CANCEL CULTURE AND CANCEL SPORTS
by Sherlock
Quick Hitter: Andrew Cuomo of the Cuomo Crime Family quit as governor. The sexual harassment charges are a laugh ….. Democrats treated Bill Clinton’s rapes and gropings and other sexual abuses as no worse than bad breath (which they all have from eating excrement). Something bigger led to the Crime Boss of New York’s quitting.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden cheerfully abused this little girl at a ceremony where he announced the cheapening of the Medal of Honor by declaring he would give the corrupt and murderous Capitol Police on the job 1/6/21 one of these medals each. It must be an honor to have SCROTUS (so called ruler of the US) feel up your little girl, eh, pig?
Now on with the show.
99 and I recently watched a PBS TV show featuring snippy Brits called “Secrets of the Dead.” The degreed grave robbers aka archeologists dug up hundreds of dead people, and excavated Anglo-Saxon and Briton buildings from the fifth and sixth centuries AD. England had been part of the Roman Empire until the Romans left in the early 400s AD. Because of the raids of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes for more than a century, most of England fell out of contact with Christendom. The pagan Angles, Saxons, and Jutes dominated most of England except for the far western fringes of the land.
St. Augustine of Canterbury came to re-evangelize in the late 500s and early 600s AD. Eventually the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to accept Catholicism, and the island remained Catholic until Henry VIII’s reign. Henry VIII, who lusted for the saucy Anne Boleyn, banished his Spanish wife Queen Catherine of Aragon, and forced the English out of the Church through bribery of those powerful lords who would follow him, and through murdering the churchmen and others who stood loyal to Catholicism.
During his rule, Henry VIII tried to cancel King Arthur. Why?
Let’s get a little background in the history time line. Knowing the facts and when events took place help you to keep out of conspiracy theory never-never land.
The Romans colonized England, whose inhabitants the Britons were Celts (hard C), from about 40 AD to 120 AD and held the land for hundreds of years. They eventually controlled the Welsh, who were Celts, but were never able to subdue the Scots, who were also Celts. St. Patrick, who evangelized the Celts of Ireland in the 400s AD, was the son of a Roman official of Celtic blood and a Celtic woman in Britain.
Was this guy King Arthur? Or at least Ambrosius Aurelianus? Credit to the Ambrosius Aurelianus portion of the Greek History and Prehistory website.
After the fall of Rome, Teutonic invaders from present-day Germany and Denmark overran most of the land. Irish monks would evangelize Scotland and help the Britons of the west of England keep their faith.
In the late 400s and/or early 500s AD, a man legend calls King Arthur of the Britons kept the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes at bay and kept them from extinguishing Christian culture in England.
After Arthur’s time, the Britons would later have to endure the Vikings, and then the Normans. William the Bastard led his Normans into England, and they killed the English king and defeated his men in battle at Hastings in 1066. William then ruled as William the Conqueror. It wasn’t his fault a Norman lord had lusted after his teenage mother, who was known as Arlette the Tanner’s Daughter.
The English – the people who resulted from the matings of Britons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans — would outnumber the Scots and the Welsh and they would control the best lands in the island. English rulers took over Wales in the Middle Ages, but Henry VIII was the first English king to really impose his will on the Welsh.
Henry VIII worked actively to cancel the physical remains and relics of the man legend calls Arthur. The Secrets of the Dead people didn’t go into this, but I will.
The “Secrets of the Dead” people focused on Tintagel, a port town in Cornwall, the far southwest of England. The man legends call Arthur supposedly was born in Tintagel. When the archaeologists dug thru some ruins in the area, they came upon many artifacts from Rome and the Mediterranean lands. They came upon crosses. They came upon inscriptions showing the people were Catholics. The “Secrets of the Dead” people, who tried to minimize the amount of damage the Teutonic invaders did to the Celtic Britons in most of England, reluctantly concluded Arthur’s town Tintagel was a Christian community with a certain amount of literate people whose residents traded Britain’s tin from nearby mines for the goods of Europe. (Tin combined with copper makes bronze, a key metal of the Roman era.) In other words, they worked hard, and tried to live as Christians, and had the wherewithal to support a warlord who had the will to defend the Britons and Romans against the pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders. The grave robbers and the PBS hostess still doubted the existence of a man like Arthur.
