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What They've Thought
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What They're Thought November 28, 2004 R.A.
Hawkins Click here for columnist bios |
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No column this week. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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I love sports. I love to play them, watch them on television, but most of all I love to go to the stadiums or arenas and be a part of the intense excitement of what is known as “real time.” There is something to be said about the roar of the crowd, the witnessing of an outstanding shot, the smell of hot roasted peanuts, an icy cold soda, the crazed and frenzied fans, and being right there in thick of great sports moments…but how great have those moments become? Sure, there will be a plethora of commentary on the game and the immature battle that took place between a few players and the fans (Pacers/Pistons), but what does this say about us culturally? No, America hasn’t reached the ridiculous proportions of idiocy at our sports venues like our friends in Europe and South America, but hey… that’s no excuse for a lack of self control that seems to permeating our country, nor our acceptance of poor behaviors. You’ve angry fans that riot in the parking lots even when they’ve won their championship games. Our lack of self control over our own emotions stretches far beyond the basketball courts and football fields of professional sports. We’ve seen destructive antics at our college and high school levels as well. We’ve witnessed our own schoo'ls students demonstrating violent behaviors at games. We are stepping way over the line of what is reasonable. Are we developing a generation of young people to believe that the only way to express onesself is through destructive behavior? What are we all so mad about anyway? Will we have to increase our security for our professional and college games? Certainly the NBA has already increased the number of security guards, but why? Why have the players and the fans become so out of control that the NBA will have to pay for more security guards and possibly police officers? What are we teaching our young children we bring to the games we love? Is this it? "I don’t like the fact you took my ball so therefore I am going to smack you on the head." Or is it, " I don’t like the shot that player made, so I am going to call him a stupid sh*t head and throw my cup of water at him?" Grow up, people, or stay at home! I love taking my kids to the game for the excitement, the smells, the thrills of being there…not for your beastly behaviors and tantrums. I do wonder about some of these players and fans. What do they do when they don’t get their way at their jobs? Are they the ones who shoot their fellow employees and employers? Are they the ones who beat their wives and kids at home? Heck, what do they do when the bagger at the grocery store bags their groceries wrong and their eggs break? Do they go in and deck the bagger in the face? Where is our self control? Indeed, our culture is slipping quickly. We’ve become nothing more than a bunch of ferocious badgers. We horde, scratch, beat, hit, snarl and bite one another. Devouring and cannibalism of one another certainly must not be far behind… Since it seems we cannot control our bodies or our mouths from doing major harm, we now will have to spend more money on our entertainment so they can hire enough security guards to keep the blithering, idiot from hurting him/herself or anyone else. Are you ready, due to the idiocies of the uncontrolled buffoons, to have to pay higher ticket prices for protection? I’m not. I’ll keep my kids, money, support, and life at home. It’s not how I want to enjoy my sports and share them with my kids, but I am not willing to pay to be protected from the imbecile who cannot control him or herself. Players and fans, grow up! Artest, Jackson and O’Neal, if you really were a part of this brawl, shame on you. You need your mommas to give you a talking to on controlling your behaviors, and to stop whining that you think Stern wasn’t fair. The problem is, too many people have been too fair to your type of behavior for too long! The penalties given your predecessors of stupid behavior—Vernon Maxwell of the Houston Rockets punched a fan and received only a 10 games suspension and a 20,000 dollar fine; Latrell Sprewell of the Golden State Warriors only received a suspension of 68 games for choking his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, during practice; Kermit Washington of the Lakers only received a 26 game suspension for breaking the jaw of Rudy Tomjanovich during a game; and Dennis Rodman was only suspended for 11 games for kicking a courtside cameraman in the groin, and six games for head butting a referee— have never been stiff enough. Just because you’re a big name entertainer doesn’t leave you any room in the hall of “special people” to behave like an idiot who cannot control his actions. It is time to smack these spoiled brats right where it hurts. You do the crime, you do the time—player or fan— period, end of sentence. The fans (and I use that term loosely—real fans don’t behave in the manner which these disgusting humans did) need to be prosecuted and held accountable just as much as the players do. They all share equally in their deplorable behaviors. All I’ve got to say is this: Thank you to those fans that control themselves and enjoy the game for what it is: a game. Thank you to the players who play with style, integrity, class, and for the love of the game. Lastly, to those fans and players who are guilty of misconduct and egregiously deplorable antics, you are a parent's worst nightmare. Keep your butts at home and tear apart your own house. I want to take my kids to the games and have fun. Kerry L. Marsala Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Last
Friday night, an NBA game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit
Pistons turned into a
full-scale riot, the likes of which are usually reserved for revolutions
and Laker championships. It began in the final minute of the fourth
quarter, when Pacer Ron Artest committed a hard foul on Piston Ben Wallace,
which led Wallace to push Artest. Both teams cleared the benches and
a fan hit Artest with a beverage. Artest rushed—fists first—into
the stands. Next thing you knew, the game was called early. Chaos erupted.
