Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

When I was faster i was always behind.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

We still have time to mess this up!

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

The lights are all blinking red.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / What He Said Open Thread

What He Said Open Thread

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Y’all know, or should, that I’m not exactly what you’d call a believer, even within my own Jewish tradition, and that I am certainly no kind of Christian.

But I came across a column from a sports writer turned newly minted pastor (via that noted evangelist, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King) who has some true truths to impart.

My favorite among David White’s sports/divinity debunkings? This one:

When thou tear an ACL, don’t say it’s because God lets everything happen for a reason. There is a reason. A 320-pound defensive tackle landed on the back of your knee.

Preach it!

__

Open thread time.  Have at it.

Image:  Bernardo Strozzi (maybe), Portrait of a Fat Man, 17th c.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    Son of Prog

    It also sounds (and feels) like a wet rubber-band snapping inside of your knee. But if the G-man wants to help reduce some of this scar tissue, I’ll get back to praying instead of rehabbing.

  3. 3.

    priscianus jr

    That’s an efficient cause, not a reason (final cause). The first answers the question “what happened?” the second, “why did it happen”?

  6. 6.

    Tom Levenson

    @priscianus jr: Well, yeah. But I think the pastor was making the point that a final cause could be identified through human agency, with no need to disturb the deity on the matter. He’s a football writer, facrissakes.

  8. 8.

    Jude

    Why in the hell are you reading Roger Goodell buttboy and general owner water-carrier Peter King? There’s one reason and one reason only to read that tub of shit’s column: Mockery.

    The folks at Kissing Suzy Kolber (usually Drew Magary) do it right.

  10. 10.

    Zagloba

    @priscianus jr: If you’re going to be a Scholastic pedant, at least be right. Efficient causes are supposed to answer the question “What was the mechanism of this happening”, while final causes answer “what was the purpose of this happening”.

    Of course, the presumption in all of this is the false premise that everything happens for a purpose. The whole point of this guy’s quote is to remind narcissists like most professional athletes that just because shit happens, doesn’t mean we need to blame/praise God’s infinite wisdom for shit happening.

  11. 11.

    Yutsano

    Ya know, Peter King oscillates from flaming douchebag to piles of win sometimes in the space of the same paragraph. It must be some kind of strange talent that has some evolutionary usage somewhere.

    Also: if you make an appointment with your doctor for Friday the 13th and the receptionist laughs, is that a bad sign?

  12. 12.

    Tom Levenson

    @Yutsano: He has consistently weird tastes in coffee, and truly untrustworthy ones in beer, that’s for sure.

  13. 13.

    KG

    @Zagloba: but… but… if it wasn’t for God’s infinite wisdom and love, how would I have won the championship? I mean, it couldn’t have anything to do with months of training, hours of film study, and executing a game plan as well as possible (and then getting a few lucky breaks along the way)… I mean, that has to be God…

    Just once, just once, I want to hear an athlete get in front of a mic and say, “motherfuckers, this was all me, I worked harder than the rest of these fools and that’s why I won, because I’m better than them.”

  16. 16.

    quaint irene

    My least favorite bromide, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

    Oh, yeah, Newt’s in again? But what’s all this ‘will make an announcement on Thursday.” Are we all to wait breathlessly for his Twitter feed? Just say it already.

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    @KG:

    Just once, just once, I want to hear an athlete get in front of a mic and say, “motherfuckers, this was all me, I worked harder than the rest of these fools and that’s why I won, because I’m better than them.”

    You just made Terrell Owens cry. Not that it takes much.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @Son of Prog:

    I don’t remember there being a particular sound when I wrecked mine, but I did it falling off a stepladder, so that noise may have masked it. Fortunately, I did it at work, so worker’s comp insurance covered everything.

    My orthopedic surgeon did show me the MRI and say, “You see that little ball of mush right there? That used to be your ACL.”

  20. 20.

    Martin

    BTW, I’m totally enjoying the Lakers self-immolation. Not as sweet as a Yankees sink into irrelevance, but enjoyable all the same.

  22. 22.

    Zagloba

    @quaint irene

    My least favorite bromide, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

    I defy you to find someone who disagrees with that from personal experience. Mostly because any counterexamples are dead.

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    @Martin:

    Damn straight! Few sports organizations conjure forth more hatred in me than the Lakers. Buh-bye.

    I don’t believe Phil’s really, truly retired, but he’ll take at least a year off. I wonder who Kobe will pick for his next coach?

  29. 29.

    Andrew Abshier

    @efgoldman: it could be worse. It could be “God Bless the USA.”

  30. 30.

    Son of Prog

    @Mnemosyne:

    I think my surgeon was a little too gleeful when he showed me my MRI. I fell off a ladder a month later at work and debated pretending it had happened then, but I blew mine playing rugby. While I was laying on the ground I could see this guy sprinting toward me from the next field over. “Good,” I thought, “here comes the trainer.” The guy gets down on the ground next to me and says “bro I heard that all the way over there!” Not the most reassuring thing to hear.

