I guess 35 years is long enough for history to repeat itself.
The war in Iraq does feel like another Vietnam.
The indictment in Washington does feel like another Watergate.
Richard M. Nixon was simply George W. Bush with a brain.
Not that it did him any good. Nixon still turned away from the truth, when turning toward it would have saved him all that grief. But to hell with his grief. It was the country’s grief that mattered.
Just as it does now. To hell with George W. Bush’s discomfort with this indictment of his vice-president’s chief of staff, and the continuing suspicion hovering over Karl Rove. To hell with all the old catch-phrases emerging again in the media: “It’s the cover-up, not the crime.” “What does he know, and when did he know it?” There’s a nation out here, and it is the nation that matters
After two years of grief, the media finally forced out the “smoking gun” and Nixon became the first President of the United States to resign from office. He did so, he told us on television, not because he lied to us, but because he had lost his political base in Congress.
George W. Bush is losing his political base so fast that you could argue he’s finally found something he’s good at. After the election he was talking about all the political capital that he had, but that stock has crashed. Katrina, Brownie, Harriet. In this space a month ago I wrote: “I seriously think if anyone is worried about Bush these days, it is the group that has placed its agenda in his hands. I know I don’t feel good about a president who demonstrably cannot tell “a heck of a job” from a cheese enchilada, and I am not even counting on him for anything. The neocons are counting on him for everything.”
This president was already going to have trouble getting anything done in the last three years of his term. Now we have this indictment, that feels like Watergate and is sure to turn into Valeriegate, that could drag on for months or years. Interesting, the role the media has in Valeriegate. In Watergate, it was Woodward and Bernstein, indirectly directed by Deep Throat, who starred in the long search for the smoking gun. Now it is Russert, Miller and Cooper, who may not be the key reporters, but the key witnesses, in the Valeriegate investigation. This scares hell out of the journalism community, which is sworn to protect sources, not testify against them. But the source, Scooter Libby, waived the protection privilege and so they testified. Such is my own paranoia about the Bush White House that I wonder if Libby’s waiver wasn’t another brilliant Karl Rove move to rope-a-dope the media into a brand new kind of trouble.
But the hell with that. There’s a nation out here that needs serving. There’s another similarity at work: the Constitution. It was there before, during and after Watergate, and it is there now, and in the end the Constitution will work, and the system of law will prevail.
We don’t yet know what Bush knew, or when he knew it, in Valeriegate, or even if it was a crime to know it. But then, as we all remember so well, it isn’t the crime, it’s the cover-up. How ironic, and tailored to his intelligence, would it be if George W. Bush had to resign his office for covering up a crime that didn’t happen? Bush says he’s a fighter, not a quitter. Nixon used the same words in his resignation speech. It’s an eerily familiar speech to read, right now. You can read it below, in its entirety, if you like. If you do, plug in “Bush” whenever you think “Nixon,” and see how amazingly the events of October, 2005, feel like something that has happened before.
The speech, delivered on national television, Aug. 8, 1974:
“Good evening.
“This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation. Each time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest.
“In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me.
“In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.
“But with the disappearance of that base, I now believe that the constitutional purpose has been served, and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged.
“I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations.
From the discussions I have had with Congressional and other leaders, I have concluded that because of the Watergate matter I might not have the support of the Congress that I would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way the interests of the Nation would require.
“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad.
“To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.
“Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.
“As I recall the high hopes for America with which we began this second term, I feel a great sadness that I will not be here in this office working on your behalf to achieve those hopes in the next 21/2 years. But in turning over direction of the Government to Vice President Ford, I know, as I told the Nation when I nominated him for that office 10 months ago, that the leadership of America will be in good hands.
“In passing this office to the Vice President, I also do so with the profound sense of the weight of responsibility that will fall on his shoulders tomorrow and, therefore, of the understanding, the patience, the cooperation he will need from all Americans.
“As he assumes that responsibility, he will deserve the help and the support of all of us. As we look to the future, the first essential is to begin healing the wounds of this Nation, to put the bitterness and divisions of the recent past behind us, and to rediscover those shared ideals that lie at the heart of our strength and unity as a great and as a free people.
“By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.
“I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my Judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation.
“To those who have stood with me during these past difficult months, to my family, my friends, to many others who joined in supporting my cause because they believed it was right, I will be eternally grateful for your support.
“And to those who have not felt able to give me your support, let me say I leave with no bitterness toward those who have opposed me, because all of us, in the final analysis, have been concerned with the good of the country, however our judgments might differ.
“So, let us all now join together in affirming that common commitment and in helping our new President succeed for the benefit of all Americans.
I shall leave this office with regret at not completing my term, but with gratitude for the privilege of serving as your President for the past 51/2 years. These years have been a momentous time in the history of our Nation and the world. They have been a time of achievement in which we can all be proud, achievements that represent the shared efforts of the Administration, the Congress, and the people.
“But the challenges ahead are equally great, and they, too, will require the support and the efforts of the Congress and the people working in cooperation with the new Administration.
“We have ended America's longest war, but in the work of securing a lasting peace in the world, the goals ahead are even more far-reaching and more difficult. We must complete a structure of peace so that it will be said of this generation, our generation of Americans, by the people of all nations, not only that we ended one war but that we prevented future wars.
“We have unlocked the doors that for a quarter of a century stood between the United States and the People's Republic of China.
“We must now ensure that the one quarter of the world's people who live in the People's Republic of China will be and remain not our enemies but our friends.
In the Middle East, 100 million people in the Arab countries, many of whom have considered us their enemy for nearly 20 years, now look on us as their friends. We must continue to build on that friendship so that peace can settle at last over the Middle East and so that the cradle of civilization will not become its grave.
Together with the Soviet Union we have made the crucial breakthroughs that have begun the process of limiting nuclear arms. But we must set as our goal not just limiting but reducing and finally destroying these terrible weapons so that they cannot destroy civilization and so that the threat of nuclear war will no longer hang over the world and the people.
“We have opened the new relation with the Soviet Union. We must continue to develop and expand that new relationship so that the two strongest nations of the world will live together in cooperation rather than confrontation.
