Reviews

Hillary Clinton on the Line, Shooting One

7/22/2016

Humanity Teetering on the Rim

Just wonderful. The United States has a presidential candidate who seems to have major psychological and developmental problems. (Plus, he’s obnoxious.)

I couldn’t watch Thursday night. Turned on classical music on WQXR.

However, I am vastly reassured by the latest reckoning by the Ouija Board people at the Times who have come up with odds on the presidential election.

Hillary Clinton – we are told – has a three-quarters chance of winning the election.
That sounds great.

Then I read that this is the equivalent of the foul-shooting percentage in the National Basketball Association.

I did not know that numbers people had a sense of humor and could drop a sly line like that in the middle of a story.

We do use a lot of sports metaphors in this country, our brains perhaps terminally addled by reality shows and sports broadcasting.

Remember President Nixon, when anti-war protesters flocked to Washington, how he slipped down to the encampments to talk to them, using sports nicknames to relate to the young crowd: What college do you attend? Syracuse? Oh, the Orangemen. Seriously. It really happened.
Back in May, when this still seemed vaguely amusing, the Washington Post described a ploy by Trump as a Hail-Mary pass.
Trump’s opinion that the NFL was getting too soft seemed to be big news. (Ridiculous. The NFL only needed a decade to get rid of a thoroughly unqualified doctor.)
And the other day, when Trump talked about brow-beating NATO allies as if they were business partners he could scalp, old Mush-Mouth McConnell called it “a rookie mistake.” No, a rookie mistake is when a kid pinch-runner gets picked off first base.

Now there is the NY Times observation comparing Hillary Clinton’s chances with the NBA’s overall foul-shooting percentage -- .757 on this recently-concluded season.

I was of course reassured by the prospect of Hillary Clinton, steely-eyed survivor of spurious charges, strong-minded debater who dribbled rings around Congressional pinheads like Trey Gowdy, fierce rebounder who held off Bernie (Mr. Elbows) Sanders in the primaries, now saving the day for humanity.

In my fevered brain, in the championship final, Clinton gets fouled by Mad Dog Trump, the designated hacker from the Dark Side, who mysteriously never fouls out of games despite the dirty fouls he constantly commits.

The ref signals: one shot.

To let her think a bit, the Dark Side calls time out. Both teams repair to their benches. The joint is going nuts.

Her supporters keep telling us that in the clutch Hillary never misses. (“You should have seen the time she threw the vase at me,” her husband often brags.)

Coach looks at her and says, “Nothing to it, Big Lady. Over and in. Then we pop the Champagne.” In the stands, my knees start knocking like castanets.

When do we wake up?

bruce

7/22/2016 11:36:20 am

George,

i'm curious to see how Clinton responds at the convention.

rationality doesn't seem to work with enough of the 'folks'.

one positive thing, from my point of view, is that the family is already well known enough that we won't have those mawkish comments about 'my mom was the best mom in the whole world' or 'i'd be lost without my children' or the hard scrabble only in America stories about starting out poor and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps etc.

ah. %@$#. I forgot about the VP intro....so much for that.

and a piece of advice for you George.....trump takes names. make sure you have a safe haven if he's the next potus.

finally, i'm reminded of this when I think of trump style modesty.....

'I've talked about myself enough. now you talk about me'..

bruce

George Vecsey

7/22/2016 01:36:14 pm

Bruce, we here in the US of A don't have to take advice from little nations like Canada.
Make sure your country is paid up, or Trump won't defend it. He's a veteran of VD -- not VN, but VD.
He'll shut down the 38th Parallel, too, to keep unpatriotic Americans from slipping across the border for your dreadful medical care and tainted drugs.
GV

bruce

7/22/2016 03:14:57 pm

George,

no problem. we should have our wall built by then.

I think the 38th parallel would be a bit too south tho, no?

bruce

George Vecsey

7/22/2016 06:46:25 pm

Bruce, are you saying somebody might key my car next time I park in front of TrumpHaus? It would be hard to tell on my junker. GV

bruce

7/22/2016 06:51:41 pm

George,

that's unlikely if it's an 'merikan ve hic ul.

however, if it's one from those girly European countries....

Joshua Rubin

7/22/2016 12:35:53 pm

George, I do love the image of HRC at the line shooting once with the game in the balance. She does seem to have ice water in her veins when grilled by GOP congressional committees,so a good choice to take the last shot. the overall scouting report: Deep knowledge of the game, prone to unforced turnovers, does not have good move to her left, likes to take the big shot.