  31. 31.

    scav

    @KG:

    Just once, just once, I want to hear an athlete get in front of a mic and say, “motherfuckers, this was all me, I worked harder than the rest of these fools and that’s why I won, because I’m better than them.”

    It’d certainly be right up there with the dejected guy holding his helmet saying “God just hates us with reason and loves the other team more: what else can I say?”

  33. 33.

    MikeJ

    @trollhattan:

    I thought that was Neil Diamond’s time slot?

    Only in Boston, or when the Red Sox play in Seattle and I try to get the locals to sing it. I got a couple of dozen to do the “da dah dah daaaah” once, but they’re usually more reticent.

  34. 34.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    @Jude:

    i am all for mocking the hell out of peter king, or “mush” as he is less than affectionately known.however he does have one thing that is important, access. the nfl has a distribution system in effect for the media. they use sources such as him, schefter, mortenson, even less likely to be accurate lights like lacanfora, et al, to distribute information, so the beats never show up at a presser to get shocked by an announcement.

    sadly, that is something the drew magarys of the world don’t have, and by their own credoes don’t want. they do a good job of destilling the news, but don’t report it.

    i can’t vouch for peter mush’s taste in beer, either way, but his taste in coffee seems limited to, YAY! starbucks! he is an embarassment to his self glossed coffeenerdom.

  37. 37.

    catclub

    @efgoldman: Interesting that you are still overlooking Dallas. Although you post was not categorical. Dallas was really good. I think they can bea Memphis or OKC.

    I will be amazed if Atlanta even gets past Chicago. I do remember that Boston could not beat Atlanta in Atlanta – but Atlanta had no wins in Boston either.

    Memphis-Chicago would definitely have Stein crying.
    Memphis-Atlanta would have him in a strait jacket.
    If you listen to the Atlanta game call, the refs will make sure that does not happen.

  38. 38.

    scav

    @Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Well, he’s sort of a counter-example, isn’t he? But I can see that the Repub(lication) electioneering playbook has certainly spread, although I won’t hypothesize the direction of movement (aka plagiarism).

  39. 39.

    RobertB

    I have a copy of _Inside The Helmet_ sitting around here, that was pretty good for its day. Then again, I might have been a moron back then. But Jude @8 gets this one right – these days PK is every bit an idiot mouthpiece in his field as, say, David Brooks or Ross Douchehat are in theirs.

  42. 42.

    trollhattan

    @efgoldman:

    No kidding! Veins will be opened across NBA Inc. if there’s no big market/high profile team left (is Dallas a “big market”?). I was a little surprised Stern delayed the Kings moving to OC, although I suspect that was a Buss-Sterling decision, ultimately.

    There’s always the thrill of the lottery drawing!

  44. 44.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    @Bill Murray:
    which would only be somewhat annoying, if there wasn’t the opposite side of it, if guys don’t talk to him, somewhere between on and off record, he takes notes and distributes retribution in his column.

    what he does is more modelled on a classic gossip column, than anything typical of sports-journo.
    @scav:
    it really is scary how often you can see the same techniques employed by the nfl, players, media, as you do the pols, village, lobbyists,and think tankers.

  45. 45.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Zagloba:

    The whole point of this guy’s quote is to remind narcissists like most professional athletes that just because shit happens, doesn’t mean we need to blame/praise God’s infinite wisdom for shit happening.

    This.

    Because, as everyone knows, while Zeus may be aware of the fates of individuals, it’s the Moirae who determine what those fates will be.

  47. 47.

    Malron aka eclecticbrotha

    Yet another example of atheists/agnostic’s perpetual need to feel intellectually superior to the rest of us.

  51. 51.

    canuckistani

    @efgoldman:
    Best thing about the Toronto Blue Jays – major league baseball without God Bless America.
    (Worst thing.. they kinda suck nowadays)

  52. 52.

    Ted

    How’d that guy Strozzi manage to do a painting of Jonah Goldberg in the 17th century?

  55. 55.

    priscianus jr

    @Zagloba:

    If you’re going to be a Scholastic pedant, at least be right. Efficient causes are supposed to answer the question “What was the mechanism of this happening”, while final causes answer “what was the purpose of this happening”.

    Which, strangely enough, was exactly my point. Until you explain the essential difference between what I said and what you said, other than that I was trying to be as brief as possible, I will remain in doubt as to which of us is the pedant.

  56. 56.

    low-tech cyclist

    I was with David White until the part where he said:

    Let’s live as former Colts coach Tony Dungy, who let his quiet Christian actions speak louder than his football words.

    No, let’s not. If Tony Dungy believes homosexuality is wrong (and ditto gay marriage, obviously), that’s his business. But there’s nothing in the Gospels that says he has to harness the power of the state to discriminate against gays and prevent them from getting married.

    As White himself said:

    The Scripture says to take up your cross, not nail everyone else to one. Represent or tuck it in.

    Tony Dungy chooses to nail other people to one. That’s contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. End of story.

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