George Will should undress the GOP as bigots of baseball’s past

(George Will attending a  Nationals-Cardinals baseball game in 2006. Photo: Wikipedia Commons.)

I love George Will.

Like President Barack Obama, he’s a clean man.  Beyond a full career reporting on politics is his well known love of baseball.  In Ken Burns documentary, ‘Baseball’, his thorough description of Willie Mays play undressed the stereotypes in that sport and America in that time.  Sadly, stereotypes like those still exist and not always in the minds of those you’d expect.

Michael Johnson, formerly the world’s fastest runner, said his African genes is the secret behind his speed, setting off a sea of controversy. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons.)

Olympian sprinter Michael Johnson has recently given an opinion, rekindling those same stereotypes in claiming his West African heritage has given him a superior gene and has afforded him such superhuman speed.  If his thinking is what motivates him, who cares?  He is still a brilliant runner.  In many ways, he is the same as hockey player Alex Ovechkin, a child of two Soviet Olympians, who has referred to himself as a “Russian machine.”  Ironically, we know happens with Russian machines.  They break down.

Would I prefer to see confident, modest men like Jesse Owens and Marty Glickman represent the United States?  Sure.  Who wouldn’t?  In the end, the now retired Michael Johnson is, without question a man whose talent and heart to be the best was always worth tuning in for.

With baseball, Mr. Will goes wisely to the unraveling of fear.  In detailing the brilliant nuance with which Willie Mays played the game, he gave us reason to believe Mays was perhaps the smartest and most complete player ever.  Oh, if only Mr. Will would stick to baseball and Mr. Johnson to track.

Were he a rookie writer, Mr. Will would be hard pressed to find a paying job within today’s reaction-first GOP.  Yet, as a veteran, he still manages to keep a place even as he has taken some unpopular stands that the GOP often sees as tarnishing their mission to power.  Even so, Mr. Will mostly holds true to his conservative credo.

Will’s recent column about how regulation is forever stifling business chose in this case to defend the Navajo of Arizona.  That the Navajo are being singled out by this administration for having a coal fired plant on their reservation that should somehow not come under newer regulations to ensure cleaner air.

Yosef Abrahamson offers hope for future generations. (Courtesy photo.)

If I had a dime for every time the GOP and its scribes denied the importance of environmental regulation, I’d be Mitt Romney.  I’d also being re-jiggering a ’58 Chevy like those guys in Havana because that’s where we’d be and that’s where we’re headed if we don’t modernize.

In the spring, George Will ran dead opposite to the “head in the sand” practice within the GOP leadership when conflict arose.  Will is the man who, in calling out the Republican Party, said “the GOP wants to bomb Iran but is afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

He was referencing that radio host calling a Georgetown Law student who testified before an ad hoc Congressional committee a “slut.”  So, while there isn’t even a modicum of sanity or guts in today’s GOP and it’s elaborators, there is just a dash with George Will.  And in that dash he exposes the crux of today’s GOP:  myopic, led by the unelected, humorless, uncompromising and sometimes bordering on paranoid.

The Democratic Party, for all it’s imperfections and they are many, are the defacto party of everybody else.  While the current two-party divide may really be about the endless proxy war and dance over abortion, what is really at stake for Democrats is whether they can show they are united in themselves?

As the defacto party of everybody else, we Democrats include all, even if it divides us.  We’re not divided in our dislike of the GOP but we are divided in how we view ourselves.  There is a difference between celebrating differences and thinking differently. We too often view ourselves, despite President Obama’s best efforts, as white Democrats, black Democrats, Latino Democrats (ethnocentrically spoken) and lesbian Democrats separate simply from gay Democrats.  It’s exhausting!  Does being born white, gay, Latino, black or lesbian supercede anyone’s ability to think for themselves as a human first?

Yosef Abrahamson is from Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  He is a young fella who is both black and an orthodox Jew.  It was he who sought to heal the long simmering feud between the two communities in that part of New York City.  At 16, he boldly wrote an essay in which he described the deficiencies and the needs of both communities so that each could succeed.  And as his rabbi said of young Abrahamson, “Some people become leaders.  Some are drafted.  We are drafting him.” We forget that what Rosa Parks did, in refusing the status quo, she did for me as well as black Americans.  We forget that Philip Berrigan, as a Josephite priest who protested the Vietnam War here in Baltimore by burning draft files, did so for everyone, not just Catholics.

Nuns on the bus are not afraid to speak out to those whose voices are rarely heard. (Billboard photo.)

We can be even more hopeful with the arrival, earlier this month, of the “Nuns on the Bus” to Washington, D.C.  They came to the nation’s capital to protest Republican Paul Ryan’s budget that seeks to drastically slash funding for the poor.  These women do this in open opposition to Pope Benedict for they believe this budget proposal goes against the mission of the church to serve the poor.  And, they believe Mr. Ryan, as a Catholic should know this.

Leave the victimhood to the GOP.  This liberal believes that allowing such cynical and self-fulfilling interpretations such as “critical race theory” are dangerous.  That such theories of what we believe of this republic will only provide a mental insurance policy when we fail to stick together and believe in each other.  Do I need to relay the litany of achievement that this party has brought to this nation for its betterment?

The GOP talks more tripe than a street corner pimp.  Once again, in seeking to free Americans from the ‘tyranny’ of legally passed legislation, one half of Congress has voted to repeal the federal health care mandate.  They do this knowing they have no answer for Americans without insurance or for the government that has to foot the bill for the uninsured.

Rolling with nuns to protest budget cuts impacting the poor. Will the GOP listen? (PR Watch)

Theirs is a pathetic effort to simply undermine President Obama as they seek his job.  This is the party that tried to take credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.  When even Pakistani cab drivers are elated to live in a world without its wicked witch, the GOP claims it was their efforts, but not Obama’s, which resulted in the al Qaida leader’s demise.

At times like these, I look at George Will and think maybe I’m seeing Dana Carvey in “Wayne’s World.”  I see him in a long blonde wig, nervously repeating, “we fear change.”  If only Mr. Will would undress these guys as he did the bigots of baseball’s past.   When he does, I cannot help but think he’ll speak for a large percentage of Republicans, who expect their leaders to the bidding of the people, not their puppet masters.

In the meantime, I’ll hold kindly to the image of a pack of nuns parading in sweltering heat in front of the Capitol and what they stood for.  Just like young Abrahamson, Berrigan and Parks before them, they stood for me.