Press Briefing by President Woodrow Wilson, issued on January 26, 1919:

MR. WILSON: Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

We've had a tremendous week uniting the country in our fight against the Spanish virus. I have reminded people of the importance of masks when you can't socially distance, in particular. A strong message has been sent out to young people to stop going to crowded bars and other crowded places.

I wanted to come out again today to share some additional news with you: This afternoon, my political team came to me and laid out our plans for the Armistice celebration in San Francisco, California. It's a place I love. I love that state. The drawings look absolutely beautiful. I never thought we could have something look so good, so fast with everything going on. And everything was going well — a tremendous list of speakers; thousands of people wanting to be there — and I mean, in some cases, desperately be there. They wanted to attend. People making travel arrangements all over the country; they wanted to be there. The pageantry, the signs, the excitement were really, really top of the line.

But I looked at my team, and I said, "The timing for this event is not right. It's just not right with what's happened recently — the flare up in California — to have a big celebration. It's not the right time."

It's really something that, for me — I have to protect the American people. That's what I've always done. That's what I always will do. That's what I'm about.

Fortunately, the data shows that children are lower risk from the Spanish virus, very substantially. When children do contact the virus, they often have only very mild symptoms or none at all, and medical complications are exceedingly rare. Those that do face complications often have underlying medical conditions. Ninety-nine percent of all Spanish virus hospitalizations are adults. And ninety-nine point nine six percent of all fatalities are adults. That means that children are a tiny percentage — less than one percent, and even a small percentage of one percent.

I have a very, very special person who loves children, who is — who is, I think, one of the greatest athletes of all time. A lot of people say "the greatest player of all time." Known as a "center fielder" who could have been whatever he wanted. Some people — he is the greatest player of all time, by far. Substantially more runs batted in than anybody else. In fact, he got the Most Valuable Player award recently.

And he — I'm reading off these stats. I knew he was the best. I knew he was great, but I didn't know it was almost double anybody else. But he's a man who loves children — has children, loves children, works hard with children. We're going to go outside and be with some little leaguers. Ty Cobb — you know, he's the "Georgia Peach," right? My wife said, "Darling, why do they call him the 'Georgia Peach'?" I said, "You know, he's just such a sweet man." And that's exactly what happened.

So, with that, if you have any questions — please.

Q: On the Armistice celebration, were you simply not convinced that you could keep people safe at the convention?

MR. WILSON: I just felt it was wrong, Steve, to have people going to what turned out to be a hotspot. You know, when we chose it, it was not at all hot; it was free. And all of a sudden, it happened quickly. It happens quickly. And it goes away, and it goes away quickly. The key is, we want it to go away without a lot of death, without a lot of problems.

Q: You talk about setting an example on San Francisco. But I — I just wonder: Some people are going to take away from this the lesson that you're pushing too far, too fast. It seemed, for a while, the numbers were going up in San Francisco, and you were going to have a problem there with the Anti-Mask League. This comes up at a time you're pushing for schools to reopen, have the opening of the Major League Baseball season. Isn't — isn't the example of San Francisco that we're — we're pushing too fast?

MR. WILSON: Well, baseball, as an example — we were discussing it a little while ago — you're going to be at an empty stadium. I've agreed — Charles Comiskey is a great friend of mine from the White Sox, and he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I'm doing that on May 8th at Comiskey Park. And I say, "How's the crowd going to be?" And, you know, it's like you don't have a crowd; there is no such thing.

It's going to be interesting, Ty. He's not used to that. I've been at many games. He walks in; the place goes crazy. I think it'd be just as good without the crowd. You were just born with it, you know. Some people are born with it.

I don't know if — this is only for the baseball players, but I've never seen a batter hit a ball where so many bats were broken as Ty. He's got the all-time record. I said, "How do you do that?" He said, "Parents." Great parents, when you get right down to it. Right? "How do you do that?" It's called parents.

