going into a professional basketball game but you really couldn't prove it, how would you go about beating your opponents anyway? Do you just blow off the game and see how many of the other side you can bloody and disable? Do you try to physically take out the dirty refs? All those options have a rather scary downside to them including hurting some innocent folks and tarnishing your reputation and legacy. Not to mention the illegality of intentionally harming other human beings. But gosh darn it, you're the better athletes and damn it, you're the good guys as well, right? The cause is all important in this country where the good guys are supposed to win.
But just maybe there's an option that retains your white hat status and still allows you to win the game.
What's on your side is that the game is out there under the spotlights. The "dirty" refs have to make sure they don't get caught for their misdeeds so their cheats have to be subtle. They must always be judgment calls that normally have some margin of error to them even when cheating isn't going on.
In order to win without flattening out the opposition then, you must not only play your heart out but do so more cleanly than you would normally. When a player starts going up for a shot that you might consider contesting, you may have to let them go knowing the ref is just creaming his jeans with his whistle in his mouth. Of course you have to be scoring in droves to make up for those shots you're letting go but, if you're clearly the better team, you just might pull it off.
I see our current media as the "dirty refs" with the Obama team as that good guy team with all the talent that's been targeted to go down.
As far as leveling the playing field, that's an impossibility at this stage of the game. If it's even possible to put some balance back in our corporate-owned media, it will take years and possibly decades and some very bitter battles.
So, Obama and his bunch know the refs are crooked but they're a bad ass team and the fans are behind them. They know the odds are stacked against them in the finals but they have that athlete's heart coupled to a set of ethics that's sure to win over the house. They know by the end of the game, their foul total will exceed the McCain team even though they intend to play the cleanest game of their life. A few of their key players like Kareem Abdul Wes Clark will be on the bench unfairly fouled out.
The Refs will include Bill O'Reilly, editors of major newspapers, representatives of the Associated Press. All of these folks are in cahoots with the league to not only make the series go the full seven games but also to have the "dirty" team come out victorious.
But guess what? Cheating like this only works when it's close, when the teams are evenly matched and the crowd is hungry for blood. This team Obama is lean and athletic, their minds honed in the trenches and playgrounds of South Side Chicago where the rims have no baskets. For every erroneously awarded free throw the other side makes, they'll run past them so fast that there can be no contact and no foul and hit a clutch 3-pointer.
The snarling refs will huddle before the the final quarter and they'll know that their jobs are on the line if they can't manipulate the game the way the owners want but yet they know the spotlights are on and crowd isn't buying their calls anymore. Each one is met with an increasingly louder chorus of boos. Each of them have even found themselves in awe of the Obama team moves that are happening around them and have to keep reminding themselves of the task at hand. During the referee huddle, a mic is close enough to hear the head ref say to his coworker, "It's over."
The other team tries a last-second sub to try to distract the crowd. It works temporarily. "Air Barracuda" Palin comes off the bench a relative unknown, busting into the action throwing elbows and tripping the opposing players. The crowd reacts positively at first. Palin is young, attractive, and has a few scripted moves that nobody's seen before but, by the time a minute comes off the clock, it becomes apparent to everyone that the moves are easily defended and resemble those of the rest of the aged team - slow, physical, somewhat flashy and noisy but with very little effectiveness.
When the final buzzer sounds the crowd goes wild. It's truly a historic moment. The coach, who'd been put down all season long for being too nice, too unconventional has just broken the tradition of the playoff champions being the dirtiest, the bloodiest, the ones that insist upon wearing their flag pins during the playing of the National Anthem.
Well, this is a strange diary for a guy that is not exactly a sports nut but I think the message I'm trying to get out here is that Obama gets it. I can feel that.
He knows what he's up against and doesn't need us armchair quarterbacks telling how to run his team. Our points are all valid and it can't hurt to send suggestions to the campaign email where they can be evaluated properly.
The other side does cheat and lie. Campaigns in the past have shown that only equal amounts of cheating and lying and character assassinations can stand up to that tactic but, for the first time in my life, the team that's trying to do what no other team has attempted, is unbelievably talented and seem to get stronger the more adversity is thrown at them. They must know that were they matched up against equal abilities and energy, the extra cheating would end their season quickly. Yet they've gone up against these guys in the pre-season and they know they can dominate them when the game's on the line.
Dominate them they must and for anyone that somehow thinks the debates are not going to go extremely well for our side, they simply need to review video of the major contenders in debate situations over the past few years. The contrast is striking.
The McCain camp will use every advantage the mainstream media gives them but, when that final buzzer sounds, it will be obvious.....They have no game.