By John Brummett
Consider this an homage to legendary Dallas sports columnist Blackie Sherrod, who famously called it “scattershooting” when he engaged in this kind of public exercise of random thoughts and observations.
Speaking of sports, which is about all anyone is doing, it is a shameless outrage that anyone could pick the football Razorbacks to finish fifth in the country this season — as did a certain local typewriter jock Sunday.
The Hogs have an untested quarterback, a pure freshman at offensive tackle, an under-appreciated loss at tight end, a big void where a thousand-yard rusher used to be and a defense that returns almost intact in its mediocrity.
Fifth in the SEC-West, maybe.
You’re hopping mad now, aren’t you? The Hog fan, seeking validation on account of his inferiority complex, would rather his team be thought good than actually be good.
Also while on the subject of columnists, I winced over the weekend to see that a popular local blog had called out another columnist for another paper for wholly contradicting himself. This columnist declared Sunday his comfort with the notions of the West Memphis Three’s unproved guilt and release. But this columnist, it turned out, had penned the precise opposite many years ago.
It reminded me of that time when another legendary sportswriter, the late Orville Henry, told me a columnist’s best friend was a reader with a short memory.
Indeed. Give a guy a break.
The other day I wrote, in an extrapolation of the West Memphis Three story, that we could only wonder how many others had been convicted on lamely circumstantial cases because of how they looked and acted and because of community fear. So some smart-aleck commented on our Web site, arkansasnews.com, to the effect that, in a previous lamentation on Delta injustice in February, I had proclaimed that a convicted murderer in Little Rock got out with a hung jury on a rape charge in Marianna precisely because his skin color was black.
I could explain how both are true, but I’m busy scattershooting.
This format also will not permit me to give a fully contextual response to the regular on-line commenter — again, at arkansasnews.com — who wanted to lord over me the presumed supremacy of his conservatism by linking a column by right-winger Michael Medved, an oilier Mike Huckabee. The column was about how the low-tax red states are growing and the high-tax blue states aren’t.
My on-line adversary wondered: What did the addled old left-leaning columnist with his anachronistic views have to say about those apples?
It’s all part of the decline of modern American civilization, that’s what.
A few decades ago we as a nation embraced progressive tax rates for the common good to enhance education and government services and the quality of life. States like Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and California flourished.
Meantime, the states now reddest were beating up black people to keep them out of white people’s schools and out of the voting booth. The blue states were part of a prevailing national imperative trying to force red states to behave as if moral and humane.
Now taxation is considered punitive and government evil. Red states cheer the integration of black people onto the football team.
So with the economy transformed to a service one, a digital one, that is far more transient, and with our culture becoming resegregated between urban centers and the rest because people want to live only among the like-minded, businesses flee to the states with the lowest taxes and the most anemic regulations.
It’s the same principle by which jobs move off-shore entirely for cheap labor. Thus red states are not third world, just second-and-a-half.
So to conclude: I’d best not scattershoot anymore considering that I appear merely to have insulted my team and my place and my time.
Allow me to try to atone: Wooo pig.
(You can join the lively on-line discussion to which this column refers by going to arkansasnews.com and clicking on my name.)
——-
John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
August 30th, 2011 at 2:16 am
Calling someone “oilier” is a bit tacky, don’t you think? And such a comment might also be construed as being anti-Semitic. . . .thought I am certain this was not the authors intent . . . .
August 30th, 2011 at 2:38 am
And its not “lording” the “supremacy of conservatism”, it’s pointing out the obvious: The freer a people are, the more prosperous they are.
Which is why Westerners lived the good life, whereas Soviet Citizens waited in line 4 hours for a rotten piece of meat.
And why the free soil Union states had an economy much larger than the slave owning Confederate States.
And why hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians moved from ppoverty to the middle class when the shackles of Socialism were removed.
And why business people such as myself avoid California and do business in Texas.
As Danny Ford once said . . .this isn’t rocket surgery . . ..
August 30th, 2011 at 5:46 am
Last time I checked Massachusetts and New York both had lower unemployment rates than Texas. I think Brummett was right yesterday that many people are moving for reasons other than work. In a service economy, any time people move (especially seniors) jobs go with them. Also, if you look at where people move on a county level, you will see considerable growth in outer suburbs where people are clearly moving for more for a place to live and less for a place to work.
Some states are just unique. California is a liberal state (more of an odd government state) that has tanked. But Nevada was a fast growing conservative state that has also tanked.
August 30th, 2011 at 9:42 am
@Lefty,
Nevada is suffering for reasons that are unique to that state, and that are unrelated to its low tax, friendly business environment:
#1. NV relies heavily on tourism, particularly on tourists from California. When California suffers, this has a tremendous negative impact on NV
#2. Housing. Before the economy tanked, construction workers could not build homes fast enough (many of these new homes were for Californians fleeing the once Golden state) – - but now that housing starts are down, NV has a lot of unemployed construction workers . . .
August 30th, 2011 at 11:41 am
Brummett on American declin is right on, although not nearly cynical or insulting enough, considering that Beth Ann Rankin filed for Mike Ross’ seat in congress today. That’ll come later.
August 30th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
You seem a little thin-skinned these days…you feeling OK? I could find a good doc for you, as long as you’re not covered by Medicaid.
