Wish I'd written that

These are mediocre times. People are starting to lose hope.”

- Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson) to David (Bruce Willis) in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable

The sad state of sports

At one point Friday evening, the top ten headlines at Fox Sports included the following: a football player indicted for child abuse, the NFL players union approving a new drug test program, an NBA general manager dealing with charges of racism, a baseball player suspended for drug use, data showing 28% of NFL players will suffer some type of dementia, another football player dealing with domestic abuse, an Olympic athlete convicted of homicide, and a racing driver taking the place of another one killed in an accidental accident.  And this didn't include the calls for the NFL commissioner to resign, and the stories leading up to that.

As you can see, it's a pretty grim legacy.  Truth be told, last week was not the best week if you're in the sports PR business, although it certainly provided you with job security.  And they say sports is supposed to provide us with a break from real life.

Of course, those who participate in sports - players, managers, owners, fans - are simply one subset of society as a whole, complete with the same foibles and graces that you might find in any group of individuals that share a particular trait.  In that sense, we shouldn't expect to see sports headlines that are any different than those we read about in the news.  As well, the media love to focus on "stories," usually negative ones.  All that being the case, it was still an extraordinary sports week, and a depressing one.  And to the extent that sports does mirror the rest of society, it tells us much about the world in which we live.  

But then, we have other headlines to deal with: dissension in the Church, terrorism and genocide in the Middle East, non-stop partisan bickering on Capitol Hill, a president who doesn't seem to know which end is up, a nation seemingly at war with itself.  .  It can make the world of sports seem tranquil by comparison.  I'm fond of often writing the phrase "my point is," but I'm not sure there's a point to all this.  Those who say the world is going to hell in a handbasket have a lot of ammunition behind that argument right now.  

There are still good stories in sports, just as there are good people.  (And good headlines in the news, though they may be even fewer and farther between.)  And the drama of a live sporting event is still difficult to surpass, which is one reason why so many of us keep coming back for more, even while knowing who we're dealing with.

There will be a time, though, when each of us has to ask of ourselves whether or not it's worth it, or if we're simply the idle Romans being entertained by the circus in the Colosseum - the gladiators, the Christians being fed to the lions - while the empire crumbles around us.  I reached that point a few years ago when I quit watching the NFL* and NBA, and I don't doubt that other sports are standing in line waiting their turn (and not too patiently, it seems).

*Baseball, on the other hand, besides being corrupt, is also boring.

The thought of this sickens me, as it should everyone who used to enjoy the simplicity and competition of sports.  So much of it is about money nowadays, which I think has no little impact on everything else going on.  But so much of it is like the horse that's already out of the barn - there's not much anyone can do over it, and if we fuss too much, we're dismissed as curmudgeons.  

And until that time comes for each of us, when we have to decide what's important for us, we'll sit back and watch: watch the games, watch the headlines, and wait for the next shoe - or body - to drop.

Flashback Friday: Wish I'd written that

Idon't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. "You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, Goddamnit! My life has value!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: [Screaming at the top of his lungs] 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), written by Paddy Chayefsky, Network

Did you ever notice now many people get the line wrong?  They'll say, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."  Chayefsky was quite specific in what he was writing.  He didn't say, "it" - he told everyone that this what he was lashing out at.  The sheer dehumanization of man.  The quote can be applied to anything, but to fully appreciate it you have to put it in context.  He wasn't raging at everything, but something very specific and direct.  It only seems, nowadays, as if it applies to everything.

Originally written February 2, 2008

The lack of responsibility led to the Ward and Brown cases

For wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the evil one.” – Job 5:2

Sitting through my thoughts over the week's news, I looked at notes from my Ryrie Study Bible, purchased while at a college retreat, and is falling apart from a decade and a half of consistent use, thinking of this verse while finagling through the news in both the Canandaigua, New York and Ferguson, Missouri cases, where in each case, a man died from wrath, and outrage from the nation has become the issue. Upon the review of each story, it was evident that wrath played a role in both cases.

