Binge reading my blog in tree stand

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Good morning, Dave A.! Had your breakfast yet? Seen any deer? And how’s the blog been lately?

I’m taking the unusual step today of directly addressing an individual reader because Dave, one of my more faithful blog constituents, informed me last week he’d given up cold turkey.

Why, pray tell? Had I become boring? Topics not to your liking? Have you found a blog that purports to be nearer to Amish than mine?

“Nah,” he said. “It’s none of that. It’s just I’m going deer hunting near Quincy, Illinois, for 10 days in November and I like to have big backlog of your blogs to read while I’m in the tree stand for 13 hours a day.”

It’s not the first time someone’s informed me they’re binge reading my blog, but it is the first time they’ve done it in a chilly tree stand while cradling a lethal weapon.

(Editor's note from Oct. 15: I've since learned Dave is an archer. A perfectionist would re-write this to correct the misconception. Not me. It's still a lethal weapon. Remember, bows don't kill deer. Arrows do. Or is it Dave?)

It struck me as very strange, but I prefer that image to the one most commonly mentioned as the best place to read my blog. That, of course, would be the crapper.

Some people are sheepish about mentioning this, others bold.

I favor the latter because it helps demolish the unnecessary stigma that some feel about reading in the bathroom.

Bathrooms are such great places to read I’m surprised they don’t each come with their own librarian. It’s quiet (mostly), well-lit and no one in your nebbie family will dare bother you while you’re doing your necessary.

And if makes you feel more comfortable, rest assured that while I always read in the bathroom, I’ve never once written in there.

In fact, it’s maybe the only room where I’ve never written even a single word.

I prefer to write in my office, but will sometimes write on the kitchen or dining room table and I’ve blogged from bed, from the porch and once when the girls were having a party from the canary yellow captain’s chair on my John Deere mower.

I’m actually writing this from the bleachers in the high school natatorium where my daughter is engaged in swim practice. 

I had a friend once tell me he knew a writer who says he always wore a three-piece suit every time he wrote in his apartment by himself where no one to see him. He said it made him feel more professional.

Clearly, the guy was either an idiot or a skilled liar. Because only an idiot would bother to constrict himself in a neck tie when sitting down to write.

To write, I wear what’s comfortable. It’s what you’d see me wearing if you saw me at a family restaurant or ball game. I wouldn’t dream of trying to write something funny in church clothes.

Maybe I should dream up some kind of heroic costume to tell people I wear when I write, something with a cape. I could be SuperBlogger!

Dave’s told me he sometimes laughs out loud at something I’ve written. I love hearing that reaction so please tell me you, too, do that even if it isn’t true.

I like to think, for the sake of gentle woodland creatures, that Dave right now is guffawing so hard the nervous deer are scattering for miles wondering what all the commotion might be.

And having the rifle there is an interesting element.

It’d be great if he fired off a round every time he read a line that struck him as funny. Maybe the “last meal” story below has enough funnies in it that it’d sound like west central Illinois had declared war on Missouri.

Of course, best of all, would be Dave returned to tell me he was reading my blog and became so immersed that he was startled to find a bunch of wild animals reading over his shoulder right along with him.

You know that sarcastic rhetorical question about if bears do their business in the woods?

It’d be cool if, like so many of my human friends, they were reading my blog while they were on the squat.

Related . . .

A celebration of food & death row last meals

Reading my sh!t on the crapper

Potty talk about bathroom euphemisms

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan & my blog!

5-hour swim meets too long, driving me crazy

Teaching my 13-year-old how to drive my car

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Our oldest daughter turns 14 in two weeks. It’s an age of looming adolescence that makes some fathers quake.

Not me.

I understand now that every day she gets a day older she’s making some of my questionable parenting less and less newsworthy.

Like teaching her to drive.

My interest in her learning to drive dates back to ’11 when I read a spate of stories about a Detroit father who let his daughter drive him home from the bar because he was too drunk to do it himself. I invite you to read the top first link below. I thought it was a goodie.

