Donald, Jackie, Colin, Bill and Me

Donald Trump doesn't really care about the specifics of what he calls "The One Big, Beautiful Bill." He just wanted a win, something he could sign on the 4th of July, as a show.

I'm reminded of the 1st Rocky movie, where Duke Evers (Tony Burton) tells his fighter, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), of Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), "He doesn't know it's a damn show! He thinks it's a damn fight!"

It's all a show to Trump. As long as he can keep the show going, he can stay in power.

He doesn't care about the specifics, but he also doesn't care about how many people in the "United States of America" -- including those who voted for him, but in this case especially in rural areas -- will be hurt, and even die, as a result of the Big Ugly Bill's Medicaid cuts, all so he and his fellow filthy rich guys can have the biggest tax cut of all time.

He never cared about the people who bought his MAGA lies. As James Carville says of Republicans in general, Trump only wanted one thing from them: Their votes, to put him in power, and then to keep him in power.

*

In his autobiography, which he titled I Never Had It Made, and didn't have published until after his death, Jackie Robinson, the 1st black player in modern baseball, brought to the Brooklyn Dodgers by team president Branch Rickey, looked back on what he considered the highlight of his career: Standing on the foul line with his teammates, hearing the National Anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," at Yankee Stadium before Game 1 of the 1947 World Series. They had made it, and they had done it together.

But there's a big difference between having made it, and having it made. He compared that moment to his thoughts at his present time, 20 years later, after events showed him that America had not yet become the country his 1947 efforts suggested it could become, and after he had come to accept that the Republican Party, to which he belonged, no longer seemed to want him:

There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the National Anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands.

Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first World Series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey's drama and that I was only a principal actor.

As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the Anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

After the 2016 backlash against his kneeling during the Anthem before games, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, soon to be blacklisted (though never officially banned) from the NFL,  shared a similar sentiment:

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street, and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wrote of a parallel world for the episode "The Omega Glory," one in which a planet developed the same way Earth did, until a nuclear war. According to Spock (Leonard Nimoy), the evidence shows that "the Asiatics won." But, in a world rendered primitive again, these "Koms," descendants of Communists, had finally, perhaps over 1,000 years later, had the tables turned, and the "Yangs," descendants of Americans or "Yankees," had won.

The Yangs had a Stars-and-Stripes, what Johnny Cash would have called a "ragged old flag," and a copy of the Constitution of the United States. But time had dulled their words: "We the People" had become "E pleb nista," and they no longer knew what "the holy words" meant. Captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, a Jewish man from Canada, showed them.

Bill Shatner (left) as Kirk, and Roy Jenson as Cloud William.

Jenson was also Canadian.

On this Independence Day, let us recall that our "best words" were written for everyone, and both their protections and their responsibilities must apply to everyone, or they mean nothing. If Bill Shatner, a Jewish Canadian actor of the 20th Century, playing a 23rd Century starship captain from Iowa, can figure it out, then nearly all of us can.

But can we? Trump has divided us. Indeed, "E pleb nista" doesn't sound like "We the People," but it is reminiscent of "E pluribus unum," one of the nation's mottos. Translated from Latin, it means, "Out of many, one." Trump has turned us into a nation of about 340 million unums (unii?), with precious little pluribus.

For the last few years, the tradition in our family is to go from our hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey to see the 4th of July Parade in neighboring Milltown in the morning, and then return to Milltown in the evening for the fireworks.

I won't be doing that this time. As of this writing, I have already "missed" the Parade. I will not be attending the fireworks. I cannot stand and sing the Anthem. And I have not recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag since the Summer of 1988, when a previous Republican demagogue, George H.W. Bush, made it a club to use over the head of his Presidential election opponent, Michael Dukakis.

Through his efforts to end birthright citizenship, through his denunciations of anybody who doesn't support him, Donald Trump has divided America into patriots and MAGAs. And you cannot be both. You either love America, or you love Trump.

Three things have kept America free, and Trump has perverted all of them:

* The right to vote. If not for voter suppression in 2016 and 2024 -- and an attempt in 2020, which failed -- Trump would not have come out on top.

* Civilian control of the military: Trump has forced out the Generals who have told him what he cannot do, and he is giving unconstitutional orders.

* Separation of church and state: Trump has seen to it that there is one god, and he is it, and if you worship anyone or anything other than him, then this god will not have mercy on your soul.

News flash, one you won't see in any major American media outlet: Trump is no god. And he is President in name only. He holds the office and its powers, but he does not represent America.

In 2026, the year of the 250th Anniversary of our independence, we must elect a Congress that will hold him accountable. In 2028, we must elect a President and a Congress that will undo the damage he has done.

