Football Nation, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #378 | @MDWorld
September 15, 2014 Mike Gold 4 Comments
OK, let’s start with something upon which we can all agree: physically bashing people is wrong. Well, unless it’s part of professional sports, where there are the illusions of reciprocity and instant on-site judgment.
We can all agree on that, right? Hello?
Right now, we’ve got a bunch of professional athletes – all football players, but that’s just a coincidence – accused of assaulting women. The “men assaulting women” issue isn’t significant to this particular argument, because I’m theorizing we believe bashing people is wrong so it doesn’t matter if it’s men bashing women, women bashing men, women bashing women, men bashing men, and/or hermaphrodites bashing themselves. It’s the “bashing” part that is today’s subject.
Yeah, sure, I know. Sports are violent, it takes a certain type of maniac to play professional sports, we’ve got to expect this stuff, boys will be boys. Right. As Lenny Bruce famously stated: “Yadda, yadda, yadda.” On the other hand, the very idea that sports professionals are or should be “role models” for children is also total nonsense, a remnant of Dead End Kids morality that never really existed and, in fact, does not deserve to exist. There’s no heavenly glow around athletes; they’re usually rather young and they act their age – exacerbated by their sudden and immense newfound wealth.
In fact, just about the only people who think young wealthy athletes are so great their shit comes out in bags are the young wealthy athletes, and then only a handful at that.
So, in my fevered brain, it comes down to this: athletes are humans and humans are held to certain legal standards. Ethics has nothing to do with this: your ethics might vary from mine and probably do. It’s the law, which is supposed to be based upon commonly accepted standards of behavior. It’s not, but that’s a different issue.
So we should treat these athletes as though they are, in fact, humans. And that means we don’t worry about their game suspensions, their hall of fame potential, the length of their suspensions, their careers or even the habits of the almost-universally greedy team owners who can’t tell the difference between their employees and those who used to work on ol’ Virginny plantations.
What it all comes down to is this: No matter what you do for a living, if you assault somebody you go to prison.
It’s just that simple.
The rest involves getting good teevee ratings, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about that.
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com as part of “Hit Oldies” every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman and Martha Thomases as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
Rick Oliver
September 15, 2014 - 2:13 pm
When some woman scolded John Kruk for smoking, admonishing that professional athletes should be role models for children, Kruk replied, “I ain’t an athlete, lady. I’m a baseball player.”
Michael Vick went to prison for dog fighting. Of course, dogs cannot either press charges or refuse to do so. I thought most states had laws that allow them to prosecute offenders for assault, even if the victim refuses to press charges, in which case Ray Rice should be headed for prison.
Mike Gold
September 15, 2014 - 2:36 pm
Not unless he’s indicted, Rick. The Atlantic County prosecutor was looking into doing just that back in February. And the following month, he was indeed indicted. The following day, he married his victim. It should be noted that she was also arrested for assault. So, I guess, we’ll see what happens. Maybe. If anything.
If he goes to the slammer, will Janay remain faithful? Dare she not?
Michael Vick is another matter. As you say, he went to the slammer for his crime. And he paid his dues, and he got his job back after release. Um tut sut. However, the fact that the New Jersey Jets (they fucking play in the Meadowlands; they are the New JERSEY Jets and, yes, that applies to the Giants as well) have put him on the field doesn’t mean their fans are willing to forgive and forget. For example, the life-long Jets fan nearest to me is my own daughter, and she now refuses to support her team. I think she said she was looking into following the Kansas City Chiefs, which would be a gift horse for me. All that great barbecue…
Time was when our elected officials, at least those in “high” office, were also regarded as role models. A careful search throughout American history would indicate that this was the stupidest idea in the history of role modeldom. There but for the grace of the mighty Ungabunga.
As long as Babe Ruth is regarded as a hero, the whole concept is worthless.
And don’t get me started on that traitor/bigot Charles Lindbergh.
Rene
September 15, 2014 - 4:37 pm
Lindbergh was a bigot and a traitor, but what I find most scary about the whole situation is that his views weren’t that atypical for the time he lived.
It is comforting to us to consider Nazism as an aberration, a monstrosity. And it was. But the awful truth is that a lot of things that informed Nazism were widespread and popular in their time.
Racism and the whole sick notion of “racial” purity, of eugenics, of anti-semitism, it was all very widespread, really. 19th century and early 20th century science and philosophy were suffused with stuff about “blood” and “lineage”.
