Dead Man Flying

It's been a week of rather sensational and grotesque news events, whose impact at first took me far from the drab concerns of a disappointed post-season baseball fan, and then flung me right back into the rarified air of Baseball Tragedy.

It began with a dog-and-pony political carnival involving a gay congressman's flirtatious e-mails. I agree with what Bill Maher said on his show, pointing out that as tawdry as Foley's actions were, they pale in importance to the real threats to our national well-being effected by Bush's wayward foreign policy. That Foley was the chairman of the Committee to Protect Young People from Internet Sexual Predation merely reiterates the moral hypocrisy in which the Republican leadership wallows. The exposure of another hypocrite has become as common as a Republican's knee jerk pronouncements blaming Bill Clinton for pretty much everything bad that has ever happened. Well, all I can say is, Clinton did not chair the Committee Protecting Blue Dresses from Cum Stains.

With all the who-knew-whats and why-didn't-they-act caterwauling going around, and the obvious political posturing from both sides, the sad fact is that at the basis of the scandal is homophobia. Had Foley been caught e-flirting with some young chicks there would not have been the slightest ripple. Ironically, it is the Democrats who are now trying to benefit by eliciting the ick factor among the Red Staters. Given that the Republicans rode the anti-Gay-Marriage initiatives right back into the White House in 2004, this is a fair, though regrettable irony.

But that was a tempest in a teapot, compared with the tempest in a tempest of North Korea first announcing an atomic test, then producing one. The entire region is now on panicky alert, and Kim is proving himself a much more potentially threatening madman than that old weathered asshole sitting on an endless trial in Baghdad. Right now the best whistle-in-the-dark attitude I can draw from the situation is that the North Koreans can't yet fly nuclear missiles into Los Angeles--though they can do Seoul in an instant, and Tokyo too. Tokyo too. Of course, the Republicans are blaming Clinton, whose earlier attempts to negotiate with the North Koreans only slowed but did not deter their nuclear development. The NeoCons would rather have engaged in the kind of persuasive confrontation that has so succeeded in the Middle East and has left the world in a state of everlasting peace and contentment.

Ignoring that looming mushroom cloud in our future, there was yesterday's tragedy in New York, which began as a terrorist alert and then turned into a bizarre baseball disaster. When I saw on my computer headlines that there had been a small plane crashing into a Manhattan high-rise, my first impulse was, like most people's, fearing some kind of terrorist activity, perhaps a lone suicide bomber trying to shake things up. That the aviator turned out not to be an Arab, but to be a Yankee--not just a Yankee but a New York Yankee for Christ's sake, Cory Lidle--this was almost too bizarre a confluence of events to digest. Had the Yankees won the series against the Tigers, of course, Cory wouldn't have been flying and his wife wouldn't be a widow. But life is randomly cruel, but not only does he not get a chance at a World Series ring, he doesn't get to breathe ever again. As someone will surely state some time at his funeral, "God works in mysterious ways."

Frankly, I think it makes more sense to blame Bill Clinton.