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What The Hell Is Going On In The World w/ Cliff Schecter
Messi is so damn good; Trump’s embarrassing behavior and mental mook-ery is just so painfully bad; And George Santos’ life continues on an ever-crashing trajectory of ugly.
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By Cliff Schecter
Cliff’s Note: All Good Things Must End, My Friends. Including Our Back-To-School 40% OFF SPECIAL. All Pay-Walled Content: Videos, Columns, Strategy Memos, Community Lives, Celeb Interviews From Hunter Biden To Heather Cox Richardson.
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THE GOOD: Lionel Messi
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As Lionel Messi announces his retirement from international soccer today, I feel so lucky to have gotten to see this legend play. He won’t do it for Argentina anymore, and we’ll have to see how much longer, at age 39, he decides to push himself in club play.
I took my then much younger son to see him at The Big House (shout out to David Shuster, Justin Wolfers and Brett Di Resta!) at the University of Michigan almost exactly 7 years ago. Barcelona came for a trip to the U.S. of A. to play against Napoli. We were excited so excited to go…and then Messi got injured, and didn’t play.
But…redemption! We got to Messi play vs our FCC Cincinnati warriors after he signed with Miami FC and came to town for the U.S. Open Cup Semifinal on August 23, 2023. Two assists and a PK kick goal that, sadly, secured the win for Miami in overtime. This included a play so classically Messi you felt like you could walk away having seen what you’d come to see—indeed had to see—to say you’d really seen the man play his game. In the 68th minute, trailing 2-0, Inter Miami got a free kick on the left side, a good bit outside the penalty box. Messi took the the kick, and didn’t put the ball where his teammate was, but exactly in the air in the middle of the box—where he was going to be. A precise, curling cross toward the middle of the penalty box, where striker Leonardo Campana met the ball in the air with his head to put it away. Painful for our team, but greatness.
For a brief moment in a life spent on this spinning beachball in space, we got to see greatness.
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THE BAD: DONALD TRUMP
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Folks, as Donald Trump raged against Canada today like an extra in a South Park flick or someone gurgling stupid like he was about to enter a triglyceride-induced coma, I came across a column I wrote about him 15 years ago. 15. God I wish I had been wrong… But the predictions, they were right on. Some nuggets:
‘Little Donnie Trump, the dumbest kid in the class.’ This only somewhat facetious refrain was proffered on a day when Trump had said something particularly insane, by a friend of my parents who attended school with The Donald when they were just boys.
Trump is a potential presidential candidate who has most recently hitched his hairpiece to Birtherism, or the slightly-less-clever-than-a-comb-over theory that President Obama only plays an American president on TV. In this fantasyland of conspiracy and fear of mind-control via fluorinated water, the president is the amazing beneficiary of the most prescient plot in human history – next to the invention of the hot dog centuries prior to the creation of baseball.
In Obama’s case, it involved the planting of a birth announcement in a Honolulu newspaper to hide his “Kenyaness” and falsely convert him into an American citizen. Because one day, he would inevitably want to be the first black president, and at that moment it sure would come in handy.
But wait, there’s more! I went on to tell you how he’d do it. Also, George Santos is back. Join us below the paywall for a Trump prediction I’m stunned I made (I’d forgotten), and where we won’t have George Santos to kick around anymore…
More from my take, circa 2011, on our sad sack, spittle-flecked, sponge-bellied shite-pants of a President…...
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