Should B.A. Baracus hit someone?

The allure and difficulty of aphorisms

     Aphorisms, i.e. short pithy statements, usually of a philosophical bent, appeal to almost everyone (except me; well…).  When a person uses an aphorism he or she can move people to think more deeply.  Somehow it seems that there is an immediate connection to a deeper, more profound truth than the mere words only suggest.

     In my Master’s thesis I compared Lev Shestov (the “Russian Kierkegaard”) to Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, Renaissance man and philosopher.  Because Shestov despaired of “the Wall”, i.e. Reason (read Enlightenment Kantian or Hegelian Reason), he tended to align himself with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Underground Man and later, after Edmund Husserl pointed him in Kierkegaard’s direction, Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith (Abraham).  Shestov had a brilliance for using aphorisms to make his points, though his technique is not always clear.  Also despite his denial of “Reason”, he does reason, i.e. use arguments, and even the arrangement of aphoristic sayings is in itself a type of argument.  Why would one write at all if there was no point to discursive logic?

     Shestov and Pascal are likely to inspire one to make slips of paper with pithy quotes and stick them on your cork board (or in these electronic days to make banners and headers on your computer screen with them). Shestov, Pascal and Kierkegaard are all in a tradition, which could be called fideistic intuitionalism.  Fideistic intuitionalism means that one would decry “reason” and discursive logic, and emphasize choices of the will over the intellect.  One “feels” the truth of the aphorism.  One cannot argue for it.  Or so it might seem…

     Pascal died relatively young in his thirties.  He wrote much in his lifetime: pamphlets, books, letters, etc..  He had a very dramatic conversion to Christ as a young adult.  His sister, who was a nun in the Port Royal Abbey in France, became involved in a revival movement in which Pascal was taken up.  His short poem, “Fire”, which describes his conversion, was written on a small piece of paper which he sowed into his coat lining.

      "The Memorial":

The year of grace 1654
Monday, 23 November, feast of Saint Clement, Pope and Martyr, and of others in the Martyrology.
Eve of Saint Chrysogonus, Martyr and others.
From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight.

Fire

'God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,' not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
'Thy God shall be my God.'
The world forgotten, and everything except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.
Greatness of the human soul.
'O righteous Father, the world had not known thee, but I have known thee.'
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have cut myself off from him.
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.
'My God wilt thou forsake me?'
Let me not be cut off from him for ever!
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.'
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I have cut myself off from him, shunned him, denied him, crucified him.
Let me never be cut off from him!
He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Sweet and total renunciation.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director.
Everlasting joy in return for one day's effort on earth.
I will not forget thy word. Amen.

http://pascalianawakenings.blogspot.nl/2007/11/on-this-day-pascals-night-of-fire_23.html

Accessed Aug 24, 2013

     This poem of Pascal’s is so well know, as you can imagine, that one can find it in second on the internet.  It is probably quoted most often by Evangelical Christians from his larger work, The Thoughts or Pensees. Since The Thoughts is his most well known work it is often referred to by the French title.  One can get the whole text on www.ccel.org or www.gutenberg.org

     The Thoughts were written by Pascal over the course of several years.  He was very ill.  He could sometimes only concentrate for short times.  Thus, some of “Thoughts” are very short and aphoristic.  Other of the “Thoughts” are longer, sometimes up to a dozen pages.

Pascal had been involved in a long argument with the Jesuits, who were determined to stamp out the Port Royal revival movement.  The movement was started by a bishop named Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres.  Jansenius revived a sort of Augustinianism (teaching of St. Augustine), which emphasized predestination and other doctrines which the Jesuits didn’t like.  Since the Jansenist or Port Royal movement was Augustinian, it has appealed to Reformed Protestants, and indeed the Jesuits considered the adherents of the Jansenist movement to be closet Protestants.  Jansenius was himself interred in a tower of what is now a part of the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain) in Leuven, Belgium for two years.

