Bruce Dowbiggin
Buffett’s Sunny Escapism Masked The Decline In Biden’s America
Only time will tell if it was time well-spent—Jimmy Buffett
When singer Jimmy Buffett died last week, many of his chroniclers played “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” as his sign-off tune. The song and its video (filmed at the Square Grouper bar in Jupiter, Florida) became synonymous with his good-time beach creature. His adoring Parrothead fans ate it up.
But Buffett did not write 5 O’Clock Somewhere. It was written by Jim “Moose” Brown and Don Rollins. Alan Jackson had the hit with it, with Buffet joining him for the end of the recording and video. (Inexplicably, Kenny Chesney turned down the song before Jackson recorded it.)
But his fans didn’t care. It sounded like Jimmy. After all, Buffett DID write Margaritville and so many other romantic odes about the sun, the sand and the sea. (His grandfather was from Newfoundland and was the inspiration for the song Son of a Son of a Sailor.) He was what you wanted him to be— especially if you were an aging Boomer. As long as he lived ‘70s liberals held to his kinder, gentler vision of themselves and their legacy in the Post-Trump world.
“Thinking younger doesn’t quite do it. You still have to do the hard work of, as the Toby Keith song says, ‘Don’t let the old man in.’ And that is my job now, the way I see it.” Ironically, Buffett’s true purpose was to keep the aging ‘old-man’ Boomers from seeing that they were now out of the.loop.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written a chummy eulogy to a friend whose loathing for Donald Trump was nearly as deep as hers. Buffet just kept it below the surface, lest he upset the non-#TDS followers in his audience. Buffett was just trying to emulate Michael Jordan’s famous ode, “Republicans buy running shoes too”. Dowd? Not so much.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 04: New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd poses for a photo with Jimmy Buffett backstage at the 2018 A Capitol Fourth at the U.S. Capitol, West Lawn on July 4, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Capital Concerts Inc.)
Like Biden, Buffett was living a fading American dream. Working class guy sings like a pirate but makes out like a bandit with the hoi polloi. It comes as little surprise that he died a dedicated Joe Biden fan at age 75. As he told Dowd, “Looks like I am welcome back at this White House. I have known Joe a long time, and his favorite song is ‘Come Monday.’ I am honoured.” The Biden Crime Family details suggest that Joe’s favourite song is actually ‘Changes In Attitudes, Change In Latitudes’. No word if Jimmy ever wrote a song called Ukrainian Shakedown or Fire The Prosecutor. .
In Dowd’s piece she recounts Buffett’s eager acceptance of the 2019 Trump quickie impeachment by Nancy Pelosi over exposing the Bidens and their Ukrainian money machine. Buffett asks Dowd in an email, will this be “the rotten piece of bait that finally hooks this sleazy bottom feeder? I hope so.” We now know that rotten bait was Joe “Come Monday” Biden and his son Hinter’s extortion machine in Kyiv. But like so many of his fans Jimmy remained in blissful denial of that reality.
Politics aside, he was a nice, generous guy even if he found the pretentions of Dowd clever. “Usually, joie de vivre is a sign you’re not paying attention. But with Jimmy, it was ensorcelling. I went with him to Walter Reed medical center when he sang for wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. He was able to transport them to a beach with no cares. During the Covid years, he did “cabin fever Zooms” with health care workers from across the country who were Parrotheads.” It’s not his fault that her arch smugness (WTF is ensorcelling?) found a home in his music.
Good on him. For so many Boomer liberals who now believe men can have babies and other absurdities, with Buffett you could pretend you were a JFK Democrat even as you loathed his nephew RFK Jr. He passed on squaring the sordid present for drifted liberals in their Tommy Bahama gear. His conch reality made them feel like urban pirates. So let’s go surfin’ with Justin Trudeau.
He was The Big Chill on a shrimper in the Gulf, an image the DC creatures like Dowd found clever and reassuring. Like the cast of that movie he could identify the spliff and the empty tequila bottle as totems of misspent youth without ever probing the cost of that lifestyle. In his song “Jamaica Mikstaka” he laughs off how his plane carrying Bono was strafed by Jamaican drug authorities who mistook it for an illegal shipment.
