Did you see the last game of the American League Championship Series last week? In the bottom of the 11th inning, with a runner on first and two out, Roberto Alomar of the Orioles is standing in the batter’s box facing a full count. Cleveland Indian pitcher Jose Mesa throws a pitch that is way inside, but the home plate umpire, who the box scores identify only as “Reilly” calls “Strike Three” and suddenly the game, and the Orioles season, is over.
Lemme tell you what I think. I think this Reilly umpire decided to call a strike before the pitch was ever thrown – because Roberto Alomar was the batter and Roberto Alomar spit at an umpire at the end of the 1996 season.
I’m not talking about this to rehash old baseball games. I mention it as an example of prejudice. Umpire Reilly decided to call a strike and he did, without regard to the actual pitch. I was reminded of the baseball incident a few days later when I read in the Washington Post that Al Gore, in a speech, said the television show “Ellen” gives us all the opportunity to be more tolerant. Now, one would think uttering such bland platitudes would not result in a front page story in the Washington Post, but apparently Gore made a number of people angry with all this loose talk about tolerance. Randy Tate, the executive director of the Christian Coalition tore into Gore for allegedly sucking up to the Hollywood elite and advised that Gore would do better to concern himself with what Tate called middle-class values than to say a kind thing about lesbians like Ellen DeGeneres. I must be way out of the mainstream on this one, because I thought tolerance was a middle-class value. Nor do I think soccer moms will lose their political franchise because Al Gore once had a kind word for a homosexual.
Just as Umpire Reilly decided before the fact that Roberto Alomar would be thrown a strike, so did Randy Tate decide that Al Gore’s speech on gay and lesbian issues would be unacceptable, regardless of what Gore actually said. This is the fruit of the politics of opposition. No matter what you do, we’ll oppose it; no matter what you say, we’ll contradict it.
We can be cynical about all this, and I admit the temptation to be so is great. After all, Al Gore made his speech and kept his constituents happy. Randy Tate blasted the speech and kept his constituents happy, the Washington Post has a page one story on the political pulse of the nation and Floegel has something to rant about for another week. It can all seem like part of a complex ballet, part of the on-going political production that is always moving but never seems to progress.
And you – you’ve spent the last two and a half minutes of your life with me and you want a moral for our story. Okay, it’s this: Be careful what you pretend to be. If we are going to posture for the sake of politics, posture on behalf of tolerance, on behalf of openness, on behalf of gentleness.
The Fall Classic
Did you see the last game of the American League Championship Series last week? In the bottom of the 11th inning, with a runner on first and two out, Roberto Alomar of the Orioles is standing in the batter’s box facing a full count. Cleveland Indian pitcher Jose Mesa throws a pitch that is way inside, but the home plate umpire, who the box scores identify only as “Reilly” calls “Strike Three” and suddenly the game, and the Orioles season, is over.
Lemme tell you what I think. I think this Reilly umpire decided to call a strike before the pitch was ever thrown – because Roberto Alomar was the batter and Roberto Alomar spit at an umpire at the end of the 1996 season.
I’m not talking about this to rehash old baseball games. I mention it as an example of prejudice. Umpire Reilly decided to call a strike and he did, without regard to the actual pitch. I was reminded of the baseball incident a few days later when I read in the Washington Post that Al Gore, in a speech, said the television show “Ellen” gives us all the opportunity to be more tolerant. Now, one would think uttering such bland platitudes would not result in a front page story in the Washington Post, but apparently Gore made a number of people angry with all this loose talk about tolerance. Randy Tate, the executive director of the Christian Coalition tore into Gore for allegedly sucking up to the Hollywood elite and advised that Gore would do better to concern himself with what Tate called middle-class values than to say a kind thing about lesbians like Ellen DeGeneres. I must be way out of the mainstream on this one, because I thought tolerance was a middle-class value. Nor do I think soccer moms will lose their political franchise because Al Gore once had a kind word for a homosexual.
Just as Umpire Reilly decided before the fact that Roberto Alomar would be thrown a strike, so did Randy Tate decide that Al Gore’s speech on gay and lesbian issues would be unacceptable, regardless of what Gore actually said. This is the fruit of the politics of opposition. No matter what you do, we’ll oppose it; no matter what you say, we’ll contradict it.
We can be cynical about all this, and I admit the temptation to be so is great. After all, Al Gore made his speech and kept his constituents happy. Randy Tate blasted the speech and kept his constituents happy, the Washington Post has a page one story on the political pulse of the nation and Floegel has something to rant about for another week. It can all seem like part of a complex ballet, part of the on-going political production that is always moving but never seems to progress.
And you – you’ve spent the last two and a half minutes of your life with me and you want a moral for our story. Okay, it’s this: Be careful what you pretend to be. If we are going to posture for the sake of politics, posture on behalf of tolerance, on behalf of openness, on behalf of gentleness.