     The Provincial Letters, in which Pascal defended the Port Royal Movement from the Jesuits’ charges, took a lot out of Pascal whose health was frail.  When he was ill or recuperating he would jot down his “thoughts”.  When he died he left behind hundreds of these aphoristic “thoughts” and some longer bits.  He had succeeded in organizing some of them himself and left indications of how the rest might be organized.  There are two editions of The Thoughts. One edition tries to follow Pascal’s ordering or numbering system and arranges those he did with the titles he gave. It then tries to organize the rest according to the editor’s conceptions for titles and content, generally organizing them by type.  The more scholarly edition organizes them by the numerical order in which they were written without titles or headings.  Most editions have both numbers, the number of that edition and the number which the other editor has assigned, at the bottom of the entries as they have arranged them.

     That was probably more than you wanted to know about The Thoughts. However, all this is to say that when one has a pile of wood it’s possible to build almost any sort of house (except maybe brick).  The Thoughts are often fodder for someone to spin off into outer space attributing all sorts of things to Pascal that he likely didn’t think.  When a “thought” is one line with no context, it’s almost impossible without a deeper knowledge of Pascal’s overall thought to understand just what he meant.

     Let’s take an extremely well known “thought”:

     The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

     The quote has been used to say that Pascal is a fideistic intuitionalist. That might be true.  The statement seems to pit “reason” against “the heart”.  Those of an intuitive or emotional bent (they aren’t the same) like this sort of idea.

     But what does Pascal mean by “heart” and what does he mean by “reason”?  We are not free to decide for ourselves without context.

     “A Text without a Context is a Pretext for a Proof Text.”, says an old adage we learned when we took New Testament Exegesis, i.e. the science of interpreting the New Testament.  This adage, though, applies in general to any literary interpretation.

     But how do we get a context for an aphorism?  I finally come to the point! ;-) If there is no obvious context, e.g. surrounding paragraphs or the context of a letter or chapter, we must look at the overall arguments of the book and compare and contrast places where the words are used.

Pascal uses the word “reason” frequently in The Thoughts. He always seems to use it in contrast to “the heart”.  However, Pascal’s Thoughts reveal that he was anything but an irrationalist.  He was a mathematician and a scientist.  He developed a calculator and a city public transport system.  He was not an anti-rationalist.

     What he was was opposed to Rene Descartes.  Pascal felt that Descartes “rationalism” would result in atheism.  Pascal said,

76

To write against those who made too profound a study of science: Descartes.

77

I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God. But he had to make Him give a fillip to set the world in motion; beyond this, he has no further need of God.

     Pascal wasn’t against science.  He was against the hubris, the pride of the new science that felt (even if it hid it) that it could proceed without God.  The context shows that Pascal was not opposed to reason per se, but pride in human ability to succeed without God.

     So what are the “reasons of the heart”? They are not irrational.  Rather they are those which modern science (I’m use “modern” to mean the strict sense of Descartes’ era) rejected.  Pascal isn’t so much against reason as its misuse.

     But what about Pascal’s famous argument against the metaphysical proofs for God’s existence? Does Pascal mean any rational demonstration of God’s existence is impossible or worse detrimental?

He writes of “proofs”

But at least learn your inability to believe, since reason brings you to this, and yet you cannot believe. Endeavour then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions.

    Reason apparently has its place.  It is a heuristic.  It shows you what your problem is, though it can’t cure you of it.  It shows us that our problem is not reason, but passion, i.e. lust.

     People in Pascal’s time where involved in one of two pursuits, i.e. wealthy people: either “science” like Descartes (very few) or self-indulgence (most).  Everyone in France was a “Christian”.  Everyone had been baptized, etc.. However, few knew Christ personally.  They thought that by some simple observances of religious rules they could attain salvation.  They weren’t interested in change of heart, but only “fire insurance”, assurance of eternal salvation without effort. Pascal goaded them to true religion, i.e. faith in Christ.

     All of this has been a digression from what sparked this epistle.  A week or so ago I watched for the second time the recent movie “The A-Team”, which stars Liam Neeson among others.

     While incarcerated B.A. Baracus has seen the light and become non-violent. If you don’t value non-violence, it is a humorous scene.  B.A. Baracus is a huge man who can easily pick up an opponent and lift him over his head and break the enemy’s back, which he does later in the movie.

