Up until Saturday morning, I had never heard of Adnan Januzaj. All of a sudden, he was subbing in for Manchester United, playing left wing, feinting, dribbling, drawing defenders to him, then distributing the ball toward goal. He has just turned 19. Listening to the very good British broadcasters, I deduced that this stripling was born in Belgium, with roots in Albania….and Turkey…and Serbia.…and even Kosovo, if Kosovo had a full international team. The broadcasters seemed to hope that since the young man had been playing at the Man U club for three years he might have some kind of residence eligibility for England. Probably not, but one can understand their hopefulness. Personally, I tried to remember if the Emma Lazarus poem, The New Colossus, (“Give me your tired, your poor….”) had any reference to your nimble-of-feet, but a quick scan suggests it does not. Still, wouldn’t it be nice for the U.S. if it could produce just one kid with a touch like that? I suspect that if an American kid started juking around like that, Coach, on the sidelines would scream, “Cut the cute stuff!” Probably the Man U coaches do, too. But coaches cannot totally wring balance out of a kid. Couldn’t the U.S. go out and borrow somebody like Adnan Januzaj from a more advanced soccer culture? It’s been trying. The U.S. has qualified for seven straight World Cups with the help of solid recruits with an American parent, like Earnie Stewart (Netherlands) and Thomas Dooley (Germany). The hunt has intensified under Jürgen Klinsmann, with his ties to Germany. To date, the best recruit has been Jermaine Jones, a swaggering, broad-shouldered enforcer who reminds me of Charles Oakley, the hit man of the great Knicks basketball teams of the ‘90’s. Jones doesn’t smile as much as Oak did, but he does hit people. Every team needs one. Jones makes the U.S. better because no opponent wants to go near him. He learned that in the Bundesliga. But where is the player with the shiftiness of a Gale Sayers jitterbugging to the outside in American football, faking inside, going outside, hips swiveling? Now the U.S. is going back to the supply depot. On Wednes- day evening, it will unveil Julian Green, all of 18, who has come along in the great system of Bayern Munich but has not yet been scooped up for the German national team. Born in Florida, son of an American soldier, Green had the choice of soccer nationalities, and he has gone with the U.S. He would not be in uniform Wednesday if Klinsmann did not think he could play up front in this June’s World Cup in Brazil. This bold move suggests Klinsmann does not think Landon Donovan, Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey – who helped produce the epic 91st-minute goal against Algeria in 2010 – can approach 2010 form in the Group of Death this June. Klinsmann has a contract through 2018. So, essentially, does Julian Green. Wednesday’s game against Mexico, in Glendale, Ariz., will begin at 11:15 pm eastern time. Speaking of Mexico, the aforementioned Adnan Januzaj turned the corner and set up Chicharito (Javier Hernández of Mexico) for the fourth goal by Man U on Saturday. That’s Januzaj, No. 44, coming from the left. He’s 19. And he’s Belgian, or Albanian….but no matter what Emma Lazarus wrote, he is not American. Big-time college football brought that decision down on itself. The National Labor Relations Board decided Wednesday that Northwestern football players could be seen as employees, not just student-athletes.
