Say it ain't so Bobby. Say it ain't so

After a grand jury delivered indictments to several Chicago White Sox players for fixing the 1919 World Series, Charley Owens of the Chicago Daily News wrote a column under the title “Say it ain’t so, Joe”, a reference to Shoeless Joe Jackson, at the time a baseball hero to many, young and old alike.  

Shoeless Joe Jackson

Historically speaking, it is generally accepted that Shoeless Joe was not in on fixing that series, however that phrase – say it ain’t so, Joe – has lived on as an expression of disbelief and disappointment upon learning something that knocks the person off the pedestal we had put them on.  

That phrase came immediately to mind for me, and undoubtedly countless others, over the weekend when Bobby Orr took out a full-page ad in a newspaper to endorse the re-election of Donald Trump. Say it ain’t so, Bobby.

One of our country’s better sportswriters, Stu Cowan of the Montreal Gazette, wrote an excellent column on this, which was reprinted in Monday’s Fredericton Daily Gleaner and perhaps other Irving papers. He wrote it from the perspective of someone who as a kid idolized Bobby Orr, and held him out as a role model since. 

Bobby Orr was never my idol, but I sure respected his talent, and as a hockey fan I appreciate how he changed the game. He is, without a doubt, one of the best players to ever lace up skates.  

And he seemed, from everything I have ever heard of him, a really decent, classy guy.  

So it struck me as such a disconnect that someone like Orr would endorse someone like Trump, a grifter who, as Cowan put it “doesn’t try to hide his racism, is a pathological liar, calls the media “the enemy of the people,” boasts about groping women, puts children in cages, refuses to listen to scientists and doctors as the COVID-19 pandemic gets worse and looks to divide rather than bring people together.” 

Bobby Orr’s full page ad in last Friday’

I have to think there is more to the story of Orr’s newspaper ad than we know and at some point it may come out. But for now, all we can conclude is that he’s just one more wealthy white guy who benefitted from Trump’s tax breaks for the rich, and is perhaps concerned because Biden promises to cancel them. 

But of course Bobby Orr was never a close personal friend, in fact I don’t expect I will ever meet him and frankly I couldn’t care less. But he was one of those larger than life figures that we assign more stature to than perhaps they deserve. He was good at hockey and I assume, he is kind to puppies and kittens.  

The fact I will never again look at Bobby Orr the same way means nothing to me. But it is indicative of the effect Trump has had on relationships that should matter.  

I have lost respect for Orr because of his judgement to line up with someone whose moral deficiencies are so foreign to everything I believe in. Whether it is calling white supremacists “very fine people” or the purposeful cruelty of separating desperate, vulnerable refugees from their children without even a plan to someday reunite them, or something equally disgusting, if you are on that side of this divide, I am on the other.  

The point is that except for his close personal acquaintances, Bobby Orr doesn’t matter. But I have talked to friends whose experience is the same as mine. They lost valued relationships that did matter for the same reason Orr has now lost the respect of many. They found, as I did, that people we thought we knew well turned out to not share our same values at all, a reality stripped bare because of Trump. This isn’t to say I don’t have friends who are right-wingers. I certainly do. But we don’t talk politics or if we do, it’s a respectful difference of opinion on policies or philosophy, a far cry from being onside with Trump’s policies that hurt people he doesn’t like.    

Which brings us to today. The American election is upon us. It is pretty clear Trump cannot win it legitimately, but consistent with who he is, rather than accepting the will of the people, which is kind of a “thing” in a democracy, he is ready to try to steal it, which is kind of a thing in a banana republic, by unleashing an army of lawyers who will argue that some of those citizens who voted in advance should not have their votes counted. His hope is to get these arguments before conservative judges who he hopes will agree. 

It means that unless Biden has an overwhelming election night showing, winning by a large enough margin that any contesting of the results would be obviously fruitless, this could drag on. And while it will be finalized at some point, much of the damage done by the Trump presidency may take generations to undo. That includes the damaged relationships among so many families and former friends. One more consequence of this sad chapter of American history.

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