Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
I’ve probably mentioned this in the paper before, but I made the deliberate choice a few years ago to start following sports more closely because I wanted to improve my metaphors. Of course, that’s a bit like going fishing because you want to get better at swimming. (Shit. Sorry. Still haven’t improved much.) But it was serendipitous timing because it was 2010, and a great time for a fair weather S.F. Giants fan to jump on the bandwagon. (They won the World Series that year and twice since then.) Now, seven years later, it’s become a bit of an obsession.
Hearing that Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education felt exactly the same as the Patriots winning the Super Bowl with an overtime touchdown that didn’t really even look like it broke the plane of the endzone. Except that Pats star Tom Brady is just a pretty boy who’s fun to root against, and DeVos is an oligarch who wants taxpayers to help rich people pay to send their kids to religious schools.
She also thinks some school officials should carry guns in case of “potential grizzlies,” which is hilarious, and I had to double-check to make sure I wasn’t reading The Onion or Andy Borowitz or something when I first read about that, but it’s not really nearly as troubling as the fact that she’s a “school choice” advocate, and another unqualified billionaire appointed to lead a department she wants to dismantle.
Back to the Super Bowl: I was only half-heatedly rooting for the Falcons. And honestly, it was a pretty impressive comeback victory. And I’m happy for my cousins who grew up in Boston and other New England fans.
It feels nice to write about sports. It’s so inconsequential in the grand scheme that it soothes the soul to bury the head in the sand and think about sports or video games or, hell, even music. But we can’t forget about the things that really matter—like the fact that, despite appeals from his constituents, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller voted to confirm DeVos. Remember that when you see his name on the ballot next year.