I'm not a sportswriter.
In the Dobbsian view of America, the mainstream media isn't evil because it's liberal but because it's lazy. And Washington is utterly corrupt, has sold out, Democrats and Republicans alike. And corporate America is an insatiable pig.
When he emerged Lou Dobbs the populist, he was so hard to peg. A mishmash of contradictions: anti-outsourcing, anti-globalization, pro-international-trade, pro-free-enterprise, anti-corporatism, pro-choice, pro-Second Amendment, pro-gay-marriage, pro-gays-serving-openly-in-the-military, pro-military, anti-war-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.
Bob Dole is not a romantic, at least not an immediate one. Bob Dole is not one to waste a lot of time on metaphor.
Bob Dole is not a bitter man. That part is jarring. His life was hard.
In the summer of 2007, Roger Goodell, the new NFL commissioner, convened a meeting in Chicago for the first league-wide concussion summit. All thirty-two teams were ordered to send doctors and trainers to the meeting.
On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner's office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player.
Dead at 50. Mike Webster! Nine-time Pro Bowler. Hall of Famer. 'Iron Mike,' legendary Steelers center for fifteen seasons.
Mike Webster lost all his money or, maybe, gave it away. He forgot. A lot of lawsuits. Mike Webster forgot how to eat, too. Soon, Mike Webster was homeless, living in a truck, one of its windows replaced with a garbage bag and tape.
It's the subconcussive hits, the constant bam, bam, bam that linemen like Suh give and receive. Those are the hits scientists say cause the lasting damage to the brain, the kind of injuries that made guys like Mike Webster, Terry Long, and so many others go crazy. The subconcussive hits - every single play.
Ndamukong started out playing soccer, like his sister before him. She excelled at it, played for Mississippi State, made the Cameroon national team.
Buzz was, of course, the second man to walk on the moon. Buzz made a rap video, 'Rocket Experience,' with Snoop Dogg. He did the cha-cha and the fox-trot and was eliminated in the second round of season ten of 'Dancing with the Stars'.
Neither Neil Armstrong nor Michael Collins had a mental breakdown after returning from the moon.
No matter what your age, gender, politics, nationality, social or financial standing, every single person inhabiting the planet Earth has the same reaction to him: 'Holy crap, Buzz Aldrin, you went to the moon!'
By 2012, Dan Gilbert was well over his LeBron James-abandonment hissy fit. He opened Cleveland's first casino, with 1,900 slot machines and eighty-nine table games.
The LeBron 11, for $200, has hyperposite construction - a combination of Foamposite material and performance synthetics - and a new layer of Lunarlon cushioning; and anyway, Nike generates about $300 million off the sneakers.
Pearl Harbor? Michael Bay doing a movie about the single most devastating, most holy day in United States military history? Why, that's like the Three Stooges doing a Holocaust movie. Or Barney doing 'Hamlet'.
'Bad Boys', which Bay made when he was just twenty-eight, having never made a movie before, having done a string of commercials and music videos with artists ranging from Donny Osmond to Meat Loaf, grossed more than $140 million worldwide.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was an attempt to impose order. It set up the Federal Firearms License (FFL) system; gun stores would have to become licensed, and they would have to follow certain rules. Felons, illegal immigrants, and crazy people would be prohibited from buying guns.
The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data.