     Baracus says when questioned by Col. Smith whether he will join their effort,

    "Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary."

    This is a quote by Gandhi, which Smith recognizes.

     Smith then goes on to quote Gandhi to Baracus,

     It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent. 

     It would seem then that Gandhi allowed for violence.  How one is to reconcile these two quotes is not explored in the movie.  It seems that the film writer wants us to see that Gandhi recognized a right time to use violence, which is of course the film’s point (and seems almost always to be Hollywood’s point, unless it’s an art film or a documentary).

     But what was Gandhi actually saying?  Was he self-contradictory?  Does Gandhi mean to pit intuition or heart against reason?

    Another commentator quotes Gandhi

     Non-violence, which is a quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

     And he expounds on the quote as follows:

     Quite so. One can only thank Gandhi for being so frank as to admit that the doctrine of non-violence can not be arrived at and successfully defended through rational argument.

Scott H.

http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/Gandhi.htm

Accessed Aug 24, 2013

     Personally I sincerely doubt that Gandhi meant to be irrational. I think this is a case of someone taking an aphorism (as the movie did) from a book of famous quotes which did not provide context and interpreting it with free license. 

     I went looking for the movie’s quotes of Gandhi and I found a source http://www.mkgandhi.org which made it clear to me that it would take me at least a week to find the source I wanted (Gandhi wrote many, many, many letters, books, pamphlets and addresses).  I also realized that there probably was plenty of context if I could find it.

     Still I thought I don’t who (Gandhi or Scott H) means that there is no way to argue for non-violence rationally.  But, whoever says such a thing is being disingenuous. We do argue.  It’s not merely an intuition. Gandhi wrote his many, many, many pieces to convince us that non-violence is rational.

     Doesn’t Gandhi mean that non-violence is a matter of character and not rationalizing of war and its goals? We can always rationalize what we want.  However, reasoning is not rationalizing.

     So, let’s return to Col. “Hannibal” John Smith and B.A. Baracus.  Smith seemingly provides Baracus a statement from Gandhi himself which will justify Baracus’ use of violence.

     It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent. 

     What does Gandhi mean to say?

     Using what little I know of Gandhi as context and generally what I know of non-violence I would interpret this statement to mean that what Gandhi is trying to say is that someone who is “non-violent”, because he is “impotent”, i.e. has no means to succeed militarily, is worse than the violent, since at least the violent is not deceiving himself into thinking he is something that he is not, i.e. non-violent.  That is, the impotent says he is non-violent when in fact he is only powerless.  A violent man who thinks violence would achieve his goal, however, may be converted to non-violence when he realizes the foolishness of thinking that violence will change hearts and minds.

     I think my interpretation is consistent with many, many other times when Gandhi emphasized non-violence over violence.  Gandhi realized that violence only bred violence and did not change hearts, did not drive out hatred, did not free people from greed or pride.

So, aphorisms can be a useful tool (a heuristic) to point us to a deeper truth, but by themselves they can be easily abused to prove a point.  

     Almost any quote from any book, article, etc. can be taken out of context to prove a point.  A correct interpretation depends on context whether the obvious context of paragraph, chapter or book, or the context of a broader body of literature and life as it is lived by the author.

     When I was in college I studied Russian and Soviet History.  During the Soviet era any scholar who wanted to publish a book or article had to quote Marx or Lenin and show how Marx or Lenin agreed with him.  If one couldn’t show that Marx or Lenin thought the same way, he could end up a refusnik, i.e. someone who was rejected and persecuted by the Communist world.

     I remember reading an article about Soviet historiography.  I think the author’s name was Barg.  He spent several pages quoting Marx and Lenin to show that his thesis was correct.

    When he got to the end of those several pages his real argument started.  I remember thinking that most of what he’d quoted by Marx and Lenin had nothing to do with what he wanted to say.  However, he had to do it.  Otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to publish his article.

     The practice of having to please the censor has been with mankind a long time.  Descartes had to please his Jesuit censors.  While Pascal perceived Descartes as a false Christian, Descartes at the beginning of his work, the Meditations, gives two proofs for the existence of God, which satisfied the censors.  One scholar of Descartes noted that any student of formal logic can see that these arguments are fallacious.  However, somehow they fooled the censors (or the censors could point to them to fool those above them).

