February 15, 2013
Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun Sentinel

RE: Close but no cigar – Some comments on your almost Damascus moment in today’s Sun Sentinel

My dear Professor,

Iwasthisclose to agreeing with you on your regular knotted knickers rant, this time about renovating JoeRobbieDolphinsLandSharkSunLifeStadium. Honest Injun!

I am rolling along thinking that my prayers have been answered. After decades of you preaching the values of modern American Liberal Kool-Aid I had my toes on the line of saying “I know that my Redeemer liveth” when I came to the part where everything went blah.

“Big football never wants to pay its fair share.”
Today
You

I underlined football so it can replaced by oil, real estate, banking, utilities, defense contractors, pharma, “special interests”, gun manufacturers, phone companies,
agriculture….So many bad guys, so little time.

Since the original community activists lined up in the French tennis court the Amen corner has been yelling “fairness” as if it can be defined and as if it can be attained. In other words, “Once a horse’s ass, always a horse’s ass.”

Was it “fair” to start America’s longest war 49 years ago? Was it “fair” to keep sending cannon fodder conscripts over the top against the well-entrenched foe, Poverty, a most decidedly “unfair” enemy? No can count the treasure or lives wasted on this Quixotic quest for the Holy Grail of “fairness”.

Just as I was about to welcome you into the company of rational thinking free men you pulled a Lucy on me. There’s poor Charlie Brown [me] believing that Lucy, the paradigmatic template of “unfairness” [you], won’t fool him again.

Splat!

Jeezus Haitch Keerist but I am too old to fall for that again. Or so I thought.

The thing that bitch slapped me back to reality was that your thoughts on government subsidies for favored businesses should have begun with….drum roll, please…Solyndra.

In the worst of all possible worlds, should the stadium get rebuilt, there might be a chance for the little people, those unfairly treated by Fortuna, the Wheel of Life, people like bartenders, working girls, carpet cleaners, linen salesmen, pool attendants, bus boys, cab drivers, program and popcorn sellers, to make a few dollars more than they would have. We could call it the Winter of Recovery, couldn’t we? That sounds “fair” to me

In the case of Solyndra’s extinct, as in gone forever like the carrier pigeon and, soon, America’s middle class, grub stake, a pile of dough totaling $586,000,000, the only winners were and will be the bankruptcy lawyers. Since we borrow 43% of all the money we spend somewhere inside the Heavenly Kingdom some mendacious Mandarin moneylenders are nodding their inscrutable noggins while chanting USA, USA.

As both a football player and coach – I picture you as a wedge buster on special teams and an offensive tight end – I think “fairness” dictates that the Dolphins get 5 downs to make a first down. Their opponents – think of the “unfairness” of having to play the Patriots twice a year – have 3 downs to go 15 yards to make a first down. Plus, 3 of their players have to wear shoes.

What could be “fairer” than that?




KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET