The e-mail spam flood from Donald Trump and his minions ceased a week or two before that administration did but that flow was replaced by a very similar stream — similar in rhetoric and format — from the Republican National Committee. These aren't as amusing so I've blocked them.
Not thinking (much) about Trump has been good for my sleep and, I'd like to think, for all of us. But I don't know what the hell Joe Biden thinks he's doing all day holding planning meetings and signing executive orders. Why isn't he out on the golf course all day, stopping only to tweet childish insults at anyone who doesn't worship him? The nerve of that guy.
Hank Aaron died the other day. Knowing as little as I do about baseball, I'm not able to write any sort of valid tribute to him as a player. Ah, but I do know he wrested the title of Baseball's Home Run King from Babe Ruth and held it for something like three decades…and I know there was a strong burst of racist anger when he did this.
A few days before he tied the old record, I found myself in a bar — a very rare occurrence — near someone whose purchases there were making up for my abstinence and that of about ten other folks. This very loud, very drunk person was holding forth on how Mr. Aaron should "know his place." That term was only uttered about eighty times, which was a few less than the accompanying "N-word."
Apparently, Aaron's "place" was to not play to the best of his ability…an odd position for the bombed bigot who also announced that he always bet serious money on the Braves. You'd have thought he'd have liked the concept of a Braves batter belting one over the left field fence or wherever Aaron hit that one. But no. Only if that Braves batter had been a white guy. It made about as much sense as that kind of hatred ever does.
I never saw Hank Aaron play and I know very little else about his career other than that it was long and that The Babe's wasn't the only record that got shattered. But merely based on how mad he must have made that guy in the bar when he did beat Ruth's record, I liked Mr. Henry Aaron a lot.