The kid was 9 and, I guess, sober.

I’m not saying I’d ever do that, but if extraordinary circumstances ever called for it, I think she should know to place her hands on the wheel at 10 and 2 without having to nudge me awake.

So that’s what we did Sunday morning out back behind Westmoreland Mall in the acres of empty parking lots. Not another vehicle in sight.

That’s why it’s surprising she almost killed me.

She was coasting along — I’d wisely instructed her to not press the accelerator — when I calmly said, “Okay, now hit the brake.”

I only wish she’d react so affirmatively when I tell her to empty the dish washer. It was like a 10-point buck had jumped in front of the old Saturn.

My head banged off the windshield.

Because I was uncertain whether I’d need to once again help her adjust the driver’s seat, I’d failed to put my seat belt on.

So she learned a lesson about how instantly responsive GM’s ABS braking system can be and I learned a lesson that you should always apply proper seat restraints when a 13 year old is behind the wheel.

I want her to become familiar with what it feels like to drive a car so in two years she’ll be comfortable. And other than nearly sending her instructor head first through the windshield she did fine.

For me, the best part was the verbal instructions about driver etiquette.

“Remember, there is no such thing as a left lane. There’s only a right lane and a passing lane. Pass slower vehicles and then get the hell out of the way for guys like your old man.”

And I told her about the importance of waiting until someone who’s driving a bigger car than yours is heading down an exit ramp before you have someone in the passenger seat moon them, which is a much more satisfying expression than giving them the finger.

The neat thing about the dynamic is I know she was actually listening to me. She’s eager to learn to drive and has seen me drive competently so she knows I have information she wants.

I only wish every motorist felt that way. 

I think every motorist should have to take a refresher driver’s test every five years and I ought to be the teacher.

I’m a great driver.

You probably think you are, too, but you’re probably wrong.

You probably don’t use your turn signals, slow down too much when you come to a tunnel, and hog the passing lane when I’m trying to bury your ass in my rear view mirrors.

Of course, it might all become moot. I’ve been reading a lot about self-driving cars these days. Not having to drive a car will be a godsend to lots of people who find driving tedious.

Not me. I hate sitting in traffic, but I love operating a motor vehicle. I’m not a distracted driver. I’m fully engaged.

Once we get self-driving cars, the thrill of passing a slow truck on a two-lane mountain road with another on-coming driver playing chicken will be no more.

I wonder, too, if the cars will learn how to be truly self-driven and will go where they like whether we’re in them or not.

Like what if my car gets tired of spending so many hours in The Pond parking lot waiting for me to get tanked and heads off on a jaunt to lot with a more scenic view.

So I’ll likely resist the advent of self-driving cars for as long as I can.

I want to drive the car. I don’t want the car driving me.

On the upside, I won’t need an accomplice if I feel like mooning some asshole in a bigger car.

Related . . .

Kids driving too early, drinking too late

Results of my weekend crashes, the computer & the car

Vegas: Dream racing my 5-minute Ferrari

Cars need energy-saver sleep mode

Beating supporters need an attitudinal switch

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The good news for the NFL this week is that for now feckless commissioner Roger Goodell is no longer the media whipping boy.

The bad news is the media are focusing on NFL star Adrian Peterson and the boy he whipped.

Peterson admitted to using a tree branch to whip his 4-year-old son so hard that it left open wounds all over the boy’s legs, butt and scrotum. You may have seen pictures of the scars.

Well, of the physical scars. 

The psychological ones sure to come from having someone you love terrorize you might not emerge for years.

My first reaction, of course, is distress. I can’t imagine anything a 4 year old would do to deserve such a beating (Peterson says he pushed his sibling off from a video game control panel).

But anyone familiar with the daily news is numb to that kind of brutality against children. 

