CSotD: Earning honor
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I said yesterday that there had been cartoons about the Dolphins' harrassment issue but none worth passing along. Now here's one that is, from Rob Rogers.
The story is getting coverage beyond the sports page, as it should, for a couple of reasons.
One is that, if you're going to lecture our kids about bullying, you can't then shrug it off when their heroes do it.
I've already said that anybody who tells kids not to be bullied and then watches "American Idol" in the early humiliation episodes each season is a hypocrite. How can you tell kids bullying is bad out of one side of your mouth and laugh at the cruelty of this exercise in public humiliation out of the other?
A related thing is this: In the last generation, we've seen football players in particular step up to be men, by which I don't mean tearing the heads off each other.
I mean coming forward and admitting they have had damage from years of concussions and are not too "manly" to seek help, that they don't feel compelled to "just shake it off."
I also mean starting foundations to help kids who don't have their athletic skills escape from a world that seems determined to drag them down.
And I mean skipping games in order to be present at the birth of their own children.
And then pulling those children out of the stands during Super Bowl Victory celebrations and carrying them around the field as proudly as they carry the Lombardi Trophy.
And, yeah, those are headphones protecting his little ears. Judging from the expression on his face, this isn't the first time Daddy has held him waaaaaaaay up.
But I also saw a cartoon from an artist I generally admire, harping on the Neanderthal theme that real men don't have feelings, that football players are tough guys.
"Say it ain't so," indeed. I never thought to question his manhood until now, but I'm disillusioned.
Anyway, Rogers seems clear on the matter, and touches on the latest wrinkle: The circling of wagons in Miami, in which the (alleged) bully, Richie Incognito, is being hailed by his teammates as the greatest guy who ever strode the face of this planet.
Annnnnnd … here we are back at my favorite question: Are they stupid, or do they think we are?
Rogers is actually going light on the Dolphins. There have been many times when a player has been accused of rotten conduct, only to have his teammates stand behind him.
Sort of.
That is, they'll say he's a good teammate, but then they'll admit he can be a bit harsh, that he rubs some people the wrong way, that he sometimes gets out of hand …
Bill Romanowski. Conrad Dobler. Albert Haynesworth. Cortland Finnegan.
I'm told — but can't find a quote — that Adam Carolla has said the test for whether someone is an @ss**** is repeating the name. Which is to say, when colleagues say, "Well, you know, Joe is Joe," they mean that they can't stand the guy either and they aren't gonna lie for him, but he's a valuable member of the team.
More or less what Rob Rogers portrays here, and I think it's accurate in that, if Incognito were not really good on the field, he'd have been gone from the lockerroom long ago.
He's not only been gone from two colleges and a couple of NFL lockerrooms despite his skills, but there have been coaches and general managers in the past few days who have said they took a look at his character coming out of college and decided not to draft him.
That doesn't translate to "What a great guy!"
It translates to, "Well, you know, Richie is Richie."
Speaking of "damned with faint praise"
Nice commentary by Nick Anderson on the ACA web site "controversy."
I put that in quotes because it's being ginned up by ACA opponents, which I would expect, and then by coup hunters in the news business.
Let me explain that phrase: "Counting coup" is a sort of showboating aspect of combat in many Plains Indian cultures. Some even have a "coup stick" which was something like a curved ruler that you would take into battle.
"Counting coup" was as simple as striking an enemy with your coup stick. You didn't have to kill him or even hurt him. In some cases, he could even be dead by the time you counted coup.
I guess it was the Indian equivalent of Woody Allen's dictum that 80 percent of success is showing up. A sign of your being willing to enter the fight, yes, but not the same as the honors a more accomplished warrior — or even his horse — could earn.
So last night Chuck Todd got Obama to admit that he was disappointed in the roll out and regretted having overpromised the portability of coverage to the five percent of Americans to whom it applied in the first place.
From the way Brian Williams played it up, you'd have thought he'd caught the man with Colonel Mustard and the candlestick in the Conservatory.
Give Chuck Todd a trophy for participation. His collection of those is starting to rival David Gregory's.
My expectations of NBC are low enough that it didn't shock me, but it did remind me that, while I gave up on the website and called the phone number a month ago, I hadn't heard back. So I went to the website last night and still couldn't sign on, so I tried the live chat.
Now, according to the insurance industry lapdogs, that exposed me to horrible felons who would immediately steal my identity and, I dunno, buy snowtires with my credit card or something.
What it exposed me to was nothing, because they aren't allowed to ask for any identifying information. Which means he couldn't help me with my question. He suggested I call the 800-number.
Which I did, and I was on hold for … gasp … about four minutes. And then, after providing my information, I went back on hold for another four minutes while she looked things up.
Then she came back and said my file was still working its way through the system. She wasn't allowed to peek into it, but there were no red flags and everything seems to be unfolding slowly, but more or less as it should.
She suggested I just give it another week or so and then call again if I wanted to check again.
I like Anderson's take because he's not letting Obama off the hook, but he's also not simply running in to count coup. He's making a point about perspective and proportion, and he's not falling for the scary-scary promises of all the Count Floyds out there.
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