In the Canandaigua incident, which some are wanting the “assailant,” Anthony W. Stewart, 43, of Columbus, Indiana, charged with manslaughter, the disturbing video evidence proved negligence not of Mr. Stewart, the 1997 Verizon IndyCar Series¹ and 2002, 2005, and 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion driver, proved the driver allegedly struck by Mr. Stewart, Kevin Ward Jnr, 20, had lunged towards a second driver (the #45 car) in the 360 (cubic inch displacement engine – a lower-cost series versus the 410 cubic inch) sprint car event before he gathered his anger at Mr. Stewart by lunging in front of the #14 car, with dim lighting in a dark firesuit and helmet, with little (if any) reaction time to react with his actions. This incident has forced Mr. Stewart in hiding, while his operations (Stewart-Haas Racing, Tony Stewart Racing, Eldora Speedway, True Speed Communications) are run by associates in the interim, while some are wanting him guilty when it's evident Mr. Ward had lunged in road rage that he crossed the line, forcing motorsport authorities to tighten rules regarding driver behaviour when exiting the car (which, in theory, will lead to more fights in the pit area). In motorsport, a driver involved in an incident is often forced to be restrained by circuit officials if he attempt to charge at another competitor. The Canandaigua Motorsports Park officials did not restrain Mr. Ward in any matter, which is disturbing considering most circuits would have officials do their hardest to prevent other competitors from charging at other cars.

In the Ferguson incident, reports are the teenage assailant and a friend entered a convenience store (where the most popular items sold are tobacco, alcohol, and gambling tickets) and committed a strong-arm robbery where a full cigar case, valued at $50, was stolen in the robbery. The clerk in the store called police and likely called it an “armed robbery”. When questioned, the suspects then attacked the policeman (the cigars were stolen, and the suspect may have looked too young to own tobacco), with reports coming that the shoplifter and his accomplice were involved in an incident with police, attempting to resist arrest, with part of the battle involving the policeman's gun. When a policeman could be held defenseless by an assailant, he has a right to defend his weapon, which he did away from these assailants who were going after his gun, and shooting the policeman was a possibility.

Think about a motorist who travels US Highway 21, which I travel often, with a 88 KPH speed limit on the two-lane road. If you are traveling at 130 KPH, more than 41 KPH over the limit, that's a six-point penalty (0-16 is two points, 16-40 is four points, 41 and up is six points; twelve is a suspension). If you resist arrest and go on a high-speed chase, you will face extra forms of police technique to stop you from your antics. Reckless driving will result in police using severe tactics to stop the dangerous driving, similar to what happened when the policeman was having to stop the assailants from attempting to use his gun to attack him.

If you look under 18 years of age with the full box of cigars, let alone having stolen the tobacco, that is an automatic suspicion since tobacco sales are prohibited to those under 18, and with the actions that took place as proven by cameras, it was serious case of stealing, which even our Ten Commandments prohibit. However, in today's humanist teachings, there are no standards. They are taught there is no right or wrong, and it is based on feelings. The looters forget the most important part of the Ferguson story in that Mr. Brown and his accomplice first engaged in the strong-arm robbery, which in effect was shoplifting. That's stealing and violates Exodus 20:15. But once again, they are not taught the Bible today in schools. Popular culture has turned away from God's Word in favour of relativism.

This leads to an article this past week in the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission by Collin Garbarino of Houston Baptist University². Mr. Garbarino, a professor, assigned a paper to students based on Thucydides' accounts of the Sparta and Athens battles, and Athens' attack on Melia when the city refused to join their side in the Sparta-Athens battles, led to the annihilation of the area. The professor found the students unable to see how Athens' moral failure was based on their self-centred arrogance, and they could not see how democracies could only stand with moral fabric. Such is why we have urban arrogance in an attempt to push a new humanist religion as the state religion, and attempts by activists to eliminate the moral fabric by wiping out standards based on the Bible, and instead impose standards based on man.

When considering that, the moral relativism of those who ransacked Ferguson as “social justice,” even reaching into the idea they want what they want, and refuse to be responsible for behaviour that led to the death of the robber.

In both the Michael Brown and Kevin Ward Jnr cases, both men were irresponsible. In Mr. Ward's case, he charged at race cars traveling at safety car speed in anger, which led to his own death for not following correct protocol after a crash, and wanted to take the situation with Mr. Stewart immediately, and not await until later to see what happened. In Mr. Brown's case, he committed crimes of robbery, and when suspicion aroused he was involved in illegal behaviour, he showed no responsibility and resisted arrest, even threatening the policeman.