Lancelot and Guinevere (late 1800s illustration by J.M. Cameron)
Many people doubt whether King Arthur existed. For the record, I’m not of them. Only one written record from that period, The Ruin and Conquest of Britain, by the Briton monk St. Gildas, written about 540 AD, mentions the man who I and many others believe was the historical Arthur. St. Gildas in this work described a native Briton leader and his battles against the Anglo-Saxon invaders. At that time, Roman power had disintegrated in Britain, but there was still a society of Britons living as Christians in Roman style towns under Roman customs as well as their own. There was intermarriage of these people with the Romans as well. St. Gildas mentioned a leader “Ambrosius Aurelianus” who led the Britons against the Anglo-Saxons in 12 battles. Some say Arthur was that man; others say Arthur might have been one of Ambrosius’ officers. Two records from before 1000 AD, The Annals of Wales, and The History of the Britons, say Arthur was the leader, and say he “carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (In other words, he used the cross as his emblem, like many Catholic and Orthodox soldiers and officers from Constantine to Joan of Arc to De Gaulle would do.)
The fortress of Cadbury, excavated in the late 1900s, is thought to be Arthur’s “Camelot.”
Here’s some of what Wikipedia says about Cadbury:
“Cadbury Castle, formerly known as Camalet, is a Bronze and Iron Age hillfort in the civil parish of South Cadbury in the English county of Somerset. It is a scheduled monument and has been associated with King Arthur’s legendary court at Camelot.
Following the withdrawal of the Roman administration, the site is thought to have been in use from c. 470 until some time after 580. Alcock revealed a substantial “Great Hall” 20 by 10 metres (66 ft × 33 ft) and showed that the innermost Iron Age defences had been refortified, providing a defended site double the size of any other known fort of the period. Shards of pottery from the eastern Mediterranean were also found from this period, indicating wide trade links. It therefore seems probable that it was the chief caer (“fort”) of a major Brythonic ruler, his family, his teulu (literally meaning “family”, but actually meaning “warband”), servants, and horses.
Local tradition, first written down by John Leland in 1542, holds that Cadbury Castle was King Arthur’s Camelot. The site and the Great Hall are extensive, and the writer Geoffrey Ashe argued in an article in the journal Speculum that it was the base for the Arthur of history. His opinion has not been widely accepted by students of the period.
Militarily, the location makes sense as a place where refugees and the southwestern Brythons of Dumnonia could have defended themselves against attacks from the east. If Arthur was indeed conceived at Tintagel, as tradition asserts, he may have been a prince of Dumnonia and used Cadbury as a stronghold on his eastern frontier.”
Note: Cadbury is in Somerset, not too far east of Tintagel. The whole of England and Wales is about the size of Georgia.
The monks of Glastonbury Abbey in the late 1100s claimed to have found the tomb of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. A century later, Henry II (who invaded Ireland and whose knights murdered Thomas a Becket) ordered the grave opened, and the diggers found the skeleton of a man and a partial skeleton of a woman. (For childbearing, the pelvic cavity of a female skeleton is much larger than the pelvic cavity of a male skeleton. This is a basic forensic identifier.) The man’s skull was cracked, as if he had been struck hard in the head. Evidently there were no bisected cervical vertebrae giving evidence a sword blow or axe blow severed the woman’s head from her body. This gave some credence to the account that Arthur forgave Guinevere for her alleged tryst with Lancelot, if one took place.
Guinevere sees Excalibur (source unknown to author). Per the legend, Arthur caught Guinevere and Lancelot sleeping after sex, he drove his sword Excalibur into the ground between them, and left. When they awoke, they knew he knew and cried in fear and regret — fear for losing their heads, and regret for the tryst that so deeply cut her husband and his friend. The bards and minstrels say Arthur forgave them both.
Henry VIII imposed his will on the English with his desire to divorce Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. (Anne had imposed her will upon him by getting him to divorce Catherine so she could be queen.) When Pope Clement VII wouldn’t give Henry VIII an annulment (he and Catherine had been married for more than two decades), he broke with the Catholic Church and set himself up as head of Christians in England and Wales. This church subservient to the king would be called the Church of England or the Anglican Church; in America it is called the Episcopalian Church.
Most English bishops and clergy obeyed Henry VIII. Most of Henry VIII’s nobles also joined his new church to keep their possessions and their heads. Chancellor Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher stayed loyal to the Catholic faith and were beheaded for putting their consciences and objective truth above the desires of their king. They were not alone. Elizabeth Barton, a nun known as the “Holy Maid of Kent,” a woman named Bridgittine, and some priests, nuns, and laymen and laywomen would go to the block for placing Christ above Henry VIII. They were some of the more than 600 people Henry VIII had murdered for their Catholic faith.
Henry VIII had Catholics executed or otherwise punished on the charge they were loyal to a foreign leader (the Pope) and not to him. Henry VIII seized Church lands, which supported many poor peasants with alms and with wages, and turned them into “sturdy beggars.”
Henry had some Catholic noblemen executed, but impoverished many more by confiscating their property. Looting Church property and Catholic laymen’s property gave him the property he needed to bribe other nobles who were willing to turn Protestant.
Many Catholics hid out priests and took the Mass and the Sacraments in secret.
