The Barry and Cam Show

Election eve of 2020, and the world sure doesn’t look like I thought it might back when the ball dropped. Like so many people, I live in a world that is unrecognizable. The Covid pandemic, and the political seismology that came with it have changed the complexion of my life – the complexion of American life.

In 2016 I described my support for Trump as grudging. I didn’t care for his style. In many ways I still don’t. I’d prefer my President more refined. I’d prefer him to command the issues to vex his enemies in the loyal progressive Washington media. Be a little less antagonistic. Be a little more congenial.

But the truth is that on substance, the Trump presidency has been an incubator for the things that I believe are essential to the growth of our Republic. On nearly every issue; taxes, trade deals, treaties, climate accords, support for law enforcement, the second amendment, judicial appointees, immigration, and limiting the size of government --- all roads point to Trump.

All roads would, almost surely, point that way if Covid had not come along. While the President’s leadership during the pandemic has been, at times, strained – I believe he’s done a good job. If anything he over-invested in the type of mitigation that has torched our country. So-called NPI’s that included shutting down the economy were insane, and should never be attempted on a wide scale again.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, a number of so-called experts have convinced people that these shutdowns do work, and that they, along with paper masks, are levers that we can pull to control this pandemic. I think that’s false. I know that the damage of the blue-state Covid policies – 20 million unemployed, 50 million kids losing out on academics and social development – are not worth it.

Biden has gained traction on Covid. Without it, I believe he’d lose easily. But the combination of this generational challenge, combined with a nation press that treats Joe’s candidacy like a faberge egg, have put a lot of oxygen in to his campaign.

Some high-minded pundits would have you believe that this about the soul of the nation. They try to position Trump as some super-villain, and Joe as the sudden, white-hatted change agent. That kind of thing is silly on its face. Democracy is not, was not, and will not be at risk. The tantrums of the left, never graceful in defeat, are simply that.

So tomorrow I’ll head to the polls and cast a vote that I believe secures the second amendment. A vote that will prevent further damaging economic shutdowns. It’s a vote to keep American manufacturing and American jobs on our soil, and avoid bad trade deals like NAFTA and TPP. It’s a vote to keep us out of the Paris Climate Accord, which will hurt Americans and do nothing for the environment. It’s a vote to back the blue. It’s a vote for judges who decide cases based on the law as it is written. I’m voting for continued strides toward peace in the Middle East. I’m voting to bring our soldiers home from Afghanistan.

Did I mention no more shutdowns? No national mask mandate? I’m voting for that too.

When Massachusetts’ Governor Charlie Baker issues a so-called stay at home order, he did so on the basis of it lasting for two weeks. As the COVID-19 pandemic gained steam in the United States, and public health officials projected that millions would die without mitigation, such was a patriotic duty.

I said then, and it remains true now, that the state has no power to order you in to your home. Your free movement, and free assembly are outlined at the top of the Bill of Rights. The state of course, in times of emergency, can compel your participation in activities which save lives, and so we have all complied. We shuttered businesses, threw away jobs, shed incomes, and effectively ended our participation in society.

Now nearly a month later, and with the deadline of the President’s second series of guidelines looming, the question of what to do next is prevalent in the national awareness. Some, such as California’s governor have suggested that life cannot return to normal for the balance of the year, maybe beyond.

The question now facing citizens of every state in the union is; do you consent?

In the subsequent weeks we know that the number of unemployed Americans will soon soar past 20 million – far eclipsing Great Depression numbers. We know that businesses, the total investment in someone’s dream, will fall. We know that dreams of education will die on the vine. We know that elective medical procedures on hold. And we know that people who cannot control the thing for which they are being detained or being held prisoner by a government force that cannot control it either.

Subtly what was cast as an emergency, predicated on millions of deaths and an overwhelmed health system has been transitioned in to a new normal, predicated on tens of thousands of deaths, and a health system collapsing under the burden of stagnation. Of course in hotspots medical professionals are in a very real war, I don’t diminish their sacrifice or their heroics. But that war is being fought in a few counties, while a wide majority of the country will be spared the tsunami.

The state cannot hold you indefinitely. Despite what the Raleigh Police Department may suggest on Twitter, or what pure public health advocates would wish for. As ever, society is a balancing of factors, and desires, and no one side of the ledger can dominate without crushing the other.

If you feel like I do, that this aggressive mitigation tactic must yield to a longer term strategy that tries to give public health officials tools to fight Covid-19, while allowing Americans the right to continue their God-given lives, then we better start thinking about what that looks like.

The first and most obvious thing is that people are scared. Some of that fear is rational. There’s a lot of Lysol being dispensed in my house too. I understand the nature of this disease, and I’m not cavalier about its impact or existence. For some people, that will be enough to prevent them from going back in to free society just yet, and I get it. Particularly in the case of older Americans, or those with the underlying health conditions that seem to ensure a bad course with this virus, we must provide a real safety net so that they can isolate safely.

Secondarily we have to focus on getting kids back in to their social circles and back to school. In reality it is the kids who endanger adults, not the other way around, thank God, and we need to acknowledge that locking them away is doing more harm than good. That may require some painful distancing for older family members who can’t expose them to risk, but the well-being of marginalized and healthy children is being diminished every day, and it can’t continue.

For the average adult who commutes on the highway, flies, operates machinery, works with tools, or really any other function you can think of – risk is part of life. Risk, and danger didn’t come with Covid-19, and they won’t be gone when it is. We always have to make some decisions about what we are willing to accept, and what things are important to us. For the small business owner, that person has lived risked on 11 since the day that they plunged everything in to their dream. To lock them out of the chance at realizing their fullest potential is as criminal an act as the government can commit. It’s time to free them.

Lastly, free movement and free assembly are the inalienable birthright of every American. No state has the power to silence you, lock you up, or restrict your movement arbitrarily. Part of the future management of Covid-19 is going to require the consent of the people. Just as the second amendment is not a pass to go hunting, other amendments aren’t some sort of a pass to go to work. You have the right to see your family if they choose, you have the right to go out of your house, and the right to hug anyone who wants to hug you. If the state wants you to give that up, they better make a compelling argument, because its up to you, not them.

