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A 350-Mile Trip To the Glory Days
By Michael Wilbon
Sunday, August 3, 2008

Few teams in professional sports get to have as grand a day as the Washington Redskins had here Saturday. Any team’s fans can buy out a stadium for a big playoff game or be indulged in a civic championship parade. But how many times can a team’s fans, more than 15,000 of them, monopolize a sport’s Hall of Fame? Not since the old Bulldogs left Canton has the birthplace of professional football so tilted toward one team.

The Redskins and their devotees hadn’t had so much to celebrate in more than 16 years, since Darrell Green and Art Monk were in uniform, not coincidentally. Folks who’ve been coming here for these inductions for 25, 30 years swear no team has produced anything close to the Redskins’ Hall of Fame turnout, not to mention their fervor. Their ovations, particularly the four-minute outpouring that greeted Monk, were as heartfelt as any Sunday afternoon praise during their career.

The mayor of Canton took one look at the crowd, painted in burgundy and gold, and proclaimed it “Redskins Day.” Every seat on every flight Saturday from National, BWI and Dulles airports to nearby Cleveland was occupied. Thousands more drove the 350 miles. Every one of them seemed to be wearing a Redskins jersey, most bearing either Green’s No. 28 or Monk’s No. 81. No single Redskin could have caused this stampede; only a pair as already beloved as Green and Monk could pack the house on the road like this.

Every sighting of every Redskin already in the Hall of Fame was treated like a first appearance. Joe Gibbs, Ken Houston, Bobby Mitchell, Bill Dudley and Charley Taylor all were cheered wildly when introduced. Good thing Sonny Jurgensen and Sam Huff were leading young players through a tour of the Hall at the time, lest their public introduction cause a complete panic.
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Hall of Fame Cowboys were unmercifully booed, especially Michael Irvin, whose beaming smile seemed to suggest an acceptance that boos in the context of this particular afternoon amounted to quite the honor. Thurman Thomas, the Buffalo Bills running back who was inducted here last year, told an ESPN interviewer when asked about the passionate outpouring of the day, “I’m glad I’m not a Cowboy.”

One of today’s “other” inductees, Emmitt Thomas, was enshrined because of his outstanding career as a ball-hawking, head-knocking Kansas City Chiefs cornerback who entered the league an undrafted free agent back when the draft lasted 17 rounds. But real Redskins fans know him as a longtime Joe Gibbs assistant, a man who coached both Monk and Green, an unassuming lieutenant with a wonderful mind for defensive football who, had he been born 15 years later, might have found an owner unafraid to hire him as a head coach.

They’re all part of one fabulously successful era of Redskins football, a masterful run chock-full of smart and resourceful men who cared nothing for stardom and exclusively for team, as out of touch as that phrase now sounds. Even Saturday, on a day when being honored at the highest level of one’s profession might allow for some chest-thumping, former assistant Thomas spoke with his signature humility. Of his former pupils, Monk and Green, sitting behind him, Thomas said, “Both of these men overcame my coaching and had successful careers.” And Thomas might as well have been speaking for all of them when he said: “You’re looking at a man that has a lot of blemishes, abrasions and scars dealt to him by life’s highs and lows. But you’re also looking at a man who stood tall in the arena, never quit even though it looked like the game was over on many, many occasions.”

Every city, if it’s lucky, has an era like the Washington Redskins of 1981-91, teams that win championships and produce Hall of Famers and uncommon good times. Pittsburgh will forever celebrate the four-time champion Steelers of the 1970s. San Francisco has those stylish and prolific Joe Montana teams of the 1980s. Boston and Los Angeles have Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s “Showtime” Lakers, respectively. Chicago revels still in Jordan’s Bulls. New York has, most recently, the late-’90s Yankees teams captained by Derek Jeter. New England has the Patriots, the first great football run of the new century, just as San Antonio has the Spurs of Tim Duncan. They are teams whose championship runs live for decades, teams that become civic treasures and ways by which communities define themselves.

