Maybe it’s just me, but it seems a little childish to spend a couple of pages picking on a guy for saying “basketball ring.” On the other hand, I suppose now it’s open season to make fun of Joe anytime he says something sufficiently uncool. I’ll start with that time he referred to Wilco as a great “new” band, sometime around 2012.
I think it is more of Joe’s movie scale thing. Cruz is always reminding everyone that he was a champion debater at Princeton and great appellate attorney from Harvard (record is actually mixed on this). Both of these require great skill at thinking on the fly and/or knowing the right thing to say. So when he makes these mistakes, it is so much easier to laugh at them (specially as he seems so serious about everything). Myself, at least where it comes to Joe, knows that Joe will make typos and other mistakes about facts, etc. but not why I come here. Even if i disagree with his stances, the writing always make me feel something.
“it is so much easier to laugh at them” — Well, you’re making my point for me. Laughing at a person for a simple mistake, or being uncool, is childish.
Well, is it a simple mistake, or that they are faking being a sports fan, lying?
You can give a pass to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for saying ‘they scored a football, then we scored a football.’ Ted Cruz’s mimicking Hoosiers, and not knowing anything about basketball is a major issue in my opinion.
I have to comment here. I don’t mind people ripping me for being uncool — I am horribly uncool and I say a billion uncool and stupid things practically every day. And I’m perfectly happy to have it be open season on my awkwardness even though I’m not exactly running for president.
But I most certainly DID NOT refer to Wilco as a great new band in 2012 or anytime around it. I know this for two reasons:
1. I don’t like Wilco. I have written at length about how I don’t like Wilco, they were one of my five “Things we don’t like but everyone else does” draft picks on the PosCast (right around 2012), and all this makes me very unpopular with my friends, all of whom think Wilco is the greatest thing ever.
2. I saw Wilco open for Sheryl Crow in 1997 — a show I went to for my girlfriend, now my wife.
The thing that’s sort of fascinating about saying that I referred to Wilco as a great new band — the reason I wanted to comment — is that it’s one of those things that SOUNDS like it must be true. After all, who would make up something like that? But it’s 100 percent false — it’s the opposite of true. There might be some other longtime band I referred to as new because I was ignorant of their history (the Beatles?). There might be some point where I wrote about trying to like Wilco because of the pressure from my friends. But somehow this absurdity came out … like I say, I really do find it interesting to see how people misremember things.
One thing I have found reading the comments over the years: The truth and Invitro have, at best, a nodding acquaintance with one another, especially when there is even a tangential political angle to the conversation.
I guess there might be some sort of conceivably *tacit* endorsement in this article, because you included a friend’s nomination of Wilco as a candidate for the world’s top band without criticizing or lampooning him. Not exactly wild acclimation, but there you are:
People running for President spend an absurd amount of energy pretending to be Regular Joe at the diner, just like you! Any time they try that they deserve to be widely mocked. Maybe then they’ll stop.
A speedball always was, always is, and always will be a mixture of heroin and cocaine or meth. Any kid from Freehold, NJ would know this. Especially a kid born in 1949.
Great bit of advice. I wish TV news/internet “news” followed the precept that you should know something about your topic before you report on it or provide an opinion. For years, I have been appalled when I see or hear “news” on topics that I know about (there are a few…damned few, but they exist) and it is ALL WRONG! Oh, well, as Abe Lincoln said, “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.”
Seems like most politicians don’t know sports, unless they were a collegiate or professional athlete. Or when George Bush said to Mario Lemieux when the Pittsburgh Penguins were at the White House, “and you are?”
I dislike that presidential congratulatory phone call too. It’s not your celebration, you didn’t do anything, don’t chime in.
Would Cruz be one of the easiest last names to make an all-star squad from? Johnson? Smith? I’ve seen several dog-paddling around the ol’ baseball rink. No pepper allowed!
I’m not a Ted Cruz guy AT ALL – but yeah, he DID say “rim” a little before that. To me, he sounded tougue-tied, not confused. But then, that wouldn’t have made for a very good article. Frankly, this whole article strikes me as oddly mean-spirited for Joe. I don’t see why, for example, Barack Obama has to know the names of players on the White Sox in order to root for them and be happy when they win. How usually gives people the benefit of the doubt – see his recent Podcast in which he agrees with Bob Costas about some things he patently disbelieve – but this article seemed just to be making fun of people for no reason.
If you don’t hear the whole audio, then it does look like Cruz is faking it. I think it’s a big deal to ripoff Hoosiers for votes and you know nothing about the sport. Obama plays up what a great sports fan he is. The 3 in Iraq signalled he is nothing like John Kerry. We would let it go if a woman had no clue while claiming to like a sports team, but for Obama not so much.
