Professional football players are told to bulk up on steroids, decimate their opponents physically, and brutalize each other. Yet fans are surprised that some of them victimize their family members with domestic abuse.
Up the Sensitivity
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Two groups have “domestic abuse” problems way out of proportion to the GP, that being sports “heros,” and cops. Correlations anybody?
Toy/boys, Boys-with-toys, etc.
D
Add military to that.
But then, is there any significant difference remaining between police and military culture?
There’s not that much difference between cops and criminals. In general, they are authoritarians who feel they entitled to enforce different rules than those they live by.
I’m reminded of Alex’s Droogs. “Jobs for two of Job age!!”
With regard to the cops, see this «Atlantic» article : http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/?single_page=true ….
Henri
Well done, if a bit too easy 🙂 That said, domestic violence really is the easy thing for people to talk about with football. What about what happens to the players? Even the NFL has (finally) been forced to admit that 1/3 of former players will die young, with significant brain damage. If you believe the NFL (and I don’t, I’m guessing it’s more like 2/3 based on what research has been done – when they started doing autopsies on ex NFL players brains, it was something like 23 out of the first 24 had CTE), that is nuts. Crazy. A “sport” where you are likely to die age 50, in pain, unable to remember your wife’s name? I can hear all the football fans saying “but they’re adults, they can do what they want” – how many NFL players start playing when they turn 18? You want to play football then, fine, be stupid. But having kids encouraged to play on teams in school? Very clever. Football, even by the NFL numbers, is way more dangerous than smoking, so maybe we should switch and have high school smoking teams. Toke Johnny Toke!!
Didn’t the Romans segregate the Gladiators and Soldiers from the general population?
I just re-read George R.R. Martin’s first published story, “The Hero” – written during the Vietnam war. It’s only a few pages long.
Set in the far future, the protagonist is a warrior born & bred. Raised on a high-gravity planet to make him strong, fed drugs to make him fast, he is a tried & true killing machine.
He reaches an age where he can resign with a full pension, and he wants to go to Earth. His CO tries to talk him into going back to his home planet, where he will be among his own kind. The hero knows his rights, insists on passage to Earth, and his CO grudgingly allows it.
So they load him onto the shuttle with full military honors.
-= SPOILER ALERT =-
After a short period, the shuttle captain calls the CO to report that it’s all over and what should they do with the body? Seems that they know better than to let born & bred killers loose in polite society …
… unlike us.
LARFFF
Collateral damage, Ted, collateral damage. One must expect and accept some unfortunate incidents in order to maintain the circenses part of panem et circenses (it would be invidious to inquire as to how the panem part is going). Sort of like all those people killed in the Empire of Chaos’ interminable wars of aggression abroad….
Henri