What’s A Dollar Really Worth To These Ghouls?

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about nuns, rope, human settlements on Venus, and more.

Your letters:

Robert:

I was reading the article about Tom Brady's Saudi sportswashing and it got me wondering: how are we, as Americans in 2025, really able to accuse Saudi Arabia of sportswashing? We are witnesses and (unwilling) participants to daily atrocities inflicted by the United States on international and on local citizens. Not to mention the American sportswashing rituals of national anthems, veteran salutes, military flyovers that accompany every sporting event, etc. But we sit on a high horse? I don’t like any of the shit Saudi Arabia has done, and I don't think Tom Brady is owed any bit of grace, but accusations of sportswashing coming from Americans feels incredibly rich (and somewhat racist) in 2025.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, although most of that thinking has involved me trying to come up with a good joke for it. Not terribly productive. Anyway, Robert is right that the U.S. serves as perhaps the definitive example of a country that tries to put a smiley face on its own evildoing. After all, what’s a NFL team but an entertaining résumé topper for an owner who makes the bulk of their money producing munitions for bombing orphanages? And imagine how President Extortion would have used a U.S. Ryder Cup comeback win to burnish his own lousy reputation. Whitewashing was damn near invented in this country, so it’s a bit hypocritical to call out other countries for engaging in similar practices. They can’t use golf to make themselves look nice! That’s our thing!

But I can’t help but indulge in some of that hypocrisy myself when it comes to MBS and Saudi Arabia. This is because Saudi Arabia did 9/11, and because they cut a journalist to pieces with a saw. Those aren’t easy visuals for me to ignore. I know that Trump’s brand of incoherent fascism is currently ravaging the landscape, but people who have lived under real-deal fascism will tell you that the Saudis have that system of oppression locked wayyyyy the fuck down. You wanna know what a true dictatorship looks like? Saudi Arabia’s got you covered. That’s what makes it just a bit more galling when Western businessmen and entertainers attempt to justify taking MBS’s money. Right, Jim Jefferies?

“One reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I'm gonna die on.”

No, but your credibility will die on it. I’ll never fault poor folks for doing what they have to do to get by, but Jim Jefferies ain’t poor. Neither is Tom Brady. Neither is Cristiano Ronaldo. These men aren’t taking money from Saudi Arabia because baby needs shoes, but because it’s there. And as we get deeper into Trump 2.0, more of their ilk feel increasingly comfortable taking the money and not asking questions. Pay them enough and they’ll gladly help their new benefactor avoid those questions. It’s greed at its most transparent, and it becomes even more transparent when they try to make it look like anything else.

As weird of a human being as he may be, Cristiano Ronaldo knows he’s getting paid in blood money, and he knows that you know it. And yet he goes ahead and pretends otherwise, because that’s what they’re paying him to do. The insincerity of it all doesn’t matter to him, nor the evil, nor, frankly, the incredible tackiness. Trump's success has freed a great many people, including millions who have not gotten a lucrative offer from the Saudis, from the fear of being publicly shamed. As a result, those same people have no apparent inclination to feel shame themselves.

That’s the thing that nags at me. Forget about other people thinking you’re a piece of shit for joining the LIV Golf Tour; don’t YOU think less of yourself for doing that? Surely you were raised to feel things like shame and guilt. What happened to those instincts? I was raised on Lethal Weapon movies, and even those movies taught me the difference between honest money and dirty money. Now, you and I know that difference is often blurry, if not outright imaginary. But there’s still value in the distinction, because it helps you establish limits on what you, an individual, will and won’t do just for money. I have turned down work I’ve found out of alignment with my personal values, and would gladly do so again if the Saudis somehow decided that worker-owned blogs were the secret to a higher Q rating. I love me some money, but I also value the work that goes into that money. I take pride in what I do, because I was taught to do so. More important, it makes me feel good.

And I’m not a saint by any means. So how can people richer than I, by orders of magnitude, take all of this bullshit work without barely any compunction? What’s a dollar really worth if you were willing to abandon your dignity to get it? What other basic human traits do you also lack? You have to leave some of your humanity behind if you’re willing to convince yourself that MBS is a kind and benevolent ruler, or that your big corporate merger is too important to let Jimmy Kimmel make jokes about a dead troll, or that voting for Trump is worth it for that capital gains tax cut. You’re selling every piece of yourself away, in public view. Doesn’t that bother you? It would bother the shit out of me. That’s the value of shame. Of guilt. Those emotions, at their core, help guide your inner being. They compel you to do the right thing, even if you don’t want to do it. What’s happening now is that the most visible people in this country are saying their better angels are nothing more than a drag on the P&L sheet. I don’t understand it. In some ways, I hope that I never do.

