Stinking to High Heaven

“He shoots, he scores!”

Foster Hewitt

***

As a carryover from my unrealized childhood desire to become a sports announcer, when I watch a sports event on television I usually do a play-by-play broadcast in my head. That, of course, will never get me inducted, like Foster Hewitt, the legendary announcer on Hockey Night in Canada, into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto—or into any other sports hall of fame, wherever located. But like Mr. Hewitt I have invented a phrase—while not as sonorous as his goal call—that I have coined for a particular defining moment in a game.

For example, on June 14 in the 35^th minute of Italy's opening round game against England in this year's World Cup finals, Claudio Marchisio found himself in acres of space and was able to easily boot home the initial goal of the match. It was an example of what the announcing voice in my head has named a “deodorant play,” the definition of which is “a play that is made by someone who did not put on any deodorant before the game and thus reeks so much that no opponent cares to get close enough to defend against him.” In Marchisio's case, no Englishman, even were he brandishing the proverbial ten-foot pole, was near enough to make contact with the Italian. 

***

Just the weekend before the England/Italy match in the heat and humidity of Manaus, Brazil, George Will, who is a member of that Washington fauna known as “pundits,” raised the temperature of quite a few readers of his Washington Post column by … well, let the headline in Salon.com tell it:

George Will: Being a victim of sexual assault is a “coveted status that confers privileges”

The Washington Post columnist thinks women are lying about sexual assault in order to get "privileges"

The New Yorker elaborates:

Colleges and universities have now learned, [Will] writes, “that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate”; he sees this quite plainly in “the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. ‘sexual assault.’”

I have a suggestion: 

Since having one's body violated, being battered and bruised, and perhaps being permanently maimed is such a good thing, someone should take the aforementioned ten-foot pole and administer a few well-directed blows against George Will's person. I am sure that he would welcome them. After all, who would reject the opportunity to gain the privileges that the coveted status of victimhood confers?

My Heart Belongs to Daddy

“No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office." 

Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th U.S. President

*

“Nepotism in many ways is like its furtive sibling, onanism: a practice that people are irresistibly compelled to indulge in, and one that gives them great satisfaction, but one in which no one can take public pride.”

John Homans*

***

“Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews--sons mine . . .”

Robert Browning, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church, Rome”

*

One wonders if on their deathbeds Pope Alexander VI, who “elevated not fewer than ten of his relatives to the College of Cardinals, and endowed others with a host of fiefdoms in the Papal States,” or Pope Sixtus IV, who “elevated six of his relatives to the Sacred College,”** were surrounded by those who gained from the largesse of their relative.

One wonders, also, if Adam Bellow was at the foot of the bed of his Nobel Prize winning father, Saul, when the latter shuffled off this mortal coil. As he himself admitted in New York magazine, “The son of a famous writer, I attended an exclusive private school along with the children of other distinguished people: writers and actors, musicians, politicians, art dealers, and editors of the New York Times.” He has also admitted to being a great lover of nepotism; in fact he wrote a whole book to praise it. 

Of course, he found it necessary to try to separate the nepotism of Renaissance popes from that of democratic American life. Bellow doesn't see us as “returning to a society based on hereditary status, complete with a corporate aristocracy and a political House of Lords.” What he sees is something like “the family that works together, stays together.” He says, “Occupational traditions within families are very much a part of our national fabric,” going on to point out that children go into family businesses and some actors' children become actors and some home run hitters' offspring also swing major league bats.

As John Homans pointed out in his review of Bellow's book In Praise of Nepotism, the author uses a definition of nepotism so capacious that whatever sordid taint the word had is so diluted as to be barely detectable.” Surely, the issue with nepotism isn't talent following talent from generation to generation, or learned skill following learned skill from generation to generation, but of the privileged using their advantages to maintain their power from generation to generation. 

It is interesting that Bellow cites Jim Hightower's attack on George Bush the elder: "He is a man who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." But he sloughs off this observation that holds true in so many cases to justify Bush junior's electoral success as somehow down to personality and achievement. Nevertheless, Bellow does attempt to defend nepotism (however he defines it)--an attempt which is perhaps an apologia pro sua vita, understandable as he himself seems to be too honest to sing in the shower, “I did it my way.”

*

I once had a desk plaque that read: “All I Ask is an Honest Advantage.” I would clasp to my bosom the man who would defend any advantage I had and proclaim:

“I will go to the barricades to protect your right to dine on caviar and champagne, while I gobble my bowl of gruel.”

But somehow I doubt I shall ever meet that fellow. The defenders of privilege always seem to be those people who already have them and not those people whose cupboards are bare.

I will clasp to my bosom, though, Paul Bernal, who recognizes his privileged status and what that should entail: 

“With great privilege should come great humility. Those of us who are privileged . . . should be able to find that humility. To know that we really don’t know what it’s like to live without our privilege. We can try to imagine – but we’ll never really succeed. And we should know that we’ll never really succeed – and be far, far more willing to listen properly to those who do know it. Most of all, though, we should know when not to talk as though we had all the answers. We should know when to shut up.”***

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*http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/n_9020/

**http://www.historytoday.com/blog/2013/10/were-borgias-really-so-bad

***http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/11/boris-johnson-and-invisible-prison-privilege