The football and basketball powers have been exploiting athletes forever, certainly since schools learned how to make money off players’ names and images – providing huge salaries for coaches and administrators. The players allegedly get an education -- that is, if they can fight off the coaches’ demands that they lift weights and attend practices. I'm kind of sorry I don't cover coal mining any more. I'd love to hear the reaction of some miners about the plight of the college boys -- probably a heady mix of chewing tobacco and invective. But still, it's a job. How the schools would pay the athletes is another issue. Would there be a sliding scale? Would star players be able to negotiate? I have always maintained that big-time college football (and basketball) has no connection to education. Might as well hold rock shows to support school presidents. The players learn: trust nobody. A perfect example is the mess involving Steve Masiello, who put together the Manhattan team that reached the national tournament this month. Masiello a protégé of Rick Pitino, demanded a lot from his players, but college sports are a one-way deal. This week Masiello tried to skip to South Florida. That happens all the time, with hot-shot coaches moving on for more money, leaving the players behind. It turns out that Masiello does not have a degree from the University of Kentucky, as he claimed. Now South Florida will not take him, and it is unclear if Manhattan will have him back. My first reaction was that Manhattan could claim some form of family loyalty toward the prodigal coach and let him come back, waiving its own rules requiring a degree. But his claim of a degree could surely be construed as a lie, contempt for the school that gave him a chance. What is the lesson in that? Much of big-time college sports are based on a lie – coaches recruit players, schools cut corners, athletic departments put one over on the public in order to entertain the public. In other words, life itself. Since I stopped writing a sports column regularly at the end of 2011, I find I have a visceral distaste for big-time football and basketball. I know how these spectacles are put together. Since I have not been paying much attention, I rely on the observations of others. This is what Doug Logan wrote about the Masiello case, in his weekly essay. SHIN SPLINTS 2014 BY DOUG LOGAN No Bull Coach, what the hell were you thinking? A week ago Steve Masiello, 39, was on top of the world. The men’s basketball coach for the Manhattan College [located in the Bronx, not Manhattan] Jaspers had just taken his gutty team of New York City playground veterans to the second round of the NCAA tournament. His opponent was the defending national champion Louisville Cardinals, coached by his mentor, Rick Pitino. The bonds between Masiello and Pitino are longstanding. Pitino was the head coach of the New York Knicks in the late ‘80’s. He had this hard-nosed, city-raised kid, Masiello, as one of his ball boys. Later, Pitino recruited him to play for his 1996-2000 University of Kentucky Wildcats. After his college career as a player, Masiello learned the coaching profession at the knee of his guru, serving a stint as an assistant coach at Louisville. Their coaching styles are identical: a swarming defense, fast-breaking offense, and helter-skelter energy up and down the court. The tournament game was very entertaining. At times Masiello knew exactly what Louisville was going to do: he was actually calling out their plays from the sidelines. Manhattan had a three point lead with three minutes to go but could not overcome the Cardinals’ experience. They gave up two critical three point shots by Luke Hancock and lost 71-64. It is not unusual for coaches to leverage a positive tournament outcome into a bigger job. As a matter of fact, Manhattan has served as a crucible for coaches to go on to more lucrative positions. Fran Fraschilla took a Jasper team to the NCAA tournament and was rewarded with offers, first from St. John’s then from New Mexico. More recently, Bobby Gonzalez parlayed his success at Manhattan by accepting a better position at Seton Hall. Masiello was no different. He had a 60-39 record at Manhattan over three seasons. Last weekend the rumors had him accepting the vacancy at the University of South Florida [USF] in Tampa. The five year deal to coach the Bulls was all but announced, with a salary reported to be in the $1M per year range; a big raise. Then, the inexplicable happened. It was reported that USF had rescinded their offer. The reason seems to be that Masiello had declared that he had a college degree from the University of Kentucky and that appears not to be true. Manhattan has subsequently announced that they have suspended their erstwhile coach pending an investigation into his educational credentials. He may have lied to them, too. Sports imitates life, but in a more dramatic fashion. From hero to goat in six days. Top of the mountain to the depths of the valley in less than a week. The philosophers all tell us that if we don’t study the mistakes of the past we are destined to make them in the future. All Masiello had to do was to take to heart the tragedy of George O’Leary. In December of 2001, O’Leary was forced to resign as head football coach at Notre Dame, arguably the most prestigious coaching position in the country. This after a mere five days on the job! It was revealed that O’Leary, former coach at Georgia Tech, lied on his application for the Notre Dame job by stating he had a Master’s Degree in education from NYU [where I now teach]. O’Leary was publicly humiliated and was forced to labor in obscurity as an NFL assistant. He has experienced redemption, of sorts, but his current job as head coach of University of Central Florida [UCF] pales, in comparison, to his prior potential glories. Did Masiello think he could get away with it? Probably. The psyche of some of these coaches is such that they feel that all they have to do is deliver wins and that everything else is irrelevant. And, the market place appears to validate this hubris. Less than two years ago, Bruce Pearl was fired as head basketball coach at the University of Tennessee. Pearl was caught lying, repeatedly, to NCAA officials who were investigating recruitment infractions. Last week Pearl was hired by Auburn University. Sometimes all you have to do is to use the “eye test” to make judgments about character. Masiello is a pugnacious, in-your-face screamer. He paces the sidelines, berating his players, howling at the referees and playing the bully. He is loud, boastful and boorish. One can easily foresee him acting in a deceitful way if it will help him to win. There are many ways one can overcome the lack of a specific credential in a job search. Usually that requires transparency, honesty and a bit of humility. But deceit, of this type, is, and should be, disqualifying. The role of coach, in my view, is not only to facilitate successful outcomes in athletic contests, but also to prepare young men and young women for the game of life. Coach, you falsely claimed a degree in Communications. You might think about going back to finish and take a course or two in ethics. Really? It’s that easy? Wave a red card and people go away?