As protests begin in some states around the country, most notably Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina, I can only say this: I’m on board until May 1. After that, I will not comply with any orders I don’t deem legal or appropriate. If I’m arrested, I look forward to the challenge in court.

We can continue to intelligently direct our resource, ingenuity and energy to the fight to stop Covid-19. We have a moral obligation to do it. But we have an equally strong moral imperative to understand that this temporary state of mitigation, if applied for too long, will have opposite, dire consequences that will likely harm more people the virus.

I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t believe we are doing what we are doing. I’ve lived in it for a month now, and I still cannot believe it. I was on my phone, waiting for a flight at Orlando International back on February 28, when someone asked me how bad I thought this would be – and I brushed it off.

I said it then, and I’ll say it now; I’m not terribly afraid of this virus, but it’s people’s reactions to it that are terrifying.

In the weeks to come we all watched the foundational blocks of our society removed from the structure one at a time. Schools, closed. Businesses, shuttered. Americans isolated and alone. Some states ordering them home, some states advising it, hordes of nattering neighbors demanding it.

I don’t think the politics of this are worth discussing much. Some time, way down the road we’ll know what happened when, and I think there will be plenty of blame to go around. Right now, I tell people that the only way over this is through, so I’m complying with the guidelines for April, and I plan to start picking up the pieces in May. However many there are left.

How did we get here? At what point, and on whose authority did the United States decide that the only way to ride out this crisis was to squash society. Who made the decision that we would upend the at-large social contract? Because that’s what we’ve done.

Everything has risk. When I get on the highway I’m moving at high speeds with unknown people all around me. I’m trusting their health, skill, quality of their vehicle, level of impairment and overall judgment. If they fail, they have a good chance of killing me. But I accept that risk. If I’m fearful for my own health, or my vehicle is inadequately insured or appointed, or frankly if I’m just scared, I don’t have to get on the highway.

In this case there those who are highly susceptible to having very bad outcomes from COVID-19. I know some of them, and I worry for them. I’ve encouraged them to lay low. I’m happy to shop for them and leave groceries outside, and I don’t want anything to happen to them. If life is a highway, I’m asking them to stay in the rest area for a bit.

In this case though, the government has decided that there are people on the highway for whom it is not safe, and therefore all traffic must be halted. In fact, they’ve lied to you with varying severity by telling you that what you are stopping now can simply be restarted later. The truth is that it can’t. We’ve made massive decisions, the consequences of which were scarcely considered, and the end of which few of us can grasp. This is like a tornado ripping through the night – it’s scary, but you won’t see the breadth of the damage until morning.

As I write this I know of more than a handful of small business owners, who employed dozens of people, and see no way forward. I know of hundreds of people who have lost paychecks, and maybe their careers. The damage from this will run deep, and some of it will be irreversible. As unemployment surges to greater and greater multiples of Depression era despair, the chances of coming back are limited, and the results will leave human catastrophes in their thick wake.

The new social contract essentially appears to require that if it isn’t safe for one to go out, then dammit it can’t be safe for any of us. If one person may have a bad outcome, we should act like we all will. It’s the very underpinning of socialism – if everyone gets the bare minimum, no one can be left behind. It is the sharp edge of a guillotine that, with the slightest hint of the consent of the governed, has chopped the head off so many American families’ dream.

Was it wrong? Maybe. It certainly wasn’t right.

We’re already talking about the next stimulus, when the last spending package from Washington barely moved the needle for most impacted Americans, and cost FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS! For that kind of outlay we simply could have paid every at risk person to stay home!

And while increasingly ornery executives at all levels of government, drunk on the power of their new position as safety officer for the masses, make new rules – some of them will be shocked when they see the condition of municipal budgets after nearly a full quarter without economic activity. Teachers and firefighters don’t get paid by the tooth fairy. A society locked in its own homes is a society that can’t afford a damn thing.

At some point, Americans have to face the reality that the current conditions are not sustainable. I’m on board until the end of April. After that, there would be so little left to return to that it almost doesn’t matter. This new social contract deserves to be understood, and only go forward with the informed consent of the governed - not with fear of the masses who were warned of millions dying and assured little consequence to pausing.

I often like to say that two things can be true at the same time. When the President ham-handedly said used the word “hoax” in reference to the outbreak of Covid-19, or Coronavirus, it became a galvanizing moment for his opponents. On the other hand, the current societal panic that is being stirred, whether for nefarious or well-meaning purposes is illustrative of what the President may have referred to. 

Our current polarized, charged, and panicked approach to shutting down commerce and travel to try to prevent the spread of Coronavirus is absolutely unprecedented - especially in the US. 

It isn’t only legitimate to question the motives of a media increasingly consumed with its hatred for the current administration, when viewed through the lens of the handling of previous health disasters, it’s only logical. The borderline hysterics, coupled with a hostility for the federal response, feels more like a power play than a simple reporting of the facts. 

In December of 2009, in an article reporting that more than 8,000 Americans had died from H1N1 - 1100 of whom were children - NBC News took a stoic approach to just the facts reporting. They didn’t even begin to evaluate the effectiveness of the response of the Obama administration in dealing with that crisis. More than 200,000 people were hospitalized in that outbreak, but not once did the media suggest a need to “flatten the curve”, regardless of its destructive havoc on the economy.

As of this writing on March 9, with the stock market on fire, there are scarcely more than 200 cases of Covid-19 confirmed in the US. Nearly half of those are people that were evacuated with the virus from other places. If the moment is as urgent as the alarmists in the nation media would have you believe then surely the quick move to restrict travel, and the current response of the Federal government is an unqualified success. 

Still there is a persistent nattering, particularly on the political left, to take further and further action to restrict commerce, restrict activity, and stop normal life. 

In a related story, the economy has been poised to be the single factor that made Trump’s re-election look probable. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ we hear so often. It may be that people have taken that to heart. National pundits are both trying to pin the very limited proliferation of the virus on the President, and continuing to push draconian measures that will undoubtedly harm the economy, and by extension the very people who would have allowed their economic circumstance to vote for Trump. 