In the end the working-class kid from Pascagoula, Florida, would never betray Dowd or his acquired class in affluent Sag Harbor, the Hamptons, the Keys, Aspen and Palm Beach.
Because class is now what defines. As we wrote in 2018 in Traitor To My Class about the tumult after Donald Trump’s 2016 election as president in the United States, “it’s tantamount to a crime against your urban liberal class to think this is anything but a calamity for America and the free world. That class being white educated Boomers who cut their teeth on The West Wing and The End of the Innocence.
The kind of people who still laugh at the tired tropes of Weekend Update on SNL or believe that CNN’s Don Lemon is an honest broker of facts. Obama uber alles. The Canadian iteration of this class might be the most smug. The Trudeau mansplainers who celebrate our healthcare while ignoring that the U.S. takes care of our defence for us.
I should know. I used to be one of them. As long as I sang from the hymn book I was golden. I have a prize to prove it. Two, in fact. Still know the secret handshakes. Know how to spot a racist or a homophobe when no one else can see one.
Because I have been one of them, I know that no one in their virtue circle is conservative. They probably know more pygmies than conservatives. So they base their prejudices on cartoons painted for them by Stephen Colbert. It comforts them to condescend.
It’s been remarkable to see the surgical removal of humour from this self-regarding class. As Robert Tracinski of The Federalist says, they’ve immunized themselves against hostile messages. “(F)or years, the left has trained itself in the habit of assuming that the only reason anyone disagrees with them is because of racism.
“As a consequence, those who live in this bubble tend to reflexively dismiss anyone who brings them a contrary message from the outside world.”
Buffett’s light-hearted lyrics about Cheeseburgers In Paradise aided the denialist wing of his audience in dodging the radical drift they’d allowed in society. It’s not his fault that they mistook Buffett’s good-times recordings and concerts for their reality. But, for all of Dowd’s tender ministrations, it will be his legacy.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
There’s no crying in baseball. And there’s no fighting in golf. Unless LIV is involved.
Don’t tell the participants in the Ryder Cup this past weekend. Under the sunny skies of Rome, the Americans and Europeans produced storm clouds over… brace for it… a golf hat. Or the lack of a golf hat. Let us explain.
American player Patrick Cantlay chose to go hatless, eschewing the U.S. team wardrobe that everyone else agreed to wear. Needless to say the hat had patriotic themes and Cantlay’s decision was seen to be controversial. It was not like quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem, but to those loyal to Old Glory its seemed disrespectful.
It wasn’t helped when media reported that Cantlay had declined the chapeau because, as opposed to teammate, LIV member Brooks Koepka, he wasn’t receiving a bonus for wearing the hat. And that, as a result, the embattled U.S. team was split over the controversy. (After first saying that he couldn’t find a hat that fit, Cantlay later changed his story to say that the bonus/ dissension story was false.)
That was all the partisan European fans needed to hear. They began mocking Cantlay by doffing their hats and jeering him as Team USA stumbled on Friday and Saturday. Rather than fold, however, Cantlay went on a blazing run in Saturday’s final match against Rory McIlroy and Matthew Fitzpatrick. Posting three straight birdies, his last forced the emotional Irishman into a difficult putt on 18 to get a tie.
After Cantlay’s dramatic putt dropped, his caddie Joe LaCava (formerly Tiger Woods’ caddie) mocked the crowd by doffing his hat in McIlroy’s vision. As he did he came close to McIlroy who was preparing for his ultimately unsuccessful putt. The two exchanged words. They were not, “Have a good day.” European team member Shayne Lowry then yelled at LaCava who returned fire.
When the sniping ended, the bare-headed Cantlay sunk a dramatic putt to give America hope on Sunday. But that didn’t end the unpleasantness. In the parking lot, McIlroy got into it with Justin Thomas’ caddy Jim “Bones” McKay. Lowry had to physically shove his fellow Irishman into a car to end the confrontation.
Golf’s chattering classes went mad with excitement. What would happen on Sunday as Europe attempted to win the four points that would return them the Cup? Would America be inspired? Was Europe distracted by McIlroy’s intemperate blasts?
Sunday, LaCava told media he’d met with McIlroy that morning to smooth things over. No hard feelings. In the end, etc. The most visible sign of Saturday’s ruckus was Cantlay buddies Justin Thomas, Colin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele also going hatless in solidarity. It didn’t help as Europe— led by McIlroy spanking Sam Burns 3&1— won the Cup 16.5-11.5. And McIlroy called LaCava a liar about talking to him.