“Around the world, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, there are millions of people who live in terrible poverty, even starvation. We must keep as our goal turning away from production for war and expanding production for peace so that people everywhere on this earth can at last look forward in their children's time, if not in our own time, to having the necessities for a decent life.
Here in America, we are fortunate that most of our people have not only the blessings of liberty but also the means to live full and good and, by the world's standards, even abundant lives. We must press on, however, toward a goal of not only more and better jobs but of full opportunity for every American and of what we are striving so hard right now to achieve, prosperity without inflation.
For more than a quarter of a century in public life I have shared in the turbulent history of this era. I have fought for what I believed in. I have tried to the best of my ability to discharge those duties and meet those responsibilities that were entrusted to me.
“Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."
“I pledge to you tonight that as long as I have a breath of life in my body, I shall continue in that spirit. I shall continue to work for the great causes to which I have been dedicated throughout my years as a Congressman, a Senator, a Vice President, and President, the cause of peace not just for America but among all nations, prosperity, justice, and opportunity for all of our people.
“There is one cause above all to which I have been devoted and to which I shall always be devoted for as long as I live.
“When I first took the oath of office as President 51/2 years ago, I made this sacred commitment, to "consecrate my office, my energies, and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations."
“I have done my very best in all the days since to be true to that pledge. As a result of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place today, not only for the people of America but for the people of all nations, and that all of our children have a better chance than before of living in peace rather than dying in war.
“This, more than anything, is what I hoped to achieve when I sought the Presidency. This, more than anything, is what I hope will be my legacy to you, to our country, as I leave the Presidency.
“To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal sense of kinship with each and every American. In leaving it, I do so with this prayer: May God's grace be with you in all the days ahead.”
October 29, 2005
October 24, 2005
40th reunion
I wasn’t sure I would go to my 40th college reunion. But I did, with my bride-to-be, and this morning I pulled on my new red Stanford sweats and went outside to drink coffee on the glider and think about the weekend.
Stanford University, Class of 1965. We had a good turnout, at least 300 (felt more like 500) alumni and spouses and in some cases kids, at the main party Friday night at the Sheraton across El Camino Real from the campus.
They call Stanford “The Farm,” because it was built on a farm – a very large farm – owned by Leland and Jane Stanford. The university was founded in 1891. It was beginning its 70th year when I and my ’65 classmates matriculated in 1961. Today, the university has passed more than a third of its existence since we left. Over the weekend, we meandered in the Quad among familiar stone buildings that had acquired not just the wear of middle age, but the splotchy patina of history, that you would expect to see on the porticos of Florence and Madrid. It placed in me a sense of awe, and respect, that had not been there before.
We munched and moseyed at the party with our own splotchy patinas, looking for a few old friends in a throng of old strangers, 99 percent of us connected in life by only one bond, names on a class list, not enough to allow us to remember each other.
But I didn’t go to see them. I went to see and be with classmates I did remember, brothers in the Class of ’65 who lived together in the old Delta Upsilon House on Salvatierra Street. There were 14 of us there. Dick, Joe, Paul, Sandy, Steve, Mike, Tom, Rich, Ted, Terry, Bill, Dirk, Brooke and me. We came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Texas, Washington, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Piedmont, and San Diego. During the weekend, we candidly reviewed our collective academic performance. Only one of us, Joe, graduated with any honors, something called “distinction,” he said, and he only did that because, he said frankly, “I gamed the system.”
My Stanford performance was the essence of marginal. The university has always striven to maintain a diverse population, and I have long suspected that was why I was admitted. To balance the brilliance, they needed a white male freshman from a lower middle-class family who attended Texas public schools. When I go back to Stanford, I have to hide my eyes from the things I missed as a student there. I go only to celebrate the experience of simply being there, which was still a true difference in my life.
We are now all professionals, a lot of lawyers, two doctors. Rich is a neurosurgeon at the University of Connecticut medical complex. I had not seen him in 40 years and probably didn’t talk to him more than 20 minutes total – he could only be at the Friday night function – but it was worth the trip.
There were a lot of old stories waiting to be told again, which is why I almost decided not to go. I didn’t want to hear the old stories of the hell raised in those days and nights of the early 1960s. They belonged to a place in my head that I have worked hard to get away from in the last 15 years, and I like 2005 so much, it didn’t make sense to go back to act out the drunken frat-boy indifference of 40 years ago.
Eventually it was curiosity – and something else – that made me decide to go. In the pre-reunion email chatter there was a lot of talk about the old stories and roaring thirsts and a special Saturday afternoon retreat at Zott’s, still there with the same plank tables and pitchers of beer from 40 years ago. But I wondered if the others might also, at this 40th reunion, have felt a shift forward, a preference for our seasoned 62-year-old selves in 2005, over the gifted under-achievers of 1963.
Then Saturday morning I was showing Karen the Quad, and we walked across it toward Memorial Church, and as we reached the arcade and the steps up to the doors, Sandy and his wife Anne walked out. On Sandy’s face was a look that could be interpreted as awe, gratitude, surprise. It was a look that belonged not to the old stories, but to a new story about interacting with an old place and, in Eliot’s lines about the end of our exploring, “to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”
There were others of us, exploring. Across a distance we would spot them, the brothers, strolling the Quad as we were, looking this way and that, most of us eventually winding up at the Bookstore and joining long lines (the old grads got 10 percent off) to pay for sweats and t-shirts, many of them in small sizes for grandchildren.
Some of the brothers did make it to Zott’s Saturday afternoon. But I was both exploring an old place and celebrating a new one. I loved introducing Karen to the brothers and their wives, and they were happy to hear about our marriage coming in December. We thought about going to Zott’s, but we needed more to make our first trip to San Francisco together, in the new lives that we have. We drove up for lunch, and it was perfect. Driving back down, it was after 4 and we didn’t try for Zott’s. But that night, at our own special reunion party, I was talking to Brooke, who is the new president of the Washington state bar association, and he told me simply that it was “Perfect.”
