A friend once asked his history professor why Stalin was able to stay in power for so long.

“He was awful to his people; he was awful to his staff. Why did they put up with him?” he asked.

“Who else was going to hit .315 with RISP?” the professor said.

Manny Ramirez can do whatever he wants. It’s Manny being Manny. The tag is so awfully stupid that it makes me wonder if hockey players really are the least intelligent athletes in professional sports.

Who else is Manny going to be? Gene Roddenberry?

But the phrase means that Manny’s a prick. It’s like saying to your girlfriend, “Your father? Well, he’s interesting. He’s a character. He’s just being himself.” Meanwhile you hate the guy, and he tips 6%.

Yesterday my dad’s car–which was parked–was hit by a garbage truck. “That’s just the garbage truck being the garbage truck, dad,” I said.

A few days ago I was sitting in a restaurant, drinking a coffee, when someone walked by, bumped into my table, and sent a glass of water onto my lap. “Damn,” the guy said, eying the spreading stain on my pants. “Well, that’s just water being water.”

As a way of explaining behaviour, Manny being Manny is right up there with the cornmeal theory of infectious disease. It’s the perfect shield for sports announcers who might otherwise be forced to give some kind of personal insight, some kind of tendentious offering, some kind of…you know…opinion.

And wouldn’t that be awful? “You mean that Manny isn’t a great guy, Tim? Well, that’s crazy. Milton Bradley…he’s just misunderstood. But a heart of gold. He and Pacman do so much for the community. Like sometimes I see them out there, on the highway, picking up garbage. Now isn’t that nice? Elijah Dukes? He’s a little young, you know. A little young for his age.”

Manny isn’t as bad as those guys. But he’s bad enough.

The funny thing about “Manny being Manny” is where the phrase started. John Daughtrin, a producer for FSN, was volunteering at his son’s school. Because of fiscal restraints, this particular school had been forced to integrate developmentally disabled children into the regular academic stream. There was a boy in his son’s class named Alex; Alex functioned at a third grade level, but was in an eighth grade classroom. In order not to alienate Alex from the rest of the children–or blame him for his educational failings–the teacher had come up with an expression that excused Alex’s behaviour: “That’s just Alex being Alex.”

And, well, it just caught on.