Nicklaus’ Lynch mob
Jack Nicklaus, shown during filming of a documentary, supports Donald Trump. Why does the media think that’s a big deal? News flash: It’s not. (Courtesy Golf Channel)
Elections, by definition, are choices. In the presidential election that will reach a blessed conclusion Nov. 3, or soon thereafter, we’re presented with an unpleasant choice between two monumental windbags who are pathological liars, have had questionable business dealings and have been credibly accused of treating women badly (if not criminally). Both of them, frankly, often seem like odd, creepy dudes.
Not exactly our best and brightest. But in truth, JFK’s best and brightest didn’t live up to the hype either.
I mention this not just because it’s Election Eve, but because Jack Nicklaus announced a few days ago that he was endorsing President Trump’s re-election bid. Given that Nicklaus is an establishment Republican who has campaigned with previous GOP candidates, this news shocked absolutely no one – except my former Golfweek colleague Eamon Lynch. There’s a reason why the late Dan Jenkins said Nicklaus was “the best interview of any athlete I ever covered in any sport.” The Golden Bear always has been comfortable speaking his mind.
Eamon is annoyed that Nicklaus’ qualities as a competitor – “winning with class, losing with grace, abiding professionalism and decency” – were not “equally evident in his choice of presidential candidate.”
Eamon is Irish by birth, but he’s lived in the U.S. long enough that he should know our presidential elections aren’t a choice of good vs. bad, or even great vs. good. We’re reduced to picking the least worst option.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, a man firmly of the Left, described Eamon’s least worst option this way: “Joe Biden is a corpse with hair plugs whose idea of ‘empathy’ is to jam fingers in the sternums of people who ask the wrong questions, or call them ‘fat’ or ‘full of shit,’ or dare them to ‘try me’ — and that’s if he remembers what state he’s in. Is he a better human than Donald Trump? Probably, but his mental decline has hit Lloyd Bridges-in-Hot-Shots! levels and he shares troubling characteristics with the president, beginning with a pathological struggle with truth.”
Biden’s mental and verbal gaffes have become so prolific that Trump has been running a Biden blooper reel at campaign stops. Has that ever happened in a political campaign? If Biden does cross the finish line this week, he’s a 25th-Amendment test case just waiting to happen.
A more serious media consisting of 100 Taibbis, rather than just one, might have pressed Biden on his mental state, his threats to lock down the economy again (I’m confident that would be a complete nonstarter with the American people), his call for a national mask mandate (another nonstarter) and his flip-flops on any number of issues, most notably fracking.
But Eamon reflects the media’s imperative, which is to defeat the evil Orange Man. Part of the problem here is that much of the American media no longer believes in free speech, whether it be by their colleagues or the people they cover, such as Nicklaus. As Holman Jenkins recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “None of us likes to think we aren’t brave, but journalists and motorcycle gang members are perhaps unique in interpreting their own slavish conformity as rugged individualism. A ‘profession’ whose daily existence is such a stark contradiction to its self-image, first of all, loses any claim to respect as a profession. Soon after, it’s likely to lose its customers.”
Trump’s media critics span the political spectrum. On one end are the deranged leftists who try to draw parallels between the president and Hitler. (As an aside, if you ever feel the urge to compare an American president to a genocidal maniac, step away from the computer, take a deep breath and bang your head against the wall until you get your wits about you.) On the other end of the spectrum are the grandees at National Review, such as Kevin Williamson, who think, with some reason, that Trump is icky and yucky, and therefore unworthy of their support. They intentionally ignore the administration’s fairly substantial list of domestic and foreign policy successes in the face of a relentless media barrage.
Instead, they turn to their alternative, which is … Joe Biden?
How quickly people forget that Biden was the Trump of American politics before Trump came along: a blowhard whose ego dwarfed his intellect, a serial fabulist on, among other things, his academic record, his family history, his Senate voting record and, God help him, the death of his first wife and infant daughter. He’s been credibly accused of sexually assaulting a Senate aide – even his running mate seems to believe his accuser – and his habit of fondling little girls is … just … fucking … weird. Biden’s entire life story, as Kyle Smith has observed, often has seemed dependent on his audience. On one day he’ll boast about his warm relationships with Democrat segregationists in his early Senate years, and on another he’ll tell voters that his Republican opponents are “going to put y’all back in chains.”
And Eamon thinks Jack Nicklaus needs to explain himself?
