The View

FROM HEMINGWAYS ATTIC

 

The Ping Pong of Politics

by William E. Hazelgrove

When I was growing up my brother and I played ping pong every night to see who would have to do the dishes. My brother was younger than I was and I was the overbearing older brother. Every night we played and every night I beat my brother. But the way I did it was this. He was better, I knew that. But I would start cheating. I would claim the shots that were close were my point. I would change the score. Then, what I would do was taunt him. I knew if I could get in my brothers head then he would get mad and start blowing his shots. By the end of the game he was fuming and I was racking up the points and he ended up doing the dishes.

 

 

 

We just had another sort of ping pong played in our national election. There was the bruising jock older brother and the egg head. The older brother just sort of smiled at the egghead and started cheating. He put his injunctions faster. He claimed to be the winner faster. He sued faster. He litigated faster. Then he started taunting the egghead and told him that no matter what he did he would lose. The egghead kept playing his game while the older brother just smiled and nudged his friends who finally told the egghead he had lost and that he couldn't play the game anymore. The other night on television the older brother smiled and his friends hooted and hollered and the egghead talked about his family and going home.
  
Over the holidays, I played my brother in ping pong again. We've both grown up. He's a professor and I'm a novelist. We're way past all the shenanigans of sibling rivalry. We went down to the basement and played three games and then we played three more. I didn't cheat or taunt him and he just played the game the way he always could. I washed dishes the whole weekend.