Whatever happened to responsibility? Neither man was being responsible after their incidents, leading each to rage that led to their own deaths. We need to be responsible now. And moral relativism is allowing a lack of responsibility to dominate. Think about it.

***

¹INDYCAR attempted to run the season to end the season at Indianapolis; that plan, which had been proposed for the 1996-97 season, was to have the season-opener in Loudon 1996, through the five-race season that continued through Las Vegas, and 1997 races at Disney World and Phoenix, before finishing at the Indianapolis at the 500; during the calendar year change, INDYCAR decided to finish the season at the end of the calendar year, meaning new races in Fort Worth, Fountain (Colorado), and Charlotte, and the two established races at Loudon and Las Vegas would end the 1996-97 season; further INDYCAR-sanctioned seasons have been calendar year only. Mr. Stewart's title is written as per style guidelines established by INDYCAR. Please note “INDYCAR” in all capital letters specifically refers to the sanctioning body, formerly known as the Indy Racing League until the end of the 2013 season. The name change was formalised in the 2014 INDYCAR rule book.

²The article refers to a movie that is now on DVD; when Mr. Chang attended the movie as part of a church trip in March, he discovered the movie was an feature-length film advertisement for Vivendi Universal Music around its storyline. Obviously, in the twelve years since taking his first voice lesson, and further learning of church music from friends such as Ingrid Schlueter, and reading of theologians regarding church music history, which effectively separates church music into a antebellum, postbellum ('gospel song'), and modern emotionalism era (OCP, GIA, and the Michael Jackson Family Trust that controls modern church music), he cannot justify a movie that promotes secularised music that is too often played in churches today.)

How "elite" higher education is destroying our society

I got this link from Mitchell over the weekend; he knew this was bait for another "Scam Alert" on higher education.

It comes from the website of the Dallas Morning News, where William Deresiewicz pulls back the curtain on the scam that is an Ivy League education.  It's a damning indictment, and you really ought to read the whole thing, but this excerpt should give you an idea of what Deresiewicz, who used to be on the faculty at Yale (and thus, knows of what he speaks), sees in today's "elite" higher educaton:

Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.

Now, we used to think of college as the place wherein young people prepared to face the world, and in an ironic way the Ivy League has done exactly that.  For Deresiewicz describes perfectly what kind of a world we now live in.  Look at U.S. foreign policy, for example - don't the words "anxious, timid and lost" describe it to a T?  Of course, what else would you expect from a society that displays these very traits?  One has only to look at the breakdown in religious belief to see a people with no sense of purpose, little to no curiosity, no idea why they do what they do.  Remove belief from life, and that's what you get.

More:

When I speak of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them — the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants and test-prep courses; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brand-name graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the B.A.; and the parents and communities, largely upper-middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.

Deresiewicz speaks of the students he taught at Yale, and once again it's hard not to see the cause-and-effect, in that the system is producing exactly the kind of society one might expect when it's made up of young people who bring these experiences into the world.  There were many wonderful young people,

But most of them seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them. Very few were passionate about ideas. Very few saw college as part of a larger project of intellectual discovery and development. Everyone dressed as if they were ready to be interviewed at a moment’s notice. [...] Look beneath the facade of seamless well-adjustment, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation. A large-scale survey of college freshmen recently found that self-reports of emotional well-being have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s 25-year history.

Well, it's hard to argue with any of this, especially when we don't even know what college is meant to achieve:  "Is it just about earning more money? Is the only purpose of an education to enable you to get a job?"

In the midst of the gloom, Deresiewicz offers the start of the solution: "I’ve come to see that what we really need is to create one where you don’t have to go to the Ivy League, or any private college, to get a first-rate education."  You may or may not agree with his conclusions, but be sure to go here and read them.

What's wrong with sports today

It's become fashionable over the last few decades to see a larger meaning to sports - to see baseball as representing a microcosm of life, for example.

There is, however, another - less romantic - way in which sports mirrors life today.  ESPN's Tim Keown, writing about the prospect of the city of Oakland losing all three of its professional sports teams, on what sports has become:

Take a look at those future ruins. They rose from the ground before crowds inside stadiums mimicked the stratification of the society outside, with the moneyed elite walling themselves off from the commoners in gloriously appointed privacy -- a logical extension of the gated, country-club community.