There is a mood about “Perfect” that implies summation, something not to be improved on, and I was happy it was the word that a man like Brooke would use about the afternoon at Zott’s. I think the word might also be the best one to summarize the weekend. A college homecoming is not like a high school homecoming. In high school, it was the community that united you. In college, you must create your own family. I believe the people in families are like threads bundled together at the starting place, then each thread following its own direction, the threads spreading far apart, in all manner of directions, each picking up its own colors, then at the times they return to the bundle, sharing their colors with the others. When we were bundled again this weekend, as different as we were, I saw that each of the brothers had given me some of their colors. And I have given them some of mine. The ”something else” that made me go was wondering if I belonged. I found that I do.
Stanford University, Class of 1965. We had a good turnout, at least 300 (felt more like 500) alumni and spouses and in some cases kids, at the main party Friday night at the Sheraton across El Camino Real from the campus.
They call Stanford “The Farm,” because it was built on a farm – a very large farm – owned by Leland and Jane Stanford. The university was founded in 1891. It was beginning its 70th year when I and my ’65 classmates matriculated in 1961. Today, the university has passed more than a third of its existence since we left. Over the weekend, we meandered in the Quad among familiar stone buildings that had acquired not just the wear of middle age, but the splotchy patina of history, that you would expect to see on the porticos of Florence and Madrid. It placed in me a sense of awe, and respect, that had not been there before.
We munched and moseyed at the party with our own splotchy patinas, looking for a few old friends in a throng of old strangers, 99 percent of us connected in life by only one bond, names on a class list, not enough to allow us to remember each other.
But I didn’t go to see them. I went to see and be with classmates I did remember, brothers in the Class of ’65 who lived together in the old Delta Upsilon House on Salvatierra Street. There were 14 of us there. Dick, Joe, Paul, Sandy, Steve, Mike, Tom, Rich, Ted, Terry, Bill, Dirk, Brooke and me. We came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Texas, Washington, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Piedmont, and San Diego. During the weekend, we candidly reviewed our collective academic performance. Only one of us, Joe, graduated with any honors, something called “distinction,” he said, and he only did that because, he said frankly, “I gamed the system.”
My Stanford performance was the essence of marginal. The university has always striven to maintain a diverse population, and I have long suspected that was why I was admitted. To balance the brilliance, they needed a white male freshman from a lower middle-class family who attended Texas public schools. When I go back to Stanford, I have to hide my eyes from the things I missed as a student there. I go only to celebrate the experience of simply being there, which was still a true difference in my life.
We are now all professionals, a lot of lawyers, two doctors. Rich is a neurosurgeon at the University of Connecticut medical complex. I had not seen him in 40 years and probably didn’t talk to him more than 20 minutes total – he could only be at the Friday night function – but it was worth the trip.
There were a lot of old stories waiting to be told again, which is why I almost decided not to go. I didn’t want to hear the old stories of the hell raised in those days and nights of the early 1960s. They belonged to a place in my head that I have worked hard to get away from in the last 15 years, and I like 2005 so much, it didn’t make sense to go back to act out the drunken frat-boy indifference of 40 years ago.
Eventually it was curiosity – and something else – that made me decide to go. In the pre-reunion email chatter there was a lot of talk about the old stories and roaring thirsts and a special Saturday afternoon retreat at Zott’s, still there with the same plank tables and pitchers of beer from 40 years ago. But I wondered if the others might also, at this 40th reunion, have felt a shift forward, a preference for our seasoned 62-year-old selves in 2005, over the gifted under-achievers of 1963.
Then Saturday morning I was showing Karen the Quad, and we walked across it toward Memorial Church, and as we reached the arcade and the steps up to the doors, Sandy and his wife Anne walked out. On Sandy’s face was a look that could be interpreted as awe, gratitude, surprise. It was a look that belonged not to the old stories, but to a new story about interacting with an old place and, in Eliot’s lines about the end of our exploring, “to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”
There were others of us, exploring. Across a distance we would spot them, the brothers, strolling the Quad as we were, looking this way and that, most of us eventually winding up at the Bookstore and joining long lines (the old grads got 10 percent off) to pay for sweats and t-shirts, many of them in small sizes for grandchildren.
Some of the brothers did make it to Zott’s Saturday afternoon. But I was both exploring an old place and celebrating a new one. I loved introducing Karen to the brothers and their wives, and they were happy to hear about our marriage coming in December. We thought about going to Zott’s, but we needed more to make our first trip to San Francisco together, in the new lives that we have. We drove up for lunch, and it was perfect. Driving back down, it was after 4 and we didn’t try for Zott’s. But that night, at our own special reunion party, I was talking to Brooke, who is the new president of the Washington state bar association, and he told me simply that it was “Perfect.”
There is a mood about “Perfect” that implies summation, something not to be improved on, and I was happy it was the word that a man like Brooke would use about the afternoon at Zott’s. I think the word might also be the best one to summarize the weekend. A college homecoming is not like a high school homecoming. In high school, it was the community that united you. In college, you must create your own family. I believe the people in families are like threads bundled together at the starting place, then each thread following its own direction, the threads spreading far apart, in all manner of directions, each picking up its own colors, then at the times they return to the bundle, sharing their colors with the others. When we were bundled again this weekend, as different as we were, I saw that each of the brothers had given me some of their colors. And I have given them some of mine. The ”something else” that made me go was wondering if I belonged. I found that I do.
October 19, 2005
At 5:28: Astros terrorize television
Starting time, according to the morning paper, of Houston vs. St. Louis, Game 5, was 5:28 p.m.
I announced this to my bride-to-be: “Houston, St. Louis, 5:28.”
“Five twenty-eight what?” she said
“P.M.,” I said.
“Not 5:30?” she said.
I brandished the paper. “Five twenty-eight, is what it says.”
She didn’t respond, telling me loud and clear how silly it was to announce the starting time of a game as 5:28. It’s just the television business at work, reminding us who is boss with a flip reminder to all us great unwashed of how big this game really is. It is not a 5:30 game. It is a 5:28 game.
I have liked the St. Louis Cardinals since Stan Musial was there, but I hope Houston wins and goes to the World Series. The television people are already gnashing their teeth that the idiot Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim put the New York Yankees out of the playoffs and World Series, eliminating all those eyeballs in the nation’s No. 1 television market.