Trying to figure out who the real NBA analogue is to ""Mad Dog trump" -- the slightly insane, dirty pool big man who somehow avoids fouling out. Rodman perhaps?

The use of sports cliches in politics is, of course, cliched, Always nice to see an original use.

George Vecsey

7/22/2016 01:41:35 pm

Josh, thanks.
There was Fred (Mad Dog) Carter, thoroughly rational guard.
Rodman was a brilliant athlete, much like Willie Mays, mastered angles for rebounds like Bill Russell. Much smarter in his chosen field than Trump in his.
Back in the old NBA -- I saw those days -- Al mcGuire would hack away at Cousy, pick up 4-5 even 6 fouls, and generally beat up on his Queens pal. I think he once said, "I own Bob Cousy." Ha. But Al was a much better person than Trump, witty, observant, zest for life.
But there were some hackers back in the day -- Syracuse, Rochester, not that Trump has a physical bone in his body. He is more like a rich fan in the first row, urging others to shed the blood.
GV

Joshua Rubin

7/22/2016 02:04:22 pm

My apologies to The Worm.

I don't go back to the Cousy days. I was not quite 7 when my dad let me stay up to see game 7 in 1970, the Willis Reed game, though I didn't quite get it yet. I first really paid attention to the Frazier/Monroe Knicks - that was a smooooth backcourt. To this day, i like a team that passes, boards and plays good team D. I am not much for pyrotechnics.

First year of law school, retiring NYU prez John Sexton was my Civ Pro professor. When there was a clever answer to be had, he would ask "what's the 'Earl the Pearl' move in this case?" Sadly, this was 1992, so only a handful of us knew what he meant. Sexton loved hoops and had a sunday morning 4 on 4 game in the "Little Gym" at NYU. One time I played and he had as a guest Ken Charles, who once played for the old Buffalo Braves in the NBA (and Fordham before that).

Hansen Alexander

7/22/2016 02:55:59 pm

Well, George, my take comes from my version of Trump's speech from last night:

DONALD TRUMP’S REAL ACCEPATNNCE SPEECH FOUND!

Read the full draft of Trump’s speech as prepared for delivery below. Note that the remarks are subject to change:
Friends, delegates and fellow Americans: I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination as the candidate of The White Peoples Party.
I will present the facts plainly and honestly. We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.
I know my father Fred Trump would be so proud of me tonight, not only because I always know everything about everything, but because I have followed in his footsteps as a person who attended meetings of the KKK, even though I’m only a wannabee George Wallace.
So if you want to hear the corporate spin of most of my campaign donors, the carefully-crafted lies of my speechwriters, and the media myths that Fox Television is spinning, go watch the Democrats who are holding their convention next week.
But here, at our convention, there will be no lies. These are the facts:
Decades of progress made in bringing down crime by President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama are now being reversed by this black President who employed that crooked Hillary for four years, from 2008-2012.
Again, I will tell you the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and your morning newspaper: Nearly Four in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58% of African American youth are not employed. 2 million more Latinos are in poverty today than when the President took his oath of office less than eight years ago. This situation is so bad that almost all those African-American children and 2 million Latinos in poverty are voting for that successor to the black guy, Crooked Hillary.
Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in Third World condition, and forty-three million Americans are on food stamps, even though my fellow members of the White Peoples Party voted against proposals to deal with those problems.
Now let us consider the state of affairs abroad. In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. Therefore the evidence is clear, my fellow members of the White People’s Party. Crooked Hillary not only created ISIS all by herself, she is its leader.
Furthermore, after four years of Hillary Clinton no longer being Secretary of State, ISIS has spread across the region, and the world.
I AM YOUR VOICE, my fellow White People.
And when a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can’t see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence –just to ruin her chance ever to be President-- I know that corruption has reached a level like never before.
I have joined the political arena so that the powerful, billionaire real estate developers can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves
I will restore law and order in our country by making sure non policeman have as many guns permitted by the Second Amendment as they can possibly buy.
Any non-White Person who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never will be.
Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American, Latino workers, but not Chinese and Russian immigrants, because White People work harder.
Yet Hillary Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness. She will be out in the street shooting cops herself.
I have made and lost billions of dollars in business making deals – now I’m going to make our country rich again.
I’m going to bring back jobs to Ohio, a state I desperately need to win to get this gig, and Pennsylvania, which I also desperately need to win, and West Virginia where hopefully the evangelical vote will save my ass too, and I’m going to do it by hiring 100,000 coal miners, even though presidents have no control over such hires and even though there is no world market for coal in the near future.
We are going to start building and making things again in the White Peoples America, even though I have not the faintest idea what we will make and neither does anybody else.
While Hillary Clinton plans a massive tax increase, I have proposed the largest tax reduction of any candidate who has declared for the presidential race this year –which means billions less to pay for anything, and billions more in the pockets of rich people like myself, because face it, we pay more than half of the taxes anyway.
America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world. Reducing taxes will cause new companies and new jobs to come roaring back into our country. Actually that’s a total lie, we have one of the lowest tax rates in the world, but who cares? My White People supporters will believe ANYTHING I TELL THEM.

