If You're Going to Be a Loser, Be a Good Loser

What is with the Republicans and all their booing this year? Have they always been this sophomoric and somehow I didn't notice, or is this a new twist, the reduced vocabulary of a bankrupt policy? Perhaps, to a ticket that does seem to believe "When you've said 'Budweiser,' you've said it all," booing is all that remains of discourse. I mean, take a look at the gilded woman standing primly behind Senator McCain at all those speeches, Little Miss Cindy "I Got Rich Filling Your Gut With Cheap Beer." She doesn't speak, but she sure does dress nicely, and I can't help but notice that gold is her favorite color and wonder just why that might be.

You know, I enjoyed a good long stint of Soccer Momming myself, which I originally assumed was pretty much the same thing as being a Hockey Mom, but I'm rethinking that. Sarah Palin smiles from the podium when her admirers course with boos against Obama. She feeds them lies to fuel this booing. She actually thrives on the booing. That must be a Hockey Mom thing, and if I'm offending any Hockey Moms out there, well I think you should really be complaining to Ms. Palin instead of to me.

One thing we worked on with the little-boys-becoming-young-men on our soccer team through the years of its existence was sportsmanship. Sportsmanship may be kind of an advanced notion for people who think shooting animals who can't shoot back is fair game, I realize, but what it amounts to is this: Be nice. Don't push or elbow your opponents once you're off the field, don't brag if you're winning and don't whine if you're losing. And don't boo. Booing is for people who have no vocabulary. It's like swearing. It's what you do when you don't have any intelligence left.

Which may go a long way toward explaining why Governor Palin and her admirers find it such a perfect means of communicating their positions. And that's all I have to say today.