Yet it would be a good test of this Angels marketing experiment of tying themselves to Los Angeles, the No. 2 market, instead of some backwater orange factory like Anaheim. But that good chance at new information got blown to hell by the Chicago White Sox.
The Chicago White Sox! In the World Series! That cost the network probably $100 grand a minute in advertising rates. The only team worth television’s time in Chicago is the Cubbies, who have more fans in most major league towns than the home team. The White Sox? Please. What’s on the movie channels? Turn on “The Daily Show.”
When Albert Pujols hit the home run to send the National League series back to St. Louis, the television people jumped out of their seats. The end of the world – the Houston Astros vs. the Chicago White Sox in the World Series was one out away. The Cards, with at least a shred of national name I.D., lived to breathe another day.
I like games at this level, where the loser goes home, whoever the teams involved might be. That’s how I market this game to my beloved, whose preferences in televised sports are narrow. Tennis, and, if Tiger Woods is playing, golf. But it was Houston-St. Louis, so I didn’t market that hard, which is why we didn’t see the Pujols home run.
It is reasoning like that among the great unwashed which drives the television people crazy. It must have been a dramatic moment of Kirk Gibson quality, but we missed it because if was Houston-St. Louis. Dramatic moments matter to television only when it’s New York vs. Los Angeles.
Of course if New York and Los Angeles were in the World Series, five of the games would start at 5:28 on the West Coast, 8:38 Eastern, and those New York fans would still be watching commercials after midnight. With Houston vs. the White Sox, they can start it any special time they please, 5:28 p.m., or 1:23 a.m., and about the same number of people will watch. They know that, and I love it that they do.
I announced this to my bride-to-be: “Houston, St. Louis, 5:28.”
“Five twenty-eight what?” she said
“P.M.,” I said.
“Not 5:30?” she said.
I brandished the paper. “Five twenty-eight, is what it says.”
She didn’t respond, telling me loud and clear how silly it was to announce the starting time of a game as 5:28. It’s just the television business at work, reminding us who is boss with a flip reminder to all us great unwashed of how big this game really is. It is not a 5:30 game. It is a 5:28 game.
I have liked the St. Louis Cardinals since Stan Musial was there, but I hope Houston wins and goes to the World Series. The television people are already gnashing their teeth that the idiot Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim put the New York Yankees out of the playoffs and World Series, eliminating all those eyeballs in the nation’s No. 1 television market.
Yet it would be a good test of this Angels marketing experiment of tying themselves to Los Angeles, the No. 2 market, instead of some backwater orange factory like Anaheim. But that good chance at new information got blown to hell by the Chicago White Sox.
The Chicago White Sox! In the World Series! That cost the network probably $100 grand a minute in advertising rates. The only team worth television’s time in Chicago is the Cubbies, who have more fans in most major league towns than the home team. The White Sox? Please. What’s on the movie channels? Turn on “The Daily Show.”
When Albert Pujols hit the home run to send the National League series back to St. Louis, the television people jumped out of their seats. The end of the world – the Houston Astros vs. the Chicago White Sox in the World Series was one out away. The Cards, with at least a shred of national name I.D., lived to breathe another day.
I like games at this level, where the loser goes home, whoever the teams involved might be. That’s how I market this game to my beloved, whose preferences in televised sports are narrow. Tennis, and, if Tiger Woods is playing, golf. But it was Houston-St. Louis, so I didn’t market that hard, which is why we didn’t see the Pujols home run.
It is reasoning like that among the great unwashed which drives the television people crazy. It must have been a dramatic moment of Kirk Gibson quality, but we missed it because if was Houston-St. Louis. Dramatic moments matter to television only when it’s New York vs. Los Angeles.
Of course if New York and Los Angeles were in the World Series, five of the games would start at 5:28 on the West Coast, 8:38 Eastern, and those New York fans would still be watching commercials after midnight. With Houston vs. the White Sox, they can start it any special time they please, 5:28 p.m., or 1:23 a.m., and about the same number of people will watch. They know that, and I love it that they do.
October 12, 2005
A woman to love me
In March of 2002, I underwent surgery for removal of my cancerous prostate. The cancer was very small (PSA of 4.3) and the surgery was successful.
The surgery was “nerve-sparing,” meaning the surgeon was able to take the prostate without damage to the nerve bundles that enable erection.
But for several months after the surgery, I had no sexual function at all, partly as a reality of recovering from surgery, and partly because the nerves, though intact, were aggravated during the process, and aggravated nerves take time to recover. For several weeks during that period, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, I was also incontinent. I was going through a big bag of Kotex pads every week and four incontinence bed pads every night.
I thought: “No woman is ever going to want to have anything to do with me.” I was 59 years old, alone, after my wife’s death from breast cancer in 2000 – what interesting years those were – I couldn’t get it up, I wet the bed all night, and I never knew during the day when I was going to spring a leak. Nope, I was going to go through the rest of my life alone, leaving a little trail, like a snail.
But I was wrong, and it is important that men coming out of prostate surgery know this. Many men – most of us, probably – go through life believing that women want the same things from sex that we do. But they don’t. Guys, we admire our equipment a lot more than they do, even when we are healthy, virile stallions of 35 or 40. Sex for most women does not begin and end with adoration of a man’s crotch.
Nor can situations like impotence and incontinence get in the way of a woman’s love for you, if she loves you. I knew good friends, a married couple, and more than once, as I saw them socially, they told me the real score. He is a year older than I am, a colon cancer survivor, surgery more than 30 years ago that left him with a colostomy. Radiation at that time created scar tissue that in the last five years has confounded his life and threatened his health in ways that truly should not happen to a human being.
He has tubes coming out of him indefinitely, but he has his strength back, and his life is full. He and his wife, one of the most beautiful, vibrant and professional women I ever knew, invited me more than once to dinner in those Christmas season days of 2002 and sat at their table and told me how much they loved each other, and she told me how she loved him, and how much a woman could find to love in a man like me. They told me how much I, as a man, had to look forward to when I met the woman who would love me.