What is news to me, however, is how much support there is for the 6-foot-1, 217-pound, locomotive who beat the boy.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child,” they say, citing the Biblical justification for more wanton violence against innocents than any six words in history.

They’re saying this is okay. It’s a way of life. 

This from Charles Barkley: “Whipping — we do that all the time. Every black parent in the South is going to be in jail under those circumstances.”

Well, then we either need to change or build bigger jails because it’s impossible to justify what Peterson did to his son.

I’m surprised to hear a black man from the South defend a peculiar institution that looks to the rest of the civilized world like something barbaric. Because he sounds just like the white Dixie politicians who used to defend slavery and Jim Crow laws and all the quaint Southern customs that led to lynchings.

This is just the way things are. 

I like Barkley and consider him thoughtful, if bombastically so.

But if he thinks Peterson shouldn’t go to jail for this, then he’s blind to a culture that needs to change.

He makes the good point that me, someone who grew up a privileged white guy in a nice neighborhood, shouldn’t judge Peterson, a kid who like many young black men, had to dodge the odds that said he’d either wind up dead or in jail.

Peterson’s father, an outstanding athlete in his own right, dreamed of playing in the NBA. Those dreams were derailed when a gun his brother was cleaning discharged into his leg.

My father dreamed of playing golf at Pebble Beach. And in 1985 he did.

When he was 13, Peterson’s father was jailed for laundering money for a local crack cocaine ring.

When I was 13, my father used to drive the car loaded with heavy stacks of Sunday newspapers so we could finish in time to go golfing where Dad would always win.

My father beat me at golf.

His father beat him with a switch.

Of course, maybe Barkley’s right. Maybe if my Dad have ever beaten me even once I’d have become more accomplished, more disciplined. More like Peterson, whose last contract was for $96 million.

So part of me sees the point Barkley’s trying to make.

Barkley says without the beatings he wouldn’t be where he is today.

Statistically, he’s one of the lucky ones — black men who’ve played professional sports and gone onto lucrative broadcasting careers. Many more turn out like Peterson’s father.

So savage beatings like the one Peterson gave his son may have worked out for Barkley.

To his credit, blowhard ESPN yapper Cris Carter said in an emotional interview that his mother was wrong to beat him and that the beatings have to stop.

No one can argue that cycles of violence and poverty are particularly crushing to the demographics Barkley so cavalierly defends.

So we can all see what tough love can do.

Maybe it’s time we encourage one another to try it with just a little less tough and a little more love.

Related . . .

What to say when you see a parent mistreat a child

The Baltimore Rays and NFL’s on-going disgrace

RRS: Happy belated birthday Arnold Palmer!

Arnold Palmer turned 85 on Wednesday and the whole town was invited to the party. They held it at Greater Latrobe High School where, thanks to $1 million donated by Palmer, the district was dedicating the Arnold Palmer Field House at the new state-of-the-art practice facility. I missed it for a reason Palmer would surely appreciate: I was golfing with buddies. But I heard it was a wonderful slice of Americana. The whole high school sang him Happy Birthday. I saw him last month. He showed me his new pacemaker. I almost asked if he'd let me touch it. Here’s what I wrote about Palmer on his 80th birthday back in in ’09.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Some admiring jokers started www.chucknorrisfacts.com to put a farcical spin on the B-movie actor’s fantasy exploits. Example: “When Chuck Norris does a push up, he isn’t elevating himself, he’s pushing the earth down.”

It’s a hilarious bit of make believe.

In 2005, I was asked to do the daily timeline project on www.ArnoldPalmer.com and can now conclude what should be obvious to any fair-minded observer. And that is this:

The real Arnold Palmer makes even the make-believe Chuck Norris look like a candy-assed sissy.

Today is Palmer’s 80th birthday.

He declined an invitation to an interesting party this evening where some of his friends were going to salute him just for being such a great guy.

“I wish I could attend,” he told reporters, “but I’ve got some other things planned and I’ll be pretty busy that night. Sorry, I just can’t be there.”

