It’s puzzling that in a year with more than 70 major elections around the world (many in weed-legal states) that nobody endeavored to create a line of cannabis-infused choice cuts of beef, under the brand name of: “The Steaks Have Never Been Higher.”
Knock That Shit In The Creek
(The earliest draft of this never-published piece was written several years, ago, but most of 2025, I’ve pondered what I with pent-up energy that grows with each encounter with a news headline, )
I’ve noticed that nearly all promotional, motivational and political content, that is based on sports metaphors, is….offensive.
That is, they refer to things like home runs, touchdowns, knockout punches, or other terms that are about scoring points.
Rarely do you hear defense-oriented phrases about catching a fly ball at the outfield wall before it leaves the park, stopping a running back short of the goal line, or dodging a haymaker in the boxing ring.
However, sports teams, businesses and constituents are reliant on defense as well as offense. You play more defense in your work and life than you probably realize.
Why haven’t defensive sports metaphors permeated the vocabulary of business and political clichés?
A few of my college friends have been using one for decades. We frequently played pickup basketball a few blocks from our apartment building. On the court’s western edge, the concrete was bordered by a 6-ft fence. In the wooded area behind that there was a small trickle of flowing water.
Depot Avenue Courts, Gainesville, Florida
Whenever a player attempted a shot, somebody on defense would issue this call to action:
“Knock that shit in the creek.”
During a game, if a player blocked a shot with authority, their teammates would shout, “He knocked that shit in the creek!”
If a player dribbled toward the basket, a defender would yell, “C’mon, bring it this way and I’ll knock that shit in the creek!”
In the years since my friends and I have constantly used variation of that phrase to describe our responses to (depending on our professions): a business challenge, a news interview, or a dissertation defense…
As you write a response to a request-for-proposal, or field challenging question from an audience, or draft a letter to your US Representative or Senator, you are not in a position for a metaphorical slam dunk, though visualize knocking that shit in the creek.
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What Would Strom Thurmond Do?
(I wrote this originally wrote a draft of this post in February of 2025, several weeks before Senator Cory Booker’s 25-hour floor speech).
You know who would hate DEI? Former US Representative and Senator, Strom Thurmond.
Thurmond was so incensed by President Truman’s 1948 Executive Order integrating the US military, that he ran for president as a member of the segregationist Dixiecrats party. You can see Confederate flags in photos of the party convention and campaign rallies. Thurmond won 39 electoral votes in the 1948 election.
Later, he held the Senate floor for over 24 hours in his filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
A few years later he fought against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Oh, and a he had a Black daughter. At age 23, he got his parents’ housekeeper pregnant.
SHE WAS 15.
Governments, corporations, and other organizations are going to do what they will do with their laws and corporate policies, etc. and I have pretty close to zero control over that.
Though I like to think there would be contexts where I’d ask “What Would Strom Thurmond Do?” that I would strive to do something diametrically opposed to that.
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Tired
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two –
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
The above is the poem “Tired” by Langston Hughes. My first encounter with Hughes was in 7th grade. That year my English teacher announced that we all had to memorize and recite a poem with at least 20 lines.
Many of the boys in the class defied Mrs. Vogel’s “no running” directive and sprinted to the bookshelves and began counting lines.
A few days later, Mrs Vogel called me to her desk and this conversation ensued:
Mrs. V: What poem did you choose, Scott?
Me: Uh….”Mother To Son” by Langston Hughes
Mrs. V: It’s interesting that so many of the boys in my classes picked that. Why did you choose that poem?
Me: Uh…um… it was the only poem I found that had exactly 20 lines. I didn’t want to memorize more than I had to.
Mrs. V (chuckling): Thanks for confirming my suspicions.