Imagine a Legacy Like This

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The New York Times on the life of Pat Robertson.

“He suggested. . . that Americans’ sinfulness had brought on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and that the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010 was divine retribution for a promise that Haitians had made to serve the Devil in return for his help in securing the country’s independence from France in 1804.

He said that liberal Protestants embodied “the spirit of the Antichrist” and that feminism drove women to witchcraft. He called for the assassination of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. He maintained that his prayers had averted hurricanes. And he condemned homosexuality as “an abomination,” linking it at one point it to the rise of Hitler and declaring that it provokes God’s wrath, as manifested in natural disasters and even the death and destruction of 9/11.”

Golf Armageddon

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It’s common knowledge that Pressing Pause is the place to go to make sense of all things professional golf. Apologies to RZ, DDTM, and the legion of other regulars who have just about lost all their patience with me.

First, James Colgan and Sean Zak did a nice job detailing Rose Zhang’s arrival on their most recent Drop Zone podcast. If you don’t know this RZ (what are the odds of two famous golf RZ’s?), you will soon enough.

Zhang, in two years at Stanford, played in 20 tournaments and won 12 of them. That’s absurd. Then, last week she won her first professional tournament becoming the first pro to do that since 1951. Smart, personable, seemingly immune to pressure. The “future of women’s golf”.

For as thoughtful as they are, Colgan and Zak dropped the ball (Drop Zone pun intended) by not pointing out that Zhang won $412,500 versus Viktor Hovland’s $3.6m check he earned an hour earlier at Nicklaus’s Memorial tournament. For those keeping score at home, Zhang’s victory earned her 11.5% of Hovland’s.

That’s a woefully underreported scandal in professional golf. Critics of this discrepancy always say that’s because of the vast differences in commercial sponsorships, meaning eyeballs, but that begs the question of how/when is that calculus ever going to change. Maybe I should be the LPGA commish.

Tangent. Hovland deserves major props for cashing his check on Sunday and then caddying for his college teammate at a US Open qualifier on Monday. The young Norwegian carried his boy’s bag. That’s class personified.

Alright, are we warmed up now? When one of my golf besties texted me about the LIV/PGA merger, I texted back, “Is this for real?” I thought someone might have been punking us.

All I’ll say is some decisions are so bad—Chris Licht amplifying Donald Trump’s bullshit, everything Elon Musk has done at Twitter since buying it, dismembering a dissenting journalist—that there’s no coming back from them. Licht is out at CNN. Twitter’s ad revenue has cratered and the value of the company has fallen by two-thirds. And yet, Musk and MBS are so wealthy it looks like they can survive anything, thanks to the likes of PGA commissioner Jay Monahan.

Jay Monahan won’t survive though. “Hypocrisy” isn’t a strong enough word for his double dealing with LIV’s Saudi’s funders, we need another. One Pressing Pauser asked me “If the PGA supports dismemberment now?”

It appears so, at least a few of the most influential suits. I went cold turkey on CNN post Trump “town hall” vowing to never watch it again. Professional golf’s future is still as murky as the New York City skyline. Sadly though, my golf sickness is far too advanced for me to go full CNN on the PGA.

Go ahead, call me a sad (sick) sellout. Probably fits.

Humanity’s Great Triumph

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According to Nicholas Kristof.

“One of the misimpressions people have about the world is that it’s going to hell.

Perhaps that’s because humanity’s great triumph over the last half-century — huge reductions in poverty, disease and early death — goes largely unacknowledged. Just about the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children died before reaching adulthood. We happen to live in a transformational era in which 96 percent of the world’s children now survive until adulthood.”

I concur.

Doug G’s Eggsellent Idea

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Vending machines eggs. Just one more reason to love British Columbia. Check Dougie out on CTV’s Farming for Love.

“I wanna show her how we do things on our dairy.” Yikes.

“Farming for Love” looks like must watch t.v. Wait til’ the end for the best line, “If you have more than 5,000 acres, please slide into my DMs.”

Closing Curtain

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Allegedly, Succession was inspired by the Murdoch family. It was the rare show that got better and better for four consecutive years and then pulled the plug at its heights.

The main characters’ greatest flaws all reached a crescendo in the final episodes. Tom admitted he loves money and thinks about it all the time. Tom and Shiv detailed what they most hated about one another. And Kendall intimated he might die if not put in charge of the family empire after the patriarch’s death.

Three of the patriarch’s children desperately tried, but failed miserably, to emulate his business success. Psychologically, the fourth, an eccentric who separated himself and dabbled in politics, fared better.

Viewers liked the depictions of extreme wealth. I found the second generation’s psychological maladies more interesting. How do you overcome largely absent, uninterested, uncaring parents? Childhood trauma. In Kendall’s, Rome’s, and Shiv’s case, you don’t.

Yesterday, I mowed the lawn with someone who is in the process of overcoming not just absent, uninterested, and uncaring parents, but abusive ones. Stephanie Foo, author of What My Bones Know.

Foo’s book in short.

“By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD–a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.”

Foo has severed all ties with her birth family and is fashioning a new one of choice consisting of close friends who love her, her partner, and her soon to be child.

The Roy’s probably would’ve been better off following Foo’s footsteps. But they couldn’t resist the lure of their family’s wealth, status, and power. And had they gone full Foo, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good television.

Is Feinstein the Canary in the Presidential Coal Mine?

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From the New York Times:

“Many Americans say they do not want President Biden to run for re-election, and his age is a big reason. In an NBC News poll released last weekend, 70 percent of adults said Mr. Biden, who is 80, should not run again. Asked if age was a factor, 69 percent of them said yes. Other recent surveys detect a similar lack of enthusiasm, with many voters — including around half of Democrats — calling him too old to seek the White House again.”

Historians will look very favorably on Biden’s first term. I appreciate every single way he’s the complete opposite of the previous President.

But count me among the aforementioned 70%, 69%, and the “around half” group of voters. For one reason. Diane Feinstein.

I can’t criticize California’s voters for electing an octogenarian and then do the same thing. Especially in one’s 80s, as Feinstein demonstrates, mental and physical health can go south very, very quickly. Why take that risk when we don’t have to?