It’s that time of year again: Thanksgiving. A time when we eat turkey like it’s the only day of the year we’re legally allowed to eat it, watch teams we don’t care about play football and prepare to stampede our fellow Americans to save hundreds of dollars on a TV.
OK, maybe that’s not its true meaning, at least for you. But it is the time of year we take a few moments to reflect on things in our lives for which we are thankful. And since this column is going to run on Thanksgiving (meaning you’re more likely to be in a turkey coma than want to read about the news of the day), here are a few things for which I am thankful this year.
As it was last year, this list is not all-inclusive; just the highlights.
1) Hillary Clinton. Yes, I’m extremely thankful for the former secretary of state. Were she any sort of honest human being who hadn’t milked her position of public trust to make herself one of the wealthiest people in the country, she would be our next president. Had she not been so paranoid that she willingly and brazenly thwarted our nation’s transparency laws, she would be our next president. Had she not been so arrogant in her pending “victory” and campaigned in Wisconsin once, or Michigan more, she would be our next president. I’m thankful she wasted time campaigning in Arizona.
Had Hillary campaigned like she wanted the job and not like she deserved it and had it already, she would be our next president. She did not and will not be, and for that I am eternally thankful.
2) The media. Thank you, journalists, for being yourselves. From your bogus “fact checking” to important think-pieces on how the Republican Party may collapse, you could not have helped more if you were on the payroll.
After years of working to keep your agenda-driven bias hidden behind a thin veneer of credibility, you torched the whole damn thing. It was beautiful to watch your faces on election night as reality washed over you. It couldn’t have happened to more deserving people.
I’m particularly thankful for how you sought out the craziest, most offensive signs at Trump rallies and used those needles in haystacks to portray everyone who didn’t support Clinton that way. The thin air inside your elitist New York bubble led you to think calling half the country racist for eight years and telegraphing your glee over the prospect of calling them sexist for the next eight was a good plan.
On top of all that, I am eternally thankful for your unwillingness (or inability) to learn from any of this. Please, double down on your arrogance. Continue to talk about, but never to, anyone who lives in a state that doesn’t have an ocean coastline. And if you happen to find yourself enduring a layover in an airport somewhere between New York and Los Angeles, start calling everyone uneducated and poor. Please.
3) Curses, particularly in sports. Hey, my whole life isn’t politics.
I’m not a Cubs fan or an Indians fan, but Game 7 of this year’s World Series was incredible. The best part about the World Series this year was no matter which team won, it wasn’t going to be a repeat. The curse of the Bambino went down in the last decade; now the curse of the goat is gone.
The best part about sports curses (aside from them being fake) is the emotional investment fans put in them. It’s never that their team was beaten, it was that cosmic forces prevented them from winning.
There’s something fun about seeing long-suffering fans finally have something to celebrate, especially when they’ve beaten a curse. Except maybe New England sports fans. Red Sox fans were insufferable when they were convinced they were cursed and became only more so when they started to win.
There is, of course, much more for which to be thankful this year, but honestly, isn’t the fact that Democrats were destroyed at the ballot box enough for one year? Even the media’s implosion would’ve been enough for one year.
Let 2016 be remembered as the year Bill and Hillary Clinton were sent packing. If that isn’t enough to be thankful for, you’re probably a Cleveland Indians fan.
I’m going in for seconds and preparing to watch my Lions lose. Happy Thanksgiving.