Tag: sports

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I was watching the trial by combat joust in the new Game of Thrones iteration “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” and it dawned on me on how attracted human beings are to violence. People are willing to joust and people are willing to watch jousting even though there was a good chance that somebody would, at the very least, get maimed or, worse still, be killed; furthermore blood sports have a long history in humanity.

The modern world makes a show of caring more about the athletes in their games but the danger still exists (think boxing, rugby, football, hockey, Formula One). These men risk their bodies and possibly their lives to entertain us.

Some observations here:

1.The participants are largely men. There is something innate in men to show their bravery by risking their health and lives. Some men like to rumble. I knew a guy who liked to get in bar fights. He would arrange situations where he might have to defend his “honor.” His honor was broadly defined as anything that irritated him, things like tailgating on a highway or running into him in a crowded bar. I generally thought his honor wasn’t at stake and a simple apology would suffice but he felt differently. The show of physical courage is important to men.

2. A lot of people like to watch these displays of physical courage. Millions of people watch football games and boxing matches — knowing full well that these men are risking their bodies for their entertainment. Even though they would like to detach the idea of this as courage, most people in the audience for these events would largely agree with this idea of physical courage. It is important to them to know there are men capable of this type of courage.

3. These ideas are pretty much locked into our definition of courage. As this appears to have been going on for as long as humans have been in civilizations, speaks volumes of the importance of violence in civilization. I can give all kinds of rational reasons why this shouldn’t be so, that it is insanity for a man to risk his future brain for a Super Bowl ring now but I am fairly certain it will fall on deaf ears. In order to prove his courage, a man must risk his body to prove it and this is the way things have been for a very long time.

What I am trying to figure out is why society’s approach to violence is to treat it as some aberration instead of fundamental to the nature of the male of our species. So much of what humans profess to think about something has nothing to do with how we feel about it. Men want to box. People want to watch boxing. Saying that they shouldn’t box or enjoy boxing fails to deal with the reality of the situation. When someone screams fight in high school parking lot, the people rushing to the fight are not running to break up the fight but rather trying to catch the action before it ends.

I wish I had answers but I don’t. But completely quashing this very strong emotion in humans and making them wrong, doesn’t stop people from having them. It is irrational and inexplicable but despite our best efforts to reform and our continued disapproval of physical violence, it persists. Let’s face it, humans like to rumble.

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I know I am little late in commenting on this but I feel this is a great example of how wrong headed the media has become.

First, I want to apologize to Aaron Rodgers before going any further. I have to mention something that he was reported to have done which is in essence passing on the information that I feel is unworthy of news coverage. I have made my peace with it in that so many major news outlets have reported it and my very low subscriber list is certainly no match for these networks, I am fairly certain that this is not news to anyone who would read an article about Aaron Rodgers. It also shows the bigger problem, I stopped to read this article over say what is going on in the Ukraine or the Middle East.

Any way, here is the gist of the report — Aaron Rodgers eats boogers. That’s right, a man who has a camera focused on him for much of his life, was, maybe, caught doing something human. That it is so important to point this out to the world beggars belief. So what? Nobody needs to know this. NOBODY.

Rodgers denies it and I can’t blame him it because it is embarrassing, but I think a better response would be to mind your own fucking business. What person on this earth, if they were under the same scrutiny, wouldn’t sometime lapse into some gross behavior which is entirely human? Blowing my nose without a handkerchief? Spitting? Picking their nose? Smelling their arm pits to check on their oder?

What value did this story bring to the reading public? All it really does is embarrass Rodgers which, I admit, is pretty fun because Rodgers is a bit of an asshole and deserves a little embarrassment. This, however, was the wrong tool to bring him down. Some in the media will say that they were forced to report on it when social media began to go wild with reports of Rodgers booger eating. It, then, became necessary for people to know about it and for Rodgers to address it.

How disingenuous. This means some crazy person can gaze hour after hour at a famous person sitting on a bench and report about any of the things he does there just because he is famous. Once the asshole finds the booger eating and then spreads his discovery onto social meeting, the media has to investigate because the public is talking about it. Let them talk about it. The media is under no such compunction. It isn’t news. Celebrities are human beings whose bodies function much like other mere mortals. If it annoyed Rodgers enough to rebut, he can talk about it but I see no reason for any responsible media operation to say anything about the topic.

More importantly, it is a distraction from a million more important things that could be reported on. Why waste the short attention of the public with something so insignificant, and, hey, I am admitting I one of the public here because I zipped right on to the booger eating controversy. The sports media might focus on something like the Jet’s abysmal record this season and how Rodgers might change this continuing disaster? Now that is something worth talking about. .