Well…with the passing of Sparky Anderson this week, the title question came to my mind…”where have the nice guys gone?” When I was younger, there were nice guys in every avenue of life here in America; there were nice sports figures, politicians, and newsmen who did their jobs with an innate goodness that didn’t make them any less effective. What happened? Why are today’s versions of those people so nasty and brutish…why do we now have guys like Boehner and McConnell in politics who believe that the only way for them to win in politics is to demonize and crush their opponents? Then, to gloat about their wins and play to their troglodyte bases that they have created by making it acceptable to be an ass in public…making it a virtue to be unreasonable. And, we see this kind of behavior in sports where it is looked on as quaint to show sportsmanship; to let their play talk for them on the field…and this is compounded by the epidemic of inflated self-importance from guys that just play child’s games for a living.

I don’t know where this country went wrong…but I sure liked it better when guys like Sparky Anderson were in it…when politicians understood that compromise is the life blood of any democracy…and that we the people understood and supported people who could be reasonable….like Jerry Ford from our neck of the woods…geez…