The event? The opening night kickoff of the 2009 NFL season at Heinz Field. The Pittsburgh Steelers wanted to honor Palmer on one of the biggest nights of the year. They wanted to have more than 65,000 fans cheer him, watch video highlights of his career, and listen to heady praise of his lavish philanthropy.

But he has something better to do.

There’s an astounding humility in that polite little no thanks. I’m guessing he’s going have a small party with friends at Latrobe Country Club, but how many of our celebrities could resist the opportunity to have their already-massive egos stoked by having a crowd of that size blow kisses at them?

All America should feel better about itself today knowing we produced a man like Palmer and that he continues to thrive and inspire.

Unlike Norris, who’s becoming more famous for popping off on far right causes that embarrass even mainstream conservatives, facts about Palmer are, well, facts.

I know this because for two years it was my job to go through more than 50 years of newspaper and magazine clippings about Palmer and note what he did each and every day of his life.

As of today, the Timeline has more than 1,200 noteworthy items.

As everyone knows, he is one of the greatest golfers who’s ever lived. But a charming alchemy of small-town grit, old-fashioned good manners and heaven-sent good fortune have made his a life unique in American history. Many presidents may admire Sandy Koufax or Cal Ripken, but that doesn’t mean they’ll ever invite them to the White House to play catch.

But it’s different with golfers. And it’s different still with Palmer. That helps explain why former President Dwight D. Eisenhower showed up at Palmer’s house to surprise him on his 37th birthday on this day in 1966, and why Bill Clinton told biographers in 2000 that one of the greatest perks of being POTUS is the “opportunity to play golf with Arnold Palmer.”

An accomplished pilot who still flies his own jet, Palmer set an aviation world record on May 19, 1976, when he circumnavigated the globe in a Lear 36 in less than 58 hours.

Kirk Douglas said in 1970 that no one -- not Sinatra, John Wayne or Ronald Reagan -- has more charisma than Palmer.

He has a popular drink, The Arnold Palmer (half lemonade/half iced tea), named after him and the concoction is recognized by hip Manhattan waitresses who have no idea who Arnold Palmer is. In addition to the drink, two entire hospitals, a national golf museum, a regional airport, a PGA golf tournament, fancy club rooms and charity initiatives and scholarships too numerous to tally bear the name Arnold Palmer.

John Paul Newport of the Wall Street Journal wrote this week, “Lasting popularity of Palmer’s magnitude simply cannot be explained.”

It’s a safe bet that today Palmer will celebrate his birthday by playing some golf, laughing with some children, hugging loved ones, joking with buddies, being bold and doing something to help someone needy.

Let’s all try and join him in doing just some of the same. It’s life the way it ought to be lived.

All, but you, Chuck Norris.

You can just sit home in the dark and maybe dream about what it would be like to be a real man.

A celebration of food & death row last meals

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I have no fear of dying as long as it doesn’t have to hurt. I want my demise to be so rapid I never even see it coming.

That’s why I contend it’s entirely possible to die peacefully in your sleep of multiple gunshot wounds.

And while I have no fear of death I absolutely dread the idea I might either die hungry or with a belly full of pedestrian crap.

I cherish good food so much I’ve always eaten like my next meal might be my last. This awareness is becoming more acute as I ascend the actuarial tables.

I’m 51 and every day the obituaries, which I read with morbid enthusiasm, are filled with death notices of men either my age or younger. I wonder how many of them will be buried with undigested Hot Pockets crammed in their colons.

Poor saps.

Too many people confuse food with fuel, something they consume to merely sustain life.

I contend if that’s the way you think then you’re not really living at all.

Every single bite of every single meal should be a celebration, something to be savored.

That doesn’t mean it has to be fancy. A simple sandwich if done properly can be as delightful as a seven-course meal.

