I was watching hockey last night and former Chicago Blackhawk, Jeremy Roenick is a personality on the NHL Network. I'm not a rabid hockey fan but, I know some stuff. I had it in my my mind that, though he seems OK, Roenick might be a jerk. Google is my friend so, I typed in Is Jeremy Roenick a jerk?
Turns out he is. Like too many people, he's on Twitter. And, like ex-baseball player and noted twit, Curt Schilling, he's seemingly on Twitter to bash President Obama. I'm not going to bother with the tweets because they are tweets, and the ones I found were a few years old. Suffice to say it was pretty generic stuff, the kinda crap you would see regurgitated on Topix.
It's amusing to me that the self-proclaimed "Party of personal responsibility" blames absolutely everything on President Obama and that one of their favorite whines is that Obama himself blames absolutely everything on Bush. He does not. That's everybody else. Obama could blame Bush but he's better than that and those in the know, know who did what. If you you think that the mere mention of "the greatest recession since the great depression" is a slam at George W. Bush, you are in the know. You just don't know it.
So, Roenick doesn't like Obama. Musta been a miserable last seven years for him. One more to go.
The guy managed to be the third American-born player to score 500 goals in his 18 seasons in the NHL but, he's not in the Hall Of Fame. Like 500 home runs in baseball is usually a guarantee of entrance to the Hall, I'd expect that number of goals to be automatic too. It's not. The guys not in the baseball HOF with 500+ homers are cheaters from the steroid era- Sosa, Palmeiro and McGwire. The numbers are good but not how they got them. There was no steroid scandal that I know of- at least surrounding Roenick. An article I read said that, despite a very good career, he never excelled at his position. He was never considered one of the top 3-4 forwards. Plus, he never got his name on The Stanley Cup. There's was a couple tie in's with gambling but I don't know that it was a Pete Rose or Michael Jordan thing. He was never banned nor did he retire to play baseball. Still, I have to wonder if the gambling hasn't been a factor. It might be jerkiness.
Today in the news, 90-something year old actor, Dick Vandyke, endorsed Bernie Sanders. Like with everything else on the internet, there was much gnashing of teeth about this. A lot of the fallout was questioning why anyone should care what Rob Petrie thinks about,well- anything?
Well, same with Schilling or Jeremy Roenick. Or Ferrerman. Why care what anyone feels about anything?
That's a rhetorical question, of sorts, but it begs asking every time someone questions any celebrity opinion about politics. A lot of people believe celebrities shouldn't even have opinions. Well, they are just like us, only usually wealthier and better looking. The only argument I could see with celebrities holding their tongues is the fear that you might alienate some of your fans. If you don't mind that, have at it. There's not a lot of celebrities that I like on the republican side anyway. In fact, I don't think I can think of one where I was sad to learn they were leaning to the right. I'm a pretty fair judge of character and I generally already didn't like them, as was already the case with Roenick and Schilling. I mean now, do you know any good people who hate President Obama and want to build walls in 2017 that might have been a better idea in 1980?
The Jerk Store of life is always open. Make sure they're always out of you whether you're a celebrity or not.
2 comments:
Actually, there are a number of Former NHL players with over 500 career goals eligible for the Hall of Fame who are still not in led by Dave Andeychuk with 640 and Mark Recchi with 577. the others in addition to Jeremy Roenick (513) are Keith Tkachuk (538), Pat Verbeek (522), Pierre Turgeon (515) and Peter Bondra (503). Some of them aren't in possibly because of the number of years it took them to reach their career totals. A few on that list including Roenick averaged less than 30 goals a season and managed to score over 500 points primarily due to longevity. It was almost like Tommy John in baseball who has the most wins of anybody not in the baseball Hall Of Fame as he spent a total of 26 years in the Majors.
Good point about Tommy John. It does dilute the stats if a guy takes forever to get there. The rap on Aaron was always that he never came close to 60 like Ruth, but he hit 40+ 7 times. He had consistency! And longevity.
I'm not near as familiar with hockey as I am with baseball but a few of the names you mentioned rang a bell. I'm surprised that they aren't in the HOF with 500+ goals and no steroids but I see your point about the dilution of time. Still, it seems odd. Perhaps they had *social problems* like Roenick? The late, great Ron Santo of the Cubs pissed off some of his peers. They saw him as cocky. Third base is one of the toughest positions to play into the Hall but he earned it!
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