Oh Balls!

Okay, so it has not been a stellar week for the Obama Administration. The President, facing an onslaught of criticism for previous remarks that Americans would not have to give up their health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act, realized that his well-intended remarks were not totally true. This week, he apologized to those Americans who have received cancellation notices from their carriers. There is some movement in Washington to tweak this latest glitch in the law (the website is still being worked on) but how much can we expect? After all, we’re dealing with the health insurance industry, which does not have the greatest track record when it comes to the concept of common sense.

Couple this crisis with Obama’s sinking poll numbers in the areas of the economy and immigration, and we can conclude that this was not his best week since taking office. Vice President Biden did not fare much better; he tried to make a well-intentioned phone call to congratulate the winner of the Boston mayoral race, but he called the wrong person. Biden placed a second congratulatory call and, yes, you guessed it, still reached the wrong person.

At this point, I feel compelled to remind all of the Obama haters who want to see the President out of office that Biden is one heartbeat away from occupying the Oval Office. And this is being said by someone who likes Biden.

I also feel compelled at this point to use a literary device known as misdirection, where criticism is deflected into another area and another crisis, real or imagined. With this in mind, my just left-of-center liberal sensibilities prompt me to use this tactic (just as Republicans have been using the Benghazi attacks to get American minds off their intra-party woes) and declare, “Oh my God! Look over there!”

Look, indeed, at um…this week’s induction ceremonies at the National Toy Hall of Fame. (No, I’m not kidding!)

This year the game of chess — an ancient board game that fosters intuitive thinking and strategy skills - and the rubber ducky — a, um…soft piece of polymer shaped like a duck - were inducted into the hallowed halls of the hall of fame headquartered in Rochester, New York. (No, I’m still not kidding!)

The article I read in The Philadelphia Inquirer (side note to Rand Paul: did you see what I did there? It’s a literary device known as attribution!) also listed inductees from every year since the hall of fame was founded in 1998. Among past inductees are America’s icon of anorexia (the Barbie doll); America’s training game for future Wall Street plunderers of capitalism (Monopoly); along with other low tech items as the stick, the jump rope, and the ball. It’s the ball that prompted me to devote a blog entry to an injustice.

The ball was inducted in 2009, or a full 11 years after the first class of inductees. Eleven years! WTF!

Hold on, the phone is ringing!

Okay, I’m back. It was the vice president on the phone. He thought I was the new mayor of Boston. Oh well, keep going Joe! You’ll get it right one of these days!

So where was I? Oh, yes, the subject was balls!

The ball, after all (if memory serves me correctly), was invented a few minutes after the wheel. Yet it took over a decade for it to be recognized as an honorary device of amusement in the hall of fame?

Hell, even the cardboard box (2005) made it ahead of the ball. When I read this, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor schmuck who devoted their entire life to lobbying for the lowly, humble ball to be elevated to greatness! I hope this person has done something worthwhile in the years since their efforts were rewarded in 2009; and I hope most of all he or she got a life!

So, how to rectify this injustice? Start a campaign to elevate the ball — along with its other non-descript counterparts like the stick and the cardboard box — to exalted, extreme honorary status within the hall of fame? Possibly, but some other poor schmuck will need to take up this fight. After all I…oh pardon me! There’s the phone again!

(Thank you for reading! You can hang up now, Joe. I ain’t answering this time.)