Author: hankkalet

Sad news for basketball fans. Red Auerbach died today at age 89.

Born Arnold Auerbach in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Sept. 20, 1917, Auerbach was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969.

“I never thought he’d die,” said author John Feinstein, who last year collaborated on a book with Auerbach on the coach’s reflections of more than 70 years in basketball. “He was a unique personality, a combination of toughness and great, great caring about people. He cared about people much more than it showed in his public face, and that’s why people cared about him.”

With the Celtics, he made deals that brought Bill Russell, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale to Boston. He drafted Larry Bird a year early when the Indiana State star was a junior to make sure Bird would come to Boston. The jersey No. 2 was retired in Auerbach’s honor during the 1984-85 season.

He coached championship teams, including eight straight from 1959 through 1966, that featured players such as Russell, Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn, Bill Sharman, K.C. Jones and Sam Jones, all inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Auerbach coached and then ran the despised — by Knicks fans like me — but he stands as one of the men who helped put the sport on the map.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Bill O’Reilly, the nation’s pre-eminent bloviator, made the talk rounds Friday, venturing out his “no-spin” bubble into hostile territory.

Making stops on “Oprah” and “Late Night with David Letterman” to hawk his latest book, O’Reilly spewed his standard invective, blasting the vast left-wing conspiracy for ruining the nation with its amoral behavior and complete control of the power apparatus.

It is the standard argument that the right has been making for years, that the liberals — what he calls “secular-progressives” — are using their power and influence to destroy American values. It is an argument that builds off the obviously false notion that so-called SPs actually run things.

His rant on “Oprah” targeted people ike George Soros and organizations like MoveOn.org (those left-wing Web sites, as he said), the entertainment industry and, of all things, a left-wing media that disdains traditional values (does he actually ever read the paper or watch the news?
To which news organization are we to assume he refers?).

His arguments on Oprah made his Letterman appearance all the more significant, because Letterman of all people called the Grand Bloviator on his tenuous grasp on the facts (“I have no idea what I’m talking about,” Dave said, “but I don’t think you do either.”)

In the end, the O’Reilly argument — advanced by others on the right like Sean Hannity and even the vice president — is designed to do little more than promote the myth of a hidden power elite when the real power is pretty obviously in the hands of right-wing hatchet men like Bill O’Reilly (the right controls all three branches of government and corporate interests tend to be value-neutral, supporting those politicians who will do the most to help pad the bottom line).

There is an echo here of the argument used by the Nazis in German (no, I am not equating the American right with the Nazis; I’m only pointing out the rhetorical similarities) — that a hidden elite (then it was Jewish bankers; today, it is secular-progressives and the media elite) has taken over and is eroding what has made the nation great.

It is, to be kind, a bunch of hooey. But their argument also poses some danger because fascism has its seeds in a culture of blame. What makes it all the more disgusting, though, is that O’Reilly and his minions know the argument is the proverbial red herring, something to get the plot rolling and to distract us from the real stakes. They have dressed their naked thirst for power in patriotic and traditionalist garb.

As Keith Olbermann might say, “have you no shame, sir?”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I was no fan of Christie Whitman when she was governor, but she did manage to get this one right. Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, the first woman chief justice in the state’s history, left a legacy of expanding rights — especially for minorities and women — ending it with her blistering dissent in the same-sex marriage case decided Wednesday (she didn’t disagree with the court’s ruling that gay couples deserved equal rights; she disagreed with the court’s unwillingness to use the word “marriage”).

I had the opportunity, shortly after she was appointed by Gov. Whitman, as the state’s first female attorney general to sit with her for a story. I was a reporter in Princeton for the Packet at the time and she was gracious and gave willingly of her time.

She deserves the best in retirement.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

The News Blog offers a textbook way to respond to GOP attempts to nationalize Wednesday’s gay marriage decision. As they say on “Family Fued,” “Good answer, good answer.”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

The Boston Globe has some advice for the New Jersey Legislature — advice it should take as it now takes up the issue of marriage equality. In an editorial today, it recommends that the state look to Massachusetts’ experience, which has been uneventful, to understand how little impact the Massachusetts’ court had on heterosexuals.

The state’s four candidates for governor have different positions on the issue, but none “has brought the issue to the forefront in a campaign that has seen spirited differences of opinion” on other issues, the paper said.

One reason is that any opposition to gay marriage would likely be based simply on a candidate’s belief that it breaks with the traditional model and not on any evidence that it has had a harmful effect on gay spouses, the children that many of them are raising, or anyone else. There is no such evidence.

There also appears to have been little, if any, political fallout from the deicision, the paper said.

Although Massachusetts legislators have had occasion to vote on the issue, not one has been turned out of office for favoring gay marriage. So at least in this state you can add elected politicians to the long roster of those who have suffered no harm because the SJC decided gays had the same right to marriage as heterosexuals.

Not sure where the Legislature is likely to come down on this, but at least the court has ruled rather definitively that gays and lesbians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of us.

I suspect that the Legislature will try to punt on the issue — though there are a few Republicans calling for a constitutional change to overrule the court (and one, quoted by The Star-Ledger, calling for impeachment of the judges).

That said, I think there are two ways the Legislature should go — as opposed to the path they actually will choose:

1. They can expand the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. This would grant full equality under the law, removing the stigma that would ensue from creating an entirely new category for gay couples.

Or

2. Eliminate the word marriage from the law, enact civil union legislation that would cover a variety of family arrangements and leave it up to the individual couples (and their families, religious institutions, etc.) to determine what each relationship should be called. This makes the most sense to me — it honors the separation of church and state and gets the government out of the personal relationship business.

But I’d endorse either approach, so long as the current discriminatory set-up is ended along with the double standard the court seemed ready to endorse.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick