The Death of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg

 I am angry with you, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. I feared this was going to happen.

Despite what I'm sure were your best and highest intentions, you succumbed to the Trump disease. The same selfish, megalomaniacal impulses so vividly displayed by the most destructive man ever to inhabit the White House.

You knew you were sick. You knew your time was limited. And yet you persisted in holding your seat on the Supreme Court even at the risk of allowing Donald Trump to nominate your successor.

And exactly who did you imagine he would replace you with? A radicalized socialist feminist?

Thanks to you and your outsized ego, Sir Lies-A-Lot is now in a position to install a third justice (in a single term!) to the Supreme Court.

I politely inquire: exactly what were you thinking?

While I admire your tenacity and your dedication and your passion, your inability to step-down from the Court despite your obvious ailments will always be a black mark against you. You have empowered our mortal enemy for years, if not decades, to come.

Is it too much to hope Democrats can pull a Mitch McConnell-like stunt and force Congress to wait until after the next election to replace her?

Of course it is.

Mourning Mr. Hibbert

You've probably heard by now of the death of Toots Hibbert, lead vocalist of the seminal reggae band Toots & the Maytals. The Maytals weren't the most-famous or most-lauded reggae artists, but they were instrumental in getting reggae known beyond the confines of Jamaica.

As was the case in the early-to-mid-seventies, reggae spread first to England, or more specifically, London, owing to its large Jamaican population. The indelible material the Maytals were recording at the time was too good to stay bottled up within in a single community and soon the word was out: you needed to hear the Maytals. Now.

“Funky Kingston”, “Pomp and Pride”, “Time Tough”, “Pressure Drop” and amazing covers of the Kingmen's “Louie Louie” and John Denver's “County Roads” brought universal acclaim to Mr. Hibbert and his band. It wasn't long before a reconstructed version of Funky Kingston featuring that material was released on Island Records.

Reggae was white hot, driven by the first three Wailers' LPs, the soundtrack to The Harder They Come and, of course, Funky Kingston.

Those were glorious days.

One of the most tragic moments of my youth was missing the Who's 1975 appearances in Chicago. Not only because the first of their two dates actually featured an encore, but because they had handpicked Toots & the Maytals to open.

Predictably, the Maytals were not well-received. (I wonder how many rock fans of the day realized how narrow-minded their taste in music would have appeared to their heroes? It's a wonder more musicians didn't rail at their fan's suffocating expectations.)

At any rate, the Maytals continued to record, if not always with the stunning results found on Kingston. But their output through the nineteen-eighties was always worth hearing, and live they remained a unit capable of inducing joy and wonder.

I was fortunate to see the Maytals twice on their tour to support Knock Out!, and not even a Rolling Stones show three days later could dim the memory of that November, 1981 performance.

And another show the following April was just as good.

Despite the often political orientation of their material, Hibbert performed with warmth and radiated good vibes. He was authentic, passionate and obviously enjoyed his craft.

This openness was reflected in the fact that the Maytals never followed the strict Rastafarian orthodoxy of, say, a Bob Marley. The Maytals from day one embraced their gospel and rhythm and blues influences to the point where Mr. Hibbert recorded an album of R&B chestnuts in 1988. 

Amidst the embarrassment of reggaefied riches available in the mid-seventies, the Maytals were the first reggae band I embraced. And they remained my favorite. Even as the name 'Marley' became a brand-name for an entire genre of music, too often crowding out all else.

The Maytals' recordings always lifted me, and hearing Hibbert sing was like hearing from an old friend.

That voice is still now. And life just got a little more grim because of it.

A Bit About Baseball

I suppose everyone considers the generation of baseball they grew up with to be the Golden Age of Baseball. Being that our first exposure to it usually overlaps the sweet and carefree days of childhood, it's hardly surprising.

And I am no different.

Beyond the infamous Chicago Cubs of the late-sixties and early-seventies, I grew-up watching guys like Henry Aaron, Johnny Bench, Jim Palmer, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson, Carl Yastrzemski, Juan Marichal, Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Willie Mays, Tom Seaver, Willie McCovey and Brooks Robinson.

I could go on. Gaylord Perry, Reggie Jackon, Orlando Cepeda, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Al Kaline, Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Al Oliver, Dick Allen and Vada Pinson.

Not all are in the Hall of Fame. But all played with distinction.

Were they better than the major leaguers of today? Hard to say. One thing is clear—they were different.

They were better-versed in the nuances of the game. More likely to utilize the array of strategies that had evolved over the last hundred years. Baseball hadn't yet de-evolved into an either-or game of home run or strike-out.

Today's baseball is a distillation of its most-obvious elements. Like an abstract painting, only the subject's largest and most-prominent features make it to the canvas. The rest disappears into the background.

Which is appropriate for our attention-deficit disordered times. We are so distracted by our onslaught of technology we can barely process the big things, much less the finer and more subtle ones.

If it isn't a corporate tag line repeating a dozen time in a fifteen-second spot or a hyper-strobed light in seizure mode it hardly registers. I mean, who even has the patience for a sacrifice bunt or a hit and run???

In a new-fashioned take on an old expression, hit it out or get off the pot.

I'll even go so far as to suggest that every one of today's MLB starting pitchers ought to total 3,000 strike-outs for their career. If they don't, they just aren't trying.

And while kids today no doubt see Clayton Kershaw and Bryce Harper through the same gauzy haze of hero-worship that I did Tom Seaver and Henry Aaron, they won't ever be equal.

It Goes On

In their bid to cement the administration as the hands-down winner of the “Which presidency most reminds you of an unflushed public toilet?” contest, Donald and his strumpets relentlessly proffer half-truths and lies.

That is, when they're not delusional.

In a rambling interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump spoke of airplanes full of thug-radicals in riot gear and mysterious men in dark shadows controlling the streets and manipulating Joe Biden.

Sadly, Donald couldn't elaborate because all are currently under official investigation.

I can imagine.

Even coming from a habitual liar like Donald Trump these comments are unhinged. Perhaps Sir Lies-A-Lot is so far down the QAnon rabbit hole he can no longer distinguish truth from fiction.

Witness the confused logic of comparing Rusten Shuskey's seven shots into the back of Jacob Blake to a golfer missing a putt.

Or characterizing the Corona virus, where thanks to Donald's sonambulant response, four-percent of the world's population is responsible for twenty-two percent of the world's deaths, as a bump in the road. “It is what it is” quoth Donald.

Try to decipher the laughable, smack-your-forehead idiocy of his rants against mail-in voting, despite the fact he and Melania apparently did just that with complete confidence in Florida recently.

Best of all are the law and order quotes made to stimulate the base's perpetual fear. As Clarence Page asked in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune, does Trump even know he's president?

Trump's assertions that this summer's rioting and civil unrest is what America will look like under Joe Biden gives one ample reason to wonder.

Um, Don? You know you're the guy in the White House, right? That this is on you? That this is what America looks like under our (cough) law and order president?

And could be if your base would just vote twice?

If Donald is to become the world's most-famous example of the Peter Principle, we can only wonder at the effect this very public failure will have on his brittle psyche. One thing is for certain—it won't be pretty.

Not unlike Saddam Hussein's retreat from Kuwait following his defeat in the Gulf War, it will be filled with booby traps and destruction. 

Trump may not set fire to oil wells (although I certainly wouldn't put that past him), but further rollbacks of environmental protections, the gutting of Social Security, Medicare and the Post Office and a declaration that he has received the Mandate of Heaven to rule forever wouldn't surprise me at all.