In the GQ article, McNabb says that his lack of urgency during the Super Bowl was due to slow play calling and confusion as to whether or not Terrell Owens coming out or staying in the game. He blames his lack of knowledge of overtime rules in Cincinnati on an official on the field at the time. Of his relationship with the Eagle’s front office, Donovan opines, “they didn’t have my back.”

The article encapsulates the whine-o-rama that characterized McNabb’s decade in Philadelphia. The chip on McNabb’s shoulder landed there and started growing on draft day, when thirty idiots bused up to New York by WIP booed Donnie Mac. Suddenly these thirty became “the city of Philadelphia” booing the rookie.

I’ve been in the stands many times over the last decade and without exception, the loudest, most thunderous ovations were saved for Number Five when he walked out of the tunnel. We cheered, vociferously, every scintillating play. For the longest time, we overlooked the quarter and a half of worm burners and overthrows as McNabb warmed up. We overlooked the goofy smiles and expressions when first and goal at the two turned into a field goal because McNabb was too skittish about throwing a pick to squeeze the ball into tight coverage in the end zone. We overlooked, after a two yard pass on third and 11, his look that said, “We’ll get them next series.”…until there were no more series. If bitching and moaning was my biggest problem with him off the field, a complete lack of urgency on the field was my biggest issue with him there.

As for the Eagles front office..well…they made McNabb an ancestor. An ancestor is someone who, generations hence, is the guy or girl who raised the clan out of obscurity and made it possible for descendents to live a life of wealth and privilege. Sixty years from now newly minted Doctor McNabb will celebrate his graduation from Harvard at his parents’ house in the Hamptons, toasting grand uncle Donovan, the ancestor who made it all possible. McNabb pocketed over one hundred million dollars during his time in Philadelphia, a time when the team was built, and revolved, around him. It’s going to be very interesting to see how he fares in DC, where he’ll no doubt be a star, but not the sun around which the Eagles universe revolved for the last ten years. Methinks Donovan will wake up one day soon to realize how much he was coddled in Philadelphia.

I recently watched a Redskins preseason game and one drive proved a microcosm of the Donovan McNabb experience in Philly: a couple crisp passes for big gains, a worm burner and an overthrow, and a very nifty scramble, followed by a time out because he was gassed. The Skins ended up punting on that drive. Redskins fans will be amazed at some of the things he can still do with his body. Amazed like I was, though, up to a point.

But fear not Redskins fans, if he ultimately fails, be secure in the knowledge (as he will be) that it wasn’t his fault.

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The next day, he was still in favor of the mosque, except not so much. Turns out what he meant was that Muslims had the right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan. He would not, however, comment on whether or not that was a good idea.

On behalf of myself and the other tens of millions of people who think this is a bad idea, thank you Mr. President. Our detractors have made the argument that our objections to the Ground Zero Mosque stem from our hatred of the First Amendment and our intolerance. You have shown that it’s possible to support the right of anyone to worship as they please and still not give a ringing endorsement to the mosque.

Supporting a fundamental right and criticizing how it is exercised are not mutually exclusive. I abhor flag burning, but I support the burners’ right to do it. I’m disgusted with Piss Christ and those who consider it art, but I support the right of the “artist” to express himself freely. (As I write this, I wonder how a Piss Mohammed would play in Riyadh, Jakarta or Tehran).

Herein lies the crux of the whole Ground Zero Mosque debate. Rarely are those who exercise their rights to the limit motivated by lofty desires to celebrate our cherished liberties. They wish to push some other agenda (in the above examples, that agenda is usually to offend as many people as possible). The builders of this mosque claim they want to build bridges of understanding between Islam and those in this country who may not have the “correct” perception of their religion. But understanding works both ways. One has to wonder why the developers of the mosque haven’t stepped back and said, “We have seriously miscalculated here. Perhaps we need to understand what is behind the opposition to our project.” The fact that these folks have not taken that step back makes me question their motives.

I’m not suggesting that the government act to stop the construction of the mosque. In fact, if the mosque ends up being built, I advocate that any attempt to infringe on the rights of Muslims to worship there be dealt with severely through our laws and court system. That said, the builders of this mosque shouldn’t be surprised if the gap in our mutual understanding widens because of their refusal to take into consideration how the majority of Americans feel on this issue.

