Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
The Los Angeles Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 in Super Bowl LVI on Sunday. The suspenseful game ended with a fourth down stop by the Rams to win it all. The Rams controlled much of the first half, with receivers Odell Beckham Jr. and Cooper Kupp scoring the first two touchdowns of the day. The Bengals answered back… Read more.
Russia state-sanctioned doping That Russia runs a state-sanctioned doping program to enhance the performance of its athletes is an open secret. I decried this phenomenon in the blog post “In Putin’s Russia Even Athletics Is a Criminal (Doping) Enterprise” on November 9, 2015. Therefore, nobody should be surprised that Kamila Valieva has the women’s figure skating competition embroiled… Read more.
China has spent much of the past five years jailing Hong Kongers for demanding democratic freedoms. The government considers such demands seditious challenges to its authoritarian rule. Mind you, those Hong Kongers were merely demanding freedoms China promised. This, as part of the infamous “one country, two systems policy” colonial Britain negotiated as a condition… Read more.
In a stunning result, Michaela Shiffrin failed to successfully navigate more than a handful of turns in Wednesday’s women’s slalom and was disqualified from her second race this week at the Beijing Olympics. Shiffrin, a two-time Olympic champion who was expected to contend for multiple gold medals at Beijing, had trouble in her run almost… Read more.
The Opening Ceremony for the Beijing 2022 Olympics gets underway today. But count me among those who will be jeering, not cheering. In fact, I was in the vanguard of those who called for a conventional boycott. Notably, The New York Times published an Op-Ed on March 15, 2021 by Sen. Mitt Romney titled “The… Read more.
Raducanu Fires her coach 18-year-old Emma Raducanu shocked the world two weeks ago by winning her first Grand Slam at the US Open. Everyone probably thought her coach, Andrew Richardson, had much to do with her feat. That’s why Raducanu shocked the world again this week when she fired him. Perhaps, now that she’s a big celebrity, she needs a celebrity coach… Read more.
Colleges treat female athletes as second-class citizens, especially compared with their male counterparts. And one can hardly blame most female athletes for accepting it. After all, even the highly successful and celebrated women’s USA soccer team has been waging a decades-long battle for equal treatment in this respect, to no avail. Sedona Prince exposes NCAA mistreatment The stark difference… Read more.
The National Anthem I usually comment on this ritual just to pooh-pooh it. I invariably measure each performance against the rousing rendition Whitney Houston gave at Super Bowl XXV in 1991. No performer has ever measured up. Demi Lovato performed well. But I remain convinced that no performer ever will. Most commentators are hailing Lovato more for a comeback from… Read more.
Trump and the Sleight of the Deal President Trump made quite a show last week of announcing a “partial” accord to end his trade war with China. Unfortunately, this was rather like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain making quite a show in 1938 of announcing a “peace-for-our-time” accord to end German aggression. The U.S. and… Read more.
And Clyde the glide takes my side. (That’s Frazier … with apologies to Drexler.) I took a lot of flak for pooh-poohing LeBron James’s (presumed) greatness after he made that fateful decision to “take his talents to Miami.” Here is how I explained my disappointment and cast my judgement in “LeBron Abandons Cleveland for Miami,”… Read more.