Are we destined to forever live in a sports world where amenities go from desirous to compulsory? Are fans and taxpayers just resigned to either building new shrines or losing their teams?

In the relentlessly monarchical world of professional sports, someone has to be able to forsake a digit or two in the bank account to create a legacy more meaningful than a trust fund that'll cover a lifetime of BMWs and Botox treatments for the grandchildren of his grandchildren. Someone has to consider the void left behind. And someone has to make a clear-eyed assessment of whether 4–12 will look any better through the window of a luxury suite with a view of LA Live than it does through the bottom of a smuggled-in fifth of Albertsons scotch in the depths of the Black Hole.

Do read the whole article.  Now, I've never been one to jump on the "trash the suburbs" bandwagon, though I myself prefer living in an urban area.  And there's nothing inherently wrong with living in a gated community, when the purpose is to provide a minimum amount of security to, say, an apartment complex without a security entrance.  But when the attempt is to create a permanent chasm between classes - in fact, to create a cultural subset where those of a certain lifestyle never even have to come into contact with "everyone else," then there's a problem. Sports has often been a means of building community, of something that crosses political, racial, or religious lines.  It was never meant to become a ghetto for the rich.  ◙

The sad state of television today

Movie theatres have a problem when the rating of a film is “R” or “NC-17” (an X rating before 1990) because they will appeal to adults only. Restrictions against children are strictly imposed in the theatre. However, it's clear now with the proliferation of cord-cutting and Web-only viewers they can escape the restrictions of theatres. Yet, with television's “TV-MA” rating, which is the equivalent of an NC-17 (or X) rating in television, we are seeing the rewards of the R/X-class programming on television.

Consider that HBO, Showtime, and Netflix can air TV-MA grade programming, and the Emmy nominations went mostly to that triumvirate, while the broadcast networks, which have a restriction of Y7, G, PG, and some 14 after 10 PM ET, were shut out of the prestigious drama category, you have to wonder what it says when pay television, with no restrictions on content, is defeating network television, which must cater to as many people as possible.

Does it seem that television's equivalent of the R and NC-17 ratings, unlike movies, is worth artistic gold, with Emmy nominations, while network television with their PG and PG-13 ratings, are being shut down by these R and NC-17 type shows? If the Emmys believe raunchy content that's not capable of being on network television is the golden goose to earn accolades, we are in trouble.

Speaking of which, the report on Al Jazeera America's launch this week is only fitting considering Al Jazeera effectively shut down three Fox sport-related channels (Speed, Fuel, Fox Soccer) as much of their content has gone to the pan-Arabic Qatar channel (and their partners at Time Warner Cable, for legal reasons), Comcast (see the rise of NBC Sports Network), and Fox is starting a basic cable channel with the R and NC-17 type HBO/Showtime/Netflix unrestricted raunch (FXX) to replace the football channel, while replacing the motorsport and action-sports and MMA channel with general sports channels (Fox Sports 1 and 2). Already, according to a report posted on ESPN, television providers are balking at FS1 and FS2 because of the carriage fees.  [Ed: Time Warner, DirecTV and Dish have yet to sign up with FS1, and here in Dallas we're seeing the Time Warner-CBS standoff.]

It is a sad sign of what we have become when acceptance of deviancy in violation of the Bible is glorified and mandated by federal law. Now it's even worse that Hollywood and the critics are forcing on us their attitudes of grotesque material that would not have been put on television years ago. ◙

Emotions have replaced careful analysis in society

P. T. Barnum said it best over a century and a half ago when he noted, “There's a sucker born every minute.” I learned it the hard way at an automobile auction when car shopping recently in an effort to replace my 16-year old truck that had an engine failure last summer. Equipped with information from a major publication on the fair market value of an automobile, I scanned three vehicles at the auction I thought was worth the possibility. I checked fair market value, and deducted properly for defects that need repair for a fair market value that I could use for the purchase.