Covid-19 is a new and dangerous illness. It’s not going away. It’s part of our environment now. The question as to how we respond is open-ended, but I for one would suggest that we treat it like any other illness. We treat it the way the media treated the deadly swine flu in 2009. 

I became a fan of Winston Cup racing in 1993. That year Rusty Wallace won 10 races. That black deuce was the coolest looking car, and Wallace didn’t look or sound like a stereotypical NASCAR driver. That season was punctuated by an incredible wreck for the 2 car at Talladega. 

Bob Jenkins and Benny Parsons, an iconic Cup announcing duo in my opinion were shortly remarking how they could see Rusty moving around in the smoking tubular skeleton of his wrecked machine.  It felt like a miracle that he survived not one, but two airborne, harrowing, car shredding crashes in a single season. He had already done the exact same bone-jarring choreography to exit the season opening Daytona 500.

There hadn’t been that much torn up Miller Genuine Draft aluminum since the first time my parents left me at home alone for an overnight. 

I can remember some really insane moments in my time as a Cup fantatic. Ricky Craven’s car tumbling through the catch-fence at ‘Dega. Ryan Newman’s previously most-harrowing Daytona 500 wreck, or Michael McDowell’s machine impossibly seeming to gain speed at Texas. They all walked away. 

Ernie Irvan wasn’t quite so lucky at Michigan. But he would return to racing after the practice wreck that derailed his 1994 title hopes. 

There were much darker times. Two fatal accidents at my home track in New Hampshire that claimed a young Kenny Irwin, and an impossibly young Adam Petty. Leading up to 2001, we were still in the racing dark ages. We let these guys crash in to concrete walls and thought it was ok. Literally. 

In light of Ryan Newman’s terrifying crash to cap of this year’s Daytona 500, there seems to be a questioning about the safety of racing. Is there a moral question about doing this? About plate racing? About going this fast?

The answer is obviously maybe. We can’t stop asking questions. For race fans of a certain age, the haunting image of an ambulance crawling to Halifax Medical Center on a sunny day, a desperately jogging Dale Jr., and the haunted eyes of Kenny Schrader are unforgettable. Dale Earnhardt’s death propelled the sport in to a new era of safety, and thanks to angels and engineers, he is the last Cup driver who died in competition. 

The car that became the controversial car of tomorrow is an engineering marvel. The concrete that cars used to smash at crushing speeds is covered with a system to dissipate the deadly energy. Helmets, seats, head and neck systems, foam in the panels of the doors and specially placed roll bars all mean that this pursuit of inhuman speed is astronomically safer. 

Is it dangerous? Of course. 

Can you take the danger away? No. Never.

As the Fox cameras zoomed in on the smoking hulk of Ryan Newman’s Ford, fuel dripping from the ruptured cell, and the ungodly sight of the crushed roll cage laying on the asphalt, my heart sank. 

That Newman is alive, and talking, is a miracle. It’s a miracle I’m grateful for. It alleviated a feeling that the NASCAR community hasn’t felt in 19 years. The tears we all held back never fell. But make no mistake, they may someday. We’ve been spoiled race fans.

Our heroes ride the edge of sanity, tempting death every week. They know it, and we know it. I’m so happy to be spoiled. If we’re lucky, it will be a very long time before we have that pit in our stomachs again. But remember that whole time just how spoiled you are. 

Cam Newton looked like he had been taken hostage by some kind of rebel force in some dusty place far across the globe. In an awkwardly tight camera shot, Newton recited an apology for, what is in 2017, the most egregious offense one can commit – he offended people.

When a Caroline Panthers beat reporter, Jordan Rodrigue, asked him about one of his receivers and their route running prowess, Newton stepped in it. I suspect that everyone in the room knew he stepped in it. People watching on TV knew he stepped in it.

He said it was funny to hear a female talking about routes.

In the age of nuclear outrage, the wheels of indignation began spinning at high speed.

For her part, Rodrigue reportedly confronted Newton after the availability, and he declined to apologize.

He would apparently try to make up for that with his long, uncomfortable video message on Sunday.

Because outrage in the age of social media is a 24/7 business, some industrious soul dug back in to Rodrigue’s twitter history and found some references she made to racist jokes that were funny, and a retweet that contained a joke with an offensive word.

Pitchforks, get your pitchforks here.

This little dust up is the embodiment of the silliness that consumes our culture in 2017.

Michael Bennett claimed that the Las Vegas Metro Police roughed him up, put a gun to his head, and threatened his life. When video of the incident proved such a claim false, we let it go.

But Cam Newton made a joke that offended people, and he was all but tied to a chair and made to cry.

My supposition is that the folks who uncovered the Rodrigue Twitter history, and who are calling for her job are Cam Newton fans upset at the negative attention that the Panthers’ signal caller is receiving. That makes you twice as stupid as the people who are actually outraged about what he said in the first place.

Should Newton have apologized? Yes. He should have apologized to the person to whom he was speaking when they told him they were upset with him. Would that have been the end of it? I don’t know. But it would have been the right thing to do.

Still, pretending that what Newton said, or what Rodrigue tweeted, are some sort of felonious verbal assaults is just posturing. There’s a whole class of people on social media and in the mainstream of our discourse that spend their day cracking their knuckles and waiting to be offended.

A natural extension of what I’m saying is that you have every right to be offended. You can be upset with what someone says, just like Jordan Rodrigue was. You can call it to their attention, and if they’re compassionate, they’ll say they were sorry.

What we don’t need is this continual friction in our society that comes from the clench-fist approach to having everyone who offends you fired. Newton didn’t need to make that absurd public statement, and Rodrigue sure as hell doesn’t deserve any sanction for laughing at a joke 5 years ago. If you think she does, you’re part of the problem.

It was a joke folks. Was it a poor one? Yes. Was it dumb not apologize? Yes.

I don’t want to live in a society full of humorless pricks, and the price of that is simply that every once in a while, a poorly timed or ill-considered joke gets dropped. We’re all going to be ok.

I was a kid who had just moved to California, far from home, when some dude from the Dakotas drilled a field goal that made the New England Patriots Super Bowl champions.

