Was Michael Jordan the GOAT?

June 5, 2024June 5, 2024 Rilaly3 Comments

“If you think Michael Jordan is the greatest NBA player of all time, by far, you’re probably between the ages of 40-60,” blared one reddit commenter.

Some call it recency bias, but seeing as how Jordan took his Bulls’ jersey off for the final time 25 years ago, we could say that the recency bias exists in the pro-Kobe, pro-LeBron arguments. I’d call the pro-Jordan argument a generational bias. The generational bias suggests that everything that happened before and after my prime is not as great as it was during this relative window. With all these biases rolling around in everyone’s, it’s almost impossible to arrive at a final objective answer.

Some might also argue that the most instrumental bias in such arguments is the emotional bias. Those of the 40-60 demographic cheered harder for and against Jordan than later generations did Kobe and LeBron. That’s an almost impossible argument to debate, of course, as it’s all relative, but we do have statistics to argue and counter. That’s still impossible to argue, as Mark Twain once said, “There’s lies, damned lies and statistics.” It’s true, both teams can argue their statistics in the Jordan v LeBron argument, but there are stats and there are advanced metrics. Before we get into that argument, however, we must discount longevity, games started and played, and minutes, as LeBron entered the NBA straight out of high school, and Jordan played three years in college. Longevity and games played are valuable stats in our determination, but LeBron never retired, and Jordan did three times. LeBron obviously wins all of these categories.

The advanced stats dig deep into actual games played, and they include value over replacement statistics, player efficiency rating, and fifteen other advanced statistics of the players’ respective careers that favor Michael Jordan 9-6, by category, in the regular season and LeBron James wins these metrics 9-8 in the postseason metrics. LeBron beats Jordan by a substantial number in win share, or the total number of wins contributed by a player, in both regular season and playoffs, which is surprising, but Jordan barely beats him in a majority of the regular season categories. It’s also surprising to see that the deep metrics in the postseason favor LeBron, as I would’ve guessed that would’ve been flipped. Big Game Mike, to my mind, took his game up to stratospheric, untouchable levels in the postseason. LeBron was better. If postseason is far more important than regular season stats, and an overwhelming number of people agree this is the case, LeBron actually has a slight advantage in most cases against Jordan.

Another publication used a more comprehensive approach, regular season and postseason combined, with advanced stats compiled by various publication. Their categorical verdict: dead even.

In the Clutch

Whenever Kobe or LeBron missed, and misses, a clutch playoff shot, some of us hit that “He’s not Jordan!” button. We don’t even consider that a bias at this point. It happened. We don’t remember Jordan ever missing a clutch playoff shot, but we do remember the many misses by Kobe and LeBron. The Bleacher Report developed a very simple formula for a definition of clutch shots in the playoffs. “Playoff games only (no regular season), go ahead or game-tying shot attempts (free throws, turnovers, and the like were ignored, [and the shot attempt had to occur in the]) final 24 seconds or he fourth quarter or overtime.” Within the constraints of this definition of playoff clutch shots, Jordan, they found, was 9-18 in clutch, playoff attempts, for “an astounding” 50% clip. LeBron is 7-16 for a 43.8% rate. (Not Jordan, but it was a lot closer than some of us remember.) Kobe was 7-25 for a 28% (or 5-17 for a 29.4% in the chart they provided).

Player	Makes	Attempts	FG%
Michael Jordan	9	18	50
LeBron James	7	16	43.8
Kevin Durant	5	12	41.7
Dirk Nowitzki	5	12	41.7
Kobe Bryant	5	17	29.4

Microsoft’s Co-Pilot program lists the following clutch field goal percentages for NBA greats in the playoffs. Jordan 45%, Kobe 41%, Bird 40%, Lillard 42%, Wade 42%, and Horry, LeBron, Magic were all at 40%. So, although, Jordan leads the pack, it’s not by as much as the 40-60 aged demographic remembers.

One contrarian argument I read online, states that the disparity between the elite talent and average player the 90s and the 2020s, favors the 2020s. They argue that the worst teams of the 90s were far worse than the worst teams of the 2020s. They argue that “There’s no question that the average player is more skilled today than in the 90’s.” They also write that The Chicago Bulls were able to achieve total dominance of the regular season thanks to expansion and a difference in defense rules. Another decent argument I’ve heard is that no one in the NBA, prior to Mike, had the marketing and promotion packages that he would receive.

