“The view is wild, bleak, and desolate. The elements, which have been warring for the last fortnight, have called a truce and left a sea of mud.”
– George P. McClellan
President Donald Trump has promised to send Yankee troops to the rebellious province of Portland, OR, to whip those damn rebels and restore order. Federal officers will be obeyed or else, promises our Commander-in-Chief.
“Full Force” - he’ll have those damn rebels running for their lives and begging for mercy. How dare they raise their, erm, um, bicycles? against the Army of the Potomac.
Here you can see in that traitorous Sen. Ron Wyden’s social media posts the rebels of Portland setting up encampments (the tents) and mobilizing the trains.
The horrors of war will show those damn Portlanders who’s really in charge around here. They’ll rue the day they installed those bike lanes when American tanks roll right over them to crush the resistance. They’ll be trading in their plaid for good ol’ red, white, and blue clothing. Instead of Hip Hop and Grunge, they’ll be singing along with Lee Greenwood and their kids will be whistling Dixie by God, or those atheist hipsters will be crying in their $10 coffee.
Because God knows that if the people of Portland had their way, they’d give back Oregon to the Russians or the Spanish or the Indians, and we all know the soil is as much ours as the Gulf of America or the Panama Canal.
So when our masked federal agents start seizing people off the streets because they look like funny foreigners or dare to say something we don’t like, Trump don’t want to hear no whining about the Constitution and human rights. This is America, even if we have to provoke another Kent State to prove it. Send in the troops, “full force.”
Your city is next.
Football Memories
Notes from home:
Our friend Mark visited us for Sunday dinner. Mark is one of the Lovely Doreen’s oldest friends and was the organist/musical director at our wedding.
Usually when Mark visits, the conversation turns to matters of Faith: the state of the Catholic Church, different religious speakers, a priest who cannot understand the purpose of a homily, etc.
We had all that Sunday night, but Mark really came over to watch the Green Bay Packers and enjoy a home cooked meal.
As any Wisconsinite will tell you, football has its own religious character in our state. Weddings, and even funerals, are carefully scheduled around the Packers. A child’s baptism is best scheduled for the bye week.
My parents weren’t religious, but I was raised in the Church of St. Vincent Lombardi. Sundays were devoted to the game. When the Packers played in Milwaukee and the game was “blacked out” in our area, we would visit our relatives in Sheboygan to watch the game.
On my mother’s side, the faith of the Green and Gold had a special history. My uncle, Ray Barrington, and my grandmother actually attended the Ice Bowl. Yes, many claim to have attended, but few actually did. However, my uncle and my grandmother were there, but they left at half time as the weather was just too much. They heard the end of the game in the car on the way home.
My uncle would go on to be a sportswriter for the Green Bay News Chronicle, and then was a columnist until the newspaper folded.
My dad, who grew up in Madison, followed the Badgers every week, but became as passionate a Packers fan as my mom, who actually attended the first Super Bowl. He became a football coach himself, briefly, at Marquette University, which had football as a “club” sport. My dad also took my brother and me to Packer games in Milwaukee when we could get tickets.
Years later, when my dad was experiencing Alzheimer’s and my mom had passed, we recorded a game for him that he could watch over and over again. With Alzheimer’s, he had no recollection of the game despite seeing it numerous times, but it would occupy his mind and his time. I’m not sure he could still break it down the way he did other games before he lost his memory, but as the game played in front of him, he could still recognize the plays and the strategy.
I inherited the faith but became an Apostate. While I was growing up, the Packers were mediocre at best. Playing football in the backyard, my friends and I would imitate a Packers quarterback by limping backwards and then falling down.
So, I became a Dallas Cowboys fan. The team of the 70s. Five Super Bowls, two wins, America’s Team according to NFL Films, glamorous cheerleaders, and a cerebral approach to the game under Coach Tom Landry. The stars of football were all in one place: Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Drew Pearson, Butcher Johnson, Randy White, Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones…
My dad took me to a Packers-Cowboys game at County Stadium and then wondered if it was a mistake. The fans around us got surly as I cheered for every throw by Staubach and every run by Dorsett. The ‘boys won that game 42-14. We stayed until the end when the crowd had thinned out before leaving, my dad deciding discretion was the rule of the moment.
