Former ABC anchorman in Houston interviewed then QB Dan Pastorini about the 1979 controversy involving a disputed non-catch in the end zone during a championship game. The controversy is credited for being the reason behind doing instant replays of controversial calls in critical parts of games, as that situation was. Pastorini said of the call, that he liked his chances going into the final quarter with the scored tied. The call deprived the Oilers of that, and left them still behind as the fourth quarter started. The play is a bit of football lore that may be recognized more than it otherwise would have been if it hadn't been so important at the time. You might wonder about how the game might have gone if the call had been different. They might be wondering about that one for as long as football is played.
As I watched that interview on YouTube, I wondered if the Election of 2020 is about the same in a respect. No matter how much a partisan might make a claim of one thing or another depending on who you preferred to win, the fact of the matter is that there wasn't any way to determine it as well as it could be determined at the time. There wasn't any replay in 1979 when that game took place. The link between that and the election is that the Congress is like the referees who couldn't go against the crowd, and decided the outcome of the play under circumstances that were less than ideal.
There may be recounts of votes-- but in today's world, with electronics being the way they are, it should be easier to determine for a fact who won an election. The aftermath of the election, and the claim of an insurrection is testimony to the fact that there needn't be as much controversy as there was. Certainly there exists a way to determine quickly if the votes were accurate. Same as in football in 1979. There was a way to do an instant replay then. Excuses were made for not doing and those continued for years until they finally approved it for the first time in the mid to late eighties.
Those who protested in the Capitol that day are not insurrectionists just because they don't believe Joe Biden really won. Those who claim otherwise are doing us all a disservice by making such a claim. If the call had gone the other way, the shoe would have been on the other foot. How would YOU have acted if the decision had gone the other way? It is doubtful that they would have taken it so calmly. To make these claims now is just aggravating a bad situation. The facts that politicians are doing it making it even worse still.
There's is no way to create perfection on this earth. Even in the case of the NFL game, there were going to be a whole lot of unhappy people no matter how that call went. The insistence that it is somehow unpatriotic and out of bounds for there to be a protest over a controversy is itself out of bounds. Why not attempt to improve upon the way these things are settled as opposed to trying to tar and feather somebody who has a legitimate reason to dispute the result as obtained? There were plenty of reasons to dispute how the 2020 election went. To claim otherwise is just pouring salt into the wound.
No matter how the election went ( in some dream world in which everything goes perfectly), there should be no controversy in looking honestly at what actually happened. But that is not what is happening with the January 6th committee. All the more reason to doubt that the result of that election was the true or correct one, and those who are trying to punish the rest who say otherwise, appear to know it. That is why they are behaving so unreasonably with this one-sided committee.
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