I learned the hard lesson. Two bidders online (both resellers) went for the same vehicle, and grabbed it for 60% greater than the fair market value, as posted by nationally renowned sources. I thought why it had happened to me. It finally dawned why. In my efforts to follow the Dave Ramsey way of auto buying, we checked fair market values to purchase the vehicle at fair market value. The buyers who were successful were resellers, not having seen the vehicle at the auction, and only basing it on outside pictures, and not inside, made it clear they were being suckers. They did not care for the fair market value of the vehicle, and only looked at their intrinsic value based on emotions. Obviously, as we saw in the most recent election, emotions matter more than those who analyse on any front. What gives in our society? Have we become a society that values emotions and refuses to look deeper before anything? ◙

Last week, we saw the jackpot for one of the two multiple-state lottery games reach a value of five hundred million dollars in an annuitised jackpot.

It makes me shake my head to consider the number of people piling into groceries, convenience stores, and other wild places (some in dangerous parts of towns) to spend a Thomas Jefferson paper currency (or more) to purchase “chances” at winning this jackpot (for which the odds are slim to none). Why would people trust their entire fortune on the luck of one draw at 2259 hours (GMT-5) to see if they have five numbers and the special red number to clinch that pot of which the person is not expected to even win. Meanwhile, the President and his group are interested in telling people to cease participation in the market in favour of trusting the government, with new taxes aimed at the investors but not at those who participate in state-run numbers rackets.

Hard work is a virtue, but we have seen it replaced, especially with the results of the election earlier this month, with the idea government is a deity, and the entitlement generation has taught us government, not hard work, is the best virtue. Luck from the government is being encouraged, while we discourage hard work and investing with the masses piling to the numerous numbers racket locations, wanting their two dollars to spend on a worthless ticket.

So we no longer trust God, we no longer want hard work, we just want the government to pay us aplenty. That's the message from the lottery lines.

What gives?

And oh, by the way: Sony's Glee is going “Gangnam Style” and they're singing it in Korean. I don't think the Greenville Light Opera Works would want that, considering both what I've read from Renée Fleming's The Inner Voice about opera before the 20th century, when supertitles did not exist, the operas were sung in the tongue of the region, not the original tongue of the opera, which is how our Upstate opera company sings their operettas in English translation. If the Upstate opera company can sing translations of great operas, why can't this raunchy pop culture show sing a Korean tune translated? Turns out many Korean tunes (K-pop) popular with the youth of Korea are translated from other languages from Swedish pop factories. If they tried to sing other K-pop ditties might they try to sing those in English? How many times have I seen a Greenville Light Opera Works singer sing the wonderful opera pieces that should be in Italian instead in English? That was then, and this light company does it the way it was. ◙

The consumerist society is out of control; we want Thanksgiving back!

Our consumerist society is clearly out of control.

The five red lights for the traditional day after Thanksgiving sales (Pilgrims' Day as Canadians might call it considering what we call Thanksgiving in Canada, which is in October) are turning on very early and extinguishing at an even earlier time than normal.

Whereas I can remember the red lights turning on at 5:59 for the traditional 6 AM lights extinguishing, we have seen the lights at 4:59 AM, and now have crept to Thanksgiving, with 11:59 PM lights, and some merchants have switched to 7:59 PM lights – and the NFL is likely unhappy with such mass consumerism. Whatever happened to running a Turkey Trot, having a nice family dinner and the three NFL games (Noon, 4 PM, and 8 PM) and then resting, and if you are a merchant, preparing for another day (remember Wall Street does sound the 9:30 AM bell) and my fitness partner and I have often done, tough Black Friday workouts, that I cannot imagine the stores full of people before Faith Hill hates herself for loving you at 8 PM ET.

No wonder merchants and families are wanting their day back. Those of us up at the crack of dawn and running for charity have more virtue than those eating too much, let alone piling stores at 5 PM, awaiting the 7:59 PM lights turning on, similar to the crowds at concert venues for the pop star's next concert at a venue that sells out quickly (which is why one country star went from the 18,000 seat arena to a 80,000 seat stadium for local concerts), where people can be attacked and even killed in the stampedes worse than 15 bovines, led by Asteroid, tossing 15 cowboys, led by Silvano Alves, in less than five seconds each. The five red lights should not be turning on Thanksgiving, let alone 7:59 PM, 9:59 PM, or 11:59 PM, or even Friday before sunrise! No wonder I'm planning to do a hard workout on Black Friday morning and doing some merchant tools instead of a trip to the mall. ◙