This was sent to me today by someone who is still, for whatever reason, on Facebook. (I’m not.) I can’t quite make up my mind what to think about it. Maybe you can help.
These are my thoughts, for better or for worse:
JESUS CHRIST. That scumbag fantasist toddler-potty rider has basically imposed on a man who is eighty-one years old and suffering from a degenerative disease so he can create a “passing of the torch” photo that is as fabricated as his pretensions to the so-called cross-country record.
ON THE OTHER HAND, maybe Brock knows perfectly well who this guy is and what he claims to have done, and maybe he’s okay with it, and maybe I’m imposing my personal views on authenticity and decency on a little tableau that requires neither my approval nor my commentary.
AND DON’T FORGET that Brock was and is an imperfect human being and shameless self-promoter who pulled off the neat trick of profiting from illegal racing and from decrying illegal racing.
BUT WHEN I GOT KICKED OUT OF ONE LAP for doing donuts in the Road America paddock, Brock made sure I was allowed to come back for the final event.
AND I RESPECT A LOT OF THE THINGS HE WROTE but I don’t respect everything he wrote and in his later years he started to display a worrying David-E-Davis-esque pretension to wealth and privilege.
SO BROCK YATES IS AWESOME AND ED’S A SCUMBAG except they both did pretty much the same thing and they both want to profit from it and define themselves by it and so what’s the difference? That Brock created some enjoyable stuff from it? That he wrote the legend?
BUT AT THE HEART OF IT IS THE FACT THAT I don’t really care much for the transcontinental thing. I respect Alex Roy for reasons having nothing to do with his “record”. I respect Brock because he wrote some great stuff, and because he was an SCCA racer. I respect the writer and racer, not the cross-country stunter.
AND SINCE A CROSS-COUNTRY STUNTER IS ALL THAT ED BOLIAN IS and since I don’t even think he actually set the record,
ED BOLIAN CAN GO STUFF HIMSELF, for being who he is and for taking this photo, and for trying to make himself look cool at the expense of a gravely ill person who actually means something to some of us,
FUCK HIM,
THE END.
=8-) .
-Nate
I had no idea Brock was ill. His was always the first page I turned to in CandD.
When he took his walk I wrote to Robert suggesting that he pick him up. Sadly it didn’t last long.
I’ve often thought about taking a detour off I90 to Wyoming to see his compound.
And it is true, his miss Pamela routine was starting to smell like the hubris of David E himself.
Well, I for one will always be grateful for Ed’s contributions to search engine technology. Without him, the search results for “tits” AND “ass” wouldn’t be nearly as fruitful.
This strikes me as a very awkward attempt by one man to inflate his own reputation by simply standing in the same vicinity as someone who has actually accomplished something. Shameful, but I’ve come to expect little else from this person’s generation. After all, we’re taking about the guy who applies the term “build” to a process that apparently involves paying other people to perform work that would likely fall tech inspection at the local drag strip’s test-n-tune night. But at least he owns some fancy cars that he’s be able to afford by selling similar fancy cars.
Ed may or may not be a douchebag, but “this person’s generation” is just old people talk for “git off ma lawn!”
Yeah, that doesn’t look like “quality time,” at least not for Yates.
Dean Jeffries, who passed away in 2013, made a personal appearance with one of his custom cars, the Mantaray, at the 2012 Autorama. He was 79 at the time. From my experience with my mom I recognized signs of some minor cognitive impairment, though he was lucid, and I got the impression, fairly or not, that he was being exploited just a little. I’m sure he wasn’t there against his will, and it was a way for him to make money, but it left me with an uncomfortable feeling.
Of course, I took some photos of him, so I guess I was a participant in his exploitation. You can click on the link below if you want to join the crowd.
http://www.rokemneedlearts.com/carsindepth/wordpressblog/?p=12663
If Brock is getting paid by this d’bag then more power to him. I suspect that all of us who care about our families (or even eating or having a roof, especially in our youth) have humiliated ourselves in some way. I was a janitor for a while and washed dishes for longer than I care to admit. If I accomplish enough that it is worth more than the current minimum wage for my estate to wheel my corpse out to some car show I would still call that a win. I know some people older than me who not only believe that their beneficiaries should extract every cent they can but that not a penny should be spent on prolonging their life. Not saying that Bolian should not go fuck himself, because he absolutely should, just saying that even decisions made when impaired are not necessarily lamented by the people who made them. Especially when it comes to old folks. Some of them are just lousy people who lived a long time, but some of them are just still trying to the best of their abilities to take care of their families and not be a drain.
All that being said, this photo, Ed, and anyone who knows and has not rebuked him can go eat a big ol’ bag of dicks.
If Brock is getting paid by this d’bag then more power to him.
he doesn’t look to be in any condition where “getting paid” will help.
So he doesn’t have a family?
Somehow I don’t think it’s quite on the cultural level of Bob Dylan seeking out Woody Guthrie, dying of Huntingdon’s disease, in Greystone Park Psychiatric hospital.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgRzkoScuF4
I’m still trying to comprehend just how narcissistic one has to be to take a selfie with a bedridden Alzheimer’s patient. F’ing Chooch.
