The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Bidding farewell to worst sport in history
Departing president proved himself to be a fake sportstman
The WWE Hall of Famer is the worst sport of all time. He gloats and preens when he wins. He insults the weak and the infirm. He is a horrible team player. He takes all the credit and none of the blame.
He cries when he loses. Man, does he cry when he loses. Someone on his team did a horrible job. Or, more likely, he was robbed. He didn’t really lose. He won — by a lot. The results were stolen from him.
He is everything a coach, a mentor and parent tell their sons and daughters not to be when they take the field. He is the anti-parent. He enjoys sports, enjoys them as much as his sport-loving predecessor. A record 14 of the 24 Medals of Freedom, the highest honor for a civilian, he awarded were to sports people. Yet the Commander In Sports (CIS) is a fake sportsman.
And that is why it was so satisfying to see the sports world, damaged in some cases by his words over four years, tell him to get lost as he heads into the final week of his job.
After the failed coup at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Patriots coach Bill Belichick told him to keep his Medal of Freedom. He would not be his publicity stunt.
The PGA of America told him that he can buy up golf courses on every continent, but he won’t be holding the 2022 PGA Championship at his beloved Bedminster. The Royal & Ancient
then told him that Turnberry will not host the British Open in the foreseeable future. That really hurt. He loves golf (and is known to cheat at it).
In the 2020 Super Bowl of elections, he didn’t lose on a last-minute interception by Malcolm Butler. It was more a 24-10 game. Still, he made it sound like this was exactly like the Patriots’ miraculous late comeback against Atlanta, only these cheating nonpatriots stole the game by stuffing ballot boxes overnight.
He had won by the same score in 2016 and called it a landslide. This time he called it a fraud. And here’s the worst part about the CIS as it involves human nature: If you and your sycophants predict it beforehand, repeat it over and over afterward, people begin to believe it.
And if you keep repeating it for months everywhere (or at least until Twitter cut his mike), millions of people can get brainwashed. Good grief, I’ll watch CNN one hour at night and think one way on a particular subject and then watch Fox the next hour and think another way.
Exploring different avenues of thought is a virtue. But these performances at night aren’t debates and the performers don’t even claim to be journalists. They are the Skip Bayless of the news world. They are professional manipulators and provocateurs. And some were awfully effective in spreading their idol’s lies.
So please sit down, MAGA hats. Calm yourself. We want to break this to you easy:
⏩ The winners in professional wrestling are predetermined. The athleticism is real. The results are fake.
⏩ Biden won fair and square. Is an election 100 percent perfect? No election that big is. Yet widespread cheating? Thousands of zombies coming out of their graves to vote? The big cities (dog whistle for cheating Blacks) changing ballots? Didn’t happen. Disproven at every level of elected government and in the courts.
Yet he kept crying he really won and ultimately implored his rabid fan base to converge on Washington. There, he fired up thousands. Rudy Giuliani, his fugazi consigliere (although he deserves an Oscar for his role in the
new Borat movie), called for “trial by combat.”
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on what happened next as people died, including a police officer, as cowards dressed as sports mascots invaded the sanctum of democracy and nearly made good on a promise to hang the orange man’s own vice president.
I’d call it seditious. I’d call it traitorous. Free elections and the peaceful transition of power are at the heart of our democracy. And if this guy is even allowed to run for dog catcher in the future, it will be an American tragedy.
If he owned an NFL team like he has dreamed and pulled all the stuff he did after a Super Bowl loss, he would have been fined $50 million, lost all his draft picks and been run out of the league.
Yet even after the siege on the Capitol, we still had a half-dozen seditious senators
like Tommy Tuberville of Alabama voting against certifying the electoral votes. The same former football coach who said after he was elected in November that the three branches of the federal government were the “House, Senate and executive” and we fought World War II “to free Europe of socialism.” The other day Tommy was pushing for the inauguration to be moved until “after we got this virus behind us a little bit.”
Only it’s in the Constitution, the 20th Amendment: Inauguration. Noon. Jan. 20.
Belichick was too smart to be used as a prop by a man that he even wrote a public letter of support for during the 2016 campaign. Belichick is too savvy to tie his reputation to the sinking SS Narcissism and accept anything from a man only a few days after rioters carrying Confederate flags invaded the Capitol.
Belichick’s locker room is 65-70 percent Black and Trump is a guy who urged owners to get any “SOB off the field” if they kneeled for the national anthem, and implied that maybe they should be run out of the country.
Some have gone so far as to call Belichick’s decision self-serving. I see it otherwise. He said that while the Medal of Honor would be flattering, he is above all an American citizen with reverence for freedom and democracy. He said one of the most rewarding things in his career took place in 2020 with team conversations about social justice, equality and human rights. Weighty matters that moved the NFL to donate $250 million for those causes. “Continuing those efforts while remaining true to the people, team and country I love,” Belichick said, “outweighs the benefits of any individual award.”
Medal-worthy words on the path to enlightenment.
And how good do all those noble women of the WNBA, who have led sports’ charge for social justice, feel after they helped to defeat Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia U.S. senate runoffs? This is the same robot-talking Atlanta Dream owner who skewered the Black Lives Matter movement in a letter to the WNBA. In the end, a Jew and an African American won in Georgia to tilt the balance of power in the Senate. Along with the win by the Biden and Kamala Harris ticket, former UConn All-American Renee Montgomery told Slate it was a “3-0 sweep.” Break out the broom. The calls, including one from Keith Olbermann, for stripping swimmer Klete Keller of his two Olympic gold medals are understandable. It’s not going to happen. The IOC has no interest. Yes, he is videotaped among the rioters
in the Capitol and could be found guilty of a number of felonies. Yet, citing Olympedia.org, Time pointed out 33 Olympic medalists have received prison sentences over the years. No medals were taken away. Some really bad stuff, too. Like James Snook, 1920 double gold medalist in shooting and an Ohio State professor, who was convicted of murdering his mistress in 1929. Severed her jugular vein. Beat her with a hammer. Kept his gold.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee did denounce Keller and the riots. Anybody who ever stepped in a pool should.
Which brings us to Curt Schilling. The Baseball Hall of Fame announcement will be Jan. 26. I made it clear in November that, despite his hateful words, despicable memes in the past, I had voted for him consistently. The character clause in the voting is non-specific. Some employ it. Some do not. I made it clear that I drew my line at seditious and traitorous acts and would wait until the postmark deadline of Dec. 31 to see if U.S. mail — accused of incompetence in the election — could deliver my vote on time.
I monitored Schilling over the next five weeks. Not one single thing rose to sedition, but the accumulation of his tweets and retweets constantly hammering at the integrity of the election, the typical nauseating stuff, and him suggesting Dr. Fauci was a Nazi, pushed me over the edge.
I didn’t vote for Schilling this time.
He convinced me I was correct when he tweeted Jan. 6 as the Capitol was under siege: “You cowards sat on your hands, did nothing while liberal trash looted rioted and burned for air Jordan’s and big screens. Sit back, stfu, and watch folks start a confrontation for (crap) that happens like rights, democracy and the end of govt corruption. #itshappening.”
We don’t need Curt Schilling inciting a riot at the 2021 Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.
What this country needs is room for a new president to work for us, the re-emergence of smart conservative thought to balance our democracy without the WWE Hall of Famer false idol. What we don’t need is the worst sport in history.