When black men spike balls

We are witnessing a fascinating sociological phenomenon where a president many Americans despise because he’s black is taking flak from these very same people for not acting black enough.

President Obama doesn’t want to release the photos of bin Laden’s ventilated head.

“We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies,” he said. “We don’t need to spike the football.”

Good enough for me. Besides, I’ve already seen the rendition of the assault by the genius Taiwanese animators at Next Media Animation who not only envisioned every aspect of the secret raid, they posted animated insights of what happened to bin Laden when Satan welcomed him to hell.

(The uproarious video was removed for confounding reasons of cultural sensitivity, but check out their stuff).

Many of the people right now screaming for releasing the gruesome pictures to convince radical Muslims bin Laden is really dead, are the same Americans who refuse to believe the authenticity of the Hawaiian birth certificate of the man they’re imploring to release the real pictures.

It’s classic twistedness.

Releasing the picture has become another issue upon which to gauge or belittle Obama’s manhood.

Sarah Palin, god love her, injected the word “pussyfoot” into the debate.

Interesting historical aside: The origin of the word “pussyfoot” tips its hat to Prohibition. 

It was the nickname of  W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson (1862-1945). He was a staunch prohibitionist who used underhanded -- maybe underpawed -- methods to further his truculent and, I say, brain-dead opposition to Demon Rum.

Comment that a man named Johnson was the inspiration for a word featuring what is now an anatomical vulgarity will be left unsaid.

I’m no football historian, but I think you can trace the touchdown spike back to a black man known as White Shoes. That would be Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, who played professional football for the Houston Oilers in the mid-1970s.

Whenever he’d score a touchdown, and he often did, he performed a spike-punctuated gridiron version of soul singer Rufus Thomas’s dance, the “Funky Chicken.” 

Since then, the football spike has been elevated to an art form by diva receivers like the peerless Chad Ocho Cinco -- and, hey, Happy Cinco De Mayo, fair readers!

My favorite was his “Lord of the Dance” impersonation. This gold-toothed, 6-foot-1, ebony-skinned gazelle for just a moment convinced me he was a plucky little leprechaun.

I thought it was marvelous, but stoic traditionalists were outraged. 

They want flashy African-Americans to play football and attract that demographic, but when they score points they want them to act like pro golfers do after they’ve sunk a long par putt.

The men who are now running the NFL (and that’s “running,” not “ruining,” although the words are right now interchangeable) have even instituted penalties aimed at curbing what they call “excessive endzone celebrations.”

They might have even tossed a penalty flag on the euphoric crowds that gathered outside the White House on Sunday evening.

They are men who look and probably act like John Brennan, Obama’s chief counter-terrorism advisor. He’s a 55-year-old New Jersey kid who’s spent 25 years working with Republicans and Democrats in the CIA.

He looks like the mirthless kind of man who if he got into a staring contest with Dick Cheney dinosaurs would re-evolve and start devouring fast food joints before either blinked.

He’s pictured in that already classic photo of tense Situation Room where the current Decider and his team where watching the drama play out in real time (and I can’t wait for the movie).

He came close to chortling in admiration when he described Obama under pressure. Here’s what Brennan said: 

“There was nothing that confirmed that bin Laden was at that compound and therefore, when President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president had to evaluate the strength of that information and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory.”

Brennan, who looks like a man who favors salty talk, was probably sanitizing his true feelings.

What he’d probably meant was Obama has balls.

And that brings us back to the picture and another sound reason why Obama will not be goaded into releasing it.

A man who’s already proven he has real balls will wisely conclude he has nothing to gain by spiking imaginary ones. 

My new $295 dictionary

I can generally gauge the foolhardiness of any impulsive purchase by the sound my wife makes when I tell her about it.

It’s the same involuntary gasp she makes when a deer jumps out in front of her car.

When I tell her I just spent $295 for a dictionary I can’t hold, can’t own and will only be able to access for 12 months, it’ll sound like a 14-point buck just appeared three-car lengths from her front bumper.

The color will drain from her face and she’ll swear I’ve made a grave mistake, one in a long line that’ll continue to ensure my poverty.

She already considers me something of a dictionary polygamist. Besides computer spell checkers and myriad on-line freebies, I already own three dog-eared dictionaries. 

So why did I need to spend nearly $300 on a subscription to the on-line version of the Oxford English Dictionary? 

As I’ve mentioned before, my sole professional ambition is now to get one of my 58 (and counting) coined words in a reputable dictionary. 

My theory is that writing one really good word that will last an eternity will be more gratifying than writing a 75,000-word bestseller that will be yanked from the shelves in time for next summer’s beach reads.

And, geez, just do the lazy man’s math: one word versus 75,000 words.

It’s a no brainer.

There are 1,803 books that fit the description “dictionary” in the august Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh.

There are bartender dictionaries for mixologists, medical dictionaries for physicians, plant dictionaries for those with botanical bents. There’s even an “Equine Dictionary.”

Who knew horses had vocabularies so advanced they’d find themselves stumped in pastoral conversation? I imagine it would be great fun to watch frustrated ponies trying to turn pages.

But what is known as the OED is the Mt. Everest of them all. The elegant 20-volume hard cover weighs 137.72 pounds and sells for a whopping $1,165. It’s the granddaddy of all dictionaries containing the definitions to more than 600,000 words (the average person knows and uses just 5,000 words).

In just a few days it’s become the cerebral staple of my web surfing. I love sleuthing the history of unusual words, when they were formed and how their meaning has shifted over the years.

For instance, “pussyfoot” is a word that tips its hat to prohibition. Who knew? It was the nickname of W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson (1862-1945). He was a staunch prohibitionist who used underhanded -- maybe underpawed -- and behind-the-scenes methods to further his truculent and, I say, brain-dead opposition to Demon Rum. For reasons of taste, I’ll withhold comment that a man named Johnson was the inspiration for a word featuring what is now an anatomical vulgarity.

There are browse features galore, timelines and, sure, you can randomly jump to any point in the entry field. It’s web surfing for savants. I can search the 2,304 Mark Twain quotes the OED used to illustrate the meaning of words. Give it a freebie test drive at www.oed.com.

I’ve learned the word “puck” definition involving hockey is but the fourth most common historical definition listed behind “an evil, malicious or mischievous spirit or demon of popular belief” and “a cattle disease.”

Yes, the vulcanized rubber disc that is the focus of a popular winter game had four previous incarnations centuries before Don Rickles made it a catchphrase insult. 

And I can predict almost exactly what my friends in the bar will say next time I try and foist that fact on them during a break in the action.

“WTP?”

Already I’ve learned fascinating and previously unknown things about many of my favorite swear words I’ve been using since the fourth grade.

You can search the exact year words first appeared in the OED. I like that the word “boink” first appeared in 1963, the same year as I was born. But you won’t hear me  bragging that my birth year also coincided with the evident need for the word “dipshit” to be saluted with OED recognition.

I feel like I’m wading into a vast lexicographical ocean. It’s exciting. I feel enriched every time I log in with my secret handshake of a password and only hope I can retain a fraction of all I’ll learn with each fascinating search.

So, no, paying $295 to subscribe wasn’t a mistake.

Telling my wife about it, now that’ll be a mistake.