-Three Disparate Thoughts
Growing up during the great American Depression, it was my view that golf was an elitist sport. There were a few driving ranges around, but public golf courses were few and far between. Jobs also were few and far between and money was a problem at every step of the way.
Golf was played mostly at suburban country clubs where the men smoked expensive cigars and drank premium whiskey. About as close as I would ever come to a country club was to get a job as a caddy or someone working in the kitchen. And so it was that I developed no great interest in golf or in golfers. I did not harbor hostility toward golf or golfers, but I simply have had no interest in them over the ensuing years.
While I maintained a disinterest in the subject of golf, I do know of course who Tiger Woods is. He seems to have won many major tournaments and is perhaps the established star in all of golfdom. During the latter part of March, Tiger Woods gave an interview to Ed Bradley of Sixty Minutes on CBS Television in which he stated his philosophy. He said that the idea of playing golf was to win the tournament of course, but winning was only part of the procedure. Woods said that he “liked to kick their butts” even after he won the tournament. He went on to say that if he and Bradley were playing a game of cards, it was Woods’ intention not only to win the game but to “kick Bradley’s butt” as well. I was fairly astounded at this remark because it reflected an attitude that I had not associated with Tiger Woods. And it shows no generosity at all. It seems to be of a sadistic streak worthy only of the vice president, Mr. Cheney. It seems to me that winning is important but that kicking butt is a cause for eventual retribution.
Two thoughts came to mind as I heard Tiger Woods talk about kicking Bradley’s butt.
In perhaps 1935 during a grade school softball game, I was the catcher. When our pitcher threw a fast ball by one of the opposing batters, I held the ball out in front of the batter after he swung and missed and said something to this effect, “Is this what you were looking for?” The umpire was a gentleman named Mr. Payne who was widely beloved in the Clayton, Missouri public school system. Mr. Payne just turned me around and delivered a short lecture to the effect that I should never ever show up an opponent in that fashion. If the batter swung and missed, so be it. That was to the credit of our team. But to show him up by exhibiting the ball was needless and tended to make enemies. In all of my catching career after that time, I never ever showed the ball to a batter who had swung and missed. Mr. Payne made his point quite well.
The second thought that comes to mind has to do with an election in which I ran for the union presidency. In late 1949 in St. Louis, I was the vice president of Local 5 of the Federation of Long Lines Telephone Workers. The president was a man named Gordon “Pete” Sallee. Things were not progressing well in that local, so in the election of late 1949, I ran against Pete Sallee for the presidency and won it. Using Mr. Payne’s example, I went out of my way to make sure that Pete Sallee did not feel as though I were gloating or anything of the sort. Quite to the contrary, it was my intention to make a friend out of Sallee. As time went on, he and I became close friends and, indeed, until his death in 1970, whenever I visited St. Louis, I made it my business to have lunch or dinner with Pete Sallee.
I had no intention, ever, of making Pete Sallee feel as though I were intent upon kicking his butt. It is my belief that Tiger Woods would profit by taking the same view as I took back in 1949. Winning is important but kicking butt is not what sportsmen do. They should be magnanimous to the losers.
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Now we turn to civil war, this being Iraq in the case in point. For a year or more, our man in Iraq was Ayad Alawi. He was our appointed Prime Minister of Iraq and he was selected largely because of his being secular. He was not publicly identified as being Sunni or Shia. He was a secularist.
Late in his career, when there was an election to be held in Iraq, Alawi was invited to the White House for a photo op, during which he “conferred” with George Bush. Alawi also addressed a joint session of Congress reading a speech prepared for him by the White House. Apparently Alawi had no chance to read the speech beforehand, as he made several errors when he spoke even though he is a fluent English speaker.
Nonetheless, Alawi ran in the January elections in Iraq as a secularist, and was handed his head by the religious parties. My recollection is that he got no more than 12 to 15% of the vote while the religionists ran off with all the rest. Now that Alawi is no longer in power and has largely been rejected, the current administration is trying to distance itself from him.
