Thursday, August 20, 2015

Here be some Weasels

You may never look at Subway the same way again for a while.

Jared Fogle was a feel-good story several years ago when he extolled the virtues of Subway's line of sub sandwiches as a means by which he had lost a ton of weight. In terms of advertising, Fogle became the face of Subway as the 21st century began.

It's all come crashing down over the last month. First, an associate tasked with helping Fogle run a charity foundation was arrested on child porn possession charges. Within the last few days, Fogle has himself been arrested, and plead guilty to possession of child porn, as well as sexual relations with underage girls. His wife plans to file for divorce, and Subway has cut its ties with Fogle, who had interacted with a number of pro athletes and appeared on WWE Monday Night Raw on a couple of occasions.

Could it be that the sudden fame enabled Fogle's darker, baser nature to be, well, nurtured in secret all this time? Possibly. The last thing we needed, though, was another role model being taken down in shame. Let's see how Jared likes Weasel ears.

Next stop is Washington state. South Snohonish Little League thought they had a sure fire means of ensuring they'd reach the final four of the Little League Softball World Series. The coach had his players essentially lay down for a North Carolina team on Monday, getting no hit in an 8-0 loss, just so a team from Iowa, which lost to South Snohonish, 3-2, earlier, would be eliminated. While this sort of tanking goes on and is allowed in pro sports (i.e. NBA), it's frowned upon in amateur competition. The Iowa coaches complained, so Little League International forced a "tiebreaker" game on Tuesday. Iowa earned its way into the final four, and South Snohonish goes home instead, finishing 5th.

Now, ask yourself this question. Why would South Snohonish take the easy way out? Was it because Iowa played them tougher than the other teams in their bracket? Quite possibly. Less than a full year after the Jackie Robinson West LL scandal, LLI didn't need another black eye, but got it anyway, because someone decided that what works in basketball and football would work in Little League. Wrong! The coaches get Weasel ears. The girls on the softball team would likely get a case of Kleenex apiece for being led astray and having their dreams shattered by their self-serving mentors.

Finally, another set of Weasel ears, plus a tail, headed to a certain New Jersey blowhard who is set on displacing Alec Baldwin as the biggest bloviator in the Northeast. Yep, you guessed it. Donald Trump gets yet another set, demonstrating yet again why he won't be on the ballot 15 months from now.

Apparently, either Trump doesn't believe in hiring speech writers, or just thinks that it's his world, and we just live in it. First, he ragged on Fox's Megyn Kelly after her line of questioning at the GOP debate last week seemingly offended him. Next, model/TV personality Heidi Klum was described by Trump as being "no longer a 10". What? Doesn't he have time to DVR Project Runway anymore, or look at the gossip columns when his mug's not there? Heidi's having some fun with this, being a good sport, but Trump just doesn't know when to shut up. Especially when he's bloviating on topics he really doesn't know anything about.

Mark my words. Dumb Donald won't be at the GOP convention next year at this rate, but I doubt very seriously that Swillary Clinton will get the Democratic nod, either. She's better off trying out for a gender-reversed remake of Pinocchio.

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