I’ve never been an American football
fan by any stretch of the imagination, and in fact I’ve lost interest in all
professional sports in the past 30 years. I used to be an avid Buffalo Sabres
fan, and my family held seasons tickets for the Sabres home games from the time
the franchise was formed in 1970. I was there
in the early 70s when they lost their first Stanly Cup playoffs to the Broad
Street Bullies of Philadelphia. During one of those playoff games at Buffalo Memorial
Auditorium, I watched Sabres center Jim Lorentz swat a bat out of the air with
his stick in a pea soup fog. Sadly for its fans, The City of Good Neighbors rarely
(if ever) makes the headlines as the champions. I used to follow the Bills, just
because I was shamed into it by my Bills fan friends, but the Bills always
broke our hearts. The last time the Bills came close to a Superbowl ring was in
’91, when Scott Norwood notoriously kicked a field goal wide right at the very end
of a nail biter, and the Bills lost to the NY Giants by one measly point. You
could hear the entire city groan; it was like watching Bambi’s mother die. The morning
after that heartbreaking Sunday, there was a cartoon circulating the fax network
throughout Buffalo, depicting Scott Norwood standing at a urinal and peeing
wide right. The Bills would go on to make it the Superbowl for the next three consecutive
years, but that Giants game was as closest they ever came to victory. My late brother-in-law Jordan used to tease me.
If someone failed at something, Jordan would say, “They’re as useless as the
Bills in January.” Jump ahead to 2021, and the Buffalo Bills are making a bit
of a comeback. They just won their first home playoff game in 25 years. Of
course, the year they get hot is the year the sky is falling in America. I
doubt people are as focused on pro sports as they once were. I’m happy the team
is having a good year, and I’d like to see them do well, because I love the city
where I grew up. Buffalo fans are among the hardiest in the country, and as a
former Buffalonian, I take great pride in hearing that one of our teams did
well.
Regarding what happened last week
in the United States, I am of course saddened, but hardly surprised. Shauna and
I were watching the certification of the electoral votes last Wednesday when it
all went south. House Republicans threw their collective hail Mary pass to deny
reality, and never in my life had I been so ashamed of the government of my
homeland. That is a very low bar to set, given the events of the past 4 years. Written
when Pumpkinhead was elected, my song “New Constitution” now seems eerily prescient.
An alarming number of Republicans drank the Kool-Aid, on board to defy the U.S.
Constitution in a futile effort to overrule the will of the American people. They
are acting like spoiled children who did not get their way. It was bad enough
watching that nonsense, but then to see an angry mob of wannabe-Vikings storm
the Capital building, egged on by the now Twitter-banned, hate-filled leader of
the insurrection, was the final straw. Enough is enough. Please put that
sociopathic demagogue out of my misery! He is a bad man, a traitor in fact. Impeach
him, again, and may he one day know the corrosive humiliation of history’s unbridled
scorn.
America was built on the
foundation of hope. I fear that foundation is cracking, but it has not yet collapsed.
I hope my country can find its soul, for everybody’s sake. History has proven
that it can. Nobody knows the future for sure. As for the Bills, they may not
make Superbowl this year, but as long as they keep playing the game, there is still
a hope and a prayer they will get it right and win.
- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer ©2021 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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