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SyndicateWorth Rehashing
By Robert Ringer - Tuesday, December 8, 2009
By Robert Ringer
In response to two of my recent articles — “The Beckoning of the Serpents” and “The Dismissal Strategy” – reader johnwolfe53 wrote the following blog post:
Several days ago you published a letter from a reader decrying professional sports as a subversive influence in society. Your comments following the reader’s note seemed to agree with him on many of the points he raised. The tone of the letter and, sadly, of your comments was borderline offensive.
The implication that those who follow sports are sheep being led off a cliff was insulting, and frankly beneath you. I, for one, follow sports as an enjoyable diversion. But that does not make me an unthinking automaton incapable of understanding the gravity of the situation we face. Nor do I whistle past the graveyard on my way to purchasing overpriced tickets and team-logo gear.
I’m active in local affairs. I participate in the political process on a variety of levels. I’m vocal on the issues of the day, communicating regularly with my Congressional representatives, the media and even the White House. And, yes, from time to time, I root, root, root for the home team. I find it energizing and, God forbid, enjoyable.
Perhaps your correspondent, and the other criminally strident among your subscribers, would be well served to take a break from their misery occasionally and watch a ball game, drink a beer or have a catch. Spend some time interacting with those outside their circle of sycophants, and get a little perspective. Stop the Chicken Littling and focus on having a positive, measurable effect on their communities, their workplaces, their families.
And if they – or you – are going to attack sports, professional or otherwise, how about showing some creativity – or at least some consistency? One of your correspondent’s comments was the tired old screed that professional athletes get paid too much for playing “a kid’s game,” that what they do – at the top skill levels in their chosen fields by the way – is somehow not “worth” what they earn.
Yet today you write, regarding the Chris Wallace interview with Rush Limbaugh, that “perhaps the best of Rush came out when Wallace asked him, with regard to his purported $400 million radio contract, how anyone could possibly be worth that much money. Said Limbaugh, “Because that’s what people are willing to pay me.”
Is it possible that some people might think Limbaugh is overpaid? Personally, I agree with much that Limbaugh says, but I don’t care much for the way he presents himself. I think he’s an arrogant blowhard. That doesn’t mean he isn’t “worth” his fat paycheck. As he told Wallace, “That’s what people are willing to pay.”
You went on to mention the “moral superiority of capitalism,” adding that “Capitalism is not something to be embarrassed about. I’m proud to say that I believe in economic freedom.” Just not for athletes? Seems to me, you can’t have it both ways. If capitalism is good, and it is, it is good for all involved in it, not just those you think are worthy.
Dear johnwolfe53, you need to read my articles more closely. I never said that those who follow sports are sheep being led off a cliff, nor did I say that anyone who goes to sporting events is an unthinking automaton incapable of understanding the gravity of America’s dire situation.
I agree with you that going to an occasional game is a good way to relax and unwind, but I stay my ground on those lost souls whose lives are totally consumed by rooting for the “hometown team.” This kind of obsession keeps their minds off subjects that are somewhat more important than painting one’s body in his team’s colors and screaming at the top of his lungs for three hours for his heroes to win one for Mudville.
When I say subjects that are somewhat more important, I’m referring to pesky little issues such as the loss of our liberty, America’s march toward bankruptcy, and government-run healthcare and cap-and-trade legislation that is guaranteed to drown working people with new, draconian taxes.
I also stand my ground on the idea of a hometown team being nonsense. As I said, most professional athletes have little attachment for the towns in which they ply their trade from year to year. Theirs is a nomadic profession.
In the days of yore, things were different. I am told that when you played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, you really were like a hometown guy. On any given day, you might see Duke Snider walking into your neighborhood delicatessen. Roy Campanella owned a liquor store in Brooklyn, and many Dodger fans were also his customers. The Dodgers, the Yankees, et al really were hometown teams. But those days are long gone.
