Favre is back - Palin won't leave

Back on 9/29/08 I wrote the following piece on this blog. At the time I was close to being equally wired about what was going on in the worlds of sports and politics. In the former, my beloved Jets had just enjoyed a history making victory over Arizona Cardinals with then quarterback Brett Favre throwing six touchdowns. Ironically it was the Jets who would fall apart after a 8 – 3 start and end up missing the playoffs while the Cardinals found themselves in the Super Bowl with a fourth quarter lead before eventually going down. None of this was foreseeable as I sat down to write last September. When it came to football, all was right with the world. Brett Favre seemed poised to deliver precisely what Jets Nation desperately hoped for, a return to respectability and perhaps dare we even think it, to greatness. Super Bowl III happened a long long long time ago. Could it be that the hired gun / NFL legend we convinced to change the shades of green on his uniform would turn back the clock and pull off the improbable if not downright impossible? Apparently not. Brett’s throwing arm betrayed him (specifically the bicep) and then he betrayed the Jets by retiring when I suspect he knew all along that he longed to still play. Perhaps betrayal is the wrong word though, for I also suspect that both parties knew all along he would be a 1-year rental. Even had the Jets won the Super Bowl with Favre I still wouldn’t be shocked if he subsequently retired only to unretire and join the Minnesota Vikings. Winning a Super Bowl with the Jets would not have been sufficient vengeance against the Green Bay Packers. Only winning as the shining star of their arch enemy Minnesota Vikings would accomplish that. If Favre cared only about continuing to play in the NFL and not so much about spite, he’d still be playing for the Jets. The Packers pissed him off by setting up provisions in his trade to the Jets that made it impractical for New York to turn around and trade him to Minnesota where he wanted to be all along. Green Bay made it inevitable that his attempt at revenge would have to wait at least one year. That year has come and gone as quickly as they all do. Brett’s a Viking now, about to start at QB in their second preseason game. The Jets did their part (preplanned?) to move his plan along by relinquishing their rights to him after trading up in the draft to obtain Mark Sanchez as their quarterback of the future. If anyone seems destined to be the reincarnation of the hope and success Joe Namath brought to the franchise way back when, Sanchez appears to be that guy. As for Brett Favre, he is simply following up on what he has wanted to do since the day Green Bay told him that Aaron Rodgers was the guy they planned to go forward with. His desire for payback and to scream out “I TOLD YOU SO” is the worst kept secret in the NFL. He played amazingly in his final season as a member of the Packers and had the Jets poised on the brink of greatness after 11 games last season. So I don’t doubt what he's capable of and wish him well on his quest, somewhat juvenile though it may be. He wants to play and the Vikings want him to play for them, so nobody has been harmed by his annual pre-season song and dance other than Green Bay fans who can only see him from the perspective of a devoted cheesehead, which is also understandable. The chips will fall where they may as they always do. When the Jets landed Favre last year it seemed almost too good to be true, and in the end that’s pretty much what it was. Like their 8 – 3 start, Favre’s tenure with the team was basically a mirage. The present and future in Jetsville belong to Mark Sanchez and company. As usual, the goal for the upcoming season is greatness or bust.

I don’t have nearly as much to say in follow-up to the second half of my 9/29/08 posting where I discussed Sarah Palin and her then upcoming debate against Joe Biden. Whereas Super Bowl winners only get bragging rights for one year, winners of presidential elections have them for no less than four years. Team Obama-Biden won in a rout and now have their hands full presiding over a nation. If any man is up to that task it is Barack Obama, or at least that’s what I hope for a variety of reasons. Former President Bush and former presidential candidate John McCain have been respectful of the current administration primarily through silence, leaving the noise making to former Vice President Dick Cheney and former VP hopeful, Sarah Palin. Cheney has picked on his old boss nearly as much as he’s complained about President Obama, but Palin is only looking forward to four years from now so doesn’t bother criticizing McCain or Bush or anyone else from the past. This isn’t to say that she hasn’t been looking at the past, particularly Obama’s, choosing to align herself with silly conservatives (aka birthers) who question the President’s U.S. citizenship. Her other post election day accomplishment of note is quitting her job as governor of Alaska, apparently to spend more time on Facebook and Twitter. Guess she figures that the internet worked wonders for Obama’s presidential bid, so why not for her own future one. As they frequently say on Twitter – SMH – an acronym I once had to look up to learn that it means “Shaking My head”.