And back to our President. I abhor President Obama’s policies and I don’t really like him personally. I find him an aloof, arrogant and uninspiring leader. Up to a year or so ago, though, I thought him a consummate politician. How could he not be for the majority of the electorate to have bought the nonsense he was peddling? Lately, though, I’ve been amazed at President Obama’s tin ear. I cannot think of a single president (not even Jimmy Carter) who is so out of touch with the people he leads. The clumsy way in which this was handled is embarrassing. On Friday night the President has made this issue one of national import. Any lawyer can explain the technicalities. Would it be too much to ask the leader of this country to weigh in on the heart of the issue?

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The heart, though, is a different matter. When I think of that day, I think of people in those buildings being forced to decide being burned to death or jumping a hundred stories to the unyielding cement below. When I first heard the news about the mosque, my reaction was strong and visceral. My heart was filled with anger.

Soon, I found that much of my anger was directed at those non-believers who defended that Cordoba House, like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. Those of us who have misgivings about the mosque are accused of being Islamophobic and, of course, racist. The mosque, they say, should be built in the spirit of tolerance. The mosque, they say, should be a tribute to the freedom and liberty we enjoy in this country.

I find it more than a little offensive that we’re expected to treat with kid gloves any issue that might bruise the tender sensitivities of the Muslim community and yet swallow what appears to be a thumbing of the nose at our collective feelings over one of our nation’s greatest tragedies. Would it be too much to ask Abdul Rauf to step back and ask himself if a mosque at Ground Zero is the best way to honor the men and women who died there? There’s just something wrong in the cosmic ordering of things when Americans are accused of insensitivity and disrespect when we don’t take into consideration the ever fragile feelings of Muslims on one hand and are accused of harboring all sorts of phobias if we ask Muslims to take our feelings into consideration.

The argument for the mosque is being made by evoking our cherished freedoms and liberties. It’s sadly ironic that some of those who make those arguments mock the necessity of maintaining those liberties and freedoms. Indeed, some of them…some of those of the more radical interpretation of Islam, would see those liberties and freedoms destroyed.

Liberty and freedom are words that are thrown around, as in this debate, with great promiscuity. We seldom hear the one word that is most important in relation to the other two: responsibility. As in the responsibility to say, “Yeah, I’ve got the freedom to build a mosque near Ground Zero….but why don’t I do the responsible thing and not step on the memory of those who died in an attack which was, however misguided the motivation, made in the name of Islam.”

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Jill loved Taco Bell (which she called Taco Bells when she was little). She loved eating there and her first real job was working at the Taco Bell in Red Bluff, California. She had been working there for about a week and was driving there when she had her accident.

Whenever Jill and I went to a restaurant, whether it be fast food or otherwise, and received shoddy or indifferent service, I’d always say, “Jill, if you ever get a job at one of these places, and treat someone like that, I’ll hook you to a car battery.” Jill would laugh until she snorted, for she was always found hilarious the exotic punishments Dad thought up. For better or worse, she had my sense of humor.

So, whenever the poor girl wanted a burger or taco or chicken tender, she had to endure my critique of the service and my admonishments against doing whatever the grunting, rude, slow, put out, comatose food service employee we had been unlucky enough to draw that day was doing. It got to the point where I didn’t have to say anything. If we were in line at a fast food restaurant, I would hear behind me “Yeah yeah yeah…car battery…piranhas…I get it” at any deviation from prompt and cheerful service she perceived behind the counter.

Of course I was wasting my breath. Jill understood how to treat people without me having to say anything. When she got her job at Taco Bell, her orientation booklet was filled with little scribblings about how she would treat customers. When we talked on the phone about the job, she said not to worry, no one would ever have reason to complain about her.

So on Monday, I decided to remember Jill by having a taco at the Bell. I walked into the place and joined the line behind four people. Behind the register was a kid in his late teens. He was tall, thin and hatchet faced. A small, faint rash of acne disappeared into this impressive chin beard and his frizzy hair, tied in a pony tail, spilled out from under his Taco Bell cap.

His name tag read: Blake.

Blake greeted each customer with professional good cheer and asked for their order. He quickly clarified their request (For here? Medium or large?), took the cash, efficiently and accurately counted the coins and bills before handing the customer his change and receipt. The entire transaction lasted less than fifteen seconds and ended with a sincere “Have a nice day.”

In less than a minute I was at the register, enjoying customer service that seems to be the exception rather than the rule these days. Whether being sold a burger at a fast food joint or a plane from Airbus, every customer should be treated with the courtesy and efficiency with which Blake treated his patrons that day.

