Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
A post-holiday stampede of GOATS has drawn our attention toward politics, arcane factoids and the National Football League, not necessarily in that order. An acronym for “Greatest of All Time,” usually associated with athletes, GOAT has been applied to Serena Williams, LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Lionel Messi. Although Tom Brady’s GOAT-ness is sanctified more frequently around here than any of the others, the term did not evolve with him as many New England fans believe but with the original “Greatest” — Muhammad Ali.
While “Jeopardy” presented a three-day tournament to determine the Greatest of All Time, America was riveted elsewhere, aghast at the culmination of a three-year disintegration of our foreign policy courtesy of Donald J. Trump, ostensibly the GOAT of presidents: “Some say I’m better than Abraham Lincoln.” Trump joined Brady, whose Patriots uncharacteristically exited the NFL playoffs in the wild card round, as goats who should be put out to pasture for very different reasons. Regarding the exalted quarterback, we’re worried about him. In the president’s case, we’re more worried about us.
Men of Brady’s age — 43 next season — are a rarity on the football field unless they’re coaches or referees who may be metaphorically in the crosshairs, but seldom absorb a blitzing linebacker going 40 miles an hour. Although Brady has reportedly experienced several concussions over the years, his healthy diet and generally pristine lifestyle keep him in excellent condition but also appear to be sending him the wrong message. After his season prematurely ended, the all-universe quarterback said his retirement was “unlikely,” which unfortunately, while pleasing to many Patriot fans, might very well place their idol in serious jeopardy.
Did someone say “Serious Jeopardy”? Seemingly an oxymoron, the decades-old nerd fest just completed the game show equivalent of WrestleMania, pitting its three top money winners in a bloodless fight for all time supremacy, aka The GOAT. Overshadowing the festivities was beloved host Alex Trebek’s very public battle with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. According to finalist Ken Jennings, Trebek admitted to struggling during the taping but “can always turn it on,” and that “when the music came up, the lights came on, he would just stride out there and nail it.”
Synonymous with “Jeopardy” since 1984, Trebek is every bit as loved as the show itself for his utter lack of guile and the unpretentious delight he takes when a contestant is doing well as he was with James Holzhauer’s incredible recent run that saw the professional sports gambler claim not only the game’s top one-day money record, but the 15 next best slots as well. Though Trebek is well beyond characterization by mere mortals, Holzauer nevertheless lionized him with a recent Final Jeopardy answer in a game he knew he couldn’t win, dubbing him “GHOST — Greatest Host of Syndicated TV.” No counter argument was heard.
Basking in post-Suleimani adulation from Sean Hannity and the Bush administration’s geniuses who planned and executed the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq, forever upsetting the Middle Eastern olive cart, Trump’s assertion of presidential greatness was echoed by the echo chamber, as 53% of Republicans agreed he was indeed a better leader than Lincoln. But if you still have doubts that Trump has taken Melania’s “Be Best” initiative to heart, all you need do is ask him and he’ll explain that he’s better than anyone at everything: “The military … the bible … helping the disabled … women.” Still wary? Check out this You Tube mashup.
But we would be remiss after reviewing all the GOATS who are heroes if we didn’t include a word or two about all the heroes that are goats — actual goats that are performing heroic functions other than contributing the primary ingredient in goat cheese. Though it is a myth that they eat tin cans, they do consume problematic plants — kudzu, for instance, and are instrumental this time of year with the disposal of discarded Christmas trees. They may even save California from itself. Southeast of Los Angeles, in the hills around Anaheim, 400 goats graze contentedly, eating invasive grasses and dried brush — which double or even triple the likelihood of the kind of wildfires that have decimated the state in recent years.
Finally, goats really are “old goats”….older than Jeopardy; older than Tom Brady; even older than Donald Trump, who might very well order a drone strike if he knew that the earliest evidence of their domestication dates back over 10,000 years to Iran: “Believe me, I know more about Iranian goats than anyone and the shrubbery around the US Embassy in Tehran was in imminent danger of being consumed. We couldn’t take that risk.”
