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ESPN’s Random Act of Feminism

By Selwyn Duke

It’s really hard to know today where the stupidity ends and the propaganda begins. MSNBC recently made news by labeling infamous segregationist George Wallace a Republican during a recent television broadcast. Now ESPN has followed suit, with a random act of feminism. 

On the sports network’s Friday US Open golf telecast, there was a short retrospective piece on golf great Lee Trevino’s gag at the 1971 Open at Merion, where he tossed a rubber snake at opponent Jack Nicklaus right before their playoff. The piece’s narrator mentioned that it was history’s second most famous serpent story, next to that of the Garden of Eden. This was accompanied by Eden imagery, which certainly enhanced the work’s artistic quality, so the association made sense. But then the piece took an interesting twist:

Thomas Jefferson Said . . . 1/16/08

"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
– Thomas Jefferson (1801)

Thought of the Day - The Wisdom of Edmund Burke

The following are select quotations from the great Irish orator and statesman, Edmund Burke (1729-1797).

On Freedom . . .

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,—in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Thought of the Day - Lawyers and Legality

The following is from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).  Read it and see if it seems familiar.

I said, there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves. For example, if my neighbour has a mind to my cow, he has a lawyer to prove that he ought to have my cow from me. I must then hire another to defend my right, it being against all rules of law that any man should be allowed to speak for himself.