August 30th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
feel great. just trying to engage you rascals like the consultants say.
August 30th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
It takes a rascal to know a rascal . . .
The loss of Knile Davis has really thrown me for a loss. If Wingo and Dennis Johnson perform up to their abilities, we might be ok.
I predicted a 9-3 season before Davis went down. I’ll say we could go 8-4 or even 7-5 if the O Line and RB’s falter. But 10-2 would not surprise me either.
August 30th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
blue states are terrible in college football. vermont really bad. rhode island not much better.
August 30th, 2011 at 2:31 pm
oregon ok. usc has had its moments. generally, though, you can turn the college entrance test score rankings upside down and get your ap top 25.
August 30th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
I appreciate your engagement, but don’t do it because “the consultant says to”, do it because of your charm.
Soccer is for blue states.
August 30th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
my whut?
August 30th, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Cap’n, I’m no Hog fan, but I see 10-2 even without Davis. 11-1 is not much of a stretch. Hope I’m wrong.
August 30th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
@Delta, We were 2 plays away from 12-1 last season. And 2 plays away from 8-4.
Victory and defeat on Saturday is by the slimmmest of margins. . . .which is why losing the SEC’s leading rusher could be devastating to us. Sooner or later we’ll be in a game in which we need to grind out a victory running the ball. . . .
August 30th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
captain makes sense sometimes. then he’s liable to get all huffy against the moronic pointy-headed liberals. georgia and miss. state definitely could have gone other way. lsu kinda, too. i’m trying to remember a&m. weren’t ags in it til last desperation play? could 10-2 regular season with bcs bowl really have been 6-6? man, i tell you: you just never know. except petrino has arkansas knocking on the upper tier in a way houston dale couldn’t. i’m going to play tennis. y’all get some exercise yourselves.
August 30th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
I read an article last week which discussed how the population shift to Red States was very damaging to the Big Ten. And to me, this was much more important than how the population shift impacts politics.
I mean, who remembers who our Congressmen were in 1969? I certainly don’t. And yet every Arkansan, young and old, can tell you the score of the Arkansas Texas game from that year.
August 30th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
@Cap’n–I can’t remember the congressmen, nor the score, I was a only a toddler then. And while I like to know about politics of the past, scores from a rivalry gone by the wayside are meaningless to me.
@Sir (that would be you, Mr. Columnist)–Like so many other things here, Arkansas seems to finally be falling in line with the rest of the old Confederacy. Those of us from here are slow after all, I guess, like everyone else from everywhere else likes to joke. I hate to admit it, but Petrino is finally the guy to get Arkansas caught up (at least from the sporting perspective). It took getting rid of a senile dinosaur in charge for effective change to finally occur…Sounds like an analogy for a future column. I’m with you on the tennis, though.
August 31st, 2011 at 2:08 pm
noted sportswriter rick reilly has picked hogs to win national title. it baffles me. at running back we now have ronnie wingo, who has never run tough, backed not by dennis johnson — who is nagged by hamstring, apparently — but a guy named deanthony curtis, who got moved to deep wide receiver reserve and then deep secondary reserve and now, all of a sudden, is our go-to guy if wingo gets dinged. looks like at tight end we’re going with a big blocker instead of receiver, taking away a key component of our offensive versatility from last year hope i’m wrong. hope we’re world-beaters. but i’m going to tell you right now: they got good last year when they started run-blocking the corner and knile davis got cooking. passing is great. but averaging 4 yards or more per carry makes passing even greater. on happier note: they say missouri state couldn’t cover me. we may pass for 500 yards and run up 50 saturday.
August 31st, 2011 at 5:07 pm
@Brummett – I tend to agree with your analysis on the Razorbacks. The loss of KNile Davis could cost us 1-2 games. Davis was the SEC’s leading rusher – but what was amazing about this was that he was only used in the 2nd half of the season.
I don’t see how a team like Arkansas can lose a player of this calibre and still run the SEC gauntlet.
Also- Everyone brags about how much our defense has improved, but I am skeptical. And yes, while the 2010 defense was the best of the Petrino era (ranked 36th overall nationally) it still got run over at times. People forget that our defense ranked 71st nationally against the run. ALabama, LSU, and Ole Miss are returning beastly OL’s that could really make our life difficult.
I would not not be surprised if Ole Miss beat us this year.
I’m going to predict 9-3. But it could be 8-4 or 11-1 if the ball bounces just right, or just wrong.
August 31st, 2011 at 9:31 pm
Nice dislclaimer, Cap’n. Want to go further out on the limb, and say we might or might not have a bad hurricane in the Gulf this year?
August 31st, 2011 at 10:42 pm
@Delta – ha ha ha
Here’s the thing, I really don’t know what to expect this season. In Petrino’s first 3 seasons, I was 100% accurate in predicting the final W-L record for each season.
But this year, there are so many variables that I am not very confident in my 9-3 prediction.
*We have a new QB
*We are breaking in some new offensive lineman
*We have a veteran defense that has depth
*We lost Knile Davis, but regain Dennis Johnson
*We lost DJ Williams, but regain Greg Childs
*aTm should be improved
*Bama, LSU, and Ole Miss will be tough road games
*Most of our SEC opponents will be as good or better than last season, save Auburn and Vandy
There is a lot of football to be played, it will be interesting to see how it all pans out