In effect, this just might have been the grandest and final public celebration of the men who comprised those teams in Gibbs’s first tenure. Yes, Green and Monk were enshrined Saturday, but they weren’t the sole objects of all that affection. Monk and Green were, in effect, stand-ins this weekend for the Hogs, the Fun Bunch, the Pearl Harbor Crew, even a few stragglers from the Over the Hill Gang. For Joe Theismann, Doug Williams, Mark Rypien, Dexter Manley, Earnest Byner, Monte Coleman, Darryl Grant, Charles Mann, Mark Moseley, Bobby Beathard, Richie Petitbon, Joe Bugel, Bubba Tyer, and on and on and on.

The Redskins may not pass this way again for a while. The Hall of Fame is an especially difficult place to come to rest. Joe Jacoby’s name has come up in the Hall of Fame discussions over the years, but briefly. Russ Grimm’s name has come up a little more extensively, though not enough for my tastes. Jeff Bostic was awfully, awfully good for a very long time, but Canton is most likely out of his reach.

Gibbs, John Riggins, Darrell Green and Art Monk. That’s the list. Nobody in the seasons since even appears on the horizon, not yet anyway. Those are going to be the most decorated of the Redskins, of a very special time in the team’s history, in Washington’s history. The cheers here today were for all of them, really.

Green and Monk wore the yellow Hall of Fame jackets that are so coveted by every player who ever enters the NFL. But the teammates they sweated with, bled with, and mostly won with were alongside them for every step on the trip to Canton, through the speeches, the pats on the back and the atta-boys, especially the ovations that began in the warm sun and lasted happily deep into the rarest of nights.

The ability to write well is very useful for our personal and professional lives. It helps students, business people, politicians, writers, bloggers, marketers and everyone who has ever needed to arrange words together to convey ideas or opinions. The written word has become an essential means of social communication: mastery of it helps you to enthrall and persuade an audience that would look upon you favorably in return…

The Rest of the Story…

8 July 2008 Filed under: Other Stuff Author: tony

My apologies to everyone who participated in the Metro-Rednexual Contest. I’ve been delayed in compiling the results. After reviewing all the submissions, I’ve arrived at the following top 10 list. Without further delay:

You might be a metro-rednexual if…

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By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 03, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Oil: With the long July Fourth weekend, you might get a chance to see your senator or representative. If so, you should be ready to dispel a few myths politicians now have about drilling for more oil.

This is especially true of Democrats. Many in Congress seem either disconnected from reality or intentionally disingenuous about our energy crunch…

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This is just too weird for words…

2 July 2008

Durham, N.C. — Police charged a third person Wednesday in connection with beatings and rape that authorities say were carried out by a satanic cult.

Diana Palmer, 44, of Cottage Woods Court, surrendered to police Wednesday afternoon. She was charged with being an accessory after the fact of assault with a deadly weapon and was being held in the Durham County Jail.

Palmer posted $30,000 bond Wednesday and was released from jail.

The Rest of the Story…

powerlineblog.com
July 2, 2008

On page 8 of the Washington Post’s news section today, we learn that, according to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq has met all but three of the 18 original benchmarks set by Congress. The only three that have not met are (a) enacting and implementing laws governing the oil industry (though it’s not clear why formal laws are necessary), (2) disarmament of militia and insurgent groups, and (3) making the Iraqi police more professional.

The Post hastens to add, however, that other recent assessments find that Iraq has failed to achieve “many of the goals that the Baghdad government and President Bush said would be reached by the end of 2007.” But a parallel statement can probably be made with respect to the domestic situation here in the U.S.

The best evidence of the extent to which political progress has been made in Iraq is found in another story that also appears on page 8 of the Post — the fact that Iraq’s main Sunni Muslim political bloc is on the verge of rejoining the Shiite-led government after a boycott of almost a year. If this bloc, known as the Tawafaq Front, does join the government, that itself will represent progress. Perhaps more importantly, the bloc would not be ending its boycott in the absence of major progress.

