By The Old Gods And The New

This was sent to me today by someone who is still, for whatever reason, on Facebook. (I'm not.) I can't quite make up my mind what to think about it. Maybe you can help.

These are my thoughts, for better or for worse:

JESUS CHRIST. That scumbag fantasist toddler-potty rider has basically imposed on a man who is eighty-one years old and suffering from a degenerative disease so he can create a "passing of the torch" photo that is as fabricated as his pretensions to the so-called cross-country record.

ON THE OTHER HAND, maybe Brock knows perfectly well who this guy is and what he claims to have done, and maybe he's okay with it, and maybe I'm imposing my personal views on authenticity and decency on a little tableau that requires neither my approval nor my commentary.

AND DON'T FORGET that Brock was and is an imperfect human being and shameless self-promoter who pulled off the neat trick of profiting from illegal racing and from decrying illegal racing.

BUT WHEN I GOT KICKED OUT OF ONE LAP for doing donuts in the Road America paddock, Brock made sure I was allowed to come back for the final event.

AND I RESPECT A LOT OF THE THINGS HE WROTE but I don't respect everything he wrote and in his later years he started to display a worrying David-E-Davis-esque pretension to wealth and privilege.

SO BROCK YATES IS AWESOME AND ED'S A SCUMBAG except they both did pretty much the same thing and they both want to profit from it and define themselves by it and so what's the difference? That Brock created some enjoyable stuff from it? That he wrote the legend?

BUT AT THE HEART OF IT IS THE FACT THAT I don't really care much for the transcontinental thing. I respect Alex Roy for reasons having nothing to do with his "record". I respect Brock because he wrote some great stuff, and because he was an SCCA racer. I respect the writer and racer, not the cross-country stunter.

AND SINCE A CROSS-COUNTRY STUNTER IS ALL THAT ED BOLIAN IS and since I don't even think he actually set the record,

ED BOLIAN CAN GO STUFF HIMSELF, for being who he is and for taking this photo, and for trying to make himself look cool at the expense of a gravely ill person who actually means something to some of us,

FUCK HIM,

THE END.