The practice of law, which should be a noble calling to ensure justice, leads to the spiritual downfall of too many lawyers in their pursuit of wealth and power. (The wealthy, the corporations, and the government have the money to retain lawyers; the poor and the working people do not.) Sir Thomas More is unique in that, to my knowledge, he is the only lawyer the Catholic Church has declared a saint – a person publicly acknowledged to have lived a life of virtue worthy of imitation. Even the “trade” of prostitution – in the persons of Mary Magdalene and Mary of Egypt – has more declared saints than the trade of lawyers!
Henry VIII’s lapdog clergymen in his new church got him the divorce he wanted, and he married a now-pregnant Anne Boleyn 1n 1533. She was carrying Elizabeth; the girl’s birth disappointed Henry, who wanted a boy to succeed him as king. Henry eventually tired of Anne’s nagging, and decided to shut her mouth by chopping off her head. From time to time you see taverns named “The Silent Woman” or “The Quiet Woman”, whose signs feature a headless woman … this is a tradition of “scaffold humor” that traces back to the fate of Anne Boleyn. A few hours before her execution in 1536, she joked bitterly that she would be known to history as Anne Lackhead.
Anne Boleyn meets the swordsman. He cleanly beheaded her, after tucking up the blindfold. Publicity still from “Wolf Hall,” a 2015 TV miniseries.
Henry VIII seized Glastonbury Abbey in 1539, had it sacked, claimed some of the valuable items for himself, and sold the rest. Henry VIII also had abbot Richard Whiting, whose monks guarded what they held to be Arthur’s and Guinevere’s relics, hanged at the abbey. At roughly the same time his lapdog clerics ordered the destruction of a shrine to the memory of Bishop of Canterbury St. Thomas a Becket, who had died a martyr for defying the wrongful behavior of King Henry II
The man legend calls King Arthur, besides being a good cavalry leader, was a Catholic who apparently tried to live his faith. He was renowned as a good, devout, just, and merciful man, which was unusual for a king. The legends the troubadours and bards of the Middle Ages made up about him, morphing him and his rough circle of warrior followers into “Knights of the Round Table” were harmless falsehoods, but his character and deeds in real life are worthy enough. Who could not respect a man who was courageous in battle, humble before God, generous to his subordinates, and supposedly forgiving of his wife Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot for her alleged adultery with him when he had the power to chop off their heads?
The example the man legends call King Arthur set led Henry VIII to order his relics desecrated when he seized and looted the abbey where the supposed King Arthur’s grave was. If King Arthur hadn’t lived such a Christian life – which was an indictment by comparison of Henry VIII’s own wanton lechery, gluttony, impiety, and murder — or if the people didn’t know about King Arthur, then Henry VIII wouldn’t have bothered to try to have King Arthur’s and Queen Guinevere’s bones done away with when he looted the abbey.
What Henry VIII did wasn’t unique to history. The Assyrians and Babylonians exiled the Jews to wipe out their memory. (They failed.)
The Romans, before they became entangled in the web of all the false gods of Greece and other lands they conquered, wiped Carthage (located in what is today Tunisia, not far from Rome) off the map and sold their people into slavery. The Romans, who at the time worshiped simple gods and goddesses of home and fields, were appalled the Carthaginians worshiped Baal, a god whose followers said demanded the sacrifice of babies.
Baal worship came from the Phoenicians who founded Carthage. Queen Jezebel was a Phoenician, and she tried to make Baal worship the official religion of the ten breakaway tribes of Israel.
The First Book of Kings talks about the Prophet Elijah, who beat the prophets of Baal when God lit his sacrifice on fire …. after the god Baal, being false, didn’t do jack to help the pagans who worshiped this falsity. Elijah then got the people to kill the false prophets. He predicted the bloody homicide of Jezebel and her followers. Jehu, who Elijah’s successor Elisha sent a prophet to to anoint as a sign God favored his drive to overthrow Jezebel and her descendants, carried out the prophecy, per the Second Book of Kings. Jehu also turned the temple of Baal into a latrine.
Gustave Dore shows Jezebel being thrown to the dogs. Literally. The writer of 2 Kings note that when the canines finished feeding, all that was left of her were her feed, hands, and separated head.
There is canceling for a good reason (to prevent the glorification of evil) and canceling for a bad reason (to down better people in the past because their example reveals the moral worthlessness of those in the present). Henry VIII’s efforts were definitely the latter.
Now for broader comments on “cancel culture.”
The moral midgets of today attack Washington and Jackson for their moral failing of owning slaves. They give Jefferson a pass because they consider the college president more liberal then the men of action Washington and Jackson were.
