If My Mom Let Me Use the Word, I'd Say This Really Sucks!

I'm looking out my office window on this fine fall day. The sky is blue, there are a few streaky clouds, and the wind is whipping hard enough to convince my silver maple that it really is autumn, and it's about time it dropped its leaves. It is the kind of day where I am prone to feel no malice toward any other person. It's a shame I read the POST STANDARD this morning. Two stories in two different sections of the newspaper suggested I was truly a wimp to sit in my chair and feel that things were O.K. with the world. There are plenty of people to hate out there, and one need not travel to the Middle East to find them.

Shame on me, but when I read the morning paper, I read the sports section first. I read Dave Rahme's lucid and sensitive article "Marrone stands up for Paulus," in which Doug Marrone confronts the issue of the boo-birds, who snarl and howl at Greg Paulus each time he takes the field. Even though this fine coach and fine man offers his broad shoulders to bear the brunt of the bleacher nuts' venom, and, even though, Paulus claims to be deaf to their shouts, everyone with a brain knows those shouts hurt both coach and quarterback. It's ironic that the boo-birds, so desperate for a win to validate whatever it is they need validating, take it out on the young man who is trying harder than anyone else to get that win for them.

After my sports fix, I went to Section A and found on page 5 an article by Michelle Breidenbach entitled " 'Hate, lies,' wore her down, Scozzafava says.' " In this account, I got to read about hatespeak on a national level. Dede Scozzafava seems to be a good person, a caring civic leader, and a person of conscience. She's one of those ladies about whom might be said, "She is her own woman." For being an independent-minded Republican she was scourged nationally by her own party. We're used to this Republican nasty noise from Rush and Bill and their ilk, and it isn't surprising. I was most bothered by the man who called Scozzafava from Oregon and had the audacity to try to beat her up with God. Let me say that I have dozens of fine friends who are fine people and loyal republicans and I honor their right to their political beliefs, but the lunatic fringe is apparently now the voice of the party, and like the boo-birds in the Dome, they are so in need of validation by winning something, that they attacked the fine Republican woman, who was trying to get that for them.

I blog for the fun of it. After reading the two aforementioned stories and thinking about how they had taken some of the joy out of this autumn day, I went back to the archives of "The Blue Moon Grille," my blog. On September 6, 2009, I wrote about attending the first SU football game of the season. My wife and I gave up our season football tickets years ago, not so much because we'd lost interest, but more because of the high DPR ratio in our section. If you aren't familiar with the DPR, that's the "drunks per row." On that Sunday two months ago, I wrote, "Behind me sat the doofus, a fellow who announced loudly from the beginning that he didn't like Greg Paulus or Doug Marrone even though he loved the Orange. He was just like a Republican pulling for the president to fail." He wanted his team to win, but he didn't want those people he didn't like to be part of that success. Those two little sentences were just a little thought I tossed out while talking about the whole game experience, which I really enjoyed. Today they don't seem so little.