Q: That's baseball, but the question really is —

MR. WILSON: Yeah, I just — just to finish, I think — I think that we have to all set examples. I think Major League Baseball is setting the example by, you know, playing to empty stadiums, and so are other sports. You see that. Now, then they'll allow a certain number in. I see golf is now — soon will be allowing people to come in, in percentages. And all of a sudden, we want to get back to normal.

The key is to get back to normal, because nobody wants to see this. But I think it's really good that baseball is opening. It looks like football is opening. It looks like sports are opening. We — we have — it's a tremendous thing, psychologically, for our country.

And we're all — we're all, whether we're — we're going to see right now some beautiful, young Little Leaguers outside with a great future ahead of them. They're already practicing on the front lawn of the White House, and we're going to go out and say hello to them, and it'll be really great.

Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

END

...

Follow-up communiqué by President Woodrow Wilson, issued three days later:

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It's election season, and the television is flooded with campaign ads.

I have repeatedly seen an advertisement for Kelley Loeffler's reelection campaign for her U.S. Senate seat in which a young black man extols her virtues not as an embarrassingly rich owner of a sports franchise and a stock exchange but as someone sympathetic to those less fortunate than her. Yet her supporter mispronounces her name throughout the whole commercial. (He says "loff-ler", yet she appears at the end of the commercial pronouncing her own name "leff-ler," almost like she is passive-aggressively correcting him after the fact.) Why would the Loeffler campaign air that? Could they not find a single person who could praise her who actually knew who she was?

Another advertisement for current president Donald Trump's reelection campaign claims that if former vice president Joe Biden wins the election, the United States will go to shit. What condition are we in now? Uncontrolled pandemic, record unemployment, race riots, oh, my! If this shit show is the current administration's idea of greatness, I'll take anyone else, please.

I suppose it's some small comfort that Marjorie Greene isn't adverting over the air in the Metro Atlanta market in her run for the state House of Representatives. Greene has become infamous as a candidate so openly racist that state Republicans have widely disavowed her, which takes some doing considering that the current Republican governor ran on a platform of successfully befouling state citizens' ability to vote. Even Facebook has said Greene has gone too far in her most recent gun-toting ads. When you're too far afield for Facebook, it's time to stop auditioning for a government seat and start looking into some professional mental help.

That said, there's nothing new to watch between those campaign commercials anyway, so maybe I should just leave my television off until December. Being too aware of who's making the decisions that impact my life is bad for my own mental health.

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The Miami Dolphins 2019 season can now be called a success.

Waaay back in January 2019, the Miami Herald reported that team owner Stephen Ross "really likes Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and that getting a high 2020 draft pick is the priority." After winning only 5 of 16 games, the team selected Tua Tagovailoa as the 5th pick in last night's 2020 NFL Draft! Amazing!

Whether or not Tua will translate into actual wins on the NFL gridiron remains to be seen, but I'm not worried. If the Dolphins still suck at actual football in 2020, I'm sure Mr. Ross can find some other way to redefine success.

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Nothing was usual when Notre Dame came to Athens.

What you see above is the new LED lighting installed in Sanford Stadium earlier this year. Those of you who see a lot of live sports may be familiar with the old metal halide lights that warm up slowly. These are not those. Quick on and color changing, the new lights made for some very impressive stadium effects during the big game, including the red out at the start of the fourth quarter. Nice addition, Georgia.

It didn't take red lights to notice the difference between Notre Dame and a "regular" game. Despite adding extra seats to the stadium for this meeting of top ten teams, Athens was still expecting 50,000 people without tickets, and they arrived early and took all the parking places. We had a flyover of F15s and about two dozen returning Dawg football stars on the sideline (including David Pollack, Champ & Boss Bailey, and Knowshon Moreno, just to name a few). When kickoff finally arrived, the atmosphere was truly electric.

