The Iron Yuppie

Well, Marge Schott passed away. For those who don't know who Marge Schott is, she was the primary owner of the Cincinnati Reds for about 15 years from 1984 to 1999 where she was known for such gems as:

"Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far."

The funny part about this (and many of the other things she said) is that, logically, I understand exactly what she was saying. You can practically hear her father uttering these words, and they echo 50 years later. Some night, when she was 12, her father sat across from her at the dinner table reading the De Newspaper (or whatever the newspaper of the day was) and commented how much he liked what Hitler was doing with the local train stop. In her mind, Hitler did do some good things such as rebuilding the German economy and infrastructure. What she neglects to recognize is that it is possible to do good things without bad things as well, and the two do not necessarily offset (good + bad != neutral). But she just segregated these things in her mind, and had no concept of how other people would understand it. Maybe I'm giving her too much credit and she was just a big racist jerk. But I doubt it.

She was suspended from baseball for a year after saying this comment. It goes back to my earlier point about people having the ability to say anything they want at any time (thanks to free speech), but that does not mean what you say does not have repercussions. I think our society is better for the diversity of opinion and speech, but it means that if you speak, you suffer the risk of being hoisted on your own petard.

I guess the only reason I mention this is I just feel bad for her complete lack of social understanding. That, and it reminds me to worry about my own tendencies to miss the subtler forms of social communication, and that I'll fall into the same boat as her. I doubt it'll ever be anything about Hitler, but I definitely have foot-in-mouth-itis.

D