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[ by Charles Cameron — Triptych, DoubleQuote and Single in sports, with a sermon you should really click through and hear, delivered by the inimitable Alan Bannett of Beyond the fringe ]
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The London Review of Books sends me a weekly email, and this week it offered sporting articles that might be of interest. I can’t access all the articles in question, not being a subscriber, but the sort versions offered in the email provide me with this triptych of sporting paragraphs.. on the theme of suffering..

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A Broad Grin and a Handstand
by E.S. Turner, 2004

The Paris-Madrid road race of 1903 was a wonderfully disgraceful affair. Three hundred cars set out, conferring death and dismemberment along the dust-choked roads south. Six of the drivers were killed outright and nearly twice as many gravely injured. The hospitals were stuffed with mangled sightseers. By the time the surviving drivers reached Bordeaux the race was called off, and in Madrid the garlanded welcome arches were quietly dismantled. City-to-city road racing was now over. However, the dawn of motoring was still one of those dawns in which it was bliss to be alive.

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Everybody gets popped
by David Runciman, 2012

For Tyler Hamilton, as for many of the other leading cyclists, doping did not constitute an unfair advantage. Instead, it was a way of sorting out who was really the toughest. In an extraordinary passage, Hamilton writes that EPO made the sport fairer, because it ‘granted the ability to suffer more; to push yourself farther and harder than you’d ever imagined, in both racing and training’.

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Bantu in the Bathroom
by Jacqueline Rose, 2015

The full citation from Corinthians tattooed on Oscar Pistorius’s upper back reads:

‘I do not run like a man running aimlessly;
I do not fight like a man beating the air;
I execute each stride with intent;
I beat my body and make it my slave
I bring it under my complete subjection
To keep myself from being disqualified
After having called others to the contest.’

The line about making my body my slave is not in most translations from Corinthians, nor is subjection described as ‘complete’. Pistorius was raising the stakes. He was also punishing, or even indicting, himself.

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So much for the Triptych: now, still with sports in mind, for a Twitter DoubleQuote:

Tour de France on one screen and cricket final on the other screen – that’s how you know you’re at a European airport ??????

— Dr. Amira Jadoon (@AmiraJadoon) July 14, 2019

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And finally, for a Single, this delightful sports metaphor in religion quote, also from the LRB offering this morning, and worthy of the Alan Bennett sermon (to die for):

6/4 he won’t score 20
by John Sturrock, 2000

In prelapsarian times, it was only ever a short step from the batting crease to the pulpit, as generations of cricketing vicars used the game that they played heartily, if not usually very well, on Saturday afternoon for a neighbourly source of Sunday metaphors with which to earth a sermon and reassure the congregation that the rules by which a good Anglican was urged to live were really no more arduous than those framed by the MCC.

Howzzat?

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[ by Charles Cameron — two instances of somewhat unexpected balance ]
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Here, first, something you’ve already seen — the Maastricht bookstore in a restored church, arguably an instance of word being made flesh:

and the gardens now surrounding the clay court on which the French Open is played:

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Sources:

Marcus Fairs, A shop in a church by Merkx + Girod Architecten

Gerald Marzorati, How the French Turned a Tennis Court Into a Garden

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I say alchemy because marriages of hard and soft, above and below, word and flesh, have it in common that they bridge significant metaphysical divides — like the fall of the Berlin wall, to take a political equivalent within living memory — and thus perform a healing work.

Tikkun olam.

[ by Charles Cameron — it might be that “This is where politics becomes a blood sport” turns out to be my final entry in the sports metaphor stakes, or the title of a “best of” collection — anyhow, let’s get there ]
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Ari Melber:

Jason Johnson:

It’s good that they finally pulled out the sword of Damocles: if you don’t do this, we’re going to sn=end a subpoena ..

Hardball:

Some in Mueller’s Team See Report as More Damaging to Trump Than Barr Summary

Chris Matthews:

I can understand why Trump plays ball with Netanyahu ..

If that’s a game, Barr is going to be exposed ..

