By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Cornhole King
In a world where quadruple amputees can become pro cornhole players, wrestlers, marksmen and murderers, I agree with C.G. Stoppel: now we need a sing-along.
Saturday’s latest No Kings rally, relegated late to sidewalks around Coghlin Park in Saugatuck, made it clear it is President Trump’s fault bad things happen.
Start with Dayton Webber. 27, who both hands and feet to a bacterial infection so aggressive he was given last rites at just 10 months old.
That didn’t stop him. Fortified by group singing — OK, I just made that up — he pursued and excelled at sports including football, wrestling and firearms shooting.
ESPN profiled Webber, just 12 in 2010, when he said, “I like using my strength and being fit. Sometimes when I watch my teammates, I wish I had hands, but I just try to do things my way.” Let’s all sing Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” The then-seventh-grader told ESPN he wanted to be a priest or Secret Service agent someday.
Then Webber picked up, after a fashion, cornhole — the lawn game in which players throw bean bags at a target on a sloped wooden board. After being crowned Maryland’s best cornholer in 2020, he turned pro. Beats working for a living.
He got big into guns as well, posting clips on YouTube showing off his shooting skills. “No Hands No Feet Shooting 9mm Handgun!!!!,” Webber titled one 2024 video of him using the stubs of his missing arms to load and fire multiple rounds in seconds, ending with a proud grin.
Ah, but Webber had taken a wrong turn dropping group singing to rely on the cyber world to communicate with other people. Sans face-to-face contact, it was precicetable what came next.
Police records he was driving his Tesla SUV — Elon Musk figures in this too — when he shot and killed front-seat passenger Bradrick Wells, 27 also. When he asked two backseat friends to help dump the body, they did what friends are for and fled.
Some two hours and 14 miles later Charlotte Hall, Md., a resident called police to report “a body in the yard.” Detectives found Webber’s car at a gas station (for a for an electric car?) more than 100 miles away in Charlottesville, Va., tracked him using surveillance footage and arrested him at a local hospital, where he said he was seeking treatment for a medical issue.
A little singing, a different president, Musk’s reassignment to Iran, Greenland, Canada, where next (?) an none of this would have happened. The good news is America believes in rehabilitation for native white people.
Picture Webber, Ohio State’s Jeffrey Dahmer and our own U-M-educated Unabomber Ted Kaczynski — the latter two resurrected if not yet fully rehabbed —sitting ‘round a campfire in their shared cell singing “Kumbaya.” Maybe John Wayne Gacy can bring the s’mores.
It is all Trump’s fault this has not happened … yet. Never mind Dahmer killed and cannibalized 17 victims, most of them young men of color, in Milwaukee throughout realms of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush I, the Unabomber into Bill Clinton’s. whose administration allowed publishing the ex-Wolverine’s 35,000-word manifesto despite concerns they were “giving in to terrorists.” Maybe, but it worked. Kaczynski’s brother recognized its style and turned him in.
When it’s blame game time, let sanity be no obstacle. Free speech victims keep piling up. What concerns me as a former guitarist and campfire sing-along leader is dehumanization by our own devices.
As C.G. puts it, The Olds (approximately his and my ages now) never let radio, TV, patriotic songs and early, primitive social influencers like Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy sway their choices. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin … the movement was worldwide. “Seig heil!” as good-old-days Germans used to chant together face-to-face, building human bonds.
We have Olympics for everyone these days: Summer and Winter Games, Paralympic; Special, Science and Youth Olympics, Deaflympics, Florida Man Games …
Why not pit Webber against ex-Paralympics blade runner Oscar Pistorius, convicted for murdering his model girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, 2013, in a cornhole/sprint biathlon. Think of the sponsorships, TV ratings, book and move rights …
Neither would walk away on their own two legs — before or after — but no matter. During closing ceremonies, killer athletes worldwide would link such arms, as they had, to sing “I’d like to teach the world to sing/in perfect harmony,” but skip the “buy a Coke” part,” then end the torture putting out the torch.