In terms of marketing alone, I won’t even hear arguments about Bill Russell, Wilt, Kareem, or Dr. J. The only NBA marketing argument that comes close to that which Jordan received was Bird v Magic. If Bird v Magic saved the NBA, on a national level, however, Michael Jordan took it to the worldwide stage. Larry Bird was allergic to the press, and he only gave interviews begrudgingly, so that leaves the media-friendly smile and laughter of Magic Johnson. He was a hero to many, but his media attention paled in comparison to the worldwide, superstar treatment afforded Jordan. Kobe and LeBron later had a taste of it, of course, as they were the best players of their era, but they could never escape the cloud of “the chosen one”. The implicit statement is that Kobe and LeBron may have been as good, or better, than Jordan, but the 40-60 demo wouldn’t allow anyone to flirt with that notion. As a person who doesn’t follow the intricacies of the league, I must concede to the argument that part of Jordan’s impenetrable image as the GOAT revolves around how much the media adored him. The only marketing push that could come close to Michael Jordan was that of the “King of pop” Michael Jackson.

The Competition

To get to the core of this particular argument, we must dismiss the regular season records and the stats they achieved against average players. Even playoff teams have average, role players in every lineup, but if we were to stack the elite teams of each era against each other, let’s go seven deep on the various rosters, how would the late-80s, 90s Bulls, Pistons, Knicks, Jazz, Rockets, Sonics, do against the 2000s Spurs, the Shaq, Kobe Lakers, or the 2010s Warriors, Heat, Celtics and Lakers?

If we could somehow move the Jordans’ Bulls forward a decade or three, how do they fare against the elite teams of latter decades? First question, whose rules do they play under? Does Jordan operate better or worse in the wide-open rules of latter decades, or did the Warriors play an almost indefensible offense at their peak? On the flips side, if we could move the elite modern teams back, under the rules of yesteryear and Detroit’s “Jordan Rules” become “Kobe Rules” or “LeBron Rules”, do they overcome them in the manner Jordan eventually did? Would Tim Duncan, Ginobili, and Parker survive against Pat Riley’s brutal lane enforcement rules carried out by Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason and Xavier McDaniels? Do Jordan and the Bulls 4-2 Shaq and Kobe in championship series? If Jordan and LeBron play in the same era, does Jordan kill LeBron’s legacy the way he did so many others? As with just about every sport, it’s almost impossible to compare eras. The game changes, evolves, and adapts with rule changes. The brutal nature of the game in which no one was allowed a layup, became a wide-open, almost 3-point dependent game.

Focusing on the elite level alone, one reddit writer submits that: “There’s no evidence to support [the idea] that the [elite] players from the 90s are any better or worse than the [elite] players of today. In 632 games, Jordan never lost three games in a row, went 27-1 in playoff series [during that span], won three consecutive championships twice, 10 scoring titles, nine 1^st-team all-defense awards. Led the league in steals 3 times, was the first player to ever record 200 steals and 100 blocks in one season and he did it twice [This stat, some would argue is timeless]. Won 14 MVPs (6 Finals, 5 regular seasons, 3 All Star game) plus 2 dunk contest championships. [He] was outscored once in 37 playoff series (in 1985 Terry Cummings outscored MJ by 1 point in the first-round series, 118-117), and [he] is 1st all-time in the number of times a player averaged 40 or more points in a playoff series. He did it 5 times and there’s a 4-way tie for 2nd place who have all done it [once]. [Jordan] also has outscored 982 out of 983 total opponents in career head2head match ups. (Alan Iverson being the only player ever by avg 27.1ppg in 7 games vs MJ who avg 24.4ppg). And this was all in 12 full regular seasons and 13 playoff appearances (15 active seasons). It’s basketballs greatest resume by a mile and those who weren’t there to see it do not want to believe it so, that’s why the 90s era gets no respect.”

The reddit user ends with a compelling argument. Most of the argument centers on the idea that we, the 40-60 demo, suffer from a number of biases, but the same could be said of those in the generation where Michael Jordan officially became a grandfather. If all you know of Michael Jordan are the YouTube videos, the “If I could be like Mike” commercials, the idea that Jordan was the GOAT might sound like “The Three Stooges were the greatest comedians of all time” or “The Andy Griffith Show was a greater sitcom than Seinfeld” arguments did to us. Unlike Curly or Barney Fife, most of Jordan’s exploits occurred between the highlights, on nights when it seemed like he couldn’t seem to miss midrange shots that only counted for two points. These weren’t the dramatic shots that we see on YouTube, but they don’t show what those in the 40-60 demo know.

The 90s Knicks

The best team the Bulls beat during this era would have to be the New York Knicks. Those Knicks 90s rosters may have been the best assemblage of NBA talent to never win an NBA Championship Ring. During Patrick Ewing’s run with the Knicks, they had John Starks, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason, Xavier McDaniel, Greg Anthony, Gerald Wilkins, Derek Harper, Doc Rivers, Charles Smith, Mo Cheeks, Bill Cartwright, Bernard King, Hubert Davis, and the later rosters included Larry Johnson, Allan Houston, Marcus Camby, Anthony Bowie, and Latrell Sprewell, and they never won a ring.

