Ryan White & Associates

I got an email from a gentleman yesterday asking for some advice. As one who had spent many years covering sports, might I be able to offer some advice as to how one would go about alerting sports blogs to this “killer” video of Shaquille O’Neal commenting on the recent (and only) Dudley-Kitzhaber debate.

My advice was that nothing mucks up a sports blog quite like plainly partisan politics. There are at least as many reasons to be as wary of Dudley as there are to be concerned about Kitzhaber. Me? I’m putting up a lawn sign in support of better candidates, period.

I don’t care if you’re a witch. I don’t care if you aren’t. I don’t care if Michael Steele knows the minimum wage anymore than the fact that he does know the going rate for a lap dance at a lesbian bondage club, or whatever that was (which is probably whatever you pay for). Michael Steele is a mascot, and I’ve always hated mascots.

I don’t care if you’re as nuts as Sharon Angle or as ineffectual as Harry Reid.

I think Jim DeMint didn’t go far enough. I think we should outlaw any sexually active people — man or woman, gay or straight — from teaching our kids. That’ll leave, um, Catholic priests, and what could go wrong?

I believe the truest bit of writing this fall comes courtesy of Matt Taibbi, and it’s in the final paragraph of a long piece about the Tea Party.

The bad news is that the Tea Party’s political outrage is being appropriated, with thanks, by the Goldmans and the BPs of the world. The good news, if you want to look at it that way, is that those interests mostly have us by the balls anyway, no matter who wins on Election Day.

And, yes, that is damn depressing. Which is why I plan to spend the rest of election season in my basement, in front of my computer, watching this over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. The future of America depends on it.