Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Shadowboxing with giants


There was about a 100 minute span on Tuesday, a window during which the baseball world waited. A little short of two hours passed as the initial reports of a downed plane gave way to confirmed aircraft ID numbers before, finally, the sheriff of a coastal Florida county read the victim's name aloud.

For almost two hours, I distracted myself with the last refuge of scoundrels: municipal politics. I watched a live stream as a handful of opportunistic contrarians shuffled to a microphone where they might cough out crass, opportunistic, and intellectually dishonest arguments.

They were at best underprepared and at worst wholly unfamiliar with the subject at hand. They were lazy and they were unprofessional. And then, just after 4:15pm, I was confronted with the name of a man who was neither of those things.