I got my taco and sat down at a table, heart very heavy. I looked to the front of the store and saw the last customer in line being served. Blake then came out from behind the counter, grabbed a broom and pan and started cleaning the tables and floor in the dining area. He moved with gusto and not the slow unmotivated zombie shuffle one sees too often in restaurants. He cleaned the place like it was his own. I decided right there that, had I had a business, I would’ve hired Blake on the spot, no matter what his level of education or skill set. You can teach someone a skill, a procedure or a concept. You can’t teach what this guy obviously had.

Blake had impressed me, mightily.

Was it just a coincidence that I found the Kurt Warner (v. 1999) of fast food workers…the most exceptional, hardest working employee within 200 miles…on the day when I was remembering Jill by eating lunch at Taco Bell? Probably. But driving back to work that afternoon, trying to drive through the tears, I thought that maybe Blake, for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, was a little more inspired than usual to give the customer what he wanted, and do it with a smile on his face.

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I remember my first experience with earthquakes and, looking back, I probably felt the same as those folks did in Montgomery County. I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but I know I was younger than ten years old, for we still lived on Colonial Street in Philadelphia. The quake, a wee one, occurred in the early morning hours I remember the noise more than the shaking. It sounded to me like a huge truck being driven down the middle of our row of houses.

When I joined the Air Force, I spent a year in Monterey, CA, learning Russian. I was standing in my dorm room in a towel, just having gotten out of the shower, when the floor lurched violently under my feet. The shaking continued, knocking a stack of cassette tapes off the shelf above my desk. I was to experience many more quakes in California, so the novelty wore off quickly. There’s nothing that combination of fear, helplessness and wonder one feels when the ground moves under your feet the first time.

After training, I was assigned to Misawa Air Base, Japan. My first six months there, I lived in a house off base. Early one morning, again standing in a towel (maybe I should contact the USGS every time I take a shower), I was watching the pre-game show for Game 3 of the 1989 World Series between the A’s and the Giants when suddenly the picture cut out, then came back on, with Al Michaels saying that he thought they had just experienced an earthquake..which they had: the Loma Prieta quake which killed 42 people in the Bay area.

Not long after that I had what was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Very early one morning I woke up to the sound of our bedroom door being violently shaken. When I first got up, I didn’t understand what was happening. It sounded like something very big and very powerful was trying to pull that door off its hinges, the kind of thing that happened in movies like The Exorcist. Only when I got out of bed and felt the floor shaking beneath me did I realize we were experiencing an earthquake. It lasted quite awhile…long enough for me to open the door, get across the living room and check on the kids.

That couple seconds between the time I woke up and the time I hit the floor and realized what was happening were probable most scared I’ve been in my entire life. Definitely the wages of an overactive imagination.

I experienced significant earthquakes in Japan over the next three years, though nothing like that night in the house off base. Soon after that night our number came up on the housing list and we moved into a modern, nine story apartment building on base. In Japan, buildings are constructed with earthquakes in mind and our particular building was built on rollers, to help absorb the shock of the moving earth. During an earthquake in one of these buildings felt like being in a boat on the sea. Often, I’d be lying on the sofa reading at night when the chandelier over the dining room table would start to sway back and forth on its own. At those moments we were experiencing an earthquake too weak to feel, but strong enough to set the building rolling back and forth.

The area around Misawa continues to be active. In 2003 an 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Hokkaido and was strongly felt in Misawa.

Natural phenomena like earthquakes and heavy weather fascinate me because of their power, power that we are more or less helpless against. As advanced as our civilization has become, we are still at the mercy of nature.

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Company X’s bank won’t lend it for the same reason Company X won’t spend it: uncertainty.

Businesses, like people, fear the unknown. Chiding businesses for not spending their hoarded trillions is the same as chiding Citizen X for not going shopping with the $20000 nest egg he’s built as a cushion in case he gets laid off.

As someone who leans conservative, I believe that government’s function vis-à-vis business is to create a stable environment which fosters competition and growth. A large part of doing that is limiting the uncertainty companies face when they are doing business. Whether it be Boeing or Fred’s Bowling Alley, there are two questions that must be answered before all others: how much will it cost me to produce my good or service and what can I charge for it.

Business is stuffing cash into mattresses these days (or might as well be…have you checked out your bank’s interest rates?) because they do not know how much it will cost them to do business. We can thank the goings on in Washington today for this uncertainty. Seems to me that our government is doing its very best to ensure that businesses are completely unable to answer the first of their two most important questions.

Exhibit One: Tax policy. Cuts in the death tax rate are set to expire at the end of this year, with rates set to go as high as 55%. I saw a story on the news about a mill owner in Alabama whose business is valued at about fifty million dollars. If these rates do go up that high, his priority suddenly shifts from investing in plant, equipment and people to ensuring there’s enough cash to pay the tax bill so that his sons won’t have to sell this business in order to settle it. Right now Congress is dithering over whether or not to extend the cut. You can bet this business owner his holding onto his cabbage until our gub’mint decides on which side to land.

