Stumble of the Week

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It’s hard not to be tired of tawdriness after a week of such uplifting events as:

  • A British Parliamentary panel’s finding that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit” to run a large news company, which is quite a condemnation since Murdoch runs the largest such company in the history of the world. This is the same Murdoch who was Prime Minister David Cameron’s first official overnight guest. That’s the same Cameron who hired Andy Coulson as his communications director while Coulson was still on Murdoch’s payroll. And that Coulson is under arrest.
  • The testimony at the trial of John Edwards, a man some once considered fit to be president.
  • The abrupt resignation of Ric Grenell, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy expert, because of the outcry against his homosexuality by “pro-family community.”
  • The National Football League, which suspended four players for offering “bounties” for maiming opposing quarterbacks and whose former star, Junior Seau, became the second ex-player in two weeks to commit suicide.

So it is nice to note that one of the most heartwarming stories also came out of the NFL, when Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie coach, Greg Schiano, signed his former Rutgers player, Eric LeGrand, a defensive lineman who was paralyzed from the neck in his junior year. It was a gesture, to be sure, as LeGrand is in a wheelchair – although he has made more progress than his doctors ever thought possible. But Schiano’s act reminds us that it isn’t only in fiction that a coach can love his players.