The unseemly brawl between two football teams from colleges in metropolitan Miami got me thinking about the spoiled brats that pass for athletes among amateurs in such marquis sports locations and among the professional ranks. The fight that broke out at the Miami-Florida International football game on October 14 seemed less like a rivalry gone bad (let’s face it, FIU shares a city with “the U” not a level of program) than an indulgence of posturing that rose to thuggery. It’s the culture of elite programs, elite leagues, and elite media markets that accepts, and often encourages, the chest-thumping, indulge-me-cause-I’m-just-that-good way of thinking.
The Miami Hurricane football program has had a history of thug posing, which made their loss to straight-arrow Jo Pa’s Penn State squad for the 1986 national championship that much sweeter. Yet the intimidating swagger is becoming as commonplace in sports as the next rap CD cover. And the more casual it gets, the bigger the blowups are when things get out of hand.
Examples: the Ron Artest-led fight at the Pacers-Pistons game that carried into the stands and earned Artest a season-ending ban; Mike Tyson, who if he spars with a female boxer on his el-lame-o “world tour” will do in the ring what he used to do to ex-wife Robin Givens and other female conquests, not to mention the threats to eat Lennox Lewis’ children and the actual bites taken from Evander Holyfield’s ear; and don’t get me started on TO, the NFL’s answer to Barry Bonds in extreme talent and zero likeability, except Bonds didn’t try to kill himself or publicly feud with teammates.
Perhaps these are factors behind the NBA refereeing change that debuted in the current pre-season where virtually any gesture toward a referee’s call is subject to a technical foul ... a throwback to the pre-1970s college era where a player had to hold up his hand (horrors!) when a foul was called on him. Commissioner David Stern reportedly wants to get control over players’ deportment toward referees, something he saw as a negative in the eyes of fans and, therefore, bad for business.
Perhaps Stern is dealing with the harvest of pushing the NBA as an urban/hiphop culture sport to sell tickets. But while it could be argued that the NBA influences athletes in all major sports, the fact is pro and amateur athletes in many sports appear to show a deeper, exaggerated sense of self-importance and act as if their opponents (and sometimes their teammates) are theirs to intimidate.
We don't always know where the line is, the one that once crossed is too much. We endlessly debate whether Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame or forfeit a sure spot in Cooperstown because he bet on baseball. But incidents like the Miami-FIU brawl remind me that we should find a collective sense of where that line of behavior is and say "enough" when an athlete crosses it.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
Calling the Kettle Black: Bush, Rove, and Fred Phelps
Why do we stay so polarized? How can it be possible in the first place for cynics to grab hold of the public eye and the power of the government with divisive tactics and positions that once upon a time would be relegated to the end of the political bench? In explanation, let me tell you about a subject I know no small bit about.
The Rev. Fred Phelps, leader of a cult that calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, has jumped from my old Topeka stomping grounds to the national stage. Preoccupied with homosexuality, Phelps and his mostly-extended-family congregation became moderately well known nationally, and infamous locally, by picketing the funerals of gays who died of AIDS, churches who didn’t take a hard line against gays, parks that were supposed to be locations for gay trysts, and eventually any large local public gathering. His picket signs were garish, graphic, and blunt; the most famous signs were “God Hates Fags” and “Fags Burn In Hell.”
Phelps did what I thought wasn’t possible to grab national headlines; he became even more extreme in his paranoia of homosexuality. He and his WBC followers started picketing the funerals of U. S. soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, publicly stating that their deaths were God’s punishment of a country that tolerated homosexuality. The reaction of the country outside the Great Plains was all the explosive outrage the middle class can muster. The very idea that a group could picket fallen soldiers in a time of war flew all over the patriotic citizenry and offended sensibilities regarding respect for the dead.
But the rest of the country is learning what Topekans are too familiar with. As deranged as he is, Fred Phelps is a lawyer and a brilliant one. Further, his sons and daughters are lawyers. They have thwarted nearly every legal attempt to rein in their practices. A judge in Kentucky just threw out that state’s law that prohibits protests within 300 feet of funerals.
