The American Spectator

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Crying Foul

5.29.08 @ 12:01AM

HEAVY IS THE HEAD
Re: James David Dickson's Tired Superpower:

How many Americans can openly admit to giving our country five minutes of undivided cerebral attention? Attention that is free from the stresses of life, job, and our fellow humans? Not the attention of what the country can do for me, or what you can do for your country." More like as Americans are we on the verge of something that is yet to be defined, but will have dramatic effect upon our lives and this country.

We are emphatically blamed for many of the ills of the world. We are castigated for not doing enough for the world's poor, we allow third world countries' children go to bed hungry at night while our children become more obese, yet Americans are the world's most productive people.

So what are we to do? There comes a time as a people we need to go back and relearn the principles that made us who we are today.

"But we won't be a superpower anymore!" Maybe. But what is the definition of superpower and that still doesn't take away from us who we are as a people and nation and what we have accomplished in our brief history.

Maybe this yet to be defined something, is really a new American cognizance that we are to embark upon as a nation, that in itself will make us stronger, better, and a more effective leader of the free world.

But will we have a President that will address us as a whole nation instead of individual demographic groups and have the political courage and will to tell us, "We need to pull off the World's freeway for a while and take a break."
-- Melvin L. Leppla
Jacksonville, North Carolina

SOMETHING ELSE
Re: Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder's Experiencing Obama:

All kidding aside, Jackie and Raoul, "experiencing" Obama may very well be the undoing of this country. I found his Memorial Day remarks extremely disturbing, and not because he mistakenly said the American's liberated Auschwitz, either. No, unfortunately for America, what Obama, and his fellow leftist travelers suffer from, is far worse than the Post Traumatic Stress he spoke of. This insight into Obama's moral myopia began when he suggested that his uncle experienced PTS upon his observations of the horrors he experienced at the camp he helped liberate, and not, as a result from experiencing his fellow soldiers dying or being severely wounded in battle. Obama, in his haste to score cheap anti-military points, failed to close the loop, and in so doing, unwittingly admitted to us that he has absolutely no concept of the existence of Pure Evil.

If Obama had the slightest regard and respect for America, he would have used his uncle's experience, as a segue, especially on Memorial Day, to offer a spirited defense of American troops fighting radical Islam and the Evil it presents to the world today.

Problem is, Obama didn't and doesn't see that radical Islam is today's incarnation of Evil. His moral equivalence and appeasement mentality, like many of those on the Left, has blinded him to what al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups represent, even with their daily pronouncements and acts of violence. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother, were two famous, principled pacifists during WWII. The horrors of the Nazi revelations changed their entire moral perspectives, and they both committed themselves to fighting further Nazi aggression. We will not be so lucky with
Obama.
-- A. DiPentima

ONE BLIND MOUSE
Re: Lisa Fabrizio's Save the Umpires:

I spent over 20 years officiating baseball, softball, and football. It was both great fun, mildly remunerative, and even harrowing. I called games involving kids, boys and girls, starting at age 10. I called games from junior high to high school. On the other end of the spectrum, I called adult baseball and softball (slow pitch and fast pitch) up through national tournaments, in almost all classes of ball. I didn't want to call men's unlimited softball because virtually every player was sure that the only reason they were not on a major league roster was some incompetent general manager or coach that had a personal bias against them. Damn prima donnas! What I am saying is, "Been there, done that." Not at the MLB or NFL level, but I worked just as hard to "get it right." That is where I developed my theory that parents should be kept in locked cages at least 100 yards away from the playing field during any youth sporting event.

Lisa, you wrote a generally good article. One that I can agree with almost completely. The theory behind your prescriptions would seem to be spot on. There is, however, one development in major league baseball that you fail to take into account. That is the modern stadiums.

Way back in the day, the home run thing was not so big a problem. The bats were ash, not the current super hard maple that splinters at the drop of a hat. The ball was a "dead" ball, or at least not as lively as today. The players were not as honed, and toned, and strong. But at the original Yankee Stadium, you couldn't hit a ball out of center field anyway. You could get an inside the park home run, but you darn sure weren't going to hit it out of the park. In all stadiums you had an outfield wall of some height, and some distance from home plate, depending on the stadium. If the ball cleared the fence, or if it hit the top of the fence and bounced over, it was a home run. There were a few balls each year that were called wrong as far as fair and foul are concerned, but there were not enough of them to get all radical over.

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