In January, 2003, I began regular procedures called cystoscopies that gave me my continence back. Slowly my spared nerves regained enough tingle to convince me to get a prescription for Viagra. I picked up that first prescription of eight pills, and the pharmacist said, “That will be $38.” Thirty-eight dollars! I pulled out my credit card, gave it to her, and silently laughed at the circumstances of a man, leaning against the counter, who still had Kotex in his glovebox just in case and for the rest of his life would be paying more than four dollars to get a hard-on.
In September, 2004, I met the woman who would love me. She is 54, smart as a whip, and beautiful. We are engaged to be married Dec. 3. We are living in sin in the meantime and having more fun than should be legal. She has women friends who tell her about men friends who have had prostate surgery and walk around looking so confused and sad. I remember that sadness, and what caused it, and I was wrong. It’s the man a woman loves, not his equipment, and with that, the two of you will always go all the way.
(This blog will be archived in the Back Booth under "Her Cancer and Mine.")
The surgery was “nerve-sparing,” meaning the surgeon was able to take the prostate without damage to the nerve bundles that enable erection.
But for several months after the surgery, I had no sexual function at all, partly as a reality of recovering from surgery, and partly because the nerves, though intact, were aggravated during the process, and aggravated nerves take time to recover. For several weeks during that period, between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, I was also incontinent. I was going through a big bag of Kotex pads every week and four incontinence bed pads every night.
I thought: “No woman is ever going to want to have anything to do with me.” I was 59 years old, alone, after my wife’s death from breast cancer in 2000 – what interesting years those were – I couldn’t get it up, I wet the bed all night, and I never knew during the day when I was going to spring a leak. Nope, I was going to go through the rest of my life alone, leaving a little trail, like a snail.
But I was wrong, and it is important that men coming out of prostate surgery know this. Many men – most of us, probably – go through life believing that women want the same things from sex that we do. But they don’t. Guys, we admire our equipment a lot more than they do, even when we are healthy, virile stallions of 35 or 40. Sex for most women does not begin and end with adoration of a man’s crotch.
Nor can situations like impotence and incontinence get in the way of a woman’s love for you, if she loves you. I knew good friends, a married couple, and more than once, as I saw them socially, they told me the real score. He is a year older than I am, a colon cancer survivor, surgery more than 30 years ago that left him with a colostomy. Radiation at that time created scar tissue that in the last five years has confounded his life and threatened his health in ways that truly should not happen to a human being.
He has tubes coming out of him indefinitely, but he has his strength back, and his life is full. He and his wife, one of the most beautiful, vibrant and professional women I ever knew, invited me more than once to dinner in those Christmas season days of 2002 and sat at their table and told me how much they loved each other, and she told me how she loved him, and how much a woman could find to love in a man like me. They told me how much I, as a man, had to look forward to when I met the woman who would love me.
In January, 2003, I began regular procedures called cystoscopies that gave me my continence back. Slowly my spared nerves regained enough tingle to convince me to get a prescription for Viagra. I picked up that first prescription of eight pills, and the pharmacist said, “That will be $38.” Thirty-eight dollars! I pulled out my credit card, gave it to her, and silently laughed at the circumstances of a man, leaning against the counter, who still had Kotex in his glovebox just in case and for the rest of his life would be paying more than four dollars to get a hard-on.
In September, 2004, I met the woman who would love me. She is 54, smart as a whip, and beautiful. We are engaged to be married Dec. 3. We are living in sin in the meantime and having more fun than should be legal. She has women friends who tell her about men friends who have had prostate surgery and walk around looking so confused and sad. I remember that sadness, and what caused it, and I was wrong. It’s the man a woman loves, not his equipment, and with that, the two of you will always go all the way.
(This blog will be archived in the Back Booth under "Her Cancer and Mine.")
An urge for Barbecue Chili
A coolish, gloomy, damp weekend is forecast – our first of the fall – and I am getting the urge to make Barbecue Chili.
Texans always get the urge to make chili when the weather turns cool, but barbecue is so much in our blood too, that it can be difficult to decide. One autumn – 1979, it was – I decided to see if the two could be combined.
They could, and I have been bragging about it ever since. I have been promising Karen for months that I would cook up a batch, but it was always too summery. This Sunday, I think, will be just right.
If you look for the recipe later on, you will find it in the “Cookbook” at the Back Booth.
You need three pounds of boneless chuck roast, and three pounds of boneless pork shoulder, on the lean side but with some fat, too. (There is a lot of dicing involved, and the boneless cuts make it much easier. If you want to be John Wayne and get bone-in roasts – they’re cheaper and have a little more flavor – go ahead.)
I use a 22-inch Weber kettle to barbecue. Pushed to one side of the fire grate, make a fire of about 30 charcoal briquets – the mesquite kind – and toss on two or three chunks of actual mesquite charcoal. Line a 10 by 13 aluminum cake pan with foil (makes cleanup a lot easier) and place it on the fire grate opposite the fire. Put the grill in place.
Salt and pepper the roasts and place on the grill over the drip pan. Position the kettle cover so the vent is over the meat and barbecue the roasts for four hours, adding seven or eight briquets and a mesquite charcoal chunk every 45 minutes or so.
Have ready two large onions, a large red and green bell pepper, two Anaheim chiles, and six or more garlic cloves, all diced. Let the roasts cool a bit after taking them out of the kettle, to make dicing easier. Dice the roasts into pieces no bigger than your pinky fingernail. This is a messy, onerous step, but so was mixing the paints for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
From the drip pan, measure four tablespoons of fat into a large dutch oven and sauté the onions, peppers and chiles in the fat over medium heat until they are soft and the bottom of the pot starts to brown a little. Add the garlic, one tablespoon each of salt and oregano, and four tablespoons (or more) of good chili powder (I like Gephardt’s Eagle Brand).
Stir the spices into the vegetables for a minute. Then add one 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, and one 8-ounce can of tomato sauce. Pour the excess fat off the drip pan, and add a cup of water to the pan and heat, stirring, to bring up the cooked-on meat juices. Add this, and the smoked meats, and water barely to cover, and black pepper to taste.
