I'm just about as "left" as it gets. Many folks over the years have labeled me as a "radical leftist," and just as many times I have not disagreed. I have been called a "Socialist" even more often; and just as often I have agreed, but always with the caveat, or slight correction: "Make that a Democratic Socialist, if you please." In the long ago olden days, I was sometimes called a "Communist"; depending upon the speaker of that accusation, I had different responses. If it was a rabid John Bircher type for whom I had no intellectual respect and wanted to enjoy watching his eyes and neck veins pop out, my response was, "You're damn right!" If it was from a centrist democrat for whom I had a fair degree of intellectual respect, my most frequent response would be the apocryphal quote: "Hell, every man worth his salt was a Communist in the 30's." Sometimes, with a few scotches in me, and I was in the mood to shock my mother's prayer-meeting friends, I myself would announce that I was a "godless Communist." But, in truth, I am not a Communist; never have been and never will be--but I damn sure am a proud leftist.
Of course, there was another epithet far too often hurled my way; a hateful, horribly ugly term, so hated still that I cannot spell it in its full ugliness: "You n****r lover!" That one always brought a response, and swiftly: my right and left fists aimed at the head--or heads--of the bigot(s) who was dumb enough to hail me so. Unfortunately, being a civil rights activist in Mississippi in the mid-60's, that name and the violence it begat was so frequent and terrible that I try now to forget as much of it as I can.
Why this overlong litany of my varying degrees of labeling in the political and metaphysical realms? Because I am also a Jock, a damn proud Jock--alright, in truth, I am a prematurely old and broken-down ex-jock. While I was a 4-sport letterman at Ocean Springs High School (Mississippi) in the early-to-mid-60's--when they still had such phrases--my sports of choice were football (American) and baseball. I was fairly good at both: I went to college originally on a football scholarship; and in baseball I made it all the way to the big leagues as a scout, and to college ball as a coach.
Oh, by the way, from high school on, I was also successful as a poet, a painter (and not houses), an actor, an author, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a professor--yep, a dyed in the wool egg-headed intellectual I was and am still.
I know it goes against the stereotype, but I have always lived and worked firmly established in both the world of the jock and the world of the artsy-fartsy intellectual, always hating the commonly spoken myth that the two worlds are mutually exclusive. The dumb jock vs. the effete intellectual. This nonsense also exists in the political realm: Jocks were supposed to be arch conservative Bible-thumping flag-wavers, and members of the intelligentsia were limp-wristed, yellow-bellied traitors. Let me say this, while the label "Hippie" was certainly an accurate description of me for a spell, peacenik never was, and never will be.
So, where am I going with all this personal history? Very recently, two of my favorite bloggers, Richard at The Peking Duck, and Conrad at The Gweilo Diaries, posted on a blasphemy--Mocking Pat Tillman, or Why so many people hate The Left and R.I.P. Pat Tillman, respectively--that is almost beyond imagination except that it is too goddamned true and out there for all to see. This ugliness, this inhumanity is directed against the NFL football player and U.S. Army Ranger, Pat Tillman, who just a few days ago was killed in action in Afghanistan, and this is what it is:
Go ahead, click, and see who they are, and what they did, and what people are saying about it. Then come back here for a few paragraphs and a link to the original story the Indymedia sourced for their shameful use of their undeniable right of free speech.
Tillman, 27, was killed when the combat patrol unit he was serving in was ambushed by militia forces near the village of Spera, about 90 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital. Tillman was hit when his unit returned fire, according to officials at the Pentagon. He was medically evacuated from the scene and pronounced dead by U.S. officials at approximately 11:45 a.m. Thursday. Two other U.S. soldiers were injured and one Afghan soldier fighting alongside the U.S. troops was killed.
The death of Tillman, the first prominent U.S. athlete to be killed in combat since Vietnam, cast a spotlight on a war that has receded in the American public consciousness. As Iraq has come into the foreground with daily casualty updates, the military campaign in Afghanistan has not garnered the same attention, though there are still more than 10,000 U.S. troops in the country and fighting continues against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Tillman was the 70th U.S. soldier to die within Afghanistan's borders since U.S. forces invaded the country in October 2001. According to the Department of Defense, 117 U.S. soldiers have died worldwide in Operation Enduring Freedom. Tillman was assigned to Company A of the 2nd battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., an elite Army light-infantry unit often used for difficult assault missions around the world.
Tillman stunned his family, coaches and teammates in 2002 when he walked away from a three-year contract worth $3.6 million. At the time, the move was viewed as a strong example of post-9/11 patriotism. After four seasons with the Cardinals, the aggressive safety -- whose 224 tackles in a single season was a team record -- simply told the organization that he was joining the Army with his brother, Kevin, a former minor league prospect in the Cleveland Indians system. By May 2002, they had both enlisted.
Part of the decision was timing. The Rangers do not accept recruits over the age of 28. Tillman was 25 at the time.
"The people who knew Pat, the less surprised you were," Pete Kendall, his Cardinals teammate, said yesterday during a news conference at the team's practice facility in Arizona. "For someone to walk away from several million dollars and a life of relative ease to put his neck on the line literally for $18,000 to $20,000 with no guarantee for tomorrow, you had to be surprised by that. Pat is the only one I know in our modern day of athletics who did it. This was sort of out of the blue and totally unexpected nationally. But the more you knew Pat, the more you understand why."
On Sept. 11, 2001, Tillman walked into the media room at the Cardinals' training facility and sat with reporters watching the coverage of the terror attacks, transfixed by the events of the day. In his last on-camera interview, the next day, Tillman alluded to his deep patriotism and seemed to be setting the stage for his enlistment.
"My great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that," he said. "And so I have a great deal of respect for those that have and what the flag stands for."
Part of the decision was timing. The Rangers do not accept recruits over the age of 28. Tillman was 25 at the time.