Moreover, the Phelps Clan (as I “affectionately” call them) utilize a crass but effective strategy. They make their extreme statements, and when the inevitable outrage comes from reasonable people, they bully back against those critics as being enemies of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Between the constant drumbeat of their hate-filled diatribe and the threats of legal action against any who would oppose their statements and actions, the Phelps Clan wears and demoralizes casual criticism against them until they’re resigned to put up with the Phelps’ extremist conduct.
Karl Rove probably didn’t study the Phelps Clan’s methods. But it’s hard to tell from the way President George W. Bush’s political strategist has transformed political discourse in this country. Rove has done with the Bush presidency as Phelps has done with his anti-homosexual crusade: taken positions that the center sees as extreme, then attack those who react against those positions.
Campaigns no longer run to the center as the conventional wisdom has always dictated. With an evenly divided country, Rove chose to emphasize controversial hot-button issues for the far right (e. g., abortion, same sex marriage) that alienate the center but whip the conservative base into a frenzy and motivate them to go to the polls. With Rove, it’s all about how many of your base can you turn out on election day, not how many in the center can you get to come to your side.
And so it was that in the tight 2004 presidential election the people of southern Ohio decided that Bush should be re-elected over John Kerry. Not, according to exit polls, because Bush was seen as more effective in the war on terror or the war in Iraq. Southern Ohio went for Bush because he was against gay marriage, and a plethora of state constitutional amendments for same sex marriage bans held up and reinforced homosexuality as the great social boogeyman.
As for demonizing the opposition, Bush has demonstrated a mastery not surprising for the reputed loyalty enforcer for his father George H. W. Bush. The Iraq war was sold to America with questionable WMD intelligence reinforced with constant imagery of mushroom clouds and dirty bombs. Critics of the Iraq war were compared to Nazi appeasers. Outrage at Bush’s warrantless wiretapping was met by Bush charging that Democrats don’t want us to listen in on the terrorists.
This is government without consensus, an elbow-your-way-to-the-front approach that cuts the knees out of those who dare speak in opposition. It’s the inevitable fruit of doing the outrageous and casting those who react indignantly as being the “real” extremists.
The Rev. Fred Phelps, leader of a cult that calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, has jumped from my old Topeka stomping grounds to the national stage. Preoccupied with homosexuality, Phelps and his mostly-extended-family congregation became moderately well known nationally, and infamous locally, by picketing the funerals of gays who died of AIDS, churches who didn’t take a hard line against gays, parks that were supposed to be locations for gay trysts, and eventually any large local public gathering. His picket signs were garish, graphic, and blunt; the most famous signs were “God Hates Fags” and “Fags Burn In Hell.”
Phelps did what I thought wasn’t possible to grab national headlines; he became even more extreme in his paranoia of homosexuality. He and his WBC followers started picketing the funerals of U. S. soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, publicly stating that their deaths were God’s punishment of a country that tolerated homosexuality. The reaction of the country outside the Great Plains was all the explosive outrage the middle class can muster. The very idea that a group could picket fallen soldiers in a time of war flew all over the patriotic citizenry and offended sensibilities regarding respect for the dead.
But the rest of the country is learning what Topekans are too familiar with. As deranged as he is, Fred Phelps is a lawyer and a brilliant one. Further, his sons and daughters are lawyers. They have thwarted nearly every legal attempt to rein in their practices. A judge in Kentucky just threw out that state’s law that prohibits protests within 300 feet of funerals.
Moreover, the Phelps Clan (as I “affectionately” call them) utilize a crass but effective strategy. They make their extreme statements, and when the inevitable outrage comes from reasonable people, they bully back against those critics as being enemies of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Between the constant drumbeat of their hate-filled diatribe and the threats of legal action against any who would oppose their statements and actions, the Phelps Clan wears and demoralizes casual criticism against them until they’re resigned to put up with the Phelps’ extremist conduct.
Karl Rove probably didn’t study the Phelps Clan’s methods. But it’s hard to tell from the way President George W. Bush’s political strategist has transformed political discourse in this country. Rove has done with the Bush presidency as Phelps has done with his anti-homosexual crusade: taken positions that the center sees as extreme, then attack those who react against those positions.