Speaking of the crowd, although ticket costs had bloated from their $75 cover price to a rumored $600 and up on the secondary market, it didn't keep the drunks out. Nor did it keep them in their seats. For reasons that remain unclear to me — credit my naturally welcoming personality, perhaps — Mom and I had plenty of elbow room in an otherwise packed stadium when the couples to our left and right simply disappeared at halftime. That gave us plenty of space to bite our nails when Notre Dame made their late comeback attempt.

Final score: #7 Notre Dame 17, #3 UGA 23. Great football game. It just might have been worth $600.

Footnote: During the pregame, all ten Ugas were showcased on the big board. However, instead of being presented chronologically, they were ordered alphabetically by Roman numeral: I, II, III, IV, IX, V, VI, VII, VIII, X. That probably says terrible things about a Georgia education, but at least the football team is good.

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Mom has now joined the ranks of such immortality as the 1990 announcement that Atlanta would host the Olympics, the 1946 Winecroft Hotel fire, and the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank. In other words, she's on the front page of today's The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

At least the back of her head is.

There's a bit of a story to this picture. Mom was in Macon in the middle of last week with her sister. While my aunt was attending her business conference, Mom decided to venture into downtown Macon to see the sights. She was headed for the Tubman Museum, but when she saw a sign informing her that the lot she had parked in was reserved for the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, she decided that she had to go there instead.

She called me that evening to tell me an AJC reporter had taken her picture. He had singled her out for the honor because of Mom's unparalleled distinction of being the only person there. The hall, it seems, was in the middle of changing several exhibits, and Mom was the only patron in sight.

For the record, she enjoyed her visit to the hall, and has encouraged me to go next time I'm near Macon. Now that it's part of my family history, I just might. I hear it's on the verge of a revival.

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No sooner do the Dolphins trade one Ryan than they pick up another.

Quarterback Ryan Fitzgerald has been signed as the Dolphins' starting signal caller. The Dolphins will be Fitzpatrick's 8th team in his 14-year career. He'll set a record if he completes a single pass for the 'Fins in 2019. Long-term marginal competence has to count for something, and that something appears to be about $5 million, the price of Fitzpatrick's new contract. The team paid Jay Cutler twice that in 2017. He won 6 games. I guess they're expecting Fitz to manage only 3.

This will be Fitpatrick's third tour of duty in the AFC East. He's already passed through the locker rooms of both the Bills and the Jets. All totaled, he's managed a career 6-5 record against his new team. The only team in the division that hasn't hired him is the New England Patriots. He has a 2-9 record against them.

It's probably worth noting that during Fitzpatrick's entire career, the Bills, Jets, and Dolphins have had at least 13 starting quarterbacks — each — while the Patriots have had essentially one. (Technically, they've had 4. Tom Brady missed all of 2008 with a knee injury and served a 4 game suspension in 2016 because he likes saggy balls. But there was never any doubt who the team's starting quarterback was.)

Will Fitz bring his Fitzmagic to Miami in 2019? My Magic 8-ball says no. So does Vegas. Even before dumping Tannehill, sports books were down on the 'Fins. Last week, if you bet a dollar on them to win the Super Bowl, you could pocket $300. That's three times longer odds than are being given to any other team. Comparatively, the never-going-anywhere Detroit Lions are 100-1. Those were Friday's odds that the Dolphins could win their division. I'm sure the addition of Fitzpatrick isn't bringing them any closer.

Ye gods. It's going to be a long season.

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"Batman and Robin stand up for Sportsmanship" PSA from National Comics Publications cover-dated February/March 1950

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Walter reviews more movies he watched in April!

71. (1300.) The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)
Disney advertised the shit out of this back when I watched the Disney Channel in the 1980s, and I just finally saw it. (The House of Mouse gets us all in the end.) It's a good-looking adventure yarn for kids in the White Fang vein, and I enjoyed it.

72. (1301.) Isle of Dogs (2018)
Best movie of 2018! No, that wasn't sarcasm. I'm all-in on Wes Andersom movies.