Likewise, they mock Lincoln’s lack of formal education, Zachary Taylor’s frontier lack of polish, and Theodore Roosevelt’s cheerful ability to shoot game, attack academics, and take his time rubbing elbows with the “unwashed.” Teddy tried to protect the “unwashed” with his use of the authority he had as police commissioner of New York City, governor of New York, and president. Al Smith, the father of health and safety and worker compensation laws we take for granted, was demeaned by fundamentalists and atheists and serial whores like Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger for being Irish and Catholic, and for closing some of the most degenerate stage shows in the state he ran.
Even John Kennedy, who was once a liberal icon, has lost his luster to leftists because he was a patriot and an opponent of the multinational corporate bosses. And Martin Luther King is suspect because he was a preacher who didn’t preach hatred of Whitey.
Cancel Culture is the revenge of all the piss-ants in high school who wish they had been athletic or smart or popular or attractive to those of the opposite sex. They took jobs in politics or academia because they couldn’t achieve greatness in real life. And they act like tyrants against those of the past because they have nothing positive of their own works to show us.
Parents of all colors have figured out the Cancel Culture leftists’ “critical race theory” is designed to get children to hate each other and refuse to rise on their own efforts.
The Cancel Culture vermin think they sound smart saying BCE and CE instead of BC and AD to deny the central role of Christ in Judeo-Christian civilization, of which the United States is a key member. The ignorant children of incest who thought this slur up forgot that “before Common Era” and “Common Era” are Europe-centric also. The people of most of the world used different ways to calculate the years. In my book, CE stands for “consuming excrement.”
Likewise, some human hemorrhoids insist the rainbow is the emblem of homosexuality and inclusiveness. Their rainbow doesn’t have a white, a black, or a brown stripe, which leaves out more than 90% of the people of America. How uninclusive of you, misfires of nature.
And the rainbow itself, per the Book of Genesis, was a sign of God’s peace to the family of Noah after He drowned all the degenerates.
A more accurate emblem for militant sexual misfit crowd is the swastika. Hitler, Roehm, and many other Nazis were intolerant pervs. Plus Hitler, a known homosexual, was a leather fetishist and he forced himself on his niece.
Now for a bit of Cancel Culture most of us grew up with.
We have all used the term “Dark Ages” to describe the Middle Ages, especially the first few centuries. Let’s look at the record on these years, in which the man known to legend as King Arthur lived.
The 400s AD was the century that witnessed the fall of the Western Roman Empire and witnessed many pagan attacks on civilized Western Europe. It also witnessed Clovis the Frank uniting the lands that would become France and Belgium under his rule and the Catholic faith. His wife the formidable Queen Clotilde saw to the latter by convincing Clovis to leave paganism and become a Catholic.
The medieval artist shows the mighty King Clovis at left humbly undergoing baptism like the rest of the people, and Queen Clotilde on the right. Before God we all are small.
Europeans reacted to the pagans’ attacks by putting together the mutual assistance organizing of society known as feudalism. The leaders of the Catholic Church assisted in forging the agreements it took to protect the people. From castle to humble church, many buildings featured protective walls to protect the people from invaders. Pope Leo I convinced Attila the Hun to turn away from Rome in 452 AD. Other churchmen did similar deeds when the civil authorities weren’t up to the job of protecting their people.
The 500s AD would witness the rise of the Eastern Roman Empire radiating outward from Constantinople (aka Byzantium) under its truly remarkable emperor Justinian and his truly unique wife Theodora (a Greek former actress and prostitute who mended her ways and put her shrewdness to good use for her husband). Justinian, of Slavic and Macedonian blood, drove the writing of the Code of Justinian as a set of laws to organize society and try to provide justice. His military leaders, especially Belisarius, were able men also.
Theodora and Justinian. Mosaic art by artist in San Vitale Catholic church in Ravenna, Italy. These are details of two incredibly good life-sized mosaics he did of the couple and their courtiers. Theodora looks shrewd and a little conceited. Justinian looks sturdy, thoughtful, honest, and not at all vain. Dark Ages, my backside …. this man’s work stands up to any artist at any time.
The 500s AD also witnessed the steady growth of authority of the Catholic churches in Rome and Constantinople, and the important work they did to relight the lights in Europe the invaders from pagan Europe and pagan Asia tried to extinguish.
The term “Dark Ages” is an insult to the people and leaders of this era. It was the beginning of the ordering of European society under the Christian ideal, which anti-Catholic bigots attacked for being not as “enlightened” as they thought they were. It is currently a slur used by those who are atheists as well as militant anti-Catholics. It is naturally a part of the Cancel Culture.
There is not a single “academic” or officeholder today who has the accomplishments or the fortitude of Clovis, Justinian, or the man who would be known as Arthur. Michigan Dave, one of our readers, is a veteran like me and a lot of us, and he sent us an article that indicates our top generals today would be short-hosers compared to Constantine or Clovis, or the man who was known as Arthur.