I stopped buying his books or anything to do with Dean Karnazes really, shortly after he posted a photo of himself with Jack Lalanne, a wheelchair and a huge stack of Depends boxes. Sure, reality is what it is. But some acts are much worse than running above Times Square to get attention.
If Ed or anyone else truly wants to do something to honor one of these old-timers, then they should just lay some coin on them as an “advisor” to their foundation of their dreams, but leave the old-timers out of pictures showing them well past their primes.
No doubt many of them still have a modicum of pride, and do not wish to be put on display as a shadow of their former selves…whether Brock Yates, clearly not having the time of his life with Ed, or the Jack LaLanne thing alluded to above.
Let these old-timer legends, whether mythical or problematic, have their dignity in their dying days, and if you want something off of them, confine it to, as I said above, hiring them as a “consultant” to their foundation, and laying a bit of coin on them in their old age.
I know that if I live long enough to end up being a shadow of my former self, that I wouldn’t mind loved ones taking photos of me at the end of my run, but I damn sure wouldn’t want pictures of me that way broadly distributed.
You almost don’t have to write a damning indictment of the whole sordid mess, Jack, except for the fact that there are too many people who don’t “get it”. Ed’s behavior, and even a superficial analysis of the dynamics of this photo session reveal Ed to be a nobody struggling to get into a photograph with someone famous, and it’s just as obvious as if he were trying to be photographed with some pop entertainment star.
And wrapping himself in the guise of doing a public service does nothing to dispel the true image of a desperately publicity-hungry younger man trying to weasel his way into a picture with a far more famous person, but one who is now so old and incapacitated as to be unable to tell Ed to get off his lawn and to stay off his lawn.
But hopefully there will be some backlash effect…more people will get to know who Ed really is, and what games he is, and has been, up to, in trying to make a name for himself.
Yeah, Ed, we believe you…the cross country run required so much of your attention that you didn’t have time to arrange for ANY supporting evidence…but since we can see what a sincere selfless person you are, no doubt we are supposed to believe your exploits simply on the basis of your own unsubstantiated testimony.
I DON’T THINK SO!
And DO stay off of Brock’s lawn, Ed, you hear?
I’m going to post a “Yates Memory”, and not comment on the picture. Two of my grandparents suffered from Alzheimer’s - one for the better part of seven years. The disease takes a significant emotional toll on the family.
Jack, I’m 3 years younger than you, and like you, I grew up reading C&D. I really appreciate your posts on that era of automotive journalism. I always read the Brock Yates column, but it was too much of a highbrow style for a teenager in a working-class town. So when I think of Brock Yates, I think of he and Steve Evans hosting American Sports Cavalcade on TNN. You know, swamp buggy racing. Those guys did such a great job making an obscure motorsport entertaining to watch on TV. No small accomplishment.
The opposite of cool.
I have an in-law who posts FB pics like that of the old patriarch that she’s bleeding dry.
In a culture where a pretty, precocious girl goes from Disney princess to tongue-wagging, butt-twerking whore for attention and relevancy, and where our childhood Olympic alpha-male hero goes from the best athlete in the world to hen-pecked whore-husband wearing lipstick, makeup and a dress in order to get his/her own unreality show, we, as a nation and a people, no longer know shame. Our entertainment machine has come to expect that fame-glory-wealth is attainable by the undeserving should they be willing to perform any and every necessary degrading act.
This? This is fluff shame. Disgusting to the few who trouble themselves to study the context, but in the grand scheme of things, sadly just soft-porn self-degradation and barely recognizable as such to the many.
sorry, the Japanese are well versed in shame but they still manage to do incredibly odd things. you don’t get to dictate something is “wrong” just because you don’t like it.
The Japanese step up and recognize their shame; public acknowledgments of bad, unethical, criminal, unprofessional and/or immoral behavior is the social norm.
In America, shameful behavior is simply the stepping stone to 15 minutes of fame. The price of admission. In essence, we no longer have shame, admit shame, recognize shame. It’s now the new normal.
The complete opposite of Japan’s interpretation of shame, actually.
I know, right? That is why the Japanese totally acknowledged raping millions of Chinese and Koreans, and using biological warfare. Japanese people are so much better than white people.
You’re misreading current social mores and memes re personal shame by applying it to military history/atrocities re national shame . Nobody said anything about Japanese being better, they’re just different.
To reset, this story is about a douchebag who took a picture with a dying old man, trying to boost his credibility. Shame. Yet he feels none. And most viewers won’t recognize it as shameful. And that’s a symptom of our fame/wealth/glory-for-nothing culture. Shame as down payment.
I meant in no way to extend that to the larger constructs which you cite. Sorry if I offended.
I kind of miss Brocks writing. He was a very good writer but he was a little out of whach with my views sometimes. Oddly enough I was less a car guy and more a boat guy in my youth (still am actuall
I kind of miss Brocks writing. He was a very good writer but he was a little out of whach with my views sometimes. Oddly enough I was less a car guy and more a boat guy in my youth (still am actually) and I first read Brock in the pages of Boating not C and D and I have many fond memories of his articles there.
I’m not sure what’s going on but it may be a little inappropriate to smile that way next to a man who’s not exactly having a good time. Sad to see.