But there was no mistaking the witches’ brew cooked up on the weekend in Italy. The well-rested Americans were handed their hats (badda-bing) early by a Euro squad seeking revenge for their loss at Whistling Straits in 2021. The coach’s selections on the U.S. side— Thomas, Koepka, Burns and Rickie Fowler— stunk out the joint. Calling them coach’s selections exaggerates. Zach Johnson was told by his core players whom to invite.
The Euro coach’s selections might not have been brilliant, but they didn’t hinder the win. Nor were the Euros hurt by the partisan crowd that hooted, chanted and sang its dislike for the Yanks. But that is the Ryder Cup, and when the sides meet again at NYC’s Bethpage Black in 2025 the rabble will reciprocate.
Some players called for calm. Rahm asked everyone to cool down after his half on Sunday. Cantlay smiled benignly through all the hullabaloo, saying the chaos is what makes the Ryder Cup great. But they were drowned out by the international press that pronounced critically on American vanity and the Euros swagger.
The Ryder Cup is traditionally— if not actually— considered the end of the golf season, the culmination of the majors and the FedEx Cup season. So it seemed only appropriate that the first full year of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf end with a sour taste for many. McIlroy, for one, has had a miserable time mixing the old (he won 2 times and earned $13,921,008 but with no majors) and the new (as defiant spokesman for the PGA Tour versus LIV he was hung out to dry by the Tour and many fellow players who allowed him to fight their fight). His outburst Saturday/ Sunday showed the strain he’s carried.
As the only LIV member playing at Marco Simone Koepka did little to put a happy face on his chosen Tour. Dour, sullen and churlish, he refused the ceremonial doffing of his hat when he’d schooled young Lucas Aberg 3&2. Not that the European and PGA Tour officials connected to the Ryder Cup extended a hand or made pleasant noises about the proposed merger with LIV.
Indeed, the ghosts of LIV members haunted the event. Ryder Cup legends Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood, Henrik Stenson, Graham McDowell, Paul Casey, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson were not only excluded from playing but told there was no place in the coaching room of their teams. It all felt somewhat hollow at times.
Thanks goodness #HatGate resurrected a bit of the old-fashioned bile that makes Ryder Cups so anticipated. For all the polite chumminess of today’s PGA Tour, a silly pissing match is a nice diversion. After all, as Conn Smythe once said after a brawl-filled hockey game, “Much more of this and we will have to print extra tickets for the next game.”
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
There’s an abiding idiom in hockey trades. It says whoever got the best player in a deal wins the trade. If you get Wayne Gretzky you win every trade. After that, received wisdom of trades is more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Everyone has a theory. But all agree there’s no denying the impact of trades toward NHL success.
From their evolution as simple player-for-player swaps to the current version of trading players for draft picks, cash, future considerations, salary-cap space or actual humans, the art of swapping in the NHL has become a science, an art and an accounting exercise. Where once it was a pair of hockey-lifer GMs making deals, today’s moves require capologists, accountants, lawyers, agents and, often, the player’s family being onside before a deal can be approved by the NHL.
A whole new culture has grown up within the sport so that deals can be swung. As trades have become more complicated, they have concurrently become less of a burden on the moving parts involved. We’ve come off an offseason with a surprisingly modest number of intriguing deals.
