Easter tidings to all

By DAVID GREEN

Easter weekend thoughts, at random:

ITEM: To those who can't get enough NASCAR Cup Series racing, this reminder: No more off-weekends for awhile now...

ITEM: Sure, I can say this now, six days after the fact. But it's true. I really had a feeling that Jeff Gordon was going to win last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, ending two droughts -- his string of races without a victory and his failure to win at Texas.

What a talent this driver is. What a pleasure it is to have watched his career (his adult racing career, that is) from the beginning. What a classic, mythic thing his rivalry with the great Dale Earnhardt was.

Of course, the Chase scrambles everything, so I can't predict with any confidence that Gordon will win his fifth championship this year. I can predict that he'll have a season worthy of a championship...

ITEM: The Smith family is taking quite a bit of heat these days, and reaction to the stories about their economic adventures and related issues is interesting to read.

Suits in high places are conspicuous targets these days, as they always are in troubled economic times, and rightly so. Never mind contractual details; it is morally wrong for officials of companies such as AIG to accept bonuses when the companies they directed show themselves to be such abject failures, whatever the reasons.

I have no problem with anybody making money -- in any amount -- if he or she finds a need and competently fills it; if they, in the words of the old Smith Barney commercials, "do it the old-fashioned way -- they earn it." I have a serious problem with the notion of creating wealth without any contribution to society to show for it.

I'm still idealistic enough to imagine the AIG pigs are in the minority and that most corporate executives, big and small alike, are ethical folks. Perhaps not, but that's what I believe. I know that William Clay Ford sacrificed not only his bonuses, but also his salary, several years ago to help the company his great-grandfather founded more than a century ago.

Sure, the cynical observer can truthfully say that Ford could easily afford a year, several years, the rest of his life, without any income and still enjoy a higher standard of living than perhaps 90 percent of the population. The point is not that the cynic recognizes that, but that Ford does.

Too bad the leaders who are not getting richer as their companies founder don't get more press. We need more than the inflammatory bad-apple stories.

But you have to love the name of Observer reporter Jefferson George. That's "George Jefferson," to the nostalgically dyslectic...

ITEM: Anybody following the brouhaha in Formula One, about whether or not reigning champion Lewis Hamilton and his former McLaren team manager Dave Ryan played fast and loose with the facts of what happened in the final laps of the season opener at Australia?

For those who don't know but might find it interesting, Hamilton was disqualified from his third-place finish, Ryan was fired, and there may be more consequences to come.

It's so bad, it has some European types suggesting that NASCAR is much better managed than F1...

In addition to the religious significance of this weekend to Christians and the tradition of hunting Easter eggs, I have this memory -- when I was in second grade, I think it was, we made holiday cards. Mine was much the same as the other kids' -- "Happy Easter, Mom and Dad," or something like that -- except I wanted something to put on the back of the folded card, and so I scribbled, "Next year, too!"

Nothing like planning ahead, I say. Happy Easter, Mom, and everyone.