Jordan and the Knicks faced each other five times, in this era of their respective primes, and Jordan and the Bulls went 5-0 in those matchups. If the reader doesn’t consider that record eye-popping, go read Blood in the Garden to get a grasp on how talented those Knicks’ teams were.

Jordan retired (the first time) to play baseball? and Ewing and the Knicks lost to Hakeem Olajuwon’s Rockets then Reggie Miller’s Pacers. Jordan retires again, and the Knicks lose to Tim Duncan, David Robinson, and the Spurs. I still cannot believe Patrick Ewing, and his Knicks’ teams never won a ring.

The Late 80’s Early 90’s Pistons

The late 80s/early 90s Pistons’ run was not near as lengthy as the Knicks’, but they packed a whole lot of winning in that shorter time frame. Some rightly blame the talent around Jordan, but the Pistons beat Jordan and the Bulls in three straight playoff series from 1987-1990.

We can all admit to some type of bias in these never-ending arguments, but those of us in the 40-60 demographic will never be able to get passed “The Run”. When Jordan and the Bulls finally found a way to beat the Pistons, no team could stop them. They won six championships in a row (not counting the retirement years), and no one, outside the 60s Celtics, have been able to match such a run. Those of us in this demo will listen to arguments about stats and advanced metrics that suggest the argument between LeBron and Michael is a lot closer that we thought, and we might even entertain the idea that on many of those scales, especially in the postseason, LeBron was statistically better, but LeBron was never able to amass anything equivalent to “The Run” of six championships in a row (not counting retirement).

If Michael Jordan never existed, how many rings would Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Clyde Drexler, and Malone and Stockton have? How many more would Magic, Bird, and Isiah have? How many different legacies would have been cemented with a ring, if he never existed? There’s a reason they call Michael Jordan the legacy killer.

The counter argument might be, that if Michael Jordan had to compete against “The virtually unstoppable” David Robinson, Tim Duncan combo, the Kobe, Shaq combo, the LeBron, Kyrie combo, or Steph Curry and the Warriors ability to shoot the ball from outside the arena, he might not have had such an almost unprecedented run. Before we strip Jordan of his crown, however, we do need to go back those names of elite, hall of fame names from the era’s elite teams of its own “virtually unstoppable” combos and elite talent that Jordan and the Bulls defeated. Our conclusion matches that of the Reddit use who claimed: “There’s no evidence to support [the idea] that the [elite] players from the 90s are any better or worse than the [elite] players of today.”

Of all the biases involved in these arguments, the toughest to overcome is the emotional one. We can all argue our generational biases, as we all deem the best players of “our” era as the best to ever play the game. Others, from other eras, might argue that Bill Russell, Wilt, Dr. J, Pistol Pete, Oscar Robertson, Kareem, Magic and Bird, Isiah, Tim Duncan, Kobe, LeBron, Steph Curry, and Nikola Jokic were/are better, but these arguments focus on tangible elements of the game. No NBA player I’ve witnessed, in my life (and I admit to many biases to arrive at this conclusion), has combined elite talent with elite levels of doing anything and everything he had to to win better than Michael Jordan. His own teammates talk about how vicious and downright mean he could be to them during practice. He played psychological games with them, his opponents, and himself in order to gain some kind of edge for that series, or that night, for one win in a series. On some level, we have to throw the idea of biases and metrics out the window and put ourselves in Michael Jordan’s shoes. He had all the money in the world, he couldn’t leave his hotel room in most countries around the world, because of his fame, and he had every creature comfort a human being could dream up, but when one of his teams needed a win, he almost always came through in the final six years of his career as a Bull (the one series loss to the Shaq, Penny Hardaway-led Magic being the sole exception). Five of the six championships, during his much talked about run, were 4-2, six game wins. Each of them required him to dig deep to help his team find some way to overcome his opponent, and I’ve never seen another player will his team to win as often, or with as much consistency, as the greatest basketball player who ever lived, Michael Jordan.

Expecting the Expected

June 4, 2024June 6, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“Comedy is the imitation of the worst kind of men,” –Aristotle

“Dark humor is like food—not everybody gets it!” Josef Stalin

I was waiting on a friend who would never show when Marilyn Dartman sat down next to me. I spent the last half-hour looking back at the door whenever someone entered, when she sidled up next to me in an aged sports bar that the owner hadn’t renovated in twenty years. It happened so many times before, that I had the old ‘shame on me’ dunce cap on for expecting that this time would be different.

