It’s been quite the week for keeping my language in check. I don’t mean self-censorship, and I’m not about to break out a bunch of Prager U Adam Carolla P.C.-culture-has-run-amok garbage. Some Asian girl at Oberlin with too much time on her hands had a bad idea. Some kids flip out during finals week. Big fucking deal. College kids are in their formative years, hearing a bunch of stuff for the first time and trying to figure their own shit out while simultaneously trying to fuck everyone in a five-mile radius. It’s always been that way. They’ll be just fine.
Words do matter, though. It’s unkind to tear people down at all, let alone using deeply personal insults or slurs to do so. With some shame I can admit to doing both in the past, specifically in my high school years. Back then I thought that fighting with someone of another race meant it was somehow okay to break out certain words, including that one. I could blame it on youth or rage, but that’s not an excuse, and I still regret it because I know those guys probably remember it. Who knows, maybe I’m still in the wrong; it is after all a bit hubristic to think that a man in his 40s gives a shred of a fuck what a white trash teenager in a Danzig II t-shirt with armpit holes said to him in a bowling alley parking lot in 1989.
Like most people, but not everyone, I became an adult and learned to mind my words accordingly. Generally, we all figure out that sometimes it’s not about what you’re allowed to do so much as what you should do. I’d guess it’s probably been five years since I made a conscious effort to stop calling people and/or things “gay.” Probably not soon enough, given that culture had become accepting enough that I was literally making these jokes while socializing with gay and lesbian people. I suppose I got lucky since this usually happened at bars and baseball games, as opposed to Psychedelic Furs concert, when I would have been excoriated, or an Amanda Nunes fight, where I would have literally been killed.
All of which brings me to Tucker Carlson. You guys are Ruthless readers, not desperate shut-in seniors or depraved shack-dwelling gun fetishists, so you don’t watch Tucker Carlson. You are thus likely unaware that he went all-in on my neighborhood last week. On Tuesday, he and some knob named “Seth” called us dirty and un-American, and pointed a camera at bagged garbage – seemingly on garbage night – as some sort of proof that we all dwell in filth and “[pour our] pig grease in the gutters.” Though to be fair, as a semi-professional greased pig catcher, I do pour a lot of “pig grease” into gutters. Gotta practice up for my annual tour of county fairs across the nation after all.
This is a picture of Tucker Carlson. This is as even-handed a summary of his beliefs that I am willing to link to. Do you know how brain-clawingly maddening it is not to insult this motherfucker’s masculinity? Forget the sexuality, just the whole vibe, you know? I certainly understand that concepts of manhood can be toxic, and believe you me I hate sentences that start with “back in my day…” But Christ, this fucking guy? The fucking bowtie? Tell me that you can look at that bastard’s photo and not immediately identify him as a sucker. Of… things, I guess. When I was younger, this dumb son of a bitch would have earned himself a meeting with a pipe wrench and left to figure it out a long time ago. Is that wrong? It’s got nothing to do with his personal preferences. It does, however, have everything to do with his existence.
This cunt wishes he lived in a neighborhood like this. His show claimed that “relatively few American citizens” live here, and that our “dirty” neighborhood is because “a very high percentage of [our] district’s” population is made up of undocumented residents.This, like most everything broadcast on Fox News, is a total lie. Thus distinguishing it from the other category of their content, that being ads for some sort of pillow manufactured by a crack addict..
Let me tell you about my neighbors. On my south side is a Greek couple in their 70s, maybe 80s. James is on the decline now, bless him, but he worked the docks in this city for nearly 40 years. As he says in his heavy accent, “the Greek have worn a path in the Atlantic.” James was an American citizen before Tucker and his brother Buckley – yeah Buckley – saw their first light of day. The folks on my right are Thai. They basically hit the lottery because somehow, someone in the family scored a medallion, the odds of which would have you waiting forever and a day in these last vestiges of 2019. Every morning, their adult son goes out to the cab and drives for 12 hours. When he’s done, he comes home and they exchange pleasantries for a few minutes – I assume, maybe they kickbox while awful music plays in the background, hell if I know – and then his father takes the car for the next 12 hours. And the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum.
These people are the American dream. I am the American dream, and maybe you are too. Tucker Carlson, by contrast, is a literal parasite. His grandfather was a rickets-addled orphan born to 15-year-old mother, which would make him sympathetic under any other circumstances. Except that his father was a knockabout banker and politician who married an heiress to the Swanson frozen food fortune, thus motivating Tucker to change his name to “Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson.”