George Vecsey

7/22/2016 06:48:41 pm

Hansen, nice work, you capture the voice quite well.
He and Jim Cramer and Sarah Palin all have that discordant sound.
Birds of a feather,
GV

Alan Rubin link

7/22/2016 07:16:47 pm

At this stage of the presidential campaign, when polls are not normally as meaningful as those during the head to head phases, particularly in the final weeks---I am not comforted by Clinton currently poling at about 75%.

This suggests that Trump has a 25% chance of winning. I look at this the same as I do weather forecasts. In the past three weeks, chance of rain as high as 70% was predicted for nine days goalkeeper camps. My fairly reliable iPhone weather app adjusted almost daily. The net result was non rain.

The 70% foul shooting rate is the same as that for the conversion of soccer penalty kicks. I have no idea why this is relevant, but statistics from two major sports should ad credibility to the Clinton analysis.

The RNC should serve as an excellent template on what the Democrats and Clinton need to address to present her has a knowledgeable caring candidate.

No question that she is flawed, but has there ever been a presidential candidate who was not?

On a more interesting note, I loved all the flashbacks to up-tempo give and go basketball. I was an avid basketball fan from junior high school until the current backing in and individualistic style emerged.

I was a big CCNY fan as my older sister was dating a CCNY student. NYC was the center of basketball then, although there were other great teams around the country. I watched all their televised games and listened to the others on the radio. I never got a a game at the garden as Josh’ grandmother was not as lenient about school nights.

A recently released Israeli called “On the Map” is a must see for all old-school basketball fans. In addition to being an uplifting David-Goliath story, it had great end to end basketball.

The story takes place in 1977, the year that USSR had a few seconds to the clock to defeat the USA in the Olympic finals.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/197873/the-basketball-victory-that-put-israel-on-the-map

Brian Savin

7/23/2016 06:45:12 am

"Where have you done, Joe DiMaggio?" -- eh? I'm still pushing for the Sandy Alderson, Terry Collins ticket of GENUINE change on the Party like We Won voting line.

Turning to lesser sports, I'm afraid Trump wins the pick up hoop game. He's chosen to fill out his starting lineup with four of his kids, and every one of them is fast, keen-eyed and looks good on a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover. Hillary? Her hubby Bubba? Some guy named Kaine who doesn't seem quite able? Maybe if she can coax Bill Bradley out of retirement......

The one good thing Trump has done is give a valuable lesson to Phil Jackson on how to quickly blow up a bad team and start over. You strip any talent away from your alleged star and put him out there to perform and watch him fail miserably. What Trump did to Ted Cruz, Jackson should do to Carmelo Anthony.

George Vecsey

7/23/2016 10:12:34 am

Brian, how many more years does Jackson get to expose Anthony?
Casey used to say, "Let me play him for a week and I can trade him."
Doesn't seem to be working for Trump or Melo.
Great pun on Kaine.
Tell you who is not Able: the hack who did Kaine's face over.
Yikes.
GV

John McDermott link

7/23/2016 11:20:49 am

There's so much I could say about Trump and what fraud and a danger he is. But you've probably heard that over and over by now. So I'll we just make one very personal observation about him. He never would have survived in the Philadelphia neighborhood where I grew up(mostly because he was a spoiled rich punk). He would have had his lunch money and his fancy shoes regularly taken away from him.

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Hillary Clinton on the Line, Shooting One

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