Mar-a-Lago:

CM:

Congressman, what do you make of this? Because I get the sense that Mar-a-Lago has become a highly priced kissing-booth. If you want to get to the President join this club, then you can get relations with this guy, you can meet him on the golf course, you can hang out with him at the first tee, the nineteenth hole, he can be your buddy just for the price of admission. It is a kissing-booth, =tell me the difference?

All In:

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Jane Coaston:

They can’t outrun whatever the facts are forever ..

Chris Hayes:

There’s also a strange expectations game that’s been played here ..

NYT, How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World

NYT, 6 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Rupert Murdoch and His Family

Rachel Maddow:

Thin pickings yesterday, no doubt because I slept through much of my dialysis session..

And from today:

Stephanie Ruhle:

Adm. James Stavridis:

Craig Melvin:

Two more from my deaktop

O’Donnell 4/4/2019:

Kristan Peters-Hamlin:

There was a pass that was thrown to Congress by the Mueller team with adequate evidence for Congress to make the decision on obstruction, and there was an intercept by Bill Barr and he ran in the exact opposite direction ..

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And just a few from 4/5/2019:

Ari Melber:

If the agents did thoroughly go through those like 14 million files and Michael Cohen now finds a smoking gun or a gatling gun***** and those documents corroborate what Michael Cohen says, this could add rocket fuel to the investigations in DC, EDVA< & Southern District of New York. Possibly. Or it could be a nothingburger. All In Chris Hayes:

The thing that may be biting the most is the thing that brought us to the metaphor***** portion of the news .. and not the subtle kind ..

There’s this thing they do with him where he’s just a private citizen, he’s a taxpayer. It’s not like some metaphysical question about the private Trump and the public. He’s the President of the United States, and hoe doesn’t get to get out of that.

[ cf Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies ]

Jesse Eisinger:

Or as you said, Schrodinger’s Cat type of existence

The tax returns are not the Rosetta Stone that will let us know everything about every source of funding that he’s ever had. He’ll have overlapping LLCs and a Russian doll of corporate structures, no pun intended..

Barbara Boxer [re Joe Biden]:

Do we want the Mike Pence response where he’ll never go to lunch with a woman alone, and he won’t have a woman in his office without keeping a door open, I mean, is that where we’re headed?

Rachel Maddow:

This is a hill [Trump’s tax returns] and people will be willing to die on it ..

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I may have done enough of this metaphor chasing.. maybe do a “best of”.. maybe just taper off..

But this from someone on AM Joy, Sunday 4/7/2019 is too good***** to miss:

This is where politics becomes a blood sport ..

{ by Charles Cameron — including off and on security clearances, Biden and personal space, Trump and groping, kissing, Sovereign Citizens, a billion dollar swindle, and a cruise named Conspira-Sea — and on and on ]
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So, Fox had a chyron gaffe —

— it’s worth a chuckle — now move along..

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Okay here’s enantiodromia:

Trump will put $100 billion into a slush fund so he doesn’t have to deal with budget cuts:

Republicans have spent a generation complaining about deficits, government spending and attacking a so-called “big government.” Yet, within just a few years the entire party has turned 180 degrees.

and a nice paradox:

If P gets things right then it lies in its tooth;
and if it speaks falsely, it’s telling the truth!

Where did I get that?

Geoffrey K. Pullum, an elementary proof of the undecidability of the halting problem

If it was Dr Seuss, I’m betting he’d have employed and enjoyed pee (male) and queue (female), which would have made youthful readers giggle and blush.

That’s Epimenides territory btw, as in “all Cretans are liars”.

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Getting back to news chyrons — I wasn’t awake to catch this when it showed up on Morning Joe, but a piece on RawStory pointed me to it:

Joe Scarborough:

Once again, we’re just looking through a glass darkly, and have no idea what Mueller

Tom Nichols (professor, Naval War College):

I would love to play poker with the president because he’s a walking bundle of tells.

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CNN Situation Room 4/1/2019:

Donald Trump: We’ll keep it closed for a long time. I’m not playing games.
Kellyanne Conway: It is certainly not a bluff.

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MTP 4/1/2019:

Jeh Johnson:

You don’t have to the the former Secretary of Homeland Security to know you can’t shut down a 1,900 mile border. It’s a little like decreeing that it should stop raining..