     Sometimes we behave like this Soviet historiographer or Descartes, we quote a Bible verse either to prove our point or to “gain admission” when in fact it’s ripped from its content. Probably the worst thing we can do with the Bible or Jesus’ teaching is to quote short sayings out of context.  It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t quote the Bible or Jesus, but it means that we better be very sure that we are quoting these briefer bits in a way that is consistent with other things God or Jesus or Paul wanted to say.

“A Text without a Context is a Pretext for a Proof Text”

TWO WARRIORS

I have two friends who have fought their respective illnesses for many years.  Recently one lost his battle. 

Unfortunately both the way he died (suicide) and his illness (a mental illness) mean that some don’t see him as a successful warrior.  Common reception of the news of his death in the newspaper was “mrniceguy211  2 days ago− Sad stuff, don't know the dude but its sad when someone life is in such shambles that suicide as the only way out”. 

However, to those who have known this friend they realize that this sort of reaction is as facile as it is stupid. Both of these brothers are faithful Christian men.

We have known our friend who just died since college days.  He went out as a self-supporting missionary to an Asian country.  He met and married a Christian national there.  They have three sons.

While there in that country he suffered from his illness and eventually, since medication alone could not control it, he decided to return to the US with his family.  He had been an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in the Asian country.  He continued to work as an ESL teacher in a small community college in the US.

He was known by all as a kind, gentle Christian man whose heart to reach the world was huge.  He and his wife sponsored international student gatherings in their home.

Yet he often asked those of us who knew him to pray for him.  He suffered debilitating panic and anxiety attacks.  He tried many medications, therapies, counseling, etc, but nothing seemed to help.   

He had been weaned on and off various medications hoping to find one that would cure or at least contain his illness.

However, none was found.  When he was recently going through the process of being weaned off one medication he tragically did what many do: committed suicide.  Suicidal ideation, i.e. thoughts that one should consider suicide and how to commit suicide, is common during this phase of trying to get off one medication and onto another.1  Typically he didn’t go on a shooting rampage (which is extremely rare whatever the media might say), rather he took his own life jumping from a bridge.

That he was not “himself” when he did this is clear to anyone who knew him.  His illness drove him to do something irrational that he could not control.  It was his illness and NOT a volitional choice.   

He had no more control over this than a person who dies of cancer does.

Yet society does not judge him so, at least those who didn’t really know him and those ignorant of mental illnesses.  Those who have suffered from mental illnesses themselves and the relatives, of those who have, understand.

Unfortunately society still stigmatizes mental illness, so that those who suffer are either forced to guilty silence or held in contempt as weak or weird by others.  Our brother fought valiantly for 20 plus years, but he finally succumbed.  His brother, who wrote his obituary, said, “N ran into Jesus’ arms”.  Whether our friend was running from something in his head, which disease made seem real, or whether he was “unbalanced”, he was so because he suffered from an illness, which like many illnesses isn’t always completely or successfully treatable.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Our other friend has battled with a form of leukemia, known as hairy celled leukemia.  For 20 years or so he had given himself daily shots of interferon, a drug to suppress his immune system, so that his system would stop killing off his red blood cells.  As is the case with many medications eventually either they lose their effectiveness or in this case it was “too effective”, i.e. it killed his immune system.

Now our friend has no immune system.  Any simple infection could potentially kill him.

So, there was no option, but to go through chemotherapy and radiation.  He went through many debilitating rounds of chemotherapy.  After that he was matched for a donor for bone marrow cells.  

 When a donor was found, they “killed” his bone marrow and implanted the donor’s healthy cells.  The doctors’ hope is that the new bone marrow will “take” and that it will begin to produce healthy red blood cells and restore his immune system.

This friend has passed the 100 day mark, which is both a miracle and a cause for rejoicing, but he is not out of the woods yet.  He faces a lot more in the way of treatments and follow-up.