I’ve been obsessing about red cards since the United States and Russia began issuing sanctions in the past week. John Boehner can’t go to Russia? Does that apply in Congress, too? On Saturday, there was Roman Abramovich and his girl friend free to watch his club, Chelsea, rampage through Arsenal. But what if the West and Russia were to ratchet up the red cards, and the oligarchs and their money were not allowed into the West? What if the Nets’ owner, Mikhail Prokhorov, were not allowed to inspect Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, rusting away before his eyes? What about the billionaire who bought an $88-million pied-a-terre for his daughter on Central Park West? What’s the point of being an oligarch if you can’t go west for R&R? Why amass all that money in the first place? Speaking of sanctions, it’s time for soccer to wave the red card at referee Andre Marriner after his blatant mistake – and refusal to listen to reason – on Saturday. Chelsea was already leading, 2-0, in the early minutes. I thought Chelsea had a huge advantage, shooting from sunlight into shadow (sunlight! in London! in March!) but maybe it did not matter. Marriner correctly saw an Arsenal defender deflect a shot that was probably veering wide. Tweet! The ref promptly called a penalty kick for Chelsea and an automatic red card for Arsenal. Only trouble was, the ref waved the red card at No. 28 Kieran Gibbs rather than No. 15 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and his guilty fingertips, who had been closer to the goal. Anybody can make a mistake. But when the Arsenal players tried to explain, Marriner was too blockheaded to listen. His two assistants on the sideline were apparently daydreaming, so Gibbs went off. The authorities will switch the one-match suspension on Monday, but Marriner also needs time away, to learn how to reason. The match ended, 6-0, in favor of Chelsea, with José Mourinho demonstrating his seething super ego, the coldest stare this side of Putin. * * * Two other soccer observations: *-I’ve never been a fan of John Terry or Wayne Rooney, but both demonstrated their resourcefulness and skill in Champions League matches in recent days. *-I take back most things I ever said about the Dolans. James L. Dolan relinquished his wretched control of the Knicks this past week, and now Cablevision, owned by the Dolans, has added the Qatari station, beIN, to my cable package, just in time for the Clásico (Real-Barça, but you know that) on Sunday. Cablevision, le saludo. (And I forgot to thank fellow Queens-person Andy Tansey for calling my attention to the news about Cablevision.) Don’t give up.
Don’t despair. This is the lesson of Phil Jackson, who now returns to rescue the Knicks, indeed, rescue New York. I remember the night – the late night – in February of 1985, in a Mexican joint in Florida, when he lamented that he was done, finished, in the National Basketball Association. I’m a bit older than Jackson, can remember him coming along in the late Sixties, a thoroughly likable counter-culture guy from the Upper Midwest, who went with Bill Bradley to Allard Lowenstein anti-war rallies. The Knicks had virtually a whole team of cool guys. It was a great time to be around them, and not just because they eventually won two championships. However, by 1985, Jackson had convinced himself that he would never work in the N.B.A. again. His playing career was over, and he and Charles Rosen had written his book called, “Maverick: More Than a Game,” that revealed just where Jackson’s shaggy head was at – perhaps not a good idea in the N.B.A. job market. I was in spring training with the Mets in funky old St. Petersburg, and Jackson and his Woodstock buddy Rosen – once the star at Hunter College -- were coaching the Albany Patroons of the Continental Basketball Association, a league of bizarre travel connections to places as distant as Puerto Rico and Oshkosh, Wis. We went out for pizza after a game, along with Herbie Brown, who had coached the Israel Sabras, Detroit Pistons and Tucson Gunners, and they were telling horror stories about overnight drives and changes-in-Atlanta. Phil Jackson was morose. It was late at night, and he was morose. He was done. Cooked. His modest revelations into life style and politics had revealed himself to be a liberal, perhaps a troublemaker by Reagan-era standards. The N.B.A. was flush, with Erving and Kareem going out, Bird and Magic and Jordan in their prime. In Jackson’s fevered mind, there was no room for a perceived hippie. My role was to order the food and the beer and scribble down travel tales while his colleagues tried to talk Jackson off the conversational ledge. Have another nacho, Phil. Change planes in Atlanta a few more times. See what happens. It’s just a box of rain. I don’t believe anybody said that, but you never know. Next time I saw Jackson was in the Garden. He was an assistant coach with the Bulls, wearing a suit and a surprised look. The thing I remember most