Rant #2,551: Pride (In the Name of Love)

Several subjects have crossed my mind today … and they all have to do with “pride,” in one form or another.
 
Charley Pride died over the weekend. He was 89 years old and was a victim of the pandemic.

 Pride was country music’s first black superstar, and this former athlete with professional baseball aspirations was criticized at one point by some for singing “white man’s music.”
 
But the music was in his heart and soul, and he stayed true to that music during his entire career.
 
In fact, when many of his peers crossed over to the pop side of the charts—including Roy Clark and Ray Price—he pretty much stayed true to the country music that he so loved, never really having a real pop crossover.
 
Even without such a breakthrough, he was pretty much well known by music fans of all ilk’s, and songs like “All I Have To Offer You (Is Me),” “Kiss An Angel Good Morning,” and somewhat prophetically “I’m Just Me” solidified Pride as one of the most popular singers in country music.
 
And yes, that was his real name. Kind of appropriate for a guy who never took his critics to heart and basically did what he wanted to do during this life.
 
And then we have another name that has riled some people for generations, while others have taken their own “pride” in the name.
 
The Cleveland Indians have announced that they will be changing their name after using that moniker for more than 100 years.

 At one time, the use of American Indian names by American sports teams was a sense of pride to some, honoring our Native Americans as warriors.
 
But the use also made others upset, as with the names came what they considered to be racist portrayals of these indigenous people, and while this wasn’t really the intent, these names have finally caught up with some of the teams that have used them for decades.
 
The Cleveland Indians were perhaps the most valid target of the naysayers, because their one-time mascot—Chief Wahoo—was a real caricature of the big lipped, happy go lucky Indian stereotype that has gotten so many people so upset.
 
They retired that caricature a few years ago, but I guess the name “Cleveland Indians” was still thought to be a racist one, like if they called themselves the “Cleveland Negroes” or something akin to that.
 
It wasn’t showing these people any pride, it was generating just the opposite response, so the name was deemed inappropriate and had to go, and it will be gone in the 2021 MLB baseball season.
 
No new name has been given, but unlike the Washington Redskins, who dropped the “Redskins” name and just goes by the “Washington Football Team” for the time being, I do believe that the Cleveland organization will come up with something plausible and very marketable as their new name, with the emphasis on marketable.
 
And then we have pride in one’s religion, and we come to Hanukkah, the “Festival of Lights,” which began on the evening of November 10 and last eight days.

 I put up a post on Facebook lauding the holiday as providing us with a “light at the end of the tunnel,” with each candle lit drawing us one day closer to the end of the pandemic.
 
I basically took a chunk out of what I wrote here about that subject the other day, and went with it as a single post, with a picture of my family’s Hanukkah menorah lit up for the first day, with the “Shamash” candle in the middle, the candle used to light the first night’s candle … our menorah is an electric one, so the tradition outweighs the reality of what lights what.
 
Anyway, I put what I wrote up as a single post, with the photo, and I received a lot of “likes,” and good wishes, and that pleased me, but one person put up the following message:
 
“Only if Trumps [sic} get re-elected.”
 
I reacted to that message with a frown, and replied:
 
“This was not a political post. ,,, .”
 
I probably should have left it at that, but I continued:
 
“And he isn’t getting re-elected, so Fuggedaboudit.”
 
I stopped down to their level, and I regret doing so, but I did leave my post up full and intact.
 
My reply did receive one like, but the fact of the matter is that I should just have left it as I said the first half of the reply, and not gone into the political realm with my reply.
 
My original post had no politics behind it, but people on both sides have so politicized the pandemic that you can’t utter a word about it, the vaccines to fight it, or anything else without getting into a political discussion.
 
Not everything is about politics, and in this world where people seem to get ruffled over everything and anything, we all need to tone it down, and tone it down right now or we won’t win this battle against this invisible enemy we are all fighting now.
 
Yes, that thought is just so “common,” for lack of a better expression right now, but it is also so true.
 
And the pride I have this year—where the vaccine and the coming of Hanukkah just about coincided with the test results from my son, which came back negative for the coronavirus in both tests —does provide a sense of that there is a “light at the end of the tunnel” to this scourge, and that thought should not be ruined by politics from the right or the left of the center, for that matter.
 
Let’s take real pride in the fact that it took only a couple of months to create a vaccine against this thing, and let’s hope that it works.
 
Pride in humanity … I can go for that.