If you’re concerned over the realities of day to day, of the elections, our country, and the future…consider the example of what’s being written about the Bengals (of what’s been written), and maybe give truth a chance!
I was shocked to click online Tuesday morning to read Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty’s headline following the Bengals’ Monday Night Football loss to the New York Giants.
“The Bengals Just Aren’t Very Good!”
No excuses, no pandering, no equivocating. Just the facts, folks. The Bengals just aren’t very good!
What’s shocking, of course, isn’t the fact of the Bengals and the issues of why they lost Monday night. They really aren’t very good.
No, shocking is that someone like Daugherty, who has a habit of routine observation, had the audacity, the temerity…the gumption…to tell the truth.
There’s a lesson here, somehow, in just how far we’ve come as a culture. Ok, call it an example. We’re not very open to lessons anymore, especially if they’re not positive, or hopeful. Tomorrow is another day, right?
Well, we’ve been trained to be so hopeful that we can’t discern anymore…that dead fish, dirty laundry, and the guest that stays too long never gets any better.
The fact is that we’ve taken the term “hopeful”, the emotion of wishing, not to new heights, but to new lows. And why? Because we ignore the fact of irrefutable evidence. We spend too much time – we waste too much time – wishing that something would get better without actually do anything to make it better.
The fact of the Bengals is pretty simple.
They haven’t beaten a team this season with a winning record. Daugherty’s description: “No longer in the upper middle class of the NFL, the Bengals are now just another family schlepping kids to soccer practice in a minivan that needs new tires.” Love it!
The Bengals are delusional, not just the organization, but the players themselves. Daugherty quotes cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick: “We gave it our best shot and just came up short.”
Really? Odell Beckham caught 10 of 11 throws targeted at him, Eli Manning threw three touchdown passes, and the Giants had the worst running game in the entire league prior to the game…and the Bengals never figured that out? They just came up short?
And given a fighter’s chance in the fourth quarter, and driving, how do you allow Andy Dalton to be sacked consecutively on second and third downs. Has anyone actually looked at films of right tackle Cedric Ogbuehi lately…or considered an upgrade from the kid playing at Marion Local?
Look, as bad as the Bengals are it’s refreshing that someone actually calls attention to it without being accused of being negative…yet! But I’m sure when they read what Daugherty wrote today someone’s bound to take the cop-out and call it a “backlash”, just bitter words from some journalist who’s protected by the first amendment. It’s how we’ve become conditioned to think.
Hillary Clinton didn’t really lose last week. That was a backlash, too.
We owe twenty trillion dollars of debt, but we keep borrowing because tomorrow is another day. We’re hopeful. Maybe, if we do it long enough, two wrongs will become a right.
Never, ever, ever…take personal responsibility for one’s own failings.
These are the truths of our culture…of sports. This is the fork in the road to which we’ve come.
The Bengals are just the newest model.