For real, what sort of dickhead changes his name to associate himself with money unearned, especially after his stepmother disinherited him? What kind of person literally films other people’s garbage and calls it journalism? All week I’ve ruminated on how to describe this evil prick who was born on third base and yet uses his platform to vilify decent people like me and James and the rest of NY-14.
But I won’t call him a bad name, nor will I be a bully, After all, “Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars… [a]t some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too.”
Can’t wait, bitch. HEY LOOK FOOTBALL!â
CHICAGO v. GREEN BAY -4.5
Can we get away with sitting on the capable shoulders of Aaron Rodgers once again this week? Can we count on a guy who has essentially been his own OC and taken his team to 10-3 in the process to gut out at least one more win for us? Damn straight we can. Granted, he’s no Nai Kanom Tom, but we only need him to beat one opponent in this instance.
Bears games are different in Lambeau. Hell, you won’t be able to watch a five-minute stretch of this broadcast without hearing about the greatest rivalry in sports or seeing a bunch of grainy footage of Ray Nitschke. Hey, fine by me so long as the scoreboard says the right thing.
The Bears 7-6 record is incredibly misleading. If you wash out last Thursday’s Cowboys win, the Bears have only won divisionals and a home game against the Giants since their bye week. I foresee this being the type of “rivalry” game that Goat deservedly buries quicker than the cuts scab. Lay the Pack.
NEW ENGLAND -10 v. CINCINNATI
Scandal! The Pats got caught videotaping another team’s sideline again. This time they claimed that they were in the process of making a documentary. Specifically, a documentary about a scout. More specifically, a documentary about their scout. A scout so integral to the organization that they sent him to go watch the Browns v. Bengals game. On December 8, 2019.
Hey, they’re the New England Patriots. They’re going to do New England Patriots things. Did they gain another edge? Possibly, though that depends on how soon the scout got caught. Had he or she already been to Skyline Chili? Did they already go look at the WKRP fountain? Does a WKRP joke make me the lamest writer on this website? Well up your nose with a rubber hose!
I get that the badly wounded Pats are stumbling and that the Bengals showed some life in their relatively savage beating of the Jets. But that’s part of the issue – Cincinnati already got their “but-at-least-we” salvation win, so they won’t need it here. Elsewise, the lowly 10-3 Pats have an average margin of victory of 20 points and are probably looking to reassert some of the fear the need going into the postseason. I’m gonna lay 10 and see what happens.
HOUSTON v. TENNESSEE UNDER 51.5
Sometimes you need to look at the numbers with a skeptic’s eye. This O/U number opened at 47.5 before jetting up to 51.5, largely because of Tennessee. The Titans have scored 37.5 in their last four games, those accounting for a winning streak, and seen Ryan Tannehill of all people go 6-1 since winning the starting job from Marcus Mariota.
So why won’t this be a shootout? Well, the Texans are playing for one. Despite the at-times supernatural abilities of Deshaun Watson, Houston only averages 21 points per game. The Texans’ less-than-stellar defense is worth noting, but not as much as the fact that Derrick Henry – the Titans’ best offensive weapon with 13 TDs to his credit – didn’t practice this week due to a hamstring injury.
51.5 is a sky-high over in this situation. I get the averages and the offensive histories of these two teams, but I don’t think they’ll cross that line under the circumstances then and there present. Keep your units low and hope that at least one guy on both rosters can play defense when it counts.
MINNESOTA v. LA CHARGERS +1.5
The things I do for you guys! This game is here because I needed an add-on, lest you be stuck at home with nothing to do after 4:00 p.m. EST. So I bit the bullet and tossed in an afternoon game so you’d have something to watch. Now that’s what I call customer service – unlike My Pillow, as word on the street is that if you call their 1-800 number for maintenance they will come to your house and hit your shelter pets with rolled up newspapers. Can you imagine? What would motivate the My Pillow guy to do such a thing?
OK, seriously: you’ve got a Minnesota team that plays poorly on the road, going 3-4 SU and giving up 23 and change each time. You’ve got the Chargers with a 38 point differential on the year and a defense that has allowed less than 100 rushing yards over the past eight weeks. I know full well that L.A. has some issues but Rivers can hear a clock in the back of his head and I look for them to emphatically wreck the Vikings en route to their crawl back to respectability.
Don’t call people names. Don’t call immigrants “dirty.” Don’t insult cities or neighborhoods or refer to people you’ve never met as scum. I know you all wouldn’t do such a thing but they’re all desperate egoists with nothing to live for and no one to love. We on the other hand have a shot at another sweep weekend if things break right. Be good to one another, do the right thing and:
Good Luck!