[ cf King Knut ]

[all of them Mexico?]

Jeh Johnson:

Cutting off aid is the exact wrong thing to do ..

Note the lovely symmetry there, equivalent to projection

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Ari Melber:

Neil Katyal:

You can’t be playing Ducks and Drakes and releasing selectively some quotes here and some quotes there..

Is, incidentally, I’m thinking sports metaphors, whistle-blower a sports reference, referee?

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Hardball:

Rep Steve Cohen:

This whole thing has been played out like a stall. Like when they used to play basketball without a 32 second, 30 second, 35 secondclock, a 35 second clock and they’re just holding the ball, and they’ve got the lead, they’ve got the lead and they’re holding the ball.

Chris Matthews:

That’s Dean Smith’s four corners offense, I know about it. Thanks for the basketball recap. .. This isn’t basketball at all, but there is a question of game-playing here ..*****

This was re Barr timing the release of the Mueller report (after his redactions) to April 15, when Congress wld be away from town on a 3 week break..

CM:

A picture’s worth a thousand words everybody. Natasha, you take this: if we get a New York Times top of the fold picture >of a whole page blacked out .. There isn’t going to be much white left on that page ..

Natasha Bertrand:

Is Donald Trump considered a third party because he wasn’t charged?

I just want to go back really quickly to the question of whether ethics and morals matter. If you’re a morally vacuous person, that makes you more susceptible to beinf blackmailed by a foreign country .. It’s a very big national security issue, and I think that that is the lens through which we have to view this ..

Jay Inslee:

Trump has been so inhumane to close the border to refugees, some of whom are climate refugees today, because of the drought..

First mention I’ve seen of climate refugees***** as a term — cf my poem Mourning the lost Ka’aba —

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All In:

Lachlan Markay:

A state-sponsored Saudi information warfare apparatus ..

a full spectrum of information warfare, essentially, against Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post and Amazon ..

Chris Hayes:

If it’s true, it’s as real and immediate a threat to free speech in the US as one can possinbbly imagine, if a foreign government that doesn’t like dissidents speaking out of turn so much that it murders themessentially attempts to blackmail and destroythe paper which covers is.

LM:

And not just the First Amendment, but we have to remember that Amazon right now is bidding on a ten billion dollar Pentagon cloud storage contract, here as well ..om there are tremendous national security implications

Ah, and golf:

There’s even a book about it —

— a book-length sports metaphor***** for the current presidency?

Author Rick Reilly describes the President as a “prolific cheater” ..

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Andrea:

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Okay.

Two major pieces on forms of the extreme associated with the right:

How Sovereign Citizens Helped Swindle $1 Billion From the Government They Disavow

And from that article, an aptly named car:

Mr. Morton’s sentencing was set for that June. But when the 11 a.m. hearing started, he didn’t show. Agents spotted him that afternoon outside a Domino’s in Hermosa Beach, a gray hood and sunglasses shrouding much of his face. He hopped in his white Ford Escape and headed south.

and an aptly named cruise:

Worth reading, and really worth knowing about the loosely-defined, quasi-religious Sovereign Citizens movement.

Also:

There are two forms of interest here — the vicious circle, a quintessential ouroboric concept, and the implied symmetry in “jihadists and the far-right not only reflect each other, but feed off each other”..

But the CSM piece I really want to direct your attention to is one written by blog-friend Ann Scott Tyson and quoting blog-friend JM Berger– — who was also quoted in the NYT SovCit piece above:

Christchurch brings global white supremacist threat into sharp relief

“This is a much bigger global challenge than it is a challenge just in New Zealand or just in the U.K., with Britain First, or just in the U.S. with the [Ku Klux] Klan and a range of other neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups,” says Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s a broader collective concern here.”

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This just in before I go.. another symmetry observed:

The cruel irony of Hussle’s murder is that he was the victim of the type of urban violence he had long tried to remedy: The day after his death, he was scheduled to participate in an LAPD anti-street-violence meeting.

