Letter: Did you catch that ball?

By David Anderson, Tillicum

Much has been written and said – 70,000 calls to the NFL is a lot being said – over the controversial final play following Monday night’s game between the Seahawks and the Packers.

But what happened at CenturyLink Field has been symptomatic of a common flaw in the human condition down through the centuries.

One sports talk-show set of co-hosts were sure that refs commonly ask a receiver – whom they’ve finally pulled off the bottom of the pile – “Did you catch that ball?”  A New York Giant’s player on this particular show was asked what he would reply.  His answer?

“That’s a trick question.”

A trick question?

Here are some more ‘trick’ questions:

(1)  Las Vegas Sands Corp. chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson is donating $100 Million to help defeat Obama. Since for one to win in gambling many must lose, does that make the GOP campaign supported by losers, justifying losing for winning?

(2)  Several lawmakers on each side of the debate regarding the legalization of abortion in Uruguay (breaking news today, September 26) “said they could not in good conscience go along with their parties, and allowed substitutes to vote in their stead.”  Does the resulting decision by these ‘replacement refs’ – the elimination of criminal penalties for first-term abortions and a ‘victory’ for Women and Health – absolve these elected officials from their representative duties?

(3)  On March 1 of this year, the euthanasia lobby in the Netherlands launched six mobile euthanasia teams, anticipating they would carry out 1,000 euthanasia deaths per year.  Do these mobile ‘replacement-for-natural-death’ teams – mobile, as in they make house calls: they’ll come to – and for – you, sound humane given “people with chronic depressions, people with disabilities, people with dementia/Alzheimer, loneliness, and those whose request for euthanasia is declined by their physician” will be euthanized? 

Did you catch that ball?

Don’t ask.

So I don’t have to tell.