Hornswaggler | The culture, the humor, a bit of the sports, not so much the politics, and the workplace distraction
Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of
hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my
pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" --
"I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers,
bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits,
vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers,
buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train
robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!"
In the May 30 issue of Sports Illustrated, there's a story on retired New York Giants running back Tiki Barber's attempt to return to football. Besides rehashing Barber's fall from grace, the article ponders the reignition of Barber's passion for the game.
The only mention in the roughly 3,000-word article that money, not a love of football, might be the prime motivator behind this 36-year-old man's attempt to return to play arguably the most punishing position in all of professional sports is this sentence: "Barber insists that regardless of how costly four children and a contentious divorce might be, he's neither broke nor motivated by money."
Uh, huh. Anyone who's even glanced at the New York Post's coverage of Barber's affair and divorce calls BS on this. According to the Post, his ex-wife, on whom he cheated while she was pregnant with twins, is asking for a ton of money in the divorce, and he has claimed in court that he's broke and can't pay it. Maybe he's just posturing with that claim, but regardless the portrait that emerges is one of a guy who lives a flashy, expensive life in Manhattan, the kind that can lead one to blow through hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, at minimum. And now he's flamed out of TV, and his best chance for the kind of payday that'll support both the lifestyle to which he's accustomed as well as expensive child and spousal support is football.
Either the magazine bought Barber's spin or agreed to downplay the money angle as a condition for access. Either way, bad job by SI.
