Bill Voth

MARCH

Alysa Liu is a perfect ambassador for the next generation of athletes. Vulnerable, empathetic, understands it's all supposed to be fun. Athlete empowerment has a long way to go, but she's carrying the torch.

Dropping the QB back 15 yards to throw to a wide-open man was such a money move in Tecmo Bowl. Can’t believe it worked in real life.

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @Reuters reuters.com/world/pope-leo…

this week will be totally normal.

@PepsBlackVisor Lavar was ahead of his time. bluster into a microphone attracted more microphones which equaled attention which equaled dollars even if clearly just bluster. then politics noticed.

@billvoth Reminds me of the Lavar Ball phenomenon for six mos

this is so aggravating, it's forcing me to scream into this abyss, knowing no one cares we're now celebrating that content targeted to the lowest common denominator is "wisdom." lack of context is a feature, not a bug we haven't just given up. we're throwing 2,500-word parades

We’ll see you in October. #GuardsBall | #GuardiWins

There’s nothing that makes Cleveland go crazier than a QB that MAY be able to play.

I’d highly recommend anyone who gleefully shared the Coldplay couple story today to read “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” by the wonderful @jonronson I was right there when Justine Sacco landed years ago. I regret it now. That book changed how I look at these moments. 100%

Social media was a true joy for many years. Lots happened to change it, but I’ll remember Justine Sacco as a turning point in ‘13. Mob justice became the jury for sins. We all make mistakes. Some worse than others. Piling on doesn’t make us better people.

I mean, they pulled out the Bulls intro song. That is so beyond brilliant.

I wish Twitter was still around to talk about Severance. My goodness, its brilliance is rising.

Dump Thy Neighbor? As our new president and his favorite broligarch move to dismantle US foreign aid in the name of making America “great again,” consider this: There are 8 billion people on this planet. About half of them live on less than $7 a day. Around 10% are in what the UN calls “extreme poverty” — trying to live on less than $2 a day. And 4% are Americans who live on an average of about $220 per day. Before January 21, when Trump froze virtually all foreign aid, the US allocated slightly less than 1% of its wealth to help the world’s poorest people. And for more than 60 years, that work has been done by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), whose goal is both self-serving and compassionate: to “further America's interests while improving lives in the developing world.” This weekend, Trump declared USAID is run by “liberals and lunatics” — and Elon Musk tweeted it was “time for it to die” as his crew took over the agency’s offices and demanded access to classified material. And today, with Musk crowing, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper,” we are learning that Marco Rubio is now in control of the agency. Trump was elected by the most conservative Christians in the USA. But all Christians, whether liberal or conservative, follow the teachings of Jesus Christ — and if you distill Jesus’s message into three words, it’s “love thy neighbor.” As a traveler, I’ve come to understand that if there is a God, then all people are children of their heavenly creator. Therefore, we are all brothers and sisters. And logically, proximity (what country you happen to live in) has nothing to do with “love thy neighbor.” But let’s just say the typical MAGA American Christian is more of a nationalist than a Christian (a.k.a. a “Christian Nationalist,”) and they care more about being rich and safe than actually loving thy neighbor. The president those Christian Nationalists helped elect, whose slogan is “Make America Great Again,” is in the process of dismantling humanitarian aid in the interest of saving tax dollars. But ironically, pulling out of this work will actually make America less safe and less great. Forgetting about any ethical or Christian-compassion dimension of foreign aid, ending these programs will make the Global South both more desperate and less stable — leaving a huge vacuum for China (which seems to understand the concept of “soft power” much better than MAGA Americans) to fill in these weakened countries. And to top it off, millions of people will no longer be providing a market for us to trade with — and will instead become refugees. As a traveler who has spent about three months a year overseas for 40 years, who has researched and produced a one-hour TV special called “Hunger and Hope: Lessons from Ethiopia and Guatemala,” and whose primary teaching and philanthropic goals have been to fight poverty at home and abroad, I’ve learned something very fundamental: Even if you’re only motivated by greed, if you know what’s good for you and your loved ones, you don’t want to be filthy rich in a desperately poor world. It’s just not a pretty picture. And if you really want to make America great, the best possible use of US tax dollars is to continue to dedicate less than 1% of the total federal budget to fighting global poverty — not in the name of Jesus, but in the name of a more stable and prosperous world where the USA is a strong leader. (And talk about a twofer…you get to love thy neighbor as well!) Concerned? Raise your voice!

@PanthersFan_Afr Pretty heartbroken at the moment. But hope you’ve been well.

@billvoth I was really hoping for Lions v Bills. Sigh....

Buffalo. Detroit. Cleveland. It’ll happen. One day.

I don’t tweet much. I want to tweet right now cause this game is bonkers and I miss what Twitter used to be.

R.I.P. Greg Gumbel The first black primetime Olympics anchor on U.S. television, who led us through the unmissable Nancy Kerrigan & Tonya Harding saga at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games.

Electric

Take the goalposts to Marshall Street 🍊