The bloc withdrew from the Iraqi government last August over demands for constitutional change and the release of Sunni detainees from Iraq’s prisons. Now, according to the Post, its leaders say the government has done enough to satisfy their core conditions. In particular, they cite the passing of the amnesty law and the government’s efforts to crack down on Shiite militias.

A spokesperson for the Sunni bloc said: “We feel that a great deal of [the conditions] have been fulfilled.” Considering the stakes for Iraq’s leading Sunnis and their close proximity to the situation on the ground, this assessment seems persuasive, and far more probative than any assessment by the GAO.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/07/020895.php

Russell D. Moore on Jeremiah Wright & the Conservatives Who Preach Just Like Him

For months, Barack Obama’s pastor lit up the radio and television airwaves with his comments on conspiracy theories about American “state-sponsored terrorism,” his call on God to damn America, his belief that the September 11 terrorist attacks were simply America’s “chickens coming home to roost.”

Some of the talking heads discussed Jeremiah Wright as though his kind of rhetoric were essential to the African-American church, a claim that is patently untrue, and easily verifiable as such. Others seemed to assume that his style of ministry was unique. The truth is, Jeremiah Wright’s name is Legion, and you are just as likely to hear his kind of preaching in a white congregation as in a black one.

The Rest of the Story…

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From the Guardian: Bush Made the World a Safer Place, by Oliver Kamm.

From Bench Memos: Will-ful Disregard, by Ed Whelan.

From Politico: Are Dems Talking About McCain’s Age in ‘Code’, by Carrie Budoff Brown.

From National Review Online: Redefinition Revolution, by Maggie Gallagher.

From the Wall Street Journal: We Can See Clearly Now, by Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

I’m working on some new ways to post interesting content to this blog.  As a result I may have sent quite a few unnecessary emails to everyone subscribing to my feed or updates.  SORRY, jw

Andrew McCarthy writes that Congress must act now:

The most reprehensible aspect of the Boumediene ruling is thus Justice Kennedy’s diktat that all “questions regarding the legality of the detention [of combatants] are to be resolved in the first instance by the District Court” — as if Congress, the law writing branch of our government, had nothing to say about them.

Congress must ignore that brazen overstatement. Boumediene is a terrible decision, but all it means for the moment is that the jihadists held at Guantanamo Bay have been given the opportunity to press their cases — i.e., to seek their release from custody — in the federal district courts. The combatants have not been ordered released, and the narrow majority did not presume to prescribe a procedure for how the district courts should handle those cases.

That is the job of Congress, and it must act now. Bear in mind, even in the civilian-justice system, where the judicial competence is generally undeniable, it is Congress that enacts rules of procedure and evidence. We do not leave judges free to make it up as they go along. How much less should we do so with respect to combatant detention — a war power as to which judges have no institutional competence? [...]

Congress could provide for the presentation of evidence by hearsay, proffer, and affidavit — with a directive that the court may not compel the government (particularly, the military and intelligence community) to produce witnesses for testimony in court. It could provide for classified intelligence to be presented to the judge ex parte, with only a non-classified summary provided to the combatant. It could require the court to give deference during wartime to the conclusion of combatant status review tribunals already conducted by the military (allowing judges to disregard those conclusions only upon a showing that the conclusion was irrational — the same standard that compels federal appeals courts, in every single civilian criminal case, to refrain from disturbing a trial court’s findings of fact).

Read the whole thing.

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“As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for,” warns Katha Pollitt. Writing in The Nation, Pollitt is warning Democrats that their embrace of religious leaders and symbols will lead to embarrassment and disaster. Her proposal — embrace secularism.

Pollitt is one of the most predictably liberal columnists in America. Her periodic articles in The Nation offer a window into the logic of a liberal mind unconstrained by political considerations. She does not trim her sails or pull punches.

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