The Sports Curmudgeon

Remember when “double standard” was a bad thing? If you applied a different yardstick for success or recognition among different members of a group, you were castigated at the very least and more likely vilified. We’ve come a long way. Because the “double standard” issue has been turned on its head.

It seems that in 2003 it is not only expected but it is imperative that double standards are applied to situations where an individual says something stupid or potentially hurtful or something that someone somewhere might take offense to. Here are the rules:

If the speaker is a woman or a minority, then the remark cannot be taken to be hurtful or offensive because that would be judgmental toward the woman or the minority individual. Even to suggest some negative connotation to such a remark demonstrates the questioner’s stature as a troglodyte.

If the woman or minority happens to say something that might offend another woman or another minority, then it is a toss-up because there are imputed rights to say offensive things with impunity and imputed rights to take offense at anything said or written and thereby to be entitled to an apology and punishment for the remark(s).

If the speaker is a Caucasian male, then the statement is hurtful, spiteful, offensive, stupid and intentional by axiom. The only question left in doubt is the severity of the punishment to be meted out.

And so I will go where angels fear to tread. I think that women and minorities can say things – intentionally and/or accidentally – that are just as offensive and racist and demeaning as anything that a Caucasian male can say. Before anyone gets all exercised about that statement and prepares to send me off a scathing rebuttal or some kind of expositive writing to enlighten me, consider that if you disagree with me you have just admitted that there is something that a woman or a minority cannot do to the degree a Caucasian male can do it. That is not a horse that anyone – especially I – wants to let out of the barn.

Recently Warren Sapp called NFL Commissioner Tagliabue a “slave master” when the league stepped in and prevented any kind of “confrontation” between Sapp and LaVarr Arrington prior to the Bucs’/Redskins’ game. The remarks were characterized as emotional and something that came from deep within Sapp’s core being. Some people said that it was important to understand where Sapp was coming from in making that remark and that one needed to take it figuratively in some kind of context and not literally.

Oh really?? Turn that remark on its end and imagine that Paul Tagliabue in some conversational gambit referred to Warren Sapp as his 99th field slave. Even without a sniff of the use of the “n-word”, Paul Tagliabue would be roasted, scorned and vilified for being so insensitive and provocative. Don’t tell me he wouldn’t because Marge Schott said something very similar to this – only she did use the “n-word” – regarding Dave Parker and she was sent off to sensitivity training for that. Oh yeah, “sensitivity training” sounds so much nicer than “brain washing” or “thought police” doesn’t it?

Recently, Junior Seau said the best way to stop Chargers’ running back LaDanian Tomlinson was to fill him up with fried chicken and watermelon. But that remark is defined to be humorous and affectionate because Seau is one of Tomlinson’s buds. And of course, Junior Seau as a minority male cannot be deemed to be intentionally offensive to another minority individual. If I tried to make that case, I’d be told that I just don’t understand…

OK, so how is this so different from Fuzzy Zoeller saying that he hopes Tiger Woods does not ask for chicken and collard greens at the Masters’ Champions’ Dinner? If you recall, Zoeller was pilloried for that remark. Even if it were intended as a joke – which is what he claimed – black people took it as an offensive remark and therefore it had to be offensive. Because it was offensive by definition, it therefore had to have a basis in some kind of racial unrest within Zoeller. There was a whole lot of mind-reading going on there.

Excuse me, but if I am not allowed to be able to read Warren Sapp’s mind or Junior Seau’s mind to determine with certainty what their motivations are, then no one of any gender, race or ethnic background is going to be deemed able to read my mind about anything I might say or write. And that should go for everyone. That is what equality is all about.

Remember when Bob Ryan got a month’s suspension without pay from the Boston Globe and from ESPN because he said that he thought Joumanna Kidd ought to be smacked. Not a good thing to say, to be sure. And he paid for it.

Recently the wife of the Governor of Maryland – speaking at some event related to domestic abuse prevention no less – said that she would like to shoot Brittany Spears. Excuse me? In my perverted corner of the universe, shooting is even worse than slapping. Did Mrs. Governor get a month off without pay? Not exactly. A couple of days later, she was having everyone gush over her because she is preggers. Now if I were to suggest that her absolutely outrageous and uncalled for remark – might it even be called “assault”? – was due to her unbalanced hormonal state at the time, I’d be called a callous pig. All right; if that’s not the case, then why did she say something so stupid? Is that “just part of her nature” that I don’t understand? If so, then “stupid” must occupy a significant part of her inner being.

Here is the deal, folks. If equality is the objective, then the consequences for similar stupid transgressions should be similar. And they are not.

If the mere fact that someone somewhere expresses offense at some remark makes that remark something that is worthy of punishment for the speaker/writer, then the right to be offended must be open to everyone. And let me tell you that when Warren Sapp refers to “slave masters”, I am offended. Not a whole lot, but I am offended. And so he is guilty and needs to suffer public scorn similar to that suffered by John Rocker. I won’t hold my breath.

What I find very interesting is that Black people have not been public in their criticism of Sapp for his comments. Now I admit that I don’t understand the nuances of Black culture, but it would seem to me that people who can trace a family lineage to slaves – as can many Black people in the US today – would wonder how “slavery” applies a guy that makes $5M a year doing what he has chosen to do in his life in a circumstance that would allow him to leave that undertaking any damned time he chooses to do so. I wasn’t ever a slave and neither were any of my family members but from my study of US history in school, I don’t think any of those conditions applied to the slaves on the plantations.