I don’t care how angry, bitter, resentful and just plain fed up I get here, the friend who wouldn’t show wasn’t an awful person. Was he inconsiderate, sure. Did he abandon me the second a hint of something better, more enjoyable, and just plain fun arose. He did, I’ll admit that, but he wasn’t rude. He was inconsiderate, unless the considerations involved himself. What’s the difference? I wondered sipping slow on a dark, stout beer. The difference is that he’s one of the expected, and I am the type that is always left expecting him to show up. I play the Charlie Brown character in this production, always running up to the football, expecting Lucy to continue to hold it, every single time, until you can’t bear to read any further.

While sipping on that delicious brew, I thought about the few times in my life where I was expected to show up. They made plans, and those plans involved others, but they made it clear that they expected me to be one of the ones who showed up.

“Are you going to be there?” they asked with a small amount of plea in their voice. It felt odd being on the other side of this paradigm, and I assured them that I would be there. Throughout the course of that day, some double-checked, some even triple-check. Even though those triple-checks sounded cringey desperate, I understood. I’ve been there.

“I want to assure you that I would never do that to another person,” I said when they double-checked me, “because I’ve been on the other side of this so often that I could write an article on it.”

I’ve been the pre-teen soccer player expecting that the set of headlights that washed over me were from my father’s car, bringing a merciful end to me sitting there in the dark all by myself for nearly an hour. I’ve worn that expectant smile when the sounds of the bar or restaurant’s swinging door cue another’s entrance, only to see a foreign shape fill that space. I know how that expectant smile dissipates when the laughing, fun shapes fill that entrance. I know the sense of vulnerability that drives another to the proactive measure of triple-checking, and I know what it feels to sit there so long that I vow, once again, to never put myself in such a vulnerable position of counting on anyone for anything ever again. As deeply entrenched as those feelings of resentment are, I would never reveal them by triple-checking.

“I’d never do that to another,” I say to try to put an end to what I considered the painful revelations inherent in their triple-checking. “I’d never damage the expecting the way they’ve damaged me.”

How does a friend blowing off another at a bar do so much damage? I consider the general practice of no-showing abhorrent regardless the circumstances, but if I were to dig deep, I’m sure we’d find some pre-existing conditions that lead me to such straits, and my guess is that it’s this congealed ball of so many flavors that it’s impossible to nail one. It’s probably so deep-seated that it would take deep, intrusive therapy to fully define, but most of us are not so damaged by such matters that we seek therapy.

“Sorry, I forgot,” is what the expected say the day after pulling a no-show, when they’re not lying or providing an excuse. The excuse I heard most often from this friend who would never show was that needed to spend time with his son. Who can argue against that, and how do we verify it? Years later, I found out he reversed this lie to his kid, telling him that he was hanging out with me on the nights in question. (On an illustrative side note, his kid, now a grown adult, still resents me for taking so much quality time away from he and his dad.)

“That’s fine,” we say after they apologize. It’s not fine but it feels odd, petty, and even a little dramatic for a grown man to say something like, ‘No, you know what, it’s actually not fine. You left me sitting there by myself, feeling like a fool, staring back at that ever-swinging door, thinking it might be you.’ We also know that it won’t prevent future incidents, and we know that holding onto that anger and resentment won’t do anything either, so we just say, “It’s fine.” If anyone else can call them out like that, I applaud them for being honest to the point of revealing how vulnerable they felt, but I just don’t do vulnerable well. I’ve also learned how skilled, and some might say artful, others can be when diminishing and dismissing another’s pain.

It was in that void that a woman named Marilyn Dartman stepped.

“I’ll buy the next round for you for … your soul,” Marilyn Dartman said, stepping into this tangled web. She said it over my shoulder, with as much baritone as she could muster. She then extended a hand. “Marilyn Dartman,” she said. “May I sit next to you.”

I was in no mood for humor, but Marilyn sold that line so well, and she was so serious, that I burst out laughing. “Has that ever worked before, Marilyn Dartman?” I asked shaking her hand and inviting her to sit.

“Actually it did, yeah, it did sort of … on me,” she admitted, sliding into the seat diagonally. “I sold my soul to the devil a decade ago.” She stopped to mentally count, “Yeah, it was almost a decade anyway. I was all young and stupid, and I thought Beelzebub might be able to make me the greatest writer who ever lived. I’ll take the ‘L’ for it, my bad, but I thought I was so close to becoming the greatest writer who ever lived that I thought if anyone could put me over the top, it was Beelzebub. I now chalk it up to youthful exuberance, or naïveté, but if you’d ever read anything I’ve written since, I think you’d agree I got screwed.”

“I’m sure you’re not that bad,” I said.

“Well, I’m not that great either,” she said, “which is kind of the point.”

I enjoyed this beyond it being such a wonderful distraction from all my sulking, so I bit, “I’ve seen the movies and read the literature, but what are the procedures, or the process you have to go through to get Satan to grant you your wishes?”