Super… Bowl… Champions. Really. That happened! I heard Madden and Summerall call it. I had tears in my eyes because I knew what an unlikely moment that was. Sure the Snow Bowl game against the Raiders required some, ahem, divine intervention. Another amazing field goal. A win in a stadium that Texas high schools would be embarrassed to play in.

But there was some kid named Brady, and a Belichick before hoodies, and Ty Law, and Troy Brown, and they were champions. Through the drying tears of 9/11, a halftime show that honored the victims of that attack, and the Robert Kraft’s pronunciation that we were “all Patriots”!

It was the moment my heart fell. Sure when I was a kid I had lust for the play of Dan Marino and John Elway. I thought Joe Montana was the coolest dude who ever lived. (Hint, he still is.) I saw the emotion in the Giants’ household I was raised in when a certain kick went “wide right”. But that was childhood infatuation, this for a New England kid in the desert, was love.

The National Football League is, despite the league’s best intentions, America’s game. It is struggle. It is the quintessential standing at the bottom of the mountain and willing your way to the top. Standing at field level, when the national anthem is played, is an experience like none other. I’ve been fortunate to have it on quite a few occasions. I was fortunate to hear that National Anthem at a Super Bowl. It always chokes me up.

Hearing the National Anthem in that setting is a stark reminder of what our forefathers built on this last-claimed continent. Not what the framers understood it to be, spare me that, but what it is in 2017. From sea to sea, and border to border, it is a place where no one can limit what you can achieve. No one can dictate how far you drive the ball on the field of your existence.

As much as I reject Collin Kaepernick, Michael Bennett, and other social justice football warriors’ take on America, our police, and our military, I will not let them have the game.

You can burn your jersey if you want to. I’m will not.

The media may think they’re the most important people in the game, I don’t.

The most important people around the game of football are wide eyed kids who emerge from a tunnel into that cacophony of humanity for the first time. The most important people are the ones you share your sections, your tail gates, and your living rooms with. The most important people are the ones with whom you connect about life, work ethic, and yes – patriotism. The strangers you high five and hug, and the friends you trash talk with are the most important people in the game.

I stand. I will always stand, as long as my legs work. My hat will be off my head. My hand will be over my heart. No matter how many confused millionaires kneel in front of me, I’ll stand for the uniformed service men and women. They are standing in front of their detractors, and keeping them safe.

I’m not giving up football. I’m not giving the vocal minority and their allies in the media the microphone all to themselves. They’re wrong. We’re right. Walking away and burrowing deeper in to our own ideological holes solves nothing.

I stand. I will always stand, as long as my legs work.

I love football. I will always love football, no matter who tries to hijack the game for whatever agenda.  

The First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, boiled down to free speech, is both the simplest and most complicated of those endowed by our creator. In the rancorous political jungle of 2017, it is derided and evoked by partisan hacks who want to use it to protect their ideas and squash it to silence those they perceive as their opponents’.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

That’s one of my favorite quotes because it very simply lays out the foundation for the American freedom experiment. Our society is comprised of diverse groups. Diversity is sometimes ethnic, or racial, or religious; but I think that in 2017 the diversity that is the hardest to accept is ideological.

We have divided ourselves in to tribes. We are left or right. Progressive or conservative. When the President stooped to calling NFL players who, stupidly, kneel for the National Anthem “son of a bitch,” he put on perfect display our most basic desire to dislike and delegitimize the people we disagree with.

As for the kneeling NFL players, two things can be true at the same time about speech; it is free of legal consequence, but it is not free of colloquial consequence. In other words, if you say that anyone who voted from Trump is a white supremacist, that’s your right. Of course, people who voted for Trump are likely to think that you’re an intellectually challenged ideologue.

If you kneel for the National Anthem, I think you’re a jerk. I think it’s your right. I defend it as a right. But exercising that right has the consequence of making you look like a jerk, and most of the country agrees.

You see, this all started because Colin Kaepernick said he could not “stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

So, because we know that two things can be true regarding a single fact, Kaepernick has every right to his opinion and to sit or kneel when the symbol of our nation is raised. The problem is that he’s dead wrong. While our country has areas that need improvement, our society is simply not oppressive toward people of color.

Our uniformed police services, nearly a million strong on US streets, are by a wide margin courteous, professional, and respectful of the population that they serve. Kaepernick and other progressive activists have sought to use a handful of cases to impeach the very basis on which law is enforced in the United States, and that effort is sorely misguided.

If you believe that the hundreds of thousands of cops on the street in our country hurt people of color, or people with socioeconomic challenges more than they help them, then you’re simply wrong. You’re living in an ideological dream world that is formed, for whatever reason, by your own personal bias.

President Trump should have something like, “the people who choose to kneel during the National Anthem in an NFL stadium are disgracing themselves. Choosing that moment of national unity to make divisive, partisan statements is a reflection of them, rather than a reflection of our great, free nation or the uniformed men and women who protect it.”

Instead he rattled off something about son of a bitch. He said the NFL should force them to stand. Meaningless bluster. They have every right to kneel, and based on what they do for a living, I don’t think it makes any sense for their employer to force them to show patriotism that their ignorance keeps them from genuinely experiencing.

What really matters is standing up and speaking truth to pop culture power. As I’ve written before, when a violent encounter with Police occurs, it’s a unique and awful human event. These aren’t the results of a system, but results of individual choices. In some cases, the Kaepernicks of the world are simply lying to you, and in some cases their outrage is justified because police officers have committed acts that were anywhere from unscrupulous to criminal.

Let them kneel. Let them hate cops. Let them lie about America. Refute that with the facts though, not the anger. Even as I disagree with Collin Kaepernick, I’m more concerned with refuting the basis upon which he chooses to take a knee, rather than to force him as an individual not to do it.

When the first tweets of a school shooting came across from San Bernardino County Fire, I was glued to social media. I always am for days like these. I vividly remember watching the amazingly tragic images of Columbine High School pass as I worked at an ABC-affiliated television station some 1800 miles away. There was no social media then, but the punch-in-the-gut horror of violence befalling children is so tragic that I just need to know it’s passed.

