Archive

Politics

She Said, She Said

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July 7, 2019
America, Politics, race, sexism, Soccer, Sports
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Franck Fife/AFP/Getty

Two years ago, my oldest, not older, brother brought up a point I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since[1]. He was thinking about patriotism, and how it presents a weird proposition when an American athlete does something extraordinary on a grand stage, and you aren’t especially proud of what your country has or is capable of accomplishing as you see it. Borders are troublesome in their very existence, and trying to adhere to them is a worry of people who can afford homes within their borders, or people who aspire to

In fairness, as someone who was born here and has no connection to my heritage other than the aspirational and that which is skin tone-related, I’ve been a lot more Republic of Ireland-forward than he has, but I think I get it, to some extent – the United States isn’t the greatest breeding ground for pride in anything you like unless a lot of people like yourself enjoy it, and even then, it can be a dogfight.

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David Tepper’s $485 Million Punt

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March 18, 2019
America, NFL, Politics, Sports
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Courtesy of Forbes

Charlotte, North Carolina, my home and where the Carolina Panthers reside (for now), is currently undergoing massive upheaval as a result of a tax revaluation by the Mecklenburg County Tax Assessor’s Office. This is the first revaluation since 2011, and Charlotte has only continued to increase in its population to the tune of roughly 54 people a day. This population growth coupled with a lack of supply in housing stock (both affordable and otherwise) has led to the kind of real estate speculation that spells disaster for working class neighborhoods. 

The Tax Assessor’s Office reported that commercial property jumped by an average of 77% while residential jumped by an average of 43%. As a result, people are making tough, kitchen table decisions like appealing their revaluation or moving before a property tax rate is set in July. The revaluation has turned an affordable housing crisis into a nightmare with horror stories of affected neighborhoods devastated and residents despondent with the choices ahead of them. 

There was a story released this past Thursday that one major fixture of the region is also feeling the squeeze: David Tepper’s Carolina Panthers. 

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Grid Positions: A 2019 MotoGP Season Preview

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February 25, 2019
Auto Racing, Movies, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Sports
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You have options. Before the start of every new sporting season, dedicated fans take a step back to join casual onlookers just catching up in assessing offseason developments, visualizing the year ahead, prognosticating to pass the time. There are bland press releases to read, rehearsed transcripts to read into, social media posts to pick apart. Media sources both official and otherwise get paid to distill this pile of corporate-backed bollocks into coherent season previews with scripted narratives to follow for your benefit so you can regurgitate it to uninterested parties as the smartest, least likable person in the room when the topic of conversation finally comes around. I know what these previews will say. So do you. This is the ritual.

But there are alternatives. That’s why you’re here.

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Everybody’s Got a Thing: The 2018/19 TwH Megathread

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December 31, 2018
America, Auto Racing, Basketball, Movies, Music, NBA, NFL, Olympics, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, sexism, Soccer, Sports, Television
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Graphic by Brian Kraker

Another year down. Another year older, but perhaps none the wiser? Maybe that decision doesn’t belong to you alone. It felt like nothing did, most of the time. From Tide Pods to the Philly Special to countless acts of cruelty and many more of plain senselessness to the continued existence of the Golden State Warriors to having 12 years left to stop the sun to inexplicable blue lights over Astoria, everything that happened felt like it was going to happen anyway, sooner or later, and we were all left to bear it as best we could. Same as it ever was, but different.

Still: we would be equally bereft of sense to assume that darkness would drive out darkness. You may have heard that only light can do that. For all the bad and rot everywhere, urban, suburban and rural, at home and abroad, there were the moments in between that made everything we experience every day that kept us together, however briefly. If we experienced them together? All the better.

As Bootsy Collins said in 1972, “Balance is my thing/The snow, wind and rain must come.” With that, we delve into the year that was, with an eye toward the twelvemonth ahead.

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A Natural Woman

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August 17, 2018
America, Blues, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, R&B, Religion
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aretha franklin songs

Citation needed

The first time I internalized Aretha Franklin – not “heard,” because as an American growing up post-1966, you never hear her for the first time – I was playing a video game against my oldest, not older, brother, back in the relatively nascent console days when video game producers didn’t know what to do other than to license actual music to fill in gaps in gameplay.

Specifically, the first time I internalized Aretha Franklin, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 76, was during one of the marathon sessions of NFL GameDay 2000 that yours truly used to play against his older, wiser sibling. To give you an idea of how the games themselves usually went, I relied on the fake punt-pass as my go-to fourth down play, and it never worked, and the most memorable game we ever played rests on that guy using that play, my play, to beat me in the final seconds of a game in which I was already ahead. He kept a running log of this particular series, but that is neither here nor there. It’s in Chicago, if I had to guess.

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God’s Plan

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May 16, 2018
Auto Racing, Politics, Religion, Sports
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I.

You’d have to really be up on your Eastern European saints to know Stanislaus Kostka; the 16th century Jesuit novice somehow isn’t even the best-known St. Stanislaus from Poland (an honor that goes to Stanislaus Szczepanów, the 11th century bishop martyred at the hands of a guy literally named Boleslaw). Long story short, Kostka grew up a boy of weak constitution but strong religious fervor in a (surprise!) harsh patriarchal family with six siblings and one older brother in particular who – we are told, probably by way of the younger siblings – ragged on him often. After education in Vienna, an alleged visit from St. Barbara and a long trip through Germany and Austria that ended with employment in a Rome boarding school, Kostka realized in a vision that the last fever he had would get the better of him, promptly wrote a letter to the Virgin Mary and died in the small hours of August 15, 1568, at the age of 17. In the Renaissance, being self-aware enough to realize you had a weak immune system was basically enough to get you beatified and canonized; in the Gilded Age, it was enough to get you Chicago’s first Polish Catholic church.

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