After watching the first debate last night I got quite disturbed. Trump was rude, insulting, and unfair. He interrupted Clinton repeatedly, sneered and frowned while he was talking and while she was talking. both. He stretched out his time on every question and then tried to take her time besides. I could say something very bad about his performance but I don’t want to do that.
And there’s the capper. At the end of his 90 minute display of spoiled bad boy behavior he actually complimented himself on how nice he was, how restrained he was, and complained about how badly Hillary was treating him with her campaign ads.
I was actually disappointed with Hillary. “Why don’t you take him out” I practically shouted to myself. “It would be so easy. He’s so wide open. That’s what I would do.”
That’s what I would do. Then I had a flashback. It was an odd kind of flashback, a historical flashback all the way back to 1945, to when Branch Rickey was the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers. That was the year he invited a fellow named Jackie Robinson to his office for a talk.
I’m talking about the famous meeting where Rickey asked Robinson if he wanted to be the first African-American player in major-league baseball. Rickey asked him and then tested him to see if he had what Rickey wanted. Here’s one description:
For the next three hours, Rickey interrogated the star shortstop. With great dramatic flair, he role-played every conceivable scenario that would confront the first player to break baseball’s color barrier: first he was a bigoted sportswriter who only wrote lies about Robinson’s performance; next he was a Southern hotel manager refusing room and board; then, a racist major leaguer looking for a fight; and after that a waiter throwing Robinson out of a “for whites only” diner. In every scenario, Rickey cursed Robinson and threatened him, verbally degrading him in every way imaginable. The Dodger general manager’s performance was so convincing, Robinson later said, that “I found myself chain-gripping my fingers behind my back.”
When he was through, Rickey told Robinson that he knew he was “a fine ballplayer. But what I need,” he added, “is more than a great player. I need a man that will take abuse and insults for his race. And what I don’t know is whether you have the guts!”
Robinson struggled to keep his temper. He was insulted by the implication that he was a coward. “Mr. Rickey,” he retorted, “do you want a Negro who’s not afraid to fight back?”
“No!” Rickey barked. “I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.”
The first black ballplayer in the majors and the first female president.
That’s a reach, some of you will be saying. How dare you compare Hillary Clinton to Jackie Robinson? The two things are completely different.
Maybe not. To paraphrase Trump, they’re not the same, or maybe they are the same, I don’t know.
For most of our history women were second-class citizens. African-Americans were slaves,yes, but wives and daughters were considered the property of their husbands and fathers well into modern times. Blacks were expected to follow behind everybody else, to bow and scrape, to quietly do what they were told. Kind of like a dutiful housewife or secretary. And God forbid if ‘the blacks” should object or try to fight back. They got attack dogs and fire hoses for their trouble. Didn’t some of those suffragettes on hunger strikes get feeding tubes shoved down their throats?
Why didn’t Hillary take Donald down? I would have taken the skin off his hide in front of the whole nation and I would have been applauded for it. But then I’m a man.
Hillary did the Jackie Robinson thing. Rickey told Robinson to ignore the taunts and just keep getting hits and making plays. Trump insulted Clinton and barked at her and she went right on talking like he wasn’t there, swinging at the questions as they were pitched to her and not going off on rants.
The good news is that Rickey also told Jackie he didn’t have to take it forever. He said after the first year, after you’ve proven you can take it, then you can let go.
Second debate, anyone?