Black Armband

People have been asking me (specifically at work, where all we talk about is sports) why I don't seem particularly "in" to the Penguins Stanley Cup run. I thought about this for a while, because I am a Penguin fan, but generally I don't pay much attention to hockey. Football is my sport, and I know that shit inside and out.

But I decided tonight, as I was watching the Penguins let the Stanley Cup slip through their grasp, that I can't emotionally get that involved. I physically can't. During football season, I have 16 separate aneurysms while most everyone else is "enjoying the football season." It's really a nightmare. I'm a wreck every Sunday, and it takes so much out of me that by the time the season is over, I'm usually relieved that I don't have to deal with that sort of emotional exhaustion for seven more months.

But with the Penguins making the playoffs, and the city of Pittsburgh basically turned into a town of puckhead maniacs, I had to watch. And when the Pens took the ice for game one of this thing, I noticed my left arm tingling and an acidic coppery taste filling my mouth. I bailed out. I couldn't do it. I was like a little kid watching his first scary movie, covering my face with my hands, only ever so carefully daring to peek through at calculated intervals.

So I'll confess. I haven't watched as much of this series as most true fans. But when the last seconds ticked by tonight, I had the same knot in my stomach as when David Garrard pulled off the most improbable quarterback sneak in the history of the Steelers on 4th and a mile at Heinz Field last year

If You Don't Like Hillary Clinton, You are a Sexist

Peggy Noonan basically crane-kicks Hillary Clinton right in the uterus in today's Wall Street Journal. She leads off with brief biographies of Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir, Prime Minister of India Indira Ghandi, and Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher. Then drops this:

You know where I'm going, for you know where she went. Hillary Clinton complained again this week that sexism has been a major dynamic in her unsuccessful bid for political dominance. She is quoted by the Washington Post's Lois Romano decrying the "sexist" treatment she received during the campaign, and the "incredible vitriol that has been engendered" by those who are "nothing but misogynists." The New York Times reported she told sympathetic bloggers in a conference call that she is saddened by the "mean-spiritedness and terrible insults" that have been thrown "at you, for supporting me, and at women in general."

I'm sympathetic to the plight of the woman. Really. But I also believe that the kind of talk Hillary is engaging in does nothing to help break down the barriers of sexism but rather reinforces them by making them seem like everything bad happening to her in this election can be blamed on her being a woman. Noonan speculates that this tactic isn't to garner votes, but to shift the lens through which history views her inevitable defeat. But I think that's absurd considering she's going to lose to A BLACK MAN. It's hard to play the prejudice card with people who were once considered less than half a person.

Americans today are much softer than pretty much any people from anyplace else at any time in history. The amount of grief Meir and Ghandi and Thatcher had to endure because they were women was monumental. But I doubt you could go back in the annals of history and dig up a transcript of any of them complaining to the media about the "mean-spirited, terrible insults" they were receiving. But these days that kind of crap makes you a folk hero. And anyone who tells Hillary to suck it up and deal with it is a sexist.

If she can't handle the shit she gets from American media, how is she going to deal with going to places like Iraq and Afghanistan? I just can't imagine someone going into a hostile area like that after groaning about sexist treatment in the media. She seems so fragile it scares the shit out of me.

American Airlines is Saving Most of us Lots of Money

I had at least 5 people complain to me today about the SFGate piece on American Airlines deciding to charge $15 for each passenger's first checked bag. And every single one of them thought I was an asshole for deciding that I like this policy. Because in the face of insanely high oil prices airlines have two choices: 1) They raise the price of all their flights to compensate for the loss, or 2) they charge the individuals who create more strain on the airplane in the form of checked bags extra money so they are forced to pay for the extra fuel needed to haul their suitcase full of whatever. Maybe it bothers me less because I only own like 4 shirts and one pair of jeans and never have to check a bag.