Sports & Politics

                                    East Lake golf course near Atlanta, site of the PGA tour championship and the FedEx Cup this past weekend, looked to me like the meanest, nastiest course I’ve ever seen, set up as tough as any U.S. Open course, maybe even tougher—Bermuda rough like wire, narrow fairways, pins tucked precariously close to edges, greens like glass that were stimping around 14 (and more like 18 when descending from some of the steep East Lake slopes), and, of course, the pressure of FedEx money and prestige. And it absolutely embarrassed some of the best golfers in the world: Phil Mickelson at +13, Bubba Watson at +10, Patrick Reed at +9, and our current U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka at +4. And the winner, the resurgent Tiger Woods, was 11 under par. Welcome back, Tiger. I and most of the rest of the world were watching with bated breath to see if you could pull off this miracle. And you did, as your two closest pursuers succumbed to the pressure of Tiger mania, with Rory McIlroy six behind and Justin Rose five behind. Granted, Rose won the FedEx championship and the ten million that went with it, but he and Rory and the rest of the youngsters saw firsthand what PGA players in the fifteen years of Tiger dominance saw, the immense crowd pressure that accompanies his every shot. When he and Rory walked down the final hole on Sunday with hundreds of fans right behind them, that crowd, like a swarm of excited bees, nearly swallowed them whole. It had been five years since his last victory, but after this one, there will be many more to follow.

            More weekend sports considerations. I seem to be losing my grip on language. Today, after their debacle against the Chicago Bears, I wanted to say that the Arizona Cardinals reeked, but I was no longer sure what the verb “to reek” meant. I thought it suggested a really strong stench, like a long-dead skunk or a pile of rotting fish. If that’s true, then it applies to both the Cardinals and the Diamondbacks. Wow! Do they both reek. The Cardinals look like a new version of the Cleveland Browns, a team that may very easily lose all sixteen games this year, and the Diamondbacks look more like Zirconbacks, or poster boys for complete meltdown late in the season. How sad for Larry Fitzgerald, who will undoubtedly give it up after this season to begin his career as a sports broadcaster. How sad for Paul Goldschmidt, who will once again not be named MVP in the National League. Oh well, I still have the Ryder Cup next weekend, and a Tiger season beginning with the Masters next April.

            Enough about sports. What about politics? We’re only six weeks from the Mid-Terms and the mud is flying everywhere. Here in Arizona, the art of mudslinging is reaching new highs (or should that be new lows?). In the race for Jeff Flake’s vacated seat in the U.S. Senate, supporters of democrat Kyrsten Sinema and republican Martha McSally are spending oodles and oodles of money to see who can win in the negative tv ads and the too frequent negative mailings. Sinema, according to McSally, opposed the War on Terror, believes in “world disarmament,” wants to shut down Luke Air Force Base, opposed creating the Department of Homeland Security, and voted to cut funding for ICE. McSally, according to Sinema, voted for huge tax breaks for the wealthy, proposed a tax plan that would raise health insurance premiums, put Social Security and Medicare at risk, and voted to raise the national debt by $1.9 trillion. All right, ladies. Why don’t you both spend your campaign funds on ads that tell us why we should vote for you? Tell us what you believe, where you stand on national and world issues, what you would do to bring about positive changes. Instead of mud, why not just toss us some marshmallows?

            We’re living in an age of instant information (too often misinformation) with nearly everyone tweeting opinions on every current subject or using one or more of the many social networks. Everyone has an opinion. And too many of us believe nearly everything said. Only a few decades ago, most of us couldn’t have foreseen a time when the president of the United States might spend hours every day sending out inflammatory, misinformed, ungrammatical, untrue, idiotic comments for all the world to see.  But that’s where we now are. And here I am, sending out opinions to my readers. Take this most recent conundrum, the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the charges of sexual assault brought against him by Christine Blasey Ford. Is he, as his accuser says, guilty of sexual assault or is he simply a man who thirty-five years earlier gave in to his boyish libido and got a bit too rough in his amorousness? Appointing or rejecting him for the Supreme Court is an important decision. What he may have done thirty-five years ago is equally important. Did he cover with his hand the fifteen-year-old Christine Ford’s mouth as he tried to rip off her clothes or didn’t he? And how can the truth be determined? Before we rush to confirm him, let’s hear the testimony of those who were around back then. Let’s not confirm or reject him just on political partisanship.