KC Confidential

Local media jock sniffers gave the Chiefs a slap on the hand when they drafted Tyreek Hill…

After which they spent the better part of past two seasons pretending everything was fine and dandy – that Hill was a changed man – and celebrating his spectacular on field accomplishments.

Unfortunately that’s not how things tend to go with women beaters and domestic abusers

“In discussing why abusers abuse , it’s clear that a lot of the causal factors behind these behaviors are learned attitudes and feelings of entitlement and privilege — which can be extremely difficult to truly change,” according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “Because of this, there’s a very low percentage of abusers who truly do change their ways.”

Got that, a “very low percentage” change their lowdown ways.

Even when they happen to be National Football League superstars. Continue reading →

The Mueller Report will move no needles in either Democrat or Republican silos…

Places where long standing biases are life sustaining sustenance.

Case in point, approximately 30% of the country thinks anti-Trump Dem Adam Schiff is Diogenes and disgraced MSNBC anchor Brian Williams the last honest man in America.

Another 30% think House Republican (and pro Trump guy) Devin Nunes should be canonized in the ruins of Notre Dame…right after fired FBI head James Comey and twin CNN flaks – former CIA head John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper are burned at the stake.

There’s just no convincing anyone on the far left or right that ANYTHING has changed.

The far lefters still believe Trump and Putin are BFF’s forever. Continue reading →

‘DUMBO’—what can I tell you?

It’s a beautifully staged and photographed (i.e. filmed) LIVE-Action, family fantasy movie that should please audiences of ALL ages. Parents and/or grandparents taking the kids to see it will enjoy it as well.

Imagine that.

Because it’s got heart and soul.

Disney’s well oiled revival machine didn’t skimp on anything here.

It’s all up there on the big screen.

In all fairness I must admit to never having seen the original animated ‘DUMBO’ which Disney first released some 78 years ago in 1941. So my expectations were obviously in pretty low gear.

But the Mouse-House’s business plan of re-imagining  almost all of the studio’s classic animated hits into new live action adventures should propel ‘DUMBO’ to fly high this weekend at the box office.

The storyline really hasn’t changed that much. It is still basically about a young elephant born with giant-sized ears that enable him to fly and help save a struggling circus in the process, eventually landing at the glitzy Dreamland Amusement Park. (Disneyworld, anyone?)

There is of course, much more to the dramatic story setting under the big top. Continue reading →

Time flies when you’re having fun…

Reading the novels of Anthony Trollope, an English writer of the 19th century, one is struck by how different society is nowadays from his era. 

It’s actually not that remote in time from our own.

Let me explain.

As a small child in 1957, I remember visiting my great-grandmother in an old folks’ home.

Born in 1862, she was already an adult when Trollope died so she may have read his books as a contemporary author, especially since his books were so popular in the U.S.

Despite the overlap of this single lifetime, despite all the recognizable institutions which are outwardly the same; i.e. the business world, the realm of the professions, the two party political system, schools and universities, churches, charities, etc., to read Trollope is to enter a lost world.

It is familiar as far as its outward trappings go, but the mindset of those who lived then would be bewildering to most of us nowadays.

Though human nature has not changed how people want to be perceived, how they judge themselves has.

For example, what has been dismissed as Victorian prudery or hypocrisy is simply a very real understanding of how one’s reputation could be compromised with terrible consequences. Thus people might not always behave but at least they tried to be discrete, i.e. they didn’t flaunt bad behavior.

You don’t have to go back to the 1880’s when Trollope died, however, to be struck by the contrast between how people felt they should lead their lives, then and now.

This realization of radical change in society can be found in a much more compressed time frame, i.e. in a single generation.  

I recently watched two Hollywood movies on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), both reflective of the times they were made. Even though they were only 30 years apart, they seem as remote from each other as if they were from different countries in different centuries. 

The first was 1935’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” based on Charles Dickens’s masterpiece about the French Revolution. Set during the Terror, when “The Committee of Public Safety.” decreed who would live or die depending on  class background (Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, call your office!), it starred two British acting greats in the roles of their lifetimes. Continue reading →

Sports media types can be so superficial and pretentious…

Especially those of the print persuasion.

The Sam Mellinger‘s of the sportswriting world don’t write fawning tributes and dole out miniscule wrist slaps to their sports heroes because they grew up dreaming of being investigative  journalists, a la Woodward and Berstein.

The aforementioned who are so full of themselves and nerdish these days that nobody could possibly visualize them as the once-glam actors Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman who played them in the movie All the President’s Men.

Nope, it’s all about jock sniffing and the Bejamins for Sam and Joe Posnanski.

Oh, they’re talented wordsmiths alright.

They just don’t have much to say that about stuff that actually really much matters.

Take Mellinger’s column in the Kansas City Star about troubled Chiefs star Tyreek Hill.

Pretty much everyone in KC (who thought with their big heads as opposed to their little ones) knew the way Hill beat the tar out of the mother of his yet-to-be-born son, that he was a ne’er-do-well of the first order.