Howard:

What’s the difference between spooky and scary? I’ve always thought insects can be scary, but not spooky. This is why I think they’re bad for Halloween theming. However, ghosts are spooky as hell, but I don’t find them particularly scary.

“Spooky” refers to an atmosphere, “scary” a visceral emotion. An abandoned old house is spooky. I might feel safe walking around it, especially in daylight, but it’s still giving me the heebie-jeebies. Throw in a bunch of cobwebs and some rotted furniture, and now it’s crazy spooky. The ghost living IN that house? Now that’s scary. I see that ghost and now I’m panicked. You would be too if you saw a real-ass ghost. Friendly ghosts only exist in cartoons and on boxes of Boo Berry. If you see a real ghost, your brain isn’t gonna be like, “Hey, that might be Casper! We could be buds!” Your brain is gonna say WE NEED TO FUCKING LEAVE THIS PLACE RIGHT NOW.

This is funny to think about when you consider the existence of Halloween perverts. You know the people I mean. The people who think they’re the spiritual love children of Tim Burton, who go all-out for the holiday by decorating their house and yard with every foam headstone on sale at Target. Those people’s houses are almost never spooky OR scary. They’re just corny as balls. I appreciate the effort and all, but no one of any age is gonna shit their pants just because there’s an inflatable Frankenstein chilling out on the lawn.

Yes, but it’s meant to be fun for the children!

Fuck the children. What children today need is a good old-fashioned dose of sheer terror.

Mark:

I know that Peter King was fun to clown on, but I realized a week or so ago I miss his work. I'd read MMQB (I'm not calling it FMLA) weekly and, while rote at times, he provided key insights. What are your thoughts and is there a similar column that I might not be aware of that has taken its place?

SI gave Peter King’s MMQB column over to Albert Breer after King left for NBC, but I’m gonna rightfully assume you have zero interest in reading that shit. Peter King is a kindly old goober who used his Monday column to drop some inside intel and then complain about the hotel room he stayed in the night before. Albert Breer is a redpilled sourpuss whom every other sportswriter resents having to aggregate. Reading his thoughts on a Monday morning is like slashing your own tires before driving to work.

But I do have good news for you, Mark. Our friend Mike Tanier posts a roundup of the games at his Substack every Monday morning. It’s unreasonably comprehensive, and much meaner than King’s old column. I therefore deem it an improvement in format.

Of course, I publish my own recurring NFL column every Thursday, which I modeled after King’s column as a way of competing against it. Unfortunately, my column is light on breaking news and heavy on stories about me having to barf in unfortunate places. Thus, in attempting to destroy Peter King, I became him. This was predictable to everyone who is not me. As such, you’re better off reading Tanier to fill that void in your life.

Rog:

During the summer, I started running again after three years of recovering from various ailments and surgeries. We live down the Jersey Shore, and I run on the Boardwalk from town to town. This summer, there was a weighted vest explosion! Old people, young people, fat people, skinny people: they were all wearing various shapes and sizes of a weighted vest. How long will this fad last, and will these people do with the vests when it’s over?

My wife has one of those! She goes on power walks with it and shit. And when I hit the bike trail, every other person I pass is also wearing one. BIG WEIGHTED VEST took over this country even faster than salted caramel did. They’re going to make those vests heavier and heavier until, one day, they’ll leave you hopelessly pinned to the ground. And that’s when those companies will send out their minions to pick your pockets! DIABOLICAL!

Dr. Cox:

Is it still a sandwich if you can't pick it up with your hands?

Sounds like a challenge to me. Oh, they SAY you shouldn’t pick up that open-faced pot roast sandwich that’s been drenched in thick, beefy gravy. But for me, the danger only makes it a turn-on. Watch me get both hands under that bad boy and hold it aloft, like a prize trophy. Then watch me take three bites before it falls apart and I have to eat the rest with a fork.

Anyway if the menu says it’s a sandwich, then it’s a sandwich. I got enough other shit to think about, nuh mean?

Michael:

My dad called me over the weekend to ask if he can borrow some of my rope. I'm single, and live in an apartment in Iowa, I don't own any rope. He couldn't fathom that I don't have any. Should I have rope? How much rope do you have? 

Let’s pause here to marvel at the levels of dad on display here from Michael’s old man. There are only two kinds of people who’ll ask, “Hey, you got any rope?” One is a kidnapper, the other is your dad.

