We’ll start off with a few paragraphs on the latest politician whose nasty, cynical-to-the-core nature couldn’t be concealed any longer: America’s villain of the moment, Andrew Cuomo.
Mr. Gripes has been long been fascinated how politicians, who outside of public view are often nothing but self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal personalities, manage to escape harsh scrutiny for a long time. Andrew Cuomo is just such a case in point. He’s governed New York State for 11 years, with hardly any disapproval from New Yorkers. Recently, we’ve learned, he’s been revealed as a toxic force for years – he doesn’t simply want to win against an opponent, he becomes hell-bent in attempting to destroy him or her. Not only do his antagonists feel the full wrath of Mr. Cuomo, but his own staff for years has been terrified of him– a reporter who covers Albany calls his personality ‘brutalist.’
Now, after a decade, his huge faults have emerged in a torrent. Any news that damages Mr. Cuomo is immediately out there in the public domain these days. How does concealment of a man’s obvious malevolence last for so long? Only through intimidation and fear. Cuomo’s situation now is essentially a modern version of the fairy tale ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’: a blind, apathetic, uninformed, preoccupied population simply didn’t pay enough attention to a powerful man’s abhorrent behavior, including sexual harassment of young women and inappropriate touching, who as associates of the governor, were additionally asked to wear high heels [his preference? Stilettos] and skirts in his presence.
Can you imagine a demand like that in this day and age? How do you think those women feel about suggestions from higher-ups to dress in a particular manner? Very uncomfortable, I would say. In a more equitable world, suggesting that his staff --only the youthful, pretty women of course -- wear high heels could be labeled as ‘harassment’ and is grounds for removal from office. It’s sleazy and antediluvian behavior.
Mr. Cuomo knows he’s in deep trouble, so he does what he does best: he lashes out, and uses any means to retain power. His first accuser three weeks ago right after she came forward with her claims of sexual improprieties heard from friends and acquaintances that telephone calls were being made to those friends inquiring about the accuser’s own history.
The Cuomo operatives were looking for dirt obviously. Not only that, but a letter was prepared by the Cuomo people to be circulated that contained specific actions of the accuser that could only have been gleaned from her employee personnel file. Only a vengeful, powerful boss like Cuomo could have or would have directed someone to open those files – a citizen’s privacy is a sacrosanct right, we thought. Divulging contents from an employee’s files is surely a felony, and Mr. Cuomo, if in fact he did open those files, should go to jail.
This fact jumped out at Mr. Gripes when he came across a week or two ago: fifty percent of ‘white men’ oppose the COVID Stimulus Act that just passed Congress, and then signed by President Biden. I don’t think it’s coincidental that a very similar percentage – 49% -- of all Trump voters is choosing not to be vaccinated.
This poll number is in contrast to the 70% percentage of all Americans who assert they will be vaccinated. That’s some proof that most Americans are intelligent enough to protect themselves, while a core of knee-jerk Trump supporters throw aside the strongest of all instincts, self-preservation, to slavishly abide by their Pied Piper and refuse the inoculation. They say ‘no’ to a vaccination that will protect their family, close friends and themselves. Dumb.
[A digression for a moment: the talking heads on television kept repeating the trope that 70% overall approval for the COVID legislation represented ‘strong’ support for Joe Biden. Actually, commentators on newscasts got it wrong, as usual: 70%, to Mr. Gripes, was a surprisingly low number. After all, virtually every American received an early Christmas gift: $1,400 for one person or $2,800 for couples to gleefully place in their wallets, or spend as they wish, no questions asked. Using that criterion, 95% approval would have seemed to be a more appropriate result.]
But back to the stat that 50% of white men were opposed to the COVID stimulus: the 50% male Caucasian population is against it purely for oppositional reasons – a Democratic ‘victory’ like the COVID bill very likely infuriated that fat, old white guy down there in Florida; and if he’s furious about the loss, so too are his knee-jerk supporters. Doctors to a man or woman say ‘Get the shot.’ Nope, the Trump fanatics assert, we don’t believe them; those doctors and scientists are probably all Communists –or Democrats -- anyway. One fact is unassailable: not one of those Trump puppy dogs is going to refuse that check – despite all their strident nonsense about the vaccine’s potential peril or their phony concern about the growing national debt.
I’m going to now go through an exercise outlining the fears that Republicans of all stripes, I think, worry about when paranoia possesses them: it’s a time line imagining the takeover of America:
Here goes: Biden and the Democrats begin to build momentum in the wake of the stimulus bill win….Biden gets credit from most Americans for solving the COVID national catastrophe; out of the public view, Donald Trump’s popularity diminishes, as Biden’s favorability ratings increase… The Biden approval numbers rise, slowly at first, more significantly later….Congress senses a Biden groundswell, and passes a raft of liberal legislation, like limitations on the right to bear arms, stricter environment regulations, expansion of voters’ rights, an infrastructure initiative [taxes, though, go up]…..Democrats [the ‘lefties’] start winning a lion’s share of Congressional elections… country swings more liberal and left….Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s acolytes win a batch of Representative and Senate races… Her influence in Congress becomes formidable… Congress itself turns more and more left-wing…. Biden runs again and is re-elected…Republicans are vilified and lose one election after another… AOC wields more and more power….Communists stage a coup, and take over the reins of the government… and, finally, with AOC’s blessing, Nancy Pelosi is anointed Grand Empress of the United States, with Ms Ocasio-Cortez installed as Vice Grand Empress Suprema [She reputedly is the power behind the throne.]
