Perhaps this should be the last time. --Al Michaels
How
far have we forwarded from the days when George Will could praise the late Hank
Aaron's athleticism on the diamond with appreciative poise? Fairly far, if
Antonio Brown’s antics on the field against the Jets this evening was any
indication, and no, I am not present at the curtain call to compete with
swaggering dicks on field stats. Wouldn’t dream of it, but as per my link to Jason
Owen's synopsis article for Yahoo Sports, I am indeed here to stir the pot
with my own ladle toward a real time future pitch, attempting to get back in
the saddle in my fifty-ninth year of humiliating and now sometimes painful jeopardy.
One thing you will never read my complaining about is an editor dropping me
because incontinence prevented me from meeting a deadline, and I have lost
opportunities with periodicals to which I am reluctant to return because my
topics fell apart, without regard to what form of colitis plagues my colon,
even if it isn’t colitis as opposed to other forms of inflammation. Arains was
within his rights to release Brown immediately, nothing illegal about it. Brown
had a fiduciary obligation to the contract he signed, just like every other league
player of privilege who pay their dues, and that’s the point. Being in the league
because one is a great wide receiver or quarter back is a privilege, not a
right, especially when men like Gleason of the Saints has sacrificed, and any
inequities that existed in the 1950’s have been corrected, even over-corrected.
Brady, and those who worship said demi-god want to draw out the violins and
look for a suitable bipolar inhibitor? There is more to Brown’s melodrama than
that, and it has a fairly lengthy tradition in Black American culture, an
exaggerated servility designed to distract observers. Nothing is perfect, and
for every Junior
Seau and other instances of dark domestic violence some managers have to
contain, there are the Donovan McNabbs and Dak Prescotts who become household
names, and Dak is all grace under fire with his own emotional skeletons.
Whatever else our pandemic cultural shifts contains, there is an element of
insouciant superfluidity about it, like Lil
Nas X Old Town Road video embedded in sarcasm and the female street dancer’s
nearly automated gestures of defiance in a song which is nothing more than
studio broadcast sugar for those who’ve lost moral centers to bling. This is
one disabled woman aging out, on the precarious slope of vanishing, who’s had
enough. I loathe the NFL, but Antonio’s rip cord isn’t a corrective measure in
which to create a better league. He deserves social ostracization, considering
how many millions of people simply cannot take his place on the field.
