Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

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Lileks on Wellstone

A thoughtful analysis. I have to say I saw myself reflected in his prose:

Friday afternoon I listened to a local talk show whose host has been hammering Wellstone like a hot horseshoe for 12 years. I wasn’t surprised to hear him spend his three hours treating Wellstone’s death with sorrow and respect; I wasn’t surprised to hear the callers say the same thing. Over and over, one by one: I disagreed with everything he said but he was a good guy, and it’s all a damn shame. Every so often a contrarian would shoulder his way on the air and spit on the floor: are you nuts? The man was a flaming socialist, and we shouldn’t be putting him on a pedestal when we can stand on the grave’s edge and whiz on the coffin. Or words to that effect.

Exactly. The first words out of my mouth were “it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” (Although I have to say tha I immediately thought, “what a dickhead thing to say,” without really changing my opinion. My liberal wife is exceedingly annoyed at me for saying it, too.)
Anyway the rest of Lileks’ Bleat today is just as good, even if I am somewhat chastened by it. Read it.
I don’t like to fly myself, and I assume I’ve put one foot in the grave every time I get on an airliner heading to Florida or DC. Let’s face it; nobody should have to exit this life that way. I am equally sorry for his family and I am even sorrier that his wife and daughter were on the plane and lost their lives as well. On that level I feel no differently for him and them than I do for the survivors of John Allen Muhammad’s and John Lee Malvo’s murdered victims.
But the bottom line is that in Wellstone’s 12 years in the Senate he had done everything he could to push his socialist agenda. To me this makes him an enemy of this country’s capitalist heritage (and by extension, by returning him to the Senate twice, his fellow Minnesotans were culpable, too). This time, he was close to losing his seat to a Republican opponent; and now another left-wing waste of space, Walter Mondale, will likely replace him on the ballot and get the sympathy vote.
From a political standpoint, I still believe: It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
From a human standpoint, though: RIP, Paul, Sheila, and Marcia Wellstone, and the three campaign workers and two pilots who lost their lives with you.

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Other thoughts on Series coverage

The Fox commentators agreed before the game that it would not be a pitching duel…yet it was, after the Giants bounced Hernandez, after which not another run was scored.
Would Bonds be walked intentionally? What for? He never came up in Game Seven with anyone on base in front of him. His one walk came from a pitcher who was overly careful about giving him the ball right down the pike (worked him to 3-1 and then walked him). Bonds never got a pitch-out in this game.
I found it to be an exciting game. There’s nothing quite like the ninth inning of Game Seven with two men on and the tying run at the plate, a monster hit almost all the way to the wall, and a beautiful catch to end the season.
But could they shut up the damn commentators, for Chrissake? Geez. And those stupid green-screen ads behind the plate are really stupid, and frankly distracting from what’s going on at the plate.
Next year: Cubs in the Series! (OK, fine, hope springs eternal.)

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As I suspected

Angels in 7. Barry Bonds gets another year to whine. Boo hoo.
I can’t believe he was even under consideration for MVP. I can’t see how a member of the team that LOSES the Series can be considered “most valuable”, unless you qualify it as “most valuable to the losing team”. And if he contributed to the winning team’s win, he certainly wouldn’t be “most valuable” to his own team 🙂