The Best Offense....

By Captain Arthur Samuel Swift

Back in my days as a tailback at the Merchant Marine Academy, Coach Cavitation used to say the best defense is a good offense, or was it vice versa…. It seems to me sitting at St. Maggie’s, five short blocks away from a huge hole in the financial ground, that perhaps both are true.

A couple of steps up Wall Street that highly talented, sweet, youngish, waif of Broadway, Liza Minelli had the most extravagant and wondrous of weddings bringing a tsunami of publicity for her career that is completely in the bilge pipe. Offense as defense.

“Why yes, Mr. Benoit, another cosmopolitan cocktail would be just fine.”

Bobby Valentine, the manager of the perpetual underdogs, The New York Metropolitans, tells a reporter that one of his closeted gay baseball players is thinking about announcing to the world he is homosexual and that Valentine is fine with the idea. For the Met’s skipper: offense as defense. For the un-named player: defense as offense, hiding it from the press will exert enough media pressure that either a reporter will snap the pictures of him or he will be forced by other players on the team to come out.

As I sip on my drink, Mr. Benoit tells me that popular Met catcher, Mike Piazza, has just told the press that he is not gay (confirming my erudite thoughts above). Thusly exhibiting offense as defense to the multitude of anonymous gossip page stories that have floated in New York publications since Mr. Piazza came to NYC three years ago. By the way as I have tens of thousands of hours on the sea, sexual proclivity is an issue that I prefer my crew keeps below deck, if you will.

Andrew Cuomo attacks Governor George Pataki for not being active enough, in comparison to Mayor Giuliani, during the 9/11 crisis. This is a great way to use offensive rhetoric to defend the fact that Andy will never be the politician that his father, Mario, was.

And as we are just barely starting to recuperate from the torpedo in the main hold that was 9/11, the admirals of democracy in Washington have started to use the offense as defense technique.

The Democrats started with a defense of the fear that they were going to lose the mid-term elections by going on the offensive that the Bush Administration knew of the impending 9/11 attacks.

Conversely, Condi Rice, and the heretofore All American Team of Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld, went on the offensive against not only the Democrats, but also the American people and the toughest, most wonderful people on the face of planet New Yorkers. Suddenly as the congressional committees are being formed to investigate who knew what when, Lady Liberty, The Brooklyn Bridge and every building in The City, including the Port-a-Potties in Central Park are under imminent threat of being blown up.

A hybrid of the offense as defense defense, this appears to me to be a unique case of offensive offense as defense.

Though that funny fellow on Saturday Night Live who imitates President Bush says “Don’t mess with Texas”, perhaps some in the Nation’s Capital should remember “Don’t F#$@ with New Yorkers”, if you will please excuse the phrasing.

As I sit next to Charlie and Tony, two municipal bond traders who earlier told me of how they ran from the offices in the North Tower and then walked to their families in Brooklyn, I wonder if the offensive offense is working with them?

“No Cap, my wife said that if we left Bay Ridge, her life would be over anyhow,” says Charlie, adding, “But once the kids are out of school and my mother-in-law dies, I think she will go to Boca.”

As I then turn to Tony for his reaction to the question of whether he is worried about the Federal alert on more attacks, he tries to take the cell phone from his ear, starts to choke on the hors d’oeuvre in his mouth and throws his hand in the general direction of Mecca or possibly Washington D.C with his middle digit extended. Charlie smacks him on the back loosening the appetizer and Tony says, “Uh huh, do I have to say more?”

This makes me wonder if the O/D technique is working. Of course if when you read this, St. Maggie’s is nothing more than dust floating somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, you can say that we were too cavalier; but the sea is a fine final resting place for me.