January 10, 2010

Tiger’s Not Alone … Sure, Mr. Woods was incredibly reckless chasing and bedding women all over the country, and he’s probably destroyed his family as a result. But, let’s deal with reality: his behavior, in comparison with other professional athletes, is not abnormal. I’d venture to say fidelity is the rare aberration. Rich, handsome, young, vigorous men with nothing to do meeting young, pretty and adventurous women in gaudy surroundings: those guys might as well have a bull’s-eye target on their backs. Spontaneous combustion is inevitable.

Jim Bouton, a pitcher for the Yankees and other clubs in the 1970s, describes in one of his books an incident that occurred at the end of a two-week road trip [He was with the Seattle Pilots at the time.]  As the team’s plane is being wheeled into an arrival gate at Sea-Tec, with wives and girl friends waiting inside the terminal, one of his teammates, catcher Jim Pagliaroni, stands up at the front of the cabin, and exclaims to all his teammates, “OK, guys, act horny.”  That comment cost the unfortunate Mr. Pagliaroni his marriage later, but he spoke the truth.

D.L. Hughley, the comedian, sums up Tiger’s escapades much more concisely, “Fourteen? Hell, that’s a bad week in the NBA.”

Big Al’s Not Happy… It’s inevitable: Al Sharpton will capitalize on any event, grand or petty, to gain some publicity and, let’s never forget, increase the cash flow to his quasi-political enterprises. And, sure enough, the Tiger Woods affair provided an opportunity. Mr. Gripes, though, was surprised at the tack Mr. Sharpton took: he criticized Mr. Woods for selecting only white women as lovers, and extolled the superiority of black women as mistresses. Mr. Sharpton may not realize it, but his comments are definitively racist.  Things sure have changed, though: seventy or 80 years ago, black men were lynched in the American South for merely looking at white women. Now, a black man is excoriated by another black man for copulating with only white women. Everything’s been turned upside-down. God, Mr. Gripes loves this insane, perplexing, moronic, wack-job country. It’s one huge three-ring circus.

Don’t despair long, Big Al. In a month or two, you’ll pick up the phone, and Mr. Woods will be on the other end: “Hi, Al. Yeah, it’s been rough, but at least the kids are adapting well in Sweden. Listen, Big Guy, can you do me a favor: You got Tyra Banks’ phone number?’ Yep, Tiger will come through for you.

Elvis’ 75^th… This past Friday, Elvis Presley turned 75. Mr. Gripes will never miss an opportunity to comment on the phenomenon of ‘The King.’ One of the appeals of Mr. Presley was his sly, smart sense of humor. It’s a side of Mr. Presley that every one of his fans adores.

Here’s a little vignette: Elvis, upon his return to America after a year or so of army duty in Germany, conducts a news conference in hot Memphis. The sweating writers, clad in short-sleeve white shirts and black ties, looking as old and wrinkled as bull crocodiles, are the perfect foil for the incredibly young, handsome and irrepressibly hip Elvis. One of these dinosaurs gets up and asks Elvis, “Is Rock n Roll dead?” Mr. Presley, a smirk slowing creasing across his face, says simply in that lovely Southern drawl of his, “Rock n roll might be dead, but something awfully good is gonna have to take its place.” Perfect. Elvis, we’ll be blowing out candles on your birthday cake 1,000 years from now.

NYC, the Apocalypse …Here’s a fact that nearly knocked Mr. Gripes off his computer chair when he saw it: New York, its acreage 1/350^th the size of the United States, has on its payroll a workforce equal to one-seventh the size of the entire Federal workforce.  That’s unfathomable. Readers, consider the mandated-pension tsunami coming: baby-boomers have just begun to retire, and there’ll be a crush of retirees from now on. As Mr. Gripes explained to a friend the other day, this rusting relic of a ship is beginning to take on a lot water even now; sure, it might take 10, 15, 20 years, but New York City is going belly-up. Mr. Gripes peers in through the front windows of those shimmering restaurants where you can get spaghetti-and-meatballs for only $75 a pop, and observes that no one cares. The good times will roll on forever, just like in the Weimar Republic.

A Scary Prospect…President Obama commits another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and billions more in aid to create a national security force, to improve living conditions for Afghan citizens, to build schools, blah, blah, blah. We old-timers have heard this song as far back as when Lyndon Johnson lied to us about Vietnam’s golden prospects 40 years ago.  Come on:  all those billions will disappear in a miasma of corruption and larceny, as America will be played for a dumb fool once more. Let’s face it, and I’m certain Mr. Obama knows this: a country with a bloody tribal history of 4,000 years simply doesn’t change in 10 years. Cohesive security force? That’s just not going to happen ever. It’s all a fairy tale.

This time, though, the generals and Mr. Obama are not duped: they simply do not want to scare Americans half to death. Let’s be frank: their grandiose plans are only a plausible cover for the real reason America cannot abandon Afghanistan. After all, Afghanistan, geopolitically, should mean no more to us than some distant state like Tajikistan. There’s just one reason we stay in that desolate, ruined country: its neighbor, Pakistan. Pakistan is now a volatile, tottering country on the verge of chaos and break-up. And – this is key – Pakistan possesses a large nuclear arsenal. The military theatre scenario that scares the hell of Mssrs. Petraeus and Obama is not that difficult to discern.

Let’s connect the dots:  For the Pashtun nation, there are no borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan; their loyalties to a man are to the Pashtun tribe that stretches across northern Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan, abetted by Al Qaeda, are attempting to destabilize and terrorize the Pashtuns up in the north. Let’s suppose they’re successful, driving out governmental forces and creating a terror state; the chaos then inexorably moves across to the Pashtun area in Pakistan, northern Pakistan is destabilized, and the Taliban take over there, too. Abetted by Al Qaeda, the Taliban intensify the struggle across all of Pakistan as the corrupt Pakistan military and national government are not up to the task. Then the nightmare: The Taliban, with Al Qaeda lurking, topple the central Pakistan government.  And, guess who now gets their hands on the country’s nuclear arsenal? The specter of that horror is why we fight the fight now in Afghanistan.

That possibility alone keeps President Obama up at night.

www.mistergripes.com

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