Cavalcade of Sport

 What does the world need?  More sports.  That's why ESPN and others are able to bring us World Chase Tag, in which teams of grown men play tag on a futuristic obstacle course in front of paying spectators.  I have seen it.  It exists.  

It's faster and more thrilling than Cornhole, which promises a bit more than it delivers.  Cornhole is, in fact, beanbag, which politics ain't according to Mr. Dooley.

Players try to toss the beanbag into the hole.  It has all the excitement of curling with none of the speed or danger.  

And now, pickleball.  Described as "one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States," pickleball is played with a ping-pong-type paddle and a net.  It's in the news because Arslan Guney, 71, is looking at three years in prison for marking up a gymnasium floor in Denver to show where the equipment should be placed.  (Pickleball still has to share space with basketball and volleyball, for now.)  He is charged with felony criminal mischief.  If he had taken part in the January 6 insurrection he might be faced with three months in the slammer, more likely probation.  Colorado takes its gymnasia more seriously than Merrick Garland takes sedition, assault and riot.

The punters are still analyzing Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock as though it were Ali-Frazier.  Was it a stunt?  Should Smith have been arrested or ejected from the venue?  Won't somebody think of the children?  This has something for almost everybody.  (It was the second-lowest-rated Oscar show since televising began, but this thirty seconds has been viewed more times than the Zapruder film.)  Tayo Bero says all the outrage is rooted in racism; nobody remembers the time Debbie Reynolds put a beatdown on Joan Fontaine.  Stuart Heritage worries that "it might have been just the thing that the Oscars needed," and future telecasts will be gooned up like professional wrestling if the ratings require it.  "Cheap violence might be thrilling in the moment, but it tarnishes everything around it," he writes.  I guess he's not a hockey fan.

I say, what's the matter, Ms. Pinkett?  Is your arm broken?  It was for you to bitch-slap Mr. Rock if his "joke" annoyed you.  Sisters are supposedly doing it for themselves, or haven't you heard?  That burst of feminism Hollywood experienced after #MeToo dissipated fast.  And since the intelligence of Americans is usually overestimated, Maryland state senator Will Smith is getting all kinds of unwanted attention.  A video game developer named Will Smith is also hoping the next show business outburst involves Zeljko Ivanek and Goran Visnjic.

"Many people are asking, so I'll give it to you now, it is 100% true..."

What could it be?  That "many people" is the giveaway:  Kim Jong-Trump claims he hit a hole in one during his daily golf outing.  Apparently there's no video so you'll just have to take his word for it, as with his Michigan Man of the Year award and his intimidation of Vladimir Putin and his impregnable border wall and his pharmaceutical price controls and his superiority to Abraham Lincoln and the millions of jobs created by his daughter and his "extraordinary" physical strength and his claim to have read the Bible and...