His advice: See “America’s Generals Lied, Lost Wars, And Looted The People They Claimed To Serve” by Josiah Lippincott, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Marine Corps officer, in The Federalist.
Link is
That reminds me. Washington lost most of his fortune due to the American Revolution. War of 1812 heroes Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison won fame but not fortune for their service. Winfield Scott, who also served well in that war, was never independently wealthy. Zachary Taylor, who was, used his own money to provide medical care for Mexican soldiers his men wounded and the Mexican general left for dead. Taylor gave his life in the fight against secessionists.
William Sherman, George Meade, Phil Sheridan, and George “Pap” Thomas, four of the five best Union generals of the Civil War, did not rake in wealth for their service. US Grant rose to the Presidency, but was deep in debt as he neared death. Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain helped Grant write his memoirs as Grant was dying of cancer so Grant’s widow Julia would not be left destitute. Thankfully the memoirs were so well done, Julia would live debt-free and comfortably till her death.
Teddy Roosevelt had to write and lecture to support his family when he wasn’t in the Army or the White House. None of our great leaders of World War Two except MacArthur, who was questionable for his conduct, made big money in the way the grifters with stars in recent years have done.
Back to the topic.
Pope Leo, Patrick, and Augustine of Canterbury likewise tower over the pee-wee preachers and lukewarm bishops of today. (The various Christian denominations still have some good clergymen, but not enough of those who are in the ministry or the priesthood put Christ ahead of earthly things. That goes for us laypeople who call ourselves Christians too. If we truly lived our faiths, we would stick out in this godless society like the Amish.)
Queen Clotilde and Empress Theodora likewise have no peers in any of today’s American female politicians.
Wait …. Kamala Harris was like Theodora in her life before Justinian. But not after she gained power.
Sources for the discussion of King Arthur include In Search of the Dark Ages by Michael Wood (pages 37-60), Europe and the Faith by Hilaire Belloc (pages 93-129), The History of the Middle Ages, by Victor Duruy (pages 41-42), A History of England by David Willson (page 16), An Archaelogical Quest for the ‘Real’ King Arthur by Erin Ogden-Korus, and information from Glastonbury Abbey. (The Abbey is ruined; its grounds are now in the hands of the Anglican Church. As a historical site, it is open to the public. Unfortunately many of the devotees appear to be New Agers, “new pagans,” and the “Dungeons and Dragons” crowd instead of good Christians and patriots. A healthy dose of King Arthur the chivalrous Christian and patriot would certainly help the manhood and morals of Britain’s males.)
A source of information about Catholic martyrs in the reign of Henry VIII is Walter Black’s book Lives of Saints (pages 319-321).
SUMMER BREAK: WOKE SPORTS CRASH AND BURN
The Olympics have wrapped up.
The crazed anti-American dykes on the American women’s soccer team crashed and burned, to the delight of many Americans.
Inset: Megan Rapinoe cries after the Canadian team (the ladies and lezzies in red) hand Megan and her crew their asses.
And why not? Most of the females on that squad openly belittled the nation and disrespected the flag. They represent anti-American degeneracy, not us.
Last time I checked, millions of people were trying to come to America illegally. You are not seeing that with other countries that are not a part of formerly Christian Europe.
The media covered up for the female kickballers when they won the World Cup in 2019, and the drunken members of the US women’s soccer team acted like jerks. One of them openly advocated raping women and girls. The media, whose lips were fully clamped on the team members’ butts, were unable to say a word in criticism of lesbian rape.
Lead Vagitarian Megan Rapinoe is now a model for Victoria’s Secret. Don’t spit your coffee on your PC. Hey, VS, if you are trying to sell undies to lesbians, at least find a pretty one. In this photo. Megan R, at left, looks like David Bowie.
In most of her action pictures, Megan Rapinoe looks like Ryan Seacrest.
Then there was Simone Bails, errr, Biles. She bailed on her team, and cost them the team gold medal. Her daily drama about which individual medals she was going to try for, only to cancel out of almost all of them, sucked coverage away from the girls who actually did something.
For the record, Sunisa Lee won the all-around gold medal. She is an American too. She is the daughter of Hmong immigrants who fled Communism in Indochina.
Sunisa Lee. We should put this picture on milk cartons because the media made her disappear in their butt-kissing frenzy over quitter and oxygen sucker Simone Bailes.
Whoever advised Simone cost her many dollars and a heck of a lot of good will. When the self-proclaimed greatest of all time comes away with a bronze medal for her own accomplishments because of her alleged mental issues, she will grace the cover of Psychology Today, but never more the “Breakfast of Champions” box.