“I did research on the best way to do it, but I don’t even remember where I read that to do it right you need to fly down to the corner of highway 61 and highway 49, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, but that’s what I did.”

“Robert Johnson,” I said. “Old blues singer, allegedly sold his soul on that corner.”

“That’s it. That’s the name everyone dropped on Reddit,” she said. “It’s so plain that it’s almost hard to remember some of the times. Other people, in line, mentioned the group Led Zeppelin, and some other guys named Niccolo Paganini, and Bill Murray who sold their souls, and we thought if he could do it for them, he might be able to spin some of his black magic on us.”

“You said we,” I said. “There were other people selling their souls?”

“Oh my gosh, how about lines were around the block,” Marilyn said. “Had I not flown on such a limited round-trip and paid for a one-night stay, I would’ve turned around and come back another day when the lines weren’t so long. It was so ridiculous that Satan’s minions eventually installed a self-checkout aisle.”

“C’mon,” I said. “You had me till that. I can’t believe that they addressed customer complaints-”

“Believe what you want,” Marilyn said. “Someone in line said, and I quote, ‘it’s just good business, and they received a ton of complaints.’ Believe what you want though.”

“After standing in line for so long, I’ve since found that if you know what you’re doing, you can sell your soul to the devil from the comfort of your own bedroom, or you can find local chapters, or whatever, but I didn’t know any of that back then, and I was so dying to be a great writer that I would’ve done whatever it took, and I would’ve flown wherever just to get it done.”

“Did you get out of it?”

“Out of Satan owning my soul?” she said. “I did eventually. I told one of his minions, in his customer relations department that if Satan didn’t release me from my contractual obligations, I would accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior, and I’d go about saving all kinds of souls with my story of redemption. His minion says, but you don’t believe, and I said, and you’re going to love this, I said, ‘Does the car salesman really believe that the Smart Fortwo is the best car on his lot?’ I was so proud of that comeback, which I thought of on the spur of the moment, that I don’t remember much of what he said after that, but a week later one of his minions calls me back and says, ‘Satan says fine, he knows you’re coming to him anyway.’”

“That is such a bunch of …” I said, “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m not, unfortunately,” Marilyn said. “I wish I was. It was pretty dumb.”

“Because from what I’ve heard you can never get it back, or, at the very least, that it’s harder than you’re making it sound.”

“I’m condensing bit time, here,” Marilyn said. “After I submitted my request to his council, I had to go through all of the displays of the powers he uses to scare people. He put on a big show of letting me know his presence, with the theatrical opening and closings of doors, rocking chairs moving, and he even possessed my favorite aunt for a time. I wasn’t buying any of it. I knew he was just trying to scare me, but I didn’t fall for it. I laughed at it as a matter of fact, until he released me.”

“That is quite a tale Miss Marilyn Dartman,” I said. “Quite a tale.”

“And it happened,” she said in closing story mode. “It all happened. So, what are you doing here all by yourself anyway? I’ve never seen you here before.”

“It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that I don’t pick my friends very well,” I told her. I proceeded to tell her some of my tale, leaving out the vulnerable elements of course. I also told her the theories I developed, while sitting there for a half-hour, about the differences between the expected and the expecting.

And then, as if to prove to me that she was not one of the vulnerable, expecting types, Marilyn told me how she ghosted one of her friends, a woman named Andi, at a restaurant.

“She called me and asked if I wanted to meet for lunch at this place she really wanted to try,” Marilyn said. “I was hesitant, but I eventually said yes. She broke me down, made me feel guilty, and all that. I wasn’t into it then, and I really wasn’t into it when that afternoon rolled around. I just wasn’t in restaurant mode, if you follow.”

It wasn’t a test, and I looked for it. I scoured her face to see if she was somehow testing me, but it wasn’t there. It was impossible to know for sure, it still is, but I wondered if this was a simple case of me bringing up a subject that reminded her of a story from her life. I still wonder, to this day, if it was equivalent to the almost impulsive reaction some have to our warning not to touch that one very specific subject that bothers us most. If we tell people that we’re sensitive about lions, just to randomly pick a subject to set a premise, and we tell them that we’ll entertain stories about any animal in the animal kingdom, except lions, what do you think their first joke will be about? Lions, of course. It’s just what some types do, and I’ve met such a wide variety of those types. It’s almost equivalent to that wound you have in your mouth that you can’t stop licking, even though you know it will only make it worse. Except this is another person’s wound, and they can’t help but lick it with their infected tongues.

Even though Marilyn, and all her stories, proved a more than sufficient distraction from my feelings of anger and resentment, I was still in a particularly vulnerable mode, but I don’t get squishy and sad when I’m vulnerable. I grow resentful and even angry.