He recently celebrated his 65^th birthday. We have known him now 29 years. (We met the year Beth was born.)

He has always been a cut up.  He loves corny jokes and laughing.  His outlook on life is always positive and he never seems to take himself seriously.

His humor has no doubt helped in his recovery at various times and his continued life among us.  We pray he lives 20 more years.

He has been an elder in the church where I was an intern many years ago.  He is a faithful husband and loving father.  He is avid supporter of world missions and shares his love for Jesus with everyone he meets.

Both brothers are warriors.  One sadly lost his battle.  The other battles on.  Both deserve nothing, but respect and commendation.

It’s too bad that ignorance and fear keep many from recognizing the courage of those who battle mental illnesses. Are those who battle mental illness the last lepers?  These days those who suffer from AIDS are considered valiant and heroes, while those who suffer from mental illnesses continue to be ostracized and pilloried.

It’s my privilege to have known both these brothers a long time.  I admire them both.  I know that those who have known them both do too.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 1.Second, weaning off the drug incorrectly can lead to severe withdrawal symptoms. These withdrawal symptoms are not unlike withdrawing from severe alcoholism, and may lead to increased anxiety, depression, psychosis, seizures, hypersensitivity, and possibly suicide.

http://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/drugs/side-effects 

Hasty Generalization

Have you ever been really hurt by a conclusion regarding your behavior that is absolutely false? You may have failed in one regard, or even in a couple, but it doesn't justify a blanket condemnation. You forgot someone's kind invitation and then you are told you are generally callous and lazy, and deserve to lose friends? 

What this shows is that the person is hurt that you forgot them and angry. Such a conclusion (that you are callous and lazy, and deserve to lose friends) is a hasty generalization (a conclusion drawn from insufficient statistical evidence). It is a formal logical error/ fallacy. 

"This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough. ...

People also commonly commit Hasty Generalizations because of laziness or sloppiness. It is very easy to simply leap to a conclusion and much harder to gather an adequate sample and draw a justified conclusion. Thus, avoiding this fallacy requires minimizing the influence of bias and taking care to select a sample that is large enough. ...

Example:
Smith, who is from England, decides to attend graduate school at Ohio State University. He has never been to the US before. The day after he arrives, he is walking back from an orientation session and sees two white (albino) squirrels chasing each other around a tree. In his next letter home, he tells his family that American squirrels are white."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/hasty-generalization.html

I'm fallible and I am not omniscient, but I'm definitely not callous or lazy. I hate to lose friends, ever for any reason. Perhaps for Boethius there was Consolation in Philosophy. For Phil there is Understanding in Philosophy, but often no Consolation. :(

Schmod

Along the lines of any CD left in your glove box for any length of time turns into a Queen CD…

At any time of the day or night somewhere on cable TV they are showing the movie “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray and Andy McDowell…

Did Bill Murray hear or read Peter van Inwagen’s lecture on God and omnipotence?

Van Inwagen suggested that there could be more than one god.  God is traditionally thought of (by theists) as being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.  What if there was a second god, who was all three of these, only he couldn’t do everything instantaneously.  He could perform any feat only it would take him longer than God.

Bill Murray says to Andy McDowell, “Well maybe the *real* God uses tricks, you know? Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around so long he knows everything?”[1]

I would have thought that Murray had listened to van Inwagen’s lecture I had heard in Oxford in, though he wasn’t there.  I didn’t have the audacity to object to van Inwagen’s lecture, but I was one of those who was convinced that this sort of analytic philosophy was incapable of discussing God seriously.  Murray, on the other hand, or his script writers seem to have thought of this idea earlier.  “Groundhog Day” came out in 1993.  Van Inwagen gave his lecture in Oxford at the British Society for Philosophy of Religion conference in 2007.  It’s possible that van Inwagen had written about schmod earlier.  It seems he mentioned him in an article which was incorporated in an anthology of his articles in 1995.[2]

Probably what all this proves is that some philosophy major found a job as a screen writer in California… It’s better than “Do you want fries with that?”