Oh, I keep forgetting. I’m incapable of understanding…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…

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Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to shut down the Olympics. I’m not talking about anything that is partial or temporizing. I men it is time to cancel, negate, nullify, stop, cease and desist any, all, each and every activity that has to do with the Olympics. And the time to do it is now.

They were shut down for a couple thousand years and civilization managed to march forward somehow. Then the Olympics were resuscitated and civilization continued to move forward. No big difference here. Therefore, since the Olympics have become nothing more than a scandal ridden set of events run by a bunch of preening snobs whose only interest is self-interest, I say it is time to call another halt in the Olympics for another 2000 years.

I’m doing most of this from memory because – frankly – it is not worth the time and trouble it would take to go and look up all the recent articles on Olympics shenanigans and cheating and wastes of time and money. So there could be a name wrong in here or a date or something like that, but the idea here is to look at the overview. And the overview is that the Olympics are a giant mess of a scandal that costs billions of dollars to put on and provides nothing useful in return. So get rid of it entirely.

What are the Olympics good for? The glorification of amateur athletics? Spare me! There hasn’t been an amateur athlete competing in the Olympics since the 20s – and I may be very generous in calling those athletes in the 1920s “amateurs”.

Are the games good for international good will? Horse hockey!! In 1972, we had athletes murdered in the Olympic village. In 1980, the US would not send a team to Moscow to protest a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – which continued to go on until 1989 so you can see how effective that boycott was. In 1984, the Soviets refused to send a team to Los Angeles to protest something the US did in terms of its foreign policy that they did not like. (It may have been our support for the Contras in Nicaragua; I don’t remember; I’m not a historian.) Since the Soviet Union does not even exist any more, you can see how effective their protest was and how useful the Olympic games are in terms of bringing the family of nations together.

Many of the events are rigged. Please don’t tell me that you believe that the skating scandal of last year was the first time that the outcome of an Olympic event had been pre-cooked. Far too many of the events are not sports; they are athletic exhibitions where the subjective opinions of people who represent national organizations vote on who should win. Let me be clear about this. These judges and representatives of national sporting organizations have a cushy job and the thing that they want to assure more is that they continue to be in a position of influence. The “integrity of the competition” is so far down on their list of personal priorities that it is in danger of falling below “rearrange my sock drawer”.

In the events that aren’t rigged – and in some of them that are rigged too – lots of the athletes are juiced. And the reason they are juiced is that they see it as a way to get an edge in the competition; that is the way they put it. Where I grew up, it was referred to as cheating.

The Olympics will spend somewhere in the vicinity of $1B (yes, that is one billion dollars) for security at the games in Athens. Why is that a good idea? If these games are so dangerous and are such a magnet for kooks and terrorists, why not just stop doing them? Even with that kind of expenditure, the US State Department is not certain that the Greek government has the will or the resources to provide a secure environment for the games. Remember, the State Department is in the business of never saying bad things about anyone and so this kind of negativism from them equates to someone else saying that the security at the next Olympics game will be as impenetrable as a screen door. The US State Department is providing the Greek government with “policy workshops” and “security training”. Nothing like a good “policy workshop” to put the fear of The Almighty into some kooks/terroists.

Remember, some folks will still cash $1B in checks for all of that. And that money comes out of your pockets because it is the US TV contract and the advertising on US TV that fuels all of this. Cancel the NBC contract for televising Olympic games and the IOC might be able to hold a ping-pong tournament in a low cost of living area of the world such as Mali. They probably have enough money left in “savings” that have not been paid out to consultants and officials and international conferences to afford hotel space in Bamako.

The people who monitor the games and seek to keep up the façade that they are trying to keep the games “honest” are so mired in processes that they make themselves look dumb. They need no one else’s assistance. According to a Washington Post story about a month ago, the IOC has just now begun to hold disciplinary proceedings against US Olympian, Jerome Young, for a positive drug test that they had on him in 1999. It has taken 4 years to get here; that is something that should take 4 weeks. Forget about all the “explanations” and all the justification that procedures need to be followed for the protection of the athletes and the games and all that crap. If it takes 4 years to figure out what to do about an athlete who failed a drug test, what is the incentive for athletes not to use the “banned substances”?

What you have is a bunch of people – organizers and sports federation officials - who are living a luxurious life off your money without doing anything that gives anything back to you. To a lesser extent, so are the athletes. Remember, your taxes fund the USOC and the training center and somehow provide enough support to athletes that they find a way to “acquire” some of these banned substances.

It’s time to call a halt to all of this and just pull the plug. The patient looks healthy, but he is rotting inside. If you want to see some good sporting events, just hold some world championships and let all the athletes come as drugged up as they want and you’ll get to see new records in track and field and gymnasts doing push-ups with their tongues. At least there would be no patina of propriety here; you could announce from the outset that these would be the real world championships and that the Olympics would be for the wusses who want to pretend to follow rules – but don’t really.

And to all of those people who moan that the poor athletes will destroy their bodies with all these drugs and steroids, I say, “So What?” Take out the nationalistic nonsense and they will be choosing to take those things; no one will force them. They are adults; adults make choices; choices have consequences.

The US Congress is considering several bills dealing with the restructuring of the USOC based on all the scandals and thievery that went on there. I’ll bet that none of those guys will come up with the solution of just shutting the whole thing down. Could it be that they have some vested interest in these games too? Makes you stop and think…

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………

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