Football Season

When I was a boy,  there was a saying that playing football builds character. I didn’t  believe it. I knew a number of the football players at my high school. Some were good guys, and some were jerks -  just as with the rest of us. I did not notice the quality of anyone’s character improving or worsening over the years from being on the team.  Nor have I seen much evidence for the idea in the following years.  Big time college football’s and the NFL’s present and recent collections of  thugs,  “domestic abusers”, prancing narcissists, bullies, belligerent near illiterates, and felons do not offer it strong support.

Neither does the behavior of some of the coaches who are said to be instilling all those upright character traits. Urban Meyer, coach of the prestigious and well beloved by the sports media Ohio State Buckeyes recently lied about a serious subject (accusations  of wife beating by one of his assistant coaches and what and when he knew about them)  to reporters and the public at an event where he was officially representing the university. He was caught in his lie and changed his story from a claim of complete ignorance of the matter to one of following the rules explicitly to one of maybe not doing all he should have but only because of his fondness for the accused man’s grandfather.  The university’s bosses suspended him for the time  up to the end of  the season’s first game and prohibited him from  being on the sidelines for two more games.  Most of the arguments I have read have been over whether this was too severe or not severe enough a punishment for failing to do more in 2015. While I have not followed the story thoroughly, I have not seen many people saying he should have to pay for his  lying. It may be that to many fans and people in the sports media, lying by coaches is to be expected and treated as no big deal.

College football often is a sleazy business.  Cheating and buying players in recruiting are said to be fairly common.  Coaches regularly sign up players lacking ability or preparation for college and bring hoodlums and criminals to their campuses while prattling about character and “student athletes”.  Trying to injure opponents in games gets some coaches’ tacit approval or even encouragement.  There is reason to be a little skeptical of the idea that all those three hundred pounders on college teams are the result only of weight lifting, clean living, and eating lots of Wheaties and to be curious about how prescription pain drugs are used on players.

One can know this and still like the game, but a person should take the game as it is and not fall for the character building stuff or participate in any silly idolatry of successful coaches.  

At a Republican Rally

There is an old  saying that in this country people  have a choice between the evil party, the Democrats, and the stupid party, the Republicans.  Some people may prefer “bad” or “misguided” over “evil” to label  the Democrats, but it often is hard to argue with “stupid” to describe the Republicans.  A couple of days ago  Debby and I and a friend attended a rally for Senator Cruz at a local restaurant.  It was a lousy place for such an event. The small dining area  was filled  with a large number of people standing  in the spaces around the tables, blocking the waiters and waitresses and probably annoying people trying to eat. That, however, wasn’t stupid but  only excusable poor planning.

The stupidity came later. This was a purely political  rally open to all to fire up support for the Senator’s campaign against a particularly repugnant  Democrat.  Nevertheless the show began with a local politician giving a long and very sectarian evangelical Christian invocation, which clearly implied that Christianity and his kind of Republicanism were inseparable if not more or less the same.  One can assume  that our local Republican politicians know there are Jews, Hindus, Muslims, secular people, Buddhists, Unitarians, and other non-Christians around   whose votes count the same as any believer’s and whose support would help  Republicans win elections. Yet they purposely behaved in a way that such people  could reasonably have understood as signaling that this was a place where they were  not wanted and did not belong.  (Senator Cruz, to his credit, stayed mainly on topics of policy and  political ideology in his speech and when answering questions after it.)

The leftists have some very unpleasant things planned for this country.  In resisting them all Americans who value a free society need to hang  together.  It would be good if more Republicans were smart enough to realize that and act accordingly.

Not the Glory Days of the NFL

This week football players in the NFL were again kneeling, raising fists, or otherwise acting badly while the national anthem was playing before their games. The people running the league had considered prohibiting  such  behavior before the season started but decided to back off.  This is more evidence against the notion that executives in the entertainment businesses care only about money and make their decisions solely  to maximize revenue.

It is usually not a good idea to spit in someone’s face before asking him to continue purchasing your product so you can remain  rich.  However that is what the NLF and the players  did and likely will keep doing. In the context of the tradition of playing the anthem at the beginning of sporting events, the players’  actions are obviously gestures of disrespect and for the country and contempt for most of the people in it.