about his Jordan years was that he loved annoying Pat Riley and all the other Knick coaches and suits, but he moderated his antagonism out of respect to Red Holzman, his coaching godfather who was always at the games. Now Jackson has won 11 championships, not bad for a perceived anarchist. He has enough stature to force James L. Dolan to downgrade the absolute weakest link of the New York Knicks franchise, that is to say, James L. Dolan himself. The hippie as corporate savior. I wonder if Phil remembers that night in the Mexican joint. * * * My travel column from 1985: http://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/21/sports/sports-of-the-times-on-the-road-to-oshkosh-again.html I caught up with Charley Rosen in 1997, by which time he and Phil were pursuing separate muses: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/11/sports/novelist-and-a-coach-are-still-hanging-out.html Filip Bondy on Jackson the other day: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/bondy-yipee-hippie-garden-exec-phil-long-bohemian-roots-article-1.1723057 Top: Raglan Road. Below: classic concert at the Alhambra. Everything dies baby that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back --Atlantic City, Bruce Springsteen It’s mid-March, the weather is miserable, and the Big East is in the Garden. This was the best basketball conference that ever was, because it was Big and because it was East – players and fans, bundled up, road salt on their shoes, with a case of the sniffles, playing in the most noted basketball arena in the land. Ewing of Georgetown. Mullin of St. John’s. Pinckney of Villanova. They all went to the Final Four one year. We know the names of the defectors who joined football conferences, putting their students out of reasonable driving range for road games, teaching the great lesson of college sports, which is screw loyalty, screw history. Go for the money. Somehow the Big East stays alive with 10 teams, some of which I could not name -- 10 colleges that cannot afford legions of football players on their campus. All I know is that St. John’s and Georgetown and Villanova and Providence and Seton Hall are still around. I smiled at the photo in the Times of Val Ackerman, the new president of the newly-configured league, sitting in an empty league office. It was her statement: The league of Looie’s garish sweaters and Big John’s style statement is still intact. Joe McGinniss, who died on Monday at 71, wrote about politics and scandal and hypocrisy. In his foray into Italian soccer, he found himself at that very same intersection.
In his 1999 book, “The Miracle of Castel di Sangro,” he was living in a small hill city in the Abruzzo, getting to know the players. Then he watched them blunder away a final game that allowed the team from nearby Bari to advance into Serie A. Soon he accused some of the players of throwing the game, comparing them to the Red Brigade of the ‘70’s. “Tu non sei costretto a parlare,” one key player said. You don’t have to speak. This was revolutionary stuff in 1999. Seven years later, the world discovered that major teams in Serie A were leaning on referees and some players were gambling on their sport. Joe was not surprised. By that time, he was back in Massa-chusetts. The beautiful game was much like the rest of life. We had one thing in common – awe of Roberto Baggio, the wispy pigtailed Buddhist genius, who created beautiful moments, from nothing. “Other than my sons, he's the only man I've ever truly loved,” McGinniss wrote in an e-mail. We never met. I remember seeing a very young sportswriter with a lean and hungry look, working for the Bulletin (“In Philadelphia nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.” But not anymore, inasmuch as that paper is long defunct.) He soon wrote “The Selling of the President,” about the Nixon campaign of 1968, and later “Fatal Vision,” about the conviction of an army doctor for killing his pregnant wife and two children. Janet Malcolm and others have accused McGinniss of misleading the doctor by professing to believe him to keep his access. I have never fully understood that. As a reporter, I have sat and listened to politicians, business people, sports officials, religious leaders and entertainers tell me all kinds of stupidità, and usually I kept a straight face, The trick is to keep them talking. McGinniss and I never discussed that, or his time in Alaska, living next door to the Palins. I was jealous that he had lived in the Abruzzo. I’ve got dozens of his e-mails, deploring the gun culture in America or bad soccer on the tube, but he never bemoaned his wretched medical luck – inoperable prostate cancer, 14 months ago. “Welcome to the Hotel Carcinoma," he wrote last year. He could not hang in there for the World Cup – Pirlo and Buffon and Balotelli in Brazil. I would have loved to hear his critiques. Buon lavoro. Buona vita. Riposate in pace. People are comparing Vladimir Putin to the Russian tsar Peter the Great.