Someone threw a chair.
Now folks are passing the blame like… well, like a basketball. But who, pray tell, is at fault here? That’s what I’d like to know. On the one hand, you have the players—that’s the obvious answer. You can blame Artest for fouling Wallace, or Wallace for pushing Artest. You can blame both rosters for clearing the benches. You can even blame Artest and teammate Stephen Jackson for taking the bait from that beverage-throwing fan. Whichever way you slice it, the point is that the players could conceivably be blamed. The NBA, for its part, agrees. Two days after the melee, it suspended nine players from both teams for a total of 140 games. “We have to make the point that there are boundaries,” says NBA Commissioner David Stern. “Players cannot lose control and move into the stands.” Of those suspended, Artest was hit hardest (pun intended). He’ll be in exile for the rest of the season, and no doubt will use his time off to reflect on his actions and promote his rap album. “I didn’t mean for the situation to turn out like it did,” he says, upset with the length of the penalty. “It really hurt me to see the children crying on TV.” Whatever that means. For what it’s worth, Artest threw some sweet looking punches. But that aside, his behavior was unprofessional—very unprofessional. And I found it disgusting, etc., and so on. Clearly, the players deserve to be blamed here. They’re supposed to be role models. Even if Artest threw some sweet looking punches. Which he did. But what about the fans, though? Don’t the fans deserve some blame, too? It was a fan, after all, who threw a beverage at Artest. If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. “If someone is throwing something at you with intent to harm you, you’re going to defend yourself,” Pacer David Harrison says of the beverage intended to harm Artest. Former player Tim Legler expands on this point. “A fan made himself part of the altercation and that’s when it got ugly,” he says. “I’m not defending the players’ actions,” but: “When fans get involved, they get what they deserve.” He adds: “I feel sorry for the children who were at the game and had to witness this unfortunate situation.” Whatever that means. Now, I can sympathize with this argument—not from a player’s perspective, but a fan’s. I remember attending a Yankee game a few years ago, with the best seats I’ve ever had. Jose Canseco played for the visiting team that day. I’m not sure what team it was. I think this happened in ‘98, so it was probably the Blue Jays. But whatever. The point is, every time Canseco was up, I shouted something at him. I’ve never been a fan of telling players they “suck” (they obviously don’t, if they’re playing), but I’ve never been a fan of Jose Canseco, either; if evil comprised a parallel universe, he would play for its all-star team. So I got creative. I shouted, “Jose Canseco has a hairy back!” And then, “Jose Canseco doesn’t brake for kids!” It was all in good fun, and I liked the attention I was getting. But then I got carried away. I shouted, “Jose Canseco, I hope you die,” then stopped and realized, no, I didn’t—I had better knock it off. So it’s easy for fans to get carried away at sports events (some would argue that’s the point). And make no mistake: Those who commit arrestable offenses deserve to be arrested; they ruin it for everyone else. The problem with blaming “the fans,” though, is that it’s too general. How do you blame them last Friday, for instance, when Artest ran into the stands unsure which fan threw the beverage? He apparently hit the wrong guy, but at that point it no longer mattered—now dozens were involved. Sports crowds are seas of faceless super-consumers—guys like Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson notwithstanding. To blame “the fans” is to blame something larger. It is to blame all of Detroit, fans and non-fans alike. It is to blame pro sports and its sponsors for “an insidious sales strategy” that, according to the New York Post‘s Phil Mushnick, “target[s] young males… begging them to be wise guys.” And, indeed, to blame “the fans” is to blame society, like USA Today‘s Ian O’Connor, the Boy Who Cried Hyperbole, who says the incident “opened an unforgettably vile window on the human condition.” But that only brings us back to square one: Who, pray tell, is at fault? You can’t blame “the players” or “the fans,” or Detroit, or pro sports. You can’t blame society. Those are cop-out answers. They’re meaningless and empty. And you can’t blame individual players and fans, either, because it’s tricky to sort them out and determine who provoked whom. None of these answers suffice because none of them actually answer the question. We might as well blame Desperate Housewives. Or hell, how about blaming politics? Indiana’s a Red State. Michigan’s a Blue State. Maybe that’s why the riot occurred? No, what we need is a single, solitary scapegoat—a person, not a group or a trend or an entity. We must blame last Friday’s violence on someone who represents both the best and worst things about athletes, but someone who doesn’t represent the Pistons or Pacers, their fans, or the NBA. We must blame this on someone with talent, but someone who wasted their talent, and someone who’s therefore one half athlete, one half regular joe. And above all, we must blame this on someone who deserves blame for something, but not for this incident, so that we may shift the blame even while placing it on deserving shoulders. Someone who wasn’t there last Friday. Someone who doesn’t brake for kids, whatever that means. I nominate Jose Canseco. I don’t know
