Crybabies…We Americans have become a country of whining crybabies.
‘Aw, Mommy, why do I have to wear a mask? I don’t feel sick.
‘But a mask prevents bad germs that may be in your body, Tommy, from spreading to all your friends, and making them sick.’
‘But I can’t even see my friends and play with them. It’s not fair.’
Tommy’s assessment of the situation is precisely what the preposterous House representative, Jim Jordan, R, Ohio, would like to advocate to all those equivocating Americans out there in the hinterlands.
‘They [Fauci and Biden] are taking our freedoms away,’ Mr. Jordan exclaims. ‘We can’t even enjoy the basic right of freedom of assembly because of the limitations on our movements due to ridiculous COVID restrictions.’
To Mr. Gripes, Mr. Jordan is nothing but a sycophantic, gutless coward, taking orders from his cranky headmaster down in Florida. He yells and screams that Dr. Fauci doesn’t know what he is talking about; Fauci’s making things up, presumably because the doctor is some kind of socialist. But let’s be real, and stop the grandstanding: Mr. Jordan and his family, I’ll bet dollars to donuts, had their full doses of vaccinations a few months ago, and are now protected from the virus. He’s playing games with his constituents, to their potential peril.
That’s the standard bellow now from crybaby Republicans – our ‘freedoms’ have been whittled away by all the COVID restrictions. What a crock of crap. ‘Freedoms going away? No one’s breaking into your house at night, are they? No one’s arresting anyone for not getting the vaccination, right? You’re not being hauled off to prison for promoting the big lie and weakening our democracy, are you? Of course not. You’re allowed to say whatever crazy sh_t you want to, and no one putting cuffs on you.
Besides, what is the big deal about wearing a mask? We put it on when we’re in a restaurant, or among a gathering of strangers, and then basically forget about it. An infringement of our basic rights? Horse manure. Act like an adult, Jim Jordan, and sacrifice just a little for the general health of your neighbors and countrymen.
It is government representatives such as Mr. Jordan that’s made Mr. Gripes despair of our democracy. Can’t we get past all this acrimony and just start straightening out the country? We have so much to do, and very little time to accomplish what we must to survive as a functioning democracy. As we all can attest to lately, democracy is as fragile as an orchid, and we must be vigilant in preserving it. It can all disappear very, very quickly [Look at Venezuela – its once flourishing democracy now is akin to a animal carcass kicked to the side of the road.] Jim Jordan, Donald Trump and their ignorant clones have proliferated over the past couple of decades, and what they’re doing now is assaulting the beautiful American experiment of a people’s democracy.
During World War II, sixteen million [!] men and women enlisted or were drafted into the armed forces. Of that number, how many do you think, readers, carried on about their ‘freedoms’ being taken away because of the army experience? Sure, the young men must have complained loudly to anyone who would listen – after all, they were vociferous Americans. But guess what? After all the complaining, the men simply buckled up their belts, loaded up their weapons, and beat the hell out of the Germans across Europe and the Japanese across the Pacific – and won the war.
What a difference 75 years make: Mr. Jordan and the other pathetic Trump sissies yell and bitch about their ‘freedoms’ being taken from them– free of any consequences for spewing the lies, it may appear that their supporters will never desert them. But, one day…the chickens will come home to roost – maybe their grandchildren will rise up and ask how could Jordan, et alia have risked the lives of Americans who could have been vaccinated, if told to do so. Jim Jordan, afraid of his own shadow, is a fraud.
Mickey Mantle: Rags-to-Riches-to-??....A former New York Times sportswriter, George Vecsey, wrote, ‘The upward mobility of youth – especially an athlete in the purest, unthreatening form – has always been part of American mythology.’
The tale is always epic: an innocent and young athlete, born under dire, penurious circumstances, is destined to endure a life of hardship and crushed dreams, yet manages to crawl out from under a shanty-town slag pile of rubble, and, realizing a real-time miracle, achieves the American dream of unimaginable fame and fortune.
Mickey Mantle, a childhood hero of Mr. Gripes, personifies the rags-to-riches myth of America.
Raised in eastern Oklahoma amid zinc-and-coal mines, Mickey Mantle learned early on about the burdened generations of Mantle men who could not escape the dreary, dark, cruel, and dangerous mines. Either the mines will kill you in a collapsing disaster, or you will die at a young age from debilitating lung disease. Dying before their time was the miner’s fate.
One of the Mantle legends – truthful, perhaps – is that at nine or ten years ago, his father took him down a mile into the mines for his first time. His reaction? The experience traumatized him. Terrified, he told his mother he would never again go down there again for the rest of his life – and he didn’t.
Mickey Mantle escaped. Not all by just benevolent fate, of course. Extraordinary talent and luck and a father’s sacrifices helped. For one thing, his body was ideal for playing baseball –– huge shoulders, a massive torso and powerful legs [he was only 5’10”, but that shortened stature combined with extraordinary musculature resulted in an explosive swing. [Here’s a description of one of his bombs: Against Paul Foytack of the Detroit Tigers, at Briggs Stadium in September 1960, Mickey Mantle hit a ball over the right field upper deck, over the roof façade, over the street just outside the ballpark, and landed in a lumber yard across the street – a ridiculous 643 feet from home plate!]