Sometimes the initial reports are wrong. Sometimes there is no danger. Sometimes the results are so horrific that even the most twisted fiction writer could scarcely allow his imagination in to the corners of hell where one would conjure up these nightmares.

What made today’s horror in San Bernardino unique, in my estimation is the fast work of the SBPD. The responses, tactically, to these shootings has changes so much since the torturous and deadly approach at Columbine. Law enforcement goes in fast and hard, secures the building, and gets kids the hell out of harm’s way. They did that today, with remarkable tenacity.

Chief Jarrod Burguan took to Twitter during the ordeal though. At 1:55pm east, the Chief tweeted that there is a “report of a shooting at Northpark Elementary”. Within half an hour the chief had indicated that there were 4 down in the deadly attack, one of them possibly being the suspect.

Just 1 tweet later the chief said “We believe this to be a murder suicide. Happened in a class room. Two students have been transported to the hospital.”

As someone who has spent countless days working breaking news stories, and even more hours watching them unfold, it’s stunning to me that social media provides a direct pipeline between the players in a national tragedy, and those watching it.

While people like me, observers, found the Chief’s tweets both interesting and informative because they illuminated the facts of a crisis before most of the Los Angeles stations even had live pictures from the scene, there is a great deal of value for the community. I follow a number of officials and departments from places I’ve lived, traveled and loved. But if I lived in San Bernardino and had relatives or friends or kids in the district I’d be very grateful for the immediate information.

In the future, one has to wonder what the level of integration between first responders and the public will be. Whether this type of integration is a service to the media, or a blow to it is another question.

Knowing that two little children were hurt by the sick monster who perpetrated this attack was soul-numbing. But there was substantial value for the community to know that the danger had passed, and where there now-safe children were going to be waiting for them.

The impact of a social media is an interesting side story to a tragic day.

Now that we’ve switched the clocks and sprung Spring, you can’t afford to binge-watch shows that are hundreds of episodes. You’ve got gardens to grow, meat to grill, and beers to crush in the sunshine. Still, you can’t let your entertainment center languish without you. So it’s the perfect time to hit up some one-hit wonders, and feast on shows that are more about what could have been, rather than what was. The following is my ice cold six pack of shows that only lasted a single season, but are still must-see.

-The Job (2002, 8.4/10 IMDB)

Although this show technically spanned 2 seasons of network television, it really counts as a single, brilliant 19 episodes in my book. ABC was in an odd place, post-Dennis Franz’ ass, but in the midst of Janet Jackson boobie outrage time. The Job was brilliant because of its rough edges. Our hero is an alcoholic, pill popping, married dad with a badge, a gun and a girlfriend in the city. The cast is as crazy as the plot, and the roots that would later grow the masterpiece Rescue Me are obvious.

-Detroit 187 (2010, 7.7/10 IMDB)

Michael Imperioli, fresh off The Sopranos, took this gritty Detroit cop drama to ABC in 2010. There are obvious ties to the NYPD Blue family tree, and the show struck with all the sizzle of the aforementioned best cop show on network TV, ever. Despite some critical acclaim and a People’s Choice Award nomination for Favorite New TV Drama, it never took the Motor City’s underbelly past season one. But that’s ok, the season is a brilliant arc that stands alone with a great cast, and a sizzling threaded story line.

-Playmakers (2003, 8.6/10 IMDB)

ESPN nearly blew up its relationship with the NFL when it aired a single season of a show based around the trials and tribulations of the Cougars football team. Despite the constant, and over the top sex, drugs and more sex and drugs, the show managed to humanize football players and their relationships with each other. The NFL essentially got ESPN to can the show after a single, brutal season. Which is essentially an admission from the league that show captured very well the internal and external violence of football life. If FX had aired the show, as was the original plan, I think it might have played beyond it’s rookie deal, but the ride is still worth it.

-Big Apple (2001, 7.6/10 IMDB)

This is still the show that I lament the loss of more than any other. It had all the feel of something special, in my mind, when it hit CBS television in 2001. It featured Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) as a grizzled NYPD cop working with the FBI to sting organized crime. The cast included forces of nature like Titus Welliver, and was laying the ground work for a slow-burn storyline at a time when network television had no attention span. That only 8 episodes saw the light of day is still a crime against television humanity.

-Over There (2005, 7.9/10)

Steven Bochco has brass television balls. The NYPD Blue creator took to the razor’s edge when he and Chris Gerolmo created a show about the Iraq War while we were actually fighting the Iraq War. The show required people with knowledge of the Army to suspend some disbelief, but it also required viewers to confront the danger, death, and devastation facing actual soldiers in actual harm’s way, and their families. The sharp writing and great action made the Iraq situation feel more real and less entertaining, and in my opinion killed the enjoyment of the audience of the show. They moved on to things that challenged them less over the 13 episode run.

-Firefly (2003, 9.1 IMDB)

Republicans in Congress funded a border wall.

They also voted to repeal Obamacare.

No, not in 2017. Not since they won the White House and effectively took majority control of the elected branches of government. They funded the border wall 11 years ago; they just didn’t have the balls to build it. They voted repeal ACA as recently as last year, they just don’t have the stomach to do it when it means something.

Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States, in no small measure, because people who vote Republican are pretty sick of voting for pols who talk a tough game on the stump only to go to Washington and sit on their thumb. Well folks, tough news, you lose again.

The Democrats passed a bill that colloquially became known as Obamacare. They famously said that you have to pass it if you want to know what’s in it. Even after deep blue Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to the Senate, a vote that would have killed ACA, Democrats found a trick to pass the law without ever actually having to vote. Pretty cool.

People on the right must think it’s awesome to have elected representatives with the stones to simply use trickery to pass bills to keep currently serving members from even getting a vote. They must think it’s cooler still to have the press fawn and drool all over that kind of horseplay. Never is heard a discouraging work on the range roamed by progressives.

Conversely Republicans have spent the past 5 or so years telling the masses that if they just won more elections, they’d get what they want. Sick of premiums skyrocketing? Pissed because you lost your doctor? Can’t get the care you want? Can’t get an appointment? Vote GOP, they said, and we’ll repeal this monolith the government inefficiency.