She’ll score some feminine hygiene product endorsements. Maybe she will be a spokesgal for KNIX. And because she breathlessly came out in favor of abortion, Planned Parenthood might do some ads with her. It fits. Simone was a foster child until screwball state child services ninnies allowed her father to raise her and her brothers. Foster children suffer sexual abuse and Planned Parenthood helps cover it up with VD treatment, birth control, and abortions. Ditto for girls who get raped by other adults, like Simone did.
Virtually unreported was the link between Black Lives Matter and Simone, who praised BLM presumably for reasons of political correctness.
It was reported by a couple of outlets the Black Lives Matter people were pressuring Simone into making an anti-American gesture each time she was on the podium. Then the story went away and suddenly Simone morphed into the poster child for strategic stepdowns.
If the BLM pressure angle is true, the Biden team will do nothing to investigate the perpetrators.
Could Simone have been faced with the choice of getting abused by shitbag leftists for failure to demonstrate, or losing her sponsors and her self-respect for demonstrating? Did she decide to tank as a way out? Bear in mind Simone was submissive enough, along with more than 100 other girls, to be finger-raped by Larry Nassar and physically abused by the US gymnastics team’s coaches. Simone and all the other victims lived in fear and shame until Rachael Denhollander outed the evil crew. Simone is legally an adult, and gymnastics has made her famous, but at great cost to her spiritually and emotionally and physically …. like with so many of the other victims of these monsters. In many ways, Simone Biles is still a girl – and a broken one at that. Too many leaders and other adults in young people’s sports are vermin.
Parents, encourage your children to do their best. But also teach them to have the character to walk away from those who want to abuse them or exploit them.
Not everything is as it seems.
Jimmy Piersall had mental problems that nearly sidelined him for life, but he beat them. Jimmy had real demons as a rookie with the 1952 Red Sox, and his teammates wanted to kill him. And he was ready to fight all of them. Jimmy eventually sought treatment in a mental hospital. He missed the rest of the 1952 season, and had to undergo shock therapy. All while the sportswriters and others were prying into his life. Jimmy who had a wife and two children, turned 23 after he came out of treatment. Unlike Simone, he had an adult life and adult responsibilities. He also had a lot of competition for his job, which was nowhere near as lucrative as the endorsement and speaking career Simone has and will have.
NYC cop at upper left is pulling up shitbird Yankee fan who Jimmy Piersall knocked down with a straight right to the kisser. Jimmy Piersall is kicking at the loser’s cowardly buddy, who also rushed him in the field. Jimmy has his glove on, so he can make a fielding play too. Multitasking at its finest. Rest in Peace, Jimmy P!
Jimmy realized he could be a belligerent competitor without being afraid of failing, and it cured him. Jimmy had the courage to write a book about his mental problems and how he faced them in a book called “Fear Strikes Out.” He returned to the field in 1953 to get thrown at, engage in fights, and taunt rival players and rival fans with a sense of humor as well as anger for the next 15 years. My brothers and I were fortunate to meet Jimmy in his last year as a player, when he was with the California Angels. He was nice to us and the other fans and he autographed our program. For free. Like Babe Ruth and virtually all the other athletes before the 1980s did.
My favorite Olympic highlights were our boxers winning five gold medals in the 1976 Olympics, beating a number of Soviet bloc competitors along the way. Leo Randolph, Howard Davis, Sugar Ray Leonard, and the Spinks Brothers (Michael and Leon) were the champs.
Of course, our hockey team beat the Russians in 1980 and that rocked. I was a young officer in the Army, and I drank my fill of whisky in celebration.
As a boy, I thought Peggy Fleming skating to “Ave Maria” and winning a gold medal was pretty cool. Today the woketards would boycott Peggy for using a Catholic hymn for her skate music.
IMHO, Peggy Fleming is the gold standard of women athletes. Poised, pretty, personable, professional.
Speaking of skating, Tonya Harding and her cast of knuckleheads made the 1994 Olympics more compelling when they hit Nancy Kerrigan. Nancy Kerrigan, who was briefly America’s sweetheart, lost some luster when she bitched about Oksana Baiul beating her out for the gold medal. Nancy would later help her manager commit adultery by making herself VERY available.
Tonya’s ex Jeff Stone has at least owned his infamy. Tonya would end up beating Paula Jones in a boxing match. Paula would beat a bigger opponent when she proved Bill Clinton was a lecher and an abuser, and clinically damaged, by testifying Bill’s errr, manhood was undersized and pointed left. Bill has Peyronie’s Disease, which causes those conditions. Paula Jones didn’t have the medical files, but she had her own two eyes.
Tonya and Nancy
Kerry Strug’s landing on a broken foot in 1996 was pretty darn special. There was also a gynmast from Belarussia who competed that summer ….. guys who didn’t care about the sport liked her because she was an attractive woman instead of a girl. Her name? Svetlana Boginskaya. Several of my colleagues called her “Love Goddess” for short. Ms. Boginskaya is now a naturalized Texan.
