When 80,000 mostly white, Christian men rallied at the Silverdome to pledge their family values, nobody complained.But when a few dozen white men marched in Skokie, Ill., there was national outrage. The difference? Those men were Nazis.Here is my point: It's not numbers or color that necessarily frighten people. It's hatred. Hatred that might be directed back at them.
O.J. Simpson had nine months to tell his story. He didn't speak. His lawyers said, "We can't risk it." So he sat silent during his trial, as experts suggested he killed his ex-wife and her friend in cold blood. He sat silent, and he won his freedom. And after the verdict, one of his lawyers admitted, "Had he talked, one mistake would have ruined him."
It is not my place, as someone who can barely tackle my dog, to tell Wayne Fontes what he should do with a football team that just crushed the Cleveland Browns like a tortilla.But I'll do it anyhow.He should chew them out.Not terribly. Just enough to correct some mistakes that were made in Sunday's otherwise glorious afternoon of indoor football. You may think this is nasty. You may think my timing is wrong. But I remember a certain Pistons coach with neatly coiffed hair who said the time to get after your team is when things are going well.
Wherever you go in football, fans stick up their fingers and yell, "We're No. 1." They wave at TV cameras, at passing cars, at each other. Over and over. Their favorite digit, high in the air. "We're No. 1!"
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.