“When did you decide you wouldn’t be going to this restaurant with Andi?” I asked. I interrupted Marilyn after she started in on another subject. Her no-show at a restaurant tale was so meaningless to her that she tossed it out as if it were nothing more than another tale from her life, and she started in on another subject before I would bring her back. Her reaction was equivalent to ‘Hey, I’ve done that whole no-show thing to someone too, but what do you think of this weather, huh?’

“As I said, I wasn’t really into her whole luncheon plans to begin with,” Marilyn said with an almost playful smile, “but Andi sounded so needy that I just couldn’t say no. It was one of those moments we all have. When that afternoon rolled around, it was a weekend afternoon that followed such a rough week at work, and I just wanted to veg. I was so far away from restaurant mode that I just said nah.”

“The point I’m trying to get here is did you tell her, this Andi, any of your feelings of nah at the time, at any time, before the fact?” She said she didn’t. “Did you, at any point, text her to let her know that you wouldn’t be there?” The answers to all of the above were no, followed by detailed explanations of the rough week she had at work, which led me to ask, “So, you just decided to leave your good friend sitting all alone in the restaurant?” Yes. Marilyn didn’t actually say the word yes, but it was pretty obvious, at this point, that a lack of no was tantamount to a confession.

At this point, it is safe to say that Marilyn and I were no longer hitting it off. She was giving me that scrunched up, “Move on!” look. Her no-show was so meaningless to her that she was trying to convince me that it should be just as meaningless to me. I mentally said, ‘Nah!’ My three progressive questions led to some silent tension between us. I didn’t care. I didn’t seek more information to make her feel bad, I wanted the mentality of the expected explained, framed, and enshrined in my head to help me try to see another side to it.

Marilyn said a whole lot of things to plead her case. She brought up things Andi did to her in the past, and those things were so meaningless and unrelated that it was pretty obvious that she was searching for circumstantial evidence to prove her case. She was no longer interested in me in anyway at this point, but she felt a need to clear her name. Marilyn was no different than any of us, and our need to prove that we are the good guys in our scenarios in life. Marilyn Dartman wanted her ‘good guy’ crown back.

“So, these things she did to you,” I said. “What you did, by ghosting her at a restaurant, leaving her to tell the wait staff to wait another couple of minutes, until she felt so foolish she either left or ate alone? This was your retribution?”

“Yes,” she said without conviction. “I mean, no, but she’s no angel. Let me tell you that much. If you’re trying to say that she never did anything to me you’re wrong.” She then went on a rant, continuing to talk about Andi, and all of her faults.

Our conversation did not progress beyond this point. It was the contextual equivalent of yes huh and nuh uh that often concluded with me saying, “I still think it was wrong.” The only notable element of this part of the conversation was our tone, as it progressed from conversational to the two of us trying to speak over one another to the point of almost yelling.

“I don’t need this,” she said to put an end to it. “What is wrong with you anyway? I sat down here to have a drink, and a decent conversation, and you’re all like … uh.” She made some kind of expression here to suggest I was badgering her, and making her feel bad about herself.

I knew this was the point of no return, and I knew she would be leaving in seconds, so I just launched: “I just don’t know why you people don’t just say no. That’s really the part I just don’t get. Would you like to hang out with me tonight? No. Now I might ask why, but all you have to say is I think you’re kind of boring, or you’re so boring that I cannot bear spending another hour with you. Or, I want to hang out with Steve, because he’s so much more fun. You know what I say? I say fine and dandy, because no is better than a no show. No leaves me wondering why, but I get over it just as quick. No-show leaves me in a bar, by myself, looking back at the door, like a damned fool. What’s wrong with me, you ask. I ask, what’s wrong with you? Why would you do that to another person, anyone, much less a friend, or a best friend?

“If your plans change, or you fall out of restaurant mode,” I continued, speaking over her. “Why don’t you pick up the phone and push a couple buttons that say, ‘I’ve decided I don’t want to go.’ Why, who cares, thanks for telling me bud, because I’d rather you text me that you’ve decided you don’t want to hang out with me, because I’m boring, that someone else is more fun, my breath smells like European cheese, or you’ve decided not be friends with me anymore, because you’re starting to consider me an unpleasant and smelly orifice on the human body. Would it hurt, sure, but it’s all better than leaving me sitting in a bar or restaurant, all by myself, looking at the door, feeling like an absolute fool for believing, once again, that you’re a good friend.”

“There is something wrong with this guy,” Marilyn said to the few patrons in the bar, to try to drive some kind of dagger home. “There is something so wrong with you that I don’t want to know anything more about,” she added picking up her drink and her drink napkin. She appeared all ready to march away, but she turned back, “I’m a good person, and you don’t know me. There’s something so deeply wrong with you that you’d say such things to a complete stranger. You don’t know me, and how dare you?”