By Roy L. Pickering Jr. (author of Patches of Grey)

The Face of Change/Experience/Feminism/Family & Small Town Values/Hotness/Whatever else the Republican party can convince you of

Sarah Palin is the republican selection for vice presidential candidate. I say the republican selection rather than John McCain's choice because I doubt he had very much to do with it, which says a great deal about how much of his own man the so called maverick actually is nowadays. Joe Lieberman did a wonderful impersonation of Benedict Arnold the other night but never had a snowball's chance in hell of being the VP nominee no matter how tight he and McCain are. Clearly John's handlers and professional political spin doctors were growing increasingly worried that "The Celebrity" was going to clean "The Straight Talker's" clock, so they had to come up with something big to shake up the polls, and they needed to do so ASAP. It's easy to picture them saying behind closed doors - "How about a shocking choice for VP, someone practically no one will have heard of much less expected to be selected? Sounds like a plan." Next thing you know the world is being introduced to Sarah Palin, governor of the state of Alaska which is about half the size of the borough of Brooklyn but probably has more oil, though not nearly as many West Indians. Before becoming governor of our late arriving state she was mayor of some town that has a population smaller than the occupancy of my office building. I have not actually checked to confirm if this statement is factual, but anyone reading this feel free to find out approximately how many people work in the New York Life Building and let me know if it's more than 8000. Such an unlikely candidate certainly meets the SURPRISE criteria. Did I mention that Sarah is a woman? That means all disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters can move on over to the other party because they have the most ovaries on the ticket by far. Mrs. Palin is a mother of five which I suppose makes her five times the woman that Hillary is, so no need to let little things like her anti woman's right to choose abortion even in the most extreme situations; anti-birth control education (abstinence or bust); let's teach Creationism in the classrooms while making sure every student has the right to own a gun stances get in the way of voting for her and John McCain. At 44 years old she's about half a century (okay, that's a slight exaggeration) younger than her ticket mate, another item to check off. Youthful vigor and minority status are no longer the sole domains of Barack Obama in this year's presidential race, but McCain continues to be the only resident former POW, which as we know is the most necessary qualification a presidential candidate can possess. For those who like White House occupants to be folksy like that good old boy George Dubya Bush rather than eloquent like Obama or stiff as a board like McCain, Sarah has that going on too. She sounds just like Frances McDormand in Fargo. As for who she physically resembles, I'll let the photographs above speak for themselves. This is rather ironic since the whole selection process (apparently Sarah met with the man who "picked" her once for all of 15 minutes) seems like a bad Saturday Night Live skit. Mrs. Palin came out with all guns (fortunately not literally) blazing when she spoke at the republican convention and was officially introduced to her newfound rabid fan club. They gave her a long standing ovation before she spoke a single word simply for not tripping on her way to the podium. Talk about setting a low bar for success. She proceeded to do a fine job of reading the speech that was written for her off the space age teleprompter, causing ovation after ovation after ovation to erupt, yet never managing to wake her newborn baby son in the audience. I on the other hand can't belch without accidentally waking my daughter in her sound proof room. Republican politicians by definition are masters at going on the senseless attack. Sarah Palin did not disappoint in this department. After spending about 4 hours introducing everyone to the members of her immediate family awake or otherwise, she went on to chastise the media for daring to make any remarks about anyone in her family. The former beauty pageant contestant stood there as if receiving an award for mother of the year rather than accepting the VP nomination, then ripped into the media for daring to suggest that her parenting skills fall a little shy of the standard set by June Cleaver. No one is supposed to comment on her 17 year old daughter being pregnant and unmarried because men who run for public office are never asked if they will be able to be both a good politician and a good father. Fair enough. No one is supposed to ridicule the vetting process that enabled her to be picked ahead of so many other far more qualified candidates because that isn't very nice. Okay. No one is supposed to question the brevity and lameness of her resume because she doesn't like it when people say mean things unless she's the one saying them about Barack Obama. All right, I guess. No one is supposed to check on or care about the allegations of improper behavior as governor, allegedly using her influence to get a former in-law fired from his job, because this would get in the way of believing she is Wonder Woman, Joan of Arc, Mia Farrow, Oprah, Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, Rosa Parks, and the Statue of Liberty lady all rolled into one Ronald Reagan approved package. Really? That seems to be asking a bit much. Gimmicks and trick plays do work from time to time on a football field, and can even end up being the margin of victory. But since McCain and the republican party pulled their wild card with several months of campaigning left to go, the evil empire of the media (except when they're fawing about republicans, then they're just fine and dandy) and the democratic party has plenty of time to point out the little man behind the curtain operating the Wizard of Oz, and there is ample opportunity for the truth (rather than slickly produced propoganda) to reveal itself. Once the smoke from the fireworks has cleared everyone will be able to see that the choice before us is the same as it has been from the start. If you want to continue in the war mongering, economy destroying direction George Bush has been taking this country for the last eight years, or if you believe that like Justin Timberlake the role of Vice President is to bring sexy back, vote McCain-Palin. If you have something else in mind, forget all the partisan fact distorting ads and catchy slogans and simply listen. This should allow you to determine who is speaking with the calm yet passionate voice of reason, and who is merely full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

- Roy Pickering (Author of Feeding the Squirrels: A Novella)

http://www.synergebooks.com/ebook_feedingthesquirrels.html