Stir it well, cover and simmer three hours. It makes about five quarts, but it freezes well, and will unfreeze you, on other chilly nights to come.
Texans always get the urge to make chili when the weather turns cool, but barbecue is so much in our blood too, that it can be difficult to decide. One autumn – 1979, it was – I decided to see if the two could be combined.
They could, and I have been bragging about it ever since. I have been promising Karen for months that I would cook up a batch, but it was always too summery. This Sunday, I think, will be just right.
If you look for the recipe later on, you will find it in the “Cookbook” at the Back Booth.
You need three pounds of boneless chuck roast, and three pounds of boneless pork shoulder, on the lean side but with some fat, too. (There is a lot of dicing involved, and the boneless cuts make it much easier. If you want to be John Wayne and get bone-in roasts – they’re cheaper and have a little more flavor – go ahead.)
I use a 22-inch Weber kettle to barbecue. Pushed to one side of the fire grate, make a fire of about 30 charcoal briquets – the mesquite kind – and toss on two or three chunks of actual mesquite charcoal. Line a 10 by 13 aluminum cake pan with foil (makes cleanup a lot easier) and place it on the fire grate opposite the fire. Put the grill in place.
Salt and pepper the roasts and place on the grill over the drip pan. Position the kettle cover so the vent is over the meat and barbecue the roasts for four hours, adding seven or eight briquets and a mesquite charcoal chunk every 45 minutes or so.
Have ready two large onions, a large red and green bell pepper, two Anaheim chiles, and six or more garlic cloves, all diced. Let the roasts cool a bit after taking them out of the kettle, to make dicing easier. Dice the roasts into pieces no bigger than your pinky fingernail. This is a messy, onerous step, but so was mixing the paints for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
From the drip pan, measure four tablespoons of fat into a large dutch oven and sauté the onions, peppers and chiles in the fat over medium heat until they are soft and the bottom of the pot starts to brown a little. Add the garlic, one tablespoon each of salt and oregano, and four tablespoons (or more) of good chili powder (I like Gephardt’s Eagle Brand).
Stir the spices into the vegetables for a minute. Then add one 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, and one 8-ounce can of tomato sauce. Pour the excess fat off the drip pan, and add a cup of water to the pan and heat, stirring, to bring up the cooked-on meat juices. Add this, and the smoked meats, and water barely to cover, and black pepper to taste.
Stir it well, cover and simmer three hours. It makes about five quarts, but it freezes well, and will unfreeze you, on other chilly nights to come.
October 11, 2005
In bed with Cathie Adams!
George W. Bush has worked a miracle. He has gotten me in bed with Cathie Adams.
He is asking Cathie and me to trust him. “Trust me,” he keeps saying.
Trust him to what? Have the brains God gave a doorknob? Fine. Trust him that Harriet Miers will make a good Supreme Court Justice? Cathie and I have a problem with that.
For me, the problem is trusting George W. Bush. When I think about trusting him, I see him peering out the window of Air Force One at the Katrina landscape the third day after the storm, and then flying on to Washington, instead of turning the plane around and landing at Baton Rouge and being presidential. Here was a man proving once and for all that he couldn’t lead fleas to a dog, and now he is asking me to trust him?
For Cathie Adams, the problem is Harriet Miers. She may not be conservative enough for Cathie, who is a Phyllis Schlafly conservative and president of the Texas subsidiary of Schlafly’s “Eagle Forum.” Cathie expected Bush to nominate a potential Supreme Court justice with a proven conservative track record. Why he chose an unknown like Harriet Miers was a blow.
So now he says to Cathie and me: “Trust me.” But I can’t, and she can’t. Cathie told The Washington Post: “President Bush is asking us to have faith in things unseen. We only have that kind of faith in God.”
So here are Cathie and me in bed together, two Americans who could not be farther apart in what we believe to be true, and neither of us having the slightest bit of faith in the President of the United States. How on earth did we come to this?
First, I have to get Cathie Adams out of my bed. She is a dead person walking. She has no faith in things unseen. My whole existence is faith in things unseen. I am in the 57th grade. This year I will learn things I didn’t know last year, in 56th grade, and next year in 58th grade I will learn things I don’t know now.
What will those things be? I have no idea. They are things unseen. But I know what I have faith in. I have faith in a spirituality that isn’t the dogma of rigid belief, but dynamic, and alive, and growing. My spiritual life continually brings me, when I am spiritually and mentally ready, to a new door, which I open, and step through into a space of virgin light and unbreathed air so pure that it is awhile before my heart is calm enough to let me see and breathe again.
These rooms are not created for me, but already exist, destinations in place at this moment, but I don’t know what the next one is, or the next, and I won’t, until the day I arrive. By this argument, the last room must already exist, and probably God is waiting there, but I can’t know that, or Him, until I arrive.
Faith in things unseen? My God, that’s all there is. In my life, anything is possible, and that makes tomorrow such an awesome mystery. But Cathie Adams wants to establish tomorrow before it gets here. And she represents the political base that put George W. Bush into the White House, with the serious expectation that he turn America into a dead land of faith only in things seen.
But now he has betrayed her! What can I do but shower him with gratitude? It is a most confusing time. Talk about things unseen. Never in my life did I expect I would become politicized, but knowing now that Cathie Adams is out there, 57th grade looks like it could be the year.
He is asking Cathie and me to trust him. “Trust me,” he keeps saying.
Trust him to what? Have the brains God gave a doorknob? Fine. Trust him that Harriet Miers will make a good Supreme Court Justice? Cathie and I have a problem with that.
For me, the problem is trusting George W. Bush. When I think about trusting him, I see him peering out the window of Air Force One at the Katrina landscape the third day after the storm, and then flying on to Washington, instead of turning the plane around and landing at Baton Rouge and being presidential. Here was a man proving once and for all that he couldn’t lead fleas to a dog, and now he is asking me to trust him?
For Cathie Adams, the problem is Harriet Miers. She may not be conservative enough for Cathie, who is a Phyllis Schlafly conservative and president of the Texas subsidiary of Schlafly’s “Eagle Forum.” Cathie expected Bush to nominate a potential Supreme Court justice with a proven conservative track record. Why he chose an unknown like Harriet Miers was a blow.