Seeing John Kerry decked out in some preppy east coast version of hunting clothes was cringeworthy. Same with watching Obama throw out a first pitch. You could practically hear the Castro brothers and every other tin pot dictator laughing their asses off. Presidents should be given a throwing exam and if they can’t pull it off looking like a man who knows what he’s doing, just take a pass.
One thing that nobody seems to mention about Cruz’s quote: it is not, and never has been, “amazing” that basketball hoops are the same height in both New York and Indiana.
Here is my all-time favorite: “Bobby Knight told me this: ‘There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.’ In other words a good offense wins.”
You are going to bitch about Steve Miller rhyming Texas, facts is, and taxes, while in a different song he completely makes up a word. The word ‘pompetice’ or ‘pompatice’ or whatever variation you’d like is not a word. I think that is a much more egregious offense than bad rhymes.
And tell REO Speedwagon ‘intoleration’ is not a word as well.
Typically, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when they make mistakes. It’s easy to misspeak and I do it all the time. And, usually, I try to be nonpartisan in this. I was always uncomfortable with the way Jon Stuart would take quotes from Bush, for example, out of context to make him look incompetent. I even had some sympathy at times with Joe Morgan mangling the English language. But in Trump’s or Cruz’s case, ridicule is always appropriate. If they were decent human beings, even if I disagreed with their politics, I might give them some sympathy. But they are rotten people who have dragged down, not only the country, but democratic (small d) politics in general. As far as I’m concerned, they are beyond the pale for any kind of sympathy.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems a little childish to spend a couple of pages picking on a guy for saying “basketball ring.” On the other hand, I suppose now it’s open season to make fun of Joe anytime he says something sufficiently uncool. I’ll start with that time he referred to Wilco as a great “new” band, sometime around 2012.
I think it is more of Joe’s movie scale thing. Cruz is always reminding everyone that he was a champion debater at Princeton and great appellate attorney from Harvard (record is actually mixed on this). Both of these require great skill at thinking on the fly and/or knowing the right thing to say. So when he makes these mistakes, it is so much easier to laugh at them (specially as he seems so serious about everything). Myself, at least where it comes to Joe, knows that Joe will make typos and other mistakes about facts, etc. but not why I come here. Even if i disagree with his stances, the writing always make me feel something.
“it is so much easier to laugh at them” — Well, you’re making my point for me. Laughing at a person for a simple mistake, or being uncool, is childish.
Thanks, Dad. I’ll try to remember that.
Well, is it a simple mistake, or that they are faking being a sports fan, lying?
You can give a pass to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for saying ‘they scored a football, then we scored a football.’ Ted Cruz’s mimicking Hoosiers, and not knowing anything about basketball is a major issue in my opinion.
I have to comment here. I don’t mind people ripping me for being uncool — I am horribly uncool and I say a billion uncool and stupid things practically every day. And I’m perfectly happy to have it be open season on my awkwardness even though I’m not exactly running for president.
But I most certainly DID NOT refer to Wilco as a great new band in 2012 or anytime around it. I know this for two reasons:
1. I don’t like Wilco. I have written at length about how I don’t like Wilco, they were one of my five “Things we don’t like but everyone else does” draft picks on the PosCast (right around 2012), and all this makes me very unpopular with my friends, all of whom think Wilco is the greatest thing ever.
2. I saw Wilco open for Sheryl Crow in 1997 — a show I went to for my girlfriend, now my wife.
The thing that’s sort of fascinating about saying that I referred to Wilco as a great new band — the reason I wanted to comment — is that it’s one of those things that SOUNDS like it must be true. After all, who would make up something like that? But it’s 100 percent false — it’s the opposite of true. There might be some other longtime band I referred to as new because I was ignorant of their history (the Beatles?). There might be some point where I wrote about trying to like Wilco because of the pressure from my friends. But somehow this absurdity came out … like I say, I really do find it interesting to see how people misremember things.
You can’t be that uncool. Didn’t you once hyphenate Ann Margret?
One thing I have found reading the comments over the years: The truth and Invitro have, at best, a nodding acquaintance with one another, especially when there is even a tangential political angle to the conversation.
I guess there might be some sort of conceivably *tacit* endorsement in this article, because you included a friend’s nomination of Wilco as a candidate for the world’s top band without criticizing or lampooning him. Not exactly wild acclimation, but there you are:
https://joeposnanski.com/greatest-rock-band-in-the-world/
People running for President spend an absurd amount of energy pretending to be Regular Joe at the diner, just like you! Any time they try that they deserve to be widely mocked. Maybe then they’ll stop.