Until then, I can only echo what Jackie Robinson said. I know that I am a patriot in a MAGA-ruled country. In 2025, in 1988, at my birth in 1969, I know that I never had it made.

Those words in the Constitution: "They must apply to everyone! Or they mean nothing! Do you understand?"

Donald Trump does not understand, and he would not if he could.

Do you?

I can't answer that question for you.

Bert Sugar, 1936-2012

Bert Sugar died yesterday at the age of 75. That stinks, worse than any cigar he ever smoked.

Herbert Randolph Sugar was born on June 7, 1936, in Washington, D.C., and attended the nearby University of Maryland. He earned an MBA and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan. Those of you who knew about him before, really, can you imagine Bert as a businessman? Or a lawyer? Or... an advertising executive?

Yes, he was an advertising executive. He worked in the industry until 1969, when he heard that the magazine Boxing Illustrated was up for sale. This gave him a chance to connect with his first love, the sport that sportswriter A.J. Liebling nicknamed "the sweet science." This led to Sugar becoming, if not the last of the old-time wiseguy sportswriters, then a very good approximation of what they were. He edited Boxing Illustrated, The Ring (a.k.a. The Bible of Boxing), and Boxing Illustrated again.

He wrote over 80 books, mostly but not limited to boxing and its history. Probably the best known is an anthology of his writing, Bert Sugar On Boxing. He was the ghostwriter for the autobiography of 1960s light heavyweight champion Jose Torres. He was called "The Greatest Boxing Writer of the 20th Century" by the International Veterans Boxing Association. He also co-wrote a biography of Harry Houdini with magician James "The Amazing" Randi.

In 1995, Bert published The 100 Greatest Athletes of All Time. His choice for Number 1 was Jim Brown, because he believed Brown to be the greatest performer ever in the history of two different sports: American-style football and lacrosse. While the choice of Brown as the greatest football player ever was backed up by The Sporting News in its 100 Greatest Football Players poll in 1999, I'm not sure how he came by the idea of who the greatest lacrosse player ever was. Maybe he found film of Brown playing the sport at Syracuse University, and looked up lacrosse experts to see who else was great in that sport.

Bert also appeared as himself in several boxing-related films, including Night and the City, The Great White Hype, and the last Rocky film, Rocky Balboa.

Whenever a documentarian needed a boxing expert, Bert was the go-to guy, with his knowledge of the sport's past and present matched only by his personality, aided by his ever-present hat and cigar. Ken Burns interviewed him for Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Bert also discussed Johnson and several other fighters as a panelist on ESPN Classic's 1996 feature Fights of the Century.

That special first aired right before the first fight between Mike Tyson -- still considered invincible despite his 1990 loss to James "Buster" Douglas -- and Evander Holyfield. A year earlier, when Holyfield lost to Riddick Bowe for the 2nd time in their 3 fights, Bert went on WCBS-Channel 2's Sunday late-night sports wrapup show, and said that, though he was just 33 at the time, and that Archie Moore and Sugar Ray Robinson had done big things when considerably older than that, "In boxing terms, Holyfield is a very, very old man."

A year later, not only had Bert changed his tune, but he was perhaps the only boxing expert to believe that Holyfield had a chance against Tyson. He went on the same show afterward, and was asked, "Were you shocked by Holyfield winning?" He said, "Shocked, no. Surprised, yes... I knew Holyfield had the fight won at the end of the first round." He suggested that Holyfield would have studied the Tyson-Douglas fight and realized that the reason Douglas won was because he wasn't afraid of Tyson, thus taking away Tyson's greatest weapon: Fear.

This, of course, would be backed up by Holyfield-Tyson II and Lennox Lewis' destruction of Tyson, which Bert seemed to predict: "Buster Douglas was a blip on the radar screen. This is the end of the Tyson legend. 'The Baddest Man On the Planet' ain't, no mo'!"

But all great boxing champions -- Rocky Marciano and the more recent Joe Calzaghe, so far, being exceptions -- must eventually hit the canvas, fighting an opponent they cannot beat. For most boxers, it's not so much a man as it is Father Time.

For Bert, it was an opponent he thought was such a close friend: Cigars. He had battled lung cancer for a few years, and died yesterday, March 25, 2012. He had lived in Chappaqua, Westchester County, New York. He had been married to Suzanne for 62 years, and had a son J.B., a daughter Jennifer, and 4 grandchildren.

But he was a winner. And as a storyteller, he is still, the undefeated, the undisputed, heavyweight champion of the world.

UPDATE: No burial location has been noted, so it's possible that he was cremated.