That, of course, is the ideal. We have children, ages 13 and 8, and they’re both involved in swimming, an activity so time-consuming that proper meals are often  impossible. On nights like that, I’ll hit the drive-thru — usually Arby’s — and drop a roast beef sandwich on my growling belly. It’s not bad, but it to me represents a lost opportunity.

If I’d have had the time, I’d have sautéed some barbecue Cajun shrimp like the way they do at Pascal Manale’s on Napoleon Ave. in New Orleans. Or maybe tossed a thick Delmonico steak sprinkled with Montreal seasoning on the grill.

The dinners are great, and I love a big breakfast, but my favorite meals of all time are the 3-hour lunches with Val or some friends and two or three bottles of wine.

It’s life the way it’s meant to be. So you can see, I’m not a man who likes to compromise when it comes to my meals. They should be sumptuous, savory and slow.

Top it off with some golf or some sex with the tipsy missus and you’ve got all the ingredients for a really great day.

I mention all this here because I want to confess that my insistence on eating well is leading me to sinful behavior —  well, behavior more sinful than the obvious slothful gluttony.

I’m fibbing to church folks.

It’s because I’m doing so many speaking engagements and they always include a meal. The food is rarely up to my refined standards.

I mean, just try and find a church cafeteria that serves an ’07 Chateau St. Jean Merlot, anything even a step above the sacramental swill.

But the people are so nice I’d feel sheepish saying, “Your chicken has the consistency of a Bridgestone farm tractor tire and the sauce tastes like something scraped from the tread. It’s a good thing people come here for soulful salvation because anyone here for a satisfying meal hasn’t got a prayer.”

It would be the height of rudeness.

So what I do is usually have some salad and say I’d previously agreed to take my mother to Hoss’s for dinner. Then I stop at one of the 20 great restaurants I passed on the way and have an agreeable meal at the bar.

Given all that, it’s obvious I’m the kind of guy who’s fascinated by the tradition of the condemned man’s last meal. After decades of prison food, the last meal might make it all worth while.

Yes, I’m such a cheerful optimist I can find a silver lining even on death row.

Do even a little research and you’ll see the menu reflects the entire spectrum of the American palette. There’s steak, king crab, ice cream, KFC, White Castle sliders, apple sauce — you name it.

Me, I’d probably go with fresh lobster tails, so if I’m ever going to get caught killing anyone I’m driving him at gun point to Maine first.

There’s even some doomed to die who’ve ordered vegetarian options, and you have to be a really committed to healthy living to have that be your last meal before your scheduled sit-down with Ol’ Sparky.

It’s certainly not what racist murderer Lawrence Russell Brewer was thinking. He requested a last meal that included two chicken-fried steaks with gravy, a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños, a bowl of fried okra, a pound of barbecue beef, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream and some peanut butter fudge.

Incredibly, his Texas jailers delivered the meal just as requested and were understandably furious when he said he wasn’t hungry.

It was convenient for all that they already felt like killing him anyway and they were all in Texas.

It’s a funny story and would be funnier if you didn’t know he was convicted in the 1998 dragging death of a black man. He’s hungry in Hell, for sure, right now.

On the other end of the spectrum is the request of Odell Barnes, 31, who was convicted and executed on evidence so flimsy that he remains a poster boy for the unjust application of the death sentence in America. He was in March 2000 executed in — where else? — Texas.

What did he want the warden to provide for his last meal?

“Justice, equality and world peace.”

As much as I admire the sentiment, I’d have to stick with the lobster tails.

Related . . .

Speaking ill of the dead for fun & profit

Justice and John Grisham

Eat at Sonoma Grille, I ethically ask

Extreme Vegas . . . and me!

Help re-build Napa: Guzzle wine!

Feeling nostalgic for printed pictures

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I read the other day how last year the number of pictures we took exceeded the total number of pictures we’d taken in the entirety of man’s existence.

It’s my very favorite kind of fact because it’s dramatic, easy to remember and absolutely impossible to factually verify.

But it stands to reason.

