I love Hoosiers.
It’s not a 4th of July movie, but it is a movie that makes you feel good about America, specifically small town America. And it’s also instructive now that Sarah Palin has reminded us that she still sees herself as a small town H.S. basketball player.
We mostly remember Hoosiers, I think, as a sports movie, and a good one at that. Who could forget the gripping David and Goliath tale writ large against the landscape of rural Indiana. But Hoosiers is about a lot more than that, as Roger Ebert noted in his original review:
What makes "Hoosiers" special is not its story, however, but its details and its characters. Angelo Pizzo, who wrote the original screenplay, knows small-town sports. He knows all about high school politics and how the school board and the parents' groups always think they know more about basketball than the coach does. He knows about gossip, scandal and vengeance. And he knows a lot about human nature.
Which brings us to Sarah Palin. Gossip? Check. Scandal? Check. Vengeance? You betcha! And boy does she ever know better.
Thankfully, Palin spared us from a lot of this in her rambling, incoherent resignation speech, but she did take a moment to bring us all back around to basketball:
Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me - sports... basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I'm doing that - keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities - smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it's time to pass the ball - for victory.
See, she’s the heady point guard who’s gonna get the ball to Jimmy Chitwood in the waning seconds. But, wait a minute, I thought she was Jimmy Chitwood. OK, that’s not right. I’ve got it now. She’s that kid who left practice after the first day because he didn’t like the new coach and his rough practices.
But that’s not it either. Let’s be be honest. Sarah isn’t a point guard passing the ball off to a wide-open teammate. No, she’s a pit bull getting called for a charge and picking up a technical for whining about it.
Sarah Palin is Danny Ainge.
Or Bobby Hurley.
Or Isiah Thomas. Talented players, yes, but whiners.
But the real truth is that Palin isn’t any of these things. No, she’s the kid who takes her ball and goes home when the game doesn’t go her way.
The truth is that Sarah Palin is a quitter.
Thank God she wasn’t on the bench for the Hickory Huskers.