Anyway, I just checked around the house and discovered that we don’t appear to own any rope, of any kind. We have lots of cords, which I suppose could prove useful in the event that I need to bind an unwanted intruder. We also have some cooking twine, which I could perhaps use to rappel down a nearby playground climbing wall. But if my father-in-law called me and asked for some actual rope, he’d be shit out of luck. This fact does not bother me. I haven’t tossed and turned all bed in night, worrying about the lack of rope in our household. If I ever need rope, I can just go to the Home Depot for it. I live in the burbs, not on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. The fuck am I gonna do with a bunch of rope?

HALFTIME!

Adam:

It seems like basketball, football, hockey, and soccer uniforms are all optimized based on the demands of the sport, but that baseball uniforms are a relic. What would an optimized baseball uniform look like?

Um, excuse me Adam, but did Nike and Fanatics not already join forces to optimize MLB uniforms? You got a problem with the tactical diaper they handed to players a year ago? Well then, I guess SOMEONE isn’t as keen on progress as they say!

And now to the serious part of the answer: The modern baseball uniform setup works exactly the way it should. They make those unis out of lighter, more breathable materials now, but the basic design remains the same: pants, socks, belt, undershirt, jersey. The pants and socks prevent you from bloodying up your legs while sliding into home plate. The belt holds up the pants so that no one sees your crack. The undershirt sops up all of your sweat and tobacky juice. And the jersey makes you look cool. All boxes checked.

If the get-up looks old-fashioned, that’s not a drawback. A lot of old-fashioned shit looks cool, and is also designed to last. The fact that no one has been able to improve on the original baseball uniform setup (and I promise you they’ve tried, to disastrous results) tells you how good that design is. No need to ask the buttholes at Nike to reinvent something that already works. We’ve got enough of those kinds of shenanigans happening elsewhere.

Adam:

Of all the four major American sports (if you’re feeling frisky, you can go global, but this feels like a very American question), athletes from which sport do you think have the highest rate of jet ski ownership?

Baseball. Easy. Eastbound and Down taught me that. Every white ballplayer owns a jet ski, an ATV, and least a dozen high-powered deer rifles.

Andy:

In the past few years, I've become a big fan of Americana/Bluegrass/Country lite music, and it's now the point where it's mostly what I listen to. Never bro country though. Jason Aldean and all that crap? Fuck those guys. Why is it that I can enjoy Americana music now, but Travis Tritt and Alan Jackson and the like make me wanna stab my ears with a letter opener?

Country music purists will tell you that the commercial shit out of Nashville isn’t real country music. If you want legit country, you listen to Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, and … actually that’s pretty much all of the authentic country legends I can name off the top of my head. But honestly, it’s not that different from any other product, where the mass-produced shit is slop and the homemade shit is better quality.

My wife is a big fan of Americana star Brandi Carlile, by the way. She put her on in the kitchen once. It was tasteful. I still wanted to claw my good eardrum out.

Neil:

At any point in human existence, has a nun ever done a cannonball dive into a swimming pool while a) wearing the full habit, and b) shouting "cannonball!"? I don't mean some smashed Sigma Nu playing dress-up during rush week, but an actual sister of the cloth. My weed buddies and I consider this to be the ultimate impossible question, with the answer hopelessly bouncing between, "Nah, never happened!" and "Well sure, at least once!"

Of course it’s happened. I grew up in the Golden Age Of Nun Jokes, and what Kathy Najimy taught me was that nuns aren’t robots. They’re normal women who sometimes like to do fun shit, like jump into a pool fully clothed. Besides, if you committed your whole life to chastity, wouldn’t you take advantage of any God-sanctioned fun you could get? I know I would. If I were a monk, I’d be the kind of monk who drinks brandy from sun-up to bedtime.

Barry:

Have you ever noticed that in fantasy films, everyone speaks with a vaguely British accent? Any other type of film, it doesn't matter what accent people have. But if a dwarf doesn't sound like they’re from the UK, I'd be thrown off. Hell, imagine a Southern accent... 

Aragorn: Legolas, whatcha done see? 

Legolas: Y'all, I reckon they done be taking the Hobbits to Isengard. 

See what I mean? Or am I just REALLY baked?

Why not both? I’ve actually had the same thought as Barry here, but while sober! Amazing! Because, likely due to J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive influence, the fantasy world almost always uses Middle Age England as a default setting. There are always British accents, kings and queens, castles, bogs, and cool swords. I have no problem with any of those trappings, but the point of fantasy is that it can be anything. I’m not gonna give away too much here, because I essentially have no pages, but my outline for Novel No. 4 is a fantasy story that isn’t King Arthur cosplay. I’ll still put dragons in there and shit, but no thees and thys. You’re not required by law to write a fantasy epic that way. It’s a tight needle to thread, writing fantasy dialogue that doesn’t sound ridiculous. I think that’s why a lot of writers just go for the British vibe. It’s less dangerous for them.

