Enough Already! I can’t take it!
We get it. Tim Thomas didn’t go meet the President. Very few people would have skipped that opportunity. He might have bothered his teammates…or maybe he didn’t...who knows, but I beg everyone not associated with the NHL and the Boston Bruins please shut your pandering pie-holes and move on.
Example 1: Keith Olbermann.
Olbermann has never played hockey. He’s never been on a hockey team as far as I know. The closest he’s come to hockey is covering it on ESPN from the sidelines or a studio somewhere in Connecticut. He may have covered the Miracle on Ice but not with helmet and pads on from the bench. So get off it.
Keith decided to run his mouth, as he is known and paid to do, about his opinion on the decisions of Tim Thomas. He started on Twitter insinuating that Thomas was illiterate, saying he was a moron, and referring to those who responded to him in a vulgar way as “Tim Thomas’ America”. For what?! Doing what Olbermann does every single day of his life? Saying what he thinks?
No, actually it’s because Thomas did something Olbermann rarely does and put his feelings into action.
I could go on about how bias and pompous Olbermann is. He is a glorified talking head that has moved up from being a local talking head, to a sports talking head, and now to a crazed left wing nationally televised talking head. But there is no greater way to sum it up than the immortal words of Theodore Roosevelt:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Keith Olbermann is that critic. That man that sits outside the ring watching and judging those who try and fail in their efforts. If I had a TV program I’d name Keith Olbermann the “Worst Person in the World”.
Example 2: Deval Patrick
Like Olbermann, Patrick as the Governor of Massachusetts chimed in with his thoughts on Tim Thomas. And like Olbermann, Patrick lives and works in the political universe. He does not play for the Bruins and likely has never been in a hockey locker room, but why not throw out his thoughts, right?
Patrick expressed that Thomas not showing up was insulting and rude to the office of the President. He pointed out, just as Olbermann did, that when his opportunities arose to meet the President and visit the White House he did not refuse over his own political beliefs but viewed it as a compliment and went anyway.
Things I will ignore:
1. Ok, so you chose to have views but not act overly dramatic about them….ok, your choice.
2. Your political feelings we not so strong that you felt an urge to act? No problem.
3. Would you call that selling out? Ignoring your issues just for the cool opportunity to meet someone famous?
What I will NOT ignore is one glaring fact. Meathead Olbermann and Dingbat Patrick both work, FULL TIME, as a political pundit and a politician! Of course they went! Of course they played nice! Adolf Hitler could be the President with the Devil himself as VP and both those men would at least show up because if they didn’t Olbermann would never be invited back and therefore he’d lose his ability to get political interviews and information. And Patrick would never win his next election (and therefore lose his job) if the President said “I don’t like that man. He blew me off after I invited him to my house.”
So let’s recap:
If Olbermann ditches the White House he loses his political favor, can’t land an interview and gets taken off the air.
If Patrick skips a Presidential visit he gets bashed by the highest office, loses political favor within his party, loses voters and ultimately loses his job.
Tim Thomas skips the White House and he has to deal with dopes like Patrick and Olbermann calling him names, but then he goes back to playing hockey.
Maybe that is what is driving the whole issue here. Maybe Olbermann, Patrick and the rest of the political world is upset. Not upset at Tim Thomas, but upset that they are part of the problem. They are part of a government (both sides) that is a fraternity where you can’t act alone. You can’t have a voice. You have to stay in your line or bad things will happen.
And maybe that is exactly the issue that lead to Thomas declining his invitation…