[ by Charles Cameron — Oxford the memory, Edward Said the music critic, WB Yeats and his Tom O’Roughley, Townes Van Zandt in the song of David Broza.. Barr and Aaliyah — four-page letters, kisses .. plus FaallBack, & Wiz Khalifa on my watch [!!] ]

Minefield, yes —

— but also two sides on one stage, so two virtues in the music of ideas:

polyphony — many voices, and

counterpoint, the juxtaposition, clash and resolution of contrary points of view

For war and peace as symphonic, see Edward Said:

When you think about it, when you think about Jew and Palestinian not separately, but as part of a symphony, there is something magnificently imposing about it. A very rich, also very tragic, also in many ways desperate history of extremes – opposites in the Hegelian sense – that is yet to receive its due. So what you are faced with is a kind of sublime grandeur of a series of tragedies, of losses, of sacrifices, of pain that would take the brain of a Bach to figure out. It would require the imagination of someone like Edmund Burke to fathom.

Just a snippet — the first paragraph from the Guardian piece:

Lou Armour is a special needs teacher, an introspective man with a walking stick. If you passed him on the street you probably wouldn’t notice anything about him beyond his limp. But 35 years ago he yomped across the Falkland Islands and ran through a minefield under artillery fire on Mount Harriet. His section killed several Argentinians in a bloody battle and Armour found himself attending to a fatally wounded Argentinian soldier who spoke to him in English about visiting Oxford. He watched as the young man died.

Ah, Oxford.

That’s I’d say, is a very good start for this post.

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Okay, back into the mire:

Defense One, The US Military Is Creating the Future of Employee Monitoring

Uh oh, just what we need!

As I said to Ali Minai, my view is that of WB Yeats in his poem Tom O’Roughley:

‘Though logic choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
An aimless joy is a pure joy,’
Or so did Tom O’Roughley say
That saw the surges running by,
‘And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey.

‘If little planned is little sinned
But little need the grave distres.
What’s dying but a second wind?
How but in zigzag wantonness
Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?’
Or something of that sort he said,
‘And if my dearest friend were dead
I’d dance a measure on his grave.’

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Back to the Mueller probe according to President Trump

:Many, many people were badly hurt by this scam, but more importantly, our country was hurt. Our country was hurt. And they are on artificial respirators right now. They are getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

— and back to “little pencil-neck Adam Schiff” aka “Adam Schitt”:

He’s got the smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen. He is not a long-ball hitter, but I saw him today, ‘Well we don’t really know, there still could have been some Russia collusion.’

Sick, sick.. these are sick people and there has to be accountability because it is all lies and they know it’s lies ..

Well then:

That’s an unexpected and welcome follow-up ..

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And so to Trump:

Wildcard*****, a nice, slightly paradoxical example..

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I’m watching Hanna (Amazon), starring the skilled and lovely Esme Creed-Miles:

Life, she is full of variety, no?

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elshi & Ruhle:

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MTP 3/29/2019:

Again, trump, trump, trump..

Rep Jamie Raskin, his way with words:

Attorney General Barr writes letters like Agatha Christie novels, there are more and more mysteries built into each one ..

[Impeachment] it’s the people’s defense against a president who’s acting like a king ..

Katy Tur:

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The Beat, Ari Melber:

First, a stream of chyrons..

Aisha:

I’m dropping this four-page letter and enclosing it with a kiss..

Aside: the things we learn!!

Howard Fineman:

I think he’s part of the team..

Let me use a basketball analogy if you don’t mind.. You know how, at the end of a game when one team thinks it’s ahead and they spread the floor and start tossing the ball around to keep from getting fouled to stop the clock, that’s my interpretation [of Barr’s actions] here..

.. dozens of years of Yale Law School education, and we end at the freak-show tent ..

A pair:

Then there’s a quote from Obama’s Selma Bridge speech:

We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”

That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others.

Fallback, which I generally don’t like too much, but here —

— hunting and shooting a sleeping lion —

If you’re hunting to eat, that’s one thing ..

You want to impress me — go fight that lion with your bare hands, knuckles, teeth — and then come back and talk to me..

[cf past Maasai hunting traditions.. ]

— and which, further into the Fallback episode, brings us more music — Stay in ur lane:

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So here I’ll take a break..