I was really into sports in my youth, but I slowly lost interest as cities became nothing more than way stations for players looking for ever higher salaries. And who can blame them? But for anyone to take seriously the notion of a “hometown team” in this day and age of free agency is lunacy.
Finally, you say, “Seems to me, you can’t have it both ways. If capitalism is good, and it is, it is good for all involved in it, not just those you think are worthy.” I don’t want it both ways. As I said, I don’t blame athletes for making all the money they can. I believe in the free market.
My concern is with the mindless folks who provide the money to pay astronomical salaries to those who happen to be good at playing games of one kind or another. The fact that people place such a high premium on athletic talent is just one of a long list of signs that Western civilization is now standing on its head.
So-called rap “music” … abortion on demand … reality TV shows … plotless movies offering nonstop violence and explicit sex from start to finish … gang-infested cities … the list is as long as you want to make it. So, insanity over sports doesn’t get all the credit for the decay of our once proud civilization.
But the athletes, they’re just giving people what they want at prices they are willing to pay. No problem there. More power to them. It’s the meatheads who work themselves into a frenzy of blind adoration — who have no purpose in their lives — who are the problem.
Of course, in a free country, they have every right to medicate themselves with sports, junk TV, sexual excess, or anything else that does the trick for them. But the more they do so at the expense of learning a bit about what is happening to our once noble civilization, the less free our country is likely to become.
I guess you might say that in a free country you are free to lose your freedom by becoming totally absorbed in things that don’t require you to engage in that oh so painful activity known as thinking.
Better?
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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14 Responses to “Worth Rehashing”
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I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of the hometown team being nonsense. I realized this even as a small child. Everyone I knew — adults included — rooted for the hometown Phillies and Eagles just because they lived in Philly. It seemed so mindless: I live in Philly…. Must root for Phillies and Eagles….
I thought, “what happens if we move to New York? We then immediately root for the Yankees and Giants and despise the Philly teams?” and “what if the Philly players you love so dearly get traded — do you now hate them with a passion?”
Even as a child, I always chose my teams. First the Yankees because they were the best, then the Baltimore Colts because they had John Unitas. Later, I chose the NHL Sabres after watching them rally against mighty Montreal early in the ’74-75 season.
For many years now I’ve been bored with all sports, essentially having outgrown them. Rabid fans in their forties and fifties seem slightly idiotic to me. Grow up!
You hit the nail on the head !
Professional sports and other entertainment, in much of the western world, but more particularly the US, remind me of what was available during the decline of the Roman Empire. If I recall correctly it was referred to as “bread and circuses”. The empire appeared to have lost its purpose, and had too many people with no purpose. They had to be entertained. And their attentions diverted from substantive matters. We know that ended badly.
On another level we are quickly becoming nations of spectators rather than participants.
Robert,
The thing that bugs me most about professional sports is the taxpayer subsidy of people who can’t even claim to need it.
The team owners are billionaires, the players are millionaires, but they refuse to pay to build their own stadiums. Rather, they blackmail gutless politicians in making the taxpayers build their stadiums. And then they expect us to cheer for them.
The sports issue is always worth rehashing; but, personally, I think the nuclear issue brought up in the previous post—One Person at A Time— would be even more interesting. People are stinging mad about the suggestion of America being the first to use nuclear weapons.
“But that quagmire, too, could be ended in one day by dropping a nice, neat string of nuclear bombs on the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Lets explore the issue: When is the use, including the first use, of nuclear weapons justified?
My first thought is that it’s almost an absolute certainty that some group or country is going to use nuclear weapons. When it happens, how will we as individuals and a nation respond when there is, for example, a mushroom cloud over Jerusalem?
Bethlehem, the city of Jesus, is about five miles away from Jerusalem: How will you and I feel when all the places that we’ve learned about in the Holy Bible; the places that we were taught are Holy; The places that even if we’ve never set foot on them, they’re still cherished. Even if, like me, you have serious doubts about God and Jesus; How will we act when a suit- case nuke is opened? And what kind of response will we demand from our leaders?