Marilyn Dartman did not appear tears. It was all anger, disgust, or righteous indignation that drove her to sit in the opposite corner of the bar. The fella she sat next to in that dark corner gave me a look, nothing on it, just a look. I turned back to my beer, took a drink, and began watching the hockey match on the television set.

I’ve since told this tale to a wide range of people, and the reactions were mixed. Mixed. I didn’t bother keeping a ledger on their reactions, but they were about 50/50. I did everything I could to tell this interaction as objectively as possible to try to get true reactions. I included the stories Marilyn told me about Andi, and any information I could to support Marilyn’s cause, because I wanted an objective answer for what I considered a bullet proof case. Even though I didn’t think much of what she added, I tried hard to remove any tones to her story to seduce my listeners to my side. The 50/50 reactions shocked me. How could anyone agree with Marilyn? Some agreed agreed with me, but the others shocked me by saying, in various ways, that I was wrong. Some said I was harsh, and I admit that there were some time and place emotions that drove my spirit. Others said I was just wrong for calling out a complete stranger without knowing all the facts, and they admitted that aggressively saying such things to a woman prejudiced their opinions. “A man should never say such things to a woman,” they said, “and if you were near-yelling that’s just beyond the pale, and it’s just not something a man should ever do to a woman.” Still others said it was none of my business how anyone chooses to conduct their personal affairs. If her friend was upset by the matter that’s between Marilyn and Andi, and I had no business subjecting my views on her.

“Ok, fair enough,” I said, “but isn’t it about respect, or even basic human decency? If I say I’m going to meet someone at 7:00, I usually show up at about 6:50. That’s me. I understand not everyone abides by my self-imposed edicts, but a complete no-show? If you’re fifteen minutes late, I consider that a subtle show of disrespect, but it’s so negligible that I won’t remember it two minutes later. Thirty minutes doubles the disrespect, but a complete no-show, that’s when we move into the uncharted waters of basic human decency.”

Did I lay it on a bit thick? Probably, especially to a woman. As for all the other arguments, I just think I value friendship far more than most, and I now know how that puts me on the weak end of those relationships. There is this sense they must have that because I’ve always been there, I’ll always be there, and that leads them to value our friendship less. They don’t expect more, because they’ve never put that much thought into it. You’re a friend not a lover, so why should they bend over backwards to make it work? Then, after you’ve finally had enough, and you unceremoniously end that friendship, because you know they won’t show up, and you get back together with them, after ten years apart, you might expect some sort of nostalgic apology for all the violations of the conditional tenets of your friendship, but you find yourself left expecting, because they aren’t really that big on nostalgia.

The Wars of the Wonderful

May 16, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald an excerpt from The Crack Up.

Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s (AKA F. Scott Fitzgerald) quote isn’t just wonderful, it’s the product of multiplying wonderful sentiments. Wonderful writers don’t write these things to us. It’s a competition among their peers to be crowned “Most wonderful”.

We saw this in high school, during the “Mr. Wonderful” pageants, that the rest of us called drinking parties, in which the jocks would try to impress upon the available women at the party the idea that not your typical dumb jock. Their comments are just as general, and just as uninformed, but everyone who hears them considers them brave for saying, “What everyone else is afraid to say.” They praise them for their “ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, because … at least they had the courage to say it.” Say what, we ask. No one knows, and no ones cares. It’s more important that they said it than what they actually said.

In one of these pageants, a 2016 awards show, a star declared, “The world is B.S.!” If one definition of B.S. is nonsense and the other is a more direct definition of fraudulent, or inept behavior, I wondered if the star was attempting to pit these definitions against each other. Her argument was either the most ingenious I’ve ever heard or the dumbest. We’ve all heard stars say things about the treatment of people at awards shows, and it might be unfair to pick on this one, but was she more informed and determined to make them otherwise, or was she just saying it to say something important. Even though stars are generally as uninformed as everyone else, they’re usually more pointed and specific with their concerns. This star proclaimed that our entire planet is not doing things the way she would proscribe for it to “un-B.S.” itself. To be clear, she didn’t say B.S., she used the humdinger, one of the real naughty words, to provocatively say that inhabitants of earth aren’t doing things right.

Some reviewers viewed her statement as “a controversial one from a strong woman,” “valuable,” and “it still resonates!” Reviewers then interpreted her open-ended comment in long form. “What she was trying to say was …” which often leads to them clarifying her comments in a way that says more about the clarifier than the actual author of the quote. If someone said that the inhabitants of the world are BS, we can assume that it bothered everyone from her intended targets to the ones with whom she presumably pledges allegiance, but the old adage applies here. If she offended everyone with her statement, she offended no one, because we all know she was talking about some other side. If she was talking about the planet, we also have to wonder how many species, plant or animal, she offended.