A week or two ago, Alawi observed that with all of the deaths taking place in Iraq from bombings, shootings, stabbings, strangulations, and beheadings that indeed a civil war was in progress in that country right now. Our Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Bush, violently disagreed, saying that there was no civil war in Iraq and that things were going swimmingly and that progress was being made on every front.
My guess or belief is that if you have a few bucks to bet on the outcome of the unrest in Iraq, put your money on Alawi and the case for civil war. Bush is simply whistling past the graveyard, knowing that a civil war in Iraq looms. Alawi is in Baghdad and Bush is in Crawford. Again, I tell you if you have a few dollars to wager, go with Alawi.
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Now we turn to the virgin element of this essay. It had been my intention to write a humorous essay on the Muslim belief having to do with virgins in Paradise. As you may recall, every martyred Arab is entitled to up to 100 virgins to be put at his disposal once he enters Paradise. My thought in the proposed essay is that so many Iraqis are being killed that there is a terrible strain on the inventory of virgins in Paradise. I also wanted to point out that in the Koran there is no specification that the virgins be young. They are simply to have protected their virginity and that is all that matters. Consequently, the paucity of young virgins is such that middle-aged and elderly women have to be given to the martyrs to make up their quota of 75 to 100 virgins. I had intended to comment on the possibility of civil unrest occurring not only in Iraq, but also in Paradise because the martyrs would be complaining about being assigned virgins who had passed their 60th or 70th or 80th birthdays.
At the time I was contemplating this essay, there appeared to be a modicum of humor attached to it. Now, however, the situation is so dire in Iraq, not only for the Iraqi nation, but for the U.S. as well, that I fear that any attempt at humor in this situation is debatable. Consequently, the story about the elderly virgins has been dismissed and we’ll try again another day. Nonetheless, in spite of all the foregoing doubts, I am still struck by the Muslim belief that there is no homosexuality in Islam. No gays, no lesbians, and no transsexuals. What would happen if indeed, a gay Arab became a martyr and was given 100 female virgins for his use in paradise? What in the world would he do with them? As you see, I do not hold with the view that homosexuality does not occur in the Islamic faith.
Well, there are my thoughts about golf, civil war, and virgins. They are not cataclysmic thoughts but the meanderings of an old guy’s mind on a Sunday afternoon when daylight saving time takes effect. Maybe tomorrow, with the start of the baseball season, my spirits will improve and we will have something decent and humorous to include in the essays that I will send you.
E. E. CARR
April 4, 2006
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Kevin’s commentary: Gay guys tend to get along with women pretty well, as far as I know. Presumably the martyr in question would just get 100 buddies to chat or go shopping with, or whatever the equivalent of that is in heaven.
More on Pop and virgins here, here, and here.
Reading this, it strikes me that I’d be very curious to hear what Pop would have to say about good ol’ ISIS these days. He certainly knew a good deal about the region, and presumably would call them out for being horrible, horrible people but stellar marketers. Seriously, ISIS doesn’t even have to fall back on the hundred virgins thing — they’re attracting tons of people with just the promise of basically indiscriminate violence.
Regarding the thoughts about baseball, I was struck by a bit of a cross-generational epiphanies. I’ve never been much of a sportsman but recently I took up a competitive videogame which pits two teams of five against one another. The circumstances of the game sometimes align such that the team that is ahead can entirely forego completing the objective necessary to win the game, and instead sit in the other team’s base and kill them over and over. The game penalizes anyone who leaves before aforementioned objective is complete, so when this situation arises the losing team is basically just forced to sit there and watch their butts get kicked for upwards of ten extra minutes. It is the most shining example that I can think of about playing not to win, but instead playing for the chief objective of humiliation, with the victory as a side benefit. The people who do this sort of “camping” are widely regarded as tremendous assholes, at least, which is nice — not very many people are with Tiger on this one.