Fallout raining down like a Christmas snowstorm on The Mount of Olives, Nazareth, Galilee, and all of Zion: Think of it! And the worst part of all this is that if something like this happens on the night of the World Series, then it might even preempt the the big game! My, my, my—-all those poor broken-hearted baseball fanatics would feel such disappointed about missing the games they so worship.
I sometimes wonder which are more zealous: The religious fanatics that are plotting to nuke the West or the sports fanatics that work themselves into a total frenzy over a kid’s game.
The writer says “I’m proud to say I believe in economic freedom.” May I submit that ALL our freedoms, especially economic, have been expropriated? What freedoms, will someone tell me, do we still have which do not accomodate a P.C. agenda? Employers have the “freedom” to higher unqualified applicants to fill government quota mandates. Landlords have the “freedom” not to refuse to rent to the most unsavory characters who apply. Homeowners have the “freedom” to continue to pay property taxes, long after the home is fully paid for, to the REAL owner who will expropriate the property if this shake down payment is not timely and consistent. On-air jocks have the “freedom of speech” to be fired if they stray from the P.C. mode of expression, as Howard Cosell, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, Tom Brookshier, and Dodgers GM Al Campanis found out the hard way.
We also enjoy, in this country, the “freedom” to have our phones tapped, our internet activity monitored, our social and business contacts logged, and our shopping and personal habits on file for possible prosecution fodder for the vultures who care more about our range of normal human behavior more than we and our families even do, for their sadistic personal life destruction and profit motive, of course.
We also, under Roosevelt, had the “Freedom” to have our gold expropriated,under penalty of law (prison sentence) if we did not comply, in exchange for inflatable paper currency, in the biggest “legal” heist ever purpetrated upon a civilized society. But of course the perpetrator was a Democrat, so we never read nor hear of it, these days.
Enough. Just tell me ONE real freedom we still enjoy which justifies our young people having to die in foreign wars defending, and I will defer to your brillance.
Of course I meant “hire” in the third sentence, above, not “higher.” RB
I seem to remember someone once saying,”give them bread and circuses”. Our bread is now our overabundant lifestyle and our circuses are the sport
-ing events or reality shows or news that you couldn’t trust even if it were happening in front of you, or the touchy feely shows of “O” or ellen degenerate etc. that come into every ones home that has the “One Eyed Monster” sitting in the family room,kitchen,bedroom,etc. Those that get lost in these things are getting the gov’t they deserve because they believed the politicians when the told them about the free lunch of health care, yada, yada,
yada. You were right Mr. Ringer about the thinking part, that is too much like work for most people.
Robert,
You have it exactly on the response to johnwolfe53. However, as you mentioned “the list is as long as you want to make it.” Because of single issue thinking (a symptom), we are somewhat individual or small herd instinctual. We can’t seem t get together on delivering a death blow to the socialist march toward socialist governmental control.
Because there is not a national “Mantra” supported by libertarian voices (a solution to the list/symptoms) the “beat goes on” as it were. You must cut the socialist power base off at the knees.
Repeal the Federal Reserve, back the “money” by gold and silver, pass the Fair Tax and eliminate the IRS. I’m looking for the mantra to ignite national passion. Randall
You have the voice
Any given life has a finite quantity of time in it, and one’s life can end at any given time. What comes after, no one knows for certain. To be wasting so much of one’s precious and valuable time alloted on this Earth, passively being entertained with what amounts to completely useless and trivial events and information, is a sign of our lost times and wasted human potential on a mass scale.
To relax once in awhile and enjoy a stress relieving distraction in the form of watching an occasional game or television program , is of course needed in today’s fast paced and hectic world. Yet for grown adults to obsess over these various forms of entertainments
(fanatical sports team devotion, video games, grown adults collecting child’s toys such as Star Trek, Star Wars, comic books, etc. has all the earmarks and characteristics of a nation and culture in rapid decline.
