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Year of the (Sea)hawk

It’s supposed to be the Year of the Horse. But someone forgot to tell the Seattle Seahawks.

And the Denver Broncos. Thunder, the Broncos’ Arabian stallion of a mascot, may have thundered into MetLife Stadium, but the Broncos sure didn’t.

So what did we learn from the less-than-Super Bowl?

1. Good pitching stops good hitting. Football translation: Good defense stops good offense. The Hawks’ D-line just shut Peyton Manning and company down.

2. But you still have to put up some points, otherwise a good defense means nothing. Ah, 43 – 8 Seattle? No problem.

3. The guard has changed. Peyton may be the classic pocket passer but – and it breaks my heart to say this – his time is past even as he lives it. The game belongs to a breed of young, largely African-American, running quarterbacks – led by the Hawks’ Russell Wilson – who are not afraid to move and mix things up. They’re risk-taking, they’re thrilling and their time is now. Read more

 

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Is Christie Coriolanus?

Recently, a trio of screen stars has taken to the London stage to portray three of Shakepeare’s greatest characters – David Tennant (“Dr. Who”), Richard II; Jude Law, Henry V; and Tom Hiddleston (“Thor”), Coriolanus. Together they offer a kind of round robin of Shakespearean performance. On PBS, Tennant was a febrile Hamlet, a role that was played with lucent rationality on Broadway by Law, whose Henry V follows hard upon Hiddleston’s charismatic interpretation in PBS’ “The Hollow Crown.”

The three also offer lessons in leadership undone at a time in our history when the systemic failure of Alexandrian leadership – leadership from the front – continues to  haunt us. What, for example, would the Bard make of New Jersey Gov. Chris Chrisite? Would he cast him as his blustery Roman general Coriolanus, a man whose skills are undermined – no, doomed – by his own arrogance and blindness to the will of the people? Read more

 

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