I’ve certainly gotten my share of joy from following the Cowboys. I remember the night Chris Boniol kicked seven field goals against the Packers. I won the bar pool and my fantasy football league game thanks to his record-setting performance. I remember each of the Super Bowls. I remember Emmitt Smith setting the all-time rushing record, and I remember Smith going on Late Night with David Letterman to walk back his threat to quit if Coach Jimmy Johnson got fired.
I married into another Packer-loving family. Well. My wife’s brother-in-law was also a Cowboys fan. I was watching a game with the Lovely Doreen’s dad, a cigar-smoking ex-Marine of few words, at least towards me. I decided to poke into the bear cage. “Bill, what does it say when two of your daughters are married to Dallas Cowboys fans?”
He took the cigar slowly out of his mouth, turned to me just as slowly, and without changing expression, said, “Do you really want me to answer that?”
He then turned back to the game and put the cigar back into his mouth. Conversation over.
Not long before my parents became ill, I reclaimed my Sundays by giving up football. The player protests, the NFL no longer knowing what constituted a catch, and learning about the real consequences of “the game” to ex-players’ health, all led me to question the amount of time I was devoting to watching the game.
My mother didn’t understand. I could’ve told her that I was converting to Latvian Orthodox and it wouldn’t have phased her. But giving up following football?
But Sunday night we made the exception, and as luck would have it the Packers were playing the Cowboys in Texas.
The Packers were heavily favored by 6 1/2 points. I knew from my younger and more irresponsible days that the Packer faithful tend to bet on their own team more than other fans of other teams, driving the point spread* to be larger than one would normally expect.
As one bookie explained to me, Packer fans make him a lot of money. “I started making money on football the day I stopped betting on football,” he told me.
After watching the game Sunday night, I suspect a few Wisconsin bookies were happy, but very few Packer fans were happy. The result was a tie in overtime, but it seemed like a win for the Cowboys. Here’s what went right or wrong, depending on which side you were for.
The Cowboys kept control of the line of scrimmage on offense.
The Cowboys had a hot receiver but the Packers made no adjustments. The Packer corners were burned by George Pickens more often than a mob-owned restaurant. Late in the game, it didn’t occur to anyone on the Green Bay sideline to tell the corners to keep the Cowboys’ receivers in front of them rather than let them make a big play.
The Packers special teams gave up momentum in the game to the Cowboys with the blocked extra point. When the Packers needed to stop the Cowboys in the 4th quarter, the Cowboys ran a kickoff nearly to midfield. Nice to see the Packers’ special teams are still terrible.
The Cowboys didn’t turn the ball over.
It was really that simple.
I didn’t cheer for either team, but I enjoyed the game. I’m looking forward to the next game I watch, in another four or five years.
(*Note: contrary to popular belief, football point spreads are not predictions. They are set so there is an equal amount of money bet on both sides of a game. The sportsbooks make their money in the middle from the vigorish, a.k.a. the vig. That’s the difference between what is bet and what the bookie will pay out, typically an 11/10 split, with $11 to the bookie and $10 for the payout. It’s a house advantage for the bookie who wins regardless of the outcome of the game. Don’t ask me how the Trump casinos went bankrupt.
Obviously, small-time, illegal books don’t have the scale for that kind of arbitrage. They either have to eat the losses when bets are too heavy on one side, or they “lay off” bets to other bookies or financers to balance the weekend costs. This is where organized crime plays a role. However, because Packer fans tend to overbet their own team, the typical bookie can use past profits to offset the occasional loss by a blowout.)
James Wigderson was once described by the Cap Times in Madison as “the spokesman for the state’s far right.” A few years later, the former editor of RightWisconsin endorsed Democrats for governor and the US Senate following the January 6 Insurrection. Wigderson comments on our politics and culture in the Trump era. He’s not happy.