Myron Cope - Reflections

I've been around long enough to remember Myron Cope as an accomplished sports writer, which he was long before he started his broadcasting gig. His "schtick" as the color guy on Steeler radio broadcasts and his many activities related to that role, was amusing most of the time, but sometimes he made a complete fool of himself and I was embarassed for him. But he was smart and I thought he generally knew what he was talking about.
When he retired from broadcasting, he said he had told his good friend, Joe Gordon, to let him know if Joe ever thought he was "losing it." Joe told him he was, and Myron retired.
I and many others could also have told Myron he was losing it. His commentary during his last season with the Steelers was a mess. A few months after his retirement, when he was inducted into the broadcast Hall of Fame, his acceptance speech was rambling and incoherent. He had to be coaxed to leave the podium. It was sad. He had ceased to be Myron Cope.
So, here's the question - who are you when you're no longer you?
My mother stopped being her a long time before she died. She became some woman who used to be my mother, but who no longer knew me, who no longer talked to me and who no longer cared about me, or herself or anything else.
I guess its a good thing that the guy who used to be Myron Cope didn't live too long after he began to not be Myron Cope.

Left and Right

On the American political spectrum, I consider myself to be right of center. But, when I compare my thoughts with those espoused by the "true believers" who claim to form the base of the Republican Party, I'm a threat to our American way of life.

Abortion:
I think abortion is a sin; I don't think it ought to be a crime. The thought of rape victims, and women whose lives are at risk for going through with a pregnancy, and their doctors, going to jail for making a painful decision, is not acceptable to me. Maybe the government shouldn't be paying for abortions, but I'm not sure how we, as a nation put that into practice.

Immigration:
Our immigration system is broken, and we've got, by some estimates, 12 million people who are in this country without proper documentation. Without violating our national standards for the protection of human rights, I don't see how we even think about sending all of those people home without creating a huge, non-productive bureaucracy to deal with individual cases. And, we can't send them home without settling on what an enforceable immigration policy ought to look like.

Gun Control:
If you have to have a license to drive a car, why can't a license be required to own a gun? The Second Amendment argument is a red herring. Read in context, the protection of the right to bear arms is in relation to a "well regulated militia." If we decide, as a nation, to reasonably regulate firearms, we can limit ownership to members of the militia, and make all gun owners join-up. No one suggests that gun control would stop all gun violence, but can't we make it a little harder for someone like Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, to get his hands on an assault rifle?

I'm not sure how I'll vote in the next presidential election (although it for sure won't be for Hillary Clinton - that's a blog for another day). Everybody else in in the running for my vote.