Officiating and Immigration

The preacher sitting behind me had the whole row laughing early in the game. Alabama was rolling pretty good ahead of Kentucky by double-digits.
But when Kentucky made the game tight, the preacher lost his religion for several minutes.

He went from "THE GOOD LORD LOVES GOOD BASKETBALL" to "YOU #%$@ BLIND BAT ZEBRA, I KNOW WHAT I'M PREACHING ABOUT TOMORROW! WHO IN THE #%#$ TAUGHT YOU HOW TO CALL A BASKETBALL GAME" in the time it takes to lose a lead in a SEC basketball game.

The speed with which the good preacher lost his good humor was directly proportional to Alabama losing it's lead.

Bama finally won and all was right with the world and also the Sunday sermon. But it did remind me of something I've learned after covering sports since 1981 and my daughter playing
AAU basketball at a high level for 10 years.

It is a myth that fans want a fairly called ballgame. Fans in the stands don't want an evenly called game or officials who blow the whistle fairly and squarely.
They want a break. They want an advantage. Don't say the home team fouled. It's the zebra's fault. At the end of the day, it's about winning at all cost and if the officials help us, so be it.

I can see the e-mails now. Jasper from Jasper will write...."Greg, most fans want the officials to do a good job with a sense of fair play."

Yeah....and I'm the King of England.

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Immigration and the Liberal Media...Well, sure the media are liberal aren't they?

Got an e-mail from a really angry guy named John. Says we are just another liberal media
outlet who ignores important issues like illegal immigration. And because we do, he says, that makes us liberals in bed with other liberal media outlets.

I love the conservative/liberal media debate. Just like the officiating in a basketball game...(see above)...people seek out what they want reinforced and try to discredit what they don't want to hear.

Also, people don't want tough questions asked of leaders they support. But that is what we do.
We ask tough questions. And we expect honest answers. If we don't get those, we tend to get a little irritable.

You want to know why a national correspondent gets a little chippy during an interview. It's because at any given point in the day, someone is trying to mislead him or her.

Be glad that we live in a country where the media are tough. In fact, I sometimes don't think the media are tough enough in Washington, DC. We're lucky. I doubt that any reporter is shouting questions at the guy in Iran.

Back to John and his questioning of illegal immigration coverage....

Every time I turn on my television, there is coverage about how people feel and how the country should react to illegal immigrants.

But I think the dirty little secret on illegal immigration is that there is a significant segment
of the business world that wants nothing done about it. Illegal immigrants are a very cheap and reliable source of labor. As long as that pool exists, and business interests weigh in on the political process, I don't see much changing.

One of the smartest people I have ever met in my life said this today...


"Most controversial issues don't have just two sides... there are usually many dimensions to a controversial story."

Illegal immigration is no different that any other complicated issue that affects our time and out life.
It's like speeding, cheating on your taxes, and wanting a "fairly" officiated basketball game.
It's a "I can do it and I don't want you to do it world" that we live in daily.

More later......