Weekly Mail September 25,2016

Hey There:

Saturday afternoon, I saw the musical Aladdin with Tara, Tim and my mother in law. Awesome show. The singing and the dancing and the costumes were top notch. It was a long show, but it was so good it made the time go by quickly.

My one complaint is that I'm guessing when these Broadway Theaters were built, folks were a lot shorter and thinner, because I'm telling you these seats were tiny. I went to Timmy's back to school night earlier in the week, and the little chairs we sat in for that were similar to the ones we sat in for the show.  Yes, I know I can stand to lose a few pounds, but I can't make myself shorter. Even still, you have to me short and skinny to fit comfortably into these seats. When the show was over, I found myself singing the song Billy Crystal sang in City Slickers...

Rollin, rollin, rollin
Keep them doggies rollin
Man my a$$ is swollen
Rawhide!


NEWS ITEM: HOFSTRA SHOWDOWN

My sophomore year of high school started right in the thick of the 1988 Presidential campaign. George HW Bush vs. Michael Dukakis to replace outgoing President Ronald Reagan.

My Global Studies teacher that year Mr. Fiocco, gave us an assignment to watch the first Presidential Debate. That took place on a Sunday. I wasn't looking forward to it.

But I had to admit after watching it, I enjoyed it more than I ever thought I would. Mr. Fiocco told us to keep track of every issue debated and to group them into domestic or foreign policy. (This was before they gave the debates their own themes)

That Monday we came into class and Mr. Fiocco asked how many of us watched the debate, me and maybe one or two other guys raised their hands. He then asked how many of us watched the Olympics instead. Everyone else raised their hands.

But it didn't matter, I was just about hooked. I would officially become hooked about a week later, when Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bensten debated in the Vice Presidential showdown. (Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy)

I've tried to watch or listen to them all since then. Not the primary ones, just the ones that get down to the finalists. Clinton-Bush-Ross Perot in 1992, Bush-Gore in 2000, Obama McCain 2008 and all the others in between.

I have never looked more forward to the debate coming up on Monday between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And my interest in the debate is in inverted proportion to how I feel about the candidates themselves. They are both disasters.

And I realize that I sholdn't be watching these things for entertainment, but with what we are being served, how can you not?

EDITORIAL: TRUMP VS. HITLER

I very rarely read the Daily News anymore. I'm not going to sit here and trash it, I have some really good friends that work over there, men and women who helped me when I first started at the Post. People I hope to be friends with forever.

But I find myself disagreeing with things they write more and more, so about the only things I read are Mike Lupica's Sunday sports column, and on Tuesday syndicated Washington Post editorial columnist Richard Cohen. Not that I always agree with Cohen, (in fact more often than not I don't), but I find his columns nuanced and well thought out, and usually allowing for some room for the other side of the coin.

But this past week he did something that the Daily News and several other media outlets have done, and I'm reluctant to bring it up because someone is going to misrepresent the point I'm trying to make. But he compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

I find this offensive.

And no, it's not offensive to Donald Trump, quite frankly I don't care if he's offended. He's offended everyone whose gotten in his way, and then some. You say he deserves to be offended, I can't say I disagree.

But if I was Jewish? I'd definitely be offended.

When South Park first came on in 1997, it's Halloween episode had Cartman dressed as Hitler. Naturally the school staff was offended and Cartman was sent to the principal's office where he was forced to watch a Smokey the Bear video explaining why dressing like Hitler wasn't cool. Amongst the explanation were that "Hitler was a very bad man."

I'm figuring South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were simply trying to get attention, but they also hit on something else...We've spent so much of the past 75 years as so talking about what a bad person Hitler was, that we may have lost sight of just how evil his acts were.

This man literally exterminated human beings in the most graphically horrible ways. Men, women and children, it didn't matter. If you were the wrong race or religion, you were starved, tortured and put to death in ways I can't even bring myself to type.

Donald Trump? I know he wants to deport illegal immigrants, I know what he said about Mexicans and Muslims. I'm not saying he's right, I'm just saying what he wants to do with the above mentioned people isn't anywhere close to what Hitler did to the Jewish people.

Is Trump a liar? A fraud? Yes and yes. Nobody here is disputing that. Do the things he says rally a certain unsavory portion of our population? Definitely.

Richard Cohen's point, as I'm sure the point of most of the people making the Trump/Hitler comparison, is that a man was able to grab the attention of a people who felt left behind by society and through the sheer force of his personality was able to get the people to agree to overlook certain things that they would otherwise deem awful. I get that.

They say if we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. I get that too, but that works both ways. If we don't take seriously the rhetoric of someone like Trump, we could find ourselves in a heap of trouble.

But if everyone we disagree with gets compared to one of the most evil people who ever lived, we'll become desensitized to the actual evil acts committed.

And THAT can't happen either.


SPORTS: 2016 WORLD CUP OF HOCKEY

I think it's a pretty safe bet that our old friend John Tortorella won't be asked to coach Team USA in any future international competitions. My goodness, did Team USA play like crap or what?

Of course it's not fair to lay all of the blame on Torts, I realize that. GM Dean Lombardi, not to be confused with Vince Lombardi, put together a team forgetting to add guys who can actually put the puck in the net. I have no use for Phil Kessel, but the man can score goals, what was the big idea of keeping him off the roster? Kyle Okposo? We could have used him too.

The real shame of this is that it was the 20th anniversary of the one time the US pros won an international tournament. The Canada Cup which began in 1976, featured NHL Players playing for their respective countries. In 1996, it was changed to the World Cup of Hockey.

The US made it to the finals of the 1991 Canada Cup (the last one before the name change) and most predicted they would probably not even get that far in 1996. Canada was still stacked. Gretzky, Messier, Eric Lindros, Joe Sakic, with Martin Brodeur and Curtis Joseph in net.

But the US was loaded too. Brian Leetch, Brett Hull (who could have played for Canada) Mike Modano, John LeClair and in nets, the great Mike Richter.

The US beat Canada in the championship game in Montreal (on a night Ray, Karl and I hit 14 downtown bars FYI) Besides the Miracle on Ice, it's considered the greatest victory in US Hockey history.

But this past week has to be considered the biggest disappointment. Losing is one thing, going oh for the entire tournament is another. This set back US Hockey a long way. It's looking like the NHL isn't going to send their players to the Olympics in 2018, so this was our last good shot for a while.

A shame.

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With the blog being delivered via Facebook now (for the most part) I've gotten away from birthday shout outs, and things of that nature, but  I do want to take a minute to salute a good man who passed this week. Bill DePuy the dad of one of my closest friends Ed (Auggie) dePuy, was one of the best guys you'll ever meet. A fellow McClancy Crusader (2nd graduating class) and fellow Postie (he was chief electrician at the plant) we always had a lot to chat about. Almost one year to the day heaven welcomed one huge Notre Dame fan, (Pete McGuiness) another one arrived just in time to see them lose to Duke. Well, they say the bar in heaven never closes Hopefully over a couple of cold ones,  Uncle Bill and Pete can come up with a plan to remind the Good Lord the Fighting Irish are God's team.

Thank you. And Have a Great Week