Weighing in on McVeigh

I have long admired Clark DeLeon and his shtick of being Philly's Jimmy Breslin. But his bizarre conjoining of the expected execution of Timothy McVeigh with the Sixers' very unexpected arrival at the NBA finals makes my spirit double dribble. The absurdity of alleging that American sports mania would have inoculated McVeigh against treason is laughable. McVeigh's mushy brain is a result of the triumph of infantile commercial entertainment over a mature politics. The phony euphoria that the local dailies are whipping up to whistle in the gathering darkness of their plummeting circulations didn't start yesterday.

The bad American media habits really took off in the 1920's when the newer media of tabloid journalism and network radio competed fiercely for circulation by creating sports celebs--Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Bill Tilden, Babe Diedrickson Zaharias--you know the roll call, the media have embedded their names in our collective consciousness. And the struggle towards the lowest common denominators just escalated over the decades as movies and TV shouldered their ways into the media mix.

Now we have a shamefully dysfunctional electorate, half of whom don't vote at all, and half of those who do, vote for morons. Consider our Republic, the ignorance of whose citizens about real problems at home and abroad is a global scandal. What the hell kind of a representative democracy is it where the even the dumbest know batting averages to the third decimal place and haven't a clue about the emerging world around them?

"If Timothy McVeigh had been a Sixers fan, he wouldn't care if no one remembered his name. . . He'd know he was part of something bigger. Something special. Something beyond names." And then Clark drags in Shakespeare, kicking and screaming, if he's the same Shakespeare I taught for thirty years. Really. And he also drags the heretofore unenthusiastic girls into his act, "caught up in the magic of an athletic moment that so perfectly describes what Philadelphia loves about itself".

Yeah. Tell that to the barbarians that cause so much grief at football games. Tell that to the oafs in Denver who trashed their downtown to celebrate victory. Hell, it's becoming Burn, Bubba, Burn when you win and Trash, Bubba, Trash when you lose. I can only infer that DeLeon has momentarily lost his faculties through an acute attack of Iversonitis, a disease that's spreading with dangerous rapidity in our town.

"Heart. Soul. Grit. Magnificence.Desire, Pride. You got a problem with that?" Unhuh. A Big, big problem. And I've got a problem with heroizing seven foot "giants" from the Congo or Canada, or wherever. The giants who made Philly great were Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, John Wanamaker and Walt Whitman, Joe Clark, Richardson Dilworth and Ed Bacon.

Sports heroes are pygmies compared with the thoughtful people who gave our democracy its infrastructure, which sports maniacs are steadily piddling away. Clark is beginning to sound like our president, "Leave no tall center behind". Overemphasis on sports has twisted our university system. Parental hunger for family stars has turned even T-ball into a ridiculous farce. Parents fighting refs. Parents fighting each other over games. God, where are we headed?

So Philly has an inferiority complex. (I grew up in Detroit, so I understand the metabolism of sports to self-esteem.) And Philly has a lot to feel inferior about--blighted neighborhoods, endemic racism, rampant individualism. But sports is no answer to these long range defects.

It is another anesthetic, which keeps us from taking sensible, thoughtful steps to build a city we can be rightfully proud of. The Sixer Sillies will pass, whether we win or lose. To be followed perhaps by Flyer Fantasies and Eagle Egregiousness. But they won't give us the grit to dig ourselves out of the pits we've dug for ourselves over the decades. Only ideas and character will do that. The rest is double drivel. Clark, put down that megaphoney and start thinking again.

*
Yo, Bro--because of the innumerable loads of shit I have inflicted on an unblinking world, I know it when I see it.One bad essay deserves another--so I'm e-mailing the piece I offered to the Inquirer on Timothy McVeigh. (I'm still working on an Iverson piece.) Patrick.

From: CDeleon88@aol.com
To: pdhazard@hotmail.com
Subject: Full of shit
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 04:47:49 EDT

Damn, Pat, if you weren't so right, I'd be offended. It was absurd of me to compare the two. I plead guilty to temporary insanity. Not only did my reach exceed my grasp, but it was purple and completely overdone. And depending on the outcome Wednesday night I might repeat my silliness by quoting Invictus on my deathbed.

I know you know I know better. I apologize for being ridiculous, but not for the emotions that led to it. At least I wasn't ironic. I meant what I said. And, God, wasn't that what you always liked about me?

Clark