Enter Trump, a brash non-politico with a devil-may-care attitude who trashed ACA from the start. Despite the fact that he told us in his own words that he believes in single-payer, government run healthcare – he also told us he’d put a stake through the heart of Obamacare.

That stake to the heart might be more like stepping on a Lego in the dark. Trump, Paul Ryan, and Republicans at large may have some issue with Obamacare, but the apparent truth is that they either don’t have any moral objection to the central state running the system, or they’re just too scared of being called meanies by the New York Times. Either way, they’re currently patting a turd into a cookie and telling you to eat it.

No thanks boys. I voted for repeal.

Listen, the media and the Democrats are out there telling Republicans what a huge setback it will be if they fail to kill the individual mandate. They’re sounding the alarm, as though the very law that they passed like thieves in the night hasn’t driven up costs, and driven down care for working families. If you believe them, the GOP either replaces Coke with New Coke, or it has failed.

Take solace in this oh gutless Republican representative – failure is what has gotten you here. On immigration. On taxes. On healthcare. You promise, you get elected, and then you fade in to the background only to re-emerge and tell the base that voting for you is the thing that will get it done.

It won’t. We know it won’t. Don’t bother voting for Obamacare Lite. Just do what you always do, nothing. There’s another election just around the corner – you can promise to fix it then.

If I participated in the absurd practice of naming winter storms, I’d tell you that Stella is crapping all over the northeast part of the country right now. For better or worse that’s where I hang my hat. That hat, right now, is under about 2 feet of snow. No joke.

There are only a few ways to ride out a storm like this. Really there are two things you can kill off the hours by doing: binge drinking or binge watching. If the power goes out you’re limited to Bourbon and Ginger Ale. At least that’s what I’m drinking. Freezing the family jewels off in Western Massachusetts, I may as well give a nod to Berkshire Mountain Distillers. They actual do have the best everyday bourbon on any side of Kentucky.

If the power and internet are up and running you should make yourself a cocktail and pour some pixels in to your brain. Going outside is not advisable anywhere north of the Carolinas, so fire up the moving picture box, snuggle up with someone special, and keep the drinks coming. Here’s a six-pack shows you should be binging while you freeze your ass off:

·         Since this is a streaming list I cannot include “The Shield.” This is number one on any list of television for me, ever. Best show, hands down. But it’s only on DVD right now. If you have the discs, do yourself the favor of starting now, if you don’t: move on to “Bosch.” It’s another LA based cop show that’s filmed on the sun-drenched, but oh so dirty streets of the city of angels. Titus Welliver is a powerhouse as the Michael Connelly-created Detective Harry Bosch. It’s a serial show with heart, smarts, and amazing cinematic texture. Season 3 drops soon, so catch up now. (Amazon Prime)

·         I’ve recently had my television heart stolen by a new old west inspired lawman. He may not be as cool as Raylan Givens, but Walt Longmire is grizzled, tough, and tremendously human. He’s the law in Wyoming’s would-be Absaroka County, and he’s surrounded by a compelling cast of supporters. The show went from cable to Netflix exclusive, and it has grown along the way. New seasons stream in 4K, which is a huge added bonus. Saddle up. Longmire is calling. (Netflix)

·         The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties are three streaming documentaries that take the viewer on a thematic ride through the decades of the latter half of the 20th Century. These docs are packed with unforgettable moments you’ll never forget, and wild depth that you won’t believe you forgot. If you’re caught up in thinking that 2017 is the craziest time ever, these will put some perspective on it for you. (Netflix)

·         The Americans is a show that, shamefully, I’ve only scratched the surface of at this point. But based on a small sample, and a lot of recommendations from connoisseurs who I know and respect, this show is great. It’s a slick period piece with super-smart writing. There’s something for everyone comrade, so put some Smirnoff over that ice and hit up The Americans. (Amazon Prime)

·         If the snow is high enough to freeze your backside, where would you rather be than Miami? That’s where Michael Westen has been dumped upon his unceremonious burn from the spy trade. Although there is, especially in the early seasons, a monster-of-the-week quality to Burn Notice, it’s cast, characters, and intensity only ratchet up with the seasons. Plus you’ll get a great gander at Miami, and a lot of fine looking extras who would die in minutes if they wore those skimpy get-ups in a blizzard. Miami is a diverse, attractive, tropical, seedy, dangerous town; and you’d rather be there than shoveling! (Netflix)

·         Speaking of the aforementioned Raylan Givens, if you haven’t journeyed through the depths of Harlan County’s underworld with him, you’re missing the best written show – maybe ever – on television. Every guest bad guy, foil, and damsel in distress only adds to a stellar cast. If the smoky taste of some bourbon is what you need to escape this weather, Justified is the perfect compliment. It ended on its own terms, and in its own time, just like a blizzard. (Amazon Prime)

The good news is that the storm always passes, but the need to binge great content never does! Anything streaming now that you think I’ve missed? Let me know!

The question that always follows the next morning after every Oscar airing. For me it’s always been “yes” as a movie buff and once film major, I’m always curious what and who goes away with the golden statue. I enjoy celebrating the arts, even if the arts get lost in the celebrating.

Now more often than not when I ask the follow up question, “did you?” I get a resounding “NO.” Or maybe a mix of “first 10 mins then I went to bed.” Even my esteemed colleague Mr. Gadbois will tune in for a bit, then call it a “fucking snooze fest,” and move on to arguable better television somewhere else. So today, when Barry responded to my question with his typical negative reply, and then followed by “I guess I missed a good ending...” 

I said, “Yes, Barry, you missed a good ending. And, as it turns out, one of the best Oscar shows in a long, long time.”

And no, not because of the cluster of an ending. Even if it was because of an honest accident left up to a man and a woman in their late, late 70s to make a judgment call on whether to announce the winner or ask for clarification. I’ll give them a pass. They were handed the envelope as they walked out on stage and they read what was in it. (Side note: I would NOT want to be in their (thousand dollar) shoes at that moment—in front of the Hollywood elite and hundreds of millions of people not knowing what to do. Oops.)

But no, what made the Oscars great this year was one man and one man only: Mr. Jimmy Kimmel.

