Monday, September 8, 2014

Political Correctness and the NFL

It seems that the contretemps over the team name of the Washington Redskins has subsided, much to the chagrin of liberals who think it terribly insensitive that a pro football team would actually refer to itself by the name “Redskins” even though it has been painfully difficult to find any Native-Americans who were actually offended by it.

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We'll soon be heading into the month of October which means that all across the country, but especially in the NFL, football teams will be wearing those garish pink shoes and other paraphernalia in recognition of breast cancer awareness month. Isn't one Sunday a month enough to have to endure having one's aesthetic sense assaulted by the clash of team colors with pink accessories all so the NFL can claim to care about women? Couldn't they just hire a few more token side-line reporters instead?

And why is it only breast cancer about which the NFL is "raising our awareness"? Why is there no prostate cancer awareness month in the NFL, or, given the seriousness of head injuries in football, an Alzheimer's awareness month? I guess the reason is that these just wouldn't score points with women.

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Speaking of scoring points with women, Ray Rice was cut by the Baltimore Ravens for punching his fiance in an elevator. Very well, that's certainly appropriate. A business should not employ people who bring shame and discredit upon their organization. But my question about this is, had Rice punched some guy in a bar would the Ravens have cut him? What if the guy was some wimpy weakling no more able to defend himself than was Rice's fiance? Would there have been anywhere near the outrage over Rice knocking out another man as has been unleashed by the video of him punching his bride-to-be? If not, why not?

In other words, is Rice being punished more severely for hitting a woman than he would've been for hitting a man? How can a feminist justify a disparity in punishment? According to feminists gender shouldn't matter in how women are treated, and yet many feminists (rightly, in my view) believe that it's somehow more wrong to have punched a woman than a man.

Maybe they just don't really believe what they say they believe when they say that gender doesn't matter.

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When Michael Sam, the openly gay NFL draftee was released by the Rams the NFL was said to have intervened on his behalf to try to get another team to pick him up which the Cowboys ultimately did. Why did the NFL do that for Sam? Is it because he was gay? Aren't we told that a person's sexual orientation isn't supposed to matter? Isn't the NFL discriminating against the hundreds of players who fail to make a pro team but who do not have the league office seeking to secure them a position on another team? How is what the NFL did for Sam anything but preferential treatment for a man just because he's gay?

Did the NFL make similar efforts on behalf of Tim Tebow when he was cut? Well, someone might reply, that's different. After all, Sam is gay, a special class of person even though the class only makes up about 1.5% of the population. Tebow is overtly Christian and as such is an embarrassment to the league even though Christians of Tebow's stripe make up probably 40% of the population. The NFL apparently believes that it's appropriate to treat gays better than Christians. In the NFL some people are evidently more equal than others.

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I actually think it's too bad that the Cowboys signed Sam. I was hoping the Redskins would have picked him up just for the fun of watching the left squabble among themselves over whether to hate the Redskins for refusing to change their name or to praise them for signing a gay player.