Watch Those Tenses

"This is a great success story." "Federal government rose to the challenge."  Jared Kushner (April 29, 2020)

It was the first game of the intramural hoops season. Our lineup, featuring four 5'11" guys and one 5'9" dude, stepped into our spots on each side of the foul line. We, members of the branch campus cross-country team, had battled the faculty team tooth-and-nail, but we found ourselves down five with 30 seconds left. The faculty captain, also the coach of the branch campus basketball team, was at the foul line to shoot one-and-one. He turned to me and nodded. "You know," he said, "you guys are going to win some games."

He bounced the ball twice, took his foul shot, and missed. I secured the rebound, dribbled the length of the floor, pulled up at the opposition foul line, and hit a jumper. As the faculty tried to inbound, our best player, George, stole the pass and made an incredibly difficult running one-hander over a 6'5" guy. We were down one. The faculty again tried to inbound. George stole the ball again and made another running one-hander from about 12 feet. The faculty launched a wayward 25-footer as the horn sounded. I turned to the faculty captain and said, "Yeah, you were right. We might win some games."

One thing I have learned from a lifetime of sports betting is that you've gotta watch your tenses. Putting ongoing events in past tense has no magical effect on the events themselves. Perceiving, reporting, and discussing ongoing events as if they have finished does not make them finis. Events tend to not be impressed by the fact that you use past tense. One can use whatever tense one prefers over and over, and still those pesky ongoing events pay you no mind. It's as if they don't care what you think or what you say or what absurd spin you try to impose. Events just go about their business of being events.

Jared Kushner's Fox interview yesterday was grotesque. He looked like Mr. Sardonicus on uppers. His attempt to impose a past tense on the pandemic will go down in history as either self-deluded hubris or cynical sadism, depending on whether he is actually perceived as believing what he said.


April 30, 2020
Bob Dietz