Exhibit Two: Passing laws without knowing what is in them or how they will work. Back in March, Obamacare was passed and we got this assurance from Nancy Pelosi:

Today, Freddie and Fannie Mac (Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank) gave us financial market reform. Senator Dodd, after explaining how this legislation would touch every facet of our lives, had this to say about the bill:

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

Little is known about how these bills will actually work because the numerous bureaucracies both create haven’t written the regulations required by the legislation. Think about it. One bill restructures one sixth of the American economy. Another makes significant changes to how money moves through our financial systems. The folks who wrote and passed the legislation have little idea how it will affect the country and its economy.

This issue came into sharp focus when Representative Henry Waxman called CEOs of several large corporations to come before Congress to explain why they took charges against earnings because of Obamacare. Apparently Waxman saw this as a ploy by the Big Horrible Corporations to give Obamacare a black eye, not knowing that such charges were required by accounting rules. Waxman quietly cancelled the hearings when he was schooled on the law.

Is it any surprise that business owners, large and small, are digging holes in their backyards and burying their cash?

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Something simply does not smell right here. These agents were tasked with recruiting spies within the United States and infiltrating policy making organizations within the U.S. government. I just cannot believe that in two weeks we gleaned every bit of information they had about their operations in this country and, more important, members of other sleeper cells or the names of U.S. citizens they recruited.

Well, I suppose there’s not necessarily something rotten just because the sniff test isn’t passed. This is probably no more than further evidence of an administration which is incredibly naïve and in over its head. The arrests came the week after Obama took Dmitry Medvedev out for a burger. Now, the fact that nations spy on each other should come as a surprise to no one. Nations don’t give each other the cold shoulder or boot each other’s diplomats out unless the espionage is especially egregious. That said, one doesn’t come out looking very good having a chummy burger with the guy who’s running sleeper cells behind your back. Or maybe it wasn’t behind Obama’s back at all. Maybe Obama knew about the impending arrests and still decided to go along on his man date with Dmitry, so as not to offend the Russian’s delicate sensibilities.

Reagan said “Tear down this wall!” Barry O says “Here, have another onion ring.”

Dmitry’s handler and Russia’s Man Behind The Curtain, Vladimir Putin, certainly knows a doormat when he sees one. He threw a fit about the arrests and our government, with alacrity, tried to smooth his feathers by arranging this premature spy swap. They are getting their spies back, while we’re probably getting dissidents who have done nothing wrong and whom Putin jailed on trumped up charges of espionage.

One day, President Obama will look up from his finger firmly pressed on the “RESET” button and find he’s standing there in his boxers and knee socks, having been picked dry by the Russians on this spy swap, START, the Eastern Europe missile shield, Iran and every other arena where our interests collide with Russia’s.

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Of course, there’s a lot I could blame for the inactivity. There are the constant demands of work. Our home the land on which it sits demand a lot of attention. I’ve grown quite fond of Zynga Poker since I joined Facebook last November.

But these are not reasons so much as excuses.

I started this blog as something to help me write on a regular basis. Over time, a (very) few people started reading it. I got a little feedback (good writing…too much politics) and began to fall into a trap which had me wondering what so and so would think if I wrote about thus and such. Quite ridiculous, really, getting puckered up over what an audience of maybe ten people think. But this has been my problem with writing my entire life.

“What will people think?”

I’ve read, from a bunch of different sources, that first drafts are always horrible. Whether you are a 46 year old who has spent a life wasting writing potential or Stephen King, first drafts are almost always unreadable. “What will people think?” of this first draft. Probably not much. And what about later? There will always be those who don’t think very highly of what I write.

My wife would probably say that my “Libra-ness” is to blame for this. I have a need to please everybody. I should do my best to turn from that Quixotic path. Whom I please is probably the last thing I should be thinking about when I sit down and write.