Who has not watched our snowboarders in action and thought, “These are the medalists most likely to test positive for marijuana”? For the record, I love the antics of the half-pipers – whether or not they have fired up a half pipe or a full pipe.
A bunch of us cadets met John Naber, the swimming star of the 1976 Olympics, the year after he dominated the pool in Montreal. His brother Fred was one of our colleagues. John stayed with Fred and the rest of us mugs out at training camp for a day or so, and we made it known he was available to sign autographs. The female cadets mobbed the movie star-handsome John – they were thrilled to meet him and talk with him.
That 1976 Olympics also featured Bruce Jenner winning the decathlon. He was on a call-in show in the early 2000s, before he got confused as to what sex he was. I called in and told Bruce I rooted for him and Naber despite the two of them being Trojans (Southern Cal students for those of you who don’t follow college sports). I then told the story in the previous paragraph. Jenner was gracious, and said his fellow champion was a great athlete and a better person.
I hope Jenner can make peace with his Maker before he has to meet Him. He and most of the rest of such people need prayers much more than they need ridicule or affirmation.
Dad, who was half Eliot Ness and half Teamsters Union boss when it came to dealing with those who crossed his path in the workplace, was the building manager of a large office complex in Los Angeles. The local phone company rep gave him and some other of his biggest customers two tickets each for a night of boxing during the 1984 Olympics. Instead of using his second ticket on another corporate type like the other recipients did, Dad invited me to come along. I was out of the Army and was in town.
Dad told the phone company rep none of his fellow bosses competed in boxing like he had done. He added I had boxed competitively for a decade (though not at the weight or skill level of Dad), so he thought I would appreciate the fights more than any of his contemporaries in his company. We got dinner for free before the fights, which were across the street at the Sports Arena.
That night we saw a slew of Americans hammer their way to victory. The Soviet Bloc and Cuba boycotted, so nine of our 11 boxers won gold medals. The only two who didn’t win gold got jobbed. Evander Holyfield knocked a New Zealand boxer cold, and the ref disqualified him for allegedly hitting him after a stop order. Replays showed the ref was full of excrement. And Virgil Hill got jobbed out of a gold medal on a bogus decision call to let some Korean guy Virgil was punishing get the medal.
Dad and I also shot down a small instance of corporate greed.
One of the corporate execs had been pestering the phone company rep for freebies like Olympic pins all evening. Midway thru the fights, I thought Dad and I deserved ice creams, so I bought two. This prick saw Dad and me eating ice cream, so he demanded the phone company rep buy him ice cream.
Dad nudged me, which was his signal for me to unload on the ingrate if I felt so inclined. I did. I said loudly, “You’ve been badgering the rep all night, even after he got you dinner and drinks, and tickets to the best fights you’re ever going to see. Why don’t you buy your own ice cream, you ingrate?”
Dad laughed loudly. The ingrate was rendered speechless. The other corporate guys grinned or said nothing. After the fights were over, the phone company rep, who had been too nervous to enjoy the fights because of this guy, thanked Dad and me. He knew Dad well enough to know I wouldn’t have gone off on the ingrate if Dad hadn’t have okayed it.
And now for some quick football and baseball takes.
The Chicago Cubs became the Chicago Fire Sale about a week ago. They let go first baseman Mark Rizzo, third baseman Kris Bryant, shortstop Javier Baez, and top reliever Craig Kimbrel for some minor leaguers of average skills. They said they were going to trade these soon-to-be free agent stars away, and as a result, got less for them than if they had kept their cards closer to the vest. Reportedly, the Cubs didn’t offer competitive offers for their stars to re-up. How Cub-like of them.
But some of the detractors of the Cubs are also stupid or ignorant.
One such knucklehead, NBC Sports scribbler Gordon Wittenmyer, said the four were the core of the best team the Cubs ever had.
This of course is nonsense. The 1906 thru 1910 Cubs won four pennants and two World Series in that five-year span. Their pitching staff, led by Hall of Famer Mordecai (Three Finger) Brown, Notre Damer Ed Reulbach, and ag student turned gold miner Orval Overall, had ERAs in the low 2s. Their infield included Hall of Famers Frank Chance, Johnny Evers, and Joe Tinker. These three guys stole 1000 bases between them, played great defense, and were hard outs. Chance was a lifetime .300 hitter. Their catcher Johnny Kling was an above-average hitter and an unparalleled handler of pitchers. The year the Cubs lost the pennant (1909, to the Pirates) was the year the Cubs allowed Kling a season-long leave of absence to compete as a billiards pro.
Frank Chance, Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, Cub Hall of Famers. Frank Chance would die in his early 50s from the effects of all the times rival pitchers hit him in the head, God rest his soul.
