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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Sports, Politics And Revenge

That's how Shank sums up the attitude in Massachusetts in his latest CNN / SI column. It's a good enough article, but we now start to see the seeping in of elements that make Shank one of the best in the business.

Add one teaspoon of condescension:

That's right boys, and girls. She said that Curt Schilling was a Yankee fan. And that closed the curtain on her bid for the U.S. Senate.

...a few shots at Curt Schilling:
Most recently Schilling has mixed sports and politics in Boston. A dedicated Republican, never shy about giving his opinion, the big Blowhard actually considered running for Kennedy's seat in the early weeks after the congressional lion passed away. Ever the glory hound, he announced he wasn't running on HBO's Joe Buck Live.
...throw in a few misspellings:

...Celtics owner Steve Pagliacu (should be Pagliuca)...
...Fred Smerles (should be Smerlas)...
...add overstatement that could easily get past a chin-stroking, head-nodding Boston Globe editor:

Oh, and then there's this fellow named Tom Brady.

Brady has it all. He's got the looks, the charisma, the fame and he's remained politically neutral on just about everything. He got into a little hot water when he accepted an invitation to one of George Bush's State of the Union addresses, but has otherwise steered clear of polarizing issues.
And we have what resembles your standard Globe product.

Question for Shank: are Republican presidents the only kind of president whose issues are polarizing?

The Great Column Convergence begins...

4 comments:

Monkeesfan said...

Apparently Shank thinks Republican Presidents really are the only ones who are polarizing. It's the standard condescension of the Anointed. Republicans actually take a stand on something and actually succeed in creating positive developments (it was Congressional Republicans who boosted the economy after effectively killing Hillarycare in the 1990s; it was Bush's tax cuts that boosted the economy this past decade; it was Bush who actually defeated Islamo-Arab terrorism while Billary was treating state-sanctioned war-by-proxy as a low-grade police procedural and Obama is doing the same thing) while Democrats consistently fumble and collapse (Obama likes to blame Bush for economic problems now but the stimulus that wasted nearly $800 billion was his - not Bush's - call and it wasn't even a stimulus, it was a slush fund primarily used to bail out Democratic states running big deficits; Obama got laughed at overseas all year and now Iran and Red Korea among others are arming faster).

Shank actually thinks Scott Brown turned the tide because Martha Coakley said Schilling was a Yankees fan. Brown turned the tide because he was telling some truths while Coakley kept lying, about herself, Wall Street, Bush-Cheney, Afghanistan, and Brown's votes.

He is also putting too much stock into politicians campaigning at Fenway and his shots at Schilling got tiresome years ago. He's obviously running out of magic at SI.

Anonymous said...

I'm not fooled, this column is credited to Bob Ryan, but it smacks of Shank from top to bottom:

http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/articles/2010/01/27/some_interesting_items_found_in_desk_drawer_of_a_sports_mind/

Anonymous said...

Monkeesfan You are correct on Brown versus Coakley, ... but here are a few other thoughts on why she lost:

Channeling Sarah Palin by citing her sister living overseas as foreign experience.

The string of scandals to hit Beacon Hill the past couple years: third straight speaker indited by feds, senator arrested for molesting woman in the park, senator arrested for taking bribes from undercover Fed, legislator jailed for DUI and violating his probation ...

Coakley channeled Kerry Healy's failed campaign by running awful attack ads.

Fells Acres - Not much talk about it in the primaries, but Tookey got his revenge in the General Election appearing on any talk show that would have him.

Paul said...

IS SPAM...TRY HARDER NEXT TIME.