To keep the overall populace distracted, sedated, and by and large completely complacent by feeding them mass amounts of mindless entertainment that requires no thinking or active questioning, is a form of control. The concept of this form of control was defined back in ancient times when the government figured out it could keep the general population distracted and peaceful by sedating them with entertainment and full stomachs….
From Wikipedia….
“Bread and circuses” (or bread and games) (from Latin: panem et circenses) is a metaphor for handouts and petty amusements that politicians use to gain popular support, instead of gaining it through sound policy. The phrase is invoked not only to criticize politicians, but also to criticize their supporters for giving up their civic duty.
In modern usage, the phrase has become an adjective to deride an infantilized populace so defined by entertainment, instant self gratification, and personal pleasures that they no longer value civic virtues and the public life (not necessarily accomplished through deliberate pacification by politicians but through the popular culture itself). To many social conservatives, it connotes the wanton decadence and hedonism that defined Rome prior to its decline and that may similarly contribute to the decline of modern society.”
Grown adults watching and fanatically following entertainment sports is nothing more than the man’s version of voyeuristically watching those sad and pathetic “reality tv” shows that engage mostly women’s interests, where someone else’s life and world is far more interesting than one’s own.
I sincerely doubt that any athletes or media entertainment celebrities are going into the locker room or dressing room at the end of their day and obsessingly checking the daily statistics and high point events in the lives of any of their “fans”.
Why should I, as a rational adult, give more than a passing moment of my time, or modicum of money, to follow the accomplishments and lives of these far removed and inconsequential people in sports and entertainment.
There are more seriously important and immediate personal reality issues to attend to with the admittedly limited time remaining in my life and I’d rather not squander that time.
Hey…how about that ongoing TIGER WOODS story?!?!
WOW. I just can’t seem to get enough dirty and juicy details on this high profile athlete’s scandalous marital faux pas to keep me in the loop and up to date. The vigilant media doing their “job”(as covertly defined), providing us with all the crucially important news that’s absolutely needed to know for a free and informed society to remain vigilant over the current crop of lecherous politicians and the legislation shaping our lives and the future of the nation. The modern media is really on it, and providing the thinking and informed masses “just what they THINK they want”.
I feel we made a grave error getting involved in the turmoil in Islamic cultures.
They don’t benefit from our efforts to force our form of government on them, especially when we have thrown our compass, the Constitution under the bus.
We have opened the doors to Muslim integration into our culture. The world has known the results of this nonsense for many years.
Our Constitution forbids official religion and theirs demands it.
Robert,
I did understand the point you were making about decisive action when one engages in a battle. I would have to also admit throwing in the “nuke ‘em” strategy would not have been the way I would have approached the debate. It is a viable strategy to go way over the top in a debate and rattle your opposing debaters. But the nuclear option is so pejorative that it does not rattle the opposing debaters, rather it creates furor. In addition, the last thing the USA wants is to raise the ante with the nutcases (like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and Kim Jong-il) letting them think we are considering the nuclear option.
That said, we would want the most aggressive strategy we can develop to get in, get it done, and get out. Unfortunately, President Bush failed us in the GWOT fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Obama is doing worse. Now, we just need an exit strategy that gets us out with minimal loss of life and face. I do not think, with the tenor of his speech at West Point, that President Obama is adequate to the task.
Ken Wallin, PhD (abd)
Major, USAR (ret)
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kmwallin
“Keep up the fight”
I agree that U. S. should have never entered the Vietnam war, and I agree that once one is commited one should use all the power at their disposal to end a fight. I also agree that comercialazed sports are a means to distract people from the real important things in life.
What I do not agree with is, that WE the beings who have been given the leadership of this vast and apparebtly unendeless planet; have to go to war and/or worship, and pay huge amounts of money to so very few.
If you think about the nickname I have chosen for this site, you should also think about Pandora´s Box: Please remind me about what Pandora found in the bottom of Epimithieous
s box