I’m not saying everybody was racist, but that committed, enthusiatic anti-racism was likely to be seen as an excentricity, ironically, it could mark you as either a religious fanatic or a communist.
Mike Gold
September 15, 2014 - 4:43 pm
Absolutely, although Lindbergh was really something else. He had the love, admiration and sympathy of an entire nation but his love was for Germany, Herr Hitler, and his second family — the wife and kids who lived in Europe, in addition to his American set. The fact that this bastard remains revered is a national disgrace.
All you mentioned — racism, racial purity, eugenics, anti-semitism — is alive and well. Political correctness has driven some of it underground, but it rears its head fairly often. Sometimes we change the players, but the philosophies (if we can call it that) remain healthy.
Feh.
Douglass Abramson
September 15, 2014 - 8:15 pm
Rick,
The Kruk exchange occurred in the Padre locker room while he was a Padre. The lady in question was either Joan Kroc (who had taken ownership of the team when her husband Ray died before the 1984 season) or a La Jolla friend of hers. I’ve seen both versions in print. Either way, the comment put him on thin ice with the front office. They were primed to get rid of him later when he complained to the paper about beer being banned from the clubhouse.
Rene
September 16, 2014 - 5:56 pm
Mike –
I think I remember you saying once that you liked the old-time German movies? I just watched The Blue Angel (a very brutal movie, by the way), and it’s interesting to note that Marlene Dietrich was pretty much the opposite of Charles Lindberh. A German celebrity who fought the Nazis.
And she was also bisexual, a crossdresser, and had multiple affairs. That is a contrast to Lindbergh, who was a prude in public, extolling the virtues of monogamy (and “good genes”, like the Nazi scum he was), while having multiple children out of wedlock secretly.
And that is the problem with a lot of role models, isn’t? People make a big deal out of chastity and purity, when they should have been lauding charity and concern for your own fellow men.
Reg
September 17, 2014 - 3:33 pm
Michael Vick stayed in the headliner news cycles longer than Ferguson.
If that’s not a reflection of the true heart of the republic I don’t know what is.
Mike Gold
September 17, 2014 - 4:08 pm
Well, to be fair, Vick had the media’s attention all by himself. Peterson has to share the spotlight with, what, four other football players – college and pro?
However, you raise an interesting question: do we as a society loathe dog abusers more than women abusers? I don’t think Mr. Gallop has weighed in on that one yet. As for the vox populi, as always it depends on who’s ox is being gored. PeTA might say dogs, NOW might say women.
Me? I say, “Damn, I’ll bet there’s a LOTTA overlap!”
Reg
September 17, 2014 - 7:40 pm
Mike…I should have qualified my response so that Ferguson, MS. (where a young, unarmed Black male was gunned down) was not conflated with Peterson.
Yes…domestic violence is horrific WHENEVER, WHEREVER, and to WHOMEVER it occurs. (BTW, tremendous respect to Meredith Vieira for sharing her history and exposing the reality that this crime can and does cross all social constructs)
With that being expressed, the point that I was trying to communicate earlier was that with respect to Michael Vick and even the Rice and Peterson incidents, it seems passing strange as to how the media and societal focus on a life ENDING act of violence and all of the associated factors has so quickly dimmed to a matter ‘no longer of any import’.
Mike Gold
September 17, 2014 - 7:59 pm
Reg, I had to read your comment twice before I could appreciate your point. I got overwhelmed by the intense amount of violence oriented stories that are before us right now.
The trick to helping improve our nation is to not get depressed by the girth of the problem. It ain’t easy, but it’s absolutely necessary. In fact, we continue to improve our society. There’s a lot more to do and there always will be, but what fuels the effort is stepping back once in a while and appreciating the successes we’ve had and those who came before us have given us.
Mindy Newell
September 25, 2014 - 9:07 am
A couple of things:
Hey, Mike, was I the one who told you about the National Felons League? (It’s not Felons with an apostrophe.)
Did any of you read THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, by Philip Roth? Lindbergh is elected President in 1940, negotiates a peace with Hitler, and begins an anti-Semitic campaign in the States.
Rene
September 25, 2014 - 11:14 am
I’ve heard of that book, but never read it.
Mindy Newell
September 25, 2014 - 1:22 pm
You should, Rene. It’s really, really good, and I believe that Roth won the Pulitzer for it.