, welcoming you to the Hall of Presidents

“All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.”

—JOHN ARBUTHNOT, Scottish physicist, mathematician, and satirist

We would add: “. . . but not nearly fast enough.” 



 

Being Right: Not Always the Same as Being Smart

 
When my wife is asked what it’s like being nine years younger than her husband,¹ she likes to say that

 “People think he’s robbing the cradle, but actually I’m robbing the grave.”

It’s a good line and she delivers it well, with a happy, sunny bounce to her voice that rarely fails to get a laugh. It’s the kind of thing that one doesn’t expect to hear from a genuine graverobber, who in our experience tend to be generally unpleasant people.

Not the most practical way to find a date . . .
but, hey, times are tough all around.

While our age gap rarely comes up as an actual problem worth discussing, it often becomes the basis of good-natured teasing, such as when I injure an old-mannish part of me (a hip, for example) playing hockey, getting slowly out of bed, or chasing kids off our lawn; or when she struggles to identify artifacts such as LP records, typewriters, and rotary phones,² or wants to know what life was like before automobiles.

Your humble author, ca. 1895.

The age gap does seem to be a bit harder on me, though, not just because I’m more elderly and thus an easier, slower target, but also because, frankly, I’m not too bright.


Some years ago—I won’t say exactly how many—Some Gal turned twenty-five. She was in a funk for much longer than I had learned to expect her to be down about anything,³ so finally I asked what was eating her. Clearly (in hindsight) upset about having rushed through the first five years of her twenties, she answered with a slump in her shoulders and voice:

“I’m halfway to thirty.”

My immediate response—the mathematical part of my brain obviously moving much faster than the part that doles out common sense—was:

“What are you talking about? You’re halfway to fifty.”

I suspect that by the time I live this down, she’ll be halfway to ninety. Maybe older than that, since I’m dimwitted enough to have put it in writing so it’ll be harder to forget.



NOTE
1. In case you’re struggling to keep up, my wife’s husband is me. While we tend to use the first-person plural here at Bowling in the Dark, referring to our wife’s husband as “us” would be be confusing at best, and at worst might inadvertently generate discussion about polygamy and the constitutional definition of marriage, and I/we/Gaia are particularly interested in not having that discussion here.
2. I’m making a lot of this up because she’s probably not going to read this.
3. Probably twenty or thirty minutes. She’s pretty upbeat.

Bowling in the Dark's Endorsement for President of the United States:

 

Montgomery Brewster, pitcher, Hackensack Bulls

 
 

A platform we can get behind:

 “I wanna thank you for coming out today . . . to see to it that neither my opponents nor me win the election. I wanna ask the question:

Q. Who’s buying the booze?  
A: [Montgomery Brewster.]

Q: Who’s buying the food? 
A: [Montgomery Brewster.]

Q: And who’s trying to buy your vote? 
A: [Technically everybody, but also Montgomery Brewster.]

Q: And who you’re gonna vote for? 
A: None of the above! 

Q: Say it again! 
A: None of the above! 

Q: Let me hear it one more time! 
A: None of the above! 

Yeah, sure, we’ve all heard that one before.

If You Think Your Kids Don’t Listen to You . . .

they do.

Nike Takes a Courageous Stance Against Certain Kinds of Cheating

Tiger Woods, professional golfer

Tiger Woods, immediately after bombarded
by gamma radiation.

Moral misstep: slept with a woman who was not his wife, and then—having decided that that was pretty awesome—went on to sleep with five, nine, eleven, or 121 others, depending on which disgusting internet source you choose to believe.

Marketability: while his popularity may not be what it once was,¹ he’s still a well-known and much-discussed athlete in what is inexplicably one of the world’s most popular sports. While he’s not playing up to his usual standards of late, he has the potential to continue to golf at a very high level for the next five to twenty-five years, making him a huge boon for any company with the right amount of moral fiber to stick with him through a few thousand minor marital indiscretions.

Nike’s stance: Everything’s swell. The Tiger Woods Center at Nike’s headquarters remains, as you may have guessed, named after Tiger Woods.

Kobe Bryant, shooting guard, Los Angeles Lakers (NBA)

Kobe Bryant, having briefly forgotten that the name
that matters to him is the one on the back of the jersey.

Moral misstep: accused of rape by nineteen-year-old Katelyn Faber; while the charges were dropped after Faber refused to testify, Bryant later publicly stated that while he “truly believe[s] this encounter . . . was consensual,” he “now understand[s] how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.” So viewed in the best possible light, he had sex with a woman who was not his wife. Given the competition in this category, one single adulterous affair seems positively quaint, but it’s still not a particularly decent thing to do.