Mordecai Brown aka Three Finger Brown. He lost his index finger in a farming accident as a boy, and lost part of his pinky finger and broke his other fingers later on. It didn’t stop him from winning more than 200 games, saving a slew of games, or having an ERA of below 2.00 as a Cub, the best National League ERA for a starting pitcher of any era.
From 1929 thru 1938, the Cubs won the pennant every three years (also in 1932 and 1935), or four times in 10 years. They lost all four World Series.
Even the Santo Gang, the underachieving Cubs teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s, had more players who are in the Hall of Fame than the 2016 World Series champs will have. They had Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, and Ferguson Jenkins. Banks hit .275 lifetime and hit more than 500 home runs. Santo hit .277 and almost 350 home runs as a Cub, and was a multiple Gold Glover at third. Billy Williams hit almost .300 and almost 400 home runs as a Cub. He also had one of the longest consecutive games played streak in baseball. Jenkins won close to 300 games, 60% of them as a Cub. He also completed almost half the games he started as a Cub. Cubs management traded away a very young Lou Brock, which left them for years with an unfilled hole in center field; Brock enjoyed three World Series with the Cardinals in that time frame.
Ernie Banks — Mister Cub
Baseball is a team game, not an individual game. The 2016 Cubs were a pleasant surprise to this long-time Cubs fan. They lost out in 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 when they reached the playoffs. At least they got their place in sports history for breaking the 108-year drought.
All time means all time, not the past few years. Cancel culture again, though probably inadvertent. Or maybe on purpose. Some woke sportsliars refuse to count the accomplishments of white players who played before the integration of the Big Leagues in 1947.
The second item is Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. He was pissed the Packers wouldn’t allow him to call the shots on personnel and bring in who in his eyes would be better talent. He threw his teammates under the bus. Rodgers in so many words said he wanted the input Tom Brady gets to have.
Rodgers conveniently forgets he has made much more money per year than Brady. Brady realizes he makes more in endorsements as a multiple Super Bowl winner than as a highly paid QB without the rings. So he took less money in exchange for allowing Patriots management the flexibility to get better players. This helped him win the extra Super Bowls. In short, Brady got the say because Brady acts like management, even to the extent of leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table so he could have a better supporting cast and go for the glory money can’t buy.
Think linemen don’t matter? Ask Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, who looked horrible when his patched-up offensive line couldn’t keep Tampa Bay’s defensive players from flooding into the backfield. The Bucs made Mahomes run for his life in the last Super Bowl.
Some are in Rodgers’ camp. Others call him a spoiled bitch. Still others, like my brother, don’t use gender-demeaning names. He just says Rodgers acted like a bedwetter.
We’ll close with the Cleveland Indians management, who decided to go PC on themselves and rename their franchise the “Guardians.”
This is a laugh because the politicians of Cleveland and nearby Summit County (Akron) protect sex offenders routinely.
This is a laugh also because there is a roller derby team with the name “Cleveland Guardians.” The baseball officials are about to get held up for naming rights.
A few years back, those who ran Cleveland’s minor league team in Akron were wary of using American Indian terms to describe the new club. So they decided to call the team the Akron Blast and wanted to have as the team mascot a cat named Kaboom.
Now the bad news. Judy Resnick, a female astronaut who was decapitated and dismembered in the Challenger explosion, was from Akron. The excrement hit the fan, blowing out the brooding geniuses who wanted to go with the Blast name.
The Blast and Guardian fiascos are what happen when you pander to leftists, who know little and think less. The original Cleveland American League franchise had the names Blues and Naps (after all-timer Napoleon Lajoie) before those who ran the show listened to smarter sportswriters and decided to name them the Indians in honor of Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine, who played at Notre Dame and was a star for the old National League’s Cleveland Spiders in the late 1800s. Sockalexis endured the same kind of racial taunting from fans that Jackie Robinson would endure a half-century later.
Most of the fans wanted management to call the team the Spiders, like the old team. The problem with this was that the Spiders were so bad they were contracted. Don’t associate with losers, Cleveland. You’ve done too much of that already.
One American Indian term – fire water – does fit Cleveland. Cleveland leaders had to send out their fire department to put out their river when it burst into flames in 1969. The Cuyahoga River had also burst into flames a number of times in the 1900s, so the 1969 blaze wasn’t a fluke.
The Indians could change their stupid-looking mascot into a tougher looking Native American and stay with the “Indians” name. The Atlanta Braves seem to escape most of the PC finger pointing, possibly because their mascot is more macho looking, Maybe this is also because for awhile Jane Fonda was giving sexual services to the team owner in exchange for the eventual divorce payday when he tired of her.
Jane Fonda did something for me no other woman could ever do. When the Braves made the World Series in the late 1990s, her evil and treasonable presence caused me (during the Series, at least) to become a Yankee fan.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