So now he says to Cathie and me: “Trust me.” But I can’t, and she can’t. Cathie told The Washington Post: “President Bush is asking us to have faith in things unseen. We only have that kind of faith in God.”
So here are Cathie and me in bed together, two Americans who could not be farther apart in what we believe to be true, and neither of us having the slightest bit of faith in the President of the United States. How on earth did we come to this?
First, I have to get Cathie Adams out of my bed. She is a dead person walking. She has no faith in things unseen. My whole existence is faith in things unseen. I am in the 57th grade. This year I will learn things I didn’t know last year, in 56th grade, and next year in 58th grade I will learn things I don’t know now.
What will those things be? I have no idea. They are things unseen. But I know what I have faith in. I have faith in a spirituality that isn’t the dogma of rigid belief, but dynamic, and alive, and growing. My spiritual life continually brings me, when I am spiritually and mentally ready, to a new door, which I open, and step through into a space of virgin light and unbreathed air so pure that it is awhile before my heart is calm enough to let me see and breathe again.
These rooms are not created for me, but already exist, destinations in place at this moment, but I don’t know what the next one is, or the next, and I won’t, until the day I arrive. By this argument, the last room must already exist, and probably God is waiting there, but I can’t know that, or Him, until I arrive.
Faith in things unseen? My God, that’s all there is. In my life, anything is possible, and that makes tomorrow such an awesome mystery. But Cathie Adams wants to establish tomorrow before it gets here. And she represents the political base that put George W. Bush into the White House, with the serious expectation that he turn America into a dead land of faith only in things seen.
But now he has betrayed her! What can I do but shower him with gratitude? It is a most confusing time. Talk about things unseen. Never in my life did I expect I would become politicized, but knowing now that Cathie Adams is out there, 57th grade looks like it could be the year.
October 07, 2005
New in the Back Booth
New material in the Back Booth. Battling an egg slump in the Cookbook, and in Turning Toward Her Breast Cancer, a new chapter.
Riding out an egg slump
You never can remember exactly how it begins.
You go into the kitchen to make breakfast. Two eggs, basted; bacon; toast; coffee. You fry the bacon, and crack the eggs into the skillet, and one of the yolks breaks.
So it begins. You don’t think about it until the next day, when it happens again. Then it happens a third time. You start to look over your shoulder. They say you’ve had it when you start looking over your shoulder.
The technique is to tap the egg firmly on the skillet rim to make a clean, straight crack. Then in one smooth motion you part the shell and drop the egg into the skillet. It is a pure expression of confidence.
Suddenly you can’t get a clean crack. You have no feel. You become tentative. The result is a tentative, spidery crack with jagged edges that snag the yolk. With the third failurem you know you are in a slump.
You try everything. You change your grip. You straighten your wrist and cock your elbow. You straighten your elbow and cock your wrist. You shorten your backswing. You change your stance. You stand back from the skillet and up close to it. You practice when you can, but a man can only eat so much egg foo yung.
The aggravating thing, when you are in a slump, is that you never break both yolks. How is it that a person can break one yolk every time for a week? A good breakfast, half-ruined. There aren’t many greater disappointments.
The slump will end. All slumps do. You even know how it will end. You will go into the kitchen one morning and go two-for-two, and that will be the end of it, as if it never happened. You’ve been in other slumps. You know that you just have to ride them out. A slump is always in the back of your mind, but you can’t dwell on it. Your self-esteem can rot entirely and suddenly you can’t even chop an onion.
You have to think positively. You have to think of things that you can do.
Every morning you shave your face and all of your neck without a nick. You can tie your shoes in the dark. You can parallel park. You can type 60 words a minute. At a ballgame, you can shell peanuts and hold a beer between your legs and not spill anything. You can fold burritos so the filling will not leak. This slump is doomed.
You go into the kitchen to make breakfast. Two eggs, basted; bacon; toast; coffee. You fry the bacon, and crack the eggs into the skillet, and one of the yolks breaks.
So it begins. You don’t think about it until the next day, when it happens again. Then it happens a third time. You start to look over your shoulder. They say you’ve had it when you start looking over your shoulder.
The technique is to tap the egg firmly on the skillet rim to make a clean, straight crack. Then in one smooth motion you part the shell and drop the egg into the skillet. It is a pure expression of confidence.
Suddenly you can’t get a clean crack. You have no feel. You become tentative. The result is a tentative, spidery crack with jagged edges that snag the yolk. With the third failurem you know you are in a slump.
You try everything. You change your grip. You straighten your wrist and cock your elbow. You straighten your elbow and cock your wrist. You shorten your backswing. You change your stance. You stand back from the skillet and up close to it. You practice when you can, but a man can only eat so much egg foo yung.
The aggravating thing, when you are in a slump, is that you never break both yolks. How is it that a person can break one yolk every time for a week? A good breakfast, half-ruined. There aren’t many greater disappointments.
The slump will end. All slumps do. You even know how it will end. You will go into the kitchen one morning and go two-for-two, and that will be the end of it, as if it never happened. You’ve been in other slumps. You know that you just have to ride them out. A slump is always in the back of your mind, but you can’t dwell on it. Your self-esteem can rot entirely and suddenly you can’t even chop an onion.
You have to think positively. You have to think of things that you can do.
Every morning you shave your face and all of your neck without a nick. You can tie your shoes in the dark. You can parallel park. You can type 60 words a minute. At a ballgame, you can shell peanuts and hold a beer between your legs and not spill anything. You can fold burritos so the filling will not leak. This slump is doomed.
The real sports business
It sure feels good when your team wins.
At least I think so. I live in San Diego, so Monday mornings when the Chargers win feel better than the Monday mornings after they lose. When they win, I look forward to reading the morning paper and sharing the glory. When they lose, I barely glance at the game stories.
I feel that way because I am a sports fan. Many Americans – probably most Americans – could not care less whether a football team wins or loses, or even if the game is played at all. They are not sports fans, and that is fine. They are probably fans of other things like art, music, dance, mathematics, philosophy, because most people, I am sure, are fans of something.
