Hockey, Hooey, and Help from the National Guard

Virgil Vaupel's column this week will probably illicit a response from the community (for better or worse). In the interest of civility and balance, I'll take the first crack at it.

But first I have to give a shout-out to a couple of National Guardsmen who came to the aid of Stan Sonsteng in his struggle with esophageal cancer this past week.

Without relaying too much in the way of personal detail, I can say that among the many difficulties that Stan and his family and friends have faced recently, a batch of critical medical supplies was accidentally left behind in Billings after a visit to the doctor last Friday. A quick call from Ruth Ann Hutcheson to Guardsman Corey Smith in Billings solved the problem straightaway. Smith made a call (on a Friday night, no less) to Glasgow's Joe Shipp, who is also in the Guard, with the result that the pair met midway between Billings and Glasgow and got Stan and Ruth Ann the supplies they required. They didn't even ask for gas money. Way to go, gentlemen! And way to represent the Montana National Guard, even off duty.

Now back to VV: Over lunch at the Cottonwood this week, Virgil and I discussed the subject of the odd racial disparity among visitors to our National Parks system.

I love talking to Virgil, and while I didn't initially detect anything outright obnoxious in what he had to say, his column made a few missteps that I can't overlook.

For starters, the whole subject as framed by VV seems a straw man to me, but I'll leave that low hanging fruit for a reader to pluck, if anyone dares.

However, copy editor and Detroit Red Wings superfan Gwen Honrud threatened to have a conniption if I let the statement that there "aren’t any" minoritiy players in pro hockey get through to print unopposed.

Why Virgil makes this claim before moving on to an expressed wish for "more black female cheerleaders in pro football and basketball," I'm not quite sure. Regardless, any list of current black players in the NHL (to say nothing of other minorities) would have to include Winnipeg Jets defenseman Dustin Byfuglien, Olympic gold-medalist and five-time All-Star Jarome Iginla, and P.K. Subban (the first black player to win the Norris Trophy).

Ordinarily, I'd type "et al." after a list of three names like that, but I'll double down with a blast from the past in Grant Fuhr, the first black player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. 

Lastly, I'll move on to matters closer to my own heart. VV claims that he isn't really weighing in on whether "racial parity and/or diversity" is either "a bad thing or a good thing," so I'll go ahead and do that myself.

The subject of racial parity is a pressing one. According to my universal unabridged, "parity" is "the state or condition of being equal, especially regarding status or pay."

Good sir, if you're genuinely undecided about the merits of racial equality in our society, I could issue a short course on the subject. But I don't really need to do that, do I?

This sort of muddled discourse and coded language around the subject of race doesn't serve anyone. We tend to agree that people should just come out and say what they think, right? If we're going to argue about race, perhaps we should start there.