Most of those who applaud  this stuff probably are not football fans, and most football fans probably  dislike it, many  to the point of stopping watching.  Yet those in charge in the  NFL continue to allow it. It could be the bosses worry more about offending the players than about driving their customers away. It could be the result of  a desire to fit in with and be approved by the leftist traditional media, including the sports media. It could be the usual corporate cowardice in the face of the demands of political correctness.  It could be that  people such as Goodell do not care any  more for America or most Americans than the hateful players  do.  Whatever it is, it is not a decision driven by  the bottom line.  That is what makes it interesting.

Anyway, fall is a nice season in most of the country, and there are plenty of pleasant ways for former fans of the NFL to spend an autumn Sunday afternoon.

Useful Information from the New York Times

It should be obvious that racism or  racial bigotry is wrong in itself, irrespective of whether the bigot has any way to act on it.  Powerlessness does not absolve anything. The racial  ideas expressed in Mein Kampf would have would have been no less wrong if the author had never found a publisher for it and had died an unknown alcoholic paper hanger.  It should also be  trivially obvious that there are politically powerless white people and people of other races in politically powerful positions.

It should be obvious but it isn’t to everyone. Many leftists disagree. So the best thing about the case of  Sarah Jeong, her racially bigoted writings about white people, and the New York Times  is that it  has drawn attention  to the leftists’ dangerous doctrine that anti-white bigotry is not really bigotry because its  target is fair game, and that only white people can be bigoted because only they have power in society. It is good for people, especially for those in the targeted group,  to come to understand that a good many American leftists believe that it is okay or even necessary to hate and disparage some people because of the color of their skin.  People  should not laugh this off as the rantings of a few insignificant losers. It is more than that. The Times seems to  accept it. (The paper almost certainly would not have hired someone who had written that stuff about any non-white racial or ethnic group.) It is implicit in the set of double standards of political correctness and in the notion of racial identity politics.  It shows up ever more frequently in the Democratic Party, the entertainment industry, and the traditional media.

This is not good news, but it is news Americans, white or otherwise, should pay attention to.  I am glad the people at the Times dropped the mask and showed how things really stand.  One lesson for all from the 20^th Century is that when people say they hate you and want you destroyed, it is prudent to take them at their word.

As an aside, the Times's  claim that Jeong’s writings  were excusable as overwrought  responses to rude posts directed at her is nonsense.  Her attacks were on white people as such not rejoinders aimed at particular people who may have offended her.  

Straws

An observation attributed, perhaps inaccurately, to Yogi Berra: “you can observe a lot by watching.”

It is hard to argue with that. It is also true that sometimes you can observe something useful by paying attention to things which, on the surface, seem too silly to be worth watching. In the last couple of weeks some  politicians and  self-styled  activists have  been on a crusade against plastic straws. Governments in several cities have banned the things (with at least one making offering a person one a jailing offense), and a sorry troupe of weak kneed corporate executives  at Marriott, Disney, and other outfits have taken the pledge and promised that lips that touch straws will never touch theirs.

The natural first reaction is to write or laugh this off as just one more absurdity of a fairly mad world.  No sensible person cares what sort of straw his neighbor drinks through. But there are plenty of obnoxious  busybodies  who seem to live to force their puritanical  desires of the moment on  their fellow citizens without regard to fact, cost, or anyone’s rights. They flit from cause to cause and sometimes get what they want from obliging officials.  It may be that the poor plastic straw industry is  the more or less randomly selected target of the day and  one unlucky enough to be hit with a bullseye. This could just be  a case of what Governor Lepetomane came up with next. There is always that. 

However there could be more to it. The idea of taking to the barricades or passing laws  over somebody sipping a coke or  latte through a straw belongs in a low farce or an  over the top political satire.  Even a few months ago  people would have hooted at the suggestion it might happen. Yet  politicians have embraced and acted on this one quickly and strongly. It is worth guessing why.  It could be that its absurdity is one of the things leftist politicians find attractive about it. If your  purpose requires getting people in the habit of obedience, forcing something on them that both you and they know makes no sense and has the potential to annoy  them to boot can make a lot of sense.