73. (1302.) Warrior (2011)
Warrior is not a winner. Friend Keith loves it, and I guess I can see why. But the schmaltzy ending doesn't work if you don't care for all the characters involved, and I didn't. Go to hell, Tommy.

74. (1303.) Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Best movie of 2017! Friend Mike let me borrow this, and I'm so glad he did. I watched it, like, 4 times. It's really, really funny with a James Carpenter vibe and 80s synthesizer soundtrack. Marvel can't possibly make a movie better than this.

75. (1304.) Battle of the Sexes (2017)
I was expecting less biopic and more sports action, but I'm never disappointed in Emma Stone. Even when she's a lesbian.

76. (1305.) Coco (2017)
Honestly, I don't get what everyone loves about this movie. Beyond the creative set design, it's a predictable snooze-fest populated with stock characters. I would say it is easily Pixar's worst film. (And yes, I've seen Cars 2.)

77. (1306.) The Greatest Showman (2017)
Hey, Randy! I've seen The Greatest Showman. It delivers what it promises: a throwback to 1930s MGM musical spectacular! I agree that it is too light on reality and too heavy on CGI. But who can't enjoy a film with a character named Walter the Dog-Boy? Not me.

More to come.

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What I did on St. Patrick's Day:

Jacksonville Icemen 5, Georgia Gladiators 4.

Minor league ice hockey might not sound an Irish way to pass the time, but they fight like true drunken expatriates. Saint Patrick would be proud.

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For those of you interested in my UGA season ticket dilemma, you may appreciate this correspondence between myself and the UGA Athletic Director.

Mr. McGarity:

I write to you in regard to 2018 football season ticket prices.

I've been a season ticket holder since I graduated from the University in 2002. I have attended almost every home game in that time. It has been my dream that I will be able to continue attending games in Sanford Stadium for the rest of my life. For the first time in the past 15 years, this year's jump in season ticket prices has me wondering if that will be possible.

I recognize the need for the Athletic Department to raise funds to maintain its competitiveness. I don't begrudge small adjustments from year to year -- especially after championship seasons -- to maintain operations in football and other sports.

However, I consider a 50% jump in ticket prices year-over-year to be excessive, even after reading the justifications provided at georgiadogs.com, especially considering that a less painful 25% increase per ticket would still have placed UGA squarely in the middle of the pack of your listed comparibles. I would have hoped that loyalty would have some value to the Athletic Department, but if your goal is to price out longtime ticket holders in pursuit of deeper pockets, that's your prerogative.

Please know that despite my disappointment at the steep increase in price and the difficulty it presents to my personal budget, I still plan to renew my season tickets for 2018 and beyond. I do so with the hope that going forward, I shall not again experience such a sticker shock.

Go Dawgs!

Walter Stephens, BFA 2002

To my surprise, I received a handwritten response, transcribed below.

(Before I go any further, let me publicly thank Mr. McGarity for responding, period. I'm sure if he'd read any of the terrible things I've said about him in the past 8 years here on my blog — which is accessible to Google — he would already have banned me from campus.)

Dear Walter,

Thanks for your letter of 2.8.18. I do understand the dilemma these ticket price increases caught our fans and in a perfect world, increases would never be necessary. I wish that were so! But in order to make all parts of our program work at the highest levels, football is one of the areas that allows us to raise the essential revenue.

I hope future increases are more in line with previous year increases, if and when necessary.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely, Greg McGarity

Any price we football fans can pay is worth it to help the equestrian team win another national championship, I guess. Go horse-Dawgs!

Actually, I probably shouldn't pick on the equestrian team. Their most recent national title came in 2014 and is one of the few titles to be won by UGA teams since McGarity replaced Damon Evans (fired for having a DUI and red panties!) in 2010. Everyone knows UGA basketball is terrible and many other sports are under performing. Boosters have been pressuring for McGarity's replacement. Obviously, McGarity sees diving into football fans' pockets as a potential solution to his department's other woes.

I'm not sure I agree, but I'm willing to wait and find out. At least for one more year.

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