When people ask me about the subject of my upcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding,” I tell them it’s the story of a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for identity, acceptance, success and love amid the brutal beauty of the NFL.
It’s also the story of the workplace. What, you may ask, can we learn from the atypical workplace of the NFL? Ah, but you see, I think the violence of the NFL is a metaphor for today’s brutal workplace – one in which employees are set up to fail by 24/7 demands, no opportunity to take the vacations they earn, weak benefits and eviscerating bosses. It’s the picture The New York Times paints of Amazon. ...
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Read MoreWhat would we do without Nick Kyrgios to provide us with this summer’s emotional firestorm?
When we last saw Nick, the 20-year-old Australian tennis player, he was “sock”ing it to Wimbledon, suddenly changing socks in a match that he would ultimately lose (some say would deliberately tank) to Richard Gasquet.
Fast forward to the Rogers Cup currently being played in Montreal, where Kyrgios defeated Stan “The Man” Wawrinka but not before going all “So’s your Mama” on him by observing in front of the microphones that Stanimal girlfriend, tennis player Donna Vekic, had slept with Nick compatriot Thanasi Kokkinakis. This led to a locker-room confrontation with Stan, a $10,000 fine from the Association of Tennis Professionals (with possibly more to come) and a dressing down from two of the game’s longstanding leaders. ...
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Read MoreFootball is war as theater. Violence is endemic to the sport. So it comes as no surprise that New York Jets’ linebacker Ikemefuna Enemkpali should sucker-punch his teammate, starting quarterback Geno Smith, over a $600 plane ticket Enemkpali purchased for Smith that he has yet to reimburse.
Enemkpali, (in-em-PAUL-ee) who was arrested during his Louisiana Tech days for battery of a police officer, was immediately released by the Jets. Even as NFL altercations go, this hits a new low in stupidity, and, of course, the snarkarazzi was out in force. ...
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Read MoreThe Supreme Court has upheld a drug used in Oklahoma executions, dismissing the claim of three death-row inmates that it causes excruciating pain.
Basically, the majority of the Supremes said the inmates should’ve come up with an alternative drug – which Justice Sonia Sotomayor thought was nutty.
“Petitioners contend that Oklahoma’s current protocol is a barbarous method of punishment — the chemical equivalent of being burned alive,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. ...
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Read MoreDzhokhar Tsarnaev has apologized for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing.
“I am sorry for the lives that I’ve taken, for the suffering I’ve caused you, for the damage I’ve done – irreparable damage,” he said in court Wednesday. “I’m guilty of it. If there is any lingering doubt of that, let it be no more.”
Is he truly sorry, and does it make a difference? Should we expect the same from Dylann Storm Roof, charged with the murder of nine in the Charleston church? Fat chance. That one will probably go to his grave Timothy McVeigh-like.
“‘The evil that men do lives after them,’” Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. told the Boston court, quoting Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” “‘The good is oft interred with their bones.’ So it will be for Dzokhar Tsarnaev.” ...
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Read MoreHistory is not merely written by winners. It’s dictated by them. That’s true at Wimbledon. And it’s especially true in war.
The controversy over a Confederate battle flag flying over the South Carolina State House that has erupted anew in the wake of the Charleston mass murders is yet another example of our failure to understand this. The South lost the Civil War. And the losers do not get to display the trophies of war. If they did, the Nazi flag would be flying over Germany today. How long do you think the former Allies would tolerate that? ...
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Read MoreWell, one thing’s certain: Dylann Storm Roof – really? That’s a name? – is no Rachel Dolezal.
One couldn’t do enough to embrace black culture. The other couldn’t do enough to destroy it, allegedly gunning down nine people at Bible study Wednesday night in Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, uttering the particularly lunatic thought, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” ...
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