Daily Archives: June 17, 2006

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I hate beans

I would’ve loved to have been a musclehead tonight. Considering I was at Turner Field, I would’ve fit in nicely.

There was plenty of ugliness on the field (it’s official: the Braves run of excellence is over) and even more in the stands. First, I had to deal with hordes of nouveau Red Sox fans. At least a quarter of the crowd in Atlanta was cheering for Boston, and I’m certain only about a quarter of those people actually hail from New England.

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They needed a good beating.

Like the fat sack of shit sitting two rows in front of me, zestfully rooting for the Red Sox in a Southern twang. Hard to figure him for a Brookline-ite. “Hey, I bet you’re a Steelers fan,” I yelled in frustration, to which he replied: “How’d the Falcons do last year?” To which I replied, under my breath, “So if your kid gets a bad report card do you stop loving him?” My buddy Al Kosa was more direct: “Lose some weight!”

He needed a good beating (the Sox fan, not Al).

Is there anything more annoying than a frontrunner? Maybe the hick standing in the aisle with his shirt off exhorting the Braves fans to … do the wave, in the 8th inning (he needed a good beating). Let’s face it: the pro sports environment in Atlanta is tepid, at best. Most “fans” either don’t care or root for another team.

I tried to get in the spirt of things, responding to the repetitive “Let’s go Red Sox” chant with “Bill-y Buckner” or “Buck-y Dent,” which elicited mostly nervous looks from the surrounding throng, like this one chick with pig tails who caught my eye, implying, with her furrowed brow, that I was being mean.   

No, I’m trying to be a fan. It would be nice to have some company, but you could fit all the die-hard Braves followers into a Holiday Inn banquet room (an overstatement, perhaps, but not that far off). It ain’t easy being a baseball acolyte in a region filled with transplants brainwashed by the alleged appeal of football — “That fourth instant replay challenge sure was exciting.”

And it’s worse when you have a bunch of yankee rednecks throwing it in your face.

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I’m offended … you’re fired!

I’m not crazy about being called a deviant, just as I’m certain Christian fundamentalists don’t like me calling them nut jobs. But whereas I would probably not lose my job for saying such a thing, Robert J. Smith, a member of the Metro (Md.) transit authority, lost his for repeating the former.

“Homosexual behavior, in my view, is deviant,” he said. “I’m a Roman Catholic.” Smith said his comments had been part of a discussion about a proposed ban on same-sex marriage. “The comments I make in public outside of my [Metro board job] I’m entitled to make,” he said. His personal beliefs, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with running trains and buses and have not affected my actions or decisions on this board.”

If he repeated such comments in the workplace — and it reflected in his hiring practices within the department — that would be another story. But there’s no evidence of that, and Smith shouldn’t have to apologize for being a religious conservative, as much as I disagree with his views.

Maryland’s Republican governor Robert Ehrlich canned Smith, saying his comments were “insensitive.” If insensitivity has become a firing offense, then I’m in real trouble.

At the Metro meeting, board member Jim Graham, who represents the District, had called for Smith to disavow his remarks or apologize or for Ehrlich to remove him. “As someone who cares deeply about human rights, and as an openly gay elected official . . . I cannot remain silent in the face of these comments,” Graham said, reading from a prepared statement.

I care deepy about human rights, too, and I care just as much about the First Amendment. The two are intrinsically tied, and Graham, like many liberals, doesn’t seem to realize that being offended is not a capital offense.