Campaigns no longer run to the center as the conventional wisdom has always dictated. With an evenly divided country, Rove chose to emphasize controversial hot-button issues for the far right (e. g., abortion, same sex marriage) that alienate the center but whip the conservative base into a frenzy and motivate them to go to the polls. With Rove, it’s all about how many of your base can you turn out on election day, not how many in the center can you get to come to your side.
And so it was that in the tight 2004 presidential election the people of southern Ohio decided that Bush should be re-elected over John Kerry. Not, according to exit polls, because Bush was seen as more effective in the war on terror or the war in Iraq. Southern Ohio went for Bush because he was against gay marriage, and a plethora of state constitutional amendments for same sex marriage bans held up and reinforced homosexuality as the great social boogeyman.
As for demonizing the opposition, Bush has demonstrated a mastery not surprising for the reputed loyalty enforcer for his father George H. W. Bush. The Iraq war was sold to America with questionable WMD intelligence reinforced with constant imagery of mushroom clouds and dirty bombs. Critics of the Iraq war were compared to Nazi appeasers. Outrage at Bush’s warrantless wiretapping was met by Bush charging that Democrats don’t want us to listen in on the terrorists.
This is government without consensus, an elbow-your-way-to-the-front approach that cuts the knees out of those who dare speak in opposition. It’s the inevitable fruit of doing the outrageous and casting those who react indignantly as being the “real” extremists.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Extremes in the Cross and the Crescent
Religious extremists make my butt tired.
Pope Benedict quotes an obscure Byzantine emperor who called the Muslim faith evil and one that was spread by the sword. Muslims worldwide failed to hear the "I quote" before the passage, and they riot and burn churches. Then Al Qaeda puts forth a statement that the Pope and the West are "doomed" and that eventually our choice will be "conversion or the sword." Um, didn't that statement just appear to validate the Byzantine's view of Islam? "How dare you say we're violent! Convert or die!" Anyone else see the illogic?
Yet some Christians seem bent on proving Rosie O'Donnell right. While I plow through a flurry of forwarded e-mails calling on everyone to send a Christmas card to the ACLU and bury them in mail, I read about Christian Zionism (which in part holds that the establishment of Israel is part of Biblical prophecy) and its support by GOP head Ken Mehlman and Sen. Rick Santorum. It was Santorum, speaking in July at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) first Washington-Israel summit, who invoked this belief in a call to stop negotiating with Iran and take action against it. CUFI is a newly formed political organization that tells its members that supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a Biblical imperative." CUFI was founded by John Hagee, the head of the 18,000 person Cornerstone Church in San Antonio who believes that "a nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty."
No wonder I often feel like I'm walking between two big rabid dogs, hoping neither of them takes notice of me and decides to bite.
Pope Benedict quotes an obscure Byzantine emperor who called the Muslim faith evil and one that was spread by the sword. Muslims worldwide failed to hear the "I quote" before the passage, and they riot and burn churches. Then Al Qaeda puts forth a statement that the Pope and the West are "doomed" and that eventually our choice will be "conversion or the sword." Um, didn't that statement just appear to validate the Byzantine's view of Islam? "How dare you say we're violent! Convert or die!" Anyone else see the illogic?
Yet some Christians seem bent on proving Rosie O'Donnell right. While I plow through a flurry of forwarded e-mails calling on everyone to send a Christmas card to the ACLU and bury them in mail, I read about Christian Zionism (which in part holds that the establishment of Israel is part of Biblical prophecy) and its support by GOP head Ken Mehlman and Sen. Rick Santorum. It was Santorum, speaking in July at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) first Washington-Israel summit, who invoked this belief in a call to stop negotiating with Iran and take action against it. CUFI is a newly formed political organization that tells its members that supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a Biblical imperative." CUFI was founded by John Hagee, the head of the 18,000 person Cornerstone Church in San Antonio who believes that "a nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty."
No wonder I often feel like I'm walking between two big rabid dogs, hoping neither of them takes notice of me and decides to bite.
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