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Wladyslaw Pleszczynski and William McGurn

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Real Coaches Don't Quit Young

By Wladyslaw Pleszczynski
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2001, at 4:01 PM ET

Hold on, Bill:

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This time it was me asking my wife: How long before Bill teases me about Bobby Knight? This from someone who has yet to reply to my request for a comment on the star Notre Dame women's basketball team. Say what you will about Knight--he beat your alma mater like a drum. The first time Digger Phelps brought down a team to Bloomington, in December 1971 I'm pretty certain, it scored all of 29 points to Indiana's 94 or so.

In many ways Al McGuire reminded me more of Phelps than Knight. A fine entertainer, even huckster, but also the sort of coach who appeals most to those who aren't that interested in basketball. Frankly, as a color man he seemed to pride himself on not paying much attention to detail. He got by on authentic New York charm, which did him no good when playing against a Knight-coached team. A real coach you have to drag into retirement and chain to a tree. McGuire quit at 48.

It was good of you to mention the Media Research Center. With amazing regularity it perpetrates hate crimes without saying a word of its own: All it need do is quote from "mainstream" news reports and media commentary, and the liberal bias comes through loud and clear. That's the way it is, and if not for Fox News, that's the way it would remain. But before you thank God for Fox, thank Him for Brit Hume. (That should get one of us a job.)

Too bad your constitutional position on abortion is too "complex" for our snazzy media culture. Any chance it might be articulated by a Bush administration figure the way Bush himself makes a consistent case for why taxes are the people's money that should be returned to them? (It still irks me that he was ridiculed for saying Social Security wasn't a federal program when all he meant was that its funds came from, and thus belonged to, taxpayers. In other words, it was their program, not Washington's.)

Other than his promise to sign a ban on late-term abortions into law, Bush so far has emphasized the need for a cultural, rather than legislative, rejection of this callous practice. This effort shouldn't be belittled. Abortion may be as old as mankind, but at least until recently it was understood to involve the taking of unborn life. Now the more widely available abortion becomes, the more willfully blind its advocates become to the humanity of its victims--and intolerant of those who think otherwise. This is the way we're supposed to live?

Can't wait to hear from you again.

As ever,
Wlady