A speedball always was, always is, and always will be a mixture of heroin and cocaine or meth. Any kid from Freehold, NJ would know this. Especially a kid born in 1949.
It was game we played in Gym that was a combination of soccer, football and rugby
Great bit of advice. I wish TV news/internet “news” followed the precept that you should know something about your topic before you report on it or provide an opinion. For years, I have been appalled when I see or hear “news” on topics that I know about (there are a few…damned few, but they exist) and it is ALL WRONG! Oh, well, as Abe Lincoln said, “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.”
Seems like most politicians don’t know sports, unless they were a collegiate or professional athlete. Or when George Bush said to Mario Lemieux when the Pittsburgh Penguins were at the White House, “and you are?”
I dislike that presidential congratulatory phone call too. It’s not your celebration, you didn’t do anything, don’t chime in.
George Bush was a collegiate athlete, and his dad and grandfather were president of USGA.
Yes I know he played baseball in college and his father was big in golf, and he still didn’t know who Mario Lemieux was.
Wasn’t Lemieux the Pokemon who could talk?
Would Cruz be one of the easiest last names to make an all-star squad from? Johnson? Smith? I’ve seen several dog-paddling around the ol’ baseball rink. No pepper allowed!
Robinson, Jackson, Hernandez, Jones, …
Even worse than Lambert Field was talking about Manny Ortez, the year they won the championship.
I was gonna say precisely this.
Does anyone have a link to the full video. I remember him saying rim just a little before that.
I’m not a Ted Cruz guy AT ALL – but yeah, he DID say “rim” a little before that. To me, he sounded tougue-tied, not confused. But then, that wouldn’t have made for a very good article. Frankly, this whole article strikes me as oddly mean-spirited for Joe. I don’t see why, for example, Barack Obama has to know the names of players on the White Sox in order to root for them and be happy when they win. How usually gives people the benefit of the doubt – see his recent Podcast in which he agrees with Bob Costas about some things he patently disbelieve – but this article seemed just to be making fun of people for no reason.
If you don’t hear the whole audio, then it does look like Cruz is faking it. I think it’s a big deal to ripoff Hoosiers for votes and you know nothing about the sport. Obama plays up what a great sports fan he is. The 3 in Iraq signalled he is nothing like John Kerry. We would let it go if a woman had no clue while claiming to like a sports team, but for Obama not so much.
Seeing John Kerry decked out in some preppy east coast version of hunting clothes was cringeworthy. Same with watching Obama throw out a first pitch. You could practically hear the Castro brothers and every other tin pot dictator laughing their asses off. Presidents should be given a throwing exam and if they can’t pull it off looking like a man who knows what he’s doing, just take a pass.
I think they call it a basketball ring in Canada.
One thing that nobody seems to mention about Cruz’s quote: it is not, and never has been, “amazing” that basketball hoops are the same height in both New York and Indiana.
No one mentions it, because most people know what Cruz is saying. Hint- he wouldn’t have tried this in any other primary.
Here is my all-time favorite: “Bobby Knight told me this: ‘There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.’ In other words a good offense wins.”
Aw, now come on…
You are going to bitch about Steve Miller rhyming Texas, facts is, and taxes, while in a different song he completely makes up a word. The word ‘pompetice’ or ‘pompatice’ or whatever variation you’d like is not a word. I think that is a much more egregious offense than bad rhymes.
And tell REO Speedwagon ‘intoleration’ is not a word as well.
There are lots of words in poetry and songwriting that are “invented”, and “rhymes” that are not, really.
However, Intoleration is legitimate word.
Are you calling Steve Miller a poet? I bet he didn’t know it.
Steve Miller didn’t make that word up. He got it (albeit not completely right) from a classic doo-wop record, “The Letter” by The Medallions. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/972/in-steve-millers-the-joker-what-is-the-pompatus-of-love
You can hear the song here–the bit Miller references is around 1:52.
So by the time Miller used it, it was a perfectly cromulent word. B^)
Whoops, left out the YouTube link. HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQNGHMf15I4
Typically, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when they make mistakes. It’s easy to misspeak and I do it all the time. And, usually, I try to be nonpartisan in this. I was always uncomfortable with the way Jon Stuart would take quotes from Bush, for example, out of context to make him look incompetent. I even had some sympathy at times with Joe Morgan mangling the English language. But in Trump’s or Cruz’s case, ridicule is always appropriate. If they were decent human beings, even if I disagreed with their politics, I might give them some sympathy. But they are rotten people who have dragged down, not only the country, but democratic (small d) politics in general. As far as I’m concerned, they are beyond the pale for any kind of sympathy.