Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:
During my years as a newspaper columnist, I wound up with a lot of topics that were interesting but not interesting enough to fill an entire column. That’s where “short takes” came from. Lately there seem to be a lot of mildly interesting things, so I’m resurrecting it.
Here goes.
BRADY’S BUNCH: For about 15 years as a sportswriter, one of the beats I covered was the National Football League. There were six different teams I covered for at least one season. I covered the Washington Football Team in Joe Gibbs’s first season of 1981, the Atlanta Falcons in 1983, the Denver Broncos from 1986-88, the San Francisco 49ers in 1989, the Los Angeles Rams from 1990-93 and the Los Angeles Raiders from 1992-94.
I got sort of NFL’ed out and eventually stopped watching pro football completely. In fact, the last Super Bowl I watched was XXXIII in January 1999, John Elway’s last game.
So when I read yesterday that Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady was going to be playing in his 10th Super Bowl, I realized I have never seen Brady play, either live or on TV.
No reason to change that now.
***
AN AMERICA GONE BY: If you’re a long-time reader of mine or if you follow me on Twitter (@mikerappaport49), you’ve seen this picture before. The first time I saw it was in 1988 in a movie that has become one of my true guilty pleasures, Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster in “Stealing Home.”
For some reason, when I see this picture, it reminds me of Billy Joel’s song “Allentown.” Both seem to me to be about America the way it was for 20 years or so after WWII, when a good work ethic and a strong back could make up for an incomplete education and still result in a good life.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, along with Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, made up a manufacturing belt the likes of which the world had never seen. A man could make enough at a good blue-collar job to support a wife and kids, buy a house, get a new car every three or four years and take family vacations.
We’ll never see the likes of it again.
***
HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN: Remember when Rudy Giuliani was “America’s mayor,” Time Magazine’s Man of the Year and someone who stood tall in the days and weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? You don’t? Well, it was nearly 20 years ago. My daughter was a senior at UCLA and my son was still in high school.
Rudy was a well-respected man. Heck, I even have a baseball in my collection signed by Giuliani and Yankees manager Joe Torre. Sadly, though, as the old song goes, he stayed too long at the fair. And just as everything Donald Trump touches turns to shit, so did Rudy.
Figuratively, at least.
From Four Seasons Landscaping to hair dye running down his sweaty head, Giuliani has become a joke. And if he’s at all surprised that Trump is refusing to pay his legal fees, he’s probably the only person in America who didn’t see it coming.
Dominion Voting Systems is suing him for slander, and even though there’s no way Giuliani can come up with $1.3 billion, it’s ridiculously embarrassing.
I wonder if anyone will remember the Rudy of 2001, when he really made America proud.
***
419,000 DEAD AND CLIMBING: I truly admire President Biden for his honesty about the pandemic. When he tells the country the pandemic will get worse before it gets better, that’s completely opposite from the other guy and people should appreciate that.
I can’t speak for him on this (or on anything else), and I think the fact that Biden is the oldest man ever to be president is liberating. If his good health continues, he will be 82 when 2024 comes around. My guess is that he will be satisfied with one term, and that means re-election doesn’t have to be part of the equation when he makes decisions.
Imagine that. A president who just does what he thinks is right.
For America, not for himself.