“Are you talking about us?” the Jade Plant, otherwise known as the Crassula Ovate, probably asked. She may have even offended the macaw, who were in the process of making some really powerful changes in their infrastructure to provide a better world for their fledglings. Like most Hollywood stars, macaws don’t offer a solution, because they don’t have any. They just repeat what they’ve told.

If I wrote, “The world is hopeless,” or “The world sucks!” and “We should try to fix it” right here, how would you reply?

“What did you just say? We should try to…what were the words you used again, fix it? Has anyone ever considered that before?”

If the world is broken, and we imply that someone fix it, in the most general way possible, shouldn’t we try to figure out who broke it first and how? If we don’t, what good are the fixes? The problem with attempting to properly source a problem is that proper investigations can end up demonizing the wrong people, the people who had the best intentions, and the methods they used that ended up leading to greater corruption and devastation. It’s best to keep our complaints general to keep the focus on those complaining, because complaining is provocative and beneficial. The nature of proposing solutions, however, can prove messy and loaded with unintended casualties through friendly fire. Proposing generic solutions can also make us feel better, but does it do anybody any good, and will our solutions eventually prove worse than the problems? The big problem with most proposed solutions is they don’t try to source the problem first, and they often make none of the people happy none of the times.

Sending money, blindly, is the best way we’ve found to mollify all parties concerned. Money does not blame, it only helps, unless that money is stolen by the bad guys who tend to use all that well-meaning to further their goals.

The peacocks and penguins hold charities, galas, and other fundraisers, and when the banquet employees begin tearing the façades down, everyone knows who gave what. Donations have a bad tendency to leak, to clarify the line between charity and publicity. Wonderful people don’t talk about the source of the problem, because no one really knows what it is. If we do find out, and we openly address it, we unwittingly reveal some vulnerabilities in our character. Then when we send money to fix the problem, and the problem gets worse, the recipients of our charity direct their ire at those who report that the problem is now worse.

I’m not going to pretend that I know how to fix the world’s problems, who would? Answer, those who play dress up and pretend. “But they’re using their platform to bring attention to a cause.” True, but let’s go back to the wonderful people in the jock world. They want to prove that they’re not as dumb as everyone thinks. They have important ideas they learned at a cocktail party, and they’re not afraid to share it in a “something meaningful, important and controversial” college party where everyone is drunk, because it does wonders for their public relations scores. So, they play dress up and use their platform to address problems of the world, of which they know little-to-nothing. They just provide such in-depth analysis as “The world is B.S.!” or “One should be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

Other pretend people, leaders of local, special interest groups, then tell us that wonderful people shouldn’t try to solve their problems. It does no good, they say, to involve ourselves in their problems, because we don’t understand all the complexities involved. They then mock those who do try by saying that they’re trying to save people, and they say that word in the most condescending manner possible.

I don’t know when genuinely trying to save other people in anyway we can became a bad thing. They talk about it as a savior’s mentality, and I can discern some meaning when it comes to movies, books, or other entertainment venues, but when an individual does whatever they can to help another person, why is that a bad thing? I’m not sure if this new method of assassinating another’s motives and character is to further promote guilt, or if they want to encourage blind giving, but the driving force for criticizing those who try to help others genuinely confuses me.

They say that not only do they not want us to save them, but they don’t need it. I have no problem with someone saying, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ because I don’t, but if someone tells me to send money, back away, and shut up, and let me handle it, I can’t help but think they’re suggesting we avoid investigating their results or holding them accountable for their actions. I also have no problem with someone saying, “I’m on the ground. You’re not. You don’t understand the depth of the problem as well as I do.” Because, again, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I guess you’re going to have to define involvement for me. At some point they’ll drop an “It’s complicated” on us. It’s not complicated, if you sincerely don’t want us to help you, and you just want us to blindly give, you do what you do to help your fellow man, and we’ll monitor, investigate, and we’ll hold you accountable if you can’t or won’t fix the problem. “Ok, but be forewarned, you could make matters worse.”

Most wonderful people have the typical bad guys in mind when they talk about the problems of the world. If they dug deep, they might find that some of their guys are the source of the problem, so they don’t dig. They just proclaim that the world is full of problems, and we fawn. They don’t want to play the blame game, because, at this point (the point of obfuscation and diversion), who cares who caused the problem, let’s just fix it. Let’s not fight and argue, let’s fix the problem. Ok, but if we don’t properly source a problem, from A to Z and back to B, we’ll just be papering over the problem with duct tape and chicken wire, so we can plant a “fixed” flag in it that will probably blow over if a wind over 20 mph hits it. Even if we can pinpoint the exact problem, and the solution is surprisingly simple, everyone tells us it’s so much more complicated than all that, and no matter how much money we send, it never gets fixed, and that might be one of the reasons why the world is B.S.