George Eastman didn’t found Kodak until 1888. That’s when he began selling inexpensive cameras and making money from the stuff you needed to make owning an inexpensive camera — film, chemicals, paper — worthwhile.

As recently as 1976, Kodak commanded 90 percent of the film sales and 85 percent of camera sales. 

It was one of America’s most innovative companies. Based in Rochester, N.Y., its geniuses in 1975 developed the first of its kind digital camera. It was considered a major breakthrough, a game changer.

But the company quickly dropped the idea for fear it would threaten Kodak’s core business: the sale of photographic film.

It’s a case of insight being ambushed by insight.

You know what happened. 

Today everyone has a digital camera either in their pocket or extended a foot or so in front of their face.

Today we’re all shutterbugs, that is assuming our smart phones even have shutters. There is no film, no finite number of shots, no little yellow FotoHuts in every mall parking lot.

It’s a still surprising development to those who thought that some developing would never cease.

I was thinking of all this when my nephew and his girlfriend came up to visit over the summer. The trip included a surprise stop at Nana’s where there was much rejoicing.

It was what we used to call a “Kodak moment,” a sentimental point in time that had to be preserved photographically.

That’s how big Kodak used to be. It was one of the world’s only conglomerates so beloved it was capable of generating warm and fuzzy feelings wherever loving humans gathered — not to be confused with a Polaroid moment.

Polaroids were self-developing pictures popular with amateur pornographers.

Kodak, by the way, is an arbitrary word made up by George Eastman for trademark purposes. I’ll bet there’s more to the story and I’d call the Kodak offices to learn what it is, but it might be difficult to get someone to answer the phone.

A company that in 1982 employed 60,000 workers is down to about 8,800.

If this sounds like I’m nostalgic for Kodak, I am not.

But I am nostalgic for Kodak moments.

I try not to be too profligate with my smart phone camera, but I do document all the special moments a father enjoys over a summer with his family. My phone has bunches from the beach, ballgames, parks and gatherings with friends.

The problem is most of them will never be free of the phone and that’s a terrible forum for looking at something so heirloom sentimental.

I think it began getting to me when I later asked my nephew what they did all night at Nana’s after we’d left.

“Oh, it was great!” he said. “We just spent hours and hours going through old scrapbooks.”

I conjured an image of the three of them sitting on the couch thumbing through page after page of fading old photos.

When was the last time you did that? When was the last time you printed a picture and put it in a frame?

We’re very good at taking pictures, but we’ve become lousy at making them.

Scrapbooks full of pictures used to be the first thing you’d grab if the house ever caught on fire. The rise of our devices has diminished the urge to preserve something special and I’ve begun feeling like I’m doing my daughters an historic disservice by not having more scrapbooks for them.

Val excelled at that for a few years when the kids were still kids. But they were very homespun crafty sorts of scrapbooks. They were very time consuming, a tremendous hassle to make and maintain.

I wouldn’t dream of going to that sort of trouble. But I think I’m going to invest about $200 in some cheap digital printer. I hear Kodak makes some good ones.

But I’m looking forward to a winter weekend where I can sit in the basement with a nice fire, a game on the TV and a big messy stack of snapshots from the best days of our lives.

I’ll just stick them all in a big old ringed binder. No captions. No IDs.

Just memories.

Can you picture a guy like me doing that?

It’s the kind of Kodak moment the remaining men and women in the lonely Rochester headquarters will truly appreciate.

Related . . .

In a world awash in pictures, Kodak not the only bankruptcy

I miss when phones were phone shaped

The Baltimore Rays & NFL's ongoing disgrace

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Lots of outraged people responded to the release of the brutal Ray Rice video — let’s charge him with attempted homicide — by issuing angry tweets.

Me, I sold two Pittsburgh Steeler season tickets/seat licenses that have been mine for 25 years and in my family since 1950.

Take that, Roger Goodell!

Of course, one didn’t have anything to do with the other. It was purely coincidence.