By some weird coincidence, I recently read “Peter the Great: His Life and World,” which earned Robert K. Massie the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. It is one of the greatest biographies I have ever read. Putin’s concern with expanding toward salt water may sound like Peter, but Putin does not demonstrate the curiosity and complexity of the tsar (1672-1725.) As tsar, Peter lived in the Netherlands for several years, learning how to build ships with his own hands. He encouraged European ways, first in Moscow, later in St. Petersburg. He also invaded, killed, tortured – all of that, too. In the current turmoil in Ukraine, the real comparison is between women. The other day at the naval base in Crimea, the wives of Ukrainian naval men stood watch outside the garrison. If Russian soldiers came any closer, they would have to face the women first. The stirring eyewitness report was in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/world/europe/no-bloodshed-in-a-standoff-at-an-airfield-in-ukraine.html The women had a spiritual ancestor in Catherine, the second wife of Peter the Great, who also faced potential disaster. Their union was one of the better love stories in history – a teen-age immigrant who impressed a tsar, became his wife, calmed him during his seizures, advised him, even cautioned him. And once accompanied him toward battle. In July of 1711, Peter got himself surrounded by Ottoman forces on a foray to the Pruth River, which flows from Ukraine toward the Danube. “In the center of the camp, a shallow pit had been dug to protect Catherine and her women,” Massie writes. “Surrounded by wagons and shielded from the sun by an awning, it was a frail barrier against Turkish cannonballs. Inside, Catherine waited calmly, whilke around her the other women wept.” For some reason, the Ottoman leader allowed Peter and his army to escape, in exchange for land that will sound familiar today. Peter lived to strengthen his empire, and the next year he re-married Catherine in a more formal ceremony. “Two years later, Peter further honored Catherine by creating a new decoration, the Order of St. Catherine, her patron saint, which consisted of a cross hanging on a white ribbon, inscribed with the motto, ‘Out of Love and Fidelity to My Country.’” Massie adds: “The new order, Peter declared, commemorated his wife’s role in the Pruth campaign, where she had behaved ‘not as a woman but as a man.’” The brave women outside the garrison in Crimea deserve a medal, also. So many changes in baseball. Spring training mostly has the charm of a moderate-security prison. Get your autograph through a chain-link fence.
But here, courtesy of Ed Martin, is funky old McKechnie Field in Bradenton, just as I remember it from 1980. The left-field corner. I touched on this a few weeks ago when I described how I wandered into the Pirates’ clubhouse to visit my friend Bill Robinson while the Royals took practice. When I came back on the field, I spotted a kid playing pepper with the Royals in the left-field corner. Good grief, that was our son, David, then 10. He had his glove on (the one with Jim Rice’s autograph from a chance meeting in Boston) and was scooping the ball off the ground in the time-honored ritual of baseball, when players enjoyed the fundamentals of their business. This must have gone on for 15 minutes before the Royals left the field, and David hopped back into the stands. To make sure my memory is correct, the other day I asked David to resurrect the event. This is what he wrote: “Not much to it ....Some other kid and I were in the stands long before the game, picking up all the foul balls. We were standing by the rail when the Royals pitchers came out and one of them asked us if we wanted to hop the fence. I THINK it was the one that died young, whose name I can't remember.” Dan Quisenberry? He had been a rookie the year before, was a great guy, gregarious and smart, became a good friend of Roger Angell, and was mentioned in Angell’s beautiful riff recently on the passing of time. Quisenberry died at 45 in 1998, of a brain tumor. Whether it was Quisenberry or not -- and it sounds like something he would do, give a thrill to a couple of kids in the stands -- the gesture created a legend in our household: a boy with hair down to his shoulders, playing pepper on a spring-training field in a more informal time. "Think about it,” David concluded the other day. “Not only would that never happen these days, but do ballplayers even play pepper?” They don’t even take infield practice anymore. But fans still carry their gloves to games and try to get close to the players in retro places like funky old McKechnie Field. * * * PS: David still loves the game. In case you missed it, here is his essay in last Sunday’s New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/sports/yearning-for-the-fields-of-summer.html?_r=0 PPS: The photograph of Andrew McCutchen is by Ed Martin, formerly the president of the great Abilities, Inc., in Albertson, L.I., and previously the assistant secretary of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Carter Administration. We have very classy volunteer photographers. Celia and Altenir Silva are introducing Neo to his first Carnival near their home in Rio.
