TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – As we get closer and closer to the election I detect a sharping of knives on social media. Sides are firming up their arguments and backbone and it’s getting downright nasty. Trouble brews when you speak your beliefs and the more famous you are the more trouble it attracts, as Philadelphia Eagle wide-receiver DeSean Jackson found out this week when he used a quote attributed to Hitler saying white Jews, “Will blackmail America …. Their plan for world domination won’t work if the Negroes know who they were.” He also posted on Instagram admiration for Louis Farrakhan, an anti-Semitic and leader of the Nation of Islam. My problem isn’t that Jackson said these things. He is likely telling the truth as he sees it (he has apologized) and that is okay. Well, maybe it’s not okay, but I don’t believe for a second that among 330 million Americans there aren’t many who think like him. Among those millions I bet there are way too many that hold racist views. Go back when we didn’t have the Internet and social media platforms and racist views were not as public. But those racist views were still there. With social media and a guy like Trump, a white supremists and racist who has shown a proclivity to verbalize his beliefs in rallies to incite the racists among us to come forward out of the darkness into the light, we are experiencing a rise of racists incidents around the country. People who hold extremists and racist views are not afraid anymore to grab an assault weapon and appear in public. I don’t know if that is good or bad to let the dogs (racists) out. I know they were always there, but there was some comfort knowing they would not act on their beliefs. Now I’m not too sure about that. Our thinking about skin color has to change at birth. We cannot go on hiding our racism or even worse use it in public to knee on a black’s neck and kill him (George Floyd). It’s time to use an eraser and wipe the slate clean and become a welcoming and all inclusive people that uses a four-letter word – love – as our standard, our mode of operation. I have never understood why a skin color makes a difference. It doesn’t. Character makes the man, not the man’s skin color. … I still think it’s stupid and dangerous for most sports to resume. Golf I can see‑ if you manage the protocols that keep you safe from COVID-19 ‑ can continue on. But any sport where you have contact or close contact, no way. Football, basketball and baseball are disasters waiting to happen. You could play tennis, but not these other sports. I get it that Trump wants everybody to get back to normal – I would like that, too. But he is encouraging it because he needs a robust economy for his reelection. He doesn’t care who gets sick or who dies, he just wants the economy humming. I want the same thing, but not at the expense of lives. If this virus continues to spread and we have more and more cases, I could die. If I get it and die, Mary will also get it and die. Am I being selfish? We have no national leadership on the virus and it already has killed thousands that should not have died if we had an effective national plan to fight it. We still don’t have that leadership, so I say back off. Stop sports from resuming. You are going to die. … During our home quarantine I have spent time watching horse racing around the country that is shown live on TVG. Man, I have realized how bad some of these horses are. I have figured out a way to pick out the better ones by just watching the post parade. It works maybe 40 percent of the time. But in some of those races at some of the smaller tracks the horses are so bad that it’s difficult to pick a winner. The races from Belmont in New York are great. Those horses are the best of the best. I have seen Tiz The Law, Mr Monomoy and Charlatan win races. If Charlatan is healthy, and I’m not sure he is, he and Tiz The Law are my favorites to win the Kentucky Derby. There are some other good ones, including Nadal, Storm The Court and Maxfield. Bob Baffert trains Charlatan and Nadal, both of whom won their divisions at the Arkansas Derby. The Kentucky Derby runs this year on Sept. 5. That’s it for today.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.