Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. Controversial dude. Rightly so. In a TV interview, he said, “It’s about to be football season.” And “I can’t wait to beat Ohio.”
Immediately, this was a controversy, a scandal—ridiculously.
Many, many Republicans across the country, in elective politics and the media, claimed that El-Sayed had committed a laughable blunder. He said “beat Ohio,” when the University of Michigan’s rival is Ohio State University, not Ohio University.
(Actually, our real rival—our fiercest rival—is Michigan State, but we ought to leave that for another column.)
What a stupe! people said of El-Sayed. He’s pretending to know something about football! How can he be a senator from Michigan?!
El-Sayed is not a stupe. (He is other things.) He grew up in southeastern Michigan, he went to the U of M, he went to the university’s med school. He knows exactly what he’s talking about.
And we say “beat Ohio.” (As regular readers may recall, I’m from Ann Arbor, the home of the U of M. I grew up with all things Michigan football, and Michigan sports.)
The “Ohio” episode illustrates what stinks about our dunk culture. “Here a dunk, there a dunk, everywhere a dunk dunk.” I know people, have worked with people, who live for dunking. It’s their raison d’être.
I owned him. I DESTROYED him.
Even fact-based dunking can be problematic, but ignorant dunking has a special smell.
In 2021, our football coach, Jim Harbaugh, implemented a drill called “Beat Ohio.” And that’s what he did, that year and the next two years.
(Jim is now the coach of the Los Angeles Chargers, in the NFL. He and I grew up together, in Ann Arbor. Jim’s dad, Jack, was an assistant coach at Michigan, under Bo Schembechler. Jim and I went to the U of M. One of us was the quarterback of the football team, one of us wasn’t. Jim went on to play for almost 15 years in the NFL.)
Don’t get me wrong, we also say “Ohio State”—as in “Oh how I hate Ohio State.”
But the Buckeyes, too, refer to their university, and their teams, as “Ohio.” For heaven’s sake, the football stadium in Columbus is called “Ohio Stadium.” Fans chant “O-H-I-O.” This is a call-and-response chant. One person, or section, says “O-H,” and another person, or section, says “I-O.”
For many generations, the OSU marching band has formed “Script Ohio.” I think it’s the most famous marching-band tradition in America. As I understand it, the senior-most tuba player dots the “i.”
Sometimes a celebrity does. In 2006, this honor fell to Jack Nicklaus, the great golfer, who graduated from Ohio State, and, for good measure, is a native of Columbus.
Anyway, this controversy has been so stupid. Our dunk culture, and our political culture more broadly, are so stupid. There are a thousand things to knock Abdul El-Sayed for. He accuses Israel of genocide. (My whole life, people have delighted in accusing Israel of genocide. See?! When the Jews get a state, they do it too!) But “beat Ohio”? These words trip off the tongue of every Michigander.
Idiots, these people are, these dunkers. Stone-cold idiots.
***
I’m sorry that El-Sayed is an ideological nightmare (from my point of view)—because he’s a classic American success story. The son of immigrants (from Egypt). An impressive student.
Hang on, let me quote from the relevant Wikipedia entry:
El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School in 2003, where he was a three-sport athlete and captain of the wrestling, football, and lacrosse teams. He then attended the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science and played on the lacrosse team. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest distinction in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree and delivered that year’s commencement speech. …
El-Sayed received a full-tuition scholarship to attend the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed the first two years of a combined M.D./Ph.D. program …
As a second-year medical student, El-Sayed received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in public health in 2011. At Oxford, he earned a full blue as captain of the lacrosse team. In 2014, he completed a Doctor of Medicine degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons …
I mean, geez oh Pete, as we’d say in Michigan—what credentials, what achievements.
Still, what a nightmare—a socialist, a leftist, the whole package. Personable, too. (Our mayor here in New York, Zohran Mamdani, is also personable. Kind of a shame.) (I’d better clarify that, Ann Arborite though I am, I’ve lived in New York for almost 30 years.)
***
Let me turn once more to Israel. Did you see this story, one of many in the same vein?
Masked Israeli settlers attacked and injured a Palestinian woman and members of an NBC News team reporting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday.
I will be blunt: Jackasses such as these are soiling the name of Israel. Then again, you could say that this is what Ben-Gurion and the other founding fathers wanted: a “normal country,” which includes jackasses and everyone else.
“When Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we’ll be a state just like any other,” said Ben-Gurion.
***
Yesterday, I was at the golf range. A grandfather was supervising his three grandsons—whose names were Eli, Jacob, and Levi. (This will be relevant.) Adorable kids. The littlest one asked me, “How old are you?” I told him. I then asked, “How old are you?” He said, “Four and a half”—those halves are very important to little kids.
He referred to the clubs in my bag as my “hockey sticks.” I did not correct him. He’ll learn in time.
Anyway, the grandfather had a British accent and the kids did not. When the kids were occupied with their golf, I said to the man, “So, you’re from Britain?” Yes, he said, from London—“They live here, we live there.” The grandchildren live in New York, the grandparents live in London.
I said, “Tell me, what’s the temperature over there, and I don’t mean the weather.” He thought I meant politics. Things are very bad, he said. He started talking about the effects of Brexit and so on. But I cut him off, making clear that I meant … “How are things for the Jews?”
(The man was wearing a Star of David around his neck and a hat that said “Chabad.”)
Long story short: they’re leaving. The man and his wife are leaving Britain, where, presumably, they’ve lived all their lives. That’s how bad things have gotten.
This is just one story, mind you—but there are many such stories, and they add up, painting a picture.
***
In Washington last week—Washington, D.C.—I passed this fine structure:
“Oh, right,” I thought, sardonically. “They must teach Esperanto there.” Longtime readers are familiar with a complaint of mine: people say “international” when they mean “foreign,” and the two words have different meanings.
“International students,” people now say. Oh, you mean they hold two passports? Maybe they live in Trieste, where they are not quite Italian, not quite Austrian, not quite Slovenian …?
I’m gettin’ cranky, y’all, so I’d better sign off.
Thank you and bless you!
I clicked through to the videos about the marching band formation. I'm such a fuddy duddy about college football I'd never even heard about this maneuver before your essay. Besides, I'm the former college music major who quit band my senior year of high school because I hated marching band so much!
Watching the videos ... yeah, I still hate it. College football man, it's a whole other world.
At Fort Benning in the 1980's we had the Allied Student Training Detachment. When they changed it to International Students, I wondered which side was behind the change.