I’ll come right out and say it: I’m a huge fan of him and his show. I have been for years, dating back to the glorious and groundbreaking “The Man Show” on Comedy Central. At the Oscars, he brought his humor and charm to disarm the crowd and get in a few jabs, and it worked wonders.

Any time you can make massive amounts of fun at Matt Damon I’m on board. I have never laughed this much (out loud) at the Oscars let alone any awards show. Ricky Gervais coming in a close second for his hosting duties with the Golden Globes in years past. I had a very good time watching this year, and that says something for an 89-year-old, usually stuffy awards show attended by massively rich people. Should they drop some of the technical awards and maybe have them done off-stage, shaving 45 minutes (at least) off the broadcast? Yeah, sure. I mean does anyone really know the difference between sound mixing and sound editing? Does anyone care? Documentary short? Animated short? If the mass public can’t actually see these films, do they actually exist? And then there was the political stuff? You knew it was gonna happen, 99% of Hollywood leans in one direction, and this club (cough, union) isn’t open to the public. You have to petition to join, and if they deem you worthy, they’ll let you in. Sound familiar? You take the good with the bad.

Then there’s the actually awards, and what Facebook and Twitter have to say about those awards, dresses, tuxes and their hair it turns out (sorry Halle Berry, I still think you’re beautiful) -- oh yea, their performances—whether or not they should have been nominated given their past wrongdoings. No, no I wasn’t talking about Mel Gibson—funny you thought that. Remember, there are other white men in the Academy that are controversial and still win, even despite that. Love the art, hate the artist? That notion doesn’t seem to exist in this social media world we live in. Don’t forget, Suicide Squad won an Oscar this year.

I won’t necessarily make comments on said winners and losers of the night. What do I know? Was Moonlight a better picture than La La Land? Maybe. Clearly enough people thought so for it to win (except for Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway…) Was Denzel better than – well, let’s say this: Did Denzel give a performance that took a hold of me, spoke to me, and impacted me 10 times more than Casey Affleck? Yes, but apparently not to others. You see, the Academy Awards are a competition based on opinions of others in a private club (cough, union) and, because of that, there really can be no audible opinion from us peasants. It’s literally the definition of arm chair quarterbacking. 

As Jimmy said in his (great) opening monologue, “If each and every one of you took a minute to reach out to one person you disagree with, someone you like, and have a positive, considerate conversation, not as liberals or conservatives, as Americans…If we would all do that we could make America great again.” Thanks for making the Oscars good-ish again Jimmy.

But there is one thing we can all agree on… JT killed it!

So here we sit, day before the trade deadline.  

Rumors are swirling about Blake Griffin, Jimmy Butler, Andrew Bogut, and, God help us, Melo.  

Danny Ainge has put us in an awful spot of waiting.  It’s been four years, or a Red Sox World Series and two Patriot Super Bowls since we said good bye to Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. 

We know this team will not win a championship as constructed, but we are so painfully close. Does one of those names get us banner 18? I think so.  Danny promised us this wasn’t going to be the nineties, where we held on to Red Auerbach’s boys a little too long, and ended up suffering through Rick Pitino. We would reload by letting go of talent at the right time.  

Well, my patience is running out.  

Jaylon Brown on draft night wasn’t the answer I wanted.  I am a Boston sports fan! I want fireworks, I want championships. I want Duck Boats!  

Danny, this trade deadline-give me fireworks!  

This Celtics team has a very good back court with Smart, Bradley, and Thomas, but absolutely no rim protector.  Al Horford, probably the biggest free agent signing in Celtics history, doesn’t fix that need. The upcoming draft doesn’t appear to have any big time front court pieces (insert unnecessary Travis Knight reference here).  We watched Demarcus Cousins go to the Pelicans for pennies on the dollar… and now I cling to hope that somewhere Danny is moving that ‘17 pick (with most likely Avery Bradley), bringing Boston an All-Star, and hanging another banner in the rafters of the Garden. 

Dan Gadbois

White privilege may very well be assuming that children of color are so different than you, that only you can assume their level of fragility and what might be upsetting to them.

When the Northampton Police Department decided to cancel its High Five Friday program, in which police officers went to city schools to greet kids and give them high-fives, the move went largely unnoticed. Until Turtleboy Sports, a Worcester-based blog called attention to it. To say that this moment was a failing for the at-large media in Western Massachusetts is an understatement. But now, thanks to growing pressure resulting from the blog, we are learning more.

Based on MassLive and Daily Hampshire Gazette articles, there weren’t objections from parents over the program. The objections started at a January 12 meeting of the Northampton School Committee.

At-Large committee member, Molly Burnham, said the program, which was approved by the principals of the schools and the superintendents, “came up very suddenly for a lot of us and that was a little upsetting.” Yes, I can see why cops going to schools in a well-coordinated effort to build connections with young people might upset you. 

Oh, wait, no I can’t.

Laura Fallon, ward 2 committee member said this: “You may be getting positive feedback but it may be really difficult for people who are having a negative reaction to come to you and say, ‘It really upset my child to come to school and see the police because the police have been at our house three times this month.”

Allow me to translate Ms. Fallon: No one has complained about this, but let’s assume that there are some scenarios where frequent flyers who have the cops in their homes could be upset. The parents, maybe. But the kids in these scenarios have the cops coming to their homes because someone has to stop domestic abuse, drug abuse, or criminal neglect. The cops are the saviors of these kids, not the enemy, and to project your opinion on to someone who isn’t there to speak for themselves is the height of ego-centric hypocrisy.

Ward 7 committee member R. Downey Myer said the committee “couldn’t ignore” the idea that some students may be upset. Easy to see why they couldn’t ignore it, it was their idea.

You might argue that someone complained though, right?

Per the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Gina Nortensmith, a political activist spoke up at a December 8 school committee meeting. She called the program “ill-considered, tone-deaf, and potentially damaging.” Here’s the kicker, she’s reportedly a district employee. So, one employee of a district which had already approved the policy spoke up, and presto: the school committee sprang in to action as though there were a groundswell of anger over kids getting high-fives from public servants.

