‘Matter’ of fact …
THE TACIT promise that aging brings wisdom is starting to feel like a con, like a “facility fee” or Comcast, which owns a piece of the Mets’ SNY, dropping YES from 900,000 regional homes with the claim that no one watches the Yankees.
For the past week, we have been told Josh Brown, who needs no introduction as he departs, is evil. Go away, stay there.
Yet, in July, Jose Reyes, a pariah for the same wifeabusive reasons as Brown, was returned to the infielder-needy Mets — and to a standing ovation. Should auld acquaintance be forgot.
In May, when Aroldis Chapman, who likes to mess with guns, after having served his suspension for domestic violence returned to baseball. As a Yankee armed with a 102-mph arm, the excitement was in the affirmative.
The hideous selectivity of our outrages, indignations, blessings and indulgences carry no expiration dates.
To that end, does the continuing wave of NBA and NFL national anthem protestors take requests? If so, here’s two:
Trinity Gay, the 15-yearold daughter of U.S. Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay recently was shot dead — murdered — in the 4 a.m. crossfire between drive-by rivals in Lexington, Ky.
Four men — Lamonte Williams, 20, Chazerae Taylor, 38, D’Markeo Taylor, 19 (Chazerae’s son), and Dvonta Middlebrooks, 21 — have been charged.
Why wasn’t the publicity opportunity seized (exploited, if you choose) by NBA and NFL players to protest the murder of yet another black child, this one a famous fellow-athlete’s daughter, as one of the latest among thousands with thousands more to come?
Why is the Black Lives Matter movement, as adopted by professional athletes, so conspicuously selective as to ignore such daily and nightly, here, there and everywhere murders? Which black lives matter, how many, where and when? Who decides?
Why was no NBA and NFL players’ national anthem protest dedicated to Gabrielle Hill Carter? Gabby was 8 years old, about to enter the third grade, when she was shot dead — another “stray bullet” — in Camden, N.J. Tyhan Brown, 18, also of Camden, has been charged.
That made for no news outside the Camden area. But just a few days earlier, national news was made when a Camden high school football coach, Preston Brown, invited his kids to kneel during the national anthem.
Aren’t the murders of 8year-old Gabby and 15-yearold Trinity worthy of protest? Or are such murders too common to merit attention, let alone outrage?
It’s confounding. It makes the right-headed cynical, makes them doubt the motives and sincerities of the pregame national anthem protesters. Are they being conned by a we’ll-choosewho and we’ll-tell-youwhen movement?
The Knicks opened their season Wednesday in Cleveland, thus new Knicks center Joakim Noah renewed his childish agitation, trash-talking the Cavaliers and their fans. Obviously eager to both antagonize and demonstrate his classlessness, he even had to be told to cease shooting baskets and leave the court so the Cavs could conduct a pregame championship ring ceremony.
Odd, he’s the same, sensitive Joakim Noah — enjoying the hard-won, livescostly freedoms of a country that pays him $18 million a season to play basketball — who refused an invitation to join his team in dining with West Point cadets because he’s anti-war. Yeah, he doesn’t want young men entered into what he regards as senseless conflict.
Anyway, on Tuesday Josh Brown, good riddance, was fired. The next night, Aroldis Chapman pitched in the World Series.