His father, Mutt, likely exhausted from a day in the mines, nevertheless worked with Mickey every afternoon after he got home; he pitched to Mantle who batted left handed against his right-handed father, and, then, stepping across home plate, hit from the right side against his left-handed uncle. Those lessons taught Mickey to hit from both sides of home plate – with that instruction, he became the greatest switch hitter in the history of baseball.
Later on, at 16 or 17, Mickey Mantle’s lifelong history of momentous highs and crushing lows took on operatic proportions. Here’s a little of that epic tale:
Playing one Saturday in a sandlot game [the equivalent of Little League in those days], Mantle was observed by a baseball scout only there to assess a ballplayer on the other team; Mickey managed to hit three home runs, exhibit great speed in stealing bases, and make several impressive plays defensively. The scout happened to be in the employ of the New York Yankees. Mantle was signed soon after. He was on his way to the great city, a very lucky break.
He made it to the Big Leagues and Yankee Stadium by a callow age of 19. He played in his first World Series the next year. He had escaped from a midnight-black, bleak life toiling in the mines, and in a blink of an eye, under a brilliant sun, he was patrolling the centerfield expanse in Yankee Stadium every afternoon. A journey literally from Hell to Heaven. Rags-to-riches, indeed.
Often, though, Mickey Mantle seemed cursed, too. In that World Series, chasing a fly ball in the outfield in Yankee Stadium, Mantle tripped over a sprinkler cover, and tore up his knee permanently. In those days, reconstructive knee surgery didn’t exist. As great as he became, that injury hobbled him for the rest of his career, and he never reached his full potential.
This chapter of his fabled life doesn’t end there, unfortunately. Driven to the hospital for x-rays on his damaged knee, Mickey leaned on his father’s shoulder for support as he emerged from the automobile. His father crumbled to the ground. Both son and father became patients, lying in adjoining beds – Mantle’s dad was soon diagnosed with a type of fatal bone cancer, and never really returned home for any extended stay, dying a year later, at 40. [Mickey’s father, an uncle, and two of his sons all died of cancer at young ages.] Mickey Mantle, for all his glories, his money, his women, lived a tragic, cursed life in many ways; in fact, at the end of his life, an alcoholic dying of liver cancer, Mickey Mantle assessed his life as a huge disappointment.
But, my God, he meant everything to me – and to millions of other boys of the ‘50’s -- for years.
The longer vaccinations are available for the public, the more incensed Mr. Gripes becomes at the sheer stupidity at the resisters. Yes, I understand the depth of a distrust of government officials for many years, and yes, many individuals don’t understand science, and therefore reject scientific discovery out of hand.
But, come on, folks. Can’t you take a look at the basic facts, and put your skepticism aside? Getting a vaccine might save your life. Mr. Gripes does not have any patience with ignorance.
I listened yesterday to an argument put forth by a college student – at Rutgers – who chooses not to be vaccinated – this despite a mandate issued by the college that students ‘must’ be inoculated before they can matriculate in the fall.
One of her justifications for her stance is that the vaccine is still in an ‘experimental’ stage. ‘Experimental!?’ Give me a break. How many shots have been administered in this country in the last two or three months? A total of 284 million doses have been given to Americans, and 130 million citizens are now fully vaccinated! Have we heard of many life-or-death problems stemming from the giant effort? Nope. Some experiment.
Whatever the reason for this student’s resistance to the vaccine, it’s got nothing to do with an ‘experimental’ stage. And this student was so adamant and confident in her fallacious reasoning, and so sure of herself. She was in fact exhibiting that worldwide phenomenon: the arrogance of youth.
[A slight digression: Mr. Gripes, if it were within his power, would mandate that ALL students at every university who’s returning to campus get the vaccine. No ‘ifs, ands or buts.’]
And guess what? I’ll bet every university president, if he could make a decision on a ‘vaccine for all’ without interference from external pressures, would opt for blanket compulsory coverage. It would make their job so much easier.
College life, after all, is about congregation, the mingling of young people. That’s the very marrow of the college experience. If the unvaccinated are allowed to ‘mingle’ within the college setting, that’s a ‘set-up’ for continued COVID illness among the students, and potentially a real medical calamity.
As sensible as a mandate would be, it’s not possible in this age: politics always intrudes, and it has already: public state universities with Republican governments are starting to legislate against ‘compulsory’ mandates. You know a huge battle is brewing.
One last opinion regarding the protesting Rutgers student: she says, ‘If they won’t let me enroll, I’ll just go somewhere else. ’ You think so? Not a wise career move: for one thing, she’d be leaving Rutgers, a fine university, and end up God knows where. Maybe Egg Harbor Community College?
There’ll be one individual, though, in the college environs who will surely be glad she’s leaving: the Dean. Under his breath, he’ll quietly mutter, ‘So long…and good riddance. One problem eliminated.’
By Jim Israel
Mr. Gripes
May 24, 2021