how, and I don’t know why, but I truly believe this is all his
fault. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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When the framers were invited to the Philadelphia Convention, it was to revamp the Articles of Confederation. Shays Rebellion, difficulty raising revenue, and regulating foreign trade convinced many of the need for a stronger national government. It was not anticipated, though, the Articles would be scrapped or that James Madison would arrive with his Virginia Plan in tow, outlining a proposal for an entirely different organization of government. But he did and changed the whole course of our history, the result of his innovative spirit and confidence in his ideas. Like James Madison, there are many who believe that the present system of public education can no longer provide an optimal performance on the same set of worn tires. It needs more than just an infusion of money to control the leaks and propensity to fall flat. It needs an entirely different set of wheels to run smoothly and efficiently. Visionaries, like James Madison, able to see beyond the present boundaries and provide alternative solutions are trying to remedy the established public education system. Like the framers were able to come to an agreement about the type of Constitution our country needed, they have formulated their plans but still have to convince the general populace that their vision is the only sustainable course of action and that we cannot continue mired in a system controlled by administrators and union reps whose only stake in the process is the status quo because it serves to maintain their present stature and income. Competition in a free market prompts people to excel and continually pursue greater achievements. This is why the United States is a prosperous country and that our population as a whole lives much more comfortably than most others around the world. Choice in education provides those needing educational services more options and a competitive product. If a product isn’t up to speed, people will not seek it out. Universal Tuition Tax Credits are the only option that would allow consumers from any socio/economic background the opportunity to pursue the education that best fits their needs without drawing from public education dollars. There are additional ways to insert competition into the public school system. One suggestion worth considering has educators run the public educational system by electing their principals. It’s worth noting that everyone has been given the opportunity to change the present system of education in our country except the teachers, who have been given no power in the system. Teachers often fear losing their jobs or offending the principal or others if they truly voice their opinions. Electing the principal would remove the fear teachers have of expressing their true beliefs about how things should go. It would also introduce an element of competition. Next, principals would serve as the school board members because they are infinitely more knowledgeable about how the tax dollars should be spent in their district. These same principals would elect one of their own to serve as superintendent for a term –in charge of appointing and hiring teachers. Teachers would no longer have to answer to untrained school boards and administrators who are removed from the every day problems of the classroom. Classroom teachers could simply vote out those who impede the educational process. If there must be a teacher union, it will be to do the job for which it was established; to seek proper benefits and working conditions for the members. That would be the extent of any union role in education. It is the teachers who have the proper training and classroom experience necessary to run the school system. It must be acknowledged that in the sum of their practical experience and training lie the only answers to the question of what works in education. Solution to Problems in Education by Leslie Jack We The People: The
