It was a heckuva week for funerals. Aretha Franklin’s, in Detroit, employed stirring eulogies, heartfelt performances, and more than 100 pink Cadillacs in a 10-hour celebration of her life and art.
John McCain’s service, in Washington, lasted only 2 1/2 hours, but managed to bring together both his friends and foes to celebrate a bipartisan side of the city that has evaporated in less than two years. McCain arranged the entire event to act as a Washington Monument-sized thumb in the eye of the current occupant of the White House, and more than one writer — among them Esquire’s Charles Pierce and The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser — noticed that the entire event worked as a Resistance rally.
Leonard Pitts used the opportunity to ask Trump if he’s thought about his own funeral and who would eulogize him. The list at this point is down to Kid Rock and Roseanne.
Not every death garners that kind of attention, and even when one does, it’s not always welcome. Rob Tibbetts, the father of Mollie Tibbetts, the student killed by an undocumented immigrant, blasted right-wingers
in general and Donald Trump Jr. in particular for using her death to further an ideology she abhorred.
On a lighter note, we all know that lawn signs as election tools are going the way of torchlight parades, but they still make a big difference to a lot of people. For example, Ted Cruz supporters in Texas are melting down because Beto O’Rourke’s signs vastly outnumber Cruz’s. The guy managing the Cruz campaign tried explaining that they get more bang for the buck with online advertising, but the GOP is mostly old people, and they want signs enough to fight back. Count on the American electorate to focus on the issues that matter.
What does explain the American electorate? If you go by social science, it’s almost entirely tribalism — or, more pithily, people vote not for what they want but who they are.
Going even deeper into the underpinnings of the liberal/conservative divide, this article explores whether conservatives are immoral or just wrong, and whether their morality, if that’s what it is, deserves that label.
Finally, football season is upon us, and if you wade deep enough in the coverage at Sports Illustrated you’ll find this article by Tim Layden looking askance at America’s love affair with the sport.
Alone among sports played in this country, football is frequently portrayed as not just competition or entertainment, but as Capital-I Important. The game is mythologized as emblematic of the best of America. This is what University of North Carolina head football coach Larry Fedora said in mid-July: “Our game is under attack. I feel the game will be pushed so far from what we know that we won’t recognize it in 10 years. And if it does, our country will go down, too.” Our country? Football is a sport, like lacrosse or swimming, but with bigger stadiums, better TV deals and more gamblers. Lots more gamblers. Arguing that it has a higher purpose in society is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense.
Is it worth noting that Richard Nixon’s fandom helped hoist football to its current pedestal? I think so.