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Whenever I think of Donovan McNabb, there is this image my mind conjures up. The date is December 30, 2000 and the then young, upstart Eagles are hosting the favored Tampa Bay Bucs and their ferocious defense in an NFC wild card game. It had snowed the night before and the air was frigid. The crowd was frenzied as the Eagles played their way to a 21-3 mauling of the shell shocked Bucs. There was a point in the game when the Eagles were at the Tampa Bay goal line. McNabb, a young football god, possessing a cannon for an arm and a set of legs that would leave the jocks of defenders scattered all over the gridirons of the NFL, walks up…swaggers up, really…to the line, looks into the teeth of that defense and smiles. That wide, joyful Donovan McNabb smile. At that point in time, that smile contained all the sunny possibility of double-digit wins per season, the humbling of hated rivals, personal football glory for McNabb himself and, of course, parades down Broad Street celebrating an ever-expanding trophy case filled with Lombardi’s. Looking at that confident smile on that day, you believed. You believed that, as an Eagles fan, your days wondering through the Stygian darkness of NFL purgatory were finally over.

And the last decade has proved a great one for the Eagles, thanks in no small part to Donovan McNabb: The Franchise, Donnie Mac, Mac 5. Game in and game out, his ability to use his legs and his arm to make something out of nothing was dazzling. The four TD passes he threw on a broken leg; Fourth and Twenty-Six; the Fourteen Second scramble are the stuff of legend and are indicative of his level of play with the Eagles from week to week. Part of the joy of being an Eagles fan over the last decade has been to see the bedeviled faces of Parcells, Gibbs, Spurrier, Coughlin, Fassel, Phillips and their respective defensive staffs and players, all at the hands of Number Five.

McNabb is the greatest quarterback in Eagles history. He is a six time Pro Bowler who holds the Eagles record for pass attempts, completions, yards passing and most passing touchdowns and led the team to five NFC Championship game appearances and an appearance in the Super Bowl. There are a lot of people who were not terribly fond of McNabb’s play at quarterback over the last decade. Those folks seem to have forgotten what it was like being an Eagles fan for the two decades before he arrived in Philly.

Of course, McNabb’s success has also been his curse. As he leaves Philadelphia, the one glaring hole in his resume is a Super Bowl victory. Right now, its what defines McNabb and the Eagles teams he has led over the past decade. Time, though, will lend perspective and he will end up as beloved and lionized as a guy like Jaworski.

My brother Paul and I were discussing the trade last night; discussing whether or not it was a good move for the Eagles. Defending the trade necessitates going into how McNabb lacks whatever it is that will get the Eagles that Lombardi. I’d rather not go into that right now. I’d rather just celebrate what the man did for the team and for the city of Philadelphia.

For a guy who has embraced change throughout his entire life, I’m a very nostalgic guy. Though I think it is the right move, I’m pretty saddened by this, because I’ve always liked McNabb as a player and as a person. Truth be told, I thought that McNabb’s benching against Baltimore a couple years back was the end of his career in Philly, so I’ve been prepared for this. Still, as I look at my McNabb bobblehead smiling at me on the desk, today’s a bit of a bummer.

I’ll save the reasons why I thought this was a good move for another blog. Today though, I’d just like to say “Thanks Donovan, “ for the thrills, for the success, for giving it your all to this team for the last eleven years. Keep smiling Donnie Mac, it looks good on you.

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I don’t get too spun up about birthdays. They don’t make me feel old. Brian Westbrook being cut by the Eagles makes me feel old. When a guy like Mike Schmidt retires or a guy like Westbrook leaves, it’s a reminder of the years that have passed.
So today I’m bummed out for two reasons: I feel decrepit and BWest is an Eagle no more.

Of course, Westbrook was fast, but usually, at least to me, he didn’t appear fast. What I will remember most about Westbrook is him catching screen passes and just flowing, like water, downfield, behind and around blockers, past defenders. It was like watching a fast flowing river go on and on.

Make no mistake, though. Brian could, and would, put you on your ass.

Westbrook was so dangerous because you could put him anywhere. In the backfield, back for a punt return, in the slot, out wide, in for protection. He wasn’t just a decoy, he was great wherever he lined up. That’s really saying something about his smarts because we Eagles fans constantly hear how tough it is for players to pick up Andy Reid’s offensive scheme. Brian Westbrook seemed to know every part of that vast machine like the back of his hand.

He was electrifying on the field, yes. But I think the reason why he was respected and loved in Philadelphia was that he brought a very workman like approach to the game, which of course will get you a long way in Philly. As great as it was to watch him move downfield, it was even better at times to see him staying in to protect and blow up a blitzing linebacker.

Off the field he seemed genuine and humble, without any pretense. In an era where the athletes who wear three pounds of gold around their necks, ride around in limos and go to strip clubs get most of the attention, there was something refreshing about a guy who, on his days off, couldn’t wait to head south to Maryland and hang out at his horse farm than burn the candle at both ends.
From this one fan, and I’m sure there are many others, thanks Brian.

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