People can always use something to feel good about, and the easiest and best place to look is at the professional world. We like to see someone who is beautiful the way we aren’t, athletic the way we aren’t, musical the way we aren’t, famous the way we aren’t, successful the way we aren’t.
All these things give their fans a quick, feel-good fix without the fans having to do the least bit of work. No wonder sports is such a huge business. Their real product is not baseball, football or basketball. Their real product is drug-like, delivering euphoria in the good years and hope for euphoria in the lean years. And the dealer is the media. When the Chargers win, the San Diego paper usually gives six pages to the game coverage, and when the Padres gained the baseball playoffs this fall, the paper printed daily special sections with game coverage.
Sports is not a “sports” business; it is a media business, when you dissect it. There is a certain risk in being a dissector. The great 20th century essayist E.B. White wrote: “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”
If I thought it took away any of the Monday-morning euphoria, I would not talk any more about sports as a media business. But, realizing it has not taken away any of my fan satisfaction, I feel okay about pushing on.
All the media rules and definitions were created by people, after all, and we instinctively know what is going on. But people need to know how to “read” media, too, to get an objective handle on euphoria sold as a product, so they can enjoy their sports without being manipulated at the same time.
In fact I am developing “Reading Media” (look in the Back Booth) as a primer for the public, about how the media does its work. This material isn’t taught in high school, but it should be. If it were, the public would be familiar with the Definition of News: “News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.”
On this very legitimate definition hangs all the news the media brings to the public, every day, 365 days a year. It is the journalist’s core job, reporting that change, or being aware of the threat.
But the threat to the status quo is also at the heart of the media business of sports. The single question: “Who is going to win?” is responsible for billions of dollars in revenue to a media willing to pay multi-millions to sports agencies like the NFL, MLB and NBA (and the NCAA) for rights to bring the question to fans sitting on the edge of their couches. It is also a mainstay in newspaper circulation figures. I am familiar with a fairly recent survey that suggests 35 percent of readers subscribe to a newspaper solely because of sports.
At the heart of the “Who is going to win?” question are several media values: proximity, prominence, conflict and sensational.
Proximity describes either a physical or emotional/psychological attachment of a person to an event. I am a Chargers fan because they are physically close to me, and it makes an emotional difference to me (even if I try to deny it) whether they win or lose. I feel this way even though I have soured on professional football because of its commercialism, and I absolutely hate television’s obsession with trying to turn the sport (collegiate and professional) into something bigger than a game, which is, of course, manipulation targeted at young (some of them 50 years old) males.
I feel good when the Padres win, too, though I am more a football fan than baseball. They were within a couple of games of winning the National League West with more losses than wins, which gained them national attention for the media value of novelty. Then in the playoffs first round, they had to play St. Louis. Talk about a threat to the status quo.
At least I think so. I live in San Diego, so Monday mornings when the Chargers win feel better than the Monday mornings after they lose. When they win, I look forward to reading the morning paper and sharing the glory. When they lose, I barely glance at the game stories.
I feel that way because I am a sports fan. Many Americans – probably most Americans – could not care less whether a football team wins or loses, or even if the game is played at all. They are not sports fans, and that is fine. They are probably fans of other things like art, music, dance, mathematics, philosophy, because most people, I am sure, are fans of something.
People can always use something to feel good about, and the easiest and best place to look is at the professional world. We like to see someone who is beautiful the way we aren’t, athletic the way we aren’t, musical the way we aren’t, famous the way we aren’t, successful the way we aren’t.
All these things give their fans a quick, feel-good fix without the fans having to do the least bit of work. No wonder sports is such a huge business. Their real product is not baseball, football or basketball. Their real product is drug-like, delivering euphoria in the good years and hope for euphoria in the lean years. And the dealer is the media. When the Chargers win, the San Diego paper usually gives six pages to the game coverage, and when the Padres gained the baseball playoffs this fall, the paper printed daily special sections with game coverage.
Sports is not a “sports” business; it is a media business, when you dissect it. There is a certain risk in being a dissector. The great 20th century essayist E.B. White wrote: “Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”
If I thought it took away any of the Monday-morning euphoria, I would not talk any more about sports as a media business. But, realizing it has not taken away any of my fan satisfaction, I feel okay about pushing on.
All the media rules and definitions were created by people, after all, and we instinctively know what is going on. But people need to know how to “read” media, too, to get an objective handle on euphoria sold as a product, so they can enjoy their sports without being manipulated at the same time.
In fact I am developing “Reading Media” (look in the Back Booth) as a primer for the public, about how the media does its work. This material isn’t taught in high school, but it should be. If it were, the public would be familiar with the Definition of News: “News is anything that changes, or threatens to change, the status quo.”
On this very legitimate definition hangs all the news the media brings to the public, every day, 365 days a year. It is the journalist’s core job, reporting that change, or being aware of the threat.
But the threat to the status quo is also at the heart of the media business of sports. The single question: “Who is going to win?” is responsible for billions of dollars in revenue to a media willing to pay multi-millions to sports agencies like the NFL, MLB and NBA (and the NCAA) for rights to bring the question to fans sitting on the edge of their couches. It is also a mainstay in newspaper circulation figures. I am familiar with a fairly recent survey that suggests 35 percent of readers subscribe to a newspaper solely because of sports.
At the heart of the “Who is going to win?” question are several media values: proximity, prominence, conflict and sensational.
Proximity describes either a physical or emotional/psychological attachment of a person to an event. I am a Chargers fan because they are physically close to me, and it makes an emotional difference to me (even if I try to deny it) whether they win or lose. I feel this way even though I have soured on professional football because of its commercialism, and I absolutely hate television’s obsession with trying to turn the sport (collegiate and professional) into something bigger than a game, which is, of course, manipulation targeted at young (some of them 50 years old) males.
I feel good when the Padres win, too, though I am more a football fan than baseball. They were within a couple of games of winning the National League West with more losses than wins, which gained them national attention for the media value of novelty. Then in the playoffs first round, they had to play St. Louis. Talk about a threat to the status quo.
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