Marketability: remains active as the most popular player on the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the NBA’s most popular teams, with potential to make Nike oodles of money for at least another four to six years.

Nike’s stance: no problems here.

Ben Roethlisberger, quarterback, Pittsburgh Steelers (NFL)

Moral misstep: accused of sexual assault in 2008; no charges filed. Accused of sexual assault in 2010; no charges filed. After the second accusation, he served four games of a six-game suspension and lost his Fathead endorsement. A spokesman for the company stated at the time, “We named our company Fathead, not Fat Asshole.”²

Marketability: Two-time super Bowl champion, marquee quarterback on one of the absurdly popular and marketable NFL’s most popular and marketable teams. While his career may not last more than another five to six years or two to three allegations, even mediocre players and backups  sell jerseys.

Nike’s stance: Are we under oath, here? No? Then what he may have done would have been bad, and we’re definitely going to cut him loose any day now. Honest.

Lance Armstrong: cyclist, seven-time Tour de France winner

Have you ever spent a lifetime sitting on a bicycle
seat? Trust us, you’d look this grouchy too.

Moral Misstep: despite his repeated and strenuous statements to the contrary, Lance Armstrong may well turn out to have been something of a cheater in the otherwise squeaky-clean world of competitive cycling. He joins the very brief list of cyclists who have tested positive, admitted to doping, or been sanctioned for doping that includes—and is absolutely, almost definitely, probably limited to—barely-known racers such as Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich, Roland Meier, Alex Zuille, Laurent Dufaux, Abraham Olano, Richard Virenque, Bjarne Riis, Christophe Moreau, Roberto Heras, Richard Virenque, Francisco Mancebo, Igor González, Óscar Sevilla, Raimondas Rumsas, Levi Leipheimer, Alexandre Vinokourov, Iban Mayo, Ivan Basso, Michael Rasmussen, Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador, Alejandro Valverde, Mikel Astarloza, Bernhard Kohl, Christian Vande Velde, Fränk Schleck, Tadej Valjavec, and Tyler Hamilton.³

Marketability: one of the best-known figures in the world when it comes to providing emotional, physical, and financial support to survivors of cancer, a disease that has to some degree, directly or indirectly, affected pretty much every person on Earth. Ever. On the other hand, he’s retired, and he participated in a sport that nobody in Nike’s U.S. demographic gave a shit about before Lance Armstrong came along.

Nike’s stance: Screw you, Lance Armstrong.

In the past, Nike has cut ties with sports figures such as Marion Jones (for her alleged and later admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs), the late Joe Paterno (who, of course, technically didn’t do anything but also, of course, didn’t do anything), and Michael Vick (who was coincidentally reinstated with Nike once he’d become popular again).

We’re not going to say that Nike should have maintained its ties with Lance Armstrong, regardless of whether the doping charges against him were (or are) ever proved or definitively disproved—that’s completely up to them. And we’re not saying that Armstrong’s admirable work with his foundation gives him a pass if he is, in fact, a big fat blood doper—although this raises the interesting question of whether it’s better to be a great guy in your sport but a turd in your personal life, or the reverse.
 
We’re simply a little disappointed that the message we’re all getting from Nike here seems to be “if you’re gonna get caught cheating, it’d better be on your wife.”⁴



NOTES
1. Except perhaps in the limited circles in which he was always apparently popular—after all, ladies, he’s single now. Rawr.
2. No, of course we made that up.
3. The part about these guys being “barely known” is just us being sarcastic. While we recognize only a handful of their names, all of them have finished in the top ten of the Tour de France at least once in the last fifteen years.
4. We realize that Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t fit the “cheater” theme here, as he was not married when he was accused of sexual assault. Twice. He does, however, still have a valid place in this piece, thanks to its overarching theme of “pro athletes who are definitely or at least probably dicks.”

Rest in Peace, Alex Karras

Why We Like Sir Alec Guinness

Yeah, sure, Alec Guinness played Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, Jamessir Bensonmum in Murder by Death, and Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Only Reason Americans Under Forty Remember Alec Guinness, and his name is an anagram for genuine class. But as if that weren’t enough already, here’s another great reason to like him:

In case you haven’t spotted it, check out the t-shirt he’s wearing under his Jedi robes.

It’s an obvious connection to make, of course, given his last name,¹ of course, and he’s probably not the first movie star to enjoy a drink—assuming there was any available, what with Oliver Reed being alive at the time. But the possibility that he had that same t-shirt on while the cameras were rolling makes Alec Guinness—not to mention Obi-wan Kenobi—just that much cooler.


NOTE
1. Alec Guinness’s last name, for those of you who aren’t keeping up, is “Guinness.”