I stopped being a fan of the NFL about six years ago. I became fed up the arrogance, hypocrisy and greed that have become NFL hallmarks.

I guess it’s ironic of me to accuse the NFL of greed when that’s the real reason I’m selling my seat licenses. I paid $200 a piece for two in 1999 and can likely get about $7,000 for them today.

The price, I assure you, will never be higher. Interest in the NFL has no where to go but down. Yes, a mighty comeuppance, one I’ve been predicting for years, is finally here.

This I can tell because the prevailing attitude among the talking meatheads on ESPN yesterday wasn’t justice. No, it was something rarely seen among men who for most of their lives have had their 270-pound asses kissed.

It was fear. Something that had nurtured their cushy lives is going away

Fear because if the mighty NFL slipped in covering up the Ray Rice assault, what else might slip through.

I laughed out loud when I heard former New York Jets coach Herm Edwards say, well, this is terrible, but now that the NFL understands it has a domestic violence problem it will take the lead in bringing this issue to the nation’s attention.

Oh, really?

He’s got it perfectly backwards.

I contend the nation has a domestic violence issue because of the culture the NFL’s promoted for the past 15 years.

From Nate Silver’s statistical blog: The NFL rate of domestic violence is “extremely high” when compared to other occupations and “accounts for 48 percent of arrests for violent crimes compared to 21 percent nationally.”

And given that there is zero poverty — a contributing stress factor to marital conflict — “the domestic violence rate of NFL players is downright extraordinary.”

Instead of sportsmanship and compassion, we have taunting and a stomach-turning ruthlessness.

It promotes violence to the point that it takes reprehensible steps to conceal the test results that reveal that violence is leading to concussive brain damage among its employees who react to the symptoms with untreated despair and more violence.

Kansas City’s Jovan Belcher in 2012 killed the mother of his daughter and then himself. Other prominent suicides from recent years include Junior Seau and Dave Duerson, and the NFL is the first sport to have had a serial killer — New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez — on its payroll.

What gets me is how the NFL and the people who promote it on the network level, hold up football as a paragon of American virtue.

You can see it in the fraudulent splashes of pink on the jerseys during Breast Cancer Awareness Month and in the SportsCenter puff pieces that convey just how much good NFL players and teams do for communities, never mentioning how much good communities do for for-profit NFL owners in their tax-payer subsidized coliseums.

Of course, that’s all just conjecture on my part.

You’ll have to go to Baltimore to see a concrete example of what I’m speaking.

Concrete and bronze.

It’s in Baltimore you’ll find a monument to all that’s wrong with the NFL.

It’s a statue of Ray Lewis, who yesterday called himself a mentor to former teammate Ray Rice, an awkward roll for a man whose own mother was a victim of horrific domestic violence.

Lewis is the Raven who retired a Super Bowl champion in 2012, a dozen years after being charged in the double homicide of two men outside an Atlanta nightclub. He eventually agreed to a plea deal for obstruction of justice and was given a year’s probation.

The white suit he was wearing during the stabbing was never found, and his co-defendants charged in the killing — his friends — were acquitted. No other suspects have ever been charged.

In 2004, Lewis reached undisclosed financial settlements with the families of the murdered men.

Despite the payoff, both families say it sickens them to see Lewis idolized.

Sickens me, too.

Maybe we could all get together and drizzle blood over a white suit and dress it on the Lewis statue some early morning when no one’s looking.

The story of Lewis, one which now evidently includes redemption, is similar to what you find in the Bible, a book Lewis frequently sites as an inspiration.

It’s the kind of story with which I’ve learned to live.

See, I can handle the humanity.

It’s the hypocrisy I despise.

Related . . .

NFL’s a bore: here are 5 ways to save it

The NFL sacks itself

Replacement refs? NFL must be joking

Cheering for a devil of an NFL celebration

Seeing red over NFL pink

Namby pambies, jack wagons and the NFL

NFL and throwback jerseys