The Howard Dean/Boston Red Sox Controversy

If you're here for enlightening political thought, go away. I don't get terribly political in my blog. For one thing, I feel there's enough of that in the blogosphere. I feel that most political commentary and/or dialog nowadays is about as interesting as two women in tube tops arguing on Jenny Jones who their babydady might be.

But there are three things I cannot condone in the political world:

1.) Censorship. I don't care for being told what's good for me by those who say they know better.
2.) The Excess Taxation of Liquor
and, most importantly:
3.) I will not stand a waffling of a political candidate on their favorite baseball team.

The first two are self-explanatory.

In pro wrestling, they've got cheap heat. One way to get heat (a negative reaction from the crowd), quickly and easily, is to run down the local sports team. If I'm wrestling in Boston, and I want to get the crowd to acknowledge me as the bad guy, then I'm going to denigrate the Red Sox, or the Celtics or the Patriots (depending on what sports season we're in).

It works like a charm.

In the political arena, we have the opposite.

Most politicians, when they acknowledge sports at all, will use it as a tool to ingratiate themselves to the populace. Hillary Clinton was pretty good at this. Remember when she was the first lady, and she came to Wrigley to sing and talked about how long she'd been a Cubs fan and how she and her family came to Wrigley and all that jazz.

But what happens when she goes to run for the Senate in New York? The most dangerous place to be was between Hillary and her New York Yankees baseball cap.

That's why this stuff with Howard Dean and the Red Sox bugs me.

I don't like Howard Dean. Let alone all that stuff where he's smug, condescending and has something of an inability to relate to people. Has nobody else noticed that he treats everybody like they're below him, even in interviews? Odd from a man who's working the blogosphere, trying to transform himself into a man of the people.

None of that's important.

The man switched allegiances in his baseball teams, without sufficient reason.

In my book, that's right on the verge of blasphemy.

I don't buy that you can change allegiances, especially between rivals like the Sox and the Yankees. And be trustworthy about it.

Especially when you're trading from the Evil Empire to the underdog of underdogs (at least in the American League).

I'm a big believer that unless your team betrays you (a'la the Brooklyn Dodgers), you never trade allegiances. Not completely. You root for the Diamondbacks while you're living in Phoenix, but when the Cardinals come to town (if you're a Cardinals fan), you root for the Cardinals.

You don't change allegiances. And the person that does, without just cause, isn't to be trusted. I don't know if it's because a leopard doesn't change its spots. But I don't trust a person who changes allegiances.

And changing to a Sox fan when the Yankees have done nothing but win? When you're a politician living in an area populated by Sox fans?

The best thing you could do would be just not bring it up.

But I know some of you people are going to pooh pooh me and say baseball's just a game. But to me, it's the closest thing I have to a religion. And there are a lot of people who believe similarly. And if you're able to throw around an allegiance like that, you're going to end up insulting more people than you'll be drawing toward you, ultimately.

Just call it a small survey sample.

All of which reminds me.

It's an old joke.

There's a surprising lack of zoning laws in McMinn County. So if you want to build a junkyard right next to a church and a school, you've got no laws on the books stopping you.

So I asked, hypothetically speaking, if I set up a strip club in the field next to my parents' house, what could the county do?

Mom said: "Little things. There are obscenity laws, but with zoning, you'd probably have a hard time getting a liquor license, for example."

"Liquor?"

"Yeah"

"Hell, Mom. I don't want to liquor. I just want to watch her take her clothes off."

I really shouldn't be writing when I'm this sleepy.

Is it just me, or is this Broncos/Raiders Monday Night Football game just about the most boring meeting between the two ever?