With preseason games starting, to whet the ref’s whistle, here’s a list Rating The Top 25 Trades in NHL history from our next book Deal With It: The Most Impactful Trades In NHL history and How They Changed The Game (due later in 2023). (from ***** to ***)
1) August 9, 1988: Wayne Gretzky, Marty McSorley, and Mike Krushelnyski from Edmonton to Los Angeles for Jimmy Carson, Martin Gélinas, the Kings’ first rounders in 1989 (traded to New Jersey) , 1991 (Martin Rucinsky), 1993 (Nick Stadujar), and $15 million. *****
2) May 15, 1967: Phil Esposito, Fred Stanfield and Ken Hodge from Chicago to Boston for Gilles Marotte, Pit Martin and Jack Norris. ****1/2
3) October 4, 1991: Mark Messier and future considerations (Jeff Beukeboom) from Edmonton to the New York Rangers for Bernie Nicholls, Steven Rice, Louie DeBrusk and future considerations (David Shaw) ****1/
4) December 6, 1995: Patrick Roy and Mike Keane from Montreal to Colorado for Jocelyn Thibault, Martin Rucinsky and Andrei Kovalenko ****1/2
5) June 30, 1992 Eric Lindros from Quebec City to Philadelphia for Steve Duchesne, Peter Forsberg, Ron Hextall, Kerry Huffman, Mike Ricci, Chris Simon, a 1993 1st round pick (#10-Jocelyn Thibault), a 1994 1st-Round pick, (#10-Nolan Baumgartner)) and $15 million in cash *****
6) March 3, 1968: Norm Ullman, Floyd Smith, Paul Henderson and Doug Barrie to Toronto for Garry Unger, Peter Stemkowski, Frank Mahovlich and Carl Brewer ****1/2
6A). January 13, 1971: Frank Mahovlich from Detroit to the Montreal for Guy Charron, Bill Collins and Mickey Redmond ****
7) March 10, 1980 Butch Goring from L.A. to New York Islanders for Dave Lewis and Bill Harris ****
8. November 1947 : Max Bentley from Chicago to Toronto for Gus Bodnar, Gaye Stewart, Bud Poile, Bob Goldham and Ernie Dickens ****
9) January 2, 1992: Gary Leeman, Alex Godynyuk, Jeff Reese, Craig Berube and Michel Petit from Toronto to Calgary for Jamie Macoun, Ric Nattress, Rick Wamsley, Kent Manderville and Doug Gilmour ****1/2
10) August 17, 1992 Dominik Hasek from Chicago to Buffalo for Stephane Beauregard and a fourth-round draft pick (Eric Daze) ****
11) July 23, 1957 Ted Lindsay and Glenn Hall From Detroit To Chicago for Johnny Wilson, Forbes Kennedy, Hank Bassen, Eric Preston ***1/2
12) June 28, 1994: Garth Butcher, Mats Sundin, Todd Warriner and 1994 first-round pick (#10-Nolan Baumgartner) from Quebec City to Toronto for Wendel Clark, Sylvain Lefebvre, Landon Wilson and 1994 1st round pick (#22-Jeff Kealty) ***1/2
13) May 22, 1970 : 1971 1st-round pick (#1-Guy Lafleur) and Francois Lacombe from Oakland to Montreal for Ernie Hicke and 1970 1st-round pick (#10-Chris Oddleifson) *****
14) Nov. 7, 1975: Phil Esposito, Carol Vadnais from Boston to New York Rangers For Brad Park, Jean Ratelle ****
15) October 1989: Tom Kurvers from New Jersey to Toronto for first-round pick (#3 Scott Niedermayer) ****
16) Nov. 30 2005: Joe Thornton from Boston to San Jose for Brad Stuart, Wayne Primeau and Marco Sturm ***1/2
17) December 20, 1995: Joe Nieuwendyk from Calgary to Dallas for Jarome Iginla ***1/2
18) Feb. 22, 1964: Andy Bathgate and Don McKenney from New York Rangers to Toronto for Dick Duff, Bob Nevin, Rod Seiling, Arnie Brown and Bill Collins. ***
19) March 7, 1988: Brett Hull from Calgary to to St. Louis for Rick Wamsley and Rob Ramage ***
20) June 29, 1990: Denis Savard from Chicago to Montreal for Chris Chelios ***
21) June 24, 1963: Dave Balon, Leon Rochefort, Len Ronson and Lorne “Gump” Worsley from New York Rangers to Montreal for Donny Marshall, Phil Goyette and Jacques Plante. ***
22) June 24, 2000: Mark Parrish and Oleg Kvasha from Florida to the New York Islanders for Roberto Luongo and Olli Jokinen ***
23) February 10, 1960: Red Kelly from Detroit to Toronto for Marc Rheaume ***1/2
24) October 10, 1930: King Clancy from Ottawa to Toronto for Eric Petting, Art Smith, cash ***
25) June 28, 1964: Ken Dryden and Alex Campbell from Boston to Montreal for Paul Reid and Guy Allen ****
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
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