Ray Handley’s Disappearing Act
America was better when leaders knew how to vamoose.
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Today in Free Expression, columnist Louise Perry compares the scandal of “gender-affirming care” with the craze for lobotomy, and Tony Woodlief mounts a defense of wrestling in a culture that can demonize masculinity.
But first, there’s a lot to be said for riding off into the sunset.
Ray Handley had a stellar career as a football coach, rising through the college ranks at Army, Stanford and the Air Force Academy before landing in the National Football League. He joined the New York Giants as a running backs coach in 1984 and won two championships under head coach Bill Parcells in 1986 and 1990.
Only a few months after winning the Super Bowl, Mr. Parcells stepped down for health reasons in early 1991. Opportunity knocked for Ray Handley. He got the big job. But that was the pinnacle, and it was brief.
Under Handley the Giants had miserable seasons in 1991 and 1992. New York is unforgiving of losers. He was fired.
And then something extraordinary happened: He went away.
For 33 years, nobody heard from Ray Handley. He never coached again. He never called a game on TV. He never did a livestream. He was incommunicado with the Giants despite having played a major role in two of the franchise’s four Super Bowl wins.
Handley hung up on a Newsday reporter who found his phone number in 2008. Until his family announced his death this week at 81, Handley had been out of the limelight entirely.
He ghosted.
It was once standard practice for leaders to fade away when their time at the top was over. Presidents did it. So did CEOs, studio heads, university presidents, baseball managers and military generals. It was considered the graceful thing to do, a gift to your successor. Who needs the old boss hanging around, second guessing everything?
These days the standard approach to retirement is to take a podcast perch or a TV gig and snipe at the new guy from the sidelines.
The old way was better. The disappearing act is a lost art in American life. Let’s honor Ray Handley by bringing it back.
My Hometown: Former Rep. Tom Malinowski conceded Tuesday to Analilia Mejia in the Democratic primary for the New Jersey House seat recently vacated by Gov. Mikie Sherrill. Recall that Ms. Sherrill won the seat in 2018 after the retirement of long-serving moderate Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen. If the ultraprogressive Ms. Mejia triumphs over GOP nominee Joe Hathaway in the April 16 special election, this district—which happens to be where I was born and raised—will have lurched from Rockefeller red to Bernie blue in under a decade. Stop the Tilt-a-Whirl, I wanna get off.
Media Mutters for America: U.S. reporters covering the Olympics are asking U.S. athletes to comment on U.S. politics. I don’t like it because I think sports and politics don’t mix, but I especially don’t like that it seems to be an exclusively American thing. The BBC has yet to ask Team GB whether Keir Starmer will survive the week as prime minister. Nor, as many have noted, has the Chinese freestyle skier/supermodel Eileen Gu faced questions about Jimmy Lai’s 20-year prison sentence. I feel strongly that if the press wants to ruin the Olympics with politics, they should ruin it for everybody. Not just me.
The Amateur: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was a notable no-show Friday for the installation mass of Archbishop Ronald Hicks, the new leader of the city’s approximately two million Catholics. This is political malpractice of the stupidest kind. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that one of Mr. Mamdani’s socialist Gen Z advisers told him the event at St. Patrick’s Cathedral was one of those optional type things. Even the left-leaning Daily News called it a “big blunder” with overtones of “rudeness,” “disrespect” and “ignorance.” A spokesman for the archdiocese of New York told me that the mayor and the new archbishop met briefly Tuesday morning and spoke on the phone a little while later. It could be that Mr. Mamdani’s vaunted political skills are great for the needs of his TikTok audience but inadequate to the needs of running the nation’s largest and most dynamic city.
The Alan Parker Project: A report released Tuesday by Americans for Public Trust reveals that British billionaire Alan Parker funneled $753 million to progressive causes in the U.S. via his Switzerland-based Oak Foundation. While Mr. Parker isn’t the only foreign billionaire shoveling megabucks into left-wing American nonprofits, he is the only one who shares a name with the late director of such excellent films as “Mississippi Burning,” “Bugsy Malone” and “The Commitments.” I like that Alan Parker better.
Automatic Game Misconduct: In regard to Donald Trump’s threats to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge between the U.S. and Canada, I refer you to the National Hockey League’s “instigator” rule: “A player who is deemed to be the instigator of an altercation shall be assessed an instigating minor penalty, a major penalty for fighting and a ten-minute misconduct. If the same player is deemed to be the instigator of a second altercation in the same game, he shall be assessed an instigating minor penalty, a major penalty for fighting and a game misconduct. When a player receives his third instigator penalty in one Regular season, he is automatically given a game misconduct following that third violation.”
Gender-Affirming Care Needs a Lobotomy
Louise Perry
A growing movement of detransitioners is demanding redress from the medical establishment. It isn’t the first time doctors have doubled down on a misguided protocol.
Read Louise’s Column ⧁
Wrestling With Wrestling
Tony Woodlief
Wrestling is a dangerous sport. It especially seems so when your kids are doing it. But it also produces the good, strong men we need in this world.
Read Tony’s Article ⧁
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I know people have written this before, but the name of this column from the WSJ is highly ironic considering the censoring policy of the comments section of WSJ.
I am a WSJ unsubscriber. there is hope for this publication. they seem to be trying to do what’s right