Yet the Chiefs swooped him up a couple years later and he went on to become of the team and league’s top stars.

So, dutifully Mellinger wrote at the time about what a bad dude Hill had been, but quickly changed his tune to celebrating Hill’s on-field successes and – given no high profile incidents or convictions – how Hill had turned his life around.

You know, out of sight, out of mind.

Trouble is, really bad dudes tend to remain really bad dudes. Continue reading →

Guess they never read “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Someone with no guilt is a sociopath. They may be nice to others face to face, but they’ll do whatever it takes to get what they want, casualties be damned.

We live in a sociopathic society.

How did this happen?

First, America lost its place as the inviolate, the undisputed leader.

It started with Nixon and then Trump put a stake in its heart by removing the U.S.A. from compacts under the notion of “America First.”

Just like “Loughlin First” and “Huffman First” and “Rich But Not Famous First.”

You don’t get there by luck. And to stay there you have to continue to employ an edge. They try to assuage their guilt via charity. But even Trump didn’t complete the circle on that.

They feel they’re entitled.

And we eat it all up until we don’t.

It was Reagan and the global economy that blew this country up.

Reagan made greed good,

Michael Douglas just articulated it in a movie.

Suddenly there were people richer than the rest. And by time we hit the 21st century it was clear you could not get to the destination unless you had certain privileges. Mostly, an elite education and connections.

Funny how everybody at Harvard not implicated in this scandal helps each other.

As for getting an MBA, that’s what it’s all about – who you meet, who you can leverage – what you learn in the classroom is nearly irrelevant.

And then came globalization.

Inevitable and to our advantage. But not everybody’s advantage. If you weren’t educated, you were left behind. Oh, we heard about lottery winners, athletes, but the rank and file saw their gigs go overseas and suddenly they couldn’t afford the lifestyle they were accustomed to. They ended up divorced and on drugs.

But the elite considered them throwaway people. Not only the right wing elite, the left wing too.

That’s why Hillary lost, she was out of touch.

The scary little thing is the left wing elite is still out of touch. They think they earned their position. They worked hard, round the clock, and they want the benefits.

As for those people in front of them, they’re bending the rules, so why shouldn’t they?

Bill Gates is lauded for his philanthropy today, but let’s put him on the stand and ask him why he charged computer companies for Windows even if they didn’t put it in the box.

Or Steve Jobs.

Cancer got him, but we want to know about his anti-poach agreements. Continue reading →

A bier is just a beer, right?

Stay with me here…

Say you’ve just returned from a great European vacation and you loved the beers overseas. And now you’ve luckily found the very same brew in the import section of your local liquor store.

Just ONE problem!

It doesn’t quite taste the same here as you remember it did in Munich, Prague, Paris, Amsterdam or Berlin.

Your imagination or is there more to it?

In my opinion, probably the latter.

That’s because U.S. laws forces international breweries  to add preservatives to bottles and cans for retail in the USA.

Hence the brew you loved overseas will most likely never quite taste the same here.

The same does not hold true for similar imports sold in Canada, Mexico or on cruise ships,

There you get the real thing.

In other words the German biers brewed under the Fatherland’s strict ‘Purity Law’ (which prohibits additives)  STAYS pure—except here.

PROST!

Which begs the question as to what my personal choices are for beer?

It used to be BECK’S. Continue reading →

John Hickenlooper‘s following the Jimmy Carter playbook…

And Carter may (not) be the best ex-President – as opposed to one in office – but one thing’s for sure, he won.

We underestimate winning.

It’s a long road to the top if you wanna rock and roll and AC/DC lit up bars throughout Australia before they shook the world years later. It’s what you do in the trenches when few are watching that matters. And then you’ve got to find a way to win.

Jimmy Carter used the Allman Brothers and the rest of the Capricorn crew.

Never underestimate the power of rock and roll.

It brings people together and spews out bucks, which were used in the ’70s to fire campaigns. Not only Jimmy Carter’s, but Jerry Brown‘s too.

And now Hickenlooper has Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats on his side. They played his launch rally in Denver.

Not that you paid attention.

The coasts are betting that you’re not paying attention.

They can’t stop making fun of Hickenlooper’s name and his lack of recognition. But have you ever heard of Barack Hussein Obama? I mean, to make fun of someone because of their name… Hell, I wish Alicia Keys and John Legend went back to their original monikers. If you’re not proud of who you are, your message is compromised. You win on identity. You make mistakes, you apologize for them and you carry on.

Only losers don’t have faults. Winners are flawed, but we get behind them because of their character.

I’m left of left.

But this week has me questioning the progressives.

If you can’t smack down anti-Semitism, the game is rigged.

If we all don’t begin on the same starting line, we can’t win.

The holier-than-thou standing up for Ilhan Omar have lost me.

Like AOC. And even Bernie. Continue reading →