Don't tell Altenir how the Knicks are doing. The World Cup arrives in three months. Boa Sorte Para o Brasil. A crisis is brewing for residents of the Greater New York Metropolitan Area, where we like to think we have the cutting edge in everything.
Even those of us who live in New York had been taking a perverse kind of pride in the revelations about Gov. Christie’s regime in New Jersey where they shut down the George Washington Bridge when they feel like it, and apparently do other nefarious things. It’s been fun watching Christie dial down his bullying as he nationally turns into what Bill Maher described as “350 pounds of toast.” But now the dreadful realization is sinking in that the governor of our neighbor to the west may not even be in the top three of wretched governors. There’s worse. Take for example the governor of Georgia, one Nathan Deal, who recently presided over a snowstorm that paralyzed the Atlanta area, during which he gave the appearance of having the IQ of a snowman. I remember it snowing before a Super Bowl in Atlanta. The governor apparently did not. However, this guy is more dangerous than we thought. Deal is currently administering the closing of rural hospitals that serve the poor. He may be able to justify this, economically and maybe even theologically: let the poor take care of themselves. For more about this guy, check this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB5NMRHIOhA Further north, the governor of North Carolina, Pat McCrory, is reaping the results of his efforts to cut back on regulation of coal waste and other ecological malpractice. Oh, yes. McCrory toiled 28 years for Duke Energy. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/us/coal-ash-spill-reveals-transformation-of-north-carolina-agency.html?_r=0 Nearby, in a similar disaster, poorly-regulated chemical containers leaked into the rivers that flow through Charleston, W. Va., Weeks after the spill, children were still getting sick when they used running water at their local schools, and people were afraid to take baths in their own homes. At press conferences, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin was inarticulate, a human shrug. Like just about all West Virginia politicians, he didn’t want to ruffle his friends in the coal industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/us/one-month-after-toxic-spill-west-virginians-face-crisis-of-confidence.html Examples like these put Chris Christie outside the top three. I can’t count Arizona governor Jan Brewer, normally addled and non-verbal, since she vetoed a bill that would have allowed residents to express their religious-based bigotry toward gays on a daily basis. Brewer only did it after Delta and Marriott and the National Football League pointed out the possible loss of considerable income. One cannot really call Brewer courageous, but her enforced practicality does take her out of the top three, for the moment. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/us/Brewer-arizona-gay-service-bill.html And you really can’t count former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell – and his well-dressed wife – who have been separately indicted for taking lucrative favors from a businessman-friend. Back where I’m from, we call people like that schnorrers. But McDonnell is no longer a governor, merely a defendant. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/us/politics/ex-governor-of-virginia-and-wife-plead-not-guilty-to-corruption.html That leaves Christie floating outside the top three, shunned in public by his own Republican governors. And this is not a political issue, not after I covered news and politics in Appalachia back in the day. I remember one election night in Kentucky, when one party or the other swept back into power. The party leader went on statewide television and bragged, “They had their turn at the trough; now it’s our turn.” Christie is now making the best of a bad situation. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/nyregion/christies-plan-to-shift-the-publics-attention-from-scandal.html?hpw&rref=nyregion Under scrutiny, Christie comes off as a provincial blowhard who hires people like the former high-school nonentity, Wildstein, and his former assistant, Kelly, who made jokes about a prominent Chabad rabbi. What a pair. Christie has been exposed as a local, a guy who barely left his home state for college in Delaware, did law school back home, and seems to ooze air, like a dysfunctional parade balloon, when he leaves his comfort zone. Remember when Tony Soprano would go into New York to shack up or have a meal or meet one of his rivals under a bridge? Tony always seemed to shrink, even if he was packing. Christie has been deflated, living out his second term. People commute to New York and Philadelphia, shrugging him off. Can’t even crack the top three. Loser. (Note: The Comment/Reply section seems to be malfunctioning for this specific posting. Maybe Wildstein did it. I am trying to reach the site administrator at Weebly. GV.) |
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