The National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] is the governing body of college sports for men and women. Its obvious favoritism for men’s activities over women’s is not a secret to anyone who follows college athletics. And, to be perfectly honest, it makes sense from a financial perspective: without the large revenues generated by men’s football and basketball games, the athletic departments in most of these institutions would not be unable to fund all the other lesser varsity teams, intramural competitions and club sports functions.
That is just a fact. Men’s football, of course, is a huge money maker. College football games during the fall offer geysers of television cash that goes to the NCAA coffers to apportion out. The other cash cow is men’s basketball; the annual tournament going on right now will bring in $1 billion just for television rights to this event. The women’s NCAA basketball tournament that’s going on simultaneously? It will lose money.
[An opinion: to this observer, at the risk of sounding like a troglodyte, women’s basketball is fundamentally unwatchable -- compared with the men, the players seem distressingly slow, turnovers are too frequent, the actual game action can be very sloppy, and, let’s not forget, one of the most exciting plays in basketball – soaring above the basket rim and ‘dunking’ the ball down into the basket -- rarely occurs in women’s basketball; the ascending vertical leap, an important factor in popularizing the men’s game, is simply lacking in women’s games.
The competition among teams is meager as well, as there are not enough top-notch teams that could win the tournament; in fact, on the first day of the women’s tournament, there were two games in which the loser was beaten by almost 50 points! It’s been my belief for a long time that unless women’s sports competitions can create male fans in abundance, they will never be successful and make money. Women, to their credit, eschew spectator sports mostly, so it is the men who are needed to fill the arenas, and generate ticket sales.]
But those problems are a topic for another time. Here I’d like to address a huge problem for the NCAA: the inability to tell the truth about the chasm between the men and the women sports. Perhaps buffeted by the swirling political winds, virtually everything written about women’s sport these days is influenced by gender dynamics.
But that impossible issue is not my focus here: it’s the blatant hypocrisy of the NCAA that infuriates Mr. Gripes. Instead of dealing directly with the dilemma of revenue sharing when one side can’t contribute a dime to the general pot, the NCAA disingenuously talks about the ‘empowerment’ of the collegiate female ‘student-athlete’, and chatters ad infinitum of the ‘equality’ and ‘parity‘ between the sexes as to the disbursement of funding. That’s a bold-face lie.
This year, San Antonio and Indianapolis are the hosts for the men’s and women’s tournaments, and team players for both the women’s and men’s tournaments are sequestered in just one hotel in each city due to Covid precautions. Workout and training facilities had to be constructed in each hotel so players would not have to venture outdoors and possibly contract the virus. Those ballroom ‘gyms’ inadvertently exposed the vast chasm between the treatments of men versus women by the NCAA. It’s no longer a secret as to the decidedly inferior treatment women are accorded by the association.
The men’s facility in their Indianapolis hotel resembles an airplane hangar in terms of square footage – a huge space outfitted in the newest exercise and weight machines including Nautilus apparatus, stationary and elliptical bikes, and free-weight stations spread out all over the floor. A gorgeous array for the male players, rivaling the best of private gyms.
One enterprising woman player, though, released videos of the men’s facility versus the women’s: the contrast was astounding: compared with the men’s workout area, the women were accorded one tiny piece of real estate: they were given a dozen or so hand weights, up to thirty pounds, stacked in a pile. That miniscule stack could have fit on a small card table, and that was to be the women’s ‘gym.’ All of it.
The NCCA was caught with their pants down. Fumbling for a response to legitimate outcries from the women’s side, they asserted ‘there was not any available space’ for a comparable workout area for the women. Well, that turned out to be another lie, as the same woman player who furnished the original film videotaped later a huge empty room in the women’s hotel, equivalent in floor space to the men’s spacious area.
The ongoing contretemps between the men and women showcases the blatant falsehoods that the NCAA promotes: all the chatter about equal rights and ‘perks’ for women is pure BS. The NCAA’s interests, despite their professed desire to treat the sexes equally, are totally aligned with men’s athletics; ‘we’ll keep the billion-dollar gravy train going, and just humor the women along.’
The association should just drop their malarkey about equivalence. There is none, and there won’t be until women ‘earn’ as much money as the men. That’s the stark reality, and the NCAA overlords should stop pretending otherwise. They sure as hell are not fooling the women players, who almost certainly have dealt with lies out of the mouths of men all their lives.
‘Mr. Gripes’
March 27, 2021
By Jim Israel