---

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/quotes Accessed 13 Feb 2013

^[2] Peter van Inwagen, God Knowledge & and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1995 

Of Super Bowls Past and Present

Terry Bradshaw still maligned

Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers are tied with four Super Bowl wins each.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Quarterback_with_most_Super_Bowl_wins

Accessed Feb 5, 2013

Bradshaw “played 14 seasons with Pittsburgh, won four Super Bowl titles in a six-year period (1975,1976, 1979, and 1980), becoming the first quarterback to win three and four Super Bowls, and led the Steelers to eight AFC Central championships.”  He also called his own plays. Source - His wiki

Yet Bradshaw doesn’t make the top ten quarterbacks.  Why?  Is it still that sports writers just don’t like him?  Arguably he should be ranked above many who had only one or two Super Bowls to their credit.  It shouldn’t be a popularity contest.  It should be argued on some basis of their performance, of which winning Super Bowls is what matters (in my humble opinion).  Performing when it matters is what sports is all about, not merely putting up impressive statistics.

A blog from the Denver Post [Now who would they root for?] “Ranking the NFL’s top quarterbacks of all-time: Montana vs. Elway” rates the top quarterbacks of all time as below. 

http://blogs.denverpost.com/broncos/2012/09/04/ranking-nfls-top-quarterbacks-alltime-montana-elway/15429/

Accessed Feb 5, 2013

[I have added comments of my own or from their Wikipedia articles.]

No. 1 Joe Montana 47 [votes] [I could argue Joe Montana with four Super Bowls is no more impressive than Bradshaw’s four, but OK, there are other factors than just winning Super Bowls.  Perhaps Joe was better… Sports writers think so…]

No 2. Elway 38 “led his teams to six AFC Championship Games and five Super Bowls, winning his last two.” His wiki

No. 3. Johnny Unitas … 34 [votes] [I won’t argue here]

No. 4. Peyton Manning … 30 [votes] “From 1998 to 2010, he led the Colts to eight (seven AFC South and one AFC East) division championships, two AFC championships, and to a Super Bowl championship (Super Bowl XLI).They won.” His wiki

No. 5. (tie) Tom Brady … 22 [votes] “In Brady's ten seasons as a starter, the Patriots have earned trips to the Super Bowl in five of them, winning three.” His wiki

No. 5. (tie) Otto Graham … 22 [votes] “taken the Browns to league championship games every year between 1946 and 1955, winning seven of them.” His wiki

No. 7. (tie) Roger Staubach … 17 [votes] “He led the Cowboys to victories in Super Bowl VI and Super Bowl XII.” His wiki

No. 7. (tie) Bart Starr … 17 [votes] “One Super Bowl II” His wiki

No. 9. Brett Favre … 12 [votes] “He has led teams to eight division championships …, five NFC Championship Games …, and two Super Bowl appearances (Super Bowl XXXI, Super Bowl XXXII), winning one (Super Bowl XXXI).”  His wiki

No. 10. Dan Marino … 11 [votes] “Despite never being on a Super Bowl-winning team, he is recognized as one of the greatest quarterbacks in American football history … Marino led the Dolphins to the playoffs ten times in his seventeen-season career.” His wiki

Terry Bradshaw 9 [votes]

Joe Namath  9 [votes]  “During his thirteen years in the AFL and NFL he played for three division champions (the 1968 and 1969 AFL East Champion Jets and the 1977 NFC West Champion Rams), earned one league championship (1968 AFL Championship), and one Super Bowl victory (Super Bowl III).” His wiki

Why do Peyton Manning, Bart Starr, Bret Favre and Dan Marino or even Roger Staubach deserve to be ahead of Bradshaw or even Broadway Joe Namath?  Are the sports writers voting too young to remember Bradshaw or are they old enough and still bear animus against him?

I watched Montana, Bradshaw and Staubach play.  Yes, Bradshaw wasn’t often particularly pretty to watch, but when he connected he beat these other two.

I argue that Bradshaw at least, and perhaps Namath, ought to be in that list of the top ten quarterbacks of all time.  I doubt Marino should. I’m not sure that Starr or Favre should.

And that friends, is of more importance to me than the last [yawn] Super Bowl. [Why did they turn the lights back on? ;-)]