bleckblog: musings of a community college english teacher

I got a phone call from Tommy Lasorda, ex-manager of the LA Dodgers, today, and I hung up on the bastard. Okay, it wasn't really him, but his recorded voice, and I didn't really hang up on him, but instead deleted the message from the machine about halfway through. And I'm sure countless others got the call. He was shilling for George Bush and privatization of social security. He used the phrase "personal accounts" rather than privatization, but a rose is a rose is a rose, no matter what we name it.

During the election of fall 2004 I also got a call from former Seattle Mariner Jay Buhner. If you aren't a Seattle baseball fan, or maybe a Yankee fan because the trade that brought him to Seattle from NY for Ken Phelps was one of the lousier ever made by the Yankees, you may not know him. He preceeded Ichiro in Seattle's right field. Anyway, at the time he was shilling for Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate for governor, who sorta won a couple of times, and then lost, maybe, for good. The court is still out on that one. Now he does a little bit of color for Mariner broadcasts and ads for a local sporting goods store.

So what is it about baseball players and Republicans, at least in these two instances. Clearly, it really isn't about the issue as all these guys know, for the most part, is baseball. Why would anyone listen to them? Because they are "stars" that's why. They have some sort of distorted ethos about them thanks to the cult of celebrity; they are well known so they must be able to sway the guy or gal who doesn't know. At least Rossi and Buhner live in the same general neighborhood, but Tommy Lasorda? I can't imagine he's doing anything more than whoring his image for the Republican party and Bush, even if he believes the script he's reading. And that's why I hung up on the bastard.