QUARANTINE BLOG # 98

July 6, 2020

👉  Readers of this blog know that I object to all of the calls to erase history by tearing down monuments, changing institution names, etc., because if we forget history, we are doomed to repeat it.  So far, no matter which side you are on – agree or disagree –  the argument has been about principle.  That was until Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins announced that there is going to be a “thorough review of the team’s name.”

Supporters of America’s First Nation people have long asked for the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves, the Cleveland Indians, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Kansas City Chiefs to change their names.  They would have called for changes in to the hockey team in Edmonton, Alberta, but they are, obviously in Canada, and I don’t if the Eskimos have a support group.

Snyder said in a statement: “This process allows the team to take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League and the local community is proud to represent on and off the field.” [Italics, mine]

That sounded like principle until you understand two of the team’s biggest financial partners – sponsors – signaled they wanted a name change.  FedEx, which owns the naming rights to the team’s stadium, recently informed the team it wanted to see a new name at FedEx Field.  Nike, the league’s official uniform supplier wiped the team’s products from its online store.

It’s an old saying, but true: Money talks.  You-know-what walks.

👉  While I’m sticking my finger in the eye of professional sports, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred – the worst commissioner in the sport’s history – admitted last week that, despite all of the negotiating and maneuvering, the league never intended to play more than 60 games in the 2020 season amid the coronavirus pandemic.

March 27: MLB is still hoping to play a 140-game season with playoffs expanded to 14 teams.

May 9: MLB reportedly narrows its focus to beginning the season in early July. The aim would be a regular season of around 80 games followed by an expanded postseason.

June 18: MLB rejects players offer of 70 games.

July 1: Commissioner Manfred: “The reality is we weren’t going to play more than 60 games no matter how the negotiations with the players went, or any other factor.”

👉  Baseball has played through one pandemic – the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918, which killed 675,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide.  World War I was in its final, brutal year.  With players being drafted to go to Europe and fight in the “The Great War,” [Yoda’s comment about war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyRFTcRdrIc ] and with the threat of a plague on the horizon, baseball was caught in a dilemma.

There was a question as to whether the season was even going to finish, but it did with a shortened season.  The Boston Red Sox only played 126 games, the Chicago Cubs 129, and the World Series ended September 11 with the Sox up 4-2.  It was the only World Series with all of the games played in September.

👉  Here’s an annual Independence Day sporting event I missed.  Oh darn!  The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.  Held annually since 1972, the competition this year saw Joey Chestnut eclipse  his own world record, winning his 13th title, downing 75 frankfurters in 10 minutes.  On the women’s side, Miki Sudo set a world record on the way to her seventh Mustard Yellow Belt, consuming 48½ frankfurters to beat the record of 45 hot dogs, set in 2012.  And with people around the world going to bed hungry tonight, gluttony is glorified on ESPN.

👉  Enough sports talk.  Let’s turn to the funny pages.

Credit for being the first commercially successful comic strip goes to “The Yellow Kid,” created and drawn by Richard F. Outcault.  The Kid, whose real name was Mickey Dugan first appeared on May 5, 1895  https://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_albums/yellowkid/HoganAlley_Enlarge/d_1578.jpg and was as much a political cartoon as it was a traditional comic strip.

Although a cartoon, Outcault’s work aimed its humor at social commentary.  The Yellow Kid’s head was drawn wholly shaved as if having been recently ridden of lice, a common sight among children in New York’s tenement ghettos at the time.  His nightshirt, a hand-me-down from an older sister, was white or pale blue in the first color strips (he is in the lower right hand corner of that first strip, wearing the blue nightshirt).

Because Outcault did not copyright the Kid, he was published in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal American, and drawn by two different artists.  The two newspapers quickly became known as the yellow kid papers.  This was contracted to the yellow papers and the term yellow kid journalism was shortened to yellow journalism, describing the two newspapers’  editorial practices of taking – sometimes even fictionalized – sensationalism and profit as priorities in journalism.  Fake news?  From the 19th to the 21st century, it seems like not much has changed.

Tomorrow, we’ll move into the 1930s and look at some comics which told an adventure, not just a one panel joke, and are still published today – Dick Tracy, Fearless Fosdick, The Phantom, Prince Valiant, and Mandrake the Magician.  Then the likes of Calvin and Hobbes, Far Side, Baby Blues, Fox Trot, and Peanuts.

👉  It is called “The Sermon on the Mount,” and the key word is repeated nine times,  “Blessed.”  Some have suggested that “happy” would be a better translation, except that it misses an implied congratulation as Jesus originally spoke it: “Bravo-joy to the poor in spirit!”

The Beatitudes are not good advice.  They are not a pious “thought for the day.”  They are not a daydream.  Coronavirus and the tension in society cannot stop the blessedness Jesus intended for us.  Every dark force converged on Calvary and was overthrown!

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  That means the opposite of proud.  To be poor in spirit is not to despise yourself.  It is not to look upon yourself with contempt.  It is to be humble, childlike, teachable, ready to lean on Someone greater than yourself.

In the Old Testament, Jesus’ Bible, “the poor” is often a synonym for those who wait on God, and Jesus says, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The poor in spirit  worship at a throne as lowly as a manger, as self-forgetting as a cross.  The poor in spirit, are those who know their hope is beyond themselves and in the life of the resurrected Savior, are already in heaven – “theirs is – right now – the kingdom.”

Eugene Peterson phrased this beatitude in a beautiful way: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.  With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”

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