Stray Thoughts on Daily News

Gun violence in Chicago. How can NRA people still maintain their position on gun control? Would all those deaths in Chicago, recent as well as in the past, have happened if guns weren’t so easily obtained? Without a gun, murder would have to be up close and personal, strangling or beating on a head with a hammer or sticking someone countless times with a knife, none of which would be accidental. Guns make it too easy from an impersonal distance. Up close and personal. Yes, people would still die but it wouldn’t be in such numbers.

Recreational marijuana in Washington. This is just the beginning. Soon we’ll see more states legalizing pot, both medicinal as well as recreational. It’s hard to say what the repercussions will be. Will we become a nation of potheads? Will our young people take it up with a vengeance? Will DUIs from marijuana zoom up? Or will it make illegal pot from south of the border a thing of the past? Will the revenues from sales and state and federal taxes be enough to justify its legality? We’ll have to pay close attention to how it goes in Colorado and Washington to find the answers to all the questions.

World Cup Soccer. I was all set to write a comment about the low scoring in soccer, a game about which I know almost nothing. I was wondering how the rules of the game could be changed to accommodate more scoring, if the net could be enlarged or if more penalty kicks could be granted for fouls. Then I watched Germany simply destroy the Brazilian net in the first half of their semi-final game. But that was an anomaly, not a norm. I still think I and a bunch of other people would find soccer more attractive with more scoring.

What does it say to the rest of the world, especially to those who are undernourished, even starving to death, that in this country we can have a hot dog eating contest in which this year’s winner, Joey Chestnut, stuffed down sixty-nine hot dogs with buns in ten minutes? That’s right, sixty-nine. And in Custer, South Dakota, at another hot dog eating contest, Walter Eagle Tail, choked to death when his throat became engorged with buns and wieners, with no way to Heimlich it open. Senseless death, senseless contests. The rest of the world must just scratch their collective heads at such stupidity, such crass consumption. It seems to me that we could use an updated version of Eugene Burdick’s and William Lederer’s The Ugly American. We’re still ugly, maybe even more so than we were in 1955.