Jack:

Did you see this article? My daughter and I just went and toured Tennessee, Auburn, South Carolina, and Clemson over a long weekend. When people ask her where she wants to go, her response is pretty much “big SEC school.” I went to a miniscule college and understand a little about the desire to go somewhere with big time football and party culture, but I also think she would love a smaller school with good academics and smaller class sizes. I also can’t wrap my head around wanting to go to a particular sports conference. My daughter’s not abnormal among her friend group at her high school. They can’t get into Texas anymore, so they are looking to all the other big SEC schools now. Do you buy the idea that southern schools are pulling an inordinate number of kids in versus the schools up north? By the way, a Tennessee football game in Neyland is awesome!

One of the reasons I went to Michigan was because of its size. I was stuck at a small New England prep school, and every liberal arts college I toured had the exact same feel to it. I didn’t want that. I was too big time for some rinky-dink NESCAC school. I wanted to level up to a college that had a big football team, multiple frats of dubious reputation, and women. Michigan was just my style.

I lasted one semester there before transferring to a rinky dink NESCAC school. Growing up means learning that what you think you want isn’t what you actually want. I was raised on Animal House and college football on ABC, so I had a daydream of college life that I demanded to be fact. That’s the power of college football. That’s why schools pour tens of millions into football programs that are destined to be coached some iteration of Bobby Petrino. There is no more visible advertising vehicle for universities than sports, so it makes perfect sense that a high school senior in 2025 would want to attend a power four school. They see the teams, and they see all the rowdy students(?) pregaming behind the GameDay set, and they’re like, “Ooh, that’s the life for me.” It’s all branding. In many ways, it always has been.

Given how much time has passed since I graduated (1998), and given the incredible amount of damage that the new administration is inflicting upon higher education, I have no idea what the present college landscape is like on the ground. I know what my kid’s college is like, and how it’s defied her initial expectations for it, but that’s all I can know. Your kid will be the same way. They’ll pick a school based on its reputation, its brand, its campus tour, and if they have a prayer of getting in. After that, they have to enroll and figure out, in real time, if this is really the right place for them. Same as I did.

Alex:

Why don't great quarterbacks have cool nicknames? The last one I can remember is "Joe Cool" for Joe Montana, and maybe "The Gunslinger" for Brett Favre. Otherwise it's lazy stuff like TB12. Nicknames seem to be reserved for lesser QBS (like "Danny Dimes" or "Red Rifle"). What gives?

I’m pretty sure Bill Simmons tackled this question back in his days writing for ESPN. The gist, and I can barely recall it, is that great QBs don’t need nicknames. They’ve reached a level of accomplishment where their own name says it all: Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees (as ripe for a nickname as you’ll ever see), Peyton Manning, etc. Trying to slap a nickname on any of these guys, like when Manning was weirdly dubbed “The Sheriff” toward the very end of his career—feels redundant. Also, cool sports nicknames have basically gone extinct in the 21st century, so calling Mahomes “Tricky Pat” won’t catch on even if you’d like it to.

Gary:

In light of last week’s game of who was the sweatiest president, who was/is the smelliest president? Gotta be one of the pre-Civil War ones, like Andrew Jackson. He seemed like such a colossal fuckwad that he didn’t give a shit about smelling bad.

This is why we aren’t ready for time travel. None of us are ready for what the old days smelled like. People bathed once a week, opting to wear 190 proof perfume to cover up the B.O. The roads were coated in shit. And car fresheners had yet to be invented. I don’t even have a sense of smell and I fear the mere idea of that heady bouquet.

So let’s go back before indoor plumbing, before electricity, and before Designer Impostors body sprays. Any president from this time is gonna smell unreasonable. Let’s single out John Adams here, just for fun. And because he doesn’t strike me as having been all that active of a fellow.

Email of the week!

Bill:

I work at a business school (not faculty, staff), but I recently received an email to a graduate business school conference where the keynote speaker is the co-founder of Humans2Venus. Humans2Venus has a long-term vision of establishing a permanent human presence of 1,000+ people in the Venusian atmosphere by 2050. It also touts in the email that this speaker, "was previously founder of Space Angels Network, a global group of individual accredited investors focused on early-stage space ventures, and co-founder of OceanGate, which designs, builds, and operates deep sea crewed submersibles." Seems like you might want to keep that one on the down low, buddy... I do think we should support research on a variety of topics, but like, come on. Are we ever going to shame some of these billionaires out of hoovering up truck-tons of money for doomed projects? Like, just gimme some more buses!

Only a true visionary would attempt to establish a colony on what is literally the most hostile planet in the solar system. Sign me up for the test flight!