What really happened here is that Nortensmith, and some members of the school committee revealed their own implicit bias, because they clearly believe that children of color are positioned at odds with law enforcement from the earliest age. If you want to talk about something that is damaging and ill-considered, it’s these social crusaders going out of their way to teach children that the police are some kind of other class of people. They teach them that the law is something to be fearful of, and they teach them to avoid the police at all costs.

This is gross negligence of the highest order. Sadly, I think most people in Northampton may go along with it. Obviously, this committee didn’t come to be by accident. Their action in passing on Nortensmith’s preconceived notions about how others may react to officer friendly is, at best, gross negligence. The Chief, the Superintendent and the Mayor all caved like wet tissues under the weight of a complaint that someone thought someone might someday have. They are serving the loudest few in the city of Northampton, and they have done a public disservice to the nearly one-thousand kids at the high school.

Killing the program was pathetic, but doing it with open public debate about why cops are scary would be laughable, if it weren’t so maddeningly irresponsible.

If I see a Northampton Police officer, you can bet I’ll give them a high-five. They need it. They have an uphill battle against crime, and the city’s leadership.

Watching Donald Trump joust with the national media is devolving in to a pathetic battle that looks more like a grade school slap-fest more than a heavyweight prize fight. In one corner, a President whose communication skills would get him laughed out of intramural debate club, dropping one questionable line after another. And in the other corner, a group of activists whose candidate lost, on alert for any misstep like a dog under a dinner table.

As someone who is neither a Trump-lover, nor a Trump-hater, it’s a vexing game of clumsy tit-for-tat in which both participants only serve to make themselves look as bad as the other side, which they claim is so foolish.

When Trump, at an event in Florida, off-handedly referenced a situation ‘last night’ in Sweden, the mainstream media was whipped in to it’s hyper-coital, resistance mode. Naturally they were aroused by the fact that their mortal enemy referenced an apparent event that didn’t happen. Rather than simply assail the President for his poor choice of words, they went one step further and have embarked on a quest to prove that a mass influx of migrants has been super cool for Sweden. “Nothing to see there,” almost says the New York Times, “Stupid Trump!”

Consider that the chief of police in the Swedish city of Malmo has asked publicly for help because of a sharp uptick in crime. To be fair, the city is only made up of about 32 percent migrants, according to Fox. Then again, the city has endured 100 GRENADE attacks in the last two years, so it does seem like its working out quite nicely for the Swedes after all.

Trump, for his part, does a disservice to the intellectual strength of the positions he takes, by playing incredibly fast loose with the language. It gives his detractors a constant supply of what they perceive as red meat, and it continually steers the mainstream conversation away from the ideas he’s representing, and back to how he’s representing them.

Bowling Green for example: 2 bomb-makers who had participated in overseas attacks on American soldiers were arrested while plotting on our soil. When Trump advisor Kelly-Anne referred to a “massacre” that never happened, the left burst out laughing. Nothing tickles the funny bone like bombing US soldiers.

Trump should stick to the facts, because there are enough of them. It’s maddening. Talk about the grenade attacks, Mr. President. Grenades. Not muggings or car-jackings or graffiti, freaking grenade attacks.

Note too, Mr. President, that Sweden has taken in 32,000 unaccompanied minors. This is an important because when you talk about vetting, progressives pish-posh that current standards are strong enough.

So how does Sweden know that these 32,000 minors are actually minors? Because they claim to be. That’s it. There’s no challenge to this unless someone is “obviously” not a minor. A rule that wouldn’t work well in Little League baseball is surely a tenuous place for a city that faces a hundred grenade attacks every few years to put its trust.

The most unusual Presidential press conference ever? I’d say so.

Trump spent well over an hour sparring with reporters in his staccato, finger-wagging style. He spoke exactly like the candidate who announced his intention to run amidst the amused chuckles of the elite media who believed he was little more than a sideshow.

Today, the country club dwellers who once believed that they would spend the next four years celebrating a Hillary victory, once again sat in the audience for a news conference that could only have been the manifestation of their worst nightmares.

More than the news conference itself, with its now customary tit-for-tat between the President and his media detractors, the continual jousting between the administration of the would-be gate keepers is now the story.

For those on the left, and those who make their living at a news outlet comprised of 3 letters, the unorthodox behavior of Trump is abhorrent.

For those on the right, who believed that the last President was given a virtual pass by 3 letter outlets, the verbal drubbing is overdue.

Viewed through an impartial lens, I think they’re both right.

The Trump White House is populated by a group of tacticians who stitched together a brilliant and unlikely electoral victory. Their brilliance, to some extent, seems to have faded since election day. The President is correct in saying that he’s working to keep his campaign promises, and it is those promises that pulled together a blue collar electoral coalition that rejected the establishment in the firmest way.

Yet to come to Washington with a plan of action, and no plan to manage the predictable offensive from the elite progressives in the media is truly a shame. The people who voted for Donald Trump did so in a direct attempt to undercut the agenda of the Obama Administration. They want secure borders. They want the utmost in national security. They want fewer regulations, lower taxes, a strong second amendment, and an economic policy that puts America first.

The truth is that I want that too. I believe firmly that the last 8 years represent a sharp left turn in the wrong direction for the country. The fast food, uni-syllabic, thin-skinned approach to this fight has no hope of winning over anyone who isn’t a truly believer.

Of course, the same could be said of the whiny, foot-stomping, self-important Washington press corps. Its painfully obvious that people who had little or no interest in impeaching the credibility of a President they agreed with, are now wholly committed to an ideological quest of resistance and undermining. The veil of impartiality has, for the most part, been lifted.

So, at the end of the press conference, Trumpkins were thrilled with the backhands that were delivered to the more vocal members of the press. And the progressives, desperate for some miracle impeachment to salve the wounds of their loss, believe that the press is some white knight defending their ideological position. And no forward progress is made.

Someone in the Trump White House needs take control of communication. Trump didn’t just win with blunt force, he won with ideals, and it would be refreshing to hear some idealism from this White House. People supported this candidate because they believed he could move the ball on a whole host of issues. If the next four years amount to little more than bluster, chiding press conferences and executive fiats, he will have achieved as little of substance as his predecessor. And the toxicity will only deepen.