Citizen And The Constitution Nancy Salvato Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education." Paul Karl Feyerabend "The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 1922 With the prospects that the U.S. Supreme Court are on the verge of a historic ruling, school vouchers may well be the last hope for saving the next generation. The idea of effectively allowing parents an alternative to government schools has been with us for decades. Back in the mid fifties, market proponents like Milton Friedman wrote extensively on The Role of Government Education. Opportunities for children should be the standard, not conformity to bureaucratic curriculum. The Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program has clear support from parents and single parents that seek a decent education for their children. The failure of the American public school system is beyond debate by any objective person. Public education in our cities is equated with bankruptcy in moral purpose. The National Center for Policy Analysis offers up a detailed report and defense for the voucher concept. The deceptive argument that this program violates separation of church and state needs to be seen just for what it is. A veiled attempt to protect the vast government apparatus that claims to serve the interests of the student. Teacher organizations can't have it both ways, asserting they are a profession, while acting like a union. From the Brief Analysis - Cleveland, School Choice and the Constitution the report concludes: "The Cleveland voucher program allows families who could not otherwise afford to exercise choice (e.g., by moving to another district, enrolling in private schools, undertaking home schooling) to decide what constitutes an appropriate education for their children. This was clearly a legitimate public policy goal for the Ohio General Assembly when it created the Cleveland program. The fact that no public schools have chosen to participate or that many parents and students choose religious schools under the program in no way delegitimizes the goal of providing better education alternatives for children from low-income families." The significance of encouraging true competition with the government school education system, cannot be stressed enough. The current structure is a disaster, while the likes of Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers referred to the potential of turning an education endeavor into a profit-making venture as the "threat of an educational industrial complex." Well excuse me! Just what do you call the present monopoly of government schools, if it is not a guaranteed racket of protection? It seems that socialism is the only model that Shanker defends and free enterprise the option that he fears. You have heard this before and most of you know the record all too well. But what may be new to some is that a lineup of advocates ranging from a left of center Republican Rudolph Guiliani to the Democrat mayor John O. Norquist of Milwaukee favor the Cleveland voucher program. Kenneth W. Starr helped to write Ohio's defense for their program, while C. Boyden Gray, Edwin Meese III helped to provide pro-vouchers briefs. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson has said: "vouchers are a response to the catastrophic and well-documented failure of Cleveland's inner-city public schools", will argue the Bush administration's viewpoint, before the supreme court. Just who seeks true reform for the sake of the next generation of deprived children? Isn't it time to admit the total miscarriage of wasting more money, administered by hacks and incompetent teachers, while an entire subculture remains uneducated? The central argument in public education has never been addressed; namely, control of the process by parents. If parents don't have a practical alternative to leave the system, the government education culture has no reason to change or reform. Society never benefits when people are left to a future of despair. If the current public schools failed in their task of instructing our youth, and a competing one has demonstrated vast improvements, why not encourage the method that works? Especially when the parents demand meaningful change, the charade of 'business as usual' is offensive to any sincere person. Face facts! Public education IS big business. One that has caused more harm to the country than the collapse in dozens of Enron's or Global Crossing's. We are talking about the future of the nation. The teacher union needs to be fired . . . The only incentive for internal reform of the government schools lies within the peril of loosing their pupils to a competing educational system. For the first time in several generations, the highest court may well make the correct decision. Conventional wisdom looks to Sandra Day O'Connor to provide the swing vote. This decision offers hope to fix a broken and entrenched national embarrassment - the government schools. Mr Friedman concludes:
"The result of these measures would be a sizable reduction in the
direct activities of government, yet a great widening in the educational
opportunities open to our children. They would bring a healthy increase
in the variety of educational institutions available and in competition
among them. Private initiative and enterprise would quicken the pace
of progress in this area as it has in so many others. Government would
serve its proper function of improving the operation of the invisible
hand without substituting the dead hand of bureaucracy."
If we knew the
answer for nearly a half century, why is the problem still with us?
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©2004 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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